24 in 24: season 6. (Which is apparently set in 2013, and is therefore clearly sf…) Liveblogging here.

Here:

We need to write a detailed critique of the plot, character, race and gender elements of Heroes. We need to have one place where the producers and writers of Heroes can come and find what fandom has to say on these issues.

That’s the purpose of this website. We don’t need to Save Heroes from cancellation or network misuse, we need to Save Heroes from itself. Because it’s not a lost cause. It’s still capable of being the amazing show it was in season one. No, it’s capable of being even better.

[…]

Timeline

Week of November 19 – 25
Putting together the first draft – accepting comments/links/contributions from all fans

November 26 – 28
Creating the first draft, soliciting input from contributors.

December 3rd
Final draft ready.

As I mentioned in the comments of a recent post, I’m in the process of rewatching the first season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In the great Babylon 5 vs. DS9 rivalry, I started out firmly in the B5 camp, and ended up firmly in the DS9 camp — despite the fact that I missed large chunks of the later seasons. As a result, collecting the DVD sets and rewatching the whole show from start to finish has been a vague ambition of mine for some time. I was finally spurred into action by the confluence of (a) being bought the first season for my birthday and (b) the desert that is the summer tv schedule.

Given that it’s received wisdom that DS9 didn’t get good until the Defiant turned up (which in turn created the received wisdom that it takes three seasons for Trek shows to find their feet), my expectations for the season weren’t particularly high, and so far — with the exception of the pilot, “Emissary”, which turned out to be really quite good — they’ve been met. Abigail made reference to Trek‘s “overpowering squareness“, and it’s certainly something the early DS9 struggles, not very successfully, to avoid. The most interesting characters are almost all the outsiders — the acerbic, abrasive Odo, of course, but also weaselly Quark (I haven’t had to sit through any Ferengi comedy yet), and the rather wonderful Major Kira. I’m enjoying Avery Brooks’ performances as Ben Sisko more than I did first time around, probably because I can see the roots of what he becomes in later seasons, but you can see that neither writers nor actor have really got the hang of how best to deploy the character’s mix of iron authority, explosive anger, and occasional ebullience.

Although there are glimpses. In the episode I’ve just watched, “Dax” — in which Jadzia Dax is put on trial for treason and murder originally committed in the symbiote’s previous life, as Curzon Dax — there’s a marvellous little scene in which Sisko and Kira double-team the man trying to extradite Jadzia, Ilon Tandro (played by President Logan Gregory Itzin). Tandro’s people have a treaty with the Federation that allows “unilateral extradition” (God knows how that one got signed), which they invoke when their initial attempt to kidnap Jadzia Dax is thwarted; but of course, Deep Space Nine is technically a Bajoran station:

TANDRO:
That’s absurd. No Bajoran interests are even involved here.

KIRA:
How did you people know your way around this station so well?

TANDRO (with disdain):
My conversation is with the Commander.

SISKO (stepping back):
No, I think your conversation is with my First Officer now.

KIRA:
You Klaestrons are allies of the Cardassians. Your knowledge of this station confirms that. They must have given you the layout, which not only comprises Bajoran security but also … [beat, then with a certain amount of relish] annoys us.

SISKO (faux-apologetic):
I’m afraid it means Bajoran interests are involved. And Bajor is adamant that — [courteous, directed at Kira] At least, I believe it’s adamant —

KIRA (definite relish now):
Oh yes, adamant.

SISKO:
You see. There will have to be an extradition hearing before I can lawfully release Lieutenant Dax.

I never thought I’d say find myself watching an incarnation of Star Trek for the characters, but here I am. Every episode so far has featured one or two wonderful nuggets of interaction like this — or a great guest star; “Dax” features Anne Haney as the fabulously crotchety arbitrator of the extradition hearing (“I’ll start with some informal advice to all: I’m one hundred years old. I’ve no time to squander listening to superfluous language. In short, I intend being here until supper, not senility. Understood?”). Which is just as well, since the plots have been almost uniformly lame. “Dax” is a transparent excuse to explain Trills to the viewers; the exploration of the putative issue at hand is somewhat half-hearted (certainly in comparison to The Next Generation‘s Data-on-trial episode, “The Measure of a Man”), and in the end the question is dodged entirely by having Dax’s innocence revealed just as Dax is finally asked, directly, whether she considers herself responsible for Curzon’s crimes. The secondary theme — the exploration of Dax and Sisko’s friendship; after all, Sisko is in the position of having to prove that Jadzia Dax is not his friend, when he’s spent the previous six episodes trying to convince himself that she is — is also underdeveloped. More evidence of Trek‘s squareness, perhaps; a lingering unwillingness to really delve into interpersonal conflicts between members of the Federation.

