Category: tv

Categories
deep space nine rewatch

DS9 Rewatch: Season 1, Episodes 7-10

Well, Dax is off to a strong start with another round of “Julian, take a fucking hint.” Extra annoying is Julian basically tells himself “well, she didn’t say no, so it still could be yes!” and follows Dax, so he’s there to at least see her being kidnapped. Dax, why so many creepers?

I love that there’s a “unilateral extradition” treaty with these people, because that ensures a dramatic kidnapping attempt. But I like the way this sets up to examine some of the strangeness of the Trill as a people, like the question of who Dax really is, and if Dax becomes a different person when the host changes–and the existence of the host as an entity who still has a life with meaning despite joining. And there’s some great moments of politics, about who is allied with who and why the Bajorans don’t have a treaty so they can say no extradition because it’s their station. The maneuvering is lovely, as is Odo playing hardball with Quark using the threat of building code violations; this kind of thing is Star Trek playing bureaucracy at its best.

Also, special love for Anne Haney as the arbiter who is Done With Everything Before The Trial Even Starts. As Trek trial episodes go, it’s not The Measure of a Man (if for no other reason than it lacks the special drama of Picard versus Riker); it leans more toward being a mystery episode, solving a thirty year old crime that goes full Long Black Veil, which cuts into the major ethical debate that’s rolled up in the question of who Dax is. But it’s solid, and fun watch.

Another episode, another setup with Julian being fucking insufferable, but this time he’s not creeping on any lady people so I’ll allow it. You know, I remember really liking him at some point, and I’m not sure if it’s because he gets some good character development in later seasons, or if I just gravitated toward him on my first watch because he was the youngest guy on the crew and he is as objectively cute as he is smug. The Passenger starts out with Julian getting lightly choked by a dangerous prisoner who then promptly dies, so my money was instantly on him getting possessed by the prisoner in some way.

I feel like episodes are taking turns with who is hitting grossly on Jadzia. Last episode was Julian. This one, it’s Quark’s turn.

Security Lieutenant: …if you want my opinion…

Sisko: Actually, I don’t.

This is why I love Sisko. And DS9 is working to make him such a distinct sort of command presence from the captains we knew before.

Instead we get a shipment of a MacGuffin going to a planet to help stop the people there from dying, on a collission course with a very bad man who is supposedly dead and was obsessed with immortality. Probably because I called it at the very beginning of the episode, so none of the “ooh, suspense! mystery!” stuff worked for me, this ended up feeling like the worst episode of what had been a fairly solid run. (And all love to Alexander Siddig, but him [over]acting as the criminal walking around in his Julian suit is just… not great.)

Move Along Home starts with the terrible revelation for Sisko that Jake’s gotten all his relationship advice from Nog. Y I K E S. And the first ever aliens coming in formally from the Gamma Quadrant are gamers. OH NOES. (Oh god they actually look like they got scraped up from the TTRPG tables at a fantasy convention and slapped in some horrible, cheap-looking costumes, which I feel terrible for even having written.)

Honestly what appalls me even more than the wigs in this episode is that the Ferengi are just so bad and obvious at cheating. And the bad, obvious cheating leads the main crew members to get trapped inside the game that Quark is playing as an apology, which is just… not a great concept, and especially not as executed, plastic 3D board and all. My face met my palm when the Head Gamer Alien showed up to cackle maniacally and shout his first cryptic message.

I mean, that’s basically the entire episode. Dude in a bad wig saying cryptic things while the command staff wander around in a maze and get given basic “puzzles,” salted liberally with some of the worst acting so far this season. Even Odo’s exasperated “Is it against Star Fleet policy to push a few buttons?” comes across flat. Quark’s decisions have the potential to be interesting; I mean, as Corina said while we were watching, if you’re going to pick one guy off the station to play a random game with lives at stake, it probably would be Quark. I’m not sure how, but this episode even makes the life or death choice uninteresting; Quark goes into a screaming begging fit and the exasperated Head Gamer Alien says they’ll just choose someone at random. Which leads to an interminable cave sequence. And in the end, it’s all dismissed as “only a game.”

(Also “a tectonic shift of two ground masses”??? WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT EVEN SUPPOSED TO MEAN?)

Apparently this one is considered to be one of the ten worst Star Trek episodes ever. Can’t say I disagree.

In fact, Move Along Home was so fucking awful, instead of going to bed I decided to watch another episode just so it wasn’t going to be the last thing in my brain before sleep.

Which puts us at The Nagus. And this episode, I do vaguely remember, mostly because the Grand Nagus is played by Wallace Shawn (you know… “Never trust a Sicilian when death is on the line!”) and he’s still an absolute delight even under seventy pounds of makeup.

I think the more important part of the episode is the expansion of Nog and Jake’s friendship, the tensions where you can tell that their respective parents would really rather prefer to tear them apart. It’s a great foundation for their later character development. And poor Nog getting told yet again that he can’t go to school when it’s something he actually wants to do, and that makes him get in a fight with his best friend. This poor kid in his unsupportive home environment. And then there’s Jake, who I love with all my heart, sad because he’s losing his best friend–and when his dad tells him that “these things happen sometimes” you can just hear him thinking this is bullshit. It’s a really great depiction of friendship between young men that I don’t feel like even gets a lot of play today.

