Wertzone Classics: Blade Runner

Los Angeles, 2019. The Earth is grimy and grim, covered with vast cities of towering skyscrapers. Most animal life has been wiped out, replaced by expensive synthetic counterfeits. Counterfeit humans - replicants - also exist, carrying out dangerous, dirty work in the offworld colonies. For security their lifespans are limited to just four years. Four replicants have come back home, seeking to extend their lives. A replicant-hunter, a blade runner, is sent to stop them.

Blade Runner was released in 1982, a movie by Ridley Scott based (loosely) on Philip K. Dick's short novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The film had an initially mixed critical reception, but this improved with the release of the 1991 Director's Cut, which restored a subplot raising the question of if the central character of Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is himself a replicant. This cut also removed a series of unnecessary voiceovers and a studio-mandated "happy ending" that Scott had hated. In 2007 this version was superseded by the Final Cut edition, which restores some more scenes and tweaks others whilst completely digitally remastering the film in proper high definition (with eye-popping results).

The power of Blade Runner does not lie in its story - which is slight - but in its visuals, atmosphere and in its thematic exploration of the nature of what it is to be human. The replicants appear to be intelligent, sentient and capable of emotion, so the decision to use them as slaves is morally dubious; on the other hand they are also capricious, child-like and do not have an innate value for human life, killing those who oppose them with ease and ruthlessness. Deckard starts the film as a man of apparent moral certainty, willing to execute replicants. His meeting and association with Rachael, a cutting-edge replicant with much more human characteristics, raises doubts in him about his certainty that the replicants are soulless machines that need to be put down.

This is mirrored in the story of Sebastian (William Sanderson), who has a terminal disease and is spending his dying days creating new replicant technology for the Tyrell Corporation. This gives him tremendous empathy with the replicants, who are likewise doomed to die far before their time, and explains why he wants to help them (a decision he later comes to regret). This storyline is not as explored in as much depth in the novel - where a character named Isidore plays the same function and has a bigger role - but it does give some humanity to the replicants.

These themes of using artificial life to question what it means to be human would be revisited just a few years later in the character of Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation, but much more powerfully in the 2003 reboot of Battlestar Galactica (which also inherits Edward James Olmos as an actor and the term "skinjobs" for its replicant-like artificial lifeforms).

The movie's most enduring quality is its startling visuals: the vast, towering blocks of Los Angeles, the flames roaring into the sky from towers, police cars flying in front of colossal advertising hoardings. Disregarding realism (even in 1982, the idea of earthquake-prone Los Angeles looking like this just thirty-seven years later was a stretch), these visuals have lost none of their power and have even gained new power through their high definition remastering. Backed by Vangelis' haunting score, the sweeping effects shots of the city remain powerful and arresting in a way that the disposable CG cityscapes of modern SF movies cannot match. But beyond the effects footage is the minimalist way Scott shoots his futuristic, dystopian city, with dusty offices, bustling street markets and sparse apartments all looking amazing.

Performances are stripped-back, honest and raw: Harrison Ford, Sean Young, Daryl Hannah and Rutger Hauer all give career-best performances, whilst Edward James Olmos does a huge amount with a small amount of screen time. The film is sparsely-written, sparing with dialogue but making sure almost every conversation is important and memorable. This culminates in the movie's ambiguous and much-debated final confrontation between Deckard and Batty (Rutger Hauer), and Batty's soliloquy on his impending death and the loss of his memories, although he tries to impart some of these to Deckard through his "tears in the rain" speech.

For those who like their movies to be clear and unambiguous, Blade Runner will likely frustrate. This is a film designed to raise questions, engage in philosophical debates and have viewers revel in its slow-burn atmosphere and visuals. There are action sequences, but they are awkward, ugly and brutal rather than visceral and exciting. The so-called love story element is strange and questionable. The ending is ambiguous and, for some viewers, abrupt. But it's also a supremely assured film that is confident in its own ambition and executes it perfectly.

Blade Runner (*****) is strange, haunting and utterly compelling. There are numerous versions available, but arguably the Final Cut - DVD (US,UK), Blu-Ray (US, UK) - is the strongest, representing the director's clearest vision of the story.

A sequel, Blade Runner 2049, will be released on 5 October 2017 in the UK and a day later in the US. There are also three sequels in book form, written by K.W. Jeter, but these have been superseded by the new film.

Anniversary Triple Bill: Fallout, Homeworld and Star Trek: The Next Generation

Three SF franchises have celebrated anniversaries this week.

The highest-profile anniversary is the 30th of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The show debuted on 28 September 1987 with its two-hour pilot, Encounter at Farpoint, and lasted for seven years, 178 episodes and four feature films. It utterly transformed the fortunes of both Star Trek and science fiction in general, inspiring the boom the genre saw in Hollywood in the 1990s.

Related articles: ST:TNG during my "Star Trek at 50" article series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
Reviews: Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, Season 4, Season 5, Season 6, Season 7.

