Land of the Lost: 'Pylon Express'

Land of the Lost: 'Album'

There is trouble brewing in the Land of the Lost. For starters, an unknown animal is coming into the Marshalls' cave at night and eating their stores; and then there is a strange buzzing noise that only Will can hear, that draws him to the Lost City.

In the Lost City, Will finds something that looks like a matrix table of the sort Enik used to open the time portal, but made with colored stones instead of the stones. On the floor is a pulsing blue crystal. When Will picks it up, a nearby doorway fills with mist -- as when Enik showed each of the Marshalls their deepest fears -- and in it he sees a woman beckoning him to come closer, whom he recognizes as his deceased mother.

Holly, who has been working on a trap to catch the animal eating their stores, eventually hears the buzzing; and she and Will go to the Lost City together. Holly sees their mother too, after she picks up the blue crystal. Will speculates that they've found a time portal has opened to a point where their mother is still alive, and that they see her through a mist because they don't remember her well. Their mother fades from view, and they return to their cave.

Rick Marshall notices how despondent his children have become, and when they wander off to the Lost City together the next morning, he fellows them. There he discovers that the whole thing is a trap. The Sleestak are using the blue crystal to show the Marshalls what they most love, as a way to draw them in, so they can feed them to the Sleestak god at the bottom of the pit. Rick frees his children, tackles two Sleestak and pushes them into the pit, and leads his family to safety.

Back at their cave, he explains to the children how the Sleestak trap worked; and Holly abandons her own efforts to trap the animal coming for their food.

What I loved about this episode:

It's tightly written. The subplot about trapping the animal synchs nicely with the larger plot about trapping the Marshalls. Rick explains to Holly that a good trap relies on offering the animal something it wants but doesn't already have easy access to. The Sleestak offer the Marshall children not just a loving parent, but a loving parent whom they have lost.

Family ties. There has been no mention the entire series that I can recall to the children's mother. Why wasn't she on the "routine expedition?" We're never told, until this episode, when we find out that she died, years ago. I can think of few things more upsetting to young children than the thought of losing a parent, particularly a mother. But that's what happened here. A 1974 children's Saturday morning show actually gave us a widowed father raising his children. Even more daringly, while the mirage of their mother is alluring enough to draw the Marshall children close, the trap doesn't work until the children believe they're seeing Rick.

The Sleestak. They don't move particularly fast, they hiss a lot, their aim with crossbows is terrible, and frankly they walk like they're grown men trying to move around in rubber suits. But they are cold-blooded, vicious, and evil to the core. When the Marshall children believe that they are walking through the Lost City with their father, the camera keeps showing us brief snatches of what is happening: A Sleestak is leading two trusting children to their intended deaths. I'm 45, and it still creeped me out.

I keep saying it, but it bears repeating. "The Land of the Lost" was an intelligently written TV series for children. Forty years after its initial broadcast, this remains a show that children and adults can watch and enjoy together in a way they can with few others.


Forget the Will Ferrell attempt to make a comedy about this show. It deserves a serious and respectful treatment, either as a new kids show revisiting the concept as respectfully as its original incarnation did, or as a serious show for the adults who grew up watching Spencer Milligan and his castmates.

land of the lost: 'the stranger'

Self-control, and what that means, is at the heart of "The Stranger," the sixth episode of the classic "Land of the Lost" TV show.

Written by Star Trek alumnus Walter Koenig, "The Stranger" is where we start to see just how complex a sci-fi world David Gerrold created for this children's show. The episode begins with Holly and Will bickering as siblings will, while their father tries to keep the peace. They carry their fight as they go looking for food, and find a glowing crystal that converts the children's mutual hostility into actual physical pushing.

The crystal, it turns out, is called the Mageti. It is a stone that can operate the time portals in the Land of the Lost. The Marshalls are attacked by six Sleestak, and then rescued by Enik, a brown-skinned creature that looks like a Sleestak and claims to be an Altrusian from the future, descended from the Sleestak. The Mageti responds to emotions, but as a safeguard against violence, it self-destructs in the presence of too much hostility.

Enik acknowledges he theoretically could send the Marshalls home, but claims it would be too complex a calculation and refuses; besides, he needs the Mageti to return to his own time period. Will, predictably, becomes outraged; and in the ensuing fight for control of the Mageti, it explodes.

As it turns out, Enik possesses a stone that is a second Mageti, but it lacks a power source. The Marshalls lead Enik to the Lost City, where they soon find a gemstone to power Enik's Mageti; and Enik discovers that the Sleestak are not his ancestors, but the descendants of his people. He speculates that his people lost control of their emotions and descended into ignorance and savagery.

Another fight breaks out over the new Mageti, and this time Enik summons a psychoactive mist that subjects the Marshalls to their worst fears. Rick resists, and tells Enik that perhaps his people fell into the Sleestak not because they failed to control their anger and hate, but because they failed to display compassion and mercy. Persuaded, Enik releases the Marshalls and they let him return to his own time to warn his people of the danger facing them.

What I like about this episode:

Real sci-fi: OK, the matrix tables were pretty poor special effects; but this is some complex stuff. Interdimensional portals. Time travel. Evolution, and de-evolution. There's even an acknowledgment that this isn't magic; Enik could send the Marshalls home, yes; but as he points out time and again, with increasing irritation, it's not as simple as dusting crops. There are complex mathematical equations involved, and while he can do them, it could take years.

Complex world: Per the show's theme song, the Marshalls entered the Land of the Lost after an earthquake shook their raft while they were white-water rafting and plunged them down a waterfall. In the episodes, Rick has suggested that they fell through some sort of space warp, which he described as "a nightmare inside a nightmare." The world is obviously artificial, given that you can travel downstream from the swamp and end up back at the swamp without ever turning around. But now we're starting to see some of the machinery behind the world, which suggests that the Marshalls may be able to work that machinery themselves some day. (Albeit with risk. These controls are in the Lost City, which swarms with Sleestak.)

