Et In Arcadia Ego

In today's issue: dodgy theories about television; Sapphire and Steel; Blake's 7; a marvellous dream

Original Star Trek has set me thinking again. It's just so...shiney. Free of ambiguity. There's some gentle conflict, but all our heroes are that and nothing more: heroes. Original Galactica is just as bad; so is The A-Team. I've been busy building Sapphire and Steel into my conception of what television looks like, and it's conspicuously non-American. Again. Our "heroes" are a bit incompetant; one of them is grouchy, the other definitely not as nice as she seems; and while they're easy to like, you wouldn't trust them.

Consulting the map of television in my head, this fits neatly with what British television does. Doctor Who was at its darkest in its first few years, and while the Doctor is generally a heroic character, he shares a lot of Steel's flaws. He'll pop out of nowhere and save you from the supernatural, but he's not polite or pleasant about it, his agenda is entirely his own and if you catch him on a bad day, he may just poison you, shoot you, gas you or sacrifice your entire planet because it's the most expedient thing to do.

Perhaps the keyword here is "unreliability", which is something Blake's 7 also has in spades. These people are primarily heroic, can usually be trusted and are basically friendly - but don't count on it. The concept extends throughout their universes: the Doctor has a spaceship he can't pilot, and Blake has one which answers back. Furthermore, the program itself does not always seem to approve of its own characters actions - there is room for doubt, and often disapproval from the writers. This is also different to the American style.

Today's theory: British heroes are unreliable, British TV shows portray an unreliable world. American heroes, conversely, are reliable and live in a world which confirms their beliefs. American TV shows also approve of themselves.
Because the web is being truculent, I'm having difficulty finding other examples to expand my sample beyond six shows. I tried consulting the Guardian's Top 50 list, but it didn't seem to have any old American telly on it. Is this telling?

I looked up the BFI's top 100 TV, and all the dramas seemed to fit:

Fifties - 1984, Quatermass, Coronation Street
I'm aware Quatermass is like all British sci fi - dour, and packed with villainous establishment figures - but I can't comment on its hero

Sixties - Cathy Come Home, Doctor Who.
Lord, presrve me from ever seeing Cathy Come Home...

Seventies - Abigail's Party

Eighties - Boys from the Blackstuff, Edge of Darknesss

I was also deeply satisfied (and very surprised) to see Blake's 7 voted top of the "Shows Which The General Public Think Should Have Been On This List". This probably says less about the show, and more about the demographic most likely to vote in force on an internet poll...

While this seems to confirm my theory, statistics are difficult. As my most quoteable hero Charles Fort puts it, "there will be data". Is this merely because darkness sells, and anything positive = mainstream = trashy = not voted by the BFI?

A few things didn't quite fit: The Prisoner (but is maybe too weird to? Six doesn't have enough personality, and we never see him in morally trying situations - he is purely an escape machine) and Thunderbirds (purely for kids? Have kids shows always been shiney, both sides of the pond?)

I also found myself wondering, does America have a companion to our soap operas? Eastenders started in the 80s, Coronation Street in the 60s. British TV has always been closely linked to the social realism agenda, a naturally flawed and miserable genre. Perhaps that has seeped into all British dramas, or any number of potential correlations.

When do things change? Nowadays, angst is America's biggest export, which means there must have been a watershed point where everything changed. At the same time as cinema - you can tell you're watching a 1970s film, because there will usually be a downer ending? More likely, the 90s: Twin Peaks is 1990, X-Files is 90s-ish.

Your challenge for today: prove my theory wrong. Find me some old American television which isn't shiney, or some old Brit TV which is. For the sake of this study, comedies and book adaptions don't count.

While you're chewing on that, oh yes, let's talk about Sapphire and Steel, a rather perfect little 70s show. And all the little directory things I've thought about it in the past week.

After a gleefully incomprehensible opening spiel, which actually leaves you less informed about the show than before, our heroes arrive from another dimension to handle "irregularities" on Earth. So far, the phenomena we would recognise as ghosts. They have an array of weird powers, a talent for wandering into trouble, a mysterious agenda, and are definitely just as scary as the things they've come to chase off.

It digs out all the cliches in the damn book: nursery rhymes! Clocks! Flickering lights! Written by the guy who gave Torchwood its spooky-fairground/haunted-cinema episode But it is so marvellously constructed it seems less hackneyed, than a perfect example of its type. Friend 4 rightly identified that its special effects make Doctor Who look big budget, but cheap has always been best for spooky. Partly because it forces directors to be clever, partly because suggesting and not-showing is always more terrifying. Partly because there is something innately scary about bad special effects. They don't quite fit, they seem disjointed in some way - otherworldly - and this I have always found scary in its own right. And so these ghost stories do their best with flashing lights and ticking noises, and so somehow does it better.

It makes healthy use of sound and space. Lengthy serials fully establish the layout of the single locations on which the stories are set - the first in a creepy house, the second a railway station, and another four I haven't seen. This too is good: in it's purest form, a haunting is merely a building made notable by absence. Things not there, forgotten, hidden, so giving the location strong character is important. It's this, probably, which makes me love the show more than anything else. Hauntings, of any sort, bother me. I can't be bothered to waffle about the sound design, except there's a lot of it and it works well.

It is also notably well shot. The camera positively worships Sapphire - she always seems to stand right underneath light sources. This isn't unusual for telly, until you compare it to Steel's treatment. He's shot by an incompetant - totally in shadow most of the time, not in an arty way where the camera hits you side on and makes a fascinating mess of your face. Just out of focus, like a shadow. It's a marvellous contrast.

They are also often shot as a couple - not in a cute way, more creepily, as if they don't quite understand human interaction. Brief film studies lesson: generally speaking, there is only one reason for shooting two lead characters in close up, in a single shot:
Probably because there's no other obvious reason for two people to stand quite that close. It's the reason you can always "feel" a kiss coming in romances - the camerawork changes. In any other context, it conveys a feeling of extreme discomfort - it would be suitable for, say, two characters trapped in a tiny space. I've included the Blake's 7 scene on the right as an example of the latter working very, very well. This scene stood out as particularly disturbing at the time, even though it's only one of many arguments between the two heroes. Having recently rewatched the episode, I think it is the use of this shot that particularly makes my skin crawl. The dialogue and performances help, but it's this very intense, tight camera which conveys the feeling of attempted domination.

Sapphire and Steel does it all the time, for no readily apparent reason. But even though you'd think a man and a woman wouldn't make the shot quite so bizzare, it still feels like an alien violation of personal space. Whether they are a couple remains to be seen, and is perhaps impossible to answer - they are obviously abstract concepts of huge power who adopt human form, and presumably human limitations, when on Earthbound jobs. So whether they actually do emotion or relationships the same way we do is automatically contentious. It edges around blisteringly romantic and back into "no, just creepy..."

Not a couple. Definitely non-coupley. And the picture on the right is a perfect example of light missing Steel entirely.

