This week: Bioware guru Casey Hudson clues us in on Mass Effect 2′s characters, story, and awesome new gameplay features. We talk damn dirty apes in this week’s classic sci-fi feature, Planet of the Apes — including Sean’s Moses run-in. And our fantasy sci-fi teams struggle to get lucky with red-carpet hotties. We also run down the week in geek, including a killer (if possibly fake) Tekken movie trailer, Caprica’s increasingly-less-accurately-described “premiere,” Spider-Man 4′s ugly end (and new beginning), a newly-announced Firefly short story collection, and Scott Bakula’s upcoming return to Chuck.
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One Response to #203: Classic Sci-fi: Planet of the Apes, Mass Effect, Casey Hudson
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Love the podcast! 2 things for you, hope someone sees this before the next ‘cast.
1. The comment line isn’t working so good. Error messages. and it’s hard as hell to find on this site!! I had to listen to the intro of the podcast to get the number, and with the errors, I’m not sure I have the right number. (214)296-9229 ext.701
2. On the Planet of the apes: You kinda glossed over several social commentaries and missed some background. This was written as a social commentary of the then-current society (book was written in 1963). The movie changed the story somewhat, but kept the commentary.
The apes are divided into social classes. Gorillas are the agressive, militaristic workers; the Chimpanzees are the inquisitive scientists, and the orangutans are the sneaky, lying politicians.
The back story for the movie is: the humans destroyed the planet, blasting it back to the stone ages. The lawgiver was the leader of the band of apes who survived, along with a few humans. The film takes place at a time where the apes have developed to the level of the mid-1800′s (guns, horses, oil lamps, etc., but no electricity. Think wild west). the houses and such (mud huts) are camp-film shlock just trying to make it look different and unrecognizable. All advances from humans have been lost. Remember Zira was performing autopsies on humans to learn basic biology to improve ape health care. Cornelius was at a dig that found human artifacts. Zaius was the one who shut the dig down. Zaius and the rest of the politicians did not know details, but they had secret records that told man had been the original ruler and had destroyed the original civilization.
The arizona look is supposed to be the result of the nuclear holocaust that changed the entire ecosystem (New york was and still is a major military target and Nukes were aimed there until the end of the cold war, so imagine a nuke taking out all New York, and the ensuing radiation kills everything, leaving a giant dust bowl, burying the statue of liberty, which was on the very limit of the blast radius, so just the tips of the crown got melted.
Ape city was located much further inland, so escaped the worst of the fallout and fewer plants died, allowing them to live as hunters/gatherers as they spent 2000 years rebuilding.
Moses (love that!) was alright with the idea everyone was dead because he believed they were on another planet, and that the current earth was some far-advanced wonderfull place. Seeing the statue made him realize there was no hyper-advanced civilization to go home to.
Hope all that made sense and helped explain some of your questions from the podcast.