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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Did Star Trek: the Next Generation fail as science fiction?

  
  

Page: 12(3)

 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:12 / 23.11.05
I think Buffy broadens the topic again, as it is not really science fiction and operates along different generic lines. Short version - yes, thhe whiteness of Buffy is an issue worth discussing, as is the way Willow's binary switch from straight to gay was handled. I'm not sure if this is the thread for it, but we could change the title to something more like "gender/race/sexuality politics and cult TV"...

The writer of the series and the actress that portrayed Ivanova seem to have a different interpretation than you, Haus, both speaking about Ivanova as bisexual. When asked by fans "Did Talia and Ivanova have a sexual affair?" JMS responded simply "Yes."

Actually, the issue here is that you and I have a different interpration of the concept of identification. You are happy to take somebody saying in an interview outside the actual text of the series itself "x is bisexual" as sufficient reason to ascribe that to the character, even if it is not made clear in the text. So, for example, if I were to say "Marcus Cole and Stephen Franklin were lovers", I have the power to affect the relationships of the core characters within the text. If I wrote the scripts, or played one of the characters, my power to decide what supplementary data I get to add to the character or the script is magnified enormously.

The problem with this position is that I can say "I have watched Babylon 5" and you can say "I have watched Babylon 5", and we can now mean entirely different things. You are watching a series in which Ivanova's sexuality is explicit, because it has been explicitly stated in an interview at a convention you attended or a magazine you read by Jim Michael StraJimski that Ivanova is bisexual. Having read no such interview, I can watch Babylon 5 in its entirety without that datum. That's what Deva means by "there is no hors-texte above - they can certainly say "we wanted to do this" - and Ivanova kissing Winters would have for my money saved an awful lot of time - but the fact remains that in the text that was created that did not happen.

I wanted Sinclair to be punched very hard in the balls a lot. I can pretend to myself that every time Sinclair walks out of a scene a man with a lead glove is standing behind the door preparing to use his jimmy sack as a speedball, and likewise that every time a scene cuts, the same man walks into the room with a big smile on his facea nd knuckles the size of walnuts. Maybe StraJimski has claimed in a magazine that Babylon 5 was originally to be titled "Jeffrey Sinclair's Nutsack Torment", but I have only my reading of a text in which, given how little time Sinclair spends complaining about his lead-lined mansatchel nemesis, I have to conclude with regret that no such reading is open.

As such, reading Ivanova/Winters as a sexual and romantic relationship provides the reading, based on the text, that they had a relationship, but for some reason they felt unable to refer to it or mention that fact in anything but cryptic terms when everyone around was perfectly able to identify their heterosexual partnerships as such and discuss them. Possibly the message there is that even in the future, bisexuals get a crappy deal.
 
 
Nobody's girl
10:37 / 23.11.05
On the topic of queer interpretations in B5, I have to say I find Sinclair's stint in B5 much more bearable by choosing to interpret Garabaldi and Sinclair's relationship as more than platonic. Once you start looking, you'll be surprised you didn't notice the subtext before.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:22 / 23.11.05
I can never remember the fanon on this - it's either that Garibaldi and Sinclair were lovers, or that Sinclair was the one person on B5 that Garibalid never got happy with, even though he loved him...
 
 
grant
15:03 / 23.11.05
but JMS did what he could,

Depressed. American popular culture.

What he could?

Indeeeeeed.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:32 / 23.11.05
Be fair, grant - it's easy to assume that you would make a stand on principle on that kind of thing, but when you are faced with the possibility of losing your moneyspinner and also putting all your friends and colleagues on the crew out of work, with the same ultimate result (no ladykissing in that timeslot), it gets a bit harder...
 
 
This Sunday
22:25 / 23.11.05
This is why writing is so much nicer as a solitary event. I can argue with an editor and even if I'm talked into a change, nine times out of ten its not because of some suspected dreadful public opinion, not because society will crumble and the streets will run with blood because of something like a kiss. But that's print.
Film, and beyond that, the hyperregulated world of television, is so (speculative) mass-market driven it's sickening. JMS got himself involved in television, not only as a working hand, but as a mover and developer, not feeding and caring for the machine, but breeding the thing, as it were. Lots of people do. I'll never actually understand why.
Personal disagreement on ethics, aesthetics, or what a piece will bear... those I can deal with. One on one, one against five or forty... one versus some imarginable value-base of society at large?
I mean, is television - is a huge market or seeing your characters given flesh and a celebrity voice, the money or whatever is the draw - worth it?
No, seriously. I don't watch a whole lot of TV that doesn't pipe from a DVD-player or VCR into the set, so... for those who're immersed in this and really into it... why? And would you set out, knowing you'll no doubt have to compromise on things that are intellectually, ethically and aesthetically insulting?
If you were just taking a job, that's one thing, but fostering, developing, and otherwise walking something through its lifespan as a program... would it be worth it?
See, there's where the difference between Babylon 5 and the various Star Treks comes, for me, in that one is a mass of pure, unadulterated commercialism with a periodic message or personal point, and the other is supposed to be JMS' thing. His story as opposed to an endless marketing tool with some Great phantom Bird looming over it and permeating its moral bones and futuristic flesh. Star Trek: Voyager isn't Roddenberry's story, in the same way we're sold B5 or even Buffy as a one-man show, from the creative end. We know, due to their being staff-writers, actors, directors and all, that none of them are one-man shows, but the auteur thing is definitely pushed further with some than others and the auteur gig only works if there's a note of responsibility behind it.
Can their be personal responsibility in television? If there can... is there?
 
