Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 348, in which I interview YouTube star cover artist Anne Reburn, who did the cover of John Lennon/The Beatles' "Real Love" in the It's Real Life radio play adapted from my short alternate history about The Beatles, streaming on Killerwatt Radio.
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The wife and I binged The Night Agent on the Netflix the past few nights, and enjoyed it. Both the story, and the fact it was streaming rather than spun out episode by episode over ten weeks, or shown in two parts.
Shawn Ryan put it all together. He did The Shield, probably the best cop show ever on television, and Timeless, not the best time travel ever on television, but pretty good. I'd say The Night Agent is better than Timeless and not as good as The Shield, but that means The Night Agent is well worth watching indeed.
It's the most reminiscent of 24, even though it takes longer to unfold than a day, and there's no clock literally ticking. In fact, two of the medium important actors from 24 -- D. B. Woodside and Kari Matchett -- had important roles in The Night Agent, and they both did well. Woodside played a President (of the United States) in 24, and Matchett plays the same in The Night Agent.
The two lead characters -- Gabriel Basso as Peter Sutherland who works for the Night Agents and Luciane Buchanan as Rose Larkin -- who evolves from depending on Sutherland for her very life to saving his more than once -- are a sharp, spunky couple, and I look forward to seeing them again, whether in another season of The Night Agent (just renewed for a second season) or in other shows.
The villains are probably the weakest part of the story, on all levels, because we've seen something like all of them in one way or another many times before. But they propel a plot with surprises in every episode, and take part in lots of superb action scenes.
So, yeah, see The Night Agent, hold on to your seat, and enjoy.
That makes sense, right? Don't ask me, because if I'm traveling faster than light I probably wouldn't know. Now, last time I checked, we here on Planet Earth are not traveling faster than light. We're traveling at whatever speed it takes for our planet to circle around the sun, in what we call a year.
Is that clear now? Of course not. But I've got to give The Ark credit for presenting this enigma on the screen in a way that almost does make sense. Alicia, genius that she is, has figured out how to retrofit Ark 1 with the faster-than-light drive that powered Ark 3. This was developed in principle by Trust but actually put in motion by Trust's successor. So Trust understands it, or least how to make sense of being on a ship that's moving faster than light, and he helps guide his wife and Alicia to get to a place on Ark 1 where the three catch up to their future selves, i.e., things seem normal on Ark 1, though the ship is apparently not closer to Proxima B.
His wife, by the way, is the jealous type. Sooner or later she'll walk in on Trust when he's pursuing his proclivities, and who knows what might happen then. With any luck, someone on the ship will increase its speed even faster -- analogous to exceeding Mach 10 like we saw in Top Gun: Maverick -- and that could shake the wife's confidence in what she thinks she's seeing.
Star Trek has portrayed faster-than-light travel ever since 1960s. Creds to The Ark for portraying it in a way I haven't seen before. About the closest might be John Stith's murder mystery on a ship traveling FTL in Redshift Rendezvous -- but, hey, that hasn't been as yet made into a movie or TV series as yet. So to see it on a screen -- assuming you haven't seen this yet -- follow your future self and watch this episode of The Ark.
See also The Ark 1.1: Worth Watching ... 1.2: Why I'M Enjoying It ... 1.3: Asteroid and Comet ... 1.4: Hallucinations ... 1.5-1.6: More than One ... 1.7: "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)"
a second ship around Proxima Centauri B, too ...
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My alternate history short story about The Beatles -- "It's Real Life" (which you can read for free here) -- has been made into a radio play, which you can listen to for free, anytime here. Among the people and places you'll find in this 24-minute radio play, followed by an 18-minute interview with me: Pete Fornatale, Dennis Elsas, The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, WFUV Radio, Barnes & Noble, with musical performances by The Bangles, Anne Reburn, and Spencer Hannabus. Enjoy!
