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Thought I'd give a few quick thoughts on the recent two-part Doctor Who story consisting of The Rebel Flesh (episode 5) and The Almost People (episode 6).
I was not originally looking forward to this two-parter. It didn't appear connected with the main season arc, it wasn't written by Steven Moffatt, and it seemed to involve just another monster of the week (or, well, group of monsters of the week). I was expecting it to be not-that-great, possibly on the order of Curse of the Black Spot, which I thought had good parts but was overall kinda lame.
It was with pleasure, then, that as soon as we got very far into The Rebel Flesh that the show turned out to be much more interesting than I first thought.
Basically–and this is not a significant spoiler but merely an explanation of the title monster–the story concerns a 22nd century technology that allows for the standard sci-fi staple of rapidly-produced, fully-functional, fully-memoried adult clones.
Normally I don't like that trope (doesn't fit real-world science), but they get there in an interesting way: The humans in the story don't realize at first that creating such clones is what they're doing. They think they are using a generic biological substance (called "flesh") to receive a temporary impression of a person's physical form and consciousness so that it can act as a temporary, remote-controlled disposable worker body to take on dangerous jobs so the human controller won't have to.
What they don't realize is that the way they technology works, they are actually creating new living beings with the bodily forms and memories of their operators. The Doctor even warns them that these beings may (or do) have souls, qualifying them as the subjects of rights just as much as normal humans.
At this point the episode becomes very interesting from a philosophical and theological perspective. The show's creators are now playing with themes that have important real-world applications.
It doesn't matter how you come up with a new human–they can be produced by marital intercourse the way God designed the process to work, or by fornication, adultery, or rape, or by in vitro fertilization, cloning, or materialization in a nanotech chamber–however you get them, they are real humans who have real human rights that must be respectd.
Even if they aren't quite human, if you make something that's alive (and thus has a soul, or animating principle of some sort) that displays human consciousness (and thus rational thought), you have a being with a rational soul that must be treated as equivalent to a human being in terms of rights and dignity. How it got here is irrelevant. Now that it's here, its rights must be honored.
So this episode is doing what sci-fi does well when it's working at its best–using an imaginative context to re-frame actual, important elements of human experience. Ones that our own technology has (since 1978, when Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby was born) begun to confront us with.
Thereafter follows the expected story of how the humans and their "flesh" dopplegangers ("gangers," as the show calls them) will relate. Naturally, it puts them at odds, but it does so without making either side clear-cut villains. It needed to do that–to show good on both sides–or it would have become unbearably cliche and far less interesting.
There are a lot of nice Doctor Who-esque moments along the way (particularly some nice references to the Doctor's prior incarnations), and while the story is not genius from star to finish (there are paint-by-numbers parts, particular in the second episode, The Almost People), it was much better than I expected.
The ultimate resolution of the human/gangers conflict was decent, though it was tainted by the typical bad sci-fi metaphysics regarding identity (one ganger character ends up substituting for his human counterpart in a way that is not plausible), but that's par for the course.
More interesting was the way the episode linked with the overall season arc. It was much more tightly integrated than first appeared.
Moffatt seems to have been doing at least slight script revisions to other authors scripts so that they will include at least passing references to the season arc (e.g., appearances of the eye-patch lady, the Doctor looking at Amy's positive/negative pregnancy through a medical scanner, references to the Doctor's apparent death in episode 1 of the season), but these have been very brief elements clearly added in script revision.
The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People turns out to be much more tied to the main arc than that. My guess is that Moffatt proposed the idea and assigned someone else to write it. Either that or it was proposed at an early stage of season development and Moffatt realized how nicely it would fit into his overall plan.
Whatever the case, they end up pulling the triggers on several major season elements, which is good, because it was getting a little tiresome watching the eye-patch lady peek in on Amy every episode or two and watching the Doctor looking suspiciously at Amy with the medical scanner every episode. I was afraid they wouldn't pay these elements off until the end of the series, but they did in part two of the episode, and now I don't mind them. They have a decent relative proportion to the overall shape of the season arc.
I'm very keen to see what they do in the mid-season finale which airs this weekend (in America; it aired last weekend in England).
The ominous title (which is even more ominous based on what we've heard River Song say before) is A Good Man Goes To War.
Catholic News Service is running a piece about the new statue unveiled in Rome to commemorate Bl. John Paul II (statue pictured).
Wow is it ugly.
And inappropriate.
Even L’Osservatore Romano—the Vatican’s newspaper—has commented on how lame it is. (I guess that’s one fortunate thing about LOR‘s turn toward less anodyne commentary; if we’ve got to deal with with their less-than-helpful commentary about the Beatles, Michael Jackson, and The Simpsons, at least they now have the freedom to say when a pope statue is ugly.)
According to CNS:
Sculptor Oliviero Rainaldi intended to show the late pope with his cape billowing in the wind, as a symbolic image of welcome. The 16-foot-tall bronze sculpture was placed outside Rome’s main train station, where tens of thousands of visitors arrive daily.
But when unveiled May 18, it looked more like an open tent, or a sentry-box, or a bell, commented L’Osservatore Romano. The papal cape looks like it was split open by a bomb. More importantly, the newspaper said, it’s unrecognizable as John Paul II — the head is “excessively spherical.”
The newspaper credited the sculptor with trying to move beyond classic papal iconography and attempt something new and different.
