Episode 56: Transcript

Transcription by Keffy

Annalee: [00:00:00] Hey listeners. We’re doing something a little different during this time of quarantine. We’re recording from home and remotely, so you may hear a little bit of a difference in sound quality. I’m sitting here in my home office looking out into my backyard where there’s a nice tree and some birds. Charlie Jane, where are you recording from?

Charlie Jane: [00:00:20] I’m recording in my space station. I have a really good view of the north pole right now. We’re flying directly over the Arctic circle, it’s really lovely actually. You know, I wish everybody was in quarantine up here in space. It’s actually really nice, because you know, you don’t even miss people after a while and there’s robots and some aliens have stopped by to say hi. It’s been really good.

Annalee: [00:00:42] You have a great internet connection up there. Damn.

Charlie Jane: [00:00:45] I know, it’s so good. The aliens actually helped with that.

Annalee: [00:00:48] Oh great, cool. And Veronica, our producer is also doing this remotely. Veronica, where are you?

Veronica: [00:00:56] I am in my home hanging out with my cat, Pattycakes.

Annalee: [00:01:01] Aww.

Charlie Jane: [00:01:01] Hi, Pattycakes

Annalee: [00:01:01] Pattycakes is so cute. I follow Pattycakes on Instagram.

Charlie Jane: [00:01:04] Pattycakes has Instagram.

Veronica: [00:01:06] Yeah.

Annalee: [00:01:06] So all of you should know about that. All right. Let’s start the show.

Charlie Jane: [00:01:12] Welcome to Our Opinions Are Correct, a podcast about the meaning of science fiction. I’m Charlie Jane Anders, a science fiction writer who thinks rather a lot about science.

Annalee: [00:01:24] And I’m Annalee Newitz, a science journalist who writes science fiction.

Charlie Jane: [00:01:28] Today we’re going to be talking about television shows that are making us happy right now during this time of home confinement and social distancing. And just generally feeling kind of a little bit stuck at home. You know, this is a time when we really need television to be our special friend and—

Annalee: [00:01:45] Our guiding light.

Charlie Jane: [00:01:46] —a lot of TV shows. Our guiding light, absolutely. And a lot of TV shows are stepping up and meeting the challenge and we’re just going to pay tribute to some of the TV shows that are making us really happy right now.

[00:01:56] Intro music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.

Charlie Jane: [00:02:23] You know, I’ll start us off by talking about a show that is very close to my heart right now, which is Motherland: Fort Salem. It’s a show on Freeform and it’s about basically witches who were fighting for the United States against terrorist witches and they’re like, at like, witch West Point, kind of. And it’s an in an alternate world, where…

Annalee: [00:02:47] That’s what Fort Salem is. It’s like, it’s witch West Point. Or witch Annapolis. Take your pick.

Charlie Jane: [00:02:53] Yeah, it’s like, exactly. It’s the witch military academy, and it’s an alternate world where instead of the Salem witch trials there was some kind of Salem peace accord where witches agreed to fight for the United States before the United States was even a thing. And it’s just… I don’t know. Annalee, why do we love that show so much?

Annalee: [00:03:09] You know, for me, it’s one of the most interesting alternate history ideas that I’ve come across in a really long time. And a lot of it has to do with stuff that you can only do on television, which is just the visual image of pagan women waving the American flag and making patriotic speeches. It’s just, it’s such a mindfuck because these are images that just, I grew up at a time of like, people burning D&D books and burning heavy metal albums because they were SATANIC! And they were doing it in the name of America. And seeing a show that’s embracing the idea of pagan magic as something fundamental to American identity. It’s just amazing seeing those images. And that’s just the kind of background. That’s just the worldbuilding. I haven’t even gotten into the adorable main characters and all of their flouncy, bouncy melodrama.

Charlie Jane: [00:04:10] There’s so much drama, it’s like… I can’t believe it’s not a CW show. It’s just so much drama and the three female main characters have these complicated friendships with lots of spikiness, and they all have different perspectives about what’s going on and they all are having their own romances. Except for one of them, who just wants to screw around, I guess.

[00:04:32] But they’re having romances and, it’s like—

Annalee: [00:04:34] Yeah, one of them is like, she’s a slut. But that’s a badge of pride. One of the things that these witches are supposed to do is they’re supposed to be randy and kind of show their power by attracting lots and lots of people to have sex with. And so it’s like, when I say she’s a slut, I mean that, like, in a world where being a slut is considered super bad-ass, she’s bad-ass.

Charlie Jane: [00:05:02] It’s expected and, yeah, it’s so awesome. And there’s a lesbian relationship that’s unfortunately got some issues, but I’m rooting for them. I’m hoping that it works out. It’s just, it’s a really fun show that’s very kind of, it’s crack but in the best possible way. It’s just tasty, happy, crack.

