Tuesday, February 25, 2020
Saturday, February 22, 2020
Lost Legacy
This confused mess does not feel like a Robert A. Heinlein novel.
A trio of random Californian academics (hero, love interest and sidekick as per action movie standards) discover psychic powers so they can see with their eyes closed. Cool beans. One of them breaks a leg while hiking and they get rescued by the (literally) immortal Ambrose Bierce who inducts them into a secret society of godlike psychics. They all live on mountains. As newcomers, our heroes' innocence and youthful exuberance gives them the edge they need to take down the society of evil psychics keeping humanity from remembering that they all have psychic powers and could transcend their mortal existence in a week or two if they just squint and grunt hard enough, and by the way Mu and Atlantis were real. So they levitate their way over to Long Island to telekinetically squeeze the devil.
And they all lived happily ever after in another dimension.
Ummm... what the hell, Bob?
Sure, the story dates from 1941, but others from that period still rate as Heinlein's most memorable: The Roads Must Roll, Coventry, If This Goes On-, etc. Lost Legacy on the other hand is somewhat summarily composed, as though its action were a foregone conclusion. It lacks tension or even a sense of wonder at the heroes' newfound divinity. Worst of all is the utterly facile manner in which they acquire their superpowers, in direct contrast to Stranger in a Strange Land's later reinterpretation of psychic training through careful Martian studies and lengthy practice. I have to note that just like By His Bootstraps seemed more of a mix between The Man Who Would Be King and The Time Machine than a Heinlein original feature, Lost Legacy's references to Bierce and Twain and Atlantis make it more of a throwback to 19th century Theosophy and fanciful tales of Lemuria. Hero worship and copycatting did not suit him.
I find myself even more annoyed at the realization that I could probably write something this good bad. To my shame, despite my ability to turn the occasional phrase, my storytelling ability has remained... not any such thing. But even if I can never hope to be as good as the Heinlein of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, I might someday (with a lot more studies in Martian linguistics) aspire to match the Heinlein of Waldo. So by way of practice I guess I'll be posting something about a toy car here tomorrow.
Monday, February 17, 2020
Warframe
"I didn't come to party or to justify
I hear the same excuses every single night
I'm not some demographic
That's swallowed the pill
Some twisted little cliché humming for cheap thrills"
FC Kahuna - Nothing Is Wrong
At some point early last year I decided to buy one of the newer online games just to see what the kids are into these days. I'd love to do a whole series on it but there's very little to say about Warframe. I'm guessing Digital Extremes' pitch to their investors for this project consisted of exactly one phrase: "we can do it cheaper" - and cheaper they did! No server costs because its co-op matches (with a maximum size of four) are hosted on players' computers, no GMs and little to no customer service of any kind, maps algorithmically generated from modular set pieces, most voice acting obviously relegated to interns, etc. The story's premise is so aggressively stupid it belongs in a 1980s cartoon.
You are a rococo space ninja bouncing at breakneck speed through a nonsensical clutter of rooms (apparently the architecture of the future will consist of nothing but dead ends, red herrings and superfluous corridors) killing space zombies, space cyborgs and space chaos marines, not to infringe on anyone's copyright. Most of its assumptions toe every line of pop culture morality: man bad, woman good; smart people are bad and codependence is good; curiousity always kills the cat; transhumanism = apocalypse. Later on it's revealed you're actually a psychic space teenager space-teleoperating your cyborg space ninja avatar (and no, for once I've got no compunctions against spoiling that reveal; it's too damn stupid.)
Oh, and there's a Mobile Suit Gundam spaceflight mode. Because of course there is.
The basic gameplay can be described as either an old-timey arcade shooter or a 3D version of a Diablo 2/3 co-op (microtransacted) loot grind. Enemies by the thousands constantly jump out of the walls from every direction at you and you keep mowing them down. Lather, rinse, repeat... endlessly. No strategy, all reflex. Amusingly, there are times when the developers seem like they'd prefer to be doing something more interesting, and of course they're well aware that their product stays afloat not due to any objective quality or innovation but due to inducing adrenaline / dopamine addiction in its adolescent target audience. Quoth one of their villains: "Can you feel that coming rush? That cocktail of unflinching violence and pseudo-random rewards? Mmmm, good for business."
However, those pseudo-random rewards deserve special mention.
Every planet or has its own particular resources. Events triggered both globally according to the developers' schedule and individually by players can temporarily add alternate mission types or rewards to most any locations. Given that player characters advance primarily by using said resources to craft new gear to level up, one can cut down on the grind to some extent by waiting to do missions when multiple rewards line up. Though not every location gets the same amount of love, Warframe does a surprisingly good job of "taming the randomizer" and though I'm ashamed of myself for it I'll admit I've enjoyed much of the hundreds of log-ins and hundreds of hours I've put into it over the past year. By emphasizing player choice in harvesting specific resources in specific locations, Warframe is more of an MMO than most games which used to call themselves that with their quasi-persistent maps. At least you won't find every single player farming the same latest instance.
