The Real Pretend and the Pretend Real

Sooner or later, every intensely immersive simulation game is going to go fantastically wrong, as proves to be the case on Farscape. Crichton and Chiana find themselves caught in a forced dream composed of parts of Crichton's memory in an episode with surprising psychological depth.

Season Four, Episode Seven: John Quixote

The second episode to be written by Ben Browder, Crichton himself, this has at its heart the relationship between Crichton and Aeryn (Claudia Black), much like Browder's previous episode, "Green Eyed Monster", from season three. But this wasn't unusual subject matter for season three, in season four it feels like a refreshing return to form after the first episodes of the season had been more about introducing new characters and focusing on Aeryn's secret pregnancy. For whatever reason, previous writers in season four failed to take the pregnancy plot to the levels of the John jealousy/inadequacy plot in season three.

The silly story in the game simulator which Chiana (Gigi Edgley) gets them stuck in while in a transport pod turns out to contribute to this depth during the perhaps inevitable portion where it seems the two have safely gotten back aboard Moya. They find Scorpius (Wayne Pygram) is taking over the ship and finally succeeds when Aeryn double crosses Crichton, confirming John's fear from a few episodes back that she was working with Scorpius for more than necessity's sake.

This is where the episode starts to become brilliant because while we, as the audience, might assume now that this is all a simulation, there's enough ambiguity to prevent this from being the obvious conclusion. It crystallises in an excellent moment for Claudia Black to show her capacity for subtlety as Crichton, now locked in a cell, confronts her on the issue of her loyalties, commenting on how everything they say can be overheard.

She asks questions to undermine possibilities of certainty. She'd shot Crichton when he was being attacked by Pilot (Lani Tupu) being controlled by Scorpius and she points out to Crichton that her shooting him may have been her way of protecting Pilot. She doesn't say if this was her motive, she merely points out that he didn't seem to be considering it. Is this her way to signal to him that she's only pretending to support Scorpius because he's spying on them? If so, would would this be the simulation Aeryn pretending? All this compels the viewer to intensely scrutinise her expression for any tell--that she's pretending, that she's a simulation--virtually anything, and Black employs the tiniest suggestive quirks of the eyebrow. Ironically, when she does reveal herself to be entirely supportive of Crichton, this is the moment he correctly guesses it's a simulation.

Which isn't to say it's not true Aeryn would be supportive of him but this is the moment where the computer fails to hit the right level of nuance for effectively sentient.

The episode features several season three guest stars--Jool (Tammy MacIntosh), an oddly hairy Stark (Paul Goddard) and, of course, Zhaan (Virginia Hey), in her first appearance since her death at the beginning of season three. She's only a simulation but it's still nice to see her.

. . .

Farscape is available now on Amazon Prime.

This entry is part of a series I'm writing on Farscape for the show's 20th anniversary. My previous reviews can be found here (episodes are in the order intended by the show's creators rather than the broadcast order):

Season One:

Episode 1: Pilot
Episode 2: I, E.T.
Episode 3: Exodus from Genesis
Episode 4: Throne for a Loss
Episode 5: Back and Back and Back to the Future
Episode 6: Thank God It's Friday Again
Episode 7: PK Tech Girl
Episode 8: That Old Black Magic
Episode 9: DNA Mad Scientist
Episode 10: They've Got a Secret
Episode 11: Till the Blood Runs Clear
Episode 12: Rhapsody in Blue
Episode 13: The Flax
Episode 14: Jeremiah Crichton
Episode 15: Durka Returns
Episode 16: A Human Reaction
Episode 17: Through the Looking Glass
Episode 18: A Bug's Life
Episode 19: Nerve
Episode 20: The Hidden Memory
Episode 21: Bone to be Wild
Episode 22: Family Ties

Season Two:

Episode 1: Mind the Baby
Episode 2: Vitas Mortis
Episode 3: Taking the Stone
Episode 4: Crackers Don't Matter
Episode 5: Picture If You Will
Episode 6: The Way We Weren't
Episode 7: Home on the Remains
Episode 8: Dream a Little Dream
Episode 9: Out of Their Minds
Episode 10: My Three Crichtons
Episode 11: Look at the Princess, Part I: A Kiss is But a Kiss
Episode 12: Look at the Princess, Part II: I Do, I Think
Episode 13: Look at the Princess, Part III: The Maltese Crichton
Episode 14: Beware of Dog
Episode 15: Won't Get Fooled Again
Episode 16: The Locket
Episode 17: The Ugly Truth
Episode 18: A Clockwork Nebari
Episode 19: Liars, Guns, and Money, Part I: A Not So Simple Plan
Episode 20: Liars, Guns, and Money, Part II: With Friends Like These . . .
Episode 21: Liars, Guns, and Money, Part III: Plan B
Episode 22: Die Me, Dichotomy

