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ask-the-fanbots · 5 years

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Family?

A fic between Coil (mine) and the Becile Boys and Mr. Weed (@ask-the-becile-boys)

Words: 2.4K

TW: malfunction, loss of fingers

Hare was squatted in the alleyway, watching with only slight distress as The Jack gnawed on something inedible. Did he know what it was? No. Did he care? ...yeah. More than he'd like to admit.

"Hey, c'mon Jacky, spit that out. Weed'll blow a gasket if he has to fix yer jaw again this week." He tried to coax the object--now identified as a brick torn from the building--from his mouth with little success. "Ow!" He hissed, inspecting the damage to his fingers. Still intact, so whatever. It was...probably time to bring Jack home.

"Dnuor dna dnuor eht yrrebllum hsub--" He trailed off into cackling as he was gently hauled to his feet, spinning a few circles before springing up in an impressively high jump and stomping back onto the ground.

"Ya don't say?" Hare offered casually, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he strolled alongside the giggling bot. "When we get back I'll--hey!"

The Jack seemed to have decided he was tired of talking, because he began sprinting off without waiting on Hare to follow. The sound of his laughter drifted further off, his legs devouring the terrain ahead of him with all the gusto of an Olympian.

"Hey, c'mon, why you gotta do this today!? We were doin' real well!" He huffed, arms pumping in rhythm with his admittedly pathetic strides. He wasn't anywhere near as fast as Jacky, but he could always hold onto the hope that the escaped kid would fall or something else'd slow him down, otherwise he'd have to try and drag Weed and the other guys out onto a Jack-hunt.

Up ahead of him, the distant laughter cut off suddenly, replaced with a blood curdling shriek.

"Jacky!?" Hare found a sudden reserve of speed, running faster than he'd ever gone before. It wasn't happening. Whatever he was afraid of wasn't happening! His thoughts tangled together into a web of helpless anxiety as he barreled around the corner, the manor coming into view. There he was! What was--?

"--get off! Where'd you even come from!?" The voice was unfamiliar, as was the streak of dirty metallic grey covered by The Jack's writhing form.

"The rocks! A lady from the floor! A candy man! The green took the lady!" The Jack was screaming as if his life depended on it, snippets of words in between snapping his jaws at the person he had pressed against the stairs.

"What the Hell is happening out here!?" The Skull stepped out before Hare arrived, and instantly The Jack scrambled backwards, ramming headfirst into his brother. "Get outta here!" One fluid motion was all it took to haul the other person to their feet--a bot, no doubt, and a girl by the looks of it. "Hare. What happened here?"

"We were on a walk an' he took off! Who's this?" He gestured wildly at the intruder on the steps, trying to size her up enough to get any kind of read on her and why she was here. Other bots weren't terribly uncommon to see, but ones turning up on the goddamn doorstep were.

"Becile." She said, looking between them in a mixture of anger, disgust, and...well, a bit of hope. "He...y'know, made you?"

"Go." The Skull shoved her back towards the street, taking another step forward before Hare waved a hand in a vague gesture to wait just a second. He shook his head, slamming the door on his way back inside. He'd have to go tell Locksmith, see if he could stop being useless just long enough to get the girl outta here. He may have been the enforcer, but if those piles of scrap metal wanted to hang around they had to do something every now and again.

As soon as he knew Jacky was situated, Hare grabbed both he and the new lady and dragged the both of them inside. "Alright, sweetcheeks, let's talk. Why're you askin' about Pops?"

"I was gonna ask if you couldn't see the family resemblance but thank God I ain't as ugly as you." She replied with a sneer, gesturing towards his face. Both were endowed with pointed teeth, though the woman’s were in her mouth, and between the pair of them that only managed to scrape together two eyes.

"Wha--I ain't ugly!" Hare sputtered before leaning forward with a growl. "And you ain't family."

The Skull pushed the two of them apart with a grimace. "We know all about his ugly mug. What we don't know is why the Hell you think you're one of us. Get talkin' or I'll throw you out whether they try to stop me or not."

"Friendly bunch." She said flatly, crossing her arms over her chest as she tried to gather her thoughts into a sensible order. "Name's Coil." She paised briefly for a reaction, but upon receiving little more than slightly angrier scowls she continued. "Green core bot."

"...yeah? And? Chrissakes, we're gonna be rusted over before ya finish the story." Hare plunked himself down into a moth-eaten armchair, resting his chin on his fist and looking at Coil in the same manner an impatient child would look at its mother.

A throat cleared, and the attention shifted over to the source. Locksmith was standing off to the side, fingertips drumming over the cane in his hands. "If I may interject. You claim to be our relative, and this may well be the case, but have you any evidence to substantiate this? Are we to trust you at your word? This is--how do I put it--you would be far from the first ruffian claiming to share our lineage, if one is bold enough to call it that. How do you intend to put our troubled minds at ease? Proof, as it were, is what we'd ask you to furnish us with."

"You all see if you can keep from dyin' for the next few minutes. I'm gettin' Weed and seein' if he can sort this out. If Pops made her there'd be some kind o' mark or somethin' to tell us." Hare rose from his chair, grabbing The Jack by under the arm to lead him off. "You too, Jacky."

After earlier he didn't feel confident that Jacky wouldn't tear the gal apart before he got a chance to get back. A couple of her fingers were already severed, and they didn't need anything else going on at the moment. That's what he told himself, at least. Truthfully he needed a walk. Somewhere to go so he could think while he got there. Pops had been a less than honest guy, but there was no way he made another entire lady without them knowing, right? Right.

