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“Dark Thoughts”: Violations

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So. There are a handful of episodes that, irrespective of their quality one way or another, I simply cannot watch. This would be one of those.

The first strike against “Violations” is that it’s one of those infamous “Issues” stories. Even though this is the kind of story Star Trek is arguably most famous for doing, the fact of the matter is they’re also the kind of story Star Trek is also the most terrible at telling. There’s no way it can do a story like this and not come across as equal parts blinkered and self-absorbed. The best way for Star Trek to do “social commentary”, as it were, is through its utopianism: Demonstrate a utopian approach to solving a problem or portray a world where a specific problem is conspicuously absent. Conversely, if you must tell a story about a specific social topic that would no longer be strictly speaking relevant in a utopian future setting, you have to speak about it in allegorical generalization. The problem “Violations” has is that it doesn’t quite commit one way or the other, which is deeply unfortunate as it also happens to be “The Rape Episode”.

I’m not even sure how to tactfully go about this. I mean, I think the story has its heart in the right place, but it’s deeply, deeply uncomfortable to watch, and not in a good way. And just being right-on politically and ethically does not mean can adequately translate that into a narrative setting. Alien this isn’t, that’s for sure. Actually, Alien might be a good place to start: Like “Violations”, that’s a story that is at its roots a condemnation of rape and rape culture told mostly through allegory. But while the Alien eventually did end up going around indiscriminately slaughtering people, the key thing there was that the first victim was male, part of an attempt to force male audience members to come face-to-face with the rape culture they have been brought up a part of. “Violations” already comes up short by comparison, because two of its three victims are women and the first is…Deanna Troi. Someone who has an unsettling predisposition to mind rape. And this one doesn’t even have the excuse most of Deanna’s possession plots do (that being allowing Marina Sirtis to actually do shit) as she’s comatose for most of this episode.

Another crucial aspect of Alien‘s success is the fact that so much of it is conveyed through its own awareness of its cinematic nature. It’s a film so loaded with symbolic imagery that it basically runs on it (thanks in no small part to H.R. Giger and Ridley Scott), demonstrating a peerless mastery of Long 1980s cinematography. “Violations”, meanwhile…doesn’t. It’s a further continuation of Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s frustratingly conservative and dated filmmaking techniques, and this is a major problem for a story like this because of the subject matter.…

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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 2.08: The Prince of Winterfell

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State of Play
The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly:
Lions of King’s Landing: Tyrion Lannister, Cersei Lannister
The Lion, Jaime Lannister
The Direwolf, Catelyn Stark
Dragons of Qarth: Daenerys Targaryen
Bears of Qarth: Jorah Mormont
Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow
Lions of Harrenhal: Tywin Lannister
The Ship, Davos Seaworth
Stags of King’s Landing: Joffrey Baratheon
Direwolves of Winterfell: Brandon Stark
The Direwolf, Robb Stark
Direwolves of Harrenhal: Arya Stark
Kraken of Winterfell: Theon Greyjoy
Archers of the Wall: Samwell Tarly
The Burning Heart, Stannis Baratheon
Flowers of King’s Landing: Shae
Chains of King’s Landing: Bronn
Spiders of King’s Landing: Varys
The episode is in fifteen parts. The first part is four minutes long and is set in Winterfell. The first image is of a man dumping a pile of ravens out. 
The second is two minutes long and is set north of the Wall. The transition is by dialogue, from Winterfell to Ygritte identifying Jon Snow as the bastard of Winterfell. 
The third is six minutes long and is in two parts; set in and around the Stark camp in the Riverlands. The first part is four minutes long; the transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Robb Stark. The other is two minutes long; the transition is by dialogue, from Robb Stark sending out more men to capture Jaime to Jaime and Brienne. 
The fourth part is three minutes long and is set in Harrenhal. The transition is by family, from Jaime to Kevan and Tywin Lannister. 
The fifth is one minute long and is set north of the Wall. The transition is by family, from Arya Stark to Jon Snow. 
The sixth is three minutes long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by hard cut, from Ygritte to Bronn playing with a knife.
The seventh is two minutes long and is set at the Fist of the First Men, north of the Wall. The transition is by hard cut, from Tyrion to an establishing shot of the Night’s Watch on the Fist. 
The eighth is two minutes long and is set in Harrenhal. The transition is by dialogue, from Tyrion saying “pig shit” to Samwell and the others digging latrines.
The ninth is seven minutes long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by hard cut, from Arya to Tyrion. 
The tenth is seven minutes long and is set in the Stark camp in the Riverlands. The transition is by the theme of ill-advised sex, from Tyrion and Shae to Robb and Talisa. 
The eleventh is one minute long and is set in Harrenhal. The transition is by family, from Robb to Arya Stark.
The twelfth is three minutes long and is set on the sea a day outside King’s Landing. The transition is by hard cut, from Arya and her friends leaving Harrenhal to testing a catapult on one of Stannis’s ships.
The thirteenth is three minutes long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by dialogue, from Stannis making Davos his Hand to Tyrion. 
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“Strange New Worlds”: Hero Worship

