Marvel's What if...?

Cap's been on a diet

What if they had endings?

No, seriously, what if?

In terms of visuals, the show's gobsmacking! Drop dead gorgeous. Looks like they animated art deco posters from the 1920's. I gather it's all done with filters over 3D models, but DAMN. Super impressive filters.

The only thing that gives me pause visually is the lip syncing. It just feels off, like I'm watching Ashley Simpson. Mouth and sound don't match. The 3-D model mouths don't seem to form the proper shapes.  

All the more irksome when so much else is so breathtaking visually!

The action sequences are impeccably staged... and yet, I find the show oddly lacking in tension. The action is feels perfunctory, something you expect, like fries and a drink. 

Captain Peggy Carter and Star Lord Panther

Maybe I'm just jaded after so much super hero spectacle. 

The stories aren't grabbing me.

For a What if show, I'd expect mind blowing concepts, like Wandavision and Loki had. Again, I'm probably just jaded and need to go on a diet of independent art films made on a laundry change budget. 

Peggy's ending was okay; having her pop up 70 years later echoes popsicle Roger's return. But it didn't have emotional impact. The zombie one just petered out into nihilism. 

Dr. Strange's outing was dark, had the strongest finish, and the most emotional heft of the entire series, however awful. 

And there's the rub: all the other episodes have felt like fluff, with lacklustre endings and bland humour. 

A series without teeth. 

Of course, humour is like the very essence of subjectivity, so what do I know?

Maybe they need to do the basic scenarios before they really go full Twilight Zone and really start playing around. 

Visually, I love it. A full feature with this look would be amazing. The Rocketeer would rock the look. So would Superman or Wonder Woman. 

Whoops, wrong franchise!

I think I need to take a break from Marvel for a bit...

The Great Deep Space Nine Rewatch

DS9 (Deep Space Nine) is excellent. I haven't watched DS9 in something like twenty years, so I thought the COVID-19 lockdown might be a good time to re-acquaint myself with the show. 

I remember seeing a good deal of it during the initial run, but I know I missed some episodes. 

I just finished all seven seasons (over 7 days worth of content spread over two months), and I can say it holds up. It has an epic arc with The Dominion War, a fabulous set of nuanced, compelling characters and some of the best villains to grace a Star Trek show. 

Like the other two late Twentieth Century Trek shows (TNG and Voyager), it changes radically in season three. 

The first two seasons of TNG were, let's face it, kinda rough. Lots of great ideas were there, but they didn't gel. Season two is more in focus than the first, but it's not until season 3 that it all really comes together. It may have something to do with the new uniforms, which were no longer causing extreme crotch discomfort for the male actors (seriously, this is why they changed the uniforms: Starfleets key personnel were being rendered infertile). 

Voyager spent the first two seasons, if memory serves, dealing with the Kazon, who were (for me) a rather lacklustre foil for the crew. Season three sees the ship hit Borg space, and introduces Jeri Ryan in her sexy silver cat suit. I have some quibbles around that as an act of pandering to the lowest common denominator, but admittedly no objection to Miss Ryan's unquestionably riveting appearance.

DS9 starts out like typical Trek, solid and episodic. The first two seasons are a lot better than TNG's first two and on par with Voyager's start. The characters, however, stand out more with DS9: while Voyager also has a mix of Starfleet and non-Starfleet cast members (the latter half Maquis terrorists), the cast of DS9 is more eclectic. 

The big initial twist with DS9 is that it's set on a space station near Bajor. The crew isn't going anywhere, which means the villains and extras stick around, and the consequences of earlier episodes aren't so easily evaded. In the first episode, a wormhole leading to the Gamma Quadrant (far far away otherwise) appears beside the station. This opens up a whole new region of space to play in and populate. 

Planet Bajor was set up in TNG: it has just been freed from a long and oppressive Cardassian occupation. Initially the TNG character Ensign Ro was going to be the station's first officer, but she turned down the role, and it turned into the equally feisty Major Kira.

Kiera (Nana Visitor), a core cast member, is a spiritual former terrorist and understandably hates Cardassians. She's combative on every front, both personal and professional. It takes a little while to discover her softer side. Her struggles nicely nuanced right from the start: she's not needlessly violent, but like the French Resistance (and the parallels are deliberate) she'll fight and kill (including civilians) for her people's freedom. 

DS9 is headed up by the bold Commander Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks), who's suffering from PTSD after losing his wife at Wolf-359 (where the Borg slaughtered the Federation fleet). He's immediately proclaimed The Emissary by the Bajorans, adding an interesting mystical subplot to the show. 

He's joined on the station by his young son, Jake (Cirroc Lofton), who's an ordinary kid, unlike the almost superhumanly capable adults in Starfleet. 

Quark (Armin Shimerman), an openly, defiantly avaricious Ferengi, runs the station bar; his character is rounded out by flashes of empathy from time to time. Not that he'd ever admit to it. His brother Rom works with him, and is a peripheral character initially, but takes on new dimensions starting in season three, where he emerges as a gifted engineer. 

Rom's son Nog (Aron Eisenberg) is paired with Jake, and the two form an unlikely interspecies friendship. In fact, interspecies friendships abound on the station. 

