Happy New Year to my readers and everyone else! Hope you made it through the 2021 hellscape ok, though enlightened places like my beloved Texas didn't make out so bad. More to say later, just leaving you some food for thought for the nonce.

Soylent Green is PEOPLE.

There's No Place Like On The Air...For The Holidays...

 

    One of my IRL gigs is morning host for one of the local radio stations, in fact, the local NPR affiliate. Thing you need to know about NPR listeners, is that they do tend to be a smart, erudite, elevated crowd. But...they do self-estimate themselves to be on an even higher plane than they actually are. Which is why they absolutely take seriously certain notions, like a man can be woman because of his feelings, or that what happened Jan. 6 was an insurrection, no matter what the FBI said, or that Donald Trump's collusion with the Russians swung the 2016 election, no matter what Robert Mueller in the end said. So...it is what it is.

    So, today, I was doing my thing. And like any non-liner reading on-air type, I will noodle and freestyle a bit. I commented that the 12 Days of Christmas began today, the 13th of December, as I realized we have 12 days to Christmas, as of Monday morning. I warbled a bit about that on the air, some friendly, holidayesque on air improv, then was off to the next element.

    Well, lo and behold, I get an email from the station manager, forwarding an email from a listener. This listener caught my performance and wanted to make sure I was corrected in my errors, in that this was not indeed the 12 Days of Christmas. Those don't actually start until Christmas Day. As of a week ago, we fell into another season, the one before the musical 12, that being Advent.

    Honestly, I did not know how this actually fell, calendar-wise. But I also was not intending to be a fount of actual information, just doing some holiday thinking out loud.  She signed off with this...

"I just find that many Texans are confused about the 12 days of Christmas. I can't resist asking CALL LETTERS REDACTED to be more aware."

I appreciate you supplying the correction, ma'am. I in turn have to resist telling you to pull the stick out of your 4th point of contact on the air, and will have to merely thank you. Here, I will also thank you but also request, for the peace of the season, specifically your own, to lighten up.

Merry Christmas!  Ho ho ho.

 Star Trek vs Warhammer 40k

Even more than the Mirror Mirror Universe, the Warhammer 40k universe, with its myriad hostile xenos and a militant, fanatical anti-alien human empire beset on all sides by a universe determined to destroy it, the bright and shiny setting and utopian ethos of the Star Trek universe sees its negative opposite in this setting. A thread I perused on the Star Trek BBS broke it down thus...

BTW, been gone awhile, glad to be back. Lots has happened. We  will take time to catch up.

An ancient wormhole awakens that span the two realities. This is detected by a Rogue Trader, that travels through the wormhole to the Alpha Quadrant, say on the border of Federation space.

The Trader finds trouble with navigating and loses all FTL. They are found by a Federation scout ship. While somewhat suspicious of the visitors, the Fed captain renders assistance. The Rogue Trader realizes the idealism and squeamishness of the Feds, and puts his best face forward until he gets the engines attuned to the new reality.

They put in to a small Fed colony world and begin contact. The Rogue Trader's crew steals a replicator, and the resultant conflict kills a few Federation citizens. The Trader flees with its new found treasure, the Fed scout ship pursues but realizes its massively outclassed.

The Trader returns through the wormhole, and sells the device to a planetary governor for a small fortune. As he plans to return to find new wonders the Inquisition appears and puts him to the question. The Inquisition reports the findings to the High Lords of Terra. They garrison the wormhole, and send a small fleet through.

There a techpriest makes the necessary adjustments, but the fleet gets uneasy as the Navigators lose contact with the light of the Emperor, the Astronomicon. The Feds meet them and tell them to stand down, hoping for a successful diplomatic resolution. The Admiral of the Imperial battlefleet incinerates their small ships and pushes forward, with his directive to spread the word of the Emperor among these humans. At this point, it is believed that this is a lost colony, they lack the science to discover they've passed to a different reality.

A battle breaks out over the nearest large colony, which the Imperial Fleet wins. They send down the Space Marines and the Priests with their Sisters of Battle. The Feds retreat and call in their allies, the Klingons. Several more worlds are invaded. The 40K forces are overwhelming, but are impressed with several aspects of the Federation defense. Phasers make armor a moot point, and the Space Marines suffer unexpectedly high casualties. Transporters allow for an impressive mobile defense. Klingon shock troops fare well against the Imperial Guard, and earn respect from even the Sisters of Battle.

A few more battles occur, and while the Imperial ships are far more massive with greater weaponry, they are slow, working in an unfamiliar space, and they have little understanding of their own tech.

