Starship Smackdown

A comment from Johnny:

Uhu... so, execs suck because they hire successful writers and when those writers turn out to be less successful it's because the execs didn't understand them in the first place. Oh, and audiences suck because they want what they want. Is it remotely possible that Dollhouse sucked and that's why the Company and the hoi polloi turned their backs on it? Wheadon is a one hit wonder turned hack. Call it the Lucas syndrome. Or lack of talent. Fine, I'll take that back... the dude gave us Heathers with fangs, good idea. Though it did pave the road to Melrose Place with fangs, not such a good idea. We all know there's only one good vampire show on the air these days, and that show's Kalifornication.

Well, Johnny, instead of just trying to be obstreperous, go back and read the post. I didn't say executives suck. I'm not sure what you were reading, or in which universe you were reading it, but you've misunderstood. Or maybe you're just a Joss Whedon hating troll. I dunno. There are a lot of reasons for Dollhouse's failure, and Whedon hisself addresses many of them. Which I would think would be illuminating for people interested in TeeVee...

I have been enjoying science fiction author Philip Palmer's blog, who recently stepped into the "SF is dying" meme. Here's the link.

The basic premise is this: Dude #1 (Mark Charan Newton) has come up with four reasons fantasy is more popular than science fiction. And they are:

1) More women than men read books.

2) Culture has caught up with our imagination.

3) Literary fiction is eating up SF.

4) Modern fantasy audiences have grown up on the films of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings.

The problem, it seems to me, is that the science fiction folks have become SO close-minded about what constitutes science fiction (lookin' at you, Charles Stross) that it's become this nerdy invite-only club. And although it's entertaining to make fun of Twilight, a lot of these folks go way too far. If you want new science fiction readers, you probably ought not make vicious fun of other fans.

Obviously, the whole discussion sprang up because of the insane popularity of Twilight and Harry Potter. But the notion that the people who read these books and see the movies are genre fans is erroneous. They're Harry Potter fans, and Twilight fans. Maybe they move onto other stuff but you can't assume that, or else you'd be assuming that people who love Dan Brown books will go on and read other books. If that were true, Tim Powers would be living in a fucking mansion with twenty servants and a private jet.

The rigorous mind-set of some science fiction writers who seem to WANT to pigeon-hole their content is not doing the genre any favors. I realize that one of the commandments of geek is "Thou must form subgroups," but now you're just hurting yourselves. If you want to constantly prove you're the smartest kids in the room, well, fine, but it's gonna cost you.

I have to wonder, though, would science fiction writers moan and complain if some science fiction book became all popular... BUT GOT THE SCIENCE WRONG? Or was poorly written? With lousy characters and lame plots? Or would they be delighted that the audience is responding to it? I would say the former, because they would go, "But there are SO many better writers to read!" Well, same thing in fantasy. Twilight and Harry Potter aren't particularly well written or original. But how often does something truly well written and imaginative gain insane popularity? Science fiction writers are refusing to see this. And it's frustrating, and weird, until you really sit down and think about where it's coming from.

The entire discussion seems to exist so science fiction authors and fans can denigrate fantasy. Jealousy and envy turn to hate and anger, and we all know what happens then. But when you read the back-and-forth you start to find a pattern. As Newton said above, more women read than men. And the extrapolation of that is that more women read fantasy. And the extrapolation of THAT is that more women read fantasy because it has romance in it.

Mr. Palmer says,

Point 1) is a killer: yes, women do read more books, and it seems that by and large they don't read 'blokey' hard SF. (I'm basing this on anecdotal evidence, admittedly - if the publishers know more or different, I'd love to hear it.)

However, I do recall being on a panel at a Sci Fi London event where a female fan asked, sweetly and devastatingly, why SF writers are always so obsessed with 'getting it [the science] right.'

And her words struck me like a body blow. Here was a fan who wanted to be told stories. She didn't want books which taught her all the science she'd so far managed to avoid by not doing physics and chemistry A Levels. And so the whole geeky, anoraky dimension to hard SF was, for her, like a huge Keep Out sign.

And yet! SF - of the hard and space opera variety - is all about concepts and ideas and amazing extrapolations of scientific insights. Like the many-world theory, or the astonishing properties of black holes, or the commonsense -defying theory of quantum physics. These concepts give a backdrop to a world of the extraordinary, where wonderful events can occur as a matter of course. And it is or should be no harder for the lay reader to grasp these concepts than it is for readers of Dan Brown to follow his historical and esoteric digressions.

'Hard' SF , therefore, shouldn't mean SF that's 'hard,' and on which you will be tested by stern faced boffins.

And, personally, though I love the SF of ideas, I get bored when it's gadgety and geeky, all about the machinery (plot and otherwise) and not about the story and the characters.

EXACTLY, and I guarantee you that this is exactly what that female fan was on about. My issue with Stross's bleatings has to do with the insane nerd quotient, that segment that cares much more about spaceship design and star maps than characters and dilemmas. So the female fan, I believe, was responding to what the science fiction fans and writers have been known to say -- "IT'S ALL ABOUT THE SCIENCE, YOU DIM-WITTED FUCKERS!! If you don't understand it, go read your My Little Vampire books." Which they then did, and now science fiction writers are wondering where their readers are.

If this woman had been presented with an Alastair Reynolds book, or a Robert Charles Wilson book, or a John Scalzi book, then she would probably have been happy. She's not stupid for asking the question; the science fiction writers who throw that wall up are stupid for MAKING her ask it.

Look, anyone can understand ANYTHING if it's explained well enough. That doesn't mean things get dumbed down. Instead, the characters have to be well written enough to support the concept and make the reader WANT to understand. But pages and pages of fiction that's all about science, with no plot or character support? Bullshit. I'll just go read a Michio Kaku book, thanks very much. And yes, I can wrap my girl head around the concepts.

