Oops and SMALL and TALL TALES

First of all – oops. Last night’s episode of “Agents” is called “Nothing Personal” and it aired on April 29, not May 5, as it is self-evident. My bad, I had a rather exciting evening.

Second, I want to talk about a book called SMALL and TALL TALES of EXTINCT ANIMALS. This is a rather interesting book, albeit published primarily for children, about extinct animals, of course. It discusses 27 species of extinct birds and mammals – the odd animal out is Lonesome George the giant Galapagos tortoise, who is a reptile instead.

The book’s design is simple: it got a prologue, a map of where the extinct animals were located before they died out, the animals’ entries, a glossary of some of the more obscure terms and...not exactly an epilogue, but a ‘frieze’ of the animals, done in black silhouettes over a more colorful background – a rarity in many books.

Let me elaborate. The animals’ entries consist on one half, of a comic that tells some sort of an ancient myth or legend, makes some sort of an anecdote, depicts just how exactly the animal in question died out and why, etc. The other half is essentially a fact-box that depicts the animal’s statistics – just how big and heavy it was, what were its’ particular features (the horny plates of Steller’s sea cow,  the giant claws of the giant ground sloth, the tail of the Glyptodont, etc). Artwork dominates the text in the book, no doubt, but the half-comic half-factbox works – it conveys enough information for its audience (especially the younger readers) for them to understand what is going on (the animal has died out and this is why) and to be, hopefully, intrigued enough to continue to read about the modern animal extinctions and perhaps later on to do something about it – join the World Wildlife Fund or something...

The book’s other features are slightly more ambiguous. The book’s map, depicting where each extinct animal lived is rather simple – it is an ecological map, not a political one, it just shows the relative ecosystems of the world – the deserts, the jungles, the mountains – and where each animal lived. It is also colored-coded – the Americas’ animals are outlined by a different color than Africa’s or Eurasia’s or Oceania’s. The book itself is divided into four parts – Americas, Africa, Eurasia, Oceania – but there is no warning, no specified separation between the parts: for example, you flip over the page with Lonesome George and without any warning you’re suddenly dealing with African extinct animals instead. It is not very clever and subtracts any possibility of any intermediate conclusions being presented in EXTINCT ANIMALS. (The final conclusion is something else and will be discussed below.)

Second, there is the glossary. It discussed such terms as biodiversity, extinction and myths & legends. True, EXTINCT ANIMALS aims at children readers, rather than the grown-ups, but by now (the book was first published in 2010, translated into English in 2012) even children probably know what biodiversity or myths & legends mean. Thus, the glossary is probably unnecessary and again, it actually subtracts from the overall value of the book. 

Finally, the frieze in question. It creates a semi-panoramic timeline view of the 27 animals described by EXTINCT ANIMALS as it was said before, and it also acts as a conclusion of sort: it shows how the described animals have died out throughout the ages, as a rule – after coming into contact with men. This frieze just emphasizes the book’s message – all of these animals died out because of human action – one last time and is a rather effective medium, especially for a younger audience.

But what about the book’s message? Were humans responsible for all of the extinctions? Perhaps unintended by the makers of EXTINCT ANIMALS – Hélène Rajcak and Damien Laverdunt – show several waves of animal extinction during the last 15 000 years or so. The oldest mammals, the so-called mega-fauna of Pleistocene (and Pliocene, by extension), from the giant echidna of Australia to the woolly mammoth of Siberia (Eurasia) died out when humans were just beginning to make their mark on the world and probably had nothing to do with the following extinctions. However, the animals that died out during the last 2 000 years – yes, they probably perished due to human actions, whether you’re talking about the Sicilian dwarf elephant and the European lion (a subspecies of the modern lion, actually) or Chinese river dolphin and Lonesome George the giant tortoise, undoubtedly. During the Pleistocene, humans were still not numerous enough to affect the world around them – but during the Holocene (a la right now) they most certainly are: the frieze shows how the extinction process speeds up from the 1700s-1800s. 

