Some may recall the singing of the sirens lured in the sailors who'd wreck and drown

[sovay]

1. Last night I fell asleep before four in the morning and I stayed that way until shortly after one in the afternoon. In between, for the first time in months, I had detailed, narrative dreams in two distinct phases. I was watching a television play and participating in it at the same time: the killing of a king in something like a Shakespearean history, filmed with all the grey skies and chapped faces and damp wool of modern adaptations. There might or might not have been a plot with a pretender. The speeches should have been in verse, but I can't remember if they were. I fell in love with the youngest of the killers, the one who got the death-blow in, a thin, cowled, gender-ambiguous person with straw-spiky hair and a round face with too many bones in it. They were quick-spoken, taking little nervous breaths halfway through phrases; they were gentle and political and I knew they would be betrayed. We never did more than hold one another, briefly and longingly. I had to watch them found out and torn apart, long after the point where the frame of the play had blurred into something that was really happening. Quartering sounds neat as mathematics, I remember thinking; bodies aren't stamps with dotted lines. After the coronation, I pushed through the gallery of spectators into the backstage that had not existed since the first moments of the dream and found them in modern dress, scarf pulled down around their neck like a cowl, packing a knapsack. They burrowed against me instantly. Later I learned that their name was Filipe and their gender identity was "boi" and we went out to dinner with a bunch of other actors and dancers they worked with (at a restaurant near Fresh Pond that hasn't existed since I was a child, though I didn't remember that until after I'd woken) and it wasn't that the events of the history play had never happened, or that we were living in some kind of metatheatrical region between dreams, but dying and going out to dinner were apparently not mutually exclusive. It was not an idyllic dream, which interests me from here. Not all their friends liked or approved of me; I hadn't introduced them yet to any of mine beyond rushthatspeaks and derspatchel. It must have been colder where we were or earlier in the year, because I remember trees breaking into flower above our heads, white and pink petals all over the sidewalk. I remember how they fit into my arms, a little shorter than I was and much skinnier. I missed them when I woke up. Those are unusual dreams for me these days.

2. I spent much of this evening with sairaali and M., watching Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001). It turns out that the pilot and the second half of the two-parter with the Borg Queen are not a good introduction to Voyager, but being shown four favorite episodes (and one chosen to showcase a character I was interested in) by someone who really likes the series is great. Robert Picardo continues his streak of fantastic character acting, because the Doctor was my favorite character almost at once. Her figure-hugging jumpsuit is idiotic, but Jeri Ryan's Seven of Nine may be coming in second. I am interested to see a show running two very different narratives about how to be human—or not—simultaneously, without putting them in conflict with one another. Will gladly watch more episodes as recommended. Also, Kate Mulgrew has an amazing voice. The last person I heard who sounded like her was Katharine Hepburn.

(I stand by my original assessment of Star Trek: Enterprise (2001–2005), however: it was terrible.)

3. I should cook fruit more often. The braces and other health concerns have made eating most raw fruits difficult, but the baked-down plums and nectarines really worked.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The one that I really objected to was the one where Southern Guy is incurably sick, so they create a clone of him, because that'll let them somehow harvest something medically to save him. But Clone-Southern-Guy is, of course, an independent, complete, sentient being, and eventually has needs and wants distinct from acting as a healing dose for his progenitor. I think the show tries to obfuscate by having it be that Clone Guy is going to die anyway, but nevertheless, the characters were coming down on the side of this guy being a secondary being whose only purpose is to service the main guy. It was horrible.

There was also one involving two intelligent species, one of which had been cognitively less advanced (? or something?) and kept in a subservient position, but now the oppressor race was ill with something that was going to kill them unless Enterprise crew intervened. But they decided not to because of the prime directive, but comforted themselves because of clear sign that the subjugated people is now coming into its own, intellectually and (presumably, with the demise of the subjugators) power-wise, as well. I may be misremembering things about that one, but in any case, it seemed like a misinterpretation of the prime directive--or at best an indication of a real flaw in the prime directive--but instead of the episode looking at things from that angle, it was all from a Yay! This other people will get to flourish! angle. I can't recall if the oppressor people were made to be Awful in Every Way (and therefore worthy of extinction).

Finally, there was an episode in which the captain decided he needed to torture someone because ends justify means, apparently, and so he put the person in a decompression tank, just as they did to Kirk in TOS one episode, but this was not taken as a commentary on this being a wrong action. Nope. It's A-OK to torture when it's the captain doing it. That was the episode after which I wouldn't watch any more.

ETA: What made *you* give up on it?

