ed_rex

Sins of the Show-Runner?

A commentator at the Tor.com discussion of The Middle Men passed along a "strong rumour" that Torchwood: Miracle Day was originally meant to be a five-episode series, but was expanded to ten, "so that Starz could get subscribers for longer".

Like any rumour, I take this one with the proverbial kilo of salt, but it does offer a credible, if not fully explanatory, hypothesis for the remarkably slow and inept story-telling to which we have been subject lo! these past seven weeks.

Less subtle than an average episode of South Park, the seventh episode is the best outing of the series so far. Or perhaps I should say, the least bad.

Immortal Sins at least boasts some action, some humour, some sex and even some romance.

On the other hand, the sex and romance is at best only as good as the merely competent fan-fic it will no doubt inspire, the action was counter-balanced by long, gruesome minutes of torture that would delight Mel Gibson and — of course! — a secondary plot and characterization that make no sense and which are in any case mostly negated by episode's end.

For skin, spoilers, stereotypes, structural analysis (and, yes, snark) see Mel Gibson comes to Torchwood or, The Passion of the Jack. Probably not safe for work.

As you might know, I've been serially reviewing the latest Torchwood series, a work that (I presume) is as much the product of Russell T Davies' personal vision as is possible in an inherently collaborative medium.

So it is rather difficult to ignore the irony, that there is more credible social commentary, more humour and more excitement in Peter Watts' 300 page adaptation of a first-person-shooter video game, which (again, I presume) was written strictly for the money, than there has been in the first five hours of Davies' brain-child.

Watts' story, about a an accidental cybernetic soldier's brief campaign on a ruined island of Manhattan a scant 12 years in our future is also fairly rigorous science fiction, as one might expect from the "reformed marine biologist", but probably not from a novel about a super-soldier and his mysterious battle-armour.

If Crysis: Legion is not quite the follow-up to his 2006 hard-SF masterpiece, Blindsight one might have wished for, it's a better book than one has any reason to expect of a media tie-in.

Click here for "Strange bed-fellows". Some spoilers may occur.

Torchwood: Miracle Day — Escape to L.A. Introduction

The answer to the question, What happens in Escape to L.A.? is, "Not very much and what does happen is too stupid for words."

As there is no sense of reality in Torchwood: Miracle Day, so there is no sense of urgency. The only ticking clock is that of the viewer's rapidly-dwindling patience.

Once can only imagine that two years ago, the four hours to which we've been subjected so far would have been, to much better effect, condensed into the first 30 minutes or so of Russell T Davies flawed but taut, emotionally-moving and thoroughly gripping Children of Earth.

Do you really want to read more? Well, click away. As always, some spoilers behind the link; as sometimes, some foul langage as well. You've been warned.

Rendition: Delayed

Turns out I was anticipating the second episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day a little more than I thought I would.

I awoke to a dead computer on Saturday morning, with a full day already scheduled with Raven. I struggled with the recalcitrant beast's BIOS (the computer, people! The computer's BIOS!) until it was time to step out into the real world.

By the time we had returned from a tour of the Royal Canadian Mint and my very happy introduction to Malaysian cuisine (if you're looking for curry in Ottawa, the Nyonya Curry Chicken at Pedas in Chinatown is very good. But I digress), we were a little sunburnt and a little more worn out by a 10 kilometre stroll on a blistering day. (It's true: the lives Raven and I lead do not resemble a Torchwood storyline in the slightest.)

Nevertheless, I finally managed to finally get the machine to boot from a live Ubuntu CD and then, to diagnose and repair itself. But by then it was too late to watch anything. Quite a lot my surprise, I realized that, in my secret heart of hearts, I had been more frustrated by the delay in watching the second instalment of Torchwood: Miracle Day, than I had been anxiety-ridden by the prospect of getting professional help in repairing a dead computer.

Well, I've seen "Rendition" now, so that, among my life's stressors, is in the past. And so, after a decidedly mixed series opener, where are we at?

This reviewer, at least, is happier about the state of the Whoniverse this week than he was last week. For my full review, with fewer spoilers than usual, click here for Thugs On a Plane.

Considering Treme

Introduction: Lost in (outer) space

Anybody remember Star Trek: Voyager? The 1995 edition of the Star Trek franchise was based on an idea that begged for a treatment much different from where any Star Trek had gone before but, though the program survived seven seasons, it can only be considered a colossal failure of creative nerve.

