Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 56
June 13, 2022
The Time Traveler's Wife 1.5: Hair
A less momentous episode of The Time Traveler's Wife -- 1.5 -- on HBO Max last night than usual.
***
[Spoilers ahead ... ]
No deaths, though Henry, arriving through time naked, is beaten by bikers and rescued by Gomez. It just occurred to me that Henry arriving with no clothes at all on when he time travels is akin to how we non-time-travelers all come into the world, naked.
I guess the most significant event is Henry becoming his older self -- the Henry Clare fell in love with -- not by living through time and aging, but by Clare's younger sister cutting his hair. That was a nice touch.
As to the dinner with Clare's family, I'm getting a little tired of dinners being such a central means of exposition in this story. And Clare's family is no great shakes either. The parents are close to cliches and Clare's brother is annoying and annoyingly predictable. Only Clare's younger sister Alicia (Taylor Richardson) is interesting, and she does a good job cutting Henry's hair, as I said, and fixing up the bruises from those bikers. I would have liked the hair cutting even better, though, had we actually seen that happen.
Looking ahead, the season finale is next week. And that's only episode 6! There's a lot more story to tell here, and one would expect at least a second season, but HBO hasn't announced that yet either. I sure hope they do. Despite the uneven pace, there's a lot of beauty and profundity in this story, it's an excellent exposition of time travel, and I'd like to see where it goes.
See also The Time Traveler's Wife 1.1: Off to a Fine, Funny, Complex Start ... 1.2: Fate ... 1.3: Lies and Love ... 1.4: Mercurial Stock
June 12, 2022
Everyday 21: The Interstellar Anthropologist
Emon Hassan is a gifted photographer and movie maker. I didn't know that he is also a gifted composer. He combines all three in Everyday 21, a short film of hauntingly beautiful and profound photographs -- one for every day of the year of 2021 -- backed by music that brushes against the edge of your soul.
Hassan's goal was to "find the story" in each day of 2021, and capture that story in a photograph. The result defies literal summary, because it cuts so keenly, to a part of brain that is moved by the music in songs, the deeper almost inchoate part that lives below and soars above the words.
But to give you a hint of what you'll find here in this 13 minute and 33 second short movie that is short on nothing: a flower growing in a hole in a wall, lots of cracks in structures, words that exist in signage that tell a story that transcends any wordsmith or poet.
Is it a coincidence that the year being so chronicled is 2021, which began with the attack on the U.S Capitol and continued the decimation and fear engendered by COVID-19? Probably not. Hassan is a sensitive being, and decisions as to where he pointed his camera, what to include and not include in this tableau, the order of the photographs, all were made by someone who has a golden unflinching antennae to what is going on in the world.
There are very few human faces in this documentary. And I'd guess that's because Hassan is more interested in the results of what people do, than who they are, or look like. I've been watching and reviewing a lot of science fiction of late -- though I guess I've been doing that for years -- and Everyday 21 has what feels to me like an interstellar quality, even though all the photographs are from Earth (and I think, but don't know for sure, that they all were taken in New York City). It's almost as if Hassan is an interstellar anthropologist, tasked with reporting back home to what's going on here on Earth. Not news events. Artifacts. Produced by our species. Reality. And captured by one of our most luminous members.
See the movie, anytime, here, for free.
Podcast Review of For All Mankind 3.1
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 314, in which I review For All Mankind 3.1 on Apple TV+.
Blog post written review of this episode
Podcast reviews of prior seasons: Season 2 ... Season 1
Further reading:
It's Real Life (free alternate history story about The Beatles) The Missing Orientation (free article about why we have not yet made it further than the Moon in our own reality)
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
For All Mankind 3.1: The Alternate Reality Progresses
For All Mankind is back on Apple TV+ with the first episode of its third season and an exciting, harrowing reminder that space is still a very dangerous place.
[Spoilers follow ... ]
First, the alternate history: The 1992 Presidential election features Ellen running as a Republican against the Democratic candidate, Governor Bill Clinton. (In a nice touch, Gary Hart has previously been President.) All four Beatles are alive and well (see my "It's Real Life" for a completely different alternate history story in which John Lennon is not killed).
Next, our fictional characters: Ed and Karen are divorced, she's married to Sam, and the two are running an orbital hotel. Danny (the late Gordo and late Tracy's oldest son) is getting married up there. Of course Ed and his new wife attend. Everyone's having fun -- well, not quite everyone, Danny's younger brother gives a toast in which he lambasts the space program for killing his parents -- and then things get really bad.
