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“For Science!”: Eating Doritos Roulette

by Diane Duane August 2, 2015

(First of all: is there some specific reason they used the Classic Star Trek font [or one very like it] for the warning panel on the bag? Is it somehow seen as “futuristic” to be afraid of chili heat? Just asking. But if so, I weep for my species.)

… It’s funny the things that can get your attention sometimes. At some point in the last couple of weeks, this post regarding someone who’d had a bad reaction to Doritos Roulette made its way across my Tumblr dashboard. I looked at the post and blinked a couple of times, said a couple of things under my breath about some of the more insensitive comments, and then went on with whatever I’d been doing.

But then, over the week that followed, it happened that I saw a couple of ads on TV for these chips, and I thought to myself, “Okay, now I’m curious. I’m a white girl; let’s see how I do with these.”

As background information for this experiment, it needs to be stated that we have two different kinds of “hot food people” in this house. As a New Yorker raised in the Metropolitan Area during a time when hot and spicy food was (for a suburban girl) harder to lay hands on for a good while, I got rapidly clued in in the 1970s, and developed a fair tolerance for heat in my food. Not huge, but fair. Six years in LA much improved this situation.

The other participant in this study is someone who, for a Belfast boy, stands out in having had a taste for the hot stuff that long precedes its now-widespread popularity in British mainstream culture. This is a man who has a whole shelf of hot sauces, and whose idea of what’s nice to put into a newly opened bag of crisps is one or more of the following:

image

(The two on the right are typical favorites that came from Oriental Emporium in Dublin until they stopped carrying it a few months back. The one on the left is something we picked up in passing in Austria in June, and originates apparently from a native Austrian company; causing Peter to remark, “Yet another reason to go back to Bregenz.”)

So your baseline here is two people one of whom has a significant tolerance for chili heat*, and one who has a mild tolerance but at the very least can be guaranteed not to faint dead away from shock at the taste of something spicy.

So, onward to the experiment.

We dumped about the third of the bag out onto a plate, as you see above. We were interested in doing visual examination first to see if there was any way to tell the doctored chips from the non-doctored ones. The company has been careful: visually, they are indistinguishable. Our guess is that all the chips are originally identical until a given number of them are separated out into a separate assembly line to be sprayed with chili extract.

PR stories about these chips indicate (per the company’s advisory) that the doctored ones have been sprayed with chili extract approaching the strength of a (mild) Scotch Bonnet / habanero chili at around 73,000 to 75,000 Scoville units (the not-mild ones can be double this, and they vary without warning). This is not exactly an entry-level strength. The average Jalapeño pepper clocks in at somewhere between 4000 and 7000 Scoville. To that end, I made sure that there was a tub of crème fraîche handy. This was for me and not for Peter. Habaneros generally are at the far upper end of my heat-tolerance ability, and I wanted to make sure that I had a fire extinguisher ready if it was needed. (As for Peter, even he has his limits. We have some Moruga Scorpions in the freezer in the moment, and he’s spent the last couple of months wondering what he can use them on/in that they won’t ruin. Too much heat is simply a waste of time.)

We proceeded by breaking chips in half and nibbling until we found hot ones, then exchanging them to see how hot they were—admittedly, a very subjective business—and how their heat persisted and built. There are some chili heats, after all, that flare quickly and die away quickly (like Tabasco), whereas others linger in your mouth and on your lips and tongue, and build—a cumulative heat. The hot chips in the Roulette bag have a cumulative heat, though not one that even by my standards would be tremendously strong. Both of us have over our time here had far hotter curries or chilies, and have drunk a lot of wine or eaten a lot of raita to to wrestle them down, but otherwise have suffered no ill effects.

Two interesting things immediately became apparent: (a) The heat is not consistent across the hot chips. Some, probably due to quirks in the manufacturing process, have been dosed harder than others. (b) There is some transference of the hot chili flavoring to non-hot chips. Peter and I both felt sure we were able to detect a difference in flavor between the ones that had been purposefully dosed with chili extract and the ones that had not. (Flavor is always an issue for us both in situations like this: we both like the heat, and sometimes both like it quite strong, but neither of us has any time for the witless application of pure extract-based heat without flavor.)  Some of you will recall the old packaged-food warning, “Contents may have settled during transport”. My guess is that during the production and shipping process for these chips, there’s a lot of rubbing and jostling, and some of the hot coating on the dosed chips rubs off and gets on some of the others.

With this in mind, it does bear pointing out that there was a fair amount of the usual colored dust in the bag that one gets used to seeing in brightly colored junk foods. One wants to consider how easy it would be to inhale some of that dust… and what the results might be if the stuff got down into your bronchi. Even when just chewing and swallowing the hot chips in the normal way, both of us were caught at the back of our throats by the heat of the chili extract, and there was some discreet coughing from each of us (significantly more from me) until we swallowed once or twice. That dust struck me as an immediate possible cause for the problems experienced by the unfortunate girl in the Sun news story. And seriously—mock an asthmatic for having trouble with that? And for possibly having a reaction on top of it, secondary to inhaled dust contaminated with straight chili extract? “Judge not lest ye too be judged.”

Anyway. Our conclusions: if you are a person comfortable with fairly spicy food, you can safely eat these, but you may still be surprised — so take precautions. If you are not able to handle capsaicin-based heat, you might want to steer clear of these: the hot chips may cause you trouble.

Hope this helps anyone who might have had questions. Me, I’m going to finish off my share of the bag now and leave the rest for Peter. But I’ve got the crème fraîche ready…

*It’s interesting to note in passing here that while Peter has very significant tolerance for chili heat, he has almost no tolerance for (or patience with)  the upward-rising horseradish-style heat of the kind you get with wasabi, hot English or Chinese mustard, or a good Jewish horseradish. When ingesting such, it is my pleasure to sit there and happily enjoy the sensation of my sinuses getting blasted clear while he runs around flailing and shrieking. Okay, maybe not shrieking so much. But flailing, yeah; and he turns all pink.

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August 2, 2015
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Fantasy and SFMediaOnline lifethings that piss you off

Dinosaurs and Dinosaur Shit

by Diane Duane April 6, 2015

dinosaur-asteroid

This last weekend has been spent reading, working on this and that, making a lot of waffles, and attempting to deal with some thorny issues, the least important of which has been “How on Earth did we eat that Valrhona chocolate syrup and not remember doing it?”

The most important of the issues, though, has been increasingly occupying my mind since the Hugo Award nominations came out a couple of days back.

I suspect that most writers don’t mind being nominated for awards. It’s happened to me every now and then: I still remember with considerable pleasure (even though I didn’t win) the crazed adrenaline rush that came with being nominated for the Campbell two years in a row.

Being nominated for a Hugo is something that’s not likely to happen to me in the near future — at the very least, for various logistical reasons. But now, with the circumstances surrounding this year’s Hugo nomination ballot, the thought that keeps recurring is this: “I am so, so, so, so, SO glad that this year I wasn’t in a position to be nominated for anything.”

This is because this year the Hugo Awards nomination system has been nastily and cynically gamed, much to the detriment of various people who deserved to be considered for the awards — and whose nominations are now more or less irrevocably tainted by the approbation of the bloc voters supporting one or another set of nomination “slates”.  Some writers were put on one or another of these slates without their knowledge or agreement, and are now horrified by the ugly situation they’re in.

The Book News page at the online version of the Telegraph has a roundup of the general / basic facts of the situation. Also, if you check the #HugoAwards tag on Twitter you will find plenty of links discussing what’s been going on.

