For All Mankind 4.8: Sergei and Margot, Ed and Alex

A really excellent episode 4.8 of For All Mankind up on Apple TV+ today, that develops some crucial personal relationships.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Let's start with Sergei and Margot.  They loved each other, in addition to and making possible all the space stuff they managed to work on together in previous seasons.  Like just about everyone else, Sergei here in the U.S. thought Margot had died in the bomb blast at NASA.  But not like everyone else, he's deeply thrilled, with no mixed feelings, to learn she didn't die, and she's back here at NASA.  His meeting her outside the diner, to warn her that she can't go back to the Soviet Union, was one of the best scenes in the series.  The build up to that, and Sergei's involvement of Aleida, was also good to see.  One of the things that has made For All Mankind so appealing all along is that the personal relationships that get our species out into space are just as important as the science and the politics.

And that was the case on Mars as well as on Earth in episode 4.8.  The good guys -- Ed and Dev -- need to get the Discriminator onto the ship that will be remote steering the asteroid.  The Discriminator will move it towards Mars not Earth.  But getting that Discriminator in the right place is not easy, for a variety of reasons.  The solution to one of the unexpected problems comes from Alex, Ed's young grandson, who is small enough to crawl through a passageway and retrieve the misplaced Discriminator.  This not only allows Dev and Ed's plan to proceed, but gets Alex and Ed finally on the way to a good, loving relationship.

I haven't said anything about the alternate history in episode 4.8, because there was next to none.  But it was fun to see Spiro T. Agnew's name up on a high school in the Texas town that Sergei is now living in.  Agnew of course resigned as Nixon's Vice President in our own reality rather than stand trial on criminal charges.  Good alternate history always plays games with villains as well as heroes.

Chuck Todd and Paul Levinson talk Alternate History, including For All Mankind

See also For All Mankind 4.1: Back in Business and Alternate Reality ... 4.2: The Fate of Gorbachev ... 4.3-4.4: The Soviet Union in the 21st Century, On Earth and Mars ... 4.5: Al Gore as President and AI ... 4.6: Aleida and Margot ... 4.7: Dev on Mars

And see also For All Mankind 3.1: The Alternate Reality Progresses ... 3.2: D-Mail ... 3.3-3.4: The Race

And see also For All Mankind, Season 1 and Episode 2.1: Alternate Space Race Reality ... For All Mankind 2.2: The Peanut Butter Sandwich ... For All Mankind 2.3: "Guns to the Moon" ... For All Mankind 2.4: Close to Reality ... For All Mankind 2.5: Johnny and the Wrath of Kahn ... For All Mankind 2.6: Couplings ... For All Mankind 2.7: Alternate History Surges ... For All Mankind 2.8: Really Lost in Translation ... For All Mankind 2.9: Relationships ... For All Mankind 2.10: Definitely Not the End

Bodies: Stick With It

Well, I finally finished watching Bodies on Netflix, having watched the first five last month, and the final three episodes last night.  And that was because the first five episodes didn't make much sense -- actually, hardly make any sense to me at all -- but the final three episodes brought it all together, in a way that respected all the paradoxes of time travel, which, as I always say, is crucially important in a time travel story.

The set-up was great -- the same body turning up in the same place, in four different times -- 1890, 1941, 2023, and 2053.   Even with time travel, how could that happen?

[Some spoilers follow ... ]

We find out in the final three episodes -- someone is attempting to travel to the past, a police detective is trying to stop him and fires her gun just as he starts to time travel.  The result splits his body into four bodies, each with a bullet in his head.  And that's when the overall story started to make sense to me, and got me glued to the screen.

Before that happened, there at least were four good period pieces involving the detectives on the case in 1890 (Victorian), 1941 (World War II), 2023 (current), and 2053 (post-huge-bomb-blast) London.  The plot that then fully emerges in the final three episodes follows the central villain of the story from 2053 to 1890 to set in motion a series of events that results in his younger self setting off the bomb that leads to 2053.  Once our heroes understand this, their goal is to puncture the loop that this villain has so painstakingly created.

That's of course no easy thing, and it shouldn't be, which makes the ending all the more satisfying.  The fix has to be put in motion in 1890, and percolate with just the right people in just the right places in subsequent times, and all of that comes off like clockwork.  The 2053 detective and the 2023 detective (aged 30 years in 2053) travel back in time and have all the necessary conversations.

I've recently enjoyed two time travel stories (Novikov Windows and The Way Home) that rely on Novikov's principle that the past cannot be altered.  I said in my reviews of each that I prefered time travel scenarios -- as a reader, viewer, and author -- in which the past could be changed. I'd highly recommend Bodies as a fine example of putting that scenario into a complex, thoroughly engaging story.

here's a little time travel story, you can read for free

 

here's the first novel in the Sierra Waters time-travel trilogy

Who Killed JFK? Episode 8: Not Lee Harvey Oswald

A short but powerfully informative Episode 8 of the Who Killed JFK? podcast with Rob Reiner and Soledad O'Brien that makes a convincing case that Lee Harvey Oswald couldn't possibly have done it.

