#Jack&039;s Return Home

[cultfaction]

Hit Man (1972)

Directed by George Armitage, Hit Man follows Tyrone Tackett (Bernie Casey), an Oakland hit man who comes to Los Angeles after his brother Cornell is murdered. It is based on the 1970 novel Jack’s Return Home by Ted Lewis (which was also made as 1971’s Get Carter with Michael Caine and its 2000 remake starring Sylvester Stallone ). During production Armitage encouraged the cast to improvise the…

[thedoctorwhocompanion]

Exclusive Interview: Writer Nick Triplow on The Unmade Fourth Doctor/Robin Hood Story

Exclusive Interview: Writer Nick Triplow on The Unmade Fourth Doctor/Robin Hood Story

The Doctor finally met Robin Hood in 2014’s Robot of Sherwood but a meeting almost happened much earlier in the life of the series. The original plan for Season 16 would have seen Tom Baker’s Doctor encounter the legendary outlaw in a story titled The Doppelgangers in the quest for the Key to Time. In a twist to the established legend, Robin Hood would have been depicted as a cold-hearted villain…

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 039

Last time, Krillin, Gohan, and Bulma embarked on their trip to Planet Namek.   It’s been a few days, and Bulma’s already bored.   She spends this whole episode not bothering to wear pants.  

I mean, is this a fanservice episode?  I mean, probably, but this is a Triangle Guy production, so Bulma looks pretty weird the whole time, so I have a hard time imagining what sort of fan feels serviced by this.    Also, Krillin looks like he’s wearing Bulma’s shirt from several episodes back.  

Krillin and Gohan spend much of the trip “image training”, which I guess is some kind of telepathic sparring?   I never quite understood how either of them knew how to do this, but it’s pretty awesome that they can.   

When they finish, Bulma gripes about how messy the ship’s gotten, and when Krillin points out that it’s her mess on her side of the ship, she gripes that she’s super busy because she has to keep the ship functional.   

Krillin wishes aloud that she wouldn’t wander around in her undies all the time.   Team Four Star really did a good job with this this part of the saga, by the way.

Back on Earth, Goku is apparently well enough to get out of bed and do situps.   So what are all the bandages for, exactly?   In the fic I write, I invented a doctor who’s this giant spider, specifically so he could wrap up his patients in bandages made from his own webbing.   So I know how fun it is to wrap up characters like mummies and call it medical treatment.    But Goku really did suffer a bunch of broken bones not too long ago, so I don’t get it.

The doctor puts a stop to this and orders “Grandpa Glad-hands” to help the nurse put him back in bed.   Grandpa Glad-Hands belongs in jail.    As for Chi-Chi, she’s up on the roof worrying about Gohan.

This part looks like it wasn’t handled by Triangle Guy.    Chi-Chi’s all worried because Gohan hasn’t written her.   Does she just not understand how space works, or...?

Anyway, Chi-Chi’s adorable.

Back on the ship, Bulma asks where Vegeta went after he left the Earth.    He was badly hurt, and his home planet was destroyed a long time ago, so where would he have gone for medical attention?    It’d be kind of funny if he turned out to be in the same hospital as Goku, and they ended up sharing a room together.

They agree that wherever Vegeta has gone, it’ll be best for the Earth if it takes him a long time to get there, so they’ll have more time to prepare for his inevitable return.   Krillin figures that if the Saiyans sold planets to other aliens, maybe he went to one of his clients for help.

Meanwhile, we see Vegeta en route to... wherever he’s going, and he’s still hurt, and he’s still amazed that he’s this badly hurt.   I’m not sure it was worth checking in on him like this if there was no new information to reveal, but okay.

Back to Bulma, a swarm of alien ships suddenly appear and fire upon their vessel.    I guess they’re unmanned drones, since there’s no sign of pilots in the cockpits.

Bulma returns fire and blows them all up, so I guess Capsule Corp. armed this ship.   Or maybe it had weapons on it from the start?   Doesn’t sound very Namekian to me.

Then they see another spaceship, and it mirrors their movements.    That’s because its just a reflection of their own ship.   I don’t understand why they never notice this, since they all know what their own ship looks like.

They end up getting pulled into the... whatever it is, and gradually it becomes clear that they ran into a much larger ship with some sort of reflective hull or force field or something like that.    I don’t understand how they collided with it and just sort of sank into it, but it’s an alien ship, so I guess it doesn’t have to make sense.    For some reason it looks like a hot-air baloon painted all-black.   

They find themselves in a cargo bay full of junk, and they go out to look around.   Bulma forgot to put on some clothes first, so she spends the rest of the episode like this.   Some triangle-fetishist must love this episode.   

Also, why is Bulma so jacked in this episode?    Really, her arms are usually this big around, it’s just that her lower legs are really skinny because triangles.    I ran into this in the Xenoverse games.    A lot of players made custom Videls, and they looked very show-accurate except they never seemed to look quite right, and then I realized it was because all the women characters had really skinny legs to make them look “sexier”.    That’s dumb, because the Dragon Ball house style gives everyone thick calves, especially Videl, because she’s a jock.   Bulma’s a nerd, but she still has thicker legs than this most of the time.

Anyway, there’s all these booby traps on the ship, and a section with no doors, so they have to fly up to the next deck, and the whole place feels more like a tabletop RPG than an actual spacecraft real people would use.   I mean, literal green slime drops down from the ceiling, and it kills on contact, just like the old D&D comic ads from the 1980′s.  

Triangle Guy probably drew this ad, too.  

Oh, hey, it’s Vegeta again, and now he’s swearing revenge.   Neat.

All I’m saying is, why would you build a ship with green slime and guns in the walls and a red door in the ceiling that’s the only way in or out of a room?    It doesn’t make any sense.

There’s even one trap that breaches the hull and Krillin’s hat gets sucked out into space.

Then they get to a room with a scrumptious dinner laid out for them.

. 

Bulma dodges a knife, because she expected the food to be bait for another trap, but she failed to consider that the knife hitting the wall behind her was designed to activate another trap.

This giant dome falls on her, and everyone’s all surprised, like they wouldn’t have noticed that thing when they walked in.   

Then it starts to retract itself or something...

And a robot claw reaches down and plucks Bulma up into the air.    Well why didn’t they just do that in the first place?

Then a bunch of children come out and point guns at them.   Why didn’t they do this in the first place?

This episode isn’t all that terrible, but it’s not particularly good, either.   I can deal with Triangle Guy and the filler stuff and the fanservice crap, but not much actually happens, and when you put all that together, it just makes for a low-quality experience.   It feels like the ship was only as big as it is just so they could stretch the story out and have the gang wander around it for a while.  

I say this because the next episode is a lot better, and I think that’s mainly because we actually get to find out who these kids are, instead of just seeing the heroes deal with a bunch of corny traps that could have been laid by any stock villain.