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

In which, as is traditional in the one before the finale, all kind of things go to hell.

( Spoilers are now worrying about the life span of one particular cast member )

In which Ed Baldwin continues to be infuriating on all levels.

( Spoilers are illustrating the 'die a hero or live long enough to be a villan' proverb )

I just found out Disney will do an adaption of the Shardlake mysteries by C.J. Sansom, aka my favourite novels set in the Tudor era bar none. The current idea is a season per novel, and they've started on filming the first season based on Dissolution . There's one immediately obvious big change for readers, i.e. Jack Barack will already be in this one, when in the novels he doesn't become Matthew Shardlake's sidekick until the second novel. But I can see the reason for this change - Barack is the second most important character in the series, he's far more interesting than Mark Roper, Shardlake's assistant in the first novel, in a climate where it's by no means guaranteed a show won't be cancelled if it's not an immediate success you'd want the audience to meet Barack and get introduced to the Shardlake/Barack dynamic right away. There's just one thing Roper does which Barack definitely won't do in the novel's big climax, but the result this has can be achieved in a different way. And I could see Cromwell, who asigns Barack to work with Shardlake in the second novel, do so in the first novel's case alreaady, so no problem there. Speaking of Thomas Cromwell, while Shardlake and Barack are played by up and coming actors who aren't yet internationally known (which is good, it means they can make the roles their own), Cromwell will be played by none other than Sean Bean. (Which I'm greatly looking forward for. Cromwell - spoiler for history - is only in the first two novels for obvious historical reasons, meaning he'd be in the first two seasons of the tv show -, and he's neither the Stalinist opportunist of older fiction nor the Renaissance superman from Hilary Mantel's trilogy; Sansom's Cromwell is an ambiguous character whom Shardlake might get disillusioned with but whom (and whose memory) Barack remains loyal to through all the novels, and a great role for Bean to play.

Of course, whether or not this tv show will work will stand and fall with the ability of the main actor. I haven't seen Arthur Hughes in anything yet, but his wikipedia page looks promising - he's played Richard III for the RSC, the first disabled actor to do so. (Matthew Shardlake's disability is an important part of his character and how people in Henrician England react to him. Not to say a not disabled actor couldn't have played it, or that a disabled character could only play characters who are disabled as well, but there are few heroes with a disability in fiction, Shardlake is one of them, and I like he'll be played by an actor who knows what it's like.) Age wise, he also fits, because Matthew Shardlake is indeed in his early 30s at the time of Dissolution. (If the show will indeed cover all the novels, there's plenty of time to age along with the character.)

The adaption is written by Stephen Butchard, who also wrote the scripts for the tv version of The Last Kingdom, and heightens my optimism. Both because I really liked The Last Kingdom, the tv show - much more than the novels - , and because one of the things I specifically liked about the tv show as that it dealt better with the female characters, fleshing them out, making them three dimensional. Like I said, I love the Shardlake novels, buuuuuut the first two novels aren't exactly stellar in that regard, either. In a different way than Cornwell's novels, I hasten to add. Shardlake is the anti Uthred in terms of his love life, or lack of same. Anyway, both Cornwell's and Sansom's novel are written in the first person, but one of the benefits of the visual medium is that we can get characters from outside the main character's pov, and I suspect Alice in Dissolution and Lady Honor in Dark Fire might benefit from this. (The later novels offer a greater variety of interesting female characters. Including an excellent Catherine Parr.)


For All Mankind 4.05: ( In which the past becomes the present in several ways. )

For All Mankind 4.03: ( Which I can't comment on spoiler free, so have an immediate cut. )

