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Pages from Throwback Thursday

Posted in Favorites, History, Miscellaneous, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 16, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Paradoxically, the anti-sex mob are those most obsessed by sex; they see it even where normal people do not.  –  “Obsession and Bedevilment”

Modern people are deeply in denial about how common sex work has been throughout human history.  –  “The Invention of Incels”

Though cops are still conducting their entrapment schemes and pretending they’re something more than an excuse for moral degenerates to rape and rob women and ruin men’s lives, the public has largely lost interest in the “sex trafficking” hysteria which drove them, and they’re limping along on a mixture of inertia, sadism, and the federal government’s profligate spending until such time as the sociopaths in office can think of a way to interject more mindless carceral violence into their war on the internet.  –  “Newsworthy”

It’s one of the ironclad rules of media journalism that all “100 best” lists are bad.  –  “By Non-fans, For Non-fans“

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Diary #779

Posted in Diary, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , , on June 3, 2025| Leave a Comment »

It’s been a few years since my last new book, but after four years in the making, Who in Review is finally here!  The process started in March of 2021, when Grace and I decided to watch every single televised Doctor Who story from 1963 to the present, and I reviewed each one on Twitter (along with reviews of every episode of Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures) as we went, running all year and into 2022 before it was done.  Then in April of last year I started copying the whole thread to Bluesky while also compiling the reviews into a book, which required considerable reformatting and modification, plus adding two appendices which couldn’t have worked in the microblogging format.  I finished that early in October, but Grace was diagnosed with cancer just a few days later, leaving me no time for proofreading until this past April.  I found a lot more errors in the proof than is typical for me; I reckon that’s probably due to the change from microblogging format, which left a lot of extremely long sentences strung together with comma splices, plus other, weirder errors.  But at least it’s done, and on Sunday I ordered a box of copies to sell as autographed copies in my own store; they’re supposed to arrive next week.  In the meantime, here’s the link to buy the paperback on Amazon; if you want an autographed copy, you’ll have to wait until my own copies come in (when you see the image for the bookstore in the right-hand column change to the cover image displayed here, they’re available).  I’m also working on the Kindle version; it’ll probably be done later this month.  I’ll keep you posted!  But those of you who just want a regular, unsigned paper copy needn’t wait.  And with any luck, this book may attract new readers and supporters to my existing body of work.

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Paying For It: The Premiere

Posted in Biography, Perception, Philosophy, tagged , , , , , , on May 23, 2025| 1 Comment »

Long-time readers need no introduction to Chester Brown, the well-known Canadian graphic novelist who came out as a regular patron of sex workers in Paying For It, his autobiographical 2011 graphic novel; Chester is a friend and a regular reader of this blog who occasionally shows up in the comments (and the blog itself!) and did the covers for both Ladies of the Night and The Forms of Things Unknown, and has agreed to do the cover for Lost Angels (which I’m currently working on) as well.  As I announced last August, Canadian actress and director Sook-Yin Lee has adapted Paying For It into a film, and it made its long-awaited US premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival last Saturday!  Chester was kind enough to send me a complimentary ticket (for some reason the producers did not opt to send him to Seattle), and I was excited both to see the film and to meet Sook-Yin in person, since Chester has spoken so highly of her.  Apparently, he also spoke highly of me to her, because when I went up to introduce myself after the showing, she immediately recognized me before I could say more than her name.  We didn’t get to talk long, but I’m hoping it won’t be our last meeting.  I’m also happy to tell you that I enjoyed the film very much; I think Sook-Yin did an excellent job of adapting Chester’s documentary style into a cinematic one, with additional material depicting the romantic ups and down of “Sonny”, the character based on her, as a way of translating Chester’s expository text to the screen and allowing the viewer to make their own judgments about the subject.  The visual style of the film references Chester’s artistic style as closely as possible, including the use of his own lettering font and sketches of the characters in the end credits, and I found the whole funny, sweet, and very moving.  Judging by the positive reaction of the audience, none of whom had read the book but me and one other, I don’t think that’s because I’m biased; I’m unsure where and how the film will be shown next, but I’ll keep y’all posted and I’d definitely recommend seeing it when you get the opportunity.    P.S. – no, that’s not a cane I’m holding, but my red umbrella; the weather was quite rainy and I had to park on the street, and Sook-Yin suggested the picture after I was ready to walk outside.  Since Chester’s artist’s eye caught that detail, I figured I’d mention it should anyone else wonder.