Season Three:

Episode 1: Season of Death
Episode 2: Suns and Lovers
Episode 3: Self-Inflicted Wounds, Part I: Would'a, Could'a, Should'a
Episode 4: Self-Inflicted Wounds, Part II: Wait for the Wheel
Episode 5: . . . Different Destinations
Episode 6: Eat Me
Episode 7: Thanks for Sharing
Episode 8: Green Eyed Monster
Episode 9: Losing Time
Episode 10: Relativity
Episode 11: Incubator
Episode 12: Meltdown
Episode 13: Scratch 'n Sniff
Episode 14: Infinite Possibilities, Part I: Daedalus Demands
Episode 15: Infinite Possibilities, Part II: Icarus Abides
Episode 16: Revenging Angel
Episode 17: The Choice
Episode 18: Fractures
Episode 19: I-Yensch, You-Yensch
Episode 20: Into the Lion's Den, Part I: Lambs to the Slaughter
Episode 21: Into the Lion's Den, Part II: Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
Episode 22: A Dog with Two Bones

Season Four

Episode 1: Crichton Kicks
Episode 2: What was Lost, Part I: Sacrifice
Episode 3: What was Lost, Part II: Resurrection
Episode 4: Lava's a Many Splendoured Thing
Episode 5: Promises
Episode 6: Natural Election

Rocking the Ford or Fording the Rock

I frequently have a problem with to-day's short attention span quick editing on television but it's worth remembering things can go just as bad in the opposite direction. I watched the pilot episode of the 1974 detective series The Rockford Files a few days ago and, oy vey, the padding. So much padding. There's an establishing shot of a police station that was already going on too long when the camera slowly started to zoom in on the "police" sign . . . and held it there for a moment.

So this . . . is a police station. Thank you.

The plot is a bit thin and silly--surely too thin to spread over two hours--but the stars, James Garner as Rockford and Lindsay Wagner as the guest starring client/love interest, are both great and their chemistry blooms out over the loops of meaningless dialogue.

Garner had a real talent for coming off as natural in absurd circumstances and Wagner, despite her character being a pretty blandly written damsel, comes through nice and sharp and her rough voice pairs well with her pretty face.

The plot involves the murder of her homeless, alcoholic father. This happens in the beginning of the episode with a confusing shot continuity error as the camera cuts between full shots of the drunkard in baggy pinstripe slacks, stumbling towards a pier, and the red panted legs of someone following him. But then there's a cut to someone's legs wearing brown corduroy flares which I think are supposed to belong to the drunkard.

Rockford reluctantly ends up investigating despite the fact that Lindsay Wagner can't pay his normal rates. He has amusing dialogue with buddies at the hall of records and . . . the police station . . . and gradually a really confusing scheme is revealed. Somehow killing the old man helped a devious heiress and her henchman get money or cover up another crime, I'm not sure. Everyone ends up in Las Vegas and then out in the desert where Rockford manages to take down an aeroplane with a snub nose revolver.

The plane lands successfully and then explodes for some reason. But it's all nicely shot and it's preceded by a surprisingly effective car chase.

The Rockford Files is available on Amazon Prime through imdbTV, which means there are a few commercials but not very many. I think there were only four interruptions across the two part episode.

Twitter Sonnet 1327

Diversions brought the matter back to fore.
The team of strings begat the violin.
A pickled bean redeemed the seedy core.
Suspicious eyes were soothed 'neath tarpaulin.
A floating bug reported waves to suns.
Organic acres crush the wheatless chaff.
A threshing floor reports the stalks to buns.
A mild thought became a deadly gaff.
Electric streams produce the chatty fish.
A salted chip redeemed the greasy lunch.
Uncounted grains combine to make the dish.
Banana hands combine to make a bunch.
The volume sets itself throughout the night.
For ev'ry sound has got a dreamless right.

The Letters of Weird

A new Sirenia Digest a few days ago brought the beginning of a new alphabet from Caitlin R. Kiernan, "The Cerulean Alphabet". This is a series of vignettes, one for each letter of the English alphabet. Caitlin has used this format before to good result and the latest is no exception.

Covering letters A through M, vignettes like "G is for Gephyrophobia" and "L is for Listen" feature Caitlin's familiar second person dialogue format in which the narrator speaks to a "you" and discussion involves an argument about perception of the strange. I like how these stories aren't about the elusiveness of a shared reality but the dread of confronting the undeniable, whether it's merely a strange sound in "Listen" or a bridge in "Gephyrophobia".

