Tag Archives: sci fi

Jamie on the Box: Star Trek Picard

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It’s been an exciting, almost boundless time for TV in general lately, but sci-fi as a genre has fared rather less well, the glittering exceptions being The Orville, The Mandalorian and The Expanse (and perhaps we can extrapolate from that roster of success that it’s simply a good time for sci-fi shows with the word ‘The’ in the title).

Star Trek: Discovery is certainly boldly going, as all good Trek series should, but many of the franchise’s fans have also boldly… just gone. Lost in Space is fun and frothy, but nothing more. Just last week there was yet another flashy but hollow outing for the thirteenth Doctor played by Jodie Whittaker (although last night’s Judoon-flavoured romp appears to have turned a few heads), plus a disappointingly lacklustre debut for Armando Iannucci’s new sci-fi comedy series Avenue 5 (let’s hope tonight’s episode kicks it up a gear).

There’s a lot of hope, then, riding on Picard (CBS All Access, streaming on Amazon Prime),  Sir Patrick Stewart’s first foray into the Star Trek universe since 2002’s disappointing big-screen outing ‘Star Trek Nemesis’. That’s right, baby: Picard’s back. Except he’s retired. And he needs a stunt double to run. And he’s re-programmed his replicator to dispense decaffeinated earl gray. But what did you expect? He’s an octogenarian now. (“Computer? Stool softener. Phillips’ Gel. Hot.”)

The show’s opening sequence takes place aboard the ship of our Star Trek dreams – which is also literally the ship of Picard’s dreams – the Enterprise D. The old bird’s looking as good as she ever did, hooking a hand-brake turn across a space-lane. On-board the dream-ship, the dearly departed Data is back where he belongs, playing poker against Picard.

If not for the etches on Patrick Stewart’s face or the chub on Brent Spiner’s very human jowls we could be watching an episode plucked straight from the final seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I guess that’s sort of the point. When Data asks Picard why he’s stalling, and Picard answers sadly: ‘I don’t want the game to end,’ he’s acting as a proxy for fans like me who’d rather remain on-board the old ship than wade into the unknown with a new crew and a new focus. But Picard has to wake up, and so too do we. We’re not in Kansas anymore.

We’re in France, actually, at Picard’s vineyard.

Picard now has a dog called ‘Number One’ who likes to jump up on his lap and lick him right in the mouth, which begs the question: why did he name the beast after his former first officer? I guess space must’ve been lonely sometimes.

I’m not sure how Riker will react to discovering that his old boss has named in his honour an animal that gets visibly sexually excited many times a day and presumably tries to hump anything it sees, but he won’t be able to deny that it’s an apt homage. Anyway, that’s probably more than enough words on Riker’s wandering glands.

Picard is having dreams and visions; so too is Dahj, a young woman who finds her Chuck-like killing-powers activated when a bunch of assassins beam into her apartment on date night and murder her boyfriend. Her visions are of Picard, a man she’s never met, so when she sees him giving an interview on whatever they call the telly in the far-future, she goes straight to Chateaux Picard to enlist his help.

‘I’m so confused,’ she tells him, weeping and neurotic, ‘I don’t know who you are. I just killed some men. I know your face. I can do kung-fu. I think I love you.’

‘Come here, you,’ says Picard, ‘And give your uncle Jean a big cuddle.’

OK, I’m paraphrasing a tad. Horrifically, though, it’s a close approximation. Too much of the premiere seemed designed to join the dots of plot, at warp speed and with scant regard for pacing or character. Granted, there was a lot to pack in – everything from the destruction of Romulus to a hot-potato refugee crisis to re-purposed Borg cubes – but more time could’ve been taken to set things up and orient us in this new world. Less jumping around and hashy-bashy dialogue.

