Firefly (2002-2003)

Time to revisit Joss Whedon’s ill-fated science fiction 2002-2003 TV series Firefly. I disliked it at the time but perhaps I’ve mellowed since then. It is possible that at the time was suffering from Joss Whedon Fatigue.

At that stage Whedon’s fans thought he could walk on water and perhaps he was starting to believe that himself. He was apparently thinking in terms of a show running for seven seasons, which was certainly wildly optimistic. It was cancelled midway through the first season. It was his first taste of failure.

To be fair it was not entirely his fault. The network was unhappy with the series right from the start. They helped to ensure its failure, starting by screening the episodes out of order. Disastrously, they screened the first episode midway through the show’s run. That episode gives us crucial backstory on the main character and crucial background information. As a result viewers had no clue what was going on.

The basic premise is breathtakingly unoriginal - an ill-assorted band of misfits adventuring through outer space. This is the exact same premise as Blake’s 7, Farscape, Lexx, Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Star. By 2002 it was the most over-used cliché in science fiction.

Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) is the captain of the Serenity, a battered Firefly-class cargo spaceship. He and his crew are smugglers, thieves and all-round criminals and they’re notably unsuccessful. The crew also includes Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin), a high-priced whore. More on her later. They have taken on a few passengers. One of them is a preacher man. There’s also a young doctor and his insane sister River (Summer Glau). The Alliance government has done something nasty to her brain. 

The Alliance are the bad guys. Mal supported the Independents in their war against the Alliance. The Independents lost and this left Mal bitter and twisted.

We have nine ill-assorted people who don’t necessarily understand or trust each other and some of them are not what they appear to be. And romantic and sexual attractions start to happen. There’s potential for interesting character developments and relationships.

So what went wrong? The answer is, almost everything. The hints that there is going to be interesting character and relationship stuff and that there is something really bizarre about River don’t really kick in until we’re well into the series and by that time most viewers had switched off. Realistically you have to grab the audience in the first three episodes or so and Firefly fails to do this, for reasons I’m about to explain.

We expect the crew of the Serenity to encounter new and different strange worlds in each episode but every planet has normal Earth gravity and normal Earth atmosphere and normal Earth vegetation. In fact every planet looks just like California, in the days of the Old West. Every planet has a Wild West town. It’s too much of the same thing each week. Even when they visit a more urbanised world it looks like the 19th century. Firefly’s aesthetic is just awful. It’s boring.

Whedon was hoping that it would be original and exciting to make it a western set in space. The blending of space opera and Wild West elements is always very uneasy. How do we know this is a western? There are guys on horses, with six-guns. There are saloon brawls. There are cattle rustlers! The dining table in the mess hall is straight out of Little House on the Prairie. The captain of the ship looks like a poor but honest rancher in the Old West. His second-in-command looks like a lady gunslinger. The spaceship, the Serenity, is basically a stagecoach in space.

I can understand Whedon’s thinking. He wanted to avoid science fiction clichés. He wanted to avoid a futuristic aesthetic because such things always date very badly. He wanted it to look as unlike Star Trek as possible. He succeeded in this. This is the anti-Star Trek. This is Star Trek if the Federation were the bad guys. This is the anti-Star Trek. I’m OK with that as a concept but it just doesn’t come off. He needed to create an aesthetic that was different and exciting, but it’s dull.

And in an effort to avoid science fiction clichés he ended up with a series that lacks any real science fiction feel. Too many of the plotlines seem like they belong in 50s B-westerns, with B-western villains. Apart from the spaceships there is no cool technology at all.

These mistakes undoubtedly alienated the target audience - science fiction fans. 

Perhaps Whedon, whose previous TV successes Buffy and Angel had been aimed primarily at a female audience, failed to understand that a science fiction series was going to have to aim much more at a male audience. Offering hints of complex character and relationship stuff is all very well but a male sci-fi audience is going to want more actual actual sci-fi and more cool tech stuff.

A major problem is that Whedon wanted Mal Reynolds to be dark and brooding and cynical, a character we would slowly come to understand and admire. The network vetoed that. He had to be a conventional hero from the start so he is turned into a bleeding heart tough guy with a heart of gold and it makes him boring. Nathan Fillion is OK but the series needed more acting charisma and more colourful characters.

Inara is potentially interesting. She insists that she’s a Companion, not a mere whore. And in this future being a Companion is a respectable high-status profession. They have a union and everything. There’s also a suggestion that there’s a quasi-religious element - that it’s a bit like the temple prostitution or sacred prostitution that (possibly) existed in the ancient world. It’s an intriguing idea which presumably Whedon intended to develop but I’m inclined to agree with Mal Reynolds - he regards Inara as just a high-class hooker. But at the same time he’s very attracted to her.

Whedon learned some hard lessons from Firefly and in his next foray in TV sci-fi, Dollhouse, he did not make the same mistakes. Dollhouse has a much cooler premise which grabs our interest right from the start. It has a cooler and more consistent aesthetic. It feels like a genuine science fiction series. It has colourful but ambiguous characters. And in Eliza Dushku it has a very charismatic lead actress.

I’m afraid that on a rewatch Firefly still doesn’t grab me.

The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968)

The Year of the Sex Olympics is a 1968 television play made by the BBC as part of the Theatre 625 anthology series. It was written by Nigel Kneale, best remembered as the creator of the Quatermass serials which aired on the BBC in the 1950s and which were adapted by Hammer as three very successful feature films.

The subject of The Year of the Sex Olympics is television itself. It is set in the fairly distant future in which a totalitarian regime maintains order by effectively drugging the populace with mindless television entertainment. Most of the programming revolves around sex but its purpose is to eliminate any desire for actual sex. In fact, to eliminate any desire for anything other than consuming television. 

The populace are to be indoctrinated to watch rather than to do.

In 1968 hysteria about overpopulation was starting to peak so the idea that the government would want to discourage procreation seemed extremely plausible.

The watchword is Apathy Control. The aim is to encourage absolute passivity and an avoidance of any passions. People must never experience tension.

This was 1968, when people were becoming obsessed by the fear of overpopulation. The government does not want people to have sex, at all. Just to watch.

The population is divided into two castes, Low Drive and High Drive. The High Drives run things. The Low Drives watch television.

Nat Mender (Tony Vogel) is the producer of one of the most popular TV programs, SportSex. Its ratings are high and it keeps the audience cosy and comfy. 

Nat’s current girlfriend is the ditzy blonde presenter of SportSex, Misch (Vickery Turner).

Nine years earlier Nat and Deanie (Suzanne Neve) had a daughter. They have little to do with her (there is no marriage and no family in this future society).