I think my favourite of this group is probably "I is for Indolent", which sort of reminds me of "The Lazy Sunbathers" by Morrissey, though Caitlin's vignette is not so much a condemnation of idle bystanders as an eerie portrait of immobilising torpidity barely interrupted by a strange vision of subtle horror.

By the way, in yesterday's post I talked about the lack of mood and atmosphere in Sunday's Doctor Who. In the past the show has excelled in these things, often doing much more for effect than any pouncing monster. A good example is the Second Doctor serial The Web of Fear.

The Sonic Screwdriver and a Bunch of Words

As infamously bad as the Thirteenth Doctor's era has been, no episode has been quite so boring as Sunday's new episode of Doctor Who. I checked to see how far in I was at one point and was startled to find I was only twenty four minutes in. It felt at least like two hours. Ironically, I'd say the main problem with the episode is that it moves too fast; the reason it feels like such a slog is that it's composed almost entirely of infodumps rapidly edited together. No time is spent for atmosphere or mood to accumulate, a deadly mistake in a story about living nightmares.

It's a shame a pretty decent werewolf design goes to waste. The story begins in Aleppo in 1380 where an order of Muslim women care for the mentally ill, something the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) later hastily compliments them for though we never see any patients. The werewolf creature is terrifying according to the dialogue though director Emma Sullivan seems to have failed to instruct the actresses to allow this fear to show in their faces or line deliveries. Even when a monster wraps its claws around one woman's face conversation maintains an almost casual tone.

My hopes went up a bit when the Doctor separated from her companions, leaving them back in Sheffield, but, sadly, the plot followed their doings as well in order to focus on how anxiety and depression impact them in their lives. Ryan (Tosin Cole) has a friend whose anxiety keeps him in the house while Yas (Mandip Gill) recalls a time when she ran away from home due to some vague, unspecified emotional trauma. In both cases, the treatment of anxiety feels so sterile and impersonal between the lifeless performances, the limp directing, and the stiff dialogue that one is reminded of the worst of 1980s PSAs and After School Specials.

This week's stunt casting is Ian Gelder as a godlike being named Zellin whose penchant for making humans his playthings compels him to awkwardly namecheck other godlike beings from the show's history as though this sadistic deity nevertheless feels the need to obsequiously placate classic Who fans.

But speaking of the 80s and classic Who . . . I never thought I'd say this but it's time to take away the Doctor's sonic screwdriver again. The decision to take away the sonic screwdriver in the Fifth Doctor serial The Visitation was due to producer John Nathan-Turner's idea that writers had been using it too often as a quick solution for the Doctor. My argument has always been that this called for more creativity from the writers, not for the destruction of any particular device. But watching Thirteen constantly wave it around, glance at it once, and then spew a litany of plot concept and technobabble, I couldn't help thinking the current staff need a kick in the pants. And this was before a moment I'm sure will go on every future reel to demonstrate the vapidity of Thirteen's era, when she seemingly escapes from manacles by pushing the sonic screwdriver out of her coat with her hip, the pocket spitting it out like a watermelon seed into her hand.

There's a pathetic moment later when the Doctor brags of her cleverness for this escape. Someone needs to tell the writers that she's the Thirteenth Doctor, not thirteen years old.

Finding Time for Murder About Town

A handsome, fashionable young man is suddenly arrested and it's only after being brought to the station and carrying on with several adversarial conversations is he told that his lover has been murdered. Of course, he's the primary suspect in 1961's L'assassino. Marcello Mastroianni stars as the young man and with plenty of location shots in Rome and most of the movie consisting of dialogue it's easy to be reminded of the famous Fellini films he starred in. It's not quite as good as those films but it's an interesting rumination on perception.

Despite the dialogue-heavy nature of the screenplay, which could almost be a stage play with one or two locations, the action continually shifts from one place to another as Alfredo (Mastroianni) is interrogated. Now in an office, now in a hotel room, now in a cell, everything changes but Alfredo expresses the same exasperation. And other people start winding up dead.

The film frequently shifts to flashback and we see Alfredo with his lover, the murdered woman, Adalgisa (Micheline Presle). A wealthy older woman, he nevertheless seems to have real affection for her but she generally regards him with an ironical, mildly impatient smile. We see other women in Alfredo's life, too, including his mother whom he seems oddly anxious to put on a train out of town.

I want that sport coat. The wardrobe in this movie is great, of course.

The ending of the film could possibly be a twist but it's given in such an offhand way it could merely be a joke. But it compels the viewer to think back over all that's happened, successfully forcing close attention to the endless, seemingly trivial and casual conversation.

L'assassino is available on Amazon Prime.

