SLAYERS & VAMPIRES: THE ORAL HISTORY OF BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER & ANGEL by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman

In 1997, Buffy the Vampire Slayer started airing. Over the course of seven seasons, it became a pop culture phenomenon and one of the most critically-acclaimed network TV shows of all time. It spawned a hit spin-off show, Angel, which ran for five seasons and did almost as well. The shows introduced a mixture of comedy, horror and character drama that became a template for many series and movies that followed them, but creator Joss Whedon would become an increasingly polarising and controversial figure.

The story of the development of Buffy and Angel has been told before, but Mark Altman and Edward Gross take a slightly difference tack with this 2017 volume by leaning heavily on oral accounts provided by the writing staff and some of the actors. This is a similar format to their earlier two Star Trek books and subsequent volume on Battlestar Galactica (and they have since produced similar volumes on James Bond, Star Wars and John Wick).

Reading in 2024, the book has a slightly different feel due to the well-publicised allegations from 2021 that Whedon created a toxic working atmosphere on Buffy and Angel before he departed both shows (the final two seasons of Buffy were helmed by Marti Noxon and Angel was overseen by a succession of different showrunners, including David Greenwalt, Tim Minear and Jeffrey Bell). These allegations followed earlier complaints that Whedon had bullied castmembers on the 2017 film Justice League, which he'd overseen reshoots on. This book, which just predates those allegations, is surprisingly candid on the fact that working conditions, particularly on Buffy, were often difficult and sometimes unprofessional.

Compared to the authors' other book on Battlestar, this tome is a little more disappointing. This is partially because it tries to cram much more in: twelve seasons of Buffy and Angel, not to mention some bleed-over into discussions about Firefly (the production and abrupt cancellation of which had consequences for Whedon's other shows), as opposed to six seasons of Battlestar (the four for the newer version of the show, the original and Galactica 1980). This means there is less time for discussion of individual episodes, with only the most prominent episodes getting a lot of coverage. Unfortunately there's a lot of repetition here for anyone who's familiar with coverage of the show from web articles and magazine articles back in the day.

There's also an issue in that actors seem much less willing to take part in the projet: there's a much greater reliance here on stock interviews rather than new interviews undertaken just for this book. Only Charisma Carpenter and James Marsters get a lot of new discussion time, Nicholas Brendon gets almost none and stars Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz are primarily quoted from pre-existing interviews. This absence sees some Buffy critics called in to discuss the show's meaning and accomplishments, and no offence to their expertise, but there's dozens of books out there which have the space to do that a lot better.

The book does do better with the writers' contributions, with the likes of Tim Minear and Dave Greenwalt having a lot to say about television writing and production. Whedon himself gets quoted a fair bit but did not give new interviews for the book, unlike Ron Moore for the Battlestar tome, which makes for a less compelling read. There is some interesting stuff about the mythologising of Whedon, though, and even his most ardent friends and supporters in the book acknowledge he could be mercurial and difficult to work with.

The most fascinating material comes from interviews with Carpenter, who acknowledges her own faults on-set (getting a new haircut or tattoo mid-filming of an episode) and struggling with self-confidence issues, whilst struggling with her treatment by Whedon, who could be kind and generous to her one moment (like giving her a lead role on Angel in the first place) and harsh and judgemental the next.

There is much in the book that is interesting: Minear's journey in adapting to the writing of the show and driving it forwards, and his take-no-prisoners attitude which fascinated Whedon as much as it could annoy other people, is particularly noteworthy. The book also has a genuine emotional moment as it recounts Glenn Quinn's difficulties working on the show and the attempts by co-stars David Boreanaz and Christian Kane to help him out which ultimately did not pan out, with Quinn dying of an accidental drug overdose in 2002.

Compared to the Battlestar tome, Slayers & Vampires: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized, Oral History of Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel (***½) falls a little flat as it has nowhere near as many cast and crew contributing new material to it, forcing it to fall back on well-known anecdotes and interviews, as well as critical analyses that doesn't feel entirely appropriate to the book. There's also too many seasons and episodes to cover even in the generous 520 pages of material here (the Battlestar book gets 200 pages more, and it feels like the two franchises maybe should have inverted that). But there is enough new material, especially on the writing and production process of both shows, to make it worthwhile to established fans.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, SKYRIM and FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS actor Michael Hogan makes first convention appearance since serious injury

In very welcome news, actor Michael Hogan has made his first public convention appearance in almost five years, since he suffered a serious head injury. Hogan is best-known for playing the role of Colonel Saul Tigh in the second iteration of Battlestar Galactica, and subsequently playing the role of Doc Mitchell in the 2010 video game Fallout: New Vegas and General Tullius in Skyrim (2011).

