The Letters to the Editor department is intended to be a forum for our readers to express their own opinions and ideas. While we appreciate the many complimentary letters we receive each day, you won't find them on this page. Instead, you will find letters that go beyond or even contradict what we have written, letters that offer a different perspective and provide a different view of science fiction.
— Scott Edelman, Editor-in-Chief
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meddled in things that were better left alone," is a common lament in sci-fi—yet another hapless victim who messed with science.
Does the same apply to fiction? Should a writer be allowed to challenge the set boundaries as a scientist takes on the unknown? Aren't characters supposed to change with the times? Such is the way they are kept alive. And bankable.
Frankenstein's monster, Dracula and the Wolfman have been revised countless times. Deities, devils and angels get more makeovers than the movie stars who play them. In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a "re-imagined" Invisible Man, Capt. Nemo, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Tom Sawyer team up to save the world. Is there no one in the vast sci-fi universe immune from the tinkering of revisionists? Should anyone be?
Warner Brothers doesn't think so. After more than 10 years of trying to get a fifth Superman movie up, up and away, the studio first announced a Batman vs. Superman flick, then killed it in favor of "re-imagining" Superman and taking bold liberties with the original story.
Why? We already [know] how and why the infant Kal-el of Krypton became the Clark Kent and Superman of Earth. The 1978 film again told the story in full color while TV's Smallville continues to embellish on it. While both may be nit-picked, together they coexist as the biography of Superman. By "re-imagining" the Man of Steel, is Warner Brothers telling us that Christopher Reeve's portrayal was a lie? Will their "important new chapter
in the Superman legacy" finally be the truth?
And Smallville? Not the true Superman? We've got to pay the big bucks to see the new genuine Man of Steel coming soon to the multiplex?
(Imagine "re-imagining" a certain Lord of the Jungle—instead of the orphaned babe of British bluebloods being raised by apes, the son of American rock stars is brought up by hyenas or tigers or space aliens. Yes, it's the new Tarzan with new toys and books and T-shirts to buy.)
What Warner Brothers doesn't understand is that Superman is more than making us believe a man can fly—Siegel and Shuster taught our imagination how to fly. Through more than 60 tumultuous years, Superman has been the lone fixed point in the sci-fi universe. All heroes and superheroes have been
compared to Superman ... Superman is compared to no one. He is his own man, the definitive symbol of individual integrity.
Warner's doesn't get it. They just don't get it.
Superman is not just American, he is America—our truth, our justice and our way! To change his story would be like rewriting the Declaration of Independence. Not a case of literary license abuse, high treason.
"Never, ever let them see you sweat" is a Hollywood commandment chiseled in stone and Warners has been doing plenty since its planned Superman trilogy hit the Net.
May I propose another law better sung than scrawled:
"Don't tug on Superman's cape!"
Kevin Ahearn
KEVTOMA@aol.com
uffy without Buffy is an interesting idea. It was done here in the
U.K., with a police show called Taggart. When the actor who played Taggart, the central character, died in real life, his show just carried on. Some say it got even better. However, this kind of thing has to be done just right.
The possibility of a show centered on Buffy's little sister Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg), gets a thumbs down from me. It's too early in the character's development, and Dawn is too young to carry the show. On the other hand, a show centered on wayward slayer Faith (Eliza Dushku), is full of enticing possibilities. Faith has history within the show, a real depth of character, but an entirely different outlook to Buffy. Faith is not wholly evil, but makes her own rules. Most important of all, Eliza Dushku is a match for Sarah Michelle Gellar when it comes to looks and screen charisma.
So come on Joss [Whedon] and Marti [Noxon], embrace the darkness.
Nathan Brazil
nathanbrazil@freeuk.com
arl Park ("Buffy Series Premiere Stakeout Fails") didn't drop any hints regarding his location, so I can't be sure if this will be of any help. Nevertheless: I am in the Cedar Rapids, IA area, and like Mr. Park, I was dismayed to find that the local UPN affiliate would not be airing the Buffy [the Vampire Slayer] season premiere. (They're not airing
Enterprise either, incidentally.) It turned out that the local UPN station is also the local Fox station—much of their UPN programming had been shifted around to begin with, and now they appear to be dropping Paramount's programming altogether.
Fortunately, the local WB affiliate (WB 20, KWWL if memory serves—and it may not) has come in to save the day. Buffy has been airing on Sunday nights at 9 p.m.; the season premiere was broadcast on September 29th. Assuming you are in my general area, this means that by the time this letter is published, you will probably have missed the first two episodes of the new season; but hopefully someone you know managed to tape those.
If you're not in Cedar Rapids or thereabouts, I would recommend checking Yahoo's TV listings (tv.yahoo.com) for your area—I've found that they're far more accurate than TV Guide Online, which wasn't able to find Buffy for me at all!
