Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars by: Terrance Dicks

 

Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars was written by: Terrence Dicks, based on Pyramids of Mars by: Robert Holmes and Lewis Greifer writing under the name Stephen Harris.  It was the 27^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Whenever I find myself reading a Terrance Dicks novel there’s an immediate sense of comfort.  Several of my own reviews have discussed just how easy going his style is.  It has been said Dicks is responsible for the literacy rates of generations of British schoolchildren.  Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars is an interesting example of his style leaning particularly hard into the pulp fiction roots of both his style and Philip Hinchcliffe’s time as producer on Doctor Who.  Pyramids of Mars is a story exemplifying this, it’s a take on reanimating Egyptian mummies with diversions, because this is science fiction, into taking inspiration from Chariot of the Gods.  It's the latter point that the fandom does have a tendency to ignore or simply write off as part of the pulp fiction roots of the show and the serial in general.  The idea of the Osirans, or as they are in Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars the Osirians, as a near all-powerful alien race that influenced human culture is at best a dodgy decision despite being in an excellent serial.  At worst it is playing into a very long history of conspiracies aimed at denigrating “non-Western” cultures, mainly non-white cultures.  These stereotypes feel more present in the novelization with Dicks leaning heavily into those specific origins.  There is an added prologue recounting the Egyptian myth of Set killing Osiris which is a particularly fun little addition, but it does add in the context of the gods as aliens and making it explicit science fiction.  It does at least introduce little kids to Egyptian mythology since that is clearly the target audience of the novelizations in general.

 

The real step down for Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars is that despite some additions, there’s also an epilogue of Sarah Jane discovering through newspaper clippings that the entire story was written off as just a tragic fire and mix-up, and being a fairly quick read, this is a story that just loses a little bit of its luster when it isn’t being performed.  It’s perfectly fine to read about Sutekh, but without Gabriel Woolf’s delivery Dicks doesn’t do nearly as much to communicate the character’s presence to the reader which is a shame.  He just relies on the dialogue from Holmes’ original script which of course is good dialogue, but this is clearly entering the period where Dicks is writing so many of these novelizations he cannot quite keep up with the demands.  It’s still fairly early in the run of novels sure but it’s also his sixth novel of the year and because it’s one that was only about a year old, there isn’t enough time to really allow for a lot of that creative license that Dicks would write in novelizations like Doctor Who and the Web of Fear or his first Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars, while translating the story well enough to the page, it does exacerbate some of the underlying problems with the nature of the story and a lack of creative license does mean that it is just the TV story a second time.  The lack of performances does mean the final episode being similar to Death to the Daleks is just more apparent, though the additions are nice.  8/10.

Fury from the Deep by: Victor Pemberton

 

Fury from the Deep was written by Victor Pemberton, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 111^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Writing reviews for any of the Target novelizations are always just that little bit difficult because they aren’t original stories.  Fury from the Deep is a bit of an odd one because it breaks largely with the Target format by being about 60 pages longer than what was the standard length.  This would be done in the future as a trial run for the New Adventures, but Victor Pemberton simply found himself unable to adapt his story in the standard length.  Pemberton avoids making any major cuts to the story but also having six episodes to work with of mounting dread and horror means that you really do want that extra space just to translate it well.  The horror does work in prose, Pemberton translating a lot of the underlying pulse as more of the foam and weed breaking through the pipes more often.  The scenes which do exist in clips are ramped up in terms of violence, rarely is it just the gas attacking.

 

The working title of the story was The Colony of Devils and Pemberton restores some of those implications in the novelization.  The weed is more explicit in its sentience and quest for world domination here from the start.  There are subtle additions to make it feel there from the very beginning and its invasion is contrasted with a harshness of the refinery.  The Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria are shot early in the story with tranquilizers but in the novelization there is a direct mention of the people with the guns, something that on television feels somehow less harsh than it does here.  There is also a sense of a human touch Pemberton adds to the supporting characters.  Several are given first names but also expanded backstories from implying the Harris family are having a strained marriage from the refinery and Robson having a deceased wife which motivates his overwork.  Robson and Megan Jones are also treated harsher here, more often being referred to not by name but by title which adds to the atmosphere.

 

Overall, Fury from the Deep is one of the very best of the Target novelizations.  The pace reads more like an actual novel than a novelization which is always a plus and Pemberton’s additions are to make the book have better characters and a sense of mounting dread.  10/10.

Yesterday's Enterprise by: Ira Steven Behr, Richard Manning, Hans Beimler, and Ronald D. Moore, from a story by: Trent Christopher Ganino and Eric A. Stillwell, and directed by: David Carson

 

“Yesterday’s Enterprise” is written by: Ira Steven Behr, Richard Manning, Hans Beimler, and Ronald D. Moore, from a story by: Trent Christopher Ganino and Eric A. Stillwell, and is directed by: David Carson.  It was produced under production code 163, was the 15^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 63^rd episode overall, and was broadcast on February 19, 1990.

