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Lurking Musings

~ Musings of a newly published writer

Lurking Musings

Tag Archives: Game of Thrones

#GoT : Plausible logistics in fantasy.

28 Monday Aug 2017

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

#amwriting, #GoT, Chekov's dragon, dragons, Game of Thrones, Ravens, Three Eyed Raven, world building, World design


Game of ThronesIf you are a fan of Game of Thrones I guess it cannot escaped your notice that there were a few, shall we say, logistical issues with ‘Beyond the Wall’ (episode 6 of the latest series). Issues that included not only faster than light Dragons and Ravens but also people that can move at that speed.

In a recent interview, the Director of that episode, Alan Taylor, defended these issues.

‘I’ve only looked at one review online, and it was very much concerned with the speed of the ravens. I thought, that’s funny — you don’t seem troubled by the lizard as big as a 747, but you’re really concerned about the speed of a raven. It is true there are time issues, and I’m not exactly sure how many kilometers there are between Eastwatch and Dragonstone. But it was a bit dreary to hear somebody who said, “I cannot enjoy this episode because, you know, that speed of that raven … ” There’s was a lot of wonderful stuff going on here and if it really gets that much in your way, that’s not good to hear. But that said, Gendry’s a really great runner. [Laughs.] Ravens go super fast. And who’s to say how much time passes on that island, since it’s always sort of an eternal twilight north of the Wall? With those three ideas in mind, I think we can lay the timing concerns to rest.’

Now, this is an interesting defence and one which is not new. ‘But there are dragons’ or something similar is a statement that has been made about fantasy settings in tabletop RPGs, books, TV shows, films and LRP for decades. And on the surface it is a reasonable argument. Why are you concerned about the petty logistical issues when there are such fantastical elements blatantly on display? Surely everything can be explained by magic?

With this argument we do, however, get into one of the fundamental pillars of world building. Regardless of your fantasy elements, there need to be consistent and visible rules to govern how they function. In a post in this blog a while back I discussed some of the reasons for this and argued that not only does the human mind react badly to blatant rules breaking in settings, but also that the rules set limits on what is possible and therefore increase the tension and thus drive the story. For this to work, you have to accept that magic  cannot (and should not) be capable of solving all problems, at least not without a cost and that other fantastical elements such as mythical creatures need to have well defined specifications.

There is also the issue of pacing and direction here. Most storytelling forms can and often do play fast and loose with time. I mean we really don’t want to spend hours of screen time watching some people trudge through snow when nothing of interest is happening and a good director can play with these rather fluid perceptions of time to good effect. How long were they waiting there surrounded by an army of undead? It is heavily implied by the direction that it is a day but the above quote seems to suggest longer was intended. It feels here that the intention to fool the audience with time has backfired somewhat – certainly based on the many responses which assume the less than 24 hours theory.

Looking at the above response we have three things that are problematic. The first is Gendry being able to run, in bitter cold and hostile terrain, an unknown number of miles back to Eastwatch after an indeterminate number of days marching through the same terrain. OK, yes, he may be a fast runner and he may have inherited something of a heroic constitution from his father. However, he is not a native of that part of the world. He was born and lived most of his life in a climate that was more like southern France than the bitter cold of the north. He is strong because of his genes and his work as a blacksmith (which is what makes his strongarm antics with the hammer plausible) but he has never been shown to be a particularly good runner. We can add some points for him being driven by urgency but you still have to question how long it takes to do that journey. Maybe it would have been more plausible if it had been Tormond – a native of the terrain they were traversing – or even Jon who has Stark genes and therefore resistant to the cold? Of the three points, this one is the one that could maybe be excused on the points made, although it is stretching credulity. If they were close enough to the wall that he could get there that quickly, why not have a signal prepared for Eastwatch to look out for – a beacon or similar? Something to let them know they needed help. After all, they already had two flaming swords so fire was not an issue.

The three eyed RavenThe second issue is the speed of the ravens. Again, arguments that Westeros Ravens are fast do cover some of this. It has been established that there is a complicated and efficient mail service that uses them and so it is reasonable to assume that breeding methods, training and possibly some magic may well go into this. However, it is still stretching it to assume that even a fast bird could cover that distance in less than 24 hours. Previously the raven mail has been seen as providing delivery within a couple of days (within similar limits to a modern postal service) rather than a few hours.

