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“We just get a fragment of a hint”: Future Imperfect

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This is the archetypal example of the problem I’m having with the fourth season. “Future Imperfect” is a perfectly straightforward and even enjoyable hour of television, but it doesn’t leave me with a whole lot of room to craft a creative and entertaining critical analysis of it. I mean, pretty much everything that can be said about it is pretty obvious to anyone watching it.

I actually remember “Future Imperfect” quite well. I did tend to mix it up with “Parallels” a lot, which I like better than this episode, but “Future Imperfect” still sticks with me. The caves on the planet where Commander Riker spends the episode in particular, as well as Barash’s design, reminiscent as it is of the stereotypical Grey aliens from abduction reports while also being endearingly cute and childlike at the same time. I guess if you’re going to do an abduction, missing time and false memories story in a Star Trek: The Next Generation setting, that’s the kind of character you’d naturally want to create for it. The illusory Enterprise stuff is obviously pretty fun in a sort of “lets play around with our stock programmatic conventions a bit” kind of way. I just don’t have a whole lot to actually say about the episode itself, so this is going to be another one of those entries where I tell you how much I’m trying to fill space in this post as a way of filling space in this post.

“Future Imperfect” holds the distinction of being the one episode Michael Piller apparently thought was so good he told the team to buy it sight unseen without even hearing a formal pitch. At least, that’s the story Brannon Braga tells: Piller himself says he thought the story was “a little flat” after the action got going and he, along with the script’s writers J. Larry Carroll and David Bennett Carron, came up with the Romulan illusion misdirection subplot during a brainstorming session. With that kind of setup, “Future Imperfect” is obviously an extraordinarily good showcase for Jonathan Frakes, who gets to sink his teeth into a stylistic range as Riker he hasn’t always gotten the chance to. To broadly generalize, in more mediocre outings Will has tended to be written as either a pallet swap of Captain Kirk from the Original Series, an affable everyman or a grumpy Starfleet lackey. This is one of the first episodes to really play up and play on where he really shines on the show, which is in his strong relationships with the other crewmembers.

Here, Will is confronted with the possibility that a huge chunk of his life is missing, so he defaults on what he knows best. And, Minuet notwithstanding, it turns out he knows his friends so well that this becomes the key to figuring out the illusion-One of my favourite exchanges from this whole year happens when Will confronts the illusory Geordi: “[You’ve been running a Level 1 diagnostic] For thirty hours?…

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Comics Reviews (April 22nd, 2015)

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Theodore Beale has responded to yesterday’s post. I’d link it and say not to read the comments, but honestly, why read the article. There’s some other highlights on my Tumblr. Which I bet, by linking here, I’m going to get some fantastic asks to ignore soon.

Comics, from worst to best of what I voluntarily paid for via what a commenter on Theodore Beale’s blog calls “e-begging on Patreon.” (Which is still $2 off from a review on “High Sparrow” come Sunday.)
The Black Vortex: Omega

Man, I love the word “Omega” instead of issue numbers. Kitty Pryde as literal Manic Dark Cosmic Power Dream Girl. This should never have been thirteen issues long. It was preposterously dumb. But its resolution is at least interesting in a general sense of being a thing that will probably be retconned by Secret Wars anyway. 
Lazarus #16

A somewhat self-consciously clever interstitial issue to let Michael Lark catch up with the schedule. Fine, although I’m not sure it works satisfyingly after a self-consciously clever arc finale – Rucka’s pop virtues are not quite so virtuosic as this requires. He’s an album man, not a singles man. Nothing wrong with this issue, but not why this book is in my pulls either. 
Guardians of the Galaxy #26

I see we’ve caught up with Secret Wars. Which is, once again, unsettling more than exciting – this issue sets up a lovely premise. Then it ends by going into a series that at best puts that premise on hold for several months. I mean, I’m not saying I think it’s going to suck, but I have to say, April is not doing wonders for my excitement on this series. In particular, I continue to think the pacing of Hickman’s Avengers issues was wonky – the fact that there’s no actual Secret Wars content coming out for the last few weeks is making the rest of Marvel feel disposable. There’s no swagger or confidence to this. 
Chew #48

Chew continues its frustrating trend of being good enough, often enough that I don’t drop it. 
All-New X-Men #40

This has generated some deserved controversy online over accusations of bisexual erasure. You can see, in the full issue, why Bendis thinks that accusation is misjudged. I’m very much unconvinced, simply because there’s still nothing motivating the decision to make Iceman, as he rather awkwardly puts it, “full gay” as opposed to bisexual. There’s nothing gained by having Iceman be gay instead of bi, and there’s plenty of implication that bisexual people are just gays who lack conviction, which is a bullshit stereotype. 
In any case, the sense of momentum leading into Bendis’s big X-finale is satisfying. 
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl

Nobody is ever going to write a better line for Galactus than “Thanks, Tippy-Toe,” except of course, for Ryan North, who writes numerous other lines of similar quality for Galactus in the course of his defeat at the hands of Squirrel-Girl. (This is not spoiling the ending, since the title of the book pretty much guarantees it.)
…

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“Put ’em On Ice”: Reunion

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No. Unforgivable. Fuck this and everything about it.

