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The Remix/Redux 7 ficathon is open for signing up! It occurs to me that rebooting a franchise (whether it's BSG or Star Trek) basically operates on the same principle said ficathon does. Which is why I can't get worked up about the talk of the owners of the Buffy movie rights wanting to cash in on same by wanting a Joss Whedon-less, Scooby-less and Buffy-less reboot. I mean, I think the first utterances sound like a dumb idea because they manage to miss a lot of what made BTVS appealing. (There is a reason the show took off in a way ye olde movie did not, and it's not the lack of Rutger Hauer overacting.) It's not meant as straight horror, the post-modern banter and send-up was quintessential to the premise, and so were the friendships and the other characters. Also, it's far too soon - just a measly decade, with everyone's memories of the show and its characters very vivid. But you know, I really enjoyed Fray (aka Joss' story of a Slayer several hundred years in the future), so the idea of telling the story of a new Slayer, in a completely different surrounding, with new characters to relate to and fight against, in principle isn't something I'm opposed to.

This is as good a place as any to mention my position on the comics, because I've also seen the "the comics are such a travesty, so it's a good thing Joss isn't involved in any movie" argument. Basically, the BTVS comics didn't capture me so I don't read them, but neither do I feel a need to rail against them or generalize about J.W.'s post-Firefly work. It really depends on the item in question. I loved Fray, his first foray in comics; the BTVS comics left me indiffirent, which didn't really surprise be because after seven years of writing for a particular ensemble and a particular world, any writer is bound to have run out of ideas; by contrast, I absolutely adored his run of Astonishing X-Men, and again, didn't surprise me that Whedonian writing for characters he hadn't been writing for since years would feel much more captivating.

Dollhouse? I'm mostly with likeadeuce in seeing it as both interesting and ultimately a failure, though this might change. My biggest problem with it wasn't actually the skeevy premise, because as opposed to many an indignant post I think the show does acknowledge it, and uses the word "rape" clearly and several times; it was the discovery that Eliza Dushku seems to be a one trick pony, acting wise, which is especially glaring because the actors playing the other regular dolls really pull off some amazing stuff here, which combined with the fact that so far, the writing hasn't managed to make Echo/Carolyn that compelling, either leaves you with a black hole as a main character. I think it's not coincidentally that the writing in the second half of the season, which really is quantum levels above the first, centers on everyone but Echo. Here's what I'd do if I were in charge of the second season, not that I think it will happen:
1) Get rid of the credits sequence. It's really inexcusable.
2) Decide whether you want Ballard to be a critical deconstruction of a male hero (which he was for most of the season except the finale) or a genuinenly heroic character, but most crucially
3) Swap leads, if you must have one at all. The actress for Sierra is ever so much better than Dushku, and Sierra herself, of all the dolls, has the strongest reasons to bring the dollhouse down.

What I'd do and what I think will actually happen: follow-up on the "what is the true purpose of the dollhouse / who uses the kind of power that allows complete identity destruction/construction and how do they use it on the large scale, if the dollhouse is just a deflection and a matter of income earning?" question. Which I do find interesting, but I'm not sure such a narrative emphasis will also mean the end of gratitituos episodes like Target, because that's what the network pays for.

Lastly, a personal heresy: I think Adelle DeWitt is more compelling than Lilah Morgan as a take on the noir villainness. I also find the difference in reception telling because it is directly connected with what makes the show both problematic and interesting (with so far the problematic outweighing the interesting, though not in the case of DeWitt): Lilah's brand of corporate evil was safely in the fantasy realm. Wolfram and Hart pimped girls to rich vampires in the very first episode of Angel (one reason why I was never as sympathetic to Lindsey getting scruples apropos of blind children was that he evidently did not get them apropos of teenage girls), but vampires don't live in the reality of the viewer. When Lilah sets up an abused girl to repeat her abuse experience so she can exploit her as an assassin, that abused girl is a telekinetic, and she's currently interacting with another vampire. When Lilah orders people killed, beheaded or mindwiped, or feeds a father the blood of his son, it's still all in a fantasy context; there is the safety net of the audience knowing it could never possibly happen to them. Whereas the dollhouse technology that allows complete identity changes might be sci fi, but barely so; so what Adelle DeWitt does to people hits much closer to home. Which, btw, is one of the reasons why I find her more interesting. The other is that on the one hand, she mostly, but not completely believes her own propaganda, and I find villains who consider themselves the heroes of the story always more intriguing (Adelle is so the "the Corps is mother, the Corps is father" type, if you allow me the B5 comparison) than villains like Lilah who do the proverbial moustache twirling, albeit in Lilah's case elegantly); but on the other hand the narrative (so far) manages to show her vulnerabilities without making them excuses. If I do continue watching in s2, it'll probably be mostly for Adelle DeWitt.

