The REM Matrix

I’ve been working on a short story for the past couple of weeks, so haven’t really had much time to devote to the pursuit of enjoying Science Fiction and Fantasy. You can check out The Third Day over in The Collected Manuscripts. I did, however, manage to get a nod over at the Trek BBS with a humorous caption of a Bride of Frankenstein photo. No major prize or anything, but it brightened my day this morning when I checked visited the site.

In the meantime, I’ve managed to book my tickets for Thursday night’s showing of Matrix Revolutions. I’m ecstatic that the decision has been made to release the movie overseas on the same day as its being released in the States. I was so angry that it took Star Wars: Attack of the Clones over two months to make it here to Colombia, even though I did manage to find a means of seeing it in advance. The Black Market in Latin America is pretty pervasive.

For all you RIAA and Movie legal people out there, I did still buy a ticket for opening night and caught the ten o’clock showing in the theatre, so Lucas still got my money. However, even though I saw it twice, like many other people out there I really feel that the Star Wars Prequels are sorely lacking in the Star Wars spirit.

Which brings me back to the Matrix series. There was so much left open at the end of Reloaded that this third movie really has the potential to be wonderful. For example, if the names do suggest something about the characters as I suspect, then there is something about Morpheus that we have yet to see. Is Merovingian a descendent from The One as the Merovingian Knights were reputed to belong to the bloodline of Christ, or is he a keeper of secrets like the members of there society were supposed to have been? Will we find the Matrix’s version of the Holy Grail?

I’m firmly in the camp that Merovingian is a previous incarnation of The One, and Persephone a previous incarnation of Trinity; but then again she could also be the mother of the Matrix. For that matter, we still have to learn the full answer to the first movies question, “What is the Matrix?”

Is Neo’s ability to disable the “mechs” at the end of Reloaded a sign that he can exist in the Matrix and the “real world” at the same time or does it mean that Zion exists within yet another layer of the Matrix? Someone over at the Trek BBS recently suggested that the Alice in Wonderland references in the original movie extend into the second, an intriguing idea. Will the trilogy end the way it began with Neo sleeping in front of his computer screen? Is being a hero in a post-apocalyptic world in which humanity as been enslaved more desirable than living his life in that pit of an apartment we saw as the first movie opened? For that matter, will we ever find out what was in those mini-discs Neo was selling illegally?

The whole thing reminds me of when I was a teenager back in the eighties and I first starting listening to REM’s music. Back then Michael Stipe mumbled through most of the lyrics of their songs, with only the occasional intriguing reference or image breaking through the murkiness of the music. Those occasional understandable phrases were intriguing and gave the impression the songs were deeply intellectual and philosophical. While I still enjoy REM’s music as well constructed pop/rock tunes, I remember the first time that I actually got a chance to read their lyrics. All those obscure phrases that broke through Stipe’s mumbled singing were not nearly as deep as I had led myself to believe.

After Thursday night’s viewing of Matrix: Revolutions, I wonder if I will return home in awe of the depth and intricacy of the story, or if I will be left feeling like I did when I finally got a chance to read those REM lyrics.

Either way, I’ll let you know what I think by the time the weekend comes around.

Surfing for Good Science Fiction on Television? Good Luck

by theenglish

From the Science Fiction lovers perspective there seems to be very little out there in terms of new television entertainment this year. Compared to a year ago, when Farscape was in full swing, Firefly was just starting, and there was still a Buffy around to watch, I guess I can consider myself lucky that I have so much time for myself now. There is nothing in the way now to keep me from sitting down and writing my Pulitzer Prize winning novel before May sweeps come around.

I have no desire to watch UPN’s updated version of the Six Million Dollar Man, Jake 2.0, and I have never really gotten interested in Stargate SG-1. Please don’t get me started on Andromeda, as I’ll leave that for a future column. I’m really starting to realize that the Sci-Fi saturated airwaves of the nineties were something I took for granted.

Luckily there a still a couple of good Sci-Fi programs out there.

Each week this season, Star Trek: Enterprise has delivered a solid episode. Granted, there hasn’t been any ground-breaking Science-Fiction that has made me want to re-evaluate my place in the universe, but the plots have been crisp and well paced, and the actors have delivered competent performances. Compare this to a year ago, when the episode being broadcast was a rip off of The A-Team and what’s worse is that the A-Team episode was more entertaining. No, this year’s Enterprise stories have been fun. It is too bad though, that the show has fallen so far in the ratings it may never recover.

Angel, the Buffy spin-off with a do-gooder Vampire as the main character, has also started off the season on a high note. After last year’s fourteen episodes of cliffhangers, the Angel writers seem to be taking a more laid back, relaxed attitude and the series has really gotten back some of the charm of the early Buffy The Vampire Slayer seasons. The Angel cast has great chemistry, something that even the arrival of James Marsters (Spike) doesn’t seem to affect. When the show’s production company, Mutant Enemy, announced that Marsters was coming over from Buffy to join the show this year, I was a little worried that he would dominate the program. Thankfully, this doesn’t seem to be happening. He was hardly even in the first episode, and the second episode was a nice slow introduction of his character into the current Angel milieu.

On the lower end of the spectrum, I find that I derive this guilty pleasure watching the WB’s Dawson’s Creek/Roswell hybrid, Smallville. Although I find about half its episodes to be quite good and interesting interpretations of the Superman mythos, the rest are such complete drivel that I change the channel when my wife comes into the room out of sheer embarrassment. I am beginning to suspect that she thinks I am a porn addict or something.

