The Bluff British Man

Let me tell you about a character archetype peculiar to British media: the bluff British man.

The bluff, beefy British man is typically in his forties, with some muscle and some bulk to him. He’s not a prizefighter, but he’s physically capable. He’s a family man (that’s very important), with a wife and kids, typically at least one son. He is not inclined to understanding. Let me put it another way: He rules his family by prestige. He is the provider, the breadwinner, and by God if he has to go out and work for his crust, he is going to get the respect he deserves from his family when he comes home at night. That’s not usually a problem with his wife, but it is usually a problem with his son. Instead of trying to understand his son, he generally tries to browbeat and bludgeon him (verbally speaking) into submission, which of course only makes the son angrier. He won’t hesitate to use, or at least threaten to use, his physical strength in cases like these.

The most important thing for the bluff British man is maintaining that status of domineering respect with his family, and by extension, with any group of people he might happen to find himself in. In addition to all of his above qualities, he’s also not very clever or smart. He often finds himself intellectually overmatched, and his primary response to such a situation is to try and overbear his way out of it. It must be noted, however, that he is also very protective of his family.
Ultimately, the bluff British man is a very self-centered and insecure person, who cannot allow his façade of outward authority to be tarnished. At any such tarnishing, he must strike back and prove his primacy. See the Doctor Who episode in Season 2, “The Idiot’s Lantern”, or J.K. Rowling’s Vernon Dursley for examples.

Now consider this character in the light of the man in “Midnight”, Biff Cane. (Even his name suggests physical force; ‘Biff’ used to be a common sound effect in cartoons and comic books.) He begins the ride with his wife, but with his rebellious son ensconced in the other seat. That’s okay, as long as he can socialize with the rest of the group and crack wise and make people laugh. As long as he’s telling the slightly self-deflating story, it’s okay. One could even see it as him taking control of his own image and saying, “Here, look, I can laugh at myself. That makes me even more solidified.”

When trouble starts, however, Biff is as scared as anyone else. But he has to cover that to protect his image, and also to protect his wife and son. So he puts up a blustery, bluff exterior, and advocates a hard-line stance against the creature in Skye, up to the point of throwing her out the airlock. This naturally puts him in conflict with the Doctor, and here’s where things get interesting. The Doctor wants to keep him in check, needs to keep him and everyone else in check in order to avoid violence. But because everyone’s scared, and because Biff’s anger is based on fear, there’s no way the Doctor is going to intellectually argue him out of this. Biff just remains set in his opinions, and keeps agitating for the death of the creature. The Doctor gets frustrated by this, and eventually tries to assert his (well-earned) primacy in the group, first by saying he’s clever, then by saying that to get to Skye, they’ll have to go through him first.

That’s a mistake. Immediately after the Doctor says “Because I’m clever!”, Biff takes it as demeaning to him. He assumes that the Doctor is trying to degrade him and assert his own status as the alpha male, which he essentially is, although for good reasons. And when the Doctor challenges him, asking if he would really, honestly throw another person out of the airlock, it’s not about Skye. Biff has written her off by this point anyway. It’s about, “Am I going to let this guy show me up? Am I going to let him tell me what to do?” and his answer is, “NO”. Thus begins a hard core of resentment and anger focused on the Doctor, which will not go away until the end of the episode.

He can’t allow the Doctor to be cleverer than he is. The Doctor is clearly more literate, as shown by the Christina Rosetti comment, more experienced and smarter than Biff can even hope to be. He can’t allow the Doctor to supplant him. And while those aren’t the only reasons why he eventually wants to throw the Doctor out the airlock, they are the big ones that explain why he’s so solidly behind it. He needs to prove himself in some way, and the last reservoir at his disposal is physical force.

The biggest takeaway, in terms of how you should view the Bluff British Man, is that he is scared out of his mind. He tends to be a very insecure individual. Vernon Dursley, Biff, the Idiot’s Lantern guy—all of them are terrified of the strange things entering their relatively ordered universe. Their only out, their only escape, is to get angry and assertive and hope to bluff their way through things by yelling at them. They are psychologically incapable of understanding either the situation they’re in or the other people in that situation, because they’re trapped so deeply inside their own heads. The thing is, approaching them from that direction only enrages them further, because they find it emasculating. Once you understand the Bluff British Man’s motivations—his fears and his desire to not appear weak in front of his family—his behavior suddenly becomes very understandable, even moving.

