for x in *.jpg; do convert -geometry 1280x1024 "$x" output/"$x"; done

Having a rich command line available to me lets me do operations on large sets of data in batches, and that's a good thing because that's what computers are good at.

But that's a bit of a tangent. When I am working in linux, I often find myself dealing with big numbers. File sizes. Free memory. Free disk space.

Because I rip all my DVDs to the hard drive, I'm very concerned about free disk space. So I'll run "df":

Filesystem	1K-blocks	Used	Available	Use%	Mounted on
torchwood:/mnt/store0	4326436544	3654545536	671891008	85%	/mnt/store0
saxon:/mnt/store1	2130562560	1073968640	1056593920	51%	/mnt/store1
saxon:/mnt/store2	2145245184	467011584	1678233600	22%	/mnt/store2
badwolf:/mnt/store3	5768575488	4445833216	1322742272	78%	/mnt/store3

But those numbers start to get blurry after a while. Fortunately, df has an option that makes its output "human readable", "-h":

Filesystem	1K-blocks	Used	Available	Use%	Mounted on
torchwood:/mnt/store0	4.1T	3.5T	641G	85%	/mnt/store0
saxon:/mnt/store1	2.0T	1.1T	1008G	51%	/mnt/store1
saxon:/mnt/store2	2.0T	446G	1.6T	22%	/mnt/store2
badwolf:/mnt/store3	5.4T	4.2T	1.3T	78%	/mnt/store3

A lot easier to read. Several of the standard linux commands have a "-h" option -- ls, du, free has a similar "-m" option.

The disadvantage to using the human readable numbers flag is sorting. The standard command for sorting output, sort, has a flag (-n) that will make it handle numbers correctly. But if the numbers have been mangled into ugly human-readable form, this breaks, and suddenly 1G sorts below 10k.

So I wrote this quick-and-dirty little perl script which sorts the lines in a document, properly ordering numbers which have been converted into "human readable" format in the style done by df and du.

In case anyone finds it handy, This is hsort.

Two nights in a row last week, I made a simple casserole by layering left-over baked Macaroni and Cheese with chicken patties, spaghetti sauce, and shredded mozzarella (On night 1, I added meat balls and sun-dried tomatoes. Neither of us cared for the flavor of the tomatoes, though I liked the mouthfeel, and the meat balls didn't really mesh with the other ingredients). On the second night, I decided we needed a green vegetable dish as well, so I made this. Leah loved it, requesting all the leftovers over the next couple of days.

I started on this while giving my son a tour of the kitchen ("This is where food comes from. It's basically like a breast for grownups."), as you only need one hand for the first few steps if you've got the onion diced ahead of time ("If you're ever cooking, son, and you don't know what to make, start by dicing up an onion and sauteeing it in a skillet with some butter. Doesn't really matter what you end up making, some sauteed onions never go amiss.")

• 1 tbsp butter (I used a white truffle butter, but anything's fine)
• 1 onion, diced
• 8 oz sliced green and red bell peppers (Half a bag frozen)
• 2 oz balsamic vinegar (Use the cheap stuff, or mix a teaspoon of the good stuff with red wine vinegar)
• 1 lb spinach, drained (I used half a bag of frozen plus a can because it was what I had on hand)
4 oz artichoke hearts (As per usual, I got a jar of marinated ones from Costco and rinsed them)
• 3 oz goat cheese (This came in 300g packages and I used a bit less than a third)
• 3 tbsp heavy cream
• 1 tbsp hummus (Optional. I happened to have a little bit of leftover hummus that I wanted to use before it went bad)
• 2 oz sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
• 3 tbsp milk

Melt the butter in a large skillet. Cook onions to translucency then add peppers. Deglaze the pan with vinegar. Mix in the spinach and artichokes. In a separate vessel, mix the cream and goat cheese -- your goal here is just to keep the goat cheese from all staying together in a big lump. Add this to the skillet and stir in. Add the hummus and cheese. At this point, between the cheese and the hummus and the solids, you'll be close to having a solid unworkable mess in the skillet. Add milk (and maybe a bit more cream if you like) until you get a thick and creamy but workable consistency. If you taste it now, it will be pretty sour. Cover and cook on low heat for 20-30 minutes. The peppers will release a lot of sweetness that should balance out the flavors. If it's still too sour, stir in some (real) balsamic or madiera.

Special thanks to my mother-in-law, who despite the normal tensions that exist in a mother-in-law/son-in-law relationship, has a pretty solid knack for getting me a Christmas present I really enjoy every year.

This DVD set is pretty top-notch for the price range. The transfer is good but not perfect -- in particular, the title sequence is a little fuzzy, and there is a bit of choppiness in the high-action sequences. The visual quality isn't quite as good as, say, the remastered Doctor Who classic series DVDs, but those run about as much for one six-part serial as this entire season box set. It's still quite good in the less action-heavy sequences, and Soaron cleaned up so nice that I'm half-convinced they just went back in and re-rendered all his models using someone's laptop in their spare time. There are no subtitles or captions, which is unfortunate. Again, easy to forgive under the circumstances, but it's a shame that the hearing-impaired are going to miss out. And, of course, for my own selfish reasons, it would have been helpful to have a transcript I could look at to verify some of the dialog.

The commentary and interviews are great. It's a shame they couldn't get in a few more commentaries, but I can't imagine it's easy to come up with 22 minutes worth of things to say about a show you were involved in a quarter century ago for each of twenty episodes.

Conspicuous by their absence are the direct-to-video animated "Training Videos". I can only guess that the distribution rights for those were different, having been made by Armtic, a now-defunct anime studio. They don't add much to the experience, but it means I'll be toting those three ancient VHS tapes along with me until the day I die. A real collector's edition might have also benefited from something like a commercials gallery, though the quality of the clips they show in the documentary suggests that those may no longer exist in decent quality recordings.

The documentary is a real treat, providing some framing and exposition that goes a long way to help us modern viewers understand the reasons for some of the really bizarre design and storytelling choices, and they talk at length about the direction they would have taken the show in the second season -- a lot of which surprised me, and I'll go over it in length as my review series progresses (Sorry about the hiatus. Sadly, my son doesn't really have the attention span for a half-hour action-adventure yet.). They also debunk and confirm various bits of theoryJMS goes so far as to mention that "people on the internet" had identified rape symbolism in the depiction of digitization. Given what a quick googling of "captain power" and "rape symbolism", I gotta ask: did I just get a shout-out? I've thrown out here.

One of the really weird coincidences I noticed though, was the episode ordering on the DVD: they're in the same order as the order I'd previously announced for my reviews. So that's convenient. The upshot for you folks at home is that I imagine my screen shots will be a lot less grainy and color-corrected.

I will point out this: I wasn't able to get my Power Jet XT-7 to interact with the DVD. They mention the difficulties they had during development getting the toys to work, so my suspicion is that the process of deinterlacing and upconverting that 25-year-old NTSC signal to play on my 1080p screen probably destroyed the carrier signal. I'll see if I can dig out a dumber DVD player and a CRT screen and try again when I get the chance. I also can't rule out that my 25-year-old Power Jet XT-7 just isn't up to it. If you can make it out in the picture, the thing is suffering from a few decades of grime and a couple of missing parts. It does make all the expected shooty-sounds, though it power cycles if you shake it too hard.

In all, this is a great DVD set, well worth the price. I'd probably have paid double for a set with more special features and more work done on the remastering, but at this price, and given the obscurity of the series, it's clearly a labor of love. It's priced like a budget shovelware release, but it makes a really serious effort that you don't usually see with comparable season boxsets for shows of this vintage. Captain Power aficionados have undoubtedly already bought a copy, but if you're just curious: this is worth it. For that matter, if you're a fan of Babylon 5, this is probably worth it just to see an example of JMS developing some of the stylistic elements he would later use.

Next time, I'm going to go into a bit more detail on one of the coolest extras on the DVD. Until then, Power On!

Oh, and one last thing: I'd like to give a small shout-out to CPL of Captain Power Lives!, who has a fantastic collection of images of hard-to-find or unreleased Captain Power toys and links to various other reviews of the DVD set.

• 8 strips of bacon
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 4 celery stalks, diced
• 12 oz baby portabello mushrooms, halved
• Optional: 3 slices of ham, diced
• 8 oz hummus
• 4 tbsp Salsa Con Queso
• 1 tbsp-¼ cup heavy cream or milk
• ½ tsp worcestershire sauce
• 1 tbsp cream cheese

In a large skillet, fry up the bacon until crispy. Take it aside and crumble. Saute onions and celery in bacon grease until tender, then reduce heat to medium-low and add mushrooms. Cook the mushrooms about 5 minutes -- you're not trying to fry the mushrooms all the way through yet. Reduce heat to low. If you want a bit more protein and have some spare ham laying around, toss it in now. Add hummus and queso to the pan and stir. Add cream or milk to thin the sauce to a medium or medium-thick consistency. Add a dash of worcesterchire sauce for flavor and then incorporate the cream cheese. Return the bacon to the pan. If you've got a bit of balsamic vinegar left over, go ahead and drizzle some over the top.

Simmer, covered, over low heat for about 15-20 minutes. Serve over rice.

This makes a very delicately-flavored but savory sauce. I gave some thought to adding some curry powder to kick it up a notch, but it's occurred to us that our son might appreciate it if Leah avoided spicy foods until his stomach gets used to this thing we call "digestion".

Also, this came out a bit oily, so I'd suggest draining off some of the oil before making the roux.

• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into large pieces
• 1/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp paprika (I used a hot Hungarian paprika. The spiciness was a bit of an issue. If you like the spiciness, maybe try using a cajun seasoning instead of paprika)
• 2 medium onions, diced
• 1 tbsp butter (optional. I used a black truffle butter here)
• 1½ cups chicken broth
• ¼ to ½ cup balsamic vinegar (The real deal. You probably already know that most of the stuff sold as "balsamic vinegar" is just red wine vinegar with molasses. I managed to snag a couple of bottles of Cavedoni Botte Piccola at a substantial mark-down, though it was hard to persuade myself to commit so much of it)
• 3 tbsp spaghetti sauce
• 12 oz baby portabella mushrooms, sliced thick
• 1 tbsp heavy cream

Heat the oil in a large skillet over high heat. In a shallow bowl, mix the flour and paprika. Dredge the chicken pieces and then fry in the skillet until golden brown. Do not overcook. Remove chicken and put aside. Fry onions until nearly translucent. Remove onions and put aside. Add remaining flour (Don't add more than 3 tbsp yet) to pan and stir with a wooden or silicone spoon to form a roux. You can hold back some of the flour if it looks like the roux is thick enough. Melt in the butter if the roux becomes too thick. You should end up with a ball about the size of a small egg.

