Christopher L. Bennett's Blog, page 72

Note: “The Doctors’ first and last lines” now updated

The most popular post on this blog seems to be my 2011 list of the first and last lines of each incarnation of Doctor Who‘s lead character, and the recent anniversary and Christmas specials have revealed several more regenerations. So I’ve updated my list accordingly, and it’s now as comprehensive and up-to-date as I can currently get it:

The Doctors’ first and last lines? (Doctor Who) — UPDATED December 2013

 

The Man From UNCLE Season 2 Affair: Eps. 19-24 (Spoilers)

“The Waverly Ring Affair”: After raiding a THRUSH message drop disguised as a storefront photo developing service (complete with an oddly blurry fight scene — perhaps there was a camera error and they couldn’t afford a reshoot), Illya finds a top-security UNCLE document in the captured packet, revealing that there’s a mole inside UNCLE HQ. We get to see more of UNCLE’s security procedures as Solo and Illya investigate. Suspicion seems to fall on a friendly Clark Kent-meets-Fred MacMurray type named George Dennell (Larry Blyden), who’s caught with a secret document and gets kicked out of UNCLE and “de-trained” using a spinny-disk hypnosis “beam” to erase his classified knowledge — but it’s really a ploy by Solo to use George as bait for THRUSH recruitment. It’s pretty easy to guess that the other new UNCLE employee introduced here, Carla (Elizabeth Allen) — who’s just friends with George though he wants more — is really the THRUSH mole. But when Solo gets captured by both of them seemingly working together, it’s unclear which one is the real mole — especially since they both seem to have so-called Waverly rings, a top-security device that can only be issued by Waverly himself to his most trusted operatives. Which one is the real spy? (Well, for THRUSH, I mean. Obviously they’re both spies.)

This is a fairly good episode, a nice look inside the title organization, though as is often the case, the climactic action gets a little incoherent. Still, there was a moment where I thought the story was going to go in a totally different direction. The de-training hypnotist, Dr. Lazarus (Jim Boles), had a very sinister-looking pointy goatee, so I thought, “Of course! He’s the mole! He frames UNCLE agents for security breaches, gets them kicked out, and pretends to hypnotize them into forgetting all UNCLE’s secrets, but he rigs the process with a back-door suggestion so THRUSH agents can capture them, trigger their suppressed memories, and get their secrets! It’s brilliant!” But none of that actually happened. Which is a pity, since that sounded more interesting than what we got. Not that this was a bad one, but it feels like a missed opportunity, and a less cohesive story, since the hypnosis angle has little payoff in the actual episode.

—

“The Bridge of Lions Affair, Parts 1 & 2″: Solo investigates the disappearance of elderly scientist Dr. Lancer, who looks like James Doohan in old-age makeup, and the appearance of a man with identical fingerprints named Bainbridge, who looks like James Doohan with a fake mustache. Bainbridge, of course, is a de-aged Lancer, as he reveals to the elderly Sir Norman Swickert, played in age makeup by the great Maurice Evans, who does such a convincing job playing an elderly man that I almost forgot he was still much younger at the time this was made. Swickert was once one of the great men of power in the UK, and he formed the Bridge of Lions Society, a chess club allowing world leaders to keep the lines of communication open so the misunderstandings that led to World War I couldn’t happen again.

Solo’s investigations lead him to Lancer’s daughter Lorelei, a model at the Paris salon of Mme. Raine De Sala (Vera Miles), who has ambitions to seize the power that the men of the world reserve for themselves, and who has her henchwoman Olga (Monica Keating) strangle Lorelei and shoot Dr. Lancer/Bainbridge/Scotty to keep them from talking to Solo. There’s also a Richard Kiel-esque strongman chauffeur, Fleeton (Cal Bolder), who tries to keep Solo from getting into Swickert’s estate by lifting the front of his roadster and rotating it to point in the other direction — whereupon Solo simply kicks it into reverse to get inside.

Meanwhile, Illya is tracking cats around Soho, trying to find out why they’re being, err, catnapped. And eventually THRUSH’s Hong Kong office, of all places, gets wind of these investigations, and their Waverly equivalent (James Hong) orders Jordin (Bernard Fox, without his usual mustache) to look into it all. Which is a slow scene that’s mostly for padding, but it’s mildly interesting to see inside a THRUSH HQ and to see how different James Hong looked and sounded back then.

It’s a while before all these plot threads come together. Raine reveals that she’s been in love with Sir Norman since she was a little girl — maybe it was his power she was in love with, but Vera Miles and Maurice Evans have a beautifully acted scene where Sir Norman speaks of how time has defeated him and Raine passionately insists she can give it back to him. It’s perhaps the finest acting I’ve seen on this show — which helps make up for the performance of the innocent, Sir Norman’s nurse Joanna (Ann Elder), who has an atrociously fake Irish accent. Anyway, the cats are research subjects for Gritzky (Harry Davis) and his age-reversing process, which Raine has developed so she could de-age Sir Norman in a machine that’s basically a big box with Robby the Robot’s head on top. That’s not a joke; it’s actually the outer part of Robby the Robot’s head used as the machine’s dome. (IMDb’s episode page actually says “Robby the Robot … Part of Rejuvenating Machine (uncredited).”) But even as Sir Norman is being de-aged, Solo and Illya try to win over Joanna, but she’s a prim lass who doesn’t like strange men showing up at her window, so she summons Fleeton, who knocks them out and dumps them into a wine press. Holy vintage! Can our heroes handle the pressure? Will they be turned into wine before their time? Tune in next week, same UNCLE time, same UNCLE channel!

Or, just play the next episode on the DVD. Which opens without a “Previously…” montage, instead replaying some of that well-acted Miles/Evans sequence interspersed with new material of Solo and Illya trying to shore up the wine press. Apparently lifting the floor left enough space underneath to save them, for Jordin subsequently retrieves Solo (while Illya plays dead) and quizzes him on recent events, recapping part 1 through dialogue — similar to what they attempted in their previous 2-parter, but better handled. Illya helps Solo get away from Jordin. Later, we see Sir Norman in the Robby-head contraption, and it actually plays out differently than in the closing shot of part 1: Rather cleverly, the de-aging machine causes no instant outward effect, but triggers the cells to gradually restore themselves over the ensuing days.

Some time later, Sir Norman has made a triumphant return to politics, and his old friend Waverly sends our boys to try to talk him into turning the process over to UNCLE before THRUSH gets it. But Sir Norman insists it’s his marriage to Raine that’s rejuvenated him and won’t reveal the truth. But Jordin has the room bugged, so he captures Dr. Gritzky and blackmails Raine into sharing the de-aging process with THRUSH. By this point, though, Sir Norman has realized that he’ll need monthly treatments to stay rejuvenated, and that he’s therefore trapped. He doesn’t like that, and he wonders if Raine ever really loved him.

Solo tries to reach Sir Norman and tries to persuade Nurse Joanna that he’s on their side. Having little success, he asks Mr. Waverly to fly over and talk to Sir Norman. But Jordin gets the drop on Solo and puts him and Joanna back in the wine press. Later, Waverly arrives, but Raine has Jordin take him prisoner — and the unflappable Waverly utterly schools him in the etiquette of proper hostage-taking. Leo G. Carroll is in rare form here, and later on as he and Solo contrive their escape from the press.

But Sir Norman has reached his own decision without Waverly’s help. He tries to convince Gritzky that the process is a trap and must be buried, even if Gritzky has to be buried along with it. Jordin just barely stops him from shooting Gritzky himself, but Sir Norman urges Gritzky to do the right thing. He then begins to confess the whole story to his assembled compatriots, and when Jordin attempts to shoot him, Raine surprises her husband and herself by taking the bullet for him. Gritzky subjects himself to an overdose of the machine, and booby-traps it, taking Jordin out of the picture. His secret is lost, except for a notebook that even UNCLE’s computers can’t decode — at least, not anytime soon.

This is one of those stories that would’ve been so much easier to resolve if not for the insistence on maintaining the status quo of the world. Sir Norman and Gritzky were trapped because only Gritzky held the secret and couldn’t let THRUSH have it — but if he’d just published it, then everyone would’ve had the secret and the bad guys would’ve had no advantage. Not to mention the potential benefits to humanity. Plus there would’ve been no need for Gritzky’s suicide.

Still, this 2-parter is the highlight of the season so far and one of the high points of the series. I’ve found this season rather disappointing on the whole, but this one really clicked, with a good script by Howard Rodman (story by Henry Slesar) and effective direction by E. Darrell Hallenbeck, as well as mostly excellent guest performances (with one or two exceptions). The main thing it was missing was an original score.

—

“The Foreign Legion Affair”: Speaking of original scores, this one has an entirely new one that’s immediately recognizable as Gerald Fried’s work, built around an Arabian-style leitmotif that presages Fried’s Capellan theme for Star Trek: “Friday’s Child.” Illya is caught photographing a THRUSH code somewhere in Morocco. He manages to escape, but the THRUSH agents get to his chartered plane before he arrives, and for some reason, instead of just shooting him, they replace the pilots and go through the charade of taking off and everything. For some reason, the plane’s stewardess Barbara (Danielle De Metz) doesn’t discover this substitution until after they’ve taken off, so she and Illya are both taken by surprise. But Illya fights the baddies off and parachutes out with Barbara, landing deep in the Sahara, where they stumble across a French Foreign Legion fort run by Capt. Calhoun (Howard Da Silva), who doesn’t know the Legion was disbanded five years ago and the Arab war ended, so he arrests them as enemy spies. (For some reason, he thinks the blond, Nordic Illya is a Tuareg, one of the Berber natives of Saharan North Africa.)  Meanwhile, Solo goes to Casablanca to investigate, gets captured, and predictably gains the support of a gorgeous and very lusty harem-girl type, Aisha (Vivienne Ventura), who helps him escape.

The “outpost commander who doesn’t know the war is over” trope is a hackneyed one, and it plays rather goofily at first (Da Silva’s character is supposedly Irish but you’d never know it from his New Yawk accent), but it ends up taking a rather touching turn when we learn of the unearned disgrace that drove Calhoun to the legion, and the reasons for the loyalty of his only underling, Cpl. Remy (Rupert Crosse). So what seemed like it was going to be a very silly episode turned out to be rather sweet. Although it’s certainly jam-packed with Arab stereotypes.

