Thoughts in two universes
Oct. 26th, 2024 02:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakStar Trek:Jeri Taylor has died. I associate her mostly with Voyager and Janeway - who was very much her creation -, but she did get her start in TNG and wrote The Drumhead, which to this day remains one of my favourite episodes. (Also a good example of why one episode with this basic premise works and another doesn't, when compared to a season 1 of Battlestar Galactica episode. In both cases, an actual act of sabotage happens and the investigation escalates to a MacCarthy-esque (as we said back in the day; this was before the last two decades, where more modern comparisons would apply) paranoia exercise, with civil liberties being dispensed with left, right and center, until it's the show's leading man on the dock. Here are my two main reasons why Jeri Taylor's version works for me better than Ron Moore's does: 1) in the TNG episode, one of the people on team Dispense with Civil Liberties In This Investigation is Worf, i.e. a sympathetic, heroic regular. Who doesn't snap out of it until late in the game. Whereas the BSG episode has only unsympathetic people on Team Paranoia, and our heroes holding firm. (Well, this is season 1. In later seasons....) Which robs the episode of some of it power and point that The Drumhead makes, i.e. that you can be full of good intentions and in still let your belief in "in times of danger, we have to dispense with the niceties and get our hands dirty for the greater good" drive you to a place where you do something unjustifiable. There is no magic protection against it by virtue of being a good person. The other better writing choice is that the original defendant in The Drumhead is a half Romulan whom the audience doesn't know, whereas as far as I recall, in BSG the ones on the lines are two sympathetic recurring characters. The difference is that Picard and friends have no more idea whether or not the half Romulan is guilty than the audience does. The emotional stakes are simply easier if it's someone we know and like getting accused from the start. So yeah: Jeri Taylor, I loved that episode.
Speaking of female showrunners, here's an interview with WandaVision and Agatha All Along show runner Jac Schaeffer about the latest episode. I rewatched some of WandaVision since we have to wait for another week for the Agatha All Along finale, and I have to say it holds up really well, and my two problems with the finale aren't really that heavy anymore. For external reasons, in a way. Meaning: stuff not in the show itself but what came after. What was most bothering me during my original watch was Monica's line in the finale where she told Wanda regarding the citizens of Westview "they'll never know what you sacrificed for them", which back in the day came across to me as if downplaying the horror the townspeople had gone through and implying Wanda sacrificing the version of Vision and the kids she created in the hex in order to end the spell enslaving said townspeople was the greater tragedy. (Rather than Wanda undoing something she did in the first place.) I no longer think that, not least in Agatha All Along we still see the emotional scars from the whole experience for Westview. But also because Multiverse of Madness irritated me by essentially letting Wanda repeat essentially the same emotional arc WandaVision had put her through a lot more sledgehammery and with less three dimensional character and creativity. (Sorry not sorry, Sam Raimi), which made me more sympathetic to Wanda again. And lastly, when I rewatched that scene I paid more attention to Monica adding that if she'd have Wanda's power, she would have resurrected her mother in no time flat. Given that both Wanda and Monica deal with grief in WandaVision, and in a time-distorted way - for Monica because she got un-blipped and then had to cope with the shock reveal of her mother's death and the missing five years, and for (the equally unblipped) Wanda because as Vision points out in the last episode that still uses the sitcom format (i.e. the Agatha reveal episode), the two deaths of Vision happened a few weeks ago - , it makes Monica's sympathy for Wanda a lot more personal to her and less coming across as something the viewer is meant to see as the overall attitude of the narrative.
Something else that watching Agatha All Along and WandaVision back to back hammered home to me is that Jac Schaeffer really excells at creating Marvel shows with multiple female roles that simultanously work as acting tour de force showcases. Elizabeth Olsen in none of the MCU movies has the chance to showcase the sheer variety she does in WandaVision, but as much as the show is built around her, it also offer a meaty character driven storyline for Monica Rambeau (who essentially gets (re-)introduced here as an adult character, does a great job with Darcy Lewis (a better one than the later Thor movies, imo) as a supporting character, and of course introduces Agatha as a great new MCU villain. Which isn't to say the male roles are background noise - Paul Bettany as Vision(s) also gets more to do, acting wise, than in any MCU movie save perhaps in his original appearance in Age of Ultron, and my rewatch had me paying more attention to the kids for obvious reasons, so I noticed the scene where Billy, having newly developed his Wanda-inherited telepathic powers, tells "Agnes"/Agatha he likes being with her because it's quiet and she's quiet, i.e. he can't read her mind, upon which she looks downight intrigued which might have given Ms Schaeffer the idea to pair up Agatha and a teenage Billy in the spin-off as each other's foils. Also, the flashback to Agatha and her original coven and mother in Salem was especially interesting to me regarding the question as to whether or not Agatha can control her power when attacked by another witch. Now, presumably none of the other witches including her mother are aware of the exact way Agatha's power works at this point, otherwise they wouldn't have tried to kill her the way they do, but she must have already killed other magic users. Here's the fascinating thing: she actually does hold back for a while with her mother. I had misremembered Agatha killing all seven witches of her original coven at the same time, but this is not what happens.