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And this would be the perfect counterpoint to that argument. It’s one of my absolute favourite episodes in a season mostly made up of favourite episodes.

I used to get “Hero Worship” mixed up with “The Bonding” a lot because they both deal with helping children cope with a traumatic loss and move forward with their lives. They’re also both fucking brilliant and textbook example of what Star Trek: The Next Generation is all about. It would be understandable to make the assumption “Hero Worship” is a ripoff or rehash of “The Bonding” in this respect, and I even thought that myself for awhile. But it’s actually not: Both episodes approach loss from different angles, and Jeremy from that episode and Timothy in this one deal with their confusion and sadness in two very different ways: Jeremy tries to cling to a past he can’t go back to, while Timothy shuts down and doesn’t want to acknowledge his feelings. Also, and this is just me I’m sure, but I almost think “Hero Worship” is maybe a little more nuanced and sophisticated than “The Bonding” in some areas.

Firstly though, the title is very apt. Timothy doesn’t pretend to be an android just because they don’t have emotions and he doesn’t want to feel pain and guilt anymore: As Deanna Troi points out, Timothy also sees a strength in Data that he wants to emulate. It’s pretty much the first diegetic acknowledgment in the entire history of the series of how Star Trek: The Next Generation is actually supposed to work, and if there’s a better place to put an episode like this than in the 25th Anniversary year as part of a season of growing strength and confidence, I don’t know where that is. There’s also the very nice touch early on of Data turning to Geordi for help in understanding childhood trauma so he can better help Timothy, to which Geordi naturally responds with a story.

He’s not the one directly interacting with Timothy, but Geordi helps Data who then helps him. Reading Data, as we do, as filling the kind of role that might otherwise go to a child character, this results in a very sweet and elegant chain of empathy showcasing how role models work: One person is inspired by another, they then take those lessons into their own being and, through living their lives in accordance with them, can then go on to inspire a third person. Role models are important not only because we see in them the sort of person we’d like to be ourselves, but because they can sometimes provide example of solutions to confusing and painful situations. We trust their judgment not necessarily because they think like us, but because they think the way we would like to think, and that can be profoundly helpful on many different levels.

(In fact Deanna gets a very telling quote early in the story: “His world is gone, Data.…

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Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell Episode 5: Arabella

