Eruditorum Press

Less the heroes of our stories than the villains of some other bastard’s

“Yo ho, yo ho”: Gambit, Part I

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I suppose it’s worth pointing out the possible significance in the fact that the first few acts of “Gambit” chronicle the crew’s search for Captain Picard, missing and presumed murdered, and their efforts to discover the identity of his would-be killer and bring them to justice. I will still stubbornly maintain that Star Trek: The Next Generation can’t live without Captain Picard, and the symbolism behind a plot twist like this to me seems obvious. A Star Trek: The Next Generation without anyone would be unthinkable, but especially him, the public face of the series to millions. The only other character whose death would be more openly and visibly catastrophic to the show’s continued existence would be the Enterprise itself.

Ironic then how “Gambit, Part I” is the moment where this season finally gets its act together and stops faffing around. Not that this show has ever been terrific at season openers, mind, but the one-two punch of “Liasons” and “Interface” was excruciating in a way we’ve really not seen in six or seven years. This is a story I’ve always remembered as a highlight of this year ever since I saw it as part of TNN’s reruns (I might have seen it when it aired as well, but I don’t have strong memories of it from that time period), and I was perhaps understandably relieved to see that it’s essentially as good as I thought it was. My favourite scene is the teaser, with the crew undercover at a seedy alien bar: They naturally play their parts perfectly, and, as counterintutive as it perhaps might seem, it really feels like they belong in an environment like this (more on that later). That’s another thing I remember vividly from this run of stories: Dank extraterrestrial dives with dark mood lighting, abrasive characters and a lot of grates and sheet metal (except for the one time it was a cramped bar with a lot of bright, gold colours). In hindsight, it was probably the influence and cross-pollination from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Of course Captain Picard’s not really dead, and from there we move to what is in my opinion a positively delightful adventure mystery story. It probably tells you all you need to know that this is a two-parter both the fans and writers alike have a rather negative take on: Even Brannon Braga, who talks sense more often than not, says that “Gambit” is of a genre that’s “not usually taken seriously” and that it’s beneath the show to do an episode like this. He’s also of the mind that it was a bad call to open up with the whodunnit cliffhanger, because audiences were never going to buy that the captain was really dead. Which, to be frank, just displays a startling lapse in media literacy and a lack of understanding about how cliffhangers and dramatic tension are actually supposed to work.…

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I Asked Him What Record It Was, But He Didn’t Know (The Last War in Albion Book Two Part Twenty-Six: Olympus)

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Figure 930: Winter is worth it. (Written by Alan Moore, art by Rick Veitch and Rick Bryant, from Miracleman #9, 1986)

Previously in The Last War in Albion: After a convoluted series of events, Alan Moore’s Marvelman, now renamed Miracleman, was published in the US by Eclipse, and Moore was writing new material for it, starting with a controversial issue including detailed images of Liz Moran giving birth.

As the sequence reaches its most famous page, it switches structure, the sepia-toned panels becoming insets on the full-color ones instead of the other way around as the baby’s head emerges. “Did it feel like this, when you took the first cell scrapings,” Miracleman asks the absent Gargunza. “Did it feel like this as you watched it divide and replicate; as you hauled me dripping from the tank? The head emerges; a face drawn on a fist. My eyes cannot grasp the fact of it: a head protruding from inside her. It looks so hideous, beautiful, absurd, awesome. But of course. Of course.” And finally, as Miracleman grasps his daughter’s head to finish delivering her, he asks, “was it worth it? Worth the risk of loosing gods and monsters on the world? Worth all the blood and violence? Yes. It was worth it. For here is blood. Here is violence. Redeemed by love, by this pure act of creation.”

