This First Officer : The Alpha Protocol Book 2

The First Officer

Forgotten treasures lie waiting in deep space. So too does the greatest threat humanity has ever encountered…

Assigned to a new warship with cutting-edge technology, Jack Samson returns to the Frontier, determined to cast off the question marks over his previous conduct.

This is the sequel to The Alpha Protocol. It immediately introduces a new character Hannah Wolff, a navy-reservist scientist assigned to help study the alien data discovered in the first book. While the first book only let us see the perspective of Jack Samson, the narrative now splits back and forth between Hannah and Jack. Only other characters in the first book are mentioned, and none of them turn up. Which seems strange from a storytelling perspective, but is probably more in line with a major military campaign where people aren’t likely to cross paths very often. 

Once again, while a lot of the ideas feel very familiar, the writing is engaging and story is quick paced and action packed. A good read. 

Favorite Question and Answers from First Quarter 2023

The Big Three

Well. The question with the highest votes, the highest voted answer, and the highest view count for the first quarter of 2023 is…

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Jack’s Bad Movies: Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Indiana Jones Poster

IMDB’s description: 

In 1936, archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones is hired by the U.S. government to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis can obtain its awesome powers.

This movie opens with Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina) wandering through a jungle. Somehow they stumble upon a cave. A cave of wonders I suppose. How did these ancient people build a boobytrap that is activated by someone blocking the sunlight? How does that work at night? Who comes along and makes sure all these pressure plate arrows haven’t gone bad?

Moving on, there is a golden head which Indy thinks he is going to trade with a bag of sand. I’m pretty sure he’d need something like 8 times as much sand as the volume of that head. Regardless that doesn’t explain why the trap sinks down for lighter sand. Indy then attends the school of Prometheus in ‘How to Run Away From Things’ as he flees a boulder. 

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Jack’s Bad Movies: Black Adam (2022)

Black Adam

IMDB’s description:

Nearly 5,000 years after he was bestowed with the almighty powers of the Egyptian gods–and imprisoned just as quickly–Black Adam is freed from his earthly tomb, ready to unleash his unique form of justice on the modern world.

This movie. Maybe the movie wouldn’t have felt so long and boring if the trailer didn’t spoil most of the action scenes and if every DC movie didn’t feel like it was just rehashing what we’ve already seen in Marvel films. 

This place is Wakanda. The movie opens in the past in some generic Egypt but not Egypt looking place (Kahndaq). The king is forcing them to mine for some magic rock that only exists in this country. The goal is to create a magic crown. A young boy tries to start a revolution and is quickly captured. But then he is saved by Shazam and company and given what are essentially the same powers of Shazam/Captain Marvel. The boy becomes Dwayne Johnson. He kills the evil king and is entombed. 

This is just the trailer. Modern day, some characters are looking for the crown. They think it will help them free their city state which is being controlled by Superman’s enemies the Intergang. I don’t know why they think this demonic crown is going to be a positive for them. Adrianna Tomaz (Sarah Shahi) gets the crown and then is immediately betrayed by her friend who is secretly the head of Intergang.  She decides to recite something on a tomb and it frees Black Adam. He commences to do all the action scenes we already saw in the trailer. Black Adam is knocked out by a rocket or something. 

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