Unexpected twist. Enik is convinced the Sleestak are his ancestors, and why shouldn't they be? They're stupider, slower, and less advanced in every way. I can't imagine any viewer expects the Altrusians to predate the Sleestak, any more than Enik does.

Real fears. While a lot of kids shows have struggles like "How can I be popular?" or "How can I rescue him without revealing that I'm a mermaid?" the Marshalls just want to go home. Wesley Eure overacted a bit in this episode, and so did Spencer Milligan, but there has never been a child alive who hasn't been lost or separated from home and worried about never getting back.

Decent message. It's a kids show, so of course there's a moral. Rick Marshall puts it best: It's not enough just to control your emotions and not give into them; you also have to show empathy for others.

land of the lost: 'tag team'

I keep writing about "Land of the Lost" as though it were a sci-fi adventure show, and it is; but for all the sophistication underlying the show, it's also a children's show, with all that goes along with that.

Fifth episode "Tag Team" is a lesson about cooperation. When the Marshalls go hunting for vegetables, their neighbors the Pakuni keep raiding their cart and stealing the gigantic carrots and turnips as soon as their backs are turned. (Food plants grow to enormous size in the Land of the Lost. Carrots are 3 feet long, strawberries are the size of basketballs, and a turnip is the size of an Ottoman.)

While the six of them threaten one another and yell about the vegetables, Grumpy returns and chases them away, breaking off pursuit only when they break into two groups; but since Cha-Ka has remained with the Marshalls, the conflict continues. Before long, they're being pursued not only by Grumpy but also by an allosaurus the Marshalls have named Alice -- and then the children all get trapped by themselves.

Eventually things work out, as they always do in these situations, but the episode is made ironically amusing as Rick Marshall explains his rescue plan to Ta and Sa, the other two Pakuni, through the time-tested means of speaking English very loudly and gesturing a lot with his hands in hopes that he'll be understood.

The Pakuni distract Grumpy and Alice while Rick rescues the children, and afterward the Marshalls show the Pakuni how to work together to harvest their own vegetables. Cooperation. It's such a nice lesson to pass on, especially when it involves running for your life from dinosaurs.

land of the lost: 'downstream'

The mystery of the Land of the Lost deepens in "Downstream," as Rick Marshall leads his children on a rafting expedition downstream to see if they can find a way out of the land.

Along the way the episode sets up a number of mysteries about its setting. First is Jefferson Davis Collie, a Civil War artilleryman. Second is the cave where he lives and excavates jewels that store and direct large amounts of energy, enough that Rick speculates that they may be the power source for the time portal that brought theme there. Third, the show establishes that the land is finite and self-contained; heading downstream ultimately just leads back to the same point. Lastly, this is the first episode to mention Pylons.

As episodes go, this one was lackluster and not particularly exciting. But it does reveal just how intricate a world David Gerrold had created as a setting for the show. It's no surprise that 40 years after the show aired, my daughter right now is creating her own pretend Land of the Lost.

land of the lost: 'dopey'

If "Land of the Lost" was an edgy show for children, with monsters like the Sleestak; it was still very much a Saturday morning show that competed with cartoon fare.

That's shown in Episode 3, "Dopey," where Holly Marshall becomes enamored of the latest dinosaur the family has encountered. Out foraging giant strawberries for food, she and Will discover a giant egg, hatched, and wonder what could have come from it. They don't have long to wonder, because they soon encounter a baby brontosaurus whom Holly names Dopey.

The episode becomes a classic stray dog episode, as Holly begs her father to let him keep her new pet. When it becomes evident that they can't make a 4,400-pound brontosaur leave if it doesn't want to, Rick reluctantly agrees; and Holly sets about showing how useful he can be. In short order she is training him how to fetch, riding on his back, and hitching him up to the cart.

The downside is that Dopey makes a lot of noise when he's hungry, and his cries keep attracting Grumpy, the T-Rex, and putting the Marshalls in danger. Thus it is not long until Rick Marshall is telling his daughter the sad news that she has to give up her new pet and let him be with other brontosauri.

"Dopey" isn't an adventure episode like "Cha-Ka," or a suspense episode like "The Sleestak God." Instead, it's very much rooted in family, with children wanting to adopt wild animals as pets, whining about chores; and a parent setting boundaries and enforcing good behavior. We also see signs that Rick Marshall is a handyman: Like the good folks on "Gilligan's Island," he has managed to make a wooden cart with wheels, and a dinner table, using only the natural resources available.

We also get a little more speculation about the nature of the Land of the Lost. In the first episode, Rick Marshall told his children that they weren't on earth, judging by the three moons he had observed, and said that when they fell down the waterfall it seems like they were traveling through some sort of "space warp." Now Will tells Holly that their father things they are in an entirely different universe, one that connects to all space and time, which is how there can be dinosaurs there the same time as humans.

land of the lost: 'the sleestak god'

If you want an example of how intense "Land of the Lost" could be for young children, check out its second episode, "The Sleestak God."

A similar concept to the Silurians on Doctor Who, but with slightly better productions values, the Sleestak are a race of reptile people who soon became the main villains of the series and its most iconic characters. They're tall, skinny and long-limbed. They don't move particularly fast, and they hiss instead of talking.

During "The Sleestak God," Will and Holly are sent to fetch water -- even in the Land of the Lost, this is still a family, with chores and whining over having to do them -- and decide to go exploring as they go. One of their discoveries is a mysterious and midlly foreboding building. Before long the two of them are caught by the Sleestak, put into a net and hung over a pit to be fed to a monster in the pit, the presumed Sleestak god.

The children are saved by their father (of course) after their friend Cha-Ka is able to alert him to the danger they're in, but if you think about it, this is a pretty intense concept for a young child. It's probably one of the chief reasons that the Sleestak gave me nightmares when I was younger.

