Divisiveness and Star Trek Discovery

I don’t need to tell you that America is a divided place right now.  Red states vs. blue states; anthem standers vs. kneelers; smooth peanut butter vs. chunky.  But it used to be there was something most of us could agree on, and that is that Star Trek is awesome.

But the Star Trek concept of IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations) is being strained by the response of fans to the latest incarnation in the Trek oeuvre, Star Trek Discovery.  CBS just announced that it was renewing the show for a second season, so the experiment of only making it available on a streaming platform instead of broadcast television must have worked.  But there is a civil war brewing about the show and the direction of Star Trek into the future.

I cannot comment on the quality of the show because I won’t sign up for CBS All Access just to watch a new Star Trek series.  I can go back and re-watch The Original Series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine on Netflix if I want my Trek fix (sorry, Voyager was never my cup of tea), not to mention the movies (at least the good, even numbered ones).  I did watch the first episode that was broadcast, and I thought it was terrible.  Of course, it’s hard for me to make an informed decision because what they showed on CBS was not the first episode, but only the first half of the first two-part episode.  Note to CBS—if you say you are going to show the first episode on broadcast TV, then show the ENTIRE episode and don’t end on a cliffhanger and say, “to be continued” on part 2.

Metacritic gives Star Trek Discovery a respectable critical rating of 72 out of 100.  But then I checked the User Rating and saw it was a measly 4.5 out of 10, worse than mediocre.  Looking at the summary, it was what we in the statistics biz like to call a bimodal distribution—163 negative reviews vs. 82 positive reviews, with all the 10’s and 1’s averaging out to just under 5.  Very few people are on the fence.

I got the sense of the controversy looking at the comments on the AV Club review of the most recent episode.  In my history of reading reviews at AV Club I had never seen so many comments taking issue with the position taken by the reviewer, which pointed out the inconsistencies with the Star Trek universe and questioned the purpose of setting the series in the Star Trek universe then feeling the need to rebrand certain aspects (like largely rebooting the Klingons).  Comments on AV Club reviews sometimes have commenters pose slight disagreements with what other commenters have posted, but rarely have commenters taken the offensive to unilaterally disagree with the approach the reviewer took in critiquing the show itself.

The major reason for the split of opinion could be because we are now into the third generation of Star Trek fandom.  The First Age of Star Trek was the original show and the big screen movie version of Star Trek and its immediate sequels.  These stories were about Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and the rest, and were based on a unifyied concept.

The Second Age of Star Trek was the re-birth and rise of the television franchise, from The Next Generation through Enterprise.  These projects were one step removed from Gene Rodenberry’s original vision, but close enough to avoid any major issues with continuity.  Yes, Klingons now had forehead ridges, but the best explanation for that was contained in the Deep Space Nine episode Trials and Tribble-ations (as Worf explained, Klingons did not discuss the change with outsiders). 

The Third Age began with the movie franchise reboot, where Chris Pine reinterpreted the role of Kirk.  One of the clever things done to avoid the whole consistency “tar baby” was to make everything due to a temporal anomaly, so that the events that followed would NOT be consistent with the events of the original TV series.  This was taken to a somewhat tedious extreme by Star Trek Into Darkness, which (spoilers!) was essentially a remake of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan but with events slightly altered due to changes in the timeline.

So now there are two, maybe three, groups of fans: those loyal to the original Star Trek series and its characters (these people are pretty old at this point); those raised on The Next Generation and the subsequent TV series which tried hard to toe the corporate line; and those who came aboard with the recent movie reboot who see no reason to drag a 50 year old TV series into imposing limits on a new science fiction TV franchise.  Thus the split in opinion over how dedicated any new incarnation of Star Trek has to be to the details of what has come before.

I’ve written before that my theory for the decline in quality in the Star Trek franchise, starting with Voyager and the later seasons of Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, was that they started hiring writers based on their knowledge of Star Trek trivia over having actual writing talent.  The first year of the original series featured scripts by noted science fiction authors like Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, Frederic Brown and DC Fontana, mainly because in the mid-1960’s there were few science fiction writers working in television.  More recent writers developed episodes with major plot points based on nuances that were probably not-thought-out details about Klingon physiology or Ferengi psychology; namely, they were Star Trek insiders and not graduates of screenwriting classes.

