Pixel Scroll 10/6/18 Box Is Made For Tickin’, Pixel’s Very Droll, Never Seen SF News That Didn’t Look Better In The Scroll

(1) ST:D AT NYCC. Debuted at New York Comic Con during its Madison Square Garden panel with cast and executive producers, this trailer previews the continued voyage of the U.S.S. Discovery and its crews’ mission to discover new worlds and new life forms. Star Trek: Discovery returns to CBS All Access on January 17, 2019.

(2) BUY A MCQUARRIE. It’s said Ralph McQuarrie’s artwork is rarely available at auction. The current bid on this piece is $55,000.

A painting of rebels preparing a hanger of Y-Wing Fighters for a battle against Darth Vader’s empire — a rare piece of Star Wars movie concept art created by artist Ralph McQuarrie to help George Lucas create his space opera — may sell for $100,000 at auction Oct. 12. The auction marks the first time the original 1976 painting will be seen by the public in 35 years.

…The painting creates a dark spacecraft hangar. In the foreground is presumably a rebel fighter’s Y-wing spacecraft with an “R2 droid” unit visible atop the fighter. In the background, McQuarrie features an X-wing Fighter, a craft design used in the film series.

The painting is well known. It was one of the 21 paintings reproduced in the December 1977 Star Wars Portfolio and is reproduced in the 2016 book Star Wars Art: Ralph McQuarrie Volume 1dated as “January 1976/early 1976.” It also appears in The Art of Star Wars (Ballantine, 1979). McQuarrie died in 2012.

(3) A LOOK AHEAD. Camestros Felapton can’t say what those baby steps might be, but he doesn’t feel we’re required to assume they’ll never happen: “A Question on the Economics of Space Energy”.

The cannon was invented before the steam train. The fusion bomb was perfected before the fusion reactor. Deploying huge amounts of energy is not necessarily technically difficult, what is difficult is deploying huge amounts of energy without wrecking stuff. Of course, that doesn’t mean making wormholes in space to travel to distant planets is feasible but it does make me think it might not require a level of finesse over physics that could be applied to more subtle things.

(4) GET YOUR KICKS AT WORLDCON 76. Enjoy Rebecca Inch-Partridge’s photo-illustrated con report — “World Science Fiction Convention 2018”.

Something else that made this convention special was that my son and his girlfriend, Chelsea came with me. It was their first Worldcon and they really got into it.

(5) STAR WARS LAND. “Disney drops more details on its Star Wars land Millennium Falcon ride” — the Orlando Business Journal has the story.

A special feature, released on the Target (NYSE: TGT) exclusive Blu-ray edition of Solo: A Star Wars Story and discussed at length on web sites including WDW News Today, outlines some mechanical and storytelling details of a ride based on the iconic Millennium Falcon starship that include:

  • The story: Your crew has been given a mission by Hondo Ohnaka, a galactic pirate who was introduced in the Clone Wars animated series and returned in Star Wars Rebels. If you are successful and the ship is brought back in good shape, you could receive a reward in the form of Galactic Credits.
  • The crew: In the films, the Millennium Falcon cockpit has four seats, but the ride’s backstory states that modifications were made for an expanded crew of six, all of whom will have assigned tasks. For example: Gunners, stationed at center, need to defend against TIE fighter assaults. Engineers, stationed in back, need to maintain flight systems and repair damage. If damage is extensive and the mission unsuccessful, you may end up owing money to Hondo, who could task a local bounty hunter with finding you.
  • The ship: The ride itself will consist of seven rotating pods that each will seat six crew members. The cockpit will have a total of 200 working switches and knobs that control the various crew tasks. And riders will walk through the interior of the Millennium Falcon, surrounded by details from the films, like the holo chess table.

(6) MEMORIES. Audiobook king Audible.com has been making noise in the Big Apple – Andrew Liptak tells how at The Verge: “Audible brought Harry Potter’s bottled memories to life at New York Comic Con”.

For the last two years at New York Comic Con, Audible has been on a drive to demonstrate that audiobooks are an altogether different experience for readers than sitting down with a book. Last year, the company rolled out an impressive faux museum to support Andy Weir’s novel Artemiscomplete with a lunar art installation. This year, the company is showcasing a familiar classic, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, with an installation designed to mimic the memories of the books’ characters.

