Ron Moore was wrong. He kept saying that the BSG finale wouldn't be what anyone was expecting, but my two main predictions came true. I won't bother with a detailed review (there are plenty of those to choose from) but here are a few random thoughts:
Earth: The Colonials wore suits and ties like us. They worshiped Greek gods. Well before "All Along The Watchtower" it was inevitable that their world and ours would be connected somehow, and since a major part of the show's premise was the quest for Earth, I always believed that the fleet would eventually land on Earth, and it would be revealed that all this happened thousands of years in the past and the Colonials are our ancestors.
Starbuck and the Head People: Ron Moore and co. were in a lose-lose situation with this one. No matter how they handled the mystery of what the resurrected Starbuck, Head Six, and Head Baltar ultimately were, there was no way to please everyone. From the many Internet comments I've read, I think people were upset that we didn't get some kind of Star Trek explanation, especially in Starbuck's case. The term "Star Trek explanation" refers to TNG-era Trek's propensity to reduce any seemingly unexplainable phenomonon to a quantifiable, not-at-all-mysterious thing, usually by way of dense, technobabble-heavy exposition. All in all, I'm not unsatisfied by the choices Ron and co. made here.
The Flashbacks: Watching the flasbacks during Daybreak's first hour, I assumed that they would pay off during the story's final two hours, that the character's actions in the flasback sequences would somehow inform their choices in the present day. Mostly, I was wrong. Except for the Baltar story, which set up his eventual choice to become a farmer like his father, the flashbacks just felt like a late addition. I mean, did we really need to see a drunken Adama vomiting in an alley? And yes, I understood that the pigeon in Lee's apartment was supposed to represent Starbuck, but that, too, seemed tacked on. In one of this interviews about the finale, Ron Moore revealed that it was originally concieved as a two-hour episode, but then the network gave them an extra hour fairly late in the game. More than anything else, the flashbacks look like an attempt to spend the extra hour they'd unexpectedly been given.
I haven't seen every episode of BSG, some of it is just too dark for my tastes. However, I think that Ron Moore and the writing staff did the best job anyone could have done in telling the story of Battlestar Galactica. To do four seasons of a science fiction TV series and never once fall back on genre conventions like time travel, evil twins, ray guns, bumpy-headed aliens, and cardboard characters is a feat that's never been accomplished. It's a testament to the good that can come when you scrap an old and tired way of doing things in favor of a fresh approach.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Retro Disney Blast
I'm on vacation this week, visiting my parents in the mountains. I was going through some family photos when I happened upon some pictures of our first trip to EPCOT in the fall of 1984. We spent the morning at the Magic Kingdom, then headed over to EPCOT. Much to my dismay, my parents marched right past all the marvelous Future World pavilions so my mom could go to Morocco and shop. While she was rooting through the gift shop in search of who-knows-what, my dad snapped this picture of my sister, my grandmother, and I:
![epcot84Morocco[1]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFgvo6n6z4gNjDNXSiOe5kRwDGC2eC4mzCzAzRGpkaR-DElwoAh14WNC5qluVVz3lt9y2g1_VFLnwiuctfH8YkdIP9lyVeKsGOU7EKGG3BGstooV9is3LvfhwCQbWLcq5V_YYUS6oylYdI/s1600-h/epcot84Morocco%5B1%5D%5B5%5D.jpg "epcot84Morocco[1]")
As you can see, I was not happy to be in Morocco. My poor grandmother was doing her best to put a happy face on the situation, but for a six-year-old there are few tortures worse than having to sit and be bored when there are exciting experiences around the corner, just waiting to be had. Fortunately, my mom soon finished in Morocco, and we headed off across the World Showcase, pausing to snap this picture:
We finally did make it to Future World, where we rode Journey Into Imagination, World of Motion, Horizons, Universe of Energy, and finally Spaceship Earth. At the end of the day, my parents took this picture of my sister and I outside Earth Station:
Sadly, it didn't occur to either of my parents to take more pictures of Future World's architectural wonders, but I suppose it never occurred to them that in years to come some of them might not be there anymore. Many people complained that EPCOT Center was too staid and "adult" to be appealing to little kids like the 1984 versions of my sister and I, but I can tell you that I was excited and inspired by what I saw that day. True, I was already prone to spend recess pretending to be Captain Kirk while other kids were pretending to be Autobots and Decepticons, so I'm not saying I was a typical six-year-old. Still, those few hours spent in Future World almost 25 years ago continue to affect me to this day. I'm not sure if Mission:Space, Test Track, or The Seas With Nemo and His Computer-Generated Friends are capable of working the same magic on today's kids.As an added bonus, here are some pictures from my very first trip to the Magic Kingdom in 1981:
The monorail on approach to the Magic Kingdom station. The monorail has always been one of my favorite things about Disney World, and it looks just as sleek and futuristic now as it did the year the first Space Shuttle launched.
Finally, here's a picture of my chance meeting with Mickey Mouse. This is before the Magic Kingdom had designated Character Greeting Areas, and the characters roamed the park. Of course, I understand why things have to be more structured now, but it's nice to remember a simpler time.
