Gary Seven - Why try create new series when current one is struggling.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re: Gary Seven - Why try create new series when current one is struggl

Here's another possibility: Klaatu may have been piling on the bullshit for the Earth people's benefit.

Meaning: Their society is not really like Klaatu says it is, he was just saying those things to scare the stupid humans. Ah, so what is Gort, then? Probably Klaatu's personal bodyguard. If Klaatu implies that there are Gorts everywhere, that makes his society look more powerful than it is, and thus we'd better be nice to them or else, blah blah blah.

 

[mos6507]

Re: Gary Seven - Why try create new series when current one is struggl

The point of the film is not to "sell" us on the idea of a robot autocracy as a utopia. The film's goal is to tell a story. A story needs conflict. By having Klaatu represent a race under the yoke of robotic overlords, it allows the film to play with tropes, giving Gort the ability to do some "pew pew" and skull-crushing and damsel-in-distress carrying without turning Klaatu into an unsympathetic figure.

Klaatu is kind of in the same league of characters that are promoted as the villain but turn out to be more of a victim-protagonist, vaguely like Elsa in Frozen.

People remember the film because it deliberately (and masterfully) baits and switches the audience expectations of the red-scare era.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

Re: Gary Seven - Why try create new series when current one is struggl

Why try and create a series out of that character in the first place? That episode is the least Trekky Star Trek episode I've ever seen. If they were hoping for Star Trek fans to watch it they were barking up the wrong tree. I'm sure some would have watched it but it held no appeal to me.

Also, for an alien-orientated 'security agent' who was supposed to stop Earth from destroying itself, Gary Seven, Isis and Roberta sure did a piss-poor job, since Earth had a World War III anyway. Also, where was Seven when people like Phillip Green were on the rise causing the shit that they were in the early to mid 21st century that led to World War III?

 

[JWPlatt]

Re: Gary Seven - Why try create new series when current one is struggl

^You're still caricaturing my ideas and completely missing the point. Please, let's just drop this. It's kind of silly to argue about a story I never actually wrote. Maybe if I actually had written it, you'd understand my intent.

It's worth a try. I did like your optimistic points. Let me know when it's done and I'll give it a read. The key for me is just don't make Klaatu a liar, fool, misconceived, or a rogue.

Here's another possibility: Klaatu may have been piling on the bullshit for the Earth people's benefit.

Meaning: Their society is not really like Klaatu says it is, he was just saying those things to scare the stupid humans. Ah, so what is Gort, then? Probably Klaatu's personal bodyguard. If Klaatu implies that there are Gorts everywhere, that makes his society look more powerful than it is, and thus we'd better be nice to them or else, blah blah blah.

Kind of like Matt Frewer in TNG's "A Matter of Time?"

Nope.

 

[Greg Cox]

Re: Gary Seven - Why try create new series when current one is struggl

Why try and create a series out of that character in the first place? That episode is the least Trekky Star Trek episode I've ever seen. If they were hoping for Star Trek fans to watch it they were barking up the wrong tree. I'm sure some would have watched it but it held no appeal to me.

Also, for an alien-orientated 'security agent' who was supposed to stop Earth from destroying itself, Gary Seven, Isis and Roberta sure did a piss-poor job, since Earth had a World War III anyway. Also, where was Seven when people like Phillip Green were on the rise causing the shit that they were in the early to mid 21st century that led to World War III?

That's a real problem that I had to dance around in my Gary Seven novels. "Wait? Gary Seven ultimately failed?"

Another good reason for divorcing any hypothetical remake from the STAR TREK universe, unless some future version of Trek ditches World War III from its timeline, too.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Gary Seven - Why try create new series when current one is struggl

That's a real problem that I had to dance around in my Gary Seven novels. "Wait? Gary Seven ultimately failed?"

