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Right! Just got back from seeing it at the local movie theatre! We went to the 3 p.m. show and there were only about 15 people in the whole theatre. It was great not to have loud people or lots of little kids around.
Where to start...?
The main character. I think he was meant to be portrayed as your "typical clueless South African", and did a good job. I know people like him - people who don't see the "others" as beings with feelings, who refer to "them" and honestly just do not know any better. In the real world there are people like him, people who have families, who take their kids to school, who have braais (barbecues) on the weekend, who have friends, and who just live in this little bubble of cluelessness.
But it definitely helps if you have the cultural background: a lot of the things Wikus and the others do at the beginning - serving the aliens with eviction notices, talking about the aliens like they're zoo specimens - speaks directly to what people did during apartheid. You'd have documentaries about various things and people would speak just like that. "Oh, they do that. They like to live like that." Whatever. I recognized every documentary I'd seen about "township" life. ("Townships" were the areas where black people had to live during apartheid. Soweto is a HUGE township, for example.) The people in authority (cops, experts, whomever) would know a lot about the people they were "serving" - they could speak the language, they knew the customs - but they weren't affected by it on a personal level. The movie did a brilliant job of portraying that mindset.
Someone on another forum wrote that the aliens were shown as having no redeeming qualities. I don't think this is the case at all. The area where the aliens were kept was dirty, but it was a squatter camp (shanty town). Squatter camps sprang up mostly in the 1980s around major urban centres. A lot of people blamed apartheid, but it's one of the side-effects of rapid urbanization. Brazil has favelas (sp?) for example. You need to remember that a squatter camp is an informal settlement and they don't have paved roads, refuse removal, electricity, etc. So refuse is just left lying around, and in the dry time (in Joburg in July and August it gets VERY dry) it blows everywhere. So while people from other countries might be shocked or think the aliens were dirty and irredeemable, actually, squatter camps look like that. Some people also end up making their shacks so nice that they even have satellite dishes. So just because someone lives there doesn't make them irredeemable or dirty or even necessarily poor.
I find it ironic and kind of amusing that the main human baddies (aside from the cops and MNU people) were the Nigerians. In S.A. we really do have problems with Nigerian crime syndicates. Even the cops in real life are scared of Nigerians. So that, too, had a ring of truth.
I don't think that the aliens were meant to represent any particular group of people. They were just another group of "aliens" in the City of Gold; the only difference being they had a huge ship and cool weapons. In my opinion the movie isn't political in that it tries to get a political point across; it's more like a mirror. It basically holds a mirror up to South African society. I like to think that we would never experiment on aliens, but I can totally believe aliens might be separated from the rest of the population. Although in this day and age the government would probably just make them citizens and be done with it. MNU, the multinational corporation, while it had some S.Africans heading it, was also headed by at least one guy with an American accent. And it was this company, not the government, that wanted the alien weapons and biotechnology. I think in the end it comes down to: "BRING BACK ALIEN FOR STUDY. CREW EXPENDABLE" as the computer wrote in "Alien". It's just the setting that's different. Big business will always want the weapons and technology and consider the people expendable.
The journey of Wikus, the main character, made me think of Dunbar in "Dances with Wolves". It's a journey I love to take with characters. Sikes in "Alien Nation" (the TV series) goes through the same thing as well. The protagonist starts on the outside and something dramatic happens that makes him begin to see things from the "other" perspective. Eventually he becomes a part of the "alien/other" community; becomes one of them. In DWW one of the Union soldiers says to Dunbar, "Ya turned Injun, didn't ya?" In "Alien Nation" Sikes ends up getting together with Cathy (his Tenctonese neighbour) and spending most of his time with the Newcomers. In District 9 it's more blatant - Wikus actually turns into an alien - but it's the same idea. When he realises what is going on, he essentially switches his allegiance to the "correct" side, and the outward transformation is just the expression of that.
Lines in the movie that I found amusing:
"Don't you point that fokken tentacle at me!!" ("Fok", pronounced "fork", is the Afrikaans version of the f-word.)
"Voetsek!" (The guy shouting at the aliens loitering near the vehicle. It's pronounced 'footsack' and is Afrikaans. It basically means "scram" but more rudely.)
"Things have been falling off that bladdy (bloody) ship for months!"
At one point the bad guy says, "You see the alien in the Casspir? He knows something." A Casspir is the name of that armoured vehicle used in a lot of scenes. These really exist and are used by the army. They are normally painted yellow.
"Why are the lights off? Is the power off again?" Heheh. S.A. has been plagued by power disruptions in the last two or so years.
It's a hectic movie. And yes, Johannesburg really is that dusty. They filmed it in winter, when it's dry and there's grit in the air. You can even see mine dumps (those yellow "hills") in some scenes! At one point the camera panned across the city centre and whoops, there was a building with the MTN sign on it! (MTN is a cellphone network.) And I enjoyed seeing the news reports with South African channels' logos!
And the alien baby was adorable!
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Having now had the chance to watch the movie nine times, I feel I can give more of a review on it.
AWESOME.
I'm done. :)
Seriously, I have seldom seen such an awesome movie. It had elements of the original Trek, it had 'new' stuff to draw in a new audience, it had great actors, it had fantastic action sequences and most importantly, it had the characters we love.
Kirk? Great performance by a great young actor. I totally believed James T. Kirk ("renegade and terr0rist") could have started this way. Favourite parts? The Kobayashi Maru test and the whole scene after Bones shoots him up with the vaccine. So funny, so brilliant, so Star Trek.
Spock? I have always loved Spock. This did not change. I think I love him even more now. There are scenes in the film where I actually forget that he's played by a different actor, that's how good Zachary Quinto was at being Spock. And when I read he didn't pattern his performance on the series itself, but rather based it on Leonard Nimoy's advice... wow. Shows you how much of Spock was Leonard Nimoy. I mean, it took Leonard 30 years to admit it, but now we have proof. Truly amazing.
McCoy? Fantastic. "My God, man!" :) "Oh, good. He's seventeen." :) "Are you out of your Vulcan mind?" :) DeForest Kelley would have LOVED Karl Urban's performance.
Scotty? I think the character was played a bit too much for laughs. Scotty in TOS was a more serious character. But overall, not bad.
Chekov? A lot of people complained about him being "too blonde and curly" but come on. If that's their only complaint they're really reaching. He did a great job.
Sulu? Also great. "What kind of combat training do you have?" "Fencing." Hee hee.
Uhura? She was fine, but the actress was a bit too "hard" for Uhura, I felt. I can't imagine her saying, "Captain, I'm frightened," believably. (Not that that line was a shining moment for women even in the '60s.)
And people complaining about her and Spock? DID THEY NEVER WATCH THE ORIGINAL SERIES? It's all there! Uhura flirting with Spock, Spock playing his lyre to please her, Spock complimenting her... My friend Rae has always contended Spock had a thing for Uhura. I wish she'd agree to see the movie; she would SO be able to gloat about being right all these years!
Bruce Greenwood? Great casting as Pike.
Sarek? Perfectly fine performance; I think Mark Lenard would have approved.
Amanda? I did a double take during the "You'll do fine" scene when it dawned on me it was Winona Ryder. She really did well at NOT being Winona Ryder.
And Amanda's death and Sarek's subsequent admission that he loved her (it's about time, not that we ever doubted it) push Spock's existential crisis forward by about ten years. He only realized that people need feelings in order for their lives to have meaning in Star Trek: The Motion Picture during the V-Ger encounter. Here it's underplayed but definitely happens - if he was still trying to be some uber-Vulcan he would never have kissed Uhura in the transporter room. (Lucky Uhura.)
I personally don't care about the science of the movie. Yes, yes, black holes don't work like that, tell someone who cares. Transporters can't work like that ("uncouple the Heisenberg Compensators!"). Warp speed would never work. Yadda yadda. Very little of the science in Star Trek makes any sense, or did no one ever notice that? STAR TREK IS NOT ABOUT SCIENCE. There's a reason all the tech is nicknamed "treknobabble". It's all nonsense. But we don't care BECAUSE STAR TREK IS REALLY ABOUT US. It's about the human experience. As David Gerrold wrote in the '80s, "No, space is not the final frontier. The final frontier is the human soul. Space is merely one of the places where we shall meet the challenge." Exactly.
Let me end with a quote from end of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country:
"... they will continue the voyages we have begun
and journey to all the 'undiscovere'd countries,
boldly going where no man... where no ONE...
has gone before."
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It's AWESOME. Truly awesome.
More as I collect my thoughts and can stop going, "Squeeee!!" in my head!
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"It's just one of those special cases where alone we're incomplete, but together we're better than we are separate."
Ruminations on Due South
My first exposure to Due South was, believe it or not, in a Highlander story. It was a crossover in which Richie met Fraser, Ray Vecchio and Diefenbaker. The storyline sounded sufficiently intriguing that, when the SABC started showing DS here, I decided to watch. And I really enjoyed it.
The bizarre premise was enough to hook a person (a Mountie heads due South with his wolf to find his father's killers), but it was the acting, continuity and chemistry between the characters that kept me watching. And the show matured. Fraser, as the show's anchor, would always have to be recognizable as "the Mountie", but Ray Vecchio and the other characters had a lot of room to change and grow - and they did. Ray, for instance, started off as being somewhat of a caricature of an Italian Chicago detective, but soon came into his own, becoming a much more real character. This can especially be seen by the changes in his wardrobe over the first season and into the second.
Fraser changed in more subtle ways. Naturally, his uniform could not change (except for his occasional wearing of his brown uniform - which I preferred - instead of the red serge), but although he never totally lost his naivete and his faith in people, he did become acclimated to life in Chicago, and learned to open up to his friends. He realised, too, that his methods were not necessarily the only ones that would work. By the end of the series, he truly did feel that he had a partnership with someone - it was no longer just a case of hanging around the precinct helping them solve crimes, as it was in the beginning.
The supporting characters, too, became actual characters as opposed to foils for Ray and Fraser. By the time we got around to "Juliet is Bleeding", Huey and Gardino were good friends of Ray's instead of being the partners who sniped at Ray and made comments about his methods behind his back. Ray's family were real people as opposed to the large yelling bunch we saw in the pilot. We got to know Fraser's workmates better, too. All in all, the first two seasons of Due South were a good chronicle of developing friendships and professional and personal relationships. And then everything hit the fan.
The third season (or 3rd and 4th seasons, depending on whether your country showed the final block of episodes in one chunk or two) was a radical departure from what we knew because of one main thing: the change in one of the leading actors. I will not rehash the background of all this; suffice to say that money (or a lack thereof), and different executive producers and writers necessitated writing Ray Vecchio out of the show and bringing Ray Kowalski in.
Now, change is not always a bad thing. Certainly, I thought the way in which it was done was rather inspired. Some people argued that it was silly, and that Ray Kowalski could never fool people who knew Ray Vecchio (especially people like Frank Zuko, for example), but I liked the idea. The idea of keeping up the appearance that Ray Vecchio was still at the 27th precinct in order to safeguard his life was a good one. And Ray Kowalski was a great character in his own right. Of course, this did not appease some of the fans.
Very soon after the third season began airing, Due South fandom split down the middle, and has never been able to come together again. Fans of Ray Vecchio disliked the cavalier way in which Ray Kowalski replaced him. Fans of Ray Kowalski thought the Vecchio fans were overreacting. Fans who "went both Rays" (of which I am one) got caught in the middle. And in amongst all the emotion and accusations being flung around, it was hard to develop an accurate opinion of the third season.
I'll be honest here and say that while I liked Ray Kowalski right away, I hated the third season with a passion when I first watched it. I thought there was too much silliness in it, something which made it hard to take any of it seriously. I thought the series had become a caricature of itself, not to mention that some parts of the ending seemed silly. I mean, Francesca and 'immaculate' conceptions? Ray Vecchio in a bowling alley?! That just didn't make any sense. So for a couple of years I didn't watch it at all. As a Ray Vecchio fan, the easy way in which Fraser seemed to forget his best friend made me want to scream and throw things. As a Ray Kowalski fan, I felt he deserved better than to be stuck in some sort of bizarre Mountie comedy. And at that stage I was sure that I would never be able to watch Due South again - it was just too painful then.
But, you know, time is a great healer. I recently began watching an occasional episode, and was surprised to find that I no longer wanted to throw things at the TV. The third season has a lot of good stuff in it - good stuff that I had originally discounted in my pain and outrage. The supporting characters were brought right to the fore and used well. Francesca especially got to do more than chase Fraser around - she got to work and help out, being a sympathetic presence in the precinct. Turnbull got a lot more screen time, as did Meg Thatcher. We got to meet Ray Kowalski's parents and ex-wife. Even Dief was more in evidence in the third season. Huey got a new partner who was a 'real' character right from the start.
I still think there are some parts which were over-the-top and should have been left out (Fraser's gymnastic impersonation in "I Coulda Been A Defendant", making a wood carving in about a minute, listening to the sounds made by a computer and knowing what was said, using all the same actors in "Dr. Longball" etc.), but those parts do not make up the whole of Due South. I'd like to say that, like seaQuest DSV, Due South is two shows with the same name, but that's not true. If you discount a couple of the sillier moments of the third season, the series is basically consistent and good throughout. All the characters have something to recommend them, and the storylines are always solid and often fun.
Due South starts at a very specific point, and takes a journey to another. It takes comedic and dramatic detours along the way, and in doing so teaches both the characters and the audience. When I think of the two years I spent not watching it, I'm rather embarrassed - because, had I known the direction it would take beforehand, I would still have chosen to watch it. It is that good. It's worth it.
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While watching Stargate Atlantis last night I suddenly thought about how many characters in sci-fo shows have died due to radiation. Not from being killed by aliens, but from something a lot more preventable. I mean, think about it:
Spock. Died from radiation in the engine room of the Enterprise (in Star Trek II). Yeah, yeah, he came back, but still...
