Track League – Week 1

Spring was fighting to break out at Herne Hill Velodrome last Wednesday. The vibrant green of the centre grass was a sharp contrast to the leafless trees surrounding the circuit with their jerky limbs.

It wasn’t the best weather (overcast, a slow but nasty chill) for sitting and watching never mind competing. But nonetheless just a little after 6 o’clock the U12 Girls set off for their Scratch race, and as they hit the first curve a train crawled down the hill in front of them, almost as if arranged.

Although it may have been bolstered by the compulsory attendance of parenthood to a budding cyclist, the attendance was impressive for a dreich evening. I was very grateful for the nice and quite new-looking pavilion with (mostly) covered seating. That, however, didn’t stop the wind from throwing spits of rain towards us, quickly making paper-based notetaking unpleasantly difficult.

A pattern began to emerge across the youth races: the monolithic presence of Velo Club Londres. With alumni like Ethan Hayter and Fred Wright, that makes a lot of sense, but it’s still striking to see in action. Their predominantly red outfits have a straight black stripe down the middle that is only one of the factors making them eerily reminiscent of peak Team Sky.

Hordes of red and black-clad young riders marshalled the front of every race. It takes some extraordinary coaching and talent to be able to exercise quite such a commanding presence, but nonetheless I did find myself rooting for those solo adventurers daring to challenge their dominance.

The U16 racers all rode together, Girls and Boys, although with points somehow calculated separately for each gender. Looked like a stupidly difficult task to me, but good on the volunteers calculating that. One particularly impressive U16 rider in the Girls category struck me as one to watch. In almost every race she stayed with the breakaway group of predominantly male racers until the dying stages. It was very impressive, even more so for being the only member of her club in the race that I could see. If I were at British Cycling, I’d have a close eye on that one.

The adult races were split into skill-based categories, as well as an extra category reserved for Women.

The sun had mostly set by the time the adults got going. The on-site commentary was getting ever so slightly sharper too. I was introduced to a concept I suspect is well-known in amateur sporting circles: sandbagging. There appeared to be no shortage of good-natured scorn for those who undersold their proficiency and thus dominated a lower category. I look forward to watching those sagas unfold over the next couple of weeks.

The adult races were longer, but with the weather worsening, it didn’t appear the racers were particularly keen on stretching anything out. The pace was electric in almost every race. Despite that, it was slightly harder for me to pick out any particularly notable moments in the adult races. Maybe because the presence of clubs seemed slightly diminished, or because my lack of layers was bringing hypothermia ever closer.

Nonetheless I look forward to coming back over the next few weeks and seeing the season unfold. And the ever-exciting development of what the café is offering that week is pretty enticing…

TV Review – 24th January 2020

Star Trek: Picard – “Rememberance”

Season 1, Episode 1
Air/Availability Date: 24/01/2020 (UK - Amazon Prime)
Teleplay by: Akiva Goldsman and James Duff
Story by: Akiva Goldsman & Michael Chabon & Kirsten Beyer & Alex Kurtzman and James Duff
Directed by: Hanelle M. Culpepper

Wooft, look at that Story By credit. Look at it. Five people. Five. Four of them apparently drafting together and a fifth working separately if the rule of ampersand v. word is to be followed (although one of those ampersands was in a funky place in the titles so who knoooows?).

That typically means you’re in for a rough, written-by-committee ride. Luckily we seem to have avoided that.. so far.

Excuse my tone of caution, but I hate Discovery. I hate it more than I have ever hated any TV show ever. I mean that. It’s first season was so anti-Star Trek to me that it has not earned the right for a second chance with it’s second season. So you’ll understand how worried I was about this new venture, what with it’s Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman in the credits.

But from what I’ve heard those two were pushed to a back seat in production so maybe that’s why I ended “Rememberance” with a sense of optimism. It isn’t what you’d expect from Star Trek either, but more so in its pace than in its tone. With a lot of help from Patrick Stewart and a toned-down visual style this feels much more grounded than Discovery, it takes itself seriously in the right way and the character of Picard brings back the hope and, I guess, earnestness (?) that Discovery was missing.

On those visuals it really helps that this version of the Star Trek Universe actually looks like an evolution of the aestheitics of TNG thru Voyager (Modern Trek for short, in future) as opposed to the fuck-it-cool-lights-and-tech of Discovery’s NuTrek this-ain’t-your-mommas-Star-Trek look. [Note 1] The consoles in Chateau Picard are based on LCARS and the replicator control in the cold open apes the yellow/blue theme of the Enterprise D’s interfaces. Sure you can box that away as Fan Service, but when recent efforts in this property have so enthusiastically thrown away the legacy they’re using to draw eyeballs, little signs that the people behind this show care about the world they’re diving back into means more than it normally might.

