A Day In The Life

January Meme: Andor: Syril Karn on Ghorman, on "going native?"

2026-01-15T10:26:31Z

Considering this prompt by bimo, it did occur to me that Syril Karn’s part of the Ghorman arc in the second season of Star Wars: Andor in a way is the Mirrorverse, twisted version of a rather popular trope.

( Filling the spoilery darkness with order and light )

The other days

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Meanwhile, in Bible based fictional news...

2025-04-15T07:45:34Z

My attempt to watch the new series House of David came to a swift end when about twenty or so minutes in, we were told by Michal in voice over that the Amalekites and their King were evil Cannibals (in addition to being evil tormentors of the Israelites). Now it's been years and years, but as far as I remember from Deutoronomy, a) the Amalekites/Israelites conflict sounds pretty standard for ancient world warfare between neigbouring tribes, with neither having the upper hand for long, until b) Samuel, speaking for God, orders Saul to wipe them out (as in, men, women, children and livestock) and Saul doesn't do that completely but lets the King and some of the livestock survive, and that is why God's favour is taken from Saul and transferred to David. Now, divine orders to commit genocide sound quite different to 20th century onwards people for all the obvious reasons, but making an entire group of people into essentially fantasy Orcs is surely not the answer in how to tackle that narrative. I remember the 1985 movie King David (starring Richard Gere, not exactly a cinematic masterpiece, but actually trying to do engage with the biblical story beyond the "plucky little guy vs giant, little guy wins" narrative of David vs Goliath) making the repeated clashes between Prophets and Kings (not just Saul vs Samuel, but also later David vs Nathan) be a power struggle similar to the medieval Emperors vs Popes ones, with neither side the eternal good guys or eternal villains, each side sometimes is in the wrong and sometimes in the right from our then 20th century perspective), with the order to wipe out an entire people exactly as appalling presented as it sounds like.

From what I remember, the aborted series Kings which tranferred the entire Saul, his family and young David saga to the 20th century, didn't really do an equivalent of the Amalekites story but did not present anyone as evil cannibals, either, but heavily leant into the "everyone is shades of grey" interpretation. In German literature, the most famous work engaging with the David story is probably Stefan Heym's Der König David Bericht. (Stefan Heym: German Jewish writer, escaped 1935 to the US, post WWII returned to East Germany, had a complicated relationship with the East German government from 1956 onwards.) To simiplify a complicated book, in Der König David Bericht, Solomon after David's death commissions a book glorifying his father, our investigating hero inevitably comes across all the crappy stuff David did as well, and despite him already toning this down in his report, Solomon decides to while not killing the investigator surpress the report entirely and to add insult to injury steal Ethan the investigator's wife and claim authorship of a love song Ethan wrote about her. This novel was published in West Germany first in 1972 despite Heym still living in East Germany, in East Germany a year later, and in the Westt definitely was seen as Heym tackling Stalinism, the rewriting of the past and censorship by the state in his present via the biblical story.

The second most famous German written novel engaging with these biblical stories is Der Brautpreis by Grete Weil. Like Heym, Grete Weil (who was friends with Klaus and Erika Mann in her youth) was a German-Jewish writer who escaped the Nazis but in harder conditions - she went to exile in the Netherlands, not the US, which meant that once the Nazis arrived there, she could only survive in hiding. Which she did, but her husband was captured, sent to a concentration camp and murdered. Der Brautpreis is written from Michal's pov, and in Weil's interpretation, Michal's falling out with David whom she hid and saved his life when her father Saul persecuted him is not because, as in the bible, she scorns his dancing; she stops loving him out of disgust when he pays the bride price her father demanded as part of the power struggle between the two men, said price (biblically) consisting of a hundred Philistine foreskins. By doing this (and even doubling the price), David stops being who Michal fell in love with and reveals himself no better than who he fought against.

Note what both writers have in common: they don't focus on the "David vs Goliath" part of the story, though it is in there. Just not as the main story. What I find fascinating about the biblical David is how complex a person he comes across, because the biblical version does heroic as well as ruthless or egotastic things, and not just from the 20th century onwards pov; obviously David sending Uriah to his death so he can have sex with Uriah's wife Bathseba is meant to be a bad thing in the contemporary context as well.

For me, the most compelling part of that particular story and what makes me never entirely lose sympathy with David is the aftermath, i.e. when God according to Nathan punishes David and Bathseba by taking their first born child. As long as the child is sick, David does penance and is on his knees praying and fasting. When the child dies, he stops doing this, gets up and starts eating again, to the confusion of his attendants. And then we get this:

21 His attendants asked him, “Why are you acting this way? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but now that the child is dead, you get up and eat!”

22 He answered, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, ‘Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me and let the child live.’ 23 But now that he is dead, why should I go on fasting? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”

24 Then David comforted his wife Bathsheba, and he went to her and made love to her.

This reaction to loss and grief is so viscerally relatable to me.

On a personal level, this also why the young David in Kings is the least interesting character in the show to me - he's too good to be true golden retriever boy, with not even a hint of the moral ambiguity to come - and why I'm still looking for a fictional David who fine, can start out as a well meaning youngster, but should show the potential for the future ruthless King, while conversely older and old David should be not just another tyrant, that would be going too far in the other direction. (And okay, obviously the relationship with Jonathan should be there and important, looking bewildered at you, Kings, for letting the two be hostile rivals instead of bffs with at the very least homoerotic undertones.) Because this new show on Amazon Prime had been called House of David, not David, I had been hoping they were aiming for the entire story, including later on the complete mess that are David's children. But I can't get over the Amalekites as bloodthirsty cannibals in the very first episode to find out, and the fact the show felt it needed to do that doesn't augur well for future complexity anyway.

