tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55520787048594261932024-02-07T01:25:40.117-08:00Organizing PrinciplesJustin Snead--Teacher and writer, interested in the space industry, science-fiction, modern life & our narratives—religious, political and Hollywood.JustinScottSneadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02325889200792115162noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-78481017193151483022015-09-08T15:37:00.002-07:002015-09-08T15:37:20.694-07:00Revisiting The X-Files: The Women Problem<div class="MsoNormal">
Only 8
of the series’ 201 episodes were written by women. By the time Gillian Anderson
got to write and direct her season 7 episode “all things” she was the 7<sup>th</sup>
female writer of the show and only the 4<sup>th</sup> to get a sole writing
credit. She was also the last. Her episode was the last one written by a woman.</div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is
not surprising considering male-dominated Hollywood, nor am I raising it as a
criticism. In fact, it is a testament to the sensitivity and feminism of Chris
Carter’s all-male writing room that the show was so even handed on gender. The
horror genre to this day is notorious for sexploitation of female bodies and
sexist stereotypes. The X-Files mostly avoided that. You could sense that the
writers were actively balancing the number of times each partner got to rescue
the other. If you add it up, you might even find that Scully rescued Mulder
more times than he rescued her. Over the years, Scully went on dates. She had
sex a few times without the story shaming her for it. When Mulder did act
possessive of her, this was always done in a way that cast him in a negative
light, like he was being petty or even creepy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is
also a credit to the writers that they kept the narrative balanced between
Mulder and Scully despite the fact that the show was about Mulder’s life’s
work, not hers. Almost every episode is structured around Mulder’s crazy idea
being right—this is part of the fun of watching. He’s like a paranormal Sherlock
Holmes, which makes Scully his Watson. Watson’s narrative purpose is basically
to show how smart Holmes is by comparison. Not so with Scully. She is Mulder’s
counterpoint, her critical perspective making his methods stronger, and
vise-versa. Unlike a lot of depictions of Watson, Scully is not a dolt or a
buffoon. She always held her own. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And
still… by Season 6 and 7 this relationship started to grate ever so slightly.
By then she was not personally invested in many X-files because of her health
or her family. It was just an all-consuming day job. She spent a lot of time
whining to Mulder that the case they were investigating was not an X-File, only to be
proved wrong. Much of their work was on Mulder’s terms, and he gave her a lot
of marching orders with every expectation that she would do as told. We were
left to wonder, how long would a strong, independent woman—a medical doctor who
can kick butt in heals—put up with this?</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Anderson’s
episode “all things” is a corrective to this Scully drift, and also a sly, brilliant
maintenance job of the status quo in their relationship. Anderson tackles the
imbalance head on from Scully’s point of view, and let’s Scully have some
agency in deciding to keep the path she is on. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the
voice-over opening monologue she even uses the word ‘drift’ to name what is by
then obvious about Scully: “How rarely do we stop … to consider whether the
path we take in life is our own making, or simply one into which we drift with
eyes closed.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Anderson
gives Scully a juicy backstory that dramatizes this choice. Before joining the
FBI she had an affair with a married man that resulted in the dissolution of
the marriage. She left him, but in this episode he reappears in her life
offering to take her back. She contemplates the life she could have had if she
stayed with him, and that she could restart now if she wanted. But by the end
of the episode, she has chosen against this old flame. She tells Mulder, “I
once considered spending my whole life with this man. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What I would have missed</i></b>”
[Emphasis mine].<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Here
Anderson allows Scully to voice her reason for staying on the X-Files. Scully
values what she has learned, how she has grown, in her years working with
Mulder. She is saying: I chose this, and I continue to choose this for myself.
It is an understated moment at the very end of the episode, but one that is the
key to her character. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Anderson
also has some good-natured fun with Mulder’s character. After 7 years of
episodes of him always being right, she makes him wrong about everything in
this episode. The episode begins after an autopsy of an X-File that is
legitimately not an X-File. Scully says that the victim did not die “of
inhalation of ectoplasm as you so vehemently suggested.” Mulder says: “What
else could she <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">possibly</i> have drown
in?” It was margarita mix.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
Mulder had already moved on to crop circles in England. In a well-shot scene,
he is talking through one of his slide shows and the camera is on Scully
picking through a salad not paying any attention to him. When he calls her on
it she says, “I guess I just don’t see the point.” And besides, it’s Saturday
so instead of flying to England to track down “some sneaky farmers who happened
to ace geometry in high school” she’d rather be doing just about anything else,
like taking a bath. You really get the sense of what her work life is like at
it’s lowest. When Mulder is hot on the trail, he is brilliant and it’s
riveting. But on an average day in the office, he can be nutty, pedantic, and
boring—and she is expected to play along with every crackpot idea. Turns out
Mulder flies all the way to England—Scully refuses to go—and he finds
absolutely nothing. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
theories of literacy there is the concept of Landscapes of Action and
Landscapes of Consciousness. The former is when the story is all about action,
the quest, winning the prize, reaching the goal. The latter is all about what
is happening in the interior of the characters, their hearts and minds, their
inner-most thoughts. Literature uses both to tell its stories. Boys are
supposed to respond better to literature that inhabits the Landscape of Action,
while girls tend to relate better to the Landscape of Consciousness. The same
goes for male and female writers, of course not 100% of cases fit this model. It
is telling that Anderson’s episode contains no mystery to solve, no case to
crack, no monster to capture. There is very little plot. There is a beginning,
middle and end, but it maps onto Scully’s internal conflict: is she happy; has
she made the right choices in her life; should she choose another path? As
Scully has been telling Mulder all season: there is no X-File here. Except for
the mystery of existence, and the role of fate in our lives, which the series,
in its season 7 maturity, has been suggesting is the most important X-File of
all. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
episode Duchovney wrote and directed in Season 6 was all about baseball, pure
Landscape of Action. Of the two episodes I think Anderson’s, though flawed, was
superior. His story was kind of a mess. He concocted a twin brother to Arthur
Dales, presumably so he could work with an actor that he preferred over the
original Arthur Dales. Admittedly that actor was great fun to watch, but the
story was just a mess, even though it had an interesting concept: a gray alien
in the 1940s rebels against colonization and shape shifts into a black baseball
player before integration. It is the only time in the entire series when we get
the point of view of an actual alien, but because the depiction is in such a
silly episode and unmoored from the rest of the mythology, I don’t put much
stock in it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Scully
does not factor much in this one, but there is a striking scene in the end when
Mulder is teaching her to hit a baseball. It starts out as a sweet scene, but
grows more cringe-inducing. Mulder holds her torso and forces her movements so
that she swings the bat to hit the ball. He looks like he is manhandling her. First
of all, I don’t think this is how you teach someone to hit a baseball. Second,
it is a terrible visual that symbolizes Mulder as the puppet-master of her
life. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Duchovney
started co-writing episodes with Carter in Season 3 and continued into Season
and 9 (when he wasn’t even acting in the show). He had sole writing credit on
episodes in Seasons 6 and 7. This is not evidence of gender bias as much as it
is Duchovny’s personal desire to write for the show, born out by the fact that
last year he published a novel and admitted he always wanted to be a writer. It
is surprising that Anderson did not write and direct again, especially during
season 9 when she had a lighter acting schedule. I can only hope that this did
not happen because of her own wishes. In any case, I’m grateful we got her take
on Scully in “all things”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Implications
for the new season:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“all
things” has a great teaser where we see Scully getting dressed in the bathroom
and then walking out with Mulder asleep in bed. We later learn she fell asleep
on his sofa the night before. Still, the moment was arresting. For the first
time—after years of being against the idea and even denying it ever happened—I
totally accept Mulder and Scully as a sexual couple. Not only is it plausible,
it is also highly likely considering their close bond and complete lack of any
factors holding them back from trying out a romantic relationship. Their
flirtation has been building over Season 6 and 7. By mid Season 7 Duchovny and
Anderson portray the characters with more affection for one another, with more
outward signs of their love. And the scripts give them romantic lines like Mulder
whispering to himself, “She still can surprise me.” They seem genuinely in
love, but also afraid and unsure what to do with it. At the end of “all things”
as they are musing about their life paths Mulder says, “One wrong turn and we
wouldn’t be sitting here together… That’s probably more than we should be
getting into at this late hour.” It’s a scene that, if Scully had not fallen
asleep, would have ended in a kiss.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">While
it makes good character sense to put them together, the relationship would have
fundamentally altered the show’s narrative. The love affair would necessarily
become such a big part of the story that it would crowd out other elements of
the successful X-Files formula. The writers could not have them chasing
monsters and killers like they used to. We would always be wondering what they
were doing together when they weren’t working: are they on a date? Do they go
on vacation? Are they moving in together? Do they argue about the toilet seat
and who does the dishes? If they were romantically involved, the show could
never avoid the details of how they are as a romantic couple. So it is good
that they got together at the end of the series, and in such a vague way. For
the same reason, I am glad that Mulder and Scully won’t be a couple in the new
season. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What
has changed for me, upon re-watching the series, is that I now accept they were
in an active romance. It lasted a few years but it did not work out because
they are two different people who want different lives. When they reunite in the
new episodes it will be as best friends who know one another better then anyone
else, who share a deep love and history, but who have gone their separate ways.
All the better since they can chase aliens without having to pick up toilet
paper on the way home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945467288441613131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-67981122946316550332015-09-08T15:25:00.004-07:002015-09-08T15:25:42.865-07:00Addendum: The X-Files and Closure<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #414141; font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
know I just argued that Season 7 marks the X-Files's incomprehensible period,
but now that I am over half of the way through the season this description only
applies to the season 7 two-part premier. The mid-season mythology
two-parter “Sein Und Zeit” and “Closure”--where Mulder finally accepts his
sister is dead--is a masterpiece. It shows The X-Files at its most narratively
mature.</span> It is the narrative pinnacle of so much of what the series was
about: faith in things unseen; acceptance that answers, when they come, will
only scratch the surface of understandings that we will never fully grasp. <span style="color: #414141; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #414141; font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
a way, these two episodes are almost like the finale of the series we had been
watched up to this point, and it had all the right notes of where the
should should have ended if Carter had decided to end it that season. If anyone
here is re-watching in preparation for the new season, this two-parter is a
must revisit. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #414141; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://ladymanson.com/galleries/tv/TVWZ/albums/XFiles/S7/711/xf71110790.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ladymanson.com/galleries/tv/TVWZ/albums/XFiles/S7/711/xf71110790.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #414141; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #414141; font-family: "Times New Roman";">“In
spite of the series’ slow fade throughout its later seasons, <i>The
X-Files</i> has never felt finished, in the same way we’ve never been able
to close the book on the great mysteries of our time (the Kennedy
Assassination, Roswell, Bigfoot, Donald Trump’s hair). The timelessness of the
show lies in the way it prompts us to consider the mysteries of the universe
and comforts us with the notion that there are answers out there we will one
day find.” From:</span><a href="http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/08/i-want-to-believe-why-the-new-x-files-series-will.htm" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/08/i-want-to-believe-why-the-new-x-files-series-will.htm</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #414141; font-family: "Times New Roman";">To
which I would only add that the X-Files appeal is that some mysteries will
never be solved and there are things in heaven and earth we simply will not be
able to comprehend. This is a central theme of the show. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #414141; font-family: "Times New Roman";">I've
been thinking about how the show never had a proper "everybody hug
goodbye" finale—like how a lot of finales try to place the
characters in a position that we can imagine them in after the freeze
frame/fade to black. Even "The Truth" was not a goodbye, more of an
until-next-time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #414141; font-family: "Times New Roman";">"Closure"
really has the feel of a good bye--at least to the mythology arc. Samantha
was the last thread of that mystery yet to be resolved. If Carter had wanted to
end the X-Files, he could have pushed that mid season episode to the end of
season 7 and had the series end with Mulder blissfully letting go of The
X-Files (and perhaps embracing a love affair with Scully). And it would have
worked 100%. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #414141; font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
the quote above makes me think that the X-Files, whenever it ends, doesn't need
a traditional finale. There will always be X-Files to uncover, and apparently
Mulder and Scully will always come out of retirement to solve them. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span> </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945467288441613131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-11672163178436741762015-09-08T15:08:00.000-07:002015-09-08T15:08:06.692-07:00Revisiting The X-Files: The Beginning of the Incomprehensible Period<div class="MsoNormal">
First,
a note about how the mythology was structured in the seasons. An X-Files season
finale will address some of the questions raised during the season’s mythology
episodes, but then add an entirely new, out-of-left-field element that sets up
a big season premier after the summer hiatus. That premier, usually a
two-parter, set the stage for the following season’s mythology arc. This follows
the good mystery writing advice that for every question you answer, raise two
new ones. So: The 1<sup>st</sup> season finale confirmed that the government
has evidence of aliens in the form of a fetus, and added the element of the
Human-alien hybrid Project. The 2<sup>nd</sup> season finale confirmed that
there is a government syndicate of elders working on said Project, and
introduced the idea of vaccinating humans against an unknown virus. The 3<sup>rd</sup>
season finale explained the shape shifting aliens, and then introduced the idea
that there is a coming colonization that some aliens are opposed to.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This cycle
repeats until the 6<sup>th</sup> season when the alien colonization arc is
definitively resolved mid-season with “Two Fathers/One Son” where the alien
rebels kill the Project and all the elders except CSM. Now the writers’ trusty
mythology-episode formula is inoperable. There are no more questions the need
answered, and the alien mythology needs an entirely new direction. The finale
provided a new direction with great promise—unfortunately the season 7 follow
up squandered it by being nonsensical and full of cop-outs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On the
plus side, I loved the concept of the aliens having our genetic code (not
mapped out at the time the episode aired) and the holy texts of all world
religions scrawled on a ancient artifact buried off the coast of Africa. The
mind reels at the possibilities: Humans were not just planted here, but the
aliens also bestowed their creation with religion and culture. Why? And how
does that fact fit with the idea that the aliens are returning to take over the
Earth and potentially kill their creation after we established a global society
and modern infrastructure? These are good, satisfying questions for a sci-fi
series to pose. Also, CSM has a brief scene where he is in a conference room
overseeing a group of men in suits getting up to speed on the alien invasion
plans, essentially reconstituting the Syndicate. An exciting, mind-bending
finale. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Unfortunately,
the season 7 payoff does not pay off. Scully is exhuming the ancient alien
artifact and faces three biblical warnings: a plague of insects, the sea turns
to blood, dead animals and one person comes back to life. Her reaction is that
she is not supposed to gain the knowledge contained in the artifact and she
decides to walk away from it. She returns to the U.S. without any evidence.
