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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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Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Reading Guide

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Longtime Vaka Rangi readers may remember that I have a small tradition of making episode guide/reading list posts whenever I finish covering Big Eras of the project. The hypothetical situation is that someone who is new to the show and yet for some reason *doesn’t* want to marathon binge-watch it as is the standard way of consuming TV these days could theoretically be interested in my recommendations for the best stories so as to emphasize the cream of the crop while avoiding filler and missteps. Each entry has a link to my essay on the story for those who might want to revisit them.

I first did something like this when, following a joke Kevin Burns made to me about Futurama, I was challenged to find “20 Good Episodes” of the Original Star Trek. TOS fans will likely be annoyed as there’s probably more episodes from that show one could recommend (and I *still* would have chosen different episodes after publishing Vaka Rangi Volume 1), but I wanted to limit myself to 20 following the conceit of the game so I was far harsher in my choices than I might otherwise have been. I didn’t do a list post for the Animated Series, but really, you’re pretty much good with anything on that show that wasn’t written by Margaret Armen.

After I finished Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 1, I did another post to drive home my argument that the inagural year was very unfairly maligned and in truth had a robust crop of stories that deserve anyone’s attention. That post also has a list of my picks for the best episodes from the Dirty Pair TV series, as I had recently finished watching it for the first time and was about to start on the Original Dirty Pair OVA Series.

The Dirty Pair franchise itself got what in many ways is the prototype of the post you are about to read today: A master post of all my favourite stories I’d experienced so far, with links to where you could get your hands on copies of your own. It’s not linked from Eruditorum Press, but it’s still archived at my old blog. The links to my essays on all these old posts do link back to the old site, but all of my essays are archived right here too and can be read by searching or following the tags. It’s a bit dated now (especially the webstore links, though Dirty Pair should still all be on YouTube), but my picks are still pretty much the ones I’d pick today.

And so now, having come to the end of a long and winding road revisiting Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, it’s time to give this phase of the project the same dues. Listed below, for your reading pleasure (or perhaps displeasure), are what I consider to be the best Star Trek stories between 1987 and 1996, including TV episodes and comic books.…

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The Proverbs of Hell 11/39: Rôti

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RÔTI: Roast, specifically roasted game birds, but in this case likely a straightforward case of “and now we arrive at the big centerpiece courses.”

HANNIBAL: Someone who already doubts their own identity can be more susceptible to manipulation.Dr. Gideon is a psychopath. Psychopaths are narcissists. They rarely doubt who they are.

DR. CHILTON: Tried to appeal to his narcissism.

HANNIBAL: By convincing him he was the Chesapeake Ripper.

DR. CHILTON: If only I had been more curious: about the common mind.

HANNIBAL: I have no interest in understanding sheep. Only eating them.

One of Hannibal’s more bluntly callous secret confessions. Its unusual viciousness is probably explained by his understandable frustration at having to relate in any way, shape, or form to Chilton. Also interesting is the selection of animals for the metaphor – a departure from the show’s default choice of pigs that flags the particular disdain with which Hannibal holds Chilton.

DR. CHILTON: I thought psychic driving would have been more effective in breaking down his personality.

HANNIBAL: Psychic driving fails because its methods are too obvious. You were trying too hard, Fredrick. If force is used, the subject will only surrender temporarily.

Hannibal is, of course, obliquely discussing his own efforts to make Will Graham believe himself to be a killer. Of course, it’s not as though Hannibal isn’t using force, after all – he literally killed a man to ensure Will’s diagnosis would remain secret. Hannibal’s real point is, as ever, aesthetic – Chilton’s approach was clumsy, heavy-handed, and, most damningly, lacking in elegance.

There’s an odd structure to the episodes from “Trou Normand” through “Releves.” “Rôti” seems to want to follow up directly from “Trou Normand,” flashing back to the totem pole as a metonym for all the murders Will has been looking at, while putting Georgia Madden off to the side. Then “Releves” will pick up the Georgia Madden case, as though it would prefer to follow up on it. Was there a change in episode order? If so, other than the disjuncts, it’s a sensible one that results in Will’s psyche disintegrating further with each episode, but there’s an odd sense of cycling through several parallel stories of Will’s collapse.

Given that the script for “Buffet Froid” compares Will’s misdrawn clock to Dali, it’s fitting that this episode should go with the amusing image of a melting digital clock. Although on the whole the focus on imagery of rushing water for Will’s delusions is slightly odd given that he’s running a fever. Presumably it’s meant as an extension of the frequent motif of Will awakening drenched in sweat, but there’s a clear contrast between last week’s “set his mind on fire” and this week’s flooding. The easiest reconciliation: Will’s delusions are in fact a respite from his illness – he hallucinates water as a means of calming his body down. This is clever, but doesn’t really work.

DR. CHILTON: I can’t take responsibility for your actions, Dr. Gideon.

DR. GIDEON: Sure can. It’s why I’m suing you.

