Homeland 7.3: Separating Truth from Hyperthinking

Homeland  bounced back tonight with a strong and surprising episode 7.3.  In fact, it was one of the most unusual weaves of the series, with a familiar tapestry in almost every scene, slightly turning to reveal something unexpected yet immediately obvious in retrospect - in other words, the most appealing kind of narrative.

The best of this came at the end, with Wellington ordering the air strike in Syria against the President's wishes.  Linus Roache, who was compelling and unpredictable as King Ecbert in The Vikings, is doing it again as Wellington in Homeland, in which he's not (yet) President, but now making as well as calling the shots in the White House.  I especially liked this, because it has no analog that we know of in our political reality.

And in second but still strong place is O'Keefe turning the tables on and nearly getting Saul.  Again, this was well motivated in retrospect and almost tipped off in a conversation but still somewhat surprising to see on screen.  On one level, this story at the compound is another Waco,  On the other hand, it's something much deeper, if only because O'Keefe is so much more media savvy than David Koresh, not to mention accurate about what the President is doing - or, more precisely, what Wellington is doing, but there's no way that O'Keefe can see that difference.

And it was a powerful night for Carrie, too.  Her dilemma - of being able separate true connections from those her hyperactive mind might generate - is really the template for this entire season.  When the enemy is a foreign terrorist, or even some American like Brody under the sway of a foreign terrorist, it's a little easier to separate truth from hyperthinking than when the enemy is in the White House.

And by the way, this set up is much more dangerous than Trump in our reality.  Elizabeth Keane seems ten times smarter and more in control of her impulses than Trump.  And as much as I can't stand Chief of Staff Kelly, he so far hasn't revealed any of the depth of deception and treachery of Wellington.

And I'll be back with more next week.

See also Homeland 7.1: The Worse Threat ... Homeland 7.1: Carrie vs. 4chan

And see also Homeland 6.1: Madam President-Elect ... Homeland 6.2: Parallel Program ... Homeland 6.3: Potentials ... Homeland 6.4: "A Man with Painted Hair" ... Homeland 6.5: The Attack on Carrie's Brownstone ... Homeland 6.7: The Arch Villain ... Homeland 6.8: Peter's Problem ... Homeland 6.9: The Tide Begins to Turn ... Homeland 6.10: Fake News! ... Homeland 6.11: Quinn and Dar ... Homeland Season 6 Finale: Chilling - and True to Life

And see also Homeland 5.1: Moving into the Age of Snowden ... Homeland 5.2: Who Wants to Kill Carrie ... Homeland 5.3: Carrie and Kerry ... Homeland 5.5: All Quinn ... Homeland 5.6: Saul Wises Up ... Homeland 5.7: Tough to Watch ... Homeland 5.9: Finally! ... Homeland 5.10: Homeland and Homeland ... Homeland 5.11: Allison as Primo Villain ... Homeland Season 5 Finale: RIPs

And see also Homeland 4.1-2: Carrie's State of Mind ... Homeland 4.3: Quinn and Carrie ... Homeland 4.4: Carrie's Counterpart ... Homeland 4.5: Righteous Seduction ... Homeland 4.6: The Biggest Reveal ... Homeland 4.7: The Manifestation ... Homeland 4.8: Saving Someone's Life ... Homeland 4.9: Hitchcock Would've Loved It ... Homeland 4.10: The List ... Homeland 4.12: Out of this Together

And see also Homeland 3.1: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 3.2: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 3.3: Two Prisons ... Homeland 3.4: Twist! ...Homeland 3.6: Further Down the Rabbit Hole ... Homeland 3.7: Revealing What We Already Knew ... Homeland 3.8: Signs of Life ...Homeland 3.9: Perfect Timing ... Homeland 3.10: Someone Has to Die ... Homeland 3.11: The Loyalist ... Homeland Season 3 Finale: Redemption and Betrayal

And see Homeland 2.1-2: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 2.3-5: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 2.6: What Brody Knows ... Homeland 2.7: Love Me Tinder ... Homeland 2.8: The Personal and the Professional ...Homeland Season 2 Finale: The Shocker and the Reality

And see also  Homeland on Showtime ... Homeland 1.8: Surprises ... Homeland Concludes First Season: Exceptional

Counterpart 1.6: Alternate Prince, Funeral, and Clear Clare

Another deeply interesting episode - 1.6 - of Counterpart tonight, which moves the story along in tantalizing drops and a big reveal.

