Christopher L. Bennett's Blog, page 50

General update

I’ve been making a bit more writing progress lately. Last week, I received, proofread, and returned galleys for both my upcoming Analog short story “Abductive Reasoning” and my third Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations e-novella Shield of the Gods. I’d been starting to wonder when “Abductive Reasoning” would show some movement toward publication, so this is a good sign, though I don’t know the release date yet. As for Patterns of Interference, I got the word last night that the manuscript has been approved by CBS and my final advance payment is routing for approval even now. I hope it arrives before tax day.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on a review and polish of my previously published original stories with an eye toward putting them together into a collection. That entailed making sure my manuscripts were updated with all the changes made in the final printed versions, except in cases where I wanted to undo those changes or make additional changes. Mostly I tried to be faithful to the published versions, though. Anyway, I’ve gotten that done and now it’s a matter of getting a publisher interested. We’ll see how that goes.  With that and the galleys out of the way, I’ve refocused on some new original stories I was working on last year but had to postpone in order to write Patterns of Interference. Well, I actually kind of got stuck because I started writing a story too hastily, before I really had the whole plot worked out. But coming back to it after a break has helped give me a new perspective, and I’ve worked out a couple of things I was stuck on before.

The new Kroger superstore nearby is open now, and I’ve been there three times already — once on foot, twice by car. It’s nice to be able to make smaller grocery trips when I need a few things, instead of just making 2-3 big trips a month and going without certain things for much of the interim. The new store isn’t as big as the other superstores I’ve been to, since its location is more constrained; in fact, they’ve actually had to put the “behind-the-scenes” employee areas up on the second floor, an unusual feature. There’s also an upstairs area for customers, but I haven’t visited it yet. And the shelf space is a bit less expansive. I read an article claiming that they’d compensate by restocking more frequently, but I’ve already noticed a couple of things that they didn’t have in stock while I was there — although there was one they did have in stock by the time I needed it. Anyway, it’s definitely a lot bigger than the old store, and has a lot more features like a pharmacy, deli, Starbucks, and pizza counter. The produce section is laid out pretty much exactly like the one in the gigantic Kroger that opened a year or two ago across from the movie theater I usually go to; I guess it makes sense that the two most recently built stores would use the same design. But it was kind of disorienting the first time I was there.

Reading-wise, I got a couple of new DC trade paperbacks from the library the other day, the second volumes of Batman: The Golden Age (reprinting all the original Batman comics in order from the start) and Wonder Woman ’77. The latter is theoretically based on the Lynda Carter TV show, but my problem with the first volume was that it didn’t feel like the show, just like generic Wonder Woman stories with the likenesses of Carter and Lyle Waggoner. Much of the second volume is like that too, but a couple of the later stories felt more like the show, or more ’70s-oriented at least. (One story brings back a major villain from the show, and another is steeped in ’70s nostalgia like funk music and CB radio.) As for the Batman volume, it’s good to get to see how quickly the character’s tropes fell into place within the first 2 years. These days, you’ll see a lot of people online claiming that the ’40s Batman was a dark, violent, gun-toting character until the Comics Code crackdown of the ’50s, but that’s just wrong. Even though the first year or two of stories were in a violent, pulpy vein, Batman only rarely used guns in them, though he did kill by other means like breaking a neck with a kick or flinging people off roofs. But as early as Batman #4 in December 1940, the dialogue and narration were insisting that Batman and Robin never killed or used weapons — although exceptions were still being made for causing recurring villains Hugo Strange and the Joker to fall to their apparent deaths, since of course they’d surely survive anyway. And B&R were portrayed in a pretty upbeat way, trading wisecracks and bad puns as they fought villains. Volume 2 shows other familiar Batman tropes emerging in 1941, like the Batmobile (a sleek red convertible with a small bat-shaped hood ornament) and the term “Dynamic Duo.” No Stately Wayne Manor or Batcave yet, though — Bruce and Dick live in a house in the suburbs, with a secret tunnel leading to the barn where the Batmobile is kept.

