On the first day of this month, a new movie rating system created by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) went into effect. Although the system is voluntary, filmgoers in the USA can expect to see a letter of the alphabet accompanying almost every movie.
This is very old news to those living in the United Kingdom, where a similar system has been in place since 1912. There have been some changes over the years, but currently the British ratings are:
U for Unrestricted (everybody admitted)
A for Adult content (children under 12 must be accompanied by adults)
X for Explicit content (no one under 16 admitted)
The new American system uses different letters, although they kept the scary X.
G for General audiences (everybody admitted, no advisory warnings)
M for Mature audiences (everybody admitted, but parental guidance is advised)
R for Restricted (persons under 16 not admitted without adult parent or guardian)
X for Explicit (no one under 16 admitted)
Gee, Magazines R Xciting!
In the spirit of the MPAA, let me experiment with offering my own similar ratings for the stories in the latest issue of Fantastic, in addition to the usual one-to-five star system of judging their quality.
Cover art by Johnny Bruck.
As with previous issues, the cover art for this one comes from the German magazine Perry Rhodan.
Hell Dance of the Giants, or something like that.
The fine print under the table of contents reveals that former editor Harry Harrison is now the associate editor, and former associate editor Barry N. Malzberg (maybe better known under the authorial pen name K. M. O'Donnell) is now the editor. I have no idea if this swapping of job titles really means anything.
As the cover states, this is a sequel to Hamilton's famous space opera novel The Star Kings, from 1949. (I believe there have been a couple of other yarns in the series, published in Amazing.) However, it's certainly not a short novel. By my reckoning, it's a novelette, not even a novella.
I haven't read The Star Kings (mea culpa!) so it took me a while to figure out what was going on. (The fact that several paragraphs near the start are printed in the wrong order doesn't help.)
Three guys escape from a planet in a starship stolen from aliens. One fellow is the main hero, a man of our own time who somehow wound up in a far future of galactic empires and such. Another is a man of that time. So is the third one, but apparently he used to be the Bad Guy in previous adventures. Now he's working with the two Good Guys for his own self interest.
It turns out there's an alien on the ship as well. It can control human minds, but only one at a time. The trio solves this problem by crashing into a planet.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
The place is inhabited by nasty winged reptile aliens, who are part of an army of various extraterrestrials being collected by a Bad Guy to invade a planet ruled by the woman our time-traveling hero loves. Can he find a way to save her? Can he trust his former enemy? And what about those pesky mind-controlling aliens? Tune in next time!
This slam-bang action yarn reads like a chapter torn out at random from a novel. Besides starting in medias res, it stops before reaching a final resolution.
Hamilton is an old hand at writing this kind of space opera (they don't call him The World Wrecker for nothing!) so it's very readable. The former Bad Guy is the most interesting character (and he seems a lot smarter than the two Good Guys.) Too bad the story doesn't stand very well on its own.
Three stars.
Rated G for Good old scientifiction.
Ball of the Centuries, by Henry Slesar
Here's a brief tale about a guy who uses a crystal ball to see into the future. He warns a couple about to get married not to go through with it. Of course, they don't listen to him. Years later, they have the argument he predicted. The husband tracks down the guy and finds out the real reason he warned them.
That sounds like a serious story, but it's really an extended joke, with a double punchline. It's OK, I suppose, but nothing special, and a very minor work from a prolific and award-winning writer of fantasy, mystery, television, and movies.
Two stars.
Rated M for Matrimonial woes.
The Mental Assassins, by Gregg Conrad
Cover art by H J. Blumenfeld.
From the pages of the May 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures, this story is the work of Rog Phillips under a pseudonym.
Illustration by Harold W. McCauley.
People who have been horribly maimed in accidents are kept alive and made to experience a shared dream world. The trouble begins when three of the twenty people develop evil alternate personalities. (As usual, the story thinks that schizophrenia literally means split personality.)
The physician in charge of the project asks the hero to enter the dream world and kill these doppelgängers. (This won't actually harm the real people, just eliminate their imaginary wicked doubles.) He gives it a try, but finds the experience so unpleasant he backs out of the deal.
The story then turns into a sort of hardboiled crime yarn, as the hero gets mixed up with a couple of mysterious women, a hulking bouncer, and two cab drivers who know more than they should. A wild back-and-forth chase ensues, partly on a spaceship, followed by a double twist ending.
You may be able to tell what's really happening as soon as the hero exits the dream world, but I don't think you'll guess the other plot twist, which is rather disturbing. This yarn reminds me of Philip K. Dick's games with reality, although it's not quite as adept.
Three stars.
Rated R for Really shocking ending.
The Disenchanted, by Wallace West and John Hillyard
Cover art by Vernon Kramer.
This fantasy farce comes from the January/February 1954 issue of the magazine.
Illustration by Sanford Kossin.
The ghost of Madame de Pompadour shows up at the apartment of a publisher. Present also is the author of a novel about the famed mistress of King Louis XV. The ghost objects to what the writer said about her in the book, and demands that it not be printed. When the publisher refuses, she has her ghostly buddies uninvent things, leading to chaos.
Strictly aiming for laughs, this featherweight tale ends suddenly. As a matter of fact, because the usual words THE END don't appear on the last page, I have a sneaking suspicion part of the story is missing. [Nope. It's that way in the original, too! (ed.)] Be that as it may, it provides a small amount of mildly bawdy amusement.
Two stars.
Rated R for Risqué content.
The Usurpers, by Geoff St. Reynard
Cover art by Raymon Naylor.
The January 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures is the source of this chiller by Robert W. Krepps, an American author hiding behind a very British pen name.
Illustration by Leo Summers.
The narrator is a one-armed veteran of the Second World War. An old comrade-in-arms shows up and tells him a bizarre story.
It seems the fellow recovered from a serious eye injury. When his vision was restored, he saw that about half the people around him were actually weird, horrifying monsters in human disguise. He reaches the conclusion that beings from another dimension are infiltrating our own, intent on displacing humanity.
Things go from bad to worse when some of the creatures realize the guy can perceive them. They try to kill him, while he destroys as many of them as he can, leading to the violent conclusion.
This shocker is most notable for the truly strange and creepy descriptions of the monsters, each one of which has a different form. As an ignorant American, I found it convincingly British, although somebody from the UK might disagree. Overall, a pretty effective horror story.
Three stars.
Rated R for Revolting creatures.
The Prophecy, by Bill Pronzini
Like Henry Slesar's piece, this is a miniscule bagatelle about a prediction. A prophet who is always right announces that the world will end at a certain time on a certain day. When the hour of doom arrives, the unexpected happens.
Even shorter than the other joke story, this tiny work depends entirely on its punch line. I can't say I was terribly impressed. I also wonder why the magazine printed two similar tales in the same issue.
Two stars.
Rated G for Goofy ending.
The Collectors, by Gordon Dewey
Cover art by Barye Phillips.
My research indicates that somebody named Peter Grainger is an uncredited co-author of this story from the June/July 1953 issue of Amazing Stories.
Illustration by Harry Rosenbaum.
A very methodical fellow, who keeps track of every penny, tries to figure out why a small amount of money disappears every day. He runs into a woman who experiences the same phenomenon. It seems to have something to do with a vending machine.
The editorial introduction dismissingly says this story is . . . no classic, to be sure, it isn't even a minor classic . . . which seems like an odd way to talk about something worth printing. I thought it was reasonably intriguing. In this case, the open ending seems appropriate.
Three stars.
Rated M for Mysterious conclusion.
Unrated
As I mentioned above, the MPAA rating system is voluntary. No doubt a few movies will be released without one of the four letters. In a similar way, the stuff in the magazine other than fiction isn't really appropriate for rating.
Editorial: The Magazines, The Way It Is, by A. L. Caramine
Brief discussion of the rise and fall of science fiction magazines, with an optimistic prediction that they're on the way up again. A note at the end states that A. L. Caramine is the pseudonym of a well-known science fiction author.
Digging through old magazines, the only reference I can find to A. L. Caramine is as the author of the story Weapon Master in the May 1959 issue of Science Fiction Stories.
Cover art by Ed Emshwiller.
A glance at the magazine tells me that, in addition to a story by Robert Silverberg under his own name, there are book reviews by the same fellow under his pseudonym Calvin M. Knox. Given the way that single authors often filled up magazines with multiple pen names, I suspect that the mysterious A. L. Caramine is Silverberg as well, although I don't have definite proof of this.
2001: A Space Odyssey, by Laurence Janifer
One page article that praises the film named in the title, and says that Planet of the Apes is lousy. Just one person's opinion, take it or leave it.
The Rhyme of the SF Ancient Author or Conventions and Recollections, by J. R. Pierce
Parody of the famous Coleridge poem mocked in the title. It says that science fiction writers shouldn't go chasing money by writing other kinds of stuff. Pretty much an in-joke, I guess.
Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber
Mostly notable for a glowing review of Picnic on Paradise by Joanna Russ. May be the best-written thing in the magazine!
Good? Mediocre? Rotten? Xcruciating?
All in all, this was a so-so issue. The two star stories weren't that bad, the three star stories weren't that good. Not a waste of time, but you might want to listen to the current smash hit Hey Jude by the Beatles instead.
David Frost introduces the Fab Four as they perform the song on his television program.
As a Captain, James T. Kirk has always been known more as a soldier than a diplomat. In the same way that Captain Kirk was forced to move past his initial, violent, problem-solving instincts in "Spectre of a Gun," here, yet another great and powerful alien species drops the crew of the Enterprise into direct contact with a combative, unreasonable opponent, making him take a "diplomatic tiger by the tail" that Captain Kirk must use every tool in his skill set to tame.
