This past week, for reasons even I’m not sure about, I re-watched the entire Babylon 5 saga. It was quite a reflective experience, not only for re-experiencing one of the most unique televised expressions of American SF, but also for the introspective effect that B5 unwaveringly has on its watchers. The show ran for five seasons, with four full-length TV movies, one spin-off series that was cancelled mid-season (Crusade), one abysmal spin-off pilot (Legend of the Rangers) and one rather good attempt at a made-for-tv movie-length miniseries spin-off (The Lost Tales). The movies were touch-and-go, ranging from vomit-inducingly bad to timelessly inspiring. But it’s the main series, the five year tale of the “last of the Babylon stations” that I’d like to take some time to think about today.

If you’re like me, you stumbled upon an episode of B5 sometime in its first season (1994, I think) and had the problematic reaction of wanting to lose your last meal upon the TV screen. The pilot episode, now considered a TV movie in its own right, called “The Gathering”, is unfortunately critical viewing for understanding all the players in the grand story that would eventually unfold. But unfortunately, it is poorly acted, poorly directed, suffers from pitiful special effects and simply cringe-worthy corny dialogue.

So I did not return to the B5 universe…. until I stumbled upon another episode a couple of years later, titled, “War Without End”, a two-parter. The thing about that episode is that, as another writer so perfectly expressed it, it’s the cashing of a cheque that was written a year earlier, in an episode titled, “Babylon Squared”. With “War Without End,” I realized that there was something more to the story that what TV skiffy audiences had thus far been exposed to.

You see, at that point in television history, the Star Trek franchise reigned supreme. Any other space-based show was seen (mostly rightly) as pale imitators to the throne. In fact, Babylon 5’s creator, J. Michael Straczynski (JMS), had famously presented his concept to an industry audience a decade earlier, with the quip that it might surpass Star Trek in popularity and relevance. He was laughed at. (As an aside, there has been speculation since that “Deep Space Nine” was influenced by JMS’s presentation.)

TV at that point in history, even Star Trek, was largely episodic. Arc-driven storylines were rare and never bridged between seasons. (It’s for this reason, I believe, that the Star Trek: Next Generation story arc, “Best of Both Worlds”, was so successful –it was that audience’s first taste of genuine storyline continuity told over many episodes.) The thing about Babylon 5, the plan went, was that it was to be a complete story arc, with a beginning, middle and end, with interweaving side plots and multiple character arcs that would all find satisfying resolution. It was, in essence, a grand pulp novel to be told over 5 years.

Today, with shows like Lost and the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, series-long story arcs are de rigeur. But it all began with Babylon 5. And frankly, in terms of sheer storytelling finesse, no one has done it better than B5 did.

There are many risks associated with such an endeavour. Most famously is that actors would lose interest and drop out. So JMS created his now famous “trap doors”. If a trap door opened, and an actor was swallowed up, there were secondary characters available, in whom viewers had already somewhat invested, that would adopt the dropped-out characters’ story arcs.

At the end of the first season, the main protagonist, Commander Jeffrey Sinclair, fell through a trap door when the actor playing him wasn’t quite working out. So the contingency plan kicked in, and Bruce Boxleitner’s John Sheridan stepped into the leading role. It would happen again in the 5th season, when actress Claudia Christiansen failed to re-negotiate her contract, resulting in her character, Susan Ivanova, being replaced by actress Tracey Scoggins’ Ezlabeth Lochley. Other characters were similarly replaced. These are important events because key plot points had been planned to pivot on those characters; so JMS’s planning was essential.

The second thing that was essential to the success of a long term arc-based story was audience investment. In 1994, the Internet was still new to most people. But those few of us regularly online were the hardcore geeks, the dorks and the nerds… in other words, B5’s target demographic. JMS had a strong online presence, stoking interest and answering questions from the fans. In today’s world of chat rooms and Twitter, the idea of creator-fan engagement is pretty much essential for any broadcast product. Back then, it was new and groundbreaking.

So there I was, having just watched “World Without End” and not understanding what I had just seen, but aware that was indicative of a very complex story. It was my brother Bhash who explained it to me, and his explanation was a revelation.

Allow me to summarize the prelude to B5. A century from now, genuine telepaths start being born into the human gene pool. This kickstarts several changes in our society. A short time later, an alien civilization shows us how to build “jump gates” to travel through hyperspace, thus turning humanity into an interstellar species. We spread out, building colonies and warships and spreading our civilization. We have our first interstellar war, with a species called the Dilgar, and win easily. We become a power in the galaxy. Our arrogance grows to the point where, against all the advice of our allies, we attempt to make contact with a secretive, older race called the Minbari. There is a misunderstanding during first contact, and Earth vessels end up destroying a Minbari vessel which, by unlucky circumstance, was carrying the Minbari’s beloved religious leader.

The Minbari declare holy war against the humans. We lose at (almost) every encounter, to the point where all human territory has been destroyed and all that remains is Earth herself. On the last day of the war, the Minbari surround our world and prepare to destroy all life on Earth. The humans launch a fruitless, last ditch attempt to fly every vessel we have at our attackers.  From the perspective of a single human pilot: he attempts to ram a Minbari ship, but falls unconscious before impact.

When the pilot awakes, the war is over… and the Minbari have surrendered on the verge of victory.

In the wake of the war, measures were taken to ensure that no such misunderstanding would happen again. A series of Babylon space stations were built to be platforms for interstellar diplomacy. The first three were sabotaged and destroyed before they went online. The fourth station was heavily armed and equipped with an engine, in hopes that it would escape sabotage. But Babylon 4 vanished before it could go online.

The Minbari agree to help finance the fifth and final station, with the caveat that they would choose its first commander. At this point, two humans are well known to them: the man who blacked out while attempting to ram their ship, Jeffrey Sinclair, and the only human to have won a battle against the Minbari during the war, John Sheridan.  These two would serve as the dual aspects of the grand tale of conquest, leadership and Messianic advancement that would follow.

And that is where our story begins, with the “gathering” of all the players as Babylon 5 comes online, and with the first hints that an ancient evil is waking somewhere in the galaxy. We begin with a series of mysteries that will prove to be lynchpins to the 5 year story arc: (1) why did the Mimbari surrender on the eve of absolute victory? (2) What happened to Sinclair when he blacked out during the final battle? (3) Why did we suddenly evolve a sub-race of human telepaths?  And, (4) where did Babylon 4 go?

If the above prelude does not whet your appetite to know how this story unfolds, then I would question your credentials as a science fiction fan.

So, as I hope is clear by now, I am fan of the deep, mysterious and complex story old over the lifespan of B5. Unlike more famous arcs –Lost and Battlestar Galactica come to mind– B5’s story arcs were planned out ahead of time. Its finale –the masterpiece, “Sleeping In Light”– was filmed a year before it was aired. There is satisfying conclusion to all its arcs, and none of it was hastily thrown together. It really is a magnificent achievement for its creator, JMS, who singlehandedly wrote two full seasons of episodes, including some of the songs.