So, we’ll have to agree to disagree.  I will continue to think that Star Trek Discovery is a major misfire, while I watch City on the Edge of Forever and Our Man Bashir on Netflix.  Trek fans younger than me will eat up Discovery and believe that Star Trek Beyond is the best Star Trek movie yet.  If the Federation and the Klingons can co-exist, I suppose the various schools of Trek fandom can learn to live together.

The GOP Tax Plan

In case you haven’t heard, Republicans want to pass a “tax reform” measure.  Of course, being Republicans, when they say, “tax reform” they mean “tax cuts” primarily for the rich (because cutting taxes for the poor doesn’t accomplish very much).  Since this would dramatically increase the federal deficit, and because a lot of Republicans don’t like that idea, they have to look for ways to raise tax revenues without increasing tax rates, which can be tricky.

 One idea that was reported by respectable news sources is a plan to cap employee contributions to 401(k) plans, which are used by employees to save money for retirement.  The current cap limits tax deductible contributions from $18,000 to $24,000 a year; Republicans want to lower that amount to an amount possibly as low as $2,400 per year.

 Before I discuss the implications of this proposal, a little history of 401(k) plans is in order.  When 401(k)s were created in the 1970’s, they were a way to give highly paid executives a higher retirement income without raising benefits for everyone in a company’s pension plan.  Contributions to a 401(k) were treated as non-taxable income; taxes were paid when the money was withdrawn during retirement, at which point most company executives would be in a lower tax bracket, thus creating an incentive for the executive to squirrel away money.

 However, the tax code has changed a lot since the 1970’s.  Upper brackets were eliminated by the Reagan tax reforms, and companies found ways to compensate executives with stock options and the like which reduced the incentive for highly paid executives to use 401(k)s.  As private pension plans were eliminated during the late 20^th century (for reasons that I will leave to be explained another day), most private companies made 401(k)s the principal method of retirement saving for rank and file employees.

 One consequence of this is that the tax-deferred advantage of investing in a 401(k) has largely gone away.  It used to be said that retirees could live on 70% of their final income, mainly because presumably their house was paid off, but now many people refinance their housing instead of paying it off.  Also, medical expenditures are increasing for people of retirement age, so now people are expected to need about 90% of their final income in retirement.  This means that people who retire are in the same tax bracket as when they were working.

 So, the tax-deferral aspect of 401(k)s is just that—deferral, not avoidance.  What that means is that the Republican plan to cap 401(k) contributions won’t raise more tax revenue; it merely shifts when the taxes are paid from the future to the present.  So, the Republican plan mortgages the future in order to write down the deficit-enhancing aspects of the tax cuts.

 Shifting the tax payments means that the economy will be stimulated now, creating more jobs and, as I said, reducing the deficit now.  But there is no free lunch—the economy will be depressed in 10, 20, 30, or 40 years in the future when retirees retire and find they don’t have enough income to live on.  So not only will tax revenues be lower in the future, but there will be an increase in demand for government services as an increasing number of older citizen find they need government assistance to make ends meet.

 Taking public sector employees off pensions and putting them into 401(k) plans has been a Republican mantra for decades.  Now Republicans essentially want to take 401(k)s away (a cap of $2,400 per year would not allow people to save enough to live on when an employee reaches retirement age).  This means that the Republican plan would essentially mean that most workers couldn’t afford to retire, they would have to keep working until they die.  This may not be an issue for people in white collar jobs (California Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is 84, announced she is running for re-election, meaning she plans on working until she is 90), but people in blue-collar trades often can’t physically continue to work when they get older and can’t meet the physical demands of their job.

