Some video links and spoilers

Episodes 5 and 6 are currently shooting, and you can watch them on ustream. I've not been able to watch as much as I'd liked, and thus not seen anything spoilery.

There have been quite a few new shorts and videoblogs which are well worth checking out.

Click here for some spoilers.

Epiosde 4 Easter Eggs

I thought it would be fun to unravel the headlines from Amercian Morning Report. I'm having issues with the image uploader, so I can't put them in order, but they read:

CHINA TO ATTEMPT FIRST DOCKING WITH TIANGONG 1 SPACE LAB

TROOP LEVELS IN AFGHANISTAN TO REMAIN UNCHANGED FOR FORESEEABLE FUTURE

MC-G RUMORED TO DIRECT 'BLADE RUNNER' PREQUEL

BEAR FACT: GRIZZLY POLAR BEAR HYBRID DISCOVERED

RCMP - AGENTS INVITED TO 'CONSULT' --GREENLEY: "THIS IS IN NO WAY A VIOLATION OF CANADA'S SOVEREIGNTY

BILL DUKE CONSIDERING GUBERNATORIAL BID

UNNAMED SOURCE CLAIM DETAINEES BEING HELD IN CALGARY

WHITE HOUSE CALLS WAR GAMES PROVOCATIVE

KATE HUDSON & ASHTON KUTCHER TO STAR IN REMAKE OF "THE GRADUATE"

CHINA TO BEGIN NAVAL WAR GAMES IN SOUTH C..

NEW UNIVERSAL FLUE VACCINE DISCOVERED

APPLECURRY FRONTMAN KEEGAN CANCELS TOUR CITING 'EXHAUSTION'

I like the way the first news cast didn't have any headlines about the situation in Calgary, but they are now creeping in. I also like the slightly futuristic news.

Bear Fact and Applecurry are both references to Lionshare, Josh and Bracey's previous movie (which I hope to review sometime soon). Nice to see they're in the same universe.

It looks like Tiangong 1 is finished, and there are tensions between the US and China evidently, I wonder if this will come into the plot at all? There's a wink at unnecessary prequels and remakes.

I'm guessing Bill Duke for governor is an Arnie joke as they were both in Predator, but I could be wrong.

Feel free to leave your opinions in the comments.

Message to the Naysayers

I've been doing some thinking recently about the Pioneer One naysayers. This was brought to a head by me finding a hitherto unknown-to-me P1 "fan" community on Orkut. This section is a Brazilian forum for discussing P1. When I joined last week there were already 700 members, and this currently stands at 713. When I saw this I got excited, although none of it was in English. After a few trips to Google Translate, I found however an enormous amount of negative comments, and indeed posting a link to this blog resulted in some negative feedback. Whilst, of course, everyone is entitled to their opinions, I couldn't quite work out why people would spend time returning to a site to slag something off repeatedly. I've seen plenty of online web series that I don't like, and I just stopped watching them (and TV - Heroes season 3 anyone?).

Anyway a lot of this negativity seems to float around two points, the first is that the plot is too slow and/or not Science Fictiony enough. Again, each to their own, but I find the slow plot a plus, and as I've said before, more like a novel than a conventional action packed drama. The second, that it doesn't contain enough SF elements is something the creators have always admitted up front: its just that nobody really listened. P1 is an interesting and relatively rare blend of SF, procedural and political drama, and for some people just don't like their genres blended.

The second criticism is in the quality of the production, pacing, acting etc. I can't find the comment now, but I saw something online that went along the lines of "It's not as good as Lost, is it?" This inane comment got me thinking: how does P1 stand up to Lost when adjusted for budget? I did some back of the envelope calculations regarding the costs involved in Pioneer One comapared to Lost:

Lost's pilot lasted approximately 90 minutes and cost $12 million, thats $133333 per minute of screen time.

P1's pilot was 35 minutes long and cost $6000, that's $171 per minute of screen time.

This makes Lost 780 times more expensive by my calculations.

Now I ask you if you think Lost is 780 times a better show than P1? I would say a resounding no. Now I know I've picked the most expensive pilot of all time (so much so the executive who greenlit it was sacked), but you see my point.