But…

She was just as soot-covered and banged up as the rest of them, and there was somethin' that didn't sit right when he looked at her. Something too familiar.

"Oi, Weed! Open up." Hare banged on the door with his fist, earning a growl from within. "I'm not takin' no for an answer, 's important, so get yer ass out here."

The door cracked open, a disheveled looking Riker peering through it. "Someone better be dying, and at this point I might let 'em for a little peace around here." He smelled of alcohol, deep bruise-like shadows beneath the one eye that was visible. That wasn't unusual for him, of course, but geez he looked like--...well, not great.

"We got a situation." Hare inched closer, looking uncharacteristically nervous. He was smooth as silk. Cool as a cucumber. Nothing ever bothered him, naturally. As the tough leader an' all that it was his job to keep it together.

Riker looked slightly more interested, but it was hard to tell with him. One brow arched almost imperceptibly higher. "What kind? I--Jesus, whose fingers are those? Who did he bite this time?" This earned a genuine reaction from him as he opened the door fully to look at the pair of tin cans that blocked his doorway.

"Well that's the thing if you'd let me get there. We got a lady." The bot gestured vaguely, as if the weak attempt at charades would make things more clear.

"A...lady." The engineer echoed, not any closer to understanding the situation than before.

"A lady!" Jack confirmed, the high pitched giggles bubbling up through him against his will. "A lady from the rocks, a lady from the ground, a lady in the foyer who can't make a sound!" He sang before breaking down into hysterical laughter and snapping playfully in Weed's direction.

"..."kay, what does that mean?" He didn't look pleased, but grabbed his tools nonetheless. If he didn't return some fingers his ass was on the line, too, and there was no way he could afford some kind of lawsuit for destruction of property or whatever they'd get charged with. Criminal proceedings were the last thing they all needed.

"She--"

"HEY! GET BACK HERE, YA LITTLE RAT! SHE'S YOUR PROBLEM!' Skully's booming voice echoed across the manor, and Hare cursed under his breath.

"C'mon, I'll just show ya. Jacky? Wanna come with or head to yer room?" His hands found their way around the arm of the shaking bot, opting to guide him to his room and make sure he was secure before hustling back towards the door. "What's the--I WAS ONLY GONE A COUPLE O' MINUTES!"

The Skull and Locksmith were standing beside the still form of Coil, the latter leaving a much wider berth. "She's your problem now. If she breaks anything it's on you. Get some answers." The Skull left with that, strolling briskly towards his own space. He didn't want her here, but he did wanna know what connection she had to the old man, if any.

"We do seem to be in a predicament. While I can't say she's charming company, we are owed the full story, and the only one who can provide us with any insight is inactive on our flooring. A tapestry of tongues can't be woven by the mute, so I suggest our roboticist begins his work before much more time slips past us." Locksmith remained stationary, as he needn't provide them with any further room. They had ample space to operate, so for now he would observe the proceedings. Should the time come when he had to relocate, he would gladly cede further floorspace to them.

"What do I look like, a dancing monkey? Why should I work on a bot I'm not in charge of? It’d be easier to scrap her." Despite his words, he was already kneeling to look her over. What exactly was the protocol on working on someone that wasn't yours? Especially one of the lady ones? And especially one that couldn't give him permission to take a look under the hood, so to speak?

"She said Pops built her. Just take a look or somethin', will ya? Wake her up so we can ask ‘er a few things." Hare squatted beside Weed, resting his elbows on his knees as he looked her over. She did have the shoddy workmanship of Pops's hands, but that didn't mean much. He was overthinking this.

"Fine, fine." Riker grumbled, undoing the buttons on the back of the dress. "You owe me, though. Next time I tell you I'm takin' a sick day, I'm taking it. No emergency repairs, no whining at the door, no nothing."

"Yeah, sounds great. Do your thing, o mighty roboticist." Hare's tone was mocking, but there was no denying that Weed was good at his job. His ma had taught him well, apparently.

It didn't take long before Riker was popping open an access panel, and he tossed it aside onto the carpet. "Geez! What's going on in here?" He turned aside, sneezing openly toward the rug.

Locksmith looked utterly repulsed by this decision but held his tongue. He fished through his pocket, extending a handkerchief to the resident engineer. "Bless you, Mr. Weed. I take it our companion's interior is a bit... antiquated."

"No kidding! When was the last time someone opened this up!?" He ignored the offer, swiping at his pointed nose with his knuckles. There was a thick layer of dust built up on every surface in the little panel, clogging everything and muffling the sound of the things that did still work. "I don't know what the last person in here did, but it looks like a toddler got a wrench and went to town. Half this stuff is straight out of a history textbook, and the other half looks like someone tried to make something out of spare parts from a dollar store."

Locksmith withdrew the proffered cloth, tucking it back into his pocket. "I believe I'll retire to my quarters. Today has been eventful, and truthfully I have no desire to watch another uncouth display like the last one."

Riker snorted, sparing a glance toward him. "Don't worry, I'll be sure to save a sneeze for you for next time I'm doing your repairs." He leaned back, resting in roughly the same position as Hare. After Locksmith left he turned to his companion, chewing the inside of his cheek before trying the find the right words. "You've been...quiet." It was more an invitation to speak than an observation.

"Thinkin'." Hare was at a loss for more words than that--something Riker would have been quick to point out as the very first time had the circumstances been better. Family was a hard thing, especially for this lot. Hell, he struggled with his own family, but that was just a whole ‘nother beast.

