Category Archives: Television

The Doomsday Machine is not Dead

Masters of the Air Rekindled my Annoyance with The Eternals

(Minor Spoilers follow)

In the final episode of Masters of the Air Major ‘Rosie’ Rosenthal (Nate Mann) after being rescued by the Soviet Army following the crash of his B-17 sees with his own eyes a death camp that the Nazis had operated. This naturally has a massive impact on the pilot, but the scene also reawakened an irritation I had with the superhero film The Eternals.

The conceit of The Eternals is that a small group of immortal being and the source of many myths and legends have live with humanity from before history shaping and guiding our development. One of these beings is Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) whose particular gift to humanity is teaching us technology.

Phastos’ faith in humanity is shattered with our use of technology and this is exemplified in the movie by having him break down crying amid the rubble of Hiroshima.

Yes, the nuclear bombs kill hundreds of thousands. Yes, they were the very cutting edge of science and technology at the time. But millions were murdered by the Nazis in Europe, millions. Their murders did not end the war, their murders were the point of the war. Murder on such a scale is impossible with the technology of industrialization. The vast incomprehensible scale of it is only achievable with the industrial revolution.

One can argue the terrible ‘trolley problem’ of ending the war in the Pacific with nuclear weapons. Would it have been more moral to forego the atomic attacks and launch a ground invasion that would have almost certainly cost far more lives? That’s a debate that cannot be resolved because it is a personal value judgement, but the slaughter of the innocent in camps built only for death? That is undebatable. That is a clear and perverse corruption of technology and that is what should have shattered Phastos belief in humanity.

Partial Series Review: The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin

Apple+

With the crushing news that Our Flag Means Death is not renewed for a third season many in fandom had their moods depressed as the loss of the irreverent, gloriously queer, ahistorical pirate series. They may find some so solace in Apple+’s original program The Completely Made-up Adventures of Dick Turpin.

Like Taika Waititi’s pirate series Dick Turpin is inspired by an actual historical persona, a highwayman whose status and legend are more products of vivid exaggeration that his actual crimes and exploits.

Starring comedian/actor Noel Fielding as Dick Turpin. An imaginative man desperate to be something other than a butcher’s son Dick leaves home and becomes a highwayman and member of the Essex Gang, the nearly worst rated gang of highway thieves in the area. Together with the oddball members of the gang, Turpin engages in hijinks as a highwayman while dodging a local Lord and the godfather of organized crime Lord Wilde (Hugh Bonneville.)

While not as flamboyantly queer as Our Flag Means Death, Dick Turpin manages a modern sensibility and pacing in its humor. Despite its 18th century setting the characters and tone are decidedly 21st century. Produced in the United Kingdom, the series is populated with familiar actors and comedians if you are a bit of an Anglophile. The crime and violence are played for laughs, and it is not the sort of program that will leave you with deep questions about the nature of life and humanity but rather help you spend half an hour not thinking about such deep subjects. It is escapism but there are times when that is your highest duty to yourself and your sanity.

The first two of six episodes are already available to stream with the remaining four being delivered on a weekly basis as is the standard practice for Apple+ programing. If you have access and need to forget the terrible mess that is our current world you could do far worse than engrossing yourself in The Completely Made-up Adventures of Dick Turpin.

Ellison’s Cynicism & The City On The Edge of Forever

Paramount Studios/CBS Home Video

The City on the Edge of Forever the 28th episode of season one from Star Trek (The Original Series) is a celebrated and award-winning episode of classic television collecting both the Hugo for short form Dramatic Presentation and the Writers Guild Of American award for Best Episodic Drama on Television.

After suffering a mishap while the Enterprise investigates disturbances in time from a long dead world, Doctor McCoy to hurled into the past where his presence changes history erasing the United Federation of Planets’ existence, forcing Kirk and Spock to follow McCoy to set right the course of the universe.

The original script was penned by famed and mercurial author Harlan Ellison but for production the screenplay had been rewritten, by uncredited story editor D.C. Fontana, at the producers request. The rewrite dissatisfied Ellison producing a rift between him and the producers that lasted decades. Ellison eventually would publish his own account of the production in book form that included his original script.

I have watched the original episodes many many times since the 1970s and I have read Ellison’s original script. Both are wonderfully written but Fontana’s is decidedly more in the tone of Star Trek.

Spoilers follow.