Figure 931: Winter, delivered at last. (Written by Alan Moore, art by Rick Veitch and Rick Bryant, from Miracleman #9, 1986)

It is, of course, a standard technique for Moore, right down to the heavily iambic flow of the narration. But the content is remarkable. It’s not that Moore hasn’t blended imagery of sex and death before, most obviously in “Rite of Spring,” where the orgasmic unity of all things includes a description of how “my enemy’s blood erupts to fill my mouth with molten copper,” but notes that “there is no contradiction” between this and sexual passion. Or, for that matter, in the description of the “almost sexual hatred” between Miracleman and Kid Miracleman in their early confrontation. But, of course, “Scenes from the Nativity” is not about sex, even though it contains the most detailed depiction of female genitalia to grace Moore’s work prior to Lost Girls. “Rite of Spring” stretched the definition of sex to its widest point, but stayed firmly within the realm of the erotic; “Scenes from the Nativity,” on the other hand, retains all the sense of taboo and sacredness, but strips it down to the most elemental binary, proclaiming that “in the careless and foggy continuum of our lives, these precious moments burn like suns: birth, death… these are the moments when we are real,” the final phrase coinciding with a 2/3 page panel of Miracleman and Liz crying as they hold the just-delivered Winter up to the gleaming sun. And in turn all of this is presented as the true and inevitable teleology of superheroes, with all of the ornately rewritten mythology of Miracleman being framed explicitly as something existing only to lead to this moment.…

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Legacy: The Siege

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In the previous episode, “The Circle”, Major Kira undergoes an Orb experience and receives visions from the Prophets of the events of “The Siege”.

The Prophets’ connection to nonlinear time has already been well documented, but what I find interesting about their reappearance here (for the first time since “Emissary”, it may be worth noting) is the way this is conveyed: Images, experience and snapshots of memory, repurposed and rearranged. It’s a dream meant to convey a message through coded symbols built out of memory. My first exposure to “The Homecoming”/“The Circle” /“The Siege” was all in one piece as part of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine sometime in either late 1993 or early 1994. So when I watch Kira’s Orb vision in “The Circle”, I don’t see portents of events to come, but a distorted reiteration of events I already have a recollection of.

“The Siege” itself operates on the level of images. Namely, iconic memorable setpieces. The battle in Bajor’s atmosphere between The Circle and the transport runner piloted by Kira and Dax is one of the most spectacular action scenes from Star Trek’s golden age, a remarkable series of shots that pushes the boundaries of what can be accomplished with model-making practical effects on an episodic television budget. In fact, I daresay this is probably as complex and striking a scene as could ever have been done at this particular time with these particular resources. Once again, we get another bright, sunny and colourful outdoors setting, conveyed aptly through the use of a matte painting overlayed with shots of the motion controlled models.

But what I remember is actually the interior of the Bajoran raider, and Kira and Dax’s outfits: I think the bright colours of the control panels, their clothes and, funnily enough the phaser blasts all really compliment the verdant setting outside and help to convey a uniquel special and memorable vibe. I guess you could say this begins for me what you might call the real “summer blockbuster” phase of Star Trek, which I’ve always associated primarily with Deep Space Nine, and in particular this season. “The Siege” is really one great big action sequence, but it’s got a lot more going for it than most of the other Star Trek riffs on the action genre, and I prefer it head and shoulders above anytime the franchise attempts something like this in the years to come. One of these things is the colour coordination, which really does evoke a breezy, fun summer vibe to me, or at least the memories of that feeling.

There’s a deliberate and overt artistry to the action here I don’t see in most science fiction, especially Star Trek (and even most action films for that matter). Funnily enough, this sort of thing *is* the province of Dirty Pair, especially Dirty Pair: The Motion Picture and Original Dirty Pair, but actually now that I think about it the other place I can think of right off the top of my head that gives me a similar feeling is…Project A-ko.…

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The 1913 Zone

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This is actually the third and final part of a series of posts I began in 2012… which is pushing it, even for me. Here’s Part 1, and here’s Part 2. You don’t need to read them to understand what is below. While we’re talking about belated entries… I am planning some more Tricky Dicky and (unexpectedly) more Minnesota Normal. Be patient, my darlings. I finished Forward, to the Past! didn’t I?

