Chaos! A world of disorder!

     Is this theme found anywhere in SF?  It permeates the various programs, but there are a few shows with this essential setting, and of course they are all set on Earth, in the near or far future.  One's attention turns at once to DARK ANGEL, where the Pulse has destroyed the nation's computer system and thereby brought about a social breakdown.  Then there's DOCTOR WHO, which it IS chaos to watch; its audiences contribute to the effect of anarchy and confusion.  Other shows presenting this kind of social order, or disorder, include FIRST WAVE,  LEVEL NINE, DEAD LIKE ME, THE LOST ROOM, and GHOST HUNTERS (this last, of course, occurs in the real world), and for fantasy enthusiasts there's BEASTMASTER.  One thinks also of films like TERMINATOR, BLADERUNNER, and so on; films of this sort tended to reach their apotheosis in SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW. For background we should recall also THE HITCH-HIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY and the works of William Gibson and Samuel Delaney.

     The viewpoint goes back to earlier science fiction, however, than the “New Wave” writing.  Some science fiction of the 1950s actually made use of the term “chaos”, and Robert Moore Williams used it in the title of one of his novels, THE CHAOS FIGHTERS.  As for madness, there's Roger Dee's AN EARTH GONE MAD.  In fact, one of the earliest fiction works with an SF viewpoint, Lewis Carroll's THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, portrayed widespread craziness, as did William Hope Hodgson's THE NIGHT LAND.  But these days, craziness seems to be getting inflicted on the popular culture.

  

     The Old Masters have done some corresponding work.  After portraying social dislocation and existential uncertainty in STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, Robert Heinlein went on to show the advent of Apocalypse in THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST, whose cover will give the reader a very good idea of the story.

     But the “New Wave” attitude brought with it an uncomplaining mode, best exemplified in THE HITCH-HIKER'S GUIDE, wherein the end of the world seems to be treated as a comparative trifle, to be referred to with suave British inflection over a cup of tea.  At least in DOCTOR STRANGELOVE there were counter-measures being taken to any ultimate destruction.  The GUIDE seemed to usher in the new attitude, if not to be itself spellbound by it, and it was backed by such works as THE BEASTLY BEATITUDES OF BALTHAZAR B and MEET MY MAKER THE MAD MOLECULE, both by J.P. Donleavy. 

  

     More in real life, if we seek real-life parallels to this, is the television series DARK ANGEL, which seems to take off from turbulence in Los Angeles, which is, of course, where Hollywood is located; and it seems to have origins also in South American unrest, as indicated by the title character being named Max Guevara, as with rebel leader and iconoclast “Che” Guevara.  Los Angeles (which has a South American name) is the origin-place of Frank Zappa's “United Mutations”, who participated in a national movement called “Freaking Out”.  Max comes from a genetics project, and, escaping from that, enters a destroyed America.  Let's take a closer look at the series.

     DARK ANGEL centers, as its title suggests, being a reference to a single individual, around Jessica Alba's portrayal of Max Guevara, an escapee from a genetics augmentation center called Manticore, which is breeding super soldiers for warfare.  As an angel, Max is supposed to redeem people, but is largely unsuccessful at this in the series as it is presented.  She loses several siblings she attempts to save, her affair with social crusader Logan breaks up, and as the series ends she has enlightened no one and outer society and the transgenics alike are sitting in an aura of doom, waving a flag of hope, a not atypical conclusion if one compares it to works of the realistic and nihilistic schools.  Samuel Beckett's WAITING FOR GODOT comes to mind.  However, the fact that she is destined (although not predestined) to redeem shows up in the more valid or lifelike scenes in the series.  She has a love interest with Logan (not a sexual one, very much), a perennial dissatisfaction with most elements of her environment, she sits atop a monument considering things, and she has an affinity for the oppressed.  The only accomplishment she can show is the destruction of Manticore in the crucial episode in which its top operative and henchman Lydecker joins her.  But the essence of the place remains intact, and so we have an unsuccessful archetype as well as an unsuccessful character.  Like Gully Foyle in THE STARS MY DESTINATION, she is erratic and only a figure in motion.  But Foyle was not an archetype and an archetype doesn't represent failure—they are only viewed in situations of failure.  The matter is not over until she achieves her destiny as an angel, which the writers themselves say that she is.  If she does not achieve this in the series, she achieves it in the viewers' imaginations.