Odo (Rene Auberjonois), the shape shifting station security chief, is an island, preferring not to have any close connections, but he has an antagonism with Quark, who's always got some illegal scheme going on, that has a fun interdependent angle to it. They're like the coyote and the sheep dog from the Warner Brother cartoons: friends but also enemies. 

Bashir (Alexander Siddig) is the brash young station doctor, who's a bit of a legend in his own mind, and he rubs the other crew members the wrong way at first, especially O'Brien. Bashir proves to be both brilliant and genetically enhanced, which is revealed around season three, and that adds a whole new angle to his character.

Miles O'Brien (Colm Meaney)is the station's chief engineer and responsible for keeping the aging Cardassian station operational, which is no small feat. He's put upon and disgruntled a lot of the time, besieged by requests and demands, and storylines regularly subject him to great suffering. In fact, this becomes something of a joke in the writer's room, where they have the saying: "O'Brien must suffer". And man, does he. In one episode, they actually kill him off, only to replace himself with an O'Brien from another timeline. 

O'Brien is a man down in the trenches, and Julian Bashir's attitude and endless chatter drive him bonkers. Over the course of the show, the two become fast friends, although there are some hilarious barbs exchanged between them over the years. 

Dax (Terry Farrell) is the station's sexy Trill science officer; she's had multiple lives, including several as men (Curzon, a former male host, was fast friends with Sisko). She's a little nebulous at first, character wise: early on she's very chill and balanced. Later on, they bring out her party hearty side, like a kind of space age science hippy. 

Garak (Andrew Robinson) is the station's tailor; an ex-Cardassian spy, he's endlessly dissembling, and mixes lies with truth so much you can't tell what's real and what's not. He develops a friendship with Bashir, and the two have lunch once a week together for almost the entire run of the show. There's even a little sexual subtext to their connection. 

Conflict is the order of the day on DS9. Character's are built to conflict, but they also work through their differences, which is a big theme of the show: that people with very different points of view can ultimately get along. 

Kiera (Nana Visitor) is a window into Bajor, Julian can explore all sorts of medical themes, Sisko gets both command and spiritual themes as The Emissary, Quark is a window into Trek's underworld, Jake and Nog into youth in the Twenty-fourth Century, Dax into balance, tolerance, change, and difference; while Odo is law and order, topped by his fabulous shape shifting, a topic that is mined extensively. In later seasons, it is revealed he is one of The Founders, the shape shifters who run The Dominion, the arch-foil of The Federation for the later half of the show's run. 

What's great about DS9's first two seasons of episodic shows is that it lets you get to know the characters really well before throwing them into the grand narrative arc of The Dominion War. 

This builds up over season three and then becomes a dominant aspect of the show all the way through to the finale. 

The show intersperses the Dominion Arc episodes with one-offs until towards the end of season 7, and it's jarring sometimes. You go from a life and death struggle with a relentless enemy one episode to funny problems in Quark's bar the next. You get a bit of whiplash with this. On the other hand, if all the one-off episodes were taken out, I think the show would get too dark. It's nice to still have side jaunts that explore the lives of the station's quirky characters. 

One thing the show does very well is convey a sense of a larger universe. The writers will seed clues to larger events in episodes earlier on in the season, or even whole seasons earlier, and then hit you with a big payoff that's all the bigger for the build up. You can look back at the clues and they all add up, which is awesome. I'm sure there's a lot of ad lib stuff, and retro fitting, going on as well, there always is in such a complex, ongoing narrative, but enough of it is so well planned out you can really invest in the show's reality. 

There are quibbles, of course, but they don't seriously detract from the show. Considering the scope and scale of it, and the likely onerous demands of higher level executives, I'm amazed it all holds together as well as it does. 

This is Trek as never before: no other Trek show at this point has had such strong, ongoing narrative threads. No other Trek show fleshes out it's villains as well as DS9, and they are worth mentioning: 

Gul Dukat (Mark Alaimo), the former leader of Cardassia's Bajor occupation, is a reptilian, Machiavellian schemer who likes to preen and pose as virtuous. He has enough of a conscience to need to justify his villainy to himself and others. What's great about him is that the writer's will let him be decent for a stretch, to the point you wonder if he's changed, if he isn't really villainous, but then he'll do something truly dastardly. It ties back nicely to a quote from Jean-Luc Picard: "Villains who twirl their moustaches are easy to spot. It's the ones who cloak themselves in good deeds who are the real threat." Or something close to that. 

Speaking of villains cloaked in virtue, Kai Winn (Louise Fletcher) is the epitome of this. She's one of the most vile characters I've ever seen on Trek, and I can't stand to watch her oily condescension and passive aggression. She keeps things just civil enough, masks her snide barbs just enough, to avoid direct confrontation. She lies and denies as well as Garak, perhaps even better, but with non of his charm. That said, the show will allow slivers of decency to show through from time to time. 

Later on there's Weyoun (Jeffrey Combs), the unctuous and smarmy Voorta diplomat. He's exceedingly polite and complimentary when he wants something from you, and turns snide, demeaning and sadistic when he doesn't. 

No other Star Trek show has ever explored villainy with such depth and nuance. It's great stuff!

The Founders are presented as deeply xenophobic, ruling an empire of solids out fo fear of them. The lead founder is motherly towards Odo, and seems decent and reasonable at first, but as push turns to shove, becomes monstrously punitive and genocidal. 

