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Debarkle Revisited: Hypothetical – Sad without Rabid
Apr. 22nd, 2025 08:23 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
camestrosfelapton_feedIn mid April 2015, the Sad Puppies were facing significant vocal pushback after sweeping the Hugo Award nominations. Notable blog post from people such as Naomi Kritzer and El Sandifer, highlighted the role of Vox Day and his Rabid Puppy campaign in engineering the shocking result. However, Day took a back seat and most of the news coverage and PR for the Puppies fell onto Brad Torgersen and Larry Correia. This undoubtedly led to layers of confusion and at times will full misunderstandings.
But what if there hadn’t been a Rabid Puppies campaign? Vox Day had been deeply embroiled in the controversies within the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and several years earlier he had an active interest in the Nebula Awards. However, he hadn’t shown much interest in the WSFS or the Hugo Awards. In 2014, Larry Correia had included Day as part of the Sad Puppies 2 slate, causing more controversy and hence more attention. Day claims that accusations that Day had gamed the 2014 Hugo nomination process as a major contributing factor to setting up Rabid Puppies.
So let us imagine that Corriea had NOT included Day in the 2014 Sad Puppies 2 slate. Day was busy with the more high profile culture war outbreak of GamerGate in 2014 and 2015, so it is not implausible that he would not have actively engaged with the Hugo Awards in 2015. For arguments sake, let us assume he didn’t or had a bad cold in early 2015 and stayed in bed. How would 2015 have turned out without the Rabid Puppies?
We don’t have a simple way of disentangling Rabid Puppy votes from Sad Puppy votes. There are definitely relevant figures in the Debarkle who sit comfortably in both camps, John C. Wright and Tom Kratman in particular. The two slates had a lot of overlap but also some relevant differences.
In Best Novel the slates differed by two novels neither of which made the final ballot. For the Sads this was Trial by Fire by Charles E. Gannon, a Baen author who often made the Nebula Award short list. For the Rabids the choice was The Chaplain’s War by Brad Torgersen. I assume this was a favour by Vox Day so that Brad would not been seen nominating himself in the slate he was running. Both the Sad & Rabid slate included he Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson, which was a dreadfully boring book and which came fifth overall in the nominations with 263 votes. Trial by Fire didn’t make the cute with 199 votes and The Chaplain’s War fell even further short with 196 votes. So at most about 64 votes in play as the difference between the two slates.
For the sake of simplicity, I’ll knock 50 votes off all Puppy nominees as a rough way of imagining a Rabid-free set of nominees.
| Votes | Title | New Rank |
| 337 | Skin Game Jim Butcher | 1 |
| 322 | Monster Hunter Nemesis Larry Correia | 2 |
| 279 | Ancillary Sword Ann Leckie | 3 |
| 256 | The Goblin Emperor Katherine Addison | 4 |
| 220 | Lines of Departure Marko Kloos | 5 |
| 213 | The Dark Between the Stars Kevin J. Anderson | 6 |
| 210 | The Three Body Problem Liu Cixin | 7 |
| 168 | Lock In John Scalz | 8 |
| 160 | City of Stairs Robert Jackson Bennet | 9 |
| 149 | Trial By Fire Charles E. Gannon | 10 |
| 146 | The Chaplain’s War Brad Torgersen | 11 |
| 141 | The Martian Andy Wei | 12 |
The main difference is that The Goblin Emperor is a finalist on the first cut. It did end up being a finalist anyway but only because Larry Correia and Marko Kloos withdrew. This is where the hypothetical becomes more complex. Without the Rabid Puppies other categories would have had more non-slate finalists and without the Rabid Puppies there would have been less attention paid to the far right politics of the Puppies. Given that would Correia or Kloos have withdrawn?
I suspect Correia already planned to withdraw. He was on the slate to bring his voters along and the man knew he was going to be No Awarded on a matter of principle. To a large extent Jim Butcher was included in the Sad slate as a kind of Correia stand in: somebody with a large following but without Correia’s baggage. Kloos would have felt less pressure to withdraw if Day’s toxicity was absent. If both withdrew, then the Best Novel ballot ends up being the same. If only one of them withdrew in this Rabid free scenarion then the eventual winning novel The Three Body Problem wouldn’t have been on the ballot.
With Best Novella the situation is simpler. The Sad slate had only three nominees and even if we assume a lower vote for them I think it is likely that all three would have made it. That does mean the non-slate works The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss and The Regular by Ken Liu would have been on the ballot. This has two effects in our hypothetical: the category would not have gone to No Award but also the overall heat caused by the Sad Puppies would have been less because it would have been one less category that only had Puppy nominees.
Best Novelette only had four Sad nominess but the fifth Rabid nominee “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” by John C. Wright was deemed ineligible. All the Sad nominees had large votes and even assuming a big reduction without Rabid votes, they would have made it. That means the Novelette ballot would have been likely the same with Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” coming in as the non-slate finalist.
Short Story was a bit of a mess. The Sad slate had five nominees as did the Rabid slate but the Rabid slate had two different works from the Sad slate. This was further complicated by one of the Sad finalist being ineligible (“Tuesdays with Molakesh the Destroyer”) and Annie Bellet disavowing the Sad Puppies and withdrawing. In the real 2015, the split slate meant that even with the loss of two finalists, the category was still a Puppy-sweep. The Rabid-only Turncoat by Steve Rzasa and The Parliament of Beasts and Birds by John C. Wright [click that link for a treat] got sizeable votes (162 and 151) which suggest better overall slate discipline by the Rabids. Without Rabid votes it is possible that none of the Sad finalists would have made it except for Annie Bellet, who may have had enough organic votes to have made it. I suspect Bellet would have withdrawn anyway but it is plausible that she would have been in a category with no other Puppy finalists in which case (and without the liability of Vox Day), maybe she wouldn’t have. Either way, assuming the Sad Puppy vote held up, Jackalope Wives by Ursula Vernon would have been a finalist and would have won in the final vote.
I’m not going to go through the rest of the categories one by one. What I wanted to demonstrate is that without the Rabid Puppies, of the main story categories it is likely only Best Novelette would have come close to a Puppy sweep. I assume we would have seen similar impacts down the ballot. Some categories might still have had Puppy sweeps (Best Related Work maybe) but without the Rabid Puppy votes the chance of non-slated works getting on the final ballot would have increased.
The net effect would have been an overall reduction in the rhetorical temperature. Without Vox Day’s involvement, the public political positions of the Puppies would have looked less extreme and their contention that their campaign was about fairness, variety and aesthetics would have been more persuasive to more middle-of-the-road Hugo voters. I think those of us on the left would have found it harder to encourage others to participate. Having said that, I assume Correia’s argumentative online presence and Torgersen’s capacity to shoot himself rhetorically in his rhetorical foot would still have riled up a lot of opposition.
With, fewer categories swept by the Puppies (possibly none), the impetus for voting reform would have been less. Possibly the measures enacted in the 2015 business meeting wouldn’t have happened, we can’t know for sure.
However, while it wasn’t obvious at the time, in 2015 GamerGate was actually running out of steam. While it had a bigger public profile than the Puppies, the disconnect between the supposed aims (“ethics in games journalism”) and the actual praxis (online harassment and whining) was unsustainable. The alt-right was nonetheless gaining traction culturally and figures like Vox Day and Milo Yiannopoulos were looking for a new cause.
In this hypothetical, I suspect the 2015 Hugo Awards sans the Rabids, would have been fractious but less heated than what we actually saw. However, it would have been a less decisive defeat for the Sad Puppies and possibly the rule changes would not have passed. With 2016 being a banner year for the Alt-Right and with the added political heat of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, I suspect my hypothetical simply delays the arrival of the Rabids by one year and 2016 would have been the big battle for the Hugo Awards.
Postcards from America (4.22.25)
Apr. 22nd, 2025 06:30 pmslacktivist_feed"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid."
Holes: TV Adaption Casts Greg Kinnear, Shay Rudolph, Aidy Bryant, & Others
Apr. 22nd, 2025 07:17 pmtordotcom_feedHoles: TV Adaption Casts Greg Kinnear, Shay Rudolph, Aidy Bryant, & Others
The pilot has Agatha All Along’s Jac Schaeffer as a director.
Published on April 22, 2025
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Vanessa Armstrong</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/holes-tv-adaption-casts-greg-kinnear-shay-rudolph-aidy-bryant-others/">https://reactormag.com/holes-tv-adaption-casts-greg-kinnear-shay-rudolph-aidy-bryant-others/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=812021">https://reactormag.com/?p=812021</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal">
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1"><i>Holes</i>: TV Adaption Casts Greg Kinnear, Shay Rudolph, Aidy Bryant, & Others</h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">The pilot has Agatha All Along’s Jac Schaeffer as a director.</div>
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Published on April 22, 2025
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<img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="740" height="370" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/holes-covers-740x370.jpg" class="w-full object-cover" alt="Three covers of Holes by Louis Sachar" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/holes-covers-740x370.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/holes-covers-1100x549.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/holes-covers-768x384.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/holes-covers-1536x767.jpg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/holes-covers-2048x1023.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure>
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<p>Disney Branded Television’s <a href="https://reactormag.com/holes-agatha-all-along-showrunner-jac-schaeffer-to-direct-pilot-of-gender-swapped-adaptation/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">adaptation of Louis Sachar’s 1998 book, <em>Holes</em></a>, is moving forward with an officially announced cast.</p>
<p>According to <em><a href="https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/holes-tv-series-pilot-cast-greg-kinnear-shay-rudolph-disney-1236374989/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Variety</a>, </em>Greg Kinnear (<em>As Good as It Gets</em>, <em>Talk Soup</em>) and Shay Rudolph (<em>The Baby-Sitters Club</em>) will star along with Aidy Bryant (<em>Saturday Night Live</em>), Flor Delis Alicea (<em>Love the Skin You’re In)</em>, Anire Kim Amoda (<em>The Penguin</em>), Noah Cottrell (<em>The Spiderwick Chronicles</em>), Iesha Daniels, Sophie Dieterle, Alexandra Doke (<em>Grey’s Anatomy</em>), and Maeve Press (<em>Everything’s Gonna Be Okay).</em></p>
<p>The series is a gender-swapping take on Sachar’s story, where Rudolph plays the teenager sent to a detention camp where Kinnear’s Warden forces the kids to dig holes for initially unknown reasons. </p>
<p>The show has <em>WandaVision </em>and <em>Agatha All Along </em>showrunner Jac Schaffer on board as executive producer and director for the pilot episode, and Liz Phang (<em>Yellowjackets, Haunting of Hill House</em>) as showrunner.</p>
<p>Here’s a rundown of the announced cast’s character descriptions:</p>
<p><strong>Greg Kinnear as The Warden</strong></p>
<p>The Warden is the boss at Camp Yucca, with a flair for manipulation and getting the upper hand on his campers. He has created a camp ideology to explain the virtue of having girls dig holes, but this is actually a ruse; he is really forcing the girls to labor for a mysterious purpose.</p>
<p><strong>Aidy Bryant as Sissy</strong></p>
<p>Sissy is overflowing with camp counselor energy. She seems like a trustworthy big sister figure to the girls, but as a true believer of The Warden’s philosophy, her allegiance lies with him.</p>
<p><strong>Shay Rudolph as Hayley</strong></p>
<p>Hayley arrives at Camp Yucca having been wrongly accused. She’s full of heart and tired of her family’s belief that fate is fixed; her arrival at Camp Yucca will inject new hope and optimism into her campmates.</p>
<p><strong>Flor Delis Alicea as Queenie</strong></p>
<p>Queenie is the tough queen bee, a seemingly fearless leader whose hard edges cover up her vulnerability.</p>
<p><strong>Anire Kim Amoda as Thumbelina</strong></p>
<p>Thumbelina is bold and not scared of anything or anyone, not even The Warden.</p>
<p><strong>Noah Cottrell as Kitch</strong></p>
<p>Kitch works in the kitchen at Camp Yucca. He is a stickler for the rules, but we’ll soon learn there is secret, deeper reason he’s intent on maintaining his job.</p>
<p><strong>Iesha Daniels as Mars</strong></p>
<p>Mars is brainy, charismatic, no-nonsense, and a bit of a player among the queer female campers.</p>
<p><strong>Sophie Dieterlen as Sticky</strong></p>
<p>Sticky is an ever-daydreaming girly-girl with a kind heart and an abiding passion for clothes, but she can be serious and driven when she needs to.</p>
<p><strong>Alexandra Doke as Eyeball</strong></p>
<p>Eyeball is a mischievous, zany artist who sees the world in her own idiosyncratic way and often lightens a heavy mood with a joke.</p>
<p><strong>Maeve Press as Shrimp</strong></p>
<p>Shrimp is the youngest and smallest of the campers, and her unusual, blunt nature makes her an outcast amongst the girls.</p>
<p>No news yet if/when <em>Holes </em>will premiere on Disney+. [end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/holes-tv-adaption-casts-greg-kinnear-shay-rudolph-aidy-bryant-others/"><i>Holes</i>: TV Adaption Casts Greg Kinnear, Shay Rudolph, Aidy Bryant, & Others</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/holes-tv-adaption-casts-greg-kinnear-shay-rudolph-aidy-bryant-others/">https://reactormag.com/holes-tv-adaption-casts-greg-kinnear-shay-rudolph-aidy-bryant-others/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=812021">https://reactormag.com/?p=812021</a></p>
A Wheel of Time Video Game Is in the Works
Apr. 22nd, 2025 07:07 pmtordotcom_feedA Wheel of Time Video Game Is in the Works
iwot Studios is developing a role-playing experience that covers “the entire world.”