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January Meme: Star Trek: Discovery - a Manifesto

2025-01-06T16:05:14Z

Aka the long promised manifesto about what has become my favourite post DS9 Star Trek show, or version of Star Trek, full stop. Some preliminaries and disclaimers about what this isn't: A declaration that Discovery is best, or flawless. No ST movie or show is. Or that I'm 100% behind every plot or character decision. I'm not. People getting creative - which TPTB most certainly did with this show, which is one of the reasons why I fell in love with it - inevitably means that some of their ideas just doesn't work out the way they intended, or they didn't work out for this particular watcher. With every season, I praised and I nitpicked, in different degrees. This is how I do fandom. (When I reach the point where I catch myself only complaining and not enjoying anymore, I say goodbye.) With all these caveats being said, here's why I think Star Trek: Discovery isn't just a fabulous show, but specifically a fabulous Star Trek show:

( 1) Something New )

( 2.) Something Old )

( 3. Something Blue )

And there you have it: My personal Manifesto of love for Star Trek: Discovery!

The other days

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Thoughts in two universes

2024-10-26T12:44:41Z

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. )

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January Meme: Mentoring on "For All Mankind"

2024-01-25T10:26:42Z

Which scintilla10 requested. Before talking about my favourite examples, it's worth pointing out a few others.

( Spoilery musings for all four seasons broadcast so far await )

The Other Days

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Finding Joy in Reconstruction

2023-09-11T16:28:03Z

After a month where I had to do other things, I went on with my Discovery rewatch, and four episodes into s3 I'm filled with even more love for the show. I think one of many reasons why I adore the later two seasons so much is that for me, they solved a narrative problem even my beloved Babylon 5 struggled with in its fifth season and which the Star Wars sequel trilogy avoided altogether by skipping entirely over the New Republic era and creating another scenario where it's Evil Fascist Bad Guys vs Plucky Resistance Heroes. It is this: making a period of reconstruction, of rebuilding a society after some cataclysmic event narratively compelling and exciting.

War, as Sheridan says in one of JMS's self conscious meta moments in s5, is exciting. Teaming up in war against a mutual (usually evil and overwhelming, in fiction) enemy is a feell good narrative, as is defeating said enemy after some temporary set backs. But rebuilding, making alliances for the long term, making compromises where no one gets exactly what they want, and without a Big Bad to boo and hiss at? I'm a staunch s5 defender, and not just because the network screwed JMS over, but while the Fall of Centauri Prime storyline is perfect, everything else would have needed some retooling, and I don't think he ever solved the problem of how to make Sheridan convincingly a good president (i.e. the dialogue keep insisting he is, and the story keeps showing us he's not) the way he was a good war time leader. As for SW and the sequel trilogy, I do think it was a simple calculation on the part of Disney and J.J. Abrams, especially based on the reception the prequels originally got (with their reputation thankfully now somewhat better, says this prequel fan): what people wanted from SW was Plucky Underdog Rebels vs The Evil Empire, and nothing else. Not the plucky rebels transitioning to being the people in power and trying to rebuild a society. So they recreated that scenario, never mind that it meant Our Heroes lived to see their efforts smashed to pieces. (For all that the Disney tv shows can be very different in qualitiy, I give credit where due to Filon, Favreu & Co. of actually tackling the challenge of showing us the New Republic and trying to create a believeable scenario where we see why it fails. Of course, they live in an era where we see democracies all over the world full of people fannish about strongmen again, so I think the theme resonates. However, given that the sequels already established that the New Republic is basically Weimar, the ending is perordained, so that's not really comparable to the challenge I mean: making rebuliding, and specifically rebuilding a democratic society, narratively compelling WITHOUT resorting to the next war against Evil McEvil on the horizon.

Which is what Star Trek: Discovery does show in its third and fourth season. Not that the series is suddenly without villains, or threats and menaces, but they're of a different type, not Evil Empires. S3 very specifically shows us a society that emerged from the breakdown of a civilisatiion - and one that already showed fractures before the Burn -, and the rebuilding of the Federation, the reforging of connections, the need to establish trust that was lost, or in the case the 10c to understand what at first seems utterly incomprehensible, those are the tasks set to our heroes. And it's captivating and emotionally stirring and compelling to watch. That's what I mean when I say Disco has solved that particular narrative challenge.

Also: I'm not sure whether I recced this before or not, but it bears repeating: this is a beautiful vid capturing what's best about the show so well:

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Discovery Season 2 Revisited

2023-08-20T13:35:02Z

I continued with my occasional Discovery rewatch, so you're getting some s2 thoughts.

( Let's have a little more fun )

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Going forward, going back

2023-08-10T09:35:31Z

Since because of SNW, I have Paramount + these days, I've done some Discovery rewatching. Now one reason why I've mostly stuck to my journal here with my Discovery discussion and enthusiasm - and by now, I think it has advanced to one my favourite Trek incarnations of all times, so there's a lot of enthusiasm to go around - is that whenever I try to check on what other people might have to say, I seem to run into extremes I can't agree with.

( Spoilery thoughts for Star Trek: Discovery ensue )

And now I'm off to watch the SNW s2 finale. And then more Discovery.

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Secret Invasion, or: How Not To Do a Spy Or Any Other Miniseries

2023-07-27T11:16:46Z

So this year, instead of giving just one month to the Mouse, I decided to give more, because there were several ongoing shows I wanted to watch (up to and including Ashoka next month). This means I also got to see Secret Invasion, which just finished and works as a text book of how not to do a tv miniseries along with how to get the wrong creative lessons from the success of Winter Soldier and Andor, respectively.