"For what it's worth, she's not one of ours. The marks and parts are wrong. But it does say Becile on the panel." Riker passed the piece of metal over to Hare, who inspected it carefully. Imprinted inside was the name Grace P. Becile in the standard formatting of foundry marks. Becile…

"Pops never talked about a Grace. Think she's connected to Buster? Don't know that we really know where he came from neither." He handed it back to Weed, who set to work securing it back in place. She twitched under his tools, so it'd only be another minute or two until she came to.

"You'd know better than me." Riker shrugged, wiping his hands off on a rag and stretching.

"I'll go get Skully to carry her out." Hare jerked a thumb towards the front door, his other hand on his hip. "But uh...hey Weed. While you're out, keep an eye on her. If you see her. Don't go outta yer way or nothin'." His hand migrated to rub the back of his neck as he cleared his throat. “I gotta go back to my room. I'll see you later."

"Right. I'll see you later." Riker watched him go before sighing and gathering up his tools. Keep an eye out...yeah, he could do that.

#becile boys #ask-the-becile-boys #interaction fic #fanfic #sorta?#spg oc coil #if there's something I need to change #let me know

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preserving-ferretbrain · 5 years

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The I in Vampire: Joss Whedon and the Philosophy of Identity

by Dan H

Monday, 21 September 2009

Dan almost manages to say something nice about Joss Whedon~

Recently I did two things. I read The Pig That Wants to be Eaten - a nicely accessible book of philosophical thought experiments – and I watched Series five of Angel (review forthcoming from Kyra or myself, special exclusive spoiler preview, it’s shit).

One of the infuriating things about S5 of Angel is its blatant disregard for any of the show’s prior mythology (to be fair, this was partly due to network pressure). The girls at Boils and Blinding Torment get particularly furious about this, complaining about the way it craps all over the notion that vampires are in any way different to regular people. To quote them quoting Buffy

To paraphrase almost every character in Buffy ever: A vampire is not the person they appear to be. They walk like them, they talk like them, they have access to their memories, they might even do their hair like them, but it’s not them.

Which is pretty darn clear, and is, as the girls observed, spelled out in the first episode, and about every five episodes thereafter.

The thing is, while it’s spelled out like that, it’s pretty clear that it’s not like that. Jessee pops up in the second damned episode and seems quite convinced that apart from being “connected to everything” he’s still the same guy he always was. Angelus, while evil, still has a lot of Angel’s basic personality traits (“it’s just … you’re still the only thing he thinks about” is I believe how Willow describes it). Not only is there textual evidence against the whole “demon in a Xander suit” theory (and very little to support it except maybe that scene in series two where Angel’s “inner demon” beats up that other demon inside Angel’s body), there’s also some fairly fundamental problems with the whole idea of something that has your appearance, memories and personality being, in any meaningful sense “not you”.

Memory, Continuity, and Tom Riker

The question of who “you” actually are is a horrendously difficult one in philosophical terms. In practical terms, you know that you’re you, other people aren’t you and that’s an end to it. In the world of the philosophy of identity it’s far trickier.

One of the thought experiments presented in TPtWtbE is the teleporter problem. Suppose you go through a Star Trek matter transporter. It scans your body, and reduces it to data. Then it blasts you into atoms, and reconstructs you miles away from (presumably) completely different parts. None of the characters in Star Trek seem remotely bothered by this but it raises a lot of difficult questions. If the person who is reconstituted at the other end of the teleporter is made from completely different atoms from the person who went in, in what sense are they the same person?

The problem is compounded by the fact that the person who goes into the teleporter and the person who comes out are in fact capable of living independent lives. In a relatively famous episode, it is discovered that exactly that had happened to Riker. A transporter accident had split him into two people, both with exactly the same memories and experiences, and both believing themselves to be the “original” Will Riker. The Trek episode neatly dodged a lot of the nastier problems involved with this kind of conundrum by having the “other will” be one who had been stuck on a remote planet for several years, making it fairly clear to one and all that the Will Riker who has been, y'know, on TV all this time is the real one.

A similar idea crops up in The Prestige - Tesla's teleporting machine doesn't destroy the original, so you always get two copies, an Hugh Jackman solves the problem by drowning himself. This creates a terribly haunting image in the original film, but it's interesting that in many ways the machine functions identically to the “real” teleporter in Star Trek. It's just that the way it disposes of the “original” is less neat.

I understand that the way a lot of philosophers resolve such issues is with a concept called “Continuity of Consciousness” - broadly speaking if the individual coming out of the transporter remembers being the person who went into it, they can be said to be the same person.

Of course there are arguments against this definition (the two Rikers and the Tesla machine highlight one of them) but it's still extremely useful, and it's very interesting when applied to Buffy vampires.

The Buffy vamp remembers its human life. This is described in early episodes as “having access” to the human's memories, with the implication that the vampire knows itself to be a demon, and simply uses the human's memories to trick people into thinking it's something else, but this is clearly untrue. We witness the transformations of several vampires, and all of them clearly genuinely consider themselves to be the person who got bit, not some alien parasite. They have, in a word, continuity of consciousness. Not only that, but no vampire ever displays knowledge or memory of having existed independently as a demon.

Of course once a person becomes a vampire they are changed - they lose their soul (which seems to have a rather nebulous effect, certainly it doesn't seem to alter their sense of identity very much) and become Evil, but you can't really say that they're different people except in the metaphorical sense that we are all “different people” when we are – say – drunk.

This has particular consequences when it comes to little things like moral culpability.

