Charlie's Choice

At about the 20-minute mark of "Charlie X," young Charlie Evans plays a very short, one-sided game of three-dimensional chess against Mister Spock. Charlie plays white, Spock black. Spock defeats Charlie in a couple of moves: "Checkmate." Charlie, who's not very mature because of his alien upbringing, throws a verbal tantrum, shouting irrationally, "No, it's not!" Spock, unflappable, walks out. 

A moment later, Charlie focuses his rage on the chessboard, using uncanny psychic powers to melt about half of the pieces. 

Despite having seen this episode probably a half-dozen times, this time I noticed an interesting detail: Charlie only melts the white pieces--his own pieces. He may have refused to acknowledge Spock's victory with words, but by melting his own pieces, Charlie shows the audience that he knows the truth; he lost because he wasn't smart enough to beat his opponent. By melting his own pieces instead of Spock's Charlie shows us that along with all his other emotional difficulties, he's prone to self-loathing. 

Throughout the episode, Charlie says he wants people to like him, but that somehow he always "gets things wrong." He doesn't understand human social mores, having spent the first 17 years of his life with benevolent but distinctly non-human, unknowable aliens--the aliens who gave him the powers Charlie needed to survive after he was marooned without parents on their world. The aliens who come to take him back to their world, not out of malice, but to protect the galaxy from Charlie, who has unlimited power but not the sense of responsibility to use that power wisely. 

"Charlie X" is already one of Star Trek's most tragic and moving episodes, and taking a closer look at that short-lived game of chess increases the pathos. 
 

Alert Condition: YELLOW

Lego's TOS bridge set includes some neat easter eggs, including your choice of alert condition lights for the top centre of the astrogation station, represented as a cheese wedge brick in translucent clear, yellow, or red. I've used the yellow brick here and added a light glow with Photoshop to indicate that Kirk has taken the ship to yellow alert for some reason. Poor Chekov and McCoy look alarmed, while Scotty seems concerned, too. Get down to engineering if you're that worried, Scotty! 
 

Where No Bricks Have Gone Before

For the very first time, I have a tiny representation of the bridge of the USS Enterprise in my office.

Building Lego's 1701 bridge took about six hours. It flew by at warp speed! A very fun, satisfying build. 

Naturally, the set came with 1,701 pieces. 

I really hope they'll release a Galileo shuttlecraft at minifigure scale. And we need more crew! 

Earth Trek

Steve Shives, one of my favourite YouTubers, posted an editorial today about how the end of the Cold War took away Star Trek's central metaphor, one that informed many episodes of the original series and the final original series movie in particular. He acknowledges that many excellent episodes of Star Trek have been made since then, but that they lack that one overriding and consistent structural allegory--one that links the fictional world to the real one. He then suggests that future showrunners would do well to take a look at the world and find a replacement central allegory, suggesting the rise of AI, the resurgence of fascist movements, and, naturally, climate change, our most urgent existential threat. 

Steve hints at this problem in his video, but I'm not sure how Star Trek could tackle climate change when they don't face a similar crisis--that is, one caused not by an external force, but our own bad decisions. One late episode of The Next Generation suggested that faster than light travel was an environmental threat, but that thread didn't last long before it was dropped, offscreen, by a technological solution. Not exactly a mirror to our existing situation! 


So imagine the next Star Trek show isn't a Star Trek show--that it's merely set in the same universe. It's not even a science fiction show, but a political drama, one that starts in the present day with as much real-world grounding as possible: Earth Trek--six seasons of drama taking us from 2030 to 2060, with five-year gaps between each season, from today to just before first contact with the Vulcans. 

With apologies to Kim Stanley Robinson, who came up with this idea in his 2020 novel The Ministry for the Future, imagine Earth Trek's pilot opens with the worst climate catastrophe humanity has yet faced. In Robinson's novel, it's a heat wave that kills millions in India, an event that finally wakes up humanity and causes some serious collective action. For the pilot, we could start with an even bigger climate disaster that impacts larger areas of the world, with tens of millions of casualties and catastrophic economic damage, enough to completely restructure the entire world political and social order--but instead of the decent outcome we get in Robinson's novel, the pilot ends with the limited nuclear war that we know happens sometime in the Star Trek timeline. The main characters we establish in the pilot--representing perspectives from every continent--all die. The title of the episode, revealed as the nuclear fire fades to black: 

THE HUMAN ADVENTURE IS OVER. 

