Four Quick Scifi Reviews

Thanks to the magic of cable TV and the internet, I recently got the chance to see some on-screen works of science fiction I missed the first time around. So here's some quick reviews of stuff most of you probably already saw years ago. Warning, some spoilers ahead.

First up is Mission To Mars. The very first thing I thought of when I finished watching it was: they made the wrong movie.

For those unfamiliar with the plot, Future Don Cheadle (well, okay, his character, but I can only think of him as Don Cheadle) heads the first manned landing on Mars. They discover a mysterious mountain-sized artifact of apparent alien origin. When they investigate, the artifact reacts with lethal results.

Back on Earth, another Mars mission is launched, and after a lot of hokey melodrama, the follow-up mission arrives on Mars a year later. They find Future Don Cheadle still alive, having somehow survived a year in the first mission's makeshift base. Then they all traipse back to the artifact, figure out how to get in, and discover a recording meant for mankind by a dopey looking extraterrestrial.

The movie was okay up until the first team died, then it segued into dumbness and horrible cliches. But you see, hidden in that mess, was the movie they should have made. I'll spell it out: Future Don Cheadle was marooned alone on Mars for a year with a mysterious, murderous alien artifact just over the horizon. Why didn't they make that movie instead?

Can you imagine how awesome that story could have been in the hands of a better director (sorry, De Palma) and much better writers? Can you imagine his struggle for survival on an alien, hostile world, more isolated than any human being has ever been in all of history? Or the dark terrors that man must have suffered through in his crushing loneliness, with the deaths of his friends and teammates weighing on him, and the alien horror that caused it all just an hour's walk away? In the hideous silence of the Martian night, was there really something moving out there, or was it all in his mind? Was any of it ever real, he wonders, as he skirts the edges of madness for months at a time?

It could have been one of those awesomely dark, complex mindf*ck movies, where both the hero and the audience wouldn't quite know what was going on for sure. And Don Cheadle could easily have been up to the acting task. Instead we got some horribly-staged bad-science melodramic crap with Gary Sinise. Argh. Guess we can just chalk this up to one of those great missed opportunities.

And on we move to Bicentennial Man starrig Robin Williams, and based on an original short story by the great Isaac Asimov. Of the works reviewed here, it was the least annoying, but that was mostly because it was so bland.

Robin Williams plays Andrew, an android employed by a wealthy family in the far-flung future year of 2005. When Andrew begins showing signs of sentience, his family helps him become more independent, and Andrew begins a 200-year struggle to be accepted as human.

This film was actually a lot more true to Asimov's original vision than the movie adaption of the all-but-raped I, Robot that came out some years later. There's even some very Asimovian intellectual dialog toward the end, when Andrew pleads his case before the World Council of Smart Guys, or whatever they were supposed to be. But sadly, the film also lacked a lot of Asimov's playful inventiveness, and there was never any real tension or excitement to interest the audience. A for effort, but C for execution.

Okay, I'll admit it, I never saw the blockbuster Transformers movie until it was shown on broadcast TV a few weeks ago.

The robots were damn cool. I've got to give the film creators that. Visually they rocked, and their characters were actually fairly engaging as well. Or maybe it just seemed that way because almost every single human character in the film was so vastly annoying that the robots just seemed much more likable in comparison.

For those of you still more behind the times than me, or perhaps just never watched any cartoons in the last quarter century, in Transformers, two factions of a race of living robots are engaged in a millennia-old war, and that war spills over to an alternate version of Earth populated by good-looking but vapid idiots.

Okay, I'll admit the soldier characters were mostly tolerable. But every time our hero Teenage Goofball was on screen I wanted someone to smash his mouth shut with a sledgehammer. Megan Fox was indeed nice to look at, but that was about it. Goofball's clueless family apparently was created by an algorithm that averaged every sitcom cliche from the past twenty years, and the government types were so incompetent I expected Inspectors Gadget and Clouseau to show up at any minute to take charge.

But did I mention the robots were cool? Megatron especially, I thought this was the single best version of him. He honestly came across as menacing and dangerous. Optimus Prime was also at his best, as noble and heroic--and surprisingly badass-- as one could hope for. If only the film had more of them and less of Goofball and the sitcom brigade...

The anime series Stellvia ran on Japanese TV in 2003, and is available on DVD and for viewing online.

The series starts with a crackerjack premise: For unknown reasons, the star Beta Hydrus, 20 light years away, suddenly goes supernova. Its radiation pulse hits Earth in the year 2167, devastating the planet. Humanity slowly rebuilds, and even expands into the solar system. But in the year 2356, mankind faces its most grim challenge yet: the physical shockwave from the supernova is about to wash over the solar system, and threatens to annihilate everything. To protect the inhabited worlds, a number of immense foundation space stations are created to coordinate defenses; Stellvia is the one above Earth.