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Peter Harness has said that he thinks this episode is the best thing he’s ever written. It’s not an unreasonable assertion. This is a precision-engineered piece of television. It starts impossibly big and careens at unrelenting speed towards an equally grandiose conclusion. On each end is a different version of the same event: the cracking of Jonathan Strange. At the outset is the Battle of Waterloo, a sequence one imagines gave Harness his most thorough grounding to date in what writing Doctor Who is like (“What can I have to do the Battle of Waterloo?” “Thirty extras, a courtyard, and a half-dozen CGI shots.”), and one that culminates in Strange breaking his previous assertion that a gentleman could never kill another man. At the end is Strange finally figuring out the secret that Norrell has been keeping from him, and plunging into dangerous obsessions.
In between, meanwhile, is a very carefully subverted fridging. That it is a fridging is difficult to dispute. Arabella is killed in order to give Strange some angst. The entire plot of the episode is literally “Strange goes a bit mad because his wife dies.” It’s as classic a fridging as you can do. Except, of course, that Arabella’s not dead, and all of the scenes of Strange’s angst are necessarily weighed up against this fact. As has been the case since the end of “The Friends of English Magic,” this is a show in which we frequently know more than the characters. And here the nature of the big secret shifts – where it had been the question of what actually happened to Lady Pole, now, as Strange, Secundus, and Honeyfoot all figure out key parts of that, the big secret becomes Arabella’s captivity.
It’s notable, then, just how straight all of Strange’s scenes of angst are played. Nothing in how they are shot or written betrays the secret. Instead, “Arabella” plays out as a normative fridging, except that the audience knows more. This has an interesting effect – it creates a sense of estrangement from the scenes, making the tropes more visible. As, of course, they are meant to be – in a story that has made as much of marginalized populations as Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell has, the fridging of a character cannot be read straightforwardly. (Although man, I wish Harness had avoided the temptation to have the last conversation the Stranges have prior to Arabella’s disappearance be about having children, a thuddingly cliche note.)
It also has to be said, it’s very well done. The sense of dread that hangs over the episode’s start, running through to when the Gentleman finally captures Arabella, is a magnificent thing. There’s a lovely twist pulled in naming the episode “Arabella” and then quickly establishing the inevitability of her demise, then having it actually happen early on. One expects Arabella’s “death” to be the cliffhanger (a move that would have made the fridging much less of an object of critique), so the point when it happens becomes, instead, a point where the episode goes weirdly off the rails into something altogether more unsettling.
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Saturday Incineration: A Review of Seeming’s Worldburners EP

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Fun fact: Despite the fact that Seeming is the single most WicDiv
band ever (no really), I have thus far failed utterly both at getting
Kieron Gillen to listen to Seeming and at getting Alex to read
The Wicked & The Divine.

The usual disclaimers when I talk about stuff made by Alex apply: he’s one of my closest friends, and there’s nothing on this record that I haven’t previously heard in various demos. That said, I do not like Seeming because I’m friends with the frontman and songwriter; I like Alex because he makes some of the best fucking music I have ever heard. Which is to say that this is an unabashedly partisan review, but an entirely sincere one.

Having gotten that out of the way: there’s a new Seeming record out. Entitled Worldburners, it’s a seven song EP backed by a veritable smorgasbord of remixes. It’s absolutely brilliant. You can get it, along with Seeming’s previous releases, including the sublime Madness and Extinction, here. There’s a video for the lead track, and everything is streamable for free at the link above:
As the track list suggests, this is a concept EP around the theme of fire, which is pretty much the perfect theme for a concept album: broad enough to allow for takes from wildly different perspective, but narrow enough to provide a meaningful sense of unity. But it’s an especially good theme for a Seeming record. Over the course of the year and change the band has been producing material, Alex developed a compelling sort of musical method – one defined by an uncompromisingly ruthless commitment to aesthetic extremism mixed with an equally ruthless commitment to the methodology of pop music.
Fire works well with this. On the one hand, it lets Alex (and co-conspirator Aaron Fuleki, the machine to Alex’s Florence) more fully unleash their goth/industrial roots with an unsparingly aggressive record. On the other, the connection from “fire” to “aesthetic extremism” is a very easy one. This is very much what it says on the tin: a record about lighting the fucking world on fire. It’s a record for anybody who reacted to that “some men just want to watch the world burn” line in The Dark Knight with “and what’s wrong with that?” Music for people who read Jack Graham’s brilliant essay in praise of villainy and punched the air.

