As always with Steve Donoghue, the strong opinions are half the fun. Like many people I had a hard time warming up to TNG myself (as I've mentioned before), but I definitely came around to TNG by the time it came into its own in the 4th season.
I didn't learn all that much that was new, but I thought it was a good discussion anyway. Warmed my heart as a someone who has a lot of love for the Original Series myself.
There was a brief talk in the video about the Animated Series, and some speculation that it hadn't really been on TV since it's original run in the early 70s. So I chimed in with my small correction in the comments.
Well, as long as I've started allowing Steve to get me to reminisce about old Star Trek books I read in 5th and 6th grade, I might as well continue.
Steve mentions Diane Carey again (although the specific Diane Carey titles he mentions were ones I haven't read.)
But other than Diane Carey, the only other titles and authors I recognize in this video were Yesterday's Son and Time for Yesterday, both by A.C. Crispin, which I read back in the day.
Like the Diane Carey books, this was yet another series I read out of order because I didn't know any better. I read Time for Yesterday first because that was the book that I found in the bookstore. And only realized as I was reading it that it was a sequel to another book called Yesterday's Son. So once I finished Time for Yesterday, I ordered Yesterday's Son through the mail.
As Steve mentions, these books were really good. (Steve doesn't care for the sequel as much, but I remember enjoying them both when I was in 5th grade.)
As Steve explains in the video, Time for Yesterday is a sequel to Yesterday's Son, and Yesterday's Son is in turn a sequel to the original Star Trek episode All Our Yesterdays, which was also really good.
As I mentioned in my long post on Star Trek years ago, for much of my late teens and 20s (when I was desperately trying to be cool) I was ashamed of how much time I had wasted on Star Trek in my adolescence. But I also acknowledged in that post that it was the perfect entertainment for a young boy.
And you know what, looking back on this stuff, I'm going to double down on that statement. This kind of stuff hits the sensibilities of a 5th and 6th grade boy exactly right. And intellectually, I think it's just about the perfect level for that age as well. I shouldn't be ashamed of my young Star Trek obsession. This is exactly the kind of stuff you should be reading and watching when you're that age.
What caught my ear on this video in particular was the mention of Diane Carey. Watch the video from 5:36, when Steve is talking about his favorite Star Trek writers:
of course Diane Carrey who I consider to be the best Star Trek writer, a writer who never phones it in and who never insults the the intelligence of her readers and who also understands nautical matters which almost no other Star Trek writers do, has spent time on the open ocean
Diane Carey was my favorite Star Trek writer when I was in 5th grade. I read Battlestations! and absolutely loved it. Then I read Dreadnought! next. (Dreadnought! was actually the first book in the series and Battlestations! the sequel, but I read Battlestations! first because I didn't know any better initially, and then circled back to read Dreadnought! once I realized Battlestations! was a sequel.)
I actually did my 5th grade oral book report on Dreadnought! I had to make a poster and talk about the plot of the book. I must have done a good job of selling it, because afterwards several of my classmates were looking for the book in our school library, and I had to explain that our school library didn't actually have it, and I had gotten the book from a bookstore. "What, did you just choose a book outside of the library just to frustrate us, so nobody could find it?" one of the girls said to me (only half-jokingly).
My memories is that I liked Diane Carey for her plots, and not for her prose. I found her prose hard going back in 5th grade, but I loved the way the action of the book kept steadily escalating and escalating and the screws kept getting tighter and tighter on the main characters.
I want to say I've read one or two other Diane Carey books back in my adolescence, but I can't remember which ones they were. Looking at her Wikipedia Bio, I don't recognize anything else. Possibly I read Ghost Ship, although I don't have any clear memories of it.
Update:
Steve Donoghue was kind enough to respond on Twitter:
These two are very, very enjoyable - if you can overlook the 800-pound Mary Sue in the room!
I was just looking this up on Wikipedia, and apparently even the cover art is based on Diane Carrey and her husband. But I am 100% willing to forgive it all. https://t.co/hpOwxHg3pj
I'm going to (once again) break my own rule about not posting about random stuff to say... I watched this video, and it gave me tons of nostaliga. Like these guys, I watched a lot of these episodes when they first came out. And most of them I never saw since then. (So a good 30 years ago now.) And I agree with these guys: Season 1 was weird. I tried to like The Next Generation when it first came out. I really tried to watch season 1 and season 2, but just never liked it as much as the original series. Of course, I was young then, and lacking a critical spine, so I assumed the problem must have been me. I gave up on ST:TNG after season two. (Ironically, because that's just when it started to get good.) And didn't start watching again until season 5. (I caught up on some of season 3 and 4 through re-runs once I began to realize what I had missed.)
Star Trek: Discovery hasn't been released in Vietnam, but through the magic of the Internet, I've managed to watch the first episode.
This isn't a full review, but I do have some brief thoughts.
I think I liked it. It was intense. Interesting.
I really liked the characters. And I liked the actors.
Although final judgement will have to wait until I see more episodes.
I do, however, have some continuity nitpicks.
First... Thoughts on Continuity
As someone who used to be a Star Trek fan since the 1980s, I remember when people used to complain about Star Trek's continuity problem.
In interviews, writers and producers used to complain about how hard it was to tell new stories in the Star Trek world since there was so much continuity to keep track of, and it was suffocating new stories.
Amazing how times have changed. Television shows have gotten so sophisticated that, by comparison, Star Trek's continuity looks like nothing.
In most Star Trek episodes, the Enterprise would go to a completely new planet, and the basic story would reset with each new planet.
You had to keep track of the technology available on the Enterprise (what the ship could do, and what the ship couldn't do). And you had a handful of facts to keep straight about the Vulcans, Klingons, and Romulans. And that was pretty much it
Compare that to the complex convoluted story going on in Game of Thrones now.
OK, Game of Thrones is an extreme example. But pretty much most shows on TV now have a ongoing story and continuity to keep track of.
Even Star Wars, which was always supposed to be the fun, brainless science fiction franchise, is rapidly developing a more convoluted continuity than Star Trek. (Kirk and Spock can always go off and investigate a completely new planet, but every episode of Star Wars has to fit into the saga of the rise and fall of the Galactic Empire.)
That being said, I do have some thoughts:
1) Why make this a prequel? Why? Prequels are boring. We already know what's going to happen to the Federation in 20 years, you can't surprise us. (Or you could, but then you'd create continuity problems). Why not just set this series after the established continuity? What advantage do you gain by making this a prequel?
(I know Star Trek: Enterprise was a prequel, but isn't that widely cited as one of the main reason Star Trek: Enterprise flopped?)
2) Making the main character into Spock's adopted sister also creates problems.
We already did the "Spock has a long lost sibling you never heard about" thing in Star Trek V. And Spock already had to explain away once why Kirk had never heard of his brother. So why do it again?
(That being said... now that we've already opened up this Pandora's box, I'm going to expect to hear about the young Sybok at some point on Star Trek: Discovery.)