The setup is masterfully crafted from the very beginning by what appears to be a solitary alien made of pure energy that presents as a wheel of twinkling lights. Twinkling alien energy, who I will refer to from now on as TAE, is not invisible, but takes pains to silently hover just out of direct line of sight from every group of combatants it takes interest in. The Enterprise does not notice TAE on its first appearance when they beam down to an uninhabited planet, searching for what was supposed to be the ruins of a recently destroyed colony described in a distress signal. Chekov remarks, in confusion, that his readings indicate that there was no evidence of a colony nor an attack. Before the crew has time to process this information, Sulu chimes in over the communicator, warning him that a Klingon ship is approaching. Said ship immediately starts showing signs of distress, quickly becoming disabled by internal explosions to which the Enterprise made no contribution.
Commander Kang, the Klingon starship captain, makes no attempt to understand his situation; he beams down and decks Captain Kirk, yelling that since the federation has committed an act of war against the Klingons by killing 400 of his crew and disabling his ship, he is owed command of the Enterprise. TAE glows a menacing red color, apparently delighted with the increase in hostility. Thus the stage is set before the first credits roll of this episode.
The episode's opening salvo
Captain Kirk displays his newfound diplomatic skills, engaging in dialogue with someone whose assault just knocked him flat on his back. When Kang again demands that Kirk cede control of the Enterprise, our captain calmly replies, “go to the Devil.” Kang smoothly retorts “We have no Devil, Kirk, but we understand the habits of yours,“ whom he intends to emulate by torturing crewmen until Kirk hands over control of his ship.
Suddenly, a strange look comes over Chekov’s face and he jumps at the Klingon commander, practically volunteering to be first on the torture block, incoherently yelling about needing revenge for his brother, Pyotr, who had been killed on the colony they never found. In another clever manipulation, Captain Kirk gets Kang to agree to cease torturing Chekov by promising to beam the Klingons aboard the Enterprise, assuring him that there will be no tricks once they are on the ship. Of course, phrasing it like this left a loophole where he wouldn’t be lying if beaming the Klingons up was the trick—they are stuck in stasis until guards can round them up. Back on the Enterprise, Kirk quarantines the angry Klingon landing party with their distressed ship's remaining crewmen stranded.
A gaggle of steaming-mad Klingons
Before our heroes can figure out what’s going, the Enterprise crewmen start falling one by one under the same spell of violent madness that seized Chekov down on the colony site. Unlike with the Klingon crewmen, this wave of violence is very out of character for the Enterprise crew, and they turn on each other using racist, species-ist and otherwise highly offensive rhetoric against each other, the likes of which hasn’t been used on earth in centuries at this point. Chekov even goes on a slathering rampage where he outright defies Captain Kirk and goes to attack the Klingons to avenge his slain brother. This strangeness becomes particularly significant when Sulu declares that Chekov doesn’t even have a brother, as he's an only child.
Chekov disobeys a direct order.
Captain Kirk does the best job of fighting through the madness in order to refocus each crewman one by one towards finding out the root of the issue at hand. It is eventually surmised that TAE is on board, spurring the crewmen to fight and feeding off the negative emotions when its manipulations work and they get at each other’s throats. It is soon discovered that TAE is even more dangerous than originally feared, as it not only can influence the memories and emotions of its victims, but it also has the ability to warp reality itself, healing the scars of the wounded and turning nearly every object at everyone’s disposal into swords, deliberately making every weapon just inefficient enough to prolong conflict and minimize potential fatalities.
Bread and circuses, redux.
In typical Kirk fashion, the seriousness of TAE’s threat doesn’t fully hit him until a female is affected; Kang’s wife, his ship's Science Officer, gets separated from the rest of the group and is set-upon by a completely rabid Chekov. He rips her clothes, but thankfully is interrupted by Kirk and the bridge crew before he can go further. Kirk is justifiably horrified that TAE would be more than willing to push his crew towards that kind of violence. After incapacitating Chekov, Kirk entreats Kang’s wife to join him in uniting her husband and the rest of the Klingons against the real enemy; and it is with great difficulty that he does finally change Kang’s mind and get him to call the rest of the Klingons to a truce. In the end, it’s Kang’s words that finally eject TAE from the ship, as he taunts ”we need no urging to hate humans… only a fool fights in a burning house”
United in defiance.
While it is obvious to see that this episode is once again making a political commentary of our time, this one doesn't rub me the wrong way because the character foils have been fleshed out enough to be likable. Straw men have a tendency to be hollow and weak, but Kang and his wife Mara are anything but that. The Klingons may be violent and aggressive on their face, but they justify their actions with a strong moral backbone and end up proving themselves capable of being reasoned with. Michael Ansara's tremendous presence of voice and body does a phenomenal job of making Commander Kang a formidable yet worthy foe. No slouch herself, Mara shows that she is a leader in her own right, making Kirk work almost as hard to change her mind as her husband's, along the way making some very solid points about Klingon foreign policy. If anything, the Klingons are made to be anti-heroes rather than villains, and in constantly having to take their side against his own men, Kirk shows us the value of humanizing one's enemy, even when that enemy is not human at all.
5 stars.
by Janice L. Newman
When entertainment takes a stance on politics or morality, it’s often a recipe for a bad story. There are plenty of classic parables and fables, of course, but when popular television gets involved in such things sometimes the lesson feels shoehorned in or the plot feels warped around the ‘message’ the writer wanted to send. For example, The Omega Glory and A Private Little War were both attempts to make a point about current political situations, and both were subpar episodes.
“Day of the Dove”, on the other hand, does it right.
This is not a subtle story, yet it maintains a clever mystery plot and dramatic tension right up to the end. The denouement carries a powerful message that I found both shocking and welcome. Shocking, because I didn’t expect to see such blatant anti-war sentiments expressed on prime-time TV. [Janice doesn't watch the Smothers Bros. (ed)] Welcome, because I feel the same way.
There are plenty of intense moments throughout the episode, but the message can be summed up in a few lines of dialogue:
KIRK: All right. All right. In the heart. In the head. I won't stay dead. Next time I'll do the same to you. I'll kill you. And it goes on, the good old game of war, pawn against pawn! Stopping the bad guys. While somewhere, something sits back and laughs and starts it all over again.
MCCOY: Let's jump him.
SPOCK: Those who hate and fight must stop themselves, Doctor. Otherwise, it is not stopped.
MARA: Kang, I am your wife. I'm a Klingon. Would I lie for them? Listen to Kirk. He is telling the truth.
KIRK: Be a pawn, be a toy, be a good soldier that never questions orders.
(Kang looks at the weird light, then throws down his sword.)
KANG: Klingons kill for their own purposes.
There is so much conveyed within these few lines. In the context of the rest of the episode, they inspire all sorts of thoughts and questions:
“Question orders.” “Is it wrong to participate in unjust wars?” “Who is benefitting from our wars?” “Who stands to profit and has a vested interest in keeping a war going?” “Are the people with a vested interest also in authority? Do they have control over those in authority?” “Refuse to fight if a war is wrong.” “War may always be wrong.” “Total pacifism may be a possible path.” “If we do not stop hating and fighting, the hating and fighting will not stop.”
These are messages which, if spelled out clearly in almost any other kind of television show, would be unlikely to be allowed on the air. At a time when young men who choose to flee the country rather than accept being drafted are being convicted of treason, telling people to question orders and refuse to fight is risky. Yet the futuristic setting provided by science fiction makes it possible to convey these ideas without the hidebound network pulling the plug or insisting that it be changed. I’m just stunned that Gene Roddenberry let it through, especially after his reputed heavy influence on the script for A Private Little War. I’m not saying I want Star Trek to turn into a ‘message’ show, but I wouldn’t mind a few more episodes like this.
Five stars.
A Third Party
by Lorelei Marcus
As Janice put it, “Day of the Dove” is a ‘message episode’. It’s there to tell you something about life today under the guise of the possible future. Yet unlike my compatriots who saw a cautionary tale of ceaseless fighting in Vietnam and the larger Cold War behind it, I saw a different war entirely.
Star Trek has rarely shown racial tensions between humans and aliens of the Federation. When it is done, it’s for a very specific purpose, like Kirk aggravating Spock in This Side of Paradise. Even the Federation’s disdain for the Romulans and Klingons has less to do with xenophobia and more the fact that neither will agree to reasonable peace terms. Hence why the blatant hatred between not only human and Klingon, but also human and Vulcan, is so jarringly effective in this episode.
Star Trek is the ideal, bigotry-free future—Uhura and Sulu and even Chekov on the bridge are proof of that—but “Day of the Dove” is the closest it gets to reflecting the ugliness of racial tensions in our own world. Cloaked in the veneer of alien and human terms, I saw the hostility and lack of compromise inherent to the Democratic Convention this year, the hatred from man to man over superficial traits.
A scene from the Democratic convention—taken from the Nixon ad that aired during the episode.
Most of all, I saw small prejudices being stoked and inflamed by an outside force, turning anger boiling hot until it nearly exploded into bloody violence. I know that too well. Every step towards peace and equality we take gets slid back when another Wallace or Nixon comes along. Every injustice we commit against the Black man is another reason for him to take a rifle to the streets. Every school that fails to integrate is a generation of Whites who can’t see past the color of skin. And yet, that’s just how Wallace and his ilk want it. They benefit from it.
Wallace preaching hatred from the pulpit.
Perhaps that’s the scariest part: at least in the show, the alien seems to be fomenting hatred out of a need to feed, a necessity. Our politicians do it in the complete service of self-interest. And with the results of the election, tragically, we seem to be dancing right in the palms of their hands.
I often see shades of our world reflected in Star Trek, but never so viscerally. 4 stars.
