![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Enterprise and Dr. Who mini reviews; BSG and Alias fanfic recs
So, thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cavendish I've started with the fourth season of Enterprise, and thanks to kernezelda I started with the new Dr. Who.
Unfortunately, the first Enterprise ep of season 4 managed to hit one of my pet peeves in Sci-Fi and Fantasy.
Let's put it this way: what does the original series episode Patterns of Force have in common with the Voyager two-parter The Killing Game (I think that was the title) and now the Enterprise episode Storm Front? That's right. Nazis. Used in that way beloved by the genre, as those Really Bad Guys (tm) whom the Bad Aliens Of The Week model themselves after/ally themselves with, while Our Heroes get to be the persecuted brave resistance fighters. Nobody ever bothers to explain why ruthless Aliens (tm) who want to win would model themselves or ally themselves with the side that LOST THE FREAKIN' WAR. The TOS precedent was even stupider, because there we were asked to believe a Starfleet officer actually had that glorious idea of modelling an alien society after the Third Reich. The Voyager episodes asked us to believe that the Hirogen, a race adicted to hunting who think of themselves as the ultimate in warrior bravery, would choose a holodeck scenario in which they embodied the universally decried villains of the 20th century. And this Enterprise episode asks me to believe that the newest bunch of ruthless aliens would ally themselves with Hitler in 1944. In 1944. When Germany was busy losing the war, resources were breaking down left, right and center, and the combination of Stalingrad and the unfortunately unsuccessful assassination attempt ensured Hitler never got out of his bunker anymore. Right. And why? Because said aliens need resources to build a transmitter. Yes. That makes sense.
Now the frustrating thing is that you could use these scenarios in a way to disturb viewers and shake them up and make them think. In the Enterprise case, let the Aliens ally themselves with the powers who actually have resources at their disposal in 1944. Which would be the Allies. Let them offer help to defeat Germany quickly and completely. And then, after that first empowering use of futuristic technology, let them offer Roosevelt and Churchill the power to wipe out Stalin while they were at it. Let the Enterprise crew stumble into THAT, let them deal with THAT. Restore the timeline... but that means one more year of WWII and of the concentration camps. And of course an ongoing Stalinistic Soviet Union.
But no. Instead, we get yet another replay of Operetta Nazis Versus Our Brave Heroes, because hey, who doesn't want to stop Nazis from invading North America?
The first Dr. Who episode, however, turned out to be delightul. A brief summary of my Whovian knowledge: saw two Tom Bakers (nice), one Colin Baker (dreadful), two Sylvester McCoys (intriguing; loved Ace), and the dreadful movie with Paul McGann (boo, hiss! Not at Paul McGann, at the script) . So I am neither an expert nor a total ignoramus.
This first episode, Rose, managed to get the basic premise across anyway. At first glance, the ninth Doctor is a good variation of the character, and I like Rose. As important is that this newest version captures the Britishness of the show (looking at you, dreadful movie), and the moving plastic puppets are just the right mixture of creepy and silly. And the show doesn't pretend that it's still somewhere in the 70s/80s; bringing in the internet and a conspiracy theorist was just the right amount of modern day. Speaking of the conspiracy theorist, loved the twist on Mickey's and the audience's expectation by letting him be a jolly family man (who happened to be right about the Doctor, of course). And the victim of the plastic dolls. Alas. Reminds me of Blake's lawyer dying in the B7 pilot, in a way; on British sci-fi shows, this kind of thing happens. Whereas Mickey the boyfriend, on whose death I'd have bet anything, schooled by genre tv as I am, made it out alive.
Now I'm eager to watch more of the Doctor, and will fight against my pet peeve in the Enterprise case, for hopefully that scenario will soon be done with and never appear again. In the meantime, fanfic for other stuff.
BSG:jennyo it seems has discovered Battlestar Galactica and wrote "The World Can Wait", a good story about Laura Roslin and Lee during Colonial Day.