After having re-watched the entire saga in essentially one sitting, I have the following parting observations to make:

The story. As I point out, the story is simply overwhelming in its complexity and subtlety, and even for its emotional impact and satisfying conclusion. But the storyteller in me must also respect JMS’s maturity to realize surprises and mysteries do not sustain a product, only spur interest.

Consider Lost, whose many mysteries kept its fans salivating at every turn, only to be left damp and frustrated at the end. The B5 mysteries are resolved fairly early on. And indeed, through frequent foreshadowing and the use of prophecy, even the various endings of all the story arcs are known to the viewer by the end of the third season. JMS’s storytelling brilliance is in relying on his love of character to maintain our interest as the story unfolds in the way we’d already been shown it would unfold.

For example, we know early on that the main character, Sheridan, will die, and that, years later, people would say that he had been taken bodily to heaven, like Mohammed. But we still wait to see how that will transpire. We know from several flash-forwards that two very important supporting characters, Londo and G’Kar, will die at each other’s hands. JMS never shows us the finality of that event in any given episode, but rather spins it out in pieces over the entirety of the 5 years; and when we finally absorb the full picture of their deaths, the circumstances are not at all what we had assumed them to be. It’s a simply brilliant use of prescience and misdirection without ever lying to the viewer.

The characters. I hope it’s clear by now to most serious fans of television SF that everything hangs on the characters. The one thing that salvaged the potential disaster that was Battlestar Galactica’s finale was the creators’ realization that it was the characters that mattered most, in particular Gaius Baltar, who represented the tragedy of that story arc.

JMS knew that in spades. He also knew that the titular lead was not really the emotional focus of the story. While both Sheridan and Sinclair rise to Messianic and Alexandrian statures, with Sheridan in particular being the centre of any scene, they are not the true heart of the tale. Instead, I think it’s the rocky relationship between the aforementioned Londo and G’Kar. Londo, in particular, is the heartbreaking, tragic figure who represents the plight, sadness and hope of the entire B5 universe.  It’s his ambition that triggers the horrible galactic war; it’s his transformation that allows the enemy to be vanquished; and it’s his tragic path that requires his fall from grace if all he loves is to be saved.

Inspirations. Watching the saga again, it’s clear to me now what has been clear to others for 20 years, that B5 is essentially The Lord of the Rings in space. Shout-outs to “the rangers”, the eye of  Sauron, the wakening of an ancient evil, and similar-sounding place names make the connection obvious. But more essentially, the ancient evil arising from afar and threatening civilization, only to be opposed by a marginalized group of heroes who must first marshal their fellowship and their personal motivations, are all plot themes extracted directly from the Tolkien classic.

The special effects. They are universally atrocious. To a lot of people, this is a conversation-ender. Frankly, I don’t care about special effects. Give me a good story, good acting and good dialogue, and how the thing looks on screen is irrelevant to me. But since B5 sometimes tries to show off its piss-poor visuals, I must criticize it for that failing. The one exception is their ability to show space ships moving through atmosphere. They do it absolutely brilliantly. There’s a scene in the 4th season in which a space ship exits hyperspace inside the Martian atmosphere and proceeds to destroy ground targets. There are scenes in which various ships race across the skies of Centauri Prime, especially one in which a Vorlon “planet-killer” blocks out the sun. I’ve re-watched all of those scenes several times over. They look pretty damn real, and represent visual shots rarely seen in other science fiction offerings.

The dialogue. Okay, this is where JMS loses me. When watching B5 episodically once a week, the corny dialogue is a tad painful. Watching it non-stop for a couple of days had me pulling out my hair in frustration. When talking about matters of spiritual or philosophical consequence, JMS’s dialogue is superlative. When he’s trying to be a “regular guy”, his dialogue is cringe-worthy in its amateurishness. I found myself easily predicting the rhythm and length of speech of pretty much every character in every exchange. Most typically, his characters go on at length explaining their motivations in frustrating displays of stretched exposition. Maybe he was going for an obvious homage to opera, since this is space opera of the highest order, and wanted his characters to engage in frequent sonatas and soliloquys. Whatever his intent, it does not work.  It’s sometimes just embarrassing.

The acting. Part of the issue with dialogue is the poor acting of some of the players. Boxleitner is a star who radiates charm, but delivers every line the same. I fear he may actually speak in corny dialogue in his personal life, as well. “Get the hell ot of our galaxy!” is a particularly cringe-worthy example.

But other actors, such as the late Andreas Katsulas (G’Kar) and Peter Jurasik (Londo) bring glorious, deep life to the words they are given. It’s evidence that even the poorest dialogue can be uplifted by gifted actors.

The skinny. One of the reasons I have gone on at length about B5 is that its story and heart represent an enjoyable and important part of the history of American televised SF, and I fear that those who have only stumbled upon an episode of two will have been driven away by its atrocious casual dialogue and visuals.

One way to jump into the story without having to suffer through the gutwrenchingly bad first season is to watch the very well written TV movie, “In The Beginning,” which covers many of the basic plot points. But to get the full impact of the richness of this tale, do consider enduring the first two seasons. In seasons 3 and 4, the story ramps up and you will crave each new episode. The 5th season features some of the best writing and production, but the story staggers a bit. (This is due to a production issue having to do with an uncertain future of the show, causing JMS to accelerate and slow the story at inopportune times.)

And lastly, as I’ve oft said, the final B5 episode, “Sleeping In Light” is, for those who know the plot elements leading up to it, the finest hour of American science fiction TV ever broadcast. Yes, it is that good.

So, give B5 a chance. And be forgiving. It does pay off.

A lot of people like to add “traditional” super hero comic books to the category of science fiction.  On its face, that seems reasonable, since there’s a strong speculative science aspect to much of comics heritage: Superman is an alien, Spider-man is a teen genius scientist, etc.

I tend not to conflate the two.  The science fiction in comic books is often a convenient storytelling trope that is not essential to the narrative.  Thus, by my definition, it does not qualify as true SF.

However, today I will suspend my strictness and write a bit about comic books.  This is mostly because I’ve spent the last month inhaling a score of Ultimate X-Men comic books.  And I’m a longtime Avengers geek.

So this post is all about who I consider to be the best villains in the mainstream comic book universe.  I say “mainstream” because, frankly, the comic book world is a deep and complex labyrinth with many nooks of extreme and arcane nerdliness.  If I were to include some of the less well known titles, like Spawn and Hellboy, then the devil himself would qualify as a villain, and we can’t be having that.

What do I consider to be a good villain?  I think there’s something to be said for a classical approach, wherein a villain is a tragic figure, someone who could have been a hero if it were not for a tragic flaw or an unfortunate circumstance.  Indeed, one of the truly terrifying aspects of a villain is how much he (or she) dwells within in each of us.  A hero is often an unattainable ideal, but a villain is Everyman pushed a little too far.

