SyFy's Mercury Men -- "Skyscraper Saboteurs"

"Skyscraper Saboteurs," the second episode of the intriguing Mercury Men web series, went live this morning. The episode builds on all the qualities that worked in the first episode, and features fewer of the drawbacks. It appears that the series is quickly getting past the sense of "pilotitis" I felt regarding the first episode.

The series takes place in Pittsburgh in 1975 where Jack Yeager (Curt Wootton) -- a character wonderfully inspired by classic pulp figures -- discovers a sinister plan by Venusian invaders, a plan that only he can stop. Lucky for the Earth, Jack is a combination Flash Gordon, Doc Savage, and Blackhawk:

Daring League captain, aerospace engineer, and former US Air Force pilot, Jack travels the galaxy to explore unknown worlds, new alien races, and advanced technological wonders. Always at Jack's side is the Lumiére, his trusted revolver which fires bolts of condensed light. Jack is dispatched to Earth to investigate the glowing men of Mercury.

Like the pilot, I do have some complements and criticisms regarding the episode, but watch the episode first. It is well worth your time. Join me in discovering the sinister plan of the Mercury Men!

Pros:

I've got to give the production team at Mercury Men Pictures credit for their focus on sound design. Poor design can really tank a feature, particularly a genre feature, but the MMP crew have added some interesting environmental sound effects that add depth to the feature. I am particularly fond of the "fuzz" sound of the Mercury Men themselves.

The visuals continue to be fairly impressive. I was particularly impressed by the scene where our heroes were on one side of a wall constructed of glass bricks, and the Mercury Men were on the other. The image where we look through Jack's looking glass was also impressive as it included "warping" around the edges and was more than a mere "circular cutout" image. Jack's hologram projector was a nice touch, and a nice effect.

Like the serials that Mercury Men is based upon, the MMP crew use a lot of visual storytelling. When the Mercury Men's plan is revealed, it is shown and not told. Very nice!

Cons:

I still find Mark Tierno's performance as Edward Borman a little forced. He seems to be acting in a style more akin to silent films than talkies. He isn't bad, but his movements have an odd fluidity that seems natural in a purely visual story. His line delivery is good, but I'm on the fence. If Edward gets blasted by the invaders I won't be overly distraught.

When Jack and Edward are walking down a stairway there is a wipe effect -- a nice homage to the serials -- that goes against the movement of the action taking place. This has the visual effect of slowing down the pace of the story and decreasing urgency. It almost feels as if the action is being rewound. I think wipes should follow movement, not run against the grain. Just a personal opinion.

Now that I've seen the story so far, I am more convinced than ever that I need to lift ideas from it for a short term Savage Worlds or Cortex+ campaign. I will certainly be statting up some of the characters as the show goes on and we learn more about them.

The MMP crew have captured the tone perfectly. This show is obviously done of love of the material and lacks the kind of ironic distance that too often seeps into the gaps and ruins a good story. Let's hope they keep it up. If their website, and their digital props, are any hint I think they will.

I already wish they'd build a flash based game based on their fictional Atari 2600 game.

Blogging Northwest Smith: "Black Thirst"

In the last installment of "Blogging Northwest Smith," I discussed how C L Moore's tales of Northwest Smith included elements of Space Opera and Weird Horror and pushed the envelope of what constituted a Science Fiction tale. By Space Opera I am referring to the earlier "Space Opera equals Space Westerns" description often used during the early days of the genre.

I am far from the first to notice that Moore incorporated elements of Weird Horror into the tales of her space faring anti-hero, Lin Carter noticed her inclusion of these elements and thought it likely they were added to garner publication in Weird Tales. Whatever Moore's reasons for including Weird Horror elements, as she did with her adaptation of the Medusa into "pleasure vampire" in "Shambleau," she was deeply enough tied to the Lovecraftian circle that she was one of the co-authors (in fact she was the jump start author) of a Lovecraftian "shared world" tale entitled The Challenge from Beyond (more on this in a later post).