The concept of “retirement” is a relatively new one; before the Great Depression (the one in the 1930’s, not the one in the 2010’s) pretty much everyone expected to work until they keeled over at their work station.  Thanks to the 20^th century development of pensions, enough could be set aside for future costs so that people might enjoy a few years of rest between work and the grave.  Then businesses decided that pensions were too expensive, so switched to 401(k)s, and now Republicans think that 401(k)s defer too much spending. 

 In a perfect world, everyone would save enough for their golden years.  In case you haven’t noticed, the world is less than perfect.  According to the Federal Reserve, Americans have a credit card debt of a little over $5,000 per person with a credit card, or $9,600 per household with credit card debt.  In our consumer culture, saving for the future is not as exciting as buying a really neat boat (or renting a one-bedroom home in the San Francisco Bay Area).  401(k)s are one of the few resources that people have to make wise decisions about savings, but the Republicans want to take away people’s futures in order to give the wealthy a tax cut.

TV Review: Star Trek Discovery

TV Review—Star Trek: Discovery

One of the dangers of trying to revive a beloved but dormant franchise is that you’ve got several million viewers ready to jump on even the slightest error or misstep of interpretation.  You have to be true to what made the previous incarnation great, but be able to innovate in order to reach a new audience.  It is what the creators of Star Trek: The Next Generation succeeded at.  It was what the creators of the new Doctor Who succeeded at. 

It is what the creators of Star Trek: Discovery failed at.

I can’t write off the series based on one episode, but one episode is all that is being provided before the show goes into “access mode” on CBS’ streaming platform.  Based on what I saw, I won’t be signing up.

Where does the show go wrong?  First, there is the inherent problem of setting a series using today’s filming technology ten years before the Original Series was set.  The sets, costumes, and make-up have to look better than they did when the Original Series was filmed in the 1960’s.  The most glaring example—Star Trek: Discovery has characters communicate with people far away by using holographic imagery.  Did Kirk ever use holograms to communicate with Star Fleet?  No, of course not.  So how do you explain Star Fleet having hologram technology ten years before the Original Series but not then?  Of course, the answer is because now we can film scenes using simulated holograms and we couldn’t in 1966, but that’s a meta answer that takes the viewer out of the experience.

Speaking of make-up, the creators of Discovery have decided to give the Klingons yet ANOTHER makeover.  Next Gen famously gave the Klingons a forehead ridge, a development wonderfully mocked in the DS9 episode Trials and Tribble-ations when digital technology was used to insert Commander Worf into footage from the Original Series episode The Trouble With Tribbles (when asked who Klingons used to look more human, Worf replied that it was something Klingons didn’t discuss). 

Klingons have been revamped, and so help me they look like Vogons from the BBC Production of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  They had a domed, turtle-like head and don’t look the least bit menacing, at least to me.  Their ship, which used to be the height of sparse, utilitarian design, has so many ornate carvings and elaborate moldings that it looks like a Orion brothel (or at least what I assume an Orion brothel looks like, since I don’t believe Trek has ever shown one).

There is also the age-old problem in Star Trek that they have to find ways for there to be problems despite futuristic technology.  The opening scenes show the Captain (Michelle Yeoh) and her First officer Michael Burnham (series lead actress Sonequa Martin-Green) trudging through a desert, and the Captain complains they are lost.  Lost?  My car has a GPS system, you’re telling me that a couple of hundred years in the future Star Fleet doesn’t?  Okay, maybe there is some “magnetic resonance” preventing GPS from working; the fact remains that they could have transported directly to where they were headed instead of risking getting lost in the desert.

What is the most important criterion upon which I will judge a TV show, or movie, or book?  How well does it solve the problems that it sets up?  The Original Series set up problems quickly, then let Kirk, Spock and McCoy wander around for 45 minutes before they reasoned out a solution.  The Next Gen usually had Picard, Riker, et al wonder what the problem was for 45 minutes, then when they realized what it was all Picard had to do was order Geordi to modulate the framistan to create a cascade effect on the whatzitz.  Not as interesting.

Unfortunately, I can’t evaluate how well Discovery solves the problems it presents because the first episode is a freakin’ cliffhanger!  Of all the cheap, manipulative ways to suck people in to signing up for CBS All Access, that’s the only way to find out how the plot of the pilot episode is resolved. 

