Eruditorum Press

Stupid games *and* stupid prizes? In this economy?

The Eaters of Light Review

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The nearest precedents for a classic series writer returning to do a new series episode were probably the P.J. Hammond episodes of Torchwood. And indeed, those two episodes provide a handy map to the pros and cons. “Small Worlds” felt brave and refreshing, “From Out of the Rain” like a clumsy collection of random ideas that belonged to a different show. More to the point, they do this without actually being very different as scripts, which goes to show you that the comeback tour is on a knife’s edge in terms of whether it works or not. And while Hammond and Munro are very different writers, The Eaters of Light has similar problems to the Hammond scripts. Most notably, the characterizations are slightly off. Bill has unexpectedly caught Amy Pond’s already fairly idiosyncratic fascination with Roman Britain, only without the “invasion of the hot Italians” explanation. The Doctor, meanwhile, has rolled back two seasons and change of characterization, becoming more surly and uncharitable than he’s been in ages. (Note the two very Series 8 catchphrases – he’s “against” charm and back to calling human lifespans “hilarious.”) Both Hammond and Munro visibly come from a pre-”tone meeting” generation of writers – these aren’t scripts that bother with the idea that your climactic scene has to pay off some thematic thread so that the whole episode is “about” one specific thing. All the stuff I keep saying Toby Whithouse is very good at the formal structure of but never bothers to develop? This episode mostly doesn’t even bother with it.

But that doesn’t answer the question of whether this is any good or not. After all, a forty-five minute episode of Doctor Who is a container that can’t possibly hold all the things a story is supposed to do. Every story has to pass on some aspects to make room for others. So this one is a bit threadbare on the TARDIS crew’s characterization and doesn’t hammer home a theme. What does it do? Well, perhaps unsurprisingly for a returning classic series writer, it splits the TARDIS crew up from the word go, has each side meet a different faction, and then spends a lot of time teasing out the mystery of what’s going on.

Oddly, the result doesn’t feel as much like a classic series throwback as Empress of Mars did. Gatiss is still a new series guy, after all, and wrote an episode built for 45 minutes, with a modern structure, which let the very classic series thematic components shine. This, on the other hand, is so committed to doing its own thing that it doesn’t actually quite feel like anything. Some parts of it are very new series – the entire “this is a myth about why crows caw” aspect is something you’d never see in the 1980s. But this in a lot of regards this doesn’t feel like a classic series throwback because it’s so steeped in an older tradition that it just feels weird instead. It simply doesn’t bother with the modern “move through 2-3 set pieces” structure.…

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E3 2017: Nintendo

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1 Strengthen your body. Staying in good health is the basis of everything

My first thoughts upon watching the opening to Nintendo’s E3 2017 showcase were that their new demographic seems to be athletes. We opened on a montage of weightlifters, strength trainers, boxers and sportspeople all passionately getting ready for their next event. Much as, I would guess, Nintendo themselves do to prep for E3. But then there were those who seemed to not be training for anything in particular, just groups of friends hanging out at the beach or downtown. Maybe those athletes aren’t all career players then. Maybe some of them just do what they do for the love of it.
 
This is a message that speaks to me.
 
There are many schools of faith for which total body fitness is a matter of spirituality, especially in east Asia. You take care of your body, mind and soul because all are emanations of the same sacred whole: Health and wellness of the body is the same as health and wellness of the spirit. This is an ideal to which all of us can work towards, and when we train to improve out bodies it is very much like honing our awareness through meditation. Training is, in fact, a form of meditation and staying strong and in good health are blessings to be grateful for. Training your body is also a form of self-improvement. It is yet one more tool we can use in our quest to become better people every day.
 
After the opening sequence, Reggie Fils-Amie introduces the show by musing on the nature of competition in athletics, and in video games. For many gamers, he says “fun and battle are always locked together”. The game is a challenge to be overcome. But, he reminds us, games can be much more than that. Games can be “a journey to other worlds”. For Nintendo, and for Shigeru Miyamoto (and for me), this has always been true, because it speaks truth. Reggie says to “close your focus, and open your mind” and asks us to remember that it’s not “where you can take your game, but where your game can take you” that’s truly important. This is, and always has been, Nintendo’s philosophy, and mine as well.

