That’s — SPOILER ALERT! — pretty much how “Smallville” flew off into TV history last night (here’s the YouTube clip). Once it was announced that this season would be the show’s last, and once I realized I actually had some free time on Friday nights, I ended up watching a decent amount of these final episodes. (ComicsAlliance’s “Smallvillains” feature made it easy to keep up with the show otherwise.) Last night I also followed reactions of the faithful on Twitter, first at #Smallville and then #SmallvilleFinale. Now, I know, Twitter; but even discounting the OMG! factor, clearly the show developed an audience devoted enough to keep it on the air for ten years. Heck, it probably could have run until Tom Welling started to look like the Earth-2 Supes and the special DC guest-stars were Aztek, Kid Psycho, and Sugar & Spike.

Still, I was never one of those faithful, for a few reasons. The biggest was logistical: when “Smallville” debuted in September 2001, my hometown of Lexington, Kentucky didn’t have a dedicated WB station. We relied on Chicago’s WGN (which we got on cable) for WB programs, and when WGN dumped WB, the Frog’s lineup was parceled out over the later hours of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. We did have a dedicated UPN station — ah, WB and UPN! Has history made you plucky yet? — so I could watch the other new prequel show, “Enterprise,” as the Lord intended on Wednesday nights. “Smallville” I had to tape, and it was never that enthralling even when I did see it. Essentially, once I realized that “Smallville” wasn’t going to be Silver Age-style craziness with a “Buffy” sensibility — in other words, once I realized that “Smallville” would never make Lana Lang into Insect Queen — I lost interest pretty quickly. For all the grousing that “Enterprise” was just telling standard Modern Trek stories in a different time, at least it was using those familiar elements. “Smallville” had a definite end point — Clark flying off as Superman — but instead of building a feeling of anticipation, always felt like it was holding back.

Therefore, the only episode of the series which could do full-on Superman was last night’s finale. Certainly its plot sounded Superman-worthy: on Lois and Clark’s wedding day, Darkseid sends Apokolips hurtling towards Earth, where millions (if not billions) of the world’s population have been branded with the Omega-symbol of Anti-Life. The world is full of superheroes, including the Justice Society and the newer “League,” but the only one who can save the planet must also be inspirational enough to break Anti-Life’s hold on the world. At the end of the episode (SPOILERS again!), Superman stops Apokolips, saves Earth, and wipes out the Anti-Life infection.

Now, that’s not a bad way to insert Superman into a series already crowded with costumed do-gooders. It also justifies “Smallville’s” mission of telling limited Superman stories, because up ’til now, the world hasn’t needed Superman. In practice, though, “Smallville’s” big finish spent a good bit of time on gauzy character sequences — Clark and Lois getting over their premarital jitters, Clark and Lex renewing their relationship only to destroy it utterly, Lex and his sister contrasting their destinies — leaving little time for the actual Superman scenes to pay off. Worse, we never get a good look at Tom Welling in the red-and-blues, and I have to think it’s because he actually does not look convincing in the suit. After saving the world (see it here), Welling gets a Superman Returns-ish “watching from orbit” moment (shot from the neck up) which falls pretty flat; and when he’s waving at Lois from outside Air Force One (also shot largely from the neck up), he looks a little embarrassed. The best Superman bit comes at the very end, with the look-what’s-under-my-shirt move, and it too is frustrating because Welling finally shows some swagger. Maybe that’s the point — maybe he’s not supposed to look Super-confident in the first few minutes of his costumed career — but the show’s had ten years to figure out how to play these scenes, and they don’t really sell themselves.

That said, the #SmallvilleFinale folks were OMG!ing, tossing around the word “epic,” and crying their eyes out, because at last they had closure. I was initially interested in “Smallville” because it was a show about Superman, and I like Superman. However, apparently the parts of Superman which I like include some things “Smallville” didn’t want to touch. Along the same lines, “Smallville” was more interested in WB-friendly teen angst than I was, only recently turning into a more superhero-oriented series. In part it was a victim of success: no one expected it to run for ten years, each season prolonging Clark’s pre-costume career even as it made room for another few DC guest stars. Similarly, if there had been a plan to get Clark in the suit by, say, Season Five, with each year making clear headway (glasses come in at Season Three and they don’t come off ’til the red cape flaps), I’d have trusted the producers more.

Ultimately, however, I keep coming back to the one thing presumably uniting all “Smallville” fans: the need to see Superman. If you watched the show faithfully for ten years, surely the payoffs were more than enough. If you were more of a Superman fan, it still must have been nice to see Clark step out onto the Daily Planet roof and do that Super-strut into the camera. I’m now extremely curious to see whether “Smallville” affects the Superman mythology over the long term. There’s always been that symbiotic relationship between the comics and their adaptations, pretty much since the 1940s; and the Christopher Reeve movies have continued to influence the comics, even twenty-five years after Superman IV. “Smallville” has already started the process, supposedly helping to restore Clark and Lex’s childhood encounters, and bringing Chloe Sullivan to the comics as Jimmy Olsen’s girlfriend. However, those are minor details. Just as many of today’s fans grew up with the Reeve movies (and “Super Friends,” and reruns of the George Reeves show), many of tomorrow’s will have grown up with “Smallville.” Will they be a big enough group to exert a similar pull on future Superman iterations? Will they even be the type of fans to continue with Superman into future iterations?

