Alienation: X-Files, Nostalgia and Isolation

 

A few days ago I read a blog (The X-Files Has Made Me Nostalgic for a Time I Never Experienced) by a self-described Gen Zedder about their impressions watching the X-Files, the hit Sci-fi show of the 90s. It's an interesting read, one part about getting into a show after it had its moment and the strangeness of a first time viewing in a culture heavily influenced by the thing in question. The other part is exploring just how much society has lost compared to the 1990s which were just 20+ years ago.    

It caused a bit of a stir on social media, with quite a few veterans of the period weighing in, often negatively.  Reading I had some "Notes" and a few sentences raised my eyebrow, but I did find myself largely in agreement with the thrust of the piece. I will be quoting sparsely from it, so I recommend taking a few minutes to read it yourself (here's the link again). 

I think what rubbed many people the wrong way was the rose-tinted view of the decade. Several statements come across as crass and hard to stomach. e.g.

 It’s far too easy to romanticise the past, wallowing in the struggles of today whilst forgetting the real and terrible struggles of times gone by, but I believe that, to a good extent, people lived better in the 90s. 

 

The 90s were awful, miserable for many, sadly that's true of all periods of time under system's of exploitation and oppression. And while at the end of the day the X-Files was TV show it is worth remembering that the show was rooted firmly in the counter culture of the 90s, which was a time when suspicions of government were growing and fantastical conspiracies rubbed shoulders with mundane leaks and investigative journalism into corporate and government corruption. And that was just the general malaise that effected everyone, if you were in one of the out groups like I was reading something like this comes across as a personal challenge especially when written by someone who by admission does not know and cannot know the period in question. The 90s for me and many others were bleak and threatening, Yanks call that period "The End of History*" but the end did not stop for the rest of us. I remember the death of my community, rampant drug addiction and homelessness and extremely, violently anti-queer society and being taught how to check cars for bombs behind the tires. Though fortunately that last one was just before the Good Friday Agreement when terrorism in Britain and Ireland was ended once for all**. 

Now I didn't write all the above to have a go, but to illustrate a flaw in the blog I'm responding to. It does go onto explain that "lived better in the 90s" refers to specific relationships in society and the absence of excesses that plague our present. But, it remains a bold and in my view incorrect thing to say that does not take into account the reality of the 90s and using an artificial substitute. It's easy to think a time and place is pretty great when you watch a version crafted and edited for a specific purpose like in TV shows and movies. But I think that lesson's been demonstrated by the negative reception. No sense piling in here. After all they are correct that it wasn't all terrible either, for every bad memory and experience I have some good ones. The rub is no place or period of time is totally good or totally terrible it's a mix of both and sometimes the balance leans too far one way for some people, and for some people I mean society's outcasts and losers. 

Sticking with the first part I sympathise with the author's experiences, last year I watched the entirety of Twin Peaks, and I am currently working through the 60s classic The Prisoner. Once these shows sink their hooks into you, it is very difficult to shake the notion that they don't make them like they used to, and that we have lost something in the passage of time. But that is the issue with nostalgia, or at least imbibing too much of it for too long, it warps your perceptions and makes it harder for you to see reality. Nostalgia for some kind of "better" pastime is a key motivating factor for many reactionary movements today after all, and it does not matter that their perfect 50s or Ancient Roman Imperium never really existed, they were attracted to an artificial substitution. 

Moving onto the second part, I don't think many would disagree with statements like this

 I am of course thankful for the technology I am privileged enough to have; there is a certain irony in moaning about modern times through the medium of internet blogs. However, I see the brain-rotting, radicalising, life-altering effects of the current state of the internet, particularly on young people, and despair. How many hours of how many lives have been used scrolling to no meaningful end? How much violence, loneliness, ignorance, and hatred has been stoked by ‘social’ media?

In broad strokes at least I'm with the author here. However, this is where the more constructive and useful part of the criticism came into the discussion. The 90s were still largely an analogue period, but they had many of the problems of today in some form or another. Much of the 90s media dealt with loneliness, a sense of isolation and that life seemed to be meaningless. Fight Club was written in the 90s and is about the 90s, the film came out in 99 and was a massive hit, and yes, some of its fans have drawn the wrong lesssons from it, but regardless the core message of the story is that living a "normal" life in the 90s corporate environment is so destructive and eroding of human sociability and connections to others that lying about having terminal diseases is and joining a "club" were you beat and are beaten every week are seen as appealing substitutes. 

Younger folk may find this hard to believe, but early Simpsons was popular not just because it was funny but because it was subversive and rebellious

 

 We couldn't scroll for hours on are phones getting angry at twitter and facebook but we could spend hours playing Snake. To link back up to point one for a moment, why It's so strange for 90s kids to see someone gush about how great life was back then is because the decade was saturated by angst. It was everywhere including the X-Files. The show was about how the establishment of society were corrupt and a danger to us all, and in a perverse twist the part of the premise where there is in fact a shadowy cabal working behind the scenes to enact a sinister plan was the part of the show that was supposed to be comforting, otherwise we'd have to face the reality that the society we live in is corrupt and hostile and it arose organically. That's why "I want to believe" was so important to the show and one of the parts of the X-Files fandom that spread far and wide. "We wanted to believe there were key identifiable bad guys (Cigarette smoking man) and that champions of truth and justice (Mulder and Scully) would triumph over them. 

 The problems of today were problems in the 90s, what's changed is their form and scope. A book worth reading on this topic is Robert D Putnam's Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Which is a collection of 90s essays tackling the growth of loneliness, isolation and alienation in the United States. 

I will end on the author's conclusion

 Please, have a phone call with a friend instead of texting, leave your phone in your pocket at the party, drop by a friend’s place, chat to a stranger, uncover a government conspiracy relating to alien-human hybrids… well, maybe not that last one - but live in a way that almost resembles the human condition! Our brains are made for living in a village, not isolating ourselves behind glowing blue squares. We can pretend that pixels on a screen are equivalent to sharing an impromptu coffee with a friend, but we are kidding ourselves.

I think this is very good advice, and I can speak from experience that I have lived an isolated and lonely life. But I've also taken steps to change that and most of those steps are like the ones above. These relations were under growing threat for some time and are harder now than they were in the 90s, but it is still possible. I live in a block of flats, so I see my neighbours all the time but do not often interact beyond a polite hello. That changed during COVID when neighbours on the ground floor took tables and chairs outside, these have become meeting points for some of us and when the weather's nice we chat, share drinks and barbecues. 

 I've joined several hobby clubs including Chess, Creative Writing and Board games. We regularly meet in person and other time friendly acquaintances have grown into friendships. My advice is to keep looking, you'll be surprised how many groups like this are around in your area, maybe in a community hall or café off the main roads, and to join something you have an interest in, as your shared passions will give you some common ground for talking, a "foot in the door" so to speak. There's also no harm in trying something if you're curious and leaving if it's not for you. 

 

Appendix: The limits of socialising through social media

This is a separate idea I had when reading the reactions to the blog about the X-Files. Many of the people reacting negatively to the piece seemed to agree with the main argument that life has declined in some areas for reasons involving the rampant saturation of digital interactions. 

 I think one of the issues this raised for me is just how limited and strained are becoming thanks to turning to these modes of communication. Platforms like twitter and Bluesky are microblogs, where character limits hammer the ability to be nuanced. To be blunt its difficult to critique or disagree with others in a way that shows genuine engagment and not just naked rejection of the whole standpoint. Its easy to "@" someone saying the 90s were good (in someways) with "Apartheid was still a thing in 1994, checkmate!" and much harder to communicate that you get what they're saying but there are still some serious issues with the framing with a strict character limit. Even the ability to chain replies (thread creation) only marginally helps, the limit is still there you're just moving it down the line, and this method requires that you can keep your views coherently structured while constantly editing because you're three characters over, and for the person you're "at-ing" to be able and willing to read through each response when their are dozens jockeying for attention.

It's not a great way to communicate to a person. It's a great way to signal to a mass of people though. The analogue equivalent of this is someone attending an open meeting reading out a statement that strikes some as controversial, those people erupt all at once in counterarguments of varying type while the original speaker tries to pick out individual voices in a sea of murmuring. 

