Prime Target 1.1-1.2: Da Vinci Code-Like Thriller

Just saw the first two episodes of Prime Target on Apple TV+ -- I'm surprised Prime Video didn't pick it up - a Da Vinci Code-like thriller, in which mathematics -- the quality of prime numbers -- is the stuff of deadly espionage, a source of the secrets of the world, more precisely the universe, that at very least lead to the murder of mathematicians who know too much about it.

Now, I won't pretend to understand much if any of the mathematical equations we see our protagonists scribbling on tablecloths.  So I won't pretend to pass judgements on whether the equations have a scintilla of validity.  I will say that I read some interesting essays on the philosophy of mathematics decades ago, and I discovered that there was a split among let's call them philosophers of mathematics, between those who thought mathematics were in effect a language that described fundamental realities in the universe, verses those who argued that the deepest mathematics were just a sort of mental gymnastics.

I always sided with the first group, but I don't know enough about math or physics to prove it or even tell you why.  Also, since too much knowledge, at least in this series, might be fatal, I might not be telling you the truth right now, anyway, for obvious reasons.

But the first two episodes moved quickly, and made it easy to suspend my disbelief and accept that the CIA or MI6 or whatever it is that they call the KGB these days in Russia has agents out there, determined to make sure that genius mathematicians didn't act on their knowledge and therein control or at very least change the world we live in.

Hey, it's a welcome relief from what's really going on these days, and that's what's entertainment is supposed to do, right?  So I'll certainly be watching the third episode of this thriller -- which should also be called science fiction -- next week, and will report back here with whatever I can make out of the narrative and the prime equations.

Da Vinci's Demons 2.1: Science Fiction v Fantasy

Good to see Da Vinci's Demons back for its second season on Starz last night.  It had little of the inchoate mysticism which I thought brought the series down in the first season, and two good examples of Leonardo using his scientific acumen.

The first was a straightforward example of Da Vinci figuring out how to bring a nice cascade of stonework down on his attackers, thereby saving himself and his patron Lorenzo Medici, at least temporarily as far as Medici is concerned.  He is badly hurt, which leads to the second Da Vinci feat, even more impressive than the first.

Da Vinci uses his accurate knowledge of the human circulatory system - better than the Roman Galen's - to work out a dangerous blood transfusion from him to Medici.   The procedure is dangerous, that is, to Da Vinci, who is in good health, and not to Medici, who needs Leonardo's blood to live.   It's unclear at the end of the episode if Lorenzo will survive - I hope so.   History provides contradicting clues as to what might happen in the series.  Lorenzo died of apparently natural causes in 1492 - not of wounds received from a knife in the neck - but we're likely in the year 1492 in the series, or close to it, with all the visions Leonardo is having about journeys to the New World.  In fact, the opening sequence, which takes place some months in the future, shows Leonardo in the Western Hemisphere.

I'm find with this turn of events, which could be exciting, as long as it doesn't plunge the narrative further into the mystical, nonscientific track.   The mysticism is already a fundamental part of the story, so it can't be completely abandoned, but the story works so much as better as historical science fiction, or even just historical fiction, than it does as fantasy.

See also Da Vinci's Demons:  History, Science, and Science Fiction ... Da Vinci's Demons 1.7: Leonardo Under Water with a Twist ... Da Vinci's Demons Season 1 Finale: History, Science Fiction, Time Travel

 
Interested in a story with a passing reference to Leonardo?   Try The Plot to Save Socrates ...

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Da Vinci's Demons: History, Science, and Science Fiction

I caught up on the first three episodes of Da Vinci's Demons on Starz last night - the latest offering from David Goyer (of Flashforward television fame) - and I found the series superb, a full-bodied, top-of-the-line player in the surge of outstanding historical dramas that are lighting up television these days.

In time and place, Da Vinci's Demons is closest to The Borgias - in fact, in the exact same places in Italy, and only two decades or so years earlier.  You'll find familiar family names - such as the De Medici's and the Sforza's - as young Da Vinci (25 years old) contends from Florence with the Pope and his nephew. The lovemaking and nudity is also in good supply - even a bit more with Da Vinci, as befits his Renaissance-man talents as a painter and anatomist - and the ambience is as lush and captivating.

