Wasteland.

On Monday night, my friend Chris and I went to a showing of 1917, a gripping, dramatic film which really doesn't need to rely on the additional trick of being a single extended shot (well, two shots, to be accurate, the main character is knocked out at one point in the film).  It's a timely viewing, given that I've just finished reading one of the books that I purchased during my recent Toronto trip:  1917 - Wasteland:  The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror, by W. Scott Poole.

It's Poole's contention that modern horror finds its origins in the literally horrifying environment of the trench war: mud, blood, mold and decay, a hellish landscape punctuated by fetid shellholes, unburied bodies, and mutilated soldiers.

Art is always a window into its own time and place, and I certainly agree with his comments regarding the influence of the war on artistic movements such as Dada and Surrealism, and its role in the rise of fascist politics as a response to the chaos of the battlefield, but the connections he makes to the genre of early 20th Century horror don't have the same authority for me.

Historically speaking, almost all of the best known stories that lay the groundwork for horror as we know it today predate World War One:  Mary Shelley's Frankenstein revived his monster in 1818, Edgar Allan Poe wrote The Telltale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, and The Fall of the House of Usher in the middle of the 19th century, Robert Louis Stevenson published The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1886, and Bram Stoker's Dracula made its debut in 1897.  H. G. Wells, whose writing is admittedly considered to be more science fiction than horror, released The Island of Doctor Moreau in 1896 and The Invisible Man in 1897.

The villain of The Phantom of the Opera, written in 1909, is deformed from birth, rather than due to the misfortunes of combat.  Ambrose Bierce, noted literary creator of the odd and the uncanny, vanished in Mexico and was presumed dead in 1914,  and Howard Phillip Lovecraft, commonly cited as one of the most influential figures in the development of the horror genre, wrote his first published tale of indescribable eldritch monstrosity in June of 1917, a month before the start of the war.

The equally classic horror films of the post-war era draw heavily upon that pre-war catalogue of horror fiction, with movies such as The Phantom of the Opera, 1925; Dracula, 1931; Frankenstein, 1931; Island of Lost Souls, based on The Island of Dr. Moreau, 1932; and The Invisible Man in 1933.

However, it's Poole's contention that the success of these films, regardless of their source material, reflect a specific post-war zeitgeist:  Frankenstein's patchwork monster represents the fragmentary corpses of the trenches and craters, the Phantom's mask (and ruined visage) echo the masked faces of mutilated veterans, and the bandages seen on the Invisible Man and the Mummy are the same bandages that cocooned wounded soldiers.  Dr. Moreau's surgical theatre, the "house of pain" of the movie, reflects the harrowing, nightmarish procedures of the front line hospitals.

For me, the strength of Poole's thesis lies in extending the effects of the first world war through the rise of fascism in Europe and from there into the origins of World War II, which seems far more resonant in terms of its genre influence. In my mind, World War II, or more accurately, the events of the Holocaust, represent a more significant line of demarcation than World War I in terms of its effect on the continuity of horror to the modern day.

It’s much easier for me to connect the psychopathic physical brutality of movies like Psycho, the Halloween, Saw and Friday the 13th franchises, and a myriad of other slasher films, to the Nazi concentration camps in their shared inhuman indifference and disregard for the human body.  World War II is more commonly associated with the spectre of nuclear destruction and the effects of radiation on the world, but it also revealed a more subtle and frightening truth:  the idea that the most horrifying, cold-blooded and pitiless monsters can actually be other human beings.

- Sid

And weighs as much as 16,788,000 Timbits.

And yes, the internet will tell you how much a Timbit weighs - because Canada.

- Sid

"Be the captain they remember."

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

 Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

From the very beginning of the first episode of Picard, it's obvious that  the series will be catering to nostalgia on the part of the Star Trek fan base, as Data and Picard play poker in Ten Forward on the Enterprise to the tune of Blue Skies, the Irving Berlin tune that Data performed at Riker and Troi's wedding in Star Trek: Nemesis - and which B4, his less sophisticated duplicate, attempts to sing at the end of the movie.

 

Sadly, it's only a dream, but a dream whose ending suggests disaster and chaos, as the surface of Mars erupts in explosive flames that engulf the Enterprise,  The explosion jolts Picard into awareness in his bedroom at Chateau Picard, where his dog, Number One, runs to greet his troubled master.

We then jump to Greater Boston, where a young woman celebrating a new job appointment with her boyfriend is suddenly assaulted by masked assassins, who kill him then restrain and blindfold her. Surprisingly, she is able to eliminate them all - while blindfolded - and afterwards has a vision:  the face of Jean-Luc Picard.