Annalee: [00:05:22] And the worldbuilding is just so superb, and it’s all, sort of the main plot of season one is that there are terrorist attacks and they’re magical attacks so the witches are having to get involved to try to stop these magical attacks. So it’s very on the nose in terms of American politics, and yet it’s just taking place in this bonkers alternate reality where patriotism looks really different, but it still feels like patriotism. I can’t get enough of this show and it is, any time you get bored of the worldbuilding, there’s just somebody having sex or arguing with their mom or there’s some crazy conspiracy, and so, it’s delightful.

Charlie Jane: [00:06:01] It is. So what’s another show that we’re really, really excited about right now, Annalee?

Annalee: [00:06:05] So we’ve been watching Vagrant Queen—

Charlie Jane: [00:06:10] Yes.

Annalee: [00:06:10] —which is an incredible Canadian space opera, which is—

Charlie Jane: [00:06:16] It’s so good.

Annalee: [00:06:17] It’s just, I mean. This is another show where there’s a lot of stuff happening in it that completely depends on the medium of television and this is… The story’s a pretty typical swashbuckling tale. There’s a princess who’s fleeing. She’s a reluctant royal, as the listicle might say.

Charlie Jane: [00:06:37] She’s actually queen.

Annalee: [00:06:38] Oh no, she was a queen. Right. Okay, anyway.

Charlie Jane: [00:06:39] She was crowned.

Annalee: [00:06:39] She was crowned queen and then there’s a horrific attack from basically nationalists who overthrow the monarchy, which the monarchy are the good guys in this show. Kind of like Star Wars.

Charlie Jane: [00:06:52] It’s a little ambiguous, but yeah.

Annalee: [00:06:56] Yeah, so she flees the kingdom and becomes a scavenger and becomes this total badass ninja who’s completely below the radar. She’s zooming around, kind of Firefly-style. Just smuggling and stealing stuff like you do. And then, of course as the show begins, she’s having to kind of reckon with her past, and she’s being sort of torn between remaining an outsider just leading her own life, or going back to her home planet and taking the thrown and trying to overthrow the incredibly authoritarian shitbags who’ve taken over.

[00:07:32] That’s the backstory, but the thing that’s delightful about it, tell us more, Charlie.

Charlie Jane: [00:07:35] Well, it’s funny you said it uses the format of television really well, and I agree with that. It’s actually based on a comic book which I haven’t read by Magdalene Visaggio and various other people. And I’m actually really curious to read the comic now, because I feel like it’s such a television concept, and the way that it uses all the visuals and the kind of pumping dance music in every scene, and the acting, and there’s so much about it that’s so uniquely television. And I just love the characters so much. I love the main, Elida, the runaway queen and her kind of, “Fuck it” attitude and her whole… She absolutely does not want to go back and become a monarch again, and they’re trying to drag her back into regaining her throne, and she’s just like, “Fuck that.” Her sidekicks are just adorable.

[00:08:26] It is so Canadian. There’s just all these jokes about Winnipeg and Regina, and…

Annalee: [00:08:30] Well, their ship is called the Winnipeg.

Charlie Jane: [00:08:32] I know.

Annalee: [00:08:32] And when they’re trying to go undercover, they refer to the ship as the Regina, and there’s lots of jokes.

Charlie Jane: [00:08:38] Yes.

Annalee: [00:08:38] Regina, for those of you who don’t know, is the capital of Saskatchewan. Anyway, so it’s delightful.

Charlie Jane: [00:08:43] It’s very Canadian, and at one point, Isaac, the guy who’s from Earth is like, yeah, somebody else is talking about their dangerous planet they come from. And he was like, yeah, Canada’s also really brutal and dangerous. And it’s like, just so…

Annalee: [00:08:57] Yeah, I’m from Canada!

Charlie Jane: [00:08:58] It’s just, it’s such a cute show.

Annalee: [00:09:02] And Elida, the lead character who’s the queen, she just gives great side-eye. She is just the master of side-eye and that’s what we want in a queen right now. But also, back to the sort of styling of the show. It is very disco-candy color

Charlie Jane: [00:09:18] It is!

Annalee: [00:09:18] It’s very much in that mode of like, I feel like, in the last five years, since Guardians of the Galaxy, the kind of brightly-colored, late ‘70s vision of the future has become much more popular again, which thankfully, because now everything can be sparkly. 

Charlie Jane: [00:09:36] Yeah! It’s really true. 

Annalee: [00:09:38] Jem Gerrard, who’s the person who is the show-runner, she’s clearly got a real flair for the visual. She often will set the show’s action sequences in these really unlikely places, like a convenience store at a gas station on another planet.

Charlie Jane: [00:09:58] Yes.

Annalee: [00:09:58] And a scene that we saw in the second episode, which I cannot believe exists because it is so fucking amazing is that our heroes are in your usual kind of trap. They’re in a cage dangling over a fire. The bad guy is like, I’m going to kill you and eat you if you don’t do a thing!” And what’s the thing they have to do? They have to win a karaoke contest.

Charlie Jane: [00:10:23] Spoilers.

Annalee: [00:10:23] And so… they’re, I mean, come on. This is not even a spoiler.

