UNDER NO CIRCUMSTNACES SHOULD ANY WRITER SUBMIT A PIECE OF THEIR ORIGINAL FICTION TO STARBURST MAGAZINE.

At the time of this post, Starburst continues to accept submissions for original fiction. For the sake of convenience, I’ve reproduced their guidelines below.

Would you like to see your original fiction featured in the pages of Starburst Magazine or online at www.starburstmagazine.com? Then you’ve come to the right place! We’re currently on the lookout for sci-fi, fantasy and/or horror themed short stories, so if you’d like to submit yours for consideration, email it to:

rylan.cavell@starburstmagazine.com

Stories must be 100% your own material, previously unpublished, between 800 – 1600 words in length (for print) and categorically NOT about the zombie apocalypse. (Seriously, we love a good zombie yarn as much as the next person, but the amount of these things out there right now is frightening. And not in the good way.)

Please note: If published, Starburst will retain copyright, but any further use beyond the above will be subject to renegotiation. Additionally, while every effort is made, the demands of the submissions process deem it difficult to offer critiques on all material sent in.

I see two problems with these guidelines. First, they don’t talk about payment. Even if a magazine doesn’t pay, it should say so in the guidelines. More troublesome though is the final paragraph.

“Starburst will retain copyright?” What? That’s not right. By those terms a person submitting their fiction to Starburst is not offering it for sale but surrendering the ownership of said story.

I reached out to Starburst for clarification, assuming this was all just a mistake on my part or a typo on theirs. Here’s my email.

To the editors,

I am writing regarding your submission guidelines for original fiction.

You do not list any per-word or flat rate for payment. At this time are you offering payment for accepted submissions?

You also state that Starburst will retain copyright upon publication of a story. This suggests that you are buying the story outright and in perpetuity. Is this an accurate interpretation?

Cordially yours,

Adam Shaftoe

Starburst responded with the following:

Good evening,

Thank you for your interest in Starburst Magazine. At the current time we are not offering payment. When and if published Starburst will own the rights to the fiction, but this can be renegotiated in the future if needs be.

I hope this clears up any confusion

Rylan

For the record, reputable magazines do not bring up copyright except to reaffirm that it remains in the hands of the author. A sample contract from Lightspeed Magazine illustrates this previous point.  A magazine buys, or is given, certain publication rights. Starburst’s guidelines are on par, if not worse, than what we’ve seen recently from scummy publishers who try to gimmick neophyte writers into surrendering all rights until the sun explodes. At least in those cases the author is still the legal owner of the work in question.

Though I am not a lawyer, it seems to me that these these guidelines are so poorly written that they may not even be actionable under the laws of gods and men – at least not without a highly unconventional contract to support Starburst’s ownership claim on printed fiction. Regardless, the publishers of Starburst Magazine, either out of slime-bag malice or colossal ignorance, have set up a system which appears to appropriate the work of the artists they purport to showcase. This will not do at all.

I encourage all writers, readers, and interested parties to boycott Starburst Magazine, and share any outrage they may feel with the magazine’s editorial team until such time as Starburst’s submission policies reflect a more responsible and equitable approach to publication.

Contacts at Starburst Magazine

EDITOR

Jordan Royce jordan.royce@starburstmagazine.com

ASSISTANT EDITOR

Kris Heys kris.heys@starburstmagazine.com

PR LIAISON

Phil Perry phil.perry@starburstmagazine.com

Crazy Ones (Comedy)
EP | David E. Kelley (Harry’s Law, Ally McBeal)
DIRECTOR | Jason Winer (Modern Family)
CAST | Robin Williams (Mork & Mindy), James Wolk (Political Animals), Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Ringer), Hamish Linklater (The New Adventures of Old Christine), Amanda Setton (Mindy Project)

Log line: A father/daughter workplace comedy set in the world of advertising.

Prediction: So we’re getting a lighter hearted version of Mad Men, interesting. Buffy fans are going to go ape shit for this series because OMG BUFFY! ZOMFG! Meanwhile, Boomers will hail the return of Robin Williams to television. Williams won’t be quite as manic (or funny) as people would hope for, but he’ll be good enough to get the show picked up for a second season within nine episodes.

The Millers (Comedy)
EP | Greg Garcia (Raising Hope)
DIRECTOR | James Burrows
CAST | Will Arnett (Up All Night), Margo Martindale (The Americans), Beau Bridges (My Name Is Earl), JB Smoove (Curb Your Enthusiasm), Mary Elizabeth Ellis (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Michael Rapaport (The Mob Doctor)

Log line: The multi-cam project revolves around a recently divorced man living with his parents.

Prediction: On paper, this should work. This is a talented cast with no shortage of Emmy pedigree. James Burrows has been directing smart TV comedies for longer than I’ve been alive. The problem, as I see it, is that ABC already beat CBS to the punch on this one with the dreadful Sarah Chalke comedy, How to Live With Your Parents (For the Rest of Your Life). The comparisons will be inevitable, and The Millers won’t do nearly as well as it would have under other circumstances. They’ll make it to the finish line of their first season, but not even a Will Arnett chicken dance will see it to a second season.