'To Catch a Killer': Brian Dennehy as John Wayne Gacy

 

I've spent about three hours the past two nights watching Brian Dennehy play John Wayne Gacy in "To Catch a Killer."

Gacy, for those unfamiliar with him, was a Chicago-area serial killer convicted of sexually torturing and murdering some 30 teenage boys and burying their bodies in his basement, under his garage, under the floorboards of his rec room, and elsewhere. To all outward appearances, he was an upstanding member of the community who regularly donated to civic organizations, and who performed for children as Pogo the Clown. The movie was made for TV, and aired in 1992.

Dennehy gives a great, just-the-right-side-of-creepy performance of Gacy, a man with cocksure grin who engages police in cat-and-mouse maneuvers as the pressure slowly builds; opposite an equally strong Michael Riley as Detective Joe Kozencza, who becomes convinced early on that Gacy is behind the recent disappearance of a local teen and then gradually realizes the monstrosity of Gacy's crimes.

The movie's got some good drama. In addition to the performances of its leads and supporting actors, it depicts Kozencza as a man under pressure as he overcomes colleagues' professional skepticism to bring Gacy in. He's got to convince not only his chief to provide the manpower, but his detectives that he's not wasting their time; and he's got to complete the case before Gacy's attorney can file a harassment lawsuit that will shut the case down.

It's got a few weak points too. I could have done with fewer car chases, myself; and the decision to include a psychic (Margot Kidder) seems silly in a story that focuses on more serious detective work in a true crime story. It also felt too often like the movie focused on Gacy's orientation, as if that were a sign of his depravity instead of incidental to it; but that at least may be a product of when the movie was made.

Still, what a movie. Dennehy was nominated for an Emmy for his portrayal of Gacy; and Riley and director Eric Till each were nominated for a Gemini Award. I generally don't think much of TV movies, and there's no doubt that the movie glossed over the more horrifying elements of Gacy's crimes; but this was a good movie.

Part two:


 

land of the lost: 'cha-ka'

Today I began a task that every man must undertake when he is a father. Today I began watching "The Land of the Lost" with my youngest daughter.

"Land of the Lost" was created by David Gerrold for Sid and Marty Krofft, and originally ran on Saturday mornings on NBC beginning in 1974. For a show that ran opposite cartoons like Bugs Bunny, "Land of the Lost" had a pretty intense setup. It was about a father and his two children trapped in a mysterious land with dinosaurs and other menaces.

The episode Alex and I watched tonight was "Cha-Ka," on YouTube. It's the pilot episode, but the theme song that plays over the open credits is really all the introduction you need: Rick Marshall and his two children, Will and Holly, are whitewater rafting when a terrible earthquake drops them 1,000 feet. They miraculously survive the terrible fall, only to find themselves running from a Tyrannosaurus rex they call Grumpy.

The episode picks up not long after the Marshalls' arrival in the Land of the Lost, and for a young child especially, offers a fantastic mix of adventure and risk. There is Grumpy, a regular dramatic threat who chases the Marshall children or who corners them in their cave. And there is Cha-Ka, a missing-link ape boy whose friendship the Marshalls cultivate by rescuing him from Grumpy and by treating his broken leg.

The writing is a little corny some times, and the banjo soundtrack adds a touch of feelgood sensibility to what could be an otherwise scary show for a young child. But all that aside, it's as engaging to Alex as I remember finding it myself. Two hours after watching it, she was walking around the catching saying "Cha-Ka! Cha-Ka!"

She's already asking to watch Episode 2 tomorrow.

'daredevil'

Just watched the first episode of Daredevil, and it was good.

"Daredevil" is a Netflix show based on the comic book published by Marvel Comics. Matt Murdock is a criminal defense attorney blinded in an accident as a boy when he saved a pedestrian from being hit by a truck carrying toxic waste. Normally when this happens, the person hit with the waste becomes very sick and may even die. But because this was a comic book, Murdock found himself with heightened senses that more than compensate for the lost sight.

And, like any other Irish Catholic criminal defense attorney would do, now that he's an adult, he goes out at night and beats up criminals.

I've only seen one episode, but the show looks promising so far. It draws heavily on the writing of Frank Miller and Brian Michael Bendis, the two writers who left the strongest marks on the comic. Miller set Daredevil in the Hells Kitchen neighborhood and played up his Catholic faith; and Bendis gave the comic a gritty film noir feel. They both also set Daredevil as the superhero who tangles more with organized crime than with flashy supervillains in outlandish costumes.

The show has a few subdued references to the first Avengers movie and the Chitauri invasion. They're there to remind you that it's part of the same shared universe, but made obliquely enough that that the story doesn't suffer if you haven't seen the movie.

Very nicely, the comic book elements are understated. Daredevil's outfit so far isn't the red leather worn throughout most of the comic's history; nor is it the black-and-yellow outfit that the series started with in the 1960s. So far he hasn't even got the Daredevil name yet. When Murdock goes out as a vigilante, he's dressed in the simple black cloth outfit of Frank Miller's "Man Without Fear" miniseries, and he's called by those who meet him "the man in black."

The bad guys are understated too. No outlandish costumes or melodramatic plots to rule the world. Daredevil in this series appears to be poised to fight organized crime. The show starts out with him interrupting a mob human trafficking action, fighting ordinary thugs with guns.

The first episode also introduced us to Karen Paige, Foggy Nelson, Turk and Wesley. (Wesley is the kingpin's right hand man, at least in Miller's "Born Again" story.)

So, good series. Definitely not for the young kids, though.

Fox continues its war on reason

Does Fox News think Christians should be thin-skinned and sensitive to everything that isn't exactly how Fox thinks it should be?

That's what I find myself asking after reading an opinion piece by Todd Starnes, titled "NBC Declares War on Christians." In his opinion piece, Starnes takes umbrage at the Saturday Night Live sketch "Djesus Uncrossed."