Blame, Responsibility, and Evil

Even if you accept that vampires, whatever the show might say, are the same people they were when they were alive, it's still perfectly reasonable to say that they are the same people but evil(it's also perfectly reasonable to argue that the “but evil” segment of that sentence renders them not the same person at all, what isn't reasonable is arguing that they're suddenly a demon occupying somebody else's body – whatever the text says, Buffy vamps clearly don't work like that).

But even here we run into a bit of a stumbling block. Okay, vampires are evil. They kill people, because that's what they do, hence the slayage. Except that repeatedly, starting lest we forget in series two when Spike turns against Angelus, vampires have shown that they are capable of choosing to do good – or at the very least not to do evil. Now frequently they choose it for selfish reasons: Spike helps save the world because he likes being evil in it, and later fights demons because he enjoys hurting demons. The vampires at the dodgy place Riley goes to avoid killing people because it helps them stay under the radar. Harmony goes on the cowblood because it's a condition of her employment at Wolfram and Hart.

Now on the one hand, this makes the vampires that actually do kill people way more reprehensible. On the other hand, it makes killing vampires on spec a little bit dodgy. Yes, some vampires kill people, but a great many of them don’t, either because of artificial constraints (a chip in the head) emotional constraints (I haz soul! It make me sad if I do the killing!) or rational self-interest (killing people will get me fired, killing people will make them less likely to let me feed on them repeatedly). These, not to put too fine a point on it, are pretty much the three reasons that regular people don’t go around committing murder.

Now true, vampires are still much more likely to kill people than humans, but to get all formal logic about it, you can’t say that all vampires are killers – they are clearly capable of choosing not to kill – which leaves you only with “some vampires are killers” which is kinda useless. This means that staking vampires the moment they rise is basically a form of racial profiling. It’s effective racial profiling, to be sure, since they’re mostly going to go on to be mass murderers, but it’s much less cut and dried than the original remit of “a demon in the body of your friend”.

Dolls, Identity, and Consent

The whole philosophy of identity issue gets even more interesting (and even more problematic) in Dollhouse. Is that me saying something positive about the show? Well yeah, sort of. The actual philosophy of identity bit is kind of interesting – and on some levels it seems to be what Joss is interested in (q.v. the “it makes humanity irrelevant” speech in Man on the Street) – unfortunately because Joss is pathologically incapable of writing a show that doesn’t have EYE YAM TEH FEMINISTS scrawled all over the front in crayon, he muddies the water by making it something that is also about the abuse of women by men who aren’t him.

The problem with Dollhouse (why yes, I am recycling content from an old article) is that it brings up a whole lot of important rape myths and then not only fails to challenge them, but dips the whole thing in a the kind of abstract philosophy that dickheads use so that they can accuse feminists of being “too emotional”.

To quote one blogger whose name, weblog, and other identifying features I have totally forgotten: “the thing I love about this fandom is that you can always find somebody willing to argue that it isn’t rape if she was brainwashed”.

The problem is that “it isn’t rape if she was brainwashed” is actually part of several interesting philosophical questions about identity, free will, and perception. The problem is that rape is not in any way the right subject to be using as a vehicle for these questions. The concept of consent and complicity is complex enough in real world rape cases that it doesn’t need imaginary supertechnology muddying the waters. The abstract philosophy of the Dollhouse contributes to, rather than challenging, the prevailing notion that consent is so vague and ill-defined that anything short of a clear “no” counts.

One of the things I really liked about The Pig that Wants to be Eaten was the way in which it tempered its abstract content with pragmatism. In its discussion of the

Ship of Theseus

, for example, the author points out that the identity of the “real” ship depends on what you want to do with it. If, for example, you were looking for forensic evidence in a murder investigation, you would want the physical components that had been present at the time of the crime. If on the other hand you were looking for Theseus himself, you'd want the ship that was actually in his possession.

The abstract, philosophy-of-identity stuff in Dollhouse is at odds with the simple, practical fact that the Dollhouse is all kinds of fucked up. If the Dollhouse was more benign and less rapetastic, it could explore some of the interesting ideas about identity which are – in theory at least – part and parcel of the show. Unfortunately the nature of the Dollhouse makes abstract theorizing about identity an offensive disservice to its victims. Yes, you can wonder to what extent Echo's imprints are real people with volition, and to what extent therefore they are moral agents in their own right capable of, amongst other things, consenting to sex. The problem is that the house's “brainwash and bone” routine is so close to real-world date-rape that it becomes genuinely uncomfortable.

Which is a shame, because the actual ideas are rather interesting.

Themes:

TV & Movies

Sci-fi / Fantasy

Whedonverse

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Arthur B

at 14:18 on 2009-09-21

Uh, actually

the novel came first

. Though you are right that there's a particularly striking image that results from this, if it's the same one from the novel I'm thinking of.

That's a nitpick though, and I completely agree with the rest of your points here. I think the conclusive thing is that, whilst not a compulsive

Buffy

-watcher, I've seen at least a season or two's worth of episodes, and I've

never

even caught an inkling of the idea that vampires are not basically the same people they were before the Embrace (TM White Wolf) but with kewl powerz, simply because I never saw an episode where it was explicitly stated. Which I suppose is another good philosophical question: if you cut out the episodes which make the "they're different people" thing explicit, and a viewer can't work out that vampires are different people from the humans they used to be through observation, can it really be said to be true?

(The best example of using this plot point right, in my book, is

Dracula

; part of the reason the vampirisation of Lucy is so horrifying is that vampire-Lucy is so utterly different from normal-Lucy.)

