Animal Planet: more about the lamprey

And so, life goes on...

The “Man-Eating Super Wolves” have certainly made a reaction, just not the one that AP was probably aiming for – quite a few people and organizations (like Colorado Fish & Wildlife Center, to name one) are upset for their depiction of wolves as man-eaters. “Man-Eating Zombie Cats” (or super squid, or anything else) is one thing – there are plenty of fictional man-eaters, and wild cats infested with zombie virus are not that different.

The wolf situation is. There has been a time, and not too long ago, when wolves were considered man-eaters and were shot and destroyed by people accordingly – and it seems as if AP is trying to bring this time back. Strange, really, because AP is AP, and should be pro-animal, rather than pro-hunting, but there it is.

Anyways, the wolf situation has been measured and reacted against – there are petitions going around to forbid AP from showing “super wolves” and the like – so let us talk about lampreys and their blood lake.

The lampreys, as well as their cousins the hagfish, belong to jawless fish, the oldest group of vertebrate animals in the world. To use the term ‘vertebrate’ in relation to this duo is tricky – neither lamprey nor hagfish have actual bones, and some scientists actually think that the hagfish are invertebrates, just like the insects, the squid and the earthworm, and thus they are not related even to the lampreys. But let us ignore this for simplicity’s sake.

AP’s new monster movie about the lampreys made them a super-predator, almost like the shark with their sucker-like jaws, studded with teeth, looking rather leech-like. In the movie, the lampreys also behaved leech-like, not just getting out of water, but also crawling up the walls using the suckers. That does not work. The lampreys are not leeches; they are fish (technically speaking), and they cannot exist outside water. That is one.

Two, is that lampreys do not quite suck – they rasp. The adult lampreys are predators, they hunt fish that is sick, or weak, or injured, or somehow else incapacitated, (or else already dead): they grab it with their sucker-like mouths and begin to make holes into its flesh that they swallow completely. They do not attack warm-blooded animals, including humans, of course, and their larvae feed on plankton that is carried on the currents of water: they make burrows in sand and they live there – they are poor swimmers, even worse than their parents are.

The lampreys (and the hagfish, but they are trickier) don’t have any bones, but they do have a notochord that acts as a backbone – in some ways they are similar to Haikouichthys and Cephalaspis that were featured in the first episode of Walking with Monsters (2005). Unlike Cephalaspis and others (Ptersapis, Psammolepis, Drepanaspis, etc), they do not have any armor; they do not have any limbs either, but the lampreys, at least, are edible to humans, especially smoked.

The heyday of the jawless fish was the Silurian and the Devonian – they were never very large (about 20 cm long on average) and never too successful: first the sea scorpions and then the true, jawed fish dominated them and ate them. None of them survived the end of the Palaeozoic...but the lamprey and the hagfish did. Those basic, unarmored (save for the slime), homely models of evolution made it for millions of years until the present.

As one can see, the lamprey (and the hagfish) already has quite a few interesting facts and qualities behind them to make a documentary presentation, (as it was also done on River Monsters S5,) and AP did not have to air a sci-fi/horror film to make them attractive and interesting to their audience. But nevertheless they did. Sucks to be them, period.

Animal Planet: from fact to fiction

And so, Animal Planet has brought us another Monster Week, which features the following pearls of bad television:

- “Man-Eating Zombie Cats”. The virus is turning wild cats, from wildcats to Siberian tigers, into man-attacking zombies. Basically, this is your typical lousy zombie flick, with a wildlife twist, where the ‘others’ (to use a genre term), are not just zombies, but also carnivorous mammals, predators, and thus – doubly dangerous. This idea is an old one – mankind has feared big predators – lions, wolves, tigers, bears, sharks, crocodiles, etc – since it was represented by australopithecines that just came down from trees. Ok. This idea got augmented by another old chestnut – that only mentally sick, unstable animals will attack the humans, who are kings (and queens) of beasts. Again, that is nothing new. But – where’s the educational angle in all of this? “Man-Eating Zombie Cats” seeks to purely entertain, tuning in with humanity’s oldest (and currently incorrect) fears. AP, can you hear me?

- “Man-Eating Super Wolves” or something along that line. According to this idea, wolves are beginning to starve and are starting to attack people. Again, this is an old idea, used by natives of Europe, North America, and possibly Asia, to justify their killings of wolves. The wolves (including werewolves) were some of the oldest villains in humanity’s history (and villains’ minions – remember the original ‘Dracula’ novel, for example?) and what AP does here is bring up an old literary/movie cliché yet again. Bravo! But there is a twist:

Currently, the American (and also Canadian, and European) society is divided into pro-wolf and anti-wolf camps. These camps are not all encompassing, of course, but they are well-known and well-established, and they are trying to recruit and influence people into their directions; AP’s special on man-eating wolves plays into the anti-wolf camp, of course, a rather strange site for a TV channel that is named Animal Planet.