Daniel. Would have died from the naquadriah radiation if he hadn't ascended (in Stargate SG-1).
Crichton. At least, one of the two Crichtons (in Farscape). Luckily we had a spare!
Carson Beckett. Okay, he was killed by an explosion, but the precipitating event was a radiation machine designed to form explosive tissue. (Stargate Atlantis). And he actually stayed dead. Luckily we had Michael on hand to clone him before he died.
I'm sure there are more, but those are just off the top of my head. Really, sci-fi writers need to come up with new ways to kill off characters.
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"Sometimes being the Emissary isn't such a bad thing."
Ruminations on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Of all the Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine has had the lowest profile. It is seldom discussed in the context of Trek as a whole, it wasn't very popular when it started, and it was generally understated. Part of the reason for this is that many fans, myself included, did not know what to do with the show when it started. It didn't have a starship crew journeying into the unknown. Its captain wasn't some gung-ho bachelor golden boy stereotype. The characters often got into disagreements and fights. And, instead of being concerned with the fate of the galaxy as a whole, Deep Space Nine was more concerned with other problems: those of Bajor, the wormhole and things closer to home.
A lot of fans refused to watch it on the grounds that it wasn't "Star Trek". It followed the wrong format. A friend of mine said she didn't like DS9 because, "The station just sits there." I found it extremely hard to get into. I kept falling asleep while watching it. And then I realised why: DS9 requires the viewer to make a mental adjustment. While it is set in the Trek universe, DS9 has a completely different tone. A person cannot watch it as though it were TNG or Voyager. For one thing, DS9 often had much better storylines (well, it's not hard to have better storylines than Voyager, but DS9 also told stories of much greater import than anything found on TNG), and it was deeper.
The captain wasn't someone out to find new life and new civilizations - no, he was an unhappy widower trying to do the best he could for himself and his son while trying not to shirk his duty to the Federation. The first officer wasn't even a member of the Federation - she was a strong-willed, former resistance fighter. Instead of a doctor who seemed only interested in the health of the people he came across, we got one who wanted to be the best at everything, who wanted to make a name for himself studying "frontier medicine". The security chief was alien, even to himself. And there were lots of non-Federation types around, reminding us that the Federation wasn't the only game in town.
It was a heady mix, one that took some getting used to. Phil Farrand, author of the Trek Nitpicker's Guides, says that he enjoyed many episodes of DS9 more if he thought of the show as being titled Bajor: Terok Nor. It's true. Once one got used to watching the show for itself and stopped trying to fit it into an old formula, DS9 came into its own. And as the show grew and prospered, so did the characters.
Ah, the characters and the actors who played them. Many fans complained about the choice of Avery Brooks to play Sisko. Many of them felt (and still feel) that he couldn't act. Let me just say that they are wrong. They took one look at Sisko and how he behaved and decided that it was the result of bad acting. Rubbish! Anyone who has seen Avery Brooks in other roles, and in interviews, will know that he is a fine actor who is nothing like Sisko. No, he chose to play Sisko that way. And for me, at least, it worked. Sisko is not Kirk. He is not Picard. He is not, thank goodness, Janeway. No, Sisko is unique. While he was loyal to the Federation, he was not the mindless Federation drone that Janeway was. He was not the thrill-seeker that James T. Kirk was. And he wasn't the staid, politically correct bore that Picard was. No, Sisko was the Emissary. He was human with all its attendant faults, but he was also of Bajor. He was introspective, but he could also be tender, caring, friendly, strong, heroic, angry. He was more of a "whole person" than any of the other captains, and perhaps many fans responded negatively to this, since they were unable to project their own ideals onto the character.
The other characters also took a while to grow on fans (except for Quark, who seemed to find his place with fans almost immediately - but then, Armin Shimerman had played a Ferengi before and thus had the character "down" from the first episode), but we came to know them well and care about what they did. When DS9 started, there were only two other Starfleet officers in the main crew - O'Brien, who seemed much more at home on DS9 than he ever did on the Enterprise, and Jadzia Dax, who was interesting merely because of the symbiont and the potential there. Odo was also fascinating, and at first I was worried that his shape-shifting abilities would dominate the episodes, but that was unfounded: his abilities were integrated into the episodes as needed. Kira found her feet quite easily and worked well with the others. And Jake Sisko, thank goodness, didn't want to be a Starfleet officer.
Like Classic Trek before it, Deep Space Nine tackled many different, deep issues. Quite often, they weren't the universal issues of Classic Trek (war, love, peace, friendship) but instead they were issues affecting the characters. We had Sisko's fight to be comfortable with being the Emissary. We had Kira's love troubles, Bashir's struggles to be the best while trying to hide what he was, Odo's continual yearning for the Great Link. And sometimes we did have some universal issues: being yourself (Chimera, Doctor Bashir, I Presume), the nature of love (Rejoined, Looking for Par'Mach in all the Wrong Places), loyalty (The Maquis, Blaze of Glory), faith versus science (Emissary, In the Hands of the Prophets), the personal consequences of war (pick almost any episode in the seventh season) and many more.
Like Classic Trek, when DS9 dealt with these issues, it never preached. That was one bad weakness of TNG: they felt that they had to "preach" and explain things to the audience: DRUGS ARE BAD. INDIVIDUALITY IS GOOD. WAR IS BAD. There were no shades of grey in TNG, but there are in DS9. And the show is a better show for it. When it was cancelled, I was most upset, for the simple reason that there were many more stories to be told.
And the stories? DS9 actually managed to have stories which shone light on either the characters, their situations or Bajor/the wormhole and their goings-on. I don't think DS9 ever had what can be called "filler episodes". There were episodes set in the holosuite, yes, but we (and the characters) learned from them every time. In Our Man Bashir, Julian learns to be heroic in a whole new way. In His Way, Odo finally comes to grips (so to speak) with Kira. In Badda Bing, Badda Bang, Sisko learns to be a bit less uptight. Episodes which focused on the individual characters also always had something to say - even the Quark episodes usually had some sort of subtle message. War episodes were exciting, but strangely, not my favourites. However, in those we did see the courage of the characters and learned just how war can devastate a planet or people. Comedy episodes were fun, and yet we still learned. Even in Trials and Tribble-ations we learned a few things, trivial though they were: one of Dax's hosts slept with McCoy; Jadzia Dax and Spock both enjoyed calculating; Jadzia thought Spock sexy; Sisko hero-worshipped Kirk; and we learned a bit more about our favourite Trek pets, the tribbles.
Each episode made some sort of contribution to the "whole" that was Deep Space Nine. One could argue for ages about whether or not whole plot ideas were, er, 'borrowed' from Babylon 5, but if plot ideas were borrowed, they certainly served to improve the show. If only Voyager had borrowed from something that good.
There really isn't anything negative that one can say about the show. Except... there was one scene in Badda Bing, Badda Bang that I felt was totally un-Trek-like. And the scene is, of course, the one where Sisko pitches a fit over being asked to join everyone in their little adventure in the holosuite. He starts going on about how black people could not go into casinos in Las Vegas in 1962. Fine, okay, we know Sisko knows Earth history (unlike Julian, who is "a doctor, not an historian"). And we can understand that he might be traumatized by his experience as Benny Russell in Far Beyond the Stars. But then he talks to Kasidy about "our people", and by that he means black people. Excuse me?! I thought that one of the most fundamental points of Star Trek was that humans are past petty things like what colour a person is! This was the principle back in 1966 when the first Trek was made (which is why I still think the Original Series will always be the best series).
So, what does this tell us? That Sisko doesn't consider white humans, oriental humans, any other colour humans, or Bajorans as "his people"? Even after being told that he is "of Bajor"? That just doesn't make any sense. None! And what's worse in this scene is that Kasidy does not look at him like he's insane, but instead waffles about not feeling "uncomfortable" in the holosuite. What?! It's a frelling holosuite! It's the frelling 24th century! No one except Sisko even knows about this, because they've never encountered this sort of prejudice before. So why does Sisko even bring it up? I just can't understand it. And, really, all it would have taken to be unoffensive would have been to have Sisko say instead, "People with our skin colour..." or, "I learned in history/through my experience of the Fifties that..." instead of excluding all other humans by referring to "his people" the way that he did. We know already that there is only one race, the human race. And if we're getting to enlightenment now, at the dawn of the 21st century, then surely by the 24th such thinking would be extinct. Sheesh. If they'd buried Gene Roddenberry, he'd be spinning like a top. I love Sisko dearly, but that was uncalled for.
Lastly, DS9 actually had an ending. Now, a person could look at it as TPTB wanting to end things so that a movie was not necessary, but with a show like DS9, a movie really isn't. It was meaty in itself, and didn't need little addendums every few years (of which, as everyone knows, only the even-numbered ones are any good). And although I wasn't happy at the crew splitting and going off, and Sisko being taken to the Celestial Temple, at least there was an ending. And - more importantly - it was a lot more realistic to have military personnel transfer to other duties instead of keeping them together through strange plot devices just for the sake of movies (like the contrivances to have Worf in the TNG movies).
Of the new Trek series, DS9 is definitely the most mature. But you will need to adjust your mind, because DS9 was about less perfect, but just as fascinating, characters and situations. It was a maturer, different Trek, well worth a seven-year watch.
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Sometime during the second season of Enterprise, I wrote this essay. I've added a few more up to date comments afterwards.
****
"If you're going to try to embrace new worlds, you must try to embrace new ideas."
Ruminations on Enterprise
Enterprise has been something of a different experience. While it's meant to be a prelude to Classic Trek, it has far more in common with TNG, DS9 and Voyager than it does with TOS. Now, some of the changes are understandable. TOS was clearly made in the Sixties, with '60s attitudes, fashion and level of technology informing the stories. Obviously, TPTB could not go back to that same look and feel, and that's fine. But in trying to do this prequel, TPTB seem to have forgotten that TOS exists.
What I meant by that is, most of what we know about Star Trek comes from TNG. Alien races, ships, star systems, medicines, and so on became "established" with TNG. We know that the series supposedly takes place eight or so years before the founding of the Federation (the Federation was founded in 2161) - a date that was fixed only in TNG, in the episode The Outcast if memory serves. So Enterprise really has to maintain continuity with TNG more than anything. And that's
Return to Marina's Ruminations fine too.
But what gets to me is TPTB trying to change what we know about races we've loved since the 1960s. Case in point: the Vulcans. Instead of coming across as the friends they've always been, Enterprise paints them as galactic party-poopers. Yes, they've always been logical. Yes, some are not huge fans of humans (T'Pau, for instance). But Enterprise goes against the grain by trying to show us that all Vulcans are not, in fact, telepathic (unless they are and just haven't noticed it yet), and some of them even seem to dislike humans intensely. How does a race go from the picture painted in Enterprise to what we saw in TOS, TNG, DS9 and even Voyager (Tuvok is uptight even for a Vulcan, but he doesn't hate humans or think we're inferior)?
Some other alien species have been fleshed out: the Andorians, Nausicans and Tellarites, for example. And it has been done extremely well. But considering that we supposedly had a disastrous first contact with the Klingons that led to decades of war, how do TPTB expect to maintain any continuity with the other shows if they keep on bringing the Klingons into things? New species have been integrated very well, and we've learnt about them. The Suliban are just one example.
The temporal cold war is a concept that works, but is rather extraneous. Classic Trek didn't need a huge, all-encompassing arc in order to be entertaining. Neither did TNG. Voyager certainly didn't. So what's with this cold war thing? Is it just an excuse to have lots of time travel episodes? And this whole thing with the Delphic expanse and the Xindi? Please. Just go out and explore! How hard is that? Keeping continuity is fine, but that doesn't necessitate arc episodes that detract from a series that could be doing more. It seems that TPTB confuse action with excitement, and arcs with continuity. For me, Fusion is an extremely exciting episode, and there's not a phaser (sorry, "phase pistol"), Suliban or Xindi in sight.
Some people have complained over Doctor Phlox's character. I mean, in TOS a big deal was made over Spock being the only "alien" on the ship, and now there are two (T'Pol and Phlox) on a prototype starship a hundred years before Spock? But I really don't mind that. What it shows is that a science fiction series needs aliens or it just turns into Lost in Space. And the character of Phlox is a good one. I disagree with those who've labelled him a know-it-all. He's actually a well-rounded character, and a worthy successor (or predecessor) to McCoy. His alienness never overwhelms scenes he's in, and while he is amusing at times, he's certainly not the Enterprise equivalent of Neelix. Thank goodness.
T'Pol is an interesting character. Yes, TPTB quite clearly hired a sexy, "hot" actress in order to satisfy part of their demographic, but the character is worth more than that. Being a full Vulcan, she doesn't have many of the insecurities that Spock had, but because of her we also see that being insecure and/or trying to maintain a facade isn't something unique to people with human blood. TPTB are showing how she mellows in the face of humanity while remaining Vulcan. Even Tuvok couldn't get that right!
The other characters are fine, and fit well into their roles. Yes, it was a casting coup when TPTB managed to hire Scott Bakula - but you'd think that after that, they'd give him something meaty to do! My favourite character is Trip. Why? He's the easiest to identify with. He's the one who often makes the weird, strange mistakes and learns from them. Characters with flaws are more appealing to me than perfect automatons. Plus, he looks hot in his underwear!
Which brings me to another criticism of Enterprise: the decontamination chamber. Many people have complained about the "gratuitous gel-rubbing scenes". But the idea is (forgive me) logical. The people of this time period aren't comfortable with transporter technology yet, and I think it's safe to say that the transporters might not yet have biofilters. Even in the 21st century we have "decon showers", so why not something similar for the 22nd century? And they don't always need to do that gel-rubbing thing - that seems to be for cases where the possibility of contaminaton is high. Plus, if the men in the audience get to see T'Pol in her underwear, why not let us women see Archer, Trip and co in theirs? I can live with that.
