Ah. Another week, another elementally themed SGU episode. As expected – and mentioned, in the review of Light – the premise of these episodse are becoming a little draining for the discerning viewer, despite them delivering the goods in the end.
This week saw the crew search for water as they gather up the ingredients for the extragalactic picnic basket that is the good ship Destiny. Turns out that the water is running out at a frantic rate on the ship, sowing malcontent among the military personnel and the civilians as they search for the cause. Again, the fact that these disagreements seem petty rather than reasonable are indicative of the writers being unable to match the intensity of the rather more rationally motivated disagreements of BSG. Yes, I’m mentioning BSG again. But it’s really very good. The cause of the water evaporating (see what I did there) happens to be the sentient like ‘Dust’ from a previous episode, that seems to have stowed away on the ship.
This unexplained entity, presenting Scott with a mirage that ultimately saved him on the planet, should always have been more than a device to give us Scott’s backstory, and definitely more than the cause of water leakage on Destiny. It presented us with that rarest of things: a harmonious alien. It was peculiar because its interaction with a dying human, mimicking the devils of Scott’s past (ironically a priest: HAHAHAHA) was part of its very nature and for that, much, much more than our idea of the alien as a man in costume and prosphetics. Should the ‘Dust’ have remained a permanent feature of Destiny’s interior, it would have become a fruitful device for both exploring the stories of our characters pasts, but also for encouraging the larger narrative arc of the season to rear its head.
Which, of course, brings us to that unknown beast. We know our characters aren’t going to make it home for a long time yet – if they ever do – so give us something, please, anything to cling on to. Marauding Aliens will do, contact with ’something else’ will do, mysterious happenings within the ship will do or things awakening inside the ship will do. The world is your oyster writers. The use of such a potentially fruitful sentient in this way was entirely redundant. A chance missed.
Meanwhile, some other stuff happened. Scott and Young went ice fishing; a red jersey got a facelift courtesy of the ‘Dust’; Eli got a little ratty at Rush; Rush was being difficult as per the norm; Dead Senator’s daughter got to cry a bit more. It was all a bit wishy-washy really. Not much to see, not much to ponder and our thirst for more is a little weaker than the week previous, hence why I was so lazy in typing up a review. Hopefully SGU can shrug off its slight dopiness and throw us up in the air a bit next week – with something other than a malfunctioning shower curtain and a look at a periodic table.
I’ve not seen the original series of V, and when I heard it was being remade by ABC, I thought they were remaking the Thomas Pynchon novel of the same name. But that would be bloody treacherous to adapt in the first place. And foolish to remake it even then. But whatever the character of the original V show, the first episode of this remake is brimming with confidence and polish. That said, it’s conventional to the bone, and nothing is particularly spectacular. Oh, and the dialogue is, at times, dreadful.
The plot is that aliens reveal themselves to Earth peacefully but the slickness of the Visitors (Hence the V – tadah!) belies a more heinous intention and manner. We see, as ensemble shows love to do, all the characters we will follow through the course of the show, in their daily lives – the single mother badass cop, her bratty teenage son, the enfranchised black-american businessman, the priest with a strong jaw and the Journalistic lovechild of Tom Cruise and Michael J Fox playing an amalgam of Tom Cruise and Michael J Fox characters – before the events which send everybody into turmoil.
Everybody is, as US drama would have us believe, a normal working human in V, with the compulsory cautionary past, familial issues and wanderings of faith that typify us as a species, in comparison to, say, Goats, which are just stupid animals. There’s nothing really wrong with this – you can’t expect ABC to pull out anything resembling realistic characterisation like a BBC, HBO or AMC program would – but again, it feels same old, same old. Most are likeable, conventional types, even if the writers lack the spirit to push the Priest (name unimportant) to the level of Jesse Custer or the balls to make him anything other than a Mddle-of-the-Road beefcake with a lot of scepticism. The bratty son of the cop is annoying however; too sappy, too wet, and too full of himself to like. Of course, he’s want for frolicking with an attractive female Visitor and generally expatriating to the Other side, so there’s no loss for humanity there then.
As said however, ABC shouldn’t be expected to overcome the hurdle of dramatising realistic familial relationships in a way that doesn’t wreak of cringeworthy sentimentality. Things do get more interesting though, with Morena Baccarin as Anna, the seeming head honcho behind the media-frenzied visitation of the aliens, whose beauty often so distracts from her solid performances. Here, she is framed in such a way that her angelic features become stretched beyond normal human possibilities to reveal something entirely alien and frightening. The compulsary monstrous feminine she may be, but it’s a wonderful performance, and slightly unexpected for those used to seeing her doll about as a foil to Captain Hammer.
Alan Tudyk is always great to watch, and although he isn’t given much to do here, his presence is always reassuring in a sense – although this is in the sense that he looks like he feels just as marooned as us, and not in the sense of ‘everything is going to be alright for I, Alan Tudyk, am here’. Suffice to say, playing around with our affections for Tudyk worked brilliantly in that one decent episode of Dollhouse – swooping from jabbering pot-head architect to sinister mastermind in one of the biggest Ohhhhh! moments of recent memory – and the same device works great here too, if less masterful.