Image from BSGMuseum via Instagram.

Hogan suffered the injury in February 2020, which happened backstage at another event. He was subsequently given excellent but expensive medical treatment, with his family setting up a Gofundme account. His Battlestar costars publicised the appeal. Fans have since contributed almost half a million dollars towards his treatment and rehabilitation.

Hogan made his appearance at the "Salute to Battlestar Galactica 20th Anniversary" convention in Chicago, appearing alongside much of the cast of the show and showrunner Ronald D. Moore. Hogan made an appearance alongside Edward James Olmos (Admiral Adama) and another alongside his on-screen wife Kate Vernon (Ellen Tigh), sporting an eyepatch and his screen uniform in honour of his character.

As part of his rehabilitation, Hogan had to learn to speak and walk again from scratch, no mean feat for an actor who is now 75 years old. Hogan has been supported in his recovery by his family, particularly his wife Susan who has acted as a spokesperson for him, as well as his co-stars. Impressively, he has already returned to work, recently doing voice work for the children's animated series Sonya from Toastville.

This is of course splendid news, and I believe all of his many fans will continue to wish him the best recovery.

RIP Jeri Taylor

News has sadly broken that television producer and writer Jeri Taylor has passed away at the age of 86. She is best-known for her contributions to the Star Trek franchise, including co-creating Star Trek: Voyager.

Jeri Taylor on the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation. She was a writer and producer on the show from its fourth season, and executive producer during the final season.

Born in Bloomington, Indiana in 1938, Taylor received her BA degree in English from Indiana University in 1959. She later gained a master's degree in English from California State University in Northridge.

Taylor began working in television in 1976, producing and writing for shows including Quincy, M.E., Magnum, P.I., In the Heat of the Night, Jake and the Fatman and Blue Thunder. On Jake and the Fatman she met J. Michael Straczynski, giving him one of his first writing credits on a live-action show.

She joined Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1990 as a supervising producer, starting with the episode Brothers in Season 4. Her first writing credit was the episode Suddenly Human. She would go on to write or co-write episodes including The Wounded, Night Terrors, The Drumhead, Unification, Aquiel and Descent.

For Season 6 of TNG she was promoted to Co-executive Producer and for Season 7 became Executive Producer and effective showrunner (though the term was not used at the time) whilst Rick Berman and Michael Piller were focusing on Deep Space Nine. During Season 6 and 7 she was also involved in the development of Star Trek: Voyager, contributing enough that she was named co-creator of the show alongside Berman and Piller. She was made Executive Producer and effective showrunner of Voyager for its first four seasons. Taylor was closely identified with the writing and character development of Captain Janeway.

She also found time to work on Deep Space Nine, contributing story material for three episodes in its second season.

Taylor's appearance at STLV in Las Vegas, 2021, alongside Voyager actor Garrett Wang, TNG/DS9/VOY script supervisor Lolita Fatjo (for whom Leeta is named) and Voyager documentary director Dave Zappone. Source: TrekCore

Taylor was a rare TV writer who made the transition to novels, penning the novelisation of Unification before writing the novel Mosaic, which explores the backstory of Janeway in considerable detail, and its later sequel Pathways. Unlike most Star Trek novels, Taylor's books were considered of a higher level of canonicity and reliability.

Taylor chose to leave the Star Trek franchise after the fourth season of Voyager, but accepted the position of creative consultant for the remainder of Voyager's run, offering feedback on scripts.

After Voyager wrapped Taylor decided to retire from television altogether, and mostly shunned the limelight. However, in 2021 she attended her first Star Trek convention in Las Vegas and was warmly greeted by fans and fellow castmembers.

One of the more significant figures in the writing and development of Star Trek, Jeri Taylor was a skilled writer and producer. She will very much be missed.

Franchise Familiariser: Cyberpunk 2077 / Red / Edgerunners (2024 update)

Back in December 2020, CD Projekt Red released Cyberpunk 2077. The game allowed players to create a character of their own design and then live a life of crime in the late 21st Century metropolis of Night City, California. After an infamously rocky launch, the game was rescued through updates and a well-received expansion, and has since expanded to include a spin-off TV show, graphic novels, art books and board games.

