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shadowkatSaw a bit of a discussion on Doctor Who and Daleks - have a confession to make, part of my problem with Doctor Who is the Daleks. I just can't take the silly things seriously. Every time they appear in an episode, I find myself rolling my eyes, and groaning. They don't scare me. Be a bit like being scared by Robby the Robot. Sorry mutated people rolling around in machines, saying exterminate, exterminate, no matter what - isn't that interesting. Or scary. Scorpius on Farscape - on the other hand - is scary and interesting, so is The Terminator in the first Terminator movie (but not after you've seen the entire series). I'm scared by things that are unpredictable, that can hide, and are clever. The Shadows in Babylon 5 give me nightmares. Daleks - just make me roll my eyes and/or giggle uncontrollably for fifteen minutes. Hmmm, maybe that's part of it - they are supposed to make me giggle? That's not to say Doctor Who doesn't have scary villians - it does, two that were created by Stephen Moffat - the first is the Angels, which literally creeped me out. Blink has got to be one of the scariest hours of tv. Another is the Blood family in S3, the villians who look like scarecrows. And the final one - are the piranahas of the air - which you can only see if the shadow moves. Now those are scary monsters. And all three are close to impossible to defeat. Plus great metaphors. I love the stone angels - that kill you or send you back in time, stuck, if you blink. Nice twist on both the idea of angels, and the idea of gargoyle statues on churches. Another great twist - are the shadow piranha, that live in forests, and are the reason people did not venture in forests at night. They come out of the books which are made of wood. All are creatures of nightmare and fairy tales.
Saw an interesting quote by Stephen Moffat - stating he doesn't see Doctor Who as science fiction so much as a dark fairy tale - the tale that parents tell their children to warn them about the creatures that want to eat them. This was probably why I wasn't watching Doctor Who in the 1970s and 1980s - I tended to steer clear from horror shows back then, because my vivid imagination had a tendency to incorporate the horror tale into dreams at night, making it impossible for me to sleep. Horror stories aren't good for kids with vivid imaginations, we don't need more ideas.
Farscape continues to blow me away. Watched The Ugly Truth last night. Rather interesting episode that contains multiple themes. Farscape like most tv series centers itself around a theme. For Buffy it was growing up and slaying one's demons, specifically those of high school and adolescence. For Star Trek - it was mainly about maintaining a peaceful, harmonious existence and spreading that around you, as well as exploration - a somewhat naive idea, not to mention romantic. Farscape - the theme is about warfare or violence/aggression.
It's a story about a bunch of prisoners or fugitives fleeing a somewhat facist regime of peacekeepers. (The irony of a warmongering race being called "peacekeepers" is intentional - and they of course believe they are justified).
In each episode - they deal with an aspect of war, weapons, violence and how it changes and effects people. John Crichton - an astronaut - starts out as the niave and innocent explorer, pacifist, who does not want a gun and can barely figure out how they work - to a somewhat cynical tortured man, who not only can shoot a gun, but has named it Winona. In the Ugly Truth - Talon, a warship that Moya, a peace-loving vessel who carries no weapons, has given birth to due to tinkering by the peacekeepers - has fired on and destroyed a weapons dealer. No one is certain if Talon fired or someone ordered Talon to fire. A second ship appears and takes Moya's crew, those who'd been aboard Talon and were forced off before Talon fled into custody and proceeds to interrogate them on the destruction of the other ship.
The set design alone will blow your mind. Their prison is as Crichton puts it - a floating hub cap. It may well be the most frightening prison I've seen. It is suspended far above the ground, with apparently nothing but black space beneath. A cage comes up through it like an elevator or lift, transporting the prisoners one by one to the interrogation chamber below. The interrogation takes place in oddly shaped dentist chair, with lights attached and pointed in the prisoner's face, this chair is suspended over water, or what appears to be water, while two heavily robed creatures, with huge hats (they remind me of the robes the workers in rice patties wear with the hats) and walking sticks come forth to interrogate the prisoner, speaking in high, echoing, and squeaky voices. Every once and a while they drip what appears to be acid. When we finally see them, which is towards the end, when Crichton finally is interrogated, they look like melted wax figures, their faces half melted. The story is about perception. When they ask who fired on the ship or how Talon came to fire on their ship - each person provides a different answer. The only two people - we learn later - that know what happened are Aeryn and Crichton.
