Where Lots and Lots of People Have Gone Before

I'm going to begin with a disclaimer: I've been writing this review for weeks. It rambles and meanders, probably even more than most of my posts. It's also a large part of the reason for the low content mode of the last several weeks. I'll be glad to finally have it posted.

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It's been a very long time since I've considered myself a Trekkie or Trekker of any sort. I liked TNG and DS9, though the former had its share of terrible episodes seasons and I never saw the first few seasons of the latter because there was no UPN in my area. I remember being underwhelmed by "First Contact," though thinking back it seems the majority of my complaints were driven by nitpicky continuity geek stuff, so I should probably give it another shot. "Insurrection" was the last Trek movie I saw in theaters, and it was nothing more than a particularly pedestrian episode of Voyager stretched out over two boring hours. "Nemesis" was targ-dung, and I'm glad I didn't pay to see it on the big screen. I never really cared for Voyager, especially after it became "The Seven of Nine Show starring Reset Button;" I gave up on "Enterprise" after the first episode with its ridged Klingon forehead and its awful, awful theme song. Eventually, I started watching the series again (because my roommate talked me into it) and laughed and cried through the vast majority of season 3. The show whittled away at any remaining passion I had for Trek, until blue alien Nazis made me give up on the show, and Star Trek, for good.

And that included the most recent film. When I heard that Star Trek was going back to the prequel well again, even after the dismal failure of Enterprise*, I scoffed and cursed Berman and Braga, who had seemed to be doing their level best to run the series into and beneath the ground since the start of Voyager. I remember hearing vague rumors over the last couple of years about them doing Kirk and Spock at the Academy, which sounded pretty silly--but throw in Uhura and a talking Sehlat and have them form a band and travel around in their shuttlecraft solving space-mysteries, and I'm in for it.

Anyway, nothing made me even remotely interested in the new film until the trailers started coming out. I've generally liked J.J. Abrams, and while the trailers were cool, I was comfortable waiting for the DVD. Until the reviews started trickling in, and started suggesting that this would actually be a good Trek movie, which this universe has not seen in quite some time. I went to see it about as quickly as I could (a week or two after its opening), and again a week or so later. Needless to say, I liked it. I liked it quite a lot.

I think the thing I most liked about it was the way it focused around the characters, around building characterization for the main cast. The plot was peripheral, and I can see that as a complaint, but really, it's the same kind of space opera story that we've seen a thousand times: Big Bad with planet destroyer MacGuffin out for revenge against the protagonists. There are some wrinkles here and there, but the story was really just a vehicle for Kirk and Spock to become friends, given their similar-but-different pasts. It was a little too convenient that the characters would all end up together--and in command!--on their first mission aboard the Enterprise, and the Spock ex Machina planet was a little more convenient yet, and those are legitimate complaints--places where the plot actually felt like it was merely a vehicle to get the main characters where they needed to be. Even if it is (and most plots are, aren't they?) one goal of good writing should be to make the progression feel natural, and not like the audience is being led around by a ring through its collective nose.

I'm going to digress for a moment or two more on those complaints about the somewhat supplementary nature of the plot. They remind me of a tone-deaf review I read a few years back about the Justice League Unlimited episode "The Greatest Story Never Told." The conceit of the episode was that the big guns of the League were dealing with an attack by Mordru, leaving the less prominent members to deal with cleanup and crowd control. Booster Gold, our focal character, chafed under the apparent insignificance of the assignment. Ultimately, Booster gets the chance to be a real hero, even though his adventure goes unnoticed and unappreciated due to the larger battle going on around them. We only see and hear little bits of the fight with Mordru--Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman merged into a single entity, Elongated Man saving the day, and so forth. It's one of my favorite episodes, largely because it showcases the character work (and incredible writing, with some particularly good humor) that made the DCAU so wonderful, so beloved, and so enduring.

This reviewer disagreed, disliking Booster Gold for largely unstated reasons. He would much rather have seen the League's epic battle with Mordru, and seemed to think that the episode's title referred to that story. I have to wonder how anyone could miss the point so blatantly; we've seen the big guns of the League team up to battle apparently insurmountable odds and come out on top before. The first two seasons of Justice League are largely made up of episodes just like that, as are each of the season finales. Epic battles are a dime a dozen in superhero media; quirky stories that have a tight focus on character building for supporting cast members, not so much. Getting the battle in snippets and secondhand storytelling ultimately has the same effect as the old horror standby of never clearly showing the villain or monster. Just as the murder scene you fill in yourself is always more frightening than the one that's meticulously laid out on-screen, the battle you imagine that somehow leads to buildings coming to life and Elongated Man's stretchiness defeating Mordru is going to be far cooler than anything they could have reasonably depicted in 22 minutes. Such a battle, if it were the A-plot of the story, would have been a clichéd mishmash, pure eye candy, with no real room for characterization. It would have been the animated equivalent of a big crossover event, with all the depth and quality we usually associate with such stories.