Published on April 22, 2025
Credit: Prime Video
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Vanessa Armstrong</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/a-wheel-of-time-video-game-is-in-the-works/">https://reactormag.com/a-wheel-of-time-video-game-is-in-the-works/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=812010">https://reactormag.com/?p=812010</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal">
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">A <i>Wheel of Time</i> Video Game Is in the Works</h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">iwot Studios is developing a role-playing experience that covers “the entire world.”</div>
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<p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/vanessa-armstrong/" title="Posts by Vanessa Armstrong" class="author url fn" rel="author">Vanessa Armstrong</a></p>
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Published on April 22, 2025
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<img decoding="async" width="740" height="494" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WOFT_S3_Static2x3_GlassColumn_2000x3000_PRE_PV_FINAL_en-US_KAPS-1-740x494.jpeg" class="w-full object-cover" alt="cropped poster of main characters in Prime Video's The Wheel of Time" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WOFT_S3_Static2x3_GlassColumn_2000x3000_PRE_PV_FINAL_en-US_KAPS-1-740x494.jpeg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WOFT_S3_Static2x3_GlassColumn_2000x3000_PRE_PV_FINAL_en-US_KAPS-1-1100x734.jpeg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WOFT_S3_Static2x3_GlassColumn_2000x3000_PRE_PV_FINAL_en-US_KAPS-1-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WOFT_S3_Static2x3_GlassColumn_2000x3000_PRE_PV_FINAL_en-US_KAPS-1.jpeg 1400w" sizes="(max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure>
<div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-horizontal [&_a]:link"><p>Credit: Prime Video</p>
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<p>Fresh off <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/the-wheel-of-time-on-prime-video/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the season three finale of <em>The Wheel of Time</em></a>, we have news that there will be at least one more project set in Robert Jordan’s fantasy universe.</p>
<p>Today, <em><a href="https://variety.com/2025/gaming/news/wheel-of-time-video-game-iwot-1236374066/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Variety</a></em> broke the news that iwot Studios—the company that owns the rights to Jordan’s fourteen-book series across film, TV, video games, and comics—has set up its own video game division to develop a<em> Wheel of Time </em>AAA open-world role-playing game. The entire project will be worked on in-house and will take an estimated three years to complete.</p>
<p>“It’s an open-world game, and it’ll be everything with <em>The Wheel of Time</em>, everything that is covered in the books, as well as all the backstory elements of it,” iwot Studios CEO Rick Selvage told <em>Variety</em>. “As we build out the world, it’ll be the entire <em>Wheel of Time</em> world—it’s not going to be limited to one area or another or a particular age.”</p>
<p>This isn’t the only project iwot is working on based on their <em>Wheel of Time </em>rights. There’s the TV show, of course, and there’s also <a href="https://reactormag.com/the-wheel-of-time-age-of-legends-zack-stentz/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the prequel live-action films, the first of which is called <em>Age of Legends</em></a>, that they’re working on, as well as a 3D animated feature in development.</p>
<p>To that end, Selvage added that the video game will “have a lot of assets from [<em>Age of Legends</em>] and marketing opportunities and fan integration and a lot of other things,” but that, ultimately, the game will also “cover the entire world.”</p>
<p>The video game is still in its early days, with former Warner Bros. Games VP Craig Alexander leading the new studio. No news yet on release date for the game or, for that matter, <em>Age of Legends</em>.[end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/a-wheel-of-time-video-game-is-in-the-works/">A <i>Wheel of Time</i> Video Game Is in the Works</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/a-wheel-of-time-video-game-is-in-the-works/">https://reactormag.com/a-wheel-of-time-video-game-is-in-the-works/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=812010">https://reactormag.com/?p=812010</a></p>
Read an Excerpt From Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil by Oliver Darkshire
Apr. 22nd, 2025 07:00 pmtordotcom_feedRead an Excerpt From Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil by Oliver Darkshire
A cozy fantasy about self-discovery—as well as fungus, capitalism, and sorcery…
Published on April 22, 2025
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Read an Excerpt From <i>Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil</i> by Oliver Darkshire</h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">A cozy fantasy about self-discovery—as well as fungus, capitalism, and sorcery…</div>
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<p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/oliver-darkshire/" title="Posts by Oliver Darkshire" class="author url fn" rel="author">Oliver Darkshire</a></p>
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Published on April 22, 2025
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<p>We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from <em><a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324105916" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil</strong></a></em> by Oliver Darkshire, a cozy fantasy reimagining a heroine of Boccaccio’s <em>Decameron</em> in a delightfully deranged world of talking plants, walking corpses, sentient animals, and shape-shifting sorcerers—out from W. W. Norton & Company on May 13<sup>th</sup>.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>In a tiny farm on the edge of the miserable village of East Grasby, Isabella Nagg is trying to get on with her tiny, miserable existence. Dividing her time between tolerating her feckless husband, caring for the farm’s strange animals, cooking up “scrunge,” and crooning over her treasured pot of basil, Isabella can’t help but think that there might be something more to life. When Mr. Nagg returns home with a spell book purloined from the local wizard, she thinks: what harm could a little magic do?</p></blockquote></figure>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-center">PROLOGUE</h3>
<p>It was late summer under a pale green sky, and the wizard Bagdemagus had decided to retire. Not right now, perhaps in a decade or two, when the ache in his bones had really settled in. He felt the itch, the same way he’d felt it when he’d first picked up the book of practical magic commonly known amongst wizards as the Household Gramayre. He hadn’t known that strange, subtle itch for what it was, back then. Now he could recognize it as a sign that it was time for something new. Wizards didn’t die of old age. They were too suffused with Gramayre for that. No, a wizard changed. They took on new shapes, new forms, until one day you never returned. It was in their nature, just as the sun was pushed across the sky by a gigantic beetle, and as goblins returned to the valley each year at the first mischievous whisper of autumn.</p>
<p>The valley was tucked away below the village of East Grasby, and Bagdemagus wandered it freely, deep in the heart of the crag that would soon blossom with wild goblins and their treacherous fruits. He’d tried to banish the goblins for good, when he’d first come into his power, but some magics were too old and buried too deep. Instead, when all power and works had failed him, he’d reluctantly done exactly what his wizardly predecessor had done, and contained the problem instead. A spell encircling the valley, fencing the goblins inside to ensure neither they nor their enticing wares could work evil in East Grasby<sup data-fn="5bfbba4c-0f90-4154-b046-5ed7fd228b2d" class="fn"><a id="5bfbba4c-0f90-4154-b046-5ed7fd228b2d-link" href="https://reactormag.com/excerpts-isabella-nagg-and-the-pot-of-basil-by-oliver-darkshire/#5bfbba4c-0f90-4154-b046-5ed7fd228b2d">1</a></sup>. The goblins were harmless enough as long as they stayed in their market until winter, when the cold caused them to wither away.</p>
<p>As he walked, and with extreme care, he scattered mandrake leaves behind him. Most people didn’t know of the mandrake’s special properties, because they didn’t care to listen to the old folk tales. The people of East Grasby didn’t listen much to anyone. To each other. To their surroundings. To any of the lectures he gave on the matter when someone turned up at his door with mandrake poisoning. As a matter of principle, and professional curiosity, Bagdemagus listened all the time. There wasn’t much else to do when you kept your own company, unless you counted the grimalkin, which Bagdemagus didn’t. He spent so much time with the feline creature that he almost considered it part of him, much in the same way as the Household Gramayre. Spells and memories all folded into each other until you couldn’t tell which was which anymore. It was going to be hard to leave it all behind.</p>
<p>It was often the case that Bagdemagus became so caught up in his own inner dialogue that he failed to notice what was right in front of him, and today was no different. Gaze turned firmly inwards, he stumbled across something heavy in front of him. Catching his balance, he stepped back onto the mandrake leaves, scuffing the line. Cursing blithely, he turned to see what had tripped him.</p>
<p>The body was headless. Large, strong, and oddly contorted, as if it had died in some distress. Unfazed by the sight (Bagdemagus was old, older than anyone gave him credit for), he warily reached down to assess the state of decay. Less than a day old, perhaps killed the previous evening. He couldn’t state the exact cause of death, not without opening the Gramayre, and there were spells in the books that even he feared to cast. What worried him most was the fact that it had been left unwatched. Having been abandoned without a vigil or burial rites, the corpse was almost certain to wake as a licce, tirelessly seeking out some last vengeance or obsession. A body didn’t need a head to be dangerous.</p>
<p>He inspected the wound. Jagged. Clumsy. The head had been severed in a hurry, or by someone unfamiliar with the workings of the body. A murder, then. It wasn’t the first one in East Grasby and it wouldn’t be the last<sup data-fn="e843ffcb-a235-4c66-a14b-6ea54a2c8f4c" class="fn"><a href="https://reactormag.com/excerpts-isabella-nagg-and-the-pot-of-basil-by-oliver-darkshire/#e843ffcb-a235-4c66-a14b-6ea54a2c8f4c" id="e843ffcb-a235-4c66-a14b-6ea54a2c8f4c-link">2</a></sup>.</p>
<p>The grimalkin sidled out from behind a rock, all extra toes and crooked teeth. It looked nothing like a cat in any meaningful sense, but that was still the closest word one could use to describe it. The creature was something like an assistant, a deputy librarian, and a tutor all rolled into one. The grimalkin liked to nap on a particular rock when Bagdemagus did the goblin-mandrake ritual, because it was an excellent sunbathing spot, and they rarely ventured down into the valley together except to perform this specific rite.</p>
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<p>“Gosh,” the grimalkin said, dryly, indicating the body. “Well, it’s not goblin. I suppose that’s a mercy.” It sniffed the corpse. “Not watched. It’s going to turn. We’ll have a licce on our hands before sundown.”</p>
<p>Bagdemagus sighed. “Have to do everything myself,” he grumbled. As if he’d have accepted help from anyone, which he would not have.</p>
<p>Reaching into the depths of his mind, where the spells he had memorized that morning were drifting about, he sifted through the jumble of words and incantations until he came across a spell of burning. It was an unruly thing. Fire always was. It wanted to escape, and you had to be wary lest it catch onto something inside you and burn you out from the middle. With the spell on his lips, eyes burning like coals, he made to touch the body.</p>
<p>“What on earth are you doing?” The grimalkin’s sour voice cut into his concentration. He paused.</p>
<p>“What does it look like? I’m burning it before it gets up again.”</p>
<p>“We don’t have the whole body.” The cat had that superior expression it leveraged whenever he knew something the wizard didn’t. This happened often.</p>
<p>“What difference does it make?” He was irritable now. The spell slipped from his grasp and vanished from his mind. Bagdemagus wondered, briefly, where it went<sup data-fn="4d5c8f09-4731-44f1-beee-f16c1aed32aa" class="fn"><a id="4d5c8f09-4731-44f1-beee-f16c1aed32aa-link" href="https://reactormag.com/excerpts-isabella-nagg-and-the-pot-of-basil-by-oliver-darkshire/#4d5c8f09-4731-44f1-beee-f16c1aed32aa">3</a></sup>.</p>
<p>“If you don’t burn the whole thing,” said the grimalkin, “particularly the head, you won’t kill it. You’ll just end up with some very alive bones, unless you have fire hot enough to burn those too. Which you don’t. Because I know all your spells.” Smugly, it waved its tail. “You’ll have to bury it until we find the head, and then we can get rid of it all at once.”</p>
<p>Sighing loudly enough to make a point, Bagdemagus delved for another spell. This time, slumbering under some cobwebs, and next to where he’d left his list of favourite celery memories, was the Cant of Terrestrial Gerrymandering. He retrieved it. It had been a while since he’d memorized it, but it was still good. Under his careful guidance, the spell worked the same way it always did, opening a sizeable pit in the earth into which a body (or several bodies, if you squeezed them) could be placed. With a kick, he heaved the dead man into the newly formed grave. Six feet under, that was the key. Licce might be strong, but even they struggled to reach the surface from there.</p>
<p>“I suppose we should find the head,” he said, “before it gets into trouble.” He looked around, but it wasn’t anywhere in sight.</p>
<p>“Seems someone made off with it,” said the grimalkin. “Or it rolled away. Either way, we’ll be at this all day. We don’t even know which way to start off in.”</p>
<p>“We could ask the tinderbox,” said Bagdemagus, idly. “We only used two questions, remember?”</p>
<p>“Absolutely not,” the cat said, firmly. “Stop suggesting that. I lost an eye last time, Bagsy, in case you forgot.”</p>
<p>“Alright, alright. You keep looking after it for me, then.” He scratched the famulus around the ears.</p>
<p>Standing up properly, he pulled up his trousers, which were always falling down just a little. “We’ll look for the head later,” he told the cat, which helped to scoop the dirt back into the grave. “It can’t have gone far. And the rest of the corpse is safe down there. No one comes here, and no one would be stupid enough to dig in the goblin market, not unless they want to be weeviled.” He sounded almost wistful. He hadn’t turned anyone into a weevil in years.</p>
<p>“Can we stop at the river?” The cat seemed to have brightened in mood now that the body was gone. “You know the one. I want a fish. Then maybe some witch backgammon<sup data-fn="ac2459c4-fc1c-44f6-af72-ebfe6cdfa684" class="fn"><a id="ac2459c4-fc1c-44f6-af72-ebfe6cdfa684-link" href="https://reactormag.com/excerpts-isabella-nagg-and-the-pot-of-basil-by-oliver-darkshire/#ac2459c4-fc1c-44f6-af72-ebfe6cdfa684">4</a></sup>?”</p>
<p>The river. That would be nice. He could sit down for a while, rest his back (which had developed an ungodly twinge from all those nights under the stars). Finding this head could wait, it was of little urgency now. Besides, a licce didn’t speak. A head could cause little trouble on its own, unless it bit someone and they got gangrene. He finished scattering the mandrake leaves and picked up his bags.</p>
<p>Yes, a sit-down. Some nice fish. And then, in a few short decades, he would retire.</p>
<p>He was halfway down the path when all thought of the rogue head slipped from his memory altogether.</p>
<p>Twenty years passed before Bagdemagus decided to finally retire. In that time he never quite got around to remembering the headless body, buried six feet under the ground in the goblin valley.</p>
<p>Deep below the earth, dead muscles twitched.</p>
<div style="height:5px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div>
<p class="has-sm-font-size">Excerpted from <em>Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil</em>, copyright © 2025 by Oliver Darkshire.</p>
<ol class="wp-block-footnotes"><li id="5bfbba4c-0f90-4154-b046-5ed7fd228b2d">The spell required a circle, an oval, or a reasonable attempt at either. The important thing was the spirit of a circle—nature abhors a polygon. <a href="https://reactormag.com/excerpts-isabella-nagg-and-the-pot-of-basil-by-oliver-darkshire/#5bfbba4c-0f90-4154-b046-5ed7fd228b2d-link" aria-label="Jump to footnote reference 1"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/21a9.png" alt="↩" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" />︎</a></li><li id="e843ffcb-a235-4c66-a14b-6ea54a2c8f4c">There had been a time, several wizards back if the grimalkin was to be believed, when the people of East Grasby had indulged in seasonal festive homicides as a way of evenly spreading the death out across the year in a controlled manner. The sacrifices were eventually replaced by civic town meetings, which satisfied the same visceral urges. <a href="https://reactormag.com/excerpts-isabella-nagg-and-the-pot-of-basil-by-oliver-darkshire/#e843ffcb-a235-4c66-a14b-6ea54a2c8f4c-link" aria-label="Jump to footnote reference 2"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/21a9.png" alt="↩" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" />︎</a></li><li id="4d5c8f09-4731-44f1-beee-f16c1aed32aa">It went to a small carpenter’s shop in the city of Verdigris, which happened to be built on a nexus of magical energies. Several times a week, mislaid spells manifested in the foyer, driving the owner to distraction and his insurance premiums through the roof. <a href="https://reactormag.com/excerpts-isabella-nagg-and-the-pot-of-basil-by-oliver-darkshire/#4d5c8f09-4731-44f1-beee-f16c1aed32aa-link" aria-label="Jump to footnote reference 3"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/21a9.png" alt="↩" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" />︎</a></li><li id="ac2459c4-fc1c-44f6-af72-ebfe6cdfa684">The parlor game/extreme sport known as witch backgammon is very similar to regular backgammon, except the stakes are the kind you might be burned at. <a href="https://reactormag.com/excerpts-isabella-nagg-and-the-pot-of-basil-by-oliver-darkshire/#ac2459c4-fc1c-44f6-af72-ebfe6cdfa684-link" aria-label="Jump to footnote reference 4"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/21a9.png" alt="↩" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" />︎</a></li></ol>
<p></p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/excerpts-isabella-nagg-and-the-pot-of-basil-by-oliver-darkshire/">Read an Excerpt From <i>Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil</i> by Oliver Darkshire</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/excerpts-isabella-nagg-and-the-pot-of-basil-by-oliver-darkshire/">https://reactormag.com/excerpts-isabella-nagg-and-the-pot-of-basil-by-oliver-darkshire/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=811882">https://reactormag.com/?p=811882</a></p>
Doctor Who Takes Metafiction to New Heights in “Lux”
Apr. 22nd, 2025 05:30 pmtordotcom_feedDoctor Who Takes Metafiction to New Heights in “Lux”
Don’t make him laugh!
