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Saturday, November 26, 2011

Saturday Morning: Fun House

I have a confession for you all.

You know amusement parks? I love them. Or, at least I did before I realized that I am at the age where I can get motion sickness going on a merry-go-round. But when I was a kid, I loved going to the fair or to theme parks. It was the only place where a corn dog and cheese fries were considered a nutritional dinner, and where you could spin around and around on a Tilt-A-Whirl, and still manage to maintain some degree of your equilibrium.

There were some features of certain parks and fairs that for whatever reason I didn't like.

One was the various carnival games that were scattered all over the fairgrounds. Let's be completely honest here. 90% of those games are rigged as such that it's impossible to win the gigantic sized panda bear or stuffed Dora the Explorer doll. The only games I've ever had much luck in were the duck pond where everyone was guaranteed a prize, and the Whack-A-Mole games. But that's fine, everyone should get to play one of these games at least once. I actually shake my head at the various people who spend twenty dollars just to win their significant other a prize.



There are a few rides as well that I absolutely refuse to go on. One of which is the Crazy Dance ride. You may have seen it in the movie Problem Child 2, as it's the ride that Junior speeds up that causes everyone in the park to simultaneously upchuck their corn dogs and cheese fries. My experience on the Crazy Dance wasn't quite that traumatic, but the last time I rode one, I found the compartments to be unusually tight, and I felt more claustrophobic than anything. Of course, the last time I danced the Crazy Dance, I was at my heaviest. Maybe if I got on at my current size, I'd find it much more enjoyable.



Then there's the rides that go up high in the air. Think Ferris Wheels, that ride with all the swings, some roller coasters that have upside-down loops. Yeah, NO. Not my cup of tea. I get vertigo just climbing a ladder.

And then there's the fun house attraction. I know lots of kids who LOVED going through the fun house. Climbing up those moving staircases, walking through the spinning barrels, walking across rope bridges.

Myself? I found it boring.

To me, in order for it to be called a fun house, one would think that it would have to be...well, fun. The fun houses I went through were anything but. After a while, I found the whole venture of going through the fun house to be completely dull, and a waste of two tickets that I could have spent on the Tilt-A-Whirl.

Of course, maybe my experiences were somewhat spoiled by a particular game show made for children. A game show that I used to watch religiously as a youngster, and a game show that I really wanted to be a contestant on. The only problem was that the show filmed in the United States, and since I was Canadian, the odds of me becoming a contestant were slim. Also, at the time the show aired, I was a bit too young to be a contestant. By the time I was old enough to be one, the show had been canceled.

What timing, huh?

So, what game show am I talking about? Well, it happens to be the subject for today's Saturday morning discussion. And while many stations used to air the show during the week, one affiliate used to air it on Saturdays.

Hence my reasoning for talking about it today.



The game show happens to be the show Fun House, which ran for three seasons. The first two seasons were aired in syndication between 1988-1990. It was later picked up by the FOX network for the 1990-1991 season.



The show was basically along the same lines of other game shows that aired for kids at the time, such as Finders Keepers or Double Dare. The prizes ranged from bicycles to vacations in Disneyland, and the ways that the contestants could win these prizes was to run through a gigantic version of an amusement park fun house where every room had a prize hidden inside of it. And sometimes, the prizes were well hidden. Sometimes, you had to bust balloons to find the prize inside. Sometimes you had to walk over a shaking bridge. The centerpiece of the Fun House set was a gigantic water slide that teams could slide down into a swimming pool. The house looked like it was something that came out of a child's imagination, and was probably the main reason why I found amusement park fun houses boring in comparison.

In fact, I did some digging, and found this clip of the people running into the fun house to grab everything they can. Check it out below. I'll explain it a little later in this entry.



So, Fun House was hosted by a man by the name of J.D. Roth. At the time, Roth was one of the youngest game show hosts ever. 



He was just 20 years old when Fun House premiered. Since then, Roth has made a name for himself as a television producer with shows like The Biggest Loser and Beauty And The Geek to his credit.

The way the game worked was that you had two teams of two, almost always a boy and a girl. One was in red, the other one in gold. Each team had a cheerleader backing them up.



No, seriously, they were actual cheerleaders. Jacquie and Sammi Forrest. If memory serves me, Jacquie was the red team cheerleader, and Sammi was the gold. But I could be wrong. They were twins after all.



The first part of the game involved one or both members of the team participating in some sort of stunt where they could earn points for their team. The way the stunts worked is that one stunt would be performed by just the boys. Another stunt would be performed by just the girls. The third would involve both members of the team. Some stunts took place just outside the contestants podium. Some took place inside the Fun House set.

