Philip Sandifer's Blog, page 51

Shabcast 32 (Chatting about free speech with Daniel)

Helloesville, my little chickadees, have a 32nd Shabcast.  Why not? 

I'm joined by the ubiquitous Daniel Harper to talk about freedom of speech, its limits, its abuses, what it means to different people, etc.

This episode comes in at a comparatively brief 2hrs 20mins. 

Download here.

 

Eruditorum Presscast: Knock Knock

Oh, yeah, I should probably announce this here instead of just uploading the file, huh? Anyway, our podcast on Knock Knock, unexpectedly featuring Seth Aaron Hershman instead of Kevin Burns, is now available for your listening pleasure. Or displeasure. Get it here.

Myriad Universes: Ill Wind Part One

A sense of vastness and cosmic wonder. One almost expects a haunting synthesizer remix of “Space...The Final Frontier” to play over this resplendent scene of the Great Interstellar Dark. But instead, it's a caption box reciting John Masefield's “Sea-Fever”. Slightly stilted and hokey, but perhaps evocative in its own way.

A comforting sight, as the starship Enterprise slowly materializes for us out of the night, just as we remember. And alongside it another ship, resembling a giant dragonfly with weblike lattice wing-sails on either side.

On the Enterprise bridge, Captain Picard exposits to us that the crew has been assigned to serve as referee and security for the eighth leg of the Centauris' Cup solar sailing yacht race around GC 2006. Will and Deanna tell us about how solar sail craft were once the workhorses of the cargo merchant trade, but are only used as pleasure craft now. Deanna remarks on the romance of it all, but Data doesn't understand why anyone would want to willingly pilot a “fragile and technologically primitive” ship. Captain Picard explains the appeal lies in the subtle way solar sail ships handle, the prospect of friendly competition with other enthusiasts in races such as this one, and in the idea of being alone with the forces of nature. In doing so he reveals that solar sailing has been a lifetime passion for him too, though one he's had to give up as the Enterprise's captain: He's simply become too valuable to Starfleet for them to allow him to participate in such a dangerous hobby, though he keeps up with new developments when he can.

The craft sailing alongside the Enterprise belongs to the Mestral, the hereditary leader, and absolute ruler, of a matriarchal planet called Edelis friendly to the Federation. She is, in fact, one of the “security risks” the Enterprise is here to keep an eye on, because the Federation is very nervous about behaviour on her part they consider “reckless”. Such as personally competing in solar sail yacht races and flying within spitting distance of a Galaxy-class starship, whose deflector fields and thrusters alone could wipe out the delicate sails of a light-powered vessel. Furthermore, it's been theorized that previous attempts at sabotaging this race in earlier legs were due to reactionary factions on Edelis objecting to the Mestral's involvement in it. Another concern is the Carrighae, who are known to resort to any kind of trick, no matter how underhanded, unethical or violent, to achieve success, as they believe the entire universe was built for them and that they alone are entitled to it (amusingly, Deanna explains to us that their society is based around “insult diplomacy” and their physiology is based around an ulcer). Right on cue, the Carrighae hail the Enterprise with their usual brand of formalities.

Even so, Captain Picard stresses that the crew must be tolerant of other cultures and not pass judgment, no matter how hostile and confrontational others may be with them. Furthermore, he confesses that the Carrighae are likely not even the worst of the problems they'll have to deal with, as some competitors are racing for political motives, such as a proxy for war with other competitors. Following that, he has Worf call up the Mestral to pay their respects...And because they're obligated by Starfleet to ensure her and her crew are properly protected. The Mestral assures the Enterprise crew that they are, and Captain Picard invites her to a pre-race reception to be held in ten-forward that evening, to which she accepts. Will, Deanna and Worf discuss how headstrong the Mestral is, and Captain Picard says she'll need that and skill both in this leg of the race. Data elabourates by explaining that GC 2006 is an unusual “flare star” that becomes visibly brighter (and thus more intense) at regular intervals. Furthermore, it's the only known example of such a star to be blue instead of red.

At the reception, Captain Picard muses on how sports have become a socially acceptable form of warfare, reiterating the same power structures and political conflicts that go back millennia. He wonders if they have always been like this and he was just too young to notice before. The Carrig Captain intercepts Jean-Luc, and, praising the Enterprise skipper on his deft handling of insult diplomacy earlier, offers him a hefty bribe if the Enterprise were to fix the race on the Carrighae's behalf. Captain Picard takes enormous offense and flatly, though politely, refuses. Captain Picard shares his frustration and confusion with the whole situation with Commander Riker, who points out that in a way, he's just been complimented: After all, “People who feel they 'own the universe' don't dicker with inferiors”. Captain Picard remains unimpressed though, and both express interest in what Deanna Troi will make of the whole sordid affair.

Worf is entertaining the Mestral, and is concerned about the fact she sent her tender away, which leaves her ship vulnerable should one of its parts require replacing. Captain Picard arrives and continues the train of logic, pointing out “There are some parts of your racing team for which there are no spares”. But the Mestral sees herself as expendable: Even though her planet is ruled by a system of heredity, her family is large, and should anything happen to her a replacement will quickly be selected. Deanna wonders if the Mestral ever gets lonely, since yacht racing takes her so frequently away from home. But the Mestral, quoting Lord Byron, claims she prefers “To mingle with the universe”. This surprises Captain Picard, but the Mestral assures him her first love was literature, though Byron typically depresses her. Her consort Rav, meanwhile, is far more interested in engineering and astrophysics, so Captain Picard sends Data to entertain him with some indecipherable technobabble.

Captain Picard is concerned about how close the Mestral sailed to the Enterprise, but she assures him that she knows her ship as well as he knows his. Then, as a fellow sailor, he asks her how the new type of mast struts she's been using are holding up. She says they're terrible; a closed-box system that shuts down when it gets too hot. She wants hers replaced with old-fashioned mechanical masts which, while they require maintenance, are still things that a person can fix themselves. And before the Captain can protest, she acknowledges Starfleet's concern and promises “I will take no unnecessary risks, but I intended to enjoy the necessary ones to the fullest”. Commander Riker asks Captain Picard if he achieved “the desired result”, to which he answers in the negative. Jean-Luc is frustrated at not being able to reach the Mestral because she's a constant target of assassination, and he fears she's not valuing her life highly enough. Commander Riker quips that this is “The best reason not to go into politics”, to which the Captain quips back “I have news for you Number One. We're in it now”.

Just then, Deanna pops by to share what she's learned about the competitors. And it isn't good: The Alkamins are all planning sabotage, while one of the Cynosure team is attempting to seduce the Kihin navigator so she'll be emotionally and hormonally compromised. The Thubanir, on the other hand. are plotting to assassinate their own captain, but because their species' life-cycles are governed by a regeneration system such an act would be merely an inconvenience. As Deanna grimly points out: “Greed, rage, pre-race butterflies, envy, hatred and terror...Excitement, good cheer, calculation, indigestion, jealousy, sadness and spite...The usual”. As an example of hatred, she indicates the Sauch and Lorherrin teams, who “loathe everyone here on a general basis, but their real loathing is saved for each other”. As if to prove the truth in her words, a bar brawl between the two crews breaks out, necessitating an intervention from Will and Worf.