Bringing that back to the point: we've seen plenty of flashy explosion-ridden epic battle space operas, even in the fairly recent past. In fact, I don't think it would be unfair to describe the last two or three Star Wars films as precisely that. Star Trek is clearly trying to set itself apart from that crowd by giving far more attention to the characters and their relationships than to the standard situations and technobabble that could be coming from any interchangeable cast of characters. I really liked that every main character got some time in the spotlight, and in particular got some character development. That's important, but often glossed over, with an ensemble cast, particularly one this large. As far as I'm concerned, Star Trek is at its best--in fact, it may be that it's only good--when it focuses on characters and relationships rather than technobabble and sci-fi space opera. That's one way in which it's also distancing itself from the last couple of Star Trek series and films, and even from the introductory installments of just about every Star Trek iteration. "Encounter at Farpoint" notwithstanding, it's worth mentioning that both Next Generation and the Star Trek film series began with stories written for previous series that just had the names changed. Abrams and Co. seem to be trying to get away from the sci-fi properties that are populated exclusively with two-dimensional archetypes.

Which isn't to say that it's completely unlike either the older series--or Star Wars for that matter. One of the major themes of the film is how tragedies change and affect people. The destruction of Romulus turns Nero from a common miner into a single-minded vengeance-driven terrorist**. Losing his father turns Kirk into a brash and rebellious hothead who has serious authority issues. Spock's loss of his mother and homeworld make him tense and desperate. Spock Prime's triple loss--his timeline, his homeworld, and his failure to save Romulus--inspires him to work toward rebuilding Vulcan and continuing his work as a peacemaker. This isn't quite as topical or as obvious as the themes the original series used to explore, but I think it's in the same vein, and I hope it continues.

I think the film also did a good job of conveying Roddenberry's optimistic, moderately utopian view of the future--particularly surprising, given the destruction of two worlds. I think that figured heavily into the film's visuals; the bright, pure whiteness of the Enterprise interior wasn't just a contrast with the dank, dark interior of the Romulan ship, but it also served as a kind of visual shorthand for a bright and positive future. I'll be honest, I didn't really notice the overuse of lens flares until the second time I saw the movie, but even then it reminded me of the same effect used in DC One Million for the future heroes' costumes--visual shorthand for futuristic and impressive. It's a nice way of demonstrating that, unlike so much modern sci-fi, this isn't going to be a crapsack world full of dilapidated technology. Quite literally, it's a future so bright, you'd have to wear shades.

Which I think, again, feeds into the contrast between the Enterprise and the Romulan ship. The dark, jagged, smoky green-lit interior of the Romulan craft reminded me of nothing so much as the enemy ships in Star Trek: Nemesis***. One of the more apparent meta-themes of the movie seems to be getting away from the dark and cynical future that has become increasingly apparent through the last several Star Trek films and shows (as represented by a visitor from that future). Even the decks of the Enterprise-E, Voyager, and the Defiant had a tendency to get excessively dark during red alert and battle situations, and the Enterprise never really felt like that in this film.

The filmmakers made some allusions and choices, though, that I think demonstrate what parts of Star Trek and sci-fi in general they'd like to emulate--referencing the "good parts," I suppose. I've mentioned Star Wars a couple of times now, and one of the things I think this Trek did very well was something that was omnipresent in the holy trilogy: background aliens. One of the reasons those shots in Mos Eisley and Jabba's palace were so damn cool was because they were full of weird-looking alien people who weren't given any significant parts or backstories or explanations, just hanging around doing normal things like normal extras. That attention to detail is part of what made the Star Wars universe feel so big and so diverse and so rich; it's something that the endless Expanded Universe texts, elaborating on every character who ever appeared for more than two frames in exquisite detail, have diluted quite a bit. Star Trek did much the same thing, with the big-eyed doctor who delivered Kirk Cameron's baby Kirk and the alien helmsman who appared briefly****. Those elements serve to flesh out the universe, enhancing that feeling of immersion and depth.

One allusion I particularly liked, besides the obligatory references to classic lines ("Are you out of your Vulcan mind?" and such), was the way Nero was essentially Spock's Khan. Both Khan and Nero have royal names, both vowed revenge on their respective targets for the deaths of their wives, both went after their targets' family members, both used mind-worms to wrest information from Starfleet officers, and so forth. It really underscores the point that this is Spock's movie*****.

Back to the details, I didn't (unlike some) mind "red matter." It was phlebotinum in pure, spherical form, clearly named after "dark matter," and implying some kind of strange, exotic, probably quite dense or unstable form of matter. I did have an issue with the idea that a supernova could destroy a galaxy; that was just sloppy (for more on the real astronomy, see what Phil Plait had to say). Overall, I think a lot of the film got a pass based on rule of cool--particularly Sulu's pocket katana. Silly? Sure. Awesome? Damn straight.

One final****** detail I'd like to mention is the way that the writers have apparently anticipated all the fan outrage and time travel fix fics that will be spawned by the reboot. This point sparked a lengthy and geeky conversation with my mother, who generally hates change. On the other hand, it gave me the second opportunity******* in recent memory to say "you're not thinking fourth-dimensionally" and to draw this diagram:



So I guess it was a wash. Point being, this reboot is doubly great, because it not only preserves the original Star Trek universe, but also makes it clear that they can't just go back and set right what once went wrong. The first point is potentially debatable--it could be argued that the new Trek reality supplants the old one--but Word of God and one of Trek's many established sets of time travel/alternate universe rules suggest that the new universe is an offshoot of the original, a divergent quantum reality, so that the original universe also continues to exist unabated.