 

The best alternate universe stories in science fiction television work in one of two ways.  First, there is the evil alternate universe, pioneered by Star Trek in “Mirror, Mirror” where that evil is played to the extreme, and often to camp.  The second is the more dramatically interesting alternate universe, one played entirely straight where you can see the characters you love in different places because different choice have been made, these not being exclusive to the first decision.  The most famous of these in popular culture is Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, but the I was first exposed to was the Doctor Who serial Inferno, a serial that sees the Doctor encounter counterparts of his colleagues and other characters in an authoritarian, militaristic setting with a dystopian tone that leads to the end of the world.  Despite Star Trek: The Next Generation having the option to go fully for the first type of alternate universe episode because the mirror universe exists, it goes largely for the second in its first proper alternate universe (or in this case alternate timeline) in “Yesterday’s Enterprise”.  It’s an episode that on a production standpoint, should not work.  On screen there are four writers credited with the script and two separate writers credited with the story, plus new showrunner Michael Piller taking a pass at the script at some point during the production.  With that many credits, more than the Writer’s Guild of America would usually allow, being given an exemption because of how much everybody involved contributed, it should fall apart from competing visions.  Television at its best, however, is intensely collaborative.  As a script, “Yesterday’s Enterprise” clicks, likely having everybody who has a pass adding something to create a new layer before it even goes before the camera where David Carson, fresh off the incredibly atmospheric “The Enemy” is in the director’s chair is adding his own atmospheric touch with the dynamic lighting does a lot to elevate the performances in the episode and the script.

 

“Yesterday’s Enterprise” is an apology to Denise Crosby, returned for a single episode as Tasha Yar as a rip in the space-time continuum bringing the Enterprise-C into contact with the Enterprise-D creates an alternate timeline.  The Federation is far more militaristic, Federation-Klingon relations broke down and peace was never reached, the war is not going well as resources are depleted, Worf never became part of Starfleet (and likely doesn’t exist), and Tasha Yar never died.  The only person on the Enterprise-D who knows something is wrong with this timeline is Guinan, and even she cannot put it together.  Structurally, “Yesterday’s Enterprise” is a perfect episode of television: each scene serves multiple purposes in balancing the plot and the character drama, especially as it needs to establish the new personalities of the alternate timeline Enterprise crew viewers will know and the important members of the Enterprise-C (her captain, Rachel Garrett played by Tricia O’Neill, and her first officer Castillo, played by Christopher McDonald).  Visual shorthand of the lighting and the more striking versions of the costumes, even seeing Wesley Crusher in a Starfleet universe, create that initial link during the pre-credits sequence, but the script also is moving things to make the alternate timeline work.  Garrett and Castillo are parallels to Picard and Riker, all trying their best in the circumstances that sending back the Enterprise-C will be leading them to their deaths.  That is the dilemma and what makes it unique is how understated it is.  Whoopi Goldberg’s performance as Guinan is given the most focus the character has actually gotten so far, if this wasn’t an episode so focused on Yar it would be easily labeled a Guinan episode.  Guinan is the one piecing together and the moment she sees Yar for the first time Goldberg does so much with this one facial expression of such mixed emotions your heart breaks if you’ve been watching the show up to this point.  Guinan knows that Yar should be dead, she should not have a relationship with this woman and yet she does.  This moment comes full circle in the episode’s final shot between Guinan and Geordi La Forge: she asks to be told about Tasha Yar, who she was and how she had meaning.

 

Crosby is given her best material here as Tasha Yar.  There is a hinted romance between her and Castillo, though it reads as two people in very desperate situations finding comfort and companionship with each other.  The writers clearly understand the criticism of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation laid by Crosby of not needing to actually be there because Tasha is proactive throughout “Yesterday’s Enterprise”.  She is able to work out that correcting the timeline, if that is indeed what they are doing, but the way that she loses her cool is fascinating because she doesn’t.  She knows that there is a duty to send the Enterprise-C back and instead of lashing out, Yar makes the decision to go back with it to fight, almost to ensure the Klingons see the fighting against the Romulans as a truly honorable death.  It’s a meaning in her own death that she was denied by Star Trek: The Next Generation.  She gets one final scene with Captain Picard where you can just see on a very tired Patrick Stewart, giving Picard that war torn look, that he doesn’t want to let Yar go even if she is going to die anyway.  That decision to leave is what cements Yar’s character and almost retroactively makes her death in “Skin of Evil” worthwhile.  The episode could have chickened out and negotiated with Crosby to return full time to the series, but it doesn’t, Tasha Yar is still dead but this time she is going out on her own terms.  Because Crosby is being given her best material she is actually able to give a performance that feels fully rounded and not just a generic security guard stereotype that the character so often was reduced to, though to be fair everybody’s characterization in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation was thin.

