Film Thoughts

Nightmare of the Wolf
After seeing the trailer, I was worried this would be Castlevania does The Witcher. Then I found out it was an entirely different studio handling it. And yet, the thought still doesn't feel entirely wrong. Excessive gore in animation seems to be the flavor of the week; Invincible, Castlevania, now this Witcher prequel. It feels more imitative than even going for the shock value I think Invincible succeeded with, so I don't expect it to last.

Alright, so, Nightmare of the Wolf set out to paint its era (the 1160s in Netflix canon) as different from Geralt's heyday in the 1200s. And at that, it certainly succeeds. We hear from critical mages, everyday folk, and Vesemir himself that witchers of the time are charlatans. The Golden Age of Witchers has ended; monster populations have been hunted to near-extinction in regions they patrol, and those who remain must take coin by any means possible. From the short stories, Geralt's day doesn't seem so different--except that there are far fewer witchers competing for the few contracts.

There's one other way in which Vesemir's era differs, or perhaps how the show diverged from how I thought: the witchers' training. Being able to see the slaughter of the aspirants makes for quite a different portrayal of the order's morality. Dumping them unprepared in a monster-filled swamp hardly seems like a test with any point; they weren't ready to escape, much less face any monster. Deglan calls it a numbers game, but thinning their potential crop didn't result in survival of the fittest candidates, just fewer lucky ones.

It seems like a pointless waste when the Trial of the Grasses would do plenty of thinning on its own. I wonder, would destiny take a hand? Would children of surprise have an edge in this test because they were claimed by witchers through fate? If they were destined to survive such a trial, why bother with taking in any others? Makes me want to write a character who isn't one of those fated lucky ones and survives fully aware of that. Maybe that Cat School witcheress I've been thinking about.

Meanwhile, returning to comparing the Netflix show and games... I can't call them that far off. Witcher 3 has us go through Old Speartip's cave, hear a Foglet impersonate one of the boys who died trying to get through the old cyclops' lair. Suddenly Lambert's fury towards their training falls a lot better into place.

So far as fanfic goes, then, best to embrace it. The times earlier which these tests were no doubt inherited from were dark eras. The mages and witchers who employed them were ham-handed, brutal. There was probably a lot less curse-breaking and sparing of intelligent monsters in those times. The story of a witcher from the Old World days who grows tired of the violence and begins seeking better ways would make for a good tale. Meanwhile, it means I need to revisit two things with my own witcher character; first, expanding out his training. Show off the brutality, have that cause Jorstadt's introversion. Give him a friend, kill that friend off. Second, make contracts seem far less common in the 1100s. Make him back off of one another witcher appears to pursue (maybe that Cat School witcher?).

As for criticisms of the film... I've seen some people level the accusation witchers would never create their own monsters to hunt. I feel the complaint comes more from people not finding the idea agree with their conception of the Witcher world, and I don't entirely disagree. If monsters are gone, being a witcher's no longer profitable, so time to let that lifestyle die out. But perhaps I'm biased as a viewer there. Our view of the Witcher world comes through Geralt, where Witchers are already treated as a relic of the past. Deglan comes from an era even earlier than Vesemir. One like in The Witcher Monster Slayer, where you can show up to any blacksmith and get your sword sharpened just for being a witcher. People cling hard to the familiar, even witchers. A side-effect of their long life is they want those times again, when monsters lurked in every wood, and coin always came their way by the fistful. If creating a few new monsters made that time come again, I wouldn't put it past those used to the lifestyle to try and preserve it.

If I had a critique myself, I suppose I feel Tetra was a little underdeveloped to serve as antagonist. She had to give her reason for hating witchers in her final scene, for Pete's sake. Vesemir knew the same things she knew and was against the idea of witchers making monsters. They probably should have been natural allies. The scene in the elven ruin perhaps could have accommodated a slight adjustment to remedy that. The gang finds out the witchers are making monsters; Tetra and Vesemir agree this needs investigation. Then the last crossbreed comes out, Tetra shoots at it, and Vesemir turns on her, dismayed, as we get a view of the killer she is. Tetra recriminates based on Vesemir's past behavior, giving him an earlier impetus for change, and we get the rest of Tetra's backstory there. Then we know what her stakes are going into the finale.

Star Trek: The Next Generation
When Rory picked up a month or two of Netflix for watching The Witcher, I happened to browse and find TNG was available there. I'd heard the first season or two were terrible, and was curious to see just how terrible. I didn't anticipate I'd give the show's whole seven seasons a binge, but it did seem like a worthy possible task. TNG is, from all I've seen and heard, the gold standard from the golden age of TV Science Fiction.

