UK 2022: Time to save the world.

Wednesday afternoon, and Karli and I are approaching the entrance to the UNified Intelligence Taskforce  (UNIT) headquarters on Davies Mews in London for the Doctor Who: Time Fracture event: it's show time.  I'm a bit apprehensive - no pun intended, but it's been a long time coming, and expectations are high.

Two and a quarter hours later (plus some time for the gift shop) and we're done - we've saved the universe, and we have the gratitude of the Doctors, all of them.

Overall, Time Fracture is good, but sadly, it's not great - which is a shame, because the framework for greatness is certainly there. 

It's surprisingly like being in an episode of the series: time travel, aliens, inexplicable technologies, historical figures, Cybermen, Weeping Angels, saving the world, and, of course, Daleks - what would a Doctor Who event even be without a Dalek or two?

The immersive aspect of the event gives every attendee a unique experience, and it's VERY immersive - how often do you attend a theatrical event where you're so much a part of the performance that you have lines and talk to the performers?  The Time Fracture performers themselves deliver uniformly impressive performances that give the show its energy and focus. However, there are some serious problems with the show's pacing, and it could stand some upgrades to its practical effects.

Here's how events unfold:  

In 1942, an unknown device detonates in the center of London, creating a rift in time - the time fracture of the title.  The experience starts with the attendees entering a large black ops laboratory that UNIT has set up to monitor the fracture, where we are informed by UNIT scientists that recent spikes in energy readings indicate that a catastrophic event is approaching.  The Doctor has given our names to UNIT, and Chief Scientist Kate Lethbridge Stewart makes a video appearance, inviting us to volunteer to help solve the mystery behind the fracture and save all of time and space from disaster.  However, as the UNIT science team is preparing to send two of us through the fracture, Daleks attack the lab. The Doctor is able to intervene and temporarily protect us, but all the volunteers are forced to flee through the time fracture instead of just two.

On the other side of the fracture, we find ourselves in a nexus of disjointed locations in time and space, where we are split into small groups under the leadership of guides, each of whom has a particular goal to accomplish with our help.  Our group finds itself paired with Zoria, an intense young woman with a piercingly direct stare, dressed all in red and armed with a futuristic blast pistol, who asks us to become her Agents as we seek out the components of the Time Disruptor that caused* the fracture.

Her mission takes us to a variety of historical periods in different side rooms, travelling through liminal spaces that act as conduits to the different periods: corridors, foyers, galleries, and so on.

Our first stop was Broll's Salvage and Import Export Emporium, where I was tasked with asking Brolls, the pig-headed (literally) dealer in obscure and hard to find items, what he would do if the item we needed was illegal. I took my cue, asked my question, and that set the tone for the middle sections of the experience, as we run from Broll's future to Da Vinci's Italy, and from Elizabethan England to a 1920s Torchwood outpost that had somehow been merged with one of its future incarnations.

I had an extended argument with Captain Stephen Davies in the Torchwood section - Zoria told us to enter his headquarters and to immediately find out who was in charge and to demand the Key, which was actually part of the Disruptor. (At one point Davies dryly observed that I was from "across the pond", which I thought a good improv moment.)   I don't know if people were relieved or frustrated that I took the lead on our conversation with Davies, but it was fun - and we were on the clock, someone had to do it.

As we collect the pieces of the Disruptor, it becomes evident that some of the group leaders, including Zoria, are Time Lords (for all we know, the same Time Lord, it's not impossible). 

Apparently there are 14 separate plot streams during this section of the experience, and under different circumstances I'd very likely attend the show again, perhaps more than once, just to fill in some of the plot gaps.  For example, only through online research did I discover that Brian, the Ood who is one of the group leaders, has been hired to kill Zoria - it's a tie-in with the Time Lord Victorious series, where Brian accompanies the 10th Doctor through most of his battle against the Kotturuh in the Dark Times.  There's apparently also an extended subplot involving Davros, founder of the Daleks; Queen Elizabeth marries one of the volunteers; and River Song, played by Alex Kingston, makes an appearance at Torchwood via video. 

