Video by Porfle Popnecker. I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
Monday, September 7, 2026
Sunday, September 6, 2026
SGU: STARGATE UNIVERSE 1.5 -- DVD Review by Porfle
Originally posted on 7/29/10
If you read my review of the first half-season of "SGU: Stargate Universe", you'll know that I liked it a lot but had certain reservations about it. Judging from various message board posts and such, I'm sure many viewers felt the same way. Fortunately, the release of SGU: STARGATE UNIVERSE 1.5 proves what I'd been hoping for--that the previous episodes were slowly leading up to a marked increase in the action and excitement levels of the show and that certain irritating aspects would be eliminated. Which is exactly what has happened, barring one or two exceptions.
As before, a number of military and civilian personnel are stranded on a city-sized Ancient starship that's on a seemingly neverending journey through the cosmos, stopping for a few hours whenever it encounters a planet with a stargate and then jumping back into faster-than-light speed. With Colonel Young (Louis Ferreira, DAWN OF THE DEAD remake) in command, the entire group is under military control, which leads to constant conflicts with the brilliant but unstable Dr. Rush (Robert Carlyle, THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH) and civilian leader Camile Wray (Ming-Na, ER).
The professional and personal relationships between them and the rest of the ship's inhabitants generate much of the show's dramatic interplay, including a love triangle between true-blue soldier Lt. Matthew Scott (Brian J. Smith), fish-out-of-water senator's daughter Chloe Armstrong (Elyse Levesque), and the lovestruck Eli (David Blue), a neurotic nerd-savant hijacked into service because of his mad gaming skills. Alaina Huffman plays Lt. Tamara Johansen, the closest thing to a medic on the ship, who carries some pesky romantic baggage with Col. Young. And then there's Sgt. Greer (Jamil Walker Smith), who's so gung-ho that he seems to relish the thought of occasionally blowing away a civilian or two just to keep them in line.
The first half of the season spent a lot of time setting up the premise and then meandering along with stories about the hazards related to their mysterious starship and the heartbreak of being away from home while trying to find love among the stars. But now that the writers have worked some of this stuff out of their systems, the show has gotten into gear and started kicking some ass. With the appearance of a new race of enemy aliens--spindly blue CGI-generated creatures who covet our heroes' Ancient starship--we finally get some cool space battles (as always, the special effects are gorgeous) and deadly shipboard encounters. Also, the military vs. civilians conflict embodied by Young and Rush erupts into a full-scale mutiny in one of the season's best episodes.
One of the main improvements is the absence of those damn Kino diaries, which offered characters the chance to philosophize, navel-gaze, and blubber away precious show time with a blatant and boring writer's convenience. The formula was pretty much the same every time--the subject fiddles with the Kino camera ("Is this on?"), starts to record a personal diary entry, gets either teary and emotional or speechless with inner turmoil, and then slaps their hand over the lens. It was one of the worst aspects of the show and to my great relief has now been confined solely to the extras menu where it belongs. However, we must still contend with the frequent appearance of those contemplative montages set to some truly awful emo ballads. These really need to get sucked into a black hole along with the Kino diaries.
As usual, Robert Carlyle is the main on-camera talent here and makes the abrasive Dr. Rush a continually fascinating character whom we're never quite sure whether to admire or distrust. Some insight into his backstory give us a little more understanding of his motives and attitudes. Louis Ferreira's soulful, haunted Colonel Young holds our interest by going against the "infallible leader" type, playing a commander whose decisions may not always be 100% correct and are often swayed by emotion. Watching these two characters either butt heads or struggle to cooperate for the good of the crew is one of the best things about the show.
As the dreaded season cliffhanger (I hate those) draws nigh, Young's suspicion that his arch-enemy Colonel Telford (a solid Lou Diamond Phillips) is a mole for the Lucian Alliance leads to Dr. Rush undertaking a highly perilous undercover mission in Telford's body via the communication stones. Rhona Mitra makes for a very formidable villain as the ruthless Commander Kiva, who has located another Icarus base and is attempting to dial the elusive ninth chevron. The story arc which follows combines the pulp sci-fi action and suspense of the other Stargate shows with SGU's own darker edge, culminating in a blazing stargate invasion of the ship, a hostage crisis, and a countdown to total destruction, among various other points of interest.