—

“The Moonglow Affair”: This is a backdoor pilot for the spinoff The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., which would premiere the following season. However, although it introduces that show’s main characters April Dancer (a name suggested by Ian Fleming, unsurprisingly) and Mark Slate, they’re played by different actors here, namely Mary Ann Mobley and Norman Fell rather than Stefanie Powers and Noel Harrison. Slate is introduced here as an older agent, the man who trained Solo, and now he’s been brought in to train Dancer, apparently UNCLE’s first female field agent. They’re needed to take over an investigation that’s gotten Illya captured and Solo exposed to a THRUSH radiation weapon causing sensory aphasia. Due to the importance of the mission, Waverly bends the rules that say agents over 40 (like Slate) aren’t allowed in the field.

The bad guys are Arthur Caresse (Kevin McCarthy) and his sister Jean (Mary Carver), whose front is the Caresse cosmetics company — seriously, why do so many THRUSH operatives go into the glamour business? Caresse is working on a new cosmetics line called Moonglow, and Waverly is concerned that they may be planning to sabotage America’s Project Moonglow rocket program, since of course the first thing that enemy saboteurs will do to keep their evil plans secret is to name their cover story after the exact thing they’re targeting. April goes in as a secretary, but inevitably (given that they cast Miss America 1959 in the role), Arthur takes one look at her and appoints her the new Miss Moonglow — much to Jean’s frustration, for while she’s trying to pick the best spokesmodel, he just picks the girl he most wants to sleep with. While April uses her feminine wiles on him, Mark tracks down Illya and saves him from execution, getting into fights with THRUSH assassins and generally being Too Old For This Crap. It turns out the plan is to irradiate the US astronauts’ space food so they’ll go loopy and crash, thus scuttling both the US and Soviet  space programs so that THRUSH can hold the high ground. While Mark scuttles this plan, April manages to find the microdot plans to THRUSH’s rocket base (as if there weren’t enough McGuffins already), and when Jean discovers her identity, she manages to get the better of both Caresse siblings, but unfortunately the episode wasn’t willing to let a woman save the day all by herself, so she gets irradiated and needs Mark to save her.

All in all, not a particularly good backdoor pilot. I can see why they recast the leads. I liked Mary Ann Mobley a lot in her Mission: Impossible appearance, but here, while she was certainly very nice to look at, she came off as a bit vapid and limited as a performer. And Norman Fell wasn’t very appealing at all. Really, I’m not sure why this pilot convinced them to go ahead with the spinoff. Although in the final show, Mark Slate was made British and de-aged ten years, no doubt to make him more Kuryakinesque. Odd that they  revised a character so completely in what was supposed to be the same continuity. Why not change the character name along with everything else?

The main virtue here is another full score by Gerald Fried, in a mode that’s at once very much a ’60s spy score (with lots of bass guitar and bongos) and very much a Fried score. I’ve commented on how Fried’s earlier scores for this show sounded kind of underdeveloped, sounding more like his early/contemporary comedy work (on Gilligan’s Island) but not quite having the full-fledged qualities of his familiar adventure/drama scoring on shows like Star Trek and M:I. But by now, between “The Foreign Legion Affair” and this one, I can safely say that Fried’s style had reached maturity.

—

“The Nowhere Affair”: A search for a map to a THRUSH facility takes Solo to MGM’s Western town backlot the ghost town of Nowhere, Nevada, where he’s captured by the enemy and takes a temporary-amnesia pill. The facility’s head, Longolius (David Sheiner putting on a Western accent), doesn’t believe he’s amnesiac, but his captive cybernetics expert Tertunian (Lou Jacobi) convinces him it’s real, and that the best way to break through the memory block is to “arouse” his metabolism — which predictably means sending a woman to seduce him. Just as predictably, the computer-dating algorithm Tertunian runs reveals that the ideal candidate is the one woman already working in the facility, Mara (Diana Hyland), who protests because she’s a bookish type who missed the obligatory seduction course for female THRUSH agents. Yet also predictably, she somehow manages to seduce Solo like a pro. (She even has a seminude scene that’s surprisingly revealing for 1966.) And even more predictably, she falls in love with him and helps him escape to sabotage the facility. (His memory returns when she puts a gun in his hand — which was almost a good scene, seeing his nonverbal reaction as he regained himself, but then they went and ruined it by redundantly revealing the same thing in stilted dialogue.) The predictability is only slightly offset by the revelation that Tertunian chose her with the full knowledge that this would happen, intending all along to sabotage THRUSH’s plans. But that doesn’t help any, since a few scenes earlier, we’d seen Longolius actually planning to let Solo escape so they could follow him to UNCLE, but then when Solo actually does escape, Longolius is outraged and betrayed. What?

Meanwhile, Illya is trying to track Solo down and ends up bizarrely allying with a stereotypical grizzled prospector (J. Pat O’Malley) who’s found the THRUSH map and thought it was leading to buried treasure. He helps Illya find the facility and then rig it to blow up once the good guys have escaped, and is oddly untroubled by the fact that he’s just killed a whole bunch of THRUSH agents, most of them dressed up like Yul Brynner in Westworld.

The THRUSH computer lab is a nifty set at first glance, with forced-perspective computer banks seemingly receding into the distance, but then they ruin that too by shooting from side angles that give away the diminishing size of the computers.

There’s almost a nice scene in the ending, where Mara reflects on THRUSH’s lifelong indoctrination that left her no choice but to become who she is, but then it takes a rather ghastly turn when Waverly decides the best solution for her tragic upbringing is to get her to swallow down a whole bottle of barely-tested amnesia pills and hope it wipes all her memory rather than just killing her, whereupon she evidently forgets everything she’s known since childhood except that she’s in love with Solo, and this ultimate roofie is somehow supposed to be a happy ending rather than the creepiest one I’ve ever seen on this show. Egad.

So, yeah, it’s an amnesia-themed episode that I really wish I could forget. Way to go, show. At least it has a mostly new Robert Drasnin score, plus a reuse of that nice jazzy, syncopated cue I liked from “The Tigers Are Coming Affair.”

Reflecting on AN ADVENTURE IN SPACE AND TIME (spoilers)

I haven’t posted anything here about the recent Doctor Who anniversary productions; I never seem to have gotten into the habit of discussing current TV on the blog, since I mainly do that on sites like the The TrekBBS and Tor.com. Suffice to say that I really enjoyed all of it — the wonderful return of Paul McGann in the short ‘The Night of the Doctor,” the anniversary special “The Day of the Doctor” which tied off a lot of continuity threads quite beautifully and had me jumping off the couch in amazement a few times, the Internet comedy film The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot in which the surviving classic Doctors who weren’t in the special get their turn in the sun… and the biopic An Adventure in Space and Time wherein writer Mark Gatiss lovingly recreates the spirit (if not the factual details) of the formative years of Doctor Who and William Hartnell’s tenure in the role. Yesterday on the TrekBBS I made an observation about the ending of that film that’s been quite well-received by the other posters, so I felt it was worth reposting here. Naturally there are spoilers.

The discussion was about the final scene of the film, in which Hartnell (played by David Bradley) is about to film his final scene as the Doctor, and he looks over and sees the current Doctor, Matt Smith, standing across the TARDIS console and smiling at him. Several people felt that was an odd moment, saying that it took them out of the movie or that it didn’t make sense within Hartnell’s point of view. Some said maybe he should’ve seen a montage of all the future Doctors, or something. But here’s the thought I had about what the meaning of that concluding shot was:

It’s occurred to me that the shot of Smith at the end wasn’t really meant to represent Hartnell’s POV. Smith was standing in for us, the modern audience, looking back at Hartnell from our POV. I mean, this is really a pretty sad movie. Hartnell finally finds a role he loves, a professional family where he feels he belongs, but everyone leaves him and then he gets too ill to continue and they kick him out and his career withers and then he dies young and it’s all very sad. So I think that final moment reflected our wish as fans — and Mark Gatiss’s wish as the writer — that we could go back and communicate with Hartnell and tell him that what he started would leave a legacy stretching forward 50 years and more, and that he would always be remembered and cherished. To let him know, as it were, that there should be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties, because Doctor Who had gone forward in all its beliefs and proven to him that he was not mistaken in his.

Musings on quantum gravity

Recently I came across this article about an experiment to reconcile quantum physics with gravity, the one fundamental force that hasn’t yet been explained in quantum terms:

New Experiments to Pit Quantum Mechanics Against General Relativity

The problem with reconciling gravity (which is explained by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity) and quantum physics is that they seem to follow incompatible laws. Quantum particles can exist in superpositions of more than one state at a time, while gravitational phenomena remain resolutely “classical,” displaying only one state. Our modern interpretation suggests that what we observe as classical physics is actually the result of the quantum states of interacting particles correlating with each other. A particle may be in multiple states at once, but everything it interacts with — including a measuring device or the human observer reading its output — becomes correlated with only one of those states, and thus the whole ensemble behaves classically. This “decoherence” effect makes it hard to detect quantum superpositions in any macroscopic ensemble, like, say, a mass large enough to have a measurable gravitational effect. Thus it’s hard to see quantum effects in gravitational interactions. As the article puts it:

At the quantum scale, rather than being “here” or “there” as balls tend to be, elementary particles have a certain probability of existing in each of the locations. These probabilities are like the peaks of a wave that often extends through space. When a photon encounters two adjacent slits on a screen, for example, it has a 50-50 chance of passing through either of them. The probability peaks associated with its two paths meet on the far side of the screen, creating interference fringes of light and dark. These fringes prove that the photon existed in a superposition of both trajectories.

But quantum superpositions are delicate. The moment a particle in a superposition interacts with the environment, it appears to collapse into a definite state of “here” or “there.” Modern theory and experiments suggest that this effect, called environmental decoherence, occurs because the superposition leaks out and envelops whatever the particle encountered. Once leaked, the superposition quickly expands to include the physicist trying to study it, or the engineer attempting to harness it to build a quantum computer. From the inside, only one of the many superimposed versions of reality is perceptible.

A single photon is easy to keep in a superposition. Massive objects like a ball on a spring, however, “become exponentially sensitive to environmental disturbances,” explained Gerard Milburn, director of the Center for Engineered Quantum Systems at the University of Queensland in Australia. “The chances of any one of their particles getting disturbed by a random kick from the environment is extremely high.”

The article is about devising an experiment to get around this and observe a superposition (potentially) in a “ball on a spring” type of apparatus. What interests me, though, is a more abstract discussion toward the end of the article.

