Why I hated The Hateful Eight

The flick follows a bounty hunter, John 'The Hangman' Ruth (Kurt Russell), who picks up Major Marquis Warren (Samuel Jackson), another bounty hunter and former cavalry officer in the Union Army, and the new town sheriff, Chris Mannix (Or so he says… he's a racist ex-Confederate raider, and he sure don't seem trustworthy) on the way to a haberdashery as a deadly blizzard closes in.

Russell and Jackson have bounties with them. Jackson's are dead, but Russell has a live one: a foul mouthed woman (Jennifer Jason Leigh). She's worth a cool ten thousand dollars, and Ruth means to see her hang.

The owners of the haberdashery are mysteriously away, leaving it in the care of Mexican Bob (Demian Bichir). Major Warren is immediately suspicious.

There are three others at the habedashery : the local executioner (Tim Roth), a cowboy (Michael Madsen), and an old Confederate general (Bruce Dern).

John Ruth is suspicious of everyone; he's paranoid and sees threats to his bounty everywhere, leading to tension and, eventually, conflict.

It might have been titled The Hateful Snore, which would have explained the five minute overture. The first half is all introductions ("I know you!" x 8), followed by Intermission.

The second half is a badly written stage play drenched in blood and brains.

It's Tarantino at his most self-indulgent: crass, vulgar, hateful and ugly. The film wallows in the sick side of humanity with the glee of a pig in a mud pit.

For three hours.

Which would be fine if it was entertaining.

Instead, it's tedious.

This is no fault of the actors, who give it their all, including the bit players.

The cinematography was fabulous (it's shot in 70mm), the score even better (it's Ennio Morricone), and the main set, a haberdashery (a word Quentin seems very fond of), was delightful in its detailed eccentricity. 

Kurt Russell's mustache is so magnificent it deserves an entry in the credits.

But the film doesn't gel.

The always lovely Zoe Bell shows up and is quickly dispatched, along with Dana Gourrier, Belinda Owino, and Gene Jones.

Tarantino's a visionary with in-depth knowledge of the medium. He's one of the most idiosyncratic voices in cinema, along with Wes Anderson and Kaufman.

But even the greats can misstep.

It's all the saaaaame!!!

According to John Yorke, over at The Atlantic:

"A ship lands on an alien shore and a young man, desperate to prove himself, is tasked with befriending the inhabitants and extracting their secrets. Enchanted by their way of life, he falls in love with a local girl and starts to distrust his masters. Discovering their man has gone native, they in turn resolve to destroy both him and the native population once and for all.

Avatar or Pocahontas? As stories they’re almost identical. Some have even accused James Cameron of stealing the Native American myth. But it’s both simpler and more complex than that, for the underlying structure is common not only to these two tales, but to all of them.
Take three different stories:

A dangerous monster threatens a community. One man takes it on himself to kill the beast and restore happiness to the kingdom ...

It’s the story of Jaws, released in 1976. But it’s also the story of Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon epic poem published some time between the eighth and 11th centuries.

And it’s more familiar than that: It’s The Thing, it’s Jurassic Park, it’s Godzilla, it’s The Blob—all films with real tangible monsters. If you recast the monsters in human form, it’s also every James Bond film, every episode of MI5, House, or CSI. You can see the same shape in The Exorcist, The Shining, Fatal Attraction, Scream, Psycho, and Saw. The monster may change from a literal one in Nightmare on Elm Street to a corporation in Erin Brockovich, but the underlying architecture—in which a foe is vanquished and order restored to a community—stays the same. The monster can be fire in The Towering Inferno, an upturned boat in The Poseidon Adventure, or a boy’s mother in Ordinary People. Though superficially dissimilar, the skeletons of each are identical."

Huh.

Read the whole thing.

For the book length version, see The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker. 

 

It's good.

Chapter 8 of Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom

Once more Monday rolls around and rears its ugly head; but don't worry, there's another installment of Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom to add further insanity to your morning.

(Pardon the glitches with the paragraphs. For some reason it's not picking them up properly when I paste it in from Word.)

“Ma, that was stupid,” said Thrax as he righted an over-turned chair. “I told you to keep Sally inside during day hours.”

“Thanks, Mr. Obvious,” said Megan from the kitchenette. Thrax sighed. Mom always did this.

Occupied her mind with chores when stressed. Cooking food channeled her nervous energy into productive activity. It could have easily been generated, piping hot and aesthetically styled, instantly by a Drexler box, but not his mom. She preferred the old ways. Touch vegetables with her hands. Cut them with a knife. Something about home cooking, real cooking, a certain taste, that the boxes couldn’t duplicate. She’d even tried to teach Thrax to cook. “Trill sold us out. She wants our unit.”

Sally sat quietly on the couch while Thrax prowled back and forth. “If I hadn’t gotten back when I did, Sally’d be gone, ma,” said Thrax.

“He had a warrant,” snapped Megan. She stepped out of the kitchenette and jabbed a spoon at him. “And you’d be just as invalid as your sister if I hadn’t broken every rule.”

Thrax went slack jawed. “Say what?”

“Nothing.” Megan stirred the pasta with quick, sharp jabs.

“No seriously,” Thrax pressed, growing petulant. “I want to know.”

“It means,” sighed Megan, “that I spent over a year on you. Snuck into the labs and slaved over your DNA, swapping exons, programming transposons, adding custom retroviruses. Made you as perfect as I could. Stole threads from the donor bank, wove them in, too. We have Presidents, movie stars, and athletes in the banks. Bigwigs. Alphas. Taboo against using them is just stupid. Legacy laws” She shook her head angrily. “No lawyers anymore so what the hell. But if any of the other DNA Jockeys had found out... You’d have been discarded. Either way.”

Thrax felt cold. “Never told me this before.”

“You’re a genetically engineered superman! I thought you’d have figured it out on your own. I made you smart. Not smart enough, I guess. No Santa Claus, m’dear.”

Thrax bristled at that. “Leave Santa out of this.” He’d loved Santa Claus as a kid. The benevolent, immortal ancient, who might still be alive. Why was he any more unrealistic than flying entelodons with diaherrea? Ridiculing it was her way of saying there was no Nirvana, no happy ending, no easy way out. The world was a cluster fuck, suffering and pain and struggle and blood and sweat. Red in tooth and claw. On a certain level, Thrax rebelled against that. He’d make the world a better place somehow. Someday. Even if it was only a tiny pocket of sanity in a sea of madness. “Anyway, why didn’t you—,” he started, pointing at Sally. The question was so obvious it didn’t need to be said.