Doctor Who, Contd:

Some quick thoughts that I've had in a Word document for a few weeks now. I'll post a Top 10 Who episodes of the new series list, seasons 1-6, when I get around to it; however, failing that at present, here's just a few things. SPOILERS BEWARE.

-Steven Moffat really likes presenting his characters with two choices, both of which are ultimately false (See: "Amy's Choice", "The Almost People" (in the case of Jenny), and arguably "The Girl Who Waited"; Rory has to choose one or the other Amy, but it turns out the choice was made for him anyway.

-He's also run the scenario twice where the Doctor brings two opposing groups to the negotiating table, ready to talk peace, only to have an unexpected murder spoil everything and nearly provoke a war. ("The Hungry Earth"/"In Cold Blood", "The Rebel Flesh"/"The Almost People".)

-Moffat and Davies have each run a scenario with galactic policeman trying to capture an escaped intergalactic criminal, who are willing to sacrifice human life to capture that criminal (or are indifferent to it). ("Smith and Jones", "The Eleventh Hour")

-Turning ordinary objects/situations into something science-magical/frightening. ("Gridlock" and "The Idiot's Lantern", not to mention the TARDIS itself.)

Is the Doctor Really Ruining His Companions' Lives?

First of all, I'm finally, finally, FINALLY caught up on Doctor Who. I just watched my first-ever newly aired episode, "Closing Time", this weekend. Unfamiliar sensations!

Second of all, I've got some Doctor Who thoughts to post, and I shan't stop until they're all gone. Here's a sampler: I don't think the Doctor has any reason to feel guilty about screwing up the lives of his past Companions, which has been a major theme this season. 


Yes, bad things happened to the Companions in-episode or in-season, which is fine. But that's more than counterbalanced by the wonders the Doctor shows each of them when roaming across the universe. And honestly, I think almost all of them are better off for their time with the Doctor, so I don't see why he's whingeing about screwing up their lives. 


Look at the Companions we’ve seen so far: Rose, Mickey and Rose’s mum are happy, and Rose has her own Doctor, which is what she’s always wanted. Sure, they’re in an alternate universe and sure, Rose had to give up everything else in our universe to gain what she has, but she gained her dad back as well and it’s not like she ever seemed to particularly care about anything besides family. Martha’s having the time of her life, having been elevated from a lowly doctor’s assistant to Companion and then to UNIT VIP, before leaving them to run around blowing things up (in "The End of Time"). She’s married, in love and clearly happy, even if she’s not on the TARDIS. And Donna, while she’s suffered the greatest loss of any Companion, is also oblivious to it! For Donna, her life is exactly the same as it was pre-Doctor. She’s neutral.


Obviously we've yet to see what happens to Amy and Rory, but for now, I think it's safe to say that the Doctor shouldn't feel guilty about his past Companions.

Babylon 5: The Final Verdict

If you somehow missed the Babylon 5 rumpus that's been taking place around here for the past week, fear not: all the links can be found right exactly here. Last Friday, I did an overview of the show. Monday was the show's best characters, Tuesday was its worst, Wednesday was its best aspects and Thursday and Friday covered its worst aspects. Today, we wrap up the whole thing.

It occurred to me while I was writing the 'worst things' posts that I might be grading Babylon 5 on an unfair metric. Comparing B5 to the three best sci-fi shows of the 2000s--Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who and Firefly) inevitably puts it at a disadvantage, and there are all kinds of mitigating circumstances relating to why it stinks at times. Its first four seasons aired on a network (PTEN) that was relatively unknown and probably doomed from its inception, its budget was poor, it was in an era of TV sci-fi that didn't have all that many standout shows, and so on. The best sci-fi shows of the 2000s benefited from ample budgets, well-known networks and better actors than B5 could muster.

I'm not so sure that's an excuse, though. Less than two decades after its release, Babylon 5 looks extremely dated. The bad CGI, the heavily made-up cast contribute to it and the pre-HD cameras contribute to it, but there's a certain look to the footage, sets and in the directing that just stamps the show as old-fashioned. (The camera basically remains at shoulder height for the entire series.) It gained a large cult following and is remembered fondly by many sci-fi fans, but against sleeker, more modern shows it just doesn't measure up.