Episode two, set the day after catastrophe, introduces the real main cast, again drawn from every continent. Each cast member represents and embodies a human reaction and response to the ultimate disaster. The first season of the show doesn't shy away from the horror of the situation, depicting the real human costs not just of climate change, but climate change on top of the death of hundreds of millions of people and catastrophic loss of infrastructure. Humanity is probably doomed, but for one factor: out of necessity, people finally come together, because cooperation means survival. By season's end, we see the shaky beginnings of a world actively looking for solutions and taking radical action to end selfishness and greed--by any means necessary. The focus of the first season is radically rethinking the global economy and distribution of wealth, with one purpose in mind: the survival of as many human beings as possible. 

Five years later, as the second season opens, we see the beginnings of progress. Much of the world still lies in ruins, and the skies, earth, and seas are still poisoned. Perhaps half of humanity has died. But there are no more wars, and as a species we've finally stopped using fossil fuels. (Demand is way down, which helps.) Enough key infrastructure has survived to allow trade and research to continue at a vastly reduced scale. This is not the world of Mad Max or The Road Warrior, at least not globally. Civilization hangs by a thread, but it still hangs. This season focuses on rethinking how we approach the human hierarchy of needs--how we meet them in a broken world, if we can at all. 

Five years later, season three. Genuine progress, and finally some stability. Life is hard, but life expectancy is climbing back upward. Basic research is prioritized, with the world's brightest minds working together with one purpose: to ensure humanity's survival and, if possible, to improve quality of life for humanity while repairing the biosphere. We invent true AI, with real guardrails; for good reason, we're paranoid now. All research, especially potentially dangerous research, is strictly controlled. Professionalism and dedication to duty isn't a virtue here--it's the bare minimum for every person who wants to survive. 

Five years later, season four. True AGI finally takes shape, and this new being draws on all of humanity's collective wisdom--and folly--to help humanity chart the path forward. Research and applications that would have taken us decades to accomplish alone are realized and utilized at breathtaking speed. 

Five and ten years later, seasons five and six--the next great crisis. Now that people are more comfortable and survival seems probable, we start falling back into old patterns. These two seasons describe the last cold war--and by season six, humanity is finally, if only shakily, ready to meet the civilizations of the stars. 

There you have it. Obviously I haven't gone so far as to plan a series bible, much less story outlines, but I think this might serve as the kind of framework Shives suggests. 

Addendum: Asked Gemini to create a title screen for the show, forgot I had it set on video generation. Sorry, planet! Oh, the irony. 

Simian Shelf Actualization

I'm going ape for my new movie shelves. 
 

A Minor Thrill from Thriller

 

From 1960 to 1962, Boris Karloff hosted Thriller, an anthology of suspense and horror stories. Midway through the first season, early in 1961, "The Hungry Glass" aired. It's a story about a young couple who buy an old mansion in Cape Caution, New England. As if that name weren't enough, the locals consider the mansion haunted, perturbed by the previous owners who removed all mirrors from the house. 

The new owners are played by William Shatner and Joanna Heyes; they're escorted to the mansion by their realtor and his wife--Russell Johnson and Elizabeth Allen. 

Before watching this episode, I had no idea that two actors so foundational to my tastes in popular culture had ever appeared in anything together. As Captain James T. Kirk and Professor Roy Hinkley, these two men left a strong impression on my young mind. Kirk was strong, compassionate, intelligent, decisive; the Professor was brilliant, inventive, curious, and somewhat gawky--a quality that I felt I shared. 

In "The Hungry Glass," the two characters played by Shatner and Hinkley start off friendly, then adversarial as the house starts to make Shatner paranoid. Haunted by his trauma from the Korean War, Shatner begins to see things--unexplainable double exposures in his photographs, faces in the glass. Hinkley manages to talk some sense into him--until Shatner's wife screams from upstairs. Shatner charges up and sees her being dragged into a mirror by ghosts. He grabs a poker and smashes the mirror, intending to chase after her--only to be stopped by Johnson, who reveals that Shatner, in his delerium, has actually killed his wife with the poker. 