That scene of Jake helping Nog read. My fucking heart.

Okay, yeah, there’s some other stuff going on too. Quark getting to play Mob Boss for a Day has its really fun moments, particularly if you can turn off the part of your brain that’s screaming about the horrible, racist stereotype they’re based on. There’s some spoofy nods to The Godfather and watching Quark go mad with power followed by paranoia definitely has its moments. The Grand Nagus popping back up from his faked death is pretty dang fun.

Definitely a worthy apology for the two episodes that preceded it.

Categories
deep space nine rewatch

DS9 Rewatch: Season 1, Episodes 5 and 6

Captive Pursuit oh boy oh boy. Starting off the episode great with Quark apparently having a sexual harrassment clause in his contracts for the women that work at his bar. I think they’re trying to be funny, but hoo boy is it gross. It’s a relief when the alien ship comes through the wormhole and kicks off the A plot. Now, I get sending O’Brien by himself to not overwhelm a new alien, but he is not exactly the most diplomatic person on DS9. Also not exactly the most tight-lipped–or subtle. Watching him deal with the hunt aliens later is like watching a Barbarian in D&D desperately trying to make a deception check. (If only Garak knew, I’m sure he’d be facepalming mightily.)

Fun thing learned this episode that I’d forgotten: Odo doesn’t believe in using phasers.

But good lord do they make every effort to remind us that Quark is a creepy misogynist in this episode. Really leaves a yucky echo on an otherwise fun scene between him and O’Brien.

I think the developing friendship between O’Brien and Tosk (who has the thighs of a greek god, holy shit) could melt harder hearts than mine, and that’s what elevates the episode and keeps my absolute annoyance about Tosk’s “I cannot tell you about the mysterious thing, and by being terribly mysterious, we shall attempt to manufacture tension.” Which is one of my least favorite plot devices out there, and “well he’s an alien and he took an oath” only stretches so far for that. Once the douchey aliens show up, it becomes a very formulaic, classic Star Trek kind of standalone episode, complete with Prime Directive wrangling and a superior officer happily letting his subordinate get away with breaking the rules because it’s the emotionally correct thing to do.

Q-Less okay some background here. You need to realize that Q is literally my favorite semi-regular character of all time, at least once we got away from Encounter at Farpoint and he developed an actual personality. John de Lancie is a fucking TREASURE. So you are damn right I loved the shit out of this episode and still remember it to thise day.

Starting off with Julian hitting on a lady with a play by play of his medical finals is… a choice. The fact that this “gets them every time” is sure another choice; switching back from pure puppy to weird doctor who later flirst with his patients. Shush, Julian, we need to get to Q. Weirdly, I’d forgotten that Vash was actually involved in this episode–but there’s the strong start, with her saying a “friend dropped me off” in the gamma quadrant… and then zoom in to show Q, hanging out by the shuttle in his best creeper way.

Vash, Star Trek‘s answer to Maron Ravenwood, has the B-plot in her bag of tricks from the gamma quadrant–the beautiful gem. Mysterious power fluctuations (that seems to happen a lot in these shows) soon follow. The silliest part of this episode is probably Vash unpacking her bag when she’s only going to be staying in a room for one night–what person does that?

Q! Q! Q! Being obnoxious as only a god-like being who doesn’t understand the word no can. He’d obviously terribly bored and lonely, while he also can’t figure out why threatening people who are tired of his selfish bullshit isn’t a winning strategy to maintain friendships. One of Q’s greatest charms, which really comes into focus after Julian in this episode and Quark in the previous one, is utterly, delightfully awful he is without ever being massively creepy.

Vash: What did they call you, “the god of lies”?

Q: They meant it affectionately.

Oh no. Help. I love Q because he’s basically Loki with fewer daggers and even less impulse control.

O’Brien gets utilized so well in this episode as the link between DS9 and ST:TNG. He explains Vash, and he’s the one who notices Q and raises the alarm. And then Sisko and Q get together and we get to the true best part of the episode.

Q: You hit me! Picard never hit me!

Sisko: I’m not Picard!

Q: Indeed not. You’re much easier to provoke. How fortunate for me.

This episode feels fuller and faster than other episodes, probably because there’s always Q to throw into the scene for snarky dialog to keep things light and moving. And John de Lancie seems like he’s having a hell of a good time, going from annoying child to darkly threatening from one line to the next. The conclusion with the space egg and the beautiful alien creature that comes out of it feels beside the point; the real capstone moment is Q admitting that he keeps humans around because it’s a chance to experience wonder. A+, would watch again and again.

Categories
deep space nine rewatch

DS9 Rewatch: Season 1, Episode 3 & 4

The rewatch continues!

Past Prolog is episode 3 according to Netflix. It’s the first appearance of one of my favorite characters, Garak, the simple tailor. And it probably says a lot that when I saw him as a kid, I did not notice how totally fucking gay he is–but this time around, hoo boy. I’m honestly still not sure why Garak was so bound and determined to make friends with Julian, other than Julian needed something to do, and his (thankfully not sex-pest-esque) puppyish innocence in this episode actually make him not a bad choice for Mr. Totally-Not-A-Spy to use as a conduit to get information to the Federation. Because one look at Julian’s face and you know dishonesty isn’t in his skill set.