Deglaze the pan with the chicken broth, incorporating the roux. Whisk in a quarter-cup of balsamic vinegar and the spaghetti sauce. Bring to a boil. Add the mushrooms. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, for about half an hour, until the sauce has reduced by about 30-50%. Add the chicken and onions back in about 15 minutes before cooking is finished. Add additional balsamic vinegar to achieve a nice balance of flavors. Finish by stirring in a tablespoon of cream.

• 1 cup frozen mixed vegetables


• 1 bag (16 oz) frozen spinach


• 1/2 lb cream cheese, cut into thin slices


• 1 cup artichoke hearts. (I buy them marinated in oil and vinegar and give them a quick rinse)


• 1 can condensed cream of chicken soup


• 1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup


• 1/2 tsp curry powder


• 1/2 cup heavy cream


• 8 strips of bacon


• 1 oz cheddar cheese, torn into penny-sized chunks


• 2 tbsp cup ricotta cheese


• 1 tsp grated parmesan cheese

Cook the bacon. In a large bowl, combine two cans of soup, curry powder, and all but 1 tsp of the cream. In a casserole dish, layer, in order, vegetables, spinach, cream cheese, artichokes. Pour the soup mixture over this. Tear the bacon into pieces and layer over the soup. Dot the top with cheddar and ricotta. Drizzle remaining cream over and sprinkle with parmesan.

Cook at 350°F for 1 hour.

• 1 14-oz can (Don't judge me) chopped spinach, drained
• 8 oz Cream of Mushroom Soup (Prepare from 1 can condensed, following directions. Use half)
• 2 oz Jarlsberg cheese, minced
• 2 Tbsp heavy cream
• 1/4 of a large onion, diced
• 2 Tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
• Pinch curry (I used Mohini Indian Fusion Vegetable Blend)
• Salt to taste

Spray a small skillet with non-stick cooking spray. Cook onions for a few minutes. Add spinach, soup, stir. Add Jarlsberg. Cook until spinach starts to stick to the pan, stirring often. Add cream, Parmesan. Sprinkle with curry. Stir. Reduce heat to low and cover.

Go pick up the baby and sit in the recliner with him on your chest. Try not to fall asleep as you comfort the baby. Right before nodding off, ask your wife to turn off the burner and stir. Put the baby to bed.

But being a parent also brings along with it a pretty weighty sense of responsibility. And so, in the months leading up to our formal introduction, I put together this non-exhaustive list. I plan to teach you these things as we go and put them all in their proper context, but just in case, what with all the flu shots and teething and kindergarten and vaccinations and driver's licenses and prom and college and working and marriage you're going to be doing, I miss a couple of these, I wanted to have them all written down here in one place so you can go back and read them yourself once you've learned how to read.

Love,
Dad

1. Always cut the other guy some slack. You don't know what kind of a day he's having. Maybe his mom just died. And then you'd be a jerk.
2. It does not matter that the two words are etymologically unrelated. When you say "niggardly", it will hurt the feelings of some people. Now that you know this, if you use it anyway, you're intentionally hurting them. Don't do that, it makes you a jerk.
3. Don't hurt other people when you can avoid it. When you can't avoid it, don't try to convince yourself that they deserved it.
4. Intent isn't magic.
5. If someone demands you have a completely logically consistent moral system with no room for exceptions or mitigating circumstances, he's trying to trick you into committing to a system that can be manipulated to grind down on those who are already at a disadvantage.
6. If you know it's going to hurt someone and you do it anyway, you did too mean to hurt them.
7. Don't demand someone justify their pain to you. You don't get to tell someone that they shouldn't be upset over a racial slur or a misogynistic joke.
8. From the day you were born, you were better off than 90% of all the people who have ever lived, and the overwhelming likelihood is that nothing will ever happen so terrible that you won't live your entire life better off than 70% of them. Think about that if you're ever tempted to say "Sorry, I got problems enough of my own without being expected to help you out."
9. Every time you tell a racist joke, there's a closet racist somewhere nodding in approval and thinking "Yep, there's a guy who tells it like it is." Every time you tell a rape joke, there's a rapist somewhere nodding in approval and thinking "Yep, there's a guy who tells it like it is." Still seem funny?
10. You can't push a rope. F=MA. Manhole covers are round so they don't fall in. Every engineering problem you will ever encounter can be solved by derivation from these three laws. But not efficiently.
11. No matter how dark it gets, remember: In this place and at this time, there is someone right here, right now, who loves you. No matter what.
12. There is at least one person who is worse off than you are right now. Don't make things worse for them
13. It's tempting, but the thing you feel at the misfortune of others isn't real joy. It's an addictive joy-like form of unhappiness. There's a reason the Germans needed to invent a whole new word for it. Feeling it prevents you from feeling true joy.
14. Test everything. Hold on to the good.
15. Don't be a bully.
16. Permission is the bare minimum you must have. What you really want, though, is an invitation.
17. When someone tells you that you're hurting them, don't try to explain why the thing you're doing shouldn't be hurtful. Stop hurting them.
18. After the second round of Eenie-Meenie-Miney-Moe, the fact that you want to keep going in the hopes of getting a different answer means that you actually know which one you want to pick.
19. On second thought, "Eenie-Meenie-Miney-Moe" has an unfortunate racist backstory. Use this one instead:

    Ippy Dippy My Space-Shippy
    On a course so true,
    Past Neptune and Pluto's Moon
    The one I choose is you
    

20. Pay attention to your surroundings and what you're doing. Especially when driving.
21. Someday, someone is going to say "Oh yeah, if you're so tolerant, you have to tolerate my intolerance!" That person is a douchebag. Tell him so.
22. However tempting you may find it, other people are people. Do not forget that. Do not challenge that. Do not abide others to challenge it.
23. There is no such thing as a neutral stance on racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, islamophobia, or whatever other kind of bigotry is popular when you're reading this. Either you believe everyone is a full person deserving of full rights, equality, and basic human dignity, or you don't. And if you don't, you're a bigot and that's the end of it.
24. Own your decisions. This is even more important than making the right ones. If someone asks you why you did the important things you did in your life, "It just kinda happened," is a lousy answer.
25. If you think a wire may be live, touch it with the back of your hand. Better yet, don't touch it at all.
26. Getting the thing that isn't really what you want, but is cheaper than the thing you want is hardly ever a good deal.
27. People remember you fondly when you make a point of being nice to them.
28. Hold a peppermint patty up to your ear and break it in half some time. The sound it makes is really neat.
29. Learn all the words to the songs you like to sing along to. The other people in the car will thank you.
30. By virtue of your sex, your skin color, the language you speak, the place you live, you carry around a knapsack of privileges that other people don't have. They're not necessarily bad things, but remember that these are privileges, and that not everyone has them. There are things you will take for granted as your god-given right that other people can't do. If you walk down a street alone at night and are attacked, no one's going to say "Well, he shouldn't have been out unescorted." If you fail a math test, no one's going to say "Yeah, those people suck at math."
31. Contrariwise, there will be things other people have to do to keep body and soul together that cross the line of societal acceptability. Don't do those things yourself, but have some empathy for people who have to.
32. Logic merely enables one to be wrong with authority
33. Tipping is not optional. If the service was terrible, you leave a tip, and you also complain to the manager. Waitstaff are paid below minimum wage by an amount that assumes you will tip them, so when you don't, you are stiffing them on their wages. Yes, I know this is a terrible system and we should not let people be paid below the minimum wage on the assumption of tipping. That does not excuse you for not tipping, and anyone who thinks they're striking a blow against the system is an asshole.
34. No means no.
35. Contrariwise, yes means yes.
36. Love isn't a license to hurt someone.
37. Modesty is only a virtue when it's deserved. Don't play down what you're really capable of.
38. People who insist you should always finish what you start don't start enough things. Hardly any that are really worthwhile.
39. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
40. Don't tell strangers that they should smile more.
41. Always use protection.
42. The poor do not exist for you to become a better person by giving to them.
43. If you find yourself apologizing in advance, you've still got time to not do the thing you're apologizing for.
44. Sometimes, you have to break the rules. But if you're not willing to face the penalty if you get caught, then this was not one of those times.
45. This world we live in isn't some kind of immutable law of nature that was inevitably destined to be as it is. It is the result of choices made by a lot of people over a long time. It may be daunting, but this world is your world, and ultimately you get to decide what that means. The world is, at any moment, what you say it is. So say.
46. Sometimes in life, you are going to be in a position where there isn't an option that doesn't harm someone. Take responsibility when it happens. Don't try to come up with a reason that the person who got shafted somehow deserved what they got. You made a choice, and if you can't deal with that, then you made the wrong choice.
47. All things in moderation. When I left for college, your grandfather took me aside, and instead of warning me off of alcohol and drugs and women, he gave me just that one piece of advice.
48. Be passionate when it's called for. There is no virtue in being moderate about the defense of justice, of liberty, of equality.
49. Don't blame the victim. Ever.
50. Do not side with the strong against the weak. End of story. If you're ever unsure, if you're ever unclear on a question like "Should we give tax cuts to the rich, or jobs programs to the poor?" or "Shouldn't we protect the rights of rich straight white male christians to oppress poor black lesbian pagan women as their religion requires?", you just say to yourself "Do not side with the strong against the weak," and then, do the thing that doesn't side you with the strong against the weak. Even if it seems dumb. Even if you've got a good, sound, logical reason for why the weak are in the wrong in this particular case. Do not side with the strong against the weak.

I love you, son.

Before we get started tonight, a couple of kudos to the post-apocalyptic world. I spent a good chunk of last week rummaging through blip.tv for web original series that might make for good watching. In the post-apocalypse department, here's what I found:

• After Judgment: Sort of a spin on Christian End-Times fiction, this is a show set after a "Judgment" based loosely on the 19th century idea of a premillennial "rapture" in which God removes the virtuous before destroying the Earth. In this world, though, God has elected not to visit plague and disaster on the unsaved, but rather has just sort of let the universe wind down. The Earth has stopped spinning, no one is born, no one dies, everything is just sort of more of the same forever and ever. Well, except for some creepy guys in motorcycle leathers who occasionally show up, grab someone, and take them away, never to be seen again. The story is about your average ragtag group who band together to try to find a prophecied back-door into heaven.
• Day Zero: This one only has one episode so far, but it's basically a Zombie Apocalypse (These are Honorary Zombies -- radiation-afflicted mutants altered by the fallout of a nuclear war, rather than the walking dead). The eight survivors are a ragtag mismatched group who, y'know, have to do that whole surviving thing. Did make me scream "SCIENCE DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY!" a few times at such ideas as radiation having "killed off their natural immunity to crystal meth," allowing street drugs to be used as one-hit-kill weapons against the mutants, but fun enough so far.
• Exile: Another zombie apocalypse, this time a legit one. The first (and so far only) episode introduced some interesting characters, and then killed them all. So.
• Necroland: Another zombie apocalypse. This one was too disjointed to for me to really have much of an opinion yet, but does feature a foul-mouthed ten year old girl killing zombies, so there's that.
• The Black Dawn: This one is a plague apocalypse of some sort. Though there's a whole season of episodes, I've only seen one so far, so no opinion yet.
• Zomblogalypse: This one's a lot of fun. The Zombie Eschaton as told by bloggers.