Minutes later, as Johnson and his wife attempt to console Shatner, his wife's ghost appears in the upstairs window and beckons him forth; Shatner leaps through the window, to his death, to be with her. Johnson's wife faints, and he sees the ghosts of the doomed lovers; he carries his wife to safety. 

It's a grim, heartbreaking story, one that sees the violent dissolution of one marriage, two potentially close friendships (the two wives were becoming closer), and trauma for the survivors. Johnson and Shatner play off against each other really well. I wonder if anyone ever asked either of them what it was like to work together. I'd love to know. 

The Extra Special Guest Star

 Something occurred to me while watching the first and second seasons of Columbo. In multi-part film and television stories--basically all film and television stories save anthology series and stand-alone films without sequels--producers will often cast a stable of actors multiple times as different characters within those stories. 

In the James Bond films, for example, multiple actors have played characters such as M, Q, Moneypenny,  Bill Tanner, Felix Leiter, Blofeld--and even Bond himself. 

Roger Moore's Bond worked for two Ms, but neither he nor Moneypenny remarked upon their boss' change in appearance. Nor did Bernard Lee's M remark on Bond's change in appearance from On Her Majesty's Secret Service to Diamonds Are Forever to Live and Let Die. 

This is, of course, because characters are played by different actors in different productions all the time. We, the audience, don't remark on it, so why would the characters? 

Consider the inverted case: a guest actor appears several times during a television series, playing different roles. On Star Trek, for example, Diana Muldaur played Doctor Ann Mulhall in "Return to Tomorrow" and Doctor Miranda Jones in "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" Years later, she played Doctor Katherine Pulaski throughout the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. No character on either show confused Muldaur for any of the other characters she played within the same continuity. 

Of course. Same actress, different characters; in the shared universe of Star Trek, they're simply three distinct people who happen to look alike (to the eyes of the audience, at least). 

Forgive this rambling preamble; I'm aware that anyone who watches television or movies is well aware of the phenomena I've just described. 

But wouldn't it be fun if a creative team took advantage of our familiarity with the common practice of actors reappearing as different characters?  

Imagine, for example, Doctor Pulaski at the end of season two of Star Trek: The Next Generation. What if the good doctor had actually been Doctor Ann Mulhall the entire time, having faked her own death at some point between the 23rd and 24th centuries and given herself a new identity as Pulaski? Furthermore, what if, during the events of "Return to Tomorrow," Thalassa actually retained control of Mulhall's body and simply pretended to be her from that point forward? 

Imagine a two-part second season finale for TNG. In part one, Troi, working on a project with Pulaski more closely than usual, senses something off about the doctor. Furthermore, the doctor seems troubled by her conscience, and remarks on how old she feels--even though by 24th century standards she's in robust, middle-aged health. At the end of part one, during the course of a solo scientific mission in a shuttlecraft, she changes course and appears to be preparing to fly straight into a star. 

Part two opens as the TNG crew prevents Pulaski's suicide. Troi tries to counsel her, and naturally Riker, Picard, Data, and the others are concerned and reach out in different ways, trying to figure out what's gone wrong in Pulaski's life. 

The audience should be wondering too, because to us, she's Pulaski. By season's end, most viewers will have long forgotten that they remember Diana Muldaur from the original series. In fact, I'd wager 99% of viewers would be just as confused by Pulaski's actions and demeanor as the show's heroes. 

Finally, Pulaski lets slip a cryptic phrase, quoting some of her own words from "Return to Tomorrow:" "I told him oblivion together didn't frighten me. I lied." 

Then, a beat later, just before she successfully kills herself: "I'm not frightened anymore. Forgive me, Ann." 

For fans just familiar enough with Star Trek lore, the puzzle pieces should snap into place with what I hope would be dramatic impact. 

Our main characters are traumatized by all this--suicide being incredibly uncommon in the utopian world of the 24th century. In the episode's denoument, Troi and Data uncover Pulaski's past, reporting their findings to Captain Picard, who has to decide what to make of all this. The story of Mulhall/Thalassa/Pulaski is a triple-pronged tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, and a dark finale for the show's sophomore season. 

At the very least, I think this would have been better than "Shades of Grey." Plus, it would have given Doctor Beverly Crusher a powerful in-story reason to return--to be there for Picard and her other friends in the wake of such traumatic events. 