Admittedly, this departure from the channel’s animal roots has went on for the last years, when AP began to air less wild nature shows, and more shows like “Tanked”, “My Cat from Hell” and “Too Cute”, which deal with pets. History’s “Swamp People”, or now-gone “MonsterQuest”, have more wild nature in them, than most of AP’s current shows, to say nothing of Discovery Channel or BBC. There was a time when AP featured wildlife, not just domestic, and some shows – like River Monsters – still do, but they are in minority: AP is steadily moving away from the wild into domestic, from educational into entertaining, and it shows no signs of stopping.

- The current peak of this trend became currently embodied by the film about lampreys, “The Blood Lake”. Made by The Asylum, the same company that made “Sharknado”, this is fiction, clearly and honestly: AP itself acknowledged that it was fiction (the incident after the mermaid duology and “Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives”, where some misunderstanding about the docufiction nature of those films occurred remained fresh in AP’s collective mind, it seems), which means that it has basically abandoned the documentary genres and is filming and airing fiction, and fiction alone. 

Question: does AP think that it will be able to compete with other purely fiction channels, such as SyFy and Spike successfully? They have been in this field far longer than AP did, and pet- and pet-related shows are poor aides in this endeavor further. At least “Lost Tapes” are gone, so that is good...

Conclusion: AP has gone from documentary to docufiction/fiction channel with an animal flavor. This is a dark day for all wild animal lovers indeed!

S.H.I.E.L.D., May 13 - Beginning of the End

And so the first season of “Agents” have come to an amazing conclusion. And so, Director Fury, who returned, rather like a god from a machine (well, via a helicopter), to help the main heroes save the day, has reinforced yet again the concept that a person can become something bigger when they are a part of a team; the “Agents” talk about the conflict not so much of good vs. evil, as of the rights of the individual vs. the rights of many, of selfless vs. selfish, of team vs. teamless...and so on.

For the last few episodes it appeared that the last episode of the season – this one – would be about Team S.H.I.E.L.D. vs. Team Hydra...only it had not. Garrett personally had driven it apart: Warren may have had no personal interests or goals, but Ian Quinn certainly wanted to make a quick buck and become really rich on one hand, while Raina is all about evolution...and apparently her travels with Garrett (who may or may not have been the Clairvoyant) have come to an end: Garrett had reached his final stage in evolution and doesn’t really interest her anymore; Ian Quinn, on the other hand, just may. 

Of course, it is hard to tell with Raina – she appeared to be messing with Ward as well, but it is very likely that once he proved to be immune to her charms, she switched onto the easier target of Quinn. Why not, it could work...but that is beside the point. The point is that Raina and Quinn left Team Hydra before the final showdown; to be recurring villains of the 2^nd season, of course, but also because they felt no loyalty towards Garret or Ward or Deathlok and had no issues abandoning them to their fate.

Ward is different, of course: Garrett had raised or molded him into his very own, personal weapon – a sort of a Terminator, you may say, but the problem with the weapons is that they tend to be discarded once a new and better version is acquired – in this case it was Deathlok. 

...Only Deathlok felt no loyalty towards Garrett either and shot him and killed him as soon as Skye had freed his son – good for him. Deathlok (or Mike Peterson) is the embodiment of a coerced agent of a terrorist organization, who is liable to turn on them as soon as the coercion is gone.

Ward is different – he is a fully indoctrinated member, and for him, loyalty to his boss, a very misplaced loyalty, was more important than the loyalty to his team. Loyalty to many trumps loyalty to one in S.H.I.E.L.D. universe, and so Ward lost to May, who took great payback for Ward victory in “Yes Men”, one supposes.

(Speaking of the fight between Ward and May, what was up with Cybertek, where the fight took place? Why there were half-finished rooms, and construction tools, and whatnot lying around? Cybertek was around since 1990s, surely they would have completed the construction of the secret faculty by the 2010s?!)

While Team Hydra fell apart without any pressure from S.H.I.E.L.D., Team S.H.I.E.L.D., of course, prevailed through teamwork. Skye freed the hostages and got Deathlok to join the good guys (at least this time), May neutralized Ward, and Coulson with Fury took care of Garrett (admittedly, it was mostly by setting him up for Deathlok to give the final blow – the ultimate evolved form of Garrett was apparently bullet-proof, but not missile-proof. Fancy that)! Triplett was probably too involved somehow, possibly by freeing the rest of Quinn’s ‘clients’ turned hostages, but yes, he is part of the new team S.H.I.E.L.D. now, as if agent Koenig. Only he is not Eric, he’s Billy now. It is anyone’s guess what is the story with those two – twins, clones, or something else, but the appearance of agent Koenig the second was a nice touch and a nice conclusion to the story that began in the episode “End of the Beginning”, you know?

Finally, there was the Fitz & Simmons drama. Simmons finally realized that Fitz loved her...too bad that it was under 27 m of water, just off the coast of New Mexico. Fitz was all about the heroic self-sacrifice, their initial sinking to the bottom of the Gulf had hurt him far worse than it did Simmons, but Simmons saved him all the same – well, at least she took him up with her to the surface of the Gulf and kept him and herself there long enough for Fury to come across and to save them. Still, Fitz had taken a lot of punishment (apparently more than Simmons) and is out of commission until the next season of “Agents” at least. This is going to be important because Fitz was the last to abandon the belief that Ward can be evil (Simmons was second to last). In “The Hub” Fitz and Ward appeared to have bonded on their semi-suicide mission, and until Ward returned back to Hydra the two of them got along well enough. Ward’s not letting Fitz and Simmons go at the end of the previous episode (and did he shoot the dog all those years ago?) marked his point of no return from Team Hydra...at least until the next season begins airing in the future (probably 2015). Consequently, let us wave good-bye to the plucky and courageous agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. who gave us this rather memorable first season and wait for the next season to start.