Charlie Jane: [00:10:26] It’s so good.

Annalee: [00:10:29] This is a bit. 

Charlie Jane: [00:10:28] That was so fucking good.

Annalee: [00:10:31] And it’s like, so they’re dangling in a cage over a fire—

Charlie Jane: [00:10:32] Oh my God.

Annalee: [00:10:32] —there’s another prisoner dangling in a cage over the fire and they are competing with each other at karaoke, and it’s a whole scene, a whole song of them doing—

Charlie Jane: [00:10:43] It was so good.

Annalee: [00:10:43] —cannibal karaoke. I, like I said, it was—

Charlie Jane: [00:10:46] Aaahhhh [sings].

Annalee: [00:10:49] It was sublime. I’d never seen anything like it before. Yes, it’s true that occasionally on the show Angel, they had some karaoke-type numbers, but—

Charlie Jane: [00:10:55] There was some great karaoke on Angel. But yeah, no this was so beautiful.

Annalee: [00:10:58] This was like above and beyond, so I—

Charlie Jane: [00:11:02] It was so beautiful.

Annalee: [00:11:02] This is the first show from Jem Gerrard. I cannot wait to see what she does next. I hope that there’s a fucking empire of Jem Gerrard shows that we get to enjoy—

Charlie Jane: [00:11:12] Same.

Annalee: [00:11:12] —for the rest of our lives. So, long live Jem Gerrard.

Charlie Jane: [00:11:15] Same. Yeah. And actually, building on what you said about the candy-colored disco space aesthetic. You know, I feel like for a while everything had to be Firefly and The Expanse, and Alien. And I’m here for that—

Annalee: [00:11:27] Gritty.

Charlie Jane: [00:11:27] —I love gritty space travel where everything is kind of dark and grimy. Everybody’s kind of borne down and everything’s just kind of bleak and there’s just shades of brown and gray. But, you know, every now and then it’s really nice to have pink and red and yellow and green, and just like, all the colors.

Annalee: [00:11:48] Mm-hmm. So, Charlie Jane, what’s another show that we’re super excited about?

Charlie Jane: [00:11:53] Okay, a show that we’ve both been really obsessed with recently is, I Am Not OK With This, which is a show on Netflix that is from the same people who did another one of our favorite shows, The End of the Fucking World. And I Am Not OK With This is sort of a mutant coming of age story that feels a little bit like it could actually take place in the X-Men universe or in the Heroes universe, or the universe of the movie Push. But it’s a little bit darker, a little bit weirder, and a bit goofier and more fun than a lot of those other things.

[00:12:25] And it’s just about this young queer girl coming to terms with her father’s death and coming to terms with the fact that she has telekinetic powers. And it’s so powerful and moving and intense, but also just really fun.

Annalee: [00:12:38] The thing I really like about I Am Not OK With This is it feels like it could really be just a queer coming of age story set in a small town. And the fact that she has super powers is kind of just part of this overall discovery that she’s kind of different from everybody else and she has different needs and different abilities and it feels very naturalistic. Like, a lot of times I feel like superhero shows are very heightened and we’re kind of used to that idea of like, this heightened reality. And this is kind of the opposite.

[00:13:12] It’s not grungy, it just feels very every day and very realistic and then these moments of her supernatural abilities coming out feel more scary because of that. It just feels really grounded.

Charlie Jane: [00:13:29] Yeah, it’s really all, it’s very character heavy and very character-based and that makes, like you said, it makes the speculative fiction elements pop a lot more. It feels sort of like an indie coming of age movie in a fact because the whole show is just kind of the length of a movie, I feel. 

Annalee: [00:13:44] The whole season, yeah.

Charlie Jane: [00:13:44] It’s a movie cut up into little, yeah the whole season is like the length of a movie. And much like The End of the Fucking World, which is the same people and the same kind of feel, I think The End of the Fucking World actually was a movie cut up into tiny episodes, and feel like this has that same feeling of like, it’s just like an indie movie. It’s like a Sundance film. 

[00:14:03] So another show that we wanted to talk about, that I’m just in love with right now is Dickinson. And Dickinson is a show that is not quite as speculative as some of these other shows, but it has a real magical realism feel to it. And, Annalee, tell us more about why we love Dickinson so much.

Annalee: [00:14:21] So, Dickinson is about the poet Emily Dickinson who lived in the mid-19th century in Massachusetts. And the thing that’s great about the show is that it celebrates her poetry, which is quite gothy and quite fantastical. She spends a lot of time talking to animals, and talking to death, and talking to other supernatural figures in her poetry. And in the show, we get to see that acted out. Like, she actually gets into a carriage with death and talks to death about some stuff that’s on her mind.

[00:14:55] But it’s also a very historically accurate picture of what life would have been like in the years leading up to the Civil War in Massachusetts, which was the time that Emily Dickinson lived in, and so we get to see her father, who’s a politician, arguing over issues around abolition, which he thinks is too radical. Then the younger characters in the story are all pro-abolition of slavery. And there’s a lot of great quirks in the show in terms of style where, as you were saying, there’s this sort of surreal, fantastical setting of her poetry. But also, all of the younger characters speak in contemporary American slang whereas all of the adults speak in kind of 19th century language. So there’s this fun playing around with generation gaps.