The final issue is, of course, the dragons. Again, these can be fast but there to be some consideration of the people on the back of the dragon. An exposed dragon rider going at anything more than the speed of a car is going to be exposed to a lot of elements. Think about the issues of driving a motorbike or one of the old fashioned biplanes. You need goggles and protective clothing to prevent wind chill and damage to the eyes from insects and dust even at relatively low speeds. The fastest WWI biplane (arguably the fastest plane an exposed pilot could be on before you get into vehicles that require a completely  enclosed cockpit and pressurisation) is listed (ironically enough) as the Sopwith Dragon with a top speed of just under 150mph. Beyond that speed you can imagine it would be difficult even with protection for a human to be safe and comfortable and here we have a rider with no such protection. OK, again you can argue the Targaryen genes here – her family has been riding dragons for centuries so there has to be some adaptation happening there – but still to push the speed much beyond that 150mph is not really practical. Point being, unless dragons can teleport, it is stretching it to be able to say they can cross a continent so quickly.Dragons in Game of Thrones

The goal has to be the suspension of disbelief. The writer, having set the rules of the world in place, needs to then make sure that these are maintained and, if it is necessary to break them at all, it is done in a way that seems plausible. I think the main issue here is the fact that there were many ways the same effects could have been achieved without breaking that suspension. I have already mentioned the possibility of a signal to Eastwatch – a very quick communication tool which, if the guards had been on alert, would have got the message there much quicker than a running person. The rest can have been achieved with some advance planning using existing features of the world that have already been well established. For example, Bran as the Three Eyed Raven has the ability to communicate across vast distances and could have got that message to Dragonstone almost instantly. A raven to Winterfell from Eastwatch in a short space of time is a lot more believable than one all the way to Dragonstone. But there is an even more realistic way to achieve it. What if the dragons had already been en route in preparation for this very thing? What if they were already at Eastwatch waiting for word? Easy enough to establish with some scenes of them arriving, much to the consternation of the Wildlings in the fortress, or even a scene where it is Daenerys who comes out of the fortress to find Gendry collapsed with exhaustion at the gate.

You could even have it so that Bran at some point delivers a prophesy to Daenerys – telling her she needs to be there at a certain point but there will be a dire cost (which any who watched the episode already know). She angsts about it for a bit, not sure what to do, which is more important – her war with the Lannisters or the war against the undead? But then, finally, gives the order to mount up and arrives just as she is needed, maybe dramatically almost but not quite too late to save the day entirely.

There are probably other ways to achieve the same thing, all of which end with the same awesome scene of dragons flaming through undead hordes. I’d argue that a surprise appearance of dragons that was signposted in advance (Chekov’s dragon) is far more satisfying a conclusion than ‘suddenly dragons’ in a way which leaves confusing questions about plausibility. It was not that the scene was overly fantastic or that questioning the plausibility was pointless in the face of fantasy elements. Rather, it was that three rather ludicrous situations had to occur at the same time in order for the plot to work and even in a world where dragons are a thing people will still subconsciously  take those dragons more seriously if they can see a logical set of rules that govern them. Once you start to mess with perceived plausibility you lose suspension of disbelief and once you lose that you lose the audience’s trust.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Death and the Maiden

22 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Doctor, Doctor Who, episode, Game of Thrones, GRR Ma, Michelle Gomez, Missy, regeneration cycle, regenerations, South Park, Time Lords, Tom Baker


So, yesterday there was an announcement that Michelle Gomez would be reprising her role as Missy (AKA The gender switched Master) in the upcoming series of Doctor Who.

The announcement is here for those who wish to read it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/doctorwho/entries/6a78885d-e0b1-49a0-b7e8-cecba867a99f

Now, do not get me wrong I am in a way pleased by this announcement as I did enjoy seeing the Master reimagined as a woman and I think it is good to get the character back. However, I  have one very  huge misgiving about it… the character has really been killed far too many times now.

The Master was originally on his last (13th) regeneration in the Tom Baker episode The Deadly Assassin, the story which in fact established the canon that there are only 12 regenerations a Time Lord can have before they are finally and completely dead. Later stories in the Tom Baker/Peter Davison crossover point (Logopolis and Keeper of Traken) established a plausible means for keeping him alive a little longer using the possession of another character who looked remarkably like his original goatee bearded form (to the extent it probably is not a spoiler to tell you which character would get possessed…) as a reasonable excuse. This, however, did not give him any more regenerations – once that body (which was not a Time Lord body) died that was it so his quest from that point was to gain more regenerations. This was a fact the Time Lords themselves used as a bribe to get him to perform a task for them in the Five Doctors – the promise of a whole new regeneration cycle*. His appearances since then (some Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy episodes, the Paul McGann movie) were all aimed at that goal – for example trying to steal the Doctor’s remaining regenerations.**

Then at some point he finally did get given the new regeneration cycle because of his promises to help during the Time War and that leads us to Uptopia and the wonderful portrayal by Derek Jocobi who I would have liked to have seen more of before his regeneration to John Simms but the fact he did regenerate shows he had been paid in full by the Time Lords before legging it all the way to the end of the universe and activating his Chameleon arch.