But did you know that the game and its attendant merchandise is merely the latest part of a franchise which is more than thirty-five years old? If you don’t know your rockerboys from your Arasaka corporate suits from your netrunners, a franchise familiariser may be helpful.

Note: this is an update of an article previously published in 2020.

The Basics

Cyberpunk is a science fiction franchise created by writer and games designer Mike Pondsmith, originally published by his company, R. Talsorian Games, in 1988. Pondsmith named the game after the science fiction subgenre of the same name, which in turn was named after a 1983 short story written by Bruce Bethke. This story was actually published somewhat late in the development of the genre, as several previous works had been important in establishing it, particularly Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and John Brunner’s 1975 book The Shockwave Rider, as well as the 1982 movie Blade Runner, loosely based on Dick’s novel.

Pondsmith and his fellow designers have cited Walter Jon Williams’ 1986 novel Hardwired as being extremely influential on the design of the game, along with Dick and Blade Runner (William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer, often arguably cited as cyberpunk’s codifying moment, was not read until later in the game’s development).

To make it clearer that the reader is not speaking about the short story or genre, it’s common for fans to refer to Cyberpunk by one of its edition subtitles: Cyberpunk 2013, Cyberpunk 2020, Cyberpunk v3.0 or Cyberpunk Red.

Each of the four editions of the game is set in a different decade and reflects the passage of time in the Cyberpunk universe. The original Cyberpunk (1988), now almost always referred to as Cyberpunk 2013, is set in that year and depicts a near-future dystopia where corporations have become as powerful as governments and fight one another for supremacy and where takeovers are more literally hostile than you might expect. The game is predominantly set in Night City, a custom-designed and built metropolis on the coast of Morro Bay, California, roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and sees players taking on roles such as mercenaries, corporate players, police officers and netrunners, as hackers are known in this world.

Cyberpunk 2020 is the second and most popular and well-known iteration of the game, to the point that “Cyberpunk 2020” is often used to refer to the entire franchise. It was originally published in 1990 and remained continuously in print for fifteen years, accumulating a vast array of supporting supplements and adventures. The game’s rule system, Interlock, was highly praised for being customisable and allowing players to much finely adjust their character’s development through skills rather than being tied into much broader levels (the approach favoured by the medium’s heavyweight game, Dungeons and Dragons, for which Pondsmith had worked on some sourcebooks). The setting was also praised for its attitude and punk ethos.

After experimenting with a spin-off project revolving around young characters who get superhero-like powers from technology, CyberGeneration, the game returned properly in 2005 with Cyberpunk v3.0. The game switched to the Fuzion system, advanced the timeline to the mid-2030s and also adopted a transhuman approach, with much more sophisticated SF ideas such as humans downloading their consciousness into robotic bodies and thus becoming immortal. The setting also dropped some of the aesthetics of the original setting, Pondsmith reasoning that fashion and styles would move on. However, despite some praise for trying to move past cyberpunk clichés and explore more advanced ideas, the game had some negative feedback for exactly the same reason, as well as the change in rules.

Cyberpunk Red (2020) tacitly omits v3.0 from the canon and instead serves as a direct sequel to Cyberpunk 2020, with the timeline now advanced to the 2040s but the old cyberpunk styles and ideas are still very much around. The newest edition of the game also acts as a prequel to Cyberpunk 2077 (the tabletop game and the video game developed in tandem), with Pondsmith confirming that a Cyberpunk 2077 sourcebook updating the Cyberpunk Red timeline and rules to 2077 will follow.

As well as the tabletop roleplaying game and the video game, the franchise consists of tie-in novels and graphic novels, several board games, the first edition of the popular Netrunner collectible card game and the Cyberpunk: Arasaka Plot mobile game.

In September 2022, CD Projekt Red collaborated with Mike Pondsmith, Netflix and the Japanese animation studio Trigger to release Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, a 10-episode animated TV series set about a year before the game. The show received critical acclaim, and was credited with spurring fresh interest in both the video game and tabletop roleplaying game. The former was updated with a tie-in mission exploring the fate of some of the characters from the show, whilst the latter received a new introductory boxed set based on the TV series. In December 2023, the franchise received a further boost in popularity due to the release of Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, a sizeable expansion to the video game.

Future projects are in development. A second Cyberpunk animated show is in the planning stages, whilst a live-action television series has also been proposed. A full sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, codenamed Project Orion, is also in development. The Cyberpunk Red tabletop roleplaying game is also expanding, with a new setting based in the 2077 time period of the video game expected to launch in 2025, alongside the Night City sourcebook.

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

I'm on BlueSky!