Mom (Comedy)
EPs | Chuck Lorre, Eddie Gorodetsky and Gemma Baker (Two and a Half Men)
DIRECTOR | Pam Fryman (How I Met Your Mother)
CAST | Anna Faris (The House Bunny), Allison Janney (The West Wing), Nate Corddry (Harry’s Law), Matt Jones (Breaking Bad), French Stewart (3rd Rock From the Sun), Spencer Daniels (The Office), Sadie Calvano (J. Edgar), Blake Garrett Rosenthal

Log line: A newly sober single mom tries to pull her life together in Napa Valley in the multi-cam sitcom.

Prediction: French Stewart in a Chuck Lorre series? No good can come from this. I foresee maudlin pathos grabs in every episode, ultimately leading to “feel good” comedy. Despite the fact that anybody with half a brain will see through Mom as dim witted schmaltz, it will get picked up for a million seasons and become the new Two and a Half Men.

We Are Men (Comedy)
EP | Rob Greenberg (How I Met Your Mother)
CAST | Jerry O’Connell (The Defenders), Kal Penn (House), Tony Shalhoub (Monk), Chris Smith (Paranormal Activity 3)

Log Line: A ditched groom moves into a short-term housing complex and makes friends with some older, divorced dudes in the single-cam sitcom.

Prediction: Brosplosion! Part of me, the very dark part that feeds on the misery of others, wants to watch Jerry O’Connell-Romijn sad-sack it up. Though there will be lots of potential for smart writing, I foresee a cloud of Kirk Van Houten oafishness and some wholesale misogyny poisoning the show for anybody who isn’t a bro. It will get cancelled before it has a chance to get to the back nine.

Hostages (Drama)
EPs | Jerry Bruckheimer (CSI), Rick Eid (CSI, Dark Blue)
CAST | Dylan McDermott (American Horror Story), Toni Collette (United States of Tara), Tate Donovan (Deception), Sandrine Holt (House of Cards), Rhys Coiro (Entourage), Billy Brown (The Following), James Naughton (Gossip Girl), Mateus Ward, Quinn Shephard

Log Line: Based upon the Israeli format, the project centers on a family caught in the middle of a grand political conspiracy and a righteous FBI agent at the center of said conspiracy whose role will come as a surprise.

Prediction: This sounds like a network equivalent to Homeland. The cast is solid. Moreover, Bruckheimer’s reputation as an EP speaks for itself. Where ABC tried and failed with smart, high-stakes geopolitical drama in Last Resort, I anticipate Hostages will pull back a bit and let the audience latch on to individual character conflicts rather than selling the politics outright. I think this one will finish its first season, and likely get picked up for a second, if only because it will attract a following from fans of CSI and The Practice.

Intelligence (Drama)
EPs | Michael Seitzman, David Semel (No Ordinary Family), Tripp Vinson, Rene Echevarria (Terra Nova)
DIRECTOR | David Semel (No Ordinary Family)
CAST | Josh Holloway (Lost), Marg Helgenberger (CSI), Meghan Ory (Once Upon a Time), Michael Rady (Emily Owens, M.D.), James Martinez (Breaking Bad), John Billingsley (True Blood)

Log line: Centered at US Cyber Command, and focuses on a unit that has been created around one agent with a very special gift, a microchip that has been implanted in his brain that allows him to access the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

Prediction: Much as it pains me to say it, I don’t think the only show that remotely qualifies as SF in CBS’ lineup will make the cut. While I blame Brandon Braga for most of Terra Nova’s failures, Echevarria’s association will be something of a poison pill. Despite featuring that guy from Lost, the pitch sounds a lot like 24 meets The Six Million Dollar Man. Genre fans will give it a go but I doubt a man with (insert ray) vision will attract enough of a broad audience to lock down a second season, at least not when people can watch Person of Interest. CBS will try to ride it out, but I expect a quiet cancellation after the finale.

And there we have it. Now to sit back and bask in my prescience, or suffer the jeers of my readers when I get everything totally wrong. Tell you what, let’s make this interesting. If I don’t bat at least .500 on this one, I shall make some sort of act of contrition, to be named by my readers, on a future podcast. My fate is in your hands.

Much of the story happens on Gamillon, where its citizens are feting Lord Albet Desler on the occasion of the 103^rd year of his reign and the 1000^th anniversary of the Great Gamilas Reich Empire. The VIP after party to the public spectacle facilitates introductions to the Gamilas high command, whose names all range on the Germanic spectrum. Once we move past the toadying and scraping before Desler, the throne room’s assembled guests are treated to the “theatre” of a new weapon being used against the Yamato.

Meanwhile our eponymous battleship has warped into a solar storm, engineered by Desler of course. A lone Gamilas ship, which turns out to be the sole survivor of the Yamato’s assault on the Pluto base, is charged with deploying the “Desler Torpedo,” thus redeeming themselves for defeat at the hands of “the barbarian ship.”

Note here that the Pluto base survivors are white-skinned as opposed to blue-skinned Gamilans. Idle racism from Desler’s inner circle confirms that these Gamilans are non-terrestrial humans who have been assimilated into the Gamilas Empire. Their worlds acceded to Gamilas’ Anschluss unification of the Large and Small Magellinic Cloud, and in return were allowed to serve as second class citizens within the greater Gamilas Empire.

