Nothing much going on here.
So I probably wouldn't have been posting much even without this, but I thought it was worth saying that the desktop computer I do my CGI stuff on went phuft at the start of the pandemic (~March) and I only repaired it a couple of months ago. The consequence of this (and arrangements so that I can do my day-job from home) is that I'm now mostly using my laptop, so not a lot of Blender stuff likely to happen in the immediate future.
I've doing some more actual real life pencil and paper drawing lately, though, so I might post some of that at some point.
Anyhow - thanks to everyone who has continued to visit/favourite/comment. It's always appreciated and I wanted to say so. I also wanted to plug the latest Kickstarter by Elizabeth Sandifer, who has written extensively on Doctor Who at http://www.eruditorumpress.com/. Her work is always fascinating, grappling with themes and weirdness that more run-of-the-mill histories rarely do. It's wildly far removed from rivet-counting about Dalek designs, but I can strongly recommend it to anyone seeking a more in-depth view on Who.
The next volume will cover Doctors 8, War and 9: the link is here, if you are so inclined: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2027287602/tardis-eruditorum-volume-8
A belated explanation and call to vote.
Normally I’d start something here with a spoiler warning. But today, it’s going to be a POLITICS warning. I am sorry, normal service/silence will resume momentarily.
I’ve been thinking for a while that I should probably post something to explain why there probably won’t be much Doctor Who stuff on my gallery for a while. I mean, besides my noted inability to finish any long term projects or series. That goes without sayings. So here goes.
Series 11 of Doctor Who sort of broke my heart.
When I first heard Jodi Whitacker had been cast, I felt immense relief. Thank goodness, I thought. After a year in which we say an openly gay black companion, a narrative about how regenerating into Missy was a step in the right direction for the Master and the Doctor punching a Victorian aristo on the nose for being racist, they hadn’t bottled it. The additional cast announcements did nothing to dim that feeling. We were finally going to have British Asian and older companions. The first episode rolled around and we found out Ryan was dyspraxic, something I honestly did not expect to see in a Doctor Who character. Great, I thought. This is actually going to be inclusive and take things in new directions. Jodi’s fantastic, we’re in Yorkshire, there’s actual genuine emotional heft to what’s going on – groovy.
Only, there’s a prominent character in that first episode who is clearly not in the trailers and . . .
Look, Grace is there to be wonderful and then die so that her partner and grandson can feel emotions for the rest of the season. Mr Chibnall fridges an older black lady in the first episode so that he can enact one of the most rote and trite emotional arcs in character fiction. We could have had Grace as a companion but instead she exists purely as set-up for what is, in essence, Graham’s story. The white male character’s arc is served by the death of a black woman. I should not have to spell out the problem with that in 2019.
But I was willing to give the new team a chance. After all, if I can stick up for Moffat despite his clangers, I can’t go throwing stones at the first fumble. I sat through a meandering second story that forgot Ryan’s dyspraxia. I gritted my teeth when the conclusion of Rosa implied naming asteroids after those who fought for civil rights was more significant than the challenges faced by those fighting for those rights today. I blanked entirely that the victim of the spiders was a lesbian, which brings us to two narratively dead gay women in Chibnall penned stories.
And then we got Kerblam!
I should be clear at this point that I don’t actually need Doctor Who to be terribly progressive in its politics. That’s not ever been what it’s for. This is a show that started out making pro-war arguments in a scenario steeped in a confused mix of anti-Nazi and pro-Aryan imagery. At its best, Doctor Who has been able to turn a delightful magic door plot-device to the very excellent end of giving the obvious nasties of the world a good drubbing. I don’t expect a rousing argument for socialism (although, you know, The Sun Makers) or a loudly revolutionary anti-war story (c.f. The War Games) every week. Just a a lot of poking space-Nazis in the eye, dashing around between genres and a base level of being against bullies and for ordinary people. If we get the occasional inadvertent outbreak of my kind of left-wing sentiment, I’m happy. If not, well, there’s always next week.
