Hugos III: DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA

[melannen]

OK, best dramatic presentation: let's do this thing.

...they really need to fix this category and if they want a category for TV drama series they need to have one, and go back to letting people nom entire series like they used to, instead of pretending it's "short form" and people are nominating episodes. Anyway.

Best Dramatic Presentation: Short Form

Two nominees:
Doctor Who: "Listen"
nope. sorry, but I noped out of new-DW ages ago and am not going back. give me Doctor/Master that's actually doctor/master and not Moffat's "definitely not gay also I have lady issues" thing and I might go back. maybe. but not for this. nope.


Orphan Black: "By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried"
I did manage to stream the nominated episode last night, finally. I got a sinking feeling when it turned out to be the season finale and sadly I was not wrong.

1. Is it science fiction?

Possibly. Can't tell from this episode! It's all people running around having drama at each other and something about an evil corporation that wants to steal people's ovaries? There was some biotech stuff involved somewhere I think but it didn't have any effect on the plot of this episode except by playing MacGuffin.

I get the impression from fandom osmosis that this show is about cloning? They did say the word "clone" a few times. I really appreciated that most of the main female characters had very different hair, that way I could tell them apart, which is more than I usually manage with TV drama these days. All of the other main female characters were skinny, tired-looking white women with dark hair, I couldn't tell them apart, not even sure how many there were? Maybe they were the clones? I think one of them was called Sarah. Also I think some or all of the young male characters were apparently clones? Not really sure how many of them there were, either. One of them had a beard and one wears a military uniform! Maybe they were the clones? No clue. There were a lot of characters and I couldn't tell which ones were the ones I was supposed to be following.

So basically the show as a whole may or may not be SF but I couldn't tell based on this episode.

2. Is it good?

See above about having no clue what was going on. Might be a great series, this might be an amazing and emotionally devastating season finale, but as a stand-alone short-form production it was pretty awful. When you can't even figure out what's happening in the "previously on" you know it's not a show that's designed to be watched one episode at a time.

Also it was a DRAMA show that was full of DRAMATIC DRAMA and also DRAMA. I do not think the heavy shovelfuls of EMOTIONAL EMOTION (ALSO DRAMA. and TENSION. DRAMA.) let up for even a moment, the entire episode? And, even to the extent I was able to follow the episode, they quite frequently sacrificed people-doing-stuff-that-makes-sense in favor of DRAMA with extra DRAMA. If you like that kind of show, I'm sure it's great, but it's not my thing.

3. Is it good SF?

See above.

Also to the extent I could follow the plot, it seemed to be about a cabal of old creepy dudes trying to steal some chick's ovaries. Admittedly this is supposed to be a show about biotech so maybe it sort of made sense, but I swore off watching any show where main character's plotline is about somebody trying to steal her ovaries back when they tried it on BSG (of all places) and nope. Hasn't become any less a creepy strategy to make a woman all about her reproductive capacity and to make rape threats without actually using rape than it was the last three times somebody thought they were edgy by going there.

I'm glad I watched it, I now do not have to feel guilty of voting No Award with nothing above it for this category.

Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form
Two nominees


Winter Soldier

1. Was it SF or fantasy?

So the main character is a supersoldier and there's a dude with a fancy robot arm and like helicarriers and wings, and a guy who uploaded his brain to magnetic tape, so. Maybe?

On the other hand if you made Steve your standard badass & noble former Special Forces guy, and Bucky his bff who had a head injury and had been brainwashed as a POW for a more normal length of time, and Zola a recording, and changed some of the fight choreography a bit, you'd have a spy movie with nothing SFFnal at all -it's another one where that's just window dressing. Maybe more importantly, even with all that left in, there's nothing really more SFFnal than your average Bond movie in it, and it clearly wasn't trying to be part of the SF conversation, it was trying to be part of the spy thriller conversation.

Maybe Bond movies should be eligible for Hugos but historically they haven't been nominated; if this one wasn't Marvel Universe I doubt anyone would have thought twice. And even being Marvel Universe, Marvel 616 has always had a bunch of different genres in it; Marvel Galactic is the SF, there's horror/fantasy stuff, there's the superhero stuff -- and then there's the spy/war stories stuff, usually with a lot of SHIELD and Fury and so on in it. This was clearly going for that, even in the context of being Marvel.

2. Was it good?

Yes. For details, see all of fandom for the last year and change.

3. Was it good SFF?

See #1 for the "was it SFF at all" discussion. But even conceding that, I feel like the more SFFnal stuff was actually the weakest parts? Characterization was amazing, storytelling was amazing, theme and resonance were amazing, cinematic craft was amazing, what the heck was actually going on with the helicarriers? why does Bucky have a magic arm? How did Zola get away with saving himself on tape? WTF is this algorithm thingy? Why? What? Huh?