Here's the irony: I didn't expect much of anything from the Hawkeye miniseries back when it got dropped pre Christmas and only watched it because Peter Jackson's Beatles three parter was released at the same time and that was why I went to the Mouse back then. But as it turns out, Hawkeye was great, and along with Ms Marvel probably my favourite of the Disney Marvel shows even several years later. Whereas I'm practically the target audience for what Secret Invasion (I assume) aimed to be - a spy story/underbelly take on the MCU. Plus going in to the respective shows, I was certainly more invested in Nick Fury than I was in Clint Barton.

Now, rather than going on a rant of how Secret Invasion is bad, I'd rather go for a bit of why it failed (and why Hawkeye did succeed) (for me, as always this is subjective). Because it's not that there are new characters with a narrative focus (both shows have those) and new relationships in addition to the movie established ones. Or the inherent clichés or sillness of the premise (part of the parcel).

( Here we go, spoilers alert )

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A Place of Greater Safety, the Audio Series

2023-02-20T16:18:20Z

I recently finished listening to a thirteen parts (German) audio play version of Hlary Mantel's novel A Place of Greater Safety. (German title: Brüder.) It was originally broadcast and is now available on Audible. I haven't reread the novel in years, but I found all that made and makes it my favourite among Mantel's books in this version. One of those qualities, btw, also is a reason why the Thomas Cromwell trilogy doesn't work nearly as well for yours truly.

( Lots of spoilery musings on book(s) and play, cut for length. )

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January Meme: Ezri Dax and Elizabeth Lochley

2023-01-30T11:43:53Z

lightofdaye wanted a compare and contrast of Ezri Dax (DS9) and Elizabeth Lochley (B5).

Let's start with the obvious: what Ezri Dax and Elizabeth Lochley primarily share is that both characters were last minute replacements for show regulars in their respective show's final season, who came into existence because things with an actress playing a series regular did not work out for various reasons. As both characters had been very popular - Ivanova even more so than Jadzia Dax (which reminds me, I do wonder what would have happened if Nana Visitor had been the one to leave! Because DS9 without Kira is unthinkable...). This alone ensured a considerable part of fandom would resent the new characters, irrespectively from how well or badly they were written and acted.

Now, it's interesting that both shows used almost diametrically opposite narrative techniques to deal with this inheret drawback. DS9 went out of its way to establish Ezri as not simply being a Jadzia clone and devoted considerable screen time to her. She was given a different job (counselor to Jadzia's science officer, which reminds me, I don't think we ever found out who replaced Jadzia as science officer?). We got to know her pre-Symbiont family, the Tigans, and their background in an episode that was all about them. Where the last episode that had been Jadzia-centric without also being Worf-centric had been several seasons ago, Ezri in addition to the episode exploring her birth family got another Whodunit episode focused on her as the detective, this one co-starring former host Joran as Hannibal Lecter (it was very much the age of Silence of the Lambs) and an episode in which she had to counsel and prove herself to the show's most popular recurring guest star, Garak. There was a continous, unchanging relationship - the friendship with Sisko - and one relationship that turned out to be quite different from the one Jadzia had, with Worf, but had its commonalities and differences explored in great screen time detail. (And then there was the last minute romance with Bashir, which got so little screen time to develop that it never felt like the writers were either interested in it or believed in it.)

Meanwhile, JMS went almost the opposite way with Elizabeth Lochley. Technically, she got Sheridan's old job, not Ivanova's, but it was evidently the job Ivanova would have had if Claudia Christian had not left the show. There was no Lochley-centric episode to introduce or explore her the way there had been when Sheridan had taken over as station commander in s2; instead, she got introduced through the telepath story arc on a professional basis and through the confrontations with Garibaldi on the subject of her loyalties on a personal one, until the one episode not written by JMS but Neil Gaiman, Day of the Dead, which did more to flesh out Lochley's character and background than anything that had come before (as JMS himself freely admitted in the preface to the published script). The one relationship with a regular she was established to have had before her introduction to the show, with Sheridan, got as little screen time as possible; it's almost till thet last but one episode that the two of them share a scene and conversation which isn't about the plot of the week and feels a bit personal. Where Ivanova had been given key parts in the show's political arcs (both in the Shadow War and the Earth Civil War) as well as two popular romantic relationships (with Talia and then with Marcus, Lochley during season 5 had no screen time devoted to her personal life (this changes in Crusade, but we're talkingn about B5 here), and while she had a role to play in the telepath mini arc that dominated the first half of the season, she had no part in the Drakh/Fall of Centauri Prime arc dominating the second half. Her main scenes in the second half of the season involve Garibaldi's storyline and are a great pay-off to the hostility between them established early in the season, but they're still mainly about Garibaldi, not Lochley. In short, I'd say s5 goes out of its way to signal to the audience that Lochley isn't taking anything away from beloved regulars; she's the unexpected houseguest who keeps to herself most of the time, not the one insisting on sharing every conversation and choosing what's on the menu for dinner.

There are pros and cons to either approach. For example, my guess as to why JMS went out of his way not to give Lochley and Sheridan any one on one scenes together that aren't about station business is that he wanted to avoid even the whiff of a suspicion he was setting up a love triangle here between Sheridan, Lochley and Delenn, which in a season where there's already an emotional triangle between Sheridan, Delenn and Lennier, fair enough. (Not to mention that Sheridan/Delenn was the most popular relationship on the show, and Lochley really didn't need any shippery resentment directed her way.) Still, that meant, and my most recent B5 rewatch underlined this for me, that the Sheridan & Ivanova friendship, which had been one of the most endearing platonic m & f relationships on the show and brought out the best in either party, had not only disappeared along with Ivanova, but that Sheridan now shared personal screentime only with Delenn, what with Garibaldi having his Bester-caused off the wagon arc and Franklin also not given to hanging out with Sheridan, while Londo and G'Kar were busy with the unfolding tragedy on Centauri Prime, so the effort to not let Lochley intrude might have actually backfired and robbed Sheridan of something of his human warmth. Equally: given that one of the key ways in which DS9 made Ezri different form Jadzia was that Ezri had ended up with the Dax symbiont accidentally, had not been prepared for it and had not originally wanted the symbiont life, it made narrative sense to let the audience see Ezri Tigan's family and have her interact with them to explore whether and how Ezri Dax was different from Ezri Tigan. I have my problems with that episode, but not with the basic premise. Just as, to look at another Ezri episode, the idea of Ezri facing the challenge of playing Counselor to Garak, of all the people, is a good one - can't ask for a bigger challenge - but the execution...