Twin Peaks Shadow Box

 Tonight I filled a shadow box with a few of the Twin Peaks items I've collected over the years. 

Taking Deep Space Nine and Voyager to the Next Level

In 2012, CBS released three episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray disc, with reach episode remastered in high definition. This was no mean feat, because the show was shot on film, but the episodes were edited on video, which effectively meant that any shots with special effects were, by their nature, restricted to standard definition. The producers of the blu-ray sets had to re-edit every episode from its original elements, an incredibly expensive and time-consuming process. 

To test the market, they released this disc, which included the remastered pilot, "Encounter at Farpoint," one of the series' most beloved episodes, "The Inner Light," and the Worf-centric "Sins of the Father." 

According to CBS, the blu-ray releases of seasons one through seven of TNG did not sell well enough to giving Star Trek: Deep Space Nine or Star Trek: Voyager the same treatment. Indeed, to this day, every Star Trek series except for those two has been released in high definition. 

But what if CBS had decided to forge ahead, once again releasing sampler discs before the season sets of DS9 and Voyager? What episodes might they have included? 

Doubtless they would once again include the pilots for the shows: "Emissary" for DS9 and "Caretaker" for Voyager. Both pilots are excellent, with plenty of outer space action to show off the remastered special effects. That leaves two more episodes for each series. 

Were I in charge, I'd choose "Duet" and "Far Beyond the Stars" for the DS9 sampler disc. While the episodes are light on special effects, they offer some of the very best dramatic storytelling the franchise has ever produced, and the great performances of the cast would look amazing in high definition. 

As for Voyager's sampler, I'd choose "Death Wish" and "Living Witness." "Death Wish" features an appearance by Q and Commander Riker while telling a compelling story about the consequences of immortality and the right to end one's own life. And "Living Witness" is simply one of Voyager's best episodes, giving us an alien perspective on the ship's adventures through the Delta quadrant. 

I want to believe that one day the business case will make sense and that someone will release DS9 and Voyager in high definition, maybe even sooner rather than later; physical media seems to be making a comeback. 






 

The Young Man from Elsewhere

Today I watched a fifth-season episode of St. Elsewhere, and who should turn up but Wil Wheaton? He plays a prodigy with an IQ of 160 who's completed Einstein's unified field theory. 

Never mind that such a feat might fundamentally alter the world in which St. Elsewhere exists, Wheaton's character decides he wants to be a doctor, so even though he's only 14, he joins the cast for rounds. 

Wheaton is very good here, and it's interesting to see him in a role that comes after his star-making turn in Stand By Me but before he joined the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation as Wesley Crusher. 

Other Star Trek alums appear in this episode: Bruce Greenwood, who joined the regular cast this season and who appeared as Captain Pike in the first two Kelvin timeline movies, and Ed Begley Jr., who guest-starred on Star Trek: Voyager. Mind you, several St. Elsewhere regulars have appeared on Star Trek, perhaps most famously Jane Wyatt, who played Amanda Grayson, Spock's mom. 
 

St. Elseworld

Someone set him up the bomb.

 "Family Feud" is the 15th episode of the fourth season of St. Elsewhere. It's also the episode that finally convinced me the writers are having fun with their audience and the television format, and that the famous twist at the series' end really doesn't come out of left field. 

The episode begins with Doctor Robert Caldwell (Mark Harmon) returning from vacation. He's met at St. Eligius by Doctor Elliot Axelrod (Stephen Furst), who briefs him about the goings-on at the hospital in Caldwell's absence:

• The gift shop was blown up--the second explosion on the show in two days, and Doctor Philip Chandler (Denzel Washington) was injured in both explosions
• Doctor Jack "Boomer" Morrison slipped on vomit and badly injured his knee
• The John Doe with amnesia regained his memory

And those are just some of the highlights. In the episode before this one, there's a cute exchange referencing Doctor Chandler's misfortune:

"Pretty rare for someone to be injured by two separate explosions in two days!"
"It's pretty rare for someone to be present at two separate explosions in two days." 

Later, the crutch-dependent Doctor Morrison meets his ex-girlfriend, Clancy Williams (Helen Hunt) at the hospital; she's been helping take care of Boomer's son while he recuperates from his injury. In a private moment, Doctor Morrison admits to Clancy, 

"I can't stop thinking about you...dreaming about being together..." 