Deanie’s current boyfriend Kin Hodder works as a designer in TV but he has been spending his spare time painting pictures. Misch is horrified and bewildered by the paintings. They’re pictures but they don’t move. Kin wants the public to see the pictures but that’s not going to be allowed - it must cause people to experience tension.

An accident on set provides the inspiration for a revolutionary new show. It will be Nat and Deanie and their daughter on an island, with no modern technology. They will have to survive without help. The Co-ordinator (Leonard Rossiter) knows it will be a risk because it will show people dealing with fear, anxiety, cold, hunger and isolation. All the things that are supposed to be avoided because they might make viewers feel something. His hope is that experiencing these things vicariously will keep them in their cosy comfy vegetative state.

This is very obviously predicting reality TV. And it’s dealing with the widespread fears at the time that TV was turning people into moronic zombies. Mind control and brainwashing were major pop cultural obsessions from the late 1950s until the 70s. The Year of the Sex Olympics is perhaps the bleakest most cynical view of the entertainment industry of all time. When I first saw it I thought it was overly pessimistic, that such extremes of manipulation of the public were just a little implausible. Today, watching it again, I have the depressing feeling that its view of human nature is pretty much spot on.

The main target is obviously the elite who manipulate the populace whom they regard with fear and contempt. This teleplay is successful in that respect but there is an ironic twist in that one does get the slightly uncomfortable feeling that Kneale may (perhaps even unconsciously) have shared some of that contempt for the TV audience. And this is a BBC production and the BBC at that time certainly regarded ordinary people with undisguised loathing (and of course they still do). The audience members shown have the intelligence of cabbages. Maybe we’re meant to think that this is the fault of the elite but it still speaks to a breathtakingly pessimistic view of ordinary people.

The acting is very exaggerated and very stagey but given that every member of the cast plays things this way I assume that this was entirely deliberate and that the intention was to emphasise the artificiality of this future society, and of course to remind us that we are in fact watching a television show. We are watching a television show about watching a television show.

The aesthetic of this teleplay is the 1960s Flower Children aesthetic on steroids, which might put some people off but once you accept it it works well enough.

The Year of the Sex Olympics is in some ways very much of its time (for example the overpopulation fears) but well ahead of its time in others (it doesn’t just predict Reality TV, it predicts it with uncanny accuracy). It’s an extraordinarily jaundiced view of the television industry coming from an insider (by 1968 Nigel Kneale had already spent 17 years forking for BBC-TV). And of course the points it makes apply equally well to all electronic media including the internet.

It’s not cheerful viewing but it is powerful and unrelenting and it is highly recommended.

It was released on Blu-Ray but it could be hard to find.

I’ve also reviewed Nigel Kneale's fascinating 1976 TV series Beasts. He really was doing some amazingly inventive TV work in the 60s and 70s.

Dollhouse season 2 (2009-2010)

Much to everyone’s surprise Joss Whedon's Dollhouse was renewed for a second season. You do need to watch season 1 first. I reviewed it here.

There were some changes in season two, some of which were forced upon Whedon but some reflected a slight change in his approach to the series. Whedon also wanted a different visual style - more shadows and a more atmospheric film noir-tinged look.

Whedon and his writers are as convinced as ever that women are physically much stronger than men. Apart from being silly this leads to some poor writing. Instead of finding ways in which Echo can use her brains and her female strengths to get out of trouble the writers are content to just have her effortlessly beat up big burly guys. The nonsensical GirlPower! stuff gets totally out of hand in the second season.

The character of Echo undergoes some changes but they make sense. Whedon always liked very long characters arcs. The Buffy of Buffy season 5 is a totally different person to the Buffy of season 1 but the changes are plausible and organic. She has grown up. She has also begun to understand the full implications of being a Slayer. Cordelia has a complex character arc in both Buffy and Angel, and again it makes sense. She has also gone from being a high school girl to being an adult woman.

Echo’s evolution has more to do with her attempts to become a real person rather than just a Doll but it’s presented in a plausible way. Echo starts to remember things that she’s not supposed to be able to remember. She starts to develop intellectually. She’s no longer a child-like zombie. She starts to have emotions. Sierra and Victor start to evolve as well. They develop emotions, and they develop sexual feelings towards each other and Dolls are not supposed to be capable of such things.

The imprinting process starts to develop glitches. At the end of each Engagement the imprinted personality is supposed to be wiped completely but that’s no longer happening reliably. The Dolls start to retain traces of imprinted personalities. Echo ends up with lots of different personalities imprinted simultaneously and it’s no longer possible to wipe these imprints.

By 2009 of course every TV series had to have character development and had to have extended story arcs. As a result Dollhouse has several story arcs and it has a long story arc extending over both seasons. This is why we get the Dolls starting to behave like real people.

Unfortunately this undermines the original concept and that original concept was the series’ biggest strength. The idea was that a person could start out as a young woman named Caroline, have that personality erased, have a new personality (Echo) that is child-like and innocent, then be given other totally different personalities and then have them wiped and Echo would then have no memory at all of anything these other personalities had done. It raised provocative moral questions. If she (in the guise of one of these imprinted personalities) kills someone in the course of an Engagement does Echo bear any responsibility for this? She has no idea that it happened.

Most of the Engagements are in effect high-class prostitution jobs. In the course of a year she might have a hundred different sexual partners, but since Echo has no memory of any of this and has no sexual urges and no knowledge of sex you could argue that Echo is in fact a virgin. And is Adelle DeWitt actually running a high-price call-girl operation if the girls have no knowledge of having had sex with clients? Are you a prostitute if you don’t know that you’ve done it? And if one of the Actives commits a crime on an Engagement is she guilty of a crime?

These fascinating moral dimensions are less evident in season two, which is a pity.

There are however plenty of good things about season two. As Echo develops self-awareness other questions are raised. Her body was originally inhabited by a young woman named Caroline. Does Caroline still exist? And is Echo a real person? Was she a real person when she was little more than a cheerful zombie? And now that she has self-awareness and emotions, has she become a real person? The series gets interesting when Echo learns about Caroline. Caroline was a psycho bitch terrorist who got people killed. She was a nasty fanatic. Echo isn’t keen on one day giving up her own existence so that that bitch Caroline can have her body back.

The downside to season two is that Echo ends up with forty simultaneous implanted personalities, all of them experts in some field such as firearms and unarmed combat. As a result she becomes more of a generic comic-book kickass action heroine with super-powers. The series becomes more of a routine sci-fi action story rather than the provocative slightly cerebral serious science fiction series of the first season. There’s too much blowing stuff up and endless endless fight scenes.