The latter point, I suppose, requires some explanation (though I'm sure quite a lot of folks have reasoned it out the same way). We have the original Trek timeline, which proceeds as we know it up to the point where Spock Prime******** and Nero get pulled into the singularity. This spits Nero out in the past (or more likely, in the 2233 of a parallel-but-identical timeline), where he immediately destroys the U.s.S. Kelvin, killing George Kirk and causing this timeline to diverge from the original one*********. When Spock emerges twenty years later, it's into this already-altered timeline. This means that Spock Prime emerged into an already-altered timeline, changed by the events of twenty years prior. Spock Prime could go to the future and stop the supernova from obliterating Romulus, but it wouldn't change anything. The Nero who destroyed Vulcan wasn't the Nero of this timeline; like Spock Prime, he came from the original universe. The only way********** for Spock Prime to get back to the original universe would be for him to go back to the point of divergence and stop the event that spawned the alternate timeline. In other words, he has to arrive at the precise moment that the Narada exits the singularity and stop Nero from destroying the Kelvin.

Which shouldn't be a problem, right? I mean, how many ways are there to time travel in the Star Trek universe? The slingshot around the sun bit seems to be the most popular, but I'm sure Spock Prime also remembers where the Guardian of Forever is, and there's the Bajoran Orb of Time and several other options as well.

But once he's back in the past, waiting to meet and beat Nero, what then? The Narada is a hundred years more advanced than anything Starfleet has right now. We've already seen it effortlessly destroy six Federation starships in the span of a minute or two. What could Spock Prime possibly do to stop it? He'd have to go back with an entire fleet, and even then there's no guarantee he could win. First, he'd probably have to share some of his knowledge of advanced technology, and just because he knows about things like quantum torpedoes doesn't mean he knows how to construct one. And even if he does know how to construct one doesn't mean that Starfleet has the ability to build one yet. Frankly, I wouldn't feel comfortable trying to ambush the Narada (remember, they have to destroy--or at least disable--it before it can destroy the Kelvin, and probably before he can bring Capt. Robau onboard) with anything less than a Defiant or an Enterprise-E (even then, I'd want some serious backup), and those ships are pretty close to cutting edge in a hundred years' time.

Regardless, Spock Prime would need years to prepare an assault force with any hope of defeating Nero before the timeline could be altered. Doing so would require him to gain significant support from the Federation (even though he's a quantum anomaly, whose plan may, for all they know, result in the destruction of their universe), develop a ridiculously complicated plan (at least, as far as the time travel aspect goes; the "blow him up" portion of the plan is pretty straightforward) with a huge amount of advanced experimental Starfleet ships and resources, and all to an unclear end, because even if they succeed, it's not certain what will happen. Will they just spawn a third quantum reality? Will traveling back to the future bring Spock Prime back to where he needs to be (and if so, will he be able to stop the supernova in time to keep this from becoming a repeating cycle? Or would doing so just create new problems? What will happen to the fleet he takes? Will they be able to get back to their quantum reality, or will they become like Spock Prime is now, adrift in a universe not their own? I don't know about you, but if I were the President of the Federation, I wouldn't be wasting time and manpower on a plan with so many unknown risks.

And if I were Spock Prime, I'd be setting course for Farpoint Station at the earliest convenience.

So, to conclude, I really enjoyed the new Trek movie, and I hope it's the start of a long and excellent film series. The movie captured a lot of the traits and tropes that make for good Star Trek and good sci-fi in general. The new universe even offers some interesting new opportunities to revisit old stories and enemies, if it comes to that. While I'd like to continue seeing new stories with the familiar settings and mostly familiar characters, I'd be lying through my teeth if I said that there wasn't a part of me who would like to see Kirk and crew face the Borg ninety years ahead of schedule. But that's a plot for another film, hopefully at least five or six films hence. All I know is that I'm looking forward to the sequel, and that for the first time in a very long time, I'm excited about Star Trek.

One last thing: you may have noticed that my little fan background schpiel at the beginning really didn't touch on the original series much. That's because, well, I haven't ever watched much of it. Most of my knowledge of TOS has come from cultural osmosis and reading the Star Trek Encyclopedia. But the new movie has piqued my interest, and I've started watching more Trek--especially original Trek--than I have in years. What this all means is that I'm thinking about a new weekly event, Trek Tuesdays, where I'll be blogging about some Star Trek episode or idea on a weekly basis. If you've been reading this blog for any time at all, you know what problems I have with punctuality and commitment, and you know that this would be the first time I've ever had two regular features going at the same time. I can't guarantee when it'll start, but at the very least it'll give me an excuse to post more frequently, and on more than just SilverHawks. I've got something special planned for this week (astute Trekkies might be able to predict what), and then we'll see what happens.

End log.

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*Yes, I know, four seasons is hardly a dismal failure from a ratings and marketing standpoint. I suppose I'm talking in terms of fan reception and overall quality.

**Incidentally, this was (in my opinion) the main theme of "V for Vendetta"--desperate situations can drive people to do and become things they never would have imagined or condoned. Evey is driven by circumstances to prostitution, then eventually to terrorism; V is driven to terrorism through torture and experimentation; even Susan describes how the government was driven to fascism by nuclear war.