Food-wise, I serendipitously discovered a nice new way to make a sandwich last week. I decided to make a sandwich with tomato, sharp cheddar cheese, and Romaine lettuce on whole wheat bread with olive-oil mayonaisse and spicy brown mustard, served with a pickle spear and a small amount of olive oil potato chips. It was surprisingly yummy, and I’ve made that combo two more times since then, but somehow they weren’t as good as the first. I also recently discovered a second new type of sandwich that’s pretty good: cheddar cheese and apple butter.

Aside from that, I’ve mainly just been watching TV, but maybe I’ll talk about that later in another post.

What if STAR TREK had been a ’40s radio show?

In the interests of having something to post so this blog doesn’t go dead again (it’s already been 10 days since my last post — sorry), I’m going to repost something fun I contributed to a TrekBBS thread last year musing about what TOS might’ve been like as a radio adventure show from the ’30s or ’40s. Based on the binge-listen I’d done of old The Adventures of Superman radio shows online a couple of years earlier, I ended up putting together a hypothetical scene from an episode, a riff on how radio characters had to narrate the action for the audience’s benefit. I’m reposting it here, with a bit of narration added in response to other posters’ comments:

“Yes! Punching the Gorn’s ears seems to have disoriented him. I’ve got to get away… get some distance! Yes! That rise over there.”

(Panting sounds.)

“Yes… this rock should do nicely.”

(Grunt of exertion.)

“He’s recovering. Now — heave!”

(Sound of object whooshing through the air and striking a leathery surface. Growl of pain from the Gorn.)

“Yes! A hit! But — no, it’s barely staggered him! What incredible strength! Now he’s — no — he’s heading for that large boulder! There’s no way he could — but he is! He’s… lifting it above his head! It must weigh over a ton! Could he possibly throw it hard enough –”

(A loud grunt of exertion from the Gorn, and a heavier whooshing sound.)

“He did! Have to dodge, dodge for all I’m worth!”

(Heavy thud of the boulder striking rock, rolling downhill.)

“Whew! That was close! I could feel the breeze as it blew past! Better not take any chances — up the mountain, quickly! My speed is my only advantage!”

(The sound of swift footsteps on stone, and Kirk panting. Fade out these sounds and asteroid ambience; fade in bridge background audio.)

“Meanwhile, far out in space, the star cruiser Enterprise is trapped, held motionless in a powerful force ray by the mysterious Metrons! Under the cool, logical leadership of the half-Vulcanian Mister Spock, the crew now strives to break free of the Metrons’ relentless grip!”

“Have you tried overload, Mr. Scott?”

“Aye, Mr. Spock. It does no good…”

Just something I tossed together on a lark, but I was happy with how it turned out. Credit where it’s due: This is, of course, an adaptation of a scene from “Arena,” written by Gene L. Coon, from the story by Fredric Brown. Acknowledgment is also due to The Adventures of Superman‘s star Bud Collyer and narrator Jackson Beck for inspiration.

Resurfacing at last

Hello, everyone — sorry I haven’t been posting lately, but I’ve been really wrapped up in trying to finish Rise of the Federation: Patterns of Interference. This was kind of a rough one, since there were delays getting the contract and approvals through, so I was late getting started and I had to work fast. Which proved difficult, since I was suffering from a vitamin D deficiency that I think was causing me some mild depression and making it hard to focus. So I’ve spent the last month striving to finish the book, which left little mental attention for other writing such as blogging (though I still posted on my bulletin boards regularly because I’m addicted to those). I’m afraid I’ve really been neglecting this blog, and I need to try to refocus on it.