Titled “A Harry Potter Pensieve Experience,” the activation is a clever reminder that reading and listening are two very different activities. In Harry Potter’s world, the Pensieve is a way to access someone’s memories: a wizard extracts them from their mind with a wand, and they can store them at will. This experience replicates that: attendees select a vial containing the “memories” of a character — which is really a color-coded dot pasted on the bottom — when they enter. The exhibit isn’t huge, but it contains several stations equipped with a set of headphones and a place to slot in the vial. The computer dutifully figures out which character you have, and at each station, it reads a different excerpt from one of the novels. A screen in front of you flashes with an abstract bit of animation that matches the mood of the excerpt that you’re listening to.

(7) ORIGIN OFFICIAL TRAILER. Released October 4 on YouTube Premium –

From the producers of The Crown & producers of Lost comes Origin, a chilling new original series that follows a group of troubled passengers as they wake up on a damaged spaceship abandoned in deep space. Each having left behind a dark past in search of a fresh start on a newly colonized planet, they’re determined to survive at all costs. But as their terrifying situation spirals into paranoia, they come to realize that the greatest threat to their dream of starting over – and indeed their lives – is something far darker than the pasts they were so desperate to escape.

 

(8) NOVAK OBIT. “Jim Novak, Marvel Staff Letterer and Logo Designer, Has Died”Multiversity Comics pays tribute.

In 1977, Novak was assigned to design the logo for Marvel’s adaptation of the forthcoming sci-fi movie Star Wars. In a 1983 edition of Comics Interview, Novak recalled, “They brought in their logo from the studio and Stan Lee wasn’t crazy about it – the ‘W’ was a little bit different looking and the letters weren’t Marvel-style. So I ended up redoing it.” Novak expressed surprise at seeing his version of the logo on various merchandise, noting he was only paid $25 to redesign it (the film’s final version, used today, was created by Joe Johnston).

(9) VINTON OBIT. Claymation creator Will Vinton has died at the age of 70 Variety reports. In 1985, Vinton directed his sole feature film, The Adventures of Mark Twain, voiced by James Whitmore.

His studio created numerous iconic Claymation characters for advertisements, especially the California Raisins, which gained notoriety for the art of Claymation as a whole after an ad using the Motown hit “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” went the ’80s equivalent of viral.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and JJ.]