The less said about the degenerate brain-dead little pissants it attracts as an audience, the better. Still, it offers some decent leeway in playing around with damage types while putting together new loadouts, and though it's too florid for my tastes I won't deny the character models' style has had quite a bit of work and even inspiration put into it... and, though the writing is often deliberately bad (sorry, I mean "accessible") even the artistic aspect manages a couple of touching high points.
I hear the same excuses every single night
I'm not some demographic
That's swallowed the pill
Some twisted little cliché humming for cheap thrills"
FC Kahuna - Nothing Is Wrong
At some point early last year I decided to buy one of the newer online games just to see what the kids are into these days. I'd love to do a whole series on it but there's very little to say about Warframe. I'm guessing Digital Extremes' pitch to their investors for this project consisted of exactly one phrase: "we can do it cheaper" - and cheaper they did! No server costs because its co-op matches (with a maximum size of four) are hosted on players' computers, no GMs and little to no customer service of any kind, maps algorithmically generated from modular set pieces, most voice acting obviously relegated to interns, etc. The story's premise is so aggressively stupid it belongs in a 1980s cartoon.
Oh, and there's a Mobile Suit Gundam spaceflight mode. Because of course there is.
The basic gameplay can be described as either an old-timey arcade shooter or a 3D version of a Diablo 2/3 co-op (microtransacted) loot grind. Enemies by the thousands constantly jump out of the walls from every direction at you and you keep mowing them down. Lather, rinse, repeat... endlessly. No strategy, all reflex. Amusingly, there are times when the developers seem like they'd prefer to be doing something more interesting, and of course they're well aware that their product stays afloat not due to any objective quality or innovation but due to inducing adrenaline / dopamine addiction in its adolescent target audience. Quoth one of their villains: "Can you feel that coming rush? That cocktail of unflinching violence and pseudo-random rewards? Mmmm, good for business."
However, those pseudo-random rewards deserve special mention.
Every planet or has its own particular resources. Events triggered both globally according to the developers' schedule and individually by players can temporarily add alternate mission types or rewards to most any locations. Given that player characters advance primarily by using said resources to craft new gear to level up, one can cut down on the grind to some extent by waiting to do missions when multiple rewards line up. Though not every location gets the same amount of love, Warframe does a surprisingly good job of "taming the randomizer" and though I'm ashamed of myself for it I'll admit I've enjoyed much of the hundreds of log-ins and hundreds of hours I've put into it over the past year. By emphasizing player choice in harvesting specific resources in specific locations, Warframe is more of an MMO than most games which used to call themselves that with their quasi-persistent maps. At least you won't find every single player farming the same latest instance.
The less said about the degenerate brain-dead little pissants it attracts as an audience, the better. Still, it offers some decent leeway in playing around with damage types while putting together new loadouts, and though it's too florid for my tastes I won't deny the character models' style has had quite a bit of work and even inspiration put into it... and, though the writing is often deliberately bad (sorry, I mean "accessible") even the artistic aspect manages a couple of touching high points.
Friday, February 14, 2020
ST:TNG - Politics
In an effort to relive my early teens, I am re-watching old episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It is both better and worse than I remembered it, as was my youth most likely.
_____________________________________
Seriesdate: 4.12
The Wounded
Wrinkly forehead alien species #212 has made peace with the Federation. Huzzah! And we never even knew they were at war. Huzza-zah!
When we last saw the Cardassians... was never, because this is their first episode. But, after the Klingons, the Ferengi, the Romulans, the Borg, etc. TNG's creators were fine-tuning their skill at introducing a recurring alien race in medias res, and the Hardassians benefit from the smoothest insertion into the Enterprise's backstory. Partly this was accomplished by not repeating the mistake made with the Borg of escalating too quickly. Instead, the central theme, more in keeping with Star Trek Utopianism, is de-escalation of a potential conflict and wrapping things up in an ambiguous enough fashion to leave room for diverse future plots. Also, instead of expositing at the audience, the various characters allow us to observe Cardassians interacting with filthy hu-mons. All in all they come out much less one-dimensional in their first showing. Klingons roared at the ceiling, Romulans schemed, Ferengi sneered and capered.
Overtly, this is an episode about war stories and post-traumatic stress. O'Brien's slightly over-drawn dialogues as a war veteran eat up most of the air time, but ultimately they get the job done. We're given ample opportunities to see the new aliens being both imperious and conniving, belligerent and apprehensive. The Cardassian underlings act appropriately like fish out of water, restrained, tentative in their interactions. Their leader struts in, outraged at a rogue Federation captain gunning down his fellows, then softens gradually as he sees Picard go from skeptical to convinced of his peer's guilt, watching the lunatic descend from genocidal mania to defeated exhaustion.
And, beautifully, by the end the assumptions of right and wrong are reversed twice more in a single scene. Picard admits his fellow Starfleet captain's suspicions about their former enemy's re-armament are almost certainly correct... but having built up trust with his Cardassian counterpart he tasks him instead with de-escalating in turn.
_______________________________________
Seriesdate: 4.15
First Contact
(The one with the kinky nurse.)
