This is a nice little story, picking up from the original Frankenstein story.
Thoughtfully made, and with a nice twist. The diary form works ok, though the title gives away a part of the plot.
6/10
Having watched the first episode of the “new Who” Silurian story, “The Hungry Earth” I decided to take a look at the very first Silurian story, I happened to have it on DVD in the “Beneath the Surface” box set.
Now, when overcoming the rather poor technical quality (thank you very much BBC for deleting the tapes) and thus the poor video quality, this is a very good story.
The memory of my early Doctor Who (before the “new series” is mainly of Jon Pertwee, and I do recall to have seen some nice stories.
Early Who mostly has a lot of running through corridors etc (well, new Who does, too), chased by monsters. While looking monster-like, the Silurians are not really that much different in attitudes from humans, making them more interesting adversaries.
This is more so true of the escalating military part of the conflict, so well commented by the Doctor.
The end is rather sad, and perhaps that is reflected in “The Hungry Earth”, seeing the Doctor’s attitude towards the Silurians.
Finally I decided to become a “supporting member” of Worldcon2010 (Aussiecon).
This means that I have been downloading the “Hugo Voter Package” with the majority of the material nominated for the Hugo Awards. When unpacked this amounts to a whopping 700MB, including 5-6 each of Novels, Novellettes, Novellas and Short Stories, as well as a fair bit of Fan and pro magazines, fan and pro artworks.
Last year I started out with reading the novels ( the short stories had already been listened to as podcasts ) and I think that was somewhat of a mistake, since I never got to anything shorter than the novels (apart from the short stories) before the time to vote had come.
This year the plan is to go the opposite way, so I started looking at the:
Fan Artist category in the package :
Brad W. Foster,
David Howell,
Steve Stiles and
Taral Wayne
All were nominated for graphics art in different styles, except David Howell who designed the base for the 2009 Hugo award.
David Howell will be my choice of Fan Artist for the Hugo Awards 2010. I like the design a lot and I think he deserves to be recognized for the work he did.
Will I be disappointed if someone else wins ? Not at all, this just reflects my preference.
Today I went to a small scifi convention in Copenhagen.
The DanCon is a one day convention with a single thread, all going on i one room. It is organised by one of the Danish Science fiction societies, Science Fiction Cirklen. Everything was going on in Danish.
The con opened with a very nice panel discussion on “Tendencies English language short stories”, with a few examples of authors old and new.
After lunch we had a very nice presentation on medical science of the future, seen in the light of Star Trek technology, quite entertaining with a few examples illustrating how far we have already come and where we are behind the ST tech. An interesting fact is that the “hypospray” of ST had already been invented and tested some years before the original series aired.
The rest of the afternoon we had a presentation of the older British comic strip “Dan Dare”, a presentation of Anime
The afternoon ended with a presentation of the classic scifi magazine Astounding (before Campbell), an interesting insight into the scifi of the 30’s.
I found that I might have a subject for a presentation on a following con, so I am afraid I may have some work to do until then.
All in all a very enjoyable day meeting scifi friends in Denmark.
A web story by Joss Whedon.
After having heard most people rave about this little show I finally got the DVD and watched the thing.
The beginning is quite funny, but for me the fun wears off quite quickly. I find it too repetitive and to me that gets boring. I probably have heard too much hype about how hilarious this is.
I have no problem with the production as such, and it probably deserved winning in its Hugo category.
It just did not bring much *to me*.
Sorry about that, guys. Don’t let this take away any of your enjoyment of the show.
6/10 on the Lurker’s scale
From the beginning of the first new season I have always loved the episodes written by Steven Moffat, from ‘The Empty Child’/’The Doctor Dances’ over ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ and the brilliant ‘Blink’ to this double episode. I am looking forward to see what he will bring to the series as show runner.
Like the other stories (when they were written) this story stands a bit by itself in the Doctor Who time line.
We find The Doctor and Donna arriving (in the 51th century) at a planet full of books. In essence it is a library of all known books, known just as The Library. Something is very wrong, since the library seems completely empty. Well, there are the books, but no people at all, just a cryptic computerized warning message ‘Count the Shadows !’ .