I think one of the great lessons from comparing the 90s to today is that we can see that in a sense nothing has changed regarding the issues we're all struggling with. But in another sense everything has changed because many of these problems are now more pervasive than ever and it's harder to take the steps necessary to alter them. 

 In essence the Matrix was correct, humanity peaked in the 90s, and we really need to come to terms with that and deal with if we're to survive.

___________________________________________________________________ 

*The author is Scottish and not from the USA, however they're basing their impressions of the 90s on US pop-culture.  

** Yes, I am being sarcastic.  

Section 31 and Star Trek

There's a brand new Star Trek movie out, it's called Section 31 and stars Michelle Yeoh. And I have not seen it and probably will not. This isn't an outraged fan boycott, I didn't have much interest in the project when it was announced, and nothing I've seen since has grabbed my attention and made me reconsider. Many people don't like it, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't, I just have more things to occupy my free time.

Instead of talking about the movie, I am interested in discussing the focus (I assume it's the focus, since it's the title) of the movie, the titular Section 31. Section 31 is a shadowy and unethical intelligence service affiliated with the Federation and is quite old. It first appeared in Deep Space Nine, and there's a subplot in Enterprise that places them or a precursor were running in the days before the Federation was officially founded.

I liked the idea and execution of them in Deep Space Nine, so I'm not opposed to them getting a movie/show focused on them. Though I have seen the quote by Alex Kurtzman who is essentially running the modern Star Trek franchise and I find it depressing and alarming. 

In order for that vision to exist, in order for the light to exist, you need people who operate in the shadows. And it's a yin and yang. You can't have one without the other.

I'm struggling to figure out where to start with what's wrong with this view of the show and frankly in general.  I don't agree that the Federation of Star Trek is a Utopia, I know it feels like one compared to our quite troubled lives and world, but they're not the same thing. The people of the Federation and the crews of the ships we watch on TV have struggles and imperfections and flaws, both as individuals and as societies. They accomplished much and made significant progress in many areas that our real societies are in danger of backsliding on. But, importantly, that progress was shown to have taken years of hard work and sacrifice, and in a number of episodes is challenged and shown to be not as advanced or as secure as first thought.

I agree that Rodenberry and Fontana et al. created a franchise and world that is optimistic, but its optimism isn't founded just on good feelings and naivety, as Kurtzman suggests with his views on the show. In the days of Kirk and Spock, the Klingons are an enemy and possibly existential threat to the Federation. By the end of the old period of Trek some 40 years later, the Klingons and Federation are allies and are working towards a stable and lasting peace and building a better relationship. That progress was shown throughout the movies, The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Those stories involved sacrifices, resources, ships and quick thinking. And it wasn't a path of uninterrupted progress, the path to peace was met with stiff opposition from both societies, and animosities and cultural misunderstandings would on occasion cause rifts and opportunities to exploit into renewed conflict.

Take away the make-up and costumes and turn the starships into naval vessels, and you have a fairly grounded show about tense situations and diplomacy. The message of Star Trek is essentially, these wonderful things can be ours too, if we try and commit to the undertaking.

So, then, where does Section 31 (S31) fit into this optimistic future of hard work and risk paying off in the long-term? Well, in the old Trek shows S31 was ultimately an antagonistic force, their first appearance is an episode where they subject a main character Doctor Bashir to interrogation, accusing him of being a traitor, which is revealed to be a form of job interview to recruit him into their operations. Bashir and the main cast are appalled at their methods and existence. 

They remain antagonistic and unscrupulous, another highlight of theirs was manipulating a rival power in the Romulans, in the process framing a Senator and getting her killed. They also engineered a bioweapon that infected the entirety of the Changelings, the leaders of the Dominion, another rival power. Their justification for existing is that they wish to protect the Federation and will do "whatever it takes" to get the job done. S31 is ultimately destroyed in Deep Space Nine, and peace between the Dominion and the Federation is reached when a cure for the disease S31 created and is given to the Dominion.

I'm glossing over many things in this short recap, the important thing to understand is that S31 despite their justifications are not a Yang to the Federation's Yin, they're out of control and needed to be destroyed and its existence and relationship to the Federation was a stain on the latter. Some fans make excuses for the disease that infects and will kill an entire species because of the actions of the Founders and the Dominion, which to be clear were horrific. No sympathy or tears for them, but, but, the reason they're so horrifically awful is because of a history of them being on the receiving end of actions like S31's. Their actions are justified on the assumption that someone will poison them all if given the chance, so they make sure they never give anyone a chance. And what stops the war in the end ultimately isn't the cure itself, it's being given the means to save themselves and finally being convinced that some aliens might be trustworthy to a degree after all.

Again, achieving that result took multiple seasons and an intergalactic war. S31 did nothing to prevent the conflict nor did their weapon actively stop it once it started, it'd just increased the body count. And to give new Star Trek its due, this lead to what's known as "blowback". In the third season of Star Trek Picard, the antagonists are a small group of Founders who were experimented on by S31 to develop that weapon. They did not forgive nor forget, and embarked on a plot that nearly wiped out the entirety of the Federation. 

Apart from being good television, this plot line reveals something about S31, like groups in fiction and reality. The "dirty but necessary" and "pragmatic" option often creates more problems than it solves. If you believe that S31s actions during the war with the Dominion were necessary, then at best they traded one existential threat for another down the line. Or like how the CIA and MI6 leant support to the movement to overthrow Prime Minister Mossaddegh in Iran in 1953 which kept the Shah in power and the oil flowing, and also cemented the West as hostile powers for Iran's reformers and strengthened the reactionary clergy (who also supported the downfall of Mossaddegh) contributing heavily to the rise of the Islamic Republic which is still a headache for Washington to this day.

Or how the Russian security services in the 1990s targetted and killed Chechen and other nationalist leaders in the Caucuses while provided support to Islamist rivals to split their opposition has now led to a large and very dangerous current of Islamic terrorist movements including affiliates of Islamic State. Or how the Russian Federation intervened in Syria to assist the Assad dictatorship in the brutal destruction of democratic opposition forces and brutalise the wider population into submission, only to galvanise the majority of Syrians into supporting an offensive that toppled Assad and expelled Russian forces from the country, led by a group that was previously affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

Again, I have not watched the S31 movie, and perhaps it is unfair to have written this without doing so, but I don't see how someone who thinks S31 as it existed in both old and new trek is necessary for the good things in Star Trek to exist would produce something that would add to this subject in a way that's meaningful and in keeping with the wider Star Trek vision.

I will say I like this poster, does it fit Star Trek? No. Does it suit a hypothetical Section 31 movie that does the topic justice? Also, no. Does Michelle Yeoh look cool as hell? Yes.

Watching Tank Police in a post-2016 World

 

That's right, horrified at the way things are going I've embraced a period of escapism and watched a horrifying speculative future 2010s where the police have the firepower of militaries, the world is heavily polluted, the politicians only care about re-election and corporations believe employment contracts give them the right to control their employees own bodies. In hindsight, that wasn't the best plan I've authored.

It's the holiday period, and I've caught several winter bugs over the past two months. So in addition to having time off, an erratic sleep pattern and semiregular periods of imposed isolation has led to quite a bit more time on my hands than I had planned for. And I filled part of the hiatus catching up on a backlog of films and television. I finally scratched a few things off my list, including It's a Wonderful Life, and also today's topic for discussion Dominion Tank Police, and its sequel (kinda) New Dominion Tank Police. The Tank Police OVAs have been on my list for some time, why the long wait? Well, a combination of them being in limited availability in my markets and a reputation for not being great pieces of entertainment. What fanbase they do have is largely thanks to being early action Sci-Fi anime that were licensed internationally, and being based on Manga by Shirow Masmune, the creator of Ghost in the Shell didn't hurt either. They also benefited by the existence of Anna and Uni Puma who are androids, sisters and Cat girls. 

Apart from that, both shows have their issues, the first series from the late 1980s is quite cheap, the animation can be choppy and reuse of assets is obvious, the dubbing itself is also a bit spotty, some of the voice acting feels weak, and the dialogue sounds weird. It also struggles with tone, it's a rather cynical take on cyber punk futures and cop dramas with very crude humour and extremely hard to like protagonists. Only to drop most of the jokes and refocus attention on a comedic fool villain (Buaku) and his tragic past at the end. Oh, and it ends on a cliffhanger that is not followed up on in New Tank Police.