I enjoyed this section quite a bit - for me, it was the most interesting part of the event, and I wish there had been more of it.  The actors do a brilliant job, both in their performances and their timing.  I can only imagine the challenges of juggling three or four different conversations and storylines as volunteers run in and out of rooms, and I was quite impressed that Zoria got us back to Brolls exactly in time for the auction of the last remaining piece of the Time Disruptor, just before marauding Cybermen chased us out of the nexus.

And then they lost all the momentum and excitement that they'd built up by dumping us into a room where we sat for 35 minutes and listened to a blue lounge singer.  

I don't know what was happening behind the scenes during that 35 minutes.  Were they resetting the staging?  Reloading the smoke machines in the Gallifrey High Council room?  Changing costumes? Disinfecting the seats?

Whatever the reason or reasoning was, it was a mistake. Thirty-five minutes is far too long an interval:  if you've only got 135 minutes in total, there's no desire to spend almost a quarter of your time cooling your heels in a space bar.

Admittedly, there were some bits of extraneous business in an attempt to liven things up - Zoria exchanges shots across the room with someone, and one of the group leaders convinces the captain of the ship to detour to Gallifrey, the home of the Time Lords, but really, it was 35 minutes of sitting and wondering what we were supposed to be doing.

We could see some of the volunteers exiting through the rear of the room, and finally the last of us were ushered out through a gauntlet of Weeping Angels to the chambers of the High Council of Gallifrey, already locked in debate as we enter the room.

With our support, the Council votes to resurrect Rassilon, the founder of the Time Lords. (Interestingly, research reveals that Rassilon resurrects as either male or female, depending on what day it is.) Reborn, Rassilon decides to detonate the Time Disruptor, ensuring Gallifrey's ascendance over all of time and space.

The Doctor shields the council chambers in an attempt to protect the rest of the universe from the temporal detonation, but the volunteers are able to use the residual artron energy that they've accumulated during the experience to defuse the Disruptor and save the universe.  The volunteers return to UNIT to celebrate, and the experience comes to an end. 

So, what would I have done to improve Time Fracture?

I would have told it as more of a unified story, gradually pulling all the threads together to bring everyone together on Gallifrey and giving the plotline more structure and closure so that everyone knows what's happening.

I would have skipped the lounge entirely, and brought each of the groups into the Council Chambers as a logical extension of the storyline - Zoria takes her Agents there after finding all the components of the Disruptor, the other Time Lords find out and pursue her, one of the other groups obtains the Crescent of Rassilon that Queen Elizabeth I is wearing as a crown and delivers it to to the High Council for the resurrection, Brian the Ood and his group pursue Zoria to Gallifrey for a climactic showdown - I'm even willing to have one group get there via the starship, albeit a lot faster than in the current arrangement. 

I would have had Zoria be part of the Council - it's well and good that she runs away shouting that the Council will be sorry after they reject her, but it would have made so much more sense to involve her in the finale, rather than a bunch of Time Lords that we haven't seen. In fact, all the Time Lord group leaders should be part of the council, it would have tied things together more logically.

I can also think of half a dozen different ways to enhance things on the practical effects level.  Many years ago, there was a 3D ride at the CN Tower in Toronto.  At one point during the preparation for boarding the ship, a blast of air innoculated travellers for the trip - a simple idea but very effective, and that sort of effect would have greatly improved things at Time Fracture.

In the UNIT lab, we were told to brace ourselves several times, but nothing happened.  Okay - if you can't afford a motion platform for the room (or don't want one for safety reasons), at least get some IMAX-level woofers with the kind of bass that make things vibrate.

Let's make the various time portals more, well, portally.  Flashing lights are all very well and good, but let's put some fans in there, or jets of compressed air, rumbling bass sounds, something to make me feel like I'm going through a rift in time and space, rather than down a flight of stairs. Similarly, the portals between areas in the second part of the experience are heavy plastic slats and plastic tubes, something less prosaic would have enhanced the experience.**

A couple of small Van De Graff generators concealed close to the Time Disruptor would have made saving the universe more dramatic - good grief, a good disco ball would have made it more dramatic, or even some focused high powered lighting effects.  As it was, it was hard to tell whether anything was actually happening or not during the climactic event of the experience, which is unfortunate.  In fact, if I had to sum up that aspect of the show, it completely lacked any "wow" moments - wouldn't it have been better to have something happen that makes the audience gasp at the end?

