Redemption '09: Sunday panels
Feb. 27th, 2009 12:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethWhy Sunday first? Because I wrote it on stripy colors paper after my little notepad ran out.
Little notepad was new for the weekend.
It's kind of intimidating to look at it and realise how many words must be in there.
Regendering TV
I heard someone afterwards complain that the definition of regender was too simple, but I think it was exactly right. Keep everything the same, but have the part played by an actor of the opposite gender. Women instead of men, mostly.
This panel had a lot of connect to the Bechdel panel later.
Start with list:
Blakes 7: Regenders nicely but the BBC wouldn’t make it. {panellist reckoned} Avon fell in love, works as O+ [Avon’s background includes throwing it all away for love, pretty much. Classic O+ story. With bonus being really good at computers.] Jenna as O-> works. 4 O+ on a spaceship led by O+. Gan as a deadly woman. Small woman with limiter interesting. [Gan could work as a O+ because the interesting part is the character killed, and is strong. Small women can be strong, and definitely can kill. And then you get an interesting visual.]
Life on Mars and Mad Men: Neither works. Same reasons. Historicals. Regendering while keeping the same attitudes, having women treat men as sex objects, breaks the historical attitudes and makes it a polemical AU. Not our 70s / 60s.
B7 makeable, LoM destroyed… or a comedy show, Worm Turned.
Loses interesting. Mad Men even more so. Early 60s bizarre AU.
First 2 male plainclothes detectives sent out as prostitutes undercover.
Cagney and Lacey.
As men? Loses the surprise. C&L already revisioned it by being O+.
Firefly: As with B7, doable. Set in imaginary world, large and diverse cast with decent female roles already. Works when swapped.
Male prostitute.
Jayne would work as a O+.
Insane brother dancing.
Married couple already role reversed.
Mal as female getting in fights in bars and her crew just accepting that would be different.
Star Trek TOS. Nichelle Nichols read for Spock, was excellent. So close!
Regender so slash is f/f and people argue if maleslash is the same thing or not.
Original 1st officer was a woman.
Female captain in 60s?
Shatner eye makeup anyway.
Kirk with men drooling and kneeling.
Love them and leave them.
Different reaction to O+ Kirk.
B7 and ST could never have been made.
Female Captaid? Shoved far away, with a husband at home, moping about him.
Next Gen regenders even more easily.
DS9 does too, but the caring father with a son is valuable as is.
Regender Janeway? Has Enterprise.
Picard as already regendered, torn between family and career.
SF has possibilities.
Historicals idealise sexism?
People in structures like snail in shell, rigid but outside them {BE doesn’t agree}
Woman in male role, lesbian? No. True parallel woman protect delicate men.
Change setting. Matron? Works. [in historicals] [strong women, being tough on other women who can take it, protecting poor ickle baby doctor mens]
Send back to Carry On Matron.
Regender Carry On? Lols. Nice package son! Cucumber!
Red Dwarf did it. Holly head sex change.
Easier to regender older shows. Newer ones pre gender switched.
Atlantis would lose female leader and gain a lot of female character followers.
Mulder and Scully were regendered, believer and skeptic. Course that meant the O+ was always wrong.
Kaylee regendered: keep strawberry and frills and complain about not getting fucked. Keep them femme and oriented to the same gender as the original character and you get a whole different result than regender to masculine equivalents.
C&L regendered buddy cop shows already.
STAR WARS: “Lucy, I am your mother.”
Stormtroopers with moulded breastplates.
Lightsabers are such phallic symbols would a O+ jedi still carry them?
Highlander slash sword-penis fight-sex.
[er, yes, my notes feel that needs no further explanation.]
Gender imbalance in series theory was O+ immortals wouldn’t get sword training before first death so would die quickly. [which is a dumb theory because most immortal training happens after first death when a teacher takes them on anyway]
Regender it and have to explain why there’s more women than men. Maybe O+ immortals are all nuns, living on holy ground.
Liz Williams epic fantasy Bechdel pass [except I’m not sure I got the names right]
Regender only one and it changes the balance.
Acceptability and legibility, acceptance and making sense.
Gender embedded in thinking, need people to have gender to understand.
Regender messes with ideas of gender.
[hence the yaay]
Xena ambiguous [morally?] (regendered) [already a warrior bloke with O+] also big strong tall tough and gorgeous
[there was a chorus of agreement that we’d all *like* to see big women. In many senses of big. Not just tiny delicate people, huge great taller than everyone people.]
