Some thoughts on Doctor Who

I've been on a big Doctor Who kick since a little before the 50th anniversary special. It's been slightly obsessive, to be honest. So I figured I'd do something productive (sort of) with it and pop out another bulleted list of incoherent thoughts. Spoilers ahead for things that have been out for months now.

• Night of the Doctor: I think Paul McGann might be my favorite Doctor, so it was incredible to see him back in live action--and with his own hair this time! That they actually acknowledged the companions from the audio adventures was a beautiful little cherry on top. I'd love to see more mini-episodes with past Doctors like this, and I hope BBC is thinking really hard about it. This made me run out and find "The Brain of Morbius"--well, this and the fact that the Eighth Doctor Audio sequel to that story was coming up in my listening rotation.
  
• The Eighth Doctor Audios: It had been so long since I listened to any of these that I kind of forgot where I left off. I started up listening again with "Immortal Beloved," which was familiar enough that I know I'd heard it before, but nothing else seemed familiar until "Max Warp," which I distinctly remember listening to while mowing the lawn several years back. So, no idea what exactly ended up happening there. I'm most of the way through Series 3 now, and kind of holding off because I know the finale is a sequel to "Planet of the Spiders," which I haven't seen yet. And I've been holding off on watching that because I feel like I should watch more Third Doctor stories before seeing his swansong. And that's led into me watching just a ton of classic Doctor Who whenever I have the chance. Anyway, the EDAs are great (even if I don't like Lucie Miller quite as much as Charley Pollard), and I'm particularly excited to dig into "Dark Eyes."
  
• The Day of the Doctor: I thought the 50th Anniversary special was just delightful. Lots of nods to the past (though I'd forgotten that Kate Lethbridge-Stewart had been introduced previously), with a fun story that gave all three Doctors a chance to shine. While I kind of wish Christopher Eccleston had at least done something with it, I frankly think John Hurt's War Doctor fit better in that role, and did wonderfully. I hope that (if Hurt is willing) the BBC is working on getting him to do some other media. I'd love to hear some War Doctor audios, even if they were done by BBC Audio like the "Hornet's Nest" releases and not Big Finish (as I understand there's some weird issues with the rights).
  
  One of the guys at my LCS said "The Day of the Doctor" was everything he wished "Man of Steel" had been, and I think that works really well. Not only was it fun and reverent of the past while giving a good new story, but it also featured the Doctor doing what the Doctor does (and what Superman usually does): finding a better way to win. And not just when it comes to averting a human-Zygon war, but also with regard to the Time War.
  
  I've seen criticism about the retcon, but frankly I think it's misguided. I understand the desire to keep the new series' driving tragedy for the Doctor, but it hasn't been mentioned much--if at all--since before "The Eleventh Hour." It hasn't really driven the series in a long time. Moreover, the more we learned about the Time War, the less sense it made for the Doctor's character. Like, it's one thing to know that there was a Great Time War between the Time Lords and the Daleks, in which countless worlds (including Gallifrey and Skaro) were destroyed, and in which the Doctor made the impossible choice to destroy the Time Lords and Daleks once and for all--well, except for the Master and the Daleks, both of whom made it out all right. But it's another thing to think about what that actually means. The Doctor committed genocide. Twice over. Yes, we're assured that by the end, the Time Lords were as bad as the Daleks if not worse, but...really? All of the Time Lords? Even the children (we know there are Gallifreyan children, thanks to "The Sound of Drums")? Even Romana and Susan? It just doesn't hold up.
  
  It all runs into the same problem that Superman had in the Silver Age. There's a great line in the Wizard Death of Superman Special (I know, I'm surprised too) about how, after awhile, it seemed like the only people actually killed in Krypton's destruction were Superman's parents and a few close neighbors. At least Superman got the people of Kandor, Supergirl, and the Kryptonian Super-pets out of the selective survival deal. Seems like only the evil people survived the Time War.
  
  And when the Doctor is one of those survivors and has double genocide in his past, it's hard not to wonder if he might not be an exception.
  
  "The Day of the Doctor" didn't undo the fact that the Doctor was driven to desperation such that he'd be willing to push that button. It didn't undo all the other terrors and atrocities of the Time War, like the destruction of the Nestene and Zygon homeworlds and the disembodiment of the Gelth. What it undid was the notion that he'd try to save Davros of all people, but destroy Gallifrey. The Doctor doesn't do genocide, not even for entities as bad as the Daleks. That's been established for a good long while. It doesn't even negate the remorse felt by Nine and Ten, since he had still been driven to the point of committing that double genocide, even if there ended up being another way. Whether or not he pulled the trigger, he'd been willing to do something that otherwise would have been abhorrent to him, and that would give anyone cause for remorse and reevaluation.
  
  So, yeah, I generally thought that "Day of the Doctor" was the best that "Doctor Who" has been in awhile.
  
• The Time of the Doctor: But the next installment? Hoo boy. What a sharp drop in quality there, as Steven Moffat tried to cram half a season of story into a single episode, and pretend that it had all been planned that way from the beginning rather than being hastily assembled in a rather slapdash manner, which it clearly was. The dinner with Clara's family deserved a full episode (a la "The Power of Three") rather than being the quickly-dropped introduction. Ever since the mystery of Clara was solved (in a way that also didn't make a whole lot of sense), it's become abundantly clear that they've never really bothered to give her any characterization beyond it. Rose, Martha, Donna, and Amy have all had lives and families outside of the TARDIS, and that's helped to give them a sort of grounding in reality (and conflicts to motivate them and create drama). Clara was created as ungrounded initially and intentionally, and as a result the most we've seen is that she's a babysitter who likes to make soufflé. A sitcom episode with her and the Doctor would have been a great way to correct that, but instead we get the unnecessary and weird nudity stuff and hop out into space for the most nonsensical adventure in quite some time.
  
