Let's roll some dice, watch some movies, or generally just geek out. New posts at 6:30 pm ET but only if I have something to say. Menu at the top. gsllc@chirp.enworld.org on Mastodon and @gsllc on Twitter.
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A while back, I talked aboutBrain Games on Disney+. It’s a great show, but there’s so much science behind how our brains work that close to 10 seasons can be overwhelming and time-consuming. Netflix’s The Mind Explained is a much more focused show — only two seasons so far — that’s a more manageable discussion of anxiety, focus, memory, and other aspects of neuroscience. The human brain is weird (some more than others), and this show does a good job of explaining that. It also targeted a specific issue that hits home for me. You may have a similar experience.
If you watch the episode on focus, maybe you can handle Brain Games. 🙂
Yesterday, I whined a bit, and I’m going to keep this going. I never thought I’d say this, but I’m really annoyed by Star Trek Discovery. It’s probably still better than The Animated Series, but The Animated Series shouldn’t be taken seriously by adults, so it’s got an out. Discovery, on the other hand, should be taken seriously, and it’s finally gotten so bad that I simply don’t like it.
The Triumvirate
As an old guy, I don’t like the way modern storytelling has proceeded. This is meaningless, as I’m no longer the target audience, but I’m going to share why that’s the case. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy represented the ethos, logos, and pathos of Starfleet, all wrapped up neatly in three characters. Focusing on only three characters has the advantage of developing those characters so thoroughly that the viewers’ appreciation of them is maximized. Modern writing focuses on far too many characters, which means there’s less plot and more minutiae. For example, we know that Chief O’Brien’s wife’s mother was born in 2269; we didn’t know Sulu was born in San Francisco until the fourth movie.
I experienced a similar issue with the TV show, The Flash. Among several issues with the show, one that drove me nuts was that over half the show’s runtime (I’m not exaggerating) had nothing to do with the main storyline. Instead, presumably because the writers weren’t talented enough to produce a complex story, over half of each episode had the characters 1) saying how much they loved each other; and 2) saying why they had to leave and never come back. As for number one, I’m all for character development — that’s the strength of the Triumvirate — but as Kirk once told Uhura, “Too much of anything, Lieutenant, even love, isn’t necessarily a good thing.” In this case, the “too much” isn’t character development itself, but rather how much of the runtime is dedicated to it. As for number two (huh-huh), there were a couple of characters that kept leaving “forever” but returning as soon as an actor needed another paycheck. It was maddening. (Note: The final straw for the Flash was a different issue altogether: A woman with no superpowers deflecting automatic gunfire with a sword. Even Deadpool couldn’t do that, and he’s utter deus ex bullshitina.)
This is what Discovery does. It spreads its development around the personal storylines of so many characters that the plot takes up almost none of the episode. This is easier writing, of course, which is probably why they write it that way. Most modern shows are like this, as have been past seasons of Discovery, but Discovery keeps adding characters, and it’s now unbearable.
The Characters
I know that Mary Wiseman, the actress playing Tilly, has caught a ton of grief for her continued weight gain. A lot of it has been mean-spirited, and I don’t like that. However, there’s something to be said for placing your trust in someone who’s clearly not physically fit to rise to the challenges Starfleet personnel typically face. In the real world, the US Army has engineers, doctors, and other specialized soldiers, and while they’re not all Ranger qualified, they must do PT and maintain a certain minimum level of fitness. There’s good reason for that. How does Tilly get around that? In season 3, they have her “jogging” around the ship and running laps around the physically fit characters. Is this because Mary Wiseman is in better shape than they? Nope. It’s because, well, the script says she does. Who cares if it makes sense? They want her to be one of the stars of the show, so . . . she just is despite everything cutting against it.
Her physical fitness isn’t her only issue. While I don’t like unqualified viewers flippantly diagnosing on-screen (i.e., make-believe) characters with conditions the scriptwriters don’t understand and probably don’t care to understand, it’s clear that the Discovery scriptwriters intend for Tilly to suffer from some mental disability, probably something along the lines of autism. This has been made exceptionally clear in the current season, where her condition has caused her to break inside. Rather than immediately remove her from duties, the script instead had David Cronenberg tell her that the mission she led showed how great she was. He completely ignored the fact that she created the hazardous situation in the first place, getting someone killed and almost costing the entire shuttle crew their lives. The scriptwriters could have written whatever unrealistic story of heroism they wanted, but they wrote that, and thought they were writing a success story.
