gagglefrak - science fiction blog

This week’s W.Y.O.S.T. subject is Brian Thompson. If you ever watched the original Terminator movie, then you’ve seen him. For a few minutes anyway. In one of the opening scenes, he and Bill Paxton play a couple of street punks who go up against a naked cyborg Arnold … and are promptly killed for their clothes. As first roles go, an actor could do far worse — although from the body of work that’s followed since that movie in 1984, one wonders how exactly Brian Thompson has avoided playing the role of a terminator himself over the years. After all, the square-jawed baritone actor has played just about every other kind of imposing bogey man you can think of — two different vampires, two different Klingons, a shape-changing Gotham City supervillain, an alien bounty hunter, an indestructible demon, and even a vengeful Greek Titan.

A child of two teachers, Thompson broke into Hollywood as a Terminator casualty, but has gone on from there to build a career as either a tough guy or an outright bad guy, mostly in sci-fi/fantasy projects. By the time the 80s were over, he had racked up more than 20 appearances in such shows as Moonlighting, Knight Rider, and Falcon Crest, as well as the classic movies Three Amigos, Miracle Mile, and Alien Nation. In 1989, he landed his first Star Trek role, playing a Klingon officer in The Next Generation, and his relationship with the franchise would persist over the years — he appeared in the Generations movie (1994), in Deep Space Nine (1993 & 1996), and even had a recurring role on Enterprise in 2005.

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Okay, so I won’t be the first or possibly even the ten-thousandth person to post about this today. But I still can’t not post about it. Behold the horrible awesomeness … er, awesome horribleness … er, awesomely horrible Whedon-ness that is Act 1 of 3 of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. As always, since it’s on Hulu.com, Canadian mileage may vary — but it is also available on iTunes.

More screencaps follow after the link … Continue Reading »

“Man, you really haven’t lived until you’ve had Scottish Chinese take-out. Anybody want some more sweet and sour haggis?” - Xander

“Great. Three magic enchantments wherein my ass is huge.” - Dawn

This issue begins the four-part “Time of Your Life” arc, which features — as the cover tells us — “The Return of Fray”. In fact, the entire Fray team is back for this arc: Joss Whedon writing, Karl Moline on pencils, Andy Owens on inks, and Michelle Madsen on colors. So everything looks beautiful and reads undeniably Buffy-ful. In fact, I think I’ve re-read page 5 a few dozen times already, because I don’t think I’ve ever read something that makes me hear the voices of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan, and Nicholas Brendan in my head as strongly as the dialogue on that page.

When Willow says, “Ah, quitcher grousin’,” and, “No no, you’re making up made-up things,” Joss is not only writing in the voice of a character he created, but also in the voice of the actress who portrayed her. And that’s just all kinds of awesome to me. And a little saddening too, because of course it makes me miss the TV show. Continue Reading »

“Does anyone have a car? We could get further away from Angel if we had a car.” - Spike

“Man’s career path is based on a pun, can’t be too much inner pride.” - Angel, referring to the Loan Shark Demon

So after all this time, it turns out the Loan Shark Demon is named “Bro’os”. Get it? Think Finding Nemo. Well played, Brian Lynch!

As I’d hoped, this issue brought back the cohesiveness that I felt the “First Night” issues lacked. Armed with a new artist (Nick Runge), we return to the story exactly where it left off at the end of Issue #5, in the middle of a pitched battle of Angel & Friends versus the Champions of the L.A. Demon Lords. At the last minute, Wesley (”Casper the Dapper Ghost”) has appeared on the scene, and as a result, Illyria has reverted back to being Fred again. And according to Spike, it’s not the first time. Apparently, she flips back and forth regularly, and whenever she’s Fred, he protects her.

Observation: If we’ve learned nothing else about Spike over the years, it’s that in the women department, he seems to be attracted to nothing quite so much as a fixer-upper — Crazy Drusilla, Season 6 Buffy, and now Fred-Not-Fred. And yet in each case, these women are powerful, and once fixed, they always move on. I’m guessing the same will happen with Illyria/Fred, even though technically, the two aren’t romantically involved.

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Season 1 of Angel has just been added to Hulu.com. All 22 episodes. Watch for free on your computer, with limited commercial interruptions …

http://www.hulu.com/angel

This is in addition to the first two seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that were already there …

http://www.hulu.com/buffy-the-vampire-slayer

And the entire 14-episode run of Firefly …

http://www.hulu.com/firefly

Sadly, Hulu.com is NOT Canada-friendly. Sorry Canadians — no Whedon for you!