It's easy to forget exactly what the guys in capsule in Time Squad were trying to do-- according to Zen, their capsule contained brood units and genetic banks. Does this change our analysis of Deliverance? The Time Squad capsule was launched with landing instructions but no capacity to re-launch--i.e., on the same kind of errand as the Deliverance rocket. The Time Squad capsule is more rounded and less pointy, if it matters. And at the end of the episode Blake orders it dumped into space, with implied destruction of all its genetic material.
In Time Squad, Blake and Jenna climb into the capsule without oxygen masks, although they know that life support in the capsule is inadequate. Blake ordered a rendezvous with the capsule although he didn't know who was in it or why--it could have been Hitler and Himmler, for all he knew. The main action of the episode involves blowing up a nuclear power plant, so there's a sort of poetic justice in most of the crew developing radiation sickness in Deliverance.
in Deliverance, of course, they go to Cephlon to pick up Marryat (who is already dead) and Ensor Jr. (who is, to say the least, a lot of trouble in the short run)--without knowing who they are or what they're doing, and they go down to a planet they know to be dangerously radioactive without adequate protective equipment. Well, that's B7 all over innit--either ending up destroying things you tried to save or saving things you tried to destroy (Star One).
My reading: at the script conference, someone suggests diffidently that it's too early to remake Time Squad, at which point the ever-popular "capture by primitives" and "worshipped as god" tropes are introduced. (I would not be surprised if a similar thought process influenced the script for the film version of Stargate.)
-(Y)
PS--Deliverance's first shot of fur-clad primitives reminds me of the old ad campaign for Blackglama mink coats: "What becomes a legend most?"
Meegat/Gamete, the time-squad capsule, Chris Boucher's fondly-remembered story. We've got quite a sub-genre here. Stories which dramatise the meaning, or lack of meaning, that sexual reproduction brings to an individual life, but using space-colonisation as a metaphor.
What I like about interpreting stories in this way is that it raises questions in my mind.
Does leaving children behind really make your life more meaningful? Does a 'failure' to reproduce take anything away from your worth? How much should you sacrifice of yourself for the chance to leave a legacy? Are we just carriers for our genes? If reproducing ourselves is all that gives us meaning - is meaning endlessly deferred?
And in some ways, because it is done obliquely, I feel the answers are less 'closed' than they would be in a realistic story about a woman facing some of these dilemmas herself. I should rephrase that. Even quite crappy SF stimulates my imagination, while realistic character-driven literature has to be pretty damn good to produce the same effect.
Another somewhat similar example is Kurt Vonnegut's 'The Sirens of Titan', where earth civilisation is manipulated by an alien to send pointless messages back to his home world (Stonehenge I think is the sign for 'arrived safely').
Anyway. There's one final example I'd like to mention and I really urge anyone with any interest in all this to read it. It's by just about my avourite SF author, Alice Sheldon, who wrote under the name 'James Tiptree Junior'. Her works are mostly short stories and they are highly informed by the whole gender/power/genetics deal. If that makes them sound boring, they really aren't, and they are also very very bleak.
Alas I now forget the name of the story, but read any collection of her works. In this a rocket ventures for the first time outside the solar system, where it encounters some kind of big wonderful object. All the astronauts experience ecstasy. Some new entity is created and goes away. And that's it for earth civilisation. That was all it was created to do, send DNA out of the solar system to be used. Job done, there is no more point to existence.
This is exactly the Meegat/gamete story but it is told from the male point of view. The rocket is a phallic symbol, the astronauts are gametes. But in this story the emphasis is on the female/egg symbol moving on, and leaving the spent male behind.
My point is that this is an example of a story which is very similar to Deliverance or Time Squad, but the subtext is definitely put there on purpose. And the power relations are the other way round, in reproductive terms. I just think this provides an interesting context to the discussion. Oh, and it was written in the early seventies.
Alison
PS sorry that this seems to continue a debate that might be old hat, but it only just occurred to me, and it seemed so relevant I had to chip in
From: Alison Page alison@alisonpage.demon.co.uk
What I like about interpreting stories in this way is that it raises questions in my mind.
Does leaving children behind really make your life more meaningful?
Dunno, never done it.
Does a 'failure' to reproduce take anything away from your worth?
Do you have any to subtract from in the first place?
How much should you sacrifice of yourself for the chance to leave a
legacy?
The approximate equivalent of two siblings, two offspring or eight cousins. Or as much as little as you damn well please.
Are we just carriers for our genes?
Yes.