Since that’s not possible, let me see how they resolve a smaller plot point.  Burnham flies off in an EVA suit to investigate a ship that sensors can’t discern.  Why the first officer and not a more, ahem, expendable crew member (*cough red shirt cough*)?  No idea.  She’s told that the radiation will kill her in 20 minutes, so she only has 19 minutes before she must be back.  She encounters a problem, the ship loses contact with her, and after the deadline her EVA suit reappears but the ship cannot establish remote control.  How is she saved?

We don’t know; they cut to commercial and then pick up with Burnham in sick bay being treated for radiation burns.  There is some hand waiving about how she was brought back on to the ship, but it is a deus ex machina conclusion to a relatively simple problem.  If she can’t be out for more than 20 minutes, then her suit’s computer should be giving her warnings when she needs to start heading back. 

There is also the problem that the ship’s third in command is an alien whose race is, apparently, cowardly by nature and is always recommending retreat.  I am all for affirmative action, but isn’t it a liability to have a command officer who will never engage in hostilities and will probably surrender to any ship they encounter that goes, “Boo!”?

I had low expectations for Discovery and they were NOT met.  The last two movies have been mediocre, and now an all-star assemblage of notables (Nicholas Meyer from The Wrath of Khan, Alex Kurtzman from the Star Trek movie, Bryan Fuller who wrote for Voyager and created the wonderful Pushing Daisies) has created this mess.  I am not subscribing to CBS All-Access; I think my time would be better spent re-watching Deep Space Nine on Netflix.

2017 US Open--the most unpredictable tennis in decades

The 2017 US Open was one of the most entertaining US Opens that I can remember.  The tone of the two weeks was set on the first night when unseeded Maria Sharapova, coming off a 15-month suspension for PED use, defeated the number two seed Simona Halep in the opening round.  Even granted that Maria Sharapova is a former Grand Slam winner, that match confirmed what we knew going in—it would be a wide-open tournament.

That was certainly true on the women’s side, due to the absence of Serena Williams who was otherwise engaged.  One can sum up the situation with the observation that the number one ranked player, Karolina Pliskova, had never won a major.  There are relatively few women players who have won majors, because Serena has won so many lately, and those who have won majors have fallen off after their victory (a surprising lot have trouble dealing with the “pressures of success”).  There were a number of potential favorites (mostly Eastern European women whose last names end in “a”), but the field felt wide open.

The situation was not quite as extreme with the men.  Several possible champions were missing the tournament, namely Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Stan Warwrinka.  Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were the heavy favorites, but both were older players with a history of injuries, so anything could happen.  In the end, in the quarter-finals only 2 of the 8 players would be seeded in the top 10, and only 3 would be in the top 16.

The past 13 years have been incredibly stable for men’s tennis.  If you look at any 5-year period from the start of the Open Era (1968) you’ll find somewhere between 8 to 12 men won the 20 major titles in that period.  Doing some random sampling the smallest number I found in the 20^th century was 7, between the years 1978-1982 (Vilas, Borg, Connors, McEnroe, Teacher, Kriek, and Wilander).  However, between 2006-2010 and 2007-2011, only 4 men won a major title (Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, and Del Potro).  The number went up to 5 when Andy Murray started winning majors in 2012, and from 2010-2014 until 2013-2017 each 5-year span has had only 6 major winners (Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, Murray, Warwrinka, and Cilic). 

The opportunity to win a major seemed to energize a lot of the players who otherwise might have just gone through the motions before being eliminated by Serena or Roger.  The Sharapova/Halep match featured inspired tennis on both ends.  Subsequent matches featured a number of upsets, with an unlikely quartet of US women sweeping into the semi-finals.  Venus Williams, seeded ninth, was not quite a surprise, but Madison Keys (15 seed), Coco Vandeweghe (20 seed), and Sloane Stephens (unseeded) were not projected to get that far.

