Lone Locust Productions

Day: April 1, 2008

  • Ashes to Ashes – Series review – possible spoilers

    Ashes to Ashes just finished airing and, while not worthy of an episode by episode review, it’s worth a few comments.

    Ashes to Ashes is the sequel to the successful Life on Mars. Life on Mars told of modern Manchester Detective Chief inspector Sam Tyler who, through a car accident, is transported by to 1973 where he has to cope with life as a cop in a world far removed from his.

    During Life on Mars’ two series, the initial ambiguity of how Sam got to 1973 is slowly eroded. By the second series, it’s clear to all that Sam is in a coma, not “back in time” or “mad” as mentioned in the opening credits. I really enjoyed Life on Mars, except for the final episode, which was, to my mind, a betrayal of Sam Tyler’s character.

    Ashes to Ashes picks up in London, where Detective Inspector Alex Drake, the police psychologist who was assigned Sam Tyler’s case, is mysteriously confronted by a man she doesn’t know, but seems to know her, who then puts a bullet in her brain.

    Drawing on her knowledge of Sam Tyler’s coma-fantasy world, Drake creates a fantasy world of her own, 1981 London. In this world, DCI Gene Hunt, figment of Sam Tyler’s imagination, and Chris and Ray, his equally unreal subordinates have moved from Manchester to London to flesh out Drakes fantasy-world.

    Drake, knowing full well this is a construct of her own dying mind, tries to escape by solving the murder of her parents, which, from her current perspective hasn’t happened yet. Her reasoning is if she can work it out, she’ll survive. Pity she studied Tyler’s case so well that she can recreate his fantasy people – and they even look the same (How’d that happen?) – but didn’t remember that Tyler thought the same thing about the mystery of his father’s disappearance. That didn’t get save him either.

    Ratings for Ashes to Ashes were very good, and so Alex Drake is destined to spend another year in 1981.

    It seemed to me that much of the magic of Life on Mars is missing in Ashes to Ashes. For starters, this is more a vehicle for Gene Hunt than Alex Drake – hardly surprising since the show was created to continue Hunt’s adventures as a fantasy construct, Drake being needed as a plot device to get us into Hunt’s world. Witness many scenes in which the fantasy characters are present but Drake isn’t! My memory might be wrong, but I think Sam Tyler was, by necessity, present in every scene in Life on Mars (except any dreams he may have had) since it was a first-person fantasy.

    Second, the mystery is well and truly gone. In Life on Mars, even when it was fully established he was in a coma, they managed to sling a few “how could that be possible in a coma?” moments that might make you think something bigger was afoot. Not so in Ashes to Ashes, where Drake is fully informed on Tyler’s experience.

    Third, 1981 London, while an important time in the revitalization of London, is not nearly so far removed from today as 1973 Manchester was. The culture shock isn’t nearly as profound, which was the core premise of Life on Mars.

    Finally, and I’m sure I’ll get a,”I don’t see you writing any better”, comment along the way, the first series finale triggered my that-doesn’t-add-up warning bells too much to be avoided.

    Absolutely, spoilers if you continue.

    The basic idea is that, this homeless guy captures Drake. He talks to someone on the phone, mentioning that he’s got your past here. He shoots Drake. In the first episode, she tracks down the guy who shot her, back in 1981 he was a crime lord. That doesn’t get her back to 2008, so she fixates on saving her parents. She meets and continues to interact with them, particularly her mother and her godfather, Evan, who we saw in 2008 taking Alex’s daughter away to her birthday party.

    It’s obvious at this point, that Evan must have been the link between past and present, but how? During the course of the series, Alex learns Evan and his mom had an affair. Did she really know this and had suppressed the memory or is it all a fantasy construct?

    Finally, she learns that her father knew of the affair and, rather than let his wife and child go, he decided to commit murder/suicide by having them all blown up in a car. (The bomb provided by the man who shoots Alex in the present, a client of her father’s) As a child, Alex had escaped by accident, and the crime remained completely unsolved.

    Evan asks for the suicide video to be destroyed so Alex will never find out, explaining why the case was never solved. Alex also explains that the bomb-maker will try to blackmail Evan in the future, and that’s why he shoots Alex.

    For a few moments, that sounds like a nice packaging. Then the doubts start to niggle at the back of the mind. Could Alex have known this somehow, like the affair, and suppressed the memory?

    Ignoring the obvious point that her father was nuts, even a nut doesn’t arrange a complex plan with a convicted felon, a borrowed car and exploding your whole family to commit a murder/suicide. They kill the wife and kid, then off themselves. If he really did try to use the bomb, why wasn’t he trying to stop Alex from getting out of the car?

    The bomb-maker knows the father commissioned the bomb. He saw the explosion. He knows Evan didn’t tell Alex. He blackmails Evan. Evan doesn’t pay. So, he commits murder? Blackmailers usually threaten to reveal something embarrassing or criminal, not shoot the person they’d be revealing the secret to.

    If it weren’t for one fact, I’d think they rigged the pieces together at the end. The reason I think it was planned this way: The Death Clown. Sam had the Creepy Little Girl, who was death. Alex has the Death Clown, played for by the same actor who played her father. Again the question: Did she know that her father was the killer all along?

