Thoughts in two universes

Star 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 ( spoilery things )

I no longer think that, not least ( because of spoilery things )

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 ( one scene in particular )

which might have given Ms Schaeffer the idea to ( Read more... )

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. ( And the answer is spoilery. )