Yes, I am at The New Place as well.

I remain active on the existing platforms for the time being, but with a huge number of my contacts setting up shop over on BlueSky, it seemed logical to set up an account there as well.

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew

The Lost Caribbean, a world between the living and the dead, ruled over by the menacing Inquisition of the Burning Maiden. Several lost souls find themselves drawn to the Red Marley, a forbidding ship, and a quest to find the treasure of the legendary Captain Mordechai. But the quest will be long and arduous, requiring the recruiting of a crew with...unique talents.

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is the third stealth tactics game from Mimimi Games, the accomplished team behind Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun (and its standalone expansion, Aiko's Choice) and Desperados III. On a basic level, this is a very similar game to those ones, and if you've played those already (and you should, they are excellent), you can jump into this one without too many problems.

To recap, these games are played from an isometric perspective with you controlling a group of characters with different abilities. Your objective is usually to pass through an area patrolled by guards using a mixture of stealth and violence. You can sneak up behind people and knock them out or kill them, but you have to be careful to stay out of the view of other guards (guards have "view cones" so you can see if you're in view, out of view but if you cause a big enough commotion you'll become visible, or out of view altogether). You can hide bodies in water or undergrowth. You can also queue up actions for characters which they can execute simultaneously, to take down multiple opponents, or cause a distraction to allow your other characters to sneak past.

Each character has different abilities, and in Shadow Gambit the supernatural setting means these abilities are whackier and more creative than in the other games. One character can dip in and out of another dimension, snatching enemies away into another universe, or hiding in plain sight. Another character can put enemies and allies into a massive cannon on her back and shoot them to otherwise inaccessible locations. Another character has a flute he can use to lure opponents off their patrol routes to isolated areas where they can be dealt with quietly. A ghostly character can possess enemy guards and wander around in plain view before triggering mayhem. And so on.

The biggest shift in this game is that it adopts a more of flexible approach. Both Shadow Tactics and Desperados III had a linear succession of missions, with you moving from mission to mission. Shadow Gambit instead has a world map showing the Lost Caribbean, with several islands available to visit (and later in the game, all the islands). You have multiple missions available at any time and can choose between the next main story mission, a character-based side-mission, or a challenge or treasure-hunting mission. Each of the eight characters (nine including the DLC, ten including the character you unlock right at the end of the game) has their own multi-part, optional mission which explores more of their backstory and motivation.

In addition, between each mission your crew regroups on your ship, the spooky Red Marley. There are activities that can be undertaken between each mission, including various character-based quests on the ship. The result is that there's a lot to do in the game, with a greater variety of activities.

This doesn't come at the expense of focus though. Shadow Gambit more or less matches Desperado III in game length (about 35 hours) if you focus on doing the main storyline and character side-missions, but with the optional stuff it significantly exceeds it, giving you a solid amount of value for money.

As with the prior games, the games have solid, characterful graphics, great music and nicely reactive controls. The story is quite entertaining, and the way it interfaces with the game mechanics (never before has "Quicksave" been referenced so much as an actual in-game concept) is very clever. There are some issues, particularly with the game still sometimes getting confused over whether you are trying to move to or target an area on the same level or above or below you (occasionally resulting in your character jumping into the midst of a group of enemies for no discernible reason), something I'd hoped they would have fixed after eight years. But in most cases this can be avoided by rotating the camera to a more favourable angle.

A more interesting limitation is that the game doesn't feel quite as tightly-designed as the previous incarnations. Because the previous games were more linear, they knew exactly what characters would be available for which mission, and could design fiendish puzzles for the specific make-up of the crew you knew would be going on that quest. Here, because any combination of characters (up to 3 out of the eventual pool of 10) can go on any quest, the missions by necessity have to be more flexible, to allow for a wide variety of approaches. This makes most missions feel a bit easier than in the prior games. Conversely that makes Shadow Gambit more forgiving for newcomers, who may find this game more accessible than Desperados III or Shadow Tactics.

More unfortunate is the news that, after completing this game, Mimimi decided to call it a day on game development and shut down the company (although they did deliver several updates and two new DLC episodes for the game beforehand). They will very much be missed; Shadow Gambit completes a very fine triptych of enjoyable, intelligent and satisfying stealth 'em ups.

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew (****½) lacks the tight and fiendish mission design of their previous two games, but is still a compelling combination of stealth and semi-justified light murder and body-hiding. The game is available now on PC, Xbox X/S and PlayStation 5.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

SUBNAUTICA 2 gets full trailer

Developers Unknown Worlds have unveiled the full trailer for Subnautica 2, their long-awaited sequel their aquatic-based science fiction exploration game/thalassophobia simulator.