I particularly like villains who, if viewed a tad askew, are in fact the heroes.  The demise of a great villain should be a reason for both celebration and a touch of sadness and regret, for appreciation for what could have been.

With that, let’s get to my list.

3. Lex Luthor

When the hero (Superman) is essentially a god, indestructible, perfectly honourable and virtuous, who shall his foil be?  A mad man intent on world domination?  A super-powered miscreant?  A dumb brute focused on destruction?  Or, more subtly, a businessman with a complicated agenda?

Most depictions of Luthor are of course the latter.  What I like about Luthor is, firstly, that he has no special powers.  He is just a man, though a brilliant one, unencumbered by the burden of morality.  More importantly, at a certain level, Luthor is right.

Superman, as much as we love him, is a fascistic figure.  He could crush us or rule us at his pleasure.  To his credit, he chooses instead to enforce our own laws on our behalf.  But the prospect and potential for his tyranny is real.  In the real world, we would each pray for the rise of a Lex Luthor, a mere mortal who holds the key to keeping the unfettered godling at bay.

2. The Joker

Where to begin?  Joker’s motivations are mysterious.  He doesn’t care about money or power or any of the traditional factors that compel a villain.  We don’t understand him.  He seems to seek only chaos.  He has no super powers, no advanced technology, just a bizarre personality, an unimpeachable will and a frustrating incomprehensibility.  To heroes, all of whom are seated in order and understanding, the prospect of chaos truly is horrifying.

To me, the scene in The Dark Knight Returns, in which Joker breaks his own neck to frame Batman, is emblematic of the character.   Unpredictable, violent, remorseless, without ego or emotional vulnerability, Joker is the ultimate untouchable terror.

1. Magneto

And here is the king.  Since earliest childhood, Magneto has been my favourite comic character, heroic or villainous.  A survivor of the Nazi holocaust, a troubled soul seeking only justice for “his people”, Magneto is a misguided yet charismatic man of both great power and great honour.  His anger and villainy arise from righteous pain.

We cannot hate him outright, for the injustices he has endured, and for the truth of his campaign.  His foes, the heroes, the X-men, are the naive ones who blindly try to forge a peace between we meek humans and the undeniably superior mutant race.  The thoughtful reader knows, at a certain level, that Magneto is correct, that men and mutants must eventually come into conflict.

Yet he is the villain, for he opposes us.

His tragic history, his awesome power, his cult of personality, and the manner in which we must hesitatingly admit to the righteousness of his campaign, all make Magneto the greatest and best of the comic book villains.

Elisabeth Sladen, 1946-2011

After a tragically brief battle with cancer, actress Elisabeth Sladen died earlier this year.  Science fictions knew her as Sarah Jane Smith, the Doctor’s most capable companion in the original classic run of Dr Who.  She was so popular that the BBC gave her a spin-off show in the early 80s called K-9 and Company.  It was atrocious and lasted only four episodes.

Fast forward three decades and Sladen reprised her classic role in a guest spot on the new Dr Who, opposite the new doctor, David Tennant.  She was so wonderful that the BBC tried again, this time with an older Sarah Jane Smith, and with a show more directly targeted at children.  The result was The Sarah Jane Adventures, which I originally reviewed quite positively.

SJA was, in my opinion, the true successor to the classic Dr Who series.  Its aliens were preposterous but fun.  There was lots of running.  The good guys were really good, and always managed to save the day morally without killing anyone.  Resolutions were always clever, and the protagonists were well acted and, frankly, lovable.  Yes, it was a kid’s show, but a smart and engaging kids’ show.

With Sladen’s death, SJA had to end.  The final episode that she filmed, number 6 in the 5th season, was just broadcast.  If you have anything resembling a heart, it will bring a tear to your eye.  It marks the end of the show, and the end of the one of the most beloved female science fiction characters of all time.

The character Sarah Jane Smith was abandoned by the Doctor back in the 80s.  She was a journalist who spent the next three decades trying to regain the adventure that was once had on board the Tardis.  She never married, never had kids.  Now, in her late 50s, she lives alone on a street called Bannerman Rd, secretly defending the Earth from alien incursions.  Then, into her life comes a series of youths.  As a group, they become her investigative team.  Over 5 seasons, their line-up has evolved, but no one was ever really lost.  The Doctor himself made guest appearances.  And gradually viewers young and old learned to love them all, with their youthful zeal and genuine camaraderie.

Of particular note was a fellow meant to be a secondary supporting character, young Clyde Langer, the rakish Black boy from a broken home, who yearns to be an artist, but who was clearly intended solely for comic relief.  As the show evolved, Clyde’s profound human courage emerged again and again.  Many feel that it is Clyde, flawed, tragic, beset and beloved Clyde, who is the true hero of SJA, not Sarah Jane, not her genetically engineered genius adopted son (episode #1), and not her alien adopted daughter (season 5, episode #1).

The show managed to touch on serious social issues, too, but not in that cloying afters-chool special way that American networks would tend to embrace.  Homelessness, broken homes, child abandonment and slavery were all dealt with smartly on SJA, in a fashion accessible by children.

The show ended with the death of Sladen.  To their credit, the producers decided to complete production of the final episodes that she filmed and to broadcast a shortened season.  And also to their credit, they included a marvelous voice-over by Sladen herself, played just before the credits rolled to end this marvelous show.  She said something to the effect that throughout all her travels in the universe and through time, the last thing she expected to find at the end was a family.  And then there was text: “The adventure continues… forever.”

Goodbye, Elisabeth Sladen, and goodbye Sarah Jane Smith.

If you don’t know, Terra Nova is the flashy new science fiction show created by none other than Steven Spielberg and produced by Brannon Braga (known mostly as the guy who ruined Star Trek). The show has major name backing, and even more major money behind it. In fact, each episode is rumoured to cost $20 million, making it the most expensive network TV show ever made. I’m not sure, but it might even be more expensive than HBO’s Game of Thrones.

Now, that’s where the comparison between these two contemporary genre offerings ends.   Game of Thrones is transcendant, mature and complex entertainment derived from a beloved literary source.  Terra Nova… well… isn’t.

Terra Nova begins sometime in the 22nd century, when the Earth is polluted and infected by us worthless benighted humans. Miraculously, a time tunnel is discovered into the distant past. When, exactly? Well, 85 million years ago, the peak of the time of the dinosaurs (convenient, given Spielberg’s experience in bringing dinosaurs to film). The kicker is that the tunnel is a one-way passage; once you go back in time, there’s no coming back.

So, human society decides to “start over” by sending in small waves “time colonists”, selected as the best, brightest and most useful, to create a human society in the time of the dinosaurs.

Okay, fantastic premise. I mean, really fantastic premise. There are so many elements here for deep, meaningful storytelling: the conflict between the dystopian realities of 22nd century life and expectations of Eden-like perfection in the past; the enormous challenges of navigating a new world with giant beasts and unfamiliar flora and geography; the additional challenge of building a new society from scratch: philosophically, which elements from the failed parent society to preserve and which to trash?