Can we talk about the whole Data thing? That’s a rhetorical question; we’re already doing it. See, Dahj is Data’s daughter, which is why Picard and Dahj were so drawn to one another. Artificial life-forms were outlawed, but not before Data’s neurons were used to clone a daughter, because, you know, that’s how robots work. But they couldn’t just clone one, silly, he had to have two daughters, BECAUSE THAT’S HOW THESE THINGS WORK. I can almost hear one of the show’s 80,000 producers asking another of the show’s 80,000 producers during pre-production:

‘You know how Star Trek used to stick as closely as possible to actual science, or plausible projections thereof, with very little in the way of ridiculously fantastical shit in service of quasi-mystical character quests?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well how about we get rid of that science shit?’

By the end of the episode Dahj is dead, but long live her sister, Dohj, or whatever the shit she’s called.

Patrick Stewart, of course, was… well, he was Patrick Stewart. When has that man ever turned in a poor performance? You could watch him taking a shit for twenty minutes and it would still be better than 90 per cent of anything you’d ever watched. Picard still possesses charm and wit and authority, but age has softened him around the edges; Stewart takes the veneer of vulnerability and warmth that always existed in Younger Picard and drapes it around Old Man Picard like a cosy tartan blanket.

That old dog can still bark though. When a TV interviewer probes him about Starfleet’s deplorable political stance in the wake of the android-orchestrated shipyard attack that left Starfleet unable – or unwilling – to come through on its promise to rescue refugees from the Romulan supernova (pauses to catch a breath before passing out from terminal exposition), he seethes that Starfleet’s decision to ‘abandon those people we had sworn to save was not just dishonourable, it was downright criminal!’

This is not the Star Trek we remember (see also Discover, Star Trek). Whereas the first clutch of series in the franchise (TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT) cleaved closely to Gene Roddenberry’s utopian vision of the future – despite occasional forays into the grey and dark areas of both the universe and the human heart – Star Trek: Picard firmly establishes itself as a vision of the future that takes as its root a post-colonial, present-day past (I know, I can hear it, too) in which populist demagogues like Trump and Bolsonaro rule the world (Hell, out here in the real-world, in a case of life imitating art, Donald Trump has sanctioned the use of a logo for his Space Force that’s pretty much identical to the Starfleet logo).

Simply put: Star Trek is now a dystopia, in which almost all institutions are inherently and irreversibly corrupt. Most of the baddies from the other iterations of Trek are now the goodies, and most of the goodies are now the baddies.

It’s similar in a way to what happened with westerns. Once the genre had been around for a few decades, doing its thing of showing the rough and tough and noble American dream in its infancy, we started to get revisionist westerns, showing a dirtier and doubtless more accurate version of the Wild West: a world that was grimy, brutal, morally bankrupt, and occasionally genocidal.

Picard is revisionist Star Trek. A revision of the future before it’s even happened. A reversal of hope before we’ve even had a chance to feel it.

I’m willing to sit back and see where the show takes us. I love the character of Picard, I’m intrigued by the set-up, and if I was exasperated a few times, then I certainly wasn’t bored at any point. I guess I liked it? I feel a lot of good will towards Star Trek, having been a big fan of TOS, TNG, DS9 and VOY as a teenager (much to the dismay of my balls, which would’ve liked to have been emptied into a woman a little more often). I want to love Picard. I just…

Well. Let’s see what’s out there.

Word of warning to you, though, Jean-Luc. This isn’t the 90s anymore, son. No mansplaining. No assuming anyone’s species. And don’t forget to check your human privilege before you go off and do something patronising or unforgivably offensive like save the day all by yourself.

Forget who you were. Remember who you are.

But whatever you do, don’t forget to engage.

Space: The Final Cashier (or ‘An Old Man Sells Star Wars’)

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Harold Shipman’s at it again!

News of Lucasfilm’s purchase by Disney, and the prospect of a new trilogy of Disney-produced Star Wars’ sequels, was met with the anger and reprobation of a bunch of people who really shouldn’t give this much of a shit about the creative direction of a space-based fairy-tale movie franchise for small children. An enormous 48-year-old fat geek, who only got his hole once in his life and only then completely by accident, told us: ‘I feel like Lucas has sold my soul for corporate gang-rape. All six Star Wars movies were pure art, like Wim Wenders’ films set in space, and this cheapens it. I’m so angry I could trash everything in my house, and I probably would, if I didn’t live here with my mum and dad.’

