Eoghann Irving's Blog, page 11

The Twilight Zone Will Return as an ‘Interactive’ TV Series

CBS has announced plans to revive the iconic anthology series The Twilight Zone, but it won’t be an ordinary TV show. Instead it’s a melding of TV and video games, helmed by gaming industry legend Ken Levine (the driving force behind Bioshock).

Source: The Twilight Zone Will Return as an 'Interactive' TV Series

I'm not sure what to make of this. The Twilight Zone has a special place in  tv history but anthology series have struggled in the modern market (though season long anthologies seem popular now).

The interactive element is interesting though.  Is "choose your own" something you want from your tv?

 

 

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The Twilight Zone Will Return as an 'Interactive' TV Series

CBS has announced plans to revive the iconic anthology series The Twilight Zone, but it won’t be an ordinary TV show. Instead it’s a melding of TV and video games, helmed by gaming industry legend Ken Levine (the driving force behind Bioshock).

Source: The Twilight Zone Will Return as an 'Interactive' TV Series

I'm not sure what to make of this. The Twilight Zone has a special place in  tv history but anthology series have struggled in the modern market (though season long anthologies seem popular now).

The interactive element is interesting though.  Is "choose your own" something you want from your tv?

 

 

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Icy Pond

I'm looking back through my photo archives to see what I haven't posted. This one comes from a couple of months back when we had that ridiculous amount of snow. The photo was taken about 5 days after the snowfall itself and most of what you are seeing is actually a pond covered in ice, covered in snow.

Snow is always challenging to shoot but my phone did a pretty good job here.

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Musing on Medium's Place in my Workflow

So piece by piece I am fitting together a blog centered workflow the encompasses not just full length blog posts but also shorter micro-posts that are closer to what I would normally write on Twitter or G+.

As I combine these elements I have to figure out what posts belong where. Obviously long posts belong on Medium, that's what it was built for. What about these short snippets though?

Thoughts anyone.

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Neil Gaiman Is Writing a Six-Part Good Omens Miniseries

Neil Gaiman Is Writing a Six-Part Good Omens Miniseries by Katharine Trendacosta(io9)

Neil Gaiman'€™s latest project was recently announced along with two other brand new Pratchett-based adaptations. When it rains, it pours.

I'm not as big a fan of Terry Pratchett as some but I did love his work with Neil Gaiman so I like the sound of this.

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Silos, Webmentions and the Challenge of Owning Your Own Content

For pretty much as long as there have been social networks I have struggled with how to maintain my own content while simultaneously going where the audience is. Expecting people to come to you is a foolish endeavor.

It's not that what I post is inherently valuable, it's that it is mine and I would like to control it. So my default has been to post to my blog and then post versions to assorted networks. But unless you're some sort of full time social media expert, that's far too time consuming to be practical. Yes, in an ideal world each network gets its own hand crafted post, but really... I don't have time for that.

So the fallback has been to use various hacks to push the content to Twitter or Facebook etc. But those are hacks and open to frequent failure. And it still left the problem of responses, there was no good way to aggregate responses from all these different places G+, Instagram, Flickr, Tumblr... and on it goes.

For a while I just gave up on the blog comments completely and figured I'd see what I'd see, now, with Webmentions I'm trying a different tack which is to consolidate everything back to my blog again.

Social Networks Matter

I'm not a social person, I don't actually like people, and mostly I write for my own satisfaction just to map out what I am thinking. I don't then go looking for friends on social networks. I do, however, go looking for ideas, for thoughts, concepts, information.

You would not sit in your house and expect the people to continually come by just to tell you things, similarly it's unreasonable to post only to your blog and expect the entire world to make a special visit. Content needs to be shareable and accessible. Where the reader is shouldn't matter.

Social networks do that, the problem is they then contain the responses in a silo.

Owning Your Content Matters

It's not about telling people where they have to read you, it's about controlling what you get to say. If you post on Facebook or Twitter or Medium or anywhere else you are at the mercy of their terms and conditions. They can block you. They can delete your post or your whole profile. That is their right, but I don't want to be limited like that.

They can also get shut down and then whatever you put on their, your photos, your reviews your random thoughts about toast, are locked away in their silo forever.