The Feds eventually manage a tech answer to equalize the relative powers of the fleets, as even with a Tech Priest they are far superior in their understanding and adaptability of the respective technologies. They successfully mine the wormhole with cloaked replicating mines, which the 40K ships have no way of countering. Some reinforcements get through due to the simple size of the ships, but all of them sustain damage.

The Imperium creates a bulge in space out from the wormhole, with dozens of captured minor colonies. One planet successfully revolts, as the Imperium fails to understand the power of phasers. They pull out the Marines and bombard it from orbit.

This incentivizes the Feds, and they start receiving support from some of the other powers, as a genocidal human Empire is not the long term interest of any other faction. The Federation/Klingon alliance manages to hold the line at a major planet, and the war becomes a stale mate as the Trek powers begin to build up their strength and the Imperium tries to solve the riddle of the mines.

At this point however enough Imperium humans are present to begin to realize the nature of the new reality. The Warp does not exist here, nor do Chaos Lords. Defections to the Federation begin to happen, at first intermittently, then with greater and greater frequency. The Federation is able to assimilate the tech that the Imperium is using.

A temporary truce is called as an Orc Waagh breaks out near one corner of the Imperium, a Chaos tainted uprising has to be purged, and a Necron Lord destroys several planets on the rim. When the Imperium finally gets enough momentum to continue, it sends a mighty array of ships with nova cannons to clear the mines with brute force. This succeeds. When they arrive they find that fully a third of their forces have rebelled, trying to break free of Imperial yoke. What’s more, cloaked probes have been sent through to the Imperium promising freedom from oppression for any group that can make it into Federation space.

They are forced to stop and perform additional exterminatas on both sides of the wormhole. In the meanwhile they are facing new Trek ships with enhanced weapons, as the centuries of weapon technology of the tech priests of Mars are incorporated into Federation and Klingon designs.

A hero Starfleet captain turns the tide in an epic battle, and the forces of the Imperium are called back. The Federation stops there, but the Klingons pursue. A boarding action on a shattered Cobra destroyer leads to a jump into the warp, and the Klingons see what happens when the Gellar field doesn’t protect the ship. A new type of daemon is born that day as the Klingons onboard are corrupted, but their message to the Klingon fleet shocks the superstitious warriors who return to Trek space.

And just as well, because the native uprisings due to the Fed psyops campaigns gets the full attention of the Imperium. They muster several Battlefleets and Space Marines chapters. Up to this point this had been the personal project of one High Lord of Terra, but now the Imperium has been aroused. Probes send back images of fleets far beyond anything the Federation had seen to this point. The Federation uses technologies it had gained in the decades long study of the Bajoran Wormhole to close the interdimensional breach once and for all, knowing that it barely survived a its war. However, this had been a mere probe by the Imperium. A Starfleet captain stares off into the rift as it closes, driven nearly to despair at the life the poor humans of that reality are imprisoned within.

Demiurge, Jun 16, 2012

#37

For those interested in the full thread... Warhammer 40k vs Star Trek | The Trek BBS

Star Wars-The Force Awakens: Returning Home In a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Hey, it's good to be back home again, as the late and remembered John Denver once said.  And, like John Denver, he's not the only 70s icon who is still remembered.  For Star Wars, which got it's start in 1977, it has the added virtue of never having left us. Forcefully bursting upon the American culture in 1977, it took up residence in our collective conscience.  Now global, though it has ebbed and flowed, it has never left.  Even through moments where the franchise seemed to have seen better days, the hunger for more adventures in that far away galaxy remain with us.  If the multiple movie money making records broken this weekend are any indication, the hunger is just as voracious.  But if it is one thing Star Wars fans are, more than hungry, it is vulnerable of heart.  The Prequel Trilogy got a decidedly mixed reaction from fans and those who hate, they hate deeply.  Disappointment aside, as well as expected wariness, many of these same fans despise the efforts and distrust the storytelling judgement of director/writer JJ Abrams.  JJ Abrams is the creator of LOST and the man who rejuvenated Star Trek. He is a fanboy for sure and master of the mystery box, the emotions of the moment and rapid fire scenes.  But some fans were concerned that his return to the Star Wars universe would be light and fluffy, full of image but bereft of logic and narrative flow.  Some of those fans point to Abram's treatment of Star Trek as evidence.  As financially lucrative as Abram's Trek films have been, some say they exemplify Abram's worst tendencies as a storyteller, to be more interested in the moment rather than the deeper narrative thread that connects them.

