It’s been a couple of weeks since the epic 50th anniversary ‘Doctor Who’ story aired, and I’ve spent an awful lot of time mulling it over in my head, as well as interacting with my fellow nerds to see if others enjoyed it as much as I did.  The return to greatness after an inconsistent season made me happy, and gives me hope that the new era of ‘Who’ could be a real winner.  With that milestone out of the way, though, my nerdly high hopes turn towards J.J. Abrams upcoming ‘Star Wars Episode VII’ (which I hope has a better title than that, ’cause even The Phantom Menace is superior to just a Roman numeral).  Of course, since we’re all friends here (even Rob), perhaps this shift in anticipation also begs a query…

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) occasionally likes to cut through the subtext and ask the question we’re all quietly thinking, asking: Time-Lord or Jedi?

No matter how successful the newest iteration of Star Trek is, there will always be a part of me that compares them to the original Trek crew.  Certainly there are talented actors on Abrams’ V.2 Trek project, able to make the characters their own, but there may never be an ensemble that affects me the way the 1966 cast could.  Of course, it should be noted that I am a sucker for a good “team”, whether it be Ted Mosby and his pals or the cruelly and criminally underrated Justice League Detroit squad of my youth, and breaking down the archetypes and roles of those teams is how I fill many an idle hour.  (For the record, for all the static I’ve given Rodrigo during sessions of Critical Hit, the idea of party roles is one that has grown on me, especially when you figure that Torq and Montgomery Scott fill a similar slot in their respective groups.)  This, in turn, begs a query…

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) admits that Captain Reynolds and his ragtag crew are incredibly compelling as well, asking: What is the most perfectly balanced ensemble cast in all of pop culture?

There are those who complain that zombie-flavored stories are too prevalent, as if the use of the shuffling dead were in itself a genre, rather than props used to evoke a particular mood.  For my part, I enjoyed the early installments of ‘Marvel Zombies’, especially the bits where undead Peter Parker laments having killed and eaten his family in the same tone he used to whine about working for J. Jonah Jameson, and have often thought that it would be interesting other hero-types in similar settings.  How might Indiana Jones face a wave of revenants?  Or George Costanza?  Would Jack Skellington have an edge against a horde clamoring to eat flesh, or would become their leader and sic them on Wallace and Gromit?

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) believes that Talking Heads had a great point when they said, “Stop Making Sense”, asking: What fictional character (who doesn’t already live in a zombie story) would survive longest after the zombie apocalypse?

As a fan of comic book history, it’s interesting to look at the various “boom” periods, and the characters and concepts spawned from those expansion points.  The original Golden Age post-Batman explosion featured any number of loony concepts for books, from Madame Fatal (cross-dressing two-fisted mystery “woman”) to The Clown (who was a clown.)  In the 90s, we discovered that all you needed to be a superhero was a pair of shoulder-pads and a noun that sounded badass.  My favorite epic expansion, though, came circa 1966, where the success of the Batman television show led to the creation of dozens of heroes of various repute, from Space Ghost all the way to Tod Holton, Super Green Beret.  Interestingly, the last few years of comic book madness have led to a situation very similar to those swingin’ days of yore, with superheroes invading TV screens, movies and even the mainstream pop culture in ways that we haven’t seen since Adam West, which begs today’s query…

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) thinks this one will seem equally obvious to proponents of either side, asking: Are we actually in a new renaissance period of comics, or is it just the proverbial dead-cat bounce?

The various rumors swirling around Star Wars Episode VII seem to imply that the original actors will be playing versions of themselves that are, like the actors themselves, 30 years down the line from the Battle Of Endor.  I find myself enjoying that idea, wondering what a 70-year-old Han Solo might be up to, or what kind of fighting techniques would be most appropriate for 62-year-old Luke Skywalker, legendary balancer of The Force.  There are problems with that sort of story-telling (notably seen in the recent 50th Anniversary Doctor Who special, wherein an elderly Tom Baker made an appearance, while the other retirement-age Doctors probably wouldn’t have fit the story being told), but for every negative, there’s a bright side.  The “twenty minutes into the future” setting of Marvel’s Spider-Girl series gave us a fiftyish Peter Parker, having given up his mantle to teenage daughter May, and tried to show us the realistic consequences of Spider-Man’s heroic life.  What might Batman comics be like if Bruce Wayne had aged realistically from his first appearance in 1939?  Thereupon hangs today’s query…

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) sees what’s become of me, when I look around at my possibilities, asking: What story would you most like to see taking place in “real time” and why?