Strange Tales #147 (O’Neil/Everett, Aug 1966). Bill Everett takes over from Ditko. I love that Strange just wanders into a drugstore to pick up over-the-counter meds. Moving a mystic into a mundane space!

Star Trek Disco 1x01 “The Vulcan Hello”

“You can’t set a course without a star.”

Just before this episode debuted on CBS in September 2017, Oprah was interviewing Trump supporters. They were pleased with his performance in office so far. It was like glimpsing into an alternate reality. I wondered, “How can we co-exist in a world with people whose perspectives are so irreconcilable with ours?” Seconds later, the Klingon messiah invaded our screens and snarled in an alien language, “THEY ARE COMING.”

And it was like, oh right! Questions like this are what Star Trek is for.

Star Trek Disco Prologue

CBS will air Season 1 of Star Trek: Discovery starting this Thursday at 10/9c.

Before the season begins, a Tribble Triple Feature! Each of these episodes are available on Netflix, Hulu, or CBS All Access. Probably Amazon too, but I didn’t check ‘cause truly is there anything less utopian than Amazon?

TOS 2x15 “The Trouble with Tribbles” TAS 1x05 “More Tribbles, More Troubles” DS9 5x06 “Trials and Tribble-ations”

Doctor Who 1x07 “The Long Game”

In “The End of the World,” The Doctor disarms the Adherents of the Repeated Meme by reducing them to merely “an idea.” (Well, and by yanking some wires.) But ideas aren’t just ideas in this show. Like the London Eye in “Rose,” everything conceals secrets -- iconic landmarks conceal fortresses, political officials conceal aliens, and innocuous phrases conceal sinister purposes.

Here, the innocuous phrase is, “The walls are made of gold.” The employees of Satellite Five slave away to broadcast news to the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, but they’re so enthralled with the possibility of reward (ie. promotion) that they never question anything. Why is it so hot in the station? Why are there no aliens aboard? Why does no one return from Floor 500, where the walls are made of gold?

In Russell T Davies’ Doctor Who, the biggest enemy isn’t the Slitheen or the Gelth or the Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxaraddenfoe. It’s complicity. By exposing the secrets embedded in our institutions, The Doctor exhorts ordinary people to shirk complicity and change the universe into a more tolerant and thoughtful place.

Doctor Who 1x04 “Aliens of London”

Under Russell T Davies’ supervision, Doctor Who demonstrates conspicuous diversity. I really started to notice it with this episode. As the acting Prime Minister arrives at 10 Downing Street, he’s greeted by an Indian aide named Indra Ganesh.

If the script called attention to Indra’s race, it would feel like it was fetishizing “Other”-ness. But it doesn’t. Instead, it’s a quiet extension of Russell T Davies’ agenda to advocate tolerance and compassion for everyone. After all, the universe is populated by people of all creeds and colors...

Doctor Who 1x03 “The Unquiet Dead”

This is the first episode of the revived Doctor Who credited to a writer other than show runner/head writer Russell T Davies. But that credit, to Mark Gatiss, is apparently disingenuous. According to The Writer’s Tale, a wonderful book about writing and TV production and living with a creative mindset, Davies confesses that he rewrites many (most? all?) of the scripts during his head writer.

This issue of authorship becomes important with this episode, because “The Unquiet Dead” has a more controversial reputation than its predecessors. Whose voice is on display here, and what were they trying to say?

Doctor Who 1x02 “The End of the World”

When the Nestene Consciousness transmitted its activation signal, Rose gasped, “It’s the end of the world!” But it wasn’t. On her first journey with The Doctor, he shows her the true end of the world. He has ulterior motives -- he can’t quite bring himself to talk about the Time War and the end of his own world, so he manipulates her into feeling that sense of loss and horror. Then, maybe she can begin to understand his alien-ness.

The idea of alien-ness is crucial to this episode, ‘cause... well, we meet a lot of aliens. And we try to understand them. 

It’s an ambitious set-up, and it doesn’t totally work. For instance, there’s an extended action sequence where Rose is trapped in a locked room. She’s banging helplessly on the door, while The Doctor pokes his sonic screwdriver into some wires to free her. And it goes on forever. Even with a deadly sunbeam threatening to incinerate Rose, it’s an oddly inert sequence -- and when it’s over, Rose is still locked in that room. It feels like nothing is accomplished, although it’s actually a crafty way to let tree-person Princess Jabe take Rose’s place as companion. Jabe dies so Rose doesn’t have to.