All of this, btw, still didn't stop me from liking both characters. I thought making Lochley someone who'd been on the other side of the war was an interesting premise, as was her different relationship with Bester. She had great chemistry with Garibaldi, and both their initial hostility and the way she ended up helping him really worked for me. Day of the Dead, and the reveal of Zoe, the story of Lochley's youth and how it still haunted her was great. And I took the additional tidbits we were given about Lochley - for example, that she speeks a little Centauri - and used them in fanfic. And I loved all three of her Crusade episodes. Meanwhile, Ezri's scenes in the opening s7 three parter are just what the doctor had ordered to get me and Sisko out of post-Jadzia gloom, Nicole de Boer had a knack for projecting likeability, and the story with Worf worked on a "exes who don't get together again because they realize they're (literally) different people now, but people who know each other still really well and thus can be each other's confidants" for me. If there's ever a Star Trek: Sisko show the way there was Star Trek: Picard, I do want to meet Ezri again and find out who she has become in the intervening decades. Especially without the writerly pressure of having to present her in a last season situation.

In conclusion: not having written a multi season tv show set on a space station with a big ensemble and multiple storylines, I'm not sure what I'd have done when faced with the need to replace a popular character with only one more season to go, whether I'd taken the Ezri Dax or the Elizabeth Lochley solution, and whether all those things I as a watcher concluded should have been done differently would have occured to me as a stressed out writer. But these are my thoughts on a character comparison.

The other days

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January Meme: More thoughts on Andor

2023-01-25T16:42:41Z

Due to having a frightfully busy week, I'm late again, but here we go. More thoughts on Andor, asked for by scintilla10.

( Spoiler cut, just in case )

The other days

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January Meme: A Midsummer Night's Dream

2022-01-20T14:04:35Z

watervole asked me to talk about A Midsummer Night's Dream, a performance of which, starring the late Gareth Thomas, we both watched together. (In tandem with James Barrie's play Dear Brutus which it partly inspired and with it shares some themes.) Now because I attended an entire class about this play in my university days, I saw a lot of live and filmed performances as well as some movie versions, and I can easily ramble on about it. In Sandman, Neil Gaiman uses the idea that A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest are the sole two Shakespeare plays whose plot doesn't have an obvious source (be it another play or prose) to let these plays be written by Shakespeare for Morpheus, the King of Dreams, in payment for getting his poetical gifts unlocked. He's not the first or the last writer to bring these two plays into context; both have magic, play-within-a-play structure, characters who double as directors putting on a show in more than one sense, and comments on the theatre itself in the text.

The Dream is the more popular of the two (though it also has its haters, like Restoration diarist Samuel Pepys, who wrote in his journal that it was the most insipid thing he ever saw). I saw it first when I was still in school and my hometown's theatre put it on. I only remember a few details: the actors playing Oberon & Titania als played Theseus & Hippolyta (something that happens a lot and only is tricky at one point where the fairies come on stage directly after Theseus and Hippolyta leave, and it spares a provincial ensemble two extra actors), there was a lot of overt homoerotic subtext between Oberon and Puck (when I later saw productions where Puck was either made up to look like a youth/child or like a hobgoblin, I was startled because of that first impression - the actor from my hometown was just dressed in green and very much an adult when fondling and rubbing himself against Oberon's legs), and the most prominent actor of our ensemble played Nick Bottom (go figure). In contrast to the majority of more recent productions, Oberon, who is the successful director in this play as opposed to Peter Quince who tried to direct but finds his star taking over, was definitely presented as the play's winner, getting all he wanted by the end, with the overall production implying this was how harmony gets restored. That was in the 1970s; Oberon as the clear winner is also what Max Reinhardt's 1930s film version presents. (A Midsummer Night's Dream was one of Max Reinhardt's most famous theatre productions in both pre and post WWI German theatre, and he toured the world with it; alas, by the time of the Hollywood film, he was old, film wasn't his medium of choice anyway, and what so many attendants of the stage productions had described as the most perfect theatre magic they ever watched comes across as very stagey and creaky glitter on film.)

In the early 1990s, when I was at college and attending that Dream-devoted class, that was changing. The stage Oberons in the productions we were studying tended to, via some pantomime or redistributed lines, at the very least share their win, and more often it was Titania who took them back. Meanwhile, Theseus, whether or not he was played by the same actor as Oberon, went from standard (and not interesting) gracious Duke - this play's Athens being the most Elizabethan place imaginable - to taking on more villainous colors, as people started to examine the implication of him having defeated Hippolyta in war before marrying her. I don't think I ever saw Fascist!Theseus before the most recent RTD tv film, but I did see several Colonialist!Theseus versions.

