Captain's Log: Braga, Geekie and the New Doctor Who

Welcome to the Captain's Log at Soul of Star Trek, where your vision will never be blocked by a popup ad that you can never shake, so for better or for worse, you can actually read what's on this site.  Is that science fiction or what?

Readers of this past post at this site will not be surprised that at a convention appearance, former Star Trek producer/writer and producer of the Cosmos series Brannon Braga reportedly said of his work on Cosmos: "I did bring a lot of my Star Trek sensibilities to the show. The ‘Ship of the Imagination’ might as well be the Starship Enterprise."  (I suggested it looked like the Enterprise D before they put the stuff in, except for the captain's chair.) Check out the Trek Movie story that reports on some of what he said about the Star Treks he worked on. (That's Neil deGrasse Tyson on Cosmos--can't you just hear him? "Engage!")

Speaking of the Trek Movie site, I was genuinely surprised to see (in several comments sections) that such a negative tone towards Star Trek Into Darkness has developed.  I've made my own caveats and qualms known here, but the trekgeist seems to have turned against it definitively.  I don't know what that means for the next JJverse movie, unofficially as yet to be directed by a writer on the past two who is a writer on this one, Roberto Orci.  Word there is that the script is complete, and 2016 is still the release year.

Congratulations to Star Trek Continues for winning as Best Web Series at the 2014 Geekie Awards.  Also to Geek of the Year LeVar Burton.  His successful Kickstarter campaign for Reading Rainbow apparently was the clincher.

 Doctor Who did not fare as well at the Hugo Awards.  Despite having four entries among the nominees for short form TV, it lost to an ep of that other Brit global hit, Game of Thrones.  I really, really dislike that series.

However the world is being prepared for the new season of Doctor Who, a series now of global reach.  The actors playing the new Doctor (Peter Capaldi) and the current companion (Jenna Coleman) participated in a tour that touched down on five continents.  Cities included Mexico City, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro and Seoul, South Korea.  Each stop included screening of the premiere episode, "Deep Breath."

The episode will be aired in the UK, US, Canada, South America and Germany (though in undubbed English) on August 23, as well as in at least four other countries the next day or the next week.  Thanks to the successful theatrical screenings of the 50th anniversary show, "Day of the Doctor," this episode (70 minutes plus) will also be shown in theatres in a number of countries.

The BBC publicity machine hit a snag however when scripts of the first five episodes were leaked on the Internet.  But from my point of view, this was not all bad since one of the online "reviewers" of the scripts suggested that the new Doctor, while definitely darker than the previous, will have humorous moments, and that the scripts include humor as well as drama.  That would be in keeping with past Doctors but the official publicity shows Capaldi glowering all the time.  I began to wonder if the series is taking itself too seriously.

But then I've only recently been catching up with the last Matt Smith episodes on dvd, lacking a couple of the Christmas specials and the final regeneration story.  I loved "The Day of the Doctor" 50th anniversary story. John Hurt and especially Billie Piper were superb.  David Tennant and Matt Smith work very well together, as do their Doctors.  Though I've come to appreciate Matt Smith's Doctor more, I still feel partial to the Tennant/ Russell T Davies years.  Davies' East Enders Meet the Time Machine approach grounded the stories better for me. Tennant did comedy and drama, the big gestures and subtle moments, all so well.  Matt Smith had unique strengths as the Doctor but he didn't quite have all those colors, and neither did the stories.  Capaldi has done drama and comedy well in the past.   So we'll see.  Although you'll probably see first.

Star Trek Wars

There is a story within the movie Star Trek Into Darkness that goes something like this: in the alternate Trek 23rd century (the JJverse?)--in the year 2259--Starfleet is in danger of being militarized.  A terrorist attack prompts a rogue admiral into setting up conditions to cause a war he has already decided he wants to wage, and for which he has been aggressively preparing.

Because this terrorist attack cost the lives of citizens and valued Starfleet officers, there was no initial resistance to organizing a mission of revenge.  When Spock, Scotty and finally Kirk object and decide to capture the fugitive for trial, the admiral's plan goes awry.  He is forced to show his cards, and his plans to sacrifice the Enterprise and its crew in order to force his pet war.

As an allegory, this story tracks pretty well with events after 9/11/2001 and the American invasion of Iraq.  Members of the Bush administration claim that the Bush White House was intent on waging war on Iraq even before 9/11. They were looking for an excuse.  In the movie there is a further suggestion of 9/11 when the rogue starship crashes in San Francisco, toppling towers.

Ultimately the rogue admiral is defeated. We hear Captain Kirk's voice, and then see him addressing a Starfleet audience.  He says these words: "There will always be those who mean to do us harm.  To stop them we risk awakening the same evil within ourselves.  Our first instinct is to seek revenge when those we love are taken from us, but that's not who we are."

"We are here today to re-christen the USS Enterprise, and to honor those who lost their lives nearly one year ago.  When Christopher Pike gave me his ship, he had me recite the captain's oath--words I didn't appreciate at the time.  Now I see them as a call for us to remember who we once were and who we must be again.  And those words..."

And then Kirk recites the standard opening to Star Trek, one of the most famous poems of the 20th century that begins "These are the voyages..."  The Enterprise then sets off on its five year mission, the one that in the GR universe commenced in 2264.

This central story was obscured by the unfortunate choice of melding it with the Khan story, and specific echoes of Star Trek II.  Upon seeing this film again, the central story seems clearer, and the Khan story--though it would make sense within this story if it wasn't familiar from another setting--takes us way out of this story, and the echoes are mostly unfortunate, however well done.

But by the end of the film there is a sense that this is an attempt to move into the exploratory mission and away from a militarily aggressive Starfleet.  And there are hints that this military tendency is not just one rogue admiral.  Starfleet uniforms are more military than any seen before, especially with the hats which I identify with Nazi uniforms, and others suggest are more like Soviet uniforms.  I also noticed that the architecture of San Francisco is uncharacteristically monumental, suggesting a sense of empire.  And Kirk's speech pretty much says that the rogue admiral was only an extreme example.  Why else would he say that they needed to "remember who we once were and who we must be again."