Wrinkly forehead "alien" species #579 is about to achieve warp travel. The Enterprise has been monitoring them and getting ready to make first contact. (Topic to be discussed at some later date.) Riker gets wounded and hospitalized while undercover and almost escapes by prostituting himself to a nurse who just happens to have a space-alien fetish... which is obviously a hilarious topic!
"Oh it's not so much to ask" quoth the nurse, and I agree. It is not too much to ask to fuck a physically healthy member of the opposite sex (no matter how wrinkly his forehead) and the scene's humor's just about tripled by her breathy enthusiasm at going where no woman of her species has gone before.
Riker: "There are differences in the way that my people make love."
Lanel: "I can't wait to learn..."
Except it's a bit galling to see the "me want snu-snu" bit played out in a show that routinely treated the idea of a woman having to touch a man who hasn't jumped through her various hoops and pledged eternal servitude to her as a cosmic injustice which had to be prevented at all costs and overcompensated by his utter humiliation. Would this scene have been written and played out as playful and adorable had Troi or Crusher been held captive and told to spread and let her crotch do the talking? Oh, it's not so much to ask...
But the real meat of the episode isn't the space nookie in space, or even the other inverted contact-first angles. It's the interplay of faction rivalries among the Malcorians: the skeptics, the fetishists, the cautious progressive collaborators, the panicked ignorants, and most importantly the Security Minister.
Krola: "Perhaps, like many conquerors, you believe your goals to be benevolent. I cannot, for however you would describe your intentions, you still represent the end to my way of life. I cannot permit that to occur. Eventually, Durken would choose to welcome your people, with arms open and eyes closed. I must force him down another path. When they find us I will be dead, killed by your weapon. The lines will be drawn. A peaceful accord will no longer be an option. For my people!"
Back when I was ten, I remember my jaw dropping at this moment. In most other shows it would've been a cut and dried scene: the villain tries to shoot the hero, gets the gun knocked out of his hand at the last second then falls off a conveniently placed cliff to keep the hero's hands clean of blood. Seeing the would-be martyr instead turn the gun on himself gave the conflict more depth in a second than an hour's worth of exposition. To most viewers, it would flip him from evil to pitiable. To me, he remains villainous - "most people would rather die than think" as Bertrand Russell said; as far as I'm concerned, thought being synonymous with existence, obfuscation is plenty villainous in itself. Assuming much of the Malcorian populace would emulate him, the whole affair does convey an infuriating but believable impossibility of taking the correct course of action.
At least the one superior mind who was building the warp drive, the scientist whom it would be criminal to condemn to life among her idiotic species, is given a place aboard the Enterprise.
Oh, if only... if only...
______________________________________
Seriesdate: 4.21
The Drumhead
Holy shit... this is one of the series' best episodes and I didn't remember a single frame of it!
Anyway, a member of wrinkly forehead "alien" species #15 is stealing Federation technology for wrinkly forehead "alien" species #34. Which is to say a Klingon exchange officer is spying for the Romulans, as part of the ongoing Season 4 meta-plot about Sela's incitement of civil war among the Klingons. We begin as near to a cold open as TNG was wont to indulge in, with Riker and Troi interrogating the spy about a possible act of warp core sabotage. The spy insults Worf and gets gut-punched, an admiral warps in to investigate, Worf presents physical evidence of the espionage, the prisoner is interrogated a second time and proclaims innocence to the sabotage if not the espionage, the admiral suggests a conspiracy aboard the Enterprise, an offhand call-back to season 1, a further reiteration of the season 4 meta-plot... whew!
And we're only 10 minutes into the show, opening credits included.
Even the technobabble makes a lot more sense than usual:
Worf : "He can extract digital information from a computer, encode it in the form of amino-acid sequences and transfer those sequences into a fluid in the syringe. Then he injects someone, perhaps even without their knowledge."
(If you think that sounds more far-fetched than warp cores, protein-based data reading/storage has in fact been toyed with occasionally since at least the mid-2000s)
This whole script's a triumph of television screenwriting for its manifold allusions, and the directing keeps an appropriately snappy pace - kudos to Frakes who's credited for it. Each scene manages to both advance the plot and tie into character development, ongoing galactic events, the state of mind of the crew and the impact of subjective interpretation in an investigation. It culminates in a couple of dramatic trial scenes during which the admiral slips gradually from the role of an investigator to that of a witch-hunter. Shockingly for a television show (which normally encourage the populace to be as overemotional and anti-intellectual as possible) we see Picard countering the others' growing paranoia and scapegoating fervor by calm, cold-blooded reason and equanimity.
Picard : "You're asking me to restrict Mr. Tarsi's movements solely on the basis of Sabin's feeling."
Count how often you see the word "feeling" put in a negative connotation in a television show, I dare you. Picard himself is ultimately put on trial for guilt by association and provokes the inquisitor into an emotional outburst revealing her self-righteous fanaticism.