So anyway, PoI is finally done, and we’re expediting the editing process to make up for lost time. It helps that it came out relatively short, about 83,000 words. I figured that, after the big epic 2-part saga of Uncertain Logic and Live by the Code, it was good to do a story that was a bit more intimate in scope. I was influenced by The Next Generation‘s “Family” and Enterprise‘s “Home.” Although that’s only part of the novel’s story. Basically, there’s one really big adventure plotline at the heart of the novel, and a number of more character-driven subplots around it. But there are some major events and changes to the status quo on both scales. So it’s a smaller story, but with big consequences.

Another thing that helped with the tight writing schedule was that I’ve once again managed to recycle a concept from one of my old, unsold original stories as a subplot in PoI. It’s actually a double-recycle of sorts, because I was going to use the premise as the basis for a second Star Trek: Corps of Engineers novella, but that series was cancelled before I got a contract for it. For this version, I kept some of the new worldbuilding ideas I was going to add in the CoE tale, but I’ve actually been able to incorporate a lot more of the original story’s plot and dialogue in this version than I would’ve been able to do there, albeit revised to fit the new characters and relationships. So that saved me some time — although not as much as it could have, since there was a pair of supporting characters that were originally just names spouting dialogue in the material I copied, and I didn’t really work out who they should be and what motivated them until the revision phase, so parts of that sequence got rewritten several times.

I even got to the point where I was afraid that the book would run short, so I was looking through my old unsold fiction (just about all writers have a ton of early stuff they never sold, while they were learning the trade), trying to find some short story or subplot that I could adapt as a story arc for some supporting character to meet my word count. But I couldn’t find anything that was both adaptable to the 22nd-century Trek universe and well enough written to be usable — at least, not from the stuff I could remember, and taking the time to re-read a bunch of old stuff to refresh my memory would’ve defeated the purpose of trying to speed up the process. Fortunately, I managed to come up with enough new material to do the job, and it naturally worked better to add material that grew from the story and characters I had, rather than trying to shoehorn in some unrelated story. As a matter of fact, when I finally reached the end of the novel in the first draft, I was still a little bit short of 80,000 words, and I’d already decided there was one more scene I needed to go back and put in earlier. I did that later the same day, and it put me over the limit, and it wasn’t until I finished it that I finally felt the rush of euphoria and satisfaction that came from finally being finished. Although it didn’t last long, since I still needed to clean up and tighten the draft before I turned it in.

So now I’m finally done with PoI, and I’m free to resume work on some original projects that I’ve had to put off. Currently, I’m starting to explore the possibility of putting together a collection of my original stories, though it’s too early to say whether that will happen. Once that’s done, I need to get back to work on some new stories I have on the back burner, one of which is unfinished. Hopefully I can make some real progress on those and one or two other things before my next Trek project comes along — although I hope that next Trek project comes fairly soon, because I still need to make a living. That’s the paradox — my Trek work is what lets me make enough of a living to pursue the other stuff, but it tends to take up a lot of time that I could be spending on the other stuff instead. Well, I shouldn’t complain — I actually got a lot of original writing done in 2016 while waiting for the go-ahead on PoI. But there was some of it that I didn’t quite get to finish before I had to throw myself fully into Trek writing. Of course, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem if I were better at time management and self-discipline. But I’ve been telling myself that for ages and it hasn’t helped much.

Let’s see, I don’t have much to talk about beyond writing, because I haven’t had much of a life otherwise lately. One bit of good news — the fancy new Kroger they’ve been building next to the university for the past year and a half is finally opening in just a few days, so I’ll finally be able to get groceries from somewhere within walking distance again (although I doubt I’ll try biking there, since I don’t think the adjacent intersection is very safe for biking). And it’s a much larger, more elaborate superstore than the old one in that location, or than the next-nearest one in Walnut Hills, which I never liked going to, and which is actually closing the night before the new one opens. Makes sense, in a way — the store is twice as big, so it’s taking the place of two adjacent ones. Meanwhile, the local co-op store that replaced the old IGA up by Burnet Woods opened last month — nearly a year later than originally touted — and it’s not bad, though not as suited for my needs as the new Kroger will be. I hope it does well, though, since it’s good to have both options. After a year and a half with no grocery stores in the neighborhood, there are now going to be two. (Well, not really — the co-op is about the same distance from me as the Walnut Hills Kroger, but it feels closer to me, probably because I’m more familiar with its neighborhood.)