Anyway, this isn’t entirely a Garak love fest, but that’s the A+ part of the episode for me and a strong start for his thematic constant of “gay, spy, or why not both?” The rest of the episode is about a terrorist from Kira’s past showing up, people double crossing each other, and Kira figuring out where she fits in with the new path of Bajor and what loyalty to her people actually means. It really is Kira’s episode; she also gets to develop her relationship with Odo a bit, and her still slightly antagonistic working relationship with Sisko. You know from the beginning that Tahna is bad news, but it’s not as heavy handed as it could have been. And I enjoyed the Klingon sisters and their anry boob windows showing up as a nice little tie to ST:TNG.

All-in-all, I’d also call this one as pretty solid.

Babel starts off going a bit lighter than the previous couple episodes, which makes sense. Everything is breaking on the station, O’Brien is overworked, and then shit just starts getting weirder as he gets sick. It’s time for a standard “mysterious illness” episode! Something weird is going on! It definitely doesn’t have anything to do with the replicators, promise.

But hey, another chance for Julian to do something, and it’s actual doctoring this time. He gets to explain aphasia to the audience twice. And then the virus becomes airborn! (Can’t blame this on The Hot Zone, which wasn’t published until 1994, by the way. But that’s probably why the virus is causing aphasia instead of explosions of blood.) And NGL, this is my favorite exchange of the episode:

Quark: I’m just here visiting my less fortunate customers to make sure they’re not faking their illness to avoid paying their bills.

Sisko: No one could be that devious.

Quark: Psht. I am.

I know Quark is problematic as hell, but I can’t help but love him at times all the same. (And his friendship with Security Chief Grumpy Pants.)

The fact that the virus is a Bajoran invention rather than a Cardassian one is a nice twist, but it ultimately feels like not quite enough story for the length of the episode, and there’s not much of a B plot. It feels incredibly slow-paced, even with lesbian icon Kira Nerys’s excellent turn at kidnapping. By the standard of random Star Trek episodes, it’s not bad; it certainly didn’t make me cringe. But compared to the previous three episodes, it’s fairly weak.

But let me tell you, this is not a great episode to watch with someone who has a biology degree.

Categories
deep space nine rewatch

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the rewatch

Well, sort of a rewatch/first watch, because I don’t really remember watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine beyond the first couple of seasons. I was barely twelve years old when it started airing and a dedicated Star Trek: The Next Generation fan, but for some reason DS9 just never grabbed me. Maybe it’s because they didn’t subject Jake Sisko to the same series of ugly sweaters that Wesley Crusher had to endure. Who knows.

But in honor of Aron Eisenberg’s passing (way too young), I want to give DS9 the chance it deserved… which I’m much better prepared to deliver as an adult than a kid, I daresay. I mean, adult me came to love Babylon 5 and that’s one hell of a slog through the first season.

Night one: The Emmissary part 1 and 2 and A Man Alone

I’ll note that A Man Alone was listed as episode 2 on Netflix, but Google claims it’s actually episode 3? Who knows. I think at this point, it also deeply does not matter, because I do recall the first couple of seasons being extremely episodic, shooting at the ST:TNG formula that was working so well at the time.

So. The Emmissary. 

When I mentioned I’d be rewatching/watching the show on Twitter, I got a lot of cheerful warnings that the show really doesn’t get cooking until a couple of seasons in; be prepared to be as forgiving of DS9 as one has to be of the first couple mostly cringe-worthy seasons of ST:TNG. (And hoo boy, there is some cringe-y stuff in those seasons; I rewatched a bunch of ST:TNG while I was out of commission last year.)

But the thing is, I don’t think the warnings were really necessary. Particularly considering it’s a pilot, The Emmissaryis a solid two-ish hours of television. You get the dramatic start at Wolf 359 that sets up a lot about Commander Sisko’s issues, his traumas, his markedly strained relationship with Captain Picard. You get some good character moments with him interacting with Jake, and then he digs in with the rest of the main characters. Kira threatens to be a one-note aggressive lady-person with frizzy hair, but the pilot backs off that course just in time, letting her show her cunning and her absolute determination–and hinting at her deeply spiritual side. The central mysteries of the show get a good set up with the wormhole, and the entire concept of the show and its political tensions are broadcast from that. There’s a solid effort to indicate that the Ferengi are going to get to be more than their absolutely terrible origins as a gross stereotype. The only real weaknesses I’d accuse The Emmissary of having is that Julian Bashir is puppyish in a way that makes you feel like getting your Cruella DeVille on (if puppies were sex pests), and the bits with the aliens in the wormhole had me rolling my eyes at times.

Is it perfect? Wouldn’t say that. But when you compare it to other first episodes, like Encounter at Farpoint or Midnight on the Firing Line, it’s a damn strong first showing that I hope everyone involved was really proud of.

