"Truss me, I'm the Doctor."

We're well into 2010 now, and in just over a month we'll see the first appearance of Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor.  The BBC has announced that the new season of Doctor Who will start on Easter with the broadcast of The Eleventh Hour, the first episode with the new Doctor. So far there's no trailer for that episode, but a clip introducing the entire season with Mr. Smith can be viewed on YouTube.*

Fans will be subjecting this season to an exacting scrutiny.  Not only does it mark the end of David Tennant's enormously popular run as the titular character, it also ushers in a new Head Writer and Executive Producer - Russell T. Davies, whose work in those two positions was largely responsible for the success of the resurrected Doctor Who, is leaving the show. He'll be replaced by Steven Moffat, whose scripts for the series have won him three Hugo awards to date.

So, we have a new Doctor, a new season, a new logo, a new head writer, and as shown in the picture above, a new costume for the Doctor, and a new companion as well.  But wait!  The new Doctor's costume is not the ordinary outfit it appears to be at first glance.  A closer examination reveals that his trousers are being supported by some kind of dimensionally displaced suspenders which don't require that the clips be attached to the braces.

As so many of the villains tend to ask, "Is this one of your tricks, Doctor?"  Well, sorry, no, it's just bad Photoshopping, sad but true.  Let's just hope this isn't an omen of how things are going to go now that Mr. Davies is no longer involved with the programme.

- Sid

* Oh look, bloody Daleks, how many bloody times does the Doctor have to wipe out "all" the bloody Daleks?  My god, they're worse than cockroaches.

Certainly sincere, but probably not flattery.

We're perched in a booth at the Frog and Firkin on Friday night, and the topic of music snobs has come up.

(Say hello, Chris. "Hi."  It's not a guest posting, but we take what we can get.)

Anyway, we were discussing music snobs - Alan, Laurie, you know who we mean - and it led me to wonder what exactly the term "snob" means in this context.

According to my Concise Oxford, there are a number of meanings, but the part that jumps out at me is "...judge of merit by externals".  In other words, a snob is someone who passes judgement based on the cover, rather than the book.  If you asked me, I would say that I'm not often guilty of snobbery in this sense, but there is one area where a mea culpa on my part is necessary: the literary pastiche.

If you've never run into the term before, "pastiche" is French for "imitation", and generally refers to a tribute to an artist that deliberately uses their themes or motifs.  However, I use it to describe the odd phenomenon that plagues the science fiction and fantasy communities, the "continuation" of a dead author's work by another writer.

Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide series as continued by Eoin Colfer; Isaac Asimov's Foundation series as continued by David Brin, Gregory Benford and Greg Bear; John Gregory Betancourt's prequels to Roger Zelazny's Amber series; the Dune prequels/interquels by Frank Herbert's son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson; the myriad of authors who have written Conan books - I could continue the list but I think you get the idea.

Now, I'm not completely guilty of uninformed pre-judgement. I did read House Atreides, the first Dune prequel by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, when it first came out in 1999, although I will admit that I read it with a strong degree of skepticism.  Whether that resulted in a self-fulfilling prophecy or not, I found the style and plot to be...let's say "inadequate", that seems polite.  Not necessarily bad, not horribly written or badly structured, just not up to the standard set by Frank Herbert in the original books.

And that's really my problem with the entire phenomenon.  It's not that any of the authors who indulge in this bizarre activity are bad writers - in fact, many of them have well-developed and successful careers in their own rights.  The issue is that they're not the same writers.  No matter how good an imitation is, it's still an imitation, and as such it can never match the original.  In a way, you could think of these books as literary zombies, still lurching along in spite of the fact that life has long since departed.

It would forgive the whole process a little bit if I thought that it was motivated by any sort of desire to keep the original author's creative flame burning for a little longer.  Sadly, I'm fairly certain that the sole motivation is profit:  the desire to beat a few more miles - and dollars - out of a literary horse.  As such, I find the idea offensive, and that's resulted in a blanket refusal to support it by purchasing any of the books in question, regardless of how good they might or might not actually be.

In other words, I'm a snob.

- Sid

Canny, explicable, and believable - is that so much to ask?

 

My previous post featured a picture of a sign in front of a local coffee shop, blaming extraterrestrial influences for their lack of drip coffee.  Now, before we go any further, I feel that I should clear up something about my opinion regarding the possibilities of alien intervention and its effects on coffee.

I don't believe a word of it.  Not a word.

Yes, when it comes to the entire category of what we will perhaps unfairly call "pseudo science", I'm a complete skeptic.  Sadly, in spite of a lifetime of science fiction and fantasy intake, some solid internal layer of disbelief has remained impenetrable, and as a result I don't believe in UFOs, ghosts, Chupacabra, crop circles, or any of the other X-Files entries that continue to resist rude and unseemly demands for documentation and evidence.