New Tank Police on paper has a lot more going for it. Released in the mid 90s, it looks more professionally made, the characters have more detail, the animation is smoother, and I didn't notice much reusing and recycling of previous footage. The dialogue sounds a lot more like things people would actually say, and the cast who are the same voice actors who worked on Tank Police either gained more experience and confidence in the years between releases, or they received a lot more support direction wise. And the action set pieces have more going on too, most of the action in the first series were basic chases with some gag stunts thrown in. In New Tank Police, there are clever escalations and use of vertical space. 

And yet, and yet, I found myself having stronger feelings for the choppier and cheaper series. Which is a little odd since that show's four episode run goes from stealing jars of piss and anti-tank mines that are dick jokes - yes I am serious- to a sad look at the life of a hairy android crook for hire whose stealing a piece of fine art and risking his life, not for the massive pay-off, but because he was the subject of that painting, and it depicts his early life in a lab where he was physically and mentally tortured since creation by uncaring scientists who used him as raw material for experiments. So, as far as he (Buaku) is concerned it's his by right, oh, and it also contains hidden data that can prove the existence of that experiment and the existence of his fellow lab mates who did not survive and escape the lab. It's extremely sad, and it makes it perfectly crystal clear just how crooked, horrible and miserable this world is. 

New Tank Police, well Lenoa Ozaki the female cop on the top image and the protagonist of the franchise has to investigate the murder of an old friend on the motorcycle police, and there's some corporate scheming going on with cyborg henchmen. It's perfectly fine sci-fi with a cynical edge where the protagonists are cops. It's perfectly fine, didn't get very engaged with it, wasn't put off by it. I did find it slightly amusing to learn that New Tank Police took place in 2016, well, I found it funny at first, now I'm a little sad.

Speaking of sad, I was surprised to see how different the Cat Women were to what I had been primed to expect from the marketing. The Puma sisters were the breakout characters of this franchise, most marketing material I've found about these two series heavily pushes them, sometimes to the exclusion of tanks and police. I suspect quite a few people who watched these two miniseries were quite disappointed. Yes the Puma sisters appear frequently, yes they wear costumes that are usually revealing, and they do a striptease. Just the one though, and it's depicted as very goofy if many cutaways to reaction shots of SWAT police behaving like the Wolf from those Tex Avery cartoons. 

No, they don't wear anything like that in the show. And not to get into a slap fight with TV Guide, but the word sometimes is doing the heavy lifting in that quote.

 

There are raunchy anime OVAs, but the Tank Police ones are not in that number. The sister's main contributions were comedy and then some tear-jerking because as androids they are treated very poorly by society. They're in Buaku's gang because that's the only prospect of regular money that they can get that isn't stripping. And in New Tank Police where Buaku is completely absent, they sleep in an underground car park and have nothing going for them except more crime. Even when they move over into sort of doing the right thing territory, they get hassled and harassed by the Tank Police anyway.

Having watched both, I now understand why it's largely been relegated as an artefact of the 90s-early 2000s. Though watching in 2023 I think it may have aged pretty well. It's a cynical franchise where the label hero doesn't fit anyone comfortably, and the protagonists would be denounced and avoided if they were real people, but here the violence and cruelty is softened with crude humour and a strong distrust of everyone and everything. Like how the Home Alone movies use slapstick sensibilities and heart string tugging to take the sting out of scenes of Kevin McCallister throwing bricks at Daniel Stern's head. 

Grenade torture, Dominion Tank Police's first running joke

Despite this, unfortunately, the march of time has shown that its depictions of cops as a bunch of self obsessed jerks and violent thugs barely qualifies as satire. The first four minutes of the first episode of Tank Police is a back and forth shouting match between two characters, the mayor and the Chief of Police, the Mayor is furious that the Tank Police are causing so much damage to the city while the Chief couldn't care less about that and is demanding even more dangerous and powerful weapons. Since the 1980s, police forces across the world have been showered with military grade weapon systems, including armoured vehicles, so Main Battle Tanks aren't so farfetched. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/05/why-are-some-us-police-forces-equipped-like-military-units

How about the attitude? Well, the Tank Police are depicted as selfish arseholes who only bother to fight crime because they view the activities of criminals as a direct challenge to them personally. In the first Tank Police episode, the captain of the force is lecturing Lenoa and another rookie on how the most important thing is to preserve their Tanks. There's a violent incident every 36 seconds on average in that city, and if they were too active in responding, they'd soon be worn down. He even overrules the rookies who which to answer a call for back up from the SWAT police, since he views his fellow police officers with contempt. He only bothers to try and stop Buaku's gang when they rear end his Tank and thus insult him personally.

Lenoa is no better, unlike the Captain she doesn't subscribe to How to Kill magazine, but once her Tank gets scratched in yet another grenade "Interrogation" scene which she set up she tries to gun down an unarmed prisoner who is suspended from a game show spin wheel. She sort of sees Buaku as a person by the end of Tank Police thanks to how that plot line goes, but she's more than willing to kill and torture anyone who runs afoul of her. Many cop centred media products deal with abuse of power and usually covers for it with some appeal to pragmatism or threatening potential outcome, if the detective doesn't murder the child murderer the bill of rights and lawyers will set them free, or there's a ticking time bomb and people's lives are at stake so they had to beat the suspect until they can't walk any more, or show that the bad things made the police feel bad about doing them.

Tank Police throws all of that out of the window. The criminals who get the grenade treatment are bad people who admit to horrible actions, but it's crystal clear that the "interrogations" were excuses for the Tank Police to torture people for fun. One of them confesses to multiple murders, which they didn't ask him about because they didn't know anything about them. When they deploy they frequently level the City, they in fact do much more damage to than the criminals do, and they are fully aware of this and do not care about it. They don't even like supporting fellow police officers, Lenoa's dramatic climax is using her damaged Tank to shut a civilian jet out of the air, killing everyone on board. The passengers are shady corporate criminals, but she's avenging a friend and has no real interest in whatever their scheme was. Make the Tank Police into a rival gang with better connections to international arms markets and nothing much changes in how they operate. You could even keep the paperwork jokes and change them to being compensation payments that are deducted from their protection racket income. Which is functionally what taxes to pay for the police are.

So, surely this level of callous self interest must be a product of cynical imagination, right? Well, in the United States of America the doctrine of Qualified Immunity protects police officers in what are blatent examples of brutality. 

To push Brooks to step out of her car, one of the officers pulled out a Taser and asked her if she knew what it was. She didn’t, but told the officer she was seven months pregnant. The officers chatted in front of her, casually discussing which part of her body they would tase: “Well, don’t do it in her stomach,” one of them said, “do it in her thigh.” The officers twisted Brooks’s arm behind her back and tased her three separate times—first on her thigh, then in the arm, and then in the neck—before dragging her into the street, laying her face down, and cuffing her.Brooks sued the officers to hold them accountable for their conduct. Six federal judges agreed that the officers’ use of severe force absent any threat to their safety violated the U.S. Constitution. But those same judges dismissed her case, relying on a legal doctrine called “qualified immunity.” Qualified Immunity Explained

 And said actions of brutality are not uncommon. Furthermore, funding these police forces is draining multiple city budgets.

https://www.statista.com/chart/10593/how-much-do-us-cities-spend-on-policing/

And as for giving a damn about other people, well they haven't done that for a long time if they ever did. Currently as I'm writing this in the United Kingdom every month there's another reveleation that police forces especially the Metropolitan have been harbouring and covering for murderers and rapists within there ranks. And Uvalde Texas showed the world that over 400 police officers from multiple forces including special tactical response units with military grade equipment will just stay in cover listening to gunfire and calls for help from schoolchildren for over an hour before deciding they had enough strength assembled to intervene. The shooter entered the school at 11:30 am and wasn't confronted and eliminated untill 12:50. At the start of the attack there were 19 officers inside the school building the majority of the back up stayed outside for the duration.

Practically the only thing that still science fiction about the Tank Police franchise is that we don't have fully sapient Cat Women gynoids and anti-tank mines that humoursly flip the tank over like a Chef's spatula only more phallic. We're stuck with weird walking dog leg robots and anti-tank mines that explode and maim or kill everyone in the vicinity. Once again reality has ruined a joke.