Go to the Devil
by Joe Reid
“Day of the Dove” was this week’s episode of Star Trek. On first reading that title it evoked religious themes in my mind. I wondered if Star Trek was getting preachy again, the dove being the Christian representation of the Holy Spirit. Like in “Bread and Circuses” where the crew was jubilant that the people of the planet worshiped the son of God. When TV shows try to pass on spiritual virtues, they tend to do it in a ham-fisted way. “Day of the Dove”, although not perfect, does a decent job passing on two themes that I learned in my own religious training. One from the book of Ephesians, chapter 6, verse 12. The other from First Peter, chapter 5, verse 8. So permit me to put on my chaplain's robes as I explore the religious themes I saw in “Day of the Dove”.
Ephesians 6:12 says, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” The crew of the Enterprise and that of the Klingon ship were made to think that they were enemies. Expertly manipulated and set upon by another, with the intent to have them fight. The real enemy was the outside force. A powerful alien entity that understood the fears, thoughts, emotions, and technology of each side to create opportunities for conflict. This scripture I quoted explains that no flesh and blood human is your enemy; we are all victims of outside forces that use us against one another. As hard as it was for Kirk and Kang to see that they were being used, it is so much harder for all of us to see that we are literally killing ourselves when we raise arms to harm others. All that does is satisfy the real enemy, that of our very souls.
The second verse that came to mind in this episode, 1 Peter 5:8 says, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour”. At the start of the episode, Kirk told Kang to “Go to the devil!” when Kang slapped Kirk, accusing him of crimes, claiming the Enterprise. As they left that planet, we saw that Kang didn’t have to go to the devil, because a space devil went back to the ship with them. The alien, always near the action, remained just out of sight. It stalked the crew, looking for minds to twist to meet its ends. Kirk displayed powerful sobriety, breaking free from the influence of the alien. Although he could not see the alien, he was able to know of its presence and resist its influence. The message for us is that it takes sober vigilance to prevent wrong actions that may damage other’s lives. It was awareness of the enemy that helped Kirk stay disaster; it may be awareness that people are not the enemy that may help us.
Kirk prepares to preach to the choir.
This episode read like a sermon. One that encouraged brotherhood over bitterness. Which brings us to the close of the episode and yet another verse that came to my mind watching it. That was James 4:7. “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” This was the method Kirk and Kang used to get rid of the unwanted alien influence. They stopped giving it what it wanted, stopped seeing each other as the enemy and told their dancehall mirror ball devil to leave the ship. With both Kirk and Kang saying GO to their devil.
In conclusion, “Day of the Dove” was well acted. It had great costumes and good characterizations of all characters. Sadly, the dialogue at one point was filled with exposition, explaining to the audience what the alien was even though no one explained it to them, which I never love. It caused me to knock the score down a couple of points, but that is to be expected when TV shows—and reviewers—get preachy.
Three stars
Only in the movies
by Gideon Marcus
Despite being a show set in the far future of the 22nd Century, Star Trek has always employed themes from our current era. This has never been truer than in episodes involving the Klingons, the chief adversary of the Federation for which Kirk's Enterprise is employed.
In Errand of Mercy, we saw Commander Kor and Captain Kirk stand shoulder to shoulder, united in their defiance of the superpowerful Organians, who had the temerity to deprive them of their "right" to fight. The threat of the Organians to demolish both adversaries should they escalate their conflict to a general war, was very much a metaphor for the atomic bomb—specifically the newly minted concept of "Mutual Assured Destruction."
Thus, "The Trouble with Tribbles", "Friday's Child", and "A Private Little War"—the Klingons and Federation now fight proxy wars, engage in cloak and dagger exploits, and occasionally skirmish one-on-one. That last title was very much a product of last year, when it looked like we might "win" in Vietnam. Kirk asserted that the only way to prosecute the conflict on the planet of Neural was to arm the hill people so they remain at parity with the Klingon-aided townsfolks.
Contrast that to "Day of the Dove". Kirk and the Klingon commander (beautifully portrayed by "Mr. Barbara Eden", Michael Ansara) once more stand back to back, but they are resisting the urge to fight. It is a beautiful bit of synchronicity that LBJ the night before airdate announced a full bombing pause on Vietnam after three years of incessance. I watched the episode with tears in my eyes: for once, the hope matched the reality. Maybe we were going to stop the cycle of violence after all.
Would that it could always be this easy.
But Trek is science fiction, and we still live in the real world. Dick Nixon won the election this week, South Vietnam has retracted its willingness to participate in the Paris peace talks, and the beat goes on.
This is the second episode in a row (the first being "Spectre of the Gun") that has featured a new Kirk, a diplomat first and a soldier second. I like this new Kirk. I worry that he will run afoul of his superiors, increasingly conflicted, as John Drake was when working for MI6, ultimately becoming The Prisoner. But at least he's fighting for peace, a fight I can 100% get behind.
It's not a perfect episode, a little heavy-handed in parts, but boy did it resonate.
Four stars.
[Come join us tonight (November 8th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific. You won't want to miss it…]
It really looked like it was going to be a happy Halloween. On October 31st, President Johnson made the stunning announcement that he was stopping all bombing in Vietnam. This was in service to the Paris peace talks, which subsequently got a huge shot in the arm: not only were the Soviets on board with the negotiations, but the South Vietnamese indicated that, as long as they had a seat at the table, they were in, too.
The holiday lasted all of five days. In yesterday's paper, even as folks went to the polls to choose between Herbert Humphrey and Tricky Dixon (or, I suppose, Wacky Wallace), the news was that South Vietnam had pulled out. They didn't like that the Viet Cong, the Communists in Vietnam (as distinguished from the North Vietnamese government), were going to get a representative at the talks. So they're out.
It's not clear how this will affect the election. As of this morning, it was still not certain who had won . Nevertheless, it is clear that Humphrey's chances weren't helped by the derailing of LBJ's peace plans. If a Republican victory is announced, it may well be this turn of events led to the sea change.
Well, don't blame me. My support has always been for that "common, ordinary, simple savior of America's destiny," Mr. Pat Paulsen. After all, he upped his standards—now up yours.
Respite
Once again, a tumultuous scene provided the backdrop to my SFnal reading. Did the latest issue of Galaxy prove to be balm or bother? Read on and find out:
by John Pederson Jr. illustrating One Station of the Way
Evalyth, military director of a mission to a human planet reverted to savagery after the fall of the Empire, watches with horror as her husband is murdered, then butchered by one of the planet's inhabitants. Cannibalism, it turns out, is a way of life here; indeed, it is considered essential to the rite of puberty for males.
The martial Evalyth vows to have her revenge, tracking down the murderer, Mora, and taking him and his family back to their base, where they are subjected to fearsome scientific examinations. But can she go through with executing the killer of her husband? And does Mora's motivation make any difference?
There' s so much to like about this story, from the exploration of the agony of love lost, to the examination of relative morality, to the development of the universe first introduced (to me, anyway) in last year's A Tragedy of Errors. It doesn't hurt that it stars a woman, and women are integral parts of this future society, with none of the denigrating weasel words that preface the introduction of female characters in Anderson's Analog stories (could those be editorial insertions?)
This is Anderson at his best, without his archaicisms, multi-faceted, astronomically interesting, emotionally savvy.
Five stars.
One Station of the Way by Fritz Leiber
by Holly
Three humaniforms watch on cameloids as the star descends in the east. Sure enough, at a home in the east, a divine being prepares to impregnate a local female so that she will bear a divine child.
Heard this story before? There's a reason. But the planet of Finiswar is not Earth, the aliens are not remotely human, and the white and dark duo who pilot the spaceship Inseminator are anything but gods.
A little girl is told a bedtime story about a big computer that stopped doing its job right. That's because the machine couldn't think of casualties and war statistics as simple numbers, battle strategies as abstract puzzles. The problem is its personality; if the computer's mind could be reconciled with its function, the machine could work again. But can any mind be at peace with such a frightful purpose?
A simple piece like this depends mostly on the telling. Luckily, Goldin is up to the task. Four stars.
Subway to the Stars by Raymond F. Jones
by Jack Gaughan
Harry Whiteman is a brilliant engineer with a problem: he's too much of a "free spirit" to keep a job, or a wife. Desperate, when the CIA approaches him about a singular opportunity, he takes it, though the resents being bullied into it.
In deepest, darkest Africa, the Smith Company is working on…something. Ostensibly a mining concern, it produces no gems. On the other hand, whatever it is is important enough that the Soviets have based missiles in a neighboring country—pointed right at the company site!
Whiteman is hired, for his irreverence more than his ability, and begins work as a double-agent. Once on location, he finds the true purpose of the site: it's a switching station of an intergalactic railroad station! But it turns out that the folks at the Smith Company also have multiple agendas…
A mix of Cliff Simak's Here Gather the Stars (Way Station) and Poul Anderson's Door to Anywhere, it is not as successful as either of them. It takes too long to get started, and then it wraps up all too quickly. It's genuinely thrilling as Whiteman peels back the multiple layers of the Smith operation and the factions within it, and when the missiles do find their target, the resultant chaos is compelling, indeed. But then it turns into a quick, SFnal gimmick story better suited to Analog than Galaxy.
I think I would have rather seen Simak takes this one on as a sequel to his novel. Jones just wasn't quite up to it.
Three stars.
For Your Information: The Discovery of the Solar System by Willy Ley
As it turns out, the science article in this month's issue addresses two issues on which I've had keen recent interest. The first is on the subject of solar systems, and if they can be observed around other stars. Ley discusses how the gravity of an unseen companion can cause a telltale wiggle as the star travels through space, since the two objects orbit a common center of gravity (rather than one strictly going around the other).
