Eruditorum Press

Join the Eruditorum Press Discord Server: https://discord.gg/fRphKMdGwn

The Mind Robber Commentary

5

I’m pleased to announce that the second of my Doctor Who commentary tracks, on the classic Patrick Troughton serial The Mind Robber, is now available. Thanks to Jack Graham for joining me for the fun once again.

These commentary tracks will continue through the eleven stories promised by the Kickstarter, and will continue past that assuming the Patreon is over $300 a week by that point.

The tracks are available here, in a zip file containing commentaries for all five episodes. Please enjoy, and do let me know how you like them.…

Continue Reading

Comic Reviews (March 25th, 2015)

27

From worst to best of what I willingly paid money for. Also, the Mind Robber commentary will be coming out tomorrow afternoon – was going to edit it all tonight, but I’m falling asleep at the keyboard, so I’ll finish tomorrow.

Multiversity: Ultra Comics #1

The concept, of course, is just that of the classic The Monster at the End of this Book. But I want to raise a larger issue here – this is the issue of Multiversity that’s been most hyped – the “hypnotic induction” and “haunted” comic, which is literally dangerous to read. But if we take Morrison’s larger philosophical framework seriously – if, in other words, we accept his vision of how magic works and of what art is – then this is, I think, a flatly unethical comic. Morrison’s beliefs are such that parasitic and vampiric ideas are real things that can cause genuine harm and damage. Given this, unleashing one to feast upon the reader and making the reader’s infection by this idea a necessary part of the popular Multiversity crossover is at best ethically questionable, and worst monstrous of him. It’s clever, but it’s also borderline sociopathic.

The Black Vortex Parts 7-9

The rhythm of this continues to be frustrating – the Nova issue, in particular, felt like a complete digression to try to sell an issue of Nova, which was admittedly not an awful issue, but which is nevertheless frustrating, not least when Marvel’s scheduling means that three issues of this blob out at once. Whereas the “encase Spartax in amber so the Brood can eat people” twist is… thoroughly a delaying tactic and a direction I find myself spectacularly not caring about. Very much a “this is why I hate crossovers” moment.

Chew #47

This did nothing for me. Like, left me completely cold, no real comments to make on any front.

New Avengers #32

Man, remember when you could meaningfully tell the Avengers books apart? Still, this is a good issue, and kills off half the characters I couldn’t ever remember who were, so that’s nice too, because now I presumably don’t have to try. But this is probably the most lackluster beat before Secret Wars – too far before it to actually reveal much, but close enough that one feels impatient. This is a fine comic, but one suspects it is sound, fury, and a distinct lack of signification.

Gotham Academy #6

Interesting, and I like the last twist, but ultimately, the problem with being unable to remember any characters’ backgrounds I’ve had here is too entrenched, and I think I’m going to drop this in favor of trade-waiting.

Daredevil #14

Fun, nice twist at the end. One gets the sense Waid is working towards a conclusion to this, which is probably for the best, not least because they’ll want a new #1 sometime soon for the Netflix series, but it seems like a good conclusion. I quite like the Owl’s daughter. And Daredevil’s new costume, for that matter.…

Continue Reading

Sensor Scan: Red Dwarf

, , 27

 

This is going to be another of those essays that crop up every now and again where I am 1000% confident my readers know far, far more about the subject matter than I do.

I never watched Red Dwarf. In fact, I’d never even *heard* of it until I started hanging around niche sci-fi analysis blogs four years ago. Apparently, this is something that’s been a huge part of a lot of people’s lives for many years now though, and given there are ten (going on eleven as of this writing) seasons of this show plus a fair amount of tie-in material, there’s no way I could be expected to put together a comprehensive retrospective of this thing, so, sorry in advance. What I’ll try to do instead is briefly take stock of some observations I’ve made about Red Dwarf‘s fandom and how they feel the show fits into the larger narrative of voyaging starship stories.