As I said, while this has been unfolding I’ve been wondering what to say about it, and am not surprised that others (i.e., those less preoccupied with screenplay work and waffle irons) have been quicker off the mark and have summed up much of what I was thinking more gracefully or incisively than I can at the moment.  Most specifically, I’m very much on the same page as Elizabeth Bear, whose LJ posting speaks very clearly about the intersection between fandom and prodom and how this situation seems to her to affect it. (Also worth reading are Matthew David Surridge’s quite long but beautifully comprehensive reaction to being nominated via one of these slates and how he declined the nomination, and Sarah Chorn’s “lamentation”. Charlie Stross’s post about a publisher that no one’s ever heard of but which suddenly has nine Hugo nominations also makes interesting reading.)

Meanwhile, my only worthwhile contribution to these alarums and excursions is to say: I now and forever decline to be placed on any Hugo (or other) nomination slate, by anybody. If I get put on such a slate without my knowledge I will immediately decline any actual nomination that happens.

Nor will I ever vote for anyone or anything that achieves Hugo (or other) nomination via being put on such a slate. …And in company with many other potential Hugo nomination-voters this year, I can see a whole lot of “No Award” (or “No Vote”, I need to get clear on the detail…) votes being marked on my ballot in the near future.

One last thing: I think, finally, that what we’re hearing behind this ugly fooforaw is what Chuck Wendig memorably describes as “dinosaurs losing their collective dinosaur shit and waving their tiny ineffective arms at the coming meteors (and subsequent mammal survival party).“ And leaving their little proto-coproliths scattered all over the landscape, for good measure.

Well, this too shall pass. And this particular batch of dinosaurs, no one will miss.

April 6, 2015
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On missing Dr. Who at Christmas

by Diane Duane December 26, 2014

image

 

Suddenly, a big deal tonight: Not being able to watch a Dr. Who Christmas Special on Christmas. (It’s recording on the Sky box at home, but we won’t be back for days yet and it’s not the same.)m

Even though one is both a novelist and screenwriter who has been a fan of the Doctor’s since the 1970s. And a fan who sneaked Four into a Star Trek novel.. And a fan who sneaked Five into one of her own novels. And who finally had the pleasure of writing for the Doctor under the Beeb’s auspices, though in print. And is yet, somehow… strangely… a woman.

Dammit, Christmas has not been perfect after all. But perhaps less because of the lack of Dr. Who (today) than the underlying context.

“I think in 10 years when ‘Doctor Who’ is still triumphantly successful, a lot of those [women] will grow up to be writers and directors who are desperate to do ‘Doctor Who.'”

Wait. What? “Wait ten years until the present generation of female Who fans grows up enough to have enough credential and also desperately wants to write for Dr. Who“?

Seriously? What about the last ten or twenty years’ worth of woman writers who have loved the Doctor for who he is, and are also writing for TV, on this side of the water or the other?  You can’t have dug that deeply into that stratum. Otherwise all of them wouldn’t have said “no” except one.

Stephen, for God’s sake, wake up! Women have been holding up half of Who fandom’s sky for decades. Most of the people managing the pledge drives that supported the Doctor on US public television when he was as new there as Monty Python? Women. Most of the people talking up the available Who books (I had them all while I was doing my earliest Trek work) in the eighties? Women. Other women got me into Who, and not because of how he looked. The Doctor does not need to be comely. It’s nice when he is, but dear God, hardly a requisite. The main issue is his courage, and his heart, and how the two engage one another: with the occasional nod to personal style. The character who adventures, who dares in the face of terrible odds to do the right thing, who succeeds (and sometimes fails at least as spectacularly) — that’s the character we want to see more of; to work with.

…And (over here, at least) to see something like as many woman writers working with him as men. Leaving aside the sheer statistical unlikeliness of at least a statistically significant percentage of the woman writers working in US and UK TV right now not being Who fans — this isn’t about demographics, or political correctness. It’s about point of view, and (again) about personal engagement. The Doctor’s male associates and companions have arguably been kind of a mixed bunch in terms of their effectiveness — excepting of course Captain Jack Harkness, always a law unto himself, the one being that every sentient creature in the universe knows would love the one lovable thing about them that no one else can see. But it would hardly take a six-sigma analysis of Who episodes to suggest that on the averages, it’s the female (or female-ish) companions and associates who routinely teach the Doctor most about being human: that being what he seems to most want to learn. And it wouldn’t seem like reaching to suggest that — at the very least — the female Who writers could have things to say to, and through, the Doctor that the male writers have so far missed.

Haven’t found the right women writers? Look more. Look harder.* Christmas is a time to consider the resolutions that will follow in the new time to come. The necessary resonances are all here, and the time is right. Because the more people of all available genders who bring their expertise to writing for our old friend, the stronger, smarter, deeper, better he’ll become. And isn’t that what this is all about?

Colleague: look harder.

(…And dammit, I missed Cabin Pressure last night, too. Plainly perfection is a nuanced thing…)

*And much as it pains me, to prevent confusion, I recuse myself from any such consideration right now. There are lots of woman writers who could do this work as well as I could, or better: with delight, with passion, desperately — as you seem to prefer. While I have universes to tend to that need my attention and no one else’s. It’s the burden we bear.

December 26, 2014
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On receiving the IAMTW “Faust” Award

by Diane Duane July 26, 2014

IAMTWjpg
The formal acceptance of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers’ Grand Master / Lifetime Achievement Award at SDCC 2014:

I want first of all to thank the IAMTW for honoring me with this award. I don’t think of myself as particularly grand, and mastery is a goal I’m usually convinced is a long way off; but it’s nice to be disagreed with so publicly.

 

I really hate it that I can’t be with you to accept this. But work at the European end of things is keeping me at home, and I’m pretty sure that that incredibly prolific and committed storyteller Frederick Faust, who wrote as Max Brand and under so many other names, would back me up in saying that the work comes first.

 

In any case: in accepting this let me chiefly thank the readers, fellow writers, and editors who make it so very worthwhile. You’re the ones whose constant support and friendship over many years have proven that the challenge of working in other people’s worlds is far outweighed by the privilege and pleasure of it — and that playing in those extramural universes, as long as you give your all to the storytelling, is just as honorable and fulfilling a way to spend your life as playing in your own. To my fellow pros and the fellow fans in all the worlds where I work, canonically or otherwise, all I can say is: thanks again, and (until I kick the present project out the door) I’ll see you online! (@dduane)

I’ve really been intensely unhappy that I wasn’t going to be able to be in San Diego to speak the above words myself. There’s much to be said for knowing you’ve won an award before the fact — especially that you don’t have to sit there in a roomful of people twitching about what might or might not be about to happen. I’ve done that a couple/few times, and I can’t really recommend it. Scrubbing in on brain surgery has freaked me out far less.

But stress issues aside, there’s also considerable pleasure in merely having this kind of work acknowledged. A lot of professional writers are ambivalent about doing novel work that’s based on films or comics or somebody else’s storytelling in some other medium  — often a more visual one, or one positioned higher up on the media totem pole. (Since there’s been an unspoken perception among creatives for a long time now that film beats TV, TV beats music, music beats any print medium, and so on down the line, with new forms of visual media squabbling amongst one another as they try to wriggle themselves into the longer-established peer structure.) There are writers who avoid such work because they feel it’s beneath them, or because other people will assume that they’re only doing it for the money – not that the money’s routinely all that great, if the truth be told. Or else they’re afraid that people won’t take the work (or them)  seriously if they do it.

How the newspapers of the time saw the Star Trek revival

How the newspapers of the time saw the Star Trek revival

I would not be one of those writers. My experience is that if you as the writer treat the work seriously, it will be taken seriously… at least by anyone who takes the time to judge it on its own merits rather than their own preconceptions. (And if someone won’t do that, why would you care what they thought?)  As a result I’ve spent a significant portion of my life working hard in other people’s universes, and the only reason I do that is because I feel strongly about what’s come out of them in the past, for good or ill or sometimes both. Routinely, this is not work I get into unless there’s something I really love about the source material.