And, as a stroke of genius, it winds down into a low-key denouement. Her motivations exposed, defeated, the witch-hunter is gradually abandoned by everyone she herself had convened to the courtroom, even her former allies of convenience to whom she no longer serves as a social prop. I can't help but want to recommend this episode to every modern-day activist on youtube and reddit and fox news and msnbc, from the Bible-thumpers and nationalists to the pronoun police and the racial figureheads and the feminists flinging rape accusations on automatic fire, and the "for the children" chorus behind every attempt to censor, censure and sabotage free thought.
Yet Picard himself looks defeated in his pyrrhic victory. To find the system has rotted far enough to allow for such witch-hunting weighs a great deal more heavily than defeating one solitary fanatic.
Picard : "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then, before you can blink an eye, suddenly it threatens to start all over again. [...] Mr. Worf, villains who twirl their moustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged."
_________________________________________
Both The Wounded and The Drumhead are credited fully or in part to one Jeri Taylor. Her work seems to have varied wildly in quality among the many episodes in which she collaborated, but for the purposes of this post she's certainly associated with the increased complexity to TNG's plotlines in Season 4. All three of these episodes stand out by their deliberate ambiguity, refocusing the viewer's attention on the topic of choice and not merely outcome.
The Cardassian caught accessing the Enterprise's computers in The Wounded may or may not have been guilty of espionage, but the true task was judging him in a calm and fair manner which maintained both sides' confidence in their framework for cooperation. Conversely despite being correct in his accusations the rogue Federation captain was causing more harm than good.
The Security Minister in First Contact acts to prevent scientific progress which would immeasurably improve the lives of everyone on his planet... yet in illustrating the pervasive backwardness of his kind he prevents what could be a horrendous failure of their first exposure to space. They can't be helped if they're too stupid to learn.
The act of sabotage in The Drumhead turns out to be pure accident. The Klingon spy believes himself a patriot. The young medic who consorted with him may or may not have been guilty of giving aid to the enemy... but the methodology used to convict him formed a greater crime.
Pulp science fiction is prone to ludicrous generalizations and tokenism: species defined by the planet they live on, composed of a single climate with a single culture defined by a single trait. For my own part, my favorite TNG episodes centered on outlandish discoveries, seeing the crew solve futuristic scientific puzzles. Still, the show's other strong point was gradually moving far beyond the original series' "planet of hats" motifs and developing the galactic politics angle through multifaceted alien cultures. Here at last are pro-Federation Klingons and pro-Romulan Klingons, sneaky Cardassians and reasonable ones, primitive aliens who both embrace progress and fear it, internal politics oscillating between egalitarianism and unexpected Spanish Inquisitions. Not only do they present attempts to take correct actions in ambiguous circumstances, but the second most important intellectual leap: from tribal motivations to personal ones.
_____________________________________
Seriesdate: 4.12
The Wounded
Wrinkly forehead alien species #212 has made peace with the Federation. Huzzah! And we never even knew they were at war. Huzza-zah!
When we last saw the Cardassians... was never, because this is their first episode. But, after the Klingons, the Ferengi, the Romulans, the Borg, etc. TNG's creators were fine-tuning their skill at introducing a recurring alien race in medias res, and the Hardassians benefit from the smoothest insertion into the Enterprise's backstory. Partly this was accomplished by not repeating the mistake made with the Borg of escalating too quickly. Instead, the central theme, more in keeping with Star Trek Utopianism, is de-escalation of a potential conflict and wrapping things up in an ambiguous enough fashion to leave room for diverse future plots. Also, instead of expositing at the audience, the various characters allow us to observe Cardassians interacting with filthy hu-mons. All in all they come out much less one-dimensional in their first showing. Klingons roared at the ceiling, Romulans schemed, Ferengi sneered and capered.
Overtly, this is an episode about war stories and post-traumatic stress. O'Brien's slightly over-drawn dialogues as a war veteran eat up most of the air time, but ultimately they get the job done. We're given ample opportunities to see the new aliens being both imperious and conniving, belligerent and apprehensive. The Cardassian underlings act appropriately like fish out of water, restrained, tentative in their interactions. Their leader struts in, outraged at a rogue Federation captain gunning down his fellows, then softens gradually as he sees Picard go from skeptical to convinced of his peer's guilt, watching the lunatic descend from genocidal mania to defeated exhaustion.
And, beautifully, by the end the assumptions of right and wrong are reversed twice more in a single scene. Picard admits his fellow Starfleet captain's suspicions about their former enemy's re-armament are almost certainly correct... but having built up trust with his Cardassian counterpart he tasks him instead with de-escalating in turn.
_______________________________________
Seriesdate: 4.15
First Contact
(The one with the kinky nurse.)
Wrinkly forehead "alien" species #579 is about to achieve warp travel. The Enterprise has been monitoring them and getting ready to make first contact. (Topic to be discussed at some later date.) Riker gets wounded and hospitalized while undercover and almost escapes by prostituting himself to a nurse who just happens to have a space-alien fetish... which is obviously a hilarious topic!
"Oh it's not so much to ask" quoth the nurse, and I agree. It is not too much to ask to fuck a physically healthy member of the opposite sex (no matter how wrinkly his forehead) and the scene's humor's just about tripled by her breathy enthusiasm at going where no woman of her species has gone before.