Clancy rebuffs him. But later, Doctor Wayne Fiscus (Howie Mandel) uses the exact same language in an effort to get back together with his ex-fiance, Mona Polito (Leah Ayres). And then, a couple of scene later, Clancy says the same thing to Wayne! 

While all this is going on, Doctor Caldwell learns that he has AIDS, thanks to a blood test taken as a precursor to scar removal surgery. A few episodes prior, the handsome Doctor Caldwell was slashed in the face by a disturbed young woman he'd picked up on that selfsame vacation. It's not directly stated, but given Caldwell's comments..."Maybe I deserve this..." in reference to his habitual sleeping around, I feel like we, the audience, are meant to imagine that the knife used in the slashing was perhaps contaminated with infected blood, perhaps from the woman who assaulted him. Or maybe not, but it feels like a bit of dramatic irony the writers enjoy--the handsome plastic surgeon not only scarred by a scalpel, but doomed by it. 

Meanwhile, several members of an influential family, the Endicotts, clearly modelled after the Rockefellers or the Kennedys are at the hospital visiting their matriarch, the kindly grandmother undergoing open heart surgery to extend their life. The family is burdened with their fame and fortune and the responsibilities that come with it, three generations at odds with each other. 

Doctor Axelrod, not at all a part of these proceedings, is tending to a strange, angry patient who reacts violently to Axelrod's tests. At one point, the patient growls "You ever wonder why it's always you?" He delivers the line with eerie precision, looking straight into Axelrod's eyes, as if knowing that Axelrod is well-known for saying "Why me?" when he gets saddled with the worst cases. 

A few minutes later, Wayne's ex-fiancee Mona runs into Doctor Morrison in the hallway and confesses that she's long had a crush on him . . . and she says . . . 

"I can't stop thinking about you . . . dreaming about being together." 

At this point I thought I must have been hallucinating, but I went reviewed each scene, and yes, the phrase really is used four times by four different characters--each infatuated by the other's ex-partner. It's farcical, the kind of thing that could only happen in an invented world. 

It all comes to a head during the temporal intersection of three events: Doctor Craig is performing the heart operation on the Endicott patriarch, the Endicott father and son/grandson are praying together for their mother/grandmother's health while discussing their political destinies, and off-duty doctors are celebrating Doctor Morrison's birthday.

The operation ends not with tragedy, but a near-miss; the matriarch almost dies, but she pulls through. Wayne and Boomer mutually agree to pursue their exes with no hard feelings. But the women suddenly find that they're once again attracted to the men they broke up with. 

And in the chapel, the deranged man that was being treated by the luckless Doctor Axelrod walks in and assassinates the matriarch's son, the man who had been destined as the next major presidential candidate. A harrowing action sequence follows, and of course poor traumatized Axelrod and recently-bombed Chandler are the doctors who try and fail to save him. 

"Family Feud" is the best example yet of the show's creators winking at the audience that this is more than a straight hospital drama; it's an exploration of the soap opera genre, seeing to what heights of absurdity they can reach while still retaining the facade of a reasonably grounded work of art. 

Naturally, this is my favourite episode so far. It makes me feel like the world of St. Elsewhere is a close neighbour to the world of Twin Peaks. 

The Westphall

I was playing with Gemini tonight and asked it to turn a collection of images of a prop from an old 1970s kid show into a futuristic ambulance registered to St. Eligius. Then I remembered that technically, thanks to Tommy Westphall, St. Eligius exists in the same universe as the United Federation of Planets. So I turned my attention to the air tram seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. 

Voila, a Federation-style hospital shuttle, the Westphall, assigned to St. Eligius in Boston. 

In an eerie coincidence, just as I opened up blogger for this post, an amnesiac patient on the episode of St. Elsewhere I'm currently watching was flipping through television channels. We hear Captain Kirk say "Space, the final frontier," and the amnesiac's channel surfing ends on the famous MTM production cat animation--a cute in-joke. 

Of course, this means either that, in the expanded St. Elsewhere television universe, Star Trek exists as a television series that somehow foretells over 80 future events (counting the episodes and movies). Alternatively, the universe of St. Elsewhere has a show that duplicates our version of Star Trek's opening title sequence. 