Yes, you’re all in luck today. Been awhile since I’ve done a proper polemic on this blog, but here we are: “Reunion” is simply godawful. This one deserves to stand with “The Naked Now” and “Code of Honor” among the series’ absolute lowest lows. This episode is pretty much everything I hate about scripted drama in general and Star Trek in particular all neatly wrapped up in a gift bundle.

Unless this is literally the first thing of mine you’ve ever read (in which case, hi! And sorry you had to come in on such a crap episode! Please go read something I enjoyed writing about instead!) you know why I hate “Reunion” as much as I do. What happens to K’Ehleyr is a textbook example of fridging: Randomly and unceremoniously killing off a female character solely to give her male significant other something to lament about. With no agency of her own, she’s treated as a disposable satellite of a male character’s dour, angst-ridden narrative existence. It’s a flagrantly sexist (and in this case, borderline misogynistic given a few concerning habits the show’s developed over the past couple of years and with an eye on one or two specific episodes coming up this season) approach to storytelling that Star Trek: The Next Generation not only has no business engaging with, shouldn’t even be something conceivable to someone working in it.

It tells you something about how rotten and vile the concept of fridging is given that I’m not even a *fan* of K’Ehleyr and I *still* think she deserved better. Every woman does. Yeah, I still think K’Ehleyr was a not-entirely-functional attempt to “spice up” a show and cast the second season creative team didn’t really know what to do with: Her big contribution, setting Worf on a path to put the Klingon and human sides of his personality in better harmony, could have been done a lot of other ways. I mean, isn’t it *also* sort of sexist to have that all wrapped up in a single, female package? That’s just the infamously-dubbed Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, which is just another form of objectification. It’s always a warning sign when men expect you to breeze into their lives, straighten them out and help them figure themselves out. Those are men who don’t know how to grow up.

But you know what? None of that actually matters, because you don’t fridge characters period, not even Manic Pixie Dream Girls. Once again, what does it say that this creative team is so sadistic and creatively bankrupt their first instinct is to wheel in a former one-shot guest character and put a bullet through their head to give one of the mains some more precious “conflict” to deal with? Fuck off. Fuck off and think about what you’ve done.

K’Ehleyr’s death is also stands in for a unanimous vote of no confidence in Suzie Plakson as a potential new member of the Enterprise extended family, which hurts for its own reasons.…

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Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons: An Analysis of Theodore Beale and his Supporters

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Although this post is not specifically funded by my Patreon backers, this site and my work in general would not be possible without their support. Also, if you want to further support my work, you might try the book version of this essay, which is revised, expanded, and accompanied by tons of other cool stuff.


Right. It’s probably about time to collect all the issues and discussion of the 2015 Hugo Awards into one big post that is, at least in terms of what I have to say, a definitive take on it. A long read, to be sure, but one that will hopefully manage to cover everything important and give a clear sense of the issues and their implications.

One note that is probably worth making before we begin – I am writing this with the assumption of a basically sympathetic audience who have heard bits of the disturbing story, but who aren’t clear on the whole picture. It’s meant to be persuasive to people who are, broadly speaking, left-leaning (or at least not far-right) fans of intelligent and literary science fiction, and who are not generally of the opinion that there was ever anything badly wrong with the Hugo Awards. This is not to say “someone who agrees absolutely with the Hugo Awards,” as such a person presumably does not exist, awards being like that, but it is to say “someone who thinks the Hugo Awards have gone to generally reasonable selections over the past five years.”

Correspondingly, it is not expected to be in the least bit persuasive to people who think Theodore Beale to be an intelligent and respectable figure worth taking seriously. It is not an attempt to argue with them. For reasons that will I think become clear as the post goes on, I do not think arguing with them is a particularly worthwhile pursuit. In any case, off we go, first with a primer on what we’re actually talking about here.