But in the quarter-finals Vandeweghe got past number one seed Pliskova, Williams beat 13 seed (and two-time Wimbledon winner) Petra Kvitova, Keys beat an unseeded player named Kaia Kenepi, and Stephens won a three setter over 16 seed Ana Sevastova.  Pliskova was the only top-8 seed to make it to the quarter-final, a sign of all the upsets that occurred on the way there.

Sloane Stephens, who had been ranked in the low 900’s earlier in the year, decisively beat Madison Keys in the final to win her first major title.

The men’s side was also filled with upsets, with only two top ten seeds (Nadal and Federer) making it to the quarter-finals.  The biggest disappointment was when Juan Martin Del Potro thwarted the chances of the first ever meeting of Nadal and Federer at the US Open by beating Federer in the quarter-finals.  Del Potro won the 2009 US Open title by beating Federer, making him the only player outside the “Big Three” to win a major from 2006-2011, so this was the second time he blocked Federer’s path to the Open title.

It was almost an anti-climax when Nadal beat some guy named Kevin Anderson, the 28 seed at the tournament.  Nadal managed to win his 16^th major, but to do so he needed a field so weak that he never faced anyone in the top 20.  He faced only two seeded players, Del Potro (24) and Anderson (28), which was a lot easier than having to beat Djokovic, Federer and Murray all at the same tournament.

Having a period dominated by possibly the two greatest men’s tennis players ever (Federer and Nadal), along with another all-time great (Djokovic) has produced some incredible tennis.  And having a period of women’s tennis dominated by arguably the best female tennis player of all time (I'd still give that crown to Steffi Graf) has been entertaining.  Predictability is nice, but unpredictability is more interesting.

But after the excitement of the 2017 US Open, I am looking forward to a period where there is a little more variety in the number of winners at Grand Slam tennis tournaments.

TV Review--The Defenders

TV Review—The Defenders

Marvel’s had a good run lately, churning out one successful super-hero property after another.  Their one mis-step was Iron Fist, which got such poor reviews I took a pass on it even though it was technically free for streaming on Netflix.  It may be free, but as the saying goes, time is money.

So I wasn’t very enthusiastic to tackle the Marvel mash-up of The Defenders, which combines crusading blind lawyer Matt Murdock aka Daredevil (Charlie Cox), super-strong PI Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) and Luke Cage (Mike Colter) with the protagonist of Iron Fist, Danny Rand (Finn Jones).  I had also skipped Daredevil season 2, because as much as I admired the first season of Daredevil, a lot of that was due to the contribution of Vincent D’Onofrio as Kingpin, and without him in season 2 I thought it would be disappointing.

Of the Marvel/Netflix properties I thought Jessica Jones was the best, with a damaged hero, an intriguing villain who couldn’t be beaten by simply pummeling him and whose threat to the protagonist was more psychological than physical. Luke Cage started out promising, but then killed its antagonist off mid-way through the series and replaced him with a much less interesting villain (the first villain was played by subsequent Oscar winner Mahershala Ali, who was more captivating playing evil slightly understated than the second villain who chewed the scenery; sometimes less IS more).

So, I had not watched two of the five series that were prequels to The Defenders, but I decided to give it a try anyway.  At a trim eight episodes, the series accomplishes what it needs to and then does not overstay its welcome.  The same genius alchemy Joss Whedon used to create the super-team The Avengers is on display here, as a highly disparate group of heroes finds enough common ground to work together.

The most interesting aspect to me was the technique employed when the four of them fought together.  There are two distinct fighting styles at play; Daredevil and Iron Fist are straight out of every chop-socky film ever made, with lots of kicks, flips, leaps, and leg sweeps.  On the other hand, Luke Cage and Jessica Jones just stand around and wait for the opportunity to punch someone really hard.  The combination is effective, mostly because the evil ninjas don’t realize that Luke Cage’s skin is impervious to blades, or that Jessica Jones can hit a lot harder than the typical 115-pound woman.

