The Top 10 Greatest American Science Fiction TV Shows

Top Ten lists are always two things simultaneously: lame and fun.  Lame because their innate subjectivity renders the exercise supremely pointless.  Fun because… well, because we are hierarchical beings who suffer from a pathological need to rank everything from shoes to past Presidents to TV shows to excretory experiences.

To rank the “best” American science fiction TV shows in history requires me to first do three things: define what I mean by both “TVshow” and “science fiction”, and state my parameters for quality.

To qualify as a TV show, the program must have survived at least one full season on either broadcast or cable television, and been produced in the USA or by an American production company.  This is important, because once you expand the category to include British or Australian or others productions, the field gets confused very fast.

Individual seasons don’t count, either.  But I was torn over whether to include non-episodic shows, like The Outer Limits, due to their inconsistency in theme, actors, writers and subject matter; but eventually chose to do so.

The harder bit was deciding on which criteria to apply.  I decided to not be too overt about it, but rather to include some vague combination of production value, cultural impact, quality of science fiction content, acting quality, consistency in quality, internal consistency in logic (i.e. not messing with its own canon), respect for actual science,  and the degree to which the show lingers in memory.

Another arbitrary rule is the disqualification of animated shows.  This means no Star Trek: The Animated Series and no Futurama.

Okay, ready?  Here we go…

10. Star Trek: Deep Space 9

With five shows in the live action Trek franchise, I was tempted to disqualify all but the first.  But DS9 stands out from its brethren as having existed within its own conceptual framework: the exploration of interstellar war, conflated with religion and personal angst, told from the environs of a stationary space station.  Mind you, I’m of the opinion that the producers stole much of the concept of DS9 from Babylon 5.  But they executed it well enough to warrant a spot on this list.  Ultimately, the fact that I still enjoy watching old episodes is indicative of how highly I rank this show.

9. Firefly

Joss Whedon’s venture into space opera was a popular flop but critical triumph.  The acting was of cinematic quality.  The writing was as clever and tight as anything Whedon produced for Buffy.  The production value was outstanding.  The unfolding greater story was compelling and complex, and would eventually see a degree of fruition in the movie, Serenity.  Most importantly, though, the characters were complex and beloved, ven when they were dicks.

If nothing else, Firefly should be noted for its brave portrayal of futuristic human society.  For one thing, Whedon acknowledges that the primary human economic powers are American and Chinese, and that those cultures should be reflected in futuristic society.  Secondly, by moving forward in time, he moved backward in time, essentially creating a space age Western.  Very cool.

8. Farscape

Only hardcore science fiction fans ever gave Farscape a chance.  Its brilliance was in casting puppets (created by Jim Henson’s company) as aliens, creating a truly skiffy-ish feel.  The greater story that emerged was truly a classic wide-canvass classic science fiction approach, involving interstellar war, wormholes, personal sacrificies, bended perceptions and, as always, old fashioned love at its core.

I love Farscape.  Maybe it’s a good thing it’s not well known.  That’s what makes for a good cult classic.  It was, as well, that the storyline was finally given a proper ending with the miniseries, The Peacekeeper Wars.

7. Star Trek: The Next Generation

My very first article as a student journalist, more than 20 years ago, was a review of the pilot episode of ST:TNG.  I panned it.  All of us hardcore Trek fans were offended at the shiny new Federation, with all its taking and negotiating. Where was Kirk drop-kicking Klingons and bedding green alien babes?  Instead we had a bald Brit with a French name, endlessly hand-wringing over the Moral Issue Of The Week.

But you know what?  We of the Trek generation had entered adulthood, and were actually eager to explore some of the more intellectually challenging aspects of Roddenberry’s expanded universe.  Some of the episodes, like The Inner Light, will linger with many of us for the rest of our lives.  They were that good.

6. The Six Million Dollar Man

The opening sequence of this show is, in my opinion, the coolest thing ever broadcast on American TV.  Astronaut Steve Austin is rebuilt as a cyborg after an operation costing an insane $6 million (a price tag that today would buy him a bionic toe).  The science fiction is implicit.  Heck, Austin’s very existence is science fiction.  But in many episodes, he actually travels into the space, fights the Venus probe and, of course, Big Foot himself!

Yes, the science was flakey, to put it mildly.  But this show made it cool to like science, and allowed an entire generation of chubby pre-teens to feel powerful while running in slow motion.

5. Stargate: SG-1

I’ve made no secret of my love for SG-1.  Its basis was the absolutely transcended big screen film, Stargate.  But it took that core DNA and created a team of beloved galactic explorers who weekly battled alien menaces that were believable and daunting.

For me, the beauty of SG-1 was its honesty and consistency.  I recall one episode when a General tells our hero, Colonel O’Neill, “The US government does not interfere in the internal activities of sovereign nations” or something like that.  O’Neill responded with a cynical, “Oh really?  Since when?”

This is a small thing, but whn you consider that SG-1 is one of those rare shows that benefits from the full cooperation of the US Airforce.  This relationship also resulted in spectacular and very believable military actions.

The consistency aspect of SG-1 is the degree to which the show developed an internal canon of facts, all based on somewhat accurate science, and the degree to which this canon was adhered to over the show’s record-breaking 10 seasons.

One of my favourite examples of this was the episode in which the Earth was connected to a Black Hole through the stargate’s wormhole.  The effects of gravity and time dilation were well explained, to an extent I never would have expected from other American TV shows.

4. Lost

I’ve written many times that Lost is the finest TV show on American broadcast networks, in any genre.  Lost officially and unabashedly entered the formal ranks of science fiction with an entire season based on time travel, and now its final season based on alternate universes.

Lost’s quality, though, is not based on its skiffy credentials, but on basic, old-fashioned storytelling.  The acting, direction and production are all simply fantastic.  The underlying story is, to put it mildly, spellbinding.  It’s yet to be seen, of course, whether the pay-off will be worth it, but I have faith.

Why am I so sanguine?  Because every season thus far has impressed me with the richness of thought that the writers have imbued in every scene of every episode.  Everything has meaning, which might just be the final message of Lost.

3. Babylon 5

Yes, the special effects were laughable at times.  Yes, some of the dialogue was cringe-worthy.  And yes, this show is probably not very accessible to the masses.  So why does B5 rank so highly?  Mostly because of its role in history.

See, B5 proved, in the face of a sea of soubters, that arc-based TV was the future.  It was the first TV show to have an entire season written by a single person, the legendary producer JMS.  He had famously announced his intent to create a show that would prove more popular that Star Trek, and was laughed out of the room.  But, for a brief shining moment, he made good on that promise.

B5 was a video novel that unfolded over 5 seasons, and that told a sprawling tale of ancient wars, crumbling empires and personal triumphs.  The main characters were complete and flawed, and enjoyed personal cycles that mirrored the grander tale.

And, of course, its final episode –filmed a year before it was broadcast– remains, in my opinion, a Smithsonian-quality achievement, one of the most glorious achievements of narrative television ever.