The three-disc set (10 episodes) from 20-Century Fox and MGM is in 1.78:1 widescreen with English 5.1 Dolby and Spanish Dolby surround. Captions are in English, Spanish, and French. Each episode features a cast and crew commentary. Extras also include about fifteen "Destiny SML" featurettes and several Kino diaries. (Blu-Ray contains additional extras.)
With SGU: STARGATE UNIVERSE 1.5, the idea of mixing the sci-fi fun and excitement of the earlier Stargates with a darker, more serious sensibility--something which the first half of the season didn't quite pull off--seems to have finally started realizing its potential and yielding some first-rate episodes. And suddenly the future of this show is well worth looking forward to.
For additional coverage, click here.
Saturday, September 5, 2026
SGU STARGATE UNIVERSE 1.0 -- DVD Review by Porfle
Having somehow managed to avoid every single previous film and TV incarnation of "Stargate", I delved into the 3-disc DVD set SGU STARGATE UNIVERSE 1.0 (2009) not knowing quite what to expect. After a marathon viewing of all ten episodes (which constitute the first half of the first season), I find that while it isn't mindblowingly awesome, it's still a compelling start with the potential for greater things.
Fans of the saga up till now will know all this, but for us novices: billions of years ago, a race of aliens known as "The Ancients", from whom we are descended, built a series of ring-shaped portals called "stargates" which use wormholes to allow intergalactic travel. Having discovered one of these stargates on another planet, Earth scientists and military have been trying to unlock the "dial-up" code which will access the stargate's transportation function. But just as they do so, Icarus Base is attacked by hostile aliens known as The Lucian Alliance and all military and civilian personnel are forced to escape through the stargate to an unknown destination seconds before the planet explodes.
After their chaotic arrival, they find themselves on an immense, automated starship built long ago by the Ancients, which is speeding through hyperspace billions of light years from Earth for some unknown purpose. The ship, it turns out, slows down whenever it approaches a planet with a stargate, giving the crew a specified time to explore the planet and gather whatever materials they need from it before the ship automatically jumps back into hyperspace. Damage from some long-ago battle has made repair of its life-sustaining functions imperative, and as the passengers struggle to survive they also must deal with interpersonal conflicts and the uncertainty of ever being able to return home.
I like a good "spaceship exploring the cosmos" series and this one is shaping up pretty well so far. Not much has been done with the stargates as of yet--the crew only visit two or three planets in this set--but there's more than enough stuff going on aboard the Destiny to keep things hopping. As is often the case in sci-fi, the military and scientific factions frequently have heated disagreements over their priorities and there's a constant power struggle between stalwart Colonel Everett Young (Justin Louis) and the brilliant but arrogant chief scientist Dr. Nicholas Rush (Robert Carlyle), with the hapless civilians caught in the crossfire.
Carlyle, a fine actor who played a formidable Bond villain in THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, makes Dr. Rush a fascinating character whose motives we're never quite sure of. At times he seems to place more importance on research and discovery than on preserving the lives of his shipmates, and some suspect that their presence aboard the Destiny may even be his doing. As his nemesis Colonel Young, Louis brings a soulful intensity to the role which has made him one of my favorite actors since he played Sarah Polley's ill-fated husband in the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD. The interplay between these two solid actors makes for some of the show's best moments.
Among the military characters are Young's second-in-command, the troubled but heroic Lt. Scott (Brian J. Smith), hotheaded but dependable Sgt. Greer (Jamil Walker Smith), and cowardly, rage-stoked loose cannon Sgt. Spencer (Josh Blacker). Back on Earth, the Destiny's progress is monitored with intense interest by Lieutenant General Jack O'Neill (an amiable Richard Dean Anderson) and Colonel David Telford (Lou Diamond Phillips at his best), who will try not only to usurp Colonel Young's command but, eventually, his lonesome wife as well.
The civilians include Ming-Na ("E.R.") as Camile Wray, a human resources executive who thinks she should be in command, Alaina Huffman as plucky and wise medical officer Tamara Johansen, and David Blue as nerdy math genius Eli Wallace. Eli, recruited straight out of his mom's basement because he was able to break a vital stargate code imbedded into an online videogame, is the vicarious wish-fulfillment character for gamer geeks in the audience and alternates between being amusing and irritating. Another old favorite, Christopher McDonald, plays Senator Alan Armstrong, whose daughter Chloe (Elyse Levesque) finds herself the romantic interest of both Eli and Lt. Scott.
