ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 12/05/09
“Verisome Fido-S Tech support. How can we help you?”
“My TV….uhm…stopped working.”
“We can help you with that. Can you verify the name and address on the account?”
“Republibot 3.0, out of St. Grissom”
“Very good, mister 3.0, what seems to be the trouble today?”
“Well, my TV isn’t working.”
“It what way isn’t it working?”
“Well, you know the part where you sit down and watch pictures on it, and listen to sounds?”
“Yes.”
“That aspect of it isn’t really working.”
“Ok, can you be a bit more specific?”
“No, I’m sorry, I really can’t. I’m sort of an idiot.”
“Ok…hm, yes, looking at your file I see we’ve had a number of calls with you stringently proclaiming your idiocy first thing, and then breaking down crying.”
“To my shame, yes.”
“Ok, then, first things first: is there smoke or flame coming out of your TV?”
“No.”
“Good. Good. Is it on?”
“Yes.”
“Ok, why don’t you tell me what you were trying to do when it all went wrong.”
“Great! Ok, I decided to watch ‘Space Truckers,’ staring Dennis Hopper and a scantily-clad-yet-strangely-sexless Debi Mazar, to review for my website. Unfortunately, the only copy I have is on VHS, so I had to, you know, turn the VCR on and…uhm…put the tape in and stuff, right? If this is too detailed…”
“No, no, I can follow it. Do go on.”
“Well, anyway, I haven’t used the VCR in like 18 months or more, so I’ve kind of forgotten how it works, but then it started giving me onscreen options to reset the clock and stuff that I don’t care about…and then…[voice quivers]…gimmie a minute…..”
“What did you do?”
“I hit a button on the remote - one button - and now nothing will work.”
“Huh.”
“So since then, I can’t watch the tape *OR* the TV. I’ve been running around for 35 minutes, trying to get it to run, alternately plugging and unplugging things, using various kinds of profanity, but nothing’s working. I even turned it over to my son to fix - he’s twelve - but he couldn’t figure it out either. I just don’t understand how I could have broken it so bad by simply touching one button.”
“Can you describe…”
“Tee Vee no workee.”
“Right. What channel is it on?”
“I don’t know….uhm…two?”
“Put it on three.”
“Oh, yes, there we go. Perfect picture. Debi Mazar in her purple spangly bra. Yup, yup, yup. That’s it right there. I’m an idiot. Thank you.”
“No problem.”
PLAY BY PLAY
We start out with some surprisingly nice space footage zooming in on Triton, largest moon of Neptune. On the surface, we’re in a somewhat badly lit and fake-looking lab, where everyone’s favorite Science Fiction prop, Shane Rimmer, is talking to an English dude about their new project, which is, at that moment, running amok. A bunch of space marines seal off the lab, while higgledy piggeldy breaks loose, and various fighters and tank-things outside are destroyed by the whatever-it-is. The Whatever then gets through the big, impressive door, revealing itself to be a disappointing-looking Rubbersuit Monster. It disintegrates the space marines, and kills everyone in the room. It’s just about to kill Shane Rimmer when the English guy hits a button on his car alarm fob, and the thing deactivates. Turns out it’s a new bioweapon they’ve been developing for “The Company.” Shane Rimmer compliments the English guy on his brilliance, and says that with a hundred of these dealies, his people could take over the world.
“Which world, Sir?”
“The Earth, of course. The government’s in trouble, it has been for years.”
It turns out the English Guy made ten thousand Rubbersuit monsters, all answerable to Shane Rimmer. Rather than giving the English Guy a promotion, Rimmer decides to have the Rubbersuit Monster kill him.
In another time and another place, we see a space truck - really more like a space train - driven by Dennis Hopper, hauling genetically modified “Square Pork” to a shipping hub, a huge space station evidently in the middle of nowhere. He’s an independent trucker, but he’s two days late, so the Interpork shipping manager - George Wendt - tries to stiff him by only giving him a quarter of his salary. Hopper plays tough, and refuses to release his cargo until he’s paid in full. Then he goes to the hub Bar & Grill to talk to his sweetie, Debi Mazar, a waitress. Mazar is, of course, making goo-goo eyes at Stephen Dorff. There’s some tension there, as obviously both men are interested in the same woman. While there, some of Wendt’s Interpork goons hijack Hopper’s load, leaving him with bupkus. He’s upset, but
Yeah, it's true. It's like when Southerners turn up in British TV shows, and they're all cowboy hats and Hawaiian shirts, over-the-top accent, and talking like Foghorn Leghorn. It's overdone. It's too much. When it's done right - Bones from TOS - it's just a guy with a tiny little dash of added color that's only really noticeable overtly when he's being amiable (He is more amiable than the rest of the cast), drunk, or when he gets excited and his accent tends to come out more. McCoy's southernness is a flourish, not a cliche. (And do Southerners - apart from Texans - even *wear* cowboy hats?)
And probably one they didn't want, but couldn't avoid, since DeForest Kelly was Southern. Conversely, Southerners in UK shows are generally played by Brits, and in the US they're generally played by non-southerners, badly. (Kira Sedgewick does a great job on The Closer)
My favorite blue collar hero/redneck in space is probably Mal Reynolds from Firefly: Raised a cowboy and religious, and slightly crazy, he lost everything in the war including his faith, and after they let him out of the POW camp, he remains charmingly unreconstructed. He claims nihilism (Though repeatedly we see he's not). He's scrappy, smart though uneducated (well read, though), practical, honorable for a criminal, funny as hell, and sort of unexpectedly offhandedly badass. Even if his side had won the war, he'd still be lower class, but probably not a half-crazy criminal. Either way, though, he'd make it work for him.
Apart from him, probably Garibaldi, though he's not a redneck. He's a poor lower class blue-collar guy who became a marine with a drinking problem and a history of screwing up badly, but there's a core of decency to him and an intelligence - he's a really good cop - that makes people keep giving him more chances. For instance, he racistly fears Telepath in general, but he's been shown to have two close relationships with *specific* telepaths. He was terrified of getting the Draffa plague and dying, but he wasn't about to let some poor infected Markab get beat to death by a mob. Though you can see it playing over his face - do I get involved, or not? And when he finally went over to the dark side...yow!
The Artist Formerly Known As Republibot 3.0