{"id":96,"date":"2007-09-12T23:15:24","date_gmt":"2007-09-12T23:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/?p=96"},"modified":"2020-02-12T23:03:52","modified_gmt":"2020-02-13T04:03:52","slug":"flashback-to-space-above-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/flashback-to-space-above-and-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback to Space: Above and Beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back when I slogged through IMDB\u2019s list of \u201csci-fi\u201d film and TV to pick out my top 25 of the past 25 years<\/a>, I noticed some stuff with high ratings that I hadn\u2019t seen. Netflix ahoy! Just recently I finished one of these shows, Space: Above and Beyond<\/a><\/i>. It didn\u2019t take too long, because like some other worthies it was prematurely cancelled.<\/p>\n

S:AAB (as it\u2019s abbreviated by fans) ran from 1995-1996 on Fox. Produced by Glen Morgan<\/a> and James Wong<\/a> (frequent collaborators who had previously worked on The X-Files<\/a><\/i>), it had a large budget for the time, and, apart from a few early exceptions, featured very good CGI. The premise will seem familiar if you\u2019ve seen the Alien<\/a><\/i> movies or Starship Troopers<\/a><\/i>: in the year 2063, humanity is attacked by a previously unknown species of bug-like aliens (soon dubbed \u201cthe Chigs\u201d) and must fight a series of desperate space battles to survive. Five of the six main characters start as new Marine recruits (or \u201cmaggots\u201d according to their drill sergeant, played by Lee Ermey<\/a>, seemingly just off the set of Full Metal Jacket<\/a><\/i>), but under the leadership of their new commanding officer, Colonel McQueen, they quickly become hot shit. The 58th squadron, also known as \u201cthe Wildcards\u201d, are called in on the toughest, most interesting missions, which conveniently enough are what the audience wants to know about.The first half of the season doesn\u2019t advance the plot much. We get some background on the Earth of 2063, which has united under a single world government after a devastating war with rebellious artificial intelligences. The A.I.s lost but weren\u2019t eliminated, and now appear to be consorting with the enemy off in outer space. If the Cylon-like robots aren\u2019t enough to scratch your sci-fi itch, there is also a population of exploited people who\u2019ve been grown in vats \u2013 the inVitros. Two of the main characters, McQueen and Hawkes, are inVitros, and this becomes quite important in several episodes. They are basically the science fictional proxies for present day targets of racism.<\/p>\n

The style of the early episodes is uneven. The writing, particularly in the pilot, is not that great, and there\u2019s a fair bit of wink-wink cleverness and\/or cheesiness. The best of this first lot is \u201cRay Butts\u201d, which benefits from a terrific guest actor (Steve Rankin) and some genuine humor mixed with weirdness. That being said, I\u2019m glad that it was the last episode that really, strongly reminded me of The X-Files<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Round about episode 11, things started to improve substantially. The stupid A.I. storyline fell by the wayside, allowing the writers to focus on the war themes and some more nuanced character development. I really started to like McQueen. Most of the time he acts like he has a pole up his ass, but he genuinely loves his pilots \u2013 who he calls \u201cthe kids\u201d, almost like they\u2019re really his children. He\u2019s not just a father-figure, either; there are a couple of great scenes where he talks about the treatment of inVitros, and it\u2019s obvious that he\u2019s seething with rage about it most of the time. He\u2019s a great character, and James Morrison<\/a> makes the most of the role. As the season continued, I grew fond of all the members of the squad, even the annoying West. They all loosened up and worked better together, something that\u2019s really important in an ensemble piece.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the plot and the missions kicked into high gear. I liked that these missions weren\u2019t rah-rah boosterism for our protagonists. They make a lot of mistakes and often seem ridiculously incurious about what\u2019s really going on. After the second or third instance of a character shrugging off or not even noticing something that practically had a neon sign flashing \u201cI\u2019m important!\u201d over it, my housemate and I started coming up with alternate names for the show. \u201cSpace: Just Doing Our Jobs\u201d\u2026 \u201cSpace: Between Our Ears\u201d. Having watched the whole series of 22 episodes, I now appreciate that it was a conscious choice to make the characters fairly normal grunts. They\u2019re not passionate do-gooders or private detectives, they\u2019re just soldiers trying to keep each other alive one day at a time.<\/p>\n