Napoleon: On a scale of Ridley Scott historical movies which go from being an unholy and not entertaining mess with good visuals (Kingdom of Heaven) via massively entertaining and good visuals but also full of historical nonsense (Gladiator) to actually good, both emotionally and intellectually captivating and giving the impression of having done their research, good visuals a given (The Last Duel), this one, alas, is on the lower end of the scale. And no, not because Ridley Scott glorifies Napoleon (he doesn't). Yes, he doesn't mention the reintroduction of slavery, but given everything else, both good and bad, he leaves out, that's really not a factor in why this film doesn't work for me. I mean, the battles he picked are predictably well done, and I suspect they were a big reason why he wanted to do the movie in the first place, but that's just not enough for a story, and the human element he chose to be the emotional red thread, the relationship between Napoleon and Josephine, just doesn't work the way he wants it to and only illustrates that it's anything but simple to do compelling "can't live with, can't live without'" type of co dependent relationships in a way that click (for me, it's imo as always). The classics are of course George and Martha in Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but to name a less famous and still excellent example of the trope: Ellen and Saul Tigh on Battlestar Galactica. Granted, that one had several seasons to flesh them out, and this is a movie, not a series, but still, I think the Tighs are a good example of what the movie wanted to show with its versions of Napoleon and Josephine. The Tighs on BSG' are bad for each other and they bring out genuine heroics and selflessness in each other. We see them argue and revile each other, we see them comfort and be tender with each other, and (very important this) we see them have fun as well as making each other miserable. Ellen cheats on Saul on a regular basis, but she also is ready to be tortured and die for him if needs be. (This is presented to the audience in a show, not tell way.) Saul goes to pieces without her. Meanwhile, Napoleon the movie wants us to believe Napoleon and Josephine are this kind of couple, but unfortunately the movie completely avoids showing us the two of them having good times (beyond having sex). At all. So "They're obsessed with each other" is a claim made without any emotional fodder as substance. This is not Vanessa Kirby's fault, who is charismatic and compelling as Josephine, but Joaquin Phoenix is so incredibly one note dour as Napoleon (I think we see him smile or laugh only twice in the entire near three hours movie, once during his wedding with Josephine), and the script avoids any mention of pragmatic reasons for Josephine to marry him in the first place (like the fact she was in debts and he was at this point clearly an up and coming star in the military, plus for all his faults, he was a very good stepfather to her children both in the human interaction and in the providing for sense), that the relationship just does not make sense on her part. At all. And this is literally the only relationship Napoleon has in the entire movie, with anyone, which means the movie falls apart on that front.

Seriously: never mind the fact mistresses once he's Emperor are mentioned briefly but not shown - letting Napoleon interact a bit with Josephine's children would have done wonders in terms of making him human, which isn't the same as excusing him, btw. Not only would it have been actually with a foundation in history, you could have done it without needing much additional screen time - think of the scene with Boromir teaching Merry and Pippin how to sword fight in Fellowship of the Ring, which is also used for Aragorn and Gandalf to have expositionary dialogue. As it is, he talks a bit with Eugene at the start, but Hortense isn't named in the entire film, you just see her in the background occasionally, and then they have a conversation after Josephine is dead and he's back from Elba. Also, the only brother of Napoleon's who is mentioned by name and shown is Lucien, and when that happened I first thought, good, it's the most interesting brother after all, but then Lucien disappears after the Brumaire coup just when the relationship gets interesting and is not seen again. He's still luckier than the other brothers and all of the sisters. No Pauline, no Elisa, no Caroline. (Never mind Napoleon handing over territory for them to rule.) (Also, Pauline was his favourite and the only sibling to visit him on Elba, proving she wasn't just seeing him as the source of family riches.) Mother Letitia, Madame Mère, has two brief cameos, and that's it. And the Marshals? Junot gets given an order by name at Toulon, and I tihink Marmont is mentioned somewhere, but that's it. If you don't know who Michel Ney was, he's That Guy With the Moustache Talking To Napoleon early in the battle of Waterloo. Also entirely about military matters, no sense of what type of relationship they have. (Jo Graham won't like that movie.) And then, connectedly, there are Napoleon and the soldiers. We get a scene, very briefly, en route to Russia of him handing out some bread to some of them, and that's the first and only time he does something that could be used to explain why they would believe he cares about them.

Sidenote here: Just so we don't misunderstand each other, I don't mean that Napoleon should have been shown as someone mourning for every soldier dying in his battles. I mean, by all means, film, make the point his ambition excells any consideration for human life. But there's a reason why he was incredibly popular with the army, and why he could return from Elba with no soldiers and pick up an army en route to Paris, with the Bourbons, who start out with an army, fleeing before he arrives. The film even uses one of the rl events that showcase this, but because there has been zero preparation for it until this point, it falls emotionally flat. The sequence of events as shown: Napoleon encounters one of the army units sent to intercept him. (This happened a few times, most famously with those commanded by Ney, but since Ney doesn't get either name or characterisation in this film...) He pulls off a "take up your sword again or take up me"', to use the Shakespeare quote from Richard III by facing them unarmed, coming closer and talking to them, saying he's not going to fight them, he misses them and wants them back, if they want to shoot him, go ahead, and the soldiers who start out aiming their guns at him end up calling "Vive l' Empereur" and defecting to him in totem. This does happen in the movie, but, like I said, because there's no preparation, and because Joaquin Phoenix plays Napoleon as someone whom you can't believe would be at any point be actually loved by his men, it just doesn't work. Meanwhile, the decades old film Waterloo, which didn't have Napoleon's entire career to cover or to prepare this, does it perfectly. Check out Rod Steiger as Napoleon showing Scott and Phoenix how it's done:




And Waterloo doesn't present Napoleon as the hero of the tale. He's an impressive antagonist, but he is the antagonist in that movie. Which also doesn't exclude his vanity and unwillingness to accept blame.