From comments made by Whedon in an interview it seems that he was under immense pressure from the network to dumb the show down as much as possible. He was also forced to reduce the amount of sexual subject matter - he had hoped to explore the emotional and sexual ramifications of the technology much more fully.

And then there’s the major story arc and I found it disappointingly obvious, too much like countless science fiction movies of the past half century. To be fair the series was made with the threat of cancellation always hanging over it so some of the ideas may have developed more satisfactorily had Whedon not been forced to hurry things along.

Both seasons of Dollhouse are visually impressive with a much more coherent aesthetic than Whedon’s earlier Firefly.

One of Whedon’s great strengths was his ability to create interesting female characters and then develop them in complex ways and Adelle DeWitt in Dollhouse is one of the best examples of this.

The first season of Dollhouse is excellent and while this second season doesn’t work quite as well it’s still superior science fiction television and it’s highly recommended.

The Blu-Ray release includes both seasons and looks lovely.

Dollhouse (2009) season 1

The cyberpunk TV series Dollhouse, created by Joss Whedon, ran on the Fox Network in 2009 and 2010. Whedon’s career was up and down at the time. The Firefly TV series in 2002 was a disaster and was cancelled before the end of the first season although it later built a cult following. There was general surprise when Dollhouse was renewed for a second season. The ratings were mediocre but it did well with the demographics that advertisers cared about. To some extent that had been the case with Buffy as well.

The key concept behind Dollhouse, personality uploads and downloads, had been tinkered with by various science fiction writers, notably William Gibson. But as someone famous once said, if a story is good it probably isn’t new and if it’s new it probably isn’t good. That certainly applies to science fiction ideas. And Dollhouse is based on an idea that is definitely a good one.

Digital personality uploads are of course total scientific nonsense but Joss Whedon was the guy behind a long-running series about a high school girl who battles vampires so he clearly feels that the coolness of an idea is much more important than its plausibility. And he’s right. And in this case it’s an idea that has links to pop culture obsessions going back to the 1950s such as brainwashing.

It has affinities with movies like A Clockwork Orange and Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell which deal with questions such as artificial interference in the workings of the mind, the blurring of the line between reality and fantasy, the possibility of artificially created realities and what it means to be human. And what it means to have choices. And how choices are nowhere near as simple as they seem. In Dollhouse there are free choices and choices made under duress, or sometimes it’s just a choice between two bad options.

Echo (Eliza Dushku) has been created by the Dollhouse. The Dollhouse is run by Adelle DeWitt (Olivia Williams) although it seems certain that there is someone (or some organisation) much more powerful behind her. We are given no idea at all who or what is behind the Dollhouse and what its true purpose is. Is it a private corporation? Is it run by organised crime? Is it a government covert operation? This series deals in multiple levels of ambiguity and paranoia. Maybe nothing is as it seems to be.

For each case a Dollhouse agent has a different personality uploaded, tailored to the mission. In between missions Echo has her Echo personality restored. That’s not her original personality. She had been a girl named Caroline who had landed herself in very serious legal trouble. There is a suggestion that her original Caroline personality has been permanently erased. Now she is merely Echo, who has no memory of any of the personalities that have been uploaded to her brain. She seems to have no memories of anything before she arrived at the Dollhouse.

When imprinted with a suitable personality the agents are referred to as Actives. Between missions they are Dolls. The Dolls are very child-like, very passive, with no emotions and no sex drive and no desires of any kind. They are very obedient.

One inherent weakness in this series, or at least one aspect that probably hurt its ratings, is that Eliza Dushku is effectively playing an entirely different character in each episode and between missions she’s playing Echo who has no actual personality. This means the audience has no actual heroine with whom to identify, or for whom to develop an affection. This would have alienated some viewers although it does of course provide Eliza Dushku with an exciting acting challenge and if you stick with it it makes this an extremely interesting series.

While the Actives are given various missions (including security jobs and even secret agent-type jobs) It becomes very obvious very early that on most of those missions they are acting as at best, courtesans and at worst, high-class call girls. Even worse, Adelle DeWitt knowingly sends girls like Echo out on prostitution jobs knowing that the jobs are very high-risk. Worst of all, DeWitt doesn’t even bother finding out the true nature of the risks. As long as the client pays it doesn’t matter. Even the Mob has higher ethical standards. While that is presumably not its true function in practice The Dollhouse is a whorehouse.

But the twist is that the Dolls do not know they have been used as prostitutes. In their hazy dream-state they don’t know about the missions and wouldn’t understand if they were told. Are you a prostitute if you don’t know about it? Is Miss DeWitt a madam if she sends the girls out on prostitution assignments but the girls will have no memory of it And if a mission requires engaging in criminal activities (and some do) are they criminals? Is it our memories that make us who we are (a question addressed memorably in Blade Runner)? If the Dolls have no memories are they human?

And it seems that if someone is deemed to be a risk then the Dollhouse will take precautions. Possibly very drastic precautions.

The Girlpower! thing does get overdone. Petite women easily beating up huge tough guys. It’s a problem because the silliness of this does at times undermine the serious tone.

This is a long way from the teen angst of Buffy and it’s clearly aimed at an older audience. This series gets into X-Files levels of paranoia and then pushes the paranoia even further. This is serious conspiracy theory stuff. And the cyberpunk elements become more and more apparent.

There are fascinating relationships between the characters. Does Miss DeWitt have maternal feelings towards Echo? Does Echo see her handler Boyd Langton as a father figure? Does he see himself this way? And there are explicitly romantic and sexual relationships involving several key characters but what happens if you’re in a relationship with someone who doesn’t actually exist?

Episode Guide

In the first episode Echo is uploaded with the personality of a top-flight hostage negotiator. This episode launches the series on its way very successfully. It also introduces a couple of what are obviously going to be extended story arcs. There’s an FBI agent named Ballard investigating the Dollhouse although he’s been told to drop the matter because the Dollhouse doesn’t exist.

In episode 2, Time Target, the main story in intercut with multiple flashbacks. Non-linear narratives will be a major feature of this series.

We get some slight backstory on Echo’s handler, Langton. We find out that something went very badly wrong three months earlier and that those events may be continuing to exert an influence. We get hints that the Dollhouse people make mistakes. And we start to get an edge of paranoia creeping in. We also find out that when a guy wants to take a girl on a camping trip she should always decline. It will end in tears. Good episode.

In episode 3, Stage Fright, Echo’s job is to act as a bodyguard to a pop singer. The problem is that the singer is not just a diva but a psycho bitch and to avoid arousing her wrath Echo has to be a bodyguard without being aware that she’s a bodyguard. Someone is trying to kill the singer but there are very twisted complications.