Kerblam is the story of how space-Amazon is not the real problem and if we just got everyone slaving away in the warehouses rather than the robots, everything will be a-OK. It is the story of how ‘systems aren’t the problem, it’s the people,’ even though it is quite literally the system that kills a complete innocent for no reason, mere minutes before the Doctor teams up with it to take down the evil activist janitor who wants to kill everyone with robots to solve an unemployment crisis. It is the story of how it’s so terribly nice to get things in the mail and doesn’t that really outweigh the human misery that is required to pack them?
It’s probably one of the better scripted and edited stories in Season 11. It’s also an incredibly noxious piece of television and no one involved in Doctor Who in 2018 should have allowed it to air without massive rewrites.
But – well, this is apparently what Doctor Who in 2018 looks like. The trappings of inclusivity without the substance. Ryan’s disability gets dropped as the plots demand. Yaz gets nothing to do. The emotional heft over the death of a black woman is shifted on to the white man. Every gay character is either bereaved or dead. Or King bloody James. No matter how charming the leads or fun the individual beats of any given story, diversity of casting does not outweigh the harm of a reactionary script.
I blame at Mr Chibnall for this, though I do not believe it is from malice. The problem with Kerblam! is one of seeking a twist (it’s not evil-corp what done it) without considering the implications of that twist. As show-runner and editor, Chibnall should have been aware of those implications and taken steps to at the very least ensure that the Doctor didn’t end up on the side of a murderous computer. But apparently his conception of the Doctor is someone who gives the appearance of being on the morally correct side without actually committing to the action necessary to make that effective. A Doctor who simply glares sternly at the obnoxious, violent bully but is never the one to actually act against them.
A Doctor who asks permission to fight Daleks.
There is one line in Resolution that sums up for me how thoroughly ignorant of the implications of the show he is putting out Chibnall really is. At one point, amidst all the body-snatching and what-have-you, the Doctor refers to the Dalek scout as ‘a refugee from the planet Skaro.’ And that phrasing honestly left me gobsmacked.
From day one, Daleks have been characterised as the malevolent other. They are alien nasties, lurking in the shadows and scheming extermination. In them are bound up lots of really unpleasant aspects of science fiction that presents the alien as dangerous. But they are also empire-builders and a stand-in for expansionist fascism. ‘Daleks conquer and destroy,’ to coin a phrase. They are pulp monsters to be sure, but with a cultural weight that means that a line such as ‘because it honestly believes they all need to die’ can have a heft that eclipses the fact it’s about a shouty tricycle.
At a time when migrants and refugees displaced by war are being scapegoated by the very people who benefit from those wars, and nationalist sentiment is distorting mainstream political discourse in far more overt fashion than usual, to associate ‘refugee’ with ‘Dalek’ is unforgivable. The Dalek in Resolution is an imperial scout, sent to seek out new territory to conquer. It isn’t on Earth seeking asylum or because it is fleeing persecution. It’s there to seize occupied land by military force. It is in no way a refugee and to call it one does nothing less than play into all the right-wing rhetoric about those who seek sanctuary in our countries. ‘Dangerous.’ ‘Invaders.’ ‘Here to take what is ours.’
You know this vile language, reader, equating the helpless with the criminal. The homeless with the monstrous. If you’ve lived in Britain for the past decade or so, you’ll have seen it deployed countless times for the benefit of one reactionary cause or the other. I hope that you can recognise it as the lie it is. I dare say if you do not, then there is little I can say to persuade you. Perhaps, like Mr Chibnall, you do not see any problem with words I’m talking about or the equivalence that is implied.
But words have meaning and trying to drain them of that has very dangerous implications for real people. A word is not just its dictionary definition. It is the role it plays in society, the things it represents, what it actually means. Take those things away, conflate the word with its opposite, render it empty – and well, you can eventually get away with anything.
My point is, Series 11 left me with a sour taste, especially given how much I was looking forward to it. There were bright spots, Demons of the Punjab especially, and I have great respect for any story that turns God into a talking frog puppet. But afterwards, I just couldn’t bring myself to work on anything Doctor Who related. I’m still struggling with the apathy and disappointment it left me with.