Thus, the message of EXTINCT ANIMALS implies that and suggests that humans have to clean up their act or the Chinese river dolphin and Lonesome George (who died on June 24, 2012, two years after the book was originally published by Gecko Press) will be succeeded by more mammals, birds, reptiles and other animals – a message worthy enough to be thought about and to be, possibly, prevented.

S.H.I.E.L.D., May 5 - Ragtag

After tonight’s episode it became obvious: the previous episode – “Nothing Personal” – and this one formed this season’s nadir for the titular team: Ward proved to be a traitor, agent Koenig died, and May left. Only May left for a reason – to recuperate at her mother’s, to discover (or uncover?) what is up with the project T.A.H.I.T.I., and to talk to ex-director Hill about providing some assistance to Coulson and co. And because she is that amazing, she succeeds with every part of her agenda. 

That’s agent May. And speaking of amazing, this episode had some equally awesome footage of Coulson and Skye’s escape from the Helicarier – but more on that below.

Hereby, or thereby, or whatever, but this episode had showed that wherever Ward’s loyalties may lie, Skye has made her choice, and it is with S.H.I.E.L.D., even if the latter is represented by Coulson, Tripplet, Fitz & Simmons, plus May and anyone May may be able to involve (like Maria Hill, at least temporarily). And you got to give her credit – not only she is loyal, she is also resourceful, considering that she was able to escape Ward at first, before Deathlok stepped in. Afterwards, Skye resisted until the end, when Deathlok got Ward’s heart to stop, just for a while. True, it may have given Ward second thoughts about Hydra, Garrett, and so on, but it did force Skye to decrypt her code, more or less. And then in swooped Coulson and rescued the damsel. Hoorah!

Incidentally, the getaway via Lola, the amazing flying car was some of the most remarkable movie magic one has ever seen on a TV screen. “Movie” because this episode of “Agents” was strongly tied-in with the Marvel movie-verse: Skye talks about Red Skull (the villain of the first Captain America movie and his archnemesis), Hill goes to work for Tony Stark (perhaps a fourth Iron Man movie in the works), the last part of “Ragtag” talks about the Avengers and so on.

The last part is also important because it reveals the truth behind Coulson’s conditions: the initial procedure cured him physically, but caused him to go crazy until his memories got fixed, and even that was a temporary solution, as the previous episodes of the first season had showed. What’s more, now that Skye had been cured in the same manner, this affects her too. Oops. Judging by Coulson’s last expression in this episode? Double oops.

While Coulson recuperates from his latest bit of knowledge, Skye – from Ward’s betrayal, Hill – goes to work for Tony Stark and May does what she does best, Fitz & Simmons have finally gotten together – sort of. Fitz does confess that Simmons is very, very important for him in his own, overly subtle and indirect way – and for him (well, him and Simmons) this is a big breakthrough.

Agent Tripplet played largely a background role in this episode, and Deathlok was Deathlok: he knows that what he does is wrong, he just assumes that he does not have any choice in doing this. Maybe he does not, in which case his difference from Ward grows even bigger: with this being the penultimate episode of the season, there is only one episode left to see if this will amount to anything.

So: Skye has bested her temptation and Ward, May showed Coulson the truth (and it is not pretty), Fitz told Simmons the truth, and Ward was bested by Skye. Oh, and director Hill came over. All in all – a very good episode.

S.H.I.E.L.D., April 22 - Light

And so the break that the titular agents had was short-lived. Starting from the very beginning of this episode they had to defeat a very audacious villain – Dark Light, or Dark Force, or someone named along the dark line. Basically, Whedon went down the BtVS memory lane with him – Dark Light was a creepy stalker, like Angelus, and he was a vampire, like Angelus (true, an energy vampire rather than a standard one), and he was vaporized using sunlight (synthesized sunlight)...maybe not like Angelus, but like a vampire all the same.