So far so good. John Simm was a good Master and managed to give across the right level of insane evil coupled with that empathic bond with Tennant’s Doctor which rightly portrayed the Xavier/Magneto relationship inherent in their associations – two people who were as close as brothers driven apart by wildly different ideologies.

Then Simm’s Master died. Not in a ‘it’s ok, I will regenerate’ way and merely be played by yet another actor but in a ‘no, there is no way I will regenerate’ way.

Then he came back… in a way that was a little unrealistic and far fetched even for Who.

Then he died again… this time also in a way that seemed to preclude regeneration.

And then with very little explanation as to how it happened, ‘he’ came back as ‘she’. Perfectly fine if it had been a regeneration – oh how much we have wanted to see a regeneration from male to female – but again that was apparently not an option. He was dead and gone, no coming back. Yet suddenly she is back… did they give a reasonable reason why? Not that I noticed…

Finally, at the end of the last series, she is also killed and again regeneration seems unlikely… yet here she is, back and ready for more.

Now, to be fair, that last death may be more than it appears. I am willing to accept that since that episode’s final moments were all about lies (the Doctor’s lies to Clara about Gallifrey, her lies to him about being happy) its possible that her death was an elaborate illusion and she was merely teleported somewhere else with the appearance of being totally vaporised. It’s a trick used before in Who (the Big Brother episode in the Ecclestone series, for example) so I am willing to accept it is possible. However, it does not detract from the fundamental issue. Death should not be cheap.

Some characters are famous only for being killed…

Killing a character should have an emotional impact. Equally so should bringing them back from death. Having grown to love or hate them over the course of your reading or viewing of them, to have that character suddenly be taken from you should be a vicious and painful experience. As a reader or viewer you should feel that pain. However, the more you kill them and the more you bring them back the more you stretch the suspension of belief and the more you dilute the emotional impact. Recurring villains are great, a much loved staple of fantasy and SF and even less fantasy based stories such as the Three Musketeers, and used right they can be wonderful creations. However you can push it too far and using the ‘they’re finally dead for good and this time we mean it. Oh no, we totally didn’t mean it’ card too many times (or more than once, really) is not good storytelling. If you have a popular character who you think may be worth a reappearance it is better planning to not kill them off. Have them escape from being captured (the Master has done this a few times too) or simply slip out the back door while the heroes are battling the convenient distraction they arranged for them. This applies doubly to Time Lord enemies. After all, you already have a convenient and perfectly plausible method for them to come back from the dead (regeneration). Why have to go to all the effort of making up some new ways to bring them back after managing to eliminate that as an option? Fans would rather the enemy were still alive – so they and the heroes know they are still a threat – or able to come back in a way which does not seem too ridiculous and fits in with previous observed metaphysics of the way the universe works.

OK, yeah, in some universes (Marvel and DC I’m looking at you) the afterlife has a revolving door and characters pop in for a brief break between adventures only to pop back when sales of the comic drop. And let us not forget poor old Kenny in South Park. However, in most fictional universes, it is better to stick to a more realistic means of death in order to keep the audience with you. Less South Park, more Game of Thrones, make every death meaningful not a cheap joke or marketing ploy.

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D.A Lascelles is the author of Lurking Miscellany, Transitions (Mundania Press) and Gods of the Sea (Pulp Empires). He lives in Manchester UK. You can sometimes see him writing about Zombie porn on https://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com/ but he mostly blogs about books, vampires, science fiction and Terry Pratchett. He is inordinately proud of the fact that one of his Pratchett articles was referenced on the French version of the author’s Wikipedia page.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DaLascelles

Twitter: @areteus

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*Which incidentally also set up the canon that they can do that leaving the way clear for Moffat to have it happen to Matt Smith’s Doctor.

** May have been interesting at some point in all this to have seen a episode where he was trying to keep the Doctor alive out of enlightened self interest. After all, the more the Doctor dies and regenerates the less there is to steal…

[Spoilers] Twisting the cliche

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Battlestar Galactica, clichéd, clichés, Cliche, Dwarves, elves, Fantasy, Game of Thrones, George Lucas, GRR Martin, Inigo Montoya, Lannister, Red Wedding, Robb Stark, Science Fiction, SF, Spoilers, Stark, Trial by combat, writing


I am guessing that most people out there have watched the recent episode (series 4, episode 8) of Game of Thrones by now? If not, you may want to look away and come back when you have as there may be spoilers ahead… I am delaying posting this blog a few days to help prevent this but I am worried there may still be those out there who haven’t seen it even then.

You see, I want to talk about clichés here. In particular, I want to talk about how they might be of benefit to a writer. They are often seen in a bad light – ‘don’t write that, it’s too clichéd’ is a common refrain. However, attempts to make things more original often fail to get anywhere. So, being clichéd is bad because it is too derivative of previous works whereas being original can also be bad because the readers do not connect with the material, finding it too strange or unfamiliar. There is also, of course, the very relevant truth that there are no new stories, only old ones retold. When you do find something you think is original, quite often it turns out to be derived from another source you maybe only barely remember* or coincidentally happens to follow the lines of a much older story.