The curious thing I’ve noticed about Red Dwarf fans, at least the ones I’ve read and from what I’ve been able to discern through my admittedly limited interactions with the fandom, is that they seem to spend more time talking about Star Trek than they do talking about their own show. I have seen Red Dwarf labeled more than a few times as an explicit parody of Star Trek, or as “Britain’s answer to Star Trek: The Next Generation”. The general argument seems to be that while the USian Star Trek: The Next Generation concerned itself with the pretentious, po-faced navel-gazing of a bunch of upperclass neo-colonialists, the British Red Dwarf follows the adventures of two chicken soup machine repairmen (one of whom is actually dead), a malfunctioning AI and the descendant of of race of hyper-evolved cat people stuck together on a ramshackle mining ship three million years from anywhere who are not particularly concerned with terribly much, and certainly not Seeking Out New Life and New Civilizations.

To me, this argument is merely an extension of a pre-existing cultural tension that separates the United States from the British Isles: The unflattering comparison to Star Trek: The Next Generation is typically accompanied by a(n at least implied) statement about the difference in values between the US and the UK, with a tacit premise that UK values are superior due to their self-effacing modesty and lack of jingoistic expansionist fever dreams. It is also, in my opinion, what we would refer to in modern parlance as a “humblebrag” and further evidence of the inane, self-conscious, warlike factionalism of science fiction fans that is but one reason among many that I hate science fiction fans. As much as I’d rather not, I’m going to take some of these accusations seriously, as there is at least one level at which they have something resembling merit.

Star Trek does, in fact, have something of a class problem and it’s one the future creative teams on Star Trek: The Next Generation do actually and explicitly make worse.…

Continue Reading

A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 1.07: You Win or You Die

, 9

A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones is brought to you by my backers at Patreon.

State of Play

The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly:
Direwolves of King’s Landing: Eddard Stark
Stags of King’s Landing: Robert Baratheon, Joffrey Baratheon
The Lion, Jaime Lannister
Lions of King’s Landing: Cersei Lannister
Dragons of Vaes Dothrak: Daenerys Targaryen
Bears of Vaes Dothrak: Jorah Mormont
Mockingbirds of King’s Landing: Petyr Baelish
Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow
Kraken of Winterefll: Theon Greyjoy
Dogs of King’s Landing: Sandor Clegane
The Eyrie is deserted. 
The episode is in eleven parts. The first runs five minutes; it is set at the Lannister encampment in the Riverlands. The opening shot is an establishing shot of the camp. 
The second runs eight minutes and is in sections; it is set in King’s Landing.  The first section is three minutes long; the transition is by family, from Jaime and Tywin Lannister to Cersei. The other is four minutes long; the transition is by hard cut, from Cersei leaving the godswood to a street in Flea Bottom. 
The third runs two minutes and is set in Winterfell; the transition is from Ros to Theon. 
The fourth runs two minutes and is set on the Wall; the transition is by dialogue, from Osha talking about the things north of the Wall to Jon sighting the returning horse of a dead ranger.
The fifth runs seven minutes and is set in King’s Landing; the transition is by family and dialogue, from Jon Snow reacting to Benjen’s empty horse to Ned. It features the death of Robert Baratheon, murdered by a pig (and by Cersei Lannister). 
The sixth runs six minutes and is set in Vaes Dothrak; the transition is by dialogue, from Ned and Varys talking about the order to kill Daenerys to Daenerys and the attempt on her life.
The seventh runs seven minutes and is set on the Wall; the transition is by family, from Jorah to Lord Commander Mormont. 
The eighth runs six minutes and is set in King’s Landing; the transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Ned Stark.
The ninth runs two minutes and is set on the Wall; the transition is by family, from Ned Stark to Jon Snow.
The tenth runs four minutes and is set in Vaes Dothrak; the transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Daenerys Targaryen.
The last runs seven minutes and is set in King’s Landing; the transition is by theme, from Daenerys riding off to take the Iron Throne with King Robert’s assassin being dragged behind her horse to Ned Stark being informed of King Robert’s death and the passage of the Iron Throne to King Joffrey. The final shot is of Ned Stark with Littlefinger’s dagger at his throat, as Littlefinger hisses “Mornington Crescent.” 
Analysis
Given that it is the last episode to feature him in the bulk of it, it is fitting that “You Win or You Die” provides Ned Stark with a classical tragedy in miniature, taking him from his position of relative strength at the end of “A Golden Crown” as someone who has figured out the truth of Jon Arryn’s death and who literally need only succeed in making it into a room with Robert Baratheon and pointing out that Joffrey isn’t his son before he’ll have basically won to being completely and utterly defeated.
…