Riker: "There are differences in the way that my people make love."
Lanel: "I can't wait to learn..."
Except it's a bit galling to see the "me want snu-snu" bit played out in a show that routinely treated the idea of a woman having to touch a man who hasn't jumped through her various hoops and pledged eternal servitude to her as a cosmic injustice which had to be prevented at all costs and overcompensated by his utter humiliation. Would this scene have been written and played out as playful and adorable had Troi or Crusher been held captive and told to spread and let her crotch do the talking? Oh, it's not so much to ask...
But the real meat of the episode isn't the space nookie in space, or even the other inverted contact-first angles. It's the interplay of faction rivalries among the Malcorians: the skeptics, the fetishists, the cautious progressive collaborators, the panicked ignorants, and most importantly the Security Minister.
Krola: "Perhaps, like many conquerors, you believe your goals to be benevolent. I cannot, for however you would describe your intentions, you still represent the end to my way of life. I cannot permit that to occur. Eventually, Durken would choose to welcome your people, with arms open and eyes closed. I must force him down another path. When they find us I will be dead, killed by your weapon. The lines will be drawn. A peaceful accord will no longer be an option. For my people!"
Back when I was ten, I remember my jaw dropping at this moment. In most other shows it would've been a cut and dried scene: the villain tries to shoot the hero, gets the gun knocked out of his hand at the last second then falls off a conveniently placed cliff to keep the hero's hands clean of blood. Seeing the would-be martyr instead turn the gun on himself gave the conflict more depth in a second than an hour's worth of exposition. To most viewers, it would flip him from evil to pitiable. To me, he remains villainous - "most people would rather die than think" as Bertrand Russell said; as far as I'm concerned, thought being synonymous with existence, obfuscation is plenty villainous in itself. Assuming much of the Malcorian populace would emulate him, the whole affair does convey an infuriating but believable impossibility of taking the correct course of action.
At least the one superior mind who was building the warp drive, the scientist whom it would be criminal to condemn to life among her idiotic species, is given a place aboard the Enterprise.
Oh, if only... if only...
______________________________________
Seriesdate: 4.21
The Drumhead
Holy shit... this is one of the series' best episodes and I didn't remember a single frame of it!
Anyway, a member of wrinkly forehead "alien" species #15 is stealing Federation technology for wrinkly forehead "alien" species #34. Which is to say a Klingon exchange officer is spying for the Romulans, as part of the ongoing Season 4 meta-plot about Sela's incitement of civil war among the Klingons. We begin as near to a cold open as TNG was wont to indulge in, with Riker and Troi interrogating the spy about a possible act of warp core sabotage. The spy insults Worf and gets gut-punched, an admiral warps in to investigate, Worf presents physical evidence of the espionage, the prisoner is interrogated a second time and proclaims innocence to the sabotage if not the espionage, the admiral suggests a conspiracy aboard the Enterprise, an offhand call-back to season 1, a further reiteration of the season 4 meta-plot... whew!
And we're only 10 minutes into the show, opening credits included.
Even the technobabble makes a lot more sense than usual:
Worf : "He can extract digital information from a computer, encode it in the form of amino-acid sequences and transfer those sequences into a fluid in the syringe. Then he injects someone, perhaps even without their knowledge."
(If you think that sounds more far-fetched than warp cores, protein-based data reading/storage has in fact been toyed with occasionally since at least the mid-2000s)
This whole script's a triumph of television screenwriting for its manifold allusions, and the directing keeps an appropriately snappy pace - kudos to Frakes who's credited for it. Each scene manages to both advance the plot and tie into character development, ongoing galactic events, the state of mind of the crew and the impact of subjective interpretation in an investigation. It culminates in a couple of dramatic trial scenes during which the admiral slips gradually from the role of an investigator to that of a witch-hunter. Shockingly for a television show (which normally encourage the populace to be as overemotional and anti-intellectual as possible) we see Picard countering the others' growing paranoia and scapegoating fervor by calm, cold-blooded reason and equanimity.
Picard : "You're asking me to restrict Mr. Tarsi's movements solely on the basis of Sabin's feeling."
Count how often you see the word "feeling" put in a negative connotation in a television show, I dare you. Picard himself is ultimately put on trial for guilt by association and provokes the inquisitor into an emotional outburst revealing her self-righteous fanaticism.
And, as a stroke of genius, it winds down into a low-key denouement. Her motivations exposed, defeated, the witch-hunter is gradually abandoned by everyone she herself had convened to the courtroom, even her former allies of convenience to whom she no longer serves as a social prop. I can't help but want to recommend this episode to every modern-day activist on youtube and reddit and fox news and msnbc, from the Bible-thumpers and nationalists to the pronoun police and the racial figureheads and the feminists flinging rape accusations on automatic fire, and the "for the children" chorus behind every attempt to censor, censure and sabotage free thought.