Of course DS9 improves, until it becomes the show of later seasons, a show both bolder and more subtle than the one I’m watching at the moment, probably peaking in the sixth season with episodes like “Far Beyond the Stars” and “In the Pale Moonlight”. The high-point of B5, at least for me, is the station’s declaration of independence from Earth. It strikes me now that DS9 made a more gradual declaration of independence of its own, one that I’m still eager, if a little impatient, to revisit.

In the former camp, “that the latest episode of John From Cincinnati was great”; in the latter, “that I didn’t fully understand what happened in the last ten minutes.”

(Seriously, is anyone other than me watching this show?)

Four episodes and three days of storytime in, and I think I’m warming to John From Cincinnati. It remains a low-key, unflashy, methodical affair; although the fantastic events surrounding John are driving the story, they never dominate it, and the style throughout is determinedly naturalistic. Episode four is the day after Shaun Yost got his neck broken by a bad wave, then ended up walking out of hospital a few hours later without a scratch on him. The press, of course, got wind of the story, and staked out the Yost homestead; meanwhile, John told Kai to “see God”, which resulted in a grainy vision sequence that strongly implied that John has a kind of omniscience. Today, the papers are running “Miracle Boy” headlines, Dr. Smith (who treated Shaun) has resigned to save his hospital a wrongful diagnosis lawsuit, but is convinced there’s something more going on, Mitch Yost (sent into a philosophical tailspin by the combined effect of Shaun’s accident and recovery, and his own floating) has shacked up with Cass, Kai is wondering what John did to her, and John himself has been picked up by some Mexican gangsters. They stab him and leave him for dead a few minutes into the episode.

John is in some ways the best thing about John From Cincinnati, despite having almost no identity or agency of his own. He’s not even on-screen that much, but whenever he is there’s a dissonance about his presence, like he’s wandered in from the wrong story. This despite the fact that there’s nothing overtly magical or spiritual about him, and in fact (religious overtones notwithstanding) he acts more like an alien than an angel (although there’s no reason why an angel shouldn’t be treated as an alien). Alternatively, he behaves almost exactly like Alice, or some other algorithm imperfectly imitating humanity. His dialogue consists entirely of (a) phrases he’s heard other people use or variations thereon (“I’ve got my eye on you!”), (b) things he’s been told to say, often imperfectly (“I don’t know Butchie instead”), and (c) cliches and platitudes (“Tomorrow is another day”). He doesn’t appear to have caused any miracles through conscious intent, and it’s not even clear whether he could: he doesn’t seem to be able to heal his own stab wounds, for example, although he can enable other people to heal him.

It’s at times frustrating that none of the characters seem to be trying very hard to find out anything about John. Every so often, someone will ask him what he means, get a typically cryptic answer, and let the issue drop. To be fair, however, this is because they have their own issues to attend to, many of which have been caused directly or indirectly by John’s presence: and, satisfyingly, John is not a show that wastes much time on characters denying or ignoring or panicking about experiencing a miracle. Instead, almost without exception, they trust their senses, and try to integrate what they’ve experienced into their self-image and their understanding of the world. Mitch is wondering what his floating means, Kai is trying to decode her vision, Dr Smith is investigating Shaun, Butchie is getting suspicious about the fact that he’s gone three days without drugs but isn’t going through withdrawal. All those are eventually paths that will lead back to John, if the press don’t get there first, which means the characters will get around to asking the interesting questions, even if I doubt whether they’ll get any clear-cut answers. Or as John might put it: some things we’ll know, and some things we won’t.

The trouble with having a Doctor Who finale that was less than stellar is that then you get pieces like this one in the Telegraph, which assume it represents the show’s best and reacts accordingly.

And indeed the show did transport me to another place. At the critical point, possibly where the Master was attempting to establish a new Gallifrey at the heart of a billion-year inter-galactic empire, or where the Doctor was interrupting the Archangel network’s telepathic signal by aligning his black-hole converter, I drifted off to the land of nod, dozing happily on the sofa as a load of old cosmic screwdrivers washed over me.

