Aspirational fiction and cautionary tales

[sabotabby]

This may seem like a strange thing for an admitted enthusiast of post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction to admit, but I rather wish there were more science fiction stories about institutions that actually worked versus institutions that were one crisis away from shipping off half the populace to concentration camps. Even if the latter sorts of institutions are the ones that we actually have, the result is an individualist narrative where humans in large groups inevitably behave in terrible ways and that the only people capable of saving us are inherently more powerful and special than the downtrodden masses.



I really like Star Trek for the reasons David Brin frames in this essay. Despite all of its flaws, it was a progressive show. Most of the time, the stories amounted to "big energy thing causes a problem, the ingenuity of a group of talented humans and aliens from diverse backgrounds working in a cooperative way solves it." In a contemporary context where a big energy thing is causing a problem, it might prove instructive to have more stories where people work cooperatively, using the scientific method, to bring jetpacks to the masses improve the living standards of the majority.


We can solve the energy crisis by reversing the polarity and remodulating the—WTF IS UHURA DOING? I love you, 1960 TV.

On the other end of the spectrum is Torchwood. Russell T. Davies is apparently convinced that any organization consisting of more than five people is out to destroy the world. This isn't a spoiler, by the way; this is a recurring motif throughout the series that has gotten progressively more annoying in the last season. The thing is, a sci-fi story about how America's healthcare system is fucked beyond belief is an awesome idea. It's ripe for social critique. I love the concept. What I don't love is every government in the entire world behaving exactly the same, and no one objecting other than a few family members who are unable to organize any sort of mass resistance. It waters down the satire so that it's not about evil pharmaceutical companies blocking universal healthcare, but rather the tendency of all social and political institutions towards corruption and sadism. Hope, if it exists at all, comes only from the actions of mavericks who buck the system for purely personal reasons.


There is no problem so large that it cannot be solved with an RPG.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with a well-written cautionary tale. Those are great; I love those. The best of those, however, allow for a glimmer of hope and encourage their audience to do something before the dystopia comes to pass. In the universe of Torchwood, I'm beginning to think, there is nothing to be done but for the audience to sit passively and hope that the people with power will do something before it's too late.

It's a completely unfair comparison, I'll admit, but Jose Saramago's utterly brilliant Blindness is a similar story to Miracle Day. A mysterious medical crisis—an epidemic of blindness in the former case, a halt to death in the latter—takes the world by surprise. The government cannot react properly. The afflicted are segregated and stripped of their human rights.


Does this remind you of anything?

The difference (aside from storytelling skill, consistent characterization, and stylistic originality) is that nowhere in Blindness do the protagonists rush into a concentration camp with guns blazing and no plan, hoping to shoot their way out of a paradigm shift. Blindness is, as much as it is about failed institutions, about creating the sort of social structures that actually work. It's about human compassion and solidarity. The characters don't give up on society; they create society. That, to me, is not just a political virtue but a narrative one as well; it's a way more interesting story.

Also, I can't get over how awful the acting is. Was I just spoiled by watching Treme or can absolutely no one on that show act?

Comments

[corvus.livejournal.com]

I'm watching the pilot of Treme right this very second. It's cute.

And yeah, I'm with you. I'm following Torchwood by rote at this point. The whole thing is painful and just a bit boring. There's a whole lot of, "What just happened? Why? How? And why should I care?" going on.

[sabotabby]

"Cute" isn't entirely where I'd go with it.

The last episode of Torchwood had me yelling at my screen, "WHY ARE YOU ALL SO STUPID?"

[corvus.livejournal.com]

I was at most a quarter of the way through the pilot. At that point it was still cute and it hadn't yet turned towards interesting, which is where it is now. :P

And yeah, 10-4 on Torchwood. It was just kind of awkward.

[lokilokust.livejournal.com]

when bill fucking pullman is the best actor you've got, then you're just fucked.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

Children of earth was, frankly, "you had me then you lost me". It was simply not enough of a plot for 5 hours. Also, the more one thought about it, the less it made sense.

[sabotabby]

I liked it a lot. Though I think it was someone on ed_rex's blog that pointed out—and I agree—that it was necessary to completely destroy the characters in order to make a cool plot work, and it shouldn't have been a Torchwood series at all.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I think it (intentionally) used the structure and style of the Professor Quartermass stories and grafted it onto Torchwood. Which didn't quite work for me.

My impression is Torchwood is it continues as a mission no matter who dies, with Jack entangled in some way, until some future point at which he becomes the Face of Bo. So I can accept the current Torchwood being destroyed, but at the same time it felt sloppy.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

My favourite kind of story is the one where the world is saved by people who do nothing special except choose to be world-savers and then not give up afterward. They can be geniuses too if they want.

I have never heard of Blindness but it sounds awesome.