…

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The Lie of the Land Review

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Let’s start with the mid-episode twist, i.e. the point where any hope that Toby Whithouse was going to do anything other than Whithouse all over the damn floor died. At this precise moment, a ton of threads that have been going on for a while are converging. Most immediately, we’re doing the trailered regeneration. We’re also at the climax of the trailered “the Doctor has joined the monks and Bill stands against him” plot, which is the hook this episode was previewed on since the initial Radio Times summaries. And, of course, we’re at the halfway point of the climax of the ballyhooed “Monk Trilogy,” resolving fully three weeks of storytelling. What do we get, then? A scene in which a room full of people literally cracks up that we fell for any of it.

It’s not, obviously, that I mind narrative substitution. I mean, I coined the phrase and all. But the substitution has to actually mean something instead of just being an empty placeholder. The point of narrative substitution is that the second narrative critiques the first one. It’s not just chucking out a plot because you’re bored with it and laughing at the audience for being so naive as to think you might actually have something to say.

And I mean, it’s not as though the Doctor apparently being with the bad guys that have brainwashed the world was a hugely interesting plot as opposed to a hackneyed genre TV standard, but it was something. For a brief moment, just after we learned Missy was in it, it even looked like it might tip into interesting. Bill and Missy teaming up to fight the Doctor? That’s a story worth telling. But even the hackneyed standard of “evil Doctor” would have been something. Hell, even a 1984 knockoff so banal it can’t be bothered to do more than substitute “memory crime” for “thoughtcrime” would have been something. A world whose history has been completely reshaped by the Monks could have been at least interesting. And the script clearly knows that, with its aggressively on-point lines about historical warnings of fascism and fake news. But the one scene that grapples with any of this consists of the Doctor spouting obviously wrong defenses of totalitarian order and Bill making non sequitur replies cribbed from fifty-four years of liberal moralizing in Doctor Who. It doesn’t even try – Bill’s defense of free will is literally just “you made me write a paper about it.”

But OK. At least the episode we’re substituting is Missy. Even Toby Whithouse can’t fuck up “team up with Missy to save the world,” can he? Ha. Of course he can! Sure, Moffat can’t have expected Whithouse to do anything interesting with “Missy tries to turn good,” not least because even Moffat can’t possibly be going to do anything other than the obvious “but she fails” with the concept because the odds of him breaking the concept of the Master in his last year on the program are nil.…

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The Corbynite Manoeuvre

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Okay, first let me apologise for the paucity of long-form written pieces here at Shabgraff lately.  Normal service will (hopefully) be resumed fairly soon, or a proper announcement of some new normal will have to be made.

Next, let me remind you all of the existence of two new(ish) podcasts featuring me. 

There’s a new episode of Oi! Spaceman, in which I join Shana and Daniel to – for reasons that now elude me – talk about ‘The Return of Doctor Mysterio’. HERE.

And there’s a bonus mini-episode of Wrong With Authority, featuring myself in conversation with Daniel about the 2007 David Fincher movie Zodiac. HERE.

We may do more of these (comparatively) short extra episodes in future, with just a couple of us chatting about a movie outside our main sequence.  We’ve decided to call them Footnotes.  Because we’re just so damn cute.

On the subject of podcasts, there are some great Shabcasts coming up, including another Drunken Whocast (which seems to be genuinely becoming a new regular thing) and a fantastic chat between myself and Sam Keeper of Storming the Ivory Tower on Star Wars, Rogue One, etc.  We talked about, amongst other things, fans who say destroying the Death Star was bad because the economy, or something.  As if on cue, someone then wrote an online article arguing that Offred in The Hamdmaid’s Tale doesn’t have it that bad.  Ho hum.  Watch this space, as someone or other used to say.

I’d also like to thank everyone who donates to my Patreon.  It is a genuine source of amazement to me that anyone is prepared to pay even small amounts of money to help me produce my nonsense articles and podcasts, but they do… and god love the poor fools.  I’m not ashamed of asking for contributions, but I cant help ruefully reflecting on the fact that waiters in St. Petersburg during the Russian Revolution started demanding an end to tipping as a degrading custom.

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Now, a word on more current politics.  If you’re in the UK, for god’s sake vote Labour. I don’t expect them to win, but the better their showing, the stronger it makes their position, and the more there is to build on in the future.  Jeremy Corbyn will lose, but if he can lose well, that alone will be worth having, a poke in the eye to a media and political establishment that has concertedly undermined him and pooh-poohed him from day one, and – by extention – the people he represents.  If he stays on as leader even in the face of a defeat, as I expect and hope he will, then the closer-run the election, the better.  Corbyn was, as I have always said, always a gamble and a long game.  But what else have we meaningfully got, other than yet another surrender?  And what have we got to lose?

Is Corbyn’s Labour perfect?  Far from it.  Deeper ideological issues aside, I’m still furious about the manifesto’s acceptance that free movement will have to end. …

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