Star Trek would be the best example of this, of course. I loved it from the moment it turned up on the screen, and I loved it after it fell off the screen into what (up until then) for any other series would’ve been a fairly quick oblivion. But Star Trek had a couple of things going for it that other TV shows hadn’t had until then. It had content that could be syndicated afterwards (for which we have the inimitable Lucille Ball to thank: Desilu, the production company that she ran with her husband Desi Arnaz, invented the concept of syndication.) But more than that, it had a committed, passionate and quick-witted fandom that refused to let it die. They saw — as I saw — something in Star Trek that in terms of its storytelling and its vision was too good to lose. It was that too-often-indefinable thing that makes you want to keep on hearing (or seeing) the stories. This is in its way the purest and most basic of fannish impulses… the gut-deep response to a world you come to love so much that you want to become a part of it, no matter what that looks like, just so long as it keeps going.

In my case it would never have occurred to me in any dream, regardless of its wildness, that the Trek fan fiction I wrote in my late teens was laying the groundwork for other fiction that would eventually plunge me into the media-based fiction world. Or that I’d wind up working right back in the Star Trek universe that I’d loved for so long, and eventually — though much later — in canonical Trek as well. Both sets of circumstances sent me off down kind of a crazy zigzag career path, dizzying sometimes as a switchback road race in the Alps… but the views have been fantastic. On one side, I’ve written for Jean-Luc Picard and Batman and Siegfried the Volsung and Scooby-Doo. On the other, I’ve written novels based on comic characters, novels based on computer games, novels based on RPGs, and most of all, novels based on TV shows — some just being born, some long active, some long defunct. But in all cases they’ve been properties that I’ve been fond of.  So maybe if there’s a message here, it’s that for maximum effect — and certainly, maximum satisfaction at your end — you should write about things you love.

That doesn’t mean that while you do it you should lose sight of the economic realities. One very gifted tie-in writer of my acquaintance used to refer to some of his work by sobriquets such as “Conan the Hot Tub”, “Conan The New Roof…” You do your best to make sure you do your work in places that you not only love, but that are going to pay you a decent wage and treat you honorably. Because the work itself is honorable. There is nothing wrong with writing straightforwardly to entertain, and you have (and should never be afraid to claim) the right to take your payment afterwards with a clear conscience and walk away with your head held high.

…Always assuming you’ve done the work as well as you can, and work to do it even better the next time. The writer who incorrectly assumes that because you don’t own all the rights to it, this is work you can take fewer pains with or “phone in”, won’t be doing this kind of work for long… because the readership will smell it on them, and word will get around. If you’re going to take what we refer to around here as the King’s Shilling, then you must stay bought for the duration of your contract, and give it your full attention and effort. Your unwritten contract with your readers, who’ve spent what Robert Heinlein used to call “their beer money” on your words, demands as much. Fortunately, the more you write, the better you get, as a rule… and the Work For Hire does you the favor of honing skills that will later be turned to your own work, all the sharper for the extra use.

Anyway. Lately I haven’t been doing that much work in other people’s worlds: original writing both at the film and prose ends has been keeping me busy. But my tie-in work has been a great joy to me — the source of much fun and many friendships and (last but most certainly not least) even a factor in the events that led me to the man who married me, and who’s sometimes since done tie-in work at my side. (That Star Trek novel that we wrote on our honeymoon? There’s a statement of commitment if you needed one. It’s not like we didn’t have other things to do.)  🙂

So to have that work so acknowledged is a tremendous pleasure, one I accept with thanks.

And it’s not as if there isn’t just one more Trek novel lying around in the back of my head, waiting for other work to get handled so that I can find out who I need to talk to at Pocket Books these days…

July 26, 2014
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Something unusual happens to me at SDCC 2014

by Diane Duane July 24, 2014

SDCC rooms 23ABC…even though I won’t be there. (Work is keeping me home, unfortunately, as well as a medical issue or two. )

This is the locus of interest at SDCC 2014… 🙂

July 24, 2014
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Hobbyhorses and General RantingMediaRailWriting

The “Amtrak Residency”: Why I Think This Is A Really Bad Idea For A Writer

by Diane Duane March 10, 2014

I’ve felt sorry for Amtrak for a long time. Economic pressures and the unique problems of any rail system based inside the US (where automobile travel has too long been the be-all and end-all) have turned it into a faint shadow of the formerly great passenger and freight rail lines that helped define the 19th and early 20th-century history of the US.

But I’m finished feeling sorry for it as of now. It’s no crime to have fallen on hard times. But offering people what seems to be something wonderful and then to have it look like they might be trying to take advantage of those who take up the offer? Not good.

On the face of it, it sounds like a lovely idea.

#AmtrakResidency was designed to allow creative professionals who are passionate about train travel and writing to work on their craft in an inspiring environment. Round-trip train travel will be provided on an Amtrak long-distance route. Each resident will be given a private sleeper car, equipped with a desk, a bed and a window to watch the American countryside roll by for inspiration. Routes will be determined based on availability.

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis and reviewed by a panel. Up to 24 writers will be selected for the program starting March 17, 2014 through March 31, 2015.  A passion for writing and an aspiration to travel with Amtrak for inspiration are the sole criteria for selection. Both emerging and established writers will be considered.

But then you read the terms and conditions, and the alarm bells go off big time.

Clause 5 is where the trouble starts. From the cautious writer’s point of view, clause 5 can be read as meaning: “When you turn in your application, gee, anything can happen to your original writing. Who knows? We have a billion PR people working for us whose work yours might be [airquotes] confused with [/airquotes]. By signing this you agree that should this happen, you have no recourse, and we never have to credit you or pay you one thin dime.”

Clause 5 by itself ought to be enough to make you walk away. But then comes clause 6, in which you assign to Amtrak the irrevocable world rights to all the data in your application including your writing, forever and a day. And the day after that.

I learned the lesson long ago both from other freelance writers and at my agent’s knee, and the lesson is as important now as it ever was — in this day of the effortless digital ripoff, perhaps way more so. The lesson is this: Never give anyone world rights to any of your writing.  Ever. Ever. Because who knows if that one piece of writing is the one that would have made you famous worldwide and rich beyond the dreams of avarice? Or  more to the point, what if they later do something with your writing that is absolutely opposite to your intentions and which you find harmful or offensive? You’d have no recourse there either. I wouldn’t sell anyone world rights to a story for a million dollars and that necklace of flawless cabochon emeralds I saw in the window at Harry Winston that one time. And sell away world rights to something for the price of a single train ticket? I don’t think so. They could plate the inside of that sleeper with platinum and lay on catering from Dallmayr and I still wouldn’t do it if it meant they got irrevocable world rights.

Better pay the ticket price yourself and keep the rights to your work in your own pocket than swap those rights for the chance at a single train ride, sleeper or not. (And something else to note here. There is no declaration of who owns the rights to the material you produce on this train trip. There is no way to tell what paperwork you’re going to be required to sign if you actually win. Oh, and did I mention the background checks they want to conduct on you first, to make sure you’re not some kind of crypto-crook who’s going to embarrass them? Clause 9.)

…Now, I hear they’re fixing clause 6 in some way or other (doubtless already having heard the first wave of complaints). That’s all well and good. But I haven’t heard a word about clause 5, which stinks to just as high a heaven.  And they originally thought clause 6 was fine as it was. That says way too much about their non-clarity on the concept of what belongs, or might reasonably be expected to belong, to writers.

