Interesting Essays This Week

[brightknightie]

I didn't happen see any articles this week that specifically pinged the Forever Knight corner of my fannish imagination, but I did see these three with general fannish implications, and thought that you might be interested in them, too:

• "From 'Doctor Who' to 'The Leftovers,' TV tries to regenerate the hero" by Jeff Jensen (9/6/14, EW)
  Jensen proposes that the age of the TV anti-hero is ending, and that perhaps we're seeing the dawn of a new age of genuinely good protagonists, who, where they have troubled pasts, have repented their misdeeds and work to repay society for their sins... to put right what once went wrong... to battle the forces of evil... to go where no one has gone before... (I'd so love him to be right!)



• "Why 1994 Was One of Network TV’s Last Truly Great Seasons" by Josef Adalian (9/2/14, Slate/Vulture)
  The glory days of traditional television, network and syndicated? Adalian makes a strong argument for the 94-95 season. He even mentions that two Treks (DS9 and Voyager) aired simultaneously around that time, though he (not inexplicably, but, you know) fails to mention FK's second season or HL's third. Along with the qualitative comparisons, he offers some eye-opening quantitative comparisons of eyeballs on screens. (The numbers that FK was pulling then, network executives would drool over today.)



• "The Body and the Spirit" by David Brooks (9/4/14, NYT)
  Regarding the horrific murders by so-called "ISIS" of the US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, Brooks reflects on the very particular barbarism of decapitation. I don't mean to belittle this serious reflection by saying that after considering it in what I hope is its proper real-life context, I also then considered what its analysis could mean to Highlander fandom, how we read and write about our characters, as well as how our characters themselves cope within the stories.