August 25th, 2008


11:14 pm - More reasons I love this
What I love is all the homages to other shows.  The snappy dialogue and the references to things we know and love.

This happened to be a huge Doctor Who and Die Hard homage! 

If you are not watching the Middleman, this is the type of stuff you are missing in the dialogue, etc.

This is all the stuff I actually caught that was referenced!  Go me!  Again, this super hero comic book turned TV show rox my sox!

- "pan galactic gargle blaster" - homage by namecheck to "the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy"

- "the return of bruno" - homage by namecheck to bruce willis's album of the same name

- "commander benton and specialist heriot" - homage by namecheck to sgt. benton of UNIT, companion to the second and third regenerations of doctor who and to zoe herriott, companion to the second doctor

- "mister lethbridge-stuart, if that is your name!" - homage by namecheck to brigadier lethbridge stuart, companion to the third and fourth doctor who

- "zygon-rated quarantine facility" - homage by namecheck to the alien race first encountered by the fourth doctor who

- the text seen in the clotharian pod is a public-domain variant of the aurebesh alphabet, best known as the graphic representation of the galactic basic language in the star wars universe

- "the nakatomi protocol" - the first of MANY homages to "die hard" in this episode - in a further driving home of the theme, the keypad chimes with beethoven's ode to joy, the central musical conceit of "die hard"...the reason for the constant name-checking of "die hard" in this episode is that, eventually, in the course of every tv series, the producers are forced to do an episode that takes place primarily in the standing sets in order to save money: as a result, almost every series, especially sci-fi shows, have resorted to doing some variation of "die hard" in which a hostile force of some kind causes the standing sets to be taken over and locked down, forcing the heroes to do battle on their own turf, rather than be coy about it, we figured we'd point out the similarity at every turn

- "come out to the coast, we'll have a few laughs" - homage by quote (and lucky lighter use) to john mcclaine in "die hard"

- "great, hans grubered with our own robot" - homage to the villain from "die hard," which, by the way, was an homage to the villain from "our man flint," also named "hans gruber"

- "now i have a machine gun - ho-ho-ho" - quote from "die hard"

- "mccrimmon college" - homage by namecheck to another one of the second doctor who's companions

- "the treaty of periperpegilliam" - homage by namecheck to another doctor who character, this one a companion to the fifth and sixth doctor

- "yippi-kay-yay [BLEEP!]" - another homage to "die hard" if you watch closely, you will also notice that the black box covering high aldwin's mouth is part of the holographic projection...either the middleman's or the clotharian holo-system has a built-in censor

- "now i know what a tv dinner feels like" - quote from "die hard"

- "die hard inside an android" - is a screenwriter's joke referring to the glut of films that followed "die hard," all of which were pitched as "die hard in a -"...like "under siege" (die hard in a battleship) or "air force one" (die hard in air force one) or "toy soldiers" (die hard in a military school) or "executive decision" (die hard in a passenger plane) or "sudden death" (die hard in an arena) or "speed" (die hard in a bus) or "speed 2" (die hard in a cruise ship)

- "like oompa-loompas with power tools!" - homage to the characters in "willy wonka"

- "kiss my asimov" - shout out to the science fiction writer who developed the laws of robotics quoted by the middleman earlier in this scene

- "today john wayne doesn't get to ride off into the sunset with grace kelly" - yet another quote from "die hard"

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