Published on April 22, 2025
Image: James Pardon/BBC/Bad Wolf
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1"><i>Doctor Who</i> Takes Metafiction to New Heights in “Lux”</h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Don’t make him laugh!</div>
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Published on April 22, 2025
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<img decoding="async" width="740" height="493" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux3-740x493.jpeg" class="w-full object-cover" alt="The Doctor and Belinda looking wary in Doctor Who, "Lux"" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux3-740x493.jpeg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux3-1100x733.jpeg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux3-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux3-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux3.jpeg 2000w" sizes="(max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure>
<div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-horizontal [&_a]:link"><p>Image: James Pardon/BBC/Bad Wolf</p>
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<p>We’re back once again with your regularly scheduled reviewer *waves* and an absolute delight of an episode.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Recap</h3>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="557" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux2-1100x557.jpeg" alt="The Doctor and Belinda marveling at Mr. Ring-a-Ding in Doctor Who, "Lux"" class="wp-image-811978" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux2-1100x557.jpeg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux2-740x374.jpeg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux2-768x389.jpeg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux2-1536x777.jpeg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux2.jpeg 2000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: James Pardon/BBC/Bad Wolf</figcaption></figure>
<p>At a cinema in Miami, Florida in the year 1952, a group of viewers are watching news reels about the atomic bomb. Next up is a cartoon about Mr. Ring-a-Ding (Alan Cumming, back again after his turn as James I in <a href="https://reactormag.com/were-all-the-same-doctor-who-the-witchfinders/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“The Witchfinders”</a>) that contains a very catchy little tune. While it plays, moonlight bounces off a spoon in the projector room and onto the screen, which somehow brings Mr. Ring-a-Ding to life, and he comes through the screen to greet the audience as they scream.</p>
<p>Back on the TARDIS, the Doctor tells Belinda that he’s got a plan to get her home to May 24, 2025. It involves landing and using a contraption called a Vortex Indicator, which will act as an anchor that draws them back to the desired date very slowly. They land in 1952, and Belinda notes that her clothes wouldn’t be appropriate for the past. After the Doctor gleefully hauls her off to wardrobe, they both reemerge in stunning period-accurate getups complete with hair and makeup. It’s the middle of the night in; they have landed next to a movie theater that has been chained shut. There are flowers and notes on the doorstep, mourning multiple people. The Vortex Indicator does its job and Belinda wants to be off, but realizes the Doctor wants to investigate. They head to a diner across the road, where the server (Lewis Cornay) tells them all about the 15 people who disappeared from that theater three months ago. The police searched it up and down, finding nothing. There’s films still playing at night because the projectionist, Reginald Pye (Linus Roache) keeps them going, despite the place being locked up.</p>
<p>They’re introduced to Renée Lowenstein (Lucy Thackeray), who is happy to let them sit with her and ask questions if the diner doesn’t mind bending the rules; 1952 Florida is a legally segregated place, and “blacks” (which would include Belinda, regardless of specific ethnicity) aren’t allowed to sit. The server doesn’t mind, as it’s the middle of the night and no one is there to complain. Renée tells them about her boy who disappeared that night in the theater, and how she comes there often, unwilling to give up her search. The Doctor tells her to hold onto her hope, as it’s the most powerful thing she has. He promises to find her son. Inside the theater, the Doctor arrives on the stage and calls up to Mr. Pye, who is silently begging them to leave. They are met by Mr. Ring-a-Ding, who seems to be a living cartoon, a being made of light.</p>
<p>For every question, Mr. Ring-a-Ding tells the Doctor not to make him laugh (his cartoon catchphrase), until the Doctor finally asks why. The reason is because his laugh is “The Giggle,” indicative of the Toymaker’s children. Mr. Ring-a-Ding is truly Lux Imperator, the god of light, who is one of the Gods of Chaos. Before he can descend on them, the projector begins to play and traps Lux into the Mr. Ring-a-Ding dance number. The Doctor and Belinda flee to the projector room to talk to Reginald Pye, who admits that the reason he’s been playing movies is to feed Lux light, in exchange for the chance to see his dead wife as a resurrected image. The Doctor finds the 15 missing people, imprinted on cellulose and trapped. Lux finally finds them; the Doctor reminds him that he must admit how he can be beaten, the same rules that apply to the rest of his kind. Lux tells the Doctor to think about what he never does, then turns the Doctor and Belinda into cartoons.</p>
<p>The Doctor and Belinda realize that when they discuss complicated feelings, they become more three-dimensional, until they’re finally fully human again, but still stuck in the film. The Doctor suggests that they try to escape the reel and they find themselves back in the theater—only to be set upon by Renée and a cop (William Meredith), who are there to arrest them for being in a “whites only” space and suspicious activity. The Doctor quickly sees through this ruse: They’re still in the film. Knowing that pulling at the reel doesn’t work, he realizes that perhaps they have to push their way out of the screen. They do, and arrive in the living room of three <em>Doctor Who</em> fans: Robyn (Steph Lacey), Hassan (Samir Arrain), and Lizzie (Bronté Barbé). They tell the Doctor that he’s the main character of a TV show and they are super fans. (Their favorite episode is “Blink,” dismaying the Doctor.)</p>
<p>The group thinks this episode is kind of obvious, but urge the Doctor to get back to the plot and stop Lux, telling him not to worry about them. Belinda is confused by this, but the fans explain: They’re actually the characters in all this, and not even ones important enough to get last names. They thank the Doctor for allowing them to exist in this moment and meet their best friends. The Doctor tells Belinda that they need to halt the film by holding the frame and make it burn under the projector’s heat, which works and pops them back into the real world. The Doctor’s hand is burned, but he’s saved a little extra regenerative energy for this and heals himself. Lux reemerges and ties the Doctor up with film stock; he plans to use the Doctor’s regenerative energy to build himself a body.</p>
<p>The thing Lux never does: Go outside. He wants more light, but he cannot step into it, and hopes that by creating a new body for himself, he can then absorb even more, from something like an atomic explosion. Lux begins to drain the Doctor, becoming hideously three-dimensional. Belinda rushes to burn the film stock and the cinema with it. Mr. Pye is the one with matches, but he’s too afraid, until the image of his wife (Jane Hancock) comes to him with matches in hand and tells him to do this in order to find her again. Pye tells Belinda to flee and burns the stock himself. An explosion from the fire puts a hole in the wall of the building and daylight hits Lux, who reverts to two dimensions and grows and grows in the sunlight until he’s ever-expanding and everywhere and dissipates into nothingness. The missing people are returned to the world and reunited with their loved ones. As the Doctor and Belinda leave, Mrs. Flood shows up and encourages everyone to watch the TARDIS’s departure, saying it’s a great show—one that will be ending on May 24th. And that’s a wrap.</p>
<p>Suddenly there’s a mid-credits scene where the trio of fans begin criticizing the episode… only to realize, with joy, that they are still here.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Commentary</h3>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="733" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux5-1100x733.jpeg" alt="The Doctor and Belinda talking to a server at the local diner in Doctor Who, "Lux"" class="wp-image-811981" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux5-1100x733.jpeg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux5-740x493.jpeg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux5-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux5-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux5.jpeg 2000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: James Pardon/BBC/Bad Wolf</figcaption></figure>
<p>Okay, there are <em>layers</em> to this one. </p>
<p>This episode is steeped in metafiction, but in the best possible way—with a wink and a nudge, rather than the insistence that everything is so much deeper that way. It’s buzzy and quick and clever, rather than ponderous and tired. And my favorite meta aspect is probably not the most obvious one at first glance…</p>
<p>You see, the Disney-partnered restart of <em>Doctor Who</em> has resulted in labeling all of Fifteen’s episodes as though they’re a new show. Just like the restart of 2005, Gatwa’s era began as another “season one.” (Do I agree with this in practice? No, it’s incredibly confusing. But that’s still how they’re going about it.) So “Lux” is labelled as season two, episode two. In this episode, a being made by moonlight is defeated by destroying it with even more light. When Belinda questions this, the Doctor tells her, “We’re 60 percent water and we can still drown.”</p>
<p>Any of that sound familiar?</p>
<p>Oh right, “Tooth and Claw,” a delightful adventure in Scotland with the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler. Where the antagonist was a werewolf—made by moonlight. And the creature is defeated with an abundance of focused moonlight. And when Rose questions this, the Doctor tells her, “You’re 70 percent water—you can still drown.”</p>
<p>In <em>season two, episode two</em>. </p>
<p>I may have punched the air when that came to me.</p>
<p>There’s so much to love about this episode. It’s simultaneously expansive and extremely low-rent; obviously the Lux special effects weren’t cheap, but everything else has that old school soundstage feel that sets Doctor Who apart. (Some folks do not like that, but it’s a big winner for me.) All of the animations have clearly been meticulously researched and matched to very specific art styles from different eras. This is technically a first companion adventure (being the first time the companion agrees to join in rather than getting waylaid or kidnapped), and Belinda is jammed through an emotional meat grinder as <em>all the things</em> happen to her at once.</p>
<p>Though I’m sure all viewers will feel differently, I’ve been overall impressed with how Doctor Who is handling racism in Gatwa’s episodes: not shirking the idea out of discomfort, but only allowing it to dominate the narrative when there’s a purpose. Here, we’ve got an acknowledgment of segregation in America at the point when they’ve landed (something Thirteen had to confront more openly due to her companions, but it’s different when it applies to yourself). They’re helped out by a few factors. For one, it’s the dead of night, so there are fewer people to encounter. Helpfully, the white people in the diner across the road aren’t bigots (this coming with the caveat that we don’t know if they’re fighting segregation in any meaningful way aside from not being awful, but hey, every little bit counts). They don’t really get into it, but the fact that they’re from the U.K. helps, too; Americans are largely suckers for those accents in every era, which is the height of irony for obvious reasons.</p>
<p>But Lux’s trick with the police officer was an excellent handling of those themes as well—not just for the continuity joke, but because it metafictionally points out that the way popular fiction addresses racism is often, well, kinda cheap. You feel it when they get stormed in on; the threat has the potential to be real, but it’s also incredibly boring and does nothing to actually help the audience understand how racism affects people. Better for the Doctor to erase it with a smirk here, where it serves no purpose.</p>
<p>Also worth mentioning is that this episode is incredibly low on shooty, explodey action style sequences, and boy do I miss when more television did that. Doctor Who <em>should</em> do that more often than not. This is largely a puzzle episode, with a lot of enjoyable jokes packed in, and it proves how well you can write something that moves and jives without needing all that excessive violence.</p>
<p>This isn’t the first time a show has directly called out its own fandom, but it might be my favorite? <em>Sherlock</em> did it as a send up of all the theorizing fans were doing after the “Reichenbach Fall,” and <em>Supernatural</em> dredged up their own fans more than once, very awkwardly. Superhero yarns will often touch on this conceit through in-universe fans (like <em>Shazam!</em>) or deep fourth wall breaks (<em>She-Hulk</em>). Doctor Who arguably did this with the character of Osgood in a similar vein.</p>
<p>But here, we have a fourth wall break that boomerangs back on itself: The Doctor is being (accurately) told that he’s a fictional character on a television show, only for us to find out that the fans are the fictional characters, created to distract the Doctor from what’s really going on during the episode.</p>
<p>These fans look like many Whovian nerds I’ve met at conventions over the years, unglamorous, bright, and brimming with deep cuts. (The shirts, they’re all more telling than that scarf could ever be.) They feel more real than any version of fandom I’ve ever seen on screen. But… they’re not. And once they come to that realization, they know they’ve got to let the Doctor get back to doing what he does best. But it’s okay. They were born with best friends, and they got to meet them a few minutes ago. That’s a pretty great life, no matter how truncated.</p>
<p>Wasn’t really expecting to cry during this episode, but that’s often how Davies works.</p>
<p>And then they’re not really gone. Because television is magic and the Doctor is magic and there’s no reason not to summon a little more magic after fighting a being made of light and urging him into an existential crisis death that fills the cosmos.</p>
<p>Damn, I love this show.</p>
<div style="height:10px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div>
<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Time and Space and Sundry</h3>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="733" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux1-1100x733.jpeg" alt="Belinda and the Doctor as a cartoon in Doctor Who, "Lux"" class="wp-image-811977" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux1-1100x733.jpeg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux1-740x493.jpeg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux1-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux1-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/dw-lux1.jpeg 2000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: BBC/Bad Wolf</figcaption></figure>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>A very neat little nod to the fan characters saying that they aren’t important enough to get last names—they are listed in the credits with last names. Welcome to Hassan Chowdry, Lizzie Abel and Robyn Gossage. It would be a real treat to see them again, though I’m not sure how they’d manage it.</li>
</ul>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>All I can think about is how confusing it would be to view a two-dimensional being in a three-dimensional world? Because it doesn’t seem like Lux is flat, exactly. It’s more like the perspective of him shifts as though he were 3D as you move around him, which I imagine would do such a number on your brain and sense of space. (Also, I love when they render human-ish designed cartoons as 3D beings and we get to see how heinous they’d look in realtime.)</li>