Well, that’s about all I have to report for now, and it’s lunchtime. I’ll try not to wait so long before posting again.

Reminder: Joseph-Beth signing tomorrow!

Just a heads-up that I’ll be at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Cincinnati’s Rookwood Pavilion tomorrow, January 26th at 7:00 PM, to sign and discuss Star Trek: The Original Series — The Face of the Unknown and my Analog novelette “Twilight’s Captives.” Here are directions.

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Star Trek trivia: The evolution of “mind meld”

A while back, I noticed something interesting about the history of Star Trek terminology. We’ve all come to think of “mind meld” as the standard term for the telepathic contact used by the Vulcans, and it’s been used consistently and near-exclusively in most Trek productions over the decades. But in fact, it was never used in the original series until the third season, and then only twice. TOS was quite inconsistent in its terminology — as with so many things, they made it up as they went and it took time for the concept to settle down. Here’s a list of the terms they used, and how they were depicted (originally posted in a thread on Tor.com, and put together with the help of the app):

Dagger of the Mind: “an ancient Vulcan technique to probe into Van Gelder’s tortured mind” — The template for the mind meld as we know it.
Devil in the Dark: “the Vulcan technique of the joining of two minds” — Also a very deep fusion and blending of identities.
The Changeling: “mind probe” — Ditto.
By Any Other Name: “mind probe” and “mind touch” to refer to the telepathic suggestion used with the Eminian guard and Kelinda, much less of a connection than we’ve seen before.
Patterns of Force: “mind probe” to refer to Spock reaching Gill’s mind, but we didn’t see how deep it went.
Spectre of the Gun: Debut of the term “mind meld,” to refer to what was basically hypnotic suggestion.
Elaan of Troyius: “mind meld” suggested but not used as an interrogation technique.
The Paradise Syndrome: “mind fusion” used for a full “our minds are one” joining.
Is There in Truth No Beauty?: “mind link” to refer to the full union of two minds.
One of Our Planets is Missing: “mind touch” for Spock allowing the cloud creature to see and speak through him, much like his “link” with Kollos.
The Infinite Vulcan: “mind touch” to refer to a full transfer of mind/memory from giant Spock to original Spock.

So that’s “Vulcan technique” in season 1; “mind probe” and “mind touch” in season 2; “mind meld,” “mind link,” and “mind fusion” in season 3; and “mind touch exclusively in the animated series. The usage was all over the place, and “mind meld” was the third-most common term after “mind touch” and “mind probe.” And the writers’ bible for TOS refers only to Spock’s “strange Vulcan ‘ESP’ ability to merge his mind with another intelligence.” In the first major Trek reference book, The Star Trek Concordance by Bjo Trimble, the version that gets the longest lexicon entry (29 lines) is “Vulcan mind touch,” with “mind link” (non-Vulcan) getting six lines, “Vulcan mind fusion” five lines, and “Vulcan mind meld” only four, the shortest entry (though no “mind probe” anywhere in sight). I always used to have the sense that “mind touch” referred to a shallower, more basic telepathic communication while the “meld” or “fusion” was a deeper, more complete blending, but as you can see above, the terms were used more interchangeably than that.

