Eruditorum Press

A magical ritual to pay our rent

Orphan Black

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This is the monthly bonus post voted on by my Patreon backers. Voting for next month’s post just opened on Patreon. Orphan Black Season 3 begins on BBC America this Saturday.

There’s an expectation, with these sorts of things, that I’m going to review the show. This is not entirely helpful for Orphan Black – leading with the question of its quality is putting the focus in the least interesting places, in some ways. This is because it’s not a great show. It is, to be sure, a good show. But greatness stubbornly eludes it, due, if we’re being honest, to the fact that the writing isn’t really all that. It’s been up for a Hugo in both 2014 and 2015 (in the latter case it, along with Doctor Who’s “Listen,” were the two non-Puppy nominees in the Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) category), and in each case you look at the episode that was nominated and find yourself thinking “which one was that again?”

It’s better binged than serialized, I suspect. Certainly I found my desire to watch another episode to be quite intense following the cliffhanger, and relatively middling twenty-four hours later. It can spin its wheels frustratingly. There is not a clear sense that the overarching mythology has a point and is not being made up as the show goes along. Blah, blah, blah.

It would probably be happier on Netflix, where its compatibility with binge watching would be a strength instead of a problem. Likewise, I suspect I’ll pick up Season Three at the end of its run and marathon it instead of tuning in week to week, simply because I think my attention will wander. But the three nights over which I marathoned the existing twenty episodes were terribly fun.

What holds it together – what makes the show extraordinary, in fact, is Tatiana Masalany. It’s perhaps worth mentioning the show’s premise here. Basically, there are clones. Tatiana Masalany thus plays, over the course of the first two seasons, five major characters and an assortment of more minor ones. She acquits herself with the same sort of distinction that marks Patrick Troughton’s performance in Enemy of the World – one so good that you can go long stretches not thinking about the dual role. Each of her characters is bracingly distinct: British grifter, soccer mom, scientist, homicidal Ukrainian religious fanatic, CEO, and so on, and she makes them feel different.

The show is also pleasantly aware of its own best trick, which it hits upon early in its run and wisely never lets go of. It consistently crackles when it contrives to have Masalany play one of her characters pretending to be another. This, thankfully, is the early premise of the show – Sarah, the grifter, starts by impersonating Beth, a Canadian cop who commits suicide at the start of the first episode, and in the process gets pulled into the mystery Beth was investigating, namely “what’s up with all these clones?” Before long Sarah is impersonating other clones, and the show is having other clones get in on the impersonations (most notably, and, satisfyingly, the housewife Alison).…

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Comics Reviews (April 15th, 2015)

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The Legendary Star-Lord #11 (aka The Black Vortex #12)

There’s a metaphor here in Kitty’s reluctant but inevitable embrace of the Black Vortex and decision to become a cosmic entity despite the fact that the power will inevitably destroy her. I think it’s a metaphor for how I keep paying money for this fucking story.

Thor #7

I want to like this book, especially given the caliber of the people who hate it. But my underlying objection stands, not least as it becomes increasingly obvious that Roz Solomon is Thor, which was always the most obvious choice. I mean, they may yet subvert it, but at this point, if they subvert it, it’s going to be a cheap twist, and if they don’t, it’s going to be so obvious that it wasn’t worth doing a mystery. Either way, this is a yawn.

Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #7

Fun, although I feel like the two plot thread aspect of the book ended up being a bit of a weakness here, with each plot feeling like it wanted about four more pages. Still, it’s called “Kick ‘Splode,” and it does what it says on the tin.

Loki: Agent of Asgard #13

It’s always terribly fun looking at a creator across books, especially when you see the same basic themes and reflections on storytelling cropping up in Doctor Who and Loki. Not that those are two books that exist that far apart from each other in the grand conceptual scheme of things. In any case, a climax, and the point where Ewing finally moves the book completely out of Gillen’s shadow, which, to be fair, is the sort of thing that really should take thirteen or so issues to do, given the size of that shadow. Fun stuff, and a nice setup for Secret Wars. (A side comment – it’s genuinely weird to have Hickman’s lead-up to Secret Wars dry up at this point. I know there’s two more issues coming, and I’m sure they’ll be long on blood and thunder, but it’s still a strange gap, and one that casts an odd shadow over the rest of Marvel.)

