Quarterly update: international openings and character commentary

Hey, everyone, long time no see… 🙂 This is still not a website update (sorry…)–I’ve been keeping a little too busy as of late, like to the point that I don’t even turn my home computer on more than a couple of times a week these days. I’m very eager for things to settle down soon.

But I did want to post some fun finds from around the web…

Firstly, a series of international PoDW openings on YouTube: Las Piratas de las Aguas Negras (Spanish), the Swedish intro, A Sötét Víz Kalózai (Hungarian), and ~???????? ???????? (Japanese–this hilarious pop song intro by Hironobu Kageyama that will now be stuck in my head for the rest of the day. By the way, check out the “international” tagged posts to get more info on the Japanese version of the show).

Also, this great comment, from Tumblr user nijireiki

Man, I really wanna do a rewrite comic of Pirates of Dark Water.

Like, CLEARLY there were some executive meetings to make Ioz nicer, curse less, and stop referencing whorehouses; to make Niddler less of a racial critique and more of a buffoonish stereotype; to make Ren paler, less “femme,” and more competent as a leader (rather than a naïve lighthouse boy who assembles a relatively equal TEAM); and to make Tula sweeter, more helpless/less competent, less creepy (ecomancers have… side effects that come with their skillset), less revolutionary, more “femme”/scantily clad, paler, and all-around healer/mystic/team girl. (AND to make the bad guys less threatening, though, interestingly for a ’90s cartoon, death— even onscreen death— was not phased out of the show entirely.)

I think it would just be awesome to restore some of that stuff, you know? A lot of worldbuilding clearly went into Dark Water, and it’s a damn shame the show never finished and so few people know about it. :/

You know, I did wonder about whether all ecomancers’ legs sprout (or transform into) roots and branches, the way Teron’s did. He didn’t have the incandescent lightning effect that Tula did, so my assumption was that it’s a little different for everyone–kind of an organic manifestation that depends on the person.

But anyway, that bit aside, the rest of the commentary is spot-on: the characters did change rather dramatically throughout the series. I’d even argue that the three main chunks of the series (released in 1991, 1992, and 1993, respectively) show noticeable differences: episodes 1-5 are the most solid and balanced representations, episodes 6-13 are definitely more watered-down and geared towards kids, and episodes 14-21 trend towards the darker and/or more grown-up side with some of their themes and action sequences.

Though, then again, a woman with a 17-year-long obsession over a man (and then that man’s son) who died a horrible death by melting into a pool of Dark Water was in that middle block of episodes, as was a wizard being killed by his own ghastly creations after using his magic to kill many people in order to steal their gold (but yet again, that episode also has the monumentally awful and OBVIOUSLY watered-down line, “You fight like your captain, Swar–not very well!”)…but that whole block of episodes did focus more heavily on moral themes, and you can derive very clear ones from each episode.

But then in those last 8 episodes, Ioz’s temper towards Tula waxed and waned (raging at her one minute, then grudgingly acknowledging that she was capable and worthy of respect, and asking Ren not to tell Tula that he had admitted he was “a greedy fool”), Tula became a bit more badass again (though still watered-down by her obvious interest in Ren and her jealousy over him expressing interest in other women–but tempered by the fact that she really stole the show when she fake-betrayed her friends in order to protect them from the Delpha Warriors and to try to secure the Eighth Treasure of Rule), and Ren made some tough moral decisions (not leaving Bloth to die when he could have, learning greatly from his own experience of being transformed into a dagron) and grew a lot in the process. (Note that I’m not saying a word about Niddler, because I’m really irritated that he was such a great and multi-dimensional character in episodes 1-5–embittered and damaged by his service to Bloth, but a loyal and true friend with deep convictions and moral fiber–and then was relegated to the irritating, selfish, childish comic relief after that.)

Also, it’s interesting, but I guess not that surprising, that pretty much the entirety of the character development happened with the protagonists. It was still a show from the era of wanting to proper delineate good and evil, so the bad guys were simply that. They had backstories and motivations and personalities that were uniquely theirs (especially in episodes 1-5–Mantus’s cool “Of course, sir. When you let the enemy think he’s in charge, it’s easy.” line still is pretty freaking cool), but at the end of the day, they were The Bad Guys. Period.