In the other half of the article, Ley explains how atomic rocket engines work: shooting heated hydrogen out a nozzle as opposed to burning it and shooting out the resultant water out the back end—it is apparently twice as strong a thrust.
What keeps this article from five stars is both pieces are too brief. For the first half, I'd like to know about the stellar companions discovered through astrometry. He mention's Sirius' white dwarf companion, but what about the planets Van de Kamp claims to have discovered around Barnard's Star and so on? As for the atomic article, I'd like to know what missions a nuclear engine can be used for that a conventional rocket cannot.
Four stars.
A Life Postponed by John Wyndham
by Gray Morrow
Girl falls in love with cynical jerk of a boy. Boy decides there's nothing in the world worth sticking around for, so he gets himself put in suspended animation for a century. Girl follows him there. He's still a cynical jerk, but she doesn't care because she loves him. They live happily ever after.
I'm really not sure of the point of this story, nor how it got in this month's issue other than the cachet of the author's name.
Two stars.
Jinn by Joseph Green
It is the year 2050, and aged Professor Morrison, stymied in his attempts to make food from sawdust, is approached by a brilliant young grad student. Said student is brilliant for a reason: he is a Genetically Evolved Newman or "Jinn", with a big brain and bigger ideas. The student has solved Morrison's problem. However, another Jinn wants humanity to go to the stars, and he fears if the race gets a full belly, they'll lose interest.
The conflict turns violent, the point even larger: is there room for baseline homo sapiens in a world of homo superior?
Green doesn't paint a particularly plausible future, but there are some nice touches, and the points raised are interesting ones. I'd say it's a failure as a story but a success as a thought-exercise, if that makes sense.
So, a low three stars.
Spying Season by Mack Reynolds
by Roger Brand
We return, once again, to Reynolds' world of People's Capitalism. It is the late 20th Century, and the Cold War adversaries have reached a more or less peaceful coexistence. The greater challenge is existential: ultramation has taken away most jobs, and the majority of the populace is on the dole. How, then, to avoid stagnation for humanity?
In this installment, Paul Kosloff is an American of Balkan ancestry, one of the few in the United States of the Americas who still has a steady job, in this case, that of teacher. He is tapped by the CIA to go on sabbatical in the Balkan sector of Common-Europe. Ostensibly, his job is not to spy for the USAs, but to sort of soak in the culture of the area over a twelve-month span.
Very quickly, Kosloff finds himself entagled with an underground revolutionary group, with law enforcement, and with several fellows who enjoy sapping him on the back of the head.
Suffice it to say that all questions are answered by the end, the major ones being: why an innocuous pseudo-spy should be a target, why the CIA would send him on a seemingly pointless mission in the first place. In the meantime, you get a bit more history of this world and some tourist-eye view of Yugoslavia. In other words, your typical, middle-of-the-road Reynolds story.
Three stars.
Counting the votes
While not as stellar as last month's issue, the December 1968 Galaxy still offers a more satisfying experience than, well, most anything going on in "the real world". It clocks in at a respectable 3.45, which brings the annual average to 3.23.
Compare that to the 2.81 it scored last year, and given that Galaxy is once again a monthly, I think it's safe to say that, at least in one way, "Happy days are here again."
Star Trek continues to surf the New Wave in this week’s episode, Spectre of the Gun. While the plot incorporated many things we’ve seen before (both in and outside of Star Trek) it combined and presented these elements in new and innovative ways.
Just as America returned to space in a big way with this month's flight of Apollo 7, the Soviets have also recovered from their 1967 tragedy (Soyuz 1) with an impressive feat. Georgy Beregovoi, a rookie cosmonaut (ironically also the oldest man in space thus far, surpassing 45 year-old Wally Schirra by two years) has taken Soyuz 3 into orbit for a series of rendezvous and perhaps dockings (TASS is being vague on the issue) with the unmanned Soyuz 2.
Comrade Beregovoi in training
We've seen flights like this before, but this is the first time there has been a person involved. Many are calling this a harbinger of an impending lunar flight, though NASA is adamant that this particular flight won't go to the moon. Indeed, Dr. Ed Welsh, Secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council says Soyuz and September's Zond 5, which went around the moon, are completely different craft and the Russians aren't even close to fielding a lunar mission.
We'll have more on this flight in a few days. Stay tuned.
On the ground
Like the flights of Soyuz 2 and 3, this month's Analog is outwardly impressive, but once you dig in, it's not so great.
Centuries from now, after the fall of the Age of Science, humanity is divided into two camps: the "Olsaparns", who dwell in isolated technological camps and retain a semblance of the original technology and society, and the Novos—psionically adept savages who live in conservative Packs. One of the Pack members is Starn, who possesses a brand new ability that allows him to best even the telepathically and premonitionally blessed. He runs afoul of Nagister Nont, a highly adept, highly disagreeable trader, who kidnaps his wife.
After a raid on the Olsaparns leaves Starn close to death, the technologists remake him into something more machine than man, like Ted White's Android Avenger. The Olsaparns want Nont out of the picture, so they help Starn in his quest to defeat the mutant and get back his wife.
I have no fault with the writing, which is brisk and engaging. I take some issue with the pages of discussion on whether or not psi powers be linked with primitiveness, or the concept that humanity could regress to Pithecanthropy in a scant few generations (or the idea that evolution must be a road that one goes forward and backward on; I thought we gave up teleology last century). But I blazed through the novella in short order, so… four stars.
The Ultimate Danger, by W. Macfarlane
by Kelly Freas
In which Captain Lew Frizel takes a shipload of eggheads to a hallucinogenic planet. He is the only one who, more or less, keeps his head. The message appears to be that LSD can be employed by aliens to judge our character. Or something.
Three stars?
The Shots Felt 'Round the World, by Edward C. Walterscheid
This piece, on atomic tests, was much easier reading than Walterscheid's last article. Do you realize that we have detonated half a billion TNT tons worth of nuclear explosives since 1945? It's a wonder there's anything left of Nevada.
Four stars.
The Rites of Man, by John T. Phillifent
by Rudolph Palais
A scientist is working on rationalizing the art of interpersonal relations (because in Phillifent's universe, no one has invented sociology). About twenty pages into that effort, humanoid (really, human) aliens show up and ask to be allowed to compete in the Olympics. They do, but they lose on purpose so we won't hate them. Then we interbreed.
Possibly the dullest, most pointless story I've ever read in this magazine. One star.
Humanity is a resilient creature, tough enough to tame any world. Except that planet Sibylla, with its poisonous soil, extreme axial tilt, thin atmosphere, temperature extremes, high gravity, and violent weather may actually be more than Terrans can handle. What does one do when a world is too minimal to sustain a colony? And what is the value of 10,000 settler lives against the teeming, impoverished billions of Earth?
This is a vividly written piece with some excellent astronomy. If I didn't know better, I'd say Poul Anderson is writing under a pseudonym. I felt the solution to the colonists' problem, though reasonable, was not sufficiently set up to be deduced. Also, I felt Karageorge missed the opportunity to make a more profound statement at the end than "well, humanity can lick almost all comers." I'd have preferred something on the point of colonization or the shifting of priorities on a racial scale.
Still, a high three stars.
Split Personality, by Jack Wodhams
by Kelly Freas
Mauger, a homicidal brute, agrees to be split in two for science instead of getting the chair. Instead of this resulting in two new individuals, it turns out that the two halves remain connected, the gestalt whole. Thus, Maugam can literally be in two places at once.
This is timely as the first interstellar drive has had teething troubles. Two test ships have gotten lost, unable to communicate with Earth. Now, half of Maugam can fly on the ship while the other stays home and reports, since telepathy, for some reason, is instant.
It's actually not a bad story, though it's really just a bunch of magic and coincidence. It works because Wodhams has set it up to work a certain way, not because this is any kind of realistic scientific extrapolation. Also, it's hard to work up any sympathy for a homicidal brute.
Three stars.
Doing the math
When everything is crunched together, we end up with Analog clocking in at exactly 3 stars—again, adequate, but vaguely disappointing. On the other hand, it's been something of a banner month in SF (provided you're not looking for female writers; they wrote less than 7% of the new fiction pieces published). Except for IF (2.6), every other outlet scored higher than 3. To wit:
Star Trek is usually defined as an "action-adventure show" or maybe just a "science fiction program". While it is the first truly SFnal production on television (The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits had their moments, but for the most part, their science fiction was primitive), for its first two seasons, it tended to hew close to its '40s era Astounding Science Fiction roots.
With last week's episode, that all changed. The 1960s, and the experimental New Wave movement, has arrived on television.
Diana Muldaur returns to Trek as Dr. Miranda Jones, a human telepath who has never seen Earth, but who spent four years on Vulcan learning to master and tame her profound powers. She has been tapped to serve as ambassador to the Medusans, a race of inchoate aliens of sublime thoughts and profound navigational abilities, but whose appearance is so hideous as to render all humans who see them insane. Jones is accompanied by the Medusan ambassador to the Federation, Kollos, who spends most of his time in a box for the safety of the crew.
Ambassador Kollos is brought to his quarters by Mr. Spock and Dr. Jones
Jones is a meaty role, much more interesting than when Muldaur played Dr. Ann Mulhall in "Return to Tomorrow", and Muldaur plays it perfectly. Her demeanor is largely arch and cool, as befits Vulcan stoicism, but there are flashes of the human, too: jealousy regarding her unique relationship with Kollos, which she feels is threatened by Spock, who can both look at Kollos and communicate with him; irritation at the parochial behavior of the Enterprise's senior officers, who can't believe she'd give up on men to live with a monster; resentment when things do not go her way.
"Gentlemen, surely we can patronize Dr. Jones a little more intensely. Perhaps if we tower over her!"