      However, that would not seem to be the case at all.  Star Wars The Force Awakens is a film with a sound narrative and mythic fantasy logic running through it that has run through the entire saga, that being destiny, family and the ongoing struggle between light and dark, but out on the physical world as well as deep within the soul.  Unlike Star Trek, which Abrams admits he wasn't a fan of before he became involved with the franchise, Abrams clearly connects with Star Wars on an intuitive personal level.  Though that is not a guarantor of a good story, that seems to be the case here and the critics seem to agree that Abram's stuck the landing, with the film rating 95 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.   

      The film begins thirty years after the end of Return of the Jedi.  One of the most controversial decisions Disney has made with their captaining of the Star Wars franchise was ditching the established Extended Universe (EU) trilogy, most notably its post-Jedi tales.  From Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire trilogy...

 ...forward, the fans already had a well-developed version of the SW universe going forward, with well developed post-Jedi elements, both in the personal lives of our beloved characters as well as the larger politics of the galaxy.  Zahn's books were a smashing introduction and it was those books that kept SW alive for many fans.  So when Disney did what it did, many raised loud voices of objection.  However, though Disney had logical reasons for doing this (a cumbersome quasi-official timeline they had no part in creating, the fact that many of the EU books are pretty bad), they did recognize the rich treasure trove the EU books and the elements it brought into being did offer.  So, when TFE does kick off, from the opening fanfare and crawl forward, it is clear the EU is not dead.  It is just, altered according to the muses of JJ Abrams and his co-creators.  For example, like in the EU, it is clear the defeat and deaths of Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader did not mean the end of the Empire.  In the EU, huge fleets, armies and occupied worlds still remain for the New Republic to contend with, with splinter factions of the former Galactic Empire squabbling for control.  In TFE, this is also true, with The First Order arising from the ashes of the Empire.  Another concept of the EU was that the Empire eventually started conscripting its enlisted forces, most notably stormtroopers.  Part of their training is submitting them to some kind of intense conditioning to ensure their loyalty and obedience.  One young, inexperienced trooper in his first combat engagement, finds that he does not have the stomach for gunning down helpless villagers and decides he needs to escape.  He enlists the help of a captured Resistance pilot and the two of them escape from The First Order and land on the desert world Jakku, where a young scavenger girl named Rey and a wayward droid named BB-8 await.  This is where things start, but not where they end, in an adventure that crosses light years and alien worlds, delving into family ties and the mysteries of an awakening Force.

    Thus, we are reintroduced to the Star Wars universe, an old, dear friend with a fresh face.  Believe me, it is good to be back home again.

    May the Force Be With You.


   

SPECTRE-JAMES BOND WILL RETURN (AGAIN)

Once again, James Bond has graced us with his presence, saving the world from unspeakable evil.  Just as well, considering the evil never seems to run out, either in his world or as we were recently reminded, in ours. It is safe to say that 007 will never run short of missions, as long as MI6 keeps him in the field. 

Which is a bit of a question, considering how the film starts.  Bond is in the field in Mexico City on an apparently unauthorized mission, chasing down a suspect that M (Ralph Feinnes) seemingly is not in the know about.  Needless to say, this irks him.  The audience goes from witnessing a spectacular action sequence, the first brief Bond girl of the film and some nice humorous moments to being chewed out by M back in London.  Worse comes to worse, MI6 is looking at budget cuts, being merged with MI5 under an umbrella organization that is heavily dependent on artificial intelligence, managed by a figure Bond dubs "C", Max Denbigh (played by Andrew Scott, who is also Moriarty opposite Benedict Cumberbach's Holmes on the BBC's Sherlock).  And now, the 00 program is under fire, regarded as obsolete in the age of drones.  Bond's rogue antics don't help things much.

So, Q puts an electronic leash on Bond, under M's orders.  But that does not help things, as Bond, against instructions, attends the funeral of one of the assassins he killed in Mexico City.  This brings an encounter with Lucia Sciarra (Monica Belluci, not only, for my money, even being older, one of the sexiest Bond girls ever, and one of the sexiest women ever) and Bond first hearing (in this incarnation of the franchise), the name SPECTRE. For long time fans, this is the sinister chief criminal organization Bond finds himself battling, both in the films and books.  And with SPECTRE in play, you have to have Ernst Stavro Blofeld.  The filmmakers have been cagey about his involvement in the film, however, but I won't spoil it for you here. 

