“There is nothing wrong with your web browser. Do not attempt to adjust the monitor. I control the horizontal. I control the vertical. I control the lack of proper grammar. For the next few minutes sit quietly, for you are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the shock and awe which reaches from the inner mind to...The Ramblings of Marx.”

Welcome to the first installment of…The Ramblings of Marx. This is where I…ramble about everything related (and sometimes not so much) to science fiction & fantasy.

No I am not Karl Marx, one of the Marx brothers, or the evil twin of Richard Marx. I am Marx Pyle - the man behind the virtual curtain called Scifi 411. I’ve gotten bored just reporting the news, so I’ve decided to make it up…err…I mean give my opinion on the current events in science fiction and fantasy. So, enter The Ramblings of Marx…nuff said.

I saw Elektra last week and, well…it wasn’t very good. I give it a C or C+ (a good one to rent). Good actors (red alert: some Stargate actors can be found here), good action, and cool special effects (almost made me what to get a tattoo). But, a severe lack of depth. Who are these characters and why are they doing what they are doing? I could figure it out, but I doubt the general audience would. What amazes me is that due to budget constraints, they had to chop off some action and add more dialog. Which begs the question; what would this movie have been like if they had a bigger budget? A big budget Mortal Kombat: Annihilation with nothing but fight scenes perhaps. Also, the villains appeared just long enough to be killed, and be killed rather uninterestingly I might add. For some reason, this felt more like a rough TV pilot than a movie.

You should, everyone is easy on the eyes and ready to jump in bed at a moment’s notice…oh, but there is that thing with Satan’s daughter and the end of the world. I’m enjoying the show so far, but it has not hooked me yet. With Marti Noxon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Ben Edlund (The Tick) on board, I have high hopes that this series will improve. Hopefully, FOX won’t kill it before that happens.

ABC’s Lost is my absolute favorite new show this year. If you haven’t seen it, then you really have…lost out (smell that corn). J.J. Abrams (Alias), Damon Lindelof (Crossing Jordan), David Fury (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel), Javier Grillo-Marxuach (Jake 2.0), Lynne E. Litt, and a bunch of other great writers have created a show that defeated all odds – an intelligent, thought provoking, complex SF series that is actually popular with the masses! If you don’t want to start mid-way into the series, then fear not gentle viewer; Lost: Season 1 will be on DVD this summer.

Did you watch the mid-season premiere of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis? I did and it rocked. The Scifi Channel really has a great line up now, with Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Battlestar Galactica. Ah, it is starting to remind of the good old days when Scifi Channel had lots of original shows (Farscape, Invisible Man, The Chronicle, First Wave, etc), instead of just corny movies and occasional hit & miss mini-series. I am eager to see if there will be a second Scifi day with Painkiller Jane, Motel Man, and Eureka. These all sound promising, but I do wish the Scifi Channel would consider instant fan favorites like a Buffy spin-off or a B5 spin-off. I know, I know they did Legend of the Rangers, but that was just a movie and they didn’t even give a series a try. They could at least do an occasional B5 movie or mini-series. And was it just me, or would Riverworld have been a good series?

Anyway, off the tangent and back to the topic. The Stargate SG-1 episode was really interesting and I can’t wait to see what they do with the Replicators. My only gripe about SG-1 is the lack of visiting new planets. This is what makes Atlantis more interesting right now. SG-1 has gotten really bogged down with their mythos lately. It reminds me of the overuse of mythos that X-Files did near the end. Fans love it, but only in doses. So please…don’t overdose the fans!!!

Also, please kill Pete!!! This guy is a loon. He really was a creep and stalker wannabe in the first episode that he was in. I try to like him, but I just can’t do it. I think part of it is the O’Neill/Carter sub-plot, but I think I could get over that if Pete had had a better introduction. The whole thing seems forced. Like a Goa'uld forcing itself into a host…it just hurts to watch.

I am sorry to see Richard Dean Anderson go, but perhaps it will be better for the series overall. SG-1 will be able to go on missions again. Oh, and did I mention that having Ben Browder join the team in Season 9 is going to rock? Since the team members of SG-1 can always change, there is no reason SG-1 can’t last a really, really long time. With a 9th Season, SG-1 will tie X-Files. Big whoop, I want to see them tie Doctor Who’s 26 season record. Now that would be something.

