S.H.I.E.L.D., Sep 23 - Shadows

And so, Marvel’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” show returned with its second season, and right away the titular heroes are in trouble! 

No, the matter is not specifically with Hydra – right now they got more immediate problems to worry about. Throughout all of S1 the show drummed how teamwork was important to good guys if they were to triumph, and starting with the very first episode of S2 this aspect of the agents is in trouble.

The problems that are affecting their teamwork are several. The elephant in the room, or at least the prisoner in the dungeon, is Grant Ward, who betrayed the team in S1, or rather was set to betray the team in S1 (which he did) by the late Garret. So far he has not changed much on the inside, save that he switched from following Garret (who is dead) to following Skye. That is not the right strategy – if Ward is to show that he is truly repentant, he has to work (at least on a limited basis) with the whole team, not just Skye. Otherwise, he is the same old Ward, albeit with a beard and a muscle shirt. He is also depressed and suicidal, but that is another problem altogether.

(BTW: the interactions between Ward and Skye in this episode? That ship has clearly sunk for the next while, and Ward’s new regretful attitude is so hammed up, that it is clearly annoying; the only question is who has done the hamming – Ward, or Brett Dalton, who plays him?)

The same problem plagues Leo Fitz. After barely surviving Ward’s attempt to kill off him and Jemma Simmons, Fitz had survived, but went insane – he forgets words, and has long conversations with his imaginary girlfriend – the same Simmons. That is right; Jemma did leave him – and the team. The latter was implied, sort of, back in S1 – Jemma was not very happy with Coulson or his team, but to ditch Leo like that is certainly OOC for her, especially by the late S1 standards. True, this episode mentioned S.H.I.E.L.D.’s new allies in London, England (London, Canada, is something of a stretch), so maybe Simmons is hanging around her old neighborhood, but still – the Fitzsimmons ship is also having problems; Fitz’s new, imaginary Simmons is just one syndrome of it.

BTW: this is clearly influenced by BtVS S10, where Xander is also having conversations with his own ex-girlfriend, Anya/Anyanka. Still, Xander’s girlfriend is dead, while Simmons is alive (at least officially), but that does not help either man.

And it also shows another leak in the agents’ team – one of their members went to the dark side, the second – to the crazy house (May and Coulson are starting to consider Fitz to be more of a liability than an asset), and the third – just left. Not good.

Conversely, there are new members coming in – in theory. In reality, the only new face(s) that appeared in this episode among the good guys is agent Isabelle and her team, but they have their own problems: they have not integrated with the core team of the agents, and Isabelle seems to have some sort of an alpha female struggle going on with May.

Or rather – seemed. Typical of the “Agents”, agent Isabelle died by the end of this episode; at least she does not appear in the next week’s episode either. Xena’s fans are probably rather disappointed...

What X:WP have to do with it? Agent Isabelle was played by Lucy Lawless, whose trademark role was X:WP. Quite a few Xena fans were excited about her starring in “Agents” too. Instead, agent Isabelle had only few lines, little to any action (though she did have a killer bowie knife in the episode), and died by the end of “Shadows”. Very disappointing, and it also unintentionally showed how Lucy Lawless has...diminished, or gone to seed, since her Xena days...

On the other hand, agent Isabelle died because of Hydra’s latest field agent – the Absorbing Man, the villain who can absorb any sort of material and use it to augment his strength. Not the smartest guy around, he usually faces-off with the Hulk, but Banner appears to be lying low until the second Avengers movie arrives, so the Absorbing Man has to do with Coulson and his team instead – and considering that so far he had stolen the last 084 artifact (whose most obvious ability is to petrify people who grab it with bare hands) and killed agent Isabelle and other members of her team. Score another one for the bad guys.