Speaking of which, DS9 introduces Section 31, a secret organization within The Federation that is dedicated to protecting it at any cost, including creating a plague to exterminate The Founders. Their methods are antithetical to everything the Federation stands for, the stick to the Federation's soft speech, and they run into conflict with DS9's crew. 

This is an area of contention with fans of Trek: many see it as undermining Roddenberry's hope for a better, gentler humanity. And to be fair, they have a point. Section 31 delves into the nasty side of international (interstellar) politics and implies they're necessary. It's disheartening that the Federation's decency is a lie, and that deceit, murder and even genocide are necessary for survival. That The Federation continues to exist at all could indeed be thanks to Section 31's hidden perfidy and mass murder. 

On the other hand, the storyline does pose the question loudly and effectively, and it pits the crew agains this viewpoint, to a degree (as we shall see next). Star Trek has always glided past how it's economy works, and how they've solved all of today's pernicious social and economic issues. Perhaps it is childish to view the future through rose coloured glasses. The show's writers are more hard nosed realists when it comes to interstellar politics. 

The important thing here, I think, is that the question is raised, and we are poised the question: at what price survival? What are we willing to countenance from our military and spy agencies? Where does one rightly draw the line?

This leads nicely into In the Pale Moonlight, for me the most memorable of all DS9's episodes. One of the hallmarks of great drama is characters making truly difficult choices: not between right and obviously wrong, but between lesser evils. Here Benjamin Sisko enters into a deception, aided by Garak, to bring the Romulans into the war with The Dominion, which The Federation is currently losing. Distressed by the weekly casualty lists, Sisko is intent on doing what he can to save his beloved Federation. With Garak's help, he concocts a fake hologram tape of The Dominion's agents plotting an invasion of Romulus. He passes it on to a Romulan senator, who discovers it is fake. Before he can get back to Romulus and expose Sisko's hoax, his ship explodes. The damaged data rod is then recovered by the Romulans, it's flaws hidden by the explosion, and they duly declare war on The Dominion. This is what Garak planned all along, and Sisko is complicit in the deliberate murder. 

The episode is presented in flashbacks as Sisko recounts events in his log, which he then deletes. He questions whether or not he can live with what he's done, with the compromises he has made, and in the end, he decides he can. 

Unlike TNG, DS9 never sugar coats, and moral absolutes are quickly muddied into shades of grey. The best thing I can say about it is that it's truly thought provoking. You can argue about Sisko's choices (as you can about those made by many of the other characters) because there are multiple sides to the issues. Where do you draw the line? Was Sisko justified? Why and why not? 

What Sisko does condemns millions of Romulans to death, but also saves the Alpha Quadrant. Does he have the right to make that decision? And yet, with your own civilization on the line, what would you do to survive?

It reminds me of The 100, which (before it flew off the rails and into orbit) was relentless in presenting it's characters with painfully difficult choices that would stain their souls. 

Some things don’t track if you think about them too much, and I’ll list a couple quibbles just to be pedantic:

Starfleet asking Sisko to plan the invasion of Cardassia strikes me as odd. He’s a field officer, not a staff officer. D-Day was led by Eisenhower, who was a five-star general, and he was supported by a large dedicated staff. Invading a planet is many orders of magnitude larger than D-Day; there’s just no way they’d give that responsibility to a captain. It’s beyond their pay grade and role. At very least, Sisko would be promoted, transferred to HQ, and have dozens of new characters assigned to support him. Sure, they could make DS9 their HQ, but where are Sisko’s staff officers? This is a monumental task!

Earlier, they had Sisko lead a fleet of six hundred ships (six hundred!) against the Dominion. Such a vast fleet would be broken down into sections, each commanded by an admiral, with at least a rear admiral commanding the lot. There’d be admirals coming out of your behind with that many ships. It certainly wouldn’t be led by a captain. 

Sisko is being screwed: his admiral managers are off loading tons of THEIR work onto him without proper compensation or recognition! Planning the invasion of a planet, leading a thousand ships, that’s what admirals are for!

Of course, the show is on a budget, and for narrative reasons they want a main cast member at the head of the story (ie. invasion plans, etc). 

Something else that irks is the ire Sisko gets from Starfleet for trying to be The Emissary and a star fleet officer at the same time. Hello?!? Surely Starfleet knows that the whole reason they have not lost the Dominion War is because The Emissary asked The Prophets very nicely to evaporate the Dominion fleet and prevent more from coming through the wormhole. 

Yet The Admiral keeps riding Sisko for trying to get along with The Prophets. Is this man oblivious? The greatest contribution to the war effort, by far, was made by The Prophets. They’re the only thing standing between The Federation and utter, total defeat. But you won’t allow even a little leeway for Sisko to deal with them, to keep them happy? 

It’s so monumentally short sighted, so transparently artificial, such a bit of drama for the sake of drama, that it knocks me out of the narrative a little. 

Then again, Starfleet admirals have a history of being boneheads, traitors, megalomaniacs, batshit insane or controlled by alien parasites. 

C’est la vie.

The Dominion is repeatedly shown to be crafty and resourceful, setting traps and starting wars between their enemies. They aren’t merely a bunch of tin plated imbeciles running into laser guns in order to aggrandize the heroes. They have agency, an instincts for self-preservation (well the Voorta do, not so much the Jem Hadar), and they can and will adapt to our hero’s plans. All of which makes them excellent foils.

