The Geek Quotient v1.5

Have you ever been watching a show and realized "Hey, this is a pretty geeky show. I wonder how it stacks up to other geeky shows?" Have you then said "If only there was a formula I could follow that would tell me exactly how geeky a show is!" Even if you haven't, you should have, and now you need look no further than the Geek Quotient Worksheet v1.5!

It's simple. You take your show, and you assign it points based on the criteria that follow, add up all the points, and then compare it to all your other geeky shows. Add up all your numbers to get an overall rating of how awesome a show is to the geek culture.

Let's see how some fan favorites add up.

The Criteria:

Positive:

+5 for each cast member of a really awesome, undisputed icon show (for instance, Firefly will start with a +35 just from here; Star Trek: The Next Generation will start with a +35 also, +40 if you forgive Wil Wheaton for his teen years) (if a show of unknowns becomes an icon, they are all awarded their +5 to take with them to their next project)

+5 for each proven writer, producer or creator (Joss and JJ, of course, but also Rodenberry, Rockne S O'Bannon, Steven Moffatt, Jane Espenson, Kurtz and Orci and so on)

+3 for awesomeness outside of television that guest stars or writes, to be applied to that season / +1 to the show's overall rating (so the recent "The Doctor's Wife" written by Neil Gaiman gets +3 for season 6 and +1 for the show as a whole)

+2 for a reboot, sequel or adaptation, with another +1 in reserve in case it lasts more than one season

+1 for each classic scifi trope: spaceships, aliens with weird foreheads, other worlds, time travel, unexplained phenomena (as a major plot device, not just one episode), wormholes, weird science, neat gadgets, super powers, etc

+1 for clever references to other big geek-culture elements, up to a total of 3 a season (otherwise Big Bang Theory and the like will just blow everyone away), with a reserved +1 for consistent use

+1 for each of the elements of good writing that consistently appear, to reward real, honest, quality (things like consistency, snappy dialog, good plotting, complex storylines, good character arcs)

+1 for getting a defined and planned ending

+1 for each spin-off, another +1 if they last more than a season

Negative:

-1 for too much studio involvement that waters down the show

-1 for poor writing that doesn't turn out to be "so bad it's good"

-1 for 'mainstreaming' to the point of sucking the life out of SF/F tropes (see: No Ordinary Family, Heroes by the end, Defying Gravity, etc)

-1 for a character everyone agrees is terrible (the JarJar Clause)

So, by these criteria, we get the following numbers:

Firefly - at least 55

ST:TNG - at least 92

Doctor Who (reboot) - at least 50 (if you count most actors as geek-unknown until this show, more by far when the series is over and they all get their +5 bonus)

Big Bang Theory - about 20

Castle - about 19

V - 30

As you can see, it shows how even non-SF/F shows like Castle can get their geek on because of carry-over geekiness. And it helps define whether a new show is geeky enough to pick up when the new season starts: How many known geek icons does it have? How many tropes? How many creators and writers with a proven track record? Everything you need to know!

How do your shows line up?

Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

One of the best things about having a birthday on Memorial Day Weekend is that I almost always get a big blockbuster movie for my own personal holiday. This year, one of the ones I got was Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Being a geek, I firmly believe that any birthday involving pirates is a good birthday.

The movie, however, didn't quite live up to the hype. Close, but not unequivocal.

This far into a series, it's almost impossible to review a movie without comparing it to it's predecessors. This one is shorter than World's End (movie 3) and less dark as well as less unnecessarily convoluted. But it wasn't as fun as the original movie, or as pure, though there was something of the feeling that they might be trying to recapture a little of that essence. It was definitely entertaining, but not mind-alteringly-awesome like a first viewing of the first one. 

It would have been nice to have a little more sly reference to the fact that three stories have gone beforehand and two of the characters spent some time dead, and really, how that affected them. Other than Barbosa looking really rough throughout the movie without anyone even commenting on it, that is. 

And it lacked the heart that Orlando Bloom / Wil and Kiera Knightley / Elizabeth brought to the first three (when they weren't being annoying or confusingly-motivated), and I think a big part of that was that the preacher was introduced so heavy-handedly: he came across as unpleasantly Bible-thumpy without much reason other than being religious, and he was there for pretty much unexplained reasons. At first, it seemed like he was to be Angelica's love interest, but that fizzled out without any development, and his romance with Sirena was so classic and sincere that it really could have benefited from a little snarking and complication. Maybe some delving into exactly what it means to be in love with something not human. Some stakes other than 'maybe she won't like me back'. 

On the other hand, it was great seeing Jack up against a woman who was his equal enough to impersonate him. Their attraction didn't quite sell itself, but the dynamic was interesting enough to overlook that part a little. Sincere-Jack is strange: it's hard to know what to think of him, and it came just short of dulling the slimy charm of the character, but that was fixed by the resolutely non-sappy ending.