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Diary #777

Posted in Diary, Fiction, tagged , , , on May 20, 2025| 2 Comments »

I finished the rough draft of my seventh book, Who in Review, early last autumn, but Grace was diagnosed with cancer just a few days later so I was much too busy caring for her to have any free time to do the proofreading.  After Frank & Olivia’s visit I was able to motivate myself to start the proofreading process, then last week I got the physical proof in and have been doing the third and final pass.  I proofread my books three times: once as a Word file, then as a “virtual proof”, and finally as a physical proof.  Typically, I only find two or three errors at most in that third pass, but this time I’ve already hit nearly a dozen in just the first few chapters; I reckon it’s because, unlike my previous books, the contents of this one came from an epic-length Twitter thread rather than this blog, and that change in format was bound to generate more errors than usual with fewer opportunities to catch them in the pre-manuscript stage.  But in any case, it’s almost done and should be available by the end of this month.  In case you missed previous mentions of the project, this book contains my reviews of every single televised Doctor Who story for the first two incarnations of the series, Classic Who (26 seasons from 1963-1989) and New Who (13 series from 2005-2022), plus some speculation, a chronology of the Whoniverse, and more.  Judging from the amount of positive feedback I received from the first version of the thread on Twitter in 2021, and the revision on Bluesky last year (actually ending only a couple of weeks ago), you won’t want to miss this one if you’re a Doctor Who fan.  And with any luck, this will draw attention to my earlier books from folks outside my established readership.

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The X-Files, Continued

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , , , on March 10, 2025| 1 Comment »

To appreciate The X-Files as an intelligent, well-informed person requires a strong sense of irony and an equally-strong capacity for willing suspension of disbelief, because in the X-Files universe nearly every myth, folk belief, superstition, pseudoscientific premise, conspiracy theory, and science-fiction plot has at least a basis in fact.  While in real life Agent Dana Scully would be the sane, grounded one, and her partner, Agent Fox Mulder, would be a paranoid, unhinged crackpot (read the first half of this review, if you haven’t yet), in the topsy-turvy, looking-glass world inhabited by these characters, their viewpoints are much more equally balanced.  Mulder’s willingness to believe in anything and everything doesn’t always prove useful, and indeed the writers often have fun with it, especially in later seasons.  But when balanced by Scully’s scientific skepticism, the two can often uncover the solution to the mysteries they probe (unless, of course, the writers have decided that they can’t).  In most cases, this is typical of shows in which the heroes go up against supernatural or sci-fi menaces; after all, neither Kolchak: The Night Stalker nor Buffy the Vampire Slayer would’ve been nearly as interesting had every threat been revealed as a fraud, a la Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?  But by adding many of the 20th century’s most popular conspiracy theories into the mixture, the show begins to bear a much closer resemblance to the Illuminatus! trilogy than to any of its other inspirations.

This is not a criticism, though in its first two seasons, written and broadcast toward the end of the Satanic Panic, dangerous nonsense like recovered memories and Satanic ritual sex abuse are treated seriously at a time when those beliefs were not only not considered total hokum by the Establishment, but were actually being used by cops and prosecutors to destroy lives.  I found those episodes difficult to enjoy, though by the third season the Satanic Panic was being treated far more dismissively, and Scully even has a few speeches about it being an evidence-free crock of shit (unfortunately, actress Gillian Anderson lacks her character’s disciplined skepticism).  And while some of the other conspiracy theories the show used as plot devices may have adherents who make trouble for others, they were usually treated in such an over-the-top fashion (eg, the Smoking Man being the true assassin of JFK, RFK, and MLK) they couldn’t be taken seriously by any audience member who wasn’t already entirely convinced of their veracity.