Hard to say — but for now, they’re out there, they’ve got their Superman, and they’re probably hungry for more.

Accordingly, I was watching the Midwest’s most gifted repeat offender get the snot beaten out of him – yes, another viewing of Star Trek ’09 — and thinking, no, that’s not how it happened.  It is now, of course; but it wasn’t then; and that is not an insignificant distinction.

See, then it wasn’t necessary to come at James T. Kirk from Year One, let alone Day One.  Back on September 8, 1966, it was enough to see Kirk fully formed as Captain of the Enterprise.  For that matter, it was enough to introduce “the Bat-Man” as a mysterious urban vigilante; with the shocking! twist at the end of “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate” being that he was really bored playboy Bruce Wayne.  Batman’s origin was told a few issues later, in a two-page vignette which had nothing to do with the main story’s Dirigible of Doom.

Now, these may be exceptions.  Superman’s origin was sketched very quickly in Action #1.  The Golden Age Flash’s origin took up a good bit of his first appearance in Flash Comics #1.  The Silver Age Flash’s origin got its own story in Showcase #4, same as the Silver Age Green Lantern in Showcase #22.  The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Hulk, and Thor all pretty much started off with origin stories.

For the most part, though, I think those origins stood on their own pretty well.  Apart from things like Spider-Man:  Chapter One and that Captain America miniseries that Kevin Maguire pencilled, those origins haven’t been changed or augmented too terribly much.

And by “too terribly much” I mean like Superman.  We all know the basics:  brilliant scientists, doomed planet, kindly couple, Midwestern values.  However, by the mid-1970s, the origin had been expanded to include things like Jor-El and Lara’s respective backgrounds, Kal-El’s brief Kryptonian childhood (complete with pet dog), the Superbaby years, the Superboy career, and the Kents’ death.  The Superman:  The Secret Years miniseries of the mid-1980s filled in the last gap (mainly Clark’s college career), but not having read it (well, just an Internet synopsis) I can’t tell you the bright line between “Superboy” and “Superman.”

Of course, that was the Earth-1 Superman, a character who most likely lives only in memory, even with recent attempts to restore some of his traits.  I have a good bit of affection for Earth-1 Supes, but I think he’s a bit of an odd duck precisely because he started his superheroic career as an adolescent somewhere in the Midwest.  He’s basically the Ron Howard of superheroes:  a former child star who grew up to be quite influential in his chosen field.  For whatever reason, though, Superman’s Silver and Bronze Age writers never really made that connection.  There always seemed to be a disconnect between “Superboy” and “Superman,” and The Secret Years came out right before Crisis On Infinite Earths, too late to inspire anything along those lines.

Not that the connection really cried out to be made, mind you.  There were Superman stories which looked back at Smallville, there were Superboy stories which looked ahead, and there was the occasional Superman/Legion story which touched on the issue; but it’s not necessary to understanding the character.  The Earth-1 Superman was haunted by the Kents’ death, same as his Earth-2 predecessor, and if the details were different, the texts weren’t going to dwell on them.  Every character’s origin ends at some point, and generally speaking both Superman shared that point.

Even so, I find myself wondering about such extended origins in more biographical contexts.  With today’s superhero comics striving for “accessibility,” perhaps it appears too intimidating to make a story out of all the Superman background details.  (Consider Geoff Johns’ and Gary Frank’s current Superman:  Secret Origin, which incorporates such details as Easter eggs but is more concerned with its new plot.)  DC has done just that previously, in projects like the Untold Legend Of The Batman miniseries and “Iris Allen’s” Life Story Of The Flash. Indeed, I don’t think it’s a matter of accessibility as much as it is restriction.  Put another way, DC probably doesn’t want its writers and editors locked into the kind of very specific set of details such a project would produce.  It would rather be free to change those details, as it’s done with Superman at least twice in the past few years (not counting Secret Origin, either).

And I hate to sound like a continuity hound here, but I think that’s a weak argument.  Superman is still Superman, regardless of biography.  Batman is still Batman — and before I forget, the current Batman biography would probably require some serious research.  I need to see how Bob Greenberger’s 1988 Batman Encyclopedia treated the Dark Knight’s pre-costume years, and I’m writing this without checking Chris Miller’s chronology; but I don’t know that anyone has tried to put all of his training-oriented travels into a coherent timeline.  This is another set of details which wouldn’t necessarily make a huge difference, in terms of which martial-arts master he visited when; but it would at least acknowledge the stories from which those details arose.

That, I think, is the larger point of all this:  a biography is the product of those details viewed through the eyes of history.  It lets a biographer juxtapose an especially effective Bruce-in-training story by (let’s say) Chuck Dixon with an Ed Brubaker Bruce-as-a-teen story, and make something meaningful from the juxtaposition.  The value of a biography is in its conclusions, not its suspense.  Still, as discussed above, I doubt seriously that we’ll see anything like Untold Legend (or even an Untold Legend collection) anytime soon.  Biographies have that air of definition which is apparently death to creativity.

Too bad.

