The Long Extinguished Light Illumines the Machine

Seth MacFarlane redeemed himself as a writer last night with "Lasting Impressions", a new episode of The Orville much better than the previous, also written by MacFarlane. This being another sweet relationship episode like "A Happy Refrain" I'm thinking, with some exceptions, MacFarlane's strength on this series shows in episodes where one or two Sci-Fi elements influence a romance between two characters.

Spoilers after the screenshot

Star Trek: Voyager's Tim Russ guest stars as an anthropologist who, for some reason, is opening a time capsule from 2015 Earth on the Orville. Amongst the assorted items is a cell phone in which is contained all the personal history you might expect of a young 2015 American woman. Even so, it's surprising how accurately the Orville's computer constructs a simulation of her life when Gordon (Scott Grimes) decides he wants to meet her.

I think there's a subtle joke here about how impossibly good the Enterprise Holodeck could be even though Enterprise crew members seem totally ignorant of many of the most basic aspects of our time. Tim Russ hilariously assumes "WTF" means "Wireless Telecommunications Facility" but the Orville computer effortlessly replicates 2015 locations and people. I'm not complaining about that, it's amusing, nor am I complaining that we still didn't get any follow-up with Isaac (Mark Jackson)--in fact, Isaac doesn't even get a single line in this episode, appearing only in the background of a few shots. None of that matters because the chemistry between Grimes and guest star Leighton Meester works so well.

But Isaac is mentioned prominently when Gordon argues with his friends about the legitimacy of his budding relationship with the hologram woman. As I pointed out in my review of "A Happy Refrain", one could argue that Claire's (Penny Johnson Jerald) relationship with Isaac is basically the same as Bortus' (Peter Macon) simulator sex addiction. Gordon points out, in a line strikingly similar to one Claire has about Isaac in "A Happy Refrain", if the artificial intelligence is convincing and satisfying in every way as an autonomous being, then what difference does it make? Even if human civilisation by the time period in which The Orville's set believed in the soul there's still no conclusive way of detecting its presence in another being.

It turns out Laura, Meester's character, is a singer and Gordon shows up to one of her gigs where I was pleasantly surprised to see her performing "That's All I've Got to Say" from the soundtrack to The Last Unicorn, a 1982 Rankin/Bass animated film based on a book by Peter S. Beagle (who also wrote a third season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Sarek"). The song was performed originally by Jeff Bridges and Mia Farrow, neither of whom had voices as well trained as Meester or Grimes, who joins her for the duet later in the episode. Apparently Grimes has been singing for a long time; here he is from 1986:

He's had a long career but as Gordon on The Orville I suspect he's done his best work.

"Lasting Impressions" is funny and sweet but there's a melancholy edge to it; there's always the reality that Laura is dead lurking in the background--it occurs to me now her name may have been taken from the 1944 film noir directed by Otto Preminger, Laura, about a detective who falls in love with a dead woman. The fact that she desires to be remembered while clearly knowing how hopeless that likely is is part of the bitter-sweetness of the episode's conclusion, leaning more towards the bitter when Kelly (Adrianne Palicki) echoes one of her lines, observing that the vast majority of people aren't remembered. Ed (Seth MacFarlane) and Kelly pondering a 2015 newspaper that seems unconcerned with the climate crisis adds another level to the episode's understated rumination on death. The reference to The Last Unicorn feels all the more appropriate because that film and book is about the impending death of human imagination or spirit or a certain sensibility that embraces the beautiful and the fanciful. A very good episode of The Orville.

The Alluring Fires of Rebirth

What if, all alone, you were able to feel a sense of fulfilment and pleasure that far surpassed anything that could be gained through human relationships? This is essentially what changes Jean Grey from Phoenix to Dark Phoenix in The Dark Phoenix Saga, the celebrated 1980 series of Uncanny X-Men comics by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. The simplicity of the premise is part of the reason it works so well but it also contains plenty of ambiguities; where does Jean Grey end and Dark Phoenix begin? How much responsibility does she bear for her actions?

