Eruditorum Press

Our business actually is to reason and compare

Time Can Be Rewritten: Night of the Doctor

, 54

“Man, this is the second-worst episode of Doctor Who I’ve been in.”

Because my Patrons are just so gosh-darned nice.

It was, of course, one of the highlights of the Fiftieth Anniversary. A tremendously sentimental and cool moment for fans, a fantastic way of officially revealing what the Hurt Doctor was, and a lovely gift to Paul McGann, who will pretty much never have the TV Movie be someone’s introduction to his Doctor again. And we have a full set of regenerations now, if you care about that sort of thing. Just about the only thing it isn’t, really, is a satisfying ending to the Eighth Doctor Era.
It tries, and that is a real part of its charm. I mean, one is pretty much sure Moffat included the litany of Big Finish companions as an acknowledgment of the Eighth Doctor Era – you know, that messy, historical thing that actually happened. The one with a giant bone thing in the sky, and he’s traveling with a fish, and there’s that girl from Jonathan Creek. Lego. They’re all made out of fucking Lego. Moffat probably even knew what would actually happen, which was that Big Finish fans immediately declared victory over the EDA fans, while the EDA fans sulkily pointed out that technically all this really disproved was the Vampire Science gap theory if those were the companions that first came to mind. 
But the fact that this even happened; that there were still, in 2013, people whose first reaction to this was to make a new move in a fifteen-year-old fandom spat or to somehow make it about Lawrence Miles, speaks volumes. And not even bad volumes. Honestly, the greatest tragedy for anyone who lived through the Eighth Doctor Era would have been if all the blood and pixels spilt had been in the name of a faith so fragile that it could be broke upon a seven minute YouTube video. We listened to Zagreus. We pretended to take Scream of the Shalka seriously. We even read Mad Dogs and Englishmen in public. Heal that, Sisterhood.
Actually, I think my favorite part was when anti-Moffat fans seized on the retcons this made to the Eighth Doctor era as evidence of Moffat’s malfeasance while openly admitting that they hadn’t read the books or listened to the audios. Not out of any sort of “fake geek” sentiment, but simply because I find the idea of blindly entering the Eighth Doctor era factionalizations just to find another front in the Moffat wars to be the most sublimely perfect execution of the Eighth Doctor Era ever. 
All of which is to say that the symbolic fate EIghth Doctor Era is a sublimely ridiculous thing to hang on an eight minute YouTube video. Even one that is, as this one is, intelligently and slyly constructed. The first half works by taking what is by this point a staple scene of the new series – the seduction of the new companion (and both Davies and Moffat always write it as a seduction) – and then twisting it into something altogether different as the usual “bigger on the inside” line becomes a source of utter horror and revulsion for Cass.
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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 2.10: Valar Morghulis