As is so often the case, the show took a few seasons to really hit its stride; while I found the first season and most of the second entertaining enough, It wasn’t until the third season that I found the majority of episodes truly engaging and entertaining.  The show’s creator originally intended to produce only five seasons and then transition to a series of movies, but only the first one was made because the still-adolescent Fox network had no intention of retiring its most highly-rated show just yet, and so wrangled the creators into four more seasons.  The sixth was still quite good; one excellent two-parter was obviously adapted from the script for the never-made second movie, and there were a number of the same type of experimental episodes which were becoming fashionable in other imaginative shows of the time (including Deep Space Nine, Stargate SG-1, and the aforementioned Buffy).  But by the seventh the show was noticeably aging, and the eighth and ninth seasons largely seemed to be looking for a reason to still exist; I know that two more seasons were produced in the Teens, but frankly they just looked embarrassing, and neither Grace nor I was interested.

All in all, I found the show a worthwhile use of my relaxation time, but I don’t think it’s likely that I’ll ever re-watch it.  And if I had tried to watch on a weekly broadcast TV schedule rather than a DVD set of known length I could watch on my own schedule, I suspect I would’ve lost interest long before it was over, unless I was watching with a loved one who was more excited about it than I was.

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The X-Files

Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged , , on February 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I didn’t watch The X-Files when it first aired.  I don’t think I heard about it during its first season, and its second was during my Year of Disaster; I did happen to catch a couple of episodes during the third season, but they rubbed me the wrong way, so I never watched any more.  But Grace wanted to re-watch it with me, so I bought her all nine seasons for Christmas of ’23, and it was the last show we got to watch together; today I’d like to share my thoughts and impressions.

As you already know if you’ve read any of my previous TV show reviews, characters are the most important part of a show for me; I may enjoy a show with undeveloped characters, but it’s never going to be one of my favorites.  In that respect, The X-Files was very uneven; while the central characters, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, were well-developed, most of the other characters weren’t.  The chemistry between the two was, I think, the best thing about the show, and I don’t just mean the slow-burn sexual tension.  The way in which fascination became friendship, which developed into loyalty, then love, was believable and engaging, especially in the middle seasons where that love developed into something stronger and deeper than that shared by most married couples, and yet did not turn physical until after David Duchovny (Mulder) left the series at the end of season 7.  Individually, both characters were extremely flawed; Mulder’s idealism too often washed over into fanaticism, and all too often Scully confused skepticism with dogmatism.  But as dance partners they were phenomenal, and their interaction lit up the screen (counterbalancing the directors’ obsession with filming half of every episode in the dark).

Beside the two principals, however, the other characters in the show looked more like props or scenery than people.  Few of the regular characters were other than flat, and what little development was given them was often incomplete, unsupported or unexplained.  The chief villain, the infamous Smoking Man, was more complex and interesting than any of the characters who either assisted or obstructed (sometimes both) our heroes at the FBI, and the two agents who became the main characters in the last two seasons were poor replacements indeed for the Dynamic Duo.  There were a few episodes with well-developed supporting characters, but for the most part the people the agents interacted with, friend or foe alike, were fairly stock characters with very little to distinguish them from similar characters in other episodes.  Of the recurring supporting characters, my favorites were the staff of The Lone Gunman; though their personalities remained fairly static across nine seasons, I saw them more as mythic characters than realistic ones.  They were the Three Musketeers to Mulder’s D’Artagnan, the faithful sidekicks without whom he could never have succeeded, who were nonetheless satisfied to remain in the background while he got the credit (or blame).  Indeed, though they have individual names, talents, and personalities, they are always depicted as a trio, rarely even being shown physically far from one another; their fates are interlocked, and even the names of the three actors playing the parts are always displayed together as a block in the credits.

Other than most characters remaining undeveloped, the biggest gripe I have about the show’s characterizations is one which is probably inevitable in any show featuring FBI agents: cop glorification.  Though a good fraction of the cops in the show are depicted as assholes and a good fraction of the FBI agents as two-faced schemers, there were also lots of Brave Hero cops, and while Mulder seems to have viewed his status as a means to his own ends, Scully definitely comes across like a cop far too often for my liking, and the way she loves yelling “FEDERAL AGENT!” while pointing a gun at people never ceased to be disconcerting.

Look for the conclusion of this review, in which I discuss other aspects of the show, two weeks from Monday.

