/** *********************************************************************** * ************************************************************************ * The Non-Sequitur Express * Blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah, blah. * Published weekly, or at other random intervals, by Phillip Thorne. * http://home.earthlink.net/~pethorne/Reviewer/ * * Volume 1, Issue 6: Friday 12 November 1999 * ************************************************************************ * ********************************************************************* */ In this issue: UPCOMING: Heads Up, TV, Voyager TOYS: Beast Wars Fuzor SILVERBOLT SOMNABULATIONS: 1992 September 10: The Imperial Salad Computer ERRATA: plus Legalese, acknowledgements and opt-in/out instructions /** *********************************************************************** * Upcoming * Series, Seasons, Episodes, Movies * ********************************************************************* */ Heads up: POKÉMON: THE FIRST MOVIE opened Wednesday 10 November, not Friday the 12th. And remember to hide from the 20-minute short that precedes it, PIKACHU'S VACATION, because even the son of a film critic found it incomprehensible. DOGMA, the fifth film from writer/director Kevin Smith in which he appears as Silent Bob (Clerks, Mall Rats, Drawing Flies, Chasing Amy) opens today. Watch Silent Bob and... the other guy... join forces with the forgotten Thirteenth Apostle of Christ and Christ's last surviving descendent to offend people who can't bear to see their cherished beliefs laughed at. No, wait, that was the plot of "The Name of the Rose." And they stop rogue angels from destroying the universe via a loophole, too. It's like "Neon Genesis Evangelion" only completely different and not animated. On Monday-Wednesday 15-17 November at 20:00, FoxFamily shows the three parts of V: THE FINAL BATTLE. Alien lizards disguised as humans eat rats and steal our water with giant flying saucers. Then their ships are re-used on "Star Trek: The Next Generation." The seventeeth Bond film, THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, opens Friday, 19 November. And the promos look exactly like those for every other 007 film. FoxKids airs the animated NASCAR RACERS: THE MOVIE on Saturday 20 November at 10:30. They're crayon-colored stock cars plastered with corporate endorsements... that race on giant Hot Wheels loop-de-loops... and transform to deploy jet engines. Saturday Morning FoxKids: * SH22 109 z 1106-0800 * X9 108 z 1106-0930 * BMTF 110 z 1106-1100 * Avg 103 z 1106-1130 Primetime TV: * N+A A girl's life 107 f 1112-2100 CBS 3 * EFC Thicker than blood 306 z 1113-1600 WB 17 * SG1 Secrets 209 z 1113-1700 Fox29 r SG1 Family 208 s 1114-0400 Fox29 Teal'C's son. * Fut Fry and the Slurm factory 113 s 1114-2030 Fox29 * XF Sixth extinction 2, amor fati 702 s 1114-2100 Fox29 Mulder crazy. RD Back in the Red, 2 802 s 1114-2330 PBS12 r EFC Once and future world 305 s 1114-2330 WB 17 Ma'el's ship. * Buf The initiative 407 t 1116-2000 WB 17 Spike captured. * Dil Art 203 t 1116-2030 UPN57 * Ang Bachelor party 107 t 1116-2100 WB 17 Doyle's wife. * 7D Sister's keeper 207 w 1117-2000 UPN57 * N+A Pulp turkey 108 f 1119-2100 CBS 3 * EFC Little bit of heaven 307 z 1120-1600 WB 17 * SG1 Bane 210 z 1120-1700 Fox29 r SG1 Secrets 209 s 1121-0400 Fox29 * Fut I second that emotion 114 s 1121-2030 Fox29 * XF Hungry 703 s 1121-2100 Fox29 RD Back in the Red, 3 803 s 1121-2330 PBS12 r EFC Thicker than blood 306 s 1121-2330 WB 17 Upcoming episodes of STAR TREK VOYAGER: Relativity 524 f 1112-1900 Seven as timecop. r Dragon's teeth 607 z 1110-2100 Alien sleepers resume war. Eye of the needle 106 m 1115-1900 Meet Romulan thru wormhole. The killing game, 1 418 t 1116-1900 Crew reenacts wars for Hirogen. The killing game, 2 419 w 1117-1900 Crew fights back. * One small step 608 w 1117-2100 Meet first Mars expedition. Bliss 514 r 1118-1900 Space cloud hypnos, eats ship. The 37's 201 f 1119-1900 Land, thaw Amelia Earhart. r One small step 608 z 1120-1900 Ibid. (Pre-empted by hockey) ... m 1122-1900 ... Macrocosm 312 t 1123-1900 Fight the flying superviri. /** *********************************************************************** * Toy Review * Transformers Beast Wars Maximal Fuzor SILVERBOLT * Hasbro * ********************************************************************* */ Hasbro's "Transformers" toys produced by Hasbro are but one of several 1980s lines of robots that disguised themselves by rearranging their body parts into some alternate mode. Those original "Generation 1" altmodes were almost exclusively vehicular. Many of them were awkward slabs of bestickered plastic with unposeable conjoined legs. Their "Beast Wars" line, started in 1996, represents advances in almost every technical category. The organic animal forms the characters don are highly realistic, with finely sculpted, detailed and painted surfaces. As robots, many of the toys have almost full human articulation -- ankle, knee, hip, waist, shoulder, elbow and neck. The 1997 "Fuzor" subline features chimeric beastmodes -- scorpion plus cobra, hammerhead shark plus hawk, etc. The Silverbolt toy was released way back in 1997, but I was lucky enough to find one this week for $10.99, hidden amongst dozens of "pegwarmers" in my local Phar-Mor's toy aisle. A fusion of eagle and wolf, "SB" is one of the few toys privileged to appear on the "Beast Wars" CGI series, and was re- released as a BotCon'99 recolored toy exclusive. Form: SB's a "deluxe" scale toy, which means he's larger and has greater posability than the "basics." In beastmode, SB has the head, body and hindlegs of a wolf, with the wings and tail of an eagle, and forelegs that resemble an eagle's talons. He's 14.5cm nose-to-tail and has a 23cm wingspan. As a 14.5cm-tall robot his limbs are well-proportioned, though his 1.5cm head's a little small (a ubiquitous shortcoming), and he looks to be wearing a 13cm-long hang glider. Aside from that and the wolf's lower hindlegs that hang from his elbows, he's wonderfully free of "kibble" -- leftover elements from one mode that detract from the other. Detailing: He's beautifully detailed in gray plastic, with the finest details of the fur and feathers molded in relief. There are no decals, but five colors of paint: black on the wolf's nose, back and trailing tips of the wing feathers, gold on the midfeathers and talons, egg-white on the tail, yellow for both mode's eyes, and his wolf snarl is picked out in ivory. The gold follows through to robot mode; on the talons-now-ankles of course, plus detailing on the chest and apron. His thorax contains a cabochon molded in startling pink plastic. Articulation: SB's joints, both hinge and ball, are firm; he can easily balance on two legs as a wolf, or on one as a robot. He has 16 points of articulation in beastmode: the fore-and-hind claws pivot independently, the knees are hinged, the four hips are ball-socketed, and the wings are hinged vertically and pivot horizontally. The same points move in robot mode (save for the ball-socketed robot elbows), plus the tail can now fold down and the neck pivots. Transformation: semi-anti-homologous; the foreleg talons map to the robot mode's legs, and the hindlegs to the arms. With the latter, the forearm is folded up as part of the thigh, and the lower leg and foot end up hanging off the elbow. The wolf head and neck unfold to comprise most of the torso; the remainder is provided by a pair of double-hinged mechanisms that unfold each talons/legs. A similar pair of linkages swings the wolf hips forward into the robot mode shoulder sockets. The wings and tail are essentially fixed in position. Gimmicks: Pulling on the tail rocks the wings forward; they're spring- loaded and spring back. Each wing contains a slot for a feather-shaped missile; look out, their spring-launched trajectories can stretch well over two meters. The two gimmicks combine; pivot the wings to their furthest extent and the release pegs are actuated, launching the missiles at 45 degrees left and right of the centerline. (The missiles resemble clubs and can be held as such in robot mode.) Finally, SB's Maximal allegiance is revealed by the "energon chip" hidden under his tail; this is a square of liquid crystal that reacts to the heat of a fingertip to reveal his faction insignia. /** *********************************************************************** * From the secret mixed-up files of Phil's head, it's... * HIS WACKIEST SOMNABULATIONS * 1992 September 10 * ********************************************************************* */ When a wrestler asks who I am, a third party points at my bedroom bureau (an Imperial