a study in adaptation

a study in scarlet (novel 1887)

by arthur conan doyle

i should start by saying that i’ve read a bunch of the short stories in the adventures of sherlock holmes, and seen a decent number of film adaptations, but this is the first sherlock holmes novel i’ve read. i always saw him as much more of a static character, but he seems much different in this novel than i remember him being in the short stories. so i’m glad i’m reading these in order so i can see if there’s deliberate character development on doyle’s part or if he just gradually learns how to write him, finds the formula as it were.

i feel like most depictions i’ve seen of holmes have shown him as more of an… all-encompassing genius of sorts? or maybe that was a misreading on my part. but i just distinctly remember having him slotted in that category of characters’ whose main personality trait was “smart,” like spock or beast or doc brown.

in any case, the idea that he would, as he does in this book, not know something as basic as the fact that the earth revolves around the sun is just stunning to me. and his entire argument about avoiding “useless facts elbowing out the useful ones” is just… not how brains work, my dude. though i do find it hilarious that when he says, “depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before,” he is basically asserting that the human brain works on the same principle as a pokémon having to forget one of their four moves to learn another one. (“HOLMES wants to learn EARTH GO ROUND SUN… …however, HOLMES already knows four things…”)

disney tried to keep luca in the closet but its gayness is too powerful to be denied

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disney's meddling couldn't stop turning red from becoming my favorite pixar movie of all time

oh my gosh??? this is so good???

i’m struggling to think of the last pixar movie that was this good. i’m not sure any of them have been this good.

you know what? they haven’t. this is my favorite pixar movie! and it isn’t particularly close!

like, where do i even start? this movie is gorgeous. and it looks so different from any movie pixar has ever made before? it’s apparently somewhat autobiographical on director and co-writer domee shi’s part, and, you know, wow shocking that we get really great, original ideas when a studio doesn’t just keep giving the same three or four white guys the director’s chair and keep making sequels of all of their preexisting properties. i’m sure a certain mouse has a lot to do with those problems, but from what i hear lasseter’s departure has also opened a lot of doors so hopefully this is the kind of thing we can look forward to more of in the future!!

one… not-so-great representation note: apparently pixar had a ton of blatantly queer representation in this movie but disney cut basically all of it. coming on the heels of their refusal to condemn florida’s “don’t say gay” bill, it’s… just not a great look.

what survives is rather clear romantic tension between the protagonist mei and her tomboy friend ava, but that apparently wasn’t even the explicit relationship that was meant to be shown onscreen? there seems to be a lot of fan speculation (and possibly even confirmation from one of the film’s creative team) that priya was meant to explicitly have a crush on a goth girl side character. and then there’s tyler, who starts out as a bully but ends up showing up at the boy band concert and being embraced by the girls!

so, yeah, what we’re left with in the finished product of the movie is nothing more than queerbaiting, and that’s a damn shame. i would love to see what the filmmakers originally intended at some point. but like… i don’t know, guys, what did survive might be crumbs, but you can see enough of it that we were enthusiastically reacting to all the obvious gay stuff while watching the movie. it wasn’t until afterwards when i was doing some research that i found out that it had originally been much more explicitly gay and that all of it had been cut. sigh.

i’ve already hinted at it a bit, but the characters and their relationships are really the movie’s not-so-secret weapon. mei’s friend group is incredible, mei herself is a wonderful protagonist and it’s incredible seeing her balance the things that are important to her. and while this movie has come under fire from conservatives for encouraging children to rebel, what i love about it is that mei actually values both her family’s traditions and her desire to explore things outside of those traditions. and while her family is an obstacle at times, when the chips are down they’ve got her back!

oh, and, i love the role of the boy band in this! like, it feels very culturally authentic to my experience growing up in the 90s, and having them join in with the ceremony to help mei’s mother at the end was simultaneously funny and genuinely heartwarming.

wait how have i not talked about the elephant-sized red panda in the room.

i love, love, love that mei is so determined that her being basically a were-red panda is a good thing, and that she doesn’t want to let go of it like her family has been for literally centuries! and although she has to fight her family’s disapproval at first, as previously mentioned they eventually make space for her and the resolution to the film is harmony, not a zero sum game.

now release the gay cut so i can give this thing the full marks it deserves, disney you fucking cowards. a-rank

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

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i loved the batman (2022)

i’m gonna want to rewatch this one a few times, in fact i’m already kinda itching to do so despite it being 3 hours long, so that’s immediately a great sign. i feel like this is one of those movies i’m going to get something new out of each time i rewatch it. what i can safely say after one viewing is that this is my third favorite batman movie, behind returns and mask of the phantasm.

this is basically a weird, lurid murder mystery, and i’m super here for it? and populating that weird, lurid murder mystery with a kinky serial killer version of the riddler (seriously there’s so much bondage and sadism in this), an explicitly bisexual catwoman who’s walking around in fucking goth domme boots, and one of the least annoying versions of the penguin this side of the animated series who runs a seedy, loud edm club is… yeah! yeah, that’ll work!

