The Event 1.6: Not Only Aliens, Immortals!

Well, we found out something else for sure about our aliens on The Event 1.6 tonight:  they're not only aliens, but immortals, or, at very least, age-much-more-slowly-than-we-do-ers.

The story tonight most centers around Simon, previously revealed as an alien working for Thomas under cover with the Feds.   Tonight we learn that he fell in love with a human woman back in the 1950s, but was forced to decamp by Thomas.

We've seen this theme before, most recently on New Amsterdam.  It wore a bit thin for a whole series such as New Amsterdam, but worked ok as just one element of a more complex plot in The Event.  Simon is also more believable than Richard on Lost, who came by his immortality through the least scientific part of the island lore.

It's totally believable that sentient beings from off of our planet might age at a different rate from us, and be, in comparison to us, immortal.  And tonight we also get confirmation - for those on the Web who doubted - that Thomas, Sophia, Simon et al are indeed aliens.   We get this from a crazed but plausible reporter who briefs on Sean and Leila on what her father the pilot came upon up north in Alaska.

So The Event continues to hold my interest.  It's so far nowhere as good as 24 and Lost were at their best, but it has its own style and appeal.   And with its unfolding of the alien story, and the kinds of powers they have - Thomas escapes tonight by creating another worm hole, this time in a building which collapses into a void - The Event is beginning to weave in some elements of V and Fringe, which is all to the better.   The Event continues to be a compendium of intelligent science fiction and action.

See also The Event Debuts on NBC ... The Event 1.2: Aliens! ... The Event 1.4: 24 Back in Action!

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

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Give Me Sanctuary - on the Sci Fi Channel

Just saw the two-hour premier of the Sci-Fi Channel's new series, Sanctuary, and very much enjoyed it. It began as a series of webisodes which I didn't see last year, so tonight was my first immersion in the series.

The show has a style and storyline all its own, even as it has elements of Heroes (as in, humans or human-like sentient beings with super or strange powers - including a mermaid), New Amsterdam (immortality or at least a major character living relatively young - at least, not old - for a long, long time), and even some of the strange creature feel of H. G. Wells' Island of Dr. Moreau.

My favorite of these was a Neanderthal with real heart. (I like the idea of Neanderthals surviving into our time, which is why I wrote The Silk Code.)

The story revolves around Dr. Helen Magnus - always good to see Stargate's Amanda Tapping - who recruits Dr. Will Zimmerman (reminiscent of Daniel Jackson from Stargate and the younger Bishop on Fringe) to work with her in the "Sanctuary". This is just what it sounds like, but for the strange sentient beings, including the Neanderthal, that Magnus has been rescuing from all over the world - for at least as far back as the time of Jack the Ripper. Some of them are good, some are bad, some confused. Zimmerman, in fact, was rescued by Magnus when he was a boy, but doesn't realize that until the end of the premier. Also on hand is Helen's daughter Ashley - who looks to be about 20 or late teens, does most of the dangerous collection of specimens, packs a mean punch, and is blond. Think somewhere between Claire and Niki, to get back to Heroes.

But Sanctuary does have an appealing original flavor - zoological and botanical and scientific, where Heroes is comic book, and Fringe is just invitingly weird so far, without any real explanation of why.

Biology was my favorite subject in high school, and in college, too, until I realized I'd get more out of sleeping late on Friday mornings than running down to City College for an 8am lab.

Sanctuary is on at the more civilized time of 10pm on Fridays, and I expect I'll be watching.

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

Lost 4.11: Unlocking Locke

A mind-blowing extraordinary episode (11 of Season 4) of Lost tonight.

Richard Alpert is Locke's father - the timeless man, maybe a time traveler, perhaps an eternal like John Amsterdam who doesn't seem to age, who knows, who helped get Juliet to the island, who helped Ben kill the Dharma people, who has a life as a "hostile" on the island that seems to transcend the Others, Dharma, and everyone - well, he's Locke's father. He impregnated a teenage girl - Emily, half his age, who dug Buddy Holly in the 1950s. She has the baby, names him John, gives him her last name (Locke), and leaves the hospital. Her mother gives John Locke up for adoption - but not before we see Richard Alpert in the hospital...