Isaac Asimov could explain science and math to "regular folk." Gregory Benford explains scientific possibilities for TIME TRAVEL, for fuck's sake. And you don't have to be a genius to understand it. You just have to be a good enough writer to write it. So, science fiction writers, before you go bemoaning the genre's lack of popularity, maybe you should take a good, hard look in the mirror. You blame the readers, but shouldn't you take some of the blame yourselves?

Palmer says, about Battlestar Galactica:

But why is this show so beloved by female fans? For it is a "blokey" show if ever there was one. It's all about hardware and spaceships - the Vipers, the Battlestars, the Cylon ships. There are even long scenes in the engineering bay in which spaceship mechanics talk about the mechanics of spaceships. There is jargon aplenty. All in all, there is little - very very little - of what one might call "girly" stuff. And yet women love it. They don't just love it, they adore it, in their millions. It's SF! It's Hard SF! Why????

I think there are three reasons.

First, it's bloody good. It's smart, complex, morally ambiguous, and has characters you can engage with, and care about, and be exasperated by. Women fans are smart, just like male fans; they want stories that challenge them, and make them think and feel.

Secondly, it's sexy. Genuinely sexy. It's not the old-fashioned pulp cliched stuff with big-breasted Amazons with no brains; the women in this show are sexy, the men are sexy, and the Cylons (Number 6! be still my beating heart!) are the sexiest of all. And it's sexy in a totally non-sexist way. The beautiful young women in this show are often seen in revealing vests; but the gorgeous young men wear the same uniforms. And the old guys - Admiral Adama and Colonel Tigh - are also seen in the same revealing outfits, and dammit, they may be old and gnarly but they look good.

Thirdly, the women are just like men. They can be vicious. They can be cruel. Kara Thrace (Starbuck) is a swaggering arrogant jock who punches her senior officer and smokes a cigar - and we love her.

My theory is that the show is made a bunch of men who know nothing about women, so they write them just like men. And women, it seems, like that approach - because it's not condescending, and reflects a fundamental truth about our genders: women can, and do, kick ass.

Well. No. The reason the female characters work on Galactica has more to do with the fact that they're written like PEOPLE first. And you know what? So are the male characters. Because the male characters on Galactica can be sensitive and brooding and fragile. Y'know. Like fucking PEOPLE. The women on the show don't work when they're written like women. But hey, now we're talking about TeeVee, where staffs of men are hired to write female characters with nary a female writer in sight. And when they TRY to write women like women and not like people, they fail. Conversely, when ANY writer tries to write men like men and not like people, they also fail.

Stereotyping fiction into different factions leads to the stereotyping of the audience. It seems to me that some science fiction writers WANT to do this. They don't want women reading their books. But I don't want to read anything that isn't well written, so take that as you will. You can have all the research on the planet but if you can't write, an awful lot of people aren't going to give you the time of day.

Mr. Palmer wonders if science fiction writers are going to have to turn to epic fantasy, which he admits is, of course, ridiculous. But open up a bit, guys. Stop being so narrow-minded. There is tremendous work being done in science fiction. Instead of deriding the women who read fantasy, why not make a real effort to find out WHY they like that genre so much? And why not make a play for them? And here's something to think about -- why not, just one time, write a science fiction book with a female protagonist?

Didja ever think maybe THAT has something to do with it?

And then there's this, from Sam J. Lundwall:

“The question of whether a certain story of imagination is a fantasy or a science fiction work would depend upon the device the author uses to explain his projected or unreal world. If he uses the gimmick or device of saying: ‘This is a logical or probable assumption based upon known science, which is going to develop from known science or from investigations of areas not yet quite explored but suspected,’ then one could call it science fiction. But if he asks the reader to suspend his disbelief simply because of the fun of it, in other words, just to say: ‘Here is a fairy tale I’m going to tell you,’ then it is fantasy. It could actually be the same story.”

In other words, "Science fiction is logical, fantasy is made-up and illogical." Science fiction folk seem to have a VERY specific, narrow idea of what constitutes science fiction. They are trying to apply this narrow viewpoint to fantasy as well (witness the assertion all over the interwebs that urban fantasy is paranormal romance). But fantasy, well... there are SO many different ways to go. Fairy tales are just one. Magic realism. Urban fantasy. High fantasy. Contemporary fantasy. Etc. But I personally don't just like one of those sub-genres. I like bits of all of them. Same with science fiction. I like time travel stories, spaceship stories, even future war stories. AS LONG AS YOU FUCKERS WRITE THEM WELL.

So how about we refer to these sub-genres under one umbrella -- speculative fiction. Because at the end of the day, that's what it IS. Everybody's not going to like everything -- I really can't stand high fantasy, for example -- but you have a better chance of getting new readers if you don't alienate them before they've even picked up one of your books.

When we're talking about TeeVee and movies, incidentally, science fiction is actually MORE popular. Star Trek made a ton of money this year. So did Transformers. And unless your show has vampires in it, it's VERY difficult to get a fantasy show off the ground. Partly, I think, because science fiction is perceived as having procedural elements, while fantasy is not. What I like is the emergence of shows that don't have those restrictions. Lost, for example, has science fiction and magic realism elements. The more the networks insist on shows set in a recognizable world, the more opportunity there is to do urban and magic realism. You just have to be CLEVER about it. Science fictionally, there's FlashForward, V, Eureka, Stargate, Sanctuary, Fringe (which also steps into the fantasy world), Warehouse 13 (fantasy elements as well). I'm sure I'm leaving some out...

Anyway, as a woman writing genre on TeeVee, I resent it when arguments are invented seemingly just to bash women. I've really had it with this shit.

A Half Built House

Here's an interesting interview with Joss Whedon about the problems with Dollhouse.

Given what Whedon says about the network, it's a total miracle that they brought Dollhouse back for a second season. When a network gets buyer's remorse, the show usually doesn't even finish out the initial order.

"The problems that the show encountered weren't standalone versus mythology [episodes]," Whedon said. "Basically, the show didn't really get off the ground because the network pretty much wanted to back away from the concept five minutes after they bought it. And then ultimately, the show itself is also kind of odd and difficult to market. I actually think they did a good job, but it's just not a slam-dunk concept."