The fly in this episode's ointment is another kind of emotion: one-sided love. Accompanying Jones is Lawrence Marvick, an illustrious engineer who is ostensibly there to contemplate how a Medusan might integrate into the crew of a starship. His real aim, however, is to convince Jones to abandon her mission to stay with him. To attain this goal, he is willing to resort to murder. Unfortunately for him, when he confronts Kollos, phaser in hand, all the alien has to do is open his protective box. Marvick is violently repelled by Kollos' appearance and, insane, takes control of engineering just long enough to drive the Enterprise into the barrier that surrounds the galaxy. The ship becomes lost in the zone, and none of the crew can navigate the ship out.
Where 430 men (and women) have gone twice before.
But Kollos can. Spock, with his telepathic abilities and his Starfleet training, volunteers to fuse minds with the Medusan, resulting in an astonishing hybrid, which successfully navigates the ship out of the zone with no difficulty. I cannot adequately express how marvelous Nimoy is in this role, subtly uniting the sober Spock with the somewhat whimsical, profound Kollos in an absolutely unique performance.
Sp/ollos makes an excellent navigator. I'd love to see a Medusan/Vulcan gestalt in a future episode!
The crew is not out of the woods, however. Upon returning Kollos to his box, Spock inadvertently catches a glimpse of the Medusan and goes insane. Only Jones and her telepathic abilities can save him—but her pettiness causes her to hesitate. It is up to Kirk, frantic with worry for his friend (indeed, seemingly more worried than he was for his ship, for once) to convince the doctor to do her utmost. In the end, what convinces her is the thought that Kollos would never forgive her if she let Spock die.
Kirk gives Dr. Jones a tough talk. To his credit, he is immediately concerned he did it wrong. (For the most part, he does…but one arrow hits the mark.)
I must express how excellent Shatner's performance is in this episode, as well. Missing are his usual, scenery-chewing tics. I have to think that the superlative jobs the cast did in this outing must be somewhat attributed to director Ralph Senensky.
Indeed, all of the "staff officers" of the show, from the cinematographer to the score master to the costume designer, work to elevate the production of "Truth". There are unusual angles, edits, and lenses to convey the disjointedness of insanity and to give a fresh feeling to the show; the score is entirely new and very evocative (though the distinctive "fight" theme is used perhaps one time too many); Dr. Jones' dress, which turns out to be a sensor web, enabling the normally sightless doctor to navigate (an excellent twist tastefully revealed), is terrific.
To be sure, the episode is not completely unexplored territory. Ugliness not equaling evil was a significant message in "The Devil in the Dark", with the monstrous Horta being a gentle, desperate mother being. The Enterprise has visited the galactic barrier twice before, in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "By Any Other Name". Both Spock and the ship are put in danger, two occurrences which the show-runners have made almost de riguer as plot drivers.
Amok Spock—don't drop acid, kids.
But it's the way it's all done that's special. Beyond the first class work turned in by the cast and crew, the writer must be credited. The pacing is unusual for Trek, with the episode's four acts of unequal length adding to the dreamy sense of madness that suffuses the episode. There is no one crisis to be resolved, but a mounting series of crises all revolving around the Spock/Miranda/Kollos relationship. In the end, the episode is not about Spock surviving or the Enterprise crew getting home safely, but about an unique woman in an unique situation navigating the fusion of not two but three alien races.
It's a rich, beautiful thing. Jean Lisoette Aroeste is a new name to me. This may well be her very first screenplay, and it is her newness that brings such a fresh cast to the show. Just as IF has made it its mission to bring new writers into the literary SF genre, it appears that the mature show of Star Trek may be providing that same vehicle for SF screenwriters (particularly women—the upcoming script, "The Empath" is also by a TV novice, the friend of a fanzine-writing friend).
I can't wait to see how the show develops as a result. 5 stars.
You've come a long way, baby
by Janice L. Newman
Most of the time, Star Trek gets it right. Women are frequently shown in positions of power and authority, and are given the respect such positions deserve. But even in the future, they occasionally run afoul of the undercurrent of sexism omnipresent in our own society. The dismissive attitude about Lieutenant Palamas in Who Mourns for Adonais, for example, or the exasperation shown toward Commissioner Hedford in Metamorphosis (not to mention the lack of concern for her ultimate fate), jar uncomfortably against our hopes and visions of a world where women have true equality and are allowed to pursue their dreams without facing condemnation or condescension—regardless of whether their dream is to be an engineer, a mother, or both.
The silver lining is when the women turn the sexist expectations of the male crewmembers on their heads. The treatment of Dr. Miranda Jones by the senior officers of the Enterprise (excluding Spock) borders on insulting. Dr. McCoy questions her career choice, while Captain Kirk is convinced of his own ability to divert her attention to himself, and patronizingly explains to her what she really wants.
Some of the best moments of the episode are when Dr. Jones defies the men’s expectations. Consider this exchange:
Dr. McCoy: “How can one so beautiful condemn herself to look upon ugliness the rest of her life? Will we allow it, gentlemen?”
All the men at the table: Certainly not.
Dr. Jones: How can one so full of joy and the love of life as you, Doctor, condemn yourself to look upon disease and suffering for the rest of your life? Can we allow that, gentlemen?
Or this one:
Captain Kirk: You're young, attractive and human. Sooner or later, no matter how beautiful their minds are, you're going to yearn for someone who looks like yourself, someone who isn't ugly.
Miranda: Ugly. What is ugly? Who is to say whether Kollos is too ugly to bear or too beautiful to bear?
Miranda’s quick witted responses, turning the men’s words back on themselves, are enormously satisfying. Her resistance to Captain Kirk’s charms is equally delightful. As much as I dislike any portrayal of sexism in the future, Miranda’s counters made it worth it. They made me wonder about the author of the episode, who she(?) is and whether she encounters such comments in her own daily life. Were the words of Dr. Jones intended to give professional women everywhere a blueprint for how to deal with such difficult situations?
Four and a half stars.
The Ambassadors
by Joe Reid
An ambassador is one that represents their country to a host country. This week in Star Trek we got to see several ambassadors of several races…and of more than one variety.
From the onset of the episode, when we were introduced to Dr. Jones, her desirability as a woman was heavily stressed. Kirk paid Jones several compliments that would lead one to think that Kirk really had a strong interest in her. These were followed by McCoy, and even Spock, who later dressed in Vulcan formal attire with the intent of honoring Dr. Jones.
All the males in this episode seemed strongly drawn to Dr. Jones, even the poor lovesick fellow who lost his life pursuing her. What was also clear was that Doctor Jones had absolutely no interest in the attention of these men in the episode. She was essentially at war with those who wanted her (perhaps a necessary battle to win status as a woman). What piqued her interest was the possibility of building a stronger connection to ambassador Kollos through a mind melding.
Her desire for Kollos was so all-encompassing that when it was revealed that Spock would have an opportunity to meld with Kollos ahead of her, she screamed out in frustration. Her rejection of the attentions of all other men throughout the episode demonstrated her desire for Kollos.
In the end, her desires were requited. Kollos did indeed have some measure of desire for her as well. We saw this as when he joined with Spock, Kollos paid special attention to her, highlighting the fact that her future and his would be intertwined going forward on his world in their near future. Although this was complicated when he also paid special attention to Uhura, Jones was able to receive confirmation of Kollos’ feeling for her when she melded with Spock in order to save his life. That connection to Kollos through Spock was all that she needed to assuage her fears and insecurity about her future with Kollos.
This successful conclusion to the story had Spock himself playing as the ambassador from the heart of Kollos to the heart of Jones, thus ending the quiet war between men and the doctor.
Happy endings for everyone.
It was a fantastic story with solid acting, great costumes, and three-dimensional characterizations. More of this please!
The politics of race have been an actively displayed part of the Olympics as long as I can remember. Who can forget boxer Joe Louis defeating Max Schmelling at the 1936 Summer Games in Nazi Berlin? So it should come as no surprise that, at a time when the race crisis in America has reached a fever pitch, that there should be an expression of solidarity and protest at this year's quadrennial event in Mexico City.
The fellows with their hands "clenched in a fist, marching to the [Mexico City] War" (to paraphrase Ritchie Havens) are medal-winning sprinters Tommie Smith (Gold) and John Carlos (Bronze) who had just won the 200-meter finals. Peter Norman of Australia (Silver), while making no physical gesture, is wearing the same "Olympics Project for Human Rights" medal as his fellow winners.
Why did the winners present this display? I'll let Carlos speak for himself with his comments at a post-race, press conference:
We both want you to print what I say the way I say it or not at all. When we arrived, there were boos. We want to make it clear that white people seem to think black people are animals doing a job. We want people to understand that we are not animals or rats. We want you to tell Americans and all the world that if they do not care what black people do, they should not go to see black people perform.
If you think we are bad, the 1972 Olympic Games are going to be mighty rough because Africans are winning all the medals."
Carlos added, responding to press references to "Negro athletes" said,
I prefer to be called 'black'…If I do something bad, they won't say American, they say Negro.
Smith and Carlos, described by the Los Angeles Times as "Negro Militants", have been expelled from the Games by International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage. This is the height of hypocrisy—how many times have we heard "we don't mind if Negroes protest; we just get upset when they riot and burn things"? Yet, here we have two men, American sports heroes, who peacefully highlight the plight of the Afro-American in our fraught country, and they're the bad guys?
With anti-Brundage feelings piqued and the U.S. expected to win today in the 400 and 1,600 meter relay finals (with nary a white man on competing on the teams), it is quite possible further displays of solidarity will be presented during the playing of our National Anthem.
Right on, brothers.