So please, I beg of you, unless the legal language associated with this offer is amended, you should consider stepping away from the very large diesel-powered vehicle. I too am passionate about train travel and writing… way more than most people might guess on the first count. But this is not the way to go about it.

…Let me add, for clarity’s sake, that I think aiding writers to experience rail travel as a possible source for inspiration in their writing is a super idea. The people you meet who you’d never have met otherwise, the places you see from a train that you see from no other point of view (especially that strange opportunity to see, as it were, into the “back yards” of people’s lives)… they can make a huge difference to the work, no question, injecting the delightfully unexpected into the writing experience. But as usual with any abstract “good idea” when you try to drag it into real-world realization, the devil proves to be in the details. Sometimes, even with the best intentions in the world, implementation can get thorny, and unexpected consequences can get thrown up to complicate the issue.

I’m hardly insensible to the view that there’s nothing altrustic about this particular version of the sponsored-residency concept, and the way this whole business can be viewed as an opportunity for positive publicity for Amtrak. (I wouldn’t have used the word “stunt”, though here and there others have.) Never mind that for the moment. What I think Amtrak needs to deal with now is the apparent one-sidedness of the legal language attached to the opportunity — so that applicants will have some sense that there’s protection in it for them, their concerns, and their work, as well as for the company providing the opportunity.

I very much hope that happens.

Writing on the train on one’s own nickel: the Belfast-Dublin Enterprise, 2004

(CC train image at the top from Jack Snell on Flickr)

March 10, 2014
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Going deeper
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“Going Deeper”: searching for the secrets in Dr. John Watson’s CV

by Diane Duane April 17, 2013

Last year I wrote a post called “The Starship and the Upstairs Flat” which concerns the longstanding (and until then, one-sided) relationship between the Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek canons. While working on that, I had cause to go have a look at the Sherlock  DVDs, because in “The Blind Banker” we get a quick glimpse at John’s CV, and I wanted to examine it in detail.

(This was as much a harking back to old habits as mere curiosity. Nurses like to have the salient professional details about the doctors they know, and especially the ones they work with. Back in the day, when it was much harder to lay hands on pertinent details than just Googling for them, my colleagues and I were definitely not above quietly sending away for the State Board scores of doctors whose expertise we weren’t sure about.)

I hadn’t given much more thought to the subject until recently, when I had reason to look more closely at the Doctor’s CV. When I did, I began to realize that it says all kinds of interesting things about John Watson to a (former) health professional. Discussion follows…

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April 17, 2013
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Dude, where’s my Apocalypse?!

by Diane Duane December 21, 2012

Does anybody have an 800 number for the ancient Mayans? Because I need to lodge a complaint.

Seriously, 2012 has been something of a wash all around.  Tragedies. Mass shootings. Anguish of all kinds. Local cataclysms of the flood-and-earthquake variety. Wars and rumors of war (well, yeah, we always have those, but this year has seemed worse than usual for some reason).  Superstorms. Droughts and famines. Endless human pain. (And other species are suffering too, obviously, but in typically human fashion it’s our own pain we notice most.)

A nice hefty apocalypse would’ve really taken the edge off all of those.

Because just think of it.  No more… well, no more [fill in the blank with whatever really gets on your case]. I have my own list:  full of the great tragedies above, but also full of many lesser ones, of annoyances and  disappointments and things that just get under my skin. No more Prometheus.  No more robocalling marketers. No more fiscal cliffs.  No more spam. No more Windows 8.  No more Apple Maps.  Crash a runaway planet or so into us and it’s all over with, and good riddance. (I really would miss never seeing season 3 of Sherlock or the remaining Hobbit films, but when so much evil would be wiped out at the same time, it seems petty to complain.)

Yet after all this effing buildup, what have we got this morning?

Bupkis!

It’s been beyond annoying, really: partly because we were promised two others of these this year. One of them was going to be a few days after my birthday. I thought, “Yeah, typical. I hit a landmark year and then have three days to enjoy it: whose good idea was this??” And the day came — it was supposed to be one of those raptures or something similar — and what do we get?

Nothing.

Then immediately the guy responsible for the math says, “Whoops, no, calculation error, God moves in mysterious ways, I haven’t been told everything, uh, human error, that’s the ticket. It’s going to be October.” The designated date was right after Peter’s birthday this time.  P. simply said, “Great, I get a party and no hangover!” — trust him to see the bright side of an apocalypse: this kind of behavior is the reason I married the man. And the day comes, and we have our little party, and the day goes, and what do we get?

Zip. Zilch. Nada.

What’s the saying? Once might be an accident. Twice could be coincidence. But the third time? Enemy action. The third time, any sensible person would pick up the phone and call Customer Service and say, “This is unacceptable. Something is really wrong at the fulfillment end. You need to do something to put this right.”

But who do I complain to?

Because now we’re going to hear the old song again…  all the stuff about how complex the problem is, how you can’t possibly blame any one person or organization. It was this writer. Or that broadcasting personality. It was a runaway meme. It was publicity-seeking New Agers — that’ll be a popular one. You can just see what the news is going to look like tomorrow, as all these people who promised us an End Of The World that could actually be worth something start pointing at each other and trying to shift the blame.

“Miscalculations in the calendar” — I bet that’ll be the most popular excuse. Rounding errors. Failure to correctly convert metric to imperial, or the other way around. (At least one Mars probe went God knows where because of that: you’d think people would’ve learned better by now! Seriously.) Or wait a moment, no, it’ll all have been a translation error, won’t it? Such a subjective art. Yeah, let’s blame the translators. Like they don’t already have enough on their plates.

I guess there’s nothing for it but to settle in for a nice long session of watching the fingerpointing, until the news cycle gets bored with it and cycles on.  (And I bet that won’t happen soon enough for some of these people, who’ve thought nothing in particular of inflicting their own crazy paranoias on the rest of the planet at large.) It’ll be just like the week after the US Presidential election all over again, with all the people who thought Romney was such a shoe-in suddenly finding all these great reasons how the other guys in the party screwed it up. “Wait, what? Women? Black and hispanic voters? Young voters? He said not to pay them any mind…! Yeah, him over there. And Romney, pff, I never really liked him anyway…”

Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not going to let this slide.  I want to march up to somebody’s desk and get this made right. I don’t care what it takes: they can bloody well get DHL or FedEx on it, for God’s sake, but I want that runaway planet or whatever the hell it was supposed to be on my desk by tomorrow morning at the latest. And in the meantime, until the email with the tracking number comes in, I just want an answer.

Dude, where’s my apocalypse?!

December 21, 2012
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FilmMedia

Setting Out on the Journey

by Diane Duane December 14, 2012

Bilbo Baggins at Rivendell

The second I saw it, the image above turned into a kind of mental “money shot” for me. I’d been awaiting this particular movie with interest for a long time, but not until I saw this image from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey did the hair stand up on the back of my neck and the little voice whisper in my ear, “Start marking off days on the calendar.” Yesterday The Big Day finally came, and I went up to Dublin to see the film in the best possible company. What follows are some very broad and non-spoiler-y notes on the experience.

Just so you know what previous affiliations may color this review: I first read Tolkien’s work in my mid-teens, loved it instantly, and have returned to it repeatedly, for pleasure and sometimes comfort, all my adult life. So am I a fan? Yes. (So was my seatmate at the film, my collaborator / spouse Peter Morwood, though he came at Middle-Earth from the opposite direction: The Hobbit first, then the Lord of the Rings trilogy.) That said, I think I can set aside fondness and fandom for long enough to review what I’ve seen with a relatively clear eye.

