Klingons like ketchup

[sergebroom]

Bubonicon was being held here in Albuquerque this weekend. Sue and I didn't attend, but we went to the con's hotel last night. It was the chance to meet Nina, one of Making Light's infrequent contributors, who was in town with her hubby Lee to promote Phoenix's 2009 Westercon. As we went into the hotel's restaurant, we walked past a gathering of various pros, some of whom surreptitiously glanced at me, probably thinking I might be one of them, what with my beard being neatly trimmed and my wearing a nice jacket. Well-kept pilosity and elegance are, as we all know, the trademark of the SF field. But I digress. This was the chance for me to put a face to another ML name, among other things. Lee gave me some DVDs he'd made of his old tapes of Star Cops, a 1980s British SF series set on the Moon and starring David Calder. We had a great time and spent five hours talking about all kinds of things, including why the Skiffy Channel's Flash Gordon isn't must-see TV, unlike, say, Burn Notice. Five hours and the restaurant didn't kick us out? Well, there were plenty of empty tables, presumably due to the overpriced menu and not to our waiter's tendency to bring in your dishes with his fingertips touching your food. The Klingons a few tables away didn't seem to mind too much. I don't know if the ketchup bottle that remained on the table after they left had anything to do with that.

Comments

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Star Cops was wonderful. Unfortunately, it didn't last long.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

It'd been such a long time since I had caught the show on PBS that, until I got those DVDs, I had forgotten how few episodes there had been. Which is indeed a shame. What I do remember is that it did have a sense of closure, with Calder's character about to move to Mars, for a similar law-enforcement job.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

It did, but that's because the series had been cancelled and that was the writers' way of handling it.

There were still a lot of possiblities that could have been extracted from the premise of the show.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize that the move to Mars came from their knowing it had been cancelled. It's nice when people decide to wrap things up instead of coming up with a cliff-hanger that they hope will force the hand of the powers that be.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

British serials have shorter seasons than American ones.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

True. Still, they could have left things hanging the way Blake's Seven did, but they chose not to. I think that the only thing they didn't resolve was the discovery of a non-human artefact. Which is OK.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Blake's Seven had a conclusion. It was ambiguous, which was the point -- I think.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Ambiguous, indeed... Why did Blake shoot Avon, aside from the latter being obnoxious? Why was Avon smiling as he became Blake's target? One of course assumes that he was indeed Blake's target and that this wasn't filmed to only look that way.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

True. A lot of meanings can be, and have been, extracted from that closing beat.

uttered without being prompted

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

By the way, I forgot to tell you that, when we talked about Making Light, Nina said, without being prompted, that she very much enjoyed your poetry, and Abi's.

Re: uttered without being prompted

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Oh. Thank her for me, please.

Re: uttered without being prompted

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Will do.