So much possibility! So what did we get instead? A family drama. That’s right. Episodes about whining teenagers, whining teenagers and more whining teenagers. We’re only four episodes in and I’m pulling out my hair over how badly Braga (and yes, I blame Braga for everything) has squandered such a delicious opportunity. We’ve already had the mandatory episode about the virus that causes everyone to temporarily lose their memories. We’ve already had the arrival of the wife’s college lover, just to create some convenient tension. And we’ve even had the completely unbelievable episode about the cute, scruffy child (with the Los Angeles acting school accent) who somehow survived alone in the dinosaur-infested jungle.

So let’s list the top reasons that I think Terra Nova sucks ass:

1. We’re supposed to believe that the colonists are the “best and brightest”, yet they consistently do stupid things and say even stupider things.

2. It’s explained that the time tunnel only goes in one direction: toward the past. Then how are the colonists able to send messages to the future? Stargate had the same problem, since their wormhole was also unidirectional; but they often explained that the exceptions were electromagnetic radiation and extreme gravity. That really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but at least they gave themselves a method of communicating bi-directionally through the wormhole.  Nada from the Terra Nova folks.

3. This is a story about how we weak and fragile humans suddenly find ourselves fighting for our survival in the giant, alien jungles in the time of the freakin’ dinosaurs. Yet, with the exception of the pilot, the dinosaurs have yet to play much of a role at all! How about putting some freaking dinosaurs in your dinosaur show?

4. Enough with the whining teenagers! The lead family’s son is particularly annoying. He spends the first half of the pilot whining about how much he misses his father, and the second half about how much he wishes his father hadn’t come with them. Fuck off, already! I hope the writers are setting him up to be a dinosaur morsel.

5. What’s with all the white people? All right, some of you probably have no idea what I’m talking about, while others know exactly what I’m talking about. Let me break it down for you. Terra Nova is a prime example of what I like to call the subtle racism of American science fiction.

What do you imagine the 22nd century human population looking like? If it’s a bunch of white Americans with Californian accents, then you qualify to be a Hollywood scriptwriter. And if you then imagine the “best and brightest” of the human race being 90% white Americans and 10% “other”, then you qualify to be a Hollywood producer. If you then imagine the natural leader of a new human colony, along with his second in command, as well as the lead protagonist and his family, and pretty much every other background character, to also be white Americans, then you, my friend, qualify to be Steven Spielberg himself.

In fact, the only non-white character of note is the nominal villain, a black woman. Make that a black American woman. Because, in both the 22nd century and 85 million years ago, everyone is American.  Well, with the exception of the protagonist’s wife, who has a British accent and something of a tan… maybe we’re supposed to think she’s Brazilian or something?  Heck, even the characters who may in fact be non-white appear as if they’re just white folks with light tans.  Argh.

What can I say? This show sucks. I’ll keep watching, though, because I want to see how $20 million is wasted every week.

I pride myself in being a connoisseur of fine, mature and smart science fiction.  I allow myself some kitch in other genres, but I like to think that my science fiction is universally of the cerebral brand.  Thus, it may confuse you when I declare that I have become something of a fan of the SyFy show Sanctuary, an offering known less for transcendent genius narratives than for its cliched writing and often linear narratives.

If you don’t know, it’s a US-funded Canadian production, starring Stargate alumna Amanda Tapping as Dr Helen Magnus, who is the seemingly immortal Director of something called the Sanctuary Network.  The Sanctuaries are situated in several locations globally, and are meant to be safe zones for the protection, study and preservation of “abnormals”.  What’s an abnormal?  Well, actually, that’s a bit unclear.  At first, they were humans with odd genetic characteristics, often plucked from mythology or literature: werewolves, mermaids, centaurs, etc.   In later seasons, it was revealed that some animals are also abnormals.  It’s a bit unclear how to distinguish between an “abnormal” and just a “normal” creature of a different species.

But whatever.

The show originated as a limited web series, whose popularity led to its scale-up to a full TV show.  Given what a Stargate fanboy I am, I had high hopes for the show.  In addition to Tapping, some of SG’s production staff and supporting actors migrated to the new show.  In many ways, it was supposed to be the true successor to Stargate SG-1, moreso than the disappointing Stargate: Universe spin-off.  However, the first season was dreadfully disappointing to me.  Mediocre acting, laughable special effects, cliched characters, and of course Tapping’s poor British accent quickly caused the show to drop in my viewing priority. They even had that standard genre TV trope of the episode in which two characters in conflict are trapped in a vehicle for some ridiculous reason, simply as a framework for fastforwarding a relationship or back story; that’s lazy scriptwriting 101.

I almost didn’t continue watching into the second season, and that would have been a mistake.  The show found new life in its second year, mostly due to its new understanding of its own internal mythology.  The origins of Helen Magnus’s immortality had been previously revealed, but now it came with a host of far more interesting characters, “The Five”, all of whom had shared a sample of rare ancient “vampire blood” back in Victorian times.  Magnus received long life.  Her lover, John Druitt, was able to teleport, and was in fact the historic Jack The Ripper.  Legendary scientist Nicola Tesla had had his dormant vampiric genes revived, allowing him to be simply the most awesome character in all of current skiffy TV.  One fellow became the Invisible Man of lore.  And the last, John Watson, was the true Sherlock Holmes of literature. (See, he and Conan Doyle had invented Holmes to conceal Watson’s true detecting genius.)

By brilliantly linking the most beloved literary characters and historic figures of the Victorian age with the modern “abnormal” phenomenon, Sanctuary became something truly interesting: an American genre show that was not based on existing source material and thus truly original.  I can’t stress the importance of this enough.  Pretty much every other skiffy show on TV today –Dr Who, Supernatural, or the now defunct Stargate franchise– are all limited by their internal canons.  Viewers know the limits and extents of those worlds, and thus the limits of the stories.  The one prominent exception is Fringe, but that show has quickly defined its parameters, as well.

The joy of the second season of Sanctuary was finding out how global the Sanctuary network truly is, how the United Nations is aware of its existence, and about the network’s history and its connection to ancient lore.   The first ended in large fashion, with the discovery of a decayed Vampire city and a message from Magnus’s long absent father.  The second season did one better, with a Bollywood dance number and an epic sea battle with a monster on the ocean floor… an episode I’ve actually re-watched a number of times.

Ready for it?  It’s not for those of you who take yourselves too seriously.  The glory of this episode, the finale of season 2, titled “Kali”, is that it’s so overwrought, goofy and, in any parts, poorly acted, that you can’t help but love it.  And yes, it climaxes with a Bollywood dance number, which is played out partly in the mind of a character, played by Robin Dunne, who is have problems distinguishing between reality and illusion.  Yes, it’s atrocious, but also wondrous.  I defy you to watch the dance number without smiling just a little bit.