The two televised Doctor Who stories which depict the First World War both approach it, as it were, from an angle, rather than head-on.  In ‘The War Games’ (1969), we see characters who are ordinary soldiers (both British and German) who’ve been abducted from the front in 1914-18, brainwashed, and placed in a simulacrum of the war, where they are commanded by alien impostors masquerading as representatives of the military top brass of both sides.  ‘Human Nature’ / ‘The Family of Blood’ (2007) is set in England in 1913, just before the outbreak of the war, with ‘flashforwards’ to No Man’s Land during the coming conflict, and an epilogue set at a Remembrance Day ceremony many years afterwards.   An important secondary character called Tim Latimer is shown as a pupil at a public school before the war, a soldier during the war, and an elderly veteran after it.

The two stories are both highly regarded by fans – in many ways rightly so.  Both set themselves the task of ‘saying something’ about war.  The later story is more openly concerned with examining historical, political and moral issues, though it strives to find a balanced and non-partisan position.  The strategy of the writer, Paul Cornell, seems to have been to present the issues in a dramatic rather than a didactic way, by allowing various viewpoints to arise through the personalities of the characters.  The earlier story is more coy about its historical and political concerns, being seemingly content to present itself as an adventure story with a straightforward moral.  However, it also happens to be a slyly-radical, late-sixties, anti-imperialist parable. To understand how this happened, you only have to glance at the dates. It was written and produced in the aftermath of ‘68, the biggest global explosion of protest and insurgence in the latter-half of the twentieth century, a lot of which was focused on the Vietnam War. There is no straightforward, mechanistic, deterministic relationship between politics out in the real world and the politics of Doctor Who stories (or indeed any other stories) but there are certainly relations of influence. But I won’t belabour this point as it is a pretty fundamental assumption underlying both my own ‘work’ and Phil’s entire Eruditorum project, and a point that I suspect most readers of this site are already happy to accept, at least as a marker. (The question of exactly how the relation works is one over which a great deal of ink… and even some blood… has been spilt, and far cleverer people than I have weighed in on it and been unable to reach satisfying conclusions, so we’re not likely to clear it up here and now.)…

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Comics Reviews (February 11th, 2016)

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A very Marvel-heavy week, which is helpful in comparing some of the more intermittently frustrating titles in my pulls.

Guardians of the Galaxy #5

Like this, which will be the last issue I pick up. Bendis’s books always meander, but his Guardians has become pathological in that regard, lurching from point to point without anything recognizable as an overarching reason. With this issue, the new post-Secret Wars setup is undone and we return to the old setup while simultaneously providing a new origin for Yotat, which is at least two origins too many for a sublimely pointless character. Fun characters, as the movie has shown, but this needs a new writer.

Digital code: FCMK4CDAZHN1

All-New All-Different Avengers #5

The extent to which Waid’s pacing and shape on this book is thoroughly inept is genuinely shocking. The ouster of Ms. Marvel on the cover is awkward and unmotivated in the extreme – a transparent contrivance made all the worse by its complete lack of suspense. For the third time running the enemy is an out of nowhere silliness. I have no idea how a creative team and cast this good can be this bad, but man, it stinks. Will stay on through the Pleasant Hill crossover at least, but what an abject disappointment of a book this is.

Digital code: FCM2WNWVMJAF

Radioactive Spider-Gwen #5

This continues to slowly bend towards being pretty good, though the sense of its improvement being two steps forward one step back continues. This one focuses pretty much entirely on supporting cast, which is a mixed blessing. I still have trouble particularly investing in the high concept inversions of Matt Murdock as the Kingpin (although his t-shirt is hilarious in a sort of Eviler Seth Bingo way) and the like, but what the book is doing with them works, and that counts for a lot. Frustrating, but not in a way that makes me think about walking away from it.