And ALL of them were messy as heck, and the grosser the stunt, the better it was for us kids. Here's one example of one of these stunts.



Pretty cool, huh?

The winner of the stunt would get 25 points for their team. If the stunt somehow ended in a tie, both teams would get 25 points.

At the end of each stunt, the teams (which at this point were soaked with water, chocolate, green slime, or paint) would return to the contestant podium to answer some sort of general knowledge question that was loosely tied to the theme of the stunt they just performed. The first person to buzz in would earn an additional 25 points.



After the three stunts were completed, the next round would be the Fun House Grand Prix. If you click on the link below, you can see one of these in action.



Now, the Fun House Grand Prix was kind of like one of those soap box derby races. The teams would have to push some gigantic contraption (which could resemble a car, a spaceship, or even a bathtub), making at least three or four pit stops along the way to perform some mundane task, like putting peanut butter on a slice of bread, or building a tower of blocks. Along the way, they would also have to keep an eye out for black and white token chips. These chips ranged in point value from 10 points to 25 points which were then added to the contestants final total. It was imperative for teams to try and come in first, for if they did, they would get a 25 point bonus for crossing the finish line first.

The points were added up and barring a tie-breaker situation where a toss-up question was asked, the team with the most points would be allowed to enter the fun house area.

As you've seen in the clip posted above, the fun house was one extensive area filled with dozens of gift tags. Most of the gift tags in the house were green tags with a dollar amount ranging from $50 to $250, but there were some red tags available to grab which would give our players toys, games, electronics, and sporting goods.



To sweeten the deal, there was one prize tag at random that was selected to be the Power Prize. If one of the team members grabbed that tag before the two minute time limit ran out, they would get an additional prize. This prize was almost always a luxurious vacation to such places as Hawaii, Disney World, Universal Studios, and Six Flags Amusement Parks. So, needless to say, there was plenty of incentive to make it through the house as quickly as possible. In addition to the time limit, a player could only grab a maximum of three tags each time they entered the house. After they grabbed the third tag, they'd have to leave the fun house, and switch out so their partner could run in.

The show also had its own version in the United Kingdom, which ran a lot longer than the American version. It ran from 1989-1999 and was hosted by Pat Sharp. 



It was similar in every way to the US version right down to the cheerleaders. There was even an American spin-off of the show called College Mad House, which was hosted by Greg Kinnear, which saw college co-eds competing against each other. The rules were slightly changed, and the challenges were a lot more adult in nature, but it was essentially the same idea.

The original version was the best version though. It was definitely a show that could be fast-paced and messy. But looking back on it all, that fun house put any of the ones I walked through in my youth to shame.

This month, I've had some fun talking about some live-action shows each Saturday, but I promise you all, the Saturday morning cartoons will return as we close out 2011. Stay tuned!

Friday, November 25, 2011

TGIF: WKRP In Cincinnati

Hello, everyone!

Welcome to Black Friday. I hope all of you who are off to get major deals on electronics, toys, and appliances manage to get what you want without any cuts, bruises, and broken bones. And a special shout out to all of our American readers here as well, hoping that your Thanksgiving yesterday was filled with lots of food, and fun with friends and family.

And for today's blog entry, I have a special post-Thanksgiving treat for all of you Americans out there, and for the rest of the global population, I hope that you can get some humour out of today's posting.

How is today's posting linked to an American Thanksgiving? I'll get to that in a second.

But first, I have a question to pose to all of you, as well as a story linked to it.



Have you ever won anything from a radio contest or promotion? Really, anything at all? Concert tickets? Free food? Cold hard cash?

I have. In fact, the last two I've managed to win.

When I was about ten years old, I ended up winning a free pizza...though to be fair, all I really had to do was have my name sent in to the birthday club, and had my birthday read on air. And on a rather ironic note, my nephew ended up winning the birthday pizza for three years in a row!




But really, our local radio station, 104.9 JRFM (formerly known as 830 CFJR on the AM Radio dial), had quite a few contests, as did the sister station, 103.7 BOB FM (formerly known as The River). My sisters both won tickets to concerts and to the circus, as well as albums, clothing, gift certificates, and other various gifts. My mother is also one who likes to participate in radio contests, and one of her pet peeves in regards to these contests are ones where you have to call in to be a specific numbered caller, and that caller would either be an instant winner or get a chance to play a game. My mom would get so angry when she couldn't get through on the line, and even angrier when someone she knew DID get through! But, that was the chance people took.

