Saturday Waffling (July 25, 2015)
The Davison/Baker edits are continuing to come along nicely; I’m firmly in the midst of the extra essays, which are mostly going to end up being Colin Baker extra essays, just because I think that makes for a better book really.
The last Brief Treatise for the foreseeable will go up on Monday, and then “Name of the Doctor” on Tuesday. I’ve got the first sentence of my Hannibal/True Detective piece, but it’s not quite cohering yet. I know the broad strokes of what I want to say, but the shape is still proving elusive.
So, Super Nintendo Project for a bit after that. The next stretch of games, namely “those that came out in 1993,” will take us pretty much right up to Doctor Who Season Nine, at which point I’ll switch to that.
Unless the Patreon hits $325 by then. If it does, I’ll run something alongside S9 reviews. Maybe another stretch of Super Nintendo Project. Maybe something else.
Speaking of which, are there any topics that would get you to back the Patreon if you’re not already a backer? With Brief Treatise off the table for a bit, I’ve very much got a slot for a blog project open, as it were. I’m very much open to input on what to do, and if someone throws something intriguing out, I may well follow up on it.…
Take the techniques that make it a masterwork and use them for changing the world. (The Last War in Albion Book Two, Part Two: The Nine-Panel Grid, History and Superheroes)
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Figure 837: The experimental panel layouts of Swamp Thing are a marked contrast to the rigidity of Watchmen and its nine-panel grid. (From Saga of the Swamp Thing #30, 1984) |
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Figure 838: Even when not working in a nine-panel grid, Dave Gibbons’s style is tidy and straightforward. (Written by Alan Moore, art by Dave Gibbons and Tom Ziuko, from Superman Annual 1985) |
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Figure 839: The one time in “For The Man Who Has Everything” that Gibbons violates a panel border. |
“An Introductory Reader”: Ethics
There was an urban legend going around awhile back about an entire intro class failing due to rampant, universal plagiarism, the kicker being the reveal that it was an ethics class. I’ve also heard a variant where criminals were getting caught illegally profiting off of resold ethics textbooks. That’s sort of what I was thinking about as I was working through this episode.
“Ethics” is, to my knowledge, considered a highlight of the fifth season. In Starlog‘s episode guide from the mid-1990s (which for the longest time was my primary insight into what conventional wisdom on any of these stories was) there was a little Starfleet emblem next to the title of this episode, an indication that this was one of the editors’ personal recommendations. Longtime readers of my guides will have doubtlessly picked up on my thoughts about this already: Typically when I go into this sort of background before I actually start analysing things it’s a sign that I disagree with it just about entirely. Well, I’m certainly not about to go against type now. I’ve tried to like this episode, many times, in fact. But I just can’t get passed the fact that the fundamental, well, ethical stand the story seems to be taking just seems so fundamentally wrongheaded. Not to mention how there’s some cratering characterization problems on display.
So I mean first of all, Worf gets paralyzed in the most humiliating way imaginable. He’s “distracted” because he was too busy thinking about losing to Deanna in poker? Seriously? That’s not a tragedy, that’s a black comedy farce, which would be one thing if that set the tone for the rest of the episode, but it doesn’t. And Worf is embarrassed about losing to Deanna in a game of skill and bluffing where she clearly played more strongly? That doesn’t strike me as the way an honour-bound warrior would react to losing to a worthy or superior opponent and sounds uncomfortably like Worf is just sexist (and given how he’s the favourite of the writing staff, particularly Ron Moore, that’s an avenue I’d rather not go down).
This naturally leads into the episode’s big “ethical” dilemma, and its big “ethical” screw-up. At least the subplot between Worf, Deanna, Alexander and Will (we’ll…come back to Will) basically amounts to an examination of paraplegia and the right to die. And Star Trek: The Next Generation handles both with all the trademark nuance it displayed in such classics as “Blood and Fire”, “Angel One” and “Violations”. I can’t actually think of a way this could have landed more spectacularly wrong had it been deliberately trying to: First of all equating disability with something like, say, total brain death is basically appalling from any angle you care to mention and completely goes against the moral of “The Masterpiece Society” from just a few weeks back. Even if you grant the analogy and buy this is a right to die situation, which I very much do not advise you do, the central philosophical standpoint here still doesn’t work, what with every other character yelling and screaming about how cowardly and shameful assisted suicide is, especially when it’s apparently a sacred tenet of Klingon society.…
Comics Reviews (July 22nd, 2015)
From worst to best of what I bought. Which, erm, wasn’t much.