[sabotabby]

I am even happier when they're not actually genuises. This was why I couldn't get into TNG; suddenly, the characters couldn't just be competent within a functional system; they all had to be perfect, too.

You should totally read Blindness. I have it somewhere; I can loan it to you. The movie is also surprisingly good for an adaptation of a book that I'd consider unadaptable.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

book! book book book booooooook

I have to ask though

does everything end up down the shithole in the end? because I don't like books that do that.

[sabotabby]

Well, the entire novel is horrific in that uniquely post-apocalyptic way, but it has a happy ending. Until the sequel.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

ghjfghfkhgjfhgffffffff.

XD

I might give the sequel a pass then. (is there even a sequel or are you just fucking with me)

[sabotabby]

I'm not fucking with you. There's a sequel. It's called (of course) Seeing and it is just as amazing as Blindness. The problem of course is that Blindness starts off horrific and ends relatively happily, and the reverse happens in Seeing.

It is only the vaguest of sequels, in that it's about different characters but is set in the same universe in the same unnamed city. When the characters from Blindness finally show up in Seeing, you'll wish they hadn't.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

:(

yeah so I should probably skip it then

except I will want to know what happens and then I will read it and be saddened

:( :(

[sabotabby]

Blindness is meant to be self-contained. Like, I am pretty sure that Saramajo didn't start out writing Seeing as a sequel so much as it was obviously part of the same universe so it made sense to bring some of the characters back. You can totally read the end of Blindness and not need to know what happened to the characters afterward.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

The only such sf books I can think of in this vein are Walden Two, which is sort of sf, and of course Brave New World. But these are about societies that "work" in ways that are supposed to horrify us.

I did not know that "Torchwood" is an anagram of "Doctor Who".

[sabotabby]

Was Walden Two supposed to be horrifying? I kind of thought that it was about the author's ideal society (which, granted, is horrifying to anyone who doesn't keep their infant daughter in a box).

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

Yeah you're right, he did not intend it to be horrifying but the critical reaction was, uh, less than nuanced.

[mad_maudlin]

The whole reason I've given Miracle Day a by so far (if I don't see any particularly violent sturm und drang when it's all over, I might torrent it) is that CoE completely destroyed any sense of hope in the universe. RTD even lampshades it: rather than the Doctor swooping in and trying to make sure everybody lives, the day is only saved when Jack chooses to do something abominable. The take-home message, to me, was, "See? Thomas Hobbes was righter than he knew, and the only function of your precious ideals it to make you sad." And I have a heard time tolerating anything that bleak.

[sabotabby]

It gets increasingly difficult to reconcile the sheer Malthusian despair of the TW universe with the relatively benevolent, if frequently violent, DW universe. I'm going to assume from now on that TW takes place in some sort of alternate universe and the Captain Jack from DW is still merrily slapping his staff's asses in the "real" canon.

Though really, the sacrifice of Stephen at the end of CoE was an asspull, and if they wanted to be bleak, it should have ended with the 456 winning.

[mad_maudlin]

I think the only reason the 456 didn't win is that RTD is also in love with the reset button--again and again, mayhem on a massive scale gets ignored/rationalized/forgotten about just in time for the next plotline. TW, SJA and DW are full of events that overtake all London/Cardiff, all Britain or even the whole Earth...and within twenty-four hours nobody remembers anything about them. (Moffat actually lampshades that early in S5, though he was just as guilty in "The Eleventh Hour.")

If the 456 win, there's no reset--nobody is ever going to forget it and there's no reset to push. So they made it as bleak as possible while still giving them a tenuous out to have everybody in the next series forget anything weird has ever happened.

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

Even if the latter sorts of institutions are the ones that we actually have, the result is an individualist narrative where humans in large groups inevitably behave in terrible ways and that the only people capable of saving us are inherently more powerful and special than the downtrodden masses.

This is exactly why I got so bored with fantasy & sci-fi. The one redeeming thing about The Lord of the Rings is that it is about the fellowship. Role playing games emphasize this too. But I am sick to death of fucking "CHOSEN ONE"s.

Also, I can't get over how awful the acting is. Was I just spoiled by watching Treme or can absolutely no one on that show act?

I forget: Have you seen Babylon 5? Atrocious acting and design, but excellent story.

[sabotabby]

I hate CHOSEN ONES with an unholy passion. Have you read Un Lun Dun? It has an awesome "fuck prophecies and chosen ones" theme.

Babylon 5 is on my list of things I need to see. But no, I've never watched it.

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

I haven't read it. I'll add it to my list.

[jenlight.livejournal.com]

Is it wrong that the only thing bothering me about Torchwood Miracle Day is that that The Doctor is apparently too busy to come save the Earth?
He was so upset by Jack's existence and now [spoiler embargo]!

