tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32203569.post84899555935280403..comments2024-03-22T13:24:58.821-07:00Comments on Beaming Beeman: SEASON 3 - EPISODE 4 - "AT ALL COSTS"Greg Beemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01193087984175490915noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32203569.post-31239629147335553792013-08-07T22:08:02.627-07:002013-08-07T22:08:02.627-07:00@Badlands:
1. "You want to come with us? Be ...@Badlands:<br /><br />1. "You want to come with us? Be my guest!"<br /><br />Okay, that was one bright spot in all of this. I think I like Tom when he's drinking. I also prefer Evil Hal to Angsty Hal.<br /><br />2. It's weird what a baby will and will not be afraid of. I've noticed it when youngins come around my place to play with the critters. Itty-bitty baby chickens? Positively terrifying. Our big ole' horses and that leviathan mule we used to keep around? Cute and cuddly, I suppose.<br /><br />3. Keyhole? West Virginia?<br /><br />Interesting choice for the new capital. Old coal-mining and lumber town at the bottom of these very deep valleys ("where the sun comes up about 10 in the morning and the sun goes down about 3 in the day"), predominately-black (remember Noble's Holler from Justified? Most every rural Southern county has at least one place like that), lots of ecological issues, dwindling population, located in one of the poorest counties in America.<br /><br />No airports though. Nearest one is five miles away between Welch and Kimble, but... <a href="http://www.airnav.com/airport/I25" rel="nofollow">it ain't much of an airport.</a><br /><br />I'd like to see season 4 take place in an area like that.<br /><br />4. Why did Remi want a Lockheed Electra? Amelia Earhart. One look at that plane and I knew it was going to go missing.<br /><br />5. Didn't tell them that Cochise was coming, because someone might be listening? Did Tom not think that he alone was a sufficiently high-value target, or that even the plane itself might be?<br /><br />6. Fleeing from airplanes? In slower, unarmed airplanes?<br /><br />Why? What did they expect to happen? A fleet of bicycles would have made for better bug-out vehicles than passenger airplanes.Aldenatanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32203569.post-67825808105872177922013-08-07T21:32:44.166-07:002013-08-07T21:32:44.166-07:00@Field Marshall Rommel:
1. "They came on in ...@Field Marshall Rommel:<br /><br />1. "They came on in the same old way and we defeated them in the same old way." Duke of Wellington explaining the success of his new tactic, the reverse slope defense.<br /><br />Simply put , the Espheni have spent centuries fighting wars in a very specific way and are not used to rapidly altering their strategies. They're a lot like John Ringo's Posleen, they don't like change and even the "smart" ones will only adapt when they absolutely have to.<br /><br />2. They absolutely have to. After destroying our military and most of our technology, they expected it to be as easy to take our children away from us as it is for me to take a chicken's eggs away from it. The idea of guerrilla warfare and dispersed resistance is new to them.<br /><br />Kind of like your own Wehrmacht in the Balkans. They spent all of 1940 clobbering broken, nihilistic Dutchmen and Frenchmen who lived in nice, flat, peaceful countries and were completely unprepared to deal with a bunch of crazy mountain men who were heavily-armed, used to fighting from all the time spent killing each other and still enjoyed doing it.<br /><br />3. It wasn't a code, it was an authentication. She was proving that she was indeed Lt Fisher, but both of them were speaking in the open. Neither seemed to be worried about their communications being intercepted or triangulated because…<br /><br />…actually, that's a good point. Disregard my comment.<br /><br />4. They didn't think the plane couldn't be tracked, just that it wouldn't be. Eshpeni have shown little concern for things that occur outside the area immediately surrounding their towers, so they must have figured that the plane would be ignored.<br /><br />It's a stupid assumption, of course. Putting important people on an airplane while aliens still control the gravity well is idiotic.<br /><br />5. I found the speech very touching, even if I wouldn't trust it as far as I could throw it.<br /><br />The Poles allied with the Soviets against y'all and what did they get out of it? Siberian vacations. The Cherokee allied with the United States to drive the Creek out of Georgia, and not much later there weren't many Cherokee left in Georgia neither.<br /><br />Intent matters quite a bit: if you see any reason why your allies might benefit from not having you around after the war, or if they seem duplicitous in their long-term plans for you: you put less of a focus on future reconstruction efforts and more of it into getting ready for round two.<br /><br />6. Arthur C Clarke called… he wants his weirdness back.<br /><br />7. Waiting to see where they're going with it. I'll probably end up agreeing with you, but I'd like to hold out hope that they'll surprise me.<br /><br />8. Yup.Aldenatanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32203569.post-76642226519172043642013-08-07T20:47:44.415-07:002013-08-07T20:47:44.415-07:00@Trainwreck