Later—after we see a reanimated human corpse!—the massive craft-shaped artifact
is simply gone. No clue as to how it was removed. Was is the government, or
aliens? Did the zombie drag it out to sea? The episode doesn’t tell us. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://ladymanson.com/galleries/tv/TVWZ/albums/XFiles/S6/622/xf62207579.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ladymanson.com/galleries/tv/TVWZ/albums/XFiles/S6/622/xf62207579.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Even
more nonsensical is Mulder’s illness. Apparently he has had the junk DNA in his
temporal lobe activated much like Gibson Praise (though the episode does not
make this explicit connection to the season 5 episodes) and he is now “more
alive” by becoming “biologically alien.” His brain is so active that his body
can’t respond and he switches from raving lunatic to comatose. In the words of
CSM he has become an “alien-human hybrid…immune to the coming viral
apocalypse.” CSM has his doctors extract the alien DNA from Mulder and inject
it into himself so that he will survive also.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
reason Mulder was thus altered? A rubbing of the artifact in Africa on a piece
of paper reacted with the latent alien virus that was still in Mulder’s system
since season 4 when he was infected with the Black Oil (in that two-parter
“Tunguska/ Terma” where he went to Russia with Krycek and was captured in the gulag).
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So now
we have the kind of not-so-good questions that indicate a sci-fi series is not
telling a coherent story. How did a piece of paper turn Mulder into an
alien-human hybrid, the thing that took the Syndicate 25 years and countless
abductions to fabricate? If Mulder’s exposure to the alien virus is the answer,
then why wasn’t Scully affected by the same piece of paper? She was infected
with the virus too, and worse. When Mulder was splashed with the Black Oil, it
crawled into his skin, but he was shown in the next scene none the worse for
ware. But when Scully was infected we actually saw an alien baby sucked out of
her mouth. The rubbing did not affect her. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Furthermore,
in the previous big mythology episode, we learned that the alien invasion is thwarted
because the rebels are winning. Their victory was made apparent when they
killed all the members of the Syndicate and stole the alien fetus that was the
center of the Project. Why does CSM act as though that did not happen and the
“coming viral apocalypse” is still on schedule? This too is ignored. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The 6<sup>th</sup>
season finale cements an X-Files cliché that has Mulder going crazy. At the end
of season 2 he was suffering extreme paranoia because CSM was drugging him. At
the end of season 4 he suffers depression and we are left to believe he
actually commits suicide. Season 6 ends with him committed in a padded room. The
fact that he is going crazy yet again would be excusable if the reason for it
made sense. In this case it does not. Nor does it add anything to his
character. By the end of the follow up two-parter, the alien DNA is extracted
from him and he returns to his normal self. It was all just a contrivance to
put Mulder in danger in time for another cliffhanger. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i> is why shows like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The X-Files</i> run out of steam about this
point in their life cycles. You cannot tell stories of a global-to-cosmic scale
without having something interesting and usually dangerous happen to your main
characters (if you doubt that, try reading <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Last
and First Men</i>—I cant get through 20 pages.) There are only so many times
you can put your characters through the ringer without it getting ridiculous. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The TV
writer’s first priority is to develop stories that don’t have characters simply
walking from one room to the next or getting stuck in long, talky scenes of
expository dialogue about action happening elsewhere. You have to make sure
your story has something happen <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to</i>
your characters every 10-15 minutes of screen time no matter what. The second
priority is to connect that action with some larger meaning or significance.
The third and final priority—and here is where it gets hard—is to keep the
action and meaning of this episode consistent to all the mythology episodes
that came before it. A writer is going to care about the first two priorities,
and if the third one doesn’t fit… oh well, my deadline’s coming. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
trick is to keep the plates spinning. I for one am glad that The X-Files kept
them spinning for 6 years. By season 7, the plates were falling. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Implications
for the new season:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It will
be interesting if Chris Carter radically changes the X-Files mythology formula
described above. There are undoubtedly unanswered questions left over from
Season 7-9. Does he answer them and pile on new questions? Does he ignore them
and try to start new mysteries? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And
what does a 6-episode X-Files season look like--one that we now know will
contain stand alone and alien mythology episodes? Will the first episode
establish a new mythology to be resolved in the sixth episode? Will the sixth
episode contain a cliff hanger?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’m
reminded of Mathew Weiner’s philosophy when writing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mad Men</i>, a series that he was never sure would get picked up for a
next season. He said that every season they went for broke, never holding any
great twist for a later season, but dumping into the one they were writing. And
every season finale was written as though it was a series finale. Carter should
heed that advice right now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One
thing I am confident of: the new season will not continue the “TV senility” of
the last few X-Files seasons. This will feel like a fresh, new TV series. It
will be narratively tight and comprehensible. I hope.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945467288441613131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-56806341542536135692015-09-04T04:45:00.001-07:002015-09-04T04:45:58.090-07:00Force Awakens skepticism<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;">
No Spoilers, just a premonition of a disturbance in the Force.</div>
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Count me as someone who has been skeptical of Abrams's Star Wars movie since he was announced as the director. This is because I don't think Abrams is very good at delivering movies with an emotional punch, with a heartbeat. His films are technical, visually brilliant, exciting to watch but all artifice, hollow. They lack pathos, character depth, any sense that the events depicted are tapped into a deeper human or spiritual existence. While fans are excited about the way The Force Awakens looks, I'm worried that we're all going to wake up the morning after and think, "Yeah, but what was that even about!?"</div>
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I hate to rain on the parade of good will that is being drummed up for this movie right now, but here is one little piece of evidence that supports my fears: </div>
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<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/anthony-daniels-star-wars-secrecy-isludicrous-071456360.html">http://news.yahoo.com/anthony-daniels-star-wars-secrecy-isludicrous-071456360.html</a></div>
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<br /></div>
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Here is what Anthony Daniels (C3PO) said: "The screenplay was very good as far as C-3PO was concerned, but I had no idea what was going on in the rest of it. Still don’t. When JJ told me the story of the new one, my eyes sort of glazed over.”</div>
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The reaction of someone upon hearing the plot of the next JJ Abrams movie is that their eyes glazed over. Sound familiar, Star Trek fans? I have argued many times that the mortal flaw of the last three or four Star Trek movies, in fact most studio tentpole films, is an overly complicated plot that is almost always twisted into knots to justify/explain the villain's existence and actions (see Guardians of the Galaxy). Sounds like the new Star Wars film is following this modern trend.</div>
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If you are Daniels, you remember a simpler time. When the villains in epic movies were evil without the need for much explanation, and the heroes had to complete a task that was difficult but also simple to understand.</div>
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Maybe The Force Awakens can have a ridiculous, complicated plot and still pack an emotional punch. I hope so. But Abrams's track record is not good on that count. A Star Wars movie, even more than other blockbuster epics, has to tap into that deeper universe of meaning I mentioned above. The fact that the original three heroes--Han, Luke, Leia--are reprising their roles for the first time in 30 years makes this even more of an imperative. It would be heartbreaking for fans to watch these characters play holograms of their former selves. Some disagree, but I felt like Nimoy's Spock was wasted by the first Abrams Trek movie. It didn't bother me that much because I've got six other movies with him, plus a very fitting send off in the Next Generation two-parter. But Han, Luke and Leia as played by the original actors only have three films. It will be hard to watch them spend the next three films, half of their narrative life, spouting soulless exposition that does nothing but set up the next action sequence. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945467288441613131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-37527219854184137942015-06-26T07:48:00.000-07:002015-06-26T07:48:43.771-07:00Michael Gummelt compels us to ask: What is Star Trek?Is Star Trek old and in need of re-engineering, or does it
need to be abandoned to the museum of 20<sup>th</sup> Century science fiction?<br /><div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
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I was getting caught up on HBO’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Newsroom</i> last night, and in episode 5 of Season 3, there was a
Star Trek reference that peeked my interest. Trek references in pop culture are
telling signs of the status of the franchise. If Trek is on the cover of Time
magazine (1995) or getting full page coverage in The New York Times (2009),
then it is probably a good year to be a Trek fan. But this reference put me in
a particularly morose mood about the state of Trek. It was not a negative
reference. The problem was the type of person the reference associated with
Star Trek, and not because the character was a stereotypical nerd like on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Big Bang Theory</i>. It wasn’t like that at
all. <o:p></o:p></div>
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For those of you who do not know <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Newsroom</i> or Aaron Sorkin, this is a show (and a show runner)
that glamorizes the past over the future. The show’s hero Will McAvoy played by
Jeff Daniels is constantly equated to the 17<sup>th</sup> Century anti-hero Don
Quixote (just as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The West Wing’s</i> hero
Jed Bartlet was a throw-back to JFK).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
central conflict of the episode with the Trek reference is whether the newsroom
can adapt to a new millennial corporate overseer who wants to replace their
Edward R. Murrow business model with an Internet-driven/TMZ/citizen-journalist
style of news. Just one of the questionable things they are being asked to
broadcast is an on-air debate between a rape victim and her accused rapist. The
show’s heroes can’t adapt, as evidenced by the crusty old president of the news
division, Charlie Skinner played by Sam Waterson, suffering a heart attack in
this episode. A young reporter, Jim Harper played by John Gallagher Jr., is
just as old-school idealistic as the other heroes of the show (and Sorkin), as
evidenced by the fact that he broke up with his girlfriend who left the
newsroom to write gossipy click-driven Internet columns, as opposed to the ‘real
journalism’ he thinks he does. Sorkin has said in the commentary that Jim is a
younger version of Charlie, the embodiment of the old ways of journalism
instilled in a young man just starting out. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Jim is the character referred to in this episode as someone
who watches Star Trek. He takes umbrage at the fact that someone confused the
Star Trek episode he was watching with Star Wars. There is a scene where we
actually see him watching a classic Star Trek episode on his iPad. To my ears
this brief, insignificant reference, screamed this (probably unintended)
message: the guy who says ‘piss off 2015, I prefer my media like it was 1955’
is the Star Trek fan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Am I overreaching? No. Consider the summersaults Hollywood
types are doing right now to update Star Trek for modern sensibilities. The Bad
Robot reboot is one example. But those who want to produce a new TV series, who
will have to film dozens of hours of TV, have a higher hurdle to make their
show relatable to modern audiences, of which the most important demographic
will be millennials. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Enter Michael Gummelt, apparently in talks with
Paramount/CBS, who said to TrekMovie.com about a potential series: “[Star Trek]<span style="color: #535353; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> needs to be reinvented for a
new generation. Not a reboot, that’s already being done in the movies. What I
want for this series is for it to be the future – a Star Trek TV series that
feels modern and feels futuristic relative to our current times.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #535353; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Futuristic relative to our
current times</span></i><span style="color: #535353; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">.
There’s the rub. This is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">real</i>
reason Trek canon gets a bad wrap by current Hollywood people involved with
Trek. It’s not that writers and producers feel constrained by fictional facts, decades
old lines of dialogue, Trek history. They desire to be free of the old Trek
aesthetic, the look, feel and sensibility of TOS and TNG-era Trek. They want a
Star Trek that seems futuristic to people in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this</i> decade, not the 60s or the 80s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Classic Star Trek was standard science fiction of that era (written
by some well-know 60s science fiction writers), but as TV, Roddenberry knew
that the setting, the characters, and how they interact had to be visually
familiar and relatable to his audience. His solution was to make the Enterprise
look, feel and sound like a WWII battleship in outer space. There was the
bridge, complete with pinging sounds; tight crew quarters; a sickbay; a rec.
room, etc. The viewer tuning in could make the necessary suspension of
disbelief—Oh I see, it’s the Navy is space—and then enjoy the story. </div>
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When TNG
came around 20 years later, that TV audience did not have the same cultural
reference points as a generation before—we did not come of age close to WWII
and Korea or having seen a lot of WWII movies. So the Enterprise-D resembles a
plush, leather-interior luxury cruise liner, more <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Love Boat</i> than the Battle of Midway. The bridge, it has been said
by the show’s own writers, looked like the lobby of a chincy hotel; sprawling crew
quarters; a lounge (ten-forward); state-of-the-art entertainment (holodecks);
children romping down the corridors—a cruise ship in space. Voyager, TNG’s
sister show, was virtually identical in sensibility. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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In these shows, the way the characters interact is deeply 20<sup>th</sup>
Century. They communicate using glorified radios. Decisions are made from a
central authority, distributed down a clear chain of command. They hang out
socially in rec. rooms and lounges (bars, when they are in alien environments).
