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Valve keeps milking zombies
November 11th 2009, 17:00 CET by Milan Brezovský Set for release on November 17, the title adds melee combat to enable deeper co-operative gameplay, with items such as a chainsaw, frying pan, axe, baseball bat, and more. Introducing the AI Director 2.0, L4D's dynamic gameplay is taken to the next level by giving the Director the ability to procedurally change weather effects, world objects, and pathways in addition to tailoring the enemy population, effects, and sounds to match the players' performance. The result is a unique game session custom fitted to provide a satisfying and uniquely challenging experience each time the game is played. Featuring new Survivors, boss zombies, weapons, and items, Left 4 Dead 2 offers a much larger game than the original with more co-operative campaigns, more Versus campaigns, and maps for Survival mode available at launch. So, let's interview the resident Valve employee on the chainsaw details. |
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Milan Brezovský (#51): Matt, how is that iPhone app development coming along? I've just noticed that Flash CS5 will have a native support for building iPhone/iPod Touch applications, so I'm getting curious about jumping on the ever-growing app building ship. That's pretty cool shit. I haven't done much with it since I found I needed I mac. I never bothered to take the hardware plunge or try to make my intel box run the Mac OS. Basically, I didn't care enough to continue at that point. :P "Fucking Radio Shack. It's a wonder they even know how to use a bathroom and don't just walk around all day with shit in their pants." - smds
"the concept that a happy worker is a productive worker is hardly an entry from Matt's Big Book Of Things The Fairies Said." - Dum |
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gaggle (#52): V, on the other hand, seems like complete and utter trite shite. Good lord. Huh...because I'm liking it a bit. I've only seen two eps, but it's been interesting enough. "Fucking Radio Shack. It's a wonder they even know how to use a bathroom and don't just walk around all day with shit in their pants." - smds
"the concept that a happy worker is a productive worker is hardly an entry from Matt's Big Book Of Things The Fairies Said." - Dum |
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Yeah, I don't care enough to buy a Mac (although I could get myself to finding "trial" versions of Mac OS and virtual machine), but with developing inside Flash Pro / Flash Builder / with Flex SDK would cut that annoyance away. I'm afraid that once CS5 is released, Flash developers will flood the app store, and the market will just become much tougher, especially if top Flash game developers begin publishing their already finished, polished games. At the same time, that is what I absolutely love about Flash 10.1 - one application, all platforms. Browsers (win/mac/linux), smartphones (WM, iPhone, Symbian, BlackBerry OS). Bam, all development platforms I find interesting. Parhelic Triangle is coming.
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Ugh. But everything is so cheesy! I can't overcome it. To me it feels like 2nd rate drama. What would you say is the part of V you find most interesting? Like, do you feel for the priest's cause? I thought it incredibly boring and lazy how he just saw a bloodied man die in pain in his church and all he did was go turn in an envelope. Surprise!, he hooks up with our try-hard mom. Who lets herself be cut in the line of duty by a crazy man that for some reason isn't being laughed out of the warehouse by his crazy conspiracy theory. It just feels so… cheesy! Everyone are empty shells being puppeteered around in service of a bland alien story. I can feel how the actors are pretending to be caricatures of people: There's the career-minded journalist, the try-hard mom, the naive son, the conspiracy-guy-who-has-it-all-figured-out, etc. There's no particularly clever dialogue, nor do we get close enough to the people to make them stand out much. Even the aliens are like us, with remote controls and see-through televisions, there's no interesting take on this alien society. And c'mon, those FBI agents don't feel like they're part of a big bureau do they? It feels more like they run around doing what a script writer thinks FBI agents do. I'd point to Flash Forward as an example of how to pull off a much stronger characterization of that line of work. Maybe the characters are simple because the story is so broad, but do you feel the story is interesting enough to stand on its own? So the aliens have been here for a long time and are the cause of all our real-world problems and now they're here to fuck us up good, with only FBI-mom, Priestboy, Crazy-Conspiracy-Guy and the V-opposition to stand between us and certain doom. Oh I wonder if they'll make it??? I can't shake the feeling it's a 2nd tier show retelling an already told story. It actually feels a lot like Stargate Atlantis or some of the recent Stargate movies. Everything feels like actors running around in service of a story that's not really that interesting. To me it's a sharp contrast to shows like Generation Kill, Daybreak, Dexter and others that all have these detailed characters and settings as well as unpredictable stories. I'm not saying those shows have universal appeal, but I am saying they offer far more nuanced characters and higher quality stories. Or what, do you just watch V to turn off your brain? Empty hollow entertainment? I don't mean that to sound condescending, turning off my brain is one of my favorite pastimes :) |