As I've said earlier, Counterpart is if nothing else a taut spy story, though of course it's something more.  That duality - spy story and something more - was captured perfectly in the "love the lie" conversation between Howard Prime and the butcher's widow.  She assumes that HP and her husband were spies for Russia or the United States.  That would be compelling enough, in the way that any good spy story is.  But of course, Howard Prime and we know that they were/are spies for an alternate reality.

And we learn through this episode that that alternate reality really has it in for us.  The deaths they're meting out are more than you get in the usual spy games.   The killings are part of an effort to wipe us out completely.

What are they - the alternates us's - so angry about?  I mean, we learn that Prince is still alive there.  Not as momentous as JFK (the big reveal about the alternate reality in Fringe), and not as wonderful as saving John Lennon would be (at least, in my book, figuratively and literally - in "Saving Lennon" in Peter Brown Called, but I won't tell you if the time traveler succeeds) - but, hey, Prince living is still pretty impressive.   But that's not enough to budge the huge chip on alternate Berlin's shoulder.  The look in Clare's eyes at the end is clear and deadly.

But there's also some hope, I suppose, in Howard Prime, who does have more of good Howard in him than meets the eye, showing real compassion to the butcher's widow.  And even Nadia at the edge of her alternate's funeral may be thinking something vaguely humane.

I'm looking forward to finding out more next week.


See also  Counterpart 1.1: Fringe on Espionage ... Counterpart 1.2: Two Different Worlds ... Counterpart 1.3: Identification and Pandemic ... Counterpart 1.4: The Switch ... Counterpart 1.5: Ménage à Alternates

Peter Brown Called

just published ...



Writing science fiction and songs have been two of my lifelong passions. This anthology combines them, with a selection of my science fiction and fantasy stories that has music as a theme, and my lyrics that deal with far-off suns, robots, and time travel.


Table of Contents 

Prologue 

 =stories= 

Marilyn and Monet 
The Harmony 
The Kid in the Video Store 
Ian, Isaac, and John 
Saving Lennon (from The Loose Ends Saga) 
The Suspended Fourth 
Sam’s Requests 
The Singing Pottery (from The Silk Code) 

 =songs= 

Evening's Evergreen Morning 
A Piece of the Rainbow 
The Lama Will Be Late This Year 
Alpha Centauri 
Lime Streets 
Tau Ceti 
If I Traveled to The Past 
 I Fell in Love with a Robot 
The First House on Mars

 =alternate equation #1=

Elvis, Ed, and Einstein

read an excerpt you won't find any place else on Speculative Fiction Showcase

Review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles 22 of X: The 70s Till the End

It's a testament to how good a book is that you seem to say every chapter is the best.  I'm not going to go back and read my 21 previous reviews of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles - right, I'm reviewing this book just about chapter by chapter - because I'm more in the mood to write this review than do even a modicum of research, but it sure feels like I've said that lots of times in the past nearly year.  And each time I say that, I usually put in the proviso that this chapter really is the best in the book.  Which is exactly how I feel about this one, which is about The Beatles in the decade of the 70s, not individually (the focus of some of the other chapters in this book), but, somehow, as a group, typified by Capitol's release of their Rock 'n' Roll Music double-vinyl album in 1976, and kindred releases, and lost chances, all culminating with the Dakota in New York City in December 1980.

Sheffield brings his customary intensity and light touch to the subject, getting us to twist and shout and just about everything in between and before and beyond as we read this chapter.  We learn that even Ringo felt used by the album - "When Ringo feels degraded, you know things are out of hand" - and how John's line to the effect that one can be a "delinquent" by buying a "rock and roll book" empowered Sheffield.  As is clear from the first page of Dreaming the Beatles, this is as much Sheffield's autobiography as it is The Beatles biography, and that's key to why it's such irresistible reading.