According to Wikipedia, Chris Claremont has said himself he was never sure when he was writing the project whether Jean was possessed or if her actions were entirely her own, which I think is perfect. The uncertainty is part of the torment for her and her friends. When the Phoenix persona is introduced there's already something inherently narcissistic about it--Jean's rebirth after saving the X-Men when their craft falls into the sea after encountering a solar flare comes with unexpected fanfare as her boosted psionic powers manifest in the massive, fiery image of a bird. What better way to say, "Happy Birthday to me"? Certainly there's a lot to celebrate--when Phoenix uses her power subsequently throughout the series, Claremont frequently describes her as beautiful and awesome and John Byrne's art certainly supports the text.

It's no wonder anyone would want to see Jean and Phoenix as distinct entities, though, particularly Cyclops, her lover, who, in trying to snap her out of it, describes her as "love" itself. A person so defined by her selflessness and compassion that her personality is unrecognisable when devoid of these traits. But compassion requires effort and Phoenix is a telepath who has the same problem experienced by so many super-powerful telepaths in fantasy fiction--she can't always shut it off so she perceives thoughts she doesn't want to. There's a scene, after she becomes Dark Phoenix, when she visits her parents and is able to perceive the fundamental dread they feel for her and who knows what else. At this point, there'd already been some disturbing rumination on perverted family dynamics as the story preceding Jean's transformation into Dark Phoenix is the first to feature the villain Proteus. In the last portion of that story, Proteus, who took over the bodies and personalities of other people to prolong his life, eventually took over his father's body and kidnapped his mother.

So not only does Jean have the incredible ecstasy of power she experiences through Phoenix, her old sources of happiness have become strange and terrifying, her increased awareness making the essential fabric of human social bonding seem a convenient illusion for managing civilisation. Every relationship would have to constantly be reevaluated or carefully controlled, no wonder she prefers the beauty and simplicity of consuming stars.

I love how understated and yet essential Wolverine's presence is in the series. Jean is of course aware that he's in love with her but she barely acknowledges it, I'm not sure Cyclops is ever aware of it. Byrne made some incredible illustrations of Wolverine for the series, particularly the scenes where he's alone trying to save the other X-Men from the Hellfire club. I love that Jean becomes Dark Phoenix after an attempt by the villain Mastermind to make her into an evil dominatrix. The premise of a woman being psychologically manipulated by a man into adopting a superficially domineering but essentially subservient role becomes a sort of prelude illusory layer for Phoenix to cast off. Mastermind abuses the traditional, socially constructed means of allocating human affection and when Jean discovers the truth it's even more plausible that she'd want to set fire to the whole game.

Again, Wolverine acts as a subtle counterpoint; as a creature of instinct who seems to consider suffering a natural and welcome part of his existence, he's a focus for so much of the story yet he never seems to distinguish himself in Jean's perception as anything more than another of her friends. There's an almost zen-like quality in his acceptance of reality's ambiguities. Before the climactic fight, in which the Shi'ar, Kree, and Skrulls have decided to allow the X-Men to defend Jean for her crimes in a trial by combat, he says, "I ain't scared of dyin'--never have been. It'll happen to me one day, whether I want it to or not. So why waste time worryin' about it." Which says something about the contrasting burden of limitless power. Wolverine doesn't have to consider endless possibilities, infinite implications. This must be part of his intrinsic appeal to readers. It certainly isn't his power--over the course of the forty three issues I read, Wolverine seems to get his ass handed to him more than any other X-Man. He's short, hairy, and not especially attractive and yet he grants a kind of wish fulfilment for readers. Oddly his limitations seem to make him more free than Jean Grey. But of course he represents one interpretation of life.