"The radio play of 'It’s Real Life' is set on Paul Levinson’s home campus of Fordham University and has a fictional version of the legendary New York disk jockey, Pete Fornatale of WNEW-FM and WFUV (Fordham’s radio station), hurrying through the tunnels under the campus, which transports him to an alternate reality. Full of Beatles references and music, and the interview with Levinson at the conclusion of the play is rich with Fordham and musical history (and music) and is extremely well done — the whole package is highly recommended. Tune in and be transformed into your own alternate reality.
--John F. McMullen, Poet Laureate, Town of Yorktown, NY
[And there will be spoilers ahead ... ]
So, I said in my review last week that I thought that other Ark floating motionless out there in space was Ark 5, carrying William Trust, the creator of the Ark project, who had planned on going out to Proxima B in Ark 5. And, though Trust plays a big role in episode 1.7 (see below), turns out that the motionless Ark is not 5 but 3. I got the name but not the number right. Reminds me of that Beatles song, "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)".
But how did that later Ark get to this place before Ark 1? Here the series pulls out an old but still surprising science fiction chestnut: Ark 5 had faster than light travel, developed by Trust's successor. It, too, was disabled, most of its crew destroyed, by some kind of powerful, unexpected force. Which turns out to be ... Ark 15. Hey, once you can travel faster than light, you can travel faster and faster, right? That's logical, as Spock might say.
And as icing on the cake of this fine episode, here's the big role that William Trust plays: at the end of the episode, two of our favorite characters, thinking they have only seconds left to live, are about to kiss ... when a code that only William Trust could know is delivered just in time to save them. Thanks Lane for bringing Trust out of suspended animation just in time. You can always trust Dean Devlin to deliver an excellent episode.
See you back here next week with my review of what I hope is the season one (not series) finale.
See also The Ark 1.1: Worth Watching ... 1.2: Why I'M Enjoying It ... 1.3: Asteroid and Comet ... 1.4: Hallucinations ... 1.5-1.6: More than One
a second ship around Proxima Centauri B, too ...
So, I just watched Press Play on Hulu. I don't know why I didn't come across this movie sooner. It has the two most important elements in my pop cultural life, time travel and music, and, you know, it's quite good.
[Some spoilers ahead ... ]
Here's the set-up: Laura meets Harrison in a vinyl and cassette shop in Hawaii run by Cooper (played by Danny Glover). They both have a love of mixtapes, and fall in love. Then, four years after Harrison is killed on the way to surfing by a car, Laura discovers that she can go back in time, to before Harrison was killed, every time she plays a song on a mixtape that she and Harrison were making. When the song ends, she's back in the future in which Harrison was killed four years earlier. She warns Harrison to be careful about that car, but he dies anyway in a different accident. So, the gist is: Laura can change only the circumstances of Harrison's death, not his death itself.
That's a pretty nice set-up writers James Bachelor and Greg Björkman put together. Glover is always good to see on the screen. Clara Rugaard was winsome and winning as Laura, and Lewis Pullman was sensitive and cerebral as Harrison (first time I've seen Rugaard, and Pullman was good in Outer Range). The music was appealing, too, and new to me.
Now, I generally prefer science fiction to science fantasy -- in time travel, that would be a time machine vs. click your heels together -- but Press Play had such a sweetness, a refreshing innocence, that I'm fine with its fantasy. It kept within the contours of its story -- music takes us back in time, all the time, in our minds, so why not play with the fantastical possibility that it can also take us back in time in reality -- and the ending was ...
Well, see it yourself, and see if you agree with me that the ending was right.
[And there will be spoilers ahead ... ]
So, first, here's what happened. Turns out, at least as far as the docs in the hospital that Joel and Ellie finally get to, think: only by destroying Ellie's brain can her immunity to the fungi be disseminated to the rest of humanity. We never find out if they're scientifically right or wrong, because Joel, once he finds out what the docs plan to do with Ellie, kills the doc about to perform the surgery and everyone else in his way so he can make good his escape with Ellie.
