You know you’ve got a decent rep as a supervillain when a Dalek comes to you for help finding parts. I mean, I don’t mean to brag, but screw that, actually, yeah, I’m kinda bragging. I’d say that depends, cyborg – whatcha got for me?

On a not-entirely-unrelated note, I decided over the summer that I’d give the new series of Doctor Who a chance, after last year’s trainwreck. I’m not convinced – it’s got a bit too much fanservice and we are again retreading old ground, even if they do acknowledge it outright – but it’s still better than anything I saw last year. I quite enjoyed the first 15 minutes, which is something I couldn’t say about last year at all.

Regardless, it looks like they’ve backtracked on a few bad ideas, and I do like Michelle Gomez’s take on Missy/The Master – particularly with these rectons – so… we’ll see. Modern Who is back up to probationary status, at least for the moment.

Hey, everybody, sorry for going all silent like that. It’d be cool to say that I have big news, or supervillainy adventures to report, but I don’t. The best I’ve got is that a college radio station in the midwest threw me a note that they want to play some tracks from Bone Walker, so that’s definitely cool.

This video of 13,000-odd marbles flowing down many levels of a giant marble-cascade machine is… oddly soothing, actually. Enjoy.

Also, I made a custom 404 page for the website. I used the real page URL for that link, but, of course, you can use any URL you want as long as it hangs off crimeandtheforcesofevil.com. That is, after all, kind of the point. XD

A couple of weeks ago, the retro-SF blog Galactic Journey talked about SF television from 1959 – in particular, Twilight Zone and Men Into Space. Everyone is familiar with Twilight Zone – it’s iconic enough that even now most people have at least heard of it. Men Into Space, not as much.

Meanwhile, we’ve been playing Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas again at the Lair, like y’do, in anticipation of Fallout 4 coming out soon. When I was playing before, I’d never yet seen any episodes of Men Into Space. I’d heard it mentioned, but never watched it.

What do these works have in common?

MiS feels very strange, as a viewing experience. It’s extremely-near-future SF of 1959; it started maybe a decade into that future. They’ve more or less got the science as understood at the time acceptably right, thanks presumably to the very close cooperation with the American space programme of the US Air Force. And it was shot very much like a radio drama with pictures; there’s lots of narration voiceovers and talking.

The resulting combination makes it feel like a series of short military documentaries, rather than fiction. Which is good, because it’s pretty dull, and you need an angle to make it interesting. That one works for me.

And where that ties into Fallout is that if you take the Fallout universe and have them get into space exploration with gusto rather than nuclear power and robots… this becomes a documentary about the history of that Fallout AU. If Fallout is specifically about the imagined future of the late 1940s and early 1950s, this is background clips for an almost identical world, based on the imagined future of just a few years later.

In some ways, Men Into Space feels more like Fallout than Fallout itself does. No, that’s unfair; it feels more like Fallout than does Worlds of Tomorrow: Science Fiction with a Difference, the collection of short SF stories cited by the creative team as possibly the largest single source of inspiration for the game world.

Fewer robots and more spaceships, but nuclear armageddon nonetheless

I never really expected to have a headcanon for 1959’s Men Into Space, but – apparently, that was going to happen, because it has. It’s not a world I’d want to visit; wow, sexist much? and, again, 1959, so it’s Whitey! Into! SPAAAAAAACE! which is a name I originally came up with for When Worlds Collide but certainly applies here.

But it’s kind of neat, just the same.

I kind of like it, to be honest, but I can’t resist. I mean, at first glance, I thought it was Twentieth Century. It’s not, I mean, the default kerning is different! And they didn’t use a calligraphy pen. CRITICAL!

“Product Sans” they’re calling it. Product sans what? Oh, I get it, sans everything.

Also, NOT SINCE 1987 HAS A VOWEL BEEN SO JAUNTILY TILTED:

@fozztexx on Twitter sent me this massive bundle of amazing retro stickers as thanks for me sending him a big box of antique computer chips. How many apply to you?

I didn’t even know what was in the box, really – I’d identified a few of the small ones as collections of logic elements (NAND, etc) – but it turned out to be full of things like Atari 2600 support chips and Z-80s and video chips and all sorts of stuff decades old. And so far, mostly working! Which is awesome, since he restores antique computers.

Anyway, you get this instead of the promised article on the E Pluribus Hugo award – which I swear I will get done tonight – just because I ran out of time.

If I get time this winter, I’m going to make a Radio Shack TRS-80 LDOS laptop – emulators exist! – just to have somewhere to put the black Radio Shack TRS-80 sticker. 😀

The Stonewall Riots – the revolt that started the modern queer rights movement – were started mostly by the drag queens and transwomen, with a bulldyke, a black drag queen, and a transwoman all resisting arrest just for being queer.

Stormé DeLarverie, the bulldyke daughter of a black mother and white father, urged the crowd to action after she was beaten with a club while being arrested. Marsha P. Johnson, the black drag queen in question, is generally believed to have thrown the first brick that really got resistance going. She and the above-mentioned transwoman, Ms. Griffin-Gracy, are all acknowledged as leaders in the revolt. Sylvia Rivera, another transgendered woman, was also important.

All this is true unless, of course, you’re watching the contemptible movie version coming out later this year. From the trailer:

If you watch this trailer, this message is pretty damn clear: a straight-looking gay white guy turned things around and made this revolt happen. The trailer is telling you a straight-up lie. It’s whitewashing, it’s erasure, it’s elimination of women and people of colour from history. It’s contemptible. And it’s routine.

The director calls it “fictionalised.” Yeah, fictionalised to change the actual people of history into a straight-looking white dude.

Do not support this movie.

This is genius. No, really, this is genius. Hit play.

Courtesy Kathryn T. on Facebook. 😀

VICE has an article up about the long-missing Roger Corman-produced Fantastic Four film from 1992, including the actual film. It’s ripped from a bootleg VHS copy which may be the only one left, as the negative – reportedly – was burned. Get to it before a DMCA notice is served.

I have to tell you, particularly for a film so legendarily bad, it’s not really that bad. At least, not the first 20 minutes or so I’ve watched. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a good movie – seriously, it’s not – but I’ve seen way worse, and I’ve seen way worse in theatres. Also, the effects are fairly terrible, but it was produced for about a nickel, so what do you expect with that budget in 1994?

In addition to being brutally terrible, Pixels is also deeply misogynistic.

I’d seen other commentary to that effect in reviews, but this article gives examples and reasons.

Enjoy some quotes from other reviews. My favourite is, “an overwhelmingly sad experience” – Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.

minor spoiler eta: “So Pixels ends with the only likeable character and the only non-bullshit incarnation of its own premise [Q*Bert] blinking out of existence so that one of two vaguely prominent women characters in the entire cast can serve as a literal trophy. Holy fucking shit.” — MovieBob pulls no punches.

Thunderbirds are in fact go. Supermarination lives again, the Kickstarter has met first goal, and Thunderbirds series 3 episode 1, “The Abominable Snowman,” will be produced. All original cast, all supermarionation.

Click through to Kickstarter project with details

They’re $25k away from Series 3 Episode 2, a prequel episode, “Introducing Thunderbirds.” If they make that, they’ll go for 3×03, “Lady Penelope Investigates: The Stately Home Robberies.”

While I’m more of a Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons fan myself, I’m all over this. And I’d love to see the Lady Penelope adventure. If that’s you, click through to Kickstarter to support it. They’re doing well so far and are definitely in range of at least 3×02, and 3×03 is not out of the question.