I think he succeeded, though. His job was to ensure humanity survived. He delayed WWIII long enough that when it did happen, it was a limited nuclear exchange that humanity was able to recover from, rather than an all-out conflagration that would've rendered the species extinct. Not to mention that, in Roddenberry's view, going through a near-extinction like that was a key step in getting humanity to go, "Whew, let's not ever do that again, guys!" and rise above nationalism and intolerance and greed and the like. So maybe the whole idea was to allow a war that was bad enough to really drive home the point while still limited enough that it was survivable.

 

[JWPlatt]

Re: Gary Seven - Why try create new series when current one is struggl

Why try and create a series out of that character in the first place? That episode is the least Trekky Star Trek episode I've ever seen. If they were hoping for Star Trek fans to watch it they were barking up the wrong tree. I'm sure some would have watched it but it held no appeal to me.

Also, for an alien-orientated 'security agent' who was supposed to stop Earth from destroying itself, Gary Seven, Isis and Roberta sure did a piss-poor job, since Earth had a World War III anyway. Also, where was Seven when people like Phillip Green were on the rise causing the shit that they were in the early to mid 21st century that led to World War III?

That's a real problem that I had to dance around in my Gary Seven novels. "Wait? Gary Seven ultimately failed?"

Another good reason for divorcing any hypothetical remake from the STAR TREK universe, unless some future version of Trek ditches World War III from its timeline, too.

I don't like to encourage this sort of thinking, but suppose we are no longer in the "Prime" universe because Gary Seven succeeded here whereas he did not in the Prime universe. Mind you, we don't need to live in the Abramsverse either. The Many Worlds Interpretation is a great thing, eh?

 

[Tim Thomason]

Re: Gary Seven - Why try create new series when current one is struggl

Why try and create a series out of that character in the first place? That episode is the least Trekky Star Trek episode I've ever seen. If they were hoping for Star Trek fans to watch it they were barking up the wrong tree. I'm sure some would have watched it but it held no appeal to me.

Also, for an alien-orientated 'security agent' who was supposed to stop Earth from destroying itself, Gary Seven, Isis and Roberta sure did a piss-poor job, since Earth had a World War III anyway. Also, where was Seven when people like Phillip Green were on the rise causing the shit that they were in the early to mid 21st century that led to World War III?

That's a real problem that I had to dance around in my Gary Seven novels. "Wait? Gary Seven ultimately failed?"

Another good reason for divorcing any hypothetical remake from the STAR TREK universe, unless some future version of Trek ditches World War III from its timeline, too.

I know we'll probably never see a definitive "end" to Gary Seven's storyline, just like we'll never see an end to the storyline of most of the main characters, but I like to think that the commencement of World War III represents that end. He didn't fail in his mission to prevent World War III, he just can't live forever and perhaps the Aegis had to move their resources elsewhere.

 

[Drone]

Re: Gary Seven - Why try create new series when current one is struggl

The point of the film is not to "sell" us on the idea of a robot autocracy as a utopia. The film's goal is to tell a story. A story needs conflict. By having Klaatu represent a race under the yoke of robotic overlords, it allows the film to play with tropes, giving Gort the ability to do some "pew pew" and skull-crushing and damsel-in-distress carrying without turning Klaatu into an unsympathetic figure.

Klaatu is kind of in the same league of characters that are promoted as the villain but turn out to be more of a victim-protagonist, vaguely like Elsa in Frozen.

People remember the film because it deliberately (and masterfully) baits and switches the audience expectations of the red-scare era.

Clearly the explicit story isn't meant to be the whole story, as you mention above and which I suppose is discussed as frequently as the plot itself. What I wonder, perhaps a bit too facilely, is in-universe why should this confederation of highly advanced civilizations be concerned about Earth being a threat at all? Klaatu acquires information and perspective about its culture, history, and norms while here, but clearly the outline of the mission was in place and known before being dispatched. As primitive as Earth's technology for waging war beyond the home world was, it would seem that such seemingly perceptive and thoughtful creatures that Klaatu would appear to represent would be much more likely to dismiss the need to clue Earth in on the reigning order. I think a consensus probably would easily be reached that the planet almost certainly would destroy itself long before being in any plausible position to require being given any consideration at all, let alone as a potential threat.