So what is a writer in search of originality to do? How can you maintain the very fine balance between cliché and the familiar? The answer seems to be to twist the cliché in order to subvert the audiences’ expectations.

Now Game of Thrones as a series and as a set of novels is actually not all that original in terms of the fantasy concepts it throws up. It includes a lot of old standbys – dragons, quests, knights, barbarians, battles, pantheons of gods, young children going off on quests (actually it has several of these…), the list goes on. However, fantasy was for many years a very staid and static genre where everyone was trying hard to be Tolkien (so many elves living in forests, so many dwarves living in mines) so in many ways even small changes from these clichés is a bonus and GRR Martin’s does manage to do this very well, mostly by making the characters very realistic and three dimensional. He also manages to avoid Elves and his only dwarf is a human who just happens to have been born short rather than a member of an ancient, gold obsessed race. But he does more than this, he often twists expectations so that what you think is going to happen doesn’t. There are a few examples of this I could mention, one of which is this week’s big shock end (which I admit was not a shock to anyone who read the books).

Let’s take Robb Stark to begin with. In the second series his story looked like it was well mapped out in cliché land. He was the eldest son of a man executed for treason, raising an army to defeat those who had killed his father and fighting against a mad king to boot. In your old fashioned fantasy epic the conflict therefore becomes Stark vs Lannister and in that tale the only ending cliché would accept is Robb winning and becoming king. Subconsciously we all know this. Robb has to win, it is imprinted in everyone’s understanding of story. The hero prince sets out on a quest to avenge his father’s death… come on, we have seen this story a million times.

And yet that is not how things work out… instead Robb makes a political error, a very human one, and as a result is murdered during the infamous Red Wedding, leaving no one in a position to lead his rebellion which crumbles.

Another example is the trial by combat in this week’s episode. To be honest, I was a little sceptical of Tyrion managing to get away with the same trick twice.** Remember, he used trial by combat to get out of a previous murder rap and honestly no writer would allow a character to get away with something that audacious again. So I was sort of expecting there to be an ending that did not include Tyrion’s champion walking away unscathed. However, that combat threw another revenge based cliché at us – the brother of a murdered woman seeking vengeance on the man who killed her. Again the story imprinted in our bones screams at us ‘of course he is going to win!’ and I don’t know about you but I was certainly seeing good old Mandy Pantinkin in his most famous role as Inigo Montoya in that scene and we all know how that works out rather well. And for a moment it looks as if he will win. He actually does win, in fact. His enemy is down and helpless. Then there is a sudden change in fortune… Again, he makes a critical error, an error based on his human nature. Had he merely killed his enemy he would have won. Instead he had to gloat and therefore lost spectacularly.

Both examples given show how characters are being set up by the author (and in some cases the script writers of the series in some of the material that is newly added) to apparently be following a clichéd path. They even get some way down that path, enough for our minds as readers or viewers to spot the pattern (however consciously or subconsciously) and expect a particular outcome. Then something happens, often a very human mistake, which completely throws that pattern out of the window and the nature of the plot changes – we are horrified by this because the person set up as the hero cannot lose and yet they do. This, I feel, is the main reason these scenes cause such outcry. It is not just because of the gore, it is because of the cognitive dissonance of our well trodden clichés being suddenly wrenched from under us. This is also why it is seen as innovative, despite being riddled with tropes. The places where the expected outcomes are subverted are ones that stick in the mind and suddenly the writer is a genius for doing it. Even an occasional scene like this can be enough to plaster over the many occasions where the writer does follow the standard tales. These scenes also increase the tension because, dammit, even characters you previously believed safe because of some perceived ‘hero’ status can die. Its been happening in SF TV for a while now. A famous example is Mal’s innovative method of resolving the infamous Mexican standoff (clue: Mal definitely shot first, no Han Solo/Greebo confusion here) and recent series like Battlestar Galactica have been constantly violating our expectations with respect to the relative safety of those afforded supposed hero status.

All of this makes me somewhat concerned over the safety of other characters in Game of Thrones. After all, several of them are clearly on clichéd fantasy hero paths. For example, Arya and Bran Stark are each following slightly different classic versions of the typical child hero in a fantasy novel. They each quest to understand themselves and their abilities in order so that they may return some day to wreak revenge on those who murdered their families. A cliché that was old when George Lucas used it. The cliché says that they should succeed. This means that something nasty and fatal awaits them in their future.

Unless, of course, it is by now considered cliché to subvert the cliché which means that, now, it is perfectly fine to let things follow their normal course and let the children achieve their destiny. Sometimes fashions in writing can change so quickly and soon we may well be expecting the opposite to what the story should be… Thinking of such things can easily send someone insane.