Say what you will about the original series’ attempts to re-write Japanese identity, but at least it was more subtle than this. I would wager real money that Iscandar is now some sort of Space Warsaw Ghetto.

The episode’s big reveal comes in the form of the Desler Torpedo releasing a gaseous biological weapon akin to the blob. For those keeping score at home, Gamilas’ WMD count now includes radioactive meteor bombs and biological gas weapons. Is anybody unclear on how they are supposed to read the Gamilans at this point?

With the solar storm precluding another warp or effective sub-light manoeuvring, Captain Okita’s only option to escape the blob is to sail dangerously close to a star. Doing so facilitates yet another opportunity to foreshadow that Captain Okita’s days are numbered. The Captain’s plan, which apparently none of the Gamilans, save for Desler, could imagine, allows the star’s gravity to trap and consume the gas monster. The Yamato then uses the wave motion gun to blast a gap through an unavoidable solar flare (physics FTW) and thus navigate the ship to safety.

Meanwhile the Gamilas ship that fired the torpedo has advanced on the Yamato in a suicidal attempt to salvage their honour. Unfortunately, the gap in the solar flare closes around the second ship, killing the alien crew in the process.

Could the Yamato have come out of that battle any more righteous? Not only did they let the star destroy the biological weapon, but they passively allowed a force of nature, rather than their shock cannons, to melt the lone Gamilas destroyer. A single blast from the Yamato’s conventional weapons can sink a Gamilas ship. But instead of having the rear firing guns to do just that, the writers kept the Yamato’s figurative hands as pure as an Admiral’s inspection gloves.

For all this constant reinforcing of Gamilas as an evil empire, the only exception being one of the second glass Gamilans reading a letter from his daughter, and Earth as a righteous victim of an imperialist agenda, I really hope that the series is setting me up for a bait-and-switch. Otherwise it is going to be a long season of nothing but binaries of black and white. Where’s the grime and grey area of war? It doesn’t need to turn into a “Space Terrorist” story, per my last afternoon anime post. However, continuing as is seems childish in its simplicity.

Stray Thoughts

-   Lt. Niimi approaches Captain Okita with a request to explore a habitable planet discovered between warps. Okita shuts her down, citing the shelving of the “Izumo Plan.” Interesting to know that the Yamato was designed as an ark, but it’s a stretch to imagine this as becoming relevant to the main plot.

-   Okita shows the bridge personnel a telescope image of Earth when they are 8 light years from Sol. The distance allows the crew to see the Earth as a blue planet for the first time since the war began - physics FTW for real this time.

-   True to the original series, Desler is written as charismatic and somewhat aloof when compared to his zealous staff. He is a paradox as the embodiment of civilized behavior while simultaneously abiding genocide and subjugation. Perhaps the writers can find a way to explain why he is this way, rather than chalking it up to a goofy Hitler allegory.

I view Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and other crowd sourcing platforms as a very high class form of begging, and that’s fine. People who pass the digital plate around are usually saying, “I don’t have the money to do x, but here’s my plan, and this is the endgame. Please invest without actually buying stock.” In theory, crowd sourcing then works as a meritocracy. The essential problem here is that mixing celebrity sponsored projects into the equation has the potential to skew what should be a level playing field.

In this case, it is fair to ask if Zach Braff met his funding goals because people believed in his creative vision, or if adoring fans supported the object of their affection, regardless of the value of his project. The latter becomes problematic and potentially exploitative. I doubt Kickstarter’s founders would claim that the intended purpose of their platform was to facilitate celebrities leveraging their notoriety as a means of funding vanity projects. And in the eyes of this critic, there is a very fine line between passion project and vanity project.

In the wake of criticism from the likes of Ken Lavine, and the internet at large, Braff made the mistake of taking to youtube to defend himself. NB: I say this as somebody who quite enjoyed Garden State and mostly liked his work on Scrubs. So, dear reader, please do not assume I am jumping on board the hate for hate’s sake bandwagon. Where Braff should have applied his celebrity sensibilities and ignored his detractors, he instead he got righteous with the internet.

Braff opens with an attempt to establish a sense of legitimacy as both a citizen of the internet and film maker. Fair enough, I’ll concede Braff’s knowledge of directing outstrips mine. Unfortunately, this opening salvo very quickly turns into a sort of narcissistic doublethink. Braff points out his “huge” social media following, suggesting that “it would only take 20,000 or 30,000 people giving ten bucks a piece” to make his movie. Never mind that he set a fundraising goal of two million for Wish I Was Here; let’s stop and parse his statement. Zach Braff has over a million followers on Twitter. In his hypothetical situation Braff would be mobilizing a mere 2.5% of that fan base. To put this in context, if 2.5% of my twitter followers (at the time of this post) gave me 10 bucks for a production I’d have about $100 – enough for one new podcast quality microphone, but not the mic stand. Perhaps there is something to be said for the online community raising questions about (ab)use of star power in this situation.

Braff further attempts to leverage himself as a member of an online community when he is directly pressed on his celebrity status as a key to kickstarter success. In answering this question he segues into an anecdote involving his publicist reminding him that he was writing a production blog for Garden State before blogging was a mainstream thing. Ah, hipsterism at its finest.