Continue Reading

Myriad Universes: The Gift

, , , 6

One of the things Star Trek is often praised for going forward is how involved it would get its actors in the creative process. Now admittedly we haven’t seen a ton of that so far, especially where Marina Siritis, Denise Crosby and Gates McFadden have been concerned, but this is beginning to change. Shari Goodhartz recalls specifically consulting Brent Spiner during the production of “The Most Toys” to get his input on how Data should behave, there’s Patrick Stewart’s somewhat infamous alleged meddling in “Captain’s Holiday” and Jonathan Frakes is, of course, now one of the show’s regular top tier directors. Even Denise Crosby was invited to pitch the basic concept of “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, and she’ll be the guiding figure spearheading all her return appearances from now on. Yet Crosby’s is not the marquee name on any of her stories: One thing the cast member’s *haven’t* gotten to do yet is pen their own script themselves.

Until now.

“The Gift” is DC’s first Star Trek: The Next Generation Annual, a special extended length issue published once a year every year for the duration of the book’s run. I always looked forward to these Annual issues for a number of reasons: Firstly, they were always event stories, but not in the contemporary parlance of big, overblown, often incredibly lurid and brutal bits of crossover fanwank. No, for Star Trek: The Next Generation the Annual (and, subsequently the summer event miniseries) is the comic line’s chance to do its “Yesterday’s Enterprise” or “Transfigurations”: That one sublime story that everything sort of builds towards, standing out as the iconic moment of the year. The other reason I tended to look forward to the Annuals is because I never subscribed to any of these books; I bought my comics and magazines at the grocery store (yes kids, once upon a time you could do that) and since the racks were re-stocked just infrequently enough these tended to be the issues you’d see on the shelves most often.

“The Gift” is also none other than John de Lancie’s authorial debut on Star Trek, and naturally, it’s a landmark Q story. In fact, it’s the very best Q story since “Q Who”, if not “Encounter at Farpoint”. It’s a story of unprecedented depth and sophistication from the hand of someone who plainly knows his character better than the staff writers on the TV show do. This is the second story to be included in The Best of Star Trek: The Next Generation and it absolutely deserves it: “The Gift” is a potent mixture and anticipation of “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, “Family”, “Tapestry” and “All Good Things…” and comes damn close to outdoing each and every one of them. It’s a story that’s actually incredibly difficult to explain, so focused is it on dream imagery, hallucinations, memory and alternate timelines. It’s the story that singlehandedly catapults DC’s Star Trek: The Next Generation into the big leagues, conclusively demonstrating that not only is it more then capable of playing on its parent TV show’s level, it can pick up its slack and, if it’s not careful, actually outclass it.…

Continue Reading

Reviewing Doctor Who Episodes Without Having Watched Them: ‘Robots of Sherwood’

, , , , , 4

I saw ‘Deep Breath’ and ‘Into the Dalek’.  Then I stopped watching Series 8.  Welcome to the first in a new series of posts in which I will be revewing the rest of Series 8 without having watched it.

Mark Gatiss, that arch-trickster of modern Doctor Who, has done it again.  In ‘Robots of Sherwood’ he has managed to dupe everyone into thinking he is doing nothing more than simply paying homage to the classic series, while actually flying something far more profound under the fan radar.  Yes, he has armies of robotic Merry Men stalking around Sherwood Forest, their eyes glowing red, holding out their hands and saying “Kill the humans” in calm voices, but that’s where the similarities to ‘Robots of Death’ end.  For a start, these robotic outlaws are the good guys, cleansing the greenwood of the forces of law and order.