Publish Once, Syndicate Everywhere, Aggregate Responses

It's a great concept and it, just about, works, but it's clunky and spending the weekend implementing it shows just how far away from prime time it is.

The basic idea behind Webmentions is that you have a location on the web (a domain) which is designated as you, as the origin of your content. When you post to other sites, you simply include a link back to the original post and with a little bit of magic (it may not actually be magic) all the likes, favorites, replies and re-posts you receive can be added as comments to the right page on your blog.

In many ways it is the perfect solution, or it will be, maybe.

The problem is not the concept, it's federated, decentralized and flexible, the problem is execution.

Indie Web Camp is a collection of technically minded people who believe quite strongly in owning your own content. Beyond that, they don't really agree on very much. They do have a number of broad formats and protocols but there are numerous implementations at various stages of half-baked completion. They know this and acknowledge it on their website.

There's no company behind them so no centralized direction. What's good about that is you get a million different ideas shooting out in all directions. What's bad is you get a million different ideas shooting out in all directions.

Some projects are well supported, others are just one guy. Some are frequently updated and some haven't been touched in three years. It's quite hard, until you go digging to figure out which is which.

And here we get to the heart of why Indie Web won't catch on in its current form. It's just too difficult. The documentation is sparse or incomplete, the implementations are often obscure and a lot of the time unless you find someone to talk to you'll never figure out what you need to do.

I'm a person of allegedly above average intelligence with a documented above average education who has specialized in IT related things for the better part of 40 years and yet it took me two days of head scratching to fully implement Webmentions the way I wanted in WordPress. And that was using their bundled plugin! There's certainly no way I could expect anyone else in my family to use it.

This Needs to Work

I'm not going to go into detail about my specific implementation yet, not least because I'm not sure I fully understand it, but also because I'm still tweaking how I do things.

The thing is, this needs to work. We need to own our own content. We don't want to go back to the days when a handful of newspaper owners controlled everything and that's where we're headed we just have the Social Network silos to rely on.

Community projects have broken through to the mainstream before, but it rarely happens without some level of corporate support and right now it's not in Google or Facebook or Yahoo's interest to back something like this.

Spring Morning

Spring in the Washington DC area is a season of wild fluctuations. One day it's 25 degrees and freezing cold, the next day it's 70 and beautiful. In fact it's quite capable of covering 30 degrees within 12 hours. It's a mystery to me how the flowers know what to do. On this occasion though it was a beautiful and incredibly bright spring morning.

Daredevil Season 2

The second season of Marvel's Daredevil is not as strong as the first, but calling it a sophomore slump would not only be cliched, but overstating things. Much of what made the first season of the show enjoyable remains but there are some pacing and focus issues that mark things down a notch.

The first four episodes of the season form what I have internally referred to as the first Punisher arc. While what happens here is built on later they do feel like a complete story that could have been told on its own. It's bleak and slow moving (particularly in the first episode) but narratively coherent.

The Punisher makes a good opponent for both Daredevil and Matt Murdock because his values are so similar in some ways and so much more extreme in others. I do feel that particular story could have been told in three episodes rather than four though.

And the, rather abruptly, we are introduced to Elektra who is certainly a dynamic character and provides some much needed exuberance in a show that has been to this point very dour. But it is notable when the previous season told a single cohesive story that this feels more like something from the episodic playbook of a cable drama.

From here forward the Elektra and Punisher storylines run in parallel but almost entirely separately. There are brief overlaps, but neither one really depends on the other. It's an odd choice that highlights the lack of central villain in this season. Of course it was going to be next to impossible to fill the void created by the Kingpin (and I do love the hint that we will see him back if there is a third season) but the lack of a singular villain leaves the show feeling directionless at times.

In effect what we have is Elektra and Stick in one storyline (the Hand) while Karen and Foggy exist in the other storyline (Punisher) with Matt Murdock sort of in both, but mostly in the former storyline. Seeing how things played out it makes more sense why they pushed the Karen/Matt romance in the early episodes of the season, but that still felt rushed.

And forcing the breakup of both the Matt/Foggy friendship (something I have a hard time buying into) and the legal partnership the show essentially cuts both Karen and Foggy off from the superhero element of the show entirely. They do both get some really strong scenes and progress as characters, I just find it and odd move.

