Giving Up on Alcatraz

Mrs. Speculator and I try to follow one simple rule when evaluating new TV shows—we give the show four episodes to sell us and then discuss whether it has interested us enough to keep it. When it comes to genre shows, we regularly have consensus, and this latest offering from Fox and J. J. Abrams is no exception.

The premise sounds like what I often hear salesmen refer to as "elevator pitches": a short pity description meant to capture the viewers' imagination. For Alcatraz, the premise is that all the inmates and workers at Alcatraz federal prison disappeared and are now showing up again, unaged, in the present. The best elevator pitches lead to some exploration on the part of the audience, whereupon they find out the breadth and depth of the thing they have been told about. Unfortunately, Alcatraz seems to be missing breadth and depth, giving Mrs. Speculator and I unpleasant flashbacks to Lost, serious enough that we can't keep going.

The first episode of Alcatraz indicates that the travellers, as I'll call them, return to the place where they were when they disappeared; in that episode a traveller wakes up in a cell in the solitary area, but the door is now open and he escapes out to a return ferry and then on to San Francisco proper, where he takes up the crime spree that got him incarcerated in the first place. Looking back on it now, I should have realized that this was an indication of how weak the writing is for the show—imagine if you knew that unexpected people were showing up on Alcatraz and then dispersing out into the city, how would you go about managing them? How about making sure only people with return tickets on the ferry are allowed to leave the island without interrogation? Instead, the series depends on secret governmental forces not being as smart as that and allowing the returnees to roam freely. Worse, we find out later that the prison workers have been returning too and are helping the secret governmental forces round up the "bad" travellers…but apparently no one thought to ask them about their return trips.

This kind of eye-rolling writing isn't limited to the broad strokes of the show but also down to the details. Jorge Garcia, Lost's Hurley, plays Dr. Diego Soto, a comic store owner who holds degrees in history and some other unnamed field. His specialty is Alcatraz, and he has perfect recall of the smallest details of all the prisoners and some of the workers who were at Alcatraz, down to prisoner ID numbers. So he acts as the source for important information for Sarah Jones's Detective Rebecca Madsen as first determines that a traveller has returned and then begins to chase them down. So, when Soto hears on the police band radio that a child has been kidnapped in a fashion similar to that of one of the travellers, he immediately picks up his cell phone and calls Detective Madsen to pursue the kidnapper. Except he doesn't; instead he does whatever it takes to get to Alcatraz Island from his comic book store, which I imagine involves some driving and then some ferrying, including perhaps waiting for the ferry, to look for her and find her in the secret governmental forces' secret hideout in the basement of Alcatraz and THEN tell her that a serial child kidnapper/killer is on the loose. This lack of decisive action is exacerbated by the later revelation that Dr. Soto himself was kidnapped as a child and feels tremendous empathy for the child they seek…but apparently not enough to call or text anyone.

I think I may have mentioned before that the laziest writing tool I know, and the one I most despise, is having otherwise smart/brilliant characters do really stupid things.

Soto and Madsen work for the crotchety Emerson Hauser (played by Sam Neill), the leader of the secret governmental forces. After meeting him, we discover that he's a no-frills sort of secret government guy—if it doesn't have to do with the job of getting the returnees back in prison (or killing them as it turns out), it has no place in his life. Pretty much all of his time on the show is spent either threatening to dump Madsen and Soto from his secret team—although as best the show makes out, they are the only people working for him outside the secret governmental forces' lair somewhere deep in a forest (Seriously)—and harassing Soto for his perceived flaws, such as never learning to drive. In fact, the show really only gives Madsen a single reason for continue to accept Hauser's abuse, and it's a flimsy one at that: it turns out that Madsen's grandfather is also a traveller and is responsible for the death of Madsen's partner (procedural cliché #1). Soto goes along with the abuse because he can, although each week we get to see him act particularly squeamish at crime scenes. These little character nuggets are what pass for character development on the show, little gotcha moments where some stupendous surprise is revealed to heighten the audience's waning interest. For example, it's revealed that Hauser actually worked on Alcatraz as a guard but was not present when the travellers were taken. We find out in the first episode that one of his assistants actually was a psychologist who was taken from Alcatraz when the disappearances started. But nuance in the characters and chemistry between them? They don't exist—they're all just collections of clichés in service of a show that strives to be weird.

It's no help that the show seems set on a formula each week that is monotonous despite how the writers attempt to fill the pattern with more and more strange stuff. Each show consists of the team chasing the traveller in the modern day juxtaposed with scenes of the traveller's life in Alcatraz before he was taken, filmed in black and white. About halfway through each episode, a character nugget is revealed as the team investigates, and then the traveller is captured and taken away to the forest lair…which happens to be an exact duplicate of Alcatraz, except all in white. The dual storyline in each episode unfortunately reflects the same stunt used in Lost which over time went from any interesting story-telling technique to a crutch to an impediment to moving the overarching plot forward. And that comparison is waving huge red flags for Mrs. Speculator and me. As does each episode of Alcatraz ending with a special reveal, reminiscent of the splash page at the back of the stereotypical comic book, something to make the audience gasp and force them to wait impatiently for the next episode. In Lost, such reveals included uncovering the Hatch and finding a map to the island. On Alcatraz, the reveals have thus far included the existence of the secret governmental forces' forest lair and the collection of keys that is growing larger but the purpose of which no one knows.

The lack of character development, the repetitive formula that includes flashbacks, and the surprise ending each week is too reminiscent of Lost, and Mrs. Speculator and I feel like we were burned enough by that show that we don't want to start down that path again. Despite repeated promises that Lost had a definite end in mind and interviews with writers debunking certain theories, the end of Lost a dramatic letdown, leaving way too many questions unanswered. The press for Alcatraz has not been so loud—we have no idea if the writers have a plan in mind—but even if they claimed they did, I'm not sure we would believe it. One reviewer describes all the reveals and movement of the show as "mystery for the sake of being mysterious" and I find that a wonderfully apt description. Perhaps the point of shows like Lost and Alcatraz is just to go along for the ride and not worry about such mundane things as plot and character…just get immersed in the story. But we can't. Watching such shows has to pay off somehow—good story-telling usually. But Alcatraz seems bereft of any depth at all and we've got more important things to do with our TV time. I'll pay attention to show synopses in the next few weeks, and if they seem about to do something interesting, we'll maybe give it another shot. But I don't see it happening.

More on Prophets of Science Fiction

Earlier, I posted my short review of the wonderful series, Prophets of Science Fiction, broadcasting on Science Chanel (http://perrynomasia.blogspot.com/2011/11/viewing-alert-prophets-of-science.html). Slate has also posted a strong review (http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2011/12/ridley_scott_s_prophets_of_science_fiction_reviewed_.html). Unfortunately, the reviewer makes a quibble on the definition of "prophet" in the last two paragraphs that is exceedingly fine. If that really is the only complaint the reviewer has to make about the show, I'm not sure it really deserves mentioning. Or maybe it should be expanded so the point can be made more clear.

At any rate, a good review for a very good series. You should be watching it if you aren't already.

Viewing Alert: Prophets of Science Fiction

I probably should have brought this to readers' attention before now, but the third episode of this series on the Science Channel convinced me that it is well worth watching.

The premise behind Prophets of Science Fiction is simple: an examination of the great writers of science fiction and their best stories, of what motivated them, and how what they wrote predicted and affected future technology. While fans of science fiction may well be aware of the importance of the writers and their works, it is still fascinating to see not only other writers talk about how influential these writers are but also the leading scientists in the world talking about their research and how those writers influenced them and the path that scientific development took.

The first episode centered on Mary Shelley and of course, Frankenstein. Mixing reenactments of Shelley's life with scenes from performances of Frankenstein, the episode talked not only about why Shelley wrote what she did—including the loss of her infant daughter and her unending feeling of being haunted—it also spent time talking about the ethical dilemmas surrounding advanced biotechnical research. The second episode was about Philip K. Dick and was brutally honest about his drug use and psychoses. But it also spent at least half its time on the advances in cybernetics and memory that Dick predicted, discussed by leading scientists in the field.

And while those episodes were pretty good, the one that clenched my proselytizing the series is the most recent episode, on H. G. Wells. While a lot of series on a similar theme would be content to talk about the predictive nature of Wells's fiction, the episode also spent time talking about the social issues that lay at the heart of his best novels. And pretty much none of his most important work was spared examination: War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The World Set Free, and even his movie, Things to Come.