Inspired by the possibility of experimental tests, Milburn and other theorists are expanding on Diósi and Penrose’s basic idea. In a July paper in Physical Review Letters, Blencowe derived an equation for the rate of gravitational decoherence by modeling gravity as a kind of ambient radiation. His equation contains a quantity called the Planck energy, which equals the mass of the smallest possible black hole. “When we see the Planck energy we think quantum gravity,” he said. “So it may be that this calculation is touching on elements of this undiscovered theory of quantum gravity, and if we had one, it would show us that gravity is fundamentally different than other forms of decoherence.”

Stamp is developing what he calls a “correlated path theory” of quantum gravity that pinpoints a possible mathematical mechanism for gravitational decoherence. In traditional quantum mechanics, probabilities of future outcomes are calculated by independently summing the various paths a particle can take, such as its simultaneous trajectories through both slits on a screen. Stamp found that when gravity is included in the calculations, the paths connect. “Gravity basically is the interaction that allows communication between the different paths,” he said. The correlation between paths results once more in decoherence. “No adjustable parameters,” he said. “No wiggle room. These predictions are absolutely definite.”

Now, this got me thinking. Every particle with mass interacts gravitationally with every other particle with mass, so there would be no way to completely isolate them from interacting. For that matter, gravity affects light too. So if gravity is an irreducible “background noise” that prevents stable superpositions, that would explain why quantum effects don’t seem to manifest with gravitational phenomena.

And that does sort of reconcile the two. The decoherence model, that classical states are what we get when quantum states interact and correlate with each other, basically means that classical physics is simply a subset of quantum physics, the behavior of quantum particles that are in a correlated state. So the “classical” behavior of gravity would also be a subset of quantum physics — meaning that relativistic gravity is quantum gravity already, in a manner of speaking. We just didn’t realize they were two aspects of the same overarching whole.

Now, this reminds me of another thing I heard about once, a theory that gravity didn’t really exist. It might have been the entropic gravity theory of Erik Verlinde, which states that gravity is, more or less, just a statistical artifact of particles tending toward maximum entropy. Now, what I recall reading somewhere, though I’m not finding a source for it today, is that this — or whatever similar theory I’m recalling — means that particles tend toward the most probable quantum state. And statistically speaking, for any particle in an ensemble, its most probable position is toward the center of that ensemble, i.e. the center of mass. So I had the thought that maybe what we perceive as gravity is more just some sort of probability pressure as particles tend toward their most likely states.

Now, if Stamp’s theory is right, then Verlinde’s is wrong; there must be an actual force of gravity, or rather, an interaction that correlates the paths of different particles. But it occurs to me that there may be some basis to the probabilistic view of gravity if we look at it more as a quantum correlation than an attraction. To explain my thinking, we have to bring in another idea I’ve talked about before on this blog, quantum Darwinism. The idea there is that the way decoherence works is that the various states of a quantum particle “compete” as they spread out through interaction with other particles, and it’s the more robust, stable states that prevail. Now, what I’m thinking is that as a rule, the most stable states would be the most probable ones. And again, those would tend to be the positions closest to the center of mass, or as close as feasible when competing with other particles.

So if we look at gravitation not as an attractive force per se, but as a sort of “correlational field” that promotes interaction/entanglement among quantum particles, then we can still get its attractive effect arising as a side effect of the decoherence of the correlated particles into their most probable states. Thus, gravity does exist, but its attractive effect is fundamentally a quantum phenomenon. So you have quantum gravity after all.

But how to reconcile this with the geometric view of General Relativity, that gravity is actually a manifestation of the effect that mass and energy have on the topology of spacetime? Well, that apparent topology, that spatial relationship between objects and their motions, could be seen as a manifestation of the probabilistic relationships among their position and movement states. I.e. a particle follows a certain path within a gravitational field because that’s the most probable path for it to take in the context of its correlation with other particles. Even extreme spacetime geometries like wormholes or warp fields could be explained in this way; an object could pass through a wormhole and show up in a distant part of space because the distribution of mass and energy that creates the wormhole produces a probability distribution that means the object is most likely to be somewhere else in space. Which is analogous to the quantum tunneling that results because the peak of a particle’s probability distribution shifts to the other side of a potential barrier. And for that matter, it has often been conjectured that quantum entanglement between correlated particles could be caused by microscopic wormholes linking them. Maybe it’s the other way around: wormholes are just quantum tunneling effects.

One other thought I’ve had that has a science-fictional impact: if gravitation is a “correlational quantum field” that helps the most probable state propagate out through the universe, that might argue against the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum decoherence. After all, gravity is kind of universal in its effect, and the correlation it creates produces what we see as classical physics, a singular state. It could be that coherent superpositions would only happen on very small, microscopic scales, and quantum Darwinism and gravitational correlation would cause a single consensus state to dominate on a larger scale. So instead of the whole macroscopic realm splitting into multiple reality-states (timelines), it could be that such splitting is only possible on the very small scale, and maybe the simmering of microscale alternate realities is what we observe as the quantum foam. It could be that the MWI is a consequence of an incomplete quantum theory that doesn’t include gravity, and once you fold in gravity as a correlating effect, it imposes a single quantum reality on the macroscopic universe.

Which would be kind of a bummer from an SF perspective, since alternate realities are useful story concepts. I’d just about come around to believing that at least some alternate realities might be stable enough to spread macroscopically, as I explained in my quantum Darwinism essay linked above. Now, I’m not so sure. The “background noise” effect of gravity might swamp any stable superpositions before they could spread macroscopically and create divergent timelines.

However, these thoughts might be applicable to future writings in my Hub universe (and as I’ve discussed before, I’ve already given up on the idea of trying to reconcile that with my other universes as alternate timelines). The Hub is a point at the center of mass of the greater galaxy — i.e. the system that includes the Milky Way proper, its satellite galaxies, and its dark-matter halo — that allows instantaneous travel to any point within that halo. I hadn’t really worked out how it did so, but maybe this quantum-gravity idea provides an answer. If gravity is quantum correlation, and all particles’ probability distributions tend toward the center of mass, then maybe the center of mass is the one point that allows quantum tunneling to the position of every other particle. Or something like that. It also provides some insight into the key McGuffin of the series, the fact that nobody can predict the relationship between Hub vectors (the angle and velocity at which the Hub is entered) and arrival destinations, meaning that finding new destinations must be a matter of trial and error. If the Hub works through quantum gravity and correlation with all the masses within the halo, then predicting vectors would require a complete, exact measurement of the quantum state of every particle within the halo, and that would be prohibitively difficult. It’s analogous to how quantum theory says that every event in the universe is already part of its wave equation, but we can’t perfectly predict the future because we’d need to know the entire equation, the behavior of every single particle, and that would take an eternity to measure. So it’s something that’s theoretically deterministic but functionally impossible to determine. The same could be true of Hub vectors.

Although… we’re only talking about one galaxy’s worth of particles, which is a tiny fraction of the whole universe. So maybe it’s not completely impossible…

Anyway, those are the musings I’ve had while lying awake in bed over the past couple of early mornings, so maybe they don’t make much sense. But I think they’re interesting.

SPIDER-MAN: DROWNED IN THUNDER makes AudioFile Magazine’s Best of 2013 list!

The folks at GraphicAudio just sent me some excellent news: AudioFile Magazine listed their audiobook adaptation of Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder as one of their Best Audiobooks of 2013 in the “Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Audio Theater” category.

The list is here:

http://digital.audiofilemagazine.com/i/215700

It may take a few moments to load, but the entry is on page 11. And here it is at GraphicAudio’s Facebook page.

I’m really pleased by this. I’ve always been proud of Drowned in Thunder, but the paperback didn’t get as much attention as I’d hoped. I’m glad to see the story getting a new lease on life thanks to GraphicAudio, and I hope this attention may eventually lead to Marvel reissuing the book (since Pocket’s license has lapsed by now).

Realism in space: EUROPA REPORT and GRAVITY (spoiler reviews)

In the past few days I’ve seen two recent movies that took an unusually realistic approach to portraying spaceflight: Sebastián Cordero’s Europa Report (which I watched on my computer via Netflix) and Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity (which I watched in the theater). It’s very rare to get two movies in such close succession that make an attempt to portray space realistically, and I hope it’s the beginning of a trend. Although both movies did compromise their realism in different ways.

Europa Report is a “found-footage” movie presented as a documentary about the first crewed expedition to Jupiter’s moon Europa to investigate hints of life. It’s rare among such movies in that not only is the found-footage format well-justified and plausibly presented, but it’s actually thematically important to the film. On the surface, the plot follows the beats of a fairly standard horror movie: characters come to an unfamiliar place, start to suspect there’s something out there in the dark, and fall prey to something unseen one by one. But what’s fascinating about it is that it doesn’t feel like horror, because these characters want to be there, are willing to risk or sacrifice their lives for the sake of knowledge, and see the discovery of something unknown in the dark as a triumph rather than a terror. And that elevates it above the formula it superficially follows. It’s really a nifty work of science fiction in that it celebrates the importance of the scientific process itself, and the value of human exploration in space even when it comes at the cost of human lives.

The depiction of the ship, its flight, the onboard procedures, and the behavior of the astronauts is all handled very believably, with a well-designed and realistic spaceship relying on rotation to create artificial gravity. The actors, including Sharlto Copley, Daniel Wu, Anamaria Marinca, Christian Camargo, House‘s Karolina Wydra, and Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol‘s Michael Nyqvist, are effectively naturalistic and nuanced. The film’s low budget means they can only manage a limited number of microgravity or spacewalking shots, but what we get is reasonably believable. I do have some quibbles about procedures, though, like the lack of spacesuit maneuvering units during the spacewalk, and the decision later on Europa to send one crewperson out on the surface alone without backup. Really, a lot of the bad things that happened seemed to be avoidable. But I’m willing to excuse it since this was portrayed as a private space venture and the first of its kind. Now, I’m a big supporter of private enterprise getting into the space business, since history shows that development and settlement of a frontier doesn’t really take off until private enterprise gets involved and starts making a profit from it. And I’m sure that private space ventures in real life take every safety precaution they can. But for the sake of the fiction, it’s plausible that a novice organization might let a few safety procedures slide here and there.