The problem is that Braff doesn’t seem to realize that any points he may have scored for being “one of us” are now tallied against the fact that he’s the kind of person who begins a story with “my publicist just reminded me.” How many other people seeking funding for projects on Kickstarter have publicists? I don’t begrudge Braff his success, and subsequent need for a public relations person. Yet it remains difficult to buy into his dialogue of egalitarian oneness when he’s invoking something that is closely related to celebrity exceptionalism.

In a further discussion on community Braff discusses how he received unsolicited concept art from a German fan. Braff appears genuinely grateful for the support. Yet he never seems to acknowledge that his role in the community is of a first among equals. We might all part of an online space, but not everybody gets people doing things for free on their behalf. By virtue of his mainstream celebrity, he is predisposed to a certain type and quantity of sweat equity that other independent producers can only imagine. Again, this is fine. But when Braff idly suggests that he could call Bill Lawrence if he wanted to really make money, in lieu of working on an independent production, he’s not demonstrating humility; he’s projecting an air of cluelessness about the connections he has within the entertainment industry. Where other producers on Kickstarter will be scrounging talented volunteers, and daring to hope for mainstream recognition, Braff has a rolodex of established industry professionals to call upon. On some level, he must recognize that he’s not just some kid from Jersey with a video camera and a pocket full of dreams. Joss Whedon might have made Doctor Horrible as an indie project, but he was still able to get Fillion and NPH on-board before they’d even seen a script. Braff isn’t Whedon, but he moves in similar circles. Any pretensions otherwise land as, at best, flaky, and at worst, dishonest.

Perhaps the most damning parts of the interview occur when Braff speaks to his critics. He begins with humility but then transitions into condescension: “Those of us involved in social media, or are very web savvy, had to see this was coming.” Really, Zach? What does that mean? Seems to me like you’re suggesting those who disagreed with your vision aren’t as plugged in as you are? He also chalks up the “head scratching and vitrol” directed toward his campaign as a reaction to the unexpected speed with which his movie was funded. It’s all very polite, but there’s a distinct subtext of righteous indignation to Braff’s words. It is as if he’s saying that those who agree with him are clearly hipper than those who dare to question what is happening.

To reiterate, my ultimate point of contention is not with Braff as being “too rich” or too successful to use kickstarter. I don’t have access to his books, so I won’t speculate. I do suspect a great many people find his justification for using kickstarter distasteful. Similarly, his demands for total creative control might echo as hollow and self-aggrandizing. For me, the crux of this issue is Braff’s faux humility and strategic application of doublethink.

Braff talks about nobody making money on indie art house projects. Yet Garden State is an incredibly successful movie in terms of money. It cost, according to Box Office Mojo, $2.5 million to produce and grossed $26.7 million. He talks about Wish I Was Here as a passion project, but then discusses “Presale territories”, and commitments to screen in Rome, Berlin, and Paris. This is not the voice of an “indie” artist who has maxed his credit cards and borrowed from his parents just to submit to a local festival a la Kevin Smith’s Clerks. What it seems like is Zach Braff using Kickstarter to fund Zach Braff Studios, all the while invoking “community” and film school sensibilities as a smoke screen. This is  why people are mad at you, Zach Braff. This is why you need to shut up for a while, then say thank you a few thousand times before making your picture. You said it yourself, Zach, vis-a-vis the disaster of Morgan Freeman’s Reddit AMA, “People can smell bullshit,” and right now your riposte video stinks to the high heavens.

Like most games of this genre StarDrive starts players with a home solar system and a handful of ships. From there, stellar hegemons must research new technologies, expand their empire, negotiate with alien races, and lead an armada across the stars – all in real time. Five seconds in real life equals one turn in the game. To the designers’ credit, I’ve never once felt bored or rushed within this real time system. Granted there are times when I pause the game to take stock of a planet’s economy or an incoming fleet of xeno scum. But no matter if I am managing a single star system or a late game empire, the pace always feels appropriate.

Though much and more of the game can be turned over to AI management, which is generally pretty sharp, micromanagers are going to find themselves utterly enraptured by StarDrive’s economic system. Each planet in the game produces two main resources, food and production. A given world can then be set to export, import, or store each resource. This allows lush Terran planets to develop as breadbaskets or hubs of research, while harsher, but mineral rich, worlds are cultivated into production centers. Facilitating this trade is an intuitive system of player, or AI, designed trade routes. 90% of the time this is a brilliant mechanic to ensure nobody in your empire starves to death. The rest of the time I’ve watched one of my expensive transport ships claiming it is “looking for a trade route” even though I’ve assigned a clear one to it. It’s a minor annoyance which would probably be eradicated if I turned shipping over to the AI, but where’s the fun in that?

Setting up trade routes also allowed me to discover some of the finer points of detail that have gone into the game. One such flourish is planets orbiting their star in real time. I discovered this quite by accident when I noticed a trade fleet sitting idle in a system. I zoomed in only to discover that planets Castor and Pollux had moved out of the trade routes I designated. This may seem like much ado about nothing, but small points like this really help sell the idea that I, personally, am managing a space empire.

