General Open Thread – TV Shows (2)
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Craig 4 years, 2 months ago.
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19 May 2015 at 12:40 #40222
Anonymous @
@pedant ah hah! To be killed by a toilet seat. On many levels that has to get a laugh from me -sardonic, nonetheless.
BSG. Yes many members have been enthralled by the initial phases of the show so that’s on a list. But so is Farscape first….This will take an eternity! Anyone know of a spare police box?
Well I guess there’s actual gaol and VCRs…and 3 squares and a loo without a toilet seat.
19 May 2015 at 12:51 #40223Hi All
I have 3no tickets for the dr who spectacular at the Scottish hydro on the 29th of may great seats but my daughter can’t make it,will sellthem for less than face value as I would like them to be used.
Please message me if interested.
Cal.
19 May 2015 at 17:19 #40225@IAmNotAFish — Oh, I loved “Dead Like Me” — bought the set after the series closed out. Lovely, funny, sad, and plenty of angst to go round as well. It was appointment TV in our house, back in the day.
27 May 2015 at 10:51 #40384@purofilion
I have watched up to ‘Ariel’ which means the journey is nearly over. I’m enjoying a lot of it -I think I didn’t enjoy the train heist as much nor the selling of the cows to the bible belt planet with ‘witchy’ River (I’m terrible with ep names!). In fact, I’m finding River to be a little …well…I’m unsure of her. Simon seems to be the stronger character and that’s no doubt part of the brother/sister role and characterisation. Perhaps Glau doesn’t seem a visually clear or strong actress but I’ll have to think more about this -I’m probably quite wrong about it.
I like the fact there are 9 characters -they really do have a particular visual quality and see the world -the universe- differently to each other. And the bonding? I can definitely see that. I’m watching Haven -there are maybe 3 main characters, 26 episodes and I have no attachment to them. They don’t particularly move me or even seem to like each other. We get lots of long, straight looks at the camera. Everything is one-note.
But with Firefly there’s an unusual level of chemistry between the characters and the actors. All very charismatic people and it’s wonderful to see. Other than Fillion, though, I’m not sure I’ve seen many of these actors in other shows? But that could be my relationship with telly more than anything else.
You’ll remember Summer Glau from the Waiting in the Wings episode of Angel. I like her a lot and I think she does bring a lot of nuance to the part of River. Playing a mentally ill young woman could have gone all kinds of wrong and as someone who’s had to deal with this kind of issue at close hand, I think she’s judged her performance just right. She goes on to do great work in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles as a ‘good’ Terminator. (It’s actually a great show, big on the timey-wimey, and not half as hokey as you might think.)
Most of the others have shown up here and there. Torres, Fillion and Baldwin in Buffy and Angel, of course. Ron Glass was in Barnaby Jones — a blast from the past, but I’m sure you must remember that. Alan Tudyk has had tiny bit parts in lots of movies. Gina Torres is in Suits at the moment but I always think it wouldn’t have killed Larry Fishburne to get his missus some work when he was getting movie gigs. She’s born to be a movie star I would have thought. You’ll have met Saffron by now, playing by the great Christina Hendricks, who’s now mega in Mad Men.
Yes, I think the rapport between the cast and characters is one of the key points of the show. As an ensemble, I think it’s stronger even than the Scoobies. It was always painfully obvious to me that Torchwood desperately wanted that kind of bond between its characters but that the writers just didn’t really know how to make it happen. It always struck me that Torchwood suffered from Firefly-envy in general, actually.
If you’re watching them in order then with Ariel you’re just over halfway through. I think my favourite of all episodes is Our Mrs Reynolds — love me some Saffron. But also the little set you’ve just watched — Ariel, Out of Gas, Jaynestown. Shindig is also quite fun too.
Just got a couple to go myself. Time to start thinking about that blog.
27 May 2015 at 12:20 #40385Ah hah. Yes, Ron Glass. He has been in quite a lot and I missed that part out. As for River, you’re right. Glau as a mentally ill person could have been overdone and maybe I find her to be too illusive? Again, that’s me, but I understand what you’re saying.
Boy Ilion will watch this with me later and so a re- watch might better my perverse opinion!
Yes, yes Fillion, Torres in Angel! and Wash -I think I saw him in a few films? Maybe not lead roles. As for Hendricks, “I am kinda hot”, she is isn’t she? And curvaceous! I loved The Hour and heard that Mad Men is possibly better? I bought the DVD, promptly lent it to a friend and haven’t seen it (or the show) since. A little bird said Connor from Angel has a lead role.
The Sarah Chronicles. I presume that’s serial telly as well? Must see.
Nope. Don’t know Suits. I don’t watch much telly these days -unless it’s at the hospital. I’m usually bugged out on …something….so I could easily watch the same film many times over and still never actually ‘see’ it. I watched The English Patient 27 times and remember barely anything except a woman swinging on a rope in a church filled with art!
But as you know, it’s boxed sets for me 🙂
I like that set of 4 you mentioned. The only thing annoying me a bit with direction/writing in both Angel and F’fly are the scenes in the kitchen or sitting around on sofas (and you know something is going to go horribly wrong) where all the characters are shootin’ the shit, clapping each other on the back and laughing awfully hard. It seems forced, to me. When Zoe and Wash are in bed during the sword fighting on Persephone, Zoe is all ‘professionally sweated up’ and breathing so hard it’s like she has sinus. The playful chatter between her and Wash again seems forced -perhaps to distinguish their happiness from both the party scenes and Mal’s approaching duel. So, that’s a tiny complaint. Actually, it’s not a complaint, just a ‘thing’.
The Angel and Buffy group don’t seem to have quite the same bond, do they? Is it one created by Mal as strong leader, the captain figure? Is it that Kaylee’s manner is so damn appealing you just want to smile at her? And Zoe brings so much confidence. Perhaps Wes’ suffering, and the general misery of the life of a slayer or watcher at such a young age means you’re ‘brought down’ early. Maybe the Fireflies create a great bond because they’ve learnt to accept suffering -without whining (which I noticed Buffy herself did quite a lot of in S6-7); they seem incredibly strong people in a deadly world.
The Buffy world is of course different for Buffy and her friends -but they’re just kids. They go to the flicks, the Bronze, and they try to have a ‘normal college’ experience. Life on Serenity seems nail biting, terrifying (and that could explain the arch “I’m having soo much fun at dinner, can’t you see?” scenes). Perhaps, though, it lies with the helmsman: Nathan. A superb actor and I didn’t see that in Boreanaz until the last 6 eps of Angel 5.
In the ‘Making Of’ you showed us, Whedon says Filion puts his arms, like a chum or someone protecting his crew, around Kaylee and this isn’t scripted. When I saw that tonight again, I could see how that tiny gesture and the smiles which result (not Jayne, hiding a traitorous secret) connect the team.
Wash is so different from the other characters which adds ‘yeast’ to the whole thing- neither is he as ‘aw shucks’ as Xander could be through the first 3 seasons of Buffy (excepting where he actually became a soldier/tough guy to protect the ladeez).
Certainly I didn’t see this level of connection and ease (that’s the word I want) between the actors and the characters from the first season of either Angel or B. To have it nailed, here, in a few episodes is quite astounding. Inara adds some mystery and depth, and boy does she do it graciously. They all seem experienced. On stage in a musical performance we’d say ‘they’re in the minute’. At rest. And yet dynamic. Tough to re-produce.
This is all something I wouldn’t have noticed much less discussed before last November. I’m learning a thing or two which needed learnin’ (I aint gonna start speakin’ like the Cap’n. It don’t work like that).
Then there’s Farscape as Phaseshift’s suggestion so I’ll eventually watch that too. Now, what about Babylon 5? 🙂
27 May 2015 at 12:55 #40386I think the chemistry on Firefly is just a fluke of the cast really getting on with each other. If you listen to some of the commentaries with the cast involved, you’ll hear the same thing. Not to say that the teams on Angel or Buffy didn’t get on (and there were occasional problems going by the scuttlebutt) but there seemed to be a bonding here that you just can’t fake. Maybe it’s something to do with the show being made under such adversity that brought them all together.