  • Born October 6, 1910 – Elsie Wollheim, Publisher, Writer, Editor, and Member of First Fandom. She was one of the original Futurians, assisted them in their publishing efforts, was a member of the Vanguard APA, and even published her own one-shot fanzine, Highpoints, in March 1945. She married fellow Futurian Donald Wollheim in 1943, and they co-founded DAW Books in 1972. She received a Special Award from the British Fantasy Society in 1984. She was Guest of Honor at Wiscon 5, Lunacon 26, Darkover Grand Council 6, DeepSouthCon 33, and was Special GoH for L.A.Con III, the 1996 Worldcon, but passed away before the convention.
  • Born October 6, 1928 – Frank Dietz, Writer, Editor, Fan, and Conrunner. He helped found the International Science Fiction Correspondence Club in 1949. In late 1956, with his then wife Belle and Dave Kyle, he founded the Lunarians (aka the New York Science Fiction Society), which in turn launched Lunacon, a convention which Dietz chaired for the first 15 years of its 60-year run. He published numerous fanzines and apazines in his fannish career, including Luna, Luna Monthly, Ground Zero, and Science, Fantasy, and Science Fiction, and was Guest of Honor at Lunacon 50. His room party at the 1951 Worldcon in New Orleans was the genesis of the notorious bash which became known as Room 770.
  • Born October 6, 1942 – Arthur D. Hlavaty, 76, Writer, Editor, Publisher, and Fan, who has published dozens of apazines and fanzines, has contributed to many other fanzines and publications such as The New York Review of Science Fiction, has been a finalist for the Best Fan Writer Hugo twelve times, and has been Guest of Honor at numerous conventions including Detcon1, the 2014 NASFiC. Mike Glyer posted some commentary on Hlavaty’s fannish writing here on File 770.
  • Born October 6, 1950 – Dr. David Brin, 68, Astrophysicist and Writer. His debut novel, Sundiver, earned him a nomination for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His Hugo-nominated post-apocalyptic novella The Postman was later developed into a Campbell-winning and Hugo-nominated novel, and made into a movie. His novels and short fiction, especially those in his Uplift and Existence universes and the standalone clone novel The Kiln People, have earned him numerous Hugo, Nebula, Campbell, Clarke, Locus, Anlab, Seiun, and Kurd Laßwitz Award nominations and wins. He has been Guest of Honor at many conventions, including Nippon 2007, the Worldcon in Japan. I’ll admit that the book he co-wrote with Leah Wilson, King Kong Is Back! An Unauthorized Look at One Humongous Ape, tickles me.
  • Born October 6, 1955 – Ellen Kushner, 63, Writer and Editor. Author of the mannerpunk Riverside series, where hot chocolate, manners and blood have equal billing; the third novel in the series, The Privilege of the Sword, won a Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel. If you’ve not read them, they make fine Autumnal reading for those cold, windy evenings. Her second novel, Thomas the Rhymer, won the World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Award, and her fiction and anthologies have received several Nebula, World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Tiptree, Balrog, and Locus Award nominations. She has released a music CD The Golden Dreydl: A Klezmer Nutcracker, which uses selected music from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker to tell a Hanukkah tale, with the music being performed by Shirim Klezmer Orchestra. It’s quite excellent. Kushner, along with Elizabeth Schwartz and Yale Strom, scripted the musical audio drama The Witches of Lublin for American Public Radio, based on the history of Eighteenth-century Eastern European Jewish women who were klezmer musicians. She was Guest of Honor at Arisia in 1993 and Wiscon in 1998.
  • Born October 6, 1955 – Dr. Athena Andreadis, 63, Biomedical Scientist, Teacher, Writer and Editor originally from England, whose anthologies include The Other Half of the Sky (with Kay Holt) and To Shape the Dark. Her nonfiction work includes numerous essays such as “Why Science Needs Science Fiction” and “We Must Love One Another or Die: A Critique of Star Wars”, and the book To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek. She has also published numerous short stories and poems, several of them in her Wisps of Spider Silk universe.
  • Born October 6, 1963 – Elisabeth Shue, 55, Oscar-nominated Actor and Producer whose genre roles include Back to the Future II and III, Heart and Souls, City of Angels, Tuck Everlasting (based on the children’s book by Natalie Babbitt), Hollow Man (a remake of H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man), Hide and Seek, House at the End of the Street, and – wait for it – Piranha 3D. However, JJ’s favorite Shue movie is Adventures in Babysitting, which is totally genre, because it features a cameo by Thor.
  • Born October 6, 1965 – Bruce Baugh, 53, Writer, Game Designer, and Fan who has published some short fiction of his own as well as designing and writing for numerous RPGs for publishers including Green Ronin, Sword & Sorcery Studios, and White Wolf, for games such as Gamma World, Kindred of the East, 2001, Mage: The Ascension, Vampire: The Masquerade, and Trinity. He’s done fiction and gaming reviews for venues such as The New York Review of Science Fiction, Tor.com, and RPG.net.
  • Born October 6, 1973 – Ioan Gruffudd, 45, Actor, Singer, and Musician from Wales known for genre roles playing Reed Richards in Fantastic Four, Lancelot in King Arthur, parts in fantasy films The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box, 102 Dalmations, and The Secret of Moonacre, and the lead as the immortal in the TV series Forever.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) JAPANESE CARTOONS ON US TV. Galactic Journey celebrates the genesis of Astro Boy: “[October 6, 1963] Birth of a genre (the Japanese cartoon, Astro Boy)”.

The birth of Astro Boy

The story begins in Japan immediately after the war’s end within the pages of a comic book.  While comic strips had been known in the country for nearly a century, it was the American occupation and the subsequent exposure to western-style comics that really made them popular in the island nation.  One of the most famous of the Japanese comic artists is Osamu Tezuka, who created the character that would one day be known as Astro Boy in 1952.  Called “Mighty Atom,” he has appeared in weekly comic anthologies ever since.

(13) ZOMBIE SODA. This product came out in 2016 and hasn’t died out yet!

What could more fun than drinking unique Zombie themed sodas at Halloween. Each flavor is labeled with images created by comic book artists specifically for the bottles.  DeadWorld Zombie sodas are deliciously made with pure cane soda.  Make sure this year’s Halloween bash includes DeadWorld Zombie sodas!

DeadWorld Zombie Soda Sampler includes 2 bottles each of 6 Zombie themed flavors: Root Beer, Orange, Black Cherry, Cherry Vanilla Cola, Green Apple, and Cotton Candy.