If reproducing ourselves is all that gives us meaning - is meaning
endlessly
deferred?
Only if there *is* a meaning to be deferred.
Neil (willing servant of the Selfish Meme)
Fiona Moore wrote:
Better to take your chances on the Liberator, though, than to spend the rest of your life on a radiation-soaked planet rife with primitives, surely?
It seems to me that you are the one trivializing Meegat. You seem to be arguing that she should be seen by the others as a child in need of wiser heads to look after her. I saw her as a grown woman who was quite able to speak up and make her wishes/needs known about launching the rocket. And she never said a word about wanting to leave the planet herself, did she? Or even hint that anyone else did either. Why isn't it good and non-chauvinistic that they respected her autonomy?
It seems to me that having Avon (and/or Blake and/or the entire crew) decide that it would be "better" for Meegat to join them on the Liberator *would* be patronizing. Who set them up to be her guardians? Why is the take of a stranger who has known her and her circumstances for a few minutes to be assumed to be wiser than that of Meegat herself with a vastly greater knowledge of the situation?
And as for:
I
mean, she wished for the rocket to be launched, but once it's gone, there's not much left to do but live out the rest of your life. As Chris Boucher said, be careful what you wish for...
Gee. Does that mean *everyone* who achieves their heartfelt wish might as well kill themselves at once? (I picture all those Olympic champions strangling themselves with the ribbons from their gold medals.)
What you do, of course, is settle on a new wish. You turn to your second more heartfelt goal. Or numbers 2 through six combined, which you'd had to neglect previously. You take up flute lessons. You breed rare orchids. You set up a free love commune and have Saturday night orgies. You practice yoga. You garden.
Some of us think 'living out the rest of your life' is a fine thing.
Susan Beth (susanbeth33@mindspring.com)
----- Original Message ----- From: Susan Beth susanbeth33@mindspring.com
Fiona Moore wrote:
Better to take your chances on the Liberator, though, than to spend the
rest
of your life on a radiation-soaked planet rife with primitives, surely?
It seems to me that you are the one trivializing Meegat. You seem to be arguing that she should be seen by the others as a child in need of wiser heads to look after her. I saw her as a grown woman who was quite able to speak up and make her wishes/needs known about launching the rocket.
This point has been answered earlier by better writers than myself. But I would like to point out that she's *not* making *her* wishes known about the rocket. She is speaking for many people, following a religious tenet set down by Kashel the Wise and what she refers to as "The Fathers." I do not want to trivialise Gamete in the slightest, but I think a distinction should be drawn between her own wishes and the wishes she expresses.
she never said a word about wanting to leave the planet herself, did she? Or even hint that anyone else did either. Why isn't it good and non-chauvinistic that they respected her autonomy?
Again this is a timeworn point, I merely restate here. It would be good and non-chauvinistic if they did respect her autonomy, but, just as she never says a word about it, so they never even offer her the choice (and saying "they did offscreen" doesn't count either; she may equally have said she wanted to leave, offscreen). For that matter, she never directly asks them to launch the rocket either, she says "you will recognise Deliverance," and leaves them to figure it out. And they do manage to do that.
It seems to me that having Avon (and/or Blake and/or the entire crew) decide that it would be "better" for Meegat to join them on the Liberator *would* be patronizing. Who set them up to be her guardians? Why is the take of a stranger who has known her and her circumstances for a few minutes to be assumed to be wiser than that of Meegat herself with a
vastly
greater knowledge of the situation?
The question has *never* been one of Meegat being brought along against her wishes, it has always been one of whether she was given the *choice.* I agree, if Blake and Co. had decided it would be "better" to bring her along it would be just as reprehensible as leaving her behind, but what seems to worry people is the fact that it's debatable whether they asked her whether she thought it would be better to bring her along or not, at all.
I
mean, she wished for the rocket to be launched, but once it's gone,
there's
not much left to do but live out the rest of your life. As Chris Boucher said, be careful what you wish for...
Gee. Does that mean *everyone* who achieves their heartfelt wish might as well kill themselves at once?
No, but if your entire life is wrapped up in this wish, it might well mean your death-- as Travis' obsession with killing Blake killed him in the end. And I'd like to point out too that people who achieve things which are less wrapped up in their lives (winning an Olympic medal, e.g.), do frequently experience crises at the end of their careers, and some do suicide. The point I wanted to make is that, if an event of this magnitude happens, it is going to provoke some sort of crisis. If the Messiah returned, I imagine a lot of messianic preachers would feel a bit upset once the implications (i.e. that they were no longer needed) had sunk in.
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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