Nancy Who

Time and Space are infinite, if you accept this then the odds of a single woman from South Croydon England encountering a Time Lord once is astronomical. Sarah Jane Smith has met multiple versions of the same Time Lord at numerous occasions. The only odds more astronomical then this are the chances of that same character getting a second chance at her own spin off Sci-Fi television show 27 years after her first chance at a spin off was shot down by studio executives.

Sarah Jane Smith first appeared in 1973, when she and the third incarnation of the Doctor foiled a Sontaran warlords plans. Ms. Smith proved to be quite a handful for the adventurous Time Lord, and she became a staple on the television show for two more years. But BBC executives weren’t done with the intrepid investigative reporter, not by a long shot. When Christmas rolled around, Sarah Jane and K-9 the robot dog appeared in K-9 and Company. The first attempt at a Doctor Who spin off series only lasted one episode, as the new studio head at the BBC did not wish to continue the series. Sarah Jane and her robot companion K-9 would only resurface in radio dramas, and Doctor Who Magazine stories.

Well you can’t keep a good reporter from getting her story, especially when she is the focus of the story. Sarah Jane appeared in the second season of Doctor Who, revealing subtle hints of a matured school girl crush on the wild haired Time Lord. This time when the Doctor said good bye to Sarah Jane, he left her a new and updated version of K-9, and the future potential for her own series. But with Torchwood already dealing with alien menaces, Sarah Jane felt that her future lay upon a different path.

Sarah Jane set up shop and went to help in her own fashion, with compassion or with stubborn determination, which ever was needed. Because a hero always needs compatriots to explain the plot to, or to save from certain death, Sarah Jane had to develop some friends. Enter Maria, Thomas, and Luke, two neighborhood kids, and a boy built by an alien race known as The Bane to further their own ends.

The Sarah Jane Adventures recently premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel, in an early 8pm time slot during their Friday night lineup. The series is directed towards elementary school aged Sci-Fi fans, and has more of a light hearted feel to it than its parent series Doctor Who has ever shown. In this era of bleak Sci-Fi focused on genocidal aliens, catastrophic stellar anomalies, and time destroying masterminds I welcome this investigative journalist back to television. The BBC has announced plans to produce 24 new episodes of this series after season one is complete, welcome back to the time war Sarah Jane. Welcome back.

Prologue

Captian America
March 1941 to March 2007

I wish that I could say it was a pleasure to be here. I think if I could say that, then things would somehow be alright. If not alright, perhaps they would be a bit better then they are now. Because right now, we all know how things are.

I feel that I'm not supposed to be the one doing this, that somehow my best attempt will fall short. Barnes should be here. Or Jones, or Fury, or Carter, or Sam. Not me, I was never supposed to be the one to do this. I'd have thought that he might even have asked Stark to be here, anyone but me. But here I am, and I'm going to try my best.

He was the best of us, and by us, I mean all of us who ever pledged alligence to the red, white and blue. When I say that he was the best of us, that is by no means a measure of his skill, or of his muscle, but it is a measure of his heart. For that is why he was who he was to each of us. Simply a 90 pound weakling, with a heart bigger then the Lousiana Purchase.

Truth be told, I never had the honor to meet the man. Which is partly why I am so surprised to be speaking to you today. Like I said earlier, my best attempt will fall short. But we all know what he would say to that, something to the affect of;
"Son, you did your best. That is all we could ask of you."
He was annoying that way wasn't he?

1941, a year that the world held it's breath. A housepainter from Austria was making quite a splash in Poland, and the trains were running on time in Italy. Edith Pealf was singing her heart out in France, a public appearance director in Washington DC was trying to figure out how he could continue to hide a wheelchair from the public eye, and a young man from Brooklyn only wanted to serve his country.

4F, these days it sounds like a coordinate on a corporate conference room map. But to a boy from Brooklyn, it was nearly the end of the world. He begged, he pleaded, he cried, and they sent him away. But one man took pity on that boy, saw him for what he might be, and not for what his body said he was.

Well, we all know what happened next, we know about the rocket, and we know about the cold icy north Atlantic ocean. Thanks to recently declassified documents, we now know about the cube, AIM, Hydra, and SHIELD. Some privledged few know about the punch to the jaw of Thanos, Diamond Back, and even about Agent 13.