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Each episode of V has been better than the last. The pilot was very rushed, I think, just to get all the pieces in places. They could have took their time with it, but I don't think that's the story they want to tell. Basically it's going to be the resistance and 5th column versus the Visitors, but they didn't feel they could throw that out there and are doing a half asses backstory. I think it can turn into a good show. Plenty of SF shows needed a bit of time to find their groove. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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Milan Brezovský (#55): Yeah, I don't care enough to buy a Mac (although I could get myself to finding "trial" versions of Mac OS and virtual machine), but with developing inside Flash Pro / Flash Builder / with Flex SDK would cut that annoyance away. I'm afraid that once CS5 is released, Flash developers will flood the app store, and the market will just become much tougher, especially if top Flash game developers begin publishing their already finished, polished games. At the same time, that is what I absolutely love about Flash 10.1 - one application, all platforms. Browsers (win/mac/linux), smartphones (WM, iPhone, Symbian, BlackBerry OS). Bam, all development platforms I find interesting. The bigger problem with iPhone apps... "Fucking Radio Shack. It's a wonder they even know how to use a bathroom and don't just walk around all day with shit in their pants." - smds
"the concept that a happy worker is a productive worker is hardly an entry from Matt's Big Book Of Things The Fairies Said." - Dum |
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I find V interesting because of the overall theory really... And the fact that I remember the original. "Fucking Radio Shack. It's a wonder they even know how to use a bathroom and don't just walk around all day with shit in their pants." - smds
"the concept that a happy worker is a productive worker is hardly an entry from Matt's Big Book Of Things The Fairies Said." - Dum |
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it's missing the every important Mark Singer character. But gaggle, the original was quite cheesy. "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" - "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely."
"LP, your big balls are a religion." - Jibble |
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Mark Singer for president. But today's version has to stand on its own legs right? I fondly remember seeing V as a miniseries back when I was a kid but that was a lifetime ago. Things change. Maybe they should've remastered the original if they wanted a similar copy with the same level of storytelling. |
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#58 by Matt Perkins The bigger problem with iPhone apps... There is a warez scene for iPhone? I'm going to get one. Parhelic Triangle is coming.
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Some games are reporting 90% piracy rate... It's crazy land out there! "Fucking Radio Shack. It's a wonder they even know how to use a bathroom and don't just walk around all day with shit in their pants." - smds
"the concept that a happy worker is a productive worker is hardly an entry from Matt's Big Book Of Things The Fairies Said." - Dum |
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Don't you have to have a jailbroken phone to pirate apps? I didn't think there were that many jailbroken phones anymore. |
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V is fun. Cheesy entertainment can still be entertaining. Game Developers: Don't forget the zombie monkeys.
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#64 by jjohnsen Don't you have to have a jailbroken phone to pirate apps? I didn't think there were that many jailbroken phones anymore. I am the only person I know who's phone isn't Jailbroken. |
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#66 by Squeaky I am the only person I know who's phone isn't Jailbroken. I personally know about 20 iPhone users, between friends and work. No one has jailbroken their phone. "Bioshock, sadly, is no Painkiller." - BobJustBob
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Yeah, but Squeaky's young, and goes to school with even younger. "I hope you one day decide to smarten the fuck up so I can stand to look at your posts." - gaggle
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#68 by Shadarr Yeah, but Squeaky's young, and goes to school with even younger. I am the only person in my class with an iPhone, everyone else uses a blackberry. My dad has a jailbroken iPhone, so does my uncle, my cousins husband, and my brother-in-law as well as his brother. |
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Blackberry is going down so hard. |
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Squeaky's got smart classmates and lwf is wrong. The prediction for the iPhone market share is pretty much the same, but changes to the estimate for Blackberry move it to third place while iPhone falls to fourth. Parhelic Triangle is coming.
