Countdown

More Blake's 7 episode reviews, from back in 2002:

'Countdown' yesterday. Great stuff; a simple, straightforward and relatively cheap plot by Terry Nation that not only works, but also manages to fill up its 45 minutes with no padding. Sadly Jenna and Cally get even less to do than usual; Jenna's performance is so knowing I'm surprised she doesn't wink at the camera. Cally's getting a bit tetchy. Vila's comedy banter falls a bit flat, as usual, but he's a likeable enough sod. Avon unusually heroic, and Blake unusually gullible. I really enjoyed it. I would give it a good '8 out of 10' if I awarded things marks out of 10, but I don't.

Voice From The Past

Oh my goodness. There's some real vying going on in the competition for 'most sheepish episode of Blake's 7 ever'. But it will be difficult to out-sheep this.

To begin with, this appears to be the episode that has had no money spent on it whatsoever. Four sets - three of which are the Liberator control room, a room in the Liberator and Servalan's office. Three non-regular speaking cast members. And five minute's location filming, at the Barbican if I'm not mistaken, unless that's a corridor in TV Centre.

The plot is essentially, 'Blake gets a headache and goes a bit mad'. He has to be restrained to a chair. Cue lots of nasal hair shots. There is some endless to-ing and fro-ing - will they go to the asteroid or the bouncy planet with the Fera particles? For the longest time this viewer was convinced they wouldn't even get off the bloody Liberator. Cue model shot of Liberator turning left. Cue model shot of Liberator turning right. Cue model shot of Liberator turning left again.

In all its years of rubbishness, Doctor Who never managed a special effect as colon-evacuatingly awful as the space-suited Blake wandering across the surface of the asteroid. I mean, I think it's lovely that they let the producer's four-year-old daughter paint the backdrop, I really do, but what is that big white line supposed to be? Is that big round thing a moon or something? Is that a giant Gin and Tonic?

It gets worse. Blake is here to meet Shevan, a rebel leader. Who is covered entirely, from head to foot, in bandages. And who talks like Papa Lazarou after he's had a stroke. 'Elllo Blaaaake. You wanna buy some pegs? Maaaaa wife was right, there was a problem with the Federation, but I fixed it. Of cooourse you can join us! etc. etc.'

It transpires, in a trouser-changingly absurd plot twist, that Shevan is none other than Travis in what must be the feeblest disguise since John Simpson tried to smuggle himself into Afghanistan dressed in only an Hawaiian grass skirt and a coconut bra. A disguise which somehow fools not only Orac, but which has passed every medical examination test known to man. Even Scooby Doo could've spotted this one.

The actors are past caring. The dialogue is ridiculously out of character - whoever wrote this episode seems to think the Blake gang are a bunch of petulant 17-year olds out on a jolly picnic. So whenever a line comes along which doesn't fit with the character, it is delivered flatly, with just a hint of 'get me out of this series NOW' desperation. Cally and Jenna seem embarrased by the juvenile bitching they have to perform, never mind discussing how pretty asteroids are. Vila makes no pretence to be taken in by Blake's loopy plan. Only the Darrow bothers to put in a performance, but even his gritting seems somehow half-hearted. He's only semi-clenched.

You know the woman in Timelash, the one with the cheek blusher and wide-eyed facial expression? Vena, played by Jeanette or Jean something. You probably thought she gave the most wooden performance by anyone in a sci-fi series ever. But, no, the woman who plays the rebelling planet president leader thing in 'Voice From The Past' is even worse. No emotional inflection what-so-ever. She takes inanimation to extraordinary lengths.

And how is this dire situation resolved? It suddenly occurs to Avon that it might be a good idea to smash the box which is controlling Blake's brain. He does so. Blake then wakes up - and lucky old Blake has no memory whatsoever of the events of 'Voice From The Past'. I wish I were Blake. Apart from the puffy sleeves and space wellies, of course. But that's it, that's the ending. Fnnurk.

The - rather unexpected - couple of scenes shot at Barbican look quite nice, though. You get to see the federation guards in spotlights, looking quite sinister. But that's hardly enough to redeem the most sheepish Blake's 7 Episode ever. So far.

And those exercises looked extremely painful.

Picasso's Last Words (Drink To Me)

Way back many years ago, I was arguing with a Christian about evolution, to pass the time on a bus journey, and he repeated the argument which I shall summarize thus: ‘Ah, but even Charles Darwin converted to Christianity on his death bed!’