But here, then, is the question: was Joel right to do this? Was he right to go against the fundamental principle of utilitarianism of the greatest good for the the greatest number, and deprive humanity of its rescue from death, all so one person, Ellie, can survive? I tend to be utilitarian in many things, but ...
I would have done exactly what Joel did, had I the lethal prowess, to save Ellie. Does that mean I'm weak? Did Joel ignore logic and give into his emotions? Well, he did follow his emotions, but that doesn't mean he was weak or even illogical. Maybe there's a higher logic at work here. The logic of going with your deepest emotion, if that emotion is love.
Joel acted on that principle, but he's not a philosopher. He unconsciously refuted the utilitarian principle, and then he compounded that ethically dangerous action by lying. Parents often lie to their kids -- the younger the kids are, the more often they're not told the truth, presumably for their own good. I said Joel was right to save Ellie. The docs could have been wrong. Even if not, he was right to save her. But was he right to lie to Ellie at the end of the episode when she asked him if he had told her the entire story of what had happened back at the hospital? Here I'd say, probably not. I'm pretty sure I think he owed Ellie the truth.
On the other side of both of these issues, we have Marlene. She kills Ellie's mother Anna, her friend, after she'd given birth to Ellie, after Anna had been bitten, on Anna's instruction. She saved baby Ellie's life. Marlene is able to think clearly, rise above her emotions, and make tough decisions. The decision to kill Ellie, the baby she saved, years later, was an even tougher decision. She went with her head, not her heart. John Stuart Mill would have approved. It's tough to hate or even dislike her, because she was really trying to do the right thing. Unlike Joel, she told the truth. But Joel had to kill her -- fittingly, the last person he killed -- to escape with Ellie. I think he made the right decision here, too.
Being right two out of three times in these hellish circumstances ain't bad. And The Last of Us was 100% right to give us such an ethically wrenching season finale. I'll certainly be back here with more reviews when the series resumes.
See also The Last of Us 1.1-1.2: The Fungus Among Us ... 1.3: Bill and Frank ... 1.4: Gun and Pun ... 1.5: Tunnels ... 1.6: Joel ... 1.7: Riley's Wise Advice ... 1.8: Ellie vs. the Resort
I talk about The Last of Us, beginning at 40mins 40secs
I just saw Luther: The Fallen Sun -- the continuation of Idris Elba's Luther TV series, in a 2+ hour movie on Netflix, and thought it was excellent, in all sorts of ways, for all kinds of reasons. In fact, minute for minute, I thought it was better than any of the many series we've seen of Luther since it came on the screen in 2010.
[I'll warn you here of spoilers, though you won't find too many here, other than what you see in the blurbs and the trailers.]
So, Luther's in prison, not because he was framed, but because of the corners he illegally cut -- what he "had to do" -- to get the criminals in the past. His adversary is a brilliant sicko, Robey (played by Andy Serkis), who is adept on the Internet and in torturing and leaving his victims hanging, literally. One of his victims is a young man, and Luther was on the case but unable to get Robey before Luther was incarcerated. Fortunately for Luther, the storyline, and the ultimate resolution of this movie, DCI Raine, who is currently investigating Robey without much success, suffers her daughter being kidnapped by Robey. This is fortunate for the story, because it obliges Raine, who starts out being adamant about not enlisting Luther, and keeping him in prison, to instead welcome him in the frantic hunt.
As most of you no doubt know, Idris Elba was at at one point being considered to play James Bond, but recently actors his age were ruled out of that running. First of all, Elba looks young enough to me. More important, he's an outstanding one-of-a-kind actor who played and defined the indelibly memorable Stringer Bell in The Wire and continues to do the same in Luther. He would have done the same for Bond. I mention this because the Luther is this story has Bondian aspects, especially in snow and ice-water action near the end of the movie. The Luther in the TV series rarely if ever made it out of London, if I remember correctly. The Luther in this movie is now both literally as well as figuratively a man of the world.