"Child of Two Worlds"

When Sarek used that phrase to Spock in the new movie, I was reminded of the many different ways Star Trek treats this particular fictional trope - the character who comes from two different cultures, might have different, sometimes conflicting loyalties; the hybrid. Sometimes, as in the case of Spock, but not always, this character is also identical with the outsider pov on the rest of the regular characters.

We get the literal hybrids - Spock (Vulcan/Human origin), B'Lanna Torres (Klingon/Human) and Deanna Troi (Betazoid/Human). Then there are also the characters who are biologically from one world, but were raised on another: Worf (born Klingon but raised human from time he was a small child), Odo (Changeling, raised by Bajoran doctor under Cardassian rule) and Seven of Nine (born human but assimilated by the Borg as a small child); I'd count them as hybrids as well. The result never plays out in quite the same way. The only character who is really at peace with both parts of her heritage and not conflicted about either of them, or with her hybrid status is Troi. She has some issues with her mother but not with being Betazoid, and indeed she usually refers to herself as Betazoid, not as human or half-human (unless she has to explain why she's an empath instead of a telepath). Her background is in a way the diamatrical opposite of Spock's. In the case of Sarek and Amanda (a couple invented and introduced in the 1960s), there never seems to have been a question of Sarek adopting human customs for Amanda, or the two of them raising Spock Terran-style; Amanda doesn't just live on Vulcan but has adopted Vulcan dress style and mostly a Vulcan way of life. By contrast, while Deanna's father Ian was in Starfleet, he seems to have moved to Betazoid when marrying Lwaxana, her daughters were born there, raised Betazoid-style, and though it's not spelled out explicitly, I'd say that the chances are "Troi" was Lwaxana's last name, not Ian's, which he adopted upon marrying her. (Lwaxana refers to "marriages" plural at some points but always maintains this last name, and her whole "daughter of the fifth house" speech points to a matrilinear background as well.) Of course, the Trois were invented in the late 80s.

Another counterpoint to Spock is B'Lanna, who is also the only one of these characters whose parents did not manage to maintain a relationship because of their cultural differences. While Spock might have rebelled against both his father in particular and the Vulcan Science Academy in general and chosen a Starfleet career, with mostly human friends, he still by and large lives according to a Vulcan code of conduct; he defines himself as Vulcan if anyone asks, not as human (and of course Spock Prime eventually ends up leaving Starfleet and becoming an Ambassador, completing the cycle). Whereas B'Lanna spends much of her time on Voyager explicitly rejecting her Klingon heritage, blaming it for everything she doesn't like about herself, and connecting it with self-loathing. She comes to terms with it somewhat but as late as the last or last but one season when there is a question of her and Tom Paris having a child would rather the child to be entirely human (as first instinct). As mentioned before, B'Lanna is the only one of the hybrids whose parents split up, with the result of her blaming both her Klingon mother and her Klingon heritage for being left by her human father.

