Comments on: After Cuba

By: N-reD

N-reD — Mon, 04 May 2009 18:10:51 +0000

hey! I’m in this one. I love it! Mmm! That’s good nostalgia!

By: DarkSlavik

DarkSlavik — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 00:06:02 +0000

Ah, the series at it’s early days, what a time.

By: Othniel

Othniel — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 09:13:22 +0000

I can’t read the Now You Tell Us.

By: Diamond

Diamond — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:46:25 +0000

Damn… I can’t believe it’s been almost four years since the Series began…

Memories… la da deeee da da da dum….

By: Thande

Thande — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:53:32 +0000

Thanks Zed-Man.

As for Paris Hilton, before your time, but back in 2005 Doc was associated with cloning her in a running joke way, I’m not sure if it was ever codified.

By: Zyzzyva

Zyzzyva — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 07:49:37 +0000

Don’t let Thande’s depreciatory comments get you down – this ep still holds up pretty well even after – is it already four years? The characterization – at least in broad strokes – is pretty down pat, although the focus is still on the “early-series cast”: Straha and AHP being the ones who’ve had the largest drop in screentime (well, *obviously*, since they were both dropped from the series in season 2 or so), but Othniel, for instance, gets an A-cast position he’s since lost, and sheep-worship has similarly stopped being a major issue.

Still, an excellent pilot – even if it wasn’t the first published: the less new viewer-friendly In a Gudda Vita Through a Cracked Mirror (IIRC) was – and it inaugurates a couple of Series traditions: the CF.net, the crew’s utterly catastrophic impact on any TL they visit, and, of course, the horrible punishment meted out to any non-main cast-member unfortunate enough to get onstage. Oh, and abuse of RL female celebrities. Paris Hilton, of all people, comes in for it here, but Alyson Hannigan and Kiera Knightley get some major “screentime” over the next few seasons.

Still, the series is off to a flying start. It’s all downhill – in both senses, probably – from here…

By: Midgard

Midgard — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 01:12:48 +0000

Ah, what a trip down the memory lane…

By: Dave Howery

Dave Howery — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 23:10:54 +0000

typical of early episodes, where I appear briefly just to indicate my dislike of Canada, and little else. I never realized it at the time, but a kind of obvious joke was missed; the people on this timeline worship fast food places, more or less… and I work at one IRL. Still, it’s a good piece of work, with the crew barely functional, the CF.NET folks incompetently nasty, and the natives of the timeline appropriately daffy. All of these qualities would be explored further in episodes to come….

By: Thande

Thande — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:02:03 +0000

In this week’s episode, our intrepid heroes clash with dark forces as they strive to defend their principles and the stability of an orphaned world…

Oh wait, no, that’s some other show. This is the AH.com Series. Do not adjust your set.

After Cuba was the first canon episode I wrote for the Series and it shows. Though I think it’s not a bad debut, I was still finding my way into the Series’ setting. The crew here are too ‘nice’, the joke references are too subtle and I was still under the impression that the CF.net ship was smaller and of a different origin to the AH.com.

Finally, the setting is probably too “serious”, which is a funny thing to say about a planet full of post-apocalyptic barbarians who worship fast food chains. At this point I was thinking we were still going to use vaguely plausible alternate timelines as settings, which really went west – and for the good reason that they rarely worked as settings. “The Reign of Spain Goes Mainly Down the Drain” was the last episode of this type I wrote, and wasn’t received very well.

However, I still like this episode. It has decent characterisation of characters such as Doc, IronYuppie and Landshark, introduces the CF.netters, and that “successful Sealion” joke never fails to crack me up…