Speculative Power
It is with this as backdrop that I finished this month's issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which also leads with a powerful image. Does it deliver as striking a message? Let's read on and see:
by Gray Morrow
Once There Was a Giant, by Keith Laumer
Ulrik Baird is an interstellar merchant carrying a cargo of ten flash frozen miners in need of medical attention. In the vicinity of the low-gravity planet Vangard, his drive goes out, sending him hurtling toward the planet. But the planet is quarantined, off limits to outsiders. Nevertheless, Baird has no choice—a landing will happen one way or another; if it's a hard landing, the miners won't survive. Grudgingly, interstellar traffic control grants him clearance and coordinates to touch down softly. The approach is too fast for safety, and so Baird ejects, parachuting down, his frigid charges ejected safely in a separate, parachuting pod.
All according to Baird's plan.
Under the name of Carl Patton, Baird meets up with the last surviving man on Vangard, a 12 foot behemoth with the nickname 'Johnny Thunder'. Together with his 7' mastiff, the giant insists on accompanying Patton to where the pod of miners landed somewhere in the frozen wastes.
Again, all according to plan.
The plan is, in fact, quite clever, and this story marks a rare return to form for Laumer, who has been phoning it in of late. This is a story Poul Anderson would have woven liberally with archaicisms and mawkish sentiment. Laumer plays it straight, sounding more like E.C. Tubb in his first (the good) Dumarest story.
What keeps the tale from excellence is its resolution. Ultimately, Laumer provides the Hollywood ending, where everyone's a winner (more or less). His moral is roughly the same as Dickson's in this month's Building off the Line: some men are Real Men to be envied. The story even has a riveting travel sequence that takes up much of the story. An interesting bit of synchronicity.
I think I like this one better than Dickson's, but I still would have prefered something more downbeat, more nuanced. Four stars.
The Devil in Exile, by Brian Cleeve
Brother, here we go again.
Old Nick and his right-hand demon, Belphagor, were thrown out of the underworld by unionized hellions. An attempt to get Jack O'Hara, formerly a common drunk, lately a crime boss, to cross the union lines to bring the Devil back to power backfired when O'Hara took charge of The Pit.
Now, down to their last pence, Lucifer and friend pose as upper crust Britishers and miraculously (is that the word?) become heads of the Ministry of Broadcasting. Their debaucherous fare quickly wins over not just the terrestrial airwaves, but also those in Hell, and the Prince of Lies is restored to his rightful throne. Finis.
This installation is as tiresome and would-be-but-not-actually funny as the other two. Good riddance.
Two stars.
by Gahan Wilson
Coins, by Leo P. Kelley
In the time of Afterit, decades after The Bomb poisoned the world with its radioactive seed, humans have given up making decisions. After all, that's what brought about the Apocalypse, isn't it? Men making decisions? Instead, life is reduced to a series of 50/50 chances, each determined by the flip of a common coin.
Vividly written, but the premise (and the story's ending) are better suited to the comics. Anyone remember Batman's nemesis Two-Face from the '40s?
Three stars.
A Score for Timothy, by Joseph Harris
Timothy Porterfield is one of the world's greatest mystery writers. When he passes away after a long career, this seems to be the end—after all, does not death write the final chapter? Perhaps not, with the help of a medium with a flair for automatic writing. Nevertheless, there is still one final twist to the tale of Timothy…
Well wrought, atmospheric, and you're never quite sure how it will turn out. I liked it. Four stars.
Investigating the Curiosity Drive, by Tom Herzog
Curiosity killed the cat, but could it not also kill the human? And if one's goal is to test to determine whether or not curiosity be the salient feature of any sentient being, isn't it vital that one pick a being who isn't wise to your test?
This is a silly story, ultimately building to a joke that isn't worth the trip. Two stars.
The Planetary Eccentric , by Isaac Asimov
The Good Doctor discusses the discovery of Pluto and how it simply can't be the "Planet X" Percival Lowell was looking for. He does not quite so far as to say that it's not a planet at all, however, as some have opined.
Good article. Four stars.
Young Girl at an Open Half-Door, by Fred Saberhagen
The Museum of Art is haunted, it seems. Every night, an elusive prowler sets off the alarms in two of rooms housing prize exhibits. When a troubleshooter is dispatched, he finds the intruder is on something of a salvage mission, rescuing the art as insurance against an impending disaster. More importantly, said troubleshooter finds love…
It's a well-told story, and the ending is suitably chilling, though I found the romantic elements a bit too rushed for plausibility. Four stars.
In this, the second shaggy dog story of Brigadier Ffelowes, we return to 1938 Sweden for a brush with gods that make the Aesir look like Johnny-Come-Latelies. It's sort of Lovecraftian and not as compelling as the first tale Ffelowes recounted, which took place in the Caribbean. Not bad; just sort of pedestrian.
Three stars.
Stepping down from the podium
You know, it's nice to be able to step away from the real world for a while. There are important things going on that one must keep tabs on, causes to support, but everyone needs a break. Thankfully, this month's F&SF, while it presents no absolute stand-outs, nevertheless presents no real clunkers, and it finishes at 3.4 stars—well above the 3-star line.
Star Trek is, first and foremost, a science fiction show. But science fiction is a special genre in that it need not be constrained by the same rules as other genres. A story that’s science fiction can also be a Western, a romance, a mystery…or a horror story, such as Wolf in the Fold and Catspaw attempted to be. On the first Friday in October, we gathered our friends in our backyard and watched on our portable 13" one of the scariest episodes of Star Trek I’ve seen yet.
Hot off the heels of Danger: Diabolik, producer Dino De Laurentis is at it again with another comic book adaptation, this time Jean-Claude Forest’s Barbarella. The French-Italian co-production is based on the sexy French comic book and directed by Roger Vadim (1956’s And God Created Woman). The movie’s title character is played by the none other than Vadim’s wife, the gorgeous Jane Fonda, who since her breakout role in 1965’s Cat Ballou, has been making name for herself in Hollywood, beyond just benefiting from her already famous last name.
[Make love, not war]
As the film’s heroine, a “5-star double-rated astronavigatrix”, she is contacted by Dianthus, the President of the Republic of Earth (French actor Claude Dauphin) at the beginning of the film, requesting that she set out in search of a supposedly young scientist by the name of Doctor Durand Durand, who reportedly vanished into “the uncharted regions of Tau Ceti” after creating a weapon known as the positronic ray. The device is so powerful that it threatens “to shatter the loving union of the universe”, which had “been pacified for centuries.” Barbarella is the president’s last hope to bring the doctor to justice and prevent possible bloodshed, because he has “no armies or police.” That said, she is armed with some weapons from the Museum of Conflict for “self-preservation” and urged to use all of her “incomparable talents” during her mission.
[Barbarella at the controls of her groovy spacecraft]
Shortly after beginning her journey, Barbarella gets caught in a magnetic storm, which results in her crashing her spaceship into Planet 16, located in the system of Tau Ceti. While stranded there, she meets 2 “marvelous little girls” who knock her out with a snowball, I kid you not. After taking her captive, they bring her to what she recognizes as Doctor Durand Durand’s wrecked spacecraft, but he is nowhere in sight. In fact, most of the inhabitants of the planet appear to be children. Barbarella threatens them with, “untie me or I’m going to call your parents!” Unfazed, the kids sic a pack of creepy dolls with razor-sharp teeth on her, leaving her with some abrasions and badly torn clothes. Luckily for Barbarella, a man draped in furs, known as Mark Hand the Catchman (Italian actor, Ugo Tognazzi), comes to her rescue. He and the authorities capture the children in nets.
[What nightmares are made of]
Afterwards, Mark Hand takes her back to his vehicle, which is basically a cabin on wheels with sails. There, he suggests she repay him for coming to her rescue by making love to him the old-fashioned way, something apparently that has not been done in centuries on Earth, because there is a newer and more civilized way to do the deed, involving individuals taking a pill and pressing the palms of their hands together. Ever the adventurous type, Barbarella agrees, forgetting all about her recent injuries. He fixes her spaceship, offers her some clothing and a tip on the doctor’s possible location, Sogo.
[Barbarella with Mark Hand after he saves her from the children and the dolls]
Barbarella tries to flee Planet 16, but shortly after takeoff, her spacecraft crashes yet again, this time near Sogo, in the Labyrinth of the City of Night on a planet called Lythion. There, she meets a blind angel named Pygar, played by John Phillip Law of 1967’s Death Rides a Horse and more recently Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik. He tells her he has lost “the will to fly.” Pygar introduces her to a wise old man named Professor Ping. Here, French mime Marcel Marceau plays Professor Ping, who offers to help her fix her spaceship so she does not get stuck in the Labyrinth, a very frightening place, filled with those exiled from Sogo, City of Night. While Professor Ping works on her spacecraft, Pygar defends Barbarella against the Great Tyrant of Sogo’s guards. Later, one thing leads to another and they sleep together. Almost immediately after their encounter, Pygar miraculously regains his will to fly. He flies her to Sogo, but things take a turn for the worse when the guards to the Great Tyrant, also known as the Black Queen (and little one-eyed wench), spot them.
[Barbarella and her "fine-feathered friend" on their way to Sogo]
Barbarella and Pygar are taken in by the Black Queen’s guards. Model, actress and rock music muse, Anita Pallenberg, stars as the Black Queen. The earthling and the angel find themselves in the Chamber of Ultimate Solution, where they have to choose between 3 different types of death. Just as Barbarella and Pygar are about to choose, they are stopped by concierge to the Great Tyrant, played by Irish actor Milo O’Shea. Pygar and Barbarella end up being separated.