The crucial element of history that McCoy upset is saving the life of a pacifist, Edith Keeler, which delayed America’s entry into the Second World War allowing Germany to emerge victorious. Kirk, having fallen in love with Edith, is torn between his duty to preserve history and prevent a NAZI future and his emotional need to save the woman he has come to love.

In Ellison’s version, Spock, the inhuman, coldly logical alien holds both men. Kirk and McCoy, back, preventing them from saving her and reestablishing the proper shape of time.

In Fontana’s script Kirk seizes McCoy, stopping him from saving Edith, but is emotionally devastated by his course of action.

Dramatically speaking I have held and continue to hold that Fontana’s ending is simply better. It costs Spock nothing to do the right thing. Alien and detached from the pull of emotion, Spock’s action has no more dramatic weight that a piece of automated machinery performing a programmed function. Kirk, forced at great emotional pain and trauma, stopping McCoy is the sort of event that forever changes a character and change lives at the heart of drama.

None of this is new thinking on my part. It’s been my conclusion for nearly 30 years since I read the original script. That said thinking further upon the story and Ellison’s ending I do think that there is another aspect to this that is fascinating.

What is the thematic core of Ellison’s ending? Why was he drawn to that particular resolution?

It is possible that the answer is that Ellison held a very dark and cynical view of humanity.

While I have not read all of Ellison’s work, I have read a number of his well-crafted short stories and dark is common element. Rarely if ever did Ellison descend in joy over terror and crushing failure.

It’s possible, either by authorial intent or predilection, that Ellison’s ending reflects a deep sense that humanity, that people, are incapable of overcoming their selfish needs and desires for a greater good. That flawed and weak humanity will always fail to destroy the One Ring and choose themselves over others.

If that’s the reason Ellison went with his ending it makes even more clear that deep and unbridgeable divide between himself and Roddenberry. Roddenberry believed in humanity’s perfectibility. That a future without the irrational failings of racism and selfness was possible and Ellison’s ending reject all of that. It is an ending that asserts people will choose their own happiness even at the cost of uncounted millions.

Series Review: Monsieur Spade

AMC and Studio Canal

Set some twenty-odd years after the events of The Maltese Falcon Monsieur Space follows famed private detective Sam Spade (Clive Owen) as a retired man of luxury in the South of France. Originally drawn to the small village of Bozouls fulfilling a task for a former flame Sam has settled into a comfortable life but dogged by loss. When brutal murders at as local orphanage, a missing child, and the teenage daughter of his former love becomes intertwined Sam is forced to once again practice his profession in a town bursting with secrets worth killing over.

Co-created by Scott Frank (The Queen’s Gambit) and Tom Fontana (Oz) this series has the writing pedigree to be peak television but sadly stumbles right at the finish line.

Clive Owen does a quite good job in his portrayal of Spade, a man who has suffered too much emotional trauma and wants nothing more than to swim in his pool, alone. The cast, a collection of French and British actors for the most part, are well suited for their roles and inhabit their diverse, complex, and secretive lives quite well. The problem with the series really lives in the final episode.

It is said that every story begins with a promise. A contract between the teller and audience about what sort of story is being shared and violating that contract loses the audience. Genre often cements the nature of that promise. With detective fiction an element of that promise is that the detective will by reason, logic, and pure skill, untangle to the web of lies revealing the truth. Holmes will explain it all to Watson and justice arrives with our satisfaction.

Monsieur Spade breaks this inherent promise of mystery stories. The final episode, seemingly in a mad rush to wrap up all story and plotline before the hour has ended, resolves by nearly a Deus ex machina sidelining the protagonist with Spade no more essential to the resolution that the police detectives lectured by the private detective. Frank and Fontana are talented writers with enormous gifts for character and story, so this collapse of basic writing seems far out of character. Television and film are complex mediums for telling stories and all sorts of events can intrude on a production forcing last minute changes that degrade the final product. Perhaps that is what happened here. Whatever the cause Monsieur Spade after flying true for several episodes untimely missed the target entirely.

Monsieur Spade streams on AMC+.

More Series Impressions: Monsieur Spade

AMC Studios & Studio Canal

It is the early 1960s and private detective Sam Spade (Clive Owen) is a rich retired gentleman living in comfort and ease on an estate in the south of France. Spade had come to France’s Mediterranean coast delivering a young girl to a family that denied her paternity and ended up in a place where he believed he might finally find peace. However, with the return of a renowned troublemaker Same is thrust into the middle of a grisly mass murder and once again must prove himself the master detective.

