zHot Takes on Science Fiction

I finally figured out what makes a sci-fi/fantasy TV show good.  Any show set in some alternate world, whether it's the future, outer space, or some mythical realm of swords and sorcery, has to explain how all the alternate world shit works in addition to explaining who all the people are.  If you botch setting things up, the whole thing falls apart.

For example, I watched a few episodes of The Expanse at Dave's suggestion.  Although I like to break his balls I respect Dave's taste in books and TV tremendously and I expected to like it.  But after a handful of episodes I'm just meh on it and I stopped watching.  There's too many people in too many places, the United Nations has too much power, and there are too many rules about living on different planets and asteroid belts for me to figure out on top of all the criminal plot lines and political maneuvering.  One plot line is clear--Mars and the asteroid belts need water and the only way to get it is by harvesting ice from some outer planets--but it makes no sense.  Yoo mean tuh tell me dat deez fuggin stoonads ken put a civiluhzashin on fuggin Mars, but dey can't make wadduh outta elemental hydrogen and oxygen?  I kawl boolshit.

Seriously though, I have too much to learn when I watch the Expanse and I can't keep it all straight.  Seeing Joey Tribiani's nephew in a spaceship is confusing too.  

I'm too stupid and too lazy to process it.

Similarly, I watched the first season of Wheel of Time and I do not plan on watching the second.  It starts out as your standard medieval type of thing, but then a lady appears who can shoot what looks like DNA from her hands and she saves the day when a bunch of random monsters appear.  

She tells a bunch of people that she's looking for "The Dragon Reborn" and it could be one of them.  It takes a while to clarify all this hooey, and there is blatant theft from Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings.  Yes, the whole swords and sorcery genre rips off LotR but this is ridiculous.  They're practically running through Mordor at one point.  "The Dark One" has an army of creatures that are orcs with dog heads.  Superpowers randomly flare up in a bar.  A wizard guides a band of trusting, less experienced people through a harrowing journey to defeat an evil force that has been silent for 3000 years, and only one of them can save the world.  

Meanwhile, they run into all sorts of random people in random places that can do random superhuman things and there is no explanation for it.  There are flashbacks to battles where neither side of the fight is identified.  Eventually they explain the lady with the DNA hands--she's part of this sisterhood of badass DNA slingers (the DNA comes from The True Source (but not The Source)), and the whole society of them is very complicated and political, so you have to wrap your head around that while trying to understand how their powers work, when suddenly a man who can sling DNA shows up and that unleashes a whole new set of rules and backstory to digest.  It's ridiculous.

Which is to say there's a fair amount of theft from Dune.  A society of women who can use The Voice/touch The True Source to do stuff and men can't do it ... except sometimes they can.  

And then some guy eats something that makes his mouth bleed.  No idea why.

Game of Thrones got this right.  Season 1, episode 1 opens with a big scary slightly obscured monster killing people.  The rest of season 1 is just regular humans with differing UK accents establishing themselves and their motivation.  When something weird happens, like a Dothraki wedding, there is an outsider who sits in for the audience to ask "What the fuck is going on?" to another outsider who knows the deal.   

By the end of season 1 you forget that that there is any magical shit involved whatsoever, until this:

And then you're like "Oh right, I forgot there was magical shit on this show!" but you're ready for it because you know who everyone is and what they're trying to do.  You can wrap your head around all the mystical stuff starting in season 2.

So if you're going to run a sci-fi/fantasy TV show, explain the people first and the science/sorcery afterwards.

“Wu-Tang In Space Eating Impossible Sliders” Is A Real Thing

“The RZA, the GZA, and Ghostface Killah walk into a spaceship full of vegan sliders” sounds like the start of a joke. And I guess it is. But it’s also the premise of a new four-part video series to promote White Castle’s new vegan “Impossible Sliders.” It's real and it’s fantastic.



“It’s kinda crazy on Earf right now, so we came to space to acquire some knowledge and gain some perspective.” That’s some true and deep shit.

A Major Coincidence? Or Just Tomfoolery?

This morning over at Sentence of Dave I tried-- unsuccessfully-- to explain a coincidence that happened last night. My excuse is that I stayed up too late last night, watching LeCompt, the best bar band in the universe. My kids did not care. They got up at their usual time (as did my wife, and she went to a yoga class on the beach, so I had to hake the cobwebs off and go skim-boarding . . . a recipe for disaster.) My cognition is still fuzzy, but I'm going to channel T.J. and explain this with clips.

Before I go on vacation, I usually print out some songs to play on guitar. So last week I printed out "Space Oddity" by David Bowie, for no other reason than I thought my kids would like it. They are boys, and they like space ships and death. The song has both. In case you've forgotten:



So last night, while LeCompt was playing Neil Young's "Down by the River," a song my kids like because they find the lyrics intriguing, I told my cousin that I had been playing "Space Oddity" to my kids and they really liked it. Not ten seconds later, LeCompt launched into a fantastic cover of . . . you guessed it . . . "Space Oddity." For a moment, I felt like this:



But then I remembered something I read about coincidences. It was some back of the envelope calculations that illustrated it would be much weirder if coincidences like this did not occur. We encounter stimulus during all our waking moments, and our brains love to seek patterns and find meaning. And the constant bombardment are senses are subjected to guarantees that those one in a million type coincidences will happen quite often. It can't take more than a month or two for a million things to run through our consciousness, so we'll experience one of these wild coincidences once every month or two. Think of all the songs you mention that don't suddenly start playing on the radio or in the bar you are in . . .

But then I remembered this scene:



And so I have decided that this was no coincidence-- that LeCompt playing "Space Oddity" just after I mentioned "Space Oddity" is a profound omen. I am going to die in space. It is my destiny; it is inevitable and unavoidable. "But Dave," you say, "just don't go out into space. Do not ever get into a spaceship and you'll be able to avoid this terrible lonely death in the cold recesses of the universe."

It's not so easy. I will try to avoid spaceships, but for example, something like this will happen. I will be on vacation in Florida, and think I am at DisneyWorld getting on Space Mountain, but in actuality, I won't be at DisneyWorld, I'll be at Cape Canaveral. And I'll get on board a real spaceship instead of a ride and never even know it. And then I'll die in space. Or my friend will pull up in his new mini-van and say, "Get in," and I'll get in, but it won't be a new mini-van, it will be a spaceship. So there's no avoiding it, and I am resigned to my fate. At least it will cure this hangover.