I walked away with two t-shirts to commemorate Time Fracture - I do like a t-shirt - and some mild regret at the unrealized potential in the show.  That being said, ultimately, I'm glad that I went. It was a unique experience, in spite of its shortcomings - and hey, we saved the universe!

- Sid

* Or will cause - wibbly wobbly, timey wimey.

** It's surprising that the doorways are so basic, considering how incredible the rest of the set is in terms of detail and quality.  I suppose they wanted the doorways to be more durable than decorative, but they might have gone a bit too far in dumbing them down.

UK 2022: Stage Fright.

 

 

It's been a long time coming, but it's finally the day - we're in London, and we have tickets for the sold out 12:45 show of the immersive Doctor Who: Time Fracture event today.  However, I'm surprised to realize that I'm inexplicably nervous about it.

I'm not sure why.  The show is well reviewed (although I haven't done too much research so as to avoid spoilers), I was reassured via e-mail that the venue would accept whatever COVID-19 documentation we used to get into the UK*, I brought my Angels have the Phone Box t-shirt, we've got the London Underground pretty well figured out,  it's close enough that if something went very wrong with the Tube at the last minute we could actually walk there (although it would be a bit of a hike), I've already picked out the t-shirts I want to buy, it would all seem to be under control, but I'm still a bit on edge.

It may just be the weight of expectation.  We've come a long way, spent a lot of money, and exposed ourselves to some COVID-19 risk for this**, and it would be devastating if something went wrong. 

Well, as I like to say, we're here now - it's time to be the hero.

- Sid

* "If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for us."

** I have nothing but praise and gratitude for Karli in all of this.  Imagine flying a quarter of the way around the planet wearing a mask so that your husband can go to a two and a quarter hour fan event - I'm not sure I deserve that degree of love.

UK 2022: Tomorrow's the Day.

You know, it never occurred to me that there would be actual ads in London for the Doctor Who: Time Fracture event - when you're researching something 7500 kilometers away, it all seems so much more abstract than that.

- Sid

UK 2022: 221B

We start our first full day in London with a visit to the Sherlock Holmes Museum, located not quite at 221B Baker Street, a fictitious address even when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle originally introduced the character of the world's most famous detective. (Fortunately, the museum has been kind enough to fake up a doorway for the Instagram crowd.)

The museum combines a fascinatingly detailed recreation of Holmes and Watson's bachelor residence with set pieces recreating their most famous cases. The recreation hits the high notes from the stories such the tobacco filled Persian slipper on the mantle and the queen's initials punched out on the wall in bullet-holes (one would expect the neighbours to complain about this sort of thing) and fills in the rest with appropriate and authentic artifacts from the era.

Although Sherlock Holmes doesn't identify as either SF or fantasy, it's hard to ignore how frequently he shows up in one form or another in genre literature: revealed as the nephew of Vlad Tepes in The Holmes-Dracula File, the second book in Fred Saberhagen's Dracula series; crosscast as queer black FBI agent Sara Holmes in Claire O'Dell's near-future Janet Watson Chronicles; investigating the Great Old Ones for James Lovegrove in The Cthulhu Casebooks; mismanaging magical investigations in the Warlock Holmes series, by G. S. Denning; and in innumerable other novels, short stories, guest appearances, and offstage references.

For conveniently short examples, the curious reader can sample Poul Anderson's The Martian Crown Jewels, featuring Martian consulting detective Syaloch, whose second floor lodging is located on The Street of Those Who Prepare Nourishment in Ovens, and Neil Gaiman's Hugo-winning A Study in Emerald, featuring a consulting detective, a wounded Afghanistan war veteran, and a queen named Victoria, none of whom are who you think they are.

- Sid

UK 2022: The Pandemic Run.

In four hours, Karli and I leave for London. It's our first trip by airplane since February 7th, 2020, when we returned from Disneyland, just under the wire before the pandemic clamped down on international travel and only a few weeks before we all started working virtually via VPN and Zoom - at least, all of us who were lucky enough to be able to do so.