Then again, it balances out the way S.H.I.E.L.D. has fooled General Talbot and his people. Talbot, now, is no dummy, but against Coulson? He is the Sheriff who has to deal with Robin Hood – he is just against an opponent who is better than he is. Try as he might, he just cannot win, and Coulson has let him go with mud in his eye, so to speak, and his people had stolen Talbot’s plane with the cloaking device too. This makes Talbot a fairly average member of the modern American administration, but one got to give Whedon and others their due – unlike the crew behind “The Last Ship” series they managed to keep contemporary politics, American and otherwise, out of the show so far. Even the bosses of the Absorbing Man are more reminiscent of the WWII Nazis than anyone more modern-

Speaking of these bosses, does it mean that the late Garret was pulling everyone’s leg when he suggested that he was both the Clairvoyant and the head of Hydra? Given what we’ve learned about him, it’s a very good bet.

Getting back to Talbot – he is the only bright spot on Coulson’s side so far. His team has missing members, has to deal with superior enemies, and just does not have enough new members to compensate for that. (In part that is because “Agents” the show tends to have people appear in cameos, usually as agents, say a few lines, and disappear for good. Maybe it has something to do with the budget of the show, who knows?..)

Otherwise, let us be fair. The second season of “Agents” has started on a pessimistic note, so it is only reasonable that things are going to get better for them from now on – somehow.

Post-Shark Week rant

And so, Shark Week has come and gone, and all I can say is – fake. It’s, really, like the Animal Planet shows, like “Man-Eating Super Wolves” or whatever – deliberately fake information, pretending to be real. The only question is why.

I admit that unlike the AP shows Discovery has tried to make its shark week specials both entertaining and educational, but what it did instead was irritate various scientists who were quote mined by the shows, or downright tricked, etc. True, there was a certain catch-22 (or something similar) factor as well: the shows (and Discovery?) needed rich sponsors, but these sponsors wanted to sponsor something, well, respectable, and so Shark Week shows had to be both educational and entertaining...only they hadn’t.

Seriously, they could have just made them educational; showing, for example, how hammerhead sharks get measured up in the wild, live, is already very exciting – but instead Discovery made this a part of a program that mainly talks about a giant and mythical hammerhead, called “Old Hitler” and “The Harbourmaster”. This is simply wrong.

Firstly, and mainly, hammerhead sharks are less dangerous to humans than great white, bull and tiger sharks. Their particular head shape makes them better hunters on the sea floor, but less so in the open ocean (unlike the tiger sharks, say), and thus makes them less likely to encounter humans, even scientists and fishermen, live. 

And also, “Old Hitler”? Seriously? The chancellor of the Third Reich was a piece of shit accountable for 6+ years of blood, smoke and tears – much more than any shark, regardless of size, ever did. To name any animal (even fish) after him is just wrong. Also – rather dumb. Yes, you can give various animals human names, but they are not really their names, but names that people give them for their own convenience. If animals do have names that they give to each other, they probably do not sound very human...

Getting back on track, if you discount their latest mocumentary about the megalodon, Shark Week at least has tried to be somewhat scientific; its’ AP counterparts, like the before-mentioned “Man-Eating Super Wolves” did not. It even admitted that in the disclaimer, making one wonder why did it was made and aired at all? In the decades past, AP was educational, if somewhat naive (just look at the old episodes of “Wild Kingdom”), now it’s either pure make-believe (like the “Lost Tapes” series), something reminiscent of “Urban Tarzan” from Spike, albeit less staged, or something like “The Pool Master”, which isn’t about animals at all – and since the channel is called, well, Animal Planet, it makes one wonder why is “The Pool Master” aired there at all. At least “Too Cute” or “Pit Bulls and Parolees” have some animals in them, for example... But “Man-Eating Super Wolves” is fake, just as much as of the transformations in the latest “Scooby-Doo” movie are. At least “Scooby-Doo”, the hound that just does not die, is just a cartoon and does not pretend to be anything else. “Super Wolves” pretend to be real...

 

And so, in conclusion, I am forced to admit: Discovery channel has deteriorated somewhat in quality of the shows, but it is still far ahead in the same quality ‘field’ as compared to Animal Planet.

Upcoming 'Shark week' rant

And so, once again, Shark week is almost upon us in Canada. Hooray! Sharks, after all, are magnificent and powerful creatures, alpha predators of the oceans, just as big cats or bears are on land, and crocodiles and alligators are in fresh water.