Ultimately, it's hard to pin the show's faults on J. Michael Straczynski or on extenuating circumstances. The actors are wooden, the directing is ordinary and the dialogue is poor: is that Straczynski's fault, or was it the fault of the era? It's hard to prove one way or the other. Ultimately, though, the only real criteria upon which I can evaluate Babylon 5 is how it looks to me, a fan of sci-fi that came of age in the 2000s.

Viewed purely on its own merits, then, Babylon 5 falls short in most ways. As I've been saying throughout this weeklong review, the show is consistently mediocre. Straczynski often likened his creation to a novel, but it's not an exciting one if that's the case. Bad writing, a lot of bad acting, bad casting, bad set design and stories that took forever to tell drag this show down, and good acting, some good universe-building and a pair of good seasons resuscitate it. I think some of the show's appeal originally lay in its serialization and consistent mediocrity: you could turn on the TV every week and know what you were getting. It wasn't going to be more than occasionally good, but it wasn't going to be horribly bad either, perhaps because there was so little at stake.

If you're a fan of the shows I mentioned at the start of this post, Babylon 5 is probably not for you. It's not remotely in their league. If your standards are lower or you're a fan of '90s sci-fi, then give it a try.

More Or Less Arbitrary Grading Scale
Acting: B-
Set Design: D
Character Development: A-
CGI: D-
Average Episode Quality Relative to Itself: C
Imagination: B
Writing: D+
Universe-Building: A-
Good Villains: C- (good in seasons 2 and 3, terrible in 4 and 5)
Good Heroes: D-
Good Characters Who Are Both: A
Series Ending: F
Arc Continuity: A
Character Continuity: D+

OVERALL SERIES GRADE: C-

The Worst Aspects of Babylon 5 (Part 2)

We're nearing the end of the Babylon 5 blitz. In case you missed the deluge of B5-related posts over the past week, here are some links: last Friday's overview of the show, Monday's rundown of the best characters, Tuesday's rundown of the worst characters, Wednesday's 'Best Aspects of B5' and Thursday's 'Worst of B5, Part 1'. Today I'll have Part 2 of the Worst Things, and then we'll wrap everything up on Saturday.

The Writing Stinks

I’ve been dancing around this for awhile, but I’ll just say it: The writing, done almost entirely by J. Michael Straczynski, is consistently bad. It is full of clichés, the dialogue isn’t clever (there’s a fascination with light bulb jokes that goes on for way too long), it’s fairly humorless and it doesn’t make you feel for the characters. The best thing you can say about the writing is that it gets the job done and tells you what you need to know in a given episode. The worst thing you can say is that’s all it does. The writing isn’t My Immortal-bad, but it’s serviceable at best. Compare it to Battlestar or Doctor Who or Firefly or even Star Trek and you’ll see what I mean. It’s a handicap to the actors rather than a help.

Consequence: Moral Superiority and Lousy Villains

I wrote the following halfway through Season 4:

“The thing that makes the current B5 conflict so uninteresting to watch is the absolute moral battle lines that have been drawn. Sheridan is what they call a paragon of virtue, a perfect ideal. He stands for Truth, Justice and the American Way, all in capital letters. ______'s side stands for nothing but fucking up other peoples’ shit. There’s no moral conflict because it’s been spelled out in the most explicit terms. Plus, there’s no documentation of what ______ does, how he does it or why. We don’t know how he got to be a police state-type of fellow, we’ve barely met him. We don’t know how he keeps everyone in line, other than through misinformation.

“There’s just such absolute ideological superiority from Sheridan, who sounds like a horse’s ass every time he draws upon it. There are very few moral choices or ambiguities to be found in B5.”

This is part of what I was saying about Sheridan, Zack Allan and Dr. Franklin in the Bad Characters post. They are so morally upright and the villain (in this case especially) is so poorly defined, it makes them unbelievable. There are very few moral conflicts on this show, and most of them feel manufactured (like the one near the end of Season 4 with the telepaths). The only convincing one comes at the end of Season 3, where Sheridan holds Morden against his will. For the rest, nothing. Sheridan and Co. are always right and the other guy is always wrong, period, end of line. This is especially true of the Season 4 villain, an evil cardboard cutout that we almost never see on-screen.