***The green lighting and steam and jagged features also evoked the "real world" of the Matrix films and the settings of the Alien movies. Star Trek seems to be trying for high contrast with the major themes of modern sci-fi.

****Based on the back of the Animated Series box, I assume he's based on a character from the cartoon.

*****There's also the fact that there's two of him.

******Mercifully.

*******The first was when I was teaching "A Sound of Thunder" and trying to explain why they couldn't just go back and stop themselves from going back in time in the first place.

********I know it's standard practice in sci-fi and comics, but naming the original entity/timeline/whatever "Prime" grates against that scientist/mathematician part of me. See, in science and math, the "prime" designation is attached to the copy. If I draw some figure A, then draw a copy of that figure reflected over some line, I label the second figure A', pronounced "a-prime." On the other hand, "prime" comes from the Latin primus for "first," which I guess means that it's the science/math usage which is erroneous. This concludes my most recent war of inner geeks.

*********By the way, if you're a time traveler looking to alter the future, "destroy the first thing you see when you get to the past" seems like a pretty good strategy.

**********Okay, not the only way. Presumably, he could be transported during an ion storm (a la "Mirror, Mirror") or he could pass through a quantum fissure (a la "Parallels"), or something, but there's no guarantee he'd end up in the right universe. I suppose they could analyze his quantum signature and somehow try to get him back, but again, that seems like a bit of a crap shoot.***********

***********You know, this asterisk stuff is for the birds. From now on, I'm using superscript numbers.

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SilverHawks Sunday VIII: Getting a grip

This is the Miraj:

This is the underside of the Miraj.

That black strip? It does this:

It has a handle. Now, it's not alone in that (after all, the villain vehicle/space squid Sky Runner has one too), but it's among very few toys I know of where the handle is recessed and...well, optional. Most action figure vehicles don't even think about handles, and most of the ones that do either try to make them inconspicuous by making them part of the design (like He-Man's Blasterhawk) or throw inconspicuousness to the wind and just slap a handle on it (like He-Man's Talon Fighter).

The recessed handle is a really smart move. It recognizes the need for play practicality--kids have small hands, space opera dogfights are hard to do with awkwardly-weighted plastic ships full of figures, you have to set it down in order to fire the missiles, etc.--while also recognizing the importance of aesthetics and the fridge logic that might result from slapping on a handle ("Who does He-Man expect to be holding his ship, and why would he accommodate them?). A lot of times, functionality and form are at odds with one another, but I think this strikes a great balance that maximizes both. It's a small thing, but it's worth pointing out and commending, at least.

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SilverHawks Sunday VII: Partly metal, partly real

I've never really given much thought to it, and I wouldn't actually call myself a "transhumanist," but I really don't have a problem with transhumanism. Using technology to improve ourselves and our abilities isn't a very controversial idea to me, but then, I wear glasses.

There are ethical concerns, to be sure, but I'm not certain how much they actually apply to things like cybernetics and bionics. We are already increasingly electronic; how many of us carry around smart phones and Bluetooth headsets*? I think we're a long way away from implants and replacement parts, but these attachments and accessories are a pretty close approximation. I'm not sure how much advantage there would be to a Bluetooth implant (for instance), aside from perhaps greater speed, but I know such concepts are in development (and there are some--like that sonar sensor--which do seem quite useful). And I'd be hard-pressed to see the significant difference between bionic limbs and some of the prostheses we have now. Sure, they're more advanced, and they may eventually mimic things like sensation, but morally and ethically I think they're pretty equivalent.

The real risks come from genetic modification, because there's a slippery slope toward Gattaca and similar eugenics nightmares. That being said, I'm a major proponent of GM with respect to crops and research, and I don't see any problem with the basic concept of applying it to humans in order to eliminate debilitating congenital defects and diseases and to extend and improve the quality of life in general. Obviously there would be details to hammer out, and there would be people who would abuse or try to abuse it, but the minor sorts of modifications that would be realistic and researched would, I think, present very little in the way of ethical issues.

Regardless of the realities, though, the idea that such modifications would result in a loss of humanity (and further, that such a loss would be generally undesirable) is very common in sci-fi, and particularly so in cartoons. I suppose that it's so common in children's stories because it's not only easily understandable, but it's also fairly uncontroversial (largely because it's fairly unrealistic, always a few decades away from any real relevance). It's hard to find stories involving cyborgs or other transhumans that don't either paint the modified characters in a negative light or explore the "machines dehumanize" moral. The only cyborgs I can remember in ThunderCats were the villainous Capt. Cracker and the Berserkers. He-Man had a few (Snout Spout, Mekaneck), but never even acknowledged that they were cyborgs in the cartoon** (as far as I can recall). Examples of this happening in the minicomics (Extendar is a notable example) were generally presented in the same negative, dehumanizing light. She-Ra's protagonists were almost universally the agrarian Rebels, while the only arguable cyborgs (such as Hordak) were members of the industrial Horde. This has always been an aspect of Cyborg's character, so naturally it was dealt with a few times in Teen Titans. Coldstone in Gargoyles suffered from this (also, he was a bit of a Frankenstein's monster), and there were similar sentiments in the Pack when Hyena, Jackal, and Wolf went in for cybernetics and gene splicing. This trope even shows up in some pretty unexpected places--like Transformers. I'm specifically thinking of "Autobot Spike," where having his brain downloaded into a robot body (albeit again, a pretty Frankenstein's monster sort of one) makes Spike violent and crazy. Even more bizarre is how this trope was a bedrock theme in Beast Machines. This one-sidedness is made all the more strange by that other staple moral of kids' sci-fi, that robots are people too. Just about the only

