Da Dominion: Home of DOMINIONCAST!

I’m not of the generation that got enamored with Harry Potter - nor do I have a vagina - so I’m not a fan of Rowling’s series. Coming of age “drama” with a touch a fantasy whimsy, cliche dread and teen angst in the more recent ones aren’t a big attractant to a player of D&D and reader of true fictional classics like Dune, Lord of the Rings and the Jedi Academy series by Kevin J Anderson.

*rimshot for the Star Wars fans*

This said, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (HBP) wasn’t a hairy plopper.

A new show on TV attempts to cast Resurrection on the fantasy genre for TV - with the ten thousand gold pieces spent towards special effects.

NBC’s Merlin, the most queerly promoted show since … Queer as Folk, may look like the story of a junior wizard ready to swing staff and part robes to service his handsome young king, but it is actually much less edgey than that. It’s several successful features woven into one to try to grab the teen/young adult audience.

The New Years brings good news: Fantasy Action has returned to TV!

Stop! I didn’t mean the Spice Channel - or other spank channels for that matter. I mean by Fantasy that genre of fiction that infuses it’s plot, theme or setting with the supernatural unfettered by advanced technology (Sci-Fi) or the macabre (read “muh-COBB-bruh” as in Horror). Lord of the Rings type shit, for the mundane minded.

The program is actually the aforementioned Legend of the Seeker, which was surveyed for excellence in its premiere early November. Seven episodes into its first season, it has bound over several pitfalls of past TV sword and sorcery predecessors to grasp the Obsidian Ring of Dominion Approval. Why not brass ring? It’s clichéd. Obsidian is hard, black, smooth and sharp - like our humor. Brass is more expensive than the brittle volcanic glass, we can’t afford it - but you can! Check our store for the Obsidian Chakram of Approval ™ coming soon! WARNING: chakram is too sharp to be held with human hands. Side effects include loss of fingers, acute pain in the fingerless hand and bleeding from the hands.

Legend of the Seeker, from the producers of Hercules and Xena, based on the Sword of Truth novel series by Terry Goodkind, is a worthy representative of both sets of artist. The first temptation it refused was camera winking. There were a lot of times in Herc and Xena when the comic relief in effect said, “this is just fun fantasy myth.” A lonely Cyclops is angry cause he hasn’t had a date in centuries. I can relate to that shit! Har har hee.

Seeker has avoided a lot of this disbelief strain by not doing monster o’ the week. The central conflict is rightfully focused on Richard Cypher being the first True Seeker in hundreds of years. One day he’s chopping wood shirtless, as a young farmer’s son is expected to do when you’re trying to rope a decent number of female viewers - by the way, writing a blog shirtless doesn’t have the same effect - now he’s the savior of the world with everybody expecting big things of him. His Obi-Wan, the wizard Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander (alliterative name: + 50 pts), is always harping on how he has to become this mythical revolutionary heroic warrior leader in a way that imparts gravity of destiny more concretely than “here’s a light saber, let’s go to Alderaan”. They must overthrow the evilly named Darken Rahl, tyrant of the West, East, Mid, left, and corner adjacent lands of New Zealand - or whatever world the Big Kiwi is meant to model.

On the action front, they’ve kept with the Pose Fu to great effect. Another annoying Fantasy trope they’ve dodged is the cartoon violence. There’s no breaking vase over bad guy’s head or disarming to take them out of the fight. They successfully walk the safe side of the gore line, but the Sword of Truth does cleave many a baddy. Zeddicus burns evil men, not CG monsters, to death with his spells. Specifically, two dagger wielding Kahlan the Confessor whirls like dervish with cuts to the joints, neck and face that leave no doubt whether or not minion #12 survives - unless she‘s cutting extra breathing hole, nah. With the camera safely behind the back of her foes the gore guard is preserved without being lame.

Destiny ain’t easy. They’ve covered Richard having a shot at a normal life in the episode Identity and faced with the temptation of magic abuse in Elixir. Cypher has no time for the fancies of a young lad, and is tragically forced to adventure with Kahlan - played by the pretty Bridget Regan - another specially gifted person with the power to know the hearts of men, steal their wills, wear low cut corsets and bathe in rivers when the Seeker shouldn’t be distracted. Even sadder, she’s not even his sister! Their attraction has developed predictably, but besides inherent problems of sheathing your sword in your ally’s scabbard - her powers make her dangerously untouchable. So it’s not just another “when is Xena gonna get down and lez-out all up in Gabriel” cock tease schtick.

I plan to check out Goodkind’s Sword of Truth once I’m done with a couple of more Dresden Files novels. If the show is this good the books must be even better.

I’ve always been a genre purist. It seems to me that when you mash up two different settings it’s a cop-out for not being able to do one right by itself. If you’re good a making breakfast, but a new lady friend asks you to make her dinner and you make her an egg and cheese loaf. A nice cheese omelet formed into an artery-choking vomit-like brick of greasy yellow. Better hope you’ve got some other charm to fall back on - dexterously dazzling cunnilinguistics.