3) Some fans are complaining that the technology in Star Trek: Discovery doesn't look like the set of the original series. But to me, this is water under the bridge at this point. Star Trek: Enterprise and J.J. Abrams Star Trekalready showed us technology that doesn't look like the original series.
My own personal philosophy is that you have to cut the show some slack on visual representations, because visual styles have changed since 1966.
4). I would have been content to also excuse away the Klingon make-up as evolving visual representation. Except that the show wasn't. Star Trek: Enterprise went through the trouble of doing a 3-episode story arc to explain why the Klingons during Kirk and Spock's era look different than the Klingons in the TNG era. So it's canon now. So I'm counting this as a continuity nitpick.
5). Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but during the original Star Trek series, only the Romulans had cloaking technology. It wasn't until later that the Klingons developed it.
So, if this show is set 10 years before Kirk and Spock, the Klingons shouldn't be able to cloak their ships, right? (See, this is exactly the reason why they shouldn't have made this a prequel. Look at all the problems prequels cause!)
Oh, by the way, did I ever tell you the story about the time I got my name printed in the letter's column of the Star Trek: The Next Generation comic book?
Well sit down kids, and I'll tell you a tale.
The year was 1992. I was 14 years old. I had a subscription to Star Trek and Star Trek: the Next Generation comic books. I was a huge Trekkie back in those days. Not only did I watch the show religiously, I also read the paper back books, and subscribed to the comics.
Being a reader of the books and comics, however, was a bit thankless, because nothing that happened in the comics and books ever impacted the show in any way. It was purely non-canonical, which means it never really happened. The reset button would be set at the end of every story.
During this time, I would look enviously over to mainstream comic books, in which continuity actually mattered, and the events of one story would be real and meaningful to the characters. During the summer of 1993, I would give up Star Trek comics to make the jump over to mainstream comics.
But I digress. Back in 1992, I was still an avid read of the Star Trek comics. I had subscriptions to both Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation. And everyone was waiting for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to come out in January. But would there be a tie in comic book to Deep Space Nine as well? I decided to write to the Comic Book Publishers and ask them.
At this time, Star Trek: The Next Generation comic book was doing its best to acknowledge all of its fans by printing the names of everyone who wrote in a letter, even if they didn't have the room to print the actual letter. So I got my name printed in the back of the comic book, even though they didn't publish the actual text of the letter asking about the Deep Space Nine Comic. In parenthesis, after my name, the editor wrote "sorry, not by DC"-- meaning DC Comics would not have the license to publish Deep Space Nine comics. (The Deep Space Nine comic ended up being published by Dark Horse Comics.)
Because there was a time delay, it was several months later until the actual comic got published, and it didn't show up until the following Spring in the May 1993 issue.
And that's my story.
Obviously I can't entertain too many cocktail parties with this particular yarn, and yet I've always thought it was kind of...something. These comics become collectibles, and my name is now part of a collectible somewhere.
I don't actually still have my copy of this comic book. (I got rid of it a long time ago when I was cleaning out junk.)
But with the Internet these days, there are so many websites that host digital copies of comic books, I thought I'd see if I could find it. And sure enough, here I found it.
(Website here--I should warn you that this is probably in violation of the copy right holders, but I paid good money for this comic back in 1993, so I figure I've paid my dues.)
The comic cover is below.
Letter page is below.
And my name is here:
So there it is folks. If I get hit by a bus crossing the street tomorrow, let it not be said that I didn't lead an exciting life.
I wasn't going to write anything about this, but then I realized today that everyone and their brother was either writing about Star Trek or tweeting about Star Trek.
And so I thought: "Oh, alright then. Why not jot down a few words?"
I spent some periods of my life being obsessed with Star Trek.
The first time was around 4th through 6th grade. (Roughly 1987-1989).
I was introduced to Star Trek via the movies, and then only later found that there was a television show attached to them.
Whisky Prajer, 10 years my elder, expressed surprise at this: "That's interesting -- it never occurred to me that a kid could see all the movies before watching a single episode of television"
But I think this was pretty standard for kids in the 1980s. The movies were really, really big back then, while the show was less of a staple of network TV than it had been 10 years previously.
(Although granted in my case, my TV viewing as a child was fairly restricted, so I tended to have less of an encyclopedic knowledge of everything on TV than some of my classmates did.)
It's interesting to consider how popular those movies were in the 1980s, because when you re-watch them now, they don't seem like summer blockbusters at all. The pacing is slow, and, by today's standards, there's not nearly enough action to attract audiences. But people loved them at the time.
Once I discovered there was a Star Trek television series, I started to watch that obsessively as well.
It was in my nature as a child to become obsessive about everything I was interested in. (The technical term for this kind of personality trait is "geek".) And so not only did I watch the TV show religiously, I read The Star Trek Compendium (A) read the tie-in novels (The Pocketbook series (W)), and read the comic books.
When Star Trek: The Next Generation came out, I already considered myself a long-time fan. Which is funny, because Star Trek: The Next Generation came out in 1987, so I could only have been a fan for about half a year at that point. But time moves a lot slower when you're a child, so that half-a-year was like an eternity. I fully felt like a long time fan, and I had a long time fan's sense of propriety over the franchise.
I tried to convince myself that I liked Star Trek: The Next Generation, but the truth is that in those first two years, I had a hard time warming up to it. It was just so boring. The original Star Trek could always be counted on to include some overly dramatic stage-choreographed fist fight, but on Star Trek: The Next Generation, all they did was talk, talk, talk.
Nowadays, the first two seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation are looked back upon as some of the worst Star Trek seasons of all time. (Everyone says it's a miracle the show survived.) But at the time, nobody knew how good the show would eventually become. And conversely, nobody knew how bad the first two seasons would eventually look by comparison.
Children are constantly told they don't appreciate adult entertainment because they are too young to understand it, and as a result I think children are reluctant to criticize any media based on its intrinsic merit. I knew I wasn't really into Star Trek: The Next Generation, but I assumed the fault must have been with me, and that I should just train myself to appreciate it.
I did eventually stop watching the show however.
I came back into the fold around 1991, by which time Star Trek: The Next Generation was in its 5th season, and had actually become good. (I had started picking up on the buzz the show had generated, and started watching it again).
I stuck through till about 1996, when I gave up due to Star Trek exhaustion. (Counting the re-runs in syndication, there were at that point 4 Star Trek franchises I was trying to watch every week. And some of them, like Star Trek: Voyager, felt like more of a chore to sit through than an enjoyment.)
So, that's my history.
Here are my thoughts on the original:
The original Star Trek was already dated when I first fell in love with it in 1987, but I never really noticed how dated it was at the time. Possibly this I was only 8 years old and couldn't yet distinguish these things. Or possibly because in 1987 Star Trek was only dated by 20 years, and now it's dated by 50 years. Or possibly a combination.
Watching it now, though...Oh boy! You can't get away from how incredibly dated this show is. The special effects are of course the most obvious, but it's everything else as well: the music, the corny humor, the cultural values, and that old style of stage-fighting which was so popular on television in the 1960s, but which we don't see anymore.
