{"id":51,"date":"2011-10-09T23:15:46","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T04:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.universalem.org\/homo_aestheticus\/?p=51"},"modified":"2012-11-09T19:55:25","modified_gmt":"2012-11-10T01:55:25","slug":"sttng-s01e09-the-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.universalem.org\/homo_aestheticus\/2011\/10\/09\/sttng-s01e09-the-battle\/","title":{"rendered":"ST:TNG S01E09: The Battle"},"content":{"rendered":"

“As you hew-mons say, ‘I’m all ears’.<\/em>”
\n\u2014Kazago<\/strong> the Ferengi, conferring with Riker<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The problem with “The Battle” is similar to the problem with “The Last Outpost” (our first Ferengi encounter) and “Lonely Among Us” … the audience is considerably more clued in than the characters, yet the story is, to a great extent, about characters figuring these “things” out. And the dramatic tension in the story arises from characters not<\/em> knowing these things.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Here dramatic tension conflicts with dramatic irony. TNG does not\u2014does not yet?\u2014trust its viewers to figure things out. Few shows do, one must admit. ‘LOST’ famously played with and played off audience ignorance … or at least keeping people in the dark. Currently ‘Fringe’ works somewhat similarly. Sure, the viewer sees\/knows some things before the characters, but we’re not so far ahead that we’re waiting for our protagonists to catch up or catch on. And then there are the CSI\/L&O\/House shows … mildly forensic-y shows where not the logical relationship of episode plot items but, rather, formula and necessity lead to predictability. In a L&O or, for example, ‘Castle’ we have an economy of guest stars rule that applies … unless the guest star is a late ‘victim’ in the episode, he or she is either the killer or closely tied to<\/em> the killer. Or we have ‘thematic irony formulas,’ as we’ve seen in ‘House,’ for example. If the patient is a really hot runway model, ‘she’ is actually a ‘he.’ And if daddy dearest is her manager, daddy dearest is also her rapist. We figure things out not because of epistemology or even metaphysics more broadly, but by way of meta-metaphysics, by way of narrative conventions ‘outside’ the stories themselves.<\/p>\n

If you want all this to work in any non-obvious sort of way it helps to break the so-called fourth wall. Hang lampshades<\/a> if you must. Think of Puss in Boots<\/a> … no, I mean Ludwig Tieck<\/a>‘s rather awesome early Romantic German stage play, “Der gestiefelte Kater<\/a>” (the booted cat … the cat wearing boots …), in which there is an audience watching a play on stage … but I digress.<\/p>\n

Once again TNG gave us obvious things …<\/p>\n