Captain Picard expresses remorse that almost none of the racers are competing for the joy of the sport. But as he ponders the forgotten romance of leaving worldly cares behind to be intimate with nature, a shadowy figure breaks into shuttlebay 13, leaving behind a suspiciously ticking electronic device.

In July 1988, shortly after Star Trek: The Next Generation had completed its first season, TV Guide's Gary D. Chistenson had this to say:

“STAR TREK depicted us in reckless youth, with a Starship captain who tamed space as vigorously as we laid claim to the future...STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION reveals the child grown-A little more polished, but also more complacent. And if there's a bit of gray and a wrinkle or two, so much the better.”

If this was the assessment of Summer 1988, then what of Fall 1995? As Star Trek: The Next Generation is about to enter its ninth consecutive season as a mainstream pop culture phenomenon, something its predecessor could never have even dreamed of, its own legacy and presence are very deeply apparent. If the gray and wrinkles were for Star Trek itself (or rather the ideals the Original Series claimed to stand for) in 1988, now Star Trek: The Next Generation must surely have some of its own. Age should breed maturity and contemplation, and Diane Duane brings both to Star Trek: The Next Generation to see off its DC comics line with Ill Wind.
 
Perhaps no author has attained quite the same level of mastery of the art of the Star Trek tie-in than Diane Duane. She has contributed to Star Trek in more forms than any other writer, being a staple of the Pocket Books line in its myriad incarnations, the DC Film Series comic line, and even writing the script for the first Star Trek electronic game that wasn't played purely through a command line interface, Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative. She even has a co-writing credit on “Where No One Has Gone Before”, which was adapted from her book The Wounded Sky. But Duane is probably most famous for Rihannsu series, five novels dedicated towards exploring and expanding on Romulan society, history and culture. Under Duane the Romulans become *far* more fleshed out and interesting then they ever were in any “canon” sources: Duane calls them Rihannsu, “The Declared”, a splinter society of Vulcans who left to travel the stars to avoid civil war after their leader S'task disagreed with Surak's teachings of pure pacifism, arguing instead for resilience and strength. Duane even invented an entire language for the Romulans (so named, it seems, because Federation explorers presumptuously named the Rihannsu's homeworlds after the Roman myth of Romulus and Remus) and makes them animists, as well as doubling down on their deeply-held dedication to a warrior's code of honor.
 
Like most authors of her generation, Diane Duane got her start in the female-driven Star Trek fandom of the 1970s. Though she didn't participate in the contemporary zine scene (as far as I can tell), her success in the Star Trek tie-in novel culture of the early 1980s was a direct result of the climate it nurtured, and her work (especially with the Romulans) was resoundingly embraced by the fandom of the time. As a result, she is arguably the most visible presence in Star Trek stewardship who reminds us of what Star Trek fandom actually was and used to look like. As such, her guiding Star Trek: The Next Generation through its final moments as a relevant comic series is poignantly appropriate, as her absence in the series to date has been a glaring omission: Though she's credited as co-writer on “Where No One Has Gone Before”, she was never asked to actually submit something to the TV series properly, and her only prior association with it had been Dark Mirror in December 1993, an attempt to adapt the Mirror Universe to Star Trek: The Next Generation that was promptly ignored and deprecated by “Crossover” six months later.
 
One can only imagine what Star Trek: The Next Generation on TV would have looked like with a second, and stronger, female voice guiding it. Certainly one expects the Romulans would not have been flanderized so had Duane been there to oversee things from the beginning. And in Ill Wind, Duane brings to Star Trek: The Next Generation something that seems somberly appropriate for Winter 1996: Wisdom, maturity, quiet, melancholy dignity, a yearning to return to the wordless graces of nature, and actually, a fair bit of tired and world-weary cynicism.
 
Issue 1 is a thoughtful slow-burn affair, perhaps boring if you're not careful about the way you read it. Nothing much “happens” plot-wise (although important plot threads *are* established and set in motion, but if you are reading this for the first time you wouldn't know that), but that's not the point. What's important here are the long, drawn out scenes of the Enterprise crew simply talking to each other and confiding in each other's feelings and concerns. And if that's not a draw for you, quite frankly, Ill Wind is final proof positive that Star Trek: The Next Generation is *not* the series for you.
 
(That Ill Wind is a very poetic and romantic work, at least in the classical definition of the word, actually leads me to my one criticism of it, which is the art is sadly not up to the standards of Diane Duane's script. Given the unforgettable painterly expressionism of sister show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's final bow Terok Nor, one does wish Ill Wind was willing to push the artistic boundaries a bit more than it does. Especially given how beautifully painterly its own covers are.)
 
Star Trek's biggest problem, and that of all mass media pop culture works, is that it cannot let go of structural institutionalized violence in narrative. And Star Trek: The Next Generation was always too good for that, and that was always its fatal flaw. In fact, one could perhaps read the lengthy sequences in Ill Wind of the Enterprise crew alternating between shock, bewilderment, bemusement and sadness at the raucous antics of the Cenatauris' Cup competitors as a statement about the pop culture climate Star Trek: The Next Generation has left behind (and what are the Carrighae but Indo-European male privilege given form? Insult diplomacy and ulcers indeed). The elders shake their head at the violence, egotism, shortsightedness and willful ignorance of their own descendants.
 
I wonder...Are your glorified ancestors proud of you?

The Proverbs of Hell 7/39: Sorbet

SORBET: A frozen dessert made of sweetened, flavored water. In this case, it seems meant to suggest a palate cleanser, resetting the meal after the extremes of “Entrée.”

WILL GRAHAM: I use the term Sounders because it refers to a small group of pigs. That’s how he sees his victims. Not as people, not as prey. Pigs.

The particulars of what it means to see people as pigs is enormously vexed, and I can’t not gesture at my “Capitalist Pig” series of essays, the first two of which are focused specifically on this. Broadly, though, pigs are second only to monkeys as animals that symbolically reflect our own humanity back on us. They are also intimately connected with food - their two basic utilities to a culture are either as garbage disposal or as an exceedingly efficient food source. Much like the pig itself, every part of this dense nexus of meaning is used in the construction of the underlying metaphor here.

WILL GRAHAM: True to his established pattern, the Chesapeake Ripper has remained consistently theatrical.

“Theatrical” is an interesting description here, given that Hannibal’s medium is the fixed artistic tableau, as opposed to the visceral immediacy of live interaction. Indeed, “theatrical” is in a very real sense the one thing a killer-at-large cannot be, in that he must necessarily remain a tangible absence at the scene. Of course, Hannibal’s role is more as writer/director/demiurge than actor, and so his absence is arguably an organic part of the process, with his victims being the actors. (Compare with the previous “sounders” metaphor for humorous writerly commentary on actors.) Another interpretation, however, is that the tableaus are the negative space of the theater after the performance has happened - sets and props left behind after a performance that the police have already missed. This interpretation has the advantage of matching well with Will’s deductive gifts. A third reading, in which the theater is the ongoing public saga of fascination, would be supported by Freddie Lounds, and is at least what Hannibal is engaging in with Miriam. As usual, these interpretations, while contradictory, are not mutually exclusive.