On the other hand, seeing how incredibly dated Star Trek is makes the aspects of it that were ahead of its time all the more striking.
I mean, nowadays geek culture has taken over mainstream media, so everyone is expected to get obsessive about the continuity in all the shows they watch. (And DVDs, Netflix, and the Internet has made this so much easier to do.)
But it's amazing to think that back in 1966 Star Trek was already introducing this kind of world building to their series.
Considering the original Star Trek aired long before serialized television would become popular, and long before the Internet, there's an incredible amount of things 1960s fans were asked to keep track of.
The original series did a ton of mythology building around the race of Vulcans, but it also expected its fans to keep track of the characteristics of the Klingons, and the Romulans. (The Romulans had some sort of mysterious ancient connection to the Vulcans which I always found fascinating, but was only hinted at in the original series). And of course, there was the Federation itself, and all of its internal politics.
That was really impressive for the 1960s.
That praise aside, I don't think the original Star Trek was ever meant to be adult entertainment. I like it now because of the nostalgia factor, in the way I continue to maintain a fondness for all my childhood obsessions. But the show was not meant to appeal to a fully grown adult.
But man-oh-man, this was certainly the greatest show ever when you were 8 years old. Sidenote: Whatever happened to those elaborate stage fights on television?
I grew up on 1960s television only through re-runs, but I grew up on a fair amount of 1960s television nonetheless.
Whatever happened to all that elaborate stage fighting we used to have on television. For all the advancement we've made in special effects over the years, the art of fight choreography on television seems to have been lost.
I mean, do you still see choreography like this on TV nowadays?
And not just Star Trek, of course but remember Disney's old Davy Crockett TV show?
Other Posts on Star Trek
My review of Star Trek Beyondhere.
My review of Star Trek Into Darknesshere,
My review of the original 2009 reboot here.
My review of Star Trek Enterprisehere.
My 4th grade report (1987) on the original Star Trek series here.
Positives
* There's a lot of debate about what a Star Trek movie should be. (I know a lot of fans want to see a more intellectual movie). But whether or not this is the Star Trek movie you wanted to see, you've got to at least give the film makers credit for doing what they set out to do. They set out to do an action/adventure film set in space, and they delivered on that premise with a lot of incredible action set-pieces
* The best thing this reboot series has going for it is the very talented cast, and it's true in this movie as well. (Rest in peace Anton Yelchin).
* Related to the above points, it has a script that gives all the characters time to shine, and has a lot of character driven moments.
Negatives
* Yet another villain who just wants to blow up everyone for the sake of blowing up everyone.
* The list of "things that are never explained at all" in this movie is really pushing it. There's a lot of magical alien technologies. (I guess that's par for the course in a Star Trek film). Krall's motivation is kind of explained, but not really. I still don't know what was the motivation of everyone working for Krall. I don't understand how Krall got his powers.
* Jaylah's character was intriguing--what little we saw of her--but she never got developed into someone the audience was attached to. Which made it bizarre when one of the movie's climatic fight scenes revolved completely around her. What do I care happens to this white skin lady I've barely been introduced to?
* It's a minor thing, but for what it's worth I agree with George Takei about the gay Sulu controversy. It was a nice gesture, but it would have been better to just leave Roddenberry's characters as they were, especially once George Takei had made his feelings known to the film makers (which he apparently did before the filming).
The Review
I know fans have high expectations of everything Star Trek, but for me, this film did exactly what it set out to do. It was a fun action/adventure movie set in space.
Links
For a counterpoint, see Fredrik deBoer, who writes:
I saw the new Star Trek movie. When I tell you that it’s all punching and shooting, I’m really not exaggerating. It’s all punching and shooting. And as far as punching and shooting summer action movies goes, it’s OK. It has an ending that’s like two 13 year old boys talking about what a good ending would be via text message, but it isn’t completely soulless, which is better than you can say for most franchise movies. But Star Trek isn’t about punching or shooting. It’s contemplative. It’s about actual moral conflict and ambiguity. It’s optimistic about the prospect of peace and the ability to solve problems nonviolently. It lets stories develop slowly. It’s about exploration and diplomacy far more than its about combat.
Speaking as someone who was completely obsessed with Star Trek in his youth, I think Star Trek's reputation as "the thinking man's science fiction franchise" has been much exaggerated. Sure, when the original series was at its best, it could be contemplative, about actual moral conflict and ambiguity, and optimistic about the prospect of peace and the ability to solve problems nonviolently. But I challenge people to go ahead and re-watch the original 1960s Star Trek. It had episodes which were completely dumb, many episodes which ended in a climatic bare-knuckled fist fight, and lots of episodes that seemed to exist only for the purpose of having a few fight scenes and some scantily clad alien women. (Some of the original Star Trek episodes were even polemics against pacifism as a realistic alternative--like City on the Edge of Forever (W) ).
All of which is to say that I don't believe making Star Trek into a dumb action movie ruins the franchise. Star Trek is a versatile franchise. It can easily be a dumb action movie in one incarnation, and serious and contemplative in the next incarnation. I'm content to enjoy this movie for what it is.
Star Trek Links
My review of Star Trek Into Darknesshere,
My review of the original 2009 reboot here.
My review of Star Trek Enterprisehere.
My 4th grade report (1987) on the original Star Trek series here.
When Leonard Nimoy died, Whisky Prajer wrote: "It's curious to grieve a man who played a beloved role"
I didn't know Anton Yelchin personally, so I can only grieve him for his roles. And I enjoyed his acting in Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness, and I'm sorry he won't be around to do the role any more.
Saturday, March 14, 2015
...and while I'm writing obituaries here, I suppose that the fact that I didn't say anything on Leonard Nimoy's passing is a bit of an omission for someone who was - so - obsessed with Star Trek in my youth. (I'm not in that obsessive state anymore, but nostalgia for the obsessions of our youth if nothing else should cause me to write down a few words.)
It is probably an unhealthy cultural obsession to eulogize actors into heroes. (As Whisky writes: "It's curious to grieve a man who played a beloved role.) And yet, it appears from all the stories coming out about Leonard Nimoy that he really was a decent man in real life. For example, I've been learning from all the obituaries out there that Leonard Nimoy was a celebrity speaker at many anti-war rallies during the Vietnam War, and supported McGovern in 1972.
I suppose I
should follow Internet convention and announce the following: ****SPOILERS
ALERT****
Why I Watched This
Movie
I was a huge Trekkie in my
youth.
Admittedly,
these days I’m somewhat of a lapsed Trekkie.(I stopped watching the TV shows in 1996.) But I still show up for the
big events like a new movie.And I still
have nostalgia for the old show.
Because I’m
going to be reviewing this movie from the perspective of a Trekkie, I suppose I
should start out with what seems to be the big question:
Is It Sacrilege to
Reboot Star Trek as an Action Franchise?