That's for damned sure. It's no surprise why Fox wanted to be in business with Whedon again. They probably shouldn't have canceled Firefly that soon and no matter how Whedon's shows have performed, he has that certain credibility networks crave. This is especially important now, as networks look to woo intractable advertisers with shiny things and ponies.

(waits patiently while people confuse Whedon's credibility with box office)

And no matter what, Whedon has already created one of the top geek shows of all time. Even if a show isn't performing ratings-wise, having a critical darling is something they can promote. And all networks want some form of THAT credibility.

While it can be infuriating to see a network overlook everybody else to go to someone who's had success, it's not hard to understand. These writers have been there. They've done it once, and the odds are better (so the conventional wisdom goes) that they can do it again. But just buying a concept they like from Anonymous Writer? That's a RISK, gentle readers. And networks aren't in the business of taking risks. They're in the business of, well, business. If an exec wants to buy something from Anonymous Writer and rejects JJ Abrams because they don't like the concept enough, that requires an explanation. They have to put their opinion on the line. And we don't necessarily have the climate for that right now.

So it makes perfect sense that they would put Whedon's show on, regardless of the concept. And actually, it makes sense that they would give him a second season and try to see if Dollhouse could rise from the ashes.

But then it all comes back to concept. If he'd fucked up the first season of Buffy, a reboot would have been entirely possible because the Buffy concept lends itself beautifully to TeeVee. The premise has incredible flexibility. There's a deftness to it that allows the writers to move within its universe. Dollhouse, unfortunately, didn't have that. And it's not that the concept was necessarily flawed. It was just never clarified:

"We got the espionage that the network wants, but it's the questions about identity that we want," he noted. "There are other things about the show that never came back, and I didn't really realize it until the second season—[there were] things that we were ultimately sort of dancing around. ... We always found ourselves sort of moving away from what had been part of the original spark of the show and that ultimately just makes it really hard to write these stories."

The network wanted a certain element and the problem with Dollhouse was that the premise wasn't solid enough to support that kind of a move. You can tell the difference between a flexible premise, like Buffy, and a nebulous one, like Dollhouse. And just plugging in a certain element the network wants isn't going to work. But then Whedon didn't know that, exactly, because he didn't have that rock-solid set-up. So he gave it a shot.

Asking questions about identity can certainly be a part of a series but it can't be the SERIES. It's too nebulous. The only way to solidify that is to make sure that you've shored it up as a metaphor, and that speaks directly to the concept of the show. See, I think it was too obvious: Let's explore the nature of identity through a corporation that erases and implants identity. What you don't get with that concept is the freedom to really explore it, because it's in your face all the time. Dollhouse spent A LOT of time justifying its premise, and that's a problem. A premise shouldn't get in the way of the storytelling. Buffy's metaphor was that high school is hell. And although Whedon put a Hellmouth under Sunnydale, the Hellmouth didn't have to be justified or constantly explained. It existed to serve the show, and not the other way around. the elegance of that metaphor served the show.

And of course, the biggest problem with exploring the nature of identity is when your main character simply doesn't have one. I can envision a more Philip K. Dick version of Dollhouse where there IS no easily identifiable Dollhouse, and the audience gets what it needs from a TeeVee show -- to identify with a character -- before being led down a much different path. But that requires a much different approach than Whedon employed.

This, BTW, is partly where a show like My Own Worst Enemy fails. You can break a lot of rules in TeeVee, but at some point you need to invite the audience in and the way you are most successful in doing that is with character. Even with a character like Dexter, or Don Draper. Not the most likable characters, but they are understandable. The characters on Dollhouse -- the ones that weren't actives -- were always battling the premise.

"When you’re dealing with fantasies, particularly sexual ones, you’re going off the reservation," Whedon said. "You’re not going to be doing things that are perfectly correct. It’s supposed to be about the sides of us that we don’t want people to see…. The idea of sexuality was a big part of the show when it started and when that fell out, when the show turned into a thriller every week, it took something out of it that was kind of basic to what we were trying to do."

Well. Yeah. The stuff that was interesting about Dollhouse had zero to do with the engagements, but unfortunately, that doesn't make a show. It DOES make for some intriguing moments. The unaired episode, Epitaph One, is a pretty damned fine hour of TeeVee. I have no idea if it's a Dollhouse episode, however, and that's something of a problem.

I told him I had trouble wrapping my head around the idea that Fox wanted less sex.

"This is the thing that caught me off guard," he replied. "First of all, network television has taken great treads backwards in terms of dealing with sexuality or the body or anything. I mean, now on cable everybody is prancing about naked and whatnot. On the networks, it’s gotten different since I was last making TV.

"Fox sort of has that reputation for 'sexy' or 'edgy' or blah blah blah, but they don’t actually want that and it frustrates me," he continued. "It’s the classic American double standard: torture -- great. Sex -- oh, that’s so bad!"

Whedon's being somewhat disingenuous here (I hope) by ignoring the fact that the actives are, essentially, sex slaves. Whether their implanted personalities enjoy it or not, they are being forced to fuck people for money. Sex may not be all over network TeeVee, but it's certainly THERE. But the basic concept of sex in Whedon's Dollhouse world isn't palatable to the majority of people with eyes. Exploring the evil of that is interesting, but that's not a show. That's an element. And something that noxious just can't exist without SOMEONE the audience can identify with.

"My favorite thing is to shake it up, is to bring as much that’s different as I can every week -- to get people to a different place. But television is largely designed to do the opposite," he said. "Hit shows are basically designed to give people exactly what they expect, and that’s not to slam on every other show. There are plenty of shows that surprise you, that are humorous where you expect them to be maudlin or scary where you’d expect them to be romantic. But ultimately most people [watch] TV shows going, 'OK, this is "Party of Five." I’m going to cry." And I’m not really good at that."