Today the villain Doctor Destiny is a monstrous, skeletal figure, emaciated from the toll exacted by years of channeling mysterious energies.  JLA #34 found him pretty early in his career, though; and he’s just a regular-looking guy without even a supervillain costume.  In a previous story, he had invented a machine (the “Materioptikon”) which could make real whatever he dreamed.  If he dreamed about chocolate, he’d get chocolate.  Thus, he dreamed about a Materioptikon, and got a Dream-Materioptikon.  This allowed him to plot against the JLA from his prison cell, and indeed during the story he never leaves it.

Naturally, his plan involves manipulating the Leaguers’ dreams.  Each of our heroes dreams — sometimes in conjunction with a colleague, which you’d think would tip them off — that during a super-battle, a weird article attaches itself to him or her and imposes some encumbrance.  That’s fancy talk for Batman’s ring giving him super-speed, Hawkman’s gloves only letting him “swim” through the air, Wonder Woman’s mask broadcasting her thoughts, and Atom’s headpiece giving him always-on telescopic vision.  Superman’s device renders him immune to Kryptonite, but makes him susceptible both to fire (a la Martian Manhunter) and the color yellow (like Green Lantern’s power ring).  I haven’t yet mentioned Superman’s device, because it in fact is the ludicrous hurdle which this story must overcome.

Superman’s device is a pair of eyeglasses.

Now, by itself that might not be a problem.  Superman fights his particular opponent (a giant statue) in the Italian countryside, perhaps far removed from anyone who might see his bespectacled face.  The fact that this happens initially in a dream also mitigates a lot of secret-identity concerns.  However, when the dream-devices inevitably manifest themselves in reality, and the glasses are fixed on Supes’ nose, he doesn’t think anything of it.  Furthermore, he apparently doesn’t care that he’s still wearing the things when he and the rest of the Leaguers visit Doc Destiny in prison.  In an era where secret-identity plots were as common as primary colors, I can barely believe that writer Gardner Fox and editor Julie Schwartz passed up such a golden opportunity.

I mean, I wouldn’t be making such a big deal about this if the story had only acknowledged that maybe it might be a problem for Superman to be seen in a pair of glasses.  Supes probably had a half-dozen ways to talk himself out of “say, don’t you look like that reporter?” One line of dialogue addressing just one strategy no doubt would have satisfied a lot of readers, me included.  I can accept a lot — I accept Doc Destiny’s reality-bending powers, especially given his later appearance in Sandman — but I trip over this plot hole every time.

And I do like the story.  It’s one of the first Fox/Sekowsky JLA stories I remember reading (in a ’70s reprint, of course), and it is one of the more imaginative takes on a familiar JLA plot.  There are nice visuals too — Wonder Woman and the Atom fight giant mollusks, Batman and Hawkman fight the Joker and (the terribly obscure) Chac amongst some South American ruins, and Superman’s gladiator-statue foe is convincingly menacing.

Those glasses, though…. I’m still shaking my head.

When the Green Lantern, Sinestro, turned rogue, the Guardians of the Universe named Katma Tui as his replacement.  Katma Tui served with distinction for a long time before retiring.  She returned to service at the urging of Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern of Earth, and trained Jordan’s replacement, John Stewart.  Katma Tui came to love Stewart, and the two of them married, but Katma Tui was murdered shortly thereafter by longtime Green Lantern foe Star Sapphire.

Can you tell which of those data points Mattel might have considered omitting?

I mean, I buy a nominal amount of action figures, and like I said, I don’t often read the bios — but I don’t expect them to say that the figure I just bought is a plastic version of a dead character.  I bet if she comes back in Blackest Night some copywriter is going to be mighty embarrassed….

Anyway, it was an interesting film, very much in the mold of alienated ’70s sci-fi, where everything looks drab, utilitarian, and monochromatic, and all personality has been outlawed. It does have its moments, most of them having to do with the characters LUH (love interest) and SEN (maliciously annoying colleague).*  THX (the character) is heroic in his way, but it’s a slow burn before he finally decides to (as Lucas puts it elsewhere on the DVD) “walk through the open door.” LUH and SEN each have designs on THX, and it’s through their actions that THX is put through his ordeal, so perhaps that’s why they seemed more … well, entertaining to me.  I had forgotten it had nudity — which sounds really strange at this point, doesn’t it?  Nudity in a George Lucas movie? — and either the actors (Robert Duvall as THX and Maggie McOmie as LUH) had great chemistry or Lucas had a much better feel in the early ’70s for directing a romantic scene.  Insert smart-aleck Attack of the Clones comment here.

For paranoid, dystopian early-’70s sci-fi, it’s not especially suspenseful either.  (SPOILER ALERT!)  When Lucas talks about THX walking through an open door, he’s not exaggerating.  The last shot is pretty amazing, though; and it makes a good counterpoint to its sister scene in Star Wars.

Walter Murch’s soundscape didn’t do much for me, probably because I wasn’t watching it in 5.1. I think it’s the kind of movie you have to watch a few times, in order to get a proper feel for the rhythms and themes. I’m not opposed to that, but it may be a while before I revisit it.

* [By the way, I would love someday to chart Donald Pleasance's various career trajectories. Not long before this he was Blofeld in You Only Live Twice, arguably one of the biggest movies in the world. In 1971 he did THX, in 1978 he did Halloween, and in 1981 he was back with John Carpenter for Escape From New York.]