     The series is fraught with symbolism and symbolical representations—Logan the computer-eunuch, Lydecker the pseudo-father, Original Cindy the girl-gone-wrong cum  savant, Normal the norm, the Space Needle, even at one point an apple of temptation, which is disdained.  But these orient the series as mythological.  Here's the action of the series, a frequently-aborted saga:

     Max, a young girl who has been kidnapped at birth and genetically engineered by transfer of animal DNA, and is being raised to be a super soldier, escapes from Manticore at the instigation of her squad leader Zack.  She's in the countryside for awhile living in a foster home, then the Pulse hits, launched by overseas enemies to degrade the country's computer system and thereby its social setup in general, and her home setup is ruined.  She goes to Seattle, a city under total surveillance, legal and otherwise, patrolled by police hoverdrones, and gets a squalid job as a delivery person at the Jam Pony (snafu'd Pony Express), a smuggling front.  She and the other workers all sit around there complaining about their job and the lowly goods they are delivering, and their manager Normal joins in the complaints, adding them to it.  They have a rather limited range of options for social activity, the Crash Down tavern being an example of it.  They're first seen watching a hacked broadcast called EYES ONLY which criticizes government corruption.  Max is doing business with Vogelsang, who runs a laundromat fronting for a computer search operation which Max is using to try to trace her compatriots, but when she robs Logan's apartment to get money to pay him, she's impressed by his means and transfers this business over to him, and gradually starts taking assignments from him.  He's aware that she's an escapee from Manticore and is interested in her, and he is the person doing the EYES ONLY broadcasts.

     She is pursued from Manticore by Lydecker, who strikes first at Vogelsang's, and his henchman Bruno nearly takes out Logan and the injury puts Logan in a wheelchair for the rest of the series, except for his use of artificial aids in walking and a couple of false recoveries.  Logan, however, locates Zack, and in return Max rescues a child residing in Logan's apartment from Lydecker.

     Max is living under concentration camp conditions, sharing them with Original Cindy.  In one altercation she is imprisoned for stealing money for medications she needs for some built-in conditions.  Sandoval, from Manticore, is surveying Vogelsang, who is killed by Zack on behalf of Manticore.  Lydecker accuses Max of the killing and a manhunt closes in on her, but murder will out and Zack is named.

     Red Prototypes, engineered with implants, and undoubtedly enemies of Manticore, show up wanting information about the rival DNA engineering  because it could increase their brief life-spans (they come off a Death Row anyway).  Zack is released from Manticore so they can follow him and find the others. He and Max rescue Tinga in Portland, with Logan driving.  Lydecker develops problems with Sandoval and Renfro (a woman played by Nancy Visitor)—they want the escapees dead and Lydecker considers them his children.  Max and Logan fight some public menaces together.  She starts encountering Manticore amoks.  Tinga is caught by Renfro and Sandoval is killed by a hoverdrone.  Logan gets an exoskeleton which enables him to walk.  Max and Zack go to free Tinga and find her dead in an experimental vat, and its housing is a trap.  Logan watches through a “satellite monitor”.  Renfro arrests Lydecker for the murder of Sandoval.  He runs off with the captured Max and joins with her and the others to “take down Manticore”.  They destroy its DNA lab so they can't come up with a next generation, resulting in a loss of funding.  Max and Zack are then captured.  She's nearly killed by a clone of herself and indeed would be dead, but Zack donates his heart to save her and his remains are put in a biotank for further parts.  Logan, who thinks she's dead, starts broadcasting about Manticore, saying taxes are diverted to its funding.  Seeing these, Renfro burns down Manticore to keep the total operation concealed.  Max escapes (in the opening of the second season), but has a virus programmed into her through which she can be traced, and the same has been made to be instantly fatal to Logan, and this, too, continues through the series.