Note to self: read the rest of Irresistible Forces [the Bujold story I’ve read, the rest I can’t recall]
Being born a woman gives you a different life experience… duh!
I did more talking. Regender don’t get same results
Women characters in fiction don’t get to just have sex
And we’re on to f/f and absence in fiction.
[Someone suggested something about Blade using guns while Buffy throws them away. They sounded approving. It reminded me of something so I stuck a hand up. Blade is supposed to be a monster, a half vampire using his power to fight other vampires. When you regender that you get? Mina Harker in Demons, which I hate. But they have the same setup, only now it’s a woman with power? They give her a disability. So, regendered characters often get treated quite differently.]
Notes on that panel done. It bounced around between people a lot more than you can see from the notes. I didn’t usually write when people changed because I was busy trying to keep up with the content, and I’m sure I still missed bits.
It was a very interesting panel.
It was also interesting hearing men Not Get It. One complaint was that you can’t just change the O+ O-> of a character because Women Are Different. I tried to explain later that the assumption that Women Are Different is the problem and it pisses many of us off. That bit went just before ‘different life experiences’. I think the key thing is that, yeah, women are living with different life experiences and structural forces, but that’s no reason for an individual woman not to end up being BA or Face or Hannibal in the A-Team. They’re exceptional people already, regendering them is not inherently more implausible.
/panel
I could go on about that panel’s content at length. But that wouldn’t be making notes on the convention.
The Bechdel panel was later in the day but I’ll put it here for thematic connection.
Dykes to Watch Out For panel
1. Two named women
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something other than men
There were a couple of men in the room that I noticed. One seemed particularly incredulous that the test sets the bar so low.
We who have been counting are incredulous you can set it that low and still consistently fail…
My notes on this panel are mostly a big long list of film names. Many of which I will probably spell wrong.
Notes:
Way too many fail.
PASS: TV easier.
Blakes 7 only might pass. Panel couldn’t remember the specific conversation.
Sex in the city passes.
Alien film passes.
Scriptwriting school trains you out of it.
Teachers saying ‘people’ won’t want to watch it if it passes.
Far more TV passes than films.
B7, DW old and new, SJA, TW a bit. BtVS. Angel, less women, a bit less pass than BtVS. Firefly passes… if you squint. Inara and Kaylee talk about dresses. Inara f/f sex BUT all talking about men! Two straight women talking about how great lesbian sex is. Dollhouse pass. LoM maybe, Annie & Phyllis? Panel can’t remember. A2A pass. C&L pass. B5. Ivanova and Delenn about hair! STtNG, Beverly medical conversations. DS9 Kira and Dax. STVoy pass. Enterprise pass according to audience. TOS? Fail. Hex pass. Dark Angel pass. Kate & Allie pass. Tenko. The L Word.
Alien series, including Alien Vs Predator, passes. Not 3, unless maybe directors cut.
Bound. Serenity. Persepolis – about Iranian revolution. Yentl. Mamma Mia. Pride & Prejudice. League of their Own. Female Agents, a French film (about the resistance?). DEBS, about spy school.
Tons of films don’t pass. 9 to 5, 3 women, talk to each other only about men.
I’m a cheerleader. Golden Compass, once. The Last Unicorn, is a female. Bend it like Beckham. Bring it on. Penelope. Spirited Away. Loved you so long. Muriel’s Wedding. Grindhouse. Pirates of the Caribbean, just barely, some discussion on the maid and corsets and audience had to remember the name of the maid to make it count, and also ‘take the helm’. Sin City. Dogma. Calamity Jane. Return to Oz and Wizard of Oz? Maybe. Juliet Bravo, police officer. Prime Suspect. Middleman. Farscape. CSI. NCIS. ER. The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Blood Ties.
Highlander: mostly women talk about Duncan and Methos. Rebecca and Amanda talk about defence and living as an immortal and killing people with swords.
Unexpected fail: The West Wing? Difficulty of cleaning, pass!
Most films that pass have a female lead. Few with male leads pass.
Tinman pass. Books of Little House on the Prairie. Books in general are more likely.
Games were discussed. Much pass. Mini fail where female characters were deliberately weaker but there was complaining until it was fixed.
Doctor to patient discussions pass.
Female character under male gaze. Just going about her business? Going to be attacked.