Crichton attempts to tell the truth, with no axes to grind, exactly what happened, but he is right when he looks at his interogators and states that they merely want a scapegoat like everyone else does. It's the same thing every time. You aren't interested in the truth, you want someone to blame, to put to death. We want justice they claim. We deserve justice. An accident would deprive them of that. And you are all lying, none of your stories match. Well, says Crichton, you have to understand - that is going to be the case no matter what. People perceive things differently. They all think their view is the correct one. Not for us, the aliens claim, we all see things the same. Well, that's not the way it is for the rest of the universe - Crichton declares. But they can't understand his point of view.
In Farscape unlike other series - the ending isn't necessarily a happy one. Talon does not return and save the day. They are not rescued. Stark - one of the newer, supporting characters, sacrifices himself - believing that he did it, and also believing he could survive the aliens method of execution which is partical disbursement - Stark is made up of molecular energy and creates a physical form. But he's not sure if he can survive it, nor are the others - so his death at that point, feels definitely like death. Later, after they've been released and Stark has been disbursed. Crichton, Aeryn, and Moya's Pilot - tell them what happened. Talon had been clued in by Moya as to the nature of the approaching vessels cargo, which is deemed hazardous to leviathans (which is what Moya is) and one of the six cargos they can't carry. Believing his mother was in danger, he fired on and destroyed the ship the moment the manual override controls were released and he had control. Which happened when Crichton prevented Stark from pushing the firing button in a panic. It demonstrates how violence only creates more violence - a series theme of Farscape - that nothing is ever solved with violence, that it doesn't make things better, and it leaves a gaping wound behind. Whether accidental or not.
The other episode that struck me as interesting, is The Locket - this episode is hardly innovative, it is what the leads, Ben Browder and Claudia Black call it in the commentary - the quintessential lets age our leads episode to see what it is like. Every science-fiction series does this at some point - they have their lead grow old magically, then become young again or travel through time, live a full lengthy life and do a RIP Van Winkle.
In Farscape - the ship is stuck in a time pocket or mist, where no one grows old or changes, but the world outside does. Every fifty five cycles - there will be an opening to a portion of space just beyond it, sealed off from the portion they came from. Aeryn flies through it first to check out what is in the mist and ends up stuck for 137 cycles (years) on another planet, far from Moya. She finally is able to return to warn them out of the mist - but to the crew on Moya, she's only been gone an hour. She's lived a full life, and is old. (What is charming in the commentary - is Ben Browder comments on how beautiful Aeryn is, and tells Claudia Black that she is a beautiful as an old woman and convincing. This charms me, because often we get the opposite. Browder's wife is a very lucky woman, she's also extremely talented - and plays multiple supporting parts in the series - you wouldn't know she's his wife unless you were told. Or that it's the same woman. A brilliant character actress. ) At any rate, Crichton chases after Aeryn when she insists on leaving and going back to the planet where she'd resided, because she can't leave her granddaughter, who had come with her to the moon in the transport and the transport is the only way back to the planet from the moon. The moon is inhabitable. The moon - is closest to the opening in the mist and the ability to hear Moya. And the mist opens every 55 cycles. Crichton gets stuck and spends the next 55 years with Aeryn, in love with Aeryn. Even though she is now over 100 years older than he is. She can live 200 cycles.
When they finally return to Moya - Aeryn dies of old age. During this time, she's been wearing a locket that Chiana gave her. Inside the locket she's placed a picture of her true love...which turns out to be Crichton. It's a love story, but an interesting one - in that it is not physical, it is purely based on connection. We never see them kiss or have sex, what we see is their fondness for each other, how they take care of one another, have one another's backs. Even though they never say the words during the episode, you know they love each other and why. It has got to be one of the most beautiful depictions of love that I've seen done on television. Simple and to the point. They are both incredibly old when we see them. Not attractive. And Crichton dreams of space -telling Aeryn that he can't be a farmer or anything else, he was born to be an astronaut, a pilot, to see the stars. It's an interesting character moment and may well explain their connection - for it is the reverse of an earlier conversation between Aeryn and Crichton - where Aeryn tells Crichton she can't change or adapt to another life, she was born to be a pilot, it is all that she wants, all that she dreamed of, it is who she is. And he says she can be more. They complement each other. Light to each other's dark, and dark to each other's light.
I really love this show. Burn Notice, on the other hand, is starting to bore me and may get axed from the old DVR.