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Dan H

at 15:36 on 2009-09-21Sorry, you're right, the use of the word "original" in that sentence is entirely specious. I think in my head i was using "original" to mean "before it was co-opted to be an example in a short article about the philosophy of identity".

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Niall

at 22:37 on 2009-09-21Must ... resist ... urge ... to debate ... Buffyverse ... mythology and metaphysics ... must ... resist ...

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Jamie Johnston

at 23:36 on 2009-09-21Ooh, interesting. Hmm. Yes.

Two very

obiter dicta

On the rape / brainwashing point, I sometimes wonder whether it wouldn't help to make the same sort of distinction as is made in law between theft (taking another person's property without permission) and fraud (using deceit to trick another person into giving you his property). The word 'rape' was until only a few decades ago almost entirely confined to violent and plainly non-consensual violation. That, of course, is only because society hadn't got far enough in reducing toleration of that extreme form of sexual abuse for it to even begin seriously looking at less obvious forms. But it does also, rightly or wrongly, cause a certain trickiness when we use the same word to denote sex where there is ostensibly consent but the consent is vitiated by, for example, incapacity. On the one hand using 'rape' in this broader sense is strategically shrewd because, now that everyone pretty much agrees that 'classic' violent rape is wrong and is a real problem, saying that something else is also rape immediately challenges people to think again about that other thing and may well shock them into new understanding. But on the other hand, as with assertions like 'meat is murder' or 'property is theft', there is a risk that people simply say, consciously or unconsciously, 'No, that's plainly not literally true and therefore I can ignore whatever point underlies it'. Whereas more progress might be made by treating the two things as separate and concentrating on getting people to acknowledge that the second is also bad. One might say that to some extent this panders to the tendency to regard 'fraud-type-rape' (if I can for the moment call it that without seeming to imply an actual analogy or to trivialize the whole business with my sloppy terminology) as less bad than 'theft-type-rape', it might at least make more progress in solidifying a consensus that 'fraud-type-rape' is actually wrong to some degree. I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a time when theft was recognized as bad but fraud wasn't; nowadays, though, fraud is often regarded as actually worse than theft because it involves an abuse not only of the institution of property but also of human trust. Anyway, perhaps this isn't the right article for this line of thought...

The second thing is that the two links in the article don't work because in each case the URL they're trying to point to has somehow got the URL for the Ferretbrain articles index tacked onto the front, in addition to the usual quotation-marks-coming-out-as-'&8221' problem.

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http://belmanoir.livejournal.com/

at 00:47 on 2009-09-22Actually, the Tesla machine functions entirely differently in the book--the duplicate that is created in the book is not really capable of functioning independently, so the philosophical/ethical issues are still present but very different. The movie DID come up with the image Dan is discussing.

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Arthur B

at 01:25 on 2009-09-22Ah, I was thinking of the image right at the end of the book, but now it occurs to me that that only happens in the framing story, which wasn't included in the film.

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Robinson L

at 22:00 on 2009-09-24It's perfectly simple, Dan. Removing the soul counts as an involuntary alignment shift to either Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil (I don't think there are many vampires I'd characterize as Lawful Evil). Side effects may include some changes in personality which go beyond those associated Character Alignment, although this has only been documented in one case (Angel), and as you point out, it's not like he's a different person—more like the same person under radically different circumstances.

Now, vampires can act outside their Alignment (Harmony trying to stay friends with Cordelia in Season 2 or 3 would be an even better example), although Spike takes it to ridiculous levels in

Buffy

Season 5. Evil is just the default.

Contrast with Russel T Davies' depiction of the Daleks and Cybermen in the new

Doctor Who

. You kind of have to admire the guy for sticking to the concept that they're without personality and totally evil—no matter how blisteringly dull this makes them as villains, or the stories they appear in. Whedon, on the other hand, through out the whole “vampires without personalities” angle (probably without even realizing what he was doing) pretty much as soon as it threatened his ability to tell an entertaining story. There's probably a lesson to be learned in all that.

Interesting question about whether vampires can be considered monsters in the moral sense, even without souls. Of course, ever since Season 2 (still referring to

Buffy

), I was wondering why the couldn't just restore the souls of all the vampires they encountered. Or at least a couple, like the Alternate Willow from Season 3.

If the Dollhouse was more benign and less rapetastic, it could explore some of the interesting ideas about identity which are – in theory at least – part and parcel of the show.

Yes, but they would also have to make the plots and characters and dialogue and trivialities like that more

interesting

, too. Even without the unfortunate implications of the Dollhouse-as-human-trafficking angle, there's still the

Dollhouse

-as-fecking-boring-tv-show issue to contend with. Without an engaging

story

with which to prevent it, all the deep philosophizing in the world is so much wasted screen time.

@Jamie: Really? The links work just fine for me.

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Jamie Johnston

at 22:54 on 2009-09-24

Really? The links work just fine for me.

This is because someone has fixed them. Presumably for the sole purpose of making me look silly. :)

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Rami

at 06:37 on 2009-09-25

This is because someone has fixed them. Presumably for the sole purpose of making me look silly. :)

Not at all. I've added some smarts to the Ferret so it shouldn't happen again.

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Arthur B

at 15:04 on 2009-09-25I confess: I used

seeecret poweeers

to dive in and fix the links for everyone's short-term convenience.

Which isn't to downplay the importance of Rami's unique ability to alter the ferret at will, or Jamie's keen bug-spotting powers.

TEAMWORK!

(picture of Captain Planet and cast goes here)

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Jamie Johnston

at 16:04 on 2009-09-27Go Planet!

