Archive for April, 2008

Early this fine morning, thousands of people across Australia woke up to attend dawn services for Anzac Day in remembrance of the fallen Australian soldiers in Gallipoli and all conflicts including those who died in current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, with respects paid to Trooper David Pearce who died in October last year in Afghanistan.

Tens of thousands of people of Australian, New Zealand and Turkish background packed into Anzac Cove to mark the occasion and remember lives lost. It was there 93 years ago that the first of the ANZAC soldiers, a force comprised of Australian and New Zealand soldiers, landed on that fateful beach where over ten thousand ANZAC soldiers lost their lives.

It was the moment that defined Australia as what it was and gave it the identity of who they were and what they were capable of. It was the event that transformed Australia from a colony into a country. It is those people who gave the ultimate sacrifice in defending our new nation all those years ago, whose death helped give our country our place in the world that we take this day and remember. Lest we forget.

#N.B. I give my most sincere apologies for the disrupted service. Wesimation (along with jansonsays.com) has recently shifted to a new shared server that will provide a faster load time than our previous server. Furthermore, it is a more environmentally friendly server, meaning that not only will we be faster, but also greener.

With the release of Stargate: Ark of Truth, the thrilling DVD movie conclusion to the Ori arc in the series, and essentially the whole SG1 series as a whole (with the exception of Stargate Continuum coming out later in the year and the subsequent DVD movies that may follow) already released, I felt it was best to look back at where the whole series began before my review of Arc of Truth.

While it is completely appropriate to say that the whole Stargate franchise began with the 1994 film starring Kurt Russel and James Spader, the start I am referring to is the pilot episode of the SG1, way back in 1997. As great as the original film was, it and the subsequent sequels originally planned by film writers Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich probably would not have had the great success the series did. It is highly likely that the Goa’uld System Lords would not have existed, nor would the Goa’uld have been parasitic snake like creatures but more like “the-thing-from-Area-51”. Although the film began it all, it is only with the direction that Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner that series went the way that it did and that we find ourselves with Ark of Truth. And the series began with Season 1: Children of the Gods.

Children of the Gods takes place a year after the events of the movie, with Daniel Jackson remaining on the planet of Abydos with the Abydonians after freeing them from their false god Ra. Meanwhile, Colonel Jack O’Neill has retired and is leading the quiet life, just as the Stargate is. It has been idle since the mission to Abydos and is now merely the backdrop for a bunch of bored poker buddies in one of the lower levels of a secret U.S. Air Force base. However, as an ordinary poker game is being played, something amazing happens. The gate no longer becomes idle and becomes active, opening up a wormhole to another planet. In steps a group of people, wearing chain mail, elaborate armour and a large eagle shaped helmet. In their hands were what appeared to be long staffs. As soon as they pass through the gate, they grab a female airwoman and take hold of her. As the airmen who were playing poker draws their weapons, the figures that stepped through the stargate open fire with their staffs that shoots out beams of energy that makes easy work of them, though an airman managed to kill one of them. As calm finally settles, a figure wearing gold chain mail and a golden helmet steps forward and retracts the front of the helmet and examines his prize that is the airwoman. As they begin to retreat back through the gate, Air Force personnel finally arrive and see the man in the golden armour heading to the gate. Before he passes through though, he takes a look at the airmen and makes his eyes glow, just as Ra from Abydos did. As a result of this, Colonel O’Neill is recalled to active duty to make contact with Daniel Jackson on Abydos and determine whether or not Ra is still alive.