The character dynamics are also intriguing. They are attempting masculinity and femininity (indeed, you could add the romance angle under that - they are attempting "couple" into the bargain). Sapphire is nice, comforting, motherly, while Steel is the "bad cop", all toughness and authority. This is curious because at the same time as this obvious polarity, I get the strong impression that Sapphire's feminine wiles are as alien to her as Steel's strength. The same goes for Lead's excessive joviality - they are aiming at something human, and almost achieving it. But not quite. I like that Sapphire provides the brawn, and Joanna Lumley's masculine qualities complete the whole bizzare impression. They also spend equal amounts of time rescuing one another.


Finally...I have returned from France much as I had hoped, with more Blake's 7 episodes, and more surviving characters, than on the fingers of a hand. But it must be said, neither is much more, so I am spending much time morbidly dwelling on the reputedly "climactic" final episode. Friend 4 has rightly pointed out that B7 finales never quite do what you expect them to, and tend to arbitarily pull the rug from under your feet - which hasn't stopped me listing everything on my brain, for your reading delight.

As I'm merely guessing, I don't think any of these count as spoilery, but if you were being extra careful you might not want to read them; it's also possible that I'm right. Here is the pick of my theories:

1. Avon's Dream - the entire series is a hallucination-under-torture from Avon's cell back on Earth, in which an imagined version of The Federation's Most Wanted rescues him, but doesn't actually like him. Kinda interesting - who else would have a dream in which everything is so awful? It'd make sense of Avon's all-consuming coolness.

2. Blake's Dream - same theory, different dreamer. Again, makes sense of the show's one brilliant stroke of luck: accidentally stumbling along the greatest ship in the galaxy. Not likely.

3. Vila's Dream - same theory, concerning the only character to appear in every single episode of the show (so far). He also seems the type to invent a dreamworld in which everybody picks on him.

4. e.t.c. - continue this theme for every other named character and sentient being on the show, those three are merely the most plausible and would pack the biggest emotional smack.

5. The Federation Is Defeated. Everything Is Well. Not beyond the bounds of possibility, but also not very likely. A better variant is...

6. A Small Glimmer Of Hope - the Federation isn't defeated, but something big happens suggesting one day, soon, if we're very lucky, they are going to fall. Probable last shot - somebody smiling faintly. I like this one, and it seems reasonable.

7. Everyone Is Caught! Seems likely, that a show that started with everyone on a prison ship would end that way.

8. Everyone is Reconditioned! Ditto.

9. Everyone is Killed! Ditto.

10. Everyone Has Been Dead All Along. It's Purgatory a.k.a. what Lost didn't do. More probable version is:

11. Sartre's Scorpio: "Hell is other people"

12. Avon Sells Everybody Out - not likely, but I did consider this at one point. Repeat with "Tarrant sells everybody out", "Soolin sells everybody out" e.t.c....

13. Blake Has Been Captured And Successfully Reconditioned As A Villain And Is Now In Charge Of Hunting Down The Remaining Cast - I think this pips it for darkest theory.

14. Universe Ends.

15. Any combo of above.

Frankly, anything confirming that Blake is OK is an OK ending by me. That's all I really want at all, ever, from life right now. God, there's nothing half so dangerous as hope...

Modelling...
Yesterday me and my sister did some objectification in the woods in the rain. The results are now up on Facebook. Maybe I should be Britain's Next Top Model? I certainly enjoy modelling, although some of the finished products which come close to come-to-bed-eyes creep me out a bit. I think it's the fun of being able to morph and create new stories so quickly. In one afternoon I was a fairy, a warrior, a statue, an elf, Snow White, the Highwayman's woman, Red Riding Hood, a lost innocent, and innocence lost. No other art form lets you play with so many ideas with such freedom. Inevitably, we also did some dead photos. What is it about me and looking dead?

While I squalled in mud and got covered in resin, we chatted a bit about objectification and the male gaze and the rest. But the ultimate problem is, I'm an aesthete first and everything else second. So while I respect and understand, i.e., Socialogical Images for getting their pants in a twist about things like this, or this - if it's in the name of a good picture, then do I really care...?

Music...

For exercise, I'm hooping to Mike Oldfield. I do not think Mike Oldfield is, on the whole, a very good artist. While his music is impressive, his songs are way too long and repetitive, and sometimes are just noise. Having said that, when he gets down to it it's beautiful stuff:



That's the end of Side 2 of Incantations - which is 4 sides long - and it's worth sitting through the dross for it. Perhaps I should work it out? I'm learning to play his "Rio Grande".

Most of my piano efforts are focused on incidental geek music - incanon songs, performed as part of the narrative. Some Firefly, some Blake, some Who. And Sander Cohen's Masterpiece from Bioshock. The great thing is, it's all good music and quite unrecogniseable except to the initiated, so I like the injokey nature of it. I think there's a great evening to be had, though, performing that type of music - particularly all the ballady ones. There's no reason Dayna couldn't perform Gaeta's Lament, while Gaeta (in happier days) jammed to Hero of Canton - space ballads, like ballads from all places and races, are timeless in their themes.

And it keeps me off the Formby, to the relief of absolutely everyone.

What else? I went DVD shopping:

When big movies come out, little companies produce rip-off versions which capitalise on the zeitgeist. Presumably, enough must be sold to make it worthwhile. Empire did an article on a company who specialises in them; and I've been interested "Sherlock Holmes" ever since seeing it reviewed favourably-ish in the Empire Video Dungeon. This is the first time (as a film buff) I've got my hands on one. Firstly, the colour scheme matches that of the current movie. The quote on the front of the box reads "In an extraordinary league of its own", recalling to mind that other steampunk epic, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Although why you'd want to remind your audience of that is beyond me. The blurb reads:

Fearsome monsters are terrorising London. Holmes and his fathful companion Dr Watson must embark on their most dangerous case yet. The investigation will take our heroic duo on an incredible journey that will see them do battle with their arch nemesis; the mad mechanical genius Spring-Heeled Jack, who will sop at nothing to bring destruction to London. Can Holmes and Watson save Queen and country from annihilation?

Froth! Well I'm there. But the interesting part is this:

Featuring fantatic special effects of period England being ravaged by dragons, dinosaurs and cyber-men, Sherlock Holmes is a breathtaking adventure for the Doctor Who age!

This Sherlock Holmes stars Gareth David Lloyd of Ianto-from-Torchwood infamy. In fact, he recieves top billing over the chap playing the great detective. Note how the blurb subtly appeals to the Whoniverse fans who might have picked up the DVD case. "cyber-men", I imagine their legal bods have told them, cannot be sued by the Pedler estate - Kit Pedler being the man who invented the "Cybermen".

All very interesting; but I was sold at the Sherlock Holmes Fights Giant Dinosaurs point. Watching the trailer, frankly I don't see how I couldn't enjoy it.

