Welcome for the fifteenth time to Ibn Qirtaiba. First up this issue, in continuation of IQ's interview with him last issue, author Damien Broderick presents his perspective on Living Here In The Future. Next, a world-first review of the brand new Doctor Who telemovie, screened by the American Fox network on 14 May this year. Continuing the Doctor Who theme, we begin a second serial; the script for a Doctor Who/Star Trek: The Next Generation crossover entitled Of Kings and Pawns by Kevin Karmann.
In the lead-up to the Doctor Who telemovie, the newsgroup rec.arts.drwho became a forum for debate between those who looked forward to an American input into the series, and those who saw it as the end for the archetypally British institution. It is undeniable that British and American SF series are written from a substantially different perspective. The cynic that I am, I would have been tempted to suggest "art" in the former case and "money" in the latter, until series like Space Precinct and The X-Files arrived to prove me wrong. It would be fairer to attribute to British series a unique creativity and gentle wit, and to their counterparts across the Atlantic a better sense of cinematic pacing and production. In any event, the absence of either country's contribution would greatly impoverish the media SF canon, so I'm happy to suspend my judgment and watch them both.
Living Here in the
Future by Damien Broderick
Let me tell you about life here in the future. For
centuries, landing on the Moon, along with the year 2000, have
been the two great signifiers of inconceivable futurity, pie in
the sky, that Buck Rogers stuff. Well, the impossibly
remote year 2000, as everyone keeps telling us, is less than four
years away. And here in the future, over a quarter century has
already passed, half my lifetime, since humans first set foot on
the Moon.
A year or so back I found myself in the future when I boarded Ansett Flight 94 from Adelaide and clambered across the blonde in the Ren and Stimpy baseball hat on the aisle seat. I couldn't help noticing that she looked like one whose line of trade took in, say, professional tennis-playing combined with sun-drenched surfing. Her hair was UV-bleached in an agreeable manner and her bare skin glowed with that deep tan that verges on burn. I fell at once to reading quantum theory in my Roger Penrose. "Jeez am I whacked," said this Belgian beauty, and explained that she'd been on the plane since Perth or possibly Broome (her Flemish accent having been thickened by many years in Holland), and what was worse, was obliged to loiter in Melbourne until her companions arrived by another flight, whereupon they would drive to the country town of Sale and suffer (she said with a shudder) the unpleasantness of further flight in a chopper. "Jeez I hate those choppers," she told me. A mad suspicion began to burn in my brain.
Marga had been trained in Europe as a computer programmer, but written no code for she'd instantly been diverted to computer engineering. Being an adventurous soul, however, she'd moved to where the real action is, and was now on her way to take it up again, being on a two-week on, two-off roster with Esso, where, atop a Bass Strait platform, sole woman in the company of 40 or 80 horny-handed chaps, she drove an underwater device, a Remote-Operated Vehicle or ROV, via a species of virtual reality computer interface. Thus equipped, she spent her days roaming the deeps, welding the great pylons upon which these oil-pumping machines stand foursquare, snatching scuba chaps from the death of rapture of the deep in her huge mechanised arms (and thereby incurring their enmity, for they are a proud race), and suffering a form of what I dubbed, to her delighted agreement, "protective sexism".
The fellas go all to pieces, you see, when Marga wanders by accident into their steamy rec room when they are forgathered to view, as it might be, Three-T, the Extra Testicle. Fearful of litigation and accusations of harassment, their boss leaps to the plug and plunges the dimly lit room into total darkness, the video screeching to a halt, the men sunk into premature gloom but anxious to preserve Marga's innocence. "What the fuck", cried she, the first time this happened, but there's nothing one can do, the Aussie male is a tender-hearted creature and cannot bear to see his womenfolk corrupted.
It was a memorable flight.
I asked Marga if she had yet been the toast of some 60 Minutes doco, or starred on Ray Martin? No way; her plan was to keep her head down and not stir up rivalry and bitter feelings from her less glamorous workmates. She planned to change jobs shortly, taking up a more lucrative post on a North Sea platform, still as a cyborg.
My word, not hers, but that's what she was: a beautiful cyborg.
I remain in shock, recalling this encounter, for in that hour's flight I had stumbled into the sort of future I've been inventing all my life.