  There are too many ideas in "The Time of the Doctor," and too few of them are any good. Others have pointed out quite accurately that it doesn't make sense for the technologically parasitic Silents to be confessional priests in the space-church, and also that there's not much point in confession if you can't actually remember doing it. The truth-field is fun, right up until the Doctor lies about having a plan and punches a great big hole in the plot. It'd be nice to have some female characters who aren't instantly and secretly in love with the Doctor, though that goes back to Davies. Then again, at least Davies had Captain Jack also in love with the Doctor, as a small bit of balance.
  
  And then there's the regeneration. I saw people complaining that he was using regeneration energy as a weapon, and I don't really mind that. It was strong enough to devastate the TARDIS in "The End of Time," so it's not entirely out of the question that it could blow up a Dalek ship or two here. The problem I have is with the unnecessary and wasteful bit where Eleven is actually Thirteen.
  
  I say "wasteful" because it throws away an interesting dynamic and source of drama without getting anything in return. The Doctor who knows he's the last incarnation is a story we deserve to see (even if we know he's not really the last incarnation). What does he do differently when he knows that the end isn't just the end for this body, but the end, period? It gives the search for Gallifrey a sense of greater urgency, since we and the Doctor know the Time Lords have ways of granting additional regenerations (they did it for the Master, after all).
  
  Instead, we cram all that angst into a single brief scene in a single episode, for no reason except that Moffat wanted to cram the Time Lords into this episode as well, shoving them behind the crack in the universe that never got much of an explanation and wasn't helped by the throwaway attempt in this episode. It was a dumb choice, especially hinging it on a fairly brief scene in a show that aired six years ago (okay, five and a half when "Time" aired). Dumb, dumb, dumb, and that kind of dumb choice making really muddied what should have been a heartfelt and tearful goodbye to Matt Smith.
  
  And that's ignoring the constant wink-clever metatextual dialogue, the eye-rolling bowtie drop, the unnecessary (and weird-looking, I imagine because of the wig) Amy, and the plot that was done better in "Orbis." I've liked Matt Smith's Doctor a lot, despite some of the writing choices along the way, and he deserved a better sendoff than he received. "The Night of the Doctor" was a mess.
  
  And it won't get cleaned up until flipping August.

Wow, somehow I wrote all that and didn't even get into my classic Who binge or the ebooks and comics I've been consuming. I guess I'll have to write up a part 2...

Oh Snap

From "Absolute Power," the 47th episode of "Superman: The Animated Series."

CETEA: We may have our wars and our factions, but we are not the barbarians Jax-Ur portrayed.

SUPERMAN: Even so, I can't fight him, Cetea.

CETEA: You must! You're the only one powerful enough.

SUPERMAN: If I do, your planet will be the loser. A battle between us would cause more destruction and bloodshed than all the wars that came before.

CETEA: We're willing to risk it.

SUPERMAN: I'm not. Not that way.

Sigh.

Die Hard and its Presidential Pretenders

I love "Die Hard." I'm one of the increasingly large and insufferable mass of people who watch "Die Hard" each Christmas, and I genuinely think it may be the best action movie of all time. Naturally, it's spawned lots of pretenders--not least of which are four other "Die Hard" movies--which I've lately been fascinated by. Fascinated enough that I got together with my Movies Schmovies brother Jon, and we watched a double-feature of "Die Hard in the White House" movies, "Olympus Has Fallen" and "White House Down," which are part of the slightly broader "Die Hard with the President" subgenre that began (as far as I know) with "Air Force One."

"Olympus Has Fallen" was generally pretty joyless, though Aaron Eckhart's turn as recent widower President Benjamin Asher gave me lots of opportunities to say "I believe in Presi Dent," and to imagine the Gotham politics that got him elected, along with Speaker of the House Lucius Fox. Jon remarked that Bruce Wayne told Harvey "One fundraiser with my pals, you’ll never need another cent," and apparently that meant "no matter what office you run for." The film features North Korean commandos taking over the White House, in order to get the codes for the failsafe system that can detonate any American nuclear weapon, with hopes of destroying all of them in their silos and exploding the country. Only ex-Special Forces, ex-Secret Service agent Gerard Butler can rescue the President's son and also, if there's time, the President.

Of the two Die-Hard-in-the-White-House movies from this past year, "Olympus Has Fallen" is the less Die-Hard-y of the two, which I think is a lot of why it was so boring. There are a couple of big things that I think most of the imitations miss about what makes "Die Hard" compelling, and "Olympus Has Fallen" misses them more than most.

First, there's the character of John McClane. During their first walkie-talkie conversation, Hans Gruber asks if John is "Just another American who saw too many movies as a child? Another orphan of a bankrupt culture who thinks he's John Wayne? Rambo? Marshal Dillon?" It's an important contrast, Dillon and Wayne being symbols of the classic cowboy adventurer, moral to a fault, paragons of virtue, and champions of the rule of law. John McClane is a good cop, but he's more shrewd and pragmatic than lawfully virtuous. But the more important contrast, and the one that most of the "Die Hard" wannabes miss, is the comparison to Rambo. "First Blood" was only six years old when "Die Hard" came out, which was the same year that "Rambo III" hit theaters. And while John Rambo was a mostly stoic, super-capable one-man army ex-special forces agent, John McClane most certainly wasn't. One of the things I most appreciate about "Die Hard"--and most dislike about more recent films in the franchise, like "A Good Day to Die Hard"--is that John becomes progressively more injured and weary throughout the film. When he finally takes a bullet from Karl's gun, it's a big deal. When he's pulling shards of glass out of his feet, it feels like an actual injury, and he's limping and trailing blood for the rest of the movie. By the time we get to that final confrontation, John is exhausted and bloody; his voice is ragged. It actively shocks Holly to see him like that. He's not the "Last Action Hero" only-a-flesh-wound action movie protagonist. He's not a one-man army who can ramp a car into a helicopter. He's just a resourceful cop with an attitude. His conversations with himself show that he's not super-confident, and his dialogue in the actual heat of battle is the kind of nonsensical angry stuff that any of us would say if grappling with a giant German on a staircase ("You motherf***er, I'm gonna kill you! I'm gonna f***in' cook you, and I'm gonna f***ing eat you!"). John's at his most clever when he's talking with Hans on the walkie-talkie, and a lot of that is bravado. He doesn't get the James Bond post-killing quips that have become standard action hero fare.