The series focuses on a 16-year-old Peruvian girl named Shima, who is recruited to undergo pilot training on Stellvia. Despite a rocky start (she earns the nickname "Shipon," japanese for 'ping pong', after her disastrous first flight) her genius ability with computers and math quickly allow her to become a prodigy as a pilot.

The series started off so well, it was sad to see it slowly but surely degenerate into a batch of banal anime cliches. The series is definitely shojo in flavor (the anime equivalent of a 'chick flick') but was still smart and original enough at first to keep my attention. But despite being 350 years in the future and set in space with the potential extinction of humankind threatening, we're set up with a lot of japanese high school drama cliches spread out among video-game-like space sequences. All of the secondary characters are forgettable; not necessarily badly done, just nothing about them stood out or made me care about what happened to them.

Then, half way through the series, the supernova shockwave arrives. The apocalyptic event they'd been building up since the first moments of the series, the Doom of Man, the Great Mission, etc, etc. I had to admit I was expecting an epic struggle and confrontation. But it was over in two episodes, and the big danger was resolved by the most horrible anime cliche of all: a big robot with an even bigger gun.

I stopped watching after that, with 13 episodes still to go. It was just too disappointing. Like Mission to Mars, there was a much better story buried in that material, if only someone had bothered to try and dig it out. Oh well. Maybe someday I'll go back and watch the rest, but after the way they handled their biggest and most important storyline, I'm afraid it would be just more disappointment.

But Stellvia did also have a cool opening theme, though.

Hidden Treasures of Science Fiction: Scrapped Princess!

Is it possible to tell a good science fiction story relying mostly on high fantasy tropes--wizards, magic, knights, prophecies, and so on? There actually have been numerous attempts over the years, but most of them have fallen short or come across as merely clever contrivances. And I thought that's all such attempts could ever be.

That is, until Scrapped Princess, an anime TV series that ran on Japanese TV in 2003, which to my great surprise turned out to be an epic science fiction story 'disguised' as high fantasy. The series is based on number of light novels created by Ichiro Sakaki and boasts the same character designer who worked on Cowboy Bebop. It has received high praises by many reviewers both in Japan and in North America for its excellent story, music, and first-class production values, ending up on numerous 'Best of Anime' lists.

I admit I've become somewhat of a reborn anime fan in the last year. I used to be really into anime in the 90s, but my enthusiasm for it waned after it started becoming increasingly mainstream in the wake of Pokemon, and the need to divert my money at the time to more practical pursuits.

However, thanks to anime shows uploaded online by various sites and dedicated fans, I've been rediscovering a lot of really good anime, and have gotten somewhat back into the hobby. And I'm very glad I have; as a science fiction enthusiast, it has opened up a doorway into a great many good stories I would have never have otherwise discovered. In the past year, I've watched through the entire runs of Cowboy Bebop, Planetes, Last Exile, and most recently, Scrapped Princess.

The 24-epsiode story centers around 15-year-old Pacifica Casull, who at birth was prophecized to be the Poison That Would Destroy the World on her 16th birthday. So she was thrown off a cliff--literally 'scrapped'--as a newborn to make sure that never happened.

But as you can probably guess, she was saved at the last moment and secretly placed with a foster family, where she grew up unaware of her destiny. But just a few months shy of her fateful birthday, she was discovered and her foster parents killed by a murderous mob. She was forced to flee with her older brother and sister, and the story opens with them on the run from the powerful forces who want her dead at all costs--perhaps with justification.

Though the series begins seeming like any another high fantasy tale in the vein of Record of Lodoss War, it quickly becomes clear that this story is actually science fiction via Clark's Law (which states that any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic.) The 'magic' and 'spirits' and 'gods' of their world are all just forms of technology too advanced for them to understand. This may be a bit of a spoiler, but it was something made very plain by the sixth episode, and the rest of the series makes no attempt to disguise from the viewer that everything happening in the series is the result of highly advanced science.

As the world's backstory becomes revealed throughout the series, the reasons for why their world is set up the way it is begins making a lot of sense. It does get a bit convoluted in places, but all the pieces do end up fitting neatly into place by the end.

Scrapped Princess also surprised me in that it was about something we don't see a lot of in anime or in science fiction--brothers and sisters and the bonds siblings share. Pacifica's older adoptive brother and sister--Shannon, a gruff swordsman, and Raquel, a level-headed sorceress--aren't motivated by any hidden agendas or lofty goals. Very simply, they protect Pacifica because she's their beloved little sister, prophecy be damned.