Digital code: FCMPEKLE5UH0 (that’s a zero)

Darth Vader #16

A slow-burn start to an arc handled with the efficient competence you’d expect from Gillen. Nice cliffhanger, and some good character bits, but on the whole a lull in the book. 

Digital code: FCMQSR0FXZW9 (also a zero in there)

New Avengers #6

The decision to do two-issue arcs here hobbles it a smidge, with a good story that lacks some of the room to breathe that it could probably use. But the takeaway there is really “good story,” with the whole Demiurge/horrific demonic possession arc wrapping up in a way that pays glorious homage to the Young Avengers history of the characters, not so much on a plot point level as an aesthetic level. “Horror! Life is horror!” might end up being the funniest line of the week. In fact, yes, it is. Delightful, wonderful, kinda mispaced.

DIgital code: FCMT5AFM4Y44

 

Ms. Marvel #4

The “teen hero gets behind on everything” schtick feels a nbit tired and played out as Ms. Marvel plots go, and saps this book of some energy, as does the degree to which it retreads All-New All-Different Avengers (although obviously it does a much better job with those plot points). But…

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Lost Exegesis (House of the Rising Sun) — Part 1

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It’s been a while since we had one of these LOST Exegesis posts! So sorry for the delay. It couldn’t be helped. And not just the nearly two months since the last one of these — I had trouble accessing Eruditorum Press last night.  Anwyays, enough excuses.  It’s been a while.  As such, please remember that Part 1 of the essay is spoiler-free. For those who’ve seen the entire series, the second part of the essay, titled “Through the Looking Glass” (and appearing next week in the second part of this massive post), applies foreknowledge to the episode at hand.

So, on to the episode at hand. House of the Rising Sun is complex. Not to say that it’s difficult to understand; on the contrary, it’s rather straightforward, at first glance. It’s here we discover that whatever preconceptions we had about Sun and Jin, they were a bit wrong – these characters are not crass stereotypes – she’s the spoiled rich girl, he’s the poor nice boy corrupted by her father, who would have guessed that? It may have been Walkabout when I fell in love with the show, but it’s House of the Rising Sun that first earned my respect.

As we’d correctly surmise from the Opening Eye of the episode, this episode is Sun-centric. But there’s a lot more this episode’s plate. While Sun’s Flashbacks and her husband’s current predicament on the Island form the primary threads of the episode, there’s also the trip to the Caves, which also ends up split in two, with Jack and Kate’s early friendship tested by differing philosophies regarding the camp’s next big decision, while Locke takes an interest in Charlie. There’s even a thread breaded in that’s devoted to Michael. So there’s a balance of five stories, and even more characters to juggle, all in forty-five minutes on a network budget. On top of that, we get another piece of mythology with the skeletons found at the Caves, some new takes on previously invoked symbols, continued thematic concerns, and several more cultural references to untangle.

It’s three episodes in a row now where we’ve started with an Opening Eye. This time it’s Sun’s. And this time it’s a Left Eye, as opposed to the Right Eyes of Jack and Locke. So from the outset, we’d anticipate an episode that’s Sun-centric, and we’d be correct; at the same time, however, the switch from right to left should harken something different, symbolically, than what we’ve seen before, given the dichotomy. And this is definitely an episode about dichotomy.

Previously we’ve identified the Opening Eye with some kind of enlightenment, and I’m happy to continue doing so. But let’s also consider that the Eye itself is often used as a way of describing certain celestial bodies. In Egyptian mythology, for example, the Right Eye represents the Sun, and the Left Eye represents the Moon. The sun shines during the day, making everything visible; the Moon shines at night, and still leaves much in darkness. And then there’s the matter of these two bodies being gendered – the Sun is typically male, the Moon typically female (though not always, obviously).…

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“Virtual XI”: Interface

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Is it bad I can’t remember what this episode is called? I’ve literally had to go look up how the title is spelled three times since sitting down to write this.