Celebrating its 20th birthday this week is the Fallout video game franchise. The original Fallout was released by Interplay and Black Isle on 30 September 1997, and to celebrate you can pick it up completely free for the weekend. A sequel, Fallout 2, followed a year later, along with several spin-off games. After Interplay's collapse, the licence was bought by Bethesda, who developed Fallout 3 and released it in 2008 to huge acclaim, taking an obscure franchise and transforming it into one of the biggest brands in gaming. Two sequels, New Vegas (2010) and Fallout 4 (2015) have followed.

Related articles: Fallout Franchise Familiariser.
Reviews: Fallout 3, Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage, The Pitt & Broken Steel, Fallout 3: Point Lookout & Mothership Zeta, Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout: New Vegas expansions, Fallout 4, Fallout 4: Far Harbor.

Celebrating its 18th birthday is the Homeworld game franchise. The original Homeworld was released on 28 September 1999 and revolutionised video gaming with its full 3D interface and graphics. The game an enormous success and was followed by Homeworld: Cataclysm a year later. However, Homeworld 2 performed unsatisfactorily in 2003 and the franchise was put on ice for a decade. Gearbox picked up the Homeworld licence and released Homeworld Remastered in 2015, followed by a full prequel game, Deserts of Kharak in 2016. There have been hints that the franchise may continue.

Related articles: Map of the Homeworld Galaxy.
Reviews: Homeworld. Homeworld: Cataclysm. Homeworld 2. Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak.

BABYLON 5 Rewatch: Season 2, Episodes 11-12

B11: All Alone in the Night

Airdates: 15 February 1995 (US), 18 April 1995 (UK)

Written by J. Michael Straczynski

Directed by Mario DiLeo

Cast: Lt. Ramirez (Nick Corri), Narn (Marshall Teague), Satai Hedronn (Robin Sachs), Satai Neroon (John Vickery), General William Hague (Robert Foxworth), Ambassador Kosh (Ardwight Chamberlain), Station One (Joshua Cox)

Date: Late June or early July 2259.

Plot:    General William Hague, one of the Earthforce Joint Chiefs of Staff and the officer who informed Sheridan and Ivanova of the change in command six months ago (B1), is paying a visit to the station to see how things are going. It will be several hours before he arrives, however, and Sheridan decides to get in some more flight-time. After hearing of strange occurrences in Sector 92, including several ship disappearances, he takes out a patrol of Starfuries to investigate. An alien vessel appears, wipes out most of the patrol and cripples two of the Starfuries. Sheridan manages to bail out in his Starfury’s escape pod and is promptly taken prisoner. The other pilot, Lt. Ramirez, manages to effect repairs to his ship and heads back to Babylon 5. Unfortunately, he has been subjected to a massive, lethal amount of radiation and dies in Medlab shortly afterwards. Ivanova analyses the sensor logs from his Starfury and discovers what has happened to Sheridan. General Hague arrives and decides to call in some heavy support in their search for Sheridan.

Meanwhile, Delenn is summoned before the Grey Council. Before she leaves Lennier decides to join her. They rendezvous with the Minbari flagship and Delenn is confronted by Hedronn (from B1). He tells her that the Grey Council have decided she is no longer worthy to sit in a place prepared by Valen himself. She disobeyed their direct order (in A20) not to pursue the prophecy instead of just waiting for it to unfold. She has been removed from the Grey Council and been replaced. Delenn demands to address the Grey Council as is her right and her request is granted. The Council agrees that she can retain her position as Ambassador to Babylon 5 but Delenn is horrified that her place on the Council has been taken by Neroon (A17), a member of the warrior caste when her replacement should have come from the religious caste. This gives the warrior caste unprecedented power in the Grey Council. Neroon tells her that if a great darkness is coming, then the warrior caste must lead the war against it. Delenn and Lennier leave for Babylon 5.

Sheridan recovers on the alien ship and finds himself pitted against a Drazi in combat. He kills him and notes that he has some sort of cybernetic implant in his head. A similarly mind-controlled Narn attacks, but Sheridan manages to knock him out and remove the implant. When he recovers the Narn suggests that they work together to escape. The aliens have captured representatives from many species to see which ones are weak enough for conquest. Sheridan and the Narn attempt to lever open the door, but cannot find a crack to get enough leverage.

The EAS Agamemnon, Sheridan’s old command, arrives at Babylon 5. Ivanova takes out Delta Wing and the cruiser and fighters wait for any word from their search parties. Delenn contacts Babylon 5 ahead of her arrival to clear the way for docking and learns about Sheridan’s capture. Analysing the design of the alien ship, Delenn reveals the aliens are called Streibs. They attempted to invade Minbari space centuries ago and were taught a humiliating lesson. She rendezvouses with the B5 forces and leads them to the Streib homeworld.

Whilst on the Streib ship, Sheirdan has an odd dream. He sees Ivanova with a raven on her shoulder. He then sees Garibaldi with a dove on his shoulder saying “The man in between is searching for you.” Ivanova, dressed as if for a funeral, says “You are the hand.” Sheridan is then confronted by himself, dressed as a Psi Cop. Kosh appears and Sheridan asks him why he is there. Kosh tells him, “We were never away. For the first time your mind is quiet enough to hear me.” Sheridan asks, “Why am I here?” and is told, “You have always been here.” Sheridan wakes up as the cell door opens slightly, apparently due to a malfunction. He manages to open the door and he and the wounded Narn escape.