     Every survivor of Manticore's destruction escapes and they are pursued by a Negro named White who wants to kill them all and is asked by the government to do so in order to keep the genetics involvement secret, but he belongs to a sect of genetics evolutionists  who are exposing them and ends up transferring his loyalties to them.

     They rescue Joshua, a mutant who is part dog and is looking for Sandeman, presumed to be the father of Manticore.  There are mutant riots and the public is insisting that all transgenics be killed.  Some out-and-out monsters from Manticore also terrorize the populace.

     A senator arrives to help kill the transgenics.  The series ends with the transgenics holed up in Terminal City, prepared to face off the public that's coming to kill them.  Many viewers asked for another season, but it's difficult to see any way that a third season could be accomplished, the thematic development being pretty complete.

     DOCTOR WHO raises the question in this reviewer's mind as to whether the Doctor and his people correct calamities or cause them, and during the course of the series this viewpoint is given some consideration.  Time travel WOULD result in disruption and chaos.  So the Doctor is not, viewing the whole concept, as beneficial as he may be intending to be.  At any rate he works with a technology that may as well be considered magic, crossing science fiction with fantasy.  The same may be said of the series—is it beneficial to the viewer, or detrimental to him?  If his mind is blown and his consciousness expanded, what does it expand into?  The show covers the territory he could get into, populating eternity and infinity with madness.

     American viewers haven't had much chance to view early episodes, and both the movie and the series shows that have been broadcast on SciFi TV begin in the middle of the air, and seem to have the conception that the viewer will be familiar with the earlier shows.  These were commenced on the BBC in England in Autumn of 1963.  It will interest the viewer who might want some day to view them that some of the episodes were lost and a few were more or less scrapped, a happenstance resembling the show's archaeological perspective. (STAR TREK copped out the same way on its earliest episodes.)

     The Doctor is first discovered, in the very first episode, through a schoolgirl with a false address locating her in a junkyard.  Searchers discover the Tardis (or Time Machine), which looks like a police box.  She says she and her grandfather were born elsewhere on another planet.  The Doctor kidnaps two investigators from the school, taking them back to the Stone Age, where they are imprisoned by cavemen who are trying to rediscover fire and who demand an answer of them.  The Daleks appear in the next episode, on a dead planet which has a high radiation level.  They're mutants living in metal life-support systems. 

     They have an adventure with Marco Polo, travel to a bizarre world named Marinus, encounter human sacrifice among the Aztecs, battle an alien race on a 28^th Century spaceship, view Paris during the Reign of Terror, and find Daleks ruling 22^nd Century London, trying to turn the Earth into a Haley's Comet powered by an engine drive.  The Doctor leaves his grand-daughter behind with a lover after the Daleks are killed. Then they're in Rome in 64 AD.  The Doctor has a temporary teenage traveling companion named Vicki now.  Daleks pursue the Doctor in a time machine, intending to execute him.  The kidnapped school personnel return approximately to their own time in the Dalek machine.  The Doctor disables the Tardis of a moke trying to fool around with time.  They meet Achilles and Zeus near Troy.  There's a tremendous battle with Daleks and then they're at the OK Corral.  They battle an Analogue computer in 1966, and meet Cybermen in 1986 at a Space Trading Station in Antarctica.  The Doctor transforms into Doctor #2, a younger man played by a different actor.

     They are next on a planet called Vulcan. (There is also a race of warriors called the Jaffa contemplated for the series.)  The new Doctor commences a conflict with Daleks who have arrived there during a rebellion.  Then they encounter Redcoats in Scotland, perhaps a British concern.  They tangle with a scientist named Zaroff who is trying to raise Atlantis.  They run into a plague and Cybermen at a Lunar base.  In a Trek-like episode they help a man named Medok who has escaped from an apparently orderly hospital while an underground menace controls the life of the colony on the surface.  Hypnosis machine treatments make everyone happy.  The Doctor asks, as he does in a later episode, why they want everyone to be the same.  The menace is killed in the same way the Daleks were in a previous episode, by an explosion from something that was on hand. There's impersonation, infiltration and intrigue and Dalek onslaughts, plus more Cybermen and Abominable Snowmen.  It gets James Bond-like in an episode set in Australia involving a dictator and featuring hovercrafts. 

