The Plot
For many shows, the first season is a season of finding the right voice and settling in; of characters who are still in development and premises that are still undergoing revision. This was the case for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Wil Wheaton, a cast member, revisits his memories of the making of the first half of the first season, evaluating the episodes from the perspective of 20 years.

My Thoughts
When I was very small, I had an irrational prejudice against certain shows and movies. I quite liked Star Wars, but I was anti-Indiana Jones, anti-TOS, anti-Doctor Who and anti-Battlestar Galactica for reasons I can’t now remember.

All the same, I don’t remember protesting at all when my dad took myself and my brother to see ST4 at the movie theatre. The rarity of such an outing cannot be overstated: I can’t remember a time before or after (until we became near adults) that my dad willingly took both of us to the movies by himself. I assume my mother had flatly refused to see this movie and my dad, not willing to appear so very selfish as to head out and see it on his own, decided we would be reasonable camoflage. And really, if you had to pick a Trek movie to which you should take two elementary school kids, ST4 is the one. By osmosis, I knew enough about the characters to identify them by name, but very little more than that (the significance of the end of the movie, where the Enterprise-A is revealed, was lost on me.)

Somehow, in between viewing ST4 and the arrival of TNG on television, I became a fan. Not of TOS (that came later still), but of the idea of Star Trek. I was SO EXCITED there was going to be a new one. I was worried (and cynically sure, even at age 11) that it would soon be cancelled. There were girls! Three of them! and a kid! (A boy, sadly, but I will rant about that later) and the guy from Reading Rainbow! By the time TNG ended, 7 years later, I was about to leave for college, I was an unabashed fan of all things Star Trek, Doctor Who, and I’d found a few sci-fi authors to follow as well.

Star Trek, and especially TNG, was a big part of my life for a lot of years. I watched it faithfully: new episodes, which were in first-run syndication, could be viewed at four different times during the week on a couple of different channels (five, if you count the station that only came in with much squinting and tinkering with the antenna). Older episodes were rerun at 6pm and at 7pm every weekday night. And I tuned in about 99% of the time.

Wheaton, who, as people (everybody?) know, played Wesley Crusher on the series, divides his thoughts on each episode into two or three sections. The bulk is found in the synopsis, which will be familiar for anyone who frequented Television Without Pity back before it went all to hell. Wheaton does not spare the snark in evaluating the success of these early episodes, and with his insider knowledge is often able to put his finger on the exact problem, be it the writers, the director, or the powers that be.

At times, I think he was a little hard on both himself and the writers in his reaction to Wesley in these episodes. It’s a fact that Wes annoyed a lot of people, but his presence also served a purpose — he gave kids watching an entry point, a character with which to identify, and helped to create a new generation of Star Trek fans. As an 11 year old, I didn’t find him annoying, and I found his behavior perfectly reasonable. The show lost something when Wheaton made his departure, and even though the later seasons were far stronger than the first two, I still wish there had been a better resolution for the Wesley character before Trek went off the air. (With all the time travel that was going on, he could totally have showed up on Enterprise…)

I also liked his insider’s view of the episodes, the bits he remembered from production and encounters with the guest stars. This is the kind of stuff that you don’t usually hear about (Wheaton has written several production diaries in the past couple of years when he’s guest starred on other shows, and this is the same sort of thing.) It also helps to drive home the work that’s involved in the creation of these shows that appear magically on our televisions. I know I can’t be the only one who has a difficult time thinking of acting as hard work requiring lots of training and effort, and as he’s done before, Wheaton really brings that side of things to life.

In Short
The whole idea for this book was brilliantly conceived, and I really hope that rather than stop at season one, Wheaton continues through and does the rest of the seasons in which he was involved (plus the handful of episodes where he was a guest after he stopped being a regular). I’m a sucker for snarky show recaps, especially ones as well done as these. Could have spared a bit of the OMG the writers! It was all the writers! [who made Wes obnoxious!] but overall this was great and I can’t wait for the next one.

Campion (Margery Allingham)
I got three more of Margery Allingham’s Campion books last month; I’ve been semi keeping up with the reissues of these from Felony and Mayhem press. I heard of Campion mainly because of the tv version, which starred Peter Davison (aka Doctor #5). The books are good enough; I don’t like them as well as Christie, but they’re easily as good or better than Marsh, though the characterization is not as good as Sayers. Campion has a propensity, like Marsh’s Alleyn, to randomly fall in love with women involved with the cases, which is annoying, especially as he has a Bertie Wooster-ish quality to him in the first place. Also interesting is the fact that unlike, say, Poirot and Holmes, he is sometimes mistaken in his conclusions even all the way to the end of the story.