The young lovers were probably the characters where the interpretations least vary through the many productions I saw. Well, except in quite how harshly Demetrius treats Helena when she chases after him, but other than that. (Again, the RTD film was the first production I saw where Lysander and Demetrius came across as two distinct personalities to me, and which had Lysander fall for Demetrius instead of Helena first when the magical love drop business starts.) In more recent productions, the lines that near the end of play make the lot of them sound like the type of aristocratic snobs Shakespeare must have known a lot of as they make fun of the mechanicals get either removed or redistributed to Theseus (if it's Villain!Theseus time, though he in the play is the only not to not make fun of the actors). Given that the lovers earlier sounded almost exactly like Pyramus and Thisbe, overwroughtness included, I always thought that them mocking the actors both was a comment on how we never recognize our reflection and Shakespeare making fun of himself to boot, since Romeo and Juliet preceded this play, and when he has the mechanicals declare that while Pyramus and Thisbe are dead, their parents are now reconciled, he's definitely spoofing himself rather than the Ovidian tale (which says nothing about the parents reconciling).

But there's a reason why our leading actor back in the day didn't go for Oberon and certainly not for one of the young lovers, but for Nick Bottom. "Let me play the lion, too" Bottom is both a great reflection on a star actor and a perfect part for one, and here I've seen the most variations, from Dream to Dream. I've seen Bottoms who are good natured and Bottoms who are bullies towards their fellow mechanicals, especially Peter Quince, Bottoms who turn out to have genuine talent when they play Pyramus, and Bottoms who are hamming it up to the nth degree. The encounter with Titania maintains its charm through most productions because while Titania might be ensorcerelled, Bottom, his good opinion of himself as an actor not withstanding, does respond to her compliments with the matter of fact statement that he doesn't quite see why she has this opinion, but okay, and responds to the high flown poetry with good natured prose instead of pouncing on her. (Whether Titania does more than kiss and stroke him varies from production to production, but in the ones I've seen, the initiative is always with her.)

There's quite a lot of magical roofying going on, and the play isn't particularly bothered by consent questions regarding this. (See: Demetrius still under the spell when everyone wakes up.) That Oberon does this to Titania in order to get the better of her in an argument - and not by using the magical flower to make her hopelessly in love with himself, but with a creature he sees as grotesque, to humiliate her - is a disturbing quality of many the play has, and one that's hardly remedied by him feeling sorry for her and lifting the enchantment - after she handed over the "Indian boy", the symbol of their quarrel. The boy is another element that increasingly doesn't seem to make the cut in modern productions. Why does Oberon want him? Why is Titania first so insistent on keeping him as the child of her dead friend and then, once the magic is lifted, no longer waste a thought on him? There's the association of fairies stealing children, of course - which btw Gaiman also uses in Sandman - and it all contributes to making the woods, and the fairies, so powerful and disturbing a storytelling element. Victorian depictions not withstanding, they're never, in any sense, safe.

There are all kind of theories as to whether the play was written for or premiered at an aristocratic wedding, and I've seen productions using this idea, too, with yet a third framing. There is a passage - when Oberon tells Puck about the story of the magical flower - that's assumed to be a compliment to Elizabeth the Queen, the "fair vestal throned in the west":

A certain aim he [i.e., Cupid] took
At a fair vestal thronèd by the west
And loosed his love shaft smartly from his bow
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts.
But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft
Quenched in the chaste beams of the wat’ry moon,
And the imperial votress passèd on
In maiden meditation, fancy-free. (II.i.)

If you believe many a historical novelist, it's also an allusion to the spectacular masques and plays Leicester, Robert Dudley, Elizabeth's most enduring favourite, put on for her visit at Kenilworth, and which a child William Shakespeare may or may not have seen if he with some other Stratfordians walked from Stratford at Kenilworth. (It's doable.) You even have people theorizing that if this passage is a compliment to Elizabeth, the Titania/Nick Bottom affair is a critique, since Elizabeth-as-the-Fairy-Queen certainly was an established trope by the time Shakespeare was an adult, and none of her favourites, with the exception of Essex, was ever popular with the people. Personally, I don't quite see it, mostly because Bottom is not aiming for his fairy queen's favor and is generally a figure of sympathy throughout the play, and if you want to critisize supposed bad favourites, you don't make the audience love them. (Shakespeare was far too much of a pro not to know any audience will love Nick Bottom.) But it's certainly easy to imagine Elizabeth's court watching this play, laugh, and ever so slightly remain disturbed, not quite sure what exactly they have seen, any more than the characters in it are.

The other days

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January Meme: Which Torchwood character is like Buffy, which is like Faith?

2022-01-02T18:07:10Z

itsnotmymind asked: Which Torchwood character is most like Buffy the Vampire Slayer? And which is most like Faith?

I don't think they map exactly, especially since both Buffy and Faith change throughout the show(s). (Plural since Angel the series has important Faith character development.), so it's also a question of "Buffy and Faith at which point?" You can, however map individual traits and situations.

( Spoilers for both Torwchood, BTVS and AtS follow )

The other days

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This isn't normal, either

2020-06-23T05:14:43Z

I had a couple of stressful weeks - not in a bad way, I hasten to add, but there was a lot of work to be done - so now and then, I dipped into popcorn tv, so to speak, which in my case was the first season of The Flash. (Having encountered the titular character in the Supergirl crossover episodes.) And by and large, it fulfilled its purpose of giving me some charming distraction. But one aspect, which isn't particular to The Flash, kept nagging at me, precisely because the more I think about it, there more it seems to be everywhere, and it's this: when exactly did it become normal that the heroes of the show - and not grimdark type of antiheroes,mind - keep various foes with supernatural abilities in tiny, tiny prison cells without any visible hygeniec facilities, and of course wiithout any preceding trial or any kind of legal justification?