     “The Web of Fear” is perhaps the first of the everything-happening episodes. Then there's one where the Tardis appears on the North Sea and they find a pipeline from which the Doctor hears a strange beating and he uses a sonic screwdriver to open an inspection plate.  It seems to batten on plots used long ago by others, especially when a monster emerges from beneath the sea.  The Doctor's attitude is “where'd they get this screwy plot?”  (Some of it's from SF THEATER, methinks.), ignoring the plot that he's in.  There are more Cybermen in space, then another atomics episode with a buried warfare message.  He's captured and tried by Time Lords and his present companions are sent home partially amnesiac while the Doctor assumes a new appearance.

     There wouldn't be any existential identity problem, of course, about the Doctor assuming new forms.  The third Doctor's first adventure is set in the chaos and confusion found later in the series and has Autons in it.  Shop dummies on the march and the Doctor's female companion is named Liz.  It's the Nestenes.  The episode's name is “Spearhead from Space”.  Next there's mysterious trouble at an atomic research station and beings called Slurians.  “Ambassadors of Death” follows, then in “Inferno” it's underground with atomic generators, green slime, possession, and alternate universe problems.  Then there's a return of the Autons, the Mind of Evil, the Claws of Axos,  and Daemons.  Many of the titles bear a far-off reference to Hell, as it is called (the Supreme Fantasy, some call the mythic invention and depiction of Hell).  There are Daleks, curses, sea devils, mutants and a time monster.  I thought they might be at Stargate Atlantis when an episode came up called “The Three Doctors”, but what with the Time Lords, a singularity and anti-matter, it's the two previous doctors back for a spell.  The Doctor states somewhere that his own Universe has been blown up by an anti-matter collision, but he might just be jiving. (The series had advanced to the 70s and the concept may have come from STAR TREK.)  There's a Time Warrior, dinosaurs, more Daleks and a Planet of the Spiders as this third Doctor incarnation completes his run.  A man of constant sorrow, he is burned down by radiation but regenerates.

     The Doctor's a patient in a hospital several times before this juncture and one suspects a joke about the title.  The new Doc's session opens with an Alexander Botts-like episode where a robot is stealing electronic parts for a female scientist so she can build a disintegrator gun to break in to where there are computer codes controlling the whole world's nuclear weapons.  She's backed by the robot's inventor, J.P. Kettlewell.  It's a real war within a technology.  The robot becomes a giant when hit with the disintegrator gun and the doctor destroys it with a metal corrosive.  There's a study of the origins of Daleks following their second episode about an Ark, then “Revenge of the Cybermen” and “Terror of the Zygons” and they get into this camp thing with all kinds of strange menaces in action conflicts.  There's “The Robots of Death”, “The Talons of Wing-Chiang”, and “The Sun Maker”, the vastest things ever.  So far the word “evil” has been used in four titles, “The Evil of the Daleks”, “The Mind of Evil”, “Planet of Evil”, and “The Face of Evil”.

     In “The Invasion of Time”, which in its context sounds like a thesis title, he returns to his home planet, which it's easy for a Time Lord to do, and gets into the politics in a favored sector of the planet's total time.  It's nice to see an episode set on his home world.  There's an alien invasion and a warfare using technology.  “The Armageddon Factor” also sounds like an interpretation of the series, this one by scientists.  However, “Destiny of the Daleks” is interesting to someone studying the series.  Then it's “Creature from the Pit”, “Nightmare of Eden”, “The Horns of Nimon”.  Tom Baker as the Doctor is working to prevent the destruction of the Universe in his final episode.