Ms. Marvel #14

The twists here are predictable, but generally in the sense of “it’s a classic because it works.” Still, for this book that’s a middling issue, and it was a really good week of comics, so here in the rankings this lands.

Uncanny X-Men #33

There are moments where Bendis’s propensity for avoiding normatively “big” moments in favor of little ones really pay off, and a “Kitty Pryde and Illyana Rasputin go on a road trip to Monster Island” issue as the penultimate installment of his Uncanny X-Men run is a prime example. Completely and utterly delightful.

Crossed Badlands #75 (aka Homo Tortor #1)

As Moore does future Crossed, Gillen does prehistoric Crossed. There’s something more than a little Tales of the Black Freighter about this, with its parallel timeframes and sense of impending doom. It’s only a first issue, and there’s much that’s going to have to develop, but it’s a big, fascinating conceptual start that parallels both the latest WicDiv (with its idea of human civilization having had various failed starts in prehistory) and Moore’s Crossed work.…

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“Heir Apparent”: Brothers

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Previously on The Brent Spiner Show…

Well, that’s the obvious reading, is it not? “Brothers” is the limit case for Brent Spiner’s incredible versatility as an actor, playing three completely different characters all of whom interact with each other during the same scenes. And there’s no two ways around it, Spiner is simply masterful, effortlessly shifting between Data, Lore and the surprisingly alive (temporarily) Doctor Noonian Soong. It’s the latter of those roles that’s worth speaking the most of here, as it provides the first genuine challenge Star Trek: The Next Generation has thrown at Spiner since he joined the show. It’s not that Spiner’s talents were ever not self-evident: He’s great as Data, obviously, and the way he works his penchant for impersonations into the android’s inherent mutability and impressionable nature is a stroke of genius. And his love of playing unreconstructed psychopaths is on record, as is his profoundly chilling skill at it: That’s pretty much who Lore is here again, and there’s another episode coming up next year that gives Spiner even more room to play in this regard.

But it’s the brilliant, eccentric and aged Doctor Soong that’s of the most interest, because it’s a role manifestly different from the sort of thing Spiner’s played on Star Trek: The Next Generation to date. In fact, Spiner even says he was uncertain how to play the part until he saw himself in the old age makeup, and then it immediately came to him. So, he credits the character of Doctor Soong as much to Michael Westmore as to himself, if not more so, a touching reminder of how much of television is really a group effort. And let’s not forget, of course, the herculean efforts the camera crew and director Rob Bowman had to go through to get Brent Spiner to appear on camera in three different places at once. And Spiner’s performance itself is predictably wonderful: We definitely get the sense that this is a person who’s possessed of great confidence and ambition who, while old age has caught up with him and slowed him down, is as sharp and wry as ever. It’s instantly memorable and one of Spiner’s most iconic performances, really removing whatever upper limit might have been arbitrarily placed on his acting range.

I’ll talk a little bit about Lore as well, because it’s really this episode that sets in motion all the cool stuff the show does with his character from here on out that I particularly like. It’s also the episode that sort of codifies the version of Lore’s personality that sticks and that I associate most with him (not to mention a good deal of Data’s subsequent character arc, particularly in terms of his relationship to Soong). Lore’s not merely a generic evil twin or a violent, thuggish backstabber as Gene Roddenberry wrote him in “Datalore” this time. Here, he’s a clearly twisted and genuinely wicked character who manages to be truly chilling, singing random stanzas from old folk songs, perhaps befitting his name (the song is the frequently-quoted, and just as frequently misquoted, “Abdul Abuldul Amir”.…

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Public Service

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Might as well put this up too…

Been watching a PBS documentary about the Scottsboro Boys.  The narration does everything it can to infantilise the Communists who got involved, to downplay their contribution, to chalk it up to cynical opportunism, to suggest their involvement did more harm than good, etc. 