The extrapolation about the security-state-surveillance stuff might've been good SF thirty years ago but now it's just drearily realistic so that doesn't count either.



Edge of Tomorrow

1. Was it SFF?

It had invading tentacle aliens and cool exoskeleton body armor and laser guns and time travel, so yep, pretty sure it was SF.

2. Was it good?

So okay, to be fair, I went into this not expecting much. I expected to dislike it, tbh - it appeared to be a shoot 'em up timeloop AU, neither of which are my favorites (I will enjoy the fuck out of a good timeloop AU tbh, but there are also ways the trope is done that I hate, and I thought this would be one of them.)

And it wasn't exactly gripping - despite the timeloopy stuff, it was your exact formulaic Action Movie, featuring Tom Cruise as the cowardly, annoying dweeb who has to Step Up And Find His Manliness and Save The Day, with a Strong Female Character (TM) to teach him how to get there and to serve as his reward at the end. (You can tell she's a Strong Female Character (TM) because she has two nicknames, and one of 'em's Angel and one of 'em's Bitch.) And they're fighting a war where the aliens just happened to make first landfall in central Germany and expand from there, so you can have brave British soldiers defending their embattled island and Americans swooping in to save the day and Russians on the other front and even battles with exactly the same names as WWII battles, which I am sure was total coincidence.

Anyway all that said, I enjoyed it more than I was expecting. It was fun, the timeloopy bits were well done, and allowed the character development to become competence porn quickly yet believably via skipping loops, although I'm sure it helped that we also got to see the main character immediately die in pain whenever he did something particularly annoying and pointless, rather than inexplicably surviving like he'd have to in most of these.

And then in the big climactic scene where she's wounded and he's about to go off and kill the Big Bad and they finally have their Moment of Emotional Intimacy, I was actually shocked and disappointed when he went in for the token romantic trophy kiss. I think I've been spoiled by Mad Max and Pac Rim et. all. But having recently seen films where they didn't need it and they knew it, it seemed even more superfluous and out of place when they went for it in this one.

Also the CGI for the aliens was weirdly bad? I mean maybe they were meant to look not-quite-real for a creepy factor, but it was the kind of stuff i'd've expected from state-of-the-art CGI in the '90s, not 2014.

So: it was reasonably fun, it was an OK movie, not exactly brilliant and groundbreaking though, and the special effects were kind of low-budget.

3. Was it good SF?

The mechanism behind the timeloop was a lot more clever than I expected, and the temporal mechanics where pretty well done. Other than the time stuff, though (which I'd seen done better in fanfic, tbh) the aliens were as stereotypical as Evil Aliens could possibly be. And there was a massive plothole re: why only White Hero Dude could have the timeloop powers instead of passing them on to SFC Who Is Actually Competent Already. This was actually brought up in the film when he tries to hit on her by proposing it's sexually transmitted (she tells him no, tried that already, and then shoots him in the face. I may have cheered. Although I also really want the fanfic now where someone's caught in a timeloop and it *is* sexually transmitted and he finally wins his true love and wakes up and thinks it must be over but it just turns out the true love is stuck now too. Poly Avengers fic, anyone?)

Anyway where was I. Oh yeah. So it's not sexually transmitted, it's transmitted by killing a particular special alien and getting soaked in its blood. Thing is, due to time loop, they know exactly where it is and how to kill it, so why don't they just go there and add a new person to the loop every day? That would admittedly complicate the temporal mechanics a lot, but they should at least mention it as something they don't want to risk.

That said. I was actually pretty into it by the end, and was thinking I'd actually be able to rank it pretty high, and then I got to the end, after everybody has sacrificed themselves to beat the Big Bad and save the world and the time loop is broken for good, and our Hero Passes out one last time -- and then wakes up and the Big Bad is still defeated but magically everybody is safe at home in bed?? And there's no attempt to explain why??? They just couldn't bear to not have a 100% happy ending I guess even if it makes no sense???? IDK, but they burnt up all their "good SF" credit and then some with that one.

Bonus puppy-noms analysis for longform, since I know a lot of people were planning to ignore the puppies on this one, given that the studios don't care about the hugos anyway:

Interstellar: Haven't seen it, still 57th in line at the library so probably won't see it in time, based on extensive reviews I've encountered I suspect I would rank it above those two but not actually like it much, since I won't have seen it I probably won't vote the puppy noms.