What happens is:
- Agatha gets tied to the stake, her mother is the speaking accuser
- Agatha pleads (including the "teach me"), her mother pronounces judgment; the other witches, but not her mother, start to all zing Agatha simultanously
- Agatha starts to reverse the flow of power (visualized in the blue magic from the other witches turning into Agatha's purple)
- Now her mother starts to attack Agatha magically as well
- Agatha sucks all the other witches dry except for her mother, who takes in what has just happened as they both stop
- Agatha and her mother have the "I can be good"/"No, you can't" exchange
- Her mother attacks Agatha again
- Agatha sucks her mother dry as well.
So while it's true her mother starts with the original magical attack later than the other witches, it's still noteworthy that Agatha is able to stop for her mother the first time around instead of immediately draining her as well. Given this is relatively early in her life as a witch, one should think that a few centuries later she'd have mastered the trick of how to stop (if she wants to) - though then again, presumably after her mother she never saw any reason to stop for anyone and threw herself into her supervillain career?
Speculation: we'll get another flashback to that near-execution/first serial killing, because that's presumably when Rio and Agatha first met? (At least that Agatha is aware of; I guess Rio saw her before when Agatha killed other people.)
Speaking of female showrunners, here's an interview with WandaVision and Agatha All Along show runner Jac Schaeffer about the latest episode. I rewatched some of WandaVision since we have to wait for another week for the Agatha All Along finale, and I have to say it holds up really well, and my two problems with the finale aren't really that heavy anymore. For external reasons, in a way. Meaning: stuff not in the show itself but what came after. What was most bothering me during my original watch was Monica's line in the finale where she told Wanda regarding the citizens of Westview "they'll never know what you sacrificed for them", which back in the day came across to me as if downplaying the horror the townspeople had gone through and implying Wanda sacrificing the version of Vision and the kids she created in the hex in order to end the spell enslaving said townspeople was the greater tragedy. (Rather than Wanda undoing something she did in the first place.) I no longer think that, not least in Agatha All Along we still see the emotional scars from the whole experience for Westview. But also because Multiverse of Madness irritated me by essentially letting Wanda repeat essentially the same emotional arc WandaVision had put her through a lot more sledgehammery and with less three dimensional character and creativity. (Sorry not sorry, Sam Raimi), which made me more sympathetic to Wanda again. And lastly, when I rewatched that scene I paid more attention to Monica adding that if she'd have Wanda's power, she would have resurrected her mother in no time flat. Given that both Wanda and Monica deal with grief in WandaVision, and in a time-distorted way - for Monica because she got un-blipped and then had to cope with the shock reveal of her mother's death and the missing five years, and for (the equally unblipped) Wanda because as Vision points out in the last episode that still uses the sitcom format (i.e. the Agatha reveal episode), the two deaths of Vision happened a few weeks ago - , it makes Monica's sympathy for Wanda a lot more personal to her and less coming across as something the viewer is meant to see as the overall attitude of the narrative.
Something else that watching Agatha All Along and WandaVision back to back hammered home to me is that Jac Schaeffer really excells at creating Marvel shows with multiple female roles that simultanously work as acting tour de force showcases. Elizabeth Olsen in none of the MCU movies has the chance to showcase the sheer variety she does in WandaVision, but as much as the show is built around her, it also offer a meaty character driven storyline for Monica Rambeau (who essentially gets (re-)introduced here as an adult character, does a great job with Darcy Lewis (a better one than the later Thor movies, imo) as a supporting character, and of course introduces Agatha as a great new MCU villain. Which isn't to say the male roles are background noise - Paul Bettany as Vision(s) also gets more to do, acting wise, than in any MCU movie save perhaps in his original appearance in Age of Ultron, and my rewatch had me paying more attention to the kids for obvious reasons, so I noticed the scene where Billy, having newly developed his Wanda-inherited telepathic powers, tells "Agnes"/Agatha he likes being with her because it's quiet and she's quiet, i.e. he can't read her mind, upon which she looks downight intrigued which might have given Ms Schaeffer the idea to pair up Agatha and a teenage Billy in the spin-off as each other's foils. Also, the flashback to Agatha and her original coven and mother in Salem was especially interesting to me regarding the question as to whether or not Agatha can control her power when attacked by another witch. Now, presumably none of the other witches including her mother are aware of the exact way Agatha's power works at this point, otherwise they wouldn't have tried to kill her the way they do, but she must have already killed other magic users. Here's the fascinating thing: she actually does hold back for a while with her mother. I had misremembered Agatha killing all seven witches of her original coven at the same time, but this is not what happens.
