Meanwhile, on another planet...
How other famous fictional detectives would have solved the murder of Laura Palmer All versions are witty, but the Philip Marlowe and the Phryne Fisher one cracked me up especially. Though I note with disapproval that wihile Poirot is represented, Miss Marple is not. Clearly, the Log Lady would have told her everything she needed to know on the first day. :)
Speaking of Twin Peaks, at first I had no intention of watching The Return, because I didn't feel a sequel was necessary, but then
abigail_n's favorable review made me curious, so I marathoned it. And... I can see all her points, but my own impression was far more negative. Not least because there were elements in it which to me felt gratitiously spiteful, such as the fate of Audrey Horne, or disturbing in an unintended way (there's also plenty of deliberately disturbing, but that's a given with Twin Peaks), to wit, things like Janey-E blissfully declaring she's living the dream when that means having a husband with the mental capacity of a toddler unable to do more than repeat the last words of the previous sentence who has to be guided through the simplest motions, which includes her having sex with him. But also because while the original Twin Peaks was not short of female suffering (I mean, the premise alone...), it had a lot of female pov characters as well (Donna, Audrey, Josie, Norma, Shelley). Twin Peaks: The Return, otoh, feels relentlessly male pov to me, and that in combination with the sheer number of abused female characters was very off-putting.
All this being said: Lynch's visual imagination is as good as ever, and I don't regret having watched it, not least for the incredible tenderness of the conversations between Hawke and Margaret, aka the Log Lady, which were filmed while the actress was dying. Oh, and given it's David Lynch, I should have known he'd cast Laura Dern as Diane. It's now impossible to imagine anyone else in that role, and as the recipient of all those tapes.
I've also continued my Star Trek: Enterprise watching to the point where the infamous post-9/11 narrative shift happens, and great maker, as Londo Mollari would say, is it ever immediately noticable. So that feels as good a point as any to look back at the first two seasons with a couple of observations.
1.) At its best, the show uses its early space flight/no Federation yet setting quite well, and certainly does a better job than Voyager did recalling its ship and crew don't have the Starfleet resources for repairs and restocking at their disposal whenever they need them. The episode when Enterprise has to undergo repairs at a fully automated alien station also struck a good balance between satire (for those of us in need of repairs and unable to talk to a human being, going from automated message to automated message instead) and suspense (the reveal about the extra price may have been a tad predictable, but it worked). Also, I appreciate that through the first two seasons there are repeated scenes where our heroes marvel at some space phenomenon in joy and awe - as explorers who'd never been in deep space before and had not seen pictures would.
2.) Otoh, when the show does the genre- and franchise immanent tropes, it rarely if ever rises above formula. This is where the comparison to Star Trek: Discovery is most striking to me. Discovery also does tropes, but delivers them with original twists. When Enterprise does Episode With Alien Princess And Male Starfleet Officer, it follows the same beats we've seen on TOS, on TNG. When it does "Enemy Mine" (another Trip episode), it does so by the letter. It's not that the result is objectionable (I like "Enemy Mine" stories! I do! And the alien pilot here can act better through his latex than Padma Lakshmi without any in the Princess episode), it's that there is no particular twist unique to this particular show in it. (Meanwhile, TNG gave us Darmok, which for my money is still the best ST twist on this particular tale, and not just because Patrick Stewart gets to tell the tale of Gilgamesh.) Whereas, when Discovery does a time loop episode, it does so in a way that's different from the TNG version, or for that matter the Xena and Buffy versions, furthers the relationships between regulars (Michael Burnham & Paul Stamets, Michael Burnham & Ash Tyler) and expands everyone's characterisations (plus the way our heroine forces the antagonist of the episode to reset the loop one more time is both inventive and outstandingly brave).
3.) Back when I had watched the fourth season without having watched more than the first three episodes of the first or any other season, I said that I found Malcolm Reed and Travis Mayweather bland as characters, without defining characterisation. Which I take back now; in the first two seasons, they get ample characterisation unique to them. Hoshi so far had to do more in s1 than in s2, and I do wish they'd have given her more scenes with T'Pol, because the few they get are always very interesting.