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Unblocked

Posted in Fiction, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , on July 15, 2024| 1 Comment »

For six years, from the summer of 2010 to the summer of 2016, my creative output was like a geyser; I had no trouble producing hundreds of new essays a year, including a new short story every month.  But then life intervened, and sapped my creative energy so that it became harder to think of new nonfiction and much harder to think of new fiction; even semi-retirement did not bring back that old energy.  But then in January of last year I started a new solo D&D game for Grace, and it seemed to free up some long-idle creative gears which had rusted through disuse.  Of course, my brain being what it is, I had to look over a bunch of old materials and decide that they all needed to be revised, updated, or added to; for the first time since I started this blog, I started taking a little time for myself every week to work on my game world; that was what inspired me to write this essay a year ago. But I’ve finally finished most of what I’ve needed to finish, and I’m working on turning my enormous Doctor Who review project into a book as I’ve planned for three years.  Then a couple of weeks ago, on the second day of summer, a new story came to me; by the time y’all read this I may have even started writing it.  And though most of y’all will have to wait until the long-delayed publication of Lost Angels to see it, my subscribers can read it now (as soon as I’m done with it, that is) as a “thank you” for all your unflagging support.  So if you’re a subscriber or frequent gift-sender, and would like to read the story, shoot me an email and I’ll get a PDF copy out to you; it might even inspire me to stop procrastinating and get it done!

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In Flux

Posted in Fiction, History, Miscellaneous, Philosophy, tagged , , , , on April 8, 2024| 1 Comment »

It’s been quite a while since I wrote my reviews of series 12 of Doctor Who; I saw series 13 with Lorelei Rivers only a few months after its initial broadcast, but I really wanted to see it again with Grace on DVD before reviewing it, and I only accomplished that a few weeks ago.  Yes, I said “weeks”; I have rather been dreading tackling it, because it ain’t pretty.  Series 13 consists of one six-part story entitled “Flux”, and given its low overall quality I think it best to handle it as I handled “The Trial of a Time Lord” or Torchwood‘s “Miracle Day“, in a single review covering all of its manifold problems.

I started all of my reviews of Series 12 in much the same way as I did every review of a 6th Doctor story:  by saying something good about it, so as to force myself to be as objective as possible.  And while I’ve already blown that in the previous paragraph, I think I can be forgiven considering what I had to work with here; still, it’s a practice that proved its worth when thinking about those other two collections of execrable rubbish, so I’m going to give it a go here.  First, “Flux” isn’t unremittingly bad; two of the episodes (a third of the story) were quite watchable, and I’d go as far as to say chapter 2, “War of the Sontarans”, was actually good if one disregards the Flux-related crap, which isn’t difficult to do.  The concept of the alternate history where Russia is inhabited by Sontarans is weird, but fun, and we’e seen similar historical screw-ups created by time-tampering before.  Chapter 4, “Village of the Angels” had too many problems to be really good, but it was watchable and the flaws wouldn’t have been irremediable if worked over by a decent script editor; it also featured the only really interesting, engaging guest character of the whole 6-part story, the psychic researcher Professor Jericho, who would not have been out of place in a 3rd or 4th Doctor adventure.  That’s certainly appropriate, given that the episode is set in 1967, but also surprising, given Chibnall’s apparent inability to dependably create interesting characters while also serving as showrunner.

The rest of the characters are, as is typical for Chibnall, more like descriptions than personalities.  Many of the cast are probably very competent actors, but even the finest thespian can’t conjure Hamlet out of lackluster dialogue draped carelessly over a checklist.  Dan isn’t a strong or interesting enough new companion to balance out the creepily-codependent Yaz; Vinder and Bel are just collections of lines rather than actual characters we might conceivably care about; the dog-faced boy oscillates between annoying and silly; and none of the villains go beyond “generic baddie in weird makeup” except for Snake Dude, who doesn’t seem to actually have a dramatic function except to complicate the already-convoluted plot even more unnecessarily (but maybe might have something to do with the Mara if Chibnall had the sense to actually connect his stories to the Whovian canon instead of merely sprinkling random references to past characters & events into his script while trying to invalidate the framework in which they were embedded).  And though in the past Doctor Who was known for making even minor characters interesting, in here they might as well have script names like “Dan’s sweetheart”, “psychic woman”, “little girl”, and “old people” for all the development Chibnall gives them.