I'll be back next week with an honest look at the plusses and minuses of FastPass. Thanks for reading!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Making it up as you go
Sorry for the dearth of new entries lately, but sometimes that's the way it goes. Creativity does not, unfortunately, work on a schedule; the ability to write good stuff on a consistent schedule is what separates professional writers from amateur hacks like me.
The TV shows I grew up with stayed scruplously away from anything resembling a continuing narrative. If a character got married, or died, or had any kind of life-changing event that would seriously alter the show's status quo, it would always get reset-buttoned out of existence and things would proceed as though nothing had happened. As my generation matured, though, we began to demand more sophisticated fare, and thus we got shows like Babylon 5, Deep Space Nine, and later Lost, Heroes, and Battlestar Galactica, that made heavy use of character arcs and continuing storylines.
As Battlestar Galactica draws to a close, a lot of fans are complaining that Ron Moore and the writing staff are making things up as they go. This was a criticism that I remember hearing during Deep Space Nine's final season, and although I don't watch Lost, I've heard people making the same complaint about that show. Apparently, these fans believe that the show's creator should map out all of the story and character arcs in advance, before anything is filmed, and then stick to his original plan no matter what. That's hardly feasible. Although the idea behind a new TV show may be the brainchild of one person, once it's picked up and goes into regular production it gains a whole team of writers, each with their own ideas and opinions that will inevitably shape the show. Also, it's a lot easier to set up story points than it is to deliver the payoff.
Think back to one of the earliest examples of this that people my age remember: The Empire Strikes Back. Think of all the awesome pieces of setup in that movie: the revelation that Darth Vader is Luke's father, Yoda's cryptic reference to "the other", the inevitable attempt to rescue Han from Jabba The Hutt; all of it left us screaming for more. When it came time for all that stuff to be resolved, of course, we got Return of the Jedi, and a lot of people were disappointed to learn that "the other" was Leia and she was Luke's sister, to say nothing about the Ewoks or that most of the Luke-Vader-Emperor scenes consisted of the Emperor sitting and talking while Luke stood there and looked conflicted. And although we've spent the last twenty-odd years complaining about it, I've never seen anyone put forward any better ideas. There was just no way to satisfactorily pay off the story elements that Empire set up.
Which brings me to Battlestar Galactica. Throughout it's run, BSG has been setting up all kinds of interesting story points and promising to pay them off at a later time: the Cylons' plan, Roslin's visions, Starbuck's destiny, the quest for Earth, and the future role of Athena and Helo's daughter Hera. In Season Three, a new mystery was added: the identities of the Final Five Cylon models. The last few minutes of that season's finale are amazing: the mysterious power outage that affects every ship in the fleet simultaneously and is seemingly orchestrated by a higher power, the revelation of Tigh, Tory, Anders and the Chief as Cylons after they're drawn together by strains of "All Along The Watchtower", and of course the return of Starbuck, followed by the dramatic pull-back-out-of-the-galaxy-then-zoom-back-in-to-reveal-Earth shot which shows us that the Fleet is fairly close to Earth. Like The Empire Strikes Back, there was just no way to pay off all that stuff to everyone's satisfaction. Ron Moore and company tried, though, and now that we're two weeks away from the finale's first installment, people are complaining that the writers are making it up as they go along. I wonder, would the story be more palatable if Ron Moore made it all up in 2003 when he wrote the miniseries?
Everyone's entitled to their opinion, of course, and I've read some very thoughtful critiques of the last few episodes. For example, why did "Deadlock" give us scene after scene of Adama wordlessly watching the work crews fix up the Galactica with Cylon spackle, but relegate important information like the disposition of Galactica's mutineers (they're on the prison ship, BTW) to the Ron Moore podcast? Did anyone even watch the episode after they cut it together? And you can't tell me that the piano players' true identity in "Someone To Watch Over Me" was a surprise. Most of us guessed it before the opening credits. Still, when BSG is finally over, I firmly believe that, although we may gripe about how certain things were handled, no one will be able to offer up any substantially better ideas.
So sit back and enjoy the ride. Because whether it was all made up at the beginning, or just made up as we went along, in the end it's all made up anyway.
The TV shows I grew up with stayed scruplously away from anything resembling a continuing narrative. If a character got married, or died, or had any kind of life-changing event that would seriously alter the show's status quo, it would always get reset-buttoned out of existence and things would proceed as though nothing had happened. As my generation matured, though, we began to demand more sophisticated fare, and thus we got shows like Babylon 5, Deep Space Nine, and later Lost, Heroes, and Battlestar Galactica, that made heavy use of character arcs and continuing storylines.
As Battlestar Galactica draws to a close, a lot of fans are complaining that Ron Moore and the writing staff are making things up as they go. This was a criticism that I remember hearing during Deep Space Nine's final season, and although I don't watch Lost, I've heard people making the same complaint about that show. Apparently, these fans believe that the show's creator should map out all of the story and character arcs in advance, before anything is filmed, and then stick to his original plan no matter what. That's hardly feasible. Although the idea behind a new TV show may be the brainchild of one person, once it's picked up and goes into regular production it gains a whole team of writers, each with their own ideas and opinions that will inevitably shape the show. Also, it's a lot easier to set up story points than it is to deliver the payoff.