Bad television
Which is more than can be said for Classic Battlestar Galactica. I always assumed I would like it more. New Galactica was undeniably excellent, but it did a lot of things that irritate me: the Jack Harkness Conflict Resolution Method, all gun-pointing-and-crying, most episodes; the need to be edgy and relevant and characters which to me seemed inconsistent. As discussed before, oldstyle production strategies just seem to appeal to my sense of drama more - I like 40s British cinema, and characters not talking about how they feel but we're able to infer it anyway, from their actions and eyes. It must also be said, I'm a fan of trashy special effects - when they're good, because I find them more exciting and beautiful than modern special effects. When they're bad, because they're terrible.

Shame; old Battlestar Galactica is very terrible indeed. As suspected, it's got this American solid po-facedness to it - none of the fun of B7's rubbish universe, where things break down all the time. Despite being the last humans in the galaxy, everything i svery shiney - from the consoles to the actor's teeth. The special effects are actually pretty cool, particularly the spaceship battles. But the characters were predictable, the dialogue was awful, and in all, it was a very non-controvertial experience. My sister later commented "I'm amazed they remade it like they did!" I'm not. When faced with a show containing not one, but two adorable little kids with ruffle-able hair, my first response would always be to read it as darkly as possible. Still, it's amazing they got something SO good out of something so very dodgy

And...
Letters project is rattling along nicely - 111 pages long, and the end is within sight! This week is proving to be a challenging one. I'm beginning to interview people about their memories, which has prompted several wannabie-breakdowns. I'm revisiting one of my deep, dark regrets for the sake of completeness - I might tell you how that goes.

And I've got the difficult letters to reason with. I was always sure I was leaving them because their canonicity was so dodgy. Now I revisit them, they're actually more consistent than I remembered - but there's another reason I discover. Its all heavy, heavy, uncomfortable, stuff, atque semper mea culpa.

Do you know how easy it is to read a letter addressed to you, pleading for help, for acnowledgment, begging from the point of death for anything at all, blaming you but still having no one but you to rely on? Alright. Do you know how many I have to type up? About 20, 25 of varying lengths and levels of despair. Mortimer had a lot of destitute exes to ignore. Oh yes, Ruby. You've had your revenge alright. Typing them up is extremely heavy going because of my total helplessness, and partial culpability. What Mortimer did was very much in character and consistant with his mood in that period - he wanted to shut the past out as much as possible. With hindsight, its pretty harrowing stuff. I just want to be back there, arguing my point, defending my position - then giving him a slap and doing the right thing which I can see so clearly now, but he couldn't at the time. It's sorrowful, sorrowful stuff.

In Today's Issue: Absolutely No Politics Because Nobody Continues to Know Anything.

Instead, my heart was a little captured by the new Prisoner, and I feel the need to talk about it. For the sake of tidiness, the new series will be referred to in capital letters. So Number Six and SIX, Two and TWO, Village and VILLAGE.


No era does not need The Prisoner. That's the thought that swung me from righteous-fan-anger to theoretical support of this year's reboot of a TV classic. The questions it asks - as far as we can tell - have never gone away: surveillance, control, society, worrying global conflicts. Here's Patrick McGoohan in 1977, a proto-Tyler Durden:

We're run by the Pentagon, we're run by Madison Avenue, we're run by television,
and as long as we accept those things and don't revolt we'll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche. Buying the product, to excess. As long as we go out and buy stuff, we're at their mercy. We're at the mercy of the advertiser and of course there are certain things that we need, but a lot of the stuff that is bought is not needed. We all live in a little Village. Your village may be different from other people's villages but we are all prisoners.

The need for intelligent shows which scream never goes away. Of course, you also want good art. I'm surprised, but pleased, to see my faith in the new series has not been misplaced.

For one thing, it is very close textually to the original. Each episode is semi-named after an original episode; the title sequence is an exciting shot-for-shot update. SIX's entry to the VILLAGE is the product of close viewings of the original, complete with a futile attempt to buy a map and chumming up with a taxi driver. From little touches, like a cup of tea trembling as its table is bashed, to huge ones like Rover. Rover, the inexplicable white balloon guarddog, might even have been on my "to-cut" list!

But of course, faithfulness is not a necessarily good quality. Yet it's not just a visual synchronicity; they seem to have their ideas in the right place, hitting the right points. In short, I feel it has been written by someone who loved the original. The new ideas, such as VILLAGER'S total denial of the outside world, or SIX'S amnesia, slip right beside. With such high level of respect, I've even dignified it as semi-canon: it confirms many theories of mine left over from the original.

There are criticisms to be made: the script is notably dull. And where McGoohan was endlessly watcheable, Cazviel has a fatal lack of charisma. He speaks in a monotone, and he is hard to like except through sheer "Monte Cristo" factor: What Is Happening To You Is So Horrible I Can't Help But Pity You. One wonders how he would fare if, as in the original, SIX was the only recurring character with dialogue.

In a broader sense, McGoohan's Prisoner had this steely inner strength to him which Cazviel almost inevitably lacks. My dad complains a lot about feminised men on the telly, and I agree to an extent. The problem is, good drama requires characters to be exaggerated in their emotional vulnerability. They don't have to be wimps, but we as an audience need to recognise what they are feeling. And the more transparently wrecked they are, the better the show. You can find evidence in any cop show whose hero has marriage problems and a drug habit. Most writers and showrunners are still male, so unlike (say) slashfic, it's not a case of women authors/viewers emasculating them - it just makes for better television. Satyajit Ray noted:

"the camera forces one to face facts, to probe, to reveal, to get close to people and things; while the British nature inclines to the opposite; to stay aloof, to cloak harsh truths with innuendoes. You cannot make great films if you suffer from constricting inhibitions of this sort."

I obviously disagree; repressed British cinema is more powerful for what it's not saying. But of course, Patrick McGoohan was thoroughly of this British school and way before heroes who cry on television. Whereas Cazaviel is all method, and SIX already seems creakier if only because the shows are made in very different. One is not necessarily more valid than the other, but it changes the atmosphere. The Prisoner was a series about rebellion, and McGoohan was the man who could not be broken: the more the Village slammed him down, the angrier he got and harder he fought back. THE PRISONER already seems more hopeless, because SIX was broken to begin with.

Unlike his plywood performance, this is not such a problem. It merely reflects modern concerns, and modern production strategies. So far what it loses as an intellectual workout, it gains in emotion. It is less surreal, less stylised. The VILLAGE has a group of regular characters, which makes it seem more of a real place and less of a dreamscape. So far, we have seen them decieved, drugged and scared, and TWO is fallible and seemingly on the point of losing control. The Village, on the other hand, was "proved" to be in three seperate locations, people would appear and disappear out of nowhere and they were controlled like Sims - with Number Six totally isolated from anyone.