The Streib ship comes out of hyperspace and approaches their homeworld, but comes under fire from the Agamemnon. The Streib ship is crippled and Delen orders them to surrender their prisoners at the risk of reprisals by the Minbari. The Streib instead dump the alien prisoners into space, killing them. Enraged, Ivanova orders the Agamemnon to destroy the Streib vessel. She picks up an SOS and confirms that Sheridan and his Narn associate managed to escape in a lifepod. The pod is recovered and they return to Babylon 5. The Agamemnon heads back to Earth space and Sheridan recovers from his experiences.

Later General Hague comes to see Sheridan and asks what he has to report. Sheridan confirms that over the past six months he has come to trust Franklin, Ivanova and Garibaldi and their loyalty to Earth is beyond reproach. Hague updates Sheridan on what he has learned about events on Earth. He is certain that President Clark arranged the murder of Santiago so he could ascend to power. He is also certain that Psi Corps and at least some high-ranking Earthforce personnel were involved. Hague orders Sheridan to expose Clark’s betrayal by any means necessary. Clark seems to think that Sheridan is a patriot who will put his loyalty to Earth above any doubts about Santiago’s death, so Sheridan won’t be watched as closely as some other officers. Sheridan agrees to do his best. Hague leaves the station and Sheridan brings Garibaldi, Ivanova and Franklin into the counter-conspiracy and they agree to help. Sheridan then sees Ambassador Kosh passing in the corridor, who says, “You have always been here,” just as in his dream.

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

TABOO renewed: Tom Hardy's Hat will return

Splendid news for fans of Tom Hardy and the Greatest Hat in the World: BBC grimcamp romp Taboo has been renewed for a second season.

Airing at the start of the year, the drama starred Tom Hardy as James Delaney, an enigmatic guy in a hat who inherited some land in Vancouver that the East India Company wanted and was willing to do anything to steal. The drama was magnificently nonsensical, but as a slice of watchable hokum it was thoroughly enjoyable. The series only did okay in ratings for the BBC, but attracted a more impressive audience on FX in the States and also picked up a lot of views on the BBC iPlayer service.

The second season will pick up on the adventures of Tom Hardy, his hat and his crew of misfits and scoundrels as they arrive in the New World to investigate his newly-acquired land and, presumably, uncover some more of Delaney's Dark Past. Season 2 of Taboo will likely air in late 2018 or early 2019 on the BBC and FX. Hardy and writer Steven Knight are apparently already planning a third season as well.

Star Trek: Enterprise - Season 4

Earth has survived an attack by the alien Xindi. The crew of the NX-01 Enterprise have been hailed as heroes, but Earth is also in the grip of anti-alien xenophobia, fanned by a terrorist organisation known as Terra Prime. There's also growing tensions between the Vulcans, Andorians and Tellarites, with Earth caught in the middle...and an unseen enemy manipulating events from behind the scenes.

The fourth and concluding season of Star Trek: Enterprise is the moment when the show finally starts fulfilling its premise. For its first two years the show seemed to too often disregard the potential of its setting in favour of doing too-traditional Star Trek stories, just with less advanced technology. In the third season the show adopted more long-form storytelling that made it more dynamic and interesting, but still had problems with pacing, not to mention telling a story that had nothing to do with the show's reason for existing. This final season finally lines everything up just right to deliver the most consistently excellent season of Trek since the end of Deep Space Nine.

The season is divided up into several multi-episode arcs. The first quickly disposes of the Temporal Cold War, an ill-thought-out plot device that hamstrung the first two seasons of the show. Very quickly the show moves into stories tying together the augments (the genetically-engineered descendants of Khan) into the humanoid-looking Klingons of the original series (a story that really didn't need to be told, but isn't awful) with other stories bringing in the Romulans as masterminds of a plot to thwart the growing relations between the eventual founders of the Federation. Other episodes involve a social revolution on Vulcan (including an appearance by a young T'Pau, a fan-favourite character from the original Star Trek) and, most effectively, a two-parter entirely set in the Mirror Universe. Another multi-part story revolves around the last gasp of fascism on Earth and its final defeat, setting the scene for Gene Roddenberry's utopian vision to come to pass.

The result is a relentlessly enjoyable season of television. It's still not the sharpest-written season of Star Trek, let alone SF in general, and the fact this season aired alongside vastly superior first season of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica probably did it no favours, but removed from that context it stands up pretty well. This Enterprise as it should have been from the start, deftly mixing together original stories with the established history of the Star Trek canon and having fun in the process. The writers and cast are clearly having more fun than they have in previous seasons and that joy finds its way onto the screen.

Of course, there is a big "but" in all of this. There are a few weak episodes this season, and the few stand-alone episodes peppered between the two and three-parters are mostly forgettable. There's also some problems within the longer arcs. The augment story is too long and mostly unnecessary: it tries to explain what happened to genetically engineered humans after Khan, a story already adequately explained on Deep Space Nine, and it laboriously tries to explain why Klingons looked different in the original series, a story, er, already adequately explained on Deep Space Nine. There's also a bafflingly pointless story which tries to mine drama from Trip's decision to leave Enterprise permanently (hint: he doesn't), which is undercut by the fact that no-one cares.