and then you throw a goth twink version of batman at them. a goth twink version of batman who answers one of my biggest criticisms of the live-action movies by still fucking having his eye makeup on when he takes his mask off, thank you!! and you have him doing actual, y’know, detective work!! which works really well with the slow, deliberate pace and long runtime of the movie. this thing is three hours long and i still kinda wish it were longer!!

this is a batman movie so, y’know. it’s got its downsides. i was willing to let the usual copaganda slide but then it goes to a hella aggressive copaganda place when a huge army of cops is waiting to arrest that mobster and one of them says something like, “i guess some of us don’t work for you.” puke. also the movie seems like it’s doing something hella badass by having bruce find out his father was actually corrupt and likely involved in the murder of a journalist. i mean, he’s a billionaire! that’s just being realistic. but alfred reveals to bruce that the mobster exaggerated and thomas only actually wanted them to scare the reporter.

i mean… a) WHATEVER, b) glad we resolved that, like, immediately, and c) WHO GIVES A FUCK, he still went to an organized crime boss to try to intimidate a reporter. why are we acting like that’s Fine, Actually???

but, yeah, i think the things i enjoyed about this movie outweighed the things that made me roll my eyes. i mean, again… it’s a batman movie. there’s gonna be some of those.

but i love this grimy city. i love this slow-paced murder mystery. and i love that we finally did the hella obvious thing and made batman a fucking goth. a-rank

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

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star trek: the next generation, season 3

3x01 “evolution”

this is the first episode with the new, much-improved uniforms (though the seams they have for the first few episodes are a bit annoying) as well as the new title sequence. i’ve always liked the seasons 3-7 title sequence drastically better, so good to see that.

(yes, i know about the really annoying weird starfield wipe. but it’s still overall a better-looking title sequence.)

also sometime between the end of season 2 and now, geordi has been promoted to lieutenant commander and worf has been promoted to full lieutenant, both of which make a lot of sense given their responsibilities as department heads. and dr. crusher has returned to the ship after a yearlong absence.

i would’ve appreciated some closure for pulaski’s character. even if they couldn’t get muldaur back for one episode, they could’ve at least mentioned the reason for her departure in dialogue like they did with dr. crusher at the beginning of season 2. oh well.

star trek: picard, season 1

we finished rewatching star trek: picard season 1 last night so we can start watching season 2. i know this was a big talking point online, but wow yeah the first season has some pretty intense mass effect vibes. which i’m not exactly complaining about but it did feel a bit weird at times. it also, like discovery, has a lot more serialized storytelling than a traditional star trek series which usually follow more of a “monster of the week” sort of format. given that, i don’t think it’ll make sense for me to do episode-by-episode mini-reviews like i’ve been doing for tng, so i’ll just talk about the season as a whole instead.

i’m a bit higher on nutrek than some fans, but even i have some reservations about the prestige television approach that all the live-action shows seem to be gravitating towards. mostly the fact that everything needs to be turned up to eleven at all times. all the drama, all the emotion, all of it, all the time. no time to breathe. it made the first two seasons of discovery a bit difficult for me to get through, and it also made me a bit guarded the first time i watched season 1 of picard.

discovery finally ended up stealing my heart in season 3 by introducing trans and nonbinary characters and having a season-long arc that was wholly original, thematically invested in rekindling the federation as a force for good, and explicitly placed the federation in opposition to capitalism. admiral vance actually says it out loud in the explosive two-part season finale.

but what of picard? honestly, even before i had seen a single episode, i was a bit put off by the concept of the show, and even the title. “star trek: picard.” when has a star trek series ever been about a single person? yes, there are numerous examples throughout the franchise of how one person can make a difference and that our individual choices matter. but one of the central draws of star trek for me has always been the crews, and starfleet. to have a star trek show start off by eschewing both was off-putting to say the least.

it took me a while to overcome my reservations about this radically different direction, but the show did have some inherent advantages all the same. the involvement of the romulans and borg, unquestionably my two favorite star trek antagonists, was a definite boon. not to mention the returns of fan-favorite ex-borg characters like seven of nine and hugh. but, for all my reservations about the concept of a star trek series centered on a single person, probably the biggest thing the show had going for it was picard himself.

if you have to focus a star trek show on a single character, picard is the obvious one to go with. raffi jokes at one point, “i mean picard is so federation, his face is still probably on the damn brochures.” and that might as well be true of the franchise as a whole. i don’t think any single character more represents what star trek is about. and although i had my reservations about the way the first few episodes seemed to throw starfleet under the bus, in so doing they had picard loudly standing up for the federation’s principles.

but while his attention was largely dominated by this big-picture struggle, picard made several extremely believable personal mistakes. so the first few episodes were basically a parade of people telling picard off for being an arrogant prick. and… yeah, you can totally see it. picard is one of the most admirable characters in the entire franchise, but he’s not perfect. and this show clearly understands what makes him tick, and how to show him believably having had a fall from grace on both a personal and professional level.