[Her Majesty The Black Queen]
The Black Queen gives orders for Barbarella to be thrown into a giant cage filled with birds, who peck at her and tear her clothes, again. She falls down a secret escape chute, which leads Barbarella into another room, where she meets Dildano, head of the revolutionary forces, played by David Hemmings (of Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up). They get to know each other better. Afterwards, they devise a plan to capture the Black Queen while she is asleep in her Chamber of Dreams, so she can “divulge the whereabouts of Doctor Durand Durand.”
[Barbarella in the cage filled with "darling" birds]
I would imagine for the more sophisticated filmgoer, Barbarella’s plot and characters leave much to be desired. Barbarella hardly grows over the course of the film. In fact, no matter what happens to her, she maintains a certain level of naïveté through the entire picture. The same can be said for most of the characters in the film, who tend to be very one-dimensional and are often pretty silly.
[Speaking of silly characters, here are Stomoxys and Glossina with Barbarella after they kidnap her]
Turns out the movie posters sum up what Barbarella is all about with the line, “See Barbarella Do Her Thing!” When the movie’s protagonist is not taking up a tryst with someone new, she quite literally has killer dolls and birds tear what little clothing she does wear to shreds. Barbarella also seems to be irresistible to both men and women. And while it is nice to see a female protagonist, especially one that does not conform often outdated and puritanical views around sexuality, she is clearly some sort of male fantasy. One thing that does make her and the film more complicated is that she sure seems to find herself being tortured a lot.
[Her name isn't pretty pretty, it's Barbarella]
The movie’s opening sequence, involves the main character stripping in zero gravity, before even one word of dialogue is uttered. This alone should tell the viewer exactly what lies ahead. In addition, Barbarella does not bother putting on a stitch of clothing in order to speak to, of all people, the president. Another scene involves the concierge to the Great Tyrant putting Barbarella in his machine, which will cause her to “die of pleasure.” But it turns out that his machine is no match for Barbarella! What I am getting at is that part the film’s charm is that it is pure fluff. Entertaining fluff, sure, but fluff nevertheless.
[Barbarella in the Excessive Machine]
To top things off, Barbarella drives what else but a pink spaceship that has an interior decked out with iconic paintings on the walls, gaudy statues, and floor to ceiling orange shag carpeting. Even if Barbarella is guilty of being an absolute spectacle of style over substance, it does feature some incredibly creative costumes by Paco Rabanne, decent special effects and impressively psychedelic set design. Also, the movie’s theme song had me singing “Barbarella, Bar, Barbarella” for days after watching the film.
[Barbarella inside the Black Queens's psychedelic Chamber of Dreams]
Barbarella probably will not be nominated for any of the major awards anytime soon, but it is still a fun ride. More serious SF fans may want to steer clear of the movie, but I would recommend it to viewers with camp sensibilities. Three stars.
[Will Barbarella and Dildano be successful in carrying out their plan?]
Ice Station Zero: Ice Station Zebra
by Tonya R. Moore
Ice Station Zebra is a paltry film for which, apparently, little expense was spared. The production is elaborate. The special effects and visual details are impressive. The actors’ performances are mostly convincing. The plot of this film, however, leaves a great deal to be desired.
First, some background:
The story of the Russian satellite in Ice Station Zebra is loosely based on real-life technology and events. Discover 2 was an American satellite, a prototype of the optical reconnaissance Discoverer series, launched in early April 1959. It was cylindrical in shape and its film return vehicle, the capsule, was manufactured by General Electric.
Though it neither carried film nor conducted surveillance, Discover 2 was the first satellite equipped with a re-entry capsule and was the first to send a payload back to Earth. As depicted in the movie, mission control did lose track of the capsule when a timing error caused it to land in the vicinity of Spitsbergen, Norway instead of Hawaii. Attempts to recover the capsule were unsuccessful and some suspect it may currently be in the possession of the Soviet Union.
The standout star of the film for SF fans is probably Patrick McGoohan (David Jones in Ice Station Zebra), who is famously known for his role as John Drake in the British television series, Danger Man (Secret Agent in the U.S.) and more recently, The Prisoner. McGoohan is actually an Irish-American who was born in Queens, New York and spent his childhood years in Ireland. The actor is based in England where he has performed in several notable film and television roles over the past decade. Sadly, his performance is not enough to elevate the film beyond mediocrity…
In the first scene of Ice Station Zebra, men in uniform sit in a cramped room equipped with sophisticated machinery, looking very serious.
This is followed by footage of a small object separating from an inexplicably phallic Russian satellite orbiting the earth.
The focus shifts to the main character. Rock Hudson stars as Cdr. James Ferraday, Commander of USN nuclear submarine, USS Tigerfish.
While visiting a drinking bar, Ferraday gets a call on the establishment’s phone.
He promptly leaves to go to another bar. At the second bar, he goes upstairs to a private room where he meets Admiral Garvey.
The admiral gives him a sketchy summary of some potentially disastrous incident at Ice Station Zebra, located at or somewhere in the vicinity of the North Pole.
Garvey issues an urgent order sending Ferraday and his submarine crew on an investigative rescue mission to Ice Station Zebra. They are to escort a certain David Jones to Ice Station Zebra, a man whose background they do not know. It is made clear that David Jones has some super-secret agenda pertaining to Russian military intelligence. His true objective for going to Ice Station Zebra is not to be divulged to Ferraday or crew.
David Jones, a paranoid Englishman of Russian origin with a noticeable dependence on hard liquor, isaccompanied by a platoon of marines led by Lt. Jonathan Hansen. Later, the Russian defector (?) Boris Vaslov…
… and Capt. Leslie Anders–The Token Black Man (played by Cleveland Brown and activist Jim Brown), are airlifted by helicopter to board the USS Tigerfish.
After a brief display of the requisite male posturing, the mission goes underway. (eg. Hansen is disrespectful. Anders puts him in his place.)
Upon reaching the North Pole, the USS Tigerfish attempts to breach the surface ice. The first few attempts fail so Ferraday decides to fire a torpedo at the ice.
Disaster strikes when the torpedo shaft/channel (?) suddenly opens. A deluge of freezing Arctic seawater comes pouring in and the USS Tigerfish starts sinking fast. The panicked crew and guests work together to get the situation under control and somehow, the number of casualties are limited to one.
Signs of sabotage are confirmed. Despite the presence of a born-Russian with questionable motives, Jones immediately suspects the Token Black Man of being the culprit instead. His reasoning? Anders comes with impeccable credentials and that just can’t be believable.
The USS Tigerfish successfully breaches thinner ice and surfaces. Ferraday leads Jones, Anders, Vaslov, the marines and a team handpicked from his own crew across treacherous the ice-scape, leaving someone else in charge of the submarine and its operations.
Following a near-death mishap on the way…
… the contingent arrives at the partially burnt out remains of Ice Station Zebra.
They locate some survivors while Jones begins frantically searching for the very secret, very mysterious object. Vaslov joins the search. Ferraday reveals that he actually knows that Jones is searching for a certain 8mm (?) / video tape (?) with highly classified spy intel containing footage and the locations of all of the US nuclear bases.
Reports of incoming fighter airplanes from opposing armies ramp up the urgency of the mission.
The Token Black Man is framed for someone else’s (Vaslov) treasonous act and shot multiple times (by Jones), to death. Naturally.
Disgusted by the stereotypical inevitability of this outcome, I took this opportunity to take a long bathroom break, returning in time for…
A transmission/press release is broadcasted reporting the successful rescue of Ice Station Zebra’s survivors.
– and all’s well that ends well, apparently.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
A Shambling Mess: Night of the Living Dead
by Amber Dubin
I was so pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the first horror movie that I reviewed (Rosemary's Baby) that I thought I had been too quick to dismiss the horror genre entirely. Thus, with a freshly opened mind, I decided to celebrate the Halloween season with a bag of popcorn and a screening of what was promised to be another horror classic. I'll admit that the bar was maybe set too high, so I tried very hard to be kind in my assessment of The Night of The Living Dead. In this, I summarily failed. This film had many never-before-seen, innovative elements and a rather bold story-telling style, but I simply did not see it fit for a major motion picture screen. I could not help but feel like I was being led down a garden path with the promise of the type of character development and storyline that could support this decently to moderately talented cast, only to be jilted at the altar by the loosely shambled together pile of scene changes that make up this film.
Night of the Living Dead shambled into theaters October 1st, 1968
Night of the Living Dead does exactly this when it gets my hopes up in the opening scene. There is something to be said for tension built through hair-raising music played over shots of a lone Pontiac driving over rolling hills in a set of old-fashioned grainy black and white landscape shots. By the time we get to the first lines of the movie, I was already on edge in a subtle way that I was hoping would bode well for the types of thrills would continue throughout. This was my first disappointment, and just like the protracted winding trip that Pontiac took around turn after promising turn, this film alternately dilly dallied, rambled, and ultimately fell flat at a dead end.
The most grounded character in the movie
The opening lines of the movie are delivered by a couple of youngsters named Johnny and Barbra who are visiting the gravesite of their deceased father. They disrespectfully bicker over the obligation the whole time, carelessly switching the radio off right in the middle of an ominous "all points bulletin" and ignoring the slow approach of a shambling figure in the distance. Mocking his sister over her healthy fear of graveyards, Johnny practically tosses Barbra in front of the approaching stranger, only to instantly regret it when the man grabs her by the throat. Johnny comes to Barbra's defense but is overcome rather awkwardly by the man slowly wrestling him to the ground and smooshing the glasses off of his face. Barbra, ever the loyal sister, doesn't bother checking if Johnny is ok before running to the car by herself, losing her shoe and falling to the ground, because it's just not scary enough if the fleeing woman isn't both helpless and unlikeable.