Can't disagree with him here. I think what happens is, there are people who are just plain good at giving audiences exactly what they expect. They don't have to think about it. When they come up with a show, it's already THERE. Whedon doesn't think that way. Most of my favorite TeeVee writers don't think that way. They're a little left of center. Whedon creates his world, and then he plays in it. But when he looks up, the audience is watching CSI and he's all, "WTF just happened? Look at my wonderful world!" And that also speaks to what a network wants. Especially now, that has to be CLEAR.

Buffy's world was always easy to enter but with Dollhouse, I'm always kind of confused about what the world IS. It's too realistic on the one hand, and too fantastic on the other. And I don't think the show ever found the medium between those two things. But if you're going to break the rules, you have GOT to succeed. I love Whedon's worlds but Dollhouse feels too much like an exploration than a solution.

The shows I like to watch have well-developed worlds, particularly shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad and True Blood. The worlds are SO different and distinct and immersible. But it doesn't always have to be a dark world. Glee has that, and so does Chuck. Network shows have to have more of a balance than cable shows and these two in particular do that very well. Glee has the music, the teenagers, and the teachers. Although it's generally more comedic, this week's episode had a pretty dark, dramatic scene. And I like that the show has the liberty to do that. Chuck somehow manages to effortlessly balance the espionage elements, the Buy More, Chuck's family and his relationship with Sarah. The writers can take the show a little off the rails when they want to because they've created great characters. I'm not actually sure why America isn't watching it. This is exactly the kind of show that used to be a network staple.

Come on, America. Tune in. You can miss a crime show once a week...

Lords of the Backstage

Okay. So it's two weeks later. But everyone knows the holiday season starts November 1st, so get off my back!

We've been having a great round of meetings lately (new representation is awesome). Not only do you talk about the specific show in a meeting, but you also talk about television in general. We've had meetings where we've discussed independent business models, and meetings where we talked about network branding. This is particularly interesting in light of how well networks like USA are doing. Y'all know what constitutes a USA show. Characters Welcome and all that. And all of their shows seem to be working, partly because they have an extremely narrow focus on what type of show works for them. Because now, networks are branded by genre. But they didn't used to be, and the broadcast networks still aren't. There are two different types of branding, and only one of them is working right now.

I think it has to do with audience fragmentation. TeeVee is like the Internet now. You go to Huffington Post for progressive politics, or Free Republic for the other kind. But what if Huffington Post had Progressive Monday and then Conservative Tuesday? How do you brand that? The broadcast networks have a much more difficult job in today's fragmented market. NBC used to be Must-See TV. You could count on NBC for ten o'clock dramas and that great Thursday comedy block. Saying "That's not an NBC show" is really hard to say right now. But NBC's not the only network having trouble with this. Probably the only network that's somewhat easy to brand is the CW and again, that's because the focus is so narrow.

CBS is the Crime Network, for the most part. But it's also the Older Drama Network. It's a little easier to figure CBS. Obviously, The Good Wife was going to work there. Whenever CBS tries to go even a little outside their box, the shows don't work. CBS has a consistency that the other networks lack. However, their inability to go even one step outside that comfort zone has always been a problem for them.

Over at ABC, they don't seem to be successfully building on their Lost/Desperate Housewives success. They're clearly trying to find a Lost replacement, what with V and FlashForward. But beyond that, are they really taking chances the way they did when they put Lost on to begin with? Should they be trying to emulate Lost? Because that could hurt their shows.

And Fox, with the American Idol juggernaut that takes up about 75% of their programming, is finding it hard to build any kind of scripted consistency. What are they, aside from the AI network? House works great for them but they're more notorious for canceling fan favorite shows than for any innovation. What I do like about Fox is that they do keep some shows on. Bones, for instance. But that show exists in isolation, doesn't it? Ditto Fringe, which is going on cancellation hiatus. It hasn't been canceled yet but taking it off for so long may not do it any good, especially when Fox has shown so little confidence in its winter replacement, Past Life, which was shortened to a seven episode order. Genre audiences know better than to invest themselves in Fox shows.

Funnily enough, it's NBC that seems to understand how important network branding is. They're using the "More Colorful" tagline for the network. I think it's an attempt to lighten up the network. They gave six additional episodes to Chuck, and they were the top bidder for the new JJ Abrams pilot, which is a spy show. NBC needs a high-profile tentpole show and this is likely to be it. I hope they stay in the drama game, that they can abort the Leno experiment and get back to business. While branding a network is tough these days, it needs to be done. There can't just be crappy reality shows and then cable. There's an entire middle ground that isn't being served. And if you look back at hit shows of the past -- back when networks were king -- you see the diversity: Family comedies and dramas, shows for teens, shows for grown-ups. Cable fills the need for shows like Breaking Bad and True Blood, but where does everything else go?

I'm pulling for you, networks. Make the right moves.

Now, some long-awaited comments!

J.J. asks:

What's your take on the Sony announcement that they're not buying anything for the foreseeable future?

Well, they're not alone. None of the studios has any money. But the feature film biz goes dark from now until after Sundance, and that's about when the producers get their development funds. So we'll see what happens. Obviously, studios are in more dire situations than they've ever been. I sure wish they would make smarter decisions about what they produce but just as with networks, the studios tend to get more conservative when times are tough. The perfect storm that allows networks and studios to take risks just doesn't happen very often.

Here's hoping, BTW, that AMC's perfect storm hasn't ended. Did anyone manage to get through The Prisoner?

Mr. Burnett said this in the midst of a great comment:

Much as I love Stross, his rant sounded like many I've heard in convention hotel hallways at 4:00 in the morning. Usually at Worldcon.

And it just totally made me laugh. Because it's completely the truth.

Gareth opines:

Stross's rant is a bit off, true. Star Trek's annoying "tech the tech" dialogue is mostly gone these days. For all the flaws of Babylon 5 or Firefly or Battlestar, they didn't have it. I can see a more valid criticism there, though. It's that SF TV isn't putting enough effort into the SF part. Let's use Battlestar Galactica as an example here. There are plenty of questions that the writers obviously didn't put much thought into, including what a Cylon is in a physical sense, what language the human characters are speaking, and why it makes sense to launch fighter spacecraft from a carrier. It's still a well-written, well acted show, but I'm not sure you can describe it as good science fiction. And you could easily give those questions answers consistent with a TV show, and make it good SF.