On the progressive front, the show is no slacker: it tackles inequality, excessive greed and racism repeatedly. Of particular note is a two-parter in which Sisko goes back in time to 2023 and gets embroiled in a historic riot, as well as a dream episode in which he’s a writer in the 1950’s and is forbidden to publish a story about a black space station captain. Quark and the Ferengi are used to criticize the excesses of capitalism. 

Worf joins the show in season three, and has numerous episodes exploring Klingon warrior/honour culture.

DS9 also has a wonderful extended wrap up: the latte half of the seventh season is one big long story, and most of the story lines are suitably tied up with bows. 

Sisko sacrifices himself to destroy Dukat (who's the evil Pah-wraith's chosen one) and ascends into the wormhole in the sky. He tells Cassidy (a freighter captain he marries in season seven) that he may one day be back. The one quibble i have here is that he doesn't talk in a vision to his own son. But that's just a quibble. 

There's a great arc for Nog, who's joined Starfleet, only to be badly injured in battle (losing his leg), and finally returns to duty as a lieutenant. 

Rom becomes Grand Nagus, Odo merges with the Great Link, Kiera becomes station chief, Dax and Julian get together, O'Brien goes off to earth to teach at Starfleet academy and Worf becomes ambassador to The Klingon Empire. 

Of all the Star Trek shows, this one has the best wrap up. 

Thanks in large part to the ongoing narrative and nuanced, multi-dimensional (and compromised) characters, it feels the most like an evolving family, and it's the most sorely missed when it concludes. 

What show runner Ira Steven Behr, and talented symphony of writers, actors & crew, accomplished with DS9 is truly special. Thank The Prophets Paramount executives were too focused on micromanaging Voyager to notice the brilliance happening in the background. 

Count me a fan.

Try it, you may like it. It's the most approachable, immersive and innovative (after TNG initial setting up of the franchise's New Wave) of all the Trek iterations for me, thanks to a diverse cast of characters, including ordinary civilians. It shifts from episodic to serialization, explores spirituality/religion, war, morality and capitalism. 

It also has a bar. 

Post-apocalyptic cinema: Love & Monsters mini-review

Love & Monsters is a ton of fun. 

Probably the best, over-the-top post-apocalyptic adventure romp that I've yet seen. It mixes heart, comedy and ridiculous creatures. Road Warrior and Fury Road look positively down to earth by comparison. 

The actors all do a stand up job, the dialogue is solid, and there weren't any narrative missteps that took me out of the experience. 

It's not super deep. It won't change the world. But it's not intending to.

The monster designs are great, a fun mix of horrific and cute, and despite the light, breezy tone, there are genuine moments of cringe inducing suspense. 

And the giant leeches are gross.

The hero is a goof, but his evolution into hardened badass flows nicely and feels natural.

Two thumbs up, as they say. 

Ranking the Star Wars films: worst to best

I thought I'd rank all the films in the Star Wars series, just for the heck of it. Hasn't everyone else? It's a wonderfully imaginative and realized universe in many ways, but some of the movies are stronger than others. 

So let's get to it!

11) The Rise of Skywalker

Rise is such a frenetic assault on the senses, I wanted to walk out of the theatre. Partly a sign of age, I'm sure; movies have been getting faster paced for awhile now but this was crazy. Incredibly, the Emperor is brought back off screen, in the text scrawl at the start, and delivered his 'Message to the Galaxy' in... a video game. 

Say what? 

Abrams tries to cover the senselessness with a manic pace and throws a blizzard of distractions at the audience. It's kind of like shouting 'Space squirrel!' whenever we start to question what's happening.

Finn is given little to do, and neither is Poe. The newest member of the gang, Rose, is so abruptly and unceremoniously sidelined it'll give you whiplash. The narrative through line between these movies is non-existent, the changes in direction are jarring, derail the audience and take the viewers out of the movie.

The fake out with Chewie supposedly being blown up is ripped from Raiders of the Lost Arc, where one of two trucks explodes and Indy thinks Marion is dead. She isn't. It worked there, it doesn't here.

It's obvious with Rise that if there ever was A Plan for this clusterf*ck of a series, it's not just been abandoned, but dynamited, chopped up, set on fire, and then packed with weights and sunk in the deepest crevice of the Marianas Trench. 

They had a huge task in trying to wrap up the Star Wars series, but even accepting that it would never live up to fan expectations (likely true), this movie is just bad. 

10) The Phantom Menace

Oh, geez, Wizard! Are you an angel? Awkward and hobbled by stilted dialogue (some of the worst in the entire series, although Attack of the Clones gives it a run for it's money), it does introduce new ideas. It doesn't use the original series as a template to rip off, although it does have a big battle at the end that resembles Jedi's ending (a simultaneous battle on the ground and in space). The lightsaber fight with Darth Maul is particularly stunning. Unfortuantely I never really connected with Qui Gon Jinn. 

There's a huge problem dramatically with putting a stoic Jedi together with another stoic Jedi (even if he is younger). They don't play off each other well. 

The collection of characters in the first film had a wonderful dynamic; they were easily recognized archetypes, and very different people, which added conflict and spark. Here, as Red Letter Media has noted, the characters are hard to describe other than by using their clothing or job. 

And then there's Jar Jar. 