For the modern fan of Science Fiction, the incorporation of horror elements into a Science Fiction narrative seems perfectly natural. Everything from the Atomic Horror films of the 50s and 60s to Ridley Scott's masterpiece Alien (based on A.E. van Vogt's 1939 Astounding story "Black Destroyer" which was included as chapters 1-6 of The Voyage of the Space Beagle) to Joss Whedon's Firefly demonstrate how deeply saturated film and television are with the SF horror story. But for fans of "Space Westerns," Foundation, or modern Space Opera, the shift in suspension of disbelief from hard SF to Weird Horror SF isn't guaranteed.

When I read "Shambleau," I was struck by how much the narrative followed the format of a classic Western and by how the monster/alien of the tale was Lovecraftian in nature -- tentacles and all. "Black Thirst" takes the combination of Science Fiction and horror a different direction than "Shambleau." Where in "Shambleau" the tale was one of Weird Horror overlaying a Western, "Black Thirst" is a tale of Gothic Horror that contains no small elements of the Western and Weird Horror genre.

Our tale begins with our protagonist, Northwest Smith, leaning against a warehouse wall in some unfriendly waterfront street on Venus. He soon encounters a woman, immediately recognizable as a Minga maid, who begs Northwest to visit her in the Minga stronghold in order to provide her some sort of aid.

Moore spends some time describing the Minga palace as a building that pre-existed the majority of civilization on Venus, describing how the stronghold was already built by the time some great Venusian explorer had sailed the seas in search of new land. The Minga maids themselves are as mysterious as the palace from which they are sold, they are "those beauties that from the beginning of history have been bred in the Minga stronghold for loveliness and grace, as race-horses are bred on Earth, and reared from earliest infancy in the art of charming men. Scarcely a court on the three planets lacks at least one of these exquisite creatures..."

Establishing the mysterious origins of the stronghold and the maids, Moore quickly establishes the dangers associated with attempting to "lay a finger" on a Minga maid. It is a danger with no appeal as "The chastity of Minga girls was proverbial, a trade boast." The purpose of these beauty slaves seems not to be a sexual one, and this is reinforced later when the real purpose of the breeding of the maids is reveals, but a purely aesthetic one. The women are bred for their beauty, in form and manner, and the price paid is for these things alone.

The concept of a stronghold of courtesans, trained in the art of charming men, combined with the similarities between Malcolm Reynolds and Northwest Smith leave one wondering if Joss Whedon had read this tale before creating Firefly. Not to imply with any certainty that Whedon was directly influenced by Moore, but it is hard for me to visualize anyone other than Nathan Fillion playing Northwest Smith in a movie -- and if he did Whedon fans would cry foul that Northwest is a direct Mal ripoff.

As the Minga maid, named Vaudir, leaves Smith she does so with a warning. She warns Northwest about the evil that is the Alendar and hints at his origins when she discusses there are "elemental" things that don't sink back into the darkness from which they came if a civilization develops too swiftly. "Life rises out of dark and mystery and things too strange and terrible to be looked upon." Here she hints at the history of the Minga and the Alendar and Moore incorporates imagery from Weird Horror. The concept of elemental evil is one of Weird Horror and it is the type of horror that is used to describe the Alendar.

Smith agrees to help the maid and approaches the stronghold as she told him he should. What follows is a series of scenes reminiscent of Bram Stoker's Dracula in which our hero plays, a much braver version, of Jonathan Harker. Smith wanders the hallways of the palace sensing, but not seeing, the great evil that awaits him. He arrives at Vaudir's room, but it is not long before he encounters the Alendar him/itself. The Alendar is a manlike creature possessed of great psychic powers, powers which overwhelm our protagonist and could kill him in an instant. But a quick death is not to be for Smith as he possesses something of value that the Alendar desires.

The Alendar, it seems, is -- like the Shambleau -- a kind of vampire. Unlike the Shambleau the Alendar does not feed on sexual/physical pleasure, instead he/it feeds on beauty. For the Alendar beauty is a tangible thing, an objective thing that provides real nourishment. The only way in which beauty is subjective regarding the Alendar's hunger is in its "form." What is beauty for a human female isn't beauty in a human male, which is why the Alendar has spared Smith. Smith possesses the quality of male beauty which must be fully developed before the Alendar can feed on him. As the Alendar describes his method of nourishment, Smith is given glimpses of unimaginable beauty -- beauty that can cause madness.