I've got a few more of these in my queue, so look forward to more words about them in the future.

One thread that runs through a lot of these web serials is that the influence of Lost really informs the storytelling. Now, I'm sure Lost is a good show, but I really don't look forward to a generation in which every "castawayAs I mentioned back in my review of Captain Power Episode 1, I view post-apocalyptic drama as being a one of several particularly science-fictiony flavors of the literary tradition of Robinson Crusoe: stories which are largely about the challenge of survival in a hostile world, cut off from the protagonist's home culture."-type science fiction drama has to ape it any more than I particularly like the way that The Road Warrior prompted every post-apocalyptic earth for the next 20 years to look like the Australian Outback.

I don't see what you're complaining about. I didn't find the plot of Lost to be impenetrable in the slightest. Now, could you pass the cocaine? I am dangerously close to coming down.

So let's rewind for a bit to the days before you were contractually obligated to frame your castaway story as a series-long mind-fuck ontological mystery, and see how things were in the world of the future-as-viewed-from-the-Eighties.

Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future
Episode 4 (or 3): Final Stand
By J. Michael Straczynski

This one is going to be Tank's character focus episode, which is nice because we're four reviews in yet, and I can count the number of lines from regulars who aren't Cap or Hawk on my fingers. We open with some Bio-Mechs emerging through the inexplicable fog into... What looks like basically the same abandoned factory as every other indoor fight scene so far.

The Putties Mechs wander around, looking for the Future Force, who have cleverly hidden behind and under things, until one of them scans what looks like the air cleaner off a Chevy Vega with his DYMO label maker Deluxe, revealing inside the source of the "Vwoop vwoop" noise that has been driving me crazy for this scene so far. Inside the air cleaner is what looks to be... GLaDOS?

I guess GLaDOS is supposed to be some kind of fake bait transmitter thing, because the commander Bio-Mech immediately announces (say it with me everyone), "It's a trap!"

Excellent piece of deduction on the part of the robotic gentleman.

Hawk (For we can not have a scene without Hawk) and Scout decide to press their advantage by... Immediately revealing their position. Scout jumps out in front of the mechs and, in what seems to be a radically misguided Jayne Mansfield impression, says "Looking for me, boys?"

After few exchanges of laser-fire, Tank decides that he needs to get on the Bizarrely Inappropriate Impressions bandwagon by performing what is going to be his major character shtick for the rest of the series: channelling the Kool-Aid Man.

Tank is such a badass that he manages to decapitate a mech with a single backhand, and his weapon is so powerful that its video toaster laser effects make a sort of "Skoom!" sound effect instead of the usual "Pwoosh!". He even wears an ammo belt even though none of the weapons we will ever see take any kind of ammunition (Except Hawk's nerf launcher). It's Hawk's time to shine, and he does, sending dozens of mechs to meet their maker, including one who he only clips across the hip, which staggers to the ground, then struggles back to its feet, and sort of stands there quaking with terror until Tank fires off the coup de grace. Our hero, everyone!

Now, I know that the Bio-Mechs are meant to be soulless automata, without even the capacity for independent thought and self-awareness of a Warlord Bio-Dread like Soaron, and that is why it is okay that they get slaughtered by the dozens without our heroes ever showing them even a hint of compassion.

But here's the thing. Soaron is a (poorly-rendered) CGI robot. He looks funny. he moves funny. He speaks in clipped sentences and his delivery is over-the-top. Overmind does the detached-psychotic-bedroom-voice thing that HAL 9000 taught us to fear in computers. Lord Dread has a human face, but he's barely mobile -- so far, we haven't seen him so much as rise from his chair -- and he looks like what you'd get if the Borg assimilated Darth Vader. And he's a genocidal lunatic.

The bio-mechs, on the other hand, are actors in suits. Stunt men, no doubt, who are doing a lot of very physical acting. And they don't move like robots. They move like people. They bump into things. They interact with their environment in a physical sort of way. They duck behind things. They stagger. They get clipped across the hip by a bazooka-laser, fall down, and try to get back up. When they die, their bodies twitch and they let out little rasping, rattling death sounds. When the last two mechs try to escape, they don't look like robots attempting an orderly strategic withdraw: they look like routed soldiers who are running for their lives.

That mech Tank shoots is staggering, shaking. I don't imagine that was intentional; just something the stuntman did naturally because he is a human being acting out a very physical scene, and his own humanity shines through. And this is kind of awkward in your Ultra Disposable mecha-mook. Because when Tank head-shots an injured mech that is literally quaking with terror, my sympathies ends up on the wrong side. And when Scout guns down two retreating mechs, then calls out "You're out!" in what seems to be a weak Rex Barney impression, it just seems callous.

Undoubtedly, this would be a lot easier today -- in a big-budget exercise, the Mechs would likely be CG themselves. Ironically, it's possible that if they did a modern re-imagining, Soaron, being a major character who has to interact with other characters, might be the only one of Dread's forces not to be computer generated.

Scout dispatches the last two mechs as they desperately try to escape, and claims their prize from the mech corpses: a Bio-Dread transmitter (Or receiver, as it will be called in the next scene). We switch to the jumpship, where Cap makes his log entry: Stardate 47-7.1. They are on their way to "Sector 7, grid co-ordinates 9 by 5," a place which "Had a name once, but doesn't any more." You know, if Cap has been waxing poetic about how much has been lost in every journal entry for the past 15 years, Ken Burns will be rather spoiled for choice when he goes to pick out good voice overs for his documentary on the Metal Wars.

As I mentioned before, I have no idea how their sector numbering works, but according to the map Hawk pulls up, this nameless sector is Sherman Oaks, in Los Angeles. Which seems strange given that back in episode 1, San Francisco was in sector 19, and the military installation that we tentatively placed on the east coast in "The Abyss" was either Sector 14 or Sector 42, depending on who you ask, and in "Wardogs", we supposed that Sector 7 was in Canada. But perhaps I'm reading too much into the map, because I think it's the same map every time someone pulls up a map screen in this show.

It will take them about an hour to evacuate the civilians from Sector 7, which may not be enough time, as their captured receiver has revealed that a Bio-Dread has already been dispatched to digitize the locals. Now, based on all the clues, can you figure out which Bio-Dread has been sent to Sector 7?

Based on a careful analysis of the facts of the case, I notice that there is a scuff on the left side of your shoe, indicative of some sort of back injury that causes you to favor one side. If I factor this in with the presumed geography of sectors 14, 7, 19 and 7, taking into account the theory we previously established that a date of 47-7.1 corresponds to the first of July, and interpolating from the weather patterns of Los Angeles, assuming current projections of global warming, but also accounting for a drastic reduction in pollution because of the wholesale destruction of humanity and infrastructure, I think I can conclude that the Bio-Dread best suited for this mission would be... Soaron.

You just said that because he's the only Bio-Dread we've ever seen.

Elementary deduction.

Well, this turns out to be a fortunate move for our heroes, since the immutable laws of the universe say that Soaron can not appear in an episode without a dogfight ensuing. This time, as Pilot keeps the Jumpship out of sight, Hawk launches a pair of guided missiles at Soaron. Soaron dogfights one of the missiles, finally destroying it, but is caught off guard when the Jumpship takes a shot at him -- the shot misses, but Soaron, having turned to return fire, receives a Actually, and this one just blows my mind, he isn't hit by the missile. The missile sort of... Shoots him. And then he explodes. The future is WEIRD.guided missile suppository and crashes, hurt bad enough that we may assume it will take him almost exactly one hour to self-repair, plus or minus the amount of complications that will arise before they can start evacuating people.

We cut back to Volcania, where Dread orders Soaron to -- you guessed it -- do exactly what they had already established he was going to do. Repair himself, then go to sector 7 and digitize all the humans. Then Overmind tells Dread that he's got some more artifacts from "Tauron". Oh Holy Crap! I just figured it out! This is actually a prequel to Battlestar Galactica and the Bio-Dreads are really Cylons! This explains EVERYTHING well actually nothing. Oh well. It was a nice thought. We only get a passing glimpse of the artifacts, but they look for all the world like RoboCop and Nimon-from-Doctor-Who action figures. They will not come up again after the next scene, where Dread looks at one for a moment, then sets it on fire. Symbolism!

Cap powers on (We won't see them use the pedestal back at base in this episode or the next one. For a show that so often reuses little set-pieces to show off particular things over and over, they seem bizarrely averse to showing the big flashy version of the transformation sequence) and they exit the Jumpship to survey the devastated-village set. Cap quickly identifies the devastation as, "Marauders. Hit and run. Take what they can and burn the rest. It's bad enough we have Bio-Dreads to worry about. But looters... Humans, preying on other humans."

Someone should thank him for that exposition. It might have been difficult for the audience to sort it out otherwise. Unless, I suppose, they were to actually look around, or pay attention in the preceding scene when we saw one of these marauder fellows peeking out at the heroes from hiding.

Yeah. And for all I respect Tim Dunnigan, frankly, Patrick Stewart would have a hard time keeping this exposition-heavy purple prose from going over like a lead nerf missile, and Tim Dunnigan is no Patrick Stewart. Tank adds, "Marauders hit ze place hahd, Keptin. Throw everybody out."

Hawk is more optimistic: "At least it keeps them out of Dread's hands." Well, given the extended rape metaphor in episode 1, I suppose he might have a point. Better to be assaulted, robbed, possibly murdered or sold into slavery than to be digitized, right? Ick.

The local Marauder, a burly, sort of vaguely Or maybe Irish. Or maybe he just smokes way too much. His voice is all over the place.Australian-sounding guy named Kasko, shouts a taunting warning before stepping out of a ruined building. He's played by Charles Seixas, an actor about whom I have been able to discover absolutely nothing at all other than his filmography. He's hamming it up as a middle-aged-punk type, with the mohawk and the leather, sort of like an evil version of Blank Reg from Max Headroom. But much more like a character lifted directly from The Road Warrior. The major point here is that he's a Punk Rock Type, which is basically '80s shorthand for "This man is a dangerous and unsavory element from a dystopian future". Tank recognizes Kasko by his voice, and identifies him as having "Came out of the same place I did. Genetically engineered. A freak." "Like you!" Kasko accuses. "Like me," Tank repeats, impassively.

Kasko has some survivors imprisoned nearby with a time bomb, and offers to trade them for a chance at unarmed single combat. Cap is unwilling, but Tank insists that it's the only way, what with their limited time and Kasko being a psychopath. So he strips down, takes off his Tron underwear, comes out of the Jumpship to fight according to "Street Rules", which is a lot like Navy Rules: First one to die, loses.

