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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s a Babylon 5 fan, I'm saddened to learn of the death of Richard Biggs a.k.a. Dr. Stephen Franklin. His professionalism came through in a portrayal on a show that many tried to ignore, but ultimately could not. My love for Babylon 5 was due in a large part to the characters of the show, and Biggs was crucial. His portrayal of the doctor with a heart, but who also had human failings (becoming addicted to stims) is one which I will never forget.
My thoughts are with his family, the cast and crew of Babylon 5 and the wider fandom community who held Biggs in wide regard.
Vaya con dios.
Terry [last name withheld]
gloty001(at)students.unisa.edu.au
was shocked and immensely saddened to learn of Rick Biggs' untimely passing. I had the great fortune to spend an evening with him at a fan event
I organized while he was in Australia a few years ago, promoting Babylon 5. Rick was funny, generous, charming and endlessly entertaining company, and he interacted brilliantly with the many fans who came to meet him. He always brought something fresh and new to his character, Dr. Steven Franklin. His family and friends and colleagues must be devastated; the worlds of media SF, and fandom, are poorer places without him.
Karen Miller
oz.k(at)optusnet.com.au
t's all about denial. And I'm not talking about a river in Egypt. Scott Edelman's recent editorial ("Why Can't We Be Friends?") pondered why sci-fi is so big at the box office but marginalized in the small screen.
The obvious reasons, like massive marketing dollars, "event" movies, popular characters that wouldn't translate or be cost effective on TV as live-action and the summer blockbuster season, all drive the sci-fi movie juggernaut.
The less obvious reason is that many sci-fi and fantasy fans don't know that they are fans. I had a friend who loudly proclaimed she didn't like science fiction, yet she really liked the movie Frequency. She was aghast and embarrassed when I tried to explain that the movie was, in fact, science fiction. Many don't realize that some of the best science fiction doesn't look or feel like it on the surface because you're so captivated by the performances and the story that the sci-fi component is almost invisible.
Now translate that to TV land where it's much more obvious what is and isn't science fiction. Oddly enough, if you ask fans of Buffy and Angel, the show's appeal isn't really that it has vampires and demons, it's the characters and their struggles. Doesn't sound much like sci-fi when you simplify that way. But to non-genre fans, it's difficult for them to get past "It has vampires who date and save the world?" And because they won't accept the fact they they might like a sci-fi TV show, like my friend who begrudgingly conceded that she liked a sci-fi movie, they can't get past the surface to understand the quality and depth of these shows.
Which brings me to the root of all network evil—the hard, blunt, politically incorrect concept that most of the TV audience is just not advanced enough intellectually to embrace the unusual and the fantastic. They are the viewers who brought Jerry Springer's success at exploiting boring, attention-seeking people from the mid-day talk show circuit into our primetime line-ups under the guise of "reality" television. Real people doing real stupid things so other less intellectual people can feel better about themselves, or live vicariously through them if their lives are so pathetic.
Frankly, I get enough "real" world on the evening news and then I need my sci-fi to escape to place where heros and truth prevail.
So, let's get Wonderfalls on DVD, Serenity on the big screen, and start cranking out new episodes of Futurama already!
Tom Loveman
tloveman(at)mac.om
heer up, Brad Torgeson ("Snobbery Should Have No Part in SF"). Your assumption that science fiction pushes the premise of futures without religion and God isn't borne out by the data. To
the contrary, religion and God have been handled with reasonable frequency in science fiction.
One of my favorite Arthur C. Clarke short stories as a kid was "The Star," where a spaceship finds the star that went supernova and was seen in Bethlehem—a masterful entwinement of real science fiction and religious themes. (And with none of the not-so-subtle proselytizing of Left Behind, et al.)
Dune is another example. Besides the presence of the Bene Gesserit as one of the three big forces in that universe's power structure, the whole original story is more or less a "Christ" story—of a young man on a journey to godhood.
In Babylon 5, Delenn was of the Religious Cast, one of the three Houses that ruled Minbar, and this was woven into many episodes.
In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the religious structure of Bajor was not only explored but was central to the outcome of Capt. Sisko ascending to godhood in the series finale.
In Farscape, the religion of Zhaan the Delvian Priestess was explored.
In each of these, religion has been portrayed realistically, as one potent force but not the only force in society.