We hear again about what we already knew - John and Paul, in New York at the Dakota, almost went down to Rockefeller Center for an impromptu appearance on Saturday Night Live in response to Lorne Michaels' running gag - and some things we didn't, like Lennon's statement (in a sworn affidavit) at the end of November 1980 that The Beatles had "plans to stage a reunion concert".  Lost opportunities, which just an excruciating month later became impossible to ever recover.

Sheffield importantly mentions that Lennon was murdered by someone with "a legally purchased handgun".  I don't have to tell you the sick synchrony of that with the legally purchased semi-automatic that took the lives of 17 people,  many of them students, at Parkland High School in Florida last week.  Not only is the legal age (18) at which someone can purchase a firearm lower in many states than the age at which someone can buy a drink (21), it is easier to purchase a more deadly long gun than a handgun in many states as well.  This insanity has to fucking end, beginning with voting out of office all the NRA-whipped Republicans who stand in the way of sensible gun reform.

The murder of John Lennon didn't get that reform, and so far neither have the subsequent mass shootings at schools, concerts, and houses of worship.  But the murder of John Lennon did extinguish a part of our innocence - at least, my innocence - in a way slightly different but related to the awful eradications of innocence that attended the murders of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy.  Dion's "Abraham, Martin and John" (written by Dick Holler) captured part of this in 1968.

The end of 1980 also brought the loss of Marshall McLuhan (who actually had been interviewed by John and Yoko a few years earlier).  McLuhan died of natural causes - a stroke - but his death was as traumatic and life-changing for me as Lennon's.  Tina and I went up to Toronto for Marshall's funeral (I'd worked with Marshall at the end of the 1970s), and I've written half a dozen books either completely or mostly devoted to explicating and expanding his work since then (Digital McLuhan, McLuhan in Age of Social Media, etc).

I've written no books about John Lennon or The Beatles, but he and they have figured in my science fiction novels and stories.  One nice thing about time travel is you can have a chance to undo some terrible event, like the murder of John Lennon, by traveling back to the past.  But that's fiction.   In the world of reality, the best you can do is read Rob Sheffield's book.

And I'll be back soon with a review of one of the dwindling number of remaining chapters in this one of a kind book, Dreaming the Beatles.

See also Review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles 1 of X: The Love Affair ... 2 of X: The Heroine with a Thousand Faces ... 3 of X: Dear Beatles ... 4 of X: Paradox George ... 5 of X: The Power of Yeah ... 6 of X: The Case for Ringo ... 7 of X: Anatomy of a Ride ... 8 of X: Rubber Soul on July 4 ... 9 of X: Covers ... 10 of X: I. A. Richards ... 11 of X: Underrated Revolver ... 12 of X: Sgt. Pepper ... 13 of X: Beatles vs. Stones ... 14 of X: Unending 60s ... 15 of x: Voting for McCartney, Again ... 16 of x: "I'm in Love, with Marsha Cup" ... 17 of X: The Split ... 18 of X: "Absolute Elsewhere" ... 19 of X: (Unnecessary but Brilliant) Defense of McCartney ... 20 of X: "All Things Must Pass" ... 21 of X: Resistance ... 22: The 70s Till the End ... 23: Near the Science Fiction Shop ... 24 of 24: The Last Two

And here's "It's Real Life" -- free alternate history short story about The Beatles, made into a radio play and audiobook and winner of The Mary Shelley Award 2023

"Ian, Isaac, and John" and "Saving Lennon" in this antho

Counterpart 1.5: Ménage à Alternates

Counterpart 1.5 was truly beautiful - or at very least, a part of it was, the very last part, in which our Howard asks Howard Prime's daughter Anna, on the other side, to tell him what he's missed (in her life).

We also learn a lot and see a lot more of what's going on, and has been going on, between the two sides.   The other side lost seven percent of its population as a result of the plague that hit it in the 1990s - and they blame our side for starting it.  Deliberately starting it?  Apparently that's the belief of some who are over there and in power, even though our side says that's just a conspiracy theory.  One of the attractive qualities of Counterpart is how it takes conspiracy theories to a new level - the level in which the reality is two alternate realities existing at the same time, transversable via the most mundane "bridge" you ever saw.  That's fertile ground indeed for conspiracy theories.