There are interesting places to go with V. The first episode sets up threads we not only anticipate, but actually want to follow; we aren’t teased in sick ways and told to endure horrific bouts of boredom before we are given answers (that’s for you David Goyer: Flashforward could take lessons from V on the subject of developing characters alright), but instead are fondled with in ways quite appetizing for a viewer. I’ll end the metaphor there, as it could go a tad blue. There’s also what appears to be a swipe at Obama’s healthcare plans in the show – although I hesitate to condemn it because the first episode seems to suggest that there’s more to the Visitors than a palatable lust for genocide – as the Visitors suggest a worldwide health service. This was nearly lost on me to be honest. Good idea, I said. Extend the NHS and that. And then I realised that the US is way behind on healthcare to those who need it. Silly me. I’m rooting for the Visitors now.
There’s a lot of asides and parallels to a staple of sci-fi themes in V, from the manipulation of the masses to the purpose of the media, and it could be rich territory for the show to mine in the future. I’ll be watching probably. Tuesday nights are pretty drab on the whole.
Science fiction films of late have been somewhat lacking in the science fiction department. In fact, due to the success of Independence Day, The Matrix and of course, Star Wars, the whole notion of science fiction has become somewhat blurred. Of course, The Matrix is rife with quasi-religious cyberpunk stylings and spiritualism, but more memorable are its mammoth action set pieces and fight scenes. So if anything, 2009 has been a year where we learned to appreciate that a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, science fiction was more than explosions in space.
Three films spring to mind this year that have recieved general acclaim and all of these films are the works of talented filmmakers making their feature length debuts, or in JJ Abrams’ case, merely their second. Indeed, Abrams’ formula for success with Star Trek borrows heavily from the aforementioned action films, and yet the reinvention of Star Trek captured the imagination of cinema goers all around, with its extravagant set pieces and wonderful characterisation reigniting the failing star. An excellent step for a series that never really qualified as an acceptable subject in public discussion. Star Trek, always a cerebral entity, feels fresh, young and hip again, and as a flagship icon it can now evolve as a platform for allegorical science fiction where no well liked men have gone before. And I didn’t even like Star Trek before I saw it.
Moon, the debut of Duncan Jones (I’m reminded by compulsion to mention he is David Bowie’s son, although he’s since proved that such trivia is unnecessary), was a highlight of the summer blockbuster season, offering a perfectly engineered alternative to the brash, throwaway bonanza’s that infiltrate the summer evenings – and became a savour for cinema against the corrupting nightmare of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It featured the delight of Sam Rockwell giving two masterful, nuanced performances with pathos and quiet grief that equal or better his finest work. Of course, Sam Rockwell wouldn’t be Sam Rockwell if, even when playing a serial killer, made you want to become his best friend, even if you were sure he was privy to an excellent joke in the room that you weren’t.
The film, set on a lunar mining installation, hangs on his performance to succeed, yet it is much more than a film of performances: Moon is atmospheric and haunting, its ethereal score permeating the sterile white labs and corridors and the grayscale deserts outside – and with its commentary on themes of identity, corporate control and cloning, Moon works on the mind and the eye. And it was made for only five million dollars – five million fucking dollars (not even five million pounds)! It’s a fine work of fiction, a fine homage to the great works of science fiction like A Space Odyssey and Soylent Green, and a fine debut for someone clearly in control of such fine artistic talents. I only hope the funding arrives for his next film, Mute.
Moon was not the only film to provide a visual and mental feast. District 9, the thinly veiled allegory of apartheid – although it would be fair to add that its sentiments stretch outside of South Africa – was a knock out effort. Neill Blomkamp, swindled alongside Peter Jackson on their prospective Halo movie, was given a budget and freedom to create a science fiction film with $30 million, and by god did he do well. Despite certain shortcomings, District 9 was a film that delivered on its hype, providing us with thrills, scares and awe inspiring events that allowed an audience to enjoy an action romp and still be worked upon by the films more weighty themes of intolerance and xenophobia. With its critical and commercial success, D9 proved that audiences were able to handle allegory and even take it to heart – many times I was asked whether I had seen that “film about apartheid,” before being assured it was very good.
Discussions about Star Trek’s sequel have begun appearing on media sites all around, and the writers seem to have reached the consensus that the follow up - while of course living up to the spectacle and adventure that the first film delivered so well – should and will incorporate the franchises hallmarks of analogy and allegory,to some capacity. That capacity better be wide enough to prove the point of this flippin post. I hope they realise that their sequel bears a heavy burden now. But more to the point, they hopefully realise that the franchise they are dealing with is not just important to the purile, insolent fans – who should be forgotten, by the way* – but to the science fiction genre itself.
Audiences have shown that they will respond to science fiction that talk to the mind as well as the eyes, D9 was one of the years most successful films, and Moon, despite a horrendous absence from all but a minority of theatres, was able to recoup its budget with ease. Both were received well by critics and both were made for extremely tight and restrictive budgets. Will Star Trek take up their mantle? Will it be a champion of a new age of science fiction? Or will Star Trek decline? Will it become simply another action blockbuster set in space?
I feel as though I’ve been spoiled already this year. My hunger and thirst haven’t quite been clenched, but I won’t be greedy. Greed would only stipulate the production of lesser films and expecting Avatar to be more than a humdrum retelling of Braveheart and a more respectable, yet ultimately arbitary work, the name of which escapes me right now, would border on gluttony.
*This should include fans of ANY to-be-adapted work. Nothing they say matters. Nothing.
If Nick Griffin’s cameo as the Villainous Glutton on BBC’s flagship political debatathon reminds us of anything, it’s that the right to free speech does not equate to complicit agreement of abhorrent ideologies. There were many who feared that allowing Nick Griffin on the programme would provide the BNP with a platform to indoctrinate, in some vile Orwellian manner that has eluded the other parties (they would bloody well try if they could), the millions of viewers it would no doubt attract. Such a fear was a gross overestimation of the BNP’s means.