The opening on Krypton is weird not just because everything is cold and crystalline, but because it all centers on Marlon Brando in a white spit-curled wig. He makes a good Jor-El, in part because he and Lara are the most friendly characters we meet. Even when he’s “interacting” holographically with Superman later, though, he plays a caring dad, eager to catch up with his long-lost son.

Of course, when I first saw Superman during its original run, I was nine years old and didn’t know Brando from Mr. Greenjeans. I had no Godfather or On The Waterfront or (yikes!) Last Tango In Paris frames of reference; and can only imagine what 1978 audiences must have thought about Don Corleone in that wig and S-shield muumuu ambling around the North Pole. (Remember, Superman‘s original script was by Godfather author Mario Puzo.) I expect Am I tripping? went through more than a few heads.

But the Brando factor is only part of the Krypton picture. While he was no longer a young turk, he still took enough chances (or so I understand) for moviegoers to rationalize Jor-El as just another one. He went from this role to Apocalypse Now, after all. I do remember Brando giving Superman much-needed gravitas, and that above all else is what we take away from the Krypton scenes. Indeed, Krypton is dying because its people are Too Serious: they are masters of all they survey, and they brook no dissent. Furthermore, Jor-El knows two ways to survive his planet’s destruction, with one described as “living death.”

Brief digression: as many of you know, when I first watched this movie on the big screen lo, those many years ago, I was shocked and appalled at the number of Earth-1 Supes elements which did not make the cut. No Kandor, no Krypto, no colorful Krypton … but here’s the Phantom Zone, made scary for the ’70s. Of course it’s in there because the three criminals are Part 2′s main heavies, but no one would have known that at the time.

Anyway, although Jor-El and Lara don’t seem especially interested in raising baby Kal as a Very Serious Kryptonian, by the time it explodes we have a good idea what Kal has left behind. This sets up the Kansas scenes, where Kal/Clark finds himself adopted by a fairly serious couple. I have been a dad for just about seventeen months now, and while I set limits for Olivia, I try to let her explore, so that she can establish her own boundaries where appropriate. I don’t let her push all the buttons on the phone, though; and similarly the Kents keep a tight lid on Clark’s use of his powers. Clark’s frustration here echoes Jor-El’s, but where it was imperative for the Kryptonians to confront their collective fate, Clark using his powers is clearly optional. Sure, he’ll have to spend the rest of his life in deep denial, but he won’t be taken away by the government.

The Kansas portion is Clark-centric, obviously; but opening and closing the sequence are a couple of scenes with Glenn Ford. Glenn Ford is always one of my favorite things in this movie, because he grounds it perfectly. His middle name might as well be “reassuring.” He is perfectly reasonable in both scenes, when he points out all the practical aspects of super-parenting; and he handles the role with such grace and charm that he never seems like a wet blanket. That said, I did like the symmetry of the Kryptonian father and Earthling mother each saying goodbye. (Lara gets shafted, but again Superman II tries to make up for it.) From Kansas we go to the Fortress of Solitude, for a gap-bridging sequence which makes sure we don’t forget about Jor-El or Krypton. Finally, at age thirty (or thereabouts), Kal-El’s dual heritage is fully integrated, and he’s ready to face 1978 Metropolis.

This third part of the movie is, I suspect, the part everyone thinks of first. It is quick and witty, and it makes Clark/Superman part of an excellent ensemble.  Of course, this is where we meet most of the main cast:  Lois (Margot Kidder), Perry (Jackie Cooper), Jimmy (Marc McClure), Otis (Ned Beatty), Ms. Teschmacher (Valerie Perrine), and Luthor (Gene Hackman).  Holding them all together, though, is the “utterly fantastic” (to borrow one of Lois’ phrases) Christopher Reeve.  He still makes me believe a man could hide behind poor posture, a squeaky voice, and thick glasses.  These Metropolis scenes, from Clark’s first day at the Planet to the villains’ Kryptonite conversation, do most of the movie’s real heavy lifting.  The Krypton and Smallville scenes each established a certain mood and filled in some character details, but the Metropolis scenes start building a movie from them.

What fascinates me is the abrupt shift in tone from the two flavors of serious which have come before.  The Krypton scenes are, for lack of a better term, goofy-serious; and the Kansas scenes are corny-serious; but once we get to Metropolis, the movie really opens up to the audience.  Superman has already flirted with a wry sense of humor a couple of times in the Kansas scenes, first when the Kents do the math on unhurt baby + crash site and later with “is a bird showing off when it flies.”  In Metropolis, the jocularity is nonstop.  Nevertheless, rather than use all the comedy to distance the main cast from Brando and Ford, Superman both embraces their contributions and asks the audience to move on.

It’s hard to put into words, but I think of Superman‘s structure as a representation of Superman himself.  The character comes from a slew of different influences but doesn’t try to replicate any particular one.  It’s perhaps ironic that Superman has become an archetype — square-jawed, honest, noble, and boring — for the general public.  Without Metropolis’ tonal shift, Superman would probably have collapsed under its own weight.  However, without Krypton and Kansas both grounding the character and giving him a certain solemnity, the audience might not have taken the movie seriously.  You have to respect Superman, I think, almost as much as you enjoy his adventures; and that’s a difficult thing to ask of a moviegoer who might not start out with the best opinion of the Man of Steel.