2. The Twilight Zone

Here’s the thing about The Twilight Zone (the original one, not one of the many failed remakes): watching a given episode was like reading a fine science fiction novel written in the silver or golden age.  No other show on this list, with the occasiona =l exception of our #1 entry, managed to fully portray the full meaning and importance of the genre of science fiction.

Skiffy is not about explosions and aliens and fancy technology or weird, otherwordly scenarios.  It’s about the meditation on what if.  It’s social, political, emotional, spiritual and, above all else, relevant.  The Twilight Zone understood that.

1. Star Trek

It will surprise no one that Trek takes the #1 spot.  Was it great SF?  Not always?  Did it have great production and acting?  Sometimes, but often not.  How was its science?  Laughable, but sufficient for the era.  But where it shone was in impact and cultural relevance.

Se, Trek put science fiction in a prime time spot, and thus in the living rooms of the world, for the first time ever.  It knew how to use SF to explore larger concerns, like racism, sexism, imperialism and war.  Sometimes it was absolutely crappy, but sometimes, like “City On The Edge of Forever“,  it rose to science fiction splendour.

Many people aren’t aware that the freelance script writers for the original series included some of the greatest names of science fiction, like Harlan Eillson and Theodore Sturgeon (“Amok Time“).  Many of its episodes were given the highest honours of the science fiction community; and, to put it bluntly, TV today would not be nearly as colourful, bold or imaginative if it were not for the original Trek.

Honourable Mentions

Many will be surprised that I did not include the new Battlestar Galactica.  But you know what?  As great as that show was, and as much as it dominated the skiffy forums during its run, now that’s over, no one thinks about it.  It had minimal impact on everything except filmmaking style.  (The new Stargate: Universe borrows from Battlestar‘s approach, but that’s about it).  Its finale was disappointing, and ultimately its skiffy content was questionable.

I adored Terminator: The Sarah Connors Chronicles, but apparently no one else did.  Same can be said for Jericho, even though I’m not sure that it can be considered skiffy.

The X-Files?  Really?  Outside of the aliens, there wasn’t a whole lot of actual science fiction going on in that show.  It was mostly Mulder moping and Scully in denial.  The writers had no idea what they were doing or where they were going, as proven in the very lame finale.

I’m enjoying Fringe, but it’s too early to tell if it will be great or just another forgotten, big budget ratings grab.

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Space: Above and Beyond and Sliders were silly fun.  The first was entirely tongue in cheek space opera.  The second took itself wayyyy too seriously.  And the third was tight, good science fiction, that ultimately forgot its purpose in the later seasons.

The remaining Trek and Stargate franchises were enjoyable, but ultimately do not stand out as major contributions to skiffy culture.

The Night Stalker and UFO are mostly forgotten by today’s generation of TV watchers.  But they were important and ground-breaking in their day.  Believe me, they both very nearly made the list.

Lasttly, I thought long and hard about Quantum Leap.  It’s a great show with a really powerful and poignant finale.  But uultimately I think it’s more sic drama than it is science fiction.

So what do you think?  Please include your choices in the comments section below.

The 2010 Hugos

(This article was originally a blog post.)

The nominees for the 2010 Hugo Awards were announced this week. If you don’t know, the Hugos are the premier science fiction awards, the Pulitzer for the nerd set, if you will. I won’t mention the novels or short stories, since few of you have heard of them. Rather, let’s look at the dramatic entries, bot long and short form.

Nominees for the long form (i.e., movies) include Avatar, Moon, District 9, Star Trek and Up.

I reviewed Star Trek here. It’s a fine action movie. But it’s neither science fiction nor clever. If it wins, I am through with the Hugos.

I reviewed Avatar here. It’s genuine science fiction, though heavily derivative and hardly worthy of an award that celebrates originality. If it wins, I won’t be through with the Hugos, but I will lose a hefty amount of respect for them.

Up is an excellent, moving and entertaining little film. But is it science fiction? I really don’t think so.

That leaves Moon and District 9. I must admit to not having seen Moon. I hear it’s quite good. But from what little I know of its plot, I question whether it’s actually science fiction. An astronaut on the moon is not particularly far-fetched. That leaves the sole option for winner being District 9.

Now, on to the short form, The nominees are an episode of Dollhouse, and episode of FlashForward and three episodes of Doctor Who. All are very good choices, though we can all wonder how Lost or Fringe didn’t make the list.

More baffling, however, is how this past year’s true masterpiece of TV science fiction failed to make the Hugo short list. I’m talking about Torchwood: Children of Earth, which I reviewed here.

I don’t use the word “masterpiece” lightly. It’s a difficult accomplishment to manage in a general public prime-time TV format, especially within the confines of an existing TV show with existing characters and relationships. But Children of Earth is that good, it really is. Not only is it pure science fiction –something the actual nominees dance around– but it’s poignant, heartbreaking, terrifying and exhilirating.

A big raspberry to the Hugo people for omitting Children of Earth. As compensation, let’s inaugurate the first annual Skiffy.ca TV award for the best science fiction dramatic short form. I hereby award it, without hesitation, to Russell Davies for his –wait for it– masterpiece in Torchwood: Children of Earth.

Review: Avatar

First, let’s get this out of the way.  Yes, Avatar was an unbelievable visual spectacle.  That’s what everyone will be talking about, I’m sure.  In fact, the quality of the 3-D effects, the richness of the visual world that James Cameron has created, and the thickness and believability of the visual characters are, without question, marvels to behold.  Is that enough to warrant the price of admission?  Actually, yes, I think it is.  In fact, 3-D might be Hollywood’s salvation against online piracy: you just can’t duplicate Avatar‘s big screen, three dimensional effect on your computer screen.

In their day, Star Wars, Jaws, Terminator, Jurassic Park, Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow, Lord of the Rings and even the original King Kong were equally heralded as unbelievable, game-changing visual spectacles.  When viewed today, all of them –even Lord of the Rings, which was released just a few years ago– appear quite pedestrian.  Visual technology in the multimillion dollar, cut-throat film-making industry is as temporal as it comes.  The reason that most of the aforementioned films are still watched and talked about today is that their underlying stories were actually quite good and, frankly, timeless.  The exception in that list is Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow, whose story was so cliched and forgettable that I’m sure many readers of this article have never even heard of the film.

The lesson here is that great special effects are certainly capable of creating a spectacle and, indeed, generating a great deal of box office revenue.  But for those of us who care about the quality of film and the long term film-going experience, it’s not so much flash and revenue that we worry about, but rather the substance of the story.  So let us leave aside the spectacle of Avatar, as I’m sure others will gleefully discuss that aspect of the film well into numbness.  Let us instead worry about the nature of the story.  And this is where I get a bit concerned.

It’s a passably acted, well directed, comfortably paced and very entertaining action-based science fiction film.  Should you spend money to see it in a theatre?  Absolutely, I say.  But once more I am disappointed by Hollywood’s inability –or unwillingness– to deviate from, frankly, an offensive and cliched storytelling trope: once again, the American White Man saves the natives.

