Category Archives: SF

Streaming Review: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Be aware that I am an old fart and the first thing that comes to mind when someone says ‘Star Trek’ to me is the original series and the original actors, much of the newer batches, particularly the newest, have little call for me.

That said I was excited by the news of Star Trek: Strange New World which proposes to go back to when the Enterprise was commanded by Captain Christopher Pike as seen in Trek’s original pilot The Cage.

In the pilot when we meet Pike (Anson Mount) he is deeply troubled by some haunting past event which he doesn’t share even with his S.O. (Significant Other not Supply Officer) An event

Credit: Paramount Pictures

that has him grounded and doubting himself. However, when his first officer, Number One (Rebecca Romijn) goes missing on a first contact mission Pike resumes command of the Enterprise and launches a mission to save her. During the rescue and first contact mission Pike must come to grips with his trauma and rediscovers, partially through Lt. Noonien-Sign (Christina Chong) a survivor of a horrific event, what it means to live fully under a terrible cloud. An understanding reinforced by his friendship with his science office Spock (Ethan Peck)

Strange New Worlds tips its hat and pay homage to the original series in a number of ways but also breaks canon continuity so your milage may vary on how well it integrates with the franchise as a whole. Secondary characters from the original series appear as crew members, Doctor M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) appeared in only a couple of episodes in the original show is now the ship’s primary medical officer, assisted by Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush). Additional original series characters include Cadet Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) and Chief Kyle (Andre Dae Kim) though he looks far too young to be a Chief.

Production design and set decor also took inspiration from the original series while not sacrificing a modern appearance. Graphics that appear on the bridge monitors are directly referencing original low-tech graphics of the original show and control even have some of the domed color button that always looked so candy-like to me.

However, the show is not without its flaws. The distances between star systems is preposterously brief, particularly in respect to the original series. Also Lt. Noonien-Singh’s background is clear break with continuity as James Kirk famously made first contact with the Gorns. There is a tendency to use advanced technology as magic and I doubt that will fade away in subsequent episodes.

But, overall, I enjoyed the pilot and will return next week for more.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams Thursdays on Paramount+.

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My Upcoming Geeky Artistic Weekend

Which artistically is starting tonight, Thursday.

Tonight, I plan to go out and see the foreign language Finnish horror film Hatching before it vanishes from theaters in my area. (I must admit I adore my AMC A-List subscription that makes rolling the dice on movie so much easier.)

Also tonight is Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. My sweetie-wife and I will be giving the series a try. Now, I’ll confess that lately the trek shows have not been working for me but hope springs eternal.

Saturday evening I plan to venture to San Diego’s Balboa Park for more experiments in night photography. Last weekend when I left the secret morgue I spied the California Tower lit by colored lights and thought it would be a good subject for my meager photographic skills.

Sunday morning my sweetie-wife and I will go out and catch the new Doctor Stranger movie.

All in all I am looking forward to this weekend.

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The Three Lorraines of Back to the Future

 

In this essay I am going to look at the three representations of the character Lorraine Baines-McFly presented in 1985’s Back to the Future and what might be suggested about the character and her history. This piece will not deal with subsequent variants presented in the two sequels.

Lorrain — Prime

Lorraine McFly as she first appears in the film is a woman struggling with alcoholism, a prudish defensive approach to sexuality, and who is deeply unhappy. She doesn’t give voice to the unhappiness, having long ago surrendered to her despair with all traces of self-confidence and agency vanished from her personality. She is in short, a broken person. Adding to the tragedy is that her pain, her shattered nature is invisible to the men in her life. Her husband, George McFly, blindly laughs at the dinner table while watching re-runs wholly unaware of his wife’s grief. Neither of her son appear to notice. the painful evening, the large amount of alcohol is so routine as to be invisible. This suggests that Lorraine’s fractured psyche is decades old.