These are words that might be applied not only to the JJverse but to almost all of Star Trek of the past 20 years.  Since the 1990s, Star Trek has been fighting wars--in the 24th and 22nd centuries.  An entire generation of Star Trek left behind its origins in GR's Star Trek in the 1960s. In the original series, Earth had fought and won a war with Romulus without becoming war crazy.  True, there was a Cold War quality to the rivalry with the Klingons, and there were certainly mixed messages about Vietnam in the 60s, but Starfleet was meant to be a model of peaceful exploration, and a mature attitude towards difference and violence.  These themes were deepened and extended in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

But in the 90s, the Federation in Deep Space Nine went to war in the 24th century--briefly with the Klingons, and more comprehensively with the Dominion.  In the real world of the 1990s, the Soviet Union had crumbled, and some were declaring an "end to history" and complete victory to western capitalism.  In this historical context, the Dominion War might be viewed as analogous to H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds as an attack on complacency and a smug belief in superiority.

Then a new Star Trek series began, set in the 22nd century, before the time of the original series.  Enterprise began with stories about the first steps into space exploration.  But then in the real world came 9/11, and an analogous attack on the Earth began the Xindi war that dominated the rest of the series.  Terrorism also became a more prominent theme, and torture as interrogation technique was notoriously shown.

  All of this echoed real world attitudes and events.  After 9/11 there was fear of terrorism, support for military action which resulted in military incursions into Afghanistan.  The existence of covert warfare and violence perpetrated by "intelligence" agencies became common knowledge. The U.S. invaded Iraq and began a war that became the longest in U.S. history, though the weapons of mass destruction that served as the pretext for the invasion did not exist.  Eventually it became public knowledge that the U.S. engaged in torture.  Suspected terrorists were held at Guantanamo and unknown other sites without trial or definite sentence or even charges.  Laws were passed with near unanimity that restricted the civil liberties of U.S. citizens and gave new powers to intelligence agencies and law enforcement.

Many of these subjects became themes that dominated Star Trek fiction long after there was no Star Trek on television.  It is only now in 2014 that the themes of war, insurrection, covert warfare (the "Section 31" of many 24th century novels that is mentioned as existing in the JJverse 23rd century) may be coming to an end--or at least that's the suggestion by a Trek Core writer, reviewing the latest batch of Star Trek novels in "The Fall" series.

All of this means that an entire generation has grown up with Star Trek at war, at least in almost every new story (and lots of games.) What began in the 1960s as an alternative to the primitive emotions, the ongoing violence and threat of even greater consequences of open warfare in that era, has reverted and succumbed to those emotions as well as the temptations of easy dramatics in storytelling.

So even more than a decade after 9/11, when the people of the western world are manifestly tired of war, Star Trek is still mired in its themes.  This is not to say that these emotions and issues of self-defense or aggression aren't pertinent or real.  Kirk's speech in Star Trek Into Darkness is eloquent on these matters.

 But in concentrating on this--as well as easy emotional themes such as revenge--almost obsessively, and getting caught up in the politics of a constructed universe so deeply in Star Trek fictions,  Star Trek has lost its edge.  It is no longer in the vanguard of zeroing in on new important issues in a new way, of revelations and of modeling a better future where problems are understood and addressed.  Even an even bigger-budget superhero epic like Man of Steel dealt metaphorically or allegorically with the transcendent issue of this age, that is truly threatening the survival of human civilization: the climate crisis.

Star Trek should be about the present and the future, but lately it seems to have become mired in the past, including its own.

Captain's Log: Old Frontiers

From the beginning many if not most of the elements in the Star Trek universe were from what was then the 70 year tradition of science fiction in literature and film.  Trek honored that part of the tradition that favored scientific plausibility, especially in the technological foundations of its universe: warp drive, phasers, transporters etc. Many such elements were either projections based on new but existing technology (so that doors that swoosh open automatically would be in supermarkets in twenty or thirty years)  or fairly daring and imaginative extrapolations from scientific theories.

But as a television show, Star Trek was unique in using the latest scientific findings or theories as elements in stories or even as springboards for stories.  I think this much is generally acknowledged.  But in reading a few stories about recent scientific findings and controversies, especially regarding space and physics, I was struck by the realization that this adventurousness in using the latest science has been gone for a long time--perhaps since the later Berman era, but more surely in the Abrams era.

I felt the plausibility slipping away towards the end of Voyager, though there were of course lapses before that.  (I think the armor on Voyager did it for me finally.)  The writers for the first Star Trek JJA movie justified their new timeline reality with certain theories derived from quantum physics, but these theories weren't at all new.  I've noted that more scientifically literate fans than I have pointed out a number of plausibility lapses in the second movie.

Contrast this with the relatively new and very popular TV genre of the forensic science crime shows.  Producers for the one that some science publication judged the most scientifically accurate (Bones) embrace the idea of using the science and keeping up with new discoveries as a way to build stories.  There are staff members responsible for providing this information.

Though in some ways science is still catching up to Star Trek (and will for awhile longer), it sobering to realize that its essentials were established almost a half century ago.  Plate tectonics, for example, which is an axiom in earth sciences, was not even yet an established theory when Star Trek went on the air.

Black holes were such a new idea that there wasn't yet an established name for them. (A Trek episode referred to a "dark star.")  The term "black hole" was first used in 1967.  That was also the year that pulsars were first discovered.  The thermodynamics of black holes weren't mathematically described until the 1970s.

Just recently however an entirely new theory is being applied to how black holes behave internally, because neither general relativity nor quantum physics seem to work there.  New research is applying something called loop quantum gravity to the problem, and coming up with brand new theories involving fundamental questions about the universe.

Could this be used in a Star Trek story?  Could it even be the basis for one?  I don't know.  But recent experience suggests that it won't be, maybe not even in Star Trek novels anymore.

 Similarly, there are stories to be told that center on the vitally important and still evolving dynamics of Earth's climate crisis--not the science alone but the human responses.  But the Trek imagination seems stuck on wars and war metaphors, revenge drama and mostly on re-telling old stories with bigger visuals.  There's simply too much money at stake.  The tent pole must never shake.

Meanwhile, one basis for Star Trek from the beginning is accumulating more evidence: the existence of many worlds where life should be possible.  Applying the number of extra-solar planets already "found," the math suggests there are, yes, billions and billions of theoretically habitable planets. Geoffrey Marcy, a professor of astronomy at Berkeley, extrapolated the findings across the open void of space, adding: "With tens of billions of Earth-like planets in each galaxy, our entire universe must contain billions of billions of Earth-like planets." 

Other recent discoveries should spark all kinds of stories.  Scientists are realizing that the universe is even bigger than believed.  A galaxy has recently been found that is thirty billion light years away.

