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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8662316" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 106: April 1995part 4/5Video Drone: Another attempt at a video review column? Interesting. As usual when it's an entirely new set of people, they do it all differently, a different title, a four point scoring system instead of the old 5 star one, and a different format where two people give their contrasting opinions on the same film. TSR's fiction editor Brian Thomsen and his wife Donna will be your Siskel & Ebert on this journey. Will they be covering ground James did already, and if so, how different will their opinions be?The Puppetmasters is a recent adaption of the Heinlein story, basically invasion of the body snatchers, only a secret government organisation is aware of the aliens and figuring out how to strike back, with Donald Sutherland getting a little typecast in the lead role. It's shot more like a spy/action thriller than a horror movie, while Brian likes, but Donna is ambivalent about. I guess hunting evil with the help of cool technology is a fairly male power fantasy.Bodysnatchers: The Invasion remakes the old classic, but with a very 90's naming convention to make it more edgy and contemporary sounding. This time, they're on a military base instead of a small or large town, which changes things in a fairly interesting way. A pretty decent updating to modern (at the time) production values. Now all we need is a white wolf licence. (or just hack Demon: the Fallen to do the job.)Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (1956) was covered by James in the old review column just a year ago, so I'm slightly surprised to see them rehashing it. Brian mildly prefers the two new versions of the story, while Donna thinks nothing tops the B&W ambience of the original for inspiring nightmares. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) also gets re-reviewed here. While not a complete loss, both Thomsens agree that this is the weakest of these four movies, mainly of interest for people who like to compare & contrast like them. You can probably skip it without feeling you're missing much.Gothic Heroes: In the World of Darkness, most famous people are not vampires, wizards, or stalwart heroes fighting against the forces of darkness, but remain ignorant, although they might be mind-controlled behind the scenes by memory erasure or posthypnotic suggestions. Gothic Earth has none of that tasteful restraint. Harry Houdini? He has genuine magical talent. Tesla? A descendent of Frankenstein using the same techniques for the cause of good. Edison? A powerful mind devoted to the betterment of mankind and totally not a plagiarist. Meanwhile Fahreda Mahzar, aka Little Egypt, an exotic dancer at the same trade fair as these three? A succubus, there to lure men to their doom and trap their souls for all eternity to power her magic. So this not only shows the dated attitudes of the 1890's, but the 1990's as well, being extremely pro scientist and anti sex worker and not afraid to blatantly alter history to fit that agenda. I guess I shouldn't be surprised with the TSR code of conduct in force, but it is a reminder just how much attitudes have changed since the rise of the internet and the increase in diverse voices having large platforms that followed. It's interesting reading to see what they've done with the people, and how it differs from other real world with hidden supernatural settings, but also comes off as both cheesy and overly conservative by modern standards. Even back in the 90's, there were better alternatives, and TSR was chasing trends rather than setting them in this field.Weasel Games: What is this, bring your wife to work month? Having mentioned her several times in previous columns, Lester gets his wife Jennifer to give her perspective on his behaviour and why she sticks around anyway. Initially she tried to be the straight woman and play things fairly, but after a while of putting up with him she snapped. Not having any hope of actually beating the more experienced weasel, she instead goes for the kamikaze approach, doing something that isn't optimal for winning, but sabotages the play of someone else. (often him <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ) and enjoying the chaos that causes. Sometimes, doing the suboptimal but unexpected thing even wins the game as a whole. Another demonstration of game theory where the lesson part is pretty small, and most of the entertainment is in the actual play stories. Having fun is more important than winning in a game, and if one person wins all the time, other people will either change their standards of success or stop playing. Best not to make them lower their standards so far that it stops being fun for you as well.</blockquote>

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