The only other male present in the prime timeline that has any notice of Lorraine is the bully Biff Tannen. While the two characters have no direct interaction in the establishing scenes of the film Biff does tell Marty, Lorraine’s youngest son and the story protagonist, ‘tell your mom I said hi.’ An innocuous statement but actor Thomas F Wilson’s line reading fills it with menace and meaning. There is a clear implication of a deep and unsettling history.

Lorrain — Base

Lorraine Baine, Marty’s mother before marriage and a lifetime of crushing pain, in 1955 is a vibrant, outgoing, and bold teenager. She is unafraid in her risk taking, groping crushes under the dinner table with her parents present, venturing to a stranger’s house in pursuit of that crush, and adventurous in her dating, willing to make confident first moves rather than wait on her partner. It would seem to be inconvincible that this self-confident teenage loses all her fire and vitality simply from the confines of matrimony.

Lorraine — variant

After Marty’s excursion to 1955 and his interference with his parent’s courtship and lives, including alteration that prompted to his father to interrupt Biff sexually assaulting Lorrain, Marty returns to discover that his entire world has changed.

Lorraine now is fit, healthy, and confidence. Vanished has all traces of her sexual prudishness and defensiveness as she exhibits both an open sexuality with her husband, a George variant that is successful and confident, and accepting of her son’s sexual life. The Lorraine variant is logical progression of the teenage Lorraine the audience was introduced to. Marty’s meddling has dramatically changed both his parents.

What broke Lorraine prime?

It would seem to be down to two possible explanations. Life with a George that never found his self-confidence or success drained Lorraine of his own agency and vitality. This explanation reduces Lorraine to simply an extension of George and would seem to be tension with the Lorrain that existed before George entered her life. It also ignores the relationship between Biff and Lorraine. 30 years after their high school days Biff still feels the need to make vague and unsettling comments about Lorraine.

Everything seems to suggest that Lorraine suffered a deep and shattering trauma that psychologically damaged her and coming to adulthood in an era that disparaged psychological health and treatments she was left to suffer, dealing with her trauma by self-medication with alcohol.

The alteration of history with George interrupting Biff’s sexual assault in a manner that forever reduced Biff to simpering subservient character is the also the event that prevented Lorraine’s trauma, providing her with the space to blossom into the woman she always had the potential to be.

Perhaps not the night of the ‘Enchantment under the Sea’ dance as it happened in the Marty altered timeline, but it would seem likely that at some point in the original timeline Biff completed his sexual assault on Lorraine, and bereft of resources and mental health treatments, she shattered.

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Halfway There

After the brief suspension of daily writing while I looked after my sweetie-wife and then the week and a half it took to return to full speed clocking in around a thousand words per day at lunch, I have passed the halfway point of my current novel in progress.

This novel certainly has had a long meandering and strange journey. The central core concept, a telepath that planting ideas in your head but your inner monologue remains in your ‘voice’, so you are unaware that it is not your thought, dates to the late 1980s. Since then, the whole setting has been crafted, short stories, both of this idea and others in the same setting, have been written, and more than one novel has been written.

Yesterday the word count passed 53,000 words and with the momentum back I hope to have the first draft completed in about two months. Luckily for me my first drafts in terms of character, plot, and events, are fairly close to my final drafts. (An advantage to detailed outlining.) And subsequent drafts are principally about editing and proofing.

I will be thrilled to finish this novel and get it out the door. (Though sadden because one editor who had seen a novel of mine in the same setting and liked the character has now retired.) I am thrilled because I can’t wait to research and write my next novel a d dark noir sf set on Mars.

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Finally Getting Back my Rhythm

 

The last month has been quite hectic. Early in March my Sweetie-Wife underwent a total hip replacement for one of her hips and I took two weeks of paid family leave to look after my sweetie as she recovered.

She has recovered and the medical procedure went swimmingly, so all is good there.

Before the surgery I was writing north of 1000 words a day on my next Military SF adventure novel but braked to a complete stop as I transitioned to care giver for the recovery period.

When I did return to work, I found it difficult to regain my writing’s momentum. This is a fact of my writing process. A project that gets paused or halted becomes very difficult to restart. It is why I cannot write more than one project at a time. One with always end up the preferred one and the project ‘paused’ simply dies.