There are more robots and devices that want to be human than there are humans
who want to be more technological. Nobody ever Tweets, or even emails. I don’t
expect Twitter to still be a functional company in the 23<sup>rd</sup> or 24<sup>th</sup>
Centuries. But you have to admit that characters on even TNG-era Star Trek do
not interface with technology as much as the average person does in a coffee
shop or elementary school in 2015.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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The change to Trek lore that potential future Trek writers
and producers are calling for is not about technology per se, faster warp drives and
sleeker communicators (there is not more archaic-sounding term than
‘communicator’ is there?). No, the so-called necessary change is about the
interface between people and technology. It’s about a millennial seeing a star
ship on TV they’d want to hang out on, instead of one modeled on a naval
battleship, an ‘iBridge’ grafted onto a naval battleship, or a cruise ship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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This is why Michael Gummelt says that the future trek series
he envisions is <span style="color: #535353; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">“set
sometime in the future, distant enough that it doesn’t really matter which
universe it takes place in. It’s universe-agnostic.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #535353; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">These
are the words of someone who wants to tell a Star Trek story on a completely
blank canvas. He wants to eject the archetypes of characters that would be
familiar to those of us who grew up in the 1980s, or who saw many WWII movies,
or, in the case of Kirk’s archetype, read stories about 18<sup>th</sup> Century
naval captains (Horatio Hornblower, as a character born in 1776, as a piece of
fiction born in 1937). All of that, and necessarily all of Trek canon, needs to
be relegated to the dust bin of pop culture history. In exchange for… what
exactly? Maybe it will be great, modern science fiction. But will it be Star
Trek? If so, what threads of Star Trek DNA will it shed and what will it
retain? On <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Newsroom</i>, the heroes have
to ask what exactly can be considered news in 2015? For us Trekkies, what is
Star Trek in 2015?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945467288441613131noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-48512001364684503792015-06-09T18:25:00.000-07:002015-06-09T18:25:12.346-07:00Notes on Past and Future X-Files<div class="MsoNormal">
The mid-Season Six two parter <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Two Fathers</i>/<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">One Son</i> all
but ended the six year central mystery of the show involving the alien
conspiracy plotline. Despite the fact that the series finale was titled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Truth</i> at the end of Season Nine, the
whole truth was basically told in these two episodes (more on Season Nine
later). <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am going to try to summarize what we learned in just these
two episodes in as few words as possible: <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In 1947 an alien ship crashed in Roswell—the first time the
U.S. government became aware of the aliens. They salvaged an alien fetus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A group within the State Department formed to
address this problem, and they spent twenty-five years collecting information
on the alien’s plans. Bill Mulder and C.G.B. Spender (Smoking Man) were part of
this group. By 1973, the group had learned that the aliens intended to colonize
the Earth and by infecting humanity with a virus that would transform the
species into a slave race (they learned only at the very end that people would
become not slaves but host bodies for gestating aliens). The only true
survivors would be those immune to the virus—alien-human hybrid clones. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The group realized—or were told—that the aliens needed their
help to create the hybrids. The group voted on the following course of action:
each member will give the aliens a family member, who will be one part lab rat,
and one part collateral. The family member will be used as test subjects to
create an alien-human hybrid, which will allow the family and the member of the
secret group to be injected with the hybrid genes, thus ensuring their survival.
The fact that the family members will still be alive, with the hope of being
rejoined with their family after colonization in a presumably non-slave status,
is the motivation for the members of the group to continue working on the
project. What the group would get in return is the alien fetus, and the alien Colonist’s
support in creating an alien-human hybrid that would allow themselves, their
family, and perhaps countless others to survive colonization. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bill Mulder was opposed to helping the Colonists. He proposed
that the group chose to make a vaccine that will stop colonization. The group
compromised with Mulder. They would agree to help the aliens create a
hybrid—including giving up their family members (Smoking Man’s wife Cassandra
Spender and Mulder’s daughter Samantha)—but stall the project until they could
create a vaccine that would save everyone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fox Mulder describes the choice his father and the other’s faced:
“stand and fight, or bow to the will of a fearsome enemy. Or to surrender—to
yield and collaborate. To save themselves and stay their enemy’s hand. Men who
believed that victory was the absence of defeat and survival the ultimate
ideology… No matter what the sacrifice.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On November 27, 1973, the family members were abducted by
the Colonists. From that day on, the group became the Syndicate, and according
to Smoking Man, they “no longer cleaved to any government agency.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Twenty-five years later, the Syndicate’s doctors succeeded
in creating a successful alien-human hybrid: Cassandra Spender. The project is
over. Colonization can begin. The Syndicate members—now known as Elders—can be
reunited with their families. But a rebel alien force has interceded. They are
not going to allow the Colonists to commit genocide just to reclaim the Earth
for themselves. The Rebels destroy Cassandra, kill all the members of the
Syndicate—except Smokey—and steal the Roswell fetus. According to Krycek: “The
Rebels are going to win.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That is all there is (I don’t think the later season added
much to this story—but I have yet to see Season 8 and 9). My first impression,
after my recent re-watch, is that this is a great science fiction story. Where
else has the tantalizing but threadbare myth of the summer picnicker abducted
by UFOs been dramatized to its fullest potential and most logical global
conclusion? The perverse but very humane twist of turning the evil government
conspirator “black hats” into reasonable human beings who make choices that
maybe we all would have made is something the modern blockbuster usually tries
and fails at (especially recent Trek films). Suddenly all of Smoking Man’s
kills, even of Bill Mulder—the hero’s father—seem understandable, if not almost
acceptable. The spinoff that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The X-Files</i>
most called for was not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Millennium</i> or
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lone Gunman</i>, but the story of how
those men of the post-WWII generation discovered the alien plot, decided to
hide it from their own government, then had hubris enough that they thought
they could play poker with an interstellar superpower and actually win. Smoking
Man: <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">You can't think these choices were made lightly. They
were the most painful decisions of our lives. Watching our families' faces…”
That would be a great show. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwbO3TyiMN5zsNvh7KwwrzyzTS1qhAdpPK6HQIoOXmMZM92ftgzsQW89NEzZsh8W4bHGRTgfoDNxL-Vhpy_eiKRLaZZzDP-T2sz2zPHDf95wKLcRIz18f1dVUYDnPKG0Uj1U07Dy3x1YE/s1600/cap146.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwbO3TyiMN5zsNvh7KwwrzyzTS1qhAdpPK6HQIoOXmMZM92ftgzsQW89NEzZsh8W4bHGRTgfoDNxL-Vhpy_eiKRLaZZzDP-T2sz2zPHDf95wKLcRIz18f1dVUYDnPKG0Uj1U07Dy3x1YE/s320/cap146.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Now, what does this mean for the upcoming new episodes? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">First, I find in increasingly unlikely that that the six new
episodes will deal exclusively with aliens. But there is the potential that
they could dispense with the entire alien storyline by claiming, as Krycek
predicted, that the Rebels won. The Colonist aliens don’t have to be punched
out by Mulder and Scully like Will Smith in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Independence
Day</i>. We can just be left to assume that the Rebels punched them out a
million light years away. Over and done. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Also, in the 90s the UFO myth had a lot more cultural purchase
than it does today. The mystery of it was enticing. We could more easily
imagine that maybe that couple <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i>
abducted on the deserted road in the middle of the night. Today, when that
couple and everyone else has a camera in their pocket, do we think that way
anymore? Carl Sagan wrote about the UFO myth being culturally and historically
specific to the 20<sup>th</sup> Century. Fifteen years into the 21<sup>st</sup>
Century, I feel confident we are going to move on to other myths. And this
still dovetails nicely with the X-Files mythology because according to the
story, the abduction project stopped around 1999, when above episodes aired. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Finally, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The X-Files</i>
was always ripe with social commentary, and the alien story was only ever a
small part of that. (One big piece of commentary I never got until recently:
There was a lot of significance in the 1990s in depicting a group of old white
men from the post-WWII years making momentous decisions that affected the fate
of all humanity, and the rightness or wrongness of their decisions.) I wonder
what Chris Carter has in store for us when his new episodes air in 2016. The
world is much weirder than some of Mulder’s X-Files, many of which now seem
downright old fashioned. Can this show that prized its cultural commentary be
updated, or will it play like a vintage throwback to a simpler time? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945467288441613131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-63572498935749667372014-10-28T18:42:00.000-07:002014-10-28T18:42:16.443-07:00Chris Christie and the NurseLast week while he was campaigning for a local candidate in New Jersey, Christie quoted a disillusioned voter who complained, "We used to control events, and now it seems we are controlled by events."<br />
<br />
This was a few days before he held a press conference with Governor Cuomo to announce a 21 day mandatory quarantine for any health workers returning from West Africa. This policy makes sense only on an emotional level. It makes us feel we are in fact controlling events. But medical professionals and scientists, as well as the White House, say this is overkill and counterproductive. Overkill because Ebola is only infectious from a person who is exhibiting symptoms, such as fever. Counterproductive because the most effective way to keep Ebola from spreading to the United States is to stem the plague in West Africa, which will require hundreds of volunteer health workers to travel to and from those countries.<br />
<br />
Now maybe the governors of NY and NJ were won over by the above arguments within three days of their first quarantined health worker. Or maybe they just were unlucky enough to have their first test case to be <a href="http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/10/chris_christie_to_maine_nurse_go_ahead_sue_me_over_ebola_quarantine.html">Kaci Hickox</a>.<br />
<br />
For the record, Hickox did not have any symptoms. A scanner in the airport thought she was flush. No human ever took her temperature until she arrived at University Hospital in Newark, where she was diagnosed with not having a fever. We've got another 2 1/2 weeks before we know for sure that Hickox was not infected when she was in Africa. Even if she turns out to have Ebola, the logic of closely monitoring people until symptoms appear, short of mandatory 21 quarantine, is still intact.<br />
<br />
But Christie is following a different kind of logic. One hopes that his quote about the necessity of controlling events is merely election season bluster, and will give way to more a reasoned, limited-- dare I say conservative--governing style--both in his remaining years as our Governor and, potentially, as our president. <br />
<br />
But I doubt it. Ever since Sandy and the 2012 election, Christie has repeatedly put forth one criteria for his political viability: his leadership skills. The problem--as this Obama NJ voter has noticed--is that he often defines his leadership skills against Obama's using situations that Obama, and not Christie, has faced. It is extremely easy to claim that people will simply bend to his will after they hear him say "Because I say so" when he never actually has to say "Because I say so." It is extremely easy to say that Putin, or ISIS, or Ebola would listen if it were only someone of Christie's leadership caliber shaking his fist at them all.<br />
<br />
The most likely result of this style of leadership, as actually practiced by an executive after an election, is someone who spends a great deal of time paying attention and fretting about the 24 hour news cycle, someone who makes bold, rash pronouncements to prove that he is shaping that news cycle come what may, and someone who refuses to admit mistakes when it becomes obvious to all that he acted rashly.<br />
<br />
This is on display this week, and continues to be as Christie is still arguing that Hickox was symptomatically ill last Friday when the facts show she was not. Christie's schtick may be wearing thin even for an election season. <br />
<br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945467288441613131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-82227072691952671932014-10-22T19:02:00.001-07:002014-10-22T19:02:22.170-07:00Primer on Space Politics: The Vision Thing<div class="MsoNormal">
Last month, when announcing the contracts to Boeing and
SpaceX to ferry Americans to the space station, instead of having to rely on
Russia as we do now, <span style="color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Charles F. Bolden Jr., the NASA administrator proclaimed:
</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">“Today we’re one step closer to launching our astronauts from
U.S. soil on American spacecraft and ending the nation’s sole reliance on
Russia.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Maybe it’s the use of the hallowed phrase “one step” in the
mouth of the NASA administrator that seemed to gear us up for an inspiring
announcement. But what he said after that phrase is utterly depressing, and
baffling. How could we have let this happen that 50 years after sending people
to the Moon we now can’t even get them into Low Earth Orbit? <o:p></o:p></div>
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The reason it has happened is simple: for decades there has
not been any political vision for human space flight coming from our leaders.
The quandary is that this lack of leadership coexists with a clear vision for
how we will use space to enhance technology on the ground, and the less
discussed but very real vision for how we will use space militarily, as I have
written in the posts below. The big question is whether the former two space
strategies will be met with an equivalent strategy for human space
presence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Every modern U.S. President gives the big <a href="http://marshall.org/space-policy/evaluating-the-obama-national-space-policy-continuity-and-new-priorities/">space speech</a> where
he lays out his Administration’s space policy objectives. These policies
usually are just updated and tweaked versions of the previous administration’s
policy, and they usually evoke the glory days of the Moonshot era. During his
re-election in 2004, George W. Bush announced, “Human beings are headed into
the cosmos.” This being an election, it was said by pundits at the time that
George W. Bush was trying to show the electorate that he had what his father
called “the vision thing.” It was not until 2006 when he finally completed his
official space policy. This document called for a replacement vehicle for the
shuttle, to return us to the Moon by 2020, and to send a robotic mission to
Mars that would somehow study the feasibility of a human mission to the Red
Planet. The Constellation program consisted of the Orion space craft (formerly
Crew Exploration Vehicle) and launch vehicle Ares I (formerly the Crew Launch
Vehicle) and would potentially carry humans to the Moon and Mars. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In any case, the Obama Administration scrapped and
refashioned most of that plan. They kept the Orion capsule plan but canceled
the Ares rocket. An Orion-type crew vehicle will sit atop Boeing’s old and
Russian-made Atlas V, or the SpaceX Falcon9, in future launches. By 2025, we
are supposed to begin crewed missions beyond the Moon, including to an
asteroid. In the 2030s we are to send humans round trip to Mars and back. The Obama
plan also calls for finding exoplanets and signs of life in the universe. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Another way that the space policy of subsequent
administrations is generally consistent is the distance presidents keep putting
between their time in office and the real tough goals. To truly match and
surpass the glory of Kennedy’s Moonshot, humans will have to travel beyond
lunar orbit. Like the old joke goes, Presidents agree that this can only happen
20 years from now, and it always will. <o:p></o:p></div>
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As anyone who has read Lee Billings 5 Billion Years of Solitude
knows, millions or even billions of dollars are spent on designs for space
ships and telescopes (and diverted from other promising designs) only to be
canceled after a few years, when people realize how much it will cost to
actually finish the project. The cycle is repeated over and over in every NASA
department. The money wasted in the canceled projects would probably have been
enough to fund to completion a set of project designs had they been nested
within a single space policy vision from the beginning. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Will this cycle be broken? Granted, there are major recent achievements in space exploration, mainly on the robotic and telescope fronts.