Kasko takes an early lead by pushing a brick wall over onto Tank. Since they don't especially trust Kasko to keep up his end of the bargain, Scout is busy trying to rebuild the walkie-talkie Kasko had used earlier to talk to his hostages then smashed and discarded. He explains the procedure of tracking the signal by interfacing with the crystal in a ridiculous fake spy-movie German accent, which Cap finds about as endearing as I do. Is stupid voices going to be Scout's thing now? I do not like this thing.

We cut around a few times, showing Soaron repair himself, Cap and Company track the hostages, and Tank playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with Kasko before getting caught in an incredibly obvious trap when Kasko offers to just give him the detonator for the bomb, and walks out onto an unstable bit of floor, which he promptly falls through.

Or, if you are observing carefully, gets lifted out over and lowered through, presumably by invisible guide wires.

Indubitably. Kasko runs downstairs to kick and taunt Tank some more, preparing to detonate the bomb early just to be an asshole. At the same time, Cap and Company find the prisoners. Tank begs Kasko to let the hostages go, as he's got what he wants. Kasko accuses Tank of having gone soft and holding back, to which Tank responds by kicking Kasko through a wall.

They fight some more while Cap tries desperately to diffuse the bomb. Then, just as things look tense, with about a minute and a half left...

Cap opens the door and lets the hostages out. Wait. A minute and a half? Who diffuses the bomb with a minute and a half left on the clock?

Kasko hits Tank in the face with a cinderblock, retrieves the detonator, and declares, "You lose!", but Cap barges in and declares the hostages rescued, entreating Tank to come with them before Soaron gets there. Tank, in a move that will surprise you if you haven't watched this show at all yet, turns to not be at all hurt from a cinderblock to the face, gets up, decks Kasko, and leaves, shouting "Quick! Let's hide!" I just want to point out that this sounds absolutely adorable the way he says it. This six-foot-seven bear of a man with a Scandinavian accent, all covered in sweat and brick dust, saying "Quick! Let's hide!"

Without his armor, Tank wouldn't stand a chance against Soaron, and Kasko is just enough of a dick to not take his defeat like a man. He breaks cover and shouts "Captain Power is over there!" to Soaron. Soaron, of course, doesn't care what an organic like Kasko has to say, and instead shouts "Obliterate!" then digitizes him, which I assume is to spare us the moral diciness of having Tank kill a human, even if the human is a dangerous psychopath. That said, let's not forget that episode 1 has established that digitization is a metaphor for rape. So don't get too much schadenfreude out of this. Which puts us in the uncomfortable position of cheering for Kasko's defeat as it comes in the form of what is essentially a metaphor for corrective rape. Yeah. I feel a bit soiled now.

It gets worse. After digitizing Kasko, Soaron throws his head back and lets out a sort of vaguely orgasmic howl. Gross. The heroes take advantage of Soaron's post-digital distraction to break cover, shoot the Bio-Dread, and make a break for it. Cap has to fight his way back to the jumpship, which should be a really tense scene, but it doesn't really compare well to the mech fight from the beginning of the episode. Soaron fights rarely do -- in this case, we cut back and forth between Cap running around a ruined city set and shots of Soaron, framed by nothing but sky, shooting. It makes the fight seem disconnected, and that takes a lot away from the drama. As the jumpship flies off, apparently having decided that the audience has forgotten that whole "It'll take three trips and an hour of travel-time to evacuate these people" thing, Soaron caps off an episode full of weird impressions by adding his own: he channels Dr. Claw, and shouts, "Next time!"

In the jumpship, Tank talks about his escape from A street gang? A genetic engineering lab? Undersea colony? Our last, best hope for punk rock? Who can say? This is all we'll ever hear about it.Babylon 5, and laments that he'd thought he'd put his violent past behind him. In a scene that I think woulda benefitted from the Full House Music, Cap comforts Tank with a speech about how, sure, he used brute force to solve his problems, and sure, maybe he enjoyed beating up Kasko, but it's all okay because he used his violence to help people rather than to harm people. Which is an unusual moral lesson, but I think it's kind of cool for that: a sort of dystopian moral for a dystopian world.

That's "Final Stand". Next time is "Pariah", which has a bit of focus on Pilot, but is basically another character focus episode for Hawk. I told you the writers really liked Hawk.

The following paragraphs talk about gender issues in the media. If that sort of thing is not your bag, hop down until you see the image of Boston Red Sox Manager Eddie Kasko.

This was a big hit with my wife, and I'll likely make it again. The prep work was a bit labor intensive. Since I'd had a slightly carb-heavy lunch, instead of rice, I served this over a cutlet (Is that even the right word?) of seitan. This was my first time making seitan (or eating it for that matter), and I think my technique needs some work. I probably should have introduced it to the curry while the curry was still cooking to let it pick up some flavor. Of course, seitan is off the menu for the gluten-intolerant, in which case, just go for rice, or even something like cauliflower.

(You can look up how to make seitan at home for tips and tricks, but the general gist is to mix about 4 parts Vital Wheat Gluten with about 3 parts water, erring on the side of less water, and a bit of soy sauce. Knead until it tuns into a sort of rubbery ball, then roll it out into several thin flat shapes, and simmer it in a liquid that tastes like what you want the seitan to taste like until it plumps up and becomes firm)

The time-consuming step of this dish is pressing the water out of the tofu. I think it was worth it for the texture you end up with (and for your tofu not dissolving into mush), but people with more experience than me at tofu might have better suggestions for how to get that texture. Heck, for all I know, you can buy your tofu pre-pressed at fine upscale tofuscarias.

I tried two methods to press the tofu. First, I laid them out on a cookie sheet, then placed a second cookie sheet on top, and weighed the top sheet down with a water-filled casserole dish. This spent an hour in the oven at 250°F. That got a lot of the water out, but the tofu still felt like it wouldn't survive cooking, so it went into the skillet with a large plate on top, weighted down with a jumbo-size jar of peanut butter. That spent another 20 minutes on the range at low heat. During both steps, I drained the pan occasionally to get rid of the water that pressed out of the tofu. The result had a firm, meaty texture that wasn't entirely unlike grilled paneer cheese.

• 1 lb firm tofu, cut into 1/2 inch thick 1 inch squares and pressed
• 2 cups of your favorite tomato-based spaghetti sauce (If your favorite is especially sweet, use someone else's favorite.)
• 3 tbsp Vegetable Curry Spices (I used 2 tbsp of Shan Vegetable Curry Mix and 1 of Mohini Indian Fusion Vegetable Blend
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 cup mixed vegetables
• 1/2 cup almonds (optional)
• 1 tbsp heavy cream
• 2 tbsp Greek yogurt
• Vegetable oil

Fill a skillet with enough oil cover the bottom of the pan thoroughly and bring it up to a high temperature. Fry the onions for a few minutes, but not all the way to translucency. Add the tofu. Now, I had a hard time getting the tofu to fry without breaking up without keeping the pan so hot that the tofu instantly burns to the bottom. Anyone who has experience pan-frying tofu, pointers are welcome.

The tofu won't need more than a light sizzle before you reduce the heat to medium and add the spaghetti sauce and vegetables. Stir in the curry spices, being careful not to break up the tofu too badly. If you've got the tofu pressed really well, this shouldn't be too much of an issue, but I made the mistake of trying a similar recipe with unpressed tofu, and it basically dissolved into a mashed potato consistency.

Sprinkle the almonds into the mix. You could try cashews instead, but I wouldn't use salted nuts, as it'll make the curry too salty. Stir in the cream.

As it happened, I had a pack of breaded spinach fritter appetizers in the fridge, and I put a few on top while the pan simmered for about 20 minutes. They mixed well and added a lot to the eating experience.

Right at the end, stir in the yogurt. You can adjust the amount of yogurt up or down based on the final level of spiciness you want. Leah sometimes uses sour cream to the same end when I make dishes like this, but for this one I think the you don't want to add any additional sourness over the acidity of the tomato sauce.

As I said above, I served this over a seitan fillet, but next time, I think I'd prefer to cut up the seitan and cook it in the curry. It should work over rice or maybe over naan bread. With all the vegetables and onions, and depending on the consistency of your spaghetti sauce, you might be happy to just eat this like a stew, without any kind of substrate.

Before we get started, those of you who are into that whole Facebook thing (It's a fad. It will pass) and have found this at all interesting, you should, I think the term the kids use these days is "stalk", Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future on Facebook. If you are into "The Twitter", you should, I think the term is "twat" @Capt_Power_2011. I honestly can't tell if these are the official feeds of the group responsible for the upcoming DVD release, but if they're not, no one is. They've got some neat stuff there, including an interview with Gary Goddard and Tim Dunnigan, who have both aged rather gracefully, about the never-before-seen behind-the-scenes documentary footage that will be on the upcoming DVD.

Also, buy the damned DVD. It's available for pre-order at Walmart, Amazon, and many other fine retailers. It's already on my wishlist, though it remains to be seen if I'll preorder and thus ensure that it arrives on my doorstep the day it's released, or if my wife will make me wait until Christmas, because it's kind of a dick move to buy yourself a present at the beginning of December. (Seriously though, I'm getting one before New Year's. My son is not going to grow up watching off-air VHS copies of this show which are a quarter-century older than he is).

And now, on with the show...

Power on

It has come to my attention, through a careful survey of the facts, that your previous presentation may have been, shall we say, misplaced.

Ah. Yes. That.

You claimed that "Wardogs" was the second episode of the series. However, my research clearly shows that it first aired on the Twenty-Second of November, some two months after "Shattered".

Right. As I mentioned before, these episodes, particularly in the first half of the season, were only very loosely ordered. I mentioned that "Shattered" doesn't really feel like a solid choice for a first episode. In fact, the pilot for the series was "Pariah", which is still two episodes off. "Wardogs" was indeed aired tenth, but we do have a clue to the fact that this was not its original intended position, which you no doubt have already observed.

Of course.

The opening line of "Wardogs" is "Database Journal 47-5 mark 13." Now, we don't have any kind of confirmation for how or even if these numbers directly map to dates, but I'm inclined to guess that "47-5 mark 13" is future-speak for "May 13, 2147". In aired order, episode 3, "Final Stand", is dated 47-7 mark 1 -- July 1, 2147. That would place "Wardogs" two months before "Final Stand". The episode I'll be reviewing this week, "The Abyss", has only one date mentioned, and it's "99-7 mark 3" So... This one is set fifty years after the rest of the season? Either Cap is using a different dating system for his personal journal, or he misspoke. In either case, best guess, this episode takes place on July 3.

Because I couldn't find dates in most of the episodes, I'll defer to captainpower.com to provide the dates which appear in this table:

My ordering is basically the same as the aired ordering, except that I've moved "Wardogs" up to episode 2, because Wardogs is the episode most blatantly aired outside of its intended position. This is also basically what Wikipedia does, except that they reverse "The Abyss" and "Wardogs". I make no attempt to defend this beyond "That's what order my ancient copies are in."