Worse, and most famously, is the season and series finale, These Are the Voyages. This episode is framed as a flashback from Star Trek: The Next Generation with Riker weirdly consulting a holo-programme about Enterprise's final mission to justify some personal decisions. This is an insult to the cast and crew of Enterprise, putting too much focus on TNG characters rather than the show that is actually ending, and feels forced. The episode is ill-conceived, badly-written and lacking in tension and drama, making it easily the weakest Star Trek series finale since Turnabout Intruder (and at least the writers of that episode had the excuse they didn't know it was the finale).

Still, at least it's a single really awful episode in a season featuring some stand-out and, in the form of the In a Mirror, Darkly episodes, a genuine classic two-parter. Overall, the fourth season of Star Trek: Enterprise (****) is thoroughly enjoyable and shows the potential of this show that went unrealised for so long. The season is available on Blu-Ray (UK, USA) and on Netflix in the UK and many other parts of the world.

Amazon developing TV versions of RINGWORLD, SNOW CRASH and LAZARUS

Amazon have announced a slate of new, high-profile projects of interest to SFF fans.

First up is Ringworld, based on Larry Niven's novel series of the same name. The series began with Ringworld (1970) and continued with The Ringworld Engineers (1980), The Ringworld Throne (1996) and Ringworld's Children (2004), before generating a spin-off series co-written by Niven and Edward M. Lerner, consisting of Fleet of Worlds (2007), Juggler of Worlds (2008), Destroyer of Worlds (2009) and Betrayer of Worlds (2010). In 2012 the two authors released Fate of Worlds, which concluded both the original Ringworld series and the latter spin-off series.

The titular Ringworld is a massive artificial structure which completely encircles a star, having the surface area of three million Earths. In the first novel the Ringworld is discovered by the bewilderingly alien Puppeteers and a low-key reconnaissance mission is sent to investigate the structure. The mission goes wrong when the ship is shot down by the Ringworld's asteroid defence system and lands on the surface, with the crew discovering that the inhabitants of the Ringworld have become primitive and are unable to help them repair their vessel. Later books in the series see the Ringworld's existence became more widely known.

The Ringworld is a (somewhat) more practical version of the classic SF Big Dumb Object, the Dyson Sphere, although it is still ludicrously huge. Iain M. Banks later created considerably more practical versions of the Ringworld, merely 3 million kilometres in diameter. The Halo video games, drawing on inspiration from both Banks and Niven, postulated the existence of rings just 10,000 km in diameter. Terry Pratchett famously satirised the Ringworld series (and the entire Big Dumb Object subset of SF) in his 1981 novel Strata, which went on (after a fantasy rewrite) to spawn the Discworld series.

The Ringworld novels are part of a much larger future history known as the Known Space universe. If the Ringworld series is successful, it is possible that other elements from this series will be brought into play.

Also in development is a series or mini-series based on Neal Stephenson's 1992 novel Snow Crash. A cyberpunk novel (or a pastiche of cyberpunk), the book focuses on a pizza delivery boy named Hiro Protagonist who discovers a conspiracy which threatens humanity. The story takes in cyberpunk themes but also ideas about language, the origin of modern human consciousness and cognition. Hollywood has shown an interest in Stephenson for a while, as his books are bestsellers, but has struggled to find ways of adapting his massive and complex stories for a wide audience. Snow Crash, being a relatively short and approachable book, is the first attempt to bring his work to a visual audience.

Also in development is Lazarus, a futuristic thriller based on the comics written by Greg Rucka (Gotham Central). The story is set in a world dominated by sixteen families, who have turned future Earth into their domain. The families use a representative warrior known as a Lazarus to fight on their behalf, ending disputes without the need for costly wars. Forever Carlyle, a Lazarus, begins to question this system and the bleak, dystopian world it has engendered.

All three projects are officially "in development" with Amazon to decide on which (if any) to formally greenlight.

Cities of Fantasy: Dunwall

Dunwall is a sprawling, industrial city located on the south coast of the island of Gristol. Dunwall has existed for centuries, dominating the whale oil trade around the Isles, but in recent decades it has grown in importance and become the capital city of the Empire of the Isles, spanning the major islands of Tyvia, Morley, Gristol and Serkonos. It is a city riven by internal strife between the aristocratic class and the workers, which has led to violence and, occasionally, outright rebellions.

Location
Dunwall is located on the south coast of Gristol, at the mouth of the enormous River Wrenhaven as it twists and turns before meeting the Ocean. The city commands the head of a wide bay opening out into a gulf formed by Gristol to the north and the island of Serkonos to the south. Regular ferry services run across to the city of Bastillan a few dozen miles to the south-west on the north coast of Serkonos.

Physical Description
Dunwall sprawls across approximately twenty square miles. The city is cut in two by the Wrenhaven. There are three significant bridges in the western part of the city, but in the east there is only Kaldwin's Bridge, which is tall enough to allow large ships to pass underneath it. Frequent ferry services run between the north and south sides of the river in the eastern part of the city.

