The Invisible Library

Now that we’ve all had a few days to chew on the details of last weeks BSG season finale, (which is where I’ve been all week. It was a lot to ponder), some questions still remain:

Is Starbuck the 5th Good Cylon or just in Apollo’s head? If a Cylon, where’d she get the viper? If just in Appollo’s head, how does she know where Earth is?

I’m leaning towards her being the number 5 good Cylon. She fits with the other four, who all have similar traits: high profile positions in the fleet, all dedicated to the freedom and protection of humanity and all in secondary service roles rather than leadership capacity. Tigh and Torri are the Right hand Man/Woman to the two most powerful people in the fleet and though flawed, often act as the conscience of the leaders. Chief and Anders (and Tigh and Torri) were all Resistance leaders on New Caprica (and Anders led the resistance on Cylon occupied Caprica). Starbuck, likewise is a protector of the fleet (a Viper pilot) as well as someone others looked up to. She was a motivational force to the other pilots, egging them on, encouraging them to be their best by leading as an example. It would also explain how she knows where Earth is: The fleet is close enough that when she died, she uploaded on Earth, which is where the 5 are from. The other 4 will pick up on this next season. Starbuck, as usual, is one step ahead by having died.

And this is what makes the 5 different from the other 7 Cylons. Where the 7 change bodies on a whim,uploading and downloading as you or I would change our shoes, they’ve hindered themselves from learning what it means to be Human and so lack that empathy gained by the 5 from not just living among the humans, but by living. They age, experience and learn. while the 7 Cylons retain memories from one body to the next, they seem to loose experience whenever they download into a new body, as if the shock of the Resurrection process dislocates them from humanity. All previous lives were just dreams, some more fruitful than others but all distant. It puts space between life and death, making them more meaningful.

And just how close to Earth are they? Distance in space is relative, but if Starbuck died only four weeks ago and is close enough to have been there and back and bought a shiny new viper along the way, that means they can’t be more than two weeks from Earth. Now, a lot can happen in two weeks and their could be any number of diversions between the Ionian Nebula and Earth but however way you look at it, Earth is close. Very close.

So, when exactly did throwing people out of the airlock become the answer to everyone’s problems on Battlestar Galactica? Got an uppity Cylon who won’t talk? Airlock him. Traitor of humanity won’t tell you what you want to hear because his fractured mind is too busy coming undone? Threaten to put him in an airlock. Cally and Chief having marital problems? Throw them out the airlock and catch them in a Raptor. It’s like on Star Trek: The Next Generation, when the writers couldn’t figure out a real solution to the made up problem of the week and the catchall answer was to Reverse Polarity. Which sounded cool, until you realized that it meant putting the batteries in backwards. Throwing people out of an airlock is the post 9/11 polarity switch. It sounds hardcore, but accomplishes exactly nothing.

Somehow, the writers forgot what story they were telling. When we last saw a good episode of Battlestar Galactica, the fleet had just narrowly escaped the Algae Planet before the star went Nova. This gave them the clues that allowed them to discover the roadmap to Earth. Starbuck realized she’s been painting signs to Earth since she was little. They had the traitor of humanity and his Cylon Girlfriend in the brig. Helo and Athena had just committed a minor act of treason in order to rescue their magical cancer-curring hybrid baby. Baltar and Caprica Six faced the realization that they were well and truly frakked and being a Cylon, for all it’s cool immortality points, wasn’t going to spare either of them from some major retribution falling on their heads. Oh, and Lee and Kara were busy sabotaging their marriages.

By my count, that’s at least half a dozen solid episodes worth of material right there. Hell, on any other show, that would be about a season and a half. But this is BSG, not any other show. At least until last week’s, “Racism is Bad M’kay?” episode and this week’s, “Let’s Go Play In An Airlock and Talk To Our Dead Ex-Wife” episode. And next week’s “Labor Issues in Spaaaaace!” episode isn’t looking any better.

Seriously, Mr. Moore, did you and the other writers misplace your story notes? This is “Black Market” territory here.

For those not familiar with the episode (or who have mercifully blotted it out), “Black Market” was the one where Apollo tries to woo a hooker, and then rounds out his film noir resume by going into the seedy underbelly of the fleet’s Black Market to figure out who murdered Pegasus’ Captain of the Week. What qualifies a fighter pilot for detective work? Pretty much the same thing that qualifies him to head the legal committee the President wants him to form in order to have Baltar’s trial. So, to review: Apollo is not just a pilot and a daddy’s boy who wants to sleep with his best friend, he also is a detective and lawyer. In “Black Market,” as in “The Woman King” and “A Day In the life,” we met characters that apparently had been there all this time but had never been seen before (and have not been seen since) and learned that the Black Market is so big, bad and vital, that it hasn’t even been mentioned casually again. The writers were clearly bored that week and decided they wanted to work on their Blade Runner meets Homicide: SVU spec script. That’s what we have with these last few episodes.