Dark Light aside, it should also be noted that we were offered a glimpse into agent Coulson’s past, when he had an opportunity (in theory) to live a normal life, with a normal girlfriend, in a normal relationship – but he put it all aside for duty, for which he died during the Avengers movie (remember?). This is especially important, because the team’s relationships are breaking apart fast – the team itself is breaking apart fast! May has left the team and Coulson behind, (and it may sound trademark, but she did call her mother, grandmother, or other older female relative when it happened), Skye has realized that Ward is evil, so her relationship with him has to change, and Fitz decided to be the bigger man against agent Triplet and give up Simmons to him. Of course he had not used those words or say that aloud – he is not that clueless when it comes to women – but that is what did.

And yet it is obvious that the agents had it better than agent Koenig did – Ward had killed him, just shortly before Skye figured out a way to track down Hydra villains (and others), but that is to be expected: somehow S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, played by guest stars, do not last on the show very long – they either die or just are not seen again or both...but that is besides the point.

What is the point? The point is that through the season “Agents” showed how they accomplish their goals and surpass their obstacles through sheer teamwork. Now, however, due to their unintentional actions and intentional sabotage their team has fallen apart, and with Hydra pressing down on all fronts they have to pull themselves together – or be hanged separately. By the necks via a hemp noose, perhaps. Will they succeed? Will they fail? Only the last few episodes well tell...

PREHISTORIC LIFE - a book review

Dorling Kindersley’s book of PREHISTORIC LIFE... what can be said about it?

Firstly, it was intended as a book for children – that is evident in wonderful, well-shot (or well-designed) illustrations: some real-life photographs, some – 3-D images, some – drawn in more traditional ways. It is evident in text, which mostly consists of a series of short sentences and/or paragraphs, designed to give maximum of information in minimum of text.

Secondly, despite the above-mentioned intent, what PREHISTORIC LIFE comes across is a multimedia site made paper: the fact boxes contain all sorts of asides that just distract the reader, and the images themselves are different and distributed unevenly: most of 3-D images concern the dinosaurs and other Mesozoic reptiles; the photographs (and other media) concern other parts of the book. 

Thirdly, the fact boxes themselves are uneven. Diplodocus, Stegosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, Edmontosaurus and Euoplocephalus are the most detailed fact boxes (among the dinosaurs): the book’s writers, designers, other members of the staff team spent most of their attention there, showing various details of the skeleton. Fair enough. But the Iguanodon fact box shows only the bones of its front limb – and there is no mention of the fact that Iguanodon and Megalosaurus were the first dinosaurs to have ever been studied by scientists, which is simply wrong and incorrect.

Then we have the intended audience of the book. As it was mentioned before, the media element of PREHISTORIC LIFE aims at children, but the abundance of actual scientific facts, the size and weight of the actual book (with over 500 pages PREHISTORIC LIFE may not be heavier than an average brick, but neither it is lighter), the cost of it make PREHISTORIC LIFE a very hefty and doubtful gift for an average child: in this day and age they would rather look up the dinosaurs, the pterosaurs and the mega-mammals on the Internet rather than shift through the pages – for a lay person of a pre-teen/teen age that is boring and tedious, and an adult will find the text of this book to be rather childish and naive: “Monoplosaurus wasn’t related to Dilophosaurus”, “after Tyrannosaurus Allosaurus is the best-known theropod” – no duh! 

On their own, these factors are surpassable; combined they spell extinction for PREHISTORIC LIFE as a successful encyclopedia and promise more trouble for DK as a company.

S.H.I.E.L.D., April 15 - Providence

And so, another episode of “Agents” came to pass, and several new developments came to life – let us start with the less obvious one.

The series’ pace. If the earlier episodes went on at a pace that is more typical for action series, then starting from last two (and this one) episodes, “Agents” are moving at a much more breakneck speed; these three episodes occurred within 24 hours of “Agents”-verse; this makes the series a tense and exciting one to follow, but also exhausting; not even the movies move at such a breakneck pace...

Ah well, I am sure the scriptwriters and other stuff knew what they were doing – now about the characters.