This is a show about war, first and foremost. Colonel McQueen is a student of war history and is prone to quoting from Sun Tzu<\/a> and The Iliad<\/a><\/i>. One episode flashes quotes from The Red Badge of Courage<\/i><\/a> before each act, and another tells the remarkable story of one Christmas Day in World War I<\/a> when American, British and German soldiers called a truce and came out of their trenches to shake hands, bury their dead, and play soccer. The show focuses quite a bit on bravery and honor in wartime, but the costs of battle are never whitewashed, and the enemy is never dehumanized. (Despite the fact that they\u2019re\u2026 not human.) There\u2019s a lot of sweat, exhaustion, sadness, and death, and not so much glory. I couldn\u2019t help wondering, \u201cWhat\u2019s it all for, anyway?\u201d<\/p>\n

As it turns out, there is<\/i> an evil megacorporation<\/a> involved. In the tradition of the Tyrell Corporation<\/a> and Weyland-Yutani<\/a>, we have AeroTech, manipulator of elections, collector of alien technology, employer of clever-talking, shifty eggheads. There are some strong indications that they, unlike the rest of humanity, knew about the Chigs before the doomed Tellus colony was established. Why they chose to hide that knowledge is never made clear, because the damn show was cancelled!<\/p>\n

It was not without its influence, though. I was immediately struck by how much it resembled the Starship Troopers<\/i> movie that came out the following year as well as the new version of Battlestar Galactica<\/a><\/i>. All three feature a sexually integrated military that wages war against a space-faring enemy. Individual story elements of S:AAB appear to have been copied in BSG: an organic alien ship that has to be reverse engineered by human pilots; an alien fighter pilot who picks off dozens of humans and seems unstoppable (the S:AAB version is called \u201cChiggy von Richtofen<\/a>\u201d!); the production of a documentary film about life in the military. The rebellious mechanical life forms who appear human are a common element as well, but I think BSG\u2019s take on it owed more to Blade Runner<\/a><\/i>. After all, the Cylons don\u2019t have cross-hairs on their eyeballs or make techno beeps as they walk around. (Did I mention the A.I.s were stupid? Even David Duchovny\u2019s<\/a> cameo as the \u201centertainment model\u201d Alvin EL couldn\u2019t redeem them.)<\/p>\n

I think BSG is a better show all around, but in one sense S:AAB leaves it in the dust: diversity. In terms of background characters, I think this might be the most racially integrated science fiction show I\u2019ve ever seen. There are numerous African Americans and Asians in the guest cast and among the extras, and the main cast isn\u2019t bad either: three white men, two women (one white, one black), and one Asian-American man. The Commodore of the Saratoga, the ship the 58th calls their home base, is a black man, and the leader of the 58th is a woman. She doesn\u2019t even have to work at it; she\u2019s obviously the best person for the job and assumes this role early in the season. How refreshing! As the show continued, I marveled at how well they were doing. But then\u2026 minor key foreboding music\u2026 the final episode came along. I won\u2019t say exactly what happens in case you ever want to see it (and I encourage you to), but I can say that I was aghast. They fumbled it, big time. But there is a particular scene at the end (which will also remain a secret) that almost made me forgive the slip-up.<\/p>\n

The verdict: time well spent. If you have the patience to sit through the occasionally lame first half, you\u2019ll be rewarded. And if you don\u2019t I suggest renting just disc 3, which features my favorite episode of the series: \u201cWho Monitors the Birds?<\/a>\u201d. It’s dark, it’s violent, there\u2019s almost no dialogue… and it\u2019s utterly gripping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back when I slogged through IMDB\u2019s list of \u201csci-fi\u201d film and TV to pick out my top 25 of the past 25 years, I noticed some stuff with high ratings that I hadn\u2019t seen. Netflix ahoy! Just recently I finished one of these shows, Space: Above and Beyond. It didn\u2019t take too long, because like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-filmtv"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":603,"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions\/603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}