“But overall, the result does not seem to have matched the intention, and in fact there has already been criticism,” it said.
In Rome newspaper polls, public opinion is running 9-1 against the statue.
Ya think?
The placement of the statue outside Rome’s main train station—the Termini—is particularly unfortunate, because it ensures a large number of people will see the thing. The Termini is a very important travel hub in Rome for locals and pilgrims alike.
I have to say that this statue is even worse than the one inside the entrance of the Vatican museums. That statue, titled “Varcare la soglia” (Crossing the Threshold), is a slab of marble with a bas relief of John Paul II on each side, apparently shoving a goofy-looking, modern, cell-phone clutching man out of the block of marble.
I was stunned when I first saw it.
Take a look see for yourself. Here’s one side of it:
And here’s the other:
(Sorry; couldn’t find larger images. Trust me, it’s even more hideous when you see it up close and larger than life.)
Some years ago, I visited a traveling exhibit of Vatican art treasures, with items spanning many centuries. I was struck by the quality of the older material and how the quality of the art suddenly fell off a cliff in the mid-20th century.
I can only imagine art historians in the year 2525 (if man is still alive; if woman can survive) looking back on this period and struggling to explain the sudden, appalling lack of taste and artistic sensibility.
Of course, neither the new JP2 statue or the “Crossing the Threshold” statue is the worst 20th century artistic atrocity passed off as something deeply spiritual, but I’ll tell you about that one another time.
In the meanwhile, what do you think the new statue of John Paul II looks like? A telephone booth? An agonizer booth? A bus stop?
What are your thoughts?
P.S. For extra points, how would you caption the photo of the new statue?
Last week my home was invaded by bees–AGAIN! This was the third time. Apparently when my place was re-roofed recently, the anti-bee measures (netting blocking access to vents) that had been set up got disturbed, and the little varmints got in again.
Multiple people have been joking me that they keep returning because I'm so sweet. All I can say is, that's very . . . sweet . . . of you to say.
In any event, I was basically offline for several days as a result, and that made me rather tardy on blogging. Apologies.
In other news, as predicted, this week's episode of Doctor Who ("The Doctor's Wife," by Neil Gaiman) was way better than last week's. Nice creepiness, humor, and a poignant twist on classic Doctor Who mythology. Just what I would have expected from Gaiman.
It also addresses a timely issue: Even though the Doctor has been married before (and is a father; he's said so explicitly, and we met his granddaughter and first companion, Susan, who was the title character of Episode 1, "An Unearthly Child"), and regardless of what happens with River Song (strongly hinted to be his future wife), from the perspective of the series as a whole there is really one "character" who has an even greater title to the role of Doctor's wife. And thanks to Gaiman, he's now been properly introduced to her.
Now we've got the two-part "rebel flesh" story before we get back to River, the Silence, and the promised "game-changing" mid-season finale.
For those who have been paying attention to the clues about River Song's past (still in the Doctor's future), the title of the finale is ominous: "A Good Man Goes to War." I'm also anticipating that we're likely to return to the beach, this time with more information about who's inside the space suit.
Although I played a good number of RPGs in high school and college–and though I even did game design work–I don't regularly play games of any sort. No computer games. No video games. No online games. No FaceBook games. None of that. (Too much else to do!)
But I recently ran across a game that Sprint is running in connection with FRINGE, which I am a fan of, and I thought, "Why not?" This game is called FRINGE: DIVISIONS (the plural makes me think that the Other Side may try to recruit me) and appears to have only five installments, being released once a week or so, so it's not a huge time investment. You can either play via your FaceBook account (the option I chose) or anonymously.
If you play by FaceBook, they personalize the game to you and tell you about your Red Universe counterpart.
How could I resist?
In chapter 1 of the game, SAIC Broyles greets me in his office, welcomes me to FRINGE DIVISION, warns me that anything I will learn is classified, and tells me that Dr. Walter Bishop will be joining us for a briefing.
Walter rushes in, apologetic about the fact he was (ahem) delayed. (I won't say by what.)
He then tells me that our universe is closely linked with another one, where just about all of us have counterparts. He puts his phone on Broyles' desk to show what he found out about my counterpart.
I took screen caps, so here is what is presently known about Jimmy Alt.kin (click to embiggen images):
Walter says, "As you can see your double looks exactly like you–just slightly better looking."
Walter says, "In the alternate universe, you married this person."
Guess there wasn't a picture available or something. Perhaps a faulty transmission from the Other Side.
Walter says, "You work for the government."
Well, y'know, church, state, whatever.
Looks like I'm based in Philadelphia and have a contract through January 2018.
Walter says, "This is interesting."
Hmmm! That alt universe apple didn't fall too far from the tree. Maybe there's a Church connection after all.
Walter says, "Oh my, look at this."
Cool! I've always wanted children! And I am, apparently, married to someone, even if her image didn't get transmitted.
Walter then picks up the phone, looks me in the eyes, and says, "You'll be contacted by my assistant, Astro, should we need you for anything else."
Cool. I can't wait. I think Jasika Nicole is the cutest, sweetest person on FRINGE!
So that's what's known about my Red Universe self: looks the same (only a little better), married to someone whose image didn't transmit, works for a branch of the government based in Philadelphia, lives in Rome, and has two children.
Meanwhile, the Blue Universe me is waiting for a call from the lovely and elegant Astrid Farnsworth.