North Korean space junk -- even in this alternate reality they're causing big problems -- hits the hotel. The result is gravity is increasing, to the point where it can tear the orbiter apart. Ed's leg gets fractured as part of the hotel comes apart. And before Danny can heroically fix the problem, Sam has been killed.
Actually, I think that's a very good thing, dramatically. Now Karen is free to get back with Ed (his marriage doesn't seem to be the greatest), or who knows who else. The damaged orbiter reminds us, to get back to the beginning of this review, that we can never be complacent about about moves into space.
As the poster for this new season shows, the goal has now shifted from the Moon to Mars, that much further from Earth, with commensurately more dangers. But humans getting to Mars was the natural progression which should have happened had the space program not been stalled for political and other reasons in our own reality (see my free article, The Missing Orientation, for more). It's gratifying to see how this alternate reality, which maybe should have been our reality, plays out.
I'm looking forward to another great ride this season, and I'll see you back here with my next review.
See also For All Mankind, Season 1 and Episode 2.1: Alternate Space Race Reality ... For All Mankind 2.2: The Peanut Butter Sandwich ... For All Mankind 2.3: "Guns to the Moon" ... For All Mankind 2.4: Close to Reality ... For All Mankind 2.5: Johnny and the Wrath of Kahn ... For All Mankind 2.6: Couplings ... For All Mankind 2.7: Alternate History Surges ... For All Mankind 2.8: Really Lost in Translation ... For All Mankind 2.9: Relationships ... For All Mankind 2.10: Definitely Not the End
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
June 11, 2022
Podcast Review of The Orville 3.2
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 313, in which I review episode 3.2 of The Orville on Hulu
Written blog post review of this episode
Podcast reviews of The Orville third season: 3.1
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
The Orville 3.2: "Come and Get Me ... "
Wanna know why I enjoy The Orville so much?
In episode 3.2, Lt. Keyali tells those creatures from the black lagoon-like monsters, "Come and get me ..."
[Spoilers ahead ... ]
Ok, that's the not the complete quote. In fact, Keyali tells the creatures "Come and get me, assholes".
And that's a large part of what makes The Orville so good. It's not just humor. It's humor that is realistic. The people on The Orville speak like real people do.
And the plots are good. In 3.2, The Orville is beset by those monsters, which can start as humans or another sentient species, who are then beset by a microbial infection that turns them into creatures.
There's even a bit of COVID humor in this episode. Dr. Finn discovers that while the microbes are transforming their prey into monsters, the immune systems of the emerging monsters are down. This means they can be killed by a common cold-like virus, which will give the humans on the ship who have not yet been attacked ... the sniffles. Sound familiar?
The doc overall has an excellent episode. Her relationship with Paul (thanks for using my name) enables her to effectively talk to the monsters, because there's still enough of him in the monster he became to respond to her. And there's more good humor in her story too, when Isaac starts telling Paul (when he's still human, before he's attacked) about her sexual preferences. You just can't trust a robot to be discreet.
So, hey, I'm happy to see The Orville to such a good third season, and I'll see you right back here, I hope, next week.
See also The Orville 3.1: Life and Death
And see also The Orville 2.1: Relief and Romance ... The Orville 2.2: Porn Addiction and Planetary Disintegration ... The Orville 2.3: Alara ... The Orville 2.4: Billy Joel ... The Orville 2.5: Escape at Regor 2 ... The Orville 2.6: "Singin' in the Rain" ... The Orville 2.7: Love and Death ... The Orville 2.8: Recalling Čapek, Part 1 ... The Orville 2.9: Recalling Čapek, Part 2 ... The Orville: 2.10: Exploding Blood ... The Orville 2.11: Time Capsule, Space Station, and Harmony ... The Orville 2.12: Hello Dolly! ... The Orville 2.13: Time Travel! ... The Orville Season 2 Finale: Alternate History!
And see also The Orville 1.1-1.5: Star Trek's Back ... The Orville 1.6-9: Masterful ... The Orville 1.10: Bring in the Clowns ... The Orville 1.11: Eating Yaphit ... The Orville 1.12: Faith in Reason and the Prime Directive
watch The Chronology Protection Case FREE on Amazon Prime
Review of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1.6
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 312, in which I review the sixth episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on Paramount+
Written blog post review of this episode
Podcast reviews of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1.1-2 ... 1.3... 1.4... 1.5
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1.6: Two Stories
A superb Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1.6 on Paramount+ this past Thursday, with two important, powerful stories.