(14) EATS, SHOOTS, AND LEAVES. “The world’s first fully-autonomous indoor farm” (video).

A farm in Silicon Valley which is capable of autonomously growing and picking leafy greens is now operational.

The BBC’s Dave Lee met the company’s boss Brandon Alexander as well as Angus, the mobile robot.

(15) WHITTAKER, THAT’S WHO. The BBC’s Will Gompertz gives the new Dr. Who 4/5 stars: “Will Gompertz on the new series with Jodie Whittaker”.

…From the moment she enters the fray Jodie Whittaker completely owns the part.

Any chat about gender is rendered wholly irrelevant before she’s finished her first sentence.

She is Doctor Who, and that’s it – some will love her interpretation of the Time Lord, others won’t.

(16) BALLS. JAMES BALLS. Some things don’t change: James Bond ‘probably’ will never be a woman says producer Barbara Broccoli.

Barbara Broccoli, who is in charge of casting 007, told the Guardian: “Bond is male. He’s a male character. He was written as a male and I think he’ll probably stay as a male.

“And that’s fine. We don’t have to turn male characters into women.”

(17) TUNE IN. When the TV adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s Nightflyers begins airing December 2, Engadget says “Syfy is making sure ‘Nightflyers’ is easy to watch”.

Syfy is set to release its 10-episode Nightflyers series in December, and it’s going to make sure you can watch it quickly and easily. The first episode will drop Sunday December 2nd, and episodes two through five will follow daily through Thursday, December 6th. Episodes six through 10 will air between Sunday and Thursday the following week. Additionally, Syfy is also releasing each episode across all of its platforms when they broadcast on TV, and you’ll be able to catch the first two for free even if you don’t have a cable log-in.

 

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Andrew Porter, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Niall McAuley.]

41 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 10/6/18 Box Is Made For Tickin’, Pixel’s Very Droll, Never Seen SF News That Didn’t Look Better In The Scroll

  1. I really wish that science fiction movies and series which are more than just horror films set in space weren’t so damn rare. 🙁

  2. (16) Well, James Bond isn’t The Doctor, so there’s that. But I don’t see any problem with reimagining the character in a variety of ways, either.

  3. Sunday Meredithing, Amazon UK has the first five Harry Dresdens at 99p each as their “Today’s Big Deal”. As always, other tributaries may vary.

  4. Andrew, me, too!

    For anyone watching BBC America who has a conflict this afternoon, it is being repeated multiple times today. I’ll be watching it at 8pm Eastern.

  5. 16) James Bond is such a stereotypical man that I don’t think you could gender-swap him without turning the character into a caricature. And that’s fine with me; there are some role models that women don’t need.

  6. @Lenore: By the way, do you know why the early afternoon broadcast is 1:45 minutes, and the evening broadcasts are 2 hours (if one version has more scenes than the other, I want to see that version!).

  7. @Lee: I’ve read the Bond books, and, speaking as a stereotypical man, I protest. James Bond is a git.

    (Well, he’s just about tolerable in the films, I guess, if you’re broad minded. But in the books, he is a mouthpiece for his author’s opinions and prejudices, and bloody hell, if you thought H.P. Lovecraft was bad, try reading Ian Fleming, he makes Lovecraft look positively cuddly)

  8. @ Steve

    I’ve read the Fleming novels too and your take on Bond is spot on. I always wondered if Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was any better.

  9. I think Bond is one of the few characters where he really does need to be a straight white male. There’s so much chauvinism and British imperialism and toxic masculinity wrapped up in the character. For better and worse.

    I think an actor of a different gender, sexuality or ethnicity could do a brilliant deconstruction of the Bond archetype. But then you’d be better off doing a Bourne style new movie.

    Also I may have missed it if it was posted here, but there’s a trailer for Good Omens
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZSXlNRRoGU
    I’m feeling quite excited. Particularly because it’s being reported as a one-and-done miniseries.

  10. Andrew: The first broadcast of the episode is a global simulicast and thus should be commercial-free. The reruns will have commercials added (hence, two hours).

  11. My snap judgment on the new Who: a solid enough opening episode, but most importantly Whittaker absolutely nails it. She’s going to be excellent.