Brilliant as it is to command my own version of the Colonial Union, ruthlessly exploiting the Earth as a breeding tank for colonists, manoeuvring from a galactic scope down to a single planet can be a bit clumsy. Eventually I memorized the important keyboard shortcuts, but when ship models on the galactic map are designed (somewhat) in scale to stellar bodies, there can be a lot of zooming in and tracking on the mini-map. It’s very honest to the grand emptiness of space, mind you. But players should be prepared for a bit of extra mouse work.

Perhaps if StarDrive came with an interactive tutorial I might have been able to sidestep some of this early confusion. Then again, I could have paid a bit more attention to the built-in slide show explaining the game’s core game mechanics. Beyond this initial overview, an in-game help system offers a triad of videos and expanded entries on the tutorial’s material. So if you start to feel a bit overwhelmed, the guidance is there. Just don’t expect StarDrive to teach you once the game begins. The onus is on you, the player, to learn what you are doing.

Where StarDrive really shines is in terms of ship building and ship combat. Where Galactic Civilizations had players making lego ships as a lead in to glorified paper-rock-scissors battles, StarDrive creates an experience similar to what I used to get when designing a pen and paper starship for a game of Leviathan. Each ship class has a fixed amount of space for internal and external modules. From there the player uses their tech at hand to design a ship which will suit a particular role. Let me give you an example. When the game begins you can only build fighter-class ships and freighters. Alone in the galaxy I didn’t bother researching corvette-class hulls. This proved a mistake when I ran afoul of some corsairs with ships much bigger than mine. I sent out two squadrons of my finest fighters to meet the brigands. None returned.

At that point I seemed well and truly fucked. Then, inspiration struck. I could take a freighter hull and load it up with guns. Sure it would maneuver like a pig in a bog, but it would protect the Earth. Lo and behold my mighty freighter fleet won the day. Of course they ran out of ammo during the next battle, once again proving that logistics is at the core of StarDrive.

From there I began further experimenting with ship design. Once I unlocked laser tech, I built a line of fast interceptors designed to shoot down missiles while heavier corvettes pounded the enemy with forward guns. Learning from past mistakes, I loaded out a middle weight freighter with a munitions factory so I could rain a constant stream of nukes on a “Kulrathi” planet without sending in the marines. I have dreams of building my own personal Space Battleship Yamato and blasting my foes with mighty broadsides, but I haven’t quite unlocked the titan ship class.

If that were not enough, StarDrive also offers a truly inspired fleet construction window. Rather than having industrial planets spam out ships, a la Master of Orion, players can build fleets of almost limitless scope. This involves designing a proper combat formation: fighter screens, fast attack destroyers, bomber wings, if you can imagine it, you can build it. The fleet manager then asks if you want to requisition the fleet from existing ships or build them from scratch, automatically dividing production between the core worlds of an empire. I may have got a little carried away with this during my first play through. In economic terms, I think the expression is shameless defect spending. Still, it was worth it to watch the fleet assemble in real time before FTLing into battle. Military history nerds, delight; this game is for you. It may not have the flash of Sword of the Stars or Homeworld, but the persistent top down view accentuates the player’s position as commander-in-chief instead of a mere Admiral.

At present StarDrive only offers a single “sandbox” mode. In terms of end-game, this requires either wiping out all other life in the galaxy or bringing the races together into a federation. It does, however, seem a bit odd to build in a menu option with only a single game mode in mind. I’ll assume that Zero Sum Games has plans for more content, or they’ve built in the game modes option as a means of supporting an already very active modding community.

StarDrive does fall short in a few areas, nothing critical mind you but certainly noticeable. Despite a commitment to modding, there’s no way to change the game’s default key bindings. Event notifications are just a little too spare for my taste. I don’t need a ping each time a ship gets built, but a fleet’s construction should merit some alert. Where every other screen in the game has an obvious “click this to exit” button, the fleet construction screen does not. And occasionally ships will rally to a location seemingly of their own volition. Again, these are small issues and nothing which should preclude a person buying the game. I would submit that addressing these points in a patch would make an already excellent game that much better.

In the final assessment, I’m reminded of something Jake Soloman said during one of his XCOM Enemy Unknown interviews. Soloman suggested that strategy games come in two varieties: complex and complicated. Complex games are deeply layered, but still approachable and thus still fun. Complicated games are just that, complicated. StarDrive is firmly rooted in the complex category. It’s not an easy game by any measure. Truth be told, it probably has a steeper learning curve than most games out there. But it stops well short of being burdensome upon a willing player’s patience. The current build has a few cosmetic bugs, but nothing that broke my gameplay experience. Overall, StarDrive reflects the developers’ clear passion for 4X games, as well as a long standing relationship to science fiction as a genre – see some of the alien races for various ‘in’ jokes. This is a must have for both fans of 4X games and those looking to cut their teeth on this style of game.

StarDrive

Developed by Zero Sum Games

Published by Iceberg Interactive

This core concept is well known within science fiction story telling. Lukacevic, who co-wrote the screenplay with Gabi Blauert, builds on the trope by making the very process of aging something that can be outsourced to the poorer quarters of the world. And for that effort, the story works more often than it does not. Yet, I can’t help but notice a few glaring plot holes and a general sense of creative caution in the narrative’s execution – more on that later.