Spencer M. Lease
beyondzine@softhome.net
n 1963, my brother and I watched a sci-fi comedy about the following:
The U.S. Army received radio signals coming from the desert mountains. The Army sent a team of army soldiers with radio receiving equipment to locate the signal. Two army soldiers found a cave. Inside the cave were two very tall alien women and a space ship. The alien women could control with their
minds some type of creatures they brought with them by mind control. The two army soldiers fell in love with the alien women. One soldier stayed on Earth with one of the alien women and the other solider went to a planet with the other alien women.
The story was a comedy with the two army men acting like The Three Stooges. One scene had the two army soldiers walking a trail when they came upon a rattlesnake. The soldier wouldn't shoot the rattle snake because, "He might have had a family."
Any idea of the name of this late 1950 or early 1960 movie? Thank you.
David Laughlin
lviss@lvcablemodem.com
itting down to watch William Shatner's Full Moon Fright Night on the SCI FI Channel is not a bad way to spend a Saturday night for lovers of genre films. William Shatner dispenses dead-pan humor with style and confidence while entertaining viewers with films that may never win Oscars or even come close to being nominated, but they do show how annoying and terrifying the supernatural can be when it invades the characters' lives without expectation.
Julian Gift
lira-b@tstt.net.tt
couldn't sleep because I was suffering from a respiratory infection, and while browsing the channels, I came across something new that I hadn't heard of on UPN at midnight (EST). With the recent surge of very decently written sci-fi shows on television, I thought I was about to see another new gem hidden in the wee hours of broadcasting.
How wrong I was.
This show was an atrocity. I have read some of the best novels from the last century, both fiction and non-fiction, and consider myself fortunate to have viewed many of the best cinematic attempts at story telling for the large screen and the small one ... so I consider myself well versed in what is well written, and what is a poor attempt at scripting a story.
Starhunter was without a doubt atrocious. In all fairness, I stayed with this train wreck until the end credits rolled, to see if there was any possible way that this show could pull itself out of the power dive it entered by the second commercial break.
Here is a list of problems I found with the show, in no particular order, as it is pointless to try to categorize Starhunter's shortcomings as they were all equally, and glaringly, bad.
1) The captain and his second-in-command are bounty hunters of some note and experience according to the story, yet they didn't have the good sense to have any form of security protocols programmed into the computer that runs their ship. The captain's rebellious teenage niece was able to override the
computer's safeguards numerous times, once from the holding cell on the ship where they were storing one of two prisoners they were transporting. When the prisoners escaped and returned to the ship, one of them was able to override the computer and gain control of the ship in under five minutes.
2) The second-in-command is purportedly a female warrior-type, and is training the captain's niece in the martial arts, but somehow failed to instill discipline in the niece, or the simple imperatives of following the captain's orders. As a result of the niece's disobedience and blatant dereliction of her duties, the prisoners escaped via a device she provided one of them after violating her orders of not having contact with one of the prisoners while guarding the ship. The captain and his second were nearly killed as a result of her actions.
3) When everything is settled, and the prisoners are returned to the automated Gulag that they were being transported to, the second-in-command gives the niece a friendly berating for her violation of the captain's and her trust, dereliction of her duties and nearly getting the entire crew of three killed for her stupidity.
4) The captain gives his niece an overly sympathetic talking to, despite the fact that she put everyone involved in dire peril, and apologizes for making her life a little uncomfortable aboard his ship, and fails to take away any of her access privileges or relieve her of her duties as the ship's
technician.
There were several other plot holes interspersed between these mentioned points in the story, but I feel no need to elaborate further on the matter as I feel the point has been made.
Under more normal circumstances, I would have turned to the Discovery Channel or any other frequency on the cable to spare myself the torment of watching this show to its conclusion. I will claim my recent dosing of Thera-Flu for my weakness. Starhunter has no saving graces. From the poor
acting, to the terrible script, or the poorly developed characters and non-interactive CGI effects, I now understand why this piece of schlock has been relegated to the witching hour and hope that someone will enact a spell to banish this from the airwaves before it is confused with some of the better offerings that have recently appeared, such as Fox's Firefly.
UPN has proven its foolhardiness in program scheduling in the past with the loss of Babylon 5 and other promising sci-fi ventures over the seasons, and are showing an alarming consistency by continuing to air shows of this caliber as if they didn't have someone view the show and approve its airing. I often hesitate to deride any attempts at entertainment in the sci-fi genre, but Starhunter made me long for a cure for my insomnia.
Kenn Dancer
KilgrenII@AOL.com
was reading through your letters and found out that the SCI FI Channel is making a movie of the Amber Chronicles.