I mean, there's always been Arkham Asylum (usually for villains to break out of), I know, but as far as I recall Gotham - which is meant to be a dark city - does go through the bother of legalities before sending people there. But when, on the Marvel side of the force, both in the comics and the film version of Civil War there were (still government run) prison sites for the meta humans off shore, this was meant to come across as disturbing. Otoh,Agents of SHIELDS is cool with its main characters keeping prisoners this way. (Not just if they have supernatural powers.) In Supergirl, our heroine works with a black ops organisation that imprisons various of her defeated foes this way, and in The Flash (first season), our hero puts his in the basement of his billionaire sponsor, essentially. Moving out of the franchise, the series Sanctuary has our heroine and her team offer both protection and imprisonment (depending on the supernatural being in question), and while that's at first done with some loose government connection, and later not so much, in neither case did I spot someone's lawyer ever visiting the facilities in question.

I mean, I get some of the Doylist logistics here: the creative team doesn't want to kill off every single villain (especially in canons where the main characters are supposed to be optimistic, humane heroes), and they've established that the villains in question have abilities that would allow them to break out of normal prisons easily. But even the X-Men movieverse, which isn't supposed to present a mutant-friendly environment, lets the government solve this in the case of a captured Magneto in both the original movies and the prequels by locking him up in a specially adjusted facility after a trial. (And everyone knows where he is.) Since the first round of X-Men movies predate 9/11 and the prequels are set earlier than them, I'm now wondering whether this current tendency to just accept that good guys have the right to deprive bad guys of any civil rights whatsoever - without this meaning to characterise the good guys in question as morally ambiguous, mind - is a by product of the post 9/11 development. Not that black ops sites weren't run before, in both pop culture and reality, but the people running them were usually not depicted as a bright and cheerful lot.

Yes, no one expects much realism from superhero shows. But. In season 2 of Babylon 5, one of my favourite episodes, In the Shadow of Zh'adum, has Garibaldi - who definitely sees himself as a law and order man and also is pro death penalty - quitting his job when Captain Sheridan insists on first arresting Morden and then keeping him locked up without being able to charge him with anything. Now, the audience knows that Sheridan's suspicions are indeed correct, Mr. Morden is Up To No Good, and does have information on what happened to Sheridan's wife (which is why Sheridan does this to begin with). How Sheridan acts in this episode is still depicted as wrong by the narrative, one of the few times the show does this to its leading man, and Garibaldi's reaction - the refusal to keep following an order he perceives as unlawful and unethical - as right. (That his aide Zack Allen then complies with Sheridan's order fits with Zack's development at this point of the show.) What I'm getting at here: it's entirely possible to make a sci fi show (or fantasy) and still recall, if said show isn't given an historical setting, that human rights aren't a privilege revoked when you're a villain. At least not if you simultanously want your heroes to come across as defenders of justice.

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January Meme: Silver Thoughts

2020-01-02T17:22:55Z

While it's been now two years since I've (re)watched an episode - must remedy that - , my Black Sails love remains as strong as ever, so when maplemood challenged me to talk about any Black Sails character, and I've covered Max-Anne-Jack, as well as storytelling in general, so: John Silver, Black Sails edition, and his relationship with Flint.

( Spoilers don't want spoil potential new watchers )

The other days

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In a land of myth and a time of magic...

2019-07-15T15:38:59Z

This year, Amazon Prime put up the Guy Ritchie King Arthur in my part of the world. Which is so awful that I didn’t manage more than twenty or thirty minutes before giving up. But it did inspire me to a Merlin rewatch for the first time since s5 ended. These last weeks, I managed to squeeze in the entire show, from the pilot to the finale, only skipping two or three episodes which I dimly recalled as too awful and/or boring. But I still found myself ridiculously charmed all over again.

( Spoilers for the once and future show and fanfiction plans )

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Timey-Wimey indeed

2019-04-26T08:04:12Z

Disclaimer: So I couldn't resist checking out some other reactions after all, and prompty ran into heated debates. Before beating a hasty retread, however, my mind was set in motion regarding some key points dealing with time travel. Which it probably shouldn't, given any given time travel plot in any franchise usually does not bear close examination, but hey. Sometimes my inner fan can't resist. I'm not saying my interpretation is the One True One or more valid than your interpretation, just that it's mine, and also a factor as to why I liked the movie. Also, spoilers for Avengers: Endgame ensue, of course.

( Let's do the time warp again )

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selenak @ 2019-04-14T14:04:00

2019-04-14T12:07:39Z

Since we won't get any new Doctor Who this year (whyyyy?), I've been randomly rewatching parts of the Moffat era as well Thirteen's first season. This didn't cause me to come to any new conclusions (the Twelfth Doctor seasons are my favourite of Moffat's reign, Chibnall's first season is enjoyable without being spectacular), but it reminded me of a great many things I love about the show. (And also made me re-listen to some Big Finish stuff for good measure.)

Another old conclusion that got revived by rewatching: other than The Doctor's Wife (because Doctor/TARDIS OTP, of course) and big anniversary special The Day of the Doctor, my not so secret favourite episode of the Eleventh Doctor part of Moffat Who might be Amy's Choice, and I maintain it's one of the most underestimated ones, possibly because Simon Nye, who wrote it, was neither the show runner nor a famous guest writer like Neil Gaiman.

To re-capitulate: Amy's Choice has a deceptively simple premise: seemigly two realities with our heroes having to figure out which one is the true one. Since one of them has Amy and Rory living in their hometown years post Doctor, and Amy's pregnant, and the other has Amy and Rory plus the Doctor in the TARDIS where last we saw them, this at first seems very obvious. But wait! There are increasing hints that the "meanwhile, on the TARDIS" reality is not quite right, either. Also, there's an entity calling himself the Dreamlord around, viciously played by Toby Jones, goading our heroes in both realiities, with special venom reserved for the Doctor. (Who figures out who the Dreamlord must be quite early on, not least because "there's no one else who hates me that much".) (No, not the Master or Davros.)

