The JAGverse Family Tree

June 10, 2019 admin Leave a comment

In the beginning Bellisario created the ‘verse. Now the ‘verse was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Bellisario was hovering over the waters.

And Bellisario said, “Let there be JAG,” and there was JAG.

And in time JAG begat NCIS, and NCIS begat NCIS: Los Angeles and NCIS: New Orleans. After the initial NCIS Backdoor Pilot on JAG, JAG characters started appearing on NCIS. Similarly, following their respective pilots, NCIS:LA and NCIS:NO shared characters with their parent series, but oddly not each other. Also, a JAG character started cropping up on NCIS:LA. So thus we have (Note: the arrows show the flow of characters):

But, we also have JAG importing a character from the not-very-popular First Monday (I’m possibly the only person in the UK to have bothered watching it): Edward Sheffield (Dean Stockwell), later Secretary of the Navy.

And then the walls of the ‘verse were broken, when Hetty from NCIS:LA appeared on Scorpion, and a crossover happened between NCIS:LA and Hawaii Five-0 (the reboot of Hawaii Five-O).

Hawaii Five-0 opens up another can of worms though. Characters appeared in MacGyver (2016), the reboot of MacGyver (1985). And then there are the cross-overs with Magnum P.I. (2018), itself a reboot of Magnum p.i. (1980).

Phew. That is a lot of interconnected TV. But we’re not done yet! Oh no, there is more.

In 2015, Duane “Dog” Chapman appeared on Hawaii Five-0 as himself, thus establishing that he exists within the ‘verse. And in 2018 Mike Wolfe of American Pickers popped up on NCIS, adding his show in to the mix.

So many series tied together does of course bring up problems. Aside from many actors being reused across the various shows (Terry O’Quinn, Sean Murray, Michael Bellisario, Dean Stockwell, and Zoe McLellan being the most obvious), there are the various references made to the other shows. DiNozzo in NCIS was a big Magnum p.i. fan, and Gibbs mentioned Hawaii Five-O once.

Then there is DiNozzo naming Bellisario, and being a Quantum Leap fan but not recognising that Dwayne Pride is Scott Bakula.

This does bring up the interesting possibilty that Dwayne is actually Sam Beckett on an extended leap, but temporarily unaware of his circumstances, not being in contact with Al. If you look at S05E01 “See You Soon” in a certain way, it could be seen to be his daughter Samantha (or even Ziggy) trying to bring Sam back into the QL program.

If Pride exited the series in a blue halo with the appropriate sound effects it would be a better end than his last leap: the one where he spent four years as a ship captain that may or not have been a computer simulation run by a fat man with a beard.

Sorry, I got carried away again.

UPDATE!!!

At the end of NCIS: Los Angeles Season 10, the 14 year cliffhanger from JAG was revealed (look elsewhere for spoilers), but that doesn’t really change the tree – JAG characters had already appeared in NCIS: LA.

However, a chance viewing of an old Magnum p.i. (1980) episode showed a cross-over with Simon and Simon (1981). More research turned up a Magnum/Murder, She Wrote (1984) crossover too.

There were rumours of other cross-overs and spin-offs, and an unlikely one turned up the from the Dog show Dog and Beth: On the Hunt (2013).

No doubt purists would disagree with the inclusion of the “reality shows”, but they stay for now.

As of Monday, June 10th 2019 this is up to date. If things change, I will try to keep up with the changes.

Computers, Games, Star Bores, Text Adventures

Star Bores – an old Text Adventure from the early ’90s

February 26, 2019 admin Leave a comment

A long time a go, in a city far far away (ok, it was a town then and it’s only 92 miles up the road from me now) I wrote a computer game. It wasn’t good, it didn’t sell more than a few copies.

The game was Star Bores, a Star Wars parody that originally pre-dated Spaceballs by two years. But, as you will see, it suffered massive schedule slip, a lot of delays, massive apathy and eventual consignment to the shitbin of computing history.

It all started back in 1985, when I got hold of a copy of Gilsoft’s The Quill adventure writing software for the ZX Spectrum. I’d played a good few games written with it, including some excellent ones by Delta 4. Thinking “I can do that, how hard can it be?” I launched half-heartedly into games design.

The first version was a simple 20-ish room affair which just involved getting Luke on the bus to get off the planet Tattoo. I hawked it around school on cheap C15 cassettes for a while, until everyone told me to sod off. It was utterly awful, and I’m thankful that the likelyhood of any copies remaining is very very slight.

Version 2 (late ’85-early ’86) included graphics using The Illustrator add-on to The Quill. The text was cleaned up, the puzzles were made more logical, and it made more sense. I remember being particulary proud of the drawing of a Mercedes Minibus for the final end screen.