As for the structure, there were far too many elaborate chase scenes, and the villains were not as interesting or as commanding of attention of Norrington. It would have been better to cut the chases down just enough to get a little character development on Barbosa's men and the Spaniards. But you know what? All of these quibbles / failed requirements of a truly good movie are basically after-the-fact. While watching it, it's as entertaining as it should be, and there was just enough growth for Jack that it will be interesting to see where he goes next. He's being pursued by the only woman who almost won him over, and we're pretty clear on the fact that his personality requires an audience and companions to take on his adventures, so anything that comes after this should be more solid, now that the status quo has been reset.

Should be, because if it isn't, us fans will have something to say about it.

How to write Scifi and Fantasy: Worldbuilding

If you read enough of these books and watch enough of these movies, sooner or later, you'll start thinking that you'd like to contribute to the Grand Tradition that has nurtured you all this time. You'll pick up a pen and start writing Science Fiction or Fantasy. And that's great. The SF/F community is still relatively small, and it's unusually open and supportive. Geeks stick together even when they go pro. 

But that doesn't mean you can just start cranking out stories and they'll be perfect right off the bat. Ideas are easy: writing is hard work, and you have to love the whole process, because it is a process. And one of the first steps is worldbuilding.

In the most basic terms, worldbuilding concerns where your story is set. A planet? A ship? A particular town? One room in a house? But it also concerns the world around that specific place. All of that world. Now, you won't be using every single detail in your story (that's called infodumping and it's a no-no because you're not writing a textbook here), but you need to at least have an idea of what you're doing and what you're working with, so you can portray it honestly and consistently as you tell your story. Consistency is the key: specfic fans know when something doesn't make sense, and acting like it does without a damned good reason is insulting to their intelligence. And you don't want to talk down to your audience.

So here's a few things to get you started on the world your characters will live in:

- How is the society different then the one we live in out here outside the book? How is it the same? What justifies the differences? If women are chained to the wall at all times, there has to be a reason--some ancient feminine overlord that was overthrown, a particularly cruel patriarchy with specific and literal rules, a false (or true!) belief that women can fly, something.

- What other societies surround and interact with the one you're concerned with? A rebel ship needs something to rebel against, a king needs other kings to trade with and make war on. And all of it needs to be set up so it makes sense socially, economically, historically, and logically.

- What do they eat, and why? How do they sleep? Are there laws, religious doctrines, scarcity concerns?

- If you're using magic or science, what are the rules? What can these things do and not do? What does their use do to the people who use them? What does it to do the world? Things are always more interesting when they're hard, when they cost your characters something. 

- What is the actual physical world like? What is the weather, the gravity, the plate tectonics, the terrain? If you're inside, what are the building materials, the quality of construction, the artistic flourishes, the requirements and prohibitions that went into making this world? How does any of this affect the people who will populate it? How have they adapted? How have they harnessed it?

As I said, these are just starter questions. General things to ask yourself. As you get into the meat and bones of your new reality, you'll find more specific things you'll have to figure out before you can speak authoritatively about the plants or the animals or the geography or the society. What are the what-ifs that concern you and that you'd like to explore? If a question like "what if we all lived on an asteroid?" bores you, don't write about that. But if it fascinates you and makes you want to figure out how to make it work, that's a great place to start. Then grow your reality from there.

VH1 Brings back "Pop-Up Videos"

When VH1 premiered in the mid-90s, "Pop-Up Videos" are what made the channel worth watching. They were something new after a decade or so of straight-forward music videos, and they offered more: behind-the-scenes and biographical tidbits of information about the people, places and topics of the songs they presented. All without interfering with the videos themselves. Perfectly-poised at the start of the Trivia Age, "Pop-Up Videos" was an icon that was quickly imitated throughout pop culture and is still referenced today.

And now they're bringing it back. After being off the air for ten years, VH1 was ordered 60 new episodes to premier this fall. Reuters reports that the format has been updated with interactive elements that basically allow people on Twitter and other social media sites to create their own pop-ups. This is a genius move on the part of the channel and the show's creators, because Twitter is king at this precise moment in time, and the internet both generates and craves trivia like never before. People want to be able to have a say in their viewing, and a whole generation remembers the show fondly while a new generation is waiting to discover it's wealth of info-bites.

On a channel suffering more and more from "channel drift" so that much of its programming as little or nothing to do with music anymore, this is a perfect balance. "Pop-Up Videos" can bring the music back to VH1 (finally!) without standing apart from the reality programming that currently dominates the line-up. If we're lucky, perhaps it'll usher in a revival of Music programming for the music channels.

(http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/25/us-popupvideos-idUSTRE74O86220110525)