Another reason I’ve given Sanctuary some reluctant love is the show’s ability to turf leading characters.  Ashley, Magnus’s and Druitt’s daughter, was actually killed on the show: a shocking move.  She was eventually replaced by an even more annoying character, played by Agam Darshi.  And in episode 2 of the 4th season, that character, too, was shelved, though not through anything as permanent as an on-screen death.

Unbelievably, with the 3rd season, Sanctuary continued to shock me with its creativity.  The introduction of the ancient city of Praxis, existing at the hollow centre of the Earth, gave steampunk fanboys inner orgasms.  And with the 4th season, time travel to the Victorian era was introduced, as well as a seeming invasion of abnormals from the centre of the Earth.

As an aside, one of my favourite bits about the show is its tendency to reward the deepest geeks amongst us with obscure and arcane historic references.  John Druitt, for example, was an actual suspect in the Jack The Ripper murders.  And in the time traveling episode, a creature called “Jack” is found prowling the London rooftops.  This is “Springheeled Jack“, an actual criminal phenomenon from the era, since receded into folklore.

Yes, the acting is still sometimes atrocious.  And the special effects aren’t as great as they could be.  And some of the episodes are just, well, stupid.  But the reason I will keep watching Sanctuary for now is that I never know where the overall story arc is going.  In these days of lazy storytelling, that’s a rare and valuable thing.  Oh, and Bigfoot is a regular. So there’s that.

The following is a mostly spoiler-free review.

I have never been a fan of Jane Espenson.  She’s written for a lot of science fiction TV shows, including Star Trek: The Next Generation and Battlestar Galactica (the new one).  She has shone occasionally, as in the brilliant Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode, “Conversations With Dead People“; though I suspect her co-writers reined in her tendency to write sloppy, over-emoting fan fiction.  (Sorry, Jane, that’s how I feel.)  When I learned she would be the show runner for Caprica, it was one more reason not to watch that now cancelled show.

And when I learned that Jane was to be one of the key writers bringing Torchwood to American TV, I truly despaired.  To her credit, Jane has regularly been posting behind-the-scenes comments about the production of Torchwood on AfterElton.com.  (The site takes an interest because Torchwood is one of those few big budget shows that features an openly gay man –John Barrowman– as the lead.)  But reading her observations about what the writers and producers seemed to value most caused me to worry further…. it was starting to sound increasingly like… well, the best term is still “fan fiction.”  I trust you will know what I mean by that.

Now, I was not a fan of the first season of the very successful Dr Who spin-off, as evidenced in this review.  Despite the undeniable charm of the show’s lead, the self-defined omnisexual Captain Jack Harkness, an immortal human who used to be one of the Doctor’s traveling companions, the show was self-obsessed and precious.  But things got much better in the second season.

And, in the third season… whoa, Nelly!  Torchwood: Children of Earth, the 3rd season’s limited mini-series style run, was an unabashed masterpiece.  I have declared proudly and loudly that it was the finest bit of televised science fiction I’ve seen in years, perhaps even decades.

One of Torchwood’s appeals is its courage to kill of main characters and to think big.  At the end of Children of Earth, the team was all but massacred, and its heroes had committed unspeakable crimes.  Where could they possibly take the show next?

America was the answer.  Moving from BBC to the Starz network in the USA meant more money, a new international flavour, and an attempt to broaden Torchwood’s audience to the prized US demographic.  This meant playing with some of the show’s iconography, moving it from charming Cardiff to various international locations, though mostly focusing on the USA.  And it meant adding an army of American co-stars, including delicious cameos from faces from other science fiction cult shows, like Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and The X-files.

Torchwood: Miracle Day was a 10 part outing that saw the team tackle its biggest challenge yet.  While Children of Earth focused on the creepy global phenomenon of all of Earth’s children “stopping” for no reason, Miracle Day tackled the big question: what happens if no one can die?  That’s right.  On one fine afternoon, “the miracle” happened, and all human beings found themselves to be immortal… just like Captain Jack.  But unlike Jack, we regular humans can still be injured.  We can be burnt or decapitated… but we go on living.  It’s a special kind of horrific hell.

And what about Jack?  Well, he’s now the only mortal man on the planet.

Miracle Day purports to tell the tale of how the “miracle” happened and why, and what the team must do to set the world right again.  But where it gets everything right is in its courage to consider all the possible ramifications of sudden immortality.  Will there be enough food?  Can drug companies produce enough pain killers for all of us who must now persist in agony?  If no one dies, how quickly will the Earth be overrun with humans (moreso than it presently is).  What about those who are terminally ill and cannot care for themselves, but who refuse to die?  How can we care for such people?

The dimensions of, and solutions to, these concerns are truly horrifying, as is the show’s accurate portrayal of the popular reaction.  Much like in Children of Earth, head writer Russel Davies seems to have a knack for seeing the subtle, realistic and dark side of otherwise good people.  We all think it’s wrong to burn people alive, for example; but Davies rightly presents a scenario in which, very quickly, citizens would accept such a practice as a regular and justifiable occurrence.

So without revealing too many plot points, let’s break down the good and bad of Miracle Day.  First, the good:

• The premise is simply fantastic.  This is what science fiction is supposed to be about!
• No one is safe.  You just don’t know which of your favourite characters might get knocked off in any given episode.
• The actors were all seasoned and competent.
• The mystery of the “miracle” unwound in an intriguing fashion that keeps you coming back for more.

And the bad:

• Like most Torchwood offerings, there is just way too much overacting and over-emoting.  I’m a fan of John Barrowman’s portrayal of Jack Harkness, but Barrowman needs to turn it down sometimes.  I’ve seens clips of him doing the drag queen thing, and there’s a touch of that in almost every scene he’s in.  There’s not a lot of subtlty in anyone’s performance, and sometimes it caused me to turn away in embarassment.
• My favourite character was killed off fairly early.  I won’t tell you who that was, but you can probably guess.
• I know that Russel Davies was trying to say something profound by having the child-killer Oswald Danes play such a prominent role in this show; but for the life of me, I don’t know what it was.  I think I’d feel better about Danes if his behaviour had been consistent and if his path were more clear.  As it was, his entire subplot felt like filler.
• Indeed, several complete episodes were filler-like.  This whole series could have been wrapped up, like Children of Earth, in 5 or 6 episodes.
• The last couple of minutes of the ending: cheesy and not worthy of Torchwood’s legacy.
• The resolution to the great mystery was ultimately disappointing.  Russel Davies as a history of preferring the deus ex machina ending, letting his characters flush out the quality of his tales.  Well, the characters were insufficient to the task, I’m sorry to say.

So where does that leave us?  Ultimately, Miracle Day was disappointing.  But it was also ambitious and entertaining.  For something that I got for free on TV, I don’t think I wasted my time by watching it.  In fact, several of the themes and concepts will linger with me for months, if not years; and, really, that is the defining characteristic of any good entertainment product.

For many of us, the tragedy of Miracle Day is how it failed to surpass, or at least equal, the transcendence of Children of Earth.  I blame clumsy pacing and poor direction, and way too many pointless plot mis-directions and wasted subplots. I fear that Miracle Day’s stumbles may spell the death of the show in its entirety.