Megan glared at him and slammed down the spoon. “Why do you think? Because I got caught!” She shook with anger. “Do I have to explain everything?”

Thrax waited. He felt ashamed.

“You’ve no idea what I’ve had to do to keep us safe, so don’t you lecture. It’s a pitiless world.” Megan walked back into the kitchenette and leant over the pot of pasta, let her face be caressed by steam. Moisture gathered on her chin. “So what will happen now?”

Thrax, reeling emotionally, rubbed his eyes. “Execution.”

Darwin’s disembodied voice filled his head, “According to the colony’s multilayered codes, you and your sister will be executed, while members of your extended family will be exiled, without trial. I can find no records related to DNA tampering on your record, although several inquiries along this line were made by Guardian Ghatz.”

“I need options,” said Thrax.

Megan stood still for a moment. “We could run.”

“Could,” said Thrax dully. “Wouldn’t get far. Ghatz. They’d come after us.”

“If we sabotaged the base first,” said Sally, piping up. “Cause chaos. Set things on fire. Send up the sewer worms.” Her eyes gleamed.

Thrax gave her a worried look. Sometimes he wasn’t sure just who his sister was.

Megan crossed her arms and smiled, leaning against their prehistoric fridge. “That’s my baby.”

Thrax felt a sudden tingle and looked down at his arm. Something vibrated in his pant pocket. He fished into it with his hand and pulled out the dodecahedron.

“What’s that?” asked Sally, looking at the small metal object as he turned it over.

“Not sure. Maybe a bargaining chip.”

He activated his interphone and thought a connection.

“What?” answered a sharp, clipped voice. “This better be good, I’m swirlin’ substrate foam.”

“Kal, it’s Thrax.”

“I know, stupid. What do you want, throwback?”

“Coming down to the lab. Got something I think you’ll want to see.”

****

“They attacked me,” sputtered Ghatz. He was still angry over how wrong the confrontation had gone, and the impertinence of their resistance. It was unacceptable that a lower class creature such as Thrax should be stronger and better looking than Ghatz, light of the new Guardian generation. It upset the natural order of things. “And my bouncers,” he added as an afterthought. “I demand satisfaction, Senator. I demand it!”

He stood in a softly lit, wood paneled room, right out of a 19th century gentleman’s club. Red padded chairs with exquisite mahogany frames, separated by ornate tables, were set beneath elegant chandeliers of the finest crystal. Sparkling, semi-transparent holographic nudes danced in and out of the lights, smiling and laughing silently. Gold framed paintings of steamy erotica by Gustave Courbet decorated the walls.

An overweight man, coddled by plush upholstery, sat before Ghatz. Ghatz thought the man looked like a cross between a bloated corpse and a beached whale, but didn’t dare say so. This was Senator Lacus, the real power and ruler of Pleasurepit Five, who owned fifty-one per cent of the company stock. Supposedly descended from a real United States of America senator, too. Ghatz idolized and hated him. Lacus was fat, lazy, indolent. Yet within all that bag of blubber and cholesterol was a ruthless, capable mind. One that would help Ghatz seize ultimate power. Until then, he wouldn’t cross the senator.

Lacus idly swirled his glass of brandy, watching the rolling surface of the liquid. He had two chins and a low brow that set sharp calculating eyes in shadow. On the table beside him was a tray of snails and oysters in porcelain cups. He grabbed one and sucked down the oyster in a single gulp, then smacked his thick, sensuous lips. He wiped the oyster juice on his smoking jacket, then downed his brandy and waited.

A dutiful sexbot waitress stepped forward and refilled the Lacus’ glass while Ghatz stood and tapped his foot impatiently.

Senator Lacus patted the sexbot’s bottom. “Hmm. How nice, yes. Come see me after, my dear, won’t you?” said Lacus, flashing crooked teeth.

She bowed and strutted away.

Ghatz watched her go, eyes glued to her buttocks, appreciating the hypnotic curves. He’d have to summon her later, after the senator was done. Then wipe the records so the senator didn’t know. Strange how insatiable he was. He’d slowly peel back her bustier...

“Ahem.” Lacus cleared his throat. “Focus, my boy.”

Ghatz flushed red and blurted, “Do I have to spell it out for you? Revenge! I want revenge!”

“And you’ll have it, my dear, beautiful boy. Fret not. Soon,” he said softly, and took a sip of soothing, thousand year old brandy.

Ghatz stalked back and forth in front of the senator like a caged animal. “I swear you are always favouring them,” he complained. “Same as last time. Pack animals! Dross! They’ve no loyalty to the greater colony. To the team. Just a primitive family unit. Such base loyalties weaken the whole. You taught me that!”

“True, my boy, but the old ways do die hard,” replied Lacus.

Ghatz exploded: “They’re aren’t! In case you haven’t noticed. When’s the last time you went into the lower levels? By the Founding Fathers! I am, we are, fighting to achieve, to realize the ideal, to free ourselves from nature and savagery, to renew the world,” he sputtered. “We are the first mover of the re-enlightenment, who are pushing the envelope of change. Everything depends on me! Us! We need to get our ducks in a row. Does that struggle mean nothing to you?!?”

“Manage your expectations,” Lacus groaned and shifted in the chair. “Ideology can become tiresome. Think of it more as a tool, a lever that can move the masses. And remember, the easiest path between two points is not always the direct one.”

Ghatz rolled his eyes. “Don’t weave your philosophical nonsense with me,” he spat. “What does that even mean?”

Lacus slipped a snail in his mouth and bit it. A little juice jetted out and dribbled down his chin. “Perhaps I’ve overestimated you. The lower levels have less influence and fewer numbers every generation. They pose no serious threat. Now. We don’t want to calcify, do we? Of course not. An element of chaos keeps society healthy. And we need a miserable bottom rung to keep the rest in line. Show them where they might wind up, as it were. Remember, my dear, it’s about the greater happiness, not the individual.”

“They’ve nothing to do with me. They’re disgusting,” said Ghatz. “Spiritually. Physically. Ideologically. Gushing like a pack of dogs, yeah? And that abomination, Thrax! Thinks he’s above Guardians. Above us, the rightful authorities! He even tried to hit me. Me!” He jabbed a finger at his chest and nodded for emphasis, shaking with outrage lit by frustration. “That little demon girl electrocuted two of my bouncers with their own prods! It’ll take days for them to recover.”