Think back to one of the earliest examples of this that people my age remember: The Empire Strikes Back. Think of all the awesome pieces of setup in that movie: the revelation that Darth Vader is Luke's father, Yoda's cryptic reference to "the other", the inevitable attempt to rescue Han from Jabba The Hutt; all of it left us screaming for more. When it came time for all that stuff to be resolved, of course, we got Return of the Jedi, and a lot of people were disappointed to learn that "the other" was Leia and she was Luke's sister, to say nothing about the Ewoks or that most of the Luke-Vader-Emperor scenes consisted of the Emperor sitting and talking while Luke stood there and looked conflicted. And although we've spent the last twenty-odd years complaining about it, I've never seen anyone put forward any better ideas. There was just no way to satisfactorily pay off the story elements that Empire set up.
Which brings me to Battlestar Galactica. Throughout it's run, BSG has been setting up all kinds of interesting story points and promising to pay them off at a later time: the Cylons' plan, Roslin's visions, Starbuck's destiny, the quest for Earth, and the future role of Athena and Helo's daughter Hera. In Season Three, a new mystery was added: the identities of the Final Five Cylon models. The last few minutes of that season's finale are amazing: the mysterious power outage that affects every ship in the fleet simultaneously and is seemingly orchestrated by a higher power, the revelation of Tigh, Tory, Anders and the Chief as Cylons after they're drawn together by strains of "All Along The Watchtower", and of course the return of Starbuck, followed by the dramatic pull-back-out-of-the-galaxy-then-zoom-back-in-to-reveal-Earth shot which shows us that the Fleet is fairly close to Earth. Like The Empire Strikes Back, there was just no way to pay off all that stuff to everyone's satisfaction. Ron Moore and company tried, though, and now that we're two weeks away from the finale's first installment, people are complaining that the writers are making it up as they go along. I wonder, would the story be more palatable if Ron Moore made it all up in 2003 when he wrote the miniseries?
Everyone's entitled to their opinion, of course, and I've read some very thoughtful critiques of the last few episodes. For example, why did "Deadlock" give us scene after scene of Adama wordlessly watching the work crews fix up the Galactica with Cylon spackle, but relegate important information like the disposition of Galactica's mutineers (they're on the prison ship, BTW) to the Ron Moore podcast? Did anyone even watch the episode after they cut it together? And you can't tell me that the piano players' true identity in "Someone To Watch Over Me" was a surprise. Most of us guessed it before the opening credits. Still, when BSG is finally over, I firmly believe that, although we may gripe about how certain things were handled, no one will be able to offer up any substantially better ideas.
So sit back and enjoy the ride. Because whether it was all made up at the beginning, or just made up as we went along, in the end it's all made up anyway.
Friday, February 6, 2009
How educational was EPCOT?
It's widely believed that the EPCOT Center of the 1980s and early 90s was a more educational place than the Epcot of today. But was it really? Let's compare the pavilions of EPCOT Center with today's lowercase Epcot and see. Of course, it should be noted that what follows is purely my own opinion.
Spaceship Earth: To be fair, I haven't had the chance to ride Spaceship Earth since the Siemens rehab. However, I've watched a little ride video, and I've listened to the entire audio track on Subsonic Radio a few times. In my opinion, the new ride has a lighter tone and is less scholarly than the communications-themed experience that preceded it. Is it actually less educational? It's a tough call. It seems to me, though, that the old ride contained more historical facts than the new one.
Universe of Energy: Among those of us who remember the first version of this pavilion, there's the widespread perception that Disney dumped the respectable, serious original show in favor of a lighthearted and airheaded Ellen Degeneres vehicle that's too busy dropping 1990s pop culture references to convey any information. So I went back and watched some videos of the original show so I could compare them. And honestly, they both convey pretty much the same information, although the original show goes into a lot more detail about oil exploration. Whether you prefer the scholarly and serious presentation of the original show, or the 1990s flavor of the current incarnation is a matter of personal preference.
Wonders of Life: This pavilion used to be an interesting EPCOT destination featuring shows and exhibits about health and the human body. Now it's an empty shell.
Horizons/Mission:Space: Anyone who reads this blog knows how I feel about Horizons. It was absolutely my favorite theme park attraction of all time. If I had the power of Q, I would rebuild Horizons, convert the second-floor VIP lounge into an apartment, and live there. Nevertheless, Mission:Space is more educational. Why? Well, even though it's nowhere near the triumph of Disney Imagineering that Horizons was, and in fact it makes people sick, it realistically demonstrates why not everyone is cut out to be an astronaut. Horizons was more fun. Mission:Space is more educational. I don't like it, but it's the truth.
World of Motion/Test Track: Although it is fondly remembered, no one would accuse World of Motion of historical accuracy. How many kids got off that ride believing that the wheel was introduced to mankind after an Egyptian Pharaoh picked the round model over square and triangular versions? To be fair, though, the post-show area had some educational value. Test Track has a narrower focus, simulating an automobile testing ground instead of telling the story of human transportation, but it does try to educate riders about the testing process that new car models are put through before they go to market. I wish it explained why GM's cars are so unreliable compared to Honda and Toyota if they really go through all these tests, but I guess that story doesn't have as much entertainment value as the testing process itself. Comparing the old and new rides is a bit of an apples-and-oranges proposition, but I'd have to give the nod to Test Track here.