But see, I don't have a problem with any of that. I need the characters to make sense, and the world to be sufficiently developed. And I think they did, and it was. I don't think Charles Stross has a suspension of disbelief gene. But for me, if the writing's good enough, my own suspension of disbelief kicks in. It's only when the writing isn't good that I start to nitpick.

Stephen sez:

Charlie Stross speaks only for himself on this one. The fact that Doctor Who has renewed itself and played to successive generations means that it's always had special meaning for all levels of the audience. Even through the long years when the BBC's own management looked upon the show with disdain. Maybe they found it hard to feel respect for viewers who loved a show with shaky sets and low production values.

That's good to know. Because God DAMN, that show is good. It should be a national treasure. And without Doctor Who, I wouldn't know how to pronounce Raxcoricofallapatorius.

Lynn on Zenyatta:

Yay for a Zenyatta post! As someone who first started reading this blog for the posts on TV writing, it was a pleasant surprise to find you were also a horse racing fan, and I was hoping you'd write about Zenyatta. Last Saturday was my first Breeder's Cup in person and seeing her make history was something I know I will remember for the rest of my life. Perfection.

Man, you couldn't have picked a better first experience!!! Incidentally, she's going to parade at Hollywood Park on Sunday. And Oak Tree has renamed the Lady's Secret Stakes (a race Zenyatta won the past two years) the Zenyatta Stakes. I wanted to do a compilation video of all of her stretch runs and when she won the Breeder's Cup still perfect, it seemed like the right time. Link here.

And that's today's blog post, gentle readers. If you celebrate Thanksgiving, enjoy! And if not, don't worry. Kwanzaa's coming.

Invincible

Apparently, I produce 0.9 posts a week, which I found out when Google Reader suggested I might like my own blog. Way to go out on a limb, Google Reader! I wanted to get it back up to 1.0, but this has been a crazy month. Luckily for all y'all, I've been bookmarking interesting news and blog entries so I've got shit to talk about later.

But all I'm going to talk about now is the Breeder's Cup last Saturday, when Zenyatta made the kind of history you just don't see. Any notion I had that I've seen greatness was totally blown out of the water when Zenyatta crossed the wire. I could wax rhapsodic and spew racing minutiae onto these pages but what I really wanted to do was try to put into words what this really means, and why Zenyatta's victory affected people so much.

I know that the majority of people (all, probably) who read this blog are either not racing fans, or just not sports fans at all. I'm sort of a sports fan. Love baseball, used to love football, can't stand basketball. Mad about racing. If you're a writer pitching a sports project (been there twice), conventional wisdom says "DON'T DO IT, YOU FUCKING IDIOT! ARE YOU INSANE??" When you're pitching a world that's unfamiliar to the majority of your audience, you have to set that world. Same with sports, unless you're pitching a baseball/football/basketball project. While most people have at least a rudimentary familiarity with those sports, they don't, on the whole, know anything about racing. Maybe they've heard of Secretariat. They've probably heard of the Kentucky Derby. But that's about it.

I had a discussion recently about sports movies versus sports and the idea was that sports movies work because they have a narrative that actual sports lack. This isn't at all true but the fact remains that if you don't know the sport in question, then the subtleties that may give you that narrative don't exist for you. Hence, you have no fucking idea what's going on, which makes the sport in question boring only for the people who truly know and understand it. I totally buy this with cricket.

But after seeing what Zenyatta accomplished on Saturday, I have to go against that. Except for the cricket. There were over 58,000 people at Santa Anita and lemme tell ya, on a good day there's 15,000. It was pretty crowded last year but nothing like this. People came on Saturday because they heard about this unbeaten filly who was going to take on the boys for the first time. People -- no matter how much they know -- LOVE the battle of the sexes. That shit is timeless. Even if they don't know the stories within the Classic, they know the main throughline... the high-concept moment. The poster. The trailer. And that's Zenyatta. Speaking of posters, TVG gave out Zenyatta posters. And they ran out. If you saw the telecast, there are freaking posters EVERYWHERE. And not just the TVG posters; homemade posters, too.

You don't need to know racing to recognize what Zenyatta did. You just need to be alive and somewhat conscious of the world around you. All a knowledge of racing does is enhance that recognition. For example, I know what it means for a horse to go out there fourteen times and win fourteen times. Even if a football team wins every one of their games, they always know who they're playing against. Baseball players don't bat 1.000. Pitchers lose games. And geez, horses lose races. Even Secretariat lost races. Seattle Slew lost. Affirmed lost. But Zenyatta faced -- and defeated -- 88 horses in her career, and she won every one of those races at a disadvantage -- her running style. She was at the mercy of every horse in every race she ran, and she STILL won them all. Now, much like a fan of Lost who dissects the clues in the episodes, you can get more appreciation about what this mare accomplished if you have the details. But you don't need it to feel the impact of what she did. And that is certainly the hallmark of great drama.

What's kinda funny is that the people who had the info -- the fans and the punters -- didn't even pick her. Because to them, the numbers didn't stack up. I can look at the numbers -- the cold, hard facts -- and see where they're coming from. But it wasn't how fast Zenyatta went or how much she won by. It was the way she did it. And she won every one of those races that way -- cruising past the leaders with her ears pricked. That's a racehorse's way of showing disdain, people. And she showed that same disdain to non-winners that she did to champions. Bettors need it to be about numbers but the whole reason EVERYONE comes to the races is that one intangible, and that's what Zenyatta showed fourteen times in a row.