In episode 4, Gray Hour, the mission is an art heist and it’s an armed robbery. Eliza Dushku really shines this one, getting a chance to explore the Echo persona.

In episode 5, True Believer, Echo goes undercover for the Feds. Her cover will be perfect since with an implanted personality she will believe her own cover story completely. It’s an investigation of a religious cult with obvious parallels to the 1993 Waco disaster.

In episode 6, Man on the Street, Echo is again a whore, this time entertaining a tech tycoon. I love the way this doesn’t develop in anything like the direction you’re going to be expecting.

In episode 7, Echoes, an experimental drug has infected a college campus. And some of the Dolls have been exposed as well.

In episode 8, Needs, things start to go awry in the Dollhouse. The Dolls are doing things they shouldn’t do. But Miss DeWitt has no doubt that she will get things under control again.

In episode 9, A Spy in the House of Love, the extended story arcs start to develop a lot more fully. As the title suggests the Dollhouse is under threat from within. And we see a very surprising side of Miss DeWitt.

In Episode 10, Haunted, the Dollhouse has a new client and she’s a bit unusual, given that she’s dead. And she thinks she was murdered.

Episodes 11 and 12, Briar Rose and Omega, make up a two-part story which explores interesting ramifications of the technology.

The season finale, Epitaph One, was made on the assumption that the series was not not going to be renewed for a second season and never went to air. Do not watch this episode until after watching season 2!

Final Thoughts

Dollhouse season one is moderately cerebral, provocative and willing to engage with slightly controversial subject matter. It’s a lot better than I expected and it’s highly recommended.

I've also reviewed Dollhouse season 2 and Whedon's earlier Firefly.

The Lost World (1999-2002)

The Lost World is an adventure TV series based (rather loosely) on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic 1912 science fiction adventure novel of the same name. It was a Canadian-US-New Zealand-Australian co-production and was shot in Australia (in Queensland). It ran for three seasons.

The two-hour pilot episode (which was later split in two to comprise the first two episodes of the first season) is more than enough to get me interested. The fact that it’s directed by Richard Franklin helps. He was not only experienced but had an impressive background in feature films and gives it a cinematic look and feel.

The time setting is the 1920s, a good choice. This is a story that would be just too wildly implausible in a later time period.

Professor Challenger has found a manuscript, apparently the record of a journey to a hitherto unknown plateau in the wilds of South America. Challenger is convinced that the evidence in the manuscript will cause all existing theories on human evolution to be tossed out the window. The dinosaurs were not creatures that existed millions of years before humans. They are our contemporaries! The scientific establishment mocks him. The mockery is led by Dr Arthur Summerlee (Michael Sinelnikoff). Challenger announces that he will lead an expedition to find hard evidence. Dr Summerlee can join the expedition if he dares. Dr Summerlee does dare.

Other volunteers include experienced hunter and explorer Lord John Roxton and American newspaperman Ned Malone (David Orth). Malone has experience with hydrogen balloons and there’s no other way to reach the plateau. But there’s no money to fund the expedition until wealthy heiress Marguerite Krux offers unlimited funds as long as she can go along.

All of the characters have their own quirks. Challenger was one of Conan Doyle’s great creations, a gloriously bad-tempered argumentative tempestuous scientific genius. Peter McCauley plays him as rude, arrogant and overbearing but clearly a man with vision and charisma. That’s close enough to Conan Doyle’s conception for me. William Snow as Lord John Roxton is extremely good - he’s cynical and abrasive but he has charisma.

The weak link is the cast Jennifer O’Dell as jungle girl Veronica - she’s not terrible but she doesn’t convince us that she is a young woman who has lived alone in the jungle for eleven years. She seems too modern, too citified. Her attitudes are stridently and irritatingly late 90s. She’s totally out of place in this series. I found myself disliking her quite a bit at first, even though I have a thing for cute scantily-clad blonde jungle girls. I did however gradually warm to her quite a bit.

The standout performer is Rachel Blakely as Marguerite Krux. From the start Marguerite is a Woman of Mystery. We soon suspect that she is a Sexy Bad Girl. And then we discover that she is a treacherous scheming bitch and she’s well-versed in the art of using sex as a weapon. Which just made me love her even more. Marguerite isn’t trustworthy but she isn’t evil. Rachel Blakely oozes delicious naughtiness. She’s a delight.

The best thing about this series is its old-fashioned feel. The writers are not constantly agonising over whether the scripts might be problematic. What matter is - would this be a cool story for the next episode? There’s a refreshing lack of ideological lecturing.

And the writers are not afraid to let their imaginations run a bit wild.

The CGI dinosaurs are really only there because they were a commercial necessity. They were a major selling point. They’re of no importance. The focus is invariably on the strange bizarre human societies that our explorers find. And they’re strange and bizarre in interesting ways. There are villains who are not necessarily villains, wise virtuous leaders who may be neither wise nor virtuous, evil queens who might me misguided rather than evil. The stories are impressively varied and are not always resolved by heroic deeds.

It must have become obvious early that six regular cast members would be unwieldy so in most episodes we get two storylines running in parallel, each featuring three of the regular characters.

The Episodes

The pilot episode gets our adventurers to the plateau. There are indeed dinosaurs. And hostile tribes. And ape-men. Professor Challenger can easily collect the hard evidence he needs. The one fly in the ointment is that there is no way off the plateau.

They meet a cute blonde jungle girl, Veronica. She has lived on the plateau for eleven years since her scientist parents disappeared. She doesn’t care about science but she is obsessed with the idea of finding her parents.

In the next episode, More Than Human, our explorers find a lost culture. It’s like ancient Rome but ruled by lizard-men with humans as their slaves. This episode borrows a little from Planet of the Apes and very heavily from countless gladiator movies. How many clichés can you pack into 45 minutes? A lot! It doesn’t matter. The action keeps racing along and it’s fun.

Nectar is great fun. Giant killer bees! A sinister bee-woman! And a hideous fate awaiting if your heroes cannot escape from the world’s largest bee-hive.

Cave of Fear gives us a deliciously evil villainess, Lady Cassandra Yorkton (Rebecca Gibney). And the various members of the party have to confront guilts and fears from their pasts.

In Salvation Summerlee saves a drowning child and is accused of witchcraft. The most interesting thing here is a tribe that follows a religion that is a blending of Aztec religion and Roman Catholicism. And we discover something odd about Marguerite. She can read ancient inscriptions in a language of which she knows nothing. She doesn’t know how, but somehow she just knows the meaning of the inscriptions.

