Simon T. Kaye

Don't worry, this isn't the Enterprise

 My dad introduced me to Star Trek. As a child, my brain was quickly filled up with the incredible idealism, aspiration and earnest good-nature at the heart of the show. I loved it. I loved the original series best of all, but the others were just great, too. I memorised the technical manual. I subscribed to the ‘Fact Files’ for years (though they contained very few ‘facts’).

Voyager was the beginning of the end for this love-affair. Maybe it was just a matter of timing – maybe I started to see how often the plots were being recycled, got to that stage in adolescence where cynicism overpowers optimism. The films took a turn for the worse, as well. Enterprise… well, Enterprise just had an appalling theme tune. I’ve been secretly trying to chew my way through the supposedly less-awful third season for a while now, and it’s tough going.

To cut to the chase, I lost interest. Th0ugh whole sectors of my brain remain dedicated to the layout of Deck 17’s Jeffrey’s Tubes and the middle name of Picard’s brother’s wife’s Tribble, I felt alienated from the show and the films. It seemed stolid, unrealistic, badly written and lazy. And to think that I could have learnt a language instead (no, I don’t count Klingon).

So just as it’s impossible to explain fully what a Star Trek obsession meant to this bullied little boy, it’s very hard to outline quite what put me off, either. But my dad? He was there before me, and he stuck around after I moved on as well. So it was clearly paramount (phnarr) that he and I see this latest entry together.

Let me try to put this in context: dad wore a T-shirt to the screening. On this T-shirt: a massive front-and-back image of Quark the Ferengi’s snaggle-toothed face, and a bit of text outlining some of the Rules of Acquisition. My dad can put most geeks to shame. He’s been doing it for a lot longer, to be fair.

A curious fact: out of all Star Trek, the original series has aged the least. It’s design ethic and budget are so clearly from a different age of television that the clunk and quirk that seem inexcusable in the more recent series are instantly forgiven. The writing is fantastic in places, some of the science fiction ideas are real classics, and the central triumvirate of Kirk, Spock and McCoy (the holy trinity; the warrior, the mage and the cleric; the ego, the superego and the id) still sparkles on today.

It’s these mechanics that the new film had to live up to, really: the emotional and science-fiction heart of Trek that has kept the first series fresh for decades. Or so I thought. (I’m actually moving into a review now, honest).

This film has no ’science fiction’ in it. It’s purest fantasy. There’s no exploration of philosophy, future politics, moral dilemmas or the like. And it doesn’t spend a hell of a lot of time developing characters, either. This is not the film of the original series. This is, in fact, the film that would be made from the original series if there had never been any films or spin-offs.

Draw a line right after the last episode of Season 3 of Kirk’s adventures. Or perhaps after Spock’s death in the Wrath of Khan. (Or, okay, just after the end of the third film). Now build a movie.

What’s the upshot? It makes Star Trek magical again. I’m not going to witter on about how it relates to the post-Obama optimism of a new era or helps us forget our credit-crunched woes. It’s a good film because it has surprising reverence for the mythology that gives Trekkers wet-dreams  – and successfully translates the stylistic and historical essence of Trek into a modern, self-aware cinematic language.

For the record, I’m wondering if this is the first in-universe reboot in the history of cinema. We are tied to the timeline we remember, and all deviations from it are excused, in one elegant sweep of J.J.Abrams’ pen. It’s the best possible utilisation and acceptance of everything that’s come before: this is the timeline that we want. It’s the utopia, Dr Pangloss’s best of all possible worlds. Our understanding of all other Star Trek forms the emotional weight for this reboot.

This is just as well, because the film could use another ten minutes of character moments and dialogue. Who thought that anyone would ever write that about a Star Trek film?

Any other problems? Well, the Macguffins arguably fly a little too thick and too fast. There are few attempts to make plausible the ‘magical’ parts of the plot. What the hell is this ‘red matter’? I understand the appeal of just being shown what it can do, and the urgent need to minimise on technobabble. But… it’s unsatisfying. Similarly, our Romulan baddie, while overall very competently played by Eric Bana, seems to have minimal motivation for chasing Spock through time and blowing up whole worlds, Death-Star style (by the way, I love that his ship is just some miner in the future and it can totally outgun everything in Kirk’s era. I also love the idea of destroying a planet by making a big hole in it and planting a black hole). Yes, Romulus was destroyed. But Spock tried to save it. It’s not enough to say that you’ve spent a couple of decades “forgetting normal life”.