Worst episode of the season, if not t...@Trainwreck<br /><br />Worst episode of the season, if not the series.<br /><br />Let's get the most inexcusable part out of the way first: Anne's trip to Crazytown.<br /><br />Hitting people in the head with wrenches can kill them, you realize that, right? Mixing sedatives with alcohol ain't exactly healthy either, and I don't know of anything in real life that works anywhere near that fast, short of Ketamine. Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic; it more or less shuts off the same parts of the brain as PCP.<br /><br />Bloodgood mentioned this in Second Watch, it went along the typical lines of "blah blah blah acting on impulse blah blah blah motherly instinct blah blah blah do anything to protect child."<br /><br />Ok, fair enough. So the course of events go as such:<br /><br />1. She asks Dr Kadar to test the DNA of her child, and he confirms what she already suspected.<br /><br />2. He suggests letting the rest of the medical staff know so that they can presumably work to save the human part her child. Given how squeamish they were about shooting fully-mutated, heavily-armed harnessed children, I'm pretty sure infanticide is out of the question.<br /><br />3. She clocks him in the face, knocking him unconscious in one blow. Nice swing, Annie.<br /><br />4. May or may not have soundness of mind to tie and gag him. Concussion means depressed respiratory function; hope he doesn't suffocate with that sock in his mouth.<br /><br />5. Head up to the medical ward to steal some date-rape drugs for use on Lourdes. Head home. Put her out of commission. Then grab the baby plus all the provisions the average human can comfortably carry (all 72 hours worth, at best), diaper bag, some more booze (sober babies are noisy)...<br /><br />...a gun too, maybe? Steal a car or wagon on the way out? A stroller at least? No? Well, ok.<br /><br />7. Exfiltrate the city by passing through an outer defense of trigger-happy soldiers who know about the city's spy problem and are presumably on the lookout for strange comings and goings. Try not to step on any landmines.<br /><br />In all fairness, this doesn't seem like a tall order; Hal's been literally doing it in his sleep.<br /><br />If Kadar hasn't woken up by now, he'll never be quite the same when and if he does.<br /><br />8. Pass through the ring of besieging skitters who themselves will probably be on some sort of lookout for human weirdness and may well know that Alexis is heading their way.<br /><br />9. Head for the Appalachians. Live off the land and the occasional roasted skitter until she loots enough libraries and learns enough about bioengineering to perform gene replacement therapy on her child using the contents of an upcountry South Carolina meth lab. (That would actually be pretty cool. You should write an alternate episode where that happens.)<br /><br />Steps 1 through 4 are understandable. I mean we all have our monkey brains working in the background and they can hijack even the best of us. Somewhere between 5 and 7, however, she probably should have realized that her frying-pan-to-fire strategy was… in need of reconsideration. Anyone who can get that far in their actions is acting on intellect, not impulse.<br /><br />Y'all should probably know this; whatever flaws your writers have, they seem to have a pretty good grasp on human psychology. <b>I can think of one way for y'all to redeem this disaster; have it made known in Season 4 that Anne was under some outside control.</b><br /><br />Maybe it was Karen. Or Alexis. Or someone else. Doesn't matter, point is that no rational (or irrational) person should have acted like that.Aldenatanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32203569.post-13214587733208938442013-07-16T16:59:34.437-07:002013-07-16T16:59:34.437-07:00I want to reiterate my love for Denny! I have NOTH...I want to reiterate my love for Denny! I have NOTHING bad to say about this show, unlike some people, other than the fact that I want to see more of Ben and Denny's perfect friendship! So, Mr. Beeman, please send off my adorable for Denny to the powers that be! Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32203569.post-20975578424675045042013-07-03T17:20:21.860-07:002013-07-03T17:20:21.860-07:00I've been impressed with the balance the Falli...I've been impressed with the balance the Falling Skies production team has used between both practical and cg effects. Mr. Jones really did an exceptional performance with his dialog. In addition, the make up, mask, and suit all look great. For any cg effects that were there, I never noticed them because I was involved in the characters story.<br /><br />Not many people can actually climb into a small plane wearing a full body suit and mask... Laurenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06513454638877799938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32203569.post-88292060627382047632013-06-26T21:45:53.000-07:002013-06-26T21:45:53.000-07:00Herr Beeman,
I find it hard to believe that any...Herr Beeman, <br /><br /><br />I find it hard to believe that any one could take this last episode serious? I’ve stated already a few of my complaints with the general attention to simple details. However, I would now like to elucidate further concerns I have this with series at present. So, forgive my presumptions—but honestly, where did the writer(s) Heater Regnir (I only put an s on writers because I know it didn’t get out writing room without round table discussion and the input from both yourself and Remi Aubuchon) of this episode come up with the mindless drivel that Tom Mason (Noah Wyle) spews forth about the ineffective nature of “Asymmetrical Warfare” and “Unconventional Tactics”? I’m sorry to have to take you to task, but in reality Cochise’s entire tactical black bag of tricks is nothing more then to use the class partisan based “ Unconventional Warfare Tactics” also known as “Guerrilla Warfare”. (Perhaps, for next season the writers should all read these books: “On War” Carl Von Clauswitz, “Infantry Attacks” Erwin Rommel, “The Art of War” Sun Tzu, “The War Of The Flea” Robert Taber , and just for good measure the following US Army Field Manuals: “Guerrilla Warfare” and “COIN”—it is just a thought!) The problem with this series’ handling of warfare is that you lack the basic understanding of what is you wish to display! In fact you display it so ineptly that I must ask have none of the writers watched a single hour of “News” (the same News that is now 24 hours a day) in the last 12 years??? Did they some how miss the parallels between “Fallujah in 2004” or “Taliban Insurgency 2003-2005”? Where these just inconvenient examples of the exact type of warfare you wish to portray on the small screen? (I realize fully that in making the heroes insurgent fighters it does sort of seem like our heroes are far more like “Taliban Fanatics” then “Loyal Patriots of The Revolutionary War” that Americans wish to always portray themselves as???)