Maybe, if any such rationale would be seen as having to be supplied at all by the filmmakers, it could be explained perhaps as a reasonable, if unstated concern by the alien cultures of the possibility of an accelerated rate of progress in Earth's ability to begin to travel widely in space. Additionally, at a time that a viewing audience wouldn't necessarily yet be widely dismissive of life being at least plausible on some planets in our own solar system, especially when reports of UFO's had quickly become ubiquitous, there simply wasn't much consideration given to any substantive questioning by the audience that such travelers as depicted would have to have been, of necessity, located unimaginably immense distances from Earth.

I haven't looked at a profusion of critical responses to the film, but I don't think I've seen this matter broached in those I have read. Given the widespread acclaim it garnered at the time and the different levels of subtext and metaphor that the film conveyed, was there even any contemporaneous thought given to what I've questioned or was it simply seen as consonant with other SF films of the era insofar as the acceptability of the general conceit of aliens visiting our world, albeit in this particular instance, with a much more important and compelling message?

 

[Christopher]

Re: Gary Seven - Why try create new series when current one is struggl

Maybe, if any such rationale would be seen as having to be supplied at all by the filmmakers, it could be explained perhaps as a reasonable, if unstated concern by the alien cultures of the possibility of an accelerated rate of progress in Earth's ability to begin to travel widely in space.

It's worth noting that there are a lot of similarities between The Day the Earth Stood Still and another seminal science fiction tale that came out just two years later (and has recently gained new attention from a miniseries adaptation), Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. In that book,

Spoiler: spoilers for 62-year-old novel and sort of for recent miniseries

the alien Overlords came to Earth to halt our independent technological progress because they recognized that we were on the verge of experimentation with psionic powers that could unleash great destruction across the cosmos. Like Klaatu, they were working for a pervasive higher power whose will could not be denied, though it too was painted as essentially benevolent in a paternalistic way. It's recently occurred to me that the Overlords, like Klaatu, can be seen as a parallel for the worldview of the cultural imperialists of the British Empire and the United States.

The 1950s were a time of considerable optimism about our pace of technological innovation. After all, we'd just split the atom and unleashed unprecedented new forces. Could conquering the stars be far behind? Lots of SF assumed we'd be colonizing the Solar System by the 1970s or even reaching the stars by the 1990s. (The following decade, Lost in Space had a colony expedition to Alpha Centauri in 1997.)

Additionally, at a time that a viewing audience wouldn't necessarily yet be widely dismissive of life being at least plausible on some planets in our own solar system, especially when reports of UFO's had quickly become ubiquitous, there simply wasn't much consideration given to any substantive questioning by the audience that such travelers as depicted would have to have been, of necessity, located unimaginably immense distances from Earth.

Klaatu said in the movie that he'd traveled 250 million miles to reach Earth, which is consistent with the distance to Mars as of July 1951. At the time, it was still considered credible that there could be people living on Mars, Venus, or other planets in the system, and lots of sci-fi from the era depicted such things. It wouldn't be until the '60s that probe data would reveal how alien and uninhabitable those planets' environments really were. So the working assumption of the filmmakers was probably that Klaatu's alliance of planets was within our solar system (something I didn't consider when contemplating my sequel idea back in the day).

I haven't looked at a profusion of critical responses to the film, but I don't think I've seen this matter broached in those I have read. Given the widespread acclaim it garnered at the time and the different levels of subtext and metaphor that the film conveyed, was there even any contemporaneous thought given to what I've questioned or was it simply seen as consonant with other SF films of the era insofar as the acceptability of the general conceit of aliens visiting our world, albeit in this particular instance, with a much more important and compelling message?

There were plenty of movies and stories about aliens visiting Earth. TDTESS stands apart from the pack of '50s alien-visitor movies by showing Klaatu as benevolent (ish) rather than an invader to be fought. It shares that distinction with Jack Arnold's It Came from Outer Space from two years later, and maybe a handful of others.

 

[mos6507]

Re: Gary Seven - Why try create new series when current one is struggl

It's recently occurred to me that the Overlords, like Klaatu, can be seen as a parallel for the worldview of the cultural imperialists of the British Empire and the United States.