A Man Alone is equally solid as a second (or third, according to Google) episode. We get to learn a little bit more about Odo as a shapeshifter and the resident hardass security dude. We get to see a start of his really fascinating best frenemies relationship with Quark. We get to see the start of Jake and Nog’s enduring friendship (*raises a glass to Aron Eisenberg*). It’s a fun locked-room-mystery variant episode that only get a little silly in hindsight when it comes to wondering why the fuck they couldn’t figure out the whole clone thing without growing a whole new clone. (On the other hand, this gives us a window into clone ethics in the Star Trek universe and I definitely appreciated that!)

I also did find it kind of hilarious to see for the second time, Commander Sisko firing his phaser in the air like he’s an old west sherriff who thinks that’s the same as a gun. But anyway, the standout for me in this one was watching Keiko O’Brien get to upgrade her role from being a nice lamp on the chief’s desk–the scene where she convinces Rom to send Nog to her school did a lot of good work for her as a character and showed her being damn smart. (Which was necessary after her sort of airy handwaving about how she can totally put a curriculum together because she’s always wanted to be a teacher, I’m assuming written by someone who has literally never talked to a teacher in real life.)

Anyway, off to a really solid start. I’m looking forward to continuing my rewatch!

Categories
tv writing

Maybe it’s just bad writing

In general, I don’t have opinions about Game of Thrones because I haven’t watched it and I haven’t read it, and I don’t particularly care to. And yet my attention was drawn to this piece at Wired: Why the Writing in Game of Thrones Season 8 Feels Off

Reader, I am annoyed. Miffed. One might even say, irate. I have no opinions about the writing quality of any season of this show, obviously, though I know there are sure a lot of opinions floating around out there because I’m a human with a smart phone and a Twitter account. What has my back up here has nothing to do with the Game of Thrones bit and everything to do with what the author of the piece, Daniel Silvermint, points to as the culprit.

It all comes down to how stories are crafted, and for that, we need to start with two different types of writers: plotters and pantsers. Plotters create a detailed outline before they commit a word to the page. Pantsers prefer to discover the story as they write it—flying by the seat of their pants, so to speak. Both approaches have their advantages. Since plotters know the story in advance, it’s easier to create tight narratives with satisfying conclusions. But that amount of predestination can sometimes make characters feel like cogs in service of the story. Pantsers have an easier time writing characters that live and breathe. They generate the plot by dropping a person with desires and needs into a dramatic situation and documenting the results. But with the characters in charge, pantsers risk a meandering or poorly paced structure, and they can struggle to tie everything together.

…really.

And his conclusion is:

In so doing, the showrunners moved as far to one end of the plotter/pantser continuum as Martin is to the other. They weren’t trying to resolve every character arc or pay off every last bit of world-building. They knew the destination Martin had in mind, they understood the dots they had to connect to get there, and they wanted to maximize fan entertainment along the way.

So apparently, Game of Thrones is now bad because George is a pantser and the showrunners are plotters and thus they’ve made the characters unutterably shitty and ignored development in the service of plot.

Here, I will offer an alternative reason for the season pissing so many people off: Maybe it’s just bad writing.

I know that writers at times like to pop off about their particular take on process, and some might want to start yet another iteration of the plotter versus pantser wars on their social media of choice because it’s great for getting engagement numbers. People talking in terms of if they’re a plotter or pantser when addressing process is easy shorthand when you’re on a panel at a convention and well aware that no one wants to hear you gush for ten straight minutes about how you in particular like to monkey around with your words. But frankly, setting this up like a dichotomy between “plotter” versus “pantser” is a gross oversimplification of something that is a full spectrum, one that writers often move back and forth on depending on what they’re working on, or if they’re trying to challenge themself, or even where in their career (or their book) they’re at.

Frankly, as someone who tends to be more on the plotter end of the spectrum, I feel rather personally insulted by the caricature of how writers who do this work. The point of writing a story is that you have to find a balance of plot, character, and pacing for the story that you want to tell. Acting as if outlining plot is wholly divorced from character reads to me like a massive misunderstanding of how one outlines; obviously I speak only for myself now, but much of the plot comes from the characters, and requires understanding them, and you’re damn right that I rewrite my outline if the characters demand it. Sure, you can use an outline that treats characters as pawns for you to shuffle around the chess board, whether the move makes sense for them or not.

But you know what that’s called? Bad writing. If your outline forces the characters to act in ways inorganic to them, it’s a bad outline and it should feel bad.

When you really dig into Silvermint’s thesis, beyond the irritating plotter/pantser redux, the more troubling implication is that there are story types or flavors that are inherent to a basic process. That, if you pick up a novel, you can tell by reading where the writer falls on the plotter/pantser scale, and that a story written by, say, a plotter would be inherently impossible for a pantser to pick up and effectively continue.

I do think it’s probably possible to tell something about a writer’s process if they’ve done it poorly. If the novel feels like you’re watching characters get dragged by the ankle through set plot points while carrying the idiot ball, all right. Failure mode of plotter right there. If you read a novel and it’s utterly disjointed and the plot doesn’t really get you from point A to point Z, then you can probably safely bet it was the failure mode of pantser.

But note what I said: Failure mode.