Of course he didn’t. This is one of those Received Wisdoms that gets repeated in pamphlets, like the nonsense that evolution can’t explain things like the eye and the appearance of the golden ratio in nature. The story of Darwin’s death-bed recantation – which is all it was, a story – was repudiated by those who knew Darwin best, and seems to have been wishful thinking by someone who had never even met Darwin.

But let’s just suppose the story was true, that Darwin did say ‘Evolution is a lie, I believe in Jesus’ before he finally pegged it. So what? Why should what somebody says on their death-bed trump a lifetime of writing, of thought and discussion? Because it’s his ‘final word on the matter’? Because up until that point he hadn’t quite decided where stood on the issue, but he arrived at a conclusion in the nick of time? Because he knew his time was limited and wanted to use his last words to finally reveal the truth, that his life’s work had been a fabrication?

Clearly this is nonsense. What somebody says on their death bed is unlikely to be their considered view on a matter. When you’re on your death bed you’re quite likely to be extremely ill – I have noted that extreme illness frequently precedes death – possibly feverish, possibly tanked up with painkilling drugs, and quite possibly not of sound mind. Almost certainly not firing on all cylinders mentally. Maybe Darwin did say he believed in Jesus on his death bed. But maybe he also said that he thought that there were worms crawling over the ceiling and that spoons were trying to kill him.

It’s this same nonsense, this idea that ‘ah, we’re finally getting the truth’, which means people place far too much credence in what people say when they’re drunk, or talking in their sleep, when really that’s the one time they shouldn’t take the slightest bit of notice. When I get drunk I’ll say the most offensive things in an attempt to be amusing. That doesn’t mean that’s what I secretly really think, quite the opposite.

I haven’t decided what I’ll say on my death bed yet. To be honest, I’m hoping to go out with a really big sneeze.

No Values

Former Archbishop of Canterbury says politicians must do more to limit net immigration to the UK.

He so very nearly has a point. But he’s got it wrong.

Of course it would be a bad idea for the UK population to rise to 70 million. That’s more cars, more congestion, more electricity and gas consumption, longer queues at the post office and the expansion of towns into green belts. Irrespective of any of those things, just do the maths – if the population increases by about 15 per cent, then either the economy is going to have to increase by at least 15 per cent or everybody, on average, is going to be substantially worse off, with a poorer standard of living.

Where he’s wrong is in talking about ‘immigration’, as though it is the cause of the problem. The problem is one of world wide over-population, and the only solution is by reducing the birth rate. And the best way reduce the birth rate is by campaigning for sexual equality and, in particular, for women to have access to contraception (including medical termination). Is that a priority for the Church of England?

In terms of the UK population, there isn’t any difference at all whether one extra bum taking your seat on the tube belongs to an immigrant or someone born here; but how do you reduce the birth rate, when having as many children as you like (whether you can afford to look after them or not) is considered an inalienable human right?

Carey seems rather cloudy on what his point is; he says he’s not in favour of a points-based system or in favouring Christians but also feels it is important that potential immigrants should be given priority if they understand our culture and parliamentary democracy which he claims, with scant regard for historical accuracy, to be based on a Christian heritage (rather than, say, the Chartist movement). One wonders also that if Christianity and parliamentary democracy are so profoundly interlinked, why there isn’t a parliamentary democracy in every Christian nation (such as the USA) and why so many non-Christian countries have adopted the system, from Sri Lanka to Bhutan. He says immigrants should be favoured if they understand British history; something which he clearly has trouble with.

Personal Jesus

The Story Of The Nativity

Based on the Gospels of Luke and Matthew

Using all the bits which are usually left out, and leaving out all the bits which are usually left in.

In Bethlehem there once was an unmarried couple, Mary and Joseph, who didn’t even live together. Joseph is visited by an un-named angel who tells him, regarding Mary, to ‘take her as a wife’ (in other words to have sex with her) and have a son who will be called Jesus. This he does, getting Mary pregnant. They then get married.

Not long after, Mary visits a friend called Elizabeth who was technically unable to have children but who now finds herself to be miraculously pregnant. This sort of thing happens quite often in the New Testament, it seems. It’s Elizabeth who declares that Mary is now the ‘mother of the Lord’.

Mary and Joseph move in together, and not much happens until Mary gives birth, not in a manger, but at home. King Herod has been dead for a while and the Romans don’t interfere in Judean life very much, so things are pretty quiet. No-one turns up with gifts and there are no unusual astronomical phenomena to speak of.