So given the generally negative attitude sci-fi, and children's sci-fi in particular, takes toward cyborgs, it's refreshing and surprising to see SilverHawks turn the trope on its head***. Not only are all the heroes cyborgs, but for the most part, only the heroes are cyborgs. Of the villainous leads, only Mon*Star could reasonably be called a cyborg, and that's only when he's powered up by the apparently mystical energies of the Moon*Star.

I don't know if the "dehumanizing" theme ever comes up in the series, but I doubt it--the series' belittling tagline (quoted in the post title) notwithstanding. I seem to recall the twins' bionic hearts coming up once more later on, but I don't think it's in that sort of negative context. "The Origin Story" treated the bionics as a routine necessity, not entirely desirable, but also not ethically troubling. I'll certainly be keeping an eye on this theme as I continue this series, but it's interesting to see a kids' cartoon--from an era where depth wasn't exactly their strong suit--bucking the general trend of popular science fiction.

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*I don't, but only because I don't want to be turned into a Cyberman.
**This may make He-Man, then, one of the most progressive shows with regard to transhumans--that their conditions are unremarkable, except inasmuch as they give them superpowers. Alternately, it could just be that Mekaneck and Snout Spout in their ilk were very minor characters who only appeared in a tiny handful of episodes.
***The only other series I can remember that had major cyborg heroes were Bionic Six and C.O.P.S.--with only one hero (as I recall) in the latter case.

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SilverHawks Sunday VI: Another hit

As I mentioned last week, I was kind of surprised by the depth given to Mon*Star's character in the series' first episode. It was odd enough that they'd spend the entire first act introducing us to the villain; the way he was introduced, though, was even stranger.

Let me remind you a bit about the state of cartoon supervillains in the '80s: they weren't deep. The vast majority of them were evil for no apparent reason. When Skeletor explained his motivation for doing bad things (in "The Christmas Special," where his holiday-induced character derailment actually represented some decent character development), he said "I like feeling evil." Megatron's motivation was apparently the acquisition of power and energy, no matter what the cost. At least Galvatron was crazy. Cobra Commander was a straightforward megalomaniac. Even Mumm-Ra only wanted the power of the Eye of Thundera...it took most of the series before his character developed beyond that. Their characters are almost universally defined in the broadest of strokes: insulting the protagonist, devising elaborately doomed schemes, retreating effectively, vowing revenge. Lather, rinse, repeat, until cancellation.

And to be honest, I don't recall Mon*Star ever rising above the bar set by those contemporaries. It's certainly possible, but I think his prime motivations were still the acquisition of money and power, and revenge on Stargazer. But for that first act, there sure seemed to be some fantastic potential. Mon*Star doesn't begin the series with some grand show of power. The Mutants nearly committed genocide in the first episode of ThunderCats, and even though He-Man never had an origin episode, the first aired ("Diamond Ray of Disappearance") still features Skeletor defeating the Sorceress and nearly banishing our hero to another dimension. Mon*Star starts the series in a jail cell. He comes across as nothing less than desperate, bribing, threatening, and even begging the guards to allow him to see the Moon*Star burst.

That isn't the behavior of a terrifying supervillain, that's the behavior of a junkie.

Imprisoned in Penal Planet 10, it's been a long time since Mon*Star had his last fix. When the guards seal his window, he pounds at it relentlessly, shouting "No! This may be my last chance!" When he finally cracks the barrier, letting a sliver of light fall onto his eye, he quivers for a moment, then says "Yes! Yes! Give me your power, your energy!" Since he first appeared on screen, he's been throwing himself at the bars against his window, clawing at the guards through the bars in the door, and moving continually, frantically. When that light hits him, for the first time since he showed on screen, he calms down. In fact, the camera (such as it is) goes to a slow motion effect as the countdown nears its end and the starburst nears its apex.

Mon*Star speaks the power chant and transforms--and let's consider that chant for a moment. On first glance, it's pretty much exactly what Mumm-Ra's incantation is in ThunderCats--imploring some external entity for its power, which transforms the summoner into a more powerful form (incidentally, now that I think of it, this was an interesting reversal of the He-Man/She-Ra model, where the hero is the one with the transformation sequence--in both SilverHawks and ThunderCats, only the villains seem to have Prince Adam-esque alternate forms). Mumm-Ra's is slightly different; he wants to transform from "this decayed form" into "Mumm-Ra the Everliving." It was years before I realized that the "Everliving" part was actually significant. Sure, he's still Mumm-Ra when he's in the red robe and bandages, but he's not Mumm-Ra the Everliving any more than all the Voltron lions together-but-unconnected are Voltron, or something.