Lacus shrugged. “Never been impressed with those mindless thugs. Serves them right. And you should be more careful. Guardians must be constantly vigilant with helots, my boy. Never let them get the upper hand. Consider this a valuable lesson.”

“Explain to me why I can’t execute the lot of them, or I’ll do it anyway. Effectual truth. At the end of the day, the law will support me.”

“Oh, please! Don’t be so melodramatic,” soothed Lacus. “Have a drink. A Guardian must act from reason, not emotion, and yours are out of control. Quite shamefully so, if I may say.”

Ghatz froze. That struck home.

Lacus looked down into his brandy glass. “I checked the surveillance feed. Thrax received something from that android, outside, you know. Ran it through the databank. It’s fragmentary, of course, but preliminary analysis suggests it might be... valuable. I removed that section from the feed. Mum’s the word. You’ll leave his family alone until we find out exactly what it is.” He waved a chubby finger in a complex pattern, and a hologram of the main council chamber, centred on the android, flicked into view before them.

Ghatz frowned at the shimmering scene, resenting it beyond words. “And if it isn’t important?”

“Why then, my boy,” said Lacus, emptying his snifter, “you can execute the lot of them.”

Classic Doctor Who Level Two: What to watch.

The only way some people will watch Doctor Who.

Level two is for viewers with even greater tolerance for cardboard, corridors, slow pacing and dodgy effects.

But you will be rewarded with lots of retro-sci-fi and fun whacky weirdness.

See Level One here.

There are a good number of Jon Pertwee episodes in this set. He's the Patrician Doctor, the action-hero alien Buddhist exile with the fashion sense of a dandy and the combat skills of Bruce Lee.

Hubris is his weakness.

But as a little kid, I always found him reassuring.

I don't see Pertwee going along with 'The Doctor lies' or the angle that he turns his companions (the stand in for the children watching) into weapons.

A former comedian, Pertwee loved the role and took it seriously, believing that acknowledging the silliness around him would annihilate the suspension of disbelief.

He made a closet and cardboard into other times and planets.

Thank you, Mr. Pertwee.

Third Doctor

Weeping Angels aren't the only ambulatory statues on the show.

The Daemons 
Story: A tomb is unearthed in rural England and a demon, who turns out (naturally) to be an alien, is awoken.

The Master turns up leading a Satanic cult that aims to gain the demon's powers.

The Doctor is aided by the charmingly guileless Jo Grant (Katy Manning) and the UNIT crew, including Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney), Captain Yates and Sergeant Benton.

The story includes Nicholas Courtney's favourite line: 'Jenkins. Chap with the wings there. Five rounds rapid.'

The Good: Jon Pertwee's favourite story, and widely regarded as a classic, The Daemons is a fun but subdued riff on super-science as sorcery. Sort of Childhood's End, only on a village scale.

The production team was petrified they'd be denounced as endorsing and promoting Satanism to children, and toned down the original script. There was no outcry. A practicing witch did vet the script for accuracy.

Best of all, to summon the demon, The Master recites Mary Had a Little Lamb backwards.

The Bad: Natas Sivel!

"They're so cute. Let's adopt them!"

The Green Death (AKA My Little Maggots)
Story: A scheming and megalomaniacal corporate computer, BOSS, gets uppity and decides to take over the world. The industrial plant it oversees for Global Chemicals also produces deadly toxic waste that results in over-sized maggots.

Because WTF!

Originally I thought the giant maggots were part of the BOSS computer's plan to take over the world, but they're just an awesomely gross side effect. 

The Good: Giant, wiggly maggots. Regular maggots make my skin crawl. When they're three feet long and spit acid I like them even less.

The story also features Jo's departure and great Welsh bit players.

This pissed off the Welsh.

The Bad: The giant dragonfly. Some of the background maggots are actually inflated condoms.

They don't really look like that. SPANX works wonders.

The Claws of Axos
Story: An alien ship lands, crewed by beatific beings in spandex bearing gifts of free power for mankind. Of course they're not. They're really alien parasites that look like human hearts on legs with explosive tipped tentacles, all part of Axos, a seemingly mellow gestalt organism that's set on absorbing the earth's energy. And Axos has got The Master prisoner it's pulsing innards.

It was originally titled The Vampire from Space.

See Lifeforce.

The Good: The Trojan horse aliens: their true appearance is wonderfully hideous, if you remember the budget and the effects typical for the time. The gestalt nature of Axos struck me as a pretty wild idea when I was five.

Also, Jo Grant flashes her knickers.

The Bad: The blue screen behind Benton and Yates when they flee in their jeep is impressively bad, even for Who.

Exxilon: The Dalek's Vietnam / Afghanistan

Death to the Daleks
Story: The Doctor and Sarah Jane wind up stuck on an alien planet, as the TARDIS has been sucked dry of power by an empty alien city. Daleks and humans are also stranded on the planet, and they must cooperate to free themselves from the city's deadly grip. The humans must also get a cure for a deadly plague back to their planets, adding time pressure. Millions are dying every second.

The Good: The City. A sentient, power sucking edifice that destroys its creators reminded me of one of Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles stories. The short term cooperation with the Daleks allows for some unusual scenes, but Daleks are too one note to be interesting, and the uneasy alliance doesn't last.

The first episode of the story I found especially atmospheric.

The Bad: How the Daleks manage to still function when they have no energy is explained away as 'psycho-kinetic power' which always struck me as silly. They produce kinetic weaponry… how did they do that without power? Do they have a telekinetic factory? On top of that, an Exxilon is left wandering around the interior of the TARDIS, and has been left there seemingly to this very day.

Fourth Doctor

Cybermen give a great back rub, but it isn't enough to win The Doctor over and they must resort to cruder methods.

Revenge of the Cybermen
Story: Our intrepid travelers arrive on a space station under quarantine, most of the crew killed by plague. Or is it? Soon mechanical men arrive to take control and dragoon our heroes into carrying explosives to the gold planet of Voga below.

The Good: Best costumes for the Cybermen until the new series. They look big, powerful. One helmet wobbles as the actor is shorter than the other, and they recycle sets for The Arc in Space, but that's Who for you. The bickering between the bad guys and not-so-bad guys is fun, too.