Okay, enough of that for now. It’s nice to reflect on the show in terms of the era in which it was conceived, and in terms of more “grown-up” sensibilities (I’m now older than Ioz! haha). And it’s great to have conversations with people who continue to rediscover and reflect on the show in their own ways. I do appreciate how enthusiastic you all are–the e-mails and comments have been wonderful and I’ve seriously enjoyed the discussions we’ve had over the years. Thank you for your lasting support over all this time. 🙂 Hopefully I’ll actually update the site one of these days (weeks? months? years? sigh), clean it up, and integrate the bulk of the info from the blog, and make it up to you!

On Pirates of Dark Water and race

For the ~15 people who still read this site ;), this may or may not stir up a hornet’s nest of trouble, as it has done in other places. But it’s a fairly active topic of discussion in other circles, and thanks to the Racebending movement and fascinating and apt blogs like Racialicious and Sociological Images, I’ve become more aware of these issues, and really feel the need to say something.

On several recent occasions, I’ve noticed PoDW fanart (illustrated or created with doll-making software or through other means) where the characters were depicted with light, or lighter, skin.

This is problematic.

The show’s protagonists, as well as many of the antagonists and supporting characters, are dark-skinned. This is one of the many things that has made the show so unique: a serious animated show aimed at teenagers and adults, with real plot and character development, not to mention a cast of characters that is not white or a stereotypical image of a minority.

Pretty much every single character has a subtly different skin tone, and (with the exception of Jenna and an occasional background character) all those skin tones are unmistakably brown! How cool is that? As a result, PoDW brilliantly avoids the horrid “light=good, dark=bad” stereotypes that have pervaded popular media. (If you haven’t noticed it, just look at your average action-adventure/fantasy flick, and pay attention to what roles the dark-skinned characters play. Really egregious examples: the live-action “The Last Airbender,” “Prince of Persia,” even “Back to the Future” (the Libyans, who are Hispanic and spouting gibberish instead of Arabic), and the “Indiana Jones” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies and others that feature random shots of dark-skinned “untamed savages” randomly attacking the good (and typically white) heroes. Once you start seeing it, you can’t unsee it…and that’s a good thing, because awareness is the first step in making lasting change happen.)

The biggest counterargument, especially in these “racebending/whitewashing” arguments around fantasy series, is that you can’t claim that the characters actually are Asian or Middle-Eastern, because the races and ethnicities in our world don’t exist in theirs.

Yes, races as they exist in our world do not exist in the PoDW universe. However, you can’t deny the ethnic influences throughout the PoDW universe, put there by the people who created this world. Fans I’ve talked to over the years, and fans attempting to match up actors with the characters, have referred to them as Latin, Jamaican, East Asian, Indian/South Asian, Turkish/Middle Eastern, and more. And there’s a reason for that–they have recognizable features and character/clothing designs that derive directly from those cultures. Even the conceptual artist behind the show, Floro Dery, attested that Tula’s clothing design was derived from Turkish influences.

In our society, whiteness has come to be the “default” skin tone. While whites are the majority population in the west, that’s an unfortunate mentality. I mean, I’m American, and I’m brown: a 100% Indian-American female, but I’ll often see “nude” and “natural” as labels for a default skin tone that’s markedly lighter than what is physically the “nude” and “natural” skin tone that describes my coffee-colored skin.

Also, how cool is it to have strong, relatable characters in a world where skin tone not only does not matter, but is unmistakably diverse? I really related to Tula growing up, because she bore a pretty strong resemblance to me and was a fantastic role model for me (well, minus the whole “double-crossing you guys for my own cause” thing, but it all worked out in the end!). And while I also related to light-skinned characters, I definitely noticed when there were characters that Looked Like Me.

It’s so easy for people to play this all off as just being fantasy, as just being random crap on TV and magazines…but when it’s everywhere, when it’s all you see, a part of you can’t help but grasp onto it and start believing and internalizing it. And it is everywhere–again, check out the above blogs for example after damning example. The subtle racism that plays into people subconsciously favoring light skin is really dangerous, in part because it’s just not questioned and it’s accepted blindly, and it leads to a lot of subconscious perceptions and actions that people don’t even realize are fueled by societally-induced racist tendencies.

Anyway, long story short: detail is important. And it’s not cool to default “ambiguous” (or even unambiguous) characters to white, or even to assume that light-skinned characters look “better” than dark-skinned ones. It doesn’t matter if they’re real or fictitious, live-action or animated: that still perpetuates a “light skin is better than dark skin” mentality that is not acceptable.

So, yeah. The characters have dark skin. Please respect that trait as being part of who they are, and please depict them appropriately.

Thanks for reading. 🙂

– Smitha, your cheerful female brown crusader for equality and goodwill for all

Childhood cartoons and children’s slavery

Taking a quick break from scrambling to wrap up final projects/presentations this week, to bring you this Public Service Announcement.