Or recent discoveries about Mars suggests that it not only once had water--it was once a watery world.  NASA has a video suggesting what it was like, and the project to study the Mars environment--launching tomorrow (Nov. 18)  is explained by LeVar Burton in this video:

[Update: This spacecraft was successfully launched. ]Which might remind us that how scientists believe the Earth obtained water and even how life may have started has completely changed since the 1960s.

Even something like the Cassini photo of Saturn with the Earth a distant dot (at the top of this column--click on it to see it much bigger) inspires not only wonder but recalls the wonder that Star Trek represents, as in this story.  Although I feel existing Trek stories still have much to suggest in other ways, it does seem that new science and its implications has dropped out of new Trek.

R.I.P. Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing died last week at the age of 94.  Famous for pioneering realistic fiction, she is quite possibly the only Nobel Prize for Literature winner to have written science fiction novels. When she did so she was criticized both by science fiction fans and guardians of literature.  Even as her first book in her Canopus in Argos series was published, she was defending herself against criticism from the literature side.  She said that "space fiction, with science fiction, makes up the most original branch of literature now...I do think there is something very wrong with an attitude that puts a 'serious' novel on one shelf and, let's say, First and Last Men on another."

She meant Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon, who was also the author of The Star Maker, which Brian Aldiss in The Billion Year Spree calls "magnificent...the one great grey holy book of science fiction."  There are of course a number of very good science fiction writers as well as many bad ones.  But there is definitely a line of writers who combine literary quality with science fiction, beginning with H.G. Wells and Stapledon, and continuing through Kim Stanley Robinson.  That line runs through Doris Lessing as well.

Trekville News

In Star Trek news, there's an interview in which Bob Orci expresses some regret for his outbursts insulting fans (see previous Captain's Log) though I'm not sure his logic would pass the Spock test.  And I don't see  he understands that he began it by abusing the writer of a legitimate and composed critique, not a rant in a fan comment.

And there's this from Patrick Stewart.  Though I question the premise--nobody listens to old men of any race if they're not famous--he's still making us proud.

Captain's Log: Trouble in Trekdom

It's been more than a little weird over at the Trek Movie site.  A post designated an "editorial" by Joseph Dickerson entitled "Star Trek is Broken: Here's How to Fix It" elicited a blizzard of responses, including several intemperate ones from Roberto Orci, one of the principal writers of the Star Trek JJA movies. 

Apart from any judgment on the validity of his assertions, Dickerson's piece was calm, respectful and reasonably written.  I thought it was pretty tame for an indictment, sincere and quickly positive in the "Trek is dead but I know how to bring it back" tradition that goes back at least to the later Rick Berman era, and probably for some folks back to the first motion picture and the first post-TOS series.

But Orci was outraged.  He called the author "akin to a child acting out against its parents" and concludes this opening salvo with "There is a reason why I get to write the movies, and you don't."  He later responded to a commenter but telling him to F-off.  His responses were so extreme that several commenters questioned whether it was really Orci.  The moderator assured them it was.

 Later Orci returned to say "don't take me too seriously" and explained that twice a year he explodes at "morons."  But by then a commenter asserted that Orci was also on Twitter "dropping all kinds of F bombs" and asked "why can't we have writers with class?  Even Brannon Braga had more."  I could almost hear Braga laughing--he had endured far worse and more personal criticism for a much longer time without (to my knowledge) lashing out in such a public way.

Some commenters agreed with Dickerson at least in part, others didn't.  Some suggested that the polls he cited naming Star Trek Into Darkness among the least favorite Trek movies were a very small and informal sample. (This is what we had editors for in the print world.)

Now there's a new "editorial" up, predictably titled "Star Trek is Not Broken" which ironically and unfortunately is much more negative about most of Star Trek, in a series of opinions and assertions with more profanity and ideology than substantive argument.  But it has its adherents, and I doubt that many of the creators of TNG etc. will be on the board trying to muscle this guy out.

I think what bothers me about all this isn't the mud-wrestling that some fans routinely engage in, at least on the Internet.  It's that the original Dickerson piece was not an opinion slung out in the heat of online wrangling or the deliberate provocation that some take such delight in producing.  It was a considered critique--that I didn't entirely agree with, either in analysis or in prescription, a bit naive maybe, but a reasonable point of view pretty cleanly expressed.  It bothers me that the author of a legitimate editorial article was demeaned by a much more powerful person,  by a principal Star Trek movie writer, with a kind of attempted humiliation that smacks of intimidation.  (Though it must be said that Dickerson's first comment in this thread indicated a cool and even generous response.)

I simply can't imagine Trek principals of any earlier time responding as Orci did to such a critique.  It may be one of the many things that have changed, as ginning up Internet interest becomes so crucial to the first-weekend success of these explosively budgeted movies.  But what I don't want to see happen is this becoming acceptable behavior.  It may be that critiques are going to be made on the Internet rather than in print, but those that make respectable arguments in a legitimate form should be respected as legitimate.  No writers should be shamed as spoiled children, or told their ideas are worthless because they are not millionaire screenwriters.  It's unbecoming and ultimately dangerous.

I am also reminded that a lot of people thought Star Trek was broken back in 2004, as Enterprise entered its final season.  I wrote a New York Times article in which I interviewed fans and Star Trek actors and producers, to confront this question.  The article began: "Could Star Trek be dying?  It's enough to make Spock laugh."  Several quotes from Leonard Nimoy followed, to the effect that Star Trek has been declared dead many times but always came back.  (He really was laughing as he talked about it.)

I have no evidence for this, but I suspect this article and those quotes had something to do with the momentum that resulted in the first JJA film, and particularly in Nimoy's involvement.  Whether or not this is so, criticism of Star Trek has a long tradition, and while some of it has been toxic and had unfortunate consequences, much of it has been thoughtful, sincerely felt, and evidence of the deep involvement many people have in their Star Trek.  And without some of this criticism of a decade ago, Roberto Orci probably would not have gotten to write Star Trek movies.

Elsewhere in the universe....

Scientists are now really sure this time that Voyager 1 is the first space probe, and probably the first  human-made package of technology to reach interstellar space.  And it did so about a year ago when it breached the solar bubble at the far edge of the solar system.

Meanwhile this AP article about "space tycoons" like Paul Allen says they are enacting their Star Trek dreams.