Damning with Faint Praise - Watching G-Saviour

 

 I had two hours of free time and nothing to fill it, while contemplating nothing my mind dug up the film G-Saviour, so I tracked it down and watched it. Writing about G-Saviour (I'm calling Saviour) is going to do my analytics any favours, despite a big push at the time of its release it's falling into obscurity and the few who know of it have few nice words to say about it. The G stands for Gundam, though the word Gundam is never said in the film at all. Saviour is a 1999 Canadian TV movie set in the Gundam IP, the Universal Century(UC)* timeline to be precise. That's a very strange sentence, it failed to find an audience in North America on its release and I haven't been able to find evidence that it was released in Europe before its 2002 DVD release, and I'm not sure whether that was just fans importing American region DVDs. 

I first heard of it in 2019ish, when a several anime news blogs cause a mini-panic in the Gundam fanbase by reporting that there were feelers being put out to make a Gundam movie in Hollywood. 

*The UC is the continuity that the first Gundam shows and novels were set in, and is considered the default Gundam continuity among fans and Sunrise, the company that makes most of the animated shows. American movies based on Japanese source material have some hits, like Road to Perdition, but there are many more duds. The news did give some exposure to the existence of Saviour, with most mentions using it as a warning of what to expect if the deal went through. And it's been kicking around in the back of my mind ever since. What little I had heard about the project left me morbidly curious and expecting a terrible 90 minutes. Instead, I got a perfectly fine experience. Not great, not terrible.

It's a fairly competent and typical 90s film pilot to pitch a sci-fi series. None of the actors convince you they're space marines, scientists, political leaders etc. But none of the performers come across as miscast, I would liken the experience to watching a stage play dramatizing real events, you know you're watching actors on sets, they just do their jobs of telling a story. Among the cast no one stands out as bad or good, Blu Mankuma comes closest to living his role as the benevolent leader of his space colony, but he doesn't have enough screen time and material to work with. Everyone else is fine, the weakest in the main cast is Saviour's Char Aznable, Lieutenant Colonel Jack Halle played by David Longren. He's serviceable as a military bad guy, but he falls flat when he's supposed to be swaggering.

Had this been taken on as a full series, I can see the cast ironing out the wrinkles and improving with more screen time and plot development. With what we got, it's perfectly satisfactory. The effects do not wow, the film is live action except for vehicles and mobile suits (the mechas). The CG animation is on par with what a production like Saviour could expect in 1999. Babylon 5's CG effects were usually better, though I've seen many productions, some made a decade later, that look worse. The main flaw with the CG effects isn't the graphics or the animation, it's the editing. There is one battle segment in the film, it is impossible to follow.  The battle is outside a space colony, and all the shots are tight close-ups on one or two mobile suits and then a hard cut to an actor in a chair with an ill-fitting helmet shaking around trying to react appropriately to whatever was storyboarded for the CG bits. The whole sequence is confusing, you cannot follow the battle, and the few bits of action that are shown are slow and lack weight. 

There is one exception I would like to highlight. The film starts underwater, there the mobile suit sequence looked at its best. I think the water filter masked the 90s computer glow that plagued contemporary CG animation, and being set underwater did a lot to justify the ponderous movement of the mechs.

The plot is also serviceable, the setting is in the future, UC 0223 according to the opening credit voice over, which is in the future for most of Gundam as well. Mankind is still divided, the lines are roughly drawn between the Congressionals who control Earth and settlements in space, colonies including one called Gaea. The political situation is deteriorating due to a food crisis, the crisis is so severe that a radical plan to turn the seabed into agricultural zones. And agriculture and a scientific breakthrough are key to the conflict for the film. Scientists from the Congress and Gaea have cracked how to grow crops in the sea, and there's a conspiracy to control this key technology and resource.

Our Amuro Rey is Jack Curran (Brennan Elliot) can he rise above self-interest and fear and is what right? Will he successfully pilot the Gundam G-Saviour to save his friends and defeat the deadly Jack Halle? I won't spoil it, hell, chances are good you've already correctly guessed those answers. When the credits were rolling, I thought the Gundam connections were weak and could've easily been excised with original IP replacements. They don't even call the Gundam a Gundam, and it has no connection to any pre-existing Gundam storyline. I thought this was TV movie already in pre-production for a unique Sci-fi property, the genre was big business in the 90s, and Sunrise stepped in with some financial and technical assistance in exchange for using the film to promote its long-running franchise that still had trouble breaking into the North American market.

Everything seemed to fit that premise. The Canadian television production, the tacked on feel of the Gundam elements, the lack of connection or references to anything that came before, a setting so far away from the rest of the franchise there was no danger of it muddying the waters for other projects. The lack of follow up or push to include it or build upon it in following years. It ticked every box.

So, I was surprised when I went to the film's wikipages, both main and Gundam entries to double-check that my memory was accurate for Saviour, and discovered that I was completely wrong. The film had been in production for at least two years and was not only part of a multimedia project including a video game, novelisation and manga, but that it was part of Sunrise's 20th anniversary celebrations for the franchise, together with the anime series Turn-A Gundam. There went my theory, crashing into earth.

That was the last thing I expected. The film was released in cinemas in Japan, which didn't surprise me, Gundam is a massive property in that country. But all the rest of it, the tie-in video game, novels and manga were surprising, that meant Sunrise was heavily involved in this thing. Why make a multimedia project where the main property is made by another company, Canada's Polestar, and has little connection to greater franchise and all the rest of the project is Japan only? I do not understand the logic behind this at all, who was then was the target audience for Saviour? An international audience can't have been the main target, most of the products weren't available in their markets. And I can't imagine Japanese audiences already on board with Gundam got much out of the film. Making a Gundam film with little connective tissue to the wider franchise does make sense if the intent is to entice a new audience, and Sunrise had success with this before Saviour, creating new Gundam properties that could stand on their own, some that weren't even in the UC continuity. But apparently their main target was the audience they already had. 

Saviour is extremely obscure, it doesn't have many fans. My faint praise puts me in that small camp. And even though I grew up on sci-fi shows with the feel and sensibility of Saviour, I wouldn't have bothered tracking it down without the Gundam connection. I don't understand much about the G-Saviour project, but I do understand why the film failed to catch an audience, its ram shackle construction leaves little for anyone. If there was a target audience for G-Saviour, it was probably me, just me. And I didn't live in North America nor Japan. I was busy watching Babylon 5, Star Trek, Sea Quest DSV, Sliders, X-Files, repeats of Doctor Who and Anime movies on a German language channel broadcast from Frankfurt. I'm reminded of an old saying, "try to please everyone, and you'll disappoint everyone".

Conquest of Synthehol - Star Trek on Anarchism

 

 I've been watching Star Trek again, Season 3 episode Allegiance surprised me. I remembered liking bits of it but I'd forgotten a good chunk of it. The plot is an mystery involving the abduction of captain Picard. He finds himself in a sort of holding cell with three other abductees, meanwhile an imposter is giving strange orders on the Enterprise. 

Two parts of the episode stood out to me as being unusual. One of them was a line of dialogue Picard throws at the culprits of the kidnappings, "Imprisonment is an injury no matter how you justify it". Seeing a common argument of prison abolition on a network TV show was quite the surprise. The second surprise was that this episode examines Anarchism. The purpose of the abductions was to conduct an experiment to observe attitudes towards authority. Picard and his fellow prisoners were chosen as representatives of differing attitudes towards the concept.

 The prisoner representing Anarchism is Esoqq a member of the Chalnoth species, his people reject authority. Usually when Anarchism gets a little exposure in the mass media its as a cautionary tale about the dangers of Anarchy. Anarchism is shown to be a chaotic dog eats dog world a primitive social darwinist playground. Allegiance is a bit different. We do get the standard lamentation over the loss of law and governance, but that view point doesn't come from Picard or Starfleet, it comes from another prisoner Kova Tholl a Mizarian. Both the Chalnoth and Mizarian peoples appear for the first time in this episode, they're depicted as the polar opposite in values and philosophy. While the Chalnoth respect fighting and reject authority the Mizarians value peace so much that they always collaborate with the established authority, including their occupiers.