Mrs. Bradley (Gladys Mitchell)
A few years ago, Mystery showed several of these on PBS. Diana Rigg starred as Mrs. Bradley, a middle aged, multiply-divorced woman of means who is a well known expert on psychology and crime. (Peter Davison was also in several of the episodes as well. He’s been busy.) They caught my attention because unlike a Miss Marple type, Mrs. Bradley has professional qualifications and a reputation that extends beyond her village. But I never quite got around to trying to find out if these were based on a series of books until just recently. Interestingly, for a series with dozens of books in, it seems fairly hard to get hold of some of the early titles and I have to wonder why she is not more well known than she is. A local library had a handful of titles from later in the series and the style was readable, if a bit different than what I’m used to. Mrs. Bradley is nearly as energetic as some of her younger counterparts and seems to be constantly driving around the countryside interviewing suspects and even spent some time crawling about on a roof and shimmying down a drianpipe.

The Baby-Sitter’s Club
I followed this series for quite a long time, pretty much until I went off the college and got behind in buying the books and couldn’t keep up (this is when I lost track of the Star Trek novels, too). It ended a while ago, but every once in a while I’ll get the urge to a) reread it and/or b) complete the set. Anyhow, a couple of years ago Scholastic had the idea to reissue four of the books (#1, #3, #4 and #7) as graphic novels. I bought the first one and was surprised (and a little depressed) at how much of the story I remembered. The graphic novel itself was quite well done — the art was clean, the character designs to my taste, and I think the artist did a nice job trying to capture the essence of the girls while trying to draw them in a way that wouldn’t become dated in about a month. Because the one thing the graphic novels dropped entirely was the effusive descriptions of 80s ‘cool’ clothes that permeated so much of the originals. First, because descriptions of that nature are not necessary when you have pictures, but second because while Anne Shirley going on about puffed sleeves may be historical now, I imagine it was a turn-off for girls in the 20s and 30s. And somehow I just don’t see the BSC enduring quite long enough for an armful of jelly bracelets to feel historical.

Picma
I really am not a fan of picross, but somehow the description of this game on jayisgames lured me in. I played the first three levels with little difficulty and was actually enjoying it. It appealed to the same part of my brain that got horribly addicted to sudoku for several weeks and which still occasionally wants to do some. But when I got to the 20×20 sized grids, I found the flaw in the game: the playing area is too small. While picma does provide a little tool which you can use to slide the grid around and see the edges, it’s incredibly annoying to try and fill it out without being able to see all of the numbers around the board. There needs to be an option to play full screen or an option to zoom out. I managed to do one puzzle shifting the grid around, but after that I was forced to give up.

Copycat
Another game I discovered through jayisgames, this one provides a pattern of colors on one side of the screen which you have to duplicate on the other. This is done by arranging shapes and then dumping paint over the rest of the canvas — you have to figure out in which order to apply the colors and where to place the stencils so you end up with the proper result. I hadn’t really ever seen any game like this before, and I was fascinated. It was very interesting, with the only annoyance being the possibility that you would accidentally hit the ‘winning’ percentage of replication before you were actually done with your efforts. This could easily be fixed by requiring people to submit their result for judgement rather than automatically judging it after every action.

The Plot
Fifty-five years ago, the British Empire was faced with an uprising of the non-colonial sort: the dead were walking and they wanted brains. The scourge continues unabated, but life has adapted to cope with the continual threat. The five Bennett sisters have all been trained to fight the menace, but their mother would like to see them well married as well. Enter Mr. Bingley, a single young man of good fortune who has just moved into the neighborhood.

My Thoughts
When this book first came out, I resolved not to read it. The original Pride and Prejudice is my favorite book of all time, coming as close as any book has to my idea of perfection: lots of witty, interesting characters saying pithy things to one another and a happy ending to boot. I love it well enough to hate the vast majority of sequels I’ve tried, because they simply couldn’t live up to the original, or they took liberties to which I objected.

At any rate, my resolve weakened against PPZ. The author had kept a great deal of the original text, and the juxtaposition of zombies with the social machinations of the original might be, as one of Austen’s characters would put it, exceedingly diverting.

The premise is this: about a half-century before our story opens, zombies suddenly began appearing to menace the living. They are witless creatures, not impossible to destroy or even to distract, but doggedly determined in their quest for brains. Zombies seem to have two sources: the already dead may rise again, and the living may be infected by exposure (such as being bitten). In response to this, the army has mobilized, and also the general citizenry has begun to train and arm itself. Even women have received some training, including women of quite high station. The opening of a new economic door to women has seemed to have an effect on society: crudeness and innuendo is more common and there is a great deal more violence.