 
This Sunday
23:07 / 23.11.05
Curiously - or not - as soon as I posted the above, I got a phonecall trying to get me to agree the FCC isn't strong enough on ethical (that's read: paranoid and panicky) concerns.
 
 
grant
03:03 / 24.11.05
Be fair, grant - it's easy to assume that you would make a stand on principle on that kind of thing,


Oh no, I'm not sure I'd be able to either -- it's just that such a thing would require a stand be made is depressing. It seems like, if anything, the line marking what's acceptable and what's not has been moving in the wrong direction, and has gotten less... less elastic.
 
 
Cat Chant
08:48 / 24.11.05
On the other hand, grant, I've just watched the first ten episodes* of the Christopher Eccleston Dr Who and am dancing about in joy at the presence of an out bisexual on iconic British children's telly show. (And you guys have the L-Word, but that's not science fiction.)

(*NOBODY SPOIL THE LAST THREE EPISODES HERE PLEASE. I KNOW A HAPPYMAKING THING HAPPENS BUT NOT HOW OR WHY.)
 
 
grant
01:38 / 25.11.05
You know, I have some of those dled, waiting to be seen, and I think that's what tonight will be. Yes.

I've also been slowly watching B5 DVDs and had only gotten to the show when Winters shows up at Ivanova's door with a bottle of wine and two glasses, so, spoiled, yes, but in an interesting way.
 
 
Keith, like a scientist
18:59 / 28.11.05
Apparently TNT refused to broadcast a same-sex kiss. This was meant to be in "Divided Loyalties" where Talia and Ivanova "sleep over" but JMS couldn't get TNT to agree to it. Still, in that episode, after awakening Ivanova rolls over and reaches for Talia in the other side of the bed, only to find it empty. While some might rationalize that away, anyone with a modicum of sense can see what's going on there.

Just for obsessive nerd sake, but "Divided Loyalties" pre-dated Babylon 5 having anything to do with TNT by 3 seasons. TNT only came into the picture with Season 5.

However, I'm sure that TNT would have had no problem with two women kissing as their main problem with the spinoff Crusade was that they wanted more sex and fighting on the show, and less of the brains stuff. I mean, this is the network that brings us pro-wrestling.

It's probably likely that either Warner Bros (who own B5) or "PTN" (Primetime Network) raised the same-sex kissing issue. PTN was faced with the prospect of getting a wide range of television stations across the country to air this show week after week, with no real commitment. It's a shame they were so skittish, but they're entire structure was pretty dicey from day one.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
06:44 / 29.11.05
There's a fair bit on this in the 'JMS speaks' section of the releventepisode guide from The Lurkers Guide but in short order, it was never in the script that they should kiss.

On the issue of why it's not in the script you get the rather headpunching 'I didn't show a kiss because, in my experience, it's easier on all around if one steps into the shallow end of the pool first, and walks into the deep end rather than diving in and splashing everybody in the process.' which I presume means he was afraid of what the networks would do to the show, as it always had a fairly precarious existence.
 
 
This Sunday
07:00 / 29.11.05
How much room is there, post-script and perhaps even beyond the episode-director, to manipulate and alter things? How far to actors get, say, intimating things not scripted or not company-approved? Any juicy or powerful examples? And do things ever get simply cut out later, like if nobody noticed the first time a Next Gen. ep aired, that Picard grabbed Riker's ass in the background of a scene, so they go in during reruns four years later, or onto the DVDs and chop it out?
See also: what was the last (semi) mainstream button-pushing SF or fantasy thing in theatres or on television?
 
 
Seth
11:12 / 29.11.05
Daytripper: I think that depends on the show. I know the DS9 Odo/Kira relationship came about because of the way in which Odo played his reaction to something Kira told him. It was never scripted and became a major subplot over the span of seven years, all from an actor's choice in a split second reaction shot. There's probably other more subtle stuff that's been worked off actors, but that's the biggest example I can think of.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
10:06 / 03.12.05
This may be pure rumour, but about B5, someone told me that originally JMS had intended Delenn would also go through a gendered transition as well as her Minbari/human mutation. This was written out when JMS started pitching to networks, before the pilot was made. Can anyone substantiate this rumour? Better, has anyone explored it in fanfic?

I'm not sure whether, in that case, Delenn would have been male-to-female or female-to-male.... I'm guessing the former, since I doubt JMS would go so far as to build the whole alliance on the basis of a same-sex romance. Again, this may be only rumour. It makes a nice speculatory hermeneutic, though And I think it also shows that some of the makers of 'failed' attempts at scifi liberalism are at least aware of the cost of simply metaphorising queer/gender-variant or interracial pairings through explicit alien/human pairings or whatever.
 
 
A beautiful tunnel of ghosts
15:00 / 03.12.05
See Tom Tit's post at the bottom of the preceding page.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
23:07 / 04.12.05
Ah. I should read more thoroughly.
 
  

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