I have every expectation that this sort of problem is solved by the accompanying prequel comic-books, but the film ought to sort out motivations properly, at least.

Spock is more emotional in this film than in his previous incarnations. The attempt to explain this seems to be based on his fundamental decision to go to Starfleet instead of try for the Kohlinar, the ceremony that’s supposed to eradicate emotion altogether. But it’s still a departure. In fact, of all the new actors approaches to the classic roles, I think I find Zachary Quinto’s the most difficult to swallow.

But I’m nitpicking really. This is a great film, and it’s clearly being positioned to replace Star Wars and fill that yawning gap for big budget sci-fi adventures. It’s charming and funny.

I love that Kirk’s cheat on the Kobayashi-Maru is finally shown to us. I love that the new Enterprise is gorgeous. I love the way the film starts with a bang, and ends with an awesome version of the original theme tune (thanks, mr. Giacchino). I look forward to the rest of the trilogy (please please please).

Last word: my dad, more suspicious of this ‘rebooting’ nonsense than I, said that he loved it. Let’s just trust him on that.

So here are couple of things I want to write aloud about. They interest me enough to drag me out of the hermetically-sealed Study Capsule into which I have intentionally interred myself for the duration of this final term of undergraduate study. Let me tell you what these things are, let me tell you why.

The first thing isn’t really a big thing, and it certainly isn’t a new thing. But when did there start to be just so much television programming about… television programmes?

The second thing is big and startling. It is that something original has happened on ITV. I’m not talking about introducing a presenter to News broadcasts, that was decades ago. For the second time in its history, ITV has done something original with its programming.

So let’s think about this astonishing post-modern reflexiveness that’s inflicted itself on the television media over the past- well, five years or so? I don’t really know. It probably started with one of those fly-on-the-wall documentaries that was so popular in the 90s. And don’t forget the shows that popped up to mock those- I’m talking about Chris Morris, with the Day Today and Brasseye. They were focussed on News, Current Affairs and Documentary spoofing, granted, but a more self-aware comedy show hasn’t been produced since.

Until now, that is. But we can come back to Moving Wallpaper.

So we woke up to how incredibly contrived TV news really was as Chris Morris orchestrated a war between Australia and Britain, just so he could use the shiny new WAR!!! graphic on his current affairs show. And maybe this is what started the trend. Big Brother became boring to me after two series or so, and I can only assume that the rest of mankind is just four of five years behind me. But then Big Brother’s Little Brother came onto the scene.

A little Montel/Kilroy thing, half an hour long, with people talking about… nothing. I honestly thought Chris Morris had struck again, only too subtly to be funny. Is this a kind of a Seinfeld thing? No. It’s a show about another show. If the other show didn’t exist, this one wouldn’t either. And… it’s popular. The new(ish) digital channels proved to be a perfect venue  for these televisual nonentities, and soon they were everywhere. Each Reality TV programme had (and has) its very own companion-piece, a few seconds later and just a channel-flick away.

And then came Doctor Who Anonymous. Material that would otherwise (and rightly) have been consigned to a DVD special edition or slick website was suddenly thrust out as a part of the main event. Like the cartoon they used to show before the main feature at the movies only, you know, a bit shit.

Perhaps something similar has been happening in the USA. I can’t claim to be that up to date with it all. But I do know about Aaron Sorkin’s abortive, disappointing and unctuous Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Don’t we all! The man who created the west wing got to work with two of the most entertaining american language-comedians… and decided to mop up the two dozen or so plot lines he had left over for the West Wing when he left that instead of actually telling us something interesting about his new characters; instead of telling us a story. The language was great. Nothing else was. But here’s something worth pointing out: a dramedy about the creation of television. Just like its (much better) estranged, battling brother: 30 Rock.

Oh how we laughed. Not just at the smart funnies, the slapstick, the timing and Alec Baldwyn. At the coincidences. Because 30 is, like, half of 60. And Rock is for Rockefeller Plaza and the Sunset Strip is a place as well. It’s TOO WEIRD.

So America has its share of navel-gazing television material. Exactly half of it is brilliant, and accordingly will keep on getting made. Law of the JUNGLE.

So, given all of this, what do you think is the least likely television network to take notice of a zeitgeist, to extrapolate it, to have a genuinely brilliant idea and execute it at high speed? ITV?

Well, it’s a funny old world. Obama lost New Hampshire. David Davis lost the Tory Leadership. And ITV created Moving Wallpaper and Echo Beach.