The UK has removed a lot of its restrictions, but we're still treating London as hostile territory, at least in terms of the pandemic. It all feels a bit like a near-future cyberpunk scenario written by William Gibson - masking up for the airport and the flight, producing our vaccine passports along with our regular passports, certifying that we haven't visited any red zones before our entry into England, and planning COVID-19 tests so that we can persuade Customs and Immigration to let us back into Canada in a week. (Although, given that the United Kingdom is currently being battered by one of the worse storms in 30 years, comparisons to Bruce Sterling's Heavy Weather are equally appropriate.)

Cue the techno theme music - we're starting our run. 

- Sid

"Would you like a jelly baby?"

One week to go before we depart on our trip to England, and at the moment we are still planning to do the trip.  In preparation, I asked an English co-worker if she'd like me to bring anything back for her - crisps, chocolate bars, cheap tights from Primark*, anything like that.

She thought for a moment and asked for jelly babies.  Sadly, in spite of her English origins, she was unaware that the offer of a jelly baby was the characteristic conversational gambit of Tom Baker's 4th Doctor**.  Fortunately someone has already created collated evidence of this very English approach to breaking the ice:

- Sid

P.S.  It turns out that my co-worker had never seen Tom Baker as the Doctor, arguably the most popular of the portrayals of the last Time Lord - sic transit gloria mundi. 

* As recommended by another English employee when Karli and I were in London for our honeymoon.

** And, apparently, a number of other Doctors at least once.

Awakenings.

At my work-from-home lunch today I starting watching The Force Awakens - which I probably haven't seen in its entirety since seeing it twice in commercial release - and I have two comments.

First, as shown in the opening sequence, Rey's home planet of Jakku is surprisingly blue (at least on my monitor) and has an awfully high albedo for a desert planet.

Second, full points to Poe Dameron for targeting the neck gaps in the First Order Stormtrooper armour in the opening skirmish, it establishes him as an experienced soldier, both in terms of accuracy and knowledge.

 

 

Three comments, actually.  

The unexpected appearance of the Millennium Falcon on Jakku is a clever and subtle way of letting the audience know that the storyline of the new trilogy will be inextricably combined with the events of the past - it's an instantly recognizable link to the history that we're already familiar with.

- Sid

Star Trek: Beyond (Burger).

My wonderful wife Karli has been a vegetarian on and off over the years, and as such she was quite pleased to finally lay her hands on a container of Just Egg, a cholesterol-free mung-bean-based egg substitute manufactured by 2011 startup Eat Just.  Just Egg also comes in a pre-cooked and folded format that can just be dropped into a toaster, but Karli has been holding out for the liquid version, which finally became available in Canada at the end of October 2021. 

It's obviously a popular product, at least based on our ability to find anything other than an empty space in the dairy substitute sections of the local supermarkets for the last few months, but a spur-of-the-moment trip to a Walmart Superstore for cheddar bay biscuit mix (long story) also paid off with a single 12-ounce bottle of Just Egg, which had its first trial run this morning.

Speaking as someone who has not pursued a vegetarian lifestyle at any point in their life, I have to say that my sample bite of scrambled Just Egg was excellent.  If anything, it might have tasted a little better than a chicken egg:  Eat Just has obviously invested a lot of time and science in reverse engineering egg consistency and flavour, and the result is impressive.  If we can find a reliable source, it could easily replace chicken eggs  in our household, at least for breakfast - I'm not entirely convinced that mung-bean cake batter would produce the same results as an egg-based recipe, and the list of recipes on the Eat Just website is suspiciously lacking in baked goods.

Why do I bring this up on my science fiction blog?  Because the astronauts of the future will very likely be vegetarians, if not for moral reasons then for practical ones, and as such developments like Just Egg will have a prominent place in their diet.

A plant-based diet is the ideal solution to space travel over long distances - and long timespans.  Pending the development of warp drive or some other way of cheating Einstein,* successful space exploration beyond our solar system will require the creation of a miniature biosphere that will rely upon hydroponic systems that will not only produce oxygen, but also provide fresh food on an ongoing basis for the trip.  Practical difficulties regarding low or zero gravity aside, it's hard to imagine that having a herd of cows** on a starship would be practical over the long run, whereas carefully managed crops would provide a sustainable food source on an ongoing basis for a multi-generational star ship.