The Bad: Christopher Robbie's bombastic Cyberleader. Many people hate the character, but I thought he was great as a hydraulic-brained villain. Quirky. Which is more interesting than any of the other Cyberleaders, who are uniformly bland emotionless megalomaniacs.

Take this exchange:

(The Doctor has been tied up back to back with Sarah.)

LEADER: The Beacon is approaching Voga at ten thousand light units. It is time for us to leave.

DOCTOR: Bye bye.

LEADER: You two are especially privileged. You are about to die in the biggest explosion ever witnessed in this solar system. It will be a magnificent spectacle. Unhappily, you will be unable to appreciate it.

(The Cybermen leave.) 

I mean, come on, this Cyberleader is a real card!

What a dry sense of humour.

Sadly, I am the only one who thinks this.

Anyway.

The episodes' logic is dodgy thanks to a big last minute rewrite, and it shows.

Worse, the invulnerable Cybermen get another vulnerability: gold.

Previously they were vulnerable to gravity.

Next it will be peanuts.

You heard it here first.

"Just trim a little off the sides."

Masque of Mandragora
Story: Malevolent alien entity meets Shakespearean Italy. The Beeb drags out their Renaissance costumes for a Doctor Who adventure that pits a prestidigitator and his power hungry patron against the rightful, enlightened ruler. Things get more complicated when The Doctor arrives accompanied by an unwelcome passenger: an evil energy helix bent on world domination…

The Good: The Beeb does Shakespeare better than anyone. Here, the village from The Prisoner doubles as San Martino. The massacre reminds me of Poe's Masque of the Red Death.

The Bad: The story is a bit slight and I don't like salami sandwiches.

The Doctor IS Sherlock Holmes. Mind = •BLOWN*

The Talons of Weng-Chiang 
Story: Young women are disappearing in Victorian London, and The Doctor (wearing a deerskin cap and affecting a very Sherlockian attitude) and Leela are on the case.

Of course Leela starts killing people.

I love Leela.

The Good: The supporting characters: the theatre manager Mr. Jago and Mr. Lightfoot are two of the most fun fellows to ever appear on the program. Apparently they were popular enough to inspire some spin-off audio adventures. Good for them. Wish The Doctor had revisited the pair, and the period. The BBC is best at doing Victorian era dramas, and this one hits the mark.

The Bad: A bit racist by today’s standards. As a kid, I had no idea the lead Asian character was actually a white guy in makeup. Yes, I was totally oblivious. It came as a bit of a shock when I watched it again as an adult. The giant man-eating Rat of Sumatra is pretty lame, too, even by standards of the day. It's an ambulatory fur coat with buck teeth and a bad attitude.

"Me? I don't know what's going on either."

Image of the Fendahl
Story: Quartermass and the Pit meets Lovecraft via Doctor Who. It's weird. I still don't really know what was going on, but there are giant man-eating lampreys that turn into a woman (make subtext of that if you dare), a glowing crystal skull, and deaths aplenty. The Doctor confuses the Fendahl by asking if it would like a jelly-baby but actually offering it a liquorice allsort. The man is endlessly diabolical!

The Good: The atmosphere of dread. At least, that's what I remember most. The last time Doctor Who was scary. "How do you kill death itself?" Good question. The answer, apparently, is salt.

The Bad: Painted eyelids.

"They let us out of the BBC closet. I can breathe!"

City of Death
Story: A lighthearted romp through Paris and time, with plenty of location shooting. The Doctor and his fellow Timelord traveler Romana (Baker's wife for a time) are pitted against an alien who's been splintered through time and is trying to get back to the beginning of life on earth and prevent it from happening. Why? His comrades tried to take off in a damaged spacecraft, which exploded and in doing so sparked terrestrial life. He wants to undo the 'error'.

The Good: Written by Douglas Adams on a diet of whisky and black coffee, it's as clever as it is ridiculous. John Cleeese makes a cameo as an art snob. Adams recycled much of the plot for Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, which I enjoyed more.

The Bad: Hasn't aged well. Baker is at his silliest, which robs the serial of dramatic tension. It's a different era for the program. Where before it delved into gothic horror, here it veers towards whimsical satire. Which could be a good thing, depending on your point of view.

"If you're the lion, Romana is Dorothy, K-9 is the Tin Man, then that means… oh."

Warrior’s Gate
Story: Almost an experimental film, it happens in interstitial nothingness, an in-between place populated by lion men, slavers, and robot warriors. Mirrors serve as gateways into a black and white universe of static pictures. There's trippy dialogue, gothic sets and dead people at a banquet covered in cobwebs.

Some of the episodes of this story were directed by Graeme Harper, who went on to direct a dozen episodes of David Tennant's Doctor.

The Good: The trippiness. This is one weird story filled to the gills with WTF.

The Bad: The trippiness is a bit, well, too trippy at times.

Fifth Doctor

"Is that The Starship Titanic?"

Enlightenment
Story: The Doctor arrives on what seems to be an ocean going ship, only it's in space. It's part of a race around the solar system, with the prize being enlightenment: the answer to life, the universe, and everything. The human crews are led by Eternals, immortal beings who are bored out of their minds and desperate for distraction.

The Good: The whimsy. It's even more surreal than Warrior's Gate. And the Eternals are not depicted as implacably evil.

The Bad: The scenery chewing Black Guardian has a bird stuck on his forehead. Someone should tell him.

"This is the first time I've worked since you took my job."

The Five Doctors
Story: Multiple iterations of The Doctor are being lifted out of time and plunked into The Death Zone, an arena on Gallifrey where dangerous creatures fight for the entertainment of decadent Timelords. It's really just an excuse to assemble five ('Four, sir!') Doctors and more than a half-dozen companions in one story.

The Good: The story's a great nostalgia trip. Seeing Troughton, Pertwee, and Davidson interacting is a delight; the sniping between Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee being a highlight. Hartnell, who had passed away, is played here by a lookalike, while Tom Baker couldn't be bothered to show up and is represented by footage from an unfinished episode.

The Bad: The lame Cybermen pop in, muck about and get killed like flies. They're the most easily dispatched 'invulnerable' species ever. As Inigo might say, "This word, I do not think it means what you think it means." They're more tinfoil than steel.

The best line is also the worst: "NO! Not the Mind Probe!" We also get Sarah Jane flailing her way down a very, very slight slope as if it were a cliff. She gives it her all, but the slope's performance is… lacking.