So in the end this season feels a bit like the middle book in a trilogy. All the characters move around and get into place for things to happen, but nothing of real significance actually plays out. Foggy's new job offer could play nicely off some stuff from the comics; Karen becoming a reporter is rather out of left field but interesting; Elektra's current status is fascinating and of course we do have the Kingpin in the background looking for revenge. All stuff with great potential, but none of it happened this season.

I haven't mentioned the actors and I should do because the performances are solid to great. The central trio of Charlie Cox (Matt), Deborah Ann Woll (Karen Page) and Elden Henson (Foggy) work well with each other. Cox probably has the hardest role as in many ways Matt is the least sympathetic of all the characters. Although I did get a bit tired of Foggy's constant outrage. Deborah Ann Woll gives her character a lot of layers and I love her mannerisms they sell a script that sometimes plays fast and loose with reality.

Newcomers to the show Jon Bernthal and Elodie Yung are also great as Frank Castle and Elektra. Both have the physicality required for their roles and in the case of Bernthal he completely sold me on this Punisher a man who has bought into his own insanity completely.

So maybe the show didn't hit five stars this year but it remains one of the most enjoyable shows on tv.

Review: The Expanse S01E05 - Back to the Butcher

If the latest episode of The Expanse doesn't have the level of tension that the previous one did, that does at least give the show a chance to do yet more world building and let its characters breathe a little. One of the biggest problems with this show for people who aren't familiar with the books is the amount of characters and locations and story that are being crammed into a mere 10 episode season. At the very least that can make it hard to keep everything straight.

Up to now each episode has been packed with events and characters and stuff.  This week though if you just wrote down what happened it would be a pretty short list, and that's probably a good thing. In many ways the biggest event, though it might not seem like it, is the renaming of the Tachi as the Rosenante. Not only will that ship become a core element of the show (giving perhaps some needed stability to the scenery) but it gave us a chance to see the crew interact in a situation that wasn't life threatening for once, which in turn gave us some nice character moments and the solidifying of Holden's position as leader of the group.

That's not the only character elements at work in this episode though. If there was any doubt left in people's minds that Detective Miller was getting a little obsessed with Julie Mau then I think that has been settled. His priorities a clearly deeply skewed at this point and while there's no doubt he's onto "something" his approach is far from healthy. And then there is Fred Johnson, the Butcher of Anderson Station. Up to now he's played a very small role in the show but this episode gives him some real depth in terms of what he was and what he is now.

Another thing I love about this show is the amount of small world building that goes on. Like the robotic animals for example. Why would someone keep a robotic mouse? Because you can't waste resources on a real one when you're on a space station, but humans have evolved to feel better around living creatures and greenery.

When watching this show it's important to understand that even though we are now half way through season 1, we're really only about a third of the way through the first book. So we're still in the building phase. Setting up situations and characters that will play out later on. It's extremely brave of SyFy to take such a long view on a show (they've already renewed it for a second season) because there's a risk that people simply won't have the attention span for this all to pay off.

Review: The Shannara Chronicles S01E01 through S01E04

What do you get when you cross epic-fantasy heavily inspired by Tolkien with a post apocalyptic future and MTV? Apparently the answer is The Shannara Chronicles a series that is, based on the first four episodes, resolutely... okay. I mean it's just exactly what you would expect... I guess? It's not like it's bad... you know?

By this point my ambivalence should be shining through and there are a few reasons for that. One is of course the fact that someone in their forties isn't in the prime demographic for MTV dramas. Another is that while I acknowledge their flaws I do have a soft spot for the first three Shannara books (and particularly Elfstones which this series is mostly based on). The biggest problem though is that the show itself seems caught in a love triangle of its own. Pulled inexorably in two different directions. Is it an epic fantasy with the fate of the world in the balance, or is it in fact a story of teen angst, political intrigue and romance?

Wow, that's Pretty

The Shannara Chronicles is undeniably gorgeous to look at as the photos here show.  It was filmed on location in New Zealand giving it epic vistas for the cameras to swoop over and the ability to echo some of The Lord of the Rings grandeur.