This article about Disney's frantic attempts to make sure there will be some kind of Star Wars feature in movie houses every year for the foreseeable future prompts thoughts about these so-called "tentpoles" as being beyond the realms of fanaticism, entertainment and avarice.  In some ways, the worlds and characters of Star Wars, Star Trek, the Marvel superheroes, the DC superheroes, Warner's Harry Potter, etc. are the locations and figures of our predominant mythologies, substituting for the tales of Greek gods and Greek heroes, etc.  In other ways, they are in danger of being exploited into meaningless repetitions, variations and inflated cliches.  I suppose it is up to those who love them and what they mean to defend them against the monsters that consume everything, eventually including themselves.

[Both images here are from that exemplary site, Trekcore.] 

Captain's Log: Nobody Here But Us Martians

We have met the Martians and they are us.  Or that's the theory, according to Professor Steven Benner of the Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology. "The evidence seems to be building that we are actually all Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock.”  The combination of biochemical building blocks and the factors it appears are necessary to transform them into microbial life existed on the really ancient Mars more than the ancient Earth.  Meteorites from Mars are a pretty frequent occurrence, so that's how such microbes would have been transported.  Or for Trek fans, one way they could have been.  Given that the latest theories conclude that all the water on Earth came from elsewhere (transported by meteors and comets) the extraterrestrial origin of life is not out of line with current thinking.

In specifically Trek news, the Star Trek Into Darkness feature is already online and on its way to disk (with fans complaining about the absence of extras.)  Not to reach premature conclusions, but the movie's reputation seems to be getting worse.  For those who fear that the Star Trek saga is being looted rather than honored or extended, this interview with writer/producer Damon Lindelof won't be comforting.  My guess: there will be a 50th anniversary film in 2016 (probably with Klingons, Borg, Q and Khan, and maybe Batman) and that will be the end of the JJA era.  Here's Trek Movie's take on the "franchise" future.

Big news in Whoville: the next regeneration of Doctor Who has been announced.  Not surprisingly, he's a white guy from the UK, but this time showrunner Steven Moffat has made good on his suggestion that the Doctor should be older.  This time he will be: actor Peter Capaldi is 55.  He's got that Italian name but he's a Scot, as was/is David Tennant.  But Moffat believes that unlike Tennant, he'll use his Scottish accent.  He'll be an "older, trickier, fiercer" Doctor, Moffat says.

Capaldi has done a lot of Brit TV and theatre, and his rep is mostly as a fierce bad guy. But his face may be most familiar to Whovians as the slightly comic character he played in the fourth season Tennant episode "The Fires of Pompeii."  He played Caecilius, the entrepreneurial survivor, who gets to respond to the volcano by saying, "It's so--volcanic."  So he can do lighter stuff, too.  And gentler: I remember him from that wonderful feature film Local Hero, which apparently was his first acting job.

As for Doctor Who's 50th anniversary year, they're doing it up big in the UK with a number of ongoing events.  The 50th anniversary episode will be broadcast there and in the US in November, and it may well feature most if not all of the past Doctors, including David Tennant and Christopher Eccelston.  I gather it will also be Matt Smith's last episode, with Capaldi taking over at Christmas.

In other real world news, the astronomical "photos" of distant galaxies and objects as well as artists' renderings of newly discovered planets (some of which have since been undiscovered) use a certain artistic license in particular when it comes to colors.  But scientists feel they know what color this newly discovered planet is: it's blue.  But not because of oceans--because it rains glass, which diffuses light into the blue.  How cool is that?  Though it's not the kind of place you want to be on the away team to visit.  I hope that wasn't a cutting remark.

As for real world space travel,  the recently quantified radiation of a Mars trip should not stop such a voyage, and a lot of people are apparently willing to make the trip even if they never come back. On the other hand I guess they'll be home.  Beyond the solar system, there's still hope for warp drive, this scientist says.  Engage!

Captain's Log: How Far Into Darkness? And Other Matters

Though I haven't seen Star Trek Into Darkness a second time, I've been having second thoughts.  They're really extrapolations of my first thoughts.  The most serious has to do with the portrayal of Starfleet in the JJA universe.  It's not Gene Roddenberry's Starfleet certainly.  Is it Star Trek's?

I haven't seen anyone else pick up on the Starfleet dress uniforms as mimics of Nazi uniforms in World War II.  But I've been thinking more about it, and its significance.  Here again are the visual comparisons.

What I've come more slowly to realize is the significance of this.  It's one thing to have a renegade officer who is twisting Starfleet's intent (the Peter Weller part).  But it's quite another to signal and suggest that Starfleet itself is a Nazi-like military organization.

Gene Roddenberry and others of his generation would certainly realize what this meant.  Though Roddenberry flew bombers against Japanese targets in the Pacific, the ideology of the Third Reich in Germany was a major motivation for many fighting that war.  The Nazis were a military machine dedicated to conquest and specifically to subjugating inferior peoples, because they were the Master Race. (More than ironic considering what Khan represented.)  Eight million Jews and countless others were actual victims, but the Slavs and other "inferior" humans were the next targets.  The threat to American democracy and way of life was felt to be first of all from Hitler.

As you can see, the shapes of the Starfleet hats and the Nazi hats are exactly the same.  The high peak is quite distinctive.  Nothing remotely as military has appeared as a Starfleet uniform in any previous film or TV show, let alone one that so clearly suggests the Nazis.  It could not have been an accident.

Repudiating the Master Race, the ethic of conquest and subjugating weaker peoples, were fresh in the minds of at least some of the Star Trek creators, for the Nazi era was part of their life experience. These elements were likely to be major motivations in Starfleet and the Federation as alternatives, as models for a better future.

The movie eventually supports an alternative to these perceived evils, though the Starfleet assembled to hear Captain Kirk at the end are still wearing those uniforms.

So how far into darkness is this movie suggesting the Star Trek universe has gone?  Is it too far to still be Star Trek?  And another (and related point): when LeVar Burton recently said that Gene Roddenberry was missing from this movie--by which I assume he meant his vision of the future, and of Starfleet--is this even worse than that?  Is it a pointed repudiation?  It's hard to look at these two photos and not wonder.

In the news...

Star Trek Into Darkness does represent the first crossover in the films of Star Trek and Doctor Who--at least in the form of a shared actor, Noel Clarke.  In June, it was announced that the 11th Doctor, played by Matt Smith, would leave the show with the next Christmas special.

The speculation on the new Doctor began quickly, and if the rule holds true this time, you can pretty much forget anybody who is being touted now, they never get the part.  For all the sense it makes that it's time for a person of color or a woman to play the Doctor, fan sentiment seems largely for traditional types. A professional poll in the UK affirmed this, and also found that David Tennant is the favorite Doctor of some 43% of those surveyed, followed by Tom Baker at 16% and Matt Smith at 14%.

