You can stop now.

Usually when you have a black man or a woman president, a meteor is about to hit the Statue of Liberty.

Jon Stewart, 80th Academy Awards

As I type this, Barack Obama's inauguration is well under way in Washington, and it is impossible to ignore the historic nature of this event. And I mean literally impossible, in that if I had a dollar for every time someone has used the defining phrase "historic" to describe the situation, I'd be heading off to Fiji this afternoon instead of a job interview.

However, this event should have some kind of impact (no pun relating to the introductory quote intended) on the science fiction community. Sorry, it will now be necessary to create a different cliché to indicate a future or near future setting. Personally, I think that having a native American president would have a nice feel of irony to it, let's use that for our fallback position for now. However, I'm a fair minded man: I think that we can continue to cast Morgan Freeman as God.

- Sid

I know, "willful suspension of disbelief."

So, Sunday evening, back from the gym, perched on the couch with some dinner, fighting off Nigel the Cat's attempts to participate in said dinner and watching Stargate: Atlantis. In this evening's rerun, Colonel Sheppard, McKay, and the usual suspects go through the gate in order to ascertain the status of an exploratory team that's missed their contact deadline. Apparently the planet is uninhabited but McKay had gotten some unusual energy readings or some similar piece of plot advancement.

So, pop - or maybe whoosh - through the gate they go:


Gosh, guys, that's quite a clear piece of ground for an uninhabited planet, but maybe that's from the Gate bubble or whatever they call it. Oh well, moving on - the team heads off in search of their missing predecessors:

Hmmm....I grew up in deer country, and I have to say that's a pretty impressive game trail you have there, people.

And then they find some corpses, far too old to be the missing team, but obviously victims of foul play, right there beside that big flat stump.

I'm sorry, but forget the bodies, you need to find out what in hell is running around this planet that leaves a fifteen foot wide trail and can bite off a tree with a four-foot diameter leaving a completely flat stump!!!!

Okay, I realize full well that in actual terms, they bundled the crew onto a couple of trucks, drove over to Stanley Park, and set up some cameras, probably happier than hell that it wasn't raining. But really, what were they thinking? Their audience is made up of science fiction fans, the most detail-oriented nitpickers on the planet - could they not have driven someplace up the Fraser Valley and found a piece of ground that didn't look quite so lived in?

- Sid

P.S. What's really unbelievable about this is that there's a web site that has 992 screen grabs from this episode. In fact, it looks like they have about a thousand screen grabs per episode, or 20,000 images per season. Wow - see above re: detail oriented fans.

It's Matt Smith, it's Matt Smith!!!!

Today the BBC announced that 26-year-old Matt Smith would be replacing David Tennant as the Doctor on Doctor Who in 2010. My reaction, and I suspect the reaction of almost everyone, seems fitting.

Who?

- Sid