But apropos both Bond and previous Luthers, I did miss any love interest (such as Indira Varma's Zoe Luther) or even the partially erotic spark (with Ruth Wilson's Alice Morgan) in this Luther movie. Maybe that's because two hours is a little too short for such relationships to really start, let alone play out, when there such a demonic psycho to be caught. But that absence is yet another good reason to make another Luther movie.
See also Luther 5.1: Back in Fine, Depraved Form ... Luther 5.2: "A Chocolate Digestive" ... Luther 5.3: Bitter Fruit ... Luther 5.4: Lethal Love
And see also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield ... Luther 3.1: Into the Blender ... Luther 3.2: Success ... Luther 3.3: The Perils of Being an Enemy ... Luther 3.4: Go Ask Alice
Well, I entitled my review of the first half of You Season 4 on Netflix, "So Far, Less than the Previous Seasons," so, in all fairness I entitled this review of the second half of Season 4, "More than the Previous Seasons". That is, more as in better.
[Spoilers ahead ... ]
Let's start with one part which was very well acted and executed, but a bit cliche, since Fight Club and everything that's come after. Rhys is a manifestation of Joe's most evil side. But Ed Speleers, whom I've now seen in Picard Season 3, is a first class actor, and he does a fine job bringing Joe's malign id (see Freud) to life. Plus, it's refreshing to see Joe talk to himself, when that self is another person, rather than just talking to us, the audience.
And the rest was nonstop catapulting of the Joe Goldberg story into a another, higher level. The season ends with Joe and Kate not only together, but fabulously rich, which of course will enable Joe to do all kinds of more damage in a subsequent season. Love Quinn never lifted Joe to this level, and it will be fun to see where that goes. I also have to say that, for some reason, Joe and Kate remind me of Harry and Meghan, and I mean that as a compliment, because I certainly don't think Harry is a killer.
The Nadia story was good, too, and, in general, I liked Joe as a professor. If he ever applied for a job at Fordham University in the Communication and Media Studies Department, where I'm a Professor, I would definitely want to hire him -- of course, assuming that he wasn't also a psychotic killer. The Marianne, Phoebe, and Tom Lockwood stories were ok, and served their purpose, even if none of those characters were as memorable as Kate and Ed Speleers's "Joe".
Last, the effervescent literacy that lifted all the seasons of You is back in fine form in Season 4. My favorite line? Actually, it's a phrase -- "analog book" -- an excellent retro alternative to printed or paper book. Hats off to Michael Foley and Sera Gamble (the credited writers), assuming they were the ones who came up with this phrase. And Penn Badgley for another great performance as Joe/Jonathan, and Charlotte Ritchie as Kate.
See also: You: Review from an Unconflicted Fan ... You 2: Killer Charm ... Spoiler-Free Review for You 3 ... You 4.1-4.5: So Far, Less than the Previous Seasons
[Of course, spoilers ahead ... ]
There were two big reveals at the end of 1.5: Baylor (well played by Miles Barrow, who was also good in The Peripheral, another excellent, very different new science fiction series) is the killer, and he steps up to save The Ark but actually to protect William Trust. A good character name, if you think about it. What's his name? Will Trust. Obviously, a pivotal character, but will you trust him to do what's right for The Ark, or in the crew of The Ark's best interests?
Probably not. And in episode 1.6, we find out, also at the end of the episode, that there's another Ark out there in deep space. At least, it looks like an Ark. And we see this after we learn that it was Trust's intention to get out to Proxima B on Ark 5.
So, is that starship Ark 5? And, if it is, did it somehow go through a black hole or some time loop in space which sent it back in time, which is how first The Ark would encountered it tonight? Starships with humans encountering other starships that have travelled backward or forward in time with humans -- alive or dead, or sometimes starships of human construction but with no humans -- is not a new theme in interstellar starship stories. Star Trek has had stories like that. And, come to think of it, so did my 2001 novel, Borrowed Tides.
The Ark has now moved into an excellent science fictional niche of weekly different crises with an underlying foundation of a much bigger, more profound story, being revealed so far in just glimpses and intimations. Works for me, and I'll see you back here soon.
