Republibot

ORIGINAL FICTION: "Free Are The Stars, Part II" by Richard Anderson

neorandomizer — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

PLEASE NOTE: This is Part Two of a three part story. Part one is available here:
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Natsuki and John were having the same argument they’d been having since the morning after their wedding.

“John you should be the chairman,” Natsuki said one more time.

With a sigh Hull replied, “Honey look the board has already accepted you as chairwoman and it's what your father wants and my father wanted.”

“Do we always have to follow their wishes?”

“It's the price the prince and princess have to pay, Natsuki. Anyway you’re better at it than me. I’m a pilot and an engineer, not a CEO.”

“Bullshit! You run Orbital just fine!”

They went back and forth for like this for a few minutes until Hull changed the subject: “Are the contact lenses still bothering you?” As a wedding present, Hull had bought Natsuki one of the new personal computers, with contact lens screens and an ear piece for audio and neural control. The CPU itself was a little larger than a twentieth-century credit card, and fit easily in a pocket or a belt pouch. It could connect with the habitat systems by wireless network.

“A little, and don't change the subject!” said Natsuki; but she knew he was right: she would have to bear the responsibility of what was to come. Over Natsuki's objection, The board had created a subcommittee with full authority to take whatever actions necessary to win independence for the Habitat and the Moon. It was a small subcommittee with only two members: Natsuki Nakamura and John Hull.

Daichi Nakamura moved from the family summer home near Mount Fuji to his apartment in Tokyo, where he could more easily lobby the government. He had many friends in the various ministries and many favors he was now calling in. The meeting was informal, in the very formal way only fully understood by the Japanese. Nakamura smiled his thanks at the women dressed as a traditional geisha who poured tea for himself and an old college friend. The friend was now a member of the Diet, and part of the prime ministers’ own faction. After the geishas finished and left the room, the conversation continued.

“Old friend, I am sorry. The Prime Minister is receiving heavy pressure from the Americans to back the takeover of the consortium and the conservatives in the Diet are backing the move.”

“So. We are still the lap dogs to Washington’s wishes?” Nakamura replied with ironic venom.

“It is not so easy, Daichi san. The crises in China and India have made our ties to America all the more important. Besides, they have promised us control of the helium-3 production on the Moon,” the friend replied.

“And they hold the strings that the puppet government dances to!” There was some anger in Nakamura’s voice now. He had hoped to at the very lest that Tokyo would be neutral, but it seemed Washington was holding most of the cards. Again.

Weeks of cajoling, promising, and even bribing from Nakamura had slowed but not stopped the Japanese government. They would eventually back America’s stance. Nakamura had never taken ‘no’ for an answer, however, and he had one more card to play. He had friends in Tokyo that could help with this last, most dangerous plan. If need be, he would bring down the whole government to get his way.

The November elections had gone the way everyone had predicted, and resultantly the workload for the Independence Subcommittee increased across the board. Firstly there remained the standing question of how independence was going to come about. Natsuki argued - and won - that a plebiscite needed to be held. The number of questions on the ballot had to be set and a date found for the voting.

They settled on four possible options. First: full independence from Earth, with the formation of a nation called the Solar Federation. Second: independence from only Japan and America with membership in the United Nations. Third: No independence, and last: none of the above. The board was going to campaign for the first option.

The next question was of the date of the vote. Hull reported that Orbital Dynamics and the other launch companies would have all essential personnel and equipment in orbit by the first week of January. To give time for debate, January thirtieth was chosen. An added point: it was decided that all persons on Consortium property would have the right to vote if they were sixteen years old, or older. If this vote went as hoped, the Solar Federation would be declared January 31 2043.

Once the hows and whens of independence were decided on, it was time to work on the form of government they wanted. All agreed that it would be democratic, but the exact form and the distribution of powers were hotly debated. Some wanted a strong central government, some wanted a weak one. The debate went on for weeks with no real progress.

By the thanksgiving weekend, Natsuki and Hull where in great need of a rest. They where lounging in the back room of their home, with the partition open looking at the garden.

“Oh look a bunny,” said Natsuki, as a small white rabbit came into the garden. It was hopping around looking for food. Natsuki sat on the floor, Japanese style, dressed in a kimono. She looked beautiful and fragile to Hull. He had to remind himself that she was the de facto leader of a rebellion.

The couple’s respite was interrupted by Ryoko entering the room. She had a stiff look to her, as if she was exerting a great amount of control. She bowed low.

“Lady Natsuki, I have news from our friends in Tokyo,” she said nervously. ‘Friends in Tokyo’ was a polite euphemism for the family's yakuza connections. Sensing something was wrong, Natsuki sat up straight and assumed a formal look.

“Continue Ryoko,” she said.

“Master Daichi has been killed, he…” Ryoko said, then suddenly stopped and could not continue. Natsuki stiffened at the word, her eyes narrowed. Hull sat up sharply in shock, and didn’t know what to say or do. The last he’d heard was that Daichi was in Tokyo, meeting with government ministers and bureaucrats, trying to guide Japan's policy in favor of the habitat and Moon. It hadn’t sounded dangerous at all.

“What happend?” Natsuki asked, her voice as cold as interstellar space.

“The police are going to report that he surprised a burglar.” Ryoko said, sullenly.

“A man in a wheelchair surprising a burglar!?” Natsuki was incredulous, “That apartment is in a high security building. What else is in the message?” Hull could see anger rising in Natsuki.

Ryoko continued with her head down, staring at some nonexistent spot on the floor, “Our friends believe the police are covering up and that he was assassinated.”

“Thank you Ryoko,” Natsuki said sadly. There was a long pause while her normal stoic appearance gave way to pain and anger and sadness and fear, all in the space of a moment, then her emotionless mask returned. She continued in a cold voice, “please inform our friends that I would take it as a personal favor if they would look into this and deal with those responsible.”

Hull admired his wife's strength but was more than a little frightened at the ease with which she’d just ordered God knew how many murders.

After another long pause, Natsuki said, “Now leave us I wish to discuss this with my husband.” Ryoko bowed and left the room, sliding the door shut.

When she was sure Ryoko had moved away from the door, Natsuki threw herself into Hull's arms and the great wracking sobs and hot, salty tears came, and would not go. She cried as only a daughter could cry at the loss of her father.

After the death of Daichi Nakamura, everyone working on project Spartacus redoubled their efforts. People openly spoke as if Earth had declared war on them. Natsuki rammed through a measure for a constitutional convention to be held with representatives from every group in the consortium.

Hull worked with the different companies that handled launch and spaceflight services. In every country where the consortium had spaceports, things started happening that slowed their schedule. Nothing was officially announced, of course, but it seemed clear the various earth governments were trying to slow them down as much as possible. Hull also met regularly with the pilots’ union, but he wouldn’t tell anyone - especially Netsuke - what they where planning.

On Earth things were heating up. Protesters were actively trying to block the entrances of the Texas, New Mexico and California launch facilities. Consortium personnel were being harassed, and the EPA filed suit to shutdown Orbital Dynamics claiming it was violating the Clean Air Act. Congressmen and Senators were going on talk shows claiming that the habitat and lunar colonists were committing all manner of ridiculous crimes. There were even doctors claiming that the consortium was covering up how spaceborn children were all deformed and unhealthy.

Hull ordered all the reusable launch vehicles that could be readied to go to orbit and to wait at the orbital transfer stations. Since all the personnel that wanted to go to New Eden or the newly-renamed renamed Clarke City were already in space, they could use throwaway launchers to finish lifting what little equipment that remained. By the end of December, 2042 the colonies and the earth seemed to be on the brink of a showdown that neither side could afford to avoid.

Andre Zarkoff couldn’t believe his luck. He’d come to Macau after completing his Tokyo mission. For the last few weeks since then, he simply could not seem to lose at the gaming tables, and he’d even made more money than the CIA had paid him for silencing that troublesome old man.

He was having a quiet drink at the hotel bar when the most stunning Eurasian women he’d ever seen walked in. It was a little before dawn, so the bar was mostly empty. He decided his luck was still holding when she sat next to him and asked for a light. Faster than seemed possible, he was back in his room, sitting on his bed watching as the woman slowly undressed.

Her back was to him, and he saw that she had a tattoo of a dragon running down her spine in the Japanese fashion. She turned and walked toward him, and he saw that the tail of the dragon continued up from her legs to end just below her near-perfect breasts. She leaned over him as he lay in bed, and gave him the most passionate and sexual kiss he’d ever had ever had. She stood and smiled down at him.