But what of human space flight? Have presidents figured out how to spin the
politics of their space policy: make sure the GPS is working, send some robots
to Mars and kick some money to the exoplanet finders, but always keep the
Moonshot business 20 years in the future, an inspiring goal we’re never
actually supposed to reach? Is it all just rhetoric to justify the aerospace
industry’s existence? Or is it an actual achievable goal that in fact does
justify the aerospace industry? <o:p></o:p></div>
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Maybe we will find out the answer only when the people get
interested in space again. Until the public finds its passion for space
exploration we can’t expect politicians to be passionate about it. Maybe we
need to be inspired by non-terrestrial sources. Perhaps shrimp on Europa, or a habitable planet a few light years away would do the trick. If a president truly wanted to motivate an era of space exploration, they might call for finding evidence of life outside the Earth within 10 years, and fund that mission. If it worked, we would have to head into the cosmos so we could go say hello to whatever is out there. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945467288441613131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-24800894369691413052014-10-16T14:27:00.002-07:002014-10-16T14:27:31.330-07:00Space Money: Brand spaceX<div class="MsoNormal">
One month ago, Boeing was awarded a $4.2 billion contract,
and SpaceX $2.6 billion to begin ferrying astronauts into orbit by 2017. Once
each company’s space capsules are certified, the companies will both perform 6
missions through 2023. Completion of those launches is the only way they get
all their money. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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SpaceX’s involvement—and the fact that a smaller company
Sierra Nevada was apparently also a close enough contender that they contested
NASA’s decision not to also award them a contract—is highly significant and a
new development in how we launch people and satellites into space. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Boeing and Lockheed Martin have heretofore exclusively
received government contracts for space work through their joint venture called
United Launch Alliance (ULA). It’s widely <a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/2495415-how-spacex-seeks-to-end-boeing-and-lockheeds-russia-dependent-rocket-launch-monopoly">written</a> that this is a monopoly on
U.S. space industry, and that the lack of competition drives up what they
charge for their launches. Elson Musk of SpaceX claims he can launch into orbit
for under $100 million, while ULA charge $380 million on average. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Another interesting wrinkle is that while SpaceX’s rocket is
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engine. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/12/congress_and_spacex_red_tape_ties_up_private_space.html">Also,</a> politicians with a Boeing or Lockheed plant in their
district will have a bias when talking about SpaceX. But there are <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2011/05/31/the-case-against-spacex-part-ii/">others</a> who are not on the SpaceX bandwagon, for better reasons than politics.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I suspect that SpaceX and companies like it will continue to
play a larger role in the American space presence. When hearing about these
companies and their big dreams in the news, we need to keep in mind the
fundamentals they are operating under: money, and the realities of the
aerospace industry. These companies are not just about space tourism and
building hotels on the moon. They are about the government’s space policy (and presumably
military space policy). The next Neil Armstorng—if we are to ever have the like—will
be a private contractor. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14945467288441613131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-25108933553679423582014-10-12T05:53:00.001-07:002014-10-12T05:58:20.278-07:00A Primer on Space Militarization<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbFlD_zYMFZ9gpZaVXLGHNedm782MvVWfr0hFsHYkXkci81YRL-jBenTPgmb2zn5jE7dWGa3rorkXnuTvYMCcdnNkG5mMui3dXPdkjdOn0cSR0EvllYKZnpF3mqo_3lwANlpDq30TkDUI/s1600/2580636-starwars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbFlD_zYMFZ9gpZaVXLGHNedm782MvVWfr0hFsHYkXkci81YRL-jBenTPgmb2zn5jE7dWGa3rorkXnuTvYMCcdnNkG5mMui3dXPdkjdOn0cSR0EvllYKZnpF3mqo_3lwANlpDq30TkDUI/s1600/2580636-starwars.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Let’s state calmly and sanely that space militarization is
happening. It is a little questioned and less touted reality of the military
and aerospace industry. It enables our modern way of life. Let us also state
that this is not the result of a sinister plan. Space militarization is
plodding along with small, incremental steps, lacking fanfare and, crucially, a
sweeping vision (which would require a political debate and legal framework).
As of yet, there are no villains akin to Dr. Strangelove in the story of space
militarization. Though when the Commander of the United States Air Force Space
Command says</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Space superiority is our day-to-day mission. Space supremacy is our
vision for the future. Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny.<o:p></o:p></i></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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as he did in March 2005, and with a name like a Star Wars
villain (General Lance Lord), we may have a contender for villainy. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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No, I’m sure General Lord is an all right guy just doing his
job. Like all the other military planners, engineers and strategists writing
memos from their cubicles about how to take the advantage in space. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Below is a primer on space militarization since the Chinese
shot a KEW (kinetic energy weapon) into an aging weather satellite in 2007. My
information is primarily based on studied from RAND and the Hudson Institute. A
rash of these papers come out every few years, as they have for decades. They
help us put this mysterious and scary subject in perspective with the
professionals tasked with carrying it out. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Put simply, space militarization will continue because
“space systems enable our modern way of war” on the ground (William J. Lynn
III, A Military Strategy for the New Space Environment, 2011). The U.S. has
five independent satellite constellations for its “defense connectivity needs.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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And even if that were not the case, space militarization
would be a factor because space systems also enable our modern way of life.
Circling 20,000 km above us every 12 hours are 24 GPS satellites—5 to 12 of
them are above you right now, connecting with your phone. An Iridium
constellation of 66 satellites all in Low Earth Orbit ensure all global
communications. If Russia or China or Iran can take out these satellites and
basically stop us from the dozen or more everyday tasks (some trivial, others
crucial) that average Americans have come to depend on, well, what are we to do
about that? <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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According to the National Security Space Strategy (2011),
the Defense Department’s “Space Policy Mandate of Operations” has 4 quadrants,
all of which support military readiness:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<tbody>
<tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0;">
<td style="border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">See<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Spy satellites<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Missile
warning<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Maritime
domain warning<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Environmental
status<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Communicate<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Internet and
communication satellites<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Militarily
relevant data streams<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 1; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Navigate<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">GPS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Positioning,
navigation, timing services (PNT)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Operate<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Precision
strikes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Early warning<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Situational
awareness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Synchronization
of operations<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Search &
rescue<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
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Note that there is nothing in this “Mandate of Operations”
that George Lucas or J.J. Abrams would be remotely interested in putting in a
movie. Space Militarization, for now, has nothing to do with dog fights in
lunar orbit. All space infrastructure is directed toward terrestrial targets
for the simple reason that the primary targets of war <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i></b> terrestrial—except
for the satellites that now guide all aspects of land, air and sea
missions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is how Lynn describes our space infrastructure: “What
are in space are the sensory organs, which find and fix [terrestrial] targets…
and the nervous system, which connects the combatant elements and permits them
to operate cohesively.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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He adds that the U.S. is “inordinately dependent on its
complex but exposed network of command, control, communications” space
networks. The reason they are exposed is because a satellite’s position is
impossible to hide. A high schooler could do the math on the trajectory that
would bring a missile and a satellite into collision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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This is the reason China, Russia, and every other would-be
world power is so interested in developing their space capabilities. Sure India
wants its own rover to beam back pictures from Mars, and China would love its
own Neil Armstrong moment. But twined with that—like it was for our own Neil
Armstrong moment—is this military necessity: taking out U.S. satellite systems
would level the playing field on the terrestrial shooting war, which China et.
al. would never win otherwise. This is the reason that space militarization
will continue—a quieter, gentler arms race.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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In one of Mary FitzGerald’s last dispatches—China’s Military
Strategy for Space, 2007—she wrote about the types of weapons the Chinese are
developing. Here is a sample list:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
KEWs: ultra high speed warheads that collide with targets<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Direct Energy Weapons (DEW): lasers, microwaves and particle
beams<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hypersonic Aerospace Aircraft<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Orbital Ballistic Missile: can function as an ICMB,
anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) or orbital bomber<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ground Based Laser<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Orbital Transfer Vehicle<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Space-Based Radio Frequency Energy Weapon<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Space Operations Vehicle: on-demand space lift from ground
to orbit<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(Naturally, we are working on the same type of weapons. It
is an arms race after all.) <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Now that potential future enemies are playing target
practice with weather satellites, the U.S. is falling back on a deterrence
posture.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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According to Lynn, American space deterrence has four
objectives right now:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Space
situational awareness: identify and assess all orbital objects so that we can
identify the origin of any attack. (The potential for an attack to happen in
space without our ability to know the source is very real, so is the potential
for a 3<sup>rd</sup> party to launch an attack that will implicate another
world power who had nothing to do with it. As John M. Collins wrote in his 1989
congressional report: “Space may prove to be a particularly fruitful
environment for deception.”)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Enhance
the survivability of space satellites<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Launch
reserve satellites to replace those damaged or destroyed in an attack – “rapid
response space launch capabilities.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Mindset
shift toward “Small and flexible distributed capabilities” in space and on the
ground so that if one satellite constellation is damaged the entire network
will no collapse.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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That is a very hopeful-sounding list. Of course, the obvious
down side to space war, like all wars (but more so, I’d argue) is that things
can spiral out of control very fast. The cascade failure depicted in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gravity</i> is a realistic possibility. But
there are other possibilities for catastrophe that may not be deterred or even
predicted. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In his <span style="font-family: Georgia;">Rice University
speech on space policy, September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy said
this:</span><b> <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><i>There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in
outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves
the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never
come again.</i></b><span style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Nearly 55 years later, it feels like that opportunity has
come and gone. <o:p></o:p></div>
JustinScottSneadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02325889200792115162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-33717595645411863522014-10-08T19:48:00.001-07:002014-10-12T05:58:36.834-07:00Gone Girl is this the updated Fatal Attraction--which is a bad thingWhen I was in the english department at the University of Iowa, I took a great class called something like "Sex and Single Women in Literature." We read the classics of the genre like Scarlet Letter and Imitation of Life, but we also watched some pop culture representations like Sex in the City and Fatal Attraction.<br />
<br />
This class did what a liberal liberal arts education is supposed to do: teach us to be on the look out for some of the themes that are too often unquestioningly expressed in our society, and to teach us how to question those themes.<br />
<br />
The insight I was exposed to in that class was the following: single women in western cultural narratives meet one of three fates by the end of the story: married off; killed off; or punished for being single in a way that contains them. <br />
<br />
The Woman as Monster storyline is an offshoot of this. Like in Fatal Attraction, she is single and therefore has the freedom to lure married men into her trap, where she will stop at nothing to keep them. Because even though she is single, the woman monster is obsessed with having a man in her life, or so she does in the patriarchal fever dream that spawns her.<br />
<br />
Gone Girl is only a slight variation. Here the Woman Monster, Amy, is not single, but married. Don't let that fool you. The film's pretensions are that married life (and even the economy) made Amy a monster. But depicting that story is not where screenwriter and director put their energy. This movie is as much about Great Recession family struggles as Star Trek Into Darkness was about the morality of drone warfare. Gone Girl is all about the Woman Monster (and the affable but stupid men who enable them by not being more controlling, Ben Affleck here in the Michael Douglas version of the stereotype).<br />
<br />
So it is surprising to read this <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2014/10/07/on-the-feminism-of-gone-girl-via-its-multiple-strong-female-characters/">Scott Mendelson</a> post on how feminist the movie is. Here is his thesis:<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 25px;">"By virtue of its plethora of varied and quality female characters, </span><i style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gone Girl </i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 25px;">is one of the most feminist films of the year."</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 25px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">Really? I get that Mendelson is so tired of movies that only have one female lead who must stand in for all of womankind. But the fact that Amy, with so many different and dynamic female co-characters,</span></span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;"> "is not burdened with representing womanhood as a gender" does not begin to counterbalance the deep-seeded stereotype she represents. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