There’s a meme going around on Facebook, urging people to change their profile images to those of childhood cartoon characters. That alone is fun and harmless, but then somehow it got “taken over” to be about taking a stand against child slavery.

The intent’s nice and all, but…what good will it do? It’s not tied to any charity or activism group. Children in these horrible situations will not actually be positively affected by this meme. There is no direct positive outcome that comes out of people changing their profile images, besides just “warm fuzzies” that may, in some isolated cases, spur people to seek out related charities/groups and donate to them. But I can bet you that 95% of the people who change their profile images will do nothing else. (I’m not leveling accusations or blame at anybody–life’s busy and we all want to show our support somehow, right?)

But let me put it another (blunter) way. The children caught up in the slave trade and other really terrible institutions like it probably don’t even have access to a computer, much less Facebook, to even see these images. This campaign isn’t hurting anything, but since it isn’t helping anything, is that really good enough?

So let me urge you all kindly to do this instead: instead of spending 15 minutes looking up a decent image to use as your new Facebook profile photo, spend that 15 minutes to instead look up a charity or activism group that fights child slavery–or any other cause that’s important to you–and donate whatever amount of money you can afford. That will make a much more definite and immediate impact. It doesn’t have to be huge–every little bit helps.

Okay, getting off my soapbox now. 😉

– – – – –

(Is there such a thing as “the bazooka of Megatron”? I keep getting these spam comments mentioning it, and at first I couldn’t help but think, “That’s nice, but I think you’ve got the wrong website/fandom…?” haha.)

And don’t forget about the RPG module giveaway!

Also, thanks to RavnDream for letting me know that the comics section “broke” during my recent host migration. I’ll try to fix it in the next couple of weeks!

And wow, hello to all the new visitors yesterday! I am not at all sure how or why my site traffic quadrupled on the 3rd of December, but thank you for visiting–hope you enjoy what you see. 🙂

More DVD comments, and my roommate’s initial thoughts

Being the bad influence that I am, I “tricked” my roommate Kim into watching PoDW tonight (she’d wanted to anyway, we were hanging out down here, I just sort of put in a DVD and she got sucked into watching). 🙂 She’d never seen it before, so her observations were really amusing.

“This reminds me a lot of He-Man. Was it by the same people? I don’t know why, but it really does…”
“Oh, I know why it does. There are lots of tan guys with blonde hair!”
“Nooooo!” (when Primus died and was swept out to sea, and when Alomar died)
“Let me guess, the lizard bird saves him, right?” (Meaning, Niddler, the monkeybird, when Ren’s trapped on the crow’s nest of the Maelstrom in episode 1.)
“I wouldn’t go sailing with Pirate Guy.” (Meaning, Ioz, right after he and Ren struck up their deal in the bar.)
“I think Short Chubby Pirate Dude will become their friend.” (Meaning, Konk. She doesn’t like spoilers so I haven’t corrected her on this.)
“That squawking, screeching sound is awesome!” (Commenting on Niddler’s exclamations.)

We got partway into episode 3 before she called it quits. I finished it off and went on to episode 4.

And you know what? They edited the audio. I don’t know if the folks who put the DVD together did it, or what, but they definitely brought up the background noise in some parts and softened it in others, AND they changed the way Ren and Niddler’s scream sounds as they’re falling down into the Kramadorm (making Niddler’s sound more like Frank Welker and his squawking, rather than a humanoid scream).

Oh! They edited the video, too–they have very subtly edited and shortened some transitions by cutting out a second or two of footage here and there. It’s not a big deal but it feels choppy to me, since I know the originals really well. (More so than the episodes, the slight shift in the audio and music throws me off, but I am a very aural person.)

This has definitely affirmed for me that my favorite episodes in the series are #1, #4, and #5. They’re such gems all around, each with their own share of symbolism, darkness, complexity, and fun. But man, I do have to wonder what the true “on-the-street” reception of this show was when it first came out, because there are moments that are not kiddie fare.

Anyway…little by little, I’ll go through the DVDs and post comments. I still have not previewed them all just yet…there just aren’t enough hours in the day this semester. Fun times. (If anyone is at all interested in seeing what I’m up to these days, I revamped my personal site/blog and combined both. It’s not complete and still needs to be tweaked…but it might actually be interesting every now and then, beyond the “gaaahhh THESIS” stuff.)

