Strange time to be watching Ashes to Ashes

Since I first said that I find crass, sexist, violent Gene Hunt hard to take in the age of Trump (not that Gene Hunt is Donald Trump,  though a number of people thought I was saying that), a few bazillion sexual harassment/abuse allegations against people in all sorts of positions of authority have come forward, making Ashes to Ashes even weirder to watch at this particular moment in history. To clarify: I get that I'm supposed to see the goodness underneath Hunt's offensive exterior, and that he's meant to be seen as redeemable. I get that Glenister is brilliant at playing layers. I actually do find the character's personality to be magnetic. But I'm not entirely comfortable with the notion that we ought to readily believe that what's on the outside doesn't reflect what's on the inside, and if we wouldn't want to make that argument about men now, knowing what we know about what goes on, we shouldn't make it about then, either.

Also, here's how I know we're in Alex Drake's imagination and not in 1980: the bra strap. I had my first office job in 1980. You did NOT intentionally show your bra at work.

What office attire did not look like:

What Alex Drake is wearing:

What female TV cops of the 1980s wore:

What actual working women of the 1980s wore:

I'm just partway through Ashes to Ashes season 1; quite a few people have said basically, "Just wait until the series finale, then you'll see." I am totally unspoiled (and plan to remain that way), so yes, it may be that, after I've seen it, I will swear it was all worthwhile, everything fits, and the character arc is a thing of beauty. That's not sarcasm. I really may. But even so, five seasons is a looooong time to wait.

Sisko of Arabia

So I'm rewatching the DS9 episode "Starship Down," a rather contrived, thinly plotted story about the Defiant being badly damaged, and the resultant personal struggles of survival that are meant to illuminate character relationships. A badly injured Sisko is trapped on the bridge with Kira. In an effort to keep him awake, she tells him Bajoran stories. The thought crosses my mind, How Arabian Nights-like. And that's when it hit me.

Benjamin Sisko is Lawrence of Arabia. I've never encountered that idea before, but now it makes so much sense that I can't unsee it. Certain characters enter the cultural consciousness as archetypes that pop up in fiction again and again, often with no conscious reference to the original, yet the influence is clear. I'm not saying anyone intentionally set out to create Sisko in the image of Lawrence (the movie version, not the historical one), but he fits the type so well. (If you've never seen Lawrence of Arabia, you should, if for no other reason than that it invented a good deal of the visual language we now associate with the "sweeping epic," including Star Wars. And if you ever get a chance to see it on a big screen, it's well worth going out of your way for.)

So how is Sisko like Lawrence? He's an officer sent to a remote location as a liaison from a colonial power that sees itself as enlightened and benevolent (British/Federation), but is not above pursuing its own interests in global/galactic conflicts. In this case, it is inserting itself into the conflict between a backward but noble, spiritually oriented people (Arabs/Bajorans), and an empire against which they are rebelling that is brutal, oppressive, and, one suspects, on the decline (Ottomans/Cardassians), but nevertheless remains a threat to remote colonies under British/Federation protection. In many ways, the depiction of Bajor in DS9 is reminiscent of the orientalism oozing from Lawrence of Arabia -- simultaneously admiring and condescending. Along the way, Sisko/Lawrence becomes a spiritual figure to the Bajorans/Arabs and comes to value their independent interests more than the distant ones he's supposed to be representing, which he never fully abandons, either. He is not one of them, but he respects them and is willing to use their regard as a valuable tool, a means to an end. He inhabits an awkward position between two worlds, never comfortable with the veneration directed toward him, but ultimately coming to see himself as chosen for some greater good.

(I know a lot of people bristle at the idea of the Federation as an inherently colonialist enterprise, pardon the pun, but it is. The Federation is yet another version of the grand tale we in the West like to tell ourselves about our highly evolved values that we have but to expose the world/galaxy to, and they will inevitably come to appreciate and share them, and when they do, they will be ready to join us in a kind of secular holy alliance. It's the story America tells itself, and Britain told itself before that. In aspiring to be better, we tend to take what we know and idealize it. When we set that story in the future, we call it sci fi.)

Thoughts on DS9: The Visitor

I always say, there are no bad stories, only badly written ones. And conversely, if a story is good, it's good because it's well written. DS9's "The Visitor" is a prime example of this rule. There's so much that could have gone wrong -- and in lesser hands, often does -- but that here goes very right.

I just rewatched this lovely episode, which, to be honest, I'd all but forgotten. This tear-jerker could have been embarrassingly cheesy. It could have been deadly dull, focusing as it does on a version of a character we don't really know (adult Jake Sisko) and featuring the regulars very little. The technobabble-based premise of Jake dragging his temporally shifted father through time could have stretched credulity to the breaking point. The framing story of old Jake's tale to a stranger is hardly original ("The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone/He cannot choose but hear/And thus spake on that ancient man/The bright-eyed Mariner"). And yet the episode manages to be authentically touching. By crafting a plot that's not killingly obvious, and by striking emotional notes that ring true, the writing walks a thin line, avoiding (sometimes barely) veering into the maudlin or the melodramatic, keeping us nailed to our seats and emotionally invested. (For comparison, check out "Facets," the Dax-centric story just a couple of episodes earlier. It's so thinly written, you can't get past the flawed premise that, if Dax has all the memories of her previous hosts, she ought to already know that Curzon had been in love with Jadzia. But I digress.)

Of course, the acting has to be up to the writing, and it is. Tony Todd as adult Jake is spot on, but the story also owes an awful lot to Cirroc Lofton, who sells bereaved young Jake for all he's worth. I mean, that scene in sick bay...wow. The kid delivered.