The one thing about the film that really bugged me is one that’s pervasive in film and TV set in space and largely unavoidable: namely, once the crew landed on Europa, they were moving around in what was clearly full Earth gravity. Europa’s gravity is 13.4 percent of Earth’s, a few percent less than the Moon’s gravity, so they should’ve been moving around like the Apollo astronauts. Unfortunately, it seems to be much harder for Hollywood to simulate low gravity than microgravity. I’ve rarely seen it done well, and all too often filmmakers or TV producers are content to assume that all surface gravity is equal. In this case I suppose it’s a forgivable break from reality given the film’s small budget, but it’s the one big disappointment in an otherwise very believable and well-researched portrayal of spaceflight. Still, it’s a minor glitch in a really excellent movie.

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Gravity is a very different film, much more about visual spectacle and action. Indeed, I’d read that it definitely needed to be seen in 3D to get the full impact, so I decided to take a chance. See, nearly 30 years ago I had some laser surgery for a melanoma in my left eye, and that left my vision in that eye distorted, on top of my congenitally blurry vision in that eye. So normally my depth perception isn’t all that great, and I tend to be unable to perceive 3D images like those Magic Eye pictures that were a fad not long after my surgery. So I’ve always assumed that I wouldn’t be able to experience 3D movies. But a few years back, I talked to a friend who had similar eye problems, and he said he could occasionally get some sense of depth from a 3D movie. So for this case, I decided to give it a try. And lo and behold, it worked! I could actually perceive depth fairly normally, though mainly just when there was a considerable difference in range, like when something passed really close to the camera, or in the shots of Sandra Bullock receding into the infinite depths of space (which were the key shots where you pretty much need 3D to get the full impact). I’m not sure if someone with normal vision could perceive more than I did, but it worked pretty well, considering that I wasn’t sure if it would work at all. There were occasionally some shots where I got a double image when something bright was against black space, but the double image persisted when I closed one eye, so I think it was a matter of the glasses filtering out the second image imperfectly. Anyway, it’s nice to know I can see 3D movies (and I didn’t get a headache or nausea either), though it costs a few bucks extra, so I’ll probably use this newfound freedom judiciously — for movies where the 3D is really done well and serves a purpose, rather than just capitalizing on a fad or being sloppily tacked on.

Anyway, as for the movie itself, it’s a technical tour de force, one big ongoing special effect that uses remarkably realistic CGI to create the illusion of minutes-long unbroken shots of George Clooney and Sandra Bullock floating in space and interacting seamlessly with each other and their environs. The technical aspects of NASA procedures and equipment and so forth seem to be very realistically handled as well. And best of all, the movie states right up front in the opening text that in space there’s nothing to carry sound, and it sticks by that religiously, never giving into the temptation to use sound effects in vacuum no matter how cataclysmic things get and how many things crash or blow up. The only sounds we hear when the viewpoint astronauts are in vacuum are those that they could hear over their radios or through the fabric of their suits when they touch something. It’s utterly glorious. Every science-fiction sound designer in Hollywood needs to study this film religiously.

The behavior of objects and fluids in microgravity is moderately well-handled too, although I’m not convinced the fire in the ISS would spread as quickly as shown, since fires in space tend to snuff themselves out with no convection to carry away the carbon dioxide buildup. But there were glimpses of what seemed like ruptured gas canisters spewing blue flame, so maybe they were oxygen canisters feeding the fire? I also wasn’t convinced by the scene where Bullock’s character wept and the tears sort of rolled away from her eyes and drifted off. I think surface tension would cause the tears to cling around her eyes unless she brushed them away.

One thing that both films handle quite realistically is the coolness of trained professionals in a crisis. In both Europa Report and Gravity, for the most part the astronauts keep a calm and level tone of voice as they report their crises. In real life, professionals generally don’t get all shouty and dramatic when bad things happen, but they fall back on procedure and training and discipline and rely on those things to see them through. And that’s what we mostly get in both these movies, although Sandra Bullock’s character in Gravity has more panicky moments because she’s not as well-trained as the other astronauts. I’m not sure it’s entirely plausible that they would’ve let her go into space without sufficient training to accustom her to it, but it’s balanced by Clooney’s calm under pressure.

However… all that realism of detail in Gravity masks the fact that the basic premise of the movie requires fudging quite a bit about the physics, dimensions, and probabilities of orbital spaceflight. The crisis begins when an accidental satellite explosion starts a chain reaction that knocks out all the other satellites and creates a huge debris storm that tears apart the space shuttle and later endangers the ISS. Now, yes, true, orbital debris poses a serious risk of impact, but we’re still talking about small bits spread out over a vast volume. In all probability a shuttle or station would be hit by maybe one large piece of debris at most, not this huge oncoming swarm tearing the whole thing to pieces. And the probability of the same thing happening to two structures as a result of the same debris swarm? Much, much tinier. Not to mention that I really, really doubt the fragments as shown could impart enough kinetic energy to these spacecraft to knock them into the kind of spins we see. It’s all very exaggerated for the sake of spectacle. And by the climactic minutes of the film it’s starting to feel a bit repetitive and ridiculous that everything just keeps going so consistently wrong over and over. (The film also simplifies orbital mechanics a great deal, suggesting you can catch up with another orbiting craft just by pointing directly at it and thrusting forward. Since you and it are already moving very fast on curved paths, it’s really not that simple.)

Gravity has a huge edge over Europa Report in its budget and thus its ability to portray microgravity; I wish ER had been able to use this level of technology to simulate Europa’s 0.134g in its surface scenes. But as impressive as Gravity‘s commitment to realism is in some respects, it’s ultimately a far shallower film than ER and cheats the physics in much bigger ways for the sake of contrived action and danger. It’s essentially a big dumb disaster movie disguised with a brilliantly executed veneer of naturalism. Gravity has the style, while Europa Report has the substance.

Now what we need is for someone to put the two together, and we could really be onto something.

Revisiting FLASH GORDON (2007): Episodes 19-22: Revolution and resolution (spoilers)

“Blame”: Last time, Flash helped distribute the stolen Earth water freely to all the cantons, but let Terek take credit for it in hopes that it would improve the Deviates’ reputation. But Ming has poisoned the water and turned the cantons against the Deviates. Flash rushes to warn Terek while the others seek to apprehend Lenu and find out what she did to Joe. When Flash arrives, Terek is attacked by the Turin, who inexplicably are led not by Thun (the one major comics protagonist who does not appear in this series) but by a new character named Bolgar (Shawn Reis). However, the Turin makeup has evolved; Tyrus in “Pride” was just a hairy guy with wild eyes, but these Turin have leonine makeup appliances on their brows and nasal ridges and tawnier hair/manes, actually looking like Lion Men, and symbolizing how much more the show is now embracing Flash Gordon tropes. (Maybe Tyrus was adopted into the tribe?) Although it makes it odd that such inhuman-looking denzens would hate Deviates for looking abnormal — but then, prejudice is about what you’re used to, not what’s logical. Anyway, Flash wields his usual diplomacy and convinces Bolgar to let him seek an antidote as an alternative to killing Terek. Bolgar forces Flash to drink the poisoned water himself to give him a personal stake. Flash goes to Vestra of the Omadrians for help, only to find that Aura has done the same. All Vestra can do, though, is point them to Esmeline (Samantha Kaine), the outcast Omadrian who created the poison, and who demands much of Flash and Aura in exchange for the antidote. (Oddly, Esmeline is portrayed like a caricature of a Jamaican vodoun priestess, even though all the other Omadrians have generic North American accents.) Meanwhile, Vestra goes to tend to Terek, who realizes that she’s his mother, and therefore Aura’s mother as well — though Vestra swore a blood oath to Ming that would render Aura’s life forfeit if Vestra ever tells her the truth. (It’s never clarified whether the mechanism of death would be something magical or simply an execution.)

This is a good episode for Aura.  She really gets to show how she’s grown over the season, and gets in on the action too, proving herself a worthy ally to Flash at last. Plus we get some important revelations about her family. Not to mention about Zarkov and Dale as they interrogate Lenu. Zarkov proves himself cannier than we — or Lenu — would expect, at first seeming to fall for her deceptions but then turning out to be the one tricking her. And the grieving Dale shows a scary side. It’s weird to see Baylin being the voice of restraint.

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“A Cold Day in Hell”: Since the rift generator can’t be destroyed without contaminating Mongo all over again, Flash decides it’s time to take out Ming instead. He goes to the Celetroph monks to win their support, willing to step up and accept the prophesied savior role if that’s what it takes, but the Dolan (abbot) of the Celetrophs (Nicholas W. von Zill) says he has one last test to pass, and sends him to the ice kingdom of Frigia, where he must save their frozen Queen Fria to prove he’s the one. He gets help from a woman named Brini (Holly Dignard) of the undersea Triton people (blue-skinned with scalloped ears — probably based on the kingdom of Coralia from the comics), but she turns out to be an ice poacher and he’s arrested with her. He convinces Count Mallow (Daniel Probert) — spelled Malo in the comics — to let him try to save Fria, but with a name like that, and with the way Probert plays him, it’s clear that Mallow’s up to no good. Fortunately, Baylin and Terek confront Rankol, who admits his affiliation with the monks, and is willing to nudge destiny along a bit by telling them where Flash is.

I should note that Terek had previously come to Ming in secret and tried to make a deal with him, offering to stand with him if Ming claimed him as his son. But Ming’s hatred of Deviates is intractable and he has Terek arrested — a condition Baylin is able to reverse, since even some of Ming’s prison guards now feel that any friend of Flash Gordon’s is a friend of theirs. The people are ready to rally around Flash’s name — although Flash ends up having Terek’s help in fulfilling the prophecy, and Terek also fits every other parameter of the monks’ foretellings, so Flash is willing to defer to Terek as the prophesied warrior. Given Terek’s willingness to bargain with Ming, though, that struck me as potentially a bad idea.

Speaking of questionable ideas, we get our first Earthside plotline in several episodes as Dale decides she has to go back home and reveal the truth about the threat Ming poses to Earth — although she’s clearly driven by guilt at what happened to Joe because of the secrets she kept. It turns out that her producer Joely, seen for the first time since “Conspiracy Theory,” has put the pieces together on her own (and there was actually a reaction shot foreshadowing this in that episode), so she and Dale make plans to reveal the truth. But first Dale needs to tell Norah Gordon the whole story. Norah warns about the men in suits who came to silence anyone who knew the truth after Dr. Gordon’s disappearance, creating doubts in Dale’s mind.

