Site Columns
By MichelleJune 9, 2004 - 7:06 PM
Hello World!
I'm in love with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Actually I'm really just in love with the Prisoner of Azkaban, as Harry Potter is much too young for me. And I'm also in love with Professor Lupin and Professor Snape, not that the latter is anything new; he just happens to be particularly fine in the latest film in the franchise. I saw HP:POA on opening day with a big crowd of my girlfriends; my sons, the ostensible target audience for the movie, were at school, and I was in a sold-out theater of adults.
I don't think the kids would have understood why we were applauding when Snape told Lupin and Black that they fought like an old married couple, but maybe I'm wrong. Prisoner of Azkaban was the book that sold me on the Harry Potter franchise, which until then had been something I read aloud to my kids. I thought of it as Tolkien-lite, certainly not objectionable, Pagan-friendly and reasonably entertaining. Then I hit the end of the third novel, where a certain character with a certain proclivity that was considered deviant by some (though he had been that way since early childhood, and couldn't have changed it if he wanted to) made an impassioned plea for people like himself to be treated with understanding. It blew me away to find that so beautifully placed in a children's book.
In the movie, as this character explains - while he's packing up his closet - that parents won't want someone like him teaching their kids, and adds that he's faced rejection and prejudice his entire life, it's even more obvious than in the book that his magical condition is a metaphor rather than a gimmick. The scene reminds me why I love sci-fi and fantasy so much, and what the original Star Trek used to do, taking real-world events and using elements of the fantastic to illuminate them. Enterprise did something similar to Harry Potter with the episode "Stigma", which has thus far received little follow-up; I hope that changes, next season.
Trek BBS Today
Below are some of the topics currently being discussed at the Trek BBS:
-Why does T'Pol get away with the things she does?
-Dominic Keating talks about Enterprise's future.
-Which were Voyager's best Seven of Nine episodes?
More topics can be found at the Trek BBS!
Trek Two Years Ago
These were some of the major news items from June 2002:
- Bakula On Family Priorities
"The biggest problem is finding time to make the show, [and] to have a kind of life with your family," Scott Bakula (Captain Archer) said of working on Enterprise, which "has so much extra stuff that comes with it, it's a challenge to figure out what you can do and how you can do it." - Stewart Says Fans 'Treated Unfairly'
Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard) said that fans were "treated unfairly" by the media, who said his first convention experience gave him "a hint of what it must have been like for The Beatles at Shea Stadium." - Interview: Michael Piller
The one-time Star Trek executive producer discussed getting The Dead Zone off the ground and called working on Star Trek "the greatest experience of my career up until now."
More news can be found in the archives.
Poll Results
Below are the results of the most recent TrekToday poll:
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30.9% - (429
Votes)Please vote in our new summer rerun poll!
Today's Television Listings
Tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time, UPN will show the third season Enterprise episode "Extinction". Here's a synopsis of the episode:
On a mission to investigate an abandoned Xindi vessel on a jungle planet, Archer, Reed and Hoshi succumb to a virus that mutates them into a primal life form.
Then at 9:00 p.m., UPN will rerun another Enterprise episode, "Rajiin". Here's the official synopsis:
The NX-01 gets closer to a showdown with the Xindi when Captain Archer takes on an enigmatic passenger: a beautiful slave named Raijin.
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