The basically accurate account of events makes it clear, however, that it was the involvement of communists (and other people who got involved because communists made the case an issue) which ultimately led to the Scottsboro defendants getting even the meagre amount of justice and freedom they did. 

Towards the end, the narration says “not protests or marches or newspaper articles but simply time itself” brought Alabama to free most of the defendants… which, if you stop to think about it, is an absolutely out-fucking-rageous thing to say.  As if just waiting for a while would’ve freed the defendants by itself.  As if the Alabama ‘justice system’ would’ve seen the light eventually even if nobody had ever kicked up a ruckus about it.  As if the Alabama racists didn’t need to be opposed and fought and exhausted and embarassed into submission.

The message is clear: don’t fight injustice, or protest about it, or write about it, or do anything that could be considered political agitation.  That’ll just make you a cynical opportunist doing more harm than good – like the Communists.  Just shut up and wait.  Time and the system will heal all problems.  Then we can look back on it all nostalgically, with a sense of our own modern-day superiority, and call what happened a ‘tragedy’ (the title of the documentary is ‘Scottsboro – An American Tragedy’).

Also been looking at another PBS documentary about what a humanitarian Herbert Hoover was.  This is the guy who basically tricked loads of people into contributing to a charity scam.  People donated to his fund to relieve starvation in wartime Belgium.  But he charged the Belgians for the food and denied relief to areas that couldn’t pay. 

He pulled a similar trick with the Russian famine after the Civil War.  The documentary refers to this as a natural disaster exacerbated by the policies of the Bolsheviks.  Of course.  But the famine was the big deal it was, and the Bolsheviks were forced to take some of the measures they did (some of which were disastrous) because the famine came after (and partly as a result of) the Russian Civil War, which was basically a West-sponsored attempt to unseat the new Bolshevik government.  The Americans and the British (largely owing to the agitation of Winston Churchill… who was rather fond of using famines as political tools) not only invaded Russia themselves, but also sponsored the invasion of Russia by a bunch of counter-revolutionaries who were essentially proto-fascists.  They rampaged through Russia using tactics that put the much-more-talked-about ‘Red Terror’ (which was defensive) in the shade. 

Hoover took advantage of the famine to attack Bolshevik Russia.  He hated the new regime because it had cancelled deals he had planned in Tsarist Russia (along with a British capitalist partner) which would have made him one of the richest men on Earth. …

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Who’s Jack Voting For?

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Might as well put this up.

I consider it a moral obligation to vote against the current coalition, and to maximise any impact such a vote might have… which is why, despite the fact that I loathe and despise the Labour Party, I would vote Labour were I in a constituency where such a vote might conceivably contribute towards a Labour victory. 

As it happens, I live in a constituency that has been a solid Tory seat for generations.  Really, where I live they’d elect a dog turd if it had a blue rosette stuck on it.  In fact, when I look at the robotic, empty-headed drone and waste of clothes who currently ‘represents’ me in Parliament, I think they did.

The nearest possible challengers to the Tories in my constituency are the Yellow Tories, whom I am proud to say I have never voted for in my life, not even tactically, not even in 2010 when lots of ostensibly left-leaning useful idiots tried to bully me into voting LibDem, saying (ludicrously as I pointed out at the time – something which I have since very much enjoyed being proved right about) that doing so would block the Tories.

So I shall be free to vote some non-Labour, non-coalition option.  Green probably, since they’re usually the only thing on my ballot paper that looks even vaguely left-wing (despite my issues with their lack of connection to the working class or unions, and their record of selling out workers the moment they acquire even the sniff of power).

I would be perfectly within my moral rights to abstain from voting given this depressing scenario.  Even what I feel is my moral duty to vote anti-Coalition doesn’t fool me into thinking that my vote will mean anything.  Like millions of people who have been effectively disenfranchised by our rigged system and its varigated monopoly of neoliberal parties, I would be accused of ‘apathy’ by assorted finger-wagging smuggos if I abstained.  But abstention is a morally defencible option.  It just isn’t one I feel I can take at the moment.