 

“Yesterday’s Enterprise” succeeds almost because while there is conflict and a moral dilemma that has the obvious solution reached, it actually doesn’t have any external conflict and somehow is written with Gene Roddenberry’s rules about future interpersonal conflict being followed.  It’s genuinely a miracle that it works because of just how many voices have a hand in how everything plays out, but it’s a tour de force for the cast as a whole.  The tone never winks to the camera that this is an alternate timeline, or treats it as something unnecessary because there is technically a status quo reset at the end even if Guinan remembers everything and wants to learn about Tasha Yar.  There is the perfect understanding of what a good piece of television is and does a lot visually instead of just letting everything work through dialogue of a script that is full of great dialogue.  Blocking is attentive, lighting is perfect, and by the time the episode ends you realize you’ve watched another episode that just elevates what Star Trek: The Next Generation is capable of doing when it is at its very best.  10/10.

Time Zero by: Justin Richards

 

The thesis of Time Zero comes in a chapter where the Doctor explains the concept of Schrodinger’s Cat, the thought experiment to explain uncertainty of matter existing in multiple states when unobserved.  It’s a thought experiment that is intentionally ridiculous in physics, something that Justin Richards is clearly understanding of because that chapter actually ends with a fairly good joke about it, but this is also a story where there are splinters of different universes making its way out through the multiverse because of the choices the characters make.  The title refers to the inciting incident of reality, a mythic zero point that even the chapter numbers of the book are counting backwards to.  This is before Event One, the start of the universe as established in Castrovalva.  Richards is proposing a book of massive proportions, fitting into Sabbath’s grand plan that dominates these latter Eighth Doctor Adventures novels.  Sabbath is here, when revealed it becomes incredibly obvious where he is hiding and yet there was enough to make me forget he could very easily be involved.  Richards brings the massive scale down to the personal level, this is an example of Doctor Who telling a story about having to fulfill history because the TARDIS team have been given information about their own futures.  This is a plot point that Steven Moffat would love, but Justin Richards isn’t using it for some grand plan, at least not on the surface, but for allowing for some particularly great character drama.  Fitz Kreiner is dead, he died in Siberia 1894 on an expedition with George Williamson, much of Fitz’s plot being the terribly sad plot of seeing the entire crew die while there is clear alien activity of some sort, interestingly connected to other books Richards has contributed here in a way that doesn’t seem overly continuity heavy.  Surprisingly it is the inciting incident of finding the diary in a bookshop is Richards most tense scene of the novel, because it is the precipice of choice.  The Doctor could choose not to open the book and seal Fitz’s fate, but he does so because he is just too curious.  He has to know, let the cat out of the box so to speak.

 

Anji Kapoor feels like it is time for her to leave the TARDIS at the beginning of Time Zero, another choice she is at the precipice of making.  She does leave for a time, it’s all part of the plan to try piecing together whatever happened in Siberia in 1894 and for her part she returns to her normal life.  It’s a life she cannot really return to, corporate office work is something that does not suit someone who has been time traveling.  The pace is far too slow and Anji no longer fits as just another face at the office, nobody really questioning a lot of what she has done.  It’s these early chapters that let Anji really shine as a character because Richards, continuing the idea of this book being a Schrodinger’s cat mystery, hints that Anji could still leave by the end of the novel.  There even is a potential replacement companion revealed in the final third of the novel who to me feels partially based on the potential replacement for Ace in Season 27, though she is introduced as working with Sabbath and as a twist.  Richards’ use of twists in Time Zero is actually odd, because it is all about ensuring that the proper universe, say the one where the cat is alive so to speak, comes to be, many of the twists are towards the logical explanations and not the science fiction possibilities.  It makes for a very different read but also creates a double edged sword because Richards does hand wave some of the events at the resolution in a way that feels like a reestablishment of the status quo.  This weakens quite a lot of what the novel was doing to further so many of the characters, but again that almost plays into the uncertainty that is at the heart of the book.  The ice TARDIS on the cover, for instance, and Fitz being dead and alive, are both things that get explanations but they are also intentionally vague explanations.  It’s a trick that for me shouldn’t work, and I’m not entirely sure if it actually does.

 

Overall, Time Zero is weird in being a type of Doctor Who story that would be very popular when the show was revived, especially during the 2010s.  Justin Richards makes it work by keeping a lot of the time breaking elements as simple as he can, even if it means the resolution finds itself just a little weaker than he can be.  The book is carried by centering the TARDIS team particularly more than previous books while pushing the overarching storyline of Sabbath forward.  It’s a very enjoyable time and there is a slight uniqueness in the format of the chapters that’s helping it standout and maintain the timey wimey tone.  7/10.

Some Thoughts on The Disaster Artist by: Greg Sestero & Tom Bissell

 

This isn’t going to be a review with a score.  Non-fiction certainly can be analyzed and scored in terms of prose and how well arguments are lad out or even the story is told, but Greg Sestero’s The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made is an incredibly personal memoir about a truly awful movie.  The Room is a 2003 drama (yes, drama, it as a comedy is a retcon) and passion project for Tommy Wiseau, a man who contains multitudes.  It is an incompetently made a, poorly scripted, and badly acted film that is notorious on the Internet.  It is also a film I saw for the first time earlier this month with some friends because I apparently don’t watch enough bad movies and this was the Citizen Kane of bad movies.  There isn’t any point to recount the plot of The Room, it has one that is conveyed through absolutely no consistencies and yet Wiseau somehow during filming tried to correct some of his own plot holes and inconsistencies.  The Disaster Artist is two narratives in parallel: Greg Sestero’s attempts to become an actor while becoming friends with Tommy Wiseau and the filming of The Room.  There is also a third narrative, a proposed life story for Tommy Wiseau, a man Sestero reinforces as incredibly guarded person who wants to be vulnerable but clearly doesn’t like his own history and is enamored entirely with America.  He is also rich.