There remain five episodes in the remainder of the season, episodes dealing with Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Jules Verne, Robert Heinlein, and George Lucas. I have to admit to being dumbfounded at the inclusion of Lucas among the luminaries of science fiction writers; no doubt Lucas's work is important to the history of science fiction, but he really isn't a groundbreaking writer—I am not aware of much of his work that is predictive or original. Nonetheless, Prophets of Science Fiction is well worth finding on the Science Channel. New episodes air on Wednesdays and there are repeats of earlier episodes scattered throughout their weekly schedule.

Lost: An Epitaph, or The Tyranny of “Why?”

(there's going to be spoilers in here; proceed at your own risk)

Not too long ago, I wrote a little about a novel by Hideki Murakami entitled The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (http://perrynomasia.blogspot.com/2009/10/wind-up-bird-chronicle.html). As a wannabe writer, I found that the more I thought about the novel, the more I appreciated the writerliness of it—the flexing of a writer's imagination and art. But it felt like it broke many of the tenets of what is an unspoken contract between writer and reader:

It's frustrating for the reader, because we have been trained to try to make connections between the events in a story, to unify them in some way that pushes the plot along. But not only does Okada [the narrator] resist any such impulse, so does the novel, actively forgoing any but the most ephemeral of relationships between events. And as a writing device, it's wildly successful: while I wanted to throw the book aside in frustration as more and more inexplicable things happened, I was determined to make it to the end of the novel to find out why they were happening.

Mrs. Speculator and I have watched every episode of Lost, culminating in the series finale last night. And then as we lay in bed, disquieted and discomforted, trying to figure out not only what we had just witnessed but what had happened over the last six seasons, I felt more and more like I had read another Murakami novel. The end of the story had been achieved; happy endings had been given to every character that we were allowed to care about and almost all of the agonizingly tragic moments of the past six years were reversed. Couples who belonged together and were torn apart were brought back together in, of all places, a sort of purgatory/limbo they all went to after they died, just before the door to heaven was opened and they all went on to whatever's next. And with the swell of tear-inducing music, the audience is supposed to walk away from the conclusion feeling good, because the suffering was all over and characters that we had grown to know all went away happier than they had been at the start of the series, even if that happiness was centered on dying and going to heaven together, to be with the people that mattered to them the most.

But it may not be enough. Six years of the cruel vicissitudes of one of the most labyrinthine plots ever on TV demanded something more than "they live happily ever after." What forces were fighting on the island? Who represented which sides of the battle? What was the power behind the island? We wanted answers to the big questions that Lost teased us with for nearly six years. And we wanted answers to smaller questions as well—why push a damn button every 108 minutes? Why did the Dharma Initiative keep making food drops? (I realize as I look back at these questions that the real geek state has been achieved; someone reading this without ever having seen an episode would shake their head in concern and amazement that such esoteric things could consume an imagination.) And like the other 119 episodes, the final episode provided no answers. Instead with a paradoxical ham-handed gentleness, we (and the characters) are told to move along. The story is done; that's all you get.

And while the characters are fulfilled by the nearness of the ones they love, most of the audience is not fulfilled at all. We've been trained to follow plot threads to a satisfying conclusion: things make sense at the end (unless we are being set up for a sequel, but even cliffhangers have rules). The audience always gets to find out why. Yet the writers of Lost refuse to give us resolution, some might say arrogantly so: the audience has given so much time to the mysteries of the island—how dare the writers hold off our reward?

I abhor the phrase "the journey is more important than the destination" especially as it applies to story-telling. Writers often say this as a final response to irate readers who are left unsatisfied by a story's ending. Usually, I find that such an excuse covers up what I feel to be shoddy writing, condescending and smarmy and sometimes not at all true. And yet I find myself circling back to this sentence over and over again as I think about Lost. It's clear to me that on one level, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof are not bad writers at all, so talking about the journey as a "get out of jail free" card against the angry masses is not really valid. Face it: millions of people watched Lost because they were made to care about the characters that inhabited the story. Viewers usually liked the interesting narrative tricks Cuse and Lindelof employed. Poor writers could not have made this happen.

At the same time, Cuse and Lindelof broke an important rule: they spoke outside their story to tell us that answers would be coming. They went to conventions and did interviews over the past few years, teasing and hinting, sometimes contradicting themselves, but always promising there would be explanations to come. Unfortunately, I don't see that as a failure in writing (except that these writers made the mistake of getting into PR), but as failures in marketing. But even that perspective is skewed by my role as a consumer of the story—this will be resoundingly cynical, but their marketing worked: audiences watched for six seasons. Advertisements were watched, products were sold. And at the end, the show had a fair-sized market that made money for six years. And now that the show is over, and they are no longer dependent on that audience, why should they care what we think of the show (except, I guess, for DVD sales; but people are stubborn and they'll buy DVDs to "figure it all out")?

Cynicism aside, I'm still left with what does it all mean? Why did the events we saw happen? I find that I can't get out of my straitjacket of desire for an explanation so easily, and the writer part of me wants to find the framework and make it all make sense. And a very visceral part of me is a bit disappointed: I deserve an explanation! For weeks, I've been planning this blog entry, where I would triumphantly point to the final episode as justification that my belief that Lost was not so much about good and evil as fate vs. free will. And as the episode concluded, I realize that really what it was "about" isn't so important. The allegory, the symbolism, the hidden meanings we want to call out just don't exist; they were teases or perhaps excited optimistic over-readings of what the show did actually supply: plot devices that grew the characters. Cynically, Lost could be seen as masturbatory writing, writing just to write, not really trying to connect pieces but playing a sort of roulette with a big "wheel o' plot devices."

But if there's a message to be had, and I really want there to be one, I think part of the point is that every character fought for what they believed in. What exactly did they believe in? Sometimes I don't think even they knew. I'm pretty certain Jack has no idea what the power behind the island is, even as he saves it and dies as a result. Is the island a cage for the world's evil, embodied by the smoke monster and Man in Black? Probably not, and the point is that it doesn't matter. The writers just set a stage and put interesting people on it. They pushed those characters around, much like game pieces, and wrote episodes about the results. It wasn't about why they did what they did, but what they did that made the show compelling. The writers spent time giving the characters interesting back stories as well, since they make good story-telling tools as well. And then the writers just set the characters in motion, pretty much without a goal. The result was just watching well-constructed characters interact. It's not about good and evil; it's about people and, from a critical point of view, story-telling.

It's just not what modern viewers are used to. It's not fulfilling and not satisfying. I freely admit to some resentment at being misled, at not being given answers. But, at the end, we're still left with characters we'll treasure, and stories that we'll remember. And while that's not something that our generation of entitled readers wants, it's still something valuable.

(hours after publishing this and looking around at some reviews, I foudn this blog, which says what I was attempting to say more clearly, and without thinking about the writers' issues: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/arts/television/25lost.html)

“20 Minutes into the Future”

In 1987, ABC announced that it would show a drama series based on Max Headroom, the suddenly ubiquitous spokesicon for Coca-Cola products. Max was everywhere, and a certified phenomenon; crude CGI allowed programmers to animate Matt Frewer as he shilled for Coke ("c-c-c-catch the wave") uttering cynical observations on the world he could not take part in. Max also had an interview show based in England, shown on a cable outlet in the US (Cinemax maybe?), where hot trendy guests would sit on a couch beside a TV set with Max on it, and do interviews as though Max were a hipster Johnny Carson. T-shirts were everywhere, and kids went around saying their favorite Max catchphrases. It was a perfect union of technology and popular culture timed to take advantage of the trending youth culture and New Wave. Computers (such as they were in 1987) were hot, and the ads and interview show took advantage of the interest. Max was about as hot as you could get in September of 1987. And, of course, a lot of people burned out on Max because he was everywhere. ABC, with planning typical of major television networks, tried to catch the wave too, just as it began to subside.

ABC's plan was actually pretty bold: their Max Headroom would not be an interview program, but a speculative fiction drama, dealing with emerging trends of pop culture and how they would play out in the near future. Specifically of interest was how television could be used to control its viewers, often in secretive ways that were undetectable without certain skills or knowledge. The result was perhaps the best representation of cyberpunk on TV or in a movie, condemning the very medium by which it was being made available and an incredibly cynical extrapolation that, twenty years on, feels very very accurate. The first episode centered on "blipverts," advertisements that compressed 30 seconds of information into a single second. Networks and sponsors were ecstatic: there was something nearly subliminal about blipverts, such that whatever product they hawked increased in sales. And viewers, often represented as sitting in darkened rooms in front of a TV set, a pale imitation of Plato's cave, also liked them because they got "less commercials." However, investigative reporter Edison Carter (Matt Frewer) discovers that some audience members' heads are actually exploded by the extreme amount of input from blipverts, but sponsors and networks try to cover up the deaths since they will affect bottom lines.