The Death Star – A deadly giant bollock hovering in space.

The twitto-verse, the realm of Twittingdom, the Twitanium steel wordosphere, Dick Twittington and his knapsack filled with fucking tweets – or whatever bullshit marketing-speak is currently being used to describe the short sentences that people type into a wee box on a social networking site – is aflame with the erm… burning… fire of… passion of people getting all… hot and ignited… and… ach, blast this ineffective flame-based metaphor all the way to roaring fucking Hell: a lot of people are talking about the future of Star Wars, okay? That’s what I wanted to say. In a non-flaming nutshell, that’s about the crux of it. Right? Just leave it. OK?? Anyway, there are millions of people who seem to care more about Disney’s Death Star taking aim at Planet Geek than they do about the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy, global disease and poverty combined. A starving Ethiopian was asked for his reaction to the Star Wars news, but he was too busy dying of thirst to comment.

So what do we know about Disney’s plans for Star Wars?

‘Motherchucker, get this spaceship in the air or I’ll horn your young ass.’

Well, we know for sure that there will be some major character changes in the new trilogy. R2-D2 will be replaced by a wise-cracking, talking goat with attitude, voiced by Chris Rock. This ‘new’ character, Gh-oato Superstar, will forever be admonishing C-3PO with lines like, ‘No way I’m getting’ on no space ship wich yoo, you uptight, John Inman motherfucker. This goat ‘aint gonna be the butt of some three-eyed, six-titted motherfucker’s jokes. Find me a field an’ leave me there, honky.’ Changes to C-3PO won’t be quite so all-encompassing, but they will be radical. Although his personality will remain the same his appearance will change some 2000 times over the course of the three sequels.

‘C-3PO always struck me as a little, well, dull and samey,’ said some guy at Disney whose name we forgot to write down, ‘So that’s why, in the new films, he’s going to have the ability to change his colour and armour at will, instantly, and as often as he likes.’

How could you not warm to the adventures of a sexually confused, metal English butler and his wee pal, the Tesco Value pedal bin on wheels.

When we insinuated that this new change might have more to do with the ability to issue a wider and more profitable selection of C-3PO action figures, and less to do with what’s best for the plot, the Disney man stabbed an Ewok in the throat, and then ran down the street laughing like a crazy bastard. Filled with panic and horror we rushed to help the adorably cute and choking creature, but once we remembered that Ewoks aren’t real and that it was probably just a dwarf in a costume, we went for a coffee instead. Don’t worry, though, dwarves are immortal. Aren’t they? Or they’ve got special powers or some shit.

Changes abound for Han Solo’s hairy side-kick, due to the long-standing fear of Disney executives that Chewbacca’s name could be viewed as subliminal advertising for chewing tobacco. ‘We don’t want America’s children hawking into spittoons like it’s the Wild West, getting mouth cancer and then keeling over like victims of Vader’s telekinetic throat-choke,’ said Disney CEO, Dave Jewstein. ‘Or even getting Chew-baculosis! HAHAHAHA! Oh, I crack myself up, I really do. Anyway, that’s why, in the new films, we’re renaming him: Chewba-cocacola.’

Jar Jar Binks: in a world gone bat-shit crazy, this animated fictional character is despised more than Hitler.

Building on the universal popularity of Jar Jar Binks, Disney have outlined a new character called ‘Ting-Ting Kablammo’, whose slitty eyes and hilarious catchprase – ‘Me no rikey these raser guns’ – will go down a storm with the ‘0-3yrs’, ‘heavily brain damaged’ and ‘people from Greenock’ demographics.

Harrison Ford will return, this time playing Indiana Jones, and Mark Hamill will be back, as an extra in one of the bar scenes.