[sovay]

Nope. It's A-OK to torture when it's the captain doing it. That was the episode after which I wouldn't watch any more.

Aaaaaagh. Wow. None of that is any good. Very post-9/11 American, of course, but that wasn't good, either.

What made *you* give up on it?

I didn't like any of the characters, I didn't like the construction of the universe, and the one character I found interesting was badly underused! On checking the plots of episodes I can remember, it seems that I bailed sometime in the first season, came back to try one episode of the second season, and after that I believe the term is "ragequit"? And I didn't even see any of the episodes you're describing!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Which was the one character? I can only remember three characters: Southern Guy, Quantum Leap Captain, and Vulcan Woman.

Oh, and I forgot to say that in the clone episode, whatever it was they were going to do to the clone to harvest what they needed, it was going to kill him (i.e., it wasn't just "You're going to die anyway, so why do you mind that we're taking your kidney" it was "What we're going to do to you will kill you, but you shouldn't mind, because you'd die pretty soon anyway, and wouldn't you like to die earlier to save this person who's the REAL you?"

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

That's horrible. I'm really glad I missed out.

[sovay]

Which was the one character? I can only remember three characters: Southern Guy, Quantum Leap Captain, and Vulcan Woman.

Lieutenant Malcolm Reed: British Guy. The gunnery officer played by Dominic Keating, a dark-haired, thin-faced, almost comically serious Englishman who keeps himself so tightly to himself that when his birthday comes around, the rest of the crew doesn't even know what kind of cake to dial up for him, because he spends so little time interacting with anything that doesn't go boom. He's not socially inept, he just really doesn't socialize. He's both expert and ingenious where weapons systems are concerned; he has the kind of focused dedication to his job that makes Puritans feel like slackers; and if he's a high-strung introvert, his rank provides its own stress release—he really enjoys blowing things up. Especially by comparison with the generally easygoing, all-American majority of the cast, he's intriguingly reticent and the show builds him up like a person with a secret. He's allergic to anything that pollinates, that's about the most anyone knows; he has some family somewhere back on Earth. Everyone's curious and no one gets close enough to find out. And because my primary friend group in college was mostly science fiction fans, we happened to tune in for the episode where his backstory comes off the wall, and it was . . . disappointing. It's the one where Reed gets stapled to the hull of the Enterprise by an alien mine while trying to disarm it and the captain has to go out after him and disarm the mine as directed by Reed while something else happens with attacking aliens; it's a classic dramatic situation where two characters are isolated, so all they can do is talk and the audience learns something about them thereby, but I took an instant dislike to it the moment I realizes Archer wasn't just keeping up the flow of conversation to reassure his trapped officer, he was using the exigencies of their situation to get as much information as he could out of an extremely private man while Reed was a captive audience. That is not an ethical use of their respective positions. After that it just didn't help that I was less than convinced by the big reveal: for starters, why does a man so paralytically terrified of drowning that he funks out of the Royal Naval College decide to defy generations of family tradition by joining Starfleet, where he could get suffocated or explosively decompressed? I got that we are meant to understand Reed's shyness and his perfectionism and his furious work ethic are all the result of his family's disappointment in him, but it seemed a little simplistic after the relative nuance of his initial characterization. I did not watch another episode.

(I don't know whether it was true, but at the time the episode aired there was a rumor that Reed's character had originally been conceived as queer, and if that was meant to be the secret he didn't want any of his shipmates to find out—remembering that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was still in effect in 2002—honestly, it might have turned into a Very Special Episode, but I'd still have found it a lot more interesting than the idea that a single phobia explains a person's entire interior life.)

(i.e., it wasn't just "You're going to die anyway, so why do you mind that we're taking your kidney" it was "What we're going to do to you will kill you, but you shouldn't mind, because you'd die pretty soon anyway, and wouldn't you like to die earlier to save this person who's the REAL you?"

Seriously, that's the plot of more than one dystopian novel.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I vaguely remember that episode being boring and disappointing. But now I'm feeling outraged, because it shows the same casual disregard for treating people as worthwhile beings:

Archer wasn't just keeping up the flow of conversation to reassure his trapped officer, he was using the exigencies of their situation to get as much information as he could out of an extremely private man while Reed was a captive audience. That is not an ethical use of their respective positions.

Exactly. It's like the show was written by folks with no moral compass at all, trying really hard to get this morals/ethics thing right.

[sovay]

It's like the show was written by folks with no moral compass at all, trying really hard to get this morals/ethics thing right.

What an interesting way to look at it. What is this strange Earth custom you call "not being terrible to other people"?