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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 2.05: The Ghost of Harrenhal

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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 Direwolf, Catelyn Stark
Dragons of Qarth: Daenerys Targaryen
The Mockingbird, Petyr Baelish
Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow
Lions of Harrenhal: Tywin Lannister
The Ship, Davos Seaworth
Kraken of Winterfell or maybe Pyke: Theon Greyjoy
Archers of the Wall: Samwell Tarly
Direwolves of Winterfell: Brandon Stark
Direwolves of Harrenhal: Arya Stark
The Burning Heart, Stannis Baratheon
The Rose, Margery Tyrell
Bears of the Wall: Jeor Mormont
Chains of King’s Landing: Bronn
The episode is in fourteen parts. The first is four minutes long and is in sections; it is set in Renly Baratheon’s camp. The first section is three minutes long. The opening image is of a bustling path through the camp. It features the death of two of Renly’s Kingsguard, stabbed by Brienne of Tarth, and of Renly Baratheon, killed by a shadow. The second is two minutes long; the transition is by music, with Stannis Baratheon’s theme playing over Renly’s body and then over Stannis’s fleet as it sails to claim the camp. 
The second part is three minutes long; it is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by dialogue, from Littlefinger saying “the queen” to the queen, and by dialogue, with her and Tyrion talking about Stannis. 
The third is two minutes long; it is set in Renly Baratheon’s camp. The transition is by dialogue, from Tyrion talking about defending King’s Landing from Stannis’s inevitable assault to Stannis, and with Stannis planning his assault on King’s Landing and both talking about religion.
The fourth is two minutes long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by dialogue, from Stannis and Davos talking about attacking King’s Landing to King’s Landing and Tyrion talking about defending from Stannis.
—
The fifth is four minutes long and is set on Pyke. The transition is by dialogue, from Tyrion being called a demon monkey to Theon. 
The sixth is six minutes long and is set in Harrenhal. The transition is by dialogue, from Theon talking about the Starks to Arya, and to Tywin talking about the Starks.
The seventh is six minutes long and is set north of the Wall. The transition is by family, from Arya to Jon Snow.
The eighth is three minutes long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by hard cut, from Jon Snow to the window of the pyromancer’s lair. 
The ninth is six minutes long and is set in Qarth. The transition is by dialogue, from the pyromancer talking about wildfire and the Targaryens to Daenerys and her dragons breathing fire. 
The tenth is three minutes long and is set in a forest. The transition is by theme, from the Warlocks of Qarth’s magic to a discussion about Stannis’s. 
The eleventh is three minuets long and is set in Winterfell. The transition is by family, from Catelyn to Bran and Rickon. 
The twelfth is three minutes long and is set North of the Wall.
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“Deep and Confused”: Ensign Ro

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Three words, heard only in hushed whispers. Deep Space Nine.

It would of course be unfair to say that Ro Laren and her namesake episode only exist to set up the forthcoming fourth Star Trek series. Star Trek can and will get that cynical, and it is true that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was well into pre-production by this point. It had a name and a setting-a space station adrift near the formerly occupied planet of Bajor, a planet whose people and history are introduced here. It would probably be more accurate, however, to say that Bajor and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine were ideas developed concurrently. And while certainly the possibility was always there that Ro might get spun off as the lead of the new show, “Ensign Ro” itself is no backdoor pilot: This story, and its titular character, absolutely belong to Star Trek: The Next Generation, and with Michelle Forbes now officially onboard, the Enterprise family is finally complete (or, at least as complete as it’s going to get on television at any rate).

Before we move on though, it may be worth it to take a little time to talk about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, as it’s the more or less open secret that will be swirling around the Paramount lot for the next year or so. In 1991, then studio executive Brandon Tartikoff, whom savvy readers will remember as the former NBC exec who is credited with pitching the concept of Miami Vice (it wasn’t him, but rather Anthony Yerkovich, though Tartikoff was involved in the initial production) approached Rick Berman and Michael Piller with the idea of doing a new Star Trek. The impetus was, simply put, that Star Trek: The Next Generation was a $25 million-a-year cash cow that couldn’t run forever. Paramount hoped to effectively double their profit margins by having two Star Trek shows airing simultaneously, and the idea was that this new show would run alongside The Next Generation for several years (the exact number is never given in official histories, but it seems reasonable to assume it would have been another five seasons) and, when its older sibling finally went off the air, the Star Trek mantle would then fall to it.

