The Flux Capacitor 4.4.08: Week 28 - Spies, Sleuths and Number Six

Posted by Owain J. Brimfield on 04.04.2008

The past, present and future of science fiction - this week we look at, wait for it, spy-fi [snigger]. Plus, all the latest from the world of SF.

Welcome to "The Flux Capacitor", the column that examines the past, present and future of the science fiction genre. I'm your host, Owain J. Brimfield, and each week I'll be taking a look at films, TV shows and a whole lot more that exemplify a particular theme within SF. We'll see how the sci-fi of yesteryear influenced what we see on our screens today, and take a look ahead to see what may be in store in the months and years to come. Later on I'll also discuss some of the latest SF news and see how it impacts on the genre. For now though, let's get the DeLorean on the road - this week's theme is:

SPY-FI

Oh alright, I'm just a sucker for wordplay, but the term "spy-fi" really does make me giggle. As the more astute among you may have deduced, spy-fi is merely an amusing term to distinguish espionage/thriller-based science fiction from the cloud of other sub-genre spores that permeates the membrane of movie SF. Of course, a large proportion of spy-oriented thrillers do have tangential connections with the genre, largely in the scheme of the gadgets and technologies that are employed (hell, take Bond out of Die Another Day and replace him with a generic secret agent and you have yourself a serviceable SF movie... at least, if it wasn't shit you would). However, it's important to draw the line between spy/espionage shows and movies that employ fanciful (or even fantastic) elements like, say, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and those that embody spy-fi. At least, it's important if you're anal about drawing lines like that. I tend not to be, but writing stuff like that makes it sound like I know what I'm talking about. And that's the greatest illusion of all!

Ahem. Enough self-deprecation for now. Instead, let's turn our beady gaze (and, if you're in the mood, our sweaty brow) towards a more apt illustration of spy-fi in action, namely cult British show The Prisoner. Rising from the ashes of Patrick McGoohan's decent, if now forgotten, spy series Danger Man - which was also known under the wonderfully C-movie-esque moniker Destination Danger - The Prisoner was an almost overwhelmingly surreal attempt at blending the worlds of secret agent-ry and pure SF, with the surface element of the incarcerated agent attempting to escape a prison-like village combined with immense levels of symbolism and allegory, a lot of it profoundly sci-fi in nature. For those of you too young and/or lazy to know anything of the show beyond the spoof in that episode of The Simpsons or the classic line "I am not a number, I am a free man!", allow me to enlighten your tiny, fragile minds. Centered around the nameless title character, the eponymous agent as played by McGoohan (who also conceived and produced the show) resigns from the secret service, and finds himself kidnapped and held prisoner in a seaside resort. The mysterious figures who run the village, led by the enigmatic and ever-changing Number Two ***, refer only to our hero as Number Six, and the series concerns the ongoing cat-and-mouse game between their trying to break his will and his trying to escape, or at least discover what the heck is going on, and who Number One might be. Imagine if Kafka wrote a TV serial, and you'll be in the right ballpark. In the grand tradition of British television the show ran for a small number of episodes (17), but took in a vast array of concepts, even if much of the show could be seen, superficially at least, as merely an exercise in psychedelia. However, more importantly, the show did pave the way for the entire "spy-fi" subgenre, and even more importantly, it's damn compelling to watch.


*** If you find yourself giggling inadvertently, you've seen Austin Powers too many times.

Perhaps the most overtly SF spy movie is Vincenzo Natali's Cypher. You may remember Natali from his innovative, if undeniably cheap-looking, debut movie Cube, making him probably the only director in my DVD collection whose entire film output can be organized identically in both alphabetized and chronological formats. Er... anyway, without revealing too much about my closet obsessive-compulsive disorder, Cypher is arguably the foremost example of contemporary spy-fi, with a plot that requires a large emphasis on SF technologies to further its espionage storyline - there are numerous and extensive uses of cognitive programming involved in the high-pressure world of corporate spying the film presents, and one of its major locales is an underground database bunker that could easily have stepped from a hundred years in the future (manned, incidentally, by David Hewlett, who portrayed the only really interesting character in Cube).

For all its high-gloss sheen though, Cypher is a spy movie first and foremost, with the SF elements rarely taking the limelight away from all the espionage that's going on. It's of course in the nature of any SF "sub-genre" as a whole that, since it's not an attempt at pure science fiction, relies heavily on whatever neat twist or gimmick it's placing its money on, but it's interesting that spy-fi seems to embody this idea more than most other sub-categories of science fiction. In Cypher, it's Morgan Sullivan's attempt to circumvent his own brainwashing and work out just which side is playing who against what (and if you think that sentence fragment is confusing, try watching the film) that provides the focal point of interest. Although the characters themselves aren't especially compelling - Lucy Liu excepted of course, but then I suppose it's not her character that's the compelling aspect - it's the thrill of the chase, the suspense and the mind-games that are the defining characteristics of spy-fi as we have known it, much like its non-SF-entwined counterpart the suspense thriller.

Having said all that, spy-fi does tend to find itself much more comfortably at home on the small screen than it does in the movies, presumably because whereas a two-hour feature has to include all the ingredients (plot, character development, SF elements etc.) in a short space of time, on television it can be stretched out and allowed to develop down a natural route, whether with The Prisoner towards psychedelic allegory, or for instance gearing itself towards a certain demographic, like Joe 90 or The Secret Service. Almost single-handedly flying the flag for spy-fi in the current schedules is Chuck, which American readers will certainly find themselves more familiar with than I am given that it still hasn't formally debuted on air yet. Josh Schwartz and McG (who'd have thought a production duo of such apparent suckitude would have it in them to create a decent show?) have essentially torn the one decent idea from the infamously poor thriller Johnny Mnemonic and used it to craft a slick and trendy, yet also geekily charming spy-fi series.