Should anyone have stepped back from the hysteria, they would have noticed that the BNP is hardly privy to slick media methods and totally in the dark about mind control techniques utilised by this man. Indeed, earlier this year they were found out for using the image of a WWII spitfire flown by a Polish pilot in a campaign stressing the need for a pure, English society. Their votes are gathered instead by rhetoric that creates false scapegoats out of greater social problems, and rhetoric that is delivered through the channels of the BNP’s own PR, and never open conjecture.
People seem to have underestimated their own voice in this debate. There is no question that the BNP should be allowed into debates around the country. They should, it’s their right as citizens and the BBC have made the correct decision in allowing Griffin on. In fact, I’m surprised they took so long about it; surely an open debate would have exposed Griffin’s views long ago, and would also have given us a flavour of his character in ways the BNP’s PR could not control. But the BNP’s idealogy roams in the fields far away from accepted public discourse of perception – we’ve all realised how jaded a reaction xenophobia is by now, surely – and the unified condemnation of Griffin is a welcome reminder that free speech does not mean people have to listen.
One wonders however, whether the occasion would have been better served, not with pantomime boos and classic put-downs (see this), but with a more sedate and meticulous scenario. It’s a shame that the other political parties swept upon Question Time not to gain points with the public for their own policies, but simply to condemn a more hated fellow, but you almost felt them justified considering Griffin mentioning the wartime imprisonment of Jack Straw’s father. Griffin certainly could have used a curtain to draw in front of his seat to curtail the jeering at times, but there is the sad realisation that he could utilise his poor reception to proclaim he was tried unfairly. That isn’t so, but considering the BBC’s reputation wincing away under intense and absurd public scrutiny, such a claim could ensure that Griffin a small portent of contentment.
SGU has started fairly strongly. Despite many thinly drawn characters and a lack of dramatic impetus, the show has grounded us in a very intriguing situation, bolstered by a few key performances. Robert Carlyle as Dr Nicholas Rush is the obvious stand out, although underplayed in many respects. The other character is Greer (Jamil Walker Smith), one of the more watachable military grunts trapped on the ancient ship Destiny as it ploughs through space. Despite starting off holed up in a cell like some kind of McQueen pastiche, Smith reveals nuances to a somewhat stock character that will hopefully develop over the course of the show. If SGU neglects the character, it could be loosing one of the aces up its sleeve.
“Light” follows the episodes “Darkness,” “Water” and “Air” which follow in the – yes, I’m going to mention it again – BSG innovation of showing the logistical realities of human space travel. While the idea is still fruitful and interesting, it does have the downside of lacking the dramatic punch if special care isn’t taken to establish a greater arc, and Light does suffer from this neglect. We still don’t know where the show is going, and because Destiny’s route seems to stretch throughout the universe, there is the feeling that without an arching narrative to compel us to watch, our interest may slip after Destiny stops off in a solar system to refill the dwindling supply of hand soap in the aft deft’s ladies bathroom.
Yet with Light, like Darkness, Water and Air before it, there is a real polish in the way these stories are crafted, and a real sense of discovery and awe amongst the crew of the Destiny that proliferates with the viewer. While we never for one second believe that Destiny will be destroyed by the Sun, the manner in which it is cleansed and rejuvenated amongst a fiery backdrop is a beautifully crafted sequence. SGU seems to want to rediscover the wonders of the Galaxy that have been forgotten by Science Fiction. Kudos must be given to the composition of the accompanying score too, for while it never reaches the beauty of BSG’s various orchestral delights, it delivers the sequence with an aplomb of serenity.
Carlyle’s Rush remains a peripheral figure amongst the greater crew, and the show doesn’t seem to know whether to present him as a silent menace, a hidden enemy or a watchful protector. It really hasn’t gotten into his head yet, but hopefully when it does, the show will crack open.
According the MarketSaw blog, there may be the possibility that the Galaxy Far, Far Away that we’ve all come to greet with apathy may be returning to cinemas. A strong source suggests that the success (or quality) of Star Trek’s reinvention has whet George’s appetite for more Star Wars movies. This time however, we’ll be treated to a trilogy in 3D – this all depends however on the success of James Cameron’s Avatar, which seems to be drawing on Star Wars’ legacy of infantilising the public’s perception of science fiction.
Noah Berger/AP
Good news for what would otherwise be a heinous and vile suggestion would be that Lucas is willing – or planning – to relinquish his autocratic control on the reins of the franchise. With little production input, and no director’s chair, the iconic franchise could be in the hands of someone with a fresh angle and perspective, and someone who can write snappy dialogue. The other side of this coin is that Lucas may only be willing to let his old chums from film school take a crack at it. And while Spielberg taking a shot would lead to predictable but probably worthy results, the idea of the fading powers of Francis Ford Coppola controlling Star Wars is a bit of a stomach churner.
Lucas before has stated that his initial intention was for three trilogies chronologing the fall of the Empire. This is probably a bad idea – the franchise almost bursts from the seams with the amount of film, TV shows, comics and crap books documenting the Galactic Civil War. Only the pairing of the planned live-action TV show that’s presumably still going ahead with the word “Battlestar Galactica” piques interest, for its about time Star Wars matured a little and grew a philosophical limb – and by that I mean more than Zeitgeist Jedi bollocks.