As calculated as the move may have been, this did not dissuade Berman and Piller from pouring their heart and soul into the project. They strove very hard to come up with a show that would both thematically compliment Star Trek: The Next Generation and allow it to do things creatively they currently couldn’t do, or had a hard time doing (including, naturally, the Almighty Conflict, but that’s a rant for another night). Pretty much immediately the decision was made that the new show basically had to have a stationary setting, because it wouldn’t be right to have two suspiciously similar shows about voyaging starships happening at the same time. That setting would need to be a space station too, as marooning the new cast on a planet would be a bit boring.…

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Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Episode 2: How is Lady Pole?

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In a real sense, this, not “The Friends of English Magic,” is the first episode of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Where the first episode was focused primarily on the task of worldbuilding, establishing the broad strokes of its alternate history, this episode is focused on the eponymous dualism between Strange and Norrell. In many ways, this is an aggressively classic dualism. Eddie Marsan’s Mr. Norrell is the older, more conservative figure of order – the fussy scholar most at home with his books. Bertie Carvel’s Jonathan Strange is the younger, more foppish and chaotic figure – the one who makes up his magic as he goes.

It is, of course, the oldest double act in English magic. Moore and Morrison, Crowley and Spare, Urizen and Los, et cetera. But like any great setup, it’s a cliche because it works. The order/chaos dualism that underlies Norrell and Strange is a good enough hook that Michael Moorcock got an entire career out of it, after all. Entirely on its own merits, as a premise, “rival magicians representing order and chaos over the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars” is something you really ought to be able to get a good television series out of.
And the dynamic works. Marsan gives Norrell a compelling sense of patheticness that manages to stop well short of making the character unpleasant to watch, but nevertheless makes it easy to damn him. The cruelty of his cowardice when he opts to lie about Lady Poole’s maladies, saying that she is mad and seeking mainly to brush her existence under the rug so as to preserve magic’s respectability, is breathtaking, and yet the story manages to keep from simply labeling him the villain of the piece.
Similarly, Jonathan Strange, while certainly the more “fun” character, is not quite the hero. Indeed, it’s more than slightly interesting that the meat of their disagreement is not merely the way in which Norrell withholds knowledge and books from Strange, but the specific nature of what he withholds, namely books that would lead Strange towards the sort of magic used to resurrect Lady Pole. This nicely complicates the dualism animating the two characters: it is Strange who wants to take magic back towards the ancient and animist traditions of faeries, but it is Norrell, the character opposed to this, who has actually done so.
But as the title suggests, “How is Lady Pole?” is not exclusively or even primarily about its central dynamic. The Norrell/Strange dualism is the dramatic engine, but it’s not quite what the show is about. As with “The Friends of English Magic,” quite a lot of this episode is spent on the supporting cast. But, perhaps surprisingly, it’s a completely different supporting cast from the first episode. Here the focus is largely on three characters: Lady Pole, Arabella Strange, and Stephen Black, the Poles’ butler. 
And it is here that the show begins to tip its hand towards its larger concerns, because those three characters are bound together by two things that do not intuitively go together, but where the implications of putting them together is profound.
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Saturday Waffling (June 20th, 2015)

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There is a prominent Doctor Who site that I have very strong suspicions engages in deeply fraudulent and exploitative practices with regards to their advertising. I was a victim of this scam, but managed to get my money back (by threatening to go public with the evidence I had), which led me to remain silent at the time, but I’ve since come across a corroborating story that convinces me that this was not an isolated incident. However, I would like to get my ducks in a row and have a rock solid case that this wasn’t just me before I name the site.