Before we go any further - if the name Emily sounds familiar to you - that might be because someone named Emily was also Ben's mother. So, are Locke and Ben at very least half-brothers (same mother), and who knows, maybe full brothers (if Richard not Roger was Ben's father) .... I've long been saying that inexplicable coincidences which are really explicable, if only we knew all the facts, are the key to understanding Lost. And Locke and Ben having the same mother, and maybe the same father, would be one wild example - which would explain a whole lot of things.*

*[Note added 12 May 2008: At very least, Richard's fatherhood would explain why Ben and Locke both developed strange powers associated with the island.]

Later in the story tonight, on the island, Ben tells Locke that the island wanted Locke to take over from Ben - that's why the island made Ben sick and cured Locke. One of the best and most instructive lines in the series. (And preceded by another great line from Ben to Locke: "Destiny is a fickle bitch.")

Back in the past and off the island, Richard comes to test Locke as a boy - who fails the test. Perhaps this shows that Locke has qualities which go beyond what Richard expected.... Or perhaps young Locke chooses the knife rather than the book, because he isn't quite willing to accept his true destiny, and the knife seems cooler than a book at his age...

Locke manages to get to the cabin on the island tonight, too. Christian (Jack and Claire's) father is there in the chair - and Claire's in the cabin, too, having been collected last week by Christian. Best guess about this is, sadly, both are dead. We already know that Locke can see the dead.

And while we're on that subject .... The hapless doctor who washed up dead on the island last week, but was still alive on the ship off shore, winds up getting his throat cut tonight on the ship .... A little more evidence that the ship off shore exists in time a little earlier than the island.

Sort of like all of us viewers of Lost ... meaning, the next three episodes already exist, but we've got to wait a few weeks to see them ... a few weeks to see the best stuff ever on television.

See also... A Theory of How the Oceanic Six Were Chosen

and


Further Questions about Lost 4.4: Jack and Aaron, Kate and Sawyer and More about Season Four: Baby Aaron and the Oceanic Six and More About Lost 4: (ii) Michael and Ben, Good and Evil, Alias Echo

1. Lost's Back Full Paradoxical Blast 4.1 ... 4.2: Five Flashbacks and Three Rational Explanations ... 4.3: Thirty Minutes and Big Ben ... 4.4: Kate and ... ... 4.5 Desmond 1 and Desmond 2 ... 4.6 The True Nature of Ben ... 4.7 Flash Both Ways ... 4.8 Michael and Alex ... 4.9 Daughters, Rules, and Some Truth about Ben ... 4.10 Almost a Dream Come True ... 4.12 Hurley's Numbers on the Dashboard

and

2. More Thoughts On Lost 4.1: Those Who Went with Hurley and Those Who Stayed with Jack and Two More Points about Lost 4.1


additional discussion of this episode of Lost in 12-minute podcast

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates and its time travel ...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

New Amsterdam Bows: Lessons in Cons and Backsides

New Amsterdam gave its final bow tonight - of the season, maybe of all time - with a line that is destined to become classic, when John says to his annoying boss Callie (played by Susan Misner) "I won't kiss your ass - which isn't that great, by the way. The way you twitch it around, you'd think it was one of the seven wonders of the modern world."

Well, it's looked ok to me, and Callie also gets creds for asking John at the end of the episode if he really meant this line, part of the little act the detectives put on to nab the bad guy (actually, a bad woman).

We don't get to see John's answer, but we did get a fine final episode, in which the current police and the past part of John in historical New York are finally meshing pretty well. Con artists are the common thread, in the 1920s and the 2008 parts, and of course conning most of the people around him is just what John has been doing his whole 400-year life.

Not to stretch this metaphor too far, but tantalizing the television viewer with just a beginning view of a series like this, a fine derriere moving swiftly around the corner, is a con job, too. I know, we're not paying for any of this, so maybe we're getting exactly what we're paying for, but I think New Amsterdam has real potential, and I'd like to see more.