Incidentally, I do wonder sometimes whether it would be kind to newcomers if it said somewhere on the site who has the secret powers. Or indeed who the editor is. But most of the time I enjoy the fact that it doesn't.

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http://pozorvlak.livejournal.com/

at 22:19 on 2009-09-29You might be interested in the Less Wrong post

Timeless Identity

. Spoiler warning: it turns out to be a sales pitch for cryonic preservation. But it's good up until that point.

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Dan H

at 11:18 on 2011-01-10Sorry, I know this is an old post but I was just playing with the Random Article function and I've just found the article linked from the bottom of this comments section.

ARGH ARGH QUANTUM BULLSHIT RAGE!!!

Firstly: you know somebody is a nutbag when they say "as we have seen in..." followed by a link to a post on their own blog.

Secondly: you can't solve the transporter problem by reference to quantum mechanics. Not only does quantum mechanics not really apply to macroscopic bodies, but it ignores the fundamental question of what identity is by clinging to the (completely false) notion that it is somehow impossible to distinguish between particles.

Thirdly: I love how this long winded nonsense about "rationality" ends in something little better than Pascal's Wager - sign up for cryonics because if you're right you get to be immortal and if you aren't you don't lose anything.

Fourthly: GAAAAH QUANTUM BULLSHIT RAGE!!!

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http://orionsnebula.blogspot.com/

at 17:41 on 2011-01-10The "less wrong" guy, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is fascinating. A lot of his stuff seems to be totally nutty, or at the very least exceedingly pretentious, like "the ten virtues of a rationalist." That said, some of his writing is really good.

http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth

is a hilarious essay on epistemology that I found pretty convincing.

He also wrote a Harry Potter fanfic:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality

which I thought was quite funny as well, even if he occasionally stops the story to complain about JK Rowling's plotting.

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Dan H

at 18:43 on 2011-01-10

The "less wrong" guy, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is fascinating

Fascinating he might be, but I find people who cite "quantum mechanics" in support of their personal ideologies extremely irritating. Quantum mechanics says nothing about the nature of identity except as it relates to sub-atomic particles. You certainly can't use quantum mechanics to prove that psychological continuity is the essence of human identity and you certainly-certainly can't use quantum mechanics to prove that psychological continuity is the essence of human identity by using it to argue, falsely, that physical continuity exists where it doesn't on the basis of the erroneous belief that all electrons are really the same electron.

Quantum mechanics *does* say that "identity" is not a measurable property of particles - when I say "this electron" what I really mean is "the electron that currently has these properties" and if I look at the electron again and its properties have changed I cannot meaningfully describe it as being either the same electron or a different electron.

The same ideas can be applied to human identity as well, and funnily enough they have been for years going back to the original Ship of Theseus. Quantum Mechanics doesn't offer us any new insight into the issue. Just because it is true that the identity of a sub-atomic particle depends only on its quantum numbers, that does not mean that the identity of a person depends only on the quantum numbers of the particles in their body (certainly it cannot be a *necessary* component of identity because I am pretty sure the quantum numbers of the particles in my body are changing all the damned time).

Sorry, personal bugbear.

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http://orionsnebula.blogspot.com/

at 19:03 on 2011-01-10I don't disagree with any of that--I just really wanted to take the opportunity to pimp his epistemology essay, which is not about quantum.

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Dan H

at 19:21 on 2011-01-10Yeah, the epistemology essay is pretty cool, although it gets a bit straw mannish towards the end. Then again, if it's good enough for Galileo...

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http://orionsnebula.blogspot.com/

at 05:16 on 2011-01-11I see I should have specified why I find him "fascinating" in my first comment. I was going to, but didn't because I was too hungry.

On the man's main website he says that he "wears two hats." One writes about the "fine art of human rationality." Now, this is an insufferably pretentious way of putting things, and some of his articles follow suit, but most of his writings are actually quite good. What particularly strikes me is his phrase, "intelligence and learning are worth nothing if used to defeat themselves." He talks about the danger of trying to confirm ideas, various cognitive biases, and then, (this is the one that really got me thinking) the fact that even studying psychology is dangerous if you're not scrupulously honest, because the more you know about how people rationalize, the more easily you can find reason to discredit anything you don't want to believe.

The other hat is "concerned with artificial intelligence." And everything he says about this appears to be goats on fire. He supposedly works for the "Singularity Institute," a "public charity funded by individual donations." Sounds like a con man, except he's too obsessive.

It's just a jarring juxtaposition. I can't wrap my head around the existence of a person who can write at length about how to do good science, the cognitive flaws that generate wishful thinking, and the difference between a real explanatory theory and vague pseudoscience--then turn around and hit you with cloning, quantum baffle and singularities.

#Ferretbrain #Buffy the Vampire Slayer #Angel the Series #Joss Whedon #Dollhouse #Dan H

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chronotrek · 7 years

Text

756. [MOV] Nemesis

SCORE:

(2/5 stars)

Troi and Riker are getting married, and the gang's all here, including Guinan and Wesley Crusher in a non-speaking role apparently wearing a Starfleet uniform, undoing whatever character development had been given him, along with Worf who apparently is no longer the Federation ambassador to Qo'noS and is just back to being Picard's tactical officer, undoing whatever character development had been given him. (Hint: this could possibly be a theme for the whole film (hint: it is)) Picard, in his best man speech, begs them to reconsider the marriage and abandoning him for their own ship, the Titan, but Riker's been First Officer long enough. Data sings the happy couple "Blue Skies" while Worf nurses a Romulan ale insta-hangover.