And then there’s the titular Apocalypse of the Week, the Flux, which manages to be dreadfully boring despite supposedly wiping out half of the universe.  Part of the reason is that Doctor Who has steadily inflated its threats for 60 years, and we’ve already seen “malevolent Time Lord unleashes a chaos wave that destroys much of Creation” way back in 1981’s Logopolis.  Another part is that it doesn’t actually make much sense; Chibnall seems unsure of exactly what it’s doing or how it’s doing it, which is why it can somehow be stopped by a wall of interlinked spaceships built by an advanced-but-not-remotely-godlike alien race we’ve never heard of before despite their supposedly being linked with humanity on some deep level.  And why didn’t the Flux destroy the sun and other planets, when it sure looked like it was doing that in other parts of the universe back in Chapter One?

The real answer is, unfortunately, that the Flux is a naked metaphor, an in-universe representation of what Chibnall is trying to do with the Whoniverse: utterly destroy it in order to create his own, new Whoniverse without the slightest regard for anything that came before.  Tecteun is thus revealed as a sort of self-insert character, a deranged control freak who, after failing to remake everything in her own image and likeness via more modestly-megalomaniacal means (Tecteun via her creepy spook “Division”, itself a blatant ripoff of the Time Lords’ Celestial Intervention Agency, and Chibnall via all his Hapless Child monkeyshines), decide to just destroy everything (including, in Chibnall’s case, Gallifrey itself) out of spite.  “The Flux” is thus the culmination of a trend that started with mere spoiling, progressed to outright vandalism, and eventually arrived at wholesale arson of a venerable and beloved mythos.  Was the extended metaphor intentional?  I honestly don’t think Chibnall is that clever, but if it isn’t his subconscious was tattling on him. 

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O.B.I.T.

Posted in Fiction, History, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 5, 2024| 1 Comment »

People with nothing to hide have nothing to fear from O.B.I.T.
–  Byron Lomax (Jeff Corey)

Generally speaking, The Outer Limits was not as devoted to social commentary as its contemporary The Twilight Zone.  This is not a knock; the flavor of the featured tales reminds me very much of Silver Age sci-fi comics like Mystery in Space and Strange Adventures, more thrilling than cerebral, and though the technobabble nearly always has holes one could pilot a flying saucer through, the same could be said of The Twilight Zone.  The episodes were for the most part skillfully directed and shot in an elegant film noir-inspired style, enhanced with superbly creepy music and performed by some of the top small-screen talent of the day such as Martin Landau, Robert Culp, David McCallum, Sally Kellerman, Vera Miles, Robert Duvall, William Shatner and many others.  But while the stories rarely fail to entertain (though modern viewers used to CGI may find the clever-but-cheap special effects wanting), they’re generally short monster movies or unchallenging morality plays rather than incisive examinations of the issues of their day.  Of course, there are exceptions, and one of them is O.B.I.T., one of those rare teleplays which are more relevant today than when they were filmed.

The Outer Band Individuated Teletracer (O.B.I.T.) is a top-secret surveillance device which is able to tune in on any individual’s unique biometric signature in order to spy on that person regardless of walls or distance.  It is used to monitor the staff at a vital Defense research installation, and when one of its operators is brutally murdered the U.S. Senate subcommittee which oversees the facility sends one of its members to investigate.  What he discovers is a base plagued by tension, discord, and serious mental health issues, all driven by the administration’s incessant prying into every private life; though the existence of the machine is a closely-guarded secret, it is obvious – and terrifying – to all that the government clearly has some means of surveillance unimpeded by locks or whispers.  Of course, this being The Outer Limits, the machines (which the investigation soon reveals are both numerous and not solely restricted to US  government usage) are an alien device surreptitiously introduced into human society as a tool of conquest.  In the climactic scene, when the disguised alien is revealed, this is what he has to say:

The machines are everywhere! Oh you’ll find them all, you’re a zealous people. And you’ll make a great show of smashing a few of them. But for every one you destroy, hundreds of others will be built. And they will demoralize you, break your spirits, create such rifts and tensions in your society that no one will be able to repair them! Oh, you’re a savage, despairing planet, and when we come here to live, you friendless, demoralized flotsam will fall without even a single shot being fired. Senator, enjoy the few years left you. There is no answer. You’re all of the same dark persuasion! You demand – insist – on knowing every private thought and hunger of everyone: Your families, your neighbors, everyone — but yourselves.