2 Childhood’s End

 

 
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 got full reveal trailer. This is a sequel to the original Wii Xenoblade Chronicles (and its re-release on the New Nintendo 3DS), rather than the WiiU Xenoblade Chronicles X. Watching the trailer a few thoughts struck me. One, everyone has Northern English accents for some reason, continuing the series’ tradition of counterintuitive English dub choices that seem to evoke the famously barmy Sixth Generation era of JRPGs Xenoblade seems at once a loving tribute to and evolution from. But secondly, a story about a quest to return to a vanished utopia built upon a constructed World Tree strikes me as a poignantly apt note for a game born from, and supposedly made for, the Japanese anime fandom.
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Shabcast 34 – The Election, Corbyn, the Tories, the DUP, and Grenfell Tower

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Shabcast 34 – download here.

The image across is by Steve Bell and was published in the Guardian.  I’ll take it down if they ask.  But it seemed too brilliantly, horribly perfect to abjure.

This month I’m joined by Kit and James, to talk about the election we had last week (surprise surprise) in which Jeremy Corbyn defied his critics to resurrect the fortunes of Labour and pummel the Tories into a very uncomfortable corner.  We also talk about the horrific Grenfell Tower fire, just had just happened when we sat down to record.

Please share around, tell your friends, etc.  I think we’re all proud of this one.

Credit where its due: this episode very much came about because Kit and James organised it, and James both edited the main body of the episode and supplied the wonderful title.  I’m not even in the episode for half an hour or so.

 

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E3 2017: Bethesda

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E3 this year has been weird for me. At first I wasn’t even going to watch it, resolving to put modern games behind me (except Samurai Warriors) for the foreseeable future, but then the Nintendo Switch started selling like Nintendo stuff does on eBay. So then I was just going to watch Bethesda and Nintendo, and wound up watching Ubisoft and Sony too, the former of which actually did some pretty cool stuff. And yet even so, as I write this, I’m not sure I could point to anything I’ve seen at this year’s E3 that makes me terribly enthusiastic about upcoming releases for the next 18 moths or so, or makes me want to shell out the 300 big ones to get a Nintendo Switch just yet (and “XBOX One X”? Ha. Haha. Hahahahahahahahaha). We’re not getting much in the way of reveals and announcements, more “here’s a thing we announced last year. We’re still making it. Here’s what it looks like now and when it’ll be out”.
 
But none of that, weirdly, actually matters, because, in giving us a more understated and intimate show, E3 this year shows the industry in a healthier place creatively then I’ve seen it in I think *decades*.
 
Even though I watched more then two conferences, I’m still only going to write up Bethesda and Nintendo’s showings, if for no other reason then I didn’t take notes for the others. I’ll mention Microsoft, Sony and Ubisoft at points because they’re relevant to the story of these two houses, which brings me to my first point…
 
I’m titling this simply “Bethesda” instead of “Bethesda Press Conference” because Bethesda actually somehow managed to show up in just about every other show in addition to their own, and they somewhat annoyingly revealed stuff in places that were not their actual event (I would have been royally pissed at Bethesda had I not also watched the Sony show. I still kind of am a bit, but I’ll get to that). Actually, Nintendo did too: Apparently cameos and cross-promotions are the name of the game now, or maybe that says something about the position these two companies now have within the industry.
 
But they sure started strong. I really appreciated this candid showcase of interviews with developers and their children talking about why they love making video games and why they find it important, meaningful creative work that makes them feel proud to bring joy to people. Pete Hines spelled it out in his intro, saying that Bethesda makes games for everyone by delivering experiences unlike anything else, tying the whole presentation together with a fun mock-Disneyland theme. That Bethesda went with a Disneyland motif this of all years is just one of those fun little bits of synchronicity that tickles me whenever I notice it, and Pete Hines’ sentiments echo Nintendo’s classic manifesto (hi UESP *waves*), and set the tone for the best of E3 this year.
 
We first got another look at Bethesda’s virtual reality offerings, VR now being an established platform for many gamers who are not as poor as me.
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Proverbs of Hell 12/39: Relevés

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RELEVÉS: Properly “removes,” but best understood in the sense of a relief pitcher, with the idea being that the course replaces the previous one. In practice, it is the big set-piece course, and so functioning much the same way that “Rôti” did.

GEORGIA MADCHEN: They say what’s wrong with you?

WILL GRAHAM: Just the fever. They’re trying to find out what else.

GEORGIA MADCHEN: They won’t find anything. They’ll keep looking and keep giving you tests and keep giving you false diagnosis and bad medicine. But they won’t find anything wrong. They’ll just know you’re wrong. (Pause) I hope you have good insurance.

One assumes the FBI has decent insurance, but it’s a delightful joke and, given how little time we actually get to spend with an on-the-mend Georgia, probably the key

The sense of being wrong, as opposed to having something wrong with you, is a deep-seated fear for Will. It’s worth recalling his description of the Chesapeake Ripper as “one of those pitiful things sometimes born in hospitals” that fails to die, a description that puts Hannibal in much the same place.