i would still be pretty uncomfy with all of this were it not for the fact that this first season is ultimately a season-long redemption arc for both picard and starfleet. and i think it’s pretty damn appropriate that the avatar of the latter comes in the form of a reinstated captain riker charging to the rescue with a cavalry of starfleet vessels. i’ve realized recently that william riker is just absolutely the best, so i enjoyed that even more on this rewatch.

i will say that it was a bit annoying that no one bothered to tell will that jean luc was dying, and that it was only his new family surrounding him when they thought he had breathed his last. will is basically one of picard’s surrogate sons. i get that the television logic here is that will is a guest character and these are the new main characters of the show, but it does feel a bit disrespectful to the history of both characters that will didn’t play a larger role in picard’s brief death and resurrection.

what makes this jump out even more is that the show is unbelievably respectful of picard’s relationship with his other surrogate son, the late lieutenant commander data. picard is thinking about him all the time, and the season ends with an incredible tear-jerking sendoff for data. i was bracing myself for it and doing everything i could to insulate myself from the impact of it, but i couldn’t stop myself from sobbing wildly when data finally passed on.

what makes this so wild is that this emotional farewell actually retroactively makes star trek: nemesis better??? whereas nemesis inserted b4 as a clumsy way to bring data back if they ended up prolonging the tng movies, picard actually pays that story off by definitively closing the book on data’s character, giving him a real ending devoid of half-measures. and in the process actually says aloud what always should have been said out loud: that they loved each other.

i’m tearing up a little now just writing about it so i’m gonna go ahead and move on, sorry.

while the prestige television approach isn’t my favorite, it does need to be said that picard season 1 is just an absolutely gorgeous-looking show. and i understand that that’s the tradeoff we’re getting. i would still like to see nutrek eventually find its way to more of the chill, “monster of the week” vibe that has always made star trek so enduringly appealing, but i don’t want to fail to acknowledge its strengths. as long as the show keeps doing right by its characters, no matter how it does or doesn’t fit my tastes, i’ll be happy to keep boldly going along with it for its additional two seasons.

star trek: the next generation, season 2

2x01 “the child”

before we get to anything else, there’s some housekeeping here with this being the first episode of season 2. geordi has been promoted to chief engineer, which like worf’s move to security chief is a much better fit for the character than just being a floating dude who does whatever needs doing. it always seemed so weird to me that season 1 had so many extra characters but no dedicated chief engineer. dr. crusher has been promoted to the head of starfleet medical to explain gates mcfadden’s departure from the show between seasons, which makes things a bit awkward when she returns to the show next season and her rank is still only commander without even a casual mention of her accepting a demotion to return to the ship or anything like that.

beverly’s replacement, dr. katherine pulaski, has very little in common with her predecessor aside from a fierce devotion to the practice of medicine. (... which we didn’t get to see much of from beverly in season 1, but will see plenty of later in the show.) this was likely intentional to differentiate the characters, but the direction they initially seemed to be going for was “dr. mccoy, but a woman.” she’s afraid of transporters, she’s cranky, she’s gruff… and unfortunately, they also try to map mccoy’s playful racism towards spock over to pulaski’s interactions with data. it’s as bad of an idea as it sounds. fortunately, this is softened as the season goes on, but it still pops up occasionally and i just hate it.

the other big addition to the cast is guinan, who is both a recurring guest star and a civilian, but both of these details bely her importance to the show. guinan ends up dispensing salient advice to basically every member of the crew on multiple occasions. and whoopi goldberg’s performance is so fantastic that you really buy her as an informal authority on basically everything. in this first appearance, everybody’s favorite bartender and socratic method enthusiast helps wesley decide to stay onboard the enterprise. it’s a nice way to solve this loose thread in a way that doesn’t feel perfunctory, but rather organic and character-driven.

roddenberry’s broken promise

in my recap of season 1 of star trek: the next generation, there was so much to talk about that i didn’t really touch on the chaos going on behind the scenes that made common descriptors like “troubled production” a massive understatement.

that chaos largely centered on one man: franchise creator and series executive producer gene roddenberry. i’ve written about my disillusionment with roddenberry and the mythology built up around him previously in my review of the tos era movies, but there’s plenty to talk about even when we limit the scope to his behavior in his two seasons as tng’s showrunner.

according to various members of the writing staff, roddenberry was notorious for aggressively rewriting other writers’ scripts multiple times, sometimes right up to and even during the filming of those episodes.1 he had difficulty recruiting writers, and pressured the writers he did have to accept wages below the minimums set by the writers guild of america.

on that last score, we’re not talking about just any writers (not that that should matter), we’re talking about the likes of “the trouble with tribbles” scribe david gerrold and the legendary d.c. fontana.2

but i think one particular aspect of the next generation’s “troubled” season 1 production deserves special attention, and that’s david gerrold’s rejected script “blood and fire.”