I just cannot expect anything good from Torchwood. I'm happy Miracle Day is somewhat watchable. Do you remember the first 3 seasons? Ho boy! I think I saw like two episodes before I just said "really? This is a TV show? Really?" then threw my TV away in a fit of rage.

Children of Earth was great, in my tiny opinion. That's the only reason I've bothered watching MD. But, let's face it, Davies can't write a story for adults and Barrowman isn't a strong enough actor to carry a series.

[sabotabby]

This also bothers me, though I understand the need for separate shows (the Doctor couldn't step in all the times Sarah Jane might have needed him).

See, I thought the first seasons were fun. Terrible and trashy, but entertaining. Children of Earth was actually good.

[twiin.livejournal.com]

My name is Jairus, and I approve of this message.

[misslynx.livejournal.com]

Coming in late on this one, because I only just now managed to get fully up to date on T:MD, and was wary of spoilers...

Honestly, I have to be one of those individualist mavericks here, and say that I'm still enjoying Torchwood. Not as much as the original series, no, but more so than Children of Earth. I was prepared for monumental suckage, given the American element, but it's been better than I expected.

And I actually don't read the underlying message the same way that you do... Yes, it's pretty bleak, especially compared with Doctor Who, but one of the things that stands out to me about Torchwood in contrast to that is that it really is mostly about ordinary people. Who make extraordinary choices, yes, but apart from Jack, everyone involved in Torchwood has always been simply human. With access to advanced technology sometimes, but they're still just people. Even Jack is human, just with a bit of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey influence making him unkillable.

There are many things I love about Doctor Who, but fundamentally, the dominant theme in it keeps coming back to super-genius alien swooping in to save humanity because we're too primitive/unevolved/stupid/helpless to save ourselves. And the Doctor's view of humans seems to vacillate between seeing as "stupid apes" (direct quote, 9th doctor in "Father's Day") and as sort of lovable pets - who still can't be trusted to take care of ourselves. Yes, it's got a more upbeat/hopeful feel to it, by far, than Torchwood - but it's really disempowering on a certain level.

Torchwood, for all its bleakness, is about humans doing it for ourselves. And to ourselves, for that matter - because sometimes the threat isn't aliens, it's other people. Hell, even when it is aliens, humans are frequently involved in making things worse. But the basic message is that we, humanity, are own damnation and our own salvation. The best and worst things we will ever encounter. That, to me, feels very true, albeit sometimes a painful truth.

That was extremely evident in Children of Earth. It had human governments doing horrible things - and ordinary humans, not just Torchwood, but people like PC Andy, and the people on Ianto's family's council estate, doing heroic things as well. Miracle Day has that too - yes, there are people doing awful things, but of the main characters, only two of them were originally with Torchwood - the others have never dealt with anything like this before. And even some minor characters do important things - like Ralph in "The Middle Men". So ordinary people stepping up to a challenge is still a part of it.

Between the two, I would have to say that, dramatically, Children of Earth was better done. It was absolutely riveting, even if I would give a kidney to be able to unwatch episode 5. The major thing about it that I didn't like was that it completely dropped something that had been a key element in Torchwood up to that point - the humour element. That might seem trivial, but given how dark the series can be at times, the fact that there was a strong element of black humour in the original series was often what kept it from being completely depressing. Children of Earth was brilliant, but made me want to slit my wrists.

Miracle Day is definitely not flawless, nor is Torchwood in general. But one thing I appreciate about it is that they've found ways to slip a bit of that humour back in here and there. Not much - this is certainly nothing to rival "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" or anything like that - but it somehow makes it feel a bit more, well, Torchwoody, for lack of a better word. I still very much miss the original series... But I'm not about to stop watching Miracle Day.

[misslynx.livejournal.com]

Oh, and on the acting - really, the only person whose acting I have a major problem with is John Barrowman's. But that's been an issue for a while.

Barrowman is, basically, very good at exactly one thing: playing himself. And the original character of Jack, on Doctor Who, was apparently not just written specifically for him, but directly modeled on what he's like in real life, or so I've read. And when he's in that mode, he's great. He's also not too bad at doing the strong-and-stoic thing, because let's face it, that doesn't actually take much acting ability. But he's really not good at expressing intense emotion, so as the series progressively got darker and angstier, the limits of his acting became more and more apparent. And there's really no good solution to that, because Jack is Torchwood, on a pretty fundamental level.

But I haven't found the other actors to be particularly bad, and Eve Myles in particular I think is very good - she always has been. Part of the reason Gwen's always been sort of the "human face" of Torchwood is that Myles is a stronger actor than even most of the original cast. I realize that it's de rigeur in Torchwood fandom to hate her (though a big part of that is just because she's female and thus gets in the way of everyone's slashy fantasies about Jack and Ianto or The Doctor or whoever they feel like pairing him up with - the fanfic crowd seem to hate women on general principle), but she's always been a big part of what I like about Torchwood.