Not much time-travel to review this week (#SFWApro)

On account of doing mostly Demand Media work, plus having two days off, as I posted yesterday.

I picked up a Back to the Future trilogy set as an impulse buy (it is, after all, legitimately a work expense) and at TYG’s request, rewatched BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985) that afternoon (ironically, she didn’t care for it). Free of the need to actually study the film, I found it a real pleasure to rewatch as Marty McFly grandfather paradoxes himself out of existence, then struggles to fix things, in-between inventing rock and roll and discovering his mother likes drinking, smoking and parking. I’ll watch the whole thing plus special features eventually, but probably not until next year. “My dead city has sent me to you.”

Like Peggy Sue Got Married, ALMOST NORMAL (2006) toys with the idea that going back to your teenage years after 40 isn’t such a great idea (“I don’t think you want an older man.”) but doesn’t do enough with it. The protagonist is a gay, lonely 40-year-old, out but not entirely accepted, which leaves him wishing at times he was “normal.” Then he gets in a car crash (sometime I must list the number of time travelers hurled into the past by car accidents) and wakes up in his senior year … except in this timeline being gay is normal and “breeders” are despised. Whatever point the creators were hoping to make founders on the big plot twist of having the lead meet a female student and suddenly discover he’s bi. And I can’t see the ending resolution would be any different if the time trip (or hallucination as the case may be) hadn’t happened. “Tell me again how great sex with me in the shower was.”

Moving to TV, the first season of the anime THE MELANCHOLY OF HARUHI SUZIMAYA won me over with an opening parody of found-footage films (“We don’t have any footage explaining this, so it doesn’t make much sense.”). The series proper is the story of headstrong Haruhi who puts together a club of fellow students based on what anime Scooby Doo-type groups have (a girl with big boobs, a mysterious transfer student), unaware that the members include an alien super-computer, a psi and a time traveler (hence my interest). This is fun, but footnote only—however the second season looks to have more time travel (it’s hard to find at an affordable price, though, even used). “Anyone accepting defeat will have to run ten laps around the school!”

Continuing rewatching the Second Doctor, DOCTOR WHO: The Ice Warriors has the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive on a near future Earth at a research station battling a new Ice Age (this is close enough to the second arc of Timeslip I checked to see if it had the same writer, but nope). Unfortunately, one of the researchers finds and thaws out a Martian whose plans to free his trapped ship from the ice conflict with the station’s plans to stop the glaciers. This was entertaining enough but the Ice Warriors are unimpressive adversaries, just a generic alien race (despite which they make several more appearances in the show). “At the time this man was entombed, there were only cavemen!”