Another party arrives, with among others, a certain professor River Song who appears to have a past with The Doctor, in his future. It turns out she even knows the name of The Doctor, something unheard of in the series until now, of course not counting The Doctor posing as John Smith, clearly an alias.
The “monster” of this story is the invisible, but very deadly Vashta Nerada, residing in the shadows and being a kind of “piranhas of darkness”.
In the story we learn enough to know why the Vashta Nerada act like they do, and of course The Doctor, aided by professor Song saves the vast majority of the people trapped on the planet.
The Little girl, living an imaginary life, does raise the questions of “what is reality” when Doctor Moon tells her that the life she thinks of as her own is not real .
For me the story has the best of the elements creating a good Who adventure, a good “monster”, a mystery or two, some good characters accompanying the Doctor, etc.
This was my first choice in the category for the Hugo Awards 2009. ‘Dr Horrible’ won that one, and that is fine.
‘Spoilers !!’ (River Song)
9/10 on the Lurker’s scale
One of my favourite quotes from Babylon 5 comes from the ISN news item where President Clark has declared Martial Law and the Mars colony does not follow suit.
“Mars has rejected Martial Law”
It has always amused me in the midst of all the seriousness of the situation, if you do not know why – think of what is the origin of the term Martial Law.
It refers to the Roman God of War – yes Mars, Martial, so it becomes a sort of a contradictory sentence.
Hugo Nominee 2009 Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.
This is Russell T. Davies’ writing at its best, aided by Graeme Harper’s directing. With all due respect for his team reviving Doctor Who Davies’ writing has not always been the best during the new Who era – probably due to the pressure of being the show runner.
While we have seen indications of inner strength in Donne Noble, this episode pulls all that to the fore. She has a little help from a friend she did not know she had : Rose. This is, for now, the culmination of the small glimpses we have had of Rose since the beginning of the season
The story finds Donna tricked into living a version of history where she did not meet the Doctor, and it is not a pretty picture. Guided by Rose from a different reality she finds her inner strength to change history back to what we know from the third season of the 10th Doctor.
The story has a good deal of fine drama, some fine character development of Donna, and a stunning conclusion, as a prelude to the two final episodes.
I consider this episode better than the two final ones, although I find those quite good as well.
This is certainly one of my favourites of the season, mainly rivaled by the double episode ‘Silence in the Library’/’Forest of the Dead’
9/10 on the lurker’s scale.
A few months ago I had a chat with Charles Stross at a small convention in Copenhagen. He did express his dislike of space opera at that time, though I had no idea he would later write such a scathing attack on this subgenre, beginning with his viewing of the Star Trek: Next Generation pilot episode “Encounter at Farpoint”.
Here is what he considers the most important part :
“The biggest weakness of the entire genre is this: the protagonists don’t tell us anything interesting about the human condition under science fictional circumstances. The scriptwriters and producers have thrown away the key tool that makes SF interesting and useful in the first place, by relegating “tech” to a token afterthought rather than an integral part of plot and characterization. What they end up with is SF written for the Pointy-Haired [studio] Boss, who has an instinctive aversion to ever having to learn anything that might modify their world-view. The characters are divorced from their social and cultural context; yes, there are some gestures in that direction, but if you scratch the protagonists of Star Trek you don’t find anything truly different or alien under the latex face-sculptures: just the usual familiar and, to me, boring interpersonal neuroses of twenty-first century Americans, jumping through the hoops of standardized plot tropes and situations that were cliches in the 1950s.” (emphasis added).
Part 1 : He has recently written “Saturn’s Children : A Space Opera”. I did read this novel as part of my preparation for voting, since it was nominated for the Hugo Award, and I found it a good, solid story, though not my favourite of the four I got to read.
If you have not read Saturn’s Children, and plan to do it here follows a [SPOILER ALERT] brief description of the story :
The robots are travelling the Solar System. They were created by humans because humans are very fragilec reatures, not very suited for space travel. Of course, robots are the servants of humans, to such a degree that humans forgot to live their life, and are extinct at the time the story begins.
The main character is an obsolete sex robot (humanity extinct, remember), trying to find a “life” of her own, being whirled into a dangerous adventure.
I do like the twist at the end, but will not spoil it here.