Having seen the original LotR film trilogy and loved it—with only the most minor niggles about creative choices—I was still a bit concerned; for in terms of adaptation, it seemed to me that The Hobbit was always going to be a hard road to walk in terms of getting the tone right. The Hobbit is extremely different from the Lord of the Rings books, plainly intended (as we too-coyly put it these days) “for younger readers”. It was always going to be a challenging work to bring to the screen when a lot of the prospective audience would be adults who’d seen the LotR film trilogy, and were used to something in a more starkly grown-up mode. I was a bit nervous that, with creative imperatives simultaneously dragging it in such different directions, the movie might not work.

Well, I needn’t have worried. That leads to my initial answer to the question: should you go see this film? Yes. Will you be satisfied with this film if you’re a Tolkien fan of the I-read-the-books-now-convince-me-you-haven’t-ruined-them school? I think so.

Let me set aside a couple of meta- or marginal issues first: first of all, the fact that Jackson chose to shoot the film in the higher-definition 48 frames-per-second format, untried until now in a major release. I didn’t find myself bothered by it in the least. Peter and I saw the film in its 3D version, and found the 48fps format not at all distracting or strange—in fact, I’m not sure I would have noticed it if I hadn’t been prewarned. Everything just seemed very clear. And the 3D seemed well-handled and not overdone. Obviously your mileage may vary: but I mention this because it’s been a big issue for some people.

Also: in regard to those reviewers who’re wandering around muttering “I don’t know how you can get three movies out of this one small book…” Sorry, but I don’t have much patience with this attitude. It seems to come chiefly from those who haven’t done their homework, ignoring the interviews with Jackson that clearly detail how the film’s writers went back to the Appendices attached to the LotR books for extensive backstory / background material. These reviewers’ position strikes me as similar to one that might be taken by someone who—having seen, for example, a series of Le Carre-based “cold war”-period films—then tries to claim that you couldn’t possibly get three big films out of the whole of World War II. The Appendices at the end of The Return of the King sketch out, in the briefest detail, centuries of uneasy history between the time when Sauron was first dispatched and the time when he becomes a serious problem in LotR: centuries in which the dark power that once rose in Mordor begins its slow and stealthy reconsolidation further afield. I looked over Tolkien’s bare-bones timeline last night, to make sure my memory of it was correct, and with my screenwriter hat on I could easily see three movies implicit in one page of that material. (I’m half tempted to do a Nothing-But-Spoilers review leading into a tentative breakdown, with an eye to what we’ve seen in the first film, of what the structures of the next two films could be like. Another time maybe.) It’s a pity that some reviewers can’t take the time to inform their opinions before trotting them out the door, but such is life. From where I sit, the advice is: Ignore them and go enjoy the show.


“Incineration…?!” …Martin Freeman and Refusing The Call as
an art form

…So back to the film at hand. About the acting there’s not much to say except that it’s always at the very least workmanlike, and sometimes terrific. When you have a big ensemble cast, with so much going on, getting all the introductions made is always going to be problematic: a lot of us can’t even name all the Seven Dwarves, after all these years, and suddenly here we are with twelve… Suffice it to say, this crowd of characters gets handled as well as it might be. Richard Armitage stands out in the crowd, but he in particular has a hard row to hoe; he has to carry the weight of the character work that will turn Thorin Oakenshield into a hero worth following, without leaving you thinking of him as nothing more but a sort of height-challenged bargain-basement Aragorn. The problem is increased by Thorin’s (canonical) distrust of Bilbo, which has to be established strongly enough to register as a problem, yet not so much so as to make him unsympathetic. (And for me this was a close one: I do remember myself thinking, “If this doesn’t get sorted out pretty soon, he’s going to come off as a real dick.” But it gets sorted, as it must.)

Martin Freeman, standing at the core of the story, does as Bilbo Baggins what he usually does, seemingly effortlessly: he makes the part his own until you find it hard to imagine anyone else in it. He starts out (apparently) a little hesitantly, but it’s my opinion that this was both an acting choice and a directorial one. To make Bilbo too proactive too soon would be a misstep, as he’s standing in for all of us in regard to how we’d behave if the house suddenly filled up with dwarves, and how most people would handle the ensuing physical and emotional turmoil that Thorin’s business proposition will provoke.

You’ll hear complaints from some quarters about these early sequences being painted in too-broad strokes, or overplayed for comic effect. But where it counts, the real business is if anything underplayed. In particular, in the crucial moments when the adventurous and much-suppressed Took side of Bilbo’s emotional heredity starts slipping out of the shadows and asserting itself, the temptation to go for any Meaningful Close-up has been wisely resisted. We get nothing but a medium angle, and kind of a remote one at that, of Bilbo sitting leaned up against a wall and listening, just listening with all of him to what’s going on in his sitting room. The way his body’s held, and the still hunger in the character’s face, between them say everything that needs to be said about Bilbo’s secret longing for adventure… and remind us that Martin Freeman can do more with his face while holding it still than many actors can while twisting theirs around every which way. (One word here, also, to my fellow Sherlock fans: toward the end of the film there’s a spot—no, two—where I think you will see, on Freeman’s face, a kind of shadow or presentment of an expression we’ll sooner or later see Dr. John Watson turn on his long-missing partner in the Work. In its present context, though, the expressions and the acting go straight to the core of the character’s interior business, in a flash completely changing the way you see him.)

At any rate, in short order Bilbo gets himself together and things get going. I for one didn’t begrudge the leisurely induction: it’s like the slow climb of the roller coaster up to the first big drop. And like a rollercoaster ride, everything after that starts to happen very fast indeed. Sometimes almost too fast: I could have occasionally wished for a touch more breathing space between sequences… but that’s personal preference. Soon enough we get to the point where Bilbo is walking into Rivendell, and what had originally seemed simply hectically real starts (for me at least) to acquire additional depth.

“Now it is a strange thing,” Tolkien says in The Hobbit, “but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to: while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.” Tolkien gives Thorin’s company a couple of weeks in Rivendell, and it would have made me happier (from the fix-this-problem-in-the-typewriter side of the brain) if even just a few more days there had been implied in the theatrical release. This would have put right a whiff of the (canonically) too-coincidental that occurs here, and also would have allowed time to set up a signpost to Bilbo’s personal sense of wonder, longing, and the depth of his regret at leaving. A few shots of montage would be all it would have taken to deepen and fully establish this sense, so that later when (at a bad moment) Bilbo says that he wants to go back to Rivendell, it doesn’t sound quite so much as if he’s simply chickening out. (Out of context, I’ve seen some images that suggest this material may well appear in the Extended Edition that’s almost certain to come out on DVD in the fullness of time.)

In terms of other character business that might possibly have been augmented a bit—there is muttering from some quarters also about Gandalf being a little too wizard-ex-machina in this film. I can only shrug and say that the beats are canonical, and too much foreshadowing of Gandalf’s assets and abilities here strikes me as counterproductive: the dwarves are plainly as much in the dark about exactly what he can do as Bilbo is. One thing I do like in this: we get to see Gandalf be a bit of the swashbuckling swordsman with Glamdring (and that too is canonical).

In any case, as the film moves toward its climax, Bilbo’s character spends his time doing what served the book perfectly, and serves the film so too: endlessly Refusing The Call (as Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” structure would have it) and then hastily accepting it and Refusing The Next One… the refusals becoming briefer and briefer as Bilbo starts the process of growing into his greater place as the hero of this story as well as its heart. This is an arc that in my opinion needs three films for maximum believability: no one would have bought it in one film, and even two (to my way of thinking) would seem rushed. The main story arc, also — the return to the Lonely Mountain and the issue of dealing, both with the very intractable problem lying within it, and the other difficulties that will follow on that problem’s solution — also need time and space to stretch.  So I think the three-film decision is the right one, and that things are proceeding as they should; and I’m intensely happy for the opportunity to sit back and watch Jackson & Co. get on with it.