I’m in agreement with Ron Moore
[LINK HERE] who makes a distinction between the Star Trek movies and
the Star Trek TV shows.
The
original Star Trek functioned, as Gene Rodenberry famously described it, as a Wagon Train to the Stars.(Or a mobile Twilight Zone if you like.)
Every week
the Enterprise
crew would explore a new planet.Something strange would be going on.The mystery would slowly boil for about a half hour, and then the
strange twist would be revealed at the end.
This works
fine as a TV show because your expectations and your level of investment are
different for TV.You don’t have to
leave your house.You’re not expecting
anything special because you know it’s a weekly TV show and whatever happens
the same characters will all be back next week.
And if the
episode is slightly disappointing, it doesn’t really matter because you’ll get
another episode next week. (And let’s face it, these “strange planet of the
week” episodes could be quite hit or miss.It’s not always easy to write an intelligent
storyline, and a number of the old Star Trek episodes were underwhelming.)
Now imagine
the movie.You get yourself all hyped up
months in advance.The Hollywood
marketing machine is doing everything it can to milk the excitement.You call your friends, put on pants, drive to
the cinema, buy your big size popcorn and soda…..Imagine if after all that you
got another slow boiler “mystery planet of the week” type Star Trek.
It just
doesn’t work as a cinema release.You need
something more exciting. Hollywood
understands this 100%, and I don’t disagree with them.
Of course
the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movies have taken the adrenaline up a notch from even
the old Star Trek movies, but things have changed since the 1980s and each
generation demands more intense cinematic thrills than the last one.And if you’re going to make an action movie,
you might as well try and make it a good one.
Someday
Star Trek will probably be back on the small screen, and then we can do more
intellectual stories.
But as far
as the movies go, I’m totally okay with this being all action.
The question is: as an action
film, is it any good?
The Review
I have a number of friends and
co-workers who absolutely hated this movie.
I actually
liked it.I thought overall it was an
entertaining action film— albeit one with some very serious flaws.There were a couple of very poor decisions in
the script, but I’ve decided they didn’t spoil the whole movie for me.
The action
sequences in this film were solid.It
didn’t break any new ground, but there was enough chasing, jumping, running and
shooting to keep me happy.
The
characters also worked well for me.
At some
point in the future, this rebooted Trek may run into awkwardness because the
actors can’t play organic characters, and are locked into imitating caricatures
previously established by other actors.(That is, assuming this new crew gets a lot more future outings, which—given
how long it took them to make just one sequel—they might not.)
However for
the moment, the writers are showing skill at keeping these characters
interesting.The new writers expertly
milk the classic conflict of Spock’s cold considered logic and obsession for
following the rules versus Kirk’s rash impulsiveness and fondness for rule
breaking.This is not new of course—it’s
part of what gave the original series its charm.But if we’re going to reboot the original
characters than we are also rebooting the old personality conflicts, and I thought
the new movie writers handled this well.They also adopted it to the structure of the movie by having the characters
develop over the course of the story.At
the beginning of the movie Kirk and Spock are at loggerheads, and by the end of
the movie they both come to appreciate the benefits of the other’s position.
I was
entertained, and I thought the movie was respectful to the series, and that’s
enough for me to give it a cautious thumbs up.(Other Trekkies will disagree of course.Passionate arguing about Star Trek is what being a Trekkie is all
about.)
Things I Didn’t Like
And now I get to my complaints.
This FAQ article [LINK HERE] does a good job of pointing out all the plot holes in the
movie.I agree with almost all of it with
some minor exceptions.(I’m not sure if
it was Khan’s plan all along to put the 72 torpedoes on the Enterprise, or if this was what Admiral
Marcus did, and Khan was just reacting to the situation. The movie
got a little bit confusing on what exactly Khan’s master plan had been.Also I didn’t mind that the movie stuck with
Trek canon about the Eugenics wars in the 1990s.I just accept that Star Trek is taking place
in a different timeline than our own universe.And I actually liked Leonard Nimoy’s cameo.But all the rest of their criticisms I agree
with.)
Fortunately
for this movie, the pacing is fast enough that you don’t get time to think
about most of these plot holes as you get rushed from one action sequence to
another.
The other point is that if you wanted to get
nit-picky, you could do this kind of FAQ with just about every movie and TV
episode from the Star Trek canon.Most
of Star Trek won’t hold up to this kind of close scrutiny, and the further back
in time you go, the worse it gets.
(If,
hypothetically, you could somehow wipe the memory of all the original episodes
from the minds of Trekkies, and then re-introduce these 1960s episodes as New
Trek, how much do you want to bet they would be complaining that these new
episodes were ruining the franchise?I
can think of more than a few original Star Trek episodes that just don’t make a
lot of logical sense.)
Star Trek
fandom is an interesting phenomenon.The
fans are often more intelligent than the show. And although the original series
was very cheesy, the fans have expected the show to move on and mature as they
have. And neither of these are bad things.(As much as the writers hate being nit-picked by the fans, it helps to
keep the standards high.)
But at a certain
point you either have to give up and just wash your hands of the entire
franchise, or accept that from time to time there will be stupid plot points,
and I’m choosing the latter.
The one
thing that I am really upset about, and it’s the same thing that every other
reviewer is upset about, is the decision to replay the ending of the Wrath of Khan by killing off Kirk and
then bringing him back to life.
The idea is
so terrible, it’s difficult to see how it ever got into the movie.Who could have possibly thought that this was
a good idea?And how did this get passed
the whole studio process?
The lesson
really should have been learned from the Star Wars prequels.George
Lucas thought it would be a good idea to have scenes in the Star Wars prequels that paralleled
scenes in the original Star Wars trilogy.It was an interesting idea, but it fell
completely flat and everyone hated it, and I naively assumed the lesson had
been learned.
I can kind
of understand what was in George Lucas’s mind, because it seems like the kind
of literary theme that your high school English teacher really loved—one scene
foreshadowing a future scene, another scene calling back to a previous scene.
But the
thing is there’s an art to this kind of stuff, and it doesn’t work if you do it
clumsily.There needs to be a certain amount
of subtlety.And ideally the way to do
it would be to have things subtlety foreshadowed in one movie which pay off in another
movie.(Which is impossible to do in a
franchise that spans 30 years, so it probably just shouldn’t even be
attempted.)
Also you
should probably have a larger thematic point and not just repeat scenes just
for the sake of repeating them.
And, like a
lot of ambitious literary techniques, they have to be pulled off exactly right
or they end up looking really stupid.And that’s what happened to George Lucas, and what happened to J.J.
Abrams.
(Lucas I
can forgive, because he didn’t know any better.Abrams really should have taken a lesson from the failed Star Wars prequels.I agree with the avclub’s reviewer [LINK HERE] that this kind of thing makes me really nervous about how Abrams
plans to do the new Star Wars movies
now.)
And I have
more complaints.It’s one thing to
replay an action scene, but J.J. Abrams attempts to replay a tragic scene.This was never going to work.Tragedy simply cannot be replayed.You can’t use the same emotional punches
twice and expect the impact to be the same.I may have gotten teary-eyed at the original Spock’s death, but I’m not
going to cry over the same scene twice.
