Mysterious Cities of Gold: Season 4 episode 1 - Lalibela

 

The whole of Gaul?

Finally, season 4 have been shown on French TV and the story can finally continue. Of course it's in French, but someone have uploaded the first episode with english subtitles so I can at least follow along. A bit better than the auto-generated subtitles from Youtube themselves, although the white colour of the text blends in a bit with the africans white robes and such. And where is the third season blu ray so I can get them physically? It doesn't even stream so how am I to get my hands on it?

Story meanwhile continues directly after the end of the third season. An African village in Ethiopia wakes up as Ambrosius launches sleeping gas bombs on the people and then puts down some machine. The next day when our heroes arrives they awake the villagers and start exploring. Tao and Estaban finds a church in the rock where the machine have been placed, but it turns out to be a trap since it's a machine that creates an earthquake in order to bury the whole church since it apparently contains wall paintings relating to Mu and the 5th city of gold. Apparently Ambrosius have been here before and found some clues and wanted to destroy the clues so that they couldn't follow and maybe even get rid of our heroes. The villagers escape their crumbling village and Estaban and Tao follows a group of rats toward an airduct to the top of the church and then disappears as the building crumbles to the ground., ending the episode.

The documentary is about the inspiration of the church that exists in Ethiopia. Then it was a short bit about some game with stones that you drop into holes in order to get the most stones. Somehow I feel we had a version of that game, but with marbles instead of stones. Don't recall what it was called though.

Not much else to say about this episode. Bit miffed that the kids fell into the trap since it was rather obvious, but what are gonna do to push the plot forward?

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Engage!

Continued with The Next Generation. A lot better. It actually still look futuristic in the machines and all that if we just go at the technical bits. Although, first season is a bit wonky. And sad to think I assume it's due to the influence of Gene Roddenberry since as he apparently got sicker until his death after season four the series got better and better... well, season 7 has bits here and there one could argue isn't that good, but I assume that maybe have more to do with strained attention for the creative team as they made Deep Space 9 at the same time. 

So now we follow Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation Starship U.S.S. Enterprise. There's first officer William T. Riker, chief engineer Geordie La Forge, lieutenant Data the android, Councelor Deanna Troi the Betezed empath, dr Beverly Crusher with her son Wesley Crusher, Mr Worf the first Klingon officer. Or that is pretty much the main cast of the whole show, in fact season 1 had Tasha Yar as security officer until she died before the end of the season and her position was filled with Worf. Which was played by Denise Cosby that was in the music video of No Stranger to Love by Black Sabbath. Of course she came back in later seasons, as a parallel universe, and then as a Romulan daughter. There's Klingons, Romulans and Vulcans from the original series, but here we are introduced to Cardassians, Bajorans and the Borg. 

Compared to the first series, from the second season and on there was episodes I couldn't pull my eyes from since they engrossed me so. Episodes like the Offspring when Delta builds a child that tragically dies at the end, the horror movie feel from that episode in the 7th season, the Klingon civil war, an alien race that only speaks in references (which can't really work in star travels since how will the language be able to be understood by all members of the race if one ship adopts one reference and another a second? Still, interesting concept) and so many more. Stories centres on Worf and his Klingon heritage, Data discovering what it means to be human, La Forge tinkering with the Enterprise and on and on with missions that explore this futuristic world or concepts beyond what the original managed. Of course, sometimes it doesn't work like the episode the Game where Riker after a vacation on the pleasure planet Risa brings back a game that addicts the whole crew and almost topples the whole Federation. Throwing rings doesn't feel that enticing if I'm gonna be honest. 

Still holds up in most areas. Remember seeing it on channel 4 as a kid, but I didn't like it. First episode I recall was the one with Picards double that he shoots at the end. Too much talking over all. I didn't get into it until the show was shown on channel 6 when I was at University. Of course at that time I had already seen 4 or so seasons of Voyager and Enterprise and most Star Trek-movies so I was more into it.... as well getting references and understanding the concepts they discussed. Now it's also fun to notice all the cameos. You got Mick Fleetwood, Bob Kelso from Scrubs, Agent 3 and Dr. Sinclair from The Journeyman Project-game series. Also the reason I started watching this show after playing the second game. And the music, first 4 seasons scored by Ron Jones, the composer for the original DuckTales, can't be better than that.

Star Trek: The Original Series

 

To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before!

Been watching the Star Trek-series on Netflix to catch up on my gaps in the Sci-Fi pantheon. Only watched one of the original series episodes before when it was on TV as a kid, and it was the episode Who Cries for Adonis? about a manifestation of the ancient greek gods that apparently are aliens. I watched Stargate SG1 when I was at university so I'm not new to that idea. So now I've seen the whole original series... and it hasn't aged that well. Interesting concept, but just the start up jingle of the Star Trek theme makes me wonder what this is. And I can't argue that there is some interesting things like Kirk and Spock dressing up as Nazi after a Federation observer gone rouge and turned a whole world into Nazi-Germany. Now, it was the 60's so it's a bit naive, but I wonder why an historian from earth gotta emulate the third reich in all its regalia? Now, also, it's not the Nazi's that made the early success of Germany in the second world war possible, but the structure of the German Wehrmacht.

