Monday, October 06, 2008
Secret Services: Introduction
Saturday morning, Georgia and I watched the premier episode of Jay Stephens's The Secret Saturdays, which was every bit as good as I'd hoped. And I was delighted to see that the four-year-old Georgia was as taken with the show as her 38-year-old dad. We ended up watching the episode twice over the course of the weekend, at her insistence.
Saturday night, after Georgia had gone off to bed, I watched the pilot episode of JJ Abrams's new series, Fringe. I'd put off watching it because one of my Rules of Television (along with "No doctor shows, no cop shows, no lawyer shows") is "Watch nothing on Fox until it comes out on DVD." After the experience of Firefly, Wonderfalls, and too many others to mention them all, I've been burned by Fox more times than I care to remember, with episodes of new series aired out of order, series bounced around the schedule week after week, until finally being cancelled before all of the completed episodes have been aired. But I've been hearing from a lot of folks whose opinions I trust that Fringe was worth checking out, and after watching the first episode I'm inclined to agree. Allison was out of town for business over the weekend, so I'm tempted to make her watch the first episode, so she and I can watch the others that we have recorded together. It's an Abrams show, so I'm fully prepared for it to fall apart at any minute, but after watching the first episode I'm willing to give it a bit of rope.
In any case, seeing two shows about a team of quirky "secret scientists" who investigate the strange and unknown got me thinking about other treatments of the same concept. I've recently reread all of Mike Mignola's Hellboy and related titles, and have been doing some work on my own "Bureau Zero" for a few projects in the early stages of development. This kind of "investigators into the odd" thing is something that really resonates with me, and it's probably not surprising that I find on the shelves of my personal library a lot of different interpretations on the theme.
I considered doing a post on the topic, but just putting together the images I could use as illustrations suggested that it would make for a long post. So I've decided to tackle it in several parts. I'll try to group them thematically, but fully expect them to become pretty hodgepodge as I go along.
Consider this fair warning, then, that I'll be doing a few image heavy posts on the topic of "Secret Services" over the course of the coming days.
Saturday night, after Georgia had gone off to bed, I watched the pilot episode of JJ Abrams's new series, Fringe. I'd put off watching it because one of my Rules of Television (along with "No doctor shows, no cop shows, no lawyer shows") is "Watch nothing on Fox until it comes out on DVD." After the experience of Firefly, Wonderfalls, and too many others to mention them all, I've been burned by Fox more times than I care to remember, with episodes of new series aired out of order, series bounced around the schedule week after week, until finally being cancelled before all of the completed episodes have been aired. But I've been hearing from a lot of folks whose opinions I trust that Fringe was worth checking out, and after watching the first episode I'm inclined to agree. Allison was out of town for business over the weekend, so I'm tempted to make her watch the first episode, so she and I can watch the others that we have recorded together. It's an Abrams show, so I'm fully prepared for it to fall apart at any minute, but after watching the first episode I'm willing to give it a bit of rope.
In any case, seeing two shows about a team of quirky "secret scientists" who investigate the strange and unknown got me thinking about other treatments of the same concept. I've recently reread all of Mike Mignola's Hellboy and related titles, and have been doing some work on my own "Bureau Zero" for a few projects in the early stages of development. This kind of "investigators into the odd" thing is something that really resonates with me, and it's probably not surprising that I find on the shelves of my personal library a lot of different interpretations on the theme.
I considered doing a post on the topic, but just putting together the images I could use as illustrations suggested that it would make for a long post. So I've decided to tackle it in several parts. I'll try to group them thematically, but fully expect them to become pretty hodgepodge as I go along.
Consider this fair warning, then, that I'll be doing a few image heavy posts on the topic of "Secret Services" over the course of the coming days.
Labels: secret_services