But for me, I always feel that a top notch concept and base story trumps everything: acting, special effects, direction, etc.  (Hey, I’m a Babylon 5 fan. That should tell you something.)  So I will probably re-watch Miracle Day at some point, to look for the hidden bits of wisdom and foreshadowing.  However, if you’ve never before seen Torchwood, I implore you to begin with Children of Earth.

I’ll leave you with one last observation.  There are three important and cryptic names that pop up in Miracle Day: Ablemarch, Costerdane and Frines.  There was some limited hysteria on the internet when someone pointed out that those names can be rearranged to spell, “Ian and Barbara Chesterton.”  You see, in Doctor Who’s original incarnation, the Chestertons were his first traveling companions.  And as was mentioned in The Sarah Jane Adventures, the Chestertons appear to be unaging.  This revelation made Russel Davies appear truly long-planning.  The problem with this analysis is that the letters of “Ablemarch, Costerdane, Frines” can NOT be rearranged to spell “Ian and Barbara Chesterton.”

The lesson: the internet is filled with morons.

PS. There’s a good review of Miracle Day over at io9.

My condo is squeaky clean tonight, which is a sure sign that I have a mountain of work to get done and am procrastinating like mad.  Part of my master procrastination plan is re-watching old skiffy TV shows.  The past couple of days have seen me re-watch the entire 5 season stretch of Stargate: Atlantis.  And let me tell you, it was an enjoyable experience.

I have long sung the praises of the mothership of the Stargate franchise, Stargate: SG-1.  One of my dirty little nerd secrets is that I continue to re-watch old episodes of SG-1 pretty much every week, though the show has been long cancelled.  The show holds a special place in my heart, right next to the original Star Trek.  Currently, SG-1 is the longest running American science fiction show in history (soon to be overtaken by Smallville, of all things), though few outside of the nerd faithful have ever seen an episode.  It’s not as an entrenched a part of Americana as Trek, so no comparison is possible; in terms of cultural importance, Star Trek wins everytime.

Star Trek was historically important, helping to shape the very character of American TV.  It saw five complete TV shows, plus an animated version, 12 feature motion pictures and an empire of books, comic books, video games and conventions.  The Stargate franchise, in comparison, saw three TV shows, plus an animated version, only 1 feature motion picture (but 3 direct to DVD films), and a smaller but equally as profitable empire of books, comic books, video games and conventions.  All of this is to say that Stargate has carved out a place for itself on the skiffy landscape that is both impressive and bankable.

So it was with sadness that many of learned of the cancellation of the most recent incarnation of ‘Gate, Stargate: Universe.  But this was not entirely surprising.  As ambitious, well funded and promoted as SGU was, it lacked the heart of the Stargate franchise, much the same way as all the Star Trek movies (with the exception of The Wrath of Khan) lacked the character and completeness of the Trek TV show.  And having re-experienced both SG-1 and Atlantis these past few days, I think I know what was missing from SGU.

SGU behaved as if it was embarassed by its campy Stargate background, but at the same time wanted to capitalize on the Stargate name.  Much has been said of its “darker” and “more adult” feel, using the shaky camera techniques of Battlestar Galactica.  But I think they missed the point.  We didn’t love BG for its darkness, sexuality and camera style; we loved it for its great acting and writing.  SGU had the acting, but some piss poor stories.  And many of us learned to resent SGU for how it seemed to deny the rich heritage of the Stargate experience.

SGU lacked heroism, characters we could rely upon, sufficient action, and suffered so much from paper-thin stories that struggled to fill its 60-minute timeslot.  Its storytelling problem is illustrated in the pilot episode, which featured a frantic sex scene in a closet, and so many poorly lit sets that I had to keep re-adjusting my monitor to see what was going on.  A “mature” story doesn’t mean sex; it means complicated plots with gravitas.  And “dark” doesn’t mean less light, it means preponderance and foreboding.  In short, it seemed as if the SGU producers learned all the wrong lessons from Battlestar Galactica: all the style, but none of the substance.

In terms of bankablity and the long term economic consequences of sustaining a science fiction TV show, I’ll offer this final observation.  Do you know of anyone who regularly re-watches old episodes of (the re-imagined) Battlestar Galactica?  I don’t.  Similarly, no one re-watches episodes of SGU.  But based upon activity on the online forums, a lot of people, like me, frequently re-watch episodes of both SG-1 and Atlantis.  That should have been an indication to the producers of the kind of Stargate show that would have been financially sustainable.

So what was it about SG-1 that made it so watchable?  Well, with the exception of the final 2-3 seasons, SG-1 was one of the most smartly written mainstream skiffy shows possible.  The science, while fictional, was well developed, explained and internally consistent.  I often cite season two’s “A Matter of Time” as an example of this smartness.  In that episode, the stargate links Earth to a planet that is being consumed by a black hole.  Amazingly, the show explains and uses the effects of macro-gravity, including the alteration of relative time, to tell a tight and tense little story.  That was the moment when I realized that SG-1 was a show that would not treat its audience (mostly made up of nerds like me) like idiots.

Future seasons, including the spin-off Stargate: Atlantis, would fall into the trap of standard TV show SF convenience: all aliens are humanoid, all alien technology can be accessed via a MacBook, all assumptions are true, every alien city looks like the back alley behind the MGM studios, and every alien planet looks like a Vancouver suburb.  Yet somehow all of that became forgivable, as both shows evolved into fun and campy skiffy pablum.

On late winter nights, when I’m up with the sniffles and trying (not) to get work done, pablum is what you want.

I miss Stargate.

My original intent with this article was to list the top science fiction events of the year. But a few problems quickly arose:

1. I didn’t read any science fiction novels or stories that were published in 2010; still going old school for the moment.

2. I refuse to consider fantasy or the superhero genres to be part of the hallowed skiffy universe –which really reduces the number of eligible products to review this year.  On the other hand, this exclusion releases me from having to be exposed to the flood of vampire nonsense that the dumb kids are all about these days.

3. I can’t think of a single skiffy feature film from 2010 that wasn’t disappointing.  The best mainstream film I saw all year was part 1 of Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows.  But, according to my rule of excluding fantasy offerings, I can’t really consider it.  That leaves Inception as, frankly, the most enjoyable and mature skiffy film of the year.  And, to be blunt, I thought Inception was kinda stupid.  So where does that leave me?

4. It leaves me with TV shows, that’s where.

So what were the top skiffy TV moments of 2010?  Let’s start from the bottom and move on upward, shall we?

5. Season 2 of Stargate: Universe.  Sadly, SGU has now been cancelled, so there will not be a season 3.  The show has been a hard sell to us hardcore Stargate fans; and, to be honest, it doesn’t really fill me with much anticipatory joy the way that both Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis did.  But complex, mature characters like Dr Nicholas Rush (Robert Carlyle) are hard to find on TV these days.  So when they do show up, I tend to cherish them.