Quoting and critiquing <a href="http://www.awardsdaily.com/blog/2014/09/gone-girl-sympathy-for-the-devil/">Sasha Stone's review of the film</a>, Mendelson writes that "<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 25px;">if we really want 'strong female character' to mean more than 'Kristen Stewart as Snow White wearing armor and wielding a sword,' we have to embrace a plurality of female characters that represent all character types." </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">So, for the sake of diversity we have to be fine with Hollywood regurgitating one of the oldest minsogynst stereotypes in the book? This movie is not trying to be feminist. It is trying to be thrilling by trafficking in our near-ancient cultural fears of evil women and weak men. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">This is not just about movies. Right now </span><a href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/conncarroll/2014/10/08/draft-n1902500" style="line-height: 25px;">there is a debate</a><span style="line-height: 25px;"> among conservatives about California's new affirmative consent law regarding sexual assault--the law where consensual is now defined by having the partners say Yes. It is interesting that in this particular sliver of the debate, here between Ponnuru and Conn Carroll, the woman's voice is left aside. There is great concern about the innocent men who will be improperly labeled rapists due to this new law. Now, why would men in general be so worried of being caught up in an inescapable web of accusations and legalese lies regarding their relations with a woman? Where might men have learned that fear? It is because, in part, of movies like Gone Girl. The stereotype of the Woman Monster has taught many men, especially young men, to believe that girls think and act like Bond villains. And that they better not get caught slipping. Women are their adversaries, and they are their conquests. The fact that no man would want to be Ben Affleck in this movie only proves the point. </span></span></span><br />
<br />JustinScottSneadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02325889200792115162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-63067799116937404362014-10-06T17:21:00.000-07:002014-10-31T03:50:13.496-07:00Why most summer (and sci-fi) movies suck <div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
As we prepare for Interstellar, I think it would be smart to talk about why Nolan is the exception to the rule. So in this post I’d like us to discuss the “reality on the ground” in Hollywood, as described by Scott Mendelson of Forbes. His blog is called the Ticket Booth. His article on this subject:</div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 8pt;"><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2014/05/26/hollywood-doesnt-care-about-fanboy-approval/">http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2014/05/26/hollywood-doesnt-care-about-fanboy-approval/</a></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
This will be important reading as Interstellar comes out, and for those of us who will spend the next few years discussing and debating the 3<sup>rd</sup> Bad Robot Star Trek Movie. I want to
get into the specifics of what Payne and McKay (mostly McKay) said in their
TrekCore interview about Trek 3, but first we need agree on some fundamentals that will
guide our discussions, debate, and especially our counsel to the Bad Robot
Team. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">Mendelson’s premise is simple: Blockbuster
movie writers and directors have a more pressing goal than pleasing the fan
base: “It’s about convincing the general audiences to check out your comic book
adaptation or fantasy property that makes it a hit…. It’s not that Hollywood
doesn’t care about or doesn’t appreciate the geek fandom. It’s just that said
geek fandom doesn’t make up very much total box office for a given film.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">Mendelson has a great analogy: “The
passionate comic book fan is the equivalent of the hardcore left in the
Democratic Party. They know you’re not going to stay home, so why bother
placating you in the first place?” The party candidate doesn’t want to alienate
the base, in fact they have to court you heavily in the primary. But the
candidate who wins is the one who all along, no matter what he says on MSNBC or
FOX News, is the one who was always building a product that is designed to sell
big on Election Day to the whole country. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">We Trek fans are in the primary phase now. I’m
not saying that the Bad Robot team is blowing smoke, but we can’t delude
ourselves that they are not primarily focused on making a movie that will open
big on their opening (election) day. What does that entail?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">As the sfdebris’s Chuck pointed out in his
<a href="http://sfdebris.com/videos/films/transformers1.php">Transformers review</a>, summer sci-fi movies cost so much to make and market, they
have to be written and produced in a way that will ensure media hype, and that general
audience masses show up, especially on opening weekend. Thus we have what I
like to call the Algorithm. You know, the reason why most summer blockbusters
are basically the same movie with differently named and costumed
characters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">This Algorithm, more than the many
different film makers, is the reason that the past 15 years of Star Trek movies
have basically been the same movie with differently named and costumed
characters. We can quibble over this and that creative decision. But the fact
remains that a summer blockbuster filmmaker is allowed only so many colors in
his paint box. We all know what those colors are by now: </span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: black;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">1) super villain </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">2) super
weapon</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">3) Earth in danger </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">4) nonstop 30-minute third act destruction... </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">5) wherein a
city is usually destroyed</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background: white; color: black;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">6) female "love (read sex) interest" for the lead actor </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">The fear of many fans—including this one—is
that the next Trek movie will repeat this trend. (It is a hopeful note that the
one thing we have basically been promised is that the setting will be away from
Earth, in deep space. This goes against the Algorithm, which says that the
Asian market will not turn out for a sci-fi space film that does not involve
Earth). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
To close,
I’m going to implore that we not make this discussion personal by myself making
it personal. Imagine you are Orci, MaKay or Payne. You have just been given a
job, asked to perform at a level that you never have before—the highest of your
career. As a Star Trek fan, you have a choice: do you channel your inner
Roddenberry and write a movie that the fans will adore, maybe a cross between
The Motion Picture and The Voyage Home (or even City on the edge and Balance of Terror)? Or do you follow the Algorithm, all but
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">guaranteeing</i> that you have the best
chance of being re-hired for next summer, fulfilling your life long ambition of
being a film maker, and so you go write The Wrath of Kahn Part 6? Or, do you
somehow thread the needle?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
What would
you choose? Think about it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
Oh by the
way, it doesn’t help that Scott Mendelson is predicting Summer 2016 will be the
most crowded blockbuster season in the history of cinema. God (or
“Q”) help us all.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
We need to push them to thread the needle, but we shouldn’t talk like it’s gonna easy. Even though Nolan makes it look easy. </div>
JustinScottSneadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02325889200792115162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-71299254085469023162014-10-05T18:32:00.001-07:002014-10-05T18:32:38.773-07:00Essay 5: The lost DS9 Time Travel Epic…nah we got “Prodigal Daughter”<div class="MsoNormal">
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I learned a lot from this meaningless episode: <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
1) We almost got a kick-ass present-Sisko vs. future-Sisko
time travel show<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2) Most Trek since 1965 has been written and filmed on a
“first idea, best idea” time scale<o:p></o:p></div>
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3) DS9 writers, in the end, could not write a bad episode<o:p></o:p></div>
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The DS9 Companion quotes one of the writers of “Prodigal
Daughter” Bradley Thomas: “Sisko battling Sisko, with the Sisko from the future
coming back to the Sisko of the present, ‘You can’t do this, because things are
going to happen.’” <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I can’t help but think that the ‘things [that] are going to
happen’ would have set up a continuity link from this unwritten episode to the
finale arc. Specifically, it would have given the writers a bit more
focus—pre-planning time, as we will see—on the Sisko-destiny storyline—more
than they actually would get, since this time-travel story never panned out.
Unfortunately, the writing team could not figure out what the story would be
after the “great teaser” concept of gray-beard Sisko battling goatee-Sisko. I’m
sure we can do better from our armchairs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ron Moore explained that “Prodigal Daughter” replaced the
time travel idea because it was “a case of ‘First thought, best thought.’” There
was precious little time before the writers had to hand the director a script
to shoot. We fanboys-and-girls often fail to acknowledge the pressures Trek
writers always operate under. We wonder why they just didn’t think of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">our</i></b>
brilliant solution, which we dream up from our perspective years after the
fact, and not having any salary on the line. In truth, most Trek has been
written by someone who had to get a script finished by dawn the next day—something
we haven’t had to do since college. It’s a miracle we have gotten the quality
that we have. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The grand plan for the finale was to have Sisko die with
Dukat in the Fire Caves, and presumably go walk with the Prophets in the first
Trek-canonical depiction of an afterlife. When Brooks asked them not to kill
Sisko, they jettisoned the idea. But there was not time to come up with an
alternative except to say that he wasn’t dead. If there had been a mid-season
time travel show with an older version of Sisko, that might have given the
writers time and creative foundation to plan Sisko’s fate. It was not to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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[By the way, Prodigal Daughter was not Ezri’s fault—nor Nicole
deBoer’s. The writers even apologized to deBoer for writing such a lackluster
script. The writers proved two episodes later that they could do a great Ezri
episode with “Field of Fire.” That episode was of the best Trill episodes ever,
in which they introduced a new element: the former host emerging in the mind’s
eye of the current host, but cinematically depicted as a separate character
played by a new actor that only the current host could see. It is perhaps the
first time DS9 successfully dramatized Dax’s experience as a joined Trill—too
bad they weren’t doing this from the beginning.]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
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Unfortunately, “Prodigal Daughter” didn’t explore the Trill
at all. It is a pointless exploration of characters we will never meet again
(Ezri’s mother and two brothers, one of which now play’s Peggy’s scorned lover
on Mad Men). The ‘first thought’ the writers came up with was to explore Ezri’s
back story, which meant roping in her family (like TNG did when they ran out of
Season 7 ideas and did Geordie, Worf and Data family episodes). <o:p></o:p></div>
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But this was not a bad episode. By ‘not bad’ I mean that the
writers of this snoozefest, understanding that they were dealt a bad hand,
still performed admirably. They did not denigrate beloved characters by having
them act out of character. They did not denigrate new characters by having them
act stupidly. There was a sensible plot and a moral, even though it failed to
live up to the gravity of the rest of the final season. There was no
technobable solution to a problem contrived to set up a space battle. There was
even a bonus continuity link to a Season 6 episode, which honored Obrien’s
character arc. Behr said that the episode concept was “a valid idea. DS9 is a
character-based show, and this had all the makings of a classic drama. But the
script never came together.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Those are the words of a man who knows what it takes to make
a script come together, and is secure enough to admit that he can’t make it
happen every time. <o:p></o:p></div>
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My big take-away from these facts is that the DS9 writing
room never phones it in. They never took us, the fans, for granted,
even—especially—when they couldn’t deliver for us. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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But what could they have delivered? What would your Sisko
time-travel epic have been? And how might it have shaped what happened in “What
you Leave Behind”?<o:p></o:p></div>
JustinScottSneadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02325889200792115162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-87457310472576509692014-10-05T18:26:00.002-07:002014-10-05T18:26:23.992-07:00Essay 4: Another Example of Trek Predicting the Future: Vic Fontaine was the First SIRI<br /><div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> </o:p>“It’s Only a Paper Moon” begins a mid-season stretch of
seven episodes before the final arc. The writers have much to accomplish in
these seven shows: wrap up the Mirror Universe and Section 31 stories, not to
mention have a little light-hearted fun while they still can. “It’s Only a
Paper Moon” has a different agenda. Though this was originally supposed to be a
comic episode with a few silly plot lines intersecting in Vic’s lounge, the
weight of Nog’s story took over. For the writers, this was important because it
validated and extended on the moral of “Siege of AR-558,” where Nog lost his
leg. If Nog had been in the next episode without any consequences from his
injury, it would have sent the message that war in the 24<sup>th</sup> Century
is cheap and easy. Worse, it would have been an admission that the Dominion War
story arc was just an excuse to show epic space battles, with no interest in
exploring deeper themes.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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That the episode succeeds in this—with a performance that
proves Aron Eisenberg is just as talented as any Star Trek principal actor—is
not as surprising to me as two other things I noticed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/7x10/papermoon_193.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/7x10/papermoon_193.jpg" height="239" width="320" /></a></div>
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First, Ron D. Moore wrote a tight, confident script. I’ve
been impressed by how clean the writing is in the last couple seasons of DS9.
The episodes have an internal logic and all the pieces fit to deliver the
story, including tight dialogue. In this one, there is no B plot. Nog’s
recovery is the only story. There is no threat of physical danger to anyone or
anything. There is a nice scene in the ward room. Usually this is the set where
weighty decisions about war and peace, life and death are made by the uniformed
regulars, admirals and generals. In this scene, there are a few uniforms, but
most of the lines go to Jake, Rom, Leeta and Quark. The only suspense in the
episode’s plot structure is summed up by Ezri: “Let’s see what Nog does next.”
And it is more than enough to carry us through. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I think I have read somewhere that the TNG writing room had
a rule that the Enterprise or a regular character always had to be in danger,
or else the episode couldn’t have suspense. They only broke this rule a couple
times, “Data’s Day” being a stand out. Even “The Inner Light” contained the
threat to Picard’s life. There is nothing wrong with ginning up suspense this
way, even doing it in most of the episodes, but when you have to do it ALL of
the time—well, that’s why the 1701D was always having to save a planet from an the
asteroid/volcano/earthquake/supernova/spatial anomaly plot device of the week.
These kinds of stories allowed for some good character stuff in between, but
always ended with meaningless technobable solutions. It’s extremely fitting that
TNG ended with the Mack Daddy of spatial anomalies that was going to destroy
the whole universe (and very telling that Moore did not want that anomaly, and
its requisite tech-tech solution, in the episode at all). DS9 went out of its
way to abolish this old TNG rule, and instead fond suspense in character
interactions. Of course this allowed for much more drama than on TNG, and I’d
argue more compelling characters. [Note to future Trek TV series writers: If
you are going to write a danger-of-the-week series, solved by characters
pressing buttons and spouting technobable, then your crew will become a bunch
of bland sieves no matter how interesting you make them out to be in your show
bible.] <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Now, about the SIRI comparison. By which I really mean the responsive,
friendly SIRI-like operating system imagined by Spike Jonze’s “Her” where the
computer actively learns about its owner and forms a relationship with him. Vic
was programmed this same way. Bashir wanted the character to be self-aware so
the lounge singer could have natural conversations with the crew, instead of
phony role playing. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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This was an episode where a flesh-and-blood person, Nog,
forms a dependent relationship with the hologram because he is suffering PTSD.