I have always lived in the future, so I'm always surprised when it actually happens. Nevertheless, it's difficult for me to grasp how strange the future seems to other people. It's almost impossible to understand the usual response to the on-rushing future, which is typically an unstable blend of dread, denial, scorn and boredom. Why else would so many literate people shudder at the cover of a science fiction novel? Well no, let me rephrase that - obviously, anyone with a trace of good sense is going to shudder at the cover of a science fiction book. But I'm really talking about what's inside. And of course what's inside isn't the future, but one of the many options lying there before us - often enough rendered in the gaudy, catchpenny hues of popular escapism. Let me give you an example or two from my own writing.
Twenty-one years before the Apollo Moon landing was 1948, and everyone (I was four) brayed like jackasses at the idea of humans flying into space. Twenty-one years before today was 1975, five or six years before the personal computer revolution started. In 1975 the equivalent of the Moon landing was, let's say, 1990s' cyberspace and virtual reality. That was the year I mailed off to the States a manuscript called The Judas Mandala, eventually published by Pocket Books in 1982. Here's a fragment from that book, set in the remote world of AD 6039, when most of the world's remaining humans drift in dreams written for them by advanced cyborgs. My lesbian heroine is trapped in just such a simulation:
For the first time [she says], I understood the overwhelming lure of addiction, the honeys of transcendental art. I understood how it could be that the Dreamvats of the cyborgs contained the majority of the world's living human beings, their brains afire on a junky's junket of total fantasies.
For being on line to Dream circuits was the ultimate art. There was nothing paltry or imposed about cyborg fantasy. It was utterly real, hyper-real. Each character I encountered in the endless cast of my sleeping universe was rich with density, beyond the resource of a Murasaki, a Shakespeare, a Dostoievski. It was solipsism tuned bracingly to my supine needs.
The hunt is done and bellies are full. In the flickering firelight the tribe lean forward to hear and tell their boasts. The old ones sing, at last, the sagas of their once and future heroes. In the Dreamtanks, at the apotheosis of art, the old ones live and sing forever...
Incidentally, the Grolier Encyclopedia of Science Fiction credits me with coining the term "virtual reality" in that novel, over two decades ago.
I had another cool idea a couple of years later, when Rory Barnes and I wrote Valencies, a novel published in 1983 by the University of Queensland Press. It's been out of print for ages, of course. It was too "futuristic", after all, for Australia. I proposed a method of predictive sociology, an ironic variation on Isaac Asimov's "psychohistory" in his Foundation series, that quite spookily resembles a current hot tool of complexity theory: "genetic algorithms". I called it "data farming", and it's not clear from the book whether it happens in the simulated Darwinian space of a computer memory or inside actual vats swarming with engineered DNA. Our character Anla, lying unsatisfied beside her snoring lover, a gene sculptor, reflects on her world:
Shit [she thinks angrily], you'd think this bastard could do something to the genes in his nasal cavity.
This man can see into the future. Fucking incredible, really, you just rip out a few million eigenvectors from your mathematical sketch of an octillion human beings, what's that in hydrogen molecules, say three and a bit by 10 to the 23 to the gram, into 10 to the 27, shit, brothers and sisters, we're statistically equal to three kilograms of hydrogen gas, yes, you plump for the major characteristics you think you'd like to play with and code them up into genes and build yourself a little mimetic beastie that stands in for what you figure pushes and pulls thee and me and all our star-spangled relatives, and you breed the little buggers in a tasty itemised soup, and watch the way the mutants go.
Wonderful, Ralf. Bug-culture precapitulates bugged-culture. No way we can jump you won't know about in advance, because the little bugs snitched on us.
There you go: genetic algorithms, here in Australia, in 1983. I think we sold about 300 copies.
I almost became a librarian. In the late '60s, when I tried to get one of those 9-to-5 jobs you're not supposed to give up when you become a writer, the sort I kept getting fired from, I went for an interview. I'd been out of university for a while, writing about rock 'n' roll for the world's first pop music newspaper, and I was summoned one day to a board of the Public Service. I'd sent them various resumes and CVs, but probably left out the fact that I'd published science fiction because I didn't wish to frighten them off.
I was seated before an authoritative committee of grey-suited old fogies - and one woman, the archetypal Lady Librarian. I didn't think they existed outside of bad American movies, but there this creature was, thick glasses, hair in a bun. She didn't say anything throughout the inquisition, and appeared to be asleep. The men asked me plenty, starting with the standard inquiries - did I have a record of petty pilfering... One of them noticed that I'd expressed an interest in science. Why did someone like me wish to be a librarian, he enquired suspiciously, rather than a nuclear physicist or a car mechanic? I burst into some sort of mendacious aria about how computing was the future of the world, libraries are the information nexus, and clearly what we were going to have someday soon was a world-girdling global village with satellite links casting bytes back and forth, and I wanted to be there, plugged in to the console of this cybernetic network.