4. The continuing quality of The Sarah Jane Adventures.  The Dr Who spin-off is ostensibly meant for kids, but resembles more the classic Dr Who of the 1970s and 80s —in a good way!  The SJA stories are well written, internally consistent, never rely on the deus ex machina endings in which the new Who seems to revel, and, most surprisingly, features excellent acting from its youthful cast.  In particular, the character of Clyde Langer continues to grow from the convenient sidekick of the supposedly more interesting alien son of the titular star, to a truly believable and heroic figure for whom I cannot help but cheer in every episode.  It’s nice to see that excellent young adult skiffy programming exists somewhere in the Anglosphere.

3. The successful transition from David Tennant to Matt Smith as the new Doctor Who.  Count me among those who rank Tennant as the best ever Doctor, even better than the legendary Tom Baker.  I was none too pleased to hear of his departure.  The brilliance of the BBC approach was to reduce his final episodes into a series of extended specials, culminating with The End of Time, which, while not particularly spectacular in the narrative department, nonetheless allowed Tenant to give us a marvelous performance as a dying hero who really doesn’t want to die.

Matt Smith has disappointed many Tennant fans, but not me.  I find his version of the most important character in TV skiffy history to be refreshingly vulnerable and hesitant.  More importantly, the stories in which he has found himself are darker, more textured and foreboding than any since the re-birth of Dr Who five years ago.

2. The redemption of Sanctuary.  I keep meaning to write a review of this very Canadian show, but haven’t got around to it yet.  In short, the first season was disappointing and puerile. The second season picked up steam and started to develop a fascinating new mythology and back story, despite some annoying casting choices.  The third season, which began in the Fall of 2010, has been nothing short of fantastic.  The beauty of Sanctuary is its unabashed camp, its love for classic figures of literature (Jekyll & Hyde, Sherlock Holmes, the Invisible Man) and history (Nicola Tesla, Jack the Ripper), its free exploration of an evolving interior universe, and a sense of visual style that is refreshingly fantastical.

1. By far the best TV science fiction show this year has been Fringe.  As with Sanctuary, I keep meaning to write a review for this site, but haven’t yet got around to it.  Where do I start?  Fringe is more than just an updated X-Files.  It has feature film quality acting in the form of John Noble and Joshua Jackson, a different kind of compelling and vulnerable heroine in Anna Torv, crazy cross-marketing stunts with characters inexplicably showing up at real life sporting events and such, and a bloody exciting story arc that continues to grow in depth and complexity with every sign of a rational and well planned conclusion to come.  My only fear, of course, is that declining ratings may spell the cancellation of Fringe before it can fulfill its promise.

I must admit, when contemplating the year in science fiction, my thoughts keep returning to 2009.  The 3rd season of Torchwood, told as a five part miniseries called “Children of Earth“, remains, for me, the most awe-inspiring televised skffy experience of the last few years.  Here’s hoping 2011 can bring a product of comparable value.

I am willing to grant Lost Girl a Mulligan. A good ol’ fashioned reset has happened before now. An actor changed. A premise shifted. Hell, entire seasons have been explained away as a dream. Lost Girl still has a chance to redeem itself and several options to choose from.

The first time I saw the trailer, I was so excited. Here was a science fiction / fantasy genre with – wait for it – a female lead! Strong female leads are still not that common in the genre and any show that has one has my immediate support. I want to see myself on screen. I want to project myself into the life of a strong, competent heroine. I want the glory that is watching a great character vanquish all foes. I want the fantasy of a really great love story – filled with all the will-they-won’t-they that fuels fanfiction and daydreams everywhere.

I have seen two episodes so far of Lost Girl – the pilot and episode two. Each one is an amalgam of good and bad on several levels – and – because I can appreciate how bloody hard it must be to get a show on the air, I am – as I said – willing to float them a Mulligan. Let’s get some re-tooling done on the show, pull things in tightly and pretend some of this never existed. Some of it works. Some of it doesn’t make sense. Some of it is awful.

First the awful so we can end this on a high note…

To start, the show is called “Lost Girl” but the main character Bo has got to be in her thirties if she is a day. It may well be that thirty is the new twenty but no where does it say that thirty is the new “girl”. I thought for a while the sidekick Kenzie was the main character. It’s a Xena / Gabrielle set up and – because there is death by kissing – the subtext is rife with all kinds of sexual overtone combinations. Still – the age difference is so huge that it feels almost like Bo is contributing to the corruption of a minor.

The “Lost Girl” Bo is much like Harry Potter. She grows up not knowing her lineage and is now confronted with a world she never knew existed. She has lived – as she says – the life of a homicidal maniac and a drifter. If she’s thirty, then she has killed about a hundred and fifty people, assuming she needs to feed every month. From the first two shows, it appears this need is more frequent than that. Following along with that concept, killing that many people and remaining undetected is not easy. Police are not that stupid. Someone somewhere would have connected the dots. I realize I am supposed to suspend my belief because – well – the other characters tell me to. So let’s say she killed that many. The way Bo is written (and acted), she come across as unremorseful about her crimes as … well … Dexter. Worse. At least Dexter is played as a soulless creature. Bo has a remarkable lack of remorse and this is critical because it makes the lead completely unsympathetic. She comes across as a cold, bitchy brat. And I don’t think that was the intent. The character, (writing and acting) is uncredible, shrill, goofy and just plain unlikable.

Here’s another part of the premise that isn’t working well – the kissy-faced killing of humans. Bo kills her human victims with a kiss. If she kisses a Fae, she can draw in power to heal or top up her power stores without killing the Fae. I think it was intended to be sexy, adult and provocative. It ends up being silly and – like all things in over-abundance – is diminished to commodity status. This is also contrary to Rule #17A about creating a love interest. Unresolved Sexual Tension is a massive attention sustainer and a friction to make fiction. By episode two, the two lead male and female characters are screwing each other. Great. Now what? I can get this crap on soap operas, I don’t need it in my science fiction too.

I confess this next echoes sentiments written elsewhere on this subject – the central writing rule of “show, don’t tell” is completely ignored. Both episodes were full of exposition and great whacking passages of explanation. Characters just stood around and explained History of the Fae. Blah Blah Blah. No slow tease and much like the kissy face sex, the interest just bleeds away. There is a lot of thought that has gone into the creation of this Fae world and it feels rushed as if someone is afraid that enough information has to come out before it gets cancelled.

Asking for a Mulligan, though, means that there’s lots of good in the show and enough good that it’s worth saving.

As I said, there’s lots of thought that has gone into creating the world of Fae. The creatures of the world are fun and the play at explaining Headless Horsemen, sprites and signs of the Zodiac are great.

There’s some great lines … most of them given to the sidekick Kenzie. One is given to a Fae with classic office décor. Bo asks, “Early Tolkien?” He answers, “Where do you think he got the idea?”

Two gold stars go to the actors who play Kenzie and Dyson.