Draper's Ward, the Clock Tower, the Boyle Mansion, the Estate District, the Old Waterfront, Tower District, Dunwall Tower and Coldridge Prison are located in the northern part of the city. The High Overseer's Office, Slaughterhouse Row, the Legal District, the Golden Cat, the Distillery District, the Hound Pits Pub, the Old Port District, the Chamber of Commerce and the Rudshore Financial District (aka the "Flooded District") are located in the southern. Also significant is Kingsparrow Island, topped by an enormous lighthouse, located several miles out into the bay.

Other locations include the Civil Service District, Tailors' District, Dunwall Water District, the Rust District,

The Mutcherhaven District is located to the north of the city, outside the old city walls on the river. The infamous Brigmore Manor is located here. The New Mercantile District is also located in this region.

History

An ancient civilisation once existed on Gristol, more than four thousand years ago. The fate of this civilisation is unknown (but may be linked to the Great Burning, an ancient cataclysm which marked the beginning of the modern calendar), although it is known to have practiced black magic. One of the consequences of this magic was the apotheosis of a young man to become the Outsider, a trickster being of formidable power. Three thousand years later another kingdom or empire arose on Gristol which worshipped the Outsider as a god and created numerous magical trinkets or artifacts. The destruction of this empire saw many of these artifacts thrown into the sea. Over centuries, many of these totemic items have washed back up in Dunwall.

Modern Dunwall began as a small whaling village. It rapidly grew in size and prestige, it's strategic location seeing it attract huge amounts of traffic from passing ships. The town's centralised location behind sturdy walls and located on bluffs towering some 125 feet above the surrounding territory meant it was very difficult to attack, and it slowly began to expand in military power and prestige.

Within a few centuries Dunwall had come to conquer all of the island of Gristol. Its economic power became indomitable and it came to command all trade on the southern seas, to the irritation of some of the other cities. The sea lanes to the north are harder to traverse and downright dangerous in winter, when icebergs can threaten ships, so Dunwall's dominance of the southern sealanes became a major problem. Finally, approximately 1,620 years after the Great Burning, the four islands fell into warfare. Gristol's economic and military might, not to mention its huge population, saw it win the War of the Four Crowns in 1625; Tyvia, Morley and Serkonos surrendered and accepted Gristol's rule. Finlay Morgengaard I was duly crowned Emperor of the Empire of the Isles in 1626.

The Empire's power was further consolidated by the rise of a state religon, the Abbey of the Everyman, which was founded in Dunwall in 1701. Dunwall had formerly been a religiously tolerant city, but the Abbey brooked no opposition, deeming all followers of other gods and creeds as heretics (and reserving a special hatred for the Outsider). Under the leadership of the first High Overseer, John Clavering, the Abbey led the Rectification War, cleansing the cities of Gristol of heresy. The war ended in 1708 with the Siege of Whitecliff. In 1711 Emperor Yefim Olaskir decreed that the Abbey was now the State Religion of the Empire.

By the end of the century the Empire had further consolidated its power and began the widespread exploitation of Morley, particularly its mines and its fertile fields. The people of Morley came to feel mistreated by the Gristolians, and were particularly resentful of the Abbey forcing their beliefs on them. In 1801, enraged by religious strife, famine and oppression, the people of Morley rose up in rebellion. They launched a military uprising which caught the imperial forces by surprise and secured territory on Morley before launching attacks on Gristol. Rebels from Morley managed to infiltrate Dunwall and assassinated Empress Larisa Olaskir in a surprise attack; the reprisals by the Empire were swift and terrifying.

The rebellion ended after two years, the Empire proving victorious due to its superior navy and vastly superior resources. Several cities in Morley were destroyed and there were widespread atrocities. Famine swept the island and thousands died, hundreds of thousands more fleeing to other islands. It would be generations before Morley would begin recovering from the rebellion, and the lesson of what happened to those who defied the Empire was not lost on the other islands and cities.

By 1810 the Empire had begun explorations of the vast Pandyssian supercontinent located several months' travel to the east of the Empire of the Isles. Exploitation of that landmass proved impractical due to both the vast travel times and also to the continent's own hostility, particularly down to the plagues which seemed widespread there. In addition, the Outsider, relatively quiet for centuries, took a sudden interest in those who had travelled to Pandyssia and returned.

In 1825 Jessamine Kaldwin became Empress of the Isles. A trusting and honourable ruler, Jessamine was concerned with justice, fairness and ruling for all of the citizens of the Isles, not just the aristocracy and merchants. Her willingness to stand up for the poor and to try to improve their lot, as well as an apparent coolness to the ruthlessness of the Abbey of the Everyman, soon won her a lot of enemies in the Empire. Kaldwin was protected by a bodyguard, Corvo Attano, a warrior without compare, and advised by Hiram Burrows, the Royal Spymaster, whose ability to root out plots against her was legendary.