Blame time: a similar comment can be made about Doctor Who. It's no exaggeration to say that the first 30 years of the show did plot and not character, whereas nowadays it does character and not plot. Of course there was emotion in the Classic series, just as there was in The Prisoner,
but it was created by the actors and plumbing their tortured souls was a byproduct of delivering three act structures. And nowadays, a Doctor Who finale is expected to prioritise a strong emotional beat over a narrative one:

One is not intrinsically better than the other, it's merely a matter of changing decades. Although I think the classic model is better. Sometimes, emotional scenes are so strong that you can suspend your logic - personally, I'd include them talking Bracewell out of exploding, and Last of the Timelords in this category. But actors can't make sense of basically nonsensical material, in the same way they can make the thinnest script powerful. I'd definitely include Turlough in the latter class, who steals scenes on the basis the writers didn't give him any.

Of course, the perfect show model is Blake's 7, who had master-plotter Terry Nation doing thorough, exciting outlines, which were then polished by Chris Boucher's gift for character: a bit of both. But that's another tangent altogether:

So far, PRISONER is hitting emotional beats like crazy, although arguably it cares as damn-all for making sense as the original.

Nothing is going to replace my love of the original, but in a sense it doesn't need to. It is a show designed for it's era, flashbacking on the back of Lost, with a hero cast in the mould of Fight Club man*. It is, in it's purest sense, a modern version - sprung from the same source but flavoured for a new audience. I wonder whether the "towers" that represent escape are meant to resemble the Twin Towers? It wouldn't surprise me if that was significant if only visually.

I particularly enjoyed the creepy twin shrinks, and the Village TV show (rather like Twin Peaks "Invitation to Love") - which I am sure is the basis for some form of hypnosis. I am enjoying it immensely, and am particularly psyched for the ending. It can't be anything but downbeat (or can it, in a world where studio after studio would only support Watchmen if that chapter was removed?), and could yet be too keen to explain away its mysteries. In particular, the possibility that the Village was an imagined construct excused any lunacy the original had to offer: THE PRISONER is going to provide a compelling reason why THE VILLAGE exists, and why everyone is there, in keeping with it's more realistic tone. But for now, I'm having as close as I can to the experience of watching the original for the first time.

Which was a crazy few months. After the exhausting penultimate episode, which was so intense to film one of the actors had a breakdown, I had a vivid dream of "the final episode" in which Number 6 finally escaped. The dream, that is, not the episode; that's still a moot point. And one of the first things that happened when he did escape was - as my mind-camera panned on his ear - he heard the chimes of Big Ben. When I did see Fall Out, I was unnerved to note that was exactly what did happen. It was a strange occurence, for a show which always plumbed close to dreams. It remains to be seen whether I'll be that nightmarishly involved in four episodes time.

What would McGoohan made of it all? You can see the hole where he was supposed to cameo, heartbreakingly filled by somebody else. When the production team asked for his involvement, his response was perfect: "I want to play Number 2".

*Homo Decuriae Pugantae?


P.S. I remain critical of the new Doctor Who series. I hate it. Being critical, that is. I still have hopes - but we are suprisingly far through, and I'm yet to be wholly sold on the New Administration. Smith'n'Gillen are beyond reproach. Eleven can confidently take his place in my top ten favourite Doctors (curses - I can't make that joke any more...), the dialogue has been consistantly fab, and I like what it's doing with the mythology. But there has been something very mechanical about the series so far, a collection of ideas not a coherent narrative. Behind the Sofa put its finger on my disquiet:

Throughout, it’s hard to escape the impression of Moffat coming up with the scares first and then working backwards to see how he can fit them into the story (“Why would the Doctor suddenly plunge an entire corridor full of advancing Angels into pitch blackness? Oh, I know! He needs to divert the power to the door!”). Poor old Amy suffers particularly badly from this tickbox terror approach: watching her subjected to various forms of torture across these 90 minutes feels a bit like watching a pre-watershed version of Saw. (“Let’s see, we’ll have her all alone in the middle of a forest full of Angels where the one thing you can’t do is blink… Nah, too easy, let’s also say she can’t open her eyes…” I’m surprised he didn’t tie her shoelaces together while he was at it.)

Tickbox terror: wonderful phrase. I'd extend the same criticism to the-Starwhale-one, which felt like the rat end of five good episodes smushed together - it seemed to run out of ideas, yet also have no time to breathe at the same time.

My customary optimism is flagging every single week, and it's very disappointing. Having said that, the boys on the internet think they have spotted a very, very, very exciting thing from the future. I'd noticed the odd oddity, but they've confirmed my hunch by connecting it to something brilliant, so my eyes will be peeled from now on. Geeks are good at overanalysis.

It's so likely to be true, that I class it as a spoiler and can't wait to see you all watching with open, awe-struck mouths. Something very clever is going on. And it's gonna be fantastic!

For my most recent Classics coursework, I had to study the translation of Classical literature into English. If I'd felt like handing in something edgy, I'd have taken the suggestion that one should transform the original into the appropriate modern medium (poetry to poetry, prose to prose) to its logical extention. As I have been in my imagination for the entire duration of the essay.

So, Kings Classics department, what would you say to...

Homer translated by DC and Marvel Comics

The Iliad is one long fight scene, featuring superhuman heroes smacking one another. The canon for many of these figures is jolly dodgy, but their basic traits are universal making them relevant to generation after generation. So why not adapt it as a graphic novel, as a DC/Marvel crossover. One house can draw the Trojans, the other can do the Greeks. It would actually look just like this:

Much like comics, the Iliad is a long "what if?". Could Hera bitchslap Venus? What about Ajax vs. Paris? And that is the general principle of superhero comics, which always have time to abandon the plot and derail for Superman-controlled-by-Poison-Ivy vs. Batman, or similar tomfoolery for the sake of some hitting. They could play it straight, with swords and sandals; but hell, the archetypes in both graphic novels and epics are so grand that they could probably easily be analogised:

Achilles could be Hulk - unstoppably strong. BUT YOU WON'T LIKE HIM WHEN HE'S ANGRY. Actually, considering it's anger that makes Hulk green, possibly this is a bad pick. Superman, then - infinitely strong, but his human heart is his fatal flaw. Bow-wielding playboy Paris could be Green Arrow - or maybe Speedy.

Oh, I could do this all day! Frank Miller and Alan Moore can do the darker-and-edgier fall of Troy in the Aeneid...speaking thus:

Virgil's Aeneid translated by Ronald D. Moore (rebooter of Battlestar Galactica)

"o passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem..."
"You who have suffered worse, this also God will end..."

The Aeneid is the story of a dislocated people. After the destruction of their home, they take their remaining ships and found some failed colonies to no avail, with Carthage as their New Caprica. There is also a mutiny in which half the crew decide they won't follow Aeneas any more and attempt to burn the ships, before following prophecy to a big battle their promised New Home.

There is an obvious plot analogy here (made explicit by the show's use of Greek mythology), but I think the context in which the stories were made is even more interesting. Virgil is all about the contemporary Roman situation. The poem celebrates the peace which followed the horrific Civil War, with heroic Aeneas a figure for the new emperor Augustus, both of whom, in their own ways, "found" a Rome.