This is a decent episode, and all the stuff in Frigia is a nice pulpy Flash-Gordony adventure, further demonstrating the show’s new willingness to embrace its comics origins rather than downplaying them as in the early episodes. But it feels like a digression from the main arc. It helps that we’ve been hearing references to Frigia and their ice since way back in “Pride,” but we never actually saw them before, and it was still a bit much to spring on us all at once, particularly with the Triton also thrown in; and so it felt a little disconnected from the rest. Although maybe it’s better seen as a pause to catch our breaths before the big finale. Or maybe the producers knew that the show’s chances of renewal were uncertain at best and thus wanted to flesh out more of Mongo’s exotic peoples while they had the chance.

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“Revolution, Part One/Part Two”: Terek has gathered all the cantons and their leaders — except for the ones introduced in the previous episode, making that one seem even more irrelevant. Although the Frigians are doing their part offscreen, since Ming has sent his army to conquer them (and claim their pre-Sorrow ice) now that they’ve deposed his puppet Malo. Terek sees this as the ideal opportunity to overthrow Ming, but he needs Flash, the one man all the cantons trust and respect, to vouch for him and convince the denzens to stand with him. Flash does his part, but he’s still not eager for war, urging Terek to find another way, and is angered when Vultan kills a captured spy. I love this show’s portrayal of Flash’s fundamental decency. Even though he knows what’s at stake, he still values human life and is hurt and angered when even an enemy is killed. That’s what I like to see in a TV hero — not the ruthless Jack Bauer kind of crap that proliferated when this show was airing and is still all too common. The cool thing about Flash Gordon, and one thing this adaptation has captured very well, is that he’s an ordinary guy whose basic decency, courage, and willingness to fight for what’s right end up changing an entire world. Perhaps in this version, he’s been less of an overt leader and fighter, more a catalyst bringing out the best in others; but though he may not be as much the champion of Mongo in this incarnation, he’s still the conscience of Mongo, a source of inspiration, and I think that’s ultimately more important.

Aura is also actively supporting Terek, and when Ming discovers Rankol’s secret membership in the Celetroph order, the chief scientist ends up in prison — leading to Zarkov choosing to show him compassion and set him free to go to the Deviates. So now both of the characters who started out as Ming’s main supporters and sounding boards now stand with Terek, and Aura steps up impressively to help the rebellion — though she still loves her father in spite of everything and is torn given the likely necessity of his death. Terek certainly doesn’t seem to have a problem with using force; the plan is to place Ming at such a disadvantage that he’ll have no choice but to surrender, yet Ming refuses to be bowed, and he gains allies in Azura and her Zurn tribesmen. So Terek chooses to launch the war even though Flash and their other allies are still in the city.

Back on Earth, Dale goes ahead and airs her story about Mongo, over the protest of her boss, but all it gets her is a visit from the Men in Black, whom she escapes by ducking out her window. She goes to warn Norah Gordon that the MiB are probably after her too, and she’s quickly proved right. Dale and Norah have no choice but to drive Zarkov’s RV through a rift to Mongo. Dale has pretty thoroughly burned her bridges in Kendal.

Rankol also reveals to Zarkov that Dr. Gordon is still alive, and at the end of Part I, Flash finally finds him — and early in part 2 is reunited with Dale and Norah. Flash is kind of marginalized at this point, more concerned with helping his father and shutting down the rift generator (since Dr. Gordon knows a safe way to do so) than participating in the rebellion, but Dr. Gordon tells him that the security key to shut down the generator is the brooch that Ming always wears on his uniform — meaning that Flash will have to confront Ming at last to get his father home. Now, I confess, while I’ve enjoyed the fact that Flash is a hero defined more by wits and compassion than force, it was satisfying to see Flash Gordon and Ming the Merciless finally battling outright (and there was a nicely done buildup to that as both men changed into battle armor to prepare — though Ming didn’t know at the time that he’d be facing Flash). But this isn’t the ’30s anymore, so Aura also plays a key role in the final confrontation, as she deserves to do.

Other key stuff happens too, including Aura finding out the truth about her mother and realizing that it’s actually Ming who has Deviate blood. Unsurprisingly, the reason he despises Deviates so much is that he’s one of them, and is vehemently in denial of the fact. Of course; the whole Deviate thing has been a gay-rights allegory since the moment Terek showed up.

Season finales are generally not the finest episodes of their series, I find, because they’re too focused on big action and revelations and tying off all the threads and thus tend to be too noisy and cluttered and plot-driven to get very deep. This finale is like that in a lot of ways — big and eventful and pretty satisfying, but not as brilliant or moving as something like “The Sorrow” or “Ebb and Flow.” Still, there’s some excellent stuff here in the culmination of the Ming-Aura relationship. Aura is in many ways the best character in this show, and I’m glad it eventually brought out the best in Anna Van Hooft. Most of the character resolutions are pretty satisfying, although it’s disappointing that Barin got written out. The action isn’t as big as it could’ve been on a show with a larger budget, but what we get is reasonably effective. And of course it’s good that they didn’t have the money for a big action-driven finale, since that required focusing more on the character interactions, which is so much better. My main problem with Part Two is that the editing is awkwardly tight at some points; it must’ve been difficult to cram so much in.

I’m going to spoil the ending here so I can talk about its ramifications. The final scenes went almost exactly as I expected they would: Ming is overthrown but escapes at the last moment (courtesy of Azura’s magic), and Flash, Dale, and Zarkov are trapped on Mongo.  And yet I consider that a good thing, because it’s just what I wanted to happen. Indeed, it’s pretty much the same as the ending of Filmation’s 1979 Flash Gordon TV movie (which didn’t air until 1982) and the first season of the weekly animated series that was reworked and expanded therefrom.  (Although there it was Barin who ended up taking over as ruler, which I suspect was the original plan here.) Still, that just drives home my disappointment that we didn’t get a second season. This show had really come into its own, and it deserved to go on longer. It would’ve been nice to see a second season about Flash and the gang having further adventures on Mongo, with Zarkov’s RV their only link to Earth. Well, I am curious about the fate Dr. and Mrs. Gordon would’ve faced on returning to Earth with the MiB after them, particularly since Flash had them take the Imex with them. Maybe a second-season (or third-season) arc could’ve involved Flash & co. having to go back to Earth to stop its leaders from endangering the cosmic fabric with a rift generator this time around. But there would still have been plenty on Mongo to deal with. I suspect we would’ve seen two major villains: Ming himself, building his forces for a return to power with Azura at his side, and Terek, becoming increasingly ruthless like his father. Aura would probably have been in much the same role as before, trying to temper Terek’s cruelties and finding herself increasingly at odds with him. And I suspect Flash would eventually have had to accept — with Rankol’s encouragement — that he was wrong to interpret the prophecies as being about Terek, that Flash was the destined uniter and ruler of Mongo all along.

Still, the end of “Revolution” works reasonably well as a series finale. There’s plenty of room for continuation, but there’s also a satisfactory degree of closure for all the major story and character arcs. So the single season we have doesn’t feel like an incomplete story. It makes me wish we could’ve had more, but I’m satisfied with what we do have, and I’m very glad that I finally own the series on DVD. And now you can too! I hope I’ve managed to convince at least some people that it’s worth the expenditure of less than ten bucks and about sixteen hours to experience this series in its entirety.

Revisiting FLASH GORDON (2007): Episodes 15-18: Setbacks and escalation (spoilers)

“Stand and Deliver” is something long overdue, an episode set entirely on Mongo. After the events of “The Sorrow,” Baylin, Flash, and Dale find the remains of the Verden village, and learn from a survivor that most of the Verden were already in bondage to Ming’s service in Nascent City, except for those who refused to submit to the order, who are outlaws and fair game for killing (as in the Honor Day raid) or capture by slavers. But Ming is getting more uneasy about the Verden, since the Celetroph monks elaborate on their former prophecy of a great warrior who will overthrow Ming, stating that the son will take the place of the father. We know who that probably is, of course (since by this point we know that Dr. Gordon rebelled against Ming), but Ming assumes it’s the still-fugitive Barin (whose father, the former Verden leader, Ming had killed), and he’s determined to punish the Verden for it.

Flash and Baylin try to buy back the slaves, which requires collecting celetrophs, whose venom is reputedly the most valuable trade good on Mongo. There’s a funny scene where Flash has to risk his life to try to harvest the scorpions (it’s Flash’s reactions, and Eric Johnson’s excellent comic delivery, that make it funny), although the whole thing seems kind of unnecessary. After all, we’ve been told many times before that pure water is the most precious commodity on Mongo. Why not use the rift blaster to pop back to Earth and buy some 12-packs of bottled water? Indeed, by now Flash’s gang should have a regular water-bootlegging operation in effect, to undermine Ming’s monopoly as well as to help the general populace.

Anyway, Dale and the Verden they rescued are captured by the slavers, and Dale ends up being sent to Ming’s bedchamber — again. This time she doesn’t manage to get away before he arrives, but she holds her own nicely against Ming, using her wit and a fair amount of flattery to maneuver him into a conversation, keeping herself safe from assault for the time being. But she inadvertently gives him a nasty idea about how to deal with Barin. (I’m a little disappointed, though, that they didn’t have her use her journalistic wiles and talk Ming into an interview. We never really got to see Dale’s professional side come into play during her visits to Mongo, and I think that’s a missed opportunity.)

Flash and Baylin are too late to prevent the slaves from being bought by a Turin (lion man), but when they attack him, it turns out to be Barin in disguise, buying his people’s freedom. (So all that scorpion-hunting was unnecessary. I’m sure Flash was thrilled about that — too bad we didn’t get to see Johnson play his reaction.) Barin helps them to free Dale, but then Ming announces that he will kill twenty Verden a day until Barin turns himself in. Barin has no choice but to surrender, and it seems he’s doomed to die. He bargains with Aura, saying that if she helps keep him alive, he’ll help her discover the identity of her mother, who’s not dead as Ming claimed. But Flash comes up with a plan of his own to issue a new prophecy to keep Barin alive.

This episode has a couple of major conceptual problems. One is the venom thing I mentioned; the other is that Baylin’s injury from last week is forgotten aside from a token arm-clutching in the teaser. I suppose it’s possible they found a healer in between episodes, but the dialogue suggests otherwise. It’s an odd glitch in a show that’s been so strong with continuity even at its weakest. By the same token, given how little time has passed, Aura has rebounded way too quickly from the shock she received in “The Sorrow.” But overall, it’s very effective. Inevitably it’s a letdown after the power of “The Sorrow,” but it’s a solid episode with some major story developments. Aura is impressive in her improving grasp of politics and how to handle Ming. Flash is impressive in his ingenuity. Dale is impressive in her survival skills and gift of gab — although at this point I’m reluctantly forced to admit that Gina Holden takes the title of the most one-note performer in the show now that Anna Van Hooft has raised her game. I still think Holden has a good presence and personality, and does pretty well with the comedy and banter; but she doesn’t show much range, and unlike others, she hasn’t noticeably improved since the early episodes.