Interesting that you compare Fillion to Boreanaz as I believe Nathan Fillion came very close to being cast as Angel back in the day. Now, how would that have worked out? Personally I can no longer see it. He just is Mal to my mind now. And I find that watching Firefly does have me dropping into Firefly-speak sometimes — just not with the Chinese.
Some people like Suits but to me it’s just a meh, tedious legal drama. Mad Men is awesome (and yes Vincent Kartheiser is in it playing another little weasel). I haven’t kept up with it but I’m looking forward to doing the whole thing on a marathon watch soon.
Sarah Connor Chronicles is another short-lived SF series — one and half seasons this time — that is essentially a reboot of the whole Terminator movies. It’s got Glau in it as a Terminator and Lena ‘Cersei’ Headey as Sarah Connor. It starts off slow but then it really goes to some really interesting places, especially in s2, with lots of meditation on what it means to be human, are our lives and deaths pre-ordained and so on. Headey takes a little getting used to as Connor but for me now she is the definitive Sarah Connor. (Linda Hamilton. Pffft.)
It’s probably sacrilege to say this on these boards, but I’m afraid I’m with Tim Bisley on Babylon 5.
I’ve only ever really dipped my toes in Farscape but will be giving it a go soon. Maybe Mr @phaseshift could be prevailed upon for a blog to get us all going. Though have watched a couple of episodes of Daredevil on Netflix and that seems to be shaping up nicely. Lots of Buffy/Angel alum involved.
27 May 2015 at 14:03 #40387@Purofilion Do give B.5 a try. Don’t let @jimthefish put you off. We can’t all be “Babbies”. 🙂 The first series is very wobbly,with some feeble scrips and some dodgy acting and season two has its weak episodes but once it really gets going it is immersive. The boys and I occasionally re watch favourite episodes. If you do decide to watch it I can give you some recommends on which eps to avoid in series one as there are only about four or five which are arc related.
Another series well worth watching is Fringe. (Was just discussing that tonight actually.) It has a surprising number of Aussie actors in it. And I am still hoping that John Noble will do a guest role in Dr Who one day.
Lastly currently screening in the Uk is what is shaping up to be a fabulous series, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I heartily recommend it. (I suspect @bluesqueakpip is watching it and was rather looking forward to hearing her views on it.)
Cheers
Janette
27 May 2015 at 16:42 #40389@purofilion — yes, it’s a purely personal prejudice. You might love it.
And I’d echo @janetteb‘s endorsement of Fringe. It’s a great series with a towering performance from John Noble. Final season is a bit ropey but it’s still a great show.
28 May 2015 at 01:26 #40398Thank you for the great recommends: oh, that Cersei, isn’t she the naughty one?
But in my heart it’ll always be Linda Hamilton. A voluptuous normal looking woman who became this tower of strength. “I heart her”. Yep, not be sayin’ that ever again.
Scuttlebutt on Buffy cast? Really? True to @pedant‘s strictures I avoided anything on the internet (and even that book on Whedon) about the Bangel verse and Fireflies. Maybe I’ll take a peek now, though.
I saw an ep of The Big bang Theory (never seen it before and never will again) but ironically, within 2 minutes (which is why I didn’t change channels) I heard the skinny dude interviewing the curly haired one, saying “Friday night is Firefly and it will be on for years”. Obviously this was a repeat -at least I discerned this. Then the other one responded with “well, I want to watch Babylon 5” and skinny guy went “pfftt” which makes it either a great show or a shite one. But @janetteb I’ll give it a try. “Babbies“-wonderful!
But with Mad Men, Farscape and now Fringe and the Sarah Connor Chronicles, I’m gonna be 80 before I finish and @janetteb has enthusiastically endorsed Mr Norrell which means it’s fantastic so I expect that’s on telly now (is that right, Janette? It’s not on the ABC, though. I don’t have access to anything unless it’s Free-to-air. I refuse to pay $60 p’month for shite. Thing is, maybe half the stuff I’ve a passion for is actually on Fox/HBO!).
Mal as Angel? Oh no! I actually think David was great -it took its time. Looking back on bits of early Buffy, I can see just how young and movie star-like David was. By Angel 5 I can see a little of the “blubbers” (to quote Inara) -not that he’s unattractive without a shirt, exactly, he’s just ‘matured’ like a good cheese {{:+)
On the Chinese, Boy Ilion read my posts when I was in hospital where I said “oh, great: intergalactic language!” He noticed you’d said “ah, it’s Chinese” and thought you were most polite. He himself said “how could you not hear that it’s Chinese, you idiot, Mum? You hear it nearly every day!” (and I do. At work. Face Palm)
Children and respecting their elders, I dunno. <:-} (I have to thank @whisht for doing faces using the keyboard. I’ve learnt a bit from him. Though, this is where I’m at these days. Typing faces. Obviously nothing to do)
Interesting about the show being made under such adversity. On the ‘making of’ video the execs said “we were keen on any show from Joss” so I assumed it was happily bank rolled (The CGI is costly for a weekly show) and extremely well received. I have to look into why it was cancelled after only one season. I’m sure there were many forgettable, predictable serials at the time which could have been blasted off air. Grey’s Anatomy had almost started, I think? House had also started. I think it went for 10+ years (didn’t mind it at first); Chicago Hope was coming to an end and Desperate Housewives was in the works.
A funny sci-fi Western? What’s not to like 🙂
When Wash and Mal are tortured by Niska, the lines are brilliant. Normally, Boy Ilion would be forwarding through such scenes but it was highly entertaining. I recall watching an ep of Haven last week where a character took out the smallest pistol. It was a dire situation -police station under siege and all they have is this tiny ‘handgun’. To me that’s a perfect opportunity to inject a little comedy into a starkly tense scene. But no, the actors remain tight lipped and the scene just stalls. Borinnggg.
Is there anything else of Whedon I should look out for other than his Shakespeare with Denisof? After 12 eps of Firefly is there a film to follow? A kind of ‘tidy up the ends’ thing?
Kindest, puro.
28 May 2015 at 01:45 #40399@purofilion —
War Stories, another great one. But to me, it’s Zoe the gets all the cool stuff. She cuts off Niska in his big villain moment and doesn’t bat an eye when she’s handed Mal’s ear. She’s a scary woman. I also love that the growing bond between Kaylee and River is blown out the water because Kaylee is so freaked by River’s powers — which kind of segues into Serenity the movie.
Yeah, I tried swapping Nathan as Angel and David as Mal in my head tonight and it just doesn’t work. Both are perfectly cast as is.
That Firefly was cut off in its prime makes no sense. I just kind of stops. Though the last one, Objects in Space is kind of a special episode. It really does go out on a high. Your next move is Serenity the movie. I must admit that I don’t massively love it as much as some, for reasons I’ll talk about in the blog but it’s still well worth seeing and it does resolve at least some stuff. I think it’s also a testament to Firefly’s power that it managed to secure a movie, when Buffy or Angel couldn’t. But then it’s a much more filmic property than either of those.
For me, Firefly is the end of Joss’s real creatively fertile period. You can go on to Dollshouse, which ran for two season but I really, really don’t love it. But some do. Maybe someone else will try and convince on it. Basic premise: Eliza Dushku plays Echo, an agent who can be programmed to be anyone but who has her memory wiped after each assignment. It didn’t really do it for me basically because it’s hard to engage with a character who is a literal blank slate week after week.
Movies-wise, Cabin in the Woods is kind of worth a look, although I always think it’s kind of like a recycling of the idea of the Initiative from Buffy s4. It’s got some nice moments though. And you’ve got The Avengers Assemble too. Personally, while it’s a great superhero movie, it doesn’t really have enough of Joss’s individuality to it to be really worthwhile. But again it does have many cool moments.