The crown jewel is the title track, “Worldburners Unite,” offered both in the “Pandemic” mix that serves as the lead track and video and in the mix used on the 7″ vinyl single. The former trends to the goth/industrial roots, serving as a more straightforward continuation of the project begun with Madness and Extinction, while the latter is a rollicking piece of celtic punk with some seriously hardcore shredding bagpipes. It’s also just flat-out one of my favorite songs ever, which is probably why I’ve been using its first line, “see the tower through the trees give way to smoky memories,” as a Tumblr tag for over a year now, and why its second line was the title of the debut entry of the Super Nintendo Project.

…

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“I Am Your Father”: New Ground

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“New Ground” is a bit like “Ensign Ro” in the sense it’s a rather middling, though functional, effort that exists primarily to introduce a new reoccurring character, or in this case reintroduce one. “New Ground” comes across a bit better than “Ensign Ro”, or at least more forgettable (in a good way) because it doesn’t have the retroactive weight of Bajor, the Cardassian occupation and Ro Laren hanging over it and because Alexander is quite frankly nobody’s favourite character (with the exception of Michael Piller’s mother, which is apparently the reason he sticks around as long as he does).

Any problems this story has can be purely chalked up as conceptual ones it inherits by virtue of digging up Alexander rather then issues with its localized narrative structure. Simply put, Alexander was never a good idea, or at least the way they introduced him wasn’t a good idea. The stink of “Reunion” is going to hang over the poor kid forever no matter what he does (and he does do some good stuff). Actually, the most annoying thing about “New Ground” is that like 80% of it works as a perfectly standalone introduction to Alexander before Deanna Troi has to come in and talk about how K’Ehleyr hurt both of them by not telling Worf about her pregnancy and not telling Alexander anything about his father or his Klingon heritage and how they both have to heal each other together. Of course, it’s all K’Ehleyr’s fault-The girlfriend and mother conveniently cut out of the picture who also conveniently can’t come back to defend herself.

The plot, such as it is, fairly clearly is designed with a form-follows-function approach in mind. Kid shows up to live with his single parent, has trouble adjusting, gets into problems, situation arises where they’re forced to work together and reconcile. The acting is good on everyone’s part, but it always is, isn’t it? That’s barely worth mentioning now. There’s a subplot involving something science fictiony and technobabley going on that crosses over with the A-plot, which is another device Star Trek: The Next Generation can use as a comfortable fallback. It’s not as well put-together as it sometimes is (the idea that the sci-fi plot and the human plot could be the same and metaphors for each other was ossified way back in “We’ll Always Have Paris”), but it works and it’s cool, which always helps. I do remember the major setpieces here fairly well: That oscillating electric blue wave surging towards the main viewer, the explosive backdraft in the science lab with Worf and Commander Riker on either side.

But while “New Ground” may be constructed out of pre-built narrative devices that have become tropes, much as one might with Duplo blocks, it’s telling that this time I’m not meaning it as a criticism. There’s nothing blatantly ill-advised or backwards-thinking here, though trying to graft this kind of stock bad children’s television plot onto Star Trek: The Next Generation isn’t the most elegant thing the show has ever done.…

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Comics Reviews (July 8th, 2015)

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First of all, these reviews are now being cross-posted to ComicMix, which means I should possibly introduce myself for the people who just clicked on a link there and found themselves here. So, hi everyone. I’m Phil Sandifer, this is my blog. It’s a geek media blog, running a history of British comics called The Last War in Albion on Fridays, a rotating feature (currently a Game of Thrones blog, switching over to an occultism-tinged take on the Super Nintendo in a few weeks) on Mondays, and occasional other features, currently including weekly reviews of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. It’s also got the archives of TARDIS Eruditorum, a sprawling history of Doctor Who. And, obviously, on Wednesday, new comics reviews.

We keep the lights on here via a Patreon, and if you enjoy the site, I ask that you consider kicking a dollar a week my way.