No, wait: the trouble is that these pieces extrapolate from one datapoint to a sweeping conclusion. Jim White, author of the article, seems unfamiliar with the concept of “science fiction” (cf Gareth McLean’s Guardian piece last week), and places Who in the same box as fantasy (though you could argue that’s really where it belongs), a box not to his taste:

But then, had Davies been in possession of the annual expenditure of the Ministry of Defence and had his denouement featured a set the size of Torquay and enough pyrotechnics to match the Northern Lights, plus a script written by Tom Stoppard in collaboration with the team behind The Simpsons, I still wouldn’t have been much moved. […] For some people such a confession is the cultural equivalent of heresy. But the fact is, you either get fantasy or you don’t. It either sets your imagination soaring or leaves you earthbound. There is no such thing as someone who quite likes The Lord of the Rings, or thinks His Dark Materials is all right to pass the time of day. With fantasy, you either take it, fully formed and in its entirety, or leave it, and get on with your life unencumbered by Orcs and cosmic dust.

You know, I’m pretty sure (a) there are plenty of people lukewarm about The Lord of the Rings and His Dark Materials, and (b) that liking one fantasy doesn’t oblige you to like all other fantasy. Of course, given White’s parting shot —

There is, though, one easy shorthand for working out where someone stands across the fantasy gap: if she is a woman, she can generally manage without it. Which is maybe what was happening as I snoozed through the Doctor: I was being put in touch with my feminine side.

— it’s hard not to conclude that his generalisations about taste are, shall we say, a load of Torchwood.

1. Martha. Iain credited me with calling Martha’s leaving, but I think that’s a bit of a stretch, since I didn’t guess either the circumstances or the reason, and I’m pretty sure I was wrong about what the follow-up will be, too. Despite that, it worked for me. I particularly liked (a) that it wasn’t due to any one factor — it wasn’t “because I spent four years training to be a doctor”, it wasn’t “because I have to look after my family”, it wasn’t “because I need to get out”, it was all of the above; and (b) that she has enough sense of her own value to be able to tell the Doctor all those reasons, to his face, in so many words. I originally thought that this turn of events would be followed by the Doctor realising what he’s lost, but now I’m not sure that’s the case; I think he does realise what he’s lost, but also on some level realises what he did to Martha and realises that there’s no way he can invite her back permanently. Essentially, Martha’s arc was that she fell down, emotionally, and spent the season getting back up again; in fact my one reservation is that in retrospect, it looks like they decided the Doctor was going to have this kind of rebound, and then came up with a companion who could plausibly leave without collapsing in on herself — who had enough to go back to. Which would explain why the aspects of her character that enabled that choice — her presence of mind, self-awareness, self-reliance — never seemed to be in the foreground; Martha as means to an end, rather than as a character in her own right. Still, I’m sure that phone will ring at some point and that we’ll see her again.

2. … and then there was the rest of the episode. Somewhat bizarrely, I find myself in the position of liking the finale more than almost anyone else I’ve spoken to or seen a writeup from. Martha got to be awesome (I don’t think the Doctor telling her what to do diminishes her awesomenosity; she still had to go out and do it), within the limitations of the budget the dystopian Earth was quite claustrophobic and dark (some good dialogue helped with that), the Toclaphane being the humans from “Utopia” was perfect, and I didn’t even mind Incredibly Aged Doctor. Floating Telepathic Jesus Doctor, on the other hand … well, even in concept it’s ridiculous, not least because two literal gods out of three season finales just looks lazy, and the execution only made things worse. And, of course, the total bollocks overdrive was only just getting going: suddenly, the paradox machine that could blow up the solar system if you tampered with it can be taken out by a machine gun. I could, perhaps, even forgive that reset if it wasn’t for the fact that everyone who remembers what happened has been shuffled off-screen (except the Doctor, of course, but I doubt he’s going to be dwelling on it much).

3. In spite of this, I find myself looking favourably on season three as a whole. For the first time, I’ve found myself watching out of interest and enjoyment, rather than out of some peverse desire to be able to call my Who-loving friends wrongheads from an informed position. “Smith and Jones” was a good start; the next four episodes (“The Shakespeare Code” through “Evolution of the Daleks”) were mediocre to dire; the next two (“The Lazarus Experiment” and “42”) were competent, entertaining runarounds and the run from “Human Nature” to the end of the season was, until the final fumble, either good or very good. Actually, I’m inclined to go so far as to say that “The Last of the Time Lords”, flawed as it is, was the best season finale Who has managed since it came back; if nothing else, it’s moved the Doctor on to a new and interesting place, since I can easily imagine a season 4 without a permanent companion — a few episodes with Martha, a few with Jack, perhaps someone else towards the end of the season, but essentially a season with the Doctor alone, perhaps undergoing some self-examination, perhaps trying to overcompensate for his alone-ness with some vast, hubristic scheme, such as bringing the time lords. And if nothing else, there’ll be another Steven Moffatt two-parter.