About a month or so later, Mary and Joseph take the Christ child to the Temple of Jerusalem to have part of his dick chopped off. He bleeds quite badly (thus beginning the redemption of man). They then sacrifice some pigeons on his behalf and chat with an old bloke called Simeon and an old lady called Anna who declare the blood-soaked infant as the saviour of the nation of Jerusalem.

Joseph is then visited by another angel in a dream, telling him to take his newborn son to Israel. Joseph decides to ignore this and they choose to settle in Nazareth instead.

Second greatest story ever told!

I Was Born On Christmas Day

So this is Christmas. And the story of the nativity.

A story so dramatic it’s only mentioned in two of the gospels; two very contradictory accounts. Both gospels seems to be awkward attempts to reconcile the Old Testament prophecy about a Messiah born in Bethlehem with the idea that it’s Jesus of Nazareth. Luke has Jesus’ parents of Nazareth travelling to Bethlehem for the birth; Matthew has Jesus’ parents of Bethlehem relocating to Nazareth after his birth.

Of course, these solutions create more continuity problems than they solve; according to Luke, Mary and Joseph are attending the census of Quirinius at the behest of the Emperor Augustus (which means it happens ten years after the recorded death of Herod, who is still King is Matthew’s version of events). And the Romans did not conduct censuses of non-Roman citizens, requiring them to return to the town of their birth; if you think about it, it’s a rather impractical way of going about it – all you would have to do is stay at home and you wouldn’t have to pay any taxes!

The miracle of the virgin birth. Assuming you’re okay about the fact that the word ‘virgin’ is a mis-translation of the original descriptor for Mary (something closer to ‘maiden’ or ‘young woman’). Bizarrely, both gospels give detailed (but differing) accounts of how Jesus is descended from David via his father Joseph, even though both gospels make it clear that Joseph is not actually his father. Of course, this is all about trying to make the ‘story’ fit the various ‘facts’ established in the Old Testament.

So an angel – possibly Gabriel, possibly not – comes to either Mary or Joseph in a dream (but not both). They either travel to Bethelehem for a Roman census or reside there already. Mary then gives birth in a stable (according to Luke only – Matthew has Jesus as a home-birth). An unspecified number of shepherds or an unspecified number of Magi attend the child (but not both). Magi being, of course, the term for priests of the Zoroastrian religion of Persia (Zoroastrian translating as ‘followers of the star’). A giant lobster may have also have been in attendance, according to the Gospel of Richard Curtis.

After which, either Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt to escape King Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents (copy and pasted from accounts of Moses’ birth – I hardly need say there is no record of any such massacre in any reliable or remotely contemporaneous historical account) before eventually ending up in Nazareth, or they take the baby to Jeruslam to have its penis pointlessly mutilated according to Jewish tradition before returning happily to Nazareth.

And was there a magic star? Not according to Luke’s version of events (the shepherds were summoned by an angel, or possibly by a travelling spaceman, according to the gospel of Chris De Burgh). It might have been a comet (though the dates don’t match) certainly wasn’t a conjunction of planets – there wasn’t a significant one around then, and even when they do happen, they are barely noticable).

The greatest story ever told? Possibly. But with the emphasis very much on the word ‘story’.

From Out Of Nowhere

As a follow-up to my earlier post about evidence, and my suspicion of any argument which boils down to ‘because I say so’... I think that’s why I never, not for a moment, ever believed in any sort of religion. Because it is – whether you consider it true or not – based on the idea that something can (and should) be considered to be true without evidence but as an act of faith - and that there is something admirable about this.

When I was five or six, this smacked of ‘because I say so’. Because, really, ‘because I say so’ isn’t so different from ‘because it was written in a book a long time ago’; that’s just an extension of the same justification. Eventually it comes down to taking something on trust, of suspending disbelief, of wanting something to be true so much that your start to forget that it isn’t actually true.

This happens – people do read stories, or watch TV shows, and forget that what happened was a fiction and that it actually happened to them. Stories or TV shows they read or watched when they were young and impressionable.

My other main reason for disbelief, though, was that by the time I was five or six I spent most of my time reading and writing stories – and the Bible just felt like more stories, and not particularly well-written or thought-through ones at that. So many parts of the old and new testament sound like someone making it up as they go along, exaggerating set-pieces and adding unverifiable detail, before writing themselves into a corner so that the only way out is an absurd, cop-out climax where hitherto-unmentioned supernatural abilities are brought into play.