2

State of Play
The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly:
Lions of King’s Landing: Tyrion Lannister, Cersei Lannister, Tywin Lannister
The Lion, Jaime Lannister
The Direwolf, Caetlynn Stark 
Dragons of Qarth: Daenerys Targaryen
Mockingbirds of King’s Landing: Petyr Baelish
Bears of Qarth: Jorah Mormont
Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow
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
Archers of the Wall: Samwell Tarly
Stags of King’s Landing: Joffrey Baratheon
Roses of King’s Landing: Margery Tyrell
The Burning Heart, Stannis Baratheon
The Burning Heart, Mellisandre
Spiders of King’s Landing: Varys
Flowers of King’s Landing: Shae
The episode is in parts. The first runs ten minutes and is in sections; it is set in King’s Landing. The first section is two minutes long; the opening image is of Tyrion’s eye. The second section is six minutes long; the transition is by family, from Tyrion to Tywin Lannister. The third section is two minutes long; the transition is by employment, from Littlefinger to Roslyn. 
The second part is five minutes long, and is set in the Riverlands. The transition is by hard cut, from Roslyn to Jaime and Brienne getting out of a boat. It features the death of three unnamed Stark men, two quick, one not. 
The third is two minutes long and is set in the Stark camp in the Riverlands. The transition is by dialogue, from Brienne saying she serves Lady Catelyn to Lady Catelyn. 
The fourth is four minutes long and is set on Dragonstone. The transition is by hard cut, from Robb storming out to the fires in the map room. 
The fifth is seven minutes long and is set in Winterfell. The transition is by image, from the fire that Stannis looks into to Theon’s fire. 
The sixth is four minutes long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by hard cut, from the courtyard of Winterfell to Tyrion. 
The seventh is one minute long and is set in the Stark camp in the Riverlands. The transition is by theme, from Shae’s vow to Tyrion to Robb and Talisa’s vows. 
The eighth is two minutes long and is set in Qarth. The transition is by hard cut, from Robb and Talisa to Daenerys, Jorah, and The Dothraki Who Isn’t Dead walking towards the House of the Undying.
The ninth is three minutes long and is set in the Riverlands outside Harrenhal. The transition is by hard cut, from Daenerys within the House of the Undying to an establishing shot of rocks and cliffs. 
The tenth is four minutes long and is set in Winterfell. The transition is by family, from Arya to Bran and Rickon Stark. It features the death of Maester Luwin, euthanized by Osha. 
The eleventh is one minute long and is set in Qarth. The transition is by image, from Winterfell burning to Daenerys’s torch. 
The twelfth is two minutes long and is set in King’s Landing.
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“Born This Way”: The Outcast

, 15

Oh dear.

So remember back in the “The Host” essay when we were talking about clumsy, confused, poorly handled episodes that kind of make a big mess of gender and sexuality? I said there were three big ones that, due to their relentless terribleness or just general incompetence, singlehandedly saddle Star Trek: The Next Generation with a reputation for heteronormativity and homophobia, no matter how many admirable strides it manages to make elsewhere. The first was “Blood and Fire” (and by extension “The Naked Now”) and the second was “The Host”. “The Outcast” is the third.

Buckle in tightly, kids.

“The Outcast” is a story about a planet (of hats, natch) where there is no concept of gender. They view “dividing people into two genders” to be a retrograde and “primitive” notion and consider themselves more “enlightened” as a result (and Holy Goddamn Shit that’s a can of worms I’m not even going to go anywhere remotely near the ballpark of). Commander Riker gets involved (in more than one way) with one of their scientists, an individual named Soren. During their time with the Enterprise crew, Soren learns more about the human notion of gender and it influences culture, society and behaviour, especially when it comes to romance. Soren takes to Doctor Crusher in particular, viewing her as a model female because of her more traditionally femme aesthetic, and ultimately confesses to harbouring long-held strong feelings of being female too. Because identifying as either male or female is punishable by death in their society, Soren has explored her feminine side by engaging in romantic relationships with men in secret. Eventually, Riker and Captain Picard violate the Prime Directive again by criticising the gender laws and negotiating for Soren’s clemency.

It would be eminently understandable if, given the rough plot synopsis above, you would be considerably taken aback to learn what the creative team actually meant for this episode to be about. You see, the real doozy is when you find out that Rick Berman and writer Jeri Taylor considered “The Outcast” to be a strong “Issues” story about homosexuality and homophobic prejudice. In the Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, Rick Berman said

“We thought we had made a very positive statement about sexual prejudice in a distinctively Star Trek way, but we still got letters from those who thought it was just our way of ‘washing our hands’ of the homosexual situation.”

While in Star Trek: The Next Generation 365, Jeri Taylor said

“’The Outcast’ allowed us to explore the issue of sexual intolerance in a unique, offbeat way. I identify with the disenfranchised and the powerless of our world. So I really wanted to make a statement for tolerance, broad-mindedness and acceptance for those who are disenfranchised.”