Here are the highlights:

• The package that Oswald carried into the Texas Book Depository on the day of the assassination was too small to fit the rifle that killed JFK, even if disassembled, according to a witness (interviewed by Reiner in 2023) who traveled with Oswald to work that day.
• More than one witness places Oswald in the cafeteria at a time too close to get back up to the 6th floor, from where at least some of the three bullets were fired.
• Oswald's behavior after the assassination makes no sense from someone trying to get away.

Now these details, added to what we heard in earlier podcast episodes about why some highly placed people at the CIA, the Mafia, and Cuban exiles wanted to see JFK dead, plus the forensic evidence of at least one of three bullets coming from in front of the JFK Limo, i.e., not from the Texas Book Depository, where Oswald was, make a case that, if I were on a jury trying Oswald for this crime, I would have more than enough evidence or lack of evidence to find him not guilty.

But, of course, as we know, Oswald never got to trial, because Jack Ruby killed him.  So Oswald turned out not just to be just a patsy -- a troubled but innocent man blamed from the assassination of John F. Kennedy -- but a patsy who paid for that role with his life.  Next week, we'll learn more about Jack Ruby's role in all of this.

And as I said before, I hope, by the end of these riveting podcast episodes, that we learn why the President's brother, Robert F. Kennedy, put up with all of this, only to be assassinated himself.

See also Who Killed JFK?  A Review of the First Three Episodes of this Podcast ... Episode 4: The Real Manchurian Candidate ... Episode 5: Sheep Dipped ... Episode 6: The Richard Case Nagell Case ... Episode 7: The Assembled Killers

Slow Horses 3.6: Winners and Losers, Part 2

Well, I was right in my prediction last week about who else on our Slow Horses team would bite the dust in the season 3 finale on Apple TV+ tonight.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

And, indeed, no one on our team was killed.  But I also predicted that Donovan would live, because the blood lust in current TV series logic that not everyone of the good guys can live had been satisfied with Ben Dunn's demise in last week's episode, and, alas, I was wrong about that.  And Donovan would have been a good addition to our heroic anti-heroic team.

But on the bright side, that bald guy was killed in the failed attack on Standish, and so was the leader of the MI-5 team which under Tearney's orders were trying to kill the Slow Horses.  And the women on our team had an especially good night, playing a decisive role in the victory back at the Park.

I would rate this season as the best so far, with three back-to-back episodes of nearly nonstop action rounding out the short season of six.  Even Ho tried to get into the action, with his vehicle.  It wasn't needed, and gave Lamb yet another chance to bad-mouth anyone on his team, but it did show that Ho's heart was in the right place, using whatever weapon was at hand to try to save the day.  And it wasn't his fault that smashing into the house to shake up the bad guys inside was no longer needed.

What's needed now are more episodes of this most excellent series, and they can't come along fast enough for me.  I'll see you back here next year as soon as they're back on the screen.

See also Slow Horses 3.1-3.2: Beatles Level ... 3.3: The Meaningful Difference Between "The" and "A" in the UK ... 3.4: "Clear the Board" ... 3.5: Winners and Losers, Part 1

And see also Slow Horses 2.1-2.2: Do Horses Eat Ramen? ... 2.3: Faster Than You Think ... 2.4-2.5: Lamb Firing On All Cylinders ... Slow Horses 2.6: Heralds of Humiliation

And see also Slow Horses 1.1-2: Fast-Moving Spy Thriller ... Slow Horses 1.3: The Fine Art of Bumbling ... Slow Horses 1.4: Fine New Song by Mick Jagger ... Slow Horses 1.5: Did You Hear the One About the ... Slow Horses 1.6: The Scorecard

  

Leave the World Behind: Educated Apocalypse

I've seen Leave the World Behind, up earlier this month on Netflix after a limited release in theaters in November, described as a horror movie, and, even more often, said in reviews to be horrible.  I think it's neither.  It's an apocalypse narrative, happening in real time, and based on science and tech.  And I thought it was quite good.

Here's what I most liked about it:

• Clay Sandford (played by Ethan Hawke) is a professor of English & Media Studies.  Ruth Scott (Myha'la) says she never has been able to figure out what Media Studies is.  I'm a professor of Communication and Media Studies (at Fordham University), and I sometimes agree.
• As the apocalypse unfolds, self-driving Teslas are smashing into one another and blocking the entrance to a highway.
• Sandford's daughter Rose watches The West Wing -- but only the Aaron Sorkin episodes.
• The same daughter loves Friends.

Now admittedly none of that has much to do with the plot, but, hey, I believe in getting whatever you can from a movie, and the plot wasn't too bad, either.  Without giving anything specific away (so I don't have to warn you about spoilers), the apocalypse hinges on getting people even more at each other's throats than they already are in our reality today, and the solution is only attainable if they/we learn to work together. That's a crucial lesson, given what's going on day by day in the world around us.

I think the characters worked well together.  They each had a believable story, and one which was well synched to their age.   The acting was excellent.   Every person in the cast, ranging from Julia Roberts to Myha'la (whom I hadn't seen before) put in a convincing performance, not easy when you're playing a character in a story about the end of the world as we know it.  So I say kudos to Mr. Robot's Sam Esmail, who directed and wrote the movie, based on Rumaan Alam's novel.