But with classic sultry Bond girls, world travel, big villains, gadgets and supervillain high tech hideaways, this is a Bond film in the modern era, with modern anxieties, like artificially intelligence, the surveillance state, border defying evil operatives, that embraces the classic tropes of the franchise.  The wonderful Skyfall was a melancholy walk through the memories of the series.  SPECTRE, on the other hand, embraces many old school tropes in real time.  The film has been embraced by moviegoers, scoring tops at the box office both weekends in its initial release.  With high attendance and very favorable reviews, it is clear the film is a hit.  However, there have been some grumbling that the film was a step back.  That its nostalgia for the history of the franchise was done well, done better in Skyfall.  I disagree. Skyfall was a misty review of one's memories.  SPECTRE is an old warrior remembering age old wisdom as relevant today and joyfully girding himself with it as he leaps into a new world full of dangers new yet familiar.

James Bond is back.  And JAMES BOND WILL RETURN.

Maggie-Daddy's Little Zombie

Maggie...quite possibly the oddest Arnold Schwarzeneggar movie I've seen. A zombie apocalypse movie whose focus is one guy taking care of his daughter as she slowly begins to waste away from the disease and become one of the undead. You expect Arnie to bust out in a zombie slaying fury, piling them up by the metric ton. Nope. None of that. Picture the warm family fuzzies from Jericho, with no gunplay, at any moment. It actually works, but it feels weird the whole time, because of the cinematic repetoire Arnie brings with him. Thing is, he's really pretty good at this, which involves him being a real actor.

My late trailer impressions re. Star Wars The Force Awakens...

       Three trailers later, JJ Abrams continues to play cagey and coy, proving to be the master of the mystery box, showing much but revealing little.  That's just how he rolls.  It stirs up interest, it generates conversation and free media coverage.  In an age where you have a zillion media channels, it pays when you have free helpers commenting, sharing, and cutting/pasting what you do, turning into a free branch of your marketing machine.  And Abrams is the true master of that skill.

        He loves Star Wars, too.  After being handed the keys to the Star Trek universe and putting that franchise back in the public eye, one that admittedly he isn't a fanboy of and one where the fan opinion on his work is sharply divided, he gets the keys to the kingdom of the other big science fiction franchise, the one that he does love and counts as one of his biggest inspirations to what he does in life.  Can he do it?  And will fans give him a chance?

        Let us examine the evidence...

        First off, I enjoy JJ Abrams' Star Trek movies.  The things they do well, they really do well.  Contrary to the griping of some fans, he has captured the original characters in feel and portrayal.  He has thrown in some different elements, like the characters being more raw, less refined and experienced, in some cases less comfortable in their skin.  But he has captured the more elemental natures of their personalities.  He has successfully brought familiar elements out and captured the simpler essences of their onscreen chemistry.  He has recast the TOS characters and successfully brought them to life again.  This is in itself a feat, one many fans said could not be done (perhaps they should stop saying that.  It has been proven wrong repeatedly).  He has brought the Trek universe back to life in vivid visual terms and captured a human  rawness, even a frontier spirit, even better than original Trek did.  Now, mind you, I am a prime timeline fan.  And that deep history I've been with for many years that JJ Abrams tossed into another timeline has me not really interested in the ancillary media that has since been published.  And I sense I am not alone in that respect.  Fans want Star Trek.  This is Star Trek, but an alternate timeline story.  We are ok with that, if it is, say, a universe that is acknowledged as an alternate timeline (Mirror Mirror U, etc).  But this is almost like Lucas producing the Special Edition Star Wars films and insisting the original cuts don't exist anymore, refusing to acknowledge them.  I'm ok with these films and their new timeline.  But if/when they do get around to a new TV series, I want the Prime Universe back.  I'll follow one in this new timeline, but it is the Trek Prime Universe that is truly "home".  So, novels, comics, videogames...Prime or nothing for me.

        Abrams is clearly a fanboy, big time.  And he is playing in playgrounds that so many of us dream to on a professional level.  Star Trek is one of those beloved playgrounds that have inspired so many.  The roots go deep, DEEP.  Abrams is not one of those fans.  Which in itself is not a bad thing.  Nicholas Meyer was not a fanboy, yet went on to be central in creating some of the most beloved Star Trek adventures ever (STWOK, STTUC).  However, Meyers was able to do this because he was able to see Trek clearly.  And he got it.  In Star Trek, even when the action is high and swashbuckling, the thing that makes it stand out is that it is cerebral.  It cares severely about the why of things.  Who we are, what is the meaning, why do we do all what we do?  Can we do better?  Should we do better?  What is better?  Star Trek cares about all this and so much more and its fans tend to do the  same.  Abrams, however, is on record as saying, "Star Trek was too philosophical" for him.