The mechanics of this scam involve getting cold emailed by the owner of the site, who will offer supposedly discounted advertising rates for a three month banner ad on their site, offering thousands of clicks for a price measuring in the hundreds of pounds depending on the size of the ad you buy, and generally assuring you of the quality of advertising with his site and the remuneration you will get. In reality, his ad will net you at best a few dozen clicks, and no sales to speak of.

If you’ve been the victim of this scam, please get in touch – my email is snowspinner, and it’s a gmail account. This appears to be a nasty and knowingly malicious predator ripping off numerous members of the Doctor Who community. Please help me expose him. In particular, if you did any ad tracking and can confirm the actual traffic his site generates compared to what he boasts, that would be helpful.

In other news, the usual suspects are now declaring a boycott of Tor Books for reasons that are so typically dogshit that I’m not even going to get into them. Anyway, Tor is publishing most of what’s interesting in mainstream science fiction and fantasy these days, including the forthcoming novel All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders, which I’ll have a review of sometime soon. They’re a good press; not a perfect one, but what “a perfect press” means is beyond me anyway, so who cares.

So I think you should go wander over by their site, find a book you want to buy, and buy it. I promise, they’ve got something you want, even if it’s just the 99 cent ebook version of “As Good as New,” which is the actual Best Short Story of 2014. So please, give them a boost of confidence that the people who support non-fascist science fiction and fantasy outnumber the people spamming them with e-mails and calling for their heads.

As for discussion… well, what’s your favorite thing Tor has published? Novel, short story, article, whatever. Let’s celebrate one of the good guys.

Past that, a Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell review will be along tonight.…

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A Home That’s Miles From Home (The Last War in Albion Part 101: Halo Jones Books One and Two)

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This is the second of five parts of The Last War in Albion Chapter Eleven, focusing on Alan Moore’s The Ballad of Halo Jones. An omnibus of all eleven parts is available on Smashwords. If you are a Kickstarter backer or a Patreon backer at $2 or higher per week, instructions on how to get your complimentary copy have been sent to you.

The Ballad of Halo Jones is available in a collected edition that can be purchased in the US or in the UK.

Previously in The Last War in Albion: Alan Moore and Ian Gibson created The Ballad of Halo Jones to give 2000 AD a rare female-fronted strip. In approaching the series, they decided to largely throw readers in the deep end, offering a lot of information about Halo Jones’s world but very little context. 

“I wanna live with Halo Jones. I wanna home that’s miles from home. I wanna drugs from the Twilight Zone. I wanna never never never never never never never say no.” – Shriekback, “Malaria”
The result of this is that the first thing the audience learns about Halo Jones’s world is not what it’s like, but rather the fact that she wants to get out of there, and that everybody else in the world does too, but, as her friend Rodice puts it, “even if you do get out it’s no good, ‘cause no matter how far you get, they’ll fetch you back here and bust you to pieces.” Past that, as with American Flagg, the world is introduced more through the media playing in the background than through characters explaining it to each other. (Not that Moore avoids blatant exposition entirely -not long after the disorienting opening spread, for instance, Moore has several characters straightforwardly explain the Different Drummers to each other, despite the fact that all of them are seemingly familiar with the group and have no reason to describe their basic features.
Figure 801: Halo Jones explains her motivation in life. (Written by Alan Moore,
art by Ian Gibson, from The Ballad of Halo Jones in 2000 AD #376, 1984)
This continues throughout. Nowhere in Book One is there anything that quite serves as an explanation of the Hoop and how it works. This is not, to be clear, a flaw: The Ballad of Halo Jones is not a story about the Hoop and how it came to be. (In point of fact, it’s a scheme to move the unemployed – or “increased leisure citizens,” to use the preferred euphemism – out of sight and out of mind. This isn’t really established until Book Two, however.) It’s about what life on the Hoop is like, which is to say, about a soul-crushing dead end designed to serve as little more than a human landfill. In this regard it’s just an iteration of a trope that has already appeared numerous times in the course of the War, generally as an analogue for Thatcher’s Britain in some form.
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“We are all stories”: Darmok

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Shaka, when the walls fell.

We have time again before the solar tide turns. What would you like to hear? I’ll tell you the oldest story I know. Two women, alone on a beach, around a fire.