In "real" universe news, the announcements that the NASA probe Voyager 1 (V'ger to Trek fans, of course) has left the solar system have so far proven to be premature.  Now scientists think it really is, maybe.  The data has been mixed, suggesting that the edge of the solar system is a more complicated place than human scientists realized.  Which led one to utter my favorite quote of the year: “Nature is far more imaginative than we are.”

In that regard, it turns out that the Enterprise wouldn't need to go to alien planets to discover intelligent plant life, or at least plants that can do math and quantum physics.  We've got them right here on Earth!

Meanwhile, there's an interesting new essay on that other Voyager, the Star Trek series, as the "Trekiest" Trek of all.  Also a very interesting essay on current thought about technologies for interplanetary and intersteller manned spacecraft, pegged on Star Trek tech.

Also in the real world, there's going to be another Enterprise.  The U.S. Defense Department announced at the deactivation ceremony for the current Enterprise, that a new nuclear aircraft carrier being built will be the latest vessel called Enterprise.  No date was given for its launch, but it's unlikely to be before the 50th anniversary of Star Trek's Enterprise in 2016.

Star Trek Into Darkness of Its Soul

My concern here is the soul of Star Trek, and that’s the focus of my comments after a first viewing of Star Trek Into Darkness. I saw it at a local theater on Memorial Day weekend. Frankly, I enjoyed it more than I expected. But this isn’t a review—not even a review of reactions—so don’t expect anything on Alice Eve’s underwear or the Starship Budweiser scenes, or even the many fine performances, effects, etc. And this is just a first take, after one viewing.  Also be advised if you haven't seen it: this is full of spoilers.

 The first JJA movie set up an alternate Star Trek universe. With the second film, it’s clear that this remains a different universe. It is different not only because that’s how the writers made it. It’s different because this is a big budget movie in 2013.

Movies have changed. The reining cultural mythology of heroes includes Star Wars and Star Trek, but it is dominated by the superheroes with origins in comic books. Thanks also to digital visual effects, the action in most of these action movies is cartoon action, the violence is cartoon violence.

This isn't entirely new, of course, just more exaggerated. There was always an unreality in movie heroics, going back to the serials and their episodic cliffhangers. J.J. Abrams loves to literally position his characters hanging from various kinds of cliffs, several times during the same movie. They hang and are hoisted up in ways that are unlikely if not virtually impossible.

 Like Speilberg and Lucas action films, the cartoon superhero films show heroes fleeing explosions and never getting hit by debris or flying glass, and they fire weapons in small spaces that would actually be suicidal. This is the movie environment for a 21st century Star Trek JJA film.

 There are a few other elements to that environment that are a little more reminiscent of the Roddenberry Star Trek era. The first is the prominence of violence in movies and TV, at the same time as relentless violent images from the real world.  The actual imagery then couldn't compare to the sheer amount and ferocity of violence in movies and on TV today, and in movies it is so much faster, more intense and unrelenting.  But the effect is similar--a pummeling of the senses that glorifies violence while minimizing its consequences.

 The second is the apocalyptic fervor. Doom was in the air in the Vietnam 60s of TOS and the nuclear buildup 80s of TNG. Now doom has become the default future. It’s the premise for new television. It’s there in the previews for World War Z that show before Star Trek Into Darkness. Apocalypse is popular partly because it’s the easy choice—it’s high-adrenalin action and violent struggle to survive. But beneath the visual effects attraction, there is a real unease about what the future holds.

 That’s what made Star Trek so important and so emotionally powerful in the 20th century. And that’s why, even if this Star Trek doesn’t confront the issues with the same focus as Trek prime, it’s important that Star Trek remains an alternative—of moral seriousness, of a model for a hopeful future.

 Star Trek Into Darkness is Star Trek in a different universe. It’s a different Kirk and a different Spock. They’re younger—probably in Trek prime, they hadn’t even met at this age. Spock in particular is different—more aggressive and angry, behind the apparent innocence of his logic. Spock prime had the dignity of controlled pain, an emotional aloofness and gravitas that this Spock doesn’t have. He's Spock, but different.

 This film shows Kirk and Spock bonding. When TOS began, with the Enterprise already on its five year mission, that bond was not evident. Shatner’s Kirk was curious about Mr. Spock, he had good will towards him, but he was evidently still figuring him out. Spock was the alien among humans, and it was awhile before his commitment to Starfleet and the Enterprise added a clearly personal commitment to Kirk.

 Spock’s famous death scene in the second feature film (The Wrath of Khan) had years of history preceding it, which made it so moving that the film crew was weeping during the shoot. Here the reboot and reversal comes at a much earlier stage. Yet it didn’t feel phony or contrived. Within this Star Trek universe, it worked, but differently. (It helps that it was well shot and edited.)

 There are differences in the other characters, too, all revealed in action that is faster and more unrelenting than in any Trek prime TV or movie adventure. Still, they are appealing characters, and there’s enough of the feeling of the Enterprise to make this feel like Star Trek, only different.

 But apart from the mutual respect and emotional commitment of the crew, what really makes it Star Trek is an underlying moral seriousness that wasn’t really present in the first JJA film.  It's perhaps not as prominent or as articulated as it could have been, but it's there.

 The premise of this film is that Starfleet has ventured into darkness, into the dark side, in anticipation of a Klingon threat. That’s only suggested at first, perhaps with those nasty Nazi style Starfleet hats and uniforms. There’s a line about Starfleet becoming more military than explorers.

 Then Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) mentions Section 31, the Starfleet equivalent of a covert branch, a military CIA, which in prime Trek didn’t enter storytelling until Deep Space 9 and the Dominion War, although it acquired its own mythology in Trek novels.

 The movie begins with acts of terror manipulated and committed by a Starfleet Section 31 renegade named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch.)  The often confused, contradictory and deliberately disingenuous pre-release information nevertheless suggested that terrorism would be this film’s real world anchor, its “current issue,” which greatly lowered my expectations and desire to see it.

 The despicable act of terrorism known as 9/11 succeeded in terrorizing this country for more than a decade, beyond reason, and to make a film exploiting it now seemed depressingly grotesque, however easy. But if there is an underlying issue in this film, it is not 9/11 and terrorism but precisely the response to 9/11, particularly in the years immediately following it, when the U.S. aggressively violated its own essential values far beyond the need, and did so with frightening alacrity.