I am also currently staring in the face of an election where the choice is between an unelected prime minister who lies like breathing and couldn’t care less about the impact or meaning of his words and, well, not that. You’ll likely have read or heard stuff that says the election tomorrow will be the most important for a generation. Believe that. I can’t give justice to how much I detest the Conservatives for what they have done (over decades, even centuries) to the people around me and the country in which I live. We finally have a chance of kicking them out of the halls of power and we need to grasp that hard.
I could make a comparison here, between the ‘true’ nature of Daleks and the glaringly obvious cruelty of the Tories. It would be thematic and ease the jarring shift of me turning this into a VOTE message. But you know what? My gallery is full of Daleks because I think the design is brilliant and I like playing with it, and above all because it is safe for me to do that. Daleks aren’t real. Their hatred does not actually hurt people the way their real-world inspirations do.
The Conservative party is real and they despise us. You, me, everyone who isn’t rich and powerful. They think we are feckless, stupid, easily gulled, so dim that we’ll fall for a few paltry plasters on the gaping wounds they have spent the last ten years inflicting on us. They are scarier than any fiction because there isn’t a magic hero in a box who’s going to blow them all up. She’s trapped in scripts that don’t let her be what she could be.
So all that is standing in the Tories’ path, in both senses, is us.
If you are in Britain tomorrow and can do so, vote as if your life depended on it. Find whoever is most likely to beat or hold off any Tory candidate in your area if you have one (this guide is the clearest I’ve seen: https://anotherangrywoman.com/2019/12/08/tactical-voting-how-to-do-it-manually-because-all-the-media-advice-is-solid-crap/) and vote for them.
And if we’re lucky and I wake up on Friday to find the Tories are no longer calling the shots? Well, that might just be the kick I need to throw off the malaise and get on with that damn comic.
So there’s that small bit of bribery for you.
Looking back
AKA I'm fed up of looking at my scatterbrained thoughts on Rogue One. With apologies for many much better critique writers than myself and SPOILERS for last year's Doctor Who, Star Trek: Discovery and Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
I SAY AGAIN: SPOILERS AHEAD.
It's been a funny old year for the big sci-fi properties.
I must start of course with the casting of the new Doctor. It was nothing short of a tremendous relief to hear that Jodie Whittaker had been cast. Reading the public BBC short-list had left me horribly afraid of last-minute weaselling out from what should have been inevitable since Missy first sashayed on to the scene. Fortunately, I am instead greatly looking forward to seeing what happens next.
It's a real shame that Bill will not be continuing as a companion, that goes without saying. Pearl Mackie's performance was the highlight of 2017 Doctor Who, in spite of having the pivot for her character's development be the horribly mishandled 'monk' trilogy. That said, the window has been left open for her to return one day, gallivanting across space as a being of magic and water.
On the subject of returns, it was nice to see the Mondasian Cybermen back, although their faces could have been a touch more haunting. The more obvious-in-colour lips worked slightly against the design. That said, full marks for resurrecting a bit of the past with good reason: the finale story could not have worked half as well with another cyber-type. A nice reminder that the Cybermen can be beautifully horrifying when used correctly.
Unfortunately, when it came to the First Doctor's appearance in the Christmas Special, things were not so well executed. The sexism in 'classic' Doctor Who cannot – must not – be ignored, yet manifesting as a personal failing of one version of the Doctor is as revisionist as it is unfair. Condensing many manifestations of that sexism into a single string of comments actually serves to undermine their impact. The First Doctor is presented as saying things to Bill that were scripted to be said to teenagers – which Bill manifestly is not – thus creating a cartoonish image that obfuscates the more insidious aspects of the show's sexism. 'We aren't like this any more' is all very well and good as a message but to make it valid, you have to actually engage with what you were actually like.
And while it's a lesser issue, the reasons to love the early stories in spite of their flaws are also obscured. William Hartnel's performance was at its best when he was showing the Doctor's delight, giggling away to himself at some new absurdity. When he played the moralising sections of the inevitable monster-fighting, it was as righteous anger at injustice and cruelty. Both these aspects of his character were disappointingly absent from Twice Upon A Time, replaced with a caricature of irascibility and a very oddly parsed good-vs-evil view of the universe that does not track at all with how the Doctor was originally portrayed.