Twitter Sonnet #1217

An endless light creates a hairy comb.
In twisting signs the tale became a head.
Engravings wrought a tin and copper Rome.
At last the gods may stumble off to bed.
The yellow bird was red in certain lights.
The hand was eyes when nails were painted green.
It's ev'ry bitter end was passed through bights.
At last the legend's foot was clearly seen.
The arrow's shadow stretched across the sand.
Magnetic shades distort the stone for grit.
An absent bell was heard on ev'ry band.
The talking cookies stopped an oven mitt.
A summer rain connects to road to school.
A sugar water fills the winter pool.

Just a Lonely Teenager in Crime

Some choose the gangster life, some are gently pressed into it by well-meaning neighbours, the latter being the case for Jiro, the hapless protagonist of 1962's Teenage Yakuza (ハイチイーンやくざ). Director Seijun Suzuki turns this simple, highly improbable tale into a captivating burst of kinetic filmmaking, taking a moralistic screenplay by Mamoru Okusono and Nozomu Yoshimura and turning it into a weird, slightly embarrassing slice of human experience.

After Jiro (Tamio Kawachi) and his friend win a fight with three other boys in the street, Jiro finds himself being asked to work as security and bodyguard for a few local shops. The ukulele playing, hyperactive teen daughter of one shop owner vigorously puts together a sort of fan club for Jiro and other shop owners start giving him kick backs and before he knows it he's something like a yakuza.

This all happens over Jiro's protests but he does gradually start to enjoy the attention despite the grim disapproval of his mother and sister. But the real problems begin when real yakuza find out about this upstart moving in on their territory.

There's an existential commentary present in the film as Jiro is helplessly pushed through a lifestyle commonly seen as a consummately self-serving vocation. He doesn't really initiate anything for himself until the climax when he tries to convince his friend, who's chosen to be a yakuza with disastrous results, to leave the life so they can go back to being friends and innocent teens. The ultimate result is slightly absurd in a way that emphasises the unlikelihood of the whole premise.

Another of Suzuki's less distinguished films he churned out for the studio, it nonetheless features his trademark talent for expressive pacing and moving compositions and is always fun to watch. Teenage Yakuza is available on Amazon Prime.

The Faux Feminist Superbowl

I finally got to a movie theatre yesterday. I was walking past the theatre and saw Captain Marvel was starting in two minutes so I figured, with commercials and trailers, I had at least fifteen minutes (I think it was more like twenty). I didn't think the trailers for Captain Marvel looked very good but there's been lots of good reviews and the movie was reportedly doing good business in its second week so I was persuaded. Sadly, I was misled. This overlong tease for Avengers: Endgame drags viewers through clumsy political allegory, jokes that are lame and recycled, and just plain bad writing.

There were about five other people in the theatre with me--it was noon on a Monday. Three of them were some loudly drunk teenagers who laughed really hard when Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) plummets to Earth into a Blockbuster video of all places. I guess the Onion articles featuring Blockbuster as a museum or maybe the episode of Better Call Saul featuring the store had prepared these kids to laugh at a subtle indication that this remembered piece of normal life is now part of a bygone era. This laughter had been long prepared for, this joke has been thoroughly tested.

Captain Marvel has been seen as the MCU response to Wonder Woman and one can see quite a few similarities--a lot of the humour depends on the female lead as a "fish out of water", hilariously unfamiliar with normal Earth things we take for granted and the studio, obviously wary of going all in on a female superhero lead, gives her a male companion with more charm--Chris Pine in Wonder Woman, Samuel L. Jackson here. But Jackson has the added bonus of playing an already popular character from other movies, Nick Fury, and he carries the added spectacle of being "de-aged" for the entire film.

They didn't make him look exactly like Pulp Fiction era Samuel L. Jackson--he was a lot skinnier in the 90s--going instead for just a subtly smoother face and more hair. The cgi was perceptible to me throughout the film though I can't say if I'd have noticed it if I hadn't known about it going in. Clark Gregg as a young Agent Coulson doesn't look as good--I'm still trying to decide if he's supposed to look like he has a bad toupee.

In any case, Nick Fury is a surprising misfire, basically relegated to the nutty companion role, endlessly spewing dumb, forgettable wisecracks. We do see how he loses his eye and if you haven't seen the movie I'd advise you to imagine the dumbest explanation you can and just maybe when you see what actually happens the blow will be softened.