I don’t have any suggestions for how to fix this. The structure of this episode seems necessary -- Davies had to write some simple action sequences, partly ‘cause his budget was being spent on costumes and make-up for the alien extras and partly ‘cause he had to learn what a good Doctor Who action sequence looks like. (Hint: it does not involve The Doctor standing quietly with his eyes shut, while his new friend burns to death in the background.)

The lack of strong action in this episode is well-balanced by the parade of absurd ideas that overwhelm Rose. (She didn’t have culture shock when she first stepped aboard the Tardis, but she sure gets culture shock on Platform One.) The universe’s rich and famous have gathered to watch the Earth explode, and a blue-skinned steward announces each attendee as they enter: “We have Trees: Jabe, Newt, and Copper! The Moxx of Balhoon! The Adherents of the Repeated Meme! The brothers Hop Pyleen! Cal Sparkplug! The Ambassadors from the City State of Binding Light!”

And you could argue that it’s just a nonsensical list. But nonsensical lists have a lot of potential. They’re suggestive and allusive. Nonsensical lists are what got me interested in Doctor Who in the first place. I got excited about the narrative possibilities of a list that included Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters, and Doctor Who and the Ambassadors of Death. I suppose it’s about key words conjuring powerful associations, and Russell T Davies is demonstrating here that he’s very good at picking words.

“The Adherents of the Repeated Meme” sounds spooky, and the black robed figures who accompany that name appear sinister. But, in a plot twist, The Doctor reveals that a “meme” is just “an idea,” and that the Adherents are remote-controlled robots. Diction is part of Davies’ alchemy -- because words carry the same mythic/mundane intersection potential that the rest of his story does. Words carry meaning, and they can be corrupted or appropriated for other uses. Think about what the word “meme” describes now, ten years after this episode aired.

The other absurd ideas are more personal, as befits Rose’s sphere of experience. I particularly like the bit where she meets Rafallo, the blue-skinned plumber. Their exchange makes this bizarre alien seem relatable -- she’s a plumber, she’s a long way from home -- so it matters when she’s horribly murdered by the end of the scene. But I’m still stuck on how the scene imbues Rose with a lot of social power she didn’t ask for: Rafallo needs Rose’s permission to speak, and she’s so thrilled when Rose grants that permission.

There’s a lot of political indignation peppered throughout this story. Poor Rafallo’s just trying to do her job, but she has to suffer the indignity of silence and death to serve the entitled. And, of course, Lady Cassandra -- the “last human,” merely a sheet of skin stretched out on a metal frame -- tries to sabotage Platform One and hold her fellow spectators hostage so she can steal enough money for another plastic surgery operation. Even five billion years in the future, it’s all about money.

As much as Russell T Davies is savagely mocking that kind of attitude, I still think he fundamentally respects the people who have those attitudes. Like, Cassandra’s still a developed character with at least three ex-husbands, a transgender identity, some deeply racist attitudes about “mingling,” and a deep need to stay beautiful and thin. It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that this character arrived one week after Jackie’s “skin like an old Bible” remark. As absurd as Lady Cassandra appears, her desires and attitudes are rooted in modern, recognizable concerns.

That continues to be this show’s primary tool. When The Doctor gets defensive about his identity, Rose uses contemporary references to reach out to him. “Like my mate Shireen says, don’t argue with your designated driver. Besides, it’s not like I can call for a taxi.” The Doctor keeps forgetting that things like getting a taxi, things that seem so unimportant to him, can be defining experiences for other people. 

But the show never forgets that. The most exciting stuff -- the aliens, the spaceships, the Earth exploding -- becomes more potent and meaningful, because the show keeps comparing that stuff to everyday experiences, like laundry and hangovers and lottery tickets. In this era of Doctor Who, the mythic doesn’t cheapen the mundane, or vice versa. They complement each other, make both sets of experience significant and magical.

Doctor Who 1x01 “Rose”

Steven Moffat was just awarded the OBE for his service to British drama, so I think it might be time for me to revisit Doctor Who. There comes a time when you realize being petty -- like John Cleese in Life of Brian, berating the creative figure for making it up as he goes -- isn't helping.