Chuck Todd interviews Paul Levinson about Alternate Histories

 

Podcast Review of Maestro

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 366, in which I review Maestro, the Leonard Bernstein biopic.

Read this review. 

Links to some of what I mentioned in the podcast:

• 1955 Edward R. Murrow Person to Person interview with Leonard Bernstein
• 1967 Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution (CBS special with Bernstein)

Check out this episode!

Who Killed JFK? Episode 7: The Assembled Killers

Given the depth of the pain I and everyone I know felt about the assassination of JFK in November 1963, it's hard to fathom how many different people fervently wanted it.  The seventh episode of the Who Killed JFK podcast with Rob Reiner and Soledad O'Brien makes the case for three groups, in particular: the CIA, Cuban exiles, and the Mafia.

The animus that the CIA and exiles from Castro's Cuba had for JFK has already been convincingly presented in prior episodes of this pathbreaking podcast.   In episode 7, the focus is on the Mafia, which had two reasons to hate JFK.  First, Castro's takeover of Cuba resulted in the Mob's Caribbean Las Vegas being extinguished, which cost them untold millions of dollars.  JFK's move towards peace and defacto acceptance of Castro in Cuba after the Cuban Missile Crisis thus angered the Mob almost as much as it did the Cuban exiles and the bellicose CIA.  Second, Robert F. Kennedy, appointed Attorney General by his brother, pursued an escalating attack on the Mafia, giving it a reason all its own to want JFK removed from office.

As this episode amply details, members of all three groups -- the CIA, Cuban exiles, and the Mafia -- were in Dallas the day that JFK was assassinated.  Are we to believe that that was just coincidence?  Not likely.  And one CIA operative in particular is especially notable:  E. H. Hunt, who achieved infamy a decade later as one of the architects of the Watergate break-in that brought down Nixon.

As Reiner aptly has put it more than once, lots of chess pieces were being moved around in the months preceding JFK's assassination.  All of which to insure that JFK was killed, and the blame placed with none of the three groups that were responsible.

The proposition that Lee Harvey Oswald was indeed the patsy that he proclaimed himself to be right after the assassination rings ever more true.

See also Who Killed JFK?  A Review of the First Three Episodes of this Podcast ... Episode 4: The Real Manchurian Candidate ... Episode 5: Sheep Dipped ... Episode 6: The Richard Case Nagell Case

Rebel Moon, Part 1: Galactic Heroes and Villains

Just saw Rebel Moon, Part 1 on Netflix.  It's a two-plus-hour movie with touches of the Star Wars, Dune, and Foundation universes, but a story all its own.  And it's just Part 1.  Which if we're comparing it to Stars Wars, means Rebel Moon is in effect two movies.   I very much enjoyed the first one, and I look forward to the second.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Here's what's going on:  There's a Nazi-like empire whose King and Queen have been assassinated, leaving those in charge intent of exterminating the rebels.  The action takes place on a handful of planets strewn across space.  There are robots (including one robot in particular, capable of feeling), cybernetic mixes of organic/electronic, natural beings of all shapes and sizes, and plain old-fashioned human beings including some who are more than plain.

A lot of the movie is focused on a team of heroes.  The recruitment of each provides pretty good stories in themselves.  My favorite was Tarak, a character who looks like a Native American, shows his prowess riding a fierce bird, reminiscent of the dragon-riders in Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, and indeed Tarak is played Staz Nair who played Qhono in Game of Thrones.

There are lots of exciting battles, and not all the heroes survive.  That's always a big plus, because it keeps you on your toes.  And there are other surprises as well.  The two biggest are Kai turning on the rebel team.  Given that he's played by Charlie Hunnam, who played such a shining hero/anti-hero in Sons of Anarchy, Kai's selling out the team as the smart move was especially jolting.  No way Jax would have done that.

But the even bigger surprise was Kora.  We first see her at work on a farming planet, where she soon demonstrates her martial skills.  But by the time the movie is over, we're seeing on the screen one of the most effective fighters ever to take on dozens of fighters in rapid succession and sometimes at once.  And we also learn at the end that Kora is actually Arthelais, daughter of the tyrannical Regent of the Empire, Balisarius (poor choice of name, too close to Belisarius, the real last great Roman general on our planet, who already provided inspiration for the name Bel Riose, the last great general of the Empire in Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Empire and appearing in the second season of Foundation on Apple TV+).  But the reason that Kora/Arthelais has such prowess as a fighter is that she carefully trained a human weapon by her father.

The two hours went by quickly, and my only regret was that I couldn't watch the second two right there and then.  I'll certainly be back here in April 2024 when I do.

Maestro: The Memorable and the Missing

Let me start with what I really liked about Maestro, the biopic about Leonard Bernstein that went up a few days ago on Netflix, after opening in theaters in November.

Bradley Cooper's performance as Bernstein was tour-de-force, an incandescent, stunning rendition of how music inhabited, animated, catapulted the composer and even more so the conductor.  I've never seen anything quite like it on the screen.  Memorable is really too weak a word to describe it.