The Lego Movie: Only questionably SF since it's really all just a kid playing with his toys; even more your 100% stereotypical Action Movie Generic Plot than the previous, which really wasn't excused by hanging a lantern on it (Never, ever, read Save the Cat, folks); especially since your moral seems to be "instead of making a meticulous and creative cityscape where you have built an entire paracosm down to individual construction workers, you should instead act out EXACTLY THE SAME action movie formula as everything else, down to every single beat, as every movie out there, starring cowardly, annoying dweeb who has to Step Up And Find His Manliness and Save The Day, with a Strong Female Character (TM) to teach him how to get there and to serve as his reward at the end." That's not a moral I enjoyed as much as I was hoping.

Also we really need the mocking of people who don't want to use their assigned-at-birth names? And the gratuitous "girls are icky and shouldn't play with legos" tag at the end? That was really necessary? Really? Anyway Axe Cop is way better. And Wild Style should stay with Batman, who at least respects her and respects her choices.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Definitely SF! Super-fun! Some quibbles with the worldbuilding (but mostly background-color stuff, by which I mean why are all the space alien extras pink babes and white dudes, and why can't you remember that Drax doesn't use metaphors) and with the way the female characters are treated and the total lack of lesbian space dragons, but in general I really liked it! This is what I want out of an SF movie.

I would have happily voted for Big Hero Six above any of these.

Comments

[muccamukk]

Nenya really liked the lady Master, but I'd decided I'd had enough by then. Oh well.

I'm trying to think what else should be in the short form category. Short films, obviously, or episodes of things like Outer Limits that stand on their own. Music videos, webisodes, animations.
Would radio plays count for short form, or long form, for that matter? I think Worldcon finally decided that narrated stories were in with regular stories, but full cast stuff would be drama would it not? The BBC, among other people, does a lot of really good stand-alone SFF stories as radio plays.

[melannen]

I think I would have been able to really like the lady Master if I hadn't already been exposed to enough to realized she was a Standard Moffat Female Type B. Not a bad character type the first time you meet it, but I had encountered about a dozen of them already, so it was hard to get excited.

I know that originally the Drama categories allowed radio plays - and even songs! - And live plays! - but I'm not sure what they changed when they split the categories. And they've also got a Fancast category now which could lead to some hair-splitting. The news coverage for the moon landing won that year, though, so I'm wondering if we could get something New Horizons-related in.

[muccamukk]

My relationship to Moffat can be entirely summed up by a quote from Galaxy Quest: "It was cute when I didn't know you."

I could probably dig up the regulations and find out what's allowed, but something New Horizons related would be lovely.

[melannen]

It would. That's currently near the top of the list. If we could find a particular broadcast of the coverage, that would work, but it was mostly NASA press conferences. I'm trying to figure out if all the data uploads count as a 'dramatic performance' (although I suppose that could be long form.)

[muccamukk]

It's certainly been dramatic!

It would be cool if someone, especially someone with a good signal could do a post with examples of the kinds of things that would qualify. If they wanted to avoid accusations of making a slate, they could always post stuff that came out in other years, and tell people to look for something similar this year.

It'd be really nice to break this tv thing.

[recessional]

GOD I hated The Lego Movie. And I had to watch it a lot, because S loved it.

[melannen]

I had some friends who really loved it and they usually have good taste, but yeah. :/ basically the only redeeming feature it had was sentimentality + geek references, as far as I can tell.

[recessional]

Yeah and the sentimentality totally missed me, because I was far, far more likely to be the kid intricately making the flawless by-the-instructions things, and found the idea that a dad wasn't ALLOWED to have His Own Thing/Interest really really creepy. Like it's not like he WASN'T buying his kid his own legos.

[melannen]

See I was never a follow-the-instructions type, but the idea of being able to build an ENTIRE CITY and KEEP IT FOREVER and NEVER HAVE ANYONE ELSE STEAL THE PIECES or MESS IT UP? Yes please. So I think I side with the dad here. And yeah! The kid had his own legos! Nobody was stopping him!

I get that it was supposed to be favoring like creativity and imagination but what it's actually doing is is deprecating one kind of creativity in favor of a very specific hollywood-approved kind of imagination (one that involved Ordinary Dude being rewarded with Strong Female Character (TM), natch.)

[recessional]

Ye-es this. And like I am not saying OMG ABLIST MOVIE or anything, but it's deprecating one form that happens to BE really common with ASD people (including a couple of my relatives - like seriously one Officially Diagnosed cousin makes the most AMAZING things out of legos) so it makes me particularly defensive-hissy.

And yes re: Ordinary Dude. I frankly really wanted Wyldstyle to go back to Lego Batman. And keep her new name. Screw you, movie-makers.