However, in another pill of irony to swallow, while my mother would try constantly to play in radio contests and not get through, on the few instances when I would enter the contest, it didn't take me long to get on the line at all. In fact, in one of these contests a few years back, I was caller number seven, I believe it was. I had to play a game similar to the Clock Game on the Price Is Right where if I guessed the right number, I'd win the same dollar amount in cash. I ended up taking home a cheque for $431.00...the most I've ever won in any sort of contest. Not a bad chunk of change.

The one thing that I can say about our radio contests and promotions is that most of the prizes were fantastic, and the contests often went off without too much trouble.

Of course, not all radio promotions were perfect. Some of them failed miserably.



There's a book that I got for a Christmas present one year. In a twist of fate, my mom had actually won the book as a prize in a radio contest herself. The book was called 'The CHUM Story: From The Charts To Your Hearts'. It was written by Allen Farrell (a former CHUM staffer back in the day), and it was a detailed history of the early history of the CHUM radio station in Toronto, Ontario from the beginning until the 1970s. It's a really great book, by the way, and it showed a lot of behind-the-scenes moments about how the radio industry worked back in those days. I highly recommend it.

Anyway, there was a whole section on all the various contests that they did over the years, and how some of them didn't end happily. In one contest, they tried to give away a dog to promote the television program Lassie (the dog was like a Lassie clone), and the dog was so nervous, the family that won it had to return it to the station, as it kept going to the bathroom all the time.

And then there was the time that CHUM Radio ran a Father's Day contest where people would nominate their fathers for a chance to be named Father of the Year by CHUM, and the selection they chose happened to be a deadbeat dad who fathered illegitimate children all over the city for the better part of a decade!!!

Whoops!

The point is that radio contests are just like any sort of contest. Most of them are fantastic ideas with a great reward, but some of them for whatever reason just falter.

Like a fictional promotion done by a fictional radio station on a very real television sitcom.



The date was October 30, 1978. Although Thanksgiving in America wasn't for another few weeks yet, the fictional radio station, WKRP in Cincinnati was running a radio promotion for the holiday. It was supposed to have been an ingenious idea that nobody else had thought of. According to Arthur Carlson, the head of the station, he had insisted that his idea would end up being the greatest Thanksgiving promotion in radio history that people would end up remembering for years to come.



Arthur Carlson would end up getting his wish, but not for the right reasons.

Arthur's plan was to take a helicopter up in the air. He would have his field reporter, Les Nessman, cover the action live from the shopping mall where the promotion was set to take place. When they were up in the air, Arthur and Herb Tarlek, WKRP's account executive, would throw turkeys out of the helicopter down towards the people on the ground, offering free Thanksgiving turkeys to the lucky people who happened to catch one. Considering how expensive Thanksgiving dinner could be, getting a free turkey could be a great money saver.

There was just one problem. The turkeys that Arthur and Herb were tossing out of the helicopter were live turkeys.

Even bigger problem. They were domesticated turkeys who COULDN'T FLY.

Sigh...just watch the carnage below...


How disasterous was that? I couldn't even imagine myself running around a shopping plaza, trying to avoid a barrage of turkeys being tossed directly at me.

And yet that episode is widely regarded as one of the best episodes of the sitcom WKRP In Cincinnati by fans and critics. It's even ranked at #40 on TV Guide's Top 100 Episodes Of All Time).

When you take a look back at WKRP In Cincinnati though, it was highly underrated, and ultimately was canceled not because of bad writing, but because it kept bouncing around from time slot to time slot, and people got frustrated with trying to find it in their TV listings.



WKRP In Cincinnati ran for four seasons between 1978 and 1982. A revival of the series was made in the early 1990s, running between 1991 and 1993. The show was created by Hugh Wilson, and the sitcom was based on his own experiences working in advertising and sales in Atlanta, Georgia's WQXI radio station. In fact, almost all of the characters on the show were based on real people that Wilson encountered during his career.

Another plus that the show had was that the cast did not change at all during its four season run. There were no new characters introduced, but none left the show during its run. Considering that most shows now have one or more cast changes per year, this was very unusual at the time.

Now, from the clip I posted above, you've already met most of the cast, and I've talked about Arthur Carlson (Gordon Jump), Herb Tarlek (Frank Bonner) and Les Nessman (Richard Sanders). 



Those three characters were also the only three characters to appear in the 1991 revamp of the series as regular cast members.