Now, I am not the first to make this observation.  Annalee Newitz over at i09.com has a tight little essay called, “When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like Avatar?” and a Google search of the words “Avatar” and “racist” results in hundreds of hits.  For each article that explores this idea, there’s unavoidably at least one apologist/commenter who offers something to the extent of, “It’s just a movie. Stop over-analyzing it.”   So, if you’re one of those people, and you’re over the age of 15, I will disrespectfully suggest that you fuck off and get yourself a better education. All right?

If you haven’t seen the film, it’s about humans going to a rainforest-type world called Pandora to negotiate for rights to mine a mineral. When negotiations fail, they turn to military means.  To enable these means, the humans have developed organic bodies that resemble the natives, who are called the Na’vi (because nothing says foreign like a superfluous apostrophe), and download their consciousnesses into those bodies to allow them to interact with the natives.  These are the titular “avatars”.  For those of you unfamiliar with Hindu mythology, an avatar is the walking, human incarnation of a god.  With the name, you begin to see how the various races are being subtly presented, with the human “gods” being referred to by the natives as “Sky People”.

The hero, Jake Sully, eventually changes sides and ends up falling in love with a native girl –a sort of princess, of course– and leads the Na’vi to resist the militaristic humans.

On its face, the idea of introducing the alien society to the audience through the eyes of a human avatar is a clever storytelling device.  The problem is that the device reinforces the dichotomy of Us and Them, rather than striving to portray both groups as equal, as is the script’s nominal intent.  As the i09.com article accurately points out, this is another case of “Dances With Wolves” syndrome, wherein the non-White society is validated by the arrival of the White man.

And it’s always a White man.  In fact, it’s always an American… White… Man.  He is always fearless but naive.  He is always charming, though, in the way he magnanimously accepts the berating for his naivete, because he’s so comfortable with his powers and his non-fragile ego.  He always manages to get a native woman to fall in love with him, because somehow his courage and qualities are more attactive than those of the native men.  He always manages to use his knowledge of his original land to garner him power in his adopted land, always rising to the position of tribal leader.  And despite original friction with the masculine forces among the natives, he always manages to win over the warriors by showing his own innate strengths and courage.

Dances With Wolves is only the most famous of these stories.  Pretty much every episode of the original Star Trek, in which Kirk must blend in with the native population, followed the same formula.  Future versions of Star Trek dumbed it down even further.  The classic novels of early American space opera and adventure pulp fiction –Tarzan, or Jon Carter of Mars, or Last of the Mohicans– pretty much invented the formula.  In every case, a courageous White Man (because he’s always white and he’s always a man) visits a less technologically avdanced society, manages to not only be accepted by them, but also wins the love of the local alpha female and ascends to the rank of tribal leader, essentially “doing it” better than any savage could.

How does he manage to do this?  Often it is by solving the fundamental (though blatantly obvious) mystery of the tribe.  That mystery usually has something to do with the quality of tribal life lost in modern North American life, something that is part religion, part environmentalism and part social duty.  In Dances With Wolves, Kevin Costner’s revelation occurs when he finds himself fighting to defend the women and children of his tribe, rather than fighting in a nameless war for a President he has never met.  In his case, the solvable mystery is one of tribal or familial connection, reinforced by an ecological dependence that was depicted through his tribe’s search for buffalo.  In Avatar the solvable mystery is profoundly offensive to anyone who’s ever studied a scratch of anthropology: the New Age interconnectedness of all things, exemplified in the film by a “scientific”, quantifiable measurement of “energies” flowing between all poles of the forest.

Which brings me to another point of annoyance with this film.  The way it sings paeans longingly to what I call “white guy spirituality”, is saddening more than it is infuriating.  In our increasingly secular society, devoid of traditional spiritualism with which to draw a personal connection, Westerners seek to co-opt the spiritualism of other cultures.  I feel sorry for those who do this.  From Madonna’s superficial embracing of kabbalah, to the throngs of white pilgrims on India’s shores, literally seeking “enlightenment” as if it were a product to be purchased in Walmart’s aisle 73, generations of Westerners have been unconsciously following the template of Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, wherein a white man goes to Asia and masters the exotic spiritual arts that have been depleted from his own civilization.  I’ve lost count of how many white friends have returned from their first trips to India, disappointed that they didn’t find instant spiritual awakening in their package tour of the Taj Mahal.

Avatar sickeningly features empty phrases about “energies” and “life forces” and “interconnectedness”, as if the screenwriter were cobbing notes from any 3rd grade class on Native North American culture.  It betrays a basic conflict within the filmmaker: on the one hand there is a profound ignorance of both religion and science, and on the other hand there is a grugding appreciation of the value of both.  The result: an embarrassing inability to rationalize their duality, not just in life, but within the simpler confines of a movie script. As one internet commenter so aptly put it, “this is the first one-dimensional 3D movie I’ve ever seen.”

As one who has traveled to five rainforests around the globe, and who has done scholarly work with Aboriginal peoples living in rainforest regions in Guyana and Thailand, I could not help but feel insulted on behalf of the people with whom I’ve worked.  Avatar, so much like Dances With Wolves, Tarzan, Last of the Mohicans and Jon Carter of Mars, portrays tribal forest-based societies as caricatures and stereotypes, though I’m sure that was not the filmmakers’ intent; they just don’t know any better.  Much like so many episodes of all the various Star Trek series, in which the know-it-all (mostly white, male and American) Federation heroes deposit themselves on an alien planet, then quickly summarize a culture according to a simplistic formula or description (eg, Vulcans are logical, Klingons are warriors, Ferengi are greedy), allowing them to influence and control that population, the main humans of Avatar –all white American men, with the exception of Sigourney Weaver– have quickly summed up the natives as environmentally conscious warrior types.  The White American Males are allowed to be complicated, with conflicting motivations and moral dilemmas.  The natives are simplistic, unchanging, easily misled and conveniently quick to forgive.

On more than one occasion, a well meaning white American, in all seriousness and gravity, has turned to me and asked, “And what are the beliefs of your people?” or words to that effect, as if “my people” could be presented in a single bulleted PowerPoint slide.  Imagine if an alien were to ask a typical North American Westerner the same question.  Can any society be summarized so simply?  No group of people is homogeneous and monolithic.  To suggest that one is serves to infantalize that population.  This is the true legacy of European colonialism, reinforced for generations through our adventure literature and now our science fiction TV and movies.  I think there is a reason that science fiction finds resonance among so many young White Western men, in particular. It is because the genre, when written poorly, harnesses the racial fantasies of this demographic, turning every lonely White teen into Jon Carter, Hawkeye or James T. Kirk, fearless White warriors who can find respect, love and sex by solving the mystery of a foreign, tribal people and easily winning dominance over them, like the domestication of a herd of wild, hierarchical animals.

As Annalee Newitz put it, “Avatar is a fantasy about ceasing to be white, giving up the old human meatsack to join the blue people, but never losing white privilege. Jake never really knows what it’s like to be a Na’vi because he always has the option to switch back into human mode.”  I can’t help but think of the scores of Western students I know who have traveled to the developing world and come back with proud tales of “going native” and “immersing themselves in culture”, while never mentioning Mommy’s credit card tucked safely into their money belts.  But the fantasy of “understanding” persists, as a way of keeping the privileges of Western lifestyle while pretending to access the supposed wisdom of the tribal society.