The mission was a disaster, though at least the outcome was close to logical: Tilly’s incompetence led at least to one death. So, that particular scene was the worst of both worlds: It had Tilly “win” even though she shouldn’t have, yet their definition of “win” was laughable. There’s no good in there. None.
This is nothing new. For many stories on TV today, many characters succeed not because they employ the most effective and/or skillful path to success, but merely because the script says so. The writers want these incompetent and/or idealistic characters to succeed, so they just do. There’s no rhyme or reason to the success. They get what they want despite themselves, and that poor writing grates on me (as I’m sure mine does on you).
At least I’m self-aware.
Obviously, some of my concerns are generational, so they may not apply to you, but some of it is logical, and if there’s anything a Star Trek fan should demand of a Star Trek series, it’s adherence to logic. As good as its season-opening episodes have been, I think I’m tapping out on Discovery. I’d like to see how the actual main storyline plays out, but it’s not worth sitting through 40 minutes of drivel. Besides, it’ll probably be a cheap ending relying entirely on deus ex machina.
I hope Strange New Worlds turns things around. I haven’t anticipated a Star Trek series this much since The Next Generation.
I recently took to to social media to whine about how disappointed I am with Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s final season.
@nbcbrooklyn99's last season is exactly what I expected: terrible. Because of the strict limits the writers place on their comedy, they ran out of material long ago. Each season is more tedious than the last due to fear of being funny. This is the future of #comedy. #Brooklyn99
— Rob Bodine, #Attorney by Day, #Nerd by Day & Night (@GSLLC) August 29, 2021
This led to a quick back and forth. Two friends agreed but characterized the failure as jumping the shark. I don’t think they’re wrong, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. There are very few new ideas under the sun. Moreover, as I reminded you on Monday, there are only seven stories one can tell. While there can be other factors, putting this together, jumping the shark occurs when the stories a show can tell run their course among their particular set of characters and settings. In other words, the combination of characters, settings, and stories grow stale even if, as with Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Office, and Parks & Recreation, the show has talented writers. It often manifests itself with desperate attempts to try something new that stray too far from the show’s premise. When Happy Days did this, it gave the phenomenon its name.
Now that comedy is being killed by a small minority of the perpetually and intentionally outraged, writers are afraid to take any risks, giving rise to a new way in which jumping the shark manifests. They don’t just take stupid chances to keep the show interesting. They also choose to exclude a wide variety of available stories for fear of losing their positions in the industry due to the controversy they cause. That means that shark-jumping occurs far earlier in the life of a series (c.f., Community), and it manifests as recycling the same tired themes with only meaningless differences from episode to episode.
In my humble opinion, with only a few exceptions, Brooklyn Nine-Nine started to lose its originality somewhere around season three, which isn’t even halfway through its life. (I keep watching because I can’t help but finish things I start.) Sure, we remained attached to some clever, well-delivered one-liners (Bingpot!), and the Halloween competition as a recurring theme, but overall the episodes, and even the characters’ personalities, grew tiresome and/or annoying long before the final season started. (I’ve wanted to punch Charles Boyle in the neck for months now.) The writers on that show both recycled themes and also, by the last season, strayed too far from the premise. I fear the stagnation of shows will only accelerate as we continue to fear those that are offended by everything. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the current crop of writers are among those demanding these changes. In that case, they’re wasting their own talent.
Much like another phenomenon that involves premature action, the cause is often psychological.
Two movies recently hit Paramount+. Yesterday, I wrote about A Quiet Place 2. Today, I’m really sad to report that Bill & Ted failed me.
I don’t think this is a case of growing out of the material. I’ve grown out of professional wrestling. I know what it feels like to just not care anymore because of who I am now. On the other hand, I haven’t grown out of Star Trek or Star Wars. Weirdly, I’ve absolutely grown out of the old Godzilla movies but love the new ones because I loved the old ones. I’m not sure that makes sense, but there it is.
