'Mister Michael, you misunderstand us. We can be against him and admire him all at the same time.'
Spoilers Star Trek: Khan 1x02 - "Scheherazade"
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A pretty good one. I like how it fleshed out Khan and Marla and offered a new perspective on Marla's choices in "Space Seed."
Although I still find the zero-narration approach to audiodrama very confusing in an action scene. A lot of the time, it's just a bunch of noise that I can't follow until the dialogue afterward explains what happened.
I don't know about that. He fancied himself a benevolent tyrant, and I can buy that he embraced the rhetoric of tearing down the old, environmentally rapacious order and painted himself as a savior of the planet. His attitude here, that he aspired to build a paradise but believed you had to destroy the old order before you could build a better one, reminds me of Mao Zedong in his early days -- before he got so impatient to bring about his dreamed-of future utopia before he died that he tried to force it with the Cultural Revolution and caused untold suffering and death.
Rather, the duology The Eugenics Wars, to which To Reign in Hell was a sequel, portrayed them as a hidden history, a conflict that went on behind the scenes. (At least as far as Americans were concerned, since we never pay attention to anything elsewhere in the world unless it affects us -- which is why I find the novels' version plausible, since Americans actually did largely ignore some major wars in Africa during the 1990s.)
Ooh, maybe I made a mistake going with Audible, then, since there were four commercial breaks, counting the one before the episode. Turns out I really hate audiobook commercials, since I can't mute them like I do with TV commercials.
Good point. I think there's always room for reinterpreting why a character did something, as long as it's consistent with the facts of what they did. Often we do misunderstand the intentions and motivations of other people because we don't know them well enough. How they appear to be acting to us may be very different from how they see themselves acting.
I do have an issue with the idea that a ship's historian is a specialist who rarely leaves her quarters. I mean, if you're exploring alien civilizations, it's not enough to observe how they are in the present; you can't truly understand them without studying their history and how they got to where they are. Not to mention that, as Jonathan Archer said, explorer ships are making history with every light year, so someone should be observing and documenting that. Even if a ship's historian doesn't go out and participate in away missions or battles, just studies and compiles the logs, you can't document events effectively without interviewing the participants.
Aside from that credibility issue, though, Marla's sense of alienation does clarify why she was drawn to Khan and willing to align with him above her crewmates and her oaths.
But so far, we haven't seen that much of him in action -- we've mostly just heard him talk about his beliefs, goals, and intentions. That's entirely consistent with what you said, that he just believes he's a good guy. The test will be how he actually behaves when faced with reality. We saw (well, heard) hints of that more domineering side when he challenged the boar (Ceti boar?) and when he insisted on hunting for Richter alone. I got the sense that he was motivated as much by his own pride, his need to prove his dominance over the wilderness, as by his concern for Richter.
Although I still find the zero-narration approach to audiodrama very confusing in an action scene. A lot of the time, it's just a bunch of noise that I can't follow until the dialogue afterward explains what happened.
I don't know about that. He fancied himself a benevolent tyrant, and I can buy that he embraced the rhetoric of tearing down the old, environmentally rapacious order and painted himself as a savior of the planet. His attitude here, that he aspired to build a paradise but believed you had to destroy the old order before you could build a better one, reminds me of Mao Zedong in his early days -- before he got so impatient to bring about his dreamed-of future utopia before he died that he tried to force it with the Cultural Revolution and caused untold suffering and death.
Rather, the duology The Eugenics Wars, to which To Reign in Hell was a sequel, portrayed them as a hidden history, a conflict that went on behind the scenes. (At least as far as Americans were concerned, since we never pay attention to anything elsewhere in the world unless it affects us -- which is why I find the novels' version plausible, since Americans actually did largely ignore some major wars in Africa during the 1990s.)
Ooh, maybe I made a mistake going with Audible, then, since there were four commercial breaks, counting the one before the episode. Turns out I really hate audiobook commercials, since I can't mute them like I do with TV commercials.
Good point. I think there's always room for reinterpreting why a character did something, as long as it's consistent with the facts of what they did. Often we do misunderstand the intentions and motivations of other people because we don't know them well enough. How they appear to be acting to us may be very different from how they see themselves acting.
I do have an issue with the idea that a ship's historian is a specialist who rarely leaves her quarters. I mean, if you're exploring alien civilizations, it's not enough to observe how they are in the present; you can't truly understand them without studying their history and how they got to where they are. Not to mention that, as Jonathan Archer said, explorer ships are making history with every light year, so someone should be observing and documenting that. Even if a ship's historian doesn't go out and participate in away missions or battles, just studies and compiles the logs, you can't document events effectively without interviewing the participants.
Aside from that credibility issue, though, Marla's sense of alienation does clarify why she was drawn to Khan and willing to align with him above her crewmates and her oaths.
But so far, we haven't seen that much of him in action -- we've mostly just heard him talk about his beliefs, goals, and intentions. That's entirely consistent with what you said, that he just believes he's a good guy. The test will be how he actually behaves when faced with reality. We saw (well, heard) hints of that more domineering side when he challenged the boar (Ceti boar?) and when he insisted on hunting for Richter alone. I got the sense that he was motivated as much by his own pride, his need to prove his dominance over the wilderness, as by his concern for Richter.
Good news -- episode 2 is on YouTube after all!
I guess we just have to wait until about 6 PM Eastern, judging by the time stamp.
I guess we just have to wait until about 6 PM Eastern, judging by the time stamp.
The last episode should have Leerman out in the final tape, and just get "Yeah this is Commander Kyle of the starship Reliant, I don't know what kind of crazy lies this traitor told you, but she totally betrayed Starfleet because she fell in love with this guy, and he's totally crazy, and this is the second starship he's hijacked out from under me... anyway, if anyone ever listens to this, just don't believe any stories she tells you, she's just going to try to make both of them sound good anyway. Don't buy a word of it."
This RSS feed should allow direct downloads.
Something that kept jumping out to me this week was how the dialogue jumps between normal conversational interchanges and then odd "classic movie" type phraseology, like the kind I would hear in biblical epics like Ben-Hur where the dialogue is a bit more "flowery."
Beyond that, the story is starting to gel and I dug episode 2 more than the first.
Beyond that, the story is starting to gel and I dug episode 2 more than the first.
What I find puzzling is the format. The frame story with Marla's tapes seemed like the setup for an epistolary or found-footage kind of story, where what we're hearing is the actual recordings. But the bulk of the series is very much not that, since there are scenes that Marla isn't present for. What we're hearing is not what Dr. Lear is hearing, and there are parts that Marla, and thus Lear, wouldn't even know about. So there's something of a disconnect between the two parts of the storyline.
It's also weird because it seems to me that a log- or journal-based format would be a handy way to allow for narration within the story, to fill in details that a pure dialogue-and-sound-effects format can't provide. Of course, framing stories with log entries is a foundational Star Trek tradition.
It's also weird because it seems to me that a log- or journal-based format would be a handy way to allow for narration within the story, to fill in details that a pure dialogue-and-sound-effects format can't provide. Of course, framing stories with log entries is a foundational Star Trek tradition.
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