Other cast members included Andy Travis (Gary Sandy), who could easily be called the main character (for a while he and Jump were the only cast members credited in the opening titles). It was Andy who moved to WKRP as its program director in an effort to keep the radio station from going under. With his spotless reputation for taking failing radio stations and turning them into ratings gold, it was expected that Andy would do the same for WKRP, but unfortunately, his tenure with the station was met with much frustration due to Carlson's incompetence and the wacky behaviour of the various deejays and staff members. Still, he managed to last four years at the station, so that was a positive.

You had Dr. Johnny Fever and Venus Flytrap (Howard Hesseman and Tim Reid respectively) who were the two deejays that we happened to see on screen. 



Dr. Johnny was a burned-out disc jockey who came to WKRP after being fired from a Los Angeles radio station for saying a nasty word on air. That word was booger.  You have to wonder how strict the guidelines were regarding the FCC circa 1978, don't you? Here's a bit of trivia for you all. Howard Hesseman who played Dr. Johnny actually worked as a disc jockey before he went into acting. 



As for Venus Flytrap, he's the late-evening deejay who likes to do his set with mood lighting and a smooth-talking persona. His real name, Gordon Sims, is never used, and details of his personal life prior to WKRP are sparse.



Herb Tarlek would always wear a white belt and white shoes with whatever garish outfit he wore, and despite his being married, he would always pursue the buxom blonde receptionist of WKRP, Jennifer Marlowe (Loni Anderson). 



But the one quality that I'm sure all women could celebrate was that Jennifer had a brain underneath all that blonde hair, and she wasn't afraid to use it.



Les Nessman tried to be a serious news reporter and put everything into presenting himself in a positive light, but he didn't exactly succeed at this. Case in point, the clip from the episode “Turkeys Away”. He would often come into work with a bandage over some part of his body from some sort of accident he got into, but did you know that this recurring gag came about from a real injury that actor Richard Sanders experienced? During the filming of the pilot, Sanders bopped his head on a studio light and gashed his forehead quite badly. He was forced to wear a bandage to cover the cut, and Sanders decided to incorporate it as a running gag.



Then there was Jan Smithers' role as Bailey Quarters, the radio station ingenue, who was in charge of billing and traffic reports in the first couple of seasons of the show. Bailey also happens to hold a degree in journalism, and her real dream is to become a broadcast executive, so Mr. Carlson decided to let Bailey try her hand at on-air reporting...a job that she excels in better than Les ever could. Another one of Bailey's quirks is her shyness and quietness, qualities that she eventually overcomes by the end of the series. But those quirks helped Jan Smithers get the role of Bailey, as Hugh Wilson stated that while actresses TRIED to act shy, Smithers always WAS shy, and that helped her get the role.

I think some of the reasons why I liked the show though was the fact that during its original run, the show played real songs by real artists. You'll hear different, more generic music being played in syndication, but in the original run, you'd hear songs by Foreigner, Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Robert Palmer, and others.

And almost every episode of the series was based on a real-life event, either based on Hugh Wilson's past experiences, or a social commentary on real life news stories. An episode entitled “In Concert” was based on the 1979 tragedy in which eleven people were killed at a Who concert in Cincinnati by suffocation after being trampled on by fans rushing into the concert hall to see the show.

And, would you believe that “Turkeys Away” was reportedly based on a REAL-LIFE event that happened at WQXI, the station that Hugh Wilson worked at before he created the show?

Now, that is a scary thought.  


Thursday, November 24, 2011

Thursday Night At The Arcade: Final Fantasy VII's Midgar

I'm just an average guy of average age living in an average town working an average job. Sounds pretty average, right?

I don't claim to know much about economics, finances, or the stock market. I imagine that if I had, I wouldn't have nearly the average life I currently live today, now would I? But, I don't really get what's going on with the economy, and it's not because of ignorance as much as it is me just being completely clueless.



I keep reading about all of these Occupy Wall Street movements that are popping up all over the world.  It is true that as of this writing, most of these groups have been dispelled or asked to vacate their protest spots, but there's still a few people protesting away.

It all kicked off in September 2011 when a group of people started protesting in Zuccotti Park, which was near New York City's Wall Street financial district. Some of the things the group was protesting were economic and social inequality, high unemployment, greed, corruption amongst financial leaders, and undue influences of corporations and the government.

I'm also hearing a lot of talk about the 99% and the 1%. The 1% supposedly representing the wealthiest people in the world, and the other 99% being the rest of the world, and how the divide between rich and poor keeps dividing.

But, is it really that dire?