This is not to say that James Cameron has deliberately made a white supremacist film.  Quite the contrary, his unveiled intent is to portray the White American masculine ethic as one of hamfisted ignorance, intolerance and profound inner weakness.  He does this by showing all the bad guys as cartoonishly evil and unidimensional.  The film is, after all, a none-too-subtle metaphor for Western imperial intrusions into Aboriginal lands for the purposes of mineral extraction, a practice that is current and serious.  In this sense, I applaud Mr Cameron.

But I so sorely wish he had not indulged his puerile fantasies about Aboriginal cultures.   As Annalee Newitz so perfectly phrased it, Avatar is at its core a racial fantasy.  And thus the cycle of miseducation continues anew.

Torchwood: Children of Earth

I’ve said some not-so-nice things about British writer Russel T Davies.  The man who brought Dr Who to a 21st century audience, and who then created its “more mature”s spin-off, Torchwood, has a tendency to write over-the-top scenarios that that tend to resolve with head-slapping deus-ex-machina endings.

I’ve also said some unfriiendly things about Torchwood, a show that began clumsily and that seemed to misjudge what “adult” should mean in the sci-fi milieu.  Torchwood‘s sci-fi has been of the ridiculous glowing-gizmo and technobabble variety, and its adultness of the random sex, 4-letter word and annoying MTV-style flash-cut direction variety.  Throw in the atrociously overacting John Barrowman in the lead as Captain Jack Harness, and you can see how I might not tend to take the show seriously.

But something miraculous has happened with this third season of Torchwood.  First, the show has been moved to a new BBC network, meaning its sexual content has been toned down.  Second, the BBC is treating Torchwood and Dr Who very carefully this year, affording each only a handful of episodes this season.  In fact, Torchwood‘s full allotment of episodes is a mere 5 installments, broadcast in subsequent days as a miniseries titled, “Children of Earth”.  Lastly, Torchwood is coming off of a very strong season 2 ender in which two of the main characters were tragically killed off.

I am very pleased to report that Torchwood: Children of Earth is very near to a modern British television science fiction masterpiece.  Davies’ forte is clearly the long form, as he has addressed and improved every one of his traditional criticisms.  For any thinking sci-fi fan, I cannot recommend this miniseries more enthusiastically.  It is smart, adventure-filled, scary, saddening, well directed and well acted.

The action begins with children around the world stopping en masse.  That’s right, every human child simultaneously stops what he is doing and remains still for minutes.  The behaviour repeats itself some hours later.  And later still, it is repeated again, but this time with the children speaking in one voice, delivering to the world a very creepy extraterrestrial message.

(I must remember one day to write about British cinema’s weird fascination with zombies.  Pretty much every Dr Who episode, most episodes of Torchwood and every notable British sci-fi movie of the past 20 years has featured some form of zombie-ism, whether it be deer-eyed children or drooling undead.  I don’t get it.)

Enter the Torchwood crew to investigate.  For those not in the know, the Torchwood Institute was established by Queen Victoria to prepare Great Britain against extraterrestrial threats, after Her Majesty was spooked by none other than the Doctor himself.  Indeed, “Torchwood” is an anagram for “Doctor Who”.  The current Torchwood crew is led by Jack Harkness, the Doctor’s former companion, a 51st century time-traveling rake who is –conveniently– immortal and indestructible.

“Children of Earth” manages to fully explore the emotional implications of Jack’s immortality.  It even does a splendid job of treating Jack’s homosexual relationship with co-worker Ianto with remarkable respect and sensitivity.  But the real characterization triumph is with Torchwood’s ostensible second-in-command Gwen, who shines in this miniseries as an action hero for a new world.  It is she, not Jack, who is the true star of Torchwood.

Where writer Davies really redeems himself, though, is with both the ethical discussions implicit in the miniseries’ premise and with the sheer creepyiness of its setup.  Sadly, I cannot say more without revealing some critical plot twists.  But I will say that heroes turn villain, villains turn hero, antiheroes seek some form of redemption, death abounds, and in the end a horrible thing is done in the name of goodness.

This is not a show for the weak of spirit or for those seeking a forgettable mindless action distraction.  “Children of Earth” will both linger and disturb.  Well done, Mr Davies.  Well done indeed.

Review: Star Trek XI

The new "Spock" and the new "Kirk".

Well y’all knew this was coming.  Star Trek was a huge influence on my life.  I know whenever someone says something like that, the common response is one of pitious disdain.  But people need to remember that science fiction was a rarity in the early 70s, and smart entertainment accessible by children rarer still.  Even more obscure were role models in such a milieu that were appreciable by ethnicities other than the White North American mainstream.

Star Trek gave us those things, and more.  Mr Spock was an immigrant who could not be invisible, living amongst hatred, but valued for his intellect.  Captain Kirk was a natural leader who solved problems with his head, heart, fists and penis: an admirable template for the real man, so lacking in the earlyy 21st century.

So you just knew I’d be taking a hard look at the newest incarnation of Trek, this “re-imagined” (I’m so sick of this term) version of the early adventures of Kirk and Spock, this time helmed by TV wunderkind J.J. Abrams.

Be warned: spoilers abound in this review.

I never watched Felicity or Alias.  I didn’t much care for Mission Impossible III.  I’m really enjoying Lost and Fringe, however.  All of these are the products of Abrams’ vaunted creative genius. But given the banality of the new movie (annoyingly simply titled, Star Trek instead of what we all know it to be: Star Trek XI), I fear for the culmination of the storyline for Lost, a show I have long hailed as the finest product of broadcast TV currently available.

I’m not sure where to begin with this review, so forgive me as I jump about rather randomly.  Let’s start with the basic declaration: it’s a well produced, adequately acted, fantastic looking and entertaining piece of cinema that will keep you interested throughout it’s 126 minute duration.

Okay? Happy?  I’m not saying it’s bad. It’s not bad.  It’s actually a good movie. But it ain’t Star Trek.  And that has nothing to do with the re-casting of our beloved iconic characters.  It has everything to do with the movie not having a point.

In Star Trek I: The Motion Picture, we had an awesome display of science fiction, as the Enterprise must confront a planet-engulfing cloud that turns out to be an evolved version of a NASA probe.  There is a subtext of aging, of Kirk unwilling to let go of his command, and of the moral repercussions of scattering probes willy nilly.

The true Trek masterpiece, The Wrath of Khan, was about Kirk’s inability to come to terms with his failing youth and virility, and about the “no win scenario”.  A magnificent villain, a smarmy son and a sacrificing best friend are all foils against which Kirk explores this personal dilemma.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock was about sacrifice.  What are you willing to give up to save something you love?  For Kirk to save Spock, he sacrificed his career, his son and his ship.  And in the end, the Spock that was returned to him was a shadow of his former self.  It was darkly hopeful yet bittersweet.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is the one most of the general public seems to enjoy.  I think it’s one of the weakest.  It’s about taking responsibility for environmental damage.  Hamfistedly done, I say.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier…. um, let’s not talk about this one.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was the swan song of the original crew.  A simple tale about the assassination of the Klingon chancellor is really an opportunity for Kirk to be examined for his lifetime of transgressions and rule bending.  It even, for the first time, made Kirk accountable for his racism against the Klingon people.  Shatner, a man of unending energy, played this brilliantly, with a very sad look of fatigue and guilt plastered on his face the entire time.

