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deanbear
Reviews
Century City (2004)
Nothing captivating about this
I saw the previews for this series on CBS, and I thought "cool, a cross-genre program."
Guess what? This isn't cool.
Granted, the creators of "Century City" were trying something new with this combination of legal drama and near-future sci-fi, but they didn't think this all the way through. With a viewing public that is used to exemplary legal dramas such as "L.A. Law," "The Practice," and the "Law & Order" franchise, you have to make the stories compelling enough to catch the viewers attention and make them want to watch. This show fails to do so.
Granted, the show *looks* great, with state of the art visual effects, and the cast is well chosen (with the exception of Nestor Carbonell, who is more suited to comedy,) and I will watch anything with Hector Elizondo mainly because he is one of the finest character actors we have today.
But strong acting and great visuals can't make a show great. Plotline has been and always will be a cornerstone of a great legal drama, and this show just doesn't have it (yet.) I'm willing to give the writers a bit of time to hash out the storylines (and I hope that they will,) because the concept shows promise.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Back to what made Star Trek great
I saw Star Trek: The Motion Picture when it came out in 1979, and although technically it was a beautiful film, the plot was quite inconsistant. I approached ST:TWOK with a little apprehension, but I was pleasantly surprised. By taking an already excellent source of material (the classic TV episode "Space Seed") and extrapolating what could have happened, Jack Sowards and Nicholas Meyer recreated the quintessential space opera, where character development didn't take a back seat to the state-of-the-art (in 1982 standards) visual effects.
What was the most exciting about the movie was the cat and mouse game played out between Kirk and Khan. Ricardo Montalban was able to infuse the character of Khan with the madness that only comes from his "genetically superior mind" being forced to survive in a world that he could not conquer. William Shatner probably turned in his finest performance as Kirk in this film, without the over-the-top histrionics that were seen in Star Trek III.