Gerard Butler's Agent Mike Banning is not John McClane. He is that hyper-capable, ex-special forces agent who knows all the ins and outs of the White House. He doesn't have to take notes or look at maps the way John McClane does. He's actually at his least clever when talking with the North Korean villains, though a lot of that is because this movie was apparently scripted by pulling lines from the Big Book of Action Movie clichés. "Die Hard" is thoroughly quotable; "Olympus Has Fallen" is littered with "but it's against protocol!" and "the United States doesn't negotiate with terrorists" and "where's my son?!" Mike Banning doesn't talk to himself, doesn't question himself, doesn't feel any ill effects from his injuries, and as a result is a much less interesting character.

There's also the issue of the villains. "Die Hard" makes itself a little more timeless, I think, by making its villains a multicultural cadre looking for money rather than achieving a political goal. Aside from the references to "West Germany," Hans Gruber could be upper-class Eurotrash from any era. Political motivations come and go, and while it'll likely be some time before North Korea and the U.S. have a friendly relationship, there's every chance that this plot will eventually seem as much a relic as all those films about Soviet terrorists, or about Rambo teaming up with the mujahideen. The multicolored group under Gruber also largely sidesteps the issue of racism, which is a very real problem any time you're casting one particular ethnicity as "the enemy."

One of the other things "Die Hard" does well is characterization. Every major character gets a story arc, from John to Holly to Ellis to Argyle, and even the minor characters have memorable moments, like the one terrorist who just wants a candy bar. In contrast, there's only one villain who gets even a little characterization in "Olympus Has Fallen," and even most of the heroic characters only exist as platitude-spouters. Everyone is a stereotype, and while that's a technique that can work well (see "Pacific Rim") it just comes off as lazy here.

"White House Down" provides a pretty stark contrast. It's a much more entertaining film, in part because it's not nearly so deadly serious as "Olympus Has Fallen," and in part because the screenwriter appears to have spent about fifteen minutes outlining his own story, then said "screw it" and did a find-and-replace on the "Die Hard" script. It's so slavishly devoted to aping "Die Hard" that the villains have a secret second plan, there's a scene with our hero on top of a speeding elevator, and there's even a "Mrs. McClane" moment. There are times where I honestly wished that it would ape "Die Hard" a little more--Channing Tatum is a hell of a lot more charming and compelling than Gerard Butler, with more humble origins as a secret service applicant who doesn't meet Maggie Gyllenhaal's (another "The Dark Knight" connection!) exacting standards, but he could still stand to be less sure of himself. We get a couple of bits of John McClane-esque "this is a bad idea" moments, but not really enough of them.

Otherwise, though, the places where "White House Down" distinguishes itself from "Die Hard" tend to be done well. Channing Tatum's politics-obsessed daughter is the Holly Gennero analogue, trapped in the occupied White House, and using her keen vlogging skills to leak information to the outside world. In most action and horror movies, cell phones are so inconvenient to plot contrivance that they have to be disposed of quickly, but this is one of the few things I've seen where a smartphone is not just used well, but made integral to the story. For much of the movie, Tatum is accompanied by Jamie Foxx's not-Barack-Obama President character, and the dynamic between the two is pretty entertaining--it takes a page from "Die Hard with a Vengeance," which is my second-favorite "Die Hard" flick, so that's a bonus for me.

"White House Down" follows the "Die Hard" formula with the minor characters, though it's not quite as skilled in giving them all good moments (the Glenn Beck stand-in is a fun idea but doesn't really get much to do). It does manage "Die Hard"'s trick of making seemingly innocuous lines and details, like a throwaway note about the tunnels that JFK used to sneak Marilyn Monroe into the White House or Tatum's daughter's flag-twirling, into more significant story elements down the line. It gives the movie a sense of cohesion that, again, too many of the pretenders miss. "Die Hard" is full of those moments, and it's really pretty shocking how much of the dialogue is foreshadowing.

I think the worst part of "White House Down" ended up being its politics, which are straight-up bonkers. The President has made a treaty with a bunch of nations that requires removing all the American troops from the Middle East, and in a world where even talking to Iran or withdrawing some troops is cause for major bipartisan pants-soiling in Congress, that broke my suspension of disbelief more than any other aspect of the film. Until, of course, it turns out bad guy James Woods's plan was to nuke the entire Middle East. I think the idea was to prevent the film from being too real-world political by inventing scenarios that were so over-the-top that they couldn't be owned by either major party, but it might have been better to go a little more subtle.

It seems I've come to the end of this rambling without an overall point. To sum up: "Die Hard" is an excellent movie, and is smarter than most give it credit for. Too many of its imitators (and sequels) are dazzled by memorable lines and explosions, and miss what made the movie clever and unique enough to stand the test of time. But if you're in the mood for a "Die Hard"-style flick that has a sense of humor about itself and also has an action President, you could do worse than "White House Down." Specifically, you could rent "Olympus Has Fallen." That would be worse.