9) Attack of the Clones

I tried to watch this one again, and was stunned by how badly some of the effects work has aged. 

8) Rogue One

Flat characters and an overly convoluted plot don't help this (to me) unnecessary prologue to the original film. I like leaving some things to my imagination. The story felt fragmented and repetitive, like a video game: they go to find the pilot, they then go to find her father, then they finally go to try and steal the plans. People pop up the instant the plot requires: stormtroopers flood into frame to be shot down like ten pins. 

The plot was pushed forward with such clumsy brutishness it reminded me of the machinations of the TV Lords in The Truman Show, while the climactic scene in the data storage facility recalled the engine obstacle course from Galaxy Quest, only it's played straight—more than a couple decades after Quest's satirical take. 

The action scenes lack emotional investment and went on way too long. 

On the positive side, the cinematography is absolutely stunning, and the film is chock full of iconic shots. 

7) The Last Jedi

The most controversial and divisive film of the set, Last recycles The Empire Strikes Back: it opens with a battle and then becomes a long spaceship chase contrasted with training sequences. It throws in a side plot with a visit to Gambling Planet which added nothing, other than to show how the ubiquitous by-the-seat-of-our-pants schemes cooked up by plucky heroes are reckless and destined to fail. Finn and Rose trust the fate of the recycled Rebellion (sorry, Resistance) to some guy they meet in a holding cell. Part of the reason we watch this genre is to see improbable schemes succeed. How much do we really need a finger poked in the eye of the genre's tropes?

On the plus side, it surprised me a couple of times, such as with the perfunctory killing of Snoke. That perked me up! On the down side, I did not find Kylo compelling as the new Big Bad. Hux? Even worse.  

The possibility of Rey and Kylo teaming up? Interesting direction! Also quickly discarded. 

Everything set up in Force Awakens was discarded or undermined. New directions were set up, only to be discarded in turn. WTF?

The original trilogy had awesome villains: Grand Moff Tarkin, Darth Vader, Boba Fett, Jabba the Hutt, and the wonderful, delightfully evil, scenery chewing Emperor. 

Even the Prequels had some half-decent villains: Darth Maul, Count Dooku, General Grievous.

The sequel trilogy? Snoke (killed off before we knew him), Kylo, Hux. I understand Rian was not interested in Snoke as a villain, and was more intrigued by the conflicted Kylo. Fair enough. I wasn't really, and any pay off to this focus was lost in the third film with the non-sequitur reintroduction of the Emperor.

Star Wars is opera in space. It needs good villains and (for me) the sequel series failed to deliver.

Some say this film makes The Force egalitarian. That's nonsense. Attack of the Clones introduced restrictions on Jedi having relationships and kids. So if Jedi aren't having kids, where are all the new Jedi coming from, if not random families throughout the universe? 

Even then, it's not egalitarian: people are still BORN with Force ability. It's not something they develop with hard work and training, as people in Star Trek progress. 

Star Wars is Chosen Ones and feudal mythology tropes (Dark Lords, Princesses, Knights, Royal Family Drama, Sweeping Battles, Magic). 

Being born with a special ability or power is John Wyndham's The Chrysalids for God's sake: you have two classes of people, those with Force powers and those without. 

And we all know the destiny of the people who don't (I'll give you a hint: it's not pretty). 

If you want a series that really promotes egalitarian values, watch Star Trek: TNG. 

6) The Force Awakens

Likeable new characters, supported by old favourites, and fun banter help float this rehash of the original film. 

On the other hand, it turns our original beloved heroes into losers: Han is a desperate bottom feeder and incompetent smuggler, Luke is in hiding after catastrophically botching the rebuilding the Jedi Order, and Leia has failed utterly as a politician and general to stop the First Order, which quickly obliterates the New Republic. 

Logan did terrible things to poor old Xavier, which I didn't like, and yet the story was so good and powerful, it was worth it. With Force Awakens, the pay off isn't. And it only gets worse.

The map to find Skywalker never made any sense (why would you leave a map if you don't want to be found?) and another, even bigger Death Star... was tedious and creatively bankrupt. History occurs first as tragedy and the second time as farce. What's the third time?

That being said, the performances of the new leads (Finn, Rey, Poe) were all great, and their interpersonal energy made the film watchable, despite the stories' relentlessly repetitious nature. 

But they didn't build on it.

5) Solo

Unnecessary (I never needed to know how Solo got his last name) but different enough from the other films to hold my attention. It had some good banter, but honestly I never bought the lead as Han Solo. Anyone else in the Star Wars universe, sure, but he wasn't Solo. 

The overall tone struck me as... dreary. 

Somethings are better left to our imagination. 

At least they didn't blow up another Death Star.

4) Revenge of the Sith

There's a big, gaping chasm between the original trilogy and the rest, just as there's a gap in quality between the first two and the third, but Revenge is the best of the Prequel trilogy. 

One thing that I'll give the Prequels: Lucas had something he wanted to say. Or at least, it seemed to me he had something to say, even if he didn't say it as well as he might have. The Sequels? I never felt there was a driving artistic vision. Just the desire to make lots and lots of money. 

You always have to be careful what you wish for. 

When I was a kid, I wanted to see more Star Wars films. As an adult, in retrospect, I believe it would have been better to stop at Return and leave it at that. 

Live and learn.