Writing is an art. We create something that is supposed to be greater than our process. One might argue that if we do our jobs right, all of the horrible mechanical bits should be entirely concealed because you’re so distracted by the excellent edifice we’ve built. The story is the towering, shining superstructure and you, the reader, should have no idea about the absolutely hideous foundation we cobbled together beneath. Hell, that’s even related to one of the perennial discussions about the Best Editor Hugo category–how do readers judge when someone’s done a good job as an editor, when if they’ve done a good job it means their work is invisible?

When I’ve read a good book or a good short story, I cannot tell if the writer was a pantser or a plotter, and I daresay most other people can’t either. Everyone makes a lot of hay out of George being a pantser (or gardener, in his lingo), but the reason anyone even knows that’s how his process works is because he told us that it had gotten him in a spot of bother with the books. Seriously, if someone picked up A Song of Ice and Fire and had no idea who George was or anything about him, would they really be able to toss his book down after finishing it and proclaim, “Well, that was definitely some excellent pantsing”?

Give me a fucking break.

Trying to pin this on basic process is, frankly, an insult to writers. Maybe the writers on Game of Thrones were in a tight spot because they had a limited number of episodes, but whatever thing has fans upset is not an inevitability of having a process where someone writes an outline. If the issue is that they’ve been allowed too few episodes and have too much to wrap up, then the triumphant return of pantsing wouldn’t magically expand the length of the season. If they asked for too few episodes, if they had a bad plan, then it’s not that failure was destined because they’re plotters touching the sainted product of a pantser, it’s that they needed to write a better fucking outline.

No matter the personal process used, every writer is capable of producing some utter crap, so maybe call it what it is: bad writing.

Categories
the twilight zone tv

The Twilight Zone: Replay and The Comedian

Two more episodes of the new The Twilight Zone, which is to say that I watched the new one from this week and finally got around to watching the first episode. Neither of them are exactly subtle, which is a-okay; I think particularly with “Replay,” there’s a need to not allow the audience plausible deniability with a veneer.

Replay: Lawyer Nina Harrison is taking her son Dorian to the HBCU Tennyson, where he’s going to major in film. They keep encountering a terrifyingly racist state patrolman, and Nina uses an old camcorder to rewind time to try to find a way out of the situation, which escalates with every iteration.

The Comedian: Comedian Samir Wassan basically makes a deal with the devil in order to gain success. The deal is the twist, so I don’t want to spoil it here.

SPOILERS FOR EVERYTHING below the fold.

Continue reading “The Twilight Zone: Replay and The Comedian”
Categories
the twilight zone tv

The Twilight Zone: Nightmare at 30,000 Feet

By total accident, I watched the second episode of the new Twilight Zone first. Which I think is fine, since it’s presumably all one-shot episodes anyway. And I think this was a good one. In Nightmare at 30,000 Feet, an investigative reporter named Justin Sanderson, who is still recovering from having seen some serious shit in Yemen, finds an mp3 player with a mysterious podcast on it in his seatback pocket after boarding a plane. The podcast purports to explore the mystery of how the very flight he’s on disappears shortly after takeoff. Justin, as you might imagine, is concerned.

It feels very classic Twilight Zone, and it’s got so many callbacks in it to the famous William Shatner episode, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. (Look, it was another time and the airplanes were not as cool back then.) And the episode damn well knows what expectations its setting up with that title and twists them around in really interesting ways, with about the same amount of “oh god I can’t watch this because this person is making such a spectacle of themself oh help.”

SPOILERS BELOW since I want to mull about the theme of the episode and how it differed from its predecessor.

Continue reading “The Twilight Zone: Nightmare at 30,000 Feet”
Categories
doctor who tv

At Last, New Who

Thanks to my friend Zalia, I have at last gotten to start watching season 11 of Doctor Who. This is the first time in YEARS I’ve been excited about watching new Doctor Who, and it’s entirely because of Jodie Whittaker. I had so many hopes that the Doctor being a woman would signal a pivot away from the god complex with a not-like-the-other-girls companion wish fulfillment that has basically rendered everything since The Waters of Mars nearly unwatchable for me.

My hopes were not dashed. From the first four episodes at least, I left feeling Doctor Who has redirected, and very much to the better, I think. I grew up watching stitched-together episodes of old Who on PBS, and in a way, this new Who makes me think more of what I loved about those, combined with the production values of the newer series. The Doctor has returned to her roots as a deeply humane, compassionate, anti-violence person, and the stories feel like the more episodic, simpler kind of plots that are intended for all ages. (And it gets downright educational and aspirational in the episode Rosa.)

But honestly, I think it’s better than the Who I grew up with, and not just because the monsters are not obviously people who have been wrapped in green-painted bubble wrap. The set of companions are absolutely delightful, and feel the most like equals to the Doctor than in any other series. They’re there because the Doctor plainly wants friends–and you can’t truly be friends without there being equality between people. The Doctor seems so much more concerned with what they’re going through emotionally as well as physically–her concern for Yaz and Ryan and the situation they’re placed in because of their races in Rosa is a huge contrast to the position Martha is in during The Family of Blood, as one example. And watching the companions all get along with each other and be concerned for each other and just be very supportive is a pleasure as well. I also wasn’t expecting Graham to be the sort of character he’s turned out to be, a delightful man in the running for Grandfather of the Year.