None of this is to say that it was the wrong decision to try and show how things have changed for the better in 50 years – simply that it could have been more deftly handled. In this respect, the Missy/Master interactions from the preceding episodes were much stronger, juggling as they did the similarities and differences between separate conceptions of the same character. There at least, if the goal was still to show that one version was better than the other, that goal was more elegantly executed and did not over-simplify the past for the sake of its argument.
Speaking of interactions between past and present conceptions of the same story, I must utter a primal scream of pure fury in the direction of Star Trek: Discovery. Struggling through episode after episode of great actors being handed good characters and a badly written, ethically bankrupt storyline, it occurred to me that the biggest problem with the 'let's push the Federation to the brink' plot (other than that it's the same plot they've been doing for roughly half the time Star Trek has existed) is that it relies on the starting premise that the Federation/Starfleet are in some way 'good'. Else why should we care?
But the Federation and Starfleet have so often been positioned as antagonists to the main characters in the various Star Trek iterations that it is hard to consider 'and then they commit war crimes' as anything other than business as usual. Couple that to othering the Klingons so much it stops being funny, burying one half of the first loving, long-term gay relationship in Star Trek's history and the kind of inept writing that feels it needs to have characters go around stating when things are ironic, and the result is an awful, drawn-out shipwreck.
Then they wheel out the 'bisexuality is a signifier of evil decadence' because they really are trying to piss me, personally, off.
The issue, I suspect, is a non-critical, surface-level reading of the claims made about the Federation that does not take into account how they have actually been shown to operate. Star Trek has never actually been about the Federation as an entity (it doesn't even exist as a concept at the start of the original series), but rather about small collections of people who exist on its fringes. Intrusions by the greater entity are generally disruptive or even out-right antagonistic – up to and including demanding that our heroes commit genocide. Yet this is elided by the way in which people talk about and popularly conceptualise the Federation, emphasising the official line about it being an egalitarian utopia in spite of contrary evidence. This view is then projected back into the series' history and we get Star Trek: Discovery applying the mantle of peaceful explorers to Starfleet while set adjacent to an era in which Star Trek was showing Starfleet as little more than a glorified space-navy. A 'peacekeeping armada' if you will.
It is worth contrasting this to Twice Upon a Time, which at least attempts to engage with previous failings in a beloved series. 2017's Christmas Special grapples with the question of what makes Doctor Who in general and the Doctor in particular worth our time to watch. This is of course a question that has been beaten like the proverbial dead horse during Mr Moffat's tenure and the results remain as mixed as ever (personally, I think the last time it worked properly was probably Listen). Actually, I'll go further and say that we ended on one of the most ham-fisted attempts at character analysis of the Doctor I've ever watched. But the point remains that it is a story that tried to face head-on the endemic problems in the larger narrative to which it belongs.
Star Trek: Discovery, on the other hand, presupposes a benign Federation with no attempt to actually demonstrate this to be the case. Where the Doctor is positioned as a flawed individual actively arguing against a positive judgement of himself, the supposed inner goodness of its setting is something that Star Trek: Discovery questions only insofar as to claim that stress made it try to kill all those Klingons. The Federation is pushed to desperation (again) by an external alien threat (again) and responds by attempting genocide (again) only for it to be all OK in the end when the True Meaning Of The Uniform comes through (again). The only attempts at a meaty challenge to the demonstrable moral turpitude of its utopia (which endorses hard labour, provides no mental health support, places little to no real oversight on its scientists etc, etc) are placed in the mouths of the villains and monsters. I mean, come on. Who exactly is going to take seriously a socio-political commentary when it's coming from Harry Mudd?
For all my qualms about Twice Upon a Time, it tried to look itself in the mirror. And while I did not especially enjoy it, the attempt is admirable – far more so than the blind adherence to an imagined past on which Star Trek: Discovery is built.
Why yes, I did I love every minute of The Last Jedi. Do you even have to ask?
I say that as someone who has a huge critical blind-spot with Star Wars, since it is embedded in my mental landscape like a star destroyer wrecked in a desert. By which I mean the aesthetics of the thing carry me a long way to enjoyment on their own. I still have huge issues with the content (most of the old EU) or form (Rogue One) of many things published under the Star Wars banner and no doubt will continue to do so. However The Last Jedi's content left me giddier with joy than I was prepared to admit in mixed company and its form was frankly stunning.