How the tale unfolds from here I will leave for you to discover on you own, but I would like to spend some time discussing some of the interesting concepts Moore threw into this story.

She is quite obviously writing a tale about slavery and presents human trafficking as a horrible affair, but she is also presenting a discussion of beauty and what constitutes true beauty. The Alendar describes beauty as follows:

"Beauty is as tangible as blood, in a way. It is a separate distinct force that inhabits the bodies of men and women. You must have noticed the vacuity that accompanies perfect beauty in so many women... the force so strong that it drives out all other forces and lives vampirishly at the expense of intelligence and goodness and conscience and all else...

For beauty, as I have said, eats up all other qualities but beauty."

The beauty that Moore has the Alendar describe is in itself horrifying, yet it is also an interesting spark for discussion. Vaudir -- who has asked Smith for assistance and led to his current state of danger -- is beautiful, but she possesses something more. She possesses and intelligence and free will that make her more desirable to the Alendar than her beauty alone would demand. Smith too possesses this combination of independence and beauty, a combination that the Alendar seeks to use in order to overcome the boredom which results from the consumption of his current fare of pure beauty. Moore is simultaneously critiquing the "cult of beauty" and proffering an alternative -- a beauty that combines intelligence, independence, and appearance. There is a strong feminist spirit underlying the story and it is this spirit that separates this tale from a run of the mill narrative.

As before, Moore combines elements from a variety of literature in this piece in a manner that is fluid. The discussion of elemental evil has ties to Weird Horror. The Alendar, his stronghold, and the equation of beauty itself with the horrific echo Gothic Horror. The manner in which Smith is encountered and the stories resolution are straight from a Western, one could easily see "Black Thirst" as an episode of Wild, Wild, West. With all that Moore combines genre elements one might expect to become lost in some residual narrative clutter, yet that never occurs. Moore has a story she wants to tell, of a vampire who consumes beauty yet seeks something more, and it makes for quite an entertaining ride.

Previous Blogging Northwest Smith Entries:

1) Blogging Northwest Smith: "Shambleau"

Where "Dollhouse" Went Wrong

In his Entertainment Weekly column on Monday, Marc Bernardin asks the question "Where did 'Dollhouse' go wrong?" His article, in short, is an expression of his concern that the show will soon be canceled because its ratings (that's the number of people who watch the show) are on the decline. He mentions a number of contributing factors to the show's decline: Whedon's tendency to have strong finales and week starts, the "Friday Night Death Slot," poor advertising, and bad lead in programming.

I have another explanation, one that Bernardin overlooked. I think it is odd that Bernardin overlooked it, as we generally have very similar tastes when it comes to the pop culture/mass media menu, but he overlooked it none the less.

In a nutshell, it's because "Dollhouse" never gave me a reason to CARE about what was going on. Certainly, there were entertaining episodes that were filled with Whedonesque action and humor. And it would be unfair to say that I didn't care about any of the characters on the show. I worried about Echo's (Eliza Dushku) safety. I also enjoyed the portrayal of the FBI agent Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) and Echo's handler Boyd Langton (Harry Lennix). In fact, Lennix's portrayal of his character's conflicts are one of the strongest elements on the show. As a fan of 'Angel,' I was pleased to see Amy Acker working again in the roles of Dr. Saunders/Whiskey.

In fact -- I'll just put it out there -- I liked all the characters and actors on the show. Their performances were strong, especially the aforementioned Lennix and the unmentioned Alan Tudyk (who is always awesome), and I always felt like I was watching "real" people in a "real" universe.

Yet I still didn't care.

Why?

Because Whedon and crew never made it clear to me whether I should support or hate the human trafficking organization at the root of the show. Is the "Dollhouse" supporting some amazing philanthropic work that is threatened by the outside world, or are they just an organization that wipes people's minds in a kind of "forgotten" indentured servitude? Are they just an immoral human trafficking company that happens to have employees that I find pleasant?