For now, the best advice seems to be to be aware of tropes and clichés and try to figure out ways to use the expectations of readers to your advantage.

*This happened to me at least once that I am aware of. When I was writing the background and concepts behind one of the race of aliens in Waypoint I knew I was stealing from Celtic, Native American and Norse myth and was good with that. However, when I wrote about their attitude to technology I unconsciously inserted several ideas from an obscure Doctor Who short story (the People of the Trees), mainly the idea of them worshipping technology as religious icons capable of ‘magic’. I only became aware of this when I re-read that story several years later and the penny dropped. I did change it enough that no one can see where I filed away the serial numbers (and besides it is a common enough concept with primitive cultures in SF that I could just have easily stolen it from Return of the Jedi) but it was fascinating to see how my mind was working there.

** Plus my wife who has read the books as far as the current series knew it wouldn’t work either, despite her rants about all the changes they have made in this series so far, and although she tried hard not to reveal anything I can read her responses well enough to spot certain facial expressions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The GQ of Love Actually

22 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Batman Begins, cast, cast members, Curse of the Fatal Death, Doctor Who, Downton, Game of Thrones, Gormenghast, GQ, Harry Potter, IMDB, Liam Neeson, Love Actually, Margery Mason, Resident Evil, The Princess Bride, The Walking Dead


It is Christmas (well it will be in a couple of days) and I have just been released from work so that warrants a special post. I had actually been wracking my brains to think of something Christmas themed to post about and then it struck me that I had not done a Geek Quotient post for ages and there is a Christmas themed film that is bursting with potential for the GQ treatment – Love Actually.

You see, like Downton Abbey it is full of the sort of British actors who end up in sci fi and fantasy films or series on a regular basis and, in fact, given some of the names here it would not surprise me if it scored even higher than Downton’s rather good score of 0.633.

So, as usual, we look at the list of names on the cast list on IMDB, take a note of the number of them who have been in something sci fi or fantasy related and divide that into the total number of cast members.

So, when this is done we get a value of 0.496, which is a lot lower than both Downton’s value and the 0.584 achieved by the new version of Hawaii Five-O.

So, in a film which boasts Underworld and Shaun of the Dead’s Bill Nighy, The Hobbit’s Martin Freeman, Keira Knightly (Pirates of the Caribbean), Chiwetel Ejiofor (Serenity, 2012, Children of Men, Salt) and Liam Neeson (who has been in Star Wars, Batman and the Narnia films among others) along with a host of others who have been extras in Doctor Who* and other geek treats how come the value is so low?

The truth is that it is the sheer size of the cast list on IMDB that scuppers Love Actually. There are 115 cast members listed and many of them are only actors in this one film. So while there are actually very many contributing to the GQ here (57 in total) it is still just less than half the total cast. This is one of the flaws of the method of the GQ – you have to stick to the cast as listed on IMDB.

Despite that disappointing score, you still have to admit that Love Actually includes some major geek talent covering a broad range of films and TV shows. As well as the ones mentioned above we also have some very obvious Harry Potter links (Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson, who was also in Men in Black III among other things), quite a few who were in Ashes to Ashes (Rory MacGregor, for example), Game of Thrones (particularly the actor playing Liam Neeson’s son, Thomas Brodie-Sangster who was also in Doctor Who), the Walking Dead (Andrew Lincoln) and the Resident Evil series of films (Sienna Guillory). And even some of the actors you might not consider to have had a geek credit have some. Gregor Fisher (Gormenghast), Hugh Grant (was the Doctor in Curse of the Fatal Death along with Rowan Atkinson but also starred in a horror called Lair of the White Worm) and even Colin Firth scores with his role in Nanny McPhee.

Of all the cast list, the one that surprised me the most was Margery Mason. That she was the tea lady on the Hogwart’s Express is not the surprise. That came when I found out that she was also the aged old crone who boos Princess Buttercup in The Princess Bride in 1987, a very memorable character for her very brief screen time. Incidentally, unless the IMDB entry for her is woefully out of date, Margery earned a telegram from the Queen in September this year for reaching the ripe old age of 100 so well done to her for that!

Margery Mason, playing wonderfully batty old crones for over 30 years

So, there you have it. The GQ of Love Actually. A film which had great promise for a high score but didn’t make it due to the huge cast list. So, I am still waiting for something to beat Downton Abbey’s score… Any suggestions for a non geek film or series that might beat that score are welcomed.

*Including Caroline John, who played Liz Shaw in classic Who and who was there for the merest seconds in the funeral scenes as the mother of Liam Neeson’s character’s recently deceased girlfriend.