[00:15:42] And also, of course, it’s true to Emily Dickinson’s life in another way, which is almost never taught in schools when you read her poetry, which is that she was a big ol’ lesbian who was having a long-term affair with her brother’s wife.

Charlie Jane: [00:15:56] And that relationship is actually really cool and interesting and beautiful, and sometimes frustrating. But that’s part of what I love about that show, is that the characters are so vivid. They’re just such interesting characters and they get richer and more interesting as the show goes on. We were talking about the other day about the fact that Emily’s brother kind of starts off just seeming like a doofus and just kind of a shitty guy. And then you kind of realize that he actually has a really good heart and that there’s actually more to him than you can see at first. And he’s actually not a bad guy after all. He’s not the smartest but he really loves Emily and wants to support her.

[00:16:32] And I feel like it’s just, there’s all this interesting stuff layered in there about class privilege and whiteness and all the privilege that Emily Dickinson doesn’t realize that she has and how that intersects with the fact that she is actually really constrained from doing the one thing that she wants to do as a woman, which is be a poet.

[00:16:49] But it’s really just a funny show. It’s really cute. And it’s a show that feels kind of like a weird historical fantasy without going too heavily on the fantasy aspects.

Annalee: [00:16:59] And the fact that it is so fantastical is such a great counterpoint to the fact that it’s so historically accurate. It’s really kind of capturing a lot of stuff that I, certainly, hadn’t realized about Emily Dickinson and I was an English PhD student who studied American Lit and I just didn’t know that she’d had such a fascinating life and that her poetry was kind of knitted into the historical fabric. And that’s the other thing about the show. If you’re any kind of lover wacky gothic poetry, every episode is about one poem that she wrote and kind of how, what happened to her in her life lead to the poem. And we hear the language of her poetry and it’s just great. Yeah. It’ll definitely perk you up. It’s got some sad parts but it’s just beautiful.

[00:17:49] So Charlie Jane, tell us about a couple of other shows that are getting you excited. Maybe like a lightning round.

Charlie Jane: [00:17:57] Yeah, okay. So, we’ve talked before about our love of Steven Universe, but there’s a sequel show to Steven Universe, called Steven Universe: Future. Which kind of picks up, much like the Steven Universe TV Movie that they did late last year, Steven Universe: Future kind of picks up when Steven is 16 years old, he’s a bit older, he’s an adolescent and it’s kind of like, the happily ever after except not entirely. Because it’s like, yep, Steven has saved the universe, he’s saved the galaxy, he’s made peace. He’s fixed all these long-term problems that his mother left behind and he’s kind of making peace with his mother’s legacy. But it’s like, what do you do after that. What do you do when you’ve saved the universe? And how do you deal with all the trauma that you were just kind of repressing during that.

[00:18:47] It was kind of slow boil. The first few episodes just were like, oh, okay, here’s the new status quo of how everybody’s dealing. But then it gets really dark and intense and really beautiful and moving but just really, really insane.

[00:19:01] I’m loving the latest season of The Expanse which is a show that we nearly didn’t get any more of. It was finally renewed for two more seasons on Amazon. It’s just getting weirder and more exciting and awesome, and I just love that The Expanse is still around and that they’re getting to do more of the books and that hopefully they’ll get to actually wrap it up.

Annalee: [00:19:18] Yeah, and with the Amazon budget, it just looks fantastic because now they’ve reached the point where—

Charlie Jane: [00:19:22] It’s so good.

Annalee: [00:19:24] —where they’re hopping through these, I guess sort of dimension doorways or wormholes or technowizardry that takes them far across the galaxy and it looks so good. You know, it really.

Charlie Jane: [00:19:38] It’s so awesome.

Annalee: [00:19:38] Yeah, and of course the writing is great, but it’s nice to see it packaged up with some really fancy CGI, just to give us that sense of wonder because the thing I love about The Expanse is that it gives you that sense of wonder that you expect from a space opera, but it never lets you forget that all of this sense of wonder is built on the backs of the working class.

Charlie Jane: [00:19:59] Yes.

Annalee: [00:19:59] And that’s, like, we don’t ever go off and just spend the rest of our days with kings and queens and fancy-ass people. We always come back to labor issues, to ethnic divisions and nationalist divisions, and I just… that’s like crack.

Charlie Jane: [00:20:14] Absolutely. Yeah, and full disclosure, I’m currently working with one of the producers of The Expanse on developing a show based on my novel The City in the Middle of the Night.

[00:20:23] And then there’s the new Nancy Drew show on the CW, which we’ve just started watching and it’s got witches and ghosts and supernatural stuff. It’s like, kind of a like a Vampire Diaries version of Nancy Drew and I’m just… it’s so fun so far. It’s got a little bit of Veronica Mars in it, too. What are some shows that you’re excited about right now, Annalee? Just lightning round.