This is an exorcism. Or a rehabilitation. I just want to feel better, doc...

I’ve felt bitter and angry for a while now, and much of that has to do with my relationship with Doctor Who. This show taught me how to write, how to treat others, how to survive failure and guilt and change. But then the show itself changed, and I couldn’t deal with it. So how do I move on? How do I stop clinging to the past?

Batman Beyond 1x01/02 “Rebirth”

Batman: The Animated Series was stylish and sophisticated, but I quickly got tired of the Dark Knight's inability to change. The series tries to mitigate that by teaming him with actual humans, like Dick and Barbara and Tim. But he's still the center of the show, and I don't care as much about Batman because I don't aspire to be like him. I don't want to sacrifice all of my mundane, personal attachments to become something purely mythic. I want to integrate my mundane qualities into a mythic life. That, I think, is why I enjoy Batman Beyond. Sure, it's set in the future, so there are robots and flying cars. But the real benefit of setting a Batman story in the future is that, even if Bruce Wayne won't change, he can't stop the world around him from changing. Change happens, whether Batman wants it to or not. The future corrupts Bruce's body, his company, and his city.

Neo-Gotham runs rampant with Jokerz, naive gangsters who've appropriated the image of Batman's most dangerous foe -- and they're just pathetic. But more offensive to him, surely, is Bruce's inability to fight aging. In the pre-titles sequence, he suffers a heart attack and resorts to wielding a gun in self-defense... violating his most hallowed code, brandishing the very weapon that murdered his parents and sent him on this crusade. It breaks him. (He changes!)

Enter Terry McGinnis: a brash teenager, a product of a broken home. He's a cross between the surly post-apocalyptic bikers of Akira and the recognizably self-obsessed students from early Spider-Man comics. He's liminal in a way that Bruce Wayne never was. As a teenager, he's between childhood and adulthood; between parents; and between justice and lawlessness.

The new Batsuit is brilliantly designed to externalize Terry’s liminality. The animators ditch the iconic cape in favor of a form-fitting bodysuit -- where is the edge between the mask and Terry’s face? Body and suit blend together, becoming a nexus point for all the boundaries that Terry crosses. Meanwhile, Old Bruce is much more compelling to me as a sturdy, unyielding mentor. There's less pressure for him to be a dynamic character in this capacity. (Dynamic, in the literary sense of, “can he change?” And no. He can't. Batman is a static character. Which isn't an empirically bad thing, it just means that I don't like him.)

These strong characters are established in a more serialized world than B:TAS. There’s still a sense of the episodic, with Bruce hiring Terry as his “gofer.” We anticipate that, with Terry having a mundane reason to stick close to Bruce, they’ll be able to cooperatively battle Neo-Gotham’s next villain-of-the-week. But that’s not how the episode ends. Instead, we cut to a secret Wayne/Powers lab, where slimy CEO Derek Powers has been transformed into an irradiated glowing skeleton. It’s a cliffhanger that won’t be immediately resolved, but it suggests that Terry’s story, unlike Bruce’s, will have some sense of linear progression.

Quantum Leap 2x08 "Jimmy: October 19, 1964"

Al's not allowed to tell Sam anything personal, due to some hazily-defined rules about the project. (Maybe Ziggy's still running tests on Sam, including how quickly he recovers his memory -- and filling in the blanks would mess with the data? That's just me making things up, but it's as good a reason as any.) But, despite how much he withholds, I still feel like I know Al pretty well. Each piece of his backstory that falls into place just makes sense. I get why he's a cad, and how he can also be capable of such progressive empathy.

"Jimmy" reveals a key part of Al's character: he grew up with a young sister who had special needs. This was before the major effort to "mainstream" the developmentally disabled; the stress and confusion surrounding Trudy's situation tore Al's family apart. (His mom ran away, and his dad shacked up with a series of girlfriends thereafter: hence, Al's womanizing.) He holds himself partly responsible for failing to take her out of the institution, where she allegedly died of pneumonia. (Hence, Al's involvement in various civil liberties campaigns -- he's trying to make up for that failure.)

Because the characters had such a personal investment in this issue, I really noticed how this episode, so early in Quantum Leap's run, stopped talking about changing the world. Sam and Al discuss the historical context for the situation, but Sam doesn't leap into Jimmy's life to reform the system -- he's simply there to earn acceptance for Jimmy, to improve this one man's life.

