Only a Farmgirl...

It's a verticle feed mixer. Inside there's an auger that goes round and round, and mixes up the feed before spitting it out of the chute below. I saw these things fairly often from the time I was ten. We have a fairly large one lying sideways in our front yard, and we used to climb in it and pretend it was a space ship. It greatly resembled part of a rocketship, as we remembered it from the movie Apollo 13. We also pretended it was a submarine. 

One year, for Christmas, we got the most remarkable present. Our parents got us the 10th Anniversary Collector's Edition of Myst: which included the DVD version of the first three games in the series. We'd played an old version of Myst on an even older laptop (it ran Windows 98, as I recall) and we were very eager to play the sequel; Riven. 

Riven did not disappoint. It was an amazing game. Except that we wandered through the entire game wondering why on earth Gehn needed a feed mixer, and where was this telescope everyone kept talking about?

Parallel Superguys: Hal

I couldn't watch Green Lantern with a straight face. There were far too many similarities between the protagonist, Hal Jordan, and the villain of Megamind, Hal Stewart.

Let's start with the obvious: they're both named Hal. 


They both wear really dorky masks that don't really conceal their identity.

They both float down to the girl's railing in an eerily similar scene...

They're both made unwilling heroes.

They're both real life failures.

The differences, however, make up for it, since Green Hal makes all the right choices and Red Hal does not. Green Hal becomes a hero because he cares about the people around him, and Red Hal becomes a villain because he cares only about himself. But they started, essentially, at the same place. 

Doctor Seven

Star Trek: Assignment: Earth

 The last episode of Star Trek; the Original Series Season Two was the first episode of a new, spin off series. This was the only episode of that series to air, and no one is quite sure what became of it. Doctor Who fans will assert, however, that Gary Seven was either an impostor or the Seventh Doctor in disguise, for who else could possess the same marvelous technology?

Gary Seven's "Sonic Device."

The Tenth Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver

Gary Seven's manufactured credentials

Psychic Paper

However, there is one difference which we can be quite sure of... at least when it comes to the Tenth Doctor's incarnation. The Doctor is not a cat person.

Parallel Episodes: Turn off your blue tooth!

Turn off your bluetooth! It may be manipulating you. 

 Stargate: Revisions
SG-1 visits a planet that is uninhabitable except for a small bubble of life. During their stay they notice the bubble shrinking, but the inhabitants have no memory of it being any larger after each shrink. To make matters more suspicious they refuse to remove their ear pieces that tie them into the central network.

Doctor Who: Rise of the Cybermen

Beware of using the same EarBud your neighbor does, they might be connected to a secret network that can control your mind. John Lumic was a brilliant, if a bit off-kilter inventor of cybernetics, including the popular EarBuds used by nearly everyone to directly access a central network. Unfortunately, when Lumic decides that the world would be better of safely encased inside emotionless metal frames he is able to use this network to force everyone with access to comply.

Doctor Who: Sound of Drums

Check your cell phone too. In the Year That Never Was the Master used the Archangel Cell Phone Network to send a message around the world, unseen, creeping into people subconscious. Four drum beats had a hypnotic effect, guaranteeing his election. 

Parallel Episodes: Golden Light

Flynn regenerates!

I couldn't help but do this comparison. Do you think that either party realized that they were making two identical scenes?

Rapunzel saves Flynn Rider in 'Tangled'

Melody saves the Doctor in 'Let's Kill Hitler'

Parallel Episodes: Freaky Friday

"I wish I could switch places with you for just one day!"

So said the mother and daughter of the thrice made movie "Freaky Friday", whereupon they promptly were granted their wish, finding themselves imprisoned in each other's bodies. But there are other versions of this tale, ones in which the switch isn't to teach them a lesson, nor is it voluntary.

Spock performs a Mind Meld

with Kirk.

Star Trek: Turnabout Intruder 

Captain James T. Kirk of the starship Enterprise has always had enemies and always will. This particular enemy is a woman who envies him his command, believing he was chosen because it was a man's world. Her feminist views are revealed to be simple excuses when she uses a device to switch bodies with Kirk and attempt to take control of the ship. When Kirk, trapped in the body of a dying woman who is known to be jealous of his command, attempts to explain what has happened he is ignored on the grounds of the woman's former instability.