I found that the humancentric episodes are a bit similar with gangster and roman legions or time traveling to the 1920's that they blend together in my mind. And then we have the technology. It might have been looking like the future in the 60's but it doesn't hold up with push-buttons all over. Also, hardly any emotional punch in any episode. Maybe the one where Kirk is left behind with amnesia and is seen as a god by the natives and is married with one for 2-3 months before she is killed by the natives as he seemed unable to stop a storm that was caused by an asteroid that the Enterprise had to stop. Maybe.

In truth, there is hardly anything worth watching here. The Khan episode so you get the build up to Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan as an exception, but even then I watched the movies during a Star Trek marathon as a kid and I got by fine. And that also screwed me over since I couldn't tell who was who since the colours of the uniforms don't match the Next Generation making Kirk's choice of a... is it green or yellow, look like an engineer.. Well, Spock looks like Spock in any uniform he wears. Then we have Scotty who is clean shaven while in the movies clearly has a mustasch so I can distinguish him from all the others in the movies. So in conclusion, watch the movies instead. Klingons look like Klingons, the uniforms looks better (no mini skirt as I recall) and clearly better stories with emotional punches... in some of them.

Phantasmagoria

Gregorian chanting is the soundtrack of the game

ScummVM is the nostalgia balm for all my old point and click adventure games, and now we even can play the FMV games. And why not to start with one of the more infamous FMV-games Sierra put out? Phantasmagoria, caused such an uproar at release due to the gore and rape-scene within it that religious groups asked for a boycott, which lead to the game being one of the best-selling games that year... or maybe overall for Sierra. Funny how that works. And I can kinda see it cause it's really grotesque, but it is quite clear this is an 18+ game, just look at the box art, beheaded woman with an M for mature plastered right there. On the other hand by todays standards it's really tame in comparison.

So basic story is that Adrienne Delany, writer, together with her husband photographer Don Gordon has bought a house that used to belong to the illusionist Zoltan Carnovach. While looking around Adrienne by accident released a demon from a locked box in a walled in chapel. The demon possesses her husband that becomes more violent and aggressive. Meanwhile Adrienne begin to notice unnatural phenomenas and having strange dreams. She begin to see things like ectoplasm in the nursery and visions through the different mirrors in the mansion. So during the course of the game you first piece together that Zoltan had been possessed by a demon and how it effects him as he kills his wives, one by one in very grotesque detail. The first gets a gardening shovel shoved into her mouth and then stuffed with dirt and thereafter her body is hidden in a pot. The second one get her neck snapped with a torture device, the third got stuffed with animal entrails until she suffocates, the fourth a drunkard gets her head shoved into a bottle of wine and the body gets stuffed in a wine casket. Gruesome.

Meanwhile Don is getting aggressive and starts by killing their cat, and in the last chapter while running around the mansion you can find the cadavers of several of the supporting characters as Don have been busy in preparation for killing Adrienne. You kill Don and then do a ritual at an underground study where you send the demon back into hell or wherever it came from. Adrienne escapes and a girl power song turns up during the credits. I never finished this as a kid, me and my best friend from school played from cd 1 to cd 6, but we stepped out after the ending scene when Don bash the head in of Mike the telephone guy.

So what do I think of it now? It's a slow game, to get the most out of it you gotta play the long game and go through a routine and click everything at every chapter. That way you can discover small changes to things like an absinth bottle that slowly gets more empty as time goes or a cigarette case that loses one of the cigarette between a chapter or the painting that's get more filled out until it shows the true face of the demon. And then of course the horrible murder scenes as shown in different mirrors at different chapters. Music enhances it as well so when you hear the Gregorian chanting you know it's about to get bloody. Acting is cheesy at times and really goes over the deep end at the last chapter. In the right mood it works all right, but it's maybe too slow for its best. Mostly the quietness. Other reviewers commented on it and I have to agree, since Adrienne very seldom inner monolog the player don't know what she thinks or get hints on what to do. Cause its hard to understand the logic that my hammer or crowbar isn't enough to break through the walled in chapel in chapter 1, but the secret letter opener is what you need. This of course is the puzzle that stopped my dad from continuing the game (which isn't a problem here since you can choose to start from any of the seven chapters). If you wanna know the solution its that a cat statue you picked up you can actually enlarge and find a button on the back. Some solution, that they only use for this puzzle which feels like a bit of waste. Of course other games used it much more often. They have an inbuilt hint system, but it's not always that good. For example in chapter 2 I though I had done everything and was looking for Don to give some drain cleaners, but I couldn't find him and all the hint system said was find Don to give him the drain cleaners. Turns out that I had to reenter the antique shop in order to get some more information and from there I could continue to find Don.

So it was a bit of a mess there. Past that no problem really, until the game crashed going into chapter 6 by missing some file for some reason so had to make a new save and start from chapter 6 directly. For a one time playthrough it can be fun if you like horror. It could have been a bit better though. For example Don goes crazy from chapter 1 to chapter 2 and constantly be aggressive from that point on. Part of me seem it a bit unrealistic, maybe he should have a longer more torn reaction to his behaviour as the demon take over his mind with the culmination in chapter 6 when he whacks Mike and then chapter 7 starts. Another problem is that in chapter 7 if you know what you do you can pick up necessary items before triggering the event that puts the game in "running from the crazy slasher"-mode, and it takes away a lot of the horror if you do. Really, in my playthrough only Mike and Don was killed and you hadn't found the bodies of the vagrants. Of course, it helps my squeamish heart as the games put it.