Star Trek VII: Generations is actually one of my favourite films of the franchise, though it’s roundly hated by most.  A low budget tale, hastily thrown together, that is supposed to be the “passing of the torch” from the Kirk gang to the Picard gang, this movie is truly about choices and –again– sacrifices.  Picard sacrifices a life with family for a life of adventure, losing the former most horribly and completely.  Kirk sacrifices his life to save a ship.  Then again he must sacrifice his perfect afterlife to save some more people.  Both captains are shown to be lonely men who must always do the right thing, forever denied a touch of the human happiness to which the rest of us can at least aspire.  This movie is historic, of course, for Kirk’s death which, while angering at first, sits better with me at each reviewing.  This is because Kirk’s death should be pointless and lonely, much like pretty much everyone’s death.  And thats what we get: a great man who always embraced the philsophy that there does not exist a “no win scenario” nonetheless loses in the end, rather anticlimactically.  It’s poetic and, if viewed with all sensors at full sensitivity, has a lasting effect.

Star TrekVIII, IX and X were all flaccid outings by the Next Generation crew.  (Well, VIII was pretty good).  So we won’t talk about those.  But I hope you see what the undercurrent has been throughout all the films: an exploration of priorities, sacrifice and the personal journey of heroism.

That brings us to Star Trek XI, which will no doubt re-ignite the franchise, bringing a whole new generation into the fold, including millions of people who care little for the history and philosophy of the original Trek.

Here’s my problem with the new film: it doesn’t need to be Star Trek.  It could be anhy unnamed, generic space opera.  Good looking people get into shiny ships and blow the frakk out of each other.  Some one-liners pop up, as do some perky boobs, and there you have your MTV generation readily sold.  Why co-opt the legendary name of Trek to make this pablum?

J.J. Abrams was famously never a Star Trek fan.  He has always admitted to being a Star Wars man, and by golly does it show.

In 6 Things That Suck About The New Star Trek Movie, Michael Dance puts it this way:

“In this Star Trek movie, Kirk is basically Luke Skywalker with the charm of Han Solo.  He’s a troubled young farm boy who leaves home at the urging of a wise older man who claims he knew the farm boy’s father.  Sound familiar? How about the early cantina scene featuring a wacky-looking alien and a bar fight?  Or the scene near the end when one character announces the humorously low odds of a plan’s success?  Or the scene where the bad guys blow a planet up? C’mon now.”

Star Wars, while fun, is mindless fantasy.  Trek has always been mindful science fiction.  As Roger Ebert puts it in his review of the film, “..the movie raises its yo-yo finger to the science, while embracing the fiction.”  The only wonder and awe are courtesy of the neato-whiz-bang CGI effects, and not of any interesting plot twists, character moments or profound revelations.  (Compare that to Star Trek I, where there is awe aplenty: at Spock’s turmoil, at the majesty of the innards of V’Ger, at V’Ger’s origins and at Persis Khambatta’s shiny skull.)  I for one would happily give up all of the impressive space battles for a storyline that both intrigued and touched me.  Clearly, though, I’m in the minority of movie-goers.

Plot holes abound.  But that’s okay; it’s to be expected.  But about that plot….

The plot is… well… it’s a plot.  Here it is.  (Remember, spoilers abound).  The old Spock, the one we know and love, is trying to save Romulus in the future.  He fails and ends up going through a black hole into the past, followed by an angry Romulan miner who wants to kill him.  Said miner arrives just in time to kill James Kirk’s father as Kirk himself is being born.  This sets in place a series of time-altering events, which include: Kirk being a bad boy who joins the Federation reluctantly; Spock being Uhura’s teacher and lover; the planet Vulcan being destroyed and its race rendered all but extinct; Kirk promoted from stowaway to first officer, then from cadet to Captain (seriously, WTF?); etc.

So, this is –and never will be– the Trek the rest of us know and love.  It’s an alternate timeline.  The timeline of the original Trek, the Next Generation, Voyager, DS9 and all the movies that have come before have been erased.  They will never happen.  This is not the same as an alternate universe, which coexists with the prime universe and that we can access.  The positing of an altered timeline is that the other stuff never happened and never will happen.  So if any attempt were ever made to access that original timeline in, say, a new TV show or movie, it would feel really quite stupid.

Yes, it’s just a movie.  Yes, it’s a clever plot twist to allow the franchise to be rebooted without having to adhere to any pre-existing canon.  But is this not offensive?  For those of us who loved the legacy of this franchise, who found meaning in some of the stories and who appreciated that an entire expanded universe of 10 movies, six TV series (including the animated one) and a quadrillion books were cleverly folded into a set of established events and canon, this is a bit of a slap in the face.

It also means that the only TV show that still fits into the established canon is the atrocious Star Trek: Enterprise, the crappiest of the lot, and probably J.J. Abrams’s favourite.

So given that the new brash, modern and seemingly anti-cerebral James Kirk will not become the brilliant and smarmy tactician we came to love; and given that Spock will not become the tortured but dignified soul struggling to find a place between his two homes; and given that none of the other characters will become those things we love them for…. why bother having those characters in the first place?  Why not re-boot the franchise with a fresh set of characters unencumbered by history and expectations?

The answer obviously is that these characters have name brand recognition and can sell movie seats.

This seems like a piss poor reason to ass rape one of the Western world’s popular culture treasures.  I do not approve.

Review: Wolverine & The X-Men, Season 1

Television cartoons are a funny business.  Most people still think of them as children’s fare.  When the topic of such cartoons is a team of superheroes, the threat of juvenility rises considerably.  Somehow, Marvel’s X-Men has always managed to sustain a high level of both adult characterization and storytelling in all three of its TV incarnations.

Other superhero teams have not fared so well.  The Avengers were juvenile crap.  The Superfriends and their various sequels were beloved in the 1970s and early 80s, but frankly were warmed over pablum directed at idiot pre-teens.  The era of the cartoon based on toys and video games, which began in the late 1980s and saw such classic shows as Transformers and G.I. Joe ended up birthing interesting mythologies which were explored in other media, like manga, mostly in Japan.  But their original TV versions were just extended commercials for the toys.

In recent years, DC stepped up their game with a series of excellent adult superhero offerings.  They began with Batman: The Animated Series, a game-changing show that proved that an angsty, adult motion picture feel could be translated into animated half hour episodes on Saturday morning TV.  That show spawned Batman Begins, a less cerebral, but no less adult version of the iconic Batman, set in Bruce Wayne’s golden years.