This scene, which opens inside the singer’s body before zooming into Hannibal’s ear as the sound reaches it, is one of the show’s more charming demonstrations of viscerality to date. The real detail that makes the scene hilarious, however, is the fact that the concert is a benefit for hunger relief. 

MRS. KOMEDA: I said properly. Means dinner and the show. Have you seen him cook? It’s an entire performance. He used to throw such exquisite dinner parties. You heard me. Used to.

HANNIBAL: I will again. Once inspiration strikes. I cannot force a feast. A feast must present itself.

MR. KOMEDA: It’s a dinner party, not a unicorn.

HANNIBAL: But the feast is life. You put the life in your belly and you live.

Hannibal’s claims here are interesting in light of the killing spree he goes on, which is focused on old grudges plucked from his reserve of recipe and business cards. The feast has clearly presented itself - what’s lacking is the inspiration for the performance. Of course, in practice the feast was delayed - this was originally slotted as episode four, but the initial cut failed to pass muster, and it was reworked with two days of additional shooting to instead tie into the Miriam Lass cliffhanger from “Entrée.” The central reason for this was that Hannibal’s elaborate dinner party was simply too early, and belonged after the audience has seen him directly revealed as the Ripper.

“The feast is life” is of course one of the show’s most iconic declarations of viewpoint.

JACK CRAWFORD: Are you sure?

WILL GRAHAM: More or less.

JACK CRAWFORD: Why are you sure?

WILL GRAHAM: The Ripper left a victim in a church pew using his tongue as a page marker in the Bible he was holding. This isn’t that. 

It’s notable that this is a judgment of pure aesthetics, without even the trappings of psychology to ground it. To some extent this is a fair critique of criminal profiling, which has decidedly dodgy methodological validity, and which does not stand up great to empirical scrutiny. One study, notably, offered a variety of groups, including professional profilers and laypeople to create profiles, with all groups performing about as well. Of course, art critics were not included, so the jury’s still out.

JACK CRAWFORD: How do you see the Ripper, Will?

WILL GRAHAM I see him as one of those pitiful things sometimes born in hospitals. They feed it, keep it warm, yet they don’t put it on the machines. They let it die. But he doesn’t die. He looks normal, and nobody can tell what he is.

Another passage straight out of Red Dragon, and a rare moment in which the show opts to puncture the myth of Hannibal, presenting him as a fundamentally wretched creature instead of as a figure of Mephistophelean grandeur. This is an important counterweight to the episode in which we first see Hannibal go on a proper murder spree. 

HANNIBAL: I’m honest.

BEDELIA: Not perfectly.

HANNIBAL: As honest as anyone.

BEDELIA: Not really. I have conversations with a version of you and hope the actual you gets what he needs.

HANNIBAL: A version of me?

BEDELIA: Naturally, I respect its meticulous construction, but you are wearing a very well tailored person suit. 

At last, Bedelia du Maurier makes her debut. This is one of the show’s most astonishing inventions - Hannibal’s psychiatrist. She recognizes the basic outline of the game Hannibal is playing with her - engaging honestly but with crucial omissions, daring her to see through the veil and understand what she’s actually dealing with. “Person suit,” of course, evokes Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs, although what Bedelia is talking about is rather less literal.

BEDELIA: Red or white.

HANNIBAL: I think something pink, don’t you?

Nice, if unsurprising, to see Hannibal stand up for rosé, which is one of those things that has one tier of snobbishness that’s against it and another that rejects the backlash as simplistic and rooted in ignorance of rosé beyond white zinfandel. 

WILL GRAHAM: Have you been drinking?

HANNIBAL: I had a glass of wine with my last appointment. 

The shift from Bedelia’s house to Hannibal’s office while maintaining the continuity of Hannibal drinking wine is an utterly unmotivated bit of reality distortion that led to initial speculation that Bedelia might not actually be real. The discontinuity was likely an artifact of the reshoots (the Bedelia scene was originally scripted for Hannibal’s office), but this is Hannibal and there’s little reason to expect spatio-temporal coherence.

WILL GRAHAM: The Chesapeake Ripper wants to perform. Every brutal choice has elegance, grace. His mutilations hide the true nature of his crimes.

Here we get a clarification/variation of Hannibal’s previously mentioned theatricality, in which it’s positioned as desire, as opposed to a straightforward aspect of the murders. In this context it becomes a common artistic desire for immediacy. Hannibal yearns for the direct access to the audience that performance allows, but the nature of his medium requires distance. The content of his art, therefore, is constantly about efforts to bridge that impassible divide. This is worth reading in direct context with his conversation with Bedelia regarding loneliness.

HANNIBAL: It’s not what you appreciate. It’s that you appreciate. A compromise. Beer brewed in a wine barrel. Two years. I bottled it myself.

ALANA BLOOM: A Cabernet Sauvignon wine barrel?

HANNIBAL: I love your pallet.

ALANA BLOOM: I love your beer. I taste oak. What else do I taste in there?

HANNIBAL: I will only answer yes or no.

So people, then. The detail that the beer has been in progress for two years is intriguing - another case where the timeline and prehistory of Hannibal becomes complex. Part of this is due to a natural but fundamentally misleading instinct to treat Hannibal as though he operates with a broad master plan, when in fact he is largely an improvisational character. But the conversation subsequently offers a sort of explanation for how Hannibal and Will remained at a distance up to this point in Alanna’s active decision not to mention him to Hannibal, a decision born out of her desire that people leave him alone. As usual, Alanna does not resolve into an entirely satisfying portrait here, but she remains intriguing.

So much for Jack knowing when he’s awake.

FRANKLYN: Cheese is a passion. Ever hear of Tyromancy?

HANNIBAL: Divination by cheese.

FRANKLYN: It was my gateway to cheese. A magic eight ball you get to eat. 

Franklyn is presumably crafting a spectacularly pathetic lie here, and yet the imaginative possibilities of someone getting into cheese via an obscure and largely abandoned method of divination are too enticing to pass up. The most common method of tyromancy is to read omens into the curds as they form, though other practices existed.

WILL GRAHAM: What do you see, Doctor?

HANNIBAL: Sum up the Ripper in so many words? (pause) Words are living things. They have personality, point of view, agenda.

WILL GRAHAM: They’re pack hunters.

The episode’s second reiteration of “Entrée”’s closing question (presumably one of the things added when this episode was reworked) becomes the occasion for a genuinely staggering pair of lines. First is Hannibal’s dodging of the question, which is poetic, if a bit bland in content. Then Will adds flavor to the mix with a spin that is baffling and suggestive all at once. 

WILL GRAHAM: The Chesapeake Ripper had no reason to humiliate Miriam Lass.

HANNIBAL: Seems to me, he was humiliating someone when he cut off her arm.

WILL GRAHAM: He was humiliating Jack Crawford. 

HANNIBAL: Did it work?