Storyboards and DVD commentary

Thanks again to everyone who entered the contest! There were some great and really inspiring answers. Ultimately it was a random drawing that decided it (I’d mentioned this in the original post but some folks may have overlooked it), but it’s really great to see that so many people are still so enthusiastic about this show. 🙂

There have been a couple of things that came up this week…

The coolest, by far, is that Floro Dery, who did concept and storyboard art on the show, has come back from a several-month hiatus and has been posting images from the PoDW storyboards to his comic/illustration art blog all week! (Ten points to you if you can name the episode.) His linework and shading is just so delightful and nuanced. I love it. 🙂 Keep checking in, as this series will continue for a while yet.

You should check out his blog regardless of the PoDW content, though. He’s extremely experienced in working for the animation industry and posts some very informative and insightful entries with regards to technique, theory, composition, and much more.

Another–not “cool” so much as “odd”–is an observation with regards to the DVD cover.

Pirates of Dark Water DVD cover

So this is it. Pretty standard–it’s the same image as the main poster that’s available on occasion on eBay, as well as the cover of The Saga Begins (the 90-minute edited movie version of episodes 1-5). The colors are awfully saturated, which is unfortunate.

But…wait, there’s something else…

???

Is that–is that a fist coming out of Niddler’s head? Holy bad Photoshop job, Batman! How on earth could they let that one slide? Maybe, after oversaturating the image so badly, it was so blinding that they just couldn’t stare at the cover long enough to notice it…

(Thanks to Shwiggie for noticing that!)

And while we’re talking about the DVDs, I may as well post my review, based on what I’ve seen of them so far (episodes 1-3 and 15). I would be remiss if I didn’t direct you all to the great reviews posted by Ericha, Just Some Guy, and Shwiggie a couple of posts down, too–they definitely cover pretty much everything, both good and bad.

But one pretty big and great thing I did notice: the cut scene at the end of episode 2 is included in this DVD release. Frank Welker does the voice throughout, though, which is jarring for me because Roddy McDowall did such an incredible job giving Niddler true depth in episodes 1-5. But if you have the DVD, you can see the scene for yourself!

Also, I am happy to report that according to wbshop.com, PoDW is currently one of their bestselling DVD sets! Awesome work, everyone–keep spreading the word about the DVD release, because it’s through these purchases that they will know how in-demand this show really is, and that will hopefully pave the way for WB to revisit the show in the future.

My review is behind the jump.

Read more

PoDW official DVD release: links and discussion

The news is definitely making the rounds, and a lot of the major animation/SF/geek news outlets have picked it up. ToonZone, Geekosystem, Topless Robot, and Superheroes-R-Us all have mentioned the DVD release.

By the way, clarification on the price change from $19.95 to $29.95: WBshop.com told TVshowsonDVD.com that it was an error on their part to post the price as $19.95, and they apologize for that. They’ll obviously honor the price for people who ordered the DVDs before it was updated, though.

I also have updated the FAQ, and removed the torrent and streaming links from the right-hand column, in light of this official release. For people not in the US…try Google. That’s all I’ll say. 😉 With any luck, there will be an international release in the near future!

A couple of bigger mentions that are cool to call out:

Yahoo! Kids actually has a trailer for the show (a.k.a. the last couple of minutes of episode 1).

Wired’s “Underwire”* blog has a contest to win two free copies of the DVD set if you can write a compelling post about the show. I actually was on the fence about entering (since anyone who’s looked around this site can guess that I can write a fair amount about the show and its background), but I took some time to ask around and my friends were unanimous in saying I should go for it. So…yeah. 🙂 (Three guesses which comment is mine, ha! By the way, my screen name is meant to be read as “Smitha KP”–my first name and middle/last initials–not “Smith AKP.”)

One thing, though–labeling the series as “mostly unknown” is erroneous. I know I’m biased, obviously, and that it has nothing on, say, The Flintstones or Hanna-Barbera’s other shows. But it played on ABC, it played on Fox, it played in countries around the world–the 30,000 visits this site receives annually from 80+ countries definitely point to it being far from unknown. Still, it’s not like we truly have a solid fan base or “fandom” (if the latter is the mark of a popular show), but there are fans everywhere.

* really? I can’t be the only one to see that and think of a bra. Ladies? Anyone?

In other news, a couple of things…

– I’ve seen a couple of rather indignant comments over this DVD release, saying that people should boycott the DVDs because they’re so hastily made with no remastering or special care. Some people have even said that the money spent on developing the DVD should have gone to develop a continuation of the series instead. What do you all think about that? How do you feel about this DVD release?