[Spoilers ahead ... ]
1. Pike and Alora: Good to see Pike find some happiness, even if it didn't work out all right in the end. The kiss, their time in bed, was a good humanizing experience. Unlike Kirk, who had lots of romantic interludes, this is the first we've seen with Pike in SNW. And although the First Servant story (well played by young Ian Ho, as was Lindy Booth as Alora) kept them apart, their interlude now offers Pike and us a possible alternate ending to what we saw in "The Menagerie" all those years ago, and Pike himself saw much more recently in television history. But, you might ask, since that history already happened -- we indeed saw that future of Pike in "The Menagerie" in the 1960s -- doesn't that mean that it can't be changed, whatever Pike might want and try to do in the next ten years of his life? The answer would be yes, were this not science fiction. But in science fiction, the impossibility of a new life for Pike in which he avoids the disfigurement can be avoided by anything that flips him and our viewing into an alternate reality. And alternate realities have been a staple not only of science fiction, but Star Trek over the years.
2. Rukiya: The other story does end on a definitely hopeful note. The First Servant's biological father and de facto protector may have the knowledge, or know of the knowledge, that can cure Rukiya of her illness. This is just what Dr. M'Benga was hoping for. He's been keeping Rukiya in transporter limbo, waiting for the time when the Enterprise's visit to some strange new world will provide the knowledge needed to save her. He may now, it seems, finally be on that path.
This episode vividly represents how Strange New Worlds is unrolling its narrative. Standalone adventures in each episode, that tie into underlying themes that are slowly developing. In that sense, Strange New Worlds may be a little more moored in continuing stories than either TOS and TNG. But that's ok with me. As I keep saying after almost every episode, SNW is becoming my favorite Star Trek.
See also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1.1-1.2: Great Characters, Actors, Stories ... 1.3: "Instead of terraforming planets, we modify ourselves ..." ... 1.4: The Gorn and the Wub ... 1.5 Going to the Chapel
June 8, 2022
Podcast Review of The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.5-1.6
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 311, in which I review the fifth and sixth episodes of The Man Who Fell to Earth on Showtime.
Written blog post reviews of these episodes of The Man Who Fell to Earth: 1.5 and 1.6
podcast reviews of The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.1 ... 1.2... 1.3 ... 1.4
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
June 7, 2022
The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.6: Music of the Spheres
An usually beautiful, powerful, erudite episode 1.6 of The Man Who Fell to Earth his past Sunday on Showtime, in a series in which every episode has had a rich helping of those qualities.
[Spoilers follow ... ]
Music of the spheres -- the idea since at least the time of Pythagoras in Ancient Greece that the mathematically describable motion of the planets describe a kind of music, if not necessarily hearable, definitely knowable by the soul -- has given rise to all manner of philosophic speculation since then. I'm neither astronomer nor mathematician, but the idea has always appealed to me in some fuzzy, consoling way.
And it provides the solution to the problem vexing Faraday and his allies -- how to turn those equations into a workable energy generator. And that solution is: music, or, more precisely, jazz. The essence of jazz, as everyone knows, is improvisation. Josiah turns out to have been a jazz man -- literally, in this case -- via the infusion of Faraday's Anthean DNA.
Let's rewind a little. Faraday cured Josiah, made him whole, by giving Josiah some of Faraday's DNA. Josiah always loved and gravitated to jazz. But with Faraday's DNA, Josiah's music, fed into a computer, is able via Faraday's and Justin's brilliant orchestration to implement Newton's vision.
Now, I doubt that's quite what Pythagoras had in mind, but his whole theory, after all, is a kind of magnificent science fiction. Meanwhile, this episode was also animated by Faraday's video letter to his Anthean wife, which provided a droll and incisive commentary on human nature and custom.
The episode ends with Spencer in maximum threatening mode, and, frankly, given the luminescence of the rest of this narrative, I'm beginning to find Spencer and threats more of an annoyance than anything. But such is the nature of even cable television these days, and the rest of The Man Who Fell to Earth, especially this past Sunday, was so sublime, I'll take Spencer and his irritations.
See also The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.1: Great Provenance and Excellent Start ... 1.2: The Ending We Needed ... 1.3: "I've come with a prototype ... " 1.4: "Tell my wife I love her very much ... " ... 1.5: Co-Mingling
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
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