28 May 2015 at 05:19 #40400Though not a fan of much of the Whedon output I do love the little one off, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUvPfZqEftI (I hope that works. Last links I posted wafted off into the ether.)
The story behind the making of this is interesting too. It was put together during the Hollywood writers’ strike when the studios were essentially empty and everyone was twiddling their thumbs as they lazed by their pools. The Whedons called on their friends and produced this on a shoe string budget and released it online. I think you will enjoy it @Purofilion I am not sure when Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell will be sown on ABC. I am certain it will be rather soon.
cheers
Janette
28 May 2015 at 10:14 #40402@janetteb not a fan..?? Waddayamean “not a fan..”? You’re dead to me I say. Dead.
🙂
28 May 2015 at 10:15 #40403@janetteb I do love you, though, and I will watch Strange Norrell!
28 May 2015 at 15:29 #40404@purofilion and Dr Horrible’s Sing A Long Blog. It is only about forty minutes and quite a gem..
Cheers
Janette
28 May 2015 at 23:42 #40405I thought that Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell really caught fire in Episode Two. That’s not to say that Episode One was bad; it wasn’t. It introduced the characters; it had a creepy moment with the stone figures in York Cathedral and we met The Gentleman. Childermass was younger than I’d imagined, but Enzo Cilenti was so good in the role, it didn’t really matter.
But Episode One has the same problem Part One of the Book has – Mr Norrell is, to be honest, a little bit dull. Even when played by Eddie Marsan. And basing your episode around a shy, retiring, miserly man who can make even the most exciting of magic sound boring was always going to be problematic.
On the bright side, Jonathan Strange is also like the book. As soon as Jonathan Strange comes into his magic, the book becomes magical. As soon as TV Jonathan Strange (Bertie Cavell) comes into his magic, the series becomes magical.I thought the pair of scenes in Episode Two where they display that difference were brilliant. In the first, Mr Norrell performs a great feat of magic, setting a magical ward around Portsmouth Harbour. He does it by standing on the shore, scrunching his face in concentration, and finally, reluctantly, waving his arms in a slightly embarrassed fashion. Absolutely nothing appears to have happened; it’s left to Jonathan Strange to explain that something has happened.
The next day, Strange is called to the harbour because a ship has run aground (possibly on the magical ward…). He then proceeds to rescue the ship by the most spectacular means possible; creating horses out of the sand the ship’s aground on to both remove the sand and right the ship. It’s the kind of thing CGI was made for.
Two scenes; the difference between the two magicians.
Episode Two also saw us in Lost Hope for the first time. I’m not quite sure where they’re going with The Gentleman (Marc Warren) – they seem to be going for flat out evil rather than the book’s utterly self-centred and amoral character. However, it’s possible that they wanted to firmly establish The Gentleman as an antagonist in the face of a popular conception of ‘faery=good’, and that they may develop him a bit in later episodes.
The dance at Last Hope was certainly a dance out of nightmare – the thing that distracted me slightly was that the fairies were much too obviously professional dancers – but possibly they’ve decided that fairies who’ve been dancing for millennia will effectively be pros. 😉
If anyone on this forum has given up on Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell after Episode One, I’d very strongly encourage them to try Episode Two (it’s on iPlayer). Personally, I’m looking forward to the Peninsula War next week. 🙂
29 May 2015 at 00:33 #40406Well there was me thinking how to get across my thoughts on Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and fortune smiles as @bluesqueakpip has done it for me!
Completely agree! Now….. get out of my mind!!
`8¬\
Though I did think they tried to get across The Gentleman’s self centredness and character (rather than ‘pure evil’ flatness) when he was surprised that Strange could hear him.
And I’m getting over the fact that my visual key for him was his hair and I always thought his hair was of the frizzy “Irish Afro*” type, yet (obviously) the colour of thistledown.
*I survived this by
going baldshaving it all off.Who says baldness is a problem?
;¬)
(and @purofilion – me making faces?? Only cos I forget how to do emoticons properly!)
🙂29 May 2015 at 02:00 #40407“Mr Norrell performs a great feat of magic, setting a magical ward around Portsmouth Harbour. He does it by standing on the shore, scrunching his face in concentration, and finally, reluctantly, waving his arms in a slightly embarrassed fashion. Absolutely nothing appears to have happened”
@janetteb NOBODY mentioned this was a show about magic. For some reason I thought it would be more like Jonathan Strange where some afro-haired (well, most) guy solves crimes which appear unsolvable.
And apparently fairies, too?
`:~{
I dunno now….I need to be convinced….
29 May 2015 at 05:07 #40408@Purofilion JS&MN is a story that defies easy description. It is somewhere between fantasy, alternate history, period drama with a fantastical twist. It draws upon ancient British fairy lore. Think not the prettified fairies of Spenser and Shakespeare. These are proper fairies, dark, disturbing and often menacing, not out of malice but because they simply have different imperatives to mortals. I did my main project in Honours Drama on how Shakespeare took the mythology of fairies and subverted it into something very different so the subject matter of the novel immediately caught my attention back in 2006. The book is one of my favourites, of the “if you were on a desert island” category of favourite.
I am loving the TV series. Our teenage sons who have not read the book and wondered why I keep harping on about it, are impressed. After episode two one announced that it is better than Game of Thrones. High praise indeed.
@bluesqueakpip You have summarised it very well, as expected. I agree with @whisht though that they are attempting to show that the Gentleman is not malign just operating to a different set of imperatives. I also at first thought him to be of an evil inclination in the book. Interesting to see how the character develops over the course of the series.
Cheers
Janette
29 May 2015 at 07:16 #40409I don’t think Strange Norrel has started here in the US, has it? Anybody know where or when it starts? I’ve seen some ads, but they seem to have gone away now; or maybe it’s just that I haven’t been watching much tv lately . . . I did try the book, could not get past the slow open, so I’m very happy that we have a visual version now to enjoy.
ichi
29 May 2015 at 08:11 #40410@janetteb yes, but WHAT channel is it on, dear? Free to air?
Otherwise it’s a no go for me I’m afraid.
Thank you for the wonderful description. I must borrow the book from the library. I’m one of those people who borrow books. But libraries are closing fast in Brisbane. Nobody reads, I guess.
Sounds like a great Hons thesis. well done.
Kindest to you, puro.
29 May 2015 at 15:53 #40411@Purofilion I think, (hope) it will be shown on ABC free to air. I am cheating but I share you objections to pay TV. We pay for ABC in our taxes and that is how it should be. I suspect the DVD set of JS&MN will end up under the Christmas tree this year though. One of the few that is really worth the added expense.
@ichabod It will be shown on Saturday June 13th at 10.00 pm on BBC America. (According to the Bloomsbury fB page.)
Cheers
Janette
29 May 2015 at 19:19 #40412@janetteb Thanks! I hope they’ll do re-runs the week after, because I’ll be attending a grandchild’s graduation that weekend and probably won’t get too see the debut. Looking forward, though!
30 May 2015 at 01:43 #40413@janetteb thank you for that information!
30 May 2015 at 13:54 #40414Not got around to JS&MN on TV yet, although it’s definitely on my list. I could never really get into the book, largely for the reasons @bluesqueakpip mentions, largely that Mr Norrell is such a boring old arse. Martin Millar is still my go-to guy for faeries really. Will give it another go soon though and the TV version looks as if it’s really nailed the atmosphere of the book.
Think someone mentioned Top of the Lake above. The Beeb is about to show a dramatisation of Iain Banks’ Stonemouth, starring everyone’s favourite Weegie Psycho Peter Mullan. I’d consider it one of Banks’ lesser novels, essentially a mash-up of The Crow Road and Complicity but I’m grateful for what I can get, bearing in mind the poor old sod is no longer with us.
Which reminds me, isn’t it about time that we got onto The Crow Road in our Capaldi retrospective?
30 May 2015 at 14:05 #40415Jim, I’ve watched all the episodes from the new Daredevil and I really do think it’s one of the best stabs at doing a superhero run on the TV I’ve seen. It helps that it plays to some extent like a remixed Frank Miller “Man without Fear”. Lots of nice nods to that and some great action set pieces/fight work.