And yet the 1977 writers’ bible for Phase II, the TV revival project that later turned into Star Trek: The Motion Picture, did use the term “mind-meld” for Vulcan mental abilities. The term was then used in onscreen dialogue in TMP itself, for the contact between Spock and V’Ger’s memory crystal. It was also used in The Search for Spock (referring retroactively to Spock’s katra transfer to McCoy in TWOK) and The Voyage Home (for Spock’s mental communication with the whales). And it’s been the exclusive term in every subsequent Star Trek production. (“Mind probe” was used twice, in The Next Generation‘s “Menage a Troi” and Deep Space Nine‘s “Extreme Measures,” to refer to mind-scanning technologies akin to the Klingon mind sifter, but never for Vulcan telepathy.) So sometime between TAS and the movies, the term became standardized.

It also occurred to me to check into the tie-in fiction that came out between TOS and TMP. 1970’s Spock Must Die! by James Blish used yet another unique term, “mind-lock.” But the next original Bantam publication, the 1976 anthology Star Trek: The New Voyages (which was mostly reprinting earlier fanfiction stories, though newly revised for the anthology), uses “mind-meld” consistently in multiple stories. As far as I can tell, it was pretty standard in Bantam’s books from then on (though I don’t have them all in my possession). So in both screen and prose Trek, the term “mind meld” somehow became the default by the late 1970s — but how? Why that term, when it was so infrequently used in TOS and never in TAS?

When I checked my nonfiction text sources, I found that The Making of Star Trek, written by Stephen Edward Poe (as Stephen E. Whitfield) and Gene Roddenberry during season 2 of TOS and released shortly before the premiere of season 3, refers to Spock’s ability as “mind-melding” — making it the earliest public use of the term. It’s possible Poe/Whitfield got it from the scripts to “Spock’s Brain” and “Elaan of Troyius,” though, depending on how early they were written. Or maybe it’s just the term Roddenberry had decided on, and so it got around behind the scenes.

People today often don’t realize it, but TMoST was the definitive ST reference book in its day, the source of a number of things that became conventional fan wisdom even though they were never stated onscreen, such as Kirk being the youngest starship captain, McCoy’s divorce backstory (proposed by DeForest Kelley for the second-season writers’ bible but first publicized by TMoST), and the Romulan-Klingon alliance (from development notes for “The Enterprise Incident” to explain the Romulan use of Klingon ships, which seems to confirm that Poe had access to early third-season scripts). Not to mention technical details that weren’t canonized until later, like the idea of the forward parabolic dish being a navigational deflector. TMoST was also the second work to establish a 23rd-century setting for TOS, preceded by James Blish’s “Space Seed” adaptation in the collection Star Trek 2 seven months earlier.

So if all these things became conventional wisdom because they were in The Making of Star Trek, it follows that TMoST’s use of the term “mind-melding” is the reason that term became standardized later on. And it does seem that it used the term because it was written around the same time as the two TOS episodes that did use it. If it had been written a few months earlier, we might’ve ended up talking about “Vulcan mind probes” for all these years.

THE FACE OF THE UNKNOWN is now on sale!

Just a reminder that Star Trek: The Original Series — The Face of the Unknown officially went on sale yesterday. I’ve updated this site’s homepage and Star Trek Fiction page with ordering links, and I’ve added a book discussion page, although I haven’t had time to do the spoiler annotations yet.

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Also, as I mentioned a couple months back, this is my first Star Trek novel to get an audiobook version, something that Simon & Schuster seems to have begun doing regularly with Trek novels now. The narrator is Robert Petkoff, and judging from the sample I heard on Amazon, he does a good job capturing the TOS cast’s voices.

Book signing event at Joseph-Beth Booksellers January 26!

I’m going to be at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Cincinnati’s Rookwood Pavilion for a book signing and discussion event next month. Here’s their events page with the announcement:

http://www.josephbeth.com/AdultEvents.aspx

I figured that, since Star Trek: The Original Series — The Face of the Unknown and my Analog novelette “Twilight’s Captives” were both coming out around the same time, it would be a good opportunity for a signing, and the folks at Joseph-Beth agreed. It’ll begin at 7 PM on Thursday, January 26th at 2692 Madison Road in Rookwood Pavilion (directions are here). This will be my first signing at J-B since the one I did for Only Superhuman three years before. I’ll be talking about the new book and story and answering questions, so hopefully my voice will be in better shape than it was last time. I expect there will be copies of some of my older books available as well.