Apropos of nothing, there's a line in "White House Down" (I think) which we misheard, and it sounded like something about Harrison Ford, which brought up the notion that to deal with the threat of White House-occupying terrorists, they needed to bring in the Battle President, and that would be amazing.

How I feel right now

Ender Bender 11: Chapter 8, "Rat" (Part 2)

Sorry about the delay, folks. Jumping right into things:

Ender notices Dink's late to things sometimes, so he decides to stalk him.

Remember how I said things were going to get weird? Yeah:

But Dink didn't practics. He stood near the door, watching Ender.
Ender stood across the room, watching Dink.
Neither spoke. It was plain Dink expected Ender to leave. It was just as plain that Ender was saying no.
Dink turned his back on Ender, methodically took off his flash suit, and gently pushed off from the floor. He drifted slowly toward the center of the room, very slowly, his body relaxing almost completely, so that his hands and arms seemed to be caught by almost nonexistent air currents in the room.

Yeah. Reading that scene, I couldn't stop thinking of the bathing scene from "Witness." I don't know how to interpret Card's fascination with underage nudity throughout this book. I mean, maybe it's trying to be like a camp thing? I never went to summer camp, so I really don't know. Do boys (and a single girl) just spend all their time naked at summer camp? Is this the equivalent of Dink skinny-dipping? If so, what does that mean for Ender just watching from the 'shore'?

This book is flipping weird.

Dink gets dressed again and takes Ender back to the empty barracks, where they talk about why Dink's never been promoted. Or, more accurately, why he's refused the promotions he's been given. It's all because of The Man, man.

["]I can't believe you haven't seen through all this crap yet, Ender. But I guess you're young. These other armies, they aren't the enemy. It's the teachers, they're the enemy. They get us to fight each other, to hate each other. The game is everything. Win win win. It amounts to nothing.

Take the red pill! You can't trust the system! In case you didn't remember when Ender explicitly statd this lesson before, the adults are the real enemy. You know it's a theme because they keep saying it. Like that bit of "Hamlet" where he says "lo, indecision is bad" a few times.

Despite doing his level best to make any and all subtext into just plain text, there's a decent amount to unpack here. For the most part, I've been looking at Battleschool as symbolizing military training--both the aspects that Card thinks are stupid and the things he thinks would make it better and more effective--but this chapter connects it further to the whole notion of sports in school. It clicks with a lot of things, actually, and I'm a little shocked that I didn't notice that in Salamander Army, Ender was essentially picked last and forced to play right field.

Dink is saying stuff that wouldn't have been out of place coming out of my mouth during a pep assembly in high school. The game is a waste of time and money, a barbaric, brainless distraction from the real issues. Of course, in this case, the people best able to espouse this view are the ones who are best at the game, and not the ones who (like me in high school) couldn't catch a pass to save their lives.

And this is where I see all the people saying that Ender's Game talks to kids without talking down to them (which I think includes Card himself in that introduction) and wonder if they're reading the same book. Maybe it's just me, but this kind of over-the-top pandering feels like condescension. "Sports are stupid, and you'd be better than anyone at them if you wanted to be. The only reason you're not popular is because they're all jealous of you, because you're clearly better than all of them anyway. They don't see the real truth, that they're just pawns in someone else's game and you're one of the enlightened few who can see the strings and how pointless it all is. What really matters is video games, which you are awesomer than anyone at." It speaks to that particular kind of disaffected, self-aggrandized, oversimplified conspiratorial mindset that I know was common among my teenage peers. And it speaks to that mindset in a way that says, "yes, you're absolutely right," with a little pat on the head. It'd be great if this book eventually took a turn toward showing that, in fact, this view of reality is not much more sophisticated than the one held by the so-called pawns, but based on the tone here, I don't particularly expect that to be the case.

Dink says he doesn't leave because, despite everything, he's as addicted to the game as anyone else. He's the pro-wrestling fan who knows it's all staged but loves it anyway, the video game addict who knows next year's Call of Duty sequel won't be appreciably different from this year's, but drops the $60 nonetheless. If nothing else, this contradiction in Dink's character feels realistic.

He further explains why he's not a commander, pointing to Rosen's neuroses (because of course the Jewish character is neurotic. Did Card learn everything he knows about Judaism from Woody Allen?), that he's afraid of the dark and doesn't understand why his team actually wins battles.

Any minute somebody could find out that Rosen isn't some magic Israeli general who can win no matter what. He doesn't know why anybody wins or loses. Nobody does.

Nobody, except strategy genius Ender Wiggin, that is!

See, this whole system has replaced real childhood, which Dink knows about because books.

"Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren't in armies, they aren't commanders, they don't rule over forty other kids, it's more than anybody can take and not get crazy."

This reads like it's meant to be cutting social commentary, but about what? Little league?

Dink continues on, and Ender starts crying because he thinks about home and Valentine, which causes Dink to continue more about how they're all supposed to be adults and nobody cries. He talks about how crazy Bonzo is, that everyone at Battle school is a little crazy, and how getting naked and floating in zero-g is how he deals with the craziness.

And eventually we get to the crux of the conversation:

"I can't believe you still believe it."
"Believe what?"
"The bugger menace. Save the world. Listen, Ender, if the buggers were coming back to get us, they'd be here. They aren't invading again. We beat them and they're gone."
"But the videos--"
"All from the First and Second Invasions. Your grandparents weren't born yet when Mazer Rackham wiped them out. You watch. It's all a fake. There is no war, and they're just screwing around with us."