I found it a little challenging to watch, honestly, 'cause the situation was just so intense. That's not to say that racism and sexism aren't intense issues, but we have words to describe those situations. It's easier to contextualize and empathize with victims of those prejudices. I don't think there is a word for prejudice against the developmentally disabled.

As Jimmy, there's constant pressure and frustration heaped upon Sam. It's not like anything he does is so catastrophic: he drops some plates, and does a poor job at washing a car. If someone who wasn't disabled did those things, it would be written off as a mistake. But, as Jimmy, every mistake feels magnified, 'cause everyone's upset with him all the time, and it's agonizing to watch. No one in Jimmy's life understands what's going on -- there is no "whole word" to talk about it.

But you have to call it something, or else you can't address it. And, for my money, Quantum Leap is at its best when it addresses these kinds of issues, when it helps audiences to empathize with people they don't understand.

This episode aired in 1989, and already, everyone's embroiled in a difficult discussion about what we call it. Jimmy's brother Frank insists that Sam refer to it as being "slow," not "retarded." Sam suggests that he's "special." Outside the show, in 2006, the American Association on Mental Retardation elected to change its name to the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. We just can't decide what to call it. 

The terminology subsection on Wikipedia's intellectual disability page is fascinating, 'cause you can see just how charged and problematic it's been. "Retarded" was introduced as a neutral replacement for derogatory terms like "cretin" and "imbecile," but the social stigma of this disorder corrupted the new term's neutrality.

The fact that Quantum Leap engages with this discussion at all is huge. They're not out to solve a global problem, they just want to acknowledge that a problem exists in how we perceive and treat those who are different than us -- whether they have a different gender, race, or degree of cognitive function. So there's much less emphasis on the wider ramifications of Sam's leap this time.

Although he references Star Wars, the show doesn't insert a young George Lucas getting a bright idea. (Whereas, in the previous episode, there's a gag where Sam performs the Heimlich maneuver on a choking man, who turns out to be Dr. Heimlich himself.) And we don't get the familiar moment at the episode's conclusion where Al reads from his glittery LEGO and confirms that everyone will now live happily ever after. No, the only reward in this episode is Jimmy's acceptance by the dock workers.

And that only comes about because Sam, as Jimmy, performs C.P.R. on a drowned boy. Once again, I'm left wondering what happens to the host body's consciousness after Sam leaps. I guess it's possible that Jimmy did (or could) know C.P.R., but the drama of that scene hinges on the idea that Sam -- with his six doctorates! -- knows something relevant that Jimmy may not. He can give everyone a reasonable explanation for how Jimmy could have learned such a thing. But if Jimmy himself doesn't actually know C.P.R., or (maybe more relevantly) doesn't remember performing C.P.R., then couldn't he undo all the work Sam just did? Or are we supposed to believe that Sam's efforts have changed Connie and the dock workers, so they'll give Jimmy the benefit of the doubt, even if he insists that he's never performed C.P.R. in his life?

I really like the focus that this episode took with improving one man's life, rather than attempting huge societal reforms. But I wonder how effective intervening in someone's personal life can be. How can you prevent the same mistakes from happening when you're no longer there to intervene? That's quite a leap of faith...

Quantum Leap 2x04 "What Price Gloria?"

When Sam was Jesse, he made a point of noting the differences between himself and a black man. Jesse was a role he could play, while still maintaining his internal identity as Sam Beckett. But, when he inhabits the body of Samantha Stormer, the boundary between male Sam and his female host gets blurred.

This manifests on screen when Scott Bakula paints his nails, curls his hair, applies lipstick, wears dresses and earrings, and walks in high heels. As previous male characters, Sam's only ever had to change clothes -- and there were always moments in the episode where he could drop the facade and speak to Al as himself. There are no such opportunities in this episode. Even leaping into the body of someone named "Sam," Dr. Beckett never gets a chance to stop performing.

And I think that's what the episode is suggesting about Samantha Stormer, as well. Even without Sam's consciousness using her body, she still has to wear all that makeup. She has to perform a version of herself that's socially acceptable. That kind of masquerade is demeaning; the women in this story are so used to determining their worth via approval from their bosses and peeping neighbors, their sense of self diminishes.