Is it revolutionary? Heck no. This is Star Wars by Disney. What it did do was push further into questioning its assumptions than I expected, in ways that could be tremendously interesting if pursued further. If I don't have much confidence that they will be pursed, of course – Star Wars by Disney – that doesn't stop me enjoying them an awful lot as they stand.
Which is not to say I don't understand why some people didn't. If I don't have sympathy for the raging 'Luke Skywalker wouldn't do that' arguments that flared up after release, I can appreciate the shape of them. Being unhappy that a sequel to something you enjoy is not what you would have created given the chance is an entirely valid position to take. I took it just now with respect to Twice Upon A Time and will almost certainly be taking it with respect to Star Wars: Episode IX.
However, one of the best things about The Last Jedi is that it is fundamentally uninterested in straightforward extrapolation from Return of the Jedi. It doesn't hedge, as The Force Awakens does with 'the same but different' roles for the legacy characters. Stuff has happened in the thirty years since we last saw these people. Luke has been driven to deep depression by a lapse that cut the heart from his self-belief. Leia has been trained in the ways of the Force, even if she chooses not to embrace the lifestyle. Threepio has learned when to shut up. These are all valid developments but crucially they are unguessable from the endpoint of the original trilogy. They are responses to things that have only just been written and they are used to construct a story that feels like a step on from those three films rather than an attempt to go back to them.
I'm tempted to say that's why The Last Jedi succeeds where Discovery and Twice Upon A Time do not, though I'm not sure that's a stance I can solidly defend outside of personal taste. The truth is that Doctor Who, Star Trek and Star Wars are genres unto themselves. They do not try to tell the same kinds of stories. But all the same, if one is going to revel in the past, better to use it as a foundation for going forward than to be blind to its failings or to caricature it to cast the present in a better light.
So here's to moving forward, to a future of Doctors unlimited, Jedi who break their swords and even a Star Trek that recognises its own failings.
Though, yeah, young Lando aside, Solo is probably going to be terrible.
Going Rogue
It is a period of civil war. Rebel
spaceships, striking from a hidden
base, have won their first victory
against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel spies managed
to steal secret plans to the Empire's
ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an
armored space station with enough
power to destroy an entire planet.
Rogue One is a film haunted by the mistakes of the film that spawned it.
There are points where it turns this to its advantage, breathtakingly so. The one vulnerable spot that allows heroic last-ditch salvation in spite of all sensible engineering principals becomes a colossal trap spawned by the arrogance of the Empire and the man they could not break. That Galen Erso worked for years, alone and without any expectation of being saved, to put an end to the planet-killer is a palpable bit of non-warfare heroism. He saves the day by being smart and knowing his subject. So does Bodhi Rook, still visibly struggling against the damage inflicted on his mind by a deranged special effect, as he desperately rewires the communications network in the heat of battle. Rook's bravery is of a similarly desperate kind, perhaps because it was Erso who recruited him. Throughout the film, both are people whose allegiances are distrusted by those they are trying to save – fatally so in Erso's case. And that too is an intelligent working of poor communication killing: Cassian Andor is able to convince rebel command to hold fire, he is just a moment too late to stop the bombing run that takes Erso down as collateral damage. Perhaps if those commanders had themselves been a little less bloodthirsty, that tragedy could have been avoided and thence the ultimate massacre. Then again, what else would one expect from the old generals so in evidence back during A New Hope?
With Darth Vader too, the biggest spectre to hang over the proceedings, the film unleashes cinematic hell. Never again will the predominant visual image of Vader in battle be a stately kendo match with fragile props. This is the Vader of our imaginations, ploughing through helpless rebel soldiers without pause or mercy. That scene plays like something from his eponymous Marvel comic book series, both treating him as something removed from the war-games going on around him. He is a sorcerer lord in a galaxy so enamoured with military sci-fi that it has forgotten that it is a fantasy setting. No wonder the soldier carrying the plans screams to be let out. In fantasy land, swords and magic always win.