"My given name is Esoqq, it means fighter."
"I bet half the names in the Chalnoth language mean fighter."
"Mizarians, your names all mean surrender!"

Esoqq and Kova Tholl

Picard is essentially occupying the role of middle ground between the two extremes. Which is fairly typical of episodes of Science fiction. Though what surprised me is that of the two Esoqq is treated more charitably. 

The Alpha Qaudrents Errico Malatesta

Esoqq in his own words concedes that he has enemies and has killed some of them, and he also wields a nasty looking knife and he growls his lines. But of the two he's the more proactive one, he works with Picard on their escape attempts and his rejection of authority isn't the typical "Fuck you! I won't do what you tell me, whatever you tell me" caricature. Its more like he's open to working with others if he thinks it makes sense. A distinction betwee working with rather than for. He doesn't obey Picard he remains suspicious of him but can be reasoned with. Meanwhile Kova Tholl advocates capitulation and defends the unseen captors and extremely reluctantly gets involved. Even Picard the view point character for the audience displays an attitude of incredulousness that borders on open contempt when Tholl explains the Mizarian philosophy. "None! in the past 300 years of Mizarian history you've been conquered six times".

As far as popular programming goes this episode, once you get past the needle teeth and jagged dagger is a more nuanced look at Anarchism than most media even media that is consciously exploring political themese would do. It isn't perfect, Esoqq comes from what appears to be an extreme individualistic and violent place, but they have managed to develop space travel and have at least some knowledge and connections to the rest of the galaxy. Trek has a spotty record when dealing with politics in more substantial ways then moral criticism, I would put Alliegiance with its commentary on imprisonment, ethics and authority in the better half of the mix.

So I've been watching; Dallos

 

So I've been watching Dallos. Dallos is an early science fiction OVA series, considered the first OVA by some in fact. I stumbled upon it flicking through anime reviews by the youtube channel Kaiserbeamz. I'll link the video as it will save some time. 

The video explains the history of the production and its impact on Japan's home video market better than I could. I will briefly outline the show itself, any way to help ground my thoughts. KaiserBeamz mentioned that the show was commissioned in part to compete with and enjoy the market share of the still young Gundam franchise. And over its four episode run I can see clear inspiration's. This is a world where the Earth is in a lot of trouble, and the way it resolves the crisis was to colonise the earth system. Though instead of floating colony cities, human has built settlements on the Moon. There is also an Earth Federation ruling humanity, and like in Gundam it is corrupt and is exploiting the people who live on the Moon, and their main enemy is a rebelling group of space born humans who want independence. 

Dallos also has mechanised vehicles that are similar to Gundam's mobile suits. Though mostly construction and mining suits, and the police use transforming bipedal walkers. 

The plot of the four episodes of Dallos are about class warfare. The conflict is between the representatives of the Earth Federation who use violence and armed force to maintain control, and the communities of Miners led by Dog (or Doug in the English release) McCoy. The people of the Moon are overwhelmingly discontented with their lot, but McCoy leads a small band willing to take violent action to end it. McCoy hopes to inspire the majority of the Moon's inhabitants to join the struggle. Interestingly, despite being science fiction and about insurrection, the combat doesn't overtake the story. 

McCoy's main strategy is to rally the workers into staging a general strike that will cut off earth from the resources the Moon provides, this will force the Earth Federation to take notice and hopefully make concessions. The street battles and raids on police armouries are to show that resistance is possible and to build up the military strength to resist attacks by the police and the Earth army while the pressure builds. The response by the colonial government is brutal and heavy-handed, attempting to crush the growing rebellion with greater force. It's this violent reaction coupled with the authorities' inability to finish off the resistance that radicalises more of the Moon population. 

One action in particular pushes the older generation who originally came from Earth and still have connections to it over to the side of resistance. And that is the attack on Dallos, the mysterious structure on the surface of the Moon. McCoy and his group shelter within it, and the police attack damages it. Many Moon citizens, especially the older ones, have come to worship Dallos as a sort of local deity, so they don't take kindly to the armed police firing missiles on it. This gives McCoy and the resistance the numbers they need to halt work at all the mines, which quickly depletes the ore processing and gets the attention of the Federation. Their response is to deploy a garrison to support the police and continue attacking rebel strongholds. During a battle, Dallos repairs itself and attacks and devastates both sides.

With Dallos restored miners start drifting back to work, and with both sides mauled a stalemate of sorts is created, and that's where the show stops. I get a strong sense that Dallos was supposed to be a pilot miniseries for a bigger franchise, either a full series or a movie or something. I don't know if that was the intention, but it would explain the last few minutes, both the main Colonial governor and McCoy predict future conflict and the tensions haven't been resolved.

Overall, I have some mixed feelings about Dallos. I'm impressed it didn't devolve liberation struggles into an action set piece with an impossibly skilled protagonist, and the battle scenes it did have were beautiful and took advantage of the setting, there are some excellent low gravity action scenes here. But there are a lot of shortcomings. For example, I have not mentioned the protagonist of Dallos, that's partly because I'm more interested in the depictions of class conflict than I was in its actual plot, but also because he left such little impression on me that I forgot his name. He's a young adolescent whose brother was killed in mysterious circumstances and has a sort of love triangle with his friend and the beautiful VIP from Earth who becomes a hostage of the rebels. Nothing ground breaking, though I did appreciate that he quickly makes a firm choice to support the rebellion instead of being conflicted and dragged around the conflict by plot convenience like some protagonists.

And Dallos itself is honestly more hindrance than asset here. At first, it's mysterious and intriguing, but we don't anything about it and its place as a deity despite its obvious alien and constructed nature is baffling. I suspect if a continuation was commissioned, the revelations of Dallos would've been key to the plot, but its potential is wasted.

A modest defence of the Langoliers

 

 

Recently I've dived back into Stephen King, both his stories and the many adaptions for film and tv. I've just finished the novella the Langoliers, which has been on my to read list for a good while. As a young kid I remember watching the Langoliers TV miniseries on the Sci-Fi channel. It's quite a long run time for two parts, 90 minutes with advert breaks. It has a bit of a reputation, it's mainly remembered for early 1990s CG special effects, and memes about its dialogue. Not many King fans care for it, and I'd be lying if I claimed it made my top 10, but I do think it has its charms. Having read the novella and re-watched the mini-series which is just on youtube, I find the derision is a bit overcooked. 

It's not without its flaws, the dialogue is indeed very strange, but most of that is from the novella, I was surprised while reading, but the TV show is very close and faithful to the original story, it's easily one of the most faithful to source material adaptions in the Stephen King filmography. Often it's word for word, and that includes Mr Toomey's* infamous "Scaring the little girl? LAY-D"! Tantrum and Nick's bizarre American stereotype of an Englishman. Now, that doesn't entirely absolve Directer and teleplay writer Tom Holland here, you are allowed to make changes, and should do to account for format and other differences. Punching up or reworking the dialogue was an option and while it does have its charms, re-working was probably the way to go. One example of the faithful dialogue that should've been changed or just cut entirely was Dinah the blind girl's line about cereal and milk, "it sounds... a little like rice crispies after you pour in the milk". This is a slight change from the novella, there Dinah still says that, but all the other characters once they hear the sound make different comparisons, radio static, crunching etc, it supposed to reflect each character's experiences and inability to describe accurately an alien sound, which adds to the creepiness and gives a little more depth to each character. The show just cut all but Dinah's which limits the character development and comes across rather silly.

I say it should've been changed or just dropped entirely because it deflates one of the Langoliers key strengths, its sound design. The great strength of the show is that throughout part I and much of Part II, clunky lines aside, it does a lot to convey a sense of wrongness and building tension and dread. The sound design is key to that, muffling echoes when the characters arrive at Bangor airport, and most importantly, the noise of the Langoliers. There's a very low, almost unnoticeable at first background noise, that slowly, very slowly builds in volume and intensity as the threat approaches until as they draw near its impossible to ignore. And it is a strange sound that's hard to identify precisely. This is what hooked me to beg my parents and let me stay up late on two school nights in a row to watch the show. My parents have no interest or love for science fiction, view it with contempt, so to agree to let me stay up and watch it on the family telly that had cable took some doing. I was quite intrigued and wanted to know what had in fact happened, I doubt I'd ever seen a horror story like it, where the threat and hostility came from just how wrong and off the world was.

