Subject: Nobody seems to remember Fillmore!.
Author:
Posted on: 2015-06-20 00:38:00 UTC
That is a great and abiding shame. What other children's cartoon would, by way of its first episode, be an extended riff on The Silence Of The Lambs?
I am not kidding.
I think I broke a personal record here. Two days after the last mission? I never write this fast, what's happening here?
Oh, well. Desdendelle and the Librarian off a Little Rascal in their latest mission.
I love reading your new stuff! Even if it gets a little...out there. Des and the Librarian are gonna need some therapy after this one, I can tell. (And did the Librarian go to Medical for whatever that stomach bug was already or is there some secret Time Lord healing factor thing I don't know about?)
Time Lords are incredibly sensitive beings. The Doctor, for instance, can sense time and feel the turn of the Earth. So can other Time Lords. The Librarian has been hurled around and bludgeoned with time compression like nobody's business. Consider it analogous to being shoved in the Devil's own tumble dryer and you're about there. =]
As 'since he's a Time Lord with extra senses and stuff, compression affects him way more than other people'; the fic was really compressed - hardly any paragraphing and little to no linebreaks.
"Please step in there and hit Agent Des over the head with a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone! And next time somebody asks for a beta reader in this continuum, respond ASAP!"
"The Snowdrop, Head of Department, Uncanonical Department of Inaccuracies"
I’m so sorry. At least he didn’t make me hit you with the bricks that are known as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire or Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Des, you cannot help yourself to non-generic food while you watch the sorting ceremony. As has been shown in three books, the canonical food appears only after the sorting and Dumbledore’s short welcome speech.
Also, if I had betaed, I would have questioned your mocking of the "Oh, I'm half muggle-born and half pureblood" line. People who care about these things (so not me) classify Harry as a half-blood although both his parents had the magical talent. Saying that he is half Muggle-born (one parent) and half Pureblood (the other parent) is actually a more accurate description, but Harry doesn’t care anyway.
What irks me there is that Alannah sounds like a Pureblood Supremacist who doesn’t dare to claim her supremacy, because she cannot deliver the certificate of magical ancestry, but still insists that she is better than those other half-bloods who actually have a Muggle parent. Considering that everything else is so condensed, and Harry in the canonical scene didn’t bother explaining his ancestry to anybody, I have to wonder why this detail is so important here. I don’t remember much from watching the Thunderbirds movie ages ago, so I have to ask: Would Jeff Tracy teach his adoptive daughter being a racist bastard, or where else may this come from?
HG
Seriously, the 2004 is torrid and terrible and horrible and bad and augh. But, no, Jeff Tracy won't have taught his kids to be racist jerks - he taught them to be heroes that save people, remember?
Anyway, got the food.
And, lastly: it's not the fact that Harry's half-blood that I'm mocking, it's the fact that Alannah's 'half-Pureblood'. You can't be a half-pure-something, since being a pure-something means you don't have anything else inside you, so to speak; it's like saying a kettle is half-fully black when you're looking for 'half black and half grey' or something similar.
Apparently I'm talking about Feuervögel startbereit ("Thunderbirds Are Go"), produced in 1966. Ages ago, indeed. (Yes, I was old enough to watch it when it came to German movie theaters.)
HG
Is if we liken being "half-Pureblood" to bronze being "half purest copper".
Overall, I thought it was pretty good. I don't know anything about Thunderbirds, though, so I found it pretty confusing in some spots.
Is basically the best kids' TV show ever.
Hands down.
No contest.
With Captain Scarlet a fairly close second.
In this show, there isn't generally much in the way of violence. It's short on fights and long on heroics. You do the right thing because you have the power to do so, and you don't do it through the medium of punching someone until their turds have fillings. That's an INCREDIBLE moral to give to children. It's exciting and beautifully crafted and the characters are wonderful and I love it, I just love it. It's the best action movie ever, and you get a hundred different versions of it.
I. Love. Thunderbirds.
Though I admit that Land Of The Lost thing never made its way over here.
My own top five looks something like this:
1: Thunderbirds
2: Captain Scarlet
3: Fillmore!
4: The Sarah Jane Adventures
5: Stingray
And it will like as not change in a bit when I remember something else. =]
When I was 5 I was not thinking about morals or anything like that. I just though Super-Heroes were cool.
My top five:
1. Batman
2. Land of the Lost
3. Power Rangers
4. X-Men
5. Pokémon (though admittedly it did come a bit later that the others)
Honorable mention goes to Street Sharks, Cowboys of Moo Mesa, and I cannot get away without mentioning Little Bear.
Of the ones you mentioned three of them were well before my time, and I do not even know if they ever even came to the US. By the time Fillmore! started running I had switched over to shows like Teen Titans, Code Lyoko, and Dragon Ball Z. And by the time Sarah Jane Adventures had come to the US I was no longer watching children's programming. But to each their own.
That is a great and abiding shame. What other children's cartoon would, by way of its first episode, be an extended riff on The Silence Of The Lambs?
I am not kidding.
I just moved on to other programs by that time. That was on in the time that my television watching was dominated by Cartoon Network's Toonami block. I watched it a few times I think, but as I said I preferred other things by that time.
... of Thunderbirds Are Go?
The new TV series, not the old movie, obviously.