Andre Zarkoff tried to smile but his lips wouldn’t move. In a panic he tried to sit up, and found he could barely move. Waves of pain hit him, starting in his mouth, and radiating downward. The woman stood there, smiling and staring at him for a bit, then she leaned in again.

“Have you ever heard of a poisoned kiss?” The women whispered into his left ear, while giving it a little nibble. She moved to his right ear: “It’s a special neural toxin. You have five minutes to live. A gift from the Nakamura clan.” She moved back over to the left ear, kissing Zarkoff on the lips on the way.

“If you tell me the name of the one who ordered the old man’s death I can ease your pain,” she offered. Zarkoff painfully struggled, croaking out a single name. His vision was getting dark. The women recognized the name, and smiled as she expertly slid a stiletto into his chest, piercing his heart ending his pain forever.

The New Year started with an air of tension. People were still moving from the orbital stations to either the Moon or the habitat. Those in the colonies who wanted to return to earth being transferred to the non-consortium stations like the Bigelow Orbital Hilton, and using Virgin Galactic to return to earth.

The first bill introduced to the new American congress was the Space Nationalization Act. After a week of debate in which most of the speakers ranted of the evils of the consortium, the bill passed and sent to the Senate. One of the most appalling parts of the bill was that only companies belonging to the consortium were to be nationalized. The bill also banned anyone below the age of twenty four from space.

With Natsuki's father dead, the independence subcommittee had ceased to rely on paid lobbyists and PR firms to make their case. All though some conservatives and libertarians argued in the consortium's favor, the tide was clearly running against them. The environmental lobby and some religious leaders were vocally against them, as were anti-big business groups, and still others that felt that man had no business in space. These lobbyied not only for the government to take control of New Eden and Clarke City, but they were demanding that they be shut down entirely.

With Natsuki in charge of the political and business matters and Hull dealing with the technical and spaceflight actions they had little time to be together. When by chance they met at home they where glad just to be able to lie together and sleep in exhaustion.

On Earth, the Nationalization Act moved with more speed than anticipated, and the Senate was set to vote on it the day before the colonies would be holding the plebiscite for independence.

On the night before the Senate vote, Natsuki arranged for Hull and her to spend the evening together. They had a quiet diner, with cocktails afterward in the garden. Their three helper/bodyguards made themselves scarce, giving them the illusion that the two of them were home alone. They chatted about music and books and things of no importance, allowing their minds and bodies to relax from the stress of careening events.

At the end of the evening, Natsuki took Hull by the hand and lead him into the bedroom. Undressing they both got into bed and embraced.

“Husband, please give me a child.” said Natsuki in a loving voice. They slowly made love like it would be their last time. Both were certain that it was.

Months before, When the word had gone out that it was time for earth folk to evacuate to the colonies, it created the biggest launch logjam in history. It had taken Diana Jaworski and her assist Roger Edwards until the last week of December to receive a flight. Things on Earth were becoming chaotic by the middle of November, with protests and near-riots at the spaceports. Jaworski’s own husband had joined in the anti-space movement that swept America.

It wasn’t her intention at first, but slowly, over the weeks of waiting and tensions she and Roger Edwards had become lovers. It was natural that two people with similar beliefs and similar ages, thrown together in an increasingly-dangerous crisis would become close, but it made Jaworski feel guilty. She wondered if she was taking advantage of Roger. Due to a shortage of ships, hundreds of people were still on the ten transfer stations in orbit, waiting for passage to the Moon or New Eden.

“No, Roger it’s your turn. I’ll get a flight soon enough.”

Edwards replied, “Diana, please don’t argue with me. They need you up on the Habitat, and anyway I’m working on modifications to some of the orbital ships so they can get to lunar orbit, and be picked up there. Far safer than leaving all those people tooling around in orbit, where any Green lunatic on the ground can pick ‘em off.” He shoved his ticket into his one-time boss’s hand. Edwards smiled as he continued, “Don’t worry. I’ll be on the Moon in no time. But you’re more important to the effort than I am. You need to get to New Eden so you can start working on my transfer back as your rusty trusty assistant.” Edwards kissed her before she could argue farther.

It was Election Day in space, and the citizens of New Eden and Clarke City used their home, work or school computers to vote. The computers used biometrics and DNA scans to verify there was only one vote per person. Hull was able to busy himself with the technical details of moving the last of the refugees in low earth orbit to the moon or New Eden. The crews of the transfer stations had volunteered - to a person - to stay on station for the duration, despite knowing they were at risk. They were the first, most obvious targets, should things get violent.

The only thing left for Natsuki to deal with was a message from the American President. The Senate had passed the Nationalization Act, sixty to thirty nine with one abstention. The President had been waiting for today's vote, and wanted the consortium's reply before signing or vetoing the bill.
The message declared that New Eden, all Solar Power satellites, and all Orbital Transfer Station, would be turned over to the US military. Clarke City and the helium mining stations on the near side of the moon would be turned over to Japan, since they where the primary user of the fusion fuel. The consortium would be reimbursed for these assets with US treasure bills at a rate to be negotiated later. The various member companies would be permitted to maintain their spaceports and to run satellite lift businesses separately; the consortium was to be dissolved. All nonessential personal would be transferred from the moon back to earth. Everyone on New Eden would have to move back to earth and the habitat would be shut down.

“Do these idiots really believe that we spent over thirty years building New Eden just to abandon it because a bunch of nutjobs don’t believe humanity belongs in space? Or that a ton of worthless paper will make it all better?” Natsuki said rhetorically to the board of directors.

As was her duty, Natsuki presented the offer to the board. One member joked that the earthfolk didn’t even have enough respect to offer real money, just bonds.

“I move that we reject the American offer!” The Mitsubishi board member with an energy that surprised the others at the table. The board agreed, and they voted with him unanimously to do so. A few members wanted to send a message to the President telling her ‘go screw yourself,’ but they left the reply to Natsuki.

She knew what her reply would be already, but she waited until midnight just to be sure she was doing what her people wanted. The voting on independence would have ended by then.

At 0100 hours, New Eden time, all the members of the board of directors of the New Eden consortium gathered behind Natsuki while she read a statement that was transmitted to every consortium property, as well as every news organization on Earth.

“As of Today, January 31st 2043, I am proud to announce the formation of the Solar Federation.”

The President immediately signed the space nationalization act, and ordered all the American assets of the consortium ito be seized. The Prime Minister of Japan followed with his own seizure order a few hours later. Some said he felt a bet reticent to do so.

After the seizure order, Natsuki ordered the solar power satellites to be shut down. They were beaming power to the Nevada desert. The effect was dramatic and immediate: Without power from the satellites, the western power grid started to suck electricity from the rest of the country. The system wasn’t designed for the simultaneous loss of thirty percent of the grid‘s overall power. The western United States went dark, from Los Angeles to Denver, and of course everyone panicked almost immediately.

Nikolas Jaworski was in his office. arranging transportation for protesters to the demonstrations at the Mojave spaceport when the power went off. This being southern California, someone pulled a hand cranked radio out of the closet and tuned to a station that had emergency power.

The newscaster said, “…And it seems the whole western half of the United States is in a blackout, the cause of which is unknown - wait - this just in: The President has announced that the power outage is the result of the New Eden consortium illegally shutting down the satellites that fed power to the western US. To repeat…”

Nikolas stopped listening and yelled “That bitch!” Most of the people that heard him believed he as talking about the consortium charwomen, but he was thinking of his soon-to-be ex-wife.

As Nikolas drove home, he had to detour around areas that the National Guard had already cordoned off. Looting and rioting had started a few hours after the power went off, and the governor had called up the guard. Nikolas felt a burning hatred for the colonists. ‘By what right do they disrupt the natural order of things?,’ he thought.

Natsuki ordered all shipments of helium 3 to Japan to be stopped. There where a few cargo modules on their way at the time, and no way to stop the automated modules after they’d been thrown into space by the linear accelerator. These just coasted to Earth and splashed down in the Sea of Japan where a ship would pick them up. Even with these last modules, it was estimated that Japan had less than twenty days of fuel for its fusion reactors. The Japanese had been building them as fast as they could, to replace the aging fission reactors constructed back in the twentieth century.

The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution stating that the colonist’s sovereignty violated both the Outer Space Treaty of 1968 and the Moon Treaty of 1979. It also authorized the use of force to bring New Eden and the moon bases back under control of their respective member states.