And that brings us to the fourth big chunk of Superman:  the disaster movie.  Disaster movies were huge in the ’70s, from big-budget pictures like Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, and The Poseidon Adventure to B-movies like Swarm.  There isn’t much opportunity for comedy in this part of the movie, because it’s all about showing off Superman’s powers.  Naturally, the key elements from Krypton, Kansas, and Metropolis all converge here, especially when Supes must choose whether to follow Jor-El or Pa Kent with regard to saving Lois’ life.  Again, though, this is no doubt the kind of thing audiences expected to see in a Superman movie — indeed, it’s the kind of thing they probably expected to see in any number of movies, except this time with Superman fixing everything — and it’s been paid for largely with the movie’s accumulated goodwill.  Specifically, the “disaster act” works because the effects hold up pretty well, and because Reeve is just so right in the role.

Now, I’m pretty sure most of you have seen Superman in the thirty-odd years it’s been around; and most of you probably have pretty definite opinions on why it works (or doesn’t work) for you.  To me, not only is this movie a great adaptation of the character, but its structure and management of tone offer great insights into how superhero comics can work well.  Superhero comics can handle any number of styles, from whodunits to space operas, from comedies to romances, and various combinations thereof.  However, many of them (especially the more venerable characters) must find the right balance between seriousness and escapism; and they could do worse than looking to Superman.

In many ways, Generations is a victim of circumstance. Conceived and produced by “The Next Generation’s” team while that show was winding down, it was filmed in the spring of 1994 for release in the fall. Meant to bridge the gap between Kirk’s crew and Picard’s, it is hardly entry-level, and plays much more to devoted “TNG” fans than to any other group. In the context of the TV show, it’s passable, but it really doesn’t work as a standalone movie. While Soran and the Nexus are new, Data’s emotion chip was last seen in “Descent” (Seasons 6-7), there are “bad” Klingons despite ST VI‘s peace initiatives, and the Enterprise-D is destroyed just as potential new viewers were getting to know her. Plus there’s now an Enterprise-B and its hapless captain, along with references to otherwise-unseen Original Series stalwarts.  Indeed, watching Generations makes one aware of what’s not in it. The more the viewer must fill in the blanks himself, the weaker the film is.

Thus, Generations desperately needs a steady drip of context, stat!

And so my Generations 2.0 begins with a beefed-up opening-credits sequence. Start with the Paramount peak, of course — but pan up into the stars, and pick up a Mercury capsule orbiting the Earth. (Vostok would work too.) Mercury zips over the horizon and out of sight, but then a Saturn V zooms past, and we follow it to the Moon. Past the Moon now to Mars, then Jupiter, Saturn, and the outer planets; and we’re really trucking now, with the Voyager spacecraft, which also races out of sight. Glimpses of various Trek-looking starships follow — not Cochrane’s Phoenix or Archer’s NX-01, because technically we haven’t been introduced to them yet — and we can see a familiar design evolving, through the Daedalus-class Horizon and the Baton Rouge-class Moscow …

… because this whole thing has taken only a few minutes, but (yes) like the “Enterprise” credits, it drives home the point that Starfleet is connected to us today, and therefore we endure as long as it does …

… so after a last glimpse of USS Constitution, NCC-1700, we finally spot the bottle of Dom Perignon spinning through space, eventually colliding with the heretofore-unblemished hull of USS Enterprise, NCC-1701-B.

By way of brief plot summary, the movie begins in the late 23rd Century, with James T. Kirk, Montgomery Scott, and Pavel Chekov present for the Enterprise-B’s launch. As the new starship takes a lap around the solar system, it picks up distress calls from two El-Aurian freighters. (They’re fleeing the Borg, who have destroyed their home planet.) The ships have gotten caught in what we’ll learn is “the Nexus,” an energy ribbon which destroys starships. Because the Enterprise has only the bare minimum of facilities, the ship can’t easily rescue the freighters, and Kirk eventually has to rig the main deflector dish just to save one of them. In so doing, he is apparently swept into space and killed.

Now, I would change the 23rd-Century extended prologue primarily by using Spock and Bones instead of Scotty and Chekov. This would no doubt involve either a magic wand or some serious script rewrites, but really it is more a matter of personal preference than anything else. Generations is a movie about mortality, but the problem with using Kirk is that there’s already been a Star Trek movie where he deals with his own mortality. In fact, the point of Star Trek II was to have Kirk emerge victorious from his midlife crisis, so he shouldn’t be all fidgety about who’s captain of the Enterprise.

What’s more, Kirk shouldn’t have to be all fidgety. In my rewrite, Capt. Harriman recognizes that Kirk is the senior officer and solicits his advice right from the beginning. Kirk isn’t shy about collaborating with Harriman, who (again in my rewrite) isn’t especially a doofus. Together they work through various problems to try and save the freighters — “I’ve tried A! I’ve tried B! I’ve tried C!” — but nothing doing. Finally, as in the actual movie, Scotty comes up with the deflector-dish solution, and (as in the movie) Harriman volunteers to do the reprogramming. I like that decision, because it is a very courageous-captain-of-the-Enterprise thing to do. However, I would make it clear that whoever does the reprogramming runs the risk of not coming back. This makes Kirk’s sacrifice even more of an echo of Spock’s in Wrath of Khan, because Kirk is saying he’s not going to let anyone else take a bullet for him.