Sneak Peak

Star Wars VII will be set on the planet of Toy, with the action focussing on Luke’s children, who are eking out a meagre, miserable existence under the tyrannical rule of Toy’s evil dictator, the Grand Merchandiser. With his army of dreaded Action Figures, and uncompromising brutality, the Grand Merchandiser looks set to make Vader and the Emperor look like a pair of bum-fingering space pussies. Audiences will be treated to some stunning set-pieces as rebel forces, led by Luke’s youngest sons, Pluto and Goofy Skywalker, battle the Action Figure army through the giant roller-coaster theme park that borders The Grand Merchandiser’s impregnable Disneyland Fortress.

Rivals

Fuggedaboutit, Vader.

HBO also fought for control of Lucasfilm, and only just missed out on the bid. Executives at the cable network had already outlined their vision for the franchise, which would have kicked off with Star Wars 7: Motherf***ing C**ts in Space, starring James Gandolfini and the late David Carradine.

STAY TUNED: We’ve been privileged to see a promo poster for Star Wars VII, which features a fat, middle-aged man in a Yoda T-shirt feeding £600 and his dignity  into a shredding machine.

(And, yes, geeks, I know the title of this ‘report’ references Star Trek before it’s pointed out to me with geek-like glee. Or gleek. And how do I know this? BECAUSE I’M ONE OF YOU!!! I just don’t like Star Wars that much.) 

Red Dwarf X-pectations

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Red Dwarf X premieres on Dave tonight at 9pm. In a few short hours we will know if that ‘X’ signifies buried comedy treasure, or if it will make us all think of a solitary dead eye on the corpse of a cartoon character that’s been drawn by a three-year-old.

And, yes, I know it’s Roman numerals for ten, before some clever cunt who genuinely thinks I’m some sort of drooling malcontent tries to point it out.

Lister and the Cat.

Red Dwarf was my favourite comedy as a youngster, and memories of the show are inextricably linked to memories of my childhood, and of growing up. I shared favourite quotes and crap cast impressions with schoolmates (I did an impressively shite Kryten). It’s fair to say that each new episode was ‘event TV’, and fellow geeks and I would spend the day after transmission reliving the entire episode to the point of suicidal tedium.

When the first series was released on VHS in two-parts I scrimped and saved summer holiday money to get my hands on it. £13.99 for three episodes at a time in good old combustible, snappable video format – and no Monster Munch for a month – but it was worth the sacrifice.

From the series 4 glory days.

And what a show: Smeg, Talkie Toaster, two Rimmers, the first Kryten (‘They’re dead.’ ‘But I was only away for a minute.’), Lister having twins, the Better Than Life video game, the fried egg, chilli, cheese and chutney sandwich, the Committee for the Liberation and Integration of Terrifying Organisms and their Rehabilitation Into Society (or CLITORIS for short), Lister eating dogfood and burning books, inflatable Rachel, a self-destruct system that dispenses chocolate bars, Gandhi with a machine-gun, Kryten dating a blob, Lister fighting a curry monster, Kryten having a penis, Rimmer going nuts in a Gingham dress, Mr Flibble, group hallucinations thanks to aggressive marine life, Lister marrying a mutant, Rimmer being able to touch again, the Polymorph, Ace Rimmer, Dwayne Dibbley!

So many classic moments and characters have been etched into my brain. I was so obsessed with the show that I was moved to write this in my diary when I was 16:

“I brought down Red Dwarf with me that I’d videotaped the night before, because Papa likes it. I don’t mind watching it for the second time, as instead of concentrating on the programme, I like to concentrate on the reaction of the person watching it. Let me explain why: if you enjoy a certain thing on the television, it must contain elements you can relate to, therefore each one you enjoy reflects a facet of your personality. Every time my grandfather would laugh at one of the jokes, I would take that as a personal victory. It’s not as simple as merely saying, ‘Oh, he enjoys the show,’ because on some level his laughter is telling me, ‘Oh, he likes me.'”