Aside from the Saturday Night Live sketch, NBC's offenses include sports blogger Rick Chandler's recent post about Tim Tebow's plans to speak at First Baptist Dallas. Starnes calls this post a "scathing smear." I just read it, and it seems like a fairly accurate description of the controversies centered on the church and the teachings of its head pastor. Don't take my word for it, though; decide for yourself.

Beyond that, the litany of NBC's supposed offenses includes editing the phrase "under God" out from the Pledge of Allegiance during the U.S. Open a year-and-a-half ago, NBC chief medical editor Nancy Snyderman expressing her personal mislike of religion on the "Today" show during a back-and-forth discussion, and of course shows like "Good Christian Bitches" and "The Book of Daniel." Plus there was a piece by Bart Ehrman, published in Newsweek, called "The Myths of Jesus," that lightly details the historical difficulties with the gospel accounts of Jesus' infancy.

By this point in his column, Starnes has got himself worked up pretty well over NBC's supposed war on Christians, and it's obvious he believes that the rest of us feel this way too. I'm sorry to disappoint him, but I just can't muster the outrage. I just don't see it.

For starters, Starnes has done a good job of stacking the deck. He neglects to mention other things that could put NBC in a more favorable light: the annual Christmas-tree lighting, for instance; Christmas specials like "It's a Wonderful Life," which NBC aired this past November. NBC also has aired shows like "VeggieTales" and "3-2-1 Penguins," which couldn't be more overtly Christian if they tried.

On "The Book of Daniel," Starnes notes that Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association hated it and called it anti-Christian bigotry. I should point out that Wildmon also was offended by "All in the Family" and "Charlie's Angels," and worried that Mighty Mouse would encourage kids to snort cocaine. More sensibly, the Rev. Gordon Atkinson said the main offense of "The Book of Daniel" was chiefly that it was a bad show.

Christ means everything to me. I've been a Christian for 25 years, even served God on the missions field in Haiti for a while. Perhaps I should be offended by "Djesus Unchained," but I just can't see it. It's Quentin Tarantino's over-the-top violence they're mocking, not Christ. If anything, the piece shows respect for Jesus. Its goal is to make us laugh by teaming jarringly graphic violence with the man best known in the United States for nonviolence. If anyone should be offended, it's Quentin Tarantino.

Fox loves to play the persecution card. The message they've been hammering for years is pretty simple: Be afraid. There's a war on Christmas. Liberals are attacking God. Our culture, our heritage, our legacy, are all under attack.

Simple truth is, we're not. If it sometimes feels like Christianity is being singled out for ridicule, there are two things to remember. One is that it's easy to overlook the negative portrayals of minority faiths like Islam, because they're not ours and we often don't understand them as well as we think we do. And the second is that because Christianity has provided the dominant underpinning framework for Western thought for as long as it has, it's only natural to use the language and the symbols of Christianity to communicate and to critique Western thought, civilization and art.

I'll also add this: Faith should lead us to reach out to other people and to forge connections with them. If the most it inspires someone to do, is to tell you to be afraid, do yourself a favor.

Change the channel.


Copyright © 2013 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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'Tin Man'

One of the greatest facets of any storytelling tradition is the ability to bring an old story to new life by recasting it in some way.

Cast your line into a different point of the story, like Gregory Maguire did in “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,” and not only is the resulting story a tremendous catch in its own right, it can even swim upstream and forever change the source where it was spawned. There’s an art to this, known only to the best writers.

But often another writer with a smaller vision will visit the fishing hole, reel in a story, and put it in another pond. To be sure, it’s a feat to make the story survive the transplant into a new setting, but if you want readers, viewers or other writers to start making pilgrimages to your new story, you have to make sure the story fits in its new setting.

That was how I felt recently watching the Sci-Fi Network’s “Tin Man,” recorded and recommended to me by my friend Rob the musician. It was clever way to retell “The Wizard of Oz,” but by the time we had finished watching the miniseries, I couldn’t help feeling disappointed. .

The story starts well enough to get your hopes up that it will be an interesting story, as the Dorothy character, D.G. (Zooey Deschanel), is disturbed by a nightmare ― “The Dream,” her father ominously calls it, when D.G. isn’t around ― and before long, she and her parents are whisked off through a cyclone to the Outer Zone.

The Outer Zone is a world under the tyrannical rule of Azkadellia, this story’s version of the Wicked Witch of the West. From this point of the story on, the main source of entertainment is looking for the nods, winks, and sly references to the 1939 MGM movie, spotting the Scarecrow in an apparent felon who had half his brain removed, the Tin Man in a resistance fighter who has been imprisoned in an iron suit for several years, and so on.

Some of these are clever enough to laugh at ― Toto, it turns out is a child’s mispronunciation of “tutor,” the job this particular character had 14 years ago ― but the story itself flounders on the flat acting the principals offer, the evil-for-the-sake-of-being-evil behavior of the witch, and the failure of the story to transcend its source material.

What’s worse, some times it fails even to reach the level of sophistication of the MGM movie, and if you’ve seen the MGM movie, you know what a statement that is. In “The Wizard of Oz,” the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion find the brains, heart, and courage to rescue Dorothy from the witch; here, D.G. has to tell them that they have those things in a scene that carries none of the growth, none of the realization, and none of the meaning of its parallel scene.

When he wrote “Wicked,” Maguire so transformed the Wizard of Oz that the witch’s name became “Elphaba” once and for all. Similarly, the wizard was forever recast as a brutally fascist dictator. These are readings that now show the original work,

“Tin Man” could have done that. The miniseries skims across the surface of a story that could have remarkable depth, where some truly tremendous fish are waiting to be reeled in. Unfortunately, while what they did catch wasn’t floating upside-down, it wasn’t in good shape at all.

hail the tripods

One of the joys of having children is introducing them to things that you enjoyed when you were their age.