[Guest Post] Why Spy by Aaron Smith

22 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Guest posts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Aaron Smith, Edward Snowdon, Espionage, Game of Thrones, Ian Fleming, James Bond, John Lecarre, JRR Tolkien, Liam Neeson, Nobody Dies For Free, Spy, Spy Genre, Star Trek, The Walking Dead, Tom Clancy, True Blood


The last time I did a guest post here at Lurking Musings, the subject was horror and some of the ways in which I find it to be a rewarding genre to write within. I’m still writing horror stories, with a few new ones coming out this year, but I’ve never been one to stick to the same thing all the time, so today I’m here to talk about a different genre and how I became interested in it and how all the pieces recently came together for me to participate in it.DSC00358

There are certain things that I suppose it was inevitable that I would eventually do once I took my first steps on the road of being a writer. Looking back on my life and the interests I’ve always had, the sort of books and movies I’ve enjoyed, I had to eventually write something in the espionage genre. On one hand, I’m surprised it took this long, but on the other, I’m glad it did. I didn’t rush into it. I waited (though not consciously) until the pieces came together and the time was right, and I’m quite happy with the result.

Looking back on my life, I can pinpoint the exact event that made me a lifelong fan of the spy genre. It was a flood.

The year was 1984, I was seven years old, and we lived in Paterson, New Jersey, just across the park from the banks of the Passaic River. It was April and it rained constantly. That grimy old river could only take so much and it overflowed, vomiting dirty water up into the park, drenching the baseball field, submerging Totowa Road, intruding on our street, and filling our basement to within an inch of coming onto the main floor. In fact, it was so bad that the mayor of the city had to come in a rowboat and coax the old lady next door out of her house! We had to get out of there.

So we packed our suitcases and escaped. It was me, my parents, my four-year-old sister and my toddler brother. We ended up spending a week at my grandparents’ house. Grandma and Grandpa had something we didn’t. At the time, they were still pretty new and quite expensive: the amazing technological wonder known as the VCR!

My father, happy to be in the presence of one of the marvels of the modern age, wasted no time running out to the local lawnmower shop/ video rental place (I’m not making that up. Somebody actually ran that very odd combination of businesses, as there weren’t too many places yet that concentrated solely on renting out movies) to get his hands on something he’d been wanting to see but had missed when it ran in theatres a year earlier.

So, despite the protests of my violence-hating mother, that night I encountered a character who would become one of my favorite fictional heroes: Bond. James Bond. The film was Never Say Never Again, the “unofficial” Bond movie, which was a remake of Thunderball and not part of the Eon Productions series, but it featured Sean Connery, making his return to the role after more than a decade away, so it certainly counts as a real Bond movie in my book.

That was it. I was a lifelong Bond fan, not just of the movies but of the original Ian Fleming novels and some, though not all, of the continuations written by later novelists.

Bond was my gateway drug into the world of spy fiction and I discovered many other such characters over the years, in books, in movies, and on television. There were the books of Tom Clancy and John LeCarre, the Jason Bourne movies, and Taken, starring Liam Neeson.

Eventually, I started writing seriously and began to have work published. I wrote in genres including mystery, horror, fantasy, science fiction, and even did some war and western stories. Occasionally, one of my stories would include elements of the spy genre, but it took a long time before I finally set my sights on penning a true espionage novel.

It was a convergence of three events that I think—now that I look back on it—finally got me to try writing in the spy genre. I found a big bargain and managed to acquire the first twenty James Bond movies on DVD for under a hundred dollars, so I was able, for the first time in my life, to watch them all in order and relive many of my favorite 007 moments. I discovered a wonderful British series called Spooks, which ran for 86 thrilling episodes and turned out to be one of the most addicting and also heartbreaking TV series I’ve ever watched. And I said—and I have no idea where this particular combination of words came from—“Nobody dies for free,” which I immediately knew was going to eventually be the title of a spy novel. So the ball started rolling and it didn’t stop until I’d written the book.

But, strangely, for all the years that I loved the spy genre and all through the time it took me to write Nobody Dies For Free and then go through the process of editing it and eventually seeing it published, it never occurred to me to really sit back and ponder the question of just why stories of secret agents and clandestine missions have been so popular for so long. In writing this blog entry, that’s the very question I’ve decided to attack, and I’ve come up with four answers that I suspect are quite valid. I know they apply to me and I’d be curious to hear what others have to say about it once they’ve read this little essay.

Secrets and Scandals

When it comes to most aspects of life, but especially when the government is involved, many of us understand the need for some degree of secrecy. Certain things must remain classified, for the more we in the public sector know, the more those who are currently considered our enemies also know. But despite this, many of us wish we could personally know everything. The recent Edward Snowden business is evidence of this. We want to know exactly what our government (and all the other governments in the world) are doing, especially the dirtier business. Realistically, we can’t have access to this information. But in the world of the spy novel or movie, we can. For the time it takes to watch a film or read a book, we are insiders, seeing the world in all its intricate ugliness and backstabbing brutality as we share an adventure with the protagonist. Human beings are curious creatures who can’t resist an opportunity to inspect the president’s dirty laundry or sneak a peek at the sins of the king. Spy fiction satisfies our need to be part of the shadow realm.      