If you’re not familiar, the concept is, like all good concepts, incredibly simple. Echo Beach is a moderately racy soap opera. Moving Wallpaper is the half-hour comedy about the team that creates it. Who really created both? Kudos, naturally, the production company responsible for practically every decent new fiction to be found on British TV these days (can you say Life on Mars?).

So in this first episode, for example, Moving Wallpaper showed the creation of the Echo Beach pilot, and ended at the exact moment that the writers and producers sat down together to watch it air. Queue brief ad-break to herald the return of News at Ten next monday, and we’re into the action at Echo Beach.

This stuff works best when we can wiggle into the sofa and congratulate ourselves for belonging to the club. The genius here is that Kudos has already generated the kind of in-jokes and knowing winks that most shows would need half a dozen episodes to set in motion. A wry comment in Moving Wallpaper about sticking someone in a miniskirt? There she is in the background. A funny moment with a child actor being made to cry? She’s howling in Echo Beach. A desperate actress gives an executive a blow job to get to say one line in Echo’s pub. And there she is, saying it, milking it (is that good acting or bad acting? Who knows?) and then instantly eclipsed by two other minor characters.

Moving Wallpaper is the clever half of the relationship. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not brilliant. It has an awfully long way to go before it can live up to its promise. But our protagonist is a somewhat likeable Simon Cowell impersonator. And they’re making an effort to make little jokes, and there’s no laughter track. It’s trying so hard! Impossible not to be a little wooed. Now they just need to tell their worse actors to do what bad american actors do- say it fast, and at least you’ll come across as quick and smart.

It’s the perennial problem of British TV: for whatever reason, we’re incredibly short of decent actors. Everything always seems as though it ought to be on stage. It troubles Moving Wallpaper. It completely blights Echo Beach.

Martine McCutcheon is almost certainly an absolute sweetheart, but she’s desperately unconvincing. Echo quickly reveals its hand- this isn’t clever meta-telly at all; it’s a cynical answer to Channel 4’s Hollyoaks and, latterly and more pressingly, Skins (Skins may be edgier, but it’s also stupider. It’s alienating me and almost everyone who isn’t over 30 or under 14, because we KNOW that high school is nothing like that).

It’s basically The O.C. set in Cornwall. And it’s exactly as dumb as that sentence looks. It also completely fails to make up for this, Californication-style, by including loads of sex, despite the fact that it airs after the watershed. It’s a pity, because if it was just a little more rubbish it could be merrily accepted as an intentionally bad appendix to the otherwise rather watchable Moving Wallpaper.

But both shows have time to improve. We can find out tomorrow night if they do, when the second episodes air on ITV1. In the meantime, let’s celebrate a really very, very clever idea. And mourn that it wasn’t made in America first.

Apologies for the lack of update lately. Here’s something I just ran across, just to keep you sweet until I have more free time. To my mind it’s the best thing that Canadian director David Cronenberg ever put together, a little piece entitled ‘Camera’ originally produced for one film festival or another. Enjoy.

Well, it’s got to be better than History of Violence, right?

I shall write again soon- thinking of starting a sort of TV reviews roundup thing. Though I suppose there are plenty of other sites out there doing the same thing, I really feel the need to write a bit about the British stuff, which tends to be a touch under-represented.

… to the UK, and how. The first season ended on such a high; a sequence of episodes which included the high political maneuverings of Caesar, the omens of his destruction, the single most gory arena battle ever committed to celluloid, the rending of a family by infidelity, the incestuous seduction of a future emperor…

 It’s wonderful, really. Rome is interesting because it decides to be absolutely as historically accurate as it possibly can in the most weird places- setting and period detail, backdrops and sets, cultural taboos and sexual mores, while paying very little attention to the actual accepted narrative of the era it portrays. And it really does work; it feels authentic enough for us to suspend our disbelief even as it re-renders an ancient story to fit its medium.

And this is nothing new; when Shakespeare was writing his great Roman plays, he certainly only paid cursory attention to actual alliances and facts as they were then understood. When Robert Graves wrote I, Claudius- in every sense Rome’s precursor- He put his audience ahead of some bookish obsession with absolute historical accuracy. See also the new Thermopylae film, 300.

It shows an acceptance of several important points: firstly, the greatness of these original stories, these narrative inheritances, is in their themes, not their facts. The stories of Troy and Alexander, Persia, Greece and Rome are the templates upon which a narrative tradition was founded. They are blueprints, their earlier incarnations (when history was not so clearly delineated from story) as subjective as the more recent attempts to turn the past into art and entertainment (hopefully a bit of both at the same time).

