Of Sharks and Octupi

I watched Sharktopus the other day. SyFy announced on Twitter it was "our most watch[sic] Sept movie ever". I have trouble putting up with their Saturday night B-movies like this. The best parts of this movie were the Bumpers (when the show came back from commercial) that had a quick message from the Destination Truth guy, who made fun of it. SyFy knew this movie was bad. They even made a special Sharktopus theme song. They mocked their own movie, ruining the only joy I normally get out of it.

A secret branch of the government makes a Sharktopus, already an unstable emotion creature, and puts an electro-shock control collar around its head to test it in open waters. It runs rampant killing as many bikini-clad girls as it can. People hunt it and many more people die. The best character was the VW Beetle the reporter drove around. I gave the first hour 100% of my attention. After that every minute I dropped 1%. I watched it die but I hovered around 55% interest. I’m so glad to get it off my DVR. Wasted ones-and-zeroes I tell you.

So, why did I watch it? Last week I got into a debate, by e-mail, with Tuning In To SciFi TV about the popularity of SyFy branded B-movies. I hate them. I think they hurt Sci-Fi fandom in general. How could new people to the genre watch Sharktopus and walk away saying they like Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror at all. The counter argument, that had never occurred to me, was that it is a gateway for non Sci-Fi fans to watch the channel, and these movies pay the bills. Really cheap junk B-movies help to fund their TV shows (currently Stargate Universe, Warehouse 13, Eureka, Haven, Sanctuary, and Caprica), all of which I really enjoy. There is a huge disconnect for me between their movies and TV shows. SyFy single-handedly made Battlestar Galactica relevant. I can accept this now and have moved on with my life. I will watch a SyFy movie that casts an actor I like, though, which is to say I’m a sucker for stunt-casting. Can’t wait for Red.

Stargate Universe is currently one of my favorite TV shows of the season, along with Fringe, Chuck, and (surprisingly) No Ordinary Family. Dr. Rush has been my favorite character since day one. He gets how bad “bad” is, and makes what others perceive to be questionable decisions, to save lives. This comes off a bit wrong only because he doesn’t waste time explaining himself, so he’s seen as a bit anti-social. (Not unlike the print version of Sherlock Holmes.) That doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve to get beat up every once in a while by Colonel Young, but it’s food for thought.

In the season premier everything from the cliffhanger wrapped up quickly in that hour, almost before we could figure out if it made sense. Instead of heading to the airlock and certain death, Scott and Greer hid on the “dark side” of the ship to survive the pulsar radiation. This makes sense to me, but Cloe’s magic healing leg needs to be explained at some point, not to mention she got all her blood back. We never really saw all the Lucian Alliance troops so they introduced new actors that weren’t in last season, since they let LDP kill Rhona Mitra’s character, Kiva. She’s now free to do The Gates. TJ’s baby-dream-sequence-thing actually worked for me since they had to account for Alaina Huffman’s lack of pregnancy. Now the show is like Star Trek: Voyager again but with a third faction on board; Military, Civilian and Lucian Alliance. Things were already shaky between Young and Camile, how will the new group cope.

At the end of the month a new vision of the Zombie Apocalypse hits AMC for six episodes of Walking Dead. The series looks great, even though it reminds me a little of the opening of 28 Days Later. I’m too impatient to wait so I bought the first Graphic Novel. Anything I say would be spoilers but this series is worth it. I’m not a huge Day/Dawn/Return of the Dead movie fan, but I love playing Zombie videogames and the book World War Z grabbed my attention fully. I’m even in the middle of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The production values look high in this series and I hope it goes the distance. With six episodes it feels a bit like a mini-series, and I don’t want to wait until this time next year for season 2 and I haven’t even seen the first episode.

My only gaming has been Halo: Reach. Daily Challenges are very addictive, and I don’t even care that I’ve ignored the campaign. Maybe this weekend I’ll finish the game on Heroic, but I’m really enjoying all the multi-player offerings. Why is it that every 8-year-old on Xbox Live sounds exactly the same. Are there Microsoft clone children being grown somewhere whose only power is to whine about being shot virtually? The real world might know my pain if the try calling this public megaphone. All parents should secretly play their kids online just to see what its like. Plus every 8-year-old is better at it than me, so I’m bitter. Playing some more Halo now…