To their credit though the shows producers have not settled for a simple Rings copy which, given the source material, is actually quite impressive. The Sword of Shannara is "inspired" by The Lord of the Rings in much the way that The Force Awakens is inspired by Star Wars and while The Elfstones of Shannara was considerably more original its origins remain unmistakable. In this case however, the producers have done their best to play up the differences.

The world of Shannara was always intended to be set centuries after an apocalypse on present day earth and there are multiple references to it in the books, but for the majority of the early stories it set far in the background and the illustrations always emphasized that traditional fantasy look and feel. Not so here where the future earth elements are brought to the fore with wrecked helicopters, ruined cars and the odd biker jacket on display. In truth this is a very good thing, although it does make me wonder how long after the apocalypse this is supposed to be and how the races managed to diverge (except for the elves, they were always there) so quickly.

All of this looks absolutely stunning as do the beautiful young people who populate the cast. There are very few old people in the world of Shannara apparently, even amongst the elves. Unless you are John Rhys-Davies, James Remar or Manu Bennett (who probably just gets away with it by being excessively manly) and you are old, you're going to die in this show. Not that being young and pretty guarantees you'll survive, but it does seem to help.

Not that the primarily young cast are bad. They are generally adequate to good in their roles. They just make me feel old and ugly. Which is okay, because I am, but it's nice to live in denial.

Aren't You a Little Small to be an Epic?

If the sweeping vistas and world ending scenario  clearly point us towards the epic portion of the fantasy library, unfortunately the execution rather undercuts this. As far as I can tell  Allanon and Wil Ohmsford are able to criss-cross the Four Lands in a matter of minutes. Okay you don't have to show quite as much walking as say The Fellowship of the Ring does but would it have killed them to give us a few minutes of people on horseback? Because if I wasn't familiar with the book I would be left with the impression that all the locations we've visited in these four episdoes are just down the street from each other.

And it doesn't help that four episodes in they've barely introduced anyone but the elves plus one band of humans. Now granted this particular story does focus on them heavily and we did get to see a Troll. But the Gnomes have only gotten a few mentions while dwarves haven't put in an appearance at all.

When you combine that with what feels like a very small cast of characters (basically the 5 regulars plus 8 recurring many of whom barely speak) it just doesn't feel that epic. This may be a budget limitation. I imagine all the special effects etc. were quite expensive and perhaps there's just not much left for actors.

Apocalyptic Fantasy Future or Contemporary Teen Drama?

It's really the language that lets Shannara down more than anything else. Far too often our protagonists either slip into contemporary diction our present us with attitudes that are so now it's like a slap in the face. Why do we need dialogue telling us the girls are as good as boys when we are not in contemporary society and could just be shown it as a fact? Why do we get eye-rolling snark and cynicism that feels like something I'd see in The Vampire Diaries and sits at odds with what is happening around them? Combine that with an increased focus on the primary characters sex lives and it's clear that MTV is appealing to what it sees as its core audience. Fair enough, you can't really argue with demographics.

But every time they do it I am pulled out of this future fantasy world and back to the present. That's exactly what shouldn't happen.

To make matters worse while the show seems to be following the broad sweep of the book the changes it makes are consistently for the worse because it seems that it has an unerring knack for finding the most cliched direction and charging towards it. And I say that knowing that the book itself is pretty cliched at times.

Why is the Dagda Mor now a fallen druid? Because he'll be more relatable. Why is the love triangle between Amberle, Wil and Eretria spelled out so early? So the viewers can pick their sides. Why does Wil give a stirring speech defending Amberle? Because all shows must have their hero giving a stirring speech. Why does Arion Elessedil doubt the existence of magic when he is quite literally given examples of it all around him? Because you have to have that doubting character. If there's a pool of cliche-tropewater nearby this show is going to jump in it.

Watch, DVR or Skip?

All of which probably makes it sound like I hate it. But I really don't. It's fine for what it is, 50 minutes of pretty entertainment. This is not Game of Thrones or The Expanse and I don't think it really has any pretensions to be. It's a tv show following a much more traditional model. Compare it to something like The Flash perhaps.

If you have limited tv viewing time or a particular fondness for the books I'd probably say skip it, but if you can tolerate some teen angst and enjoy some bubblegum tv, it's an entertaining way to pass the hour. DVR it and watch when you have some free time.

It will at least be very pretty to look at.