The new team Evil or team Hydra. Agent Garrett is behind all of this? No, not really believable. He comes across like a mid-level villain who talks too much (seriously, he never ever shuts up!) who is competent, smug and ruthless; but anything more? Not seeing it. He (and the rest of Hydra crew?) is probably ready to turn on each other and everyone else, but they also have small enough numbers to comfortably fit everyone in into an underground complex beneath a barbershop in Havana. (That is pure James Bond, BTW.) Considering that Hydra is a huge organization in the comics the concept that this is the entire Hydra in the TV series just does not float – just as the concept of Garrett does not fit into the mastermind villain. 

Raina probably thinks so too – when she met the real Garrett she was disappointed, even if she hid it well and appeared to have recovered by the end of the episode. Now Raina is not a sympathetic character; she caused Doctor Debbie to die, she caused Chan to die, and many other people besides. That makes her an unlikely candidate for team Coulson – in TV tropes, if you selfishly caused someone to die, you are evil. But considering that she was trying at least to hedge her bets with Ward, it raises a possibility that she just may sell out Garrett and the rest of his crew to save her own skin at least.

Finally – Quinn. Ever since his debut in “The Asset”, he had issues with S.H.I.E.L.D., and he wanted his gravitonium back. Now he got the latter back, complete with professor Hall inside of it – but only Coulson knows about the last part. This is going to be a wrench in team Evil’s plans, just as the fact that Quinn can barely stand Garrett (and vice versa) and Raina has her own plans, will. Ah well, evil always turns upon itself, the fireworks will be interesting to watch...

On the other hand, as we move into S.H.I.E.L.D. territory we see signs of a very similar behavior. A choleric and rather unpleasant colonel Talbot is moving onto – and into – S.H.I.E.L.D. with his crew – and Coulson promptly moves out with his team, leaving the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. to deal with the situation by themselves. There was evidence of separation before, Coulson’s people and Hand’s people, Coulson’s values and Hand’s values and so on – but this is still cold.

Within Coulson’s team proper there are also tensions – Coulson still does not trust Mae (though Skye has warmed up to her), Simmons has developed enough of personal opinions to be skeptical of Coulson, unlike Fitz, and now got agent Triplett in her corner to make her own faction; and agent Fitz is jealous of Triplett because the latter is friendly with Simmons. Ah well, some competition might do Fitz some good – after all, Triplett did read “Moby Dick”.

To makes matters worse, nobody really trusts Coulson – this episode dealt with blind faith. As real-life events have shown, believing blindly in anyone can lead to problems; America’s blind faith in president Obama had backfired, badly – but sometimes believing blindly in someone is a part of being a team. Coulson believed that Fury is alive; the others believed in Coulson himself long enough to reach Providence, and so on. (For the record, Coulson’s speech just before the discovery of Providence about them not being “agents of nothing” was one of the most pitiful and crazy-sounding ones, however.) Of course, now that blind faith is put to the test, as Coulson can’t reveal to the others that Fury is alive – at least not right now; considering that Ward turned out to be evil, that’s probably an appropriate course of action to take, but...

But yes, Ward’s actions aim to show the corrosive effects of betrayal on trust; to make him look ‘realistically evil’, so to speak; etc. That is reasonable. But it will not be any easier for Coulson to keep the fact that Fury is alive under his hat either. Isn’t all that secret agent situation fun?

Finally, agent Koenig. Apparently, he acted as a comic relief after all the tension and drama and betrayal earlier in the episode. (OT: wouldn’t it make sense to put a building called the Freezer some place cold? They did put the Sandbox into the Sahara desert, for example – but that logic did not work with the Freezer, it was Providence that ended up in Canadian snows instead. Go figure.) Considering that most other agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are either killed off or just make cameo appearances on the show and are never seen again, odds are that we will not be seeing much of him in the future.

So: agent Garrett is forming team Evil, (himself, Ward, Raina, Quinn), and Coulson’s team had a lucky break – but now that Ward is coming over to get Skye’s password (or have Hydra bomb overrun Providence within the next 24 hours), it is over. The events are continuing to race forwards like a thoroughbred horse, and it is anyone’s guess as to what will happen next.