I do find The Mandalorian fun (the effects are incredible), and I have also enjoyed watching episodes of The Clone Wars.

3) Return of the Jedi

Lucas originally planned for the Empire to fight Wookies in the final film, as a commentary on the recently concluded Vietnam War. But he'd already included Chewie as Han's co-pilot, so he thought he had to come up with another creature instead. Being a very good businessman, Lucas also wanted something cuddly that could be marketed. He took Wookies, cut out letters and halved their height. Voila: Ewoks are born! 

As a parallel to Vietnam, I don't think it works. Not because high tech military forces are never defeated by less technologically advanced armies: this has happened often, and I would have bought into Wookies defeating the Empire. 

The problem to me is that the Ewoks have stubby little legs and arms, can't move quickly, and can't get much force behind their weapons. Their arms are too short to throw with any real force (which is why I imagine they resort to sling shots), and they have no reach in hand to hand combat. 

Sure, maybe they could lull their opponents into a false sense of security, like the little child like blue aliens in Galaxy Quest, and then pounce and devour them. 

I don't think they made the Ewok threat very believable. 

That being said, it's fantasy, and the film buys a LOT of good will with the first two, with the wonderful characters and effects and the sweeping adventure angle. It is still a weak point for me in the series though. 

Luke's scheme at the beginning seems... really really badly planned, and I imagine if Rian had gotten his hands on it, it would have failed. 

The final battle, and the confrontation with the Emperor, are just splendid, and they carry the film. The space battle, at the time, was beyond breathtaking. Nowadays, you see that in episodic television! 

Progress?

2) The Empire Strikes Back

A fabulous follow up to Star Wars, although it is dependent on the first film and requires Jedi to conclude it. It's a very much a 'to be continued' middle chapter, albeit an awesome one. I don't have much to say about it: it's awesome.

1) Star Wars

As I wrote in an earlier post: 

When the first Star Wars hit the screen it was like a hurricane of fresh air. Nothing like it had ever been seen before. Well. Okay: except Flash Gordon. But this was such a huge leap forward, such a refreshing take on the earlier space pulp material that it transcended its point of inspiration and became something else entirely. It became a phenomenon. People went to the theatre over and over again to see it, and cinema has never been the same since. It was the beginning of a four billion dollar franchise, and it was still unhindered by mounds of marketing crap weighing down the original creativity.

I recently heard some of the music from the first film, out of the blue, and out of context. And I was struck by the feelings it dredged up. It felt fresh, hopeful, wistful, like a beautiful lost dream. Just without all the additional hackneyed crap that got stuffed into the franchise over time by dozens and dozens of different, disconnected creators, marketers, writers, artists, and toy and game manufacturers.

As Jonathan Price's High Sparrow might say–if I may mix my franchises–there was something clean and pure about the original 1977 film. Strip away all the bells and whistles and CGI and toy tie ins, and you're back to the first film and something that might even be described as edgy. Daring. Hopeful. It was made by dreamers, invented on the fly, innovated while it was being shot with whatever could be found. No one was saying 'no, you can't do that,' and 'no, you can't do this'.

It was pulp art, but it was art, nonetheless.

A joyous flight of imagination.

Now it's a bloated, multibillion dollar behemoth, and some of that lithe, elegant purity was lost along the way.

It was probably sold off in a value meal.

Star Wars begins with a farm boy, a couple of fleeing droids and some stolen plans. We end with a space station the size of a small moon blowing up just before it was about to vaporize another planet.

Talk about stakes! Talk about tension!

Will Luke save the rebel base and all his friends, or will the Empire be triumphant, destroying not only the Rebellion HQ, but the stolen plans along with it?

The villain here isn't just Tarkin and Vader, but the Death Star itself. It's a menace to the entire galaxy, a mobile doomsday machine. And it's already killed a planet full of people!

And what do they attack this planet sized peril with?

Teeny, tiny fighters.

Drama is about conflict and contrast, right? Scale makes things epic. Well, here we have the greatest, most dramatic difference in scale in pretty much the entire history of cinema: man vs. planet.

Goliath has nothing on the Death Star.

David Brin's Startide Rising & the Uplift Universe

One of my favourite sci-fi writers of all time is David Brin.

My aunt bought me a copy of Startide Rising as a gift in The Long Long Ago, back when we actually left our abodes and met in person (It happened!).

We now live like Isaac Asimov’s Solarians, each in a separate world...

Anyway, Startide Rising (published in 1983) is a mind blowing, magnificent journey into imagination. The science is fanciful, but backed by Brin’s expertise in physics and work at NASA.

I’ve been meaning to write about his work for some time, but never felt I could do it justice. Well, COVID-19 has me isolating and I’m going to write about it anyway, because if you’re also isolating this is top line stuff to read.

He sets the adventure of the startship Streaker in a universe of breathtaking scope: the galaxy has been populated for millions of years. In fact, it is a seven galaxy spanning civilization, or multi-civilization, composed of thousands of different species and loosely governed by Galactic Institutes. The nearest parallel would be The United Nations.

Of course do not have a copy of the book currently, as I’ve loaned it out to a friend. Again. I’ve bought multiple copies over the years as I often don’t get it back. Looks like I need to order another.