The triumvirate of villains in this episode – the Sheriff of Nottingham, Sir Guy de Gisbourne and King John – represent the power of the Norman state, and Robin Hood is a symbol of Saxon resistance.  It’s fitting that they should use a CGI Patrick Troughton to play Robin, since the Second Doctor was always the most anarchic and rebellious, and there’s always been something of Robin in the character of the Doctor.  The CGI is a bit wobbly here and there, but generally it more than adequately captures the nuances of Troughton’s acting style.

The extended use of quotations from Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Plekhanov, Labriola, Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Radek, Victor Serge, Rosa Luxemburg, Gramsci, Lukacs, Herbert Marcuse, Christopher Caudwell, Bakunin, Proudhon, Kropotkin, Maxim Gorky, Adorno, Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin and Brecht liven up the episode no end.  It’s quite remarkable that the BBC should choose to devote such a long stretch of an episode of their flagship family entertainment show to a scene in which various characters learnedly debate revolutionary theory.  But the brave decision pays dividends.  I particularly enjoyed Jenna Coleman’s readings from Minima Moralia.

Jenna is the star of the show here, especially in the scene where she verbally disembowls the Sheriff when he quotes from various sociobiologists, most notably E. O. Wilson.

However, at the end of the day, Gatiss is playing yet another trick on us – albeit a fascinating one – when he launches his extended mediatations on the hermeneutics of revolutionary theory and the radical Enlightenment.  What he’s really up to is a critique of the whole concept of metafiction.  By having his characters display a lumpenly obvious and clunky self-awareness of their own historico-mythic quasi-fictionality, he tackles head on the banality of the pop-postmodern obsession with texts which are reflexively self-referential.  (There’s also, I believe, an encoded critique of Steven Moffat here… I know he and Gatiss don’t get on.)  This ties in with the way in which the functional adequacy of the CGI Troughton implicitly lays bare the limitations of the original actor.

Gatiss’ ultimate project for Doctor Who becomes clear in the powerful mix that he creates for ‘Robots of Sherwood’: a subversive political radicalism joined to a total rejection of the strategy of the self-involved and the self-referential. …

Continue Reading

Saturday Waffling (March 21st, 2015)

5

Mostly announcements today. First of all, I’ve revamped the options on the Patreon a bit, changing around some thresholds for things. Comics reviews are now contingent on the Patreon staying over $200 a week, which we’re comfortably past at the moment. The continuation of the episode commentary podcasts past the initial eleven will be at $300, which we’re near. The Mind Robber will be going up next week sometime, all five episodes at once, on either Tuesday or Thursday depending on when I do the editing. And an extra essay a week is still at $400, which we’re rather a ways from, but which I’d obviously love to reach. That extra essay will be something of a floater, allowing for more idiosyncratic and one-off projects, and for more variety, either in two projects running simultaneously, or in getting through things like A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones faster.

I’ve also added a $5 a week reward tier, whereby backers at that level will get a bunch of extra perks, including free print copies of new books (free ebooks are available at $2 a week), voting for future podcast commentaries, participation in a monthly Q&A, plus joining a rotating sponsorship of Saturday Wafflings, with a link to a site of your choice. You can, as always, back here.

Which brings us to Andrew Morton, sponsor of this week’s Saturday Waffling. He’s chosen the Verity podcast, which is something I’ve, personally, been meaning to check out, as I’ve heard fantastic things about it. I remember meeting one of the women involved at the DePaul University thing a few years ago, and she seemed brilliant and cool, and I just don’t ever have time to listen to podcasts. But the Verity podcast is an all-female Doctor Who podcast that has gotten rave reviews – I know Paul Cornell is a huge fan. So, yes, check them out. Do not make the mistakes I make. And thank you Andrew.

Also, I want to thank all of the backers. The Patreon has been a major help over the last few months, and has made the difference between a slowly dwindling savings account and one that’s mostly growing faster than it contracts. Notably, when Jill’s laptop went to the Great Apple Store in the Sky the other month, this was mostly an inconvenience and not a semi-major crisis. That was due almost entirely to the Patreon. So thank you, everyone. As I’ve said many times, but not nearly enough, I’m incredibly blessed to have this job.

