They should win an award for "getting it"

[seriousfic]

Seen in an advert for the remade The Day The Earth Stood Still (I'm still surprised they haven't managed to fix an abbreviation with an X into the ad campaign. DESSX!): On December 12th, we make our stand.

Played over scenes of jet fighters, tanks, and such going to fight the big globey things. Which is, umm, actually called for, as in this version Klaatu wants to destroy the world.

You know, Hollywood, I accept that you're going to make movies about benevolent/superior aliens who lecture us Earthlings about polluting the environment and waging war and voting no on Prop 8. But for the love of God, when you put in bullheaded military officers to be misguided about our condescending alien friends, could you please not make their fears totally justified?

I mean, James Cameron cut out the mile-high tidal wave subplot from The Abyss (watch it again, knowing the insane military commando is right about everything and our "heroes" are actually unknowingly helping commit planetary genocide. It's called the director's cut), so you've gotta know this lesson. Just... either give us evil aliens whose ass we can kick or benevolent aliens for our kids to play with. Not... both... at the same time...

Comments

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

What's funny is, for all his pretense of respecting the rights of sovereign societies, Kirk was as much a meddler as anyone. I mean, how many times did he break the Prime Directive? Of course, as TNG showed, if you actually follow the Prime Directive, you're pretty much screwed, too. I remember a MAD magazine parody in which the characters said, "Capt. Picard, that alien is raping Counselor Troi! What can we do?" "Nothing! The Prime Directive prohibits us from interfering in native mating rituals!"

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

That's because idiot TV writers amped the Prime Directive up from a reasonable "careful where you tread" precaution to a dogma that would have the Enterprise not stop a world-ending meteor (because world-ending meteors are important to a civilization's cultural integrity), reaching its nadir in Enterprise where Phlox would rather commit genocide than break Ape Law the proto-Prime Directive.

Hopefully, J.J. Abrams will rein it in to an actual directive rather than a cheap font of DRAMA!

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

Dude ... you're trusting J.J. Abrams to save the franchise?

That's like hoping that Joel Schumacher would "rescue" the Batman films after Batman Returns.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

I know, I know...

But I liked Mission: Impossible 3!

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

And besides, who knows better, Captain Kirk or a couple billion stinking aliens? Captain Kirk. Every time.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

Kind of proving my point about White Man's Burden, there.

At least Doctor Who is internally consistent about it, because the Doctor doesn't pretend to follow any Prime Directive at all. He's just a total anarchist.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

Except for that time he got all snooty about humans figuring out a way to extend their lifespans. And defending themselves from treacherous aliens. And creating cars that don't pollute the environment...

Oh, RTD, no!

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

The "extending lifespans" thing has a lot to do with the Doctor knowing, from direct personal experience, exactly how corrupt a society becomes when its most powerful members are virtually immortal. What gets handwaved a lot in the NuWho era is that, for as much as the Doctor proclaims himself Last of the Time Lords, he really did despise the utter living shit out of 99 percent of his fellow Time Lords, and over the course of the original series, his seething hatred and total contempt for them was pretty much proven 100-percent correct (see also: "Trial of a Time Lord").

The "defending them from other aliens" thing is indeed a bit condescending (which, to be fair to RTD, was actually brought up in "The Stolen Earth," when Harriet Jones points out that she was right to destroy the Sycorax, because the Doctor wouldn't always be there to save Earth).

And the "creating non-polluting cars" thing was actually something that UNIT asked the Doctor to investigate, rather than him proactively going after Luke Rattigan on his own, and even when the Doctor and Rattigan faced off, it was less about OMG U HUMANS CANNOT HAS ADVANCED TECH and more about O HAI SMARTASS SUPERGENIUS KID WITH NO EXTERNAL REGULATING MECHANISM, I RECOGNIZE MYSELF TEH MASTER IN U.