 

The relationship between Sestero and Wiseau is a fascinating one, as this is a boon coming from Sestero’s perspective there is an inherent bias towards making himself look good but reading The Disaster Artist and watching The Room you get the sense that exaggerations are minor.  Wiseau’s proposed life, presented in the final chapters of the book, is filled with trauma and some basic explanations as to why he can possibly be the way that he is.  However, this does not excuse that Tommy Wiseau as presented by Greg Sestero is manipulative, arrogant, and clearly has his own baggage with women that implies misogyny.  He is a man who loves movies, especially very specific section of the American canon but seems to lack the creativity and understanding of what makes a movie.  There are several points where he decries “Mickey Mouse stuff” and presents himself as independent, even if his cinema influences are almost entirely studio pictures.  He is often cruel to his staff, even Sestero who he admits is a friend.  Relationships are often transactional, he puts himself first, and he will screw people over to get his way.

 

Sestero only starred in The Room because the money is good.  For his part, his story and drive to act is what drives many people to act.  He’s an example of a dime a dozen actor who goes eventually to Hollywood and just doesn’t make it.  It is his relationship to Tommy that makes his story interesting, otherwise he is just another hopeful who didn’t have the luck or connections to make it big.  Sestero knows this, he looks back at his roles as extras or the lead in Retro Puppet Master fondly.  His experiences on The Room and with Wiseau are rocky because Wiseau is a difficult person, but it is frustration and not hatred that is where the book ends.  Sestero still works with Wiseau to this day, he is self-aware of what he has done but he does ensure everyone else involved is portrayed fairly.  If The Disaster Artist had a villain? It is Tommy Wiseau and his pure artistic vision.  The memoir leaves you with two fascinating pictures of people and this feeling of that desire to fulfill the American Dream.  It’s both a how and a why something like The Room exists, and those answers are almost entirely far too normal for Hollywood.

A Matter of Perspective by: Ed Zuckerman and directed by: Cliff Bole

 

“A Matter of Perspective” is written by: Ed Zuckerman and is directed by: Cliff Bole.  It was produced under production code 162, was the 14^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 62^nd episode overall, and was broadcast on February 12, 1990.

 

In 1950, Akira Kurosawa released the film Rashomon, a film examining the concepts of truth, justice, human nature, and memory through four versions of the same story, contradictory, that all have their own versions of the truth through a perpetual rainstorm.  It is a film I have seen exactly once but greatly enjoyed, through the structure has been tributed several times in film and television, enough to have entered the pop culture osmosis.  There are good homages, but Star Trek: The Next Generation’s attempt at a Rashomon story, “A Matter of Perspective”, falls into the many pitfalls of a television series doing this type of story.  Rashomon partially works not because it is part of a trial, but it is explicitly post-trial, Kurosawa is critiquing systems of justice while “A Matter of Perspective” opens with a crime being committed (a space station exploding and killing Dr. Nel Apgar played by Mark Margolis) and the episode itself has more in common with original series episodes “The Menagerie” or “Court Martial”, Jonathan Frakes’ Riker being given the blame.  The episode becomes his trial, presided not by the Federation but by the justice system of Tanuga Four which is under the presumption of guilty until proven innocent.  The holodeck provides recreations of three testimonies and the end of the episode reveals that nobody actually committed the crime, the twist of the episode being that Apgar caused the explosion in an attempt to murder Riker.  Apgar believed his treachery, developing a radiation that he wished to sell to the Romulans, was discovered and wished to make the murder look like an accident.

 

Rashomon is a story that works in the more finite medium of film, unlike a series of television which is inherently ongoing, because part of the musings on human nature come from not knowing the four characters relaying their stories.  “A Matter of Perspective” is an episode of a television series in its third season, we already know that William Riker could not have committed a murder, he is a protagonist that the series has affirmed far too many times to be a good man with a strong sense of justice and fairness.  Picard is immediately on his side and does not believe it, the tension of the episode clearly wanting to come from the existential threat of Riker being extradited for a crime he did not commit.  Ed Zuckerman’s script, however, does not really support the tension.  Everyone knows that Riker did not commit the crime of which he is accused, his version of events is presented as the most accurate version.  You can tell he is enjoying these three versions of events, sticking vaguely to the Rashomon effect by not having any of them be entirely true, Riker’s cannot be because he doesn’t know how the crime is committed.  There’s also an accusation of rape that weirdly is taken as Riker actually did scare Apgar’s wife when shown his quarters, something that is depicted on-screen as remembered as at the very least a sexual assault.  This is an assault that didn’t actually happen, but the episode says that it is the truth in Manua Apgar’s mind, which is horrific when you think of the implications of the episode.  If Zuckerman is trying to say something feminist about how men don’t think about the power dynamics they can have over women, it is mangled in the execution.  It’s also sadly very possible that the rape subplot is here for the sole reason of being a reference to Rashomon.