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“Possession”: Joe is stalking the gang, trying to get proof of Mongo, and ends up stealing one of Zarkov’s rift blasters to go to Mongo, forcing the others to go after him, out of fear of what will happen if Rankol should get his hands on the blaster with the improvements Zarkov has made. And though Joe does get captured and the blaster taken, this is not followed up on within the episode; the characters just seem to forget about it.

Anyway, while they’re looking, they make the mistake of splitting up — something Zarkov actually warns against as a bad idea — so that Dale can be waylaid by a creepy old woman and possessed by the bottled spirit of her dead mistress, a sorceress named Helia. Helia/Dale reconnects with the others and sneaks into the city with them, but it soon becomes clear that she has no interest in helping Joe, and once she and Flash split off from Baylin and Zarkov, Flash discovers who she really is. Helia convinces Flash to help her get her body back from her sister, a rival sorceress, and protect her children. He helps her break into Ming’s archive and take one of the spirit jars used for the soul-swapping. But then she knocks Flash out and goes off to battle her sister (Stargate Universe‘s Elyse Levesque), who turns out to be a good sorceress keeping some evil bog monsters asleep with her constant harp playing. If the good one wins, Dale’s body will die.

Meanwhile, Zarkov drinks something he shouldn’t in the steephouse and ends up high, to Baylin’s annoyance. The producers like to pair these two off, since they have good comic chemistry and contrast. But the important thing that’s going on is that Joe has been arrested and brought to Ming, who has a new scientist on staff, Lenu (Sonya Salomaa) — a much more attractive and obedient scientific advisor than Rankol, and quite ambitious as well, enough to make Rankol worried about the competition. Anyway, Ming has Lenu hook Joe up to an experimental mind machine, and Baylin rescues him — but did she do so in time?

This is the first truly weak episode since “Ascension,” though it’s not quite as poor. On the plus side, it’s set entirely on Mongo aside from the first few minutes, there’s some arc advancement with Lenu’s introduction and the developments with Joe, and it’s nice watching Gina Holden play a seductive bad girl for a change, though the range limitations I mentioned before keep her from really making the most of the opportunity. Oh, and the climax is accompanied by Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel,” which is a beautiful song if a bit overused. But on the down side, the sorceress plot is an odd digression from the strong arc that’s been developing, and conceptually incongruous since it’s the first time we’ve seen any out-and-out magic on Mongo besides the celetroph prophecies (and Azura’s glowy eyes, but that seemed to be just for show), so it’s weird to see all the characters taking it so much in stride. Plus the security on Ming’s archive is ludicrously shoddy, the neglect of the rift-blaster plot point is annoying, and did we really need to see Zarkov “heroically” beat up a frail old woman in the climax?

Fortunately this is also the last truly weak episode, and things really ramp up from here.

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“Thicker Than Water”: This episode debuts an updated main title sequence befitting the more Mongo-centric focus; not only are the images mostly from recent or upcoming episodes, but very few of them are from scenes set on Earth.

It turns out the missing rift blaster hasn’t been forgotten after all; Flash, Zarkov, and Baylin head back to Mongo to retrieve it. But they stumble into a crisis: the Patriots are chasing a man trying to escape with a newborn baby that Ming has condemned to death for being 1% Deviate, despite showing no deformities. (Rankol is an exception to Ming’s genocidal policy toward Deviates because he’s “high-function” and useful.) Naturally, the guy gets shot and entrusts the baby to Flash with his dying breath. The steephouse bartender puts them in touch with people who can smuggle the baby to a Deviate sanctuary in the toxic Banelands. (I love the rich vocabulary of Mongo. Everything has its own distinctive name. Denzens, cantons, Banelands, steephouse, bondmate, Third Moon, the currency called dram, etc. It makes up for the contrivance that most of the language is idiomatic American English.) Once there, they meet the Deviates’ charismatic leader Terek (Craig Stanghetta), who orates about how one day they will be free and equal. Flash offers to arrange an audience with Aura so Terek can ply his case, but it ends up with Terek’s people abducting them both. Still, Aura and Terek bond, and ultimately discover (just in time to avoid a Luke-Leia moment) that Terek is Aura’s long-lost brother, whom Ming ordered killed at birth due to his mild Deviation.

Meanwhile, Baylin and Zarkov have been captured trying to retrieve the rift blaster — but Ming, who can’t openly be seen negotiating with terrorists for Aura’s return (she’s playing along as a hostage to help Terek), instead grants Baylin her freedom in exchange for bring Aura back sub rosa. It’s an interesting turnaround — we go from Ming seeming totally callous about Aura’s fate with Rankol to showing what seems like real concern for Aura when he turns to Baylin. No doubt Ming is a horrible man, but sometimes it’s unclear how much of his facade of caring is genuine. I think Ming does love Aura in his own twisted way – although maybe it’s just that he couldn’t tolerate letting anyone take her from his control.

The bad news is, Rankol realizes that Zarkov has modified the rift blaster using Imex-derived knowledge, so he makes a deal with his new rival Lenu to work together. Lenu has an asset on Earth: Joe, who’s got a mind-control chip in his brain. He helps her retrieve the Imex — uh-oh.

This is a strong episode, and it really ramps up the arc. The Deviate storyline that dominates the rest of the series seems to be a little bit out of the blue, and I suspect that Terek was created to take Barin’s intended place in the climactic episodes after Steve Bacic got a series-regular gig on another show. But they made Terek different enough from Barin that it adds new elements to the saga and makes for an effective arc. Stanghetta is reasonably good as Terek; as an orator, he’s reminiscent of Ralston’s Ming, which is appropriate. And Anna Van Hooft is still getting better. Aura has always been one of the most intriguing characters on the show, at least in potential, and now she’s living up to that potential.

—

“Ebb and Flow”: The Imex lets Rankol perfect the rift generator, allowing Ming to steal the entire contents of Lake Kendal, the city’s main reservoir. (This actually makes sense geographically: Maryland has no natural lakes, but does have numerous artificial ones serving as reservoirs or recreational areas.) This is why he’s been pursuing the rifts all along: to find a new source of water to replace the depleted Source well. Flash and company (now including Joe) determine they have to go to Mongo to destroy the generator once and for all. They need to buy explosives once they get there, and finally they figure out that bottled water can be a valuable trade commodity to bring with them. But Joe is still under Lenu’s control and he arranges to get Flash captured. Rankol wanted to get access to Flash because his interpretation of the Celetroph prophecies had led him to believe that Flash was a saviour from Ming’s cruelty. (True, Rankol works for Ming, but he’s secretly a Celetroph monk and his higher loyalty is to the prophecies, so if they say Ming is doomed to fall, Rankol will obey their will — or maybe he just wants to be on the winning side.) But the latest prophecy is that “the waterbearer is the ruler reborn,” which Rankol and Ming both interpret to mean that Ming’s rule is assured. There’s a nifty confrontation between a disillusioned Rankol and a bitter Flash, after which the ever-resourceful Flash manages to escape. But the gang can’t risk blowing up the rift generator, since it’s powered by the same toxic element that caused the Great Sorrow. Flash decides instead to undermine Ming by blowing open the reservoir and distributing the water freely to the cantons. But the mind-controlled Joe tries to stop him, and matters come to a powerful climax.

Meanwhile, Aura shows off how politically shrewd she’s becoming, talking Ming into appointing her as prefect to the Deviates, on the grounds that politically legitimizing them would give him influence over them that he’s lacked before due to the fact that they don’t need pure water. She arranges a meeting between Ming and Terek, which just brings out more of the depravity and lies beneath Ming’s well-cultivated facade of stern benevolence.

This is an awesome episode, almost as good as “The Sorrow,” and it’s a tour de force for Eric Johnson. He’s shown how good he is with comedy, but here he demonstrates how powerful he can be as a determined, driven dramatic lead. This is the moment where Flash Gordon steps up and commits himself once and for all to the role of freedom-fighter against Ming, and it’s wonderful. The rest of the cast gets to be pretty good too; one of my favorite moments is when Dale comes up with a very clever and counterintuitive way to get the drop on a guard in a gunfight. And yes, there is a lot of action and visual effects in this one, and both are handled a lot better than they were in the early part of the season. Everything works here, aside from Carrie Genzel’s still rather mediocre acting as Vestra. And aside from a Mongovian electronic key being rather obviously a taser. Plus there’s a funny production glitch when we see the corridor leading into Rankol’s rift-generator facility, which is clearly a redressed industrial plant of some sort… and I’m pretty sure it’s part of Zarkov’s lab, just lit and dressed differently! So both lab sets in alternate dimensions were shot in adjoining parts of the same location! That’s so fun to learn that I don’t even mind having the illusion undermined.

Next, the final four episodes.

Revisiting FLASH GORDON (2007): Episodes 11-14: Committing to Mongo (spoilers)

“Conspiracy Theory”: Unable to get the cooperation of Dr. Gordon (who we see is alive and well, though comatose and only contactable through virtual reality), Rankol sends Baylin’s former bounty-hunting colleague Genessa (Ona Grauer) to bring Zarkov to Mongo, where Rankol appeals to Hans’s ego and persuades him they need to work together to devise a way to halt the growing degradation of the dimensional barrier and prevent the destruction of their universes. Baylin follows to retrieve him, and for information she goes to a Nascent City tavern which will be a standing set from now on, plying the bartender with chocolate eggs from Earth. But will Zarkov be willing to go? And will he spill to Rankol that the Imex — an ancient artifact containing the secrets of the universe, so Rankol explains — still exists and is in his lab?

Meanwhile, Flash helps Dale try to kill the story when a local skateboarder gets phone video of Genessa’s arrival through a rift, and Dale’s more disreputable and fame-hungry counterpart from another TV station (Francoise Yip) plasters it all over the news. Dale’s boss Mitchell (the late Don S. Davis of Stargate SG-1, playing for laughs) pressures her to get the story, journalistic integrity be damned. The publicity brings the attention of Montgomery (Fringe‘s Michael Kopsa), the government agent who covered up Dr. Gordon’s disappearance, and who surveils and captures Flash and Dale to interrogate them about the rifts. Like Rankol, he’s also seeking the Imex, though he calls it the blueprint. But his use of truth serum backfires, since Flash and Dale end up sidetracked by their admissions of how they still feel for each other. It’s a totally unrealistic portrayal of how such drugs work, but nonetheless a fun exercise in romantic-comedy banter. Eric Johnson has really good comic delivery.