I also liked in this episode the new combination we saw in alternate people and their relationships.  Up to now, the biggest shock was the two Howards meeting one another.  In episode 1.5 we find a pair of alternates who have gone beyond that: they live together, as lovers, actually in a ménage à trois with a man both women find a poor cook but handsome.

Meanwhile, the relationship between our Howard and Emily on the other side continues to develop.  She's well on her way to loving him, despite her tough bravado.  And Howard already loves her, because he can't really distinguish this Emily from his Emily.  In his heart, he feels they're the same, and in a way he's right - this even though their Alexander Pope tells our Howard to be wary of Emily. Sound advice,  or is this Pope just trying to keep our Howard from telling her things Pope would prefer she not know?

Counterpart is fine, understated science fiction at its best, and I'm looking forward to more.

See also  Counterpart 1.1: Fringe on Espionage ... Counterpart 1.2: Two Different Worlds ... Counterpart 1.3: Identification and Pandemic ... Counterpart 1.4: The Switch

more alternate reality - "flat-out fantastic" - Scifi and Scary

Homeland 7.2: Carrie vs. 4chan

Well, not exactly 4chan, but I liked that in the title of this review, of one of the most ridiculous episodes of Homeland - 7.2 - indeed of any serious espionage show, to come down the pike in a long time.

Carrie puts a picture of a woman she wants to identify on 4chan (if you don't know what that is, either don't read on, or look it up on Wikipedia).  But ok, that makes some sense.  What follows is what doesn't: Carrie downloads an image that's sent to her in response.  And that image is really a landmine that explodes when she opens it, permitting some hacker to take over her computer and its sensitive files, with the motive of blackmailing her for escalating amounts of money or else the files will be made public.

Come on - even I know not to download a file that's sent to me by someone I don't know, let alone on 4chan.   Carrie's upset - before this happens - as she always is, but she has excellent instincts, and would never do anything even remotely as stupid as this.

And what follows is also idiotic.  She beats the hacker by first tempting him with her body on the screen and then in person, where she can turn the tables and beat him to the ground and get him to relinquish his hold on her computer lest she kill him.  Again - what?  What kind of hacker who stands to make thousands of dollars would risk that just for an in-person look or more at Carrie's body.  (No offense to Carrie, I'd say that about any woman or man - what hacker would risk $20,000 just for a look, or a touch, or even to sleep with the victim?)

And so this episode 7.2 of Homeland goes down as one of the most implausible, if not the most absurd, episode of this otherwise fine series.  Fortunately - I was tempted to write 4chan-ately - there's plenty of time to correct course in this seventh season.

See also Homeland 7.1: The Worse Threat

And see also Homeland 6.1: Madam President-Elect ... Homeland 6.2: Parallel Program ... Homeland 6.3: Potentials ... Homeland 6.4: "A Man with Painted Hair" ... Homeland 6.5: The Attack on Carrie's Brownstone ... Homeland 6.7: The Arch Villain ... Homeland 6.8: Peter's Problem ... Homeland 6.9: The Tide Begins to Turn ... Homeland 6.10: Fake News! ... Homeland 6.11: Quinn and Dar ... Homeland Season 6 Finale: Chilling - and True to Life

And see also Homeland 5.1: Moving into the Age of Snowden ... Homeland 5.2: Who Wants to Kill Carrie ... Homeland 5.3: Carrie and Kerry ... Homeland 5.5: All Quinn ... Homeland 5.6: Saul Wises Up ... Homeland 5.7: Tough to Watch ... Homeland 5.9: Finally! ... Homeland 5.10: Homeland and Homeland ... Homeland 5.11: Allison as Primo Villain ... Homeland Season 5 Finale: RIPs