The episode works for me on various levels; on a technical level - both realities are increasingly weirder, and the stakes feel ever more threatening, plus the only way out is a threat in itself - dying in one reality, which, if it is the "false" one, means you wake up in the real one, but if you choose wrongly, you're dead . But even more so on a content level, and as a character piece. This was the first episode where I felt I had a grip on who Amy was as a character, and to me, it's hands down one of the best investigations into the darker, murkier sides of the Doctor's personality and consciousness the show ever did. This despite the fact this isn't one of those episodes where we get presented with an "evil" Doctor a la the Valyard in Old Who or "Mr. Clever" in the New Who episode Nightmare in Silver, or an opponent designed to mirror the Doctor's darker impulses without the positive ones (with the orignal conception of the Master but the the most prominent but by no means the only one of such examples), or even the Doctor in a mixture of hubris and nervous breakdown (The Waters of Mars comes to mind). No, in Amy's Choice, the Doctor tries to save the day, as he always does (and eventually succeeds in that), and doesn't commit any ethical violatations while doing so, and no one but our three main characters is threatened, the stakes aren't a planet, let alone the universe.

And we're still treated to that ruthless look at his subconcious for the entire episode. That it's not the Doctor in extremis but the Doctor on a regular day is fundamental to its success as such a look, imo. And now I have to get spoilery. ( Hell aren't always other people. )

That this particular episode is such a favourite for me probably also explains why I didn't fall in love with the Moffat era until Capaldi's Doctor came along, because in general it's rather atypical for the Eleventh Doctor seasons. These were themselves a counterpoint to the previous melodrama-heavy end of the RTD years, and thus the Eleventh Doctor in general definitely counts as one of the "lighter" Doctors. (I don't mean that as a criticism; it really was necessary at the time.) But while I don't want grimdark Who, I do like a certain sharpness in my Doctor characterisation along with the whimsy, some capacity for disturbing mixed in with the capacity for kindness. And Capaldi's Doctor was ideal for in this regard. He wasn't one note about it and developed in his three seasons; the Twelfth Doctor as he was with Bill in his last season was a great deal kinder to most people he encountered than the Twelfth Doctor in his first season with Clara, when she as well as he were wondering whether or not he was a good man, for example. But both Twelve in his early episodes and in his last ones just before regenerating felt like a version of the Doctor capable of being both, the "idiot in the box" and the "oncoming storm". Which is what makes the character so interesting to me.

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The past is another movie, they do things differently there

2019-03-20T06:52:42Z

I think trobadora put her fingers on why I enjoyed the new Captain Marvel movie without loving it in her review here. It got me thinking about another example where a set up that was, in theory, ideal to explore torn loyalties, inner character conflict, identity issues, fleshing out the antagonists (without excusing their deeds) was simply ignored because that wasn't what the movie wanted to be about, to wit: Star Wars: The Force Awakens with Finn.

It bears repeating: making one of the main characters a deserting storm trooper was, by itself, a brilliant idea. But then the movie went out of its way not to do anything with it. It gave us a throway line of dialogue to make it clear that despite having been raised a storm trooper, Finn never before the opening assault of the movie took part in any battle but worked in waste extraction. (So there's no blood on his hands.) The only other storm trooper we see him interact with in two movies so far is Phasma, and there's nothing but mutual loathing between them. He doesn't appear to have made a single friend throughout his life pre movie, and yet the way he interacts with Poe and Rey isn't that different as if he'd had Luke's backstory of growing up a farmboy on a backwater planet instead.

Now, I don't think I'm being unfair if I speculate that the reason for this is that the sequel producers and writers wanted to keep the storm troopers as easily killable canon fodder. (For similar reasons, I bet that whatever this new Amazon series set in the Lord of the Rings universe will include, it won't be a single orc deciding to go vegetarian and/or to hell with fighting.) If they'd shown Finn conflicted about going up against his former comrades, despite having come to regard their cause as utterly wrong, if they'd shown some of his former comrades hesitating before shooting, then you get Kevin Smith's famous "how many workers on the Death Star when Luke blew it up?", but in earnest. They wanted a feel good action movie without any divided feelings about the heroes' victory at the end, not something that goes "good that the day and the innocents were saved, but how sad that these characters who maybe could have changed sides just as Finn did in other circumstances are dead, too". (And they definitely did not want Finn pondering his personal responsibility for having served a fascist regime in the past, complete with flashbacks to him as part of a unit bullying and shooting people.)

( Spoilers about Captain Marvel to follow )

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February Shipping Post: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield

2019-02-04T20:44:18Z

Since I need fannish joy in my life and since apparently February is the month for ship posts: my recent return to Middle Earth has also reassured me regarding my inner slasher. More recently, there has been many a ship, both m/m and f/f, which I either couldn’t see or which didn’t appeal to me. But say what you want about the Tolkien & Jackson cinematic combination, they bring on the homoeroticism. (Also unexpected het couples, see Gandalf/Galadriel. Plus I’m fascinated by Tauriel & Thranduil both as an ampersand and a /, the later if it’s a slow burn.) When I was a young reader, I loved various of the friendships and was fine with, say, Eowyn/Faramir (yes, it happened fast, but he was Worthy), but it wouldn’t have occured to me to ship in the sense of seeking out fanfic, or wanting the characters to have more romance in between the platonic handholding. Fast forward a few decades, and not only did Sean Bean as Boromir plus the Philippa Boyens/Fran Walsh scriptwriting suddenly make me love a character whom I had been indifferent to, but I suddenly shipped him in every sense of the word with Aragon. (Whom I also felt much stronger about on screen than I had on the page.) The hobbits I loved in either incarnation, though I thought that maybe they were too, hm, cute for jaded old me to ship them?