Jim Burns painting of Kithrup, from the Uplift Universe

Here’s the description of the book, taken from the Wikipedia page. I believe it is partly pulled from the old back cover, but I can’t be sure anymore (The Amazon book description is not as compelling as what I remember from the book jacket):

In the year 2489 C.E.,[3] the Terran spaceship Streaker — crewed by 150 uplifted dolphins, seven people, and one uplifted chimpanzee — discovers a derelict fleet of 50,000 spaceships the size of small moons in a shallow cluster. They appear to belong to the Progenitors, the legendary "first race" which uplifted the other species. The captain's gig is sent to investigate but is destroyed along with one of the derelict craft — killing 10 crew members. Streaker manages to recover some artifacts from the destroyed derelict and one well-preserved alien body. The crew of Streaker uses psi-cast to inform Earth of their discovery and to send a hologram of the alien.

When Streaker receives a reply, it is in code. Decrypted, it says only: “Go into hiding. Await orders. Do not reply.” 

And we’re off!

The book starts In medias res, with the Streaker already in hiding and The Five Galaxies going batshit trying to find them.

The way Brin describes the thinking of aliens (and animals) here is compelling, really getting across as sense of ‘other'. The dolphin crew members use Haiku, for example. Little things like that, different ways he uses language (poetry, sentence structure, punctuation), go a long way to establish that these beings think different and probably buy Apple.

And yes, dolphins! Startide Rising is part of Brin’s Uplift Universe, where space faring species scour the galaxy for pre-sentients to raise up into civilization. They take them under their wing, tailor them genetically to whatever task they wish, demand indentured servitude for 100,000 years as payment for this ’service’, and then let them go so they too can then scour the galaxy for species to uplift, and the process repeats.

Such a fascinating idea! Talk about scope and thinking long term.

Humanity, for it’s part, upsets the entire system by uplifting dolphins, apes and chimps before even coming into contact with Galactic Civilization, meaning we don’t have to spend eons in service to one of the senior races. Which pisses them off no end, and gets humanity labelled ‘wolflings’.

Some of the aliens are reasonable and noble, others rapacious and predatory (Jophur, Soru). The Jophur are a favourite: collective organisms made up of living 'rings'. They always came across to me like ambulatory fungus. The description of them from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_Universe#Other_clans_(of_aliens) :

The Jophur are a fictional extraterrestrial race in the Uplift Universe. Physically, they are a stack of waxy, living rings. Each ring serves a different purpose, and they connect to each other to form a single being by chemical means via an electrically conductive, sap-like substance that flows down the center to bind the stack together. A "master ring" provides a strong sense of individuality to each stack and enforces this with corrective electrical shocks to non-compliant rings.

The Jophur were originally the traeki, intelligent but often indecisive because of internal debates between the rings that formed each individual. Their patrons, the Poa, asked the Oallie to engineer the traeki further to increase their effectiveness. The Oailie created "master rings", shiny black rings (often described as "silvery") that created a strong sense of self-identity. The newly invigorated Jophur, as the traeki with the new master rings were called, quickly became a strong, vigorous force in the Five Galaxies.

Who comes up with this stuff? Brin! He has some of the best aliens you’ll ever encounter in fiction. Honestly, he should make a few Pokemon.

Better yet, the Uplift Universe comprises six full novels, in two trilogies. 

The first trilogy books (Sundiver, Startide Rising and The Uplift War) are not a continuous story; they’re set in the same universe, but do not directly flow from one to the other, and none of the same characters appear. The second trilogy (Brightness Reef, Infinity’s Shore, Heaven’s Reach), however, is a three novel arc, compromising a massive cast of humans and aliens.

Brightness Reef is set partly on the planet Jijo, which has been illegally settled after having been declared a fallow world. The whole idea of fallow worlds is awesome: it shows the time scale these civilizations operate on.

Infiinity’s Shore ups the ante:

...The Streaker, with her fugitive dolphin crew, arrives at last on Jijo in a desperate search for refuge. Yet what the crew finds instead is a secret hidden since the galaxies first spawned intelligence—a secret that could mean salvation for the planet and its inhabitants … or their ultimate annihilation.

Heaven’s Reach (published in 1998) brings it all to a soaring conclusion. It even features fractal worlds (where Retired species go to play cosmic yahtzee. I’m making the yahtzee stuff up. It’s way more exciting than that).

One of the greatest problems I have with sweeping, epic fiction is that so often the pay off to the mysteries the author sets up are so... lacklustre. This is especially true with television, where the whole idea is to hook people with a mystery and then keep them hooked in perpetuity. An ending is not necessary, or even wanted. The big thing is to keep people coming back and continue getting advertiser money, so the crew stays employed. Everyone’s gotta eat. But it doesn’t lead to satisfying endings (I’m looking at you BSG, selling out your complexity theme for a simplistic let’s all throw our technology into the sun with no dissenters nonsense finale).

Brin, however, pulls it off. The second trilogy is mind bending, getting into memetic worlds and galactic drift and more. it’s a truly epic conclusion. Others may (and have) disagreed, but they don’t know what they’re talking about. This is smart, imaginative, unique stuff.

One down side is that it is so way out there it’d be hard to film, and Hollywood is notorious for being unwilling (in general... The Arrival is a great exception) to depict truly alien aliens. Even the Borg, who started out very different (at least psychologically, as a collective), got a ‘Queen’ in order to make them more relatable.