It needs more time to develop. Callie irritated me as a character when she first came into the series a few weeks ago, but now that irritation is perhaps starting to make a little sense. If John is commenting about her ass, that means he's paying at least a little attention to it, and could that mean that ... Callie's the one?

Well, I'm still betting on partner Eva, and looking at Callie as a candidate for John's true love may be a little ass-backwards ...

But we'll know never know unless there's another season in the unsetting sun of John Amsterdam...

See also New Amsterdam, 1,2,3 ... 4. Poetry and Parenthesis ... 5. Meets Mad Men ... 6. The DNA of Art ... 7. What Kept John from Dying?

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winner of the Locus Award for Best First Science Fiction novel of 1999

"delivers on its promises" - The New York Times

Silk Code trailer

New Amsterdam 7: What Kept John from Dying?

Next to last New Amsterdam on Monday - at least, for this season, and no one is saying at this point if it there will be another. This hour moved the story forward on one crucial point:

Apparently Dr. Sara is not the one for John. He's shot (again) at point blank range, comes close to dying, but survives. The implication is the attack would have killed a mortal man. Were Sara the one, and this reduced John to mortality, as per the original prophecy, he should have died.

Reasons for John surviving, if Sara indeed was the one, and John was mortal, could only be if the damage done to him by the gun was not that serious. That would be a rather weak move for the story, so I'm assuming that's not the case.

Another possibility - especially given the other main story in Episode 7 - is that John may be slowly dying from the lead in his body. This is what happened to John's prior partner. He was shot, survived, but eventually died of long-range complications.

But I'm betting that what's going on is John's current partner, Eva, is John's true love.

Will this be revealed next week?

Either way, I'll be sorry to see this promising series end.

See also New Amsterdam, 1,2,3 ... 4. Poetry and Parenthesis ... 5. Meets Mad Men ... 6. The DNA of Art ... 8. New Amsterdam Bows: Lessons in Cons and Backsides

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winner of the Locus Award for Best First Science Fiction novel of 1999

"delivers on its promises" - The New York Times

Silk Code trailer

Battlestar Galactica is Back and Bristling!

Battlestar Galactica is back for its final season, and glistening, bristling with action, puzzles, and intrigue of the highest, deepest order.

The puzzle is set out to us in the first lean, mean razor of a new opener: 12 Cylons, we know 7, 4 live in secret on the ship, so who is the 5th/12th?

Caprica Six gives us a hint, when she says all five feel near to her.

And that's not the only puzzle.

Starbuck is back - after six hours on the clock for her, more than two months for everyone back on the ship (time dilation seems to be in the air this season - see also Faraday on Lost). She's sure she's been to Earth. But Adama and Roslin are determined to keep the ship on its predetermined course, based on last year's clues - or, at least, Roslin is. As for Admiral Adama, his heart tells him Starbuck may be right...

Other puzzles ... why did the Cylons pull back their apparently victorious attack? To give Anders some secret order, that even he is not aware of? Or, simply because they saw and realized that the secret Cylons had been activated? (Just four, or all five?)

One thing, at least, seems clear: the four revealed Cylons on the ship are determined to keep living their lives and their human loyalties just as they did before their revelation. This may offer a clue as to the ultimate resolution of this superb series.

(But a question about Tigh - Haven't he and Bill been friends since they were much younger men? If so, how can Tigh be a Cylon - or, is he yet a newer kind of model, which ages?) (It dawns on me that the Cylons that do not age are templates for John Amsterdam in New Amsterdam.)

About as fine a beginning as I can recall. My only regret is that I can't sit down and watch the whole rest of the final season right now.

See also ...