Worf, who is fully Klingon biologically but was only a child when his natural parents died, went in the opposite direction in that for the most part of both TNG and DS9, he's not just proud of his Klingon heritage but tends to idealize it. Worf being more Klingon than Klingon and more rigid about (some of) their traditions than most Klingons basically screams overcompensation; on the other hand, he seems to have gone into Starfleet straight away, and doesn't actually live in the Klingon Empire until the very end of DS9, and then partly because it direly needs reformation. (Some of the time he's an outcast there, true, but there are also times where he could have had an honored position.) Guinan at one point mentions that if Worf thinks of home, he thinks of his human adoptive parents and Earth, and it's not a statement that gets refuted, but he doesn't manage to live on Earth, either. TNG and DS9 both have him firmly invested in Starfleet as a career, but not always following the Starfleet code of behaviour; Worf killing Duras Klingon-style against Picard's strict orders is an important TNG plot point.

With Odo, we have a circumstance that's not the case for any of the others because Odo is biologically different in a way the others aren't; at the same time, he knows least about one half of his nature versus nurture situation. He doesn't meet other shapeshifters until s3, and afterwards only briefly and usually in hostile circumstances until the start of s6, which presents his first truly extensive period of contact with the Founders. Because the Founders are the main antagonists of the later seasons, the loyalty conflict situation is sharpest in Odo's case, but at the same time I'd call it the easiest because the show doesn't really present the "join the Founders" option in any positive light (until the very end). (Whereas Vulcans and Klingons might have their drawbacks but also their virtues.) At the same time, Odo's loyalty to the DS9 regulars isn't presented as something cultural but entirely personal. Odo might have come to consciousness on Bajor, modelled himself after a Bajoran scientist (whom he resented for treating him as a lab rat), and be in love with a Bajoran, Kira, but I never had the impression he sees himself as Bajoran in any sense. He works first for Dukat and then for Sisko, but doesn't see himself as Cardassian or Federation-belonging, either. The show declares early on Odo has a personal code of justice which he follows, but doesn't explain where he got it from. Later events pose the interesting question as to whether it's an instinct for justice or an instinct for order. Either way, it's superceded by personal attachment; one of the starkest examples of Odo's genuine other-ness is his decision to kill 800 people and wipe out two hundred years of history in order to save Kira's life, which isn't justified by any behavioral code he could have adopted from the people he lived with. When Odo at the end of the show returns to the Founders in order to heal them and end the war, again the emotional sacrifice here is near derived exclusively via his relationship with Kira; while he admits to her he might miss some of the other people on DS9 as well (including Quark, which she's not to tell him), there is not a question of Odo missing Bajor (which during the course of the show he only visits once or twice) or the "solid" way of life as such.

With Seven of Nine, the ST writers blatantly went for the interpretation of the child raised by Indians from the old Westerns. They also used the chance to do something which didn't happen at the start of Voyager, where the potential conflicting background and agenda between Maquis and Starfleet crews was quickly removed by the fast way the new Voyager crew integrated. By contrast, the integration of Seven in the Voyager crew from the point where she was forced to join to the point where she decided to stay took the entire fourth season, and afterwards the show still took care not to erase her differences, and still occasionally conflicting code of conduct. Now if the Founders were one show's antagonists for several seasons, the Borg were antagonists for the entire ST verse, no matter which show, so letting Seven not reject her Borg-ness utterly and as soon as possible was pretty radical. It also gave the show a lot of character drama, starting from the second s4 episode when Janeway tells a just-severed-from-the-Collective Seven that she won't return her to the Borg because Seven isn't yet capable of choosing for herself. Seven then asks that if she does indeed become an individual in Janeway's definition of the word and at that point still wants to return to the Collective, would Janeway let her? Janeway's answer is evasive ("I don't think you'll make that choice"), but it's clear it's actually no, whereupon Seven asks that if individuality is forced upon her, how are humans and Janeway different from the Borg. It's an unsettling and effective moment because of course on the one hand the viewer, familiar with the Borg concept, agrees with Janeway that no one sane and sentient would voluntarily choose such an existence, and the erasure of self that goes with it, but on the other, the drone about to get individualized as Seven has a point as well. The person Seven becomes remains imprinted by both the Voyager and the Borg experience.

All of which doesn't lead me to any conclusions, except that the STverse won't stop with these children of two worlds characters any time soon....

But now, some more reviews.

( Final Mission )

( Relics )

( The Drumhead )