"The Terminator" & Harviestoun ‘Ola Dubh’ Special Reserve
I bet you’re wondering what exactly these three subjects have to do with each other. The answer, of course, is ‘nothing’, but as I’ve sort of gotten into the habit of pairing my ramblings with whisky reviews, I didn’t really have a choice. So, here we go…
Back in the fall of 2010, when Meg was recuperating from her surgery, we bought a whole pile DVDs - mostly the boxed sets of several TV series (CSI, Bones, Supernatural) - for her to watch while she was off work. One of these boxed sets was the first season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (hereinafter referred to as ‘The Chronicles’; ah, look at that government-speak emerging), which takes place in the years between T2 and T3. For some reason, however, we didn’t get around to watching The Chronicles until recently, and after we had, Meg wanted to go back and watch all of the other Terminator movies, or at least the good ones…the less said about Terminator: Salvation, the better.
I guess the first question I should answer is whether or not The Chronicles is worth watching. Well, maybe? Let’s get this straight: I like Summer Glau. She’s a good actress, she was fun as River Tam in Firefly and Serenity, and she is fantastically deadpan here; it really is too bad that everything she gets involved in gets cancelled. Lena Headey is also pretty decent, considering that her portrayal of Sarah Connor had to follow Linda Hamilton’s performance in T2, and while she does manage to pull it off, there are some things that don't work. Specifically, I think Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor was far more technologically capable and was much better at improvising and planning on the fly. Thomas Dekker, as John Connor, is also fairly good: he’s certainly a lot better than Edward Furlong (T2; and where did his career go?), and the jury is out on whether he was better than Nick Stahl in T3 (Meg says yes he was, I say they were both about the same). Overall, the cast does a fairly good job with the material that they’ve been given - Lena Headey as Sarah Connor is clearly different from Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister, and Summer Glau as Cameron is very, very different than Summer Glau as River Tam - and it is nice to see strong female characters that are portrayed as both tough and feminine, as opposed to one or the other. The problems with The Chronicles can all be found in the storyline (the writing), and the directing.
And what problems there are…this is a clusterf&@k of time paradoxes beyond belief; so much so that the ‘twist’ at the end of T2 - that whole SkyNet is being developed from the salvaged parts of the T101/T800 that SkyNet itself sent back in time - can't even be considered a twist anymore. What we have (and there are spoilers here, sorry) is that another Terminator (Cameron; model number unknown) has been sent back in time by Future John to protect himself as he grows up (this makes the third one so far, and as Cameron points out, the Terminators always seem to find John). Why has Future John done this? Well, it appears that SkyNet has also sent a number of T888s back in time, but these units have been given a whole raft of different missions: some have been programmed to target John (so he needs Cameron for protection), while others have been tasked with laying the ground work for SkyNet’s future activation (stockpiling the resources that SkyNet will need to built its cyborg army).
And if this wasn't complex enough, John, Sarah, and Cameron end up throwing themselves forward in time to escape from a T888 (using a device that had been built into a bank vault by resistance fighters who had been sent even further back in time to set up weapons caches and provide technical support for the future resistance...so yes, SkyNet and the human resistance are fighting a low intensity, guerrilla style conflict with each other even before SkyNet has been developed). Once in the future, Sarah et al decide that they are going to take the battle to SkyNet instead of running. You then find out that Future John has also sent human resistance fighters back to watch for, and, where necessary, assist Sarah…getting confused yet? The writers make an attempt to salvage the whole mess by acknowledging that the timeline is divergent and that the dozens of T888s that just happen to be wandering around in the present were sent from a future in which SkyNet is ultimately created and in which the events depicted in T3 do, in fact, occur.
But where it really goes wrong is that the script writers evidently didn’t do their homework. I mean seriously, they take pains to point out that Sarah and John have spent a lot of time in various South and Central American war zones, learning how to use various types of firearms, heavy weapons, and explosives, learning survival skills and small unit tactics, and that Sarah has lot of useful contacts in the criminal and quasi-criminal world. And what do they do with all of this knowledge? Well, they apparently don't remember anything that they learned, because everyone, and I mean everyone, displays a shocking lack of awareness around issues of operational security and as a result, people die.