So, with that settled, this week we have "The Abyss". Stardate 99-7.3. Let's check the capsule summary from TheTVDB.com...

A brief transmission reveals the location of secret military base, still manned and functioning. But when Power and Hawk go to investigate, they're attacked and captured, ending up scheduled to be executed as spies and traitors as Dread's forces close in on the location...

So... Cap and Hawk meet up with a surviving regiment from the pre-apocalypse armed forces, and are mistaken for enemies, and-- Really? Really?

It would seem so.

Okay, seriously? I have distinct memories of this show being clever and mature and having a rich storyline. And they pull this? It's the same damned setup as last time!

You did just explain that these three episodes would not have originally aired in this order.

So that makes it better? We're up to three episodes and one and a half plots! Okay. Fine. Let's get on with the slow desecration of my childhood memories that is...

Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future
Episode 3 (or 2. Or 10. Whatever): The Abyss
By J. Michael Straczynski

The first thing you'll notice about this episode is that it is the only episode of the series whose title card is not enclosed by unwarranted scare quotes. Or more likely not, since most people don't notice that sort of thing. But I noticed. Oh how I noticed.

We open on a soldier emerging from under a giant metal waffle. He narrowly avoids a leftover Blake's 7 Prop and is just able to switch on a transmitter before he's caught by a gang of soldiers led by General Briggs, played by Michael J Reynolds, a man who has made his career playing... Pretty much different variations on the Briggs character, with the occasional foray into "Stuff we wanted Ray Walston for but couldn't get him." He summarily decides that the soldier, Price, has turned traitor and He points a gun at him in a "I'm going to shoot you now" sort of way, and then we cut away.implied-shoots him.

Back at the Power Base, Cap and Hawk sit around the TARDIS console, monitoring radio frequencies, when they suddenly pick up morse code from "Nope. No idea how geography works in the futureSector 42". When the signal cuts off suddenly, Cap decides that there's no time to alert the others, as surely this is a distress call from a surviving military unit who are in trouble. He and Hawk rush over to the Power Booth and, three episodes in, for the first time in the series, we get to see the full proper transformation sequence. Which seems to involve holding hands.

As Cap and Hawk hop on their hoverbikes to greenscreen their way to Sector 42, we cut to Lord Dread in Volcania. Dread is doing his daily reading from the Book of Computers, This is not me being flippant. He actually prefaces it with a cite.Chapter 4, verse 1:

And the Machine was given unto man. The Machine was perfect of mind and elegant of form. And the Machine said, "This is my gift to my people, that they may throw off the bonds of flesh."

Good to know that Dread's obsession with perfect, logical machine perfection, taken to its logical end, results in him writing quasi-religious scripture aping a stilted, archaic form of English specifically to sound like a five-hundred-year-old translation of a two-thousand-year compilation of a collection of four-thousand-year-old documentation of the cultural and superstitious practices of a nomadic bronze-age civilization.

Man, this machine logic is weird.

Overmind interrupts Dread because it's picked up the transmission as well, from sector 14. So Dread uses a different map system than Power. Great. I am never going to sort these out. Anyway, just like in the other two episodes, it appears that Lord Dread receives a personal notification of every single thing that happens anywhere on Earth, and Dread is basically doing nothing of any pressing importance at the time. And, just like before, Dread's immediate reaction is to order Soaron to go take care of it, and Soaron is just sort of flying around and having a good time when the call comes in.

Actually, I'm not clear what Dread orders Soaron to do. When Dread tells him to go "neutralize" the "disturbance" in sector 14, Soaron asks, "Shall I terminate current operation?" and Dread answers "No, my sentry: finish the task at hand, and then await further orders." So... Dread orders Soaron to go to sector 14 and neutralize the disturbance, but not to stop what he's already doing, and to finish what he's already doing, and then stop and wait for more orders. So.. Did he order Soaron not to go to sector 14? Or to go to sector 14, but finish what he was already doing first? Or... Look, for all that "The Machine was perfect of mind and elegant of form," jazz, Dread's management skills leave a lot to be desired.

And by the way... First it's night, then it's day (Cap had given the time as 0300 hours), then it's night, then dawn. Given that we know the Power Base is in Colorado and Volcania is in Detroit, this would seem to imply that Sector 42 is on the east coast, though dialogue later will suggest otherwise. Also, possibly that the earth rotates the wrong way.

Once we eliminate as impossible any scenario where the rotation of the earth has been reversed, we are left with the possibility that latitude is the key discriminator among these locations; during certain parts of the year, a location a few degrees closer or further from the equator could have a significant impact on the time of sunrise and sunset. Furthermore, it is inherently likely that Captain Power, being a military man is giving times in the Greenwich time zone. And indeed, we can not be certain of the location of the strange metal bird-man at all.

Ah, but in that case, the time would be closer to ten at night eastern time, and, if I'm remembering rightly, seven in Colorado. Which would account for the daylight the first time we see the hoverbikes, but it would hardly explain how eight to ten hours would have passed on the east coast.

In that case, I submit that you must consider one additional possibility.

What's that then?

The director just didn't care.

Touche. Shortly after Cap and Hawk land, General Briggs's soldiers descend upon them and in a few minutes, a band of infantrymen who haven't seen action in years are able to disarm and incapacitate the Future's Last Hope For Survival. Because the damned Power Suits run on three triple-A batteries.

Cap wakes up strapped to a chair in the General's underground lair. As a shortcut to let us know that General Briggs has come unglued, he does the cliche Crazy Military Guy act, where he takes everything Cap says as evidence against him: "We came here because we received a distress signal," Cap says. Briggs responds "Aha! So you admit you were exchanging unauthorized signals with a known traitor!" Briggs also asserts that he has a duty to protect his men and keep them safe until he receives orders from the president. Cap proves that he hates America by revealing that there isn't any US government any more, and Briggs takes this as further evidence of Cap's traitorous intent, especially as "You should be using your training, manpower and supplies to help people instead of hiding in this hole in the ground," is exactly the same sort of commie-socialist-nazi-kenyan propaganda the treasonous soldier had been spouting before the general offed him.

The general storms off, leaving behind a soldier whose name I do not recall, but who I will call "Colonel Will-Eventually-Order-The-Men-To-Safety-While-The-General-Has-A-Breakdown", or "Col. Weotmtswtghab". Cap points out that the General is plainly insane, sowing a seed in Col. Weotmtswtghab's brain.

In the next room, the soldiers are showing their resolve, even under these conditions, to still stand by traditional US military regulations and procedures, and are therefore torturing Hawk with an electric torture machine. Hawk, not being one to take crap from anyone, tells his interrogators to get stuffed. The general enters with a copy of Hawk's permanent record, and, finding that he's the sole survivor of his original unit, accuses him of, what else, treason. He further asserts that the fact that Hawk knew Dread before his transformation proves that he's actually a Dread spy.

There is a certain flaw in the General's reasoning

Yeah. It rhymes with "He's sad as a catter."

To show how evil he is, every time Hawk tries to answer, the torturer zaps him instead, proving that the torture isn't actually about getting information, but is 100% about the torturer getting his rocks off by making Hawk suffer. Which, for the record, is always what torture is about.

The general decides that he's satisfied himself that Hawk and Cap are "obviously" spies, and orders them executed. Hawk expresses his displeasure as only he can.

After a commercial break, we return to Briggs's office. Col. Weotmtswtghab comes in, hoping to dissuade the general from offing Cap and Hawk, but the general launches into rambly story about how the reason we lost both Vietnam and the fictional 2127 South American Vietnam Analogy War was because the anti-war movement had better songs than the pro-war movement, and if only it weren't for guys like Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan, we'd have totally won the Vietnam Analogy. When Col. Weotmtswtghab finally gets a word in, he protests the general's decision, which prompts a little outbursts of mental instability where the general gets all shouty and threateny about the idea of someone daring to question his orders. The General reiterates that he wants the prisoners executed by 1800. So this is 15 hours after the first scene now.

We cut back to Soaron, who is standing on a pile of debris, apparently having finished whatever he was doing that morning. Dread orders him to proceed to the transmission source and rendezvous with a unit of troopers. So... I guess Dread really did mean "Finish what you were doing, then call me back, and then I will order you to do the thing I just told you I was going to order you to do."

Hawk is tossed in a cell with Cap, and Hawk makes some threats he can't back up about what he'll do if Cap has been hurt. Because, y'know. I seriously don't want to ship these two, but they just make it so darned easy. Corporal Exposition rattles off "He's strong never met anyone like him he'll survive not that it'll make much difference." And if you think there should have been punctuation in that sentence, you and I feel differently from the director.

Once alone, Hawk and Cap discuss their chances for survival, and Cap hits on the crazy idea of trying to plug his discharged suit directly into the high-voltage cable running up the wall. There is some awkward technobabble while Cap speculates that the Power Suit's "modulation system" might "kick in with the charge" and protect him from otherwise certain electrocution. I remembered this scene even decades later, and it's got a nice MacGyver feel to it. As Soaron and the Bio-Mechs approach, alarms go off in the base and the soldiers are forced into combat. These soldiers who were able to effortlessly disable two members of the Future Force are easily p0wned by Soaron and the Imperial Storm Troopers.

Realizing the imminence of their danger, Cap succeeds in pulling down the power cable, He's wearing his TRON-suit underneath, so no, fangirls, no exciting shirtless Tim Dunigan for youtakes off his top, peels off the collectable Captain Power Decal from his chest, and plunges the sparking cable into his breastplate, throwing him across the room and leaving him in a crumpled heap on the floor. We cut away as Hawk futilely tries to awaken his friend. Oh no! Captain Power has killed himself! There's no chance now!

Quite impossible, given the length of episode remaining

Well yeah. Like I said before. In the next scene, Cap just gets up and is perfectly fine. No injuries from the electrocution, nor anything from having been hurled across the room into a cinderblock wall. But before that, we show the general in his office. The realization that all is lost is too much for the old man, and he just sort of frets around shouting that it's not his fault and that he doesn't know what to do. Fortunately, Col. Weotmtswtghab picks up a microphone and Orders The Men To Safety While The General Has A Breakdown.

Fully restored, Cap powers on, and then casually offers the electric cable to Hawk. I really regret that we cut to Cap blowing up bio-mechs, because I think Hawk would have had some fantastic facial expressions for being electrocuted and thrown across a room. Instead, we get to watch Cap, who earlier was easily dispatched by the infantry, clean the floor with the bio-mechs. So, infantry beats Captain Power, Mechs beat infantry. Power beats mechs. It's post-apocalyptic roshambo!

Inside, Col Weotmtswtghab announces that he's gotten most of the men to the escape tunnels, and begs the general to escape with them. The general has regained enough composure to go down with the ship, formally turning his command over to Col. Weotmtswtghab and making his last order to get the men to safety, then he sits in the corner and sings "It's a long way to Tipperary" until Soaron walks in, calls him a pathetic fool, and digitizes him.