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Blackberries suck, the hardware sucks, the software sucks even more than the hardware. They're going down and they deserve to go down. |
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#66 by Squeaky #64 by jjohnsen Don't you have to have a jailbroken phone to pirate apps? I didn't think there were that many jailbroken phones anymore. I am the only person I know who's phone isn't Jailbroken. Really? I'm the only person I know who has Jailbroken their phone. |
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#70 by lwf Blackberry is going down so hard. I wonder lumpy the regional distributions of these devices are, because I know literally one Blackberry user, and he's dumping his in a few months. #71 by Milan Brezovský Squeaky's got smart classmates and lwf is wrong. The prediction for the iPhone market share is pretty much the same, but changes to the estimate for Blackberry move it to third place while iPhone falls to fourth. That analysis seems to be based on the idea that iPhone will continue to be an AT&T exclusive. I doubt that highly. "Bioshock, sadly, is no Painkiller." - BobJustBob
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I wonder lumpy myself, sometimes. "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" - "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely."
"LP, your big balls are a religion." - Jibble |
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#73 by jjohnsen Really? I'm the only person I know who has Jailbroken their phone. Reported! <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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Wonder how lumpy, humph. "Bioshock, sadly, is no Painkiller." - BobJustBob
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#72 by lwf Blackberries suck, the hardware sucks, the software sucks even more than the hardware. They're going down and they deserve to go down. Blackberries are awesome, although quite sour. But nothing a little bit of sugar wouldn't fix. Hardware sucks? 624 MHz tri-core Bold is not fast enough for you? Capable of smooth multi-tasking, playing music, reading email, browsing, reading RSS, messaging on gTalk and BBM at the same time? With a battery lifetime of several days? Software doesn't suck, either. They've built a secure platform. Of course, there isn't nearly as much 3rd party software for BlackBerry as for the other platforms, but they're improving their developer tools, App World, etc. Also, their OS5 is pretty awesome. I'm not saying the BlackBerry is a phone for everyone, but no, they're not going down. And yes, the Gartner analysis sounds weird, I'd like to read the full report. Parhelic Triangle is coming.
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No dude, they suck. They are all over the place here for a number of reasons, but BBM is their only real advantage and they are due for a major crash. And the Bold and its lack of a touchscreen can blow me all day long before I'll use it for anything else. |
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BB has the best non-touch phone UI. And they plan to have hybrid touch/QWERTY phones, which I'm interested in. Also, find a girlfriend. Getting blown by a cell phone is not healthy. Probably causes blindness or something. Parhelic Triangle is coming.
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Regarding Stargate: Universe, I tried it and gave up after three episodes. It's awful. I really liked SG:1 but this series has terrible everything: terrible characters, terrible plots, terrible devices. Eli is the only good character and that's only because he's the least bad character on the show. The entire population is on a floating deus ex machina...the ship is a super powerful thing that seems to anticipate everything and saves them from certain doom at just the last minute because oh they didn't know the ship could do that!! It's lazy writing. The female characters are utterly atrocious, the male characters are cardboard and flat. |
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Poor Robert Carlyle. They really need to film the sequel to Trainspotting so he gets some decent work. "Don't try to take cover by the legs of my walker. It will not go well for you." - Shadarr
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I really like Stargate Universe. I'd say more but I think Hugin really likes it too so he'll be along soon to defend it better than I can. "CS is still one of the best, and fun, tactical FPS multiplayer games out there." -- Perkins
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i rather like it too. I also really don't think the women are treated all that sexist. I think they are treated like real people in a strange situation, and real people act like this. Especially if they are fighting off depression or whatever. "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" - "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely."