NB: Transfer is a German language film. I watched it with English subtitles. I am well aware that the nuance I found wanting within the story may have been lost in translation.

Even as a low-budget affair, Transfer offers a cinematic approach that should be the envy of most North American filmmakers. Key scenes use long slow pans rather than cuts to emphasize the importance of an event and the players within it. Where many directors cut between over the shoulder shots to facilitate a conversation, Transfer makes extensive use of reflections in surfaces and camera-in-camera shots, the latter accentuating the film’s surveillance motifs, to capture a room full of people while maintaining a medium-to-tight shot. I know I shouldn’t play into the clichés of German filmmakers, but damn if this movie doesn’t excel on a technical level.

Transfer’s principal cast positively exude pathos from start to finish. Hermann (Hans-Michael Rehberg) and Anna (Ingrid Andree) undertake the transfer process because after fifty years of marriage, and Anna’s diagnosis of stage four cancer, neither can imagine living without the other. Apolian (B.J. Britt) volunteers as a host because it is the only way to support his orphaned brothers and sisters in Mali. Sarah (Regine Nehy), a native of Ethiopia, does much the same. One would think that contrasting characters with such diametrically opposed upbringings would lend itself to preaching if not a very heavy-handed application of liberal guilt. Instead, Transfer is content to let both the Western European and African perspectives play out equally. This in turn creates the potential for a courageous piece of storytelling, while simultaneously becoming an Achilles’ heel.

The idea of letting people from the poorest parts of the world sample life in the richest, even if only for four hours a day, opens a lot of doors. Hermann embodies old Europe’s xenophobia. Anna personifies newer ideals of tolerance and integration. Sarah reflects upon the individual as part of a community, further championing the four consciousnesses in two bodies as a family unit. Apolian is the voice of post-decolonization anger, seeing all Europeans as selfish and indulgent. The words “white devil” got thrown around a few times. Do people still say white devil? Or did the person writing the subtitles take liberties?

In addition to those four themes, Transfer further dips its toes into the much deeper waters of corporate control over individual people, the existential nightmare of two consciousnesses sharing one body, and even a little bit of Cartesian mind-body-soul subtext. But at no point does it ever feel like the movie is genuinely committing to one of these potential conflicts. On their own, they all work, though some with more gusto than others. The plot, however, moves from one to the next without finding something to bring them all together.

All the while, the viewer must apply some heavy suspension of disbelief to sustain the core conceit that the technology to facilitate a consciousness transfer is incapable of wholly eradicating a host personality. Why design such a revolutionary plot device only to have it work 5/6^th of the time? Surely the quality control team behind the transfer system would have recognized a host’s inevitable desire to reclaim agency over their body. And since this company proves to be of the scumbag variety, why not just erase the host all together and sell a false bill to the clients?

In the end, Transfer’s take away message is rather rudimentary:  big corporations are evil, and people, no matter how rich or poor they are, will always be subject to the interests of their corporate overlords. It’s an okay place to land, maybe even a good place considering the visual quality of the film, but when Vegas is in sight why go to Reno?

Transfer

Directed by: Damir Lukacevic

Starring: B.J. Britt, Regine Nehy, Ingrid Andree, and Hans-Michael Rehberg

Ron Moore called the episode “an abomination.” Moore goes on to say,

“We didn’t have anything interesting to say about terrorism except that it’s bad and Beverly gets kidnapped – ho hum. They take her down to the caves and we get to have nice, big preachy speeches about terrorism and freedom, fighting and security forces versus society. It’s a very unsatisfying episode and the staff wasn’t really happy with it.”

Michael Piller, credited as The High Ground’s co-executive producer, questioned the overall statement the story made about terrorism.

“Was it the point where the boy puts down the gun and says, ‘Maybe the end of terrorism is when the first child puts down his gun?’ It was effective in the context of that show, but is certainly not a statement that provides any great revelation.”

Given that the IRA crisis was far from resolved when the episode went to air in 1990, it is understandable why The High Ground was seen as a milquetoast affair in the face of a real social issue. The closest the episode comes to making an actual statement on terrorism is during a conversation between Data and Picard. Data cites Mexican independence from Spain as a precedent in support of violent insurgency as a last resort when attempting to bring about political change. Picard’s reaction to Data’s android innocence is to fall back on the series’ stock answer: “Well that’s just human nature and these are big questions for which there is no easy answer.” No wonder the writers were unhappy with the episode. At least when TNG married the prime directive with the war on drugs it came with the benefit of Lt. Yar admitting to the allure of chemical intoxication; albeit Wesley’s subsequent “I’ll never do drugs” comment was positively stomach churning.

Nearly a quarter of a century after The High Ground went to air, it’s interesting to note how closely the episode’s themes mirror our own contemporary dialogues on terror. Twenty-three years might have given us real world analogues to Star Trek’s PADDs, tricorders, phasers, and even a theoretical model for a warp drive, but clearly our sociology has lagged behind the science.

In the episode’s first act, Alexana Devos (Kerrie Keane), the head of Rutia’s security condemns the Ansata terrorist organization as a group of animals. She further paints the Ansata as “…fanatics who kill without remorse or conscience.” Please to note the othering of terrorists as sub-humans.