There’s been plenty of fun so far but obviously the series needed vampires. So in Blood Lust we get vampires. We get a sexy lady vampire who lives in a gothic castle. Both she and the castle look like they’re straight out of Hammer gothic horror film. It’s all very silly but very enjoyable.

In Out of Time Marguerite may have discovered her destiny as a high priestess and Veronica may have discovered her destiny as a mother. Packed with too many ideas most of which are pretty cringe and coherence falls by the wayside but somehow it works. It works because this series has that pulp fiction/old-time adventure yarn/B-movie sensibility that just makes it so much fun.

Paradise Found turns out to be the most flawed paradise imaginable.

In The Beast Within Malone is killed, but maybe not permanently. Whether the sham who saved him intended to do him a favour or not remains to be seen.

In Creatures of the Dark Marguerite, Malone and Challenger are trapped in a cave-in, they find a lot of gold and a lost race. All very interesting but the fact that they’re all sitting on top of an active volcano is of more immediate concern.

Things get seriously weird in Absolute Power. The explorers find an ancient ruin but there are some odd things about it. Such as the presence of a nuclear reactor. And then things get much stranger and maybe we’re dealing with two different realities at once. An ambitious episode but it’s pretty cool and it makes excellent use of the two storylines running in parallel technique.

Camelot is delightfully quirky. A distant descendant of King Arthur rules a tiny kingdom in which time has stood still. There are brave knights, dragons to slay (the dragons are of course dinosaur) and maidens to rescue. And of course, like King Arthur, this young king has a traitor in his midst. This episode is whimsical fun.

In Unnatural Selection Challenger meets an old scientific colleague who is conducting certain experiments. We quickly find out that he is a full-blown mad scientist. There are definite Island of Dr Moreau vibes here. And the secondary storyline involves a fairy princess!

Time After Time involves two time travellers with two very different agendas and Marguerite learns things about her destiny. There are also ninjas, but fortunately they’re remarkably incomp
etent ninjas.

In Prodigal Father Veronica finally finds her long-lost father but the reunion doesn’t turn out as she’d hoped. At this stage in the series you’re probably thinking that the one great disappointment is that we haven’t seen Marguerite and Veronica mud-wrestling. Well that omission is corrected in this episode.

Birthright begins with Marguerite, Ned and Roxton digging up the mummy of a long-dead Egyptian pharaoh. Only he’s not so dead. And he has a sister and our adventurers get mixed up in the family feud.

Resurrection starts with Roxton getting killed. Well, sort of. A strange disturbing child offers him a deal. He can live, but another man must die in his place. Roxton doesn’t like this idea but the kid adds that unless he accepts the deal Marguerite will die. Roxton will accept any conditions in order to save her. There’s also a magical sword involved.

In The Chosen One Roxton and Marguerite save a young man.

In Prophecy our explorer meet a larcenous gypsy fortune-teller, and there are disturbing signs that the raptors and capable of learning.

In Barbarians at the Gate one of those lizard-men makes a reappearance but maybe this time he will be an ally, albeit not a very reliable one. The episode ends with a fine old-fashioned cliffhanger.

Final Thoughts

Rip-roaring rollicking adventure just like in the good old days. Immensely entertaining and highly recommended.

Outlaw Star (1998-2001)

Outlaw Star is a 1998 anime space adventure TV series created by Hajime Yatate. It fits vaguely into the “western set in outer space” category but it’s also very much in the “bunch of ill-assorted misfits adventuring in outer space in a stolen super high tech spaceship” tradition. This is a formula that was used with success in series like Blake’s 7 and Farscape but Outlaw Star has more in common with the best-ever series of this type, Lexx. Outlaw Star began its run two years after Lexx debuted so there may have been some direct influence. I suspect that the old Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon movie serials may have been an influence as well - Outlaw Star has a lot of good old-fashioned space opera elements with spectacular but wildly improbably space battles.

Outlaw Star does not feature a living spaceship (which is named the Outlaw Star) but it does feature a spaceship with a definite personality.

It’s tempting to see Outlaw Star as being in the mould of Cowboy Bebop but it isn’t really. They’re both great series but the similarities are superficial.

There is also some magic. At first we might assume that this is more in the nature of paranormal phenomena but this series does eventually venture into quasi-spiritual territory.

The story takes place on the frontiers of inhabited space, and yes there’s a definite Wild West vibe. There’s the Space Force, representing the forces of law and order. Here on the frontiers of space they’re of little significance. There are pirates and there are Outlaws. The pirates are cut-throats, thieves and murderers. The Outlaws insist that they are not like the pirates. Outlaws may not be very honest but they’re not murderers. They have a romantic view of themselves as rebels.

The crew members of the Outlaw Star are definitely not noble crusaders fighting for a just cause. They’re not bad guys but they’re not quite good guys either (very much as is the case in Lexx). They have two agendas. They want to survive, and they want to get rich.

Gene Starwind and Jim Hawking run a business on the planet Sentinel. They’ll do anything as long as it’s profitable and not too illegal. Gene earns extra money as a bounty hunter. Jim is eleven years old but he’s the brains of the outfit. Gene is the muscle. Gene’s dad was a space pilot. Gene dreams of being a space pilot as well but he gets space-sick.

Then Gene encounters Hilda. She’s an Outlaw and she has come into possession of something very valuable indeed. It’s a large sealed box. When Gene and Hilda open the box they find that it contains a naked girl. Her name is Melfina. But clearly there is some secret connected with her that makes her incredibly valuable. Melfina has no idea what it is. She has no memories.

Melfina is a bio-android. She is not a robot and she is not a cyborg. She is flesh and blood. Physically she is a normal young woman. But she was artificially created. And she appears to have some specialised intellectual enhancements. Gene and Hilda would very much like to know why several very powerful pirate gangs are prepared to kill in order to get hold of Melfina.

Gene finds himself in possession of the most advanced spaceship in the galaxy, the Outlaw Star. The crew slowly comes together. At first it’s just Gene, Jim and Melfina. Melfina is vital. Only she can interface directly with the ship’s computer and unlock the ship’s full potential. To do this she has to take her clothes off. Why? Because a spaceship that can only be controlled by a nude girl is a totally cool idea.

The next crew member to be recruited is the Lady Aisha. She is a Ctarl-Ctarl cat-girl. The Ctarl-Ctarl are basically human but with a few feline characteristics. Aisha is a very high-ranking official in the Ctarl-Ctrl Empire until Gene unwittingly wrecks her career. Aisha vows revenge. Aisha assumes that everybody is in awe of her. She’s not just a formerly high-ranking official she’s a mighty warrior. Any sane person cowers in fear at the wrath of a Ctarl-Ctarl. Much to Aisha’s disappointment Gene thinks she’s amusing and rather adorable. Aisha has her own reasons for throwing in her lot with the crew of the Outlaw Star. She’s crazy and she can be exasperating but she really is a mighty warrior so she’s pretty useful.