Sharks are very varying creatures. For example, both the whale shark and the basking shark are filter feeders, but whereas the basking shark just swims around with an open mouth, with the water flowing in and out (through the gills), the whale shark actively pumps the plankton-filled liquid and in general is a more active fish among the two. The megamouth shark, which is also a filter feeder, does its own thing by actively feeding on plankton at night, when its competition (including the baleen whales) is asleep. 

The carnivorous sharks, of course, are an even more diverse group. The great white shark is Jaws, one of the most powerful denizens of the ocean; only the killer whale (and perhaps the sperm whale) can defeat it. The bull shark is smaller, but still very solidly built, and is one of the few fish that can live both in fresh and salt water. The sand tiger shark (no relation to the actual tiger shark) and the blue shark, on the other hand, are graceful inhabitants of the open waters, specializing in catch fish, not warm-blooded mammals and birds, as the great white shark does – and the list goes on.

Some of the sharks are downright bizarre – the aforementioned thresher shark with its remarkable tail; the hammerhead shark with its head; the sawnose shark which is similar to the better-known sawfish because it also has a saw on its nose – etc. All of these features make sharks stars of the ocean world – and of the Shark week that will be airing on the Discovery channel starting from August 10. 

Sadly, there is a rather big fly in the ointment, and it is called “Megalodon: The New Evidence”. It is a sequel to the previous mocumentary, “Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives”. That particular film played with the concept of Megalodon surviving in modern times, feeding on such animals as the humpback whales...and for a while it led many people astray, by making them think that this was a real documentary instead.

Now, in part this is his or her own fault – one should not be so gullible about what one sees on TV or the Internet...never mind. I need to go a make an appointment with my vet about the health of my unicorn that I have bought on EBay. That is an old story. The thing is that Discovery channel generally airs documentary films and series, which are based in real life; even on such specials as Shark week what we usually see are documentaries; the Megalodon duology (and before that – the duology about the mermaids) are not – they’re fiction, just like the Sharknado or the Mega-Shark films are.

Now, Discovery channel currently does not have it as bad as the Animal Planet, by comparison; they still do not regularly air such tripe as “Man-Eating Super Wolves” or “Zombie Cats”, etc. But this is a disturbing tendency all the same.

If we are talking about sharks, what about Megalodon itself? Can it still be real? No. Sharks do not readily leave remains, other than their teeth and the occasional backbone vertebra, but their teeth quite take up the slack, and people find them very often. Megalodon teeth in this case take a very specific position: they are fossilized, not fresh. There are no fresh Megalodon teeth, which means – that there are no live Megalodon sharks living in modern oceans. Giant sharks, on the other hand, are a different story – in general, cold-blooded animals tend to grow throughout their lives, and great white sharks, in particular, can reach 3, or even 4.5 m in length: still smaller than Megalodon was, but far bigger than a human is. This is more than enough to fill-in Megalodon’s econiche.

And what econiche is that? That of a mega-predator, of course. Megalodon was the biggest shark of all times, of course, but it was also a part of the mega-fauna of the previous Cenozoic epochs. During that time, most animals were larger than their current relatives are, and the same goes for the sharks.

Speaking of relatives, there is some speculation that Megalodon might be related to the mako sharks. While the great white shark evolved into a powerhouse, the mako (two species) evolved into the aquatic analogue of the cheetah (sort of) – it is the only fish fast enough to catch and kill the legendary swordfish. Real life being what it is, however, sometimes the swordfish is the one who comes on top and dead or dying mako sharks were found, with pieces of the swordfish’s sword still in them – but that’s not the point. The point is that some scientists believe that Megalodon was more closely related to the mako than to the great white, and others – that the mako is the close relative of the great white, and Megalodon is related to neither, and if we don’t even fully know to whom Megalodon was related to, then how do we know what it looked like? Any depiction of the Megalodon is fully speculative, period – maybe it looked like a giant bull shark instead, who knows...

Back to the econiche. The great white shark has taken over Megalodon’s place – to a point: it still does not attack and eat whales. But it does not need to – the killer whale does it instead. Smarter and more social than any shark, even the great white, the killer whale does an admirable job of killing baleen whales, sharks, giant squid and other denizens of the oceans. Not bad for a relative newcomer to Earth – just like humans, the killer whale is very much a modern animal.