Enterprise is shaping up to be a pretty good series. It has had some bad or boring episodes, but then all the shows have. TNG had stinkers like Where Silence Has Lease and Night Terrors, TOS had Spock's Brain and That Which Survives, Voyager had Threshold (which I quite like, I admit) and Elogium. So Enterprise is in good company. If they can continue to balance their action episodes with good fare that deals with wider issues, the show will be a success. Now, what do you bet Enterprise ends with the founding of the Federation?
***
Ha, I told ya! The last episode (ew, yuck, spew, stick pins in dolls of Berman and Braga) shows exactly that. Ta-dah! I knew it! But I hate that episode with a passion. Most fans do, so I'm in good company. I just pretend that ep doesn't exist, frankly, because it's an insult to all of us who love Star Trek. In fact, the DVD with that episode on it doesn't work properly. Oh, it works fine with the other episodes on the disk, but for some reason it won't play that last episode. Now, when this happens I normally call the place I order DVDs from and have it replaced. With that ep? I didn't even bother. I don't WANT to watch it. I will NEVER watch it again.
But to the last two seasons of Enterprise. I won't say the whole Xindi arc was brilliant, but I did like the character development in that season. The whole romance/bonding/whatever you want to call it between Trip and T'Pol made sense under the circumstances.
The fourth season is, of course, brilliant (with one or two exceptions). I wish they'd hired Manny Coto and the Reeves-Stevenses in season 1! But at least they managed to bring Enterprise in line with the other Star Treks we've seen in terms of its portrayal of Vulcan society. And of course, who wouldn't love a Mirror Universe ep in which Archer gets to wear the green shirt?
At one point when Archer decides to lead the landing party and gets a bit gung-ho, I yelled, "It's the shirt!" There's just something about that green wraparound shirt that makes captains think they're Kirk. Heheh.
I still like Enterprise. Some episodes are terrible, but there are a lot that are very good.
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It's time to post my old essays on the various Star Trek shows. I've been watching Voyager a bit and remembered I had this essay on my hard drive.
"Not only are we lost, we're flying in circles."
Ruminations on Star Trek Voyager
I have never felt the satisfaction watching Voyager that I have watching Classic Trek, DS9 or even TNG. I realised that I really do not like Voyager that much. Why not? Well, because it wasn't good. Wait, that's too flip of an answer. Let me try again. When Voyager first started I thought it had promise. The characters were well fleshed-out, the scenario was nicely set up, and the production values were high so that everything looked good. Unfortunately, the show never went anywhere.
Let my explain what I mean. All the other Trek shows went somewhere. In Classic Trek we had great character development episodes like Balance of Terror, Amok Time and City on the Edge of Forever. What happened in previous episodes was taken into account (usually, anyway) in later episodes. Same with TNG. There was character development. Just look at Worf - compare the character at the end of TNG to how he was at the beginning. He'd changed so much. So had the other characters - even Data! We had gotten to know them, and while some episodes of TNG in the early and later seasons were really not good, the show as a whole was.
DS9 is the best example of a show that went somewhere. Each and every character grew and changed (yes, even Quark), and what had happened in previous episodes was not only taken into account, but referred to. I was very unhappy that the show ended at the end of its seventh season, because unlike with TNG, I felt they still had more stories to tell. They had at least another season worth of stories they could have done. And this point brings me to Voyager.
Voyager didn't even have one season of stories to tell. Let's be honest here. Most of what Voyager covered had been done already, either in TNG or Classic Trek. There was nothing new going on. What's more, there seemed to be no discernible character development. Janeway never changed or learnt anything. Chakotay remained stiff and bland over seven years. Tom Paris became good in the pilot and stayed that way. Even disobeying orders, violating the Prime Directive, getting demoted, getting married and becoming a father didn't change that. Tuvok remained the same. Neelix was forever annoying. And so it went. There was no forward momentum going on in Voyager. They were lost in the Gamma Quadrant. They ran into aliens. Big deal. If that's all I want to see I can always watch Space 1999 or Battlestar Galactica. At least those shows were honest about what they were. And, of course, as Valerie pointed out to me, "You just knew that the final episode would be them finally coming home." Not that this was a problem, but it was too sudden for my liking. That episode could have taken place at any time. Getting home should have been more of an arc, more of a concern. For crying out loud, these people acted like they were on vacation, browsing through the local market!
In Voyager the relationships generally remained static. The Tom Paris/B'Elanna Torres 'romance' started off being pretty ridiculous. There was no chemistry that I could see. Even after they got married, it still seemed flat. One relationship I wanted to see - that of Janeway and Chakotay - was played with occasionally but because of this weird insistence that Janeway remain aloof, nothing was ever done about it. It was the same with Picard and Crusher, and frankly, it got annoying. Worf and Dax got married on DS9. Kira had two long-term relationships before falling for Odo (who's an idiot for going back to the Great Link, but I digress). Sisko married Kasidy Yates and she fell pregnant. There are friendships in the other shows. Kirk and Spock. Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Sulu and Chekov. Scotty and his engines smile. Data and Geordi. Beverly and Deanna. Bashir and O'Brien. Dax and Sisko. Jake and Nog. Dax and Kira. In Voyager, the only people who were truly friends were Tom Paris and Harry Kim.
But the thing that really annoyed me about Voyager is the fact that it seldom, if ever, dealt with issues. Classic Trek was chock-full of stories built around issues. How can anyone want to trade one life for millions? Each person is unique. All men are brothers. There is nothing good in war, except its ending. We are barbarians, but we can say we are not going to kill - today. The needs of the many versus the needs of the one. And so on. TNG didn't do that as much, but we had many in-depth stories nevertheless. The morality of the Prime Directive. What is sentience. Perhaps someday our capacity to love won't be so limited. Resistence is not futile. DS9 - well. They dealt with issues from the first episode. Our lives are not linear ("You exist here"). The things love can make us do. Religion versus science. The desire to be normal, and to realise that it's okay not to be. Acceptance despite differences.
Voyager didn't deal with issues. Voyager preached to aliens in order to show how superior they were. Once in a while they got it right - for example, in Nemesis, but you'll notice that it only happened when they left out the preaching and allowed the audience to figure out the issues for themselves. The other shows did that (okay, TNG preached sometimes), thereby allowing us to come to our own conclusions about things. Voyager expected us to accept pedantic moralising most of the time.
The writing. Classic Trek usually had good writing from top-notch science fiction writers. TNG, after some false starts, had good writing most of the time. DS9 - excellent writing. Voyager - the writing is bad. Let's face facts here. Maybe the writing is technically proficient, but even technicially proficient writing can suck. Recycling old plots and adding ridiculous treknobabble is not the way to write a show. Have you ever sat and timed just how much of Voyager's dialogue is some form of treknobabble? Try it sometime. You'll be amazed. Phil Farrand, author of the Trek Nitpicker's Guides, states that there are too many easy ways to solve problems in Trek. So what do they do? They make stuff up! Why can't the crew beam back? No, there's a treknobabble field blocking the treknobabble beam. Or the treknobabble circuitry just went offline because of the treknobabble radiation. Come on!
And I have to say this: putting a sexy girl in silver spandex is not the way to get an audience for a show. Too many episodes focused on Seven. Now, I have to say that I am a fan of Jeri Ryan, who is a really good actress. And yes, she is very beautiful as well, and the character of Seven was a good one. This does not change the fact that too often episodes focused on Seven to the exclusion of the other characters. And those outfits! This is supposed to be the 24th century. Why would a woman in her right mind wear outfits that constrict her breathing, and heels that are liable to cause permanent damage to her feet? In the future, supposedly, no one cares about physical appearance. But if that's so, why was Seven dressed so damn uncomfortably? Maybe because TPTB were trying to get ratings? Classic Trek became popular because it gave us something to strive for. All I can envision people striving for after seeing Seven is a case of anorexia. As someone wrote, "There are only two reasons to watch Voyager: Jeri Ryan's front and Jeri Ryan's rear." And since I'm of the female persuasion, that meant I had NO reasons to watch the show!
I've received comments from people who say things like, "But you can't judge Voyager by the other shows! You must watch it in isolation!" I'm sorry, but that's impossible. The show was called Star Trek Voyager for a reason. If TPTB didn't want us to look at it as part of the "whole", then they would have invented another show-universe entirely and given it a different name. A person needs to watch the other Treks in order to understand fully what Star Trek is really about. Voyager is a part of Trek, and must be watched and understood in that context.
I once read a file called "Reasons Why Babylon 5 is better than Star Trek Voyager". Every reason was true. Here are some examples:
A Babylon 5 episode isn't neatly ended in the last five minutes.
Babylon 5 doesn't have illogical time travel episodes just to get ratings.
Real romance, like Delenn/Sheridan instead of sweeps-month romance like Janeway/Q.
In Voyager the crew reroutes some obscure wiring and suddenly everything is all better.
More things happen in 15 minutes of B5 than in a two-part episode of Voyager.
And those are just five. There are more than a thousand reasons on that list, and they're all spot-on.
When Voyager started, I wanted to like it, I really did. Ask anyone - I am not a person to dislike something new simply because it's different. I like all three seasons of Beauty and the Beast. I like Ray Vecchio and Ray Kowalski. I actually watched the sixth season of Highlander. Let me explain something: when DS9 started I didn't like it. I would watch episodes and shrug, even though they weren't boring. I'd fall asleep and wake up during episodes (we would get the tapes from the States and end up watching a whole bunch at once in the night), thus I'd end up confusing scenes from different episodes. But eventually I realised the problem: I was watching it in the wrong frame of mind. I was trying to watch it as though it were TNG or Classic Trek. DS9 is different, and needs to be watched differently. Once I realised that, I came to love DS9 and haven't missed an episode.
So, when Voyager started I figured I just had to get used to it. I just had to get into 'Voyager-mode' the way I managed to get into TNG or DS9 mode But I couldn't. Because Voyager didn't really have a mode - or if it had one, it was a Space 1999-mode. But the show wasn't Space 1999. It was Trek. And as Trek, Voyager really wasn't good. Yes, it had the occasional good episode. But, unlike DS9, it never really rose above itself to become worthy of being called Star Trek. And that's a shame.
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I have always kind of hated Christmas... not the religious side of it, but the whole "Christmas is for faaaaamily" thing that people do. I don't know why people subject themselves to their relatives when they don't want to - I often read posts by people on the Net about how they hate rushing all over on Christmas because all their relatives order them to be there.
My relatives can be toxic and emotionally abusive at times. In fact, I often dreaded being around them because all they wanted to do was belittle my choices in life (hullo! it's not a sin to be single!!). Then later my mother didn't like sitting around for hours (she had neck/back problems that made it hard to sit up for long periods, but her relatives didn't seem to care that she was in pain as long as she was being "social") talking about nonsense, so we used to stay home and just not answer the phone (and tell people we'd gone somewhere else).
This year I'm going to friends for Christmas. Amazing how non-stressful it is knowing that for once I won't be around people whose only mission in life is to nag me.
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A forum I'm on recently had a thread about romantic scenes, films, episodes and so on. I thought quite a lot about this and came up with my own personal list of romantic scenes. These are a few of them:
Beauty and the Beast (the TV series) was incredibly romantic, what with the reading of poetry, classical music, rose motif, etc. I think the most romantic scene is when Catherine realises Vincent is what she wants from life and comes RUNNING into the park to meet him, and she's running so fast that when they collide she almost knocks him right over. The music just swells right up to that point. I was disappointed that there was no kiss, though. And of course, when he gives her the book of Shakespeare sonnets and as she opens it you hear Vincent's voice reading Sonnet XXIX: "When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes..." Ah! I turn into a puddle of goo. I have the CD and I STILL listen to it 20 years later.
Highlander (the movie), when the song "Who Wants To Live Forever" plays, and you see Connor has stayed with Heather (his wife) even though she got old and he didn't. And when she dies he leaves his MacLeod sword behind and walks off. Boy did I cry it was so beautiful!
Starman (the movie), when the alien gives Jenny the sphere at the end and she asks what to do with it, and he says, "The baby will know." Awww...
Buffy, in the episode "Angel", when she finds out he's a vampire, and they decide they can't be together, and she kisses him while the song "I'll Remember You" by Sophie Zelmani is playing. And the cross she's wearing burns itself into his chest. Now that is true love!
Babylon 5. The scene in "Confessions and Lamentations", when Delenn leaves to help the Markabs and says to Sheridan, "Don't look away, Captain. All life is transitory... a dream. We all come together in the same place at the end of time. If I don't see you again here, I will see you in a little while, in the place where no shadows fall."
Enterprise. The shower scene in "Damage" when T'Pol and Trip are all over each other. It's a dream but I still think it's beautiful and romantic... Also the last scene in "Terra Prime" when they are holding hands and thinking of their baby.
The movie Tim with Mel Gibson and Piper Laurie, when he gets upset and yells that he likes her but he thinks she likes his dad, and then she hugs him and he kisses her... so sweet. I adore unusual love stories.
The prom dance scene in the first season finale of Queer as Folk, set to "Save the Last Dance for Me". They must have had to practice that choreography for weeks! But it came out stunning.
In Superman II when he and Lois are in the Fortress of Solitude and they're holding hands and he says, "For the first time in my life, everything's clear." WELL! I turned into a puddle of goo when I was 12 and I still turn into goo now. What a beautiful scene!!