Patriotism

The world is a mess. It always has been and it probably always will. Most people seem to have mixed feelings about the countries in which they live. I’m glad to have been born American, I respect what the ideals behind the nation’s founding stand for, but that doesn’t mean I have to like everything my government does. For example, I’m currently quite irritated by the fact that the president’s new health care system is going to cost me several thousand dollars in wages this year. If I polled a thousand other Americans, I’m sure I’d get hundreds of different complaints about the way the country is run and how it interacts with both its allies and its enemies. And I’m sure my friends in Europe and Japan and Canada and various other places have conflicted feelings about their own countries. But I think most of us want our nations to be the best they can be. Spy stories, with their heroic government operatives, give us this courageous, honorable (and sometimes ruthless in that honor) side of the nation’s activities. Regardless of party affiliations or political opinions, we can all root for a James Bond or a Jack Ryan to do the right thing and act in the best interests of his fellow citizens, rising above the political mess to save the nation and maybe even the world.

A Socially Acceptable Mythology

Fans of certain genres of fiction are lucky to now live in a time when Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and True Blood are among the most popular series on television, when superhero movies are hugely successful, and when some of the world’s most popular authors are writing about vampires and teenaged wizards. But this wasn’t always the case. It wasn’t so long ago that people of certain ages might be laughed at if they publicly admitted enjoying Star Trek or comic books or the works of JRR Tolkein. So I’ve come to suspect that one of the reasons for the success of the spy genre for most of the twentieth century may have had something to do with the way it contains the very same elements as classic adventure fiction and mythology but puts it in a setting that seems to be a bit more adult-oriented, thus making it all right for a grown man in the 1950s and 60s (including President Kennedy) to be seen reading Casino Royale or From Russia With Love. As for those elements I just mentioned, let’s look at some of the basic ingredients of some of the most popular science-fiction and fantasy stories and compare them to what you might find in a secret agent movie.

Someone is chosen to go off on a quest to stop a great evil from causing harm to the world. They’re sent by an older, wiser person, usually an intermediary between them and a king or other such ruler. They are given some sort of special weapon which will aid them in their mission. They travel through many exotic locations, encountering strange beings, until they finally come face to face with the great evil and its frightening minions.

So was I just talking about Frodo Baggins being guided by Gandalf to put an end to Sauron’s plans, with a ring in his possession as he travels from the Shire to Rivendell and eventually to Mordor, meeting Aragorn and others along the way? Or did I mean James Bond being handed a mission by M, given a gadget-enhanced car by Q, and sent across the globe from London to Istanbul to the Caribbean to the Swiss Alps to face various henchmen with the help of a few beautiful women and Felix Leiter, until he finally confronts Blofeld in a final showdown? Or I could have meant the plot of Star Wars, or an episode of Spooks. The façade shifts, but the classic storytelling elements remain the same.

The Hero in his Prime

If you really want to narrow the types of heroes in fiction down to the least number of possible types, I’d say there are three. On one hand, you have the young hero being thrust toward destiny and fumbling his way along the path while struggling to make sense of the new point of view that’s been forced upon him. Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins, Harry Potter, Neo from The Matrix.

On the other hand, you have the old wizard/ guide, an older character, maybe worn out from decades of trying to keep evil in check, but possessing great experience and wisdom. Obi-wan Kenobi, Merlin, Gandalf, Van Helsing.

And then, smack in the middle of the two extremes, you have a balance between age and youth, action and experience. These are characters old enough to know how to handle a dangerous situation, but still young enough to do the fighting themselves rather than sending in a young apprentice. Captain James T. Kirk, Han Solo, Indiana Jones, and Batman, to name a few examples. This might be the sort of hero who readers and viewers most often dream of being. In the spy genre, particularly the more action-oriented espionage stories, this is the category into which many of the primary protagonists fall: James Bond, Jason Bourne, the Saint, the Mission Impossible characters, and the various lead field agents throughout the 10 year run of Spooks.

So there we have four big ideas about what might be responsible for the ongoing popularity of the spy fiction genre. As I said earlier, I hadn’t really thought about those things until I started to write this essay, but I now realize that I included all those elements in my own spy novel, the recently released Nobody Dies For Free. I hope readers of my book will enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed some of the other spy stories I’ve mentioned here today.  

Nobody Dies FCHere’s a look at the cover of Nobody Dies For Free, along with the back cover blurb.