Ok, let’s be brutally honest. The story is great, however, it does not look as refined or as sleek as the later episodes. The elaborate helmets that were so awesome and something that I totally loved in the film because of their amazing design and the way they folded out still looks good but the way they fold out doesn’t. It opens like a trap door. The pouch in which the goa’uld lives in the human looks as though it was borrowed from Species or Aliens. The special effects are worse. Everything looks as though it was done using a graphics engine borrowed from Star Craft. But this was made in 1997. It was made when when Richard Dean Anderson still had brown hair. It was made when Don S. Davis still had some hair. It was a pilot so probably made on a budget less than the cost of a house. It’s impossible to compare with the original film because that had a budget of about 55 million. None the less, the action was good, the script was superb and the acting was spectacular, especially with Michael Shanks who plays Daniel Jackson. Although there are many criticisms that can be made about this, let’s face it. It was good for its time. It was so great that it has managed to go on for 10 seasons and spawn two DVD movies and probably more. It has a cult fan base comparable to Buffy. And that’s got to count for something.

Janson Says: As shabby as this episode may seem, the series gets better and better and better. This is just the beginning.

I will admit it. I’m generally not very fond of Australian made dramas, apart from the news (well, SBS news at least). I often found them to be poorly written, poorly acted and often poorly funded. I also find them rather boring too. I also find that they have a knack of resorting to sex appeal to draw in the lowest denominator which happen to be males aged 13 to 18 who do not have a sufficient internet connection or do have one but not enough privacy who are left disappointed at the end of each episode. But when I saw an ad on SBS for a new Australian police drama based in Sydney that did not feature sex or Lisa McCune in a tight Navy uniform, I was rather intrigued. I was further intrigued when I discovered that the show examined how the Muslim community is viewed and treated in a post 9/11 suburban Sydney.

East West 101 follows Detective Zane Malik (Don Hany), a devout Muslim with a devout Muslim family as he tries to leave his mark on the Metropolitan Sydney Major Crime Squad, an investigation team that happens to be as multicultural as Australia. This however is complicated by Detective Sergeant Ray Crowley (William McInnes), an aging racist Anglo-Saxon Australian who butt heads with Malik over respect, culture and egos. However, it is more complicated than that. Malik is plagued by the guilt of an incident in which his father was shot in the head by an armed robber, leaving him permanently brain damaged because Zane refused to hand over the money.

Each episode is separate and practically standalone, where a person can miss an episode and still be able to watch the next one and not be lost, helped in part by the opening flashback to the previous episode. Each episode follows the Major Crime Squad as they solve murders that often deal with a particular member and their racial background, with the first episode being about Zane Malik and his squad investigating the shooting death of a police officer by two Middle Eastern youths and explores Malik’s character as both a Muslim and a police officer and his ties with his community.

When I saw that each episode is standalone, I should mention that that’s the half truth. Once the crime is solved, it is never bought up again, though the ramifications of the squad’s action remain throughout the subsequent episodes until they are resolved. That is what I enjoy most about this series. Everything is so realistic. You can’t just kill a drug dealer without having Internal Affairs breathing down your neck. You can’t just viciously assault a person without questions being raised. Every action has a consequence and the writers obviously had that in mind when composing this show.

Solving the murders in East West 101 is done in Law and Order fashion up to the boring part that with Jack McCoy, with good real detective work such as talking to witnesses, canvassing the crime scene, talking to the coroner after the autopsy is done and having meetings where the detectives go over what they have to Inspector Patricia Wright (Susie Porter), a role similar to that of Lieutenant Anita Van Buren of Law and Order. There are no flashbacks here that tell us who the perpetrator is in the first five minutes, no solving the crime with stool samples. Just good old logical police work. Unlike Law and Order though, the people aren’t married to their jobs and don’t live at the office. We are given a glimpse into the personal lives of most of the detectives on the squad, mostly of Malik and his life with his family and his brain damaged father.

A solid Australian police drama that is a notch above the rest and is what I would consider the new benchmark of Australian television. Though it tries to blend in family drama in as well, it still heavily focuses on the police aspect of things and doesn’t get bogged down by marital problems or family issues. William McInnes is perfectly cast and pulls off a brilliant performance and the multicultural cast greatly reflects the racial diversity of Australia.

Janson Says: Although the series has ended its run on SBS, it is now available to purchase or rent on DVD, and is a great series to pick up and watch, especially if you are into gritty down to earth crime dramas.

5/5 Stars.