4.) At least two of the episodes are outstanding examples of HOW NOT TO WRITE MORAL DILEMMA EPISODES. Good lord, Berman & Braga. I haven't seen such tone deaf examples of "episode thinks it tells one story while actually coming across as telling something completely different" since TNG's The Outcast (aka the one where the writers' idea had been to do a sympathetic allegory about homosexuality while the result, not least due to the casting of the supposedly androgynous species by solely female actors, came across as Riker versus the planet of the intolerant lesbians). What I'm referring to: "Dear Doctor" in season 1, and "The Congenitor" in season 2. "The Congenitor" irritated me more because for the most part, I thought it worked quite well until we came to the denouement. It was a painful joy to see Andreas "G'Kar" Katsulas again, and his parts of the episode were one of those "space exploration is amazing!" scenes Enterprise, when it wants, does in a heartfelt way. I also before the denouement thought that the presentation of the aliens as both technologically advanced, friendly and, as was revealed through the episode, literally enslaving a part of their population was well done, because it's easy to condemm Space Nazi Species #1000444 with the usual red and black color scheme and the vocabullary to match, or for that matter Space Roman Species #100440 complete with whips for the slaves . It's far harder if the people in question are nice and truly helpful to you and carry themselves in a calm, reasonable manner. (It's also far more realistic. I mean, I bet a great many of today's sweatshop owners don't wear evil insignia of evil and come across as lovely people in conversation.) Now, I was a bit surprised that no one, not even Trip who wanted to help, called the status of the congenitors what it was: slavery. I mean, there was no subtlety about it. The congenitors have no physical autonomy, they get assigned to whichever couple wants to have a child, they do not get any financial reward (other than being clothed and fed), they have no liberty of movement at their own disposal. And the male and female of the species regarding the congenitors as not being intelligent and childlike sounded awfullly familiar, too. The episode went to a great length to establish this last was an entirely wrong assumption, that the congenitors were as intelligent as the rest of the species, and that the one we meet in the episode, once it has grown out of the brainwashing of regarding itself as lesser than the male and female of its species, absolutely does not want to return to that enslaved existence.And then Archer responds to the congenitor seeking asylum with "sorry, no can do, because we must respect other cultures and establish good relationships with this one" , and when the congenitor subsequently kills themselves rather than be a slave again, it's Trip who gets the "how could you?" lecture (about having interfered with the congenitor's existence in the first place), with the episode agreeing since it has Trip telling Archer "it's not your fault". But it is. Entirely. And not for the reason Archer names in his one sentence of self blame (not having been a good enough role model for Trip). Look, writers, when Sisko resorts to lies, then larger deceit, then eventual political murder in order to change the outcome of a war by making the Romulans go from neutral to allies, that's a good shades of grey morality/moral dilemma episode, because even if Sisko is kidding himself about what he's doing at first, he's called out by Garak on it, and by the end is aware of just what he's done. Also, the balance of stakes - lives of Romulan crew versus Dominion victory in the Alpha Quadrant - makes it believable that Sisko would go to such lengths.
Meanwhile, the stakes for Archer: one individual treated as a slave who explicitly asked for freedom and sanctuary versus a positive first contact with a highly advanced people - who also happen to be slave owners. They could be valuable allies, but at this point, it's not that Earth needs them (there's no Federation yet). Now, you could write a good episode where Archer eventually decides that Earth will be better served with these new allies, even if they are slave owners, than without them since he's already encountered some quite powerful hostile species, and that this is worth the tacit acceptance of slavery and the sacrifice of one particular slave. It wouldn't make Archer look very sympathetic, but it would be believable, especially since he's closer to our present than to the Federation future, and our present has Western governments cozying up to dictators who treat a part of their population like dirt whenever this is strategically important (or oil is involved, or both). If the last scene, instead of Archer chewing out Trip, had been Trip calling out Archer (the way Garak did with Sisko) on the true reasons for Archer's decision, and Archer accepting this, The Congenitor could have been a classic. But this is not what this episode does. It claims this is about cultural differences, and Trip having made the mistake of trying to impose his values on a culture he knows next to nothing about. And nobody, at any point, uses the word "slave". (We're a far cry from TNG's Measure of a Man where Picard through talking to Guinan comes to realise that this is the truth behind the "is Data property or a sentient being" phrasing - "you're talking about slavery". Damm right they were.) Sorry, but this is dishonest rubbish. A slave is a slave is a slave. The congenitor is one. The congenitor also is a sentient adult being able to decide for itself and explicitly asking for its freedom. Denying that request isn't "respecting cultural differences". Once you make a story about slavery, you have to be honest about it. Or do another story. Claiming complexity when what you're really saying "slavery complete with ongoing rape: just a cultural difference" is the worst of all possible narrative choices.
4a)Otoh, Stigma, aka the AIDS episode, to me was a good "sci fi take on a contemporary problem" episode, without any moral smugness and instead an earnest and intense "look in the mirror" subtext. The episode choosing to focus on medical research being slow as long as the illness is regarded as a problem for a minority the majority feels itself entitled to disdain morally, and the hypocrisy of differentiating between "good victims" and "bad victims" (depending on how they got infected) was particular on point for those of us who remember the 80s.