So I shall hold my nose, vote Green (probably) and then go home and vigorously wash my hands in scalding hot water and bleach, feeling simultaneously dirty and relieved that I managed to do what I consider to be the least possible amount of evil.

Ain’t democracy inspiring?…

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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 1.10: Fire and Blood

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In case you missed it, I reviewed “The Wars to Come” last night.  I’ll do “The House of Black and White” if the Patreon is at $280 by the time it airs – it’s currently at $275.

State of Play

The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly:
The Direwolves, Catelyn Stark, Robb Stark
The Lions, Jaime Lannister and Tyrion Lannister
Lions of King’s Landing: Cersei Lannister
Dragons of the Dothraki Sea: Daenerys Targaryen
Bears of the Dothraki Sea: Jorah Mormont
Mockingbirds of King’s Landing: Petyr Baelish
Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow
Direwolves of King’s Landing: Sansa Stark, Arya Stark
Kraken of Winterfell: Theon Greyjoy
Direwolves of Winterfell: Brandon Stark
Stags of King’s Landing: Joffrey Baratheon
Dogs of King’s Landing: Sandor Clegane
The episode is in fifteen parts. The first is one minute long and is set in King’s Landing. The opening shot is of Ice dripping with the blood of Lord Eddard Stark. 
The second is three minutes long and is set in Winterfell. The transition is by family, from Arya to Bran. 
The third is two minutes long and is set in the Stark camp. The transition is by family, from Bran to Catelyn and Robb. 
The fourth is five minutes long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by family and dialogue, from Catelyn telling Robb they have to get his sisters back to Sansa at Joffrey’s court. 
The fifth is five minutes long and is set in the Stark camp. The transition is by family, from Sansa to Robb. 
The sixth is seconds long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by family, from Jaime to Cersei. 
The seventh is three minutes long and is set in the Lannister camp. The transition is by family, from Cersei to Tywin and Tyrion. 
The eighth is five minutes long and is set in the Dothraki Sea. The transition is by hard cut, from Tyrion to an establishing shot of the Dothraki camp. 
The ninth is one minute long and is set on the Wall. The transition is by family, from Daenerys Targaryen to Jon Snow. 
The tenth is one minute long and is set in the Lannister camp. The transition is by hard cut, from the open gate of Castle Black to Shae helping Tyrion pack.
The eleventh is two minutes long and is set on the Wall. The transition is by hard cut, to Shae climbing onto Tyrion to Jon riding south.
The twelfth is three minutes long and is set in the Dothraki Sea. The transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Daenerys Targaryen. 
The thirteenth is eight minutes long and is in sections; it is set in King’s Landing. The first section is three minutes long; the transition is by image, from a shot through the door of Daenerys’s tent to a shot of Grandmaester Pycelle sitting in a doorway, and by dialogue, with Pycelle talking about the Mad King. The second is two minutes long; the transition is by hard cut, from Pycelle’s door to Littlefinger standing, staring at the Iron Throne.
…

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“I’m not human”: Suddenly Human

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The fourth season sees the comparatively swift assembly of the team that will be the primary creative figures in Star Trek for the next four years, and in a few cases, even longer. Michael Piller, Ronald D. Moore and René Echevarria are the only survivors from the chaos of the third season, with Rick Berman maintaining the day-to-day duties he’s had since the show began, as essentially an intermediary between the writing staff and Paramount Corporate. Brannon Braga is the first new addition, coming on as a staff intern over the summer. Later in the year they’ll be joined by Naren Shankar, whose work we’ll be seeing more of when we get to season five and beyond.