I am still trying to get used to the sort of production style of this new season. It’s not utterly campy like in previous years, or twee. The episodes I’ve watched so far have felt more Fringe-y than anything else, with light-heartedness provided by the characters and the dialog rather than practical effects visual gags. That’s also a bit different, visually, but I think I’m digging it. Honestly, I’d be happy with anything as long as I get to keep this cast and their dynamic.

Also, I fucking LOVE Whittaker’s Doctor, even if her sartorial choices still make me a little sad inside. She’s so solidly written as The Doctor, not as Ooh Look A Lady Doctor. She acknowledges her different gender when it’s funny and relevant, and otherwise I could just as easily imagine David Tennant or Christopher Eccleston saying the same lines and doing the same things, and that makes me So Fucking Happy.

Mini opinions on the episodes I’ve seen:

The Woman Who Fell to Earth – Pretty solid as a first episode for a Doctor goes, I think, since it hits the regular “who am I?” beats. Though I do like that in discovering who she is, the Doctor emphasizes her creativity and compassion. I also love that this first episode is relatively low stakes. There’s the lives of a few people at risk, but it’s pretty low key, all things considered, and gives the Doctor a chance to once again re-emphasize a point that’s been lost in the past: individuals matter. I did get a bit lost in the different sorts of aliens and MacGuffins and the like, thought.

The Ghost Monument – Solid, got the job done, didn’t really stand out that much to me. I would have liked a little more development for the end conclusion, but I’m glad of the time we got to spend with the Doctor and her companions for unraveling the mystery of the planet.

Rosa – Holy shit, this episode. The entire plot revolves around the Doctor and her companions making being part of Rosa Parks’s story, but not in charge of it, so to speak. They’re there to support her, and it was so different in that way. Like the Doctor has to help by not doing things for once. Ryan finds his inner activist and Yaz plans and hopes and really runs the show. And Graham, trying to be the best grandad he can be, and trying to protect Ryan while being so plainly disturbed by his own position in the system… It was good stuff, basically.

Arachnids in the UK – I might have liked this one more than I should have because the American billionaire villain guy was just so utterly awful and hilarious… with the horrible punchline being that as terrible as he was, he’d still be a better president than the one we currently have (who he’s planning to fictionally run against, fueled by antipathy). Also, watching Yaz deal with her family was kind of great. Like sure, an environmentalist message involving giant spiders. I’m on board.

Looking at these four episodes, the thing that strikes me the most is that they’re all comparatively low stakes. Even Rosa, which threatens to alter the course of history, doesn’t pretend that it’ll destroy all life if the Doctor et al don’t fix things. In episode 2, the stakes are incredibly important to the two characters involved–they both have a reason for wanting to win the big race they’re involved in–but again, the world isn’t going to blow up either way. I think getting back to these relatively smaller stories is incredibly important, because it does highlight the thesis of the show that the lives of individual people are important. And also, honestly, it’s a lot harder to write lower-stakes stories because you have to convey to the audience why it’s so important to the characters and get them to buy in. I’ve been impressed so far.

Ultimately, I’m looking forward to Doctor Who again. I can’t wait to watch more. I’m sure it’ll have its ups and downs, but I’m starting to have faith that I’ll enjoy the journey through this whole season without mentally checking out like I have in recent years. It feels like as the Doctor truly likes and respects her companions, so does the show like and respect its audience again. I can’t wait to watch more.

Categories
tv

I Have Problems With “The Alienist”

Before I get going on this bitchfest, let me just say that translating a book into a TV show or movie is not an easy thing to do. Particularly when you’re going from a book that’s very internal, like The Alienist, which is narrated in first person, to this very external, visual medium. It’s not reasonable to expect a recreation of every detail, or for there to not be additions or subtractions of the plot, changes of the pacing, and so on.

But there does need to be some relation. There are fundamental aspects of a book, often deep thematic or character elements, that are what made us enjoy reading it to begin with. When you start losing that stuff, you end up with the feeling like you’re watching something completely different, a generic thing where the characters have the same names but that’s pretty much where the resemblance ends.

Which is my long way of saying that I really hate the TV show TNT made of The Alienist. A lot. Like yelling at the TV a lot. I also can’t say how anyone who hasn’t read the book is going to feel about the show. I just know that I’m absolutely furious.

(Spoilers for The Alienist tv show and book follow.)

I’ve read the book, The Alienist, multiple times. I’ve got some complicated feelings about it as a queer person, because it does hit that crime drama aspect we’ve all seen way too much of: the victims are sex workers, specifically young men and boys dressed in women’s clothing, with at least some of them arguably gay or transgender. Even this statement of mine is complicated by the fact that the book’s set in late 19th century New York City and Caleb Carr went as historically accurate as he could with things… so things like “trans” as a linguistic concept didn’t yet exist. And the narrator, Moore, is very much a heterosexual white cis dude who has very typical heterosexual white cis dude feelings about sexuality and gender.

(Also to note, the murdered sex workers in this book being young boys makes it much more oogie, to use a technical word. One of the few times you really feel the author step into the narrative to explain things is when Moore notes that attitudes toward children and adulthood and work of all kinds were pretty different back then.)

