PRGAAMWA DVD Fight: The Last Sentinel vs. Earthstorm vs. A Skinny Latte

by Lisa Fary
This is week it’s Starbuck vs. Starbuck in a match between two Sci Fi Original movies. And because I’m so sure they’ll both be festering sores of Sci Fi Channel “innovation”, I’m throwing in another kind of Starbuck into this match: the new Tall Skinny Cinnamon Dolce Latte. The Last Sentinel features Starbuck (Katee Sackhoff) with side boob, Earthstorm features Starbuck (Dirk Benedict) as an ass, and our last contestant features a sugar free Cinnamon Dolce taste with only 90 calories.

The Last Sentinel takes place after some sort of cyborg drone uprising that wiped out a lot of humanity, but it’s a pretty peppy sort of apocalyptic future for three reasons:

1. There’s still pink Vitamin Water laying around for the taking.
2. The cyborg drone army that destroys humanity is controlled by a couple of Tandy computers and a Commodore 64.
3. Capes have come back in to style – bulletproof capes that cloak.

Whose idea was it to have the cloaking tech be AN ACTUAL CLOAK?

Contrary to the DVD box, Katee Sackhoff is not the titular last sentinel. It’s Lou Diamond Philips. OK, it’s a guy who looks kinda like Lou Diamond Philips in a certain light (in the dark) and from a certain angle (behind) playing an electronically enhanced supersoldier who has never known love – only the cold steel of his talkative AI enabled rifle, the Exposition 5000, which gets most of the The Last Sentinel‘s dialogue.

Katee Sackhoff, playing the pivotal character of “Girl”, is only in the movie for a few scenes, one of which requires her to strip down to panties for a whore’s bath while Lou Diamond Philips and the Exposition 5000 watch.

Girl is part of a paramilitary resistance determined to infiltrate the cyborg drone nerve center – what looks like a condemned hospital – to steal a program disk and destroy the Tandy network, which will in turn destroy the drone army. However, after a few scenes, Girl gets overtaken by drones and winds up blowing up her hideout and escaping through the river that runs through the basement (seriously). Now Lou Diamond Philips has to make his last stand alone, with the Exposition 5000 and another talkative machine gun with an annoying habit of yelling verses from the New Testament.

“That was supposed to be the good one!” John wailed as The Last Sentinel‘s credits rolled (alphabetically, so that Sackhoff’s name came at the end).

“Honey,” I replied gravely,“The next movie has Dirk Benedict and Stephen Baldwin. The Last Sentinel may still be the good one.”

Earthstorm is a disaster movie of Sci Fi Channel Channel proportions – luckily most of it is really sciency, so there’s little need for choreographed action sequences, pyrotechnics or Tandy controlled cyborg drones. All you need for Earthstorm is Old Starbuck, New Ming, lunar theory and a dozen cans of hair mousse for Stephen Baldwin.

Seriously, Baldwin, it looked like you hadn’t washed it since The Young Riders was canceled (and you were my favorite Young Rider).

Baldwin stars as a demolitions expert, Dirk Benedict stars as an egotistical astrophysicist who doesn’t do much more than piss on a dead guy’s lunar core theory, write a formula in scientific notation on how he’ll Richard Hatch his way back on to BSG, and give a young astrophysicist babe the eye as if to say, “Hey, I’m the original Starbuck. Wanna see my Viper?”

Why would there be a demolitions expert prospecting the Moon? Because the Moon was slammed by an asteroid and now has a giant fissure on its dark side – a fissure that is expanding and raining chunks of the Moon down on Earth. Oh, and the Moon has been knocked slightly off its orbit – just enough to cause severe changes in tides and jet streams. Big deal, right? But, it’s close enough to, like, actual science to get my Astro-Geek going.

And those Moon bits? They’re getting bigger. And it’s likely that a big chunk of the Moon will break off and hit Earth, destroying civilization.

So, Baldwin is brought in to help ASI (Earthstorm‘s version of NASA) figure out how to close the fissure. Again, big deal, right? Plant charges, the fissure walls collapse and you’re done.

Not quite. There’s a debate about whether the Moon’s core is composed of iron or not (this is a real debate), and that makes a big difference in the kind of charges that are used. If it’s not iron, it gets nukes. If it is iron, it gets a magnetic charge.

Astro-Geek totally engaged, I found myself yelling things like, “Uranus’ moon Miranda may have repaired itself after being hit by space shrapnel, but it wouldn’t have happened in a weekend! And Uranus has a totally different structure than Earth, so the effect of its moon would have been completely different! Putz!”

You see, I’ve seen a few episodes of The Universe on The History Channel, so that obviously makes me an astrophysicist.

[nms:telescope,1,0]

The DVD box makes Earthstorm out to be an Armegeddon rip off, when it’s really much smarter than Armegeddon, the way The Arrival was much smarter (and better) than Independence Day.

The only misstep was the actual space shuttle adventure to drop the charges – very Millennium Falcon in the asteroid field, only with less moisture, no mynocks, and no space slug. Still, I was surprised that Earthstorm took me in, made me care, and was genuinely good.

What of the Tall Skinny Cinnamon Dolce Latte? I should have been tipped off by the words “sugar free” (sorry, but sugar free sweeteners don’t taste like sugar – I’m talking to you too, Splenda). It’s like the Soylent Green of coffee beverages – a bastard concoction of unholy substances, chemically treated to taste like the real thing.

While my Soylent Green Latte was still better than The Last Sentinel, it couldn’t quite eclipse Earthstorm. Dirk Benedict is the triumphant Starbuck!

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