Journey Into Imagination/Journey Into YOUR Imagination with Figment and Eric Idle: The Imagination pavilion was never meant to be educational in the slightest. It was simply supposed to be a fun, whimisical trip that reminded visitors of the potential of their own imaginations. I've written at length on this before, of course, but in brief the old ride was charming, the newest one is a sad joke, but neither had any educational value (unless you count the present-day post-show area that "educates" you about some of Kodak's more banal services.) The Captain EO movie might have been educational had it been retitled "People You Should Never Allow Near Your Children".
The Land: Although the boat ride portion of the pavilion has changed very little since the pavilion opened, the change from a live guide to a recorded narration track during the greenhouse sequence was an improvement, as everyone now gets the same information. The biggest change at The Land, of course, was the replacement of the Kitchen Kabaret/Food Rocks show with Soarin'. Although Soarin' is definitely the superior experience, it's one of the biggest examples of the "generic Disney-Park-ification" of EPCOT. Soarin' makes The Land one of EPCOT's most popular destinations, but the place was more educational without it.
The Living Seas/The Seas With Nemo and Friends: I've written about the Seas pavilion before. As I said then, my favorite version of the pavilion is WED's amazing original concept that United Technologies was too stingy to fund. The attraction that opened in 1986 was perfectly serviceable, however, and it did a good job educating us on the amazing variety of living things in our oceans. Unfortunately, people today aren't wowed as easily as they were in 1986, when the line to get into The Living Seas stretched almost to the monorail track. For better or for worse, Disney decided it was the ocean's fault. Since actual sea life wasn't sufficiently entertaining, the whole place got a Pixar makeover, complete with digital characters from Finding Nemo that seem to float inside the aquarium (which is still the world's second-largest man-made underwater environment.) I haven't had the chance to examine all the exhibits inside the refurbished Seabase, but from what I can tell the Seas pavilion isn't as much about turning guests' on to the wonders to be found beneath the ocean as it is about entertaining preschoolers.
CommuniCore/Innoventions: The old CommuniCore had more exhibits that tied into Future World pavilions, but it also had lots of cheesy gimmicks (anyone remember the Astuter Computer Revue?) Innoventions plays more like a sales pitch for different corporate sponsors, but such things have a long history at Disney. Still, Innoventions does convey actual information, even if it's not very entertaining. Overall, CommuniCore wins out. It had a teachers' resource center, and there was just more of it. CommuniCore took up two buildings; Innoventions only takes up one.
So, was the old EPCOT Center really more educational than today's Epcot? Yes, but not as much as you might think. The main difference was that it cared about educating visitors in a way that today's Epcot really doesn't.
Spaceship Earth: To be fair, I haven't had the chance to ride Spaceship Earth since the Siemens rehab. However, I've watched a little ride video, and I've listened to the entire audio track on Subsonic Radio a few times. In my opinion, the new ride has a lighter tone and is less scholarly than the communications-themed experience that preceded it. Is it actually less educational? It's a tough call. It seems to me, though, that the old ride contained more historical facts than the new one.
Universe of Energy: Among those of us who remember the first version of this pavilion, there's the widespread perception that Disney dumped the respectable, serious original show in favor of a lighthearted and airheaded Ellen Degeneres vehicle that's too busy dropping 1990s pop culture references to convey any information. So I went back and watched some videos of the original show so I could compare them. And honestly, they both convey pretty much the same information, although the original show goes into a lot more detail about oil exploration. Whether you prefer the scholarly and serious presentation of the original show, or the 1990s flavor of the current incarnation is a matter of personal preference.
Wonders of Life: This pavilion used to be an interesting EPCOT destination featuring shows and exhibits about health and the human body. Now it's an empty shell.
Horizons/Mission:Space: Anyone who reads this blog knows how I feel about Horizons. It was absolutely my favorite theme park attraction of all time. If I had the power of Q, I would rebuild Horizons, convert the second-floor VIP lounge into an apartment, and live there. Nevertheless, Mission:Space is more educational. Why? Well, even though it's nowhere near the triumph of Disney Imagineering that Horizons was, and in fact it makes people sick, it realistically demonstrates why not everyone is cut out to be an astronaut. Horizons was more fun. Mission:Space is more educational. I don't like it, but it's the truth.
World of Motion/Test Track: Although it is fondly remembered, no one would accuse World of Motion of historical accuracy. How many kids got off that ride believing that the wheel was introduced to mankind after an Egyptian Pharaoh picked the round model over square and triangular versions? To be fair, though, the post-show area had some educational value. Test Track has a narrower focus, simulating an automobile testing ground instead of telling the story of human transportation, but it does try to educate riders about the testing process that new car models are put through before they go to market. I wish it explained why GM's cars are so unreliable compared to Honda and Toyota if they really go through all these tests, but I guess that story doesn't have as much entertainment value as the testing process itself. Comparing the old and new rides is a bit of an apples-and-oranges proposition, but I'd have to give the nod to Test Track here.
Journey Into Imagination/Journey Into YOUR Imagination with Figment and Eric Idle: The Imagination pavilion was never meant to be educational in the slightest. It was simply supposed to be a fun, whimisical trip that reminded visitors of the potential of their own imaginations. I've written at length on this before, of course, but in brief the old ride was charming, the newest one is a sad joke, but neither had any educational value (unless you count the present-day post-show area that "educates" you about some of Kodak's more banal services.) The Captain EO movie might have been educational had it been retitled "People You Should Never Allow Near Your Children".