DC followed up their Batman successes with a new Superman cartoon which mimicked the Dark Knight’s serious reflections.  And then the two heroes made the inevitable evolution into Justice League and Justice League Unlimited, two outstanding adult superhero cartoons that are still re-watchable many years later.

But Marvel’s X-Men stands alone as the sole classic superhero source that has never been reduced to kiddish pablum.  Beginning with their 1980s version, X-Men: The Animated Series, the team of mutants experienced adventures that were grim and serious, exploring their metaphors for actual social marginalizing forms, such as homosexuality and ethnic isolation.

In the late 90s, X-Men: Evolution re-wrote the characters into high school, and threatened to dumb it down a shade.  Thankfully, the innate depth of the X-Men motif prevented that from happening, and a fascinating story arc managed to keep viewers enthralled as the youthful mutants grew through their adolescent angsts.

With the success of the three live action X-Men movies, and the imminent launch of the first stand-alone Wolverine movie, there was a desire to re-launch an animated X-Men, this time placing Wolverine at its centre.  Thus, Wolvering & The X-Men was born.

Many purists were afraid that elevating Wolverine, the grisly and gruff loner, to the position of team leader would ruin the motif.  In the movies, he’s been redrawn as an attractive and romantic leading man, and it seems the new show would take a similar route.

However, I’m pleased to report that the new show gives nothing up with this development.  With season #1 now broadcast, it is clear that this is a well thought out show, respectful of its source material.  Like all the best superhero and science fiction literature and media, the show bases everything on characterization first.  Everyone acts from a motivation, and the story arc is pushed ahead through believable character responses.

Wolverine himself is gruff and grisly again, but now tall and charming like in the movies.  Nightcrawler is gallant and brave, not awkward and pathetic.  Cyclops is tortured and guilty, not a cookie cutter boyscout.  Magneto, perhaps the finest villain in all of comicbookdom, maintains his complexity as passionate leader, doting father, dear friend and psychopathic terrorist.

Most interesting of all, though, has been the show’s treatment of lesser known mutant Emma Frost.  She’s a character known to the fans of the comic books, but not to those who only know the X-Men through the movies and TV shows.  Her mystery is used to great effect as her agenda is revealed slowly and with a wonderful climax.

The brilliance of this show is in the seriousness with which it treats its stories, the love with which it handles its iconic characters, and the respect it shows its fans.  No origins are shown; the action starts from the first moment.  The show assumes that the viewer already knows who the characters are and why they do what they do.  There is no pandering to the naive, as is expected in a movie.

And the way in which the season’s story arc unfolds is quite clever. For the season’s duration, Charles Xavier in a coma, to awaken 20 years later in a post-Apocalyptic hell.  He manages to communicate psychically with Wolverine in the past.  Together, the two try to prevent the carnage that Xavier experiences firsthand in the future.  To tell a season-long story on two fronts, one in the present and one in the future, with an underlying mystery to be solved (how did Xavier end up in the coma in the first place?) is sheer storytelling inspiration.

I highly recommend season #1 of Wolverine & The X-Men, and can’t wait till season #2 starts in a few months.

The Best TV Series Finales

It’s a great time to be a fan of TV science fiction.  Easily, the two finest dramas on American television are Lost and the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, both so-called “genre” shows, which means that they are best enjoyed by science fiction fans.

Galactica, a preternatural philosophical powerhouse of a show is nearly done.  As I write this, a mere three episodes remain, at the end of which all of the show’s intriguing questions are supposed to be answered.  Lost, meanwhile, has another season or two to go, I believe, but is also well over half over.

This got me thinking about finales.  In particular, what are the finest series finales in the history of televised English-language science fiction?

First, a word about terminology.  In Britain, a “series” is what we in North America call a “season”.  Our “series” refers to the full run of the TV show, throughout all its seasons.  I am using the American terminology.  By series finale, I mean the last episode of that show that was ever shown.

Here is my list of the top five best television SF series finales.  Be warned that this list is ridden with spoilers:

5. Blake’s Seven

The Blake's 7 crew, taken from crepehanger.com

Pretty much unknown to North American viewers, Blake’s 7 was one of Britain’s finest skiffy offerings.  Airing in the magnificent 1970s, it told the tale of average citizen Roj Blake, who found himself caught up in a rebellion against the evil galactic federation and falsely accused of paedophilia.  Blake gathers a team of compatriots who chance upon an advanced alien spaceship, and commences a series of adventures that sees them edge closer to finding a way to bring down the federation, all the while bickering amongst themselves the way that only Brits know how to do.

Blake himself departed the show after only 2 seasons, but the adventure continued for a total of four legendary years.  The brilliance of its finale saw the return of Blake in a promise of impending and unexpected triumph for the surviving team members…. all dashed in a moment of distrust that resulted in all the members murdered by the evil federation.  The bad guys win, and no one saw it coming, even in this darkest of dark shows.

4. Quantum Leap

The boys from Quantum Leap, taken from avanttrash.com

QL employed a very simple plot: Dr Samuel Beckett is “leaping” across the years of his lifespan, inhabiting or possessing the bodies of seemingly random individuals in the process.  With him is a holographic projection of his friend Al Calavicci, who informs him at every leap about his mission, usually involving the “setting right” of the inhabited body’s life.

The show  began as light, comedic drama with both a skiffy and quasi-religious twist.  But its finale was unexpectedly a profound tear jerker.  In it, Sam leaps into a paranormal bar where everyone appears to be “leaping”.  The bartender is a godlike figure who informs Sam that he will never stop leaping, and that the missions will only get more difficult.  It is never said outright, but I think a suggestion is made that Sam is actually an angelic figure of some sort.

In Sam’s last mission shown, he leaps back into the life of his friend Al and fixes his failed marriage.  The final text shown before the credits rolled: “Dr. Samuel Beckett never returned home.”  A very sad ending for an otherwise uplifting show.

3. Classic Battlestar Galactica / Galactica 1980

Adama addresses Dr Zee and others in the craptastic Galactica 1980. Taken from galacticabbs.com

Including this steaming turd of a show may shock some people.  Yes, the original BSG was third rate shlock at best, which nonetheless captured the imagination of a skiffy-starved generation.  Its atrocious follow-up, the impoverised Galatica 1980 was an insult to anyone who gave this show a lingering chance.  It really is a wonder that the series’ “re-imagining” managed to render one of the finest dramatic TV shows in history, the current BSG incarnation.

Nevertheless, the final episode of Galactica 1980 (and therefore of the original BSG) was a little something called “The Return of Starbuck.”  In it, Dirk Benedict’s original version of the gun-slinging, cigar-smoking fighter pilot crashes on a desert planet and is all alone with a crashed Cylon ship filled with three broken Cylons.

A space age Robinson Crusoe, he reassembles one of the robots to be his companion, and sets out to build an escape ship to rejoin the Galactica.  Then, weirdly, a mysterious pregnant woman arrives and convinces Starbuck that he must protect her and “his” child.  Evil Cylons arrive, there’s a fight, Starbuck’s robot companion is seemingly destroyed, Starbuck himself appears to suffer a very serious –probably fatal– wound, and the woman escapes in his makeshift pod and manages to find the Galactica.  But she is not in it when the ship is opened; only her child is.  The grows to become “Dr Zee”, the creepy genius child who would lead the Galactica to Earth, and who narrates the opening segments of this episode.

