Starhunter, episode 2 "Trust"

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We open with a transmission from Rudolpho to an unknown party, as he rants about bounty hunters after having just dismissed Dante from his office. He ends by saying it all hinges on trust.

In a cargo hold on the Tulip, Caravaggio keeps score as an armored up Luc and Percy duel with staves. Just as Percy lands poorly and injures her arm, Dante bursts in, ripping into Luc for injuring his niece, and into both because he'd banned sparring on his ship. When he learns Percy had asked Luc for training for a tournament she'd entered, he flares up even more, saying Percy's betrayed his trust and confining her to her quarters.

Starhunter, episode 1 "Peer Pressure"

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We open on a video of a husky dude named Adolphus joking about his "first time" before he gives our heroes a mission to recover a mother and son. We then cut to a video of the beautiful but piercing Dr. Nasreen, standing over a man who's been strapped to a table with a device wrapped around his head. Blood is crusted in his nose. She asks him a series of control questions, focused mainly on the unconditionality of "A mother's love is never wrong." She then orders him to stand up, but when he tries, his expression turns pained and he starts to thrash. He then goes still. She turns back to her work, saying, "A mother's love is never wrong." Through a window on a door, we see the eyes of her teenage son, Ajit, turn away.

A Slightly Longer-Lived Showcase: Introducing Starhunter

NOTE: Technically, Starhunter doesn't fit our criteria for a Short-Lived show, as it ran for two full seasons instead of just one. It's side a project I've wanted to do for a while with Igor, and now, with the Showcase in hiatus, it seemed like the perfect time to take it on. And since it didn't fully fit the regulations of this site, we were going to host the project at Made of Fail's First Impressions and Second Time Around blog. But I kept looking at the Showcase, which had been the most successful and widely read of the blog projects I've created, and how it just suddenly cut off with its future still up in the air, and I figured, why not. No, this series isn't Short-Lived, but I figure exploring it for the next 44 weeks* is just what the Showcase needs to keep running while we sort out that eventual future. Igor is a great writer, and I hope you all enjoy him as a new member of the team. And while Tony's currently in the middle of a bunch of stuff at the moment, I won't give up on gently tugging him back, so we'll see where he's at once things are settled.

[* There's a good chance this may only run 22 weeks for the moment, as Season 2 has suddenly become incredibly elusive, with DVD sets out of print and going for wild collectors' prices and legal streams suddenly pulled offline. Either way, we'll see Season 1 through.]

Stay Tuned

The Showcase has languished long enough, so we'll be ending the hiatus next week with a new (slightly different than normal) project and a new contributor for you all to meet. See you soon! :)

Site Hiatus

We can't elaborate on why just now, but events in our personal lives require us to put the site on hold until they can be sorted out. Thank you to all our readers for their support over the last two years, and we hope to return, in some form, in the near future.

Computer Warriors: The Adventure Begins, a One-and-Done Special

One-and-Done is an occasional special we'll use to showcase shows that never went beyond a single pilot episode.


A top-secret government facility, hidden in the wastelands of an American desert, hides Paralax, a massive supercomputer the size of a skyscraper which stretches deep into the ground. A technician is operating a mechanical arm to replace circuit boards. When one falls, he leans over, accidentally moving the claw of the arm into the open socket on the motherboard. A power surge erupts, triggering an unauthorized core dump into the network.

Final Thoughts on Pole Position...

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Tony

Have you ever used A1 steak sauce? Powerful stuff. It doesn't so much enhance as overwhelm what you pour it on. Pour it on a steak, it tastes like A1. Pour it on a shoe, it tastes like A1. Nostalgia can be a kind of mental A1 sauce, covering our memories with its pleasant tang until we can't taste the real thing anymore. That is, until we go back 20-30 years later for some leftovers, only to find the bottle is empty. That first fork-full can be rather unpleasant, and it usually doesn't get any better. I make this culinary comparison to illustrate just how blind-sided I was by Pole Position. While it never occupied the upper strata of my childhood favorites, I had (and will always have) very fond memories of watching it on Saturday mornings while eating a big bowl of Fruity Pebbles. I knew it would never live up to the promise of excitement and adventure made by its undeniably awesome theme song, but I also never dreamed it would be this awful.

Pole Position, episodes 9-13

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Episode 9 “The Bear Affair”

Tony

“The Bear Affair”? I’ve totally seen this! It starts off with these two big, hairy lumberjacks out chopping wood, and one of them is all, “My muscles are so sore,” and the other one is like, “I’ve got a cure for that,” and the first one says, “I bet you do!” ... [five minutes later] ... and then their boss shows up and says, “What’s going on here?!” ... [three minutes later] ... and he’s like, “No, I said grab my axe!”

Pole Position, episodes 4-8

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Episode 4 "Strangers on the Ice"

Noel

Well, Tony, it sure fits our luck that, right after we publicly dismiss the series and alter our entire blog format just to get through it quicker, we hit an episode that I actually find to be pretty decent. Not good, mind you, nor anywhere approaching great, but "decent" is a definite raising of the bar from where we've been until now.

Pole Position, episode 3 "The Chicken Who Knew Too Much"

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While our heroes put on a stunt show, Professor Barney Morrison is running for his life outside the sports arena, a caged chicken in his hands. On his tail are Byron and Shelly, a pair of young goons on motorcycles. They ditch the bikes when they have to enter the crowded arena, where they catch up with the professor, but he paid a kid to take the chicken to the Pole Position team. Shelly catches up with the kid, but not until after the boy puts the chicken in the hands of our heroes with a message that it's for Dr. Zachary. Our heroes call Dr. Zachary, who says Morrison is an old friend and one of the world's pre-eminent archaeologists, and that the chicken must be of vital importance.