I
promised myself not to use reviews and commentaries on television shows as
bitch sessions about Star Trek.
Sorry. I am a sucker for an easy
target. The contrast between 7 Days and Star Trek philosophies is an ocean of
difference. The Atlantic.
Here is the premise of UPN's 7 Days: Temponaut travels back 7 days
in a rickety off-again, off-again time machine. Mission? Undo whatever
tragedies befell the planet sometime in the last 7 days. Why 7 days? Because
they have not figured out their sphere of influence, and 7 days is about all
they can handle.
Suffused
throughout this series is humor, and a look at the feelings and frustrations of
a man who is sometimes 7 days ahead of the others. He knows things about them
they don't know. How they will act. What decisions they will make when it comes
down to it. Whether or not the beautiful female scientist will kiss him, or
slap him. Sometimes this information is useful, sometimes not. Often it is
painful. And he quickly learns not to take things for granted.
In my favorite episode to date, Frank goes back
in time over and over and over, trying to undo the problem, and each time
things get worse until he gets the woman he loves killed. Having to relive the
same few hours with a hyper-annoying nerd leaves him feeling loopy, and his
frustration level skyrockets. By the end he is plowing through trouble makers
and rough spots at a well-practiced and bewildering pace. Reminiscent of
Groundhog Day, and certainly influenced by it, but the twists are
original enough.
In a way, the
strength of the suspense in this series is like Hitchcock's approach to
suspense. Always tell the audience more than the stars. (e.g. Rear Window.)
Because we are now with Parker, 7 days ahead of the world, we know what is
about to happen. The game is to stop it. Clever.
But
none of this matters. Not the characters, not the situations, not the
technology. What does matter is that they waste no time in undoing the past,
and in suffering the consequences. They are acting toward the good. And, unlike
the perpetually renewable teflonic Star Trek people, ships and
chiseled-in-stone philosophy, things get screwed up in 7 Days. And they don't
always get fixed.
7D's bedrock philosophy? One of the episodes
framed it this way (roughly). "Suppose we go back in time to prevent the
assassination of a dictator, which saves other lives. But because we saved
them, the dictator then kills a little girl. What if she were the one?
What do we do? Go back in time or not? The answer? Go back in time. We
can do it. Though imperfect, we are justly motivated. For whatever
reason, God allowed us to develop this ability, and we should do our best with
it." Unusual, to hear God mentioned in a sci-fi series. And rather nice,
too.
Make rules, but break them when necessary; when concerned individuals can
exercise judgement.
That
is the law serving man.
Take
that Prime Directive! Take that Picard! I rave a little, because I am still
hacked about the ancient Star Trek Next Gen episode where Picard
prime-directively refuses to help some poor sons-of-bitches on a planet about
to lose its air. "That is their natural evolution - we must not interfere!
It is not our place to interfere." Lah-de-dah! Bullshit. It is
precisely their place.
That
is man serving the law.
In the Star Trek dramaturge, it was left to
subordinates to rescue a few of the planetypes behind Picard's back. The
payoff? When a rescued teenager accidentally left the holodeck simulation and
ventured out into the reality of the ship, he realized that his world view was
all wrong! SO HE DIES! The shock is too much!
And
the crew pontificates about how it is sooooooooooooo wrong to upset such people
(and how superior they are to the savages) and that is why the prime directive
is so sacred. Better the child die of suffocation and being sucked out into
space to have his little lungs explode than think something new? What a load of
crap. HE WAS GOING TO DIE ANYWAY! And people, be they aliens or not, are a
whole lot more adaptive than that! Especially TEENS!!! Exploration is how we
get to be sentient in the first place!
What is really at heart is
Picard's worship of Starfleet Regulations. His world view is the one that
cannot stand inspection, and he is the one who would (and did) sacrifice untold
millions for the sake of his honor and obeisance to authority. (Like when he
had a chance to intellectually nuke the Borgs but couldn't find the moral
authority to "commit genocide". So untold millions more have to die.)