But here's what was missing for me:  There was no mention of Bernstein's 1967 CBS special Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution.  That TV program was a breakthrough in television and in popular cultural history.  The Beatles didn't need Bernstein to tell us how great and original they were.  Everyone with any ears worth having knew that already.  Same for Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones. The Byrds, The Left Banke, Janis Ian, and other recording artists Bernstein featured on the program.  We already knew them, too.  And if we had any knowledge and appreciation of classical music, we already had come to the conclusion that this kind of rock and folk rock music in some ways exceeded classical music as pathways to our hearts and souls.  And would continue to do so into the future. But, Bernstein's CBS special was a welcome and crucially important signal anyway.  It broadcast a statement that still feels fresh today: music does not need to be orchestral and written in the past to be eternal.

And yet there was no mention of this at all in the movie.  All the more surprising given that David Oppenheim, prominently featured in Maestro as one of Bernstein's male lovers, co-wrote Inside Pop with Bernstein and was its producer.

And that's not all.  West Side Story is recognized as one of the greatest musicals of the 20th century.  That one musical -- because of its lyrics as well as its music -- probably has had more impact on the world than most of Roger and Hammerstein's wonderful musicals put together.  You hear some of the instrumental riffs from West Side Story in the background at one point in Maestro, and the famous interview with Bernstein and his wife Felicia on Edward R. Murrow's Person to Person is portrayed in the movie with a brief mention of West Side Story and Stephen Sondheim (Sondheim was not mentioned nor was the name of the musical in the actual 1955 interview).  But that's it for Sondheim in Maestro.  No short scene of him writing the lyrics or discussing the words put to music in West Side Story with Bernstein. Sondheim is thanked by the producers of Maestro in the credits but has nearly zero presence in the movie. Why was that?

The movie is somewhat controversial in its depiction of Bernstein's bisexuality.  He is depicted as genuinely loving his wife, passionately kissing her as he rushes offstage after his tempestuous conducting, and siring their children.  But he also flirts with men all the time, seductively massages David Oppenheim's foot, and is seen in bed with a male lover at the beginning of the movie.  Other than the fact that he had children, who knows if all of those interactions were an accurate portrayal of Bernstein's sexuality, if he was equally at home with either gender in bed, and if not, which one had greater carnal appeal.  So I'll confine myself to saying the whole gamut was very well acted in the movie.

And I'll hope to someday see another biopic of Bernstein that explores and presents a fuller tableau of this genius's extraordinary contribution to the world.

======

an alternate history story about The Beatles

get the paperback or Kindle  here

or read the story FREE here

Slow Horses 3.5: Winners and Losers, Part 1

[Spoilers ahead ....]

Well, I was right that if any one of the four inside the Park would be killed in the savage attack launched by Tearney, it would be Ben Dunn.  And indeed he was, at the very end of the great, action-packed (as they say) episode 3.5 of Slow Horses on Apple TV+.  He was the brother of the woman killed in the first episode of this season, so his death completes the elimination of the Dunns.  I'm tempted to say the Dunns are done, and apparently I just did.

This episode ends on a cliffhanger, with the question of who among our heros or anti-heroes will be gunned down or otherwise killed next week.   Before I offer my opinions, I'm happy to say that I think the chances of the three survivors surviving are a lot better than they were at the end of last week's episode.

First and foremost, the bloodlust of narrative-dictates in television drama has been satisfied with the death of Dunn.  Had every one of the four survived, that would have strained the credibility of the story on our screen.

Second, and less important, there are reinforcements either already in play or moving into play.  Marcus and Shirley are in the inside, and neither one is a slouch.  Lamb and Catherine are on their way, and certainly neither of them are slouches, either.  Even Ho is on his way, and well ... he's better than nothing.  Maybe a lot better.  I'm not sure how he is with guns, but he's smart, for sure.

So who will be alive at the of the season four final next week?  I'm thinking everyone of our team, inside and out.   And Donovan, too.   And if someone winds up dead?   I'm thinking that will most likely be Duffy, and an outside chance Tearney (by Taverner).  It's a fate that both of them eminently deserve.

See also Slow Horses 3.1-3.2: Beatles Level ... 3.3: The Meaningful Difference Between "The" and "A" in the UK ... 3.4: "Clear the Board"

And see also Slow Horses 2.1-2.2: Do Horses Eat Ramen? ... 2.3: Faster Than You Think ... 2.4-2.5: Lamb Firing On All Cylinders ... Slow Horses 2.6: Heralds of Humiliation

And see also Slow Horses 1.1-2: Fast-Moving Spy Thriller ... Slow Horses 1.3: The Fine Art of Bumbling ... Slow Horses 1.4: Fine New Song by Mick Jagger ... Slow Horses 1.5: Did You Hear the One About the ... Slow Horses 1.6: The Scorecard

  

For All Mankind 4.7: Dev on Mars

Well, I was waiting for Dev to have a major role in this season of For All Mankind on Apple TV+, and in episode 4.7 he gets it.

He's the first person person we've seen who wants to spend the rest of his life on Mars.  He made that clear in a previous episode this season.  And that means he thinks differently from everyone else.  He's truly a person of the future.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

The alliance he makes with Ed Baldwin at the end of the episode shows Ed feels the same way about Mars.  That, indeed, is why he's already stayed there so long.  His leadership of the strike, and his opposition to Poole, were rooted in his view of himself as a Martian, whether he was fully aware of that or not.  NASA and everything else that comes from Earth is increasingly something that literally and figuratively come from a different world.