They also honestly act like brothers and sisters too, arguing and trading barbs and sometimes even going against each other out of pique. Pacifica is bratty, Shannon is dour and critical, Raquel is the often exasperated peacemaker. But the strong bond they all share as a family never seems in doubt.

Pacifica comes from the Sailor Moon school of anime heroines. Often times she's whiny, self-absorbed, spoiled, and shallow, especially with her brother Shannon, with whom she often bickers. But beneath that seems a deeper core of compassion and determination which occasionally surfaces, showing the type of woman she would eventually become, if she survives. Throughout the series she struggles a lot emotionally with the fact that so many people are dying and suffering just because she exists, and wonders if maybe the world really would be better off she was 'scrapped.'

The series vacillates back and forth between lighter comedic moments and much more weighty issues. One moment they would be dealing with Soopy Kun (a goofy cartoonish dragon costume that one of the secondary characters ends up habitually wearing), the next they would be dealing with the ultimate fate of mankind and who may have to die for Pacifica to fulfill her destiny. Mostly it finds a good balance between them.

Scrapped Princess also turned out to be very West-friendly. It doesn't rely overly much on anime cliches or nuances of Japanese culture that can often confuse North American viewers new to the medium. There is a fair amount of cheesecake in some episodes and some very occasional but brief peek-a-boo nudity, mostly stemming from the Japanese predilection for frequent bathing. This, taken along with the violence, would probably rate the series at PG-13.

The complete series is available on DVD, which you can find HERE, among other places. Episodes are also available online.

Hidden Treasures Of Science Fiction: Planetes!

(I don't know why I keep putting exclamations after the titles for the 'hidden treasures', it just somehow seems appropriate.)

Planetes is a 2003 hard science fiction anime TV series that, like Cowboy Bebop before it, is quickly building up a substantial fanbase in North America mostly from sheer word of mouth about its quality. You don't even have to be an anime fan to like Planetes; its very West-friendly, features a broad cast of international characters, and like most great fiction, speaks to universal themes independent of cultural nuance.

The series begins in 2075, when an international treaty organization of space-capable nations (the US, Japan, Russia, and some European countries) have built up a substantial infrastructure both in orbit and on the Moon. The development of Helium-3 fusion, with Helium-3 mined from the Moon, has replaced the old oil economy and has led to a major financial boom among the treaty countries, allowing them to fully expand into space. Hundreds of thousands of people now live and work off-Earth.

But of course there's a downside; all that activity in space has produced a tremendous amount of debris; i.e., space junk. Today, in real life, orbital junk represents a potential hazard to space missions. Sixty plus years from now, its a primary ongoing danger to all orbital activity. So who gets the thankless job of cleaning it up?

The series focuses on a crew of these space-going garbagemen. Called 'Half Section' because they are constantly under-funded and undermanned, they go out in an outmoded shuttle and haul off rogue satellites, old space station sections, abandoned experiments, and much more for recycling.

The crew includes Hachi, the series' main character, who is a young, cynical Japanese EVA specialist. Tanabe, the female lead, is another young Japanese national and the idealistic rookie on her first day in the first episode. The pilot is American Fee Carmichael, a brash, loud chain smoker. System specialist Yuri Mihairokov rounds out the space crew, a stoic, soft-spoken Russian. There's also a small office staff, and they all get their moments to shine throughout the 26-episode run, but the focus is definitively on the crew of the garbage scow shuttle called Toybox.

Planetes shines above most other on-screen SF, both live-action and anime, Japanese or American, in two areas: depth of character and scientific accuracy. The series' great strength lies within its characters' stories and their interactions. As the series progresses, they come across as real and compelling, with both noble moments as well as petty. In other words, they act very human, and the viewer very easily can get caught up in their daily lives.

The series also gives us the most realistic representation of future space travel I've ever seen, and given all the research I've done on space tech for orbitalvector.com over the last several years, that's saying a lot. There's not a single scientific or technological gaffe that I could spot in the series. It is hard science fiction the way it should be, and reminded me in some ways of Allen Steele's Near Space series of novels, which also contemplated a very similar type of future in space. This technological accuracy greatly adds to the series' verisimilitude.

This isn't to say Planetes is perfect, however. The series' greatest weakness is its female lead, Tanabe, who is annoying in the extreme. This is especially true in the first handful of episodes where, as the rookie, the viewer is introduced to Half Section through her POV. There is nothing wrong with portraying a character as idealistic or foolish or reckless, but she takes all three to such a degree that its hard to believe the other characters would keep her around, especially after she deliberately endangers the crew more than once. In fact, of all the characters, it takes her almost until the series' very end to find any real depth. Fortunately, after the first three episodes or so, the series begins focusing less on her and much more on the its larger cast, and quickly becomes much more watchable. Planetes also relies too much on unlikely coincidences to move its plot along at times.