I completely concur with the previous gentleman (Mike Haddaway, "Amber Must Never Be Abridged") in that the Amber Chronicles must not be abridged. They are some of the seminal sci-fi works.
I had the privilege of meeting [Roger] Zelazny and of becoming friends with his biographer.
He was an incredible man, and the Amber Chronicles, while understanding that there must be abridgements to present in television form, should be told in full serial form, not in one movie.
[These books] remain firmly in my top five favorite sci-fi classics (yes, I count all of them as one choice) and have been there since I was first introduced to them in college in 1984. I didn't meet Zelazny himself until 1994, at a very tiny convention in Virginia, but was still in awe in his presence. The Chronicles still hold up in today's world and should not be diluted except in the most absolutely necessary way.
Julie Bechtel
orchiddh@aol.com
am quite pleased someone would count Groundhog Day as a classic ("Acknowledging the New Classics"). I imagine some will laugh, but I think it is the best time-loop story ever on screen. Perhaps simply the best on the concept in any form. Novels or stories on the subject have not even pleased me as much. Also perhaps one of the best genre comedies on film. I tend to think I am likely alone on that, but it is nice to see otherwise.
Indeed last issue [of Science Fiction Weekly] was pleasing in other ways, too. Especially in the mention of a favorite of mine, Cordwainer Smith, one of the most unusual authors in the field. I am perhaps one of the few young readers to have read him before almost anyone. Only Isaac Asimov came before him in my reading experience. Of the two, I preferred Asimov, but felt more in tune with Smith. His interests, style and views more mirroring my own.
However since you don't want mere flattery, I will add a bit of negativity. This cult of Babylon 5 in the letters segment is starting to grate ("Farscape Was No Babylon 5"). The show had grand ambition and interesting storylines, true, but the general execution and acting tended to be poor. Worse, most of the good storylines amounted to rehashing of very old print SF. The most annoying element had to be that when they tried to be humorous. More worrisome, its fans seem to be unwilling to criticize anything about it. Even a minor criticism can garner stern rebuke. Yet as the letters show, fans of Star Trek, Buffy [the Vampire Slayer], X-Files or other genre shows with have no such problem and are more than willing to discuss the downsides of their shows. Some of this degrades into whiny nitpicking, but still it would be nice to see one B5 fan who would be willing to say what they disliked about the show as well as why they loved it.
Thomas Rogov
TRogov@sciam.com
n your most recent issue, the Letters section contained several letters noting that the recent cancellations in genre TV are due to low ratings, compared to, say, Friends or Enterprise ("Farscape Was No Babylon 5", "Sci-Fi Fans Are Taken for Granted", "SCI FI's Second Wound Was Invisible", "Witchblade Joins Angel in TV Heaven"). Clearly these people
have missed something:
Not only are both SCI FI (Farscape) and TNT (Witchblade, which I know little about) small stations that are not
even available in all areas, but sci-fi itself is a niche market. Both the individuals writing these letters, and the channel itself, have clearly not realized that as long as they keep themselves isolated, don't advertise on other channels (I can recall to mind one SCI FI ad on another station), and don't advertise—or even air—their programming, they're dooming themselves to failure.
They have sabotaged their best shows through poor scheduling, and canceled them in order
to fund two pieces of reality trash, and the next Sliders. Something's rotten at SCI FI.
A.L. Cassel
Email address withheld by request
was upset at the first news of Farscape shutting down, but then all I had to do was just remember the first episodes of this last season, and I realized it's for the best that they pull the plug before the writing causes the show to diminish into a really bad series. It's on the brink of being a bad series right now (as compared to really bad) and I can only hope that when they air the last 13 episodes of the series that the cast manages to get out with at least some dignity left intact.
Farscape was good when it started, but my goodness, what bad writing can do to an award-winning series. Perhaps the higher ups behind the scenes at Farscape thought that once they won awards they didn't really have to keep up the quality of the product that got them the awards. If that's the case, then please shut down all awards ceremonies so that it won't happen again to
another show.
Good-bye Farscape ... and good riddance!
Cane Walker
smith1022sp@aol.com
find it increasingly difficult to accept that a network that claims to be a science-fiction channel can cancel quality science fiction like Farscape. The fact that the SCI FI channel keeps nonsense like Crossing Over (which has nothing whatsoever to do with quality science fiction or fantasy) on only makes the situation even more ludicrous.
At this rate, what can we expect next? Will the powers that be at the SCI FI Channel replace Stargate SG-1 and the B5 and Star Trek reruns with Springer and Jenny Jones?
Rather than dumping a good show like Farscape, why not dump the people at the SCI FI Channel who are making these programming blunders and replace them with people who actually know what science fiction is?
Fredric P. Conrad Jr.
