Legend Blog

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bftlovesRDA
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Re: Legend Blog

Post by bftlovesRDA »

I finished MacGyver and have started to rewatch Legend. I am happy to say again that the quality of the DVD's and the videos are great. I am enjoying the 2nd go around with this series immensely. Have already watched the first 3 episodes again and I am so angry the UPN network or whoever it was cancelled this great series. It is so entertaining. RDA and John de Lancie make a remarkable team. And bringing in the bits of real history make the series even more enjoyable. RDA is "the center" of the series and steals the show...without him, it would be a nothing series. With him, it is actually fantastic! I can't wait to watch the rest of the episodes. I am not watching for anything special - just for pure enjoyment and have not been disappointed in any way. (also posted l post this little comment over on the Legend DVD thread).
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KateR
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Re: Legend Blog

Post by KateR »

I should have episode #3 posted later today or tomorrow.

I find myself wondering how much I should include in the "Notes" section about all the popular culture references. I did it in the "For the Record" section of the Stargate Lexicon, and maybe I should do that again since Legend is full of them. But how many need an explanation? I suspect Ned Buntline is not so familiar to most people, and Alexander Graham Bell is probably more well known ("There's a man back east by the name of Alexander Graham Bell who's perfecting a device which I predict will cause no end of trouble"). But is a "Gone With the Wind" reference ("Oh, please, nobody wants to read a melodrama about an aristocratic Southern woman who barely survives the burning of Atlanta") obvious to everyone, even outside the US? Are Custer, and Hickok, and Billy the Kid famous around the world, or are they peculiarly American folk heroes?

Just wondering how much detail to add...

Kate
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Re: Legend Blog

Post by Caty »

KateR wrote:I should have episode #3 posted later today or tomorrow.

I find myself wondering how much I should include in the "Notes" section about all the popular culture references. I did it in the "For the Record" section of the Stargate Lexicon, and maybe I should do that again since Legend is full of them. But how many need an explanation? I suspect Ned Buntline is not so familiar to most people, and Alexander Graham Bell is probably more well known ("There's a man back east by the name of Alexander Graham Bell who's perfecting a device which I predict will cause no end of trouble"). But is a "Gone With the Wind" reference ("Oh, please, nobody wants to read a melodrama about an aristocratic Southern woman who barely survives the burning of Atlanta") obvious to everyone, even outside the US? Are Custer, and Hickok, and Billy the Kid famous around the world, or are they peculiarly American folk heroes?

Just wondering how much detail to add...

Kate
Never heard of Ned Buntline, but Alexander Graham Bell shoud be known. At least by people, who are no kids anymore ;)
I've read "Gone With the Wind" not only once and in my younger days I loved movies of the Wild West with Wild Bill Hickock and Billy the Kid. Even General Custer and General Ulysses Grant I know, although I don't know very much of their lives.
But I suspect today's kids don't know anyone of them. When you talk to kids of today, many of them don't even know the historic people of their own country.

Sad, very sad! :cry: :cry:
"No matter how hard the past,
you can always begin again.
"

(Buddha)
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bftlovesRDA
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Re: Legend Blog

Post by bftlovesRDA »

KateR wrote:I should have episode #3 posted later today or tomorrow.

I find myself wondering how much I should include in the "Notes" section about all the popular culture references. I did it in the "For the Record" section of the Stargate Lexicon, and maybe I should do that again since Legend is full of them. But how many need an explanation? I suspect Ned Buntline is not so familiar to most people, and Alexander Graham Bell is probably more well known ("There's a man back east by the name of Alexander Graham Bell who's perfecting a device which I predict will cause no end of trouble"). But is a "Gone With the Wind" reference ("Oh, please, nobody wants to read a melodrama about an aristocratic Southern woman who barely survives the burning of Atlanta") obvious to everyone, even outside the US? Are Custer, and Hickok, and Billy the Kid famous around the world, or are they peculiarly American folk heroes?

Just wondering how much detail to add...

Kate
I didn't know about Ned Buntline - but did know of the others you mention and of the reference to Gone With the Wind......so including them in your notes is a great gift if you choose to do that. You can just list the references and people can look them up themselves on wikipedia or something like that if they don't know whom you are talking about. Just an idea.

Thank you for the Lexicon - it is brilliant!

I just finished rewatching all the Legend episodes and I must say again - how delightful they all are. And, I get angry every time I watch Legend because, again, this series should never have been cancelled. It has adventure, intrigue, inventions, history, and great character interactions along with, of course, the humor that helps to make it great. It's great family entertainment - just as MacGyver and Stargate SG1 were. I can see how Legend could have gone on for years if the writers had continued to write with such creativity. :cry: :cry: :cry:
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Re: Legend Blog

Post by KateR »

Caty wrote:But I suspect today's kids don't know anyone of them. When you talk to kids of today, many of them don't even know the historic people of their own country.

Sad, very sad! :cry: :cry:
I suspect you may be right, Caty. :roll: History, music, popular culture... anything that is "old" is not worth knowing. I taught 6th graders, and when they wanted to say something was very old, (and therefore of no value), they'd say, "It looks like it's from the 80s!" One year I had a class, and I would make joking references about things like the yellow brick road or flying monkeys and I'd just get blank looks. It finally became apparent that most of them had never seen The Wizard of Oz. It became a running joke with us throughout the year, when I'd keep telling them, "You've got to watch the classics!" :lol:

Thanks for the input. I'll try to find a balance of notes that can fill in some blanks without insulting intelligence. :)

Episode #3 - Legend on His President's Secret Service - is now up on the website!