The consortium, meanwhile, announced the formation of the Republic of Luna to govern the Moon and to be the second nation - along with New Eden - within the Federation.
Things stood there for a week: The earth Sent a messages or made announcements, and the Federation would respond in kind, but no real action was taken by either side.

“John, how many people are still in near earth orbit?” asked Natsuki as her husband sat in her office in the administration building.

“A few hundred, give or take on the transfer stations. Why?”

“I just have a bad feeling about having people so close to Earth. They might try something.” Natsuki didn’t think that America and Japan were just going to roll over and let them go. Not after going to all the trouble of passing the nationalization bill and seizing colonial assets.

“If you want I can have them put the stations on standby and send some ships to pull them back here. It's going to take a week or so.”

“Do it, John, please. It would make me feel better.”

To Be Concluded...

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EPISODE REVIEW: Survivors: “Episode 5” (Episode 5)

Republibot 3.0 — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:41:59 +0000

Muslim Boy is walking through the woods, and comes across some campers led by a visionary prophet guy. He takes them back to the house, where his new-age mumbo-jumbo doesn’t win him any friends, but as one of his party is extremely pregnant, they decide to let ‘em stay until the baby is born. Psycho Killer is getting busy with the Ambitious-yet-Skanky girl, who seems to like him, whereas he’s just using her to scratch an itch. Rich Idiot, meanwhile, feels a bit outclassed by Suburban Mom’s making it with a homeless caveman last week, so he makes it with a homeless hippie chick following a prophet around. (Score! In your face, Suburban Mom! Who’s the bigger freakshow now?)

Things turn creepy(er) when the hippie chick’s boyfriend turns up, sharing her with Rich Idiot so as to…I don’t know what, really…spread the gene pool around? Take pictures for the internet because he keeps forgetting the amateur porn industry died in the plague? Who knows. She says she wants to have babies, but her boyfriend is clearly capable of having babies on his own, so why she wants to have ‘em with Rich Idiots and random carnival workers isn’t quite clear. I’m assuming she just thought the whole ‘spreading the gene pool’ thing around her boyfriend wasn’t really cutting it in the ‘man’ department. Or maybe she’s just a trollop. It’s England: who can tell?

Anyway, the Very Pregnant Lady goes into labor, and since there’s still a half hour to kill in the episode, there are, of course, complications. Pretty Underused Doctor Lady does nothing, but eventually Psychokiller talks her into helping out, which she does, though she gets a soliloquy about how her girlfriend died in the plague. Psychokiller hears this, and is utterly repulsed. Evidently, unlike most violent offenders doing hard time, he’s a bit Spartan. No, wait, they were all screamingly gay. Bad choice of words. Let’s say he was rather puritanical, and the whole ’gay’ thing repulses him. He confronts Pretty Underused Doctor Lady, who says she’s not actually gay, she’s a bicycle. Psychokiller isn’t really mollified by this - it’s obvious he likes her a lot - but once he realizes she’s “Been with blokes” he realizes he’s got a chance and calms down.

This is almost a good scene. Psychokiller’s very real sense of betrayal is well-played, and Pretty Underused Doctor Lady’s admission that she doesn’t know if she’s gay or not, she just fell in love with a girl, and doesn’t know what the hell it all means was likewise well played. There’s the appropriate sense of confusion there. Her anger at his anger, quickly changing when she realizes his anger is because he cares about her is also well done. Then they blow it two separate ways in rapid succession: 1) With him deciding it’s all ok if he still has a chance to get some and 2) her suddenly going all PC and preachy when she says “I don’t fall in love with men or women, I fall in love with people.” Oh, groan! Is there any greater betrayal than instantly dropping from genuine drama to bumpersticker slogans? Well, yes, the “It’s all just a training exercise” thing is worse, but this is still a pisser. Totally betrayed the first half of the only really good scene in the episode.

Anyway, Prophet quickly turns out to be a paranoid schizophrenic because, of course, you can’t have any religious leaders ever depicted in the media as being honest, decent, hardworking folk of moral stature. He kidnaps Pretty Underused Doctor Lady, and they beat it out of there. The Suburban Mom Commune gives chase, and Psychokiller shuts Prophet down in a suitably rapid badass way, but stops short of killing him when Pretty Underused Doctor Lady asks him to.

Prophet’s throng breaks up, with Hippie Chick and Whipped Boyfriend heading off to find a new way to live, possibly with creepy Sister Clarice from Caprica, who seems to be into similar stuff. Prophet’s girlfriend - with the new baby - decide to stay with him, and not give him the drugs Pretty Underused Doctor Lady prescribes because “I can’t take God away from him.” Suburban Mom’s commune leaves, pretty clearly anticipating Prophet to wig out and kill both mother and child in the not-too-distant future.

Meanwhile, in the bolted-on Mysterious Doctors-In-A-Lab subplot, they’re rounding up survivors and killing some of them to check for various…scientific…things, molecules no doubt, which might help them in their goal of doing whatever the heck it is they’re doing. One of them sees a broadcast of Suburban Mom’s message from the Children’s Museum commune.

The End.

OBSERVATIONS

I’ve been thinking about why this show doesn’t work for me. I mean, yeah, there’s the obvious drudgery of the boring stories, the flat direction, the near-total absence of music, the mostly dull characters (Excepting Psychokiller and Greg), the lackluster writing, and the drama-free drama. But, really, if I cared about *good* TV, I wouldn’t be much of an SF geek, now would I? I mean, I watched Dr. Who in the ‘Eighties, so, clearly, I’m not looking for Andrei Tarkovsky here, now am I?

I had a lot of time to think tonight during the episode, since the story didn’t really require much attention, and it occurred to me that while they’re always set in the future, postapocalyptic stories are all about the past. They’re a kind of wish fulfillment, mostly based on an inaccurately glamorous view of the past, in which everyone lives a more simple, natural existence, and yet women all somehow manage to keep their legs shaved, men never have beards, and no one ever dies of cholera. Sure, Road Warrior is set in a blighted future after a nuclear war, but what it *really* is is a revividus of the wild west. It’s a spaghetti western version of cowboys and Indians, with the gay bikers substituted for the Indians. It is not a cautionary tale of a future gone wrong, no matter how much directors and writers and stars might delude themselves otherwise. It is, instead, a desire to escape the present, a desire to have a more comprehensible life with cleanly drawn lines between good and evil, success and failure, heroism and cowardice, life-affirming refinery personnel, and life-denying gay bikers in leather pants with the butts cut out of ‘em.

Seriously, if you grew up in the ‘80s, you know what I’m talking about. Who among us *didn’t* occasionally pray for a nuclear war so we could get out of the Algebra II test on Monday? Admit it!

So then my problem here is twofold:

1) If the appeal of a postapocalyptic story is a return to a less ambiguous time, then loading the show with morally ambiguous people kind of sabotages that appeal, right? Granted, if you go Spaghetti Western, you can sidestep some of that, but not all of it, and this show is *not* a Spaghetti Western, let me assure you of that.

2) When you think about it, the only postapocalyptic stories that have been popular in the US are ones involving deserts and shootouts and cars instead of horses, generally. In essence, they’re retro-future westerns. Westerns are part of our cultural vernacular. Even if you’ve never seen one - and a disturbing number of people haven’t - you still kind of get it just by osmosis. The appeal of the subgenre is a return to a simpler time, and what’s more simple-yet-exciting-and-cool than a western?

But returning to the past in England isn’t…well…it’s simple, but it’s not at all exciting, nor is it cool. There’s no ‘wild’ aspect to it. From the point of view of an American, all of England seems like a really nice park in a ritzy suburb. There’s no ‘survivalist’ aspect to it, the living seems too easy. Now, I’m not saying it *IS* easy, I’m sure there’s lots of tough aspects to it. I mean, heck, you could drop me in the middle of a really ritzy suburb park and I’d be dead in 24 hours, tops. But it *appears* easy to Americans. There’s no grizzly bears, nothing rugged about it, no rattlesnakes, no native peoples trying to force you out, no hot wind from the west, no endless open plain that stretches on to infinity, with a vista that forces a man to look inside. None of that.

Frankly, it seems rather nice. A bit too nice.

So that’s my take on it.

Rich Idiot got the best line of the night: He’s a Muslim who said giving aid and comfort to Prophet’s group was “The Christian thing to do.”

Next week is the season finale. I’m not sure if they’re going to launch right into season 2, or give it a break.

