Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 58
May 30, 2022
The Time Traveler's Wife 1.3: Lies and Love
[Spoilers follow ... ]
Clare as a tweener and teenager repeatedly asks Henry on his many visits if they will be married in later life. He repeatedly tells her no, and eventually shouts out the truth when the guy who raped the teenaged Clare demands to know why Henry is so upset about what happened to her. Ironically, though that's not quite the word, Henry knows that the rapist burned Clare with cigarettes but not that he raped her, because Clare repeatedly told Henry that the guy had hurt but not raped her.
What are we to make of these mutual lies? They are born of love, or at least good intentions. Henry thinks knowing too much of her future will damage Clare. And she thinks telling Henry the full extent of what happened to her might get Henry to really kill the rapist. But you might not agree. Some observer of human nature -- maybe Albert Schweitzer? -- once remarked that lying, whatever the lie, is a "treason of the soul," that always diminishes the liar. On the other hand, Sissela Bok in her excellent 1978 book Lying evaluates various kinds of lies, and singles out "white lies" as sometimes justified and doing some good in this world.
The Time Traveler's Wife, like all excellent fiction, deserves credit for addressing such complex moral issues. And this episode was especially well acted, not only by Rose Leslie as the 16-year old and older Clare, but Caitlin Shorey as the tweener and Everleigh McDonell as the younger Clare. They join Theo James' Henry in a really effectively acted drama that doesn't miss a beat.
And I'll see you back here next week with my review of the next episode.
See also The Time Traveler's Wife 1.1: Off to a Fine, Funny, Complex Start ... 1.2: Fate
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
May 28, 2022
Podcast Review of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1.4
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 305, in which I review the fourth 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
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
May 27, 2022
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1.4: The Gorn and the Wub
[Spoilers follow ... ]
My favorite moment in this superb episode is Spock smiling, ever so slightly but noticeably, when he and the crew on the bridge learn that Uhura and Hemmer survived. An always timely reminder that Spock is not only Vulcan but human.
And speaking of reminders, let's talk about the Gorn, who first appeared in the original Star Trek. Back then in the 1967 episode "Arena," Kirk's combat with a Gorn captain was evocative of Fredric Brown's 1944 story, also titled "Arena," and Brown received story credit for the episode. In SNW 1.4, the Gorn are evocative of Philip K. Dick's "Beyond Lies the Wub," his first published story, which appeared in Planet Stories in 1952. Both deal, in very different ways, with an intelligent species that hunts another intelligent species as food. I guess that's not enough for Dick to get story credit, but it's worth noting the degree to which Dick's ideas continue to influence so much subsequent science fiction.
Noonien-Singh also had another excellent episode, and is now among my favorite new characters in this series. Indeed, she has the potential to be up there with the best characters in all the Star Trek series. Meanwhile, Hemmer is increasingly interesting, and also had a strong, thoughtful episode.
If you're a devotee of classic science fiction, you just can't miss with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and I'll see you back here next week with my review of the next episode,
See also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1.1-1.2: Great Characters, Actors, Stories ... 1.3: "Instead of terraforming planets, we modify ourselves ..."
I interview Rufus Sewell about Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle
May 22, 2022
Podcast Review of The Time Traveler's Wife 1.2
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 304, in which I review the second episode of The Time Traveler's Wife on HBO.
Written blog post review of this episode
Podcast review of The Time Traveler's Wife 1.1
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
Review of The Time Traveler's Wife 1.2
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 304, in which I review the second episode of The Time Traveler's Wife on HBO.
Written blog post review of this episode
Podcast review of The Time Traveler's Wife 1.1
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
The Time Traveler's Wife 1.2: Fate
A powerful episode 1.2 of The Time Traveler's Wife just on HBO tonight, because--
[Spoilers ahead ... though, actually, a lot of the story of The Time Traveler's Wife is Henry telling his younger selves, as well as Claire at various ages, spoilers of one kind or another about what's going to happen, and/or what can't happen, regardless of what Henry or anyone at any age may want or not want to happen. So maybe, if I'm being true to this story, I shouldn't warn you about spoilers. Though, come to think of it, you and I live in a world in which there is no such thing as time travel, as far as we know, so what goes on in a time travel story doesn't really apply. Anyway ... ]
We learn in an hour of details that cut like a thousand knives about a pivotal life-changing event in Henry's life. It wasn't starting to time travel and having his older self coach him about it. It wasn't about Claire in his life. Both of those of course are crucial to Henry, to say the least, But the pivotal event explored from a myriad of intersecting angles tonight was the death of Henry's mother, who died in an automobile accident, with young Henry, already time traveling, in the back seat.
Obviously, Henry survived. Also obviously, any time traveler would devote the rest of his or her time traveling life to saving their mother. But as an older Henry demonstrates to Henry as a boy, he can't change what will happen in history. This excruciating plot point puts Henry in a class of distinct minorities in time travel stories, who travel to the past and indeed change history (though a nice twist on this which I sometimes myself have employed as a writer is the time traveler goes to the past to stop something from happening, and learns too late that this very trip to the past made the unwanted event happen in the first place ...)
