…SPOILER WARNING…finish Battlestar Galactica Season 2 before reading this post

Battlestar Galactica’s re-imagining has been a like a sci-fi wet dream in this Star Trek-deprived age.  With a staff comprised of almost all former Star Trek writers, Battlestar Galactica has improved on many of the sci-fi staples, streamlining technobabble to a need-to-know basis and focusing on creating a simple and believable fantasy world dealing with real issues.  The show’s catastrophic opening shows the robot Cylons wiping out almost the entire human civilization in a 9/11 worst-case-scenario allegory.  The show’s War of Terrorism allegory gets flipped when the remaining humans find a habitable planet, only to be conquered by the Cylons.  For a year, the Cylons occupy the humans who, in turn, launch a violent resistance, blowing up buildings with humans and Cylons.  The cut and dry Cylons are the terrorists gets ripped apart when now the Cylons are the occupier and the humans are the "freedom fighters."  Suddenly, the show complicates its own message  - what makes terrorists and what makes heroes?  And this is just a sample of what makes Battlestar Galactica the deepest space opera in the galaxy.  Politics and religion makes for greatest mindless entertainment.

Lost has many mysteries, but the numbers take the top prize.  The seemingly random list of numbers, 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42, have been featured throughout the series as lottery numbers, passwords to save the world, seat assignments on the plane, and mysteriously written out on the equally mysterious hatch.  So much of Lost’s mythology seems to tie into these curse numbers, with clues linking the numbers to the Valenzetti Equation, the equation predicting the end of humanity.  Yet that hasn’t stopped pop culture from embracing the mystery, from the growing variety of off-the-island references (it’s Catwoman’s prison number) to thousands of people using the numbers to win the lottery themselves.  Seems the curse won’t scare people away from millions of dollars.  Or maybe that’s just what the numbers want us to think…

Campy superhero TV shows fit the 70s like well tailored spandex on a tight behind.  The New Original Adventures of Wonder Woman were nothing different.  The scantly clad feminist warrior spun into television history in 1976 with a popular live-action series running for three seasons (all available on DVD!).  Beauty contest winner and apparent actress Lynda Carter immortalized Wonder Woman, playing up the bullet proof bracelets to the unforgettable spin-transformation.  When secret identity Diana Prince needed to save the, she would spin around at super speed and in a flash of light transform into Wonder Woman.  Sure the dazzling special effects were partly a cost-cutting effort, but even laziness can make for classic TV.

Look at all the pretty colors.  Hollywood enjoyed various color film technologies in early years.  Using early forms of Technicolor, Hollywood produced more and more full color pictures during the 1920s until the Great Depression when cost cutting became priority.  Most of the movie companies entered the 1930s with financial worries and hoped the new, state-of-the-art color film system from Technicolor would revive the industry.  Technicolor’s new three strip process allowed for an improved rendering of the color spectrum making for a greater range and higher quality use of colors.  Several musicals first employed the technology which earned its stripes after the animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs became the highest grossing film of 1937.  Classic films like Wizard of Oz, Singin’ in the Rain, and Adventures of Robin Hood also featured the technology which dominated color motion pictures until 1952.

Computer viruses plague our frail hard drives like, well viruses.  The scary thought is that these viruses that can wreak so much havoc and mayhem are usual the creation of geeks like you.  More impressively, these viruses can provide jumps in programing and development.  Even now the lines between virus and spyware and helpful program are becoming tangled as the software is starting to mimic each others practices.  Not to say viruses are good, but progress is progress.  The likely first computer virus appearing in the early 1970s called Creeper.  It infected computers through modems posting text "I’M THE CREEPER : CATCH ME IF YOU CAN."  Viruses evolved throughout the years, mutating into harder-to-find-and-kill programs.  The term computer virus itself began in 1984, coined in a paper by Frederick Cohen as suggested by his teacher.