And then it began again. Leah walked with starlight. She makes her rounds across the sky every night, just as she always has, and you can see her if you gaze into the heart of the galaxy. Captain Picard came to her and asked if he might walk as she did, and the two set off together telling each other stories. Captain Picard asked Leah “Please tell me about the stars”. But Leah spoke in the language of dreams and memory, not of tongues, and couldn’t rightly answer Captain Picard’s question to his satisfaction. But Geordi La Forge, a wise and clever man who could see beyond into The Way Things Make Themselves Appear, understood Leah and spoke words to represent the things she had dreamed. “It’s like the stories we were told long, long ago,” Geordi would say. “The stars are our ancestors, and they’ve seen all these things before. We turn to them and become them in order to live our lives, for they have lived them before us”.

Geordi could see that appearances were not deceiving and that facsimile was not trickery. He knew that wisdom lay within learning to love the beauty of the show, but these were thoughts that troubled Data, son of data. “I do not understand, Geordi. My programming indicates that there is Truth, certitude, and that there is then Illusion, unreality. I shall endeavour to Change My Own Name to compensate”. “That’s Bynar comfort, D. The truth is in the telling: It’s all how you look at it”. “But, if I observe a thing, does that not indicate that the thing does in fact tangibly exist?” “Exactly”. That was the story of how Data learned to create reality. There’s more to the story, but that’s for Another Time. You probably want to hear more about our stars.

This is the story as I know it, you have to understand. Every storyteller has their own being-becoming, and this is mine. But I don’t think you mind. A long time ago, when the world felt new again, we looked to the stars to guide our course. We were one in those times and lived waking dreams that played out into infinity in all directions. If you look up at the stars tonight, maybe you can feel yourself reconnecting with a part of you and I that exists in another timespace. Can you? Invoke not just your memory, but your memory of existing as a memory. Do you remember that we used to talk through the energy of the visions we beheld? Can we couple once more with that which we used to see, and The Way We Used To Be Seen? This are the questions Captain Picard wanted The Answer to.…

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Perdido Street Station

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Far be it from me to criticize my generous and wise patrons, on whose behalf this essay is written, but I suspect that Perdido Street Station is not, in fact, the best way to start with China Miéville. Jack Graham tells me Un Lun Dun is superlative, and a lot of people seem to plug The City and the City, each of which are, notably, about half as long as Perdido Street Station. Indeed, at a glance, Perdido Street Station appears to be the longest of Miéville’s works.
It is not, certainly, that the book is too long, although its length and the at times willfully undisciplined nature of its plotting can be frustrating. One of the book’s most interesting characters, Lin, the insectoid partner of the protagonist, essentially drops out of the plot halfway through and reemerges at the end just in time to be violently lobotomized, a move that is both disappointing in light of the fact that she’s one of two significant female characters (and by far the more interesting and fleshed out of the two) and just plain frustrating. An action sequence towards the book’s end is resolved in part by the sudden appearance of a quasi-mythical figure mentioned early in the book, but basically ignored for the middle half of it, making his appearance jarring in the extreme. And the book’s primary plot, a group of horrific creatures called slake-moths that are stalking the dreams of New Crobuzon, doesn’t really start up until a third of the way through, causing all prior plots to be set aside until the last chapter, at which point several of them have been resolved by dint of the relevant characters having died horribly at some point.
It is, in other words, a profoundly messy book. Even this is not quite a flaw; its messiness is tangibly an artistic choice. I’ve not looked into interviews or anything, but it would not surprise me to discover that a draft or at least fragments of Perdido Street Station predate Miéville’s first book, King Rat; it has the characteristic sprawl of a first novel, desperate to get every bold idea and sweeping theme that’s been stewing in his brain for twenty-eight years into a single book. But I’ve an obvious soft spot for mad ambition, or at least a well-developed enough sense of irony to recognize that I really oughtn’t criticize another writer’s sense of literary hubris. 
Because, of course, there’s a real pleasure to messy sprawl. The clarity and depth of a tidy novel is certainly a pleasure worth indulging in, but the messy novel, with all its implications and half-elucidated ideas that leave the reader wondering if it’s they or the author who is actually playing with a given theme. And Perdido Street Station is particularly well-poised to take advantage of this. It is a book grounded in weird fiction, after all, full of fantastic creatures existing at a strange and deliberately hazy junction of magic and science.
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Comics Reviews (June 17th, 2015)