Star Destroyer) and explains that I'm the Empire's great technical guru geek guy. Meanwhile, inside a different Destroyer, a hand adjusts a control on a huge columnar computer than runs from stem to stern. The unseen owner of the hand chats with it. Later, the computer has been repurposed as a salad bar, the central feature of an upscale eatery, where it serves as an oracle-slash-host. It doesn't last long though, because when I turn and run back through the post office in a rest area along the New Jersey Turnpike, I'm too late to prevent a pair of technicians from dismantling the computer. Next, I fight Darth Vader, wrapping him in a forcefield with my weapon. Thus restrained, I then take a device from him, a black plastic ring shaped rather like one of those hooks on which socks are sold, and use it to shut off a huge hole in the sky, through which another universe is leaking. Next, Luke is fighting Vader, and gets his hand chopped off again; however, a small rocket-propelled droid holds it in place. Luke nonetheless tosses his hand down a black hole for no adequately explained reason, and follows Vader into a space station. Unfortunately, he's forgotten how to operate in microgee and vacuum. He manages to cycle through the airlock, whose "resident diagnostics" AI is reluctant to let him into danger. Luke manages to enter the 25,000-meter corridor beyond the airlock and finds at the end a spherical room. He floats there, surrounded by scenes of the evolution of powered flight. This station (as it turns out) was built by an ancient race (or maybe humanity's ancestors) and the room is a shrine. Embedded memory projectors create a deep sense of history about flight, culminating in the Incom T-72 X-Wing. Later, we're back to the computer, which has now been disguised as a kitchen table. The Imperial tech guru (who isn't me) argues with my group as to which of two positions of a three-position control ("in" or "out") activates the black hole (presumably the one with the hand that I earlier closed). The matriarch in charge of the kitchen allows us try it again; I think she's crazy until a see a loaded pack of camping gear on the living room couch and realize she's going to toss the guru (and pack) into the other universe. /** *********************************************************************** * Errata * ********************************************************************* */ The episode of "Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century" that aired 6 November ("The Scales of Justice") was #107, not #108. /** *********************************************************************** * Legalese * Acknowledgments * Opt-in/out Instructions * ********************************************************************* */ All books, movies, television shows, toys and other creative works reviewed or analyzed herein are the property of their respective copyright holders. No infringement is expressed, implied or intended. The original reviews and analyses are themselves copyright 1999 by Phillip Thorne. Some data has been reprocessed via aint-it-cool-news.com, foxkids.com, tv.excite.com, and upcomingmovies.com. I should acknowledge something here, but I do that in every issue. Umm... I hereby thank the author of the NoteTab Pro text editor, Eric G.V. Fookes. It's really handy to have 30 files open, listed both as tabs up top and in an alphabetic list to the side. You're receiving this newsletter because you're a friend, former classmate and/or former or current coworker of Phillip Thorne, or have specifically subscribed to it. To receive the seventh and subsequent issues, send an email message to pethorne@earthlink.net with the words "SUBSCRIBE NON-SEQUITUR" or 'subscribe nonsequitur' in the subject line and/or body. To stop subscribing, s/subscribe/unsubscribe/ig. Capitalization and punctuation doesn't matter. /** *********************************************************************** * ************************************************************************ * The Non-Sequitur Express * http://home.earthlink.net/~pethorne/Reviewer/ * Volume 1, Issue 6: Friday 12 November 1999 * Copyright 1999 Phillip Thorne, pethorne@earthlink.net * ************************************************************************ * ********************************************************************* */