Yes, religion is questioned in SF, such as Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question," where a "computer" reverses entropy: "Let there be light!" And James Morrow's books. But questioning things and stacking things up differently is at the heart of SF, part of the questioning scientific mind. (Left Behind doesn't question; its creativity is bringing to life the
implications of their beliefs made manifest. One could argue that Clarke's "Nine Billion Names of God" is similar, just playing out the beliefs of a different faith coming to pass.)
Real religions are seldom used in broadly commercial products, because the religious freedom that this country was founded on has made most of us respectful of others' beliefs. That pluralistic respect results in being circumspect to not push what we believe onto others. Maybe that results in fewer scripts/manuscripts including religious aspects of the characters and their worlds. Real religious beliefs can contradict each other, so commercial writers generally don't go there so as not to offend. (Left Behind does, giving it a narrower potential audience, especially if one thinks about world-wide sales.)
So, even without the Left Behind part of the genre, religion and God are not missing from science fiction. But they are not always taken on faith.
And speaking of miracles: Hooray! Fox renewed Tru Calling.
Barbara Goldstein
psifidoll(at)comcast.net
or a longtime "monster" fan, Van Helsing is a sitting duck for criticism, even ridicule—yet another Hollywood team-franchise makeover powered by young, beautiful stars and overloaded with CGI.
For nearly 50 years (gulp!), I've been in a huge fan of Universal's classic creatures. I've seen the films dozens of times over and back in my teens I bought Aurora plastic kits for 66 cents apiece and painted them up just right. Then, 25 years later, I bought them again for a lot more, and equipped with an air brush and modeling putty, recreated the monsters of my childhood.
Van Helsing is trying to do the same. Problem is that with one silent, black-and white stare, Boris Karloff projected more meaning and menace than all the CGI creatures put together. (Five Frankenstein movies are worth watching: the Karloff trio, Young Frankenstein and Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein. If its Frank is in color, don't bother!)
But it wasn't color and CGI that first remade Universal's monsters—it was television! Long gone from movie theaters in the 1930s and 40s, on came Frank and Drac, Wolfy and Mummy on the small screen to frighten and delight the fruits of the post-WW II baby boom.
Not a studio to miss a quick buck, Universal remade the monsters again just for us young Americans with I was a Teenage Werewolf and I was a Teenage Frankenstein. Then Hammer jumped over the pond from England with Universal rip-offs in Technicolor. Frank and the gang with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing plus the usual blokes and always a busty babe were the only "monster" movies in color in the '60s.
Much ado has been made of the "legendary" Hammer studio, but truth be told, for anyone over the age of 15 with a higher number IQ, with few exceptional moments, these are dreadful, boring films. Horror of Dracula which cast Chris Lee as the image and presence of Dracula, gave him one line of dialogue in the last half hour.
Van Helsing is more than a movie. It's the opening shot of a billion-dollar campaign including merchandising, TV shows and theme park rides. How long these old, old icons will continue to generate cash is anybody's guess, but the end of the money trail seems nowhere in sight.
Does that make Van Helsing good or better or what? A better question might be ... When are these Old World monsters going to be replaced by some homegrown American ones? Is that what we're really afraid of?
Kevin Ahearn
KEVTOMA(at)aol.com
fter reading the letter from Adrian Hunter ("Van Helsing Equals Monkey Vomit") I have to reply with this simple statement: "Get over it, it was just a movie!" Too many times do people go to the movies or watch a show on TV and complain that it was no good, or that it was not faithful to the original, or destroys the myth of the character. People have to learn to realize that these shows are fantasy and are meant to be watched with the idea of suspending reality for a little while and just enjoying the adventure.
When you start critiquing every little aspect of a film ... of course, you're not going to like it. And if that's what a person is going to do, might I suggest reading a book?
Raleigh Moreno
moreno(at)tomah.com
oes anyone else feel Angel went out on a rather unpleasant and unsavory note? Angel's final season had been a bit problematic overall—still clever at times, but seeming a bit directionless as if it was in a holding pattern waiting for inspiration to strike. Admittedly, I often lose interest in a TV series before its end, which is either a reflection on me, or an indication that few series can maintain their quality beyond two or three seasons. Angel's progenitor, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, actually did better than most, although even its last couple of seasons had seen the series drop (in my estimation) from being a great series, to merely a very good one.