The biggest and most important new face of the year, however, we get to meet now. Jeri Taylor, who will go on to be co-executive producer of Star Trek: The Next Generation and co-creator of Star Trek Voyager, joins the team with this episode at the recommendation of outgoing producer Lee Sheldon (the Michael Wagner of the fourth season). Taylor herself freely admits she knew absolutely nothing about Star Trek before she was asked to come in and clean up “Suddenly Human”, though she was a veteran of television drama and, between this episode and her first proper submission she went back and watched basically every bit of filmed Star Trek ever produced to prepare herself for the gig. Perhaps as a result, “Suddenly Human” feels conceptually a bit like a a brand-new show trying to find its footing and to parse out what works and what doesn’t. It’s elevated, of course, by the by-now seasoned cast and crew who throw together a thoroughly solid and competent outing, albeit one that’s also somewhat middling and unremarkable.

The uncertain nature of “Suddenly Human” manifests most clearly when you try and piece out what sort of story it actually is. How do you choose to read it? Is this a Captain Picard story about forcing him to come to terms with his dislike of children so that he can adopt the role of a father figure? This is the reading that seems to stem most directly from the show’s new post-“Best of Both Worlds”, post-“Family” mandate for “inner conflict”. And this is also, it should be stated, a manifestly different sort of conflict then the show has been playing with in the recent past, although it’s still one that’s very much complimentary. When, for example, Ron Moore and Ira Steven Behr like to lather on the conflict, they tend to prefer making people argue and fight one another, or putting them in situations that call their judgment into question, thus making characters we thought we knew seem dangerous and unpredictable. It’s a very proto-90s grimdark approach to conflict, which makes sense given Ira Behr will go on to become one of the pre-eminent architects of 90s grimdark on television.

What we seem to be more interested in now, however, at least for the moment, is forcing characters to confront their inner demons, preferably over and over again for our amusement because actually having them heal and move beyond them isn’t good drama apparently.…

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The Wars to Come

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This review exists because of the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Further eviews of Season Five of Game of Thrones are contingent on the Patreon reaching $300. However, since I suspect a $25 jump in one week is unlikely, I’ll do “The House of Black and White” if it’s at $280 by the time the episode airs. (I’ll then set a higher amount – probably $290 – for “High Sparrow,” and then stop if we’re not at $300 by “Sons of the Harpy.”) You can support this and the other work I do here (and, you know, my putting food on my table, what with this being my job and all) right here at this link.

State of Play

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

Lions of Pentos: 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
Roses of King’s Landing: Margaery Tyrell
Burning Hearts of the Wall: Stannis Barratheon, Mellisandre
Ships of the Wall: Davos Seaworthy
Archers of the Wall: Samwell Tarly
Direwovles of the Eyrie: Sansa Stark
Paws of the Wall: Tormund Giantsbane
Flowers of the Wall: Gilly
Spiders of Pentos: Lord Varys
Shields of the Eyrie: Brienne of Tarth
Swords of Mereen: Dario Noharis
Butterflies of Mereen: Missandei
Stags of King’s Landing: Tommen Barratheon

Winterfell is abandoned (but has fallen to the Boltons).

The episode is in ten parts. The first runs four minutes and is set in the Westerlands. The first image is of a young Cersei and her unnamed friend walking through the mud.

The second runs three minutes and is set in King’s Landing; the transition is by character, from young Cersei to Cersei of the present day.

The third runs three minutes and is set in Pentos; the transition is by dialogue and family, from Jaime and Cersei talking about Tyrion to Tyrion.

The fourth runs five minutes and is set in Mereen; the transition is by implication, from Varys and Tyrion to where they’ll be heading. It features the death of White Rat, an Unsullied, whose throat is slit.

The fifth runs five minutes and is set at the Wall; the transition is by image, from the Unsullied armory, and specifically a wall of shields to Jon Snow training recruits in the yard at Castle Black, the first image being a sword striking a shield.

The sixth runs three minutes and is set in the Eyrie; it is in two sections. The first section runs one minute; the transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Sansa. The other runs two minutes; the transition is by contrast, from Robin and his inadequacy as a fighter to Brienne. At the episode’s halfway point, Sansa and Tyrion discuss strategy as their cart wheels past Brienne and Pod.

