Today's Wednesday, right?
Time is moving in weird ways for me right now. Mostly way, way too fast. But there's new The Office tomorrow! SO EXCITING. And it will be here in the blink of an eye.
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Babylon 5 1.17 - "Legacies"
First order of business: Grace Una, who played the orphan waif, Alisa Belden, was worst actor to grace this series so far by several orders of magnitude. That's saying something. It wasn't just that she couldn't deliver her lines with anything approaching normal human diction; she also walked and moved badly. So terrible! I wonder whose niece or cousin she was. I refuse to believe they deliberately cast her after an audition. That would be like finding out that Dante's Cove had full 22-episode seasons: a piece of news so shocking to my fundamental sense of human decency and enlightenment that I literally cannot imagine such a world.
But let's not cut off the badly-acting nose to spite the face full of arc-y goodness. (That is perhaps not the best metaphor.) There was a lot of interesting stuff going on in both A and B plots in this episode. On the one hand, there was Ivanova, confronted with a stand-in for her mother, someone whose latent psychic talents were coming to the fore, and whose path would seem to inevitably end at the Psi Corps door unless Ivanova could intervene. I get the sense, from this episode and from previous ones, that Ivanova replays her mother's deterioration often in her head, wonders if there was something that could have changed the results, something she could have done. We've seen some really crappy behavior from people like Bester, and some hints of evil machinations by the Corps, and Ivanova's grievance against them is real--strong, but not totally irrational, based in specific events and her reaction to them, and on the natural idea that some people with that kind of power will abuse it. But we've also seen the individuals of the Corps, people like Talia and Gray, who see their work as a fulfillment of duty, and a help, and who have a strong personal sense of ethics. Na'Toth's offer reinforces the idea that the power itself is neutral, but how it's used is not. (It was also interesting that Ivanova's description of Narn society was so negative, that their grievances against other and their own behavior seem so similar, and I liked that Na'Toth's mind looked cold and alien to Alisa, since Na'Toth is, after all, not human, and should not think or view the world like one.) The Minbari, at least, leave the use of the power to the psychic, rather than attempting to harness it through institutions; that doesn't address what happens when the psychic, rather than the institution, decides to abuse that power.
And on the other hand, there was more internal Minbari politics: the tension between the warrior and priestly castes is more complicated than it first appeared: the Earth-Minbari war was regarded as a holy and just war; the great Minbari war hero had been a priest; many of the warrior caste had not agreed with the decision to surrender; Delenn took a lot of risks to honor Branmer's desire not to be paraded around as a war hero after his death. (Those risks actually don't hold up that well to scrutiny; we shall wave our hands.) In the course of the investigation into the disappearance of the war hero's body, there was also a delightfully strange and gross detour into what the station's carrion-eaters might have had for their last meal, and if this were Farscape, we would totally have seen Steven picking through those stomach contents. With his hands. Neroon's first reaction to Sinclair--wanting to punch him in the face--is one that we, the audience, can perhaps sympathize with a little too much, but by the end of the episode he had come to accept and even enjoy Michael O'Hare's acting as a piece of surreal performance art realize that things can be more complicated than they appear, that the obvious enemy isn't always the real one. Delenn took him to school, and it was magnificent; she's crafty, and subtle, and I am terribly curious now about the Gray Council--weren't they the ones who captured Sinclair?
Babylon 5 1.18 - "A Voice in the Wilderness Part 1"
Dr. Tasaki was so gung-ho about returning to Epsilon 3 to investigate the strange signals, and such an episodic character, that I was sure he was a goner. The show confounded my expectations, though, as they did with Sinclair's sort-of-ex girlfriend. The point wasn't that the scientific expedition died horrible fiery deaths, but that Sinclair and Ivanova ended up on the away team, and Indiana Jones-level booby-trap hijinks aside, proved to be a pretty effective team.
The earlier hints of political unrest on Mars set up the open revolt on Mars nicely; I would have expected Sinclair to be the one with the personal connections to the rebellion, but it turns out that Garibaldi's ex-girlfriend was on Mars, and unaccounted for. It's interesting that the Psi Corps has a secret facility on Mars--not the least because they seem to prize preserving its secrecy over not only helping Garibaldi communicate with his ex but also making it available to Earth government as a resource to put down the rebellion. Also, again, the individual members of the Psi Corps are sympathetic individuals--Talia, making the connection for Garibaldi, and the Martian Psi Corps member trying to get him what information she could within the strictures of her position, because she understood that not knowing what has happened to a loved one is painful.