The Hobbit movies a decade later proved me wrong in this regard. (And I’m even older now!) I fell for Thorin/Bilbo, hard, and, going by my Middle Earthian expeditions in recent weeks, am staying smitten. This, mind you, is a movieverse only thing, since both Thorin in general and the relationship Bilbo has with him have been significantly altered from the novel.

Again, part of it is certainly the actor: as with Sean Bean, so with Richard Armitage. But it’s also the writing. Overall, if a relationship appeals to me so strongly I need to see both parties getting something from it that is unique in their lives. Doesn’t mean they don’t care for other people and/or causes, strongly, too, but for me to root for a pairing, they more often than not need to challenge each other in a particular way.

( Cut for length of ramblings about a hobbit and a dwarf )

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January Meme: Concerning Fannishness in Rivers of London

2019-01-29T09:58:23Z

I promised falena a Rivers of London meta, but I wanted to read Lies Sleeping, the latest novel, first, and I didn’t have the chance until now. Btw: the novel very much has a series or season finale feeling, wrapping up several storylines – prominently the Faceless Man and why Lesley did what she did -, and as such is pretty action-packed. It also provides background on one of the earliest villains of the saga, uses London architecture as well as ever and Peter Grant remains one of the most likeable suburban fantasy protagonists around. In conclusion: I liked it very much.

However, the reveal of the Faceless Man’s masterplan also got me thinking about something that nipped at me in the previous novel, The Hanging Tree, where we find out the Faceless Man’s identity as well. To wit: one of the several qualities which make Peter so likeable is that he’s an unabashed geek and fanboy, throwing out the references quick and fast. As andraste recently pointed out re: Murderbot novels, this seems to become an increasing thing in fantays and sci fi – the fellow fan protagonist. Otoh, it’s worth pointing out that the Faceless Man is as big a fan, especially heavy with the Tolkien references, and his ultimate master plan is very much a fanboy thing (the most fanboy thing in an ongoing popular series since the Trio were the main antagonists in Buffy‘s sixth season), and so I wonder whether Aaronovich, while continuing the fannish love declarations via Peter, also pulls off a critique of (part of) fandom, some trope setters and indeed current day Britain alike.

( Big spoilers beyond this point )

The other days

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January Meme: Traits of great historical fiction

2019-01-18T10:11:53Z

To start with the obvious: interesting characters and a gripping narrative, as with all novels. No matter how well researched the background of a novel is, if the author can‘t make its characters come to life for their readers, it won‘t work. Also, it‘s no use to say „but it happened that way!“ about implausible historical events. The story has to be told in a way that makes its readers, or in the case of theatre plays, tv shows and movies, its watchers believe what is happening based on its own merits.

( Read more... )

The Other Days

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January Meme: Female Leadership on Star Trek: Discovery

2019-01-13T13:43:58Z

One of the pleasures of Star Trek: Discovery is the great number and variety of female characters – Michael and Tilly as regulars, Katrina Cornwell, L’Rell and Georgiou as recurring. As different as they are: Every single one of them is an ambitous carreer woman either in a position of leadership or wanting to get there.

( Spoilers for the first season beneath the cut )

The Other Days

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January Meme: Thoughts about Saru (from Star Trek: Discovery)

2019-01-08T13:17:19Z

The various incarnations of Star Trek have included at least one alien (as in non-human) character among their regulars ever since Spock turned out to be so pivotal to TOS‘ success. Some of these characters provided outside povs or worked as bridge characters between different cultures; several, though not all of them were used to explore the alien culture which produced them. (Spock, obviously, but also Worf – arguably TNG was the single individual Trek show who in terms of on screen canon did most to develop the Klingons from evil enemy race to the space Vikings with their own mythology, customs, and political history they became -, whereas Dr. Phlox on Enterprise and Neelix on Voyager were prominent ensemble characters, but their respective people never got that much attention. (Enterprise‘s big contribution to the ST verse in terms of deepening/developing an alien race were the Andorians via recurring guest star Shran, whereas Voyager did the outsider pov angle with both the Doctor and Seven of Nine, not Neelix, and went for established people like the Vulcans, the Klingons or even the Borg rather than the Talaxians when it came to featuring/exploring more of their culture.) DS9, by its very setting on a Space Station, was something of an exception in that there were fewer human than non-human characters around, but even so, Bajorans were getting explored primarily, though not exclusively via Kira’s storylines, Ferengi via Quark (and family), and so forth.

Star Trek: Discovery has Saru, who isn’t the only alien on the bridge but by far the most prominent one and indeed a main character on the show. His people, the Kelpians, are new to the ST-verse, i.e. they’re getting established through him, which means that in this, he’s in a similar position to Spock on TOS. Otherwise, though, his narrative function (as of Discovery‘s first season, and of course subsequent seasons can change this) strikes me as very different, not least because Discovery is the first ST show in which the Captain is not the leading character; Michael Burnham is, which means that the alien character is not the lead’s subordinate (no matter how friendly they are), but at different points her rival, equal or superior, which already makes for a different dynamic before we bring the personalities into it.

Then there are the first basic traits of Kelpians the audience learns about, the baseline from which the individual personality gets developed, if you will. With Vulcans, via Spock, it was the Vulcan insistence on logic over emotion (which makes inevitably the majority of Spock’s dramatic scenes those where this is challenged), Klingons are a warrior culture (so a great many of Worf’s dramatic scenes are those where he has to figure out how to reconcile his idea of his culture – with Worf’s, there’s the additional complication that due to having been raised by humans, he in many ways is more Klingon than Klingon precisely because he never lived in the Empire beyond his early childhood – with also being a Federation officer ), with the Ferengi, it’s greed (so again, the Ferengi characters are put in situations where this is challenged), etc. With Kelpians, it’s fear.

( Spoilers for the first season abound )

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