Lastly, I’m going to make a prediction. I have no inside information to back this up, but I think it would be great. Adam Baldwin will join Stargate Atlantis. Again, I have nothing backing this up, but if I’m right, I’m psychic (or psycho). If I’m wrong, then I will just ignore the fact that I ever said this…boy I should go into politics.

Revamping is really big in comic books but revamping a television series is rare in the world of SF. Except for Superman (The Adventures of Superboy, Adventures of Superman, Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Smallville), Tarzan (at least four versions), and Dark Shadows (the third version almost happened) there haven’t been many revamps. But Battlestar Galactica has become the newest…"Dawn"…of SF (Buffy fans may get that one, the rest of you are just out of luck). At first I was a little cautious about this revamp, but I’m liking it, I’m really liking it. It is a much darker series, but that seems to fit with a plot about the near destruction of the entire human race. I mean really, how many happy post-apocalyptic stories have you seen? I can see it now, The Day After Tomorrow: The Comedy, or Deep Impact: The Musical. And as for the criticism by fans about the female Starbuck and Boomer…well they had to have some female characters in the cast. The old version pretty much was a good ol’ boys club, which would be kinda boring if you wanted to have any romantic tension in the cast. Unless you wanted to go the homosexual route…Apollo & Starbuck always did seem close…on second thought, let’s not go that route.

This revamping thing has lead to an interesting thought – what other SF series would make a good revamp? Before you say Kolchak – The Night Stalker, someone is already working on that one.

Have you been watching Star Trek: Enterprise lately? It has actually improved…really. But it is still a far cry from the good old Star Trek: TOS or Star Trek: The Next Generation days. I never have understood the motivation for the creation of this series. For me…after Star Trek: Voyager ended I wanted to see what happened after the Dominion War, and to see what happened after Voyager introduced the technology of retractable Batmobile armor for starships. But, instead, we got Enterprise. Gee…let’s see, on one side we have a continuation of Star Trek: TNG, DS9, and Voyager. We get to occasionally see what is going on with our favorite characters (besides the occasional so-so movie), we see the aftermath of the Dominion War, we see the effect of Voyagers return to Earth, etc, etc. Or we could rewind to what happened before Star Trek: TOS. Hey, that might work if it focused on the formation of the Federation (Babylon 5 anyone?). Naw, lets put it before that and focus on a Temporal War. Heaven knows, Star Trek has always handled time travel really well. (That was me being sarcastic by the way…)

But, I will say that Enterprise is really trying this season. The three Augments episodes (Borderland, Cold Station 12, The Augments) were excellent and were my favorite episodes of the whole series. The three Vulcan episodes (The Forge, Awakening, Kir'Shara) were great canon and went a long way on making Vulcans more philosophically the way they are supposed to be, but they were a little slow. Perhaps the Vulcan episodes should have been crammed into two episodes. We have also seen Orions, Tellarites, more Andorians, and Romulans. Soon we will see Section 31, learn about the Klingon dirty secret, and have another encounter with the Mirror Universe. Sounds like good stuff.

Manny Coto (Odyssey 5) has lead this valiant charge and he has won some points with me. He has really done a good job with tying in the various races and plots from the other series. I think the one thing holding him back is the boring first three seasons and the boring characters. Which leads me to this thought: is it just me or do the token Asian woman character (Hoshi Sato) and the token black guy character (Travis Mayweather) get almost zero lines anymore? You know, characters can be non-white and interesting. And no, aliens don’t count. Anyway, back to the topic at hand. If Enterprise ends this season, I think Paramount should keep Coto on the Star Trek team and try to gather up some fresh blood for any future spin-off attempts. Please, please drop Berman & Braga or at least scale back their influence. Don’t get me wrong, they have done some great stuff in the past, but they are burning out worse than Chris Carter did at the end of X-Files. Perhaps Star Trek should take a break. Or heck, let’s really shake things up and make a Star Trek revamp (ala Battlestar Galactica). Boy, would that really piss off some fans.

The rambling is almost over, but don’t let me stop you. Send me your ramblings (scifi_411@yahoo.com) in response to my ramblings or just ramble about something else science fiction & fantasy related. I’ll post the best ones in the Opinion section. So, that’s it. It’s done, finished, finite, over. Will you stop reading? Later.