This movie was atrocious. The pacing was terrible. The new characters were stupid. We all thought Station was stupid, but we didn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. We sucked it up and enjoyed Bogus Journey anyway. But here, I couldn’t do that. There were too may actors/characters added that were a second rate versions of the actors/characters they were replacing. What’s worse, the android was replacing Death even though Death was still in the movie. Death was a watered down version of his character in Bogus Journey, but my nostalgia kicked in and I was okay with that. But nostalgia couldn’t save this movie. Probably worst of all is that the heroes aren’t even Bill and Ted. Why did they name the movie Bill & Ted [anything] if Bill and Ted aren’t really the heroes.
It’s rare for me to be this disappointed in a movie that I want to love so much.
Two movies recently hit Paramount+, and I’ve been dying to see them both. First up is A Quiet Place 2. I’m not a fan of horror movies, so when a few of the typical horror tropes reared their ugly heads, it took quite a bit away from my enjoyment of the movie. As with all horror movies, people make stupid decisions just to advance the plot (lazy writing), and are then saved because logic always gives ground to the needs of the script. If that doesn’t bother you as much as it did me, then you may like this movie a lot more than I did.
That’s important, because I still liked (not loved) it despite these flaws. As much as I wanted to punch the main characters in the face, I found myself really caring for them. I wanted them to win. The opening act was also very tense, and while it didn’t answer all the questions we have, it gave us some more with which to work.
I should warn you that the movie doesn’t really have an ending. I guess that’s to make sure there’s A Quiet Place 3.
Last week, I watched season 2 of Ragnarok. I previously discussed season 1, which I think I liked more than I should have. I’m a sucker for mythology, so I sometimes give modern dramatizations a little more credit than they deserve (though this is not absolute). This certainly applies here. The acting was rather sour at times, and I’m not sure whether that’s because the English is dubbed. However, I haven’t seen a better representation of mythology on film than this show, and that’s despite the fact that it intentionally (and appropriately) takes the “gods” and “giants” in a different direction.
The premise is that the war between gods and giants never ends. Both groups are continuously reincarnated but in different ways. You learn in season 2 that the giants know who they are their entire lives, even as they take on new ones through reincarnation. However, because the gods represent the interests of humans, they possess or are reincarnated as (probably the former, but unclear) humans, taking time to remember/learn who they are. This creates a foot race. The giants are busy destroying the world (in the most modern of ways in this show), searching for evidence that the gods are returning. Once they learn that the gods are back, they race to complete their plans, or even kill the gods, before the gods gain their full strength. The complication for the giants are that they’re bound by the rules of the game, which doesn’t allow them to act directly at times.
See?Giants aren’t all that bad.
Despite getting to the action this season, there’s still character development in play. For example, there’s an obscure character in Norse mythology, Járnsaxa (don’t click the link if you don’t want to be able to infer spoilers), whose role took me by surprise. Her character was in front of my face for two seasons, and I didn’t recognize her until the last episode of season 2. Based on the myths, her presence is important to how the series should wrap up. Some new characters were “born” in this season as well, including two extremely important ones, Loki and … something else.
The actor playing Loki is no Tom Hiddleston — who is? — but he does a good job, and the writing for his character is as good as any I’ve seen for any god from any mythology ever on television or in the movie theater. He’s exactly what Loki is supposed to be, which is hard to fit into modern storytelling. He’s not evil. He’s not even always selfish. He’s . . . Loki. Moreover, Thor’s reluctance to remove Loki as a threat makes a ton of sense, just as it does in Norse mythology, but not in exactly the same way, because this show takes place today.
Season 1 was very slow — all set up — but season 2 really got us into the mythology. Unfortunately, it’s only six, 50-minute (or so) episodes. I wanted a lot more.
I can’t guarantee you’ll like it if you’re not a mythology nut like me, so as always, YMMV.
I’ve never been a fan of Star Trek: Voyager. It’s Star Trek, so it can’t be all bad, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s the weakest entry in the franchise. Star Trek used to be a morality play first, and bells and whistles second. Some of the later series have lost sight of that at times, and so have some fans, which is they’re loss as far as I’m concerned. However, I recently rediscovered season 2, episode 24, Tuvix, and it may very well be the most Star Trek of Star Trek episodes ever.
Spoilers ahead.