Here are some scattered highlights that stood out for me:

Really big things happening. One of the great delights of film for me has always been its ability to show you something bigger than you could have imagined until you saw it unfolding in front of you right that moment. Probably what initially whetted my appetite for this kind of thing would have been the look down into the heart of the ancient Krell machine in Forbidden Planet. I’m always alert now for scenes in film that do this well, and there are a couple of scenes like this in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. One in particular involves a part of The Hobbit that I had completely forgotten about. Peter Jackson imbues this sequence with such a sense of sheer size and elemental threat that I got completely lost in it for some moments, torn between “Where the hell did this come from, I don’t remember this?!” and “Wow!”

Ian McKellen, doing what Ian McKellen does. In particular his scenes with Galadriel have something about them that’s unusually sweet without being cloying. There are other moments when some expressions of McKellen’s are given particularly close attention by the camera, with very good reason. It’s impossible to tire of watching such effortless mastery.

Smaug…what we see of him. Not very much, which doesn’t surprise me: I no more expected any significant view of him in the How-Erebor-Fell sequence up top than I would have expected seeing much of the shark, early on, in Jaws. But I have been waiting a long time for a dragon attack that properly shows the dreadful power and violence that such an onslaught should entail, and boyoboy do we get a taste of that here.

…Finally: surely I must have a few niggles? Yeah, a few, but they come very much from the fannish end of things. Chief among these: I’m not entirely sure about the characterization of Radagast. He smacks to me more of a T. H. White-ish Merlin than anything else, and knowing what we know about the Istari, I’m not sure that the affect of dotty absent-mindedness (with its overtones of “what-in-Middle-Earth-have-you-been-smoking-old-boy”) really works. Not to mention his, uh, mode of transport, which struck me as a bit on the Pythonesque side. …Well, maybe—if we see more of him—he’ll grow on me. (After all, enough things seem to be growing on him…)

But by and large, I had very, very few other problems with this film, and I’m looking forward to seeing it again sometime over the next couple/few weeks. This is, to sum up, as good an adaptation of The Hobbit as we could have hoped for: or rather, the beginning of as good a one. And we’re not done yet.

Because now, of course, the wait begins for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. For some people (myself included) it won’t come soon enough: next Christmas already seems far away. But I think the wait—and the wait for Christmas 2014—will prove to have been worth it. Looking forward, a time will come, I think, when these three films and the three LotR films that preceded it will be seen as a double trilogy, inextricably interwoven. We’ll see.

 

…One last note. Before seeing the film I almost entirely avoided looking at the early reviews from the trades and so forth: not for fear of spoilers, but because reviewers too focused on the bottom line can often affect one’s impressions in ways that don’t count—specifically, assessment of how the visual and verbal storytelling holds up. I allowed myself only one exception. I went and had a look at the review written by our old friend and colleague, Munich-based screenwriter and media maven Torsten Dewi (aka Wortvogel). I trust Torsten’s judgment, and was curious to see what he had to say. Now, having seen the film, I’m not surprised to see that he and I are on the same page as regards a lot of issues; and I commend his review to your attention (in rough Google translation if you’re not German-speaking).

December 14, 2012
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Perfectly Assembled

by Diane Duane April 28, 2012

So we saw Marvel’s Avengers Assemble last night. (Aka The Avengers in the US.)

Don’t ask me why we get to see this first, instead of North American audience  getting it now: but I am so emphatically not complaining. (I should add this: I can think of several marketing/rollout strategies that would explain why this move makes sense for this franchise, but I have no data to suggest that what I’m thinking has any connection to reality in this case, so I’ll just shut up about that now.)

Let me say right here that I come from a position of bias. I have been actively reading comics since I was eight, and have been reading the Avengers characters (separately and together) since my teens. But I can normally put bias aside sufficiently to tell other people whether the film I’ve just seen is any good or not.

Anyway: we saw it at an eight PM screening in center-city Dublin last night. The audience was thoughtful (not a single damn mobile phone went off during the performance) and well-behaved, which always helps. There was a line of people twenty deep at the concession stand when I ducked out for popcorn before things started, so I went back in, resolved to find a screenplay “quiet moment” to go out and get some later.

It never happened, because there are no quiet (read “boring”)  moments in this screenplay. Not to say that there aren’t lulls in the action (sensible: incessant action is fatiguing and tends to do the storytelling harm) and pauses to handle character business: but regardless of these, the script clicks along at an amazing rate. The dialogue is crisp and the “smart lines” feel natural: characters sniping at each other because that’s what they would do, rather than because that’s what they should do now. The pacing is just faultless. And most importantly, the characters are perfectly introduced, so that whether you know them or not when you sit down, you know them quite well enough when you leave.

This is always a problem with ensemble films: getting everyone introduced and getting the character interactions sufficiently well laid down that the action which should flow from them does so naturally when it starts moving. In this case, the characters start feeling out each others’ weaknesses and picking at each other in absolutely natural and understandable ways, to the point where you do start wondering whether this team is going to come together correctly. (And the acting is almost certainly helped by the fact that all these actors seem to genuinely like each other.) There was — to my mind — a sort of thematic breathing space almost exactly in the middle of the film where the viewer is allowed a few moments to mull over the possibility that things are not going to go according to plan. And then plans start going wrong, very wrong indeed, and things come together, very believably, more in spite of what’s happening than because of it.

This is storytelling of a very high level indeed. But then, this is Joss Whedon we’re talking about: so, ’nuff said. (And though this is not a place where the majority of viewers will be coming from, let me say now that there’s a tremendous pleasure as a writer in sitting back and watching a fellow professional, who has finally been given enough money and enough time, just do his thing and knock the story and the visuals right out of the park. It is — if you’re a baseball fan like me — the visual equivalent of hearing the batter hit the ball just that way and produce that particular CRACK that gives you warning enough to sit back in sheer pleasure and watch the ball start describing that long lazy arc up and out.)

I don’t dare go into too much detail here about the film: it’s so tough to tell what people consider spoilery any more that it seems better to say too little than too much. But I don’t mind sharing a few general personal opinions.

  • Mark Ruffalo picks up this film, stuffs it into his pocket and runs off with it in some of the most charming ways possible. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Hulk, and the portrayal of his Bruce Banner side is just winning: dry and witty and so enjoyable. I could have watched Bruce sparring with Tony Stark for hours. (I leave aside the wonderful snarkfest with Loki. I was privileged to see some of this material at an advanced trailer showing in Munich in November of last year, courtesy of our old friend and fellow film fan Torsten Dewi at Wortvogel.de… and it’s been preying on my mind and making me grin mindlessly at things for no particular reason ever since. You have no idea what a pain in the butt it is to see something so marvelous and then have to keep quiet about it for five months. God, how I suffer for my art.)  (Heh.)
  • I also couldn’t get enough of Chris Evans’ innocent — let’s just say the word — beauty, and the way he carries himself and his character: to my mind he’s even better as Captain America here than he was in his own movie, which is saying something. For me at least he’s always been at the core of the Avengers concept, a character with his own special something, akin to what Superman has — that quality of just being good — and it’s marvelous to see Cap so well played.
  • I want to have Agent Coulson’s babies. (Perhaps fortunately it’s way too late for this. But still.) I have always loved the character, and I now love him, if possible, even more. You’ll find out why.
  • And a side issue: I don’t think I’ve ever seen New York so beautifully destroyed. (Disclaimer: I am a native Manhattanite, born on East 86th Street.) If you’ve read much of my novel work, you know that in fiction I occasionally destroy cities, or bits of cities, that seem to need it. I once dropped an alien spacecraft on top of the main train station in Zürich because I didn’t like the floor tile they’d installed during a renovation. (…Well, I mean, who installs tile that’s going to be slippery when it’s wet, in a space where people are going to be tracking in snow for a third of the year? I ask you. It made me cranky.) But the outdoor CGI during the whole climactic sequence was utterly believable. I know that lighting: I’ve been there when the weather’s like that: it felt real. The whole thing was magnificently done — the cinematographer deserves an Oscar. And as for details… I won’t go into too much here. Let”s just say that I’ve trashed Grand Central in my time, but boy, not like this. I was awed. (And can’t wait to see it again.)
  • Pepper and Tony have a moment while they’re working on something. Watch what Pepper does to what they’re working with.  😉 This throwaway, wide-angle moment perfectly sums up why this will go down as a classic “four-quadrant” film.