The main plot of the film adapts the Kree-Skrull war from early 70s Avengers comics but instead of being a commentary on the senselessness of conflict between two war hungry factions the MCU version definitely picks a side by inserting a poorly conceived allegory for Syrian refugees or Mexican immigrants.

I'm not sure why I'm even going to bother saying what I'm going to say but I'll go ahead anyway--I do agree that it's wrong to demonise refugees based on the acts of a few of their fellows but if you want to sway the opinions of people who are set against them you don't do it by insulting their intelligence. In this film, the idea is that a whole society is apparently organised not to fool a populace but to fool Carol Danvers specifically. Either that, or when she turns against her former companions she just decides to skip the part where she tries to convince them they've been lied to. Apparently assuming no-one else has been duped like her, she goes from seeing one faction as an evil horde to seeing the other faction as an evil horde. The audience gets pumped for it in a climactic fight sequence with No Doubt's "Just a Girl" playing nonsensically in the context.

Among the film's relentless soundtrack of 90s hits are a couple shallow pop feminist tunes--don't expect to hear Ani DiFranco here--appropriately suited to the film's shallow faux feminism. Some nameless asshole guys lob sexist jibes at Carol from the sidelines and we get a mention of how women weren't permitted to fly combat missions in the U.S. Air Force but none of the villains in the film comes off as sexist, Danvers' obstacles not really having anything to do with gender bias or systemic discrimination. I suspect it's because the film's team of writers had no idea how to write about such subject matter, at least not in ways on which the whole committee could agree.

Brie Larson is a little quicker than Gal Gadot and seems to have a better sense of timing but Wonder Woman is easily the better film. When Carol lands in the Blockbuster she takes a shot at a True Lies cardboard stand advertisement, perhaps announcing some solidarity with the DC movie which was criticised by James Cameron as being more regressive than truly feminist. It's weird we live in a time where Carol Danvers and Diana Prince are considered better feminist icons than Vasquez or Sarah Connor. I've heard a "Vasquez" has even become a name for a phoney trope and that the Aliens' character's short hair is seen as giving her a masculine trait, a visual indicator that, as a woman in a man's world, she's at best a defective man. Now, I happen to like long hair on women, but suggesting that women who wear their hair short are in some way giving into the patriarchy is simply idiotic. Carol Danvers' peek-a-boo grunge hairstyle is cute but I think the argument could be made that not having one's hair in one's face may be more conducive to combat effectiveness and this may be a more realistic explanation for Vasquez's short hair. But what do I know?

Ben Mendelsohn gives the best performance in the film and the best scene is a brief one between him and Samuel L. Jackson on an elevator. I liked Carol's Nine Inch Nails shirt though I imagine "Closer" would be the last song in the world she'd be into. Mostly, though, I just wanted the movie to end. At least I got the matinee price.

Aliens Under the Mud

We start to see what normal life will be like aboard Moya, the living prison ship, in Farscape's second episode. The script by Sally Lapiduss continues the first episode's focus on discord between a person's perceived identity and the reality of a situation. With a much lower effects budget the episode still manages to be an entertaining engagement with the show's characters.

Season 1, Episode 2: "I, E.T."

John Crichton (Ben Browder) finds himself in the role of the strange alien visitor normally reserved for little grey guys with big heads and big dark eyes. This is after Moya, the ship in which Crichton and the intergalactic collection of criminals, escaped from the Peace Keepers crashlands in a bog on a world where the sentient civilisation has not made first contact with alien life and is not yet capable of space travel.

The term "First Contact" is thrown around and this is another case where the show seems to be putting a spin on something Star Trek viewers would've been familiar with. Instead of a Federation with careful, thought out protocols for this sort of thing, we have our band of misfits just blundering into the planet, caught up in problems that have little or nothing to do with the people there. And why shouldn't it be that way? In order to ease the fears of the young woman and child Crichton encounters, he compulsively says he and his friends "chose" them as the most appropriate for First Contact. But, reluctantly, he's forced to divulge that not everything that happens out there in the stars has to do with this one backwater sentient species.