The Land: Although the boat ride portion of the pavilion has changed very little since the pavilion opened, the change from a live guide to a recorded narration track during the greenhouse sequence was an improvement, as everyone now gets the same information. The biggest change at The Land, of course, was the replacement of the Kitchen Kabaret/Food Rocks show with Soarin'. Although Soarin' is definitely the superior experience, it's one of the biggest examples of the "generic Disney-Park-ification" of EPCOT. Soarin' makes The Land one of EPCOT's most popular destinations, but the place was more educational without it.
The Living Seas/The Seas With Nemo and Friends: I've written about the Seas pavilion before. As I said then, my favorite version of the pavilion is WED's amazing original concept that United Technologies was too stingy to fund. The attraction that opened in 1986 was perfectly serviceable, however, and it did a good job educating us on the amazing variety of living things in our oceans. Unfortunately, people today aren't wowed as easily as they were in 1986, when the line to get into The Living Seas stretched almost to the monorail track. For better or for worse, Disney decided it was the ocean's fault. Since actual sea life wasn't sufficiently entertaining, the whole place got a Pixar makeover, complete with digital characters from Finding Nemo that seem to float inside the aquarium (which is still the world's second-largest man-made underwater environment.) I haven't had the chance to examine all the exhibits inside the refurbished Seabase, but from what I can tell the Seas pavilion isn't as much about turning guests' on to the wonders to be found beneath the ocean as it is about entertaining preschoolers.
CommuniCore/Innoventions: The old CommuniCore had more exhibits that tied into Future World pavilions, but it also had lots of cheesy gimmicks (anyone remember the Astuter Computer Revue?) Innoventions plays more like a sales pitch for different corporate sponsors, but such things have a long history at Disney. Still, Innoventions does convey actual information, even if it's not very entertaining. Overall, CommuniCore wins out. It had a teachers' resource center, and there was just more of it. CommuniCore took up two buildings; Innoventions only takes up one.
So, was the old EPCOT Center really more educational than today's Epcot? Yes, but not as much as you might think. The main difference was that it cared about educating visitors in a way that today's Epcot really doesn't.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Raising the Nautilus
Once a crown jewel of the Magic Kingdom, today 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea has been reduced to a trivia question: "Did you know that there used to be a submarine ride where the Hundred Acre Wood play area is now?" Although it was well-loved, the E-Ticket attraction always did have its problems. For one thing, it was a maintenance nightmare. If you've ever owned a swimming pool you know what a pain in the neck they are to maintain. Now imagine an 11 million-gallon swimming pool populated with mechanical sea creatures and brightly-painted set pieces, all of which are in a constant state of corrosion thanks to the heavily-chlorinated water. No wonder WDW management wanted to shut the ride down.
Of course, Magic Kingdom "guests" (Disney's word for paying customers) were angered by 20K's sudden closure. They even wrote letters to Disney's corporate headquarters, leading then-president of the Walt Disney Company Michael Ovitz to investigate whether the ride could be re-opened. (The entire amusing story can be found here) It wasn't, of course, and today the lagoon has been filled in and paved over. Those of us who remember 20K, though, will always miss it. And while it's safe to say that the ride will never be resurrected in its original form, could it perhaps be re-imagined for a 21st century audience? Personally, I believe that a 20,000 Leagues attraction would be the perfect fit for the stereoscopic 3D dark ride system that I proposed in an earlier post.
Imagine a queue area designed to look like Captain Nemo's cavernous lair on the island of Vulcania, where the Nautilus is berthed. As you move toward the boarding area, the path slopes gradually downward, and the atmosphere seems to grow more cavelike. In the boarding area (which I imagine to be similar to the Pirates of the Caribbean, but not as "open") , visitors would step down into the Nautilus, presumably via some handicapped-accessible method. The ship would seem to be partially submerged in an actual underground river. Once aboard, riders would be seated in front of a large circular viewport, initially shielded from view by an irislike screen, just like the film version of the ship. The ride vehicle would move out of the view of the people in the boarding area, and into a "backstage" area where there is no water. The ride, of course, would be viewed through the large circular viewport, which is actually a glasses-free stereoscopic 3D movie screen. Exactly how the ride vehicles should be configured, I don't know. Ideally, they'd resemble the Nautilus and seat around 4 people. Perhaps there could be a large Nautilus-like vehicle with three or four seperate compartments, each one seating 3-4 people. The core of the idea, though, is that you think you're going on a boat ride, when actually you're in a simulator. Of course, a ride like this would do a much better job of simulating a dive to the depths of the ocean than the old 20K ever could have. And with no water, except in the boarding/unloading area, you escape the maintenance issues of the old ride.
I caught 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea on Turner Classic Movies a while back, and I was impressed by how well it still holds up. If Disney is looking for a new franchise to replace Pirates of the Carribbean, why not a series of Captain Nemo movies? It has the potential for all the action and adventure that Pirates had. If Disney went that route, a new 20K ride would make a lot of sense. Where in the Magic Kingdom would it go? Adventureland would be the best thematic fit, but I really don't see where there's any free real estate there for a new building big enough to house a ride like this. Fantasyland has room, though. When you look at an aerial view of the Magic Kingdom, it strikes you just how little of the old 20K lagoon is taken up by the Winnie-The-Pooh play area. In fact, there's quite a bit of room between that and Mickey's Toontown Fair, more than enough for a building to house the new Vulcania.