I’m Sorry… You Do What Now?

B5 relentlessly hammers home the theme that its characters are special people. There’s an entire Season 2 episode devoted to making sure that Sheridan and Delenn are the right people in the right place at the right time. But on the level of their jobs, they never seem to have much expertise. This is a minor quibble, but what does Garibaldi do exactly? He’s a good shot and he knows how to ask questions, but he doesn’t possess any skills specific to being a Security Chief. Dr. Franklin lets machines do all the work for him, is rarely seen in surgery and operates as a glorified diagnostician. Everything from mission-critical research to flying starfighters is handled by omnipresent computers.

picture unrelated.

The point here is that nobody really seems like an expert at their job, the way Chief Tyrol is an expert Viper repairman (Battlestar) or the way Wash is a special pilot (Firefly). They don’t have to say ‘I’m competent at my job’, we see them demonstrate their competence. In B5, nobody seems to be that skilled at any job. The emphasis is on having the right people and the right personalities, not their skills, which I find strange.

You Had A Problem? Since When?!

Here’s a fairly typical scenario:

Something traumatic happens to Garibaldi in Episode A. The episode ends, the threat is dealt with and Garibaldi goes back to work. Several episodes go by, during which Garibaldi seems unchanged. Then in episode H, Garibaldi has a nervous breakdown and goes “I’ve been haunted by the vision of my wife’s buttocks ever since Episode A!!”

Seconds before bursting into incoherent rage.

This happens ALL THE TIME. A character has a crisis, then seems totally fine, then tells us that they haven’t been fine all this time, even though they’ve been acting totally fine. I don’t know what to attribute it to, but it’s really lousy continuity between episodes. It feels like the show wants to have the emotional continuity of a Battlestar Galactica, but doesn’t really know how to go about it. This results in a lot of unintentional comedy, as characters have massive freakouts over something they were totally okay with just last episode.

In The Conversation:

-The music isn’t very good or very memorable, and it’s kind of used as a blunt instrument. You know exactly how you’re supposed to be feeling because the violins tell you it’s an emotional moment.

-Straczynski’s enormous plot arcs move maddeningly slowly, although this shouldn’t be unfamiliar for recovering Lost fans like myself.

-Because we rarely leave the station in the first two seasons, it’s hard to get a sense of the greater outside universe. This does change in seasons 3-5, as more of the characters venture outside, but it’s a little off-putting early on.

- B5 tells, it doesn’t show, particularly with regard to characters’ emotions. Straczynski doesn’t let the actors show you how the character is feeling, he writes in huge info-dumps where the character tells you exactly how he feels today.

Not Bad, Just Weird:

For some reason, whenever a character has a minor wardrobe change, it’s made into a big honking deal in the show itself. Sheridan’s beard, Delenn’s hair, the new B5 uniforms, Security uniforms, G’Kar’s eye color, etc. are all played up much more than you’d imagine them being. It’s not a bad thing, just a quirk.

The Ancient Threat Returning: Trend Study

I'm a big fantasy reader, and one of the biggest plot devices used in sci-fi and fantasy works or series is the concept of a "returning evil". I've seen it in scads of different places, and probably, so have you. Here's a generic description:

Long ago, in the Before-time, a great evil walked the Earth/roamed among the stars. This evil was eventually defeated/sealed away/stopped in some other fashion, and it stayed that way for thousands/millions of years. But now, the great evil is returning. Our ancestors were awesome; now it's just us. We have to find some way to defeat/destroy/re-seal-up the evil with what we've got right now.

This scenario crops up everywhere. It's in Lord of the Rings (Sauron), The Wheel of Time (The Dark One), Game of Thrones (TBD), Harry Potter (Voldemort), Doctor Who (several uses; mostly Daleks), Babylon 5 (The Shadows), the Abhorsen trilogy (Orannis) and various H.P. Lovecraft works (notably referring to Cthulhu), among many others.

As it turns out, since the hive-mind at TVTropes is considerably smarter and more on top of things than I am, they have a whole page about this, called "Sealed Evil in a Can", and give a bunch of other examples. So the best I can do is give my small opinion about why it works so well in these particular genres.