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SATURDAY AFTERNOON B-MOVIE CRAPFEST: “Strange Brew” (1983)

Republibot 3.0 — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Ok, obviously what you’re thinking is “How in the holy heck is this movie in any way a science fiction film? I mean, sure, it’s clearly a B-Movie, and it’s arguably rather crappy, but how could any simpleton be so simple as to mistake this for SF? Sheesh!” If you’re like a lot of our readers, you’ll get so pointlessly up set at this that you’ll be riling up the angry mobs on CNN, buying group-rate bus tickets for my town in Nebraska, and checking out the two-for-one pitchfork sales. “Where the hell does this guy get off, attempting to pervert they youth of America by claiming this is a genre film, when it obviously isn’t? How dare he!”

Yeah, well, I’ve got three words for you:

“Mind Control Beer.”

Now that we’ve settled that, I have to give a bit of a disclaimer: I have an SCTV obsession so huge people can see it from space. I love the cast in a way that borders on disturbing. I’ve developed an encyclopedic knowledge of all the characters, even the minor ones, like “The Pittsburgh Midget”*. If you’ve got the cash, I even know a pusher who can get you copies of the SCTV season, no questions asked. Wink Wink. I’m not a hater, I’m not here to diss anyone, I’m not a poser - well, at least not on this one subject. I *AM* a poser on a lot of other things - so please understand that this is a reasoned opinion, and not my normal level of rabble rousing when I say…

[Deep breath. Preparing for the inevitable firestorm

…the movie really isn’t all that good.

[Ducking, running]

It pains me to say that. I was in Highschool when it came out, I watched it endlessly on Cinemax. I showed it at my graduation party, for Pete’s sake. I’ve definitely done my time with this movie, and I loved it one; loved it truly; loved it as only a half-Canadian man (non-practicing) can love 90 minutes of grainy, blandly-lit celluloid. (Carnally) But time passes, and you turn nineteen, and around the three-hundredth time you’ve seen the film, you start to notice things. Little things. Things that just don’t jump out at you when you’re a young teenaged idiot because you don’t have an experienced enough eye; because your sense of ethos isn’t developed well yet; because it’s three in the morning, and you’re probably drunk anyway. These are the kinds of things that it takes a somewhat older teenaged idiot to notice.

Eventually you notice that, apart from the pre-title sequence, nothing all that hilariously funny happens in the first half of the film. Eventually you realize that the gags are all pretty scattershot, and as many don’t work as do. Eventually you realize that the plot (“Shakespeare horked our script, eh?”) is pretty dull, and takes forever to get going, and that the obvious ripping off of Hamlet really has no payoff. Eventually it begins to nag at you that the scenes drag so much, and that Moranis and Thomas - who are great in all their scenes together - have absolutely no chemistry with anyone else in the flick. Ultimately you begin to realize that you’re kind of rooting for Paul Dooley, which is never a good sign. Don’t take this as a slam on Paul, because it’s not meant as one, he’s a really funny guy, and I’m sure he’s one hell of a ladykiller as well, but he’s not a leading man. He’s not even a leading comedian most of the time. I mean, this time out he’s like the second assistant comedy relief to the bad guy (A wonderfully understated Max von Sydow). He belts out lines like “Right at the bottom of the big hill” and “You killed him first! He was already dead when I killed him!” and he’s an absolute scream, but he shouldn’t be because it’s not his movie.

I’m not criticizing him at all, but when a relatively minor character, who’s basically just a junior assistant comedy barnacle scraper 3rd class, is overshadowing your leads, you’ve got a serious problem.

Which brings me to another failing of the flick: There’s a whole bunch of characters who do nothing, disappear for long periods of time, then show up again in order to do nothing again. “Henry,” for instance, basically has one line early on in the film of any importance (“Not so long ago, when there were men on the bottling lines, things like this didn’t happen!”), and then he hangs around for the rest of the freakin’ movie. We see his escape from the van, his trip to the hospital, his escape from the hospital, his emotional embrace with Pam when she sees her father’s ghost, that’s a significant amount of screen time - none of which serves any narrative purpose, and none of which is even remotely funny. He’s a dispensable character who they refuse to dispense with. Pamela is somewhat less dispensable, but she’s vastly overused (Though I find her kind of cute in a mid-80s Kate Bush sorta’ way), and Rosie LaRose is basically a walking prop who sleepwalks through the film (Though to be fair, the script calls for that kind of delivery) with two or three things to do, stretched out over a dozen scenes.

I don’t pretend to understand it. Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis are freakin’ Comedy Android Killbots. They’re brilliant, talented, and hilarious, and in 1983 they’re pretty much at the absolute top of their form. You almost get the impression that they, and co-writer Steve De Jarnatt were sitting around one day watching early Marx Brothers films and said something like, “Yeah, this is funny and all, but there’s not nearly enough Zeppo in it.”

“Yeah, man, you know what we should do? We should make a movie with three Zeppos! And no Margaret Dumont! No Margaret Dumont at all!”

This is a “First Movie,” and it really shows. It really does.

It’s not all a loss, of course. The second half of the movie is way funnier than the first, and it does reach a kind of sloppy giddiness in the last ten minutes, when they realize they’ve got to wrap things up, and don’t really have enough time. Bob and Doug themselves are, as always, pretty hilarious. The “This isn’t heaven! This sucks!” is unquestionably one of the five funniest lines in the thousand year history of the English Language. The “Mutants of 2051” segment is pretty much the exact kind of movie I’ve been trying to make my whole life (And failing at). Max von Sydow! Giant beer-filled Bob! I don’t think I’ve gone on a single long car drive in the last quarter century in which I haven’t deliberately worked “Would you like me to tilt your chair back?“ and “It’s nice to get out of the brewery, go for a drive…“ (Both Paul Dooley lines, by the way) into conversation.

There’s a lot to love in this movie, so please stop mailing me boxes full of feces, I’m just saying that, on the whole, it doesn’t really work. It doesn’t know quite what it’s got, nor how to best make use of it. Which is a shame. If it had been a slightly tighter story, a bit better direction, somewhat less rampant Zeppoism, we could have had a long and hilarious series of “The Adventures of Bob and Doug MacKenzie.”

*- Who, I feel, was far funnier in his first appearance than he ever was again. There’s just something about a creepy puppet with a human head. Paul Flaherty, if you’re reading this, please, please, please, I beg you: Bring back The Pittsburgh Midget!

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EPISODE REVIEW: Ben 10 Alien Force: “Above and Beyond” (Season 3, Episode 17)

Republibot 3.0 — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 04:23:42 +0000

Grrr. Is there anything worse than an episode where the audience is deliberately misled into thinking there’s real peril going on, only to find out that it’s all just a training exercise? Really, it’s just the worst bait-and-switch available.

I’m all in favor of all kinds of misdirection for the audience: keep ‘em guessing, play with the format, set things up as a mystery, have the story told by an unreliable witness, whatever, I love all those variations on form, but the whole “It was all just an exercise” really is just the worst kind of slap in the face to the viewers. Worse even than the “It was all just a dream” episode, or “Cosmic Reset Button” stories in which time travel prevents the whole episode from ever having taken place, things to back to the way they were before, and we end up blowing anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours (“Year of Hell”) on a story of no consequence whatsoever. They’re worse, even, than Holodeck episodes, which are just the laziest, sloppiest, “Why bother-est” storytelling imaginable.

(Full disclosure: I used to believe the Reset Button stories were the worst ones imaginable, but the Stargate Franchise has done like a dozen of ‘em in the last 324 episodes, and they’ve all been pretty clever and good.)

This pains me. It really does, because “Alien Force” has been a consistently above-average show with solid writing and three well-developed central characters. Though there have been a few clunker episodes in this and the prequel series (Which was on the whole far more uneven than “Alien Force” is), they’ve never made such a massive misstep as this. Obviously, because I really like the show, because I’m a huge screaming fan of Dwayne McDuffie, and because I’ve enjoyed everything they’ve done up ’til now, I will ultimately forgive this bad story, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a *Really* bad story.

All my kids and I watch the show together when new episodes come on. It’s a family ritual. We all look forward to it, and have since the original show was on. My middle child actually yelled “Oh, come on!” at the screen when the big twist was revealed. The oldest said, “You know, I saw that coming, but I hoped I was wrong,” and the youngest just said “Stinks” and left the room looking rather glum.