See also The Ark 1.1: Worth Watching ... 1.2: Why I'M Enjoying It ... 1.3: Asteroid and Comet ... 1.4: Hallucinations
a second ship around Alpha Centauri, too
[Spoilers ahead ... ]
Ellie was at her absolute best so far in this series. She progresses from killing a deer to the demonic leader of a town (or actually a "resort," he says), whose people under his guidance are practicing cannibalism. And along with that, she manages to get penicillin -- enough to get Joel back in action, after one shot of the antibiotic at night and another the next morning. Now I have no idea if penicillin can work that quickly, but it probably does, and even if not, it makes for a good story.
The key development in all of this is Ellie manages to triumph without Joel's help. She would have survived even without Joel. We've seen her contend with the elements, and people, and the infected before, but this is her best moment. She uses everything she has -- including distracting her attackers by saying and showing she's infected (though the leader sees through that) -- and taking every opportunity to get on top of things, which she indeed does.
Does this mean she no longer needs Joel? No, not at all. The world in which they live is universally dangerous, and each of them, Ellie and Joel, need all the help they can get. And as we've seen all season, the two of them are the best sources of that help, for each other.
I'm looking forward to seeing what further lessons we learn in the season finale next week. What clues will it leave us for the second season, and who knows how many seasons to come? It's at times like this that I wish all of its seasons were up online, so I could see every one of them.
See also The Last of Us 1.1-1.2: The Fungus Among Us ... 1.3: Bill and Frank ... 1.4: Gun and Pun ... 1.5: Tunnels ... 1.6: Joel ... 1.7: Riley's Wise Advice
I talk about The Last of Us, beginning at 40mins 40secs
[Spoilers follow]
The confrontation between Picard and Riker, culminating in Riker's dismissing Picard from the bridge, owing to the apparently bad advice and pressure Picard had given Riker, resulting in what Riker characterized as sending everyone on this Starfleet ship to their deaths, well ... that was something to hear and see.
I do think Riker was being a little tough on Picard, though. First of all, no one forced Riker to follow Picard's strong and repeated advice. Second, and maybe this is first, things didn't look too good for this starship whatever course of action Riker took. Third, from this side of the screen as a television viewer, there's no way that everyone on this ship will die. It's way too early in this final season to do that, and I really doubt anything like that will happen even in later episodes.
Meanwhile, it was great to see Picard and Beverly talking. Picard has a right to be angry that Beverly took so long to let him know about their son. I of course was very glad to see that Jack survived. He's far too pivotal a character to go this early or indeed any time in this story, either.
And it also great to see Worf and Raffi. Worf is in great shape, and Michael Dorn is doing a fine job recreating that role. Worf and Dorn have aged well. I like the wisdom Worf has attained over the years. All that's left now is to see Worf and Raffi reunited with the rest of our heros on the massively endangered Titan.
That will take some enjoyable-to-see doing. These Changelings are a dangerous species.
See also Picard 3.1: Crusher's Son ... 3.2: Picard's Son
And see also Picard Season 2 Finale: Resolves and New Vistas ... Picard 2.9: Cooperation! ... Picard 2.8: Borg, Q, Soong, FBI ... Picard 2.7: The Bread Was Tastier than the Meat ... Picard 2.6: Borg and Soong .. Picard 2.5: Don't Walk Away Renee ... Picard 2.4: 2024 LA ... Picard 2.3: Agnes, Borg, Badge ... Picard 2.2: Q and Borg ... Star Trek: Picard 2.1: Cameos and Time Travel ... Star Trek: Picard (Season One): Non-Pareil
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a little time travel story -- free
On the evening of February 15, 2023, I talked via Zoom to the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County about alternate history stories on TV and in the movies.
Among the shows I discussed were The Man in the High Castle, Hunters, The Plot Against America, Watchmen, For All Mankind, The Last of Us, Fatherland, Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood, & Juliet, It’s Real Life, and Snodgrass.