Although there’s still a strong slant toward humor and a strong Kendal-centric approach, this is an effective episode; the humor is genuinely entertaining and the story is advanced significantly. And I couldn’t help thinking that Rankol was right: Protecting the universes against destruction is a priority for everyone, and should trump all other factors. If Rankol has the equipment to do something about it, then maybe that’s where Zarkov should be. When the only technology that can potentially prevent universal disaster is in the hands of an amoral manipulator serving a ruthless conqueror, that’s a situation with no simple answers. At least, that’s what I thought at the time.

—

“Random Access”: The bad news: This is the inevitable money-saving clip show. The good news: As clip shows go, it’s pretty good, and makes a major contribution to the arc. The spontaneous rifts are multiplying out of control, endangering the universe unless Zarkov can find a solution. The nexus where the rifts are converging is a sleazy motel, and reports of strange incidents draw in Joe (evidently the only cop in town), who comes across Flash and Dale examining the scene and assumes the worst. The confrontation is cut short when a rift opens and sucks Flash and Joe to Mongo, where they’re captured by slaver Strake (John DeSantis) and forced to work on excavating an aqueduct to a new water source Ming has supposedly found — an excavation that quickly kills the slave laborers, requiring frequent replacements. (Although it’s made clear that this project is tied into Ming’s plans for the rift generator. We begin to see what Ming’s real interest in Earth is.) Flash fills Joe in on the whole story, which is where the flashbacks come in, but they’re kept brief and don’t intrude much. And it’s a logical context for recapping The Story So Far, so the dialogue that sets up the clips doesn’t feel forced. Anyway, when they meet a Dactyl prisoner, Darem (Woody Jeffreys), Joe learns how much Flash is respected by the denzens of Mongo — and more importantly, Flash opens Joe’s eyes to the fact that Dale is far more heroic and independent than he ever knew. Or at least, he tries to. I’m not sure it actually sinks in.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Dale and Baylin track down a Deviate who came through the rift. Baylin’s exposition of how some people are willing to drink the gray water and become Deviates because of their desperate, killing thirst is poignant and sad, and gives a better sense of the water shortages on Mongo than anything else to date has done. Things take an unexpected turn when the Deviate turns out to be a pregnant female — and you can probably guess where that leads. But Dale proves herself up to the challenge. Meanwhile, Zarkov manages to cobble together a way to stabilize the dimensional barrier and save the universe, at least temporarily, and he does it without needing to ally with Rankol. It’s disappointing that the moral dilemma of the previous episode is cast aside so effortlessly.

Stilll, this is such an important piece of the arc that it makes up for the clip-show format. You could even say that at this point in the series’ original run, it was worthwhile to refresh the viewers’ memory of what had happened in early episodes — at least, for the seventeen of us who were still watching by this point. The recaps aren’t so necessary for the DVD viewer, but the original content is very worthwhile and important, making some permanent changes in the status quo, and setting up key elements of future episodes. (Also, the decision to do a clip show may have been what freed up the money the show needed to improve the action and effects in the remainder of the season.)

—

“Secrets and Lies”: When Zarkov devises a way to track natural dimensional weak spots and open rifts from the Earth side (an outgrowth of his rift-repair work), he and Flash inadvertently get stuck on Mongo and caught in the middle of a burgeoning war between the Dactyl and the Zurn, a tribal Blue Man Group ruled by another character from the comics, Queen Azura (Jody Thompson). Here, she’s a glowy-eyed high priestess of the god Rao (so… the Zurn are Kryptonians?), and has a thing for stilted intonation, fingernail-knives, and warmongering — though she claims the Dactyl stole their water supplies, provoking the war. When Flash goes to Vultan, the Dactyl leader denies the charge. Flash decides to stay on Mongo to find the truth and head off the war. Pursuing a lead, he heads to the tavern introduced in “Conspiracy Theory” — here identified as a “steephouse,” where denzens indulge in various forms of tea, some of which are addictive. Meanwhile, Ming has commanded a peace summit between the tribes — but he’s pretty clearly set it up to fail, an intention that Flash manages to subvert by finding a witness who testifies that he sold fake Dactyl costumes to raiders. But that doesn’t stop Azura from starting the war anyway, and Flash must find another clever solution to save the day — as well as Zarkov, who’s fallen into Zurn hands and been slated for the sacrificial altar.

Meanwhile, Flash’s rarely-seen friend Nick finally gets left alone with Baylin and they end up flirting and making a date. Dale is uneasy to learn that Baylin intends “seleneration,” i.e. casual sex (odd that Mongo’s language differs from English only where sexual vocabulary is concerned) and cautions against it, though I have to wonder what business it is of hers. Well, she probably doesn’t want Nick to get hurt, but she comes off as a bit prudish. Anyway, it won’t go anywhere, since this is Nick’s last appearance in the series. The more important Earthside plot is Joe going to his captain (Canadian-TV stalwart Garry Chalk) to spill the whole story about Mongo, which of course the captain disbelieves — and Dale is put in an impossible spot when Joe insists that she corroborate his story, something she can’t do. So much for them getting back together. Joe really is a jerk, and kind of an idiot to think that anyone would take his uncorroborated claims seriously.

This is a strong episode overall. I love it when Flash gets heroic in the classic vein. He isn’t pursuing some personal mission here, isn’t trying to find his father or rescue a captured friend (at first) or protect his home planet. He intervenes to stop two groups of strangers (or passing acquaintances, in the Dactyl’s case) from getting killed, unhesitatingly risking his life to do a good thing even though he has no stake in the matter at all. I mean, sure, complex characterizations and all that are fine, but it’s refreshing to see someone doing the right thing simply because it’s the right thing to do. Say what you like about the setting or the budget or the casting — the writers of this show understood what Flash Gordon is all about. It’s about an ordinary (if highly athletic) man who takes on evil and fights for justice using only his bravery, wits, determination, and decency (and the occasional ray gun).

Meanwhile, Ming’s character is coming more sharply into focus as well. When faced with the threat of a Source water shortage, he almost loses it. No more Source water means no more power base for Ming, and power is all he craves. And he goes to extreme, murderous lengths to try to conceal the shortage. Ming gains a new confidant here, Drav (Dalias Blake), a security chief who looks a bit like a clean-shaven Nick Fury (though the patch is on the other eye), and we get to see how crazed Ming can be — perhaps even more so than when he’s with Rankol, since Rankol is less expendable and needs to be handled with more care. There’s a moment here with Drav where Ming is really chilling. Any opinions I had at the start about John Ralston being bland had completely evaporated by this point in the series.

But as good as the show has gotten by this point, about 60% of the way through, we hadn’t seen anything yet.

—

“The Sorrow”: You know, I have to say it up front: This is the best episode of the series. Much like the series as a whole, it starts out slow, but the last 2/3 of it are incredibly effective and powerful, and I’m so overwhelmed after watching it again that it’s hard to focus my thoughts as I write this.

While Zarkov, who mentioned a need for funding in a previous episode, is getting ready for a grant interview — hiding all evidence of Mongo and his dimensional research — Baylin starts acting strange, saying she’s been summoned home to Mongo by the spirits of the dead. She explains that it’s Honor Day, when the denzens commemorate the disaster called the Great Sorrow and the many who lost their lives in the event. Flash and Dale decide to go with her and help her pay tribute, which is a lovely gesture. Along the way, she explains that her once-lush planet was devastated by a disaster caused by the mining of a toxic element from the moon for power generation. The second and third moons in the sky are actually space stations built to house the miners, but are long since abandoned.

But the Verden shrine has been desecrated by raiders, who capture our heroes and injure Baylin (an arrow to the arm). They force Flash and Dale to ransack the crypt of the ancestors for them, but Baylin is still determined to carry out her tradition.

At the same time, we see Ming and Aura preparing for the event, and Aura’s eye is caught by a rakish player — actually billed as “Rake” (Battlestar Galactica‘s Dominic Zamprogna) — who flirts with her shamelessly, to Ming’s disapproval. In Ming’s court, everyone dresses in their best pre-Sorrow finery for the ceremony, and the costume designs are absolutely gorgeous, as lush and imaginative as Alex Raymond’s artwork, with Ming’s high-collared ceremonial robes suggesting the comics character’s traditional look. The visual effects of the city square and the huge crowd of denzens Ming addresses are well-done, though brief. All in all, it’s a triumph of production design, although unfortunately the DVD print is rather dim and it’s hard to appreciate the beauty of it.

The Honor Day ceremony is a recitation of the history of the Sorrow — how the release of the toxins devastated the planet, how some escaped to one of the moon-stations while the rest of the population died, and how the survivors eventually repopulated Mongo and had to deal with the gray water and its effects. It’s basically exposition, but it’s handled magnificently, giving us the most intense, dramatic sequence this show has ever done, and a tour de force of editing and direction. Two different tellings of the Sorrow are juxtaposed: Baylin, the true believer, driven to pay honor to the dead even at risk to her own life (and Karen Cliche gives her most poignant performance yet); and Ming, paying lip service to the words even as he betrays their principles, using the ceremony to distract the Verden and launch a brutal raid against them, a further juxtaposition that adds even more power to the montage.

Meanwhile, what started out looking like a frivolous romantic subplot for Aura takes a shocking turn when Aura sneaks down to the steephouse to watch the Rake give a puppet show mocking Ming — only for Ming himself to show up. I don’t want to give it all away, but lately, we’re getting to see Ming’s true evil and insanity, and it’s appropriate that here is where we finally hear the epithet “Ming the Merciless” used at last — and proudly embraced by the man himself. Ralston is at his terrifying best here. Moreover, Anna Van Hooft gives her most satisfying performance to date. I realized at this point that her main limitation was her voice; she’s actually very expressive with her face, and did some terrific nonverbal acting here.

The episode ends with a ceremony that can be interpreted as symbolizing Flash and Dale’s acceptance that they are now connected to Mongo’s fate and future, and a decision to stay there to help Baylin find the fate of the Verden (the first time the leads have chosen to stay on Mongo at the end of an episode). It also symbolizes the show taking the same step: From now on, this is a show about Mongo rather than a show about Earth.