(other than 'why is Lady Penelope a Sim', that one's a given)
hS
So far, I like some things - like the shout outs to the old series, and, y'know, people getting more screentime - but, a) the TBS is downright silly, b) where's Kyrano (seriously, I miss the old geezer) and c) why does Lady Penelope have a pug and where's her Nice Hat?
... uh, hang on a second.
I thought so: it was mentioned in the first episode that he was with Jeff when their plane went down. My assumption is a triumphant return at the end of a series - not necessarily this one, though, we'd need to look a bit more at the Hood-Kayo dynamic first.
I miss Penelope's teapot more than I miss her hat. :( 'International Rescue; Lady Penelope speaking.' Noooo idea where the dog came from (or why Fab 1 can fly - they can't really have gotten that from the movie, can they?).
My favourite accidental moment so far: every time TB1 launches, we see the deckchairs being blown across the patio. Kaitlyn and I joked that Grandma must come out and put them back again - riiiight up until the episode where we actually saw that happen. ^_^ It was good stuff.
(Weirdly, I think Thunderbird Extraneous has only been shown in flight... once? And that was only a brief shot before Tinkay joined Alan on TB3. So why did they put it in? What's it supposed to do that's different? Eh, who knows.)
hS
(Now that I've watched all of the released episodes, that is.)
Things I like:
-People actually have facial expressions now.
-Jon gets a personality and even his own rescue!
-Lady Penelope's accent.
-Parker is as awesome as ever.
-The miner and his geranium are a nice touch a la the cabbage merchant.
-The launch sequence looks nice and takes care of one thing that always bugged me (how does Virgil not slide off that... thing that slides down to TB 2).
-Creative use of the TB machines. Especially in "Heavy Metal".
Things I don't like:
-The theme isn't nearly as good as the original.
-Kayo as the Lad-ette, to the point she gets TB Extraneous. Her Action Girl-ness feels forced.
-Sherbet. Completely pointless addition.
-EOS, which is about is clichéd as things get.
-The general kiddie show feel I can't quite shake.
-Brains is token Indian, at least by the tone of his skin and his accent, and his name is Hyrum/Hyram.
-No crablogger episode. Yet.
You can't really complain about his name - that goes back to the original, who used the alias 'Hiram K. Hackenbacker' at one point. As for being a Token Indian... um, isn't the head of the GDF Indian? And hasn't at least one of the rescuees been South African? In a show where the main characters are 'a single family' and 'an English aristocrat', the fact that they've managed to get even a single main character who isn't Anglo-Norman is impressive. Also: he doesn't act 'stereotypically Indian', as far as I can tell, so... by what measure is he a token?
The real question is, why has Tin-Tin stopped being, uh... Malaysian, apparently. Weird, that.
(Also, I like eOS. John is exactly the sort of person who would accidentally build an AI and then move in with it, simply because he's more comfortable around her than around people.)
hS
Yes, it's very CGI-heavy, but almost everything is these days, and they still use modelmakers on set and blend physical stuff in with the computer effects. The Hood's ship, for instance, has a lot of CG effects... and is also built out of a lemon squeezer and bits of old vacuum cleaner.
I also like that they gave Tintin a more expanded role, even if I'm not overly fond of the name of her ride. Thunderbird Shadow? Really, chaps? I think Thunderbird X would have been infinitely preferable as a way of avoiding the whole "There Is No Six" thing.
Anyway: the effects are pretty good, the writing... is about what you can expect these days, but most of all? I think they care about the original. And when you're doing something like this, that's what you want most from your creative team. It's not as good as the original, but then, very little could ever hope to be.
Besides, it beats the pants off New Adventures of Captain Scarlet. That was a total abortion. =]
Poor old 'banished to the space station' John has been one of the best parts of the new series. He has personality! He has a role! He has awesome if slightly dodgy physics!
I wasn't expecting it to be very good, and I was pleasantly surprised. There's a few things I don't like (voices for Tintin/'Kayo', the Hood, and Penelope; the fact that they only seem to have like two bit-part voice actors; Lady Penelope is a Sim), but overall, it's good fun.
And it's nice to see Scott is still useless and doesn't even realise it. ^_^
hS
She is voiced by Rosamund Pike.
Yes, THAT Rosamund Pike.
Which probably explains why they can't afford any more VAs. =]
I still love Virgil, though. He was always my favourite. I had a Tracy Island playset when I was very young and I still remember flying a diecast Thunderbird 2 through the mountain entrance with the palm trees leaning out of the way and it was SO AWESOME. Virgil showing up to save the day by dropping a giant green shed on the problem just felt awesome to me.
Also the fact that FAB 1 looks like it's supposed to now because this isn't entirely funded by bloody Ford; you may recall from That Film that her Ladyship didn't have a Rolls, so they gave her a tricked-out Ford Thunderbird instead. Geddit? Because, like the other machines in the film, it's a goddamned abomination? Yeah, that thing was a vibrator with badly-affixed wheels, where as this one... well, here's the concept art:
I have this as my wallpaper.
Also, thinking about it, Epic Rap Battles of History should definitely do Lady Penelope vs. Penelope Pitstop. I HAVE A MIGHTY NEED.
As in, THIS BAD. Which I had managed to forget.
I blame you for making me remember it, elf boy. I blame you. =]
Take a look at this. You won't be disappointed.
Either way, I love it! Though I dimly remember a Thunderbirds anime in the works... maybe I'm imagining it. Or maybe my nightmares are just seeping into the waking world again. =]
And, unfortunately, Thunderbirds 2086 is a thing.