Devos’ attempts to ferret out the Ansata portray Rutia as a near police-state. Suspects with even the slightest ties to the Ansata are rounded up in mass arrests and questioned without formal charge or the benefit of legal counsel. Rutian methods extend so far as to arrest children and teenagers as potential Ansata sympathizers. Though nobody comes out and says it, the episode clearly implies that Rutia is a place where the average citizen is either with the government or the Ansata.

Meanwhile the Ansata view themselves as freedom fighters struggling against an oppressive regime. Kyril Finn (Richard Cox), leader of the Ansata, rationalizes himself to Dr. Crusher as a 24^th century George Washington. When Crusher reminds Finn that Washington was a general and not a terrorist, Finn retorts that the difference between terrorists and generals is the difference between history’s winners and losers. This leads to an interesting point wherein Finn asks Doctor Crusher how much violence is buried in the Federation’s past? In terms of canon, quite a lot: The Eugenics Wars, World War 3, the Earth-Romulus war, and a century of cold war with the Klingon Empire. Finn throws the idealized world of the Federation in Doctor Crusher’s face to demonstrate the selective memory governments often utilize in the prosecution of terror while simultaneously ignoring their own “legitimate” uses of force.

When Finn takes Captain Picard hostage after a failed attempt to destroy the Enterprise, Doctor Crusher questions the difference between a mad man and a committed man willing to die for his principles. Picard, however, is utterly dismissive of the Doctor’s question. Having witnessed the Ansata murdering members of his crew, he is not inclined to entertain the broader issues of the Ansata conflict. Picard further marginalizes the Ansata position in his suggestion that Doctor Crusher’s entirely conceptual recognition of the Ansata cause is the product of Stockholm Syndrome.

Later in the episode a joint Starfleet-Rutian strike force assaults the Ansata compound. Picard and Crusher are liberated but Finn is assassinated in the process. Picard’s reaction to the kill is somewhere between indifference and tacit approval. Then, as if to wash the Federation’s hands of the entire situation, the Enterprise leaves Rutian security to deal with the aftermath of Finn’s martyrdom. At no point does anybody in a Starfleet uniform acknowledge the fact that the Federation has played an active part in making an unstable situation worse.

Given the way the word has changed over the last twelve years, it’s hard not to look at Rutia and see a blueprint for our world. Combatants turn each other into monsters to legitimize their respective actions. Disagreement is confused with dissent. Empathy is mistaken for sympathy. The High Ground may not have told the story that Melinda Snodgrass intended in 1990, a story which would have seen the Federation on the wrong side of history, but it does offer a clearly unexpected window into our own world.

At the core of his argument, Mr. Bricken suggests that making Kal-El a Kryptonian in exile, sent to Earth without the benefit of Krypton being destroyed, removes the source of his pathos. To his point, I would argue that Superman has never been a pathos driven character. Granted, Superman manages to find a bit of time to lament a planet that he never knew. Yet when we set aside the maudlin storytelling, we have to ask ourselves what is in the crux of Superman’s story that would bring out genuine sympathy from the audience?

Young Kal-El was raised in a near Rockwellian environment within the heartland of America. His parents were the salt of the Earth at the height of America’s influence in the world. He didn’t have to stumble through the emergence of his powers, a la X-Men as a narrative on puberty. He was simply raised to believe that he was special by the most tolerant people in America. When the specialness wore off in the face of adulthood, Kal-El had what amounts to an AI construct of Jor-El to teach him about his Kryptonian heritage.

Even though Jonathan Kent died of a heart attack, his passing is hardly an Uncle Ben moment. There’s no lesson in vanity and selfishness to be found in Pa Kent’s death. Neither does the death push Kal-El across a line wherein he adopts Bruce Wayne’s need to reshape the world according to his own image. Poor Kal-El had to grow up with every physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological advantage a person could hope for. Boo-freakin’-hoo.

But, Adam, Superman is the quintessential story of the American immigrant experience.

Really? Remind me what Superman had to do to assimilate into American culture? Did he have to learn English after a lifetime of speaking Kryptonian? Is there anything external to his image that identifies him as an other? That is to say, could he walk down the street without getting racial epithets tossed at him for having the wrong colour skin? Only when Kal-El assumes the mantle of superhero – an active choice on his part despite Jor-El’s instructions not to interfere with matters on Earth – does Superman other himself. What are the consequences of this othering? Instead of facing justifiable suspicion and fear at the hands of humanity, Superman is hailed as a champion. Then, just to drive home his sameness, Kal-El announces that he shares the same values inherent to his adopted country. Where is the pathos in this character? Who looks at Superman and goes, “Damn, he has it hard?” The only inherit adversity in Superman’s life rests within the realm of sophomoric jokes about Kryptonian ejaculations and the consequences of taco night.

If you want to talk about superheroes as an allegory for the immigrant experience, then the discussion begins and ends with the Manhunter from Mars, or possibly Wonder Woman. But I’ll save those for another time.

Since Man of Steel was announced I’ve also witnessed complaints about the Donner-era Superman movies and a resurgence of hate for Superman Returns. Perhaps the problem isn’t with those movies, but the nature of the character himself. How much deep story telling can an audience expect from a character who is always righteous and utterly unstoppable? When the only thing that can threaten superman is Kryptonite, how do you not use it in a movie?