Unlike so many hologram-centric episodes, this one did not even pause to give
credence to the idea that Vic should be considered a sentient being on par with
a human (or Ferengi). And Vic is the one to make the case against himself. When
Nog tries to persuade Vic to let him stay in the holosuite because Vic seems just
as real to Nog as people off the holosuite, Vic says this: “Compared to you,
I’m as hollow as a snare drum.” The moral of the episode is that forming
emotional bonds with a computer program is a feature of mental illness. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In light of the creep of technology into our lives today, I
find this extremely refreshing. Just because a computer can act and speak
intelligently, does not mean it is has attained artificial human intelligence,
to say nothing of a soul. This episode correctly envisioned how humans will
program our computer toys to better serve us by being more like us. But it also
warns about the dangerous temptation this will pose to the most vulnerable. <o:p></o:p></div>
JustinScottSneadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02325889200792115162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-44149529621035983282014-10-05T12:19:00.001-07:002014-10-05T12:19:21.579-07:00Hiatus Over--New DirectionIve taken off a big chunk of time from social media to focus on my book, but now Im ready to dive back in.<br />
<br />
I'm going to take the blog into a new direction. I intend to use it as a clearing house of writers and ideas that I'm reading and learning from, as well as a kind of journal where I can process my thoughts and hone my views on the topics that interest me. I'm interested in covering the <span style="background-color: #f5f8fa;"><span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">space industry, science-fiction, modern life & our narratives—religious, political and Hollywood (which will always include my thoughts on Star Trek, and the state of pop </span></span></span><span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">sic-fi in general). </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Here are some of the topics I will focus on in the coming months:</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><u>Space Race 2.0?</u></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Let's just say, something is happening up there, and what it is ain't exactly clear. Im going to be linking articles and blogs that take a critical eye on the space industry and space militarization, as well as commenting on NASA's exploits (or lack thereof), SETI, etc. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span>
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<u>Our Narratives—Past & Present </u><o:p></o:p></div>
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This will be where I essay on fiction as well as TV and movies. </div>
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One big project I'm working on: for over a year I've been reading the first 50 years of space sic-fi literature (1850-1900). The result will eventually be a book, but I will start to post some of my essays. </div>
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<u>Organizing Principles</u></div>
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This is the tag line I keep coming back to as my newfound political identity: conservative philosophy sans conservative
policy; liberal policy sans liberal politics. If that sounds squishy, it is. But it happens to express how I feel (and vote), and I think many Americans are of the same mind. More on what I mean later. But first, I'm going to write some essays about nihilism, and its increasing and dangerous influence on modern pop culture. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Stay tuned. </div>
JustinScottSneadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02325889200792115162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-53148393471628127722013-07-09T06:26:00.000-07:002013-07-09T06:58:01.684-07:0013th “Dear Lucky Agent” ContestWhen David Milch was pitching his series Deadwood to HBO, the executives asked him to sum up his concept in a single sentence. This was his sentence: "Deadwood is about a man learning to fall in love with his wife."<br />
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It made no difference to Milch that Deadwood is about 10 things before it's about Seth Bullock's marriage to his brother's widow. Plus we didn't even meet his wife until the second season. HBO wanted a sentence, and he gave them an interesting one.<br />
<br />
There is a writing competition for sci-fi and YA novels hosted by www.writersdigest.com that asks writers to do this most difficult task: to sum up an entire novel in one logline. This is hard for me. My book is over 270,000 words. There are ten main characters, many of whom have independent story lines. There are three narrators. Thematically, the book has something to say about space militarization, sustainable farming, ecology and pollution, the role of Heaven in human affairs, postmenopausal women, the two opposing forces within the American soul, the nature of language and humor, thinking robots, alien civilizations, and the generational divide between the young and the elderly. Each of these themes could get its own logline. Maybe I've written a kitchen sink novel. Maybe I need an editor. In any case, here goes:<br />
<br />
Logline: My science-fiction novel is the first one to depict
a green utopia while suggesting the steep toll such a society would extract
from the human spirit.<br />
<br />
Maybe Milch's pitch is good because it conveys theme and character. Mine doesn't mention characters. It's hard to pitch a sci-fi novel about farmers. There are a lot of farmers, but also rebel space pilots, not to mention a robot and an alien.<br />
<br />
Let me try again.<br />
<br />
Logline: In the 22<sup>nd</sup> century, a gang of geriatric
space-industry veterans hatch and elaborate and deadly scheme to launch a
rocket to an alien civilization, hoping to prove to the torpid town fathers that
their green utopia has stunted the human spirit.<br />
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Here is the link to the contest if anyone is interested:<br />
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http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/13th-free-dear-lucky-agent-contest-young-adult-and-sci-fi<br />
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JustinScottSneadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02325889200792115162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-72078466367604200842013-06-07T14:33:00.000-07:002014-10-05T18:35:21.496-07:00Essay 3, Part II: Political FaithSpeaking of political faith. Once More… and Siege... treat faith in heroes and governments in the same non-judgmental way as DS9 treats spiritual faith. They show how real people apply these faiths to their lives and struggles. The writers have Worf sum up this view at the beginning of Once More…:<br />
<br />
“The only real questions is whether you believe in the legend of Davy Crocket or not. If you do, then there should be no doubt in your mind that he died a hero’s death. If you do not, then he was just a man, and it does not matter how he died.” <br />
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This is dramatized at the end of the episode when Kor sacrifices himself against a Gem’Hydar fleet. Was he squashed like a bug instantly, or did he die in a blaze of glory that turned the fleet around? Worf and the other Klingons will never know. What they choose to believe about Kor will depend on their faith in his legend, or lack of faith. The larger point is that if you are going to have faith in a hero, the facts don’t matter so much. <br />
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The Siege of AR-558 is the very next episode that aired. Despite being a “War is Hell” episode, it does not challenge blind faith in heroes or governments as misguided. It says something far more complex and useful. Siege says that blind faith in heroes and governments, especially in time of war, has its useful purposes for those caught up in the War.<br />
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A Starfleet unit has been holding a captured Dominion communications relay for five months. They’ve been living in caves, picked off by attacks and invisible mines. The point of their sacrifice is to keep the relay so that one day it might be used to eavesdrop on Dominion communications. The writers’ purposefully made the object of their mission ho-hum. AR-558 is not part of some ingenious plot to cripple the Founders. The place doesn’t have a glorious name. In the end, it might not even work. But no one in the episode challenges the wisdom of the orders to hold the relay. They have faith in the people who gave the orders. They believe that their sacrifice might make some small difference in the outcome of the war, that it might decrease the number of names of the oft-mentioned casualty reports (which bookend this and other episodes). <br />
<br />
Nog is the faithful character in this episode, challenged by Quark, who doesn’t share his nephew’s faith in Starfleet or its officers. Quark says, “This isn’t the Starfleet you know.” <br />
<br />
Nog: “Sure it is. It’s just that these people have been through a lot. They’ve been hold up here a long time. Seen two-thirds of their unit killed. But they haven’t surrendered. Do you know why? Because they are heroes.”<br />
<br />
Quark argues with the facts of the situation. He says that Humans, “are a wonderful, friendly people as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working.” But if put into a dangerous, deprived environment without “food, sleep, sonic showers… those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon.”<br />
<br />
Nog doesn’t accept the truth of this statement. The officers who have been on this asteroid for five months, who Dr. Bashir diagnosed with PTSD and a host of other mental and psychological stresses, are more than weak and fragile humans to Nog. They are heroes. He chooses to believe this for the same reason Sisko and the others choose to have faith in their orders—it is the only way to get their job done without going insane or deserting. <br />
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At the end of the episode, Worf comforts Sisko with this Klingonism: “This was a great victory, one worthy of story and song.” This echoes what he said about Crocket (who has plenty of stories and songs about him), but the difference is striking. You can choose to worship Crocket, or even Kor, as a hero. Whether you do or don’t is a personal choice with little effect on your day-to-day life. But the officers in Siege have no choice but to cherish their battle as a great victory, even thought AR-558 can’t be easily put into verse. If AR-588 is a pointless sacrifice, then the entire war is—and no one in Starfleet believes that. While this episode, and many others, rightly teach that war is hell, none of the episodes take the view that fighting this particular war is a mistake. It must be done. And since we are going to fight, suffer and die, we had better armor our minds and hearts with faith in the rightness and glory of the task. JustinScottSneadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02325889200792115162noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-35002585051457989842013-06-03T19:20:00.004-07:002014-10-05T18:11:38.919-07:00Essay 3: Deep Space Nine’s Uber-Theme: FaithPart I: Spiritual Faith<br />
The first third of Season Seven concludes with four very different episodes about the same idea: faith. These are: Treachery, Faith, and the Great River; Once More Unto the Breach; The Siege of AR-558; Covenant. <br />
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These depict religious faith (Treachery… and Covenant), and political or mythic faith (Once More... and Siege…). <br />
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In Treachery, Nog teaches Obrien about the Ferengi belief that the Universe is a fluid, material continuum that will bring goods and profit to those who want it, creating equilibrium. Despite Obrien’s skepticism, this actually works just as Nog says it will, bringing them needed engineering parts. It works because the belief inspires and spurs Nog to act as if it works. From an outsider (nonbeliever) perspective, this is how faith works. Faith creates a cognitive framework that directs decisions and actions toward a desired outcome. That doesn’t mean you always get what you pray for. A believer can also understand this is how faith works cognitively, while also believing in the mystery and power of faith. <br />
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In the same episode, Weyoun Six explains to Odo his unswerving faith in the Founders, the Vortas’ gods. Odo rejects this because the Vorta have been genetically engineered to be faithful to the Founders. To Weyoun this makes no difference. And why should it? The Vorta were basically squirrels, transformed into a powerful sentient race by the Founders. From the Vortas’ perspective, if that is not the work of a god, what is? They may have some wires in their big brains that make them loyal, but that has to seem secondary to the fact that they have big brains at all. The Vorta could argue that this wiring is no different than the hypothetical “God gene” which predisposes Humans to belief in a deity.<br />
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In the end, as Weyoun Six is dying, he asks Odo to bless him, and Odo reluctantly does. By having him do so, the writers are endorsing the legitimacy of Weyoun’s faith. The episode actually challenges Odo’s skepticism more than it challenges the Vorta’s religion. <br />
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There is a parallel story of faith in Covenant. A Bajoran vedek tries to convince Kira that the Pah-wraiths are the true gods, not the Prophets. She challenges him with arguments that he has been seduced by evil entities (I wonder if she would call them devils or demons, since she considers the Prophets not aliens but gods), and the scheming Dukat. The vedek does not accept this, even after mounting evidence that Dukat is a fraud. In the end, like Weyoun Six, he kills himself. Kira is not sure if he did so because of his faith in the Pah-wraiths, or because he felt betrayed by his faith in them. What she does say for certain is that Dukat truly believes he is the emissary to the Pah-wraiths, and he is doing their bidding. She says his faith makes him more dangerous than before. But neither Kira, nor the episode, takes the black-and-white view that faith enables ignorance and violence. The episode suggests that faith is a powerful force in the soul, which can be put to enormous good, or perverted by evil people for their own ends. <br />
<br />
Whether it is Nog’s faith, or Weyoun’s, or the vedek’s, or Kira’s, these two episodes respect the power of their belief. They take it seriously. None of these episodes blatantly criticize faith in general (the way some TOS and TNG episodes do). To do so is not possible on DS9 because too many of our heroes are faithful and present an unapologetic view of believers. The writers seem to have decided that by designing the show this way, which reflects the role of religion in our modern world, they are able to explore how faith interacts with people’s lives, government, war, terrorism and politics. <br />
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<br />JustinScottSneadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02325889200792115162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-33135425392625902442013-04-14T15:00:00.002-07:002013-04-14T15:01:17.393-07:00Colony Collapse Made Easy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Two studies have finally linked the Colony Collapse Disorder of certain bees to a specific group of pesticides. <br />
Here:<br />
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/science/neocotinoid-pesticides-play-a-role-in-bees-decline-2-studies-find.html<br />
<br />
and here:<br />
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/science/earth/soaring-bee-deaths-in-2012-sound-alarm-on-malady.html?pagewanted=all<br />
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Neonicotinoids! Such a tidy scientific name. It suggests that the problem has been quantified and isolated, and so the solution is near at hand. That’s was my gut reaction at least, reading the two New York Times articles. Don’t need to worry about the bees anymore. <br />
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They’ll—who? The government? Scientists?—will do what they always do when faced with this problem. Just a tweak to the formula of the pesticide. Or introduce an agent that will immunize the hives against the pesticide. Behold the easy miracles of SCIENCE. They’ll do like they do in bad Star Trek: techno-babble the solution just before catastrophe. Easy-Peesy. [Run your own experiment. Scour the web for people recommending that we can replace the at-risk bees with cloned bees or robot bees.]<br />
<br />
But of course it is not so simple. The authors of the studies, the farmers and, thankfully, the journalists of the news articles all point out that there are many other likely reasons for bee collapse:<br />
<br />
• fewer flowers due to land development<br />
• pesticide-resistant mites <br />
• fungicides that inhibit insect maturation<br />
• pathogens or viruses <br />
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Here is the telling quote from the Times article on March 29th, by Michael Wines:<br />
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Eric Mussen, an apiculturist at University of California, Davis, said analysts had documented about 150 chemical residues in pollen and wax gathered from beehives.<br />
<br />
“Where do you start,” Dr. Mussen said. “When you have all these chemicals at a sublethal level, how do they react with each other? What are the consequences?” <br />
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That is a much more complex and difficult question than how to deal with one group of pesticides. And don’t get me wrong, neonicitinoids must be addressed based on the threat they pose. But we cannot simply order a solution to that one culprit and feel good about saving the bees, while ignoring the dangers and costs to bees inherent in the entire agricultural system that will remain. We can either alter the entropic makeup of that system, root and branch, or continue to impose modifications that keep the system’s efficiencies in place—until the next, compounded problem forces the choice on us yet again. JustinScottSneadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02325889200792115162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-9657683856248630822013-03-29T14:54:00.000-07:002014-10-05T18:11:57.064-07:00Into Darkness or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the AbramsverseFollowers of this site, and Star Trek fans everywhere, fall into two camps: those who love the Abrams Star Trek movie; and those who struggle to explain and justify their bitter disappointment in the Abrams Star Trek movie to people in the other camp. Most of you know that I fall into the second camp. I am not going to rehash all the arguments. Suffice to say, we saw it, we loved a lot of it, but were ultimately unfulfilled in the ways we know Star Trek can fill our imaginations. I’m not disavowing those arguments. But I also don’t want to hang on to them and sulk. The purpose of this post is to give fans like me motivation to enjoy the new Star Trek movie free of the funk that has built up around the ‘09 movie.<br />