It can be done well. I’ve spoken on how Buffy didn’t appeal me in the past - kitsch dark occult, NAH - but do love Firefly, Joss Whedon’s Western Sci-Fi mix redemption. Another example is Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novel series - actually I‘ve only finished listening to the debut novel Storm Front but if the writing holds through out the series it‘ll be gravy. Not egg gravy. The story inspired a single season series on Sci-Fi Channel, but in the tragic tradition of Farscape, it too was canceled before its prime. Wasn’t a great showing with its Mulder and Scully love tension between Harry Dresden and his cop contact Murphy, but it did magic a bit differently than normal.

Butcher did a lot upfront to soothe my suspicions. Many setting leave me wondering why magic has to be underground. Why doesn’t science absorb it? Methane is flammable, shit can produce methane, and therefore bat guano could maybe produce the twenty-foot radius fireball of fantasy lore. It would take a lot of bats on a prune diet, but you can work with that as an author. Many don’t because it seems to take a bit of work and talent, which they don‘t have or choose to showcase. Geeks like sexy sexy detail, duh!

Butcher shows why this can’t be in his world. Magic operates by a symbolic science, although it’s used the same way as the forensic sciences on CSI - but far less cheesy. The forces are often fueled by dark energies - not the “dark” as in extra creepy but the kind that requires demonic orgies, hatred and lightning storms to power. If it became mainstream the world would be hell given this cheap form of energy. White Council that enforces laws to protect our civilization although it isn’t a part of it checks the potential for power abuse. There’s a practical reason why it shouldn’t become more popular - although they’re not uber secretive about it. Main protagonist Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden advertises in the Yellow Pages and is on police retainer.

Dresden’s tale is a gritty film noir detective story that simply adds credible magic. He broke as fuck - would you hire a wizard? Instead of paying crackhead informants, he’ll pump a faerie for information - no homo. He lives an old fashion life not from some hokey style but because dealing with magic ruins machinery. Yet, he still packs a revolver since it’s a simple mechanism and guns are fuck’in handy. There laws of magic like those of physics, which are too numerous to exposition dump, but Harry, our hero and first person narrator, has no problem explaining them in simple terms as they come up without sounding like lecture.

I could very well be disappointed later on the series, but so far so magically delicious.

Another five months, another Futurama movie - at this rate we’ll have the much demanded fifth season in four months. Perhaps, Fox will resurrect the show a la Family Guy to the cacophonous cheers of geekdom. This can be great, or merely … nice, depending on the quality delivered.

Bender’s Game’s says what it is on the box: a sci-fi favorite diving into fantasy for a hilarious romp through a D&D-esque world. First they guest star Gary “Lord of Nerds” Gygax in the series, now they pay full homage to his memory by glorifying his life’s work. Double-decker Win cake with a gooey filling of awesome sauce, right? This story however doesn’t really start until half way through the feature.

The first sixty-odd minutes features a main plot about battling the domination of the mega mogul Mom with a B story about Leela’s anger issues and a tertiary bit about Bender exploring his new imagination thorough an old school tabletop fantasy game. Does this sound like the description you’d expect given the box art and advertising blurbs? No? Then you understand the DEEP INNER EAR ITCH ANNOYANCE I was beginning to develop for the movie.

“Movie“: your pardon citizens, this is not a True account of this third installment. It is a pair of long episodes stapled together. Notice “long“, not epic. Epic stories are generally good over a sizable duration, while long shows make the duration acute. Bender’s Game didn’t drag on however. It just feels that way as you wonder whether or not you grabbed the right movie off the DVD shelf - “Is this an old episode I missed?” Half way through the intertwined stories reverse priority and you get what you came for, but I was actually expecting a bit more role playing in-jokes or Futurama trademark satire.

The writers Groening and Cohen (the series creator and lead series crafter) seem unwilling to commit to the fantasy tale promised, and when they do get to it the writing begins to feel rushed - like when you’re tired from work but need to write an article Friday night because technical issues prevented you from posting a new Dominion Cast episode and you’re hoping your regular readers don’t mind, but since they’re mostly silent anyway why the fuck not?

The jokes were decent but not really what you’d expect for having waited for a new Futurama joint. Some gags were set up chuckle worthy to be called back upon funny later, than less the next time, then tired when referred to a third time. Many punch lines were ironically beaten to death. Most were hit and miss but the whole thing is overall funny for the sheer volume of jokes written in. There’s was one scene with “Morcs” that was brilliantly funny for it’s non sequitar feel - the inability to see a gag coming was a hallmark of the Groening brand and now too sparse. It’s almost as though they had to remember the feel of Futurama.

Despite this, the third feature was overall funny and definitely rent worthy, purchase worthy to complete the set - but you could stand to wait for a discounted gift set with all the movies.