Implicitly, this kind of production displays a snippet of real wisdom: that any attempt at a historical drama is immediately and automatically divorced from the literal facts of its historical context. And this does not need to be a bad thing. Historians themselves are only ever working with second-hand, subjective material. There is no ‘primary source’ which was never itself secondary Not even the buried stones of an ancient culture are immune from the fact that they were crafted.

So let’s enjoy a bit of modern, artistically driven historical truth; the kind of truth that resides in Rome’s hilariously undiluted attitude to sex (“I’m not leaving this bed until I’ve fucked something.” “Fine! Go and fetch that German slut from the kitchen…”), or in Rome’s playful references to the still-popular version of events propagated by Shakespeare (“It wasn’t a bad speech, Brutus… maybe a bit cerebral for that crowd…”).

And, best of all, it’s beautifully written, passionately performed, seductively filmed and has absolutely glorious production values.

Rome Season 2 Episode 1 repeats on the BBC tonight a little before midnight. Watch it.

The five-part BBC documentary, closely associated with the similarly themed, titled and authored book, ended last night. And, by all that is holy, it’s the first documentary in some years not mainly involving whales that I’ve felt driven to watch every last minute of.

In attempting to tackle a broad-brush history of the years since the war in a primarily political way, the most obvious comparison is with fellow ex-journo Peter Hennessy’s The Prime Minister: The Office and Its Holders Since 1945, a slightly older book. The bearing is similar, even if Marr’s work is more ostensibly a popular history than Hennessy’s. Even the political alignment is identically portrayed (in that it is hardly portrayed at all- good to see), both histories littered with semi-personal anecdotes (Hennessy’s constant references to events that simply must have been disclosed to him in some shady curry-house just off parliament square, tie still loose from the struggles of the lobby; Marr’s mentioning last night of his own immediate- and flawed- reaction to the swift “victory” in Iraq).

But Marr’s vision is clearer, if more vague; his hypothesis more interesting, and his presentation more charismatic. Based upon the documentary along, Andrew Marr’s is the better history.

I like Andrew Marr. I think many people do. He has a gift for images, for easily relatable metaphors which somehow always stop short of being patronising- comparing the British-Scottish union to a pizza being pulled apart, but still connected by molten cheese, or describing the heady, commercial ‘loadsamoney!’ days of the 80s as ‘like being properly drunk for the first time’.

And of course, Marr has a pretty interesting perspective on the last fifty years or so. He has served as a newsroom hack, a lobby correspondent, the editor of a broadsheet (back when the Independent was a broadsheet), the BBC’s political editor, and now a roving, quasi-historian with a penchant for accessibly intellectual radio and television programming and friendly interviews with VIPS on sunday mornings. His Scottish origins and very English current existence come into play as well; with the Scottish Nationalists in power and talk of a referendum on Union membership, Andrew Marr speaks of cheese stretched between two slices of pizza with a degree of personal certainty. Andrew Marr, you see, is the Mozzarella.

This documentary was also an attempt at mythologisation; at crafting a popular, unitary narrative from the thousands of strands of an increasingly complex national history. Marr sticks his fingers into all sorts of pies, discussing the fortunes of British cinema as if it has a real, causal bearing on the flow of the story of the British People. And usually- usually- he pulls it off.

There is the feeling that Andrew Marr desperately wants to understand the changes this country’s been through for himself; the way that the economy was changed, the opening of the gates to globalisation, even the threat of the greenhouse effect. This is a journalist’s personal attempt to come up with some sort of unified field theory for his own recent history.

The transition from career journalist to historian is frequently attempted, if commonly failed. Someone once wrote that the newspapers are the first draft of history; to Marr, as to so many others, it must seem the most natural thing in the world to have a crack at the second draft, as well. Or even the third. Marr chose wisely in writing first about himself, and then the history of his own profession in My Trade, which is excellent reading for anyone.

Complaints? The series was too short. Covering six decades of history in a total of five hours is a tall order for anyone. That’s about one year of history for every five minutes of screen-time; clearly inadequate. The problem with this approach is that the emphasis has to become about what is ommitted rather than what is included. For example, the last programme was full of implicit criticism of Blair’s foreign record, but it never once mentioned Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, or Bosnia. Picking the quote that matches the story is a journalistic, rather than historical, practice.

Nevertheless, this was some of the most compelling documentary work that I’ve seen for some time. Not enough is done to catalogue the years following World War 2- especially given the hours upon hours of documentaries devoted to that conflict. Andrew Marr’s excellent new series was a good first step in addressing this deficiency.