One of the gentlemen nodded his head amiably, and said, "Very interesting, can you tell us more about these... 'satellites'... how would they work?" I said with immense confidence, "Well, they're in geostationary orbit - 22,500 miles above the equator" (I was out by a couple of hundred miles, I'd read it in Analog, or Arthur Clarke when I was a baby, or something.) He found this interesting, but said, "Don't you think it's a bit... futuristic? Computers? Information technology? Look, how would you feel about sitting there at the library desk stamping out the books every day?"
I'd been out of work for about three years. I bleated, "I'll do it, I'll do it!"
I added, "Is everyone satisfied with what I've said?" and at this point the dinosaur crepitated into alertness. She consulted a document in front of her, and she said, "Ah, Mr Broderick," sniff, "ah. As far as I can see here, you're not married. Are you married?"
I said, "No, no, I'm not married."
"Arh, hmmm. Are you engaged?"
I thought, This is very strange. Isn't "engaged" what girls do? Then I realised that usually it involved a male and a female, so if the female was engaged then probably the male was also engaged. So I said, "No, as it happens, I'm not engaged."
But she wasn't finished with me. She saw deeper than that. She said, "Have you got any plans to become engaged?"
With a burst of astonishment, I said, "I see what you're doing here! You're applying to me a rule you'd normally apply to young women, who you fear might secretly be pregnant, and will therefore zip off shortly after they've entered the tenure and total security of employment in the Public Service, and thus receive all manner of ill-gotten ancillary benefits... But the fact is, I am not planning to be engaged, and I am not pregnant, and I'm not likely to become pregnant."
But I didn't get the job. It may have been something I said. I was forced to become a science fiction writer instead, and write about the future, even as the future became the present, and then started plummeting into the past.
If the first men on the Moon had been from Borneo, or Japan, my life would have turned out differently. In 1969, I was living with my beautiful girlfriend Angela in a sterile Carlton unit, out of work, finishing my first novel. Angela later had three strapping sons by a Leninist revolutionary before revising herself into a famous lesbian photographer. I'd been waiting for the Moon landing all my life. When I was 9 or 10, a teacher had jeered at my belief that one day humans would rocket into orbit. Now people were orbiting the Moon, ready to descend. Angela and I were too poor to own a telly, so I took a tram north a couple of miles and hunched for bleary hours in front of my grandfather's set.
The landing was arranged for Sunday night prime TV in America. But in Melbourne, you see, more than half a day ahead, on the rolling earth, it was sleepless 7 am on Monday when the Eagle finally landed. I had a job interview lined up with Angela's rich uncle the publisher. This would surely lead to a prosperous career, marriage, family, the benign regard of society. I rang and cancelled. Do you think I'd miss the first step on to lunar soil? Just before 2 in the afternoon, our time, Armstrong muffed his line, and I watched him do it in grainy images that looked as if they'd been transmitted from the Kitty Hawk rather than a spacecraft. I was 25 years old, my life was ruined, I was doomed to write science fiction until I died in penury, and my heart soared like a bird.
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Ever since I was 9, since Tom Baker's regeneration in Logopolis, Doctor
Who has captured my imagination and molded me into a die-hard
fan, with a collection of books, novelizations, and videos. The
Doctor, as we know him, was a character that Americans, Britons,
Australians, and other democratic peoples could identify with. 
His
crusade for the underdogs, his disrespect for immoral and unjust
government, his sense of being in the right, his quest to make
the universe a better place, all echo our inner desires to bring
out the best and the goodness in us. Now, as the new movie,
titled in fandom as Enemy Within, graces the television
screens over America, I feel privileged to be part of a marvelous
institution that has touched the hearts of millions of people. Enemy
Within justifies my undying belief that the Doctor remains as
an eternal icon for the human nature, as a role model that
exemplifies the best of the human race.
Enemy Within made its first appearance on Fox in the form of several promos, or television ads. When I saw the very first one, it was the beginning of the realization that the Doctor was back, and in style. After seven years, Doctor Who still goes on strong, with the hefty support from its fans. Three more major promos appeared in the next few weeks after the airing of the first promo. I still felt disbelieving that Doctor Who was really back, even after seeing the "grand" special effects and exciting clips from the promos. Only today, May 14th, do I finally accept that Doctor Who is now an international phenomenon, no longer exclusive to the British Isles. I will always remember this date, May 14th, 1996, as the second most important event in Doctor Who history, after the first transmission of An Unearthly Child on November 23, 1963.