4.2 Mysteries and Satisfactions ... 4.3 Deaths, Lessons, Questions ... 4.4: A Little More about Cylons ... 4.5 Mutiny on the Demetrius ... ... 4.6 Cylon on Cylon ... 4.9: Finally, Bill and Laura ... 4.10: Earth

Galactica Dylan

Lost 4.3: Thirty Minutes and Big Ben

and So Say We All: The Battlestar Galactica Blog Carnival, vol. 1

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"jumping with ideas" - Denver Post

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additional discussion of this BSG episode in 7-minute podcast

New Amsterdam 6: The DNA of Art

Tonight's New Amsterdam - Episode 6 - started out great: John is called in on a case, and finds the victim looking just like his son - John's son from 1913, in his late teens.

Now, we know that time travel is not one of the ingredients of this series, so the deceased could not be John's son who literally traveled from then to now.

One possibility might have been that John's son somehow inherited part or all of John's immortality - and lived, not aging a day, from 1913 until now, only to die riddled by bullets. Perhaps John's son had found his true love, the one who would set him free from his immortality.

Instead, the story took a more tame but still intriguing turn: this was a descendant of John's son who just happened to look like John's son. So we get get a nice episode tonight about another one of the many branches of John's family tree.

Along the way, we get some good thoughts about the immortality of art - John's a painter in 1913 - and some fine scenes in which John's art from 1913 shows up today.

I wished, again, that the show was more focused on this aspect of John's story than his police work.

On the other hand, there's more than enough of John and his many relationships and accomplishments through time to still make New Amsterdam an unusual series of lasting appeal.

See also New Amsterdam, 1,2,3 ... 4. Poetry and Parenthesis ... 5. Meets Mad Men ... 7. What Kept John from Dying? ... 8. New Amsterdam Bows: Lessons in Cons and Backsides

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winner of the Locus Award for Best First Science Fiction novel of 1999

"delivers on its promises" - The New York Times

Silk Code trailer

New Amsterdam 5: Meets Mad Men

Interesting, mixed-bag fifth episode of New Amsterdam tonight...

On the one hand ... It was good to see John telling Omar, a young jazzman in the 1960s, John's whole story of immortality. It's not completely clear why Omar would have believed such a fantastic tale, though he is aware that his father doesn't seem to be aging, but that's ok ... we can find out later, in a subsequent episode, how Omar comes to fully accept his father's true nature. In the meantime, the 1960s ambience was fine ... making tonight a sort of New Amsterdam takes a page from Mad Men, black bow-ties, white shirts, and all.

Meanwhile, in 2008, John's new relationship with Sara is already in danger - she, understandably, doesn't believe much of what John tells her of his past. At the end of the episode, John starts telling her the truth, and she walks away. Unlike Omar, she's not John's flesh and blood, has no memory of John never aging.... And a Google search she performs (it's amazing how quickly Google searches have become part of television drama) tells her there's no record of John more than five years ago.

This is a welcome development of John's story. He lives in one identity until his eternal youth makes him stand out, then suddenly moves on and adopts another. People like Omar are the only ones John takes with him. (It will be fun to learn more about John's many other children in future episodes.)

Now, if that's all there had been to tonight's show, I'd say I was thoroughly happy with it. But the other part of the show - John's police work - is beginning to drag. Although his cases connect in some way to his immortality, the actual crimes he and his partner investigate have all been done before, on Law and Order and its myriad versions.

This season of course has already been produced. If the show's renewed - I hope it is - I'd urge an overhaul of the police part to get more riveting, original stories.

In the meantime, more of John's fascinating back story, and its complex, incredible facets, would be welcome.

See also New Amsterdam, 1,2,3 ... 4. Poetry and Parenthesis ... 6. The DNA of Art ... 7. What Kept John from Dying? ... 8. New Amsterdam Bows: Lessons in Cons and Backsides

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winner of the Locus Award for Best First Science Fiction novel of 1999

"delivers on its promises" - The New York Times




Silk Code trailer

New Amsterdam 4: Poetry and Parenthesis

One of the things I really like about New Amsterdam is the way that poetry weaves through almost every episode ... Omar Khayyam, Walt Whitman, and, tonight, John quotes the famous parenthesis line from e. e. cummings, "life's not a paragraph. And death I think is no parenthesis." Hey, when was the last time you heard cummings quoted (he spelled his name in small letters) in a prime time show on Fox...