Reviews tend not to involve giving a letter or number grade to things, but instead ranking them relative to each other. So these, as with every week, are ordered from the worst to the best, with the caveat that I paid my own money for all of them, whether out of an expectation of quality or out of the bleak pathology that is comics fandom. Except that’s a lie this week, which we’ll get to. But first:

The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #2

The problem – which was present in the first issue, but largely overshadowed by the sheer energy of the thing, is that this book gives every sign of trying to have it both ways. It’s unabashedly aimed at the still-vocal chunk of comics fandom who appreciated that our version (and yes, I just gave away my allegiances) of Spider-Man was married; who thought that was an interesting way to set the comics version of a pop culture icon apart from all the others. But it’s also seeming to set up a critique of the structure, being based on how having a family necessitates reconceptualizing Peter as the sort of person who says, “that’s what daddies do. We do anything to keep our families safe. ANYTHING.” And who then has nightmares about the awful things he’s done already. As I said, in the first issue of this things moved fast enough that you could avoid dwelling on this contradiction. Here… they don’t, resulting in the unsatisfying spectacle of a comic that’s primarily about the tension of whether or not it’s going to be an insult to the readers it’s marketed to.

Archie #1

I got an advance review copy of this, and it was not purchased. I might have picked it up, especially given that this was a light week, but we’ll never truly know.

In any case, it’s pretty good, but unable to escape the gravity of its own futility. Which is to say that, quite aside from any ethical issues about the relationship between Archie Comics, the direct market, and crowdfunding, let’s not forget the fact that the abandoned Kickstarter for these Archie books was never going to meet goal.…

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Is this a Shabcast which I see before me? (Shabcast 8)

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What bloody man is that?  It’s bloody Jack Graham.  Again.

The curtain rises on Shabcast 8.  Listen and/or download here.

Another Shabcast so soon?   Yes, but don’t get used to this kind of schedule.  It’s only happening because time is out of joint.

This time, myself and my actorly buddy Elliot Chapman (returning guest from the Macra shabcast, and Big Finish’s new Ben Jackson) discuss Shakespeare’s great tragedy ‘Macbeth’ (we only shabcast about things that begin with ‘mac’), and Shakespeare generally.  We even say the word ‘Macbeth’ occasionally… hopefully without bringing too much theatrical ill-luck down upon ourselves.  We chat as we watch the TV film of Trevor Nunn’s legendary production from 1978, starring Ian McKellen and Judi Dench, and produced by Verity Lambert.  The second most profound material she ever televised.

Elliot will be appearing in a production of ‘Macbeth’ soon to run in Redcliffe Caves in Bristol, produced by Insane Root as part of the Bristol Shakespeare Festival.  Jack will be appearing in the kitchen soon to make himself an evil sandwich as part of a obscene, perverse ritual.  Root for us insanely, and download our shabcast.

When shall we two meet again?  Probably to discuss macaroni cheese.

Exeunt.…

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“Time, professor.”: A Matter of Time

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There’s an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that has always been imprinted on me. In my mind, I see an image of Data and somebody else slowly moving about inside what appears to be some kind of alien spacecraft. The walls are all odd, geometric shapes coloured silver blue. There’s a cool, yet dark, lighting to the scene. I think the episode is “A Matter of Time”, but I can’t know for sure.

So now you’ve heard their story. It’s time to tell the other side.

“A Matter of Time” is another of Rick Berman’s rare solo contributions, and marks his first stab at a topic that seems to fascinate him and inspire a lot of his future creative work on Start Trek: The ramifications of time travel. In particular, what kinds of social norms and mores would crop up in a universe where time travel technology is commonplace. As it pertains to this story, Berman cites the “Mark Twain” feeling” of “what Leonardo da Vinci could have done with a calculator or Alexander the Great with a shotgun”. But while Professor Berlinghoff Rasmussen may not technically be a historian, this doesn’t mean he’s just a simple con-man with a time machine either.