Annalee: [00:20:44] So I want to be sure and mention Devs, which is the first TV series from Alex Garland, who’s written a ton of great science fiction films and also directed Ex Machina and Annihiliation, which were two really interesting, kind of arty sci-fi movies that have come out recently. And Devs is, not surprisingly, about software developers at this kind of mysterious company where they’re developing some kind of… I don’t want to give spoilers, but let’s just say it’s technology that has the power to transform our civilization really profoundly. It’s kind of almost magic-level. And it’s a conspiracy story, it’s a story about techno-fetishism and techno-solutionism kind of gone completely wrong.

[00:21:38] It has incredible acting. It has some of the people that Garland has worked with before, like in Ex Machina. And it’s just a really weird near-future thriller that immediately sucked me in. And I just love that it’s conspiracies within conspiracies. It’s just everything you could want from a thriller, and it also is sort of making fun of Google in a lot of ways, so. So that’s always delightful, too.

[00:22:05] And the other show I wanted to mention is the new season of Westworld. We’re in season three, and I was a huge fan of season one. I thought season two got kind of mired in its own butt a little bit. There were a couple episodes that were real stand-outs in the second season. But the third season has completely gone on a totally different direction. It has gone out of the theme park. Now all of the robots are in the real world. So we’re now getting to see not just the inside of this historical recreation, but the society that’s made that recreation.

[00:22:46] And it’s basically Person of Interest set about a hundred years in the future, which makes sense because Jonah Nolan who was the showrunner on Person of Interest is also one of the showrunners along with Lisa Joy on Westworld. And we’re in this sort of gritty, kind of cyberpunk future where there’s characters who are petty thieves that have Gig apps that help them pick up smuggling jobs and stuff like that. We’re watching the robots trying to take over the 1% at their golden seats in these corporations that run the world. And there’s all these new questions about robot identity because a lot of the robots have been put into new bodies and so it’s kind of like, what does it mean when you take a cowboy robot and put him in the body of a hot chick? How does he deal with that? And there’s all these new plot twists and new conspiracies that we’re dealing with.

[00:23:46] It has Tessa Thompson in it being badass and I’m just really excited. I’m really excited to see where it takes us. And it’s very rare that you see a show that kind of meanders off the track and then just snaps right back on and gets you excited again. So I would say watch season one of Westworld, then skip right to season three. Read a plot summary of season two and you’re going to be fine. And that’s probably how it should have been.

[00:24:12] So I’m excited about both those shows. Let’s take a quick break and then when we come back, we’ll talk about some older shows that we love and take a little deep dive on some of the shows that really make us feel better and why.

[00:24:26] Segment change music plays. Drums with a bass line including bass drops.

Annalee: [00:24:37] Okay Charlie Jane, are there some shows that are either slightly older or much older that are really making you feel good right now? Not just because they’re sparkly fun but because there’s something about the show that really speaks to interesting issues or…?

Charlie Jane: [00:24:56] There are some shows that came out in the last 5-10 years. Either we slept on them a little bit or we need to give them some love again. Shows that I’m obsessed with right now, I’m finally catching up on the final season of 12 Monkeys, which is a show that was on Syfy. And I had covered it for io9, and I was really into it back then, but I never got around to seeing the final season. But it’s now all on Hulu. You would think it would be too on the nose for this current pandemic situation because it does have a… it’s based on the movie 12 Monkeys and it does have a pandemic and all that kind of stuff.

[00:25:28] But the show, especially by the final season, is just the goofy, weird, silly time travel stuff and just people crossing their own timelines and running around and having shenanigans. There’s one scene in one of the early episodes of season four where they go back to the old west, and it’s like, 1850-something and they’re in a saloon out in the middle of nowhere and it’s all these western characters, and you’re like, oh my God, we’re in a saloon, there’s going to be all this western bar stuff. And then the guy sitting at the piano, you realize that he’s playing the theme from Weird Science by Oingo Boingo because he’s a traveler from the future. And then you realize that everybody in this saloon is a traveler from the future and there’s nobody from the present, from the 1850s, in there. They’re all just different people from the future who have shown up in this saloon together. And it’s like, oooh. 

[00:26:19] It just… it’s a show that keeps pulling weird shit like that and just pulling the rug out from under you in a way that makes me really, really, really happy.

[00:26:26] What’s a show that’s making you happy right now?

Annalee: [00:26:29] So, I’m catching up on watching Shannara.

Charlie Jane: [00:26:31] Shannara!

Annalee: [00:26:34] Which, I have to admit, I never read the books, which I know are huge fan favorites. But I am not a big epic fantasy readers. There’s certain epic fantasy novels that I totally adore but usually I stick with scifi. But for some reason, during this pandemic, I’ve just been craving epic fantasy and so I dug it out of some recesses in my streaming media services and started watching it, and I just love it. It’s very light and gentle. It’s a lot of goofing around. It’s a lot of just cute people who probably should be on a CW show romping through these beautiful landscapes. It’s like a medieval fantasy realm but transposed into a post-apocalyptic future because clearly they’re on future Earth where all the cities have now decayed into these sort of graceful pieces of steel that are hung with vines and it’s this sort of world without us, but with us!