When O.B.I.T. was first broadcast in November 1963, the security state was a mere toddler; its tools were largely limited to hidden cameras and microphones, and eminently-corruptible human snitches and busybodies.  I hardly need to point out that this is no longer the case; using biometrics to identify individuals is no longer science fiction, and the number of means the government and large corporations have to track, trace, watch, eavesdrop on, and judge every last one of us would’ve been unbelievable to a TV audience of the Kennedy era.  Millions of people in the developed world, acting individually or collectively, feel completely justified in digging into the affairs of those who have different beliefs from them, in hope of discovering some transgression or mistake that can be used to destroy the victim’s life with the help of faceless, merciless corporations and institutions.  The irreparable rifts and tensions which are the inevitable product of a panopticon are already here, and growing more dangerously-intrusive all the time.  And we didn’t even need malevolent aliens to do it to us.

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The Buffyverse, Part Three

Posted in Favorites, Miscellaneous, tagged , , on June 8, 2023| Leave a Comment »

The three things I find most appealing about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel all fit into characteristics of the way my brain works.  I’ve mentioned before that for me, human interaction is the most satisfying part of my journey through life, so it should be no surprise that I quickly lose interest in shows without the kind of interesting, well-developed fictional characters the Buffyverse has in abundance.  Last week, I thoroughly explained why strong, consistent world-building is important to me, and of course Buffy has that as well.  The third thing I value in shows is cleverness and ability to surprise, and guess what?  Buffy has that, too.

See, it’s like this: my brain moves extremely fast, so that if the plot of a show is at all predictable, I will see any twists coming long, long before the big reveal.  And because I have an excellent memory, I immediately recognize derivative story elements and tired tropes practically as soon as they appear.  Now, it’s OK if I figure out the twists halfway through, or if it only happens on occasion.  But if I can predict the ending nearly every time, five or ten minutes after the opening credits, I’m probably going to get bored with it.  But with Buffy, it was exactly the opposite; the show kept me guessing the majority of the time, despite the fact that it usually “played fair” rather than pulling some sort of unprecedented necrobabble out of a hat to hand-wave the writers out of some dungeon they’ve written themselves into, as so many dark fantasy shows are wont to do.  But that’s not the half of it; the Buffy writers were not only willing to turn tropes inside-out and upside-down, but also to shamelessly steal them from other genres or defenestrate conventions.  Vampires could be boring, airheaded, or lovesick; demons could be easygoing nerds or flamboyant lounge singers; an evil wizard could be a corny square; villains could be likable and goodies despicable.  One episode was a bona fide musical (the result of a powerful demon’s influence), but rather than just being a throwaway bit of fun it actually contained serious character development and important foreshadowing.  And in more than one season, the finale resulted in more destruction than is even the norm in the superhero genre.

And then there’s the wit.  The dialogue in most episodes doesn’t merely sparkle, it snaps, crackles, and pops.  There is often humor in even the darkest, most serious episodes, and ofttimes that humor is of Saharan dryness and Hitchcockian blackness; at other times it was practically farce, and yet it all fit together smoothly and comfortably to create a consistent and recognizable style which, though less striking in Angel, suffuses both shows.  I found myself laughing out loud on a regular basis, and there aren’t even many comedy series that can dependably evoke that from me.

All in all, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a rare gem, and Angel a worthy spinoff which, while it doesn’t match its parent series, certainly doesn’t disgrace it.  I highly recommend these shows not just to those who think a horror comedy superhero soap opera sounds right up their alley, but also for anyone who enjoys tight, clever writing, compelling characters, and series which aren’t so impressed with themselves that they forget the point of television shows is, first and foremost, to entertain.

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