I guess Soaron decides it's not worth pursuing the other soldiers, as we cut to a dogfight in the sky between him and Hawk, which goes the way it always does: one shoots, then the other, back and forth until Hawk catches Soaron in the chest with his nerf missile, causing the Bio-Dread to go spinning off.

On the ground, Cap gets himself surrounded with his power running low. Again. The sultry computer voice in the suit informs him that there's no escape. Cap is showered with weaponsfire, and channels Dirty Harry for a second, rasping out "You want to party? Let's party," before revealing a previously unmentioned jetpack, which he uses to jump over the Bio-Mechs, so he can shoot them while they sort of look around, confused. Another tense moment diffused by "Cap suddenly remembering that he knows how to shoot things."

He calls Hawk in to give him a lift to safety, which he does, by swooping in, grabbing Cap around the waist, and flying away. Our episode ends on the two of them fleeing to safety.

So what becomes of the surviving soldiers? Do they join up with Captain Power and his men?

Nope. Never seen nor heard from again. I like to imagine that due to improper ventilation, they all die in the escape tunnel from radon poisoning.

And General Briggs?

Gone. They never pull him out of storage or anything.

And what of the remaining members of the team?

They were off in "Sector 7" doing a recon mission. Not mentioned again in this episode.

I see. It is tempting to draw certain conclusions from the ending of this story.

Why should we draw conclusions? The writers didn't.

Ah, I think you see what I am alluding to. From the evidence here, I am inclined to conclude that the writers just didn't care.

On the face of it, yes. But don't forget: this episode was written by J. Michael Straczynski, a writer whose qualifications shouldn't be in any doubt.

Even a fastidious writer might find himself operating at times with less than full enthusiasm. For example, at the moment I personally care so little for the consequences of this analysis that I have been forced to consume quite a considerable amount of cocaine merely to remain awake.

Fair point, but I think that while it might seem that the writers didn't care, this episode in fact shows clear signs of executive meddling. Consider: this episode is significantly more action-oriented than the others we've seen. There are two major set-piece battles which take up more than a third of the episode's entire run-time. We have a scene early on with Soaron which does nothing to advance the plot, and is essentially reiterated in full later. No, I think that the logical conclusion here is that word came down from on high to increase the amount of action in this story, and that expansion crushes out a lot of the finer details. The episode ends in what's essentially the middle of a scene, and the most logical reason I can think of for that is that any attempt to tie up the plot neatly at the end was cut to add a few extra seconds to the fight scenes.

There is a certain lack of cohesion between the action sequences and the narrative segment of the story.

Right. This episode feels very much like it's meant to be a character study of General Briggs, demonstrating how the pressure of his position has made him paranoid and dangerous. But it's hamstrung by the short running time. We never really get a sense of the forces that have come to bear on the general, so he comes off as just being an obstinate asshole. When Captain Power accuses him of cowardice, we're supposed to understand that the general isn't really a coward, but a brave man overwhelmed by his situation -- but without seeing more of the general in action, there's nothing to take us there.

As in "Wardogs", one of the major flaws of this episode is the near complete failure of the scenes we actually get to see to instill any sort of emotion in the audience with regards to the guest characters. I have by now started to build an investment in Cap and Hawk -- more Hawk than Cap, really -- but this story wants us to care about the soldiers, and I just don't. Out of the entire unit, the only two whose names I can even remember are Briggs and Price -- and Price is the guy who dies in the first scene. The only other character who makes any impression at all is "Guy who tortures Hawk". And let's face it, if you want me sympathizing with someone, you probably shouldn't show them committing torture. This could have been fixed if they'd depicted the soldiers as reluctant to zap Hawk, only doing it under direct prompting from the general. That would also have served as a good way to show how desperate and unstable the general was. But, just like in "Wardogs", all of that is cut short in favor of more action sequences.

The action looks great. It's fun and paced well, though, as always, it feels perfunctory. We do the "Cap seems to be hurt but isn't" thing again. Hawk and Soaron have a dogfight again. "Cap is cornered by mechs, but escapes by the simple expedient of shooting at them" again. These feel very much like mandates handed down from the studio execs.

If this show were remade today as an adult drama, all these problems could be fixed and the elaborate stories they set up could be brought to fruition. Heck, as an hour-long show, you could tell these stories well, and still have time for fifteen minutes of action scenes.

And this would make a brilliant story in that format. Unlike our last two outings, the plot doesn't hinge on something chock full of troubling implications -- we do have the General's rant about Vietnam, but that really serves less as a political statement than as a statement about the general's state of mind.

I'd be remiss, of course, if I didn't point out the other big glaring issue in this one: Three of our five regular cast members aren't here at all. Now, in a half-hour show with a moderate-sized ensemble, you have to expect that not everyone will play a significant role in every story, but so far, we've had one episode that was a character-focus episode for John, one that was a character focus episode for Hawk, and one that's a Bromance episode for the two of them. Scout, Tank and Pilot have had at most a half-dozen lines each so far in the entire series. I guess if you want your unfortunate implications, there they are: three episodes about the white North American men, with hardly anything from the woman, the African-American, or the European.

It does get better, though. Next week is a Tank-focused episode, and after that... Well, actually, after that it's another Hawk episode. I kinda get the impression that at some point during development, the writers decided that Hawk was a more interesting character than Cap, and decided they'd make the show be about him instead, even if Captain Power had to retain top billing for legal reasons.

Indubitably.

• 3 Eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1 tbsp heavy cream
• 1/2 can sliced mushrooms, drained
• 3 oz Cheddar Cheese, shredded
• 1 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
• 2 tbsp low-fat Ricotta Cheese
• 1/8 tsp paprika
• 1/4 cup low-carb bake mix (or bisquick)
• 4 Italian Sausage links, sliced (Optional)
• 4 oz Zucchini slices

Layer a pie pan, quiche pan or casserole dish with zucchini slices and warm in the oven to dry out. Cover zucchini with ground almonds and dust with a few pinches of bake mix. Whisk eggs. Mix milk and cream, then heat. Add milk to eggs slowly, whisking briskly. Whisk in cheese, mushrooms, paprika and remaining bake mix. Chill filling while cooking sausage and preheating oven. Arrange sausage slices in pie pan. Pour filling over sausages. Cook 1 hour at 400.

Serves 6. Approximately 570 calories per serving (350 without the sausage). When made with the low-carb bake mix described below, 6 grams of carbohydrates, of which 2 are fiber.

Low-carbiness is achieved by using a low-carb bake mix. Here's the one I used. I'm still fine-tuning the proportions. As mentioned above, you really need to mill the almonds.

• 2 part whey protein
• 4 parts finely ground almonds
• 1 parts flax meal
• 1 part wheat gluten
• 1 tsp baking powder per 2 cups mix

I originally tried this will more flax meal substituting for the almonds in a couple of popovers. It worked out okay when mixed 50-50 with flour, but using it straight, the mix broke down during cooking, and it basically ended up cooking into a muffin sitting atop a fritatta.

The tricky thing about this mix is that there's a vast density disparity between flax, almonds and whey, so you pretty much have to mix the heck out of this until the moment it goes into the oven, and then cross your fingers and hope it sets before it separates.

I say!

What?

Sir, I realize these are progressive times, but you appear to be naked.

Huh? Oh. Right. Sorry. Here. Power on!

And welcome back to A Mind Occasionally Voyaging as we dive once again into the post-apocalyptic world of...

Now, I'm not saying that I am tapped into the pulse of Hollywood, but on October 19, I posted my review of episode one of Captain Power, and on October 20, CNN Entertainment did a feature on it. Which can only mean one thing.

That the pending DVD release has sparked up public interest, including both the CNN article and your own review?

Um, no. Clearly, it means that the writers at CNN Entertainment have spies in my basement, watching me blog.

Of course.

One thing I learned from the article is that Tim Dunigan, who, as I mentioned last time, is now a mortgage broker, still has the Captain Power suit, and sometimes wears it to work to impress clients.

• A Mortgage broker shows up to closing dressed as Captain Power
• B "I have five piercings. Guess where they are."
• C 3 AM Text Messages from Ex-Girlfriend You Haven't Spoken To In Five Years Demanding Personal Details About Your Wife
• D Bumping into Shari Lewis at the Holocaust Museum

I can't quite imagine how this could have a positive effect on a normal client, but of course had he been my mortgage broker, I think I would have immediately caved on that extra half a point I wanted them to take off. To better explain, please see the chart to the right to explain exactly where this idea falls on the scale of awesome to creepy.

I haven't mentioned Gary Goddard before. His entertainment company has been responsible for a lot of things, mostly designing theme park entertainment like the Star Trek Experience and Jurassic Park: The Ride. But he also has done work on the stage, in Specifically, Masters of the Universe, but I can't imagine that's the thing he wants to be remembered for.film, and television. And the reason I bring him up is that he created Captain Power, and in the CNN article, he mentions wanting to revive Power as a modern not-for-kids Sci-Fi Drama, a la the (now old) new Battlestar Galactica. Which would kind of blow my mind -- in much the same way that the new Galactica did -- though I'm having a hard time imagining an adult audience taking a title like Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future seriously. Still, fingers crossed.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. For a revival to get greenlit, people need to buy the DVDs, and for people to buy the DVDs, you need to read my reviews, see the wonder and majesty that is Captain Power, and mutter to yourself "Oh man, I have to buy this and tell all my friends to do the same!" In this episode of A Mind Occasionally Voyaging, we're retreating back to the magical land of the eighties to take a look at episode 2 of Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future

Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future
Episode 2: Wardogs
By Larry DiTillio

And here I have some eratta from last time. I previously credited the writer of Episode 1 as "Larry Oitillio". That's because they insisted on doing all the intertitles for this show in the OCR Font designed to convey "It's the FUTURE!" to the audience by showing them 1960s banking technology. Google assures me that Larry DiTillio is a fairly famous writer, whose credits include He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and Babylon 5. So I should not at all be surprised to see his name attached to this show.

We open on Cap's Log, explaining that they've received word of several well-orchestrated raids against Dread in "It's the future, so regions don't have names, but numbers.Sector Seven", and that he's sent Hawk out to do a greenscreen "field correspondent" piece for The Daily Show aerial reconnaissance.

A Dread convoy is doing its darnedest to look inconspicuous against the gray and colorless backdrop. Aside from the bright red strobing target lights on the front. We cut to this episode's guest talent, hiding behind a rock. The man observes the Dread troop movements and reports back to an unseen female voice, name-dropping something called "Eden 2", which is their ultimate goal, and -- hey, where do I know that voice from?