Angel, unfortunately, may have overstayed its welcome. I still enjoyed some of this season, but ennui was definitely setting in. However, by the end of the season it started to come off the rails entirely.
[Warning: Spoilers ahead.]
I think the series "jumped the shark" (to use the popular euphemism) with the death of Fred—a rather gratuitous, unpleasant plot twist that just left a bad taste. And one that will no doubt add to the chorus of critics who have charged Buffy/Angel with a degree of sexism/misogyny (when one notes the discrepancy between the number of female regulars/semi-regulars who have been killed off compared to male regulars/semi-regulars over the course of both series). I realize that the show's makers will argue killing Fred was supposed to be shocking—to show how dark, 'n edgy, 'n gritty the show was; how realistic. Yeah, well, whatever. Most of us are well aware of how brutal and unjust the real world is, thank you very much.
But what really sent the series out with a whimper, was the whole shift to an unsavory, moral pragmatism. Angel (and Buffy) had been a rare hold out against the onslaught of moral relativism that has become the watchword in modern science-fiction series. They had been shows that talked about "heroes" and "champions," not just as physical protagonists who beat up bad guys, but as ideological paragons. Angel talked about how "if nothing we do matters, than all that matters is what we do" (which I took to be a refutation of the old "the end justifies the means" philosophy) and argued that they must live their lives, not as the world is, but as it should be. And so on.
So what happened?
In the final episodes, Angel was happily lying, betraying and murdering to achieve his ends. What makes this philosophical shift even more ironic is that in the final storyline (which seemed kind of hurried and tacked on ... which it probably was to face a sudden cancellation) Angel explains that what they do won't really make a difference—their victory will more be in making the effort. In other words, he is seeking a symbolic, moral victory over the forces of Evil and Chaos—a Quixotic victory: "I'm hoping to slay the dragon," he says as his final line (more or less). Yet how can one reconcile that "moral victory" with everything he's done to lead up to it? Surely if one lies, betrays and murders to battle evil ... one has already surrendered to evil.
The problem with the end justifying the means philosophy, when applied to the real world, is that it's a paradox. Someone can't say: "I will lie, cheat, steal, kill, betray to achieve my ends ... but trust me, I'm doing it for the right reasons." I'm a liar ... but trust me? Once someone has accepted that lies and betrayal are OK to achieve their ends, then those ends themselves become suspect, as do one's motives. Just travel outside the United States and ask anyone you meet what they think about George W. Bush and you will get a sense of what happens when a person's words and motives are no longer trusted.
The series' closing scene was intended to be a dramatic, bittersweet encapsulation of all the series stood for—and what heroism is all about: fighting the good fight, not because you think you can win, but because you must try. But the series' makers seemed to lose sight of their own message. Instead, like the character of Lorne, I left the series feeling rather queasy and betrayed. Oh, I'm sure in years to come I'll catch episodes in re-runs and enjoy them on a surface, non-think level—but, unfortunately, by the end, that's the only way you can take it.
D.K. Latta
lattabros(at)yahoo.com
ave some mercy on Buffy ("Angel and Spike Bid Goodbye"). She is, apparently, doomed to have custody of Andrew for all eternity.
[Warning: Spoilers ahead.]
One thing I loved about Angel was that people changed and grew (or failed) in major ways. Gunn matured from an angry hood to a posh lawyer to a warrior fighting for honor.
Wes started out as an inept prissy twit, who was always at war with his own training and instincts. He became the soul of the group, then the pariah, and finally the doomed and tragic romantic hero.
Cordy started as a selfish flake, who's inner spirit was finally as beautiful as her outside.
Fred went from wild, lost soul to pitiful lost girl before learning to love herself and finally earn her place in the group ... just to be obliterated and made a wild lost soul again.
Only Angel remained a constant—he and Spike, good or evil—sparing partners for eternity.
How many shows can say that? How many shows have ended a 12-year run with characters that haven't changed a jot?
I'll miss the smart dialogue and the friendships and the blandly banal/evil bad guys. How nice that the heros were the more complex and interesting characters for once.
Nancy Myers
crowswork(at)yahoo.com
've been a fan of Star Trek for years; but no longer. When Enterprise, began I thought it could be a fascinating glimpse into the creation of the Federation. How do you get such different people to work together despite their various prejudices, cultures, religions and ideologies? Sadly, the producers have no interest in showing how to build a better world. They'd
rather give us yet another lame time-travel episode.