Hannibal’s final line was an addition after the shooting script, and is a delightful moment of insecurity on his part, especially given his closing conversation with Jack in “Entrée,” which should have provided verification that it did. The line also provides motivation for Hannibal’s correction of Will, which is otherwise the only time in the conversation where Hannibal provides any actual insights on the Ripper.

HANNIBAL: He was removing the kidney. Poorly. 

“Not a critic” is just not a position Hannibal occupies.

WILL GRAHAM: Why did you stop being a surgeon?

HANNIBAL: I killed someone. More accurately, I couldn’t save someone. But it felt like killing them.

WILL GRAHAM: You were an Emergency Room surgeon. It has to happen from time to time.

HANNIBAL: It happened one time too many. I transferred my passion for anatomy into the culinary arts. I fix minds instead of bodies and no one’s died as a result of my therapy.

Hannibal’s usual “lie with the absolute truth,” complete with the suggestive phrase “passion for anatomy” is followed immediately by an outright lie, as we will find out when the details of his relationship with Bedelia eventually emerges. Needless to say, the lie is only going to become more of one from here.

Knock Knock Review

I’ve said before that my basic standard for Doctor Who at this point is “show me something I haven’t seen before.” It doesn’t have to be huge. Punch a racist, fail to explore some interesting ideas about indigenous species, it’s fine. I just want some sense of freshness and innovation. By that standard, then, Knock Knock is a complete and utter bust. Which feels at least slightly unfair, since it’s a perfectly well-made and (mostly) well-written episode, but if I wanted drab competency without even a trace of original thought I’d watch a Chris Chibnall show.

Actually, the snark about Chibnall is slightly unfair, because the culprit in Knock Knock’s abject blandness is pretty obvious: this is 100% down to the malign influence of Blink. And not just in the sense that it’s literally the same house, but in the fact that it’s a house in the first place. Once upon a time, when Doctor Who wanted to be scary it would, you know, do some scary stuff. Monsters stalking the Blitz. Weird Satanic horror on an alien world. Evil tourist busses. Or, frankly, any number of scary ideas from the classic series, only a handful of which were ever “haunted house.”

And then came Blink, and suddenly the standard shifted. This is the fourth straight-up unreconstructed haunted house in a decade. And that’s not even counting stuff like The Eleventh Hour, Silence in the Library, or The Day of the Moon, which are all rooted in the logic of the haunted house. And yes, those are all conspicuously Moffat episodes, as was Blink. This is unmistakably his rut that we’re stuck in. But his episodes, at least, tend to accomplish my basic desire by mashing up the haunted house style of horror with something else. This, on the other hand, is just a spooky house with the same twist as The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. There’s a bit in Doctor Who Magazine that talks about making this the “ultimate haunted house,” but it’s hard to see where that was done.

What’s weird is that it’s not even like the haunted house has been paying that impressive dividends since Blink. Sure, Hide was decent, but it was burnished by the fact that the back half of Series 7 was curiously devoid of classics. Night Terrors was crap. And yet somehow, in the wake of Blink, the haunted house has become a Doctor Who standard to be reiterated regularly. And there’s no real reason that should be. I mean, the other obvious Moffat-era defaults, out of control technology and monsters that aren’t actually malevolent, are at least interesting points that feel relevant to the present historical moment. The haunted house, on the other hand, just feels like a tired attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle while apparently completely misunderstanding what was actually interesting about Blink. It doesn’t have anything particularly interesting to say in and of itself. I have little doubt there is an interesting haunted house to do in 2017, but if there were four really interesting haunted houses across all of television in the last decade that’d be a surprisingly big decade for haunted houses.

But to actually take it to the episode, even aside from the fact that haunted houses are just a thing Doctor Who needs to not do for seven years or so, like I said, there may well be an interesting haunted house to do in 2017, but this isn’t it. This is… adamantly failing to aspire to anything more than “fine” at any given moment. Daniel asked in the podcast for Smile “who’s this for,” and the question applies painfully to this. What’s the audience for this? Who does this have anything to say to?

The usual answer when I complain about this - certainly the one that was trotted out for Smile - was that it’s for children, often with the specific phrase “fairy tale” getting used. I can only assume “fairy tale” is to this generation of Doctor Who fandom what “romp” was to a previous one, though, as all it means is sloppy storytelling and undercooked themes. Why can the Landlord teleport or just appear out of nowhere? What are his motivations in the final scene exactly? (Is it just “overgrown child?” Why exactly is he obsessed with destroying people?) How did the line “your silence is confirmation” make it through to the shooting script? Why fireworks? And would it have killed you to give the cannon fodder some actual characterization? None of this infuriates, but it’s lazy, and the suggestion that “for children” is an excuse for laziness does infuriate. Children still deserve stories that are actually about something. They deserve stories that are trying. They don’t deserve a celebrity writer and a respected actor having a lark because that’s what they see Doctor Who as.

Nah, the better defense is just that the Capaldi era has generally gone for a setup of “slightly lazy early episodes, batshit ambitious later ones,” and the arrival of Jamie Mathieson to kick off what Doctor Who Magazine tells me is a very intense mini-arc next week sounds like we’re getting into the stuff that Series 10 is actually going to live or die by. For episodes one through four, this is… fine.

I see this is the most popular episode of the season so far on GallifreyBase, which I can't say surprises me.
I’m not the person to comment on the interesting-sounding decisions they did with sound mixes for this, but it’s neat that the series plays with things like that.
Also on the subject of sound, nice to see the episode open with a song that came out in between “The Zygon Invasion” and “The Zygon Inversion,” as opposed to the slightly embarrassing “five year old pop song” approach to overt popular culture references. (I’m looking at you, Class.) I’ll leave it to someone else to parse the actual semiotics of Little Mix, though I assume it’s popular but utterly uncool given the subsequent gag about Bill’s musical taste.
Bill’s lovely this week - the amount of good stuff she gets is by some margin the best defense this episode has for itself. Bill needed one more episode like this to cement her - and it’s notable that Rose, Martha, and even Amy had these sorts of “reground the companion in their ordinary life” episodes early on. Seeing the companion as an experienced Doctor Who companion in the context of their ordinary lives is a big part of establishing them as The Companion instead of The New Companion. Anyway, loads of good Bill stuff, but her standout moment for me is her muted but slightly hurt reaction to the Doctor’s “thought you’d have loads.”
Much of what doesn’t work is centered on the end, which feels unearned. For the most part it’s one of those things where the details don’t matter because the overall aesthetic is on point, but the last few bits really lose track of what they’re doing. Eliza giving up her life and bringing the Landlord down with her ought to be a bit sad, but before there’s any room to let that happen we’ve switched to “everybody lives,” and then to a slightly jokey ending about “back to the estate agent,” and then finally to a vault scene without any real sense of structure or thought.
Evidence for both the “Missy’s in the vault” crowd and the “future Doctor’s in the vault” crowd this week in the form of the prisoner’s “Pop Goes The Weasel” response to people getting eaten and in the Doctor’s apparent skittishness about regeneration. Given that the reveal is in “Extremis,” I’m going with Missy.
The sweater with the holes in it is back! Yay!
American viewers got the first part of Class’s two-part midseason whatever it is, which is basically a double dose of middling ambition. I reviewed it here.
Back on Thursday for a podcast of this with Kevin Burns, and next week for Oxygen, which I’m pretty excited for.