Watching Zenyatta match Personal Ensign's unbeaten record of 13 straight in her Classic prep was emotional enough. But this was on a different level, a level the majority of people at the track (me included) had not seen in person. This was Secretariat winning the Belmont. When you have someone like Hall of Fame rider Angel Cordero Jr. say that this was a highlight of not only racing but of life, then you can begin to grasp the enormity of what was witnessed. But even people who don't know that, who don't have the history of that behind them, can go home knowing they witnessed something special. What Zenyatta's been doing for the past two years was captured by a huge crowd on Saturday. Everybody GOT IT.

I've never seen people just sob with joy after watching a race, but that's what happened at Santa Anita on Saturday. Emotion lifted the grandstand up. Trainers whose horses ran up the track behind Zenyatta were teary-eyed and cheering for her. Jockeys, whose horses ran very well, didn't have the words to describe what it was like to watch her cruise past them. And it was international, too. Horseplayers who were dissing Zenyatta were crying after that race. They were speechless.

Everytime a horse steps out on the track, or a pitcher takes the mound, or a swimmer takes his mark, there's the anticipation that something great could happen. The past, the history of the sport, and the future coalesce into the present. There's nothing more of the moment than a sporting event. And what sustains you through the majority of the non-great times is that possibility of greatness, of witnessing something amazing with thousands of other people. Sports are organized and rigorously policed but what happens when the gate opens in a race is the opposite of that. It's chaos, and the entropy that develops throughout can bring greatness.

It's about taking risk after risk, challenging yourself time and time again, to be better than you were the day before. It's about heart and truth and fight. Now add in horses. Nothing will make a sport more honest or true than a horse. When you see an animal lay it all on the line to WIN, it does something to you. And they certainly don't always win, as the myriad Triple Crown misses have shown us. I went to Del Mar to hopefully see Cigar break Citation's streak in the Pacific Classic and he got beat. I saw Big Brown go into the gate for the Belmont. The swell of anticipation that happens before something like that just fucking dies. It didn't on Saturday.

You can't plan great events in sports. You can hope for them, but ninety-nine out of a hundred times you're going to be disappointed. It's the unpredictability of the game or the race that gives it the drama. And it's about the search for those moments that define greatness. And that search is all about overcoming adversity. And isn't that what drama is about as well? You can't define or quantify heart, but you know it when you see it. And there's something primal about it, something that brings us all together. We recognize it instantaneously, even if we've never seen it before.

Now, if you come in and say that the horse is a dumb animal that is just doing what it's taught to do and it doesn't understand winning, you simply don't get it. And if you're a writer who feels this way, then you're doing yourself and your work an enormous disservice. Writing is about broadening horizons. Not narrowing them. And being unable to grasp what a feat like Zenyatta's means to people is more about being unwilling than blind, if you ask me.

Without Zenyatta's victory, it still would have been a phenomenal day of racing. But with that win, it became transcendent.

Cosy Catastrophes

MAN, it's hard coming up with topics, which is why I thank people who publicly say stupid shit. Thanks, peoples. Much appreciated. The stupid shit responsible for this post comes courtesy of award-winning science fiction author Charles Stross. I haven't read Stross yet. He's been on my list for a long time, but Robert Charles Wilson and John Scalzi keep bumping him down. Anyway, he posted this thing about why he hates Star Trek, ingeniously titled "Why I Hate Star Trek." So I thought I'd take a look.

In the interest of full disclosure, I don't hate Star Trek, but I don't consider myself a Trekkie or Trekker or whatever name is of the moment. I'm pretty familiar with the world of Trek. I haven't seen all episodes of each series but I would say I've seen most. I dug the new movie. The Star Trek universe isn't precious to me.

That said, I went into Stross's rant totally open-minded. But it soon becomes obvious that the dude does that science fiction nerd thing that drives me up the wall. He complains about the science of Star Trek. This acknowledgment came after Stross had read something TNG alum Ron Moore had to say about how they wrote the techspeak on Trek. It took me awhile to get over the shock of it. Not the shock that the writers on Trek would frequently just write "tech" in the dialogue so that the tech guys (called science advisors, which could be part of the confusion) would fill it in with futuristic-sounding words.

That's not what surprised me. It's the fact that we've fucking known about this since TNG was on the air, which was over twenty years ago. Seriously, dude, WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN? How is this news to anybody with even the remotest interest in the genre?

Don't get me wrong. I like a lot of crap, stuff I won't even mention on this blog. I hate a lot of crap, too, and there are certainly logic reasons -- like shitty science, for example -- that I do. But what happens is that the show or book or movie has already committed a greater crime -- it's badly written. When something's badly written, I'm much harder on the other stuff that's wrong with it. It's much easier for me to take Heroes to task because it's already not very good. So when you steal from better source material, and then you fuck it up, well... prepare for the wrath.

But man, I've sure seen some great episodes of Star Trek. City On The Edge Of Forever, obviously. Best Of Both Worlds, for sure. Yesterday's Enterprise, no question. The Visitor, well... that's one of the best episodes of television I've ever seen. Hearing actors spout techspeak did not hinder my enjoyment of those episodes because of what they did right. They told stories about people unbelievably well.

If you watch The Visitor and think it doesn't do the things that make science fiction powerful, then you're just not paying attention.

But Trek isn't the only thing Stross hates. He also hates Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica. No, not the original; the good one. And he hated them without seeing them. Which is fine; there's a ton of stuff I'm not interested in. I should watch Supernatural, but I don't. Smallville doesn't interest me. Stuff on SciFi doesn't float my boat. Stross discovered WHY he hated shows he'd never seen when Ron Moore said the thing about techspeak. This is a bit confusing. I get that he hates Star Trek because he's actually seen it, and maybe it DID take him twenty years to figure out why. And maybe the techspeak IS what drives him absolutely crazy about it. But Galactica? Really? Is it just because Ron Moore developed it, so naturally it would also be tech-driven?

Because it's not, just FYI.

If there's a more character-driven genre show in recent memory, I don't know what it is.

He says this:

SF, at its best, is an exploration of the human condition under circumstances that we can conceive of existing, but which don't currently exist (either because the technology doesn't exist, or there are gaps in our scientific model of the universe, or just because we're short of big meteoroids on a collision course with the Sea of Japan — the situation is improbable but not implausible).