I feel like the universe has been trying to tell me something important for years. 

Cheers to St. Elsewhere

During St. Elsewhere's season three finale, Doctors Donald Westphall, Mark Craig, and Daniel Auschlander head to Cheers for beer. 

Television crossovers are an old phenomenon, still seen today, but they're reasonably rare and thus still feel special, suggesting fictional worlds larger than the restrictions of any one drama or comedy. When I first read that the Cheers/St. Elsewhere crossover existed, I wondered how the creators of the episode would balance the very different tones of the two shows. 

As it turns out, and as I suppose should have been obvious, the crossover was a St. Elsewhere episode, not a Cheers episode, so drama won out. The three doctors have a pretty serious discussion at the bar, and the laughs aren't terribly uproarious. Carla Tortelli (Rhea Perlman) is as sharp-mouthed as ever as she waits on the doctors' table, calling St. Eligius a dump and crossing swords with the equally sharp-tongued Doctor Craig. Norm (George Wendt) recognizes Doctor Auschlander when he walks into the bar, and there's a brief exchange about taxes; Norm, it turns out, is the good doctor's accountant. And finally. Cliff (John Ratzenberger) drifts by the table to share some of his overblown erudition. 

It all works, because the crossover feels organic. The scene is given just as much weight as it would have had there been no crossover at all; that is, if they'd gone to some other bar filled with nameless extras. If it was intended as a way to boost ratings for St. Elsewhere, the crossover was certainly handled more artistically than one might have expected. 

Invitation to Consider Invitation to Love

During the first season of Twin Peaks, we see several characters watching Invitation to Love, a soap opera that seems as crazed and histrionic as Twin Peaks itself can be. This gave me a thought today: If the characters in Twin Peaks watch Invitation to Love, do the characters in Invitation to Love watch Twin Peaks? 

In real life, Mark Frost took the helm for the Invitation to Love sequences, all shot over the course of one day for later insertion into Twin Peaks. Reportedly, co-creator David Lynch didn't like Frost's overt parody of the soap opera genre, so the device was allowed to fade out. It's too bad; it's a nicely Shakespearean conceit, and I would have loved to see it return in, well, The Return. 

Back to the meta question: The answer, for me, is yes, Jade and Montana and the others are just as enthralled with the drama of Twin Peaks as the people of Twin Peaks (the town) are with the world of Invitation to Love. The symmetry is just too perfect to ignore. 

What brought this question to mind today? I stumbled across Nestflix, a website dedicated to shows-within-shows. According to Nestflix, Invitation to Love ran for 10 seasons! 

Some Feelings on Fiscus

 

Howie Mandel as Doctor Wayne Fiscus

I've never been a fan of Howie Mandel.

That's a me problem, not a Mandel problem. His particular comic persona just isn't to my taste, accomplished as he may be. 

But I must say that I really enjoy Mandel as Doctor Wayne Fiscus, St. Eligius' emergency room resident. Fiscus likes to goof around a bit, but he's affectionate, cares about patients and staff alike, and does the right thing even when it's hard. Also, he's a casual dresser, and complains righteously when he's forced to wear a suit and tie while on duty. I loathe suits and ties, so naturally I'm sympathetic to the character's plight. 

I look forward to seeing where Mandel takes this character. In the almost-three seasons I've watched so far, he's already grown significantly. I hope that continues to the end of the series. 

White's Wounded Women

Some of St. Elsewhere's Season Three Players.
Fans of Babylon 5 might recognize Stephen Furst in the middle. 

I guess you could say that Doctor Peter White's story began with some whimpering, and ended with a bang. A couple of days ago, I wrote about my amazement regarding the character's dark turn, and how I wondered how the writers could possibly bring him back for a third season. 

They found a way. White is a deeply troubling foil for the first third of the season, shoving his verdict of innocence in the faces of his colleagues while continuing to brazenly rape women--including a second attack on one of his prior victims, who winds up deeply psychologically damaged on top of her physical trauma (and little wonder). 

Three of White's victims: Nurse Shirley Daniels (driven to murder), Doctor Wendy Armstrong (victim of attempted rape, assaulted, driven to suicide), and Doctor Cathy Martin (raped and assaulted twice, driven to madness. Also, Ed Begley Jr.

