The Mezzanine

...just because.


Buffy

- Spike's arrival.

Because suddenly vampires were not angsty gothic people, but would make ridiculous comments about Woodstock and then go watch telly.


And way before that...
- "They can fly??" "They can drive."

It was just so mundane and common-sense-y.


Farscape

- Crichton's first week in space:
"Get a tractor beam on that shuttle!"
"Tractor beam? What's that?"
"Graviton field. Attracto ray. Superglue. Whatever it is that you yanked me aboard with."
"You mean the docking web?"
"Yeah! Fine! Use it on the shuttle!"

Star Trek really has done a lot for us. Because, despite the fact that none of us have ever seen one in action, anyone who's watched even the slightest bit of television would recognise the draggy laser thing as a "tractor beam".
I loved that Crichton's space-vocabulary was completely different from everyone else's.


Also...
- Frag-cannons.
Specifically, the fact that Crichton reacts to the name "frag-cannons" by grinning and looking around to see who else has noticed the silly; and meanwhile, everyone else it taking it totally seriously because OH NOES THE FRAG CANNONS!


Doctor Who

- "Wait! The Prime Minister's an alien! ...nah, that's never going to work, is it?"

Most shows would have either had him continually insisting that the PM was an alien, with an aggrieved why-does-no-one-believe-me air, or else had him try to conceal it from the get-go. This one made a nice change.


Leverage

- Parker's origin story. With her blowing up her foster family's house to get her soft toy back.
AND IT WAS ALL CUTE AND EVERYTHING.

Still on the subject of Farscape as the anti-Trek...

Crichton comes from a world of Star Trek, Aliens, and E.T. He starts by approaching life in exactly that way.

There are a whole bunch of humanoid aliens: he will smile and say hello; the Peacekeepers are humans in uniforms: they are clearly Star Trekky and will help him; D'Argo is weird and has tentacles: maybe he'll want to eat him; Aeryn is a pretty human: clearly she'll be friendly and nice.

He spends the whole episode operating under those assumptions, and then stumbling around in bewilderment when nothing he does is working...

It's...

( Farscape )

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