Some statistics and charts seem to say that it is. Reportedly, in 2006, the top 1% of the world earned 18.8% of all income made...which is a little more than double the percentage of the same amount earned by the top 1% in 1980. And a study done in 2007 reported that only 20% of all Americans owned 85% of the country's wealth, while the bottom 80% only owned 15%.

Some rather sobering statistics there.

And, I'm not saying that things aren't grim in the economical aspect. I'm getting by, yes, but I certainly would not classify my own status as being within the 1%. And yes, I'm sure that there are some business owners and heads of huge conglomerates that have done some rather shady business dealings, and have ended up causing more harm than good. Just Google Bernie Madoff to see what I mean.

But at the same time, there are lots of people who have legitimately worked their fingers to the bone to get everything that they have gotten in their lives. They've scrimped and saved everything to be able to afford the lifestyle they live, much to the expense of spending time away from their homes and families to do this.

So, I guess my opinion of Occupy Wall Street is this. I can understand the message behind it, and I can even understand the frustration that a lot of people are feeling over it...but I don't think I myself can fully support the movement...at least not one hundred per cent. If I knew that everyone in the 1% was a corrupt, evil individual whose only purpose in life is to make money, I suppose I might feel differently. It would be so much simpler if everything was so cut and dry, but the truth is, it just isn't so.

That's really all I have to say about that. But it's interesting that today's featured video game is set in a world that much like ours seemed to be experiencing the same thing in regards to the 1% vs. 99% mentality that some in our world seem to have.



Have any of you played the video game Final Fantasy VII? It was released worldwide in 1997 by Square, and depending on who you ask, it can either be the best game in the whole Final Fantasy franchise, or the most overrated.

Myself? I enjoyed the game very much. Apparently, so did a lot of others. There were spinoffs, and mobile games, and movies made from Final Fantasy VII. And nearly fifteen years since its release on the PlayStation console, the game is still debated and discussed by players all over the world.

(SPOILER ALERT: Yes, Aeris Gainsborough dies in the game, and no, you CANNOT bring her back to life. EVER.)

Final Fantasy VII is a HUGE game to get through. The last time I played the game myself, I think the timer read something like fifty-six hours or somewhere around that number.  And, no, I didn't play those fifty-six hours consecutively. That would be insanely stupid.  And besides, I saw the episode of 1000 Ways To Die that dealt with people dying after marathon video game sessions to verify my stance on the matter.

But just to give you an idea as to how big the game was to play, the first six to eight hours of the game are spent in ONE city. One gigantic metropolis of a city which could have easily had an Occupy Wall Street protest group within its limits if it were real.



And that city is what this blog topic is about.



Welcome to Midgar. The largest city in the entire world of Final Fantasy VII. A city where some of the richest and most prosperous people in the world live on the upper levels of the city. The city is divided into nine sectors, numbered from 0-8. There's always lots to do on the upper levels of the town. If you wanted to see a play called Loveless, you could. If you wanted to buy a car, you could. If you wanted to live a life of luxury, you could.



The centerpiece of MIdgar was the massive skyscraper, located in the heart of Sector 0. The skyscraper was the official headquarters of the Shinra Electric Power Company. The employees of the company were well paid, and the company was a moneymaker from the get-go. It originally started off as a weapons manufacturer, but over the last few years, the company made the decision to provide electric power to the global population. The more that people paid, the easier life became. The way that Shinra provided the electric power was through the use of newly discovered mako energy. The company initially started extracting mako from the planet to use for powering up appliances and keeping lights turned on, but soon the company got greedy. Headed by President Shinra, his son Rufus, and such minions as Heidegger, Scarlet, Palmer, and Professor Hojo, the Shinra Company started building reactors in other towns, and began infusing mako energy into powerful weapons. The company used some of the profits to hire a huge military force, even building a military base in the town of Junon to send a message to the world.

The message was that they were in full control, and that the world better appreciate them or else.

The company even injected young men with mako energy to turn them into SOLDIERS, whose sole purpose was to defend the company against everyone who tried to stop them.

And certainly, there were people who wanted to stop them.

The main group being that of AVALANCHE, a group that Shinra has dubbed a terrorist organization. When we first meet the group, there are a total of six members. There's Barret Wallace, the leader of the group, who orders the team to destroy each and every one of Midgar's Mako Reactors. There's Tifa Lockhart, a bartender who doubles as an expert in martial arts. Then there's Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie, a trio of people who specialize in building bombs, breaking codes to secret rooms, and creating fake identification cards.

And then we have Cloud Strife, the newest member of AVALANCHE, who has a childhood connection to Tifa, and who seems to have brief moments of deja vu during the course of the game, but he's unsure of what they mean.