     The fifth Doctor is in a hospital getting over regeneration as his first episode opens.  Getting on his feet, he uses the Tardis and views some of the action prior to the Big Bang.  The five Doctors are all in this episode.  His past selves are being taken out of time and the President of Gallifrey, his home world, has to enter the top secret Death Zone to rescue them.  “Resurrection of the Daleks” shows they will just keep coming back.

     The Three Doctors and the Five Doctors of earlier episodes are scarcely matched by the Two Doctors of the sixth Doctor's “time”—the other is Doctor #2.  “Revelation of the Daleks” is of interest in this short run of episodes, which ends with five episodes called by their own names and also called “The Trial of a Time Lord”.  There is a lot of behind-the-scenes involving the Time Lords and the Matrix.  Following this, the seventh Doctor comes in.  His opening episode is so far afield that it lacks interest and is mainly a sight picture.  The Rani is a rare central figure, a woman of much power.  “Remembrance of the Daleks” makes it appear they might be dwindling.  “The Greatest Show in the Galaxy” is reminiscent of THE HITCH-HIKER'S GUIDE.

     This was followed by DOCTOR WHO The Movie, which starred the seventh Doctor and took place in San Francisco, perhaps a concession to American audiences or potential ones.  This movie went around in videotape form.  Then came the series we are familiar with, starring Christopher Eccleston.  This new series began in March, 2005, after nearly seven hundred episodes and two movies were made in England.  The Doctor wasn't kidding when he implied that people would be seeing him again.  The ScFi TV series proceeded in this manner:

     Rose Tyler, an employee of a clothing store, is transferring lottery money when she inventories the basement of the concern and sees a lot of dummies, who come to life and threaten her.  The Doctor appears, saying he's going to destroy the Nestene transmitter on top of the building that causes this effect.  There follows a surrealistic adventure involving an animated arm ripped off of one of the dummies.  He leaves, but Rose locates him on her boyfriend's computer and finds a person named Clive who has Dr. Who memorabilia.  Her boyfriend is eaten by what appears to be a trashcan, and he's replaced by an Auton likeness.  The Doctor plugs in the detached head of the Auton Mickey to find the Nestene transmitter involved.  The dummies hit the street in some highly memorable scenes when the Nestene Consciousness activates a war action.  Rose destroys the Nestene Consciousness and joins the Doctor on his travels.

     They travel to five billion AD on the very day of Earth's final destruction by a solar explosion, then he takes her back to her own planet, telling her to appreciate things while she has them, citing his own planet as an example.  Next they go into the past, meet Charles Dickens and deal with ghosts.  Aliens try to take over London in roughly the present time as the series proceeds.  Using Mickey's computer, they  reroute a missile and destroy the invaders, following the policy that an explosion will get a menace nearly every time.  The Doctor battles a Dalek nosing into a Utah project, then they visit Satellite Five, which orbits the Earth in the year 200,000, to view the Fourth Earth Empire.  They go back in time to see Rose's father and get involved in a time intrigue.  Then there's a Dada-like presentation heavy on Freudian and other forms of symbolism called “The Empty Child”, with robotic zombies seemingly originating in the World War Two “holocaust”, calling out for their mommies.  They view Cardiff's early days and Rose is annihilated in a Reality Show taken over by aliens, but she is recovered.  The Doctor goes out in a battle with Daleks and transforms, becoming David Tennant.

     Tennant shows his talents in “The Christmas Invasion”, broadcast on Christmas Day, as if good timing had somehow become important to the series. This shows collections of amok Santa Clauses and is an alien takeover plot which the Doctor offhandedly foils. (Can I write a script?)  Now the Doctor shows his power and potency by going five billion years into the future, after the end of the world earlier shown, and they view a survival planet called “New Earth”.  All they do there is some hanky-panky, though, aside from curing a plague.