FredPAC@aol.com
am writing this to forestall a long and heated debate that I see over left and right political slant in sci-fi. As Joe Schembrie ("Star Trek Wouldn't Survive Reality") stated at the conclusion of his comments "Star Trek is just a TV show," which to me makes the entire topic moot.
I would no more care about ST's political "biases" than I would use Sleeping Beauty as a model for European attitudes towards planned economics (though without checking, I'm sure someone has written a thesis on the topic). As far as space-operas go, ST was an interesting, diverting
fantasy, but we should not confuse fantasy with reality.
Consider the setting of Star Trek: The Next Generation: In theory, all social and economic problems have been solved. Faster-than-light travel is routine and alien races communicate with very little difficulty. This is a world of absolute abundance created by replicators. No one has to work
unless they want to.
Do you live in this world? I surely don't. Can our real-life politics have any relevance, indeed does conventional patriotism have meaning in such a setting? Does the racist claptrap spouted by the Klingons, or the Cardassians mean anything to our world? Only as oblique metaphor. The characters are mythic in representation and you can take them or leave them. They might as well be Ratty, Moley and Mr. Toad. I will conclude with the same point as the original poster, "Star Trek is just a TV show," so can we calm down now?
Alan Katerinsky
alank@buffnet.net
was amazed and shocked to find a letter in your files expressing the notion that Star Trek and its offspring are all somehow left-leaning in their political philosophy. The gentleman in question, however, gave himself away completely when he brazenly stated that he found it "truly unbelievable" that "a Frenchman would be in charge" of the starship Enterprise ("Star Trek Boldly Goes to the Left"). For Frenchman substitute African American, American Indian, Hispanic, Irish, Japanese, Chinese, Moslem, Jew, Catholic, or any other of the large number of groups that are the objects of hatred, and you would
have to wonder how far this man's philosophy is from those who choose to join groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nation or the American Nazi Party.
If we are ever able to come up with a way to travel to the stars, it will be because we were able to rise up above these common prejudices and learned to see each other as human beings worthy of dignity and respect despite our many differences. This was the ultimate vision of people like Gene Roddenberry and Rod Serling. We all need to reflect on this as we look into the future to create a brighter and better world for our children.
Robert W. Allen
rwillis@johnbrownsbody.net
alling International Rescue! Calling International Rescue!
FAB!
During the mid-1960's, if you were a boy under the age of 10, it was almost impossible to avoid the allure of those words, simple because they meant Thunderbirds! Somehow, two Britons, Sylvia and Gerry Anderson, had slipped into American culture a little before the British Invasion led by
the Beatles and infected American children with something as wonderful and insidious as British music: Supermarionation!
While the Andersons had been producing their unique brand of children's programming in England for years, only 1960's Supercar and 1963's Fireball XL-5 had so far aired in the U.S., one in syndication, the other on NBC's Saturday-morning lineup.
While both were very different from what was being offered to American children of the time, no one was quite prepared for the impact of the next Anderson series imported from England.
Thunderbirds was a one hour offering of near-adult action and adventure, with well-crafted scripts that beckoned to adults as well as the children the show was aimed at. In fact, some of the episodes were so adult that if the children watching the show actually understood what was going on, they would have been very, very frightened.
Granted, it was a product of its time, therefore portraying women poorly (with the exception of Lady Penelope) and totally ignoring blacks. There were Asians, but they were relegated to subservient roles or that of stereotypical bad guys. Perfect? Hardly. Loads of fun? Especially for white, middle-class boys? Damned straight!
Now, nearly 40 years after the original 37 episodes were produced, TechTV has begun to air the series in its half-hour format (thus expanding the series to 74 episodes, an easier number to strip) with great effect. In addition to airing the episodes as two-parters, it points out the pluses and
the minuses of the show with great hilarity. One moment you are treated to information on the great deal of accuracy Gerry and Sylvia strove to achieve with their puppets and models, the next moment it's pointed out that models of the various Thunderbirds can change from one scene to the next, as well as the voices of certain "guest" characters. It's a joy to see this series after all these years, and it is great fun to see the inaccuracies pointed out, as well.
Gerry and Sylvia Anderson moved on to other efforts after Thunderbirds, such as Stingray, Captain Scarlett and the Mysterons of Mars, as well as the classics UFO and Space: 1999. OK, I'm American and this may not be the chronology they were produced in, but it is the way I remember them. Still, Thunderbirds is, to many, the penultimate Supermarionation series, and to many others, the best show that came from the Andersons.
It's a joy to see the Thunderbirds on the air again, and soon, we'll see them in the theaters as well, with the Jonathan Frakes-directed live-action version due out in 2004.
FAB!
Keith Kitchen
BoyoKlaatu1@aol.com
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