2. Star Trek: The Next Generation

Captain Picard tells us what he really thinks. Taken from toplessrobot.com

No one is going to argue that TNG is one of the best TV skiffy shows ever produced.  Finally, Gene Roddenberry had the time and money to do Star Trek the way he’d always wanted.  Its finale, “All Good Things“, is considered by some to be one of the best of a series of excellent shows.  Entertainment Weekly listed it as #5 in the show’s top 10 episodes.

I almost ranked “All Good Things” as #1 in this list for one reason alone: unlike other finales, this one didn’t try too hard to be grand.  It remained, at its core, a good TNG episode.  We can watch it in reruns and appreciate the sadness of its finality, but also enjoy it as a stand-alone episode, something that can’t be said for the #1 entry in this list.

“All Good Things” tells of Captain Picard’s consciousness jumping across three temporal states: the present, the past (to the first episode of the series) and a couple of decades into the future.  Throughout it all, his persistent omnipotent guide Q is there, this time with a seriousness we’d not come to expect.  Q’s gravitas is what makes this episode important.  His attitude suggests that consequences await the Enterprise’s crew as a result of any actions they may or may not take.

The show’s final moments are bittersweet, as Captain Picard joins his officers for a poker game for the very first time, and regrets not having done so before.  It shows us that though we will not see the crew again on TV, they have nonetheless grown closer together, and have many more adventures to which to look forward.

1. Babylon 5

Babylon 5, taken from onedigitallife.com

B5 is one of the most important skiffy TV shows in history.  It was the first to challenge Star Trek for its TV throne, and its brazenness opened the door for a host of other science fiction offerings on the little screen.  It was also the very first show in which an entire season of episodes was written by the same person, creator J. Michael Straczynski (JMS), and one of the first shows to be entirely arc-driven.  That is, every episode was a chapter in a TV novel that would last 5 years, no more.

Today, arc shows are the norm.  Lost, BSG and pretty much every top drama on TV eschew the standalone episode model.  But B5 was the first to embrace the arc wholeheartedly.

Yes, its acting was atrocious at times, the dialogue ridiculously space-opera-ish, and some of the technobabble and special effects laughable.  But the core story was intriguing, and its heart undeniable.

The final episode, the sublime “Sleeping In Light“, was written and filmed a full year before it was aired, because it was uncertain whether the show would be granted its 5th and final season; so the finale had to be ready to go, just in case.

Nominated for science fiction’s highest honour, the Hugo Award, “Sleeping In Light” takes place 20 years after the events of B5.  All the battles have been fought and won, and all the characters have moved on to live new lives.  But a lingering truth from the series was left unexplored: that the protagonist, John Sheridan, had agreed to reduce his remaining lifespan to 20 years in exchange for time to fight the war that served as B5‘s centrepiece.

“Sleeping In Light” is about the final day of John Sheridan’s life, of how he says goodbye to his world, and how his friends deal with his death.  It’s a tearjerker, no matter how many times you watch it, made more so by the moving musical score, and the linking of Sheridan’s mysterious demise with the decommissioning of the Babylon station that gave the show its name.

It is clear that this finale was envisioned years in advance.  As JMS himself stated about the episode, ” I always have the ending before I begin writing the beginning.”

Do you have other ideas of what constitutes a good finale?  Please leave them in the comments below.

The Last Cylon

This article was originally a blog post on Deonandan.com

Obama about to take office, war in the Gaza strip, Russia freezing out Ukraine, enormous military movements in Sri Lanka, the world economy tanking…. so what will I blog about? Well, Battlestar Galactia, of course.

I have long held that the reborn (or “re-imagined”, as the Powers like to say) series is the single finest current television show in the world. I am not alone in this assessment (see here, here and here.) Few other mainstream entertainment products offer such dark assessments of the human soul, drawing fairly obvious analogies to modern American military policy, primarily the “war on terror”. It takes courage to present a universe that clearly mirrors our own, North American world, but in which the polytheists are the ostensible good guys and monotheists the bad guys. It takes further courage to miraculously get us to sympathize with the mass-murdering, robotic bad guys– and yet somehow the show manages to do this.

There are many ripe philosophical fruits to be plucked and devoured in this show. Among my favourites is the anti-heroic path of Dr. Gaius Baltar. He is demonized as a villain for having made some selfish, but very human, self-serving decisions. But if we are honest with ourselves we recognize in Baltar (in all but his genius intellect and creepy narcissism) the truth of our existence. He, unlike other impossibly and predictably heroic members of a typical TV show, behaves pretty much how a normal human being would behave, given the truly extraordinary circumstances in which he finds himself.

Baltars quest for redemption underlies, for me, the lesson of the show: that everybody is both good and evil, that everyone both deserves life and deserves death, and that only the honest among us can embrace this truth and thus seek justification for our continued existence. Dark? Of course; it’s Battlestar Galactica.

The other, more accessible philosophical plumb presented by the show is the number of models of “skin jobs”, or human-form Cylons. There are exactly 12 of them. Why? It is never expressed explicitly, but the implication is that the race of mechanic Cylons took a good, long look at humanity and saw only twelve of us. There are only 12 archetypal human beings, so simple are our motivations, so predictable our behaviours and responses.

Others have discussed this aspect of the show’s mythology. The show’s producers have encouraged this discussion, and most have landed upon a summary of the archetypes, as summarized well by a poster on nightly.net:

The innocent
The regular guy
The warrior
The caregiver
The explorer
The destroyer
The lover
The creator
The ruler
The magician
The sage
The jester

Now, as fans of the show know, while there are 12 archetypes, there are only 11 Cylon models so far identified. The lasting mystery is, of course, the identity of the final Cylon. As shown in the image below, Cylon D’Anna glimpsed the faces of the Final Five Cylons, four of whom are now known to us as occupants of the Colonial fleet.

The producers have fed the speculation, most famously by issuing the following manipulated photo, based on “The Last Supper”, with the message that none of the characters portrayed is in fact the Final Cylon:

A series of snippets were also released by the producers on a website called YouWillKnowTheTruth.com, that further fed speculation and planted clues (or, more likely, misdirections). A summary of those clues is given here.

For a lot of reasons, I believe the identity of the Final Cylon boils down to two candidates: Felix Gaeta and Anastasia Dualla.

Now, I know that I have discussed this several times in the past. And I have linked to at least one thorough analysis of the clues. But I love a good mystery. I am so satisfied that the Final Cylon is one of these two individuals that I’m even willing to put money on it.

Part of the charm of the mystery is the bizarre, almost secretive, evolution of Felix Gaeta. If you’re a fan of the show, I doubt you will ever be able to forget the haunting, creepy yet beautiful song sung by Gaeta as his leg was amputated. The composer of the song talked about it on his blog, and called it both “Gaeta’s Lament” and “The Stump Serenade”. Much analysis has surrounded the eerie song, as it supposedly contains clues to the identity of the Final Cylon, to whom God (or the gods, depending on which of the show’s faiths you subscribe to) has bestowed a special fate relating to the dispositions of both races, the humans and the Cylons.