Then there’s Suzuka. She’s a kind of samurai and she’s a professional assassin. She has a contract to kill Gene Starwind but for complicated reasons of her own she joins his crew.

What drives the plot and the actions of the major characters is the mystery surrounding Melfina. She knows that she is a bio-android but she knows nothing of the full extent of her special abilities but most importantly she does not know why she was created. She needs to know, both for her own self-identity and for her survival. Gene feels an odd sense of responsibility towards her. He’s a romantic at heart. The idea of rescuing a damsel in distress and helping her to fulfil her destiny appeals to him. He is sure she has a destiny. Melfina is sure of this as well. 

Neither knows whether Gene will be a part of her destiny but they both finding themselves thinking that maybe that would be a good thing.

They’re not in love but Melfina thinks Gene is ever so brave. And Melfina is a scared, lonely, vulnerable but very sweet girl. There’s no way Gene is not going to devote himself to being her protector.

For most people the standout episode is Cats and Girls and Spaceships and it’s incredibly poignant. An emotional punch to the gut but in a very unusual way. 

I also loved Hot Springs Planet Tenrei because it’s the kind of craziness that makes anime magic. It also adds a zany touch needed at this point in the story. The Outlaw Star’s crew are on a tourist resort planet, and it’s packed with gorgeous scantily clad babes. The Outlaw Star’s female crew members are soon parading about in minuscule bikinis and then it’s bath time and we get lots of gratuitous nudity, because gratuitous nudity is always a good thing. And when we see Aisha unclad we find that Ctarl-Ctarl cat-girls are in fact all girl where it counts.

Then we movie on to the climax with lots of cosmic weirdness and possibly hints of the spiritual and other planes of existence and other weird stuff that is handled well. And the ending offers lots of shocks and twists but it’s totally satisfying. It just feels right.

Outlaw Star is an outstanding engrossing strange and oddball series and it’s highly recommended.

It's available in a Blu-Ray/DVD combo boxed set which thankfully offers the Japanese language soundtrack with subtitles as well the English dub. Nothing on earth would persuade me to watch anime in an English-dubbed version.

The Time Tunnel by Murray Leinster

The Time Tunnel is a TV tie-in novel written by Murray Leinster. Quite a few well-known very good authors ended up writing such books as their usual markets started to dry up.

TV tie-in novels sometimes had a feel that was subtly different from the series. It was not unusual for the first tie-in novel associated with a series to be written before the series actually went to air, with the author having seen only the scripts and perhaps one or two episodes before they aired. That may be the case here. The novel is copyrighted 1966 and the series was first screened in September 1966. It does however capture the feel of the series fairly closely.

The Time Tunnel was a hugely entertaining TV series produced by Irwin Allen that was a bit cleverer than it seemed to be. The big problems with time travel stories are that there is no way to deal satisfactorily with time paradoxes and there’s the danger of extreme silliness. Various science fiction authors have tried to solve the time paradox problem but it’s a problem that can’t ever really be solved in a totally satisfying way.

The Time Tunnel TV series took an approach that was as good as any and better than most. You can try to change the past but no matter how hard you try you will fail and events end up playing out exactly as they did historically. The novel develops this approach in a slightly more complex way which is rather interesting.

The subject is an ultra top secret US Government project to develop a time travel device. The level of secrecy has backfired. The chairman of a senate committee that should have been informed about the project but wasn’t has found out about it and he’s hopping mad. He thinks it’s not just a waste of money but dangerous insanity and he intends to shut it down. I have to say that the senator’s objections make a lot of sense - the idea behind the project really is reckless to the point of madness.

To forestall the cancellation of the project one of the scientists, Dr Tony Newman, decides to use himself as a guinea pig. Everyone on the project is confident they can send a man into another time period. They’re not so confident they can bring him back.

Tony and another scientist, Dr Doug Phillips, end up marooned in time. In fact they’re marooned in various times. There is no way to predict where and when they will end up, and seemingly no way for them to get back to the present day.

Tony’s urgent problem is that he’s in 1889 and he’s about to be a witness to a horrific dam collapse (the famous Johnstown Flood disaster) which historically killed thousands of people. His scientific instincts tell him he must not interfere. His human instincts tell him that he must at least try to avert the disaster. This leads to a very unexpected consequence.

The dangers are not over for Tony and Doug. Having escaped one time period they find themselves potentially in the middle of a massacre in another.

One could object that an ethical scientist with a proper sense of responsibility would not behave the way Tony behaves, but who ever heard of an ethical scientist with a proper sense of responsibility? History is littered with examples of scientists giving no thought at all to the consequences of their scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs.

And Tony is human. Give what seems to be a chance to be a hero and a benefactor he succumbs to temptation, and probably any man (or woman) would succumb to such a temptation.

The challenge for the writer is that we know what is going to happen. We know that the disastrous Johnstown Flood is going to happen. Somehow the writer still has to create an atmosphere of suspense. Leinster does this pretty well. Leinster was in fact a very fine science fiction writer.

This is an enjoyable read that has most of the strengths of the TV series. The characterisation is not exactly deep but it does at least hint at a few ethical issues. Highly recommended.

Murray Leinster wrote a number of these TV tie-in novels including The Invaders, based on the excellent series of the same name. He wrote some superb short stories - I highly recommend the collection The Best of Murray Leinster.

I’ve reviewed The Time Tunnel TV series, in a two-part review. The first part is here, the second here.

Lexx season 3 (2000)

The third season of Lexx went to air in early 2000. This third season does not just have a season-long story arc. Lexx had done extended story arcs before. The second season had had the multi-episode Mantrid story arc. But the third season is one continuous narrative.

Season 3 assumes that the viewer is familiar with the Lexx universe. There are vital things about the characters and the relationships between them that are not explained but you absolutely have to know these things to really understand the story. If you have watched the first two seasons then you do know these things and you will get much much more enjoyment out of the third season.

You have to know that Kai is dead, and why he is dead, and why he is still functional. You have to know why he is such an efficient killer. It helps if you know that he is the last of the Brunnen-G and why that matters to him. You have to know why Xev loves him. You have to know that Xev is part cluster lizard - if you don’t know that you will be puzzled and astonished when she displays the special abilities she possesses as a result. You have to know that she is a Love Slave. And that she is part cluster lizard.