    The morning the final episode aired, the BBC announced that it would be coming back. Did they shoot two endings and only decide at the last minute which one to air? Is that why it was a bit muddled?

    It may not be as good as Life on Mars, but any show where the police brutally beat up suspects to get information can’t be all bad, right? Right?

  • Of Dinosaurs and Birds

    The week before last was Michelle’s spring break, so I took a day off to take her down to the Mesa Southwest Museum (AKA Arizona Museum of Natural History) to see the traveling “Feathered Dinosaurs” exhibit.

    There is a province in Northeastern China called Liaoning, where, 120-odd million years ago a lake and a volcano combined to preserve an abundance of unique and exquisitely preserved fossils. Probably the most important finds coming out of the Liaoning fossil beds are… well, let’s call them “feathered dinosaurs”, since that’s what the exhibit is called.

    Ever since the discovery of Archaeopteryx in the 19th century, it’s been clear that birds evolved from reptiles. Specimens have been few and far between, but in the later part of the 20th century, dromeosaurs were discovered.

    No, that’s not a good place to start, let’s try again. A long time ago there were Archosaurs, the ancient reptiles that came before dinosaurs. Archosaurs led to dinosaurs, marine reptiles, flying reptiles and crocodilians amongst others.

    Dinosaurs broke into two major groups – bird hipped and lizard-hipped. Bird-hipped dinosaurs are somewhat unfortunately named as they have no connection to birds and have no further part in our story, but are represented by familiar dinosaurs such as Iguanodon, stegosaurus and triceratops.

    The lizard-hipped dinosaurs further branched into theropods and sauropods. The sauropods being the gigantic diplodocus and other long-necked forms. The theropods are the great two-legged meat eaters – the Tyrannosaurs and such.

    Then they discovered Dromeosaurs. Which are classified as theropods, although they are generally smaller and have some unique characteristics, such as long arms, and often a wicked retractable killer claw on the hind feet. Think Velociraptor from Jurassic Park, and you’ve conjured up the image of a dromeosaur.

    Perhaps you noticed between Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III, the ‘raptors suddenly gained feathers.

    For most of the 20th century, Archaeopteryx was thought to be a parallel line of development, alongside the dinosaurs – just as marine reptiles and flying reptiles were. The problem was, not enough evidence to say where they branched from.

    When dromeosaurs were discovered in the 1960’s, it became obvious that significant physiological similarities existed between them and birds. The branching point where birds began to separate from reptiles was found. Or was it?

    The case for the dromeosaur/bird relationship has been strengthening steadily over the years, and increasing number of dromeosaurs have now been identified (or extrapolated) as having feathers.

    Now, the researchers who put together the “Feathered Dinosaur” exhibit, based on the amazing finds in Lioaning have arrived at a new conclusion and turned things on their head: Dromeosaurs aren’t theropod dinosaurs on the way to becoming birds at all. They’re not dinosaurs at all. They’re flightless birds, like ostriches. These are creatures whose ancestors developed true feather and wing flight, but who, through some form of evolutionary selection pressure, became land-dwelling creatures, similar in appearance to theropods, but not related any closer than the Archosaurs.

    I’ve read the (rather sparse) material associated with the exhibit and it makes a logical case. No evidence is presented to counter the hypothesis, and I don’t know what the reaction has been in the paleontological community has been.

    What I do know is that, if this were such an obvious slam dunk of an hypothesis, I would imagine I would have to have heard more about it than I have. Has consensus been achieved this quickly? Or is this hotly contested? I can only imagine the latter. That’s the way science works, in fact, that’s probably how science works best. If there’s any lesson to be learned in science for the general public, it is that science is a self-correcting system that arrives at conclusions via evidence, multiple independent verifications and a lot of academic debate.

    So, why am I bothered?

    I’m bothered because the museum was rather full of kids on field trips and they were stocked up on docents, and they were telling everyone about this theory as if it were completely proven. The materials accompanying the exhibits were not much less certain, but the book that can be purchased separately does at least pay some lip service to the notion of academic debate on these findings. I don’t blame the authors, exactly, for they are putting forward their case, and doing a convincing job – at least to this layman, but at the same time, as far as I can tell, dromeosaurs are still considered theropod dinosaurs – for now.

    Anyway, despite that, it is an amazing exhibit! These are some of the most exquisite fossils ever found. The preservation is such that you can see intricate details on the wings of bugs. It’s astounding.

    How sad that these fossil beds are stuck in China. The local farmers can make a comparative fortune finding and smuggling out fossils. The fields aren’t well guarded and, well, let’s be brutally honest: Chinese officials are corrupt to the core. A payoff here and there and who knows how many incredible finds are in the hands of some private collector?

    No pictures are allowed in the exhibit (and armed guards will stop you if you try*) and no pictures are available for purchase, although the companion book, Feathered Dinosaurs by Stephen A Czerkas and Sylvia J. Czerkas has photos of all the exhibits and the text of the placards, along with some additional material.

    I strongly recommend anyone with an interest in paleontology to see this exhibit if you get the chance. For most people, it’s probably a once in a lifetime exhibit.

    *Or is the purpose of the armed guards to stop political activists from unfurling “Free Tibet” banners?