We’ve all had our parents, siblings, friends, or life partner walk in on us getting a little too into our fantasies.  Okay, get your mind out of the gutter.  I mean, literally, our sci-fi and magical fantasies where we not only wish we were Luke Skywalker or Spider-Man, but we act out the part in front of the mirror.  In 2002, Ghyslain Raza made the mistake of video taping himself acting out lightsaber duels from Star Wars.  He shared the video with his friends who released the video on Kazaa leading to a viral video sensation.  An estimated 900 million people have watched the dubbed Star Wars Kid living his fantasy.

Everyone seems to love the video except Raza whose family filed a lawsuit against the families of his friends who released the video for causing Raza "harassment and derision from his high-school mates and the public at large."  Three of the families settled the case out of court with the fourth family having the case dropped.

The Star Wars Kid’s embarrassment ignores the surprising cultural influence his video has evolved into.  Several TV shows and music videos have spoofed the original, from Arrested Development to the Colbert Report to "Weird Al" Yankovic.  A viral video influencing mainstream media.  That’s unheard of!

For almost four years, Harry Potter roamed the halls of Hogwarts fighting off giant spiders, evil books, and aunts and uncles.  At the end of his fourth year, his great fear came to life when Voldemort returned to his former power and greatest.  The Dark Lord spent more than a decade clasping to a single thread of life living until his henchmen brought him back.  Voldemort had Harry kidnapped and teleported to the place where Voldemort murdered Harry’s parents.  Voldemort rose from near death, ready to unleash his vengeance on the wizarding world.  Harry escaped, of course, fighting Voldemort for three more blockbuster books.  But it was at this moment the Harry Potter series matured.  No longer was Harry just facing henchmen and intelligent rats.  He had the Dark Lord to face.  And mid-terms.  Sucks.

In 1986, DC Comics found sales hurting because readers couldn’t keep track of the dozens of different Supermen and Batmen running around.  Sometimes Superman was old, having fought in World War 2, but other times he was young a vibrant and other times he was a douche.  So to simplify for the pre-Internet generation who couldn’t just Google this stuff, DC Comics destroyed its entire universe and started from scratch.  Marv Wolfman and George Perez teamed to pen the 12 issue mega-series that undid 50 years of history, streamlining origins and events to make the comics more accessible.  The controversial and risky decision arguably paid off with improved sales and a condensed timeline.

Of course,  not everything made sense Crisis.  Many character origins didn’t make sense in the simplified timeline, so DC has every few years, repeated the Crisis model with Zero Hour in 1994 and Infinite Crisis in 2005 (which may have undone all of Zero Hour and some of Crisis of Infinite Earths).  Thankfully we have Final Crisis this year to undo all the recent undoing and redo the dos that they do so well.

Geeks love casting geek movies.  One of the biggest debates for the X-Men movie revolved around Wolverine who had every gruff actor linked to him at one time or another.  But one hero took no argument or thought.  Possibly the greatest comic movie casting ever, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, a.k.a. Patrick Stewart, earned the part of X-Men mentor Professor X.  Fans who once had serious concerns over the movie’s unproven director and leather costumes could be reassured with this single piece of flawless casting. 

Japanese animation always had a tiny foot hold on college clubs sharing fan-translations of the complex stories and crude animation techniques.  Akira changed the anime market in Japan and America.  Akira used more than 160,000 animation cells to created fluid motion and a meticulously detailed world.  This compared to anime’s normal practice of cutting corners like animating only mouths while keeping faces static.  Akira also recorded all its dialogue first, animating second unlike most anime, created more polished lip-synching for dialogue.

Released in 1988, Akira became a huge success in Japan and introduced anime to a wider audience in America.  The high-production values impressed animation fans around the worlds, building international popularity for Japan’s unique animation style.  The fact that Akira was an awesome story was just like the DVD extras.  And geeks love DVD extras (or Blu-Ray extras, I’m not sure yet).