Proving of utmost importance to both the show's characters and its writers are the "communication stones", an Ancient device which allows the Destiny's passengers to temporarily swap bodies with certain Earth personnel. This makes way for a lot of emotional and sometimes soap opera-level scenes of Scott, Chloe, and Young, among others, sharing intimate moments with their friends and loved ones. Telford's body-swaps with Young pose a problem when he aggressively asserts his authority while aboard the Destiny and then later, during a momentary glitch in the transfer, finds himself having sex with Young's wife. (Oops!) The whole idea of someone inhabiting my body and then going off and having sex with people I don't know sorta gives me the willies anyway--who knows what you could catch?
These slow-burn stories are pretty leisurely-paced, with the only whiz-bang space-battle action taking place in the hectic first episode. However, I found them engrossing and often quite intriguing when not bogged down by unnecessary melodrama. In "Light", the ship is knocked off-course and is headed directly for a sun, which means that fifteen passengers must be chosen by lottery to escape in the shuttle while the rest face their impending doom. "Time" finds several of the main characters on a lush jungle planet where they are attacked--and killed--by vicious reptilian creatures, while the rest of the passengers start dying off due to a mysterious virus they've contracted there. (Okay, you know the main characters aren't really going to all die, but it's still an interesting episode.)
In "Life", Dr. Rush discovers a chair which may impart vital knowledge of the ship's functions to whomever sits in it, but only at great risk to his life (not unlike similar devices in FORBIDDEN PLANET and the ST:TOS episode "Spock's Brain"). "Justice", the final episode in the set, begins with one of the main characters shot dead and the gun being discovered in Colonel Young's quarters, leading to him losing his command and finding himself on trial for murder. A shocking revelation and an intriguing cliffhanger ending, with both Young and Rush apparently starting to lose it big-time, round out the set.
My main complaint about SGU STARGATE UNIVERSE is its tendency to grind to a halt in order to indulge in labored, overwrought melodrama, complete with maudlin plinky-piano music, which seems grafted onto the stories rather than contributing to their forward momentum. These detours from the main thrust of the plot are the sort of stuff you usually see under "deleted scenes" in the Extras menu and rightly so. One of the good things about a sci-fi show like BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is that it incorporates the interpersonal drama into the stories so well, something which SGU needs to work on in future episodes.
A major storytelling device which has its ups and downs is the floating camera sphere known as the "Kino", which is important to the crew for reconnaissance (it can be sent through the stargate to retrieve vital advance data) and surveillance, but which is also used by the writers to indulge in weepy, angsty diary entries by the Destiny's inhabitants. (As one IMDb commentator complains: "All they do is stand around on this dark dull boring spaceship moaning about stuff.") We get enough of that kind of soul-baring blather during Dr. Johansen's psych evaluation-confessionals, and all of this emo introspection justs gets to be too much after awhile.
Technically, the show is well-designed with some very nice fly-by shots of the Destiny streaking through hyperspace and a wealth of interesting though often underlit interior sets. Many of the ensemble scenes are directed with a documentary approach rather than the usual one-camera routine, allowing castmembers to use a looser and more theatrical acting style. Joel Goldsmith's music is a plus (except for the drippy plinky-piano stuff), although I could do without the emo-ballad montages.
The 3-disc DVD set from MGM and 20th-Century Fox is in 1.78:1 widescreen with English 5.1 Dolby Digital and Spanish Dolby Surround. Subtitles are in English, Spanish, and French. All episodes feature chatty commentary tracks with the cast and producers. Extras also include an extended version of the pilot "Air", conversations with the cast, numerous Kino diary entries and miscellaneous footage, and a helpful featurette for "Stargate" newbs entitled "Stargate 101: Presented by Dr. Daniel Jackson", which gives a basic history of the franchise.
SGU STARGATE UNIVERSE 1.0 lays the groundwork for what could be an exciting and provocative series that still has much room for improvement. I'll be looking forward to what's in store for us in the future, but for now, these ten introductory episodes provide a generous amount of thought-provoking sci-fi entertainment. Hopefully, the writers have a clear-cut destination in mind for the Destiny and for the show itself instead of trying to drag it out indefinitely--I'd hate to see it turn into "Gilligan's Starship."
Friday, September 4, 2026
The Three Stooges: Unidentified Floating Objects (video)
You expect to see things flying around in a Three Stooges comedy.