Above all though, the relationships feel right. Especially the one between Charlie Cox as Murdock and Elden Henson as Foggy. The occasional focus on their real life legal work is actually refreshing. Nice to see Deborah Ann Woll getting more work after True Blood (Jessica was actually one of the better vampire characters in that I thought). She has some great scenes towards the end.
D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk is great as well. Nice spin on mythology with the characters effectively naming each other “the devil of Hell’s Kitchen” and “The hidden King”.
Really looking forward to seeing how it goes in series 2.
30 May 2015 at 14:19 #40416@phaseshift — I’m about halfway through Daredevil — hence Jonathan Strange getting put on the back-burner and so far I’m really impressed. I’ve been having definite superhero fatigue in terms of movies at the moment but this is really a breath of fresh air. I thought Henson took a couple of episodes to get really comfortable but I’m really enjoying the whole thing now. D’Onofrio — great in just about everything he ever does, to my mind — is an excellent Fisk.
I worry slightly with Ben Edlund moving on after s1 as Doug Petrie’s contributions to Buffy don’t exactly inspire me with confidence at him being the lead show-runner but I’ll be happy to be pleasantly surprised.
30 May 2015 at 15:26 #40417I’ve been having definite superhero fatigue
Me too, and considering that we are old comic book followers good knows what the non-comic book follower makes of it all.
Yes – the changes are slightly troubling and you hope they can avoid a S2 downturn in the way that The Walking Dead suffered under similar circumstances. I guess time will tell, but one thing is they are building towards this Defenders concept, and the route forwards may be a little more defined.
The one thing the Affleck movie had, that I wish they had the money to accompany this series, was the visualisation of Murdochs “view” of the world. Some of that stuff was very striking.
30 May 2015 at 15:34 #40418@purofilion @janetteb @jimthefish
Sounds like you are determined to jump down the rabbit hole of Space Opera @Purofilion! If it’s any consolation, I too struggled with Firefly when it was first released to the extent I only watched the complete run after I saw the Serenity film. I now think it is the one of the last great runs of Space Opera that are kind of defined by being “anti-Trek”. It’s not a popular viewpoint, this theory but it’s amazing when you look at it.
Star Trek – Blake’s 7. In ‘66 Star Trek gets released in the US and lasts 3 series before cancellation when it starts getting shown in the UK in Doctor Who slot between series. Terry Nation is appalled at this happy clappy hippy nonsense and crafts Blake’s 7 as a reaction to it. Many of the first series basic plots are ripped from Trek and skewed. B7 is about an organic ship with a glowing arse populated by a renegade bunch of disreputable people fighting a fascistic Federation ruling Inner worlds and exploiting outer worlds.
Star Trek TNG – Lots. The Next Generation sees the normal hippy clap-trap augmented by O level psychoanalysis and the 80s obsession with therapy. It’s generally appalling but is a behemoth. Lots of smaller shows from Red Dwarf to Lexx (a big organic ship that goes around eating planets) relentlessly take the piss out its po-facedness.
Deep Space 9 – Babylon 5. Lots of allegations of people nicking each others ideas as these shows run largely concurrently. I’m ideologically attuned to B5 which has its problems but actually delivers on a lot of its promise for the time. The section where the B5 crew rebel against a fascistic Earth is a homage to B7 as is the fact that the Drahzi have a ship with a glowing arse and is shaped like the B7 ship. The relationship between G’Kar and Londo is superb and gives a lie to the fact that writer/creator JMS couldn’t write dialogue for toffee. DS9 looks more glossy, but then again its pilot costs more that the first series of B5. It’s pretty obvious they are looking at B5 and at last we get some decent human characterisation that show other sides to the lead characters in Trek. Trek fans call episodes like “In the Pale Moonlight” a horrible betrayal of Trek’s ideals. This is one reason to celebrate the show, and it’s the only one I ever go back to.
Voyager – Farscape. Oh gods – Voyager is more than a little bit pants, forgetting anything learned in producing DS9. It is Trek by numbers. In contrast the Australian Farscape, which features a disreputable bunch of characters on the run from fascists in an organic ship (with occasionally glowing arse) is absolutely bonkers. And pretty wonderful.
Enterprise – Firefly. Enterprise goes back to its “Western” roots of Wagon Train to the Stars and with a theme segment heralded by a truly insipid Western Song. The first few series are pretty awful. The last couple have a few highlights (but are really continuity porn). Then we get Firefly which basically says “You want a Space Western. Well, check this out”. A bunch of disreputable people on a ship with a glowing arse fight a fascistic Government.
The Star Trek Universe represents Authority and the triumph of American ideals being exported outwards. The others seem to represent the fight against Authority and individual freedom. For every action a reaction. Usually with a ship with a glowing arse.
Next Year sees the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek. Look that term up on google and you’ll find a lot of articles (with an unhappy tone) about what is going on for that year and using Doctor Who as an example of how to do it right. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh because during the 90s, Trek fans could be truly unpleasant as they had three shows on the go and Doctor Who had been cancelled.
But part of me hopes that they get their way, and they get a new series for their own 50th. Because that may mean we get another good show to take a good run up and try to give it a kick in the bollocks.
30 May 2015 at 16:10 #40419@phaseshift. Thank you for that summary. You have explained perfectly just why I never warmed to Star Trek in any of its incarnations.
@jimthefish I’ll second that nomination for a re-watch of The Crow Road. (I haven’t been keeping up with the Capaldi retrospective but will certainly enjoy that.) And hope you enjoy JS&MN when you get round to it.
Cheers
Janette
30 May 2015 at 16:21 #40420@purofilion, @phaseshift and @janetteb —
A pretty spot-on summation from @phaseshift (hereafter known as the Glowing-Arse Argument). I find a little space opera goes a long way for me. I tend towards TOS, find TNG occasionally inspired but tediously humourless and pompous for the most part. Quite liked DS9 — and really do rate episodes like Pale Moonlight, especially as precursors for what Ron Moore would eventually do with BSG. Voyager and Enterprise are uniformally ghastly to my mind.
I never really got on with Babylon 5 as it just had way too many bumpy foreheads and funny names for me to get really into it. Also again with the lack of humour. It always strikes me as the epitome of what Whedon was reacting against in Firefly — ambassadors, diplomatic intrigue, stately, static FX and so on.
I think one of the interesting things about Firefly is that compared to many of these other series, the Alliance is not actually fascistic but rather more mindlessly bureaucratic . They’re not as malicious as, say, Nation’s Federation and it’s more that ordinary people just tend to get crushed in the machinery of their Government apparatus. And Phase does highlight something I’ve noticed in a couple of others. That it’s not until a second pass that many people really fall in love with it.
30 May 2015 at 19:57 #40421Like @jimthefish, I find a little space opera goes a long way. Blakes 7 I loved, Red Dwarf I could either take or leave. I made a valiant attempt to watch Star Trek: Enterprise, and Star Trek: NG, largely because I’d seen most of the original Star Trek. But Enterprise was a bit – well, pants, to be honest. And Next Generation was Incredibly Serious And Meaningful.
There is a place for the serious and meaningful, but it’s not when you’re battling the rubber spider. 😉
30 May 2015 at 21:47 #40423@phaseshift Good summation. The only major overlooks were Battlestar Galactica, the remake series, which was also created as an Anti-Trek, and a ‘take that’ to Roddenberry’s optimism. Very much a Trek for the noughties and an embattled, combative, paranoid America.
There’s also Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, which is basically another version of Star Trek with the serial numbers filed off – representing both the failure of the Trek Universe/Federation, and a struggle to cling to its ideals in a darker future, in its own way, an Anti-Trek.
On the other end of the spectrum, I suppose Starlost could be fit into the narrative – a space epic of the one eyed man, and the blind leading the blind. Boldly going where no man had gone before… into waiting disaster.