Yes, that’s the problem I have with the resurrection. There wasn’t enough narrative foreshadowing.

Deceiving Is Believing

In response to Simon Guerrier’s blog post about measuring the weight of evidence and how we take things like the dates of our births on trust... a couple of thoughts.

It’s human nature to opt for the simplest, most obvious answer to any question. You can see why; it’s important for survival to make a link between cause and effect – stop eating food which makes you sick, don’t go dancing barefoot in the part of the jungle where all your friends have been bitten by ground snakes, that sort of thing.

Problem is, the simplest, most obvious solution isn’t necessarily the correct one. Because, very often, the simplest, most obvious solution is ‘because god says so’. Which isn’t so very different from the explanation that parents give when telling their kids to behave without having a clear reason to hand; ‘because I say so’. So for years people believed the sun went up in the morning and went down at night because god designed it that way.

It’s also how magic tricks work. The audience takes everything at face value, that the suit the magician is wearing is just a suit, that the guillotine is just a guillotine. Except, of course, the suit isn’t a suit but a intricately-designed cloak of hidden compartments and the guillotine has been specially designed for the blade to invisibly retract into the wood. The audience is fooled because they assume that the onstage equipment works in a simple, obvious way – when the truth is much more complicated.

Simon’s right to say people should challenge their own beliefs; I’d add that it’s healthy to be sceptical of anything based on the ‘because I say so’ argument, whether it be religion, ghosts or mathematical statements that seem to hold true but which haven’t been proved.

God Knows I'm Good

Read a thing that annoyed me in one of those free papers that litter the tube the other day. It was an opinion piece by some gimp-about-town that said that Christians would find it harder to be successful working in the City because of their moral consciences, unlike atheists who would find it easier to bullshit and make a profit at the expense of others; apparently a prerequisite for the job.

I found this mind-bogglingly offensive. An absence of God does not not not equal an absence of morality. Atheists are not liars and cheats; indeed, the whole idea of atheism is about avoiding those who claim things to be true without evidence. It’s about as offensive as somebody saying that religious people are only being ‘good’ because they have been instructed to do so by their God via his human-transmitted holy handbook; that their ‘morality’ is merely a question of choosing between the carrot of heaven and the stick of hell; that they are only pretending to be nice in order to (quite literally) get into God’s good books; that were it not for God and his threatening list of dos and don’ts, they would all be quite happily murdering, raping and stealing without hesitation.

Clearly this is not the case. This is because morality is not the unique product of religion; it’s how we are brought up, the society we are brought up in, what behavioural norms are established. Religious morality is merely a re-iteration of social conduct memes which evolved as a necessary part of the progression of human civilisation. Empathy is also hard-wired in by evolution; great apes can't read the Bible but still act kindly towards each other. Conscience is not God-given; God is simply the first answer people thought of to the question, ‘Hey, where does our sense of right and wrong come from?’

Miracle (Early Demo)

As mentioned by Simon Guerrier over on his tralala, the latest issue of Big Finish’s Vortex magazine is out now and features fascinating interviews with me, Alan Barnes, Steve Cole, Lance Parkin plus a ‘What I Did On My Holidays’ article by Simon Guerrier himself. It’s freely available on the internet and there’s a literally real pamphlet version which gets sent out to the marvellous people who actually buy the CDs.

Being interviewed is weird. My main worries are always the photo of me which will accompany the piece (I always hope they don’t use one) and whether the interviewer will add exclamation marks to the end of jokes to indicate that they are jokes. It’s a proper journalistic thing, I know, but it bugs the tits off of me. Makes everyone sound like Paul Whitehouse’s ‘Brilliant!!!’ character. Still, no exclamation marks in Vortex, but there is a photo – so that’s a one-all draw.

Rob Stradling over on his Whispers and Moans made an amusing comment about the fact that one girl survived a plane crash that killed 152 others was described as a ‘miracle’. But whilst I may pay subscription dues to the society for fighting the debasement of the term ‘genius’, I’ve no problem with ‘miracle’ being used as a synonym for a fortunate coincidence or, indeed, for an inspiring medical or technological achievement. That’s what miracles should be; better to disassociate them with dubious feats of religious wizardry.

I mean, if Jesus was a fictional character (if?) he’s barely got the skills to be a second-rate X-Man. He’s so small-scale. He can’t even fly or shoot lasers. He could probably be a minor supporting character on Heroes – Water-To-Wine-Man. Even the resurrection reads like a last-minute tagged-on cop-out ending added to placate the fans and keep the franchise alive.