Ranking

Thin Ice
The Pilot
Smile
Knock Knock

The Proverbs of Hell 6/39: Entrée

ENTRÉE: With the episode titles in French, this does not carry the English meaning of “main course” per se, but rather refers to a transitional course between fish and meat dishes. In truth the meaning is double, flagging this episode’s status as a transitional one in the season and its status as the first one since “Aperitif” to be focused entirely on the arc plot.

“Entrée” is long on Silence of the Lambs parallels, although unlike with elements drawn from Red Dragon, the show does not actually have the rights to the book and so can’t take and repurpose dialogue per se. Instead it tinkers with the iconography (to the point of exactly matching the uniform designs of the film), doing things akin to how Budish interpolated Francis Dolarhyde. To wit, Gideon’s ploy here closely mirrors Hannibal’s escape at the end of Silence of the Lambs.

WILL GRAHAM: I’m always a little nervous going into one of these places. Afraid they’ll never let me out again.

JACK CRAWFORD: Don’t worry. I’m not going to leave you here.

WILL GRAHAM: Not today.

Gee, I wonder what the end of season twist is going to be?

DR. CHILTON: Ah, yes. That thing you do. You are quite the topic of conversation in psychiatric circles.

WILL GRAHAM: Am I?

DR. CHILTON: A unique cocktail of personality disorders and neuroses that makes you a highly skilled profiler.

JACK CRAWFORD: Graham isn’t here to be analyzed.

DR. CHILTON: Perhaps he should be.

The unsubtlety of the foreshadowing is cleverly obscured by the unsubtle reiteration of the point that Will is himself “crazy” (inasmuch as the show takes that word seriously) as Chilton eyes him hungrily as a potential patient. This is, of course, one of the characteristic techniques of the show: achieving subtlety through overlapping complete lacks of subtlety.

It’s also worth noting, however, how decisively quickly the fact that Chilton is a complete shitheel is established. Much of this is down to the clever timing here - Chilton is, if not right about Will, at least not wrong about him, but this comes so early in Will’s mental deterioration and is presented with such guileless opportunism that the thing it most directly sets up is not “Will is unstable” but rather “Chilton is the worst.”

While Will’s previous involvement with the Chesapeake Ripper case is vague, it gives every appearance of somehow never having involved imagining himself committing one of the Ripper’s crimes. Either way, this is the closest we’ve ever actually seen him come to imagining himself committing one of Hannibal’s, even if in reality he’s imagining himself committing a crime by someone imagining himself to be Hannibal. It is unsurprisingly visceral, given this.

JACK CRAWFORD: Sorry to pull you out of class. There’s nothing wrong. I don’t want to make you nervous.

MIRIAM LASS: I’m not nervous. Curious.

JACK CRAWFORD: Your instructors tell me you’re in the top ten percent.

MIRIAM LASS: Top five, sir.

Without actually using any of the dialogue, this scene reiterates the basic beats of the first meeting between Jack Crawford and Clarice Starling, setting Miriam up as a mirror of the character. Indeed, Miriam’s function in this episode includes a lot of playing out the roles of other Harris characters.

This episode finds two occasions recreate Clarice Starling’s iconic walk down the corridor of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Unsurprisingly, it is Alanna who gets the “classic” version that holds slavishly to the blocking of Silence of the Lambs, since her character is too hazily defined to use for some other narrative purpose here. In keeping with the show’s de-emphasis of sexual violence, nobody tells her that they can smell her cunt.

BRIAN ZELLER: I’ll say it once more, just to say it. It was 2:47 in the morning. If you get roused from deep sleep, you’re going to be disoriented. May not even know you’re asleep.

JACK CRAWFORD: I know when I’m awake.

Compare to Will’s “I’m not even sure if I’m awake now” last episode. In one sense, at least, Jack’s claim is well-founded: he is perhaps the one character who never seems to slip into a fugue state. In another sense, however, nobody in Hannibal can really be said to be awake with any honesty.

Jack’s line about knowing when he’s awake cuts straight to an exhausted Will hallucinating, hammering home the contrast mentioned above. This scene then cuts to Will waking up in his office as Jack and Alanna talk to him about a matter entirely unrelated to the scene that transitioned into the dream - a progression that perfectly encapsulates the narrative logic of the show.

JACK CRAWFORD: Do you know which professions psychopaths disproportionately gravitate to?

FREDDIE LOUNDS: CEOs, lawyers. The clergy.

JACK CRAWFORD: Number 5 on the list is surgeons.

FREDDIE LOUNDS: I know that list.

WILL GRAHAM: Then you know what number six is.

FREDDIE LOUNDS: Journalists. Know what number seven is, Mr. Graham?

WILL GRAHAM: Law enforcement.

FREDDIE LOUNDS: Here we are. A bunch of psychopaths helping each other out.

Freddie offers one of the show’s funniest self-summaries here. The clergy are actually number eight on the list, however, with number three being media personalities - an alteration presumably made so as to remove confusion over where Freddie fits on the list. Ironically, third from the bottom on the list is “therapist,” while seventh and eighth are “teacher” and “creative artist.”

Ninth from the top, meanwhile, is chef.

In contrast to Alanna’s iteration of the Clarice Walk, Freddie Lounds gets to treat the hallway as a catwalk, striding down to ominous yet enthusiastic drums (as opposed to Alanna, who just gets a dissonant drone of bass). The corridor is not actually shorter when Freddie does the Clarice walk, but the camera positioning, brighter lighting, and editing makes it seem as though it is, and honestly, within the logic of Hannibal, there’s no particular reason why it shouldn’t be shorter when Freddie is sashaying down it.

As scripted, Hannibal’s reaction to Freddie Lounds’s article is “a disapproving tsk-tsk-tsk sound.” Mikkelsen opts to play it as what is best described in terms of seething anger at a bad review - a straightforwardly more interesting decision. What pushes Hannibal into a killing spree here is not, as tsk-tsking would suggest, the rudeness of Gideon’s claim but rather a fury at his art being misunderstood, as evidenced by the fact that his immediate reaction is not to take another sounder, but rather to engage in the elaborate game with Miriam.

HANNIBAL: I love Norton grapes. Same color inside as outside. Peel it and the flesh is also purple, not like other grapes where flesh is white and color comes from the skin.

DR. CHILTON: A grape with nothing to hide.

Hannibal has made a non-trivial culinary sacrifice in the name of making his theatrical point here, given that Norton grapes are a mediocre wine grape from Missouri as opposed to a natural choice for a dessert. The situation can presumably be salvaged with culinary skill, but the suggestion that Hannibal “loves” the grape is strained. Still, it’s hard not to appreciate this sort of over the top effort to say “let’s be honest with each other Frederick.”

HANNIBAL: Were I in your position, I would have attempted psychic driving. Based on your familiarity with the subject, perhaps you already have. I promise I am much more forgiving of the unorthodox than Dr. Bloom.