 This was really the subject of the second (prequel) trilogy of the Star Wars saga, the last Star Wars stories apparently to be told by George Lucas. It was about (quoting Lucas)" how a democratic society turns into a dictatorship, and how a good person turns into a bad person."

 Star Trek Into Darkness avoids many direct parallels to post-9/11 America—there’s no torture, indefinite detentions without trial, no general abrogation of civil liberties, no sudden invasion based on false pretexts. Some see a parallel between Admiral Marcus ordering Kirk to fire torpedoes at Harrison in hiding on the Klingon home world and the U.S. drone program, and that’s a justifiable analogy. Certainly the first moral note—absent from other blockbuster adventures—is that Harrison should be captured and returned for trial.

 Eventually it is revealed that Harrison is a genetically engineered human who had been in unconscious stasis for 300 years. His real name is Khan. It is further revealed that this Khan, like the one in Star Trek prime, was “frozen” after committing unspecified but presumably big crimes, together with 72 of his genetically engineered compatriots. This time, however, they have survived in their sleep state.

 Looking for an edge to prepare for what he saw as the Klingon threat, Admiral Marcus woke Khan, promising that he would revive the others if Khan cooperated. Khan’s motive this time is not personal vengeance for the death of his wife (a motive already used for the villain in the first Star Trek JJA) but for Marcus’ betrayal, and the Admiral’s attempt to destroy his compatriots.

Marcus is creating superweapons apparently even secret from Starfleet, and has all the zeal of a military dictator.  He is even willing to destroy the Enterprise and everyone aboard to further his warmongering.

Of course, the fight of Kirk, Spock and the Enterprise against Khan and the warmongering zealot (as well as a small battle with Klingons) involves a lot of violence.  This looks like cinematic having your cake and eating it too, and some observers saw it as dominant.  "But all the same, it’s hard to emerge from 'Into Darkness' without a feeling of disappointment, even betrayal," wrote A.O. Scott in the New York Times. "Maybe it is too late to lament the militarization of “Star Trek,” but in his pursuit of blockbuster currency, Mr. Abrams has sacrificed a lot of its idiosyncrasy and, worse, the large-spirited humanism that sustained it."  Perhaps he missed the point I am making here, or perhaps he saw the bulk of the film as undermining it.

 This movie concludes with Khan’s capture and “re-freezing,” along with his companions (with the depressing possibility of a sequel I suppose.) Captain Kirk makes the overall point explicit at the rededication of the repaired Enterprise when he says that Starfleet was becoming the evil it opposes, that it was sacrificing its own values.

 The movie ends with Starfleet’s return to exploration, and the beginning of the fabled five year mission “to boldly go where no one has gone before.” To emphasize this full circle, there’s extensive use of the original Star Trek music at the end, and imagery suggesting the original openings to the various series.

 This is perhaps a more striking affirmation than it might seem at first. For after Gene Roddenberry’s death, Star Trek storytelling turned more and more towards duplicating decades of war stories, especially in DS9. Then when the Enterprise series seemed to return to the theme of exploration, the impact of 9/11 changed its trajectory, and so there were more war and fighting terrorism stories. This became even more prominent in the Star Trek novels of the next decade.

 2016 is Star Trek’s 50th anniversary, and the word is that Paramount wants a new Trek movie to celebrate it. Will the JJA group, in whatever configuration, honor its origin by returning to stories of exploration, and relevance to issues other than terrorism and war? A number of comments and reviews in response to this movie suggest a hunger for that kind of Star Trek. In this movie business environment, that would be boldly going indeed.

Captain's Log: DS9 at 20, Doctor Who at 50, Plus Billions and Billions

Marking the 20th anniversary of Deep Space Nine, John Tabin writes an appreciation in the conservative American Spectator which claims the series for conservatives, sort of.  I wouldn't go that far, but it did mark a change, as writers got more distant from their Roddenberry roots.  Simply as writers they rebelled against what they saw as the constraints of the Star Trek 24th century, and particularly in later years of the run they turned the series towards the Dominion War.  Writers who had never seen a real war--just war movies--recapitulated emotions and activities that were even a bit too simplistic for the Horatio Hornblower novels about the 18th century.  Kind of missed the point about Star Trek, in my view, as does all the ridicule of TNG.  Still, DS9 had a lot of great moments, characters and stories, and deserves to be celebrated, remembered and re-experienced.

Speaking of Captain Sisko, I've just seen the very entertaining and enlightening William Shatner docu "The Captains."  Shatner is amazing--his self-revelation and showmanship really get the other captains (or some of them anyway) to reveal themselves.  Some especially great moments with Kate Mulgrew and Patrick Stewart, and some unforgettable moments with Avery Brooks.






Billions and billions of planets?  That's what a new NASA report says--at least 100 billion planets in our galaxy. (If you're old enough to get the joke, Johnny Carson used to imitate his frequent guest, Carl Sagan, in saying "billions and billions of stars."  Although Sagan didn't really say that--at least not until Carson made it his trademark--Johnny was making affectionate fun of how Carl emphasized the "b" sound in "billions.")

This study also suggests that one in six stars hosts an Earth-sized planet.  So there should be like billions and billions of them.

More real space news: a meteorite from Mars is telling us more about the Red Planet that the Rover at the moment.  The one that landed in the Sahara is full of water, suggesting a lot of it on the Martian surface at one time.  Another meteorite that smashed down recently in California was very old and very rare.  But its arrival was also unusual: "Most notably, Jenniskens says the meteorite hit the Earth’s atmosphere at a blistering speed of nearly 18 miles per second, making it one of the fastest recorded object to strike Earth."  That's twice as fast as the usual meteorite, and had it been a larger chunk of its mother asteroid, it might have done significant damage.  Although maybe not as much as the meteorites that hit California in 1953, with those Martian fighting machines inside.

The White House hosts a number of petitions which citizens can post and sign--once there's a certain number of signatures, the White House must officially respond.  So apparently a petition for the United States to finance and build a Death Star got those signatures, because the White House did respond.

The answer from the Chief of the Science and Space Branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget was no, partly because "Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?"  But he does point out all that the U.S. and U.S.-based corporations are doing in space and space travel.  The response is full of Star Wars references (including its title, "This is not the petition response you were looking for") but it concludes: "We are living in the future! Enjoy it!"  Star Trek fans can identify with that, too.