Old Man Logan #3
This is increasingly just becoming a case of “old Wolverine wanders plotlessly through a variety of Battleworld realms,” which… is actually a genuinely awful premise for a comic, and I’m not sure why Marvel has decided to waste such talented creators on it. Within the confines of this there are some good moments; the scene with Boom Boom is absolutely lovely. But the overall package is astonishingly pointless.
Uncanny X-Men #35
A fun little issue that would have been quite pleasant had this denouement come at the pace Bendis wrote it for, but that is infuriating wheel-spinning at the pace this is actually playing out. I believe we’re three months now til the next issue of this? Stupid. In any case, a charming Goldballs-centric issue, and I continue to like Bendis’s take on the X-Men, not least because I’m seemingly dropping the line in All-New All-Different Marvel.
Loki: Agent of Asgard #16
This ends up salvaging the week, with one of the most Norse-feeling takes on Norse mythology that Marvel has done. I’m fascinated by the way in which Loki, over the course of this run, has been reconstituted so many times that they’re only sort of a singular character anymore, instead becoming, quite literally, a narrative force. With apocalypses all around, and Secret Wars really just being used as an excuse for one, the honing in towards a definitive statement on What Loki Is makes for genuinely interesting reading – I’m eager to see how this resolves next issue, which is more than I can say for a lot of Marvel right now, where I’m increasingly more interested in what’s next than what’s actually going on now.…
“Demon War”: Power Play
OK, OK, we’ll cut to the chase. No-one is pretending “Power Play” is anything other than a rollicking action show. There’s really not a whole lot more under the surface here than that. But damn is it ever a good one. Michael Piller seemed to think this was a hollow, empty and effectively mediocre outing, but even if it’s not as openly provocative as Star Trek: The Next Generation can get on its best days, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a whole lot to love in “Power Play”.
The first obvious thing to say about it is that it’s plainly an actor showcase episode, and it’s very probably the best damn actor showcase episode this show ever does. It takes three of the best talents out of an already preternaturally talented cast, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner and Colm Meaney (and with the utmost respect to the other actors, all of whom I deeply adore, they are) and just lets them run completely wild for 45 minutes: Because of them (as well as the episode’s ample direction that works seamlessly with them), this never for one moment stops being positively gripping. Marina Sirtis is obviously the biggest draw here, and this is the moment she’s finally, at long, long last, allowed to come into her own and show us what she’s truly capable of. Now she finally has the chance to play the imperious hardass she’s always wanted to, and she absolutely owns and relishes every ounce and every second of it. As much as Marina Sirtis will say she appreciated and respected Deanna Troi’s empathy as a virtue and as an acting challenge, there’s just no way she’s not having a total blast here. We’re frankly sorry when it’s all over.
Colm Meaney gets to show off his range a little differently. His character starts off more of the muscle of the team and he’s perfectly capable of playing a hardened hired thug archetype, but the scripts give him these little moments where Miles’ personality starts to reassert itself a bit, possibly because it’s his technical know-how that’s crucial to the convicts’ plot. This I suppose makes him probably the most interesting of the three from a character development standpoint, and Meaney’s good at working his material so the little flashes of Miles come across as warped, twisted distortions rather than moments of actual sympathy: Even though he may superficially appear to have more dimensions than his co-conspirators, he’s still very much a hardened heel and we’re meant to never lose site of that. Brent Spiner, meanwhile, is just absolutely fucking terrifying: He’s back in his element playing a psychopath, but this is still a true challenge for him, as he has to make sure his character here isn’t too reminiscent of Lore (something Spiner often admits and comments on when talking about this episode). Of course, he succeeds well beyond the point of comfort.
As much as this is unquestionably Sirtis, Spiner and Meaney’s hour, the rest of the cast do get some important bits.…
A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 2.09: Blackwater
State of Play
“I can’t seem to forget”: Conundrum
Well it’s an interesting one indeed.
“Conundrum” is first off incredibly deceptive. On paper it sounds for all the world like one of the most stock things Star Trek: The Next Generation has ever done and a prime example of a show running on empty: I mean come on, really? An amnesia story? For real? But in truth this is yet another fifth season highlight and a prime example of how the show has never been stronger than it is now. The first clue is that this isn’t actually your typical amnesia story,which would have involved either a mysterious hero wandering into an unfamiliar setting where we have to learn about their past alongside them or a tragic accident where the supporting cast has to try and jog the memory of the amnesiac protagonist in a forced, strangled attempt to wring hollow drama out of the show’s premise.