</ul>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>The palette for this episode was glorious, basically variations on primary colors for the entire wardrobe set. It’s most obvious at the end when the theatergoers come back, but you get the idea well enough with the Doctor’s blue, Belinda’s yellow, and the rich red of the theater itself.</li>
</ul>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>There is no way you can convince me that the Doctor <em>didn’t</em> do Belinda’s hair. I don’t believe that any other Doctor would have the desire or the patience, but Fifteen absolutely does, and it brings me endless happiness.</li>
</ul>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>The mention of Rock Hudson feels particularly meaningful for Gatwa’s Doctor—connecting him with queer icons of the past will always wring emotions out of me. Particularly a figure who was officially “outed” for his contraction of HIV, leading to his eventual death from AIDS… the primary reason behind an entire generation of missing queer elders.</li>
</ul>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Of course the Doctor is Velma. Most queers are Velma, this is just A Thing That Is Known. This is also not the first time Doctor Who has played with Scooby-Doo references, the most obvious being the chase scene at the start of “Love and Monsters.” The Hanna-Barbera cartoon style was an excellent touch, too.</li>
</ul>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Mr. Pye and his wife also made me teary, though the idea that her image is sort of inducing him to suicide is <em>maybe</em> a bit darker than the episode realizes.</li>
</ul>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>I know that they needed to show the fancy Time Lord energy to seed the idea that Lux would drain him, but it seems incredibly silly for the Doctor to use his all-important leftover regenerative energies to heal a tiny burn.</li>
</ul>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Okay, Mrs. Flood, we get it, you’re eternal and everywhere, just <em>tell us who you are already</em>.</li>
</ul>
<p>See you next week![end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/tv-review-doctor-who-lux/"><i>Doctor Who</i> Takes Metafiction to New Heights in “Lux”</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/tv-review-doctor-who-lux/">https://reactormag.com/tv-review-doctor-who-lux/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=811971">https://reactormag.com/?p=811971</a></p>
Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Dust to Dust”
Apr. 22nd, 2025 05:00 pmtordotcom_feedBabylon 5 Rewatch: “Dust to Dust”
Bester arrives at the station to track down a shipment of Dust — an illegal drug that creates temporary telepathic powers…
Published on April 22, 2025
Credit: Warner Bros. Television
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1"><i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “Dust to Dust”</h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Bester arrives at the station to track down a shipment of Dust — an illegal drug that creates temporary telepathic powers…</div>
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<p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/keith-decandido/" title="Posts by Keith R.A. DeCandido" class="author url fn" rel="author">Keith R.A. DeCandido</a></p>
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Published on April 22, 2025
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<div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-vertical [&_a]:link"><p>Credit: Warner Bros. Television</p>
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<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="740" height="493" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-09-740x493.jpg" class="w-full object-cover" alt="G'Kar speaks with a vision of Kosh in Babylon 5 "Dust to Dust"" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-09-740x493.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-09-1100x733.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-09-768x512.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-09.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure>
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<p><strong>“Dust to Dust”</strong><br>Written by J. Michael Straczynski<br>Directed by David J. Eagle<br>Season 3, Episode 6<br>Production episode 306<br>Original air date: February 5, 1996</p>
<p><strong>It was the dawn of the third age…</strong> A security guard, who also is with NightWatch, is attempting to shut down a store that’s selling merchandise that is anti-President Clark in the wake of the revelation that he helped orchestrate the death of President Santiago. Sheridan shows up and makes it clear that freedom of expression is still a thing, despite the guard’s insistence that this is sedition. Sheridan warns the guard that if these attempts to strangle free expression will not be tolerated.</p>
<p>A man in downbelow is ranting, raving, and breaking things and people as he screams about a mountain falling on him. He’s eventually taken to medlab, as is a woman who was injured. A medtech notes that the woman was nearly killed in a rockslide on Mars—a mountain fell on her. Franklin immediately tests the man for Dust, an addictive drug that temporarily gives a person telepathic powers.</p>
<p>Bester contacts Garibaldi to let them know that he’s on his way and will be there in a few hours. The war council immediately meets and panics about Bester’s arrival, as there’s no guarantee that he won’t read folks’ minds without their permission, and if he finds out about the Rangers or the Army of Light, they’re all fucked.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-04-1100x825.jpg" alt="Sheridan and Ivanova in Babylon 5 "Dust to Dust"" class="wp-image-811959" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-04-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-04-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-04-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-04-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-04.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p>When Bester is on approach to the station, Ivanova clears CnC and activates the defense grid. Sheridan, however, talks her down, insisting that Delenn’s plan will work. When Bester finally arrives—rather pissed at the radio silence that greeted him on approach, as Ivanova deliberately ignored his hails while activating the defense grid—he enters Sheridan’s office only to discover that every member of the senior staff is being shadowed by a Minbari telepath. Sheridan’s stated reason for not trusting Bester is the fate of Winters, which prompts Bester to imply that Winters was dissected by Psi Corps, which pisses Garibaldi off until Ivanova calms him down.</p>
<p>Sheridan gives Bester an ultimatum: either take sleeper drugs to suppress his telepathy for the duration of his visit, or the Minbari stick around. Bester chooses door #1. Franklin administers the sleepers, and Bester agrees to meet in a couple hours once they’ve taken full effect.</p>
<p>Vir arrives from Minbar to report to Mollari on how he’s doing in his new post, and also to prepare a report for the Centaurum, which Mollari wants to read over first. Vir’s report is even-handed and pleasant and philosophical, and all of Mollari’s notes are to instead make it more cynical and paranoid and tactical. In addition, Delenn and Lennier attempt to negotiate an accord between Mollari and the Drazi ambassador, which fails utterly due to Mollari’s intransigence.</p>
<p>Bester is on B5 to stop the trafficking of Dust. He has it on good authority that a dealer is trying to expand to non-human markets. Proving his point, we cut to G’Kar’s quarters, where a dealer named Lindstrom is selling Dust to G’Kar. He gives G’Kar a sample packet, which the Narn will test before finalizing the deal. Lindstrom warns G’Kar that they don’t know how it’ll work on non-humans.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-05-1100x825.jpg" alt="G'Kar receives a sample of "Dust" in Babylon 5 "Dust to Dust"" class="wp-image-811960" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-05-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-05-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-05-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-05-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-05.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p>Garibaldi and Bester interrogate Ashi Van Troc, a merchant who has his fingers in pretty much every black-market deal on the station. Bester lies about being able to read his mind and says he knows Van Troc is prevaricating. This gets the criminal to admit that he was approached about dealing Dust, but turned the dealer down, as he doesn’t get involved in that stuff. Van Troc’s intel leads them to Red Sector, where Garibaldi and Bester arrest Lindstrom and his suppliers and confiscate an entire shipment of Dust.</p>
<p>G’Kar takes the Dust sample, which has a very nasty effect on him, as he’s suddenly telepathic. He makes a beeline for Mollari’s cabin, taking out Vir and kidnapping Mollari. His telepathic interrogation of Mollari reveals that the latter got the assignment to B5 because nobody else wanted it; given the fate of the previous four attempts at a Babylon station, it’s a post nobody on Centauri Prime wants, so it’s dumped on Mollari by Emperor Turhan. G’Kar finds this hilarious. He also sees Mollari’s memory of several of the ambassador’s conversations with Morden, making it clear to G’Kar who, exactly, was responsible for <a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-chrysalis/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the destruction of Quadrant 37</a>. Mollari insists that he no longer works with Morden’s associates, but G’Kar doesn’t believe him and wants to know who they are.</p>
<p>However, before he can tear Mollari’s mind apart, he starts to see other visions: his father being tortured by the Centauri, and another Narn who is definitely Kosh the way Narn see him. Kosh urges him to break the cycle of hatred and try to build something better for the future. If he stays on the violent course he’s on now, it will result in the destruction of the Narn as a species.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-06-1100x825.jpg" alt="Kosh as he appears to G'Kar in Babylon 5 "Dust to Dust"" class="wp-image-811962" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-06-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-06-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-06-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-06-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-06.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p>G’Kar wakes up crying next to an unconscious Mollari, while behind him, Kosh wanders off, unseen by either.</p>
<p>In court, G’Kar pleads guilty and is sentenced to sixty days in prison. Sheridan tries to speak on his behalf, but the ombuds doesn’t buy that he was out of his mind from the drugs, as he went directly to Mollari’s quarters—that’s premeditation. Garibaldi tries to give G’Kar back the Book of G’Quan that <a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-voices-of-authority/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">G’Kar gave him last time</a>, but G’Kar tells him to keep it.</p>
<p>Garibaldi escorts Bester off the station. G’Kar sits in his cell and thinks.</p>
<p><strong>Get the hell out of our galaxy! </strong>Having previously been at least been willing to give Bester the benefit of the doubt, not having dealt with him in the first season, Sheridan is now fully part of the ever-growing We Hate Bester A Lot Club.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-07-1100x825.jpg" alt="Sheridan and a Minbari telepath in Babylon 5 "Dust to Dust"" class="wp-image-811961" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-07-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-07-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-07-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-07-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-07.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p><strong>Ivanova is God.</strong> Ivanova comes <em>this close</em> to blowing Bester up to prevent <em>any</em> chance of him finding out their secrets. It’s obvious from the way she talks to herself that she’s trying very hard to self-justify this horrid act of murder, and shows just how deep her hatred and mistrust of the Corps is. Sheridan is barely able to talk her down.</p>
<p><strong>The household god of frustration.</strong> After Bester pretends to still be telepathic in the interrogation of Van Troc, Garibaldi angrily confronts Bester about still being able to use his psi powers, because Garibaldi apparently skipped the class about how to conduct an interrogation in security school and didn’t realize that Bester was bullshitting Van Troc. Seriously, lying to the perp to get a response is Interrogation 101, and Garibaldi should know that, and the only reason he didn’t is because the script needs to let the viewer know that Bester is lying. It would’ve been <em>much</em> better—and not made Garibaldi out to be spectacularly incompetent at his job—if Garibaldi very reluctantly complimented Bester on his technique, especially since Van Troc couldn’t possibly have known that Bester was on sleepers.</p>
<p><strong>If you value your lives, be somewhere else.</strong> Delenn is able to scare up a room full of Minbari telepaths in a remarkably short time. She also fails to negotiate a peaceful solution to the growing Centauri-Drazi crisis.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-08-1100x825.jpg" alt="Mollari and Vir, both bruised and with Vir's arm in a sling, in Babylon 5 "Dust to Dust"" class="wp-image-811965" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-08-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-08-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-08-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-08-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-08.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p><strong>In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic…</strong> Vir’s report is that the Minbari are a lovely people interested in culture and art, they have cities that are thousands of years old, and that they’re a deeply spiritual people.</p>
<p>Mollari’s counter to this is that they are decadent and soft, out to impose their views on everyone else, and their lack of new construction is a sign of their faltering economy, and it may make them aggressive. However, he says Vir should leave in the part about how they’re deeply spiritual—it always scares people.</p>
<p><strong>Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.</strong> G’Kar takes Dust, even though he doesn’t know how it will affect him, since the drug was designed for humans. It does give him telepathy, but also makes him susceptible to Kosh’s manipulations.</p>
<p><strong>We live for the one, we die for the one.</strong> One of the things the senior staff fears is Bester finding out about the Rangers.</p>
<p><strong>The Corps is mother, the Corps is father.</strong> At the end of the episode, Bester meets up with another Psi Cop so he can talk in incredibly clumsy exposition about how Dust was actually created by the Psi Corps as a method of finding new telepaths (at which it has been somewhat less than a howling success) and he was really just here to keep it from being sold to aliens.</p>
<p><strong>The Shadowy Vorlons.</strong> Kosh sets G’Kar on the more spiritual path that he will continue to follow for the rest of the show by inserting himself into G’Kar’s mind.</p>