I'm not going to repeat all the news (or what passes for news) on the forthcoming Star Trek JJA2 movie--there's plenty at Trek Movie (although the post claiming that Benedict Cumberbatch "contrasts" his role with Malcolm McDowell's Sorin in Generations is just wrong--he is saying how his portrayal is similar to McDowell's in that he is a villain who doesn't leer like one.) 

But I will pass on a bit of news concerning this year's Doctor Who 50th anniversary.  There's to be a Five Doctors radio/audio drama, starring the five surviving Doctors of the "classic" era (Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann.)  The story also mentions the 50th anniversary documentary that's written by Who writer/actor and current Sherlock co-producer Mark Gatiss.  (It misspells his name, though--should be a source of fun around the BBC for awhile.)  By the by, just saw Gatiss in an old Midsomers Murders playing a freaked-out parson, and he was quite convincing.

But still no word on what the TV series itself will do to mark the anniversary.  I just re-watched the 1983 Five Doctors special, produced for the 20th anniversary.  It's full of in-jokes and has a decent story, but you can see the problems of trying to crowd everybody (and their companions) in.  It also skimps on the interaction between the Doctors that's the real reason to do such a show.  As for the 50th, word at Doctor Who News  is that Christopher Eccleston won't appear as the Doctor again, but that David Tennant is being coy about it.  Meanwhile, the Christmas special, Snowmen, based on a story by Douglas Adams, got good reviews in the UK.  I haven't even seen the 2011 Christmas special yet.  So much for news on Doctor Who.

Star Trek Into Boredom?

I hope I'm getting the wrong impression about the forthcoming Star Trek JJA2 movie, based on its marketing synopsis, "announcement trailer" and promo teaser photo.  Because there isn't anything to like about any of them.

The marketing synopsis is a collection of cliches and gibberish. "...an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization has detonated the fleet and everything it stands for."  How can anything detonate a fleet and everything it stands for?  It makes no sense, at least not in English.

Update: Another official go at a synopsis eliminates the clinker above, only to add another: "capture an unstoppable force of destruction."  How do you capture a force?  Let alone an unstoppable one?  "We can't stop it, Captain!  It's unstoppable!"  "Okay then, we'll capture it !" Let's hope the movie is better written than the marketing copy.

Some saw this as indicating that this film will tackle the cutting-edge contemporary issue of terrorism.  Cutting edge for the Bush administration maybe.  TNG did an episode on a terrorist in the 90s.  We got an entire year of it with Enterprise.  There hasn't been anything more deadly to Star Trek storytelling than the post-9/11 obsession with terrorism, torture, covert operations etc.  All those tortured novels.  But very visceral, and very easy tension and visuals.

Then the trailer.  San Francisco looks like a cross between Gotham City and Nazi Berlin, as do the uniforms in the crowd.  Is the villain Gary Mitchell or Khan?  Who cares?  Because once again it's all about vengeance.  The only available motive.  It's always about vengeance (usually for your family) vs. the good guys protecting their families.  Is it the human Avengers versus the Super-Villain?

A glimpse of the famous moment of Spock's death scene in Star Trek II.  Another alternate universe reboot?

And then the promo photo.  Cumberbatch amidst the rubble in a long black coat, a little Batman, a little Dracula.  Very Goth. Will there be zombies too?

  I hope reports on the footage being doled out next week will "detonate" these first impressions, and everything they stand for.

Update: Okay, I fell into this anticipatory marketing nonsense by commenting on a trailer.  Information and images are being doled out carefully, and it's clear that not much is going to be actually revealed.  I am getting the impression that genetics is going to be part of the story, but otherwise, my basic feeling hasn't changed. Revenge is boring.  But I'm not going to get involved in analyzing and reacting to every bit of marketing goop they dispense.

The Once and Future Vision

This satirical video from General Grin looks at Star Trek JJA from the perspective of the Star Trek Prime universe.  I have to agree with some commentators at Trek Movie that it's maybe five minutes too long, but don't miss the ending even if you skip through.  Another commenter assumes that "half the fan base" hates the Abrams movie and its universe.  I don't know how accurate that is.  But I'm sure there's anxiety, as the wind machine winds up for the second movie of the JJA reign, now officially called Star Trek Into Darkness.

Apart from the perceived disrespect towards the Roddenberry Trek, and the ruptures between the two story universes, there is some sense that the opinion of an early reviewer of the JJA TV series Revolution might be correct: "Revolution is science fiction for people who don’t want to be bothered with any of that tedious thinking stuff that tends to go along with true science fiction, and just want to get to the action."  They don't want to see it happen to Star Trek.

There are reasons why it might be, besides the tastes and preferences of the producer/director.  In television, Revolution seems to be one of those series that is driven by social media.  The plot moves and especially the "character" moves week to week seem to be on the order of what people like to tweet about, or talk about on Facebook, etc. and in comment threads.  JJA responds to today's movie universe of international markets of young people, where supposedly action translates better than ideas, and reboots of storied "franchises" have to recur to reflect the changing technologies available to the audience.  It's all about image--Blu-Ray, 3D, IMAX, and the technologies depicted as well (any "now" without touchscreens and smartphones is obsolete.)  And it's a lot about marketing, with its associated comic books etc.

It may or may not matter that Star Trek invented and excited its own fan base--in some ways, the pioneer of all current fan bases-- with ideas.  There were debates over ideas, and applications of what came to be known as "Gene's vision" to contemporary life.  (For all they were criticized as superficial, a lot of it is there in the Trekkies docus.)  We're apparently in a different part of the cycle.

But there's no sense prejudging Star Trek JJA2.  And it is pretty remarkable that a decade after the last Roddeberry-era Star Trek film and 7 years after the last TV show made a new episode, there are still fans, introducing that universe to new generations through DVDs etc.  Star Trek online fans are always taking sides over something.  Still, there's something melancholy and maybe profound to the ending of  this General Grin video.   

Doctor Sherlock

I last commented in this space about the BBC series Sherlock just after seeing the first 90 minute episode. Now there have been six in two seasons, all on DVD, so it’s time for a revisit.

I was struck back then by the similarity of Sherlock to Doctor Who (with Steven Moffat at the helm of both, and Mark Gatiss involved in both), down to a physical resemblance between Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock Holmes) and Matt Smith (the current Doctor.) There remain unavoidable parallels, made stronger by the way the character of Watson and the role of the companions in the new Who have become a stronger element in each series, with more reality and substance in these characters.

Now that Cumberbatch and Smith have appeared together onstage (to present Moffat with an award), their resemblance and fast talking personae were available for all to compare. (In the comments to that first post, someone wrote that Matt Smith had auditioned for Sherlock. Apparently he did not—he auditioned for Watson. Cumberbatch was the only actor considered for Sherlock, the producers say.)