[00:27:39] And, you know, there’s elves and gnomes.

Charlie Jane: [00:27:42] And trolls…

Annalee: [00:27:43] Trolls, and humans. And there’s, it kind of lightly touches on how there’s this, there’s racism between the elves and the humans, but it’s barely dealt with. It’s not satisfying at that level. It’s really just a sweet romp. It’s clearly just a quest for… justice.

Charlie Jane: [00:28:04] It’s an epic quest! Yeah.

Annalee: [00:28:07] It’s an epic quest and it’s really kind of fulfilling my desire to have an epic fantasy where I don’t have to think too hard. And it’s kind of filling the same void as The Witcher did for me, as well. Although The Witcher is a little bit more biting and satirical and kind of snarky. And Shannara is more, I think Shannara is taking itself seriously as a fantasy epic, whereas The Witcher, part of the fun about The Witcher is that it’s kind of like, the main character, The Witcher, gets into these crazy fantasy situations and will literally say, like, “What the fuck? How can this be happening?” And so he’s kind of the voice of the audience. Whereas, in Shannara, there’s never a what the fuck moment. In Shannara, it’s like, wooo, it’s all epic and beautiful and here’s our destiny and I have sparkly elfstones that allow me to fight scary dragons. It’s very gentle and sweet. So I’m enjoying that.

[00:29:00] So let me throw it back to you, Charlie Jane. What are a couple other more classic, or older shows that are making you excited?

Charlie Jane: [00:29:05] Well, I mean, these aren’t that much older, but Russian Doll, which I think was on Netflix like a year or so ago. Russian Doll continues to be a source of happiness and joy to me, and I just. I really love how that show dealt with the trope of the Groundhog Day thing of living the same day over and over again, and the way that it became a story… I guess those Groundhog Day stories are often about personal growth, or about having to learn something. But Russian Doll just went deeper and weirder with it, and I would honestly watch Natasha Lyonne just read the phone book. I would watch her ordering groceries. I would watch her do anything because she’s so, just a fascinating actor, and she’s just so full of zingy kind of, energy. And that show just keeps being full of life and energy and it has such a… it gets deeper and deeper in terms of like, how it deals with her relationships and stuff.

[00:30:04] It reminded me in a weird way of, this isn’t really a good comparison, but for some reason it reminded me of a show that I love from a dozen years ago, Journeyman, where it’s like, kind of a similar thing of someone who’s unstuck in time and has to kind of deal with some stuff and it ends up being a lot about their relationships. And I feel like that… I love that kind of time travel, where it’s a little bit therapeutic in a way.

Annalee: [00:30:26] Yeah, it is therapeutic. I feel like that’s one of the things that I love about Russian Doll is that it is a therapeutic narrative and it also suggests that her journey isn’t just personal growth. It’s also about her needing to understand her connection to her community, and that there’s no healing of your self without healing your relationships and healing your larger community. And I feel like the ending of the first season just captures that completely. I mean, this is not a spoiler, I’m just saying, thematically that’s really where we go with the story is that it becomes kind of political. And it becomes focused on her community in New York and how that community has been kind of warped over time, just the way she has.

Charlie Jane: [00:31:12] Oh yeah.

Annalee: [00:31:12] And I just… it’s a show that will fill you with the right kind of hope right now. Which is to say, it’s a difficult hope. It’s a hard road, but the characters get there and there really is a genuine sense of possibility at the end that feels super earned. It’s not like we got the elfstones and we made it to the place with the shiny shit. It’s like, we worked hard, and we worked—

Charlie Jane: [00:31:35] Nothing wrong with getting the elfstones, I just want to say that.

Annalee: [00:31:37] No, I’m pro-elfstones, okay. I’m totally. But I’m just saying, like—

Charlie Jane: [00:31:41] I got so elfstoned the other night. Like elfstoned off my ass.

Annalee: [00:31:48] I just feel like elfy-boy. He doesn’t do a lot more work. He doesn’t do a lot of work on himself other than learning how to pooch his lips a lot. Shannara, it’s not throwing a lot of psychological depth at you, and that’s totally fine. That’s delightful.

[00:32:03] So let’s talk about a couple classics.

Charlie Jane: [00:32:06] Classics!

Annalee: [00:32:08] Give me a classic show that you want everyone to go back and watch.

Charlie Jane: [00:32:13] Yeah, so this one is tricky because it’s hard to find but I’m just obsessed with a show called Space Island One. I will never stop talking about it. I might eventually have to do a blog about it or something. Because Space Island One was a German-British co-production in the late ‘90s about people living on a space station and it’s just, it’s a very, even though it’s set in space, it’s a very grounded show. It’s a show that tries really, really hard to have accurate science and to have three-dimensional characters who are never exaggerated or over the top. And it does have some pretty weird plots. Like, there’s one character in the show who’s a veteran NASA astronaut who deals with a bunch of different challenges including, he’s losing bone density because he’s spent so much time in space that his bone density is eroding and he has to do all this extra exercise and stuff to try to keep his bones from becoming too brittle.