Look what else arrived today!

I should’ve waited — I could’ve posted both of these at once. Here’s what I found when I checked the mail this afternoon:

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Yep, my copies of Star Trek: The Face of the Unknown are here, and they look terrific. The spines look good too, with a vivid gold logo on a deep blue starscape background that wraps around from the front. They even look good on the inside, with a nice, classic, easily legible font. I’m happy with how these turned out. I hope readers are happy with them too. They’ll be on sale in just a couple more weeks!

“Twilight’s Captives” are here!

I’ve received my author copies of the January/February 2017 issue of Analog Science Fiction, containing my story “Twilight’s Captives” as the first novelette (second story overall) in the issue:

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Okay, kind of a blurry picture, but I can’t find an online image of the cover yet. Anyway, I got my name on the cover once again — my third time in a row and my fourth overall (out of seven Analog appearances to date).

The Analog homepage is still showing the December issue, but I expect the new issue to be on sale fairly soon. Oh, and apparently this issue is the beginning of a format change for Analog and its sister magazine Asimov’s Science Fiction. Before, they’ve published ten issues per year, two of which were double issues. Starting with this issue, they’re moving to six double-length issues per year. So it’s the same amount of content, but coming out half as often. I’m not sure what that means in the long run, but in the short term, it means there should be twice as much opportunity for folks to find and buy this issue and read “Twilight’s Captives”!

Sometime soon, I’ll be posting notes about the story here on the site, including illustrations of the featured alien species in the story. Stay tuned!

Thoughts on DOCTOR STRANGE (spoilers)

I finally got around to seeing Marvel’s Doctor Strange. I hadn’t been in a rush to see it because the reviews have been mixed, with some praising it but others saying it was just another run-of-the-mill Marvel origin movie. But I quite enjoyed it. The formula may have been familiar, but the execution was fresh and engaging in a lot of ways.

I grant that it’s a little hard to sympathize with Benedict Cumberbatch’s Dr. Stephen Strange at first. He’s good at what he does, and the opening surgical sequences do a good job of establishing how important the precision of his hands is to him, but he’s also an arrogant jerk, and not as charmingly so as Robert Downey, Jr. But if the goal is to make us want to see him get comeuppance and begin a journey of transformation, it succeeds. Although I wish the movie had done more to give us some indication of why Strange would be chosen as a sorceror candidate, what this great potential was that the Ancient One saw in him. If anything, the lead character himself is one of the least well-drawn figures in the film.

But that’s the film’s strength, in a way. Marvel films have a tendency to focus on the heroes’ journeys and complexities and keep the villains kind of simplistic, which is a shame, because Marvel Comics have long been known for the richness of their villains’ personalities. Here, though, the supporting cast and the villains (both present and future) are nuanced and well-drawn. The main villain Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) was not what I expected — far from seeking power or vengeance or some standard villain motive, he sincerely believes he’s saving the world and doing good for its people; he’s just been misled by Dormammu’s promises, and is too dismissive of sacrificing individual lives to save the greater number. I was surprised at what a sympathetic figure he turned out to be. And Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Mordo is a fascinating character — an ally of Strange and the Ancient One rather than the power-hungry traitor he was in the comics, but one who has harsh and unyielding sensibilities — a willingness to do whatever violence is necessary to achieve his goals, and a rigid adherence to the rules that makes him unwilling to accept it when his allies break the rules to save the world. In an inversion of the original character, this Mordo sees himself as the betrayed one instead of the betrayer. I’m somewhat reminded of Ejiofor’s Operative character in Serenity — an antagonist who stood for law and order and believed that the unethical things he did were necessary to defend a peaceful, orderly system he revered above all else. Although the Operative went from antagonist to ally, while Mordo went the other way. Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One is a nicely nuanced character as well, taking questionable steps that make Mordo’s sense of betrayal understandable.