Before the Enterprise heads to Betazed for the Betazoid ceremony, where everyone shall appear nude despite Worf's protestations, they pick up a positronic signature on a planet near the Romulan neutral zone and decide to divert course to investigate. Picard brazenly ignores the rules about the captain not going on away missions and that pesky Prime Directive (in what could possibly be a stark departure from Picard's entire history as a measured paragon (hint: it is)) as they drive a dune buggy across a desert, picking up android pieces (including a head that strongly resembles Data's) and shooting guns at the indigenous Mad Max car gang.

The Enterprise is greeted by the Scimitar, a gigantic Reman-constructed warbird that is clearly meant to be the final boss fight. They're invited aboard to meet Shinzon, and are surprised to find that he's not Reman, though he certainly identifies as one. He's actually human. More than that, he passes a striking resemblance to Tom Hardy Picard. After creeping on Deanna, he produces a blade and cuts his hand, presenting the knife as a gift. Back on the Enterprise, Dr. Crusher's analysis confirms it: Shinzon is a clone of Picard.

Shinzon invites him to dinner on Romulus, where he exposits his origin. He was created by a previous Romulan regime that had intended at some point to assassinate Picard and replace him with the clone, putting an undetectable spy right inside Starfleet. But as often happens on Romulus, the regime changed and the new government decided the plan was too risky, so they shuttled Shinzon off to the dilithium mines of Remus where he suffered under the Romulan heel, seeing no sky for over a decade. His only solace came from the Remans who took him in and raised him as one of them. After proving himself a capable military commander during the Dominion War, Shinzon and his Reman allies constructed the Scimitar and staged a coup, ensuring the freedom of the Reman people. Picard wants to believe Shinzon is genuinely extending an olive branch to the Federation, but tells him it will take time to earn their trust, especially after having just staged a violent coup in which the Romulan senate was killed.

Returning to the Enterprise, he's met with some unfortunate news. They've detected thalaron radiation from the Scimitar, an extremely lethal radiation that in the Scimitar's configuration has the potential to eradicate life on a planetary scale. In addition, they've discovered an unauthorized access to the ship's database, but Data's figured out a way to turn that into a tactical advantage. Picard wanted to take Shinzon at his word but it appears the dude lured them here under false pretenses. And just so we can fully establish that Shinzon and the Remans are EVOL, it turns out the Reman Viceroy Ron Perlman has telepathic abilities he can use to help Shinzon mind-rape Deanna Troi, because that's what passes for plot in 2003.

Just as Picard is refusing to let Deanna relieve herself from duty after being, y'know, raped (what the fuck, Jean-Luc, seriously), he gets beamed over to the Scimitar and tied to a bench so they can extract blood from him for... reasons. Shinzon (looking rather sickly) and Picard have a discussion about how each of them would have taken the same actions as the other had they had each other's lives, something they both delight in pointing out to the other while simultaneously strongly disliking considering themselves. B-4 beams aboard the Scimitar, the spy who accessed ship information. His use as bait is clear now. Of course, it was already clear to the Enterprise crew, because that's not B-4, it's Data posing as him, and he helps break Picard out by engaging in a hallway shootout culminating in stealing a Reman fighter and flying out a window. The Enterprise beams the fighter aboard before the Scimitar can tractor it, and goes to warp to rendezvous with the fleet that has been briefed on the Scimitar's thalaron weapon and its likely target of Earth.

Dr. Exposition Crusher (god they wasted her character in this film) explains that Shinzon was engineered to have an accelerated aging spurt so he'd match Picard's age when it was time to replace him, but they never activated the growth spurt, and the genetic modifications mean his body is starting to break down. It can only be treated by a "complete transfusion" (of what exactly she does not specify, but we can assume it means it would kill Picard), and that appears to be Shinzon's full interest in his original. Meanwhile, Data is forced to deactivate B-4, who doesn't even understand what he did wrong.

The Scimitar is pursuing the Enterprise in cloak, and waits for them to pass through a nebula that will interfere with their communications before attacking. The Enterprise is firing blindly against a cloaked vessel that Geordi can't find a way to track. Shinzon briefly ceases fire to project himself holographically into Picard's ready room, but it's more of a chance for him to gloat megalomaniacally before vanishing. (One wonders why he harbors more resentment for Picard than for the Romulans.) A couple of Romulan warbirds decloak who have decided that maybe they don't want a genocide on their conscience and are determined to stop Shinzon from eradicating Earth. One ship is destroyed and the other crippled, but it buys the Enterprise enough time to use an alternate means of tracking the ship, as Deanna reverses the psychic link between her and Ron Perlman to identify the Scimitar's location. They fire basically everything at the Scimitar which knocks out its cloak.

The Scimitar counters by focusing fire on one shield section, weakening it enough to send through a boarding party so that we can get some fisticuffs action in our big spaceship battle. Worf and Riker head down to deal with it, and Riker faces off directly against Ron Perlman, a battle which winds its way through Jefferies tubes, eventually leading to a poorly-secured catwalk over a bottomless pit (as we all know, starships have bottomless pits), where Riker is ultimately triumphant over Ron Perlman.