The concept was simple. Rather than yet another Starship only days or weeks away from a galactic garage, Voyager was a vessel hurled (never mind how) so far into space its crew found itself facing the prospect of a 75 year journey home.

Obviously, Voyager was going to be a study in the physical and psychological travails of a small group of people utterly isolated and aboard a vessel falling slowly into disrepair, gradual stripping away the veneer of 24th century civilization to reveal the essential characters of the men and women wearing the fraying Starfleet uniforms.

Or not. In fact, just like its episodic predecessors, but without the justification of having a Starbase just past the next star system, Voyager followed a simplistic Adventure of the Week formula. Thus, each week, scars both physical and psychological were magicked away and all was re-set to factory specifications for the next episode.

The format has its merits and has produced some excellent drama of a certain (essentially childish) kind. Even at best, it is of limited depth and certainly takes no advantage of the time available to tell a really long story.

Enter Treme, a program set in the heart of New Orleans, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Now just finished its second season, I dare to suggest we are witness not just to one of television's rare masterpieces, but to the birth of a new art-form — the long-format drama.

So let's talk about David Simon and Eric Overmyer's Treme. Let's talk about a drama that avoids cliches and tropes and easy laughs. Let's talk about what is, as one blogger put it, "a dramatic TV series that is about a city's history and culture."

Few spoilers, and definitely no cops'n robbers at Ed-Rex.com.

This is the way my fandom ends ...

There comes a point when intentions don't matter, but only results. Now six 45-minute episodes into his second series in charge of Doctor Who, Steven Moffat has this year given us precisely one (count it, one!) episode that was entertaining in and of itself and that didn't insult our intelligence.

I'm not an uberfan — I don't read novelizations or write fanfic — but I've watched a lot of episodes, in black and white and in colour, some of a lot more than once. And I can't recall seeing as consistent a stretch of bad writing, slip-shod plotting and ludicrous mis-characterizations as that which Moffat's run has so far provided us.

The fault this time out isn't Moffat's missing moral compass (see my reviews of the recent Christmas special or this series' two-part opener for my thoughts on that score) but just the remarkable shoddiness of the product.

After being teased into hoping for something better by Neil Gaiman's expert workshop in the fine art of story-telling a couple of weeks ago, "The Rebel Flesh" and "Almost People" (hereafter referred to as "Almost Rebels"), returns us to the inconsistent characterizations and nonsensical plots that have been the Mark of Moffat.

Now I can't bring myself to believe that Steven Moffat actually hates Doctor Who, but the on-screen results of his stewardship make that hypothesis as evidentially plausible as that which posits that he just doesn't understand the fundamentals of story-telling. (It shouldn't need saying, but for the record, I do know Moffat didn't write these episodes — direct responsibility rests with Matthew Graham, from whose keyboard came what was arguably the weakest episode of Series 2, "Fear Her". But Moffat is the show-runner and so ultimately responsible for what appears on our screens.

And what we do see once again leaves us — the viewers, the fans — with two choices. We can ignore the idiot plot in favour of speculations about the none-too-subtle clues About! Future! Episodes! or we can do the hard, unhappy work of picking apart the lousy construct.

(Yes, we could also turn off the set and go for a walk, or catch up as-yet unwatched episodes of Treme, but we are fans; walking away is not something we're willing to do, not yet.

So let's talk a bit about the basics of story-telling (again). Let's talk about such niceties as consistent characterization and internal logic as if they matter — even when slumming in the bastard field of children's science fiction.

(Why yes, I am kind of pissed off. There's cussing and spoilers both behind the link.)

You're a dirty whore-monger, Chester Brown

Autobiography is a risky endeavour at the best of times; not only will the memoirist's craft be scrutinized and judged, but so too will his or her character. So it is probably a good thing for Chester Brown that he is one of the best cartoonists of his generation, because he really does have sex with prostitutes.

In fact, his latest book, Paying For It, is all about his decision to give up on romantic love in favour of sex for money.

It has become almost trendy to dabble in the sex-trade. Bookshelves groan beneath mounds of tell-all memoirs and fictions, and even relatively mainstream television has gotten into act, with no less than one-time Doctor Who companion Billie Piper disrobing on a regular business as Belle du Jour. But memoirs and fictions glamorizing the life of johns?

Maybe not so much

It is one thing to admit to taking money for sex; to confess paying for sex, on the other hand, remains quite outside the bounds of polite society.