I have been a fan of The Maltese Falcon since I was exposed to its brilliance in a film class back in the early 80s. I own a copy on Blu-ray disc and of course I have read the novel. When I heard that Scott Frank, the creator and showrunner for The Queens Gambit, was creating a series about a retired Sam Spade my interest shot up like a rocket.

Monsieur Spade, much like The Queens Gambit, reveals its story by use of a fractured timeline, covering both Spade’s arrival in the small French town and his comfortable life a few years after. One does not need to have seen or closely remember The Maltese Falcon in order to enjoy this well-produced series, but having such information fresh or well-recalled will enhance your viewing experience as characters and locals from that classic film and novel are referenced. The events of the adventure may yet play a major role in the unfolding mystery but as of the 90-minute pilot episode they provide color for the character.

Owen makes a very credible Spade. That are moment when the costuming, hair, make-up, and framing recall Bogart’s interpretation of the character quite strongly. The episodes were produced in France and utilizes a number of that nation’s actors helping cement a realism about the time and place of the tale. The premier episode, while carrying the heavy load of establishing characters and their history, and there is a large number of characters with interlocking backstories to follow, manages to be compelling drama in its own right and has hooked me for the rest of the series.

Monsieur Spade streams on AMC and AMC+.

Series Impressions: Masters of the Air

I am calling this post an impression because I do not feel I and anyone can fairly review any piece when it remains incomplete. I may return after the series finishes its run and give my opinion on its totality.

Apple TV+

Masters of the Air is the third limited series production from Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg about the Second World War. The first series, Band of Brothers followed ‘Easy Company’ an Infantry Regiment during their combat in the European theater while the second, The Pacific followed Marines during their island campaigns against Imperial Japan. This show follows the 100th Bombard Group, the ‘Bloody 100’, flying B-17s into occupied Europe on dangerous and costly missions. The Group earned their nickname after suffering extremely high losses in the first few months of the deployment into action.

The story focuses on a pair of friends Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven (Austin Butler) and John ‘Bucky’ Egan (Callum Turner). Writing advice would tell you not to created characters with similar names but history cares not for your rules of writing.

The first pair of episodes, released together, covers the Group arrival in England, illustrating that now dangers come from active combat missions as faulty navigation and mechanical failures can be as deadly as well, through the first mission pair of combat missions into the continent and the Norwegian coast. Along with Buck and Bucky the audience is introduced to a number of characters, Harry ‘Croz’ Crosby (Anthony Boyle) a navigator that suffers from airsickness, Curtis Biddick (Barry Keoghan) a fellow ‘Fort’ commander, and others.

The characters of the series are in general likeable and differentiated enough as to feel like distinct people. The production values are topflight with perhaps the best depiction of ‘flak’ anti-aircraft fires I have seen. Anti-aircraft artillery is ground based cannons firing shells into the flight path of the aircraft timed to explode at the target’s altitude, throwing up a curtain shrapnel in an attempt to damage or destroy the planes. It’s tell-tale sign are the sudden black clouds that appear in the air when the shells detonate. In previous films and shows the deadly black clouds are nearly always all that you get but with modern visual effects and utilizing On-Set Virtual Production, such as has been employed by The Mandalorian and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, can the terror and helplessness of the bomber crews can truly be recreated.

While I had little interest in following group troops through their horrific ordeals in Europe and the island hoping campaign in the Pacific, I look forward to the remaining seven episodes of Masters of the Air.

Masters of the Air streams on Apple TV+.

TV Review: Monarch: Legacy of Monsters

Apple TV+

Set in the American Kaiju-verse, (Godzilla (2014), Kong: Skull Island, and Godzilla vs Kong (2021), the series by use of a split timeline narrative, explores both the founding of the Kaiju hunting organization Monarch and the bureaucracy that had become ossified over the decades.

The founding storyline centers on Keiko, a Japanese scientist, Bill, an American Cryptozoologist, and Lee Shaw, an American Army officer assigned as security to Keiko. Together that discover the threat of the Kaiju, which the series names ‘Titans’ and battling the headwinds of racism and national security driven paranoia establish Monarch.

The ‘current’ storyline follows Cate, a traumatized survivor of Godzilla’s battle in San Francisco and granddaughter of Bill and Keiko, Kentaro, an artist from Tokyo and another grandchild of the founders of Monarch, May, a computer scientist on the run with a mysterious past. The siblings, along with May, search for their missing father with the aid of an elderly, but with an unexplained vigor, Lee.