Yet Picard himself looks defeated in his pyrrhic victory. To find the system has rotted far enough to allow for such witch-hunting weighs a great deal more heavily than defeating one solitary fanatic.
Picard : "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then, before you can blink an eye, suddenly it threatens to start all over again. [...] Mr. Worf, villains who twirl their moustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged."
_________________________________________
Both The Wounded and The Drumhead are credited fully or in part to one Jeri Taylor. Her work seems to have varied wildly in quality among the many episodes in which she collaborated, but for the purposes of this post she's certainly associated with the increased complexity to TNG's plotlines in Season 4. All three of these episodes stand out by their deliberate ambiguity, refocusing the viewer's attention on the topic of choice and not merely outcome.
The Cardassian caught accessing the Enterprise's computers in The Wounded may or may not have been guilty of espionage, but the true task was judging him in a calm and fair manner which maintained both sides' confidence in their framework for cooperation. Conversely despite being correct in his accusations the rogue Federation captain was causing more harm than good.
The Security Minister in First Contact acts to prevent scientific progress which would immeasurably improve the lives of everyone on his planet... yet in illustrating the pervasive backwardness of his kind he prevents what could be a horrendous failure of their first exposure to space. They can't be helped if they're too stupid to learn.
The act of sabotage in The Drumhead turns out to be pure accident. The Klingon spy believes himself a patriot. The young medic who consorted with him may or may not have been guilty of giving aid to the enemy... but the methodology used to convict him formed a greater crime.
Pulp science fiction is prone to ludicrous generalizations and tokenism: species defined by the planet they live on, composed of a single climate with a single culture defined by a single trait. For my own part, my favorite TNG episodes centered on outlandish discoveries, seeing the crew solve futuristic scientific puzzles. Still, the show's other strong point was gradually moving far beyond the original series' "planet of hats" motifs and developing the galactic politics angle through multifaceted alien cultures. Here at last are pro-Federation Klingons and pro-Romulan Klingons, sneaky Cardassians and reasonable ones, primitive aliens who both embrace progress and fear it, internal politics oscillating between egalitarianism and unexpected Spanish Inquisitions. Not only do they present attempts to take correct actions in ambiguous circumstances, but the second most important intellectual leap: from tribal motivations to personal ones.
Monday, February 10, 2020
Mall Rats Overboard
"Jesus is filling out paperwork now
At the facility on East 12th st."
Green Day - Homecoming
Welcome, bees* to the splentacfluous Agartha Mall!
Agartha, the Hollow Earth, was in The Secret World's initial 2012 interpretation a transit hub. Players would bounce between America, Egypt and Romania by zooming to portals growing like fruit along the branches of the world-tree. A rather captivating sight, just otherworldly enough to be memorable, even if said zooming did grow a bit tedious by repetition.
As part of the game's desperate (and unsuccessful) rebranding as Secret World Legends in 2017, Agartha's branches were severely truncated and its trunk re-imagined as a social hub, after the game's repeated failures to make players congregate in fight clubs, theatres or the city of London. Thus the oncogenesis of the Agartha Mall at the world's very heart, a large enclosure lined with shops, bankers and auctioneers, opening into a portal to seasonal content, a restaurant and a dance club on its terraces, complete with a centerpiece chandelier beneath which a Christmas tree or other seasonal nonsense can be inserted.
Note the lack of congregating players.
Turns out it takes more than being given a place to stand to keep customers' interest.
Now, first I have to remark on the sheer idiocy of taking a grandiose, mysterious notion like the Hollow Earth and paving it over into yet another painfully mundane mall. But more amusingly by the time TSW launched, Amazon and eBay were almost two decades old. By 2017 when TSW became SWL and Agartha was mallified, real-world malls at least in the United States had been gradually pushed out of business throughout the previous decade by online shopping. In its effort toward cozy mundane familiarity, Funcom copied an architectural motif that's been moribund since before their product's original launch.
There's something just so... special... about jumping on a bandwagon while it's diving off a cliff.
_________________________________________________
* It makes sense in context.
At the facility on East 12th st."
Green Day - Homecoming
Welcome, bees* to the splentacfluous Agartha Mall!
Agartha, the Hollow Earth, was in The Secret World's initial 2012 interpretation a transit hub. Players would bounce between America, Egypt and Romania by zooming to portals growing like fruit along the branches of the world-tree. A rather captivating sight, just otherworldly enough to be memorable, even if said zooming did grow a bit tedious by repetition.
As part of the game's desperate (and unsuccessful) rebranding as Secret World Legends in 2017, Agartha's branches were severely truncated and its trunk re-imagined as a social hub, after the game's repeated failures to make players congregate in fight clubs, theatres or the city of London. Thus the oncogenesis of the Agartha Mall at the world's very heart, a large enclosure lined with shops, bankers and auctioneers, opening into a portal to seasonal content, a restaurant and a dance club on its terraces, complete with a centerpiece chandelier beneath which a Christmas tree or other seasonal nonsense can be inserted.
Note the lack of congregating players.
Turns out it takes more than being given a place to stand to keep customers' interest.
