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newnumber6First, some thoughts on Stargate Atlantis, "The Daedalus Variations". Not too many spoilers beyond the concept of the episode itself.
It was... okay, I guess. But I guess I'm spoiled, for alternate dimension stories, I want some _differences_. And I don't mean the kind they showed there "oh there must not be a city in this world!", I mean even little tiny things like "Weir's still in command in this universe" or "Daniel Jackson's part of the Atlantis team" (he doesn't have to _appear_, just have a reference to it). Alternate timeline episodes are, in a thematic sense, stories of "What Might Have Been". Without that, most of the time they're not even worth having, they're just a 'fill time' plot with no consequences. This really didn't have the WMHB aspect, at all, IMHO, and it should have. Particularly in an episode CALLED "The Daedalus Variations". We just didn't see enough variations, IMHO. I mean, even when Trek did this kind of thing and had universes that only appeared for a few seconds, at least they usually got it right - we'd see snippets of universes where the Borg conquered Starfleet, where people were in different relationships, etc.
On the other hand, given what was discovered I wouldn't be surprised to see something related to the technology appear again, and maybe we'll see more in those types of episodes.
And, I watched the old movie Wargames today, which got me idly thinking. So, allow me to pretend you guys are a Hollywood studio, and I'll pitch you an update/sequel! (And yes, looking it up I just realize now that there actually _was_ one, just recently (like in the last month), but it was direct to DVD and the description sounds kind of crappy even though it explores similar ideas, so I'll just pitch this as an alternate version)
So, we have our main character, let's call him Joshua. Like David Lightman in Wargames, he's an underachiever, and a hacker. Gets low grades and spends a lot of time on the internet. And he's a gamer. Some of his gamer friends are talking about an upcoming viral marketting thing they've heard about... it's an Alternate Reality Game, with elements in the real world, computers, etc... The 'winner' of it is supposed to get a big cash prize, and the rumor states the game's already out and started, but invite only.
So when Joshua gets a file sent to him, he believes that's what it is. Except it's an interface to what looks like a NSA type master level. By the way it's set up, it's look like he's meant to take pictures of specified but not illegal behaviors (buying fertilizer, etc), and identify the people involved, sort of like playing spy. So Joshua and a small group of friends go about this, thinking it's a game, and collecting points by identifying 'threats', ordering surveillance or arrest of people (and maybe even finding how to listening in on some of the surveillance just before the bad starts happening).
Then of course things start to go wrong. Somebody innocent, somebody he identified as part of the game (maybe the family of the obligatory love interest?) is arrested, under suspicion of terrorism. Detained under the patriot act. Others, too. He gradually realizes all of them were people he marked in the game.
He tries to tell somebody in power, but shortly into it, he realizes they're making it seem like he's a terrorist. He manages to escape custody (or was never actually in it just talking on the phone or something) and, along with his team and/or obligatory love interest, have to go on the run wwith all of them being marked as terrorists. Not just marked, framed - evidence is coming up of things he never did, in addition to 'real' evidence (that is, innocent things that can look bad when you put it into a bigger picture, like that his google searches included terrorist sites, etc).
While on the run, much like in the original movie where they had to track down Falken, the new group tries to track down the person who sent them the War on Terror game, race to the site, and discover... it's David Lightman. The hero of Wargames. We learn that after the events of the movie, after getting his education, he was given the opportunity to work with the government to improve safety, as a sort of hacker brought in to fight other hackers. More recently, he was brought in to help manage the artificially intelligent data mining, surveillance, and profiling aids... until he became disillusioned with what seemed to be happening.