-It instantly creates a sense of menace. Sauron may have an army of orcs, but he doesn't really do anything (in books or movies) other than send the orcs to attack things and gaze menacingly out of the Palantir at Pippin. He's not really all that scary. But if we learn that he once nearly destroyed the world, when he had the Ring... now he's a bit frightening. Likewise the Daleks. In the new series, when we meet them, they could be just the alien bad guy of the week (albeit an astonishingly deadly one). What makes "Dalek" the best episode of Season 1 is their history, and the Doctor's instinctive dread for them. Having what sticks in my mind as a "once and future evil" gives the evil in question instant badass credentials.

-It establishes the heroes' weakness and gives the viewer a sense of risk. Usually, the people who did the defeating/sealing away of the Great Evil were much more powerful than the present day; similarly, the Evil was usually much stronger too. If we know that our modern-day heroes aren't as good as the ones back then, we're less likely to expect them to win just because they're the good guys. We know they'll be overmatched.

Holy hell, I just got trapped in TVTropes for a solid hour. Where was I going with this?

I don't know. Will edit later if it comes back. 

Sci-Fi Drinking Game(s) [IN PROGRESS]

Widely Applicable Rules (Mostly for TV Shows):

Drink every time an alien, or a human, delivers a stirring polemic on the potential of the human race.
 

Drink every time somebody distressedly points out the flaws that could lead humanity to destruction.
 

Take a big drink every time an alien species is created with a distinctively un-human trait for purposes of providing a contrast with humans (ex: an emotionless species, a hive mind, etc.) Take a shot of vodka if one of the characters ham-handedly points out the difference within the show. Finish the bottle if this leads to a stirring polemic.

Every time someone utters the phrase “We’ve never seen anything like it” or says that something is “off the charts” or “off the scale”. (If it's a major character instead of a throwaway character, drink twice.)

Whenever someone says, during a firefight, “[Hull integrity/shields/deflector screens] down [XX] percent!  The [shields, ship, station, hull, etc.] can’t take another hit like that or we’re done for!”

[Mostly for '90s sci-fi:] Drink every time we meet an alien species that is humanoid, has a face and hands, and basically is human except for a little makeup or horns or something. (Warning: Blackouts possible when playing this rule with Babylon 5 or Star Trek.)

I am not fucking around with this warning, man. (Screenshot: Babylon 5.)

Drink whenever an alien species magically has the lips, teeth and tongue to speak virtually flawless English. (Start a Waterfall if the aliens in question have an accent that's meant to convey the difference between Them and Us.)

Drink every time someone provides an alien-y explanation for some person, event or structure from Earth's history. Examples: ancient Egypt/the Pyramids (I'm looking at you, Stargate), the Tunguska meteorite, Jack the Ripper, etc.

Take a drink whenever basic physics are violated. You can play this the "forgiving" way, i.e. drinking whenever there's gravity in space, whenever laser weapons travel slower than light, misuse of black holes, when spaceships ignore kinetic energy and so forth... or, you can play the "unforgiving" version. In "unforgiving", drink for wormholes, FTL travel, transporter beams, time travel, artificial gravity, food replicators, tractor beams, telepathy and "Eject the warp core and shoot it into the black hole so that we may escape certain death!" sort of deals. (DO NOT play this game with the new Star Trek movie. YOU MAY DIE.)

(In fact, looking back at this list, almost all of these apply to the J.J. Abrams version of Star Trek. I wouldn't go there, but if you do, I'm not responsible for what happens.)

Optional rule: knock yourself out with a fifth of vodka whenever robots enslave, subjugate or wipe out humanity. 

Like I said in the title, the game is still in progress, so suggestions for new rules are welcome! (So are beta testers who are brave enough to try this with me. Show of hands!)

The Totally Possible Planet

Hey! So, science fiction and astronomy just collided, and I thought you might find this interesting.

Ummm... So. I've been watching episodes of Dr. Who from seasons 2 and 3 to get my fix, as it were, and I just went back to "The Impossible Planet". Still one of my favorites, but as it turns out, it would be perfectly possible for the planet to be there even without a Satan gravity-field holding it there. Stars orbit around black holes all the time, the way anything else orbits around anything, and they don't fall in for the same reason the Earth doesn't fall into the Sun just offhand. The planet presumably has way less of a mass than any self-respecting star would, but all that means is that it 'd have to be farther out from the black hole than a star would.

