Out Of Alignment

First off, I wouldn't be at all surprised if lots of people saw the sixth episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as further evidence that Joss Whedon has been neutered by his involvement in such a huge franchise. One of the team gets infected with an alien virus, tries to jump out of the jet to save her comrades, but is miraculously saved. I'll admit that half of me was hoping that they'd allow Simmons to fall to her death, because that would have been a welcome boot up the arse of the series... It's not just a matter of showing that 'no-one is safe' (which seems to be about the only thing that excites people about ensemble dramas these days - probably thanks to the legions of people who watched Game of Thrones without ever having heard of the books, let alone read them) to prove that Joss Whedon is back on form. I mean, let's not forget that none of the key players died in the first series of Buffy or the oft-cited, much-loved supposed pinnacle of Whedon's TV career, Firefly. Killing off one of the agents only a few episodes into the first season would just be pandering to the wrong crowd.

The half of me that was hoping for Simmons to die thought that it would be interesting to see Fitz develop without his other half - because, let's face it, the moniker 'Fitzsimmons' accurately reflects the impression that they might as well be one person.

The half of me that was certain she wouldn't - couldn't - die was more interested in seeing how the team develops as-is, rather than suddenly being either cut down or having to work in another new 'permanent' character. I have to admit that the team's current dynamic reminds me more than a little of the idiots from the first two series of Torchwood, only perhaps a little more professional and certainly not as oversexed. They're supposedly all brilliant in their fields, and they manage to solve each week's problem within the allotted 45 minutes, but they all act like students... and long-term readers of this blog will probably know my opinions on students (in terms of the general stereotype - I'm dating a student, so I know they don't all fit that stereotype). Part of it is that some writers assume 'snappy dialogue' means 'ceaseless infantile bickering' and, while AoS's writers aren't quite that bad - certainly nowhere near the likes of Star Trek: Enterprise - there are better ways of creating snappy character interaction.

Over the weekend, while the skies were clear, I suggested to my girlfriend that we attempt a little stargazing with my cheapo reflector telescope but, despite standing out in the cold on my balcony for something approaching half an hour, we never got much further than the certainty that I should properly calibrate the damned thing before attempting anything like that again. Today, I did just that.

It was an interesting process, hampered slightly by the fact that the image I get through the eyepiece is either 135° out of true or, more likely, upside down and only 45° out. Either way, the little laser pointer on the viewfinder was nowhere near whatever the telescope was looking at when I started, but now it's about as good as I can get it without turning the viewfinder into some kind of telescopic sight. With any luck and favourable weather, we should be able to see the moon fairly well when it's next in the right area of the sky.

Also over the weekend, I went to see the second Thor movie. I noted, when writing about the first film, that the biggest problem is that Thor isn't one of the most interesting characters in the Marvel pantheon. With the introduction out of the way, the film-makers had free reign to tell a proper story, delving further into the mythos. It's an interesting take on the Norse myths, but that small fact alone meant that even this film required a lengthy exposition, narrated by Anthony Hopkins, at the beginning. Just like any movie of this kind, it has its share of plot holes - for a story about the alignment of the nine realms of Yggdrasil, the fixation on Greenwich in particular was pretty bizarre, though that did lead to a couple of interesting moments of comedy, not least Thor boarding the tube (though I should have made a note of the station he boarded at, as I'm sure the directions he got were wrong!) - and much of the portal-related shenanigans were not properly concluded. For a film that weighed in almost 2 hours, it felt like a lot of the story ended up on the editing room floor, with huge great jumps from scene to scene in quite a few places. The tertiary characters had virtually nothing to do (I was particularly disappointed by how little screen time Zachary Levi had, taking over the role of Fandral from Josh Dallas, who's now occupied in filming Once Upon A Time) and Thor himself had very little to do other than hitting things... But perhaps that's about par for the course for the guy who wields Mjölnir. I had to explain the post-credits sequence with the Collector and an Infinity Gem to the friend I was with but, since I only had Capcom's old fighting game, Marvel Superheroes, as a reference, I probably didn't explain it very well. It was a fun film, just nothing outstanding...