About the strike, I'll just throw in my two cents that it was wrong to remove a crucial piece of equipment.  There's a fine line in a strike between refusing to work and damaging equipment.  And though the people at the site were wrong to try make the equipment work anyway without that crucial part, I think the blame for the explosion is with whoever removed it in the first place.

Last point I'll make about this important episode is it's good to see Margo back in Houston, however uncomfortable she -- and Aleida -- may feel about that.  I have a feeling good things for the human species will come from it.

Chuck Todd and Paul Levinson talk Alternate History, including For All Mankind

See also For All Mankind 4.1: Back in Business and Alternate Reality ... 4.2: The Fate of Gorbachev ... 4.3-4.4: The Soviet Union in the 21st Century, On Earth and Mars ... 4.5: Al Gore as President and AI ... 4.6: Aleida and Margot

And see also For All Mankind 3.1: The Alternate Reality Progresses ... 3.2: D-Mail ... 3.3-3.4: The Race

And see also For All Mankind, Season 1 and Episode 2.1: Alternate Space Race Reality ... For All Mankind 2.2: The Peanut Butter Sandwich ... For All Mankind 2.3: "Guns to the Moon" ... For All Mankind 2.4: Close to Reality ... For All Mankind 2.5: Johnny and the Wrath of Kahn ... For All Mankind 2.6: Couplings ... For All Mankind 2.7: Alternate History Surges ... For All Mankind 2.8: Really Lost in Translation ... For All Mankind 2.9: Relationships ... For All Mankind 2.10: Definitely Not the End

Podcast Review of The Way Home season 1

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 365, in which I review the first season of The Way Home on Hallmark TV.

Read this review. 

Links to some of what I mentioned in the podcast:

• review of Chris Cosmain's time-travel novel Novikov Windows
• Sister Hazel All For You
• Maria Tayler Pens Everything I Wanted

Check out this episode!

The Way Home: Somewhere Between Outlander and The Time Traveler's Wife

So, I got the email from TVLine yesterday, alerting me to Rebecca Iannucci's 10 Hidden Gems You May Have Missed From This Year’s TV, and was delighted to find The Way Home on the Hallmark Channel on the list of ten, starting with this comment, "Scoff at a Hallmark Channel series’ inclusion on this list if you must, but we were quickly captivated by this time travel drama".

Now, I can't remember the last time I watched anything on Hallmark, if ever, but I was delighted because I'm always up for a time travel movie or TV series I haven't seen before -- time travel is my favorite genre as a reader, viewer, and author (alternate history is a close second, but the two are closely related) -- and I enjoyed The Way Home so much, I binged (the best way to see a TV series) all ten episodes of the first season yesterday, and eagerly await the second season that will start rolling out on Hallmark on January 21.

I'd say the series is somewhere between Outlander and The Time Traveler's Wife, high praise in my book. Like those two series, The Way Home is science fantasy.  No time machine or black hole in space is in evidence.  No person or group is apparently engineering the time travel.  Just a pond with a mind of its own up in Canada. 

Now when the mechanism of time travel is fantasy rather than science -- clicking your heels together three times like Dorothy -- that puts a lot of pressure on the narrative to excel in other areas.  And that's what The Way Home does, in all kinds of ways.  It has a refreshing pop cultural savvy.  "There is no way that guy becomes President," Elliot says (has to be about Trump) in 1999, when he asks teenaged Alice (who has traveled from 2023 to 1999) to tell him "something else" about the future.  Later, Elliot makes a Marty McFly reference, Alice makes a face like she doesn't know what that is, and Elliot says, "Come on, Back to the Future?"

And the story glistens with literary and even philosophic references.  Alice's mother Kat quotes from Faulkner. Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (the original title of the novel) makes a literal appearance in a nice old copy of the book, with the words "I can't go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then" underlined because it has crucial relevance to The Way Home. Kierkegaard's "life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards" is quoted.  The Way Home is sometimes reminiscent of Virgin River -- which my wife and I actually watch as a guilty pleasure -- but that soap opera has nothing approaching a Faulkner or Lewis Carroll quote, let alone Kierkegaard.

Music also plays a major role in The Way Home.  One of the best scenes in this first season has older Kat and Elliot singing along to Sister Hazel's "All For You," including mimicking "tryon," as they drive down the road.  And "Everything I Wanted," written for the series by Maria Taylor Pens and sung by Alice in the final episode, is one beautiful song.

And before I warn you about spoilers, I was happy to hear Elliot (who in 2023 is a high school science teacher) cite "Novikov's self-consistency principle of a single timeline" to explain why traveling to the past can't change anything in this fictional world.  This is the second time I've encountered Novikov in a time travel story in the past few months (see my review of Chris Cosmain's Novikov Windows for the first), and though I prefer being able to change the past in the time travel stories I write, it's good to see Novikov's principle, because it bespeaks a respect for the paradoxes that travel to the past inevitably engenders.