What do you think? Would a new 20,000 Leagues attraction be a welcome addition to Disney World? And should 20K be given the franchise treatment? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
EDIT: I didn't realize when I originally wrote this that Disney has already greenlighted a new Captain Nemo film. If it proves to be as successful as Pirates, it would be hard to imagine Disney not trying to bring Nemo and the Nautilus back into the parks in some fashion.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Naturalistic Star Trek
Although I don't always agree with the way the characters behave, I'm a huge fan of Battlestar Galactica's "naturalistic" approach to science fiction. It was a conscious decision on Ron Moore's part to break from the genre's status quo of bumpy-headed aliens, endless reams of technobabble, stock characters, thespian histronics, and utter disregard for the laws of physics, a status quo represented primarily by Star Trek's many spinoffs.
What many people forget, though, is that when Star Trek began in the 1960s it was as much a departure from the science fiction status quo as Battlestar Galactica is today. Back then, filmed science fiction was seen as cartoony, unsophisticated kiddie fare. Showrunner Gene Roddenberry, along with artists like Matt Jefferies, set out to change that. When designing the Enterprise, Jefferies was instructed to stay away from rockets, fins, or anything that would date the design. The final design was, in many ways, rooted in realism. Jeffries reasoned that, since space is an inhospitable place, it didn't make sense for important machinery to be located on the outside of the hull, hence its smooth appearance. And since the "warp" engines that powered the ship had to be incredibly powerful, Jefferies placed them away from the main body of the ship so they could be jettisoned in case of emergency. On the bridge, workstations were designed with controls in a comfortable arc within reach of the operator's hands. The design of the Command Chair was even based on the captain's chair on new U.S. Navy vessels of the time. Although the prop and costume budget was extremely limited, the people who worked on Star Trek were careful to steer clear of a Flash Gordon design sensibility. The costumes and props looked functional and real for the time. Even Isaac Asimov was impressed by the attention the show paid to real science.
In later years, though, Star Trek became a victim of its own success. New starships, sets, and costumes were designed with an eye toward updating whatever had come immediately before, each iteration becoming farther removed from the realism that Matt Jefferies had worked for. Realism, in fact, was consistently abandoned in favor of whatever looked "cool". The technical details of Star Trek's technology were so endlessly expounded upon to the point that "Star Trek science" became its own separate thing. If there was a conflict between previously-established Star Trek technical dogma and actual science, writers were expected to adhere to the Trekkian technical dogma. With a new movie set to premiere in less than four months, I think now is a good time to look at how realism could be injected back into Star Trek. Most of these things involve the look and behavior of the technology, and the way that real scientific principles are utilized.
There is no sound in space: I know that sound in the vacuum of space is a convention of sci-fi TV and cinema that only 2001 had the gumption to ignore (although Nicholas Meyer said in the directors commentary for Star Trek VI that he wanted to) but it simply isn't realistic and it doesn't add that much to the experience. Especially egregious is when something explodes in space and the characters watching on a viewscreen actually hear the explosion. It's stupid, it insults the audience's intelligence, and it won't kill the box office returns if you leave it out. Really.
Objects in space should be bound by Newtonian physics: At some point, the folks in charge of Star Trek decided that viewers wanted to see Star Wars-style space battles, and perhaps they were correct. These days, though, it takes more than pretty CGI to impress an audience. We've seen it all. It's time for Star Trek to impress us with realistic depictions of how objects in space actually behave.
Weapons should function believably: I don't think Star Trek should mimic BSG and use guns that fire metal bullets, but the behavior of phasers and other energy weapons could stand a dose of realism. Virtually every time someone fires a phaser on Star Trek, we can see the energy beam leave the weapon and strike the target a second later. Phaser beams move so slowly that it's actually possible for people to dodge them, even at fairly short range. This is patently ridiculous. Have you ever used a laser pointer in a foggy or smoky environment? If so, when you pressed the button, could you actually see the laser beam shoot out of the end and hit the first thing in its path a few seconds later? Of course not, unless you're The Flash. Laser beams move at the speed of light. Logically, phasers and other Star Trek energy weapons should behave similarly. When Captain Kirk pulls the trigger on his phaser, there should be a brief flash of light, an accompanying sound effect, and the thing he's aiming at should be hit instantly. This would simplify things on the production side, as well. Phaser effects would be easier and (one assumes) cheaper. Also, FX artists wouldn't have to "draw" an oddly angled phaser beam in situations where the actor isn't aiming the phaser at exactly the right point.