Shoes have always been a woman's greatest weakness
She finds shelter in her locked car for a moment before the man manages to break the window with a brick. Suddenly, she realizes the key is in the ignition and she slowly rolls the Pontiac down the hill. Even though her path is unobstructed, she drives distractedly enough to veer off the road and ding her side mirror slightly on a tree. This mirror seems to be so vital to her escape, that she decides that it'd be safer to abandon the car entirely and run barefoot through the woods away from her attacker (utter genius, this one).
Mind you, the limping man in the graveyard had no special makeup on, so for all we know she just abandoned her brother to be assaulted by a partially disabled, demented, old man. Literally the only way I can assume the strange congregants outside are "living dead" people is because that's title of the movie.
Maybe he's just lost and looking to borrow a cup of sugar
I expected the film to fall into a "poor decision-making blonde flees from monster" formula at this point, but when Barbra seeks refuge in an abandoned house, this film abruptly loses the plot for me. Barbara's actions have made precious little sense up until now, but after entering this house, her cognitive abilities fall to absolute bits. The first illogical decision comes when she is startled by the corpse of the homeowner and decides to rush outside to take her chances with her pursuer, running directly into the headlights of an arriving car. She stands bathed in the blinding lights, confused and wincing as if bracing herself to be struck; instead a complete stranger emerges, grabs her up and rushes her back inside. Unlike I, who was shouting "who are you and where did you come from?" at the screen, Barbra offers no greeting or introduction to this stranger and immediately falls in line behind his frantic attempts to create safety and figure out what's going on.
Ben may cut a dashing profile, but it makes no sense why Barbra would trust him implicitly and make no attempt to ask or help him figure out what's going on
It is here that the stranger, whom we eventually come to know as Ben, takes the torch (sometimes literally) of the protagonist of the story. While Barbra dissolves into quiet hysteria, Ben violently dispatches several of the mindless congregants around the house, dragging their corpses to the lawn and setting them on fire to warn off the others. Once he's mostly boarded up the whole house by himself, Barbra launches into an awkward re-telling of everything we've seen her do in the film so far. Suddenly, she remembers she had a brother. She jumps up and throws herself at the newly sealed door, insisting "we must find Johnny now!" slapping Ben when he refuses. He immediately slaps her back, which normally would appall me, but here seems the only logical way to get the hysterical woman to stop throwing herself in front of monsters and cars.
Ben continues to secure the house, finding food and a weapon, hooking up a radio, and even bringing Barbra shoes as an apology for slapping her. When the radio crackles to life, we settle in with the now catatonic Barbra for our long-awaited first taste of an explanation of what on earth is going on in this world. We are offered the laughably pathetic explanation that the world is being seized by "an epidemic of homicide." We don't even get a chance to finish rolling our eyes at this when we are surprised by Barbra's scream as she witnesses people emerge from the basement.
Suddenly, basement people!
There's absolutely no logical explanation as to why four able-bodied people and a child would remain hidden in the cellar of a house with distressed survivors upstairs, only to emerge and be suddenly invested in those additional survivors coming back downstairs with them. Harry, the obnoxious, stubborn patriarch of the Cooper family, offers such a poor explanation for his motives that I wonder whether this scene had less of a script and more of a general direction to the actors to come up with their own dialog. The teenaged couple, Tom and Judy, are convinced by this awkward exchange to come up and help Ben, while Harry's wife and sick child remain downstairs. Here we are introduced to Helen Cooper, played by Marilyn Eastman, who is a strikingly beautiful, classy and sharp-witted woman. She's responsible for nearly every cogent argument in the film and is such a mismatch for her husband that we are left to wonder why such a talented actress is filling that role and not that of the protagonist.
The stakes are now raised by the fact that there are three women and a sick child to defend. This emboldens Ben to make a plan to escape that involves Ben and Tom getting to the gas pump and truck outside by the barn. It is here that a schism appears in the group, and Harry quietly makes it his mission to undermine Ben's authority for every decision Ben makes (in much the same way I expect he is accustomed to undermining all his wife's opinions).
Behind every bullheaded man, a long-suffering wife bonded to him by poor writing
In another jarring turn, the focus shifts once again to the teen couple, Tom and Judy. Judy begs Tom not to go outside with Ben. She offers little in the way of verbal persuasion, but the scene is suddenly charged with so much of a different type of tension that one wonders if their mutual attraction isn't based in real life. They're clearly not meant to make it out of this movie alive, but knowing this didn't soften the blow for me when their escape plan literally goes up in flames, and Judy's caught jacket condemns them to a particularly gruesome and fiery death.
A romance doomed to go down in flames
From here the rest of the film devolves into a fairly predictable series of disasters: Ben is forced to shoot an increasingly paranoid, maniacal and erratic Harry Cooper in self-defense, Barbara opens a door in order to be eaten by her now undead brother, and the survivors retreat to barricade the cellar. Karen, the little girl who's been lying prone and feverish suffering from an undead bite wound this whole time, suddenly springs to life as a crazed, cannibalistic creature. Her mother is just as shocked as the audience at this development, and she falls back, helplessly paralyzed in fear. To everyone's genuine horror, the child discards the bits of her father's flesh from her teeth as she advances on her mother, violently tearing her apart with a gardening spade.
Ben is set with the unenviable task of destroying the now undead nuclear family and he does so, huddling up next to the barricade afterwards and falling into a fitful sleep as the beleaguered lone survivor of this ordeal. The next day he emerges into the now silent and destroyed house. He is greeted with a swift bullet between the eyes from a sharp-shooting member of the crisis response team tasked with cleaning up the invasion of undead; thus rendering all the heroism and hard-fought survivalism of the entire film moot.
Karen picks up some unusual eating habits
Though I was disappointed in this film as a whole, there were several things I did enjoy about it. I found it added a layer of realism to have the story background delivered by inter-cut scenes of a TV broadcast filled with busy scientists and professors on Capitol Hill trying to say as little as possible to the microphones being shoved in their faces. I thought it was a creative, bold take to explain how their situation was caused when the "unburied dead" were exposed to radiation from a destroyed Venusian satellite. I even found it authentically frightening when the teen couple immolates themselves and Ben is left to fight through the darkness and the silently encroaching hoard with nothing but a chair leg torch, all the while having to listen to the unnerving gnashing and chewing sounds of the undead dining on the burnt flesh of the unfortunate couples' bodies.
Extra! Extra! No one Knows What's Going On!
While I recognize that the film is making an innovative attempt to enhance the drama with bold lighting choices, I see this attempt as a failure because the lighting is so severe that the audience is unable to see what's going on. A particularly disappointing example of this comes in the authentically scary moment where Karen is committing matricide, and she is darkened in such deep shadow that you can barely see her at all. I was also disappointed that the score was absolutely all over the place. The beginning crescendo of appropriate music only serves to make the rest of the sound in the film feel poorly balanced by proving that at least one member of the staff knows how to smoothly score at least one scene. Cymbals crash and trumpets blast when stationary objects are meant to surprise the viewers, cricket noises get played very loudly in a bizarre attempt to make the approach of the undead hoards eerie, and yet the sound suddenly dies when the situation takes an actual dire turn; In a genuinely scary moment when undead break the window open, they do so noiselessly and a grasping, attacking undead hand gets dismembered in frustrating silence.
What made me feel this film was not of high enough quality to be released in theaters was the unforgivably sloppy pacing and direction. The Barbra-centered, awkward, choppy scenes at the beginning felt padded for runtime, and yet we are rushed through a systematic slaughter of the entire cast at the end. The script of each scene varies in quality so wildly that there are tonal shifts fast enough to give me whiplash. I felt volleyed between at least one writer who understood how couples banter, and one that decided to put a group of actors in a room and suggest that they improvise. The end result makes the film feel like a loosely connected collection of scenes, rather than a cogent story that supports character development or enhances the performances of some of the cast's talented actors.
Ben, the tragic hero who couldn't defeat racism(?)
While I appreciated the idea that Ben's death at the end implies that his race makes him just as worthless to society as the monsters getting burned in the fields, it's a poorly executed and shoe-horned-in concept. If that was going to be the message in the end, the least that could have been done is that he be attacked or singled out based on his race; but even Harry's prejudice against him was not clearly race-related and could have purely stemmed from him being an overbearing, control-obsessed, vile man.
Next time I decide to watch a film with an open mind, I'll make sure to look out for brain eaters first.
This month on Doctor Who, we’re headed out of space and out of time and into a place rather more strange: the land of fiction. This is a bit of a weird one.
Let’s take a look at The Mind Robber, shall we?
This is supposed to be lava. Or Dulkis has oddly foamy volcanoes.
![[November 10, 1968] Ratings (December 1968 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/COVERREDUCED-672x372.jpg)
![[November 8, 1968] A Diplomatic Tiger by the Tail ("Day of the Dove")](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/681108title-672x372.jpg)
![[November 6, 1968] Who's the one? (December 1968 <i>Galaxy</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/681106cover-471x372.jpg)
![[October 31, 1968] How the Western was won (<i>Star Trek</i>: "Spectre of the Gun")](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/681031title-672x372.jpg)
![[October 28, 1968] Impressive at first glance… (November 1968 <i>Analog</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/681028cover-672x372.jpg)
![[October 24, 1968] The New Wave comes to TV (<i>Star Trek</i>: "Is There in Truth No Beauty?")](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/681024title-672x372.jpg)
![[October 20, 1968] Giants among Men (November 1968 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/681020cover-672x372.jpg)
![[October 18, 1968] Little monsters (<i>Star Trek</i>: "And the Children Shall Lead")](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/681018title-672x372.jpg)
![[October 16, 1968] Cinemascope: <i>Barbarella</i>, <i>Ice Station Zebra</i>, and <i>Night of the Living Dead</i>](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/681016movies-672x372.jpg)
