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Today’s the day. A classic sci-fi series, The X-Files, makes its return to television, with a small set of episodes. Not a full season, but I’m sure the bigwigs want to gauge fan interest.

I’m sure they’ll find out the fans are still out there. 🙂

I have been a fan of the show since it first aired, although I do have some gaps, some episodes I didn’t see during the initial run. The X-Files was one of the first shows I can remember where I knew fans that would gather, weekly to watch it together, have small parties. They explained to me that fans of the show are X-Philes.

I got a kick out of that. It wasn’t until the new interest in Doctor Who that I realized there were other fans of other shows doing nearly the same thing. I’m still not quite sure if I’ll do that yet, but I have seen a few episodes of Doctor Who with other fans. It’s a fun experience, to be sure, so if I get an invite, I’m leaning towards going.

While I certainly wouldn’t claim it as the best episode, my favorite was José Chung’s From Outer Space. It’s nearly a parody, while also still fitting in with the show’s plot. There’s even the traditional men in black and menacing aliens in it. It was one of the more “stylized” episodes, and features Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebek. The episodes that were produced in a different style were some really fun ones.

Here’s to hoping the NFC Championship game goes relatively quickly tonight!

I want to believe.

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Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads. -Doc Brown

The first Back to The Future movie ended with that line, as Doc, Marty, and Jennifer launch, in a flying DeLorean, to the future. Part 2 picks up right after this, and the future definitely looked different. Somewhat outlandishly different.

Clothing that would have been at the edge of fashion in ’85 was the norm in the imagined 2015 world. Advertisements were much more pervasive and even holographic. Athletic shoes had self-tightening laces. Hoverboards, for gosh sakes, were the latest fun way to get around, replacing skateboards. There’s even more, but those are some of the most memorable examples.

So, what’s a tech-savvy person to make of this? Well, there’s some things there that are nearly self-fulfilling projections of the technology of the time. Self-tightening shoes, for example, were really a giant leap and Nike will be releasing matching shoes, inspired by those in the film.

Hoverboards, however, as envisioned in the movie, are ever-elusive, although tech is in the works on, and some practical hovering-based things exist, but they’re mostly more practical things, like cargo moving gadgets, to replace wheels.

Great Scott! The future is now. Meet our Hendo 2.0 #hoverboard #bttf

Posted by Hendo Hover on Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Not quite as versatile as the ones in the movie, but evolving.

The heavy commercialization and in-your-face advertisement isn’t quite as obnoxious as shown in the film version of 2015, but it does continue its slow crawl towards it, from increasing product placement almost being expected, not just in film, but, TV (which still exists) and even video games.

In a way, I’m a bit glad it’s not such an exact match of the predictions, which usually fall short, especially in more whimsical sci-fi such as this. Things are, in some ways, arguably better (and, not just because the Cubs didn’t even make it to the World Series.) For example, the very wide-spread use of, and even existence of, the Internet. There was not even an inkling that such a communication network would be so big. It’s good that was not imagined since any guess would have been very far off.

Those are just my quick thoughts on this since it was really a summer movie that didn’t get me to thinking too hard on serious issues of the development of society. I was more focused on getting ready for the fall school year since my family hadn’t been in our new place in the suburbs very long while the movie was still new.

[On October 21, 2015,] movie fans celebrated “Back to the Future Day” since it was the day that the characters went to in their time machine. The vision they cast about what 2015 would be like in 1989 is quite different. What do you think about that?

Let me know what your thoughts were, or if you’ve already grown weary of the saturation, that’s fine too. 🙂

Prompted by Daily Write – 10.22.2015