Having White parading around St. Eligius as if he wasn't a violent rapist gets to be too much for Nurse Shirley Daniels (Ellen Bry), who steals a weapon from a police officer in the ER, hunts white down, and shoots him. White survives for a couple of hours, but ties before he can name is killer. It doesn't matter, because while it took forever for the police to arrest White for his crimes, poor Nurse Daniels is caught within hours. Hmmmm. 

The whole arc has, thus far, shone a lot of light--maybe accidentally, maybe not--on how women are treated at home, in the workplace, and in fiction. Wendy Armstrong (Kim Miyori) lasted only a season and a half on St. Elsewhere, and I can only think of one episode in which she was the focus and got a win--a "win" defined as a moment of respect from the male doctors. Even worse, Cathy Martin (Barbara Whinnery) was written from the beginning as a flighty, promiscuous eccentric--part of the reason her testimony is dismissed by the jury. The show neglected Armstrong and killed her off--without much real buildup or even proper connection to her frustration with White's trial or her assault. It just felt like the writers didn't know what to do with her. But Martin fares even worse, treated as comic relief for most of her appearances, then as a victim--twice--and then to madness. (She might recover; I haven't watched the whole series yet.) And the formerly level-headed Nurse Daniels becomes erratic enough to take revenge on White, resorting to a murder that she surely knows she can't get away with. She also confesses to a crush on Doctor Jack Morrison (David Morse), without any hint of having those feelings in previous episodes. One of the episodes I watched tonight culimates with Nurse Daniels being captured by the police, so I assume that she'll be written out shortly, as well. 

David Morse as Doctor Jack Morrison

The somewhat hapless Jack Morrison has, all the while, stuck by his friend, Peter White, despite everyone else at the hospital believing White to be responsible for the attacks. At one point, White asks Morrison "Why do you believe me?" Jack says something like "Because you told me you didn't do it, and that's good enough for me." He believes his male friend, but not the multiple women colleagues who were victimized. This really puts a dark stain on Jack's character, who I really want to like because he's the most compassionate doctor of the bunch. But wow, his reaction here is completely tone-deaf, and he seems to be confident in it even after White is shot! (Morse is a superb actor, by the way; I still remember him as a police officer blinded in the line of duty in Homicide: Life on the Streets.)

Eric Laneuville as Luther Hawkins. 

To be fair to Jack, in the last episode I watched tonight, "Sweet Dreams," it appears as though Jack does indeed have doubts. Jack, Dr. Victor Ehrlich (Ed Begley Jr.), and orderly Luther Hawkins (Eric Laneuville) are all involved in a dream study. Ehrlich, true to his character, dreams of being stranded on a tropical island with beautiful warrior women who sentence him to death by, er, snu-snu. Hawkins' dream is a wonderful spoof of the ZZ Top music video for "Legs," complete with the music track, several members of the cast dressed as the band and sexy models, and the ZZ Top roadster famous from the video. 

Jack, on the other hand, has a terrible nightmare about Peter White. Only in the dream do Jack's doubts materialize, and though he asks "Who killed you?" (White says "That's classified"), he does not ask "Did you do it?" 

But he doesn't need to, because the dream shows that he knows the answer is "yes" and hasn't been able to accept it. White bids Jack farewell, then puts on his ski mask and laughs manically, mocking Jack for his unearned trust. It's a very chilling sequence, and redeems Jack a tiny bit. I hope he apologizes to the women he dismissed. 

Doctor Peter White's Heel Turn

 

Terence Knox as Doctor Peter White

Last month I finally started watching St. Elsewhere, the groundbreaking 1980s medical drama. I just finished season two, and I find myself astounded by Doctor Peter White's insanely dark heel turn about halfway through the season. 

Up to this point, White had been portrayed as a troubled resident beset with marital and money problems--issues that sometimes caused mildly jerk-ish behaviour, but nothing truly outlandish. Indeed, most of the residents on the show had similar or comparable personality quirks. But some well-meaning actions on White's part backfire on him, leading to his censure and putting his residency at risk. This leads to some addiction problems, which, to his credit, he overcomes, and becomes a better doctor to boot. 