Stop using the bridge viewscreen as a window: The very earliest sketches of the Enterpise bridge included a prominent, window-like viewscreen at the front of the room. Fairly early on, it was established that the viewer was not a window, but a large, high-resolution "TV screen" that was capable of displaying a wide variety of information. Except for a very few exceptions however, the main viewer is pretty much only used to show a forward view of space directly ahead of the ship, or as a videophone. That's like having a Blackberry but only using it to make telephone calls. The stupidity of the way the viewscreen is used became apparent to me when I played the 1997 Starfleet Academy video game on my PC. Most of the game's missions are space battles, and the game's AI was good enough that enemy ships didn't just sit directly in front of you and wait for you to shoot them. They were constantly moving, rendering the forward viewscreen almost completely useless. The crude-but-effective "radar" display was far more effective at giving you a picture of what was going on in space around your ship. On the "real" Enterprise, of course, the Captain doesn't have access to such a display. He's dependent on someone else to look at a sensor display and relay information to him. It seems to me that in a battle or some other critical situation, those are precious seconds that could mean life or death. I'm a big fan of BSG's DRADIS displays. They simply yet realistically give a three dimensional picture of objects in the space around the ship, and since there are large ones mounted in the center of CIC, Admiral Adama doesn't have to wait for Gaeta or an equivalent person to relay information to him before making a decision. We've seen Star Trek's viewscreens used this way before, most notably in the opening scene of Star Trek II, and in my opinion they should be used that way again. And speaking of sensors:
Place realistic limits on the sensors: Gene Roddenberry very wisely instructed his writers to never try to explain how the Enterprise sensors worked. Unfortunately, he never placed any kind of limits on their capabilities. Thus, sensors have generally been able to do whatever the writers want them to, and generally the writers have wanted them to give way too much information. The idea that our science officer can look at his magic sensor display and learn everything about a situation, down to the DNA of the aliens aboard an approaching ship, has robbed many a Star Trek epsiode of the mystery and danger of space exploration from which the franchise theoretically derives much of its appeal. The capabilities of the sensors should be extrapolated from things our science is capable of currently. Additionally, I think that the degree to which sensor data is useful should depend on the skill of the science officer who's interpreting it. Thus, Spock would be able to get more out of the sensors than Chekov, for example.
No more canned plots: The alien with godlike powers. The culture that's controlled by a computer. Evil twins, time travel, time-travelling evil twins, mind control, technobabble-driven plots and other tired cliches of the genre need to go away. Why? Because Star Trek has done them over and over. The stories were good the first few times, but they quickly devolved into tired repetitious dreck, especially in the post-Original Series era. It wasn't worth watching Voyager and Enterprise because we'd seen these stories before, and we already knew how they'd end.
It's especially important for Star Trek to stay away from any excessive unreality because of the inherent unreality in its core premise: that space is as densely populated as Queens, New York. Whereas BSG can totally eschew "planet of the week" stories, Star Trek cannot. Seeking out new life and new civilizations isn't too interesting, after all, if you never find any. I think the first season of the Original Series struck a good balance in this regard, especially the early epsiodes. Space was a big and lonely place. Most planets were barely liveable, even if you could breathe the air. Some of them had once harbored intelligent life, but it had died out centuries earlier. Every once in a while, the crew would encounter a new alien race, but it was a fairly rare occurrence.
I doubt very much that we'll ever see a Star Trek production that follows all these rules. After all, the viewscreen on J.J. Abrams' Enterprise bridge is actually a window. Still, there's lots of evidence that Abrams isn't afraid to break the Star Trek mold a little bit. Will the resulting Trek be believable, or so stupid it makes your head hurt? Come May 8, we'll find out.
What many people forget, though, is that when Star Trek began in the 1960s it was as much a departure from the science fiction status quo as Battlestar Galactica is today. Back then, filmed science fiction was seen as cartoony, unsophisticated kiddie fare. Showrunner Gene Roddenberry, along with artists like Matt Jefferies, set out to change that. When designing the Enterprise, Jefferies was instructed to stay away from rockets, fins, or anything that would date the design. The final design was, in many ways, rooted in realism. Jeffries reasoned that, since space is an inhospitable place, it didn't make sense for important machinery to be located on the outside of the hull, hence its smooth appearance. And since the "warp" engines that powered the ship had to be incredibly powerful, Jefferies placed them away from the main body of the ship so they could be jettisoned in case of emergency. On the bridge, workstations were designed with controls in a comfortable arc within reach of the operator's hands. The design of the Command Chair was even based on the captain's chair on new U.S. Navy vessels of the time. Although the prop and costume budget was extremely limited, the people who worked on Star Trek were careful to steer clear of a Flash Gordon design sensibility. The costumes and props looked functional and real for the time. Even Isaac Asimov was impressed by the attention the show paid to real science.
In later years, though, Star Trek became a victim of its own success. New starships, sets, and costumes were designed with an eye toward updating whatever had come immediately before, each iteration becoming farther removed from the realism that Matt Jefferies had worked for. Realism, in fact, was consistently abandoned in favor of whatever looked "cool". The technical details of Star Trek's technology were so endlessly expounded upon to the point that "Star Trek science" became its own separate thing. If there was a conflict between previously-established Star Trek technical dogma and actual science, writers were expected to adhere to the Trekkian technical dogma. With a new movie set to premiere in less than four months, I think now is a good time to look at how realism could be injected back into Star Trek. Most of these things involve the look and behavior of the technology, and the way that real scientific principles are utilized.
There is no sound in space: I know that sound in the vacuum of space is a convention of sci-fi TV and cinema that only 2001 had the gumption to ignore (although Nicholas Meyer said in the directors commentary for Star Trek VI that he wanted to) but it simply isn't realistic and it doesn't add that much to the experience. Especially egregious is when something explodes in space and the characters watching on a viewscreen actually hear the explosion. It's stupid, it insults the audience's intelligence, and it won't kill the box office returns if you leave it out. Really.