       Now, I am a LOST fan.  I love the ending far more than most.  Ambiguous endings, metaphysical endings, I love all those.  To me, life is more about the Mystery than the concrete answers.  So demanding all your fiction have its plot elements tied up in a nice, neat package at the end, even more that can entirely be explained by "rules", is silly.  Life is mystery.  Stories can be mystery.  You want all your loose ends taken care of in the end?  Watch Murder She Wrote.  And yes, LOST could be a deeply philosophical show.  But...here's the key difference.  Star Trek wants you to think.  In the thinking, you will often feel.  But the emotions are just a bonus.  And often optional.  Like Spock, Trek fans can sometimes be uncomfortable with emotional expression and sensation and prefer logic and Data.  Less complicated, "right" answers (not really, but the illusion is often there). So the emotion first approach of LOST with no real answers, or seeming contradictory ones confuse them.

       Which brings us to Star Wars.  It is a curious thing in scifi/fantasy fandom that we see tribal tendencies popping up.  Rivalries drawing up battle lines, harsh rhetoric, this has been going on for ages, die hard fans of both franchises giving each other the stink eye, never mind that many, if not most fans are actually fans of both.  I have met partial partisans of both camps, though I don't pretend to understand them.  I am a huge fan of both franchises (but will admit, if pressed, bigger Star Trek fan).  The rivalry I see as kind of pointless, as both are fundamentally different kinds of science fiction.  Star Trek has always attempted to attach itself to the real world.  It has used science fiction allegory to take a look at real world issues from different angles that a distance in time and space uniquely allows.  It also traditionally tries to build a hopeful, plausible future that gives humanity possibilities to which we can aspire.  Star Wars, on the other hand, has never tried to tie itself to the "real world".  Right in the beginning, it says, "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...".  It has always put itself in another world and has never tried to make its astronomy, technology, theology, politics or anything else follow any "real world" rules.  It is about elemental simplicity in those elements, just create a universe with a distinct feel.  Which is the essence of Star Wars.  It is not about heavy duty philosophizing (which is not to say that does not go on, it very much does, especially that, spiritual nature, honor, goodness, that kind of thing).  But it is not about those things in the abstract, figuring out "how they work".  It is about FEELING, all those things in the Star Wars universe are how the characters relate to them, how it moves them from one plot point to the next, or both.  Star Wars has little time for sitting around philosophizing abstractly, it is nearly always about how it relates to the players on the screen (which is one way the Prequels got off course, they tried abstract philosophizing, but Lucas didn't know how to do it believably and keep it in the spirit of Star Wars, re. relate it to the characters and their travails and give the audience just enough).

      Which brings us back to Abrams.  Lucas's failures with the Prequel films (which are to various degrees watchable, imo, iffy movies with some very, very good parts that deserve to be in better films) have fans very nervous about what is coming.  But Abrams has been raising hopes with his beautiful trailers of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  Abrams, in those trailers, has been doing the two things he does best, emotion and mystery.  We know almost nothing about the plot of the film.  We have intriguing introductions to some new characters and are joyfully shown old, beloved ones.  What we see, what we hear, what we feel, is new, yet familiar.  Abrams is a Star Wars fan from way, way back.  It is safe to assume that he knows the universe and is as well versed in it as any serious fan.  However, he is a master craftsman with a particular style and he further is in the unique position of having just come from shepherding that other major science fiction franchise back onto the cultural map, front and center.  That universe was not one of his major fandoms and frankly was not the best fit for his sensibilities.   Even so, what he did produce was very good (though fan dissatisfaction in some quarters is quite understandable, and here's hoping, going forward, that Trek fully finds itself once again).  But now, Abrams is over there in a galaxy far, far away.  And his twin drivers, emotion and the mystery, and all other elements serving them, are better suited to the Star Wars universe.  Like Han and Chewie, he has "come home".

      It is a mistake to fear both the Prequels experience or that of Abrams' Trek films.  Now, if you just hate JJ Abrams's style, you may be out of luck, but I would suggest if you are a Star Wars fan, you give at least this first film a chance and see where we go from there.

      That is my impression.  But full disclosure, I am an Abrams fan while fully acknowledging his weaknesses.  Despite them, I do believe the Force is once again with us.