<p><strong>Looking ahead.</strong> G’Kar gets flashes of some of the future events Mollari has had dreams and/or visions of, including being crowned emperor and seeing the Shadows flying overhead on Centauri Prime.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-03-1100x825.jpg" alt="Bester (guest star Walter Koenig) in Babylon 5 "Dust to Dust"" class="wp-image-811958" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-03-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-03-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-03-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-03-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-03.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p><strong>Welcome aboard.</strong> Recurring regular Walter Koenig is back from “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-a-race-through-dark-places/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A Race Through Dark Places</a>” as Bester, as is Judy Levitt (Koenig’s wife) as an unnamed Psi Cop. Koenig will return later this season in “Ship of Tears.”</p>
<p>Jim Norton plays the image of G’Kar’s father, having previously played Ombuds Wellington in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-grail/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Grail</a>” and “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-the-quality-of-mercy/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Quality of Mercy</a>,” as well as Dr. Lazarenn in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-confessions-and-lamentations/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Confessions and Lamentations</a>.” Perhaps because he was busy playing this role, a different ombuds is seen in this episode, played by Dani Thompson.</p>
<p><strong>Trivial matters. </strong>G’Kar will next be seen still serving his prison sentence in “Messages from Earth,” though he will be released early by Garibaldi in “Point of No Return.”</p>
<p>Vir was made Centauri Ambassador to Minbar in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-a-day-in-the-strife/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A Day in the Strife</a>.” The evidence of Clark’s role in the assassination of Santiago was found and made public in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-voices-of-authority/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Voices of Authority</a>,” which is also when G’Kar gave Garibaldi his copy of the Book of G’Quan. Winters was revealed to be a sleeper agent for Psi Corps in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-divided-loyalties/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Divided Loyalties</a>.” G’Kar described his father’s awful fate at the hands of the Centauri in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-and-now-for-a-word/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">And Now for a Word</a>.”</p>
<p>G’Kar telepathically sees the conversations that Mollari had with Morden in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-chrysalis/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Chrysalis</a>” and “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-revelations/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Revelations</a>.”</p>
<p>Kosh similarly inserted himself into Sheridan’s thoughts in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-all-alone-in-the-night/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">All Alone in the Night</a>.”</p>
<p><strong>The echoes of all of our conversations.</strong></p>
<p>“And if I had a baseball bat, we could hang you from the ceiling and play piñata.”</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>“A piñata, huh? So you think of me as something bright and cheerful full of toys and candy for young children? Thank you, that makes me feel <em>much</em> better about our relationship.”</p>
<p>—Garibaldi making it clear how much he hates Bester and Bester taking the piss in order to annoy Garibaldi <em>even more</em>…</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-02-1100x825.jpg" alt="G'Kar sits in a cell in Babylon 5 "Dust to Dust"" class="wp-image-811957" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-02-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-02-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-02-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-02-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Babylon-5-Dust-to-Dust-02.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p><strong>The name of the place is Babylon 5.</strong> “The great and powerful Londo Mollari got his job because no one else was stupid enough to take it!” It’s hard for an episode that heavily features Mollari and G’Kar to be bad, ditto for an episode that guest stars Walter Koenig as Bester, and this episode lives up to that promise, as it’s very well done, despite some clunky scripting.</p>
<p>G’Kar getting to see inside Mollari’s head is very provocative, mainly because Mollari is much more complicated than G’Kar is likely to have ever given him credit for. G’Kar has always seen the Centauri ambassador as a tiresome buffoon at best and a vicious representative of a vicious people at worst. G’Kar’s telepathic invasion of Mollari raises the question of how much of Mollari’s emotions does he also feel? When he sees Morden’s response of “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-revelations/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">One thing at a time</a>” to Mollari’s joking comment about destroying the Narn homeworld, does G’Kar also feel the obvious discomfort Mollari had with Morden’s serious response to his jocular query?</p>
<p>As ever, both Andreas Katsulas and Peter Jurasik are superb. I especially love the way Jurasik plays Mollari’s verbal evisceration of Vir’s report, which is told with his usual bombastic semi-folksy humor. (He claims Vir shows the most political naïveté since Lord Jarno, whose speech was so pathetic it was considered that he be sterilized so there was no danger of him reproducing. Then they remembered who his wife was and realized it wouldn’t be an issue.)</p>
<p>Which makes it hit that much harder when G’Kar drops Vir like a sack of potatoes and tortures Mollari.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, we have Koenig continuing to kill it as the telepath you love to hate. It’s especially fun to watch as he pokes everyone with a stick, being deliberately provocative and/or deliberately obtuse in order to get a reaction out of the mundanes. In addition, Bester actually accomplishes his goal, reminding us that he’s a force to be reckoned with. While our heroes were able to keep their secrets from him, the end result of Bester’s mission was a complete success for Psi Corps.</p>
<p>The only thing that holds back the episode are, as I said, some bits of <em>really</em> clunky scripting. There’s Garibaldi’s misunderstanding of Bester’s interrogation technique, done to provide exposition at the expense of character, making Garibaldi look incompetent in order to spoon-feed the viewer. There’s Kosh’s fortune-cookie nonsense to G’Kar in his telepathic vision. There’s the awkward negotiation between Mollari and the Drazi and its aftermath, which very clumsily tells us that Vir still believes in Mollari even though he’s a dick. And there’s Bester’s infodump to his fellow Psi Cop, the latter of whom is solely there so Bester can tell her things she already knows but will spoon-feed the viewer some more.</p>
<p>On the other hand, you also have Ivanova talking herself into blowing up Bester while alone in CnC, which is well-written and phenomenally performed by Claudia Christian. You’ve got Bester’s banter with Garibaldi (the piñata bit quoted above is epic). And you’ve got the interactions between Mollari and G’Kar, which always sing.</p>
<p><strong>Next week:</strong> “Exogenesis.”[end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-dust-to-dust/"><i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “Dust to Dust”</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-dust-to-dust/">https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-dust-to-dust/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=811937">https://reactormag.com/?p=811937</a></p>
Of Cats, Conspiracies, and Carcosa: “The Repairer of Reputations” by Robert W. Chambers
Apr. 22nd, 2025 05:00 pmtordotcom_feedOf Cats, Conspiracies, and Carcosa: “The Repairer of Reputations” by Robert W. Chambers
Who are the heroes and villains in a world gone mad?
Published on April 22, 2025
Welcome back to Dissecting The Dark Descent, where we lovingly delve into the guts of David Hartwell’s seminal 1987 anthology story by story, and in the process, explore the underpinnings of a genre we all love. For an in-depth introduction, here’s the intro post.
We’ve all encountered the work of Robert W. Chambers before.
Even if you haven’t read his bizarre romantic/weird fiction mosaic novel The King in Yellow, the later connections made between Chambers’ work and the Lovecraftian figure of Hastur, the repeated mention of the doomed city of Carcosa in cosmic horror, and the way references to his work pop up everywhere from True Detective to The Witcher mean that in some way, you’ve experienced his work. The most ambitious of The King in Yellow’s tales about the mysterious, madness-inducing play that gives the book its title is “The Repairer of Reputations,” the story of a megalomaniac, an insidious blackmailer, and their plans to take over a dystopian fascist United States of America. In its exploration of gothic archetypes, it lays bare the petty delusions of its power-hungry villains and questions the incorruptible pureness of its heroes; in doing Chambers shines a light on the complex relationship such stories have with power and privilege (a relationship usually taken for granted, or simply ignored).
Hildred Castaigne is a recently released mental patient, a man whose tumble from horseback left him with an “excited temperament” and a new purpose: to become king of the United States of America and usurp the fascist government. Aiding him in this task is a blackmailer and “repairer of reputations,” the disfigured Mr. Wilde, and Wilde’s army of “clients” he forces to do his bidding in various ways. From Wilde’s tiny room, they direct their conspirators in various schemes, all in service of their own power and a mysterious play titled The King in Yellow. Threatening to derail Castaigne’s plans are his love for the innocent armorer’s daughter Constance Hawberk and the fact that his dashing cousin Louis, a cavalry officer in the United States Army, has captured Constance’s heart. As the shadowy conspiracy reaches its fever pitch, Castaigne’s petty romantic rivalry threatens to derail his plans and lose him the throne.
At the start of the story, Castaigne’s got all the qualities of a Gothic antihero. He’s well-spoken and well-read, urbane, and his villainous qualities are partly the cause of a major head injury and the influence of a corrupting artifact, the eldritch play The King in Yellow. It’s also clear he’s a despicable fascist from the appreciative way he talks about the gleaming aesthetics of Chambers’ dystopian setting, highlighting in his opening narration such “flourishes” as government-sponsored suicide booths with marble columns and the expulsion of anyone who isn’t a white European. It’s the first sign of a certain wrongness in everything, that perhaps instead of the cultured, Byronic villains of gothic text there might be something far worse going on with Castaigne, and that he might not have the tragic or sympathetic qualities his narrative voice would suggest. Like last week’s Clara Militch, Castaigne has deluded himself into believing that he’s some kind of dark antihero where in reality he’s a megalomaniac who fell off his horse a little too hard.
He’s also petty and jealous, quietly terrorizing Constance’s father with knowledge gained from Mr. Wilde’s job as an information broker and bitterly fantasizing about misfortune befalling his more functional cousin/rival. His own machinations are heavily dependent on Wilde feeding his delusional megalomania, as he remains eagerly in thrall to his disfigured comrade—the only two places he ever seems to go are his own rooms and Hawberk’s building, where he can creepily make advances on Constance while also visiting Wilde on the third floor. Whenever Castaigne’s delusions are challenged, he reacts violently, expanding the scope of his plan, which eventually extends to murdering his psychiatrist, Mr. Hawberk, and Constance for presumably mocking him. The further the story gets, the more his delusions are laid bare, much like his cherished Yellow Crown being revealed as a brass-and-tinsel costume piece.
This pettiness and bottomless desire for power also extends to Wilde, who is seen in most scenes abusing his cat and gleefully namedropping the number of powerful people he controls from the tiny upstairs room he never leaves. Wilde is a grotesque, a disfigured man who wields soft power openly in this fascist state (though in a grim moment of humor it’s implied that the cat he mistreats might be responsible for his disfigurement rather than any tragic accident, as it brutally attacks him whenever it sees an opening). He’s a study in contrasts—a man who appears to wield immense power and influence, though confined to an office, and the only demonstration we see of his power is when he reads names and figures from books, in one scene hypnotizing one of his more unstable lackeys through merely reading a scroll about the secret lineage of the United States (which in Chambers’ bizarre future is apparently a monarchy, or used to be).
It’s this hypnosis scene that shows Wilde as he is. Far from the mysterious power broker pulling all the strings from his tiny room, he’s a self-aggrandizing manipulator, preying upon the paranoid and mentally unwell. In the end, he doesn’t even live to see his plans collapse around him, as the realistic outcomes of abusing a feral animal to the point of homicidal rage and relying on psychologically disturbed people to carry out his conspiratorial aims mean his cat appears to have mauled him to death in his sleep and his hired killer fails to kill anyone before diving headlong into a suicide booth, shrieking madly. The story ends (relatively) happily, with the bewildered Louis set to marry Constance and Castaigne dying a day later in a psychiatric facility.
Even in this apparently happy ending, there’s still a wrongness to everything. While the heroes have won, Louis remains a military officer serving a dystopian regime who did nothing to stop the villains whatsoever. He’s the very image of a dashing hero, but both his passivity in the plot and the undeniable fact that he’s a fascist officer create an unnerving dissonance. Louis might be cast in the heroic role, but his passivity and active support of dystopian powers mean he’s no hero. If anything, he’s rewarded merely for not being the worst person in the story and thus not causing his own downfall. Despite appearances, he’s just as wrong as everyone else in the story; he just seems nicer.
This is the genius of “The Repairer of Reputations.” By setting the entire story in a fascist dystopian version of the United States, Chambers puts the reader on their guard with an all-encompassing wrongness, forcing them to question exactly how much else is wrong even as he plays many of the usual gothic tropes straight. Within this framework, he’s able to show his villains as pathetic and despicable victims of their own delusions of power, his hero as a passive figure who vigorously supports the power and privilege around him, and ultimately the grand conflict of conspiracy and ambition as a petty struggle that leaves the oppressive dystopian regime with barely a scratch. By blending elements of science fiction and gothic horror, Chambers crafts a twisted gothic satire that remains heightened and fantastic even as it highlights the grim pettiness of its protagonist’s grand ambitions.
Now to turn it over to you. Do you think the dystopian futuristic setting was an inspired choice, or just an odd stylistic touch? How much of the story is Castaigne’s delusions? Which is your favorite of Chambers’ King in Yellow stories?
And please join us in two weeks for a look at a ghost story writer’s ghost story writer as we delve into Oliver Onions’ “The Beckoning Fair One.”[end-mark]
The post Of Cats, Conspiracies, and Carcosa: “The Repairer of Reputations” by Robert W. Chambers appeared first on Reactor.
Cynthia Erivo Will Voice the Original Elphaba in a New Audiobook Version of Wicked
Apr. 22nd, 2025 04:56 pmtordotcom_feedCynthia Erivo Will Voice the Original Elphaba in a New Audiobook Version of Wicked
Maybe it’s actually easy being green (metaphorically speaking).