Meanwhile, Rygel (Jonathan Hardy), is having an even more humbling experience as the former despotic ruler is obliged by his short stature to conduct dangerous maintenance on the ship. It seems there's a tracker on Moya and, unlike on the Enterprise, where extracting such a device may cause things to break or malfunction, here there's the added problem that the ship is a sentient being who will undergo excruciating pain when Rygel snips the cords connecting the tracker to the vessel.

Why should the little Dominar crawl about in the muck and work up a sweat? It's his only way out of this mess. Zhaan (Virginia Hey) uses her powers to absorb some of the ship's pain, experiencing it for herself, but as we'll see as the series progresses her motives aren't always entirely altruistic. The prisoners need the ship to escape but they're forced to go through Pilot (Lani Tupu) to control the vessel and Pilot is intimately connected with Moya.

Physically and emotionally--certainly the show's most impressive of its many impressive puppets, Pilot, an enormous crustacean looking fellow, belongs to a species that is physically connected to the living ships they operate and act as liaisons for with the ship's crew. Possibly the most effectively alien looking main character of any live action Science Fiction series, the puppet is enormous with articulations that are impressively complex and capable of very subtle shades of expression in the hands of its operators. This ensures that even an episode like this with relatively cheap production still looks fantastic.

To-day I learned Amazon will be streaming the entire series for Prime members starting to-morrow, March 19, in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Nordic countries, and several other countries. Which is great for me, I won't have to rely on my ancient DVDs anymore. Whatever its faults, I have to hand it to Amazon, they really have the best streaming content, hands down.

...

This entry is part of a series I'm writing for Farscape's twentieth anniversary. My review for the premiere episode can be found here.

Twitter Sonnet #1216

The helpful ants would carry loads to wash.
They took the towels and pants, the shirts and socks.
Too handy bugs we never sought to squash.
Their tramping little feet would roam the docks.
Collective dots repair to cravat homes.
The secret ties prepare the grunts for work.
A thousand points of ink denude the bones.
Another day presents a sugar perk.
Instructions wait in massive conf'rence halls.
The little spots combine to make a plan.
Like stars of light inverted paint the walls.
The busy brain again absorbs the land.
Together creatures form a single blob.
No cake escapes the snowy insect glob.

Sounds Like Ireland

Happy Saint Patrick's Day, everyone. It's also Sunday, the day I normally write about Doctor Who, but Doctor Who has always been light on Irish characters and actors and the show has perplexingly never gone to Ireland. So I turned to the audio plays and listened again to the bold 2006 story The Settling from Big Finish's monthly range. Set in Ireland in 1649, it takes place during Oliver Cromwell's conquest of Ireland and features Cromwell as a character, played by Clive Mantle. The tone is sometimes too light, particularly when it comes to some of Cromwell's dialogue, but mostly it treats the subject matter seriously with a score made up mostly of mournful strings that might overdo it slightly.

This may have been before the "fixed point" term came into use on the show but the sieges of Drogheda and Wexford are clearly regarded as fixed points by the Doctor, events that he can't effect substantial changes to. Instead of big things, he mostly focuses on individuals and helps an Irishwoman named Mary (Clare Cathcart) deliver a baby while her town is being ravaged by Cromwell's forces.

It's a Seventh Doctor story and Sylvester McCoy may be the most appropriate Doctor for this material since his mother was Irish and his father was English (he grew up in Scotland). I suspect he taught the rest of the cast how to pronounce "Drogheda". While he's concerned with townspeople, his companions, Ace (Sophie Aldred) and Hex (Philip Oliver), alternate spending time with a conversational Cromwell. Clive Mantle plays Cromwell as unambiguously villainous. The smug sense of constantly amused superiority that comes through in the performance conjures an image of an obese cat with a curling moustache.