It's all a conspiracy, man, so the government can stay in power over the sheeple, man! And it's all gonna lead to a civil war where it'll be Americans against everyone else and by the way Dink's not American, which is info we're getting right now because it's relevant now and wasn't before so there's no need to go back and edit it in at a less awkward moment.

Ender doesn't believe Dink's conspiracy theory, and chalks it up to a different conspiracy, that the Russian hegemony that controls the Netherlands, where Dink is from, tightly controls the local media, but "lies could not last long in America," and I just chuckle. And of course, as with every conversation, Ender learns an important lesson. And as with every important lesson that Ender learns, Card feels the need to spell it out for the reader, as if this were the end of a "G.I. Joe" episode.

It [the seed of doubt planted by Dink's words] made Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.

Ugh.

Next time, Ender fights the system, man!

Ender Bender 10: Chapter 8, "Rat" (Part 1)

Colonel Graff and Major Anderson, those are our adult conversation partners. I know they've both had their names said earlier in the book, but I'm writing them here so I can look it up easily and stop forgetting. Colonel Statler and Major Waldorf. Got it.


Graff's trying to pressure Anderson into rigging the games, messing with the students to put more pressure on. There's a lot of back and forth about the battleroom games, what their purpose is and what they mean, and I had to keep going back and counting paragraphs so I could figure out which side each talking head was supposed to be on. Anderson wants to preserve the games as the status symbol that they've come to represent for the kids, Graff wants to put Ender through the ringer. It's hard to find any sympathy for Graff when he's so myopically, obsessively focused on one kid and trying to structure the entire system around that one kid, while Anderson understandably has an entire school full of future soldiers to consider.

There's some "well I'll go over your head" back and forth, which brings us to this:

This is something to be decided by people who know what they're doing, not these frightened politicians who got their office because they happen to be politically potent in the country they came from.

Haha, yeah, that civilian oversight of the military is so lame, amirite?

There's also "Ender Wiggin is ten times smarter and stronger than I am," which I can't help but read as "Ooh, Poochie is one outrageous dude." Graff goes on a bit about how he could never withstand what he's putting Ender through. Why he thinks it'll work...is an unanswered question.

And then we start the chapter proper in a not unexpected fashion:

"Ender Wiggin, the little farthead who leads the standings, what a pleasure to have you with us." The commander of Rat Army lay sprawled on a lower bunk wearing only his desk.

Flatulence? Check. Characters talking about how great Ender is? Check. Young boys unnecessarily naked? Check and then some. Meet Ender's new commander, Rosen. And if you thought there might be some issues with characters like Alai and Petra and Bonzo, then let me reassure you: Card was just warming up.

"We doing OK, Ender Bender.

Oh hey, it's the title of this series!

I Rose de Nose, Jewboy extraordinaire, and you ain’t nothin but a pinheaded pinprick of a goy. Don’t you forget it."

...What.

Since the I.F. was formed, the Strategos of the military forces had always been a Jew. There was a myth that Jewish generals didn’t lose wars. And so far it was still true. It made any Jew in the Battle School dream of being Strategos, and conferred prestige on him from the start.

Okay, that is some serious Protocols of the Elders of Zion stuff--and the irony that I very nearly typed "Enders" there is not lost on me. So, everyone's forced to give up their religion, except the Jews? Or is Jewish being treated more as an ethnicity here? And either way, Jewish generals never lose wars? I don't even know where to begin, except to say that reading this reminded me of those "none of the Jews came to work on 9/11" conspiracy theorists.

It also caused resentment. Rat Army was often called the K*** Force, half in praise, half in parody of Mazer Rackham’s Strike Force.

You have got to be flipping kidding me.

I wonder how many kids learned the k-word from this book. I suspect it's a good deal more than learned the n-word from a few chapters ago. I distinctly remember that my first exposure to that particular anti-Semitic slur was in a Wizard Magazine article, which discussed that the word had appeared in an issue of X-Men, as a typo that was meant to say "killer." I don't know why Card thought it important to dredge up for this tasteless throwaway line in service of describing a tasteless stereotype character who might as well be voiced by Jackie Mason and drawn like a character from a Chick tract. Maybe the word was more common in the mid-'80s, or maybe anti-Semitism is more widespread in the places Card frequented in younger years than they appeared to be throughout my development.

Either way, what the actual hell? And it goes on.

There were many who liked to remember that during the Second Invasion, even though an American Jew, as President, was Hegemon of the alliance, an Israeli Jew was Strategos in overall command of I.F. defense, and a Russian Jew was Polemarch of the fleet, it was Mazer Rackham, a little-known, twice-court-martialled, half-Maori New Zealander whose Strike Force broke up and finally destroyed the bugger fleet in the action around Saturn.

Those Jews notably don't get the credit because they're politicians, even though Card's stance that the leadership of the military and not the individual soldiers deserves credit for successful battles. Leadership only counts if it's not civilian leadership.

If Mazer Rackham could save the world, then it didn’t matter a bit whether you were a Jew or not, people said.
But it did matter, and Rose the Nose knew it. He mocked himself to forestall the mocking comments of anti-semites—almost everyone he defeated in battle became, at least for a time, a Jew-hater—but he also made sure everyone knew what he was. His army was in second place, bucking for first.

"Almost everyone he defeated in battle became, at least for a time, a Jew-hater."

You guys, I don't even know at this point. It seems like the only consistent thing in this effed-up future is the hate. Prejudices never go away, it's just that minorities learn to laugh at them (like Alai), use them (like Rosen), or accept them as the natural products of biology (like all the women).