Revisiting FLASH GORDON (2007): Episodes 8-10: The Barin trilogy (spoilers)

“Alliances”: Picking up right where “Life Source” left off, Flash travels with Baylin through the lingering rift to follow up on Vultan’s lead (“Ascension”) that Dr. Gordon went to live with the Verden. (Why didn’t he do this before? Presumably because he had other priorities by the time he gained access to the first rift created in “Life Source.”) Baylin, an exile from the Verden, is uneasy about returning. Zarkov impulsively follows them through, eager to see Mongo at last. There, they meet one of the most important charcters from the mythos, Barin (Andromeda‘s Steve Bacic), a hereditary leader of the Verden. (In the comics, he’s Prince Barin of Arboria; here, he’s the son of the former leader of the Verden, whom Ming had executed years before.) Barin and Baylin know each other, allowing her to vouch for the Earthmen. But Flash’s inquiries about his father are met with furtive looks and evasions by all the Verden he talks to.

Barin has his own problems; the Verden are suffering from “the Sickness” that results from inadequate pure water supplies, but Ming will only extend their water rations if they agree to fly his new flag, which he insists is a symbol of global unity but which Barin sees (correctly) as a symbol of Ming’s domination. Still, the only alternative is the Lottery, a Verden tradition in which families are cast out when resources run short. It turns out that Baylin’s family was thus cast out, so she’s not happy about the tradition. Nor is Barin, after seeing her again and being reminded of the cost. But the Verden aren’t painted as evil for employing this tradition; Neya (Kerry Sandomirsky), the Verden leader who calls for the Lottery, participates in it herself, and accepts the verdict bravely when she draws the black stone condemning her to exile. With her fate seemingly sealed, she confesses to Flash that she did know his father rather well, and that he lived among them and helped them for some time.

Flash discovers that the Verden have a hidden water-purification machine which his father built, but which is now broken. Barin resents Dr. Gordon for making his people dependent on the machine, enabling their population to grow to a size that can’t survive without the extra clean water it no longer produces. (We’ll see in “The Sorrow” that Mongo’s denzens have good reason to distrust the idea of living beyond what the land can provide.) But Flash offers to repair it and gets Zarkov in on the work, along with the Verden “tender” Quin (Michael Eklund), the one responsible for maintaining their technology. Some worldbuilding hints here as we learn that the Verden (and the denzens in general, I suppose) once had higher technology but now struggle to repair the remains of what their forebears left. Evidently Ming hoards the advanced technology and the scientists in Nascent City and leaves the rest of the denzens to make do with what they can salvage and maintain from the past. But the Verden don’t trust the water machine to work, so the Lottery goes ahead, and Barin swallows his pride and resentment and goes to grovel to Ming. Turns out that Ming has decided to respond to Aura’s desire for greater involvement in politics in a particularly imperious and manipulative way: he gives her to Barin in marriage to forge an alliance with the Verden, without giving Aura a say in the matter.

(At this point in the series’ initial run, it was starting to occur to me that Flash and the gang should just be bringing some of those big water-cooler bottles through with them every time they go to Mongo. Or maybe some water purifiers from a camping store. It wouldn’t be enough to put a serious dent in Ming’s stranglehold, but it’d be great for winning the goodwill of the various cantons.)

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Dale is having problems with her fiance Joe, who’s unhappy with her secrecy. (Although I think he’s being a jerk.  As a cop, surely he has to keep secrets, such as the names of his confidential informants. So by all rights, he should understand perfectly why there are sometimes good reasons to keep secrets from a loved one.) She goes to Flash’s house to commiserate, finding him gone, but she and Flash’s mother Norah have a nice bonding scene that fleshes out the latter character considerably (including the revelation that Flash gave up college to help her when she was diagnosed with kidney cancer). The scene doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, since they’re talking about Joe and Flash nearly the whole time, but it’s still a nice character-building scene and a change of pace in the character pairings.

All in all, this is the first really, really good episode of the show, and the point where this series finally finds its true voice and identity. The characters are at their best (except for jerky Joe, but that’s kind of who he’s supposed to be), the dialogue is crisp and sharp and witty, and the worldbuilding on Mongo has never been richer. And it’s just the beginning. Indeed, it’s part 1 of a 3-part arc, so let’s move on:

—

“Revelations”: We get our first look at Mongo’s religion as Ming receives “testimony” from the order of the Celetroph: monks who paint their faces with skull motifs and use the (fatal) sting of scorpion-like insects called celetrophs (actually just real scorpions) to give them prophetic visions that are always true, but cryptically expressed. The prophecy tells of a great warrior who will unite the cantons and bring Ming’s reign to an end, which rattles the tyrant. (Hmm, I wonder who it could be…?) Meanwhile, Flash, Baylin, and Zarkov sneak into Nascent City to try to get to the rift generator so they can get home, and they’re startled to learn of Barin’s betrothal to Aura. They tell Barin the water machine is repaired, but he intends to go through with the marriage, not willing to trust the machine again and feeling he can help his people best at Ming’s right hand, tempering his judgment. Their debate is interrupted when Zarkov is arrested for tampering (out of scientific curiosity) with a holoprojection of Ming. He’s thrown in a cell opposite a prisoner named Krebb — who’s played by Sam J. Jones, star of the 1980 Dino De Laurentiis Flash Gordon movie, and is no doubt named in honor of Buster Crabbe. Krebb tells Zarkov that he knew Dr. Gordon, and the latter was imprisoned in Zarkov’s current cell until recently — proven by some equations Gordon carved into the wall. When Flash and Baylin rescue Zarkov (after Barin helps them set off an explosion as a diversion, further unsettling Ming, who suspects insurrectionists), the latter tells them of Krebb, and Flash goes back to talk to him, getting arrested himself. Baylin and Zarkov reactivate the rift generator and are forced to go back to Earth without Flash when the Patriots attack. Rankol throws Flash in Krebb’s cell, and Krebb reveals that Gordon built the rift generator for Ming — under duress, but with the goal of using it to return home and blowing it up behind him. But he says Dr. Gordon was executed less than a year before, devastating Flash. Flash is taken away by Patriots who turn out to be Celetroph monks; they knock him out with some mystical mojo, and he wakes up back on Earth. But Rankol had his own agreement with Krebb, and we get the sense that maybe he’s not as loyal to Ming as he’s seemed.

Back home, there’s more bonding between Dale and Norah Gordon, and Jill Teed really shines here. The past two episodes have been fantastic at developing Norah into a fully rounded character, and here we get some great insight into why she’s been so resistant to the idea of her son investigating her husband’s presumed death. Unfortunately, I couldn’t help being distracted by Dale’s new hairstyle — the bangs are less flattering than her previous cut, plus, given the timeframe, it seems she must’ve gone to get a haircut right after her last talk with Norah. (And Norah doesn’t even acknowledge the new do, which seems impolite.) Maybe it was a therapeutic thing, to distract her from worrying about Flash and Joe? Anyway, the bangs are brushed to the side in later episodes, so this is a one-time thing.

Meanwhile, Aura is furious at being given away to Barin, and when she argues with Ming, we get a good look at how imperious and ruthless he is and how little respect he has for his daughter. Ralston and Van Hooft have good chemistry, and Ralston was really growing on me as a performer by this point, showing a lot of nuance, especially in his scenes with Aura. Later, Aura is determined to be hostile and uncooperative toward Barin, and Van Hooft and Steve Bacic have really good chemistry, bringing out some enjoyable acting in two performers that I’d previously found rather bland and vocally monotonous. It’s the first time I’ve heard Van Hooft’s voice vary in pitch by more than a few notes, and the first time that she’s genuinely fun to watch rather than just really, really beautiful to look at.

All in all, this is a strong continuation to the Barin arc, with a lot of big things happening and the cast continuing to improve. And there’s one more episode to go:

—

“‘Til Death”: The first half goes more for humor again. Aura, whose despise-hate relationship with Barin is still going strong, goes to Vestra of the Omadrians (previously seen in “Infestation”) for a poison to kill Barin. Vestra advises that this would be politically unwise and suggests instead using a love potion (a bit redundant when you look like Aura) to seduce another man into her bed so Barin will break the engagement out of pride. Naturally, she picks Flash as her boy toy, going to Earth to hook him and bringing him back to Mongo over a stunned Dale’s futile objections. Dale and Baylin go to Mongo to try to bring him back, and failing that, to get an antidote from Vestra — who’s resistant until she learns that Flash is the man in trouble.

Flash turns out to be so wholesome that Aura is unable to get him into a suitably compromising position despite his being head over heels for her, but Barin still discovers them technically in bed together, and things get more complicated when Ming shows up. Ming insists the only way to restore Barin’s honor is with a duel to the death. He doesn’t really care about Barin’s or Aura’s honor, but the marriage serves his political agenda and thus it must be salvaged, and Ming assumes that Barin will make short work of the interloping Earthman. At this point, things get a lot more serious. During the duel, Dale manages to get the antidote to Flash with a kiss, and once he recovers, Flash is unwilling to keep fighting. At first, Barin feels honor must be served, but he recognizes that Flash was a dupe rather than his enemy, and he decides instead to use his weapon against Ming, appearing to assassinate the monarch. But Aura swapped the poison on the duelists’ weapons with sleeping potion, so Ming will awaken. She grants Barin and Flash time to escape before Ming recovers. Aura expects Ming’s gratitude for saving his life, but instead he expresses only scorn that his daughter was too weak to seize power for herself whe she had the chance.

Barin’s ultimate decision comes a little abruptly, and it’s acted out somewhat implausibly, in that Ming leaves himself more open to attack than one would expect of a monarch with many enemies, especially when he’s so recently been afraid of insurrection and overthrow. But the payoff is effective in a way that helps improve the relationship between Flash and Aura (the real relationship, not the drug-induced one), while also underlining the asymmetrical relationship between Aura, who cares for her father, and Ming, who gives her no reason to with his constant contempt for her.

Finally the scattered bits of worldbuilding we’ve seen in previous episodes are starting to come together in what feels like a larger world, and feels more like Flash Gordon. We see the great diversity of Mongo represented here, with Verden, Dactyl, Omadrians, and other denzens all appearing in one episode, and we see the emergence of the familiar relationships and roles: Aura’s romantic interest for Flash and burgeoning rebellion against Ming, Barin as occasional rival for Flash and/or ally against Ming, etc. And Anna Van Hooft is still managing to improve her acting.

Coming next, the series’ focus shifts back to Earth for a bit, but Mongo continues to loom larger, and the storyline undergoes some major advances.