If that's the case, and it seems to be, then there is little stake for me as a viewer in the narratives that Whedon and crew offered as a story arc. If Echo is trying to bring down the techno-brothel (where the doll's have no say in what they can/will do and won't remember anyway), I have a stake. Given the presentation of the Dollhouse so far, the only character I could really root for is Alpha (Alan Tudyk), but he's dead now having failed in his mission to defeat the Dollhouse and attain apotheosis. Sure he was crazy for the desire to become a living deity, but he was perfectly right in seeking to bring down the Dollhouse -- as it has been presented to us.

I could write at length about Whedon's seeming obsession with brothels/prostitutes as manifest in this show and Firefly. But at least the "courtesans" of Firefly seemed genre appropriate, possibly even inspired by C.L. Moore's Minga maids from her Northwest Smith story Black Thirst. Given that Malcolm Reynolds is the closest approximation of Northwest Smith to appear on any screen, I wouldn't find it surprising if NW were the entire inspiration behind Firefly, but you can read more about Firefly and Northwest Smith in a future "Blogging Northwest Smith" post (you can read the first one here). The dolls of Whedon's "Dollhouse" universe don't seem to be deeply rooted in the needs of the universe Whedon has presented in the series. In Firefly the courtesans also doubled as spies and were an integral part of the social dynamics of the 'verse. Last I checked, there was no equal need in the modern world unless your last name is Mitterrand.

Why should I desire the continued existence of the Dollhouse in the "Dollhouse" universe? There are a couple of hints, like with the Mellie character, but never any concrete reasons given. Unless I'm just supposed to think that human trafficking to fulfill sexual (and other) fantasies is unquestionably a moral virtue. Which I don't.

The reason the show is failing is because while Whedon has given us an emotional stake in the dolls, he has failed to give us a positive emotional stake in the Dollhouse.

An Evening with Tim Minear

As a recent Variety article points out, "there is an image war raging during the WGA strike." So far, it appears that the writers are winning with about 63% of the fans supporting the writers and only around 7% supporting the studios. This means about 30% of the people don't care, but that is a talk for another time. I don't want to get into how the underlying philosophical concepts what the writers are asking are central to the existence of modern democracy, at least not here. Ask me over a Guinness, and I might be able to ramble for a good hour about the topic.

Needless to say, the studios seem to be reacting to the lack of public support. For example NBC is showing their charitable nature and giving fans the opportunity to buy television show props with the proceeds going to charity. See how that works, you buy Steve Carell's watch from NBC and the United Way benefits. NBC makes dismantling a show a charitable act.

Hmm...maybe they don't need the writers after all, that's pretty creative.

I'm kidding about the NBC dismantling the show part. Given that some of the items are signed, I am sure that the auctions were probably already scheduled. But I am not at all surprised that NBC would use this as an opportunity to shift the PR battle in their favor.

The only way that writers, current and future, are going to get an equitable outcome from the strike is if they win the PR battle. That's why Bill Cunningham, Shawna Benson and I did a Geekerati episode with Rob Long last Monday. That's why we will be interviewing Tim Minear about the strike tomorrow night. It's important to know why the writers are striking and why those 30% who don't currently care on way or another really ought to care. It matters. We're talking about the development of a new medium here, and that means that the norms established today will be lasting.

We will also be discussing the fans who support the strike, like the organizers of fans4writers.com. If you want to know more about the strike, or if you are a participant in fans4writers, listen in (starting at 7pm) and give us a call (starting at 7:15 or so) at (646) 478-5041 to join in the conversation.

Come listen to Bill, Shawna, and me on Friday night at 7pm, as we chat with Tim Minear. Maybe he'll even discuss how this is affecting his upcoming projects (MIRACLE MAN and DOLLHOUSE), but no promises. While you're waiting, make sure you visit Tim Minear.net. You can even read the shooting script for the Firefly episode "Out of Gas." For free. Legally.

How cool is that?


If you want even more information about the strike, you can play or download the Geekerati interview with writer/producer Rob Long below.