So what other period in the Star Wars timeline could possibly give enough fruit to be worthy of a 3D trilogy? The future, although envisioned with increasingly ludicrous novels ranging in quality from shockingly bad to forgettablyreadable, is problematic. There will undoubtedly be question concerning the fate of Luke, Han and Leia that cinema goers will want, and the amount of turbulent convolution about the resurgence of the Empire, the resurgence of the Sith, the resurgence of another Empire, the invasion of Star Trek villains the Vong will muddy any waters of clarity for the audience.
The past of Star Wars – way before the fetid prequels – has been plundered before to reasonable success. The Knight of the Old Republic era, from the first comics documenting the ancient Jedi, to Bioware’s fantastic roleplaying games (including the in development MMO The Old Republic), are set far enough before the events of the Galactic Civil War to overcome any notion of knowing what’s going to happen before the characters do – a large problem of the prequels.
The best of these additions to the franchise borrow the fun, humour and types from the original trilogy and plant them in a mythically framed universe slightly different from the one that burst onto the screens in 1977. But because there has been a great deal of success with the Knight of the Old Republic era – and those preceding and following it – one wonders whether there is enough room for more galaxy spanning wars or confrontations between robed monks at all.
Why not simply a story about a Smuggler? Everybody loves a Smuggler.
It was recently announced that Spore, the evolution game from Electronics Arts, and brainchild of creative maestro Will Wright (also responsible for the Sims franchise) is going to become a movie. This is peculiar for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the narrative of Spore is, like many games, unsuitable or certainly unseeable as a filmic experience. To elaborate, Spore is the game where you begin as a small cellular lifeform and through survival in the seas of a distant planet you grow and evolve, your ‘creature’ gaining all sorts of creature ‘parts’ as you specialise and adapt to the environment around you. Thus Spore is even atypical for a game in that you don’t have a character or avatar who grows with you during the course of your playing experience, but instead an entire species. When you die, your creature won’t return, but one of its offspring will. Thus Spore charts the experience of evolution, from the seas, to the plains and landscapes where you must compete with other creatures to become king of the food chain to the far reaches of space when you finally learn how to be become a pious space faring civilisation, or a blood thirsty empire – it’s your choice. How do you adapt the experience of life, death and evolution on such a scale to a two hour film? How do you connect with the audience? The survival of the fittest is not a theme that particularly induces laughter, emotion and entertainment.
Secondly, Spore’s high concept design centres around the aforementioned survival of the fittest ethic, a subject which is still highly controversial to some. Exploring existential themes of evolution in a galaxy without a god is a masterstroke which cements Spore’s place in the history of the development of games, even if the game itself is less than the ideas which drive it, but videogames are a form played by a certain demographic who must share a certain affinity with a computer to be able to play that game; cinema is different. Take Creation, the recent biopic starring Paul Bettany and wife Jennifer Connelly about the life of Darwin and the way his own ideas conflicted with his and his wife’s religion. Pretty much no one saw it, as barely any North American cinemas dared to show it. And Creation opens interesting and constructive discourse between religion and science. What could Spore offer?
Thirdly, as the title of this post suggests, the game is heavily influenced by 2001: A Space Odyssey. While 2001 may ponder upon the evolution of man from the proto-humans to the technology muted future to the starchild, Spore just lets us play that. You can even place a black monolith on other worlds inhabited by creatures and give their evolution a head start and even more, there’s a cut scene in the game directly taken from the famous revelatory monkey scene.
Thing is, I can’t see Electronic Arts, attempting to milk their cash cows a little further, fancying taking a gamble in a failing film industry on an existential romp through the history of time charting the evolution of three eyed leprechauns from the planet Boris Twatus - can you?
These last few weeks, a host of shows have returned. First off, let’s consider Dollhouse, the Joss Whedon’s offering that takes a lump of Baudrillardian ponderings, digests it along with his usual cast of hip, All American actors (with a glossy edition of OK! magazine on the side) and shits it out. The resulting dump is a thing of two sides. On one hand, the concept of reprogrammable avatars (the dolls) living inside a brothel and used by its clientèle for things as varied as romantic engagements to bank heists to rewaking the dead to solve their own murders is rich with potential. On the other hand, each episode feels plucked from the air with little interest in maintaining a strong narrative arc and impetus in being watchable.
Instead, episodes usually revolve around Echo – a doll who, as her name suggests, finds echoes of her past and the echoes of the personalities which inhabit her over the course of the series – on a mission, with Eliza Dushku playing a variety of characters to various levels of success. The thing is, every single week there seems to be a hiccup during the process of acting out these missions, so we follow the same procedure of the Dollhouse’s “handlers” – those who look after the dolls while on these missions – as they try and sort out the mess caused. One wonders how the Dollhouse can be a successful business enterprise and what its customer approval rating is. Ultimately, the shows first season felt like a very long, extended pilot, whereby only the final reels indicate that the show is going anywhere.
Season Two, starting again after the mysterious 13th episode “Epitaph One” was placed on the first seasons DVD, dawdles about in the same manner as half the first seasons episodes, which is again a shame, because “Epitaph One,” set in an apocalyptic future where the technology programming dolls has run out of control, should have galvanised the shows creative energies. One can despair already that Dollhouse has been a bit of a spoil sport for ideas, rendering the chance of a similar premised show, executed better in the near future unlikely.