A second dynamic that the show didn’t seem interested in pursuing was the fact that Luke Cage had slept with three of the woman in the series, namely Jessica Jones, police detective Misty Knight (Simone Missick), and nurse Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), who presence in each series knitted the various series together before the protagonists met.  His affairs with Jessica and Misty were sincere but casual, but supposedly Claire is something more special (it is clear when he gets out of prison at the start of The Defenders that Luke is REALLY happy to see Claire again).  Luke and Jessica have some casual flirtation towards the end, but by and large they act like they’ve barely met before, and romantic overtones are fairly muted in order to focus on the real threat.

That threat is The Hand, an evil organization that dates back centuries that is really, really evil and led by a woman named Alexandra (Sigourney Weaver).  They live forever thanks to some substance, but they used up that substance to resurrect Daredevil’s deceased girlfriend from season 2, Electra Natchios (Elodie Yung, mostly driving away all memories of Jennifer Gardner from the movie).  They plan to get more of the substance, but their plan to do so would result in untold destruction in New York City.

The Defenders does a good job of setting the pieces in place at the beginning, giving each of the four heroes (one can almost hear Jessica Jones’ eyes rolling at the word) a different path to get to the bad guys.  The four protagonists share one trait—they are all relentless when working on a problem, and this drives them to overcome major obstacles to arrive, almost together, at an executive board meeting of The Hand in episode three.

From then they form an uneasy alliance.  The show’s timeline is compressed; only a couple of days transpire over the eight episodes (or was it only one?).  Even though there are times for conversations and one Chinese dinner, most of the time the pressure on them from The Hand is relentless and the plot moves at a pace that seldom flags.  They get along despite their differences; ex-con and ex-cop Luke Cage finds he likes billionaire Danny Rand, while Daredevil, mostly operating as lawyer Matt Murdock, wears his heart on his sleeve while Jessica Jones sets a record for eye-rolling.

The acting is mostly first rate.  You expect that from pros like Weaver, but Charlie Cox struck me as much more affecting as Daredevil than I recall from season one, and Krysten Ritter inhabits Jessica Jones like a glove.  Mike Colter is not a great actor but projects a needed sincerity, and has the physical presence required to play Luke Cage.  Finn Jones does a nice job of portraying Danny Rand and basically a well-meaning dodo.  The one performance I thought was wasted was Scott Glenn as Daredevil’s blind sensei known as Stick; he seemed to sleepwalk through his line readings, although he might have been trying to show resignation or nonchalance. 

My biggest criticism of the entire project is their choice of the final shot of the series, which undercut a great deal of the drama that transpired at the end. But to say any more would be a spoiler. 

The Defenders not only lives up to expectations, but deserves a place alongside The Avengers in the pantheon of Marvel properties.  The melding of four Marvel heroes into one story could have been awkward or forced, but it was done with intelligence by creators Douglas Petrie and Marcos Ramirez.  I guess before we get a Defenders 2 we’ll have to wait until Jessica Jones 2 and Luke Cage 2; for some reason, I haven’t heard a clamor for Iron Fist 2.

The X-files: Savior or Curse?

“I got a hundred stories, and tabloid lies

I got witnesses to what the government denies

So I headed down to Roswell to wait and see…”

            Sheryl Crow, Maybe Angels

One of the more depressing bits of news about the upcoming television season was the announcement by FOX that, based on the success of the 6-episode mini-series last season, they would be bringing back The X-Files.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved The X-Files during its original run, although I did give up on it sometime before the final episode.  It is easily the single greatest science-fiction TV show ever, running longer than any other show (well, Stargate outlived it by one episode, but who cares?) and winning more prominent Emmys than any other ten science fiction TV series combined. Unlike every other science fiction show, including the Star Trek franchise and even the Doctor Who series, The X-Files was taken seriously, winning Emmys in prestigious categories like Best Actress, Best Writing for a Drama, and Best Guest Actor and being nominated annually in the directing and writing categories along with Best Drama.

So why do I find this news of The X-files’ resurrection sad?  Because it is based on last year’s six episode run, which consisted of 3 bad episodes, 2 mediocre episodes, and one that was . . . sort of good.  The brilliant thing about the early seasons of The X-files was a sense of urgency, a demand that a show about alien abductions, secret government projects, prognostication, fat-eating mutants, and killer cockroaches be taken very, very seriously.  The six episodes from last year missed this mark entirely.