On to the movie review!
It all started at 7:00 pm, Mountain Standard Time, when the
Doctor's voice spoke as we watched the TARDIS travel through
space. The Seventh Doctor is commenting on the events that led to
the Master's apparent execution and the Doctor's mission to take
the remains of the Master back to Gallifrey, the home planet of
the Doctor and the Master. The Doctor is reading The Time
Machine, an apparent twist on the TARDIS. Let's take a break
and examine the console room. 
The console room is huge,
much more grandiose than the BBC's low-budget design department
could ever possibly have improved on. There is a wooden console,
probably circular (didn't take much notice of that aspect), and
it has really good-looking switches and controls; very Victorian.
There is a monitor above the console, telling events as they
happen, such as the name of the destination. The time rotor is
very cool-looking, where several prongs on each end push against
the other end and then retracts, in continuous motion. The Doctor
looks very snappy and dignified. They got rid of that question
mark sweater (thank goodness) and dressed McCoy for the 90's.
Back to the plot. Suddenly, the Master escapes from his
"prison" as he forces a crash-landing on Earth, on
December 30, 1999. Then the new rearrangement of the original
theme music cuts in as the credits appear in the midst of a
whirling vortex. The theme music is very good, and I wish I could
have listened to some more, a la the beginning scene of An
Unearthly Child.
Anyway, the TARDIS lands amidst a gunfight between two Asian
gangs. The Seventh Doctor is wounded by the gunfire and is taken
to the hospital. Grace Holloway, the cardiologist, leaves her
boyfriend at the opera and rushes to the hospital to save a
patient, which is the Doctor. Grace injects medicine to the
Doctor as the Doctor convulses and apparently dies. The body is
taken to the morgue where the regeneration occurs. This
regeneration is low-key, a slightly better one than the
Pertwee-Baker regeneration. Lightning surrounds the Doctor as the
face morphs into... the Eighth Doctor! And the new Doctor
suddenly opens his eyes, and sits up, the blue light from the
lighting eerily shines on his "alien" eyes...
From that point on, Paul McGann dominates the whole movie. Let me quickly sum up the plot, leaving out important details for you future viewers to discover. The Doctor finds a costume to wear, meets Grace, and during all that, tries to discover his identity. Meanwhile, the Master occupies the body of a paramedic and devises a plan to destroy the universe while he steals the Doctor's body. He enlists the help of Chang Lee, an unwitting assistant, and together they seek the Doctor. They enter the Doctor's TARDIS and open the Eye of Harmony, the source which powers the TARDIS. This action prompts the Doctor to remember who he is and understand what the Master's intentions are. Earth will be sucked in via the Eye of Harmony and the Doctor and Grace race against time to stop that process and defeat the Master...
Now for the aspects of the production:
The Doctor (Paul McGann): His portrayal of the Doctor is absolutely stunning! McGann is superb, and magnificent! These are high praises indeed! McGann makes his Doctor very accessible to everyone, with his "human" quirks and witty sayings. Jelly babies are his motif as he tries to bluff his way out of trouble with candy! Very Davison-esque, with the excitement and childishness of Tom Baker. He's very much a Doctor I would love to know! We all sympathize with the Doctor, as we try to support him unconsciously in his quest for truth and victory. Paul McGann was and still is an inspired choice for the role of the Doctor. He eases into the part like he knew the Eighth Doctor already. To me, I feel that McGann makes me much more aware of our inner "child" as we watch him be very "human," yet alien. Hip-hip-hooray!
The Doctor (Sylvester McCoy): Oh, it was so thrilling to see the Seventh Doctor again, but I just wish he had few more lines so we could see into his personality a little more. But it was a great sendoff for Syl, and it was heartwrenching to see him die. Syl, we'll never forget you.
Grace Holloway (Daphne Ashbrook): Grace is a stiff character at first, but loosens up as the movie goes on. She doesn't have great lines, and it is apparent that she has fallen under the classic label of a typical Doctor Who companion. She's a cardiologist, which should reveal some of her intelligence, but I didn't see that after the operation. She was Liz Shaw of the 90s. However, Grace has great moments, such as "I finally meet the right guy, and he's from another planet!" during the motorcycle chase. It's too bad that she doesn't leave with the Doctor.