Eventually, Burrows turned against the Empress, apparently distraught by her trusting nature, her refusal to take a husband, and the fact that the Empire seemed destined to pass to Jessamine's daughter Emily, a bastard born of unknown parentage. In 1835 the Rat Plague struck Dunwall, killing thousands, and Jessamine's response to the crisis was insufficient; in 1837 Burrows commissioned the assassin Daud to kill the Empress and frame her Royal Protector, Corvo Attano for the deed. Attano was imprisoned in Coldridge Prison whilst Burrows assumed the mantle of Lord Regent and imprisoned Emily Kaldwin.

In events that are now well-known, there was a popular uprising against the Lord Regent, Burrows was killed (betrayed, in part by Daud, who came to bitterly resent what he had done) and Corvo Attano, aided by the Outsider, rescued Emily and restored her to the rule of the Empire. Fifteen years later, in 1852, the now-adult Emily was deposed by the Brigmore Witches. Aided by Corvo Attano, now confirmed to be her father, Emily escaped to the southern city of Karnaca, gathered resources and allies and then retook her throne.

Origin and Influences
Dunwall is the primary location of the 2012 video game Dishonored and its expansions, The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches (both 2013). It also appears at the start and end of Dishonored 2 (2016) and in its stand-alone expansion Dishonored: The Death of the Outsider(2017)

Arkane Studios created the Dishonored franchise for their new owners Bethesda, wanting to create and develop a new video game series in which players were given objectives but also total freedom on how to achieve those objectives, either with blood and violence or stealth. They were heavily inspired in structure by both the Deus Ex and Thief video game series, which had been dormant for many years when development began. New instalments in both series surprisingly arrived during and after development of Dishonored.

The visual design of the city of Dunwall was led by Viktor Antonov, who had created the starkly beautiful City 17 for the classic 2004 video game Half-Life 2. Whilst City 17 was inspired by crumbling post-Soviet Eastern European and Russian cities, Dunwall was inspired by Victorian London. Indeed, the first design document for Dishonored had it set in the real London of 1666, the last year of the plague and on the eve of the Great Fire. This shifted when the designers decided to incorporate elements of magic and steampunk design, but not before Antonov had visited London and Edinburgh and taken substantial amounts of photographs to help inform the later design of the game.

During development, the city of New Crobuzon (from China Mieville's Bas-Lag novels, most notably Perdido Street Station) was cited as a strong inspiration. The City, the steampunk setting for the Thief trilogy of video games, was also an influence on both the design of Dunwall and the gameplay. Although the game originally had a historical setting, the decision to move to a fictional one resulted in the designers creating a substantial amount of lore and worldbuilding for the game.

Dishonored was released in 2012 to immense critical acclaim, which only continued with its expansions and sequel, the latter set in the more Mediterranean-influenced city of Karnaca. It is assumed that Arkane will return to the setting with more games.

See also: Dunwall at Dishonored Wiki.

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SENSE8 finale enters pre-production

The two-hour finale movie of Netflix's Sense8 has entered -preproduction, with the script being distributed for the cast for read-throughs before shooting begins.

Sense8 was cancelled by Netflix earlier this year, after citing disappointing streaming figures for the second season (despite Netflix themselves doing an awful job of advertising it). A strong fan campaign, helped by lots of news stories and more people watching the show, allowed Netflix to give the series a reprieve and allow the writers to tie up the story.

The finale, intriguingly, is written by Lana Wachowski with novelists David Mitchell and Aleksander Hemon. Wachowski previously collaborated with Mitchell on the Cloud Atlas movie. J. Michael Straczynski, who co-created the series and co-wrote the first two seasons, is surprisingly absent. Despite some speculation to the contrary, Lily Wachowski has also not returned to contribute to the finale (although there remains a chance she may return as a producer or director).

Officially, this will be the last-ever episode of Sense8, but there remains a small chance of a further revival or a spin-off if this finale is well-received.

Money Talks: The Explosion of Television

Over at Variety, TV critic Mo Ryan has an excellent series of articles on the rising costs of television and the fears that the TV market could be headed for some kind of meltdown or crash. It's a fear that more than a few in the American TV industry share, but its clear that costs and the amount of shows in production are not slowing down any time soon.

This is the level of effects fidelity TV viewers now demand from their shows.

In 2016 some 455 scripted TV series were produced and aired in the United States. That's not 455 hours, that's 455 actual separate, discrete series. The final figure for 2017 isn't in yet, but the eight-month figure as of the start of August was 342 to 325 in the previous year. The final figure for this year will be higher than last, and may come close to 500. That will easily be broken next year: 2018 is when a number of series commissioned by Netflix in their mammoth, multi-billion dollar expansion last year, and counter-commissioning by the likes of Amazon, will hit our screens. With Apple wading into the original TV space as of next year, it's possible that over six hundred scripted TV shows will air in the United States in 2018 (that's more than double the 2012 figure). That's going to be close to ten thousand hours of scripted television airing in one year. If you spent 12 hours a day watching TV, it'd take you two and bit years to watch one year's worth of scripted TV alone.

And that's not counting hundreds more shows coming out of the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, and that's just in the English language.