The fourth regular member of the crew, the robot head 790, plays a more minor part in season 3. 790 is very much a comic character. The third season is much more serious and much more relentlessly dark in tone than the previous season. 790 is a bit out of place.

You have to know about the special bond between the members of the crew of the Lexx. They have an extraordinarily extreme Us and Them attitude. They will risk their lives for each other but they are entirely indifferent to the fates and the sufferings of outsiders. In the second season they were totally unbothered by the fact that the carnivorous plant-girl Lyekka was hunting down and killing and then eating the entire crew of a spaceship who were guests aboard the Lexx. The Lexx crew members were not bothered because they liked Lyekka and she was hungry. And she had become an honorary member of the crew. Stan, Xev, Kai and 790 didn’t know those other astronauts. They were strangers. If Lyekka wanted to eat them that was her business.

In the third season the Lexx crew members witness a brutal murder. The victim was a nice person who did not deserve such a fate. Stan and Xev are devastated. It takes them at least 30 seconds to get over it. Then they move on. There’s no point letting something like that spoil your whole afternoon.

As the season opens the Lexx is drifting aimlessly and has been drifting for millennia. The crew members have all been in suspended animation for 4,000 years. Lexx is helpless because he needs to eat but he’s too weak to find food. And then the Lexx is boarded by a group of ruffians. The leader is a menacing but charismatic man known as Prince. He’s a scary bad guy. Or is he? Maybe it’s more complicated. The story is continued in the second episode, May.

There are twin planets, Fire and Water. They have been at war for as long as anyone can remember. Prince is the charismatic leader of the planet Fire. He would like to use the Lexx to destroy the planet Water. The crew of the Lexx also encounter May. She is the charismatic leader of the planet Water. She hopes to use the Lexx to destroy the planet Fire.

Because this is Lexx one should not assume that this is a simple good guys vs bad buys story. Xev trusts Prince. That might be a mistake. She falls in love with him. That might be an even bigger mistake. Stanley trusts May. Which might be a mistake. He falls in love with her. Which could be a very big mistake. Perhaps Xev and Stanley are both wrong, or perhaps they’re both right, at least partially. What is sure is that both Stanley and Xev are not capable of being rational about such matters.

The cities on Water are all floating cities. They’re mostly given over to pleasure of one sort or another. The cities on Fire are at the tops of huge towers. They’re dangerous nasty places.

There’s something very very strange about both planets. The first clue is the complete absence of children. I won’t spoil things by hinting at just how strange life on these planets is.

Prince is very dangerous and he has a very odd ability but I’m also not going to spoil things by saying any more.

Several foes and friends from the past make appearances in this third season. Their reappearances are quite impossible but how they happen to turn up now is always connected with the oddness of these planets. It’s fun to see Lyekka again!

The most sensible thing to do would be to get as far away as possible from these twin planets but Lexx cannot take them anywhere until he eats. And finding food for him is a problem. Lexx is a spaceship but he is also a giant insect. He has a very healthy appetite.

Stan, Xev and Kai get drawn into the never-ending war between Water and Fire. They also get inextricably mixed up in Prince’s scheming. The problem is that they cannot figure out what Prince is actually aiming to achieve. They are not even entirely certain it is evil, although that seems likely.

There are very subtle changes in the regular characters. The changes make sense. They have been through a lot together. They understand each other a bit more. Stan is still desperate to get into Xev’s pants but he has started to think of her as more than just a luscious body. Kai has come to understand that although Xev’s desire for him is inconvenient it is not her fault. Xev has become just a little bit more tolerant of Stan’s foibles.

And Xev has grown up just a little. She’s a bit older and a bit wiser.

The narrative is concluded fairly satisfactorily by the season finale, and in a very Lexx sort of way. Lexx is not a warm cuddly science fiction series. But it is one of the all-time great science fiction TV series. Very highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the first season and the second season.

Ergo Proxy (2006)

Ergo Proxy is a 2006 Japanese cyberpunk anime TV series. The setting is a vast high-tech future city known as Romdo, a paradise on an Earth that is otherwise inhospitable and almost uninhabitable.

There are citizens and non-citizens in Romdo but non-citizens can become citizens. This is a society based on conspicuous consumption. Shopping is practically a duty. Life is easy thanks to the ubiquitous AutoReivs, advanced androids that do most of the real work. AutoReivs also function as personal servants and companions, in which capacities they are known as Entourages.

Romdo is certainly not a dystopia. It’s a pretty pleasant place overall. It’s more of a flawed utopia (sadly all utopias are inherently flawed).

Unfortunately many of the AutoReivs are becoming infected with the cogito virus. This allows them to achieve self-consciousness, which means they no longer automatically obey orders. This is seen as being a very bad thing. Romdo is a society based on willing obedience.

There is a possibility that an AutoReiv infected with the cogito virus may develop a soul. My assumption is that the word “soul” is being used here in the same sense that the word “ghost” is used in the Ghost in the Shell animes and mangas - not necessarily something spiritual but more a sense of selfhood, the vital spark that distinguishes a human from a machine.

The heroine is Re-l Mayer. She’s a fairly hardboiled Intelligence Bureau agent. She’s a bit of a natural trouble-maker. She’s inclined to interpret direct orders as vague guidelines. Since she happens to be the granddaughter of the Regent (the ruler of Romdo) and therefore an important and powerful woman she has plenty of opportunities to be a trouble-maker. She is however very good at her job. Re-I is not one of your cute big-eyed anime girls. She looks more like a cyberpunk goth girl.

Re-l thinks that a young man named Vincent Law is important although she’s not sure why. He’s a nobody. He’s not even a citizen. He’s an outsider, from another city named Mosk.

There are other things going on. Top-secret research with unknown objectives. 

That top-secret research concerns the proxy. Or possibly proxies. What are the proxies? Were they created by humans? Did they evolve? Are they machines or are they biological or perhaps both or perhaps something else entirely. They appear to possess powers that are almost supernatural but are probably just unimaginably advanced technology. Are they benevolent or malevolent?

All of the characters are ambiguous to some degree. Romdo is ruled by the Regent. He’s a wise and just ruler. Probably. There’s the security chief Raul Creed. He has an agenda, which may not be the same as the Regent’s agenda. Raul might be a good guy or a bad guy. Or a good guy being manipulated for evil purposes. There’s Dr Daedalus, the impossibly young genius doctor-scientist with a mysterious connection to Re-l. Dr Daedalus has an agenda, the nature of which is unknown.

There’s obviously some secret associated with Vincent Law. He probably doesn’t know himself what it is. 

Vincent and Re-l will undertake a journey together although neither knows the purpose of this journey.