Also, happy spring. (Or autumn, for the southern hemisphere.) What are people excited about over the next three months?…

Continue Reading

Their Almost Sexual Hatred (The Last War in Albion Part 88: The Softly Hissed Tones of a Mafia Hitman, The Liberators)

, 4

This is the sixteenth of sixteen (it grew) parts of The Last War in Albion Chapter Nine, focusing on Alan Moore’s work on V for Vendetta for Warrior (in effect, Books One and Two of the DC Comics collection). An omnibus of all fifteen parts can be purchased at Smashwords. If you purchased serialization via the Kickstarter, check your Kickstarter messages for a free download code.

The stories discussed in this chapter are currently available in a collected edition, along with the eventual completion of the story. UK-based readers can buy it here.

Previously in The Last War in Albion: As Grant Morrison began turning back towards comics in 1984, he started with an unsolicited Kid Marvelman story for Warrior, entitled “October Incident: 1966.” 

“They were friends once, these creatures of near unimaginable power. Now, horns locked, they fight to the death in the pounding rain. There is passion here, but not human passion. There is fierce and desperate emotion, but not an emotion that we would recognize. They are titans, and we will never understand the alien inferno that blazes in the furnace of their souls. We will never grasp their hopes, their despair. Never comprehend the blistering rage that informs each devastating blow. We will never know the destiny that howls in their hearts, never know their pain, their love, their almost sexual hatred. We are only human, and perhaps we will be the less for that.” – Alan Moore, Marvelman

Morrison is blunt about what happened: “Alan Moore had it spiked. He said it was never to be published,” an event Morrison credits for the “slight antagonism” that exists between the two creators. Morrison goes on to claim that Skinn, following his falling out with Moore, “asked me to continue Marvelman,” an opportunity he was tremendously excited by, but that Morrison, when he wrote to Moore asking for his blessing, received back “this really weird letter” beginning “I don’t want this to sound like the softly hissed tones of a Mafia hitman, but back off” and threatening Morrison’s future career if he carried on.
This account of events was flatly denied by Moore three years later in an interview with Lance Parkin for his biography of Moore, saying that it “has no bearing upon reality at all” and defying anyone to produce such a letter. Moore recalled Morrison’s script, saying that “Dez had rather sprung it on me out of the blue, and it didn’t fit in with the rather elaborate storyline that I was creating,” and explaining that he was “almost 100 per cent certain that I never wrote any kind of letter to Grant Morrison, let alone a threatening one,” with Skinn separately clarifying to Parkin that for his part, “I never saw or asked to see the letter Grant got,” but that he “enthusiastically sent Grant’s wonderful little cameo story up to Alan Moore, ill-aware of his growing possessive paranoia.” It is worth noting, however, that Moore and Skinn are, in these interviews, conflating what Morrison depicts as two separate events – Moore’s spiking of Morrison’s spec script, and the separate instance of Morrison being offered the opportunity to take over the main Marvelman strip.
…

Continue Reading

Myriad Universes: Serafin’s Survivors and Shadows in the Garden

, , , 2

Given Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s steadily climbing ratings and popularity, it was only natural that DC would bring the series back to the world of comics for a second volume and greenlight a monthly tie-in comic to go along with its television counterpart. In much the same way then that “Encounter at Farpoint” was the pilot for the series prior, it could be said that DC’s 1987 miniseries was a pilot for this book line. And indeed, DC’s Star Trek: The Next Generation would go on to be so successful it actually outlasted the show it was based on, running well into 1996. It probably could’ve run indefinitely had Paramount not pulled DC’s license in lieu of its ill-advised mid-90s “Paramount Comics” partnership with Marvel.

And furthermore, this series comprises an absolutely *massive* chunk of my personal history with Star Trek: The Next Generation, so there’s simply no way I couldn’t cover it, or indeed no way I could not have it be the dominant form of spin-off media this project explores.