The plot, such as it is: The “Plumbers Helpers” (Manny, Pierce, Helen, and Alan, who I think has a different voice this time out) get an emergency call from Max in Space Station Delta, saying Ben’s wigged out and is attacking him. As Gwen and Kevin are “On the other side of the galaxy on a mission” (Cue wah-wah guitar), the Helpers head up to the station, find a message from Max, immediately disregard it, and get whomped on for the next 17 minutes or so. Then they decide Max’s advice was good after all and defeat Ben. In the process, the station is crippled and will crash on “The City of London.” (A line which seem oddly almost expositional. It’s delivered in such a manner that it could have easily gone on say something like “We’re going to crash into the city of London, capital of the United Kingdom, and the second largest city in Europe. London was originally founded by the Roman Empire as a trade port in the province of Britania in the 1st Century BC, and it was called “Londinium” in those days. The Emperor Aoleus Hadrian once commented…”)

Max comes out and pushes the button on the control panel labeled “Deus Ex Machina,” and the day is saved. Ben comes out, and the two of them explain…[Long, heavy, disappointed sigh]…that it was all just a test. To be fair, they do manage to take *Some* (but not all!) of the curse off of this by saying the WWF Smackdown was the test, the station crashing, however, was real. Max and Ben are sore impressed with the Helper’s attempt at heroic suicide, and the whole crew is sent off to Plumber Academy. (There’s a Plumber Academy?)

So, ok, we’ve gotten that out of the way, the writers got it out of the way. Maybe we’ll all be the better for it. Maybe it’s like a guy who spends years in fear of losing his hair, then shaves his head on a dare, and realizes that this baldness thing isn’t so bad, really. (Obviously, I’m speaking from experience here). Once he’s gotten that out of the way, the fear is gone, and though his hair grows back much curlier and more annoying than it used to be, now that the fear is gone he’s actually free to realize it was all nothing but fear - he was never actually going bald. He is going grey, however.

Maybe it’s like that: now that they’ve got the epic fail out of the way we - and they - can stop worrying about it, and we can get back to watching the show. Though, of course, I never really worried about the show blowing it, really. Still, I can see how the writers would live in some fear of that.

And there are some good things here: Rath is back, once again voiced by John DiMaggio (He wasn’t in Rath’s brief 2nd appearance), and he’s hilariously slow-witted and violent as ever. It was great to see the Plumbers Helpers again. The teaser was great. I’m certainly happy that Gwen and Kevin got some…ehm…alone time, and if that’s not the case - if it was a legitimate mission - I’m kind of intrigued at the idea that they can run ops separate from Ben. Either way, that’s an interesting development. Manny gets, arguably, the best line of the entire show up until now:

Helen: Ben did this to you?

Manny: He got in a lucky punch. Followed by a lucky hamerlock. Followed by a lucky kick. Followed by another lucky punch. Then it gets kind of fuzzy, but there were several other pieces of luck involved.

So there are some good things here, but you have to fight more to find them than is usual.

I’ve gone on about this too long. I don’t want to give the impression that this is a series-destroying episode. It’s not by any means. It’s a bad episode, of course, certainly the worst one Alien Force has done, but since we’re now officially in the endgame for the series, obviously it’ll recover and our/my faith in McDuffie will be rewarded by a fantastic series finale. I’m looking very much forward to it, and I’m looking forward to the next spinoff, which starts in a few months.

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EPISODE REVIEW: Caprica: “The Imperfections of Memory” (Episode 7)

Republibot 3.0 — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 03:44:13 +0000

The show’s ratings continue to rally, climbing back up to 1.5 million viewers last week. That’s the best they’ve been since the pilot! I don’t know what’s causing this, but it’ll be interesting to see if they can maintain this level of viewership for any length of time..

PLAY BY PLAY

Daniel Greystone - Curiously absent during the first half of the episode. At a C-Bucs game, Tomas Vergis shows up again, offering to buy the team, and firing off that the MCP Daniel stole *never* worked in the first place. Later on, he horks the Robot Fetishist Guy’s idea about analog rather than digital programming, and suddenly realizes Zoe is in the ‘bot body, or at least he apparently realizes it.

Amanda Greystone - Primarily the focus of this episode. 20 years earlier, she was in a car accident in which her brother was killed. Three years after the accident, she had a complete break with reality, and was institutionalized for two and a half years. She begins having hallucinations of her brother again, which Creepy Sister Clarice takes to be a communication from God. Amanda is popping Xanax like candy. She plies Amanda with rare booze and feigned friendship and ultimately hashish or opium or whatever.

Zoe - Goes on another cyber date with the Robot Fetishist Guy in which she crashes a Viper, and then they discuss computer programming, and make out a bit.

Joe Adama - Grabs Tamara’s friend “Tad” from two episodes back, and forces him to take him through “New Cap City” to find his daughter. Tad gets killed in a Zeppelin Attack (No matter how many times I type that, it never stops being funny) so Joe goes it alone, but as this is a ‘jerk us around to pad the episode up to an hour’ plot, nothing much comes of it. He’s eventually found by a guide calling herself “Emmanuel,” who says she’ll take him to Tamara if he pays her.

Lacey Rand - inexplicably not quite as cute and girly and plucky as she normally is, she meets Zoe in V-world, then talks to her would-be boyfriend about getting Barnabus to ship a crate to Geminon, then decides to join the Sons of The One jihadist organization, then kinda’ sorta’ puts the moves on her would-be boyfriend when he suggests this isn’t perhaps the wisest thing for her to do.

Creepy Sister Clarice - savagely takes advantage of Amanda’s loneliness in order to get more info about the Zoe avatar, and any other advantages she can get. She apparently overextends her credit buying the rare hooch she uses.

The Robot Fetishist Guy - Goes on a date with Zoe, suddenly realizes why the Cylon works, but they can’t duplicate the process: it’s analog. He tells this to Daniel, then goes home, chagrinned, since Daniel walked in on him cyber-smooching. Again.

OBSERVATIONS

Man, did the production designer love Crimson Skies, or what? We’ve got giant dirigible aircraft carriers, autogyro attacks, and those funky retro-future “Vipers” with the forward swept wings and the bubble-top canopies. Very 1930s. But you know what they also obviously liked? Season 2 of the ’80s GI Joe cartoon. These “Vipers” are dead ringers for the old X-30 Conquests the Joe Team used to fly or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OPqSiTK9_0 Seriously: Am I wrong? I’m not wrong. Different paint job, different arrangement of intakes, but clearly the same plane. As a 40-year-old man who has an entirely unhealthy obsession with the ‘80s GI Joe, I can only applaud this.

The Viper Mark II was the one they were flying at the end of the First Cylon War, and the Mark VI Viper was the current model when the 2nd Cylon war began. Presumably, the one we see here is the Mark I version. This is curious, since the II and VI look pretty much the same in terms of basic outline and design. Variations on a theme. This original Viper, however, is a totally different design. Curious, yes?

I’m sorry, but every time someone says “New Cap City,” I just crack up. It makes me think of that episode of The Simpsons when Millhouse and his mom moved to Capital City (“Let’s play Cap City Monopoly!”)

Tad is dead. I can’t say I’m upset. He was annoying me.

As usual, the special effects in this show continue to be stunning and relatively seamless. I’m a bit concerned with the fact that visually exciting stuff only happens in “New Cap City” (chuckle), and not in the ’real’ world. There’s the all-too-real possibility that the show will come down with holodeckitis, where the V-world will become a cheap out for the writers to give us a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. While I have (unexpectedly) loved this show thus far, I am cashing my chips and leaving the table the minute we get “A Fistful of Datas” or one of those pathetically vapid “Dixon Hill” mysteries.

I think we’re supposed to believe that Amanda *is* simply having a minor relapse brought on by stress. I’m not convinced there’s any more to this than she says, though obviously they’re playing some variation of the ‘angel’ card from BSG. I also think that we’re supposed to believe Clarice *doesn’t* realize this. She’s basically chasing Amanda’s mental lapses down the rabbit hole, never realizing that they’re just delusions and not an actual vision. As the first (And very likely only) Amanda-centric episode, I felt - character-wise - that she wasn’t really a strong enough center to hold the narrative together. It’s also interesting in the way they lit and filmed her. Generally she’s a quite attractive middle-aged woman, but in this they light her all harshly, and film her in unflattering ways. She looks a bit like Glen Close on a bad day (I know some of you guys have a thing for Close, but she’s never really done anything for me, and actually looks a bit spooky). As a strategy for emphasizing her breakdown and vulnerability, it’s quite well effective, and while the plot doesn’t quite work, Amanda gets the best scene in the episode: When she says Clarice is her friend, it’s very sweet and innocent like a kid, desperate like a person who’s terribly, terribly alone and frightened, and sad in that she’s being horribly manipulated. Amanda is so sad and lonely that I don’t think she’d care even if she knew. I think she just craves the human connection that being a pawn gives her at this point.