Anyway, the guy with the binoculars orders his gang, who he refers to as "War Doggies", to attack. I'll take a moment now to point out, outside of the regular cast, the only characters we saw in episode 1 were the bio-mechs, the sontaran, and Athena, who is fairly well groomed, having just been restored from tape backup. So this is really the first time we see Non-Future-Force-People-of-the-Future living the post-apocalyptic lifestyle. They look pretty much like you'd expect: like extras from a Mad Max film. Long hair, sleeveless shirts, more exposed chest hair than I am really comfortable with, Rambo-style headbands, shoulder pads that would make Rob Liefeld cream himself, and -- oh holy crap. The guy calling the shots in the raid is notable First Nations actor and guy-often-confused-with-the-English-author Graham Greene. You may remember him from... Pretty much everything in the last 20 years that called for a Native American of a Certain Age. His big break in the US market was Dances With Wolves, but he also held such widely respected roles as the Alaskan dad in Roget Ebert's least favorite movie ever, North, as well as episodes of A great show which I really miss now that it's gone, in spite of doing something silly with their title such that I am forced to refer to the show as "Numb-three-ers".Numb3rs (as a Native American chief), The Red Green Show (as a nearly deaf and possibly deranged explosive expert), the second Twilight movie (as Charlie's token Native American-slash-Werewolf friend), and Canadian time-travel-domestic-drama Being Erica (as probably the most senior of the time-traveling therapists. Seriously, if you're not watching Being Erica, you should be. It also has a former Power Ranger in it), and numerous other things I haven't watched and therefore will not mention.

He will be playing the role of "Cherokee" this week, a name which reflects all the care and subtlety that goes into choosing a name that reflects and is respectful to the character's heritage without straying into harmful stereotypes or cliche oversimplifications. Well, that or they just threw a dart at a board with popular Native American-Sounding names on it and it landed just shy of Tecumseh. But what can you expect from a culture where most people still use the term "Indian" for a people who we've known for over 600 years are from the opposite side of the planet from India.

The doggies make short work of the Bio-Mechs, by which I mean there's an overly long fight scene to show off the strobe effects in order to give the kids their money's worth this episode. Eighties River Tam jumps atop a tank and tosses a grenade inside, in order to establish her as a reckless risk-taker, a trait which will at no point be relevant. We cut back to Hawk, who reports in that he hasn't seen anything, such as a pitched firefight with a large Dread convoy, and that someone is "playing a game of hide and seek". On the ground, a mech with a giant truck-mounted canon decides that it would be a good time to reveal his presence and starts shooting. That finally gets Hawk's attention, unlike the previous firefight, and he dispatches the mech with a single shot from his wrist mounted nerf rocket. Unfortunately, none of the wardogs see him do this, because a few seconds later, they look up, and Eighties River Ram identifies him as a Graham Greene repeats it back to her as "Clicker", so I assume it's Futuristic Slang for "robot" and they've mistaken him for a mech. But she quite distinctly pronounces it "Quaker".Quaker, and because they apparently hate the society of Friends, Graham Greene shoots Hawk with his big gun, disabling him in a single hit.

Knocked out of the sky, Hawk falls powerless, perhaps thousands of feet, to land on the sun-baked desert landscape below, and is severely injured. He'll spend the rest of the episode slowly dying of his massive internal injuries. Naw, I'm just kidding. Hawk isn't hurt at all, just playing possum. Cap psychically deduces something has happened, and tries in vain to reach Hawk on the radio, but he's called away by Tank and Scout, who've discovered a secret gigantic Dread-made technodrome in the middle of nowhere which they think for no clear reason must be related to Project New Order, so they'd better look into it, what with everyone having read the back of the box, and knowing that Project New Order will be a recurring plot element over the course of the series.

Graham Greene and Eighties River Tam are still bound and determined to mistake Hawk for a Bio-Dread, and make plans to cut his head off to access his delicious bubble memory and nougat center. Hawk overpowers Eighties River Tam, springs to his feet, and, having his would-be decapitators at gunpoint, and defended from their counterfire by his armor suit... Powers his suit down so everyone can see his Spooky Face while he tells them, "Sorry, but I've gotten used to this head!" Bless his heart. He's really trying to toss off a cool one-liner, and it just isn't working out for him. He proceeds to go through a lengthy series of really creepy facial expressions that I think are aiming for "Dirty Harry", but come off as "Creepy Stalker" as he explains that his butt hurts and he is not happy about having been shot at. Larry DiTillio is still convinced he can keep up this farce about the Wardogs thinking Hawk is working for Dread, so they just sneer at him while someone offscreen presses a gun to Hawk's neck. Graham Greene calls him a "Dread Head", but Hawk can't even get out his angry retort as he turns around to see this newest attacker, then squeals like a little girl when he sees that it's his old friend-with-benefits Vi. They go in for a quick cuddle while Graham Greene and Eighties River Tam look on in befuddlement, before a hard cut to the inside of... Somewhere. I mean, I assume it's a cave or something, but this really just drives home for me how completely ungrounded this episode is, geographically. The Wardoggies had assumed that the convoy they raided was headed for Dread's base. Did they mean Volcania? Volcania is supposed to be in Detroit, and is post apocalyptic urban sprawl as far as the eye can see. This is... A quarry. Possibly the same quarry as the last episode. Now, admittedly, we never went as far north as Michigan on that road trip I took out to the midwest ten years ago, but I'm like 50% sure that Detroit is not normally surrounded by a desert wasteland riddled with cliffs and caves and desert. Given that Hawk is ostensibly Canadian and Vi served with him in the Metal Wars, and Graham Greene is Canadian, so I might guess that this episode is set in Canada. Sure. Why not. According to myth, had a second season been produced, the Power Base would have relocated to Canada. Now, my Canadian geography is not great, so for all I know, there are huge swaths of Canada which look like generic post-apocalyptic deserts (cliff-bearing type), but I am unconvinced that there exists a place in Canada where one would get "much needed supplies" in convoy-quantities such that the shortest path from there to Detroit takes you though such a landscape.

Logic suggests that such a convoy could only originate in Ottowa, Toronto, or Montreal.

It is fascinating how much I fail to care. Vi introduces Hawk to the Wardoggies. Well, she introduces him to them. There's no scene where they cut to each of them in turn giving us a name and a personality trait so that we care if they die later. Instead, Vi takes Hawk back to her room to... Apparently talk abut Hawk's dead wife. I assume she's dead. And his wife. We really just get "What about Joanna? Is she--" and a sad head-shake from Hawk. She also asks after "Mitch and Katie", who were "In Dalworth when Dread hit it." Again, nothing to connect these to, but, um. Did they just tell us that Hawk's children are dead? Or digitized, a fate which the last episode dedicated itself to explaining was worse. Hawk tries to get Vi and the Wardoggies to join La Resistance, but she's tired of all this fighting, thinks the war is unwinnable, and is "If this is indeed Canada, "north" seems like an unlikely place to put your mythical promised land heading north" to a place called EarthPrelapsarian BoogalooEden 2, which they've got a hot tip about, though Hawk doesn't believe in it.

While they're each trying to convince the other to run off with them, Graham Greene rushes in to alert them to a ship on their radar. Hawk identifies it as Cap's shuttle, and runs outside to call him. And because Hawk apparently does not carry a radio separate from his easily-disabled and power-limited Power Suit, this requires Powering On.

He calls home and, typical man, invites Cap over to Vi's place and totally expects her to do all the cooking when he didn't even ask her ahead of time. Cap totally ditches Tank and Scout, revealing which teammates really matter to him. Tank and Scout tempt fate by saying that everything is totes cool and Dread's forces have no idea whatever that they're nearby. A little flying nothing-in-particular-shaped thing scans them with its Dalek Vision, and instantly, Dread is personally alerted in Volcania. Dread does not understand the concept of matrixed management models. He So... What exactly is Dread doing before he turns around to face the screen. Does he just sit there in his throne all day looking dour at the empty space in front of him?turns toward the video screens, the only adornment in his lair. He immediately places his base on high alert, and calls Soaron. Man took over the entire world and has reduced 98% of the human race to convenient 3.5" floppy disc, but he seems to have exactly one guy he can go to when he needs something done.

We cut back to inside the Wardoggies' cave, where Hawk has, of course, immediately de-morphed. Cap is here now, and Vi is explaining their plan to rendezvous with a contact who is going to get them to Eden 2. Cap explains that the entire "It's the future. There are sectors now.sector" is closed off, and offers to take them to "The Passages", but they're determined. And if Eden 2 turns out to be a myth, they'll... Find something else. We have yet to hear anything about these Passages other than "they're a place where Cap takes people he saves, where they are safe," and we have yet to hear anything about Eden 2 other than "It's a place where you can go and be safe," so any real sense of why they'd be so determined to choose the one over the other was certainly not clear to audiences during the original airing, or, for that matter, to internet critics a quarter century later.

Vi indicates that she will not be swayed, so, in spite of Hawk's protests that Cap somehow magically convince her otherwise, Cap and Pilot decide to just bugger off to see what Tank and Scout have found, leaving Hawk to... Um, do whatever I guess.

Soaron flies around, basically just to show off the state-of-the-art 1980s CGI for a good 30 seconds before landing in front of -- hey, isn't that exactly the same Egyptian Catacomb entryway from last week? Anyway, he orders the biomechs to withdraw and announces VERY LOUDLY that they're going to abandon this top secret and highly valuable base. Scout calls Cap and asks if they should go in. Cap tells them to hang back, so they can all march blindly into the trap together. We cut back to Scout and Tank, and it sounds for all the world like the boom mike catches one of them farting.

Back in the caves, Hawk is still grousing about Vi's unwillingness to give up her dream of leaving the horrors of war behind to hide out in a secret underground refuge in favor of leaving the horrors of war behind to hid out in his secret underground refuge. Vi decides to win the argument by seducing Hawk, by stepping out from behind a curtain dressed like Donna Reed. She's all dolled up for some romance, but for some reason, they decided that, with Hawk and Vi both being Soldiers of a Certain Age, their notion of dressed-for-seduction is straight out of the 1950s. I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that the writer momentarily forgot that this is the future, and that the, say, thirty years earlier when Hawk was in his prime is still a hundred and thirty years in the future.

Or maybe he did, which is why Hawk's reaction to this clumsy act of seduction is a look of confused horror. This reaction, and I realize that you will all be shocked to learn this, is not what Vi was expecting, and she starts to cry and self-deprecate over her foolishness. But it turns out that the sight of a woman crying is exactly what it takes to get Hawk's motor running, and he rushes over, takes hold of her and announces, "Which he means as a compliment, but it seems to edge kinda close to "Given that my choices are heavily restricted due to the apocalypse, I guess you'll do."You're the most beautiful thing I've seen in a long time," and then they make out.

The show suddenly remembers that this is a kid's action adventure, and we cut back to Captain Power and company before we get to see Hawk pull out his little war doggie. They gun down the few remaining guards at the Technodrome, and Pilot unlocks the front door using an industrial vibrator a sonic screwdriver. Inside, Scout finds computer files about the mysterious "Project New Order", which he tries to decrypt, while the others plant a time bomb, and have just found a pile of Ominously Foreshadowy Barrels when they are caught by a band of mechs led by Dread's chief Nazi, "Overunit Weber".