And even
worse, by reversing the roles of Kirk and Spock, and then even re-using and
reversing the original dialogue, J.J. Abrams decides to try and milk pathos
while simultaneously wink at how cute he’s being.You can play this scene for tragedy, or you
can play it for cuteness but you can’t do both.
The whole
thing culminates in the worst decision of all—to have Spock yell out “KHAAAAAN!”This was Kirk’s most memorable line from the
original Wrath of Khan, but it’s
memorable in part because people love to make fun of it.The line is a parody of itself.Attempting to force this line into a tragic
scene is a terrible idea.
Once again
I have to ask the question—how did a scene this bad manage to make it into the
movie?Aren’t whole teams of people
involved in making a big-budget studio film like this?Did they all sign off on this scene?Wasn’t there one voice of sanity in the room?
The best
defense that can be given of Kirk’s death is that it is quick.Once I realized what J.J. Abrams was doing, I
was scared this was going to be a long drawn out death scene like in the
original, but Abrams doesn’t allow the scene to linger or slow the movie down. We’re given a quick death scene, and then
immediately treated to more explosions, running, jumping, and fist
fighting.The scene is quickly
forgotten, and it’s almost forgivable.
Almost.Except that killing off a main character and
then bringing him back to life is such a desperate story-telling technique that
it should only be used with extreme caution.In life, death means something, and death is supposed to mean something
in fiction as well. The possibility of death is what gives any fictional story
its stakes.If death can be reversed,
the story loses all sense of stakes.
(After
decades of abusing this narrative technique, this is precisely the problem
American comic books have written themselves into.They kill off a major character now, and
absolutely no one cares anymore.)
I know it’s
part of classic Trek now, but it was a questionable move the first time they
killed off a main character only to immediately bring him back in the next
movie.But at least they had the sense
to make the death seem meaningful, and wait a couple years before
bringing the character back to life.Here they kill a character off for no apparent reason, and then just
immediately bring him back to life.
And at
least in the original, the writers put in the effort to give us a good reason
why Spock’s body could be brought to back to life.In this movie, Kirk is just brought back to
death by magic blood, a very lazy solution if there ever was one.
Things I Liked About
the Movie
Alright, now that I’ve gotten that
out of my system, here are a few more positives about the movie.
Benedict
Cumberbatch did a great job as Khan.(Once you get passed the fact that it’s a little
strange to re-cast a British man as Khan, and I’ve already decided I’m going to
cut the new re-booted Trek a little slack when it comes to visual
representations of old characters.)
And I know it
didn’t really add much to the plots, but I really liked the fact that they
brought Leonard Nimoy in for a quick cameo.It helps to remind us that this new Star Trek universe is still
connected tangentially to the old Star Trek continuity.
(Many people
have already pointed out that old Spock completely contradicts himself, saying
essentially “I know I said I was never going to tell you anything about the
timeline, but in this case I’m going to make an exception.” It works if you
accept that people can be inconsistent in real life, and can make exceptions as
circumstances warrant.)
Given the
huge antagonism between Kirk and Khan in the original series, I thought it was
kind of cool that Kirk and Khan teamed up for a while in this movie against a
common enemy.And I thought the script made
it believable, giving them each ample motivation to attempt to use the other.
Also, once
I got passed how stupid Kirk’s death scene was, I liked the switch-up at the
end of the movie where it was Spock who fought the final battle against Khan
instead of Kirk.
Although
Kirk and Khan traditionally had the grudge match against each other, it does
almost make more sense for Spock to take down Khan in the end.Khan is genetically engineered to have
super-human strength, and in the original series Vulcans are also portrayed as
having super-human strength.So when it
comes to hand to hand combat, Spock is really the one who should be fighting
Khan.
(Although actually,
if you watch the original Star Trek closely, the super Vulcan strength is
something they’re very inconsistent on.Sometimes Vulcans are portrayed as much stronger than humans, sometimes
they’re not.Also, since Romulans share
the same genetic make-up as Vulcans, they should also in theory have the same
super strength, but the show is also very inconsistent about this.
For that
matter, I’m not sure Khan’s powers are consistent with his portrayal in the
original series.I’m going to have to
re-watch Space Seed to be definite on
this, but I think originally he was just a slightly stronger than average human
in the original incarnation, not superman.)
And while I’m
nitpicking on these little details, what would a Star Trek review be without
continuity nitpicks?(As I said above, I’m
not going to let these ruin the movie for me, but I’m still going to point out
what I caught.)
Continuity Nitpicks
Since J.J. Abrams created a new
tangent universe, he’s bought himself a fair amount of flexibility as far as
established continuity goes, but everything that happened before Nero created the new universe is still in continuity, which means Khan’s
origins are still in continuity, and Star
Trek: Enterprise is still in continuity in this new universe.
In their
fourth season, Star Trek: Enterpriseactually went through the trouble of doing a 2 part storyline
explaining once and for all why Klingons in the original series don’t have the
ridges on their foreheads as a result of genetic engineering gone wrong..
Since the
J.J. Abrams movies take place in the time period of what would have been the
original series, the Klingons should look like they do in the original series
with no forehead ridges.
(Remember
now, this is not me being more geeky than the show.The show itself went out if its way to
establish this continuity point.I would
have been content to just allow the show a certain artistic license when it
comes to visual representations of characters, but now it’s an established part
of Star Trek continuity that Klingons during the time frame of the original
series are suffering from the results of genetic experiments and therefore do not
have forehead ridges.
Although admittedly
I think you could find an easy way out of this by just positing that in the
alternate universe the Klingons somehow found a cure quicker.)
* In his review, Locke Peterseim points out [LINK] that when Khan was originally defrosted from suspended animation, he
wasn’t so angry.It was being marooned
on the planet for 20 years that drove him insane.
This movie
did attempt to give Khan another reason for vengeance—anger that he was being
used by Admiral Marcus.It’s a judgment
call whether you think that this was enough to drive him to extremes or not.
* And back to the thing about Khan’s blood: Nowhere in the
original Star Trek were we given any
hint that Khan’s blood could bring people back to life from the dead.And since Khan was created by genetic
engineering, it doesn’t even really make sense.(A genetically engineered human being would have the best of whatever
DNA was available in the gene pool, but there’s no regenerative blood gene.) Plus, in the original Wrath of Khan, Khan is driven to vengeance because in part because
his wife died.Why didn’t he just bring
her back to life with his magic blood?
* Technology, what it can and can’t do, is always very
inconsistent in Star Trek.So it’s
almost pointless to mention this stuff, but in past episodes it was difficult
for them to use communicators across long distances.Here Kirk calls Scotty all the way back on
earth
The fact
that Khan is able to transport himself all the way to Klingon space also seems
inconsistent with the Star Trek universe, but at least the movie addressed this
head on by reminding us that Scotty had created a new transport technology in
the 2009 Star Trek.