It’d be interesting to know how Daniel sussed out Zoe’s presence in the Zoebot.

Once again, the Joe Adama subplot really didn’t work, and this time it was stretched out egregiously long. We’ve got a 44 minute show here, and maybe between 10 and 15 minutes was Esai Morales reenacting “The Strange Disappearance of Dr. Tongue”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZraoOpq4RA

(It starts about 1:30) What bugs me about this is twofold: 1) it smacks of Holodeck Fever, and 2) it really is just a ‘jerkaround’ plot. What little happens could be taken care of in five minutes or less.

We get a few glimpses of a major league Pyramid game, which seems quite a bit different than the vollyball-with-baskets game we saw on BSG. This is more like Jai-Lai rugby. With Baskets.

This seems as good a time as any to ask: Is Amanda's name a Star Trek in-joke? Spock's mom's maiden name was "Amanda Greyson."

There really wasn’t enough story to go around this week. Everything felt a bit weak, a bit thin, a bit half-baked. This is a bit odd, really: thus far the show had been rather densely written and plotted, with a lot of world building. Really no new elements were added this week, nor were any of the older ones explored. Instead we got some faux-exciting videogame scenes and some placeholder dramatic pieces. I’m really hoping this is just a one-time anomaly and that they’ll be back to form next week.

I hope they will. Before the show debuted, there was a lot of chatter about show runners being fired, the network being unhappy with the quality of the scripts, and some new writing staff being brought in around the time of the fifth or sixth episode. If that’s true, this would likely be the first new story written under the ‘new regime’ after Syfy got cold feet. If that, in turn, is true, then this episode may be the shape of things to come. And if that itself turns out to be true, then it would be a real shame, wouldn’t it? I’d hate to lose the quirky, vaguely ominous, ‘real’ feeling of the show in favor of the vague emptiness we got tonight.

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REPUBLIBOT WEEKEND MOVIE PREVIEW: Movies Opening 3-12-10

Republibot 1.0 — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:06:09 +0000

It almost felt like spring once or twice this week. It was very frustrating. Now I hear it is expected to snow next week. That is very disheartening. I blame Hollywood. Therefore, it is important to state that: I’ve not seen these movies, nor have I done any real research. I trust in ever faithful power of pop culture osmosis to inform my very clueless opinions. All of the film information presented here, including the plot summary, has been pulled from the Opening This Week page of IMDb (http://www.imdb.com/nowplaying/). This week we are previewing Green Zone, Remember Me, and She’s Out of My League, amongst others.

See you after the jump.

Green Zone
Director: Paul Greengrass
Stars: Matt Damon, Jason Isaacs, Greg Kinnear
Studio: Universal Pictures
The Plot: Discovering covert and faulty intelligence causes a U.S. Army officer (Damon) to go rogue as he hunts for Weapons of Mass Destruction in an unstable region.

The Republibot Take: I am conflicted on this film. On one hand I loved each of the Bourne Identity films, each one more than the previous one. The trailers for this one seem to have that same steely eyed frenzy as those. But in the recent lead up to its release and the early buzz, I am starting to get the impression that it is a fairly clichéd corrupt government official versus a lone disillusioned military man seeking the truth film.

I am not terribly political regardless of the fact that I write for a website called Republibot – but I do take issue with dominant political clichés that say that all corrupt government officials and all corrupt big government insiders are Republican. If the world doesn’t realize by ow that both sides have immensely compromised and evil people and that both sides have relatively principled and idealistic people with good intentions that sell themselves out for influence and opportunity then I am not sure that there is any hope at all for pop culture souls.

Therefore, based on our new and improved Sci-Fi Quotient rating system in which a one is Pirate Radio, a 25 is Fifth Element and a zero is Bridges of Madison County, this gets a clean and solid 5.

Remember Me
Director: Allen Coulter
Stars: Robert Pattinson, Emilie de Ravin
Studio: Summit Entertainment
The Plot: A romantic drama centered on two new lovers: Tyler (Pattinson), whose parents have split in the wake of his brother's suicide, and Ally (de Ravin), who lives each day to the fullest since witnessing her mother's murder.

The Republibot Take: I have been sitting here for about 45 minutes trying to decide what kind of potentially funny opinion I might have on this movie and… I got nothin’.

Sci-Fi Quotient is 0 and becomes our new baseline.

Seriously, it stars Robert Pattinson – I don’t know what more you could possibly expect from me.

She's Out of My League
Director: Jim Field Smith
Stars: Jay Baruchel, Alice Eve
Studio: Paramount Pictures
The Plot: A guy (Baruchel) lets his insecurities pick away at his fledgling relationship with the perfect gal (Eve).

The Republibot Take: I hate these kinds of movies. They are incredibly predictable, they seem to be cut out of a teen girl’s blouse template from 1973, and in the end they are chock full of artificial and totally insincere heart. But that isn’t the full reason why I hate them. The reason I really hate them is because I always end up laughing at something. And tuning into them repeatedly for short bursts on Encore and Starz. That is why I hate them – they are nutrientless snacks full of vein clogging sweetness. They are energy drinks that lift you up for a short period and then let you crash down without a second thought.

That is why I hate them.

Sci-Fi Quotient is a 3.

Our Family Wedding
Director: Rick Famuyiwa
Stars: America Ferrera, Forest Whitaker, Carlos Mencia
Studio: Fox Searchlight Pictures
The Plot: The weeks leading up to a young couple's wedding is comic and stressful, especially as their respective fathers (Whitaker and Mencia) try to lay to rest their long-standing feud.

The Republibot Take: I would rather re-watch the original In-Laws with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin.

Sci-Fi Quotient is a 2, but that is only due to Forest Whitaker.

Mother [LA/NY]
Director: Joon-ho Bong
Stars: Hye-ja Kim, Bin Won
Studio: Magnolia Pictures
The Plot: When her mentally handicapped son is accused for the rape and murder of a young woman, a mother begins her own investigation into the crime in hope to clear her child's name.

The Republibot Take: By this point, it is almost mid-night, I am tired, and I don’t know anything about any of these movies. I still need to track down the trailers and write the opening and the close and I am craving a milk shake for some reason.

This movie is Korean, I am expecting that the vengeful Mom will dust off her killer Tai-Kwon-Do skills and kick some serious ass.

Sci-Fi Quotient is at least a 15 because it is an Asian and film and something weird and unexpected is bound to happen.

Well, there you go. An exciting action packed week at the cinema. Or at least marginally interesting.

I know that I am definitely seeing Green Zone, but that is mainly due to my buddies that love overwrought political thrillers. I am also kinda interested in Mother. God help, also, but there is a good chance I will see She’s Out of My League.

Next week, we will be spending a minimal amount of time on The Runaways, The Bounty Hunter, and Repo Men, amongst others.

Until then – see you in the comments.

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FAN FILM FRIDAY: "Battlestar Galactica: The 14th Colony" (2005?)

Republibot 3.0 — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Half a decade ago, I stumbled across mention of a fan film project called "Battlestar Galactica: The 14th Colony." Eventually, I found the trailer for the project, which revealed very little about it, but it did make it clear that it was a continuation of the 1978 Galactica, and probably a reaction to the RDM Galactica to some extent. The tag line was "Some Still Believe..." which certainly makes one think that, anyway.

I checked back periodically to get new information, and people did seem to be working on it, though, as with many Fan Films, it seemed mired down in production woes and technical problems.

This week I decided to hunt around for more information, and I'm pretty sure the entire project has been abandoned. The most recent information I could find was from 2007, and it was mostly repeating information that had been first posted in 2005 (As near as I can tell). The official website of the project is long dead, and I can't find any mention of it anywhere else.

So here's what we've got:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n-X_hT7GaY

One of my friends informs me the heiroglyph scene was likely filmed at Bush Gardens, Florida, by the Montu roller coaster, where they've got a big Egyptian themed pavilion.

I'd love to know about this project. I'd love to know if it is truely dead, or if it's still simmering along. I'd love to know how far they got before it died, and what the story was. I'd love to know what happened to cause it to all unravel. I mean, given how tough fan films are, it's a miracle any of 'em get completed, but it's always interesting to know when and how things went off the rails, and it's helpful, I think, to be able to pass that information along to others so they can maybe hope to avoid those pitfalls in their own productions.