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1) It’s just a movie<br />
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I hate this argument. If you have ever replied to someone on Trekweb by saying “it’s just a movie, man, it’s not a religion” then you have wandered into the wrong webpage. Please go back to the site where you can watch 5,000 harlem shake videos. That said, it is kind of true. Each movie and episode is a self-contained entity, a product of different writers, producers, directors and actors. If one doesn’t work, it doesn’t necessarily degrade the others. We have no choice but to accept a movie on its own terms. It is the movie that was made, not the one we wish was made. Fixating on what we wish was made will blind us to the good stuff in the movie that was made. <br />
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2) Nostalgia is no reason not to like what is new<br />
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Have you ever thought, man why don’t they make music as great as when [fill in the blank… Sinatra, Garland, Janis Joplin, 60s Dylan, Nirvana, Mozart] was putting out records? All of these artists are rooted in their own time and culture. The fact that both are gone forever gives us perspective: what aspects of culture have been lost, gained, and that this time right now is precious because it too will fade away. Listening to old music is like time travel. The music’s greatness becomes more than its notes because it allows us to have this experience. That’s nostalgia. Someone could write a song in 2013 that sounds like it could have been on a doo-wop radio station in the 50s. A neat experiment. But if recreating the past is all artists did then there would be nothing new. <br />
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Kurtzman said on the DVD commentary that, “Star Trek is classical music and Star Wars is rock and roll—and Star Trek needed to be a little more rock and roll.”<br />
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Would it be cool to have a new Star Trek movie written and directed by Nick Myer and scored by James Horner? Maybe. But we already have that movie, and it’s 30 years old. It was and will remain a glorious movie, but attempting to copy it doesn’t mean that the copy will be glorious. <br />
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So you long for the good old days when movies were better. Join the club. They’ve been saying “it’s the pictures that got small” since the 30s. So you wish a Star Trek director would have the balls to shoot a 12 minute sequence of the Enterprise leaving drydock…. Except that it wasn’t ballsy. <em>TMP</em> was coming out on the heals of <em>2001</em>, which acclimated moviegoers to watching extremely slow-moving science-fiction sequences. Plus, audiences wanted a nice long look at the new and improved motion-picture sized Enterprise. Because they hadn’t seen such grand effects shots before, audiences wanted a chance to drink it in. <br />
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Today audiences want different things. Just because it is different doesn’t mean that new directors can’t show us the same wonder and excitement and beauty that the old style provided. If we save our nostalgia for our DVD collections, we just might see all of that in the new movies. <br />
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3) These are not the same characters that the old gang portrayed<br />
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A big part of my disappointment had to do with <em>‘09’s</em> inability to make me believe that I was watching the earlier lives of the 60s era characters. First, I felt like I was promised an actual prequel. Second, like all serious fans, I’d been daydreaming about such a prequel for years. Third, some of the actors so embodied the originals (especially Quinto and Urban and even Pine) that I was even more bitter that they didn’t write a by-the-book “when they were young” prequel. So I nagged about how they changed Kirk’s upbringing and tossed out his career history, and how this couldn’t really be Chekov, and I wasn’t feeling Scotty or Sulu, etc. <br />
<br />
But the movie was never intended to be that. A novel or comic book can do a canonical prequel without any problem because there is no element of an actor’s performance imbued in the character. With film, you cannot separate the actor from the character. The new cast was told by all involved, including the original surviving cast, that to make it work, they must make the characters their own. Otherwise, they are just doing impersonations. The essence of the character is still in the script and guides the performance, but the actor puts it to life in their unique way. If we fixate on “She’s no Nichelle Nichols” we miss the opportunity to be seduced by a new actor and a new interpretation on the character. <br />
<br />
Two examples. Does the Chris Pike we see in <em>’09</em> bare any resemblance to Jeffrey Hunter’s Pike? None whatsoever. Abrams didn’t even use Hunter as a model; he used JFK. But who would rather not have Bruce Greenwood’s Pike around? Even I didn’t care about “canon” when it came to the new version of Pike. <br />
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Yelchin’s Chekov. Yelchin has said that he thinks Chekov was the “weirdest” character of the original series. That’s an interesting point of view. His Chekov is a bit different than the original. Over 3 or 4 movies Yelchin might be able to create a Chekov that is just as endearing, if not more so, than Koenig’s. They all might. The new characters should not be any less valid. <br />
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4) Broad brush strokes are still brush strokes<br />
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When I first saw ’09 I was irked by how in-your-face the story and characters were presented. Kirk is a rebellious but brilliant fighter. Why, and how did he come to be this way? We’re never shown or told? Nero is a “Romulan ball of rage.” Why? The flimsy explanation hardly matters compared to his over-the-top behavior and crimes. Kirk just happens to be born in the exact time and place that Nero appears from the future. Kirk just happens to crash land on the same continent of the same planet where Spock is marooned. This planet is close enough to Vulcan than someone on its surface could watch Vulcan’s destruction, but far enough away that it was not at all affected by this destruction (?!). Vulcan is destroyed as a plot device to make Spock emotionally unstable (just killing his family would be too small?) Kirk is promoted to captain without ever having graduated from the Academy. See what I mean about broad brush strokes. The movie was not as nuanced, not as literary, not as subtle as I thought Star Trek should be. <br />
<br />
But re-watching it this month, I see that if you accept the way he’s telling the story, you can better enjoy the story that is being told. And it is a coherent, emotional, character-driven story. All those ham-fisted plot points land like a steady, relentless stream of punches pummeling toward the inevitable conclusion. <br />
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We are being firmly guided by a storyteller’s steady (ham-fisted) hand. Abrams and his team have a clear vision and they put that vision on screen with skill. He has figured out how to do a Trek movie in a way that suits modern audience tastes, and still is true Trek. We’re not going to have any more like Insurrection or Nemesis where there is one foot in the past and one foot in the present and the whole thing falls down. Nimoy himself has said that Abrams has figured out how to “elevate [Trek] to another level that it had not been able to reach before.” Our imaginative Trek playground has never been this big or detailed or visually realistic. <br />
<br />
5) Benedict Cumberbatch is the greatest actor in his prime to play a Star Trek villain since… ever.<br />
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Montalban, Plummer and McDowell were all in their 2nd and 3rd acts when they were movie bad guys—not that that is a point against them. (Hardy was in his dress rehearsal with Nemesis—but even Laurence Olivier would have gone unnoticed with a script like that). Cumberbatch is just breaking as a capital “A” actor, and will be with us for a long time. The actor’s youth is a necessary pairing with the youth of Kirk and crew, and the energy of Abram’s style. Similarly, Montalban, Plummer and McDowel were all relative peers with the crew they were trying to destroy. Cumberbatch will be a joy to watch. As long as they give him good lines. <br />
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There you have it. All the reasons you need to lighten up and enjoy <em>Star Trek Into Darkness</em>. Here’s another one: Carpe Diem. You never know when you’ll get another chance to get excited to see a Star Trek movie in the theaters. One day, sooner than you think, another director will make a Star Trek movie. He will be told, "Do it like J.J.!" But he won’t be J.J. He won’t have Abrams’s vision or skill set, and the studio may not allow him the elbow room to use his own vision and skill sets. If you think the movies now are hollow, just wait for that one. Then you may be nostalgic for Abrams Star Trek. JustinScottSneadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02325889200792115162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-37968671987817827892013-02-22T19:46:00.001-08:002014-10-05T18:12:16.820-07:00Essay 2: The Baseball Episode<br />
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At the end of the 2-part season premier, there is a camera angle of the principals—minus Sisko and Dax—as they look on from the middle of the Promenade at the returned, restored Sisko and the returned, new Dax. It struck me as I re-watched the scene—for the first time since it premiered over a decade ago—that it was a kind of family portrait. The director was showing us that this group of people was back together, their bonds strengthened by the strife and trauma of the previous year of war. And that the station was the home where this family belonged. <br />
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The first regular episode of the season dealt with the new Dax host, but also served to showcase how the principals were like a family—supporting one another, and sometimes fighting with one another, over the new addition. The next one—the baseball episode—was one of the most effective depictions of camaraderie, loyalty and love ever seen on Star Trek. Killing yourself by dipping your hand into a warp core to save your ship and crew from destruction—that’s your duty. You swore an oath to do that. But playing a game you don’t know or care about with a bunch of Vulcans who will surely win and rub your nose in your defeat—that’s what family is for. <br />
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I wasn’t an Internet-based Star Trek fan at the time, but I recall people commenting that “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” was a colossal waste of time. It’s the final season. We only get 20-some episodes. There is a war going on. There are so many other stories to tell. I admit, at the time I didn’t love it. But now, it is clear that this is an indispensible episode. <br />
First, it is a war story. The subtext of the initial conversation between Sisko and Solok is dark—wonderfully written and acted as menacing, a great trick before we learn it is the set-up to a whimsical plot. The subtext is that these two captains, despite their personal animosity, know that their crews need a diversion from the stresses of the war. <br />
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Sports are ritualized human combat. So the baseball game allows everybody to vent physical and emotional energy in a highly competitive, but low-stakes way. This brief pause from battles—like the Christmas Eve football matches on the Western Front—make the war just as real as will the Siege of AR-558 later in the season. <br />
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Second, we see the DS9 family in full bloom in a way that makes the space battles to come more important. None of the characters—except Sisko’s actually family, including Casidy—know anything about baseball. But they all hit the books, studying the byzantine rules, and then practicing together on and off the field. Even Quark practices with his Ferengi servers. They do this because Sisko is their leader, the head of the family. He motivates them with a great speech from the pitchers mound. Like him, they are motivated to beat the Vulcans, but also to play together and have fun. When Sisko kicks Rom off the team (for sucking) all the others threaten to quit. They are willing to abandon Sisko for Rom. Think about that. They would not do that in the trenches of the war, just the opposite. But because they are willing to abandon their captain over a meaningless game, only proves the strength of the bonds that have developed between this family. That Odo even ejected Sisko from the game is a sign of that bond because it shows Odo followed Sisko’s directive to learn and follow the rules of umpire with Odo-esque impartiality. <br />
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Furthermore, this is a diverse, modern (Trek) family. There are eight aliens to five humans on this baseball team, between all the Fenrengi (3), Bajorans (2), Shapeshifters (1), Klingons (1) and Trills (1). This is a subtle continuation of DS9’s major strength, which is to give voice to non-Federation perspectives, even though they all end up chewing gum with the best of the Hew-mons. The family bond transcends not just species, which is typical for Trek, but uniforms, which is not what we are used to seeing on Trek. By the end of the game, the Star Fleet Captain cedes the field to the barkeep, the Dabo girl and the former waiter. (Speaking of diversity, it has to also be said that it is touching even today to see a black family—Sisko, Jake and Casidy—portrayed so plainly.) <br />
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This is not the first time Sisko has invited his friends into a Holosuit baseball game. He says as much in this episode. It took seven years for Picard to sit down at the poker table with his crew—and what a moment it was. But on DS9, this personalization was done way back in Season three, when it was revealed that Sisko had “niners” over to his quarters and cooked for them regularly. Sisko is a different man than Picard, and this is a different crew. <br />
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“Take Me Out to the Holosuit” is one of the few episodes in all of modern Star Trek that has no B-plot. The writer—Ronald D. Moore—wanted to be very clear. This episode was just about a baseball game, but that fact allows it to be about so much more. This was no light-hearted romp. This was about family, making it one of DS9’s most important episodes. <br />
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JustinScottSneadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02325889200792115162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-9214821639722802462013-02-09T11:00:00.003-08:002014-10-05T18:34:49.413-07:00Essay 1: Deep Space Nine Season 7 ReviewsSeveral years ago I started to re-watch the Trek series of my childhood—TNG and DS9—in episode order. I am now at the end of that process with the 7th season of DS9.<br />
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I feel like the question that you ask about a novel—what was that about?—can be asked of DS9, and in a way that may only be possible to ask of one other Trek series, TOS. Unlike TNG, and perhaps moreso that TOS, DS9 seems to have central and recurring messages. These themes were about the stories we saw on screen like religion and genocide and terrorism, but also about the nature of Star Trek itself and how a Trek series should be written. <br />
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So what was DS9 about? To answer that I am going to write some essays as I watch the final season. I will refer back to the previous seasons, but I feel that how the writers decided to end the series is the clearest statement about what it all means, at least based on the writers intentions. <br />
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(Note: I haven’t seen this season since it aired, and I only watched them on grainy VHS because for some reason my local TV station stopped airing it, and a friend taped them and sent me the cassettes. So I don’t remember the details and nuances of the episodes that I hope to write about here.) <br />
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Discussing the 7th season in the DS9 Companion Ira Behr says, “The show wasn’t geared to be what we kept turning it into.” This is true on many levels. <br />
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Let’s look at what DS9 was geared to do. First, DS9 began as a mandate from the studio, which realized two Star Trek shows in syndication were better than one. TNG was making X number of dollars per episode in profit for Paramount, so the executives figured two shows would double that amount. According to Erdmann’s account in Companion, it was the head of Paramount, Brandon Tartikoff, who planted the germ of the concept: a man and his son in a remote frontier outpost, a sci-fi version of the western The Rifleman. <br />
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Michael Piller and Berman took it from there. And Piller at least was clear about the crucial break from TOS and TNG that this setting would create: “We felt there was an opportunity to really look deeper, more closely at the workings of the Federation and the Star Trek universe by standing still.” He equated the standard stand-alone Star Trek episodes, where the Enterprise swoops into a solar system for an adventure, to one-night stands. DS9 would show what happened after the Enterprise left: the marriage. It was the later show runner—Ira Behr—who showed how fulfilling and challenging that marriage could be (Rapture, Call to Arms, Inquisition, In the Pale Moonlight, etc.). <br />
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What Behr meant in the above quote is that no one could have expected of this frontier outpost in Season One for the point-of-view of the natives (Bajorans, Ferengi, Cardassians) to take precedence over the Federation, for the sacrosanct values of the Federation to be challenged by gritty realism, and for the lawman to join the natives’ religion, abandon his family, and finally be transformed into one of the natives’ gods. <br />
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This radical departure from convention is refreshing, especially considering the two Trek series that were developed next (and Braga’s recent admission that Enterprise was intended to be an Earth-bound show at least for its first season, and the studio demanded it be space-based <a href="http://www.geekexchange.com/">http://www.geekexchange.com/</a> ). Imagine it: a team of writers are handed a multi-million dollar science-fiction franchise and actually decides to do something interesting with it. How novel. <br />