There's no such honorific with Mon*Star. When he summons the power of the Moon*Star, he asks it to give him "the might, the muscle, the menace, of Mon*Star." I'm sure I'm reading a bit too far into this at this point, but the implication is one of incompleteness. The Moon*Star's power doesn't change him from Mon*Star into Mon*Star the Omnipotent or Mon*Star the Destroyer, it just changes him into Mon*Star. It's the children's sci-fi equivalent of the people who take drugs to feel "normal" or "more like themselves," to fill some personal void.

When Mon*Star transforms, he nonchalantly, casually, almost mechanically, tears the wall off his cell. The guards open the doors to stop him, and he merely turns around calmly, implacably, while the robotic one shoots at him. The blast is apparently absorbed and redirected, though Mon*Star stays motionless and aloof, hitting and destroying the robotic guard. He then leaves his cell through the hole where the window was, proclaiming his freedom to a distant Stargazer.

And then we see him effortlessly re-tame his giant space squid.

I remember mentioning that '80s cartoon supervillains, when introduced, tended to get some major demonstration of their power, to show that they actually pose a threat to heroes (so perhaps we can suspend our disbelief for the next 129 consecutive defeats). Watching Mon*Star go from neurotic and desperate to destructively and mercilessly cold over the course of a single act is particularly effective at doing just that. We didn't even need to see him interact with the protagonists at all, Mon*Star acts as his own point of comparison. If the Moon*Star is powerful enough that it can turn a sniveling convict into Darth Vader, then our protagonists are in for an uphill battle.

If there's one thing that all '80s supervillains had in common, it was a desire for power. Mon*Star is the only one I remember who made that desire into a literal addiction. Mon*Star is a power junkie, empty and impotent without the influence of the Moon*Star's energy, but brutally effective with it. If the show followed through with this (and I don't remember it doing so), it would have been downright brilliant. Regardless, this was a magnificent introduction to the character, and in a single act, it provided us with more characterization than most of his contemporaries received over entire seasons.

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Lest you think this has just become the Fortress of SilverHawks...

Sorry folks, it's been a fairly busy few months. Up until a week or so ago, I was working two jobs, and now I'm just working one (part-time, unfortunately) and applying for as many more as I can. The computer has become less "device for blogging" and more "device for applying for work." Consequently, the last thing I want to do when I have free time is use it even more. Surprising, I know.

But this doesn't mean I haven't been writing stuff, or at least occasionally thinking about writing stuff. I've got posts in the wings about Star Trek (both the movie and the series), the awesomeness of Action Age Comics, a brief hair-splitting on the difference between confusing-but-entertaining comics and just-plain-confusing ones, and a review for my good friends at Unshaven Comics (yes, Marc, finally). Plus, plenty more SilverHawks posts...I'll be milking "The Origin Story" for a couple of weeks.

So, yeah, not dead yet.

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SilverHawks Sunday V: "The Origin Story"

"The Origin Story" is the first episode of SilverHawks, and watching it again for the first time in a decade or so reminds me of how odd and unconventional it is--and makes me glad I started doing this series, because it ought to make for some interesting posts.

While origin stories tend to be the norm in comic books, movie series, and pretty much all other literature and media, children's television shows often bypass that whole process. Part of the reasoning, I imagine, is due to the way kids' shows are syndicated; having a loose continuity or none whatsoever allows episodes to be broadcast continuously in any order, while progressions of events might lead to confusion or other problems. I imagine the way kids' shows tend to be written (with many episodes being developed at any given time) and other aspects of the production process have some bearing on this as well. Lots of series just relay the origin through the opening or theme song and call it a day.

SilverHawks' origin episode stands out for other reasons, though. After the theme song, the titular characters don't actually appear until halfway (or later--I wasn't watching the clock) through the episode. The entire first act is actually more of an introduction to the villains than the heroes. We begin with Commander Stargazer contacting some central authority to notify them of a breakout on Penal Planet 10 and to request backup to deal with it.

This flashback sets the stage for quite a lot of the show's key elements. We learn that the year is 2839*, and that Mon*Star is imprisoned on the Penal Planet in the Galaxy of Limbo (where the vast majority of the series' action takes place), put there by Stargazer himself (after his last escape).

The Penal Planet is located relatively close to the Moon*Star, a red celestial object that undergoes periodic bursts. There's another planetary object in between the Moon*Star and the Penal Planet, keeping it eclipsed. What would make the most sense** to me is if that object were the Penal Planet's moon, which perpetually eclipses the Moon*Star from the planet's perspective, except for periodic occasions when the moon moves out of its way. We first see the Moon*Star in eclipse--a crater-ridden planetary object with a red halo around it, so that would make the name sensible at the very least. It's worth mentioning, too, that the Penal Planet is apparently artificial, or at least largely artificial, since it looks like a brown version of the old JLA satellite. That would remove some of the ridiculous odds it would take to create this cosmic dance where the moon perpetually obscured the star from the planet's point of view, and we can just assume that the Penal Planet is mechanized enough that it maintains a somewhat variable orbit.

Anyway, the Moon*Star is undergoing a burst, and "this time" it's pointed at the Penal Planet. Over the next several scenes, the moon moves out of the way, allowing the full brunt of the burst to shine onto the Penal Planet.