– I just stumbled across this TVGuide article from 1991 about the Dark Water miniseries…and it changes some of my notions of how the end of the show was to play out. David Kirschner had originally only planned for 13 extra episodes after the miniseries. From that, it seems like they would have found a new treasure in each episode. Obviously the actual show did not play out in such a pat way. I do like that it didn’t just wrap up so quickly and it gave the characters a chance to grow and be fleshed out. But knowing more about the production side of things, the decision-making and negotiations that dictated how the show played out…that would be incredibly insightful and valuable to know.

Storyboards and concept art online

It took a few hours of work, but it’s just good to have it out of the way. 🙂 I’ve just uploaded over 150 photos of storyboards from The Quest and some concept art, like of Bloth’s pirates and the like, to a collection on my Flickr account, and included some commentary/analysis, some of it serious and some of it joking. 🙂

The storyboards are mostly of cut/deleted/edited material. The concept art is mostly of Bloth’s pirates, but also includes a couple of pages with alternate spellings. The crazy thing: some of Bloth’s pirates actually had names! But ironically, those were the pirates that showed up maybe twice and had no lines–the ones that did make regular appearances were just named “Pirate #3”. Oh, well.

And I apologize that these photos are unedited and not the greatest–I took these all the night before I left Atlanta to return to Pittsburgh, and since there are over 500 pages in this packet, scanning them would be an immense undertaking. (As if I’m not behind on keeping the rest of the site updated already…)

Anyway, enjoy!

The quarterly (not-an-)update

Hey, everyone–how are you doing?

So as I mentioned in the last post, I will be starting grad school this fall. I’m attempting to set a goal for myself, which is to make a substantial update to the site (and not just the blog) before school starts at the end of August. We’ll see if I can do it–I really hope I can because there’s a lot I would like to clean up and consolidate. Not to mention, I really don’t know if I will have time to make any big updates to this site during my two years in school (something tells me Carnegie Mellon isn’t the easiest of schools…), and I don’t want to let this site become more stagnant than it already has (the date in the header and footer still says 2007!). The biggest constraints that come to mind are time and my aching right wrist…we’ll see how it goes, though.

To those of you who have continued to stop by and who’ve taken a moment to send me a note recently–thank you so much. Life has been really busy (between preparing to start school, move, and leave my current job and my life here in Atlanta) and your kind words have really lifted my spirits. 🙂

Some PoDW-related stuff
– There are several very cool items on eBay right now: several gorgeous cels from The Quest (ep. 1) and a storyboard sketch sheet (!!!) from Dishonor. (ep. 2) The cels are $70 each and the storyboard sketch sheet is $80. These are the best cels I’ve seen available for purchase in years, so if you can afford them, go for it.
– It’s been pointed out to me (hi, Mugetsu!) that the five seals you see tiling down the page, the ones from the end credits of episodes 1-13, are not available for download anywhere on the site. CRAP. Sorry about that! Here they are: the seals from The Quest, Dishonor, Break-Up, Betrayal, and Victory.

Some animation-related news…80s Fever is in the air again. I heard a rumor (hi, Ryan!) that the same people who released Mysterious Cities of Gold on DVD are thinking about releasing Spartacus and the Sun Beneath the Sea. (I have not seen either of these, but from all the e-mails that have come in, a bunch of you have and were very fond of both these shows, so…heads-up!)

On top of that, according to Johane Matte (a.k.a. Rufftoon), an animation artist who did storyboard work on Avatar, there are plans for a sequel to Mysterious Cities of Gold–apparently there have been rumors about this for a while now, and other failed attempts, but she seems to believe this stands a chance of happening.

I couldn’t help but read that and feel a little discouraged. It’s great that so many other beloved shows are being rediscovered, but why not this one? There are so many thousands of fans out there who have such fond and strong memories of this show. I know I haven’t really done anything to organize or mobilize the fans, besides attempts at messageboards and the like (though I’ve thought about it more recently)–my emphasis has been more on digging up information about the show around the time of its production and posting as much as I can find. There’s a petition on petitiononline.com with thousands of signatures, but who’s doing anything with it?

When looking through old e-mails, I came across a mention of a posting on a messageboard a couple of years back where somebody claimed that the PoDW master reels in the Warner Bros. vault had been badly damaged, and that’s why they haven’t been released on DVD or otherwise revisited yet. As far as I know, that’s only a rumor…but it’s kind of sad that wholly unsubstantiated rumors are all we have to depend on. If that news were true, that would be terrible, but at least it would be a concrete reason. It’s hard for me to fathom that people could just blithely overlook this show, considering the loyal fan base and how many people do remember it.