I can’t understand why the show is so popular. John Glover and Michael Rosenbaum do a wonderful job at playing the Luthors, and there have been some great interpretations of Superman’s history, including a nifty appearance by Christopher Reeve last season, but the show falls prey to so many failings, each episode has the potential to be a hit or miss.

In the first two seasons, they had so many kryptonite villains and so many on again, off again moments between Clark and Lana that I keep hoping Rick Berman wasn’t watching the show and thinking that maybe there was another holodeck story left in Star Trek after all. To top it off, by the beginning of the third season Clark has been seen in so many suspicious situations it makes the whole giving Clark glasses as a disguise thing seem like an act of creative brilliance.

To be honest, I really believe that I watch this program out of desperation because other than these three shows, there is really nothing of Science Fiction left on television that even remotely interests me. Thank God, for DVDs as I can entertain myself by watching old Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Buffy episodes until the 2004 fall television season rolls around.

Star Trek: Enterprise, Expanding its Horizons

by theenglish

There is still a week left in September and the newly “re-tooled” and renamed Star Trek: Enterprise is already well into its highly touted third season. The latest Trek series has had a difficult first two seasons as far as television ratings go. Paramount has received much criticism for this from both ex-Trek actors and news publications, but most of the fans have been pointing their fingers squarely at the shows producers Rick Berman and Brannon Bragga. Both men have been with the series for well over a decade, but have really had trouble producing new and original Trek for quite some time now. To combat the ratings problem and to save their series, B&B ended last season with “The Expanse” a bang-up, if somewhat awkwardly paced episode that introduced the new plot-arc currently running through the new season.

The quick lowdown is that a mysterious race known as the Xindi have attacked planet Earth, destroying over seven million people between Florida and Venezuela. No word on Cuba, of course, because this is an American produced show and Cuba is strictly a taboo topic. Amongst the millions killed was the sister of the formerly laid back Engineer Charles (Trip) Tucker. Captain Archer, played by Scott Bakula known best for his role as Sam Beckett on Quantum Leap or the gay neighbour in American Beauty depending on whom you know, decides to take the Enterprise into an unknown region of space to hunt down the Xindi.

The crew’s anger and bloodlust seem to rival that of the Angriest American at the height of the post 9/11 call for vengeance. The Captain is angry, distancing himself from his friends and comrades. The formerly relaxed crew, who enjoyed hanging in the mess hall and watching classic movies on Friday nights, find themselves sharing few laughs indeed. Marvels of the universe that once inspired and awed the characters are now only given a second glance if they can shed light on the whereabouts of the Xindi.

The season’s second episode, “Anomaly” contains what has been touted as the most controversial scene of the series. Captain Archer shoves a prisoner in an airlock and begins to decompress the chamber in an effort to torture information out of him. Actually, it is quite mild by contemporary television standards and other Trek characters, especially Ben Sisko of Deep Space Nine, have been responsible for deaths before. So why does this scene raise the hair on the back of people’s necks?

It has to be context. The episode does not end with the Captain joking with his logical Vulcan and down-home doctor while justifying his reasons for this action; it does not end with a remorseful commanding officer wrestling with the morality of his decision; no, it ends with Bakula’s character bitterly staring at computer screens. His gambit successful, he now has more information on the hated Xindi then when he started. There is no acknowledgement of Archer’s methods at all.

Herein rests the problem with the episode. Star Trek has always been about the quest to improve the human spirit, to move beyond our base instincts and to be something more, something better than what we are. This concept pervades all the series thus far. Kirk refused to kill the Gorn lizard-man in the episode “Arena”. Picard dealt with the more esoteric and philosophical nature of man’s base instincts. Sisko always fought to stay true to his morals in the face of amoral enemies. Even the greater part of Janeway’s task was to help her people maintain their humanity, despite the seeming futility of their efforts to return home.

The problem with the new storyline is that each episode does not end with a moral resolution, although I believe that one may come in the future. It is my purely speculative idea that the current plot will involve the humans and the Xindi learning to co-exist and have to work together to fight a greater evil. In the process, the humans will learn the negative impact their dark impulses and bloodlust has had upon them.

In the meantime, Trek purists are left wondering what the hell has happened to the morality of their show hoping that the burnt out producers will not succumb to reducing the series to a mere action packed, amoral version of their favourite show.

That is until the third episode of the season, “Extinction”, aired. For the first time this season, an episode ends with the Captain consciously making a humanitarian decision. Without giving too much away, “Extinction” deals with a catharsis of sorts. Archer has to delve into the animalistic qualities of his psyche before he can resurface as a more humane and aware being. Although I may be in the minority, I have to admit that this is easily one of my favourite episodes of the past three years.

Actually, this new series has grown on me and the new storyline holds a lot of promise for some entertaining and profound television. Trek, in each of its incarnation has reflected the values of the time in which it was produced, so perhaps it is taking the correct approach for the contemporary world where the largest super-power can declare war on a nation unilaterally and get away with it. Maybe Star Trek should take a few hours and really explore the darkness and the evil that is in each one of us. Like Archer in this week’s episode, only by taking the journey through the inferno can we regain our appreciation of beauty and wonder life has to offer.

Here’s to keeping my fingers crossed for a great 27th season of Star Trek.