Flashforward unlike Dollhouse has a very clear premise, and one in which the whole show is built around. The thing is, as I have noted before, everyone is so bloody boring in it. There may well be genial orchestration in the construction of its overall narrative and mythology – although that has yet to be seen; I’m just saying – but the show insists on only dripping tidbits of information regarding the mysterious flashforwards, and in the mean time documents the ongoing crisis these many characters are dealing with. That, in itself, is not a bad thing and is a proven formula for success, and indeed that loathed beast Lost does it well with its compulsory flashbacks, but it requires the characters to be more than cardboard cut outs. Characterisation requires more than everyone having their own dark secret – as contrived as Fienne’s Mark Benford having a drink problem – their one fatal flaw which apparently gives them a depth and humanity lacking in the perfectly ordinary, average human beings such as ourselves. Domestic American life has been proved a tale of status, depression and discontentment so many times before that its starting to become incredibly dull, especially when you have to sit there and wait it out to catch a glimpse of the greater narrative arc. However, Jack Davenport is nice to see onscreen as always, and here brings a standard (for him) knowing performance to the table of absurdity that is Flashforward, a table that no one else seems to cotton on exists.
Jim and Pam finally got married in The Office (US). Their romance has gone on for a while now and the writers have built upon expectation after expectation that this would be something like the icing on the cake for a very good show. They seem to forget that the icing on the cake needs a chef to expertly lattice that fluffy pink drizzle over the rest of the cake. The episode had a feeling of self-gratuitous contentment which just came across lazy; let’s put all these characters which have slowly developed to varying levels of success over five seasons and put them in a hotel near Niagara falls. Let’s see what happens then.
And it happens pretty much as you would expect it to, in a way one could probably suggest it would after seeing merely the first season. Michael will embarrass everyone with a speech. Dwight will have to interact with other people. Pam and Jim will through off convention with a secret wedding. There seemed to be little effort or interest in writing a comedic show to it, and as Krasinski and Fischer’s onscreen chemistry arguably rivals or even betters that of Tim and Dawn’s (which is definitely one of the most underplayed yet wonderful romances of recent memory) to have such a predictable effort for what should be a landmark moment in the shows chronology is a waste.
It’s not all doom and gloom, disappointment and disinterest though. The Sci-Fi Channel (now regressed to the oh so postmodern moniker of Sy-Fy) has reinvigorated the Stargate franchise, a franchise which I must admit to have never cared for much to the extent of never watching more than a handful of episodes of SG-1 and completely avoiding Stargate Atlantis. Why I began watching Stargate Universe is not something I can really answer considering my record with its precedents, but the casting of Robert Carlyle probably had something to do with it. That’s right, taking up the mantle of the game-changing Battlestar Galactica, respected thespians are flocking to Science Fiction television regardless of the baggage of their original hammy incarnations.
Time seems to have moved on in the Stargate mythos – although only a few years to be fair – and us humans have spaceships and shit, with offworld military installations, and all this still unknown to the world at large, and yet we still have no solution to the increasing gut of Richard Dean Anderson. Carlyle plays a Scientist figuring out what some 9th chevron on the Stargates does, which is something they obviously haven’t achieved yet. What follows is that some kind of alien force attacks Icarus, the base that Carlyle works on this mysterious Stargate at, and events are pulled into motion that elicit the survivors of the attack to jump into the Stargate and thus into the unknown. They end up on an old, old ship drifting through space with no way home. Indeed, we soon learn through a modestly awe-inspiring slideshow that the ship is no longer even in the Milky Way, the zoom of the images drifting outwards until dozens of galaxies fill the screen. I’m a sucker for stuff like that.
Carlyle, as a source of knowledge among a rag tag bunch of bureaucrats and grunts, occupies a situation similar to Gaius Baltar in BSG, although instead of James Callis’ effete manner, Carlyle rockets around the ship with the kind of fury a bookworm Begby might radiate. It’s quite hard to stop with the BSG comparisons, and the look of Ron Moore’s remake is obviously a starting point for Stargate Universe, with the Destiny (the name of the ship they are stranded on) replicating not only the interior look of the Nostromo but that of the good old Galactica too, and any comparisons are only likely to do Universe favours considering the acclaim BSG commanded. The situation too, gives a similar potential for collisons of morality and politik among the crew.
Where it falls short of Battlestar Galactica for this viewer is that while Robert Carlyle is a great actor to watch week in week out, none of those around him carry the same kind of gravitas as Mary McDonnell, Edward James Olmos or Michael Hogan. Perhaps an arbitrary or ungrateful criticism, but it means that those opposing Carlyle and his brusque manner are unknowable and somewhat tame actors, without the bite of Edward James Olmos glaring and snarling at you, or Michael Hogan giving his excellent pirate impression. They are certainly capable actors, but they don’t have the extra edge that the aforementioned BSG aluminaries give, and you get the feeling you could pick up remarkably similar performances from any line of queuing Hollywood actors, and a line that will not include revelatory talents like Katee Sackhoff, Tricia Helfer and Jamie Bamber.
What it does provide however, and very well, is the sense of wonder and awe that Battlestar Galactica, in its metaphysical, philosophical mutterings, ignored. Not having been a fan of Star Trek in any sense until the new film (which borrows heavily from Star Wars, so criticise me for that) I’m loathe to reference a major part of that franchise, but the wonder of visiting these new, strange worlds and being alone in a very alien universe is a major part of what made me connect with Stargate Universe. It’s a very strong start, and one that I will be following.
