Alpha Retrospective: Bugs Season 1 Episode 5 "Shotgun Wedding"

We dive into the murky world of international politics and Assassinations (again). An Italian politician ends up attracting the ire of her enemies while a logo designer gets paranoid over rivals stealing his work...or is he?

Alpha Retrospective: Bugs Season 1 Episode 4 "Down Among the Dead Men"

For this episode, we do a deep dive (Pun most certainly intended) into murky waters, as the Bugs heroes attempt to stop a major bank from being defrauded. We also learn that despite his previous Naval experience, poor Beckett doesn’t take to the sea very well.

Alpha Retrospective: Bugs Season 1 Episode 3 "All Under Control"

One of my all time favourite episodes. This was the first actual episode I watched on the original TV broadcast, if only because I was (And still am to a lesser extent) a bit of an aviation geek before I even knew the term existed. The trailer caught my interest because it involved planes and looked exciting. At the time, I had no understanding of the intricacies of technical systems and story writing, so it all looked plausible to me. Looking back on it now, there are a lot of plot holes and silly moments that make little sense when you think about it.

In case this wasn’t apparent by now, there will be spoilers so if you don’t want any plot twists given away, do not read these write-ups until you have watched the episode in question!

Alpha Retrospective: Bugs Season 1 Episode 2: "Assassins Inc"

Before I begin the next write up, I should elaborate on the purpose of these blog posts. Bugs was a show I greatly enjoyed in my youth, even when the writing was sub-par. However, with hindsight, there was a lot of silliness including but not limited to plot holes, gross misinterpretation and mis-use of technology and downright ridiculous moments. Having said that, I still enjoy rewatching the series and developed a new appreciation for the type of 90s cheesiness the show provides. Some of the predictions, despite the poor execution, turn out to be scarily prescient. And as mentioned in the first episode write up, shows after Bugs take a bit of inspiration from it with the way tech is featured heavily along with the gritty but fanciful storylines.

Nonetheless, there is a lot to ridicule in the series, so my write-ups will be full of snide remarks, amusing observations and dry (and not so dry) sarcasm. If you are looking for a straight write up, this is not the place to look for it. I would direct you to the official Bugs website, but that sadly went offline many years ago. There are some archived pages on Archive.org which is what I'm using to help write these blog posts.

Anyway, on with the show!

Alpha Retrospective: Bugs Season 1 Episode 1: "Out of the Hive"

Recently, due to a bunch of comments on a friends DnD post on Facebook, I was reminded of an old TV series called "Bugs" that I used to watch as a child. It was as nineties as it got. A sci-fi series about a bunch of crime fighters who used all manner of computer gadgetry to stop various ne'er-do-wells. I found it exciting to watch but never really appreciated the story or noticed the silly nature of some of the plotlines and the many, many IT and hacker clichés it portrayed. Despite it's failings, it was still a fun show to watch and if you look carefully, you can see where other later, argubly superior prime time TV dramas got their inspiration from Bugs.

With this in mind, I bought the complete DVD boxset of the entirety of Bugs and intend on watching the entire run slowly. I am also going to sporadically do write ups of the episodes as I watch them. I will tentatively title these entries "Alpha Retrospectives" and the style will change as I figure out what I want to write about each episode. With that, I bring you Bugs, season 1 episode 1.

You Know You've Entered a Timewarp When...

For strange reasons possibly related to a previous job, I have a version of VMWare Player installed on this PC. There is no real point to it at the moment. Previously, when I was working in Technical Support for a large Mobile Network Operator, there may have been some point. But now, since I no longer work there, it is more of a plaything. Something to allow me to mess around with other OS's, some older, some newer. I still have, for unfathomable reasons, a Windows 2000 installation disc from my university days. As a result, a basic Win2K virtual machine resides inside my PC. There is no real point to it. I just thought it would be funny to run an older OS. I suspect, as I have aforementioned, it would've had some use for me to research older machines in case some customer called up and mentioned they were still running Win2K. But now it is mostly irrelevant.