     An episode where they meet Queen Victoria emphasizes the question of whether the Doctor is causing historical eccentricities or preventing them, a matter involving the bite of a werewolf getting into her bloodline.  There's an extraterrestrial attack on a school which seems to be seen as representing the educational system of Earth; the invaders violate its sanctity but are otherwise unsuccessful.  Cybermen return, but it's mainly a spectacle—one cannot be very concerned about their tactics with all the material about predestination and the futility of the same that there has been in the series.  However, this one takes place in a parallel universe.  The President of Britain dies in the episode, much like the former VP being taken by a Goa'uld symbiote in SG-1., so those are big doings there.  Mickey remains in this universe to continue the fight, making a more significant character of him.  Usually he's been being informally jilted.  There follows an episode where people are being attacked through televisions, significant in that DOCTOR WHO is a television show.

     On a planet near a black hole they find and battle the Beast of the Apocalypse, or a surrogate thereof.  As Satan, the Beast claims to be chained in its “Lake of Fire”, but a planet is not a lake and it isn't taken too seriously.  Anyway, they overcome the Beast and escape the planet.  After a couple of episodes of warfare confusion with just anything in them, there's an invasion from the parallel universe in an episode called “Doomsday”.  In the same episode, the Doctor and Rose Tyler part ways.  The next episode concerns adultery, for some reason.  Then in the following episode the Doctor encounters his next female companion.  They visit Shakespeare assaulted by his witches, New Earth, New York during the Depression (where a Dalek invasion must be countered and is); they encounter genetics misuse, participate in a space opera, and onward.

     LEVEL NINE features characters leading a virtual life and trying to track down computer criminals, somewhat disabled by being that themselves and suffering occasional busts.  An episode called “Digital Babylon” epitomizes the show.  A serial killer is being stalked through a series of porn site murders.  He likes to send out his hits on webcam.  A dog in a computer game functions as a bloodhound in tracing him.  The characters all have emotionally disturbed lives and the culture is in a chaos they've all given up trying to interpret with computer technology.  Instead the life has become virtual and has infused the computer network.  Thereby they're leading a secondary voyeuristic life resembling the life in which computer culture evolved.  The dog represents a bot status and would seem part of the killer's arrangements.  Of course, the show could be frightening to a computer-oriented audience.  I'd point out the similarity of this culture to that which exists in DARK ANGEL, and the influence of George Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR and William Burroughs' THE  SOFT MACHINE as well.  Of course, William Gibson has the makings of a script writer for the show, and the same could be said of Samuel Delaney.

     Similarly into computers is FIRST WAVE, which features an online work of news reporting called “The Paranoia Times”; one could easily think of Logan in DARK ANGEL with his EYES ONLY broadcast hacked in from a computer.  FIRST WAVE has ETs but like all the others has chaos waiting for these chaos-makers right here on Earth.

     BEASTMASTER concerns a man who has power over animals living in a future Earth that has been virtually destroyed, where magic rules over any science that exists.  The concept of a Beastmaster isn't new; Tarzan and Mogli were that, and Clyde Beatty.  But the destroyed future world is different.  The original author, Andre Norton, did a better job with the same theme in DAYBREAK: 2250 AD.

     The Beastmaster movie was made in 1982.  A priest sends a witch to steal Dar from his mother's womb and, this done, Dar is saved by a peasant who adopts him.  Their village is wiped out and Dar seeks revenge.  His brother Tal was predestined to replace King Zad, their father, which should have been Dar's position, as firstborn, but he was assumed dead.  The priest kills Zad.  A girl named Kira got away and becomes Dar's girl friend.  His brother also survives and becomes king as Dar goes wandering.  This invites a sequel, but a second Beastmaster film, THROUGH THE PORTAL OF TIME, is in many ways a re-run of the first, transacting with present-day Hollywood.  It has a similar reputation to BATTLESTAR GALACTICA 1980.  A third film was done, more of a sequel than the spinoff of #2, called THE EYE OF BRAXUS, wherein a sorcerer called Lord Agon wants an amulet with which he can invoke the demon Braxus, given Tal by his father and then entrusted to Dar.  Finally Braxus is successfully brought forth, and the rest of it is a battle with this being.  Hollywood publicity quotes fans as calling this some more hokum.  A documentary was made in 2005 called “The Saga of the Beastmaster”.  There is actually more to the television series than there was to the movies, including encapsulations of the plots of the movies, but the series starts with Dar's wanderings, somewhat based on the events of the first film.  It was televised in 1999, just in time for the apocalyptic turn of the century.  There were three seasons and 46 episodes, and the series ended in late 2001, suggesting that there must have been intervals during seasons.  The first episode was called “The Legend Continues”, apparently keeping in touch with fans who had asked for it from the days when frequent broadcasts of the movie had made it a television favorite.  They were only seventeen years older when they got their request.