Another volley from the Scimitar causes major hull breaches, including turning the bridge viewscreen into a viewport, sucking the helmsman out into space before a force field can be erected. Shinzon positions the Scimitar directly in front of the Enterprise for a staring match, but Picard takes advantage of Shinzon's flair for the dramatic by ordering Deanna to take the helm and ram the Scimitar. (I don't want to seem racist, but it seems like every time a Betazoid is flying a starship, it crashes into something or gets sucked into the Delta Quadrant. #WereAllThinkingIt #SpeciesRealist #TheirEyesAreAllPupilAndNoIrisTheyCantFlyIfTheyCantFocus #Biotroof #IfItWasntClearIDontBelieveThis) This fucks both ships up, and at this point they've both exhausted their complement of weaponry. The only thing the Scimitar can do is back up to decouple the two ships and charge the thalaron array.

Their only hope of survival is to beam someone over to the Scimitar and deactivate the thalaron weapon, so naturally they're going to send over the most qualified combatant: Picard. (He's the main character so he has to punch the bad guy, can't let Worf get the glory or have anything meaningful to do in this film) Once they beam him over, the transporter systems short out, but Data knows Picard needs help, so he uses a hull-breached corridor to launch himself across the vacuum of space toward the Scimitar so he can climb aboard.

Picard fights his way to the Scimitar's bridge and easily dispatches the Remans who are supposed to be super-tough warriors, but whatever. Naturally, he uses his gun as a melee weapon and breaks it like an asshole, so he's now in a fistfight with Shinzon who turns out to have a couple knives on his person and starts swiping menacingly at Picard. They make it into the thalaron generator room, where Picard breaks a pipe off the wall as Shinzon charges at him and it impales the clone in his chest. And, because all clones are superhuman movie monsters, Shinzon menacingly pulls himself forward along the pipe to get face to face with Picard and get a last word in before dying. Data shows up just in the nick of time to slap a one-way transporter beacon onto Picard, sending him back to the Enterprise, while he fires a phaser at the shitty CGI thalaron generator, destroying the Scimitar and sacrificing himself for the Enterprise.

The surviving Romulan warbird sends shuttles to assist the Enterprise as the senior staff open a bottle of Chateau Picard and reminisce about their fallen comrade. Riker recalls first meeting Data in the holodeck as Data was trying and failing to whistle. Riker can't remember the tune. (It was Pop Goes the Weasel.) Notably silent in a moment that would be a time for a best friend to shine, Geordi instead gets no lines and is yet another wasted character in a film that's only serving as a Picard/Data vehicle.

The Enterprise-E is back at Earth spacedock getting rebuilt, and Picard sees Riker off as he goes to captain the Titan. B-4 has been reactivated, presumably with his Reman programming removed, and Picard is telling him about Data's sacrifice and hopes B-4 can one day become a more complete individual like Data was. As Picard gets up to leave, B-4 is humming "Blue Skies" to himself, an indication that he's starting to recall the memories Data implanted on him. Perhaps Data can live again... or perhaps Brent Spiner is getting too old to play an ageless robot.

NITPICKS

Romulan ale is no longer illegal, the trade embargo was lifted during the Dominion War.

Positronic signatures aren't exclusive to androids. A positron is literally just the antiparticle of an electron.

Thalaron radiation is described as being able to consume organic material at the subatomic level, which is nonsense. The distinction between organic and inorganic is made at the atomic level, since organic matter is matter that contains carbon. Once you go subatomic, it's just elementary particles and quarks below that. If thalaron radiation targets organic matter specifically, it has to do it at the atomic or molecular level.

What was the point of the mind-rape other than "Rawr I am a bad guy and I must do bad guy things!" I get that they did it to set up Deanna later turning it against them, but they couldn't have used their psychic power to, I dunno, steal secrets while she was on the bridge? They just used it to be creepy evil assholes?

Why do Remans have a control interface full of tightly spaced buttons when they have those massive fingernail claws poorly designed for such control schemes?

Why is Shinzon planning on using the thalaron radiation on Earth? What animosity does he have for Earth? I would think if he hated anyone, it's Romulans. Why not use it on Romulus?

First Contact established the Enterprise-E as having either 24 or 26 decks. Why is there a 29th deck all of a sudden?

Picard says he and Shinzon have the same heart. Picard's heart is artificial.

Worf's line "The Romulans fought with honor" is not given its due, at all. It's a throwaway line in the film, but when you consider Worf's entire story arc, for him to come to a point where he would ever say that is fucking huge from a character development standpoint. The dude HATES Romulans. They couldn't have thrown in at least one or two lines earlier in the movie where he expresses distaste for them?

Where is the catwalk area with a bottomless pit for the Reman Viceroy to plummet to his death? My first thought was a turbolift shaft, but there was a walkway suspended directly across the pit of death that would get in the way of a turbolift. Not to mention, this is on the erroneous deck 29. You're telling me there's a bottomless pit 3-5 decks below the bottom of the ship?

FAVORITE QUOTES

LaForge: Did you ever think about getting married again? Guinan: No, twenty-three was my limit.

Picard: Don't worry, Number One, we'll still have you to Betazed with plenty of time to spare... Riker: Thank you, sir. Picard: ...where we will all honor the Betazoid tradition. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be in the gym.

Picard: Your wife would never forgive me if anything were to happen to you. You have the bridge, Mister Troi.

Janeway: The Son'a, the Borg, the Romulans. You seem to get all the easy assignments.

Shinzon:You may go. B-4: Where? Shinzon: Out of my sight.

Shinzon: The same noble Picard blood pumps through our veins. Had you lived my life, you'd be doing exactly as I am. So look in the mirror, See yourself. Consider that, Captain. I can think of no greater I torment for you. Picard: Shinzon, I'm a mirror for you as well.

#star trek #the next generation #tng #chronotrek #chronological #review #movie review #star trek nemesis #nemesis #tom hardy #ron perlman #romulan #reman #clone

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