  1. What Happened with the Hugos
  2. What Puppies Want
  3. The Unbelievable Noxiousness of Theodore Beale
  4. On Fascism
  5. Trolling the Voice of God
  6. In Which Several Very Lousy Pieces of Science Fiction (And One Lovely Story About Dinosaurs) Are Analyzed in Depth
  7. Notes On the Proper Handling of a Rabid Dog
  8. God Will Bury You. Nature Will Bury You.
  9. I Want To Thank You For Dancing To The End

Part One: What Happened with the Hugos

For decades, the Hugo Awards have been one of the leading awards in science fiction. This year, the Hugo nomination process was effectively taken over by two related groups who employed a controversial set of tactics that were legal but had not previously been employed in the over sixty year history of the Hugo Awards due to generally being considered unsporting and in poor taste.

Hugo nominations are a fairly simple affair. You join the World Science Fiction Convention (this year called Sasquan, and held in Spokane) for the year, either as a fully attending member or as a non-attending “supporting member” (this year costing $40).…

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The Letters and the Law, The Meaning and the Cause (Super Mario World)

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The Super Nintendo Project, a sequel to my first major blog, The Nintendo Project, is made possible by my backers on Patreon. If you enjoy this project and want to support my work, please consider backing.

There are two ways to begin this.

I am, of course, talking about Super Mario World here and not The Super Nintendo Project, where there were an infinitude of ways I could have gone. No, I’m referring to the start of Super Mario World, where you are presented with a straightforward choice between going left to Yoshi’s Island 1 or right to Yoshi’s Island 2.

(Here’s a secret history for you.

The 1986 wide release of the Nintendo Entertainment System was one of the great marketing successes of 1980s American capitalism, a period with no shortage of contenders for that title. At the heart of the success is simply the sheer degree to which Nintendo triumphed over conventional wisdom. Following the shocking collapse of the Atari-led American video game industry in 1983, the American market was enormously wary of the entire idea of video games.

Indeed, it was in some ways surprising that Nintendo even had the opportunity to try, given that they very nearly allied themselves with Atari in 1983, just before the crash, an alternate history prevented only by a staggeringly unforced error in which Atari executives mistook a Coleco Adam running Donkey Kong at a 1983 trade show as evidence that Nintendo was making a deal with Coleco (formerly the Connecticut Leather Company), when in fact the Adam was simply playing the Colecovision release of the game via its backward compatibility. This resulted in Atari abruptly pulling out of its deal with Nintendo to distribute their successful Famicom console in the US.

Nintendo thus went it alone, initially trying to release the system as a personal computer akin to the still popular Commodore 64 or the Apple IIe, and, when this faltered, regearing the product as a straight video game console, and creating R.O.B., a console peripheral/toy robot that allowed Nintendo to situate the system not as a video game system in the mould of the failed Atari 2600, but rather as a toy.)

It’s more of a choice than it might first appear. The sense of linear progression would obviously lean towards starting with Yoshi’s Island 1, but this undersells the degree to which movement from left to right is a fundamental part of the conceptual grammar of the side-scrolling platformer genre that Super Mario World is in many senses the apex of. Likewise, the world map as visible at the start of the game emphasizes the importance of going right – the path extending forth from Yoshi’s Island 2 has two nodes that are visible markers for where Yoshi’s Islands 3 and 4 will appear, as well as a castle, recognizable as the end-of-world objective.

Funnily enough, I don’t remember the exact circumstances of getting the system. It would have been somewhere in the vicinity of my ninth birthday, which was the official release date, although systems arrived in stores a couple weeks earlier.…

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“To Absent Friends”: Legacy

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You would think the moment where Star Trek: The Next Generation finally outlasts Star Trek would be a special occasion and cause for celebration. And yet “Legacy”, a morose, funereal affair that follows on thematically from “Remember Me” in taking a long, hard look at feelings of loss and the contemplation of that which we’ve left behind, is anything but. Surprisingly for a show that was supposedly more popular than it had ever been before, Star Trek: The Next Generation, for the first time, seems to feel apathetic, directionless and depressive.

Whose legacy are we looking at here? Is it Star Trek‘s? Apart from a requisite and hyper-obscure in-joke in the teaser about Camus II and archaeology, there’s nothing really about the Original Series here. Is it Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s? Isn’t that a little premature?

There is someone on everyone’s mind tonight. Of course, that person is Tasha Yar. Her absence weighs heavily both diegetically and extradiegetically: Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s long, dark season of discontent and introspection has finally forced it to come to terms with its biggest and greatest failure. The universe has long changed since the trauma of “Skin of Evil” and it’s going to change again, dramatically, in the not-too-distant future. But this doesn’t mean the ghosts from our past have entirely dissipated, and in order for that new universe to come to pass the show will have to somehow square away its remaining baggage and try to divinate some good from it. If we’re all about “facing our inner demons” now, it’s only fair that we should tackle the biggest one of all head on.