You can probably also add Alien and a lot of the filmic space operas that followed in those footsteps – they embraced the notion of a dangerous universe and a heartless state/corporation, with the only people that you could truly count on being your fellow crew – often explicitly working class, and anti-authoritarian.
Overall, most of the Space Operas tended to struggle a bit, now that I come to think of it. Lexx leapfrogged from one combination of backers to another, Farscape failed after three seasons but came back for the Peacekeeper wars, Babylon 4 almost died in the fourth season and only got a fifth through network change and its sequels died. Same thing with Andromeda. Blake’s 7 died on a cliff hanger. The audience seems to be lukewarm.
Ironically, Star Trek itself was basically the last great gasp of the previous generation of space opera which had been seen in Destination Moon, Angry Red Planet, Journey to the Seventh Planet, Forbidden World, etc., and had been popular on television in the 1950’s in series like Space Patrol, etc. All of these were based on a kind of postwar American sensibility of authoritarianism, military hierarchy and manliness, crossed with ‘frontierism’ and manifest destiny, a dollop of cold war sensibility. By the late 60’s, the Vietnam war had gone sour, the Youth movement was in full swing, along with Civil Rights, the Counterculture, Women’s lib, environmentalism, the emergence of the non-aligned movement, and Mao breaking out as third way communism.
It was pretty clear by that time that the authoritarian sensibility didn’t have all the answers. It didn’t even know half the questions. So you had a range of subversive science fiction like 2001, Silent Running, Planet of the Apes. For its time, Star Trek was seen by many as a weirdly and hopelessly old fashioned vision of the future – way back in 1960, Queen of Outer Space – featuring a planet of beautiful amazons ignorant of the ways of man was a ludicrous self parody at the time they were making it, in 1969, there’s Star Trek making Spock’s Brain without a twinge of self awareness.
I think Star Trek survived in syndication to become the dominant Space Opera paradigm because, despite its classical or conventional origins, it was at least willing to acknowledge the new cultural currents, even if it didn’t necessarily endorse them. Star Trek was prepared to say ‘okay, there is such a thing as hippies, even if we don’t approve.’ And it was prepared to go ‘okay, it’s not just the cold war, it’s a little bit more complicated with three sides.’
The next generation when it launched, I think, coincided with a period of broad American self satisfaction. Basically the right cultural window for its sensibility.
30 May 2015 at 22:24 #40424@jimthefish — about people not falling love with Firefly until giving it a second look: in discussions elsewhere, I’ve seen quite a number of people say exactly the same thing about DW S8 — that they only start to really see its virtues on re-watch. I guess that’s what happens when you take an established format and do unexpected things with it. Some people give up and walk away — “This isn’t anything like X, it’s not what I come to this show *for* and I despise it” — while others give it another go-round and this time see past their own expectations to what’s actually been accomplished, and then they’re in love with it.
30 May 2015 at 22:39 #40425@denvaldron Good commentary, thank you. Star Trek was very influential in what must have seemed later a surprising way. When I started going to SF conventions in the mid-seventies, I was part of a substantial wave of women invading convention-space in vocal numbers (the fan boys *hated* this, but mostly seem to have gotten used to it now). Every one of them that I talked to said at one point or another that they had become fans of SF because of watching the original Star Trek, cheesy and wheezy and downright silly as it was. They — we — were responding to that comparative liberalism (or maybe just open-mindedness) on the show, which looks like pretty weak tea now but which for the time was quite striking. Women who hadn’t really glommed onto SF as their literature had learned to resent reading and seeing stories in which female characters were either absent, or were the usual servant/prizes/wide-eyed nincompoops, and which were usually about war or the subjugation of the Other or both (not that all SF ever was this, but an awful lot of it was), and they learned that not only from the revived feminism of the time, but from watching, yep, Star Trek. POC to this day hark back to Uhura (“mommy, look — a black woman who isn’t a maid!” Whoopie Goldberg remembers exclaiming) as their personal breakthrough to the idea that yes, you could be non-white but still be present in the a future of space adventure. Star Trek was special, never mind the salt and pepper shakers Bones used to diagnose illness . . .
30 May 2015 at 23:45 #40426@ichabod Someone once said that the golden age of science fiction was twelve. There’s maybe a bit more truth to that than we’d all like to admit.
We can deconstruct both the original Star Trek and the Next Generation as inherently creatures of their time. In a sense, this is all science fiction. Good sci fi doesn’t show us the future, but rather shows us a mirror, in which our ideas and views are projected onto a strange pallet. This is probably true for all speculative fiction, including fantasy, magic realism, surrealism and horror.
But I think that if science fiction has an enduring strength, then it’s because it functions like historical fiction. It doesn’t depict the transient world that we live in, but rather constructs a world, an enduring pallet, which makes it accessible outside of its specific time and place, its specific cultural context. The world changes all around us, and the pace of that change and transformation has accelerated steadily, the past becomes a foreign country and the thoughts and experiences of those who lived there become alien to us. But science fiction in creating a pallet that was alien from the beginning remains accessible, it has stepped out of the world of its time, and tried to establish a world that we can visit more easily. That’s my theory.
As I’ve said, we can deconstruct the original Star Trek as a creature of its time. But that doesn’t begin to explain it’s incredible persistence and dominance as a paradigm. Space Patrol and Destination Moon came and went. But Star Trek went on to define a genre so profoundly that there’s now a huge body of work which is either an extension of it, or a reaction to it.
31 May 2015 at 01:20 #40428Someone once said that the golden age of science fiction was twelve
But to be fair, that someone was a complete moron
@Purofilion
I’ll be the dissenting voice on Fringe. I am on my second attempt at watching, at the prompting of a friend (having bailed the first time after about 15 episodes). It has two problems for me: one is that it gets the “Filler” and “Arc” balance badly wrong, with far too many “Didn’t we see that in the X-Files?” moments (and even the opening credits are a straight lift).
But the more serious problem is Walter Bishop, played by the aforementioned John Noble. Bishop is a comedy sociopath and that is a trope that should have been taken out of the back, forced to kneel before getting a couple of rounds from a Glock 17 in the back of its head, buried and then dug up, shot a few times more just to be certain, buried again and then urinated on by the entire population of Fargo, North Dakota.
As an idea it is so cancerous that not even a fine actor like John Noble can stop it seeming as a pustulant canker on the face of a perfectly decent bit of hokum. Stuff that was aiming for tasteless ending up being merely distasteful.
But don’t let me cloud your opinion.
Farscape is a different kettle of fish – The Peacekeeper Wars, which wrapped up the show after premature cancellation, is totally worth waiting for, and Claudia Black’s Aeryn is one of the greatest female characters in all of SF.
Have you watch Objects in Space yet?
Just watched Whedon’s Much Ado and was pleasantly surprised – that it was shot in 12 days with very little time for rehearsal shows only occasionally. Obviously you have a completely wrong-headed view of the divine Amy Acker, so you might have problems with it (but if I can tolerate Alexis Denisof who gets to shag the delectable Ms Hannigan, then you can show a little flexibility too). It also has the great advantage of not having Keanu fucking Reeves is in
And check out Dead Like Me (make sure you don’t watch the movie first). I had forgotten what a contemplative piece of telly it was.
31 May 2015 at 05:39 #40431@IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan I believe that was either Arthur C. Clarke, David G. Hartwell or Peter Graham. Mr. Clarke and Mr. Graham have passed away. But Mr. Hartwell is still available. 😉
31 May 2015 at 08:43 #40432Encyclopedia of SF has it as Peter Scott Graham. Other sources also have it as Peter S. Graham, and add that he said it (or possibly printed it in his fanzine) shortly before he left organised fandom.
