deep

Star Trek Deep Space Nine - The Complete Second Season
$69.98
In my mind I pair Seasons One and Two and then Seasons Three through Seven. I enjoyed both the first two seasons and both are thoroughly enjoyable. The series got a whole lot better after these two seasons, but that isn't at all to suggest that these are not good. They are and had the next five seasons been only as good as these first two it would have gone down as a very good series, but it was the final seasons that really put the series on the TV SF map and made it, in my opinion, the best of the STAR TREK franchise.

Although it did not develop yet the story arcs that would dominate the show in future seasons, the show nonetheless improved through a deepening of character development and a number of fascinating episodes. There are a lot of people who feel that the nineties was the finest decade ever for TV SF (and based on sheer numbers I think that may be true, if you include FARSCAPE, which started in 1999, and such non-space SF shows like THE X-FILES). Certainly among the top SF series of the nineties, DS9 is near the top. While this decade has seen some great SF -- in particular BATTLESTAR GALACTICA -- one can only hope that we will someday see the sheer quantity that we saw with DS9, FARSCAPE, BABYLON 5, ST:THE NEXT GENERATION, SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND, STAGATE SG-1, STAR TREK VOYAGER, THE X-FILES, EARTH 2, and ROSWELL. There has been a great deal of SF in this decade, but most of it has been of the non-outer space kind. Unfortunately, with the towering exception of BSG, too much of the outer space SF has either been merely a carry over of nineties shows, spin offs of those shows, tragically cancelled way too soon (FIREFLY), or of unbelievably low quality (how did ANDROMEDA last so long?). Wouldn't it be wonderful to see a new space opera on TV? I'm loving STARGATE UNIVERSE, but it is a spin off. I'd really love to see something something entirely original. AMC is exploring the possibility of a TV adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinson's great Mars Trilogy. As it stand right now, however, the only space opera is STARGATE UNIVERSE. CAPRICA looks like it will be a splendid BSG prequel, but it isn't clear that it isn't going to have any outer space elements at all.

After watching the first two seasons I've moved right into Season Three. As good as the first two seasons are, it really gets better once, as they say, the plot thickens. Frankly, I had forgotten how good this was. It is always great when you remember something as being good, but when you rewatch it, you discover that it is even better than you remembered.

Deep
$5.99
How would you feel if you were kidnapped on a boat in the middle of the ocean? Or, how would you feel if you were living on your own on a boat at sea?

The book "Deep", by Susanna Vance, tells the courageous stories of two girls. These amazing stories tie into one in the end as they both come face to face with not only each other but the one person they fear most. The first story tells of Birdie, or Bugs as her kidnapper names her. When her parents decide to go on vacation to the Caribbean's, she is taken on board a ship owned by a handsome guy. While her parents are on the dock watching she is kidnapped, this is one of the most memorable parts. Meanwhile Megan, who has lived at sea her whole life with her Mother and Father, is now alone. After the tragic death of her sister, her parents lose it completely. She has top leave them ashore, while she takes to the sea alone. One vivid picture that will stay in your mind though out the entire book is when Megan saves a young girl from abusive brothers and takes the girl to her grandparents.

I really enjoyed this book. It was a very well written, powerful book that will show you that you can over come any thing that you set your mind to. Good words, a strong plot, fun to read, and keeps you interested though out the entire book, are just some reasons this book is impossible to put down.

Inside Deep Throat - Theatrical NC-17 Edition
$27.98
Marketed as a documentary, this is in point of fact merely non-fictional entertainment a 'documentary', according to its historical definition it is not. That established we can move forward and evaluate this film as such.

Deep Throat defines a peculiar episode in America's popular culture and begs to be dissected against a backdrop of political, cultural, moral, social and artistic appropriation and significance. Unfortunately this film comes nowhere near to completing or even tackling such a noble task. Instead it simply sets out to provide a brief chronology of the film and it's main players and then seeks to paint a very superficial and somewhat biased wash over the film and it's subsequent oppression and persecution under Federal Law.

In all honesty, before they loaded the camera with film, I doubt the filmmakers had established a coherent brief or rationale they intended to pursue. Neither does it appear that they had a defined set of objectives, goals and truths they wished to explore. There is therefore, subsequently, an enormous sense of lack of cohesion and ultimately a clear absence of a defining central thesis to this work, something which ultimately has a very negative impact on the quality of the film.

Rather like the assassination of JFK, Deep Throat (the film) leaves us with more questions than answers. Questions that over time blur, fade and become all the more difficult to answer. As people pass away and memories fade - as fiction morphs into popular fact, so the ultimate Truth becomes even harder to distinguish. Sadly this film really does very little to address those questions and truths, and indeed really only serves to take us further away from discovery and ultimate closure.

If one does a little research one can find a lot more pieces of the puzzle than were presented in this quite shallow and mediocre piece of entertainment. This lacking is indeed rather questionable, in terms of the underlying motives for presenting or misrepresenting the Truth can only be guessed at. Let us hope that the reasons were not malicious and merely the bi-product of an inadequate and inexperienced film-maker out of their depth.

To summate. What we have here is not really a documentary per se. Certainly not of the pre Michael Moore kind, the REAL kind. What we have instead is a 'truthiness' documentary, something Moore, Spurlock et al. have all become so famous for; documentaries for the T.V. fed generations. Sadly the functions that these kinds of films essentially perform, is to weaken both the ultimate Truth and the subject in question, being supposedly 'documented'. Another fake coin tossed in a fountain, that no-one can distinguish from the real ones and that no-one wants to make the effort to get in, get wet and retrieve. Ultimately, what this film represents is a wasted chance.

Deep
$15.00
This book is so good. If you like a read that you can't put down til the end this is the book for you.