Category: Television

V The Original Miniseries on Syfy

I have not watched V: The Original Miniseries since I was about six years old when it originally aired. I remember the excitement of the story and my wanting to fight alongside Mike Donovan against The Visitors.

This morning, I am watching it on Syfy Network for the first time in over 27 years. It is far more interesting and layered than I had thought it was. This is not to say that it does not suffer from cliches and other problems.

V’s anti-scientism (lucrative research grants–ha) and fascism are the most interesting aspects of the story that I do not remember from my much earlier viewing of the series. As I learned from the Wikipedia entry for the show, the original form of V was not science fiction, but instead, a warning against the easy transition to fascism in modern society. Apparently, science fiction was seen as a way to capitalize on the popularity of Star Wars while engaging a public viewership that television executives considered not capable of engaging the subtleties of fascism in a more realistic (no aliens) narrative.

The first part just finished, and now I am watching part two. Donovan has just escaped from the mothership, and the resistance has re-captured him walking alone. Back to the show . . .

Live blogging before V: The Final Battle comes on, which I will miss since I have to teach this afternoon.

The Resistance makes their coordinated move. Talk of other cells earlier in the show.

Donovan back aboard the mothership. The Visitors want our water. How does V relate to Battle: Los Angeles? Humans put in stasis. Influence on The Matrix? Creating an army to fight The Visitor’s enemy. Human beings will serve as fodder for The Visitors, too. Fascism within the The Visitors’ society–their leader is a charismatic leader. Diana’s authorized medical experimentation.

“My grandfather fought with Zapata.”

“How about it, man? Are ya game?” “Hey, I’m proud to have you as a friend.” Yes, Visitors and humans can be friends.

Sancho fires back.

Attack on the mountain base camp of the Resistance.

Commercial break.

“C’mon Sancho, nail that sucker.”

“I will, but I need a little luck.” Donovan pulls out his LA Dodgers ball cap.

There is no room for diplomacy–reinforcements arrive with weapons at the basecamp–stored inside a garbage truck.

Slowmotion shot–shit gets real in the battle for the basecamp. Julie goes into action. “Do something please.” She stands alone with a handgun firing on Diana’s ship. Instead of being a doctor, she becomes a soldier.

Donovan pulls in behind Diana’s ship–damages the ship and Diana’s human face.

Robert Maxwell’s wife pays for Robert’s deal with the Visitors. He almost kills himself, thinking he has lost his wife and chlidren, but he puts his wife’s pistol down when he discovers his children have survived the camp raid that was his fault.

“We may have to sacrifice those thousands to save millions–millions!” –Julie

Donovan isn’t so sure about Julie’s metric of sacrifice.

Robin is going to be a teenage mom with a Vistor’s baby.

Donovan’s mother is a ‘survivor.’ She is a collaborator. “You can’t survive at the expense of other people.” –Donovan. He is obviously from an affluent family.

Maxwell goes back to the Bernstein’s, asking to use their house as a safe house. Leonardo’s last letter to his family–he and his experience in the Holocaust forms the moral center for the narrative. Mr. Bernstein has learned his lesson from his father, who died at the hands of The Visitors.

The Resistance begins sending a mathematical signal to outer space in the hopes of contacting the Visitor’s enemy. Large transmitters seem like an obvious target . . .

Up next: V: The Final Battle. I hope that I can see it soon.

Watching Star Wars Tech on History Channel International

I am watching Star Wars Tech on History Channel International right now. It is a fun television program that questions the possibility and veracity of imaginative technologies in the six Star Wars films. It is informative and interesting, but it is disappointing to hear the scientists depicted as universal grammarians. Programs like this one place the emphasis of science fiction on the prophetic possibilities of technology and science in the narrative rather than the broader implications of the story and its relationship to the here-and-now. This isn’t to say that there shouldn’t be programs like this one–I quite enjoy watching it. However, I would like to see more programs that study the cultural significance of science fiction.