Other Notes
* Put me in the group of people who think the title for this
movie is really awful.
* Whether you love this latest Star Trek movie, or hate it,
it’s worth remembering that at this point the franchise has already seen much,
much worse.(Nemesis, for example.)So
although some reviewers are complaining about how the franchise is being
ruined (this Salon.com review, for example), it’s important to keep things in
perspective.In 30 years’ time, this
movie will just be another footnote in the franchise’s history, and in the
years to come I’m sure we can expect more good Trek and more bad Trek as well.
* Before I saw this movie, I heard people were mocking J.J.
Abrams for his overuse of lens flares.I
thought people were just being hyper-critical but, wow, he really does use lens
flares a lot in this movie.
I don’t
mind lens flares per se.They can kind
of produce a cool dramatic effect when used sparingly at the right time.But you don’t need them in every shot.
* Whisky’s review is here with further thoughts
here.Many of the links above
are stolen from Whisky.
* And one last Star Trek related link before I close out
this review.I’m a big fan of the Star
Trek reviews at sfdebris.com.
They’re not
perfect—the humor is corny and often forced—but he does a good job of editing
each Star Trek episode down to 10 minutes and, once you get passed the bad
jokes, often has some intelligent commentary as well.It’s perfect for the Trekkie with short
attention span.
To see why
Khan made such a great villain in the original Star Trek universe, see SF
Debris’s review of Space Seed [HERE]
and The Wrath of Khan [HERE].
Here is a
partial list of some of the DVD box sets I’ve worked my way through in Cambodia, and
my thoughts on them.
Kings
This TV
show came out when I was in Japan,
and was completely under my radar. I
didn’t even know it existed until I saw it in the DVD shop.
(I’m
curious, how many people back home knew about this show? I know it didn’t last past its first season,
but was it a big deal when it started?)
The premise
is that it’s a retelling of the King Saul and David story, set in a modern
setting in a fictional kingdom. It did very poorly in the ratings, and was
cancelled after one season.
Slate.com
gives the series a rave review, and laments that it was cancelled after one
season [LINK HERE.]
The AV Club
has an episode by episode guide that is mostly positive [LINK HERE].
My own
thoughts are this: it’s a really cool idea to make a TV show out of the King
David narrative. This was always my
favorite story in the Bible, and it has got enough complexity here to sustain a
TV show.
But
unfortunately in the medium of television, execution is everything, and a good
premise will only get you so far. Some
of the episodes were better than others, but I felt like I was watching some
cheesy teen drama most of the time, not a mythical epic.
Plus the
way they chose to portray David was a mistake.
He just came out so bland. The
character in the bible had a bit more of an edge to him—he could be a malicious
trickster when he wanted to, and he knew how to look out for his own interests
(such as when he defected to the Philistines).
I believe a
better TV show is possible with the same source material. Maybe in another 20 years, someone will give
it another shot.
(I’ve
actually got some ideas on how I think the King David story should be filmed,
but I’ll save that for the next post.)
I also bought the DVDs of the
original Star Trek, and re-watched those.
I hadn’t actually seen most of these in years, and was pleasantly surprised to see they were just as good as I remembered
them.
The Wire
Everybody has been recommending this show to me. Some of my best friends have been praising it
very highly on Facebook (you know who you are). Some of you even said that this wasn’t just a
TV show, but that it had all the complexity of a novel, and should be regarded
as such.
I had a
little bit of trouble getting into this show, partly because the ridiculous
amount of praise it had gotten didn’t seem to match what I was seeing in the
first season. The first season was
alright, but it wasn’t the best TV ever made.
But a
number of friends told me the show grew in complexity with each season. So I stuck with it for the second
season.
And by the
3rd season I was hooked. By the 3rd
season I realized this really was genuinely the most intelligent TV show I had
ever seen.
I loved how
they took the idea of legalizing drugs, but they didn’t do it as just a one off
episode gag. They followed that concept
throughout the whole season. And they
showed all the different sides of it—all the good things that resulted from
this plan, and all the bad things that resulted from this plan.
Plus, right
about the 3rd season, they started really getting into the politics of the
city, and that was interesting.
And then
the 4th season, when they took on the public school system, was also really
well done.
The fifth season
dropped the ball a little bit, but by that point I was hooked anyway, so I kept
watching.
The Walking Dead (1
and 1/2 seasons)
This show
was very popular in my office and because my co-workers (mostly my male
co-workers) kept talking about how great it was, I decided to check it out.
I made it
through the first season and half of the second season and then I just stopped.
I like zombie
movies, don’t get me wrong. Those old
George Romero movies The Night of the
Living Dead, and Dawn of the Dead
are among my favorite films of all time.
But, I’ve
decided zombies are villains with a complexity best suited to an hour and a
half movie. I do not have the patience
to sit through 20 hours of zombies.
Horror
movies work best in small doses to begin with, otherwise they just get too
exhausting. Plus zombies aren’t really a
complex villain. You don’t need 20 hours
to understand their motivations. They
walk slow and they feed on brains.
“But zombie
movies were never supposed to be about the zombies,” my co-workers told me when
I made this complaint. “The best zombie
movies have always been about the conflicts the humans have with each other.”
And I
agreed with this. But although there
were lots of petty arguments arising among the humans in The Walking Dead, I never saw anything that grabbed my attention
and made me want to keep watching.
And another
thing: Zombies are really scary when you’re trapped in an empty house at night
in the countryside outside a graveyard, a la Night of the Living Dead.
But of course you remember what happens in that movie the next morning,
right? The sheriff and his posse go door to door shooting all the remaining zombies.
My point
is, although zombies can terrify isolated groups of people for a limited amount
of time, they’re not a problem that poses any long-term threat to organized
humans.
I do not
buy for one minute the premise of The
Walking Dead that there was a zombie apocalypse that overran the US
military. And the fact that I couldn’t
suspend my disbelief for this premise also hindered my getting involved in this
show.
I regret to
say this caused some disagreement between me and my other co-workers. Some of them argued passionately that the
zombies would definitely have overran the US military, but I just didn’t see
it happening.
“But they would
have over-run the US
military by sheer numbers!" my co-workers said.
Listen,
sheer numbers never won any battle. The
British Raj would never have been established in India if the Indians could have
beaten them with sheer numbers. (Nor could
the British and French have burned down the summer palace in Peking for that matter.) Whoever
has the guns and the organization will win any conflict.
Where all
these zombies are coming from, and how many there are, is still a matter of
debate in my office, but I maintain no matter how many zombies there are, they
would never over-run the US military.
Boardwalk Empire(First 2 seasons)
Another
show I started watching because everyone at work seemed to like it so much.
I’ve
decided I like this show, but it tries my patience at times. I like the gangsters, I like the various tie
ins with real historical figures and real gangster history.
I can’t
stand the soap opera parts. James Darmody and his
relationship with his wife? Nucky and
his relationship with that Irish woman?
Van Alden and his relationship with his wife? Boy did all those subplots really bore me to
death.