Recently the original British sitcom The Office received a retrospective courtesy of the BBC, a documentary with interviews from media types from the inside and outside of its production and if anything, seeing it on UK screens proved how missed such a show was. Seen it its full a few years after the dust is settled, the Office still retains its delicate characterisation, its immaculately forged scalpel like wit, and its probing ability to overload our finely tuned senses with its asinine performances and scenarios. But most importantly, watching the Office again restates its permanence as a ground breaking show, a milestone for television.
So perhaps it is worth noting that the American adaptation of the show – we’ll call it The Office US – has begun its sixth, yes sixth, season on American network NBC. Most of us are used to hearing of successful British shows being unsuccessfully adapted to American television – Peep Show, Spaced, Coupling, Men Behaving Badly and Gavin & Stacey have all had their clones – but The Office US is a golden exception. While us British would like to think our original produce too clever, too, well, British, for reproduction, we can’t deceive ourselves forever that we alone on this Earth are the chief proprietors of sharp wit and heavy irony. And let’s not forget, the office is not an environment confined to Albion. There are German iterations of the Office, a French Office, a French-Canadian Office, even a Brazilian Office. I’ve not seen them though, so I’ll shut up about that.
The Office US though, has garnered not just enough ratings to satisfy the need for six seasons, but it has also faired incredibly strongly with the critics. But the differences of each show soon emerge. Due to the British style of production – and Gervais and Merchants infamous dedication to detail in its creation – the Office exists merely as 12 half an hour episodes with a Christmas special. The Office US however has around 100 episodes throughout its duration. Of course, if one were to compare the series on the base statistics, a 100 episode run seems like the hallmark of a successful show and that of 12 a failure. But that’s obviously tosh; the British Office was never intended as more than what it was – a taut, meticulously crafted sitcom that gave all it needed. The Office US is driven by its commercial value for NBC, and so was its creation in the first place, but our stigma with commercial ratings obsessed television should not cloud our thoughts concerning its quality – although I would recommend the uninitiated just “soldier on” with the first couples of episodes as they are pretty much shot for shot reconstructions of the British version.
Soon the US remake began to walk on its own two feet, it became its own entity and became all the better for it. Instead of remarking on how Steve Carrel as Michael Scott is hardly as foolishly sinister and lonely as David Brent, how John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer as Jim and Pam are more obviously good looking than Martin Freeman and Lucy Davis as Tim and Dawn are, and how much more OTT the compulsory office nutcase (Dwight Schrute/Rainn Wilson) is, you should just accept that it is a very different beast from the original and Michael Scott is a very different boss from David Brent.
Sure, they are both indecisive and irresponsible managers, but whereas David Brent reaks of the nastiness and self-regard we usually find with bastard businessman on the London tube, Michael Scott sits in an envelope of self-contentment, with a brand of naivety and innocence brilliantly played by Carrel. Unlike Brent, whose private workspace guarantees his status, it is Scott’s relationship with his workers that guarantee his. And over the course of the six series, Scott really warms to his employees and they (to an extent) to him. Of course, the general impetus for maintaining the shows many seasons lies with making Scott more redeemable, more likeable, but that only takes you so far.
For there is something useful in comparing the two shows in relation to the idea of the workplace as seen in Britain and in the States. Why are two shows from either side of the Atlantic, about the same environment, so different? Is it not strange that countries who share similar business practices and the same language have so different experiences? For example, the Office of Wernham Hog was the portrait of slow death, the continually perpetuating nightmare with a spindly chair. You saw the grim environment of the industrial estate on the cusp of the Great London Vacuum sucking the lives out of people and it reflected the decaying souls of its workers and employees. In the Office (US) of Dundler Mifflin, it…well it actually seems like a nice place to work. Sure, everybody gets at each others throats after a while, stifles the odd cough and watches the more eccentric members of the Office do something outrageous, but compared to the quiet misery of watching David Brent with his po-faced smile, beaming at the lifeless husks working under him after another of his jokes falls flat, its all a bit of fun.
Take the case of Tim and Dawn. Tim, through the course of the series’ confessionals, intimated that he felt his life should be more than what it was, that an escape from the Office was needed before it was all too late. Dawn too, needed an escape. She wanted to be an artist, a children’s illustrator nonetheless, and yet was trapped by the prospect of marrying her fiance, the proto-bastard Lee, also a worker at the warehouse below the Office. This is mirrored in The Office US – Jim questions his place in life, Pam paints on the side and is engaged to a warehouse proto-bastard – but whereas Tim and Dawn escape the Office together to start afresh, Jim begins rising up the ranks of Dundler Mifflin management and Pam seemingly buries her dream of being an artist after getting a job as a Dundler Mifflin salesman.
The Office US is an inclusive place. It releases itself from Gervais and Merchants vision of the Office as a place full of misspent creativity and wasted talent fairly quickly and replaces it with one where the workplace is one that you can raise a family around (Jim and Pam get engaged, Pam gets pregnant), where the American family unit can proliferate. The Office at Wernham Hog was simply a coffin buried somewhere, to escape from. Where does this diametrical difference come from? Are the attitudes to the Office environment really that different across the pond? I’m not entirely sure, but I can say that while The Office US will never replace the startling brutality of awkwardness that the original unearthed so well or, in simple terms, replace our faith in the originals pedestal, it certainly is very good and well worth the watch.
Often with TV, it’s all a matter of Marketing. And so is the entire world. Marketing. Yes, seated atop their utopian skyscrapers with their Gorden Gecko coffee mugs and their smarmy expression, smug Surrey accents and Patrick Bateman haircuts, the Marketing people control everything. Oh, what a well observed point there young one, for it was a mystery that lingered only in my dreams until you brought it forth into reality with unequalled clarity.