…I may add some notes  to this posting later as things occur to me that I haven’t mentioned here.  However: one of the blurb sources presently being mentioned in the European trailers says of the film, “Possibly the best superhero film of all time.” Now, that’s a pretty high bar to jump. (I hold the original Superman in high regard.) But it’s possible, just possible, that this opinion is correct. In any case, there are relatively few films that I buy on DVD, not just to watch repeatedly for pleasure, but to study so that I can better understand the reasons why a movie works so well. This is going to be one of those films. And it’s going to take me weeks to get to the studying part, because this film is going to keep sucking me into Insane Enjoyment mode time… after time… after time.

Whether it’s “the best superhero film ever made” or not: you have a truly superior viewing experience ahead of you. The characters work together, they care about each other, and the Spectacle kicks right in on schedule in the proper ancient Greek sense….so as a result, this whole damn thing is unmissable.

Enjoy!

I intend to, again, as soon as possible.

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April 28, 2012
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Film and TVMediaOnline lifeTV in general

A guestblog about Sherlock: "After The Fall"

by Diane Duane February 23, 2012

ATTENTION ALL: please read the spoiler warning below before clicking on anything in this post. Thanks! 🙂

The Fall begins

There it is: right now, possibly one of the most familiar images in the TV-fannish regions of the Intarwebz, one which is routinely greeted by many of those who recognize it with miserable sighs, in some cases with weeping and wailing, and (in many forums and online havens) with the gnashing of teeth and anguished cries of “MOFFAAAAAT!!” …

…For a decade or so now, Peter and I have had the privilege and constant delight of being friends with a very gifted German screenwriter by the name of Torsten Dewi. Torsten worked closely with us on the miniseries Die Niebelungen (which aired in the US on SyFy under the title Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King), and was the source of endless good advice and encouragement all through what turned into kind of a crazed process.

In more recent years, besides his continuing TV and film work (he was, in particular, the man who introduced the telenovela concept to Germany with Lotta in Love), Torsten has become a most popular and prolific blogger on TV, film, and media in general. Some weeks ago he let us know that he and his Very Significant Other, the beautiful Britta, were going to be taking a holiday this month; and rather than let his blog at Wortvogel.de go quiet, or do a bunch of canned postings, he asked me (among various others) whether I’d like to do a guest piece for him. I immediately said yes, and almost as immediately knew what I wanted to do for him: for “The Reichenbach Fall” had just aired.

Here, then, is a link to what I wrote for Torsten —  a general overview of Sherlock (for those in Germany who might not have seen it yet) and some notes about issues that have developed over the past two seasons, and particularly in the wake of the most recent episode. Please note that this blog is absolutely overrun with spoilers for everything in series 1 & 2 up to and including specifics of events in “The Reichenbach Fall.”

Otherwise: enjoy!

February 23, 2012
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EuropeFilm and TVMediaStar TrekStar Trek and other licensed propertiesTV in generalWriting

The Starship and the Upstairs Flat

by Diane Duane February 2, 2012

There is a moment in Sherlock‘s second-season episode “The Hounds of Baskerville” in which the world’s first and only consulting detective is attempting to get to grips with the fact that his senses, the tools of his trade, utterly reliable for all his past life, have apparently turned on him and are no longer to be trusted. As have many other artists in similar situations — painters who suddenly can’t paint, sculptors who can’t find the shapes hidden in the stone any more — Sherlock briefly comes a bit undone under the pressure of the untoward circumstance.

 

[scrippet]
INT. CROSS KEYS — NIGHT

Sherlock sits by the fire in the pub. His breathing is labored as he stares into the fire, and he’s squeezing his eyes shut and opening them again as if his vision’s giving him trouble. This behavior continues while John sits down with him and briefs him on Henry Baskerville’s condition —

JOHN
Well, he’s in a pretty bad way. Manic. Totally convinced that there’s some mutant superdog roaming the moors. And there isn’t, is there? Because if somebody knew how to make a mutant superdog, we’d know. They’d be for sale. I mean, that’s how it works….

John shares a little more info about what may or may not be clues to the present mystery, but Sherlock isn’t engaging with him. His face works a bit bizarrely as he tries to hang onto his composure. And after a moment’s pause he says something that costs him a great deal:

SHERLOCK
Henry’s right. I saw it too.

JOHN
What?

SHERLOCK
I saw it too, John.

JOHN
Just a moment. You saw what?

SHERLOCK
A hound. Out there in the Hollow. A gigantic hound.

He blinks again, the trouble-with-my-eyes expression: but the trouble they’re giving him is that they’ve shown him something he cannot possibly believe. John too is having trouble believing what he’s hearing from the 2012 finalist for the title of Earth’s Most Rigorous Thinker.

JOHN
Um. Look, Sherlock. We have to be rational about this. And you, of all people, can’t — Look, let’s just stick to what we know. Stick to the facts.

SHERLOCK
Once you rule out the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be true.

JOHN
What’s that mean?

Sherlock picks up the glass of whisky sitting beside him and stares at it: stares in horrified fascination and loathing at the shaking of the hand holding it.

SHERLOCK
Look at me. I’m afraid, John. Afraid.

Sherlock takes a big swig of the whisky.

JOHN
Sherlock —

SHERLOCK
(another swig)
Ought to be able to keep myself distant. To divorce myself from feelings.

He holds up the glass. His hand shakes worse. John’s eyes rest on it, on his friend’s desperately working face as Sherlock struggles for control.

SHERLOCK (CONT’D)
But look. You see? The body’s betraying me. Interesting, yes? — emotions? The grit on the lens, the fly in the ointment —

JOHN
(concerned but gently ironic)
All right, ‘Spock,’ just take it easy. You’ve been pretty wired lately. You know you have. I think you’ve just gone out there, got yourself a bit worked up…

SHERLOCK
Worked up?

JOHN
It was dark and scary —

SHERLOCK
Me? There’s nothing wrong with me!
[/scrippet]

…Sherlock then veers into a fairly emphatic anxiety attack with a side order of unusually driven and angry off-the-cuff deduction. But I had to roll the recording back to get back into sync with it, for the narrative had unseated me at the word “Spock” and kept right on running, leaving me sitting there a bit dazed. I’d expected a lot of things from this episode, but seeing two of my favorite fandoms cross the streams with such flair left me shaking my head and grinning.