Star Trek: The Next Generation can’t do either of those plots, not just for the eminently sensible reason that they’re both dumb and hackneyed ideas, but also because its narrative structure would preclude that. The amnesia is just a plot device to get at the heart of what “Conundrum” is actually trying to look at, which turns out to be several different interesting things. The original idea for the submission, according to Michael Piller, was the concept of mentally reprogramming people to be soldiers by manipulating their memories and sense of identity, and thus that it was a critique of militarism and the military-industrial complex. Piller feels “Conundrum” doesn’t do justice to the original pitch and he’s right to make that criticism as that’s not quite what this story is (though there’s a bit of that at the end), but that doesn’t mean the episode as aired is any weaker as a result. If anything, this just allows it to get even more clever and fascinating.
And anyway, the first key concept “Conundrum” is exploring does actually tie somewhat into the original pitch: What would happen, the story is asking, if you had all the conscious mental signposts of how you defined your identity stripped away from you? What parts of you would remain, and would those parts still be you? The easy answer is yes, as even though Kieron MacDuff puts on a convincing ruse, the Enterprise crew simply cannot accept his evidence that they’re cold-blooded killers. But there’s a further thread to examine here, several, in fact. Through this, “Conundrum” is also making a statement about what our identities actually are and where precisely they lay-As important as the context of our life experiences are (they’ve doubtlessly shaped the Enterprise crew even when they can’t consciously remember them, after all), our innate personhood goes beyond that.
I’m not trying to tread into Cartesianism here, but you can imagine a situation where you might hold similar beliefs and make similar decisions even if your life turned out differently. You would be a different person of course, but not necessarily an unrecognisable one.…
Variant Iterations
“I can’t think why you would want to spend so much time here Doctor,” said Felix, “it seems a very odd place to choose as a regular holiday destination.”
“I think it’s rather pleasant,” said the Doctor brightly, “especially since we cleared out the former management.”
“The former management?” asked Felix.
“Oh, Drumlins Westmore tried to enclose this place a little while ago,” said the Doctor.
“Drumlins Westmore? Sounds like a British general. General Sir George Drumlins-Westmore OBE.”
“Ha! No, it’s a corporation. The Drumlins Westmore Interplanetary News and Entertainment Media Group. Or something like that. There’s probably an Inc in there too somewhere. They set up a department on one of their office worlds devoted entirely to fiction. Hired loads of struggling wannabe authors. Lured them in with promises of agents and publishing contracts and regular meals.”
“You mean they started publishing novels? They created a sort of novel factory?”
“No, they didn’t publish anything. They got the writers to spend all day writing stories featuring brilliant, dynamic, hyper-capable, unbeatable employees of the Drumlins Westmore Corporation. Heroic corporate accountants and lawyers and lobbyists and marketing executives. Capitalist atlases who never faltered in their noble determination to cure all of society’s ills by privatising everything… into the hands of Drumlins Westmore, naturally. The writers took to it with depressing ease and speed. As a rule, the more principled a writer, the quicker they accomodated themselves to the work. You should’ve heard the byzantine self-justifications I had to listen to. Anyway, the fictional Drumlins Westmore employees from the stories all appeared here as a matter of course. And, also as a matter of course, they immediately set about taking over. It worked too. Effectively, Drumlins Westmore pulled off a hostile takeover of the Land of Fiction.”
“But that’s all over now?” asked Felix.
“Oh yes,” laughed the Doctor, grinning so widely Felix thought her head was about to split in two, “we couldn’t be having that sort of thing now could we?”
They walked and the Doctor expounded.
“It’s the people you meet here, you see. That’s why I keep coming back. That and a strange feeling I get… a feeling of coming home. But in a good way.”
“It doesn’t seem entirely safe here,” said Felix, “even without those Drumlins and Westmore gentlemen.”
Felix looked around warily, as if expecting a corporate accountant or a marketing executive to leap out at him and attack.
He was still somewhat on edge after half an hour of hiding behind a rock from a platoon of huge robotic tripods. He and the Doctor had spied them in the far distance. The Doctor had insisted they duck out of sight, just in case. Even so, she had leaned around the rocks and spied on the things with her telescope. Felix had taken a turn. Through the telescope he saw them, metallic tendrils flailing from the bulbous bodies suspended at the tops of their tall and jointed legs. They were lumbering towards a far-off cluster of settlements connected by rivers, backed by gorges, and interspersed with farmland filled with grazing sheep.…
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell Episode 6: The Black Tower
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FUCKING RAVENS EVERYWHERE |