[that’s the thing where if you ever get a scene of a woman just wandering around doing her job or going home or something then, because the camera is looking at her, you know she’s about to get beat up. Buffy teaser from first episode plays with that deliberately. Demons… entirely fails to.]
XKCD Bechdel test female leads. Good stats. Very few leads.
Female leads: mother daughter bonding OR horror.
Korean Tale of Two sisters.
Japanese and Chinese more leads.
Need ot have a female lead to pass.
Jodie Foster films more likely pass.
Tendency to generalise from ‘woman’ to ‘women’; tendency to blame woman if a film they’re in fails.
Lit just as bad when women write.
[tendency of women writers to duplicate the very worst misogynistic tropes.]
/panel
I will say that with the listing lots of films thing and the way there's web pages that list lots of films its possible that, however interesting the topic, it didn't fit a panel discussion quite as well as it would a simple web page database. Or maybe it headed into general discussion more often than I'm remembering or made note of.
Alien defence organisations
Another panel where I spent a bunch of time with my hand up and not making notes. I made words out loud instead, and got interesting replies.
UNIT, Torchwood, Stargate & Gerry Anderson. Spectrum. Men in Black.
Defence vs Control.
Citizen defence forces. Rebel or reactionary.
Actively resist incursions or X Files cover up alien incursions.
All meant to be secret. MoD or UN. Idea is people would panic if they knew.
PC: Unit and TW. Lots in comics. MI13 covers aliens and supernatural. Chris Roberson on his blog has been charting them in comics. Has 12. Trope happens a lot.
Anderson & UNIT same kind of time. Spectrum v specific and v few. Underbudgeted, not many of them. Only one moonbase, only one cloud base, 12 people.
Underground bases vs country houses with big boards saying TOP SECRET>
M: Known UNIT but secret like KGB or MI5. Don’t know what they do.
Bambera competent replace. UN soldiers from far away.
Lots more in New Series, all filing in to no 10.
Cooler base in Tower.
Torchwood interacts how?
PC: Plausible TW stealthy shadow organisation. British government secret, not share with UN.
Aircraft marked SHADO (Torchwood SUV)
Old lady “Bloody Torchwood”
PC knows a spook. People who know them know but don’t talk about it.
UNIT vs SGC. American, USAF. Some eps Russian version.
UNIT turf battles with SGC, imagine.
SGC are an *offense* organisation. “Pre-emptive defence.” [offending as much of the universe as has actually met them.]
UFO mythology. MJ12. Truman meets aliens… not. (RL forteana)
PC follows Fortean Times.
Faked landings and hidden mars life theory.
Censorship. Contrast finding true history later. Reversion to type. Free press is new.
PC: Never done realistically. Slightly threadbare and we enjoy picking holes.
Our knowledge of the world says we think it’s not there, so… [we don’t really believe it so we pick holes]
Or, they have to be bare to make drama?
PC: possible to do it much better.
Ming: UNIT in Battlefield. UN soldiers. Quatermaster sergeant, and the attempt to have the appropriate ammunition for every foe.
PC: Ultraviolet. Very good. And MI13 is okay. UV does it quietly and well.
Needing glasses to see aliens (They Live).
Extremeophiles
Primeval – covert, play with that, defend?
PC: do you think panic in the streets would ensue? DW xmas evacuation is the population adapting.
US paranoia. Never invaded. Aliens for Russians.
ML aliens undercut jobs market [would be the worry now]
PC: everyone in Britain DW met a Cyberman or Dalek.
BE: renaissance & medieval history, SF parallels: tech level leaps forward, discovery of new world. And the psychological impact was…?
PC: Japanese history – end of isolation = first contact. Black Fleet = War of the worlds, superior tech level. [BE needs to look this up and read stuff]
Defence? Gesture against inevitability of history. Small vs huge.
PC: Cobbled together feels really real.
Difference between Alien Defence Force and resistance
Stross Laundry shout out again.
Quatermass’ budget struggles [there was lol. I cannot duplicate from notes.]
Starfleet as ADF: defense against the wrong sort of alien.
PC follower of Fortean stuff. Fortean Times. FT even is fed up with UFOs, just runs a short sceptical piece, its all lanterns and birds.
Wiltshire as strange county [was commented on at some length by panellist]… is home of PC.
Early Stargate: Americans abroad pissing people off. Later have to reveal to world. World just funds them.
PC: now China to the moon. You’d want to trade through the stargate.