Critics disagree on exactly what Virgil meant by all this. You can read it as a ludicrously imperialistic poem, packed with prophecies of Rome's future greatness. Others have taken the scene where Aeneas leaves the Underworld through the door of Lies to mean Virgil regards the Roman Dream as a pack of bull, and the whole thing is very subversive. Certainly antagonists like Dido and Turnus are given buckets of sympathy; the final line of the poem features Aeneas succumbing to his basest human urges, not ascending to a throne. There is no one explanation, and probably more than one are at work. Magistra always said - and I like this - that she thought Virgil's message was "founding an empire requires terrible sacrifices, however they are ultimately worth it."

Battlestar Galactica is also a show intimately concerned with contemporary America - obviously critical, and yet at the same time often pretty flagwaving. Is it pro-military or anti-military? New Caprica is a criticism of the Iraq war, and it is effectively a long tale about the horrors of war. At the same time all our heroes are soldiers, and fight scenes and military apparel are presented for our enjoyment and consumption. Like in the Aeneid - 50% fight scene, with all the glory that entails, yet presented with a grace and pathos that assures you Virgil is a pacifist at heart.

I'd like to see RDM have a crack at this story. One trait the two do not share is an ensemble cast, and I think transplanting Galactica's squabbling bureacracy into the Aeneid would have possibilities.

And now for some jokes which no one will get, as the Galactica fans and Virgil fans on this blog don't overlap: Sinon is a Cylon. Ascates is a girl. The "trip to the Underworld" happens in a dream sequence. The Sybil of Cumae has tits the size of Mars' moons...

Horace translated by Woody Allen

The catchword which follows Horace is "detatched". "Wry" is another one. Horace was a Roman society man, and member of a considerable intellectual circle including Virgil. His pose within the love Odes is as a mature man commentingly amusingly on romantic follies, while doing it all the same himself. He is brilliantly self effacing - one of his poems, a quarrel between him and a girl, allows her to win and considerably insult him. Something about all this just screams "Woody Allen" at me, and it's a mental image I now keep in mind when analysing Horace.

This is my translation of 3.9. I can't stump up the energy now to make it rhyme, but the Latin has a nee-naw-nee-naw rhythm, like kids chanting in a playground. Note how every stanza, the girl trumps him, and how knowingly childish the whole business is. For its ending, this is one of my favourite poems.

"Once I was good enough for you,
no other white-armed chap around your neck
I thought myself richer than a Persian king!"

"Once, you did not burn for another,
for Chloe more than Lydia -
Many know the name Lydia, more famous than Rome itself!"

"Now slave-girl Chloe is for me,
clever at sweet melodies on the guitar
For her, I would not fear to die
if the fates allowed her to survive!"

"Calaius, son of a great man,
burns for me with an equal passion!
For whom, I would not fear to die twice,
if the fates allowed my boy to survive!"

"If, perchance, love returned
and we were lead again under the same fate,
if red-headed Chloe were to be thrown out
and the door again open to Lydia...?"

"Although he is more beautiful than stars,
and you sulky and lighter than a cork
I will live with you
With you I would willingly die"

Catullus as translated by Westlife

Or Boyzone, or Josh Groban, or any of them. Catullus was a sincere, if playful love poet, and his heartfelt elegies best suit the rhythms and swells of modern pop. "Odi et amo" basically is "tainted love".

Julius Caesar as translated by Alan Partridge

Or any sport commentator of your choice. Julius Caesar's military reports have been described as "lean, clean and mean". They are textbook-perfect Latin, informing the reader of what happened as expediently as possible in the dry manner of front page journalism. Despite this, they have a certain irresistable charm - once you get into the rhythm of his frumentiis collociis, obsidiis daris, legationem mittere and the rest, it's irrepressable stuff. Both diciplines require a quick way of expressing the movements of many men, and interpreting the reasons for victory. War, like sport, has to be accurately reported for the sake of those who weren't there - but like sport, it's not always the most fascinating thing.

Propertius 1.21 as translated by The Decemberists

The Decemberists are an acoustic guitar band who I wrote off as really, really boring because I hadn't listened to the lyrics. When you do, you actually discover a wellspring of macabre Victoriana - bloody revenges, rapes aplenty and a cathexis of dead love interests - which cheers me up in a very particular manner. I also admit that their use of instruments is far more various and proggy than I gave them credit for. I actually know very little about Propertius, but a single poem of his put the Decemberists in mind.

We've been studying Love and War, best expressed by Ovid's "crede mihi, Attice, Militat omnes amores". It's 100 lines of puns and picturesque ideas, of how a lover is just like a soldier. Very cute, but in a pacifistic moment I had the urge to write a response beginning and ending "No, Atticus, to be in love is nothing like soldiery" and pack it out with Wilfred Owen style scenes of muddy despair.

This is exactly when Propertius came along and picked me up. It is...unexpected. The Romans are rarely coarse. Even Virgil's bloody battle descriptions have a certain epic detatchment to them. This is all generalisation, so there are exceptions: you do get emotional honesty, and heartbreak, and viceral descriptions. But not often, and only (I think) because we, as a modern audience, expect them to be there. My impression of Roman literature is of it being far more studied and impersonal than our own, certainly too much so for properly brutal cynicism.

I stand corrected, and it's possibly the shock of the correction that has made me fall so hard for this poem. It's bitter, cruel and downright nasty. The context is a genuine Roman Civil War battle, in which Augustus successfuly starved the besieged into surrender before killing all the leaders except Marc Antony's brother, a battle in which Propertius lost a loved one. This poem is one of those "moments" for me when a Roman reaches out of the past and taps me on the shoulder. Have a read of the best translation I could make in two minutes:

You, man, rushing to escape the fate common to all,
fellow soldier wounded on Etruscan battlelines,
why do you weeping look away from my groans?
I am your closest brother-in-arms.
Thus let your parents rejoice to see you safe,
and let sister know what has passed only from your tears:
that surrounded, Gallus escaped the swords of Caesar
but could not flee the hand of a stranger;
and whatever bones she finds scattered over
Etruscan hills - let her think they are mine.

My English doesn't do his Latin justice.

Of course, an academic has toned it down by claiming it is a ghostly apparition (welling eyes can be a sign of fear), and it is true this makes a more obvious fit in the genre of Roman grave poetry - which often had sepulchral inscriptions coldly addressed from the deceased. The modern assumption is that it is a death scene. I actually believe this is supposed to be ambiguous. It plays as both, and I believe Propertius starts by making his audience think it is a tomb inscription in the first line, then smacks him with the immediacy of the scene by addressing a specific character instead of a generic passer by.

It's the unRoman weeping, and unRoman groaning - in Virgil, heroes give up a single groan as they are hit and then die. The implication from the verbs here is that Gallus is taking his time...it's the bitterness with which Gallus twice tells the listener that he too will die, and yet also noting that he will return to his parents (with the implication that he, Gallus, will not). Gallus gets to die an ignoble death in the retreat, without even the consolation of in the first unremittingly anti-military passage I have ever read in Latin. The last couplet is just a heartbreaker: hundreds of men are being left behind on those hills, so many that it is impossible to discover his, but let his sister decieve herself in consolation. The idea of unburied bones would strike proper horror in a Roman, but the sheer cynicism of this is still affecting.