 

Jonathan Frakes for his part is clearly having fun with the recreations as are Margolis, Gina Hecht, and Juliana Donald.  Tributes to Rashomon are particularly fun for actors because they’re able to play the same scene in completely different ways, though again framing the episode as an actual trial indicates Zuckerman doesn’t understand exactly how Rashomon works.  It is integral that Rashomon is set after the rape trial, not during.  Recounting the stories doesn’t actually change the fate of the characters in the retellings, it is instead philosophical musings upon them.  It isn’t the performances that are a problem, even the guest cast is full of great character actors doing their best with a script that clearly loves what it is tributing, even if it muddles a lot of the artistry it wants to apply.  There is also clearly something off with Cliff Bole’s direction in this episode.  Since the flashbacks make use of simulation the decision is made to shoot them while the cast watches on.  While there are points where this is technically impressive seeing two versions of the same character on-screen at once, it often leaves some of the sets to feel just a bit abstract and incomplete at points.  While the acting is giving it all, the different blocking and framing of the flashbacks just feels less than inspired to make the visual distinctions actually mean something so the emotion is mostly portrayed through performance.  It’s bringing down what at the very least would be a fun tribute to a classic film, even if Zuckerman doesn’t have anything to say about the nature of either memory or justice deeper than they are both flawed.

 

Overall, “A Matter of Perspective” is a messy episode that has some of its moments, but because everything it is doing is a tribute to a much better film, you get the sense that not everybody was on the same page when making it.  It’s not a bad episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation per say, it just lacks any sort of cohesive statement inside of its script and is almost entirely carried by the performances of both the main and supporting casts.  5/10.

Ozma of Oz by: L. Frank Baum

 

For a second time, L. Frank Baum gives one of his Oz books a ridiculously long title that will be shortened for this review: Ozma of Oz: A Record of Her Adventures with Dorothy Gale of Kansas, Billina the Yellow Hen, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger; Besides Other good People Too Numerous to Mention Faithfully Recorded Herein shortened to the easy Ozma of Oz.  Baum is telling his readers who were perhaps sad with the absence of certain characters in The Marvelous Land of Oz while highlighting some of the new characters Dorothy meets in her second visit to Oz.  The title is also a bit out of place, while Ozma is in the book as a supporting character, it’s not really a book about who Ozma is.  She is there to rescue Dorothy from the captivity of the childish and narcissistic Princess Langwidere in the land of Ev, Oz’s neighboring country separated by the deadly deserts.  It does establish Dorothy and Ozma as quite good friends, both being kind hearted young girls who can’t stand to see people hurt.  The main plot of Ozma of Oz, and it is largely one plot preceded by smaller episodes leading to Dorothy’s capture after falling off a ship bound for Australia, is to save the Royal Family of Ev from the Nome King.  The Nome King is the first time in one of these books that Baum creates a central antagonist: he is a greedy rock creature who lives underground and turns people into ornaments.

 

This is the second Oz book to really be about restoring a monarchy, Baum as a writer clearly being interested in maintaining what he sees as the natural order of things.  There is at least a framework for what a ruler must be, Princess Langwidere as supporting protagonist isn’t evil but her vanity and disinterest makes her a bad ruler while Ozma rules by kindness.  The Royal Family of Ev, quite the large family consisting of the king, queen, and eight children, emphasize Baum’s ideas of a kind, loving family making for the best rule.  This isn’t particularly deep, the Royal Family exist for the plot resolution of discovering the purple ornaments.  Baum is interested in the natural order: Ozma and the Royal Family of Ev rule because it is their right, hinted at to be because of magical means as Oz and Ev are both described in Ozma of Oz as fairylands.  There is this sense that Baum believes the order of rulers is to actually serve their people as well: Langwidere and the Nome King are both poor to their people.  The Nome King’s evil nature is more towards the characters the reader is familiar with, but Langiwidere is cruel to the Wheelers, horrifying creatures with scary face masks and wheels for hands and feet, that are secretly just as scared and trying to survive.

 

What is particularly interesting about Baum’s ideas of a good ruler is that he clearly wants to reflect American democracy of the people being the source of power, but putting a democracy in fairyland would largely go against Baum’s aims at creating an American fairy tale.  Baum however is staunch in his need for order, Ozma of Oz features Dorothy insistent that the hen she travels with whose name is Bill, must be given a female name and is thus Billina.  The mechanical man Tik-Tok is also seen as lesser than the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman because he is what would fall under the definition of a robot despite being written as a person.  Baum stipulates that his thought processes and action are all mechanical, though the text has him act largely as a person and not an automaton.  It is an odd stipulation for an otherwise delightful and proper character, Tik-Tok being portrayed as nothing but a gentleman throughout towards Dorothy and Billina.  There is also the Hungry Tiger, a character made to defy his nature and unquenched desire to eat a fat baby, something his conscience could not allow, adding a weird layer to this idea of order.  Dorothy herself is a more fleshed out protagonist here, not motivated by a wish to go home and indeed only doing so when she sees Uncle Henry sad that she may have drowned on the way to Australia.  Oz is the endpoint of the novel, and not the place to escape from as was the case in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  This means Ozma of Oz can avoid the issues of The Marvelous Land of Oz following the same structure of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, instead it forms a more cohesive narrative even if getting to the resolution where our protagonists scare the Nome King takes far too much repetition of going through the palace to find the ornaments.

