I'm going to try out a new little blog series here on The Sci-Fi Block. Throughout the week, as you know, we post lots of news stories, movie reviews, TV episode recap/reviews, and occasional feature articles. But obviously I read and watch more sci-fi stuff during the week (mostly on Sundays – my only real day off) than that which I review. Yesterday I was indulging in my typical Sunday sci-fi consumption, and I thought, Why not bring these works up for a little discussion? I'll do this weekly and talk briefly about the things I watched and read in my spare time. Not everything, mind you; just the stuff about which I have thoughts that are worth noting. I’d also like to hear your thoughts on the works I talk about.

So, we’ll see how it goes. If I get a good response, I’ll keep it up. If no one seems to care after a few posts, I’ll stop wasting your time.

With that out of the way, here’s my Casual Consumption for last week (Monday-Sunday), January 18-24 (Warning: These posts contain spoilers for everything discussed):

Battlestar Galactica - episodes 3.12 and 3.13

Until recently, I devoted almost all of my sci-fi viewing time to movies, so I'm currently catching up on Battlestar Galactica. I'm slightly past the half-way point of season 3, and this week I watched 3.12 (“Rapture”) and 3.13 (“Taking a Break from All Your Worries”). I've spoken with people who say that the series begins delving into silliness during seasons 2 and 3, and honestly I have no idea what they're talking about. The first of these two episodes, though not the strongest, is good in that it addresses one of the show's recurrent themes. It involves Helo shooting Athena so that she can be resurrected on board the Cylon ship and rescue their child, who they just learned is still alive. Of course the danger here is that Athena might not return, in which case the humans lose a great asset in their war against the Cylons. There’s also the chance that Athena will be forced to give information to the Cylons. Helo, naturally, believes that Athena will return and will not give up any information. This is one of Battlestar's classic themes: loyalty to oneself and one’s family versus loyalty to society. At what point should we trust ourselves and our own knowledge and act in ways that contradict our contract with society? This is a dilemma that virtually everyone in the series faces at one point or another. Helo didn't just believe, he knew that Athena would return. Does that outweigh the risk, as everyone else perceives it, of Athena either defecting or being captured? Battlestar doesn't give us the answer. Everything does turn out alright, but that wouldn't seem to retroactively justify the risk (that is, if the risk, indeed, needs justifying).

“Taking a Break from All Your Worries” is mostly about Gaius Baltar. Having been recently captured (while begging God to tell him whether he’s a Cylon) by Chief Tyrol, Baltar is now being held prisoner on board the Galactica, and Adama orders Dr. Cottle to administer a top secret hallucinogenic truth serum to learn about his involvement in the original Cylon attack and whether he is a Cylon himself. This episode really delves into the Baltar’s savior complex. He begins by dreaming that he has died and awoken in a Cylon resurrection tank, thus learning (in his dream) that he is indeed the race’s savior. He also begins looking more Jesus-ish (I know, these people have never heard of Jesus, but it works visually) as he grows his beard out, and he looks outright crucified when lying in what he hallucinates to be a black lake during the interrogation. This is the perfect linear progression for a character as egomaniacal as Baltar. My gut tells me I’m way off in this, but, as much as I hate to imagine it, my mind wonders whether he will become, in some thematic way, a savior of sorts. He came from another world (having descended from a Cylon ship), imagines himself to be a chosen one, is persecuted by his peers, and has now, in his captor-induced hallucination, descended briefly into a Hell. I can’t go into it any more than that, not knowing what happens next, but it’s definitely something to think about.