What happens is:
- Agatha gets tied to the stake, her mother is the speaking accuser
- Agatha pleads (including the "teach me"), her mother pronounces judgment; the other witches, but not her mother, start to all zing Agatha simultanously
- Agatha starts to reverse the flow of power (visualized in the blue magic from the other witches turning into Agatha's purple)
- Now her mother starts to attack Agatha magically as well
- Agatha sucks all the other witches dry except for her mother, who takes in what has just happened as they both stop
- Agatha and her mother have the "I can be good"/"No, you can't" exchange
- Her mother attacks Agatha again
- Agatha sucks her mother dry as well.
So while it's true her mother starts with the original magical attack later than the other witches, it's still noteworthy that Agatha is able to stop for her mother the first time around instead of immediately draining her as well. Given this is relatively early in her life as a witch, one should think that a few centuries later she'd have mastered the trick of how to stop (if she wants to) - though then again, presumably after her mother she never saw any reason to stop for anyone and threw herself into her supervillain career?
Speculation: we'll get another flashback to that near-execution/first serial killing, because that's presumably when Rio and Agatha first met? (At least that Agatha is aware of; I guess Rio saw her before when Agatha killed other people.)
no subject
Date: 2024-10-26 01:05 pm (UTC)-
I don't disagree with anything you said about The Drumhead and Litmus as individual standalone episodes. I think they are a profound contrast between the two series. Picard squashes the trial by appealing to principles and undermines the prosecutor. Adama simply pulls ranks and plays on the loyalty of his men to get it done. TNG is standalone so The Drumhead doesn't come up again. The events of Litmus and Adama's actions come up for the rest of the show and undermines him at every term, whenever anyone suggests independent investigations people balked because Adama overthrew the last one "when he didn't like its conclusions".
IIRC that one also has parallels to Janeway. Adama letting Tyrol off the hook and Janeway forcing medical treatment on B'Elanna have the same ration of they are crucial engineering personnel that can't be spared.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-27 07:24 am (UTC)Good point, and well, given that by s4 Adama offers to Roslin he could just have Baltar quietly executed if the trial doesn't work out, they're not exactly wrong to fear so.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-26 04:09 pm (UTC)I never saw that line of Monica's as being meant for the narrative to exonerate Wanda for what she's done. To me it reads as Monica trying to sympathize with and comfort her, which fits with *Monica's* characterization as showing concern for Wanda as a human being which nobody else in SWORD does (iirc, it's been a while since I rewatched, but I think they just see her as a threat). Monica sees Wanda as a person because of their shared grief, as you say, and she knows like nobody else in the show does what it's like to lose your family and to be left all alone. It's a much subtler thing than some of the other big moments in the MCU like "He killed my mom" in Civil War which was Tony's excuse to lose it.
"Multiverse of Madness irritated me by essentially letting Wanda repeat essentially the same emotional arc WandaVision had put her through a lot more sledgehammery and with less three dimensional character and creativity. (Sorry not sorry, Sam Raimi)"
That movie was so, soso bad. I don't know how they had the gall to release it. The way it treated every single female character was so awful.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-26 05:49 pm (UTC)Re: Monica being the only one in SWORD to see Wanda as a person instead of a threat, not quite - Darcy and Jimmy Woo do as well, throughout the show. (Though as opposed to Monica, they don’t have repeated personal encounters with Wanda, they do the humanizing in conversations with other people.) In fact, that was part of what during my first watch had gotten my back up somewhat, because in the finale, the only characters bringing up what Wanda did to the townspeople as a horror are the two designated villains, Heywood (who is the Evil McEvil SWORD leader) and Agatha. They’re also the only ones earlier who mention Wanda having voluntarily joined Hydra. (When Heywood does it, Jimmy Woo immediately jumps in with this being a gross simplification. And Agatha says “just to recap, you dealt with your loss by joining an anti freedom fascist organisation” to mock Wanda. So to me, this during the first watch looked as if the show was stacking the deck in Wanda’s favour by giving any criticism of her past actions to clear villains - I mean, just in case we’re missing the point of Heywood being The Worst who only wants to get into Westview to get his hands on Vision, not for the townspeople, he’s willing to shoot at Wanda’s kids, and Agatha while wonderfully entertaining from the start is so clearly a villain that she kills a puppy. All of this had given me the impression the show didn’t want me to take Monica’s comment as the narrative summing up of Wanda’s actions.