Over the course of this project I’ve noticed Star Trek: The Next Generation takes a roughly annual delight in a sub-genre of story I’ve decided to call “Let’s Torture Geordi”. Ever since the third season (hmmmm) the show, for want of anything better to do with Geordi La Forge, decides to put him through an increasingly mean-spirited and downright ludicrous series of wringers more or less because they can. This team has, in turn, given him a neurotic complex he never had before, turned him into the creepiest human being imaginable by having him get it on with pretend women, forced him to mutate into a neon sea slug and had him brainwashed into a killing machine by his batshit insane murderous alien ex-girlfriend. Even Michael Jan Friedman is not immune to the fun, writing the two-part story “Seraphin’s Survivors”/“Shadows in the Garden” about Geordi acting uncharacteristically defensive and oversensitive when his childhood friend/lover comes aboard, thus blinding him to the fact she’s a space vampire who eats people. A few issues later, he had Geordi entranced by space mermaids in “I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing” and almost blow up the ship in his reverie.

All in all, sounds like an eminently respectful and legitimate, serious grown-up series of dramatic performances to give to LeVar Burton, national treasure and cultural icon who reads to children on Reading Rainbow and played Kunta Kinte on Roots.

“Interface” or “Interphase” or “Whatever The Fuck It’s Called I Don’t Give A Shit Anymore” is the episode I would call the requisite “Let’s Torture Geordi” outing for this season, although we got a nice preview in “Descent, Part II’ when Doctor Frankendata sticks strobes in Geordi’s forehead and tries to infect his brain with the Replicators from Stagate SG-1. It’s two half-assed stories stitched together into an even more half-assed whole: The first a bog-standard mid-90s virtual reality piece and the second a look into Geordi’s family history. Which, this team being this team, we have to explore by brutally killing everyone off and watching drooling, leering and slack-jawed as Geordi bears his grief for us, publicly retreating into his own mind and memories in the vain, desperate hope to be able to feel something again.

Jesus.

This was not an episode I watched at the time, and thus isn’t one that contributed anything to the mental landscape Star Trek: The Next Generation inhabits for me. The only thing I remember is the ridiculous-looking interface device itself from a shot in a magazine somewhere, and that I kept confusing it with the equally bullshit mind-control contrivance from that stupid fucking Manchurian Candidate story with Commander Sela from the fourth season. You’d think, with this episode being about inner worlds and psychology and everything, themes I’ve often gone on record as praising in this season, this would be right up my alley.…

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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 3.05: Kissed by Fire

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“That’s not a fucking kiss!”

State of Play

The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly:

Lions of King’s Landing: Tyrion Lannister, Cersei Lannister, Tywin Lannister

Lions of Harrenhal: Jaime Lannister

Dragons of Yunkai: Daenerys Targaryen

Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow

Direwolves of Riverrun: Robb Stark, Catelyn Stark

Bears of Yunkai: Jorah Mormont

Mockingbirds of King’s Landing: Petyr Baelish

The Boat, Davos Seaworth

The Burning Heart, King Stannis Baratheon

Roses of King’s Landing: Margery Tyrell

Tigers of Riverrun: Talia Stark

Direwolves of King’s Landing: Sansa Stark

The Direwolf, Arya Stark

The Stag, Gendry

Bows of the Wall: Ygritte

The Dogs, Sandor Clegane

Winterfell is abandoned and in ruins.

The episode is in parts. The first runs four minutes and is set in the Riverlands. The opening image is of Thoros of Myr stepping into frame as he calls upon the Lord of Light. It features the death of Berric Dondarion, his head cut in half by the Hound. It doesn’t take.

The second runs six minutes and is set north of the Wall. The transition is by family, from Arya Stark to Jon Snow.

The third runs one minute and is set in the Riverlands. The transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Arya Stark.

The fourth runs three minutes and is set in Harrenhal. The transition is by region, remaining in the Riverlands.