And it’s at this point the wincing and cringing commences, because I don’t think there’s a single episode where the creative team is more ignorant, ill-informed, off-target and off-the-mark about anything than they are in this one.…

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Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell Episode 7: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

14

A satisfying and well-constructed end, although as predicted not my favorite of the series. In terms of what the episode does, it is largely in keeping with what has gone before; its only significant thematic addition is the actual Raven King, who, continuing in the weird fiction theme introduced last episode, is a non-speaking character who simply strolls across the landscape of the story, makes a few alterations for reasons that are entirely his own, and exits. It’s striking and bold, a jarringly small and uncanny role for something that’s been built since the series’s start, but in a way that feels deliberate and earned.
Similarly bracing in scope is the opening scene, in which, in a very real sense, England falls to the magicians. The Parliamentary proceedings do a good job of expressing the scale of transformation sweeping across England in the wake of Strange’s unleashing of English magic, although I wonder if the series as a whole wouldn’t have been improved by finding time (and more importantly money) to show some of the Northern uprisings directly instead of reading about them off of telegrams, just to give the story a sense of scale. There’s something odd about seeing the Battle of Waterloo but not the uprisings that destabilize the entire socio-political structure of England.
There’s also some decisions I quibble about in terms of pacing and structuring the ending, most obviously the sudden reappearance of Lascelles during the denouement proper, which feels like a somewhat awkward solution to the problem of figuring out how to give the character a climactic comeuppance whereby he appears much later in the climax than is actually warranted. As loathsome a toad as Lascelles is – and his murder of Drawlight and confrontation with Childermass are both wonderful scenes – having him drop back into the plot at the moment the attempt to summon the Raven King under the name “nameless slave” goes awry and summons Stephen Black instead feels clumsy. (Harness tries to lampshade this by having him then be casually and cruelly dispatched by the Gentleman, and it helps by making the story at least mindful of Lascelle’s profound irrelevance at this point, but it doesn’t solve the problem.)
But despite occasional missteps, there’s a wealth of masterpiece sequences here. The Strange/Norrell confrontation, with Norrell finally, pathetically begging Strange not to laugh at him is a particular highlight, at once surprising and firmly rooted in the characters. Similarly adept is the final scene, with Childermass delivering a near direct address to camera as he explains that Strange and Norrell have ascended to a mythic status within the material landscape of England, having already been revealed not as magicians but as a spell woven by the Raven King.
It’s worth noting that much of this ending is original to Harness; the broad strokes of Norrell and Strange rescuing Arabella but remaining trapped in the Black Tower are all from the book, but there are major changes. Perhaps the biggest change is the destruction of all magical books in England, including the last remaining copy of Strange’s, so that the rewritten (and unreadable) Vinculus is the only book of magic left.
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Saturday Waffling (July 25, 2015)

11

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.…

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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)

14

Previously in The Last War in Albion: Watchmen is defined by its intense formalism, and yet no rule within it ever goes entirely unbroken, including its most basic unit of form, the nine-panel grid.
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)
As a page layout, it is an unusual one, especially for American comics. For one thing, the standard approach in American comics since the emergence of Neal Adams has been to break the strict grid with irregularly shaped panels that allow for dramatic emphasis. On Swamp Thing, for instance, Bissette and Totleben constantly create new layouts that blend trapazoidal panels, panels splayed diagonally across the page, and panels that cut into each other’s space. It’s as basic a technique for Swamp Thing as the nine-panel grid is for Watchmen. Gibbons completely foregoes this, consciously denying himself a tremendous swath of techniques typically used to draw emphasis to specific beats of the story.
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)
For another, the nine-panel grid means that there are a staggering number of panels per page. The first issue of Watchmen averages 7.5 panels per page. In contrast, Moore and Gibbons’s story for the 1985 Superman Annual, “For The Man Who Has Everything,” averages 5.7 panels, nearly two panels per page fewer. Similarly, in Swamp Thing #52, which came out the same month as Watchmen #1, Moore gives Rick Veitch and Alfredo Alcala an average of 4.7 panels per page. But in some ways the more revealing fact is that the highest panel count for a page of “For The Man Who Has Everything” is seven, and the highest for Swamp Thing #52 is six. An average page of Watchmen, in other words, has more panels than the most crowded page of most American comics. Of his past work, only V for Vendetta averages anything close to Watchmen’s dizzying panel count, and this can be explained at least in part by the fact that Warrior had a considerably larger page size than US comics. But even in British comics Moore’s panel count generally remained well below Watchmen’s level: Marvelman tended to be somewhere between six and seven panels per page on average, whereas Moore and Gibbons’s most beloved British collaboration, “Chrono-Cops,” averages six. But mere panel count is in many ways misleading. Out of the first issue’s twenty-six pages, nine are true nine-panel grids. More to the point, out of its 196 panels, 177 are 1/9th of a page or smaller. The standard unit of storytelling in Watchmen, in other words, is in effect the comics equivalent of a miniature – a two inch by three inch rectangle.
Figure 839: The one time in “For The Man Who Has Everything”
that Gibbons violates a panel border.
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“An Introductory Reader”: Ethics