I’m assuming that the reader knows something about the series, though you need not know the series to understand the moral dilemma in play. Tuvok and Neelix are merged into a single person due to a transporter mishap. The resulting person, who calls himself, Tuvix, is initially more than willing to have himself separated, but the technology wasn’t there at the time. Two weeks (or so) later, Harry and the Doctor figure out how to do it, but by that point Tuvix has changed his mind (minds?). When Tuvix is told that there’s a “solution” to his “problem,” he essentially responds that he doesn’t want to be executed, and at one point refers to it as murder. He’s developed friendships and has smoothly resumed his professional responsibilities as tactical officer while occasionally cooking for the crew. In fact, there’s a synergy. It’s clear that he’s a better tactical officer and chef then he was before (though one might expect that he can’t do the work of two men).
Seriously, these are the spoilers.
Nevertheless, when Janeway makes the decision to separate him back into Tuvok and Neelix, the major players in the show: Paris, Chakotay, Kes, and Harry are all in agreement. There’s a logic to that sentiment; you can’t replace a relationship years in the making with a new guy who showed up two weeks ago. However, that doesn’t remove the underlying moral dilemma.
My personal view is that the separation was appropriate. Tuvix defended his right to live in part by arguing that Tuvok and Neelix were still alive in a sense by existing within him. That one fell on deaf ears for me, as you could turn that argument around on him. Once separated, Tuvix would exist in the same sense within the reformed Tuvok and Neelix. I think what puts me over the edge is that I feel like we’re choosing two lives over one, as Tuvok and Neelix still exist in my view. They’re essentially in prison.
But you can’t ignore the fact that Tuvix is, in all ways that we understand, a unique person with his own thoughts, feelings, and relationships, no less a person perhaps than a so-called “test tube baby,” but certainly as much as an android like Data, a life form created by technology rather than biology. Even within two weeks, he’s grown as a personality. Whether or not you think he should have been separated, this decision shouldn’t be easy. I was disappointed with how happy everyone (except Janeway and the Doctor) seemed to be when the separation was complete. To my knowledge, this episode was never brought up again later in the series. That’s a shame. I wish that a later episode of Voyager had required Janeway to reexamine her decision, perhaps giving her an analogous scenario where she went in the opposite direction. The fact that it didn’t is yet more reason to view the writing in Voyager as the weakest link in the franchise.
Tuvix is currently available to stream on Paramount+, Netflix, and Hulu (at least in the United States). Give it a watch.
I have no idea if anyone has ever discussed this before, but my uncle and I had this conversation during the Next Generation run (I’m guessing around 1991). His idea was that the shape of these ships was influenced by their need to maximize combat efficiency. As a result, the best chances a starship had of winning an encounter is to be oriented face first towards the opponents. The problem is that the opponents had the same design characteristic, and it was difficult to get either ship into a bad position when facing off before combat started. That seemed reasonable to me.
However, it was really about things not looking stupid, or more generally making sure the viewers understood what they saw. For example, there was an episode of Next Generation called Power Play in which the Enterprise approached the “southern polar region” of a moon. In space, the “south pole” is really meaningless, but okay, fine. They approached the south pole. Why did they orient themselves like this?
Look, I couldn’t find a screenshot, and all I have is MS Paint. (Dave, please let me know if you have a problem with me using this modification of your work.)
The ship was shown underneath the planet, still right side up, but up and down make no sense in space. Why isn’t the ship upside down? In the alternative, why isn’t the ship right side up but above the planet (thus reversing the y axis of the shot)? The answer, of course, is to communicate to the viewer that the ship is at the south pole without disorientating them. It’s just a TV show after all.
So yeah, it’s probably about things not looking stupid.
Not that this is a surprise at all, but clearly Star Trek exists in the MCU as a TV show and, most likely, movie intellectual property. So, for this fake Star Wars week, I link to a Reddit post with a couple of cels from a comic (which I don’t read) giving an example of this. I link because I don’t want to infringe copyright.
So what about some substantive content? Ok, I’ll come up with something.
Did Star Trek have an in-comic crossover with Marvel? Or was that DC or some indie comic company? If so, shouldn’t these references throw the Marvel universe into complete chaos? If so, would any of the characters even notice? It’s already pretty chaotic in there.
That’s all I’ve got. I’m really posting it because it’s new to me, and I found it funny. And relatable. I’m Dr. Doom in that cel.
These are my favorite two intellectual properties, so why not?
Play What You Want 