The writing for Max Headroom was crisp and incisive. The production values were among the highest available for 1987. And the show, especially for fans of speculative fiction and cyberpunk, was spectacular. William Gibson's Neuromancer has taken over the world in 1984 and the follow-up Count Zero ad collection, Burning Chrome, had come out in 1986. Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix had come out in 1986 also. Fans knew something new and massive had just happened to the fairly insular world of speculative fiction in the late 80s, and cultural observers and commentators also recognized that cyberpunk was going to challenge a lot of the preconceived ideas about what speculative fiction could and could not do. Max Headroom didn't dumb itself down; instead it took advantage of the tropes that helped to make cyberpunk, and ABC appeared to present them, pretty much unfiltered to a generally unsuspecting audience.

Society has been divided pretty much into two classes for the purposes of storytelling: an upper class made up of executives doing everything they can to turn a buck, especially on the backs of middle class sheep, who remain generally unseen. Lower class characters are generally extremely smart and somehow aware of the machinations of the upper class, and they lurk in the walls as it were, gathering information and just trying to stay out of the way of the upper class. Into this structure are thrown the cyberpunk protagonists, who are able to move back and forth in class structure and who have skills (usually computer/hacking skills) that allow them to come to the aid of society by using their lower class intel to thwart the schemes of the upper class. Cyberpunk is also cynical and bleak; the protagonists are fighting a holding action against forces that are ultimately too powerful for them to overcome; there is a lot of merit to the idea that cyberpunk was a speculative fiction reaction to the policies behind Reaganomics.

I was amazed anything like Max Headroom made it to television. It was smart and insightful, and its humor was cutting. It represented the best of speculative fiction, especially since it acted as a social commentator, something the very best speculative fiction does quietly and well. Friends and I were talking about the show in terms of awe and disbelief, and I remember having a long conversation with a Nebula- and Hugo-award winning writer who taught at the local university about just how impressive the pilot was. And how it was doomed to have such a short lifespan because it was biting the hand that fed it—ripping apart the entertainment industry.

It turns out we were wrong; the show did fail after less than a season, but not because of ABC not giving it a chance. Instead, mainstream audiences hated it. On the one hand, Max, as he had been represented on TV, was all about fun and wise-cracking. While Max Headroom still had that character in it, he was not the main character, and he was not only funny but cynically twisted. On the other hand, the show expected a LOT from its audience; the ideas the show represented were big and uncompromising, and the audience just wanted to be entertained. Using Max himself indicated that the show would just be "fun"—just catching the wave—but instead it challenged the viewers to their very core. And audiences hated being challenged, thus making the show into a self-fulfilling prophecy. After fourteen episodes, thirteen of which made it on air, Max Headroom was done.

So, why this trip down Memory Lane? This morning I have discovered that Max Headroom is finally coming out on DVD, nearly 23 years after originally broadcast (http://io9.com/5481888/max-headroom-finally-coming-to-dvd). I have no idea why it's taken so long for it to be made available, but I do know that fans of good television and fans of smart speculative fiction should be lining up to get their hands on the set.

The End of Dollhouse

Last week marked the last episode of a TV show that attempted to bring some high speculative fiction ideas to television with mixed success. Joss Whedon had created Dollhouse to explore the ideas of identity in a world where it's becoming less and less clear what an individual can do to effect change. Coupling this exploration with musings, both delicate and heavy-handed, on ethics and morality made Dollhouse a potential blockbuster, not just for speculative fiction but for television in general. Unfortunately, the show was pretty much doomed from the start, given that its parent network, Fox, apparently wasn't interested in high concepts so much as the appearance of thoughtfulness as a shiny veneer over action sequences and skimpy clothing.

One of the highlights of the San Diego Comic-Con for me was seeing the "lost" episode of Dollhouse, "Epitaph I," which can only be seen by people who buy or rent the DVD collection. I've written about that episode before (about halfway through http://perrynomasia.blogspot.com/2009/10/dollhouse.html), and the series ended with "Epitaph II, which as its name implies, is pretty much a direct sequel to the earlier episode. I'm afraid that a large number of viewers of this last episode might have been initially lost by an opening that had no ties to anything they had seen before.

The highlight of the episode, like the first one, was Fran Kranz as Topher, showing depths of acting the show had rarely given him the opportunity to display. Unfortunately, it felt like the rest of the regular cast members were sleep-walking through their roles, even Eliza Dushku, who can chew scenery with some of the best. This was not the result, however, of the actors themselves; I fear the writing of this last episode was the real disappointment, as the show turned to cliché as it came to an end.

I've written many times (and said more often) that endings are the hardest thing to write. Whedon was in a tough situation as he put together the script for "Epitaph II," compounding the normal difficulties of ending well. On the one hand, he didn't actually know if this was to be the final episode of Dollhouse, though he certainly had a feeling that it might be. And so while he attempted to tie things up, he had to be careful not to tie them so tightly that a sudden reversal of fortune and renewal of the show would be impossible because he had, say, blown up the planet. He also had to build off an episode that the majority of his audience had not seen, an episode that was by far the most powerful of the two-season run. The cumulative effect was that he had to live up to what he had done so well before while appeasing the majority of his audience.

The result was not very satisfying at all. After a tremendous build-up describing the potential of the terrifically horrible Dollhouse technology, the last episode made inferences that weren't easy to follow, at least by this viewer. It also radically shook up perhaps the most powerful relationship in the series, that between Sierra (Dichen Lachmann) and Victor (Enver Gjokaj), with a conflict that felt forced and was never adequately explained. The episode also attempted to resolve in one episode the crisis it had built up over two full seasons, such that there should have been deus ex machine warnings scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Fortunately, the episode did not go so far as a true deus ex machina, but the resolution was hurried, even forced so that it stretched believability to its limit.

Similarly, part of the strength of the show had been all the relationships, which due to the nature of the plot of the show, had to be strong as many of the main characters changed personalities every week. That strength was missing in this last episode—conversations were more about things not being said than said, which was a departure. And that felt untrue to the characters we had come to care for. One notable exception was one scene where DeWitt (Olivia Williams) attempted to come to terms with what happens to Topher. There was genuine compassion and sorrow there, which we have often seen in DeWitt, even though some of the decisions she made in the past two seasons were just baffling. In fact, the scenes with DeWitt and Topher in this episode were perhaps the most powerful of this entire season.

Also unfortunate was the decision to put a little coda on the end of the episode. I won't spoil it, but while it was utterly logical, it was also utterly predictable and extremely saccharine, leaving a final impression to the viewer that did not approach the heights the show had reached. The end result was a little sadness that he show had ended but also some relief if this was the potential direction the show would have gone in if the miracle renewal had happened. Honestly, I think airing this last episode was a mistake. Instead, every effort should have been made to ensure that the lost episode, "Epitaph I," was the last taste of Dollhouse its fans would have.

The result is what will probably only be a blip in the history of speculative fiction on TV. It's a shame that management meddled, delaying the show from finding its true voice and thus its true audience. When Dollhouse hit its stride, it was thoughtful and powerful. But when it wasn't on its game, it was capable of producing some real clunkers. I'm grateful to have seen it, as I believe that it represents both the potential of what can be done with the genre and the sad reality it faces when it is generally attempted on network television. This show would have been much better served had it been on a cable channel that would have given it a chance to grow into its potential. If only there were some kind of speculative fiction based cable channel….

Dollhouse: "Becoming"

The structure of the Fox science fiction series Dollhouse makes it very easy to end up with a "mission of the week" format. Joss Whedon's series about people who have their memories and personality erased in order to have then replaced by memories and personality of a client's choosing could easily fall into something like Love Boat, where no plot is really advanced over the arc of the series, but each week brings the viewer an episode where the dolls go off and have a crisis then come back, forcing the series to become, in the process, more of an anthology series than anything really self-contained. The first few episodes of the first season were exactly that, which Whedon has blamed on the interference of the network. Those same introductory episodes are what drove away more thoughtful (and perhaps impatient) viewers. But by the end of the first season, while the dolls still had "engagements", it was clear that another story was being advanced in the interstices and with the supporting characters.

I was fortunate enough to see the culmination of that first season when I saw the "lost episode", "Epitaph 1", in San Diego when Whedon presented it to Comic-Con this past summer. Fortunately, "Epitaph 1" is available on the DVD set, and as I have noted elsewhere (http://perrynomasia.blogspot.com/2009/07/comic-con-2009.html), it is something any fan of Whedon or science fiction on TV simply must see. The first season pointed out some of the moral ambiguity of what the dollhouses were capable of, while "Epitaph 1" really nailed it home in an unforgettably chilling fashion. Also a delight in that episode is the sudden appearance of character for our resident mad scientist, Topher Brink (played by Fran Kranz). Topher really is the weakest link on the show, because he is almost sociopathic in his devotion to his work and his own self-interest. Throughout the first season, the character does not seem to evolve, or even show any depth at all. It was hard to say if this was the result of the writing or Kranz's acting…until "Epitaph 1." Suddenly, we see just how deep Topher is and, as a very happy aside, the power of Kranz's acting once he is given more than a single dimension to play. Unfortunately, most viewers will never see the episode, so they will had no idea what Kranz can do.