On the other hand, I’ve always felt when reading The Alienist that there’s still an effort to humanize and empathize with the victims. There’s an effort to at least acknowledge the varied gender and sexuality of the young people the investigators encounter. Some are obviously dressing as women for the sake of expediency; others explicitly do so as an expression of their gender in the only environment they find will allow them to do it. And the alienist of the title himself, Dr. Kreizler, doesn’t treat the victims like they are the problem.

I don’t feel like the tv show hits on any of this nuance. There are plenty of scenes in seedy brothels that are set up to highlight the wrongness of the situation–but it never feels like there’s any sympathy reserved for the sex workers; rather, they’re there to drive the lurid ick factor. The only time it really feels like there is sympathy for them is when they’re shown outside of work, and not coincidentally, dressed in socially acceptable clothing.

I don’t think it helps my negative feelings toward the TV show that there’s a sort of subplot present about syphilis and it only really exists in connection with two incredibly unsavory gay characters. The second is a random suspect that I can only figure got added into the TV show to help pad it out to ten episodes, and to nominally give high society a reason to be up Kreizler’s business about the investigation… except nothing really comes of it after that suspect gets killed and dumped in the harbor. It’s a weird disjoint in the structure of the show’s plot.

I find that especially annoying because there is a whole thread in the book about outside interference in the investigation of this killer. That’s the entire reason Teddy Roosevelt lets Kreizler and his team investigate, because there are a lot of people who want it swept under the rug. They also don’t want to see Kreizler succeed because his theories as an alienist challenge a lot of accepted societal beliefs that the wealthy rely on to keep the social order. Which I imagine is something harder to depict on television, perhaps, but it wouldn’t have hurt them to try.

I’ve recommended the book to my housemate, who really loves Criminal Minds because it reads like a historical ancestor to that show. The major theory that Kreizler has that gets him in so much trouble with his peers and with people high above him is a thing he calls “context.” Which means he believes that if the circumstances of a person’s life are fully understood, that will also render their actions understandable–though obviously not forgivable. The latter point is something a lot of character in the book have a difficult time understanding, because they’re committed to the idea that criminal behavior is a sign of some kind of mental illness. It’s another major point in the book that Kreizler butts heads with people because he finds most criminals he’s called to consult on as an alienist sane and quite rational within their own context.

Which is another position I think the show really misses out on. Probably because it’s more interested in depicting Kreizler as some kind of tortured and miserable genius than the procedural aspect of the story.

And that is ultimately my biggest problem with the show. There are a lot of interesting characters in the book. The narrator, Moore, is probably the least interesting of them. But it’s got a great ensemble cast thing going (hello, another thing I love about Criminal Minds) and there’s real depth to all of the relationships. It’s a group of people who find support and strength in each others’ company, which helps them combat the grim task they face.

The show seems to have focused on the characters to the detriment of everyone but the Isaacsons–who are absolutely adorable. With a drab and grim and miserable New York City as the backdrop, the show seems to feel the only way the characters are going to be interesting is if they are even more drab and grim and miserable than the city, and I cannot begin to say how much I hate it. I spent ten episodes wondering why the hell any of these people wanted to be around each other–I certainly didn’t want to be around any of them. We keep being told verbally that Kreizler, Moore, and Roosevelt are friends, but there’s never anything on the screen that makes you feel like they do more than barely tolerate each other. Kreizler transforms from an occasionally overly-clinical intellectual who loves a good, merry meal with his nearest and dearest to a self-isolating edge lord who slaps Sara Howard in the face for being too curious.

Yes, we have arrived at the fiery, magmatic heart of my rage. Let’s be clear, I already pretty much hated the show for how goddamn unpleasant it made everyone but the Isaacson brothers. But the full character assassination of Sara Howard is what had me shouting at my television.

(Note that there are really only two female characters in the main cast of the book: Sara and Mary. And there, too, Mary gets fridged. Sigh.)

Sara Howard, in the book, is a giant badass. She’s determined to be the first female police officer in New York City, and being Roosevelt’s secretary is step number one on that path. She carries a pistol in her purse at all times, she knows how to use it, and she has no compunction against shooting kneecaps. (The pistol, I will note, makes no appearance until the final episode of the show.) She takes exactly zero shit off of anyone, especially not Moore, who she’s known since they were children. It’s worth noting in the second book that she explicitly says she’s made the choice to remain a spinster because she wants to retain her independence and, as unfair as that is, it’s the only way she’s got to do it.

So putting her in some kind of stupid shit quasi-love triangle with Moore and Kreizler? Are you fucking serious? Kreizler slapping her for nosing into his past (Kreizler would never) and then her just taking it? Really? Moore going on about how he has super real feelings for her (Moore would never) and her not shooting him down cold? FUCKING REALLY?

I’m not saying that Sara Howard is a stone-cold lioness who never feels fear. She’s wonderfully human, because she does get sick, and she does get scared, and she does get herself in over her head. But she is most definitely not there at any point to be an object onto which men project their precious emotions. And she certainly doesn’t take that shit with passive, wide-eyed confusion.