And see also Homeland 4.1-2: Carrie's State of Mind ... Homeland 4.3: Quinn and Carrie ... Homeland 4.4: Carrie's Counterpart ... Homeland 4.5: Righteous Seduction ... Homeland 4.6: The Biggest Reveal ... Homeland 4.7: The Manifestation ... Homeland 4.8: Saving Someone's Life ... Homeland 4.9: Hitchcock Would've Loved It ... Homeland 4.10: The List ... Homeland 4.12: Out of this Together

And see also Homeland 3.1: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 3.2: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 3.3: Two Prisons ... Homeland 3.4: Twist! ...Homeland 3.6: Further Down the Rabbit Hole ... Homeland 3.7: Revealing What We Already Knew ... Homeland 3.8: Signs of Life ...Homeland 3.9: Perfect Timing ... Homeland 3.10: Someone Has to Die ... Homeland 3.11: The Loyalist ... Homeland Season 3 Finale: Redemption and Betrayal

And see Homeland 2.1-2: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 2.3-5: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 2.6: What Brody Knows ... Homeland 2.7: Love Me Tinder ... Homeland 2.8: The Personal and the Professional ...Homeland Season 2 Finale: The Shocker and the Reality

And see also  Homeland on Showtime ... Homeland 1.8: Surprises ... Homeland Concludes First Season: Exceptional

The Cloverfield Paradox: Fringe Meets Star Trek

Well, there really wasn't any paradox in it (things going very wrong does not equate to paradox), and the story was at least much horror as science fiction, but The Cloverfield Paradox on Netflix was pretty good science fiction of the alternate-reality variety anyway.

Earth in the future is in the throws of a grievous energy crisis.  Hope is placed in a new particle accelerator, to be tested in the Cloverfield space station.  A slightly nutty scientist or sooth-sayer warns that the energies that will be released in this test could rip reality apart and unleash untold monsters.  Of course, no one pays him any heed.

But indeed the tests do rip reality apart, or at least bring it into interactive smashing contact with another reality.  This is manifested by a woman who shows up in the metalwork of the station - literally - and a guy who loses his arm to the other reality (the arm comes back and writes our crew vital information), and you get the picture.  This is what I meant by Fringe (the Star Trek part comes from the crew in space).  The Cloverfield Paradox somehow mixes horror and humor in a way that only J. J. Abrams, one of the producers, can do it (hey, maybe that's the paradox).

There are good surprises, double-crosses, and breathtaking scenes throughout.  The protagonist, Ava (well played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, pictured above) is given the choice of reuniting with the family she lost in her/our reality - she can do this by going to the alternate reality - or saving our reality.   I won't tell what she does.

I will say that the changes unleashed by the particle accelerator usher in all kinds of horrors not only in space, but Earth as well.  Enjoy.

more alternate reality - "flat-out fantastic" - Scifi and Scary

Counterpart 1.4: The Switch

A really superb episode 1.4 of Counterpart last night - my favorite so far - in which the two Howards switch sides.  Again, the acting of J. K. Simmons is Emmy-worthy.  Here the kind Howard from our world has to play the tough Howard from the other side, and vice versa, and both do it just right.  This series is a pleasure to see just because of Simmons' acting.

But the storyline is deep and effective, too.  Our Howard and his Emily (now in the hospital) lost their baby, already named Anna, in a miscarriage.  On the other side, the tough Howard is long divorced from Emily, but their daughter Anna is an adult, with a commanding presence (not surprising, given her parents).

Our Howard and that Emily are of course attracted to one another, but the beginning of their relationship that we saw last night was fueled by the need that he has for his wife (she's been in a coma in the hospital since she was run down) and she for man who looks just like her husband but, in her words, is far better than he.   It's a relationship I haven't seen before in any narrative.  It's born of science fiction but is about as real as it gets for two human beings - very early, quiet, and preliminary, but already memorable and very powerful.

The Baldwin story is an interesting take on the classic spy story too.  Seduced by a woman who betrays her, by taking her gun, but Baldwin triumphs over the man who comes to kill her, anyway, with some strong one-on-one combat.  The whole sequence was a James Bond interlude for the 21st century.

Counterpart has now established itself not just as a series with an original and compelling idea, but an execution to match.


