From The Back Of The Cupboard: Voyager ain't half bad

Reading through old magazines is absolutely fascinating. It cuts through time-accumulated received wisdom and shows how things were perceived at the time. But when it comes to the geeky magazines I've got lying around my house there's also some bizarre speculations and rumours that you can only wish had come to pass. If I can be bothered, I'll be highlighting some of the more interesting finds in this series-to-be, "From The Back Of The Cupboard." First stop: September 1997.

September 1997 is the month where Scotland votes to get its own Parliament and there’s a tricky situation for newspaper editors who have to decide whether Princess Diana gets top billing over Mother Theresa. Diana’s funeral is watched by two billion people, more than will ever see an episode of Babylon 5, no matter how great the new season is. Which is pretty great, according to SFX.

FRONT COVER:
It’s only SFX’s 29^th issue. Babylon 5 dominates the cover with a promise from its producer that it’s “back and better than ever”. Your anticipation might be slightly rubbished by the fact that a spoiler is splashed on the cover: “Ivanova to leave shocker!” Elsewhere on the cover, Event Horizon might be the scariest sci-fi this side of a xenomorph, a peak at the “small-screen CGI fest” Adventures of Sinbad, DS9’s Ferengi Rom and how Spawn has made hell PG-friendly.

ISN’T IT ABOUT TIME...?
This feature right at the front of the magazine (before even the contents page) tries to convince its readers that there is some merit to be found in an oft-dismissed work. This month they might have their work cut out for them defending Star Trek: Voyager which, until Enterprise dutifully came along, was the least regarded of the Trek series for many. (Full disclosure: I bloody loved Voyager when it was first on TV, and I still like it, although I can definitely see where its detractors are coming from.) This was written, by the way, before season four had premiered.

Like Plato before it, SFX is presenting this argument in a Prosecution vs Defence dialogue. The Prosecution wastes no time whatsoever slaughtering the formulaic nature of the show as either “blue fuzz in space which causes something weird” or “one of the team undergoes some emotional watershed”. For an encore we get a butchering of the cast, some of it more justified than others:

• Janeway: “Katherine Hepburn-on-helium voice just makes you want to phaser her larynx”
• Paris: “straight out of Flash Gordon” (With the inclusion of Captain Proton for stories, you might think the writers were in on this.)
• Chakotay: “plank of wood”
• Tuvok: “poor Xerox of Spock”
•  Kim: “a wimp”
•  Neelix: “definition for a useless, irritating token alien comedy character”

Which might seem a bit harsh on Neelix but this is two years before anyone’s heard of Jar-Jar Binks.

The Defence quickly gets to work by saying that Voyager suffered negative comparisons during a rubbish first season but has become really good. We then get the bold claim that “Voyager is starting to do something interesting, even Brechtian” before clarifying that the show can subvert your expectations from time to time (episodes “Warlord” and “Coda” get name-checked). Janeway is defended as a subtle character who puts on woodenness as an act, and is a better character than Sisko... but only in the context of having conversations with Q. Neelix can’t be defended, the Doctor is praised by all and there’s a lot of hope being pinned on a new female Borg character.

Of final note is the point that “Tuvok is so stuffy he comes across like Rimmer from Red Dwarf”.

STRANGE TALES:
We kick off this rumour-mill section with news that Claudia Christian won’t be part of Babylon 5’s fifth season, with some wonderfully bitchy contradictory accounts from J Michael Straczynski and Christian herself. But who even needs the classic space station drama when there’s a new Trek series in the offing? “A Next Next Generation set 30 years on from current Trek timeline” is what we’ll probably get. Or, in other words, about as far away from a series prequel as you could imagine. Thank heavens!

Meanwhile, the Godzilla novelisation rights have been bought for “an eye-popping six-figure sum”, Men In Black’s title track single is described as “a toe-tappingly pleasant little number”, a Discworld play is to be performed professionally, and there’s a full-page ad for Who fan-film Wartime on VHS digitally remastered in stereo.

NEUTRAL ZONE: The letters page with a mildly amusing name starts with an incredibly observant letter pointing out that the opening titles of The X Files show Mulder and Scully’s IDs as being for the “Federal Bureau of Justice, United States Department of Investigation”. (The words “justice” and “investigation” should, of course, be the other way round.) Another reader writes in to say that The X Files has a lot in common with Star Wars, even likening Vader to Cancer Man. Apart from that madness, nobody liked Cosgrove Hall’s animated take on Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters, The Fifth Element is praised and somebody really hopes that the new BBC Doctor Who books will “drop some of the nonsensical baggage” from the Virgin New Adventures series. (Which it does, only to invent its own.)

EVENT HORIZON:
This interview with Event Horizon’s director, Paul Anderson, is full of optimism for a scary sci-fi film, which makes it all the sadder that the final product was cut by half an hour in post-production and doesn’t live up to the hype here. SFX asks about the casting of Laurence Fishburne, who is a good actor “but not one you’d normally associate with science fiction or horror”. But I have a good feeling about him breaking into the sci-fi genre. One day something big might come his way. Say, is there anything interesting coming up soon?

PRODUCTION HELL:

• Matrix is set to start filming in Autumn, under the direction of the Wachowski brothers. Keanu Reeves is set to star as “a man whose normal life is haunted by flashbacks which show him being hooked up to computers in a 21^st Century lab”.
• Ridley Scott will be on directing duties for I Am Legend so we can expect him to coax a great performance from lead Arnold Schwarzenegger.
• Roger Rabbit II will be a musical about Roger and Jessica Rabbit’s romance. Here’s hoping.
• Star Wars’ Special Editions will be released on video, but only for 97 days. Only 98 too long, then.
• For spoilerhounds, The X Files movie’s plot is impressively summarised in less than 200 words and you’re better off reading that than sitting through the damn thing.

STARGATE SG-1:

Even though the director  Roland Emmerich “is allegedly none too keen on the series” based on his Egypt-bothering Stargate film, Jonathan Glassner and Brad Wright reckon that their TV spin-off from the film is going to be a success. It’s been commissioned for 44 episodes following its pilot, but Glassner reckons that “could just be the beginning. It’s not a limited series.” Well, so long as he knows when to call it quits – eight years ought to do it – then we should be fine.