GEORGIA MADCHEN: They said I might remember what I did. I don’t want to remember.

WILL GRAHAM: You know what you did, Georgia.

GEORGIA MADCHEN: But I don’t remember it. I don’t remember it like I did it. It feels more like some horrible dream where I killed my friend.

Thankfully this comes well after Moffat’s use of a similar line in “The Wedding of River Song,” and so we can safely conclude that any influence was on Fuller and company as opposed to the other way around. Nevertheless, this serves as a late echo of the themes of identity and memory in “Rôti.” What’s striking is the aspirational approach that Hannibal takes to the conjunction of memory and identity. Georgia wants to  control what she remembers so she can control who she is.

HANNIBAL: Silkie chicken in a broth. A black boned bird prized in China for its medicinal value since the 7th century. With wolfberries, ginseng, ginger, red dates and star anise.

WILL GRAHAM: You made me chicken soup.

The script calls says, “Hannibal offers a supportive smile. Of course he did,” but Mikkelsen’s reaction, which is considerably funnier, has him looking slightly miffed at Will’s reductiveness. Would Hannibal still have turned on Will if he hadn’t insulted his soup? Probably, but still.

It’s also notable that the black boned chicken makes this one of the rare meals we can confirm is non-cannibalistic. (Although “a broth” offers some concern.)

Amusingly obscured from all subsequent discussion of this murder is how Hannibal successfully tampered with Georgia’s oxygen chamber to both remove her grounding bracelet and slip a plastic comb in. This is probably for the best, as calling attention to it would damage the “he might not literally be the devil” interpretation that the show takes such tortured pains to maintain the faint plausibility of.

Given that Georgia’s issues with memory provide a thematic counterpoint to Gideon, it’s a pity room for her couldn’t be found in “Rôti,” as her swift incineration in this episode seems like a waste of a character who, while she probably didn’t have a substantial arc in her, was still probably good for a few more scenes.…

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Empress of Mars Review

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In what seems likely to be his last script for the series, Mark Gatiss finally manages to get ruthlessly trad Doctor Who to work in the new series. Sure, we’ve had straight-up bases under siege and throwbacks, but most of those were at their root prettified versions – what people thinking back to the highlights of Doctor Who half-remember the series as being. But this is what the series actually was – a quaintly stagey morality play in a cave. More than, I think, any new series episode to date you could imagine this one with Jon Pertwee in it. Sure, the Victorian expedition would be down to about five people and you wouldn’t do the pop culture jokes, but this belongs to the series that made Colony in Space, The Mutants, and, yes, The Curse of Peladon in a way the new series simply hasn’t before.

It’s easy to make this sound like an unimpressive trick – and it’s not like the three stories I listed there make many people’s top ten lists. (Though I think they’re all underrated.) But, and I really want to stress that I’m not damning with faint praise here, one need only look at how long Mark Gatiss has spent trying to make Doctor Who feel like the Pertwee era to see that it’s not even remotely easy to make something simultaneously feel like 1972 and not feel like a jarring mess in 2017.

Part of what makes it work is what always made me less pessimistic about the Gatiss episode this year – the fact that Victorian explorers fighting Ice Warriors on Mars is so utterly, pathologically Gatiss that it holds things together. What’s interesting, then, is that it’s an idea it’s impossible to actually imagine Letts and Dicks going for. It’s not that it’s too gonzo for the production team that brought us The Claws of Axos, but it’s gonzo in the wrong way. Literally nobody but Mark Gatiss would ever suggest it. But more to the point, it’s too unvarnished in its political critique – when the Pertwee era did the Empire it was as the “Earth Empire,” and already in its collapse phase. Actually doing the Victorians and treating them as invaders would have been too much. (Although to be fair, part of why this feels so Pertwee is that “Earth invades Mars” turns out to be indistinguishable from The Sea Devils aside from the costumes.
The irony, though, is that of course this isn’t a critique Gatiss wants to push too far either. He puts the obligatory lines in, sure. And the basic conflict between Godsacre and Catchlove is a critique of Victorian culture. But he’s not Peter Harness, and he’s not going to do a rigorously political episode any more than he’s going to bother characterizing Bill in more depth than “the one that makes pop culture references.” Given the choice between biting political allegory and riffing on Edgar Rice Burroughs some more, or indeed between most things and riffing on Edgar Rice Burroughs some more, it’s not hard to guess what’s going to win.…

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Hung Over

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So, interesting times, huh. 

Actually, incredible times.