See also  Counterpart 1.1: Fringe on Espionage ... Counterpart 1.2: Two Different Worlds ... Counterpart 1.3: Identification and Pandemic

more alternate reality - "flat-out fantastic" - Scifi and Scary

Homeland 7.1: The Worse Threat

Homeland was back in business with the debut episode of season 7 tonight, and a story that aptly captures our real predicament these days in a warped, Bizarro-world kind of way.

The gist of the set-up, which we saw fall into place at the end of last season, is this:  The worse threat to our democracy, as Carrie tells an ally she fails (so far) to secure, is no longer terrorism but the fascist in the White House.  This rings true enough to our world with Trump in the White House - except the occupant in Homeland is a woman, Elizabeth Keane, a martinetish version of Hillary Clinton, who became paranoid last season after an attempt on her life.

The switch is more than just of gender.  Everything else around and about the President is turned around.  O'Keefe, a libertarian nut-job most reminiscent of Alex Jones in our reality, is alas not so far off when he raves about Keane as the Hitler in the White House (one only wishes the real Jones would rant the same about Trump).  And, indeed, the President is hunting him down, just as O'Keefe fears.

I expected that General McClendon would be killed - the President cannot abide even the life sentence that he was given - but the big question is who gave the order.  Was it the President herself, or her Chief of Staff, the guy who tried to get Saul on the President's team.

That didn't happen to tonight - Saul's price (freedom for all the illegally jailed people) was too high, but the coming attractions show that something will convince him to take the job.   Will he once again be at odds with his star pupil, who has been more incisive than Saul for a while now?  I hope not - Carrie and Saul are always at their best when they're working together, totally on the same side.

Good for Homeland for telling us a story this season of a budding Mussolini in the White House, even if she's not the same gender as Nixon or Trump.

And I'll be back here next week with more.

See also Homeland 6.1: Madam President-Elect ... Homeland 6.2: Parallel Program ... Homeland 6.3: Potentials ... Homeland 6.4: "A Man with Painted Hair" ... Homeland 6.5: The Attack on Carrie's Brownstone ... Homeland 6.7: The Arch Villain ... Homeland 6.8: Peter's Problem ... Homeland 6.9: The Tide Begins to Turn ... Homeland 6.10: Fake News! ... Homeland 6.11: Quinn and Dar ... Homeland Season 6 Finale: Chilling - and True to Life

And see also Homeland 5.1: Moving into the Age of Snowden ... Homeland 5.2: Who Wants to Kill Carrie ... Homeland 5.3: Carrie and Kerry ... Homeland 5.5: All Quinn ... Homeland 5.6: Saul Wises Up ... Homeland 5.7: Tough to Watch ... Homeland 5.9: Finally! ... Homeland 5.10: Homeland and Homeland ... Homeland 5.11: Allison as Primo Villain ... Homeland Season 5 Finale: RIPs

And see also Homeland 4.1-2: Carrie's State of Mind ... Homeland 4.3: Quinn and Carrie ... Homeland 4.4: Carrie's Counterpart ... Homeland 4.5: Righteous Seduction ... Homeland 4.6: The Biggest Reveal ... Homeland 4.7: The Manifestation ... Homeland 4.8: Saving Someone's Life ... Homeland 4.9: Hitchcock Would've Loved It ... Homeland 4.10: The List ... Homeland 4.12: Out of this Together

And see also Homeland 3.1: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 3.2: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 3.3: Two Prisons ... Homeland 3.4: Twist! ...Homeland 3.6: Further Down the Rabbit Hole ... Homeland 3.7: Revealing What We Already Knew ... Homeland 3.8: Signs of Life ...Homeland 3.9: Perfect Timing ... Homeland 3.10: Someone Has to Die ... Homeland 3.11: The Loyalist ... Homeland Season 3 Finale: Redemption and Betrayal

And see Homeland 2.1-2: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 2.3-5: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 2.6: What Brody Knows ... Homeland 2.7: Love Me Tinder ... Homeland 2.8: The Personal and the Professional ...Homeland Season 2 Finale: The Shocker and the Reality

And see also  Homeland on Showtime ... Homeland 1.8: Surprises ... Homeland Concludes First Season: Exceptional

Knightfall Season 1 Finale: Threading the Needle

The Kightfall Season 1 finale very carefully threaded the needle of miracle or natural event with Joan in the forest, speaking of drinking in the blues of the sky, in Landry's arms.