 

Overall, despite the oddity of Baum’s themes being present there is something freeing about Ozma of Oz.  Baum doesn’t have a stage show in mind while writing so he can take time to make the novel have a format, and by setting it in the land of Ev while it doesn’t further flesh out Oz, it does allow a different sort of logic to take place.  Dorothy is given more character traits to make her work slightly better as a protagonist for return appearances.  Having a different structure and just being a really fun little fairy tale gives hope that Baum won’t just be retreading the first book every time, shame about the weird politics of order.  9/10.

The Marvelous Land of Oz by: L. Frank Baum

 

The Marvelous Land of Oz: Being an Account of the Further Adventures of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman is a ridiculously long title that will not be used throughout this review, we’re shortening it to The Marvelous Land of Oz.  This and Ozma of Oz are the only other two Oz books by L. Frank Baum I have any frame of reference for, being combined for the 1985 film Return to Oz.  Baum came to write this novel because he received a thousand letters from a thousand little girls wrote to him demanding further stories in Oz and in 1902 there was an incredibly successful stage production of The Wizard of Oz, though one that greatly diverged from the novel.  It’s incredibly clear that The Marvelous Land of Oz was written with the intention of conversion into a stage show, much of the plot being structurally similar to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and featuring the climax of a boy transforming into a girl that reads as if it is meant to be a costume change done on-stage as a magical effect.  There are characters written to be part of a larger ensemble, there are two armies in the back half of the book as the Emerald City is taken over by the all-girl army of General Jinjur and Glinda is once again responsible for saving the day with her female soldiers.  Jinjur believes that a girl should rule the land of Oz and is rebuked by the male characters, mainly the Scarecrow, believing girls need to go back to cooking and cleaning.  The plot is to restore the Scarecrow to the throne, the male characters are adamant that the Scarecrow is the best one to rule because the Wizard gave him the throne (though it is revealed the Wizard stole the throne from King Pastoria and gave his daughter Ozma away to be hidden by the evil sorceress Mombi).  The Marvelous Land of Oz is full of this sexist rhetoric.

 

And yet, the twist of The Marvelous Land of Oz in a sense is that General Jinjur is right, a woman should be on the throne (her design also indicates Baum means her to represent all four nations of Oz being dressed in blue, yellow, red, and purple).  Ozma is the rightful ruler and the book ends with her restoration to the throne of the Emerald City.  Glinda has worked out that Mombi transformed Ozma into the boy Tip and forced him to be her servant.  Lucky for Oz Tip is also the protagonist of The Marvelous Land of Oz, the first Oz book to take place entirely in Oz.  Now there is something fascinating about this plot development.  For the bulk of the novel, Tip is given more depth than Dorothy was in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: he is introduced playing a trick on Mombi by building a scarecrow out of wood and a pumpkin which he names Jack Pumpkinhead and then brings it and a sawhorse to life with Mombi’s Powder of Life to escape his situation.  Mombi for her part is an archetypal evil witch, living in the north Gillikin Country of Oz where everything is purple.  While she is essentially a secondary antagonist to General Jinjur, mainly being a problem in the first act, she gives a very different look at magic when compared to the other witches from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  Tip is an active protagonist, deciding where his companions shall go often and being the one to make decisions, and when it comes time to become Ozma again it is presented as not really a change for him.  He just hopes she won’t be treated any differently because she is the same Tip, only different.  While the gender change is clearly meant to be a theatrical trick as Tip would be played by a girl in drag were this on stage, it is fascinating to read Baum writing a character who textually is queer.  While the terminology for a transgender person did not really exist in 1904 when The Marvelous Land of Oz was published, queer people did in fact have their own sense of community and the text here is explicit in making Tip and Ozma a queer character.  A queer character who ends the book as the queen.

 

The actual plot of The Marvelous Land of Oz is just as episodic as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which is both a strength and a weakness.  It does mean that the structure in places feels especially like the previous book, especially at the beginning and once Glinda reenters the narrative almost as a replacement for the Wizard.  Tip only gets two companions to the Emerald City because as the subtitle states, the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman are also here to be the real stars when they show up.  The Sawhorse and Jack Pumpkinhead are fascinating in their own right, especially the latter who regards Tip as his father but not at all in a parental way.  Jack has this naïve outlook on the world throughout the novel that is particularly interesting (and helps make the Tip/Ozma switch really work in the end).  The Sawhorse is almost too happy of a character, he gets mutilated several times but feels no pain and is more annoyed by it.  There’s also a machine animated by the Powder of Life called the Gump which is more interesting in the 1985 film Return to Oz.  The trouble of course is that when the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman enter the narrative, they get some of the better episodes, the Scarecrow getting a particularly great one with Jack involving a little girl interpreter called Jellia Jamb who is insistent on ‘translating’ despite Oz having one language.  There is also a character called the Highly Magnified and Thoroughly Educated Wogglebug who appears in the back half of the novel and kind of steals the show just as it turns towards going to find Glinda.