The Londo bits of this episode were random, but very entertaining: his fixation on the lack of meaning in the hokey-pokey and what that says about humans; his marital anecdotes. He seems like someone who seeks meaning in everyday life. It was also nice to see Delenn and Londo negotiating a trade agreement, with Sinclair as mediator: the humdrum work the station was built to facilitate. laurashapiro and I both start yawning uncontrollably at 9pm, so we only watched the first part. I'm curious to see what happens with the giant ship that came through the jump gates at the end (which seemed like an odd place for the cliffhanger, since the natural point of suspense was the earthquake in the underground facility that looked like it was going to trap Sinclair and Ivanova), and what's up with the mysterious person they found down on that planet, and why the underground facility on the planet started calling attention to itself all of a sudden, after, seemingly, a very long silence or hibernation.
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Watching the Caprica episodes at the beginning of Season 2 of BSG, after the big revelation in 3.20, is kind of interesting. In "The Farm," Simon uses Kara's affection for Anders as a weapon, telling her he brought her in, and that he's dead--feeding her sense of isolation, causing her grief, so that she won't notice the fishiness of the hospital setup until it's too late. And it almost works. But how does Simon know what's going on between Anders and Kara? It was probably a plot hole, or you can extrapolate that she rambled deliriously and he put it together. I have no reason to believe that the writers had planned, that early on, for Anders to be a Cylon. (I don't think he was even meant to have as large and continuous a role as he ended up having, at that point.) But there are things about it that fit, all the way back in the beginning.
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Book report, Super Extra Behind Edition:
Sister Noon by Karen Joy Fowler: Sister Noon is just a lovely novel from start to finish, a story of growing pains, both Lizzie Hayes's and the city of San Francisco's. Fowler has a wonderful way of drawing characters who aren't larger than life, but are instead every bit as frail and small as everyday, while still being moving and compelling. Lizzie Hayes doesn't start stretching herself until half her life has passed her by, and only has a limited reach, but it's a brave struggle.
Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead: The never-named narrator is a nomenclature consultant, in charge of naming things, and by naming them defining them. He named the bandaid that hid his festering toe wound so that it didn't heal. He's been hired to rename a town, a place settled by free slaves, then renamed, and transformed, by a white commercial class, and recently colonized by a software company that wants to rename it again. Everyone he meets has a connection to one of the names, and one of the potential identities, of the town. The novel is sly and at times quite funny, but it is also a profound and interesting meditation on identity, on what's in a name, on how what we choose to call things can shape a future, or erase a history.
White Knight by Jim Butcher (Dresden Files Book 9): While the way Dresden referred to Molly Carpenter when she was first introduced in the series was vaguely creepy, Butcher started moving away from it almost immediately, and has ended up developing a pretty interesting plotline with her: magical ethics, what's self-imposed and what's externally enforced. The fact that Molly wants to help, and doesn't understand what she's capable of, is both very teenager-y and reasonably complicated, since one of the book's big themes seems to be that ignorance and carelessness with power can often be as destructive as malice. The one thing that fell a little flat in this installment was the resolution of the Lasciel situation, which seemed too easy, and hopefully is.
The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell: The basic outline: Jesuit-backed mission to make first contact with an alien species goes horribly wrong. I came really close to putting this book down about three quarters of the way through. There were things about it that were pretty interesting, particularly the exploration of the nature of faith and what it takes to make a person really break down. But a lot of it felt not quite ready for prime time. Russell isn't a bad writer, exactly, but she did a lot of things that I associate with ff.net, quite frankly: jarringly shifting POVs, clumsy exposition dumps, lots of telling, and telling from the POV of everyone no less (i.e. "Everyone felt that blah blah blah"). None of the characters really came to life for me, and a couple of them were outright annoying in their quirky perfection. There's a potentially very powerful twist, one that outlines the problems with first contact, with going into a situation with your own cultural baggage and making assumptions without even realizing it; that somewhat mitigates the way the alien civilization otherwise comes across as exotic but not really alien. And the ultimate resolution was a psychological breakthrough straight out of Oprah, which left me with a bad taste in my mouth. So, yeah, I had very mixed feelings about this book. I ended up not exactly being sorry I had read it, but thinking it had huge problems, and wondering why it seems to be sold as literary fiction, when it had problems on that front as well as the science fiction front.
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon: Hooray for the San Francisco Public Library! Because I dropped this book in the chute after slogging through to page 400, so buying it would have been a waste. It's a really plotty time-travel historical romance, but it's heavy on the romance. I suspect it's a really excellent read for people who enjoy that much romance, because the historical details are vivid and not too whitewashed. People were dirty in eighteenth-century Scotland; there was no indoor plumbing; it was a violent time, and the politics were complicated and fraught with danger. I was never quite able to stop scoffing at the convenience of Claire and Jamie just having to get married, though, and Claire crossed the line from spirited and self-sufficient into idiotically stubborn and self-sabotaging at one point, and it was all downhill from there for me. Ah well.