, 5

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.…

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Comics Reviews (July 22nd, 2015)

10

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.…

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“Demon War”: Power Play

, 4

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.…

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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 2.09: Blackwater

15

State of Play


The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly:
Lions of King’s Landing: Tyrion Lannister, Cersei Lannister, Tywin Lannister
Ships of King’s Landing: Davos Seaworth
Stags of King’s Landing: Joffrey Baratheon
Direwolves of King’s Landing: Sansa Stark
Dogs of King’s Landing: Sandor Clegane
Burning Hearts of King’s Landing: Stannis Baratheon
Chains of King’s Landing: Bronn
Spiders of King’s Landing: Varys
Flowers of King’s Landing: Shae
Harrenhal, Pyke, Winterfell, the Wall, and Qarth are all empty. 
The episode is in one part running fifty-one minutes and set in King’s Landing; it is in seventeen sections. The first section runs three minutes; the opening image is of black water and a ship moving across it. The second runs two minutes; the transition is by dialogue, from Davos’s son speaking of his captain to Tyrion, his counterpart in King’s Landing. The third runs two minutes; the transition is by family, from Tyrion to Cersei Lannister. The fourth runs four minutes; the transition is by music, from Cersei to men singing “The Rains of Castamere.” The fifth runs three minutes; the transition is by sound, the bells warning of Stannis’s arrival tolling over both scenes. The sixth runs one minute; the transition is by equivalency, from Tyrion to Davos. The seventh runs three minutes; the transition is by dialogue, from Stannis’s fleet to Bronn talking about ships. The eighth runs two minutes; the transition is by image, from a fire within the Red Keep to fires burning outside. The ninth runs two minutes; the transition is by family, from Tyrion and Joffrey to Cersei. The tenth runs five minutes; the transition is by family, from Cersei to Tyrion and Joffrey. The eleventh runs four minutes; the transition is by family, from Tyrion and Joffrey to Cersei. The twelfth runs three minutes; the transition is by family, from Cersei to Tyrion and Joffrey. The thirteenth runs three minutes; the transition is by family, from Lancel to Cersei. The fourteenth runs seven minutes; the transition is by hard cut, from Cersei to the combat outside. The fifteenth runs four minutes; the transition is by family, from Tyrion to Cersei. The sixteenth runs two minutes; the transition is by image, from the Hound walking out Sansa’s door to Tyrion’s men opening the passage out of the city. The seventeenth runs three minutes; the transition is by family, from Tyrion to Cersei. It features the death of countless people. The final image is of Cersei hugging Tommen as Tywin announces that he has solved a riddle whose answer is chess.
Analysis

As with the first season, the ninth episode proves to be the point of the entire exercise. Once again, it is a masterpiece. And yet the two episodes could not be more different. Baelor may have had one trick that outdid them all, but worked because it was a succession of climaxes that careened towards Ned’s death. This, on the other hand, is an ostentatious set piece. “Baelor” is designed to seal the deal – it shows off all the show’s strengths one by one, then tops them all.
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