Well, I needed a few days to think things through- not just about that epic final double-bill, but the way the whole season now stands in the light of its events.  And of course, the real challenge will be in doing this without any spoilers. Hummm.

Season 3 was incredibly disjointed, in some ways. It really was. The six-episode mini season thing at the beginning only sort of worked, let’s be honest. The truly memorably stand-out from those was of course The Cost of Living, which simply rang every bell that the best of Season 1 had, though staying with the somewhat unsatisfactory season 2 pattern of saying absolutely nothing of any interest for four episodes and then stuffing half a season’s worth of revelation into 45 minutes.

I was absolutely terrified for the show’s future at that point, I can remember. The emphasis seemed to have shifted to the power-plays between various groups on the island rather than the central mysteries. Moreover, they were using silly ways of addressing big stuff left hanging from the Season 2 finale. Again, the word has to feel disjointed. Disjointed, disjointed.

The writing was, with a few notable exceptions, failing to reach the Season 1 highs. The trend had been set in Season 2- instead of showing, Lost was telling.  The elegance and the naturalism of the writing and the dialogue was somewhere being lost, the subtlety sacrificed to exposition of the clunkiest kind. The writers clearly wished to be able to appeal to a new audience, since the viewing figures were descending and ABC was messing with screening times.

But I can’t say how reassuring, how impactful and intriguing and exciting the last four or five (or even six or seven) episodes have been. It’s high time for all you folks who lost the faith to suck it and see again. The particular, structural alteration revealed at the very end of the Season 3 finale I think is a masterstroke; I can only hope that the mechanism is used with similar skill in future. Those of you who have seen it know exactly what I’m talking about. Also, the return of a perennial mysterious character as double-act with Locke is exceedingly welcome.

The fact is, the show had to change. Deep down, we all knew it did. Season 1 was where the fun was easy and the gains immediate: introduction, surprise, random and strange things, self-contained episodes, big themes, boys-own adventures. But it couldn’t last forever. Thematically, the show had to progress the very second a few answers- or the keys to answers- were given away. Season 2 saw many of those growing pains. And the second half of the third season is where the payoff began.

I suggest that everyone catches up immediately.

There. No spoilers. It can be done.

Dear Lost,

Well, here we are again. Looks like you even listened to me, tried to make a few changes after my last letter. Of course I was on the rebound from the West Wing then, I made some demands. I’m glad you listened despite how pushy I sounded.

People are losing interest in you. Oh, I know what you say, that all the people who loved you… years ago now, when you first turned up and there was just nothing in the world quite like you… All those people are still there. Just you work to a different timetable now, and they’ve stopped making the room in their lives. But, Lost, if they really loved you- loved you like I do- they’d work to be with you. Just to be with you.

But the fact is that you’ve changed. Some people just won’t be able to handle that. I didn’t think I could, for a while. But I pulled through. You had to adapt to survive. And some people would never have been happy. You couldn’t just keep piling questions upon questions, could you? But solve a mystery and you’ll always disappoint. We could always conjure up a better theory than the reality.

So it’s the bed you’ve made, Lost. And I just wanted to say that… well… I still love you. Despite being in a place where I can’t reach you now. I find a way. And everyone who appreciates the mystery, and even enjoys some of your solutions, will keep on finding a way.

But. There’s a But here. You can’t keep trying to cater to the newbies. You can’t keep telling instead of showing. Your script used to be SO GOOD. It’s not bad now… compared to the rest of the shows… but those heights of writing haven’t been reached since the end of season 1. Why does that have to be the way? Don’t you see it’s too late to attract a new audience? Aim to be the art you were, not the trademark you turned into. Remember your roots.

Faith pulls Reason back over the cliff-edge. Marvelous.

Think that way. Work that way. I’ll even be able to forgive the occasional, inevitable plot holes if you do.

Because I love you; your strong acting, your massive production values, your unreasonably high quantity of attractive female castaways, your clever, referential soundtrack, your quasi-spiritual ruminations. It was good to see a show where everybody had an agenda, and it still is. I love your monsters, your technologies and your fantasies, your conspiracy theories, your name-dropping of philosophers, your constant backstory cons, your commentary on political orientations. I love your “No! No! Oh God!” moments.

Fact is, you never needed J.J.Abrams. He used you then cast you aside like a whore.

All you need is me.

Lots of love,

Every Lost fan ever.