5.) Oh good lord, the bio gel really is as awkwardly fanservice-y as the introduction episodes made it look. I think the most awkward (and very, very American) thing about it is that T'Pol, who ends up in these scenes more often than the rest of the gang, always keeps her underwear on. Look, writers, if it's for de-contamination, you have to put the stuff on your entire skin, surely? *Note to self: don't go off on a tangent about how to do Sauna again*
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1271894.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Speaking of Twin Peaks, at first I had no intention of watching The Return, because I didn't feel a sequel was necessary, but then
abigail_n's favorable review made me curious, so I marathoned it. And... I can see all her points, but my own impression was far more negative. Not least because there were elements in it which to me felt gratitiously spiteful, such as the fate of Audrey Horne, or disturbing in an unintended way (there's also plenty of deliberately disturbing, but that's a given with Twin Peaks), to wit, things like Janey-E blissfully declaring she's living the dream when that means having a husband with the mental capacity of a toddler unable to do more than repeat the last words of the previous sentence who has to be guided through the simplest motions, which includes her having sex with him. But also because while the original Twin Peaks was not short of female suffering (I mean, the premise alone...), it had a lot of female pov characters as well (Donna, Audrey, Josie, Norma, Shelley). Twin Peaks: The Return, otoh, feels relentlessly male pov to me, and that in combination with the sheer number of abused female characters was very off-putting.
All this being said: Lynch's visual imagination is as good as ever, and I don't regret having watched it, not least for the incredible tenderness of the conversations between Hawke and Margaret, aka the Log Lady, which were filmed while the actress was dying. Oh, and given it's David Lynch, I should have known he'd cast Laura Dern as Diane. It's now impossible to imagine anyone else in that role, and as the recipient of all those tapes.
I've also continued my Star Trek: Enterprise watching to the point where the infamous post-9/11 narrative shift happens, and great maker, as Londo Mollari would say, is it ever immediately noticable. So that feels as good a point as any to look back at the first two seasons with a couple of observations.
1.) At its best, the show uses its early space flight/no Federation yet setting quite well, and certainly does a better job than Voyager did recalling its ship and crew don't have the Starfleet resources for repairs and restocking at their disposal whenever they need them. The episode when Enterprise has to undergo repairs at a fully automated alien station also struck a good balance between satire (for those of us in need of repairs and unable to talk to a human being, going from automated message to automated message instead) and suspense (the reveal about the extra price may have been a tad predictable, but it worked). Also, I appreciate that through the first two seasons there are repeated scenes where our heroes marvel at some space phenomenon in joy and awe - as explorers who'd never been in deep space before and had not seen pictures would.
2.) Otoh, when the show does the genre- and franchise immanent tropes, it rarely if ever rises above formula. This is where the comparison to Star Trek: Discovery is most striking to me. Discovery also does tropes, but delivers them with original twists. When Enterprise does Episode With Alien Princess And Male Starfleet Officer, it follows the same beats we've seen on TOS, on TNG. When it does "Enemy Mine" (another Trip episode), it does so by the letter. It's not that the result is objectionable (I like "Enemy Mine" stories! I do! And the alien pilot here can act better through his latex than Padma Lakshmi without any in the Princess episode), it's that there is no particular twist unique to this particular show in it. (Meanwhile, TNG gave us Darmok, which for my money is still the best ST twist on this particular tale, and not just because Patrick Stewart gets to tell the tale of Gilgamesh.) Whereas, when Discovery does a time loop episode, it does so in a way that's different from the TNG version, or for that matter the Xena and Buffy versions, furthers the relationships between regulars (Michael Burnham & Paul Stamets, Michael Burnham & Ash Tyler) and expands everyone's characterisations (plus the way our heroine forces the antagonist of the episode to reset the loop one more time is both inventive and outstandingly brave).
3.) Back when I had watched the fourth season without having watched more than the first three episodes of the first or any other season, I said that I found Malcolm Reed and Travis Mayweather bland as characters, without defining characterisation. Which I take back now; in the first two seasons, they get ample characterisation unique to them. Hoshi so far had to do more in s1 than in s2, and I do wish they'd have given her more scenes with T'Pol, because the few they get are always very interesting.