It’s a little unclear what’s intended here. Psychic driving is an MKUltra technique with the explicit goal of reprogramming someone’s personality - it involves administering paralytic drugs and playing repetitive mantras to the patient on end, and was a precursor to MKUltra’s later experiments with LSD. In this regard it fits with Hannibal’s psychiatric practice, and is indeed along the lines of what he’ll eventually do to Will Graham. It’s also broadly in line with the sorts of extreme practices that Chilton is eventually shown to engage in. But given that the issue was raised by Alanna in terms of “inadvertent” suggestion to Gideon, it’s difficult to imagine how this meaning of psychic driving could be intended. The easiest explanation is that Chilton is such an idiot that when confronted with the suggestion of inadvertent suggestion he blabbed out the ridiculously extreme and unethical psychological practice he actually used, but it’s still hard to imagine why he’d use a technique that’s based around programming the subject as opposed to around discovering what’s already in his head. The explanation Hannibal offers here - the possibility of undoing repressed memories - is so weirdly strained that it becomes difficult to reconstruct Chilton’s thought process. Ultimately, this is something of a blank slate: it’s never clear what made Chilton begin to suspect Gideon might be the Chesapeake Ripper save for Chilton’s own hubristic desire to uncover him.

While Miriam Lass’s severed arm is in general clearly a message for Jack, the card seems to specifically target Will by appealing to the visionary quality of his deductions. Notably, the specific question “what do you see” has been asked twice before in the show, once by Will to (the already dead) Budish in response to his saying he can see what Will really is, and by Jack to Will when looking at a crime scene.

Miriam’s investigation of Hannibal repurposes how Will is said to have caught him in Red Dragon, that approach no longer making sense given the show’s approach. Miriam, of course, fares rather worse than Will did. But this scene is also significant because it’s the first time that we actually see Hannibal being a murderer. Fuller’s promotional claim about the series that “if the audience didn't know who he was, they wouldn't see him coming” was never entirely honest given things like the “they know” call and a number of editing-based connections (to say nothing of the fast cut to a guy running through the forest on the “he should have hopped faster” joke in “Œuf”), but it’s still true that it’s not until “Entrée” that the audience is permitted to actually see Hannibal kill. (And even here, Miriam turns out to be alive.)

Wrong With Authority, Ep 4 (The Wolf of Wall Street & The Big Short)

Hello, just a heads up from me today about the existence of the fourth episode of Wrong With Authority, the podcast about movies about history, hosted (in turns) by myself, Kit Power, James Murphy, and Daniel Harper.

As I say, episode 4 is up, and you can download both parts of it here and here, or go to the blog page, here.

This episode is Kit's, and its about The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short.  It's so long it had to be split into two.  This happened not only because these movies gave us a lot to talk about but because we had recurrent recording problems, which forced us to record in three blocks, which ironically meant we ended up with more content that we would've done otherwise.

As much as it was a nightmare to make, especially for Kit, I think we ended up with something to be proud of (again, especially Kit).

We are considering the future shape of WWA, but we also feel that the kinds of people who want to listen to the four of us talk about this stuff probably

a) want us to go the whole hog rather than skimp, and

b) are probably the kinds of people - like us - who are fine with long podcasts.

I'd really appreciate people giving us a try if they haven't already. 

If you don't fancy listening to us talk about Wolf of Wall Street and Big Short you can try any of our previous episodes, such as

The one about Jack the Ripper movies Murder by Decree and From Hell,

The one about eccentric mathematician movies A Beautiful Mind and The Imitation Game,

or

The one about horror cinema directors and their monsters Shadow of the Vampire and Gods and Monsters.

There's also our unofficial pilot, the thing that led to WWA in the first place, our two-part Shabcast about Oliver Stone's JFK and Nixon.

 

Eruditorum Presscast

The Eruditorum Presscast for Thin Ice, featuring Caitlin Smith of the delightful 101 Claras to See project, is now available for your listening pleasure. Get that here.

You may also have noticed my failure to put up a Hannibal post on Tuesday. Whoops. Let's try Saturday for that.

Flight Simulator: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Crossroads of Time (SEGA Genesis, Super NES)

While both official and unofficial video games based on Star Trek: The Next Generation were quick to release upon or soon after the show's premier in 1987 and have been in no short supply over the years (my inability to play almost all of them when they were current notwithstanding), that wasn't the case for sister show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It took a good two and half years after “Emissary” before Commander Sisko and Co. started getting representations in video game form, and when it finally happened it happened a weird way.

Without rehashing the whole history of the video game medium again, it's perhaps unsurprising that the earliest Star Trek: The Next Generation video games were fanmade or otherwise small-scale affairs for DOS and similar personal computers of the mid-to-late 1980s. The first proper “mainstream” Next Generation game I was aware of (at least, the first on a video game console) didn't land until 1993 on the Game Boy. There is a very good reason for this, of course: It wasn't until 1993 that it was eminently clear Star Trek: The Next Generation was a pop culture juggernaut that deserved more recognition than it was getting from tie-ins. 1991 might even have been a more on-point date, but Paramount was slow to capitalize on this and took their time getting their marketing gears in action and doubling down on quality control and brand uniformity. By the time all was said and done of course Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was out, but it didn't get a companion release.

Of course, there certainly wasn't a *complete* dearth of merchandise before 1993. The Playmates Toys line launched in 1992, and its quality and speed make a good case for it being the definitive Star Trek: The Next Generation tie-in. And yet even so, it is fundamentally bizarre that they should be the ones to self-publish the first Star Trek: Deep Space Nine video game: Crossroads of Time on the SEGA Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Let me make something perfectly clear for those of you who are not versed in the history of the video game industry: A toy company spontaneously deciding to start a video game publishing house is not a normal thing. Sure, it's happened before-Bandai-Namco is still around, but Namco was, you know, an actual game developer. Mattel and Coleco both made halfhearted stabs at competing with the Atari 2600 in the early 80s, but the current status of those companies gives you an idea of how well that worked out for them. The one notable exception is, of course, Nintendo, who, for a good 70+ years or so was known almost exclusively for their hanafuda playing cards until then-president Hiroshi Yamauchi decided to aggressively expanded into other markets, namely video games.

(It is also perhaps interesting to note how Star Trek: The Next Generation's first games went straight to DOS, while Deep Space Nine's went straight to home consoles. I think that says something about where the presumed audience was at that point in time.)

But those are the exceptions that prove the rule. There just really isn't a track record for this sort of thing happening. And, while the home console industry was certainly more diverse in the 1990s than it is now, this still would have stuck out as kind of an oddball move. Granted Playmates was a publisher, not a developer and that's a bit of a different story, but it's interesting to think about a time when a toy company could still see expanding into video games as a logical business move for diversifying their portfolio (indeed, it was only because of Nintendo's output in the late-80s and early-90s in North America that video games and toys even began to be seen as kin in the first place, and Nintendo's as-of-this-writing recent attempts to get *back into* the toy business where they started has had mixed results to say the least).