 

When I was younger, Boys Life magazine carried a serial comic based on "The White Mountains" and the other Tripod books by John Christopher. The story didn't translate well, mostly because of the format they published it in. Each issue contained a single page of the comic, drawn on a grid of nine or twelve panels. A lot of the material that Christopher created to establish the characters, the setting, and even the nature of the alien rule over the earth, went right out the window. There just wasn't space.

 

In 1987, when I was an exchange student living in New Zealand, one of the channels showed "The Tripods," a BBC miniseries based on Christopher's books. I saw part of the first episode, and part of one that came nearer the end of the series. In that segment, Will the main character had just discovered that the alien masters were planning in a few years' time to eradicate all terrestrial life, I presume to make the planet more suitable for themselves.

 

I hadn't read the books yet, but I was pretty sure the Beeb had taken a few liberties with its adaptation. In the comic the only alien race on the planet was the Masters, a race that looked something like giant turds with faces and tentacles, but here in the series he was talking with some other alien that appeared as a green triangle and that also was appalled by the Masters' plans for the planet ... but which was unwilling to stop them, since he saw humanity's survival as humanity's business.

 

Fast forward to around 2000. I had bought the entire series from Amazon and was zipping through them with the speed of an arrow. Somewhere inside me a Cub Scout was in heaven.

 

The books are a nice, easy read; in fact, Evangeline just finished reading the entire series herself about a week ago, even though there are no girls worth mentioning in the books. They're set roughly a hundred years in the future, after an alien race has fully domesticated the human race through a mind-control technique that involves affixing a metal cap to the heads of children when they turn 13. The cap removes the aggression that humans have, purges their curiosity about the world around them, and makes them the happy, docile servants of the Tripods and the aliens behind them.

 

The main characters in the trilogy are three boys, named Will, Henry and Jean-Paul, who learn about feral humans -- free men who have never been capped, and who are learning all they can from their base in a mouintain hideaway about the alien conquerors so they can liberate the earth and the human race.

 

The books were published in 1970, I think, and some aspects of the writing definitely reflect that period. The people of the earth are docile, uninquisitive about the world around them, and really not all that bright -- the classic depiction of stoners. And yet the Tripods also are linked to God, through the juxtaposition of an image of a Tripod at the Dome of the Rock, and the great awe and generally religious reverence which humans hold the Tripods in.

 

My best guess, without having done any formal research into the matter, is that Christopher is urging people to think for themselves and try to save the world, without the limits imposed by religion or by the "tune out and drop out" culture of the sixties. A prequel to the series, published in the 1980s, shows the Tripods gaining control over more and more people by subverting television broadcasts, a more contemporary "think for yourself" sort of message.

 

I had told Evangeline about the BBC series, and I told her that if she were interested, we could try to watch it once she had finished the books. I was disappointed to find that the BBC show ran for two series -- the first following "The White Mountains" fairly faithfully, and the second taking tremendous liberties with "The City of Gold and Lead," not just with the glowy green pyramids, but also by making the masters a friendly and congenial sort of master race who even have given their slaves a nightclub of their very own so they can relax and feel at home. (Christopher had depicted life in the masters' cities as hellish, with ovenlike temperatures, leaden poisonous air, and abusive masters. The average lifespan of a slave was about three years, tops.)

 

Bad enough that the second series isn't available on DVD or video at all. Worse still is that the BBC never filmed a series based on "The Pool of Fire," with the result that the free humans discover they have only a few years to drive the masters off the planet or perish, and we never get to see them make an attempt.

 

We've been watching the show in eight- or nine-minute segments, courtesy of the high speed Internet access we have at the university and one or two other places we go with the laptop. So far we've watched the entire first episode, and not only has Evangeline enjoyed it, so has my inner Cub Scout, and so has my 4-year-old.

the man they called jayne

Behind the Name, a good go-to web site for the meanings and histories of names, has a ratings feature that allows visitors to the site to rate names on all sorts of factors, including whether the name is for boys or for girls.

 

If you've ever seen "Firefly," I'm sure you can appreciate it when I say that Jayne is a man's name. I am asking all "Firefly" fans who come across this blog entry to visit the entry for Jayne and a cast a vote in favor of using it for men.

 

firefly

Well, I have to admit: It looks like I misjudged this series. Despite a slow and relatively unimpressive beginning, "Firefly" has really turned out to be something worth watching.

Created by Joss Whedon, best known for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Firefly" has been billed as a hybrid of the science fiction and western genres. It's set aboard a small smuggling vessel with an eight-member crew that spends most of its time on the frontier of interstellar civilization, at some indeterminate point in the distant future. Like most good sci-fi, the series focuses on the people on board the ship rather than its technology, so there's no talk of how the ship moves from one planet to another between episodes. The captain of the ship was on the losing side of a civil war and has decided to make his career as far from the winning side as he can.

Natasha and I are about three-quarters of our way through the series, which was smothered less than halfway through its first season. Monday night we watched the episode where Simon, the ship's doctor, hired the crew to sneak him and his sister River into the hospital on the planet Ariel so he could learn exactly what had been done to River to make her so unpredictable in her behavior. The ongoing development of the characters themselves, and the relationships among them, have made the show compelling despite some of the oddities in the way the concept was executed. (I think I mentioned before that the show seemed too spaghetti western, given that it's supposed to be at the very least several hundred years in the future.)

Aside from the characters, one of the things I've found interesting about the show is the way it centers on a group of outlaws -- noble outlaws, perhaps, in the spirit of Robin Hood, but outlaws nonetheless -- who do some pretty shocking things, like stealing medicine from a hospital, easily gunning down other people, and even at times betraying or trying to kill one another. Star Trek, this ain't.