Looking forward to Nick's review and some discussion.

Kate
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Re: Legend Blog

Post by bftlovesRDA »

KateR
Episode #3 - Legend on His President's Secret Service - is now up on the website!
Thank you, Kate, for Episode #3 - especially enjoy the remarks AND the screenshots!
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Re: Legend Blog

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Re: Legend Blog

Post by ebineez01 »

Hey all :)
This is my first post about the actual content of Legend - received my DVDs last Friday and am watching it for the very first time ever - even though Kate has graciously made them available on the website, once I ordered the DVDs I have been holding out until they arrived.
So I just finished episode 4 'Custer's Next to Last Stand', and I gotta say I'm loving the show so far. It has literally had me laughing out loud! :lol:
Not sure if we have to warn for spoilers here - but spoilers for episode 3 'Legend on His President's Secret Service' just in case...

My favourite part of the series so far (that I watched late last night and had to try to control my fit of giggles so I didn't wake my other half) was in this episode when Pratt, Bartok and Abigail Steele were using 'The Bartok constant-frequency oscillator' to eavesdrop on Colonel Steele and it short circuited and blew out all the windows in the building and then made the wall fall out :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Making me grin right now even thinking of it :D

Rick is of course so funny in this - I'm taking the 'overacting' for what it is and am just going with it and it's a great ride :D John de Lancie is amazing as Janos Bartok and I absolutely adore all his inventions! I would have loved to have been on that crew to get my hands on his steam powered gizmos! I'm actually a mechanic as well as an electrician so I am enjoying him immensely - I just can't decide which one is my favourite :D

I wouldn't say that Legend or more precisely Pratt has taken over being my fav RDA character. It used to be the Colonel, though I'll admit since watching all episodes of MacGyver as well as the movies I'm firmly entrenched in 'MacLand' right now - not a bad place to be overall - really nice view most of the time too :D ;) :lol:

Will comment a bit more on my favourite parts as I go through the series

And as everyone else has said - great work with the lexicon Kate. After seeing this one for Legend I can totally understand how daunting a task MacGyver would seem - sheesh! I will say that I am intending on rewatching Mac again from the beginning when I finish Legend so if you would like anything from me while I'm doing that - fav quotes whatever lemme know :)
Ebi
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Re: Legend Blog

Post by bftlovesRDA »

Thanks, Ebi, for your synopsis of what you have seen of Legend so far. Glad you are enjoying the series. I did too. Have watched it through twice and now am back on watching Stargate straight through - but will intersperse Legend into the Stargate-a-thon.....since it is so new and so good.
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Re: Legend Blog

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themacgyverproject wrote:Here's my review of episode 3!
http://themacgyverproject.blogspot.com/ ... dents.html
Thanks, Nick! I'm a little behind this week. Trying to catch up...
There are several parts of this episode that don't make any sense, but the ending is a disaster of epic proportions. It starts out with Legend inexplicably pulling a gun on Grant and the First Lady and forcing them into his balloon. Then the balloon follows the moving train which is then hijacked by Colonel Steele. When Steele boards the train and goes to Grant's car, his daughter Abigail is sitting in a chair pretending to be Grant for no apparent reason.
It is a bit convoluted, I'll grant you, but that's not unusual for Legend plots. My interpretation was that he wasn't necessarily pulling a gun on the president, but was acting defensively to allow him time to explain the situation. The plan was to allow Grant and Steele to meet without putting the president in danger or getting Steele arrested/shot for kidnapping. So, I felt that Grant willingly agreed to the plan, that he and the first lady went to the balloon where they would be safe when Steele's men stopped the train, and Abigail was there in his place because they knew Steele would never risk hurting her and she could diffuse the situation. Finally, Grant and Steele could meet near the balloon, away from the rest of his men and out of harm's way, where cooler heads could prevail. I'm assuming here that Legend and Bartok wouldn't have gone out of their way to arrange a meeting like that for just anyone, but they were relying on the fact that Grant and Steele had a longstanding friendship.
This is followed by Potter walking off into the desert
I did wonder about that, because I was thinking at first that this planned tour of the area was going to happen by train, so no need for Potter to go on ahead. But I think he was walking back to the train to take the train to its destination and handle the public relations issues from there while Grant and Steele took their tour by balloon instead.
I'm assuming that RDA was actually upside down this whole time (unless there's some trick with the camera that I can't understand), and it's very impressive how well he was able to carry on this long scene considering that it must have been pretty uncomfortable.
He really was doing the upside down scene, although surely it was shot in smaller segments with plenty of rightside-up breaks in between. I wish I could find some of the discussion that happened when the show aired, with people from the set talking about RDA's endless patience doing that scene himself. It really was incredibly long!
I feel like I'm watching MacGyver with some of this Ken Harrison music, especially during the scene where they're discovered outside the bunkhouse.
I agree! There are certain musical threads that are distinctly western-ish and "Legend," but so much of the music is pure MacGyver!
Final Analysis:
It started out promising with a strong opening scene, the acting is mostly good, and I loved the dialogue with Henrietta. But the rest of it was a bit slow, and the last ten minutes were a train wreck (which is fitting since it involves a train). As for its ranking, I'm putting it behind Episode 2 but ahead of Episode 1 -- despite some flaws, at least there were some good moments, and Episode 1 was just so slow and long that I think it's going to be hard for a future episode to be underneath it.
I never tried ranking them, but I'd put the pilot higher than you did. I think I liked the pilot better than episode 2 and 3, but as I said, my favorite ones are still ahead.

Now I really need to get started on episode 4!

Kate
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