"LP, your big balls are a religion." - Jibble |
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Milan - Is it really even about the hardware? Surely the iPhone has such a critical weight of apps and devs willing to make them that it is the only sensible choice among similar devices. I've not seen any figures, but I'd be amazed if BB wasn't tanking. - words and stuff -
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As a somewhat knowledgable computer user, I'm not really liking the iPhone. I don't like that I have so little control, need a mac to develop anything, being on the Apple hardware upgrade train, stuck with AT&T and can't even replace the battery (my battery has already lost a fair amount of it's new battery glow/charge). I've made sure not to do anything else with AT&T (like get my a daughter a phone), so the contract isn't extended like they want to do. I definitely like parts of the iPhone, a LOT. But it's not worth it to me long term so far... That being said, I don't know really know what other good alternatives there are. I haven't heard great reports about the Droid, especially related to battery life, and not many of the other smart phones are really enticing me...so many I'll end up sticking with the iPhone longer...hopefully not though. "Fucking Radio Shack. It's a wonder they even know how to use a bathroom and don't just walk around all day with shit in their pants." - smds
"the concept that a happy worker is a productive worker is hardly an entry from Matt's Big Book Of Things The Fairies Said." - Dum |
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The problem with the iphone is that it shows up every other phone on the market for what it really is - shit. All the other manufacturers have been getting away with murder for years now because none of them were spending more on UI than any of their competitors. I figured Apple would be a great thing for the mobile market since it would mean Sony et al wouldn't be able to simply vomit up another near-identical phone every 6 months and stay profitable, but here we are THREE FUCKING IPHONE MODELS later and there's only one or two units out there that look like they *might* develop into something competitive. Maybe. In 18 months or so. It's a fucking joke. Nokia, Motorola, LG, they all deserve to go bankrupt. "Don't try to take cover by the legs of my walker. It will not go well for you." - Shadarr
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And have any of you bought an aftermarket car stereo recently? Jesus fuck. even the good ones have teeny little buttons scattered all over the fascia like it was assembled by an epileptic on a coke binge. "Don't try to take cover by the legs of my walker. It will not go well for you." - Shadarr
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FUCKING CONSUMER ELECTRONICS FUCKING RAGE "Don't try to take cover by the legs of my walker. It will not go well for you." - Shadarr
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Droid. "I hope you one day decide to smarten the fuck up so I can stand to look at your posts." - gaggle
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A phone is a phone is a phone. If you expect anything more, you deserve to be disappointed. A round pizza with radius 'z' and thickness 'a' has the volume pi*z*z*a. Coincidence? I think not.
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My car has a radio and an air conditioner. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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I also really don't think the women are treated all that sexist I don't think the female characters on SG:U are sexist. I just think they're terrible. They're more terrible than the male characters, which are already terrible. I'm actually quite puzzled that all you guys seem to like it, especially Hugin? Wow. I must have been watching a completely different show than you guys. My TV/movie tastes are usually pretty much in line with the general population here. |
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anaqer (#91): A phone is a phone is a phone. If you expect anything more, you deserve to be disappointed. Not really. I swallowed my bias and bought an iphone, and I have few complaints (the UK pricing is much less like being robbed at knifepoint). Apple delivered a critical beatdown with this thing. "Don't try to take cover by the legs of my walker. It will not go well for you." - Shadarr
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I guess I don't know what you mean by terrible? What is terrible about them? To me, most of them seem like real people. Flawed, capable of great stupidity or really reliable in a time of crises or high stress. I mean, I don't think it's GREAT, but I think it's pretty good and I like how it's dark, and there aren't always clear, easy answers to all their problems. "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" - "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely."
"LP, your big balls are a religion." - Jibble |
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They seem so empty. The woman stand around looking sad or wringing their hands or looking tortured but with no feeling to it because their characters seem to exist only in reference to the male characters. I guess that could be called sexist but it just seems like poor character development to me. Not a single character except Eli so far has made me want to follow their progression or care what happens to them. They have no idea what to do with the scientist guy: one minute he's helping them the next minute he makes a creepy evil comment that says HAY GUYS LOOK IM FORESHADOWING. It's like they want to make a Vic Mackey character where he's bad but deep and you love him and you hate yourself for loving his badness but also his humanity, but they just throw random shit into his character that has no rhyme or reason. |
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there aren't always clear, easy answers to all their problems. There aren't? In one episode I watched their ship was going to go right into the sun, and they all decided they were going to die and sat around looking sad. Then they figured out that the ship wasn't going to crash at all but scoop power from the sun and it's got protection from the radiation, of course! Because it's an all-powerful ship that manages to figure out everything that it or its human occupants need and gets it. The ship has zero flaws. It's a giant saviour device. Then in another episode I guess they all get some kind of virus and then, miracle of miracles, the next planet just HAPPENS to have the antidote on it in the form of a creature. How convenient. Seems like an easy answer to their problems to me. Everything's been convenient and easy so far in what I watched, which was three episodes. By the third I was too bored to remember to watch the fourth. |
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Also, since the ship seems able to provide them with everything I wish they'd provide some shampoo and water for the scientist and his hair. It's so...stringy and oily looking and gross. |
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i don't see it as the ship providing anything. I see it as the ship following it's course, doing what it does. It clearly had a crew at one point, so why wouldn't it notice lower stores of water and stop at a water planet? Water that two episodes later, was killing them. I'll agree, whew, thank god for dues ex bugs that have anti biotic blood, but it wasn't a simple matter of oh clean water, lucky us. The crew figuring out the ship wasn't going to suicide into the sun is not the magic ship saving them, it's the crew creating a problem that wasn't actually there because they didn't understand what was going on. Also, I think the scientist is very clear. He clearly knows more then he tells (some of the 'magic' is likely not magic at all) and just as clearly, has no desire to ever leave and will do anything to insure that he doesn't ever leave. But, you know, it's not like it's all that important. It's just a show. I have lower expectations for the SyFy channel, maybe it's just me. "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" - "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely."