Truth to tell, that's my problem with all of it, the lack of hard evidence.  If once, just once, something would happen that left clear and irrefutable proof, that's all I ask. I don't want to hear about mysterious events that have no rational explanation - screw that, I want mysterious events with a clear and obvious explanation: alien visitors, psychic ability, pyramid power, whatever, doesn't matter, provided that there's proof.  In the real world, all we seem to have is this massive archive of blurry, out of focus, grainy and otherwise deficient images of fringe phenomena such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and large headed Greys from Arcturus, an archive that no one really takes seriously. It may well be that the truth is out there, but that's a sword that cuts in both directions: maybe the truth is that it's all false.

One of the great changes to the paradigm for the new Doctor Who episodes is that Earth-based plot lines don't just deal with three people in an isolated castle, but rather take place on a global scale and are witnessed by all of humanity.  A spaceship like an inverted mountain hovers over London and makes countless people stand on ledges and prepare to jump, they evacuate the city at Christmas due to several years of alien incidents, everyone on the planet looks like the Master for a few days, Earth gets shifted to another location, and everyone knows*, it's part of history. Now that's what I'm talking about!

Now, this is not to say that I don't think that there's life on other planets, I doubt very much that in the infinity of space we're the only planet that's managed to produce what we will charitably call intelligent life.  I just think that if extraterrestrials managed to cross the great gulf of interstellar space, they wouldn't waste their time with the sort of silliness that's been attributed to them.  In fact, if there are any aliens reading this (sit down, Laurie…) hey, it's time. Enough with the crop circles and anal probes, drop a shuttle craft down in front of the White House and send someone in to talk to Obama, okay? Seize the moment - after all, the next guy could be another George W. Bush.

- Sid

* Except Donna Noble.

Well now they've gone too far.

Damn aliens - I don't even drink coffee, and I think this is over the line.

- Sid

But did they find Nigel the Cat's Facebook page?

What was the name of your friend again, the one you met at Ryerson, the guy in front of the big tire?

- Brenda Allen, BCMEA

 I've just come back from a job interview, and to my surprise (and initial horror) I discovered that at least one of the three interviewers had read a goodly portion of this blog, and asked me questions about some of the postings. 

Now, to be honest, I haven't given a lot of thought to the fact that this blog is a public document.  About a year or so in, I put it under my full name because I wanted to point a prospective employer at it for writing samples (and didn't get the job, either because of or in spite of the blog) and never bothered to delete my last name.  I've actually derived a certain satisfaction from finding the blog when I google my name, but it's never occurred to me that someone else might do a search for my name and end up here.

Having recovered from the experience, I think that I'm going to leave my full name on the site regardless.  I can think of worse introductions to my personal life, and I take pride in some of the postings that I've done, there are three or four of them that are not bad at all. 

The final joke, as I save this as a draft, is that because I obviously need to treat the blog as being accessible to everyone, this posting will never see the light of day unless I get the job.  Terrible thing if my current manager stumbled across this and read that I'd been at a job interview.

- Sid

P.S. Are we all doing the math on this?

This Sleeping Satellite.

 

Did we fly to the moon too soon?

Did we squander the chance?
In the rush of the race
the reason we chase is lost in romance
and still we try
to justify the waste
for a taste of Man's greatest adventure.
Tasmin Archer, Sleeping Satellite

I found myself feeling a slightly bitter sense of irony while watching this evening's rerun of the Mythbusters Moon Hoax episode, given the changes to NASA's direction under Obama's new budget. "Hey, look, we really did go to the Moon before!" has become "Hey look, we really can't afford to go back!"

Now, this is not an entirely fair analysis of the new budget, and there are parts of it that make a lot of sense.  I've previously commented on the shortcomings of NASA's plans for future trips to the Moon and Mars, and the new plan does address some of those issues.*

The cumbersome "Apollo on steroids" Constellation program would be scrapped, essentially throwing away four years of work and nine billion dollars and leading to an indefinite delay in further plans to travel to the Moon or Mars, but perhaps allowing for a new direction in how the future of space exploration will develop.  The proposed new focus would be on funding for private sector development, and a shift toward more international collaboration on future exploration programs.  A portion of the budget would be aimed at developing new technologies to support that future exploration, although exactly when future missions would actually take place is still up in the air, so to speak.

This could either mark the beginning of a rational move toward the sort of global involvement in space exploration which has long been a staple of science fiction, or the beginning of the end as the private sector turns its back on extraterrestrial development for opportunities closer to home and the rest of the world turns it back on joint missions due to political conflicts.

Either way, I feel a bit like a child who has been told that there's no trip to Disneyland this year, what with Dad's recent unemployment and all - the family is just going to work on things around the house, and maybe when I'm a teenager we'll go to Europe with the neighbours. 

Is this sensible? Oh, quite probably it is. But would we remember how great it was the year we didn't go to Disneyland?  And will future generations look back with awe and respect at the year when we decided not to go to the Moon by 2020?

- Sid

* Although probably not because of my blog posting from 2007.

"One Ring to rule them all."

But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and have always done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.

J.R.R. Tolkien, Foreword to the Second Edition, The Lord of the Rings

I first read J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings so long ago that I can't easily pin the date down in my head. I'm fairly certain it was in my first year high of school, when I would have been 13 or 14*. Oddly enough, my mother didn't own a copy, and I remember that for my first reading I signed the books out of the school library. I recall being mesmerized as I read it on the bus home, but fortunately the bus stopped to let people off without being prompted, so I wasn't in peril of missing my stop.