  12. @Mark: that was my reaction too. As a “regeneration” episode, it wasn’t as good as Rose (but then again, what is?) or The Eleventh Hour, but it was definitely better than The Christmas One or Deep Breath – perhaps that was because neither of those were “clean slate” episodes (I much prefer e.g. Smith & Jones or The Passenger as “first” episodes because they are clearly meant as similar sorts of show resets.)

    As you say, Whittaker nails it – the moment when she claims her name is particularly good (and she sold the costume sequence well too.) I really look forward to seeing where this series goes, especially with a larger ensemble cast than usual; that’s a risk but probably a worthwhile one.

  13. Andrew: They’re now saying the expanded version will have scenes from NYCC panel. I’m hoping they’ll have the entire ending credits and music rather than smooshing it into a tiny corner. Plus some of the scenes they cut to make room for all the commercials (simulcast, indeed. Only in the sense of ‘starting at the same time’).

  14. So, Doctor Who…. I’m cautiously optimistic. I get the distinct feeling that, having taken one very obvious risk with the character, they weren’t prepared to take many others – so, the new Doctor is likeable, proactive, and competent pretty much from the get-go, with very little of the usual gubbins about regenerations we’ve seen in the past (no amnesia, no manic personality shifts, no craving for fish custard, only one brief fainting spell – I wonder if that bit of escaping regeneration energy will come back to be important? I guess we’ll find out.)

    I liked the set-up for the three new companions – I’m not sure how well their personalities are going to emerge, yet, but it’s still early days. The overall tone seemed quieter, darker and moodier than it’s been in the past; it’s a comparatively low-stakes story – the Earth isn’t in imminent danger of destruction, all we’ve got to worry about is a single human life and the leadership of an alien world we’ve never heard of before; Jodie Whittaker does a good job of showing that these things do matter, but it’s not one of the all-action alien invasion spectaculars we’ve seen in the past. The monsters were good, I thought (I like the news that we’re going to see more new ones), and the background music was noticeably quieter and spookier than it has been before – I’m not saying that’s better, necessarily, but it’s all of a piece with the change in tone.

    Bottom line – I liked it; Jodie Whittaker is just fine, she’s clearly got the chops for the role; I’m genuinely interested in where it’s going to go next. Thumbs up from me.

  15. 9) I love The Adventures of Mark Twain. It inspired me to read some of his lesser known short stories when I first saw it as a teen. I was reminded of it by a friend just a year or so ago and promptly bought the DVD. My husband was weirded out by the whole thing, but I still think it’s delightful.

  16. I have a Hugo nominating question for everyone here. Would it be possible to nominate all of this year’s Murderbot novellas together under Section 3.2.4 of the WSFS Constitution since all the Murderbot novellas have a through story? They’re all so good, and I’d rather not have to pick a favorite. And if they can be nominated together would they go into Novella or would the combined word count dictate that nomination be in Novel? What does everyone think?

  17. Lorien Gray, my opinion is that Murderbot is a series of separate stories, not one story appearing in individual parts. I would not recommend this.

    Alas, that the combined word count is too short for Best Series.

  18. There will be a Murderbot Novel (whoo-hoo!) that might tip it over into long enough for Best Series.

  19. @Loren Gray
    A traditional way to reward a competed series is to vote for the last installment and let it stand for the whole. Toward that end, I expect to nominate “Exit Strategy” for Best Novella. I plan to do the same for the Sin du Jour series by nominating “Taste of Wrath,” by Matt Wallace, which, at 45,820 words, qualifies as a novella under the new rules.

  20. I liked Jodie Whittaker a lot in the new Who. Her doctor came off smart and compassionate and generally cool. I’m happy to watch more of her and her mad problem-solving skills.

    The only thing that bothered me (not about her or her doctor, at all, but in terms of the plot) was ubj uneq gurl jrer jbexvat gb fnir bar crefba (Pney, jub qvqa’g frrz vagrerfgvat) juvyr frireny bguref (ng yrnfg guerr, evtug?) jrer rkcraqnoyr, vapyhqvat Tenpr, jub V ybirq. V’ir ernq gung gurer ner ab fgbel nepf guvf frnfba, whfg fgnaq-nybar rcvfbqrf, juvpu frrzf jrveq tvira gur pyvssunatre, cyhf vg znxrf vg frrz yvxr gurl jvyy abg or gelvat gb svaq Gvz Funj’f ubzr cynarg gb fnir gur bgure crbcyr va pbyq fgbentr. V qba’g yvxr gung, rvgure.