The most recent episode of Dollhouse, "Belonging" (which aired 10/24/09), appears to be a character study of Sierra (Dichen Lachmann). In it, we at last uncover the origin of one of the regular characters in the series—a beautiful artist, Priya attracts the attention of a brilliant and wealthy man who has connections in the corporation that owns the dollhouses. Using his connections, he has Priya given to the dollhouse (in as villainous a fashion as any depicted on recent television) where she is given the code name Sierra and becomes one of the best dolls available. But when Echo hints to Topher that all is not as it seems with one of Sierra's engagements, Topher discovers the truth behind Priya/Sierra's joining the dollhouse and shares it with the security chief Boyd (Henry Lennix) and manager Adele (Olivia Williams).

The results are some of the most compelling TV of this young season, if not the past few seasons. The focus is on Sierra, and Lachmann gives a strong performance as she fleshes out a fan-favorite character. What Priya/Sierra is put through in order to become a doll is horrific, and the results of her engagements perhaps even more so. Vincent Ventresca plays a creepily villainous foil, Nolan Kinnard, for Sierra in his few scenes, just enough to hint at the depths of Nolan's own madness. And while Sierra's loss and recovery were the main plot of the episode, it was what happened around the periphery that made it so emotionally compelling and such strong science fiction.

At last, an episode is broadcast that shows that Topher is not mono-dimensional, a much fuller role that allows us to see Kranz's acting chops. As Topher learns what has been done to Sierra and then argues with Adele over her fate, and then as he turns that fate and becomes something of a hero (a twisted hero no doubt, but heroic all the more for his twistedness), Topher becomes human, something of which we have only seen glimpses in the past. Suddenly he realizes that the knowledge he has and what he does with it have repercussions, and rather than meekly accepting those repercussions, he does something about them. And Kranz's acting is just sublime throughout Topher's epiphany; in his facial expression, his body language, and in his cadence, Topher is wracked with horror at what his beautiful technology can be turned into. This directly echoes the path his character takes in the aforementioned "Epitaph 1" and is transcendentally powerful given how the character has been portrayed up to now. That stark difference between the versions of Topher just make it that much more clear how horrible Sierra's fate is if no one acts on her behalf. Nonetheless, in many ways, "Belonging" is more about Topher than Sierra since by the end of the episode, he is the one who has changed the most.

Mirroring Topher's horror is Olivia Williams's Adele, who seems to honestly believe she is doing what's right for the dolls while living up to the guidelines of the parent Rossum Corporation. Through three successive interviews with Ventresca's Nolan, corporate bigwig Matthew Harding (stoic and evil, played by Keith Carradine), and then finally with Topher, her outrage is beaten into submission. Her own despair is written into her face and delivery even as she tells Topher to do what he is ordered to do, no matter how grotesque and damning it might be. In one of the best lines of the series, which arises from that conversation, she tells Topher, "All of our employees but one were hired in part for their moral ambiguity. You were not. You were hired because you have no morals at all."

And yet, while most of the action of "Becoming" seems to be at a personal level, there are broad strokes that cannot but affect the activities of the dollhouse. On the one hand, the original discoverer of the unpleasantness is Echo (Eliza Dushku) who regular viewers already know has something special about her, given that she is supposed to remember nothing and, especially, instigate nothing when she has not been imprinted with a personality. But there she is, diving to the core of Sierra's fundamental issues when the dollhouse staff is either too distant or too preoccupied to notice that something is terribly wrong with her. Only Boyd, the security chief, seems to notice that she is not acting like the rest of the dolls, and rather than reporting her, he offers her advice as she warns "the storm is coming" (again, I have to refer to "Epitaph 1"—the storm is coming, and what a storm it is).

Most important is the sudden realization that the doll technology is vulnerable to corruption. In a couple of episodes in the first season, Adele uses the technology for her own purposes—creating her perfect lover and helping a friend find out who murdered her—but it never seems to strike her that if she can use the dolls for morally ambiguous reasons, other people can use them for whatever reasons they want. Rossum, in the person of Carradine's Harding, basically orders Adele to murder one of the dolls in as repulsive a way as imaginable, simply to benefit the company and to protect it from potential liability. What Boyd knew all along, Adele and Topher now know for themselves: the doll technology is extraordinarily powerful and thus incredibly vulnerable to those who would want to use it for their own reasons. And this is what makes Dollhouse ultimately such powerful science fiction.

At its deepest roots, science fiction has been used to celebrate the hope of future technology while warning of its potential misuse. Perhaps the grandfather of all science fiction, Frankenstein, is a powerful story of the unintended repercussions as man delves into places he might not be morally ready to explore. And throughout its history, some of the best science fiction stories have been about the competing interests between discovery and use, as knowledge outpaces morality. This, ultimately, is what Dollhouse is—a cautionary tale about the repercussions when technology falls into the hands of the unscrupulous and corrupt. Dollhouse, when it is at its best, brings that conflict to the fore in the most personal terms possible, in the lives of its dolls, the scientists who discover, and the people who pay to use the discovery. The episodic, "doll of the week", format could be entertaining in its own right, but Whedon and his cast and crew continue to push Dollhouse into thought-provoking areas while engrossing its viewers with powerful stories about individuals. "Belonging" is, by far, the best episode so far to make that dichotomy clear and so compelling.

Torchwood: Children of Earth

When last we encountered the Torchwood show, Mrs. Speculator and I were not very optimistic about our seeing it down the line (http://perrynomasia.blogspot.com/2008/04/torchwood.html). A year has gone by and the creators decided to try a five-episode mini-series, something that we felt would be fairly tightly managed and a departure from the episodic nature of the first two seasons. And the memory of the Captain Jack from Doctor Who was still with us, so we recorded the whole series while in San Diego and only just sat down to watch it this past weekend with high hopes.

From a high level, there are moments in the mini-series that are some of the most powerful in the Doctor Who/Torchwood franchise. The premise was compelling: an alien race (which humans have named 456) announces their impending arrival on Earth using all the human children as a sort of speaker for their intentions. And it is quite chilling to see all the children stop at the same time and with absolutely no affect announce "WE ARE COMING" before careening off into their normal routines as if nothing had happened. As it turns out, the 456 are coming back, and the nature of their return is the crisis the mini-series centers on. The shockwaves of their return force a compelling examination of the nature of being human, and being a part of a human society. And the show's creators do everything they can to paint a depressing view of the depths to which humans can fall.

When the world's children announce the return of the 456, Great Britain's Home Office undertakes a massive cover-up their first visit. Part of the target of this cover-up is Captain Jack, who begins the mini-series his normally genial self, trying to work out the implications of being a couple with Ianto, who it turns out has not completely considered what it is like to be in a relationship with a man who cannot die. Everything is mysterious on the part of the government with only momentary glimpses into their plan intermixed with life as usual at Torchwood, where Gwen considers a new doctor to join the team while Jack and Ianto begin to investigate the strange announcement by the children. These moments are the general strength of the franchise: extremely interesting characters interacting. But as the mini-series goes on, the weakness of these characters makes itself felt; Jack is not a very good leader, prone to frenzied bursts of energy without much positive effect. Ianto eventually ends up standing around, becoming more and more of observer or hanger-on, like the engineering crew on the Enterprise: on screen and busy but only providing plot points for everyone else to act on. And by the end of the mini-series, the strongest character on the team, Gwen, is completely ineffectual as she runs from hiding place to hiding place instead of leading the team as she is most suited to do.

The end of the second season was frustrating in that it existed in some ways just to push Jack to his physical limits, and the first two days of the mini-series falls back to that pattern while barely advancing the idea of the aliens returning. Instead the plot focuses on killing Jack in as final a way as can be imagined and making him come back again. Meanwhile the back story of the 456 is being pieced together in small discoveries in the workings of the Home Office as it works with the Prime Minister and in the flashbacks that plague a homeless man named Clement. But that story languishes as most of the emotional direction is on Jack's useless death and the efforts to find him and get the team together. In hindsight, I think those two days could have been squeezed down, especially by forgoing Jack's death and resurrection and focusing on who is pursuing them and why.