Audience: analyse trade between star systems? How become profitable?
Alien protocol – quarantine! Export deadly pot noodles [trust me, this was hilarious in context]
Guns Germs & Steel <- yes, must read it.
ADF as justification for far right policy - B7
BSG military machine to fight external threat from 50 years ago: Interesting to explore.
Similarity to disaster management perspective, which came up on the Apocalypse Now panel.
MoD Alien defence desk. Nick Pop (is a joke). Any defence significance? Obviously not Russian means not significant. US government UFO myth to cover black tech. Soviet too.
Niven & Pournelle NASA panel. Came up with interesting stuff. Recent? Increasingly hilarious. [sounds like a thing to look up]
Bottom line: If they have FTL, how can our tech match it?
Military Trekkies FTW [someone said about a branch of military which is basically all trekkies getting to play with the good toys]
Overconfident overaggressive for the lose.
Regan & Gorbachev. R suggested teaming up to fight aliens.
Aliens registration office. As in not British. Photo with Daleks outside.
And you can bet it wasn’t wheelchair accessible…
Dan Dare as ADF. Russians again? Commonwealth thing. PC says. Ming remembers white? Brits. PC says Black cavalry captain, competent, in the 1950s.
End of panel.
I wish these notes were more coherent, panels are way more interesting than my writing about them.
There's another page here about Originality in SF, and then some things I didn't make notes on.
I've written up the Rob Shearman talk but since he has an LJ I think I'll message him and ask before posting.
Ruler of the Universe ... needs to be seen to be believed. Is highly fun.
Man of Iron isn't even believed when it is seen. Hilarious. The origins of the script though... mind boggling.
The future of fandom panel I went to. I think I managed to be annoying. There's certain comments about IQ and 'well written books' that I simply cannot let stand. IQ is a meaningless number. But I also made some notes on the suggestions for finding and growing SF groups. I just didn't put them in the same place as all these other notes. Handy.
And then there was 2000-0500 at the Dead Dog Party, talking, in the bar. I have a five page written conversation but it's only really fascinating interacting with the spoken conversation it accompanied for at least four hours, and doesn't translate well to the web.
Someone promised to do an Intro Newbies RPGs panel. Someone else promised to do Knitting and crochet and stuff as a workshop. I have this in writing.
Right. I'm going back to bed.
Little notepad was new for the weekend.
It's kind of intimidating to look at it and realise how many words must be in there.
Regendering TV
I heard someone afterwards complain that the definition of regender was too simple, but I think it was exactly right. Keep everything the same, but have the part played by an actor of the opposite gender. Women instead of men, mostly.
This panel had a lot of connect to the Bechdel panel later.
Start with list:
Blakes 7: Regenders nicely but the BBC wouldn’t make it. {panellist reckoned} Avon fell in love, works as O+ [Avon’s background includes throwing it all away for love, pretty much. Classic O+ story. With bonus being really good at computers.] Jenna as O-> works. 4 O+ on a spaceship led by O+. Gan as a deadly woman. Small woman with limiter interesting. [Gan could work as a O+ because the interesting part is the character killed, and is strong. Small women can be strong, and definitely can kill. And then you get an interesting visual.]
Life on Mars and Mad Men: Neither works. Same reasons. Historicals. Regendering while keeping the same attitudes, having women treat men as sex objects, breaks the historical attitudes and makes it a polemical AU. Not our 70s / 60s.
B7 makeable, LoM destroyed… or a comedy show, Worm Turned.
Loses interesting. Mad Men even more so. Early 60s bizarre AU.
First 2 male plainclothes detectives sent out as prostitutes undercover.
Cagney and Lacey.
As men? Loses the surprise. C&L already revisioned it by being O+.
Firefly: As with B7, doable. Set in imaginary world, large and diverse cast with decent female roles already. Works when swapped.
Male prostitute.
Jayne would work as a O+.
Insane brother dancing.
Married couple already role reversed.
Mal as female getting in fights in bars and her crew just accepting that would be different.
Star Trek TOS. Nichelle Nichols read for Spock, was excellent. So close!
Regender so slash is f/f and people argue if maleslash is the same thing or not.
Original 1st officer was a woman.
Female captain in 60s?
Shatner eye makeup anyway.
Kirk with men drooling and kneeling.
Love them and leave them.
Different reaction to O+ Kirk.
B7 and ST could never have been made.
Female Captaid? Shoved far away, with a husband at home, moping about him.