Finally, A Clockwork Nebari - a take on, you guessed it, A ClockWork Orange, by way of Stanley Kubrick. Even the gadget they use in this episode is a satirical take on Kubrick's - except here they literally pull the eyes out of the sockets and attack neural drug transmitters to the optical nerves - which will cause a cleansing. Making the recipient docile, not wishing to hurt anyone, and serving the state. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the other tv series that played with Clockwork Orange - except in Buffy the effects weren't temporary.
Here, the Nebari have devised a biological weapon which is carried by their own citizens, Chiana and her brother being amongst them, and sent out into the universe - with the intent of infecting everyone, so that when the Nebari show up, they will be receptive to the Nebari emissaries and allow them to cleanse them and take them over. We will civilize the universe in this manner. (Whedon played with similar ideas in Buffy and Angel, as well as Dollhouse and Firefly, and I've also seen it in Doctor Who - so hardly new). But here, it is a bit different because of how it explores each character. D'Argo is overly apologetic, Aeryn acts like a Stepford Wife, and Crichton a stoner - although it really doesn't work on him and he snaps out of it fast due to the fact that his enemy, Scorpius, has placed a neuro-transmitter in his head which forces him to reject the drugs effects. Scorpie tells him to fight it. Then there's Chiana, who in Taking the Stone - believed her twin brother was dead, only to learn that he isn't and that he is a leader of the resistance - fighting the Nebari's regime. The Nebari believe that everyone should be docile and obey the state. No dirty thoughts. No violence. Their cleansing device - much like Kubrick's - is behavior modification. If you step out of line, a collar around your neck, will send electric shocks through you. Conditioning.
Crichton and Chiana fight it - they don't allow it to control them. Chiana is afraid of the cleansing. And what she is hiding is that her people attempted to use her and her brother to infect the universe. They did not succeed with them - because her brother discovered it and found an antidote.
Biological Warfare - another metaphor for the desire to control others through violence. To stomp out opposition. Our race rules. Farscape deals metaphorically with racial and gender issues. Depicting the psychological complexity. It is a sci-fi series that is most interested in digging around in the dark reaches of the human mind and examining our dark impulses, desires, and pain - as well as our ability to strive to do good, to rise above such things, and not give in.
An episode like the ones before that plays with the brain long after it has been completed. Farscape is one of the few tv series that I feel compelled to rewind and rewatch bits as I'm watching. Wait, I think, that is bloody brilliant, I must see that again.
Saw an interesting quote by Stephen Moffat - stating he doesn't see Doctor Who as science fiction so much as a dark fairy tale - the tale that parents tell their children to warn them about the creatures that want to eat them. This was probably why I wasn't watching Doctor Who in the 1970s and 1980s - I tended to steer clear from horror shows back then, because my vivid imagination had a tendency to incorporate the horror tale into dreams at night, making it impossible for me to sleep. Horror stories aren't good for kids with vivid imaginations, we don't need more ideas.
Farscape continues to blow me away. Watched The Ugly Truth last night. Rather interesting episode that contains multiple themes. Farscape like most tv series centers itself around a theme. For Buffy it was growing up and slaying one's demons, specifically those of high school and adolescence. For Star Trek - it was mainly about maintaining a peaceful, harmonious existence and spreading that around you, as well as exploration - a somewhat naive idea, not to mention romantic. Farscape - the theme is about warfare or violence/aggression.
It's a story about a bunch of prisoners or fugitives fleeing a somewhat facist regime of peacekeepers. (The irony of a warmongering race being called "peacekeepers" is intentional - and they of course believe they are justified).
In each episode - they deal with an aspect of war, weapons, violence and how it changes and effects people. John Crichton - an astronaut - starts out as the niave and innocent explorer, pacifist, who does not want a gun and can barely figure out how they work - to a somewhat cynical tortured man, who not only can shoot a gun, but has named it Winona. In the Ugly Truth - Talon, a warship that Moya, a peace-loving vessel who carries no weapons, has given birth to due to tinkering by the peacekeepers - has fired on and destroyed a weapons dealer. No one is certain if Talon fired or someone ordered Talon to fire. A second ship appears and takes Moya's crew, those who'd been aboard Talon and were forced off before Talon fled into custody and proceeds to interrogate them on the destruction of the other ship.