I have been reconsidering The X-files since reading an article in a recent Atlantic magazine cover story examining the explosion in people believing strange things, impossible things.  I don’t mean alien abductions; I mean claims that President Obama caused the Great Recession (which started several months before his election) or that he played golf during Hurricane Katrina (which also happened on George W. Bush’s watch). 

The basic thesis of the article was that starting around the 1960’s, we, as a society, started empowering people who believed in UFOs, or Bigfoot, or whatever you call what hippies believed in.  We sort of used to insist that young people believe in things that made sense, like US Steel, fighting Nazis, and baseball.  But then we started letting people believe that UFOs were alien visitors, or that angels watched over people (one can only assume if this is true that they are really crappy at their job, given all the bad things that happen).  We allowed people to embrace their irrational beliefs, and now several decades later people are demanding that not only must they be allowed to believe, but everyone else must believe too.

Did The X-files contribute to this?  The show threw out all these weird theories about the government conspiring with aliens to create alien/human hybrids to facilitate the colonization of Earth (note—even showrunner Chris Carter admits the show’s mythology got away from him after season 5 or 6).  While the show’s denouements were notoriously open-ended, the general message was that you are insane if you didn’t believe in every headline run by the National Enquirer or Breitbart “News.”

On the other hand, there was something refreshing in the relationship between skeptical FBI Agent Dana Scully and believer FBI Agent Fox Mulder, mainly how they actually respected the other person’s beliefs and tried to win the other over through reason and evidence instead of decibels. Okay, I’d love to re-watch the entire series and keep a running total of every time Scully said the equivalent of, “Mulder, that’s nuts!” but overall they respected each other’s beliefs and tried to engage rationally.  People who think Obama was President when Katrina hit cannot be engaged rationally.

Yes, The X-files perpetuated the belief in strange things, but that’s because in the universe of The X-files, strange things occurred.  How could Scully maintain her skepticism after seeing all the bizarre stuff she witnessed as Mulder’s partner?  Frankly, half way through season 2 she should have joined Hare Krishna or the Moonies.

One of the brilliant things Chris Carter did with The X-files was to build in conflict by establishing the skeptic/believer dichotomy at the outset.  One of the problems with the first two seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation was that creator Gene Roddenberry insisted that in the future humans will have eliminated all conflict, and the writers tried in vain to create interesting plots featuring characters who all agreed with each other.  It wasn’t until Roddenberry left as the hands-on producer that the show dropped the idea that there was no conflict among the crew and the show improved in quality immensely.

Was The X-files a harbinger of the fake-news-believing America we live in today, or is it a model of rationality and civility?  I lean towards the latter.  People who believe in conspiracy theories don’t need a TV show to feed their paranoia, but a program with rational people talking rationally can only help make the conversation about climate change more civil.

Unless of course one side embraces irrationality, in which case all bets are off.  I believe The X-files had a positive message of rationality; but then, I’m rational.

The 2017 Fall TV Season!

Okay, boys and girls, it is September and that can mean only one thing to anyone over 35—it’s almost time for the new TV season!  Of course, millennials will have no idea what I am talking about, as they only know a universe where TV shows come out on Netflix whenever the hell they get released.  But there used to be a glorious tradition of new shows starting in September, right after summer vacation, and then running straight through to the following May, without hardly any interruptions!  That’s right, they used to produce almost 40 episodes per season, then take 12 weeks off while people spent the summers outside, playing and having barbeques. 

Kids had summers off because schools let them out to work on their parent’s farms, so the whole idea of summer vacation is a tad anachronistic (unless you live in a Jeffersonian reality where the majority of America’s population works on a family farm).

Over time the networks went down to producing 28 episodes a season, then 22, until now when 8 episodes is considered a year’s work for some shows.  Slackers.

