#minyans

YAAAAAAA

The tired blank canvas of academic think

Chabad center in flooded Boulder hosts Yom Kippur services (JTA) — Some 300 worshipers attended Yom Kippur services in the lobby of the Chabad on Campus center in flooded Boulder, Colo. The lobby of the synagogue building is above the flood line, according to Chabad.org, which reported Sunday on the … Read more on Jewish Telegraphic Agency

by special request for dimensionsintime Science Fiction, at its best, is a well blended admixture of the mythic and the scientific. Or maybe that's just the sci-fi I tend to like. "Underworld," while being an oft-maligned and generally kinda weird episode, has good mythology, good science, and ultimately some very interesting things to say about the human (or inhuman) condition. The mythology is taken whole cloth, and intentionally so, from the story of Jason and the Argonauts. A Whole Plot Reference, as tvtropes puts it, like "the Horns of Nimon." And, like "the Horns of Nimon," this results in people having kind of silly names that are thinkly veiled variants on the greek source: Jackosn = Jason, Herrick = Hercules, Orf = Orpheus, Minyos = Minos, and so on. The Doctor even mistakenly refers to Jacks (leader of the Minyans) as "Jason" at the very end of the episode. That slip shows that this is more than just "look how clever we're being." There's a point to be made about the nature of Mythology itself. The Doctor says "these old myths have a grain of truth in them," but it's more than that as well. We are not intended to believe that the story of Jason is based upon the Quest of the Minyans, but rather that there is perhaps a ...universality, or reification of Myth. There's another hint of it later on: "The Tree of Life is always guarded by fire-breathing dragons. One of the profounder moments in the episode is Leela's realization that referring to the settlement as a tree has a deeper significance than mere physical resemblance. "Why shouldn't he call it a tree? [sudden realization] Why should he call it a tree? He has never seen a tree..." It doesn't just resemble a tree, it is a tree - the Tree of Life, and hanging from its branches is the Golden Fleece, the twin golden cylinders that hold the Race Banks of the Minyans. Moving past its classical base, the Quest itself is really very compelling. Our intrepid crew are the last survivors of a world that destroyed itself ten thousand years ago. They are following the one other ship that got out, the P7E, carrying their planet's Race Banks. Their Quest is to find the P7E, retrieve the Race Banks, and recreate their species on a new world. But stop and think for a moment. Ten thousand years. I'm a huge fan of the Eternal Quest - to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield and all that - but that's a heck of a long time, especially when you realize it's the original set of people. Compare the Doctor, who at this point is about 700 some years old, and has regenerated three times. These guys are over ten thousand years old and have regenerated dozens, perhaps hundreds of times. And it takes its toll. A major thread throughout the episode is immortality fatigue. The crew are all sick to death of their quest, so much so that even failure comes as a relief and a release. And yet, they persevere. The thing everyone remembers about the episode is their motto or mantra: the Quest is the Quest. And the first reaction is: wow, what a stupid catchphrase. Except that it's not a catchphrase, it's almost a Madness Mantra. And as a Madness Mantra it works extremely well. When you've been doing the same thing for ten thousand years, no reason is going to be good enough. You've had time to develop counters to every possible argument. And yet, the Quest is the Quest. The aristotelian premise is the one thing they have left to cling to. A is A. If nothing else, that - the one stable point in an increasingly pointless universe. When that finally crumbles, so will everything else. This, then, is what has kept them going: not duty, or the future of their race, nor any high and lofty ideals, but this most basic of all philosophies. Because that is all they have left. The Quest is the Quest. On the other side of the mythophilosophical is the science. One rule of thumb for Doctor Who seems to be the better the episode, the worse the science (cf: "Evil of the Daleks"). Not so here. "Underworld" does really cool stuff with gravity, and does it by and large correctly. Because they play with gravity not at the surface of planets. Our heroes find themselves in a nebula at the edge of the universe, where new planets (and presumably stars) are in the process of forming. Which means that the heaviest thing around is, well, them. (I feel like there ought to be a your mom joke in here somewhere...) And so the spaceship itself starts to become the core of the new planet. Not only is it an absolutely unique cliffhanger ("watch out! We're turning into a planet!" do wee dooo ) but it also sets up the reveal that the P7E has itself become a planet (and given rise to a civilization, albeit a subterranean rock-eating one). The same idea would be used again much much later, but without the explicit mechanics, for the Racnoss in "the Runaway Bride." But because the P7E is the core of a planet, we not only get to deal with