Now, the planet is probably closer than it ought to be and the Satan-field is what's keeping it in place, so it's still shocking, but in principle stuff can totally orbit around a black hole and not fall in. That's how we know about them in the first place; indeed, the only way we can observe them directly is by the actions of stuff moving around them. But apparently if you're not within the Schwartzchild radius (point of no return) you won't get sucked in. Black holes don't intrinsically have more gravity than other objects; a black hole with the mass of three suns has the same gravitational attraction as a regular star with that mass, which blew my mind. It's only when you're inside that radius that you're absolutely screwed and cannot escape.

Also, see the way the matter just pours over the edge of the black hole? As it turns out, matter and energy swirl into a black hole like water down a drain. But if you get sucked in, you won't have a chance in hell of surviving anyway. What fun!

Babylon 5: First Impressions

For a long time, I've kinda thought that besides the giant Star Trek franchise, the three great sci-fi TV shows are Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5. (I'll throw Stargate in there for kicks, but I just can't get past the ancient Egyptian aliens thing.) I'm in love with the second one and rather enamored of the first one, but up until now I'd never gotten around to Babylon. I recently got through the premiere movie and just now finished the first episode, and I'd like to give some early impressions. 

First Note in Four Days is about what now?

-First of all, the computer graphics are god-awful. They look like what you see nowadays in the behind-the-scenes of a Pixar film, before they've filled in the texture and details of faces and backgrounds, or possibly a N64 video game. The series started out in the early 1990s, so it's understandable, but the graphics are still really bad. You won't find anything like the beautiful wide-angle shots of Galactica and the rest of the fleet, or playing around with textures and lighting, here. 

However, I'm grading Babylon 5 on a massive curve because of what they're attempting to do. Even in just the pilot and the first episode, we see a space battle, fleets emerging out of hyperspace and immense shots of the Babylon 5 space station itself from quite a ways away. It may look awful by modern standards, but what they're trying to do is so far beyond the graphics they had at the time, it's hard not to admire it. 

-The writing has started out as pretty clunky, too. The first episode serves you three stories that are so different--a war between two rival species on Ragash III, space raiders around Babylon 5, friction between a telepath and a senior officer--that you know they're probably going to coalesce, and when they do it isn't much of a surprise. It's also fairly easy to predict what the characters are going to say. That said, it's still early on and it will undoubtedly get better as the writers get more comfortable.

-On the other hand, the high muckety-mucks are going out of their way to universe-build early. In the pilot, we were introduced to four alien empires that humanity maintains diplomatic relations with; in episode 1, we meet (briefly) a huge rogue's gallery of other species, and get personal tidbits about all of the show's main characters. Again, it's clunky; personal anecdotes are sort of dropped into the episode at random, but however forced it felt, by the end of the episode I felt like I knew the officers of Babylon 5 and a few of the alien diplomats a bit better. I also had a decent feel for the central government on Earth, which they drop in as well. It's a lot of information all at once, but it also signifies that the show won't have much dead time. Babylon 5's selling point is its complex plots, after all, and I'm rather excited to see what they come up with. 

-The political-legal-diplomatic climate looks like where the meat of the show will be, something that Battlestar and Star Trek dabble in and Doctor Who ignores entirely. There's apparently an interracial legal framework, within which Babylon 5 is neutral ground that is administered by representatives from all five major empires. The first episode reminds us, however, that just because every race has a diplomatic representative on board doesn't mean there's peace everywhere. We get an unprovoked attack on a Centauri farming colony by a Narn fleet in the first episode. It's definitely an unstable political climate, which I think will make it more fun to watch than simply trying to keep the peace. (The opening sequence's line "Babylon 5 is the galaxy's last, best hope for peace" keeps making me think of Gundam Wing, by the way. Even the announcers sound similar.)

So far, there has been a notable lack of giant space robots.

Overall, I think there's a lot of potential in Babylon 5. As it stands now, after watching the first two chunks of show, I don't like it terrrrrribly much on its own merits. They were decent episodes, but not on the level of a Battlestar or a Doctor Who or even a good Firefly episode. I like it for what I think the series has the capability to do. Let's see where this goes.