Next Gen regenders even more easily.
DS9 does too, but the caring father with a son is valuable as is.
Regender Janeway? Has Enterprise.
Picard as already regendered, torn between family and career.
SF has possibilities.
Historicals idealise sexism?
People in structures like snail in shell, rigid but outside them {BE doesn’t agree}
Woman in male role, lesbian? No. True parallel woman protect delicate men.
Change setting. Matron? Works. [in historicals] [strong women, being tough on other women who can take it, protecting poor ickle baby doctor mens]
Send back to Carry On Matron.
Regender Carry On? Lols. Nice package son! Cucumber!
Red Dwarf did it. Holly head sex change.
Easier to regender older shows. Newer ones pre gender switched.
Atlantis would lose female leader and gain a lot of female character followers.
Mulder and Scully were regendered, believer and skeptic. Course that meant the O+ was always wrong.
Kaylee regendered: keep strawberry and frills and complain about not getting fucked. Keep them femme and oriented to the same gender as the original character and you get a whole different result than regender to masculine equivalents.
C&L regendered buddy cop shows already.
STAR WARS: “Lucy, I am your mother.”
Stormtroopers with moulded breastplates.
Lightsabers are such phallic symbols would a O+ jedi still carry them?
Highlander slash sword-penis fight-sex.
[er, yes, my notes feel that needs no further explanation.]
Gender imbalance in series theory was O+ immortals wouldn’t get sword training before first death so would die quickly. [which is a dumb theory because most immortal training happens after first death when a teacher takes them on anyway]
Regender it and have to explain why there’s more women than men. Maybe O+ immortals are all nuns, living on holy ground.
Liz Williams epic fantasy Bechdel pass [except I’m not sure I got the names right]
Regender only one and it changes the balance.
Acceptability and legibility, acceptance and making sense.
Gender embedded in thinking, need people to have gender to understand.
Regender messes with ideas of gender.
[hence the yaay]
Xena ambiguous [morally?] (regendered) [already a warrior bloke with O+] also big strong tall tough and gorgeous
[there was a chorus of agreement that we’d all *like* to see big women. In many senses of big. Not just tiny delicate people, huge great taller than everyone people.]
Note to self: read the rest of Irresistible Forces [the Bujold story I’ve read, the rest I can’t recall]
Being born a woman gives you a different life experience… duh!
I did more talking. Regender don’t get same results
Women characters in fiction don’t get to just have sex
And we’re on to f/f and absence in fiction.
[Someone suggested something about Blade using guns while Buffy throws them away. They sounded approving. It reminded me of something so I stuck a hand up. Blade is supposed to be a monster, a half vampire using his power to fight other vampires. When you regender that you get? Mina Harker in Demons, which I hate. But they have the same setup, only now it’s a woman with power? They give her a disability. So, regendered characters often get treated quite differently.]
Notes on that panel done. It bounced around between people a lot more than you can see from the notes. I didn’t usually write when people changed because I was busy trying to keep up with the content, and I’m sure I still missed bits.
It was a very interesting panel.
It was also interesting hearing men Not Get It. One complaint was that you can’t just change the O+ O-> of a character because Women Are Different. I tried to explain later that the assumption that Women Are Different is the problem and it pisses many of us off. That bit went just before ‘different life experiences’. I think the key thing is that, yeah, women are living with different life experiences and structural forces, but that’s no reason for an individual woman not to end up being BA or Face or Hannibal in the A-Team. They’re exceptional people already, regendering them is not inherently more implausible.
/panel
I could go on about that panel’s content at length. But that wouldn’t be making notes on the convention.
The Bechdel panel was later in the day but I’ll put it here for thematic connection.
Dykes to Watch Out For panel
1. Two named women
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something other than men
There were a couple of men in the room that I noticed. One seemed particularly incredulous that the test sets the bar so low.
We who have been counting are incredulous you can set it that low and still consistently fail…
My notes on this panel are mostly a big long list of film names. Many of which I will probably spell wrong.
Notes:
Way too many fail.
PASS: TV easier.
Blakes 7 only might pass. Panel couldn’t remember the specific conversation.
Sex in the city passes.
Alien film passes.
Scriptwriting school trains you out of it.
Teachers saying ‘people’ won’t want to watch it if it passes.
Far more TV passes than films.