“The Woman King” and “A Day In the life,” both introduce pivotal characters who have never even been mentioned. The fleet has a civilian Doctor? Who is pals with Col. Tigh? And was on New Caprica? Since when? We knew Admiral Adama had a wife, she was his ex (as conveniently mentioned in the recap, which had to call back all the way to the mini series to find that one) but why is the dead ex-wife now so much more important than, say, finding Earth? I know these are flawed characters but that’s narcissism on a level that truly staggers.

Honestly, are you telling me that Helo has nothing better to do then take on worthless causes like defending Christian Scientists from embittered doctors? Maybe he should be worrying about the fact that his wife can casually incite him to betray his friends. And since when does Helo get to be the righteous hero? Somehow, we are to believe that Admiral Adama has nothing more pressing on his mind than his dead ex-wife and flirting with the President. Never mind the genocidal cyborgs that have been chasing them for the last two years, or his mutinous crew. And what has Tom Zerak been doing for pretty much all of season two? Also, the Cylons, who apparently haven’t bothered the Colonials for 49 days, what are they doing? Last we saw them, they decided to put the entire D’Anna/Three model into deep freeze, which is the equivalent of the US Congress saying, “All you Mormons are a nuisance, what with your unconventional religious fervor, so we’re going to sedate the entire state of Utah indefinitely.” That might be worth some screen time.

Here’s an idea for an episode: While the Cylons deal with the ethical ramifications of boxing 1/7th of their collective soul, the Colonials discover a D’Anna model that escaped and has been hiding out in the fleet. She’s going crazy because she is cut off. She has no connection, no greater purpose. she’s just a person now and she can’t cope. Various people on Galactica just want to airlock her but Helo and Athena try to reason with them. In the end, D’Anna kills herself because she can’t handle being alone. It covers all the areas of the stand alone episodes: racism and survivor guilt but also throws in the existential theme of being separated from God/purpose and allows Helo to be a saint. It also has the added bonus of not introducing anyone new, while moving things forward plot wise. What’s not to love?

Instead, we get Saint Helo and a two dimensional doctor, stereotypical anti-science religious fanatics and the ghost of Mrs. Adama. And next week, it’s Chief doing his Cesar Chavez impression.

I hear in the episode after that, they find a planet full of sharks and haul one up to the ship just so they can throw it out of an airlock and jump it.

I don’t mean to pick apart what is, on the whole, an impeccable and well crafted show. I do it because I love the show, and don’t want to see it devolve into just another lazy sci-fi program. BSG has, since the miniseries, been fearless in its willingness to tackle some real cutting edge themes and ideas and using sci-fi tropes to do so. It’s rooted in the great tradition of speculative fiction, spinning What If scenarios and taking them to their logical conclusion, but transcends the need to do the racism episode, or the sexism episode. Those things are handled in the subtext anyway. All that these inferior story lines that have no relation to the main plot do spin our gears. If I want to see labor disputes and racism handled in a sci-fiish way, there’s a Star Trek rerun on, somewhere.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that season 4 will only be 13 episodes. The writers will have to stay on target and stick to the main themes in order to finish the story by episode 13. There won’t be any room for padding out episodes about standard and well worn sci-fi ideas. Until then, however, we’ll have to find a way to endure the next few episodes, until it’s time to leave us hanging over a cliff, again.

Um, what?:

Seriously, Marvel, WHAT THE FUCK? At what point did Spider-Man having radioactive sperm ever seem like a good idea? At what point did anyone even think about Spider-Man having radioactive sperm? Jesus Christ, I can’t believe this ever saw print, I cannot believe that no-one at Marvel thought that having a comic where Spider-Man tells the corpse of his wife - because, yeah, I meant to say that, he’s talking to the corpse of his dead wife - that he killed her with his special radioactive spider-spunk was ANYTHING that should ever be allowed to appear in a comic. And that’s before you even get to the continuation of his admission: “Like a spider, crawling up inside your body and laying a thousand eggs of cancer… I killed you.”

I can’t really improve on “radioactive spider-spunk.” Wow.

Pulp Magazine Holdings Directory: Library Collections in North America and Europe by Jess Nevins.

I have his Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana and it’s amazing. Can’t wait to get my hands on this one as well.

Via Warren Ellis.