In case you have viewed neither Chuck nor Mnemonic (if you fall into the latter group, you're one of the lucky ones), the premise at its most stripped-back is that a young computer nerd receives a coded message that magically (well, ok, nanotechnologically) embeds a whole host of classified CIA secrets in his brain. Much like that show from a few years back actually, Jake 2.0... coincidence? Or something more sinister? Anyhow, it's a neat high-concept idea that manages to integrate itself successfully into both the intellectually satisfying world of the more serious spy-fi connoisseur and the glossy teen-world apparently so beloved of Schwartz. Thankfully, any concerns about that latter point can be deflected by mentioning the casting of Adam Baldwin, assuring instant credibility with fans of Firefly (and by extension, surely, any and all fans of modern science fiction ***). The show is a great example - indeed, dare I say it, the example - of how to integrate spy-fi into a contemporary presentation, combining all the action/comedy requisites of yer usual mainstream TV shows with a more serious, and at times profound, undercurrent.

You know, all this talk has got me wondering whether "spy" is in fact a contraction of "spyence fiction". I guess we'll never know.


*** Controversial!


Reactions and interactions

My good friend and fellow film enthusiast Andrew J.D. Hauser makes a couple of observations regarding my comments on last week's news bits:

"Two points regarding this week's Flux Capacitor:

1) David Fincher has been trying to make Rendezvous with Rama into a film for years but, for various reasons, has failed
2) Galactus will apparently be in the Silver Surfer film."

Yeah, I probably should have mentioned those tidbits. I'm nowhere near confident that they'll do Galactus any justice though. A Fincher-directed Rama could be one for the ages, but it's hardly the most marketable adaptation out there, which is no doubt why the director has struggled to make said movie. I'd mark out for it, though.


The Infosphere

Dennis Quaid, Tyrese Gibson and Lucas Black have all joined the cast of Legion, a new apocalyptic thriller from director Scott Stewart. Stewart was previously the visual effects director for films like Pirates of the Caribbean and Grindhouse. The film stars Paul Bettany as Archangel Michael, and revolves around Bettany's angel standing between mankind and an apocalypse after God loses his faith in humanity. The plot also involves the delivery of a baby that a group of strangers believe is the second coming of Christ.

I'm not sure how the addition of Gibson and Black to the cast will affect the movie's reputation, but hopefully the wonderful premise alone will make up for any shortcomings in the talent involved.

Producer Wyck Godfrey says that the Gears of War movie is on track for a summer 2010 release: "We've got our script on and a director we're about to attach. We'll hopefully make that early next year for the summer of 2010." Stuart Beattie (Pirates of the Caribbean) is behind the script and is working with the game's lead designer Cliff Bleszinski.

For as fun a game as Gears of War is, there really is very little plot development to speak of, so this may end up being in the Doom ballpark of game-to-movie adaptations. Mind you, I actually half-enjoyed that movie, so I don't know what that says. Beattie has his fingers in a certain other videogame-flavored pie, too:

Pirates of the Caribbean screenwriter Stuart Beattie has apparently written a new script for Halo that is making the rounds. The new script is reportedly based on the best-selling novel Halo: Fall of Reach, by Eric Nylund. The script is now being shopped around in the open market.

If you're going to start anywhere it might as well be with the Halo novellas, which are decent if generally disposable. I think this is one game that will have a lot of fans clamoring for the movie, so it would be nice if the production could be revived.

Producer Graham King has set up Dan Simmons' award-winning science fiction book series Hyperion at Warner Brothers, with Trevor Sands on board to adapt the first two books as one feature, according to The Hollywood Reporter. King is producing via his GK Films banner. (courtesy of Sci Fi Wire)

Aha! Now this could be good. If you've never read it, Hyperion is a fantastic space-opera novel (as is Simmons' other work Endymion) and it's one of those flagship sci-fi works that could prove to be a masterpiece - if it can be pulled off, which will be a hard, hard task given the narrative structure. All fingers and toes crossed for this one.

Heroes will return to NBC on September 15th with an expanded third-season opener, but network executives confirmed that the proposed prequel spinoff, Heroes: Origins, is officially dead. (courtesy of Sci Fi Wire)

Yay and boo, I guess. We're still waiting on the second season to air in the UK, but from what I saw of it online I found it enjoyable, if maybe not quite as compelling as the first. Sad to hear about the death of Origins, but if it encourages Kring and co. to focus their work on making the third season the best yet, then it's a worthwhile sacrifice.

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release the second of four new Futurama movies, The Beast With a Billion Backs, on DVD on 24th June. The movie will feature guest voice performances from David Cross, Brittany Murphy, Dan Castellaneta and physicist Stephen Hawking. (courtesy of Sci Fi Wire)

Only a few more days till I can get my grubby mitts on the region 2 DVD release - the delay is shocking, I tell you, but I've of course already seen Bender's Big Score and my hopes are high that Beast will be every bit as enjoyable, especially with Hawking on board. His cameos in The Simpsons have been wonderful.

The poster for the new X-Files movie has been released:



And huzzah, it's actually rather good. Certainly better than the Star Trek one anyway.


And finally…

As always, reader feedback and suggestions are welcome, I respond to everything so just drop me a line or leave a comment. You can also check out my column "The Wonder Years" over at 411 Games. Next week in "The Flux Capacitor" - aliens! Or is it? Until then - keep watching the skies.