What he conveniently forgets is that we're talking about speculative fiction here. Trying to fit speculative fiction into a neat little box, as Stross is attempting to do, is kind of the opposite of what speculative fiction can do. Why on Earth would you want to limit that? Isn't the whole idea that you go the OTHER way? That you open up the limits of imagination? People who label with such authority drive me crazy. It's bad enough that we have corporations and executives and showrunners putting limits on genre. Shouldn't a science fiction writer like Stross know better?

He talks about how he conceives his books, which involves world-building and then conceiving characters who fit into those worlds. That seems logical, right? My issue is that it's TOO logical. Logic is a necessary tool, but I think people who work in genre who are kind of afraid of it rely too much on logic, at the expense of inspiration and surprise and imagination. This results in dull, dry stories that aren't even as logical as the writer thinks they are.

Stross doesn't care about characters, about how people interact with each other, but then sometimes he does when he says science fiction should be about an exploration of the human condition. So I'm confused. What does he want, exactly?

He understands that TeeVee shows, unlike books, can't present his own brand of science fiction, where non-bipedal creatures in totally alien landscapes use tools we've never seen before. But really, that's just lip service. Because he doesn't really understand what that means:

I can just about forgive the tendency of these programs to hit the reset switch at the end of every episode, returning the universe to pristine un-played-with shape in time for the next dramatic interlude; even though it's the opposite of real SF (a disruptive literature that focusses intently on revolutionary change), I recognize the limits of the TV series as a medium. Sometimes they make at least a token gesture towards a developing story arc — but it's frequently pathetic. I'm told that Battlestar Galactica, for example, ends with a twist ... the nature of which has been collecting rejection slips ever since Aesop (it's one of the oldest clichés in the book). But I can even forgive that. At least they were trying.

More limits. Science fiction is "a disruptive literature that focuses intently on revolutionary change." For Stross, maybe. But not for everyone. Not for every reader, or every writer.

And how nice of him to recognize the limits of TeeVee as a medium!!! That's extremely troubling, coming from someone like Stross. He's ALLLLL about limits, isn't he? Where he sees limits, I see opportunity. Isn't it MUCH more challenging to tell a great story within these so-called limits? Jesus Christ, man, what Galactica did -- regardless of how you think it ended, and I personally think a lot of people didn't get it -- has just not been DONE on television. Not that anyone will ever get to do it again, but Ron Moore fucking DID it, and Charles Stross -- that master of science fiction -- won't even take a look.

I'll bet the Terminator show made his fucking head explode. If he'd seen an episode. Which he probably didn't. I wonder if he's one of those "I don't own a television" people. It doesn't sound like he should, since all genre TeeVee and movies make his head explode. Which is most assuredly indicative of disruptive revolutionary change.

He lays a smackdown:

The biggest weakness of the entire genre is this: the protagonists don't tell us anything interesting about the human condition under science fictional circumstances. The scriptwriters and producers have thrown away the key tool that makes SF interesting and useful in the first place, by relegating "tech" to a token afterthought rather than an integral part of plot and characterization. What they end up with is SF written for the Pointy-Haired [studio] Boss, who has an instinctive aversion to ever having to learn anything that might modify their world-view. The characters are divorced from their social and cultural context; yes, there are some gestures in that direction, but if you scratch the protagonists of Star Trek you don't find anything truly different or alien under the latex face-sculptures: just the usual familiar — and, to me, boring — interpersonal neuroses of twenty-first century Americans, jumping through the hoops of standardized plot tropes and situations that were clichés in the 1950s.

"You WILL do science fiction MY way, or IT IS WRONG." He also adds the "under science fictional circumstances" bit, which means, I suppose, that we have to check with him first to see what is acceptable. Which again, defeats the entire purpose of speculative fiction. And since he's asking us to choose, I'd rather get the story right than the science. Otherwise, write a paper.

He then, however, makes an even worse faux pas:

PS: Don't get me started on Doctor Who ...

Sigh. Anyone who expects a show about a two-hearted, immortal time traveler going through time in a blue police box that's bigger on the inside to be scientifically accurate is a fucking idiot. If you're desperate to attach a label, Doctor Who is science fantasy. Not science fiction. Doctor Who is NOT driven by the science, it's driven by character and ideas.

For me, Doctor Who does everything good speculative fiction should do. To wit, IT DOES WHATEVER THE FUCK IT WANTS. It moves dizzily from hard SF to fantasy to horror to a drawing-room murder mystery to a soap to comedy... it literally does everything. And it does so with heart and passion and deft writing and CHARACTER.

First of all, Doctor Who has been on TeeVee since 1963. It's survived in part because of the elegance of its premise. Time-traveling Time Lord and human companion bopping around time and space in a phone box. That can be as simple or as complex as they want it to be. They can reinvent Daleks and Cybermen and make them work because the framework of the show is so simple. Essentially, it's the best kind of anthology, where you can see a totally standalone episode one week, a Dalek episode the next, then Jack Harkness pops in the week following, and then the show unexpectedly ties together an episode from the first season in an episode from the third.

This is precisely the kind of structure that frees you up.

The ability to have intense serialized mythology but also standalone episodes without hurting the show is the goal of TeeVee, at least for me. X-Files managed this for awhile but got lost in its mythology, so the standalone episodes and mythology episodes basically diverged into two different shows. Doctor Who manages this beautifully.

I don't see a lack of imagination on Doctor Who. I see exactly the opposite. I honestly don't know how the Brits feel about Doctor Who but if Stross's reaction is any indication, well... that's unfortunate.

I will say this to Mr. Stross. Next Comic Con, come to the Starship Smackdown panel. Let's see if you can keep up, Sparky.

Yvonne -- send me your e-mail addy through comments and I won't post it. Good to hear from you!