If Brown doesn't make an explicit analogy between his "coming-out" as a john and the struggles of gay men and lesbians who braved arrest and assault when they refused to any longer closet their sexual natures, Paying For It certainly implicitly invites the comparison, if only by Brown's refusal to be ashamed.

As Brown's friend (and ex-girlfriend) Kris tells him, to most people, johns are "... creeps. Who knows what they're capable of? If I had a daughter I'd be worried about what would happen if she was in the same elevator as one of those guys."

So would you want to read a comic book by and about one?

Click here for my full review, with inevitable spoilers — not safe for work.

John le Carré in 2008 Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Some writers have but a few stories to tell — think of Joseph Heller or John Irving, whose reputations would have been far better served by a Salingeresque retreat into silence than by their painfully pointless later works.

Other manage to keep working at or near the levels at which they made their reputations. Think of Mordechai Richler, whose final novel, Barney's Version was his masterpiece. Or consider John le Carré, now in his 80th year and still producing work of a very high level indeed.

If not quite as savagely powerful as 2003's Absolute Friends, his newest novel is significantly more controlled — and so more powerful — than his previous offering, A Most Wanted Man, which suggested a writer whose moral outrage had got the better of his novelist's instincts.

If Our Kind of Traitor isn't, quite, a masterpiece, it is a solid, subtle and (yes) thrilling novel that is vintage le Carré, almost without violence or action, but still a story that finds the reader anxiously awaiting its resolution right up to its final three paragraphs.

Read the full review at Edifice Rex Online.

Collateral Damage: The Problem With Steven Moffat

There are (at least) two kinds of cheating common in the writing of popular fiction. One is when a plot doesn't make sense, where an apparently intricate tapestry is revealed to be only a bunch of holes where the logic fell through; another is when a story's human logic is lacking, when long-established characters betray their readers' or viewers' previous experience of them.

25 minutes into the 2010 Doctor Who Christmas Special, "A Christmas Carol", I was having a wonderful time, and thinking that the Steven Moffat I'd once loved — the Steven Moffat who gave us the intricate yet humane chills of "Blink" and "The Doctor Dances — had come back to us at last.

But still, I had misgivings, and by the 30 minute mark, they had re-emerged full-blown. The Steven Moffat who concocted last season's "crack in the universe" story-line, and who had first shown his true colours with the popular but hollow and inhumane "The Girl in the Fireplace" was still in charge.

Moffat can be an excellent writer, whose plots are complex and who can create intriguing and believable characters with a few deft strokes of the auctorial keyboard. But as a dramatist, he has one honking big flaw, and it takes centre stage here. "A Christmas Carol" is a grand, meticulously-constructed romp, but a romp with a monstrous emptiness at its fairy-tale heart.

My full review is at Edifice Rex Online. Minor plot spoilers ahead, but unless you've never heard of Charles Dickens, not too many.

The wound of the 'sexually-transmitted city'

In a recent blog entry Catherynne M. Valente offered a sardonic reply to reviewers who have used phrases like "not for everyone" and "dense" to describe her work.

"'Not for everyone' is certainly one--dude, no book is for everyone, why does this need to be said, even the most popular books have entire cultures of hate around them, if books were either black or white, for everyone or no one, then there'd be five books published a year and that would be it. No one would have to write reviews."

Having now read the Hugo Award-nominated Palimpsest, I find it hard not to echo the phrase, "not for everyone".

Palimpsest is far from your average genre novel, and a reader seeking from it the comforts of the familiar is likely going to wander away confused and disappointed. Palimpsest does not boast a standard plot or setting and features no obvious hero or villain. And then there's the language ...

Worse then the lazy descriptions of her work as "dense" and "not for everyone", says Valente, "is the oft-repeated saw" that she writes "more poetry than prose".

Valente's second objection is simply correct. Her prose is complicated and artful, loaded with imagery and metaphor, but it is not poetry, stealth or otherwise. It is presumably sometimes mistaken for poetry because Valente dares to dance from present tense to past, from second person to third (and back again). She is a writer willing to play with language, to push and pull it into new and interesting shapes — almost always, I am happy to say, while keeping in mind that she is first of all telling a story — however (ahem) difficult or even "dense".

None of which make of a piece of writing, poetry, any more than inclusion of parts for viola and bassoon of necessity make of a piece of music, a symphony.

All that said, is Palimpsest a good novel?

On first-reading, yes it is. Very much so.

Click here to catch a glimpse of the 'sexually-transmitted city' (no significant spoilers).