Not content with moving Battlestar Galactica to Sunday Nights, SciFi has decided that what the world needs now is a reimagined Wizard of Oz:

The miniseries is a sometimes psychedelic, often twisted and always bizarre take on The Wizard of Oz. It centers on DG, a young woman plucked from her humdrum life and thrust into The Outer Zone (the O.Z.), a fantastical realm filled with wonder, but oppressed by dark magic. DG discovers her true identity, battles evil winged monkey-bats and attempts to fulfill her destiny. Her perilous journey begins on the fabled Old Road that leads to a wizard known as the Mystic Man. Along the way, she is joined by “Glitch,” an odd man missing half his brain; “Raw,” a quietly powerful wolverine-like creature longing for inner courage; and “Cain,” a heroic former policeman (known in the O.Z. as a “Tin Man”), who is seeking vengeance for his scarred heart. Ultimately, DG’s destiny leads her to a showdown with the wicked sorceress Azkadellia, whose ties to DG are closer than anyone could have imagined.

The first rule of reimagining a story is that the orignal needs to fall short of its potential. This can sometime be a hard thing to judge (I’m all in favor of a reimigined Star Trek, though I’m probably the only one) but messing with the Wizard of Oz is just asking for trouble. George Lucus re-imagining his own Star Wars movies type of trouble.

The Oz movie is a classic. It also happens to be one of the most tightly structured scripts around. The color transition, the pacing, the stylized acting all play into the fantasy of the concept. Plus and this is a biggie, the musical numbers help tell the story and move the plot forward in an economical way. Imagine each character having to monologue their missing-organ back stories. That would be the definition of tedious.

The new BSG works because the original series was, frankly, shallow and cliched. It has it’s diehard fans who don’t like the new show for going all dark and current and philosophical and real. Some people are happy with worn out cardboard and Star Wars rip offs. But the show simply didn’t live up to it’s potential. But That’s not the case here. If you have your doubts, rent Return to Oz sometime.

Ever wonder what it’d be like if Stan Lee and Jack Chick had collaborated on a tract? Wonder no more!

Adam Sternbergh has reached the same conclusion I did about shows like Lost:

Change the format, or at least reimagine it. When it so-called arc shows, we need something between a mini-series and an open-ended run. We need the TV equivalent of a novella: the limited-run show. Series driven by a central mystery (Twin Peaks, The X-Files) peter out precisely because they have indefinite life spans. The writers are forced to serve up red herrings until the shows choke on their own plot twists.

[…] Now let’s imagine an alternate reality in which, say, Lost was designed to run for only two seasons. Rather than getting an increasingly tedious shaggy-dog story, we’d get 48 episodes of tightly plotted, expertly interwoven suspense. Viewers would be both more willing to sign on at the beginning (knowing their investment will pay off) and more inclined to buy DVDs later (either as catch-up for newbies or as a satisfying boxed set). Sure, the show won’t syndicate well, but shows like Lost don’t syndicate well anyway. And the series finale would be huge—the kind of event TV network executives drool over.

Shows like Lost or The X-Files or Battlestar Galactica work because they are complex, challenging and, at their heart, have a mystery that can be solved. But it’s the refusal to solve anything that ultimately kills them. The X-Files should have ended in Season 5. They had a second chance in Season 7. When did it end? 3 years later with season 10, after replacing the main characters because the initial characters (and actors) that made the premise work were tired of never finding an answer. But the Executives and producers didn’t care. they just saw an opportunity to squeeze a few more bucks at the expense of the audience’s credulity. A mystery cannot go on forever. Stories need to end and in a timely manner.

Imagine if movies did the same thing. Indie never finds the Ark of the Covenant, just an endless parade of tombs and Nazis with increasingly ludicrous cliff hangers. The fellowship keeps walking up Mount Doom, but never gets to the top. There were people who complained that after the nine hours of the three movies, they just didn’t care anymore who won the blessed war or what happened to that damn hobbit and his ring. Now imagine that it kept going on for five more movies with no resolution.

This is what happened to the X-files and what is happening to Lost. They had a good idea but have let it flounder for too long. It no longer matters why the polar bear, or what the numbers mean. Two seasons equals roughly 20 hours (minus commercial breaks) of feignts, dodges and cliffhangers. That’s the equivalent of 10 movies. Imagine watching a 10 movie series and still having no idea what these people are doing or why any of this is happening. You wouldn’t because no studio in their right mind would green light a 10 picture series that never had even a momentary resolution.*

I’d really love to see the American networks switch to the BBC style of drama series. One season of 13 episodes to tell your story. if it’s popular, they’ll do another season, but each season has a story arc. Something is achieved in 13 episodes and it’s over, with a possibility of a continuation. Even the idea floated above, of a limit of two seasons, forces the writers to weed out the ideas that kinda work (but not really) and get to the stuff that shines. There’d be no silly one off episodes where everyone breaks into song. Just tight plotting and storytelling honed down to a razor’s edge.