Now as to the plot [Ok, here's the warning about spoilers to follow ... ]

The essence of the story is two people from 2023 -- Alice and her mother, Kat -- traveling via the pond back to 1999, where they interact with people (Kat's mother Del, Elliot, etc) in all sorts of profound ways in life-and-death situations.  Elliot in 2023 has knowledge of everything that happened to him with the time travelers in 1999, and that's a central part of the story.  But then how come Kat, who meets time traveling Alice when Kat was a teenager in 1999, doesn't remember meeting Alice when Kat is Alice's mother in 2023?  Would that be because of Novikov's principle?  Ok, maybe, but if so, how come Elliot was able to surmount that?  Also, how come the adult Kat from 2023 apparently doesn't look the least bit familiar to her father back in 1999, until the tragic car crash that she accidentally causes in her attempt to stop him from crashing and dying (itself a nice example of the venerable time travel chestnut of time travelers causing the very tragedy they went back in time to prevent).

I also guessed the ending -- Jacob missing because he jumped into the time travel pond, and was for some reason unable to get back -- though I didn't foresee the dog having a significant role, which was a nice touch.

In any case, it's exceedingly difficult to get all the wheels of a complex time travel story moving in synch, and The Way Home does a pretty good job of it.  The three women at the heart of the story -- Del, Kat, and Alice -- are brought to life by Andie MacDowell (always a pleasure to see, and she played both older and younger Dels), Chyler Leigh (she memorably played older Kat, first time on the screen for me, she was in Grey's Anatomy, which I don't watch with my wife), and Sadie Laflamme-Snow (the same age Alice in 2023 and 1999, first time on the screen for me as well).  And Evan Williams, whom I saw in Blonde and Westworld, did his customarily good work as the adult Elliot.

They'll all be back in the second season, and who knows who else, and I'll be back then, too, next month, with more.

here's a little time travel story, you can read for free

 

here's the first novel in the Sierra Waters time-travel trilogy

 

Slow Horses 3.4: "Clear the Board"

Well, Slow Horses 3.4 gets the prize for the best ending with the best phrase: "Clear the Board".

That order is given by Tearney, to the assembled force outside the Park.  The command, just in case you didn't know, has nothing to do with chess or checkers.  It means kill all the human players.  In this case, that's River, who has once again gotten into the Park -- MI5 headquarters -- along this time with  Louisa (they make a comfortable team) in pursuit of Donovan (that's his last name) and Dunn.   Except they're now all together, and the intended objects of Tearney's lethal order.

And that's where the episode ends.

We'll find out next week who survives the ensuing hail of bullets.  Now, ordinarily I'd say probably everybody, but after seeing Spider punched out in the worst possible sense of the phrase last week -- he dies as a result of Donovan's punch -- I'll say all bets are off as to who will survive Tearney's directive.  (Note that I didn't give you a spoiler warning about Spider, because he was killed in episode 3.3, and what are you doing reading a review of episode 3.4 if you haven't seen the previous episode?)

So who will be killed next week?  The most likely is Dunn, because he's easily the least important character of the foursome in this predicament.  Less likely is Donovan -- he's a central character this season.  And even less likely is Louisa, followed by the least likely River.  But even that logic may not apply to this wonderful iconoclastic series, which began killing seemingly central and crucial characters in the first season, or languishing in a hospital, out of commission and out of the series.

So if I had to bet on this, I'd put my money on Dunn, but I'd rather not bet at all.  And, come to think of it, every one of the quartet may survive, and not get shot at all, leaving the board totally uncleared.  That result would also be totally consistent with the winningly unpredictable narrative of Slow Horses. 

We'll know more, for sure, next week.

See also Slow Horses 3.1-3.2: Beatles Level ... 3.3: The Meaningful Difference Between "The" and "A" in the UK

And see also Slow Horses 2.1-2.2: Do Horses Eat Ramen? ... 2.3: Faster Than You Think ... 2.4-2.5: Lamb Firing On All Cylinders ... Slow Horses 2.6: Heralds of Humiliation

And see also Slow Horses 1.1-2: Fast-Moving Spy Thriller ... Slow Horses 1.3: The Fine Art of Bumbling ... Slow Horses 1.4: Fine New Song by Mick Jagger ... Slow Horses 1.5: Did You Hear the One About the ... Slow Horses 1.6: The Scorecard

  

Podcast: The Rise of Antisemitism on American Campuses

 Listen to "Dr. Paul Levinson discusses the Rise of Antisemitism on College Campuses & more" on Spreaker.

For All Mankind 4.6: Aleida and Margot

I usually focus on the alternate history flourishes in my reviews of For All Mankind, but the story of Aleida and Margot in episode 4.6, up on Apple TV+ today, was so good that I wanted to devote this review to that.

Aleida had realized last season that Margot, who had brought her into NASA, was working with the Russians.  But that part of their relationship had come to a brutal end with the explosion at NASA headquarters.  It did kill Molly Cobb, and Aleida thought it had taken Margot as well.

Of course it had not. Margot was already on her way to the Soviet Union, where she has gone to nearly being killed in prison to now serving as Irina's literally secret advisor.   When there's a summit meeting in Leningrad (the title of this episode) to work out a plan to bring the iridium asteroid and its riches to Earth, Margot is literally talking from another room in Irina's ear, as she chairs a meeting in which Aleida is also present as the Helios representative.  The meeting doesn't get too far, leaving Aleida frustrated, still wanting to talk, and the others rushing off to eat.  This sets up the best scene in the episode.