The script is much subtler, though. As Ace and Hex start trying to argue with someone they know only as a monster, they're stymied by responses and examples of behaviour that indicate a man who believes in virtue and the value of human life. He teases Hex by pretending to think he's a witch and then laughs it off--Cromwell was out of step with his Puritan cohorts in that he didn't consider witches a real threat. But then he flies into a rage when Hex utters the casual blasphemy, "Oh my god!" Realistically, I think Cromwell would be more taken aback by Hex's comfort with the expression than enraged by it, even if it was a grave offence.

It's not until the end of the story that the Doctor has a conversation with Cromwell and Cromwell's questionable defence for slaughtering the inhabitants of two towns, that he saved thousands more by doing so and that his men acted against his orders in slaying women and children, is met with McCoy's low tone of ominous scepticism.

Mainly, I admire the story more for the boldness of its premise than for its execution but it's not bad. Maybe one day the show, too, will visit Ireland.

All the Folks from "Ireland"

A man is separated from his wife and young daughter while he makes a career for himself as a singer in 1937's Rose of Tralee. That's the plot but the star of the film is adorable little Binkie Stuart, the little girl who plays Rose, the man's daughter. Billed as Ireland's answer to Shirley Temple, she was in fact Scottish--the only genuinely Irish performer among the supposedly all Irish cast in this British film is Kathleen O'Regan as Rose's mother. But it's a charming little film.

Mary O'Malley (O'Regan) is being evicted at the beginning of the film by a cruel landlady who keeps the woman's luggage until she's been paid the rent. Binkie Stuart was clearly coached carefully to show indignation from the sidelines.

Unbeknownst to Mary and Rose, the man of the family, Paddy O'Malley (Fred Conyngham), has gotten himself a pretty successful career thanks to the interest of an American named Jean Hale (Dorothy Dare). There are very gentle suggestions that Paddy might be tempted to dally with Jean but really the both of them are too morally upright. It's Paddy's crooked manager that keeps staving off the incredible coincidences that keep almost bringing the O'Malleys back together.

Mary and Rose depend on the kindness of a restaurant proprietor named Tim Kelly played by an English actor with an established Irish vaudevillian persona named Talbot O'Farrell--a better made up name than Paddy O'Malley for an Irish character, at least. And he has a decent sense of comic timing.

Binkie Stuart may be cuter than Shirley Temple but I haven't seen many of Temple's movies from when she was that age--I thought she was okay as a teenager in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer.

The Rose of Tralee is available on Amazon Prime.

Two Decades of Farscape

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the première of Farscape, one of the greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy series of all time. So I thought I'd watch through the series again and write new reviews of each episode. This should take a while because Farscape premièred back in the days when a season of a dramatic series was normally over twenty episodes. Series are shorter now, normally between eight and twelve episodes per season, and those seasons usually première on irregular schedules. There was a time when it would've been a really bad sign for a series to take a year off in the U.S. but now that's normal. But that's seen as a trade-off for a number of other things, including higher production values. One of the extraordinary things about Farscape is that its production design hold ups against anything being produced to-day.

The first scene set on an alien world in the première episode is brief. But in only a few minutes we see fantastic costumes and puppets, each with intricate, careful designs and articulation. This toothy crustacean merchant only appears in a few shots:

This is the work of the Jim Henson Creature Shop, this being a series produced by the Jim Henson Company with Brian Henson serving as executive producer. The series was created by Rockne S. O'Bannon, who at that point was already the creator of two successful Sci-Fi series, seaQuest and Alien Nation. A lot of the best writing on Farscape came from former Star Trek: The Next Generation writers David Kemper and Richard Manning and in the première episode one can see in O'Bannon's teleplay already ideas that play off of familiar Star Trek concepts.