But Da Vinci's Demons has far more than political and erotic intrigue.   Da Vinci was a scientist and inventor far ahead of his time - sketching helicopters and tanks that could well have been built right then and there had the needed collateral technology been at hand.  Like Heron of Alexandria 1400 years before him and Charles Babbage 400 years later, Da Vinci belonged to the very small group of visionaries who literally saw the future in their fundamental understanding of the world around them.  Indeed, Da Vinci is easily at the top of this class, and his scientific pursuits, which included not only anatomy but botany and geology, are amply portrayed in the series.   Da Vinci's Demons in its scientific story lines is akin to Vikings on the History Channel, and its excellent depiction of Norse advances in ship building - though the Viking science of ship building is one-dimensional in comparison to what Leonardo wrought.

Such extraordinary range and depth of real scientific knowledge logically spills over into science fiction and fantasy, or speculation about what deep wells of knowledge are feeding this world, and reside beyond.  The possibility that the ancients knew far more than we give them credit for has long been a theme in my own science fiction, and figures in such popular culture triumphs as The Da Vinci Code and Rimbaldi in Alias.   Da Vinci's Demons features an ancient (fictional) Book of Leaves, which contains knowledge of the universe that goes well beyond science.   As the young Leonardo begins to learn of this book and its secrets, he comes into conflict with the Vatican and its desire to contain it and keep it from the world.   As is the case with all good science fiction, there is a proximity to reality which gives it punch:  Leonardo comes across a map of a continent which no one recognizes but he somehow knows is true.  It's a map of South America, a few decades before Columbus, a time when other historically unrecorded voyagers could well have made the trip across the Atlantic, as the Vikings in fact had done some 500 years earlier.

Da Vinci's Demons thus has everything a devotee of historical fiction and science fiction could ask for.   In its fantasy elements, the series also has a kinship with Game of Thrones, but the situation of Da Vinci's Demons in our real world makes it more compelling in my book.

                                        

The Tudors: Transformations and Assassins

It's the season for history on cable television - John Adams on HBO, the return of The Tudors on Showtime - and it's proving to be a wonderful season, indeed.

The Tudors this season is all about transformation.

Charles Brandon (well-played by Henry Cavill) was Henry's loyal buddy last year. But Princess Margaret died, Charles has remarried, and is changing his ways. He seems faithful to his new wife. He spends more time at home. And he is taking Queen Catherine's side...

What happened? I've "grown up," Brandon says. And this growing is putting him on an ever more dangerous collision course with Henry and his supporters, as the King at last officially proclaims Anne.

Thomas More is growing too. He can no longer serve as Chancellor, and is finding keeping quiet about his misgivings about Henry and Anne increasingly difficult. Henry is definitely "no longer Harry".

And the Church is changing too, both in England and Rome, though The Tudors takes some literacy license and compresses history just a bit. I don't mind - this is a dramatization not a history book. But if you're interested in real history vs. history on The Tudors, here's the long and the short of it:

In The Tudors and in history, Henry marries Anne in 1533. This is ordained by the new Archbishop of Canterbury. In The Tudors, Paul Paul III (brilliantly rendered by Peter O'Toole) sends a newly commissioned Jesuit on an assassination mission. This was all great television, with The Tudors almost taking a page from the Da Vinci Code.

In real history, however, the Jesuits weren't founded until 1534, didn't get to Rome until 1537, and didn't adopt the name Society of Jesus until 1540 (see the Wikipedia entry for more). There is certainly no record of the Pope sending out a Jesuit assassin - but, I of course have to admit that who knows what was said and done behind closed doors. (Full disclosure: I'm happily a Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, a Jesuit university. So far, no signs of assassins here....)

But The Tudors is throbbing with assassins, of the spirit and the flesh, of the heart and the mind, and these contests are precisely what make the show such a pleasure to behold.

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See also ...

Tooling Up for The Tudors and The Tudors Continues, The First Amendment Abides ... The Tudors Concludes and America Begins ...

and my reviews of all of last season's episodes, beginning here ...

and more on the printing press and the Protestant Reformation in my book, The Soft Edge ...

and a bit of historical science fiction about another era ...




The Plot to Save Socrates


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