Photon Bullet, Take Two

I let it sit a couple of days and right now I'm watching the episode again to get my thoughts in order. Not being half-asleep helps with this a lot. Additional thoughts as I watch.

Lucas's jersey has the same brand marking as Walmart's house brand. I don't know baseball to say if these are real teams with real jerseys and I'm just seeing a similar logo, or if this is really Walmart wear.

The group of random geeks behind Mycroft while he greets Lucas and the awet team don't look anything like minors. Some of them have wrinkles. I wonder if they were real extras, or they just got people from the crew to fill the scene. It's not much of a crowd. Maybe they were a last-minute decision? The extras later on look like teens or twentysomethings (dialog later establishes that most of the "kids" are college-aged) which means they're all in their thirties and have four kids. Hollywood casting.

When Lucas started playing the game with the cubes, I think the script probably said Lucas was spellbound or something. I don't think Brandis played a lot of video games, since he looks more stoned or aroused. Odd response for three-dimensional Tetris. He would have been like seventeen when this was shot, so he's of an age to have had the NES. Maybe I'm just reading his expressions wrong. He has a couple of ambiguous faces that come up when Hitchcock's breasts bob inches from his lips and when he's simply impressed with the coolness of a guest star. Unless Lucas was meant to be sexually attracted to the Regulator. In later scenes he's much more convincingly having fun playing. Did someone hold a funny monkey up off-camera?

Continuity. Lucas, according to Bridger, did not even have a toothbrush. Yet now he's in different clothes from when he arrived. He will change at least once more. Does Node Three have a large cache of clothing you can just paw through and take? There's nothing that says they sent over a package of his stuff before they left. Are we to believe that Mycroft has people change into clothing he approves of too? What is he, the UEO? The absence of a line of throwaway dialog here leaves us with this. I can buy it in a Microsoft in 1995 sort of way, but nobody even talks about it. Just like when the guest cast come on seaQuest and are forced to strip at gunpoint.

More continuity. If Lucas is on seaQuest as some kind of punishment (since he's a "disicpline problem") and his father pulled strings to make it happen, how is he able to get off the boat so easily for an indefinite period as Bridger and he both think he's going to do with Node Three? If he really was just dumped, then that says a lot about his parents. But Lucas seems to have only average issues with authority. You would think he would have more. Especially if his parents were emotionally abusive or neglectful. I like Lucas as a character, but his background isn't making a lot of sense.

Ok, I think there are several intertangled issues with this episode. I like it. It's a good character piece for Lucas. But I want to try to parse out each issue separately to see where it falls short and where it delivers.

1) It's a character episode for Lucas.
This isn't really a character-driven show, but with an ensemble cast it can be good to have episodes that are really about one or two characters instead of the full load interacting with some situation. Most seaQuest episodes so far are in the mold of presenting a situation which the crew must resolve. The plot walks to them and they play around with it, either on board or though awet teams. In this one we step away from that formula to deliver a single character into a situation where there are elements of a real dilemma which is not easily, or obviously, solved by putting the technobabble into the Captain's judgment and giving Darwin a few lines. This is both a stronger format for a show that aspires to continuity (seaQuest does not) and provides more engagement with the character focused upon. We do learn some things about Lucas from taking him out of his customary environment, even if these things leave a mixed impression.

2) It presents an interesting dilemma.
What responsibility do intellectuals have to society? Chomsky says their role is to expose the lies and confront power with truth. Plato says they're the elite masters, philosopher kings with a right now only to rule but to construct lies that aid them in that practice. Mycroft is definitely in Platonic mold here. He knows best. The story helps by making him right about some things. He stops aid money from going into private coffers and he gets in the way of election fraud. These are clearly good deeds. However, his plan is to do this secretly and with secrecy comes freedom from accountability. Not only did no one elect him, but no one is able to scrutinize his actions. He would be power without responsibility, a technocratic tyrant.

If Lucas rejected Mycroft's plan on those grounds, it would be an excellent principled stand and do a great deal to develop his character. But that's not what he does. In the climax dialog, Lucas does point out that no one elected Mycroft. That may be a valid objection to taking corrective action against a democratic state, but Mycroft could still have been a whistleblower. He could have exposed the corruption he found. Direct action against a non-democratic state is more reasonable, since the democratic option simply is not available. Or to put it another way, you can't run against Hitler and good luck getting an investigative committee running. But Mycroft could, for example, take his evidence before Congress or Parliament, to the media, and so forth. This isn't talked about at all. Instead we are left with accepting, even endorsing and being a silent party to, the evils of the world as the only alternative.

As the story moves on, Mycroft becomes more and more obviously unhinged as well. This also undermines the point. If Mycroft were measured and sensible, in addition to being right, it would make for a more provocative story. Instead he turns into a leftist loon. Lucas rejects his plan to help people not because of accountability, or even lack of democratic mandate. He simply says you can't help anonymous people. I'm sorry, but if you feed someone who is starving you don't have to learn their life story to conclude that you've helped them out a bit. This ends up being an extremely parochial philosophy that ends with you only helping close personal friends. It's easy to help your friends. You like them.

Then, after having dismissed the notion of helping anybody on a large scale as impossible, Lucas's choice is further nullified by having the technology failing. Node Three could not have controlled the World Bank network anyway so whatever Lucas decided didn't matter. You can only pull that trick if you're going to have the character take this as a setback and try the same thing over again.

3) This is an episode about Lucas's identity.
This is related to it being a spotlight episode for him. Lucas's peers are not on the ship. Nobody on the ship can meaningfully challenge him in a field he cares about. They are not his people. This is not his home. Node Three is both of those and the show sensibly plays up the appeal. But the status quo must prevail, so Lucas has to choose the strange people on the ship. Does he really have friends there, aside Darwin? Bridger isn't a friend; he's a parent. There's reference to him paling around with Ortiz and O'Neil, but he doesn't actually do that. We've only seen them hang out when one of them needs Lucas or there's money involved. If the writers wised up to that, it explains Mycroft being turned into a cult leader even if it harms the rest of the episode.

But this brings me back to geek fandom. Lucas is the geek on the show, not O'Neil. O'Neil is a geek, but he is not the audience surrogate. O'Neil is a spaceman. He's one of the UEO pod people. If he were in the science contingent maybe, but they only exist with Levine is polishing his crystals or they remember that they're paying for Westphalen whether Stephanie Beecham gets screen time or not. Lucas is the average person, the point of view character. This is doubly so for a fandom that has high opinions about its own intelligence considering he's portrayed as a genius. If anybody is like the fandom, as the fandom itself perceives itself, it's Lucas.

Yet Lucas does not choose to be with people like him. He decides to hang out with the guys on the football team. The normals. The people that much of scifi fandom seems to define itself in opposition too. This is more of that dichotomy between a self-realized exceptional person in a minority position who is confident and secure being an outsider and the one who only says he's happy as an outsider but really wants to be a part of the in-crowd.