If the viewer doesn't figure out for themselves, the mini-series makes it clear: the 456 arrived on Earth in 1965 and asked for twelve children, which the British government obligingly gives them, using orphans that "no one would ever miss." The 456 delivers the cure to a strain of influenza as their part of the deal, and the British never ask what the children are to be used for. Clement was one of those children; he escaped the 456 but suffers from horrible flashbacks and other emotional damage at the idea of what he went through. And the government wants Jack dead because he was one of the children's guards when they were turned over to the 456. Now that the 456 are back, the British government wants no one to know that they have dealt with them in the past, especially since such dealings involved the morally ambiguous surrender of children.

The British government is represented by Home Office minister John Frobisher who, while not involved with the original exchange, is tasked with keeping it under wraps, to the point of lying to the British people and to the rest of the world. Frobisher is portrayed by Peter Capaldi in what is the strongest acting performance in the mini-series, showing up the regular cast shamelessly. Frobisher is torn by his duty to the government and his duty as an official of that government. On the one hand, he recognizes the international backlash that will assail Britain if the world finds out its secret, but on the other, he grows increasingly terrified of what the 456 are doing to his daughters who are forced to speak for them along with the rest of the world's children. Particularly telling is an interview Frobisher has with the Prime Minister where he is told that the Prime Minister will not take any responsibility for what happens and that Frobisher is utterly expendable. The Prime Minister, played by Nicholas Ferrell, is exceedingly selfish, uncaring of the effect his decisions will have, so long as he is not personally touched by them.

And so the British government is shocked when the 456 arrive and announce that they are back for ten percent of all the children on Earth. Finally it is clear to the rest of the world that Britain has treated with the 456 in the past, so they demand to participate in negotiations. Ironically, Americans are portrayed as moral stalwarts, appalled at Britain's past actions and the attempts to cover it up. The world at first tries to negotiate with the 456, asking what the need for the children is. I won't reveal this major spoiler, but it is horrifying, more chilling than I could have imagined, and the people involved with the negotiations are further appalled. Then the British haggle with the 456 and are rebuked—10% or the entire world will be destroyed.

During these important plot moments, the members of Torchwood have been scurrying about, gathering the pieces that allow them to witness and record the negotiations. Much time is spent watching Torchwood watch the negotiations on a computer monitor, which only serves to dull the horror of the intentions of the 456. And once they have all the information they think they need, Jack storms the building where the 456 are located and confronts them with human stubbornness. We never see the 456, only hearing them in the voices of the children of the world or in a monotone from the speakers that surround their noxious quarters. So when Jack tells them that six billion humans will not stand for this blackmail, they respond that they will demonstrate their powers in a dead tone. They then shut down the building they are in and kill everyone inside it, including Jack. Once again Jack tries to use a grandiose gesture to solve an achingly terrifying issue and fails, horribly.

The last two days make up the strongest part of the mini-series, as we watch the British government work out how they will determine which children are going to be given up. The conversations are numbing, mostly because it is all too easy to imagine that they portray exactly how such a plan would be worked out. The lowest levels of the human emotional spectrum are made clear: "Of course the child of anyone in this room will be exempt from this process." And then, as they decide their methodology for determining who will be given up, the viewer is plunged even lower as the same people discuss the method by which the culling will take place. Again, I'll not spoil the details here, but the conversations are heart-breaking and cold and all the more powerful for the ineffable calmness by which they determine how they will sacrifice other people's children to save their own. Even our shaky moral compass, Frobisher, cannot resist the temptation to save his own children. And when Frobisher is called upon to sacrifice his own children as an example to the rest of the British people, I nearly wept as he finally acts as a desperate father and yet makes the worst decision imaginable.

So, for the final two days, the most important plot moments belong to characters not in Torchwood, who are relegated to audience members, ineffectual at everything they might attempt. As the children are being gathered, Gwen and her husband Rhys try to save Ianto's family and friends, only to fail miserably at that as well, finally caught. That last day is hard to watch as the countdown moves inexorably on and no solution presents itself. Eventually, parents figure out what is happening and try to save their children. but it is far too late, and they are outgunned by the British military.

Then in the last fifteen minutes, the government is forced to give Jack another chance at defeating the aliens, and in that space of show time, he puts together all the various clues that have been dropped through the mini-series, creates a weapon that takes advantage of his deduction, and then defeats the aliens. Seriously, it happens just like that. The mini-series tries to introduce some personal trauma into these salvation scenes, but it is lost in the utter stupidity of everything being resolved so easily. One character even asks Jack, "Don't you think we've been trying that?" only to be amazed at Jack's prowess in overcoming all difficulties in those 15 minutes. And so this intensely thoughtful and poignant story is punctuated with an exclamation point of the worst cliché in science fiction. In many ways, the emotional climax is Frobisher's heart-rending personal decision and his acting on it. The clunky coda that is the world's salvation is necessary from a storytelling standpoint but just disappoints.

The end result is that I wish the mini-series had been two days shorter and had not involved Torchwood at all. The story is powerful enough to be told without the touchstone of the familiar characters of the Torchwood team who end up adding pretty much nothing to the sweep of the plot. If the writer was going to pull a deus ex machina out of his hat, any character would have been a good rabbit; it didn't have to be Jack. Ultimately, Torchwood just distracted from some of the most powerful moments I've seen in science fiction television. Any fan of the genre really should persevere through the mini-series just to see those moments, and I promise it won't be easy to watch—a sure sign of thought-provoking storytelling. And I apologize in advance for the flailing about that the characters we already knew go through and also put the viewer through, providing some of the worst moments in science fiction television.

Warehouse 13

SyFy gave away some of their intent by showing National Treasure before the pilot of the new show. It feels like it wants to be quirky yet friendly with serious undertones like the popular Eureka, and with names like Jane Espenson attached to the show, it's an attainable goal. However, it must rise above some serious flaws to maintain any interest. The dialogue was just clunky, and I'm not sure if that was the result of poor writing or poor delivery. The mechanics of the artifact that the team is chasing in the pilot just don't make sense, or are not made very clear. And the plot also hinges in some part on apparently smart people doing really stupid things: the designers of the gargantuan Warehouse 13 have devised methods to quickly move people from the office to various points in the warehouse, but they didn't figure out a way for those same people to get back quickly? And the caretaker forgot his communication device when he suddenly figured out that the rest of his team might be in danger?

The premise of the show has a lot of possibilities—this is the storehouse where magical artifacts are stored; think of the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark or the warehouse in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The idea of Houdini's wallet somehow facilitating contact with the dead is a fascinating one. But I'll be darned if I understand why the non-powered painting of Lucrezia Borgia sits in an extra secure area of "America's attic" instead of in a museum.

The acting is a mixed bag, but again that may be an effect of the writing. Saul Rubinek has been typecast into the role of the manic genius, and he plays that role with aplomb here. The male lead, Eddie McClintock as Pete Lattimer, is somewhat believable as the Secret Service agent who relies on instinct and is somewhat easy-going. Joanne Kelly's Myka Bering is his partner and so plays the stereotypical staid, no-frills career-oriented partner. But there is no real life to the character; her issues before being assigned to Warehouse 13 are clichéd and there is nothing in the pilot that makes her remotely likable. Even the final scenes and their promise of her loosening up a little are countered by ads for the next few episodes where she seems just as stick-in-the-muddy as in the pilot. Clearly, she needs to talk to Dana Scully about how to deal with strange governmental tasks as quickly as possible.

Warehouse 13 has a lot of potential, but nothing in the pilot indicated that it would live up to that potential, and really nothing in the pilot makes me want to come back and find out more about these characters. I will probably give the show another couple of episodes to sell itself, but if my only interest after the first episode is to ask "What's the deal with the magic football?" then the show has an uphill battle to win me over.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold

Mrs. Speculator recently suggested that I review this show, new to the Cartoon Network this season. I realized I haven't written much about TV recently, and agreed that this is well worth talking about.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold comes from an impressive tradition of DC animated TV shows, from the spectacular early run of Batman: The Animated Series to the whimsical Teen Titans to the powerful Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. At Comic-con this past summer, the show's creators talked about trying to come out of that tradition with something fresh and yet feeling the pressure of all the acclaim those earlier shows rightfully earned. They decided to return to a more fun Batman, one who is less dark and willing to work with partners, and thus find the hook to pull viewers in. The art style is much more Dick Sprang, with blocky bodies and faces almost always decorated with grins. This Batman (voiced by Diedrich Bader) splits his time fighting evil and helping to train a wide range of partners, from the new Blue Beetle to Kamandi. Just choosing Bader was a risk, since moving away from what has become the iconic voice of Batman for nearly two decades, Kevin Conroy, could easily cause potential viewers to decide that this is not the "real" Batman. But Bader is a good choice, just adding some panache to the expected dark voice, lightening the mood considerably. In some episodes, Batman needs help and thus calls the more experienced heroes to his side, such as Green Arrow, thus making him less omnipotent and more accessible. In other episodes he works with heroes with less experience fighting crime, such as Plastic Man and the aforementioned Blue Beetle/Jaime Reyes, teaching them what it means to be a hero.