extra-planetary gravitation, but also intra-planetary gravitation! Well, that's probably the wrong word, but gravity at the center of a planet. Which leads to this great conversation between the Doctor and Leela: Leela: "But gravity makes things fall" Doctor: "Towards the center. And we're at the center." YES! Gravity doesn't point down, it points in! And I really like how Leela is talking about gravity, a word she must have learned fairly recently. There's actually a lot of little gems of Leela applying her knew learning to her existing world knowledge: gravity makes things fall, planets have fire in the center, etc. etc. Leela is not stupid. She's actually extremely intelligent, and you can tell by the way she takes what she learns and immediately applies it. It's really nice to see her shine like this, even if she's still wrong. She also figures out how to use a piece of unfamiliar technology she finds lying around when K-9 can't manage to get his stuff together. It's a shield gun. And may I just say: Shield Gun! What a good idea! A gun that can be used defensively. And this is the only place I've ever seen anything like it. Herrick uses one later to deflect weapons fire back into an enemy guard. Seriously, give whoever designed that thing a freaking medal for really well-thought-out engineering. No space-faring race should be without one. While we're on the subject of Leela (sort of), this episode also passes the Bechdel Test. For the record. (It should be noted that it's particularly difficult for Doctor Who to pass the Bechdel Test because most characters talk mostly about the Doctor most of the time. So props where props are due.) The last really cool thing I want to talk about in this episode is the fact that it sheds light on the Time Lord policy of non-intervention. Prior to this, it's basically been taken as read that the Time Lords are wrong. Heck, the Doctor says it pretty explicitly in "the War Games:" "All these evils I have fought, while you have done nothing but observe! True, I am guilty of interference. Just as you are guilty of failing to use your great powers to help those in need!" In "Underworld" we see the flipside of the argument, where the policy of non-interference comes from in the first place. Because the Minyan disaster was a direct result of Time Lord hubris. In their early days, when they were young and stupid, they made a point of using their great powers to help those in need (the Doctor, for his part, is still young and stupid, by Time Lord standards). And it backfired hard. The Minyans accepted their aid, revered them as Gods, advanced too quickly, threw them out at gunpoint, and ultimately destroyed themselves. Which just goes to show that Time Lords make really lousy Gods, no matter what Omega thinks. And so they wisely decided that they probably shouldn't play God when they really didn't know what they were doing, an adopted a policy of strict non-intervention. (Compare also the Tolan of the Stargateverse, or the xkcd cartoon on "Drama.") And this was a really good idea. The Time Lords learned a valuable lesson about meddling, and the Minyans learned a valuable lesson about dealing with Time Lords. And so when the Doctor turns up, they are justly suspicious - perhaps the most justly suspicious of anyone in the entire series. And, while they are willing to accept his help when absolutely necessary, they are very clear about boundaries: "Our Quest, Doctor, not yours." Jackson is polite but firm - they will listen to the Doctor's advice, but ultimately make their own decisions and their own mistakes. There's an interesting theme running through of Gods. The Minyans took the Time Lords to be Gods, and though they're now really really over them, still refer to them in that way. Gods you no longer respect or have any use for. This is juxtaposed with the Trogs (the inhabitants of the P7E planet), who believe that Gods will someday come and take them to a new world where they won't be crushed by falling rocks anymore. As the Time Lords were Gods to the Minyans, so the Minyans are Gods to the Trogs. Now they are the Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, with the power to save or destroy the Trogs, and the responsibility to use their power and technology, well, responsibly, and not repeat the same mistakes they themselves suffered under. Especially when it turns out that the Trogs are the product of the very Race Banks they've been searching for. Well, I mean, duh - where else would they have come from? But Jackson and his crew have been so single-mindedly focused on a specific task for so very long that it doesn't occur to them that saving the people is as important a fulfillment of their quest as retrieving the Race Banks - that their ultimate dream of a Minyos II has already come to fruition on the P7E planet. Too bad that it's a horrible distopia - but the point is that the race has already survived. As miserable rock-eating slaves who dream of the stars and deliverance, and tend to get crushed a lot. "Underworld" has problems, certainly, many of which stem from the fact that the BBC sort of up and stopped giving them money and they had to improvise. But it is, for all that, a surprisingly good episode, with a ton of really interesting ideas in it. I have no choice but to like it. The Quest is the Quest.