Well, it’s still true, and none more so than in the ratings obsessed media frenzy that is now television, a medium so fragmented and screaming for cash that even ITV has its iPlayer equivalent, which just goes to show that even the channel catering for the elderly has to broaden the way in which its content and advertising can reach the viewers.
This means more than ever that television must cater for ’key demographics’ and leave the risk of producing oddball comedic mash ups like Man to Man With Dean Learner to the banal fairies who haunt the BBC archives at night. Those fairies don’t exist by the way; I made them up to illustrate just how rare a TV company willing to take a risk for niche programming is. Instead, British TV concentrates on homogenised gurn fests like Doctor Who or the BBC’s other Saturday night serials.
Of course, when you have something quite unusual you have to live and let live with the production firms and hop up to the marketing level and that’s really where the gulf widens. Take the example of Lost, a high concept scenario in which the survivors of a plane crash land on a deserted island and I won’t bother going on because if you don’t know the basic premise behind the show by now you’re either too busy with your life that haven’t had time to watch it – and good on you for that – or you’re a total moron.
Of course, the plane crash turns out to be the most pedestrian thing about the show as things get going. Bundles of uncanny and mysterious things occur over the shows seasons, including hippy spiritualism, the Zeitgeist and, I’m told, time travel. It’s a melting point of different paranoia’s. There’s only so many enigmas I can take personally, and I’m glad to say I bailed on Lost at the advent of its second season.
One of the many twists of 'Lost.'
However, my point is this: these ideas are far removed from your average show and potentially too diverse and scattered to package in one normal sized box – and it probably is to the shows credit that it has managed to keep them all relative control (even if to the discerning viewer, its all completely contrived). Yet ABC’s Lost has reached its place in the cultural spectrum of the naughties not only with plenty of mysterious to tease the audience with, but with the help of a marathon advertising campaign that seems to rear its head only for air once every year like a bloody werewolf.
The same beast carries the burden of Flashforward, another high-concept ABC drama with weird ideas (what does the kangaroo mean? How zen!). Flashforward has modelled itself closely upon its forebears rise to prominence. Of course, one of Lost’s most powerful allies has been its irritant internet fan base, and Flashforward’s very premise seems to draw on the same kind of narrative mysteries that led idiot Lost fans to link together in the first place, forming a cult to ponder its meanings (if there is any that is). The premise is somewhat simple, but ultimately bizarre: the world’s population, from Swindon to Shanghai, mysteriously pass out for roughly two and a half minutes and then wake up again. Basically, if you’ve seen the first series of the perennially-disappointing-but-potentially-mind-blowing Heroes, think of Isaac’s premonitory paintings being the ENTIRE premise of the show.
Joseph Fiennes got lost on his way to the new RSC audition.
Of course, when they wake up, bad things have happened. Aeroplanes lie submerged in the oceans, millions of cars have collided with each other, helicopters shudder and splat into skyscrapers like there’s no tomorrow – the list is endless. In fact, its a shame it doesn’t show more of the stranger, banal kind of death which would probably run like a tasteless Youtube playlist of stunts gone wrong. Most horrifyingly, the two minute black out affects surgeons on the operating table, leaving their patients good and dead by the time they wake. It’s no surprise that the show revels in this chaotic dismantling of our fragile world and that no CGI is spared when visualising the destruction, but because it seems to enjoy itself too much, we have trouble taking the devastation seriously. True horror this isn’t, and as our characters run through the streets littered with debris, we are left to look at the dead bodies simply as window dressing for the greater mystery of the show.
As soon as Joseph Fiennes turns up, crawling out from the overturned car he’s passed out in (a situation much like we were with Jack the Doctor in Lost’s pilot) we know we’ve found our compulsory straight laced hero with compulsory flaws and compulsory resources to get the job done. One would hope that Flashforward can offer the diversions from the straight laced type in the same manner as Lost did, because Fiennes character is quite a bore as it is, and all in all, Fiennes just looks a bit lost in a production like this. Turns out however, that Fiennes’s character (the name is quite forgetful) wasn’t simply dormant while unconscious, but that he was having a vision in which he was cowering in a nightmarish future, looking lost again – but this time with a gun – as tatooed men approach him with bigger guns.
It’s soon established that it wasn’t just Fiennes’ character who experienced a vision during the black out, but everyone in the entire world. And it soon turns out that these visions take place in the future at precisely the same time on the same day, even the same month! It’s kind of like being beaten over the head with a genetically modified marrow of Truth, and it’s quite unpleasant.
Soon, Fiennes is revealing to a room of empty suits in the FBI office - did I not mention that hero comes equipped with Federal Bureau badge? – that in his dream, he was working on a case piecing together the information about the black outs. Now, I can’t say I know much for the inner workings of the FBI, but I know they are not investigators of the paranormal, and I at least expected the old cliche of the hero being ridiculed by his seniors. But no, instead of the benevolent boss giving our hero twenty four hours to prove his cases worth despite protestations from colleagues, they just out right believe him. Of course, most of them had dreams too, but the FBI work with reason and logic, and I find that they adapt to the idea of a global mindfuck so fast just silly.