You wonder how the Terminators always seem to find John and Sarah? Well, we can blame their total disregard for operational security protocols: they don’t engage in counter-surveillance activities, they use easily remembered passwords (the combination on one safe used by a human resistance cell is the date of Judgment Day...I mean, how difficult would that be to figure out?), their aliases are never complex (Sarah is always Sarah 'X', although John does seem to change both of his names up regularly), and they have virtually no operational planning and/or command and control structure. One of the resistance cell members accidentally leads a T888 back to the cell’s safe house (whereupon everyone at the safe house gets killed) because he doesn’t follow proper surveillance protocols and gets burned by a T888 that is following the same target (any kids book on espionage will tell you that one person is incapable of conducting surveillance on a mobile target: it requires a whole team), and then the now deceased individual's commanding officer later admits that he had no idea his subordinate was conducting surveillance against that particular target. WTF? Didn’t they hold daily briefings and debriefings? Was there no internal communication between cell members?
As I’ve said earlier, I’m a fan of espionage themed movies and books, and nothing angers me more than script writers, producers, and directors who make their characters do stupid things that they wouldn’t normally do because they are trained not to those things, for the sake of drama and tension. A trained operator shouldn't just forget field craft (but it happens sometimes): it should be ingrained, and 'sloppy' should only happen on purpose. I certainly make the players in my bi-weekly game plan out their surveillance operations and go through operational briefings and debriefings. I’ve even parsed together a Field Operations Handbook and a Tradecraft Handbook for them (adapted for our gaming world from material produced by Cubicle 7 Games and Pelgrane Press). So, when a script writer or producer, who is paid to produce quality work, ignores operational security issues just to create a dramatic situation (which may not even advance the story) it really makes me cringe. You want good examples of operational security and planning? Then watch Spy Game, or The Lives of Others, or any good heist film. Conversely, I’m willing to forgive the lack of operational security and counter-surveillance that occurs in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, the last book in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy, as the individuals involved in the clandestine SAPO unit had become so arrogant that they didn’t think that they were in danger being discovered.
Ok, now that I’ve got the aforementioned rant off my chest, we can get down to business: Harviestoun ‘Ola Dubh’ Special 12 Reserve. It isn’t actually a whisky, but it is whisky related, and I wasn’t drinking this while watching The Chronicles. What it is, is a strong Scottish Ale - based on Harviestoun’s Old Engine Oil, which more of a stout, really - that has been aged in oak casks that were previously used to mature the single malt whisky that goes into Highland Park 12 year-old. Note, this is the exact opposite of the process used by Innis & Gunn, which ages its (also remarkably good) beer in oak casks that are then used to age whisky (although they also do an ‘Irish Cask’ beer, where the beer is aged in casks that were used to mature Irish whisky, but they don’t disclose which distillery their whisky casks come from). We had our other gaming group (the Abhorsen / Old Kingdom game) over on Saturday evening, and since Jeff is a fan of Highland Park, I thought we’d try it out. At 8% ABV, it is an awesome, but fairly pricy stout ($6 a bottle), with a sort of bacony / bacon grease nose, and a very dark, chocolately, thick body, with faint hints of peat and smoke.
Harviestoun also makes Special 16, 18, 30, & 40 Reserves (although the Ola Dubh web site only mentions the 12, 16 & 30) which, as with the 12, were aged in casks formerly used to mature the single malt that goes into Highland Park 16, 18, 30, & 40, respectively. The LCBO has only the Special 12 in stock, but previously carried the Special 40, which, if I’m reading the product description correctly, appears to have been priced at a whopping $19 per 330ml bottle!
Would I recommend ‘Ola Dubh’? Yes, if you’re a fan of beer (and stouts in particular) and Highland Park whisky, I suggest you check it out. If you don’t like beer (and I don’t really like beer, but I do like dark beers, and some other craft beers), then you probably won’t enjoy it. Would I drink it regularly? No. It is far too expensive, but I’d wouldn’t say no if someone offered me one, and I’d be tempted to buy one of the “older” special reserves if I could find one, just to try it out.