The shark, on the other hand, is very old – they have been around roughly since the Devonian, over 300 million years ago in the past, and they were able to handle everything that the Earth, and the universe, threw at them. Lately, this includes humans, who kill many more sharks than sharks kill people. To paraphrase Josef Augusta, a famous paleontologist, ‘the hunter man of the Pleistocene had little impact on nature, unlike the gatherer man of the Holocene’. These are true words, and hopefully, the upcoming Shark week shall discuss them as well.

End

Discovery Channel: Zombie Cats, and cats that are not zombies

I have re-watched the “Man-Eating Zombie Cats” last night. It could be considered a waste of time, but I have watched “Hit & Miss” mini-series, and was in the mood for something different, something simpler than the high-strung and high-notched criminal drama that “Hit & Miss” is. “Zombie Cats” did not disappoint.

What can be said about this special? I have mentioned it in the past, when I was discussing AP’s ‘monster specials’ in general detail, but this time I should describe “Zombie Cats” in some greater details: this special is not so much as non-scientific, as it is just lousy.

The concept in and of itself is not that poor, just poorly delivered and poorly developed: the canine distemper virus (basically, a form of the disease known as rabies) has infested the great cats, causing them to lose fear of people and begin to attack them. (Curiously, the smaller felines, like the domestic cats, have their own strain of the rabies instead.) Even on this level, this statement is undercut, as the humans’ encroachment on the great cats’ habitat is mentioned very often on one hand, and the whole topic of cats being infected with rabies is not being fully developed – it does not go much beyond what I have said already. Structurally, “Zombie Cats” consists largely of several enacted episodes of people (and their dogs) encountering large felines – cougars, leopards, tigers, etc – with various outcomes, intermeshed with much shorter statements about the distemper virus and the encroachment on the cats’ habitat. These various parts do not mesh together very well, and combined they make “Zombie Cats” sound like a very poor version of the now cancelled “MonsterQuest” series (a series not without its own problems, but quite coherent), and not a horror/monster special.

Secondly, the zombie aspect was actually undercut by the whole canine distemper virus angle. Animals with this strain of disease – dogs, great cats, racoons, weasels, etc – do not behave like zombies; by now the modern media has created a certain idea of zombie: it is either an undead corpse, animated by magic, or... still a corpse, animated by a virus or something similar; various shows, such as “Lost Tapes,” “Deadliest Warrior”, and, of course, “The Walking Dead” series have perpetuated this image far and wide. A single zombie is not a threat; it is just a shambling corpse, hungry for brains (and other fleshy part of the living) that it seeks out without any strategy or tactics: it just shambles on and on in a straight line, and while a crowd of zombies can eventually tear down any obstacle (such as a door), a canny and adaptable human can escape them by climbing a tree or a similar landmark, for a zombie can’t climb, and they generally aren’t smart enough to even look upwards or to the side.

Conversely, the great cats in the “Man-Eating Zombie Cats” did all that; they behaved the way that the normal great cats do, albeit ones thrust into abnormal, urban, man-made habitats. Naturally, tragedies occur at a regular basis. But the rabies, or canine distemper, virus had nothing to do with it; all of the animals featured in this show were quite healthy. The rabies does not make animals into zombies; it may force them to act slow and stupid (to human eye, at any rate) on occasion, but they are still quite capable of fast attacks – this is what makes rabid dogs, racoons and similar creatures so dangerous.

Either way, “Man-Eating Zombie Cats” is not about real life; it even is not convincing pretending that there is anything real. Some other specials, like the ones about the mermaids or Megalodon, have a healthy dose of reality; “Zombie Cats” do not. Instead, it is something of a “MonsterQuest” imitation and unsuccessful one – and that why it fails.

