With our monthly show and Fan Expo are coming up, you would think my weekend was spent frantically running around the city trying to make sure everything is perfect. The opposite was true.

“A wandering mind unsticks us in time so that we can learn from the past and plan for the future. Moments of respite may even be necessary to keep one’s moral compass in working order and maintain a sense of self.” Why Your Brain Needs More Downtime, Ferris Jabr

Andie and I spent Friday night finishing our binge watching of Continuum. It a mix of Tek Wars, Matrix, and Terminator. It is our favourite current show with a strong narrative perspective and interesting protagonists and antagonists.

There is a season preview at Fan Expo next door (Thursday, 7pm 701B) to our performance space (Thursday, 8pm 701A) so I wanted to catch up before then. My street cosplay on Friday will be Lucas Ingram. Look for me (Liber8!)

Saturday, we watched the final Defiance and Dark Matter episodes. We started all three series at the same time so it made sense to finish them off as well. Also, the actors were live tweeting so I didn’t want to wade through spoilers, inferences and inside jokes.

Where Continuum is a time cop story, Dark Matter is the tale of mercenaries with forgotten pasts. I like the performers that I knew from other shows (Roger Cross, Melissa McNeil) but also enjoy Zoie Palmer as the ship Android. The mystery narrative doesn’t appeal to me but I like how they come together to live another day.

Two Dark Matter actors will be at Fan Expo in a panel Q&A (Thursday, 7pm in room 714) but sadly Roger Cross won’t be there.

Defiance is a western, a frontier tale, based on the video game. Julie Benz keeps things interesting as the kicks ass mayor of a town constantly on the verge of imploding. The duplicitous power couple Stahma and Datak Tarr, and snarky snaky Doctor Yewll are among the more charming scoundrels in the show.

The show really picked up in the third season with the introduction of the Omec — the purple people eaters. The finale had a great season-finale visual montage of different spaces.

All three shows have raised the quality of female narrative – their ability to defend themselves and problem-solve, to be “good”, “evil”, other or self-serving. Sexuality is more open and overt misogyny is reckoned with. The diversity casting is also headed in the right direction.

Today I watched a couple of episodes of Star Trek Animated Series. I watched the More Tribble Trouble episode and forgotten the troublesome Cyrano Jones. Okay so not a full break, but I also did some item purging (donation, recycling, waste) and got out into the sun.

This weekend also marked the beginning of a couple of new ventures. I guess letting my mind wander helped to clarify future plans. Stay tuned for details and see you next week at Holodeck Follies!