The guards seal off the window to Mon*Star's cell in order to keep out the light from the Moon*Star. Mon*Star insults the guards, then tries to bribe them, then begs (!) with them to let him see it, even going so far as to say that they could trust him. The guards won't fall for it; they know Mon*Star isn't allowed to see the light from the Moon*Star, and they know what happened to the last guard who trusted him (which, it's implied, led to his last escape). So, um, not to second-guess the warden or anything, but if it's that dangerous to let Mon*Star see the Moon*Star, then why not give him an interior room?

As the star burst nears its apex (we know, because there's a voiceover countdown through the prison--again, don't you think it might have been a better idea to keep Mon*Star in the dark about this?), Mon*Star desperately punches at the metal plate covering his window, denting it pretty impressively. Eventually, he cracks it, and the red light of the Moon*Star shines in onto his eye...patch? I've never been entirely clear on Mon*Star's facial anatomy. The star burst countdown reaches zero, and Mon*Star does his transformation chant ("Moon*Star of Limbo, give me the might, the muscle, the menace, of Mon*Star!"). This turns him from a mostly furry guy with Lion-O's haircut into...well, this:

He proceeds to tear the wall off his cell, then destroy the robotic guard (with its own reflected laser blast).

Mon*Star escapes into space, where he almost immediately ends up in a Darkness video. He encounters Sky-Runner, his pet/mount, which is a giant laser-shooting space squid***.

I'm reminded once again why I loved this show.

Sky-Runner has gone feral during Mon*Star's time in the pokey (or just doesn't want to be pet to an evil intergalactic mob boss anymore), and so it attacks its former master. Eventually, Mon*Star subdues it with the "Light Star," an energy shuriken from his eye (no longer a patch, but with the same star-shaped pattern) which encases the squid's body in the mechanical armor that forms his seat.

We cut back to Stargazer's transmission, where he explains that Mon*Star returned to the Penal Planet and freed his henchmen, collectively known as "the Mob." Stargazer gives a capsulized bio on each member (something I'll be doing in future posts), then reiterates his call for help.

The second act begins with the narrator (who I'm pretty sure is Larry "Lion-O" Kenney, doing his best impression of the Super Friends narrator) bringing us back to Earth, where a team is being formed to assist Stargazer. A General who looks like he'd be at home in Gundam or Robotech and a Professor who looks moderately Vulcan are meeting to discuss the new team. They give the brief overview, mentioning the real names of the various SilverHawks for one of the very few times ever in the series--and as far as I know, we never do find out what Bluegrass or Stargazer's real names are, or if the Copper Kidd even has one. The general laments that they can't just send the team as they are, and the Professor replies: "One day we'll be able to send an ordinary person one hundred light years into space, General, but right now we can only send one who is partly metal and partly real."

If you listened to the theme song a few posts ago, theh you'll recognize that last phrase as one of the show's taglines. It's always bugged me a bit; I mean, metal is just as real as flesh and bone. I get the point, and I understand the need to rhyme, but it seems to undermine a bit the show's commitment to bionic heroes.

I digress. Immediately after this SilverHawk introduction, the Professor does a diagnostic check on their upgrades. During this check, the twins' (Emily "Steelheart" Hart and Will "Steelwill" Hart) have some kind of heart malfunctions. This causes tension and suspense for all of a second, until the Professor nonchalantly says they'll be fitted with mechanical hearts, and that they'll be fine. The General remarks that this makes their new codenames particularly fitting

Now, the diagnostic scene is very well done, with some top-notch animation. But they go through the shoulders, arms, heels, and left hands**** on the wireframe representation, and I'm not seeing a whole lot of flesh, bone, muscle, or anything else that would benefit from blood pumping. The SilverHawks are, outwardly, mostly metal, with only a face and one arm each to suggest that they're not completely mechanical. I suppose that would require some further underlying organic tissue, but I can't help but wonder how much their hearts actually do. I honestly don't know if this detail ever comes up in the series again, though I suspect it plays a role in the second episode, which an unspoken "part 2" to the series intro.

The next scene is a test run of various aspects of the series' technology--the SilverHawks' individual abilities (retractable wings and flight/gliding, boot jets, shoulder- and heel-mounted lasers) and their spaceship, the Miraj, in particular. It's a good introduction to the core concepts--each Hawk has his or her own pod in the ship, with Bluegrass as the pilot in the "Hot Seat." The winged hawks can launch from the pods, and the Hot Seat can detach from the main ship and fly solo. The main ship can become invisible (hence the name--"mirage"), but I think it may only be once the Hot Seat has detached, making it a pretty ineffective cloaking device. Regardless, the toy was freaking awesome.

The scene is pretty standard, with the SilverHawks destroying a combat training drone and demonstrating some of the standard combat techniques for the show. What is notable is that the only member of the main group to have any substantial dialogue is Bluegrass. The entire rest of the team--the stars of the show, who have only just now shown up in their introductory episode--has a grand total of two lines: each counting off and saying "release" when they launch from the Miraj. And that's it, for the entire episode.