But sometimes those things didn't really "fly" as much as they...floated? Anyway, it just sorta adds to the comedy!
Here are the Three Stooges shorts used in this video and their release years:
Pardon My Scotch – 1935
Yes, We Have No Bonanza – 1939
Spooks! – 1953
Pardon My Backfire – 1953
Video by Porfle Popnecker. I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
Thursday, September 3, 2026
MEGA PYTHON VS. GATOROID -- DVD Review by Porfle
Originally posted on 6/17/11
Usually, a combination of the phrases "SyFy Original Movie" and "giant bad-CGI monsters" is enough to give me a severe case of the heebie-jeebies. Especially if the movie they're referring to has a really dumb title. Well, unbelievably enough, MEGA PYTHON VS. GATOROID (2011) is the rollicking, rip-roaring, and divinely ridiculous exception to that rule.
The highlight is a blood-curdling death duel between two of the most horrifying monsters to ever walk the face of the earth. I'm referring, of course, to 80s teen queens Tiffany and Debbie Gibson. Debbie, who's gotten a bit wiry in her middle years but is still cute, plays eco-terrorist Nikki with loads of energy. Tiffany, on the other hand, has filled out considerably since her younger days and, as Seminole State Park Chief Ranger Terry, marks off a few boxes on my fetish checklist with her generous figure, skimpy uniform, and sidearm. (Sorry if that's too much information.)
When Nikki and her cohorts break into a lab and let loose a bunch of mutant pythons, they grow to gigantic proportions and start eating all the alligators, throwing the local gator hunters out of work. This is fine with Nikki because she believes pythons belong at the top of the food chain, even if some of the lower links consist of bumbling park rangers, ill-fated fiancés, and comical rednecks.
Terry, meanwhile, has the bright idea of loading up a bunch of dead chickens with super-steroids and feeding them to the gators, thus bringing nature into balance again. ("What's crazy about this--feeding steroids to gators?" she asks her partner, Angie. "I mean, what could go wrong?") The result is a horde of colossal alligator-monsters that feast on anything that moves. Naturally, the pythons start eating their steroid-enhanced eggs and get even bigger, leading to mega-python vs. gatoroid pandemonium throughout the Everglades and eventually in the very streets of downtown Miami.
Surprisingly, Roger Corman's name doesn't show up anywhere in the credits for this freaky flick. Horror veteran Mary Lambert (PET SEMETARY, THE ATTIC) directs with a sure hand and keeps things moving at such a rapid clip that the story never has a chance to get boring. The creature attacks are exciting, suspenseful, over the top, and even a bit nerve-wracking at times, despite the lighthearted tone and resolutely fake-looking CGI.
Willfully cheesy, this movie is positively frothy with deadpan comedy and campy dialogue. Tiffany and Debbie get off to a good hostile start, nearly sideswiping each other on the road and growling "Bitch!" in unison. Their environmentalist wacko vs. park ranger animosity is stoked throughout the film ("Looks like somebody had 'bitch' for breakfast!" Debbie taunts during their initial clash), building to the eventual catfight that pays off like a slot machine of fun. When these legendary rivals go flying over a table during the fancy outdoor ball that Tiffany's throwing to raise money for the park, you can bet all those whipped cream-laden pies aren't just sitting there by accident.
Another old fave, A Martinez (THE COWBOYS), plays Diego, a scientist who tries to convince the oblivious Terry that her park is becoming a human buffet for ravenous reptiles. His skills as a pilot and demolitions expert will come in handy during the story's frantic climax, as Terry and Nikki join him in trying to lure the rampaging beasts out of the city and into a dynamite-laden deathtrap. As Terry's elderly partner Angie, Kathryn Joosten has some of the best lines and delivers them with an exquisitely dry wit. Ex-Monkee Micky Dolenz shows up at the fund-raising ball, upping the film's nostalgia value even more.
The DVD from Image Entertainment is in 1.78:1 widescreen with Dolby 5.1 surround sound. No subtitles. Extras consist of the film's trailer and a making-of featurette.
Now, please don't take all of my giddy ravings as an indication that MEGA PYTHON VS. GATOROID is some kind of a great movie, because it isn't, of course. But compared to all the other goofy "hybrid-creature" SyFy Channel flicks of its ilk that I've sat through recently, it's freaking CITIZEN KANE.
Buy it at Amazon.com:
DVD
Blu-Ray
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