This being comics, one thing that differentiates four-colour Star Trek: The Next Generation from fuzzy VHS Star Trek: The Next Generation, even at this stage, is an overt focus on serialization. While the stories tend to have the same scope of an average TV episode (though there are exceptions), they also tend to be spaced much further apart, sometimes running for months at a time. The two stories we’re looking at today, “Serafin’s Survivors” and its conclusion “Shadows in the Garden”, actually comprise issues 5 and 6 of the monthly series: The line proper began back in the second season and did a few stories set in that period that began to lay the groundwork for what it would become later on, but I chose to start with the third season material because, much as is the case on TV, this era sees the show in a time of transition, slowly evolving into the form it will be most remembered for.

One of the biggest transitions this series makes from the first volume is the addition of Michael Jan Friedman as head writer, who goes on to not unimpressively pen pretty much every single Star Trek: The Next Generation thing DC puts out. He comes in with volume 2 so this isn’t his debut, but it’s his positionality and approach to conceptualizing these characters and this setting that will define a lot of what we’re going to say about this book. We’ll get into that, but first I want to open by saying “Serafin’s Survivors”/“Shadows in the Garden” isn’t actually a personal favourite of mine from Friedman’s run: It’s got a few nice bits here and there, but it isn’t anything amazingly special, is more than a little rocky in some places and not batting at the level I know this series is capable of when it’s going at full tilt.…

Continue Reading

Comics Reviews (March 18th, 2015)

, 9

Comics reviews are a weekly feature provided because my Patreon provides over $200 for every week of blog content. 

From worst to best of what I bought, which wasn’t much this week.

All-New X-Men #39 and Guardians Team-Up #3

Two parts of the largely unwanted Black Vortex crossover this week, and it plods along with the relentless lack of speed that characterizes multi-title crossovers. We’ve at least made it to the point where different books follow different characters, which is something. Curious to see how this works when it buggers off to some distinctly more minor titles come April, losing its anchoring in Guardians of the Galaxy and All-New X-Men. But it’s a fairly intellectual curiosity – this is not particularly interesting, and I’m glad the X-books are now freed up to go work towards the end of Bendis’s run.

Batgirl Endgame

A wordless one-shot that ties Batgirl into some Batman event I don’t entirely understand, but that appears to involve some sort of Joker toxin virus. It’s a slender thing, but worth highlighting this week in particular for an illustration of why spiking that Joker variant cover for Batgirl #41 mattered by demonstrating the virtues of letting Barbara Gordon be resolutely undefined by The Killing Joke, which remains the worst thing Alan Moore has ever written.

Loki: Agent of Asgard #12

One of those issues that sets up interesting things more than it does them – for someone with a better knack for remembering plot lines from recent comics, I suspect the rush of references here is very satisfying and fits together brilliantly. For me, who can’t handle a comic without a recap page, it’s less engaging, although I’m still really interested in where Ewing is going with Loki in the general case.

Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #6

Ultimately, this just repeats the revelation from last month, although now with new details of exactly how it is that Nextwave is being considered in-continuity, where it had previously apparently not been. (That’s news to me, but.) Although the best line is clearly “The Beyonder? Oh god, I should have never taught that guy to poop.” Because remember, kids, while there’s apparently doubt that Nextwave: Agents of HATE, one of the greatest superhero series of the past decade, is in continuity, there’s no doubt at all that Secret Wars II is. Ah, Marvel. I bet next issue will have LOTS MORE PUNCHING.

Batgirl #40

Batgirl defeats the angst-ridden version of herself defined by her disability and victimization so that Gotham City can rock the fuck out. God, I love this New Pop aesthetic of comics.

The Unbeatable Squirrel-Girl #3

I laughed multiple times over the course of this issue, which is really all you can ask for from a comic called The Unbeatable Squirrel-Girl. Much like Batgirl, this is firmly in the New Pop style (see also Spider-Gwen, The Wicked and the Divine, and Sex Criminals), which is worth defining more rigorously, as it’s by miles the most exciting thing going on in comics right now.…

Continue Reading

«‹ 180 181 182 183 ›»