Alias: And my dear Andraste wrote "Edge of Darkness", an excellent take on what those First Generation Spies were up to during seasons 2 and 3. Sloane, Jack and Irina in dark times. I love it.
cavendish I've started with the fourth season of Enterprise, and thanks to kernezelda I started with the new Dr. Who. Unfortunately, the first Enterprise ep of season 4 managed to hit one of my pet peeves in Sci-Fi and Fantasy.
Let's put it this way: what does the original series episode Patterns of Force have in common with the Voyager two-parter The Killing Game (I think that was the title) and now the Enterprise episode Storm Front? That's right. Nazis. Used in that way beloved by the genre, as those Really Bad Guys (tm) whom the Bad Aliens Of The Week model themselves after/ally themselves with, while Our Heroes get to be the persecuted brave resistance fighters. Nobody ever bothers to explain why ruthless Aliens (tm) who want to win would model themselves or ally themselves with the side that LOST THE FREAKIN' WAR. The TOS precedent was even stupider, because there we were asked to believe a Starfleet officer actually had that glorious idea of modelling an alien society after the Third Reich. The Voyager episodes asked us to believe that the Hirogen, a race adicted to hunting who think of themselves as the ultimate in warrior bravery, would choose a holodeck scenario in which they embodied the universally decried villains of the 20th century. And this Enterprise episode asks me to believe that the newest bunch of ruthless aliens would ally themselves with Hitler in 1944. In 1944. When Germany was busy losing the war, resources were breaking down left, right and center, and the combination of Stalingrad and the unfortunately unsuccessful assassination attempt ensured Hitler never got out of his bunker anymore. Right. And why? Because said aliens need resources to build a transmitter. Yes. That makes sense.
Now the frustrating thing is that you could use these scenarios in a way to disturb viewers and shake them up and make them think. In the Enterprise case, let the Aliens ally themselves with the powers who actually have resources at their disposal in 1944. Which would be the Allies. Let them offer help to defeat Germany quickly and completely. And then, after that first empowering use of futuristic technology, let them offer Roosevelt and Churchill the power to wipe out Stalin while they were at it. Let the Enterprise crew stumble into THAT, let them deal with THAT. Restore the timeline... but that means one more year of WWII and of the concentration camps. And of course an ongoing Stalinistic Soviet Union.
But no. Instead, we get yet another replay of Operetta Nazis Versus Our Brave Heroes, because hey, who doesn't want to stop Nazis from invading North America?
The first Dr. Who episode, however, turned out to be delightul. A brief summary of my Whovian knowledge: saw two Tom Bakers (nice), one Colin Baker (dreadful), two Sylvester McCoys (intriguing; loved Ace), and the dreadful movie with Paul McGann (boo, hiss! Not at Paul McGann, at the script) . So I am neither an expert nor a total ignoramus.
This first episode, Rose, managed to get the basic premise across anyway. At first glance, the ninth Doctor is a good variation of the character, and I like Rose. As important is that this newest version captures the Britishness of the show (looking at you, dreadful movie), and the moving plastic puppets are just the right mixture of creepy and silly. And the show doesn't pretend that it's still somewhere in the 70s/80s; bringing in the internet and a conspiracy theorist was just the right amount of modern day. Speaking of the conspiracy theorist, loved the twist on Mickey's and the audience's expectation by letting him be a jolly family man (who happened to be right about the Doctor, of course). And the victim of the plastic dolls. Alas. Reminds me of Blake's lawyer dying in the B7 pilot, in a way; on British sci-fi shows, this kind of thing happens. Whereas Mickey the boyfriend, on whose death I'd have bet anything, schooled by genre tv as I am, made it out alive.
Now I'm eager to watch more of the Doctor, and will fight against my pet peeve in the Enterprise case, for hopefully that scenario will soon be done with and never appear again. In the meantime, fanfic for other stuff.
BSG:
jennyo it seems has discovered Battlestar Galactica and wrote "The World Can Wait", a good story about Laura Roslin and Lee during Colonial Day. Alias: And my dear Andraste wrote "Edge of Darkness", an excellent take on what those First Generation Spies were up to during seasons 2 and 3. Sloane, Jack and Irina in dark times. I love it.