As my oldest brother predicted when I told him of my initial dissatisfaction with the series, the preacher Book is turning out to be an interesting and mysterious character. But I have to admit that I find Jayne a thoroughly intriguing character if for no other reason than he's the least honorable of the outlaws on board Serenity, very clearly in it for the money, and yet even he has a conscience that bothers him when he knows he's wronged a companion and that tears him up when he discovers that he's become a folk hero on Canton because the mud farmers misjudged his motives in dropping a fortune in their midst four years back. (And what a kicking folk song they have about him, too. Any idea where I can get a copy of it, without the dialogue mixed in?)

I'd have to say my favorite epsiodes so far have been "Out of Gas," where life support on board fails; and the one where they rob the hospital, though I liked parts of "Shindig," where Mal unintentionally challenges someone to a duel; and "Our Mrs. Reynolds," where he finds out he's married. (I was really disappointed with the way they got themselves out of that mess; I thought the initial premise for the episode was much more interesting.)

So it's been a good show, so far. I expect Natasha and I will buy a copy of "Serenity" when we get around to it, and we will consign Fox execs to a special hell -- one normally reserved for child molesters and people who talk at the theater -- for not giving the series a chance. There at least they can join the execs from ABC who killed Star Trek and the execs from Paramount who killed the Trek franchise.

deep space 9

Now that I've seen the entire run of "Deep Space 9" from start to finish, I have to say that it is far and away the best of the Star Trek franchise.

Part of it's the characters. They were much more fully developed and better nuanced than in Classic Trek or TNG, with dark sides, aspirations, and a wider range of motivations than ever had been shown on Trek before. There were little things, like Sisko's love of baseball; to Odo's uncertain motivation first as someone who didn't know his origins and then as someone who rejected all that his people had done; the moral ambiguity of Quark, who in some episodes seemed decidedly corrupt and amoral and yet who consistently came out on the right side; and there were some really intriguing interactions among the characters, between Garak and Bashir, the repressed attraction between Dax and Sisko, the elaborate dance between Odo and Quark as constable and perpetual criminal suspect, and so on. (And the sheer range of characters! I lost track of how many supporting characters there were, from the station itself, to Bajor, to Cardassia, and the other Ferengi...)

But mostly it was the storytelling. There were some false starts, with the issues surrounding Bajor's assimilation into the Federation, but once the writers got going and started to figure out what the Dominion was and how it worked, the show just kept getting better. Seeing the Klingons as nasties again was a treat, and seeing humanity portrayed honestly on Star Trek for a change -- like in the episode where Garak blows up a Romulan vessel to support Sisko's lie that the Dominion plans to attack the Romulan Empire, and Sisko realizes he's OK with that -- was unforgettable. (And of course there was the episode that suggests the entire Star Trek franchise could be the product of the imagination of a black 1950s science fiction writer...)

I don't think I can say enough good about DS9. It was, all things considered, the high point of Trek. The franchise jumped the shark when they launched Voyager, and it never recovered. Maybe if they really do hire JMS to do a new series, but that's about the only way I can see.

lord of the cornfield

I had a realization last night about the Twilight Zone episode that featured Billy Mumy as a boy who terrorized the people of his community and send them to the "cornfield" whenever they displeased him: It's about God.

The boy, whose name eludes me, has absolute power and can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, without any consequence to himself. The people live in terror of him, but constantly praise him and say what a good boy he is so they can avoid his displeasure, even when he does something as horrible as turning his father into a giant jack-in-the-box.

 

I don't know who wrote that particular episode, but Rod Serling was a Unitarian Universalist, and the episode does seem to take issue with the apparent cruelty of God, whom the Bible describes as drowning the entire planet, save eight people and a boatful of animals; killing the firstborn son of every family in Egypt; and threatening repeatedly through his prophets to bring one disaster after another onto Israel. And of course the New Testament declares that those who reject Christ will be cast into hell for all eternity -- similar, I suppose, to being sent to the cornfield. And like the townfolk who can't say enough things about the holy terror in their midst, believers never stop singing the praises of the God they believe did all these things.

 

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I think a lot of evangelicals get upset by that sort of story, which they see as an affront to the dignity of God and the gospel that Jesus preached. I know that I did, back in my evangelical days. (Although I must admit that evangelicals seem to get even more incensed about negative portrayals of the church and Christians than of God.)

 

To an extent, I suppose a negative reaction is understandable, because the writer of this episode is misportraying (and misunderstanding) the nature and personality of God, and no one likes to see their beliefs misunderstood or misrepresented. But I think the strong visceral reaction that we Christians often have to disagreement isn't fair to the people or viewpoints we disagree with, and it does a poor job of representing Christ.

 

Isn't everyone better served by asking where the critics are coming from, and seeing if they have a point? Because if God really were as sunshiney-day-in-the-park as Christians market him as, I doubt anyone would write stories depicting God as a capricious monster. Biblical stories such as the Deluge, the plagues on Egypt and the conquest of Canaan are troubling, or they should be. We try to sanitize them into pleasant little Sunday school lessons about how evil will perish and God will provide for his people, but if the thought of men, women and children scrambling for a foothold and looking for dry land in a world where torrential rain just doesn't stop coming, doesn't bother you; if the thought of a nation full of parents, suddenly bereft of their eldest children, some infants, some toddlers, and some adolescents, doesn't give you pause; if none of the stories from the Tanakh make you stop and think about how God can be the author of such things and still be called "good," then you're not reading your Bible as an adult.

 

The people who write and tell stories like the "Twilight Zone" episode about the cornfield have legitimate perspectives on the gospel, the Bible, and God as the church has presented them. As people who have received Christ, we believe we have a sacred Truth to share with the rest of the world. But that doesn't mean, nor should it, that they don't have important truths to share with us as well.

tv highwater marks

I have a friend who every year has made it a point to watch the original Star Wars movie with his son.

