SPACE FOR TV WRITERS: VACUUM SUCKS

In today’s science lesson, boys and girls, we’re going to review some basics that the writers of television science fiction seem to have forgotten. The shows I’m going to rant about are generally categorized as space opera—adventures set in space, sometimes with a military framework—and are among my favorites, but in a few cases, the writers just went too far with poetic license. That’s okay if you’re writing fantasy or paranormal, but in science fiction, the science should be a little more rigorous, even on TV.

Let’s start with The Expanse, the fifth season of which just concluded on Amazon Prime Video. There’s a lot to love about this series, based on the books by James S. A. Corey, starring Stephen Strait, Dominique Tipper, Wes Chatham and Shohreh Aghdashloo. The ongoing political and shooting battles between three factions in the near future: Earthers (which include colonists and others on the moon), Martians (long-time colonists who are now independent of Earth) and Belters (independent spacers who make their living among the asteroid belts and outer planets of the solar system) are constantly entertaining and full of marvelous worldbuilding detail.

Why, then, do we always have to “hear” the roar of ships’ engines in the blackness of space (that is, from the external shots)? As the tagline to ALIEN so famously put it, “In space, no one can hear you scream.” Vacuum can’t transmit sound; there aren’t enough molecules to vibrate to a level where humans can hear it. Those engine sounds would only be heard from inside the ships, if at all. Yet, every time we see those thrusters light up against the backdrop of black space, we hear a roar. No! They would be completely silent. Explosions: silent. If I remember correctly, even Classic TREK in the Sixties got this right, and certainly 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY did.

The writers on The Expanse just plain have a disregard for the dangers of vacuum. They insist on issuing projectile weapons to their crews despite the problems a wayward bullet would cause in a pressurized hull. It’s the future, after all! Give them lasers or proton pistols or something that won’t put a hole in your ship.

The Expanse is excellent, but tends to ignore vacuum.

Things finally came to a ridiculous head this season when somebody got the bright idea to send one of the main characters (Naomi Nagata, played by Dominique Tipper) out an airlock without so much as a rebreather or a light jacket. It was her idea, too, mind you, an escape to a ship tethered alongside the one where she was being held captive. O-k-a-a-y! Someone must have read the research that says an astronaut once lasted 14 seconds in near-vacuum in a testing situation when his suit sprang a leak. Wow! Plot bunny! So they shoved Naomi out an airlock with nothing, had her cross a catwalk to the other ship, open the other airlock and repressurize, all with few effects. No boiling eyeballs or saliva, passing out from lack of oxygen, “bends” from pressure changes, frostbite on various extremities from the extreme cold, etc. Sure, I believe that.

I guess the writer who researched the effects on the human body in a vacuum neglected to note that the astronaut who survived his accident was still wearing his suit (it just had a pin-sized hole) and had a team to revive him. The last thing he remembered before passing out was the saliva on his tongue boiling. Naomi was on her own—and, outside of a few aches and pains, was just fine!

This kind of thing makes me crazy, mostly because The Expanse offers itself as a science-based show. Star Trek, on the other hand, has always pushed the boundaries of what is considered acceptable science. It is true space opera, in that there is an element of the old “Buck Rogers” serials in it, and always has been. Still, the science in TREK has less of fantasy about it than some franchises, and a separate fandom has even arisen around the military structure of Starfleet (with fan groups organized in ships and in cordons of Starfleet “Marines.”)

This third season of the latest iteration of the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek: Discovery, gave fans a lot to think about when heroine Commander Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and the U.S.S. Discovery leapt 930 years into their future to protect the secrets of the “spore drive” and time travel. They found a galaxy much changed from the one they knew. A galactic disaster called “the Burn” had rendered dilithium crystals inert, destroying all dilithium-dependent ships in a single stroke. As a result, Starfleet and the Federation all but crumbled overnight, leaving systems and planets prey to slavers and opportunists like the Orion-run Emerald Chain. Burnham had to find allies and connect with what’s left of the Federation, but first she had to find the Discovery, which somehow hadn’t followed the same flight path into the future as she had.

Though I missed the characters that drew me to the series in the first place—Captain Christopher Pike (the delectable Anson Mount of HELL ON WHEELS) and Spock of Vulcan (Ethan Peck)—this third season had plenty of new features (and characters) to keep me intrigued. The writers, though, made a couple of boneheaded mistakes that belong more in fan fiction than on national television.

The gentle Kelpien Saru (Doug Jones), for example, may be a fan favorite, but he is NOT captain material, as he showed multiple times this season. (Remember that episode of Classic TREK when Kirk was split into Nice Kirk and Evil Kirk and Nice Kirk made a lousy captain? Yeah. That’s Saru.) The writers did fix this mistake by the end of the season, in a very satisfying way (I won’t tell you how in case you haven’t seen it.)

But they allowed another major error to stand. You can never, ever, make an ensign First Officer, as they did here. As most of us know who have a military background, there is a command hierarchy that must be followed. People advance in their careers through the ranks. And an ensign is the lowliest officer rank aboard ship. Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) has been an ensign for the duration of the show and saved the ship multiple times. (In that way, she’s the very definition of a Mary Sue, the minor female character in fan fiction that takes an overblown role.) I’m sure she’s a fan favorite. Please, for God’s sake, promote her. But don’t make her the First Officer, who answers only to the Captain.