On the biggest potential worry of this series: is this really Jean-Luc Picard? Yes, I fully believe it is. The passion, kindness, and commitment is Jean-Luc Picard. I don’t fully believe he’d have a massive Bulldog, but we’ll let PStew have that one, the man loves his dogs. If there’s anything that gives me pause it’s why Picard would leave Starfleet, but that’s down to the main symptom of Bad Writing from this episode.

The SpaceCNN interview is, pretty hacky. It’s obvious “we-need-to-exposition” structure, and it stinks of that. If you need a cliched exposition delivery structure at least try and spray some perfume around it. The journalist in the scene is then an awful example of the “journalists suck huh?” archetype, to the extent that “I checked the terms 3 times” fucking guaranteed she would break them. It was one step away from Bitchy Defence Lawyer who Stymies the Police, not great.

And then the backstory they give to us in that scene is, unfinished? The Death of Romulus from Trek ’09 is still canon, OK. That led to Picard leading the Refugee Armada, that makes good character sense! But that somehow caused “rogue synthetics” [Note 2] to blow up the oft-name-checked-in-Trek Utopia Planitia Yards on Mars. I don’t quite get how Picard leading the armada led to the terrorist attack, it was implied he was meant to be guarding Mars I guess, but, c’mon Starfleet, of the many times you’ve told Picard to guard something and don’t come help us we’re good, when has he ever listened? And then heavy-handed analogy to real-world racism happened and… the Romulans had to leave again? Unless they had nice Irish accents? Starfleet bad now?

I totally believe Picard would leave Starfleet if he felt they’d lost their morals, but the actual Trek history that led to that supposed loss is woefully underwritten. It’s a hand wave that takes up the entire screen and yells “THIS IS A HAND WAVE”. Luckily this is probably the worst writing in the episode and Discovery has much worse every second scene so I’ll take it. I guess it’s also possible a cleaner version of this backstory was lost in the FIVE PERSON STORY CREDIT, so we won’t let it slide, but it manages not to derail the whole damn show.

As far as the rest of the plot is concerned, I guessed at the Data’s daughter thing fairly early, but more because of Isa Briones resemblance to Lal from TNG than anything else. I do like the idea that actually Maddox made her not Data, because when would Data have had the time for that?

I really love that Bruce Maddox is name-checked here actually. In case you didn’t realise, he’s the asshole who tried to claim Data was property in the superlative “Measure of a Man”. That he was so affected by that encounter he would go to seemingly extreme lengths to recreate Data is a really wonderful story choice. Equally nice to wrap up the B4 whistling twist from Nemesis with a “yeah that’s what you thought it was but it didn’t work”. I’ll buy that, that’s good loose end tying.

If the through line of the series is a quest to recover Data or to re-liberate Androids, that’s a quest I’m invested in and that I believe Jean-Luc would be too.

I’m less willing to trust the plan for the Romulans whatever it may be.

I’m super proud of myself for identifying a Romulan Handheld Disruptor in the cold open, but I’m not especially convinced as to why the Romulans should be the villains here. That feels like writers who haven’t watched quite enough TNG going “he had a feud with Romulans right?” as opposed to a natural evolution for the Romulans, but I have my guesses as to the justification so we’ll see. At least they haven’t fucked up their faces and language like the Klingons. Or shown us their tits. God damn you Discovery you really do suck.

That said, the cliffhanger of ‘the Romulans are building a Borg Cube’ (I think?) is a little wacky. It’s too out there to be a strong end to the episode because it doesn’t make much sense without explanation. So it ends up being a “wait, what” as opposed to an “oh shit!”.

But the best thing I think I can say about this is I’m looking forward to next week! That’s huge progress Star Trek execs. Good job. I still don’t trust you!