So Kirk is sucked into space, or so we think; the Enterprise-B sails into history; and we fade into the holodeck sequence aboard the Enterprise-D. It is essentially a middling comedy piece which introduces the TNG cast, who are celebrating Worf’s promotion to Lt. Commander.  Picard then receives bad news from Earth:  his brother and nephew have died in an accident.  After Picard has left the holodeck, the Enterprise picks up a distress call from a nearby observatory, which is under attack.

By and large, I think we can leave this scene alone. It’s not my favorite, mostly because of the clumsy direction, but it’s a decent way to introduce the characters. However, when the scene ends, I’d insert a nice beauty shot of the Enterprise, making it clear that a) this is a more advanced starship and b) hey look, the old one was “B” and this one is “D.” We’ve already had the “78 Years Later” card, but as it is Generations doesn’t do enough to re-orient the rookie viewer.

Thus, Picard goes to grieve, Riker sounds the alert, and everyone scrambles to their stations — and in my revised version, we pull back from the grid-lined holodeck, up through the ceiling, moving immaterially past machinery and decks, such that a few moments later we’re high above the Enterprise herself, drinking in her majestic lines to the lush accompaniment of Jerry Goldsmith’s familiar theme.  (Of course I’d have the Goldsmith themes incorporated into the music whenever possible.)  A suitably lingering look later, the great starship blasts into warp, and we’re back to the regular movie.

Now, I’m not going to go scene-by-scene, but I did want to give a feel for how I’d flesh out this film.  The point of Generations, which at times is made rather clumsily and other times is glossed over, is that it’s Picard’s mid-life crisis.  As mentioned above, Kirk has long since worked past his midlife issues.  For that matter, at this point in his life perhaps Picard has confronted his as well; but the deaths in his family tear the scabs off those old wounds, and he realizes that he may be the last of the Picards.  To be sure, it was a topic  familiar to the “Next Generation” series, which had given Picard a surrogate legacy in the classic “The Inner Light,” and flirted with the idea of his future family as recently as the late-seventh-season episodes “Bloodlines” and “All Good Things….”  If Picard fears that he won’t leave behind issue, certainly he is much more afraid of becoming irrelevant (as in the Q-constructed timelines of “Tapestry” and “AGT’s” potential future).  Generations therefore assures both Picard and the audience that children don’t necessarily matter, but actions do.  Picard need not worry about his own lineage because he has become part of something greater:  the lineage of the Enterprise.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  For now Picard is dealing with personal issues, so in addition to satisfying the fans’ need for a movie-sized gawk at the Enterprise-D, my little beauty insert should also show the audience that the starship symbolizes Picard’s virility.  This is not quite a direct correlation, as was Kirk’s relationship with NCC-1701; but it should remind the audience that, by virtue of his command, Picard remains more powerful than he might want to admit.  Subtle, I know.

Anyway, the other big subplot, Data’s emotion chip, comes into play at this point.  I suppose it could be tweaked slightly so that Data becomes aware of his own advancing age, and mopes around the ship in addition to his regular bipolar tendencies; but really, it’s more of a plot element than anything else.

Besides, I’m more interested in our principals, Picard, Kirk, and Soran.  As far as I remember, Dr. Tolian Soran is motivated to steer the Nexus over Veridian III because he’s become addicted to it (for lack of a better term).  He lost his family to the Borg and seeks to relive happy memories in the Nexus.  Therefore, he is not entirely unsympathetic, and in fact his issues parallel Picard’s in terms of family and opportunities lost.  At first blush he is Job, deprived of his life practically upon divine caprice, but of course that goes away once he opens fire on our heroes and tortures Geordi.  If we are being charitable, we might say that the 78 years have not been kind to him; and perhaps that weighs upon Picard as well.

A brief digression to take care of another sequence:  the space battle.  As much shield-modulating and frequency-rotating as this crew has done over the past seven years, and no one thinks to change the shield frequency, just for the heck of it if nothing else, once the first torpedo slams into the hull?  Crikey.  Let’s do this instead:  a few torpedoes do get through before Worf (not Data, because he’s high on life now) decides to do just that; and the tide turns in favor of the Enterprise.  Nevertheless, those torpedoes did significant damage, and by the way the Geordi-Cam is still active, so the Klingons get a good look at the new shield frequency and adjust their disruptors accordingly.  This proves to be the last round for both ships:  the Enterprise warp core takes a fatal hit, but the Bird Of Prey is practically exploding even as its disruptors find their mark.  In the end, both ships are destroyed, and the Enterprise saucer crashes on Veridian III, all as before.

Back to Picard.  The movie’s main draw is his meeting with Kirk, and I’d use it to drive home both men’s similarities and differences.  Again, Kirk is way past his mid-life crisis, which is why he can tell Picard to hold onto the captain’s chair for as long as he can.  As we’ve seen, Picard’s Nexus fantasy is all about regret:  a wife and kids he’ll never have, and the nephew who never died.  Kirk’s is similar, since it concerns a proposal he never made in order to return to Starfleet.  (If memory serves, the return landed him at Starfleet Academy, where we find him at the start of Star Trek II — another mid-life crisis connection.)  However, Guinan describes the Nexus as “like being inside joy,” which doesn’t exactly sound like the road not taken.  Not that their fantasies are improbable, because the Nexus is the same kind of pitcher-plant as Alan Moore’s Black Mercy, and you get out of it the same way:  by recognizing the fantasy isn’t real, and in fact isn’t desirable — so to paraphrase the immortal Bugs Bunny, “it don’t know you vewy well, do it?”