Twitter Sonnet #1326

A paper brick began a wooden house.
A field of logging traps've took the tree.
Entire thoughts were dreams inside the mouse.
Completed fountains drain the marble sea.
A candy climate gifts the sugar cloud.
Obliging coats adorn the frosty arms.
The humble plate reflects the pastry proud.
A second plane completes but never harms.
A golden chain was painted grey and brown.
A row of relished wine became the dog.
Returning agents wore a copied frown.
With quickened steps we trod the thickest fog.
A deck of fevered glimpses brought the meal.
Successive cuts destroyed the sense of real.

The Contamination of Alien Meaning

Something, possibly a meteor, strikes a populated region, rendering it uninhabitable. Military police keep the area blocked off for years and only a select few are bold enough to sneak in in 1979's Stalker (Сталкер). Andrei Tarkovsky's final film for the Soviet Union, it uses a Science Fiction concept, alien phenomena, to demonstrate the folly in attempts to regulate perception and the fear inherent in critical deconstructionism.

Why is the film called Stalker? From what I've read, Tarkovsky understood the English connotations for the term. It comes from the book upon which the film is loosely based. A "Stalker" is someone who goes into the "Zone", the area cordoned off by the government, for personal gain. The term immediately conjures criminal associations of a strangely intimate nature, of someone who invades another person's privacy. In this, perhaps, there is an attempt to control the perception of someone who would enter an area the government does not want people to enter. Just by crossing the boundary, he is to be regarded as a pervert.

The Zone itself is open to interpretation, particularly as the government endeavours to stop people thinking or talking about it. Naturally, that only makes people more curious though apprehensive of letting their curiosity to be known. The attempt to interpret the Zone, to define its essential meaning, is at the heart of the film's drama. Some people are bold enough to pay a Stalker to take them in.

The film follows one particular Stalker (Alexander Kaidanovsky) and his task to take two men into the area, two men known only as the Writer (Anatoly Solonitsyn) and the Professor (Nikolai Grinko and Sergei Yakovlev). The Professor specialises in some scientific field while the Writer, we quickly learn, is a critic of a very particular kind; obsessed with revealing how art is a reflection of base, cruel, or ridiculous impulses of the audience or artist. Early on, he tells the old joke, recently recycled in the upcoming Wonder Woman movie, about visitors at a museum mistaking a trash can for a work of art on exhibit. For him, all impression of meaning is fodder for deconstruction and ridicule. No wonder he wants to enter the Zone, so he can be an authority on a place of such awe and mystery.

The Stalker, it turns out, is just the kind of person who'd be most at odds with the Writer's preoccupations. A devout believer with a deep reverence and love for the Zone, he's confused and baffled by the Writer's endless compulsion to deconstruct.

The Professor has no particular comments for most of the film until the climax when his intentions seem to be related to the entirely concrete, physical reality.

The first part of the film, outside the Zone, is shot in gold and black, sort of like John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye. This absence of colour, like in The Wizard of Oz, presents a fantastic contrast with the full colour footage inside the Zone. The impression is the same as the Judy Garland movie, that this strange place is bigger and stranger than normal life. You can't really make a film of H.P. Lovecraft's Colour Out of Space, as interesting as the upcoming Nicolas Cage movie looks, though you can sort of make an impression of the expanded palette that occurs with the introduction of an alien colour by reducing the number of colours in normal terrestrial life scenes. More than that, in Stalker it presents a difference between a world that has been reduced to mathematically simple interpretations and a world where the full range of sensory possibility is evident in every moment.

Tarkovsky shows his love and talent for composing still lives of ruin with beautiful shots of broken telephone poles amid lush foliage and shots of water gently flowing over mossy tile.

The Stalker, after reverently placing his face to the soil, clearly finding it a tremendous relief to be back in the Zone, does his job and instructs his clients in how to safely traverse the ruins. Nearly every instruction he gives, of course, is quickly dismantled by the Writer and as the three get closer to the sensitive Room, where one's deepest wishes are granted, the Writer seems more feverishly inclined to impute the Stalker's beliefs to psychological issues and the pleasure of a position of power granted by his "knowledge" of the place. Yet, the Writer is himself struck by an instinctive fear and reverence that seem to be at odds with his words, or rather, to reveal his own motive to deconstruct.

The Stalker is not unaffected by the Writer's criticisms and suffers some crises of faith. Tarkovsky wisely leaves evidence of the alien or supernatural to a minimum though, the Stalker may be comforted, the evidence is certainly there.

Stalker is available on The Criterion Channel.

The Dream Quest of Unknown Mall

I used to really love shopping malls. Not that I hate them now but they used to have kind of a magic for me. I associate it with Trekkie-hood. I remember when Roger Ebert complained the bridge of the Enterprise stopped looking futuristic and just like a mall security kiosk. The similarity was always there for me and it was something I loved. It was easy for me to imagine a shopping mall, particularly indoor malls, as a space ship with their even lighting and controlled temperature. But I like outdoor malls. I love the feeling of a place that contains many places somehow.

