Upcoming "Bionic Woman" tidbit

David Eick (one of BSG producers) is going to be heading up a "revival" ("reimagination") of the old "Bionic Woman" series. One specific detail that came out recently (see appended article) is that Katie Sackoff (Starbuck from BSG) will play an evil bionic woman in the pilot.

I do wonder why, when you have a technological marvel, there is always an evil analog. Back in the 70s/80s, you could attribute it to the Soviet Union doing parallel secret research in the same area. I think there was even an episode or two of "Six Million Dollar Man" about this. This time around, I wonder how they'll explain the existence of an evil bionic woman. The Chinese? Aliens? Secret branch of US Government?

Article from SciFi News from TV MegaSite yahoo group (http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/ group/scifi-news/).

Sackhoff Guests On Bionic Woman

Katee Sackhoff, who plays Starbuck in SCI FI Channel's original series
Battlestar Galactica, will guest-star in The Bionic Woman, the SF NBC
pilot from Battlestar executive producer David Eick, according to The
Hollywood Reporter.

Sackhoff will appear in the pilot for the series, a reimagining of the
1970s show, which again centers on Jamie Sommers (Michelle Ryan), a
woman who is turned into a walking technological miracle after a car
crash.

Sackhoff will play Sarah, an evil bionic woman and nemesis to Sommers.
The casting comes on the heels of the recent apparent demise of
Starbuck on Battlestar.

Battlestar Galactica Season Finale

I'm steadfastly avoiding spoilers for the BSG Season 3 Finale that just showed yesterday. I really want to watch this one clean, even though I do know bits and pieces already (some of the final five Cylons) and I have a good sense of the verdict of the trial (i'm betting "not guilty", though I can't yet see how they get there).

BSG has been interesting this season - they took a lot of twists at the end of the Season 2 and the start of Season 3 and I'm not sure how well all the twists worked. But I still think it's a very good show and one of the best on TV.

Asimov's - February 2007

An interesting month for Asimov's. I thought several of the stories had very strong starts and intriguing plots and characters, but then took a major turn in style and/or plot turn right near the end of the story and didn't live up to their promise. I would put "Outgoing" by Alex Wilson, "The Chimera Transit" by Jack Skillingstead and "Close" by William Preston in this category.

My favorite story in this issue was "Recovering Apollo 8", a deep character study of a man driven by a love of space and respect for those who explored it. (It's my guess that the character was modeled on Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Enterprises.) The story had some alternate history aspects to it that I felt weren't really necessary except to allow for certain plot elements to occur, and a bit of a coincidence at the end (to resolve a final plot thread). Those were the only things that kept it from being a top-notch story for me.

I'd also give credit to "A Portrait of the Artist" by Charles Midwinter, an interesting look at an artist, his sometimes girlfriend, and an interesting turn of events in his life and his art. I don't think it knitted together as nicely as I would like - again, a few too-convenient events at the end - but I still enjoyed the style and (minimal) scope of the story.

Analog - Jan/Feb 2007

I read an entire Analog for the first time in a very long time, perhaps ever, and I now understand what people mean when they call something "an Analog story". I found these stories ... well ... obvious, blatant, or some adjective similar to those. The stories usually seem to contain a quite intriguing premise, but then the story is advanced almost completely through narrative exposition or expository dialogue.

I thought that the "world exploration" was, at times, quite clumsy and handled in a manner similar to what people often (negatively) attribute to "old time" science fiction or modern Star Trek (a la, "As you know, Doctor, the prothalium drive is a simple extension of the hypertrophic Quanset Field").

To me the best stories were less obvious and (somewhat) more subtle in their presentation. They also had in common that they were simpler in scope and character. For this issue, my favorites were "Super Gyro" by Grey Rollins (in a world of meta-humans, a fast food worker tries to handle a robbery gone sour) and "If Only We Knew" by Jerry Orton (a man in for a simple insurance exam discovers that he is more special than he could have imagined).

But even these stories, in my opinion, suffered from being too "surface" and not going deep enough into the characters and the implication of their setup. Even these stories also tended to have a "pithy one-liner" ending that went for a small chuckle (usually sexual in nature) that, for me, undercut the potential depth of the story.