I’m not entirely convinced “Legacy” does that, though. It’s a definite theme to be sure, it’s certainly about this need on some level, and it’s telling Star Trek: The Next Generation is aware of this. But Michael Piller says that if you were to strip away all the backstory about Tasha, you’d be left with a perfectly serviceable, though middling, story about extracting Federation personnel from a crisis situation, akin to something like “The High Ground”. And he’s right: Far from engaging with the spectre of Tasha Yar one-on-one, “Legacy” uses her as window dressing to doll up a filler episode. Which, as much of a kick to the gut as that is, is probably actually more fitting. Piller does say that it’s a very good drama, because it hinges on the betrayal of an innocent (Data), which is always a gripping trope. Once again, Tasha’s story and positionality is rendered a subservient subset of Data’s. Just as it always has been.

Even “Turnabout Intruder” had the courtesy to at least be a fascinatingly hot mess of confused gender roles.

But Michael Piller speaks the literal truth. The man knew his drama, possibly better than anybody else. And “Legacy” is in fact a good drama. But being a good drama does not make it good Star Trek: The Next Generation: That is not, and has never been, sufficient.…

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The House of Black and White

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This review exists because of my backers on Patreon. Reviews of the full season of Game of Thrones are contingent on the Patreon reaching $300 a week, but I’ll do “High Sparrow” next week if it gets up to $290 by the time the episode airs, which is only a $5 increase. So if you want more reviews, please consider backing.

State of Play

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

The Lion, Tyrion Lannister
Lions of King’s Landing: Jaime Lannister, Cersei Lannister
Dragons of Mereen: Daenerys Targaryen
Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow
Mockingbirds of the Eyrie: Petyr Baelish
Burning Hearts of the Wall: Stannis Baratheon,
Ships of the Wall: Davos Seaworth
The Snake, Elaria Sand
Archers of the Wall: Samwell Tarly
Direwolves the Eyrie: Sansa Stark
Direwolves of Braavos: Arya Stark
Flowers of the Wall: Gilly
The Spider, Varys
The Chain, Bronn
Swords of Mereen: Daario Noharis
Butterflies of Mereen: Missandrei
Shields of the Eyrie: Brienne of Tarth
Coins of Braavos: No one

Winterfell is abandoned.

The episode is in eleven parts. The first part runs five minutes and is set in Braavos. The opening shot is of Arya’s face, staring up at the Titan of Braavos.

The second runs eight minutes and is set in the Vale of Arryn. The transition is by hard cut, from Arya walking away after throwing her coin in the canal to an establishing shot of an inn.

The third runs two minutes and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by hard cut, from Podrick standing as Brienne rides off to Cersei.

The fourth runs three minutes and is set at Castle Stokeworth. The transition is by dialogue, from Jaime talking about Bronn to Bronn.

The fifth runs two minutes and is set in Dorne. The transition is by dialogue from Jaime and Bronn talking about going to Dorne to Dorne.

The sixth runs five minute and is set in Mereen. The transition is by hard cut, from Doran Martell to Unsullied marching through the streets.

The seventh runs two minutes and is set on the road to Volantis. The transition is by hard cut, from Daenerys to an establishing shot of Varys and Tyrion’s carriage.

The eighth runs four minutes and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by dialogue, from Tyrion rhetorically asking if Cersei will be killing all the dwarfs in the world to her appraising the head of a dead dwarf.

The ninth runs eleven minutes and is in two section; it is set on the Wall. The first section is three minutes long; the transition is by hard cut, from Kevan Lannister storming off to the letter S in a book. The other is eight minutes long; the transition is by dialogue, from Shireen and Selyse talking about Stannis’s execution of Mance Rayder to Jon and Stannis talking about the same.

The tenth part runs two minutes and is set in Braavos; the transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Arya Stark.…

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Shabcast 4

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Normal shabcast service has been resumed after the unplanned emergency anti-fascist edition from earlier this month (though you may be hearing more from Phil and myself on the issue of the Hugos and the nazis).  

This episode of the Shabogan Graffiti podcast is the long-awaited continuation of my mammoth chat with the lovely Josh Marsfelder, writer of the ridiculously good Vaka Rangi blog.  A slightly disjointed episode this one, but you’re getting all the good bits.  The bits I chopped out are mostly me being inconsequential.  What’s left is mostly Josh being eloquent and passionate about TNG, Trek generally, Dirty Pair, aesthetics, fan fiction, slash, Mary Sues, singularity archetypes, and all sorts and manners and conditions of interesting stuff.  We also do a bit of violently malevolent hating on Wesley Crusher… which should be entirely acceptable to all right-thinking people.  