Margot realizes that the combined space leaders of Earth won't be able to solve the immensely difficult problem of getting the iridium asteroid to Earth.  She also realizes that she and Aleida, working together, could and would figure out what to do.  The two meet.  Margot expects Aleida to be furious at her for betraying NASA and US.  Instead, Aleida hugs Margot, crying with joy at finding Margot alive.  That's what I call realistic, subtle, and memorable writing.

After the long hug, Aleida then takes to berating her idol for betraying her country.  And that's realistic, too.   In the end, Aleida agrees to work with Margot to come up with a plan for the asteroid, setting up some good stories in the ongoing season and series.

All in all, a really satisfying episode that portrays how the impetus to get our species into space can transcend personal as well as national differences.  A good portrayal, very well played by Wren Schmidt as Margo and Coral Peña as Aleida, in how there can still be some hope for humanity.

Chuck Todd and Paul Levinson talk Alternate History, including For All Mankind

See also For All Mankind 4.1: Back in Business and Alternate Reality ... 4.2: The Fate of Gorbachev ... 4.3-4.4: The Soviet Union in the 21st Century, On Earth and Mars ... 4.5: Al Gore as President and AI

And see also For All Mankind 3.1: The Alternate Reality Progresses ... 3.2: D-Mail ... 3.3-3.4: The Race

And see also For All Mankind, Season 1 and Episode 2.1: Alternate Space Race Reality ... For All Mankind 2.2: The Peanut Butter Sandwich ... For All Mankind 2.3: "Guns to the Moon" ... For All Mankind 2.4: Close to Reality ... For All Mankind 2.5: Johnny and the Wrath of Kahn ... For All Mankind 2.6: Couplings ... For All Mankind 2.7: Alternate History Surges ... For All Mankind 2.8: Really Lost in Translation ... For All Mankind 2.9: Relationships ... For All Mankind 2.10: Definitely Not the End

Who Killed JFK? Episode 6: The Richard Case Nagell Case

Episode 6 of the Who Killed JFK? podcast with Rob Reiner and Soledad O'Brien really hit paydirt with an account of Richard Case Nagell, given to Dick Russell, which provides the most convincing evidence I've heard so far that Lee Harvey was indeed a patsy, set up to take the fall for the assassination of JFK on November 22, 1963.

Who was Nagel?  He was a CIA double agent -- same as Oswald (according to Russell and this podcast), tasked by the Soviets, whom he wasn't really working for, to kill Oswald.  Why?  Reiner and Russell explain that the Soviets knew of the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and blame it on them (the Soviets), as a pretext for the U. S. to then invade Cuba and once and for all get Castro out of power.  Extensively interviewed by Russell over a period 20 years before Nagell's death from a "heart attack" in 1995, Russell tells us in the podcast (and in his 2003 book about Nagell, The Man Who Knew Too Much) that Nagell was ordered by the Soviets to kill Oswald to prevent the assassination of JFK.  This put Nagell "between a rock and a hard place," as O'Brien aptly puts it.  If he follows the Soviet orders and kills Oswald, the CIA will likely kill him.  If he doesn't follow those orders, the Soviets will do the same.  Nagell tries to let Oswald know he's being set up, without being too specific, because Nagell doesn't want to bring CIA down on him.  Oswald shrugs him off. So in a move that seems crazy if you don't know any of this background, Nagell walks into a bank in Dallas two months before JFK's assassination, and fires a gun in the air, twice.  He wants to get arrested, because he figures that prison is the safest place to be, with potentially CIA and Soviet assassins both apt to kill him.

The CIA does eventually get Nagell with a "heart attack gun" (not science fiction, check it out online) in 1995, one day after the Assassinations Records Review Board (established by Congress in the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992) sent Nagell a request for information.  Fortunately for the truth, Nagell had already talked extensively with Russell in the preceding decades.

So where does this leave us?  Well, as I said in reviews of earlier episodes of this podcast, it convinced me early on that, at very least, Lee Harvey Oswald was not the sole shooter in Dallas on November 22, 1963.  I'm now convinced that Oswald was far more than not the only shooter that day: he was indeed the "patsy," as Oswald after the assassination said he was, in the murder intricately plotted and carried out by the CIA to punish JFK for his failure to provide support for the Bay of Pigs invasion, prevent him from furthering detente with the Soviet Union, and we can now add to provide a pretext for a US all-out attack on Cuba.

I'm looking forward more than ever to the next episodes in this crucially important podcast.

See also Who Killed JFK?  A Review of the First Three Episodes of this Podcast ... Episode 4: The Real Manchurian Candidate ... Episode 5: Sheep Dipped

Podcast Review of the Who Killed JFK podcast, Episodes 1-5

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 364, in which I review the Who Killed JFK? podcast, episodes 1-5.

Read this review (written review of episode 5, with links to written reviews episodes 1-4)

Links to some of what I mentioned in the podcast:

• my review of Jack Dann's Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History ... my podcast interview with Jack Dann
• my alternate history story about The Beatles

Check out this episode!