But if you can get past these gaffes, you're definitely in for a science fiction treat. Episodes 10, 11, ands 12 are the series highlight, in my opinion. Episode 10, focusing on Yuri's past, has an intense emotional gut-punch. Episode 11 features a wannabe space explorer from a third world country's humble program, and though he starts out as a kind of comedic character, one can't help but be moved by his underdog determination by the end. Epsiode 12 focuses on Fee and her bad habit of smoking, but her obsession turns out to be an unlikely salvation for everyone in orbit in the wake of a terrorist attack. The last third of the series focuses on a sprawling eight-episode storyline involving an expedition to Jupiter that Hachi tries to qualify for while also trying to deal with a personal crisis. This is in addition to the mounting terrorist plot to stop it. Planetes also has something very rare among not only anime, but just about all TV series as well--a pitch-perfect ending.

The complete series of Planetes is available on DVD, which you can find HERE and other outlets that sell anime products. Select episodes are also available for viewing online.

Hidden Treasures Of Science Fiction: The Dirty Pair!

This is the first of what I hope to be a semi-regular feature. These SF works aren't so much "hidden" as they either were once popular but have since fallen off the cultural radar, or never found the audience they very much deserved.

The Dirty Pair is one of the former. It started as a series of comical scifi novels created Haruka Takachiho that were adopted into manga and anime in Japan and later comic books in America. The Dirty Pair's heyday was in the late 80s and 90s, with the last major work featuring them coming out in 2002. Though still fondly remembered by many fans, they have faded somewhat into the pop culture background.

The stories center around Kei (the red-headed, bad girl tomboy) and Yuri (the sweet-mannered intellectual brunette) as they work for an interstellar peacekeeping agency tracking down criminals and foiling terrorist plots. Though officially code-named 'The Lovely Angels', they're much more widely (and notoriously) known as 'The Dirty Pair' because of the habit of their missions often ending in one cataclysm or another. Buildings, cities, colonies, and sometimes even whole planets are often left in smoking ruins in their wake. Though technically the disasters are never their direct fault, their very presence seems to precipitate destruction and chaos.

This tongue-in-cheek approach to action and ultraviolence, combined with the curvy Pair's ballistic-weave work bikinis, would probably be enough to ensure a decent amount of popularity. But surprisingly, though many of their stories can't really be called deep, they are often very smartly written and sharply plotted. Imagine the best of the James Bond movies set in a scifi future and recast with two scantily-clad female leads, and you'll have a decent starting point for Dirty Pair stories.

The best of the original Dirty Pair took the form of anime, through a TV series, a series of direct-to-video productions, and a theatrical film. Of these Affair On Nolandia and Flight 005 Conspiracy are the stand-out episodes in my opinion. Here's a decent collection including both of those, along with the so-so Eden Project

But something surprising happened to The Dirty Pair when they were licensed for American comics and fell into the hands of artist Adam Warren; they got even better.

The original Dirty Pair took most of its cues from traditional Space Opera stories, both from anime and manga as well as popular western versions. Adam Warren, with help for the initial stories by writer Toren Smith, evolved the series into a much more cyberpunk/transhuman direction, and coupled it with his uniquely dynamic anime artistic style, produced a uniquely entertaining property.

In Warren's version (which is officially licensed by the Japanese rights holder), The Dirty Pair become more than talented young women with big guns. They are now genetically-bred, cybernetically enhanced fighting machines wrapped up in deceptively curvaceous barely-adult bodies with big guns. Their personalities, looks, and usual modus operandi are still very much in keeping with their 'classic' japanese versions, but now with a newer, and often darker and more subversive, subtext.

For example, the Fatal But Not Serious storyline hints that the current Kei and Yuri may only be one of a series of Lovely Angels, not the first and not the last, and that when and if they die, they'll simply be replaced by cloned and memory-implanted copies. In another storyline (Run From The Future), the Pair both use and run afoul of drugs that can easily be used as an insidious form of mind control, one inducing an emotional break down and the other inducing near-religious euphoria.

Of this version, A Plague Of Angels, Fatal But Not Serious, and Run From The Future are probably the best. Go Here to find these and more in trade paperback form.

It should be noted that all versions of The Dirty Pair, despite the obvious cheesecake and violence, never really teeter into truly adult territory, as some people assume. There's a lot of curves and cleavage, but rarely any real nudity. Tons of flirty innuendo but no actual sex. Gunplay and explosions in abundance, but very little blood or gore. The Dirty Pair are perhaps demented fan-service fun distilled into its purist form--sexy, kinetic, and smart.