The episodes are generally brightly colored and filled with action. As yet we have not seen the Batcave, forcing Batman into the light of day, and making him a happier character by implication. Batman has also fought beneath the sea and on other planets, so the stories have moved beyond the marauding vigilante that The Animated Series relied on (not that there is anything wrong with that version of Batman—it was just hyper-focused on a single aspect of a character with a huge history). And the creators are well aware of their DC History; I really like that Batman and Green Arrow have an ongoing competition about who is the better crimefighter. Batman even remarks to Green Arrow that he has stolen pretty much every good idea he has from Batman: an Arrowplane, an Arrowcare, even a kid sidekick—"I bet you even have an Arrowcave." But the connoisseur of continuity may grow uneasy with some of the changes for the sake of storytelling. For instance, the Outsiders are a teen gang that Wildcat takes under his wing. And Batman has a wide array of implements in his utility belt made of nth metal…the better to fight magical foes (he even has a sword in his utility belt, but he has to take the belt off to get to the hidden sheath). But these are really minor quibbles from a viewer outside the primary audience. These shows are meant to be kid-friendly and –accessible, introducing them to the characters as though for the first time, perhaps in an attempt to get them to start reading the comics. Of course, if they picked up the current Batman titles, they would be completely lost, but that's another post.

But not everything that the creators have changed works well. One trait that this new Batman shows that is really annoying is a propensity for internal monologue—we get to hear his thoughts on a variety of subjects. This is generally outside the structure of current American animation, and if it is used, it is generally only for effect, but this show seems to rely on it. What's worse, it's not handled well, feeling horribly clunky and even condescending to the viewer, not really disguising that it is a crutch for a story where the characters actions can't be shown so much as explained. It also assumes the viewer can't figure out what's happening without the aid, which is not an admission a good storyteller should ever want to make. In some ways, it would have made more sense for The Animated Series to use the monologue, since Batman is most often alone in that series. But especially in this case, where he is almost always on screen with a partner, the internal monologue is just a distraction.

The other weakness is distressing, given it is one of the main points of continuity between this show and the ones that went before. Animated DC shows have had brilliant voice casting, led by voice director Andrea Romano. It was she who picked Kevin Conroy for Batman and Clancy Brown for Lex Luthor. And her selections over the years have been nearly flawless; I honestly can't remember a voice that just did not feel appropriate for the character being portrayed…I mean Efrem Zimbalist as Alfred is just brilliant. But The Brave and the Bold isn't nearly so good mostly because the voices aren't as distinctive. For isntance, Aquaman is just horrible. Arguably, the writing of Aquaman is pretty bad as well and Romano is just finding a voice to match the persona that the creators asked for. As he is written in the show, Aquaman is a pompous blowhard, not interested in doing good for the sake of good but rather for the adventure associated with the fight…and the legends that will follow. He is not very smart—on the verge of being stupid. The sad part is that the brilliant John Di Maggio plays Aquaman and plays him even more over the top. Again, this may be the choice of the creators, but it makes the episodes with Aquaman decidedly hard to watch. And Di Maggio is a bright star in animation right now, up there with Billy West. Another example is using Will Friedle as Blue Beetle. Again, Friedle has a lot of experience, giving the Terry McGiniss in Batman Beyond a voice that can be remembered outside the TV show. But Jaime Reyes is so whitebread it's easy to imagine he isn't Hispanic at all, which goes against everything t he character is supposed to be about. Even Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob Squarepoints, falls short as Plastic Man.

One saving grace for the show is the use of a wide range of characters. Already we've seen Gentleman Ghost, Despero and Chemo as villains, and heroes such as B'wana Beast, Dr. Fate and Elongated Man. That alone is pretty much worth the price of admission. I'll definitely be looking forward to the second season, but I really hope that the voices get better, or that the creators allow the actors to play a bigger part in making the characters to stand out.

Torchwood

…or why the Speculator household will not be watching season three.

Last July, Mrs. Speculator and I stumbled into a panel for Torchwood at Comic-con, actually more interested in the panel that was to follow. Inside we found a milling throng of fans, most of whom had seen the show from downloads or borrowed DVD copies of episodes. They were enthusiastic and loud, and since the wife and I enjoy the new Doctor Who, we sat back and learned what we could about the new show. The results were good and we determined to watch it when it came on BBC America.

Now, nearly a year later, we've seen seasons 1 and 2 and are a little puzzled about why the show has such a huge following. Our dismay at the show grew with every episode, but we decided we would give it a full run on its season before deciding what we would do. This past weekend, the season two finale aired, and we found it to be a major disappointment, introducing new problems that force us to question what the show is about and continuing the issues that made us doubt in the first place.

Before the season finale, our issues were fairly straightforward. The first, which may be viewed as a peccadillo on our part, was that Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) of Torchwood is not written the same way he is when he is on Doctor Who. Who's Harkness is a rogue, a picaresque hero. He is funny and charming and someone you can depend on when you need to. While he is secretive about his own past, he is open about his plans and priorities. On Torchwood, he is almost the reverse of this personality: he is dour, only funny when it gets him out of a jam, more open about his past, and less open about his plans and priorities. While it is clear he sees the members of Torchwood as a family, his love for them is oppressive, as Gwen (Eve Myles) often points out to him. He expects devotion and trust, but he does not generally offer it in return, instead almost always making demands of those he "cares" for. I'm minded of the Peter Principle, that incompetence rises to its own level. Clearly Harkness is great as a number two, as a right-hand man, but he is a woeful leader and manager. If his team members were not so inexplicably devoted to him, they would revolt. And again, we have seen glimpses of Gwen calling him out on this very topic. The last two episodes of season two have made it clear as he works with other members of Torchwood in the past, he works much better as an agent than as the leader. So, the upshot of this is that Harkness is not the man we got to know in Doctor Who, and while his portrayal is consistent in Torchwood, I don't like the character in Torchwood. I honestly do not believe this to be a flaw with the actor, but how he is written and directed.

And while Jack is larger than life, his status merely exacerbates the weakness of the other characters. Owen (Burn Gorman), Tosh (Naoko Mori), and Ianto (Gareth David-Lloyd) are pale caricatures and rather flat as well. They each seem to have a single emotion that they are asked to portray over and over again: Owen is the irascible rebel, who just mainly appears angry and put out. Tosh is the devoted sycophant, building unhealthy attachments to whomever she is enamoured with this week. And Ianto…well, honestly, I don't know what role Ianto plays other than to be Jack's main squeeze. He serves coffee a lot and looks terrified or surprised sometimes. The attempts to give these supporting characters more life have generally failed or, worse, produced bizarre continuity issues. For example, we've seen Owen in love (or lust, a whole lot of lust…there's a lot of sex and fondling, and clearly we are supposed to think it is love, but there is nothing onscreen that really looks like love) with a woman lost in time. We see him being gentle and loving with her, and melancholy when she is lost, but as soon as the next episode, he's just mean and surly again. Tosh apparently falls in love with anything that moves, including an alien, a man lost in time (hmm, there's a pattern), and inexplicably, Owen. When she is not simpering or pining for her current love, Tosh is a brilliant…well, apparently she can do anything with machines and computers that she wants. Her skills are poorly defined, so she ends up being like Wesley from Star Trek: The Next Generation, doing whatever is needed that falls outside the skill sets of everyone else. You need someone to rest your servers after an alien attack, go to Tosh. How about shutting down a nuclear reactor? She's the one.

The issue is, again, not that these characters aren't played well. The actors are quite fine at their work; the problem is that I find the characters almost completely unlikable. Owen is mean, but Tosh loves him anyway, and that just makes him more mean. And what's worse, when we finally see some flashbacks about the characters in the next-to-last episode of season two, we find that Owen wasn't mean to his fiancée. He was devoted and charismatic, and then he fell into the TV cliché of having his heart turn to stone upon her death. Except when he is not stony, which only makes him seem to suffer from multiple personalities. And Ianto…well, he truly is just a cipher.