To bridge the twin timelines with the character Lee, the producers cast actual father and son actors Kurt Russell as the elder Lee and Wyatt Russell as the younger version of the character.

The series does a decent job of balancing the doubled plot threads, though the choice to tell the historical timeline out of narrative order can lead to some confusion as that cotemporary timeline, aside from a flashback or two, is presented in a standard linear fashion. The characters and performances in both threads are decent and engaging with more Kaiju action presented that what might be expected from a television series. The big man himself, Godzilla, is not held back for a guest appearance in the series’ finale but is utilized, sparingly, as needed throughout the first season. The show has enough mystery and character to carrying interest without ever forgetting that this is set in a world where gigantic monsters exist. If you are looking for non-stop Kaiju wrestling then the series is likely to disappoint but I found it fun, entertaining, and with just enough character to make it worth the watch.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters streams on Apple TV+

A Late Christmas Gift

A gift my sweetie-wife ordered from the UK arrived this weekend, a six-disc collection of the BBC’s Ghost Stories For Christmas. A series of television productions, many which are adaptation of stories by M.R. James, that we have been wanting to watch for some time.

We have started in on any of them yet because we are completing the annual marathon of the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings. Man, 20 years old but they still hold up. After that we will be exploring the spooky, uncanny, and horrifying.

2023 A Personal Review

The year, as we in the west number it, is coming to a close and that is a time for reflection. This year has seen triumph and tragedy in my personal life, much like the years that preceded it and that will follow.

In January I began the world building work for my next science-fiction novel, a dystopic and cynical story set on the corporate cities of Mars under the thumb of a once brilliant billion now degenerated into madness and paranoia. With it set only a hundred years into the future that required lots of research and planning to keep from making myself appear too foolish. This month also saw a dear friend of nearly 40 years struck with a terrible wasting degenerative neuro-muscular disease.

February saw the released of a pair of films that I thoroughly enjoyed, Megan a fun take on the killer doll cliche and Cocaine Bear which delivered precisely what was labeled on the tin.

In March I continued the work on my Mars novel and endured the lackluster Antman and The Wasp: Quantum Mania and the even less enjoyable 65 but was treated to the spirited and fun Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

April saw the historic event of a former President of the United States charged with crimes and his party lash themselves to the mast of his sinking ship. Sadly, nothing in the intervening 8 months changed and they remain devoted to his insurrection and criminality. April was also when I began thinking seriously that the time was right for someone to revisit the werewolf as presented in 1941’s The Wolf-Man with particular attention to the fascism in the subtext.

May was a birth month, a celebration if you wanted of my own and the experimental scene I wrote for a very vague and unformed concept of a werewolf novel. After its reception at my writers group and with their encouragement I continued on past that scene and unwittingly started writing a novel without a prepared outline.

In June I watched Asteroid City a strange almost poetic film nearly devoid of any traditional plot and yet strangely compelling. All world building work ceased as the werewolf novel took over all of my creative CPU cycles.

July was a very good month for movies with the release of Oppenheimer and Barbie both film outstanding in their quality with resonate themes of deep importance. My sweetie-wife and I finished the TV series Silo and agreed it had been a waste of time and talent as had Marvel’s Secret Invasion. It was about this time that I began to seriously consider that my unplanned novel was not going to crash and burn and might actually get finished.

In August The unplotted novel passed 40,000 word and my sweetie-wife and I discovered the delightful Australian murder/comedy series Deadloch a real hidden treasure on Amazon Prime.

September witnessed the passing of that dear friend diagnosed in January and once again the hard terrible lesson of life is that it ends. The movies of this month, A Haunting in Venice, and The Annual secret morgue of genre films, did little to mitigate the sadness of that period.

With October I became confident enough in my werewolf novel to reach out to a former editor and pitch him the book. He expressed an interest but also cautioned I would need a pen name for it. The Annual Enrollment Period (AEP) for Medicare Advantage enrollment started and the day-job became more stressful and busier but work on the novel continued.

November was a pleasant month. Two enjoyable features at the theater, The Marvels and Next Goal Wins provided comfort cinema, the annual sf convention LosCon provided friends and geek infusions as well as seeing to completion of the novel first draft.

That brings us to December, I closed out in theater film watching with the fantastic Godzilla Minus 1, abandoned the series The Crown as the Charles and Diana story held little interest for me, and turned my manuscript over to my darling sweetie-wife for her red pen of corrections.

As I said at the outset, 2023 held triumph and tragedy and now onto 2024.

Robert Mitchell Evans

Literary Saboteur