His rationale is very simple: "Star Wars" was one of those watershed events for our generation. When it came out in 1977, everybody went to see it. It shaped our generation's entertainment for years -- literally. Donny & Marie, "Quark," and even the Saturday morning "Happy Days" cartoon show -- all had episodes that were direct rip-offs of "Star Wars." It and Star Trek pretty much defined science fiction up until the new Battlestar Galactica series.

So, since "Star Wars" with its pop religion, blockbuster status, runaway merchandising, and GOK what else was so important to Tom and everyone else in our generation, he wants to pass that experience on to his son.

It's something I've been thinking about the last few weeks. Amid all the drek that gets foisted upon us every year, there are some movies, some TV shows, some books, and some music that absolutely must be passed on to the next generation. There's the high culture stuff, like Tchaikovsky and Victor Hugo, but there's stuff we're inclined to dismiss as irrelevant or unworthy because it's pop culture.

What should get passed on? It's stuff that has more value than just what you immediately perceive. It has to raise awareness of the human condition, and inspire us to be better people. It's why we all should remember The Beatles when we're 54, but forget most of what the Beach Boys produced by the time we've grown up to be a man.

Sad to say, there's not much TV that I've watched that fits into this category. (Which is probably one of the reasons why we don't get cable or satellite TV, and don't let the girls watch much of it, even on DVD and VHS.)

In no particular order, here's my initial list of TV shows I intend to share with my girls when they're old enough to appreciate them:

1. M*A*S*H. No one would remember the Vietnam War-protest movie if it weren't for the TV show, and there's a good reason for that. The movie was just dark and despairing; the show moved beyond a bleak view of war to show the compassion and decency that can rise out of humanity in the middle of our worst moments. More than any other movie or show, M*A*S*H shaped the Gen X view of war, the military, and blind obedience to authority.
2. Star Trek, specifically Classic Trek, Deep Space 9 and about half of The Next Generation. Although its wasn't value wasn't initially recognized by the execs at NBC, Classic Trek gave us the premiere treatment of the Cold War and the social tumult of the late 1960s. It defined science fiction for the next 30 years, and sowed the seeds of a franchise that it took Voyager and Enterprise a total twelve years to kill.
   
   Unlike the original series, NextGen had an aura of cultural superiority about its morality tales, with the basic message that we'd all be better off if everyone were a late 20th-century enlightened Western humanist. DS9, despite a few false starts, had an amazingly complex web of stories that ran for five years as the Federation grappled with the Dominion, and it dealt with a number of timeless themes about fear, suspicion, loss, faith, hope, security and freedom, identity and prejudice. I saw the entire series in 2006 and had to keep reminding myself that it was not about the war on terror and post 9-11 America.
3. Battlestar Galactica. Not the original series, but the remake. Everything that Star Trek was to science fiction and the 1960s, BSG is to science fiction and post 9-11 America. And it hasn't had a single "Spock's Brain" episode.
4. Looney Tunes. For sheer laughs, nothing beats the work of Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng and the other geniuses behind Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and the rest of the crew. My parents grew up watching them, I grew up watching them, and I'm proud to say that my kids are growing up watching them. Nothing comes close, not even
5. Rocky and Bullwinkle. The animation is dated, and the kids aren't going to get the Cold War jokes surrounding Boris, Natasha and Fearless Leader, but the wit behind the series and its features like Dudley Doo-Right, Fractured Fairy Tales and Mr. Peabody have given this series staying value.
6. Monty Python's Flying Circus. I'm not so keen on the post-Cleese era of the show, where they relied more and more on shock and crude language to get laughs, but I still bust a gut laughing at sketches like the World's Deadliest Joke, the Mouse Problem, and Cheese Shop. Evangeline, who has never seen a single episode, still knows to ask me if I write my music in the shed.
7. Get Smart. At least I think so. It just came out on DVD, and I'm waiting to get a set so I can watch it from the safety of my Cone of Silence. Perhaps I find it assuring that Maxwell Smart triumphs over Kaos despite being such a bumbling idiot, perhaps I simply enjoy the outrageous antics of the show. Still, it's a keeper.
8. The Simpsons. First eight seasons. There is no better record of America in the 1990s than Homer's household. All the faults and virtues of the American family lie there, in all their exaggerated glory. The show is a sitcom, but it's a sitcom that nonetheless provokes some serious discussions about issues we will face as long as there are humans to face them.

All but one of those series are comedies. I guess "St. Elsewhere" and "Matlock" don't make my personal cut, but if anyone thinks I've overlooked a show, let me know. I'd also love to hear if you think I listed something that's better off forgotten.

School House Rock: 'Interjections'

I just know there's a full-length parody in here:

He cut short his objections

With a lethal injection,

Now the ACLU's shouting some interjections!

[Dammit!]

[What the hell!?]

bsg: the cylons

Exactly what is the plan that the Cylons are supposed to have, anyway?

In the original 1978 series, their plan was fairly straightforward. Those Cylons had been created by a lizard race and were bent on humanity's total destruction. In the new "Battlestar Galactica," the Cylons were created by humanity but rebelled, and now have agents who look human and who have infiltrated human society.

Watching the show, whatever the overreaching plan is, it's pretty clear that the Cylons actually have several different agenda where humanity is concerned, genocide being only one of them.

The big one remains genocide. That was established pretty clearly in the miniseries, where the Cylons wiped out most of the human population of the Twelve Colonies in a surprise nuclear bombardment, and then went about picking off every ship that was left until Galactica led the Colonial fleet away from the Cylons at space station Ragnar.

Genocide has continued as a goal ever since then. The episode "33" put the survivors through a harrowing ordeal as they would make their faster-than-light jump, only to have Cylons appear 33 minutes later, for days on end. In "Water," a Cylon sleeper agent planted a detonator in the Galactica's water tanks and blasted the primary water supply of the fleet into space.