So, like I said, an unconventional first episode. There are some good moments of suspense and action (the prison break, the combat training) and some more tacked-on ones (the artificial tension about the artificial hearts), and it really does a good job of laying out the exposition without too many huge infodumps. We learn where and when (roughly) the series will be taking place, who the main cast members are, what our protagonists' abilities are, and so forth. The bit where Stargazer is explaining who got sprung from the Penal Planet feels like it was lifted right out of the Series Bible or something, but other than that, they did a good job of building the universe. The animation is very good; ThunderCats was one of the bar-setters with animation on '80s TV, and this is clearly in the same style. I didn't really notice until the fight scene, but I'm about 95% certain that the background music is pulled directly from ThunderCats. I'm sure the fight/chase music is, and I think the Mon*Star transformation and Mumm-Ra transformations might be using the same cues as well. To hit a more meta point, there are already quite a few details I'd like to unpack about the show, and I'm curious to see how they pan out in future installments.

There were two other segments to this initial episode. One was an introduction, which I'd like to talk about in a future post, and the other is a different sort of introduction. As I mentioned in the first post, each episode ends with Bluegrass giving Copper Kidd a quiz about astronomical facts, much like the "knowing is half the battle" segments on G.I. Joe. These after-show moral segments tended to be largely disconnected from the series proper (even if they dealt with themes from the episode), so it was surprising to see this one build organically out of the story. Bluegrass comes back to the Miraj on the landing pad, and he sees Copper Kidd sitting in the Hot Seat, pretending to fly it. He asks the Kidd if he wants to be a pilot, and gets an affirmative response. He says that it's one thing to learn to fly the ship, but it's quite another to navigate through space, so he gives the Kidd a brief quiz about space, starting with Earth's solar system. After Copper Kidd passes the quiz, Bluegrass offers to train him in the simulator on Hawk Haven (the SilverHawks Limbo HQ), teaching him "all there is to know about the universe," and if he passes, he'll qualify for flight training. This is a neat development, and represents pretty much the only interaction we have between protagonists in the episode. I recall, in the misty depths of decades-old memory, that Copper Kidd's flight training does in fact come up within the plots of a couple of episodes at some point, which ties these segments into the episodes better than almost any other contemporary series I can think of.

And that's it for this week, squeezing in just before I can't reasonably call this "Sunday" anymore.

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*According to some galactic standard, in a different galaxy, and there are apparently 38 hours in a day, so whether or not this means it's 830 years into the future (or 850-ish, since this was made in the '80s) is unclear.

**Note that my inevitably futile and frustrating attempts to make sense of the astronomy in SilverHawks begin here.

***Hm...between the giant space squid and the guitars that shoot musical energy, I'm beginning to think that The Darkness were channeling SilverHawks for that video).

****It took me a little while to figure out why they would specify left hands, but I think it's because all but two of the Hawks have unarmored right hands. That's still only three of the five, so it seems like a more general statement would have fit the scene better.

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Silverhawks Sunday IV: Diversity

Masters of the Universe, as a toyline, debuted in 1981. Clamp Champ*, the series' first black figure, was released in 1986, in one of the last waves of toys produced. The entire line had precisely three female figures. The story is pretty much the same for She-Ra--Netossa didn't show up until the last wave, although unlike Clamp Champ, at least she made it onto the TV series. Unless you count horses, the only males in the group were Bow and Kowl--though the shows had significant crossover appeal, the gender wall between the sibling toylines couldn't be more rigid. By contrast, though SilverHawks lasted for a brief two years' worth of figures, it included a woman (Steelheart) and a black character (Hotwing) in the first year's group of figures**.

I'll address the main cast of Silverhawks in future posts; I wrote this post mainly to reminisce a little about Hotwing. He was a magician, and his powers (at least according to Wikipedia--my memories of the show are still fuzzy) were derived from more magical sources. I recall him having some kind of hypnotic power, as well as some telekinetic abilities, and I think it's from his character that I first learned the term "sleight of hand." It's a shame none of this really made it to his action figure (though I'm not sure how any of it really would). Instead, his toy had a wind-up-and-spin torso, and he came with a companion bird named Gyro***.

While I always liked the main SilverHawks cast, my favorite characters as a kid tended to be the auxiliary team members--Hotwing, the magician; Flashback, the time traveler; Condor, the old soldier and bounty hunter (as I recall); and Moonstryker, the cocky kid. In another somewhat surprising turn for '80s toy lines, all those major heroic characters got the action figure treatment. The villains and supporting cast weren't quite so lucky; Melodia, Time-Stopper, and plenty of other prominent characters never even made it to the prototype stage.

Wow, this post is really all over the place. I apologize; hopefully with my schedule freeing up a bit, this is the last of these I'll have to do without having watched the show in years.

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*Incidentally, despite not showing up in much story material, Clamp Champ has always been one of my favorite characters, due largely to his cool design and weapon.
**G.I. Joe did the same, and shows a notable commitment among '80s toylines to ethnic and gender diversity.
***Who, incidentally, came with a companion named Tzatziki Sauce.

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SilverHawks Sunday III: Sing-Along

Content-lite this week, because I think the theme song sings for itself.

I always thought SilverHawks had one of the best theme songs of '80s cartoons, right up there with M.A.S.K., Inspector Gadget, and Transformers post-season 2. I mean, how many minute-long usually exposition-driven cartoon themes had guitar solos?

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