I also like the dramatic ambiguity of the scene. Is the Miles a stranger who happens to pass Gallus? Or are they close friends or, heck, even rivals? Are they brothers, or cousins? Or maybe brothers in law - with the sister married, or about to be married to one of them? There is just-about enough evidence in "ignotos" to suggest Gallus was killed accidentally by his own side as he retreated, including by the listener himself - the sense of "unknowing" as well as "unknown" is there if you want it to be.

It reminded me of many of the American civil war songs, which is doubtless what put me in mind of the Decemberists. The beyond-the-grave-ness reminds me of many-a Decemberists song (Leslie Ann Levine for one, Yankee Bayonet is another), and other things too, but really...

...what a poem!

Just watched the finale of Battlestar Galactica - all three parts of it, in one long sugar-laden marathon. I'll preface my comments by saying: Battlestar Galactica was never the show I wanted it to be. It was far more interested in sitting at home and debating Contemporary America than forging out into the galaxy, and making the most of being in space. It explored aspects of science fiction handled better in Blade Runner, hinted at surrealness, without ever going the whole way, and subsituted angst for drama. I've never thought it was a bad show: it just did a lot of things that tend to irritate me. And I was amused to see the pivotal scene of the finale, and thus arguably the whole show, involved my much-hated trope - everyone pointing guns at one another.

Nevertheless, I couldn't help becoming involved over five series, and now it's all gone away I'm feeling weirdly bereft. That and my cheeks are sore from having a good sob ten minutes from the end. I get the feeling

There are plenty of people who hated the finale, but it was everything I expected it to be. Maybe it's a symptom of not really liking the show. Look up Children of Earth. It's the Torchwood which non-fans adore, and which actual fans can't stand. I think it's the best damn piece of television ever, period, but those who agree seem to be those who (also with me) criticised the first to seasons. Go find a hub of proper fans, however, and their feelings are far more mixed.

I feel some of their pain. Those flashbacks. While they were nice (particularly Gaius' final one, particularly Starbuck saying she had no fear of death), they were also strangely meaningless. There were too many endings which felt final, but they were tying up some 90 hours of television so I'll let that pass. The future bit was just egging the pudding too much. "Does it have to happen again?" Ugh, remind me of the heavy-handed political subtext again? I'm also aware that the many threads were not so much tied up as Pritt-sticked, but I'm not fan enough to be bothered by the intracacies. Thematically, it seemed to work.

I was very happy they didn't kill characters unecessarily - I was kinda expecting a nihilistic slaughter. Everyone who died needed to go and was sent off suitably, in a way that befitted their ongoing plotlines. I loved Starbuck's casual "there must be some way out of here", and the moment they almost explained the Opera House Thing was spine-tingling.

On the whole, it united most of the things I have enjoyed about the show - Gaius' invisible girlfriend, his relationship with Caprica, the Admiral and the President being adorable, great music and such a strong element of belief. I found The Pivotal Speech very moving, but then as a Doctor Who fan, I'd spent the entire show fervently hoping the cylons and humans would unite and live in peace and harmony. War isn't the answer! "There should have been a better way"! and all that. So the prospect of the End Of War and a Peaceful Resolution made me very happy. I'm also a believer - in what, I'm not sure, so the rather fuzzy theology of said Speech struck me as rather beautiful, despite its ambiguity. I loved the lack of answers and Disappearance of another major character. Daft it may be, I liked Humanity's ultimate fate. I loved the celebration of truth, love, honesty and beauty - oh! how it touched my hippy heart! It was romantic, hopeful, and I suspect fans of hard SF would be less enchanted.

How can you not love a serious show that ends proposing that not only does God exist, that he is watching out for us - but that he is also a Jimi Hendrix fan? I'll get my coat...

Well frak me gently with a chainsaw.

What on earth was that? Can this be the same Torchwood that failed to make children + hospital scary; can it be the same show whose chief villain blew up a city because his brother accidentally let go his hand. Can it be Torchwood at all, and still remain the most exciting television event of the year.

What on earth was that?

Update on this morning's post: my sister has gleefully got in on the reality-bending. She thinks the Tommy Westphall theory is nuts, but she must have been kinda inspired for the idea she contributed this afternoon.

Torchwood was on, so I joined her to laugh at it, but was foiled because it happened to be one of my genuine favourite episodes: "Adam", in which the team is infiltrated by a man who can manipulate memories. Hilarity, and mucho angst ensuses, but my sister's stroke of genius is that potentially anything in that episode is dodgy. She identified the low-light of the episode, Jack's maudlin flashback - "it was the worst day of my life!" the Man of Plywood describes the massacre of his entire village, as if he'd missed the bus. Once he realises what Adam is, Jack is sorely tempted to ask him to unlock those memories he's supressed. Oceanic's idea is that, actually, it's part of a larger trap by Adam, and those very memories are also fake.

Pretty smart, fairly likely - and this is an especially alluring theory, because it calls into question the existance of Jack's brother Gray, and potentially removes from canon that awful season finale where Gray turns up, pretending to be a fascinating arch-nemesis, when in actual fact he's a wooden whine with a 30 year grudge against his brother on very shaky ground.

Hell, it potentially invalidates the second half of the season, and everything that comes after. Do characters who die in Adam's fake-memory season 2 actually die in real life? We can only wonder. Aw, we love Torchwood really. I'm looking forward to the week-long five-part miniseries. I'm looking forward to pointing, and laughing, for 45 minutes every day for a week. Then saying nasty things about it on my blog. It's a love-hate thing: we watch it cos we're desperate and the Mother Show isn't on air, then punish it for not being Doctor Who. Also, it's crap.



We're off to see relatives tomorrow: the worst of both worlds. It's my time off, so I want to either be totally self-denying and workworkworkworkwork till my hands bleed - or totally selfish, say by locking myself in a garret and finishing any one of my numerous projects. Any other time spent is time spent in limbo. My relatives must think I'm a real sulky sod, but it's because when I spend time with them they have me at my worst possible period. I'm not free to devote three hours to restructuring a single paragraph of prose (or rather, I am free, but I'd feel bad doing that - self-loathing!). I'm sans friends, and boy do I get disproportionately unhappy without them. And finally, no piano. It's only a small thing, but boy does it grate on me. In other words, I'm in a constant state of moping, I don't enjoy it and they surely can't. It's not that I don't want to spend time with them, goodness knows I do. I suppose, on my terms. My terms include friends, literature breaks and a piano. In other words, three methods to ignore them entirely.

Boy, is that bitter! I don't mean it nastily. I do want to spend time with my relatives. It'd just be nice if their presence didn't bar me from those few comforts that make me a sane and sociable individual. In any case, I'm back in Hampstead on Tuesday and will be spending the week chained to a desk, but it'd be nice to see people. It'll be like prison, with visiting hours, and profundis will be Realism in Cinema and Gladiatorial Games.