Now, first I have to remark on the sheer idiocy of taking a grandiose, mysterious notion like the Hollow Earth and paving it over into yet another painfully mundane mall. But more amusingly by the time TSW launched, Amazon and eBay were almost two decades old. By 2017 when TSW became SWL and Agartha was mallified, real-world malls at least in the United States had been gradually pushed out of business throughout the previous decade by online shopping. In its effort toward cozy mundane familiarity, Funcom copied an architectural motif that's been moribund since before their product's original launch.
There's something just so... special... about jumping on a bandwagon while it's diving off a cliff.
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* It makes sense in context.
Sunday, February 9, 2020
I'm so glad at having my local law enforcement agents notify us all officially that some recent acts of violence were not motivated by racial hatred. At least now when the brain-dead locals decide to crush me under the wheels of their pick-up trucks or crack my skull to splinters in a drunken rage, I'll rest assured it's not because they "hate" me.
Friday, February 7, 2020
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
Rhymes with Wrecksit
"It seems such a shame when the English claim the Earth
That they give rise to such hilarity and mirth"
Noel Coward - Mad Dogs and Englishmen
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"The sober Englishman at the close of the nineteenth century could sit at his breakfast-table, decide between tea from Ceylon or coffee from Brazil, devour an egg from France with some Danish ham, or eat a New Zealand chop, wind up his breakfast with a West Indian banana, glance at the latest telegrams from all the world, scrutinise the prices current of his geographically distributed investments in South Africa, Japan, and Egypt, and tell the two children he had begotten (in the place of his father's eight) that he thought the world changed very little. They must play cricket, keep their hair cut, go to the old school he had gone to, shirk the lessons he had shirked, learn a few scraps of Horace and Virgil and Homer for the confusion of cads, and all would be well with them..."
H.G. Wells - The World Set Free
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"How do you know that those temples are not the temples of your own civilization one hundred centuries from now, tumbled and broken?"
Ray Bradbury - Night Meeting
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During its imperial heyday around the year -100 to 300 the city of Rome peaked at a staggering pre-industrial population of a million. As the seat of a sprawling empire, it continued to grow as populations gravitated from the provinces being bled to support it, toward the locus of consumption. By 500 AD it had fallen to less than a tenth of that. Once an imperial heartland can no longer bleed the rest of the world to feed itself, its bloated aristocratic and servant castes will experience inevitable dieback. Yet I wouldn't be surprised, were I to laze about the thermae in the 400s, to hear half the rabble extolling the virtues of that Valentinian III as a strong leader pursuing domestic enemies of the state and how Rome would reconquer Africa in two shakes of a lamb's tail, and nothing will have changed and all will be right as rain again as it was in the time of the five good emperors. And anyway, we're stronger without cooperating with those inferior breeds in the outlying provinces. Quite!
The world's next major empire will be China (after it exterminates Korea, Japan and its southern neighbours) a repressive, genocidal, authoritarian culture vaster and more vicious than anything Europe has ever imagined. The fatcats of the world have ensured its supremacy by their love of Chinese wage slavery. Were any sanity to be found among Europeans now, it would point toward solidarity in negotiating a dignified retreat, toward abandoning dreams of cultural fiat or purity (and the unspoken and laughable ambitions of imperial reconquest underscoring separatist movements) and simply banding together to absorb, integrate, mediate and quite simply... survive, in some form, the several and inevitable Asiatic invasions which loom in the coming century.
Or not.
Retards.
That they give rise to such hilarity and mirth"
Noel Coward - Mad Dogs and Englishmen
_____________________________________________
"The sober Englishman at the close of the nineteenth century could sit at his breakfast-table, decide between tea from Ceylon or coffee from Brazil, devour an egg from France with some Danish ham, or eat a New Zealand chop, wind up his breakfast with a West Indian banana, glance at the latest telegrams from all the world, scrutinise the prices current of his geographically distributed investments in South Africa, Japan, and Egypt, and tell the two children he had begotten (in the place of his father's eight) that he thought the world changed very little. They must play cricket, keep their hair cut, go to the old school he had gone to, shirk the lessons he had shirked, learn a few scraps of Horace and Virgil and Homer for the confusion of cads, and all would be well with them..."
H.G. Wells - The World Set Free
_____________________________________________
"How do you know that those temples are not the temples of your own civilization one hundred centuries from now, tumbled and broken?"
Ray Bradbury - Night Meeting
_____________________________________________
During its imperial heyday around the year -100 to 300 the city of Rome peaked at a staggering pre-industrial population of a million. As the seat of a sprawling empire, it continued to grow as populations gravitated from the provinces being bled to support it, toward the locus of consumption. By 500 AD it had fallen to less than a tenth of that. Once an imperial heartland can no longer bleed the rest of the world to feed itself, its bloated aristocratic and servant castes will experience inevitable dieback. Yet I wouldn't be surprised, were I to laze about the thermae in the 400s, to hear half the rabble extolling the virtues of that Valentinian III as a strong leader pursuing domestic enemies of the state and how Rome would reconquer Africa in two shakes of a lamb's tail, and nothing will have changed and all will be right as rain again as it was in the time of the five good emperors. And anyway, we're stronger without cooperating with those inferior breeds in the outlying provinces. Quite!