The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn fights the Tories to a hung parliament after years in the wilderness.  Go back in time and tell me that in early 2015 and I’d laugh in your face.  Not because I ever had anything but respect for Corbyn.  I’ve always considered him a man of seriousness, principle, and dedication.  And not becaue I think left-wing policies (or what passes for them these days) can’t sway people, can’t be popular, can’t win elections.  They can, and do. 

(The truth is that, spread out across Labour, the SNP, Plaid Cymru – and taking into account the many people who vote LibDem for left-liberal reasons, and the many more people who abstain because they’re too left-wing to feel represented by any party, even if they themselves don’t necessarily understand themselves that way – the majority of the British public are to the left to some degree.  As Milton Friedman once bewailed, the public are irretrievably collectivist.)

No, I’d have laughed primarily because I would never have thought Corbyn would be able to get the nominations to stand for the leadership; and then I’d never have believed that the incurably cowardly and centrist Labour Party would elect him.  But he got those nominations – essentially because of a prank – and then the Labour membership stepped up.  Moreover, the people who had either been alienated from the party, or never attracted to it in the first place, owing to the poisonous legacy of Blairism, began flooding to join. 

Initially, the Corbyn group showed serious lapses of judgement and competence.  Many of these were probably inevitable when people with no experience of party leadership started trying to lead a party in adverse circumstances… but, it must be said, many others were avoidable and unforced. 

Even so, the main drag factors causing Corbyn’s persistently low polling and approval numbers in the pre-election period were the systematic media bias against him (across the spectrum from the hard right tabloids to the BBC to the supposedly left-wing Guardian, they either left what he said unreported or misrepresented him, often to the point of simple and outright fabrication) and the resistance from inside his own Parliamentary Party.  The comical palace coup failed to unseat Corbyn, as we know.  And there we saw a first real glimpse of the man’s grit, as he faced down not only a jeering David Cameron but a hefty chunk of his own party (his PLP being largely a bunch of centrists at best), going on to win a second leadership election with an increased majority.

Even so, most commentators expected – along with Theresa May, clearly – that Corbyn would lead the low-polling Labour Party over the cliff and into oblivion in this election.  Such is the unassailability of the entrenched and religiously-believed dogma of the neoliberal normal.  So imagine their astonishment when Corbyn started closing the gap – spectacularly.  The one difference being that, in election season, any media with any desire to pretend impartiality are more or less obliged to give coverage to both sides. …

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To The Future

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With the publication of my essay on Ill Wind Part 4 and my Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Reading Guide (which just went up earlier today here, in case you missed it), Vaka Rangi has officially left the TNG/DS9 period.

I said it before (in the Species essay), but this means my positionality is gone from Star Trek more or less for good. And I’ll be honest, when I was first planning Vaka Rangi in 2013, my initial plans for the project were *limited* to this 1987-1994 (and a bit after) period. I had no intention of covering the Original Series, the Animated Series, the movies, Voyager, the Dominion War or anything else. That I’ve managed to stretch the project out for this long still quite frankly amazes me. The fact of the matter is I really don’t have many more places to go with Star Trek. With Ill Wind, I’ve basically said all I wanted to say. I did what I set out to do.

I do have some stuff to say about Enterprise and I’m working on the early stages of a rough outline of an angle for the Voyager and Dominion Wars years that will lead into that (and in fact a portion of the book I’m currently editing was intended to set that up)…But it’s far from ready, and I’m far from confidant I’ve got a strong enough handle on the material and how I want to convey it such that the final product would be anything resembling coherent or erudite. Vaka Rangi from here on out would basically be an entirely different project from what it was up to today, so I need time to work out how to manage that transition in a vaguely elegant way.

Ill Wind may not be the last thing I ever write about Star Trek, but it will probably be the last for a *very* long time.

I’m deep into the planning and pre-production process of my next large-scale blog project that will succeed Vaka Rangi, and trust me, it’s every bit as overreaching and overambitious as this has been. I’m really excited to start work on this, such that it’s distracting me from day-to-day work, and I can’t wait to share it all with you. The problem is…I have to wait, and so will you, because I have to physically *go* somewhere to do fieldwork for this, and I won’t be able to do that until April 2018. So the project has to wait for at least another 11-12 months.

Permanent Saturday will continue, and so will Hyrule Haeresis (but there’s only three more entries of that left, so I’m pacing them out), and in the meantime, I still have a YouTube channel about video games, and I’m going to use this time to focus on building and nurturing that. My first two videos are on Spelunx and the Caves of Mr. Seudo by Cyan Worlds, and a commentary track on the same.…

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