[00:33:06] But meanwhile, he also is wasting the space stations resources calling 1-900 phone sex numbers because he needs to—he’s lonesome, he needs to get laid. He needs to have some kind of connection to somebody, and so he just calls phone sex lines on Earth. And obviously, this is—

Annalee: [00:33:22] Oh, man.

Charlie Jane: [00:33:23] Dates it as being from the late ‘90s, but it’s actually a really complicated show. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to find through any legit means, but the entire first season is on the Internet Archive. And sadly, the second season, which I think is better than the first season is really hard to find. And I tracked down copies of it online somewhere but you have to kind of dig to find the second season. But the first season is easy to find.

[00:33:49] What’s a classic TV show that you’re thinking about a lot, lately?

Annalee: [00:33:51] Well, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Xena: Warrior Princess.

Charlie Jane: [00:33:55] Yay!

Annalee: [00:33:55] And that was another classic ‘90s show, and I think it came up for me because I’d been watching Witcher, and Xena has a lot of the same flavor as The Witcher. And in fact, probably was an inspiration for the style of The Witcher TV show. Obviously, The Witcher is built based on a video game. But the style of the show with the kind of wisecracking character, and a lot of the very broad physical humor is all in Xena. And in fact, , Xena’s sidekick… Xena, of course, is a warrior princess. And her sidekick Gabrielle is a bard, and is constantly kind of writing up the things that Xena is doing, just the way The Witcher’s sidekick is also a bard.

[00:34:41] And, you know, the thing I love about Xena is that it’s crack for someone like me who likes a redemption narrative. If you’ve read any of my fiction writing, you know that I often have main characters who are working hard to redeem themselves after having been horrible murderers and other bad things.

[00:35:01] Xena, also, has been, in the past she was a ruthless warlord. She slaughtered tons of villages, she was just a terrible blight upon the land, basically. And at a certain point, she realizes that she’s been bad and she has a change of heart and she breaks away from her gang of brigands and goes off on her own to try to right wrongs. And so she’s kind of the equalizer at that point, and she’s alone with her awesome horse, trying to rescue people and oftentimes trying to fix probablys that she created back when she was a bad guy. 

Charlie Jane: [00:35:39] And Gabrielle, don’t forget Gabrielle.

Annalee: [00:35:42] Well, I was going to say, so she then runs into Gabrielle in one of these situations where she’s trying to rescue people and Gabrielle is like, I’m coming with you, too bad, you can’t get rid of me. And they have this amazing, unspoken romance. And it’s funny because in the ‘90s, when the show was popular, it was very common on message boards to talk about “the subtext” in the show, which is that Xena and Gabrielle are obviously lovers. And the writers knew about this and I was lucky enough to see a panel, many many years later, after the show was off the air with one of the writers on Xena. And she was like, absolutely in the writer’s room, we knew about the subtext and we agreed with it. We felt that they were lovers and we tried to write that into the story. 

[00:36:34] So, it’s like, you know. It was ‘90s lesbians, which is to say, they were closeted but we all knew. And of course they do have entanglements with dudes. They’re bisexual, but their main relationship is with each other. And the first couple of seasons are just so fun and they’re very silly and it’s really great, kind of oldschool ‘90s feminism of having a protagonist who’s a woman, who’s really big and brawny and tall and she’s beautiful, of course. But she doesn’t fit the stereotypes of the kind of cutesy, tiny, girly woman. She’s a bruiser. And she’s also got this tough past that she’s trying to live down.

[00:37:22] And then, of course, she does lots of silly stuff. She’s really great at broad physical humor. So it’s a really fun show. I feel like, you know, it’s kind of being rediscovered right now, but still hasn’t quite become a thing. It hasn’t become a meme as much as it should.

[00:37:42] And so my tiny post script to this is, another ‘90s show that we should all be watching is Lexx, which is a Canadian sci-fi show which is just this kind of ridiculous comedy with lots and lots of body humor. And a space ship that looks like a giant dick and balls, and yeah. If you can find Lexx, L-E-X-X, immerse yourself. It will be wonderful.

Charlie Jane: [00:38:06] I think we have all of Lexx on DVD. Like, a very old format.

Annalee: [00:38:12] Yes, I scored some DVDs from Amoeba Records—

Charlie Jane: [00:38:16] Oh, man.

Annalee: [00:38:16] —I’d say ten years ago, or something. So I have no idea if it’s available online, or not. But Xena is definitely available online. You can find it.

Charlie Jane: [00:38:25] There are definitely some episodes of Lexx on YouTube. And I feel like that kind of brings it full circle, because whenever we watch Vagrant Queen we always remark on how it reminds us of Lexx a little bit, kind of.