Certainly Kenzi (Ksenia Solo) dominates every scene she is in. She gets and executes almost all the best lines. She is tweaky, honest and completely believable and is the obligatory “human” that is the viewer’s access the world. Her reactions (again a combination of writing and actor) really get at the core of the discovery of someone who is not one of us.

Dyson (Kristen Holden-Reid) – a detective and the love interest – is kick ass at brooding and ironic. His character is wonderfully oblique and subtle. Because there is so little disclosed about him, I pay attention to every look, every move, every word. I want to know more. He is soft spoken but there’s a hard edge to him that suggests a back story that is bound to be rivetting.

So … from me, a vote for a Mulligan. Lots busted but salvageable.

During a visit to the University of Toronto when I was an undergraduate student there, one of the most underrated science fiction writers of the mid-20th century, the magnificent Harlan Ellison, told an inquirer that one could learn everything one needed to know about the art and science of writing by reading the collected works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

I’d read all of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories as a boy, and continue to listen to them as audio plays during long drives.  I’m very much a fan of all the dramatic productions of the stories, from the heydey of Basil Rathbone to the pinnacle of Holmes’s interpretation by Jeremy Brett to the recent, immensely entertaining, Guy Ritchie film.  But I never found Conan Doyle’s writing to be particularly instructive, nor his plots particularly inventive.

The value of the Holmes stories, in my opinion, is in their novelty.  Sherlock Holmes was literature’s first superhero, a meta-human with remarkable sensory powers who, for the first time, employed this new thing called “science” in the pursuit of criminal justice.  And this is what makes Sherlock Holmes a character of science fiction.

The new BBC production, called simply Sherlock, updates the classic tale by placing Holmes in modern, 21st century London.  Dr Watson is a battle scarred army doctor, fresh from war in Afghanistan, who finds an improbable friend in the (quite possibly) mentally unstable Holmes.  This new Holmes advertises on his website that he is a champion of  “the science of deduction.”  That, in and of itself, qualifies Sherlock as a Skiffy show.

There are traditionally two dangers for any Sherlock Holmes adaptation.  First is that the audience has become accustomed to seeing the great detective divine truth from a convoluted crime using nothing more than his mind and the data.  This is a Herculean challenge for any script writer.  The temptation is to jog down that well traveled path to action cinema, which is not what Holmes is about at all.  A further temptation is to withhold information from the audience, thus making Holmes’s feat all the more impressive.  The best adaptations lay the facts out for all to see, but weave a clever narrative of distraction and misdirection that allows the titular star to arise triumphant from the morass well before the casual viewer arrives at a solution.

The second challenge is that of portrayal.  For decades, Basil Rathbone set the tone for Holmes in stage, film and radio.  Holmes must be calm, brooding and always in control.  Then came Jeremy Brett, who created the finest Holmes of the television era: a manic man of terrifying intellect and tragic flaw, a gigantic ego in a room of lessers.  It is to Brett’s Holmes that all others will now be compared.  It’s a hard challenge for any actor to face.

The new Sherlock was created by the new Dr Who show runner, Steven Moffat.  Moffat is known for having written the most taut and terrifying of the new Who episodes, so expectations were high for this new show.  It appears as if a pilot was shot but unaired because it was felt that it was not clever enough.  This is a heartening development.  It means that the show’s creators take seriously the first challenge mentioned above.  I am pleased to report that the show’s aired first episode, “A Study in Pink“, is downright brilliant.  Had it been a movie released to theatres, I would have happily paid to see it.

Indeed, the series’ full run is only three episodes.  That’s right: three episodes.  We await news of whether BBC will produce a second season.  But each episode is 90 minutes long, making each a movie in its own right.  The plot progresses so tightly, however, that each feels like a traditional 45 minute American TV show.  The third episode, “The Great Game“, is so complicated –and some will say convoluted– that I confess to having got lost a couple of times.  But this is a good thing!  I’d rather a show’s plot challenge me than to have it be predictable and stale.

Now, the second challenge is perhaps the most daunting.  Who can compete with Jeremy Brett?  Who indeed?  Again, I am pleased to report that the weirdly named Benedict Cumberbatch does a splendid job.  There are rumours that Cumberbatch was in fact offered the part of the iconic Doctor Who after the departure of David Tennant, but chose instead to feast upon the Holmes role.  I, for one, would have loved to have seen him as the 900 year old time lord.  His is a special kind of vulnerable arrogance that works for both the Doctor and the addict Holmes.

Where Rathbone’s Holmes was respectable and all powerful, and Brett’s Holmes was otherworldly, flawed and terrifying, Cumberbatch gives us a sort of idiot savant who excels at the meta-human intricacies of deduction, but who is incapable of basic human relationships and who doesn’t even know who the Prime Minister is or that the Earth goes around the Sun.

In this modern era, a third challenge to enacting the myth of Holmes has arisen: how to depict the Holmes-Watson relationship.  Author and critic Rex Stout, a member of the “Baker Street Irregulars“, once quipped that Watson was clearly a woman.  This caused much consternation amongst Conan Doyle purists.  But the next logical development then arose: suggestions that Holmes and Watson enjoyed more than just a fraternal relationship.

In the Conan Doyle originals, Watson was a convenient literary mechanism for telling the story of Holmes.  The classist Victorian era was one that allowed a man to subsume his ego in service of a greater man’s ambition.  In the modern world, however, it seems we need a reason for two middle-aged bachelors to live together in one flat.  And that reason is rarely just economic.

The current film plumbs this suggestion in subtle tones, as Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr navigate about one another’s feelings like spurned lovers.  In Sherlock, the supposition is brought to the forefront, wherein time and again the pair are asked if they are a couple.  Indeed, in one telling scene, Holmes misinterprets Watson’s personal questions as an attempt at seduction.  Fortunately for the Holmes mythos, the seeminly Aspergian detective is revealed to be as asexual as he has always been, proclaiming loudly that he is “married to his work.”

Given the deeper interest in the two men’s relationship, the character of Watson has grown more important in recent adaptations.  To write and portray him requires a subtle hand that allows character development, but that does not overshadow the mystery or depth of the main man, Holmes himself.  To play the role of Watson, then, is probably more difficult and less fun than to play Holmes.  Watson must be more human and more sensitive than Holmes, to act as a descriptive foil to the great man.  Watson cannot be a fool, for how could Holmes tolerate a fool?  But Watson cannot be allowed to reach conclusions before Holmes does.  See the challenge?

Martin Freeman does an adequate job with a difficult role.  But, frankly, he is fairly forgettable.  Mind you, this might be unavoidable, given the way in which Cumberbatch, via Moffat’s writing, dominates every scene and draws every eye toward him.

Sherlock is a daring, clever and immensely enjoyable interpretation of the world of Conan Doyle.  It’s a new take on the now tired “crime procedural” that drags the now banal CSI-type shows back to their roots, back to the great meta-human detective that started it all.  See, Conan Doyle understood that ultimately it’s not the crime or its solving that drives the story, but the inner darkness that compels both the criminal and the detective who catches him.