Call for help: episode credits, RPG transcription

Hello! I’m still alive…just busy, as always. (I am still behind on my e-mail–sorry!) I come to you with two requests, one from a fan and one from me (also a fan, but…you know what I mean).

 
 

The first request…

Jeffrey is wondering…do any of you have the original end credits for episodes 1 and 3? How about the original end credits for the Fox run of the show?

This is a trickier question than it seems. Many of you know of those seals that appear in the background of episodes 1-5 (the same seals that run down the sides of this website layout):

1. The Quest: an octopus (the seal of Octopon)
2. Dishonor: the island with the moon overhead (the Island of the Pale Warriors/Atani?)
3. Break-Up: a crown, wings, and shackles (symbolizing Pandawa)
4. Betrayal: a woman’s face, half revealing the skull (symbolizing Tula’s betrayal)
5. Victory: three human hands and one monkeybird hand forming a peace symbol

However, on the Boomerang airings of the show, and some (all?) of Cartoon Network’s airings as well, the credits that appear with The Quest are actually the credits for Dishonor–the island crest is visible in the background. And the credits that appear with Break-Up are those of Betrayal, with the woman seal in the background. (I never realized this mistake till he kindly pointed this out. I am astonished to have not seen this mistake(?) before.)

Do any of you have any video clips, DVDs, VHS tapes, etc. that have the proper credits for The Quest and Break-Up? How about the credits from the original Fox run? Jeffrey is eager to access the original credits for each episode (and now I am, too!). Please do let me know if you can help out.

 
 

Next, my request…

After long last, I have finally started to complete work on the digital copies of the PoDW RPG module and World Book. Many people have asked me about these over the years, and I just couldn’t start working on them for one reason or another. I am truly sorry about that. But now that I’ve gotten into grad school for the fall, I feel more of a sense of urgency to update this site before I most likely drop off the face of the earth for 2 years. As it is, the next 3 months before I move and start school are going to be extremely busy.

It turns out the World Book has a lot of gaping holes in it that I (in my RPG-ignorant state when I typed it up years ago) figured people could just make up as they went along, but I finally see how helpful it would have been to have all those stats and additional info I’d cut out. I will be posting the full version in PDF format some time soon…it’s not a huge undertaking but it is time-consuming.

As for the character sheets, there are 105 of them, and this is where my request comes in. Would you be willing to help type them? I have a scanner, and I can scan the pages in, but they will be image files and very large (way too large to generate a PDF from), and the thought of transcribing over 100 images fills me with dread. That’s precisely why I haven’t attempted this before–it’s a ton of work for one person to do and I just haven’t had the time to start on it.

What I propose is this: I will start scanning the images and put them in a directory and post the link here. If you would be so kind as to volunteer to type up one or a few pages, comment on the thread in question with the pages you are doing, and e-mail me your transcriptions, with the page name/number in the e-mail title. I will compile them into a PDF (and eventually create a standard HTML version, too), and in the meantime, the images are also accessible to everyone.

It’s rare that I put out a call for help like this, but this is something dozens of people have asked for, and I feel horrible for holding out on you guys. I have always prided myself on putting every bit of media and information I receive on the site, but over the last couple of years it’s all been piling up. It would mean a lot to me and to many other interested fans if you could take a few minutes and help out. 🙂

 
 

As always, thank you for sticking with me and supporting the site. This show is now officially 18 years old, and you guys are just as awesome and supportive as ever, and I can’t thank you enough for that.

tv.com trivia

I haven’t checked the tv.com PoDW section in a while, and there have been some definite updates–namely, the trivia section.

My first reaction: WHOA. Who wrote this? (I have a few theories, based on the main contributors listed there, a number of whom have contacted me through this site over the years.) Whoever it was is incredibly perceptive because s/he’s noticed a lot of stuff I have never seen or realized in the many times I have rewatched these episodes.

My second reaction: On the whole, it’s more of a bloopers/errors/continuity-questions page, but still fun. 🙂

And a question: The second point under “The Beast and the Bell” references an interview “four years ago” with a writer who worked on this episode. Which writer? Where is this interview from and who conducted it, and was this really done as recently as 2004-05? (I’ll eventually start asking around on tv.com, but if anyone reads this who knows the answer, I would really appreciate if you could tell me!)

And I’m still looking for any suggestions or input from all of you, as per the previous post. Thanks again!