Top 60 Favorite Fictional A.I.’s – Part Four [24-13]

Continuing here our rundown of my 60 Favorite Fictional Artificial Intelligences.

You can have a look here for Part One, which includes some of the rationale for this list, as well as some of the explanations and qualifications, and here for Part Two and here for Part Three.

Doctor Who: The Sands of Life / War Against the Laan [Big Finish – Fourth Doctor]

For some reason, Big Finish’s Fourth Doctor range seems to generally have stories that are only two episodes long.  This is in spite of the fact that the most popular length for stories in that era (and for much of classic Doctor Who) was four episodes.  Oddly, the first Fourth Doctor series had two two-part adventures that flowed directly from one to the other, thus basically making a four part story.  Now we’re here in the second series of Fourth Doctor Adventures, and we find something similar.

I Know It’s Not That Good…And Yet…

I just thumbed through Empire magazine’s latest issue – a list of the 300 greatest movies!  I was just scanning it to count how many of the film’s I had seen, and I came up with what I felt was a pretty respectable number: 158. That means there’s a lot I’ve seen, although there is a fair amount I’ve missed. Of course, not surprisingly, the list–apparently a reader poll–didn’t perfectly reflect my own well-considered opinions on the high points of cinema. But then how could it? I mean this is a list that includes Iron Man 3, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Skyfall?

Really, Skyfall? I mean, I liked Skyfall, but we honestly couldn’t come up 299 films that were better than Skyfall?

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Chain of Command, Part II [6.11]

Picard is held prisoner and tortured  by Cardassian Gul Madred, wanting information about how the Federation would respond to a Cardassian incursion.  Picard does his best resisting having his will broken, refusing to comply with Madred insisting upon a false number of lights in the room. 

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Chain of Command, Part I [6.10]

When tensions with the Cardassians increase, Picard is reassigned to a special undercover sabotage mission against what is believed to be a new deadly weapon.  Meanwhile, a new Captain comes aboard the Enterprise, causing tension with all the officers by his abrasive manner. 

“Greetings, Programs!” (A few words on Tron)

I like Tron.  It’s not that I believe it’s one of the best movies ever, but it’s always sort of had a reserved a place on my unofficial list of favorite films, in the same way that The Muppet Movie or Rumble in the Bronx has.  Does that make sense?  I’d never argue that any of those films are in the same league as say, Citizen Kane (to use an extreme example), but frankly I’d probably rather watch any of them more than the Orson Welles classic, given the choice.