     The TV series begins with Dar's quest for his lost love Kyra, apparently Kira spelled differently,  who is enslaved by Terron warriors, of whom King Zad is the leader.  So it does depart from the legend considerably, but perhaps that's because a legend  is what it is.  One can never be sure of the accuracy of those.  Accompanied by his ferrets, Dar raids Zad, and is joined in battle by his tiger, and meets Tao, but Zad runs off with Kyra.  The Sorceress views this and tells The Ancient One (they're presented as archetypes) that she wants Dar's power.  She interferes with his quest.  Tao, who is of the Eiron, a group of freethinkers, strikes out on his own, is captured by enemies and rescued by Dar.  Dar meets an outcast Terron who loves Kyra and they have a fight to the death which doesn't actually reach that termination.  Kyra escapes and finds Dar, but then is captured by the Sorceress and the Ancient One.  We find that a female demon has given Dar his powers, ripping him to pieces and then restoring him in the process (primitive genetics engineering?); an episode shows this in flashback.  This history was presumably made up at this point in the series, and in fact as we continue watching we can see a lot of prior history being evolved.  Dar battles a warrior perhaps representing Atilla the Hun, saves the lives of some women, protects a princess' unicorns, meets a woman named Arina who becomes central to him and also has to be rescued, joins Tao in investigating his homeland, and battles various small-time dictators and tyrants.  The episodes are, of course, of individual interest, but they interfere with the saga.  The balance of nature being upset (by depriving Dar of his powers) is an example of great moments in the series.  Zad develops a rival named Voden.  Dar finally tries to discover his true destiny, and thereafter his heritage, but it's mostly being what he has been.

     The series hasn't much point and is mostly a view of the survival ethic.  As in DARK ANGEL, the world is not very recoverable.  One just lives however one does.

     I'd be leaving early if I didn't mention some books, and I have several of note.  They may have been noted by a lot of people long before this, but a lot of people probably haven't seen them at all, and would like to.  I refer to several volumes of STAR TREK interpretation and criticism.

     THE BEST OF THE BEST OF TREK doesn't call itself essential, but anyone who has the book has Star Trek….that is, providing they've seen the episodes too.  It pretty well wraps up the series in a number of articles collected anthology-wise by Walter Irwin and G.B. Love and published by Penguin RoC, copyright 1990.  The book is fully attentive to every aspect of the series including its fans and its producers, and it gets so attentive to the major characters that it starts to psychoanalyze them.  Its major themes are gone into in detail by real experts, and the book does not lack gossip and does not fail to go over errors of various kinds in the series and interpret its impact on culture.  The writers know whereof they speak and they speak well and understandably.  I doubt if there's another book about the show that can match it.

     THE MEANING OF STAR TREK,  Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1997, is the work of a scholar, Thomas Richards by name, and adds immeasurably to the viewer's take from having viewed the series.  The author has a substantive style that means you have a book, and it can serve as reference or backing for your own evaluations of the series, as well as being a fine aid and augmentation in discussions of it.

     Less in the mainstream are THE ETHICS OF STAR TREK and THE METAPHYSICS OF STAR TREK, but both are by authors who mean what they are saying, the first being Judith Barad and Ed Robertson, Harper Collins publishers, year 2000,  and the second is the work of Richard Hanley,  again Harper Collins, 1997.  These books recommend themselves, but allow me to add to the recommendation.  Don't just watch STAR TREK cold, get some reading done.