In Season 2, a Cylon boarding party landed on the Galactica and tried to vent the entire ship into space. Once everyone on board had asphyxiated, it's expected the Cylons would have turned the Galactica's weapons on the civilian fleet and exterminated humanity once and for all. Another large-scale Cylon attack was the one that Boomer disabled with the computer virus she transmitted into the raiders. And when the Pegasus appeared halfway through Season 2, we discovered (not surprisingly) that the Cylons have been trailing the Colonial fleet for ages, and even brought along a resurrection ship so no Cylon lives were permanently lost.

That's one plan, obviously. But there's also the unusual relationship between Six and Baltar, which has led him to believe in a singular God, as opposed to the polytheistic beliefs of the other humans, and to believe that God has a special role for Baltar to play in some ineffable plan. And since Baltar and Six each have risen to positions of prominence among their own peoples, it's hardly reasonable for that plan to advance if humanity is driven to extinction.

And then there's the relationship between Helo and Boomer. She's said that the Cylons have been unable to reproduce naturally, they suspect because they are unable to love. So they went to great length to lure Helo into a relationship with Boomer, and to father a child with her. Baby Hera obviously is of tremendous importance to the Cylon plan, given the attention that her birth received, and given that we saw her at the end of Season 2.5, she'll have an important role to play in Season 3.0. And obviously that plan wouldn't work out right if the Cylons exterminate humanity. (Nor would breeding farms like the one Starbuck escaped from, since those require human females.)

But what is the plan? Do the Cylons even know the whole of it, or is it being fed to them in dribs and drabs? "Download" showed the Cylons on Caprica restoring the capital city, and it also showed a monumental revolution beginning in Cylon culture when Caprica Six and Boomer agreed to use their celebrity status to raise awareness among Cylons of humanity's better traits, particularly their capacity for love.

"Lay Down Your Burdens" took that revolution to the next order as Brother Cavil revealed that the Cylons realized they had made "a mistake" in trying to destroy the human race, followed by a second "mistake" in following the Colonial fleet. And of course that episode ended with the Cylons occupying new Caprica, presumably with the intent of helping to repair the damage they had done to human civilization. (No, I haven't seen any of Season 3.0 yet. I don't have cable TV, so I'm waiting for the next DVD set. Please don't spoil anything for me.)

Is the "benevolent occupation" of New Caprica a change in the Cylon plan, a new wrinkle in the plan that doesn't alter the end result, or was it part of the plan all along?

My best guess is that the Cylon plan is to become fully human — witness the concern over reproduction, Six's talk in the first season about the renewal of the human race, and the arms smuggler's speech in the miniseries that God had chosen the Cylons to replace humanity — perhaps even to become better humans than humans themselves, as seen in their desire to lift up humanity and improve its lot in New Caprica.

Part of the key to understanding Cylon nature may lie in the number of models of Cylon there are. (No, I'm serious.) The original series used twelve Colonies to invoke images of the twelve tribes of Israel, who left Egypt in search of the Promised Land. In the Israelites' case, it was Canaan, which had been promised to their ancestor Abraham 400 years earlier; in the case of the Colonials, the Promised Land is Earth.

No doubt in part because of changing sensibilities over the last 30 years, the new series has no immdiately apparent biblical significance to the number of Colonies there are. But as I've noted before it has made use of the number 12 enough that my liberal arts education has noticed: twelve Colonies (named after the Zodiac), twelve Cylon models, and 12 lords of Kobol named after the Greek gods.

It could be coincidence, but I can't help but think there's something there. With the exception of the Pegasus, whenever we've seen Six, she's been extremely sensual. In addition to her longstanding affair with Baltar, we've seen her hit on Adama and Helo. The weapons smuggler, when he resurfaced in the fleet during Season 1, made an effort to sow suspicion and doubt in Starbuck and Roslin's minds. Simon, who appeared on "The Farm," is a healer and often appeared with strong lighting in the background.

If we lean toward a mythological reading here, that gives us:

Zeus	King of gods	n/k
Hera	Queen of goddesses	n/k
Hades	The dead	n/k
Poseidon	The sea	n/k
Artemis	The hunt	n/k
Apollo	God of light, healers	Simon
Hephaestos	The forge	n/k
Athena	Wisdom, combat	Boomer?
Ares	War	n/k
Hermes	Messenger	Arms dealer?
Aphrodite	Sexual love	Six
Hestia	Home	n/k
Ceres	Harvest	n/k
Observant readers will note that there are thirteen Greek gods listed. This is because there are various ways of depicting the lineup of the big twelve Olympians. A matchup from deity to Cylon is complicated by the different facets of each deity. Apollo, in addition to being a god of light, was also a god for healers, musicians and artists.

The other known Cylons include Boomer, the telejournalist who filmed the documentary on Galactica, the man Baltar correctly (if randomly) identified as a Cylon in the miniseries, and Brother Cavil. I'm not sure how to line them up; Boomer is a warrior type, which would make her Athena, except that she's clearly not the virginal type. I've wondered if the journalists might be Zeus and Hera, but that seems unlikely since the Cylon god is more likely Zeus, and think that's probably Baltar. Cavil just plain doesn't fit, from what I can see, which means I'm probably barking up the wrong tree.

We also have Boomer and Helo's daughter, whom they named Hera, but whom Pegasus Six said just should be called Thirteen. (Thirteen being Earth, I suppose, since Earth is the lost thirteenth colony.)

I still it's amazing how good "Battlestar Galactica" is, not just because of the original series, but also because of where it's broadcast. After all, this is the Sci-Fi Network, the same cable network that made a wreck of "Earthsea," ran "Sliders" into the ground, and once even padded out Classic Trek episodes with so many commercials that they ran about 90 minutes each.

So what is the Cylon plan? I don't know, but I am intrigued enough to keep shelling out the money for the DVDs as they become available. I'm sure that plan belongs to Universal Studios, but I'll go along with it.

In the meantime, I'm interested in hearing anyone's thoughts as they want to share them. And if anyone wants to record the episodes and send them to me, I won't say no.