    Who thinks Tim Shaw was totally named after the UK radio guy whose wife sold his fancy car for 50p on ebay after he said he was going to dump her for some other woman on his radio show? He’s even from Sheffield.

  21. from my comment on the 2018 Recommended SF/F List:

    Lorien Gray: Would it be possible to nominate all of this year’s Murderbot novellas together under Section 3.2.4 of the WSFS Constitution since all the Murderbot novellas have a through story?

    My take on that would be “yes”, as it’s the equivalent of a serialized novel. I have been considering doing this. Considering that Blackout/All Clear and The Wheel of Time were allowed in the Best Novel category by the Hugo Administrators, and they tend to follow the preferences indicated by Hugo voters, I suspect that such a nomination would be allowed to stand if it got enough nominations to make the ballot as Murderbot Parts 1-4 in the Novel category. And I think that would be more preferable than having 2 of the parts appear on the Novella ballot after the first part won that category last year.

    Whether I do that also depends on whether I have 5 huge favorites to nominate in the Novel category. Thus far I have Before Mars, Foundryside, the Clocktaur War duology, and The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle on my shortlist — and Murderbot stands at least as strong as any of them. Although I thought Revenant Gun, Record of a Spaceborn Few, Spinning Silver, the new Praxis novel The Accidental War, and the Vatta novel Into the Fire were all very good, none of them screams “Hugo Best Novel” to me (though I will likely be nominating the Kylara Vatta and Praxis series for Best Series).

  22. Rather than forcing the issue, it would make sense to me to wait and see if Wells produces a fix-up novel compiled from these stories. Let the author decide if they’re destined to be a novel.

    It’s not as if the Murderbot series has been overlooked by Hugo voters.

  23. @ Steve: There may be some overlap between my definition of “stereotypical man” and your definition of “git”. 🙂

    I’ve seen one Bond movie (You Only Live Twice — it was my first ever date) and read one Bond book (the same, which showed me that the Bond movies have about as much relationship to the Bond books as the movie version of Nightfall had to the short story), and never had any desire to pursue either of them any further.

    @ Lorien: FWIW, I asked Martha if she had a preference for which of the 3 novellas that have come out this year to nominate, and while she didn’t exactly answer that question, she did say that her favorite was Rogue Protocol. OTOH, having just finished Exit Strategy, I must say that she really does stick the landing, and that’s probably the one I’ll nominate.

  24. Andrew et al, sorry, I stayed away because I was not able to watch til 8pm, and then I got hung up on other stuff. I liked it. The monster plot was a bit weak but also less important. The more important part was setting up the characters, and they did a great job about that. I came to care especially about Ryan, who got the most time, but also everyone else. I was relieved that Graham as the grown-up white man didn’t try to take over the hero duties. And Jodie Whittaker nailed it.

    I think I need to watch it again.

  25. (1) ST:D AT NYCC
    I would *dearly* love to hear someone on the production of that trailer explain what viewers’ takeaway is meant to be.

  26. Mark on October 7, 2018 at 12:32 pm said:

    My snap judgment on the new Who: a solid enough opening episode, but most importantly Whittaker absolutely nails it. She’s going to be excellent.

    I really liked that she was obviously really enjoying the role.

  27. Steve Wright on October 7, 2018 at 7:35 am said:
    > James Bond is a git.

    Definitely.

    >he is a mouthpiece for his author’s opinions and prejudices

    A strange idea. Surely he’s not meant to be a hero or a pleasant individual at all. The way the books are written made that quite clear to me.

    Not that I would think my politics and Flemings overlap at all (literally zero overlap), but the idea that “Bond is Fleming” does not sound right. If Bond was meant to be Fleming, he would have made him likeable, but he went out of his way to make him dislikable. Even very “conservative” (I mean “reactionary”) Englishmen would, I think, find much of Bond’s character [in the books] somewhat distasteful, and clearly deliberately so. At least the ones I’ve discussed it with thought so…

    The way the films set him up as the hero is what I find hardest to swallow – much worse than the books. But after the first few films (which one might – emphasis on “might” – charitably describe as “of their time”) it’s hard to put the blame on Fleming seeing as how he was dead.

    (One might more justifiably criticise the books [and films] for their appallingly bad depiction of female characters… perhaps of their time, but really… very very bad.)

    Way behind on reading this stuff so not really expecting any reply.

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