And six-year-olds sling around ethnic slurs as meaningless jokes. Including our hero, everyone.

This scene keeps going, despite all sense of tact and dignity, and it just becomes more and more baffling.

"We only got three rules here. Do what I tell you and don't piss in the bed."
Ender nodded. He knew that Rose wanted him to ask what the third rule was. So he did.
"That was three rules. We don't do too good in math, here."
The message was clear. Winning is more important than anything.

I'm glad Card spelled out that clear message, because I certainly wouldn't have gotten "winning is everything" from "we're bad at math." Somewhere along the way in my English education, I was told that you shouldn't write things like "it is obvious" or "it is clear" because if it really were those things, you wouldn't have to say them. It's nice that Card has decided to ignore those rules, just as surely as he ignores that "show, don't tell" one, and the "revise your rough draft" one.

Though I'm sure that Card probably thought that having a Jewish character be bad at math was as subversive as having the black character (mostly) not talk in the AAVE-style slang.

Rosen is placing Ender in Dink Meeker's [pla]toon, and tells him not to use his desk, because he doesn't want genius programmer Ender messing with his program.

That program?

Everybody erupred in laughter. It took Ender a moment to understand why. Rose had programmed his desk to display and animate a bigger-than-lifesize picture of male genitals, which waggled back and forth as Rose held the desk on his naked lap.

Well, there's some verisimilitude for you. If the years of being in schools have taught me anything, it's that no matter how advanced a technology is, some guy is going to draw a dick with it.

Ender finds out that Dink specifically requested him, and begins a habit of offering sage cynicism that continues throughout the chapter.

"Listen, Ender, commanders have just as much authority as you let them have. The more you obey them, the more power they have over you.

That's so deep, man. Dink is our resident James Dean.

Ender gets to have a more active role in the battles this time around, but while Dink enthusiastically trusts Ender's zero-g instincts, he doesn't entirely understand them. Because that's not something you'd eventually get used to or figure out the more you did it over several years or anything. It's certainly not the kind of thing that adult astronauts who spend just a few months in space adjust to so fully that they have a hard time readjusting when they return to Earth. But I guess a few hours each week in battles is different from full-time zero-g.

So if zero-g combat and coordination is so important, why have gravity in the rest of the station?

Ender's tactics catch on, despite the other soldiers' reluctance and inability to totally intuitively comprehend the relevant physics. I know, how gauche. Being part of a real army makes Ender even more popular among his launch group.

Back in the barracks, Rosen reminds Ender that he was ordered not to use his desk. And the Ender who was smugly polite to Bonzo is nowhere to be found in this exchange. He's been emboldened by Dink's cynicism, clearly:

Ender set the desk on his bunk and stood up. "I need trigonometry more than I need you."
Rose was taller than Ender by at least forty centimeters. But Ender was not particularly worried. It would not come to physical violence, and if it did, Ender thought he could hold his own. Rose was lazy and didn't know personal combat.

Yes, our Jewish character is lazy, lewd, unserious, and only interested in moneywinning. Keep subverting those tropes, Orson!

There's some back-and-forth about how Ender disobeyed commands in his last army too, but of course it's a good thing because Ender did it. Naturally, this leads to retaliation, as Rosen decides to throw Ender out into their next battle all on his own.

And, naturally, Ender turns it into a victory:

It was Centipede Army, and they only began to emerge from their door when Ender was halfway across the battleroom. Many of them were able to get under cover of stars quickly, but Ender had doubled up his legs under him and, holding his pistol at his crotch, he was firing between his legs and freezing many of them as they emerged.

No subtext there, no siree. So Rat Army wins, in no small part due to Ender's efforts, and this kind of ambush attack becomes a trend. And Ender stops being the first in the standings but then he gets better and becomes the best fighter ever always forever.

We'll leave it there for today. Next time, things get weird.

Ender Bender 9: Chapter 7, "Salamander" (Part 2)

When last we left off, Card was ticking "misogyny" off the list of offenses he's happy to commit in this novel. Ender and Petra have agreed to train together in their off hours, and that's where we pick up now. They have a positively riveting conversation about gravity manipulation, which appears to be borne--like so much of the last few chapters--out of Card's sudden realization that there are some inconsistencies in the world he's created, and his unwillingness to go back and edit things to smooth them out.

And so we consider why the space station which achieves simulated gravity via rotation still has gravity just outside of the zero-g battlerooms, and come to the conclusion that technology has advanced since the last war, and adults have lied about it.


Petra realizes, quite accurately, that gravity manipulation would make for some devastating weapons--something I recall being a plot point in the Mass Effect universe--and Ender concludes that the adults have been actively deceiving them.

But...why? What reason would there be to hide gravity manipulation technology? Are there Bugger spies about, collecting intel on enemy technology? Wouldn't the existence of this technology be something to train with? The zero-g battleroom simulations might give a part of the process--no longer functioning with the assumption of a single gravitational well--but wouldn't do anything to train people in how to function in a variable gravitational field. Fighting when weightless won't do much good if you don't know how to fight when you weigh ten times as much as normal, or when gravity suddenly changes directions.

But then, I'm not entirely sure that I understand the battleroom's purpose anyway. Up to this point, we've heard about the war in terms of "fleets," which implies epic space opera battles between fighters and ships in space, not single soldiers fighting other single soldiers as they careen through a weightless environment. That seems like a terribly inefficient method, honestly, and one that would be easily countered by, you know, using a spaceship.

At the end of all this, Ender makes another theme explicit for the subtext-deficient:

[T]he most important message was this: the adults are the enemy, not the other armies. They do not tell us the truth.