Yeah, Rasmussen was one of ours. Bad seed; went rogue. More or less harmless in the scheme of things, mostly because he was also terrible at his job. We found the time pod adrift in space, probably crippled during one of their skirmishes. We brought it to him for analysis and to keep it safe, hopefully so we could finally get some answers about this damn war. The agents found out, of course. They came to us and told us we had to return it because it would endanger the future-Their future, naturally. Our thinking was that they’d spent so much time meddling in our present, it’d only be fair if we poked around in theirs for a bit to see for ourselves what all this was about. Of course, Rasmussen thought it would be an easy way to make some extra coin.

The thing that struck me the most about “A Matter of Time” is how aware of its own structure it is. For 97% of its running time, it’s very straightforwardly one kind of story: Rasmussen’s presence prompts the Enterprise crew to realise that Penthara IV is not going to be a run-of-the-mill mission; that something genuinely historic is going to happen. And the knowledge that it will, and they aren’t allowed to know anything more about it than that, forces the crew (most notably Captain Picard, but Commander Riker, Geordi, Doctor Crusher and Deanna as well) to consciously think about their own decision making processes and ethical standpoints. It’s not shoehorning conflict into Star Trek: The Next Generation for the sake of conflict, it’s another manifestation of what travelling on the Enterprise means: That you get to know yourself better and grow as a person because of that.…

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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 2.07: A Man Without Honor

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State of Play

The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly.
Lions of King’s Landing: Tyrion Lannister, Cersei Lannister
The Lion, Jaime Lannister
The Direwolf, Catelyn Stark
Dragons of Qarth: Daenerys Targaryen
Bears of Qarth: Jorah Mormont
Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow
Lions of Harrenhal: Tywin Lannister
Direwolves of Winterfell: Brandon Stark
The Direwolf, Robb Stark
Direwolves of King’s Landing: Sansa Stark
Direwolves of Harrenhal: Arya Stark
Kraken of Winterfell: Theon Greyjoy
Flowers of King’s Landing: Shae
Dogs of King’s Landing: Sandor Clegane
The episode is in seventeen parts. The first is three minutes long and is set in Winterfell. The opening image is Theon in bed.
The second is three minutes long and is set north of the Wall. The transition is by family, from Bran and Rickon to Jon Snow. 
The third is six minutes long and is set in Harrenhal. The transition is by image, from Ygritte as a prisoner to a man hanging.
The fourth is one minute long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by family, from Arya to Sansa Stark.
The fifth is one minute long and is set in Qarth. The transition is by hard cut, from a close-up of the Hound to Daenerys walking through Qarth.
The sixth is two minutes long and is set north of the Wall. The transition is by family, from Daenerys Targaryen to Jon Snow, who knows nothing.
The seventh is three minutes long and is set in the Stark camp in the Riverlands. The transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Robb Stark. 
The eighth is two minutes long and is set in Winterfell. The transition is by family, form Robb Stark to Bran, in abesntia. 
The ninth is two minutes long and is set in Qarth. The transition is by hard cut, from Maester Luwin being led away to Daenerys and her empty cages.
The tenth is three minutes long and is set north of the Wall. The transition is by family, from Daenerys Targaryen to Jon Snow. 
The eleventh is five minutes long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Sansa Stark. 
The twelfth is six minutes long and is set in the Stark camp in the Riverlands. The transition is by family, from Cersei to Jaime Lannister. It features the death of Alton Lannister and Torrhen Karstark, killed by Jaime Lannister. 
The thirteenth is four minutes long and is set in Qarth. The transition is by image, from Jaime Lannister’s carnage to Quaithe’s. It features the death of most of the ruling council of Qarth. 
The fourteenth is two minutes long and is set in the Stark camp in the Riverlands. The transition is by hard cut, from Pyat Phree to a Stark banner serving as establishing shot.
The fifteenth is three minutes long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by family, from Jaime to Cersei and Tyrion Lannister, and by dialogue, with Tyrion’s message mentioning Tarth. 
…

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