So I'm pretty familiar with all the malls in San Diego county, where I grew up, and a few in L.A. When I was in my 20s, I used to love finding shopping malls I'd never been to and exploring them but I always felt a particular loyalty to the most familiar malls.

Anyway, it's probably due to my urge to find and explore new malls that I started dreaming about finding malls. The strange thing is that the malls I've found in my dreams have remained the same. That is, malls I've discovered in my dreams have consistently appeared in my dreams for around twenty years. I even know where they're located in San Diego. One of them is an unpopular indoor mall with green tiling located around where the 163 freeway merges with the 15--in reality the spot just has an overpass from the 52 freeway. There's a four storey indoor mall a few blocks from a real mall in El Cajon-a Petco holds its place in waking life. That mall has a very large food court but there's something cold about the place, maybe because it looks like an office building from the outside and generally has plain, blocky grey features.

A few nights ago, I dreamt I visited a very fashionable, high-end mall I'd previously visited in other dreams. It's located east of the football stadium near the 8 freeway. It's five storeys (my dream malls seem to be much taller than any of the real ones in San Diego) and has a large Macy's. It's an outdoor mall for some reason surrounded by an empty dirt field where in reality there are several neighbourhoods, parks, and the San Diego river. I generally seem to visit this mall at sunset at a somewhat awkward point where it's starting to get too dark to see but it's not quite time for the automatic lights to switch on. The glass windows on the Macy's, too, tend to catch the sunset. Since it's a high-end mall, it sometimes has fashion shows and art exhibits, though less often now due to the higher rent prices. In my dream from a few nights ago, I discovered this mall had a library where something sinister was happening. I suppose it was because of the episode of The Magicians I'd watched that evening. I'm not sure what happened, though. I always feel like I'm trying to find something out at that mall but it's hard to investigate because of how difficult it is to see.

Kirk Douglas

"I hate surprises myself," said Kirk Douglas in Out of the Past. It's the first film I thought of when I heard he died yesterday. He has a pretty small, supporting role in that film--it was before he was a big star. It's no tour de force performance from him, and his career is filled with those. But you can see from Out of the Past how even in a bit part Douglas could transform a film.

Some actors may have imitated him but no-one could ever be quite like him. His voice and mannerisms were distinct and yet the feelings he expressed came off invariably honest and raw. I'm going to quote one of my own reviews, for The Champion (1949). "No wire is more live than Kirk Douglas in The Champion . . . He's all tension and nerve, few other actors could convey that so well."

Equally at home as the morally complicated lead of Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole as he was playing Ulysses and Sparticus, those fierce eyes and clear voice with which he could muster the finest subtlety and heaviest screams brought distinction to every film he was in. Who better to play Vincent Van Gogh in Lust for Life and any real artist who watches the film can't help but feel Douglas touches on fundamental truths about the commitment and torment required for genuine creative expression.

And he beat a giant squid. He could be tormented and malevolent and he could be a vulnerable, hard as steel hero. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea would barely resemble itself with another actor in the role and while many may be understandably inspired to say, "I am Sparticus," it could really only ever be Kirk Douglas.

Twitter Sonnet #1325

A careful plan removed the sunny grape.
A raisin wilts in nature's pickled time.
For metal fingers point to ore and tape.
Forever starts a silver plated climb.
A second count corrected button notes.
The triple toe creates a larger shoe.
In time, the fleet was just a couple boats.
In space, adhesive's just a tub of glue.
A stripey shirt beneath the sea was armed.
A painter's flame consumed a field of crows.
Reporter's aces beat the mine and swarmed.
His single name pronounced a thousand rows.
On steely paths the glory never dies.
Detective stories spread through distant skies.

Trap of the Plant

Farscape returns to an old fashioned bottle episode when Moya gets caught up in a deadly space plant. It smells like onion and it won't stop growing even as drama over Aeryn's baby unfolds within.

Season Four, Episode Six: Natural Election

And the title seemingly refers to a request from Pilot (Lani Tupu) at the end of the previous episode, that the crew finally pick a captain. Before the final election, they decide each person should serve temporarily, and we join our heroes while Dominar Rygel (Jonathan Hardy) is having his turn.

As a former ruler, you'd think he'd be a natural, but the poor little guy beats himself up when things go wrong on his watch. It really has been a long time since he had legions doing his bidding, I guess.