Apparently some people find it a daunting read, but I don't remember any difficulty getting into it. The irony is that I find it hard to read now due to sheer familiarity - I'm on my third set of copies, an honour which is shared only with Dune and Ringworld out of my library.**  I do sometimes advise less seasoned readers to take the same approach that the travellers do in the first book - when they stop for the night, so should you. (Even favourable critics admit that there's an awful lot of just walking in the first book.)

For the fantasy community at large, The Lord of the Rings is the elephant in the living room: you can't ignore it, and sooner or later you're going to have to talk about it. Tolkien's Ring has "ruled them all" for over 55 years. It has had an enormous influence, both good and bad, on authors in the genre; it's been subjected to intense analysis in a search for allegorical significance and original sources; it's been criticized for ruining the genre of Fantasy; and it has polarized its readership: people seem to either love it unreservedly or just can't stand it.

The discussion isn't helped by the fact that in some ways, discussing The Lord of the Rings is a bit like discussing the Bible. There's a certain gravitas associated with the text that demands respect whether you agree with it or not, although in this case The Silmarillion is probably closer to being the Old Testament for Middle Earth, complete with creation myth and the expulsion of a defeated "angel".

By comparison, The Hobbit reads more like a children's book in terms of tone and environment, as it was certainly intended to be. Many of the elements of Middle Earth that we see in The Lord of the Rings aren't mentioned at all, but as with its successor, the sense of monumental events observed through the eyes of humble participants is strong. And all the seeds for The Lord of the Rings are planted: the races of Dwarves, Elves, Orcs and Men; Gandalf the enigmatic and powerful wizard; Gollum and the Ring; and the threat of a distant evil. And hobbits, of course, who proceed to steal the scene from "the great and the wise" for the next three volumes.

The Lord of the Rings would be a very different story without the hobbits and the humanizing - so to speak - role that they play. The hobbits provide the emotional content of the story - is Gandalf ever hungry? Does Legolas become frightened? There are certainly cases where the more heroic characters fall prey to fear or despair, or feel pleasure or excitement, but for the most part the hobbits are the touchstones of basic feelings and sensations for the reader. It's not an accident that at least one hobbit ends up in each of the major plotlines as the tale unfolds: Merry with the Rohirrim, Pippin at Minas Tirith, and of course Sam and Frodo with the Ring.

Tolkien’s final master touch in this (and the only omission in the movie that I regret) is the Scouring of the Shire. This final capstone on Tokien’s intricate edifice allows us to see the hobbits in perspective, in their own environment and amongst their peers. This is Tolkien's chance to shows us how the four companions have been changed by their experiences: Merry and Pippin, now warriors and leaders; Sam, matured and his own man; and of course, Frodo, whose trials have left him with nothing but compassion for Sharkey/Saruman and his servants.

 

Frodo’s acceptance of a burden which will mean his doom, coupled with his transcendent end, his trip to the Western Lands with Gandalf and the last of the elves, may be what leads some people toward comparisons to Christ when discussing his character. For myself, I can’t see Frodo as Jesus because I find that Frodo’s tragedy is of a completely different nature than that of Christ. Frodo’s unspoken sin is that in the final trial, he fails: he succumbs to the Ring. (One has to wonder if this gnaws at him as he is publicly celebrated and showered with honours.)  Frodo never recovers from his journey - for the rest of the book Frodo is almost a spectator, no longer really involved in the events that take place.

Tolkien claims that his intent in the story is not allegorical, but people persist in attempting to uncover the "meaning" behind The Lord of the Rings. The situation isn't helped by the historical milieu in which the books originate - it is difficult to ignore the potential associations for a book written during WWII that deals with an epic struggle between good and evil.  Tolkien directly rebuts this view in the foreword to the second edition by describing how the story would have unfolded if it were based on the events of the war, and chillingly concludes, "In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt:  they would not long have survived even as slaves."

If you only have the movies by which to judge Tolkien's magnum opus, I think it's fair to say that Peter Jackson does a good job of conveying the feel and tone of the books, regardless of minor alterations and omissions in the plot. It couldn't have been an easy task - for example, the Balrog, the creature that pulls Gandalf into the abyss, is described only in flashes of detail:  a sword and flaming whip, darkness and shadows, and a streaming mane that kindles into flame.

Did Mr. Jackson get it completely right? Perhaps not, but if I had to summarize my reaction to the entire trilogy of movies, I would say that they accurate portray the scale of the books, the feeling of witnessing events taking place on a stage of epic proportions, balanced out by the involvement of the hobbits and their humble viewpoint. He was obviously hampered by his reliance on humans for casting purposes, although, as the character of Gollum demonstrates, it's only a matter of time...

- Sid

* My birthday is at the end of September, so it could be either one.

** Although probably not for long, there are a lot of potential candidates that are on their second copies. Sad how a paperback just doesn't hold up after 30 years or so.