Since the saying dates (I’m told) from the late 50’s or possibly 1960, one thing it isn’t talking about is Star Trek. 😉
31 May 2015 at 13:04 #40433@ichabod — RE. s8, absolutely. I was a definitely a little unsure of it at first. Capaldi’s Doctor was not how I imagined he’d play it and it took me a while to get used to him — compared to the instant shine I took to Matt, for instance. But now I think he really works. It was also not really until a second viewing tat I really got just how bold this last season was. It took risks, it give new writers to the show (and new even to this genre) their head and the results were often startling and interesting. I now think that Kill The Moon stands as one of the great episodes of AG Who, if not of the entire series. And I suppose somewhat ironically I consider Death in Heaven, which slipped back into an RTD-pastiche comfort zone to be weakest episode of an otherwise quite daring season.
31 May 2015 at 22:13 #40434@IAmNotAFish “The Golden Age” quote seems to me only to apply to pulp SF of the forties and fifties — the “little boy” stories of war, rebellion against (any) authority (since it was all bad, as I recall), and girls strictly cardboard cut-outs. It’s exactly what the Old Guard meant when they stormed about snarling about all these damn newfangled thingies taking over the genre (New Wave from England first, then women and feminism. It’s also what I heard from several editors when I was marketing the first two books of a 4-book series about gender wars in the near-ish future; they said, “Most of our readership is kids and young men, and they won’t read stories with women in lead roles”, and “This is great! Just turn all the characters in it into men, and we’ll take it!”
Seriously. I’m talking about 1976 or so; and IMO, these editors (both of them women, by the way) were way behind the curve, because female readers were coming out of the closet in droves by then, and buying books about female as well as male characters. But that’s the way that generation of editors thought (with exceptions; the book in question was bought in the end by David Hartwell).
On “Fringe”, I liked it for a while, didn’t see Bishop as a comedy loon at all but as a tragic figure who’d had his brains scrambled by Evil Forces, which I think was what the writers intended, but strokes and folks. Anyway, I got bored when the show became all gummed up with that alternate worlds stuff, doubling many of the characters into a confusion I just didn’t care enough about to spend time sorting out, so I quit.
Whedon’s “Much Ado” I found unexpectedly lithe and charming, freed from the weight of period costuming and sets.
And S8 — yep, the more you look, the more you see, in my experience with it, and the bolder it is. But I should have realized that just from the amount of immediate negative balderdash in comments from fans. Some of them just hated the loopy “science” of episodes like KtM, but maybe that’s easier to look past on re-watch, so that the virtues become visible. And of course any time you step (let alone charge) out of the established comfort zone, there will be weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth from those who were the most comfortable (or those who most needed that comfort, perhaps). I have a feeling that we’re going to see a swerve back into the old grooves in S9, which will leave S8 as a one-off feat of considerable audacity. And I’m not sure how I’ll feel about that, if it turns out to be true.
31 May 2015 at 22:18 #40435I found “The Crow Road” online and am watching — first reaction: my god, how these characters *drink*! Every time somebody says, “I’m off, long drive ahead, etc.” somebody else says, “How about a drink before you go?” meaning a good stiff one, whisky not wine or beer. Wow.
31 May 2015 at 22:36 #40436@ichabod historically, science fiction as a genre per se in the American market was traditionally aimed at young male readers, and this was persistent with occasional wobbles from Hugo Gernsback through the Campbell era. Personally, I’m not 100% persuaded, if we look at the works of Burroughs, for instance, starting with Princess of Mars, I’d warrant he had a much higher female readership than anyone suspected. It’s not like there were sophisticated demographic analysis. I suspect that a lot of the mindset of science fiction in the Campbell era reflected the mindsets of the editors – they shaped the genre to reflect themselves. John Campbell was something of a racist, and a bit of a libertarian kook, and these traits imprinted the early genre somewhat. Campbell reflected the sexual prurience of the era. The new wave, I think was a rejection of the artificial narrowing of the genre, and not a moment too soon. It’s ironic that the current Hugo Awards controversy reflect a lunatic wish to return to a golden age that was far from golden.
31 May 2015 at 22:53 #40437By the way, folks, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is really upping its game. Episode Three is excellent.
Off to watch it again. 🙂
1 June 2015 at 01:27 #40439@denvaldron Oh, no argument there — I was one of those lots of girls who read SF/F/H as a little, and then a bigger, kid; but nobody was thinking of us “invisibles” in their writing or editing, except for a handful of people. The field itself was indeed oriented toward young males, and the SF editors by and large clung to that idea long after it was heavily compromised by the female fan-base outing itself and storming the barricades (I’m thinking of some SF conventions I attended in the seventies and eighties at which female readers showed up in numbers, but were basically ignored, constantly interrupted, or just plain shouted down by male con-goers and, often, panelists).
Thank you for “not a moment too soon”. It’s been my contention for decades that SF was in fact saved from staleness by the New Wave, yes, but much more so by the incoming feminist wave. The New Wave brought in stylish sophistication from mainstream, as I recall, but the feminist wave simply threw open the gates on an entire half of human experience — women’s half, to put it very roughly, and that of the “soft” sciences — that had been pretty much ignored by the mostly male writers who preceded them. There were always exceptions, of course — Ted Sturgeon, Naiomi Mitchison (“Memoirs of a Spacewoman”), Chad Oliver, and a few others, plus some female authors who wrote under male pseudonyms for practical reasons (Andre Norton is an example of a gender-ambiguous name, another dodge — but they were seen, I think, as outliers and only for specialized [that is, mature] SF readers. This opening up brought in a flood of new energy and breadth of perspective that re-invigorated the whole filed, IMO.
The current Hugo uproar was begun by a troglodyte writer of reactionary militaristic SF in Texas, which should come as no surprise. That’s bloody Texas for you (apologies to the liberal Texans brave enough to stay there with the crazies — Texas just passed an Open Carry law, according to H. Post). I’m staying avoiding WorldCon this year to avoid being entangled in it, and staying away from Texas (the scene of a very nice yearly con called Armadillocon) until the Open Carry law is gone, and maybe not even after that . . .
1 June 2015 at 01:35 #40440@ichabod Even back in the day, the genre sported female writers who brought emotional depth to their stories. C.L. Moore and Leigh Bracket were key personalities. Alice Sheldon (aka James Tiptree) would come along later.
But it’s emblematic of how messed up the gender and racial politics of the day were when you look at Leigh Brackett’s ‘John Eric Stark.’ If you read those stories, over and over and over and over again, she clearly describes him as black. And every single book or magazine cover would show him as a blonde blue eyed Nordic.
If you look at some of the letters and commentaries in early fandom, there’s almost a fear of women and sexuality. It was something that the writers didn’t necessarily have. Heinlein’s characters got up to all sorts of things, and even Asimov wrote a novel in which nudity was casual and universal.
I see this as reflecting not just the terminal insecurity of key editors like Campbell, but also a wave of misogynist repression that ran through American society, and were reflected in things like the Hays Code for movies, the Comic Code Authority, and obscenity prosecutions in every small town for everything in sight.
1 June 2015 at 01:37 #40441@ichabod One of those Troglodytes, by the way, now lives in Italy, and runs a small press in Finland, owned by a holding corporation in England. It seems that doofusery is international.
1 June 2015 at 03:14 #40442@denvaldron Also Judy Merrill — I was just thinking of a novel she wrote with Cyril Judd, pub. 1952, that remains (in memory, at least) a piece of SF that I loved to bits. She wrote short fiction on her own, but I can’t think of another novel-length piece by her (with or without someone else). And yes, women were being kept in the kitchen again after their horrifying break-out into the factory in WWII, when all the guys were gone into the services.
Plenty of idiots here are trying desperately to drag us back into those times (again, Texas, but of course not only), but the tide is against them and they will lose in the long run; the problem is, *how* long? I don’t think I can old out that long, myself, which makes me sad.
Oh yes, I’ve read a bit about the other Trog — last I heard, he was backpedaling as fast as he could, trying to distance himself from Beale whom he’s finally realized isn’t going to do his own career any good. Pair of antediluvian cretins, an embarrassment to the field; although we’ve always had our share of gun-blasting imperialistic misogynistic warmongers in SF, only these days the war fever is more commonly found in “heroic” fantasy, i.e. Game of Thrones, Gardens of the Moon, etc. SF seems to me (literary SF, not movies, of course) much more focused on more arcane matters of culture, psychology, and so on, especially books that come from the UK — thinking of Blindsight here.