The scene in The Terminator when Kyle Reese is telling Sarah Connor that he volunteered to come back to save her, and that he had a picture of her given to him by her son, and how she looked sad in it. He says, "I came across time for you, Sarah. I love you. I always have." My heart wanted to leap right out of my chest! And then he aplogises and she kind of jumps him! Go, Sarah!! And of course at the end we find out that the photo he had is the one in which she was thinking about him!!
But none of these is a patch on...
Torchwood.
I'm talking, of course, about the dance/kissing scene in "Captain Jack Harkness". I was really overwhelmed by how beautiful and emotional that scene was.
But that episode in general just exudes romance. The writers and producers said they wanted a romantic, soft 1940s and they got it in spades. At first, when I was watching the episode, I honestly thought I was going nuts and reading a subplot into the episode (i.e. the two Jacks having the hots for each other) that was not there, since as a slash writer I tend to do that anyway. But the intensity just built and built, and you could feel how sad immortal Jack was that this was original Jack's last night alive, and there wasn't anything he could do about it except try to "make tonight the best night of (his) life".
And the part where original Jack takes immortal Jack by the hand and leads him to the dance floor? Pure love! Pure romance! Poor guy! You can just see the pain and longing in original Jack as they dance... He probably knew it was not a good idea to do that in front of all those people, but he had the courage to do it anyway. No wonder he was such a hero. I did originally wonder if maybe that wasn't why he ended up dying - that some homophobe on his squad did something - but no one else connected with the show ever mentioned it, so I'd like to think that's not what happened, but that just as immortal Jack said, he died saving his men from the enemy.
I love how the writers and actors didn't treat the scene - in fact the whole concept - as anything weird or new or different; it just was. It was, as Matt Rippy said in the DVD extras, just a beautiful little romance. And it really was. In fact, after the dance when they were about to kiss and the rift opened, I yelled, "NOOOOO!" I thought they were going to cheat us out of the kiss. And when it finally happened, I was so happy! I love that scene. The song, the incidental music - everything about it is just perfect.
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Quotes and Dialogue from Beauty and the Beast
Can you believe it's been 20 years since that show was first on? It seems like yesterday, it really does. There had never been a show like it on TV before, and there has never been again. Beauty and the Beast was truly unique. Anyway, here are some quotes from the show that I collected over time, in no particular order. Maybe they will shed some light on what made the show so special.
"There is a truth beyond knowledge, beyond everything we could ever hope to know. And that truth is love."
- Vincent; To Reign in Hell
"It wasn't courage, Vincent, it was love."
- Catherine; Shades of Grey
"For a moment I allowed myself to dream..."
- Vincent; China Moon
"I wonder what they must think?"
"That it was a miracle..."
- Vincent and Catherine; Fever
"I sometimes feel that I'm standing on the bank of a raging river watching you try to swim across. How can I not worry? I'd be a fool. And yet, Vincent, sometimes I have to marvel at your courage."
"Catherine swims across that river as well. She faces the same dangers, shows the same courage. And in many ways the toll on her is even greater."
"You really think that's so?"
"On the other side of the river there is no one standing on the bank watching. On her side of the river there is no one praying for a safe passage. On her side of the river, Father, there is no one but Catherine."
"Then I shall stand watch, and pray, for both of you."
- Father and Vincent; A Happy Life
"When all's said and done, you've got to follow your heart. That's the only thing you can ever really count on."
"That's what Vincent always says."
"Will we ever meet him?"
"I'm beginning to think that anything is possible."
- Nancy and Catherine; A Happy Life
"When I see you, Catherine, I'm filled with a happiness sweeter than anything I've ever known, and at the same time I'm reminded of a life that can never be, and I feel great pain."
"Vincent, what will we do?"
"The only thing we can do. We will endure the pain, and savour every moment of the joy."
- Vincent and Catherine; A Children's Story
"Elliott Burch doesn't have a father. Didn't you know that all great men create themselves? They do. I mean, he was Stosh Kaczmarek's father. And the way he saw it, I killed his son. And his wife."
- Elliott; A Kingdom by the Sea
"Weird, isn't it? I've been to Casablanca, the Himalayas, Paris... All over the world - everywhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La - and I dream about a hole in the ground!"
"It's not so weird... when that hole in the ground is home."
- Devin and Vincent; Promises of Someday
"You look into the houses and you can see what it's like inside. You see the lights... the Christmas tree... people talking and laughing... and you get this cold feeling on the outside, like you're never gonna be the one who's IN there."
- Lena to Catherine; God Bless the Child
"Father, when Lena came to me, there was a moment - a pull, beyond thought - when I felt what it might be like to be someone else's possibility. But it was just a moment."
- Vincent to Father; God Bless the Child
"I've been all over the world. Met people, done things. I've lived in luxury
most people could never imagine. But I can't remember a time when I felt as good, or complete, as I do right now."
"I feel it in you, through you. It's very beautiful."
"Sort of like a dream?"
"Better."
- Catherine and Vincent; A Children's Story
"I know what it is to love you, Catherine. Yet I was unwilling to share your love with anyone."
"Don't you think I have those feelings too? Sometimes I envy Father and others in your life who receive your love and your care every day. But all of those feelings come from love. To turn away from them is to forget where they come from."
"What we share must always be so measured, so limited."
"Vincent, if this is my fate, I accept it, gratefully. You must believe that.
Don't be afraid to want it, even only for yourself. Don't be afraid to deserve it. You deserve everything."
- Vincent and Catherine; A Fair and Perfect Knight
"And how could anyone not love her?"
- Vincent to Michael; A Fair and Perfect Knight
"What we have is all that matters! It's worth everything!"
- Catherine; A Happy Life
"I always loved Idylls of the King. I even knew some parts of it by heart. Some nights I dreamt of Camelot... and Lancelot."
"Lancelot was fatally flawed, destined never to find the Grail."
"Still, he was the greatest knight of all."
- Catherine and Vincent; When the Blue Bird Sings
"I had other friends, others who grew up with me in the tunnels, but Devin - Devin was the only one irresponsible enough to dream dreams that included me."
- Vincent; Promises of Someday
"Please know this: that I will protect Catherine, watch over her, and love her till my last breath."
- Vincent; Orphans
"On my way to you . . . . I knew you were in danger, yet I sensed no fear."
"I was afraid. But I couldn't allow myself to feel the fear."
"You sacrificed so much."
"I would sacrifice everything for you."
- Catherine and Vincent; To Reign in Hell
"Tell me something, Vincent, before I have to go."
"What should I tell you?"
"Tell me how it felt to hold a baby in your arms."
"There are no words."
- Catherine and Vincent; God Bless the Child
"Hmm."
"Why are you smiling?"
"Kristopher worked only in oils."
"Yes."
"Oils take months to dry completely, Catherine. Sometimes years. This canvas..."
"Don't say it. I have to hold on to some of my certainties, don't I?"
- Vincent and Catherine; When the Blue Bird Sings
"If only there was some way in which I could keep both of you safe... to shield you from harm... from pain."
"From life."
"Because I love you, Vincent, I love both of you."
"Even love can wound, Father. The grave is a fine, safe place. But if we live, we bleed."
- Father and Vincent; A Kingdom by the Sea
"He can offer you so much: the power to do great good... beauties undreamed of... He can walk beside you in the daylight. Last night I felt your fear for him... the sorrows you shared... your joy when you knew he was alive... And when death was nearest, when he - "
"When he kissed me."
"Yes. I felt that too."
"I've never felt closer to Elliott than I did last night. I saw so much of what he's always kept hidden: the boy he was; the man he could be. We almost died together. And when he kissed me, just for an instant some small part of me responded, and I wished... I wished that it was... you.
- Vincent and Catherine; A Kingdom by the Sea
"He's beyond man... in his own right he's a god. But, you see, he tries to be a man... And in that, denies his own greatness."
- Paracelsus; What Rough Beast
"Whatever happens, whatever comes, know that I love you."
- Vincent; The Rest is Silence
"We're all on the same journey... we create that journey for each other."
- The angel/spirit of Catherine; Remember Love
"He is my life. Without him, there is nothing."
- Catherine; The Rest is Silence
"Every moment since that night, I'm reminded of what a gift life is."
- Vincent; Temptation
"It's strange..."
"What?"
"Being here, makes me realize what I've been missing all along... the chance to be with you. I never knew if this time would come... if I would ever be so certain. But you know it's always been a dream."
"For both of us."
"I want to stay."
"Catherine..."
"You know me, Vincent. You know what I am feeling. I want to live in your world. I don't want to go back."
"I don't want you to go back."
- Catherine and Vincent; Orphans
"She comes here in grief. Whatever she needs, whatever sacrafices I must make, I will make to be there for Catherine."
- Vincent; Orphans
"Catherine, we are something that has never been, and our journey is one that none have ever taken. We are just now setting out. We must go with courage. And we must go with care."
- Vincent; Orphans
"There are moments... images I remember so clearly, burning so deeply."
"Tell me about these moments."
"The time when I first felt the tremendous joy that dreams could bring... the intoxication of sending your heart soaring into the realm of hope... And at that same time I learned that for me dreams could bring more pain than I could ever bear, enough to destroy me - even those around me."
"How? What happened? You can tell me. You can tell me anything."
"I once thought that. There are things... things I had dreamt away."
- Vincent and Catherine; Arabesque
"Vincent, don't you know you could never lose me? We could never lose each other as long as we remember."
"Remember...?"
"Remember love."
- Catherine and Vincent; Remember Love
"They'll never know if he's dead or gone, or just waiting down there until he's needed again... like King Arthur."
- Catherine; Terrible Savior
"One either moves toward love or away from it, Catherine. There is no other direction."
- Vincent; Ashes, Ashes
"Can such a being as this walk the world your Catherine lives in?"
- Narcissa; When the Blue Bird Sings
"You will let me go out, to do what must be done - whatever must be done?"
"I pray that won't be necessary."
"So do I."
"That is not what you are, to us."
"That is who I am... perhaps even my fate. The very part of me that I struggle to overcome gives me the power to protect the people who protect me - who give me life."
"Vincent, that is *not* your fate."
"My survival depends on this world. There is no other choice for me. For me there is no other place, Father."
- Vincent and Father; The Outsiders
"All right, it is over... played out. You know what played out means to me? It's when the music stops."
- Lisa; Arabesque
"I've... I've tried to be fair, Vincent, in... in raising all of you. I made
choices that had to be made. Though I don't know anymore which was right and which was wrong, all I do know, Vincent, is that they were made with love."
"And it is with love that I make the choices I must, now."
- Father and Vincent; Arabesque
"There was a moment when the way was still new, and I was afraid to hope. You put your hand on mine, and nothing had ever felt like that to me, like your touch. I wanted to weep; you turned and looked at me - your eyes were filled with dancing light, and I was bathed in your warmth. And I believed in that moment that even for me all things were possible. In that moment, in your light, I felt what it is to be beautiful. How many lives were touched by you? How many lives were transformed by your courage to give, and to love? How many became beautiful in your light?
Ah, we promised always to share the truth - always. But, Catherine, there was a truth beyond anything, beyond everything I had ever known, ever dreamed. It was the truth of all you gave, of all you sacrificed for me. The truth of your love humbled me, silenced me. And the truth I could never share with you was the truth of how deeply I loved you. I will remember - I will remember every moment, every word, every look, every touch. Our love lives. It will live forever. Nothing will destroy us. Love does not die. You're safe. You're safe, now. Sleep, my love."
- Vincent's eulogy for Catherine; Walk Slowly
"Some memories never sleep: bitter and sweet, dark and bright, they stay with us. When I read the books I shared with Catherine, I can feel her presence in the room with me beyond the light of the candle... listening... smiling. But afterwards when the story ends and I put the book down to look for her... All stories end, Pascal."
"Yes, but we can always read them again."
- Vincent and Pascal; Snow
"Some names have power. But you know that, don't you, Vincent... Conqueror."
- Gabriel; The Chimes at Midnight
"Perhaps he's not intelligent enough to comprehend his own mortality."
"He's more intelligent than you are, Doctor. And less mortal. No, the only thing he's afraid of is himself."
- The ill-fated doctor and Gabriel, discussing Vincent; Invictus
"Every time I look at him, the miracle fills me anew."
"Oh, he is beautiful."
"I've looked in his eyes a thousand times. Why does his power never diminish?"
"You can never run out of hope for a newborn child."
"Sometimes in my nightmares I relive what happened: the loss, the violence, all that I put us both through. But then in an instant it vanishes, carried off by his waking cries."
"He can make it all right."
"Nothing can make all of it right. Diana, you've done so much for both of us. Why?"
"It's funny, I - when it was happening I never even questioned it. I don't know, Vincent, you make everything so possible I... I couldn't help but want to help
you."
"Jacob is not my only blessing."
"You're thinking of Catherine."
"Always... and I'm thinking of you."
"Sometimes I wonder - how all this can be happening, and whether I even belong here or not. Your... your world is... I don't know where I'm going anymore, I don't know where I'm going to be tomorrow."
"Tomorrow will come, Diana. We can only live each day as it comes to us, with its pains and joys, and all of its gifts."
"Could I hold him?"
- Vincent and Diana; Legacies
"And over our heads will float the blue bird singing of beautiful and impossible things, of things that are lovely and that never happen, of things that are not and that should be."
- Oscar Wilde, quoted by Kristopher Gentian; When the Blue Bird Sings
And I think that last quote says it all... although for some reason it also makes me think of Harry Potter!
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Whenever I buy DVDs, I try my best NOT to get South African or Australian ones. In fact, I much prefer American-produced DVDs. You know why? American-produced DVDs do not have THAT HORRIBLE, TIME-WASTING, CAN'T-SKIP-TO-THE-MENU ANTI-PIRACY ADVERT ON THE FRONT OF THEM!!