But not all the ghosts are turned to positive effect. The Alliance remains predominantly a male affair, despite honestly welcome efforts to include lady pilots in the last battle. Only Mon Mothma exercises power in the upper echelons of the rebellion; the rest of the women are incidental at best, weak-willed civilians at worst. There too is that nastiest of worms chewing at the heart of a galaxy, far, far away: democracy is useless, civilians are weak, we all must pick up our guns to save the day. Erso and Rook are exceptions, not the rule. As always it is the loose cannons, not the quiet grafters, who carry the day.
Unsurprisingly, the crushing fist of the status quo has proceedings in its grip. In the space battle above Scarif, the ships hang rigid as though afraid to pull manoeuvres beyond the budget of the original trilogy. Blue squadron is annihilated, crossed out as demanded by that long-ago editor's pencil. With them die the innovations, female rebels, U-wings, everything not seen on-screen when Leia and co arrived on Yavin IV. Bail Organa walks off to die, his part in the first full test of the Death Star assured by carefully having the super-laser fire at minimum power throughout. Alderaan will still be the first planet to die completely. Krennic, his Deathtroopers, indeed all the new/old Imperial military hardware goes the same way as the temple on Jedda. Not for them the quiet obsolescence of the Clone Wars Juggernaut but an explosive strike-through now that their job is done. This is a film that has learnt its lesson from the Prequel Trilogy: change nothing, leave no trace or contradiction. At the end, the rogues are all dead and it is the spectre of a young Princess Leia, shining white, who gets the last word.
At least that is just the only way it could have ended, and a convincingly brief reanimation to boot. The CGI ghost of Peter Cushing stalking the ramparts of the Death Star is less Hamlet the Elder and more Hammer Horror. Grand Moff Tarkin is a singularity at the heart of the film, a character that cannot not be but whose presence is ghoulish in the extreme. His face is distractingly off, achieving not that ineffable quality of having stepped out of a 1977 cinema screen that Leia manages but instead ramming home the absence it is trying to cover. At least Darth Vader never stopped being a going concern in the near-on four decades since he first stalked on set. To bring back Tarkin for more than a brief evocation smacks of desecrating a grave, of the actor if not the character.
Which is not to dismiss the character's role. Like Vader, his existence in the narrative serves to ram home the inadequacies of the ostensible villain of the piece. Director Krennic is a man who has not read the script. Unlike Kylo Ren – whose true dangerousness comes from an awareness of his inability to emulate bigger, better villains – Krennic firmly believes he is a match for the Emperor's hand-picked elite. From his dress-sense to his personal guard, he reeks of reaching beyond his grasp. Not once through the entire film does he gain the upper hand. His attempts to control the situation showcase viciousness but never competence. His death is ironic as it is inevitable. In that at least he is more realistic than either the man in black or the space-Nazi. Krennic is the epitome of the nasty little man – little in the sense of intellect and ambition – causing as much harm to himself as to others. He is someone who just wants to put a gun to the head of the universe and be the one to pull the trigger. He has no wit or imagination. Small wonder Galen Erso deceives him so thoroughly.
Was he meant to be a realistic rather than a fantastical villain? There is one ghost of A New Hope that Rogue One embraces more than any other, the aesthetic of a future that feels as though it could work. Everything is dirty and weathered, everything is solid and metallic. This is science fiction that is trying to be hard, both conceptually and in attitude. 'This is a war film' it screams with blasting guns and tossed grenades. Rebels struggle in deserts and beaches, life is cheap and death is unremitting. Free of the clinical surroundings of the Death Star corridors, this is Star Wars with dirty under its nails and blood on its hands. The villains are unremitting and the heroes are murderers, thieves and traitors. Captain Andor is ruthless, executing his informants. Jyn is uninterested in the greater morality of the fight. The rebellion has its hawks and its cowards and all points in between. Look at these shades of grey! Look at this moral ambiguity!
Yet the Empire is afforded no such shading. They are evil people doing evil things for evil reasons. The legions of Stormtroopers still die in their hordes, without consideration or brotherhood. They are still an enemy that it is cathartic to shoot and necessary to kill. The Deathtroopers, even more so – they don't even speak intelligibly, aren't allowed even that humanising detail. As Star Destoryers are ripped apart, the music encourages us to cheer. How many of the Imperials aboard were conscripts like Erso, forced into work they never wanted to do? How many potential Bohdi Rooks died before they got their chance to defect? We don't know and we are not given any reason to care.