We quickly learn by playing through the first few minutes of the game, and blowing up Sector 1's reactor why AVALANCHE is against Shinra.

Immediately after blowing up Sector 1's reactor, the group escape to Sector 7. But, not the part of the sector that is above ground, where all the nice, rich folk live their lives. No, the group's hideout in Sector 7 is actually below the upper level of the city of Midgar.

It could be best described as this. On the upper level of Midgar, the whole city (save for Sector 6 which at the time of the game was still under construction) was built on a gigantic platform, which could be described as a gigantic pizza. On top of the plate were lavish condos, expensive stores, and multimillion dollar factories.

Underneath the plate though were a whole bunch of towns. It was said that long before the construction of upper Midgar, the towns all had their own names and individual identities, but since Midgar was built, the towns lost their names, and are now referred to by the sector number directly above them.

There was another side effect to being underneath the plate. The people who lived underneath them lived a life of poverty. The homes they lived in were run-down and usually haphazardly constructed from old cardboard boxes and pieces of torn down buildings. The people in the slums basically did whatever they could to survive. They sold broken objects and repaired used things to make a living. Some got lucky by setting up shop in the seedy Sector 6 Wall Market. Mostly, they resorted to mugging and stealing from people to get money for food. Things were that bad.



The AVALANCHE headquarters were located underneath Sector 7, and unlike most of the other slums, Sector 7 at least had a tight-knit community feel to it. Sure, the structures were dilapidated and falling apart, but the people of Sector 7 were like a family to one another. Tifa ran a bar in the area called Tifa's Seventh Heaven, and this bar was the meeting spot for AVALANCHE. It was where they spied on Shinra from below, and where they plotted their next attacks against their reactors.

But before you go thinking that AVALANCHE was a bunch of terrorists who just wanted to cause trouble, consider this. You've seen pictures of Midgar in this blog entry. Does it not seem a little dark to you? That's because one side effect of the extraction of Mako energy for electric power was the huge levels of pollution it caused. Sure, the people in Midgar lived in climate-control comfort inside their towers of glass and steel, but the people in the slums had to breathe in all the smoke and pollution that billowed from the city. Many got sick and even died as a result of it. And the effects weren't just being felt in Midgar.  In Shinra's secondary base at Junon, the fish nearby were dying, and the water was too polluted to fish or even swim in. A real devastating blow to the community, considering that it once had a great fishing industry prior to Shinra's expansion.

There's also some personal reasons behind why AVALANCHE wants to shut Shinra down.



For Barret, his hometown of Corel was razed to the ground by Shinra after the reactor there went haywire, and Shinra blamed the town, despite the fact that Shinra's cutting of costs in building the reactor was likely to blame.  The same could be said for Tifa and Cloud, as the same fate befell their hometown of Nibelheim (though ironically enough, not by Shinra). Another reactor exploded in the village of Gongaga, which is how Aeris joins the party (her boyfriend Zack lived in Gongaga and was executed by Shinra SOLDIERS).



You see what's happening here? Seems as though everything Shinra touches turns to dust. Nibelheim, Corel, Gongaga, and Junon were all negatively affected by Shinra. Some of these towns suffered hardships, and some were even destroyed.

You can see why Barret, Tifa, Cloud, and the others want to do everything in their power to stop Shinra from destroying even more lives.

So, on their next journey, they successfully destroy Sector 5's Reactor, but in the struggle, Cloud ends up separated from the rest of the group, and it's in the slums of Sector 5 that Cloud meets Aeris. An interesting note to make in Cloud's meeting of Aeris is that around Aeris' house, flowers and plants are not only growing, but thriving nearby. Odd that this one place in Midgar looks like a happy, serene place, while the rest of the city is dark and gloomy. But, that's a different story altogether. Just a little bit of a footnote.

Anyway, Cloud and Aeris manage to reunite with Tifa in the middle of Wall Market, and end up arriving in Sector 7 just in time to witness a Shinra attack outside of the pillar separating the upper plate from the slums. Cloud and Tifa rush up the pillar where Barret is holding off the troops, and try to fight the Shinra people off to their best advantage. But when Aeris is kidnapped, and taken off to Shinra Headquarters, AVALANCHE is forced to withdraw. To add insult to injury, a time bomb, ordered to be placed by President Shinra, explodes just as Barret, Cloud, and Tifa escape. 



The bomb takes out the pillar, and the upper portion of Sector 7 collapses right onto the Sector 7 slums. Everyone underneath the plate is killed instantly, including Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie. The only survivor from Sector 7 is Barret's daughter, Marlene, who Aeris took to safety just before she was kidnapped by the Shinra.