Also, I
never thought I would say this but I’m beginning to get bored with all the gratuitous
violence. Killing off a character
suddenly is a great way to shock the audience, but if it becomes over-used, it
loses its shock value.
I’m going
to stay with this show for the moment, but it’s really borderline for me.
Arrested Development
Another show numerous people had
recommended to me. And another show I
had missed out on because I had been in Japan when it came out.
It was
pretty funny, although I spoiled it for myself a bit by watching it all
in one
marathon session one a 3 day weekend. I
think I would have found it funnier if I had taken it in smaller doses.
But I just couldn’t help myself. The show was just so addictive, I
would
finish one episode and fell like I had to watch the next one.
Community
People at
work were talking about this, so I checked it out.
Some
episodes were better than others, but at least in its stronger moments a very
funny and very inventive show.
Parks and Recreation
(Seasons 1-4)
Again, people at work were talking
about this.
Like
Arrested Development, I found it all too addictive, and blitzed through all 4
seasons way too quickly. Again, I probably
spoiled the viewing experience for myself, but it was a funny show.
Homeland (Half a Season only)
Everyone at my work loves this show, but I just didn't have the patience for it. After about 5 episodes, I decided I was pretty sure they were going to reveal he was a terrorist at the end of the season. (That was the only way they could have written it. Otherwise the whole show would have just been one long red herring.) And I couldn't be bothered to sit through the rest of the season so I could find out what I already knew.
How I Met Your Mother
(Seasons 1-7)
Because I’ve
been living abroad for so long, this TV show has been off my radar for many
years. I first started noticing it when
I was at University in Melbourne,
and when hanging out with undergraduates I began to notice how popular this
show was with the 18-22 year old crowd.
Since then I’ve caught a few episodes here and there, and quite enjoyed
them. And then I found myself buying the
DVDs and working through the whole series.
I love the
characters and I love the zany sense of humor of this series.
The sappiness,
however, means that I can only watch so much of this series before I start
getting fed up with it. Some episodes
really lay on the sap harder than others so, so it can be hit and miss.
Hatfields and McCoys
(History Channel Miniseries)
This hit the
DVD stores in Cambodia a few
months after it had aired in the US.
Via the
Internet, I had known it got a lot of bad reviews from the critics, but I quite
enjoyed it and many of my co-workers quite enjoyed it too.
The
Hatfields and McCoys occupy a funny bit of space in American history. Because of references in pop culture, everybody
knows that this feud existed (I remember first learning about it from a Farside cartoon [LINK]). And yet no one ever teaches
you about it in history class at school.
So every American knows that there was some bizarre feud between two
families in the 19th century that ended up killing several people, but no one
knows how or why it happened. I’ve been
curious to know the story for several years now, and, for all its faults, I
thought this series did a good job of tracing the events of the feud, and
trying to show the characters motivations in order to make the whole thing
understandable.
Maybe you
have to be a history geek to appreciate this kind of stuff. The critics probably hated it because they
wanted something with a higher level of meaning, but if you’re looking for a
miniseries that simply fills in your knowledge of a historical event, this one
will do nicely.
After
viewing the series I also enjoyed this website (LINK ) that compared the oral
history of the Hatfield clan with the TV miniseries.
Downton Abbey (1st
Season Only)
A friend of mine (he knows who he
is) actually introduced me to this show before I went to Cambodia, and I
was initially intrigued. Finding the
DVDs in Cambodia,
I started to watch them here, but must confess that I started to get a little
bored with the show near the end of the first season. Through the Internet critics, I saw that the
second season got such horrible reviews that I didn’t even bother to check it
out.
Pillars of the Earth
Miniseries
The same friend also introduced me
to Pillars of the Earth, and I found this in the Cambodian DVD store also.
I was very
disappointed with this one. It was really cheesy, overly sappy, melodramatic…and
a historical drama that wasn’t at all historically accurate.
And yet I
watched the whole thing anyway.
Caprica
I’ve actually never seen the
entire Battlestar Galatica. I’m at that awkward stage right now,
where I’ve seen too many episodes to want to watch the whole thing, straight
through but not enough episodes to get the whole sweep of the story. Someday maybe I’ll have to work my way
through that series, after I’ve forgotten enough so that I can re-watch
episodes.
But I didn’t
have that problem with Caprica, which
I hadn’t seen any of. So I watched the
whole season.
Despite
having a number of plot holes, I thought it was entertaining enough.
Black Adder
Because my British friends are
always talking about how great this series is, I eventually decided to check it
out. It wasn’t quite as great as they
had made it out to be, but it wasn’t terrible either. The last season in particular I thought
managed to combine humor with a poignant anti-war theme quite well.
Keeping Up with the
old Favorites—Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy, American
Dad, South Park
Of course it
hasn’t been all new shows. I’ve also
been watching the latest seasons of old favorite animation.
I know that
The Simpsons past its peak about 15
years ago, but even though it’s no where near as good as it used to be, I’ve
still long found it a pleasant waste of time these past few years.
That is,
until now. The last season of DVDs I
bought (season 22) was just unwatchable.
As a long time fan I never thought I’d say this, but The Simpsons has degenerated to the
point where I can no longer even really sit through it.
The latest
season of South Park, by contrast, I
still found quite entertaining.
Hell on Wheels/Deadwood
I bought Hell on Wheels after a co-worker recommended it to me, but couldn’t
make it through the first season. (I
have much the same criticisms of the series that the AVclub reviewer has, so
rather than give my review I’ll just link to his LINK HERE.)
The AVclub
kept comparing Deadwood as a much
better Western period piece, so I went back and bought Deadwood instead.
As with The Wire, I know I’m a few years late to
the party on this one, but I found Deadwood
to be a really remarkable show. A nice
blend of real history with some great fictional treatments, and a cast of
really fascinating characters.
Young Justice
I’m sure I would have enjoyed this
a lot more had I been 25 years younger.
(How unfair that all the great superhero cartoons are coming out now
that I’ve hit adulthood). However, like Justice League Unlimited before it, the
show does seem to be playing to the adult comic book geek just as much as to the kids.
Having been
a huge fan of the Teen Titans in my younger comic book collecting days, this
show did a good job of hitting all the right nerd bases for me. I’d be embarrassed to tell you how much I
enjoyed it.
The Inbetweeners
This show was a big hit in Britain, and my
British friends were talking about it a lot.
So I eventually ended up checking it out myself.
I found it
interesting at first, but quickly got bored with it. The format of the show seemed very
repetitive, and the humor, which mostly seemed to focus on getting the maximum embarrassment/
cringe factor for the main characters in every episode, I felt played itself
out quickly.
And yet I
still ended up watching the whole thing.
Peep Show
Another
British TV show, although this one recommended by an American
colleague. And another show that plays off of
embarrassment humor (which seems to be very popular in Britain). But
strangely addictive nonetheless. I ended up watching the whole thing
again.
The Slap
(Mini-Series)
This is an Australian TV
show. I’m curious, is this known at all
back in the States?
