Time Immortal

Never read much of his stuff — I was a latecomer to the party in the first place, and after reading his 3001, I left the party early. Still, he was one of the influential authors in the sci-fi genre (a genre near and dear to my heart), and on that basis alone it’s worth marking his passing.

Pretty damn funny, and also a concise summation of the plot of this excellent series up until the end of Season 3. If spoilers aren’t your thing, give this one a pass. Or watch as far as you have seen in the series…one of the two.

Heh.

Ace thinks it’s a bad idea. Respectfully, I disagree.

I’m not going to give anything away about Deathly Hallows here — suffice to say that it was a heck of a good read and a very well-paced book that was just jammed with one significant revelation after another. There’s a bit of stuff that could be trimmed, to be sure, but over two-thirds of the book contain necessary story elements. And don’t get me started on the incredible symbolism of some scenes. That’d be very hard to compress into one movie, and I don’t think one movie would do it justice.

Either that, or I’m just a dirty, dirty shill for the Warner Brothers movie machine.

Oh, yeah…don’t click on that link if you hate spoilers.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m a Star Trek fan, especially since I married a hard-core Trekkie. I really loved Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, although that was admittedly because that show (more than any other Trek series) really tried to make the Federation into something more realistic, as opposed to this utopian paradise with seemingly no internal corruption or difficulties. DS9 added real grit to Gene Roddenberry’s perfect world, and tore at its seams a bit. And for that (and other reasons) it was, in this blogger’s opinion, the best damn Trek show ever made.

(For similar reasons, I rather enjoyed Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.)

At any rate, Mark Shea has an excellent two-part takedown of the “Prime Directive” — the first law, if you will, of the Federation of Trek fame. It’s a bit of a pointless thing, criticizing a belief held by characters of a television show. But at the same time, the same thinking that underpins the Prime Directive underpins a lot of the post-modern assumptions of our society, and the effects of that will be every bit as dangerous as the Prime Directive proved to be in those shows and Trek novels where it was at issue.

Update: Welcome, Five Feet of Fury readers! Nothing like a link from the Shaidle to blast a blog post’s view count through the roof! And since Kathy is right to point out the lack of money in the Trek universe, let me add one more thing about DS9 that I liked — gold-pressed latinum.

Nice to see he’s getting over his liberalism.

You know what that means, right, O Reader? Yup…it’s time for another movie about how the Gospels don’t tell us the truth about the life of Jesus and/or his disciples!

The BBC is to screen a new drama about the final week in the life of Jesus Christ which appears to exonerate [Judas Iscariot] and Pontius Pilate.

Producers of The Passion have portrayed the men in a sympathetic light because they believe they have been”very harshly judged” by history.

Judas is portrayed as torn between his loyalties to Jesus and Caiaphas, who organised the plot to kill Jesus.

Pilate, played by James Nesbitt, is shown struggling to manage his wife’s social aspirations and his career as he tried to”keep a lid” on tensions in Jerusalem.

Traditional Christian groups accused the BBC of rewriting the Gospel, but the makers of the series, which will be broadcast over Easter week, said they were simply trying to understand the motivations of the characters.

If the producers want to understand Judas’ motivations, and Pilate’s also, perhaps they should try the more traditional route for gaining such insight — reading the Bible, consulting reliable exegetical commentaries, and attending Mass on a consistent basis (especially during the season of Lent, which began last month and continues for another week and change). Producing glib historical fiction that seeks to portray Judas — the archetypical greedy betrayer — in a positive light is not a path that leads to understanding, but to greater confusion.

It’s so drearily predictable. Oh, one likes to pretend that all these entertainment and media organizations are just driven by profit and care only about the bottom line. And yet, almost like clockwork, something challenging Christian orthodoxy can be counted upon to emerge, from a major media organization, almost every time Easter rolls around. That’s not profit driving…that’s agenda and bias.

Don’t believe me? Let’s wait and see if some “alternative historical fiction” challenging the traditional interpretation of a Koranic story gets released during Ramadan. Then tell me there’s no bias.

Thanks, Kathy!

It would appear that the Conservative Party’s current proposed text of Bill C-10, alterations to tax law that would also see the guidelines for which Canadian productions will or will not be granted federal funding, is in fact almost exactly the same as a proposed amendment to the same act put forth by the Liberal Party in 2003.

Strangely, there were no warnings of “chill winds” back then, and no fears of “censorship.” But I guess that was when the Liberals were in power, wasn’t it? Now that et. al. are in power, the very same words have a vastly different meaning, and I expect we’re only a few more steps away from becoming a theocracy.

Pffft…yeah, right. Progressives are such a twitchy lot, aren’t they?