WB 5

Dear English 110 Winter Quarter Class,

The one thing I would say about this class is that you should go in with an open mind. Even though the theme for the quarter was sci-fi, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I found that some of the sci-fi was actually somewhat interesting.

The one tip I would give you for this class is to do your work. When writing your drafts you should write them the first time so you can get comments back to improve your paper. Also, you should keep up on your blog comments. If you get behind, its a pain to catch up later.

I would definitely say that I learned a lot this quarter. I had never analyzed anything like I did in this class. It taught me to look at television shows in more detail and find the hidden meanings behind these things.

The last thing I would say is to have fun with the class. Goodluck!

Farscape

Farscape was exactly the kind of sci-fi that I expected to be watching this entire quarter. It had the space ships, aliens, and a very boring plot (as far as I was concerned). I found myself bored to tears after about 5 minutes of watching the show. I thought it might be interesting for about 2 minutes, and then next thing I know there were a bunch of aliens and I had no clue what was going on. The only part I found even remotely interesting was that first 2 minutes because of the relationship that the father and son seemed to share. He said he was proud of his son and genuinely seemed to care about him. I feel like you don't see that relationship often. After the first 2 minutes I wasn't really sure who were the good guys and who were the bad guys in this show anymore. Naturally, I found myself zoned out about 15 minutes into the show.

Overall Farscape ranks last out of all of the sci-fi that I watched this quarter. I really prefer the sci-fi that involves vampires it seems. I guess that's because I'm such a big twilight fan. I think Farscape was a lot different than all the other shows we watched. I expected it to be a lot like either BSG or Star Trek but I think it had little in common. I feel like the only thing it had in common with BSG was that the aliens were the bad guys. This show definitely did not even compare to my favorite show from this quarter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

STNG

I thought the episode "A Measure of a Man" was very interesting. It debated what made you human. I thought this episode had a very good message. When looking at the world, a lot of people are treated as if they are not human; they have no rights as a person and can not choose for themselves. I thought the ruling at the end of the episode where they said that he had the right to choose was very fitting. They said that he can feel and is aware of everything going on around him therefore he should be able to choose. I think that this should be applied across the world and everyone should be given the right to choose what they want.
When I looked at this episode verses the episode of the original Star Trek I watched I found some similarites and differences. First, the ship, the Enterprise, was in both. Also, both the episodes try to be very futuristic. One of the differences between the episodes I watched was who the conflicts were between. In the original episode, the crew was dealing with aliens that were from another planet and in Next Generation they were dealing with an internal conflict. Also, there seemed to be ships other than the Enterprise in the show.

Star Trek

I watched season 3 episode 1 of Star Trek. In this episode the Enterprise goes and lands on a planet even though Kirk was warned against it. When they land they find that they have been transported to a town from the past and they are now characters in a reenactment of a gun fight. The crew tries to prevent the fight and Chekov is killed. Spock finally realizes that nothing in this town is real and convinces everyone else of this. After everyone is convinced, history replays its self but the bullets have no affect this time. After everything is over the entire crew, including Chekov, returns to the Enterprise. Here they are confronted by Earps who says that he has gained a new respect for the Federation since they spared his life.

I think Star Trek is very different than anything we have watched before for the most part. As an older show, I think it has some different goals. Star Trek is more what I think of when I think scfy. It got the aliens and space ships and stuff like that. Also, it seems to try to be very futuristic, but almost in a cheesy way. Every other scfy episode we watched was more modern and relatable. The only thing similar to Star Trek would be Firefly, and even that was very different. It had a space ship with a captain but that seems to be the only way it relates. I feel like Star Trek didn't really have much of a message to the viewer and that it was really directed towards relating to life. I definitely prefer the other scfy shows, such as Buffy, to this because I can relate them back to my own life easier.

BSG Miniseries

This was not at all what I was expecting. I thought this show would be somewhat similar to Star trek, but I was definitely wrong. The entire show didn't take place in space as I expected it to. Instead it took place on what I believe was planet earth. There were no space monsters per say, just normal humans for the most part. Even the cylons were in human form.
I thought there were several very interesting things about this show. The first was when number 6 killed the baby. I didn't quite understand why she did this, and I thought it was unnecessary and that it was also very disturbing. The second thing that I thought was interesting was number 6 and her power over men. She seemed very manipulative. I think this was a good portrayal of many women in the real world, because they can often have this affect on men, but the sex scenes were definitely not needed either. The next thing that I thought was interesting was the cylons attack on the planet. This seemed very similar to 9/11 to me. No one was expecting it and they didn't know what to do. Everything was pure chaos when the attack started. I think the people on this ship handled the attack very well though. They seemed to stay very calm and cool headed.
Overall, I thought this miniseries what pretty good, but that was probably just because I thought I was going to hate it. I don't think I would mind finishing this or maybe even watching another episode some time.

The Road Not Taken

http://www.bartleby.com/104/67.html

The Road Not Taken was written by Robert Frost in 1875. This is one of my favorite poems of all times. This poem talks about the different paths that can be taken in life. The first stanza talks about wanting to take both paths, but not being able to. The traveler stood and looked down both paths to see a far as they could down them. The next stanza talks about finally taking one of the two paths. The traveler picked the grassier of the two paths because it had the least travel. In the travels they decide that the paths are worn "really about the same". The third stanza talks about "leaves no step had trodden black". This is once again saying that no one has taken that path for quite a while. He then goes on to say that maybe he'll take the other path someday, but because decisions that are made about life are building blocks for everything else that will happen, he doubts he will ever come back to take the other path. The last stanza starts with, "I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence". This entire last stanza talks about what he will say about the path he took in the future. We don't know if that sigh is a sigh of relief or regret, because he does not yet know. He has yet to live the path he chose, but when he tells this story, he will tell everyone he took the road less traveled by and that it has made all the difference.

Normal Again

I thought this episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was by far the most interesting one that I have seen yet. In this episode Buffy was presented with a huge conflict. She had to decide what was real and what wasn't. There were two realities that she could choose from. The first, was that she was the vampire slayer and Sunnydale was real. The second option, was that Buffy was a patient in a mental institution who made Sunnydale and being a slayer up. Both of these options were very tempting for her. In the first, there was everything she knew and believed to be real. After 6 years of this life it is hard to turn away and believe that it isn't real. In the second reality, Buffy's parents were both there. This really made Buffy struggle with her decision because she had not seen both of her parents together in a very long time. Buffy then makes the decision to get rid of her friends in Sunnydale so she wouldn't be tempted to go back to that world. After almost killing her friends, Buffy finally realizes which world she wants to live in. In the end she chooses Sunnydale over her parents and sets her friends free. I think that any person woud have made the same decision that Buffy made because it is what they know and what they are comfortable with.