Two of the first alien characters we're introduced to, Zhaan (Virigina Hey) and D'Argo (Anthony Simcoe), seem at first like they might be versions of stock Star Trek and other Fantasy character types--the sensual, empathic lady of peace like Deanna Troi from TNG or Ilia from Star Trek: The Motion Picture; and the man from the warrior race, like Worf, his worldview founded on a culture that values battle and honour above all else. But the conversation between the two escaping prisoners quickly establishes them as misfits--Zhaan is a priest but also an anarchist and D'Argo was imprisoned for killing a superior officer. D'Argo's also only "thirty cycles", presumably around thirty years old, which Zhaan considers, with some surprise, "a boy", so his assertions of a persona that honours war takes on the character of a kid trying to prove his identity and worth by the standards of his culture.

Of course they're misfits, though. They're criminals, the classic example of people who have violated the social contract in one way or another. But just about everyone in the première episode has a troubled relationship between their essential natures and their prescribed social roles. Rygel (Jonathan Hardy) was a "Dominar", a ruler, and when he first encounters the series' protagonist, John Crichton (Ben Browder), he immediately treats their relationship as political--he offers to protect Crichton from the other prisoners in exchange for protection later. But the little Rygel, smallest member of the crew, is as far from being a king as could be, his physique and his upbringing making him the least capable of asserting dominance on any issue. Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black) is a fighter pilot in Farscape's version of the Galactic Empire, called, with irony that would become Stalin or Mao, the "Peace Keepers". Taken into custody by the prisoners, she continually asserts her identity as a soldier and a Peace Keeper but is immediately expelled by her superior officer when she shows the slightest desire not to execute Crichton.

This superior officer, Crais (Lani Tupu), who himself becomes an increasingly misfit character, is clearly not especially concerned about any potential "irreversible contamination" Aeryn is exhibiting. Naturally a rigid ideological order like the Peace Keepers wouldn't approve of alien cultures which would thereby encourage alternate points of view but Crais' concern is more immediate. If he allows any nuance into the general interpretation of events then it creates the possibility of something standing in the way of his own goal.

Aeryn may already be feeling some fondness for Crichton at this point but what she says is that she doesn't actually believe he's guilty of the crime Crais says he's guilty of--"I don't believe that he is brave enough or intelligent enough to attack one of our Prowlers intentionally." If the Peace Keeper goal is truly to stamp out wrongdoers, to create and keep peace, then identifying the true perpetrators of criminal acts through reason and observation would seem the logical path to securing those goals. But Crais has already seen the footage of Crichton's ship accidentally colliding with his brother's craft and, if he were rational, he would know that Crichton is not his brother's murderer. Crais has deliberately interpreted events against the evidence of his own eyes and he's mobilised the lockstep mechanisms of military bureaucracy to execute actions based on this narrative he's trying to assert.

But was there ever a more guileless wanderer than John Crichton? I found myself wondering how any of the other characters might have handled the situation in Crichton's place. Throughout the series, Crichton's struggle with his isolation, the loss of everything familiar, every artefact and sensation of home, alternately creates effective pathos and comedy. But the fact that he's able to get anything at all done in this context shows he does have a very flexible mind, perhaps his life as a scientist and test pilot having nurtured a respect for recognising complexity and taught him the value in basing his actions on empirical observation.

And that's just the first episode. It's going to be nice watching this show again.

Twitter Sonnet #1215

A storm of ants reduced a crumb to air.
Convenient leaves allow the grunt's ascent.
A golden morsel's lifted up the stair.
Without a word the Queen expressed assent.
A desert wheels a scene of light and dust.
Along the road directors trod to shoot.
The silent stones atop the hills combust.
A story spilled about a granite boot.
A set of cards collected ink and dates.
In rolling boxes thoughts become a note.
The early tapes were grouped with all the lates.
The rental store remained aboard the boat.
A flying barn remembers corner plants.
The metal legs were wearing scallion pants.

Circular Paw Prints

In the midst of a terrible winter, alone in the snowy mountains of northern California, a family plays out a drama seemingly representative of human civilisation in 1954's Track of the Cat. Three brothers, each in his own way, trying to live up to an ideal of personal responsibility under the bitter, impotent influence of parents, sister, and fiancee establish their personalities for the audience in the hunt for a panther that's been killing the livestock. There are some really great location shots, nice production design, and a brave performance from Robert Mitchum, but mainly its a film that comes across as trying to make a point that doesn't quite connect. Most of the blame for this belongs to actor Tab Hunter.