Thus, "What Price Gloria?" handles the issue of prejudice much more elegantly than "The Color of Truth." Sam tried to confront racism in a more global sense -- he wanted to kickstart integration in the Deep South. Here, he flirts with the idea of making a similar gesture for emancipation, but the true effectiveness of this leap lies in how he affects individual lives. He prevents Gloria from committing suicide over an affair with a married man, and inadvertently guides Samantha to becoming a successful car designer and single mother.

And even more significant is the impact this leap has upon Sam himself. Experiencing life as a woman enables him to take some control over his time-traveling. Typically he has very little control over when he leaps: he and Al determine a task, accomplish it, then God whisks him away to the next adventure. This time, even after rescuing Gloria and bolstering Samantha's future, Sam manages to delay the leap... by hoping for revenge on Samantha's misogynistic boss, Buddy.

Frankly, I'm not quite sure what to make of that. Especially 'cause Al sums up the situation as "very female." I feel that Al can get away with speaking a lot of sexist horseshit, 'cause typically he's on the side of the angels. We know he was active in the civil rights movement, so he's socially progressive. He supports Sam, and in this episode, even admits to loving him (as a best friend). But those positive qualities are balanced out by the fact that he's a womanizing sleazebag. That works dramatically, 'cause it gives Al a flaw that makes him more human and therefore relatable, and because this episode specifically criticizes sexism. But I'm still not sure whether the show, by extension, criticizes Al for being sexist.

He's particularly bad about it in this episode. We learn that Al sees the host body, rather than Sam's own -- and Samantha is very attractive. This contributes to the blurred boundary between Sam's and Samantha's identities. Al's so busy lusting over Samantha's body that he can't recognize Sam or treat him as a friend, so Sam never really gets a chance to stop being Samantha, to stop "being" a woman, to be himself.

Al's line -- "Very female." -- sticks out to me, 'cause it seems to indicate two different concepts. Al still treats women as The Other, as if vengeance is a uniquely feminine thing; yet Sam has seemingly erased his personal sense of a gender gap. I think he wants revenge 'cause all people, regardless of gender, should resist the kind of victimization that women endure.

In retrospect, the episode never makes that explicit. And the nature of Sam's revenge complicates that idea, 'cause his plan is to seduce Buddy, then reveal that he's a dude. It's a bizarrely cartoonish sequence, culminating in a sucker punch with chirping bird sound effects, and it all seems to hinge on humiliating someone for a same-sex attraction -- and that opens up a whole new can of worms about treating crossdressers or transgendered people as The Other.

Maybe that's an unfair reduction. Maybe it's not Sam humiliating Buddy for being attracted to a man, maybe it's more like Sam destabilizing Buddy's sense of identity. Sam shifts the power dynamic in that office, makes Buddy feel objectified and preyed upon -- and, to achieve that, Sam leads Buddy to question the ideas that his own identity and prejudices were founded upon: namely that, as a man, he is superior to women.

So, I don't know. It's a complex scene, and it's very visually inventive, too! The camera keeps passing a mirror in Buddy's office. In the foreground, we see Bakula as Sam, wearing a dress and using feminine body language to seduce Buddy; while in the reflection, we see the actress playing Samantha wearing the same costume and making the same gestures. From a technical standpoint, it's expertly done.

(For what it's worth, I found an interview with Scott Bakula about how they filmed the reflections in "The Color of Truth." Apparently, they constructed two adjacent sets, and had identical actors wearing mirrored versions of all costumes. Sounds complicated!)

It's peculiar, watching this episode -- particularly the revenge scene -- in 2014, when the "Like A Girl" video just went viral. 'cause, at one point, Sam crows, "Let me show you how I throw a ball!" Oof. While Sam should have just spent the last 45 minutes learning that men and women should be treated with equal respect, he still ends up making a "throw like a girl" joke. And so I have no idea what the show meant, when Al called Sam's revenge plans "very female." In the end, what is Quantum Leap even saying about gender?

I wonder if all this backtracking is a symptom of Quantum Leap being a network TV show in 1989, or if it's an intentional statement by the show's creators. Either way, the show keeps encountering the same limitation -- Sam's only real power is affecting personal, individual change; never universal change. He can't break down the boundaries between genders or races; he can't make everyone treat women equally. But he can make sure that Samantha and Gloria (or whoever, regardless of race or gender) get to lead more satisfying lives.