* * * * *
Babylon 5 1.17 - "Legacies"
First order of business: Grace Una, who played the orphan waif, Alisa Belden, was worst actor to grace this series so far by several orders of magnitude. That's saying something. It wasn't just that she couldn't deliver her lines with anything approaching normal human diction; she also walked and moved badly. So terrible! I wonder whose niece or cousin she was. I refuse to believe they deliberately cast her after an audition. That would be like finding out that Dante's Cove had full 22-episode seasons: a piece of news so shocking to my fundamental sense of human decency and enlightenment that I literally cannot imagine such a world.
But let's not cut off the badly-acting nose to spite the face full of arc-y goodness. (That is perhaps not the best metaphor.) There was a lot of interesting stuff going on in both A and B plots in this episode. On the one hand, there was Ivanova, confronted with a stand-in for her mother, someone whose latent psychic talents were coming to the fore, and whose path would seem to inevitably end at the Psi Corps door unless Ivanova could intervene. I get the sense, from this episode and from previous ones, that Ivanova replays her mother's deterioration often in her head, wonders if there was something that could have changed the results, something she could have done. We've seen some really crappy behavior from people like Bester, and some hints of evil machinations by the Corps, and Ivanova's grievance against them is real--strong, but not totally irrational, based in specific events and her reaction to them, and on the natural idea that some people with that kind of power will abuse it. But we've also seen the individuals of the Corps, people like Talia and Gray, who see their work as a fulfillment of duty, and a help, and who have a strong personal sense of ethics. Na'Toth's offer reinforces the idea that the power itself is neutral, but how it's used is not. (It was also interesting that Ivanova's description of Narn society was so negative, that their grievances against other and their own behavior seem so similar, and I liked that Na'Toth's mind looked cold and alien to Alisa, since Na'Toth is, after all, not human, and should not think or view the world like one.) The Minbari, at least, leave the use of the power to the psychic, rather than attempting to harness it through institutions; that doesn't address what happens when the psychic, rather than the institution, decides to abuse that power.
And on the other hand, there was more internal Minbari politics: the tension between the warrior and priestly castes is more complicated than it first appeared: the Earth-Minbari war was regarded as a holy and just war; the great Minbari war hero had been a priest; many of the warrior caste had not agreed with the decision to surrender; Delenn took a lot of risks to honor Branmer's desire not to be paraded around as a war hero after his death. (Those risks actually don't hold up that well to scrutiny; we shall wave our hands.) In the course of the investigation into the disappearance of the war hero's body, there was also a delightfully strange and gross detour into what the station's carrion-eaters might have had for their last meal, and if this were Farscape, we would totally have seen Steven picking through those stomach contents. With his hands. Neroon's first reaction to Sinclair--wanting to punch him in the face--is one that we, the audience, can perhaps sympathize with a little too much, but by the end of the episode he had come to accept and even enjoy Michael O'Hare's acting as a piece of surreal performance art realize that things can be more complicated than they appear, that the obvious enemy isn't always the real one. Delenn took him to school, and it was magnificent; she's crafty, and subtle, and I am terribly curious now about the Gray Council--weren't they the ones who captured Sinclair?
Babylon 5 1.18 - "A Voice in the Wilderness Part 1"
Dr. Tasaki was so gung-ho about returning to Epsilon 3 to investigate the strange signals, and such an episodic character, that I was sure he was a goner. The show confounded my expectations, though, as they did with Sinclair's sort-of-ex girlfriend. The point wasn't that the scientific expedition died horrible fiery deaths, but that Sinclair and Ivanova ended up on the away team, and Indiana Jones-level booby-trap hijinks aside, proved to be a pretty effective team.
The earlier hints of political unrest on Mars set up the open revolt on Mars nicely; I would have expected Sinclair to be the one with the personal connections to the rebellion, but it turns out that Garibaldi's ex-girlfriend was on Mars, and unaccounted for. It's interesting that the Psi Corps has a secret facility on Mars--not the least because they seem to prize preserving its secrecy over not only helping Garibaldi communicate with his ex but also making it available to Earth government as a resource to put down the rebellion. Also, again, the individual members of the Psi Corps are sympathetic individuals--Talia, making the connection for Garibaldi, and the Martian Psi Corps member trying to get him what information she could within the strictures of her position, because she understood that not knowing what has happened to a loved one is painful.