"Can I get you some escargot?"

Frontios
Story: The Doctor and team (Tegan and Turlough) arrive on a forlorn planet where people are getting sucked into the earth by evil telekinetic snails. No, I'm not kidding. The monsters were inspired by woodlice that had infested the writer's apartment.

The Good: Six foot tall woodlice sucking people underground. This stunt will be revisited in the new series by ornery, sexy Silurians. As sexy as Scottish reptiles can be.

The Bad: The episode is dry even by Classic Doctor Who standards.


Still not enough?

You're kidding right?

No?

Then amp it up and delve deeper into time and space with… Level Three: Time Lord.

Coming next week.

Unless I forget.

The Force Awakens a Second Time Around

Saw Force Awakens a second time.

Still enjoyed it.

It's fast and fun, with great new characters, but the story's kind of sloppy and recycles much of the original film. As I said in my original review.

It's no secret that the film was rushed and produced on an insanely tight schedule. Disney execs may have needed to make back their four billion dollar investment sooner rather than later. Igor granted a six month reprieve, but the film might have done with a full extra year to gel.

io9 has a round up of ideas that were being tossed around during development. We might have gotten Kylo Ren as a full-out Darth Vader impersonator, for example, or visited Darth Vader's old castle, or dove underwater to the wreckage of the second Death Star.

The story was still evolving well into production. Poe originally died in the TIE fighter crash, then got brought back by JJ. Maz was going with Han to the Resistance base, then doesn't, and inexplicably disappears from the film.

There are many of these sloppy bits, and they seem to be the result of last minute rewrites.

Birth Movies Death, my favourite new movie review site, has some great articles about The Force Awakens.

Andrew Todd, a filmmaker himself, wrote the article Star Wars, Storytelling, and Fixing it in Post:

"I don’t know how Abrams believed he fucked things up. Maybe the film didn’t move fast or smoothly enough. Maybe it didn’t make sense. Maybe Lucasfilm wanted to save stuff for sequels. But Abrams (or Kathleen Kennedy) clearly did believe he fucked things up, as hasty fixes were obviously deployed in production and post production to rebuild the story. The result is a movie cobbled together out of multiple versions of the script (see The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens for more) and even of the production footage. When you watch the movie, you can occasionally feel that something just isn’t right. I guarantee you that J.J. Abrams feels it too.

"Now, I don’t want to be the guy who says “you can’t understand cinema until you’ve made a film,” because you totally can. But while you can identify filmmaking mistakes as a critic, as a filmmaker you feel them in your bones because you’ve probably made them too. You feel them in the weird omissions of information; in the equally weird over-explanation of other information; in the unmotivated cuts in the middle of scenes that could only exist to mask rewritten dialogue. Given that my only feature to date is Ghost Shark 2: Urban Jaws, which made all those mistakes and more, suffice it to say that I recognised nearly every mistake in The Force Awakens. And though our movie operated on a grossly different scale and timeline, I suspect that the creative problems were rather similar."

Read the whole thing.

Remember the lightsaber hand-off scene from the trailer that doesn't appear in the film? JJ's been open about that, too.

Kasdan and Abrams were pretty sparse with exposition, but I caught more on the second viewing.

They actually mention that the weapon the First Order has built is a hyperspace gun, so that explains how it can fire between star systems. Still a bit confusing: it's on a planet, right? Each time the gun fires, it consumes the sun. They were specific about that detail. When the sun goes out, it's ready to shoot.

But it fires twice.

Where did the second sun come from? Is this planet traveling about the universe? There was no hint of that. No sign of engines. If it can travel about easily, why does it need a hyperspace gun? It can just go to the target system. Resistance scouts found it easily, too, but wouldn't it have moved in order to suck a new sun? It wouldn't be where Fynn last saw it. That sun was consumed the first time it fired.

And if the Resistance has instant communication with the pilots attacking the Death Star III, why didn't they just email the map to the Resistance HQ? They seem fine communicating their attack information across the space waves, so why not the map? Where they in the same system?

A filmmaker should lay out where characters are to each other, so the action is intelligible. I think the same goes for planets.

So… still logic problems we shouldn't think about.

The first film had them too, but they didn't feel as obvious, and never bothered me.

Devin Faraci, the lead critic at Birth Movies Death and a guy with interesting and cogent views on film, has a great article up about the movie being, essentially, Fanfic:

"Most fanfic is, on some level, fan service. I’m speaking broadly here about a genre that contains billions of words and thousands of hours of fan films, but that’s mostly what fanfic boils down to - fans giving themselves what they want. Bringing together characters they like, killing ones they don’t, redeeming villains they love, exploring concepts barely glanced upon in the original property. They right perceived wrongs, give new endings and reconstruct emotions and relationships. Fan fiction often reminds me of masturbation - it’s the fans giving themselves what they want. That’s usually dramatically unsatisfying, and very often the best stories are the ones that drive fans the craziest. Getting what you want is fun at first, but it’s like letting a kid have free reign of the fridge - they end up with a bellyache and maybe even scurvy if you don’t step in soon enough. You gotta eat your vegetables, and fanfic rarely is interested in greens.

"George Lucas gets this. When asked what he thought of The Force Awakens he said “I think the fans will love it. It’s the kind of movie they’ve been looking for.” The kids, Lucas was saying, love getting ice cream for dinner.

"And The Force Awakens is ice cream for dinner. It’s full of familiar things, sometimes with just a new name on them. It’s filled with familiar characters, who have - in true fan fiction style - reverted to fan-favorite versions of themselves. Han and Leia have been reset to their pre-Jedi selves, a move that is enormously unsatisfying for people who want to see these characters grow and change but enormously satisfying for fans who want to see the characters behaving like their favorite versions of them. It’s a film by fans for fans, filled with endless winking references and stocked with recycled versions of unused concept art that will be familiar to the hardcore. When making the first Star Wars Lucas hated that Mark Hamill ad-libbed a reference to THX-1138; in The Force Awakens one of the main characters is named after George Lucas’ favorite experimental short in film school. Another is named after the company that published Star Wars books.

"At its best fanfic uses existing characters and settings as shorthand; you know Kirk and Spock, so a story featuring them allows you to get to the meat or explore emotions without doing a lot of heavy lifting. This is what The Force Awakens does as well, using the perpetual motion machine of nostalgia to power a story that’s all shortcuts. Even the new stuff is built out of the material of the old stuff, denying audiences the shock of discovery but giving them the comfort of familiarity. It’s a fan giving the fans what they want."