Overunit Weber is a sort of over-the-top "pretty-boy" fascist type, in a a uniform listed straight from the SS, with jodhpurs and an abundance of braid and decoration, and a tall hat, and, for reasons best known to himself, enormous Mr. T-style bling. He gloats over how Power is now his prisoner, and prepares to dispatch the remaining Rangers of the Future, unaware that Scout is still in the next room. Scout morphs his suit into the likeness of Lord Dread and walks in on them just as Overunit Weber calls the real Dread to report his victory. Scout makes no attempt at subterfuge: he just walks in, stands there for a second, and Overunit Weber is surprised enough by this that Cap can give the order for the others to start shooting. Which means that there's absolutely no reason Scout had to turn into the likeness of Dread. Which has me thinking...

Cap and company brutally slaughter all the mechs, allowing Overunit Weber to run away like a small child. They give chase, but like all secret Dread facilities, there's a "Lock the heroes in a small trap-lined hallway" button, locking our heroes in a narrow room with bunch of giant novelty phalluses hanging from the ceiling.

Knowing that the visual style of this series was heavily influenced by Japanese media, the Future Force fears that this show is about to take a tragically Hentai turn, and Tank creates an exit for them the way only he can.

Back in the caves, Vi is back in her uniform with an easygoing, postcoital manner as she tries to persuade Hawk to come away with her to Eden (yeah, brother) 2, as "We've done our share of the fighting. Let's spend whatever time we have left loving." As she considers helping herself to another heaping helping of Hawk, Graham Greene busts in and announces that Dread's pulled all his forces east, giving them an opening to slip off to meet their contact. Hawk, though, knows that "east" is the general direction where the rest of his team has gone. After a few seconds of hesitation, Graham Green sheepishly reveals that Cap and the others are trapped. Way to bury the Yes, that's how it's spelled. It's newspaper jargon.lede there, Cherokee.

Hawk asks Vi for help, and she holds fast that, if it were just her, she'd do it, but she's unwilling to risk her men. Hawk goes hardcore Bros Before Hos with her and says, "Yeah. I feel the same way about the Captain," which you can read as extremely homoerotic if you want, but I choose not to ship Hawk and Cap because the age difference makes it kind of creepy for me. He storms off, telling the rest of the Wardoggies, "I hope you find your paradise," in a tone that very clearly indicates that by "I hope you find your paradise," he means "Go fuck yourselves." Yeah. How dare they not want to give up their only chance at survival and a peaceful escape from decades of horrific war and the constant threat of a fate worse than death to go on a probably suicidal mission to save a group of five strangers who are much better equipped than they are and wouldn't even need saving if they hadn't waltzed into possibly the most obvious trap to ever be shown in a television series before the premiere of Stargate SG-1? Anyway, Hawk powers up again and salutes Vi, which I'm going to take as one last parting jab, since he's making a point to make his final goodbye to her as a soldier rather than as a lover.

Outside the Technodrome, Soaron is... Just sort of hanging around. Dread calls him and alerts him to Hawk's approach. And we get another exciting air battle, where we intercut back and forth between a badly CSO'd Hawk and a badly CGI'd Soaron trading shots at each other, most of their laser blasts exploding harmlessly in the empty air behind or off to the side of their targets.

The fight goes on for, well, too long really, then Hawk seems to just kind of get distracted and plays with his glove for a while, giving Soaron the opportunity to get in a good shot which knocks Hawk out of the air and unmorphs him. Soaron declares "Victory is mine!" So naturally, God smites him for his pride by having the Wardoggies show up and in about three shots from the ground, dispatch Soaron, who could hold his own against Hawk, who was flying. Vi helps Hawk up and announces that she'd decided to "Give Dread something to remember us by," which prompts a warm expression from the previously kind of dickish Hawk. Fickle!

The exposition fairy inspires Tank to remind Cap that there's a bomb about to explode on the computer in the next room, and that their power suits are almost drained, because these things get slightly worse gas mileage than '57 Chevy with six passengers and a trunk full of gold bullion. For his trouble, he takes one to the chest in the next volley of gunfire and powers down. A cutaway to the bomb shows 87 seconds left on the clock. Overunit Weber orders Power to surrender, but Cap responds by telling Weber to "This show is really terrible about pithy one-liners. That bit from Hawk about his ass being sore is pretty much the best we're going to get.Come try it." But just as Overunit Weber orders their destruction, the Wardoggies blast their way in through the wall. They don't actually do anything; the distraction just gives Cap an opening to gun down all the Bio-Mechs while Overunit Weber curls up in the fetal position. Can't have our heroes killing a human. Hawk offers them a lift, and the rest of the team races back to the curiously doorway-shaped hole. Tank looks back to tell the empty room "Less get out! Zeese plays gonna blow!" For emphasis, we cut back to the bomb timer, which now shows 15 seconds, even though it's only been 30 seconds since the last time we saw it. Exactly twenty seconds later, just as the Future Force and Wardoggies are driving away in their little tiny tank-jeep-of-the-future thing, the bomb explodes. Or maybe not. Something explodes, but it's clearly an entirely different design of building than the technodrome we've seen in every other exterior shot. And a good thing too, because Overunit Weber who they'd gone out of their way not to kill was still inside the technodrome.

With only a few seconds left in the episode, Vi and Hawk say their goodbyes and exchange a last kiss as the rest of the cast sort of stands around awkwardly, trying to figure out why the director didn't tell them all to wander out of frame for this bit so that it didn't look like everyone else had huddled around to watch Hawk make out. As the Wardogs drive away, Vi and Hawk exchange a last salute to each other, but since Hawk isn't being a passive-aggressive dick at the moment, it's a very relaxed and casual salute. In fact, Vi looks more like she's just waving at him, and Hawk looks more like he's tipping an invisible top hat at her.

And that, friends, is episode 2 of Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. I think it's a pretty solid one -- it's a character-focus episode for Hawk, which is a little weird this early on, but as I said before, I get the distinct impression that the aired ordering of these episodes didn't have a lot of thought put into it. The big thing you'll probably notice is that the plot of this story, at its most basic, is "One of our heroes meets up with an old love interest, gets shot at, then smooches. They raid a Dread base and blow it up after hearing a cryptic clue about 'Project New Order'. Dread sets up an obvious trap and the heroes fall for it." So on that level, it's basically the same story as last week. But this one lacks all the heaviness that comes from making a protracted rape metaphor. Further, by separating the episode out into the A-plot with Hawk and the B-plot with the others, this episode is a lot more balanced, giving everyone something to do, even if Pilot is limited to unlocking doors with sex toys. This episode has a lot more action, and just a lot more general-stuff-going-on, and it doesn't stray too far into dangerous territory by getting hung up on a protracted metaphor.

Which isn't to say that this episode is shallow: the whole thing with the Wardogs in general and Vi in particular is a prevailing sense of how just plain exhausting war is. We have all the proof we need that Vi and the Wardogs aren't cowards, and they aren't weak, but they've been fighting for years, and they're just plain tired of it. And the way Hawk and Vi act toward each other feels pretty natural -- I give Hawk grief for being a dick to Vi, but it's a very natural sort of dickishness: his friends are in danger so he lashes out -- and they're both quick to forgive when the crisis passes. I don't especially like Hawk in those scenes, but I can understand where he's coming from.

Now, this series is really a showcase for why "Half-Hour Drama" is not a common modern TV format. I really would have liked to have some insight into the Wardogs themselves. After their first scene, their screen presence basically shrinks down to "Graham Greene walks into the scene, delivers a message, then leaves." There just isn't time to develop more that the one of them -- we don't even learn most of their names.

Warning: the next paragraphs contain a discussion of gender essentialism and the portrayal of women in the media. If you're not cool with that, skip ahead to the paragraph accompanied by a Mad Libs cover.

]]> http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com/2011/11/yippie-ti-yi-yo_get_along_war_.html http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com/2011/11/yippie-ti-yi-yo_get_along_war_.html TV Fri, 04 Nov 2011 23:11:45 -0500 I tried serving this with some low-carb simulated popovers using flax meal, but they didn't turn out. Real popovers might have worked out.

• 1 large steak, cut into strips
• 8 oz. Sliced Bell Peppers and Onion
• 1 tsp unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
• 2 oz (1/2 can) Sliced Mushroom Stems and Pieces

For the sauce:

• 1 T butter
• 1 T heavy cream
• 1/2 c milk
• 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
• 1/2 tsp mustard
• 1 T white wine
• 1/3 c Cheddar Cheese, shredded
• 2 T Grated Parmesan cheese

Sear the steak in a large pan and drain. Add the flour and toss the pieces lightly to coat, then add Worcestershire and reduce heat to medium. Add peppers, onions, and mushrooms. Cook over medium heat until steak reaches desired doneness.

Meanwhile, melt butter in a small sauce pan. Whisk in xantham gum, then remove from heat and add cream. Bring mixture up to temperature slowly but do not boil, then incorporate milk. Add cheeses, stirring continuously until cheese melts. Add wine and mustard, and stir briskly.

Just before serving, pour cheese sauce over steak and toss lightly.

]]> http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com/2011/11/ross_cooks_inside_out_cheese_s.html http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com/2011/11/ross_cooks_inside_out_cheese_s.html Food Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:30:35 -0500 In retrospect, I might try baking the zucchini layer for a few minutes to dry it out a bit for a firmer texture.

• 1/4 c heavy cream
• 1/3 c Grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 lb lean ground beef
• 8 oz. Sliced Bell Peppers and Onions (Costco or BJs has a good mix they sell as fajita vegetables
• 8 oz. Zucchini Slices, Frozen
• 1 oz almonds, ground and toasted
• 1/2 c Mozzarella cheese, shredded
• 1/3 c Cheddar and Gouda cheeses (or really anything you like), coarsely shredded
• About 30 slices of turkey pepperoni
• Salt
• 1/4 tsp Garlic powder
• Basil
• 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Preheat oven to 350°. In a measuring cup, add parmesan and garlic to cream and whisk. Spray a deep casserole dish with your favorite baking spray and layer the bottom with zucchini slices. Brown the beef in a large skillet, adding salt and Worcestershire Sauce. Drain the beef and layer atop the zucchini. Cover the beef with a thin layer of ground almonds. Pour about 3/4 of the cream and Parmesan mixture over the almonds. Lightly sautee the onions and peppers in the beef drippings and layer in the dish. Top with a layer of pepperoni. Cover with mozarella and dot with the other cheeses. Sprinkle with basil and drizzle remaining cream sauce. Bake at 350° for about an hour.

]]> http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com/2011/10/i_recommend_doing_the_prep_wor.html http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com/2011/10/i_recommend_doing_the_prep_wor.html Food Wed, 26 Oct 2011 23:42:29 -0500