Ender and Petra do some target shooting, learning a bit about how the weapons work. Petra talks about some of the quirks of their light guns, and how lots of people make mistakes because they don't know how it functions--again, something it seems like it'd be worthwhile to teach the recruits. I get that there's a sink-or-swim philosophy going on, but it's not like everyone just learns these things through experience. Ender didn't; he had it told to him, by someone who had figured it out on their own. Meanwhile, others are developing bad habits that might hinder their performance in battle. It's a great method of education, if your goal is to produce a small number of people who function at a high level on any particular skill, and a large number of people who barely get by or worse, but it doesn't seem like it would produce a very effective army.

Afterward, Ender joins the Salamander group on an army drill, during which he's instructed to sit aside and do his schoolwork. Much to my surprise, he recognizes that there's something he's not good at--specifically that Bonzo was right about his combat readiness, since all the other members of Salamander Army, by virtue of a rigid training regimen, are way better than he is.

Not surprisingly, he realizes this because he decides to sit and silently judge Bonzo's tactics, because Ender is obviously the better tactician. Ah well, baby steps toward humility. Not that he needs it, because this isn't Bonzo's Game (which I'm pretty sure involved tossing ping-pong balls into buckets). Ender's the one with his name in the book's title, so he gets to be right about everything, including his realization that the well-rehearsed formations are too predictable, a point which will come into play in like three pages. Card doesn't engage in foreshadowing so much as rightbeforeshadowing.

After the drill, Ender decides to use his free-play time to do actual practice, but the only people he can think of to join him are the kids in his launch group:

"Hey, the great soldier returns!" said Bernard. Ender stood in the doorway of his old barracks. He'd only been away for a day, but already it seemed like an alien place, and the others of his launch group were strangers. Almost he turned around and left. But there was Alai, who had made their friendship sacred. Alai was not a stranger.

Beautiful, perfect Alai with his perfect hair and perfect teeth, and their sacred relationship. And friendly Bernard, of course. No mention whatsoever of Shen, because the people who matter to Ender are not the ones who show him compassion and respect, but the ones whose friendship would be useful or beneficial in some other way.

Naturally, Ender talks them into joining him in some training exercises, but when he gets back to the Salamander barracks, he gets a dressing down from Bonzo. And considering how they already dress down in Salamander...(rimshot).

Bonzo orders him to stop practicing with his launch group, and if you thought Ender was insufferably smug before, just you wait.

“No more practicing with those little farts.”
“May I speak to you privately?” asked Ender.
It was a request that commanders were required to allow. Bonzo’s face went angry, and he led Ender out into the corridor. “Listen, Wiggin, I don’t want you, I’m trying to get rid of you, but don’t give me any problems or I’ll paste you to the wall.”
A good commander, thought Ender, doesn’t have to make stupid threats.

Right, if Bonzo were a good commander, he would have beaten Ender to a pulp to ensure Ender didn't fight back again, and to send a message to anyone else who stepped out of line. Right?

Bonzo grew annoyed at Ender’s silence. “Look, you asked me to come out here, now talk.”
“Sir, you were correct not to place me in a toon. I don’t know how to do anything.”
“I don’t need you to tell me when I’m correct.”
“But I’m going to become a good soldier. I won’t screw up your regular drill, but I’m going to practice, and I’m going to practice with the only people who will practice with me, and that’s my Launchies.”
“You’ll do what I tell you, you little bastard.”
“That’s right, sir. I’ll follow all the orders that you’re authorized to give. But free play is free. No assignments can be given. None. By anyone.”
He could see Bonzo’s anger growing hot. Hot anger was bad. Ender’s anger was cold, and he could use it. Bonzo’s was hot, and so it used him.

It's clear that Bonzo is in the wrong here, and overreaching, but Ender's condescending explanation isn't exactly going to help things. What happened to the kid who allegedly knew how to bring people together? Instead he's going to condescend to his superior, and when that doesn't work, he issues an empty threat.

No, really:

"If you try to control my free play, I can get you iced."
It probably wasn't true, but it was possible.

So a good leader doesn't have to make stupid threats. Except when they do. Add that to "bullying is bad, except when good guys do it" on the list of mixed messages this book is sending. And then, to rub some extra smarm in the wound:

"It isn't my fault you gave me that order in front of everybody," Ender said. "But if you want, I'll pretend you won this argument. Then tomorrow you can tell me you changed your mind."

Spoiler alert: at the end of this chapter, Bonzo punches Ender around a bit. After this bit, I'm inclined to think it was justified. "I'll pretend you won this argument"? Wow.

But Ender's the name in the title, so obviously that's exactly what happens the next morning.

There's a battle between the Salamander and Condor Armies a few days later, and we see that the battleroom setup is a little different in the actual fights. There are big floating boxes designed to be obstacles, called "stars." And they lead to this wonderfully economical couplet:

Apparently the soldiers already knew how to handle the stars.
But it soon became clear to Ender, as he sat and watched the battle from the corridor, that they did not know how to handle the stars.

I...I just...I mean...I don't even. That's exactly how it is in the book, two sentences, one right above the other, with a contradiction that completely invalidates the need for the first one, and which could have been fixed with about thirty seconds of revision. "Ender assumed Bonzo's formations already accounted for the stars, but it became clear as he watched that Bonzo just didn't know how to handle them."

Ender watches quietly, and spends more time on his fascinating notions of how to orient himself in a zero-g environment. He gets shot at one point, which freezes his legs, but in such a way that he can use them as a shield. Not that it does much good, since he's been ordered not to do anything. And he doesn't. As a result, Condor is able to get five soldiers over to open Salamander's gate, ending the game.

