“Quick – put up some shelves.”
While watching the 2005 season finale of Doctor Who with Rain the other day, something struck me. The Doctor carries a tool he calls a “sonic screwdriver”. About the size of a regular screwdriver, this tool emits sonic (and perhaps other) waves which can manipulate small mechanical and electronic objects. It’s most commonly used as a lockpick, but it’s been shown as a welder / unwelder, circuit modifier, computer reprogrammer, medical scanner, and (on rare occasions) a screwdriver.
He started using it in the Sixties, in his second incarnation, and continued well into the Eighties, when it was destroyed by an enemy of the Fifth Doctor. Sources in the BBC production team revealed that the device was causing the writers trouble when they wanted the Doctor locked up or otherwise frustrated by mechanisms. While I can’t remember if the Eighth Doctor used one during his movie, the Ninth and Tenth do so regularly, and I think with good reason. Someone at the BBC seems to have realized a fact:
Locked doors are boring story telling.
The sonic screwdriver is in fact a boon to the program: when there’s only 45 minutes of story, it’s a wise move to get past the locked doors and computer codes, and move on to the part where the Doctor must deal with other people and nasty decisions.
Besides, since the tool’s never too clearly explained, you can always have the door that the sonic screwdriver just won’t open.
(Brion Fields of Space Rogues keeps a sonic screwdriver in a pocket of his jumpsuit. Where he got it, I don’t know; and it was intended to be a subtle in-joke, not fill half the frame in an early scene.)
Welcome 2006
Been away for a while, again. December was a rough month for me; one of the high points was the sinus infection that kept me feverish, nauseated, and flat on my back for all of Christmas weekend. On the other hand, raininva trumped her Valentine’s Day gift to me with an even more geeky present: a 30GB iPod video. Dang, but that thing is small. It’s full of anime and British SF right now, but even with video-on-the-go I never have time to watch anything right now.
Back in April, I barely resisted a rant about SF fans and reviewers. However, this review of the “Starship Troopers” novel pushed the rant to the surface again.
My Muse Left A Message on My Machine
I seriously considered blowing off NaNoWriMo again this year, as I have done in previous years, because I honestly don’t believe I’d get anywhere close to the word count. My life is rather full at the moment.
But the other night, while gradually downshifting my brain for sleep, I came up with a plotline that I really like. Setting and conflict sprang to mind, though character and resolution still evade me. Also, some of it’s a touch derivative, and I’ll have to address that sooner or later. I wish to make sure that I have something original to say.
I seriously doubt I can spin out 50,000 words of it before December, but leaving NNWM out of the picture, this is the best idea I’ve had in a few years. It could well be worth pursuing.
There’s a blog called Slacktivist where, among other things, the writer presents his opinion of the “Left Behind” books in great detail. (Said opinion isn’t positive.) What I bookmarked, though, is Slacktivist’s link to Kurt Vonnegut’s “Eight rules for writing fiction.” Vonnegut isn’t exactly my favorite writer ever, but that’s an excellent list, and one I try to keep in mind when I’m writing.
Succumbing to the Shakespeare meme
If you see this on your friends list, add a Shakespeare quote to your own journal.
“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
–From Macbeth (V, v, 19)
Epic Storylines
While thinking of sf/fantasy movies & TV today, it occurred to me that they’re all more ‘fun’ if the fate of humanity hinges on the outcome. That’s hard to do in episodic TV, of course, but Babylon 5 managed it, Deep Space Nine managed it, and Enterprise picked that up by its third season.
It’s in all the fan favorites; The Original Series and The Next Generation didn’t do it often, but when they did (“City On The Edge Of Forever”, “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, “Best of Both Worlds’) It was memorable. The best Trek movies did this: Khan had to be prevented from getting the Genesis Device; the Whale Probe had to be silenced; the Borg had to be prevented from disrupting First Contact).
Of course, the original Star Wars trilogy let us know practically from the opening crawl that ‘humanity’ (i.e., the Rebellion and a pair of leftover Jedi) was gambling everything on Anakin’s twins; and in The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship knew that if they screwed this up, Middle-Earth was lost. Indeed, in SDF-Macross, the heroes almost blew it, and vast populations of human beings didn’t live to see the end of the series.
This may have been part of the problem with the new Star Wars trilogy, and the first two seasons of Enterprise. There was just no urgency in what the characters did, since we knew, in broad strokes at least, what the eventual outcome was going to be. You can make up for that with compelling character drama, but we didn’t get that either. (I know that Enterprise had a “Temporal Cold War” going on, but it was dull as dirt. We didn’t care until the Xindi zapped Earth.) Voyager eventually became character-driven and somewhat interesting, but might have had far better legs in the beginning if it had tried the Space Battleship Yamato / B5: Crusade formula and had to deal with an urgent need to get home ASAP – whether or not their technology was initially up to it.
Perhaps that’s something the writers of Trek Series 6 should think about. (I don’t doubt there will be a Series 6, next year or 10 years from now.) Make us worried, maybe not from the first episode but before too long. Make us feel like the leads are fighting not just for themselves, but for us or our kids. Give us an investment.
I bet we fans will eat it up.
Clearing the mental registers
Latest reading / writing progress: Finished a re-read of Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising, which is like The Lord Of The Rings of military thrillers; long and complicated, but internally consistent and plausible and worth the read if you can stick it out. Trying to read Terry Pratchett’s Men At Arms or The Truth, but I keep stalling in the early pages of each. Last year, Witches Abroad did a much better job of sucking me in.
Wrote a bunch of flavor text last night, and a few hundred words for “Cat Out Of Hell” over the weekend. Also figured out what the MacGuffin should be for “That Goat Doesn’t Belong To You”, making it more a part of the story and slightly less of a MacGuffin.
Our Lord of the Rings CCG is addictive, and I’m not saying that as an employee, either. raininva keeps killing me at the Bridge of Khazad-Dum, though.
I got honked at on the way to work this morning because someone mistimed his sudden acceleration and wasn’t able to cut me off as he’d planned. I guess he was trying to say, How dare you prevent me from being rude to you!
I did nothing for Mardi Gras last night, continuing a tradition I’ve maintained as long as I can remember. I will probably continue that tradition next month in a few months for Cinco de Mayo too. But at least Card Night will probably be a go this weekend – MarsCon and sicknesses have put a damper on the last few.
Just discovered NeoOffice, the OS X port of OpenOffice. Basic MS Word / Excel functionality, for free? I knew this had to suck… except it doesn’t. Now I’ve got it installed on all the machines I use at work or home.
And that’s Wednesday morning.