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Old Man Logan #2

Well this went off the rails fast. After a first issue long on potential, this is a chain of scenes, all of them interrupted before anything interesting is allowed to happen so that Logan can be dragged to some new potentially interesting scene that won’t play out. Sorrentino’s art is very pretty, but it’s unclear as all hell, and Bendis is in his “let the artist do most of the storytelling” mode, a mode he puzzlingly only ever takes when working with abstract and hard to follow artists, as opposed to when he’s working with Bagley or someone who draws pages so that you can tell what’s going on.

Blackcross #4

A rarity: a Warren Ellis book I’m just not digging at all. None of the characters stand out to me, I don’t know the superheroes being referenced, and this is mostly vague implications in search of a plot for me. Not only do I not remember what’s going on month to month, in the three hours between reading it and writing this review I’ve already forgotten most of this book.

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor #13

The plot advances, and there are some very good Eleventh Doctor monologues, but this is a resolutely average issue of this comic. Still, we’re into the “I actually enjoyed reading this” segment of the list.

Stumptown #6

The start of a new arc. I’m not entirely sold – the start was awkward as we have to sit through an explanation of civet coffee, which is on the one hand something that probably does need exposition and on the other feels a bit cliche and overdone. Still, Stumptown is a PI book, not a mystery book, so the setup isn’t the interesting part, and this has enough funny bits to be an entertaining way to spend five minutes, albeit a bit steep at $3.99. But what comics aren’t these days.

Thors #1

A Thor cop book. Aaron proves good at writing this, which is nice – he’s hit and miss for me, to say the least. But the procedural suits him, apparently, and the sheer absurdity of it wrings out a smile at least one every few pages. Throg, in particular, is a delight to see. And with the last page, it even gives a sense that this will matter when we get back to the main Thor book. The only pity is having to go back to that book eventually, really.

Ms. Marvel #16

Wilson makes the smart decision to keep this focused on Kamala and on her plots, picking up heavily from the last arc. The final page is promising. It is in places predictable, but this book always has been – its charm is its ability to find new spins and perspectives on things. Such as a school/refugee center defended by weird turquoise monster things created by Loki. (“To be pwned by Loki is a great honor,” one says, in the week’s best line.) As I said, I have low hopes for these Last Days books, but this is quite good.…

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“If you want to change the world, change yourself.”: Redemption II

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Last time on Star Trek: The Next Generation…

“The point of convergence where it all leads back to. Perhaps not the greatest moment, but the defining one. In the end, it all comes back to redemption. We will redeem. We will be redeemed…”  
“The first image that strikes me is, as is always the case with Star Trek: The Next Generation, that of a starship. It’s the image that defines “Redemption” for me: That of the Enterprise being escorted by the Bortas, the first, and archetypal, Klingon Attack Cruiser…” 
“The Klingon Civil War is something I remember much more vividly than it actually plays out onscreen. My memory is that of a breathtaking spectacle of cunning military strategy and dramatic shootouts in the depths of space. In practice, we get a couple old Bird-of-Prey models flitting around Gowron’s Attack Cruiser interspersed with stock footage from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise‘. Today I sort of laugh at the slight bombast and pretension of the whole thing, but it’s ever so fun to watch again. It’s the Klingon characters themselves who I think really make it work: The way Robert O’Reilly, Michael Dorn and Tony Todd play their parts they totally sell the gravity of the situation, implied silliness and all. It’s the first and last time the Klingons can really work this way, before they fully devolve into irrelevant, if occasionally adorable, self-parody. 
This is also of course a Ron Moore script, Moore now firmly established as the go-to Klingon and Romulan guy. Thankfully, we get him in ‘world building mode’ instead of ‘angrily slagging off the Enterprise crew mode’ or ‘being misogynistic mode’…” 
“And as if to reassure us that the show is in fact aware of what this moment signifies and the responsibilities it now has to take on, its final scene cuts to Denise Crosby stepping out of the shadows, and then the fade out.
Tasha Yar is back.”

