MASTERS OF SCIENCE FICTION episode 4: adapting "The Discarded" by Harlan Ellison (from the 2007 TV GUIDE blog for the series)

Continuing from yesterday, some of the text entries from now-vanished tv series blogs on the TV Guide website, this one the fourth in a series I wrote in 2007 about the ABC-TV airing of the (six-episode) Masters of Science Fiction, the last episode they chose to air, adapting Harlan Ellison's 1959 short story, "The Departed".

This episode, "The Discarded", as available ("free with ads") on Roku TV.  The series' page.

Tonight's episode is the fourth and last ABC intends to run, of the six that were produced (all six will be seen in Canada, at least, on the cable channel Space, starting in November). And it was the episode a number of people were most eager to see, I suspect, since it was based on a short story by Harlan Ellison, who has established himself as a major figure in both prose fantastic fiction (among other sorts) and in screenwriting, as well as some notable comics scripting and work in other media. Apparently Ellison gave executive producer Keith Addis strong support when they resisted the attempts by ABC to call the series "Masters of Sci-Fi" which would be comparable to calling its Showtime sibling series Masters of Horror something like "Masters of Spookiness" instead.

(ABC chose to slip "scifi" into the URL for the series' pages on ABC.com, anyway...perhaps the smallest of many hostilities the network has shown toward this project). And the story was adapted for television by Ellison and Josh Olson, best-known for his excellent work in adapting the graphic novel A History of Violence for the 2005 film; Jonathan Frakes, of Star Trek: The Next Generation, directed the episode.

It's a pleasantly baroque staging of a rather simple tale of multiple betrayals, most of them betrayals of people with unusual appearance due to their infection with a plague known to the characters as "RIGM" or the "Blood Poo" (broadcast self-censorship) which causes limbs or organs to undergo extreme  deviance from the norm...John Hurt's character grows an extra head, albeit a smaller one, from his shoulders. A number of these folks have been quarantined, like the lepers exiled to the Hawaiian island of Molokai referenced in the drama, on poorly-maintained spacecraft and left to their own increasingly dispirited, often suicidal devices. Suddenly an emissary from Earth comes to beg for their blood, to help create a vaccine for RIGM, which has grown more virulent as it continues to plague the planet's human population; the emissary himself is infected and suffering. The deal: a trade of their blood samples for an opportunity to take up tracts of land, rather like reservations, on Earth. The de facto leader of the Discarded on this particular cargo ship is certain that the Earth government won’t honor its end of the bargain, and aggressively insists as much, till he's accidentally killed...leaving Hurt's character as the grand old man of the ship's crew, despite being the one who killed his best friend.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the late leader's suspicions are borne out...once the Earth has the blood cultures they need, they simply exile a few more of the most "unsightly" folk to the ship, crushing the hopes of those waiting to return to Earth for the first time in years or decades.

Ellison’s early short stories often are grim and relentless, and this one, written while facing great personal hardship (including attempts by his immediate commanding officers to court-martial him for a minor infraction, living off-base as a married draftee without permission), is no exception. Today’s Ellison touch is most obvious in the word-drunk play with language evident in the lines given Hurt’s character, named for a most unpleasant fellow GI Ellison knew then. Hurt delivers the speeches with a Shakespearean’s aplomb, in a good performance among many here, one that works well with Brian Dennehy’s gruff cynic and the largely Canadian supporting cast (Ellison has acute cameo role, as well). Among those Canadian actors were a number who are in their daily lives unusual-looking, due to circumstances of birth or surviving severe burns among other mishaps...they moved Ellison mightily by suggesting that they’d adopt the term “the Discarded” for themselves. (The short story was give this title in its 1959 magazine appearance by the late Cele Goldsmith Lalli, who went on from “discovering” such writers as Ursula K. Le Guin, Thomas M. Disch, and Keith Laumer as editor of the Ziff-Davis fiction magazines Fantastic and Amazing, to become the chief editor of ZD’s bridal magazines when the publisher sold the fiction titles). You may decide for yourself how many in-jokes are suggested by a character who shares the cameo scene with Ellison, an apparent teenage girl in a cheerleader’s outfit who is otherwise unusual mostly for having only one large Cyclopean eye centered above her nose; a reference to Maria Bello’s former cheerleader role in A History of Violence, to the gifted cheerleader in Heroes (rather unlikely, given when this was filmed), or to the monocular character Leelah from Futurama…or none of the above. John Frizzell’s jazz score for the episode was impressively good, seeming at one point to rework or quote another 1959 cultural product, the Miles Davis Quintet’s “So What?”

And the arguable betrayal of this series by ABC wasn’t restricted only to the network’s lack of publicity or other support, but, also by a number of local affiliates, who particularly have been eager to pre-empt Masters of SF from its 10pm ET/PT slot on Saturdays, in favor of local specials or sports coverage, often delaying the run till early-morning hours on Sunday. Given the (at least) interesting nature of at least three of the episodes, this seems more than a shame…but one that will presumably soon be remedied for those interested by a home-video release. And Canadians, at least, will have the option of seeing the two episodes, based on stories by Robert Sheckley and Walter Mosley, that we in the States will have to wait for.