The explosion of television is also being accompanied by an explosion in budgets. This year the seventh season of Game of Thrones clocked in at around $14,285,000 per hour. That will rise to around $17 million per episode for the final season, which is just about to start shooting. Thrones is very much an outlier, but other shows are getting up there: Star Trek: Discovery and Altered Carbon are both in the $7-8 million per episode bracket, and Netflix drama The Crown reportedly exceeded $10 million per episode. The second season of Sense8 rocked in at $9 million per episode (enough to get it cancelled when not enough people tuned in quickly enough). Stranger Things' first season cost a modest $6 million per episode for eight episodes, but its success has seen the second season increase to $8 million per hour with an extra episode bump, so the season as a whole costs $72 million compared to the first season's $48 million, which in real terms is a 50% increase in just one-and-a-half years.

These budgets are insane. Back in 1990, Star Trek: The Next Generation caused consternation when its budget exceeded $1 million per episode. Although exceeded for mini-series and specials, that budget for an ongoing TV series seemed remarkable. By a few years later, however, more was the norm. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's pilot was made for $12 million in 1993 and its regular episodes came in at around $2 million. Star Trek: Voyager's pilot was shot two years later for the same amount of money (so slightly less, given inflation), and the record of those two pilots stood for a decade, until Lost's pilot was shot for a reported $15 million or more. By the mid-to-late 2000s it was generally considered normal for a TV show to cost between $2 and $3 million per episode, with a high-end show like Heroes costing $4 million per episode. Lost wound up costing $5 million per episode, due to the expense of shooting in Hawaii, a factor which was likely influential in seeing later seasons reduce their number of episodes.

The true super-budgets were strictly the preserve of high-end cable, and especially HBO's prestige mini-series. In 2001 its Band of Brothers mini-series cost $12.5 million per episode to produce; its 2010 companion series The Pacific was roughly double that. HBO's ongoing series were more modestly budgeted until the advent of Deadwood in 2004 and Rome the following year. Rome's budget exceeded $100 million for the first season and was slightly less for the second, but these costs were considered too high and the show was cancelled; HBO later considered this to be a mistake, given Rome's long tail on DVD, foreign sales and in streaming. Still, HBO exercised caution in the following years, bringing in shows like True Blood for substantially less money. Even when Game of Thrones started in 2011, it's episodes were budgeted at under $7 million per hour. HBO probably now regrets being that thrifty, especially considering they turned a profit on the series in foreign rights sales and merchandising before a single episode was screened.

In the arena of traditional network television, lower budgets have continued to be the norm but have also been seen as a major problem. On around $4 million per episode, ABC's Agents of SHIELD struggled to even remotely match the big-budget set pieces seen in the Marvel movies which are supposedly set in the same universe. Yet suggestions that ABC should raise its game have been resisted, with a strong implication that any higher budget would be unaffordable and the show would be cancelled (and in fact appears to have been lucky to reach a fifth season).

Money pouring into TV is a good thing: compared to film, television has looked quite cheap for quite some time now, and TV shows having the budget to do their stories justice is welcome. However, there is something to be said for frugality. Necessity is the mother of invention and sometimes restricted budgets can result in inventive and impressive solutions. Battlestar Galactica's budget never exceeded $2 million per episode (albeit after a more expensive pilot mini-series which helped built its enormous standing sets) but the show put every single cent of that money on screen, coming up with incredibly inventive ways of portraying epic scenes and space battles relatively cheaply.

The Walking Dead likes to give maximum bang for the studio's buck.

The golden child of responsible TV spending is The Walking Dead, which is made on less than $4 million per episode yet credibly presents a post-apocalyptic world featuring hordes of ravenous zombies and occasional battle sequences with dozens of people exchanging gunfire. Although The Walking Dead is feeling the pinch of its budgetary issues - the last couple of seasons have featured some extremely ropy effects at times - it still shows you can still achieve quite a lot even with relatively little money. This frugality is even more eyebrow-raising when you realise that Thirteen Reasons Why - a teen drama with virtually no effects, no heavy make-up requirements, relatively limited location filming and no massive explosions - costs over $1 million per episode more than The Walking Dead. Whilst Game of Thrones has long supplanted The Walking Dead's viewership and place at the water cooler, AMC executives probably have some smiles about how incredibly taut and well-budgeted their operation is compared to HBO's sprawling epic.

The rise of TV budgets has been helped by the rise of the streaming services. Netflix doesn't have to sell adverts, it simply has to sell subscriptions and it can do that worldwide. No longer does it need to chase the 4-7 million viewers a prime-time US drama might hope to grab at best, it's now targeting hundreds of millions of viewers in 190 countries. And that means it is floating in a sea of money it can use to commission and make hundreds of shows at budgets network TV in the States can only dream of. This isn't the preserve of Netflix alone, though. HBO leveraged its formidable international sales muscle to get Game of Thrones sold around the world before it aired a single frame of footage, whilst Fox TV recently crowed over the success of its X-Files reboot by saying the season was watched by over 70 million viewers in a couple of dozen countries.

More topically, CBS has turned a profit on Star Trek: Discovery's first season after selling it to Netflix for worldwide distribution. The $105 million budget of the first season has already been accounted for even before people started subscribing to CBS All Access (which is why those threatening to boycott the service are really not going to change CBS's minds on this).