 

Overall, The Marvelous Land of Oz is nearly as good as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the biggest issues really coming not from having things age poorly, the sexism is subverted by the end in Baum’s attempt to have a female ruler for Oz, but from being all too close to the previous novel in structure and at the climax when everything needs to wrap up.  The sad part, however, is that it is overshadowed so much by the first because the characters are just given more depth and the humor in particular actually holds up quite well throughout.  9/10.

Deja Q by: Richard Danus and directed by: Les Landau

 

“Deja Q” is written by: Richard Danus and is directed by: Les Landau.  It was produced under production code 161, was the 13^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 61^st episode overall, and was broadcast on February 5, 1990.

 

If “Q Who” was a dramatic masterpiece, “Deja Q” is a comedic one.  The premise of Q’s appearance in Season 3 of Star Trek: The Next Generation is what if we allowed the crew of the Enterprise to get their revenge on Q.  How do we do that?  By having Q rejected from his people, stripped of his extradimensional powers, and given mortal form as a human being.  The choice of mortal form is actually his own, a fascinating choice for the character as this is an episode that really does add layers to the immortal.  This is almost entirely the plot of “Deja Q”, Q is powerless and sent to the Enterprise.  There is a B-plot involving a moon that has been flung out of its orbit and is going to crash into its planet, Bre’el IV, which is inhabited.  Technically the Enterprise attempting to stop this destruction is the large threat of the plot, but it is more a vehicle to explore Q as a character and just let the crew of the Enterprise flex their acting abilities and the characters.  The only real narrative problem with “Deja Q” is the ending, like last season’s “Q Who” is that it is a deus ex machina of another Q coming to give our Q his immortal status back, though even with that it does at the very least give Q one last chance to really show that even if he denies it by forcing a cigar into the hand of Captain Picard, he does have a little bit of humanity inside of himself.  This also comes after the best scene of the episode, Q’s celebration via among other things a mariachi band which has given the internet a beautiful GIF (this episode is also responsible for the GIF of Picard facepalming).  Okay it’s not like it’s particularly telling about Q’s character or anything, it’s just an aspect that is so ridiculous it acts as the pinnacle of the episode’s comedy.  It’s one final massive joke to really go out on leading into that final sting that is perfect.

 

There’s also something particularly special about the first act of “Deja Q”.  Discovering Q has become human and not quite trusting him, the crew do take him aboard, giving him a particularly ugly costume and the cast’s general performances become a comedic revenge against Q for “Encounter at Farpoint”, “Hide and Q”, and “Q Who”.  This works because Richard Danus’ script is particularly witty and Les Landau’s direction really plays into the reactive comedy of the characters.  John de Lancie for his part is able to give just this true sense of being put out and limited by his now human form, but everybody gets at least one good jab in.  Gates McFadden as Dr. Crusher gets some particularly great ones because she has to help Q with back problems that develop in the mortal form.  This is really confined to the first act of the episode as it builds to the point where Q has to realize how to act as a mortal: eating and sleeping are the big ones because using the restroom on television isn’t a thing.  Like the episode elevating to a great conclusion, this first act is building to a great conclusion: the second confrontation between Q and Guinan.  Yes, Whoopi Goldberg is back as Guinan for this episode and while the role isn’t as big as it was in “Q Who”, Goldberg and de Lancie verbally sparring, this time with Goldberg on top, is just another delight in the episode.  You van particularly feel how much Guinan is getting out of this interaction, but it isn’t ordinary verbal sparring, it’s an addition to the episode’s exploration of what makes someone human.

 

“Deja Q” actually pairs Q with Brent Spiner’s Data for much of the runtime, this paring being what really gives it the substance.  While Star Trek: The Next Generation does have some continuity of plot points, especially with recurring characters like Q, it isn’t truly serialized, but Data as a character over all three seasons has been given several pieces of developments.  Data’s quest to be truly alive and human is a recurring theme and “Deja Q” posits that Q sees the android as actually a superior life form.  The weaknesses of mortality and humanity are not worth what would be gained, that cold logical thinking being closer to the Q Continuum’s omniscience that a mortal could get.  Spiner and de Lancie both play these scenes straight, playing them like serious philosophical discussions on the science fiction backdrop of the Enterprise.  Spiner plays Data here as aware of developments from the show’s history, he is seen as human in the philosophical sense, but he is not biologically a human being.  His emotions are simulated and he still wants them, the good and the bad.  The act of living life as an ordinary man is very much the idea that Q learns to see by the experience of being human: he has to make a selfless sacrifice because part of being human is facing consequences for previous actions.  Q has created several enemies, enemies that could not touch him as an immortal, but only the discussions with Data about humanity could allow Q to make that decision.  The episode doesn’t quite sit in the decision as well as it could to get us to the deus ex machina conclusion, but the buildup to that is so good and the ideas at play really do work.