This evening has been brightened by me watching - enduring - the first two episodes of Blake's 7. Wikipedia describes the show as memorable for it's "dark tone, moral ambiguity and strong characterisation." So I should have been prepared, but something about the fact it was made in the 70s, combined with the fact my dad has been describing it as "tackier than Doctor Who".

Oh my. I know that too much of the aforementioned show has softened my resolve, made me really sensitive to violence because it's so tame, made me genuinely shocked by unpleasantness because it's so friendly. But it struck me at once how nihilistic the whole thing is. It starts with our hero being party to mass murder, and it's unpleasantly shot for retro television, yet via one of the most terrifyingly corrupt and efficient eeeevil dictatorships I have ever seen, it's only the beginning of 100 minutes of good, clean fun: multiple betrayal, manipulation, multiple paedophilia, downright cruelty, attempted (or in any case, threatened) rape, a 98% death count for named characters, even ones you think are going to make it onto the regular cast, and a total lack of joy.

And I love it. There's something very...well, non-rubbish about it. Ignoring some shoddy modelwork, and you do have to, the world is brilliantly drawn. It feels very real. And it works: when two NPCs discuss loudly and in public about how they're going to bring down the government, he actually takes notice. And because seemingly everyone in this world except Blake is a sour bastard, he then notifies the authorities, and everyone gets killed. I've just sat through 100 minutes of the hero, failing, failing, failing, failing. In fact, I know the ultimate spoiler about this show - and that alone is reason to keep watching. In other words, it understands irony and isn't afraid of being downright cruel. It's also shot very intensely. Yet the fact it's an old series make these things more shocking, because you know a new series has virtually no limit when it comes to sex, violence, swearing, even special effects. I've always been more intrigued and impressed in older works, because you do expect them to be tamer.

So why are we watching it? Well I do love my retro telly, and even though I'd just as enthusiastically watch Space: 1999 or Star Trek, this is fondly remembered by my dad. But Blake's 7 is special - it was created by Terry Nation, our own personal Davros and creator of the Dalek race, albeit in fiction. And there are literally hundreds of crossovers, be it in cast, crew, props or plots. Even in the first episode I spotted a futuristic sofa which the Sixth Doctor had sat on in Timelash. That episode stars Paul Darrow (a.k.a. Avon) in an appallingly hammy cameo, but I've heard it rumoured the entire thing was vengeance for an even hammier cameo by Colin Baker in Blake's 7. That'll be one to watch. There's a healthy fan theory they exist in the same universe, and one I support so far. Obviously, there are strong stylistic similarities, especially the cross-pollination of props and costumes, and in the way it is shot. I've found where to put it too - Frontier in Space has a human Federation with a president, like the one namechecked here. And Caves of Androzani, god those gun runners, are also straight out of this universe. To be honest, I didn't think retro telly got any nastier than that episode. It does: it's here, and roll on boxed set!

Thought for the day: every story has to find its own level.

I've been mulling over how to write this blog for several hours now, and that's the best angle to approach it from. I don't want to turn it into an anger fest about Torchwood, Galactica and those episodes of Doctor Who I really disliked. Nor do I want to claim this is an article about how I want more realism in television. Which I plainly don't.

In brief, I want to talk about people crying and pointing guns at one another.

It's a cliche I first spotted in Torchwood, and I can't help but notice it all the time now because (with two huge exceptions) I can't stand it. It refers to a climactic moment in which all the principles stand around in a room together, collectively angsting, acting their little socks off while threatening one another with firearms. Drama! Tension! Violence!

Traditional story wisdom will tell you that plot's great and all that, but character development is also key. Modern, shoddy scriptwriting prioritises one over the other - it's a lot easier to do character sweeps than intricate plotting. Even in my own writing, I have hundreds of wannabie-characters sitting around with nothing to do. Worse, character "development" has the power to seem more forced than a plot - you know that villains will be killed or redeemed (because they are villains), and people who start a story either wrong or certain will have these views challenged and will be changed by the experience. This does not happen in real life, except on a huge scale and without handy signposts for the audience.

"Bob is alone. Bob finds a man. Bob is no longer alone" - of course these everyday dramas are what life is all about, which make life worth living and television worth watching. And that's fine for soap opera or pure drama. But in a lot of television, it's also substitute for good plotting. In an ideal world, character should coincide with plot. "Bob spends six episodes dodging lasers and fighting killer baby elephants - but ah, he also learns the meaning of true love."

The gun-pointing scenario is the anthesis of that. Screw the plot, we're just going to end the story by working out our trust/hate/vengeance issues, loudly. I'm sure the opposite exists, films which resolve their plots and forget about the characters. But these days (my impression is) emotional and moving are far more key buzz words than smart and challenging. OK, you've got a great detective series here. Can he be an alcoholic?

The approach isn't intrinsically flawed - you watch shows because you love the characters. Even The A-team, which I'll be the first to admit is high on character moments if low on actual development, I watch because I love the team. An ending should evolve naturally from what's gone before, and that means plot as well as character. What are my favourite Doctor Who moments of all time? That would be the emotional character scenes - but that doesn't mean they don't need to be supported by well defined, well thought out plots.

It's not this phenomenon is particular to Torchwood - although the intrinsically weak plotting on that show means they're pulled out on a very regular basis. Modern Doctor Who flunks out on proper endings all the time - count the number of episods which end with the Doctor going "oh I'll just pull this switch and reverse the polarity, and the villains go away! Now I can get back to worrying about the Time War/Rose/casualties" Or perhaps you've never heard me roar about Journey's End, which is a whole season of buildup to a three-episode mini-arc, all leading up to Donna pulling a switch and destroying every Dalek inexistance. Argue, if you like, that it was not so much about Davros as Donna - her arc, her transformation. To which I reply, precicely - that's exactly what I was just complaining about. You've got Davros and the Daleks! And all they're going to do is sit around taunting the Doctor for two hours, while he stands around miserably, waiting for the resolution to arrive? By my reckoning, not a single Season 4 episode had a complicated resolution. The Doctor rewired the Adipose computer. The Doctor chose to destroy Pompeii instead of the universe. The Doctor frees the Ood brain. The Doctor fires that missile thingie and destroys the gas. etc, etc.