Discovery channel: "Russian Yeti" and the Yeti 'family'

And so, last night I watched Discovery’s latest special – “Russian Yeti: The Killer Lives”. A mockumentary, made in style of Discovery’s films about the dragons, the mermaids, and the giant shark Megalodon, it was a fun film to see. It was designed in “The Blair Witch Project” style, as an American explorer Mike, and his trusty Russian sidekick/interpreter Mila, went into the wild Urals mountains to discover the truth – whether the Russian Yeti has killed 9 student tourists back in 1959. Designed as an action/cryptozoological film rather than a scientific one (the Mermaids duology comes to mind), it is very hard, if not pointless, to discuss the scientific aspects of the film. However, the titular cryptid, the yeti, does deserve some discussion, to say the least.

The tales and myths of giant apes and wild men of the woods have come from all over the world, and the territory of former USSR was no exception. The most widespread and used name for these creatures there was Almasti, or Almas. They played a rather negative role in the local tales, and were generally similar to the Bigfoot and the Yeti in appearance (seriously, since when does it matter where the Yeti lives, in Russia or not? I mean, if there is a ‘Russian Yeti’, does it mean that there are also Indian, Tibetan, Nepalese Yetis and so forth? What is the difference? Even the film itself did not really dwell on this fact), but they had some important differences: they were more human-like in appearance (and Bigfoot, conversely, looks more ape-like than man-like), and they were rumored to be able to use fire, again unlike the Bigfoot. 

Some greater regional differences come to mind. The Mediterranean world, curiously, did not really have many ape-men myths; the fauns and the satyrs are different – they are part goat or horse, not ape, but Northern Europe had humanoid giants of their own – the trolls and ogres of the Norse, and further down, in the mainland Europe, the wildmen proper. At about 2.7 m in length, and weighing 200 kg, these beings were just as intimidating as the Bigfoot and the Yeti are, but they were more civilized, they had their own culture (supposedly), and were not as hairy, so they probably could use fire and make clothing of their own. The trolls and ogres of the Norse, were not just bigger (about 3.5 m tall and weighing about 360 kg), but they truly were civilized, complete with culture, civilization, and societies of their own. In fact, if you read some of the Norse (Scandinavian, Icelandic) folklore, one can realize that the Norse trolls and ogres belonged, practically, to a world parallel to humans, inhabited not just by them, but also by huldra, beings that were half spirit and half-real. This makes it hard to decide if trolls and ogres were real and not purely imaginary, one of versions of the vague and mysterious ‘Them’, imagined by humans to symbolize the anti-humans – but that is another tale.

Conversely, the wildmen of Europe, including the Almas, were less sophisticated and more ape-like – they probably could use fire, and were more man-, than ape-like, but that was it. No civilization for them, no sir! Further to the east, where the Yeti and the Bigfoot live, the ‘wild people’ become increasingly more ape-like and animalistic, without any evidence that they use fire, or tools, and clothing? It is non-existent. They are also relatively smaller than the European analogs: the Bigfoot is about 2.5 m high and weighs under 200 kg, its southern cousin the skunk ape is about as big as a man and weighs under 150 kg, the Yeti is about as big as the Bigfoot, though probably is, and so’s the Yowie. The Yowie, incidentally, is interesting, also because it lives in Australia, where all of the native mammals either hatched from eggs (the Monotremes), or are marsupial and have pouches to carry their tiny youngsters around. Higher primates, including the great apes and humans, are placental and have neither. This makes the Yowie’s identity especially puzzling – just what is it?..

“Russian Yeti” film did not mention the Yowie, but it did mention the Orang Pendek as the ‘Sumatran Yeti’, so to speak. The Orang Pendek is a humanoid creature, but at about 1-1.2 m in height and a very slight build, most cryptozoologists and other specialists feel that it has no connection to the Yeti, but is possibly the descendant of Homo Florensis, the Flores Man, instead. The latter has plenty of its own mystery; nobody is certain whether or not it was actually a dwarf race of modern humans, or a descendant of a more ancient species, Homo Erectus, for example. To connect the Orang Pendek to the Yeti family was wrong from the cryptoozological P.O.V. as well...

Getting back to the wildmen and ape-like creatures, “Russian Yeti” was a very good movie...and nothing more. Unlike “Mermaids”, or “Megalodon”, it did not pretend to be anything real, or to have been filmed in the real life. There are appropriate disclaimers and warnings that is drama, not suitable for children of all ages, and it should be treated as such by its audience.

End