The bright spot of the entire series is Gwen. Although she started out as the everyday character that offers us mundane folks a view and a voice in the world of Torchwood, she has become far more than that. She is the conscience of Torchwood, regularly reminding the team to be more human or take into account that there is a bigger picture. She is efficient, she is a real leader, and she is a complete character. She insists on having a life outside of Torchwood, giving us insight into the niches of her personality, which the spotlight episodes for Tosh and Owen failed to achieve for them. And Eve Myles plays her incredibly well, chewing the scenery when it is required but generally remaining understated in her portrayal and thus far more effective. She has her lapses, which again I blame more on the writing than the actor (Why have a dalliance with mean old Owen? Why is she so attracted to Jack?), but generally her character is dependable, both in its actions and in its portrayal.

[there will be spoilers from here on…read at your own peril]

So I'm describing a series with five main characters, three of whom I don't like, one of whom is a complete mystery, and one of which is just brilliant. This seems a deficit that would be difficult to overcome, but if the storytelling is good beyond the personal bits, with interesting plots and engrossing stories, then the show might be watchable, though only teeth-gratingly so. Alas, the stories are not enough to save my interest.

Generally they start with what could be an interesting premise, but only rarely are those premises fulfilled. Often the resolutions are trite and cliché, predictable from the start of the episode. A few rare episodes show what could really be done, such as season two's "Meat" which was tremendously written and agonizingly played out. What happens when greedy, self-absorbed, normal people discover a way to make money from the alien artifacts that emerge from the rift? In this episode, little attention was paid to the personal lives of the team, perhaps so that the full emotional impact of the story would not be diluted. Butchers are selling alien meat that is making its consumers ill, so Torchwood puts together a sting to find the source. Their expectation is to find a herd of alien cattle, but instead they find a single giant whale-like alien with amazing recuperative powers kept sedated in a warehouse. The butchers carve their product from the side of the still-living creature which then heals from its injury. Torchwood is disgusted at such abuse, and probably would be if it were a terrestrial animal with similar capabilities. But then they discover that the creature is actually sentient, and the horror strikes hard and fast. It was a wrenching episode to watch and a risky thing to try, and a real throw-back to the edgier science fiction of the late 60s and early 70s. That they pulled it off with grace without condescension is a real tribute to the cast and crew of the show. Unfortunately, "Meat" was the exception that proves the rule—that the premises often fall short.

The real clincher was the last episode. In the episode before, "Fragments", someone attempts to kill all the members of Torchwood, giving the show an opportunity to do flashbacks to get some back story on the characters we have been following for two years. At the end of that episode, we discover the villain is Captain John Hart, another member of Jack's time agency (about which we know absolutely nothing still) and somehow he has Jack's long lost brother Gray from the 51st century as a hostage (bearing in mind we barely know about Gray, except that Jack has long suffered guilt for losing him). But as the final episode, "Exit Wounds", goes on, we discover the real villain is Gray himself, who Jack lost track of during an alien invasion when he was nine or ten years old. Apparently Gray was captured by the aliens and tortured for years, all for which he blames Jack. In other words, Jack must pay for something he couldn't control as a child. It stretches believability, but it is easier to decide Gray is insane and go from there (although he's really lucid). Ultimately, Gray causes bombs to go off all over the city of Cardiff and somehow lets lose denizens of the rift to terrorize the city, all in an effort to get Jack away from his team and thus fairly defenseless. We discover that while John Hart is a part of these plans, it is because he has somehow allowed Gray to "molecularly bond" a bomb to him and thus he is being blackmailed with his life.

Hart takes Jack to 27 AD, where Gray directs Jack to be buried alive beneath what will eventually become the city of Cardiff. And since Jack cannot remain dead, he will go through a cycle of awakening and dying, all because he failed to take care of his brother when he was ten years old. Gray's revenge extends to destroying Cardiff as well, and so his distraction becomes far more evil as he releases evil aliens across the city. Along the way, Tosh gets shot and Owen is trapped inside a nuclear power plant that must vent its gases before it melts down (Ianto just sort of stumbles around doing nothing important). And Gwen has her moment; in Jack's absence, she commands the powers of the city of Cardiff, dealing with each emergency as it comes up. Everyone recognizes her strength of character and her leadership.

Meanwhile, Jack is found by Torchwood in 1901 because of the signal emitted from a ring John Hart left with him. Somehow, after 1900 years being buried alive, Jack remains completely sane and still feels guilty about his brother's torture. But he also knows that he cannot meet himself, so Torchwood puts him into cryogenic stasis for another 107 years, until he awakens the very day his brother starts terrorizing the city.

Of course, the day is saved, except that Owen (who is actually an animated dead man because of an earlier misadventure in the second season) is roasted by radioactive waste gas and …well, I guess he doesn't die again, but he has no remains to animate and so is gone. Tosh dies of her gunshot wound. Jack is reunited with his brother and hugs him really hard before putting him into cryogenic stasis, knowing full well if he ever escapes, Gray will do everything to destroy him and the things he loves.

I purposely drew out that description of the episode to emphasize how tedious it was to watch. It was pretty predictable within the possibilities portrayed by the show, and the main villain came completely out of left field. And up to now, Jack has been pretty much able to do whatever needs to be done, except that he can't put away his brother (who tortured him for close to 2000 years!). Even Scott Evil knows you don't leave someone like this with an out to come back and hurt you some more. Owen had to die; he was pretty much ineffective after his first death--not only mean, but mopey too. And Tosh was just too pathetic to let live. Why Ianto gets to continue to make coffee, I have no idea.

The door is open for major changes with nearly half the team being replaced. But it wasn't the actors who made the characters unbearable, and so it doesn't really matter what comes along if they are as poorly written as these were. Here is the perfect opportunity for Gwen to assume leadership of Torchwood and use Jack for what he does best, as an agent, but I doubt the show will go in that direction. Ultimately, there was so much potential, from the actors to the pre-existing character, to the premise of the show. And other than Gwen and the rare strong episode, all of that potential was just wasted. And ultimately that's why I won't watch any more of this show until people I trust tell me I need to see a certain episode: I've got better things to do with my hour spent watching this show than be constantly disappointed at the creative decisions it makes.

Eli Stone

I probably should have been talking about this television program before now, but I've gotten into a mode of thinking about what I am reading as blog material and not the things I am watching. And it's made easier by television programming being on every week, such that it becomes standard, while reading a book changes every time I pick up a new book. But given the lack of good science fiction or fantasy on serial television, it's important to talk about the good stuff.

Until the latest episode of Eli Stone, I might have had trouble supporting my claim that it was good stuff. But the show required patience, building up slowly to one of the best moments in television this season. Honestly, the show started whimsically, introducing us to the title character, a brilliant young corporate lawyer (played by Jonny Lee Miller) who is the heir apparent to a partnership in a prestigious San Francisco law firm. Things are looking great for Eli: he's engaged to the senior partner's daughter, that same senior partner envisions big things in his future, and everyone recognizes Eli's brilliance in defending corporate clients. And then the visions start.

Eli finds himself watching George Michael perform "Faith" in his office lobby. Then Michael appears in his living room. And Eli jumps to the conclusion that he's becoming his father, who apparently suffered delusions throughout his life, making Eli's young life miserable as his father repeatedly embarrassed him in public and required special attention. But Eli's brother goes further and, as a neurologist, recommends that Eli get a CAT scan. They find that Eli has a brain aneurysm, and that his visions are in fact hallucinations. Except that the hallucinations Eli has predict the future, and they have the disconcerting habit of coming true.

At this point, Eli Stone could have gone down a road similar to Medium, which until recently made a weekly episode out of its main character predicting the future and no one believing her, not even the people who hired her to use her psychic powers to fight crime…and sometimes not even her husband. Instead, Eli Stone becomes a story about the maturing process of a lawyer, who comes to realize many things, but perhaps most importantly that law is not intended to be a refuge for corporations, but support for individuals. As a result of his visions, Eli takes on more and more improbable cases, causing his coworkers and friends to rethink who Eli really is. And because Eli is a brilliant lawyer, he almost always wins, aggravating his bosses who want him to back to his money-making ways. Particularly infuriated is the senior partner, Jordan Wetherby (played wonderfully by Vincent Garber), who is legally bound to keep Stone hired but uses that tie to make Eli's life miserable the further he goes from the firm's corporate policy. At one point, Stone assists a client to sue one of the firm's large corporate clients, which is maddening enough, but then Stone wins.

As I reread this, I recognize that these are the kinds of things that created a sort of mainstream veneer to Eli Stone, making it appear to be a slightly quirky lawyer show. But there's much more going on underneath the surface. We find out that Eli's father suffered from the same kind of aneurysm, perhaps in the exact same place, and that those moments that most embarrassed Eli were the results of his father being enmeshed in hallucination or drunk as he tries to deal with the hallucinations that he cannot control and medical science cannot cure. Eli's understanding of his father is completely altered and he learns to love his now deceased father as his own aneurysm-induced visions cause flashbacks and insight to moments he has shared with his father. Anger and embarrassment give way to sympathy and understanding, and Eli discovers that his father tried to tell Eli how he was suffering and that Eli would eventually have the same affliction.