The fifth runs three minutes and is in two sections; it is set in King’s Landing. The first section is one minute long; the transition is by family, from Jaime to Cersei Lannister, and also from Harrenhal to its lord. The second section is twominutes long; the transition is by family, from Cersei to Tyrion Lannister, and from talking about the Tyrells to Olenna.

The sixth part runs two minutes and is set in the Riverlands. The transition is by hard cut, from Tyrion eating sheepishly to Gendry smithing.

The seventh runs five minutes and is set in Riverrun. The transition is by region.

The eighth runs three minutes and is set in the Riverlands. The transition is by family, from Robb to Arya Stark, region, the image of fire, and dialogue, with Arya and Thoros discussing Robb.

The ninth runs five minutes and is set on Dragonstone. The transition is by dialogue, from Thoros and Berric discussing the Lord of Light to Selyse praying.

The tenth runs six minutes and is set in Harrenhal. The transition is by hard cut, from Selyse holding the ship Davos made her to Brienne in the bath.

The eleventh runs two minutes and is set in Dragonstone. The transition is by hard cut, from a spasming Jaime to Davos asleep.

The twelfth runs five minutes and is set outside Yunkai. The transition is by dialogue, from Shireen talking about the Targaryens to Daenerys’s camp.

The thirteenth runs two minutes and is set in Riverrun. The transition is by hard cut, from Barristan to Robb’s battle plans.

The fourteenth runs seven minutes and is in two sections; it is set in King’s Landing.…

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“Leadership”: The Circle

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There are two Circles that give their name to the title of this episode. One is, naturally, the xenophobic nativist fascist terrorists we were introduced to last week and who execute their master plan in this episode. But the other is the circle of friends on board Deep Space 9: A major theme in this story arc is demonstrating how close knit and fiercely loyal to one another this team has grown in just the short period of time they’ve been together: Last time there was Commander Sisko’s breezy interactions with Jake, Kira and Dax, O’Brien’s dedication to Kira’s cause, and Dax’s gentle but firm support and guidance.

We also saw another example of the more congenial side of Odo and Quark’s relationship in a way we haven’t really seen since “Babel”: Yes, they’re still trying to outplay one another, but there’s a familiarity and respect there. And this carries through to this episode as well-Although the “deputy” subplot is largely played for laughs, Quark still comes to Odo willingly because he’s concerned about the Deep Space 9 community being put into danger by The Circle’s actions. Furthermore, he goes straight to Commander Sisko in the climax with the crucial information about where Kira is being held and it was, of course, him who gave Kira Li Nalas’ earring in the first place, letting her know that he was still alive and where to go to find him.

Kira herself sums it up to Li pretty well by stating that while she may not have wanted this job at first, Deep Space 9 has become a home to her, and her fellow residents have become her friends. We could say much the same for the show itself. And the scene in Kira’s quarters near the beginning really drives it all home: It’s a routine straight out of a Marx Brothers film (literally, in fact, to the point director Corey Allen had it done all in one take, just like in A Night at the Opera) and captures the unique and distinct personalities of everyone involved perfectly. Kira’s arc in this trilogy effectively mirrors that of a presumed audience: She begins in self-imposed isolation away from daily life on Deep Space 9, her loyalties still primarily with Bajor. It’s only when confronted with the possibility of being removed from the station, and after suffering through the persistence of the crew, that she begins to realise how much affection she really has for the place and the people. And at the end of the episode, after witnessing the crew risk their lives to save her even though she’s no longer one of them, that she fully accepts and understands where she belongs.

Although it at first must seem like a traumatic crisis of faith for Kira, it does help her to find Bajor has betrayed her trust in them. Much of Bajor supports The Circle, who are far more dangerous and powerful than anyone anticipated and, backing by the Cardassians aside, are working in direct opposition to everything Deep Space 9 stands for and that Kira has come to as well.…

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