Objects in space should be bound by Newtonian physics: At some point, the folks in charge of Star Trek decided that viewers wanted to see Star Wars-style space battles, and perhaps they were correct. These days, though, it takes more than pretty CGI to impress an audience. We've seen it all. It's time for Star Trek to impress us with realistic depictions of how objects in space actually behave.
Weapons should function believably: I don't think Star Trek should mimic BSG and use guns that fire metal bullets, but the behavior of phasers and other energy weapons could stand a dose of realism. Virtually every time someone fires a phaser on Star Trek, we can see the energy beam leave the weapon and strike the target a second later. Phaser beams move so slowly that it's actually possible for people to dodge them, even at fairly short range. This is patently ridiculous. Have you ever used a laser pointer in a foggy or smoky environment? If so, when you pressed the button, could you actually see the laser beam shoot out of the end and hit the first thing in its path a few seconds later? Of course not, unless you're The Flash. Laser beams move at the speed of light. Logically, phasers and other Star Trek energy weapons should behave similarly. When Captain Kirk pulls the trigger on his phaser, there should be a brief flash of light, an accompanying sound effect, and the thing he's aiming at should be hit instantly. This would simplify things on the production side, as well. Phaser effects would be easier and (one assumes) cheaper. Also, FX artists wouldn't have to "draw" an oddly angled phaser beam in situations where the actor isn't aiming the phaser at exactly the right point.
Stop using the bridge viewscreen as a window: The very earliest sketches of the Enterpise bridge included a prominent, window-like viewscreen at the front of the room. Fairly early on, it was established that the viewer was not a window, but a large, high-resolution "TV screen" that was capable of displaying a wide variety of information. Except for a very few exceptions however, the main viewer is pretty much only used to show a forward view of space directly ahead of the ship, or as a videophone. That's like having a Blackberry but only using it to make telephone calls. The stupidity of the way the viewscreen is used became apparent to me when I played the 1997 Starfleet Academy video game on my PC. Most of the game's missions are space battles, and the game's AI was good enough that enemy ships didn't just sit directly in front of you and wait for you to shoot them. They were constantly moving, rendering the forward viewscreen almost completely useless. The crude-but-effective "radar" display was far more effective at giving you a picture of what was going on in space around your ship. On the "real" Enterprise, of course, the Captain doesn't have access to such a display. He's dependent on someone else to look at a sensor display and relay information to him. It seems to me that in a battle or some other critical situation, those are precious seconds that could mean life or death. I'm a big fan of BSG's DRADIS displays. They simply yet realistically give a three dimensional picture of objects in the space around the ship, and since there are large ones mounted in the center of CIC, Admiral Adama doesn't have to wait for Gaeta or an equivalent person to relay information to him before making a decision. We've seen Star Trek's viewscreens used this way before, most notably in the opening scene of Star Trek II, and in my opinion they should be used that way again. And speaking of sensors:
Place realistic limits on the sensors: Gene Roddenberry very wisely instructed his writers to never try to explain how the Enterprise sensors worked. Unfortunately, he never placed any kind of limits on their capabilities. Thus, sensors have generally been able to do whatever the writers want them to, and generally the writers have wanted them to give way too much information. The idea that our science officer can look at his magic sensor display and learn everything about a situation, down to the DNA of the aliens aboard an approaching ship, has robbed many a Star Trek epsiode of the mystery and danger of space exploration from which the franchise theoretically derives much of its appeal. The capabilities of the sensors should be extrapolated from things our science is capable of currently. Additionally, I think that the degree to which sensor data is useful should depend on the skill of the science officer who's interpreting it. Thus, Spock would be able to get more out of the sensors than Chekov, for example.
No more canned plots: The alien with godlike powers. The culture that's controlled by a computer. Evil twins, time travel, time-travelling evil twins, mind control, technobabble-driven plots and other tired cliches of the genre need to go away. Why? Because Star Trek has done them over and over. The stories were good the first few times, but they quickly devolved into tired repetitious dreck, especially in the post-Original Series era. It wasn't worth watching Voyager and Enterprise because we'd seen these stories before, and we already knew how they'd end.
It's especially important for Star Trek to stay away from any excessive unreality because of the inherent unreality in its core premise: that space is as densely populated as Queens, New York. Whereas BSG can totally eschew "planet of the week" stories, Star Trek cannot. Seeking out new life and new civilizations isn't too interesting, after all, if you never find any. I think the first season of the Original Series struck a good balance in this regard, especially the early epsiodes. Space was a big and lonely place. Most planets were barely liveable, even if you could breathe the air. Some of them had once harbored intelligent life, but it had died out centuries earlier. Every once in a while, the crew would encounter a new alien race, but it was a fairly rare occurrence.
I doubt very much that we'll ever see a Star Trek production that follows all these rules. After all, the viewscreen on J.J. Abrams' Enterprise bridge is actually a window. Still, there's lots of evidence that Abrams isn't afraid to break the Star Trek mold a little bit. Will the resulting Trek be believable, or so stupid it makes your head hurt? Come May 8, we'll find out.
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