So I was absolutely floored by how bad the first episodes--heck, whole seasons--were. The first episode sets up Tasha Yar as the traumatized, hardened escapee of a planet rife with "roving rape gangs", then in the very next episode has the whole ship effected by aphrodisiacs and she sheds her uniform to become a lascivious seductress? I can hardly think of ways to demean a character more. The third episode also gets a special mention for having an entire alien culture played by African American actors, wear vaguely "pan-African" clothing in bright colors, and not even have the later traditional forehead prosthetics to make them half-plausibly non-human, then give them the backwards-ass honor culture to be shown the error of their ways. However, I tend to agree with more recent analysis that it's not as racist as it's been purported to be; had they been anything other than all-African actors, it would've just been another alien race with a screwy value system, something not uncommon in Star Trek overall. Quite possible the showrunners or casting directors or costumers who made the choice to make them all "basically African" needed a good smack upside the head, though.

The only thing that kept me going through the first two seasons was a determination to see just how bad it gets, and there were quite a few instances of helpless laughter at the depths it managed to reach. Beyond that... it's hard for me to really put forth anything I'd consider a unique insight. Not that I have to present myself here as some witty blog writer, bringing you only the latest and greatest hot takes to come out on the cutting edge of internet discussion. This is for me to practice analyzing the media I endlessly consume. But I feel it's hard to say anything original when this show has been so closely analyzed for the past 40 or so years. Yeah, Season 1 to most of 3 are bad. Not new information for most people. I agree with Steve Shives' view of Tasha Yar's death providing opportunities for Worf to find an identity as Security Chief, and give Picard a platform to further establish the most valuable elements of his character. It's neat to see how those facts fall into place, but if I want to really get insight into how it came about, I'll just re-watch his Trek, Actually videos.

One thing I'll say for the show: I was not expecting to enjoy Klingons as much as I did. Hearing about them second-hand, you'd think "oh yeah, warrior culture, sure." Not a lot of complexity in that first thought; they're a bunch of meatheads, Picard is going to run circles around them with intellect. That impression... quickly melted away. The honor-bound warrior culture is an easy (perhaps too easy given that first thought) archetype to grasp, but their actual use in the show almost every time sees intrigue develop in the Klingon political system. Warriors have to prove they are honorable, and when doubts emerge in prominent positions of power, scapegoats are created. Worf willingly paying the price to safeguard the Empire's stability is fantastic. The power struggle after the former Council Head passes away is great; there are frustrating setbacks and exhilarating payoffs for the characters and their struggle to both speak the truth and achieve the best outcome--for the Empire and for Federation diplomatic interests. I never would have expected their episodes to be a favorite part of my watching TNG, but here they are.

Like every other review of the show, I'd have to agree the third season is where things start getting consistently good. There are a couple solid season 1 episodes, and Season 2 gets in a good few, but I don't know that I could pinpoint where the good really starts unless I took a look at a timeline with individual episode reviews. I'm not prepared to do that, but I can call out the S1 episode Home Soil about exploring how Starfleet colonizes new worlds as a highlight, and Dr Pulaski's introduction in Season 2 being a great help since the writers' willingness to cast her in opposition to the generally agreeable other main cast inserts a little bit of character basis for interesting debates to be opened up. Genuinely wouldn't have minded if she stuck around in place of Crusher, who I don't feel ever got her own consistent voice beyond generally sympathetic mother figure. And, to spare myself another paragraph retreading, speaking of Crushers and familial relations, I didn't hate Wesley much at all in his appearances. I'd say the other characters had to be lobotomized for him to contribute, but I don't really feel that's the problem with the episodes he's featured in either. I think the episodes he featured in were just consistently bland anyway because that's what the show was like at the time, and the writers had less idea of how to use him than they did the Starfleet professionals, so he got the shortest of several similarly-short sticks.

Alright, setting any pity-party for myself over not being able to add anything set aside, I'm left with only my personal experience viewing the show to talk about. Did I enjoy it? Eventually, quite a lot. By the end of Season 3, episodes were routinely the stuff of published sci-fi short stories, exploring neat concepts with nuance and detail. But I didn't love the show the way I (hadn't even realized I) was hoping to. Plain case of high expectations I admit, given what high regard people hold TNG in now, and a show that lands high, but doesn't wow me as much as it could've as result. The show is much more episodic than DS9, or even Voyager thanks to its overarching narrative. The individual episodes are much stronger, but without a more consistent through-line, it felt like a lot more of the show was filler, meandering between interesting contained tales. It might be better-written on average, but when the strong point is good filler, it doesn't make for an engaging story to watch all at once. It was never meant to, of course, this show couldn't have predicted the binge-watch age.

I'm glad I got the experience of watching it, but I don't see myself coming back to the show or setting Star Trek: Bridge Crew to Enterprise-D with every play. DS9 sets my bar for top Star Trek show, and that's not likely getting dethroned. One thing I look forward to taking away from it, however, is how it will color my re-play of Mass Effect next. ME1 in particular felt very... Star Trek, in its optimistic view of inter-species cooperation. Nothing I recall of the first game makes me think of anything in TNG particularly, but my memories of it are certainly hazy. Maybe there will be more to spot this time around, and see the pieces other creative minds chose to carry forward from the show in their own work.