Controversy

There’s a famous memo from the late 60’s, regarding the tobacco lobby. I’ll quote it:

“Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy. Spread doubt over strong scientific evidence and the public won’t know what to believe”

Of course, their approach failed dramatically. In partly, I suspect, due to the fact that WRT tobacco, no matter how much uncertainty may be cast over the empirical or statistical evidence, any smoker who has woken up coughing has plenty of physical evidence in their handkerchief that smoking isn’t doing them any good. I think this is also why the alcohol lobby has never managed to get a similar policy of confusion to stick; we know alcohol is bad for us whenever we wake up with a headache in a pool of vomit in a strange bedsit in Ruislip.

But the memo seems to have been ‘cc’d to other groups. The petrol industry used a similar approach when it came to the environmental impact of burning fossil fuels, both in terms of exhaust emissions and climate change. It’s also a strategy employed by the ‘creationists’; with about as much ethical justification as the tobacco lobby’s attempt to ‘teach the controversy’ about smoking.

The principle is simple. Create a ‘debate’ and any coverage will, in an attempt to be ‘balanced’, give equal weight to pro and con; creating the impression it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other, a fifty-fifty coin-toss that’s still up in the air – with the truth either ‘to be decided’ or somewhere half-way inbetween.

The mischief-maker in me, though, wonders whether this tactic might not be used for good. Religion shouldn’t be taught in schools – it is, by definition, indocrination – but if it is, then educators should also ‘teach the controversy’. Pupils should be told how contradictory and plagiaristic their magic book is; and how its version of history is not merely unsupported by primary evidence but utterly invalidated.

Leave My Kitten Alone

It always bugs me when I hear people – usually members of the Jesus appreciation society – using the expression ‘thrown to the lions’ as a synonym for Christian perscution. I mean, it’s an everday expression, and that’s what it means... but it’s wrong. It’s referring to something which didn’t really happen.

Now, let me get it straight. I’m not saying that Christians weren’t persecuted during Roman times. They were – certainly during the reigns of Nero and Septimus Severus, at least – though it usually gets overlooked that during the reigns of most of the other Emperors, Christians were left to their own devices (which is why they were permitted to build such vast catacombs outside Rome).

But they weren’t thrown to the lions. Didn’t happen. They were certainly executed – Tacitus records Christians being crucified, burned alive and fed to dogs – and some of those executions may possibly have taken place at the Colosseum (although it was only one of many sites of execution in Rome).

But they wouldn’t have used lions. They were too valuable – too expensive to import – and were reserved for gladiatorial contests. If you think about it, it wouldn’t even work – lions will only kill what they need for food, so effectively you’d need to have a lot more lions than Christians.

The only record of a Christian execution using wild cats appears to be that of St Ignatius. Which isn’t conclusive – all we actually have is his description of being transported to Rome with some leopards. Which may simply be a mistranslation of ‘guards’.

I’m not denying Christians were executed, which was either heroic or tragic, depending on your point of view. But surely, out of respect for these martyrs if nothing else, the very least you can do is to try and get your facts right.

Do You Believe In Magic?

The great thing about being an atheist is that there are no subscription fees.

On the other hand, you have to put up with people – people with religious beliefs – describing atheism as a belief system. Well, yes, in a way it is. Atheism is a belief system... in the same way that being bald is a hairstyle.

Of course, one can argue in favour of atheism on the basis of rationality. Though the idea that using rationality is, in itself, rational is... something for philosophers with long beards to think about. And besides, I don’t live my life or make decisions on a rational basis; I’m not Mr Spock, I’m Captain Kirk.

I’d say I was an atheist because I find the idea of a godless universe to be awe-inspiring, life-affirming and massively comforting. I find the idea that there might be something in charge of this, who is either taking an extremely hands-off approach, or is somehow directly responsible for all the cruelty in the world, to be less appealling. I find the idea of a life after death – be it heaven or hell - to be the stuff of nightmares. I don’t want to go on after I’ve finished.

There are many other wonderful things about atheism. It means you can’t salve your conscience when you do wrong by confessing anonymously. It means that you appreciate that the world, and the life on it, was not put there for the benefit of mankind and that it does not belong to us. It means that if you start hearing voices in your head, you know that you should seek medical advice because you are not Joan of Arc. And it means you don’t have to read dull books about tribes bickering in the desert thousands of years ago.