Sadly, in April ’86 my mother died, orphaning us. In the follwing upheaval I lost all my data tapes and notes, as they “weren’t considered to be important”. Neither was my self-designed ZX81 controlled Logo Turtle, but that another story that goes on and on and on…

Early 1987 brings us to the Amstrad CPC6218, the Graphic Adventure Creator, and a re-write from scratch. Once again it was awful. And thus swiftly abandoned.

Shortly afterwards, I managed to scrape up the money (by selling brushes door-to-door) to get a copy of The Professional Adventure Writer! It ran uder CP/M on the Amstrad 6128/PCW8258. It was great. Sadly, my game writing skills were still not.

But, Keeping calm and carrying on (before that was a thing), I reached a final release in early 1988. Two years after Spaceballs came out. It was still rubbish.

Still, I spent a fortune sending 3″ (yes) disks out to those magazines that might be interested. Nothing, except for a letter from Amstrad Action along the lines of “Thanks, but no thanks”. Some more copies were done for a local games shop, but more cases were stolen than games bought (Amstrad 3″ disk cases being rare as rocking horse shit at the time).

By 1990 I’d moved south and the CPC had packed up. By now the sorry saga whould have been over, but in about 1997 I heard about getting data from old Amstrad disks onto PC disks. So I did. And I got it running on a PC!

Since then it has been available on a number of retro download sites, and in total has had over 1000 downloads (he says, making numbers up like a British Politician).

Anyway, you’ve come this far so you need some sort of reward.

Here is a zip of the CPM version: starbore.zip

Computers, Games, World of Warcraft

Gilneas – The City That Blizzard Forgot

February 26, 2019 admin Leave a comment

Back in the long long ago, the before time (ok, December 2010), Blizzard released World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and everyone got all excited as they usually do. Then people got upset that their favourite race/class got downpowered, then they became happy that they could fly in the old lands for the first time, and that kept them busy for a while.

Alliance fanboys played rolled up Worgen characters and played their way through the new dedicated starting area. They were amazed to see an amazing cod Victorian-Gothic land with some fantastic architecture and landscape, and of course, big fucking werewolves.

From the brooding darkness of Gilneas City, to the grandeur of Greymane Manor, the Gilneas starting zone is wonderful. It is a series of well thought out quest chains, stunning cutscenes, and… well then it ends. The character getting shuffled off to Rut’theran Village on Teldrassil, and Gilneas is never spoken of again.

Unlike the Goblin (and later Pandaren) starting areas, which are off on separate islands that can’t be returned to, Gilneas is on the Eastern Kingdoms mainland. You can go back there, but it most will have no reason to. There are no quests, no NPCs, no… anything, except a stunning and forgotten zone.

This makes is idea for roleplaying in, and, if you are in to such things, modifying to add quests and NPCs (but that is a subject for another day).

So… onward…

Get to Gilneas!

Well, to put it bluntly, one does not simply fly in to Gilneas.

Horde characters have a flightpoint at The Forsaken Front in Silverpine Forest, which is just north of the wall. (You might be lucky enough to have the Forsaken Forward Command flightpoint in Gilneas itself, but its not guaranteed).

The closest that Alliance players have to offer is Chillwind Camp in the Western Plaguelands, which is a long flight/run over/though Hillsbrad away.

Because of this faffery, if I were to be modding Cata WoW to add new content in Gilneas, I’d make it suitable for Level 60, as by that level the characters can fly in to it. Or, I’d make portals to get there. But I’m clearly not doing that as it is Against The Rules.

No matter how you get there, get there if you can.

Gilneas City

For now I’m just going to look at Gilneas City itself. The surrounding zone is the subject of another time.

So I suppose we should start with a map.

The city, as you can see, is roughly circular and split in to five areas, which I’ll look at in turn, highlighting all the usable buildings and other features of note.

Merchant Square

1-10 denote open doors leading to small single room areas, large enough to hold maybe one NPC and some clutter.
11 is a small graveyard.
12 is the ruined market square.

If I were doing anything here, I’d put traders in the buildings and the square, and maybe a mourner at the graveyard.

Military District

1 leads to a cellar full of cannons and cannonballs.
2 and 3 lead to stair up and over the the roof, connecting to each other.

Greymane Court

1 leads to a tunnel that exits out in the main zone.
2 & 3 are entrances to a small inn like building with a bedroom upstairs.

Cathedral Quarter

This area is a bit dull. There are no buildings to enter, just two large areas full of tents with Alliance banners by them.

Light’s Dawn Cathedral

The Cathedral is just one large room. Maybe you could stage a rock festival in here, or even a wedding.

The End

So there’s your quick tour of Gilneas City. I’m sorry there are no actual screen shots, but if you want to see it go visit it yourself.

Tony Blews