<br /><br />However, to have just nonsensical dialogue like Tom’s in this episode or Cochise’s in the first episode of this season about how “constant small skirmishes are what beguile … “ the Espheni is nothing more then an insult to any member of the audience that might actually be smart enough to see that this illusory veil you the producers and writers have attempted to create is not even worthy of being called a smoke and mirror act. It is at best the work of a second rate hack. In fact the great Alien wisdom touted in this story so far could be found in any bookstore in America! That is if one is willing to exercise his or her ability to indulge oneself in that archaic art of “auto didacticism” and seek the esoteric knowledge of the classical wisdom that has become so passé in our modern world! Far be it from me to conclude that in reality these mental gymnastics of the most meager and ill attempted feats of deception work only because the average American cultural is in some systemic cationic state within the very viewers themselves! Perhaps, I’m asking too much, but is it so hard to temper one’s unenlightened imagination with perhaps the greatest dramatic tool of all “REALISM”! While I understand that is it both intoxicating and exhilarating to venture into the manic world of [Paul] Fryerabend’s philosophy where all is up for grabs and that the only real logic that exists is pure imagination! However, this turns out to be not the case it can only lead to what can be described as writing in the form of ever more increasing twists for no other reason then to attempt to shock the audience into disbelief. I postulate that a far more interesting [and I dare say daring approach] perspective is that of pure realism.Erwin Rommelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32203569.post-3305917484209137192013-06-25T04:46:20.088-07:002013-06-25T04:46:20.088-07:00Well,I for one thought this was a great episode! W...Well,I for one thought this was a great episode! While I do see the merit to some of the points listed in the above comment, I still found the episode highly entertaining! <br /><br />Cochise speech was great, very impassioned and eloquent. Just the thin to speak to the heart of humanity.<br /><br />Ben's introspection was also interesting to watch, though it seemed obvious which path he would choose from the outset. <br /><br />As always, I love watching any scenes with Pope, but most especially when he interacts directly with Tom. I am looking forward to next weeks conclusion for just that reason! <br /><br />You guys are doing some really great work, keep it up! Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10780390547410958143noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32203569.post-32504342858247878762013-06-24T07:28:32.271-07:002013-06-24T07:28:32.271-07:00I have to say that this episode was amusing. Not b...I have to say that this episode was amusing. Not because it was well written or even thought out-- because it clearly lacked any understanding of a coherent long term plan. It is like the writers room is throwing out ideas in a shotgun pattern hoping they will some how stick! They are not. <br /><br />1) Espheni keep on attacking in the same manner--why? <br /><br />2) If the Espheni could alter genetically the inhabitants of planets-- why even use a military invasion just create away to deliver the new genetic code??? You could literally use one generation to breed the future generations that would conquer them. Like Neanderthal v. Anatomically Modern Humans. <br /><br />3) Why does the Lt.Fisher send her message in code only to have the President send his response in the "open"??? <br /><br />4) Why is it a mystery that a Beechcraft B-18 (incidentally production ran from 1937-1970 not 1935 [that would be Lockheed Electra])that took the President Tom, Gen. Bressler, Pope and Cochise to "Keystone" could not be tracked??? We can do it with Radar! Why would you think the Espheni couldn't do the same with some other advanced system??? <br /><br />5) Cochise speech-- who cares why he's fighting? The only important thing is that he has WEAPONS that can destroy the enemy... As long at the Volm will share technology they could be fighting over which side of the Egg to crack is far the Humans could be concerned. The key is will the Volm give the humans the manufacturing and technology base to develop advanced weapons to fight the Espheni??? <br /><br />6)Evil Hal--- Well I guess when you call a character Hal you ultimately have to fall into the trap of making him go crazy-- paging Hal 9000-- Paging Hal 9000... <br /><br />7) Evil Alien Baby-- really who thought was a good idea? Was it the writing team Weddle and Thompson? If so you should remember how unimpressive the last time they did the mystery hybrid alien baby thing with the magical blood was on Ronald D. Moore's BSG! <br /><br />8) Fire the writer of this episode. It was a mess and bored the hell out of me. Erwin Rommelnoreply@blogger.com