This post has, for my money, one of the more intriguing analyses, specifically that Gaeta’s secret is his transsexualism. The theory has some appeal to me, since the nature of the hidden Cylon(s) has been something of a bridging of gaps or paradigms. Much the same way that the “skin jobs” cross the divide between men and machine, a transsexual Cylonic Gaeta would cross the divide between male and female.

Then again, for all I know, the Final Cylon is the dead cat formerly owned by Apollo’s lawyer buddy. It’s just a TV show, after all. The identity of the Final Cylon will be revealed to all in a matter of weeks.

The New Doctor Who

The following is reproduced from a blog post at Deonandan.com

We fans of the iconic Dr Who were saddened when Christopher Eccleston stepped down from the lead role in the revivified series almost four years ago. Many were disappointed when floppy-haired David Tennant stepped into Eccleston’s veteran, steeled void and re-imagined “the Doctor” as a foppish but likable hipster, eschewing his predecessor’s German submarine commander look. But Tennant grew to own the role, and I am surprised to hear myself voicing the opinion that he has been the best Doctor ever. That’s right, even better than Tom Baker and John Pertwee.

Mind you, Baker and Pertwee never benefited from the enormous budget of the new series, nor from the more thoughtful and adult-oriented writing. Nonetheless, Tenant has come to personify for an entirely new generation the physical incarnation of the most important science fiction character in British history –perhaps in television history overall.

So we were saddened again to hear that David Tennant would be stepping down some time in 2009, after a mere four performances, to make way for yet another actor to play the mighty Doctor, genius Lord of Time who vanquishes foes and defends the weak without ever taking a life or even striking a blow. Note that the evolution of Doctor Who was listed in Skiffy’s top 2008 stories in science fiction.

Speculation was rampant in the British press about who the new actor would be. Perhaps a woman this time? Some even suggested Catherine Zeta Jones! But I was more excited by the prospect of Black actor Paterson Joseph. There is, in my belief, something innately masculine about the Doctor character, but not necessarily something innately caucasian. (Especially in the recent seasons, the Doctor’s sexual tension with his female companions –notwithstanding Captain Jack’s omnisexuality– sort of compels the Time Lord to remain male, at least so long as the various nubile female companions remain in the present literary universe; otherwise their quite touching “lost romance” vibes would be overshadowed by the lesbian overtones. )

This is Paterson Joseph:

Woman or non-White man, it would have been interesting to see the Doctor blend into scenarios throughout Earth’s history. A Black Doctor materializing during the European slave trade? A female Doctor appearing in an orthodox Muslim community? The possibilities are intriguing.

But the BBC woosed out on us. It was leaked today that the new Doctor Who will be…. Matt Smith. This is 26 year old Matt Smith:

Now, I am certain that Mr Smith is an excellent actor. (The irony here is that The Doctor often goes by the monicker, “Mr Smith”). My objection, beyond the disappointment of not seeing a woman or a Black man, is that Smith is young. Tenant was on the verge of looking too young for a world-weary 900 year old alien who’d seen it all, and he was in his late 30s when he started the role! I really dislike this trend of casting younger and younger actors to play roles of great gravitas.

Plus, as one commenter put it, he looks like the singer of a pointless emo band.

Well, the Who team gave us two excellent initial choices in Eccleston and Tennant. So I’ll give this fellow a chance. But, David Tennant…. why? Why did you leave us? WHY?

2008 Science Fiction Year in Review

It’s 10pm Dec 31st, 2008, and I’m a little tipsy on a shot of whiskey, but stuck in bed, sick with a tummy ache.  Since I’m not able to attend any New Years Eve parties, why not invest a moment in reflecting on the past year in science fiction?

The following list of events is not exhaustive and is based only on what’s at the forefront of my thoughts at this particular moment.  If you have any additions to make to my list, please feel free to add them in the comments section.

Books

The single biggest news in the world of science fiction books was death of the final old school Grand Master of SF, Sir Arthur C. Clarke.  Along with Asimov and Heinlein, Clarke was one of the pioneers of skiffy in the so-called golden age of the 1950s.  Clarke was not just a leader in this genre, but also a societal thought leader.  He is credited by many as the philosophical inventor of the communications satellite, and certainly was a driving inspiration in the development of Project Spaceguard, a programme for the detection of near-Earth asteroids that could prove possibly dangerous to our planet.

Clarke’s biggest contribution to popular culture was, of course, his penning of the screenplay for the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was in turn based on his short story, “The Sentinel.”

Clarke’s additional masterpieces included Rendezvous With Rama and the various sequels to 2001.  I was particularly pleased that Clarke was able to give us a trilogy of so-called “orthoquels” to 2001 before he died: Time’s Eye, Sunstorm and Firstborn, all part of a series he called “A Time Odyssey.”

Sunstorm in particular was a fitting conclusion to Clarke’s career, as it told a very exciting and believable –and inspirational– tale of mankind preparing itself for a storm of Apocalyptic solar flares.

My personal Clarke favourite remains Songs of Distant Earth.  I recommend that all true skiffy fans find a moment to peruse it spages.

Movies

It was not a particularly exciting year for skiffy in movies.  No, I do not include The Dark Knight as a science fiction title, though the audiences for both comic books and science fiction products often overlap. Thus, Ironman also does not qualify.

Possibly the best skiffy title this year was Hellboy II: The Golden Army.  I’m hesitant to include it, since it’s more fantasy than science fiction

While I hated the movie, I must admit that the latest M. Night Shyamalan, The Happening, presented an interesting science fiction premise: that plants could be made so “upset” by ecological degradation that they would emit a substance that reduces animals’ inhibition against self-harm.

Television

It was in television that the skiffy genre really flew this year.  I am a fan of Heroes, but its science is laughable.  Lost, the finest show on network American television, finally revealed itself to be a pure science fiction show with the addition of time travel.  And the champion of the space operas continued to be Battlestar Galactica, whose climax this coming year will be the reveal of the so-called “final cylon.”  I’m willing to put money on that cylon being Felix Gaeta.

Other big news included the cancellation of Stargate: Atlantis and the successful transfer of Stargate:SG1 from TV to dvd movies.  But the big triumph in TV skiffy this year was the further maturation of the modern incarnation of Britain’s Doctor Who.

David Tennant is, for my money, the finest Doctor ever.  Yes, the show is still cheesy at times, and doesn’t engender the same gravitas as American offerings of the same genre.  But remember that the Doctor saves the galaxy every week without ever wielding a weapon or uttering a foul word; he’s a timeless hero.

The brilliance of the Who writing this year was in the realization that the show is called Doctor WHO.  Who is this man?  Why do we care?  Transforming the decades old vehicle from a campy kids show into a character drama was brilliance.

I don’t know what to expect from 2009, but I’m pretty sure there will be plenty of skiffy for us all.