Michio Kaku, Sci Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible, and My Early Readings in Physics

Another good show on the Science Channel is Dr. Michio Kaku‘s Sci Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible. In each episode, Dr. Kaku investigates a single science fiction idea (e.g., the technological singularity, Transformers robotic beings, or building your own solar system) and speculates about how humanity could achieve those plans. In the episode that is on right now, about solar system construction, he does calculations to show that you cannot built a Dyson sphere, a superstructure that encapsulates a star to harness all of its energy, with only the materials found in our solar system. On the surface (a pun?), I had not considered this as a limitation to the construction of such a structure. However, he then considers the possibility of using graphene, an allotrope or special molecular bonding structure of carbon that has a super strong honeycomb structure. Additionally, graphene’s strength allows it to be very thin, thus requiring less material. Therefore, graphene could be used to construct a Dyson swarm or sphere given that the planets in a solar system are carbon rich.

During the show, he interviews science fiction fans for ideas, and then, he works through these ideas with scientists at universitiesHis explanations are fascinating and insightful. I like the way that fans are engaged through brainstorming and opinions as Dr. Kaku arrives at his solution to the episode’s problem. This is one aspect of science fiction that goes beyond the stories themselves as prophetic visions. Fandom is the meta-level discourse that, in part, explores the what-if or is-this-possible aspects of science fiction. It is this meta-level discussion that Dr. Kaku’s show engages.

I have long been a fan of Dr. Kaku. In my senior year of high school, after reading Albert Einstein’s Relativity: The Special and General Theories, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, and Kip Thorne’s Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy among others, I read his book Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension. This was when I was a physics-geek rather than a lit-geek. I had finished two interviews for MIT, and I had won my high school’s Physics prize in my Junior year. I was energized not only by the amazing science that Kaku described in his popularization, but I was also intrigued by his life leading up to becoming a theoretical physicist. While I was in my teens learning how to work on cars with my 1965 Ford Mustang and optimizing memory usage on my and my friend’s computers, Dr. Kaku in his teens had built his own particle accelerator in his family’s garage complete with electromagnetic confinement rings and vacuum pumps! I suppose the life of the scientist is almost as interesting to me as the science. Also, the writing was important for Kaku and other popularizers from Einstein to the present. I appreciated the way in which they and Kaku could present an engaging narrative that also told me about the advances taking place and the imaginative conjectures proposed in the physical sciences. Perhaps I should have recognized then that I might not have been pursuing the best career path when I tried out for the MIT and Georgia Tech physics programs.

At least now, I feel more comfortable with what I am doing as a English literature PhD candidate. In the way that I approach literature, I look at the relationships between science, technology, and culture, because I believe that our exploration of and engineering of the world is absolutely necessary to our understanding of ourselves. Our science shapes our understanding of the world, and our technology shapes our engagement and mediation of the world. Even the most mundane narrative, past or present, is indelibly marked by the traces of our science and technology. It is exciting to approach the humanities in this broadly interdisciplinary approach, because it reveals more ways to read and understand humanity than a limited or narrowly defined humanities approach. However, I am not advocating the erasure of those approaches, but I am saying that interdisciplinary approaches energize and expand our comprehension and appreciation of humanity and our work.

An Idiot Abroad

I just watched the penultimate episode of Karl Pilkington’s An Idiot Abroad where he travels to Peru and Machu Picchu. Since Y and I got cable TV, I have eagerly looked forward each week to this program created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant on the Science Channel. In each episode, Gervais and Merchant pick a new great wonder of the world for Karl to visit in the hopes that the process of visiting these places and interacting with peoples around the world that Karl may become a more cosmopolitan person rather than the provincial person he seems to be. Next week at 10PM on the Science Channel is the series finale, but there is talk that there will be a second series that focuses on Karl’s ‘bucket list.’

[Warning to Safari users: the Science Channel’s An Idiot Abroad website crashes Safari every time that I visit it. I would suggest using another browser to access that site.]