I'll note that a paragraph is spent on how good Petra is, calling her "especially deadly," and noting that she became the focus of Condor's fire. Petra is singled out for being the best shot in the group, and while we don't get a lot of indication of her skill relative to the other soldiers, it's pretty clear that she's something special. Which is part of what makes the treatment of women in this book so frustrating. This is "backwards and in high heels," the rare girl who can only be considered a near-equal because she's significantly better than all the boys around her. It's not what we'd expect to see if this were an equal society, nor is it what we'd see if there really were those evolutionary reasons for girls to tend not to make it to battle school. Wouldn't she just be equal, then? Not significantly different than anyone else?

No, instead we see things the way they are in our real world, where women have to work harder and better to achieve less than their male peers. Where women are teachers and nurses and mothers but not soldiers. It's the world we expect to see when there are systematic institutional and social barriers preventing women from achieving equality. It is, yet again, a very straight white male utopia, with a straight white male chosen-one hero destined to save it.

And I don't understand why, honestly, beyond Card's own prejudices. The only thing that would be different so far if half the battle school students were girls is the whole "Bonzo doesn't want you walking around naked in front of Petra" business, which was creepy and weird anyway, and even that wouldn't require much change to stay intact.

Well, there would be one other difference: it would allow us to know, at least on the fringes of the story, that this is a universe where women can be more than just stereotypes and stock characters. Where it's not just the one token girl who's good enough to be one of the boys--and the other token girl who's placed on a pedestal, but still couldn't hack it because she's just too darn compassionate and nice. Madonna and Whedonesque.

Moving right along, Ender realizes he could easily have prevented the loss, but he's a good soldier who follows orders as given. He gets to take smug satisfaction in having the best score of the match, since he never missed a shot and wasn't completely disabled. As a wise man once said, "the two sweetest words in the English language: de-fault!" Ender expects Bonzo to change his mind in light of this, but Bonzo holds fast. And Ender starts talking like a supervillain.

After breakfast, Bonzo looked for him. "The order still stands," he said, "and don't you forget it."
It will cost you, you fool. I may not be a good soldier, but I can still help and there's no reason you shouldn't let me.

You fool, you'll pay for this! RICHARRRDS!

Actually, if this book suddenly turned toward Ender becoming history's greatest villain, it'd be a ton more enjoyable.

Wheels spin for a few pages. Ender trains with Petra and the launchies. Salamander climbs the rankings despite how bad Ender thinks Bonzo's strategic skills are. Ender has a birthday and no one celebrates, but he and Alai kiss over a cake.

Maybe not that last part.

Incidentally he thinks about talking to Petra about home, and it reminds him of Valentine. Crazy how the one female character in the book reminds him of the only other female character in the book. Just crazy how that works. Isn't that crazy? And the only reason Ender's even here in the first place is because he wants so badly to protect Valentine. Because the person who defended him from his murderous brother is the one who needs saving.

Ender begins his fourth game the next day. I don't have the patience to figure out how they're defining "game" or "fourth" at this point, but there definitely haven't been four actual intramural battles in the book so far. It's just a throwaway sentence that allows Card to work the title into the text. Salamander goes up against Leopard Army, which has a much more free-form way of fighting. They lose lots of people, but win the psychological victory, making Salamander panicked and fearful.

Ender, meanwhile, freezes his legs as in the previous battle, so he can use them as a shield. When the last of Salamander's soldiers were defeated, Ender drew his gun and picked off enough enemy soldiers to make the game a draw.

Everyone assumes that this was Bonzo's plan all along, but of course Bonzo is pissed. And rightfully so--stupid or not, orders are orders, and there's a hierarchy for a reason. How is Ender going to look at the soldiers under his eventual command who think they know better than him?

Which is not to say that Bonzo is a great commander or anything, he's clearly a caricature of a terrible, overly-rigid commander, who prizes strict adherence to inflexible dictates rather than training a force that can respond effectively to enemy tactics. He's also, like, ten years old.

Ender's sure that he's outgrown Salamander Army:

I've learned all I'm ever going to learn from you. How to fail with style, that's all you know, Bonzo.

Yeah, because one week with a commander is really all you need to have to learn everything. But no, of course, Ender is right. His name's in the title. He recaps what he's learned:

The enemy's gate is down. Use my legs as a shield in battle. A small reserve, held back until the end of the game, can be decisive. And soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they've been given.

Huh. I wonder if any such soldiers were fighting in Gettysburg or Grant's long campaign. Based on what we've seen from Card so far, I expect these lessons to either come up immediately in the next chapter, or to never become relevant again.

Ender's about to get into bed (naked, Card is compelled to tell us, for some reason) when Bonzo comes to tell him he's been traded to Rat Army. Then Bonzo slaps him hard, and punches him in the stomach, bringing him to his knees.

"You disobeyed me," Bonzo said. Loudly, for all to hear. "No good soldier ever disobeys."

But of course, this begins turning the other Salamanders against Bonzo, because they know Ender's the only reason they didn't lose that battle. Ender Wiggin knows how to bring people together: give them a common enemy.

He and Petra talk the next day about having to cancel their training sessions, rather than anger Bonzo further. Then he heads off for Rat Army--but first signs up for combat training so the next time he gets in a fight with someone like Bonzo, he won't get so badly hurt.

I guess Card forgot that Ender was doing crazy kickflip action in the first chapter.

Let's recap what we've learned: Bullying is bad, except when good guys do it. Friends exist only for your benefit and should be cultivated carefully and discarded quickly on that basis. Good leaders don't need to make stupid threats, the threats a good leader makes are anything but stupid. Soldiers should follow orders except when they think they know better than their commanders.

Such heroism.

Not the Ender

I promise I'll keep writing about this awful book, but it's obviously going to be a little late.