End

PS: Raina has contacted a mysterious stranger who is apparently Skye’s father. Since what we have seen from him is dripping with gore, this can’t be good for Skye or for anyone else.

S.H.I.E.L.D., May 6 - Ragtag

And now we are getting to the penultimate episode of this season of “Agents” – sorry about the last week’s confusion. In this thrilling new episode, we learn about the back history of Garret and Ward: Garret rescued Ward from the juvenile hall, where Ward was incarcerated for the attempted arson of his family home, complete with his elder brother still inside (first time that we hear about him). Ward was going to go to jail (juvenile or adult), but Garret escaped with him to the swamps of Louisiana or the wild woods of Texas, abandoned him with Buddy the dog, and there young Ward met skunk ape...or not, we never see that happen.

What we do see, however, is Ward growing up into the emotionally challenged robot that we have seen from the beginning, as well as a crack shot. And ‘robot’ here is a clever allegory towards agent Garret’s own trip towards cybernetics: he is a cyborg, built in part by Cybertek, and the whole plot line of Project Centipede and beyond had occurred because he was dying, he was searching for ways to cheat death (lord Voldemort says hi back in England and sends over some fish and chips) and he has maybe figured out a way to do it through S.H.I.E.L.D., Skye and Coulson. 

We also learn that Garret has turned onto S.H.I.E.L.D. because he assumed that the latter had abandoned him first – and for now we have to work with that, because Whedon and co. haven’t revealed anything more yet.

Back to the present. Hydra (well, at least the cell that Garret is running) is leaving Havana and going back to the States to have Quinn sell the US government (or at least its’ military and navy) super-soldiers, build on the Centipede’s design. This cannot be good, but at least the military forces will have an alternative to the Sentinels that will go after the mutants on X-Men: Days of Future Past on May 23, 2014. 

What is worse is that Ward had cornered Fitz and Simmons into a box on the Helicarier and then dropped the whole ensemble into the ocean to drown. That is terrible, and one seriously hopes that the duo will be rescued by some passing-by mermaids, or Atlanteans, or alien dolphins, who will be absolutely thrilled by the duo’s Scott and British accents, but-

Here is the thing. When Fitz and Simmons got inside the Helicarier, Fitz activated a Howling commando EMP, causing Garret to short-circuit (again, for he has already done this in the same episode). Garret is evil and Fitz is good, but in history, in the 19^th century, there had been idealistic young people, who killed older people, people in charge, for greater good or some idealistic and unrealistic goals – for example, to bring Ward back to the white hat side. Such people were called anarchists, and they were the direct forerunners of the terrorists of the modern day and age, including people who gave America the 7/11 catastrophe. Consequently, one can hope that Fitz & Simmons will survive until the season’s finale at least (though it is just one episode away), but one has to admit that Fitz & Simmons started the walk on the path (well, Fitz did, Simmons just went along) that brought them to a metal box in the Atlantic Ocean willingly and by themselves.

On the other hand, we got the rest of the team. Their infiltration of Cybertek was part-Cold War and part over the top. Coulson (Clark Gregg) in glasses was just wrong, it did not work, just did not. May (Ming-Na Wen), on the other hand, does, and what’s more, she has begun to bond with Skye over the whole “angry with Ward” situation. This is good for both of them. Considering, on the other hand, that this episode left them (alongside Coulson and Tripplet) trapped in a basement in a Havana barbershop (and the barber is probably in on it) with a force of Hydra’s/Centipede’s super-soldiers set against them, this offer may not amount to anything in the future – they have to survive first.

One more thing. Just like last week’s episode, “Ragtag” began on a relatively light note – the whole infiltration of Cybertek, Coulson and May pretending to be lab scientists and not quite succeeding at it even with Fitz & Simmons’ guidance – but ended with heavy drama: Fitz & Simmons dumped into the Atlantic, Quinn making his sales pitch, Garret evolving into what may be his ultimate, final form-

Oh yes, that. Raina is clearly becoming less and less enchanted about working with Garret now that he is no longer the Clairvoyant. (Of course, whether he was him from the start is another question.) Consequently she has begun to subtly manipulate Ward into causing a rift between him and Garret, and maybe create some chaos in general – who knows? Her driving force is to witness change in people, especially on the inside: one can just picture her with a scalpel in style of Dr. Mengele, skinning and slicing her latest subject...and thanks to Fitz’s improvisation plan with the EMP that was agent Garret, who became rather worried and suspicious of Raina himself.

So: the bad guys seem to be winning on all fronts, Fitz & Simmons may be gone for good, the rest of the titular team is little better off, and we’re down to season’s last episode next week. One can hardly wait for the thrilling conclusion!