Published on April 22, 2025
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Molly Templeton</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/cynthia-erivo-wicked-audiobook/">https://reactormag.com/cynthia-erivo-wicked-audiobook/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=811963">https://reactormag.com/?p=811963</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal">
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Cynthia Erivo Will Voice the Original Elphaba in a New Audiobook Version of <i>Wicked</i></h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Maybe it’s actually easy being green (metaphorically speaking).</div>
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Published on April 22, 2025
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<p>This time, we won’t get to hear her sing, but that’s okay. Cynthia Erivo, who stars in <em>Wicked</em> and the upcoming <em>Wicked: For Good</em> as Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, is going to play the iconic role once again—in a very different form. Erivo is the narrator for a <a href="https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/cynthia-erivo-wicked-audiobook-1236374845/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">new audiobook version</a> of <em>Wicked</em>, Gregory Maguire’s novel on which the musical and movie are based.</p>
<p>As a fan of the book more than the musical, this feels like a gift, and a lovely way to connect the blockbuster film back to its origins. Book Elphaba is different, and her story is <em>wildly</em> different, and frankly the thought of getting to hear Erivo perform my favorite scenes from <em>Wicked</em> gives me goosebumps. (One imagines she will have fun voicing Galinda, too.)</p>
<p>First published in 1995, <em>Wicked</em> was generally well-received but hardly a smash hit. Over the years, and in the wake of the musical, its visibility grew, and Maguire returned to Oz for three more books in the Wicked Years series: <em>Son of a Witch</em>, <em>A Lion Among Men</em>, and <em>Out of Oz</em>. More recently, he wrote a trilogy about Elphaba’s granddaughter, Rain, called Another Day. Just last month he published <em><a href="https://reactormag.com/book-review-elphie-by-gregory-maguire/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Elphie</a></em>, an unexpected prequel which takes readers back to Elphaba’s childhood years.</p>
<p>The new audiobook of <em>Wicked</em> will release on July 1st, and is available for preorder now.[end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/cynthia-erivo-wicked-audiobook/">Cynthia Erivo Will Voice the Original Elphaba in a New Audiobook Version of <i>Wicked</i></a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/cynthia-erivo-wicked-audiobook/">https://reactormag.com/cynthia-erivo-wicked-audiobook/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=811963">https://reactormag.com/?p=811963</a></p>
Jennifer Love Hewitt Asks the Tough Questions in the I Know What You Did Last Summer Trailer
Apr. 22nd, 2025 04:23 pmtordotcom_feedJennifer Love Hewitt Asks the Tough Questions in the I Know What You Did Last Summer Trailer
I bet you know what they did. I bet you do.
Published on April 22, 2025
Screenshot: Sony Pictures Entertainment
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Molly Templeton</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/jennifer-love-hewitt-asks-the-tough-questions-in-the-i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-trailer/">https://reactormag.com/jennifer-love-hewitt-asks-the-tough-questions-in-the-i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-trailer/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=811943">https://reactormag.com/?p=811943</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal">
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Jennifer Love Hewitt Asks the Tough Questions in the <i>I Know What You Did Last Summer</i> Trailer</h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">I bet you know what they did. I bet you do.</div>
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Published on April 22, 2025
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<div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-vertical [&_a]:link"><p>Screenshot: Sony Pictures Entertainment</p>
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<p>Let it never be said that a deeply awkward title might spell doom for a movie. Almost 20 years ago, way back in the ’90s, a gaggle of young stars—including Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and <em>Party of Five</em> star Jennifer Love Hewitt—starred in an adaptation of the Lois Duncan novel <em>I Know What You Did Last Summer</em>. Not all of their characters survived the film, in which a group of friends is menaced by a fishhook-wielding slasher who knows their darkest secret. It was part of writer Kevin Williamson’s teen pop culture boom; Williamson also created <em>Dawson’s Creek</em> and wrote <em>Scream</em>.</p>
<p>The movie was a hit and led to two somewhat less smashing sequels and a TV series. Now, its time has come again, and in the great tradition of just naming a new <em>Scream</em> film <em>Scream</em>, we have another movie called simply <em>I Know What You Did Last Summer</em>. Despite seeming to have a plot just like the first film, it is not a straight reboot, because Hewitt and her first-film co-star Freddie Prinze Jr. show up here to be useful once a new set of youths start getting murdered. </p>
<p>Said youths include Madelyn Cline (<em>Outer Banks</em>), Jonah Hauer-King (<em>The Little Mermaid</em>), Tyriq Withers (the upcoming <em>Him</em>), Chase Sui Wonders (<em>The Studio</em>), and Sarah Pidgeon (<em>The Wilds</em>). Some of them are not likely to last very long, one suspects. The synopsis says:</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences. A year later, their past comes back to haunt them and they’re forced to confront a horrifying truth: someone knows what they did last summer…and is hell-bent on revenge. As one by one the friends are stalked by a killer, they discover this has happened before, and they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport Massacre of 1997 for help.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (<em>Do Revenge</em>) directs from a screenplay she wrote with Sam Lansky; Robinson and Leah McKendrick have story credit. <em>I Know What You Did Last Summer</em> is in theaters July 18th.[end-mark]</p>
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<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/jennifer-love-hewitt-asks-the-tough-questions-in-the-i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-trailer/">Jennifer Love Hewitt Asks the Tough Questions in the <i>I Know What You Did Last Summer</i> Trailer</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/jennifer-love-hewitt-asks-the-tough-questions-in-the-i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-trailer/">https://reactormag.com/jennifer-love-hewitt-asks-the-tough-questions-in-the-i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-trailer/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=811943">https://reactormag.com/?p=811943</a></p>
Two Very Familiar Faces Have Joined the Game in Ready or Not: Here I Come
Apr. 22nd, 2025 03:09 pmtordotcom_feedTwo Very Familiar Faces Have Joined the Game in Ready or Not: Here I Come
They’re gonna find you whether you like it or not.
Published on April 22, 2025
Screenshot: 20th Century Fox
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Molly Templeton</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/two-very-familiar-faces-have-joined-the-game-in-ready-or-not-here-i-come/">https://reactormag.com/two-very-familiar-faces-have-joined-the-game-in-ready-or-not-here-i-come/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=811933">https://reactormag.com/?p=811933</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal">
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Ready or Not: Here I Come
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Two Very Familiar Faces Have Joined the Game in <i>Ready or Not: Here I Come</i></h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">They’re gonna find you whether you like it or not.</div>
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<p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/molly-templeton/" title="Posts by Molly Templeton" class="author url fn" rel="author">Molly Templeton</a></p>
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Published on April 22, 2025
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<p>In 2019, Samara Weaving met the world’s worst in-laws in the horror comedy <em>Ready or Not</em>. The film was a success, so, naturally, a sequel is coming—and it has a lot of star power. <em><a href="https://variety.com/2025/film/news/ready-or-not-2-sarah-michelle-gellar-elijah-wood-cast-1236374043/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Variety</a></em><a href="https://variety.com/2025/film/news/ready-or-not-2-sarah-michelle-gellar-elijah-wood-cast-1236374043/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> reports</a> that Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy herself) and Elijah Wood (Frodo himself) have joined the cast, which already boasted quite a lineup alongside the returning Weaving.</p>
<p><em>Ready or Not: Here I Come</em>, which Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett will return to direct, also stars Kathryn Newton (<em>Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania</em>), Néstor Carbonell (<em>The Dark Knight</em>, <em>Shogun</em>), Kevin Durand (<em>Abigail</em>), Shawn Hatosy (<em>The Pitt</em>), and David Cronenberg (<em>Star Trek: Discovery</em>). It’s written by Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, who also return from the first film.</p>
<p>(This is where you make a joke about how only the behind-the-scenes folks from the first film are returning, because it was an epic bloodbath.)</p>
<p>The premise of <em>Ready of Not</em> was, yes, a deadly came of hide-and-seek. When Grace (Weaving) marries Alex Le Domas (Mark O’Brien), she has to draw a card from the puzzle box created by his ancestor, who probably made a deal with the devil in order to get rich. Little does she know that when she draws the seemingly basic “Hide and Seek” card, she becomes an unwilling participant in a ritual sacrifice. Unless she survives to star in a sequel, that is.</p>
<p>No premiere date has been announced for <em>Ready or Not: Here I Come</em>.[end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/two-very-familiar-faces-have-joined-the-game-in-ready-or-not-here-i-come/">Two Very Familiar Faces Have Joined the Game in <i>Ready or Not: Here I Come</i></a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/two-very-familiar-faces-have-joined-the-game-in-ready-or-not-here-i-come/">https://reactormag.com/two-very-familiar-faces-have-joined-the-game-in-ready-or-not-here-i-come/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=811933">https://reactormag.com/?p=811933</a></p>
The Improbable Wedding of Fire and Ice: Jacques Cousteau’s Voyage to the Edge of the World
Apr. 22nd, 2025 03:00 pmtordotcom_feedThe Improbable Wedding of Fire and Ice: Jacques Cousteau’s Voyage to the Edge of the World
Cousteau’s journey to Antarctica reveals an incredible quantity and variety of life in its icy waters…
Published on April 22, 2025
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Sarah</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/the-improbable-wedding-of-fire-and-ice-jacques-cousteaus-voyage-to-the-edge-of-the-world/">https://reactormag.com/the-improbable-wedding-of-fire-and-ice-jacques-cousteaus-voyage-to-the-edge-of-the-world/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=811913">https://reactormag.com/?p=811913</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal">
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">The Improbable Wedding of Fire and Ice: Jacques Cousteau’s <i>Voyage to the Edge of the World</i></h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Cousteau’s journey to Antarctica reveals an incredible quantity and variety of life in its icy waters…</div>
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Published on April 22, 2025
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<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="740" height="493" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Cousteau-Voyage-to-the-Edge-of-the-World-740x493.jpg" class="w-full object-cover" alt="Detail from poster art for Jacques Cousteau's Voyage to the Edge of the World, depicting two divers and a submersible under water with a humpback whale" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Cousteau-Voyage-to-the-Edge-of-the-World-740x493.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Cousteau-Voyage-to-the-Edge-of-the-World-768x512.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Cousteau-Voyage-to-the-Edge-of-the-World.jpg 900w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure>
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<p>Jacques-Yves Cousteau has rather receded from public notice in this century, but in the twentieth century and up until his death in 1994, he was the king of the ocean explorers. His documentaries were a staple on television. Together with his son Philippe, he sailed his yacht, <em>Calypso</em>, from sea to sea and from pole to pole.</p>
<p><em>The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau</em> ran from 1966 until 1987. It’s still available on DVD, but it hasn’t been digitized for streaming. Only one of his original productions that I can find has been preserved in that format, a precis of his Antarctic expedition, <em>Voyage to the Edge of the World</em>.</p>
<p><site-embed id="15453"/></p>
<p>As it happens, my favorite section of <a href="https://reactormag.com/around-the-world-in-300-ish-days-jules-vernes-twenty-thousand-leagues-under-the-seas/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jules Verne’s <em>Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas</em></a> is the voyage to the South Pole. It’s nearly pure speculation, as in the 1860s, no explorer had yet managed to reach the pole. That would have to wait another half-century, for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen%27s_South_Pole_expedition" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Roald Amundsen’s expedition</a>. Verne knew of the Great Ice Barrier or Ross Ice Shelf, which barred the way to shipping—but his Captain Nemo had a solution to that: his submarine, the <em>Nautilus</em>.</p>
<p>Captain Nemo and the book’s narrator, Professor Aronnax, venture to sail beneath the great wall of ice. On the other side they find open water, but it’s a harrowing journey and they’re nearly fatally trapped inside an ice cave on the way out. It’s only through hard labor that the ship and its crew are able to break free.</p>
<p>On the way in, Aronnax notes tremendous numbers of mammals and birds, including seals, various species of whales, and penguins. He also mentions auks and walruses, which are not found in the Antarctic. The closest thing to either around the South Pole are penguins and elephant seals.</p>
<p>The Pole itself is a volcanic wasteland, and the sea—unlike the land and sky—is nearly empty. There Verne’s imagination failed, because as Cousteau says with a kind of giddy delight, “The southern polar waters are the richest of the world’s oceans.” The surface is stark and bare and barren, but the ocean is absolutely bursting with life, some of it downright alien. It’s taken modern technology, with submarines and submersibles that Verne could only dream of, to discover the incredible quantity and variety of life in these icy waters.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/animal/icefish" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The icefish</a>, for example, which has no hemoglobin in its blood. What flows through its veins is clear, almost like natural antifreeze. It thrives in water just this side of freezing.</p>
<p>Underwater explorations yield more wonderful weirdness. There’s a kind of jelly shaped like a bell that swings in the current, and gigantic many-armed starfish, and beautiful translucent squid (filmed alive for the first time), and a long-legged crab like a huge spider. And then there’s the stuff of nightmares: a six-foot wormlike creature that is nearly all digestive tract, covered in venomous cells that paralyze shrimp and draw them into its mouth.</p>
<p>Even while he celebrates the richness of life in Antarctic waters, Cousteau mourns the destruction of whale species by human predation. In 1975 when he mounted his expedition, the population of the humpback hovered around 6% of its numbers in the previous century. He was thrilled almost beyond words to encounter a mother and her calf at the beginning of the voyage, and to film them together until they vanished into the ocean. They were the only humpbacks he encountered, though he saw other species including the orca, or so-called killer whale.</p>
<p>Cousteau is a fan of the killer whale, which is misnamed, he says. It travels in family groups led by a big male, with several females and their young. It’s a social animal, and quite intelligent; while it is a powerful predator, the most powerful of the seas, it’s not a random killer. It feeds on fish and squid, and the occasional seal.</p>
<p>The over-hunting of whales had, at the time of the expedition, led to an oversupply of the creatures on which the whales had fed, notably the tiny red shrimp called krill. Other species moved in to fill the niche, notably starfish, which he calls “less interesting forms of life.” Cousteau deplores this waste of resources, as he sees it.</p>
<p>With the help of a naturalist, Dr. Raymond Duguy, Cousteau and his crew constructed a memorial to the whale on the beach where whalers brought their catch to be butchered. It “presents a vision out of Dante,” he says, “an appalling ossuary.” They put together a macabre jigsaw puzzle of gigantic wind-scoured bones of a blue whale. The head alone weighed eight hundred pounds, and the beak was fifteen feet long. They left it there, all ninety feet of it, as a monument to a species that had nearly been hunted to extinction.</p>
<p>Other species at that time not only survived but thrived. We see huge colonies of penguins leaping like porpoises through the water and swarming toward their summer breeding grounds. Males first, Cousteau notes, seeking out their nesting spots and raising their voices to call the females, with whom they essentially mate for life. These, after an eight-month separation, come flocking to their mates for a passionate reunion, multiple varieties gathering together to incubate their eggs and raise their young. Male and females share nesting duties, taking turns hunting for fish and shrimp to feed their offspring.</p>
<p>Skuas, large and aggressive gull-like birds, nest nearby and prey on penguin eggs and babies. Seals go for the adults as they head for the water, not always successfully—one of Cousteau’s crew chases one off before it can enjoy a dinner of fresh penguin.</p>
<p>I love penguins, and I think Cousteau does, too. He spends quite a bit of time with them. As funny and cute as they are on land, photobombing the whale memorial and following the humans around and belly-sledding along the ice, they’re amazing in the water. They’re fast, agile, and their little arms turn into powerful oars that propel them through the sea and carry them up and over the breakers onto the shore.</p>
<p>Although the leopard seal doesn’t get his penguin, his relatives gather en masse in the sea and demonstrate their prowess on the ice: digging circular holes through six feet of ice and slipping gracefully down into a strange and beautiful underwater world. Divers from the crew, led by Philippe, open up one of their holes and head down a thousand feet into the realm of the seal.</p>
<p>It’s no little bit terrifying, with its roof of ice and its few small openings into the air. A seal can stay down there for an hour, tracking by sonar; the sea is full of their songs. It’s amazing that they not only can find their way in the dark, but know exactly where their exits are.</p>
<p>Cousteau speculates that they must not be comfortable in that world, but I wonder. After all, they’re made for it; it’s their natural habitat. On land they’re slow and rather clumsy. In water they’re transformed: fast, sleek, powerful.</p>
<p>Watching Cousteau’s footage, I can see where the legends of the selkie come from. The huge soft eyes, the rotund, supple bodies lolling on land and skimming through the water. There’s an almost human quality in them, and yet they’re alien, with powers and capabilities that humans can only approximate with technology.</p>
<p>I think Verne would have loved Cousteau’s discoveries and been enthralled by his technology, especially the helicopter that allows the team to scout ahead of the ship. Much of the documentary seems to me to reflect Verne’s chapter, enlarging on his descriptions of the life above the surface and revealing a whole new world below it. Verne’s imagination came remarkably close to the truth, with the knowledge he had at the time, and his sense of wonder finds a clear echo in Cousteau and his crew.[end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/the-improbable-wedding-of-fire-and-ice-jacques-cousteaus-voyage-to-the-edge-of-the-world/">The Improbable Wedding of Fire and Ice: Jacques Cousteau’s <i>Voyage to the Edge of the World</i></a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/the-improbable-wedding-of-fire-and-ice-jacques-cousteaus-voyage-to-the-edge-of-the-world/">https://reactormag.com/the-improbable-wedding-of-fire-and-ice-jacques-cousteaus-voyage-to-the-edge-of-the-world/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=811913">https://reactormag.com/?p=811913</a></p>
Another Lost Alum Is Making a Star Wars Series
Apr. 22nd, 2025 02:41 pmtordotcom_feed
Lucasfilm announcements are feeling a bit uninspired lately, and this one is no exception: Variety has the news that Lost co-showrunner Carlton Cuse is creating a new Star Wars series with his son, Nick, a writer on Watchmen and The Leftovers.