B7, DW old and new, SJA, TW a bit. BtVS. Angel, less women, a bit less pass than BtVS. Firefly passes… if you squint. Inara and Kaylee talk about dresses. Inara f/f sex BUT all talking about men! Two straight women talking about how great lesbian sex is. Dollhouse pass. LoM maybe, Annie & Phyllis? Panel can’t remember. A2A pass. C&L pass. B5. Ivanova and Delenn about hair! STtNG, Beverly medical conversations. DS9 Kira and Dax. STVoy pass. Enterprise pass according to audience. TOS? Fail. Hex pass. Dark Angel pass. Kate & Allie pass. Tenko. The L Word.
Alien series, including Alien Vs Predator, passes. Not 3, unless maybe directors cut.
Bound. Serenity. Persepolis – about Iranian revolution. Yentl. Mamma Mia. Pride & Prejudice. League of their Own. Female Agents, a French film (about the resistance?). DEBS, about spy school.
Tons of films don’t pass. 9 to 5, 3 women, talk to each other only about men.
I’m a cheerleader. Golden Compass, once. The Last Unicorn, is a female. Bend it like Beckham. Bring it on. Penelope. Spirited Away. Loved you so long. Muriel’s Wedding. Grindhouse. Pirates of the Caribbean, just barely, some discussion on the maid and corsets and audience had to remember the name of the maid to make it count, and also ‘take the helm’. Sin City. Dogma. Calamity Jane. Return to Oz and Wizard of Oz? Maybe. Juliet Bravo, police officer. Prime Suspect. Middleman. Farscape. CSI. NCIS. ER. The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Blood Ties.
Highlander: mostly women talk about Duncan and Methos. Rebecca and Amanda talk about defence and living as an immortal and killing people with swords.
Unexpected fail: The West Wing? Difficulty of cleaning, pass!
Most films that pass have a female lead. Few with male leads pass.
Tinman pass. Books of Little House on the Prairie. Books in general are more likely.
Games were discussed. Much pass. Mini fail where female characters were deliberately weaker but there was complaining until it was fixed.
Doctor to patient discussions pass.
Female character under male gaze. Just going about her business? Going to be attacked.
[that’s the thing where if you ever get a scene of a woman just wandering around doing her job or going home or something then, because the camera is looking at her, you know she’s about to get beat up. Buffy teaser from first episode plays with that deliberately. Demons… entirely fails to.]
XKCD Bechdel test female leads. Good stats. Very few leads.
Female leads: mother daughter bonding OR horror.
Korean Tale of Two sisters.
Japanese and Chinese more leads.
Need ot have a female lead to pass.
Jodie Foster films more likely pass.
Tendency to generalise from ‘woman’ to ‘women’; tendency to blame woman if a film they’re in fails.
Lit just as bad when women write.
[tendency of women writers to duplicate the very worst misogynistic tropes.]
/panel
I will say that with the listing lots of films thing and the way there's web pages that list lots of films its possible that, however interesting the topic, it didn't fit a panel discussion quite as well as it would a simple web page database. Or maybe it headed into general discussion more often than I'm remembering or made note of.
Alien defence organisations
Another panel where I spent a bunch of time with my hand up and not making notes. I made words out loud instead, and got interesting replies.
UNIT, Torchwood, Stargate & Gerry Anderson. Spectrum. Men in Black.
Defence vs Control.
Citizen defence forces. Rebel or reactionary.
Actively resist incursions or X Files cover up alien incursions.
All meant to be secret. MoD or UN. Idea is people would panic if they knew.
PC: Unit and TW. Lots in comics. MI13 covers aliens and supernatural. Chris Roberson on his blog has been charting them in comics. Has 12. Trope happens a lot.
Anderson & UNIT same kind of time. Spectrum v specific and v few. Underbudgeted, not many of them. Only one moonbase, only one cloud base, 12 people.
Underground bases vs country houses with big boards saying TOP SECRET>
M: Known UNIT but secret like KGB or MI5. Don’t know what they do.
Bambera competent replace. UN soldiers from far away.
Lots more in New Series, all filing in to no 10.
Cooler base in Tower.
Torchwood interacts how?
PC: Plausible TW stealthy shadow organisation. British government secret, not share with UN.
Aircraft marked SHADO (Torchwood SUV)
Old lady “Bloody Torchwood”
PC knows a spook. People who know them know but don’t talk about it.
UNIT vs SGC. American, USAF. Some eps Russian version.
UNIT turf battles with SGC, imagine.