Annalee: [00:38:35] Yeah, I feel like there’s a really distinctive strand of Canadian TV sci-fi comedy, and this brings us to two shows that we love, Lost Girl and Killjoys.

Charlie Jane: [00:38:49] Yeah!

Annalee: [00:38:49] —which are Canadian fantasy for Lost Girl, Canadian sci-fi for Killjoys. They’re both created by Michelle Lovretta.

Charlie Jane: [00:38:58] I love her.

Annalee: [00:38:58] Who is our hero, and Lost Girl’s about a succubus detective, as one has. Those are important. Turns out that even though it’s allegedly set in New York, it’s obviously Toronto, and there’s a war between the dark fae and the light fae in Toronto, which is obviously going on even now. And helps explain a lot of things about Toronto politics. Yeah, it’s just really fun. It’s a great supernatural detective story. 

[00:39:25] And why don’t you explain why Killjoys is amazing?

Charlie Jane: [00:39:28] Killjoys is just, it’s kind of in the same vein as Vagrant Queen. It’s about these bounty hunters who have to go our and bring back bad guys but they get caught up in politics and there’s a conspiracy. And it turns out that the main character, Dutch, has this whole past where she was an assassin and the guy who trained her to be an assassin is now after her. And she has a doppelganger and the—I couldn’t possibly summarize the plot. There’s so many strands. There’s a place called Old Town where everybody is trapped in this weird slum, and there’s—

Annalee: [00:40:04] There’s sort of the Mad Max slum, but then there’s also sort of a space princess thing happening in another part of the galaxy, and like.

Charlie Jane: [00:40:13] Yeah, it’s so complicated. There’s Doctor Potter who’s a princess but also a doctor and she falls in love with one of the bounty hunters and it’s just… it’s a show that has so much going on but it’s just got that kind of good-natured quirky, fun humor all the time. And it’s about found family and I think we should wrap up in a second, but I’m going to mention one last Canadian science fiction show. 

[00:40:37] I feel like this could have been the Canadian sci-fi TV episode, really. But one last Canadian science fiction show that I want to just shout out is Continuum, which is a… it is a time travel show which takes place in Vancouver. Which, I just want to pause and appreciate how great it is to have a show filmed in Vancouver that takes place in Vancouver instead of having Vancouver stood in for Boston, or New York or wherever in the United States.

[00:41:05] And it’s a show about a cop from the future who comes back in time chasing criminals from the future and they arrive in the present day. And you think it’s going to be like Time Trax or whatever, which is another show that I have a deep and abiding love for, but you think it’s going to be just like, she’s chasing criminals, but it’s much more complicated. The criminals turn out to be kind of right about a lot of stuff because they’re anti-corporate. They’re trying to change this evil corporate future that she comes from, and it becomes much more complex.

[00:41:34] It’s a show that ultimately really sticks the landing in terms of how it ends. It has an ending that’s really beautiful and profound in which things are actually resolved in a really satisfying and exciting way. And it’s a show that just, you really grow to love these characters and the time travel stuff is handled in a way that never stops being thought-provoking and awesome.

Annalee: [00:41:56] Basically, the message is: Canadian science fiction is the best.

Charlie Jane: [00:42:02] Yes. 400%.

Annalee: [00:42:06] Oh, I was going to add one more thing. Just to cement the awesomeness of Michelle Lovretta’s two shows, Lost Girl and Killjoys, which share with Vagrant Queen the fact that like, it seems like pretty much all of the characters are bi. And everybody’s having sex with everybody.

Charlie Jane: [00:42:24] Yes.

Annalee: [00:42:24] There’s queer couples, there’s straight couples, there’s human/fae, there’s human/werewolf, there’s human/alien. Anything you want is there including polyamorous couples of trouples or fourples or whatever. Zouples.

Charlie Jane: [00:42:44] Yeah.

Annalee: [00:42:44] And so it’s just like, it’s a nice smorgasbord of romance.

Charlie Jane: [00:42:52] It’s good—

Annalee: [00:42:52] A veritable cornucopia of romance.

Charlie Jane: [00:42:54] It’s a good smorabroad of romance.

Annalee: [00:42:58] All right, on that note…

Charlie Jane: [00:43:00] Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. This has been Our Opinions Are Correct, and you can find us wherever podcasts are found. If you just randomly stumbled on us, we’re available everywhere. Please leave a review if you like us, that helps so much with this podcast. And we have a Patreon at Patreon.com/OurOpinionsAreCorrect. We’re on Twitter at @OOACpod. And you can find us everywhere. 

[00:43:24] Thanks so much to Veronica Simonetti, our incredible producer with Women’s Audio Mission, who is standing by us during this challenging time. Thanks so much to Chris Palmer for the music, and thanks again to you for listening. We love you so much and we’ll see you in two weeks. Thank you so much.

[00:43:38] Bye!

Annalee: [00:43:39] Bye! Stay safe!

[00:43:41] Outro music plays. Drums with a bass line including bass drops.