[/END SPOILER]
Come to think of it, this story actually has some interesting parallels, in particular with the new “Battlestar Galactica” (BSG). some inetesting differences as well. In both stories humanity has created sentient robots to serve their purpose. In Saturn’s Children the robots were extensively programmed with Asimov’s rules for robots, yet indirectly caused the extinction of humanity – apparently that was not the case in BSG, since the Cylons rebelled, almost bringing on the extinction of humanity.
Part 2 of the irony : (remember : “the protagonists don’t tell us anything interesting about the human condition under science fictional circumstances”).
If we take Stross’ complaint seriously (and literally), Stross himself should have this complaint about his own story, because (a) the main character is a robot and (b) humanity is extinct
On top of that, BSG does exactly what he requires of a good SF story, dealing with the human condition under conceivable (but not existing) circumstances.
Interesting, indeed.
Here is a comment I made to Charles Stross’ blog post about scifi genre TV.
I find his views rather extreme, though he has, in part retracted his “hate” of B5, and some of the comments he makes are actually a bit on the comical side. Read his post and judge for yourself. I think he makes some sweeping generalisations that do not hold water.
I will add more comments later (yes I have some comments on the irony of what he has posted)
Comment :
*****
As someone possibly more dated as you, Charlie, allow me a few comments on your post.
Apologies for the lengthy comment. If you feel the need, please feel free to edit for length. I will be posting on the subject in more detail on my own blog as well.
I met you and had a bit of a chat at the small con in Copenhagen a few months ago, so I was aware of your dislike of space opera. I am, however, a bit surprised at the strength of that dislike.
I, for one actually like space opera. That you do not is not a problem, we just have to agree to disagree on that.
Since you base the main part of your reasoning about the ST:TNG pilot and the of the Trek derivates, I will start there. You saw some of it and hated it. Then you continue :
– “Babylon Five? Ditto. Battlestar Galactica? Didn’t even bother turning on the TV. I HATE THEM ALL.” (my emphasis)
I see your main complaints as the following (here limited to ST, BSG abd B5, since you imply that they all have exactly the same flaws) :
– “Technobabble”. Agreed, my least favourite aspect of Star Trek. ([tech] the [tech], how awful). I think we can agree that it is most often used as Deus ex Machina in Star Trek.
– “…hit the reset switch at the end of every episode”
– “Sometimes they make at least a token gesture towards a developing story arc but it’s frequently pathetic”
All too true for the majority of Star Trek episodes, even though there are some gems where the technobabble is hardly present and not a part of “the resolution”. Example : “The Inner light” where we get the story of how humans dealt with the situation of a dying ecosphere of their planet (even if they did not survive, they were at least able to tell the story).
I find that none of the above points are true for B5 or BSG, though BSG’s arc seems to have been on hold for a season or two.
Babylon 5 has a planned 5 year overarcing story (with a number of sub-arcs), with excursions into the distant past and distant future, this can hardly be seen as “a token gesture”, even if the last two years had to be compressed into one season, making it truly a 4 year arc due to studio decisions. Not ideal, but the arc was, in general, completed. What came after, when the studio revised its decision is a bit of an afterthought, and filling in some blanks in the original story. Actually, B5 has the structure of a novel, it has just been presented in the audiovisual format.
The BSG ending twist is certainly not very original, it literally has the taste of Deus ex Machina.
– “The biggest weakness of the *entire genre* is this: the protagonists don’t tell us anything interesting about the human condition under science fictional circumstances.”
How can you make such a sweeping generalisation if you have not seen them ? In conjunction with the above statement of “hate them all” I fell that it would be akin to saying “20 years ago I met this [insert *ethnic identity* of choice]. He pissed me off to no end, so now I hate all [*ethnic identity*], – after all they are all the same”. I think we all know what this sounds like, and I doubt that was your intention.
Finally, here comes the biggest surprise for me :
– “….modern audiences want squids in space, with added lasers!”
WHAT !? You can not be serious ! … If this is not a massively sweeping generalisation, I do not know what is. I am glad not every TV viewer in the world sees that statement. Are you psychic (and did not tell us), since you seem to know what all of the TV audience wants ? 😉
I should, however thank you, Charlie, since your post here has given me some input to an article comparing B5 and ST, you know, what it has in common and what not.
I have a few more things to say, but it is already a long comment, so that will have to wait.