Eric Roberts (The Master): Roberts is very
chilling as the Master, but he is not Delgado. Nevertheless, the
Master remains as a very dark and evil Time Lord, and Roberts
provides an very excellent portrayal of the Master. His voice
haunts me, but as the saying goes, the bark is worse than the
bite (the laughter than the venom.) He has snake eyes, and acts
like a snake. I'd love to see Roberts again, although it's
unlikely.
The script: The story is simple enough for anyone to understand, but there were a couple of elements too many introduced into the movie. Fans would not be bored, as humor and British wit pervades throughout the whole movie. Matthew Jacobs is to be commended for this classic. I just wish Chang Lee left with the Doctor. Chang's such a good character.
The direction: The movie is done in the 90's style. Flashbacks, quick cut- ins, zooms, and of course, high-tech special effects. Five million dollars have not gone down the drain as the TARDIS' interior and special effects provide a magnificent backdrop to a good telling of a good vs. evil story. All the characters and the sets are believable. There's a nice touch as the morgue attendant watches a Frankenstein movie as the Doctor rises from the dead. Similar, eh?
In conclusion, I must say that this is a fine and glossy piece of Doctor Who storytelling. This is not a perfect story, but nevertheless it is a marvelous story. I just hope that America will do Doctor Who justice. Now I know that Doctor Who is here to stay in America, and may even beat Star Trek at its own game! I really, really enjoyed this story. Non-fans and fans alike will cheer for this movie as the Doctor travels on in his old TARDIS...
On a scale of 1 to 10, this ranks as a 9.
Editorial note: For more information on Doctor Who, Australian readers can contact the Doctor Who Club of Australia. This non-profit club publishes Data Extract eight times a year for a subscription fee of $9 for one year or $16 for two. Contact the club at GPO Box 2870, Sydney, NSW 2001, or email the president Neil Hogan.
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(Enterprise flies by [in deep space], voice of Picard can be heard.)
Picard <voice only>: "Captain's log, Stardate 45601.4: The Enterprise has been assigned to transport a diplomat from Starbase 145 to Taurus XIII. We have nearly completed the journey and most of the crew is taking advantage of the chance to relax."
(In Ten Forward, Data and Worf sit around a table with a three dimensional board between them. Many of the pieces have been moved, indicating the game is well underway. Guinan stands along the side looking over them. Data picks up a piece, moves it, and removes one of Worf's pieces.)
Data: "In three moves, checkmate will be a very likely possibility, Lieutenant."
Guinan: "Perhaps it's time to call it quits, Worf."
Worf: "A warrior does not give up." (He moves a piece.)
Guinan: "Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor."
(Data makes a move.)
Worf: "Honor is more important than valor." (He moves again.)
Data: (He makes another move) "You are currently in check."
Guinan: "If you're sure that's what you want to do, Worf..."
Worf: "A Klingon fights to the end, regardless of the outcome. However, a game such as Parrises Squares is more of a game for a warrior." (He makes a move.)
Data: "When factoring in my strength, endurance, and speed, it is unlikely that you would be able to best me in such a physical arena. In fact, with your recent back injury, there would be a 14.3% chance of it resulting in permanent injury." (He makes a move, taking one of Worf's pieces.) "Checkmate."
(Data barely completes the word "Checkmate," when the intercom chirps.)
Picard <Voice>: "All bridge officers, report the bridge immediately."
(Data and Worf immediately get up and head for the door. The scene changes the bridge of the Enterprise, Picard and Ro are at their usual places. Unnamed officers step aside as Data and Worf take their places.)
Picard: "We've been picking up some type of temporal distortion. I thought it best to be prepared."
(An alarm goes on Worf's console and he checks something.)
Worf: "Captain! There is another temporal distortion in the immediate area!"
Picard: "Another distortion? Where?"
Worf: "Right here on the bridge, sir." (Worf holds up his hand and points to Data's left.) "There."
(A pha-shoo, pha-shoo [or however you'd describe the sound the TARDIS makes] can be heard and suddenly the TARDIS appears.)
[End of teaser]
(Opening sequences. A nebulae appears and a comet streaks by.)
Picard <Voice>: "Space...the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no one has gone before."
(The Enterprise takes off, going into warp.)
![[Logo: Star Trek: The Next Generation]](Ibn%20Qirtaiba,%20issue%2015_files/treklogo.gif)
(Actors' names appear.)
[End of opener.]