Another thing: Joaquin Phoenix is now the right age for Napoleon at Waterloo, but not for most of the movie, and especially not for young Bonaparte, who was in his 20s during final years of the French Revolution. This means not only Josephine but Barras (!!!!) look younger than Napoleon instead of older when he initially meets them. So, for that matter, does Marie Antoinette, because the movie in its introduction scene employs the very Anglophone shorthand for "French Revolution bad" by opening with Marie Antoinette's execution and Robespierre ranting in the convent before getting toppled in the next scene he shows up in. (About that execution: we actually have a sketch by David showing us MA on the way to the Guillontine, so we know exactly how she looked. In this film, she's wearing a blue dress and has long curly flowing hair, worn open, which, wtf? You don't need to be a historical expert to know why women (and long haired men, which was most of them in that time) had their hair tied back before a beheading. For God's sake.) Robespierre, btw, is aged up and looks like he's in his fifties instead of in his early 30s when he dies, but I guess that means he at least does not look younger than "young" Captain Bonaparte. The actor who plays Tallyrand (and has the distinction of getting three actual scenes being clever and negotiating) looks about the same age as Phoenix, the actor playing Fouché, who is in one single scene where he doesn't do anything but is named so we know he's around, looks like he's in his late 60s. In the time of the Directorate. In conclusion: given Phoenix was good as Commodus back in the Gladiator day, I understand why Ridley Scott wanted to work with him again, butr really: he shouldn't have. I'm not sure any actor on his lonesome could have made Napoleon interesting and human, given the script doesn't bother with any relationship but Josephine and fails to make that one believable, but maybe a younger actor and/or one with more facial flexibility could have saved something.

(I suppose Rupert Everett as Wellington near the end is having fun and it shows, but he's the only one in the movie. Which, to give credit where due, does emphasize there would not have been a victory for the Brits without the Prussians arriving in the nick of time, something not often emphasized in something created by an Englishman.)

In conclusion: for a truly interesting historical Ridley Scott movie dealing with French history, watch the Last Duel. Not this one. For a film with an interesting Napoleon which gets across both the charme and the inhumanity, without battles needed for the later, you could do worse than Napoleon and Me. For sheer battle spectacle, Waterloo, by all means, shot without GCI in ye olde days.

For all Mankind: First episode I watched in real time.

( What's up in 2003, Moonverse )

Bodies: six part miniseries on Netflix which follows in Dark's and The Devil's Hour footsteps by giving us a mystery plot across several different time eras with an overlapping ensemble. This one has four different eras - initially 1892, 1941, 2023 and 2053 - and four different cops presented with an identical naked dead body (a male one, in a most welcome change from the cliché). Each of them is given something of an outsider status - Victorian Arthur Hollinghead is a closeted gay man (as soon as I saw 1892, I knew they'd do this, because the 1890s = Oscar Wilde, obviously), 1941 Charles Whiteman/Karl Weissmann is a Jew dealing with antisemitism on a regular basis, 2023 Shahara Hasan is a Muslim woman (though here the reaction isn't within the force, it's exclusively shown outside of it, and a very minor part of the initial introduction, it's not otherwise relevant to her plot), and Iris Maplewood in 2053 can only movie because she has an artificial spine (or SPY'NE, as its called), which is plot relevant. ( Now it gets more spoilery ) As the plot progresses we and the characters start to realise how everything is connected. Here I have to say that my facial recognition evidently gets worse, because I didn't clock until it's pointed out that a character in two plot lines is identical despite said character being played by the same actor (just in different costumes and hair style).

What impressed me most about the antagonist, though, is that the show's motivation for said antagonist and the eventual resolution directly connected to it holds up in retrospect once you know the entire story and all the eras, and that it manages that tricky balance of explaining without excusing and yet also not doing the easy thing of letting the villain go insane and over the proverbial cliff so the heroes don't have to make a hard decision, and yet the solution is very humane and strangely optimistic about human nature. ( Spoilers once more! )

I had a few nitpicks - no one would leave their lights on in their apartment in 1941 with an impending bombing raid, and the show even calls that out in a later episode! how is (Spoiler) at the end in 2023, that doesn't fit, age wise? - but by and large I thought this was a well done miniseries with strong characters. Shahara Hasan was my favourite, but I ended up invested in all of them. Though "Know you are loved" will never not sound creepy to me again, I fear.