Now, all my DVDs are legitimate, meaning they're original DVDs, NOT cheap knock-offs from Malaysia or badly copied local rips. Yes, when DVDs first appeared I did buy some of those, but not on purpose - DVD stalls in flea markets sprang up overnight and it was actually quite exciting to find movies and TV series on DVD, so people (myself included) snapped them up. However, I soon found that most of those had problems (picture pixellating, special features not working, the frame freezing, audio out of synch, etc.) and quickly learned to discern which DVDs were the real thing and which weren't.
FYI - in South Africa, DVDs you can buy at flea markets which say "Subtitles: Chinese, Malay, Thai" on them are NOT originals; they are cheap knock-offs. So if I found a DVD at a flea market I would check very carefully that the cover was original and wasn't blurred, didn't have the colours bleeding into one another, didn't have Chinese, Malay and Thai subtitles, etc. But once or twice, despite my checking so carefully, I accidentally bought knock-offs. This annoyed me because, of course, a person can't return DVDs, so I ended up having to throw the knock-offs out and buy the real thing AGAIN.
Now I only buy from reputable shops and stay far away from flea market DVD stalls and people selling DVDs on street corners!
BUT - given that I'm so meticulous about having original DVDs - I get very annoyed to put in an original DVD that I spent a lot of money on and have that stupid advert appear. You know which advert, right? The one that shows people browsing street stalls or downloading movies off the Net, interspersed with signage that says things like, "You wouldn't steal a car!!" "You wouldn't steal a (whatever)!" "Buying pirated DVDs is stealing!" and so on.
Okay, fine. BUT WHY PUT THIS ADVERT ON THE FRONT OF LEGITIMATE, ORIGINAL DVDS? IT MAKES NO SENSE! Isn't doing that just preaching to the converted? I mean really. That ad is 40 seconds long, and the DVD is set up in such a way that you cannot skip right to the menu - you have to play the ad. I discovered that you can fast-forward the ad - but still - why waste 40 seconds of my time ON EVERY DVD IN A BOX SET? I KNOW that buying pirated DVDs is stealing - that's why I don't do it? SO WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT ON A NON-PIRATED DVD? HELLO? BUELLER??
Once one of my DVDs got scratched and would not play in my (very sensitive) DVD player, so I tried copying it to see if the copy would play (it did). I'm sure this is allowed under fair use, since I still have the original and only made a copy so I could watch it. BUT - here's the thing - I discovered that on a copied disk, you can bypass that ad! This would have been enough to make me copy every one of those freaking disks containing that ad - if only my computer was fast enough (it's not).
But it just strikes me as ironic that a legitimate DVD forces you, the buyer, to sit through a 40-second ad every time you watch it, whereas a pirated DVD lets you skip the ad. This seems like an inducement to people NOT to buy legitimate DVDs, don't you think? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
I understand having to have copyright declarations at the beginning of every DVD; sure. But an advert that annoys the crap out of people and makes them WANT to buy pirated DVDs? Not so much.
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Although Martin Gero thinks there are only nine story ideas in science fiction, there are actually just over a dozen! Although most of these can be found on the TV Tropes pages, I have tried to categorize them here, along with specific examples from various sci-fi and fantasy series.
1. Body-swapping
"We're checking for Buffy, not a concussion."
Body-swapping is always fun, and when you have skilled actors who can do good impressions of one another, you can believe that body-swapping has happened. Usually, it's only two people who swap bodies, but sometimes you may have more.
The best example of an excellent body-swap episode is Stargate SG-1's "Holiday". The acting is so good that you really do feel that O'Neill and Teal'c have swapped. Quantum Leap isn't really about body-swapping, because Sam physically leaps back in time, into the other person's "aura". However, for our purposes, it's pretty much exactly the same. Sam has to pretend to be the people he's leaped into, and usually does a pretty good job of it. Seeing a man get treated the way he does when he's leaped into women really drives home just how sexist the world still is.
Examples:
Star Trek (Turnabout Intruder)
Janice Lester switches bodies with Kirk using an ancient machine.
Battlestar Galactica, TOS (Experiment in Terra)
Apollo must pretend to be a man from the planet Terra.
Farscape (Out of their Minds)
Zhaan is on an alien ship as a hostage when the others all switch bodies.
Stargate SG-1 (Holiday)
Machello, a man hunted by the Goa'uld, swaps bodies with Daniel. When O'Neill and Teal'c try to bring the machine back to the SGC, they accidentally switch as well.
Quantum Leap (the entire show)
The audience sees Sam, but the people around him see the aura of the
person he's leaped into.
Buffy (Who Are You)
Faith uses magic to switch bodies with Buffy.
Angel (Carpe Noctem)
An old man switches bodies with Angel.
Smallville (Transference)
Lionel Luthor uses a Kryptonian stone and tries to switch bodies with Lex. Clark gets in the way and ends up being the one who switches with Lionel Luthor.
2. Repeating time loops
"We've done this!"
Time loops are very difficult to make interesting, because usually only a short period of time repeats, and many things happen in exactly the same way. What holds the audience is trying to figure out what changes the person will make this time, and what the person has to do to finally get out of the loop.
Examples:
Star Trek TNG (Cause and Effect)
In this episode the Enterprise encounters another ship. They collide, explode and start again.
Stargate SG-1 (Window of Opportunity)
O'Neill and Teal'c are caught in the energy from an Ancient time machine that loops time every ten hours. Conseuquently, they are the only ones who know that they are reliving the same day over and over.
Tru Calling (The Longest Day)
When Tru doesn't managed to save someone the first time round, the day repeats until she figures out just who she was really meant to save.
Buffy (Life Serial)
The Legion of Dim (Warren, Andrew and Jonathan) use a time dilation device on Buffy, making her relive parts of the day.
3. Character doubles/evil twins/clones
"You stole my ass and made a... Mini-Me."
There are various ways in which 'doubles' are made. Sometimes it's a robot double - Kirk was duplicated by a robot double in "WALGMO", and SG-1 got robot duplicates in "Tin Man". Sometimes a character is duplicated exactly, as with Crichton in "Eat Me" and Riker in "Second Chances". Sometimes a character is duplicated, or rather split, into a positive and negative version, as with Kirk in "The Enemy Within" and Xander in "The Replacement". Other times, a person is cloned, like Jack O'Neill in "Fragile Balance" or Trip Tucker in "Similitude".
More modern TV shows can take advantage of special effects to make the fact that the same actor is playing two parts absolutely undetectable. I was very impressed by the 'effects' in the Buffy episode... until I discovered that Nicholas Brendan has a twin brother!
Examples:
Stargate SG-1 (Tin Man, Double Jeopardy, Fragile Balance, etc)
In "Tin Man", robot duplicates are made of SG-1. They meet their duplicates again in "Double Jeopardy". In "Fragile Balance", an Asgard named Loki clones O'Neill, but the clone doesn't mature.
Star Trek (WALGMO, Enemy Within)
In "What Are Little Girls Made Of?", Dr. Roger Korby can not only make robots, he can even transfer your mind into them.
Farscape (Eat Me)
An alien with a "twinning" process "twins" Crichton. Both Crichtons insist they are the original.
Star Trek TNG (Second Chances)
On the planet Nervala IV, the Away Team discover a duplicate William T. Riker. This one was created by a second containment beam in the transporter which was reflected back to the surface. Therefore, both the Rikers are the real one.
Buffy (The Replacement)
Xander gets split into two. At first he thinks one is an evil double, but eventually the Scoobies realise that he's been split into confident and pathetic halves.
Lois & Clark (Vatman, Madame Ex)
In "Vatman", Lex Luthor clones Superman and brainwashes the clone into obeying him. In "Madame Ex", Lex Luthor's ex-wife pays an actress to impersonate Lois.
Smallville (Dichotic, Onyx)
In "Dichotic", a Krypto-mutant has the ability to literally split himself in two so he can date both Chloe and Lana. In "Onyx", an encounter with black Kryptonite sees Lex split into what seem to be good and evil halves.
Enterprise (Similitude)
When Trip is hurt, Dr. Phlox injects his DNA into an alien that can become a perfect clone of a person, except for the fact that it will live only fifteen days.
Logan's Run (Half Life)
Logan and Jessica come to a place where all the people have been split into "negatives" and "positives". They split Jessica the same way.
4. Regressing in some way/becoming younger or older
Having people regress to a more primitive state is always fun, and an excuse for them to go completely nuts. It also allows the writer to speculate on things like human evolution and what makes us what we are.
Another way of messing with the characters is to make them regress into physically younger forms of themselves, or to age them to make them older. Both of these allow exploration of the human "ageist" prejudice.
Examples:
Farscape (My Three Crichtons)
Crichton is split into three: a Neadertal-type being, a normal human, and an advanced version.
Stargate SG-1 (The Broca Divide, Brief Candle)
In "The Broca Divide" the characters regress to savagery while in "Brief Candle", O'Neill is artificially aged by nanites.
Star Trek (The Deady Years, All Our Yesterdays)
In "All Our Yesterdays" Spock, five thousand years in the past, regresses to what Vulcans were like five thousand years ago, while in "The Deadly Years" Kirk is artificially aged.
Star Trek TNG (Genesis, Rascals)
"Genesis" is quite silly in that everyone regresses into other forms of Earth life (spiders, lemurs, etc). In "Rascals", Picard, Guinan, Keiko and Ro become children because of a transporter accident.
5. Time travel
"It's not like you're lost in a mall, you're lost in time."
Examples:
Quantum Leap (the entire show)
Sam travels back in time in every episode. Technically, he can only travel within his own lifetime, and he was born in 1946.
Star Trek (City on the Edge of Forever, etc)
Star Trek did a lot of time travel episodes. According to the two temporal investigators who visit DS9 in "Trials and Tribble-ations", Kirk had seventeen separate temporal violations on his record. The best is, of course, "The City on the Edge of Forever", in which Kirk contemplates changing history for love.
Farscape (... Different Destinations)
A rip in time interacts with Stark's energy, sending Crichton, Stark and Aeryn back in time where they affect the history of the planet they were visiting.
Star Trek TNG (Time's Arrow, Yesterday's Enterprise, etc)
"Yesterday's Enterprise" is actually a combination of the time travel cliche and the alternate universe cliche. In that episode, an alternate timeline is created due to time travel, and the ship must be sent back in time to return everything to the way it was. "Time's Arrow" is more straightforward in that Data (and eventually the rest of the crew) travels
back in time to prevent aliens from using the life force of humans for energy (or something; it's not too clear).
Stargate SG-1 (1969, 2010, 2001, Moebius)
"1969" is just great fun. The team ends up in the past due to having passed through a solar flare and they have to figure out how to get back to their own time. "2010" presents us with a future in which an alien race is systematically sterilizing humans in order to use Earth as a farming planet. The team decides to send a message into the past to prevent that. "2001" then presents us with the dilemma of what to do when we encounter those very same aliens another way. In "Moebius" SG-1 goes back in time to get Ra's ZPM from ancient Egypt. They accidentally change the past, creating an alternate timeline, in which their doubles go back in time to try to fix things.
Star Trek DS9 (Past Tense, Little Green Men, Trials and Tribble-ations, Children of Time)
"Past Tense" is pretty much a straight time travel scenario in which Sisko, Bashir and Dax are accidentally sent back in time and have to figure out how to get back. "Little Green Men" is the same plot, but funnier, with the Ferengi being the aliens who crashed at Roswell. "Trials and Tribble-ations" has the Defiant crew sent back to the 23rd century where they try to prevent the timeline from being contaminated. In "Children of Time", the Defiant crew meet their descendants on a planet in the Gamma quadrant and learn that the ship went back in time after colliding with an anomaly.
Stargate Atlantis (Before I Sleep)
This is the case where time travel actually created an alternate timeline which improved on the original. Weir went back in time to prevent Atlantis from being destroyed when the ZPM gave out and the shield collapsed and in so doing changed history - so that when the Earth people came through, the city rose to the surface.
Tru Calling (every episode)
Tru goes back in time every episode, but only to the beginning of the day, after which she tries to prevent people from dying and ending up in the morgue where she works.
Star Trek Voyager (Future's End)
Another straightforward time travel episode involving fitting in with local customs, trying to hide their true identities and trying to prevent the timeline from being contaminated.
Enterprise (Carpenter Street, E Squared, Storm Front, etc.)
In "Carpenter Street", Archer and T'Pol are sent back in time to prevent the Xindi from making a bio-weapon to kill every human on Earth. In "E Squared", the Enterprise encounters a duplicate ship that was created when they 'originally' exited a subspace conduit in the wrong time. They get to meet their offspring. And the entire first two seasons, in fact, had the Enterprise caught in the middle of the Temporal Cold War, in which factions from the future were trying to change the past.
In "Storm Front" the ship is sent back to a 1940s U.S.A. in which the Germans won WW II and are trying to take over America with the help of some time-travelling aliens. Archer learns that if he can stop the aliens using their time travel conduit, history will be returned to its
original state.
Star Trek Voyager (Time and Again, Year of Hell - sort of)
In "Time and Again", Janeway and Paris are sent back in time on an alien planet which uses polaric energy. In "Year of Hell", an alien scientist has been changing the timeline in order to bring his wife back to life. When Voyager destroys his timeship, everything goes back to the way it was.
Babylon 5 (War Without End)
A really good episode in that the B5 crew discover that they were the ones who stole Babylon 4 and sent it into the past, where it turned the tide of the war against the Shadows.
SeaQuest (Second Chance)
A pretty good episode for SeaQuest, this one deals with a fault in the engines sending the sub back to 1962, where they have to intervene in the Cuban Missile Crisis and prevent World War III.
6. Virtual reality/messing with your mind
"Oh, I'm not a detective in here. In here I'm a vampire. You may call me Nicolas de Brabant."