The loss of Sector 7 is a devastating one for all involved, as the AVALANCHE team lost three members as well as everything they owned. Yet, it gave them even more ammunition for them to use against the Shinra company. For the Shinra company in that moment proved that they weren't above killing hundreds of innocent people just to protect their wealth and their prestige against those who wanted to take it away.

It was almost as if the company was getting a high from making the lives of those around them as miserable as possible, all for the incentive of a high salary and a life of luxury.

And really, corporations like that (and believe me, I'm sure that a few of them do exist in the world), are the types of corporations that the Occupy movement SHOULD be protesting against. Not the entire 1%. Just the part of the 1% that really need it.

I won't go on with describing the rest of the game in detail as it would take forever to talk about all the twists and turns. Heck, I'd need to do a whole entry on Sephiroth (the main antagonist of the game) alone. You'll just have to play it yourself.

But, I really wanted to talk about the city of Midgar in this blog entry. Because it's probably the best example I can think of to describe a worst case scenario. A place where dreams go to die a painful death, and where your every move is controlled by a corporation. I would also like to think that we're nowhere near experiencing this in the real world as of now, but you don't need to tell me how uncertain the future is. As I explained in this blog entry earlier, it would be easy to protest against companies like this if they all acted like Shinra Electric Power Company in Midgar, but we don't know that they are ALL like that. If they were, I would say, bring on the protest.

I guess for now, all we can hope for (especially for all of you in America who are celebrating Thanksgiving right now) is to look back, even if just for one day, and think how grateful we are to have what we have right now in the moment. Maybe some of you will take a look and see that you might have it pretty good right now, even if you are in the bottom 99% of the world.

After all...you could be in Midgar where the divide between rich and poor is so great that you could put the entire Midwest in that gap.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Across The Pond and Beyond - The 11 Doctor Whos

One thing that I find fascinating about the world of pop culture is the fact that whenever a beloved character in a television show gets recast by a different actor, the massive outcry that stems from it all.

You see it all the time in daytime dramas. Whenever a popular soap opera hero or villain gets recast, the outcry that appears on message boards and forums demanding that the original actor/actress return immediately is apparent right away.

Sometimes you see it happen in movies as well. Case in point, the James Bond franchise. There have been several actors to play the iconic role of James Bond over the last fifty years, and everyone has their preferences. I personally prefer Sean Connery in the role myself, though Pierce Brosnan comes a close second. Daniel Craig is okay in the role, and Roger Moore can be hit or miss depending on the movie.

We will NOT discuss Timothy Dalton.

But that's the whole thing about shows and movies that recast characters. We all have our own preferences as to which one we like best. Certainly not all of us are going to agree with each other, and there are some instances in which may have differing opinions. But, that's life. There's some circumstances where nobody could ever replace the original actor, while in others, the replacement ends up the bigger star. But that happens all the time in the world of Hollywood, and in shows that air outside the United States.

Today's blog topic deals with the subject of recasting, and this show probably has done it in a rather ingenious way. Did you know that the main character of the program has been recast TEN times since the show debuted? It's true! And the show is definitely one that is well known within the science-fiction crowd. Especially if you happen to live in the United Kingdom.



That show happens to be the BBC production, Doctor Who. And the show debuted in the UK on November 23, 1963, making the show 48 years young today.



Doctor Who is a show that I probably only caught sporadically in my youth. At the time, the only station that the program aired on was TVOntario, and if I remember correctly, the show only lasted on that network a few years before being pulled (which made sense, if you read further down).

The original run for the television series lasted several years. From 1963-1989, the show ran on BBC for 26 seasons, and was immediately praised by the viewing public for its electronic theme, its well-written storylines, and creative, low-budget sound effects.



The show depicted the adventures of a time-traveling alien, who took on the appearance of a humanoid doctor, exploring the universe in a time-traveling device known as the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space). It has the capability to zoom between time and space, and can send the Doctor anywhere in the world at any given time period. The problem was that the TARDIS took on the appearance of a dark blue police box, circa 1963, due to a faulty mechanism in the TARDIS that prevented it from changing appearance.

During the many adventures that Doctor Who encountered, he faced many foes and villains along the way. There's far too many to list here, as this blog entry could have the potential to be more than two hundred pages long. But, the majority of them can be found on Wikipedia right here. I suppose that like anything on Wikipedia, it's subject to little white lies and half-truths, but I figure I'd post it anyway so that the hardcore Doctor Who fans could get a laugh.