Hilarious! Read the whole thing.

Faraci also wrote a review of the film I'm simpatico with. It's well written and more observant than mine:

“It’s another Death Star,” says an X-Wing pilot at a briefing, talking about Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Starkiller Base. He’s immediately told it’s not - this thing is 17 times bigger than the Death Star, and it's not a space station, it's a whole planet. This sort of functions as a metaphor for the entire movie, which is kind of a reboot of A New Hope, but bigger and more sprawling and also containing elements of Empire and Jedi.

"The Force Awakens is the Star Wars movie for remix and remake culture. It’s not a remake or a reboot, but it’s a movie that tells a story not entirely dissimilar from the original Star Wars, except that many of the familiar beats and moments have a spin put on them. It’s not a princess who hides valuable data in a droid and is tortured for it, it’s an X-Wing pilot. This time it’s a Stormtrooper dressing up as a rebel. And the kid growing up on a backwater desert planet would rather stay there waiting for her family than escape and follow in their footsteps."

I had been thinking that it was too obvious Rey was Luke's daughter, and that they were setting up a reveal for the second film where Rey and Ren have a showdown. Rey gets to say, 'Didn' yew kill mah brotha?" And Ren says, "No, I AM your brotha!"

But watching it a second time, it seemed even more unlikely she was Leia and Han's daughter. There were just too many instances where she should have been brought up, if so. But then, if Maz new the truth about who Rey was (she says she does), surely she'd mention it to Han, and Han to Leia. If they've got Luke's daughter with them, that's a significant piece of information. Perhaps it was cut, along with the rest of Maz's footage at the Resistance base.

I was also thinking Ren's probing of Rey's mind is what awoke her Force abilities, but that's not so: Rey specifically says she does not understand how she knew how to pilot the Falcon during their thrilling escape from Jakku. She's got powers and abilities that appear out of nowhere, which she shouldn't have, and she knows it.

She sells it well enough I don't mind, but if this was a self-contained story, I'd say such insta-ability was antithetical to the creation of drama. Without training, she seems to have Force abilities greater than Anakin / Vader, Luke, Obiwan, Yoda, or anyone else, instantly. Luke's journey seemed slower and more difficult. But this is part of a trilogy, so I'm expecting there's an explanation as to what's going on, and that this is all part of a greater story arc.

Somehow the Force was awoken in her.

Force ghosts, perhaps? Good spirits? Guardian Vader?

I have no idea.

I'm just hoping they don't glide over it in the sequel.

The first one is still the best, as I argue here. For inside scoop on making the series, like the role his wife Marcia played, see this post.

Thinking of seeing Force Awakens yourself?

Read this before you do!

Chapter 7 of Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom

Happy Boxing Day! 

Get a hot cup of cocoa, a flaky pastry, and then sit back in your comfiest chair and read some Maximum Magnum-Odd-Awesomeness:

“I’ve analyzed the android,” said Doc Helen Meddep’s disembodied voice over the speaker system. “It’s a modified military model. Probably a GI5 or GI7. Substantial changes to neural network, greater autonomy, deprecated control grams, nanoprocessor enhanced. Formidable military knowledge and capabilities programmed in on the subconscious level.”

“GI5. Thought they were extinct,” rumbled a deep, resonant voice. It echoed in the vast, domed chamber of the Grand Council Room of Pleasurepit Five.

Doctor Helen stepped into the spotlight. “So did everyone, Speaker.”

The ceiling was decorated with a simulation of the night sky, the stars inevitably connected together by delicate erotic images. Below, two comely nurses maneuvered a floating bed bearing the injured android, his body still encased in the glowing stasis cocoon, onto centre stage and into a circle of light. Only his placid face was visible. The Council members sat high above in a semicircle, behind crests of long dead shareholders.

“Hrm,” said the voice again. It belonged to a tall, bearded man named Kendee Cowding. His features wrinkled around kind, weary eyes. “How long?”

Helen shrugged. “A functioning top level military android hasn’t been seen in over nine hundred orbits.”

“That’s not what I’m asking. How long does it have to live?” asked Kendee, drumming spider-like fingers on his info-display.

“A week. At most.”

The councilors murmured to each other with concern.

“The programmers will be pleased,” said Selibe Joy of the Humres, a thin older woman with a nose as sharp as her wit. Her poise gave her a regal air. “But I’m more interested in the android.”

“Forget it. His mind is protected,” said Councilor Job Eyetee, a mousy, slightly built man with wild, unruly shoulder length hair and a baldpate. “High level encryption.” Everyone knew he was eager to return to the virtual realm.

Doc Helen knew fleshtime was slow and boring for his type.

“Is this going to take long?” Job groused. “I’ve got a fabulous new subroutine that will increase the efficiency of resource gathering in Kick-Ass Kingdoms.”

Doc Helen shook her head. Most of the programming staff was addicted to the virtual reality game, crippling real world research efforts. She’d tried to treat the condition to no avail. Reality was always shifting about in meaningless, messy ways, while Kick-Ass Kingdoms was eternal. And it made a lot more sense. Perhaps, thought Helen, they had a point.

“Can it talk?” sniffed Selibe.

Helen shook her head. “He’s in a medically induced coma.”

“Where is Victoria?” demanded Buchanan. “This is her area of expertise.”

“Repairs,” said Selibe.

“Get her down here.”

Selibe shifted uncomfortably. “That... may be a problem.”

“Solve it.”

“You try and push around a Technowitch,” Selibe shot back. “She could crush us all like bugs. She’s been in bit of a mood of late.”

“She’s two hundred and seventy-five, for Chrissake,” exploded Buchanan. “We’ve got a kill switch in her head.”

“Jesus, Frank. She might be listening.”

Buchanan was about to spit something back, but didn’t. He picked some wax out of his ear, looked at it. “Fucking technology,” he muttered, flicking it away.

Doc Helen knew Victoria best; knew her moods, her proclivities. Kept alive in a vat, Victoria, their last and only technowitch, had been dotty of late. Seriously senile, always wanting to engage her in virtual tea parties with that rabbit and mad hatter. Helen cleared her throat. “We have no idea what’s wrong with the android on a genetic level. My care is purely palliative.”

“No choice then. Wake him up,” demanded Buchanan. Doc Helen tapped air. “Done.”