In it's golden age, Star Trek traveled to worlds beyond any we had ever imagined, gave us characters that we could both love and hate, and told stories that could move us and provoke spirited discussions. Now, Enterprise is blandly going to worlds we've seen before, pushing one-dimensional characters that never change or grow, and the only discussion that has been provoked lately is whether or not the current show should be canceled.
The episodes have become so formulaic that there is no longer any drama. The "aliens" are nothing more than humans with bumpy heads. Why bother having an "alien" if it's going to act like a human anyway? The ship is always in eminent danger of being destroyed, yet miraculously holds
together. Is there something special about stenciling the word Enterprise on a ship which allows it to survive when every other ship is destroyed? The captain is always in a life or death situation, but it's always the red shirts who die. Does anyone actually worry when one of the main characters is about to die or the ship is about to blow up again? The only time the show manages to surprise me is when an extra with a speaking role actually manages to make it through the entire episode without being killed. Why should I care about crewman Smith dying if nobody on the ship does? Then there are the time-travel episodes. The only point to sending the crew back in time is to use some of the studio's surplus costumes. Are the writers imaginations so limited they can't think of something for the crew to do in it's own century?
The season finale was one of those rare hat tricks when they actually managed to disappoint on every level. Was there ever any doubt that the Earth would be saved, the ship hold together, or the crew making it out alive? Most importantly, did anyone care?
It's time to recognize Star Trek as what it truly is, a business. And as a business they're not interested in selling us the best product, just the cheapest. Well I'm not buying it any more.
James Stewart
jamesjstewart(at)earthlink.net
ith the rash of boxed sets of classic (and not-so-classic) science-fiction shows, it's now possible to own for yourself your favorite sci-fi TV series. You remember how much you loved the show when it first aired in the '60s, '70s, '80s or '90s. The show may have even gone off the air only last year and if you look around, you too can own it!
What I've discovered is that sometimes the memory is far more convincing than the reality of a particular show. Add to this the price tag that studios are slapping onto these anthologies and you may find yourself wondering why you bothered.
If you're a Star Trek fan, you can buy any of each seven seasons of The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine. All you have to do is cough up approximately $119.99 for each set. Hmm, if you're a die hard and want the entire collection ... let's do the math .... seven seasons of The Next Generation and seven seasons of Deep Space Nine, that would be 14 X 119.99, or $1,689.76 before taxes. Now, Voyager is entering the boxed set market, although at a far lower price of approximately $79.99, depending on where you buy your DVD's. This is a far more reasonable price, especially when you think about all the negative letters and critiques that condemned the show while it was on the air.
It gets worse, however. If you want to pick up a boxed set of the canceled SCI FI Channel series Farscape, be prepared to shell out $179.99 per set! That's just shy of $720 to purchase the entire series, which was truncated at only four seasons. It's cheaper by far to buy the excellent Babylon 5 series, which ran five seasons and you can get for less than $500 if you do some shopping.
Disappointment can come with owning some of the series available, however. Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's UFO ran but one season and has become a cult classic, but while the stories are first rate, the special effects (even for 1969/70) are cheesy to the point of hilarity.
On the other side of the coin, the duo's Space: 1999 sports far better special effects and great B-movie style stories, but it's more of a guilty pleasure than anything else.
The greatest disappointment, however; has got to be Battlestar: Galactica. Many people speak the name of this series in hushed whispers, placing it on a pedestal of glory, while admitting that much of the plot and special effects were ripoffs from George Lucas' Star Wars. Ranging in prices from $89.99 to $119.99, you will find the pilot episode on the first disc enjoyable, but from there be prepared to be embarrassed. I can't understand why so many fans decried the new version of Galactica when the original was such an absolute dog! Of the "original 24," as many describe them, perhaps four or five episodes, aside from the pilot, are watchable. Perhaps it is due to the era the series was produced, but not only is the show embarrassing, it is shamefully embarrassing.
Now, with the first season of Lost in Space available, Irwin Allen's series will be on their way. I'll admit I am a fan of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Time Tunnel, we will likely be charged $60 to $100 dollars per season per series and people will pay.
What I want to know is where is the boxed set for Star Trek, the original series? This would be worth the money. ...
Keith Kitchen
boyoklaatu1(at)aol.com
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