John quotes this line as he and Sara walk in the New York evening, and draw ever closer. The line, of course, has an especially profound meaning for John, which Sara doesn't know. John's life, going on four centuries, is surely not a paragraph. It's an epic. And close calls with death have not only been no parenthesis, but barely a dot on John's page.

John's been struck by swords, accidents, and gunshot dots, of which we saw one tonight. Back in the Bronx in 1813, John challenges his arrogant aristocratic boss to a duel. The boss takes what he pleases with women, including impregnating someone John loves. John takes a non-fatal shot in the duel - all shots presumably would be - then gets up and calmly puts the boss down for good.

Honor plays a role in the 2008 story as well, and there are some good parallels between the mistreatment of women, then and now. But the strength of this series, so far, is in its historical interludes, and their meshing into John's present.

So far, the most interesting element in that present is not the police work, but John's apparently finding his truest love, in Sara.

Except ... I think it's proceeding a little too smoothly ... I'm guessing sooner or later there'll be something more than a parenthesis which gets in its way.

See also New Amsterdam, 1,2,3 ... 5. Meets Mad Men ... 6. The DNA of Art ... 7. What Kept John from Dying? ... 8. New Amsterdam Bows: Lessons in Cons and Backsides

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winner of the Locus Award for Best First Science Fiction novel of 1999

"delivers on its promises" - The New York Times

Silk Code trailer

New Amstersdam, 1, 2, 3...

You know how devoted I am to time travel - Journeyman, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the time travel in Lost, and my most recent novel, The Plot to Save Socrates. New Amsterdam on Fox isn't quite time travel, but its story of an immortal in New York City has a lot of classic time travel elements in a hero who's been in town, since before it was a town, and continuously since 1642. In the first three episodes, we've already seen some erudite scenes in the Civil War and 1940s - as well as in the present.

I'm also partial to detective fiction - I just finished reviewing The Wire here on Sunday, and, yeah, I've written science fiction detective novels, too, including The Silk Code, The Consciousness Plague, and The Pixel Eye. So much the better, then, that John Amsterdam - the immortal in New Amsterdam - is a smart-talking detective in New York, New York. He's not only sharp, but has, of course, a great and pinpoint accurate historical knowledge. In his centuries he's a been a surgeon in the Civil War, a lawyer and then a soldier in the 1940s, and he also said something about being a history prof at Columbia University.

It's nice touches like this that make New Amsterdam a delight for the intellect. The series also isn't afraid to shock us with details like his old friend, in his 60s, is really John's son, from a woman he loved deeply in the 1940s...

John became immortal when he saved an Native American woman in New York in 1642, was run through with a sword, and she saved his life and blew some substance of immortality into him. John will live forever at age 35, or until he meets his true love, at which point he will start to age normally with the love of his long life.

If this sounds corny, it isn't at all in New Amsterdam. The series has a wisdom as well as a slight bit of CSI slickness, and the mix so far in the first three episodes looks to be just right.

The show also has a poetry - Walt Whitman and the verses of Omar Khayyam have already played roles in the series.

And Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is just right for John Amsterdam, with an off-English accent which is just what you'd expect of someone who has been around three and a half centuries. Zuleikha Robinson (who played Gaia opposite Ray Stevenson's Pullo in Rome!) as his attractive partner Eva, Stephen Henderson as his 65-year-old son Omar, and Alexie Gilmore as ER-doc Sara, who may be the love of his life, are fine, too.

I'm expecting to stay with New Amsterdam a long time...

See also 4. Poetry and Parenthesis ... 5. Meets Mad Men ... 6. The DNA of Art ... 7. What Kept John from Dying? ... 8. New Amsterdam Bows: Lessons in Cons and Backsides

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winner of the Locus Award for Best First Science Fiction novel of 1999

"delivers on its promises" - The New York Times

Silk Code trailer