Stargate SG-1: Holiday

When exploring strange devices on strange planets don't go grabbing things that look like they're meant to be grabbed! Dr. Daniels Jackson switches bodies with a strange old man named Machello, but nobody realizes it at first, since the old man passes out, and Daniel pretends to be himself until he's safely away from the others. While attempting to investigate Daniels' disappearance Colonel Jack O'Neill and Teal'c also switch places. Finally connecting the device to the mind swaps they set things right by playing a strange variation of musical chairs.

Machello's device

Both episodes involve mixed up consciousnesses with bodies, and begins with no one believing the swap actually happened. Holiday is the episode I couldn't watch because I knew the entire plot as a result of seeing Turnabout Intruder. Another episode worth mentioning that doesn't quite fall into this category is Doctor Who: the New Earth.

What episodes have you seen that fall into the "Freaky Friday" mold?

Parallel Episodes: It's Alive!

It's never been alive on your world before. It never occurred to you to check and see if it wasn't exactly the same as it's counterpart. Why would you ask the ground if it minds being stepped on? Why would you question your right to eat a tomato? And yet, this is scifi, and you never know.

Today's parallel episodes are Watergate from Stargate; SG-1, and 42 from Doctor Who. Before I proceed any further I simply must point out the interesting coincidence that both episode titles rhyme with the show title. Try it. "Watergate - Stargate, 42 - Doctor Who." Fascinating. 

42

The TARDIS is thrown off course in response to a distress signal and ends up somewhere in the farthest parts of a cargo ship. Turns out the cargo ship is a sort of illegal fuel harvester, the engines have been sabotaged, and they're heading straight for a nearby sun. The title comes from the fact that they have only 42 minutes before impact with the sun.

Well, around 32 minutes into this the Doctor has to go outside the space ship and comes back in genuinely terrified. The ship had been harvesting hydrogen from the sun, but guess what? The sun was alive. It's a life form, and they'd hurt it, and it wanted vengeance. Cue all kinds of terrible things to happen for the remaining 12 minutes of the show.

Watergate

 The Americans are always our heroes, and they just aren't quite stupid enough for this to happen to them, so suddenly the Russians have a Stargate of their own! And of course, they're the Russians, and they don't know anything, so they call in SG-1 to help them when their gate gets stuck open.  They'd found a world that's completely underwater and had build a submarine to explore it, and had brought back a sample of the water for analysis.

When SG-1 arrives on the scene the sample has gone missing and everyone in the base is dead. So they take the sub and go to explore the world to find out why the gate won't close. They get very stuck. Because guess what? The water is alive. The Russians took a sample away, but it's a life form and they hurt it. It wants the sample back, and it holds the sub as hostage until it's returned.

The Parallel: Is it also a coincidence that they deal with Fire and Water? So, in both episodes we had a large, usually non-sentient life form that had part of it taken away and wanted it back. In both there are lives at stake, and in both it happened through an act of stupidity on the part of people who aren't main characters.


What did we learn from these two episodes? Always scan for life before taking anything away from a large usually non-sentient body. As for which one I liked better, it would have to be 42. Because Doctor Who is awesome that way. And a raging sun is a lot more terrifying than relentlessly crushing water.

Parallel Episodes: Introduction

About a year ago, when my brother was just getting into Stargate I sat down to watch an episode with him. Ten minutes in I had the unsettling feeling that I recognized it. That wasn't possible; the only times I'd watched Stargate was with him, and he didn't watch them twice, and besides, there were parts I knew were new. So what was it? Ten minutes later I figured it out and almost quit watching the episode because I knew exactly what was going to happen, the entire plot of the episode and the ending. I had seen it before, but not on Stargate. It was a Star Trek episode.

Sure enough, the entire plot played out as I predicted, to my brother's annoyance. Suddenly I began to see resemblances in other episodes from other things, and I realized that storylines could be duplicated... and I call them parallel episodes.

Every good science fiction geek knows that every time you make a decision a parallel world is created. Well, here's a new one for you to remember; every time you create a Science Fiction show a parallel episode is created, and that's what this series is here to prove.