Another irritating one is Galactica, which deliberately sets out to be challenging, also tends to prioritise obvious development regularly. Sample episode: 6 tells Gaius that he only needs to believe and everything will be OK. Gaius is cynical. Gaius believes. Everything is OK. Gaius sees the world anew. Now you could say it's just typical Todorov - all stories tend to run "balance -> imbalance -> new balance". The problem is, it happens so often that it soon becomes obvious. Especially when combined with my dislike of the way it handles moral issues. Sample episode: The Admiral thinks all blackmailers are evil, insensitive scum and denies food rations to a notorious hive. The President is more concerned about the way they are exploiting the common people, the XO thinks they should just execute them all - but the Admiral's son believes they are just victims of their enviroment and is committed to positive social change. They argue and angst for a whole episode, and if we're really lucky the Admiral's son will decide to do something stupid like lead a revolt or take someone hostage. But then the Admiral will become sensitive, the President will come to sympathise, the Admiral's son will be wonderfully vindicated - and the XO will be ignored because he needs to stay grumpy so he can be the irrational voice of insensitivity in next week's crisis. And what's the best way for one character to challenge another's ideas? That would be to speak passionately about it, while weeping and holding a laser rifle, sir! Again, like Torchwood, this isn't intrinsically bad - but it happens so, so so often it soon becomes obvious.

Obvious? You feel the hand of the author, and that is something which should never ever happen. You have to believe a show while watching it. As we've observed, people do not neatly arrange their lives into three act structures; and thus while it's acceptable for characters to do this, it shouldn't dance around in frilly underwear while waving the Sacred Hammer of Thematic Tidiness.

It's a lack of realism - just because the audience are suspending their disbelief to accept the planet Malcassairo in the year 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, it doesn't mean you're allowed to stretch it too far. On the contrary, it's the daft little human ironies which sells the far out setting. I like realism in plotting, not of scenario. Or vice versa, never both. A single mum on a council estate who works in a shop - who gets super powers after finding a baby elephant in her bathtub. An Evil from the Beginning of the Universe who intends to destroy All Creation is foiled beacause he forgot the six minute time delay between Earth and Mars.

It has to find its own level and stick to it. in Friends, they can all afford hundreds of coffies at Central Perk despite never holding jobs which appear to warrant it. It's part of the framework, and you accept it like you accept the TARDIS can be bigger within than without. Hell, you accept that Hannah Montana can be a world-famous rockstar yet no one ever recognises her. I'm going to quote Lance Parkin quoting Christopher Brookmyre. Again. It's just a damn fine quote, OK?:

"This ‘voice’ is all about the internal logic of the story. In One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night, Christopher Brookmyre talks about the bullet-deadliness
quotient, he’s right and I think there are lots of equivalents in fiction.
Kissing someone is far more significant in Doctor Who than having sex with them
and their sister would be in Skins. Each story has its own level of meting out
justice, the relationship between what they do and the punishment they get.
There are Child Spunkiness Quotients, Adultery Forgiveness Quotients, Swearing
Quotients, Quip and Eloquence Quotients, Character Disposable Income And Free
Time Quotients, Recovery Time From Injury Quotients. You create a world, with
rules. The trick is, as Brookmyre says, to stay consistent within those rules."

You can argue that the above complaint is Galactica's level - it certainly sticks to it. Perhaps it just has the misfortune of finding a level which irritates me automatically. For me, the damp-gun resolution is as obvious as it's ugly cousins covered by the aforementioned Bullet Deadliness Quotient - extras will die instantly, heroes will be hit in the shoulder and soldier on. The author says "I'm here, and I am God. I have decreed that, even though the Torchwood team are surrounded by men with guns every single week and are never in any danger due to me preventing the baddies from shooting, this week Owen will die. Owen will die because Russel T. Davis sent me a series plan determining he should die. Therefore, this week in the "everyone pointing guns phase", I will allow someone to actually shoot Owen, and he will die from it. Instantly. Because it's in the synopsis."

At this point, the whole thing just becomes unrealistic. You're already asking the audience to accept that the team are in mortal danger every week without them actually being harmed. Suddenly killing someone breaks the illusion: the death doesn't work, just feels contrived, and any subsequent weeks where the team survives seem as unlikely as it always should have been. Furthermore, you need to test the audience's gullibility further after pulling a gun-pull-climax, to keep all the regulars in the show. I'm not sure about you, but if a close friend ever threatened me with a gun while weeping over whatever traumatic situation we were in, I might not be very quick to forgive him. Ever. Authors like all their characters. It's hard to remember that, sometimes, they don't like one another. Television gets frustrating oh-so quickly.

And it's not just Torchwood which wins the bad death award. You might have heard me rant about "The Doctor's Daughter" before, but it does exactly the same thing. "Oooops, we need to get rid of Jenny now so the Doctor can be without ties for the next episode, instead of organically letting her become part of the team. So even though the Doctor has spent 45 years not-being-shot when cornered by baddies, even though many of them were Daleks, Cybermen or otherwise without remorse - this week someone will shoot, once, and kill the person I decree to die. No one will react by, say, suddenly decending into a paniced accidental bloodbath when a gun goes off at a very nervy truce at the climax of a generations-old war, because they are only extras and therefore not real." Of course the simplest way to wrap up the whole "hello dad!" scenario would be not to write the episode in the first place. But it's too late now.

Peversely, LOST kills people quite well - there are deaths left, right and centre, and they are terrifying in their unpredictability. Yes, a lot of gunpointing goes on. But the characters who get killed are often attractive, often still interesting. There's a level of emotional manipulation, but there is also something quite admirably real that a central character could just die out of the blue, at any moment.


I said sometimes the gun point resolution works, and I offer three examples. I criticised it for prioritising characterisation, but sometimes plot should take a back seat, to give the show variety or if a character situation is genuinely the most interesting thing about the story.

In Last of the Timelords, you don't really want to watch the Doctor carefully planning his victory. We've all seen him save Earth, y'know, once or twice before now. You just want to get him back on screen with the Master as quickly as possible. It's a scenario where the guns'n'tears shortcut is acceptable, because by far the most interesting thing about that trilogy of episodes is the Master himself: what he means in regards to the Time War, and the way he makes the Doctor tick. The script highlights it for us too - it's a chilling plot point that the Doctor is willing to make his friends go through hell for an entire year, simply for a chance to redeem the Master and get another Timelord back. For the Doctor himself, the figure of the Master is also more important than saving the Earth. It makes a sort of sense that the true climax should be that story.

The second is going back to the Quotients mentioned above. Unsuprisingly perhaps, I regard Reservoir Dogs as an exception. That film has people crying and pointing guns at one another all the way through, so it's not so jarring when it happens at the end. It feels like a sensible extention of the in-world rules already established.

Finally, and this is a very dodgy point, it's OK if you do it very well, or in an interesting way. I recognise I'm on shaky ground, but the first classic Doctor Who I ever loved was Resurrection of the Daleks, and I can't exactly abandon it without attempt at defense. It's quiet and subdued, without the sweaty camerawork of the regular gun-point-resolution. It draws it's power from the lack of drama: the Doctor has mournfully left the TARDIS, and declared his intent to go and kill Davros. The scene that follows is a corker, and it's down to four facts. Davros knows the Doctor won't shoot. The audience knows the Doctor won't shoot. The Doctor, albeit subconsciously, has no intention to shoot - it's a ruse for a chance to try talking him out of it. And he doesn't shoot - but five or so people get killed while they're mulling it over. It removes the suspense from the scenario entirely.

But wouldn't it be best if we all forgot it entirely?