V, Lost and the uninquisitive protagonist

Now that Lost (a show whose name describes my interest in it) is finally, mercifully over and I’ve completely ceased caring about V, I think I’ll write a little on why these two shows, which each started out promising in my eyes and soon curdled like a can of Dharma UHT milk left open in the sun.

Firstly, each show started as a seeming episodic science fiction tale, then turned into something else. Lost was about mysterious forces that crash planes, power sonic barriers and teleport polar bears, but are kept in check by poorly-understood technology. Then at some point the constant mysteries it set up, often never to explain (a staple of the show) changed tenor and became supernatural. It became a show about magic smoke monsters and parallel universe purgatories, and even came to sport a genuine I-see-dead-people character.

I guess you could argue that many of these supernatural aspects were there from the beginning, but in the first seasons I never felt like they were the focus. The Hatch, for instance! The one with Desmond and the code and the network of other hatches. Dharma, with its super-secret science stuff. That’s interesting to me. Spirits and psychic forces, not so much. It’s true that BSG had its share of those too, and I would have preferred if it took a more hard sci-fi route. But BSG was still able to enthrall me with is considerably better execution and avoidance of the main problem I’m about to detail.

V, while obviously purporting to be an alien invasion story, is incredibly light on the science and turns out to be far more interested in positioning itself as some kind of horror/drama/action. The aliens are even less alien than those of Star Trek (at least Klingons have a different forehead). They look, talk and behave exactly like a band of humans of varying moral fiber. Well, maybe except for the fact that the evil dictator is such a caricature she could be at home in any Disney movie (except when the budget calls for a little CGI, in which case we get to see her reptile teeth for a few unconvincing instants). But, as with humans, most Vs are complacent followers, though there are a handful of freedom fighter rebels who try to stand for what’s right.

Yet those same rebel fighters, who actually are aliens and could therefore explain so much about the tendencies, weaknesses, for crying out loud even the origins of their race, never do so. Which leads me into the main point of this post: both of these shows disappointed me because no one ever asks the questions I ask. The protagonists, when the time comes to demand information, inevitably back away as if they don’t want answers to the profound mysteries plaguing their life.

Jack and Kate have Ben against a wall at gunpoint! You think they’ll demand the complete story of everything he knows about the island? Think again. Sure, they might mouth the words, but when he gives them some cryptic bullshit answer about how they’re meant to be here on the island, or tells them they’ll find out soon enough, they always accept it and walk away.

Or in the world of V, with enormous alien motherships parked above major cities, surely many experts would be hard at work trying to discover where these visitors came from, how they power their spacecraft and how fast it travels, how their physiology works, what they eat and how they digest it, what their language sounds like, what kind planet they evolved on, etc. Why don’t we ever get to see any of this? Why isn’t one single protagonist at all critical, or inquisitive? Instead we get a completely credulous FBI full of agents who cheerfully investigate whatever ridiculous evidence the Vs care to cook up without the slightest hint of doubt. The show isn’t about science, it’s a drama about some sky people making slow war on some ground people, and the ground people’s rebellion. It could just as well take place in the Wild West between cowboys and Indians.

Nobody on these shows really asks any questions. To me this seems like a cheap rhetorical device that allows the writers not to have to think up hard answers, and since I’m constantly asking questions and urging the characters to ask them too, after a while I just can’t take it. And that’s why I stopped watching Lost and V.

Mistborn

I listened to the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson on audiobook, then gave Kimberly the books for her birthday. She finished the first in two days, and I’m sure she’ll soon be busily working on the others.

What a great set of books. They take place in a ruined, ash-filled world unlike any I’ve ever before encountered in a fantasy novel, and involve an inventive magic system that centers around metal, the most prominent use of which is the swallowing and “burning” of metal to obtain abilities. Allomancy, as it’s called, is like a bizarre hybrid of chemistry and magic. The set of metals is well-defined with specific properties for each metal, and the repertoire of known metals increases as the characters discover additional powers.

The characters were compelling, the plot engaging and the writing--while nothing extraordinary--never got in the way. The protagonist is a street urchin who finds out she is Mistborn, one of an elite group who can use all the metals to become unstoppable killing machines. I found her character progression from skittish teenager to woman of power mostly believable. There were a couple of times when her knack for surviving seemed to stretch credulity a bit much, even for a Mistborn, but that’s a minor quibble.

Along the way, the author seemed to take great delight in intricately mapped-out fight sequences involving Mistborn swooping through the air with daggers, which was okay with me for just about as long as it usually went on.

Mostly, I appreciated that Sanderson seemed to have an intricate, interweaving story mapped out before he started, and he stuck to it. The end rewarded the reader with a lot of long-awaited answers to some very fundamental questions about the world and its people. This is something I appreciate very much in a long story.

While I’m still trying to pronounce judgment on whether I actually liked the overall ending, it was one I respected and accepted. I probably liked the third book marginally less than the other two (partly because it dealt with religion I thought I smelled a bit of the author’s bias), but it was still a great read.