As Variety notes, “There are practically no other details available about the show,” including plot, cast, and when it might take place in the greater Star Wars timeline.
Cuse, of course, is hardly the first Lost alum to make (or at least begin) the jump to lightspeed. Lost co-creator J.J. Abrams directed The Force Awakens and, alas, The Rise of Skywalker, which you’d think might give Lucasfilm pause on returning to the Lost well, but here we are. More recently, Damon Lindelof (Cuse’s co-showrunner on Lost) was attached to write the Rey follow-up movie (with co-writer Justin Britt-Gibson) that Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is directing, but he was asked to leave the galaxy far, far away.
Cuse has done more than just Lost; more recently, he was the showrunner on Netflix’s Locke & Key. He also worked on The Strain, Jack Ryan, and Colony.
At this point, it seems fair to take most Star Wars announcements with a grain of salt. In theory, we are still waiting on a Taika Waititi Star War, a Rian Johnson Star War trilogy, and more projects that have neither made progress nor been officially shuttered. Shawn Levy’s Star War, titled Starfighter, has a star (Ryan Gosling) and a premiere date (May 28, 2027). Meanwhile, we await news on Patty Jenkins’ on-again, off-again, on-again Rogue Squadron.[end-mark]
The post Another Lost Alum Is Making a Star Wars Series appeared first on Reactor.
In “Through the Valley,” The Last of Us Changes Everything
Apr. 22nd, 2025 02:30 pmtordotcom_feedIn “Through the Valley,” The Last of Us Changes Everything
Is everybody okay?
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Molly Templeton</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/the-last-of-us-through-the-valley-review/">https://reactormag.com/the-last-of-us-through-the-valley-review/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=811914">https://reactormag.com/?p=811914</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal">
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">In “Through the Valley,” <i>The Last of Us</i> Changes Everything</h2>
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<p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/molly-templeton/" title="Posts by Molly Templeton" class="author url fn" rel="author">Molly Templeton</a></p>
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<p>I honestly don’t know where to start.</p>
<p>So let’s just start by saying <strong>this will have all the spoilers</strong>.</p>
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<p>What I knew about the second season of <em>The Last of Us</em> before it began was very basic: Joel would die at Abby’s hands.</p>
<p>In no way did I expect that to happen in the <em>second episode</em>, or in the manner in which it happened, or with poor Ellie right there and helpless. I thought: penultimate episode. Season finale. Especially since it’s been <a href="https://reactormag.com/the-last-of-us-will-return-for-a-third-season/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">made pretty clear</a> that the story from the second <em>Last of Us</em> game is going to stretch over more than one season of television, I thought: That will happen later, after we’ve seen more of this divide between Ellie and Joel.</p>
<p>Nope. </p>
<p>And it makes sense, in hindsight, because for the rest of this short, seven-episode season, Ellie is almost certainly going to send herself on Abby’s journey in reverse. (I don’t <em>know</em> this. I don’t know any other spoilers. I am just going by how this one ended.) The first episode set the five-years-later stage for our survivors. This one kind of throws them all in a wood chipper. Artfully.</p>
<p>And it starts, appropriately, with Abby, dreaming of the hospital hallway in Salt Lake City with the horrors at the end of it. Dreaming of herself telling herself not to go in there and look. If you watched the-after-the-episode interviews last week, you already learned what this is hinting at, what becomes explicit later: The doctor Joel shot in the head was her dad. Abby’s quest for vengeance is personal and painful and despite the fact that it’s been five years, she still doesn’t want to look at it too closely. </p>
<p>And yet, five years down the line, all the people who were with in Salt Lake are still with her in Wyoming. What do they feel they owe her? What hold does she have over them? What are the odds that not one of them would peel off and refuse to return? They are freezing half to death in a lodge on the edge of a mountain because Abby wants revenge. But what do <em>they</em> want, when they’re not freaking out over the size of Jackson by daylight, or beginning to wonder if they can get Abby to just give up and go home?</p>
<p>Abby, though, is beyond stubborn. It’s a stubbornness that edges over into foolishness. Surely that doesn’t remind us of anyone.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="733" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/young-mazino_0-1100x733.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-811917" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/young-mazino_0-1100x733.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/young-mazino_0-740x493.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/young-mazino_0-768x512.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/young-mazino_0-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/young-mazino_0.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: Liane Hentscher/HBO</figcaption></figure>
<p>The casting on this show is universally excellent, but so far this season a quiet VIP nod goes to Young Mazino as Jesse, who has the unpleasant job of waking up a very crabby Ellie for patrol. Their relationship feels lived-in: Jesse knows when to back off, and when to call Ellie on her shit. Their banter, even as she tries to be too tough for banter, is perfect: the way he pretends to be horrified that Ellie and Dina kissed, the way he points out her tendency toward “certainty masquerading as knowledge.” In the midst of their conversation there are two glaring details. One is the mention of infected using their own dead as bait while hiding under the snow. The other is Ellie’s insistence that, contrary to all appearances, she and Joel are fine. Complicated, but “better now.” Nothing will ever change who they are to each other.</p>
<p>There is a clear suggestion here that more happened between Ellie and Joel the night before than we’ve seen yet. I suspect heartbreak city is coming in the form of a flashback—and also in Ellie having to deal with the fact that she wanted to go on patrol with Joel, and Joel wanted to go on patrol with her, but in an act of kindness, he said to let her sleep. </p>
<p>Overall, “Through the Valley” constantly tells us what is going to happen, and then makes it happen in ways that are no less shocking for knowing what’s coming. In the restaurant, Tommy calls the whole town together for a drill on what they do in an emergency. Bells, flares, shelter, guns. Maria makes Seth apologize to Ellie for using a slur at her and Dina, and Seth almost sounds like he means it. I’m beginning to wonder if there is a story through-line with Seth, if he wasn’t just a one-off rude-man appearance at the New Year’s dance.</p>
<p>I don’t really understand why the town sends out two-person patrols when Jesse <em>just</em> told Ellie about the snow pit full of infected—and also when Ellie’s last patrol was five people. I don’t understand sending two-person patrols out into a growing snowstorm. But there’s a theme here of underestimation. Abby isn’t that deadly. The snowstorm isn’t that bad. The smart infected was a ghost story. Maybe the snow-murder-pit was a fluke. No one wants to believe the horrible thing happening right in front of them even as it’s happening. </p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="733" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/gabriel-luna_0-1100x733.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-811918" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/gabriel-luna_0-1100x733.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/gabriel-luna_0-740x493.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/gabriel-luna_0-768x512.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/gabriel-luna_0-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/gabriel-luna_0.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: Liane Hentscher/HBO</figcaption></figure>
<p>In the snowy, frigid calm before everything goes to absolute shit, Jesse and Ellie hole up in a 7-11 full of weed plants that once belonged to the oft-mentioned Eugene, who, it turns out, used to be a Firefly. This, maybe, puts another wrinkle into his death at Joel’s hands. The implication seems to be that Eugene got bitten—Jesse says he “couldn’t be saved”—but given Joel’s past with the Fireflies, he can’t have been comfortable having even a former member around.</p>
<p>There’s a part of me that wishes the show hadn’t told us to expect the snow-pit full of infected, and also a part of me that thinks throwing that at us as a shocking surprise might have been over the top in this particular episode. My notes from that scene are incoherent and all caps as it is (OH MY GUFKC IT’S LIKE LIQUIFYING AROUND THE DEAD OMG HORRIBLE ZOMBIE PIT). Having heard about it does not fully prepare a person for seeing it, though, for seeing the snow just churn like that. Abby’s escape seems impossible—whoever thought up that wilting cyclone fence is an evil genius—until it doesn’t. Until she’s saved, and there’s an epic-tragedy angle on who saves her.</p>
<p>Because of course it’s Joel. He sees a young woman—who looks like a kid to him—in mortal peril and immediately leaps to her aid. You could assume, fairly, that he was in that building with Dina already because Dina was clearly suffering from the cold. Joel’s choices, one after the other, have led him here. Not just the massive choices like Salt Lake, but the little ones, too.</p>
<p>We know Abby wants to kill Joel because she said so. And yet in that whole sequence, from the pit of doom to the infected pounding on a door that will not hold, it feels impossible to not be invested in her survival. There is a bigger picture here, one hard to see among all the intimate drama: humanity is in tatters. The infected are displaying new behaviors. Shit is getting <em>wild</em>. I don’t want anyone to die. But that’s not how the end of the world works. Or a quest for vengeance.</p>
<p>There’s an absolutely gorgeous shot of the infected horde chasing Dina, Joel, and Abby as they race away on horseback that feels like a perfect crystallization of this episode: Full of horrors, and yet beautiful, sometimes. In so many moments, people demonstrate care and act on their love for others: Tommy insists that Amy (Reedan Elizabeth) radio for Joel every ten seconds. Tommy and Maria constantly look out for each other amid the battle for Jackson. Ellie, hearing that Joel is in trouble, tears out like she could single-handedly save him from anything and everything that might be on his tail. Even Abby is driven by love and grief. </p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="733" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rutina-wesley_0-1100x733.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-811920" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rutina-wesley_0-1100x733.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rutina-wesley_0-740x493.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rutina-wesley_0-768x512.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rutina-wesley_0-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rutina-wesley_0.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: Liane Hentscher/HBO</figcaption></figure>
<p>(I am, amid all the feelings and horrors, a little bit confused about why the tendrils in the pipe summoned the second infected horde now, and not when they were exposed to the air the previous night. I had to watch twice to fully understand that the second infected pack claws up from the snow after the tendrils wiggle, and the first pack peels off from their chase to join the second, presumably all summoned by the mysteries of the mycelial network. But why now? Why not last night?)</p>
<p>This felt like a season-finale level episode, a season-finale-grade peak of impressive set pieces and emotional devastation, and it left me a little terrified of how the showrunners are going to follow it. In Jackson, the tactic of telling us what would happen before showing it proves at once terrifying, effective, and briefly comforting. For a few minutes, we watch the residents move into position, so prepared for this inevitable attack, and then it all goes to shit, like it always does. But there is a brief moment of appreciating the preparations, the plans, the way that this community works together. (Also, exploding infected. It’s grotesquely satisfying.) In an episode full of spectacular performances, Gabriel Luna and Rutina Wesley hold everything together, steady and fierce, the necessary center of that town. I worried so much that one of them would die. But they couldn’t do that to us. Not this week.</p>
<p>Up in the lodge, there’s a moment of softness from Mel (Ariela Barer) as she tends to Dina; there’s a streak of care in that woman that I don’t think Abby can strip out, and I wonder how that is going to play out in the long run. I wonder how long it is until any of them turn on her, honestly. But for now, they’re under her command, and the minute Abby names Joel, everything shifts. These militia members are swift, practiced, determined, and Abby’s whole demeanor goes cold and terrible once she’s out of danger and has her prey well and truly captured. Kaitlyn Dever is incredible in this, moving with a steely viciousness that we know, from that opening scene, is masking a world of hurt. Hurt she doesn’t bother to hide, once she has the upper hand. There are tears in her eyes from the start. </p>
<p>Hurt people hurt people, as they say. And the hypocrisy of her insistence on there being things everyone knows are “just fucking wrong”—saying this, moments before she beats a man to death with a golf club—it’s palpable. It’s not subtle, and it isn’t trying to be. The show told us this was coming, and then delivered exactly what Abby promised: Joel’s slow death. That doesn’t make it right. There is no right. Joel acted out of love, and now Abby does the same, and it still ends up with people dead. </p>
<p>It’s heartbreaking but understandable that Joel doesn’t try to defend himself or explain, because what can he explain? Ellie’s immunity is a secret from Jackson; he’s certainly not going to share it with this crew. His actions are still to protect her. He doesn’t argue with Abby, either. He nods. It’s debatable whether that means he agrees with her, or if he’s just nodding in acceptance: This is what she believes, and what she’s going to act on. He acted from his own sense of belief. </p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="733" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/kaitlyn-dever-pedro-pascal-1100x733.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-811921" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/kaitlyn-dever-pedro-pascal-1100x733.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/kaitlyn-dever-pedro-pascal-740x493.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/kaitlyn-dever-pedro-pascal-768x512.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/kaitlyn-dever-pedro-pascal-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/kaitlyn-dever-pedro-pascal.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: Liane Hentscher/HBO</figcaption></figure>