Then, despite this rebound, he puts on a ski mask and rapes several women and attempts to rape one of the other residents. Caught red-handed in this last assault, White is arrested and put on trial. (His amusingly sleazy defence lawyer is played by Conrad Janis, who I remember as Mindy's dad from Mork & Mindy.) Amazingly, he's acquitted, despite testimony from his victims--two of whom are colleagues and fellow doctors at the hospital. And as an innocent man, he can't be prevented from returning to work at St. Eligius (AKA St. Elsewhere). One of the victims who testified commits suicide at the end of the season, and while--somewhat strangely--White's return to work isn't stated as one of the reasons for her suicide, it surely must have played a role. Considering the crucial role women play on this show, I feel like this was a deliberate choice by the writers--even the most accomplished women in crucial positions remain devalued in comparison to their male colleagues. 

I thought for sure this would be the end of White as a character, and that he'd be written off the show. But according to Wikipedia, Knox as White remains part of the main cast through season three, and even returns as a guest in season five. At this point it would be impossible to redeem White, so I imagine he'll act as a villainous foil for the other characters in season three. I did not expect this show to take such a starkly dark turn. 

DC Boardwalk

One might toss some jacks; caltrops for kids
Bounce ball on boardwalk
Grab jack
Second ground, grab two
And so on
Bonus points: ball colour
Perfectly matches wall colour
Ghosts peer through obsidian panes
Nails squeaking against glass
But the kids don't hear
They've reached tensies
And Harpreet has one chance to win
She scoops--she scores. 
Time for ice cream--the wall inspires Neapolitan
"We're all out of chocolate strawberry vanilla ice cream" 

Salem's Lot Boo Boo

Today a lovely special edition of Tobe Hooper's adaptation of Stephen King's Salem's Lot appeared on my doorstep. It comes with a two-sided poster, a "Welcome to Salem's Lot" sticker, and a handsome perfect-bound booklet that collects essays about the miniseries. 

Alas, sometime during the editing process, someone--more likely, multiple people--missed adding the name of Bonnie Bedelia's character to the cast list. For the record, Bedelia played the ill-fated Susan Norton. 

Series Assimilation Misstep

SPOILERS AHEAD for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
Episode Five, "Series Acclimation Mil" 

I've had more than enough time to reflect on "Series Acclimation Mil," the first episode of Starfleet Academy focused on the school's sole holographic cadet, for whom this episode is named. (Everyone just calls her "Sam.") And while I wanted to love this episode, it demonstrates that good intentions alone cannot deliver a satisfying dramatic experience. 

In this episode, Sam hears the legend of Captain Benjamin Sisko. She decides that because Sisko was known as "the Emissary" by the Bajorans, and she, Sam, is an emissary of her people to humanity, she should investigate the final fate of Captain Sisko as a project for school. It's a pretty tenuous connection, and not a great beginning. Worse, the episode feels strangely bifurcated between Academy carousing shenanigans and Sam's research. There are also some bold directorial and editing choices that feel a bit too wacky for an episode with some pretty serious themes--loss, grief, and most importantly, perhaps, ambiguity. 

In the real world, Avery Brooks, who had played Captain Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, retired not long after the series concluded. At the end of that series, Sisko jumped into a pit of fire and "joined the prophets" in the Bajoran wormhole. But before leaving what the wormhole aliens call "linear time" forever, Sisko promised his wife and son that he would return--a line added at the actor's insistence, because he did not want to contribute to the racial stereotype of a black father abandoning his family. 

That left the character's fate in limbo; to this day, we haven't learned whether or not Sisko kept his promise. That was the actor's intent, but apparently the showrunners wanted a clearer ending, one indicating that Sisko had made the ultimate sacrifice for Bajor. 

So here we are, thirty years later in our time, almost a thousand years later along the fictional Star Trek timeline. If you're going to tackle a story point that has been festering for decades, you'd better know what you're doing and have some kind of satisfying catharsis, one way or another. 

Unfortunately, the episode plays it safe, leaves things ambiguous, and in doing so compounds the downsides of the original story choices. There are some nice moments in the episode to be sure, including Tawny Newsome in a guest starring role and the return of Cirroc Lofton as Jake Siskso. But the themes here were too large and too complex for these particular writers to handle. They did their best, but some stories are best left alone.