The Comic Code persuaded my mom to ban my beloved EC comics from out apartment, so I stored them at the home of my best friend at the time. Unfortunately, they perished somewhere along the way from then to now, unfortunately . . . idiotic times. I can’t watch “Mad Men” because I lived through those times, and I do not want to be taken back to them now in any form (much as our Right Wing would love to drag us all there). Great comics (again — in memory). Scared myself to death with them (“The Vault of Horror”, “The Crypt of Terror”, and “Two Fisted Action Tales”, among others).
1 June 2015 at 03:29 #40443@denvaldron @ichabod (lots of talk there, fascinating too)
Sounds very interesting @ichabod regarding S8 -some other forums really despised KtM and Forest of the Dead – actually, I think Den Valdron, if I’m correct, you didn’t really like those eps either? (and it may not have anything to do with the science?) To me, science doesn’t matter -Who aint sci-fi. You look at Firefly and I don’t think you can claim it’s entirely sci-fi either although certainly closer to that genre than Who but ichi and I had a good long chat months ago about the tropes of KtM and FofD (actually was it Forest of the Dead? I’m terrible with episode naming: I make my own up!).
We discussed how the science didn’t matter (to us at any rate ) and I recalled that there were 3 ‘scientists’ who only came to this Forum to complain about the science – @MTG…. being one if I recall rightly, and yet there was so much more to those episodes and it annoys me. It also makes me laugh, big time, that people would be thick enough to nit pick the science and yet be unaware of plot developments & character revelations -for instance, I didn’t recall one of them pointing out how well Hermoine Norris acted or how the child had sufficiently developed as a character over the season.
It was as if they specifically hi-jacked the site to discuss (in number format and bullet points no less) exactly which part of the science was wrong. But they were shooting themselves in the foot or else putting up a straw man argument (I enjoy mixing metaphors with debating techniques) and this was fruitless.
As is my long ramble in the park.
@pedant gave me a list of some sci-fi novels to read as I’m a total neophyte. (Ichi, if you want to tag IAmNotaFish it’s @ followed by pedant. The choice of name is Buffy and Angel related)
Still, what I read as a teenager and a child -Asimov, etc didn’t interest me to the extent of DH Lawrence, Doris Lessing or Dickens.
So, we’ll see. @ichabod I take it you’re a published writer of some note of sci-fi?
Kindest, puro
1 June 2015 at 05:39 #40445“Whedon’s “Much Ado” I found unexpectedly lithe and charming, freed from the weight of period costuming and sets”
“unexpectedly?” Why? Another almost-non-Whedon fan? oh ichi, you’re dead to me. Dead, I say!
\;-}
I kid.
I still love you. And I really like a lot of the discussions you encourage (or provoke!). Fantastic.
1 June 2015 at 05:56 #40446@ichabod I actually had the honour of meeting Phyllis Gottlieb, one of the old era Sci Fi writers. She was in her 90’s at the time, a wizened little woman with gigantic ears.
As far as the Malazan stuff goes, I actually like Steve’s work, although it’s quite exhausting. It’s also subversive of the genre in it’s own way. Steve is an anthropologist by training, and did his field work in central America during the dirty wars there.
@purofilion I used to know a Native artist named David Morrisseau. He was the son of Norvel Morrisseau, who was probably one of the most famous native artists. Anyway, his artwork was in the classic style of the Oji-Cree, adapted of course with oils and acryllics. It was quite popular. But when he talked about it, he talked about it in terms of mermaids and fish people, teleportation and visits to other planets. But these were ojibway folk tales he was talking about. Essentially, he was rendering the Ojibway stories he’d learned growing up in his native language into English, but he was adopting the vocabulary of science fiction to describe it. He could have adopted a fantasy vocabulary, or a religious vocabulary, but for him the vocabulary of technocracy and science fiction was simply the most natural default for him, entering into the white world which was certainly not religious or magical in its outlook.
A lot of science fiction isn’t truly about science. Certainly there are whole genres and subgenres that have little to do with science. Military SF from Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, to Haldeman’s Forever War, or David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers or John Ringo’s Aldenata, or the Honor Harrington stuff… nothing to do with science. Only marginally to do with technology. Science is just the clothing, the wardrobe that these stories wear.
There’s hard SF that wrestles with or is derived from science – Clement’s Mission of Gravity, or Forward’s Dragon’s Egg (Eye?) Maybe some of the esoteric stuff of Steve Baxter. But a lot of it, Neil Asher’s stuff for instance, or David Brin, just uses it as the wardrobe to tell good stories. It’s really all about telling good stories, sometimes science is the inspiration, hallucinatory visions and blueprints of the future, cautionary tales, dreamscapes. Sometimes its just the clothing we drape the old stories in to make them vivid and interesting.
We live in a present which is entirely ephemeral, our reality is ghostlike. Previous generations lived with decades and lifetimes of stability. Now, everything we knew, everything we thought the knew, is constantly being eroded away. It used to be that we had all these mythical landscapes that we projected our stories on – Olympus and squabbling gods, then in the 19th and early 20th centuries, we had the wild west, darkest Africa, the inscrutable orient, the Arabian nights. Most of those landscapes are gone now, and the only really fun landscapes left to us are the future unwritten and the past reimagined.
Why do we bother with sci fi at all. It comes down to good and bad storytelling. It comes down to suspension of disbelief. And that goes all the way to Plato and Atlantis. Every piece of fiction, every story, is by nature unreal and incredible. It hasn’t happened, not going to happen, its not this reality, whether it’s ‘While You Were Sleeping’ or ‘Star Wars.’
Good storytelling is the stuff that persuades us to suspend that disbelief, to go along for the ride. That’s the big trick of every story. Atlantis is a fable, its a fiction. But Plato sold it to us. How? By describing an elaborate provenance for it, a chain of continuity as to where he got that story from. Edgar Rice Burroughs did the same thing for both Tarzan and John Carter, explaining carefully to the reader how a Midwestern Yokel got hold of the life stories of a Martian Prince and the Ape Man. Sherlock Holmes writers have made a convention of describing the elaborate chains of provenance, a manuscript found in a secret compartment of an antique drawer which was purchased at an estate sale for someone who seems to have had a connection with Baker Street. Arthur Conan Doyle gave us the voice of John Watson.
Plato sold Atlantis by piling on plausible detail upon detail – he described its city, its gods, its form of rule, he said it had elephants and apes and canals. Again, all sorts of fiction works that way, piling on plausible detail. This is the secret of science fiction – plausible detail. A cultural language of plausible detail that’s built up. Will we have warp drive, starships, transporters and phasers in the future. Probably not. We sure as hell don’t have them now. All of this detail is essentially fantasy, its magical. But we’ve lived in an era that went from the Wright Brothers to Supersonic fighter jets in two generations, that has, in a few more, landed men on the moon, put robot insects on mars, put a space station in orbit and have sent probes out into the oort cloud. We’ve all grown up with a vocabulary of space travel and rapid change. We’ve all grown up with a rapidly transforming technology which would have been magical a few generations before. Transporters? Ridiculous. But 200 years ago, the thought of transporting our voices from one place to another was magical nonsense. Then we had radio. And Radio allowed us to imagine the crazy possibility, if we could send our voices, why not our images. Then we had television. So transporters, that’s not beyond our plausible conception. We live in a civilization that does not buy magical doors. But it does acknowledge the possibility of wormholes, and is willing to use them for storytelling.
But here’s the thing with suspension of belief. It’s a fragile thing. Fiction is lies, so suspension of disbelief is always working uphill. It’s not easy, even with a willing audience. Part of building and keeping that suspension of belief is that you got to follow the rules you establish. People will accept the rationality of an underlying premise and go along with it, but you have to keep to that premise. King Kong, when he is killed at the top of the Empire state building… he has to fall. He can’t sprout wings and fly away, or metamorphize into an ethereal being, he can’t let loose a stream of French invective. He has been established as a physical monster, and in the end, physics, gravity must take hold.