Therefore, if the Nexus is joy given form, why wouldn’t Kirk find himself on the original Enterprise, with Spock, Bones, Gary Mitchell, and (of course) his son David, and Edith Keeler, and everyone else he’d loved and lost (in most cases because of that ship)?  Because it would have busted the budget wide open, is why; but we are playing with no limits here, and besides we can find a way to convey that same sense of bliss.  Let’s say the Nexus is feeling out its latest resident, having worked up a couple of basic scenarios.  One is marriage to Antonia.  The other is the ultimate Enterprise cruise.  Kirk is in his cabin, as in the movie, and while he’s making breakfast he’s going over the Enterprise crew manifest.  As Picard reads the names aloud, Kirk grows ever more wistful:  all his friends, inseparable for eternity.  This will be his life perfected — why wouldn’t he take it?

Because Picard, recognizing what he’s been working through since learning of his brother’s and nephew’s death, starts giving Kirk a very Kirk-ian speech about the necessity of pain and loss — about recognizing our limits and living for what we can make better today.  Maybe he even says “risk is our business,” if not “how we face death is as important as how we face life.”  (Young Kirk probably would have repeated the former for posterity, but Old Kirk wouldn’t have done the same for the latter.)  This is what reignites the fire in Kirk’s belly, and he gives Picard the don’t-get-out-of-that-chair speech before they ride off into normal space-time.

And since you may be wondering, Picard doesn’t find himself on the Enterprise bridge because it’s not his idea of ultimate joy — which, again, is the point; it’s what Picard must confront and overcome.  Picard has so many extracurricular pursuits that his fantasy might well be a ridiculous combination of ace archaeologist, gifted flautist, master thespian, etc. That’s why Kirk’s speech is meaningful to Picard — it’s a pep talk which helps ease Picard’s particular pains and focus him on being a starship captain.

So we are left at pretty much the same spot going into the last act.  I’d like to think that the movie’s emotional undercurrents would have been amped-up sufficiently, but in terms of plot, it’s still Picard and Kirk duking it out with Soran.  Note, though, that the pre-Nexus Picard got his butt handed to him by Soran; and the movie implies that Picard needs backup to defeat the malevolent doctor.  I’d probably change that so that Picard, having gotten his groove back in the Nexus, gets in a few good punches and generally starts to look like the action hero he’ll be in First Contact and Insurrection.  Nevertheless, Picard must disarm or destroy Soran’s missile (more phallic imagery!  Why was this not more of a mid-life crisis movie?) simply because he’ s more familiar with the technology.  Besides, Kirk enjoys a good scrap, and he too has been re-grooved by his brief stint in the Nexus.

So Kirk and Soran fight, yadda yadda yadda, Picard rigs the missile to explode and runs for cover, Soran sees what’s happened and tries to undo Picard’s sabotage (hey, maybe Shatner even says the word!), and he’s almost there but Kirk’s right behind him — and the thing explodes, killing Soran and mortally wounding Kirk.  He and Picard have their moment, “it was fun,” and Picard buries him on the mountaintop.  (Kirk always knew he’d die alone; but I took that to mean “apart from Spock and Bones.”)

Picard returns to the crashed Enterprise and we end with him and Riker, same as the real movie, but with a couple of final tweaks.  Riker regrets he’ll never be captain of the Enterprise-D (well, not again, for we remember “Best Of Both Worlds”).  Picard observes that there will no doubt be another Enterprise; and then goes into his soliloquy that time isn’t a predator (as Soran thought), but a companion.  Riker wisecracks about how “I plan to live forever….”

… and Picard rolls his eyes.  “Oh no, Will!  Not you too!”

The two beam up to the Farragut and the rescue fleet goes to warp.  The End.

How’s that?

Basically, the initial setup was this: Green Lantern — doesn’t matter who, might as well be John — is patrolling Sector 2814 when his ring detects an approaching starship. It’s an advance scout for a massive armada headed, yes, straight for Earth. Naturally, GL alerts the Justice League and also buzzes Oa for backup. The JLA is prepped and ready for action, but the word comes back from Oa: reinforcements denied. In fact, a Guardian gets on the horn to tell John specifically that he is to offer no resistance to the invaders. Instead, he is to observe and advise them. He can protect the Earth’s best interests, but the Guardians have determined that the invasion must be a success, because that’s the only way Earth can survive.

John then contacts the JLA from aboard the invading scoutship and explains the situation. Obviously John is conflicted, but ultimately he has no reason to distrust the Guardians. Besides, he (and presumably any other Green Lantern in the area) will theoretically be able to influence the invaders in Earth’s favor. Of course, the JLA and the rest of Earth’s super-folk have no such conflict, and while there is some debate over whether to follow John’s lead, eventually the choice is made to repel the invaders.