Now Star Trek fans are interested in Cumberbatch since he is playing the antagonist role in the next Star Trek JJA feature film. (There’s also a funny nod to Star Trek in the Sherlock version of Hound of the Baskervilles: when a shaken Sherlock admits he felt fear at the sight of the gigantic hound, and is even more upset by being upset, Watson tries to soothe him by calling him Spock.)

But this BBC series is not the only new Sherlock on the block. Over the past century Sherlock Holmes has not been long absent from stage or screen, but he’s currently everywhere, from a motion picture franchise (with Robert Downey, Jr.) to a new CBS television series (“Elementary,” which I deduce will not last long.) And that’s apart from Holmes mutations on “The Mentalist” and “Law and Order: Criminal Intent.”

But he’s making perhaps his biggest international splash with the BBC-originated Sherlock. The first series was a major hit, and a third series of 90 minute TV films goes into production early next year. While the Downey features are set in the 1890s of the original stories, they are more steampunk than Arthur Conan Doyle. The BBC films are set in contemporary London, but they make more use of the original plots. Both of their Sherlocks are younger than usually seen, but so is the Holmes of the first Conan Doyle stories: he’s in his 20s.

  Arthur Conan Doyle prided himself on his historical novels, but he tried his hand at various other popular forms. His first Sherlock Holmes novel in 1887 (A Study in Scarlet) didn’t provoke much reaction. Public response for his second Holmes novel in 1890 (The Sign of the Four) was better, especially in America. But it was the series of short stories in the popular periodical The Strand a year later that created an immediate sensation. By 1893 he was sick of Sherlock and killed him off, but the public demand didn’t abate and ten years later he brought him back. His last Holmes story was in 1927.

  Conan Doyle was puzzled and embarrassed about the stories that made him rich and famous. The first ones borrowed liberally from Edgar Allen Poe and Wilkie Collins, and others were indebted to other authors. Other people contributed to the saga: the trademark deerstalker cap came from an illustrator, and the curved pipe from the first actor to play Holmes on stage. (An actual Doctor Who--Tom Baker--played the full Holmes in his TV film of the Hound of the Baskervilles.)

The stories (and Holmes’ deductions) didn’t always make complete sense but as Don Richard Cox writes in his book on these tales, “we should admire Doyle for the principles his stories are based upon rather than the particulars. There are a great many things one can learn from the careful observation of evidence; until Holmes demonstrated that this was theoretically possible, few people...had bothered to look at physical evidence as closely as he did. Doyle helped establish the modern science of criminology, even though some of his own detective’s ‘discoveries’ were dubious.”

In the years that H.G. Wells was establishing science fiction, Conan Doyle established the “scientific detective.”  

The BBC series is the brainchild of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, both self-confessed Sherlock scholars who know the 60 Conan Doyle stories down to the geekiest details. Their films are full of references, mix and match plot elements and inside jokes—perfect for Sherlockian DVD obsessives. Yet they manage to make the characters and events convincingly contemporary. This is easily the most stylish version yet. The quality of these films is really obvious on DVD, especially since I’m convinced that Masterpiece cuts out several minutes per episode for U.S. television. Production values, direction, acting, writing--all work together, all first rate.

Its Sherlock is a contemporary take on the classic character (though Moffat and Gatiss talk admiringly of the very uneven Basil Rathbone movie series, Benedict Cumberbatch says he was most inspired by Jeremy Brett’s interpretation for Granada television) but its Doctor Watson is singular, as played by Martin Freeman. Though troubled (like Doyle’s Watson, he’s just returned from service in Afghanistan), he is the real person that anchors these stories. There’s plenty of humor but not (as in other portrayals) at Watson’s expense.  And the relationship is complex but fun (Before Holmes is to give court testimony: “Don’t be a smartass, Sherlock.” “I’ll just be myself.” “Have you been listening to me?”) The chemistry between these two actors makes this complex relationship fascinating and real, including moments when the actors and their characters seem to fuse. 

  But this series also includes some conventions from previous film versions. Moriarty is foreshadowed and makes several appearances, though Conan Doyle used him basically once. Mrs. Hudson, of not much consequence in the stories, is given the ample screen time that other dramatizations gave her, though her role is slightly different here: she is the middle-aged landlady, not the housekeeper, though she does wind up fulfilling that function somewhat. With Holmes and Watson in their 20s, she has more potential for a kind of maternal role and apparently, the specific qualities of the actor playing her (Una Stubbs) and her chemistry with Cumberbatch and Freeman that led to a richer relationship being scripted. In fact it’s become crucial—Sherlock’s warmth and gallantry towards her is at first practically the only humanity he displays.

Andrew Scott is a terrifyingly contemporary Moriarty. Also young, he is as pale as a vampire, a demonic genius with a psychopath’s charm. Another marvel of casting is Rupert Graves as Lestrade. He’s not at all the bumbling police inspector of the previous film and TV versions (though he was accounted as more able by Holmes in the stories.) As Gatiss and Moffat note, he has the charisma to carry his own detective series, and he is not threatened by Sherlock’s talents—he patiently uses them, and keeps an appraising eye on him.

The DVDs include a couple of brief and fairly informative “making of” docus, and 3 of the 6 films have commentaries, usually with at least 3 people talking. These also are informative now and then, but basically demonstrate that the people making these are having way too much fun.

The stories range from the fairly obscure (“A Study in Scarlet,” Conan Doyle’s first but rarely dramatized, became “A Study in Pink”) to the most famous ones in Series 2: Irene Adler, the only woman to impress Sherlock, an “adventuress” in Conan Doyle, is reimagined as a dominatrix. This one stirred some controversy.

“The Hound of the Baskervilles,” probably the most famous tale, becomes the hound of a village near a secret government lab, surrounded by a minefield. Conan Doyle’s subplot is suggested and blithely dismissed—a cheeky in-joke. There’s a scene adapted from Doyle’s “The Blue Carbuncle,” and probably others I have yet to discover.

This series ends with its version of “The Final Problem” in which Sherlock seems to be caught in Moriarty’s web, and dives off the top of a hospital building to his death. The original story’s fans had to wait a decade to learn he hadn’t really died, but Sherlock appears mysteriously alive at the end of this film. How did he cheat death? That’s in the next series. The DVD provides endless opportunities to look for clues. I found four. Possibly five.