Last week I was averaging 800-900 words a day but yesterday I passed the 1000 words at lunch mark. The momentum is back and now I just have to keep the thing rolling.

It’s a particular challenge right now because a second surgery will be taking place and my mind has been racing on a new novel idea that has me very excited but requires a ton of research.

 

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My Favorite April Fool’s Joke of 2022

Mostly April Fool’s jokes are tired tedious and not for me. Howvere this year there was one that I throughly enjoyed.

WWII in real time is a Youtube channel that is following the events of the Second World War week by week. (They are currently in April of 1943.)

This was the special episode that aired on Friday April 1st. (I particularly like the David Hasselhoff deep cut.)

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Series Review: HALO

 

Adapted from the 2001 Xbox game HALO: COMBAT EVOLOVED Paramount + debuted yesterday the pilot episode of their Sci-Fi series HALO.

While I have played the game and its sequel I have never dived deeply into the lore or worldbuilding for HALO and as such my interpretation of the series is not a comparison but as a new viewer.

Set in the distant future of the mid 26th century, HALO is concerned with both a conflict between the Interstellar human government, breakaway rebel/insurrectionists colonies the war between the humans an alien coalition known as the Covenant. The story centers on a cybernetic warrior Spartan 117 ‘Master Chief,’ part of an elite unit of cybernetic fighters.

When the Covenant attack the separatist world of Madrigal, the Spartan intervene and discover in addition to a sole survivor of the massacre that the aliens were seeking some device on the colony. Factions with the human government splinter and contest each other for the best methods in dealing with both the Covenant and the Separatists with Master Chief, acting on an element of his reawakened humanity, finding a measure of independence from his programing.

HALO boasts impressive production design and special effects with many of the game elements both faithfully reproduced visually and credibly for today’s discerning audiences. The storyline is not a direct adaptation of the game’s plot and I believe I read somewhere that the show runners have no intent to adapt the already existing lore and story from the games.

The pilot episode seems to be unable to make up its mind what it wants in terms of tone. The action sequences are fairly well staged and fast paced but with the tangled political plotlines leaving the viewer without any clear faction to support the action is undercut. In the pilot it is unclear if any of the factions deserve the viewers sympathy or emotional investment.

Pablo Schreiber performed quite well as Master Chief but with and without his helmet. However, I found Natascha McElhone’s performance as Dr Halsey, creator of the Spartan Program, stiff and unconvincing. Several times we have her looking directly down the camera lens and I was at a loss to understand just what emotion or thought she was attempting to convey. This may be a directorial issue as I had no such troubles when she was in the American version of Solaris.

The episode’s dialog is best described as serviceable. While the exposition is not as heavy handed slapped into your face as JMS’s on Babylon 5 there were repeated instances where the characters spoke more for the audience benefit than from any inner need.

Overall, there is enough there to hold my interest and bring me back for another episode, but the series has failed to truly hook and me and leave me with anything more than a mile interest. Hopefully that will change with more and better episodes.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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An Abominable Adaptation: Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers

 

Before the essay gets rolling the subject and point of this piece is not to debate Heinlein’s novel Starship Troopers and whether it is or is not fascist. If your comments are about the novel and politics, save them. That’s not the issue at hand.

Verhoeven’s 1997 film is a piece of political satire, a cinematic tradition with a distinguished and proud linage including the likes of Doctor Strangelove” Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb. Satire has a rich history and can be a great tool for arguing a case and it is not always about humor and laughter. Swift’s A Modest Proposal isn’t funny, but it is excellent political satire. So, the fact that the film Starship Troopers isn’t a comedy does not remove it from the category of satire.

What makes this adaptation abominable isn’t that it isn’t faithful to the novel threadbare and nearly non-existent plot or that the film is a satire where the novel is not. The issue is that it targets its satire directly on the novel’s argument while presenting itself as an adaptation of the novel’s argument. This is disingenuous and a perversion.

