Wonder Woman Reaction Reactions – Comparative Opinions Episode 51

Welcome to the Comparative Opinions podcast! This week, hosts Holly and David talk about the memes that have been going around about how Wonder Woman was not the first media with a strong female hero – and our analysis of how accurate that thought is. Spoiler-lite!

Comparative Opinions is a weekly half-hour-ish podcast hosted on ComparativeGeeks.com. Subscribe for new episodes every Sunday!

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Music is by Scott Gratton: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Scott_Gratton/Intros_and_Outros

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Least Favorite Buffy Moments

I have to start this out by saying that I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I watched the show when it first aired and fell in love with it. The characters were so fantastic and the relationship between the original gang was just so much fun to watch. At the same time with all of the things that I love about the show, there were definitely moments where I felt it either went off the rails a bit or just fell flat. In general these moments do not reflect badly on the show as a whole and I will still re-watch.

But there are some things that still just bug me. (Spoilers for Buffy the Vampire Slayer to follow!)

Favorite Doctor Who? Blink, Moffat, and graphs! Part 1

It’s that time again: we have Doctor Who on the brain. The new season starts in a couple of weeks, and that got me thinking back to a recent article on the Mary Sue about one of our favorite episodes, Blink. And about how Steven Moffat doesn’t know why it’s such a fan favorite episode.

So I want to approach this from a couple angles. This week is about Blink and why it stands out as a favorite. And I have graphs! It goes to the heart of selecting a favorite episode of a TV show in general.

The second angle is about the Mary Sue’s question about Moffat being able to repeat said success now that he’s showrunner. As Holly wrote a while back, once we started paying attention to the showrunner and writing credits – and saw which episodes Moffat had written – we knew exactly why he was the new showrunner. And I do see him repeating himself, trying to perfect some of his concepts – so that’ll be some deeper Doctor Who exploration next time!

Crossing Story Medium

The Animatrix – an example I thought of but didn’t work into the post otherwise.

More and more it seems that stories are crossing from one medium to another. This is done either by telling the same story in a different medium or continuing the story in a new medium. It is interesting when the story creators decide to take the story to a different medium to tell it.

Now recently there have obviously been a lot of comic book stories, and books have been translated to TV shows and movies. At the same time TV shows and books have also been translated to graphic novels. Recently I think there has been an increase in this happening. I don’t know if this stems from a simple desire for more revenue streams or as a way to introduce the story to a wider audience.

The big thing is that there are a couple of different ways that this medium crossing occurs. One of the first things that kind of has to be decided though is what is the core or main story and which medium does that story exist in. Then you can tell what the cross points and off shoots are and pinpoint how they connect.

X is for Xander Harris – the Zeppo

You may have thought we had made it through the month with no Joss Whedon characters, but take heart! For X is for Xander Harris! Just your average, socially awkward, class clown of a teen, he ends up an integral part of the Scooby Gang in Buffy, saving the world from demons, vampires, and general badness. 

Right? He matters, right? The defining Xander episode was The Zeppo, where Xander has a solo adventure while his friends, Buffy and the gang, fight off what is described as “the worst thing they have ever faced” – which happens off-screen. And meanwhile, trying to find his identity and figure out what it is that is his “thing” – what makes him cool or unique – Xander gets mixed up with some undead who want to blow up the high school. He beats them all, and saves the school, while his friends save the world – something they couldn’t have done if they had blown up.

So let me look at Xander, but also at this idea of “the Zeppo,” this character who is at once essential and expendable.