SGC are an *offense* organisation. “Pre-emptive defence.” [offending as much of the universe as has actually met them.]
UFO mythology. MJ12. Truman meets aliens… not. (RL forteana)
PC follows Fortean Times.
Faked landings and hidden mars life theory.
Censorship. Contrast finding true history later. Reversion to type. Free press is new.
PC: Never done realistically. Slightly threadbare and we enjoy picking holes.
Our knowledge of the world says we think it’s not there, so… [we don’t really believe it so we pick holes]
Or, they have to be bare to make drama?
PC: possible to do it much better.
Ming: UNIT in Battlefield. UN soldiers. Quatermaster sergeant, and the attempt to have the appropriate ammunition for every foe.
PC: Ultraviolet. Very good. And MI13 is okay. UV does it quietly and well.
Needing glasses to see aliens (They Live).
Extremeophiles
Primeval – covert, play with that, defend?
PC: do you think panic in the streets would ensue? DW xmas evacuation is the population adapting.
US paranoia. Never invaded. Aliens for Russians.
ML aliens undercut jobs market [would be the worry now]
PC: everyone in Britain DW met a Cyberman or Dalek.
BE: renaissance & medieval history, SF parallels: tech level leaps forward, discovery of new world. And the psychological impact was…?
PC: Japanese history – end of isolation = first contact. Black Fleet = War of the worlds, superior tech level. [BE needs to look this up and read stuff]
Defence? Gesture against inevitability of history. Small vs huge.
PC: Cobbled together feels really real.
Difference between Alien Defence Force and resistance
Stross Laundry shout out again.
Quatermass’ budget struggles [there was lol. I cannot duplicate from notes.]
Starfleet as ADF: defense against the wrong sort of alien.
PC follower of Fortean stuff. Fortean Times. FT even is fed up with UFOs, just runs a short sceptical piece, its all lanterns and birds.
Wiltshire as strange county [was commented on at some length by panellist]… is home of PC.
Early Stargate: Americans abroad pissing people off. Later have to reveal to world. World just funds them.
PC: now China to the moon. You’d want to trade through the stargate.
Audience: analyse trade between star systems? How become profitable?
Alien protocol – quarantine! Export deadly pot noodles [trust me, this was hilarious in context]
Guns Germs & Steel <- yes, must read it.
ADF as justification for far right policy - B7
BSG military machine to fight external threat from 50 years ago: Interesting to explore.
Similarity to disaster management perspective, which came up on the Apocalypse Now panel.
MoD Alien defence desk. Nick Pop (is a joke). Any defence significance? Obviously not Russian means not significant. US government UFO myth to cover black tech. Soviet too.
Niven & Pournelle NASA panel. Came up with interesting stuff. Recent? Increasingly hilarious. [sounds like a thing to look up]
Bottom line: If they have FTL, how can our tech match it?
Military Trekkies FTW [someone said about a branch of military which is basically all trekkies getting to play with the good toys]
Overconfident overaggressive for the lose.
Regan & Gorbachev. R suggested teaming up to fight aliens.
Aliens registration office. As in not British. Photo with Daleks outside.
And you can bet it wasn’t wheelchair accessible…
Dan Dare as ADF. Russians again? Commonwealth thing. PC says. Ming remembers white? Brits. PC says Black cavalry captain, competent, in the 1950s.
End of panel.
I wish these notes were more coherent, panels are way more interesting than my writing about them.
There's another page here about Originality in SF, and then some things I didn't make notes on.
I've written up the Rob Shearman talk but since he has an LJ I think I'll message him and ask before posting.
Ruler of the Universe ... needs to be seen to be believed. Is highly fun.
Man of Iron isn't even believed when it is seen. Hilarious. The origins of the script though... mind boggling.
The future of fandom panel I went to. I think I managed to be annoying. There's certain comments about IQ and 'well written books' that I simply cannot let stand. IQ is a meaningless number. But I also made some notes on the suggestions for finding and growing SF groups. I just didn't put them in the same place as all these other notes. Handy.
And then there was 2000-0500 at the Dead Dog Party, talking, in the bar. I have a five page written conversation but it's only really fascinating interacting with the spoken conversation it accompanied for at least four hours, and doesn't translate well to the web.
Someone promised to do an Intro Newbies RPGs panel. Someone else promised to do Knitting and crochet and stuff as a workshop. I have this in writing.
Right. I'm going back to bed.