The question is whether or not substitutes like Just Egg or Beyond Meat would survive past the first few generations of starfarers.  After all, both of these products are bridge technologies intended to mimic an animal product that would be completely unknown to the children of the original crew except as stories, and pictures in the computer archive.  Ultimately the whole terminology of scrambled eggs and hamburgers would become anachronistic in the same way that saying you're dialing a phone number or saving a file by clicking on a floppy disk icon are the last remnants of obsolete processes.  

All that being said, it may well be the start of a kinder, gentler philosophy of life for those future astronauts when it actually is possible to make an omelette without breaking anything.

- Sid

* Star Trek cheats twice.  Not only does Starfleet rely on warp drive to outwit the speed of light, it also uses a variant of transporter technology to replicate a full range of food using stored templates.  Presumably replicated steak and eggs for breakfast is without guilt, but you have to wonder how the inhabitants of the Federation feel about people who still consume food that comes directly from the source, as it were.  Hmmm...there was that less than successful omelette party in Ryker's suite in that one episode...

** Or a herd of chickens, although I suspect that chickens would be more excited than cows by their sudden ability to fly in a low or zero-G environment.

That moment when you HAVE to represent.

I mean, really, imagine that you're waiting for the elevator, you just happen to have a black Sharpie™with you - you just can't leave without fixing this, right? 

- Sid

Murder on the Lunar Express.

The Apollo Murders was one of the first things that I put on my 2021 Geekmas list - how could I not want to read an alternate history space program murder mystery suspense novel written by an ex-astronaut and set against the backdrop of a final Moon landing made by Apollo 18, not 17?

That being said, I'm sorry to say that I didn't completely love Chris Hadfield's first foray into fiction, although I also have to say that it's not bad, I simply had extremely high hopes for this book that it didn't manage to achieve.  It's certainly competently written, Hadfield obviously knows how to put words on paper - I particularly liked the first-person prologue in which the protagonist, Kaz Zemeckis, loses his eye in a flying accident - but for me it didn't quite succeed as a suspense novel.  

As you would expect, the technical aspects of preparing and launching a mission to the Moon are impeccably detailed and accurate, to the point where I have to wonder if less dedicated fans of the space program might lose interest.*  There's a strong flavour of Tom Clancy in the late Cold War period storyline - not quite with the same degree of conflict that Clancy brought to his novels, but plausibly dramatic in its motivations and machinations.  

Much of the action in the second half of the novel involves the villain of the story, and whereas I appreciate the importance of what's going on during that part of the book, I wish that Hadfield had found a way to better combine that action with the hero of the piece.  Zemeckis, the one-eyed guitar-playing ex-pilot turned slightly reluctant government operative, just isn't on the centre stage as much as I wanted him to be, and I would also have liked to have seen him more involved in the process of discovering the identity of the traitor in the astronaut program.  Zemeckis does make some deductions on his own, but overall the path from suspicion to suspect is more circumstantial than definitive.

I don't for a moment want to suggest that Hadfield should abandon his new niche as a writer of astronaut suspense novels, given his undeniable writing skills and his uniquely comprehensive and personal knowledge of the hardware and processes involved.  I view The Apollo Murders as an acceptable and well-executed freshman piece, and I have no doubt that the Commander will only improve as he continues his new career.

With the possibility of a second novel on the table, I have a modest suggestion for Mr. Hadfield.  NASA has announced that the International Space Station is going to be retired in 2030 by having it leave orbit and make a fiery descent into the Pacific Ocean, far from land.  Chris, in the unlikely event that you're reading this, how about setting a climactic struggle in the abandoned ISS as it begins its return to Earth?  I suspect that NASA has thoroughly modelled the phases of the space station's destruction as it plunges toward the ocean, and with that information I think it's safe to say that you have the required amount of insider knowledge to make the scene work, and for the hero to make a plausible escape at the last possible minute.  Now all we need is a reason for them being there - which I am happy to leave in Hadfield's capable and creative hands.

- Sid

* On the other hand, if you're not a fan of the space program, why are you reading something called The Apollo Murders written by an ex-astronaut?