More on Joseph Fiennes, I guess, who’s followed the likes of Dominic West and Idris Elba (of The Wire, the former an Eaton toff, the latter an ex-employee of Dagenham Motors), Hugh Laurie, Jamie Bamber (Apollo, Battlestar Galactica) to Hollywood and probably landed in a show that is most likely to succeed due to its advertising on every screen on the North American continent. He’s the aforementioned FBI man, also a family man, with a wife (doctor), kid (small girl) and a house straight out of the Truman Show. All is well, all is white and middle class and America is alive and well. But with America in peril, Middle America must once again save the world and Fiennes – a perfectly good actor who has nailed the accent – is the man for the job.
Sadly, from the pilot, the character is a bore as mentioned. So is his wife, a doctor, and his daughter, who just smacks of the Dakota Fanning vibe that means Daddy will have to come and save her at some point. And Daddy spends most of us his time on the show looking pensive and glum, and you almost think that Fiennes was picked because he fits in the bill for cheap, potentially bankable star rather than the character. It’s probably too much to hope ABC would present to us a progressive casting choice in the form of a black or asian family, but frankly we’ve seen all of this before.
Toilet Trouble
Perhaps though, the lack of characterisation, the lack of a realistic reaction to spectacular events and the glee its takes showing us all the bodies of the dead, Flashforward just wants to power ahead and get the real story going, and it does try hard. We’re given a few threads to follow, from the revelations of peoples own visions, from Doctor-Wifes dream that in six months she’ll be with another man to a friend* of Fiennes revealing that he saw his daughter alive in his vision despite recently burying her. We get John Cho (more famously Harold from Harold and Kumar (and Sulu!)) as a fellow FBI agent confiding to Fiennes that he never had a vision at all, to the end that he believes he will be dead in six months. Harold is in fact, one of the good things evident in the pilot, but mainly because he seems like quite a nice bloke rather than showing any massive talent for the small screen.
*Actually, this is supposedly Fiennes’ sponsor from the rehab clinic, and vice versa. How we were ever supposed to believe Joseph Fiennes was an alcoholic, I don’t know. But I suppose there’s nothing more heroic than Jack Bauer in rehab.
Flashforward isn’t bad per se, it’s probably perfectly watchable to most, but the pilots got none of the thrills of the extraordinary pilot for Lost or the determination to really get into the hearts and heads of its viewers like the Battlestar Galactica pilot had. Of course, this is precisely my point: we’re so inebriated with average shows marketed and advertised as if they are the second coming, that we miss the truly great television that’s out there.
One of these is Breaking Bad, a dark comedy-drama that has a lot more to offer than its name suggests – and yes, it sounds like Saved By The Bell, Part II. Covering both familiar territory in the form of a disillusionment with suburban life and new, stranger turf, its a show that really won’t pull enough interest to be shown anywhere but a backlot digital channel in the UK. It stars Bryan Cranston, who might be vaguely familiar to anyone who’s ever watched Malcolm in the Middle. Now, Malcolm in the Middle may have passed some by, it may also have turned off viewers with Malcolm’s frequent confessionals of teenage angst to the camera, but the show had some great moments and some even greater performances from both the young cast and the adult cast (Bryan Cranston was Hall, their Dad). This is completely different territory, even if Cranston plays the father in a matriarchal suburban family again.
Paedophile Moustache
Cranston is Walter White, a Chemistry teacher who seems to moonlight as an employee of a local garage at night to keep up the family funds while his wife is on maternity leave. They have an older child, Walter Jr, who has cerebral palsy, and who has a remarkably quick tongue and charismatic presence when compared to portrayals of other sufferers of cerebral palsy on TV. Skyler, Walter’s wife, has a bigoted sister who’s marriage to a DEA narcotics officer means that although Walter Jr may have a solid role model in his father already, he also has a successful, righteous yet ultimately alpha-male role model also vying for his attention – and by extension threatening Walter’s masculinity. The monotony of his suburban life however, is placed into perspective, or perhaps even dwarfed by the revelation that he has inoperable lung cancer.
Unlike, say, Kevin Spacey in the familiar set up of American Beauty, Walter takes an altogether extreme path to reasserting his position as family breadwinner, accompanying his ass of a brother-in-law on a drug bust at a Meth Lab – Walter previously witnessing the amount of money to be earned from selling Crystal Meth on a news report in the presence of his gloating brother in law, who was the officer interviewed by the channel. After discovering one of the dealers of the Crystal Meth is an ex-student, he sets about preparing a mobile Meth Lab with the help of the dealer, Jesse, in order to produce and sell Meth, stocking up enough cash to provide for his family after he has past.
It’s a series that manages to keep both the drama and comedy on an even keel, so you aren’t just yawning through melodramatic ramblings until something outrageous happens. It’s smart, but not to the extent of alienating its audience, and incredibly well acted by Cranston, who compliments and tones down the more exaggerated gestures and postures of Hall with unexpected layers of depth, self disgust, warmth and determination. As a show, it explores the psyche of the reluctant criminal, the good, family man turning to the dodgy side of the tracks to provide for his family and yet the characterisation is completely different from previous incarnations of the type, where the good man will turn to crime to help his family and come out of it with his principles intact, or the good man who turns to the dark side and falls prey to its indigenous natives. It instead shows easily it is for a normal man like Walter to turn to the other side of the tracks, and keep going. Walter looks like those men you see on the news, tried for crimes that seem beyond their means.
I’ll soldier on with Flashforward. It’s at least provoked enough empathy from me in its poor execution that I want to see it flourish, but while I’m sure it will be plastered across the screens of the UK soon, keep in mind Breaking Bad, and watch it. That is if you haven’t already.
You can catch Flashforward on Five I think, but Breaking Bad remains confined to the FX digital channel.