On the downside, if an episode makes me cry, but it doesn't have an impact on the characters and the series as a whole, I just feel so ripped off. Having grown up on the highly stylized, episodic storytelling of American television, I never used to hope for more. But now, when I see something like "The Visitor," where there's a climax with great emotional impact, and then the whole denouement is maybe two minutes, tops, it's so unsatisfying. What's more, because I'm binge-watching, I'm quickly on to the next episode, and it's like the whole thing never happened. That's why I'm so grateful ST is getting a chance to do fully serialized storytelling in Disco. But "The Visitor" also makes me realize that I hope Disco takes some time in its second season to slow down a little bit and give its characters room to breathe. All through season 1, it's been driving hard to pack a ton of plot into every hour, to deliver the kind of breathless pace that's become the norm for big-budget action film and TV, and to keep the audience guessing about the characters' secrets and motives. But once we get on a firmer footing and resolve some of that, I hope there'll be more (non-cheesy, believable) character pieces. We got a taste of that with Saru in “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum,” and even better, with Stamets in "Magic to the Make the Sanest Man Go Mad," where the character development was an organic part of an entertaining twist on a vintage plot (talk about "no such thing as a bad story..."). I want a whole lot more.

Welcome to my crystal ball

Five more episodes in the season, and now we have titles. Carefully considered predictions (i.e. wild guesses) we can all laugh about later:

10. Despite Yourself  Implies someone meets their double. We're in the mirror universe and we encounter alt-Stamets, who peeked out of the mirror so creepily at the end of "Choose Your Pain." Possibly other doppelgangers as well?  We learn that Lorca intentionally brought the Discovery there; tension is ratcheted up as the story feeds mistrust of Lorca. (I'm betting that, while this is the mirror universe and the crew does encounter some of the locals, the contact is very limited,  in order to preserve the TOS premise that Kirk et al arrive in the mirror universe with no knowledge of the place.)

11. The Wolf Inside  Resolution of the Voq/Tyler story line. I'm betting that Tyler is really human, not a surgically altered Voq, but Voq's mind has been implanted in him (resulting in the death of the real Voq, who has in fact sacrificed everything). Something activates the Voq inside; Voq/Tyler team up with L'Rell in an effort to steal the Discovery; they fail, and inner Voq is vanquished, leaving Tyler as himself again.

12. Vaulting Ambition  A Tilly episode, as the concept of ambition seems most closely associated with her and her very specific career goals. No idea what it's about, but hoping she saves the day and receives the recognition she deserves.

13. What's Past Is Prologue  This is where my pet theory about Lorca's motives being all about rescuing the crew of the Buran, trapped in the mirror universe, plays out. The past to which the title refers is the supposed destruction of the Buran at Lorca's own hand, which could be prologue to the destruction of the Discovery. But in fact, the past is Lorca never giving up on his crew, which is prologue to the successful rescue of both the Buran's crew and Discovery itself, which safely returns to its own universe.

14. The War Without, The War Within  The resolution of the war without (with the Klingons) and the war within (the conflicts on Discovery). Along the way, Burnham (yet again) renders a vital service at great personal risk and is pardoned.

15. Will You Take My Hand?  Couldn't begin to guess at the story, but it ends with a peacetime Discovery (the spore drive having been abandoned and its existence buried in never-to-be-opened top secret files, lest it open a gateway to dangerous universes), a unified crew, Burnham restored to her Starfleet rank, and a new mission of discovery.

The pointing and laughing begins January 7,  2018. I'll go first.

Interesting choice of words

I'm still nursing the theory that, when Disco returns, we're going to learn that the reason Captain Lorca has brought the Discovery to an alternate universe is that he's on a mission to rescue the crew of his previous ship, the Buran, which was somehow trapped there. So I was interested to note that, in this promo video, Jason Isaacs says, "We find out that he lost his entire crew, and I am sure in his mind he could have made different decisions to save them." Lorca lost his entire crew -- not that he saw them die. Hmm....

Going back to "Choose Your Pain," his exact words regarding the Buran are, "I didn't let my crew die. I blew them up." I could be dead wrong (pun intended), but both Lorca and Isaacs seem to be choosing their words carefully and avoiding saying that the Buran's crew is dead.

An anniversary

Yesterday was the 38th anniversary of the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. So here's all I have to say about that.

Having become a Star Trek fan during what I now refer to as the Dead Years -- the period of time between the end of TOS and ST:TMP, when the common wisdom was that ST was well and truly dead -- the news that they were making a movie was beyond thrilling. Under any other circumstances, I would have been there on opening day -- but I was on a gap year abroad. Not only couldn't I see it on opening day, but six months later, I still hadn't seen it. In those days, there was a long delay in opening new films overseas.

On my return to the States, the first question I asked my brother was, of course, "How was the Star Trek movie?" I'll never forget the look on his face. It was kind of like this:

When I finally got to see TMP, I understood that look. Most ST fans wanted so badly to love it.  We were trying really hard...and it wasn't all bad, so...but still, it was hard to deny...I mean, we'd been waiting all those years, and they remade The Changeling?...it could have been worse though...but still, that's it?...that's all we're getting?...really?....

Hence, that look. ^^^^

I didn't realize it at the time, but the idea that was beginning to dawn on me was that it is possible to create something people will love without fully understanding its appeal. That's exactly what Star Trek was to Gene Roddenberry. (Chris Carter and The X-Files is another example...but that's a post for another day.) Eventually this realization would crystallize in season 1 of TNG. (But that's also a post for another day. A very, very long one.)