You’ll love it, trust me.  Hardcore nattering, with no fascism to ruin everything.  Paint a bulls-eye on your heart right now.

ADDITIONAL:  Umm, I’ve actually added the link to the new episode now. 

*

Also, here are links to all my previous audio stuff:

Shabcast 3 (the emergency anti-fascist Hugo-awards edition with Andrew Hickey and Phil Sandifer)
Shabcast 2 (First part of interview with Josh Marsfelder)
Shabcast 1 (Interview with Phil Sandifer)

‘Mind Robber’ commentaries (I join Phil)
‘The Rescue’ commentaries (I join Phil)
These are best listened to while watching the stories, as long as you’ve seen them once before.  If you’re very familiar with the stories, you can listen to them on their own.

Pex Lives Frankenstein podcast (I join Kevin and James, and Gene Mayes)
Pex Lives TV Movie podcast (Myself and Josh join Kevin and James)
…

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Saturday Waffling (April 18th, 2015)

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Right, so, we did get over $280 on the Patreon, first of all. That means that there will be a Game of Thrones review going up tomorrow around when “The House of Black and White” airs. “High Sparrow” will go up next week if it can cross $290.

Then on Monday starts the Super Nintendo Project, my magical ritual to destroy Gamergate, for which I’m very excited. And probably on Tuesday, though it might take until Thursday will be a related one-off that I wrote for my own pleasure, as opposed to for money. It’s called “Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons: An Analysis of Theodore Beale and His Supporters,” and is about fifteen thousand words long. So that’ll be fun too.

Obviously, it’s about the Hugos, which raises our question for the weekend: of the many worthy things kept off the Hugo Ballot by Theodore Beale and his supporters, what are you saddest didn’t make it? What did you nominate, or would you have nominated if you’d had a ballot?…

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All Coppers Are Rascals (The Last War in Albion Part 92: Raoul’s Night Out, and Later Tales)

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This is the fourth of eleven parts of The Last War in Albion Chapter Ten, focusing on Alan Moore’s Bojeffries Saga. 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 Bojeffries Saga is available in a collected edition that can be purchased in the US or in the UK.

Previously in The Last War in Albion: Following their initial two-part story, Moore and Parkhouse wrote a second two-part Bojeffries Saga strip for Warrior entitled “Raoul’s Night Out.”

“All Coppers are Rascals.” -Ol’ Bill, Dodgem Logic #3

Figure 702: Sheena, a clear parody
of Vyvyan Basterd. (Written by
Alan Moore, art by Steve Parkhouse,
from “Raoul’s Night Out,” in Warrior
#20, 1984)
The story also marks a subtle evolution to the underlying format of The Bojeffries Saga. The plot is still basically that of a farce, but instead of focusing on one character in a traditional “idiot” role, he layers together a set of absurd misunderstandings incorporating several characters, all of whom are, in their own ways, complete dunces. But what’s in many ways more important than the change in comedic structure is the nature of the characters involved.  The first story was, at the end of the day, essentially a Hogben story transplanted to working class Britain, with the focus firmly on the eccentric family and Trevor Inchmale as an intrusion from the mundane world. But “Raoul’s Night Out” is a story about working class Britain into which a single werewolf has been inserted. This allows Moore to engage in a fairly direct satire of the working class. For instance, among Raoul’s coworkers is Colin Council Estate, who introduces his girlfriend Sheena,to Raoul by saying “society’s rejected ‘er because she’s got ‘**** off’ tattooed on her forehead” (a fairly straightforward homage to Vyv of The Young Ones). 
Figure 703: Cops beating a black man. (Written by Alan Moore, art by
Steve Parkhouse, from “Raoul’s Night Out,” in Warrior #20, 1984)
The move to looking at the larger culture in which the Bojeffries exist allows Moore a considerably sharper sort of satire. The main thrust of “Raoul’s Night Out” is a night out with Raoul and his coworkers that goes wrong for a number of reasons, not least of which is that Colin consulted his diary to tell Raoul that it was a new moon without bothering to mention that, as Sheena puts it, his “***** diary is four ***** years old” and that he hasn’t “bought one since the *** Pistols disbanded.” This, rather awkwardly, results in Raoul turning into a wolf in the middle of dinner, which causes further deterioration in a situation already made fraught by Raoul’s passing on a pamphlet given to him by his coworker Stanley to another one of his coworkers, George, completely unaware of the fact that Stanley’s neo-Nazi propaganda (“Did Himmler Discover Radium,” one article asks) might go down poorly with George, who is black.
…

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