For All Mankind: Following the reccommendations, I marathoned the first two seasons of For All Mankind, aka what Ron Moore (and friends) did next (after BSG), which is an AU starting from the premise that the Soviets get to the moon first, therefore the Space Race doesn't end, and history starts to alter in small and big ways from therel. (One of the big ways being that as part of catching up with Soviet progressiveness in that regard, women enter the US space programm far earlier.) naraht has said this is also a soap opera, which is true, in a good way; the relationships drama certainly forms a solid part of the narrative, but it's expertly done. (So far.) Non-romantic relationships are treated as important both on a Doylist and Watsonian level, and while space exploration continuing in this AU is clearly a good thing overall, the show doesn't use the premise to solve all the rl problems; as of the second season, which is set in 1983, acceptance of same sex relationships hasn't moved faster than it did in rl, for example.

You can tell that Moore and several of the other scriptwriters cut their teeth in Star Trek long before Danielle quotes the TOS episode A Taste of Armageddon in the s2 finale by despite things getting pretty dark at times, humanity's better instincts prevail. Also by Starfleet NASA, by and large, being an organisation where most people, be they astronauts or engineers, are brave, loyal, and devoted to each other, so you get why people would want to join even beyond the romance of visiting the moon. (Though I have to say, congrats to the GCI department, all those space shots are gorgeous.) When they do fail each other (think Margo re: Aleida in s1), there's usually a good explanation, and also fate gives them another chance. (They get called out on it, though.) And you get all the space tropes - difficult landings, losing contact, being thrown of course, having to do repairs on a moving vehicle, etc. - even the spoilery thing I last saw on The Expanse and before that read in Arthur C. Clarke. One sign of how well the show worked for me: I was never tempted to fast forward through the Earthbound centric episodes but found them just as gripping.

Another thing which impressed me: several examples of the "both sides have a point" trope, viscerally so when Danielle visited her sister-in-law in s2.

Sometimes I wasn't sure whether I read the episode right, but then subsequent events proved the creative time knew what it was doing. For example: ( Now it gets too spoilery to talk about without a cut. )

Lastly: talking about a non space related change to rl events in this AU: John Lennon survives. This isn't a plot point but something of a recurring gag since he keeps popping up on tv briefly when people switch channels. Apparantly in this AU, John in response to the escalating Cold War gets back into peace activisim and organizes a big concert as part of this. Here my suspension of disbelief broke down, not re: the surival or the return to peace activism but the concert organizing. Look, he'd be terrific at promoting something like that, if properly motivated. But organizational skills and the patience and discipline it takes to get a mega event like that together... nah. Of course, Yoko did and does have organizational skills, but a mega concert in 1983 would have required diplomacy and talking various other superstars with big egos into it and hm, I just don't see her as Bob Geldof, either, is what I'm saying.


I also read Fortune's Favor, the third volume of Jo Graham's ongoing space saga The Calpurnian Wars. Like the previous books, this one introduces us to another of those planets in uncomfortable coexistence with the expansion-hungry Calpurnia (aka, ever more apparant, Space Rome). Speaking of AUs, it strikes me that one way to describe this saga is "the story of the late Roman Republic, but a) from everyone else's pov, and b) everyone else wins". In the last volume, we basically got space!Gaul winning against Caesar, and now it's Space!Egypt's turn, confronted with two of the conspirators (space!Caesar still got assasinated in between books), Cassian and Junia. Cassian is this volume's main antagonist, but as ever in this series, the attraction and narrative interest lies in our heroes and the setting and not in the imperialist menace du jour. In this case, our main character is Caralys, a courtesan, allied to one of the main influential families on Menaechmi. This book is also where characters from the previous volumes start to interact, so Caralys teams up with Bister from Sounding Dark and Boral from War Lady in order to a) rescue her lover's kidnapped son, and b) ensure her world's freedom from blackmail by warlord. It's a very satisfying adventure, and I had a particular soft spot for the subplot involving Caralys' lover and Boral. As for Caralys, impressive as her weaving threads together to get the rescue going is, my favourite scene of hers involves something that I think is incredibly difficult to pull off both on a Doylist and Watsonian level: confront a character who has given our pov every reason to despise them so far when they are down on their luck and react with kindness and insight instead of crushing them. In a way that doesn't come across as naive or doormat-like but as going to the core of the problem in a way that can make an actual change for the better instead of continuing a vicious cycle. Perhaps because of all the rl viciousness right now, I treasure such scenes and characters all the more.

Like the previous books, the novel does tell its own adventure, and you get the necessary information about Bister and Boral in it if you haven't read the two previous ones, but the narrative texture is much richer if you have. I really enjoyed it reading it, and am looking forward to the next story of the saga!

Lastly, a DS9 vid rec: The Wrong Side, a delightful and charming Garak/Bashir vid.