Bearing this in mind, if Snyder and Warner Brothers are choosing to leave Krypton intact for this reboot, I don’t see it as an instant deal breaker. Instead, we could view it as an attempt to create a viable moral conflict for Superman. Man of Steal might be breaking Superman’s canon, but if we’re expecting more out of Superman than patriotic propaganda and/or pulpy pabulum then these are changes that need to happen. Otherwise Superman is never going to get a movie to rival Iron Man or Nolan’s Batman trilogy.

I don’t want to pre-empt myself too much; however I will say here that this is a top-down stealth/heist game from indie publisher Pocket Watch Games.

And do feel free to leave me some comments on what I could have done to improve on this review. I already have some thoughts in mind on what I might do differently for my next video review.

Part of the reason why I think this episode felt so haphazard has to do with the multiple conflicts in play, none of which managed to stand out as the thing which binds the rest together. The episode just moves from one thing to the next, seemingly absent a meaningful endgame.

Journey could have very easily been a “Humans are their own worst enemies” episode. The Venture Van Halen Van Baalen Brothers posses the greed, avarice, and short-sightedness which Doctor Who so often uses to juxtapose the inherent weakness of humanity against the seeming infallibility of the Doctor. The fact that the VB Bros. end up in the TARDIS opens the door to another potential conflict: The Doctor is destructively obsessive.

Consider for a moment that the toxic fumes and insta-death fuel leak within the TARDIS get cleaned up in a matter of seconds. The Doctor didn’t really need the Van Baalen brothers to find Clara. Yet, Eleven threatens to blow them up if they don’t help him. Why does he do this? Does he want to protect Clara, or is he just interested in solving the puzzle of her true nature? Interesting as this question is, it becomes a moot point with the reset button business. The dickish Doctor who all but killed killed two of the Van Baalen brothers becomes a hiccup of timey-wimey story telling.

What about the TARDIS then? We’re meant to believe that the TARDIS doesn’t “like” Clara, albeit through some very clumsy exposition.

When the TARDIS failed to let Clara in during the Rings of Akhaten, I didn’t see malevolence; I saw the Doctor not giving Clara a TARDIS key. But suppose we work with the malevolent TARDIS theory for now, except then we’d have to ignore the fact that the artificial labyrinth the TARDIS created within the episode was meant to protect Clara. Even the Doctor says that the out of sync console room is the safest place on the ship, and that’s exactly where the TARDIS led a woman she purportedly dislikes. So much for that conflict. Meanwhile, the TARDIS is snarling at the Van Baalen brothers, crying out to the fake-android-cyborg brother, and Matt Smith is walking around with his, “Oh shit” face on the whole time. So perhaps the conflict is going to be about the TARDIS turned Mr. House on the invading salvage team? Well only for about five minutes because then the XCOM Alien Abduction sound effect (if you’re going to borrow sound effects, don’t borrow from 2012′s Game of the Year) is going to play in place of the standard cloister bell to signal that the TARDIS is going to die.

Great! The now there is a conflict we can all get behind. The last vestige of Gallifrey, a machine that was old when the Doctor stole it 900 years ago, is coming apart at the seams. For an instant I dared to hope that the death of the TARDIS might extend to the 50^th anniversary story. If we take Gaiman’s The Doctor’s Wife as canon, then the TARDIS is more than just a time machine; it is the infinite union of time and space. Something going wrong there could certainly hand wave Tennant and Smith together. Moreover, the audience has a huge emotional attachment to the TARDIS and its death could raise the stakes without putting a gun to the head of the universe. But instead of killing the TARDIS, Stephen Thompson – who is also credited with writing the atrocious Curse of the Black Spot – kills the TARDIS to let Smith and Coleman walk through the time frozen shrapnel of its exploded core.

Is it a cool visual effect? Absolutely? But is it great story telling? Not if the only way out is to call a mulligan on everything that happened in the story and cancel out any potential growth in the main characters or meta-story.

While I’ll offer no quarter to this story as a narrative nightmare, it does shine as an interesting archeological dig into Doctor Who’s internal mythos. The episode very much delivers on its promise to be a journey to the centre of the TARDIS. Along the way we see the much talked about swimming pool and a library which oozes, literally, Time Lord history. There are vanishing walls and West Wing style camera shots of people walking around infinite hallways.

The problem with archeology is that it can often be difficult to craft a narrative around a collection of artefacts. Doing so requires external sources, background research, and inferences which allow for some benefit of doubt. It is on that last point, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS falls to pieces. I’m not inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to an episode which invokes a reset button to solve the story’s problems. Either by accident or design, such a resolution is lazy. Fun as the tidbits of Doctor who history are, up to and including the ghost voice of Chris Eccleston, they don’t end up contributing to the story as anything other than fan service. As a critic I don’t see why I should forge what remains into something cohesive; such is the task of the writer, not the audience.

Bottom line: It’s a pretty episode, it’s a fun episode, it’s even a nice nod to the series’ long running history, but at best it’s a narrative hot mess and at worst it’s self-congratulatory navel gazing.