Unfortunately, its greatest strength is also the show's greatest weakness, it builds and builds and builds upon itself. The mystery of what happened keeps deepening, the Langoliers march from the distance continues, Craig Toomey's trauma and high-stress existence drive him further and further down a violent breakdown, endangering himself and the other passengers. And then finally, in the final third of the second episode, it all comes to a climax that fizzles out. The Langoliers show up and they are terrible indeed, just not in the way they were supposed to be. Even for the 1990s the CG effects are shockingly poor, I had seen Reboot and Insektors and enjoyed both immensely, their early episodes are in another league compared to this. I have seen concept art of what the Langoliers would look like as practical effect models, they look a bit better, but ultimately I think the design is a major limitation, the teeth simply must have looked better if they had gone that route instead, but as cheap and artificial as the CG one's look, they follow King's descriptions in the novella exactly. It's a testament to King's skill that he wrote a story whose pay off is floating meat balls with teeth to eat the world once time passes, and it was published as a serious work of horror laced fiction that takes a philosophical look at our relationship with time as a concept and force, it wasn't until a studio put it on the screen that people finally realized just how naff that is. Again, though, they must've known how silly and stupid that design would look like out of the minds of readers and in reality. I don't know why changes weren't considered. Then again, they might not have been able to come up with a satisfying alternative with the time and resources they had available.

So in summary, while I think the Langoliers time in the sun has passed, I do think it has its merits, and I am a little sad that most people just see the gay stereotype from the Beverly Hills Cop movies** running around an abandoned airport and passed gifs of his lines on social media. His character is one of the better ones in the show, and there is a lot of depth and emotional baggage and turmoil. I would like to recommend anyone curious to track down the novella, it's the first entry in the collection Four Past Midnight, and perhaps give the show a go, just try to go into it with an open mind, you don't watch all of it though, if you don't like Part I, you can stop, it's the strongest part and the best bits of Part II are what's good about Part I.

*I suppose since everyone else who talks about the show does, but Craig Toomey was played by Bronson Pinchot, star of Perfect Strangers. However, I'm not American, and that show wasn't big over here, I'm not even sure if it was ever broadcast, so I didn't recognize him, and I'm only aware of that fact because everyone else who talks about this show bringing it up, often at length.

** Yes, we did get those, including Beverly Hills Cop III, I suspect Bronson Pinchot doesn't have a very good agent, or has an amazing one with a massive grudge against him.

There has been an Awakening

I recently saw the Rise of Skywalker (RoS) and I have comments to make, don't worry though this won't be a spoiler review of the film, instead I'm using the opportunity to talk about the Disney canon and its relationship with the old Expanded Universe (EU) material.

When Disney took over Star Wars in addition to the six films and a cgi tv series they also inherited a vast and confusing labyrinth of science fantasy, pulp adventures and confused mysticism called the EU. Hundreds of novels, dozens of games, table top adventures and comics and audio dramas and mountains of plastic tat.

They made a controversial but from a certain (business) point of view sound decision to scrap most of it by downgrading them to legend status. What on earth does that mean? Well essentially if they said something in a shiny new Disney IP that a newspaper comic strip from 83 contradicted they wouldn't care.

It doesn't matter to them creatively, but don't despair fandom, this is Disney, if you still won't those old paperbacks you can still buy them, (Republic) credit cards will do fine.

Which while annoying a lot of people I completely understand why they did that, before the EU was considered semi canon with Lucas famously just shrugging off everything he wasn't involved in, and the Prequels caused a massive pain in the neck for dozens of editors when the new films effectively contradicted dozens of existing properties including fan favourite Boba Fett*.

And since they've got the ball rolling again Disney has been helping itself to what's been considered the best parts of the old EU, Thrawn the blue skinned alien naval commander is back etc. And this recycling is a trend that RoS has continued, though in a confusing and lazy manner.

I said I wouldn't get into specifics about RoS and I won't, however I am going to talk a lot about several old EU properties like the Dark Empire comics, and if you're familiar with them then you already know a lot of the plot of Rise of Skywalker.

Dark Empire is a strange beast, published in the very early 90s its probably the first time they tried to essentially re-do the first three films, its also an early example of an attempt to outdo the Death Star with another hyper powerful weapon of mass destruction. The popularity of the Death Star and it being used in the first movie left a massive shadow over the EU and even the new Disney films can't escape it.

It has its fans, I remember when Disney announced new films were in production quite a few comments were wishing for them to bring Dark Empire to the big screen, but in general and personally its regarded as not very good. Its confused and at times reads like a synopsis for a work of wish fulfilment by the author.

To boil the Dark Empire down, its the Star Wars films but comics and bigger and darker, but so exaggerated the dark bits are cartoony and funny, but the tone of the rest of the work says we're supposed to take the threat seriously.

Regarding the Empire the EU had a sort of spectrum, on one end you had them depicted as an institution that could potentially exist, full of political zealots, career officers and opportunists all swept up in this massive military. On the other end they're cartoon cultists going around wishing each other "dark greetings" and Dark side weddings. Most works are somewhere on the scale and can lean one way but have elements from the other side. This was true of the films, the Empire is shown to be a very powerful institution but its lead by an evil wizard in a cloak and its second in command murders his own men at the drop of a hat.

Dark Empires problem is that it wants to be the former but leans really heavily on the latter. Its easily the silliest EU story I've read that wasn't a book series for very young children. The baddies do all the clichés, they don't care about how many men they lose to get what they want, they keep going on about how amazing the Dark side is and how Dark and powerful they are. Every issue has them release a new super weapon they just have in storage, everything that happens including successful acts of resistance are all according to the plan etc.

Oh and they bring the Emperor back from the dead and he has been hiding out on a remote planet building a massive war machine including a super weapon that can destroy planets. My favourite part of the whole mess is when two Darksiders (The Emperor can just make people Sith, or Dark Jedi its a bit loose with terminology) bully Boba Fett to try to get him to work for them for free. No really, the text box actually says they're bullying Boba Fett because they want his help but don't want to pay him.

Its not great, it isn't terrible, there's a plotline about Luke trying to revive the Jedi order and managing to track down a handful of old runaway Jedi which wasn't amazing either really but it added some interesting ideas about how brutal the purge must have been and spent some time on some interesting planets. Though it was also an early example of the Force being genetic and inheritable so a precursor to midiclorians and the weakest part of RoS.

In addition to not being good in its own right the Dark Empire also caused a lot of problems for the rest of the EU, whom essentially largely ignored it because there was no way to account for it in other works set after it. And causing issues for canon is also something RoS has done as well.

Dark Empire is set about 9 years after Endor and doesn't gel with any other work set in the same time frame. The year before the Empire was on the back foot, Grand Admiral Thrawn was leading the Empire on a counterattack against the New Republic and despite winning most of his battles he was the underdog. He was stretched to the limit and constantly trying to acquire more ships and men to maintain his momentum, he even teamed up with another evil wizard who he knew was unstable and experimented with cloning tech. The plot of the second novel largely revolves around the hunt for a fleet of ghost ships Thrawn is that desperate.

Then Dark Empire comes along and suddenly the Empire is legions strong and can churn out massive new Star Destroyers within days and has thousands of brand new droid fighters all of which were built at a secret base. And the Imperials are all completely loyal to the Emperor, a man who essentially was dead and then left them in the lurch for 8 or so years while building up his own personal citadel in the deep core of the galaxy.

It just can't be reconciled, so they mostly don't bother, aside from a few references like a bonus level of the Rogue Squadron video game the Dark Empire was largely quarantined and most EU properties set and created around the same time ignore it and focus on the much more interesting Imperial Civil War.

The Civil War is where in the aftermath of the death of the Emperor and several of his most important officers the Empire essentially splinters and is carved up by competing warlords many of whom dream of conquering the whole galaxy.

Disney Canon did a version of this too, but in a streamlined and honestly very unbelievable way. Whereas the Imperial Civil War took over ten years and ended with a smaller but stable and secure Imperial rump state, in Disney the Empire collapses and is defeated utterly within about a year or maybe two.