Nor, as it happens, are we necessarily given much reason to care about the main protagonist. For better or worse, Jyn Erso is a standard action hero, playing through the motions of refusing the call to action before deciding that the world-ending evil actually needs to be fought. She even upholds the tradition that no father/mentor figure shall survive until the third act. Twice over. She is a trope leading tropes, with none of the subtle subversion of Rey, Finn and Kylo.
How very Star Wars that is. The galaxy far, far away has always traded on stereotypes for its texture and meat. Here too, exotic is coded as non-European/American. Jedda is an Asian mash-up of no fixed abode, all street markets and people in funny dress. The rebels' desperate attack on the Citadel is on Normandy beaches and in Vietnam jungles. Erso's engineering team are doddering old men in long white coats. And naturally enough, Saw Gerrera's extremists are vaguely brown, wrapped in rags and holed up in a desert. Those pesky people on the ground getting desperate and terroristy while the proper authorities sit in their bunkers, planning their air-strikes.
Oh, and civilians still play no role in proceedings. There are no reaction shots of the people in Jedda to their imminent obliteration. The horror of the Death Star's power is never seen from the point of view of those who are simply collateral damage. We do not get shown anyone who has to live on that moon now that a large chunk of its crust has boiled off into space. The nuclear winter happens to other people. It is enough for us to see the beautiful spectacle and the daring escape.
That is, after all, what Star Wars is about. Style over substance. Maybe there is no shame in that. Certainly, of all the new films, Rogue One was never going to be the one to overturn the conventions and the tropes. The fist of status quo again. It has to fit right up next to A New Hope and would not have gotten away with being anything less than a more extreme version of the no-hope battles from The Empire Strikes Back. Yet maybe there is a shame in being quite so gung-ho about embracing all that is memorable about Star Wars. We see the people who run the rebellion when the heroes are not around but we still don't get to see the people who live in the galaxy when the rebellion isn't around.
That, if anything, seems like the biggest missed opportunity, the most terribly pervasive ghost of all. That the little people still do not matter. For all they succeed in what they do, it is the Princess, not the cargo pilot, the escaped slave, the engineer, the excommunicated priests, the spy or the lost girl who gets to ride off into the sunset. There are no medals for the likes of Galen Erso, Bohdi Rook or the rest. They don't even get to get away with their lives. Their battles can be slotted in easily around the more important events because they leave nothing behind, not even footprints.
And perhaps, given how we tend to construct stories from history, that really does make Rogue One the most realistic Star Wars film of all.
This is not a review of Fantastic Beasts
So the abused child is gunned to death by the police and the world is saved from having to confront anything that might make it uncomfortable. The closet doors are slammed shut and the status quo stays god. Oblitivating rain falls from the thunderbird's wings and the city is made right again. The rich get their skyscrapers back and the poor, well, they go back to the canning factory to die a little more everyday. The goblins and elves stay firmly under the shiny shoe of the leather-coated authorities and everyone gets to go home whether they like it or not. No hidden fire or power for the people who don't have the right blood or the right dress code. No advancement for the powerless.
But that's OK because the plucky comic relief gets his bakery and the hero gets to write his book. Nothing has been changed to prevent the extinction of its subject matter, of course. Still at least the heroine gets her job back with the people who executed the boy she tried to save, for the crime of being unable to cope with the position their obsessive secrecy had forced him into. And the only man who seemed seriously interested in changing anything is exposed as a Nazi. Boy, is he ahead of the curve.
This is not an attack. This is not even a particularly angry rant. I'm not going to unpick racially charged imagery the horror of which I will not feel on my home soil or attempt a socialist reading I am unqualified to undertake. I don't have that right and I'm not trying to start an argument.
But I am going to do my damnedest not to make the same mistakes. Let these paragraphs stand to remind me where the real villains lie in fiction. Status quo. Complacency. The tyranny of a happy ending that closes any chance of progress.
Make them horrifying.