Part of the 'cool' factor of the movie would be the surprise that it's actually a sequel. As such, we shouldn't call it "Wargames II" or even "Wargames" to pretend it's a complete reboot. Instead, we should go with a different name, and what I came up with is "Game Theory". Mainly the idea of having David Lightman, once he's found, tell the kids about how the Cold War was built on 'Game Theory', the idea that if everybody acted rationally and knew the rules, World War III wouldn't occur, it'd be Mutually Assured Destruction... the only winning move is not to play. But humans don't always operate on rationality, and the war on terror is an example. You can still treat it as a game, but the rules have to change. Because the threat can come from anywhere, the only way to maximize your safety is to minimize your liberty. You create a computer program that sifts data and puts people with suspicious buying patterns (even if there's nothing actually wrong with them, the computer model just says it makes you more likely to be a terrorist), you get put in the category of suspected terrorist and your life is made hell.
We could also include some references to the fact that the people in power have also realized that there _are_ mathematical models of human behavior that can be exploited in order to achieve their own goals. Like for example, studies that realized the choices we make aren't entirely rational but are still somewhat consistent and predictable, like one that suggested that when people are 'primed', told to think about big disasters, attacks, like 9/11, on average more of them will vote for more conservative, tougher-on-crime policies. Not everyone, but enough. The last movie's problems came from letting machines take over for human judgement. This movie's problems come from people being treated like machines.
Anyway, Lightman made the game as a cautionary example, sort of a 'look what you're doing' with the intent of going public about how data mining can lead to innocent people being swept up in the results or something, people giving up their freedoms. But now the evidence is that somebody in power is setting something up, they're deliberately setting up Joshua to take the fall for a staged terrorist attack, in order to crack down even more. So David, Joshua and the others not only have to prove their innocence (and those of the people who were caught up in the program) now that they're blacklisted as potential terrorists, they have to dismantle a plot that will really kill people (because a defused threat isn't nearly as convincing as a successful attack). They do have one benefit... David's accesses to the terrorist profiling/data mining program still works, so they can cause false alerts as a diversion, listen in on phone conversations, etc. Exciting cat and mouse and cat games and then of course a big finish.
Okay, it's only a couple hours of idle thought, but hey, that's the sort of thing that idly goes through my mind, particularly when I'm bored.
It was... okay, I guess. But I guess I'm spoiled, for alternate dimension stories, I want some _differences_. And I don't mean the kind they showed there "oh there must not be a city in this world!", I mean even little tiny things like "Weir's still in command in this universe" or "Daniel Jackson's part of the Atlantis team" (he doesn't have to _appear_, just have a reference to it). Alternate timeline episodes are, in a thematic sense, stories of "What Might Have Been". Without that, most of the time they're not even worth having, they're just a 'fill time' plot with no consequences. This really didn't have the WMHB aspect, at all, IMHO, and it should have. Particularly in an episode CALLED "The Daedalus Variations". We just didn't see enough variations, IMHO. I mean, even when Trek did this kind of thing and had universes that only appeared for a few seconds, at least they usually got it right - we'd see snippets of universes where the Borg conquered Starfleet, where people were in different relationships, etc.
On the other hand, given what was discovered I wouldn't be surprised to see something related to the technology appear again, and maybe we'll see more in those types of episodes.
And, I watched the old movie Wargames today, which got me idly thinking. So, allow me to pretend you guys are a Hollywood studio, and I'll pitch you an update/sequel! (And yes, looking it up I just realize now that there actually _was_ one, just recently (like in the last month), but it was direct to DVD and the description sounds kind of crappy even though it explores similar ideas, so I'll just pitch this as an alternate version)
So, we have our main character, let's call him Joshua. Like David Lightman in Wargames, he's an underachiever, and a hacker. Gets low grades and spends a lot of time on the internet. And he's a gamer. Some of his gamer friends are talking about an upcoming viral marketting thing they've heard about... it's an Alternate Reality Game, with elements in the real world, computers, etc... The 'winner' of it is supposed to get a big cash prize, and the rumor states the game's already out and started, but invite only.