For all the griping about Firefly being cancelled too soon, at least it didn’t peter out like Buffy did, turning to cheep gimmicks in season 7 to stay interesting. And my fondest hope is that Ronald Moore and the gang at Battlestar Galactica have an end planned for the rag tag fleet, and soon. I’d love it if they find Earth at the end of season 3, fight over it with the Cylons in season 4 and then call it the end. Because they have a wonderful, compelling drama with interesting characters, but if left to wander around the universe in their current state for five or six more seasons, the show will just become monotonous and uninteresting. And no one wants to see that.

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* I’m curious to see how many Spider Man films Sony will let Sam Raimi make. My guess is one more, but only if Spider Man 3 does really well.

I’ve mentioned before what a formative experience watching the original Star Trek with my father on sunday afternoons was so, I’ve been extremely interested in the news that, starting next week, Star Trek will be airing again, with spruced up theme music and effects. Take a look at the trailer. It looks amazing.

Despite making a Gazillion dollars, Superman Returns is apparently considered a flop. This is due mainly to the fact that it cost over 500 Bajillion dollars to make and market.

Warren Ellis sums it up:

SUPERMAN RETURNS conservatively cost $250 million to make. Probably the same again to promote. It took $21M this weekend, eaten alive by PIRATES. The studio gets about half the box office takings. In America, WB’s cumulative slice of SR’s takings amount to around $50M.

As Fraction said to me Sat night, producer Jon Peters is probably sleeping with a gun in his mouth.

Is it conceivable that something that took fifty-odd million in its first weekend could be a flop? I said of KING KONG that for that film’s budget, I could grow my own giant fucking monkey. $250 million puts you in spacelaunch-budget territory. For $250 million WB could’ve given Bryan Singer his own communications satellite and spent the change on a George Clooney movie. Or two Wes Anderson movies. It’s an astonishing volume of cash that, at this stage, they don’t have a prayer of making back worldwide or on DVD.

This is the absurdity of modern Hollywood; that taking more than the GNP of Luxembourg in a single weekend is not actually enough to put a movie in the black.

Maybe Hollywood should try things the Werner Herzog Way:

In Werner Herzog’s films, the main characters tend to be ambitious explorers who find themselves crashing in spectacular failure. Aguirre, the Wrath of God follows a 16th-century conquistador who sets out to find El Dorado, only to end up on a raft, demented and alone, adrift on a stagnant river. In the documentary Grizzly Man, Timothy Treadwell becomes so adept at cohabiting with wild grizzly bears that he comes to believe he’s one of them – until he gets eaten.

Now the maverick German director, who has made 52 films over a 44-year career, is launching The Wild Blue Yonder. The movie, which he describes as “science fiction fantasy,” tells the story of two interstellar voyages. The first is undertaken by an alien race fleeing a dying planet with hopes of colonizing Earth, the other by human astronauts who set out to explore the liquid world the aliens left behind.

Instead of spending millions on Spielberg-style effects, Herzog went low tech and high geek. He spliced together documentary footage from NASA and the National Science Foundation’s US Antarctic Program. He created “characters” from documentary-style scenes with actual physicists and astronauts. But this being a Herzog film, the lyrical images are tempered by characteristic pessimism. “The film ends our illusions about intergalactic travel,” Herzog says bluntly. “We will not do it. We cannot manage it. It’s just too far.”

As is probably to be expected, some Freepers are claiming Superman as their own, and all us Liberals can keep our dirty, sex having hands off. But is Superman a conservative crusader? Well, not likely. For one thing, his creators, Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster were two good Jewish Kids from New York City. And as we all know, nothing Conservative comes out of New york City. For another, Superman stared out fighting Evil Capitalists. Crooked mine owners. Slum lords. Anyone who was trying to pull one over on the common working man. He was a Depression-era hero for the people, and a bit of a malcontent as well. he didn’t become a boyscout or start fighting super-villains until well after WWII started.

As for the claims that Superman is just a thinly veiled Christ-figure, well, yes and no. While there may be a few similar details to the myth of Jesus, Superman’s story shares quite a few of the basic Savior Myth Archetypes:

A culture hero is a mythological hero specific to some group (cultural, ethnic, racial, religious, etc.) who changes the world through invention or discovery. A typical culture hero might be credited as the discoverer of fire, or agriculture, songs, tradition and religion, and is usually the most important legendary figure of a people, sometimes as the founder of its ruling dynasty. The hero is sometimes said to be still living, but is often instead a star, constellation or purely spiritual in nature

In fact, Superman actually has more in common with Herakles than any other Hero. The comparison to Jesus gets even thinner with the new movie, flirting dangerously close to Da Vinnci Code territory, if you try and follow that train of thought out literally (we can talk more about this in comments, you spoil sports).

So, I’m not buying Superman as ass whoopin Jesus, fighting for the rights of unborn fetuses, one Nation, Under Oil Companies, for just the rich and no one else. If you Freepers want to write that story, you’ll have to steal some lesser-know hero to do it.