Invincible - issues #5 and #6

Another slightly older work that I’m just now getting to is Robert Kirkman’s Invincible. I read issues 5 and 6 this weekend and am still somewhat surprised to see Kirkman take such a generic concept and keep it so fresh. The first of these issues was somewhat simple, but it worked well. It involves Invincible fighting off a regularly-invading extra-terrestrial and learning that the visitor was coming to Earth errantly, thinking he was performing his job of testing the skills of the guardian of a planet called Urath. When Invincible explains to his dad, Omni-Man, his mother is delighted at the thought of her son finding out something that his father was never capable of discovering. The issue ends with Invincible heading to bed and realizing that he has homework yet to do. It thus becomes a story about personal achievement. At its core, Invincible is obviously a giant metaphor for adolescence and the changes undergone and the responsibilities acquired upon the entering of adulthood (much like the Spider-Man story), but this issue gives that concept a concise perspective, illustrating the unfortunate reality that cosmic personal successes do not free us from our responsibilities to everyday life (in this case, to school). In this issue, Invincible literally reaches the moon at his apex of success, but at the end of the day he is relegated to lying on the bedroom floor and working monotonous problems. Such is the way of things, I suppose.

Issue 6 was similar in theme. This one involved Invincible (as his “real” self, Mark) taking a day off school to visit a college campus with his friend William. During their visit, some sort of cyborg or android (it’s difficult to tell which), busts through a wall. Mark runs off, puts on his costume, and tries to fight the robot off, but it pushes him away and proceeds not to attack anyone but to impale itself on some piece of art in a courtyard. When Mark runs off, changes back into his everyday clothes, and returns, feigning to have run off to find help, William, obviously un-fooled by the costume, asks, “Dude … Why didn’t you tell me you had superpowers?” Again, this is a superhero comic metaphor for a universal hardship encountered during maturation: the attempt to hide certain aspects of your life from your peers, and the occasional discovery, by your peers, of those secret aspects of your life.

The best part about this comic so far is that Kirkman has enough confidence in the core aspects of Invincible's stories that he doesn’t have to bog them down in the soap-opera style of plot-intertwining and melodrama that so often turns me away from comics. He also treats his characters with respect, and Cory Walker's art style complements everything perfectly with simple two-shade coloring and bold lines. At this point, my only question is whether Kirkman can keep things up. The series is currently on issue #70, and I simply can’t fathom any writer being able to sustain such simplicity over such a long period of time and keep things interesting. I imagine he'll necessarily end up complicating things down the line (because life, after all, does become more complicated as one matures). I’m sucked in, though, and I really want to see where the comic goes both in plot and in style.

Dune

Okay, this last one’s slightly embarrassing, I’ll admit, but you know how I mentioned above that until recently I had spent most of my sci-fi consumption opportunities on movies? Yeah, well, that also means I never got around to reading Dune. But I’ve started now, so you can’t throw tomatoes ... very hard. Despite my having a degree in English, I’m quite a slow reader, so that plus the fact that I don’t have time to read every night means that these 493 large pages are going to take a while. Last night I chipped a sliver off the mountain, though, and read the first ten pages. Everything is still a bit foreign, but I already like the novel’s addressing of the ideas of truth, pain, and the relationship between the two. The old woman uses the “box” to inflict great pain on Paul, with the goal of his true self being revealed. She later discusses the Truthsayer drug, revealing it to be used by women to see every aspect of the “body’s memory,” but only in “feminine avenues.” She tells him that there is a man prophesied to one day use the drug and see "both feminine and masculine pasts," which the characters refer to as “Kwisatz Haderach.” This term, right now, seems to essentially mean “God,” especially when the woman explains that everyone who has tried to see the Kwisatz Haderach has died. So, pain reveals truth. Truth likewise results in pain (with absolute truth resulting in death).

I’m impressed with Frank Herbert’s conviction to dive into a story with so many cryptic elements and remain confident that it will be engaging enough for readers to accept. While it’s too early for me personally to say whether the novel works as a whole, the widespread admiration it has received can answer that for me. I will say this, though: I’m looking forward to reading more of it, despite the fact that my imagination has so far polluted every aspect of it with memories of and images from its wretched 1984 film adaptation. That’s gotta mean something good.