Good Sci Fi, good fantasy, good storytelling of any sort, must follow its own premises. Must lay out or adopt rules and then stick with them. Even Bunuel’s Discrete Charm of the Bourgeousie or Passolini’s Salo or Jodorosky’s El Topo remained true to their own obscure internal logics.
Sometimes its a pain in the ass – Star Trek’s writers invented the Transporter to save a little time and special effects money and to get their characters into a scene. Then for every episode after that, they had to come up with a reason why their characters simply didn’t transport out. If they didn’t, they’d lose that suspension of disbelief.
Kill the Moon and Forest of Whatever – I completely loathe those episodes as emblematic of bad storytelling on every level. I’ve seen reviews by people who loved them. The most persuasive positive assessment of Kill the Moon reduces the story to a marginal component and focuses entirely on the emotional and narrative arcs of the Doctor’s and Clara’s relationship, and the crisis that ensues.
But here’s how I see Kill the Moon – It establishes a premise where the moon has gone wonky. Where suddenly somehow, its gravity has increased to terrestrial levels, giving it a temporary atmosphere and producing ongoing catastrophe on Earth. That catastrophe is what follows logically if you suddenly magnified the Moon’s mass by a couple of orders of magnitude – orbital disruption, tsunami, tectonic plate rupture, runaway volcanism… we’re talking a massive planetary crisis. In fact, the story introduces several characters crashing in on a space shuttle who tell us that is exactly what is going on, no question. You see: Premise, rules, the story lays out its framework.
Next development – all this bad shit is happening because the moon is alive – oopsies. The notion of planetary bodies as Eggs goes back to the golden age, Jack Williamson, ‘Born of Fire’ I think. It’s been around. Blake’s 7 visited a living planet once upon a time. So it’s farfetched, but why the hell not.
But if we accept that premise, and why not, then the stakes go up even higher. Because if whatever is in the moon hatches out – its game over. Even if its benign and flies away… well, goodbye earth tides, goodbye lunar cycles, the stable orbits, the intrinsic effect on Earth – best case is the disruption will precipitate chains of cause and effect that will make global warming look like a joke, that will lead to mass extinction. And hey, if any of that eggshell junk falls on earth…. stuff which be mountain sized, chiculuxub sized, that’s human extinction. This is not bullshit, this is the logical extension – Jack Williamson followed it to the conclusion. Hell, once again, the characters in the story say that’s what’s going to happen. These are the rules given to the audience, the premises, the foundations of the story and we are given nothing else.
And then at the end, the moon hatches into a gigantic magical space butterfly and buggers off. Okay. The human race should be waving a tearful bye-bye as chunks of moon the size of mount Everest plunge into New York and London.
But that’s not what happens.
What does happen? The gigantic magical space butterfly shits out a brand new moon, the exact mass of the old one….
What about the conversation of mass, how can something lay an egg that’s as big as it is…. Shut up! That’s why.
And why is the new moon in the exact same orbit as the old one…. Shut up! That’s why.
And why does the new moon look identical to the old one, you know, with all the lunar geography, the maria, and rays and craters… Shut up! That’s why.
But the craters, they’re not natural features, they’re impacts, so…. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! That’s why.
What about those chunks of Everest sized rock plowing into London at 50,000 miles an hour….. Are they still there? Did the magical space butterfly kindly hoover them up before it left? Did they disintegrate on their own? Did the moon capture them? That doesn’t seem plausible what with the escape velocity being so low. Oh, I know. ‘Shut up! That’s why’ ….. No, its just not important to the story, we don’t care to mention it…. But wait, its the logical outcome of the premise, characters specifically talked about this happening…. We don’t care…. So what about all the poor people in London, with Mount Everest coming at them? ….. Don’t matter.
So this story is all about contempt for the audience? Sure. We told you we were telling one kind of story, but then we didn’t care about that story and told another. Aren’t we clever? And aren’t you a sap.
So what is this story about? Glad you asked that. It’s about making a moral choice. Sometimes people just have to take a chance.
But was this an honest moral choice? The only option you gave in the story was planetary and human extinction. You didn’t give the characters any other option. You didn’t say ‘there’s a chance that it’s a magical space butterfly that will fix anything.’ Your moral choice was try to stop it and maybe live, or do nothing and guaranteed death. We didn’t say guaranteed death. Your characters did, and it was the logical outcome of your premise. Shut up! The other option was that they didn’t know what was going to happen if they let the butterfly live. Actually, no, that’s not the option that you allowed for with your premise, and even if it was you’ve created an entirely dishonest situation where you loaded the dice – the adverse outcomes were well defined and lethal, the positive outcome was indefinite, and yet you seem to argue for your characters to choose the latter in the face of all reason and sense – then you waved a magic wand to validate it all after the fact. That’s not how life works. Shut up!
Is this some sort of parable about abortion, as some have suggested? Might be. If so, then that seems to suggest that not only should the mother’s life be subject to the fetus, but that we should be prepared to slaughter whole families, even towns, for the sanctity of the unborn? Shut up! Since there was no way to tell what was being born, your situation was equivalent to morally arguing for a cancer to finish metastasizing regardless of the danger to the host. What? Logically, in the story premise, based on the information you give us there’s no way to distinguish whether its a cancer or a foetus, your premise doesn’t give us enough to get us to that point. So really, its just a leap in the dark. Shut up, it’s a story about a magical space butterfly you philistine!
Perhaps this story is really about the evolution of the relationship between Clara and the Doctor, so that she really blisters him for being an ass! Now you’re getting it. But isn’t this story contingent on the Doctor acting in ways he’s never acted before – he’s never bolted off and said to a companion ‘you figure it out.’ It seems to be entirely contrary to everything established about the character. It was necessary to the story. But doesn’t that violation of the character, making him act in accordance with the requirements of the story, rather than acting in accordance with the established personality, amount to a breach of suspension of disbelief. This is like those cheesy horror movies where a character goes into a dark basement for no other reason than that the script requires it. Yes, we were making a subtle comment on those horror movie tropes, this was a Hinchcliffe tribute, glad you picked it up. So you deliberately engaged in bad an implausible writing? Shut up!
Okay, well, let’s assume that the Doctor acts in an implausible and inconsistent way that’s a violation of everything ever established about his character. What the hell for? What was the plot point? It was that the Doctor wanted Clara to grow up and learn to make decisions. Using a possible planetary extinction event? Well, admittedly, that’s a little much. But he really wanted it to be a teachable moment for Clara. A planetary extinction event is supposed to be a teachable moment? So either Clara is the stupidest cow alive or the Doctor is the biggest prick who ever lived, because this seems to be colossal sadism? The Doctor probably really knew all along it was safe. Still, it just seems horrible bad behaviour by the Doctor. So the teachable moment was ‘ignore all evidence, reason and logic in favour of completely unfounded sentimental moral whims because things will magically turn out all right in the end.’ Exactly! Hmmm, so we can expect Clara’s life expectancy to be quite short. Why do you say that?
So…. the Doctor was ultimately doing the right thing for Clara. And she was wrong for tearing a giant strip off him. Because her passionate tantrum was in defense of her right to be infantilized, to take no responsibility, to make no decisions, never to ever have to be accountable or grown up for anything? No! Not at all! She was in the right!
What? How does that work in terms of the logic of the story you have established? It’s a key emotional moment for Clara, and a landmark in their emotional journey together. They’re on an arc you see, and this is an important point in the arc. You have to appreciate the entire season in context. So you’ve reached this important emotional crisis point in their relationship in the most dishonest way possible, creating an entirely artificial and implausible situation, violating the integrity of the characters and savaging the logic of the story on every possible level. Now you’ve got it.
Hmmm, this turned out longer than I intended. But hopefully, you see why I really don’t like kill the moon.
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