She's dying - from the sword the King thrust into her - and the doctor tells Landry it's hopeless.  As a last attempt to somehow save her life, when the end of is nigh, he remembers that she has the Grail.  He fills it with water and bids her to drink.  Which she does - but to no apparent avail.  Landry, furious with the Grail which didn't come through for him, throws it against a tree where it smashes.

But the miracle occurs.  Her baby is still alive, and the doctor is able to deliver it - a girl - via caesarean.  Joan dies, but their daughter miraculously lives.  Will this be enough to restore Landry's faith?

Probably.  But where was the miracle in what happened?  We know with our science that it's possible to deliver a live baby from a mother who has died via caesarean section.  So, what seems like a miracle to Landry is just quick thinking and knowledge from "Syria" on the part of the doctor, after Landry felt the baby moving in his deceased Joan.

The Templars and thus Knightfall are all about God and miracles.  Just before Joan's death, De Molay saves the day by riding in with reinforcements and beating back the red knights.  Tancrede, quoting Dylan from more than half a millennium later, says earlier and repeatedly that the Templars fight with God on their side.  But was De Molay's appearance with his men an act of God or the result a guilty conscience, clear thinking, and fast action by De Molay on behalf of his brethren?

We face questions like that today, as the world did in the thirteen-hundreds, and as human beings, trying to understand the word around them, the good and the bad and what may or may not be fate, always will.   Faith and science are always in the eye of the beholder.

***

A final thought about the finale: The death of Joan and the birth of her and Landry's daughter echoes the death of Padme and the birth of Leia, and is consistent with the resonance between the Templars and the Jedi that ran through this season.  Joan and Landry's daughter could almost be Joan of Arc, but she appeared about a century after the time being depicted in Knightfall.

I enjoyed this first season and look forward to beholding more.

See also: Knightfall 1.1: Possibilities ... Knightfall 1.2: Grail and Tinder ... Knightfall 1.3: Baby ... Knightfall 1.4: Parentage ... Knightfall 1.5: Shrewd De Nogaret ... Knightfall 1.6: Turn of Fortunes ... Knightfall 1.7: Landry's Mother ... Knightfall 1.8: Crucial Moves ... Knightfall 1.9: "More Than You Think"

Absentia: In Your Face and Worth Watching

I binged Absentia the past few days - on AXN in 2017 and now on Amazon Prime.  It starts out with a scenario we've seen before (FBI agent Emily Byrne, played Castle's Stana Katic, shows up after presumably being held hostage for six years, and declared dead), but soon takes off in vivid and less conventional ways.  Her husband Nick Durand (well played by Patrick Heusinger), also an FBI agent, has happily remarried, and the two are raising the son Durand had with Emily.  Like The OA, The Missing (season two), Thirteen, and other reappearance stories, Emily's return continues or sets off a new series of terrible crimes.

But Emily Byrne is a much more powerful character than the "victims" in those other series, with the exception of Prairie in The OA, who is powerful, but in a more mystical rather than Criminal Minds way.  Emily soon becomes both the hunter (of the person who held her captive) and the hunted (she's implicated in a string of new murders), and the narrative plays it so close to the vest that's it's not easy to tell which she is - at least, on the basis of logic - though I never lost faith in her.

And lest you think that's a spoiler, it's actually still not clear, at the very end, what she did and didn't do during her years in captivity.  Clearly, as she herself recognizes and tells her husband, she's not the same person she was before she was kidnapped.  Is it just her mind that's not quite the same, or has she acted on those dark fantasies (assuming they're fantasies not memories).

Katic does an outstanding job in this role.  The supporting case is memorable too, especially Paul Freeman as Emily's father, Neil Jackson as her brother, and Cara Theobold as Nick's new wife.  The plot is tight - I guessed some of the suspects, and was proven wrong just about every time.  Highly recommended, but not for little children.