The Londo bits of this episode were random, but very entertaining: his fixation on the lack of meaning in the hokey-pokey and what that says about humans; his marital anecdotes. He seems like someone who seeks meaning in everyday life. It was also nice to see Delenn and Londo negotiating a trade agreement, with Sinclair as mediator: the humdrum work the station was built to facilitate. laurashapiro and I both start yawning uncontrollably at 9pm, so we only watched the first part. I'm curious to see what happens with the giant ship that came through the jump gates at the end (which seemed like an odd place for the cliffhanger, since the natural point of suspense was the earthquake in the underground facility that looked like it was going to trap Sinclair and Ivanova), and what's up with the mysterious person they found down on that planet, and why the underground facility on the planet started calling attention to itself all of a sudden, after, seemingly, a very long silence or hibernation.
* * * * *
Watching the Caprica episodes at the beginning of Season 2 of BSG, after the big revelation in 3.20, is kind of interesting. In "The Farm," Simon uses Kara's affection for Anders as a weapon, telling her he brought her in, and that he's dead--feeding her sense of isolation, causing her grief, so that she won't notice the fishiness of the hospital setup until it's too late. And it almost works. But how does Simon know what's going on between Anders and Kara? It was probably a plot hole, or you can extrapolate that she rambled deliriously and he put it together. I have no reason to believe that the writers had planned, that early on, for Anders to be a Cylon. (I don't think he was even meant to have as large and continuous a role as he ended up having, at that point.) But there are things about it that fit, all the way back in the beginning.
* * * * *
Book report, Super Extra Behind Edition:
Sister Noon by Karen Joy Fowler: Sister Noon is just a lovely novel from start to finish, a story of growing pains, both Lizzie Hayes's and the city of San Francisco's. Fowler has a wonderful way of drawing characters who aren't larger than life, but are instead every bit as frail and small as everyday, while still being moving and compelling. Lizzie Hayes doesn't start stretching herself until half her life has passed her by, and only has a limited reach, but it's a brave struggle.
Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead: The never-named narrator is a nomenclature consultant, in charge of naming things, and by naming them defining them. He named the bandaid that hid his festering toe wound so that it didn't heal. He's been hired to rename a town, a place settled by free slaves, then renamed, and transformed, by a white commercial class, and recently colonized by a software company that wants to rename it again. Everyone he meets has a connection to one of the names, and one of the potential identities, of the town. The novel is sly and at times quite funny, but it is also a profound and interesting meditation on identity, on what's in a name, on how what we choose to call things can shape a future, or erase a history.
White Knight by Jim Butcher (Dresden Files Book 9): While the way Dresden referred to Molly Carpenter when she was first introduced in the series was vaguely creepy, Butcher started moving away from it almost immediately, and has ended up developing a pretty interesting plotline with her: magical ethics, what's self-imposed and what's externally enforced. The fact that Molly wants to help, and doesn't understand what she's capable of, is both very teenager-y and reasonably complicated, since one of the book's big themes seems to be that ignorance and carelessness with power can often be as destructive as malice. The one thing that fell a little flat in this installment was the resolution of the Lasciel situation, which seemed too easy, and hopefully is.
The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell: The basic outline: Jesuit-backed mission to make first contact with an alien species goes horribly wrong. I came really close to putting this book down about three quarters of the way through. There were things about it that were pretty interesting, particularly the exploration of the nature of faith and what it takes to make a person really break down. But a lot of it felt not quite ready for prime time. Russell isn't a bad writer, exactly, but she did a lot of things that I associate with ff.net, quite frankly: jarringly shifting POVs, clumsy exposition dumps, lots of telling, and telling from the POV of everyone no less (i.e. "Everyone felt that blah blah blah"). None of the characters really came to life for me, and a couple of them were outright annoying in their quirky perfection. There's a potentially very powerful twist, one that outlines the problems with first contact, with going into a situation with your own cultural baggage and making assumptions without even realizing it; that somewhat mitigates the way the alien civilization otherwise comes across as exotic but not really alien. And the ultimate resolution was a psychological breakthrough straight out of Oprah, which left me with a bad taste in my mouth. So, yeah, I had very mixed feelings about this book. I ended up not exactly being sorry I had read it, but thinking it had huge problems, and wondering why it seems to be sold as literary fiction, when it had problems on that front as well as the science fiction front.
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon: Hooray for the San Francisco Public Library! Because I dropped this book in the chute after slogging through to page 400, so buying it would have been a waste. It's a really plotty time-travel historical romance, but it's heavy on the romance. I suspect it's a really excellent read for people who enjoy that much romance, because the historical details are vivid and not too whitewashed. People were dirty in eighteenth-century Scotland; there was no indoor plumbing; it was a violent time, and the politics were complicated and fraught with danger. I was never quite able to stop scoffing at the convenience of Claire and Jamie just having to get married, though, and Claire crossed the line from spirited and self-sufficient into idiotically stubborn and self-sabotaging at one point, and it was all downhill from there for me. Ah well.