Eli also gains a friend in Dr. Chen, an acupuncturist he sought to help him end the hallucinations when he first got them. Stone and Chen have discussions about the nature of Eli's hallucinations—are they the symptoms of a debilitating disease or has Eli been selected to be a prophet. As Eli begins to make discoveries about his father, Chen reveals that he knew Eli's father and was told by him to help take care of Eli when Eli shows up for treatment.

So slowly and surely, Eli begins to convince the people around him that whatever is causing his visions is also showing him the future. The difficulty in believing this proposition is well played by the actors and writers of the show, but ultimately, Eli being correct every time has to win him converts. And yet Eli is torn; his visions help people and give texture and meaning to his own past, but they are ruining his career as a corporate lawyer and they are uncontrollable, afflicting him in the most awkward situations, and around people who don't know his condition. The latest episode returns to Eli's sole failure, a prediction of an earthquake crippling San Francisco, a prediction that was too big for anyone to believe and which forced Eli to cheat at a trial in order to protect people who were going to have their lives destroyed by having them evicted from their homes at the epicenter of the earthquake he saw coming. At the end of that first episode, the earthquake has not arrived and doubts creep in, both for Eli and the people who know him. But the vision returns, and Eli is convinced San Francisco is about to be ravaged by an earthquake.

Eli again takes extreme measures to protect the people, suing the city to close Golden Gate Bridge, ultimately losing the case but wining the attention of the mayor's office which takes him seriously. And he stands on a desk in the center of his firm, admitting to anyone who will listen that he is ill and that he knows they may not all believe him, but for their own safety, they need to get out of the building. Some leave, others stay behind. Then the earthquake strikes, and we see the destruction of the Golden Gate Bridge.

I imagine for some people, this could be a "jump the shark" moment. But for me, this is when the show excelled. Suddenly it's clear that Eli Stone is a high fantasy set in modern times. Eli has a gift, an unwanted gift, but a magical gift that he uses to help those less fortunate than himself. And he has inherited that gift from his father, a man who couldn't use the gift so well but saw that his son would and apologized to him when he learned the burden it would be. And like those high fantasies, Eli Stone is about its main character maturing, actually running through the stages of grief as he deals with his illness which helps so many others. As Eli matures, so do the people around him; the lawyers who are sometimes caricatures of everything stereotypical about lawyers are becoming fully realized. The lawyer who was too young and too busy to properly defend a client years ago, comes back to that client and works with him to get fair treatment and aid. The corporate shill who is only in it for the money grows a conscience and, while still sometimes being a jerk, finds he can be a good person to those around him. And the senior partner, Jordan Wetherby, rediscovers through Eli his passion for law, not for just how much money it brings to him but for the good it can do in other people's lives.

I realized watching the last episode that we were watching a true serial, one that required patience (and maybe even some filler episodes) to get us to where the story wanted to be. And while my description of the Golden Gate Bridge falling appears to describe a ratings stunt, it actually is the culmination of a long thoughtful process. And I couldn't see what was coming soon enough to let people know this was something worth watching. Unfortunately, there is only one episode left this season, and I suspect Eli Stone will not be returning next season—the ratings are not very good, perhaps because it required patience to see where it was going. American television viewers are not renowned for their patience. So, I bring this show to your attention, probably too late. I can hope for another season, but if that fails, I would recommend finding a DVD set of it when it comes out. For Eli Stone offers its viewers hope, for growth and renewal. It has promise and works hard to deliver it, and I'm glad I got to se it achieved.

The Lost Room

Everybody geeks about something.

Last week, the Sci Fi Channel aired an original mini-series about which I had been reading for a little while. The teasers indicated that the story was about a man who found a room in which mundane objects were given extraordinary powers. And, as is the nature of such teasers, it only scratched the surface of the story.

On May 4, 1961, at a little past 1:20 in the afternoon, an Event occured in room 10 of the Sunshine Motel near Gallup, New Mexico. The mini-series never goes into detail about what happened, but as a result of the Event, every object in the room--including the Occupant-- was imbued with a special ability. Also, as a result, room 10 was wiped off the face of the earth.

Now comes a detective, Joe Miller (played by Peter Krause), who is given a key to room 10 of the Sunshine Motel by a dying man, and with it we enter the very eclectic world of the Objects and their collectors. Some of the Objects have useful powers; for example, the key opens any door with a doorknob and keyhole to the relatively safe haven of Room 10. When the owner of the key departs the room, he exits to any door of his choice and thus has a means of near-instantaneous transportation. Furthermore, no matter the state of the room or the objects in the room before the door closes, when the door is reopened, the room is "reset" and returns to its original state, such that all new objects are gone (the basics of how this works and its uses are played out quite nicely over the course of the episodes. The writers and thus Miller become quite ingenious about how to use the room). However, some of the objects are less than useful; the radio, when tuned to the right station, makes its user grow three inches taller. And the powers of the objects grow greater and more useful when they are used together.

The primary motivation for the mini-series, however, comes when Krause's daughter goes into the room and it is accidentally reset, so that when Miller opens the door again, she is gone. The rest of the episodes are the convoluted path through this shadow world Miller must take to ensure the safe return of his daughter.

The writers build a serious mythology about the Lost Room and the people who pursue the objects, a sort of underground that the Lone Gunmen in X-Files would appreciate. In fact, a problem with the premise is the question of how such a fantastic subject could remain hidden from the public eye. First off, there are groups of people pursuing the objects--the Legion, who try to get the Objects in order to keep them from falling into the wrong hands, believe that altogether, the Objects pose a threat to the very fabric of reality, and the Order of Reunification, who believe that putting the Objects back together will give them the power to talk to God--not to mention unscrupulous individuals who serve neither side of this conflict. There are also fanboy-types who follow the Objects around from a distance, selling their tracking ability to those who pursue the objects. And finally there are the victims, such as those who have been touched by the bus ticket and find themselves teleported a few feet above the ground at another section of Gallup, New Mexico. As a sort of running joke, people that offend Wally, the holder of the bus ticket, find themselves wandering incredulously around the outskirts of Gallup. And other people must also have been affected by the Objects. So there is a good number of people who know about the Objects, but no one outside these groups *knows* about the Objects. It's an artifice and one that you accept as you watch the show, but after the fact it becomes a little troublesome as you try to work out the logic of it.

The show itself is a marvel of storytelling. Viewers can easily get wrapped up in this bizarre world and find that they care about who might win the probable battle between the factions, but taking a step back, they also realize that they spent an hour of time watching a TV show about a comb. I have to wonder if the creators are having a quiet laugh to themselves about the human ability to become fascinated with the most inane things, especially as this parallels some of the action of the show where various people build virtual shrines to the Objects that they own. The New York Times review of the show (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/arts/television/11heff.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) speculates that the Objects hold power over the viewer because they are the lost objects of a generation gone by, "the things our dads and granddads used to carry, loading them into suit pockets just as they were rushing to mysterious child-free places". But an interview with Krause himself (http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=2&id=39111) seems closer to the truth, people put inordinate value on everyday things, often to the detriment of their relationship with people. This theory plays out over the course of the mini-series; dozens of people are unable to unravel the mysteries of the Lost Room over the course of decades, but they are primarily interested in the Objects as artifacts or power. But Miller unravels it all in a few days because he has a use for those objects--he wants to bring his daughter home. And this is the message that is most important--that Things aren't as important as People unless those Things are used to bring people together.

On the downside, Julianna Margulies plays Jennifer Bloom, a member of the Legion who becomes Miller's romantic interest. On the one hand, I don't know why the story fell into the fairly stereotypical need for a love interest; it certainly adds no value to the story and is only fleetingly played out, almost tangential to the main action. However, at the same time, their interaction typifies the theme as Miller makes another relationship whereas all the other Object pursuers are emotionally or socially stunted in some way. Over the course of the mini-series, it becomes clear that Miller is the only Object hunter that is genuinely liked by every other pursuer he meets.

And of course, being a Sci Fi Channel mini-series, the conclusion is open-ended, making it a perfect back-door pilot for an ongoing series. I fear that a series would be a great deal like Lost or X-Files, where the people who watch it would have their own language that people outside their circle could never understand. But then I think about conversations that I hear at my office, as people congregate on my hall to talk about the latest happenings in the world of House, and I realize that we do form our own societies anyway, with any TV show or any other past-time. Because, as the Lost Room explains, everybody geeks about something.