Who Killed JFK: Episode 5: Sheep Dipped

Wikipedia says "sheep dipping is the immersion of sheep in water containing insecticides and fungicide." On another Wiki page, we learn that sheep dipping in military idiom is"to formally, and usually temporarily, transfer military equipment or personnel to non-military ownership for the purpose of its employment in covert action with less risk of triggering armed conflict."

Guess which kind of sheep dipping Episode 5 of Who Killed JFK? tells us the CIA did to Lee Harvey Oswald, to set him up as the "patsy" in their assassination of JFK?  The answer is: all that sheep have to do with this is the American people and the world were led like sheep to believe that Oswald was the sole assassin in this horrendous history-changing crime.  

Rob Reiner, Soledad O'Brien, and their experts give us painstaking details of how the CIA did this, making him look like a supporter of Fidel Castro and his Soviet-allied Cuba when actually Oswald was just the opposite.  And who do Reiner et al claim came up with this ingenuously devious plan?  None other than James Angleton, aka the Poet Spy, the erudite, brilliant Chief of Counterintelligence at the CIA.

I have to say that this part of the incredible story the podcast is carefully telling is a bit less convincing than the forensic evidence laid out in prior episodes.  The fact that at least one of the bullets came from the front not the back of JFK as he and Jackie and Connally and wife rode through Dallas that day seems unimpeachable, unless all the experts talking in podcast are blatantly lying, which seems very unlikely.  And if there was more than one shooter, that means 100% that the Warren Commission was lying, and at very least there was more than one person shooting at JFK.

But the CIA piece is important, because it seeks to establish or at least further demonstrate not only its motive in killing the President (anger over the Bay of Pigs and fury at the detente JFK was pursuing with Khrushchev) but the specific way they expressed that motive, and made his assassination actually happen, and in a way that didn't implicate the CIA.

Even as I write that, it seems like one tall order.  I'm not completely convinced that Angleton was smart enough and powerful to pull that off (I certainly didn't know the man personally).  But the evidence is piling up in this and the previous episode, and I'm 100-percent up to being further convinced.

See also Who Killed JFK?  A Review of the First Three Episodes of this Podcast ... Episode 4: The Real Manchurian Candidate

For All Mankind 4.5: Al Gore as President and AI

My favorite part of For All Mankind 4.5 was Al Gore as President, 2001-2005.  First of all, that's an especially satisfying piece of alternate history, since in our reality Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000, and the Republican dominated US Supreme Court stopped the recounts in Florida which could have given Gore a victory in the essential Electoral College as well.  (Also, in my time travel story, Ian's Ions and Eons, a time-traveler from the future goes back to 2000 to prevent the Supreme Court from taking that election victory away from Gore, and it's fun to see Gore in the White House in For All Mankind, a completely different story.)

Gore as President could have given the US and the world a real jump on the climate crisis, which of course he was sounding clarion calls about in the first decade of the 21st century in our reality.  I'd like to see something showing Gore as President leading the world in responding to global warming in For All Mankind.  So far, the only notable alternate history flourish in Gore's alternate history Presidency is his taking credit for discovering a very valuable asteroid approaching Mars, mirroring what he said about inventing the Internet in our reality.  Both cases were accidentally misleading statements by Gore, but the media in both realities had a field day with them.

There hasn't been much about AI in For All Mankind as yet, but it's no doubt being used to make the fictional Gore speak so clearly about things the real Gore certainly wasn't exactly taking about in our history.  It struck me that maybe the reason the series ditched Gorbachev is there wasn't enough raw material from our history for AI to put whatever words the narrative may have needed for a Gorbachev who stayed in power in our reality at least through the early 21st century.

[And now some spoilers ahead ... ]

As what's going on now in For All Mankind on Mars, it was painful to see Poole and Baldwin at such odds, but that was probably inevitable.   The two have gone from saying hello Bob to each other to Poole stripping Baldwin from his rank and position.  I agreed with Baldwin that Poole was wrong to send the Russian back to Earth in the previous episode, but she's not wrong to be concerned about the tremor in Baldwin's hand.

On the bright side, it was good to see Dev going up to Mars permanently, and I'm looking forward to seeing how things develop with all of our characters back in the US and USSR.

Chuck Todd and Paul Levinson talk Alternate History, including For All Mankind

See also For All Mankind 4.1: Back in Business and Alternate Reality ... 4.2: The Fate of Gorbachev ... 4.3-4.4: The Soviet Union in the 21st Century, On Earth and Mars

And see also For All Mankind 3.1: The Alternate Reality Progresses ... 3.2: D-Mail ... 3.3-3.4: The Race

And see also For All Mankind, Season 1 and Episode 2.1: Alternate Space Race Reality ... For All Mankind 2.2: The Peanut Butter Sandwich ... For All Mankind 2.3: "Guns to the Moon" ... For All Mankind 2.4: Close to Reality ... For All Mankind 2.5: Johnny and the Wrath of Kahn ... For All Mankind 2.6: Couplings ... For All Mankind 2.7: Alternate History Surges ... For All Mankind 2.8: Really Lost in Translation ... For All Mankind 2.9: Relationships ... For All Mankind 2.10: Definitely Not the End