I think it’s clear from reading that diary excerpt that I was a bit of a wanker. And incredibly creepy. After all the bizarre staring I subjected him to, my grandpa must have thought I was some sort of cross between Droopy and the little dead girls from The Shining. It also appears that my self-esteem was almost entirely based upon other people’s enjoyment of a 1980’s sci-fi comedy show. I must remember to write that one down for my psychiatrist.

Kochanski: Red Dwarf’s very own Yoko Ono.

Still, as much as I loved – and still love – the show, something went wrong: Rob Grant, one of Red Dwarf’s creators and one half of its writing team, quit the show after series six. It became clear that Rob was the writer responsible for the ‘com’ part of the ‘sit-com’ equation, and a noticeable dip in quality was evident following his departure. Series 7 still had some excellent moments – most notably the JFK-themed curry hunt – but the dissolution of Red Dwarf’s writing partnership, along with the decision to forgo a studio audience and film the show more like a comedy-drama, changed the atmosphere and ‘feel’ of Red Dwarf for the worse. Kochanski didn’t help either. She was shit (the character, rather than the actress) (yeah, add that rider to spare her feelings, Jamie, because she’s definitely going to be one of the three people who actually read this shite, you fucking egotist).

Danny John Jules as The Cat.

The Cat in particular became a one-dimensional retard, who seemed to spend his time pulling stroke faces and uttering the odd hackneyed and unfunny line about corduroy trousers. It was the cat’s almost sociopathic selfishness, vanity and callousness that made him funny in the earlier series, not his stupidity, which was never so much emphasised. Things picked up a bit with series 8, although I do agree with one Amazon reviewer who said that the show became like ‘Chuckle Brothers in Space.’ Also, in general, I feel it would have been better if the series had stayed with the six-separate-stories format and left the two-and-three-parters alone. I really liked the episode ‘Cassandra’, though, with the super-computer that could predict the future. It felt like classic ‘Dwarf’ again.

The pant-shittingly bad ‘Back to Earth’.

Then came the three-part special ‘Back to Earth’, broadcast on Dave in 2009, that was so hellishly bad it felt like Doug Naylor had travelled back through time to 1989 to personally spunk in my face. The entire first part – especially the tomato banter between Rimmer and Lister, and the distressingly cringe-worthy scene in which Rimmer conducted away to himself oblivious to the plight of his ship-mates as they battled a giant squid on the monitors behind him – almost made Citizen Khan look like the single greatest comedy ever produced. Fair enough, some of the ideas in ‘Back to Earth’ were inventive, if not a little derivative, but so what? It’s a comedy. It’s supposed to make me laugh, first and foremost.

Anyway, ‘Back to Earth’ was discussed on a comedy forum a few years back, and I found an interesting bit of chat about it from Scottish comedian Stu Who?.

Ok … so here’s a hypotheses … eh?

When we are younger and haven’t watched a vast amount of comedy, sit-coms, etc, we adopt some programmes which grow, with the passing of time, to be our nostalgic, firm favourites.

In their time, they were quite good, but weren’t really the classics of comedy that we think they were.

If the show is revived, we tend to compare it with the rose-tinted view of the previous series, rather than reality.

Or … in other words:

Red Dwarf was a pile of juvenile shite back then … and still is.

Discuss

I hope he’s wrong, and this isn’t just a case of me donning rose-tinted spectacles and staring at my childhood like… well, staring at it like a creepy grandchild who won’t leave his grandpa alone.

Red Dwarf was funny. Red Dwarf IS funny.

I know it’s just a TV show, and if I’d started watching it when I was 40 I probably wouldn’t give this much of a shit. I know I’m displaying a fanaticism and a personal stake in this akin to a religious fundamentalist defending his holy book. But please, please, please let tonight’s episode exceed my expectations, and blot out the years of disappointment I’ve suffered since Rob Grant left. Let the little embers and flickers of past genius that still glowed in the show, in some form or another, in the later series rage into a comedy bush fire. Let me love Red Dwarf again. Let me laugh.

Give me back my fucking childhood, Doug Naylor! And wipe that cum off my forehead.