The Doctor wasn't entirely alone in his adventures. He would often have companions tagging along with him (usually in the form of a young, attractive woman), and during the series run, it was estimated that over 35 people served as companions to Doctor Who. Over the course of the series, the Doctor would take on new companions while saying goodbye to others, be it through them leaving of their own accord, or them being killed off.

Anyway, the original series ran until 1989. It was put on hiatus that year, putting the brakes on the 1990 season, due to a change in time slot, and declining public interest in the series. The BBC did make the promise that the show could return one day.

In 1996, the show was temporarily brought back as a film, meant to serve as a backdoor pilot to another Doctor Who revival. It wasn't until 2005 though that Doctor Who returned to the airwaves with all new episodes. The revival proved to be a huge hit with audiences, winning a BAFTA award (think the British version of the Emmy Awards) in 2006 for 'Best Drama Series'. As of 2011, the show still continues to air today.

The show is beloved by many who have watched it over the years, and it appears in the Guinness Book Of World Records as the longest running science-fiction television show in the world, and is widely regarded to be one of the highest rated science-fiction programs of all time.

But Doctor Who is one of those shows in which if you asked someone on the street who their favourite version of the Doctor was, it may have the potential to cause arguments and quite possibly if you were the type to see the worst in everything, social anarchy as we know it.

Since the program debuted in 1963, a total of eleven actors have portrayed Doctor Who. On the show, they explained the ever-changing face by stating that when the Doctor is near death, he has the ability to regenerate his body, at the cost of a different physical appearance. 






Hence the reason why the Doctor has looked like eleven different men. Sometimes, the present Doctor Who can even cross paths with his previous and future incarnations.

Here are the eleven actors who have played the role of Doctor Who below.



Beginning at the top, and then going across the rows, the eleven actors to play Doctor Who are...


Here's a little bit of trivia about Doctor Who, as well as some of the actors themselves.

Did you know that Matt Smith was the only Doctor Who to be nominated for a BAFTA award? Unfortunately, he lost to actor Daniel Rigby.

The premiere of Doctor Who aired one day after American president John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the premiere was understandably overshadowed by the event. The pilot was rebroadcast just before the second episode aired to much higher ratings.

As of 2011, 783 episodes of Doctor Who have been produced.

The show was extremely popular in the United Kingdom, but the suitability of the program for children was questioned throughout the show's original run. Mary Whitehouse, a morality campaigner in the UK during the 1970s, repeatedly campaigned against the BBC for airing Doctor Who, because she claimed it to be excessively gory and frightening for young children. Despite her pleas, more and more children watched the show. It almost became a recurring joke. John Nathan-Turner, who worked as a producer of Doctor Who during the 1980s, stated that he actually looked forward to the comments made by Whitehouse, as it usually meant a spike in ratings during the following episode.

Some of the earlier episodes focused on historical events, which was meant as a way to help teach children about history, while the shows that were set in the future were meant to educate children about science. By 1968, though, the historical episodes were dropped in favour of the science ones, as the production team were vocal about their dislike of them. The show continued to have the Doctor go back in time, but the scenes were mostly used as a backdrop.



The show had many, many writers during its run. While Robert Holmes is widely considered to be the writer most commonly associated with the series, Douglas Adams would end up making a success of himself in the literary world with the book “A Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy”.

Many of the episodes of Doctor Who recorded between 1964 and 1973 were destroyed, and about 108 episodes during the first six seasons of the show are considered missing. The BBC is now trying to find a way to restore these lost episodes, and children's show Blue Peter actually offered up a reward of a full-scale Dalek model as a reward to anyone who found one of these missing episodes.

Reportedly, as a Time Lord, the Doctor can only regenerate twelve times in his lifetime, leading to thirteen different looks. Doctor Who is currently in his eleventh. But lest you think that the series is about to come to an end, there is evidence that a Time Lord can circumvent this.

The first Doctor Who crossover occurred in 1973. Hartnell, Troughton and Pertwee all appeared on screen together. This would end up being one of Hartnell's last television appearances before his death in 1975.

Doctor Who's real name has, as of 2011, never been revealed.

The first country to screen Doctor Who outside of the UK was New Zealand. They started airing episodes in September 1964. Since then, a total of fifty different countries currently airs episodes of Doctor Who past and present.

Doctor Who is also a series that has participated with various charitable organizations over the years. One charity that the show has been involved with since 1983 is Children In Need. During the Children In Need telethon, various shows would come up with comedy sketches to air in the hopes of raising money. Doctor Who was no exception. Take a look!