The set design alone will blow your mind. Their prison is as Crichton puts it - a floating hub cap. It may well be the most frightening prison I've seen. It is suspended far above the ground, with apparently nothing but black space beneath. A cage comes up through it like an elevator or lift, transporting the prisoners one by one to the interrogation chamber below. The interrogation takes place in oddly shaped dentist chair, with lights attached and pointed in the prisoner's face, this chair is suspended over water, or what appears to be water, while two heavily robed creatures, with huge hats (they remind me of the robes the workers in rice patties wear with the hats) and walking sticks come forth to interrogate the prisoner, speaking in high, echoing, and squeaky voices. Every once and a while they drip what appears to be acid. When we finally see them, which is towards the end, when Crichton finally is interrogated, they look like melted wax figures, their faces half melted. The story is about perception. When they ask who fired on the ship or how Talon came to fire on their ship - each person provides a different answer. The only two people - we learn later - that know what happened are Aeryn and Crichton.
Crichton attempts to tell the truth, with no axes to grind, exactly what happened, but he is right when he looks at his interogators and states that they merely want a scapegoat like everyone else does. It's the same thing every time. You aren't interested in the truth, you want someone to blame, to put to death. We want justice they claim. We deserve justice. An accident would deprive them of that. And you are all lying, none of your stories match. Well, says Crichton, you have to understand - that is going to be the case no matter what. People perceive things differently. They all think their view is the correct one. Not for us, the aliens claim, we all see things the same. Well, that's not the way it is for the rest of the universe - Crichton declares. But they can't understand his point of view.
In Farscape unlike other series - the ending isn't necessarily a happy one. Talon does not return and save the day. They are not rescued. Stark - one of the newer, supporting characters, sacrifices himself - believing that he did it, and also believing he could survive the aliens method of execution which is partical disbursement - Stark is made up of molecular energy and creates a physical form. But he's not sure if he can survive it, nor are the others - so his death at that point, feels definitely like death. Later, after they've been released and Stark has been disbursed. Crichton, Aeryn, and Moya's Pilot - tell them what happened. Talon had been clued in by Moya as to the nature of the approaching vessels cargo, which is deemed hazardous to leviathans (which is what Moya is) and one of the six cargos they can't carry. Believing his mother was in danger, he fired on and destroyed the ship the moment the manual override controls were released and he had control. Which happened when Crichton prevented Stark from pushing the firing button in a panic. It demonstrates how violence only creates more violence - a series theme of Farscape - that nothing is ever solved with violence, that it doesn't make things better, and it leaves a gaping wound behind. Whether accidental or not.
The other episode that struck me as interesting, is The Locket - this episode is hardly innovative, it is what the leads, Ben Browder and Claudia Black call it in the commentary - the quintessential lets age our leads episode to see what it is like. Every science-fiction series does this at some point - they have their lead grow old magically, then become young again or travel through time, live a full lengthy life and do a RIP Van Winkle.
In Farscape - the ship is stuck in a time pocket or mist, where no one grows old or changes, but the world outside does. Every fifty five cycles - there will be an opening to a portion of space just beyond it, sealed off from the portion they came from. Aeryn flies through it first to check out what is in the mist and ends up stuck for 137 cycles (years) on another planet, far from Moya. She finally is able to return to warn them out of the mist - but to the crew on Moya, she's only been gone an hour. She's lived a full life, and is old. (What is charming in the commentary - is Ben Browder comments on how beautiful Aeryn is, and tells Claudia Black that she is a beautiful as an old woman and convincing. This charms me, because often we get the opposite. Browder's wife is a very lucky woman, she's also extremely talented - and plays multiple supporting parts in the series - you wouldn't know she's his wife unless you were told. Or that it's the same woman. A brilliant character actress. ) At any rate, Crichton chases after Aeryn when she insists on leaving and going back to the planet where she'd resided, because she can't leave her granddaughter, who had come with her to the moon in the transport and the transport is the only way back to the planet from the moon. The moon is inhabitable. The moon - is closest to the opening in the mist and the ability to hear Moya. And the mist opens every 55 cycles. Crichton gets stuck and spends the next 55 years with Aeryn, in love with Aeryn. Even though she is now over 100 years older than he is. She can live 200 cycles.