In most SF virtual reality set-ups, the person or people don't realise they're in a virtual reality until something tips them off. In both Farscape's "A Human Reaction" and Atlantis' "Home", the Johns (heh) realise they know everybody in their reality. John Sheppard's schoolteacher is at his homecoming party, while a girl John Crichton dated is selling magazines at a stall in Australia. Riker is tipped off in the TNG episode "Future Imperfect" when the boy he's supposedly rescuing makes a slip of the tongue.
Examples:
Stargate SG-1 (The Gamekeeper, Avatar)
The Gamekeeper forces SG-1 to relive their worst moments over and over. In "Avatar", they use the same technology to train personnel, but Teal'c becomes stuck in the simulation.
Lois and Clark (Virtually Destroyed)
Lois and Clark become caught in a virtual reality in which Clark is not Superman.
Farscape (A Human Reaction, Won't Get Fooled Again)
Aliens put Crichton and Aeryn into a virtual Earth to see how humans would react to their presence in "A Human Reaction". Crichton suspects they're doing it again in "Won't Get Fooled Again".
Star Trek (The Cage/Menagerie)
The Talosians destroyed their world with their use of virtual reality (though it's not called that), and want to breed humans to be their slaves. They manipulate Pike's mind to try to get him to cooperate.
Forever Knight (The Games Vampires Play)
Nick thinks that a murder suspect is leaving clues in her virtual vampire game.
Star Trek TNG (Future Imperfect, Frame of Mind)
In "Future Imperfect", an alien boy uses virtual reality to stave off loneliness. "Frame of Mind" confuses both Riker and the audience, as neither knows what is going on.
Star Trek DS9 (Shadowplay, Hard Time, Far Beyond the Stars)
In "Shadowplay", Odo discovers that most of the inhabitants of a planet are holographic simulations. In "Hard Time", O'Brien is punished by having the memories of a long incarceration implanted. And "Far Beyond the Stars" might be a simulation... but then again it might not. Sisko suddenly starts living out the life of a black '50s science fiction author, Benny Russell. Benny writes stories about a space station called Deep Space Nine.
Stargate Atlantis (Home)
Aliens try to convince Sheppard, McKay and Weir that they are back on Earth because they don't want to be used as energy (and thus destroyed) to make the stargate go all the way back to the Milky Way.
7. Alternate Universes/Timelines/Realities
"Something is very wrong here. I think we took a wrong turn in the wormhole."
These are always interesting, because one can change the characters in all sorts of plausible ways to fit in with a different reality. Usually, as with time travel, they have to struggle to get home, but occasionally the alternate reality turns out to be a dream or vision. Often, the plots are based on the 1948 movie "It's a Wonderful Life", in which the main character saw what the world would have been like had he never been born.
Star Trek (Mirror, Mirror)
Kirk, McCoy, Uhura and Scotty are sent into an alternate universe where the Federation (the Terran Empire) is evil and warlike.
Star Trek TNG (Yesterday's Enterprise, Parallels)
Most of "Yesterday's Enterprise" takes place in an alternate reality, and it's up to Guinan to explain to them that things are not 'right'. In "Parallels", Worf switches between realities, getting further and further away from his own. In some, Wesley is still on the ship. In one, Data has blue eyes. And in a couple Worf is married to Deanna!
Star Trek DS9 (Crossover, Through the Looking Glass, Shattered Mirror, etc.)
DS9 had quite a few episodes in which they visited the "Mirror" reality from the original series.
Stargate SG-1 (There But For the Grace of God, Point of View, Moebius, Ripple Effect, The Road Not Taken)
Daniel touches the Quantum Mirror and is sent to a reality in which the Goa'uld are in the process of destroying Earth. The Quantum Mirror is used again in "Point of View" by Doctor Samantha Carter and Major Kawalsky to escape from their doomed Earth.
In "Moebius", the characters muse on what life would have been like if they hadn't met pivotal people. We find out when they change history, and an alternate timeline is created in which the Stargate was never found.
In "Ripple Effect", the SGC is overrun with SG-1s from alternate realities, created by an SG-1 who deliberately came into our universe in order to steal the ZPM.
"The Road Not Taken" deals with Carter being sucked into an alternate universe in which she's Rodney McKay's ex-wife and Landry is the president, but a president who is subverting democracy in his desperation to win the fight against the Ori.
Stargate Atlantis (McKay and Mrs Miller)
When Rodney and his sister use formula to bridge universes and extract energy from an alternate universe, they accidentally create a tear in the alternate universe, prompting the alternate Rodney McKay to come into our universe.
Farscape (Through the Looking Glass)
Farscape has to be different, in that three different "realities" are created, each with a distinctive sight and sound.
Star Trek Voyager (Non Sequitur, Before and After)
Harry Kim is sent into an alternate reality in "Non Sequitur", one in which he never joined the Voyager crew. In "Before and After" we see what might have happened had Kes married Tom Paris.
Enterprise (In A Mirror, Darkly)
An episode shown entirely from the perspective of the mirror universe. MirrorArcher wants to go into Tholian space to find a ship from another reality in the hope of obtaining superior technology. They find the starship Defiant (from the TOS episode "The Tholian Web").
Highlander (To Be, Not To Be)
Duncan is given a vision (a la "It's A Wonderful Life") of what might have happened to all the people he knew if he'd never been born.
Beauty and the Beast (Remember Love)
"It's A Wonderful Vincent". Vincent is shown what the Tunnels (and Catherine) would have been like without him.
8. Meeting the "ancients/first ones"
"I'm not one of the First Ones. I am... the First One."
TNG (The Chase)
In "The Chase" we find Picard using messages imbedded in the DNA of many species to solve a puzzle... which turns out to be a hologram of an alien from millions of years ago who explains that they 'seeded' the galaxy with their genetic material and that most of the humanoid races in the galaxy are their descendants.
Babylon 5 (Hour of the Wolf)
Sheridan is saved from death by Lorien, who was the first life form in the galaxy the achieve sentience. Unlike the rest of the First Ones, he remained on Z'ha'dum, which is why the Shadows continued to use Z'ha'dum as their homeworld.
Star Trek (Return to Tomorrow, The Paradise Syndrome)
Kirk and co encounter aliens known as the "Preservers" who took humans from different cultures on Earth and settled them on planets across the galaxy in order to preserve their unique cultures. This went a long way towards explaining why the Enterprise crew encountered so many societies patterned after those on Earth.
Farscape (A Human Reaction)
Aliens who believe Earth is their sanctuary use Crichton's mind to see if they will be welcomed by humanity. They also embed knowledge of wormhole technology in Crichton's subconscious. We find out in a later episode that they are called the Ancients.
Stargate SG-1 (The Fifth Race, Maternal Instinct, Window of Opportunity, Ascension, Meridian, The Lost City, etc)
SG-1 found out over time that there was one original race of humanoids in the galaxy. They were originally thought to have originated on Earth, and it was this race, the Ancients, who built the Stargate network and used it and a powerful weapon to 'seed' life in the galaxy. They were later wiped out by a plague, but not before some of them had built an intergalactic spaceship city and taken it to the Pegasus Galaxy, where they propagated. Some Ancients learned how to 'ascend', becoming beings of energy. The first Ancient met by SG-1 was Oma Desala ("Mother Nature"). Daniel himself later 'ascended' and became a quasi-Ancient until he broke the rules and was returned to human form.
Stargate Atlantis (all the episodes)
Atlantis picks up where SG-1 left off, going to the Pegasus Galaxy and resuming the fight the Ancients had with a race of life-energy sucking aliens called the Wraith. Much Ancient technology requires the "Ancient Gene" in order to work. In SG-1, only O'Neill had the gene, but the Atlantis crew had been picked because they had the gene. This makes it possible for people like Major John Sheppard to operate Ancient technology.
9. Taken over by aliens or possessed
"I've been possessed by the spirits of old lovers before; it never goes well."
Possession or being taken over is a good way to make familiar characters do things they would normally never do; it also puts them in a kind of jeopardy that isn't primarily physical: because, how do you kill whatever is infesting someone without harming them? If it's plain possession, an exorcism might work. If it's aliens, you either have to persuade them to leave, make the host body uninhabitable or remove them using surgery.
Stargate SG-1 (Children of the Gods, many other eps)
In Stargate, various characters are taken to be used as 'hosts' for Goa'uld symbiotes. Some are removed (Osiris is removed from Sarah, Klorel is removed from Skaara), some flee the body (Kanin leaves O'Neill when he is captured), some die (Jolinar dies to save Sam's life),and some have to be killed (Teal'c kills Sha're to save Daniel from Amonet; O'Neill shoots Rothman to stop him from killing his team). Then we have the Tok'ra, who blend with the host but both live in harmony in the same body. The symbiotes are revealed as being genderless, but having a preference for a certain gender of host (Jolinar preferred female hosts, and Osiris looks decidedly put out by being forced to blend with Sarah).
Forever Knight (Sons of Belial)
A pretty much straight possession episode, in which Nick is possessed by a demon and has to be exorcised. But he's a vampire - how do you DO that exactly? (Note that in the Forever Knight universe, vampires are NOT demons in human form, but humans who live long lives due to a kind of 'vampire virus' that bonds to their cells and gives them the characteristics of vampires, such as needing to drink blood, unable to be in the sun, etc.)
Star Trek (Operation: Annihilate!, The Lights of Zetar, Return to Tomorrow, Wolf in the Fold)
In "Operation: Annihilate", Spock is controlled by cells of a large creature. They remove the cells by irradiating Spock (and the others who were infested) with ultraviolet radiation. In "The Lights of Zetar", the Zetarians want a host body and infest a female crewmember. The crew manages to get rid of them by putting her into a pressure tank.
In "Return to Tomorrow", powerful non-corporeal beings convince Kirk, Spock and a female crewmember to let them 'borrow' their bodies for a while.
An alien who lives on fear has been travelling across the galaxy possessing people and using them to kill women in "Wolf in the Fold". The alien once lived on Earth and was known as Jack the Ripper!
Star Trek TNG (Conspiracy, Masks, The Host)
In "Conspiracy", aliens have been taking over human bodies without people noticing. Picard and Riker get rid of them by killing the 'mother creature'. In "Masks", personalities from a long-dead civilization live again in Data. And "The Host", of course, introduced us to the Trill, who we find out are slug-like creatures (symbionts) who 'join' with a host body.
Buffy (I Only Have Eyes for You)
As the Sadie Hawkins dance nears, people are being taken over by spirits of a long-dead couple and being forced to relive the murder-suicide of a student who, when his teacher rejected him, killed her and then himself. Buffy and Angel are possessed, but Buffy is possessed by the male and Angel by the female, so that when he's shot, he survives and the spirits can apologise, confess their love and move on.
Angel (I've Got You Under My Skin, Waiting in the Wings, A Hole in the World, Shells)
In "I've Got You Under My Skin", Angel does 'The Exorcist' and very well too. In "Waiting in the Wings", Angel and Cordelia are taken over by energy trapped in time and relive a rather torrid love scene. In "A Hole in the World" and "Shells", Fred's body is transformed to be host for Illyria, an ancient demon goddess. But unlike other episodes, this has no happy
ending, because Fred is gone forever and Illyria lives on in her changed body.
Star Trek DS9 (The Passenger, Dramatis Personae, Facets)
The DS9 characters are alternately possessed by an alien in "The Passenger", taken over and forced to relive a conflict in "Dramatis Personae", and in "Facets", they allow themselves to be vessels for the Dax symbiont's former hosts.
Star Trek Voyager (Cathexis)
Chakotay is out of his body, and going into the bodies of various crewmembers in order to try and get them to help him return.
Smallville (Rush, Spell)
In "Rush", Chloe and Pete are taken over by alien symbiote-type things from the cave. The bugs feed on adrenaline and make their hosts increasingly reckless. In "Spell", Lana is possessed by the spirit of the witch Isabel Thoreaux.
Star Trek Enterprise (The Crossing, Observer Effect)
"The Crossing" deals with non-corporeal aliens who possess various members of the crew. While "Observer Effect" also deals with alien possession, the aliens don't want to keep the bodies - they just use them for short periods of time to observe how corporeal beings respond to a plague. Kirk meets these same non-corporeal beings later in the TOS episode "Errand of Mercy"... the Organians.
Stargate Atlantis (Duet, Critical Mass, The Long Goodbye)
After Rodney and Lieutenant Cadman are scooped up by a Wraith dart, Zelenka manages to rematerialise Rodney, but Rodney has Cadman's consciousness in his mind. Cadman learns to take control of the body when she wants to.
Caldwell is taken over by a Goa'uld in "Critical Mass" and attempts to destroy Atlantis, whereas in "The Long Goodbye", Sheppard and Weir are taken over or temporarily "imprinted" by a pair of soldiers intent on continuing a war that destroyed their civilization thousands of years before.
10. Being horribly tortured/experimented on/imprisoned
"If you refuse to cooperate, from deeper in your mind there are things even more unpleasant."
Torture episodes can be shallow and purely plot-driven, or they can really delve into the depths of the characters being tortured. Not that the former type of episode is less engaging, but one certainly learns more about what makes a character tick if the latter type is used.
Star Trek (The Empath, The Cage/Menagerie, other eps)
In Classic Trek, characters are usually experimented on for reasons that make sense to their torturers. In "The Cage", for example, while the Talosians are certainly messing with Pike's mind, they are also trying to find a race suitable for helping their own race survive. We don't particularly learn much about Pike in the torture scenes, though. In "The Empath", aliens who look much like the Talosians, the Vians, torture Kirk and McCoy for the express purpose of seeing if Gem, from a race of empaths, has the compassion necessary to give her life for them. We see McCoy's humanity and learn just how deep his feelings for his Captain and First
Officer are. It's a brutal episode, but it works.