[jain]

and then I got to the end, after everybody has sacrificed themselves to beat the Big Bad and save the world and the time loop is broken for good, and our Hero Passes out one last time -- and then wakes up and the Big Bad is still defeated but magically everybody is safe at home in bed?? And there's no attempt to explain why???

When Cage was dying in that final battle, he got hit with the Omega's blood and thus regained the ability to loop, which is why everyone woke up safely the next/same day.

The only handwavey bit is why the Omega doesn't reenter the time loop, too, but it felt plausible to me that killing the Omega is substantively different from killing any other member of the time loop system. YMMV. (This article has some good theories about that, if you're interested.)

[melannen]

But it... wasn't the same day? Was it? I thought about that possibility, but it really wasn't clear. I guess all the aliens being dead made it seem like a different day even though it was the same day....? That makes no sense with the dynamics they'd set up, and they certainly didn't make any attempt to explain it that way in the movie itself, anyway, they just had him wake up somewhere else.

Also, if you're going to reset the time loop by having him get bathed in blood again, that makes it even dumber that you never brought up that possibility when it might have actually helped save the world.

I mean, I could come up with some fanwanky theories that would explain it, too, but I didn't like the movie enough to try, and they def. didn't do the work that they needed to in the film itself.

[kiezh]

I'm enjoying your Hugo posts! It seems like a difficult year to figure out what to vote for (with no shortage of things to vote AGAINST), but I admire your determination to evaluate all the options.

For what it's worth, I think CA:TWS is firmly sf/f. Steve is just not the same character, and it is not the same movie, without the time travel/identity/superhero stuff. The tension between the 70-year-old Nation-Defining-Legend and the real guy who's carrying it is thematically key to Captain America stories, and it can't really be replaced by any mundane "good soldier with a good reputation" story. Also, there's that whole thing with (admittedly handwavey comic-book-style) science being used to turn people into weapons, and what's the difference between a supersoldier and a weapon? Or a supersoldier and a normal soldier? (The soldiers vs. spies things doesn't technically need to be sf/f, though I certainly watched the Steve-Natasha identity stuff through the lens of her comics backstory as another weapon made by mad scientists, given how well it went with the themes. YMMV.)

I don't think any of that can be taken out and still have anything resembling the same movie. Some similar action scenes, sure, but it would be a completely different genre (and one I would find really boring and have no reason to watch, since I am in it for the sf/f elements and how the characters deal with them).

The surveillance state with drones poised to preemptively take out whoever is defined as an "enemy" was depressingly nonfictional, I agree.

[melannen]

Yeah, on further thought, I think you're right about the time travel stuff - Steve Rogers being a "man out of time" was sufficiently important that I would be okay with voting for this, I guess. I'm still not sure it's vital the story, though - it's just taking the "veteran comes home and his girl is gone and everything has changed" story and making it MORESO. I mean, I wouldn't have enjoyed this movie if it was Generic Square-Jawed Dude either, but that's because of Steve Rogers, not Captain America; I'd've still watched it if it was no-powers-AU Steve Rogers. Certainly the "I have been turned from a man into a weapon" thing has been done plenty of times with no SF elements at all - the original WS backstory in the comics, even, had a lot less SF stuff and a lot more just people being awful.

And I still feel like most of the identity stuff was coming more from the spy-stories axis than the superhero axis? Like in context with all the other stuff in the Marvel world, yeah, you can read superhero stuff in, but in this particular movie it wasn't really a large part of it, and I'm voting on this particular movie.

[kiezh]

But see, I don't think that is Steve's story. It resonates with his story, which is part of what Sam illustrates as his foil, but I do think the Practically A Household God thing is important and a big part of Steve's arc, and it relies on the time travel aspect. How he pushes against it, how he deliberately uses it, how people do or don't see through it - it's not an accident that we get several early scenes that lean so heavily on the public image of Captain America (Sam asking him about today's society vs. the 40s, the fact that there is a whole Smithsonian exhibit about him(!), etc.).

Maybe there's some similar elements you could get with a story about a soldier who did something heroic and unwillingly became a celebrity and a household name, but I feel like that would still be a really different story.

Maybe it's my own narrative biases, but I see Steve's identity stuff as all revolving around the tension between belligerent idealist skinny!Steve, the Legend of Captain America (The First Superhero!!!(tm)), and the question of who the hell that guy is walking around in the 21st century, who is and isn't both of those people.

Anyway, I can see how this one is a bit of an edge case, and depends on what criteria you use for sf/f (and award-deserving sf/f, which is messier still).