I think we're supposed to want to see the youngest brother, Harold (Hunter), really succeed and prove himself against all odds. But he's just so bland and his performance is so lazy, it's just irritating when anything good happens to him. Robert Mitchum, as Curt, the arrogant and loud mouthed brother under whose shadow Harold struggles to define himself, is so much more charismatic it's even harder to want to spend time with Harold, let alone root for him.

The eldest brother, Arthur (William Hopper), is presented as saintly--called "a monk" by Curt--he sees the good in everyone but lacks Curt's assertiveness to lay down the law. Their mother (Beulah Bondi) is a severe, deeply religious woman while their father (Philip Tonge) constantly drinks and is generally too feeble to establish authority. Teresa Wright plays Grace, the only female offspring, a perpetually angry woman who constantly berates her parents and siblings for their individual failings.

It all seems like an allegory for the perils of a headless society in which various ideologies try to assert dominance but each lacks some vital element to stake a permanent claim. This is a fine enough idea in itself and oddly I think the movie would've felt more like it had a resolution if it didn't make any attempt at a resolution.

Apparently Mitchum was miserable with the filming conditions but his hard work paid off with some really effective scenes of him trudging through snowy wilderness, trying to find a panther. A panther we never see, by the way, another problem with the film. Why Katharine Hepburn can be walking a leopard in Bringing Up Baby but we can't even get an isolated shot of a panther on a soundstage in this movie I really don't know. When the cat's in your title you really need to show the damned cat.

An Unlikely Smell

I was in the mood for a Spaghetti Western last night and didn't quite get what I wanted with 1975's Cry, Onion! (Cipolla Colt, "Onion Colt"). But that wasn't such a bad thing. A parody of Spaghetti Westerns that shows an intimate knowledge of the genre it also has a really delightful absurd streak.

The normally stoic leading man Franco Nero--the original Django himself--stars as Onion, a crazed onion farmer who comes to an oil town looking to buy land. But in doing so he stands in the way of a tycoon's ambition, the ruthless Petrus Lamb (Martin Balsam), who, when he lifted his golden clockwork prosthetic hand into frame, tipped me off as to exactly what kind of movie this was going to be.

Already there are shades of various Westerns and Spaghetti Westerns, particularly Once Upon a Time in the West where it's a railroad tycoon with MS who's trying to push out landowners. Cry, Onion! is also peppered with famous historical names in ridiculous places, including Al and his brother Dutch Capone as little kids using homemade grenades to defend the land Onion purchased. Waging a print war against Lamb is an elderly town resident, none other than Joseph Pulitzer.

Who's played by none other than Sterling Hayden, sadly dubbed over by another actor. This was three years after he was in The Godfather. I imagine by this point in his career he had his pick of roles; he is one I've always admired for a willingness to do something strange and off-beat, apparently not nursing a chip on his shoulder that no-one saw him as a handsome leading man anymore.

The Spanish actress Emma Cohen--who played the version of Big Bird on the Spanish Sesame Street--plays Pulitzer's daughter, Mary Ann, who falls in love with Onion at first sight, despite having trouble tolerating his stench. In a gratuitous parody of Spaghetti Western stylistic flourishes, the frame freezes on her face and his when they first see each other and cartoon hearts appear around their faces before their images are put together into a silly Valentine's card.

There are also jokes that are just plain absurd, as when Onion's chasing evil gunfighters in a granary, brushing aside grain to see the faces of the men to find the one he wants. He doesn't make any headway until he brushes away the grain on one man to encounter his own face. It doesn't make any sense at all, it's great.

Nero gives a zany performance oddly complemented by an English dub actor doing a Jimmy Stewart impression. Cry, Onion! is available on Amazon Prime.