Star Trek TNG (Chain of Command, Schisms, The Best of Both Worlds, Family)
"Schisms" is a strange episode in that the aliens vivisect Riker and others to see what makes them tick - similarly, I suppose, to the way in which humans dissect and vivisect animals for the same purposes. But in "Chain of Command", Picard is tortured in order to break him, to make him turn his loyalties to Cardassia. The scary thing is, it almost works: at the end he confesses that he did think he saw five lights. Despite this, he managed to yell at Gul Madred that he only saw four... but he was close to breaking. In "Family", Picard confesses to his brother that the Borg tortured him by taking what he was, and that he couldn't stop them...
something which has a lingering effect on him.
Farscape (Nerve)
In "Nerve", Crichton is captured by Scorpius and tortured for the information in his mind about wormhole technology.
Stargate SG-1 (Abyss, Prisoners)
In "Prisoners", SG-1 is in a typical prison with seemingly no way out. They survive thanks to a protector (Linea) and due to their sticking together. However, in "Abyss", when O'Neill is tortured for information, he is on the verge of breaking and actually asks Daniel to let him die. Daniel refuses, and we get a good glimpse at O'Neill slowly breaking down. An excellent episode.
Star Trek Voyager (The Chute, Nemesis)
When Harry and Tom are imprisoned in "The Chute", Harry has to find the strength to keep them both alive after Tom is wounded, whereas in "Nemesis", the aliens do such a good job of brainwashing Chakotay that even after he gets back to Voyager, he is unable to stop hating the other aliens whom he saw as the enemy. Both episodes are brilliant.
Babylon 5 (Intersections in Real Time)
An episode that shares much with the novel "1984" (as did the TNG episode "Chain of Command"), the goal of the torture here is to break the person and have him switch loyalties. Luckily Sheridan is rescued in time.
Smallville (Asylum)
Lex is imprisoned in a mental asylum after having a psychotic break. We know his father is behind both the psychotic break and having him committed. Clark manages to rescue him, but only after his father has fried his brain to such a degree that he has lost the memories of the previous two weeks.
Alien Nation (The Game, The Red Room)
Alien Nation was always emotionally real. In "The Red Room" we learn how humans tried to brainwash Newcomers into becoming assassins. But "The Game" is a much more powerful episode, in that we learn that George was forced into playing an alien form of Russian Roulette and that it left him with emotional scars.
Stargate Atlantis (Common Ground)
In this episode Sheppard is tortured by Kolya, who lets a Wraith feed on him every three hours. Interestingly, the goal is not to break Sheppard himself, but rather to get something from Weir - Kolya wants her to hand over Ladon Radim, leader of the Genii. It's interesting, though, how Sheppard never stops believing that his people will come for him, and his faith even infects the Wraith to such a degree that the Wraith helps him escape!
11. SNDs (She's Not Deads)/Dying and Coming Back
"No one ever comes back... except a Slayer once."
It's ironic that the term "SND" (for She's Not Dead) originated in Beauty and the Beast fandom (fan writers wrote stories in which Catherine never died, it only seemed like it: she was in a coma, her death was faked, whatever) and yet in Beauty and the Beast she was, in fact, dead! However, as Leonard Nimoy said, "Nobody dies in science fiction". It's true: even if you kill someone off, there's usually a way of bringing them back.
Star Trek (ST II & III)
Spock dies of radiation in Star Trek II, but his body is regenerated by the Genesis Planet, and mind and body are reunited via a mind-meld.
Babylon 5 (Z'ha'dum, Hour of the Wolf, etc)
Sheridan dies on Z'ha'dum, but Lorien gives some of his life energy to bring him back. Later, when the energy runs out, Lorien comes back to take Sheridan with him beyond the rim.
Buffy (Prophecy Girl, Bargaining)
Buffy dies twice: in "Prophecy Girl" she drowns, but Xander performs mouth to mouth. In "Bargaining" she throws herself from the tower and dies, but Willow performs a resurrection spell that brings her back.
Angel (To Shanshu in LA, Conviction)
In "To Shanshu...", Darla is resurrected as a human. Later she is once again made into a vampire. In "Conviction", Spike, who died in the final episode of Buffy, is resurrected via the amulet he was wearing.
Star Trek TNG (Skin of Evil, Yesterday's Enterprise, Redemption)
In TNG, Tasha Yar died in "Skin of Evil", but was alive in the alternate timeline episode "Yesterday's Enterprise", and lived to have a daughter, Sela, who showed up in "Redemption Part II" and other episodes.
SeaQuest (Splashdown, Brave New World)
The entire crew of the SeaQuest was supposedly killed when the sub blew up in "Splashdown", but aliens (or something) managed to send the sub and most of the crew back, and a third season was born.
Stargate SG-1 (Meridian, Fallen, Reckoning, Threads)
Everyone freaked when it was discovered that Michael Shanks was leaving the show, but by having only his physical body die in "Meridian" and his energy pattern survive as an Ancient, he was able to (or forced to) 'descend' in his original physical form and return to us in "Fallen". The next time he gets 'killed' (by RepliCarter) he finds himself in a virtual diner with Oma Desala and can choose, once again, whether to Ascend or not. He chooses not. And, of course, Goa'uld sarcophagi have been used in numerous episodes to revive people.
12. Comatose patient lives other life
"You are the dreamer... and the dream."
In a popular cliche that shows made after about 1995 seem to enjoy using, the series protagonist will 'wake up' in another life after being knocked out, passing out, whatever, in the 'real' timeline of the show. While in this 'other life', they usually have flashes of the 'real' timeline which tip them off to the fact that all is not as it seems.
Star Trek DS9 (Far Beyond the Stars?, Image in the Sand)
There's no way to know whether Sisko is really in an alternate reality, or if the Prophets (wormhole aliens) are messing with his mind, but Sisko is living the life of Benny Russell, a science fiction writer who writes stories about a space station called... Deep Space Nine. In "Image in the Sand", Sisko keeps on hearing voices, and at least once he's suddenly Benny Russell again, writing the story of Deep Space Nine on the walls of a mental asylum.
Buffy (Normal Again)
After being poisoned by a demon, Buffy 'wakes up' in a mental home and is told she's been living in her own world (appearing catatonic) for the last six years. To once again be normal, she must get rid of the things tying her to her fantasy life. The plot is very similar to that of the DS9 episode "Far Beyond the Stars".
Star Trek TNG (The Inner Light)
In "The Inner Light" 50 years of another man's life are implanted into Picard's mind in 20 minutes as though it's his own life. At first he tries to get "back" to the Enterprise, but eventually accepts it and lives the life as though it were his own. When he finally wakes up, he remembers the other life as though it really happened to him.
Stargate Atlantis (The Real World)
When Dr. Weir wakes up in a mental hospital, she's told that she's had a trauma and collapsed after some negotiations. Nobody she speaks to, including General O'Neill, knows anything about Atlantis. They tell her it's all in her mind. But back on Atlantis, Sheppard, Dr. Beckett and the rest of the team are struggling to come up with a way to kill the nanites
which have infected Weir's entire body.
Smallville (Labyrinth)
Clark wakes up in a reality in which he's in a mental hospital and doesn't have super-powers. No matter who tries to convince him otherwise, Clark goes on believing that he's an alien from Krypton and that something has happened to him. He turns out to be right, of course.
Life on Mars (entire series)
Sam Tyler, a cop in Manchester in 2006, gets run down by a car and wakes up in 1973. He's not sure whether he's gone mad, or is in a coma, or has actually travelled back in time. He receives messages from his mother, aunt, girlfriend, doctors and nurses via radio and TV. Even the last episode doesn't clear up what was real, because after waking up back in 2006, he chooses to jump off a building and ends up back in 1973 again.
13. Shape-shifting
A really fun cliche, this one. The ability to shape-shift, whether physically or through the use of technology or chemical suggestion, always heralds a good story. One problem with the use of shape-shifting technology is that, usually, the clothing shifts as well, which is plain illogical. Another problem is the difference in mass. Usually the audience is supposed to ignore these and just go with the story.
Babylon 5 (The Gathering)
A member of the Minbari warrior class uses a changeling net to impersonate various members of the B5 staff in order to attempt the assassination of Ambassador Kosh.
Star Trek TOS (The Man Trap, Whom Gods Destroy, Star Trek VI)
"The Man Trap" deals with the Salt Vampire, which can appear as its intended victim's fantasy person before it sucks all the salt from their body. In "Whom Gods Destroy", Garth of Izar, a human, learned to shape-shift from aliens, and takes over the mental institution where
he was incarcerated. And, of course, in "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country", we meet Marta, a "chameloid" who can take on any form.
Star Trek TNG (The Dauphin, Future Imperfect)
Wesley is fascinated with an alien girl whose guardian is a shape-shifter in "The Dauphin", while in "Future Imperfect", an alien boy can not only shape-shift himself but the environment around him. Riker tells him that he'll be embraced just as he is.
Star Trek DS9 (entire series)
Odo is a member of a shape-shifting species known as the Founders. His shape-shifting abilities are used in many episodes but are seldom the focus of any one storyline.
Star Trek Enterprise (Rogue Planet)
Archer encounters a peaceful creature that can look like anyone on a rogue planet, where it is being hunted. He gives the creature a way to fool the hunters.
Stargate SG-1 (Foothold, The Fifth Man, Summit/Last Stand, other episodes)
In "Foothold", aliens who are invading Earth use "chameleon devices" programmed to make them look like members of the SGC. Someone later takes a captured device from Area 51 and uses it to frame O'Neill for shooting Senator Kinsey in "Smoke & Mirrors".
An alien called a Reole uses a chemical hormone - to make himself seem familiar to people - as a defense mechanism in "The Fifth Man". The SGC figures out how to duplicate the hormone and Daniel uses it in "Summit" and "Last Stand" to impersonate Lord Yu's slave at a meeting of the System Lords. Mitchell later uses the same chemical to impersonate a member of the Lucian Alliance in "Company of Thieves".
14. Pushing the Envelope
Some TV shows do things that could not be done on "regular TV". If they weren't science fiction or fantasy, people would not watch or take them seriously. They can do what no other shows have ever done.
Buffy (Hush, Once More With Feeling)
"Hush" is the famous "silent episode". Most of the episode has no talking whatsoever, only incidental music.
"Once More With Feeling" is the singing episode in which Dawn accidentally calls up a demon whose gift is making people burst into song about anything ("They got the mustard OUT!").
Farscape (Revenging Angel, Out of their Minds)
"Revenging Angel" is the cartoon episode in which Crichton's mind becomes a Looney Tunes cartoon a la "The Road Runner". (The cartoon of D'Argo is adorable.) And in "Out of their Minds", you literally have one guy feeling up another guy... something which had not been shown on mainsteam TV at the time. Of course, it can be explained by the fact that Chiana was in D'Argo's body, but it's still a milestone moment.
Angel (Smile Time)
The puppet episode. Angel is turned into a puppet by some puppet demons who suck out children's life force through their TV sets.
Quantum Leap (Many episodes)
Quantum Leap had lots of 'firsts'... things which had never been done before, but which really brought home the issues being explored.
"What Price Gloria?" - Sam's first time Leaping into a woman. Sexism isn't so funny when directed at a 6' guy!
"8 1/2 months" - the pregnancy episode. Sam leaps into a pregnant teenager.
"Raped" - the rape victim episode. Sam thinks he's there to press charges, but the guy is found not guilty. When the guy tries it again, Sam discovers he was there to beat the guy up as punishment. "He tried to do it again, only this time I wasn't pinned inside of a car."
"Black on White on Fire" - this was a brutally honest racism episode set during the Watts riots. Sam Leaped into a black medical student with a white fiancee and had to deal with all the baggage that came with it.
Alien Nation (Three To Tango, Real Men)
In "Three To Tango" we discover that it takes three Newcomers to make a baby: the female, the binnaum and the gennaum. The female provides the egg, the gennaum provides the sperm, and the binnaum provides a "catalyzing emission". Catalyzation requires a sacred ceremony witnessed by the couple's friends!
"Real Men" is the episode in which George is visibly pregnant (the pod is transferred from the female to the male after a few months - as seen in the episode "Partners" - and the male incubates the baby). He goes into labour and gives birth (from the top of his pouch) after being in a fight with a suspect and Sikes has to deliver the baby.
Enterprise (Unexpected)
Another male pregnancy episode. Trip Tucker is accidentally impregnated while playing what seems to be an innocuous game (involving putting your hands into white granules) with an alien female, and no one believes he didn't have sex with her. He does go on to have sex with an
alien, but it's T'Pol, and in "E Squared" we assume SHE was the one who got pregnant and had their son, Lorian, in an alternate timeline.
Stargate SG-1 (200)
In this episode the team pitches their ideas for a "Wormhole X-treme!" movie. There's even a pitch where, due to budget problems, they wonder if they can't do the whole movie with puppets! And this is also the first known instance of a show using the same actors from a different show in a scene FROM that show within another show (is your head sore?). Vala
pitches a Farscape scenario in which she is (presumably) cast as Aeryn, Daniel as Crichton, Teal'c as D'Argo, Sam as Chiana, Mitchell as Stark and an Asgard as Rygel!
Stargate Atlantis (Duet)
The "kissing bandit" episode in which Cadman takes over McKay's body and kisses his date... then later does it again and kisses HER crush... Carson! This is the first-known instance of a "man-on-man kiss" in a science fiction series.
~~~
More cliches will follow as I notice them!
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I wrote this essay years ago when a lot of people still used their real names on the Net and Net aliases were just coming into vogue.