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That said, the final story arcs of DS9 do not have a promising start with the two-part premier. While the episodes themselves were fine--paced well and with good charcater bits for all involved--the central themes of the show were not started out on the best foot. <br />
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When Season 7 opens, the Prophets are in a battle with the Pah-wraiths inside the wormhole. The orbs are dark. Bajorns feel cut off from their gods. Sects of Bajorans are beginning to worship the Pah-waiths instead of the Prophets. We are told this, not shown. Damar has a line of dialogue where he asks Weyounn what he thinks the battle inside the wormhole must be like. But we never go into the wormhole to find out—we aren’t even given a description of the battle to go on. So the dramatic tension over Sisko’s work to restore the wormhole never builds. All he does is stumble upon an orb in the desert of a planet we’ve never heard of before, and has no connection to Bajor, opens the box and sends a ball of light across space into the wormhole, which ejects the Pah-wraiths. <br />
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There are a few problems. The Prophets work when they are shown interacting with mortals, whether Sisko trying to teach them about humanity or Quark trying to teach them about profit-making. There is a sense of spooky, foreboding, divine mystery about them. Their collectivism and paternalism gives them an epic, Mount Olumpus-like feel. In this two-parter, we only see a single Prophet, Sarah. It is the first time a Prophet does not embody characters familiar to the mortal who is having the Prophet vision. In the scene between Sisko and Sarah we don’t learn anything that we didn’t already learn earlier in the episode: that she is his mother. There is some abstruse Prophet-like dialogue that means everything and nothing. Apparently the writers are only prepared to give us the fact about Sisko’s lineage and nothing else. Hopefully they will be able to do more with this as the season unfolds. <br />
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[The vision scenes of the episode are also undercut by the inexplicable return of Benny Russell, who was never mentioned again. See my previous essay.]<br />
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The Pah-Wraiths are another problem. In their first two episodes they possessed Kieko, and then Jake, two of the least essential characters of the series. So the audience always had the feeling that these evil spirits had the minor purpose of creating dramatic tension and danger in a couple stand-alone episodes. <br />
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They were never properly folded into the mythology of the Bajoran religion or of the series. They did not appear until Season Five. If there were devils in the Bajoran religion that could destroy the wormhole you’d think we would have heard about it before then. Even still, the writers could have shown us instead of told us. So much dialogue had to be written about Pah-Wraits and ancient texts, but if Sisko was always pulled into Prophet Heaven, why not a visit to Pah-Wraith Hell? So far in Season Seven, even after they killed Jadzia, the Pah-Wraiths aren’t real to the audience, and therefore they don’t feel like a real threat. <br />
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The two-parter ends with Sisko, a new Dax, and the rest of the family back on the station. While the set-up is flawed, the board is set for the final season: Sisko’s maternal lineage to the Prophets must be explored; the Pah-Wraiths will stage a counter-attack, aided by Dukat, who is unquestionably a real threat; the Dominion War is still raging, but the leader of the Cardassian Empire appears to have a drinking problem. We will see how things develop. <br />
<br />JustinScottSneadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02325889200792115162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-61997834059306379272013-02-01T19:42:00.002-08:002014-10-05T18:12:55.471-07:00Star Trek, on the brink of declaring itself a fiction, blinks<br />
Science Fiction has always used thought-experiment stories. These stories allow us to think about society, history, and our own lives in a different way. A common version of this type of story is to present alternate interpretations of reality, and invite us to ask if our reality is real at all? A character is forced to question if what they experience as reality may not actually be true reality. The very first Star Trek episode, The Cage, did this with Pike and the Thalosians. Sometimes it involves psychosis, like Riker in Frame of Mind; or alternate realities, like the Mirror Universe and Worf in Parallels; or time travel like in Yesterdays Enterprise or All Good Things. <br />
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The Holodeck allowed for this type of story to be told many times. Star Trek Holograms achieved an archetypal status that rivals robots in the annals of sci-fi. The hologram allows us to imagine a situation where a human’s self-awareness could be called into question. It allows us to question the veracity of our surroundings. It makes us question how free freewill truly is. From the Ricker’s date in 11001001, to the mobsters in The Big Goodbye, to Morarity, to Barcly’s creations, to the pinnacle of this archytype in the Doctor—these themes were hit again and again. The best example is Ship in a Bottle where Moriarty tricks Picard, Data and Barclay into thinking a holographic Enterprise is the real thing. The title captures the concept. Is the crew on the deck of the ship in the bottle any less human than the rest of us? What is our bottle? What is beyond it? Who put us inside of it? The metaphysical frame allows our imaginations to flirt with the fundamentals of existence, limits of understanding, creation, God, etc. Picard sums it up at the end of that episode by saying, “Who knows, we may all exist only inside of a device sitting on someone’s table.” <br />
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The truth is that Picard and crew do exist inside of a device sitting on someone’s table—our DVD boxsets and streaming Netflix boxes.<br />
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I want to explore the one time when Star Trek experimented with the notion, in an on-screen canonical way, that all of Star Trek was a fictional product created by an actual, “real” science-fiction writer. It was done in Deep Space Nine’s Far Beyond the Stars and Shadows and Symbols. In the end, the serious storytelling implication of those episodes were then quietly forgotten and ignored.<br />
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In <em>FBS</em>, Sisko flashes back to the 1950s. He is Benny Russell, a struggling pulp writer in the Golden Age of science fiction. The people in his life are all played by actors who portray characters in Siskos’ life, from Nog to Kira to Dukat. When Russell/Sisko (literally wearing the Starfleet uniform and Russells’ glasses) asks the Prophets who he is, they respond: “You are the dreamer and the dream.”<br />
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Later, in the DS9 universe, Sisko says to his father: <br />
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“What if it wasn’t a dream? What if this life we’re leading, you and me, everything, what if all of this is the vision?... Maybe just maybe, Benny isn’t the dream, we are. Maybe we are nothing more than figments of his imagination. For all we know, somewhere beyond all those distant stars, Benny Russell is dreaming of us.” Then we actually see Benny Russell reflected in the glass of Sisko’s window into space.<br />
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That last line taps into the ancient wonder that a starry night inspires in all of us. Is it like a ceiling that we might punch through one day? What would we find on the other side?<br />
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This dialogue coming at the end of the episode might have been similar to Picard’s dialogue to Barclay at the end of Ship in the Bottle, and we the viewer are supposed to enjoy the thought experiment but not take it literally and apply it to all of Deep Space Nine or all of Star Trek. <br />
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But this time was different. <em>FBS</em> and its implications could have been another stand-alone episode that was not meant to be interpreted as having ramifications for the series as a whole—but for two reasons. First, Sisko’s vision of Benny Russell came from the Prophets. Whenever the Prophets sent characters visions there was a purpose behind the vision. It was always to set up plot that was coming later in the season or series. It’s why they are called Prophets. They exist with an awareness of all time. They know what is coming while Sisko doesn’t, so they dribble visions like bread crumbs to affect his and others’ choices. Second, Benny Russell returned next season in Shadows and Symbols. He was writing DS9 stories on the walls of his asylum cell. When the doctor, played by the same actor as Damar, gets Russell to stop writing and consider painting over the story, Sisko actually stops doing what he is doing in the DS9 universe. Sisko only commits his next action when Benny Russell chooses to write that action on the wall. What are we to make of this?<br />
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Absolutely nothing. Because the writers—the real “real” writers Ira Steven Behr and Hans Beimler—because of a lack of chutzpah, or excess of prudent wisdom, or both—chose not to follow through with what they started.<br />
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Here is a thought experiment for you. Imagine if the DS9 writing room had decided to confirm that Benny Russell actually wrote all DS9 stories. You say, wait a minute, Deep Space Nine is not a self contained sci-fi show. It contains Star Trek in its title. Picard was in Emissary I and II. Bashir was in TNGs Birthright. Quark was in a TNG and VOY episode. Spock and Kirk were both mentioned in DS9 episodes, and four TOS Klingons actually reprised their characters in DS9 episodes (Kor, Kang, Koloth and Arnie Darvin). Canon links DS9 to all other Trek series. So Benny Russell must be responsible for all of Star Trek. Imagine if after Russell wrote DS9 in the 1950s—most of it inside of his asylum—he was released and went to Hollywood, where he met an ambitious, idealistic TV writer named Gene Roddenberry. By this point, Russell has given up on the idea of the public accepting a black captain, but he still wants his idealistic future vision to survive. He gives Roddenberry the concept, introduces him to Nichelle Nichols, and the rest is the history we all know. <br />
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This could have been done, but it would have been all that DS9 Season 7 could be about. The last episodes of DS9 would have been about the first episodes of TOS. Interesting, maybe, but it would have betrayed the DS9-centric characters, stories and actors that built that series, and the fans that followed it (in the same way ENTERPRISE’s finale became about TNG).<br />
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Realizing this quagmire, the writers decided to chalk Benny Russell up to “The ways of the Prophets are strange” and leave it at that. Probably wise. Even in Russell’s second and last episode, his narrative logic was breaking down. Dramatic tension was created when Sisko stopped an action because Russell stopped writing his action, but the B-plot about Kira’s standoff with the Romulans, and the C-plot about Worf attacking a Dominion shipyard both continued even though Russell wasn’t writing. Russell was never mentioned after this episode.<br />
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I’ve always felt like the writers saved face by having Sisko say to Kasidy in the finale that since “time doesn’t exist here” he might return “in a year” but that “it could be yesterday,” implying that his work might be in the past. Maybe the Prophets sent him back to Benny Russell’s reality. <br />
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For years, Star Trek has provided us with opportunities to imagine that our reality is not special, that it is but one perspective among many. They did this by placing “real” characters in false realities. For a brief moment, Star Trek writers flirted with the idea of going completely through the metaphysical looking glass and declaring that all of Star Trek “reality” in all of its canonical glory was purely fictional. These writers dared to suggest that this purely fictional imaginative playground we beam into through our television sets, which we have to trick our brains into accepting as real as we watch it, is actually a fiction created by a fictional writer that we have to trick our brains into accepting as a real one, who will remain one dimension removed from the actual Hollywood writers that created the whole thing. In this way, Benny Russell is not a meditation on God and creation, but on storytelling and storytellers. Too bad the writers couldn’t figure out how to maintain this concept while also doing justice to DS9 seven season arch. JustinScottSneadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02325889200792115162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-79948697235556646062013-01-04T03:20:00.000-08:002013-01-04T03:20:42.645-08:00The Netherlands and High WaterAfter Hurricane Sandy so easily sent New York Harbor rolling up so many streets in Manhattan and Jersey City, it was a bit of a shock to see the capital city of Amsterdam vivisected every two bocks by canals. If the Dutch had built their New Amsterdam like the old one, there would be nothing left today of the Big Apple.<br />
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Of course, the Netherlands have had their super storms. In the Saint Peters Flood of 1651, 26 years after they founded New York City, 15,000 Dutch people are estimated to have been drowned. Our Dutch hotel clerk, and our breakfast chef, Yost, told us that there was a terrible flood in the 1950s that killed scores of people in Holland. After that, they decided they weren’t going to take it anymore. <br />
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He was referring to the North Sea Flood of January 1953, which killed 1,850 people and tens of thousands of animals, and destroyed 4,500 buildings. It was the result of a high Spring tide and a massive windstorm that swept across Europe into the North Sea. The sea swell was 18.4ft (compare that to the nine feet we were worried would hit Jersey City during Sandy). <br />
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The response was to build a massive flood defense system in the estuaries of all the major rivers leading into the Netherlands. (In another Dutch connection, the Hudson River at New York City is not a river but an estuary.) It’s called the Delta Works, and it was not finished until 1998. <br />
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According to Yost, problem solved. Now he said, when there is a flood in America like Katrina or Sandy, Dutch engineers go over to consult. <br />
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Here is an article on Dutch ideas for NYC post-Sandy: <br />
<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/real-estate/dutch-innovations-prevent-sandy-type-flooding-new-york-article-1.1202840">http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/real-estate/dutch-innovations-prevent-sandy-type-flooding-new-york-article-1.1202840</a><br />
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Of course, Yost said, before the high-priced engineers fly over, they send this little guy:<br />
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<img height="207" id="il_fi" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisdytN4iKZLuMcNe7EN9dgm8qeK3nOHQGYPKwyathPE4BXRpg0KNSR0NWPTV-vea2ols6T8SER-zI47A9veonjCOJ_UMBelox5Dlmk_LWSz_iVID4BakqZwF0zlZRjIT5KcWOaNkRRAI3m/s320/dutchboy.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="320" /><br />
But as others have pointed out, and as the little Dutch Boy well knows, you stop water from coming in one place, it will go someplace else, and probably not the direction its coming from. JustinScottSneadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02325889200792115162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5552078704859426193.post-69139227705455979882013-01-02T16:44:00.003-08:002013-01-02T16:59:51.086-08:00Harnessing the Limitations of Things<br />
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Ben Sollee is a cellist/singer-songwriter from Kentucky. Today in his World Café interview he described the “superhuman pace” of his former tour schedule, multiple flights per week across the country. <br />
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“I found myself spending a lot more time in-between places than actually in them,” he said. He described the unsettling feeling a lot of frequent flyers have of waking up and not remembering where he was.<br />
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After seeing a commercial on Current TV for a cargo bike company called Xtracycle, Sollee decided to slow down his tour schedule by bicycling to his gigs. <br />
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His first trip was from Lexington, Kentucky to the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee, and he hasn’t looked back since. He described the new connections he is able to make with the communities he passes through on the road. You might argue that he spends even more time “in-between places” than before because of the time it takes to get there under pedal power, but it is really the opposite. When you are pedaling through a town, stopping to get water, or eat, or just say hello, a ‘wherever you go, there you are’ mentality sets in. It’s hard to have that in an airport, squeezed into economy seating, or even on a tour bus. <br />
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Sollee is an activist, especially on mountain-top removal, but he was quick to point out that he doesn’t bike to his shows for the environment. “It’s not about being Green… or even sustainable, but rather to use the limitations of the bicycles to slow us down so we could really be in these communities.” <br />
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Sollee’s approach is to harness the limitations of the world to serve our needs (and learn how not to be frustrated by the slowness). <br />
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I think the way to foster mass appeal for sustainable, “green” living is to push the emotional, psychological, and spiritual benefits of slowing down on the individuals themselves. This may be more effective that trying to get people to care about big abstract consequences of climate change. <br />
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What are the ways we can choose slow, low-impact technology alternatives in our daily lives?... Perhaps the first question we should ask ourselves is what aspect of our daily lives do we even want to slow down? <br />
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Check out the whole interview and songs here: <a href="http://www.npr.org/2013/01/02/168355523/ben-sollee-on-world-cafe">http://www.npr.org/2013/01/02/168355523/ben-sollee-on-world-cafe</a>JustinScottSneadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02325889200792115162noreply@blogger.com0