Consider a hypothetical counter example. Let’s stipulate a satirical adaptation of Orwell’s classic novel 1984. The setting is already very close to satire and Gilliam used it as a jumping off point for his own comedic satire Brazil but importantly created his own work rather than abuse another artist’s. So, in this 1984 adaptation we not only make it satire we make the target Winston Smith and ridicule his character and his outlook, raising Big Brother to a benevolent force concerned with the happiness and safety of its citizens. This would be a perversion of Orwell’s work and in my opinion it would be immoral. I think it is wrong to take another artist’s creation and twist it, mutate it, and abuse it to make it attack itself. We could do the same thought experiment with countless classic works, sch as transforming Fahrenheit 451 into a defense of ignorance and illiteracy but I think the point is made.

Obviously not only can you attack viewpoints itis good to challenge other ideas and themes. My understanding is that Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War is in part a direct answer to Heinlein’s Starship Trooper. Verhoeven often returns to the idea of fascism and the dangers it presents. I applaud him and his stand as an anti-fascist but inverting another artist’s work is a dishonest and disrespectful method. It is far better to craft your own piece and argument such as with The Forever War or Brazil than to engage in blatant distortion.

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Resident Alien: Mid-Season Impressions

 

The SyFy channel’s series Resident Alien has been progressing through its second season and now with several episodes completed here are my thoughts.

For those who missed the first season the show is about an alien whose mission was to destroy human life on Earth. However, after crashing he becomes stranded and adopts the identity of a doctor in a tiny Colorado mountain town. The second season continue the story with several residents of the town aware of the doctor’s true nature and the conflict between the alien ‘harry’ and his emotional ties to his friends and humanity in general. There are also secret government agencies chasing after Harry to capture him.

The second season feels a little more scattered, with less narrative momentum than the first one, though the character interaction and rich comedy are still quite present. Harry had clear goals is season one which provided most of the character’s motivations and in this season, he seems more adrift, more buffeted by the plot than driving it. That said, the ending is where this ties together and it, they pull it off then the season will still be a success,

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Final Thoughts: The Book of Boba Fett

 

This week the Disney+ series The Book of Boba Fett aired its final episode of season one. The show proved to be a disappointment. Now, I have never neem enthralled by the character of Boba Fett. In The Empire Strikes Back, he was clever, resourceful, and stood up to Bader but as a character he was essentially a cypher. His demise in Return of the Jedi was ham-handed and stank of authorial intrusion and as such he eventually survival rectified that mistake.

That said what transpired in this series lacked emotional heft. After slaughtering Jabba the Hutt’s successor Fett attempts to become the new crime lord for the city with a crew smaller than Jimmy the Gent’s in Goodfellas. Pitted against several crime families and an off-world drug syndicate Fett unites several disparate forces for a final stand to free the city of Mos Espa from the evil crime lords and syndicate.

At its heart it looked as if The Book Of Boba Fett actually had a story that could have been interesting. Fett, a ruthless and amoral bounty hunter learns, after living extensively with natives of the Tatooine dessert, that community matters and rejects his former life of hunting for one of protecting. Sadly, the execution of the series hopelessly muddled the story, and the series most emotionally meaningful moments all came from cameo of character visiting from the series The Mandalorian.

Perhaps a worse cinematic crime is that in the series finale the character of Boba Fett is made to be plainly stupid. Fett and his right-hand enforcer are pinned down at the west end of a wide street by an armed force closing in from the east. (I picked the directions at random so the blocking can be clear.) Suddenly new allies from the free town arrive and join the fight on Fett’s side. Do they attack from the east, forcing Fett’s attackers to defend from both sides? No, they swoop in and join Fett in being pinned down at the west end of the street. Then the Mods, colorful biker gang allies of Fett arrive, and go straight to west end and join in being pinned down. After than another ally, then experienced Wookie fighter also ignores attacking from the east and joins his already besieged allies. I muttered to my sweetie-wife as we watched ‘I wished my players were this stupid.’

An opportunity to expand and deepen the Star Wars universe had been wasted on confused storytelling and pointless action.

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