To explain this we have the Aftermath trilogy, and its revealed that the Emperor out of spite didn't bother establishing a succession for his Empire but did arrange for it to eat itself if he died. So instead of an immoral and authoritarian institution collapsing organically under its own weight because its stuffed itself full of the ambitious and cold blooded we have a convoluted evil for evil sake plan that also undercuts the struggles of our heroes.

Instead of the New Republic fleet filled with volunteers bravely standing up to decades of oppression defeating the Empire it was the Emperor and his cronies stabbing them in the back.

Personally I enjoy the Aftermath books, I like the characters and it does a good job of fleshing out bits of the galaxy and the political situation, its just a shame that there's such a convoluted core that undermines so much and only exists to get everything ready for the Force Awakens.

Although now that I think about it, the message of the Aftermath trilogy is also largely undermined by RoS. Oh well.

Anyway the Legends were a big mess, and it had many, many missteps, though often the mess was very enjoyable so long as you didn't get hung up on 100% continuity and consistency. I don't really like Dark Empire but there was just enough in there to keep me reading to the end, and I can see why someone who look at the outline and think there's potential for an improved version. I'm just surprised and confused that JJ Abrams and Disney turned to it at this late hour, and this is the best they could do with it.

Ultimately JJ Abrams greatest crime was that we came so close to making Trioculus cannon again and he didn't follow through

*This is probably the most well known example, as a fan favourite since 1980 but having few lines and no backstory the EU built his entire life from beginning to end. And then Attack of the Clones was released undermining literal decades of work.

Enterprise - A Tale of Three Good Episodes

"Superior ability, breeds superior ambition"

With Star Trek Discovery on the air I've been getting back into the franchise via Netflix. Enterprise the last series to be broadcast on network tv and set the earliest in the shows timeline gets a  lot of flack, and its honestly largely deserved. I can remember watching it when it first aired, I didn't hate the show, but I didn't have any strong feelings for it either. So I've been picking and choosing from series 3 and 4 the better series in that shows run.

I think I've discovered the closest Enterprise had to a gem, in series 4 it had a three part storyline revolving around Trek's blind spot genetic engineering. Star Trek is an incredibly optimistic show, that optimism is still there in Discovery, despite the overshadowing war storyline. This is especially true of scientific progress, the Federations technology is so advanced its essentially magic. The only major exception, genetic engineering. In fact Trek's hostility to the field is so notable its on par with World War III.

One of the franchises most well known villain, Kahn Noonien Singh is tied to the concept. His characters origins were in the Eugenics wars, when a group of genetically engineered people called Augments ruled the earth before being driven out after 30 million deaths. The way the shows have handled the debate over genetic modifications has rubbed some fans the wrong way, I think the lowest point was in DS9 -the series that generally handled big issues well no less- when the Doctor is discovered to have been genetically modified when a child with severe learning disabilities thanks to his parents wishes.

The way this is handled is pretty well odd, his father is sent to prison, which even if you agree with his stance on genetic modifications may seem reasonable since he broke the law. But where it gets murky is that they were going to punish the Doctor too, it was only thanks to his father agreeing to accept full responsibility for what he did that Star Fleet decide to let the Doctor alone. There is then a short speech about how its necessary to outlaw gene mods outright, because of the Eugenics wars, which was four hundred years in their past.

There is a bit more meat to the episode, the Doctor and his father clash over the procedures, the Doctor believed that he was given the treatments because his parents were ashamed of him, while his parents insist they were desperate to provide the best possible life for their son. And in later episodes we meet other characters who had also been genetically modified while children and they all had very severe side effects.

But it was still controversial especially how it was handled. So I was surprised while watching the Augment episodes of Enterprise to see some genuine nuance. The time the show is set in is much closer to the events of the Eugenics wars and World War III, so its casting a much larger shadow. The events of the episodes are largely unresolved threads from the Eugenics wars even. But the really interesting thing to me is the what the episodes imply, Archer the captain, is at one point seriously considering the arguments of Dr Soong the eugenicist whose been under arrest for essentially creating a colony of Augments. 

His father died from a inherited disease, genetic engineering may have saved his life. Archer seems receptive, but ultimately wary of the price. The issue isn't really with genetic modification as a scientific field with its own potential merits, in the episodes an alien species the Denobulans have been using the benefits of genetic research for years, and they are kind, cooperative and supportive. The problem is that thanks to way things went in the 1990s they just can't have cures for hereditary diseases without eventually getting a new master race trying to kill and conquer.

This was the issue in the DS9 episode too, but that was four hundred years later, and coupled with a knee jerk attempt to punish a man for something that was done to him, while he was a child. Its much more understandable here, especially when Star Fleet learn that a group of Augments they knew nothing about show up, murder a bunch of Klingons, hijack a battlecruiser and may have brought another war to earth. 

And another refreshing surprise was the reasons given for why the Augments always seem to turn out like tv villains. Socialisation, Soong raised the Augments as if he was their father, and that relationship was reciprocated. He treated them very well, but he also kept telling them how superior they were to normal humans, and how they must band together to survive. So, when they've come of age they don't really value life that isn't theirs. They aren't all sadists, one of the Augments, Malik, does some very brutal stuff, and the reactions of the other Augments shows they're not all fully on board with his plans, but they'll go along with it for the sake of the group.

This is something that I feel gets left out of the debate in the real world. Its not quite as in depth a look as in Gattaca, but it is an important thing to keep in mind. If we do ever push this field then its only a matter of time before we get to the point where we don't just prevent serious debilitating genetic disorders but "improving" on humanity, well this will be a serious issue. Think about it, of course someone bred to be superior will think of themselves as superior, and since Feudalism is now dead and the world has embraced the concept of meritocracy in one form or another, then it isn't much of a stretch to think that these Augmented people have severe entitlement issues.

The Dispossessed

"Do you think you can stop an idea by ripping up a piece of paper?"

 Ursula K. Le Guin a famous and well regarded author of Science Fiction and fantasy and political Anarchist passed away this week. I really enjoyed the stories of hers I read, but never really found the time to really get into them. The Earth Sea series is highly recommended but I never really got acquainted with the series.

I've decided to add her back catalogue to my lists, and in the searching I found a radio play adaptation of arguably her most famous work, the science fiction story The Dispossessed.



Its an abridgement, but it remains true to the novel's themes and political message. If anything it makes the Anarchism within the story more explicit. I recommend the series its easy to listen too, and apart from some confusion over similar names is a good way to get into the work itself.

They Live We Sleep: Movies as Metaphor for Militancy

1988's They Live, directed by John Carpenter was a modest success when it was released, though nowadays if your familiar with it all its probably as a meme. Either the famous `kick ass and chew bubble gum` one liner or an edit of screencaps of the scene Roddy Piper first puts on those magic sunglasses and sees hidden messages.

Its a shame really, well okay a few of them are pretty funny. What is definitely a shame though is outside of the occasional joke and reference in other programs is that a depressingly large chunk of this films fanbase is incredibly anti-Semitic. So much so that John Carpenter has had to publicly denounce the forced associations with his film.

The film is a bit creaky as 80's action films go the action doesn't really standout and the plot relies on more than a bit of convenience to work. But it does set up its world very well, its ideas are clever consistent and incredibly subversive. Also while Roddy Piper isn't very convincing as an action hero, he does very well in the first half of the film, he is convincing as a naïve drifter who believes in a lucky break, and he does come across as genuinely baffled when first trying out the sunglasses.

Personally I think They Live's real strength aside from an entertaining way to spend 90 minutes is in how weirdly accurate the film is in depicting the development of leftist discourse and the evolution of a militant personality. Especially since this is mostly by accident. Like Carpenter says the film is quite explicitly anti Reagans America with its corporate power and consumer excess but it goes far beyond that.

It starts with a pretty bleak though accurate depiction of late 80's USA, John Nada (Roddy Piper) has just hitched his way to the West Coast after work dried up elsewhere. Decline of industry is in full swing, the Steel mills are laying off their workforce or have already closed `We gave the Steel companies a break when they needed it. Know what they gave themselves? Raises`. Its gotten so bad that even the banks in industrial towns are closing down. The welfare office is over crowded and can't cope, Nada gets a job on a construction site by essentially begging and another worker shows him a shanty town where a community of sorts has been established. They seem pretty well organised the dwellings while improvised look permanent, they have power and a food kitchen and the residents all pitch in. While Nada is getting settled in he notices a strange broadcast from interrupting the tv channel. Something that happened a few times in the 80's, a bearded fellow keeps talking about signals, distractions, growing poverty and some group that's to blame. Its pretty incoherent and the tacky ads soon drown it out.