The world's next major empire will be China (after it exterminates Korea, Japan and its southern neighbours) a repressive, genocidal, authoritarian culture vaster and more vicious than anything Europe has ever imagined. The fatcats of the world have ensured its supremacy by their love of Chinese wage slavery. Were any sanity to be found among Europeans now, it would point toward solidarity in negotiating a dignified retreat, toward abandoning dreams of cultural fiat or purity (and the unspoken and laughable ambitions of imperial reconquest underscoring separatist movements) and simply banding together to absorb, integrate, mediate and quite simply... survive, in some form, the several and inevitable Asiatic invasions which loom in the coming century.
Or not.
Retards.
Saturday, February 1, 2020
Where-serker?
I'd heard about the Berserker novels in passing but never got into them in my teens (when I would probably have enjoyed them more) yet decided to check them out in recent years after one character's aside in Mark Stanley's Freefall. It's hard to say why I've kept returning to them after the first few short stories; maybe, as with Anne Rice's vampire novels, it can be explained by the trainwreck appeal of a concept's misuse. Half a century after Saberhagen first chimed in on the topic inception, the "robot army of doom" setup has proved its shallowness with every new terminator and cylon.
These particular robot space-fleets of doom provide decidedly pulpy "fire laz0rz pew-pew" space operatic fare, but in itself that can be enjoyable enough... when it sticks to its guns and doesn't over-reach. No, what stands out about the Berserker books is just how little they concern the titular berserkers. The very first short story didn't even focus on them and was more of a "Chinese box" thought exercise. Nevertheless, the public loves an unempathetic villain with simplistic motivations, and killer robots fit the bill perfectly. The brand identity sold. Still sells, if the series' continuation from 1963 into the 2000s almost up to the author's death* is any indication. But aside from maintaining brand identity by allowing the death-bots to loom menacingly as plot-driving footnotes, precious few of the plots involve them at all.
Recruiting various authors for short story collections explains only a small amount of the insanity. Saberhagen himself doesn't seem to have held any coherent notion of just how to milk his cash cow. The reason for the Berserker's appelative, their initial gimmick of machine minds incorporating true random number generation to remain unpredictable was only good for one or two re-tellings. (Indeed, later stories have started falling back on the machines being baited into predictable behavior.) After that? Some of the better ideas at least maintain a pretext of relevance to space fleets and interstellar conflict. Even they make liberal use of cheesy love stories or telepathy inserted as a plot point and then forgotten a story later, etc. Others hail from entirely different genres with a killer robot shoehorned in somewhere at the end. There's a tournament of bronze-age barbarian gladiators, a child imbued with apotheotic technology who finds space-nirvana, a space version of Saint Francis of Assisi, some confused time travel story about space vikings, a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice - in SpaaaaaAAACE !
When I decided to get into this I'd expected to get bored of killer robots. Instead, halfway through the series, I've spent most of my time impatiently flipping pages wondering when they'll actually show up! Who knew Godot was a killer robot?
_____________________________________________________
*possibly at the claws of killer robots; one never knows
These particular robot space-fleets of doom provide decidedly pulpy "fire laz0rz pew-pew" space operatic fare, but in itself that can be enjoyable enough... when it sticks to its guns and doesn't over-reach. No, what stands out about the Berserker books is just how little they concern the titular berserkers. The very first short story didn't even focus on them and was more of a "Chinese box" thought exercise. Nevertheless, the public loves an unempathetic villain with simplistic motivations, and killer robots fit the bill perfectly. The brand identity sold. Still sells, if the series' continuation from 1963 into the 2000s almost up to the author's death* is any indication. But aside from maintaining brand identity by allowing the death-bots to loom menacingly as plot-driving footnotes, precious few of the plots involve them at all.
Recruiting various authors for short story collections explains only a small amount of the insanity. Saberhagen himself doesn't seem to have held any coherent notion of just how to milk his cash cow. The reason for the Berserker's appelative, their initial gimmick of machine minds incorporating true random number generation to remain unpredictable was only good for one or two re-tellings. (Indeed, later stories have started falling back on the machines being baited into predictable behavior.) After that? Some of the better ideas at least maintain a pretext of relevance to space fleets and interstellar conflict. Even they make liberal use of cheesy love stories or telepathy inserted as a plot point and then forgotten a story later, etc. Others hail from entirely different genres with a killer robot shoehorned in somewhere at the end. There's a tournament of bronze-age barbarian gladiators, a child imbued with apotheotic technology who finds space-nirvana, a space version of Saint Francis of Assisi, some confused time travel story about space vikings, a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice - in SpaaaaaAAACE !
When I decided to get into this I'd expected to get bored of killer robots. Instead, halfway through the series, I've spent most of my time impatiently flipping pages wondering when they'll actually show up! Who knew Godot was a killer robot?
_____________________________________________________
*possibly at the claws of killer robots; one never knows
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