No. The reverse. Klaatu's people feared that humanity would expand out and become interplanetary imperialists, disturbing the peace that had already existed.

Klaatu even goes so far as to qualify his way of life, and by extension, you can say the filmmakers were speaking through him, for fear of being accused of glorifying the idea of robot overlords:

"Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works."

The film only makes an appeal for peace but isn't telling us exactly how to get there.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Gary Seven - Why try create new series when current one is struggl

It's recently occurred to me that the Overlords, like Klaatu, can be seen as a parallel for the worldview of the cultural imperialists of the British Empire and the United States.

No. The reverse. Klaatu's people feared that humanity would expand out and become interplanetary imperialists, disturbing the peace that had already existed.

Lots of cultural imperialists saw the cultures they imposed their will on as potential threats that needed to be tamed. Indeed, that was a large part of the rhetoric that was used to justify colonialism in the first place. For instance, the British Raj really exaggerated the danger from Thuggee bandits, painted it as an endemic threat of Hindu culture, in order to justify imposing British rule and civilization on the indigenous people "for their own good." The British genuinely believed they were doing good, helping the Indians to better themselves, because they took it for granted that their own way of living and believing was superior. This is why Gandhi was able to win using nonviolence -- because it exposed the truth that the Indians were not the dangerous savages, that they were peaceful and it was their rulers who were inflicting violence and coercion on them for no reason. That shamed the British people into seeing that they were doing more harm than good.

So just because Klaatu and his people believed they were acting against imperialism, that doesn't mean they weren't being imperialists themselves. If all imperialists were obviously evil, then imperialism wouldn't have caught on so pervasively. It's easy to buy into the assumption that you're doing good and thereby be blind to the harm that comes from the power imbalance. (Which is supposed to be why Starfleet has the Prime Directive, to discourage the urge to impose your will benevolently. Although TNG misunderstood and twisted it into something even more condescending than the colonialism it was meant to counteract.)

 

[Drone]

Re: Gary Seven - Why try create new series when current one is struggl

This is why Gandhi was able to win using nonviolence -- because it exposed the truth that the Indians were not the dangerous savages, that they were peaceful and it was their rulers who were inflicting violence and coercion on them for no reason. That shamed the British people into seeing that they were doing more harm than good.

It seems that Amritsar was the catalyst for Gandhi to abandon any hope that having supported the Empire during the War, could have achieved a partial autonomy for India, and brought him to first actively pursue using civil disobedience to secure full independence. No doubt, that same event opened the eyes of many of the British public to the truth of what was actually happening on the ground there, as you assert.

 

[Tim Walker]

Re: Gary Seven - Why try create new series when current one is struggl

What the show was likely trying to aspire to be was a spy show...the spy genre was big in the 60s, and there were many shows in that vein. It could have been Wild, Wild West in the opposite direction...futuristic spies instead of 19th-century spies.

As I recall, Wild, Wild West characters were almost futuristic spies themselves. There were gadgets which seemed a bit advanced for the time.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Gary Seven - Why try create new series when current one is struggl

As I recall, Wild, Wild West characters were almost futuristic spies themselves. There were gadgets which seemed a bit advanced for the time.

Yup. It was steampunk (sort of) before steampunk was a thing.

Well, really, it's just that high-tech gadgetry and sci-fi was part of the spy genre of the time, thanks to Bond movies and The Man from UNCLE and the like. So if they were going to do a spy show in the Old West, it still needed high-tech gadgets and doomsday weapons and all the other spy-fi tropes.

 

[FormerLurker]

Re: Gary Seven - Why try create new series when current one is struggl

I found it interesting on Wild Wild West that many of Jim West's gadgets were based on the equipment developed by and for the ninja of Japan. Makes one wonder where exactly Jim West got his spy training.

 

[22 Stars]

I assume someone has pointed out that AE is basically Dr. Who, also popular across the pond at this time.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I assume someone has pointed out that AE is basically Dr. Who, also popular across the pond at this time.