Of course, aliens are usually just a way to talk about ourselves. I don’t think that’s always the case with Brin: he genuinely puts thought into how a species with a certain ecology would behave differently. And he gets that across.

He did have his novel The Postman turned into a film starring Kevin Kostner. The book, in my opinion, is far better, with greater depth and complexity and a solid theme that isn’t conveyed as well in the film. This book has some of Brin’s hardest hitting emotional moments.

Earth, another stand alone novel he wrote, is about, well, the future of life here. It’s also got some mind expanding ideas, which I don’t think I have the scientific knowledge (or memory) to really explore, given how long it's been since I read it. He was ahead of the curve on a lot of issues (oligarchs and the effect of cameras proliferating).

Existence is the last book of his I have read, and I admit it wasn’t my favourite.

Heart of the Comet he wrote in collaboration with another author, Gregory Benford, some time ago. I confess was a difficult, yet truly rewarding read. I had to go over some passages twice (or more) to truly understand what he was saying. It’s hard science sci-fi. Like reading Stephen Hawking, only with nail biting adventure, suspense and high stakes.

Brin also contributed to the Foundation series, writing Foundation’s Triumph, which ties Asimov’s books together, including Pebble in the Sky. It’s just awesome. I have no other words. Read it!

Brin's in the same class as sci-fi greats like Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Frederick Pohl, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Frank Herbert and Ray Bradbury.

It amazes me how brilliant our scientists and theorists are, to imagine mind bending yet plausible scenarios. I can imagine all kinds of stuff, but the majority of it falls into sci-fantasy / satire at best.

We all have our strengths?

Brin has also written extensively about transparency (see The Transparent Society) and currently writes a lot about politics in the United States, which he obviously cares passionately about. If he buys into something, it always gives me pause.

There are some threads about Donald Trump, for example, that I thought were so out there they had to be conspiracy theory, yet there is an unsettling amount of evidence that they are actually true.

Brin also surfaces how Republicans, who talk a good fiscal conservative game, are actually dreadfully profligate spenders. I find it incredible this is not more widely known.

Anyway. Enough about politics. This blog is about sci-fi.

If you have a true love for sci-fi, I suspect you’ll love his work. His imagination is truly epic in scope and scale, like rock candy for your brain. If there’s any series in sci-fi I would recommend (along with Foundation and Ringworld and Heechee and Hitchhikers, and okay, well, there are a lot, but this is right up there, you can start with it), it’s Startide Rising.

Give it a read, you won’t be sorry.

And his guide to aliens is also good. Not as in depth as I might have liked, and painted illustrations would have been preferred (just being picky). 

There are even some old GURPs books for the Uplift Universe.

I’d love to see some lushly produced coffee table volumes covering Uplift, with detailed paintings, like a Barlowe Guide. Or graphic novels. That would be cool.

One can dream…!

Joh Wimmer reviews Startide Rising for Gizmodo here. He delves into the book in more detail, and while I don’t really agree with his criticisms, it’s good to get another point of view.

Magnum Thrax and being weird

Apple says Think Different. 

I say be different.

Revel in your uniqueness. 

Be the authentic you. 

Because everything weird about you is what makes you, you.

Speaking of which, Magnum Thrax is devotedly weird. 

It’s my weirdness.

And it’s a bit of a screw-you to all the conformity enforcers out there, who constantly hector us from both ends of the political spectrum.

It’s silly and strange and holds no punches. 

It makes jokes you aren’t supposed to make.

It has sexbots in it, for example. That's right: sexbots. 

Quelle horreur! 

Cue the fainting couch! 

Some people think this is appalling, but I think they’re funny. 

Why? 

Because they’d be an incredible feat of technology, requiring the convergence of multiple scientific fields and billions and billions of dollars worth of research and development. 

Because there’s an inherent absurdity in that we might be smart enough to create living, breathing simulacrums of ourselves, to create life, but the reason we’d do it is so we could fuck it. 

Like building a rocket to go to the moon for sex tourism. 

Some find that sentence appalling. 

I think it’s hilarious.

Our science God is like the Greek Gods of old: driven by primal passions. Lust, hate, envy, gluttony, sloth and all the sins and emotions that make us human. 

The internet is an incredible technological achievement. Originally intended to link scientists together into a massive, collective innovation engine, harnessing brain power for the greater good of the military industrial complex, it achieved true greatness with porn and cat videos.  

If you don’t find humour in that, I’d skip the book.

Why Magnum Thrax? Why not.

I was going to write about why I wrote Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom.

Why, oh why, write an outrageous, incendiary satirical text?

I have answers. But now I have no time to write them out.

It will have to wait.

Future Fossil, the short story I just finished posting, I also wanted to dissect. I had all these ideas for the emotional journey of the characters (It's true! Believe it or not) and yet, they fall short of what I was trying to achieve. The action somehow got out of control and took over, like bacteria overflowing a petri dish.

I parred back, but I don't think i went far enough.

I had an epiphany as to what makes interesting characters, one which will help in building out future stories.

If I ever get the time.

I had been working on a Magnum Thrax sequel, but this has stalled due to other commitments. Ones that involve things like paying for food and rent and superfluous material consumption and all that jazz. I don't know when I'll get back to it, or if anyone cares whether I do or not.

That's not what really matters.

I want to get something out of the journey.

If some things are going to have to change.