Do accomplishments make a man? Or is it a man that makes a man? Was he simply the sum of his deeds? Perhaps he really was what the newsreels called him, perhaps he was the hope and dreams of our great nation. Or perhaps he was just what he claimed to be, simply a man doing what his country asked of him and no more.

To many of us he was a antique, a piece of a world lost to the pages of time. A world where being proud to be an American did not mean that you were an inbred uneducated red neck. He came from a world that being proud to be an American meant, that you worked hard, paid your taxes, contributed to the local policemans ball, and put a dollar in the collection plate every Sunday. Not because you could get a kickback from it, but because it was what you
did because you were an American.

To him being an American meant something, it meant that you were blessed with the freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness. A freedom that carried with it a responsibility to that very freedom. A responsibility to preserve and continue freedom. With your thought, word and deed you were expected to spreed, respect, and enjoy this blessing of freedom and priveledge. No one exemplified this more then he did.

He touched my life in a way that no one else ever will. He touched my life by simply being who he was, and by living up to who we said that he was. Because of that, I will hold him in higher reguard then I will any other man. But that is not why I am here today, I am here to speak of him and to remind you of his life. Because if we remember him, is he truly departed from our lives? If we hold him close to our hearts he will always be here with us.

When I leave here today, I will carry a piece of him inside of my heart with me. I would like to ask each of you to do the same, but I can not do that today. He would only want you to carry a piece of him inside of you, if that was what your heart asked you to do. So in his honor, I would ask of you, to only carry a piece of him with you if that is what you would like to do.

As I said earlier, I'm not supposed to be the one doing this, but sometimes one man's heart can override what the world tells them not to do.

He would have thanked you for being here tonight, please drive safely.

originally written March 7, 2007

A long time ago on a page far far away…

Broken (Star Wars: Legacy, Vol. 1)

Have you ever noticed, that when someone other then George Lucas writes a Star Wars story, it’s a really good story? Well, the folks at Dark Horse Comics noticed this and have been publishing stories about the force since before Anakin Skywalker whined about how mitochlorians make his skin itch.

Star Wars Legacybegins 125 years after the movie Return of the Jedi. The Empire has rebuilt it’s forces, the Republic has crumbled, the Yuuzhan Vong have retreated from known space, the Sith have risen as the dominant force in the galaxy, and the main character is a Skywalker. This story has Imperial Stormtroopers, Sith Lords, and lightsaber wielding aliens. If you add a writer with a resume that includes more than the information on the side of a Corn Flakes box, you’ve got everything you would need for a Star Wars story. If you add a writer like comic book mainstay John Ostrander, you’ve got a recipe for an excellent story.

John Ostrander fleshed out and updated the DC comics golden age character The Spectre, and modernized the silver age character the Martian Manhunter. Ostrander progresses the universe of the force away from the characters we’ve memorized the dialogue of, and into uncharted territory that seems as familiar as what we’ve grown to love over the years. Ostrander introduces us to a padawan named Cade Skywalker, who is forced to grow up and make a difficult decision in the heat of battle. It’s an old chestnut of a story, but it’s only setting the stage for the rest of this tale.

Star Wars, a new hope (known to many of us simply as “Star Wars”) contained a good deal of politics and senatorial maneuvering, which Mr. Lucas promptly dropped halfway through the film and didn’t return to until his second trilogy of films. Legacy brings us back to the political intrigue. We see Imperial Moffs vying for power with their Emperor, making deals and trading the lives of their own children for a little bit more time against the forces of the Sith.

What I enjoyed most about this collected edition is the atmosphere it contained. Throughout the Star Wars movies we are teased with bits and pieces of life in a universe far far away, and then the flavors of that world are not brought back to us at all. Legacy brings all those pieces into the for front of the story. Vulgar words of Huttese are strewn through the dialogue of space pirates. The engineer of the pirates tramp freighter is a Zeltron, a near human alien from the classic Marvel Comics series of the 1980’s. Technology has improved over the years as we are shown new TIE fighter designs, and a variety of new styles of lightsaber. Ostrander matured not only the storyline but the culture and art of the universe as well.

If you enjoyed classic the Star Wars films, and felt you were cheated out of your childhood by the phantom clones that sought revenge, then this is the Star Wars sequel you’ve been waiting for. What’s not to love in a comic book where there are Jedi on the run Sith lurking in the shadows, and legions of Stormtroopers? If you’re a fan of Star Wars who has been looking to get the taste of Revenge of the Sith out of your mouth, this is your book.