This is the stuff that has made me loathe The Alienist TV show. It’s a fundamental miss on what made the book so damn good as a procedural/mystery. There’s plenty of drama and tension when it comes to hunting down a goddamn serial killer (even if they didn’t have that term back then) without manufacturing a series of internal problems for the characters. Frankly, all the focus on all of the investigators (except the Isaacsons) being miserable and dysfunctional people took away from the actual plot. There’s less development of the investigation, less time spent making the necessary connections, less good build up to the discovery and hunt of the killer. That also means there’s almost nothing of what’s going on in the city, with the mobsters and the rich having a proxy war via the investigation–only vague hints that dangle and goes nowhere. The plot feels ancillary and incomplete and the show is ultimately unsatisfying as a mystery.

It’s a frustrating mess that I’m sorry I paid good money on Amazon to watch. Maybe it’s an audience expectation issue, for me. I know too much about the book. I expected it to be a satisfying procedural, my Criminal Minds in the 19th Century on the screen at last. Maybe I wouldn’t have hated it as much if I’d never read the book, though I think I still would have stopped watching after the second episode because I have little patience for watching a bunch of miserable people being miserable at each other when there’s no plot glue to hold them together. Maybe I’m just not the target audience for the show, even if I was for the book.

But even if they decided it needed to be character drama and not procedural, look: if you have only one female character, the last fucking thing she needs is to be the object of a romance plot. Thank you and good night.

Categories
tv

The Thirteenth Doctor

The thirteenth incarnation of the Doctor has been announced, and it’s Jodie Whittaker.

I’m having a lot of feelings right now that cannot be expressed by just screaming endlessly on Twitter, so I’m putting them down here.

I grew up watching Doctor Who on PBS. It’s been as huge a part of my life as Star Trek. Until new Who showed up, Seven was my doctor. A big part of that was because of Ace, who was cool and amazing and I wanted to be her for a long time. Her relationship with the Doctor was different, somehow. Looking back on it, I think it’s because she had Donna-esque levels of taking absolutely zero shit off the Doctor, while still being young enough that his relationship with her was more avuncular to downright fatherly. And because she was absolutely brilliant, and the Doctor supported her in that. To the extent that he wanted her to go to the academy on Gallifrey and become a Time Lord. I think that last thing is something that’s been heavily retconned in new Who, but the idea that you don’t have to actually be from Gallifrey to be a Time Lord, and that Ace could be a Time Lord? Sign me up.

And then there was Romana. Between her two incarnations she was in seventeen episodes, but she stands out in my mind because… holy shit, a female Time Lord. Traveling around and having adventures. I loved Romana II because she got to be on equal footing with the Doctor, and had her own sonic screwdriver – I mean, how cool is that?

Looking at new Who, my favorite companions have been the ones (particularly Donna) who were able to put themselves on more equal footing with the Doctor. I think I’ve always been searching for women in the series who have that independence, who are as close to being the Doctor as they can get without actually being allowed to be the main show. The companions I liked the least were the ones who were basically doormats that existed to be the Dr. Watson-esque plot receptacle. (And you’ll notice in modern retellings of the Holmes stories, Watson’s become a much more active character in his own right, whose main purpose is no longer being the person who exists to ask dumb questions so the great detective can explain himself.)

Because let’s be honest, when I was a kid and playing pretend, I didn’t want to be the Doctor’s companion. I wanted to be the Doctor. That was why I loved Romana and Ace so much. And yes, you can pretend as many things as you like, but for all children are intensely imaginative, they’re also weirdly pedantic in certain ways. If you don’t ever see a girl being the Doctor, you come to feel that the Doctor is not something you’re allowed to be. Like when the young son of a friend of mine sadly informed one of his female classmates (this happened before we had Ahsoka and Rey, mind) that she couldn’t play Jedi with him and his friends, because girls aren’t Jedi – his parents corrected him on that one, but he made a perfectly logical conclusion from what he’d observed.

And even when you’re an adult and far more capable of saying “fuck your unspoken rules,” that comes coupled with the ability to better read those subtextual signposts about what stories you’re allowed to be the protagonist for. A better ability to fight to get out of that box also means you know how goddamn high the walls are.

Which all comes down to why I’m tearing up over the casting of Jodie Whittaker, and I wish I could tell this one to kid me. Look, one of your heroes you want to be isn’t just a (cis) man. The Doctor really can be any gender the Doctor pleases. Look, you can have adventures in time and space and be the person with the sonic screwdriver and the blue Police Box, and not just the person there to be less clever than him. And I honestly never thought this would happen, after seeing the ever-escalating manbaby shit storm each time a new Doctor was cast and someone said hey, wouldn’t it be great if the Doctor wasn’t white, or wasn’t a man, or (gasp) both? (Still waiting on the first/third of those items, and that should not be forgotten.)

Maybe I’m more surprised than I should be because I haven’t watched the last several seasons of Doctor Who after being so solidly lost by the Matt Smith episodes. I’m definitely going to go back and try the most recent season, now. I want to see the set up. I’m on board for this. I keep trying to come back to Doctor Who (have not been able to care about the show since about a year after Moffat took over) because it was a staple of my childhood, and maybe this time I’ll stick.