So what is out there worth watching?  I’m not as tapped in as I was when I would get the TV Guide edition with the FALL TV SEASON PREVIEW, but I’ve heard some things.  Of course, some of the new shows I’ve heard about are on the Audience Channel, and what the heck is that?

Probably the most prestigious new show is the re-launch of the Star Trek Franchise with Discovery.  Early trailers seem to indicate the show has a decent budget, and I am a huge fan of star Michelle Yeoh.  The problem?  CBS doesn’t want to clutter its dominant schedule with this science fiction stuff, so in order to watch Discovery you will have to subscribe to a streaming platform for $9.99 a month.  Memo to CBS: I am Star Trek fan going back to my first convention in 1975, but if you want me to watch a TV show either broadcast it on your network or sell it to Netflix or Hulu.  I am not going to subscribe to a brand-new platform that has nothing to recommend it other than the first Star Trek TV series in 12 years.  Oh yeah, the last two series (Voyager and Enterprise) weren’t that good, and neither was the last movie, Beyond.  Given this track record, I’d be leery about watching a new Star Trek series if it was on free TV.

Incredibly, the new show I am the most optimistic about is a Star Trek parody called The Orville, starring Family Guy creator Seth McFarland in a live-action role.  McFarland’s non-animated track record is spotty (A Million Ways to Die in the West, anyone?), but he is a talented performer (okay, I’m talking about his vocal work; as a voice actor, he really is astonishingly good) and heaven knows the Star Trek franchise is ripe for satire.  This was attempted before with a short-lived sitcom called Quark (not to be confused with the Ferrengi on Deep Space Nine), but that was before special effects became cheap enough for a sitcom to use.  The show co-stars Adrienne Palicki as McFarland’s second in command and ex-wife; her departure from Agents of Shield was one reason for my dropping that show, so I am happy to see her again.

A lot of what is coming can euphemistically be called “recycled.”  CBS is trotting out Young Sheldon, because the character of Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory would be MUCH funnier as a ten-year-old (note—that was sarcasm).  The Good Doctor features a brilliant doctor who is autistic, meaning he’s basically House with even bigger socialization problems (lest you think I am being unfair, this show is created by the creator of House).  There are a bevy of series vying to pick up the mantle of most patriotic supporter of our men and women in uniform (The Brave, Seal Team, Valor).  And, duplicating the success of last year’s APB (more sarcasm) there is Wisdom of the Crowd, where yet another white billionaire uses technology to fight crime.

Speaking of recycled, there are also a bunch of fantasy series vying to cash in on the strength of the Marvel franchise, but none look that compelling (possibly because I am not as versed in the graphic novel genre as the target audience for these shows).  Inhuman is taking the unusual strategy of being released to IMAX theaters before going to the small screen, which I can’t help but think will make the small screen seem even smaller.  The Gifted boasts Bryan Singer as a producer so it should be true to its origins; it also features Amy Acker, late of Angel, Alias, and Person of Interest, so I’ll tune in.  There is another show called Marvel’s Runaways, but since it is on Hulu and I don’t subscribe, I’m not going to get invested.

My nominee for new show with the most interesting premise that can’t possibly last more than a season is Me, Myself, & I, a show about a central character at three points in his life—early teens, mid-life, and senior years.  The fact that the elder version is played by John Larroquette provides at least the promise of inspired acting for one of the segments.  High concept shows like this really have a difficult time surviving once the novelty wears off, but I’ll check it out just in case.

This is not an exhaustive rundown of new shows—given the fluid nature of TV that is almost impossible (does Stranger Things 2 count as a new series, or an old one?).  I’m ignoring shows on platforms I can’t access like HBO or Hulu, I’m ignoring things that just sound too dull to describe, and as I said there are channels I don’t even know about out there. 

I’ll end on a final note—CBS’ Seal Team stars David Boreanaz, coming off of 12 years on Bones, five years on Angel, and three seasons on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  So this makes his 21^st year in a row starring in a network TV series.  Not bad for a guy who was a professional dog walker when he got his big break (and someone whose career I said would be over 5 minutes after Angel was cancelled).