Thus, the stage is set: hundreds (if not a thousand) hostile starships bearing countless troops, versus the Justice League, Justice Society, Teen Titans, et al. There are pitched battles in orbit and fierce fights on the ground, but the invaders eventually get past the superheroes. The invaders seem to be looking for something, but they don’t know quite where; and they tear the dickens out of several regions in the process. Cairo, Helsinki, Nepal, and Salt Lake City are hit especially hard. Regardless, thanks to John, casualties are amazingly low, including among the superhumans. Indeed, the invaders start ham-fistedly rebuilding the infrastructure of the devastated cities, even advising local leaders on alternative forms of government.

Once the invaders believe Earth has been subdued, though, the JLA and its allies strike back using guerrilla tactics. This is quite successful, in part because the invaders are caught off-guard. Before they know it, they’ve lost half their fleet and most of their infantry has been incapacitated; and they’re ready to retreat. After Green Lantern has escorted them out of the solar system, he gets a call from Oa: the Guardians are pleased.

Pleased?!? John spits. You could have stopped all this before it even started!

Yes, muses the Guardian coolly, but the [invaders] needed to be taught defeat. The Guardians knew that bloodying the invaders’ collective nose was the only way to get them to leave Earth alone, but calling in the GL Corps would have merely turned the invaders’ attention to Oa. It seems the invaders are a particularly thick and brutal race, but one thing they do especially well is fight — so they would have first found a way to eliminate the GL Corps, and then they’d have come after Earth. And make no mistake, John Stewart, intones the Guardian, [the invaders] would have dedicated their very existence to wiping us out. Now, however, they see that even if they defeat an enemy one day, it also won’t stop until it’s driven them off. The Guardian wraps up by saying they regret having to manipulate John and the other Earth GLs as they did, because (irony alert) they normally don’t work like that.

* * *

Now, clearly there are a number of problems with that story. I first thought of it when I was half-asleep, and I fleshed it out on the fly just now. The point, though, is that it is a blatant morality play about the Iraq war, and I’m not sure that something as deadly serious as Iraq (or Afghanistan, or wherever else the U.S. finds itself) should be trivialized, even potentially, by adapting it to a superhero setting. For one thing, it’s designed to leave no lasting scars on the Earth or its people. For another, the invaders are pretty one-dimensional — they’re looking for WMDs because they think someone on Earth attacked them, but that’s never really made clear.

Still, if you declare that some subjects are off-limits to superhero stories, aren’t you shortchanging the genre? Joe Kelly wrote a decent Iraq-related issue of JLA, where President Luthor basically lies to the Justice League to get them to invade an inoffensive country; and Greg Rucka put Lois Lane in harm’s way in “Umec” during his tenure writing Adventures Of Superman.

I actually do like the story, mostly for the moral dilemma it puts GL in. I suppose you could strip out the more obvious real-world parallels and make a passable 2- or 3-issue arc out of it. It wouldn’t have any real-world lessons, but it might be entertaining, and it would definitely explore the relationship between a Green Lantern and his little blue bosses.

Still, on balance I’d like my comics to be open to larger moral concerns. I’d just hope they’d be able to get past all the fantastic stuff.

Probably the weakest aspect of the movie is the romance between Nielsen’s J.J. Adams (that name’s oddly familiar too, given who directed the latest Trek) and Anne Francis’ Altaira, and that’s not all bad. I bought it from her point of view, but by the same token Adams knows full well what she’s feeling and to my mind takes advantage of it.

Still, it’s great fun to spot the other elements which would later find their way into Star Trek. The mysterious loner and his female companion figured in “The Man Trap,” “What Are Little Girls Made Of?,” and “Requiem for Methuselah,” the all-knowing computer was a staple of Original Trek, and of course there’s the design of the deceleration devices.

Oh, and Dr. Morbius reminded me a heckuva lot of Dr. Orpheus from “The Venture Brothers.” Now I want to see Dr. Orpheus’ daughter in the Anne Francis role….

Yesterday [December 2] I finally did something I’d been meaning to do for years, namely re-read Madeleine L’Engle’s classic young-adult fantasy A Wrinkle In Time. I can’t remember the last time I read it, but it had probably been close to thirty years ago. It wasn’t as mind-blowing as I remember, but I do want to read the rest of the series.

AWIT was also a lot shorter than I remember, although it was pretty dense nonetheless. I wasn’t expecting all the Christian references, and I definitely wasn’t expecting them to be so prominent. It didn’t feel like a book written in the early ’60s — more like something from the end of the decade or the early ’70s.

Perhaps most striking, though, was the Chris Claremont sensibility I got from the whole thing. Yes, I know that if anything, AWIT would have been an influence on Claremont, not the other way around. Still, you have a mousy, nerdy teenage girl unappreciated by her peers, who’s part of a family where almost everyone is either hyper-competent, extremely attractive, and/or outright super-powered. They all live in the rural Northeast (close to Westchester County?) where our heroine Meg meets her soulmate Calvin, who almost immediately starts talking about his own special destiny — maybe not in those terms, but close enough. Meg and Calvin and little telepathic Charles Wallace have a series of well-written intergalactic Christian-flavored adventures against an implacable evil, until everything is solved by the power of love.

Now, despite that smart-aleck tone, I did like the book, but darn if it didn’t seem like C.S. Lewis’ Uncanny X-Men.
]]> http://comicsatemybrain.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/re-posting-at-least-it-wasnt-a-wrinkle-in-focused-totality/feed/ 0 Tom Bondurant