Naming Yourself For The Net
I'll come right out and state that the names some slash writers choose for themselves confuse me greatly. I can understand "cutesy" names or names related to the show one starts writing slash in, but for the life of me I don't get the weird, unattractive, bizarre or just plain "will date in a year or two" names.
These days it seems everyone has their own handle on the Net. Very few people use the names their parents gave them. Now, with slash this is quite easy to understand. Americans seem to be terrified that if they're outed as slash writers, there will be dire consequences, and there might very well be. I use a pseudonym simply because I teach primary (elementary) school, and I don't want children aged eleven to stumble upon NC-17, extremely explict slash stories featuring no-holds-barred homosexual intercourse. However, this choice wasn't about protecting me. It was about protecting young minds. I wouldn't let an eleven year-old child read NC-17 heterosexual sex scenes, either.
But what about people who only engage in innocuous activities on the Net, such as posting to forums or mailing lists? What do they need Net handles for? It seems to be very much a case of "because everybody else does it". Sure, don't give out your personal details on the Net - duh, that's common sense. But why name yourself something like "PersianCatLover14" when your name is, say, Wendy, and there are thousands of women out there named Wendy (and presumably, thirteen other people named PersianCatLover) and no one could possibly stalk you based on that alone? (No offense to Persian cat lovers or people named Wendy.)
As for Net fanfic writers, why, oh why name yourself something like Catherine&Vincent4Ever? Are you going to change your name when you write in a different fandom, or are you going to be stuck with a handle that few people in any new fandoms you might join will even understand? Which brings me to my next point: I've seen quite a few cases of people changing their name depending on which fandom they're writing in. This makes even less sense to me. If a person is a fan of your work, how are they going to find your stories in other fandoms if you change your handle?
(I'm tempted to make comments about the Matrix, for example: if you have two or more names, by which name will you be known when you get unplugged? And wouldn't you feel silly being a freedom fighter named PersianCatLover14? I realise the Matrix is only a movie, but doesn't that kind of put it in perspective? I would have no problem being called T'Mar when I get unplugged. Can you say the same about your Net alias?)
I invented my Net alias when I was thirteen, as a nickname (the Net didn't exist yet). I started using it as part of my email address when I first got online because, being only four letters, it's easy to remember. I started using it as a pseudonym for writing slash in order to avoid the prying eyes of pre-adolescent children. And it never once occurred to me to use a different pseudonym for each fandom. Yes, the name is slightly fandom-specific, being based on Vulcan female names (though for some reason many people think it's related to Babylon 5 and is a Narn name!), but it's also generic enough that I feel comfortable using it in every slash fandom I've chosen to participate in. I just don't understand the logic behind many of the Net aliases I've come across.
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I wrote this essay ages ago for the Highlander mailing list in order to explain slash to people who were not familiar with the concept. This was back when slash was still considered perverted and evil by a lot of fans.
What Slash Is: The Basics
This is a short explanation of slash and a brief summary of some of the issues usually raised by people who discover it for the first time.
What Is Slash?
Slash is a very specific subgenre of fan fiction. To put it briefly, slash posits a romantic (yes, as in sexual) relationship between two series protagonists of the same gender.
Why Call It Slash?
Fans started calling this genre "slash" because of the punctuation mark ("/") used to denote a relationship between two characters, as in "Kirk/Spock". As near as anybody can figure out, slash originated in Star Trek fan fiction, fans of other shows picked up on it, and you will now find slash writers in almost every fandom.
Who Writes Slash, And Why?
Most slash stories are written by women. This is probably because most slash stories are about men. Now, don't look at me like that. Too often, the most dynamic characters in a show are the men. And also, quite often these men are simply gorgeous. It's a generally accepted fact that men like the idea of two beautiful women together... so why shouldn't it follow that women like the idea of two gorgeous guys together? Makes sense to me!
So, most slash is by women, and about male characters. But you do find slash stories about female characters. And these are usually written by men. Note I said "usually". I have occasionally read m/m slash written by men, and f/f slash written by women, but those are the exception rather than the rule. Some people argue that if a man writes m/m fanfic it shouldn't be called slash, but I have yet to be given a reason for this.
So, You Make Characters In Slash Gay?
No. Yes. It depends on who you ask. Some writers write their characters as gay, very many don't. Some slash writers I've spoken to think the issue is irrelevant. Slash writers have written stories where the characters called themselves gay, and stories where they haven't. I personally don't see that it matters - my own stories deal with one person falling in love with another person; their gender is irrelevant. And I think I can safely say that the people who read slash don't care either way.
What About The Moral Issues?
The problem here is, not everyone can agree on just what the "moral issues" are. Are fans technically supposed to write fanfic based on TV shows? No. But most Powers That Be look the other way because fanfic sustains interest in the shows. Would the actors be offended? Who knows - and it doesn't really matter, because the actors aren't the characters they play. (I do know of one actor who thinks the whole thing is very funny.) Isn't there something wrong with the sex acts depicted? Slash fans don't think so. The bottom line here is, if you don't like it, don't read it. We like it, so we will.
But You Shouldn't Write That!
Slash fans resent this attitude most of all. The whole point of having freedom of speech is being able to say, read or write what we want to. If slash isn't for you, fine. Don't read it. But don't try and tell other people what to do. This may be a cliche, but nobody can force someone to read slash. So those people who don't like it can stay far away from slash, and those of us who do like it will continue to read and write it. There are many fanfic subgenres, and slash is a perfectly valid one: it allows the writer to explore the characters in depth. That's all most of us want, anyway: enjoyable stories that explore our favourite characters.
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Buddy-Cop Shows
Jim: I watched Banacek.
Blair: Banacek, with George Peppard? Come on.
Jim: He was smooth, he was intelligent -
Blair: He was an insurance investigator! That hardly qualifies as a detective show.
Jim: All right, take Mannix. Good with his fists, dry sense of humour -
Blair: Granted, granted. I'll give you that. But Starsky and Hutch, they had the car, right?
- Jim and Blair of The Sentinel discussing detective shows in the episode "The Real Deal".
I've been thinking about "buddy-cop" shows recently. About why audiences like them, why these shows more than others seem to get "cultic" attention, why some shows made twenty or thirty years ago are still attracting new fans, especially female ones. The Professionals is still winning converts twenty-one years after its last episode was made, Due South fandom is still going strong, The Sentinel shows absolutely no sign of slowing down, and Starsky and Hutch has ongoing "virtual seasons". Why?
I think, in general, people tend to enjoy these shows for much more than the shootouts or car chases. The plots? I very much doubt it. No, it seems to be more the character interaction that gets people interested. It's not that shootouts and car chases aren't fun, but we want to see how the characters deal with them. We want to get to know the characters, even identify with them. If they have a situation to deal with and we feel we know them well enough, we can often predict how they will behave.
For example, if a bad guy threatens Blair, we know that Jim will be all over him immediately. We know that Ray (either one) will go to any lengths to help Fraser, no matter how stupid the endeavour may seem. We know that Bodie and Doyle will risk their lives for each other. We just know.
This strong partnership vibe is a very attractive part of these shows. We want to feel that there are still friendships like this, that no matter how different the two people may be, their friendship is only stronger because of it. I mean, can you think of two people more unalike than those in the examples? An Army ranger-turned-cop and an anthropologist? A health food nut and a junk food fanatic? A streetwise Chicago cop and a Mountie from the frozen North? An ex-cop and an ex-mercenary-turned-SAS-soldier? It gives us hope - people can be very different, and still like each other. They can be complete opposites and still stand in the line of fire for their friend.
Women, of course, like the overt declarations of friendship and the, er, tactile demonstrations. I never really watched Starsky and Hutch but even I can remember Starsky holding onto Hutch for dear life when Hutch had been dosed with drugs. What about Ray Vecchio spending every waking moment in Fraser's hospital room after he shot him? Blair turning down an expedition to Borneo on account of his friendship with Jim. Bodie and Doyle getting uncharacteristically angry when the other one would get hurt. And so on.
If those kinds of scenes make women happy, the less emotional, more "guy-like" scenes would, I think, please the male contingent in the audience. Scenes of the guys drinking beer together after a long day, or picking up women together, or helping people on their off-hours.
There's a reason these are called "buddy-cop" shows. I doubt we remember the car chases once the episode is over. But we do remember the strong partnerships, and how these friends and partners would do anything for each other. That, we remember. The car chases, even the "decorative women" to a degree, are part of the formula. They have to work on cases; there has to be action. Starsky and Hutch may work on drug cases and criminal cases. Jim and Blair may work on criminal cases and somewhat "paranormal" cases. Fraser and Ray may work on perfectly normal cases or totally wacky ones. Bodie and Doyle may protect diplomats or catch terrorists. But in the end, the criminals they catch are mostly irrelevant: what's relevant is how their partnerships are affected by what happens to them during an investigation.
I also don't think it's a coincidence that in most of these shows, the men are both single. I mean, they killed off Carter's wife in The Sweeney so that he could spend more time with his partner! Studio logic would have it that it's better for partners to be single because it's easier to bring in an occasional love interest (i.e. some T&A). But those of us who watch know that these people lack stable relationships because they already have a stable relationship - their partnership - and any other relationships would detract from that. In fact, the only buddy-cop show in which both men managed to have successful relationships with women that I can think of is Alien Nation. But then, they could get away with it because it was science fiction, and who could pass up a chance to see an alien marriage, alien children and even alien reproductive methods?
The X-Files would have qualified as a "buddy" show if Scully hadn't been a woman. Now don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled that they finally brought a vibrant, beautiful, professional, female law-enforcement officer to the screen. But what happened? After declaring early on that Mulder and Scully would never be romantic partners, TPTB made them just that. And why? If they'd both been men, it would never have happened. Oh, it would have happened in fanfic, but not on-screen. I'm not sure whether making Scully and Mulder romantic partners "cheapens" their partnership, or whether those who slash (romantically pair up) the male members of these shows are onto something. It strikes me as a double standard: if it's okay to have Scully and Mulder's relationship become romantic, then it should be okay for fans to want, say, Starsky and Hutch's relationship to become romantic too. And it works backwards: if it's not okay to pair up Starsky and Hutch romantically, then it shouldn't be okay to pair up Mulder and Scully that way either. Unless you refuse to count The X-Files as a buddy show, in which case the entire thing becomes moot.
Either way, these shows have stood - and will stand - the test of time because they are so much more than just car chases and shootouts. They are about particular people. They have heart. The heart of each of these shows isn't in the "formula" but in the characters and the way they relate to each other. They can make us believe that enduring friendships exist, that people can be such good friends that they will give their lives for each other if it comes to that. And isn't that what we want to see, what we would like our own friendships to be like? In these cases, we get someone - two someones, actually - who will put their partner, their friend, ahead of money or society or fame. As Blair said to Jim in The Sentinel, "It's about friendship. I just didn't get it before."
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"Cube", made in 1997, is one of my all-time favourite movies. My brother actually ordered it, having heard good things about it on the Net, and I watched it and really enjoyed it, not only because it had two of my favourite actors ever in it (David Hewlett and Maurice Dean Wint) but because of the stunning design and interesting premise. I watched it every so often after that as well.
Anyway, I was bored recently and gave it a re-watch. And then another. And another with the commentary on. And yet another. And another. It's fascinating. I notice new things about the set, the actors, etc. every single time.
So I decided to see if there were any decent reviews out on the Net. I found some that saw the movie for what it was, a sci-fi thriller, but there were some reviewerss who had seemingly missed the point of the movie completely.
A couple of reviewers, for example, complained that "the people all had specific jobs or problems; how stereotypical!". Um... the POINT of the movie is that the people were chosen BECAUSE of their jobs and backgrounds, so that by working together they could figure out how to escape. It wasn't a coincidence, it was a plot point!
A couple of reviewers complained about the acting. (One reviewer said the acting was bad except for David Hewlett. So I won't have to hurt him.) I honestly can't see what they have to complain about. In a few instances the dialogue is a little silly, but who can really be sure how a person would behave in that kind of situation?
On the commentary they mention that the red room was the hardest to film in, because the crew and actors would get irritable. I think that's perfectly understandable. The red is not only the hardest on the eyes (from the audience's point of view), but it's also the darkest and most oppressive colour in the film, and no doubt everyone was picking up on that. While I found the blue room quite dark, it was also soothing in a way. The white room was the easiest to handle, simply from a viewer's point of view. Notice how in the sequel (starring the wonderful Geraint Wyn Davies) all the rooms are white. (The sequel is perfectly fine, for a sequel. Cube Zero, the prequel, however, was just distasteful in oh so many ways.)
The first time I saw this film I got a bit annoyed that only one character survived, but now that I've seen the film approximately ten times, it makes sense in a warped kind of way. The only person who didn't make judgements one way or another about the Cube is the one who escapes.
And being a huge fan of Forever Knight, I couldn't help but enjoy the fact that four out of the seven actors in the film had been in that TV series. Maurice Dean Wint was a guy running around in a dress, the reincarnation of a female vampire. David Hewlett was a nut who'd murdered his mother and escaped from the mental hospital. Andrew Miller was a loony who thought he was a vampire. Julian Richings was a scientist (one of the few characters in Forever Knight who wasn't crazy. Or a vampire. Or a crazy who thought he was a vampire!) Whoever cast the sequel must have noticed this too, because Geraint Wyn Davies played Nick in Forever Knight of course, and Kari Matchett was his bride in one episode (Nick tried to bring her across and killed her by mistake).
Is Cube a sci-fi movie? Horror? A psychological thriller? All of the above? Since such a cube would be incredibly difficult to build (at least one with 17,000 rooms would be - on the commentary they mention how someone created a five cube model for them, which was the best they could do at the time), not to mention difficult to hide or keep secret, I tend to see it as science fiction.
But really, I just watch it for the fantastic visuals and my favourite actors!
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