[melannen]

See, while I agree that the Great American Hero vs. Steve Rogers thing is a huge part of his arc - it has been, on and off, in the comics for a long time, it was a big part of his arc in the first movie, and in a different way in Avengers - I feel like his identity tension in this one was much more Steve Rogers, Great American Hero vs. Steve Rogers, Agent of SHIELD - he's not really primarily worried about the hero vs. self split in this one. (Perhaps most clearly illustrated by the way that he brought Bucky back by reminding him of their pre-war life *and* wearing his old uniform - all of that is The Steve Bucky Knew, that's not the tension this movie's trying to illustrate. And the tension around what's required of a SHIELD agent is a spy-thriller tension, not a superhero one specifically.)

And as part of that, they didn't really draw all that hard on his being famous as part of his arc? I think you could swap out the Smithsonian exhibit for a general one about War Heroes Coming Home that just happened to have a candid of him and Bucky in it, and hit almost all the same character notes. But you may be pulling different character notes. ^_^

[jadelennox]

I'm really sorry you were pushed into being introduced to Orphan Black with the second season finale -- it's a wonderful show, and all of those characters have a lot of personal development, but it's also a confusing conspiracy theory show, so there's no way you'd be able to pick out anything special like that. And actually a lot of the framing of the second season finale is specifically a shout out to the second season first episode, so there's a lot of framing of the entire season, which was just beautifully done, and you wouldn't get any of that without the context. It's one of the weird things about Best dramatic presentation going to a single episode of television, because so few of them stand alone these days.

In any case, aside from the ones who were obviously a different age (mother, grandmother, and a small child), there was only one other skinny white lady who wasn't a clone in that episode. Maybe two? I can't remember if Kenzi from Lost Girl is in that one; I think she isn't. But there is blonde kind of evil bisexual (as opposed to blonde adorable probably-not-evil queer lady Kenzi from Lost Girl, or brunette cornrows lesbian).

All of the other skinny white ladies are clones.

I also have problems with the male clones and telling them apart. I think the reason the show works for the most part is that the actors who does the female clones is astonishing, but also they do better things with her hair and makeup.

[melannen]

Yeah, this definitely wasn't a fair way to judge the show. But it's what the Hugo nominators suggested, so I am having fun with my utter confusion instead. It's like playing "learn the fandom from vids" except that's usually more accurate.

I think the finale problem is actually built into the current noms process - there were probably other Orphan Black episodes nominated that worked better as a stand-alone, and if you totalled them together they might have made it, but the finale is the one that stuck out as Significant to a plurality of nominators, whereas people are less likely to agree on the Best Non-Finale Ep. (Again with if we're going to nom a serial drama show, we really need to be able to nom them as entire series/seasons the way they did back in the day...)

I think I would have better things to say about it if I'd had a better episode to start with! But I think it's also clearly enough Not My Thing that it's not worth looking - I'm not super into the really suspenseful and emotional drama stuff that has very little humor in it, it's exhausting to watch, to start with. And also the way they tend to direct/cut/design/etc. those kinds of shows these days doesn't really work well for me as a viewer. (Plus have to admit I have a grudge against "They want to steal her ovaries!" that it would take a lot to get past.)

...my problem wasn't so much that it's a show with clones as that when you're going to throw several dozen characters at me, they had better look very different because hollywood-generic people with the same color hair always look alike to me for at least the first six hours. :P

I was being a bit snarky in the post, but fact that they made the clones all very different actually helped, once I figured out "Oh, I can actually visibly tell her apart from the other characters! Must be a clone." Which is probably not meant to be the point... Although I think there was at least one boring-haired brunette clone and I kept mixing her up with the one I think was meant to be her mom? Or the other little girl's mom? Maybe the moms were clones of each other. I think you overestimate my ability to tell TV-thinks-they're-middle-aged women apart from their daughters....

I thought the evil blonde was a clone? Possibly there were several evil blondes and I conflated them.

(I'm not actually face-blind, just not very good at it, esp. on TV when they're all Hollywood-bland-looking. Earth's tiny gene pool and all that.)

[dhampyresa]

How did Zola get away with saving himself on tape?

That's the part that got to me the most. FUCKING MAGNETIC TAPE DEAR GOD. I. Just. Access time? Conservation over time? Do these concepts mean nothing to you, Marvel?

[melannen]

I mean, I'm even vaguely willing to grant them the AI-on-tape thing, because comics whatever and it did make a hilarious image, but yeah: logistics! Did the rest of Hydra and/of SHIELD know about it? Why was that the best option when you have functional cryonics? If you went to all this trouble to make a magic AI why did you then blow it up? There are possible answers to all of these things but the movie was not interested in them.