[Since I haven't recovered them, not] Coming soon…a recap of the series as presented by ABC…and a consideration of the controversy surrounding the treatment of Robert Heinlein’s story by Michael Tolkin for the third episode, “Jerry Was a Man”...

From the TV GUIDE blog for MASTERS OF SCIENCE FICTION: on the adaptation of "Jerry Was a Man" by Robert A. Heinlein

TV GUIDE used to have, in its website, blogs for various television series, and, as a staffer, I wrote the entries for a number of those blogs, beginning with the ABC-TV series Masters of Science Fiction (4-25 August 2007)...other blogs I wrote for have old, now-"repurposed" links in the column at the right side of full-screen views of the blog here. MoSF was a companion series to the Showtime series Masters of Horror, and had six episodes in total, only four of which were broadcast by ABC as a summer replacement/filler series (the cable channel Space in Canada ran all six shortly thereafter, and the series was offered on DVD). I interviewed Harlan Ellison, sadly bedridden at that point, for his participation in and background for the articles I wrote. Here's the text of of the "Jerry Was a Man" as I've just found it in my drafts file.

The episode, as currently available ("free, with ads") on Roku.

“Jerry Was a Man” is the slickest and most handsomely-produced of the three episodes shown by ABC so far, and it’s based on a short story by probably the most influential of American science fiction writers of the Twentieth Century, Robert A. Heinlein—2007 is the centennial of his birth. Not the best American sf writer of the century (though many would give him that, too), but the most influential in part in demonstrating the ease with which one could sketch in details to give a sense of otherness in his fiction…but otherness in which his characters were entirely at home (unless there was some reason they shouldn’t be). And ingenuity, both in sociological speculation and in story construction, was often his strong suit, particularly in the work he published in the first decade or so of his sf-writing career, beginning with a story in John Campbell’s magazine Astounding Science Fiction in 1939. This story was first published in a competing magazine, Samuel Merwin’s Thrilling Wonder Stories, eight years later, by which timeHeinlein had established himself as a superstar in the sf field, and had also begun publishing sf stories in the hugely popular general-interest "slick"-paper magazines of the time, such as Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post, when they were multi-million-copy-selling staples of many Americans’ reading.

Heinlein was also a Californian for most of his early adult life, and prone to satirical observation; the potential for a somewhat updated skewering of the idle rich of a certain flavor, among others, is probably what attracted the deft satirist Michael Tolkin to this story…Tolkin wrote the  screenplay for and directed this episode. It’s not in the same league as such previous Tolkin works as The Player or The Rapture, nor, clearly, was it meant to be, so much as a bit of fun at the expense of self-satisfied crusaders, such as Anne Heche portrays here, corporate greed and insensitivity, as personified by Malcolm MacDowell’s character’s genetic-modification factory, and of other targets as they arise…down to an otherwise sober judge in the trial at the center of the drama all but clapping her hands as some audiovisual footage is submitted in evidence. “I like videos,” she purrs.

The "Jerry" of the title is one of a series of manufactured androids, genetically modified clones which are (somewhat improbably) put to use as extreme inexpensive slave labor, since they have been created with only very limited desires and abilities, or so their manufacturers argue. The Van Vogels, an excruciatingly wealthy couple (and named for writing friends of Heinlein, the van Vogts), seek from the same manufacturers an item that will trump a country-club rival’s six-legged dachshund.

When told their desire for a live Pegasus is impractical, they settle for a miniature elephant (the size of a toy poodle) which can write the sentence “I like you” in cursive with a pen clutched in its trunk, and also insist on taking a mine-sweeping android, or “Joe,” which they are allowed to lease rather than buy, since it has already been sold to a pet-food manufacturer…as raw material. Ms. Van Vogel becomes an advocate for Joes’ rights, and finds a lawyer who is ready to argue the case that their manufacturer has no right to execute the Joes when they outlive their usefulness. Jerry is demonstrated to be as capable of deception and selfishness as any other human, and thus the case is won.

There are funny bits sprinkled throughout the episode, such as the geneticist’s rant criticizing himself for truckling to the Van Vogels and similar wealthy fools rather than doing work that will actually benefit humanity, or in Ms. Van Vogel’s sudden affectation of beret and Che Guevara t-shirt as she is interviewed for television news about her newfound advocacy (even if the latter is a particularly easy sort of joke). The animation of the miniature elephant ranges from acceptable to quite good indeed (I was reminded of the quite different sort of special effect used to create miniature elephants for the 1940 film version of The Thief of Baghdad). The framing of the shots at times seemed a bit odd: in the courtroom, one of the three judges is not only not heard from but barely can be seen in the image as broadcast, and a chat between Ms. Van Vogel and Jerry, during which they both lie in a bed, presumably intentionally has Heche’s head partially off the screen but for no obvious reason (at least when viewed as an analog broadcast in the 4:3 ratio). And I wonder if a telling point is intended by having the Joes speak in what sounds like a parody of what dialog Chinese-American characters were often given in westerns in decades past…one suspects the treatment of Chinese-American near-slave labor in California, and its effects on subsequent generations, didn’t escape the notice of either Heinlein  nor Tolkin. And I wonder how much the somewhat similar matters dealt with in L. Sprague de Camp’s short story “The Gnarly Man” inspired Heinlein to write this one.