The game is set on a brand-new planet, with an entire team of explorers dispatched to investigate the underwater phenomena on this planet. How, or if, the new game will tie into the story and events of Subnautica and its standalone expansion Below Zero remains to be seen.

The game will launch into Early Access in early 2025 via the XBox partner programme. It's unclear what this means for a potential release, for EA or the full game, on Steam or PlayStation. We should get more information next year.

Wertzone Classics: Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett

Borogravia is a minor but bellicose country, with a long history of invading its neighbours under the pretext of religious commands given by the deity Nuggan. With Nuggan's commands becoming more unhinged (banning ginger hair, garlic, cats, jigsaw puzzles and the colour blue), the reasons for war become increasingly random as well. Its neighbours, finally fed up by its constant aggression, have joined with the regional superpower of Ankh-Morpork to finally end the threat once and for all.

With war raging - or shambolically bumbling around - bar worker Polly Perks decides to go searching for her missing brother. She poses as a man to join the army and is assigned to a new regiment, only to find out almost the entire company has had the same idea. With women doing men's work also deemed an Abomination Unto Nuggan, the regiment has to keep their heads down, infiltrate an enemy keep, and work out how to rescue/escape their assorted family members, and, if possible, end the war before it causes any more damage.

Throughout his prolific career, Sir Terry Pratchett had a knack for using his witty dialogue, sharp prose and keen knowledge of history and culture to explore many different concepts. In most cases, he produced a brilliant Discworld book exploring a certain idea, like the press or the dangers of fundamentalist religion. But, when he turned his attention to the idea of war, he uncharacteristically dropped the ball. Jingo was perfectly okay, but lacked his trademark intelligence and depth.

Ten books later, he decided to give it another go, and this time nailed it. If Jingo was about the superficialities of going to war for absolutely no sane reason, Monstrous Regiment is about war as a much more complex force. Here we have burned-out homesteads, villages standing amidst salted fields and people's homes being invaded for reasons they don't really understand. Borogravia is fighting a defensive war against invaders, but it's also been a bellicose lunatic in the past, and is being flattened under the weight of the abuse heaped upon it by its own rulers. This creates a complex stew of ideas and themes, which is where Pratchett is at his best.

Polly and her fellow soldiers have little interest in the greater geopolitical complexities of the war, instead just trying to rescue individual people from the maelstrom. But, thanks to a chance encounter with newspaper reporter William de Worde (cameoing from The Truth), their mission inadvertently becomes famous across half the continent, and takes on a grander importance. It's also symbolic of the losses Borogravia has suffered, where an entire regiment is made up of women because there's increasingly few men left able to fight.

As in his best, most cutting books, Pratchett remembers to keep the funny: the regiment consists of an assortment of funny characters, the most memorable being Maladict, a suave, reformed vampire who has sworn off blood but developed an equally crippling addiction to coffee. But there's an undercurrent of seriousness here that is powerful: more than a few of the recruits have been victimised, and how they deal with trauma is a subtle but constant theme of the book. Sergeant Jackrum also emerges as one of Pratchett's most fascinating characters, a counterpoint of his more familiar Commander Vimes (who has a few brief appearances in the novel as an Ankh-Morpork liaison) who went down a decidedly more disturbing path (with more than a whiff of Life on Mars' Gene Hunt to them as well, for good and ill).

The book unfolds with a very deliberate pace: at just under 500 pages this is one of the longest Discworld novels but it earns its length by dividing the narrative into several distinct sections as the mission unfolds, as well as the larger-than-normal cast giving Pratchett a lot of characters to develop. But this also gives the book the feel of holding a stick of dynamite that's about to go off. Pratchett is known for being funny but he is absolutely at his best when he is angry, and I get the distinct impression as he wrote the book and continued researching things like the treatment of people in war, especially women and "non-conformists," he got progressively angrier. By the time the book concludes, the humour is so laced with white-hot rage that it is positively acidic. But Pratchett also never loses control. He doesn't go into some lecturing rant (a weakness some of his other books suffer from) and he never dissipates the focus on the story or characters.

Monstrous Regiment (*****) is Pratchett's take on war - actual, messy, horribly murky war - and gender and politics. It's a long book, by his standards, but he maintains the pacing and tension to deliver one of his finest and most thought-provoking novels.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.