Miscellaneous witterings

• I’m not qualified to talk about TV Direction, but this looked real nice, and not overly showy. The fact that the action didn’t pull focus like it did in the latter TNG movies and NuTrek is a super-double-plus.
• Wow, can Brent Spiner just fucking turn on the Data. Sure, Data, was, ahem, skinnier before. But damn. Having seen him in person, Brent Spiner is truly gifted, even more so than you’d already know from TNG. The man’s comedy prowess is unbelievable. And the fact that Patrick Stewart seems to brings him onto what he’s working on (a la Blunt Talk) is pretty damn endearing.
• I’m just telling myself Picard feels better dreaming a Data who got old like him. Or that Data would add more extensive “Get Old” programming to his dignified white streak from “All Good Things…”.
• I should expand on the heavy-handed racism analogy. It just stuck out like a sore thumb didn’t it? Yes, we can and should use sci-fi to talk about real-world issues. But you have to do it well. That takes a gift which is distinct from being able to write well. Writing good allegorical sci-fi is an elite echelon of Great Writing. None of the writers on this episode suggested they belong anywhere near that echelon. If you want to Say Something about the real world then when you do it in sci-fi you have to mask it better [Note 3] or you should probably just take the plunge and Say your Something in a story set in the real world that doesn’t hide what your Really Trying to Say. A recurring criticism of sci-fi is that it’s a way for writers to hide their deficiencies in telling real world stories and heavy-handed call-outs like the “Fuck Romulans” thing don’t help sci-fi in that regard. You have to have the skills to know what kind of setting your message should be couched in, or have guts to admit you don’t know and ask for help in that area.

Footnotes

1. That Discovery look is somewhat influenced by background legal issues which Picard is avoiding thanks to the recent CBS-Viacom re-merger, so I guess they get off one of many hooks I have them on there. Check out Midnight’s Edge on YouTube for videos that explain this real well.
2. Why not call them androids? This just seems like changing the term for the sake of it which is a bad NuTrek habit, but I guess maybe “synthetic” is a quasi-racist term being applied retrospectively? But I shouldn’t have to tell myself that story.
3. Allegorical sci-fi works because it sneaks past your brain’s being-lectured-to defences and gets you to think about something in a way you normally wouldn’t tolerate an outside influence prompting you to do. Go read Augusto Boal if you want to know more about this. It real interesting. It’s also the big fucking Yes to “Does Drama/Fiction matter?” in any arts funding debate.

A Growing Art Form Needs Plenty to Chew On

If you follow video game commentary you’ll notice a comparison pop up once in a while that’s starting to become cliche: the growth of the video game industry is comparable to that of film.

It’s often brought up to give us gamers hope that film went through rough patches too and it’s doing fine! It also had some difficult years were it really had to find itself. Maybe games journalists and commentators love it because it humanises the “industry” (eugh, I hate that term); perhaps because it seems so relatable to the seen-as-typical teen/young adult audience.

To be clear, I think this is actually a pretty good analogy, and it certainly helps to explain why games have ended up where they are, and perhaps why they’ve ended up as so much of an “industry”.

The comparison is best understood, or perhaps most helpful to me, when you think about genres across the two mediums. After film had developed its tools: image, sound, then colour (a la 8/16-bit, 3d, and HD), it started to experiment a little more with what genres it could do, expanding into musicals, more comedies, then action films, sci-fi, arthouse etc. And games did the same thing: platformers, then 3d platformers, RPGs, puzzlers, shooters – both first and third person, and various others. In the games sphere though those genres rely on more obvious fundamental building blocks: mechanics.

One of the most interesting observations of games criticism today is that game makers have stopped inventing new mechanics, new types of game. They’re just re-mixing and improving on existing ones. It’s been a long time since a game did something so new as firing a gun from a first-person perspective, or first pioneered stealth mechanics; turn-based combat or real-time strategy. At that level of abstraction and invention it has been a while since a video game has so truly blown us away with something we haven’t seen and done before (perhaps with the exception of VR, but at least for me, the jury is still a little out on that one).

But tabletop games have. As recently as this year we’ve had Chronicles of Crime pioneer QR codes in a mystery game to change the way you track down witnesses and get answers, not to mention how many components you need to extend your game’s lifetime. Coming soon in the same genre is Detective: City of Angels (not to be confused with Portal Games’ more simply named Detective, which has an L.A. Crimes expansion) where the recently booming investigation genre goes one v all and a player can choose if those blocks of texts that have been so reliable in previous games might be straight up lies, not just red herrings.

In recent times we’ve had the Rob Daviau pioneered Legacy genre were players destroy components and one play session effects the next, with different groups having completely different games when all is said and done. Roll-and-write games have seen a boom recently, and in the RPG zone there seem to be more systems doing more and more inventive things (e.g. Monsterhearts) as the lack of physical components allows.

That’s one of the reasons why I think tabletop aficionados are so satisfied at the moment. We’re still in that phase of true mechanical invention that video games and films seem to have passed out of. Which is all the more remarkable when tabletop games have been around for much much longer.