“I don’t know,” Selibe frowned, and picked nervously at a radiation scab on the back of her hand. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Kendee leaned forward. “Well?” Helen felt serene. “Now... we wait.”

****

Thrax rushed through the round, battleship grey hatch into the main quarters of Klenstaf Clan, heading back to his family’s unit. Mom had signaled. Probably just another plugged pipe. The usual nonsense.

Cooking smells, mixed with human sweat, hung in the air that even the atmo-scrubbers couldn’t pump out. Dozens of kids sat on the floor playing games on plastic datasheets. Some wore glasses, others neural taps. Entertainment from multiple eras. Oblivious to both Thrax and each other. Probably had HappyTime filters on, too, which coated perception with a thick slathering of wishfull thinking sugar. Axe murderer rapists would appear as joyous troubadours, bullets as butterflies, flames as rainbows. Thrax hated that stupid filter. All it did was trick people into accepting shitty circumstances and blind them to real threats.

As he neared his family’s unit, he heard a little girl’s high pitched scream. He recognized it instantly: his little sister, Sally.

He began to run.

****

“Let go of her!” shouted Megan, Thrax’s mom. She beat her fists on the back of Barton, an ugly, burly man wearing a tuxedo. He was hauling her daughter, Sally, out of the domicile.

Sally grabbed desperately at furniture and door frames to no avail. Barton roughly flung her into the hall.

Sally slid, spinning, across the gleaming floor, stopping in front of Assistant Chief Guardian Ghatz. Ghatz was blandly handsome man and had an athletic if unremarkable build of which he was inordinately proud of. He wore a perfectly fit tuxedo. A gleaming necklace of bronze medallions hung round his neck, which is constantly adjusted.

He raised an eyebrow as Megan tried to slip out into the hall, past Barton. The obese bouncer leaned back and gently pinned her to the wall with his bulk.

“Leave Sally alone, Ghatz!” Megan yelled.

Ghatz’s small mouth slipped into its usual offset, smug smile as he contemplated the terrified girl that crouched before him. Shivering and afraid. That’s how Ghatz liked people.

“I know exactly what I’m getting into,” he sniffed airily. “We’re here to enforce the Genetic Quality Laws.” He pointed down at Sally’s deformed face. “This is a clear violation.”

Megan squirmed, struggling to breathe. “Ghatz, please. Don’t do this. Not my baby. Ask Lacus.”

“Oh, I already talked to Senator Lacus,” said Ghatz. He snapped his fingers and two goons stepped forward out of a gloomy alcove. “Gentlemen.”

“Mr. Ghatz,” said Bouncer Don. He smacked an electric cattle prod into his open palm. His face bore the brutal features of an excessive testosterone user. “Want me hit?”

“No, Don,” said Ghatz calmly. “Not yet. All in good time. Just hold her, for now.”

“Okay, Mr. Ghatz.” The thugs grabbed Sally by the arms. She bit their fingers and arms to no effect.

Megan began to cry. “Ghatz, please! I’ll do anything!”

Ghatz ignored her pleas and stared down at Sally. “This creature should have been killed at birth. Just basic best practices. Truly, Megan, I don’t understand how you managed to avoid that. Or kept her hidden for so long. Fortunately, you have vigilant neighbours, who have the greater good in mind.”

A look of realization flooded over Megan’s soft, Asian features. She glared at the sealed door across the hall. Elven B. “Trill? Trill you sellout!” she shouted. “I’ll get you for this!”

Ghatz held up a finger. “Tut tut. Trill is a patriot, and will be rewarded as such. This entire matter saddens me, truly it does, but we have rules. Think of the big picture. The food supply is limited. So is space. There’s no room for such dross. Take ownership of your sins, Megan.”

“Bastard!” spat Megan. “You’re doing this because of Thrax. You’re jealous. You’re sick!”

Incensed, Ghatz lunged forward, thrusting his face within an inch of hers.

“I’m sick? I’m sick? Your so-called ‘son’ is a crime!” seethed Ghatz. “An abomination, an abuse of every law we have. A sick and selfish ‘dream child’ made manifest. You robbed from the resources of this too loving colony. And I’m going to prove it. And when I do, your family will be thrown out onto the plains for the raptors to feast on, your existence erased. Damnatio memoriae!”

Barton’s ears perked up at that. “That a spell, boss?” Ghatz groaned. “No, you blithering idiot. It’s Latin.”

“Oh. Cause it sounded like... hey, look,” Barton gestured down the hall as Thrax rounded the corner. “Trouble.”

Ghatz swore. “He’s supposed to be in the medical bay!... Damn degenerate doctor.” Ghatz tapped Don and Hammer on their washboard stomachs. “Let him strike first. For the cameras. Barton!” He waved a hand at Barton, the well dressed mountain. “Lock Megan in her domicile. Hang back.”

Ghatz theatrically stepped out into the middle of the hall, folding his arms behind his back, tilting his chin up, and turning to face Thrax. “Citizen! I order you to stop where you are.”

Thrax ignored him and kept coming.

“Ah” said Darwin inside Thrax’s head, “Ghatz filed a warrant to search your family unit two minutes after you were confined to the med bay for observation.”

“That bastard,” muttered Thrax. “Sally! You alright?”

Sally shook her head. “They want to take me away, Thrax!”

Thrax’s eyes locked on Ghatz. “Over my dead body!” And he charged.

The bouncers stepped protectively in front of Ghatz, clacking their prods together. Their flexed muscles rippled, their bodies shaking with roid rage.

Thrax jumped the last half dozen feet, grabbing the two bouncer’s heads as he soared, smacking them together like overripe coconuts. They flopped to the floor. Thrax landed in front of Ghatz, and propelled an open palmed fist at Ghatz’s pretty pink nose, only to have it deftly batted aside.

Ghatz had reflexes only a Guardian could buy. Undeterred, Thrax unleashed a ferocious blizzard of blows, any one of which would have been deadly had it connected.

Ghatz looked down at his own fast moving arms as if they were alien, independent of his will, defending him while his brain was paralyzed with fear.

On the floor, Don and Jack Hammer’s medbots pushed out their caved in skull’s blood soaked shells. It sounded like milk hitting a breakfast cereal, popping and snapping.

Their eyes focused. Together they grabbed Thrax from behind, pinning his arms.