After years of loyally serving his country in the CIA, Richard Monroe wants nothing more than early retirement and a peaceful life in Paris with the only woman he’s ever truly loved. But when an assassin’s bullet takes his happiness away, Monroe embarks on a quest to find the man responsible for the tragedy. Monroe is soon recruited back into the clandestine services, but with a difference. Now he’s a lone agent reporting to a supervisor so mysterious that the official agencies don’t even know he exists. In his new position, Monroe will deal with situations too delicate and too dangerous for the CIA or FBI to handle. On his first assignment, he discovers a connection between the mission and the criminal mastermind behind his wife’s killing. Business becomes personal again and Richard Monroe sets out to teach his enemies a brutal lesson: NOBODY DIES FOR FREE!

Nobody Dies For Free is available in print or for Kindle or Nook.

At Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Nobody-Dies-Free-Aaron-Smith/dp/1490367586/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374860949&sr=1-7

Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nobody-Dies-Free-Aaron-Smith/dp/1490367586/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374861049&sr=8-1&keywords=nobody+dies+for+free

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/nobody-dies-for-free-aaron-smith/1115568615?ean=9781490367583

For further information on Nobody Dies For Free and all my other books, visit my Amazon author page at http://www.amazon.com/Aaron-Smith/e/B0037IL0IS/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1374366653&sr=1-2-ent

Or visit my blog at http://godsandgalaxies.blogspot.com/

 

The GQ of Downton Abbey

28 Friday Sep 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Film, Musings, TV

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Clash of the Titans, Doctor Who, Downton Abbey, Father Octavian, Game of Thrones, Geek Quotient, Hugh Bonneville, Iain Glen, Jessica Brown Findlay, Maggie Smith, Misfits, Penelope Wilton, Red Dwarf, Robert Bathurst, Ser Jorah Mormont, Shaun of the Dead


This is something I think may well become a regular feature of this blog, mainly because it seems to be something I do naturally whenever I watch something on TV. The basics are simple – take a non geek TV show or film and analyse the proportion of the cast who happen to have been involved in something else with geek credentials.

I have decided to name this concept the Geek Quotient. In fact, in the tradition of Mathematicians the world over, I would propose that it be dubbed the Lascelles Geek Quotient because my ego needs feeding. You can shorten it to LGQ if you like, or even GQ but with that option you risk both being confused with a popular fashion magazine and being glowered at by my ego.

The equation is rather simple:

Divide the number of actors in the cast who have been in geeky related shows by the total number of cast members.

So, why have I chosen Downton Abbey for the debut of this exciting new concept in geek mathematics? Well, I am of the opinion that this show will likely score high based on a rather cursory glance at the cast list.

For those who don’t know, Downton Abbey is an ITV period drama set in Yorkshire in a period (currently) between the sinking of the Titanic and the advent of the 1920s. It follows the inhabitants of the eponynmous stately home, both the noble family that owns it and their many servants, as they live through such horrific historical events as the first world war and the appearance of the telephone. As is normal for such period dramas, the cast is replete with quality British actors of the type who also often get roles in sci fi and fantasy both in the UK and Hollywood. Some are even rather better known for their geek roles than their involvement in this show…

Maggie Smith as Thetis in Clash of the Titans

Now, my calculation of Downton’s GQ is 0.633 based on examining the 49 cast members listed on ImdB and determining that 31 of them have a link to some geek TV show or film. This is assuming that ‘Geek TV show or film’ is defined as something with overt supernatural or science fiction elements. Pirates of the Carribean counts, for example, whereas Hornblower (which many of the cast do have roles in too) does not. This is not a surprising result given that the cast includes Maggie Smith (with credits as far back as the original Clash of Titans films and, of course, her recent geek cred from the Harry Potter films), Iain Glen (who is notable as Ser Jorah Mormont in Game of Thrones as well as Father Octavian in Doctor Who) and Penelope Wilton (excellent as Prime Minister Harriet Jones  in Doctor Who, not to mention Shaun’s mum in Shaun of the Dead) but also has

The beard makes him completely unrecognisable…

a number of people who have done one off guest appearances on various shows. For example, Jessica Brown Findlay, who plays the youngest daughter, was in one episode of Misfits and Hugh Bonneville, who plays Earl Grantham, was almost unrecognisable behind a massive beard as a pirate in a recent episode of Doctor Who. Out of all of these, many of which I spotted without recourse to the internet, one truly took me by surprise. For much of the series, I looked at the actor who played Sir Anthony Strallen (Robert Bathurst) and tried to work out where I had seen him before. Turns out he actually played the role of Todhunter in Red Dwarf as well as Prince Henry in the original series of Blackadder…

Todhunter

Sir Anthony Strallen

So, there you have it. Do you think I have the calculation of this correct? Do you know of any other films or TV shows which might beat this score? Feel free to comment below…

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