It’s an
adaptation of a book. And I probably
should have read the book instead (if I were the more literary person I wish I
was.) But I couldn’t be bothered to read
the book. I saw a couple episodes of
this show on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (one of the few English
channels I get on my cable package). I
found it pretty interesting, so I just ended up buying it when it hit the DVD
stores.
An
interesting story that really pulls you in.
Plus it takes place in Melbourne and,
having spent a year in Melbourne,
it made me slightly nostalgic for the city.
Ugly Americans
A co-worker said he was working
his way through this series, and that it was just bizarre enough to be
interesting. I picked it up based on
that recommendation, and I find myself agreeing with him.
Breaking Bad (Second
Season only)
Everyone in my office loves Breaking Bad, so I decided to check it
out myself. The week I decided to try it
out, my local DVD store was temporarily out of the first season, so for the
moment I just decided to start with the second season. (A decision which absolutely horrified all of
my co-workers. “Joel!” one of them said,
“It’s like a novel! You have to watch it
in order!”)
For
whatever reason, this show didn’t really click with me. I know everyone else loves it, and I can’t
really give you a good reason why I didn’t.
Maybe it was just a little bit too slowly paced for me. At any rate, I watched the second season, but
didn’t end up going back for more.
Mad Men
I had actually
seen the first season of this when I was still in Japan
(it was popular enough in Japan
that you could rent them at Japanese DVD stores.) I caught up on a few more of the seasons
while in Cambodia,
although once again I horrified my co-workers by watching the episodes out of
order.
As a
history geek, I appreciate the eye for period detail. But like Breaking
Bad I felt like this show just moved at too slow of a pace for me, and I
just couldn’t stay interested in the long run.
Archer
Another show I got into just
because my co-workers loved it so much.
Some of the jokes I find a bit repetitive, but a pleasant enough waste
of time.
Flight of the
Conchords
Because I had been living in Japan for so
long, this had been off my radar for a while, but word of mouth eventually
caught up to me. (My friend Brett would
make references to it.) So I eventually
checked it out. I got a bit bored with
all the songs, but I generally enjoyed it.
Chuck
Only one season in so far. Not all that great, but everyone says it gets
better in later seasons.
My Name is Earl
The show actually looks like it
should be funnier than it is.
The Clone Wars
Based on Whisky Prajer’s recommendation I decided to check this out. It is pretty impressive for a kids cartoon,
and does manage to recapture the fun spirit of the old film serials Star Wars is supposed to be based on.
Entourage
Surprisingly addictive, although
after you finish watching several seasons, you do wonder what the point
was. The show managed to pull me in for
several seasons, but I hated myself for watching it when it was all over.
Cougar Town
Actually pretty funny.
The Borgias (1 and
1/2 seasons only)
I understand this was put together
as Showtime’s follow-up to The Tudors.
I have yet
to see The Tudors from start to
finish. (My brother-in-law and me worked
through several episodes when I was last back in America, but its tough to watch a
series straight through when the DVD rental place only has one copy, and other
customers are renting the same discs you want.)
However I enjoyed what I did see of The
Tudors. I know it’s not perfectly historically accurate, but it seemed to
me to be largely historically accurate.
(Granted I’m no expert. Almost
everything I know about Henry VIII just comes from MonarchyandThis Sceptred Isle. But The
Tudors lined up nicely with what little I knew about King Henry VIII).
The Borgias, by contrast, seems much
less historically accurate. Eventually I
just had to stop watching halfway through the second season. What was the point of watching a historically
drama that wasn’t even historically accurate?
It’s a
pity, because the idea for a historical drama around the Borgia family is a
great idea. What a great subversive way
to remind people of all the terrible history behind the papacy. And for historical geeks, what a wonderful
opportunity to get into some of the fascinating Papal power struggles, and 16th century politics on the Italian peninsula.
However, as
each episode just got more and more ridiculous, and further removed from the
actual history, I eventually had to ask myself, “Why am I watching this?”
I know it’s
an article of faith in Hollywood
that you should never make anything truly historically accurate, because then
no one will watch it, but I disagree. I
think there’s a huge audience for accurate historical dramas. Just think how many people love watching
documentaries.
The pity of The Borgias is that the actual history would have been interesting enough. It would have been interesting simply because
it had been real. Because they made up
their own story instead, it made things less interesting.
Game of Thrones
When this series was first airing,
it generated quite a lot of buzz around my office. People were talking about this series, and
people were really enjoying this series.
So I
checked it out of course.
It takes
about 5 episodes or so to get into this series, because initially the series
just throws a bunch of characters at you without giving you a reason to care
about them.
Once you
get about 5 episodes into it, and start getting into these characters, it is
highly addictive. Perhaps the most
addictive show I’ve seen yet. Every time
I finished an episode, I had to watch the next one immediately afterwards. The week I was watching this show I was low
on sleep and hardly ever went out.
Why is it
so addictive? Well that’s a little bit
harder to explain.
The show is
classified as fantasy, but as viewers know the fantastical elements are not center
stage. Rather, this show is part of a
genre I like to call “fake history.” It’s
the story of a fictional civil war in a fictional country.
As I
watched the show, I kept asking myself, “Why am I so interested in this when it’s
not even real?”
One of my
colleagues, a fellow history geek, once said to me, “The reason I read history
instead of fiction is because history is always more interesting. The stuff that happens in history—you couldn’t
make that up if you tried. Cortez and
the conquest of the Aztecs? The French
Revolution? The American Civil War? World War II?
Show me the fiction writer who could possibly match those stories!”
I agreed
with him on the spot, but since I started watching Game of Thrones I’ve started to question the assertion. As I watch Game of Thrones, I keep asking myself, “Is this more interesting
than real history, or would a real historical drama have been a more
interesting show? Would all of the time
and money needed to make Game of Thrones
been much better employed depicting a real historical war instead of a pretend
one?"
20 years
ago, the argument probably would have been that historical dramas make for poor
television because history is too complex.
You could never ask an American audience to keep track of all the
various factions and nobles during The War of the Roses, could you?
And yet, Game of Thrones seems to be mocking this
idea. It blatantly makes its fictional
history more and more and more complex.
(One of my co-workers even told me he had started making a chart on his
wall to keep track of who everyone was while he watched Game of Thrones). And yet Game of Thrones is one of the most
successful television shows ever.
So, now
that Game of Thrones has shown modern
audiences are not adverse to complex plots or ideas, I have a whole list of
historical incidents I think would make for great television. But I’ll save that for the next post.
(For Whisky’s
thoughts on Game of Thrones and
history versus fiction, see LINK HERE)
So, yeah, that’s
my list of shame for the past year and a half since I came to Cambodia.
It’s not even a complete list. It’s just a list of the DVDs I
watched. The hours I wasted watching “Whatever
happened to be on the TV when I came home from work” aren’t even
factored in
here.
My goal for
the next year is to read more and watch less TV. And also to be more productive.
(Movie Review)