It’s clear from reading that the author has put at least a little thought into how this situation might change polite society. Unfortunately, in many cases it seems to have been very little. It’s hard to tell whether this is meant to be a “serious” retelling of the story or if it’s just meant to be a silly parody. Different rules apply in the latter case, but just enough effort has been made to maintain the integrity of the plot and story that the argument falls flat — this is not the literary equivalent of Scary Movie. And that makes it all the more galling in the cases where it’s abundantly clear that something has been inserted only because Grahame-Smith just couldn’t resist and not because it made sense in either the original or the re-imagining.

I get the sense, too, that the author didn’t have a great deal of respect for(or understanding of?) some of the original characters. In several places, Austen’s original text is included, but the speaker (or writer) is not the same as the original book – and yet they’re using the exact same phrasing. This is just sheer laziness on the part of the author. The work is almost bookended by the two of the most egregious examples of this: first, where Caroline Bingley takes over some of Darcy’s lines in an early exchange with Elizabeth, and then at the end, where a letter originally sent by Mr. Collins is penned instead by Colonel Fitzwilliam. In neither case are either pair of characters in any way similar and so the reassignment of words is out of character even within the context of this new book.

Similar problems arise when Austen’s text is revised for no apparent purpose beyond dumbing it down for the modern reader, something which happens at multiple points. A single example here will suffice to illustrate the danger of this.

Original:
“No. It would have been strange if they had. But I make no doubt, they often talk of it between themselves. Well, if they can be easy with an estate that is not lawfully their own, so much the better. I should be ashamed of having one that was only entailed on me.”

Zombies:
“No; it would have been strange if they had; but I make no doubt, they often talk of it between themselves. Well, if they can be easy with an estate that is not lawfully their own, so much the better. I should be ashamed of putting an old woman out of her home.”

In the original text, we refer back to Mrs. Bennett’s refusal to admit that the entailment of her husband’s estate makes sense or is legitimate. Further, we have a joke: of course the entailment is pefectly legal, that is the entire problem. In the Zombie version, even though there is no zombie-related information conveyed here, the text is altered: the joke is removed and the reader is not reminded that Mrs. Bennett is ridiculous or of the inheritance situation, but instead is apparently meant to feel bad for her.

There are examples of this sort of careless editing all through the text, toning down the snarkiness of the dialogue and the narrator in some sort of misguided quest to make it more simple. In many cases, these changes cause anachronisms to creep in.

In addition to these changes, there are still more points of fail.

The illustrations: These are just awful. The clothing, which is not particularly mentioned in the text as being different in most cases, is just odd looking. Not at all correct for the time period or even sensible allowing adaptations for fighting and training.

The “Oriental” stuff: I’m not even sure where to begin with all of this. Lady Catherine with ninjas is, I’m sure, the vision that made the insertion of all of this stuff irresistible. And I wouldn’t object to it all overmuch (I leave it to someone else to complain about the potential Racefail aspects of it) were there not such a big deal made about Chinese training versus Japanese training. Because even to my non-expert eyes, it was clear to me that the author was making a distinction he was not prepared to follow through with: Chinese-trained Elizabeth fights with a Japanese sword, there are random bits of Chinese culture at Darcy’s supposedly Japan-inspired home, and so forth. If the author was actually Jane Austen, one might suppose these cross-contaminations were a subtle jibe, but unfortunately, based on the rest of the book, Grahame-Smith is incapable of such a thing.

In Short
This was actually a very clever idea, and I think it could have been very good, with just a bit more effort expended on research and editing. Unfortunately, as it stands, this was definitely a failure, as a parody (not enough liberty was taken) and as a true rewrite (it was too slap-dash and sloppy). I don’t quite regret reading it, but I definitely won’t ever be reading it again, nor will I be picking up the next book, even though it’s to have a different author.

[This review is also posted at Tripletake.]

Could’ve sworn I had a post I’d started, but no draft is to be found.

Weird.

According to Wordpress, this is the THIRD time I’ve used “Huh” as an entry title.

I am not very creative.

So, a few weeks ago we drove to NY to visit my grandma. I hadn’t seen her for several years, so it was nice. The trip is chronicled over here.

A week or so after, that I got out to do something. Amazing, that. I went to the U2 concert with E and C. It was pretty good, right up until the point after the concert when we experienced the complete and epic fail that is getting out of Gillette’s parking lots. It took us about 2.5 hours to get from the parking lot to the entrance of 95, a distance of about 5 miles. 1.5 hours of that was spent actually getting out of the parking lot itself.

Clearly, we should have scouted in advance (and believed my mom when she said it would take forever to get out of the parking lot). Considering this trip was planned about 6 months ago we had plenty of time to figure out the best route.

The concert itself was fine. Very good. I’m glad I went, in spite of the traffic fail.