Pioneer One is made by people who stopped talking about how they were going to make it big one day, got off their arses and actually did something.; for this alone they should be supported.

Want to be on Pioneer One?

If you are in Binghampton area it looks like you could be an extra on the show, details here. The scene will be a huge press conference.This would be a great way for the time-rich cash-poor generation to help out the show.

Pioneer One miscellania

Here is a round up of various P1 miscellania:

Josh and Bracey are interviewed on a Slice of SciFi here (I have to admit I've not had time to listen to this).

There's a Twitter based campaign to get Nathan Fillon to do a cameo on P1. This would be beyond amazing.

There's also a Twitter based competition which would let you name your own character on P1.

This is a great interview with Josh Bernhard with a pretty interesting comment about an 'episode 7'. You can digg it, if that's your thing, I believe it's got to the front page (I signed into Digg for the first time in 2 years just to Digg this).

Name a character in Pioneer One!

There's a competition on to name an upcoming character:

http://www.pioneerone.tv/2011/04/28/name-a-character-in-pioneer-one/

It doesn't cost you a penny and would be great to get Pioneer One to be a trending topic.

The epic sweep beginneth

The term 'epic' is much overused these days, but this episode gave us a hint of what the scope of the whole story arc will be, and I'm guessing it will indeed be epic. The creators have often said that the events at Calgary are only one small part of a much larger story, and we see some of these larger pieces put into place in this episode.

The episode is split into three. Plot 'A' predominantly shows events at DHS HQ, and as I said in a previous episode if you'd only seen this episode you'd be forgiven for thinking McLellan was the main character here. I enjoyed the disconnect between that HQ was thinking about Yuri - that they were beginning to believe their own lie that he was a terrorist - and Taylor's gradual realisation that Walzer is correct (or at least appears to be). I also really liked the combative Collins. We've seen a few lines of his head-to-head a while ago in a teaser and it was good to finally see the whole thing.

Something that struck me here is that McLellan and his men are not the good guys here at all, they basically spend the whole episode lying and scheming, but I found myself on their side (a bit like in Silence of the Lambs when Lector is escaping - you're on his side despite the fact he's the bad guy). Also, McLellan seemed to know that the off-stage Miller was about to be sacked. Is there a conspiracy here going all the way to the White House? We also get confirmation that some level of the Russian government knows about the cosmonauts. I thought this was a pretty big reveal as it tells us at least that this was a government backed enterprise (though I suppose everything was in Soviet Russia).

Back on the base story arc B continues to deliver. Yuri and Jane's romance (we can call it that now) continues to run its course. Why didn't Yuri know the word for lonely? Did Jane get it wrong (can anyone confirm?) or has Yuri never heard the word because he's lived in the same Martian tent with his parents all his life? Note also the way he didn't actually say 'Mars', but 'the world', I bet that's going to become important somehow. The big reveal plot-wise however, and one that almost got lost in the mix, is that Yuri can speak English.

The closing scene showed Walzer on the phone, I'm assuming this was a colleague he'd been getting in to help him with something (maybe Dr. Avery Frank?) or was it something more sinister? And moreover, what wasn't 'a good idea'?

One thing I don't get though: on suspecting a leak about Dr. Walzer's presence on the base, surely they would have immediately blamed Clive Anderton, the hired and fired source of another leak from episode 2?

The 'C' arc showed a number of different TV pieces of people opining and arguing on the events from an outside point of view. These were all skilfully done and gave an excellent perspective as the public begin to put the pieces together.

From a production point of view the little ps and qs are also getting slicker. One of the establishing shots of the DHS HQ seemed to pan round the building as if filmed from a helicopter, I've no idea how you do that on a budget of $6000. There also seem to be more extras knocking about in the background.

I'm going to round off this review by saying that there have been four episodes now: enough to get stuck into story properly, and it would be criminal for the creators not be able to make the story they want to because of lack of funds, so please donate. Not only will you be supporting a great TV show but also helping a paradigm shift in entertainment. History remembers those who shift paradigms, not those who tried to prevent them from happening.