What goes wrong is a plant, one that seems to be getting bigger and finding new ways of clogging Moya's works. This doesn't stop chatter about pregnancy, though, and Aeryn (Claudia Black) makes the unwise decision to confide in Chiana (Gigi Edgley). The latter seems to think nothing of immediately telling D'Argo (Anthony Simcoe) but she does seem a bit upset when the news spreads.

The news is that Aeryn isn't sure the father is John Crichton (Ben Browder), be it the current resident of Moya or the deceased twin from last season. There's an interesting bit of info about Sebacean biology, that Aeryn's body could have kept a conception in stasis since well before she met Crichton. Nonetheless, I found the drama about whether Crichton's the father a bit disappointingly typical compared to the usual, weirder Farscape fare. I also dislike Aeryn casually throwing away the tension about the Crichton copies by saying there's no longer any distinction in her mind between the two men. The plant plot therefore is much more interesting. I liked how it's Scorpius' (Wayne Pygram) coolant rods that save the day.

This isn't the best episode of the series, though it's not terribly bad. Maybe the best part to me is Sikozu (Raelee Hill) showing increasing eagerness to help Scorpius. I like how the show uses this to help distinguish her from Jool. And anyway, they'd make a cute couple.

. . .

Farscape is available now on Amazon Prime.

This entry is part of a series I'm writing on Farscape for the show's 20th anniversary. My previous reviews can be found here (episodes are in the order intended by the show's creators rather than the broadcast order):

Season One:

Episode 1: Pilot
Episode 2: I, E.T.
Episode 3: Exodus from Genesis
Episode 4: Throne for a Loss
Episode 5: Back and Back and Back to the Future
Episode 6: Thank God It's Friday Again
Episode 7: PK Tech Girl
Episode 8: That Old Black Magic
Episode 9: DNA Mad Scientist
Episode 10: They've Got a Secret
Episode 11: Till the Blood Runs Clear
Episode 12: Rhapsody in Blue
Episode 13: The Flax
Episode 14: Jeremiah Crichton
Episode 15: Durka Returns
Episode 16: A Human Reaction
Episode 17: Through the Looking Glass
Episode 18: A Bug's Life
Episode 19: Nerve
Episode 20: The Hidden Memory
Episode 21: Bone to be Wild
Episode 22: Family Ties

Season Two:

Episode 1: Mind the Baby
Episode 2: Vitas Mortis
Episode 3: Taking the Stone
Episode 4: Crackers Don't Matter
Episode 5: Picture If You Will
Episode 6: The Way We Weren't
Episode 7: Home on the Remains
Episode 8: Dream a Little Dream
Episode 9: Out of Their Minds
Episode 10: My Three Crichtons
Episode 11: Look at the Princess, Part I: A Kiss is But a Kiss
Episode 12: Look at the Princess, Part II: I Do, I Think
Episode 13: Look at the Princess, Part III: The Maltese Crichton
Episode 14: Beware of Dog
Episode 15: Won't Get Fooled Again
Episode 16: The Locket
Episode 17: The Ugly Truth
Episode 18: A Clockwork Nebari
Episode 19: Liars, Guns, and Money, Part I: A Not So Simple Plan
Episode 20: Liars, Guns, and Money, Part II: With Friends Like These . . .
Episode 21: Liars, Guns, and Money, Part III: Plan B
Episode 22: Die Me, Dichotomy

Season Three:

Episode 1: Season of Death
Episode 2: Suns and Lovers
Episode 3: Self-Inflicted Wounds, Part I: Would'a, Could'a, Should'a
Episode 4: Self-Inflicted Wounds, Part II: Wait for the Wheel
Episode 5: . . . Different Destinations
Episode 6: Eat Me
Episode 7: Thanks for Sharing
Episode 8: Green Eyed Monster
Episode 9: Losing Time
Episode 10: Relativity
Episode 11: Incubator
Episode 12: Meltdown
Episode 13: Scratch 'n Sniff
Episode 14: Infinite Possibilities, Part I: Daedalus Demands
Episode 15: Infinite Possibilities, Part II: Icarus Abides
Episode 16: Revenging Angel
Episode 17: The Choice
Episode 18: Fractures
Episode 19: I-Yensch, You-Yensch
Episode 20: Into the Lion's Den, Part I: Lambs to the Slaughter
Episode 21: Into the Lion's Den, Part II: Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
Episode 22: A Dog with Two Bones

Season Four

Episode 1: Crichton Kicks
Episode 2: What was Lost, Part I: Sacrifice
Episode 3: What was Lost, Part II: Resurrection
Episode 4: Lava's a Many Splendoured Thing
Episode 5: Promises

If Wishes were Star Wars

Last week, test footage from the unproduced Star Wars series, Underworld, was "leaked" online and I was excited. Everything I've heard about the show has made me very badly want to see it and suspect I never will. Interviews with George Lucas, Rick McCallum, and one of the show's writers, Ronald D. Moore, have talked about it being about Coruscant's criminal underworld, saying that it was somewhat like The Sopranos, that it would feature a plot about Palpatine getting his heart broken by a femme fatale. I assumed the footage was leaked by Disney to gauge interest in the show. Since it involves a romance with Palpatine, it even seems likely the plot of Rise of Skywalker was a setup for the series. Would we then get to see Rey's grandmother?