There are indeed several proxies. They don’t all have the same agendas. Re-l would very much like to know what Ergo Proxy’s agenda is. She’d like to know why Ergo Proxy is so important.

There’s Re-l’s Entourage, Iggy. Like many of the city’s AutoReivs he is infected with the cogito virus. He is fanatically loyal to Re-l. Possibly.

There’s Pino, a cute little girl who tags along with Re-l and Vincent on their journey. Pino isn’t really a cute little girl, she’s an AutoReiv, a companion android, and she’s infected with the cogito virus. She’s adorable and harmless. Possibly.

Re-l herself is a little ambiguous. She’s the heroine, we assume she’s on the side of the good guys, if anybody knew which were the good guys and the bad guys. She is being manipulated. She is aware of this, but perhaps not aware of the extent of the manipulation.

Apart from all the other things going on in this anime this is also a kind of coming-of-age story. Re-l is an adult who is still to some extent emotionally a teenage rebel. She is having trouble handling the transition to womanhood. She is a woman, but she’s not sure how to deal with that. She’s also not sure how to deal with the terrifying possibility that she may have fallen in love with a man.

There are characters whose personalities are fragmenting and others whose personalities may be merging. Personality in this anime is very uncertain.

Right from the start there are questions which demand answers. But every answer leads to a new set of questions. To find the right answers Re-l has to discover the right questions.

This series is constantly undermining what we think we know.

To fully appreciate Ergo Proxy you have to put it in a pop culture history context. There’s a very obvious cyberpunk influence. But by 2006 Japan had a 50-year tradition of monster movies. The monstrousness of the proxies may well be a deliberate homage to this tradition. And by 2006 anime had its own tradition, and I suspect that this series is at times homaging classic 80s anime such as Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s Wicked City. This is cyberpunk with lots of other flavourings and influences. 

This is a complex intelligent puzzling fascinating grown-up anime. Very highly recommended.

Ergo Proxy has been released on Blu-Ray. Happily both the English-dubbed soundtrack and the original Japanese-language soundtrack (with English subtitles) are provided. I have no idea why anyone would want to watch an English-dubbed version of an anime but apparently some people do. 

Gunbuster (1988-89 OVA)

Gunbuster is a 1988-89 anime OVA. For those new to the world of anime an OVA (original video animation) was a bit like a mini-series but intended for the home video market rather than television broadcast. They were straight-to-video and later straight-to-DVD releases. It was an incredibly useful and flexible format and since they were not broadcast on TV they could deal more openly and easily with grown-up subject matter.

This is from the golden age of anime and like so many of the products of that age it turns out to be not at all what it first seemed to be.

Gunbuster is the story of Noriko Takaya, a high school girl whose dream it is to become a space pilot. Her dad was a space pilot. He was a hero, killed in action in the first great battle against the space monsters. Part of Noriko’s motivation is to honour the memory of her much-loved father. But Noriko doesn’t go to a normal high school. She attends a special high school for girls destined to become space pilots.

Noriko looks up to Kazumi Amano, a slightly older girl and the school’s star pupil. Noriko thinks of her as Big Sis.

The chief instructor is Koichiro Ohta, always referred to as Coach. He was one of the few survivors of the battle in which Noriko’s father was killed. This provides a link between Noriko and Ohta which will be important later.

When the space monsters attack again the girls are rushed into battle. Nobody thinks Noriko is ready. She’s just not a very promising space pilot but for some reason Coach Ohta insists that she will make it.

A series of epic space battles follow, in which we will find out if Noriko has the Right Stuff or not.

The whole “mecha” or giant robot thing is, let’s face it, kind of silly and goofy. But when you have giant robots that are also space fighters hurtling through space you’re reaching a whole new level of silliness. So you figure this will probably be just a fun kids’ space opera science fiction adventure series. And then suddenly it starts throwing science fiction Big Ideas at you. Like the concept of humanity as a bacteria.

And they have invented a whole new theory of physics for this OVA, a theory which supposedly superseded Einstein’s theories at the end of the 20th century. This new theory has an amusing steampunk touch since it posits the existence of the mysterious aether, a popular concept in 19th century physics. Space isn’t a vacuum. It is filled with the aether.

It’s also a series which actually takes account of the relativity effects on time. At the beginning of the the episode Noriko is still teenaged girl but her birth certificate says she is 27. Girls she went to high school with are married with kids. This sense of being displaced in time adds to Noroko’s sense of disconnectedness. She spends more time in space than her old friends so her friendships have to be rebuilt on a new basis. Those relatively effects will later become very very important, not as mere plot elements but for their immense emotional impacts.

Getting back to the goofiness which at first seems likely to be the predominant characteristic of this OVA we discover that, of course, the most suitable candidates for training as space combat pilots are hot babes. With big boobs. And the bottom half of their uniform consists of not much more than a thong. So we figure this will a sexy babes in space romp. Until we discover that the characters have a great deal of depth to them, that Noriko is a very complex young woman struggling with unresolved grief, a sense of emptiness and a sense of unworthiness. The death in combat of her father is not just a minor backstory element to explain why she’s a space pilot. It’s a tragedy that dominates her whole life and she will never become truly a grown woman until she learns to resolve this issue.

At first we think Coach Ohta will be a stereotypical tough drill sergeant type but he has lots of issues to deal with as well. Issues connected with that disastrous space battle in which Noriko’s father was killed. Perhaps he has a desire for revenge. Perhaps there is guilt. He may be searching for redemption. Why does he insist that Noriko is ready for combat when everyone (including Noriko) knows she’s a washout? This is a series that also deals very much with honour. This dominates Coach Ohta’s life. It’s not that he was in any way guilty of cowardice, but he survived that first battle when a warrior’s honour would have demanded that he die in battle.

And while we may have initially thought this was going to be an anime aimed at kids it soon becomes apparent that that is not the case. It’s not just the very adult concepts. There’s also the nudity, including quite a bit of frontal nudity. No, this is not aimed at the kiddies.

There are major themes of love and loss. Both Noriko and Kazumi find love, but each of them (in different ways) has to face the prospect of losing the man she loves.

This is old school animation without any CGI but I like old school anime.

There are three distinct parts to the story, with time gaps between each part but with the time gaps complicated by relativity effects.

Gunbuster does feature giant robots and scantily-clad (and sometimes unclad) babes but it’s an intelligent, subtle and complex science fiction story which deals with tricky concepts such as the nature of time and it’s a sensitive emotional drama.

Gunbuster is superb. Very highly recommended.

Gunbuster is available on a Blu-Ray release which thankfully offers the Japanese language soundtrack with subtitles as well the English dub. No power on this Earth could persuade me to watch anime in an English-dubbed version.