Now, again, I’ve changed my mind on this. For the reasons named in the post. For example, details like Sharon/Mrs Hart in the “worst memory” trial flashing back to her husband nearly chocking while Wanda’s hex forced her to smile and continue in sitcom mode even while she kept repeating “stop it!” Not so paradoxically meant during my rewatch of that same WV episode, I didn’t just empathize with her but also with Wanda (who I had the impression is at this point not acting consciously - it probably was just an impulsive thought on the note of “I wish he’d shut up” - but starts her waking up process there, though she fights it. Because now I feel that the effect of Wanda’s actions on other people even within a comedy format is treated seriously, and not downplayed. And like I said, I think Elizabeth Olsen is amazing in that show, both at the various sitcom versions of Wanda, mannerisms and all, and as “Real” Wanda underneath breaking through more and more (the first time in that scene, when she abruptly says “Vision, help him” in her accented voice).
BTW, something else the rewatch clarified for me is what Wanda thinks happens with the townspeople before they tell her they even share her nightmares when she sleeps and feel her pain all the time in addition to playing the roles she puts them in. I’ve seen the argument she thinks she created them like Vision and the twins, but no, she sees several of them when she’s driving into Westview the first time, she knows these were real people. However, her “no, you were happy” implies she wasn’t aware their real selves were aware and present all the time along with the new personalities; presumably she thought they were like Vision at the start in that they had no memories from the time before the hex, were fully the personalities she had assigned to hem, and shared her own sense of regarding the sitcom world where no one ever seriously gets hurt as a happy sanctuary. (Which is still massively fucked up. But the show(s) are aware and don’t say it’s not! I’m on board with that.)
no subject
Date: 2024-10-26 11:32 pm (UTC)That's really cool about the original coven, I hadn't realised that either. I wonder if she can stop when it's a blood relative rather than when she wants to - draining Alice seemed to be fully accidental, even if she did try to justify it afterwards - but it would be a cool hint that she didn't do that to her son.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-27 07:37 am (UTC)Oh, there's no question about that, but given Agatha has just proven herself to be literally lethally dangerous (and not just to Wanda), very ill intentioned, and putting her in a conventional prison is out, Wanda warping her mind like that as a way of imprisonment without killing her actually makes a lot of sense. There's an irony here I don't think the creators are aware of, though, in that the rationale is exactly the one for the brief imprisonment of super powered people Wanda herself and the other Steve-siding Avengers went through near the end of Civil War before he broke them out. Anyway, as morally questionable decisions of Wanda go, putting Agatha back in the Agnes role was for me one of the least and certainly not as questionable as deliberately releasing the Hulk at Johannesburg in Age of Ultron. (Which hadn't been Ultron's call, it had been Wanda's and Wanda's alone. I still think in-universe people giving her grief for Lagos, which was a genuine accident and where she had been intent on saving people, is a strawman argument and avoidance of people giving her grief for Johannesburg, which she's fully responsible for, no Darkhold, no Ultron, just Wanda.)
Notably, Monica was never under the mind control and didn't have the same experience that the people of Westview had - the spell dressed her up but she was in control and trying to subtly interrogate Wanda.
Something I did notice when rewatching was that while Monica's empathy for and identification with a grieving Wanda is there, the show also lets Vision (the Wanda-created version) identify with and show empathy for the people of Westview consistently, from the moment he realises something is wrong. That doesn't mean he's not also consistent about loving Wanda. But he refuses to be put off investigating, he's truly horrified when figuring out what's happening, he tries to end it, and he keeps bringing it up. So I would say the show does make the effort of showing no matter how understandable Wanda's original motivation in all this is, and how much she herself has suffered, it doesn't override what the people of Westview are suffering.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-27 01:19 pm (UTC)Well, it's the disembodied voice of her son (I guess?) telling her to stop that makes her end the Alice draining (though alas, too late). (I do think Alice was her reacting on instinct and not intention, and that it was an accident at this particular point.) Honestly I don't think that whatever happened to her son was her draining his power. But given Rio's sort of confession (that she really hurt someone she loved, not because she wanted to but by doing her job) in episode 4, I think Nicholas has to have died. Now given death isn't always permanent in this 'verse, Agatha clearly hoped he'd come back somehow because she looks devastated when Rio tells her "the boy isn't yours", but how this death came about is still a mystery. (I mean, yes, Jen thinks it was in trade for the Darkhold, but she also admits he could have been transformed into a demon and that she has no idea what exactly happened to the boy, just that the story is Agatha sacrificed him for the Darkhold. I bet it's more complicated than that; maybe she thought she could cheat and keep both the kid and the Darkhold, imagining its power would enable her to do so once she had it, because that is very Agatha-like, and then Rio showed up to confiscate Nicholas' life anyway. That's still my best guess.