Much to my surprise though, while doing research for this piece I found out that while Playmates Interactive Entertainment didn't have a huge output, they did put themselves behind some games that met with some degree of acclaim during their apparently brief existence; games like Skeleton Warriors, MDK and the Earthworm Jim games (well, there's no accounting for taste there surely). But one of the odd little consequences of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Crossroads of Time's parentage is that when the game was new you could send away for an exclusive young Commander Sisko Playmates action figure done completely in the style of their in-house DS9 line, but based on one of the levels from the game. I never had this toy because I never had the game: Like all of my video game experiences during this time it was my cousin who had it, and I'm not sure if he ever had the figure himself either.

Another weird thing about this game is the release date, for a variety of reasons. I already said the game was in development hell for several years, which means it didn't actually see release until the back half of 1995. It wasn't until I started work on this essay that it struck me how unusual this was, and what a *late* fourth generation release this truly was. I mean, the PlayStation was already out by this point (hell, it'd been out for a year in Japan), and yet this went straight to consoles that were already most certainly being seen as obsolete. This is no doubt a consequence of its lengthy development period, but this does start to make things look not so good for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. But while the late 1995 release date does seem to put Crossroads of Time curiously, well, *out of time* with current tech trends, it also puts it out of step with what Star Trek itself was doing in this period. Because this is a game very explicitly about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as it existed three years ago-In fact, you could in some ways read parts of it as basically a retelling of “Emissary” (and truth be known the game started development before “Emissary” even aired). The simple explanation is of course, again, that the abnormally long development time is to blame.

But we don't like simple answers here.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Crossroads of Time is divided into different missions, each broken down into at least two different acts with different gameplay types. You start in a lovingly recreated sidecrolling representation of Deep Space 9 itself that serves as your hub world. Here. you can talk to different characters (go chat to Quark at the bar! Listen to Miles O'Brien complain about the security grid!) and get clues about the story of that mission. From there you proceed to action stages, which usually take the form of platforming levels, with the exception of one level where you take the Rio Grande on an intercept mission and the game turns into a sidescrolling space shooter. For me the big draw was actually the hub world: Being able to explore Deep Space 9 as one of my favourite characters on a home console was somewhat mind-blowing, especially given how true-to-life the in-game representation of the station is. For DS9 fans with home consoles in 1995, this should have been enough to please even the most rabid rivet counter. Unfortunately, the cast of playable characters is somewhat limited, with Commander Sisko being the primary protagonist, though some levels have you playing Major Kira, Odo and Doctor Bashir too. But even so, this is way more options than a lot of other games of this type ever gave you.

The story involves a group of Bajoran terrorists called “Redemptionists” (ha) who attempt to destroy the station with explosives in the cargo hold. After saving the station and the Cardassian Galor warship docked at it, Commander Sisko sends Major Kira on a recon mission to find information on those responsible, only to learn Kai Opaka (yes, Opaka) is in danger, as well as the Orb she carries. Sisko figures there's more going on than meets the eye, and figures the Redemptionists are getting information and support from a third party. Just then the terrorists strike again, assaulting the monk at the station's Bajoran shrine. The monk survives and says his assailants were after the Orb inside. A DNA test of the monk's robes reveals artificial Cardassian hair and this, combined with a Cardassian-made replicator found during the intelligence mission convinces the crew that the the Cardassians are secretly backing the Redemptionists in a bid to destroy the station, cover their tracks and regroup for a new invasion of Bajor. The Galor warship docked at the station is, of course, in on the plot and cuts off all their lines of communication. Now Commander Sisko realises the clue to saving everyone may lie in a part of his past he'd rather not relive...

In contrast to last year's Star Trek: The Next Generation - Future's Past/Echoes from the Past from Spectrum Holobyte, which also got a multiplatform release and where I recommended the Super Nintendo version over the SEGA Genesis one, here I'm going to do the opposite and say that if you're interested in checking out Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Crossroads of Time you should check out the SEGA Genesis version. Both releases are, of course, very close to being identical (there's in fact even less differentiating these two games then there was Future's Past and Echoes of the Past) with only graphics and sound quality varying between them. Given this, one would expect the Super Nintendo version to be superior given that console's superior tech and while I suppose in some ways it is, I largely think it comes down to personal aesthetic preference, and my preference is actually for the Genesis version in this case.

The sprite art in the Super NES version *is* noticeably more detailed...But only in certain places. Granted those specific areas tend to be where it counts, such as in character models and animation: The characters definitely look more recognisable and distinctive on the Super Nintendo, and their faces remind me a little bit of the infamous expressiveness of the chibi sprites in the Squaresoft JRPGs fans of this system get so starry-eyed over. My favourite example is actually the Easter Egg Klingon lady who hangs around on the Promenade: She speaks Klingonese and only Commander Sisko can fully understand her (which shouldn't be a problem I know because of the universal translator but Shut Up), and she looks really cute and pouty in this version (even turning her head to track yours, which was kind of a big deal for 1995), whereas in the Genesis she looks as muddy as everyone else. Also the walk/run cycles and general animation *are* more fluid on the Super NES, as one would expect.

But it's not as clean and decisive a victory as you might think. While the animation is *better* on the Super NES, there's *more* animation on the Genesis. For example, on the Genesis, if you run in a straight line as Commander Sisko for a long period of time and stop, Ben will visibly pant and catch his breath. In the SNES game, you just come to a dead stop and he kinda runs like a Terminator. But the biggest thing against the look of the Super Nintendo release is its colours, which look alarmingly and distressingly drab and washed-out: The Genesis, despite having a more limited palette, actually gives us a game that looks *far* brighter, more vibrant and more colourful, and its lighting absolutely nails the cool neon look of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Both games have some absolutely gorgeous parallax scrolling effects though, most notable on the Promenade and in Ops.

Another distinguishing factor is the music. Given its synthesized orchestral sound, the Super NES *is* a better translation for the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine soundtrack, and both the theme and incremental music sound loads better over here. On the *other* hand, the theme song is only sampled for *10 seconds* or so on the title screen before it cuts to the demo, which is just criminal in my opinion. While it doesn't sound as nice, at least the Genesis version of the game gives you the whole song. But while the music the game inherits from the TV show sounds better on the SNES, the *new* music written for *this game* sounds *way better* on the Genesis, almost as if it was written for the Mega Drive's 80s keyboard and guitar sound. The overworld theme for DS9 in particular sounds positively *kickass* on this version.

(Also, just for personal preference, I like Genesis controls better than Super Nintendo controls. The diamond face button layout has become standard today, but the the SNES' day I feel developers felt tempted to spread the buttons out as much as possible more often than was probably advisable. I'm a big defender and proponent of two-button controls.)

So for these reasons (as well as some admitted personal bias as this was the version I played at the time), I have to recommend the SEGA Genesis port of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Crossroads of Time over the Super Nintendo Entertainment System one. It's kind of neat to say that the SNES got the best Star Trek: The Next Generation game, while the Genesis got the best Deep Space Nine one (of course, you can't really go wrong with either version if you're *super* particular about console choice). Crossroads of Time also feels a lot more like a Genesis-style platformer to me, though unfortunately this time I don't mean that as a positive...Platform games on the Genesis tended to have a lot of verticality to the point you couldn't see the whole stage at once, which made it really hard to navigate. Also, with better graphics came the temptation to make levels *look* nice at the expense of playability, and both are sadly big problems here. It can be really hard to see where you're going in the action stages, and to tell what parts of the environment you're allowed to interact with and what parts you're not. It's a big enough problem it turned a lot of people off of the game back then, but if you're a big enough Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fan (as I am) you may be able to overlook that.

