Karen L. Newman

Karen L. Newman has been a published writer since 2004 in the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres. Over two hundred and fifty of her short stories and poems have been published both online and in print. Her books include EEKU (Sam’s Dot, 2005) and ChemICKals (Naked Snake Press, 2007) and her work has been nominated for a Dwarf Star Award. She won the 2005 Mary Jane Barnes Award and two of her poems received honorable mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. She edits the online magazine Afterburn SF, which publishes speculative short stories, and is the editor for the print poetry magazine Illumen. She also write reviews for Dark Discoveries. Her reviews have also been featured in Noneuclidean Cafe, The Dream People, Night to Dawn, and Gothic Review.

Published on 08/26/2008

too much Earth, too little time

Trevor Ford, superhero sidekick or evil henchman? In episode eleven of The Middleman, “The Clotharian Contamination Protocol,” Trevor, Wendy Watson’s boyfriend, is hired by a billionaire named Manservant after doing him a good deed. So he’s good, right? Maybe. Maybe not.

The hoops Trevor jumped through to get the job were similar of those for Wendy. However, a board of directors and big business is usually associated with an evil empire in comic book lore. Could it be Trevor’s a member of the organization controlling The Middleman? That would make the business a good one. I think it’d be awesome if Trevor were evil. It would make his and Wendy’s relationship similar to that of Batman and Catwoman, except I don’t think Bruce ever slept with the evil feline. I don’t believe all of these questions will be answered in the season-ending episode next week, so I hope the series is renewed, or at least a graphic novel is written to tie up any loose ends.

Unfortunately this side plot was more interesting than the main one of Ida turning evil by being contaminated with Clotharian nanobots. The reason for sending the probe back to earth was an example of ultimate censorship – not liking all our reality shows and broadcasts. That idea was clever, and timely, but with all of Ida’s sarcasm, her evilness didn’t really manifest itself in an effective way, in my opinion. The rewinding and viewing of goodbye tapes made by The Middleman from past episodes was a great way of using clips without the annoying flashbacks. I liked the nanobots, very imaginative.

The show was like turning the pages of a comic book. Again, casting is good. I’m looking forward to the season finale.