<p>Director Mark Mylod—a <em>Game of Thrones</em> vet who does a stunning job here with impossible material—and writer Craig Mazin make sure that we’re watching not just Abby’s pulping of Joel, but everyone watching her. Those faces are not unmoved. They came here with Abby, they knew what she wanted to do, but knowing is not the same as watching. We hardly know anything about them, especially quiet Nora (Tati Gabrielle, of <em>The 100</em> and <em>Chilling Adventures of Sabrina</em>) and quick-to-violence Manny (Danny Ramirez, the Falcon himself). The show doesn’t make us watch every minute as Abby beats Joel to the point of breaking a golf club. But it makes us very aware that <em>they</em> watched. </p>
<p>Even though it would solve nothing, fix nothing, I felt that wish for Ellie to storm in and take out Abby. But then Abby’s friends would just kill Ellie, and maybe Dina too, and nothing would change, the cycle going on and on and on. Still, it’s in so many stories, this rush and drive for revenge, for some broken version of “justice,” the pointlessness of “an eye for an eye,” that it feels like resolution, narratively. The illusion is there; the story lets us feel it, and then reminds us how impossible it is. Ellie does not storm in and save the day. Ellie storms in and is immediately disarmed for the crushing, brutal finale, which is all the more brutal for the almost casual way Abby ends Joel’s life. And then she just walks away, not realizing she’s just turned Ellie into her mirror image.</p>
<p>The rest of this episode is so heartbreaking it is hard to find words for it. The quiet through which Abby’s team moves as they depart is a standout choice, a moment of silence for the audience to sit with what we’ve just seen. Bella Ramsey’s performance of Ellie’s heartbreak is gut-wrenching, and Pedro Pascal bruisingly embodies that moment when Joel tries to rise. He has almost nothing left, but it’s all for Ellie. The closure is full of love and horror and loss, shot through with a terrible thread of practicality: Jesse arriving, the horse towing Joel’s body, the blood-soaked streets in Jackson, the additional deaths of those bitten in the fight. Violence doesn’t just end; it has repercussions, and this is only the beginning. </p>
<p>After the first season of <em>The Last of Us</em>, I wasn’t sure I was going to keep watching. I felt burnt out, exhausted, tired of all the horrors and feeling as if I had spent enough time in various desolate post-apocalyptic worlds. Why watch the horrors on the TV when there are so many horrors happening every day? </p>
<p>But I was curious, and I loved Pascal and Ramsey together, and I kind of wanted to know the hows and whys of what I knew would happen with Abby. Now, I’m glad I came back to it. This episode, of all things, made me glad I came back to it. It’s a masterful display of balance when it could have been a numbing onslaught of cruelty and violence. It’s beautifully pieced together, dealing ugliness with one hand and community with the other, and it’s crafted in such a way that the almost inevitable comparisons to the battle of Helm’s Deep or <em>Game of Thrones</em>’ “Hardhome” are more than earned. “Through the Valley” is the clearest example of what this show can be, of the story it wants to tell, and that story involves a willingness to leave its audience in discomfort. We’re mourning along with the characters, hoping they can rebuild—but fearing there’s a lot more violence to come.[end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/the-last-of-us-through-the-valley-review/">In “Through the Valley,” <i>The Last of Us</i> Changes Everything</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/the-last-of-us-through-the-valley-review/">https://reactormag.com/the-last-of-us-through-the-valley-review/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=811914">https://reactormag.com/?p=811914</a></p>
Five SFF Works About Unlikely Global Superpowers
Apr. 22nd, 2025 02:00 pmtordotcom_feedFive SFF Works About Unlikely Global Superpowers
Improbable, but not impossible, ascents to the world stage…
Published on April 22, 2025
Photo by Adolfo Félix [via Unsplash]
Photo by Adolfo Félix [via Unsplash]
The current prime minister of Canada recently asserted: “If the United States no longer wants to lead, Canada will.” While the prime minister clearly means “lead” in the sense of setting an example while pursuing new alliances, it does raise the amusing prospect of a global Pax Canada, under which every human is provided all the peace, order, good government, and poutine that they could want.
Canada has about half a percent of the global population and, while it does well economically on a per capita basis, that tiny population means Canada accounts for a bit over one percent of the global GDP. Those aren’t numbers that suggest world domination is in the cards1.
That said, a quick glance at history shows a number of polities that have leveraged some asset (a slight technological edge, convenient location, organizational prowess2) to bat well out of their league. The Mongol Empire, which at its height might have had a hundred million subjects—a quarter or a third of the human race!—started from a base of one or two million people, proportionally the same fraction of world population in the 13th century as Canada has in the 21st. It’s not unreasonable to think that circumstance and cunning could deliver similar success to a comparatively low-population polity3.
Of course, science fiction authors have realized this. Thus, some comparatively low-population regions have enjoyed disproportionate influence in fiction, thanks to luck, cunning, and the fact the author was on their side. Consider these five examples.
Texas
In Fritz Leiber’s 1969 A Specter Is Haunting Texas, perfidious Texans used their control of the US government to provide the petite state of Texas4 with a disproportionate fraction of America’s bomb shelters. Thus, Texas emerged from the Atomic War in far better shape the rest of the United States—a state of affairs they were happy to exploit.
By the time woefully misinformed space beatnik Christopher Crockett La Cruz descends from the lunar colonies to secure ownership of the Lost Crazy-Russian Pitchblende Mine, bombastic, smugly ignorant, hormone-enhanced, cowboy-cosplaying Texans rule almost all of North America. This is in fact less than entirely ideal, especially from the perspective of the Mexicans enslaved by Texas, and no doubt would be undesirable from the Canadian perspective as well… if any Canadians had survived, which it does not appear they did.
The key thing to understand about Leiber’s hate letter to Lyndon Baines Johnson is that it’s a hate letter to the Lyndon Baines Johnson who sent kids off to Vietnam, not the Lyndon Baines Johnson responsible for rural electrification, electoral reform, and the Great Society. The first LBJ seems to have entirely eclipsed the second, at least for the duration of this novel.
Denmark
In Harry Harrison’s 1970 In Our Hands, The Stars (AKA The Daleth Effect) plucky little Denmark is literally handed the keys to the stars by defecting Israeli scientist Arnie Klein. Having discovered a novel phenomenon (the Daleth Effect of the title), Klein is terrified by its destructive potential. Only a government of particularly sterling character, preferably one not perpetually on the brink of war with its neighbors, can be trusted with the secret of the Daleth Effect. For Klein, Denmark is the obvious candidate.
Thus, Denmark finds itself the guardian of a secret that can deliver everything from cheap space flight to weapons of mass destruction. Also, it already possesses the research and industrial base needed to turn theory into technology. For a brief, shining moment, Denmark is poised to become a great power not merely on Earth, but in space as well.
The flaw that Klein and his allies overlooked (but author Harrison did not) is that the great secret was not in the details of the Daleth Effect, but that the Daleth Effect existed at all. Denmark’s era of dominance in the field of Daleth Effect applications proves exceptionally short-lived.
New Zealand and Polynesia
In Poul Anderson’s Maurai sequence—“The Sky People” (1959), “Progress” (1962), “Windmill” (1973), and the novels There Will Be Time (1972) and Orion Shall Rise (1983)—our current civilization violently collapsed, leaving a depopulated, primitive world. New Zealand and Polynesia formed a core of redevelopment, giving rise to the Maurai Federation.
I don’t think Anderson ever gave economic or population figures for the Federation, but the land area available and the skeptical views held by the Maurai regarding population and industrial development would have imposed a firm cap. Nevertheless, the Maurai enjoy a long period of ascendency, which they use to provide other nations with prudent guidance of the sort the other nations would have wanted, if only those nations were sensible.
Yes, eventually the Pax Maurai collapses. This is Poul Anderson. Everything dies. Also, while the Maurai no doubt think of themselves as splendid fellows, and the limits they impose on others as manifestly reasonable, there are exchanges like the following one from “Progress”:
Breathless, Alisabeta reached for her glass. Lorn rubbed his chin. “Mmm… Maybe,” he said. “If industrialism can feed and clothe people better, doesn’t it deserve to win out?”
“Who says it can?” she argued. It can feed and clothe more people, yes. But not necessarily better. And are sheer numbers any measure of quality, Lorn?”
…which cannot have endeared the Maurai to the legions of impoverished people kept on the brink of starvation by Maurai foreign policy.
Quebec
Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice’s 1989 Light Raid is short on backstory details. However, what is clear is that North American borders have been redrawn and that the Western States and the Commonwealth are (reluctant) allies. Why are they allies? Because Quebec.
Despite having (at present) about two percent of the North American population, Willis and Felice’s Quebec is an aggressive military powerhouse, able to conduct an intermittent but sustained war with the Anglophone nations sufficiently ferocious to induce the other nations to ally against Quebec. Elbows up!
As the events are told from the perspective of an Anglophone, it’s not entirely clear what Quebec thinks is going on. Is it trying to conquer the rest of North America in a bid to expand the Canadiens’ fanbase? or is it simply preventing a repeat of the Plains of Abraham?
The Canary Islands (or possibly the Azores)
Olympus, featured in Masamune Shirow’s manga Appleseed (1985 to 1989), owes its superpower status to three factors. First, the artificial island nation (located somewhere near the Canary Islands and the Azores) sat out many of the exciting events of the 21st and 22nd century, which ranged from nation-depopulating wars to a giant meteor impact in China. Second, the island nation’s technological base (and its willingness to apply it) is unparalleled. Third, Olympus’ ruling class is as pragmatic as it is visionary.
The only tiny fruit fly on this particular quasi-utopian sundae is that while Olympus seems mercifully free of corruption5, and while all of the major players in Olympus are rational, various factions favour distinctly different public policies. As violence is one of the tools used by the ever so practical Olympians, it is possible that had Shirow continued the manga series, Olympus would have been brought down by its internal contradictions.
Yes, I could have mentioned Tau Zero’s Swedish world empire or The Mouse That Roared’s Grand Fenwick or Arslan’s Turkmenistan… but I’ve mentioned all of them here before. No doubt there are some other worthy examples I’ve overlooked—feel free to mention them in comments below.[end-mark]
- Not that Canadians would want to dominate, of course—not when we could serve in a leadership role supported by a freely given global consensus. None of us want to carve our way to the Gulf of Mexico or even dictate the creation of the territories of Greater Franklin (former North Dakota, and named for Sir John, not Ben) and Lesser Franklin (the rest of the US).
︎ - As Carlos Yu once quipped, the Celts managed to conquer lands from the Atlantic to the Black Sea using nothing but meanness and porridge. Tragically, that no longer works. Sad news for Quaker Oats. ︎
- Of course, the Mongol Empire wasn’t sustainable. As previously discussed, I am not sure world empires are all that stable and the Mongol Empire is among the closest humans have ever gotten to a unitary world government. ︎
- If Texas were a Canadian province, it would be smaller than Quebec, British Columbia, and Ontario. If it were a Canadian territory, it would be smaller than the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. I, for one, am impressed by how the diminutive size of Texas has in no way inspired Texans to overcompensate with, I don’t know, ludicrous gun collections and outsized pickup trucks. ︎
- Internal corruption, anyway. I am sure Olympus sees nothing wrong with getting a French, British, or Imperial American politician onside with a steamer truck full of hundred-dollar bills. ︎
The post Five SFF Works About Unlikely Global Superpowers appeared first on Reactor.
Well Groomed
Apr. 22nd, 2025 01:00 pmcakewrecks_feed
Thanks to Julie Anne, Annabel J., Allison M., & Natalia L. for forcing all the kids out there to explain "Trololo" to their parents.
*****
P.S. This one's for the groom and all my fellow gamers out there:
"I Paused My Game To Be Here" T-Shirt
It comes in lots of fun colors at the link, plus classic gray and black.
*****
And from my other blog, Epbot:
I Can Open My Mouth THIS Wide!
Apr. 22nd, 2025 10:00 amdaily_otter_feed
Via Oregon Coast Aquarium, which writes:
This king got a crown!
Sea otters rely on their incredibly tough teeth to crack through shellfish, and their dental health is closely related to their overall health. As such, we keep a close eye on our sea otters’ teeth and work with veterinarians to provide dental care as necessary!
That said, Oswald recently had a root canal and needed a crown. While it looks gold, it’s made of titanium and has a yellow metallic finish. Oswald is now recovering behind-the-scenes, and his caretakers report that he is doing well.
You can see the crown in the first pic, and check out the link above to see how they applied it!
I have space in my non-existent schedule for a terrible book
Apr. 22nd, 2025 08:30 amcamestrosfelapton_feedOne rule: it has to be non-fiction.
Let’s face it, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Middle of the Road Opinions on Genre did not deliver. I’ve a pile stored up debunking energy and cannisters of snark already to go and nothing to aim it at.
What’s a bad non-fiction book that I should read on your behalf?
Hitchcock for Dummies
Apr. 21st, 2025 11:17 pmslacktivist_feedIt used to be a lot of work coming up with the premise for a Hitchcock-style thriller, but now the most unbelievable set-up just seems realistic.