So if we want to keep our tabletop industry booming and growing, we need to make sure we keep pushing for new mechanics. We don’t want to just seem the same things refined, as good a game as that might produce. That might mean that we’re going to get duds, as true experiments turn out to fail, but if we want a really vibrant and widely entertaining art-form, then we have to let it be comfortable in its surprisingly enjoyable, and late-blooming, puberty.

That’s why it’s wise to be aware of the growing conglomerates in tabletop gaming. Asmodee continues to slurp up publishers, including giants like Fantasy Flight. And if comparisons back to video games can help us in any other way, it’s to be wary of the incredible power of giant corporate publishers to massively expand the audience, while completely stifling creativity and invention.

So as a community of gamers who love trying new things, let’s make sure we keep encouraging new mechanics, completely new ideas. Let’s not just become satisfied with improvements on what we know. Let’s be brave, and try new things, as our grandmothers always wanted us to while we were growing up.

You are, however, still allowed to hate sprouts.

“Cricket for Idiots”

Those are the words of the brilliant Andy Zaltzman[1] at a gig of his. He was referring to baseball, and specifically responding to those members of his audience who said they liked baseball and not the Great English Pastime of swiping at a pokéball with a cheese board.

I am entirely willing to accept this description of baseball, because gosh darn it baseball is one of the world’s greatest sports and we will take what you can throw at us and smash it over the bleachers, just try to throw it without having to bounce it.

Yes, baseball is relatively simple, when the relativity is to Cricket. But when the complex option requires equations to figure out who wins in certain cases, matches take multiple days, and even the score-line is a code readable only to those with the key, I’ll take my version for dummies.

I wish I could love every sport in the world, but I’ve never been more bored than watching cricket. And I think my love of baseball may well have doomed cricket to sit in my basket of “why does this have such an audience” along with football[2].

Baseball’s format is perfect for tense viewing. At least, that is, if you have a team to root for to any extent. I can see baseball being a tough one for true neutrals. The format is sort of designed with mutually exclusive support for the teams involved in mind.

The teams must alternate being in a position where they can only be scored against. You are entirely vulnerable, and can do nothing to bolster your lead, if you even have one. Half of the game is edge of the seat viewing just hoping your team can negotiate the weapons that their opponents roll out, one by one. And those weapons stand in a small box. Staring down all but one of the opposing team, and the human cannon raised up in front of them. And even though they’re outnumbered 9-to-1; they have an entire team with their eyes on them; they have only a thin piece of wood to act with, they remain a palpable, credible threat. It’s the ultimate thriller.

Then, when it’s your turn to roll out the guns, you can only afford to miss with, at most, three of them before you’re staring down the barrel again. If you’re behind, you have to score, every at-bat a tense fight scene, to see if you can even score a blow. And if you don’t: the villain just walks away, unblemished, laughing, and pulling out his shotgun. You’ve got the lead? If you can’t pull away any further, your enemy continues to track you from behind, your inability to run a nightmare brought to life on the diamond.

That’s before you even get into the captivating tactics of pitcher choice, where to play the defence, when to let someone take a base for fear that if they even have a chance to hit you they’ll hit you big.

But yeah, like any sport baseball isn’t always good. Perhaps counter-intuitively high-scoring games can be the worst. They suggest bad pitching all around, allowing scoring to become rote. Hits, and home-runs especially, are exciting when they’re rare, hard-won, not when they’re a dime a dozen[3]. Not to mention, a blow-out is never captivating viewing[4].

In future I plan to delve into some other aspects of baseball I love, in particular it’s great foundation for storytelling and its relationship to the very best aspects of the USA.

But for now, just give the sport a go if you haven’t already (on BT Sport or MLB.tv in the UK). The season is only a month old and there will be plenty of story lines to follow. I would advise you a pick a team, to make things easier to follow. Just not the Yankees[5]. Damn Yankees.

[1] Of ‘The Bugle’ fame.

[2] For another time, dear reader. Don’t @ me.

[3] Although again, having a rooting interest in a team that’s getting all those hits is a balm against the boredom.

[4] Brazil v Germany excepted. Some train wrecks are too bad to look away…

[5] They put my team, the Minnesota Twins out of the playoffs last year. And they can have an attitude problem. Damn Yankees.