Crossroads of Time is a very fitting name for a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine video game in 1995. Like the show itself, it comes at a point in time where past, present and future all exist simultaneously. And, as a video game, it encourages us to choose our own path and direction. For me, a moment of singularity. Everything I loved about the present moment encapsulated neatly in one recommendable package.The fact remains, whatever the circumstance, that a relatively high-profile Star Trek video game came out in 1995 that ran directly ideologically counter to what Star Trek in 1995 was selling. This is The Time. Eternity Waits Beyond the Final Frontier, but your path from here is Yours and Yours Alone. While others can help you find the way, the search for permanence is by definition a solitary one; a path you must be willing to walk alone into the night...

Thin Ice Review

My god Sarah Dollard is good. I’ve said before that a really important aspect of the Capaldi era is the way that Moffat has found a new generation of writers. And while I’ll be gutted if Mathieson or Harness don’t make the jump to the Chibnall era, it’s increasingly Dollard who’s my real canary in the coal mine for the Chibnall era. If she’s on the list of writers, I’ll breathe a little easier. If she’s not, well, it suddenly becomes a lot harder to muster any optimism. This was fantastic - the first story to rise to the self-evidently ludicrous task of writing post-Brexit/post-Trump Doctor Who.

Where to start, I suppose, is with the place Smile fell most frustratingly short: the characterization of Bill. Thin Ice was shot in the next production block after Smile, so would have had virtually as little to go on with the character as Cottrell-Boyce did. And yet in her hands Bill feels like a character. Dollard’s basic approach to this is at once obvious and effective: she builds out around the fact that Bill is black. Obviously there’s a comparison to The Shakespeare Code to be made here, right down to the major beats - the companion frets about slavery, expresses “step on a butterfly” concerns, and eventually it’s established that, actually, no, the past wasn’t white. Obviously Dollard pushes all of these beats further, which you’d have to when recycling the same jokes more than a decade later, but that expansion is the difference between a throwaway “we’d better acknowledge Martha’s black before hurriedly assuring everybody we don’t need to worry about that” to something that’s actually used to define Bill’s perspective on events.

There is of course a thin line between this and just saying I like the episode because of its politics. And to be fair, I do like the episode because of its politics. I mean, the Doctor literally sucker punches a racist. Of course I like it. Shit, I suspect even Jack is going to turn out to like it. Yes, most of its overtly political statements are very right-on and generic ones that are easily traced to common social justice rhetoric on Twitter. But Smile’s politics were just as generic. The difference, and the reason this works as opposed to just being a confused mess, isn’t just that the politics are good, it’s that they’re coherent. This is a story where all the ideas are actually pointing the same way. The story is about exploitation, and so Bill talks about slavery, points out the erasure of black people from history, and confronts a racist shitlord. Where Smile spent most of its time having no idea what it wanted to be, taking up and discarding ideas willy nilly, Thin Ice knows exactly what it wants to do.

Admittedly what it wants to do is still not something of reckless ambition. We’ve seen this before and no doubt will see it again. It’s completing the “companion’s first three stories” arc with textbook precision, which means that this is the one where some friction arises between them and gets resolved. And there’s something a little disappointing there. Last year Dollard got handed a show-stopper - by some margin the most straightforwardly “big” episode not to be by Moffat - and she absolutely killed it. So this feels like a demotion - there’s just not a way that a story built almost entirely out of standards can compare with Face the Raven.

The flip side, though - and it’s a flip side that should have been immediately obvious to anyone who actually looked at Face the Raven - is that this was her opportunity to prove that what was good there wasn’t the bit that fed into Heaven Sent. The most refreshing and revelatory bits of Face the Raven were the opening half hour, in which Dollard reinvigorated the basic business of the Doctor running around investigating stuff and learning how a setting works. Here she does it with a set of standards and turns in one of those scripts that demonstrates why they’re standards in the first place. It’s worth contrasting with Mark Gatiss, the writer you’d most expect to find out was writing a Victorian-set episode full of old standards. There, the point of trotting out the old standards would have been to revel in them, possibly with small twists that amount to little more than cleverness for the sake of it. Dollard, on the other hand, digs in, trusting that a new writer and new actors doing them with sincerity and conviction will prove fresher than some carefully placed lampshading ever could. And she’s right. A minor classic.

I should really watch some of Dollard's other stuff and get her on for a podcast sometime, shouldn't I? Ah, so much to do in life.
Pete is my new favorite companion.
In an episode full of smart writing choices, Bill’s reactions to death stand out. “First time watching someone die” is not a note that’s been played with a new companion before, and watching her go from sickened horror to, when she’s complicit in a death herself, realizing how seductively easy it actually is to move on is phenomenal.
After the clanging dissonance of the Doctor being cast as a policeman last week, his fundamental affinity for thieves and con men this week is particularly delightful.
Which brings us to the obligatory “yeah, that was an absolutely phenomenal speech” note regarding the “life without privilege” speech. Like I said, I suspect even Jack is going to like this.
Sutcliffe is well cast too - he’s a throwaway villain, and the decision to give him to a comedic actor instead of someone more serious works with that, ensuring that he’s read as a worthless fop. (Also, if we count Amanda Abington in Sherlock, that’s now five out of the six cast members of Man Stroke Woman that Moffat’s hired. It’s possible I’m the only person who cares about this, but I’m weirdly fond of that sketch show.)
A smaller thing Dollard is good at, both here and in Face the Raven, is making a concept work without devoting much time to it. The underwater exploration scene and the “fuel bricks of shit” scene are both very quick things that aren’t that developed, but both are great scenes, largely because they each have clear and entertaining concepts worked into them (the Doctor and Bill being unable to hear each other and the moronic foreman). It would be easy for the episode to feel disjointed because of short expository scenes like this - they’re both the sorts of things the classic series would have spent half an episode on. Instead they do their thing and don’t get in the way.
Also, a comedy drunk that gets eaten by a monster to kick things off! How gloriously Pertwee era! (Really, when did we actually last see one of those?)
Well, that clarifies the vault a bit. It’s only knocking three times, so it’s presumably not John Simm in there. I like Andrew Ellard’s Twitter suggestion that it’s the next Doctor, which would tie in somewhat satisfyingly with the hints that the regeneration is a bit odd chronologically this time around.
I didn’t find anywhere to praise the “so the Tardis has dresses and likes a bit of trouble? I think I’m low-key in love with her” joke, did I? Loved it.
Finally, for the American crowd, here’s my review of “Nightvisiting”. Back Thursday for a podcast with Caitlin Smith, and next week for what looks to be another episode of “new writer old standards.”
Also, this is going up late enough on Sunday that I’m just going to go ahead and push Proverbs of Hell to Tuesday.

Ranking

Thin Ice
The Pilot
Smile