Fifty scripts were written before Disney bought Lucasfilm and although parts of them have been mined for other projects, notably Saw Gerrera for Rogue One, I've still been fervently hoping the scripts will be made. But if I'm right that Disney intentionally leaked the footage to see what interest it drummed up, I suspect I'm in for disappointment. Scrolling through comments on articles about the footage, I saw patterns of the same three comments over and over--one comment saying that the footage looks cheap, like fan footage; one comment where someone has to explain with understandable irritation that the test footage obviously isn't meant to look finished; and finally a comment about how it doesn't seem like a particularly interesting concept, or expressions of hope that aspects of it will be included in The Mandalorian.

Sometimes I think I'm in a very small minority of Star Wars fans. The idea of a more adult oriented storyline set in the Star Wars universe, which Clone Wars edged towards in its best moments, is what I want so bad. And I don't mean "adult" as in sex and violence, though that's always nice. "It's lot more talky," said George Lucas at one point. "It's more of what I would call a soap opera with a bunch of personal dramas in it. It's not really based on action-adventure films from the '30s - it's actually more based on film noir movies from the '40s." Like maybe that episode of Clone Wars based on Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious? Yes, please. But while Resistance seems to have been almost universally hated (thank goodness), a lot of people seem to feel the more childish elements of Rebels and Mandalorian are exactly what Star Wars should be. I can only hope Disney has learned its lesson about paying attention to internet comment sections and Twitter when it came to Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker. I hope the popularity of Baby Yoda doesn't mean we're in for just various versions of Muppet Babies with lightsabres. I'll guess I'll let these wishes pile up in one hand . . .

C'mon, people. Wouldn't it be great to have a show with Forest Whitaker playing a slightly younger, ruthless rebel? Whitaker voiced Gerrera on Rebels. Maybe he'd like to reprise the role with good scripts. And supposedly there was a story arc about Darth Vader against the Coruscant crime world. Can you imagine The Untouchables with Vader in place of Eliot Ness? With James Earl Jones voicing him? He also turned up for Rebels. And I want to meet this lady who broke Palpatine's heart! I hope she looks like Barbara Stanwyck or Gloria Grahame. Please, can't all you people be on board with me on this? I want this damned show.

Doctor Planet

Last night's new Doctor Who took a credible stab at being a live action Captain Planet complete with a preachy storyline, terrible dialogue, and hideous visual design.

Humans may have a problem with pollution but at least it's colour coordinated. Good thing Ryan (Tosin Cole) wore matching pants. And guest star Joana Borja wore a shirt with a Nike logo of the same colour.

Jeez, even her eyebrows are kind of blue. Why not just leave the natural colours alone, huh?

We're introduced to Borja's character with her short-lived friend Jamila (Gabriela Toloi) who, upon seeing the garbage, says something like, "We're not camping here." And I thought, how stupid, of course they wouldn't camp there when they've obvious just walked through plenty of area free from . . .

Oh. They did camp there. But--why?

I did like how this episode used locations (actually just South Africa) from all over the world with the companions dispersed on their own missions. The people exploding from the alien disease was a nice effect--one in Peru and the other in Madagascar. The same thing "on two different continents!" remarks the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) even though Madagascar is an island. No reason not to strand the episode's guest star companions there inexplicably at the end of the episode. Two of them are going on honeymoon but, still, why there? Meanwhile Gabriela is already all smiles and ready to joke about references to her "Two Girls" YouTube show even though her friend and co-star has recently been killed.

This week's stunt casting guest was Warren Brown as Jake Willis, a British cop taking some time off whose husband is a missing astronaut (Matthew McNutty). I'd never seen Brown in anything before and was pleasantly surprised at how good his performance is, hoping he'd take over companion duties. But at some point during the episode I gradually started to suspect he was famous for something and therefore not likely to last past the end credits. Oh, well. When he and his husband kiss at the end and the Doctor says she's a romantic it made me long again for Whittaker to be paired with someone with whom she has chemistry. Obviously the producers are aiming for a Russell T. Davies era vibe, more or less, so you'd think they'd include the thing that era is best remembered for--the romantic chemistry between Doctor and companion. But I guess they're aiming for a younger demographic.