Ambition

Olympic and Paralympic Ceremonies are my wheelhouse. I love watching sports, I’m a broadcasting nerd, and an artist at heart. They are sports, storytelling, and arts thrown in a cauldron, boiled and poured like molten gold into a television shaped frame[1]. I look forward to them for years and I think they add immeasurably to the ‘Lympic experience for athletes and spectators alike.

With that said, I’ve found Pyeongchang 2018’s ceremonies a little underwhelming so far[2]. I suspect I’ll have a few pieces on ‘Lympic Ceremonies on here in future and I’ll go into depth then, but for now I’ll try to avoid my habit of getting a bit tangential. They’ve been sound, but nothing has brought about the face-flushing, throat-catching, heart-raising pride that I’ve come to associate with such events.

Bar one set piece: the Beijing 2022 segment (here, from about 1:29:50). Regular Olympic viewers probably aren’t surprised considering that for many Beijing 2008’s Olympic opener is the benchmark. Conceived and filmed beautifully it really does stand out from the ceremony it was embedded in. But there’s a reason that it stands out for me, and perhaps me in particular. It’s not just a trailer for the next installment of this the greatest of events, for what China and Beijing will bring to it, or for what their ceremonies will look like[3].  It was an invite not just to athletes, or viewers, but to anyone who wants to be in Beijing and be a part of something significant, global, and inspiring. The Beijing segment was an invitation to dream, to aspire to be there, experience the Games, and the country that will bring them to life when the Winter flame burns once more.

Dreams and aspirations are what keep us moving as humans. Through day-to-day drudgery, through difficult times, through disappointment. It’s why we’re obsessed with fame, with fiction, with events like the Oscars, or, hell, (read with disdain) Royal Weddings.

But most potently with sport. The Olympics and Paralympics move us because they are the realization of dreams of the greatest magnitude. They are the summiting of the highest pinnacles of human achievement and success. And we get to go along with that ride, watch as they happen. That invitation from Beijing is an invitation for thousands around the world to dream of an Olympic medal, or even just for the right to travel to somewhere new, somewhere exciting, while bearing the pride of their country. And it’s constructed to give everyone at home a taste of that. It isn’t just building excitement for a televisual sporting event that will captivate attention, it’s encouraging you to dream about the success and the excitement that you’ll feel a part of by watching, or maybe even taking part.

For me, though it poured accelerant on a fiery ambition to be at the Games as part of the media. It’s an off-kilter ambition perhaps, but if it rings true with you then I hope you’ll find this blog homey. I’m a storyteller at heart. I was pretending to be a TV presenter at 6 or 7. I tried to go to drama school. I’ve had Final Draft on my laptop since high school. And lately the storytelling power of sports, and of sports broadcasting especially has captivated my interest.

Because sports broadcasting is such a brilliant form of storytelling. It’s accessible, it’s unpredictable, but it’s a tool set for brilliant artists to bring you a story with raw ingredients that can be presented in so many ways, and with central events that oh so excitingly, you cannot hope to control. But it’s also an opportunity to elevate and bring to new audiences the dreams of the athletes in them. Sports broadcasting can transform sports that seem dry on the surface become unmissable television, or indeed radio[4]. I hold recent free-to-air F1 broadcasting in the UK as an excellent example of such.

It’s also, I think an invaluable opportunity to reach out to viewers at home, with something we all love. These aren’t distant London media types, they’re your mates, telling you the most brilliant story, keeping you company with something you both love, that you have in common, that everyone else has in common. Sport unifies us, and so we come back to the ‘Lympics and the sparks flying off those flames.

I worked at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, and I have never felt more satisfied or fulfilled by a job, or anything I’ve been involved in. And I vowed then that next time I’d be in the media studio I walked by or worked outside every day. It’s too late for that with Gold Coast 2018 coming up in a few weeks, but that Beijing segment was an invitation to me too. You’ve got a dream, achieve it here. Be a part of Beijing 2022 in your own way, come help tell our story.

That moved me, and now it’s moved me to action. I intend to update this blog every week. Some weeks sport, some weeks gaming, some weeks other stuff, and maybe sometimes some fiction. Welcome to Story Mode.

They said, “See you in Beijing!”. I fully intend to.

[1] Yes, that would be a rectangle, but don’t break the romance by thinking too hard about it; I think that’s the least any budding writer can ask…

[2] With only the Paralympic Closing Ceremony remaining as I write.

[3] And thank god closing ceremony segments aren’t that last thing, imagine London 2012’s overture had it been an extension of that thing from Beijing!

[4] If you haven’t before, listen to golf on the radio, it’s pretty damn great.