Apocryphail Phriday: Fray

I'm sort of cheating twice with this one. First, word of god says that today's subject is actually canon, and it has been referred to in the comic books that followed the TV Series and the series itself. Second... it's actually not that bad. In fact some things are really awesome. But then there are some things that just... yeesh.

Anyway, this is Joss Whedon's Fray.

It's like Buffy meets 5th Element meets Hellboy meets Shadowrun meets...

Fray was an 8-comic miniseries published by Dark Horse, and was the first Buffy: The Vampire Slayer comic actually written by Joss Whedon. In a crapsack future version of New York City, the supernatural and magic has been gone from the world for so long that everyone has forgotten about it. But in the shadows the Vampires are returning. And Melaka Fray, a petty thief, discovers that she is the heir to the legacy of the Slayers. Which mostly manifests as her having all the worst problems of Superman and Goku.

Welcome to the 23rd century, ladies and gentlemen!

Jeffrey Rewrites Voyager: The Cloud

Normally I am all in favor of character development episodes. I think there needs to be more character development in most television series, especially action and/or sci-fi series. So by all rights I should love this episode, which has the flimsiest of plots stringing together a series of vignettes that develop the character of the main cast.

The problem is, this needs to be good character development. And oh boy, is it not.

So as Voyager plunges headlong into the "It's actually a life-form!" plot that should be enjoyable, but somehow isn't, let's try to rewrite these terrible characters into something better.

Especially Chakotay. For Gene's sake, writers, what were you thinking?

Doctor Whosday: Six Episodes, Five Keys, Four Quests, Three Companions, Two Hangers-On, One Sexual Assault, No Joy

Fresh off his success creating The Daleks, which catapulted Doctor Who into television history, writer Terry Nation wanted to do a historical story. When that fell through, the producers asked him to create another extremely marketable villain, like the Daleks had been. It was with this directive in mind that Nation wrote "The Keys of Marinus".

The serial was a series of quests for the titular keys, with each episode encompassing another adventure, with another key as the object. This plot would be replayed on a season-wide scale during the excellent "Key to Time" season, with Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor.

Unlike that story, The Keys of Marinus is crap. Welcome to Doctor Whosday!