At least that captain is now Michael Burnham, who, despite her flaws, has a commanding presence.

Cheers, Donna

 

 

 

 

 

STAR TREK: DISCOVERY: PUZZLING BUT WORTH IT

I had a genuine fangirl squeee! moment at the end of the long weekend of the Shore Leave Science Fiction convention in Towson, Maryland this summer. It’s taken me a while to tell you about it, dear readers, because I’m not usually a squee-ing fangirl, but also because I needed to have a bit more context for what was mostly a personal experience at the time. We’ll get to the context in a minute.

You see, I got to meet both Anson Mount, the actor who plays Captain Christopher Pike, and Ethan Peck, who plays in Spock, in STAR TREK: DISCOVERY on CBS All Access. I actually had an extended discussion with Ethan about his grandfather, actor Gregory Peck, his family history and a variety of other topics over the course of about two hours. He was charming and approachable, and, I have to say, our talk was the best ending to a con weekend ever!

Ethan Peck as Spock

Up to the moment I met these two very lovely actors, I’d been equivocating about shelling out the money to add yet another streaming service to my monthly TV bill just to see the latest iteration of TREK. But, of course, once I’d met them, I had to see them in action, so I ponied up. (One word of caution if you’re thinking of doing the same thing: if you already have Amazon Prime Video, use that service to sign up for CBS All Access. The CBS streaming service is extremely wonky, where Prime Video is smooth and without kinks, even streaming the CBS content. Don’t ask me why this is so; I’m not an engineer.)

Now we get to the heart of this post. After streaming all the episodes of both seasons of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY, I’m really not sure what to make of it. And, what’s more, I have no idea where they can go from here, here being the last episode, which [SPOILER ALERT] leaves the good ship Discovery 930 years in the future from its original stardate, which was decades before the Five-Year Mission of The Original Series. Oh, and through a wormhole into another, uh, dimension? Place? God knows.

As Jim Kirk was wont to say, time travel gives me a headache.

Before we get to the problems with the series, let me say that there is a lot to like about it. The lead characters are intriguing, particularly the heroine, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green). (Yes, her name is Michael. Why? I don’t know.) There is an endearing/annoying intern-soon-to-be ensign, Sylvia Tilley (Mary Wiseman), who comes perilously close to embodying the dreaded Mary Sue of fan fic days. She grows on you, though.

I also love a villain-turned-heroine Phillipa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) from the Mirror Universe of TOS fame. Sarek and Amanda, Spock’s parents from TOS universe play prominent roles. And, once we get to the second season, Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and Spock (Ethan Peck) make their appearances.

There was a time in the TREK world when “pandering” to the fans was disdained. Brannon Braga, producer of STAR TREK: NEXT GENERATION, in fact, bragged that he had never watched even one episode of TOS. Not so with Alex Kurtzman, Bryan Fuller, and Michelle Paradise (joining the showrunners this season), who make a conscious effort to harken back to the series’ origins. There are brilliant echoes of TOS episodes in ST:D’s second season, particularly surrounding the tragic and self-sacrificing Captain Pike. In Anson Mount’s hands, Pike becomes a fully-formed character, one that is only hinted at in TOS’s The Cage/The Menagerie.

Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike

You could even say some of this mining of the gold of TOS hints at *gasp* fan fiction! After all, that is what we fan fic writers used to do when we took a thread of an episode, pulled at it and used it to weave a whole new tale. But, guess what? Fans LOVE those new tapestries woven from the old threads. I’m glad someone finally figured that out.
 

You know what else fans love? Romance, that’s what! There’s plenty of that here, too, though the happy ever after part is still a bit beyond the ken of mostly male television writers. Keep working at it, fellas, you’ll get there.

Diversity is one thing ST:D has gotten right 100 per cent. With a woman of color in the lead, a gay couple with a prominent storyline and lots of aliens scattered on the bridge, the ship actually looks like the future, as it should.

Still, the plot lines leave something to be desired. That is the problem with a prequel set before the Five-Year Mission of TOS. U.S.S. Discovery has a new kind of jump drive that we’ve never seen before. (I won’t explain—you wouldn’t believe me anyway!) And cloaking technology, too. That violates several instances of “canon,” the set of guidelines derived from TOS and the original movies that creates the boundaries of the TREK universe. (For the uninitiated, Kirk’s Enterprise uses warp drive, and Kirk himself had to steal the cloaking tech from the Klingon’s in an episode of TOS.) And I won’t reveal the biggest WTF of all, to be found in the backstory of the series’ heroine Michael Burnham.

On Discovery, with Commander Michael Burnham, right

All these questions have to be resolved somehow for the series to be a proper prequel to TOS. I don’t fully buy the resolution we’re given in the final episode of Season Two. Then, too, we’re to believe Discovery is just out there somewhere doing its thing 930 years on in Season Three. Hmm. That may be a leap of faith much greater than any jump drive can take me. But for now I'm willing to go along for the ride.

OUT FOR A WEEK, THEN BACK FOR MORE TV REVIEWS

I'll be on vacation at the beach next week, provided Hurricane Dorian has left anything of one particular South Carolina beach for me to enjoy. Edisto Island was right in the hurricane's path, like a lot of the southeast coast, so we have to wait and see if we have a vacation spot to go to. In the meantime, I have a couple of recommendations to make for new SF and fantasy shows to watch from the safety of your own home. Watch for that in two weeks!
   
Cheers, Donna