You'll never give up, never give up, never give up that ship

[sovay]

Last night I dreamed I discovered a previously unknown and probably nonexistent biography of Ralph Richardson. I also dreamed my front teeth fell out like popsicle sticks. One of these dreams was better than the other.

This afternoon derspatchel and I met sairaali and M. at the A.R.T. for The Last Two People on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville, starring Mandy Patinkin and Taylor Mac. It was lovely. It's more or less what it sounds like: a relationship after the end of the world, described and explored strictly through gesture, mime, and music. Songs utilized include a post-apocalyptic update of Eddie Lawrence's "Old Philosopher," the best cover I have ever heard of the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York," and a subversively straight reading of "Another National Anthem" from Assassins. I grew up on Patinkin's singing (and Spanish accent), but I had never seen him in person before; he plays the older, dourer, more damaged of the pair, a tattered hermit who may or may not have been born in a trunk, but is living ferally in one when Mac's impish baggy-pantser rows a junk-cluttered lifeboat up to his shore. Mac turns out to remind me sharply of Donald O'Connor circa Singin' in the Rain, at least with a bowler hat on, a sprightly knack for physical comedy, and a mercurial talent for extracting everything from a picnic supper to a fifth of gin from the remote regions of judy's trousers. I have discovered that I am no longer the target audience for strobe lights—I didn't get a migraine, but I watched the storm sequences with one hand over my eyes. Eighty minutes with no intermission. If you can snag the tickets, it's worth your time.

So I have this relationship with the film of Stargate (1994), where I know it's a total brain-optional chariots-of-the-gods B-picture with almost certainly a white savior problem and in the days when I lived in a house with a television, I watched it every time it came around, because there are very few movies where a dork with a knowledge of dead languages saves the day. (To this day, even after Crash (1996), Secretary (2002), and Age of Ultron (2015), I am always faintly surprised when James Spader is not playing a sweet-natured nerd. Also, Jaye Davidson as Ra is ridiculously beautiful, even if the bass reverb voice processing is kind of unnecessary.) I knew about the television sequel and its multiple spinoffs; I never paid any attention to them because I couldn't see the point. People who watch more genre television than I do: are any of them any good? This question brought to you by vague curiosity upon realizing I lived through an entire sci-fi franchise without interacting with it almost at all. I mean, I've only seen the pilot of Farscape, but I've seen it.

Comments

[starlady]

It's definitely worth watching at least one episode for J.Flan's hair, and his line delivery. Whatever else you think about him, he makes it clear that John Sheppard is a weirdo.

It's been eons since I've read this stuff, but some of the best known BNFs of the time did some of their best work in it, imo: synecdochic has written a ton of SG-1 and SGA, astolat wrote some great stuff, especially "Time in a Bottle," which is the one I remember clearly 5+ years later, and cesperanza wrote some equally great stuff including one of the single most famous fics written on this side of fandom, "Written by the Victors." Others were hugely influential, such as Take Clothes Off as Directed and some are just amazingly cracked out. I am contractually obligated to mention the one where they are Girl Scout cookies, and the one where John is a rainbow and Rodney is a unicorn.

[sovay]

It's been eons since I've read this stuff, but some of the best known BNFs of the time did some of their best work in it, imo

I don't read fic almost at all, and even I recognize some of these titles now that you list them. Thank you!

[starlady]

You're welcome! I've fallen down the well of rereading some of these this evening (SGA was the first fandom I read a ton of fic in, back in the day), and as someone was saying recently, it's kind of dated in a weird way, not just technology wise, but by the presence of DADT. But that real-world limit was part of what made the fic so good, too.