The seventh part runs six minutes and is set in King’s Landing; it is in two sections. The first runs three minutes; the transition is by dialogue, from Littlefinger discussing Cersei to Cersei herself.…

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Saturday Waffling (April 12th, 2015)

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Today’s waffles are served up courtesy of Jacob Solstice, who makes music, which you can listen to here. The album is called Warrior Kid Meets the Fuzz, which is, if nothing else, entertaining.

If the Patreon, currently at $273, can get that extra $27 of momentum and get to $300 a week, I’ll do Game of Thrones Season Five reviews, much like the Doctor Who reviews that started the Patreon off. A “State of Play” for each episode, followed by a more traditional review, up as fast as I can after the episodes air. I’ll do “The Wars to Come” tomorrow night either way, as a preview, and then we’ll have until next Sunday to get up there, in which case I’ll do “The House of Black and White.”

Until then, between what we know about Season Five and A Feast for Crows/A Dance with Dragons (and let’s go with, as a level of spoiler, anything that is either in or deducible from things HBO or Martin have officially released is fair game in comments), what are you most looking forward to this season?

(For my part, I’ll go with the seemingly very real possibility that Tyrion will be meeting Daenerys instead of spending a book ostentatiously failing to find the plot.)…

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Alien Architecture (The Last War in Albion Part 91: Steve Parkhouse, Terraces)

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This is the third 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: The artist of The Bojeffries Saga, Steve Parkhouse, had a long and varied career in British comics, working, at various points, on Doctor Who, The Black Knight, and Night Raven.

“Alien architecture. Made by giants for a never-ending war. Perpetual war.” – Grant Morrison, Nameless

Parkhouse, like his fellow Steve Moore, is one of the great strange men of British comics. Both serve to give the subtle and unsettling sense of the British comics industry prior to 1979 as a sort of graveyard of strange magicians, a vast collection of visionary weirdos content to be near-completely overlooked. Although Parkhouse does not share the Moores’ or Morrison’s active and public identification as a magician, he is as self-evidently one as exists. This is perhaps most clear in his often overlooked fantasy strip for Warrior, The Spiral Path. Like his Black Knight and Doctor Who work, there is an oddly shamanistic quality to The Spiral Path – it is a comic that is based heavily on intense visuals, at times at the expense of entirely clear plotting.
Figure 692: The ancient hill where Ruad hides Galbrain, one of many
lush and mythic landscapes in The Spiral Path. (By Steve Parkhouse, in
Warrior #1, 1982)
The Spiral Path is, on one level, a fairly straightforward bit of sword-and-sorcery fantasy in the tradition of Conan the Barbarian, or, to pick something perhaps somewhat closer to its conceptual terrain, Elric of Melniboné. It opens with a bombastic narration about how “the land of Tairngir had been invaded by hostile forces… after many years of battle, King Galbrain was deposed, his armies destroyed by magic and madness. Sick and dispirited, the King and a handful of warriors took flight and now approached the furthermost borders…” and the first installment largely focuses on Galbrain’s travels as he meets a druid, Ruad, who shelters Galbrain in “an old hill dwelling” full “of mine-workings and tunnels.” Galbrain obligingly retreats, at which point it is revealed that the armies that have been pursuing Galbrain have followed, and there are thousands marching upon the hill. 
Figure 693: Caed must kill the druid who saved him. (By Steve Parkhouse,
from The Spiral Path, in Warrior #4, 1982)
But the story this seems to set up – of a King fighting to reclaim Tairngir against seemingly insurmountable odds – never quite materializes. Galbrain is essentially absent from the remainder of the tale. The next two chapters focus primarily on the twin sacrifices of the druid, Ruad, who first sends his crow, Caed, to fly forth, tying a message to his leg and telling him to “bear this spell with you, in the hope it may reach the ears of the one who dreams us all… the one who may some day awaken,” and the warrior Nuada, who dies facing a fearsome giant.
…

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