"LP, your big balls are a religion." - Jibble |
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I can get behind the lower expectations because it's Syfy. I guess I was hoping for something as good as SG:1 was and for me, this is nowhere near it. Maybe it'll get better, though; all sci-fi shows tend to go through a rough first season (I think?). |
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#93 by Caryn I don't think the female characters on SG:U are sexist. I just think they're terrible. They're more terrible than the male characters, which are already terrible. I'm actually quite puzzled that all you guys seem to like it, especially Hugin? Wow. I must have been watching a completely different show than you guys. My TV/movie tastes are usually pretty much in line with the general population here. I want to give some context. I liked the Stargate movie. I liked the first few seasons of Stargate SG-1, but then that show started to drift off-course, especially when it became clear Richard Dean Anderson wanted to basically retire and pursue his hobbies and spend time with his family and not beat up his body any more (I believe he's had achy, injured and re-injured knees and back from his various action-y shows for years). Then they spun off Stargate: Atlantis and more or less fucked that show up from the very beginning. Oh, I watched it, but it was never really very good. FInally I hear about Stargate: Universe, and how it's going to be a much darker show, Stargate: BSG, etc. It also sounds like it might be the Atlantis premise (and the Voyager premise), a bunch of Earthlings stuck far from home and how they deal with that, but maybe done right? Having slowly gotten sick of the standard Stargate formula, I was really interested in a conscious effort to make a different kind of show. And when the casting started to roll in, I was interested in that too. Ming Na, Robert Carlyle, solid actors. So, I watch the show, I've seen all the episodes. Saying "I like it" is too simplistic. It's a flawed show, and I can understand someone else not liking it. But I find it interesting, actually in some of the ways I find Dollhouse interesting, another show a lot of people hate. I like the overall look of it, the lighting, the camera work, the Kino-eye view thing they do sometimes. I also think the ship itself is fucking gorgeous, the prettiest ship design they've done for any of the series, way way better looking than Atlantis. The special effects overall are very good, the "sundive" sequence was really beautiful. I like Eli. I like Dr. Rush, for all that he's a lying antisocial jerk. I like that unlike say, Rodney McKay, people don't like Rush despite his personality flaws. Ming Na is coming along after being seriously underused. I don't hate Grier, the black guy, which I thought I would. He's way more nuanced than I feared. And the medic lady has her moments. Things I don't like? Telford, Lou Diamond Philips character, is too much of a moustache twirling bully asshole. All the female characters are underwritten and overly passive and the show have a good grasp of what to do with them outside of relationship drama. The show very seriously needs, and needed much earlier, to get into a serious discussion about the ethics of using the stones, especially for personal business. I have no problem with the idea that somehow or another they'd work out waivers and procedures or something to swing conjugal visits, for example, but that's not a detail you leave off-screen. The producers I truly believe are trying to make a mature show, but sometimes they slip into "adult=boobies" mode. They're trying to make something tonally a lot different from what they've been doing for the past 15 years, and occasionally they just get it wrong. As far as the ship as deus-ex-machina goes, the thing was designed to create a foothold in a distant galaxy for eventual Ancient crews when they arrived, and operate automatically in the meantime, so I don' tmind that it can take care of itself and acts to take care of its crew. The antibiotic eel creatures were quite the whopping coincidence, yes, although otherwise that was a pretty good episode. My hope is that given time they'll get better at rounding out the characterization, get a few external conflicts going (we know there are aliens around which have landed on Destiny), and generally just learn how to make their show. Sometime this takes a season or more. For example, Deep Space Nine is, IMO, the best of the modern Trek shows, and they didn't figure out how to really do that show for a good 3 seasons. Parks and Recreation was quite mediocre the first season, and in the second season they tweaked some things and now I think it's one of the better sitcoms on the air right now. I could name other examples. I'm trying to give SGU time to grow into itself. "Bioshock, sadly, is no Painkiller." - BobJustBob
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Sigh. The show doesn't have a good grasp of what to do with the female characters outside of relationship drama. "Bioshock, sadly, is no Painkiller." - BobJustBob
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