But not well known in the States at that time.

 

[Christopher]

I assume someone has pointed out that AE is basically Dr. Who, also popular across the pond at this time.

I debunked that in posts #66 and #71. (I tried linking to them, but it doesn't seem to be working.) In short, it's unlikely that Roddenberry had ever heard of Doctor Who when he concieved of A:E in 1966, and Who would not take on qualities similar to "Assignment: Earth" until well after A:E had already been made. They were both just building on pre-existing spy-fi tropes popular at the time.

 

[jaime]

Re: Gary Seven - Why try create new series when current one is struggl



Well, that doesn't mean he had a specific plan to do it as a non-Who story -- just that he wanted to explore the idea in some form. As he says, "I wanted to tell a story in which civilisation snaps, in which we turn on ourselves, in which nothing is safe." And Torchwood was the show that gave him the opportunity to examine that theme. All writers have a bunch of basic ideas or issues or questions that they want to write about in some form, but it may take them years to find the right specifics, the right characters and context to tell them in, the right way to structure or resolve the story. In the quotes I've found, Davies talks about how he didn't even have the ending for Children of Earth worked out yet while he and his collaborators were writing the scripts to parts 1-4.





True, some people are fans specifically of a single character and can be inordinately upset if that character is killed off. When the Voyager novels killed off Captain Janeway for a few years (she got better), the sheer savagery of the vitriol and condemnation from a small segment of the fanbase was kind of alarming. They were convinced they'd been personally attacked. This was perhaps understandable, given that there had long been an ugly thread of misogyny directed against Janeway from certain dark corners of fandom, and so Janeway's stalwart fans probably had some reason to feel that they and the character had been attacked unjustly in the past, and some of them evidently jumped to the erroneous conclusion that the creative decision to kill off the character was part of that attack. But still, their reaction was astonishingly disproportionate considering that it was only a completely imaginary figure who'd died, and only in one iteration of the tie-ins.

But I consider that to be one of the more extremist flavors of fandom, and I think extremists tend to dominate the conversation more than they should because they're so much louder than everyone else. I think that there are always going to be plenty of fans who are fans of the whole series or the whole franchise, who recognize that characters may come and go as part of any ongoing story, and that a character's death isn't some horrible crime against fandom but just a story choice that seemed right to the creators at that time. In the case of Janeway, I felt that she actually had a stronger and more influential presence in the books set after her death, and dealing with its ongoing aftereffects upon her friends and crewmates, than she did in many of the books where she was alive. Character deaths can be a valuable and powerful storytelling device because of the way they affect and change other characters. And those other characters' reactions to a loved one's death can be a great tribute to that character.

Offhand, I can think of only one time that I've really been offended by a character's death in a TV series. It was the second-season premiere of War of the Worlds: The Series, where the new showrunner just happened to kill off both of the nonwhite characters and add a new white character to replace them, and then claimed it was for reasons having nothing to do with race. One of the characters he killed off, Colonel Ironhorse, was by far the show's most beloved and popular character, and the new showrunner claimed he'd somehow been unaware of that fact when he killed him off. Anyway, as wrong as that was to me, what really hurt was just how badly and callously his death was handled. He nominally sacrificed himself to save others, which in theory would be a noble end, but the situation was just so blatantly contrived and forced to make him kill himself, and the actual scene was directed so coldly and brutally, that it just left me bitter and furious at how badly the character had been handled.

But that's the exception, not the rule. I've been a fan of a lot of shows since, and seen a lot of characters I liked get killed, but it's never really offended or outraged me like it did then. Disappointed, sure, but I've never taken it so personally. Generally I've understood that it's just something that happens in ongoing series.




It's an old-fashioned word in the US, but I don't think it's exclusively British. We have expressions that use it, like "a passing fancy," "catch one's fancy," "fancy that," etc.

Perhaps more relevant is 'pigeon fancier' whos typically presented stereotype matches fan much better than fanatic. This is the first time I have heard of its root not being from fanatic..and it makes more sense.