When they finally return to Moya - Aeryn dies of old age. During this time, she's been wearing a locket that Chiana gave her. Inside the locket she's placed a picture of her true love...which turns out to be Crichton. It's a love story, but an interesting one - in that it is not physical, it is purely based on connection. We never see them kiss or have sex, what we see is their fondness for each other, how they take care of one another, have one another's backs. Even though they never say the words during the episode, you know they love each other and why. It has got to be one of the most beautiful depictions of love that I've seen done on television. Simple and to the point. They are both incredibly old when we see them. Not attractive. And Crichton dreams of space -telling Aeryn that he can't be a farmer or anything else, he was born to be an astronaut, a pilot, to see the stars. It's an interesting character moment and may well explain their connection - for it is the reverse of an earlier conversation between Aeryn and Crichton - where Aeryn tells Crichton she can't change or adapt to another life, she was born to be a pilot, it is all that she wants, all that she dreamed of, it is who she is. And he says she can be more. They complement each other. Light to each other's dark, and dark to each other's light.
I really love this show. Burn Notice, on the other hand, is starting to bore me and may get axed from the old DVR.
Finally, A Clockwork Nebari - a take on, you guessed it, A ClockWork Orange, by way of Stanley Kubrick. Even the gadget they use in this episode is a satirical take on Kubrick's - except here they literally pull the eyes out of the sockets and attack neural drug transmitters to the optical nerves - which will cause a cleansing. Making the recipient docile, not wishing to hurt anyone, and serving the state. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the other tv series that played with Clockwork Orange - except in Buffy the effects weren't temporary.
Here, the Nebari have devised a biological weapon which is carried by their own citizens, Chiana and her brother being amongst them, and sent out into the universe - with the intent of infecting everyone, so that when the Nebari show up, they will be receptive to the Nebari emissaries and allow them to cleanse them and take them over. We will civilize the universe in this manner. (Whedon played with similar ideas in Buffy and Angel, as well as Dollhouse and Firefly, and I've also seen it in Doctor Who - so hardly new). But here, it is a bit different because of how it explores each character. D'Argo is overly apologetic, Aeryn acts like a Stepford Wife, and Crichton a stoner - although it really doesn't work on him and he snaps out of it fast due to the fact that his enemy, Scorpius, has placed a neuro-transmitter in his head which forces him to reject the drugs effects. Scorpie tells him to fight it. Then there's Chiana, who in Taking the Stone - believed her twin brother was dead, only to learn that he isn't and that he is a leader of the resistance - fighting the Nebari's regime. The Nebari believe that everyone should be docile and obey the state. No dirty thoughts. No violence. Their cleansing device - much like Kubrick's - is behavior modification. If you step out of line, a collar around your neck, will send electric shocks through you. Conditioning.
Crichton and Chiana fight it - they don't allow it to control them. Chiana is afraid of the cleansing. And what she is hiding is that her people attempted to use her and her brother to infect the universe. They did not succeed with them - because her brother discovered it and found an antidote.
Biological Warfare - another metaphor for the desire to control others through violence. To stomp out opposition. Our race rules. Farscape deals metaphorically with racial and gender issues. Depicting the psychological complexity. It is a sci-fi series that is most interested in digging around in the dark reaches of the human mind and examining our dark impulses, desires, and pain - as well as our ability to strive to do good, to rise above such things, and not give in.
An episode like the ones before that plays with the brain long after it has been completed. Farscape is one of the few tv series that I feel compelled to rewind and rewatch bits as I'm watching. Wait, I think, that is bloody brilliant, I must see that again.
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Date: 2010-07-01 04:55 pm (UTC)In that arc - the characters flip a bit.
Crichton talks the mercernary Tablex, who has become peaceful and against killing, into taking up his weapon and again and firing for the cause. And we see the flashback sequence of pacificist Cricton in his white ISASA threads attempting a peaceful negotiation.
Aeryn attempts to talk Crais into employing Talon as a weapon to aid in her fight to take down the shadow deposit base and save Crichton from Scorpius. Last season she was fighting Crais and telling him not to use Talon as a weapon.
Crais states the general theme - "Officer Sun - no matter what your justifications, violence merely leads to worse violence. There is no other outcome. There is no good justification..." Coming from Crais it is highly ironic. Crais and Crichton have flipped by the end, Crais is sane, and Crichton is insane and unable to leave Scorpius without help. By Die Dichotomy Scorpie appears to have taken over.
(I apparently have a weakness for stories about tortured male heroes going insane, being rescued by strong women. It's the Snow Queen complex.)