Digitarian Riverbank

I've been delaying discussing the new season, which is why this post is so late. I was hoping to watch at least the first two episodes of everything but after ten minutes of one particular show, I just gave up. And no, I'm not going to say which new show utterly destroyed my enjoyment of TeeVee. Because I have to operate from the neutrality of "I love all television shows. You're all fucking geniuses." So well done, new television season. Everything's MAGNIFICENT!

But then shit started to happen... shit that was centered around NBC, the network that gave you the MAGNIFICENTLY hilarious Jay Leno Show, every night at ten. All you have to do is find A CSI show, and then go up two channels.

The first thing NBC did was to essentially cancel the one show I was REALLY and seriously looking forward to -- Day One. They've decided to turn it into a miniseries, or two movies or some bullshit. So a show goes from having a 13 episode order to being a movie. Fuck you, livelihood. Sorry, hundreds of people who thought you had employment. You don't!!! NBC's in the "let's save money" mode because nothing's really working for them, and they're going to take it out on their shows.

There was a recent article about the cancellation of Southland, the NBC show that did okay for them last year but will not see the light of day this year, even though NBC had promised -- fervently -- that they had NO intention of NOT airing the episodes the studio had already produced. Now as soon as NBC says something like this, I would start packing my office. They did this on Medical Investigation. Jeff Zucker went "I can't imagine a scenario where the show won't get renewed." And then he imagined one, which had to do with him not renewing it.

So already this year, NBC's promised jobs to the staff, cast and crew of Day One and then rescinded that. Then, they actually have the studio (Warner Bros, in this case) MAKE episodes of Southland, which they decide not to air because the show is "too dark." Okay, but... wasn't it too dark LAST year? Why, yes, but last year they had ten o'clock slots. One has to wonder if they asked John Wells, who produces Southland, to lighten the show up so it would fit at nine o'clock. But one also has to wonder if they didn't think it was an issue initially. After all, they're running SVU at nine. But that doesn't seem to be working out so well, so my guess is that when SVU started losing viewers, they got nervous about Southland.

Networks tinker with shows all the time and they will cancel shows before they even air. This isn't a new trend. They've been doing it forever, but taking away the guarantee for episodes produced has made it virtually cost-free for them. They no longer have to pay penalties to producers or cast members. Now, they only have to pay penalties to the studio that shelled out the money to make the show. And NBC would rather pay Warner Bros a big old penalty than pay them thirteen episodes worth of license fees for a show they can't air. You could say that this is partly because NBC doesn't own Southland (Warner Bros does), but then NBC owns Day One and look at what happened with THAT. But since they're already paying about three million an episode for Trauma, they probably didn't want to compound that with Day One, which figures to be on the expensive side. However, Day One's a science fiction show, which means it's dark. Trauma isn't. I wonder if an entire season of Emergency cost three million bucks.

It's somewhat ironic that John Wells gets elected president of the WGA and NBC cancels his show. Go WGA! Power to the people!!!

What also sucks is that there are no assurances that one can count on. No matter what your day-to-day exec says -- or, hell, even Angela Bromstad -- the higher-ups can still cancel your show. I feel for the people who sold shows to NBC. You just don't know what they're going to do. They've apparently committed to Leno for another year, which means no ten o'clock shows. So if your show is, I dunno, even remotely realistic and doesn't feature a laugh track, then you're fucked. Obviously, NBC isn't going to keep Trauma and Mercy around too long. Heroes is about five years past its expiration date, especially if you go by my calendar, which wouldn't have even put it on the air. Day One's dead. They canceled Medium because they didn't own it, and now CBS has found the perfect show to air between Ghost Whisperer and Numbers. So they'll have The Office, and SVU. Are they going to focus on giving their only two drama slots to those shows? Will they cast Wanda Sykes or Roseanne in Prime Suspect? Will the JJ Abrams spy show have to be even lighter and funnier?

Because all they want is light and funny. And it's not hard to figure out why. Lighter shows work on USA and apparently, frenetic humor works on SyFy. Since those networks are part of NBCU, the parent network decides why those shows work and then says that's what they want, too. But they don't even know what that is, specifically. It's not crime shows. It's not family dramas. It's not genre shows. What does that leave? What they don't get is that these shows just happen to be lighter. They have a creative point of view. Not a corporate one. So the network is coming at this from exactly the wrong direction, but the right direction would be that they trust the creative voices. And they won't do that.

Does anyone at NBC think about what the network used to be and cringe a little? Will all the development execs just jump out of their windows when the shows they buy and develop don't get on the air? NBC doesn't just need one great show to save them. It needs an entire network of great shows. Isn't this the time to just throw caution to the wind and believe in something?

At least something amusing happened recently. Didja hear about the whole "Glenn Beck likes Muse" thing. Have you heard about this? The crazy motherfucker has apparently decided that Muse are libertarians because their new album, The Resistance, features a song called Uprising, which calls for, yep, an uprising against the government. I know what you're thinking. Glenn Beck's a libertarian? The crazy right-wingers ALWAYS say they're libertarians. It's hilarious. If you watch Fox News, you are a crazy right-winger. NOT a libertarian.

I'm guessing Glenn didn't listen to the rest of the album, or any of Muse's other albums, for that matter. Glenn even went further, pretending that a Muse spokesmodel had asked him to cease and desist. Apparently, him looking like a frothing loon is what he wants his audience to see.

I'm skeeved out by a few things here. One, that Glenn Beck thinks he's a libertarian. Two, that he completely misconstrued every lyric on Muse's album. Three, that he heard about Muse, bought the album, and listened to it. Actually, that last bit skeeves me out the most. I can't stand the thought of Muse going into Glenn Beck's ears.

God, that Lee Majors bionic hearing aid commercial freaks me the fuck out.

Next post -- sports. Just warning you.

Quick Update

From now on, you will have to be registered to post comments. Sorry, but there won't be any more anonymous readers playing games here. It's not fair. For one of you in particular (AND YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE), I can't take your attacks, threat or opinion seriously if you remain anonymous. What are you afraid of?