The fear that the TV market will eventually implode is a real one. Social media, video games and even good-old fashioned books are competing for attention, not to mention non-scripted TV shows and of course movies. The bubble may burst and we'll see the number of TV shows tumble to a more manageable level, but it's also likely that the victors will be those services which can reach a global audience instantly, and will continue churning out TV on a massive scale. The most important thing is that they also continue their recent trend of hiring talented writers and film-makers and allowing them to get new and interesting ideas on screen, and giving them the resources to do it properly.

STAR TREK DISCOVERY: first impressions

The first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery have aired in the US and are now available on Netflix in most other countries. Here's my thoughts after watching both episodes.

CAUTION: SPOILERS FOR BOTH EPISODES

First up, the first two episodes, The Vulcan Hello and Battle at the Binary Stars, are a single two-hour episode, and really should have been presented as such. Dividing the two episodes doesn't help either half (and shutting the second episode behind a paywall in the US is a really bad idea). Secondly, the two episodes combined are a prologue to the rest of the series. We know that the premise of Star Trek: Discovery is that it will cover the adventures of the USS Discovery during a time of renewed Federation/Klingon hostilities, ten years before the events of the original series. These first two episodes establish the reason for the renewal of hostilities, but the Discovery itself and Captain Lorca (Jason Isaacs) are both MIA, which is a weird choice. At the end of these two hours we may have gotten to know a couple of the characters but we really don't know how the series itself will play out week-by-week.

Instead the two episodes focus strongly on Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), a Starfleet officer who had been been raised on Vulcan after her parents were murdered in a Klingon border skirmish. Burnham is a mass of contradictions, her human emotions straining against Vulcan logical training and conditioning, which leads to a couple of bad choices which stain her reputation. Burnham is the executive officer of the USS Shenzhou, serving under Captain Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), who has mentored Burnham extensively and considers her now ready to step up as a captain in her own right, just before a crisis gives her an opportunity to show those skills...and she fails. The two-parter ends with Burnham being court-martialed for mutiny and imprisoned.

There's a lot to unpack here and a full review will have to wait until the season (or at least the first half, which is airing as a discrete mini-season with a break over Christmas) is complete. It's a brave idea to show such a flawed central character in Star Trek and have them disgraced and having made several bad calls before the pilot is over. It's even odder to have them making those decisions for stupid reasons. Sarek reveals that the Vulcans would attack Klingon ships on sight, attacking with overwhelming force until they had earned the Klingons respect. With the Shenzhou already outgunned and then, seconds later, massively outnumbered by the Klingon reinforcements, this option - logical under other circumstances - is clearly not viable, but Burnham pursues it regardless of the change in circumstance. I'm hoping this is a well-thought out character flaw - Burnham's need to win Vulcan respect results in her pursuing courses of action through dogma which even Vulcans would reject - rather than bad writing, but I am not hopeful on that point.

Performance-wise, the episode is a strong success. Doug Jones is exceptional as Lt. Commander Saru and Martin-Green gives an excellent performance, especially compared to her less-developed role on The Walking Dead. Michelle Yeoh is, of course, utterly superb. The Klingon actors fare less well: the new Klingon makeup is incredibly restrictive and inhibits emoting. The need for all the Klingons to speak Klingon all the time also massively restricts their performance. Whilst the TNG-era Klingons could be theatrical and OTT, they at least got across their passion and the actors could go to town with the roles. The Klingon actors here might be doing exceptional work, but with both the make-up and language choice constraining them, we can't really tell. This is something they need to address moving forwards, otherwise the Klingons are going to be a pretty tedious enemy.

Effects-wise the show is quite impressive, with tons of ambitious tracking shots and full-on space battles. Things aren't as hectic and nonsensical as with the Abrams movies and some of the shots are breathtaking. However, there's less attention paid to things like strategy in the space battles, which devolve into lots of ships flying around firing at things randomly. Ship design could also be better: the Shenzhou is derivative of earlier designs (particularly the NX-01 Enterprise and Akira) and the Klingons are a baffling mish-mash of random designs which don't follow very logically on from established Klingon designs.

Discovery's connections with the rest of the Star Trek canon are questionable: Spock having an adopted human sister he never once mentioned ever seems...unlikely. The Shenzhou looks more advanced than Picard's Enterprise-D, let alone the Constitution-class Enterprise which (according to the timeline) is already in service at this point in Star Trek history (with Spock on board) under Captain Pike. And the less said about the awkward new Klingon design the better.

As the two-parter draws to a close, it has certainly set up an interesting paradigm that is worth exploring further. In terms of effects, casting and performances the show is very promising, but the writing needs to be better, the characterisation more coherent and the show really needs to start paying attention to the canon and stop trying to change things just for the sake of change (if you're going to do that, why even make a Star Trek show in the first place?). Based on this evidence, Discovery still has it all to play for and The Expanse is in no danger of losing its title as "Best Space Opera Show Currently on Air" just yet.

Star Trek: Discovery airs every Sunday on CBS All Access in the States and every Monday on Netflix in most of the rest of the world.