The music for the title sequence that follows is more thoughtful and introspective than the standard Star Trek themes that we've heard in the past, almost wistful - a motif that provides the theme for the first episode, aptly entitled Remembrance.

We are presented with a Jean-Luc Picard who is in retirement if not decline, withdrawn to self-imposed exile at the family estate in France, living a life of quiet seclusion and unexpectedly attended to by a pair of Romulans.  When pressed by one of them regarding his bad dreams, Picard comments that "The dreams are lovely, it's the waking up that I'm beginning to regret."

An unexpectedly adversarial media interview reveals that ten years earlier, while Picard was in charge of a humanitarian effort by the Federation to help evacuate Romulus before its sun became a supernova, rogue synthetics destroyed the Utopia Planetia shipyards on Mars, setting the entire planet on fire.  This disaster leads the Federation to withdraw from the rescue mission, causing Picard to resign in protest.

In a burst of temper, Picard verbally savages the interviewer and storms out of the room.

Later, as he consoles himself with a glass of wine, he is surprised by the woman from Boston, who has come to him for help after seeing his interview.

Her name is Dahj, and she is unable to explain why she has decided that he will be able to protect and help her. However, as they talk, she confesses to a sense of connection to Picard, from deep within her.

The next morning, after Picard has once again dreamed of Data, who is this time working on a painting, she has vanished from her room.  Disturbed by something in his dream, Picard visits Starfleet Archives to take a trip into his past in what is essentially a memory palace, a storeroom containing mementos such as models of the Stargazer, his first command, a Klingon bat'leth, and a banner from Captain Picard Day.  He extracts a canvas from storage, a 30 year old painting by Data entitled "Daughter".  The face in the painting is that of Dahj.

Leaving the archive, Picard is surprised to see Dahj again, who had left the chateau rather than take a chance of placing Picard in peril. Picard explains that she may in some way be connected to Data, but she is horrified by the suggestion that she may not be real. She then somehow senses that another kill squad is on its way, and although they try to escape, Dahj dies in battle with the assassins, who are revealed to be Romulans.

Picard, knocked out by the explosion that kills Dahj, awakens at home.  He has been returned there by the police, who claim that the security feeds showed him to be alone at Star Fleet headquarters. Spurred by what he sees as a failure to both himself and to Dahj, Picard is determined to solve the mystery set before him.

His first step is to visit the Daystrom Institute of Advanced Robotics in Okinawa, where he is met by by Dr. Agnes Jurati, one of the institute's researchers, with whom Picard discusses the possibility of flesh and blood androids.She explains that following the attack on Mars, synthetic life forms and AI research have been harshly restricted, but that even before then, they had only been able to produce relatively primitive artificial life forms.

However, Picard learns that Bruce Maddox, who unsuccessfully attempted to have Data disassembled in the classic Next Generation episode, The Measure of a Man, has vanished from the Institute following the ban.  Picard shows Jurati a necklace left behind by Dahj, which she recognizes as a symbol for fractal neuronic cloning: a theory of Maddox's positing that Commander Data's code, even his memories, could be recreated from a single positronic neuron.

Jurati then comments that this process would result in pairs of androids - twins.  Picard comments thoughtfully, "So there’s another..."

The episode concludes by giving us the final pieces of the puzzle with an enigmatic glimpse at the current location of Dajh's twin sister Soji on a derelict Borg cube being reclaimed by Romulans.

Remembrance is an intriguing and well written episode, as might well be expected given the involvement of Pulitzer-prize winning author Michael Chabon in the project, and I'm curious to see where the story will take us, and which of the characters from the Star Trek universe will make an appearance.  (It's already been teased that Jeri Ryan will return as Seven of Nine, which would suggest that the Borg cube will play a significant part in the story.)   It's also a pleasure to see Patrick Stewart return to the role of Jean-Luc Picard, bringing back the charm, humour, compassion, earnest conviction and strength of character that typified his portrayal of the captain.

However, it's obvious that neither Picard nor Stewart are young men any more.  As with his portrayal of Professor X in Logan, there are hints of King Lear in Stewart's performance as Picard, especially in his fit of rage during his interview, and his subsequent regret.  There's also an echo of Star Trek: Generations - it's easy to see that Picard, like James T. Kirk in that film, wants to matter again.

One has to wonder if this series is intended to mark the end of Picard's story in a similar fashion to that of the Professor, or Kirk - will Picard ultimately fail to survive his search for the solution to this mystery?

If this series is intended to present us with the last act of Captain - now Admiral* - Picard, hopefully it won't be too soon.  As Picard wistfully comments to Data in the opening sequence, he doesn't want the game to end - and neither do his fans.

- Sid

* "Retired!"