Sherlock and Spock. I’ve been a friend of the one since my teens — maybe earlier — and an off-canon chronicler of the other for twenty or thirty years. As such, the confluence of the two universes was hardly news to me: Star Trek (and Star Trek writers) have had the hots for Holmes for a long time, and dialogue references and outright cameos are commonplace. Nick Meyer, the director of arguably the single best of all Trek movies until the Great Reboot, is probably the best-known of the Holmes fans to become involved in Trek’s newer, younger Canon. Data routinely goes sleuthing in the original Holmes’s gaslit London on the holodeck (and Moriarty has escaped from it, creating the predictable mayhem). There’s even the line referred to in the tumblr gif below — which, since all Trek film is canonical, makes the connection concrete: either Spock and Sherlock Holmes, or Spock and Arthur Conan Doyle, are (it says here) related. But whether or not you accept that last statement as gospel truth or a Vulcan “exaggerating”, there’s no denying that 1701/1701A and 221B are thematic and spiritual neighbors. The Trek universe has been nodding amicably toward Doyle’s creation for many years.

But this was the first time the other universe, in mass media at least, had ever nodded back. I don’t know how other Trek fans felt, but I was seriously tickled: as if in some obscure and very satisfying way, a circle had closed.

And of course early in January news got out that Benedict Cumberbatch will have a major role in Star Trek 2. And by all reports, he’s settling into the new job nicely. So as one circle is closed, another one opens. What a world…

(Over here, by the way, is the clip referenced in the script extract above.)

…It’s nice to see the two universes on mutual nodding acquaintance, though. For the great core relationships at the heart of each of them have resonances to each other that may or may not be entirely accidental. The correspondences naturally aren’t exact (and it’d be boring if they were), particularly because in Trek the core relationship is a triad and in Holmes’s world it’s a dyad. But the strength of the similarities is striking.

In both worlds, you could make a case that it’s the rational, logical creatures inhabiting them that give the Enterprise and the upstairs flat at 221B Baker Street their spice and potential drama… for acting reasonably and rationally isn’t normally a favorite occupation of human beings. Though logic is unquestionably a good thing, years and years of Star Trek episodes and many of the Holmes stories remind us that in either past or future, unless tempered by human qualities, the logic becomes a serious pain in the butt and occasionally a stumbling block, or even a liability. So in each world, the most committed humans/”normal people” slowly educate the local logician in the usages and usefulness of the human heart; and along the way, the logician normally manages to teach the humans something about how to really think. Everyone benefits from this arrangement… assuming that they don’t kill each other first. (Cue the iconic music from “Amok Time” here.) But the meat and drama of the stories arises mostly from this learning process, and the ways it goes wrong, or right.


If they don’t kill each other first. This was a close call…

I hardly need to get into the Kirk/Spock/McCoy dynamic very deeply at this late date: the way the characters interact is so well known. Outside of fiction, I’m sure endless reams of material have been written about the putative relationships between the characters seen as id/ego/superego or parent/child/adult or Moe/Larry/Curly or Roddenberry-only-knows what else, mostly as attempts to explain where the Logician fits in and how the others manage to affect him. Some of these theories may actually have some application. On my own time I’ve normally felt that all three characters are too complex to reduce to such simplistic formulae. But there are certainly themes that recur when Kirk is interacting with Spock (in terms of looking past the rigidity of logic toward ways to push out the boundaries of the envelope, or break some otherwise deadly paradigm to save everybody’s lives) and when McCoy is interacting with him (in terms of forcefully putting the emotional/ethical side of a situation and getting up in Spock’s face, sometimes quite rudely, until the message gets across to best effect). And if anything, these tendencies have become stronger and more effective in the reboot, with the reincarnation of Kirk, Spock and McCoy in the personas of younger characters making it plainer that they’re all in the same learning experience together — a three-part work in progress, but with the foundations of a lifelong friendship now firmly laid.

In Sherlock’s boot-forward into the 21st century from the 19th, the same situation obtains, with serious benefits. For example, the unnerving scene above would never have played with a middle-aged Holmes and Watson: to make it work you need two younger men who’re still learning the extent of their powers and settling into their roles. These might at first glance look simpler than those of the Trek core team, since this team’s built for two rather than three — but it actually makes their dynamic even more complicated. Watson, as both doctor and military man, combines the opportunities and challenges of the Kirk/McCoy roles… and winds up being able to affect his opposite number in two entirely different ways.

His own complexities aren’t to be dismissed. Here you have a man disciplined and tough-minded, deeply wounded by his experiences in Afghanistan but not conquered by them — a crack shot possessed of what Sherlock quickly (and almost inopportunely) identifies as “strong moral principle” and “nerves of steel”. But perfectly balancing this is Watson’s slight, charming diffidence, unfailing kind-heartedness, and gentle bedside manner. (Close inspection of the DVD makes available some useful and rather diagnostic background information on him, including his interest in a career in advanced A&E with an emphasis on laparoscopy and other associated styles of “bloodless surgery”. Click here for screencaps with some light clinical commentary.) John’s underlying compassion positions him perfectly to understand and support his scary-smart, “high-functioning sociopath” roommate day by day. Yet he’s both willing and able to kick Sherlock’s butt physically if circumstances require, or to administer him a succinct no-holds-barred tonguelashing that would do McCoy proud. This is no mere sidekick: this is a teammate, well along in the process of being/becoming a rock-solid friend.


He’s got a BAFTA and he’s not afraid to use it

And John’s presence and qualities point up another of the resonances between the Starship and the upstairs flat. Just as you could make a case that the real narrative of James Kirk’s greatness in Starfleet doesn’t get started until he and Spock meet, realize each other’s strengths, and come to initial terms, you could also say that Holmes is just an Annoying Incredibly Smart Guy until Watson’s transformative influence starts having its effect — tempering that awesome intellect and processing ability with more regularly expressed humanity, taught the best way: by example. In all these characters’ cases, the temptation to employ the way-overused line about “they complete each other” has to be resisted at all costs, because any “completing” in the case of these two teams of characters is decades away… if it can ever happen this side of all their graves.

In particular, the Holmes and Watson story, as it’s been reframed, isn’t about completion at all. It’s about growth, and what each of these men has to teach the other over time. It’s equally tempting, in service of this theme, to reach for the old no-brainer mind/heart-duality model and say that each man brings one half of a whole to the table. But there’s nothing so simplistic about this character dyad, who come to us with many layers of history and complexity laid on in various media over the last century, like a much-loved painting that the artist just can’t stop working on. It’d probably be more accurate to say that John has as much to learn from Sherlock about the arts of thought and observation as Sherlock has to learn from John about the uses of concern and compassion. Each man is going to make the other whole — though there’ll be the usual missteps and kicking and screaming along the way. But this is what makes for great and satisfying drama: characters who change each other and are changed themselves — not running together like two drops of water into one, but each growing more perfect in the exercise of some unique gift — say, the conduction of light or the reception of it — simply because of the other’s continued and reliable presence in an otherwise unreliable world.

Maybe that’s a clue to why both these worlds have rebooted so cleanly into this century (besides the fact that both have good solid writing teams, hard at work and intent on taking the time to get it right). Both Star Trek and Sherlock’s world still speak on a very basic level to people who — besides a little adventure and excitement — want and need stories about how friendship and intelligence, working in tandem, have a fighting chance at conquering the world and making a difference, on the small scale or the very large. In both cases you may hear the usual noise about old wine in new bottles. But this presupposes an audience that still thinks the old wine’s worth drinking… and who’re willing to take the chance to see if the new bottles might actually make it taste even better this time round. For such people, it looks more and more like there’ll always be somewhere to beam up to: and a door on Baker Street that, when they knock, will always be answered.

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40 years in print, 50+ novels, assorted TV/movies, NYT Bestseller List a few times, blah blah blah. Young Wizards series, 1983-2020 and beyond; Middle Kingdoms series, 1979-2019. And now, also: Proud past Guest of Honour at Dublin2019, the World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin, Ireland.

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