One thing I did really like about Strange, in contrast to prior Marvel Cinematic Universe screen heroes, is that he has a clearly stated aversion to killing, and shows remorse when it becomes necessary. This is something that’s been standard for the majority of comic-book superheroes since the ’40s, but it’s all too rare in their movie counterparts, since American adventure movies tend to be made within a paradigm that presumes the villains must die. This is something that’s always bothered me about feature adaptations of superheroes, and I’ve always found it hypocritical that the movies’ Tony Stark supposedly gave up the weapons business due to a crisis of conscience but still routinely uses lethal armaments as Iron Man. But it seems we’re finally starting to see a movement toward heroes with more of a resistance to killing. In Ant-Man, Scott Lang was pretty firm about being opposed to violent methods (although there was dialogue there suggesting that the Avengers were presumed to use lethal force by default), and on Netflix, both Daredevil and Luke Cage are firmly against killing (though in the former case that seems to waver where ninjas are concerned) and Jessica Jones avoided it except in one special case. I do find it ironic that the supposedly darker Netflix shows have more non-lethal heroes than the supposedly light and fluffy MCU movies, although that’s going to change somewhat now that there’s a Punisher series in production. But maybe the movies are starting to turn away from lethal heroes somewhat. I certainly hope that’s the case with Spider-Man: Homecoming, at least.

As far as the visuals and the depiction of magic are concerned, I admit I’m not a big fan of the kaleidoscopic urban-origami Inception-ish stuff that’s featured in all the trailers. It’s certainly a fresh way of depicting magic, but it’s just too overcomplicated in its execution, all these pieces of buildings folding over and reduplicating and tessellating. I mean, these are supposedly changes that the sorcerors are making to the environment to benefit themselves and confound their foes. That much makes sense. But it doesn’t seem necessary to make all those thousands of nibbly little changes to the environment to achieve one specific effect, and it’s hard to believe one person could have the concentration to initiate and control all those individual changes at once. So I might’ve liked it better if it had been a little less overdone, less mechanical-looking, less cluttered with detail.

But I really liked a lot of the other things they did. There’s some very clever stuff here. I liked the way Strange integrated his sorcery and his medicine, using his “Sling Ring” to teleport to the hospital and draw on his colleague/ex Christine (Rachel McAdams) for help in key moments. It helps explain why he holds onto the title “Doctor Strange” instead of Master — he’s not giving up that side of himself completely, but is finding ways to integrate the old and the new. There was some clever stuff in the astral-body battle, and the final scene between Strange and the Ancient One was beautifully done, both visually and in writing/character terms. The battle in Hong Kong was inspired, the way they integrated the combatants moving forward in time with the environment moving backward, including some very clever ways of using the time inversion against the villains. I’ve never seen anything like this in a movie before, and it was delightful. The climax with Strange confronting Dormammu was also excellent, and it really showed how far Strange had grown, to the point where he’d finally set aside his ego completely for the good of the world. That was really effective.

I decided to splurge on seeing the movie in 3D, to get the full effect of the visuals, and it did add to the experience somewhat. Still, I’m not sure if the problem is with the theater or my eyes, but I had the same problems with depth of field that I’ve had with other 3D movies, in that things seem to be closer than they should — a lot of things seemed to be right in front of my face when they should be at least a bit further back, and characters in long shots often seemed tiny and close rather than normal-sized and distant. The theater also had a pretty bad sound mix that made some of the dialogue hard to hear, though it wasn’t as bad in the film as in the trailers.

One thing’s for sure — Cumberbatch definitely looks the part of Dr. Strange. And judging from the mid-credits scene, he’s wasting no time involving himself in the business of the superhero community going forward. I do look forward to seeing where he and Mordo go from here. (And Wong. Wong is cool. I should’ve said that.)