So: If you're reading this, and if you were connected to this production in any way, please drop me a line at Three@republibot.com as you have much you can teach us, and we'd love to hear about this film.

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REALSPACE: America Turns It's Back On Space

Republibot 3.0 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

I actually posted this a while back here ( http://www.republibot.com/content/well-thats-it-space-age-over ), but I think it bears repeating, let we forget.

There have been a number of huge space-related decisions starting with the Obama campaign, which have caused me a lot of concern, moments of anger, and some genuine disgust. Regular readers of our little blog here will know that I’m not a reactionary kind of guy. I don’t hate the other party simply because they’re the other party, I don’t generally attack them. I do occasionally tease ‘em and I’m pretty open in my confusion about their thought processes, which frequently seem self-contradictory to me. I’m not that guy. I believe in America, I believe in the Two-Party system, I believe that the system is generally self-regulating, and if either side goes too far, the people will vote the extremists out of office.

That said, I don’t know what - aside from anger - to make of this: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100128/ap_on_sc/us_sci_nasa_future;_ylt=AlOSXKKwr6eC9qLiuX8_qBsPLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTJqMDJrNGU1BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMTI4L3VzX3NjaV9uYXNhX2Z1dHVyZQRjcG9zAzEEcG9zAzEEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDbmFzYXRvZ2V0bW9y

Following the Columbia Disaster in 2003, the government rethought our basically-inert space program. All we’d been doing for thirty years - a generation! - was spankin’ it in Low Earth Orbit. The Space Station is basically useless, and amounts to basically spankin’ it on a scale never before dreamed of. There’s no real research that’s going on that hasn’t been done a zillion times over in the previous generation. The Columbia’s mission was to do research on how weightlessness could be utilized for the manufacture of certain kinds of perfumes. Perfume research? Really? That was worth the lives of seven people and a four billion dollar spacecraft?

I’m pretty hard on NASA - and for good reason - but they are the only game in town, and it’s always been in the government’s interests (but not the people’s interest) to use the agency to limit access to space, not to expand it.

There were signs this was changing back during the Bush-the-Younger administration. We decided to retire our fleet of aviation coffins, we admitted we weren’t doing jack, we admitted we’d lost our way, and we decided to resume our lead in space. We began the development of new, less ambitious, but more practical spacecraft - the “Orion” - and a new generation of Heavy Lift Launch Vehicles (The Ares V). We began development on a new, reusable lunar lander spacecraft, and our sights were set on Mars. This was all a step in the right direction.

This “Project Constellation” wasn’t as ambitious as I would have liked, and it was thirty-five years too late, but a step in the right direction is a step in the right direction.

Well, this is all dead now, kids. The article I cited above openly states “the Constellation program is dead.” It goes on to state explicitly “What kills the moon mission is the decision to extend the space station to 2020, …That means the Bush goal of "moon by 2020 is dead. We can't afford using the station for five more years and going to the moon.”

So, once again, actual real research gets sidelined in favor of Orbital Spankery. Billions of dollars in R&D just thrown away - again - without any payoff. And of course all this will end up getting blamed on our previous president because our Current President can’t seem to take responsibility for their own actions. The War in Iraq? Bush’s fault. The existence of Terrorism in general? Bush’s fault. Prostate cancer? Bush’s fault. Girl Scout Cookies only available once a year? Bush’s fault. Inclement weather? Bush’s fault. Can’t get a date? Bush’s fault, or so we hear from the other side again and again and again and again.

To our Democratic friends - and I know we have a bunch who visit this site because we’re not kneejerk reactionaries - don’t you ever get sick of this? I don’t hate the president, I never hated the president, I don’t believe I’ve ever said a bad word about him, but don’t you wish the guy would stop blaming others, and *Start* actually *DOING* things?

I mean, we’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars to buy piece-of-crap cars, but we can’t spend a fraction of that to go back to the moon? We can’t maintain a piece-of-crap space station, *and* a vigorous manned space exploration program at the same time? What are we, France? Did we loose a war and no one told me? Has it come to the point that we’re just willing to admit our grandparents were superhuman giants, and we’re just puny dumbasses content to drink microbrewery beer and download internet porn?

No. I’m sorry, but that’s not what I signed on for. If I wanted to live in an irrelevant ‘me too’ country, I’d have moved to Canada. We are Americans, dammit! The frontier is important to us. If we turn out backs on it, we’re turning our backs on ourselves.

It remains to be seen if Orion will ever get off the ground. My assumption is that it won’t, that it’ll be quietly cancelled a year or three down the line. Obama has favored postponing the already-painfully-slow development program. Even if Orion development continues, once the Shuttle is retired, we will be without spaceflight capability for a Decade! A decade! A decade during which Russia and China will be our obvious superiors; a decade during which we will be fighting neck and neck with France - the French, for God’s sake! - for third place!

Again, this is unacceptable.

Likewise, the opening of space to private concerns - which got really it’s only ever boost during the Bush administration - is teetering on the edge of government obstruction.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB40001424052748704541004575012112718455380.html

This isn’t surprising. I predicted this would happen pretty much the day after SpaceShipOne won the X-prize. Again, NASA - hobbled by the decisions I’ve already discussed - is fearful of any competition, which would erode their power, and also point out how badly they suck. It may be a tiny fishbowl they’re kings of, and draining all the while, but by damn they’re not going to allow anyone to threaten their power.

And yet…and yet there’s some hope here. I totally did not see this one coming: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/science/space/29nasa.html The idea that private companies might be free to do manned flights as contractors for NASA is promising. This is something that has been bandied about for quite some time, but never really given any official interest. This could, theoretically, solve at least half of our problem: How can we get NASA employees in orbit for their masturbatory fun-fests? If NASA can’t, or won’t do it themselves, well, perhaps Corporate America can help out.

We’re still screwed with regards to real exploration, of course. NASA won’t do that, and they clearly won’t let anyone else do it either. Still, with corporate launches comes the possibility of industrial development in space - something NASA has always staunchly opposed - and if we find an orbital cash crop, that increases the likelihood of companies attempting to find newer and better locations and resources on their own, regardless of what the government thinks.

So there’s promise there. Again, it’s a generation too late and not as ambitious as I would have hoped, but a step forward is a step forward…assuming it’s allowed to happen, of course. Like the Orion and Virgin Galactic, I seriously doubt it’ll ever see the light of day.

And of course neither NASA nor the government have expressed any interest in Space Colonization since the summer of 1975. The real purpose of space exploration is to eventually find - or more likely build - new places for us to live. Population pressure, environmental degradation, and diminishing resources dictate that we *must* find new horizons if we’re to survive as a species. We are entirely too defenseless and fragile here on earth, all our eggs are quite literally in one basked. All it takes is a big hunk of rock to fall from space, or a quaint little nuclear war, or the sun changing it’s energy output - which it does from time to time - and we’re done as a species. We need to find new places and new ways to live, and I’d prefer that we Americans are the ones to do it. I hate the thought of our people being forced to scrabble for Chinese or Russian leftovers.

So basically at this point I’ve had it. I’m disgusted. I don’t understand the Democrat’s hatred for space, for science in general, really. I hate NASA at this point, for becoming essentially the aerospace equivalent of the Vietnam war - pissing away an entire generation of brilliant people and abilities for no great purpose. I’m furious at the President’s weird drive to continue flogging a dead horse - and make no bones about it, the real reason Constellation was killed was because the Bush administration started it - I’m just….gah. Words fail me. NASA has been plagued with a lack of vision for most of its life, and of course our government has never been particularly good at planning ahead, but even still, I’d have never expected this level of blinkered philistine pig-ignorance in my lifetime. I give up. Maybe we, as a nation, really are too stupid to survive. Maybe we deserve to be demoted to irrelevant France level-projects from now on. Maybe we’ve just lost the will to lead the world. We’re told that the recent elections were all about disgust over Republican warmongery and incompetence, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was just a vote to roll over and go to sleep? What if, as a nation, we’ve simply become tired and old, and we prefer a good nap and a walk around the mall to actually going out and doing something productive. What if Obama’s great leap forward is simply a vote to take a nap, and then catch some Lawrence Welk repeats on PBS?

I’m increasingly, disturbingly of the impression that it is. Again, this is not what I’ve signed on for. But maybe we can fix this. Maybe we can fight back against this national ennui.