So we and Claire and Henry's younger learn tonight that events that happen are immutable. There is no free will. What will happen will happen. This is a trenchant philosophic proposition, which can't in our reality be proven or disproven. And that's one big reason why I think time travel, as much fun as it is in fiction, can't happen in the real world. If you travel to the future tomorrow and see me wearing a light blue shirt, well, good for you, but I like to think and in fact I do think that I can put on dark blue shirt tomorrow, or maybe a shirt of a different color altogether, if that's what I want to do.
These, I think, are both profound and fun to think about. And I credit The Time Traveler's Wife for raising them so effectively. I'll see you here next week with my review of the next episode. Unless I don't want to write it. But I think I will.
See also The Time Traveler's Wife 1.1: Off to a Fine, Funny, Complex Start
Podcast Review of Night Sky
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 303, in which I review all of Night Sky on Amazon Prime Video
Written blog post review of this episode
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
May 21, 2022
Night Sky: Down Home Portal Done Up Memorably
Just finished binging Night Sky on Amazon Prime Video, another travel to other worlds narrative that does it not through space ships or time machines, but some kind of conduits or portals built by some interstellar or intertemporal civilization. Outer Range did a good job of this with a time-travel hole out on the range. Night Sky does this with portal to another world in a shack in the backyard. And it's lifted immensely by two peerless lead performances by J. K. Simmons as Franklin York and Sissy Spacek as Irene York, an aging married couple in the fictitious town of Farnsworth, Illinois.
[Spoilers ahead ... ]
Let's start at the end of the eight-episode season to see what I think we know: As Irene demonstrated pretty early on, the alien world outside their window comes packed with oxygen. Which is why she and Franklin survived at the end, and their neighbor Byron likely did, too. The body that we saw with the knife sticking out of him was likely the guardian Jude killed in his escape to our planet, and why he was all bloodied with someone else's blood when Sissy first saw him and took him into her and Frank's home.
Ok, what else do we know? There are "apostates" who escape "guardian" control. Jude is an apostate, Stella and Nick are guardians. And there are also guardians who have left that role, and help apostates or at very least don't hunt them. Hannah (played Sonya Walger from Lost, Flashforward, For All Mankind, and many more) refers to this third group, of which she is a member, as the "fallen". So that's a nice set-up of characters and allegiances.
Back to the portals: they connect different parts of the Earth -- characters use them to travel instantly from Mexico to Newark, NJ, and from Farnsworth to Bangkok -- and Earth to at least one other planet, the one that has oxygen, and some kind of little city not far from its side of the portal. Whoever built them did that as long as several hundred years ago -- there's a sketch of a door to a portal in Argentina in the early 1700s.
The personal story of the Yorks is touching and powerful, all the more because it is brought to life by such brilliant acting. The other characters range from interesting to compelling, which is a good range for a series like this. Questions remain. What happened to Byron? Where is Jude's father? This all adds up to a memorable series -- creds to creator Holden Miller -- which would be well served by a sequel, which I'd binge a day or two after it was released, as I did with this first season. My wife, not generally a fan of science fiction, enjoyed it, too.
Podcast Review of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1.3
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 302, in which I review the third episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on Paramount+
Written blog post review of this episode
Podcast review of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1.1-2
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
May 20, 2022
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1.3: "Instead of terraforming planets, we modify ourselves"
There was a science fiction story I read a long long time ago -- back in the late 1950s, I think, when as a kid I first began devouring science fiction -- "Enchanted Village" (1950) I think, by A. E. Van Vogt But I remember the story as as clear as day. An astronaut is stranded on a planet with a barely hospitable environment, and struggles to survive. He comes up with all sorts of strategies and fixes. [Spoiler follows for this story.] In the end, he's feeling great. But not because he's come up with ways to make the environment more comfortable for human life. He's in great shape because the environment has changed him into an alien life form happy as a clam in the hostile environment.
Strange New Worlds 1.3 does a fine job of recalling the essence of this story through the person of First Officer Chin-Riley, aka Number One.
[Spoilers follow...]
The Enterprise beams down a team to Illyria, a planet of humanoids who were outcasts in the Federation because they practiced genetic engineering. Before the episode is over, we learn that Number One is an Illyrian, and the centerpiece of their lives and explorations was to transform themselves not the planets they encountered. If you think about it, that's a pretty enlightened approach, certainly by our current environmental standards.
That story, in itself, would have been well worth watching. But we get more: we learn, at last, the backstory of Pike's Number One, as it was told to us in "The Cage" become "The Menagerie". And, while we're at it, we also learn that Security Chief La'an Noonien-Singh is a descendant of Khan Noonien-Singh! He was also a champion of genetic engineering -- which he unfortunately used for evil purposes -- which in turn is why the Federation took such a dim view of DNA re-arranging (in a nice historical tie-in to the Illyrian story).
Quite a story there, right? And just to round out a really stellar episode, we learn that Dr. M'Benga is keeping his critically ill daughter alive in transporter limbo. She's relatively fine, now, and he beams her into flesh and blood existence to visit with her, until he can somehow find a cure for her illness, maybe on some planet out there somewhere.
That's a great story, right there, in itself. This new series is just bursting with creativity about important issues, with sentient beings of all kinds striving for better lives. As I said last week, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has the makings of a Star Trek series in league with TOS and TNG. After this third episode, I'm sure of it.
See you back here with my review of the next episode next week.
See also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1.2-1.3: Great Characters, Actors, Stories
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