That's what occurred to me when Graham (Bradley Wash) and Ryan admit they don't know what "pathogen" means. "Oh," I thought, "it's so there's a reason to explain it to the kids at home," while screaming patients explode. I feel like the writers could've found a way to do this without making it seem like the Doctor's travelling with dunderheads who should've gotten themselves killed by now.

Twitter Sonnet #1324

A whisker showed the bed in which it slept.
For dreaming cats the day was cool and sweet.
In metal spheres the treats were loosely kept.
Magenta juice betrayed the tasty beet.
A skinny barrel twined became a shot.
A hidden box revealed a set of rooms.
A troop of pictures crowd the ragged cot.
Olympic knitters sync on twenty looms.
A kitten's eye contained a stack of bowls.
In spinning skins the frozen air implodes.
A game began without the thought of holes.
In second ticks the grassy time erodes.
A voyage copied failed to set the mood.
In densely speckled spaces bags accrued.

Once a Yakuza . . .

Trouble never ends for Goro the assassin in another of the series of Yakuza films about the character, 1968's Outlaw: Black Dagger (無頼 黒匕首). As Nikkatsu yakuza movies from the 60s go, there's little out of the ordinary in this film, but star Tetsuya Watari is reliably tormented and handsome.

This time he tries to go straight by taking a construction job. Things are soon derailed when he inevitably runs across old acquaintances and colleagues. In this case, he runs into an old flame and a man who killed another of Goro's loves, who also happens to be the son of the local yakuza boss. To top it all off, a nurse living in the town happens to look exactly like the dead woman--and is also played by Chieko Matsubara.

Watari always has a magnetic screen presence and the plot is good enough. The sex scenes feel a little stiff but the action scenes are effective. Director Keiicchi Ozawa finds creative compositions amid the choreography of Goro, armed with just that titular tanto dagger, fighting off five or six guys.

Outlaw: Black Dagger is available on Amazon Prime.

Cat of the Mind

Pictured above is one of my roommates. I was reminded of her while reading "Ancient Sorceries" (1908) by Algernon Blackwood, one of the stories included in H.P. Lovecraft Selects, a compilation of tales drawn from Lovecraft's essay on horror fiction. It has a lot to do with cats, with a town seemingly populated by witches who can take the form of cats, and few works of prose have so vividly conveyed an essence of catness before any actual cats even show up.

The inn, a rambling ancient house, the atmosphere of the old coaching days still about it, apparently did not welcome him too warmly. He felt he was only tolerated, he said. But it was cheap and comfortable, and the delicious cup of afternoon tea he ordered at once made him feel reallyvery pleased with himself for leaving the train inthis bold, original way. For to him it had seemed bold and original. He felt something of a dog. His room, too, soothed him with its dark panelling and low irregular ceiling, and the long sloping passage that led to it seemed the natural pathway to a real Chamber of Sleep—a little dim cubby hole out of the world where noise could not enter. It looked upon the courtyard at the back. It was all very charming, and made him think of himself as dressed in very soft velvet somehow, and the floors seemed padded, the walls provided with cushions. The sounds of the streets could not penetrate there. It was an atmosphere of absolute rest thatsurrounded him.

Lovecraft mentions it as the best of Blackwood's John Silence stories, Silence being a physician detective a bit of the Sherlock Holmes type, though Lovecraft spends a lot more time talking about "The Willows" and other Blackwood stories. Still, it's not hard to imagine "Ancient Sorceries" had some influence on Lovecraft's stories about Ulthar, the town in his Dreamlands where cats are revered. I'd also bet it was a big influence on Val Lewton's Cat People, especially in how the narrative begins to focus on a single young woman who seduces the protagonist.

She moved wonderfully, with sinuous grace, like a young panther, and her approach filled him with such delicious bewilderment that he was utterly unable to tell at first what her face was like, or discover what it was about the whole presentment of the creature that filled him anew with trepidation and delight.

I love that detail about not being able to see her face. Much of the story is spent on the general atmosphere and character of the town before the girl is introduced. Blackwood so wonderfully communicates the sense of falling under a spell, of simultaneous fear and pleasure. The story is one of the most wonderful I've read for simply sinking into. There's also a great psychological element to it as the protagonist--not Silence but a nervous man who tells the story to him--attributes much of the dread and longing he feels to something inside him, to a fearful possibility of acknowledging something fundamental about his own nature. The traditional interpretation of this would be to say that the protagonist, Vezin, is struggling with repressed homosexuality, which is fair. Especially insofar as homosexuality at the time brought with it the sense of so much danger and uncertainty. But for not being explicitly about homosexuality, the story allows us to experience this sense as something that still has, and likely always will, have currency. We are still dreadfully mysterious to ourselves.