I’m not the kind of person to call for political action. I never tell people what to do or how to think - that’s more of a Democratic thing - but I would strongly urge everyone reading this to call their senators and representatives, and to express their utter disgust and contempt for the cancellation of the Constellation program, and the extension of our involvement in the International Space Station. I don’t care if your elected officials are Democrats, Republicans, or Third-Party Whackjobs; I don’t care if you, the reader, are a Democrat, a Republican, or a Tea Partier: we need to make our voice heard on this. We need to let them know that this is unacceptable, and if they don’t do something to fix it there will be hell to pay on the next round of elections.

We need to let them know that space isn’t just a pork barrel project to piddle away government funds pointlessly. They need to understand - and I don’t think they ever have - that space *Matters.*

We need to DEMAND our place on the frontier.

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THIS USED TO BE THE FUTURE: Project Constellation

Republibot 3.0 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

So how long does it take for a vision of tomorrow to evaporate like last night's dreams? Not long at all. Sometimes something as trivial as a president who's been unable to keep a single one of his campaign promises, and decides to randomly kill a progam so it looks like he's not a completey toothless, inefectual leader.

The bottm line, my friends, is that last month Project Constellation went from being The Future to being something no different than all those Popular Mechanics covers from the 1940s.

http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/CxEMM_SITE/index.html

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_constellation

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MOVIE REVIEW: “Moon” (2009)

Republibot 3.0 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

When I saw my first trailer for “Moon” early last year, I knew immediately it was something I really needed to see. More than that - there’s a zillion movies a year that I do really need to see for this site, after all - this was something I really *wanted* to see. Alas, it was a comparatively low-budget art house flick that never went into wide release. The nearest theater it was playing at in my neck of the woods was three hours away. That’s three hours one way, a six hour round trip. There are limits to even my fanatical geekery, and while I am willing to fly across state lines to catch a really good concert, six hours in the car to see a 90 minute movie seemed…well…a bit much.

But you know what? I should have gone: the movie is that good.

It is, unfortunately, a very hard movie to review without ruining it for the audience. The entire film is built around a series of plot twists, one of them huge, the others still fairly jarring, and to reveal *any* of them does a great disservice to the film and the audience. Ordinarily I give some version of a play by play, but it would just be wrong to do that here, because this is a film best seen completely cold, with no clue what to expect.

What I can tell you is the basic setup: in the not-too-distant future - next Sunday, AD - there’s a guy played by Sam Rockwell, not too different from you and me (Unless you’re a chick, I suppose). Seventy percent of the world’s energy comes form Helium-3, mined on the lunar farside. It’s scooped up and refined by huge robotic ‘harvesters’, and Rockwell’s job is to recover the He3 and ship it back to earth with a rail gun. He also services and repairs the equipment. He’s got no companionship apart from occasional video-mails from earth, and an AI named “Gurtie.“ It’s a lonely, bleak job, and he’s been at it for about three years.

When we first meet him, he’s already in a fairly bad way. He’s long since stopped taking care of his appearance, he’s forgetting things, talking to himself, drifting off in mid-thought, apparently hallucinating a bit, and having long conversations with plants in the hydroponics lab. He’s not screwed too tight, and he’s well aware of it.

This is the setup for the film, and basically sums up its entertaining-yet-unremarkable first third. Then, at the conclusion of the first act, there’s a major twist which completely shakes his world and changes who he is forever. Not to brag or anything, but I saw it coming. I’ve read a lot of books, I’ve seen a lot of movies, and, though it’s not particularly germane, I’ve also listened to a lot of CDs. Eventually you pick up on things. People I know who aren’t as ubergeeky as myself - folks who aren’t head writers at SF websites, basically - have mostly told me that they were utterly gobsmacked by it. A few - say about 15 percent - likewise saw it coming.

It’s a pretty clever twist, and pretty huge, but it doesn’t exactly come out of nowhere. It’s set up furtively, and if you’re reasonably sharp, you can probably figure what it is before it drops on you. What really makes it remarkable, however, isn’t so much the twist, but the really interesting explorations they do with the changed premise *after* the plot twist. Then, right at the hour mark, we get another series of somewhat-less earth-shattering twists. When I say “Less,” I don’t mean they’re bad. Pretty much an entire lesser movie could be built around any one of these ‘lesser’ twists, but in comparison for the first one, we’re somewhat prepared for them, so they have a little less impact on us - as they’re designed to - but they’re pretty devastating for the protagonist.

Most movies have a fairly cut-and-dry three-act formula: Setup, Conflict, Resolution. This movie technically follows that format as well, but on a more accurate level, we have setup, new setup (Which is also a conflict of sorts) and Conflict/resolution (Which could also be argued to be a third setup, though I don’t think accurately.) I’m probably not expressing this well enough, but in non-writerly terms, basically act one is ripples from a stone thrown in a pond, act two is ripples from a different stone interacting with the first set, and the third act is all about the intersection of those ripples as they try to figure out how the hell to get out of the sorry situation they’ve found themselves in.

Storywise, the most brilliant ideas are the simplest. They’re nice and clean and simple and easy to digest, and then you realize as you chew on it that there’s a whole layer of complexity hidden within, and another behind that and another and another. This is that kind of movie: the basic premise, and even the big twist are fairly simple, and yet the more you look at it the more you see, the more complex it gets. Then, somewhere around the 45 minute mark, you can’t help but realize this is a DAMN smart movie. It’s quiet and character-driven, spooky and frequently unexpectedly funny, and sad and triumphant all at the same time. If Ingmar Bergman made SF films, and if he were capable of telling a story in less than epic length, this is the kind of film he would have made. It is lyrical and beautiful and made entirely for grownups. I can't imagine anyone who genuinely likes speculative fiction could possibly come out of this one without thinking that they'd just seen something pretty special.

Definitely, absolutely, unquestionably, if you like SF you *need* to see this film. The story is solidly in Philip K. Dick territory, with a healthy dose of John Varley thrown in, and that’s a good thing. Intellectually, it’s the heir apparent to Blade Runner. It’s not a pulse-pounder or a thrill-ride, but it is unquestionably the best genre film of the century thus far.

OBSERVATIONS

Irrespective of the plot, there are a lot of elements that really jump out at me. Duncan Jones - David Bowie’s son - wrote and directed the film, using a very spare style in both cases. This is a ‘decompressed’ tale, and Jones is content - or perhaps daring enough - to let long silences punctuate the film. Things progress slowly, but never boringly so, the so-called ‘dead air’ giving the audience time to let things set in even as we see the characters try to make sense of it. The periodic silences allow their confusion to mirror ours.

There are also some really interesting uses of sound in here. The soundtrack is likewise spare and restrained, essentially adding to the so-sterile-it’s-hostile feel of the sets. There are several great scenes where someone is trying to talk to another person who’s refusing to listen to them by various means - wailing away on a punching bag, or dancing like a jackass to Katrina and the Waves, or whatever. These are frustrating and funny, and there’s an interesting degree of parallelism in them.

Though there’s noting to really jump out at you, I’m going to say that this movie has the best, most experimental usage of sound I’ve come across in film in many a year.

The sets are beautiful, simultaneously original and feeling a bit reminiscent of Moobase Alpha and 2001 and perhaps the Ulysses Nostromo if they’d had a cleaning budget on that ship. They’re open and cheery and yet kind of oddly claustrophobic.

The special effects are restrained - no gee-gosh-wow zooms over the lunar surface, or explosions, or anything like that. We see enough, and what we see is good, but it’s used to emphasize both the beautiful/deadly nature of the lunar surface, and to emphasize the main character’s isolation and loneliness. Remember that scene in Apocalypse Now where Martin Sheen says that everything they did to make the Air Cavalry seem more like they were at home just reinforced how completely out of place they were? The effects in this movie do something similar, not in the same way, but, well, similar. When was the last time you saw a movie that made the moon seem mysterious and magical again? It’s worth the price of admission just for that.

The entire cast is really good, but Sam Rockwell gives a hell of a performance as a man who’s mentally and physically at the end of his rope, but who somehow keeps going even after he’s pushed too far. I can’t say more without giving away spoilers, but suffice to say it’s a grueling, difficult part to play, yet he manages it with apparent ease and nuance. I’d also like to single out “Gurtie” the robot (Voiced by Kevin Spacey) as possibly the best, most intriguing ‘bot since HAL 9000.

What are you waiting for? Go rent it. Now!

Duncan Jones has announced that he intends to do more films set in the “Mooniverse” (I just made that up. Ha!), though probably not any actual sequels. I can’t tell you how excited I am to see what he’s doing next.

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