Ghatz belted Thrax in head over and over again, breaking Thrax’s jaw and stunning him. Satisfied, Ghatz relaxed and carefully adjusted his medallion. Cleaned off a spot of blood. “Attacking a Guardian is a capital offence, citizen.” He leaned in close to Thrax’s ear. “No way out this time, Thrax. Mommie can’t save you. Big brother’s long gone. But you caused his death anyway, didn’t you? Who the fuck even knows who your dad was. This is it. End of the day. Game, as they say, over.”

He and his goons were all focused on Thrax. Sally, ignored by everyone in the confusion, picked up the abandoned cattle prods and slowly walked over behind the bouncers.

Ghatz continued to pontificate. “You know, I don’t think we’ll bother with a trial,” Ghatz mused. “Straight to the recycling tank instead. The grinders are not a quick way to die. Ever seen it? They scream until the very end. Their skulls and jaws are crushed into little bloody chunks. But don’t fret. Your organs will contribute to the colony. None of you will go to waste.”

Sally listened to Ghatz’s speech, her scarred face impassive. She looked down at the cattle prods, hefted them, testing their weight.

“Hey,” said Sally softly.

Jack Hammer looked over his shoulder. Saw no one. Then glanced down. “Eh?”

Sally rammed the cattle prod into the crook of his back and hit the power stud. A second later she pressed the other into Don’s spine and did the same. The bouncers screamed, writhing in agony as thousands of volts of electricity coursed through them. They collapsed, quivering and sizzling, to the floor.

Thrax slumped to his knees, half-conscious. Sally pressed an elbow up against his back to keep him from falling backward.

Ghatz gaped at his flunkies, twitching on the floor, then focused on Sally, his expression a mixture of horror, revulsion, and grudging respect. “You little fucking monster.”

Her ice cold blue eyes met his. “My big brother’s been teaching me how to fight.” She stepped in front of Thrax and settled into a combat stance, left leg bent, right extended forward, prods angled at Ghatz. “Let’s go.”

Megan, still pinned behind Barton, grinned from ear to ear. “Kick his ass, baby, kick his ass!” She patted her hands against Barton’s suit.

Thrax started to get up.

Ghatz took a step back and licked his lips.

“Whatcha gonna do, Ghatz?” taunted Megan. “Not so brave without your thugs, are you? Didn’t you bring a gun?”

Ghatz shot Megan a venomous look. He snapped his fingers at Barton, then turned and fled down the hallway. Barton released Megan and waddled over to Don and Jack. He grabbed them by their hair and dragged them away, after Ghatz.

Megan rushed out and embraced Sally.

“Mom!” Sally protested, trying to maintain her balance.

“Oh God, you okay, baby?” Megan checked Sally for injuries.

“Mom! I’m fine. Don’t crimp my style.” She maintained her limber, martial pose, prods leveled, one held above her head, the other out in front. Her eyes were fixed on Ghatz and Barton.

Ghatz stopped inside the lift at the end of the hall. He stuck out a hand as the doors began to shut, and pointed at Sally, his eyes dark pools. “This isn’t over, freak. I’ll be back with death warrants for the whole family.”

Barton chucked the bodies into the lift and stood beside his master. The doors slid shut.

Sally relaxed. “Yeah. You run, you putz.”

Quest for an Audience: On editing...

I'm starting to edit a piece, and I've been procrastinating. At least I'm wasting time online researching the topic of editing, so I can claim I'm doing tangential work.

Kind of.

Does anyone else do this?

Anyway.

Found an old Guardian article on editing, and how the role of editor is changing in the book industry:

"For some years now – almost as long as people have been predicting the death of the book – there have been murmurs throughout publishing that books are simply not edited in the way they once were, either on the kind of grand scale that might see the reworking of plot, character or tone, or at the more detailed level that ensures the accuracy of, for example, minute historical or geographical facts. The time and effort afforded to books, it is suggested, has been squeezed by budgetary and staffing constraints, by the shift in contemporary publishing towards the large conglomerates, and by a greater emphasis on sales and marketing campaigns and on the efficient supply of products to a retail environment geared towards selling fewer books in larger quantities. 

"Many speak of the trimming of budgets, the increasingly regimented nature of book production and of the pressure on their time, which means they have to undertake detailed and labour-intensive editing work in the margins of their daily schedule rather than at its centre. One freelance editor I talked to remarked that "big companies used to have whole copy-editing and proof-reading departments. Now you'll get one publisher and one editor running a whole imprint." She'd noticed that some editors tended to acquire books that arrived in a more or less complete state."

That jibs with what I've heard. Publishers have less resources, so the closer your work is to being shelf-ready, the better. "In 2005, Blake Morrison wrote a long essay on the subject in which he noted that, despite the inherent fuzziness of the line between facilitating a writer's work, with the occasional firmness and wing-clipping that entails, and the kind of over-editing that can result in a loss of authenticity and spontaneity, editing was vital to the business of writing and publishing. "When a book appears," he concluded, "the author must take the credit. But if editing disappears, as it seems to be doing, there'll be no books worth taking the credit for."

I think that goes too far, but for many of us (such as myself) it would be the case. There are even some very prominent authors, incredibly successful ones, who could do with a more assertive editor. Readers will put up with their superfluous prose because the rest is so good, but that doesn't mean they don't need an editor.

Dean Wesley Smith, who has an awesome website and talks openly about his craft, is a three draft writer, and claims most pros are.

Could be.

Editor Carmen Callil:

"The old-fashioned editor has to a great extent disappeared, but I'm not too sure that's a great loss; and the improvement in sales, marketing and design effort, in my opinion, more than makes up for it. Editorial work is often farmed out to freelance copy-editors, and not done in-house as it used to be. Have freelance editors got worse? I don't imagine so. Also, was "old-fashioned" editing as great as it is often claimed to be? Moaning about the good old days is as much a part of writing life as drinking too much and a partiality for parties and too much smoking."

Jeanette Winterson, whose work I quite like, chimes as well:

"Editors have become linear and timid. They worry about how things follow and Emma Bovary's eyes both change colour unexpectedly, and no one minds. As Virginia Woolf wrote, "all my facts about lighthouses are wrong". So there is wrong that is right, and that is better than rigid rightness that is wrong. I find, too, that many younger editors simply don't have the cultural resources to recognise a reference or playfulness therein." 

Read the whole thing.

A good editor you're simpatico with is worth their weight in gold.

And they'd probably want to edit that sentence.

I wonder what's on TV...