So in the future, when even the Borg have passed away, and the archeologists
uncover the ruins, the great law will be all that is left, stained with our
blood. That and Picard's honor. Like Ozymandius.
The
original Star Trek series broke rules, which made it interesting. Our own
cultural rules, and their own Federation rules. Janeway, on Voyager, breaks
them once in a while, but she is still slavishly devoted to the directives.
Thankfully her crew is more rebellious (read: interesting)
But you can't go around teaching
people to think for themselves! They can't handle the responsibility! And we
need order in this society - especially when we go to a one-world
government (with a European model for socialized citizenship, by the way.) Yep,
us Americans just have a little too much freedom, especially on
the Internet (Ask Hillary about whether we should look hard at all this
Internet stuff or not.) I am sure there is a directive coming from somewhere
about that, too.
More on totalitarianism later.
It
is precisely the breaking of rules that makes 7 Days interesting. And that is
also what makes it valuable to a free mind, irrespective of its many faults. We
need to agree to abide by and respect authority and our system, but we should
never be afraid to question it, Never. And we should never forfeit the right to
hold and speak opinions different from the authority. Especially when nine
Supreme Court Justices are camped out under your bed...
There come times when it is
necessary to break rules. Would you speed on the way to a hospital to save
someone's life? Run traffic lights, drive in the center turn lane? I did, to
take my dad to the emergency room. It felt weird. It did not feel right. And
that is good. But getting him there expeditiously was a whole lot more
important than following the traffic rules.
More on civilized disobedience
later.
Meanwhile, back at the review...Any
faults of 7 Days lie in the mechanics of its time travel process, and exactly
who is where, what and when. It can be confusing even to an experienced sci-fi
watcher. But these are small details, and the characters have been breaking out
of their stereotypecast molds.
For example, Nate, the balls-forward
loudmouthed security chief is grating and at times idiotically opposed to the
main star, to say the least, but they have shown him over the year to be a
stand-up professional who has what it takes. He cannot tolerate Frank Parker,
the temponaut, and continually shows his ass. But, thankfully, as with all the
other characters, he is showing increasing depth, and they all have something
going on behind the scene that makes them valuable to the time travel project,
and interesting to us.
The intrigue of competent people working toward a
goal in different ways with different temperaments is one hell of a lot closer
to reality than you might think, despite the fantasy of the series situations.
It is what makes their people leaders instead of rule spouting babysitters. And
they will make hard choices - despite their feelings for their friends. Enter
tragedy, enter drama.
And the concept of action to
ease the suffering of others is somehow more like the good old-fashioned
American way. And I am not ashamed of that. Which is why I like this little UPN
sci-fi series.
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| An Aside... |
I am angry too at the real-life
nature photographers who documented the deaths of a tribe of chimpanzees in
some God-awful desert.
They could not violate
their professional ethics by interfering with the natural chain of events. I
see. How daring!
I would like to think I
would never knowingly help one of those photographers, but I know
of course I would. I have a soul.
What the hell is
civilization for? Where is compassion and generosity? Who do they think they
are that their "natural philosophy" is so perfect they cannot help a
poor unfortunate chimp? And their self-congratulatory grief was overwhelming -
Ohhh! We felt such compassion for the poor creatures, but it was not our
place to do anything except film them slowly dying..."
It was precisely
their place. Barf.
| A Simple Test |
You're in a desert.
(Doesn't make any difference which one - this is completely hypothetical.)
You're walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down and you
see a tortoise, (a turtle, same thing) crawling along towards you. You reach
down and flip the tortoise over. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly
baking in the hot sun, beating its legs, trying to turn itself over -but it
can't, not without your help. But you're not helping.....
Why is that, Leon? *
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| Holy Voight-Kampf, Batman! I am living in a world of
replicants who don't have the emotional capacity to give a chimp a drink of water.
That is man serving the law.
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