 

Overall, while “Deja Q” isn’t quite as gripping in terms of suspense and action as “Q Who” was, it is an episode that is more than a worthy follow up to what Q is slowly becoming over the course of the show.  It’s explicitly a comedy, but it’s a comedy very much concerned with philosophical truths about the nature of humanity and living an ordinary life.  The cast are also just having the absolute best time of the episode (I didn’t even mention the comedic scenes with Jonathan Frakes as Riker and Michael Dorn as Worf and how they also reveal aspects of Q learning to be human).  If only it didn’t just end so quickly with a deus ex machina of Q becoming omniscient again, it would be the best Q episode thus far.  9/10.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by: L. Frank Baum

 

Throughout the years I have written reviews on quite a few fantasy series, mostly modern books though Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy was also thrown in there for good measure.  Since it’s the new year I’ve decided to go down the rabbit hole (or perhaps more aptly over the rainbow) of some explicitly pre-Tolkien fantasy.  I’ve always adored both the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.  I’d even read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by: L. Frank Baum multiple times.  I knew about the sequels, however I have never read them, and yet the fourteen Oz books by Baum are in the public domain and I have a friend who sings their praises.  So this year, in an effort to review a bit more than what has become my standard, I have decided to attempt to read and look at these 14 books (plus one extra included in the editions I have written apparently from Baum’s notes).

 

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz will always be overshadowed by the 1939 film, even going so far as being republished often as The Wizard of Oz.  It was always going to be this way, it’s incredibly difficult to get the film’s version of Oz out of the mind of the reader, unless you’ve read the novel first.  But that shouldn’t discount L. Frank Baum’s way of actually telling the story because it does not follow the narrative structure of a film.  The first chapter is a very quick introduction to Dorothy, crafted with care to convey how terribly dull the Kansas landscape is and as it has made its people while Dorothy is saved by her dog, before a cyclone whisks her, Toto, and her farmhouse off to a distant land.  There’s an urge in me to recount the differences between The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Wizard of Oz which I will largely resist, however, Dorothy as a protagonist is largely the same, wishing to get home simply for the love of her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry; the Wicked Witch of the West is not green though color does play an important part in distinguishing the four featured areas of Oz (Munchkin Country, the Emerald City, Winkie Country, and Quadling Country being blue, green, yellow, and red respectively); the wicked witches are not sisters and neither is a major antagonist; and finally there are in fact four witches as the only witches in Oz the Good Witch of the North being the least powerful who sends Dorothy towards the Emerald City and Glinda the Good Witch (or sorceress) of the South who sends her home in the end.

 

Baum keeps the book episodic, each chapter or two essentially being a new danger for Dorothy to face or a new friend to meet.  The general people of Oz are kind to her, even if at first they appear scary or dangerous as is the case with the Cowardly Lion and even the Flying Monkeys.  There are dangers, going into the woods is always dangerous, but Baum is considerate to give as many backstories as he can: the Lion was born a coward, the Tin Woodsman had his ax cursed by the Wicked Witch of the East to slowly shop him to bits, the Scarecrow remembers being made.  The Wizard himself is a humbug and as said in the 1939 film is a very good man, just a very bad wizard.  He still wants to help, even if he has gotten this child to commit a murder of a Wicked Witch.  The people live different lives: there is a country of people made from China who if they leave their country they become stiff and are often scared of being stepped on, the Munchkins had been slaves under the witch until Dorothy dropped in, and even the Winkies make the Tin Woodsman their leader to help them recover when the Wicked Witch of the West is melted.  What makes this fascinating is that L. Frank Baum while writing about a world where so many different societies and yet was a deeply racist man.  He fully supported the total annihilation of Native American populations despite marrying a woman whose mother was a staunch advocate for Native Americans.  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is odd because it doesn’t actually reflect Baum’s dangerous views, and as a man he contained multitudes (he was a proponent for women’s suffrage and I have been told that many of the sequels to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz lend themselves to a feminist reading and various queer readings).  This is a book that wants to impart the morals of holding one’s own while relying on others, Dorothy and her friends have a great sense of community and their “allies” who come to help them come to be because Dorothy is just nice to everybody.  There are monsters, bear/tiger hybrids called Kalidahs, the Wicked Witch of the West, and a giant spider, plus some natural dangers like rushing rivers and a field of deadly poppies.

 

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz works so well because it is a well-written fairy tale.  It is not talking down to the children, though understands the logic of a child where the world around them is exactly what they see.  Oz does not need to be like Tolkien’s Middle Earth or Lewis’s Narnia, it’s a land that is real and the story of a little girl just trying to get home will resonate if its in a technicolor masterpiece or a short novel written for children over 100 years ago.  10/10.