So when Joshua gets a file sent to him, he believes that's what it is. Except it's an interface to what looks like a NSA type master level. By the way it's set up, it's look like he's meant to take pictures of specified but not illegal behaviors (buying fertilizer, etc), and identify the people involved, sort of like playing spy. So Joshua and a small group of friends go about this, thinking it's a game, and collecting points by identifying 'threats', ordering surveillance or arrest of people (and maybe even finding how to listening in on some of the surveillance just before the bad starts happening).
Then of course things start to go wrong. Somebody innocent, somebody he identified as part of the game (maybe the family of the obligatory love interest?) is arrested, under suspicion of terrorism. Detained under the patriot act. Others, too. He gradually realizes all of them were people he marked in the game.
He tries to tell somebody in power, but shortly into it, he realizes they're making it seem like he's a terrorist. He manages to escape custody (or was never actually in it just talking on the phone or something) and, along with his team and/or obligatory love interest, have to go on the run wwith all of them being marked as terrorists. Not just marked, framed - evidence is coming up of things he never did, in addition to 'real' evidence (that is, innocent things that can look bad when you put it into a bigger picture, like that his google searches included terrorist sites, etc).
While on the run, much like in the original movie where they had to track down Falken, the new group tries to track down the person who sent them the War on Terror game, race to the site, and discover... it's David Lightman. The hero of Wargames. We learn that after the events of the movie, after getting his education, he was given the opportunity to work with the government to improve safety, as a sort of hacker brought in to fight other hackers. More recently, he was brought in to help manage the artificially intelligent data mining, surveillance, and profiling aids... until he became disillusioned with what seemed to be happening.
Part of the 'cool' factor of the movie would be the surprise that it's actually a sequel. As such, we shouldn't call it "Wargames II" or even "Wargames" to pretend it's a complete reboot. Instead, we should go with a different name, and what I came up with is "Game Theory". Mainly the idea of having David Lightman, once he's found, tell the kids about how the Cold War was built on 'Game Theory', the idea that if everybody acted rationally and knew the rules, World War III wouldn't occur, it'd be Mutually Assured Destruction... the only winning move is not to play. But humans don't always operate on rationality, and the war on terror is an example. You can still treat it as a game, but the rules have to change. Because the threat can come from anywhere, the only way to maximize your safety is to minimize your liberty. You create a computer program that sifts data and puts people with suspicious buying patterns (even if there's nothing actually wrong with them, the computer model just says it makes you more likely to be a terrorist), you get put in the category of suspected terrorist and your life is made hell.
We could also include some references to the fact that the people in power have also realized that there _are_ mathematical models of human behavior that can be exploited in order to achieve their own goals. Like for example, studies that realized the choices we make aren't entirely rational but are still somewhat consistent and predictable, like one that suggested that when people are 'primed', told to think about big disasters, attacks, like 9/11, on average more of them will vote for more conservative, tougher-on-crime policies. Not everyone, but enough. The last movie's problems came from letting machines take over for human judgement. This movie's problems come from people being treated like machines.
Anyway, Lightman made the game as a cautionary example, sort of a 'look what you're doing' with the intent of going public about how data mining can lead to innocent people being swept up in the results or something, people giving up their freedoms. But now the evidence is that somebody in power is setting something up, they're deliberately setting up Joshua to take the fall for a staged terrorist attack, in order to crack down even more. So David, Joshua and the others not only have to prove their innocence (and those of the people who were caught up in the program) now that they're blacklisted as potential terrorists, they have to dismantle a plot that will really kill people (because a defused threat isn't nearly as convincing as a successful attack). They do have one benefit... David's accesses to the terrorist profiling/data mining program still works, so they can cause false alerts as a diversion, listen in on phone conversations, etc. Exciting cat and mouse and cat games and then of course a big finish.
Okay, it's only a couple hours of idle thought, but hey, that's the sort of thing that idly goes through my mind, particularly when I'm bored.
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Date: 2008-08-04 05:28 am (UTC)I wonder if the new aliens they met will come back. They weren't very impressive looking but they seemed hard to kill and deadly.
The episode reminded me of Sliders, only they slid realities with a ship, not a device. :-)