This peaks Nada's interest, as does strange comings and goings at the church next door, he goes snooping, but shortly after the police move in, they raid the church and smash the shanty town. In a manner eerily close to photographs of the police force's attempts to evict the shanty town in Tompkins Square park New York, that same year, just a few months before They Live was released. That incident was infamous for widespread use of excessive force. Nada manages to escape the storm troopers, but when he returns to the ransacked church he finds a pair of sunglasses and that's when he starts seeing the world as it really is.

Tompkins Square 1988

They Live 1988

It was at this point that the film as metaphor for the development of class consciousness appeared to me. Its commentary on the media in propping up capitalist relations and society is fairly obvious, but less obvious is its counterpart. The broadcast jamming done by the small group of revolutionaries is a depiction of the scale and effects of radical propaganda by small groups on the wider society. Activity which does include pirate broadcasting. The group despite its cleverness and commitment is simply out resourced, the best they can do is spurt out snippets of their cause to an audience that's confused and vaguely hostile, and they are quickly drowned out by mainstream programming. The best they can do is get a few people like Nada vaguely curious in a `want to know, what its all about sense`. Its really the heavy handed police response that pushes Nada into an attempt to make sense of everything, and crackdowns on dissent have been known to be agents of radicalisation. For example the growth of Black Lives Matter after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri 2014.

And when he finally gets the famous sun glasses its effects and Nada's reactions are pretty accurate (well okay its exaggerated) depiction of how people react once they've started learning about the class system and capitalism. Suddenly the normal is different and sinister, but in a way that quickly starts making sense, though it takes awhile to fully comprehend (and some never make it that far) the implications. He also starts seeing the rulers of mankind for what they really are, a sort of bugged skull faced alien thing.

 

One of the things that distinguishes Communism from a conspiracy theory is that ultimately the bad guys are a class of human beings who do harmful things because its in their best interest to do so. Now given that the bad guys in They Live are weird aliens you can be forgiven for thinking They Live is a conspiracy theorist film (the non anti-Semitic ones certainly like it too) but its meant to be figurative not literal. John Carpenter didn't make the film to warn the public that aliens were among us. And to be honest without those glasses, the aliens look perfectly normal, they act perfectly normal, their power is revealed to be systemic rather than personal. And without class consciousness the capitalist class in reality appear like ordinary people just with more money and a few personality quirks. When mainstream society does vilify a capitalist its for being to brazen at capitalism like Mr Shrkeli who jacked up the prices of life saving medicines. His right to charge for those medicines was never questioned, does the scale of his profits and the manner in which he acquired them.

Moving on a bit, shortly after coming to terms with this revelation but still knowing very little about what's going on, Nada arms himself and engages in a brief campaign of individualistic terror. He guns down several of the aliens. He feels pretty good about it, but he soon has to flee and in the grand scheme of things he hadn't accomplished much. The aliens aren't really thwarted by a few deaths and if anything they're using his stunt to consolidate power by sowing fear of a mad gunman. This is a fairly nuanced and accurate depiction of Propaganda of the Deed. A campaign of political assassination and bombings, it was fairly successful in terms of targets killed, including United States President McKinley by Anarchist Leon Czolgosz, but in terms of effective resistance it wasn't very effective at all. Political leaders and industrialists were replaced and the systems persisted.

After escaping Nada tries to recruit his sort of friend and fellow worker Frank Armitage. Frank had expressed resentment at the system previously, back when Nada still `believed in America` but now he's hesitant. Nada being wanted for murder doesn't help matters. This is where the famous five minute back alley fight scene takes place. Its a good fight, but more importantly looks just as frustrating as attempting to raise the consciousness of a friend or co-worker who seemed receptive can be. Replace `put on the glasses` with `just read the book` or `watch this lecture` or `just listen to me and think it over!` and you have an accurate depiction of how many attempts at consciousness raising end up.

Also quite close to home is the argument they have afterwards in the hotel room about what should they do, and why doesn't the other one have a master plan ready to go? In my experience that has been a very big stumbling block, people are receptive and interested but often they really do want to know a step by step blueprint to changing the world.

After finally literally beating Frank into submission he two sees the world for what it really is. They then stumble back into the resistance. At the meeting is where the film is cemented as a critique of capitalism that uses Sci Fi elements and not a Sci Fi film that uses capitalist criticism to give it relevance. Its confirmed that while the aliens occupy key positions of power including in the police and media most of the people working in this industries and the government are humans, some have consciously sold out for the chance of personal enrichment, basically a form of class treason. This human elite is essentially the supervisors and senior management the real power remains concentrated with the aliens.

Frank and Nada also receive upgrades, they trade in there sunglasses for contact lenses, they see clearer with less interference. If the shades represent an introduction to class consciousness the contacts represent a refinement. Both Nada and Frank know more about what they're facing and have confidence in their struggle. Also at the meeting a ring leader of sorts is complaining that they're aren't recruiting enough, that should sound familiar to anyone whose attended a branch meeting. He also says that the authorities think the group and groups like them are all Communists, this explains the heavy handed policing. Even human cops ignorant of the conspiracy are motivated by false ideology to despise dissenters.

The last act begins when the meeting is raided by armed police. The storm troopers mow down the resistance, I'd say this is a depiction of the setbacks endemic to movements, but my heart tells me this was about the needed for action packed climax. Anyway Nada and Frank survive and they wind up in the Aliens headquarters. The plot is at times contrived but to be fair not nearly as much as I'm making it seem here. To its credit the film does establish most of the ending fairly well.

The ending is pretty interesting. We get collaborator explain that the whole world is under the control of the system. Nations don't really exist anymore its all artifice and everyone sells out every day. This is pretty sophisticated stuff, there is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism, and national differences are just maintained by the system for its own advantage.

At the very end of the film Nada destroys the main transmitter for the aliens interference signal, what's interesting is what happens next. Instead of an immediate uprising the immediate effect is that the aliens are exposed for what they really are, this causes general confusion but it strips them of their power. The system has been exposed, and at present that'll have to do for now.

Coda:

Some dialogue that I think sets the mood quite nicely.

Frank: I have a wife and kids in Detroit. I haven't seen them in 6 months. Steel mills were laying people off left and right. They finally went under. We gave the steel companies a break when they needed it. Know what they gave themselves? Raises. The Golden Rule: He who has the gold, makes the rules. They close one more factory we should take a sledgehammer to one of their fancy fuckin foreign cars.
Nada: You know. You ought to have a little more patience with life.
Frank: Yeah, well I'm all out!
Frank: The whole deal is like some kind of crazy game. They put you at the starting line. And the name of the game is make it through life. Only, everyone's out for themselves and looking to do you in at the same time. OK, man here we are. You do what you can, but remember, I'm going to do my best to blow your ass away. So how are you going to make it?
Nada: I deliver a hard day's work for my money I just want the chance. It'll come. I believe in America. I follow the rules. Everybody's got their own hard times these days.

Bearded Man: They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery.

Frank: What do these things want?
Gilbert: They're free-enterprisers. The earth is just another developing planet. Their third world.

Drifter: What's wrong with having it good for a change? Now they're gonna let us have it good if we just help 'em. They're gonna leave us alone, let us make some money. You can have a little taste of that good life too. Now, I know you want it. Hell, everybody does.
Frank: You'd do it to your own kind.
Drifter: What's the threat? We all sell out every day, might as well be on the winning team.

Television Host: The feeling is definitely there. It's a new morning in America... fresh, vital. The old cynicism is gone. We have faith in our leaders. We're optimistic as to what becomes of it all. It really boils down to our ability to accept. We don't need pessimism. There are no limits.

Street Preacher: Outside the limit of our sight, feeding off us, perched on top of us, from birth to death, are our owners! Our owners! They have us. They control us! They are our masters! Wake up! They're all about you! All around you!