And now, the conclusion…

So to start off, can we just talk about the new intro credits for a bit? I’ve already mentioned they’re very possibly my favourite memory of the show, so I tend to notice when they change, even if only slightly. That microsecond stutter in the starfield where Wil Wheaton’s portion of the credits were hastily cut out following his departure in “Final Mission” that used to happen in the latter half of last year seems to have been fixed over the break, so it flows more seamlessly now. But more importantly, the logo now materializes through a video tunnel effect instead of swooping in from opposite ends of the screen. This somehow manages to accomplish what many had deemed impossible-Making the show look *even more* 80s than it already did. I love it, but not as much as I love the swooping. No explanation seems to have ever been given for the change, which only lasts for the duration of this season, before the intro sequence settles on its final form in Season 6: A hybrid using the cleaner editing of this sequence with the logo from seasons 1-4.…

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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 2.04: Garden of Bones

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State of Play
The Choir goes off The board is laid out thusly:
Lions of King’s Landing: Tyrion Lannister
The Direwolf, Catelyn Stark
Dragons of Qarth: Daenerys Targaryen
The Mockingbird, Petyr Baelish
Bears of Qarth: Joran Mormont
Lions of Harrenhal: Tywyn Lannister
The Ship, Davos Seaworth
Stags of King’s Landing: Joffrey Baratheon
The Direwolf, Robb Stark
Direwolves of King’s Landing: Sansa Stark
Direwolves of Harrenhal: Arya Stark
The Burning Hearts, Stannis Baratheon, Mellisandre
The Rose, Margery Tyrell
Chains of King’s landing: Bronn
Dogs of King’s Landing: Sandor Clegane
Pyke is desolate. Winterfell is abandoned. The Wall is unmanned. 
The episode is in twelve parts. The first is six minutes long and is set at a Lannister camp. The first image is an establishing shot of the camp. 
The second is seven minutes long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by family, from Robb to Sansa Stark. 
The third is four minutes long and is in Renly Baratheon’s camp. The transition is by sound, from Daisy’s screams to a horse whinnying. 
The fourth is one minute long and is set in the Red Waste outside Qarth. The transition is by hard cut, from Littlefinger to an establishing shot of the Red Waste.
The fifth is two minutes long and is set in Harrenhal. The transition is by dialogue, from Daenerys to a discussion of how Harrenhal burnt. 
The sixth is four minutes long and is set in Renly Baratheon’s camp. The transition is by family, from Arya to Catelyn Stark.
The seventh is three minutes long and is set in Harrenhal. The transition is by family, from Catelyn Stark to Arya.
The eighth is three minutes long and is set outside Renly Baratheon’s camp. The transition is by family, from Arya to Catelyn Stark. 
The ninth is six minutes long and is set in Qarth. The transition is by hard cut, from Renly riding away to the walls of Qarth.
The tenth is two minutes long and is set in Harrenhal. The transition is by image, from the walls of Qarth to a head being fastened to a spike on the wall of Harrenhal. 
The eleventh is three minutes long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by family, from Tywin to Tyrion and Lancel Lannister.
The twelfth is six minutes long and is set around the two Baratheon camps. The transition is by hard cut, from Lancel to the stag atop Stannis’s ship. The final image is of Mellisandre giving birth to a shadowy riddle whose answer is chess. 
Analysis

Three episodes of buildup based around the magical scraping at the edges of the world pay off in several regards. This is signified straightforwardly by the episode’s structure, which both opens and closes with forces within the War of Five Kings being attacked by amazing and uncanny things. At the top of the episode a Lannister encampment is attacked by a direwolf (and note how, by the time the tale reaches King’s Landing it has been elevated to an act of magic, with the Starks turning into wolves and feasting on the bodies), while at the end Mellisandre gives birth to a shadow. 
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