4.) At least two of the episodes are outstanding examples of HOW NOT TO WRITE MORAL DILEMMA EPISODES. Good lord, Berman & Braga. I haven't seen such tone deaf examples of "episode thinks it tells one story while actually coming across as telling something completely different" since TNG's The Outcast (aka the one where the writers' idea had been to do a sympathetic allegory about homosexuality while the result, not least due to the casting of the supposedly androgynous species by solely female actors, came across as Riker versus the planet of the intolerant lesbians). What I'm referring to: "Dear Doctor" in season 1, and "The Congenitor" in season 2. "The Congenitor" irritated me more because for the most part, I thought it worked quite well until we came to the denouement. It was a painful joy to see Andreas "G'Kar" Katsulas again, and his parts of the episode were one of those "space exploration is amazing!" scenes Enterprise, when it wants, does in a heartfelt way. I also before the denouement thought that the presentation of the aliens as both technologically advanced, friendly and, as was revealed through the episode, literally enslaving a part of their population was well done, because it's easy to condemm Space Nazi Species #1000444 with the usual red and black color scheme and the vocabullary to match, or for that matter Space Roman Species #100440 complete with whips for the slaves . It's far harder if the people in question are nice and truly helpful to you and carry themselves in a calm, reasonable manner. (It's also far more realistic. I mean, I bet a great many of today's sweatshop owners don't wear evil insignia of evil and come across as lovely people in conversation.) Now, I was a bit surprised that no one, not even Trip who wanted to help, called the status of the congenitors what it was: slavery. I mean, there was no subtlety about it. The congenitors have no physical autonomy, they get assigned to whichever couple wants to have a child, they do not get any financial reward (other than being clothed and fed), they have no liberty of movement at their own disposal. And the male and female of the species regarding the congenitors as not being intelligent and childlike sounded awfullly familiar, too. The episode went to a great length to establish this last was an entirely wrong assumption, that the congenitors were as intelligent as the rest of the species, and that the one we meet in the episode, once it has grown out of the brainwashing of regarding itself as lesser than the male and female of its species, absolutely does not want to return to that enslaved existence.And then Archer responds to the congenitor seeking asylum with "sorry, no can do, because we must respect other cultures and establish good relationships with this one" , and when the congenitor subsequently kills themselves rather than be a slave again, it's Trip who gets the "how could you?" lecture (about having interfered with the congenitor's existence in the first place), with the episode agreeing since it has Trip telling Archer "it's not your fault". But it is. Entirely. And not for the reason Archer names in his one sentence of self blame (not having been a good enough role model for Trip). Look, writers, when Sisko resorts to lies, then larger deceit, then eventual political murder in order to change the outcome of a war by making the Romulans go from neutral to allies, that's a good shades of grey morality/moral dilemma episode, because even if Sisko is kidding himself about what he's doing at first, he's called out by Garak on it, and by the end is aware of just what he's done. Also, the balance of stakes - lives of Romulan crew versus Dominion victory in the Alpha Quadrant - makes it believable that Sisko would go to such lengths.
Meanwhile, the stakes for Archer: one individual treated as a slave who explicitly asked for freedom and sanctuary versus a positive first contact with a highly advanced people - who also happen to be slave owners. They could be valuable allies, but at this point, it's not that Earth needs them (there's no Federation yet). Now, you could write a good episode where Archer eventually decides that Earth will be better served with these new allies, even if they are slave owners, than without them since he's already encountered some quite powerful hostile species, and that this is worth the tacit acceptance of slavery and the sacrifice of one particular slave. It wouldn't make Archer look very sympathetic, but it would be believable, especially since he's closer to our present than to the Federation future, and our present has Western governments cozying up to dictators who treat a part of their population like dirt whenever this is strategically important (or oil is involved, or both). If the last scene, instead of Archer chewing out Trip, had been Trip calling out Archer (the way Garak did with Sisko) on the true reasons for Archer's decision, and Archer accepting this, The Congenitor could have been a classic. But this is not what this episode does. It claims this is about cultural differences, and Trip having made the mistake of trying to impose his values on a culture he knows next to nothing about. And nobody, at any point, uses the word "slave". (We're a far cry from TNG's Measure of a Man where Picard through talking to Guinan comes to realise that this is the truth behind the "is Data property or a sentient being" phrasing - "you're talking about slavery". Damm right they were.) Sorry, but this is dishonest rubbish. A slave is a slave is a slave. The congenitor is one. The congenitor also is a sentient adult being able to decide for itself and explicitly asking for its freedom. Denying that request isn't "respecting cultural differences". Once you make a story about slavery, you have to be honest about it. Or do another story. Claiming complexity when what you're really saying "slavery complete with ongoing rape: just a cultural difference" is the worst of all possible narrative choices.
4a)Otoh, Stigma, aka the AIDS episode, to me was a good "sci fi take on a contemporary problem" episode, without any moral smugness and instead an earnest and intense "look in the mirror" subtext. The episode choosing to focus on medical research being slow as long as the illness is regarded as a problem for a minority the majority feels itself entitled to disdain morally, and the hypocrisy of differentiating between "good victims" and "bad victims" (depending on how they got infected) was particular on point for those of us who remember the 80s.
5.) Oh good lord, the bio gel really is as awkwardly fanservice-y as the introduction episodes made it look. I think the most awkward (and very, very American) thing about it is that T'Pol, who ends up in these scenes more often than the rest of the gang, always keeps her underwear on. Look, writers, if it's for de-contamination, you have to put the stuff on your entire skin, surely? *Note to self: don't go off on a tangent about how to do Sauna again*
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1271894.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.