NARRATIVE AND SIGNIFICANT AMPLITUDE PT. 3

In the first two sections of this intermittent essay-series, I argued with myself that the "significant values" of a given work, or set of works, could affect the "narrative values" of the item under discussion.  However, only recently did I consider this effect could be metaphorically illustrated in mathematical terms.

In the original ACTIVE SHARES, PASSIVE SHARES argument, I surveyed the Silver Age Marvel comic-series, of which I said:

I could and did do a statistical survey on another Old West hero: the Rawhide Kid of Marvel Comics, the company descended from the publisher who did "Ringo Kid" in the 1950s. When I counted the number of Rawhide's purely isophenomenal adventures, and compared them with those in which he'd enjoyed encounters with metaphenomenal entities, the latter worked out to about eight percent of the total stories. So, by the "51 percent rule," Rawhide could not belong to "the superhero idiom" any more than could the Ringo Kid.

But this presumes that every metaphenomenal story in the series has exactly the same value as every isophenomenal story; that one story equals a value of "one." Yet in EXCESSIVE COMBINATORY FORCE, I said:

So I have at least made the essential statement that for the combinatory mode as for the dynamicity-mode, "excess of strength is proof of strength," as Nietzsche aptly said.

By this paradigm, a story with metaphenomenal elements is "stronger" than one without them, if only in the degree to which the former type forces the reader to utilize his imagination. Given that strength even in the non-imaginary world carries more value than comparative weakness, then it's arguable that every metaphenomenal RAWHIDE KID story ought to have a value of more than one.

To be sure, I fudged the original percentages by allowing a value of "one" simply to each issue of RAWHIDE KID, even though some of the earlier issues contain more than one story with the starring character. Since I felt that the feature progressed away from multiple stories fairly soon, I decided I didn't want to count out every story, with the result that I regarded the whole run of the KID as comprising 113 "points" (at least two issues featured reprints before the title went all-reprint).  Of those 113, I considered that 15 of the stories had metaphenomenal content, though I'll note here, as I did not in the earlier essay, that only two of them are "marvelous" and all of the others are "uncanny."

Now, whatever calculator gave me eight percent I evidently misused, because when I tried the operation today, it came out as a little over 14 percent. The error makes no difference to the 51 percent rule: eight and fourteen are equally unable to enjoy a "controlling interest."

So, if I posit that each isophenomenal story, because it makes no great appeal to the imagination, is only worth one point, then that gives 98 points for the roughly 98 isophenomenal stories in the Kid's original run.

Now suppose that I say that a marvelous-metaphenomenal story is worth not one, but five points. Only two stories in the run are unquestionably marvelous in nature, the "Red Raven" story and the "Living Totem" tale, so with those added we have 10 points for the stories themselves, 108 points for the grand total.

Then there are thirteen "uncanny" stories, so I'll arbitrarily assign them three points to each of these. So the subtotal of metaphenomenal stories becomes 10 + 39, equaling 49, and the total points overall are 147. Out of 147, 49 is roughly 33 percent. It's still not 51 percent or more, but it begins to look more like the sort of "passive share" I argued about earlier.

Now, I could continue to jigger the ratings of the metaphenomenal stories until they did raise above fifty-one percent, but if I set that standard in stone, then it would be totally arbitrary. By asserting greater values for the metaphenomenal stories in a merely theoretical manner, this adjusted paradigm adequately illustrates the principle of the passive share I sought to explore.

A contrasting example, brought up in NARRATIVE AND SIGNIFICANT AMPLITUDE PT. 2. was that of the 1960s TV serial LOST IN SPACE. I wasn't concerned with sussing out phenomenology here, but the appearance of the combative mode, and as with RAWHIDE I assigned every story (including parts of continued stories) just one point. Eighty-three stories meant eighty-three total points, Nineteen of the episodes were combative, which registers as 23 percent of the whole.

But to be consistent with my assertions in EXCESSIVE COMBINATORY FORCE, the higher dynamicities of a combative work should be valued higher than those that lack this dynamicity. So the total number of points for the subcombative episodes, assigning each one point, is 64.

Since combative dynamicity doesn't make quite the same appeal to the imagination as does metaphenomenality, I'll conservatively assign the value of three to the nineteen episodes. So the subtotal for the combative episodes is 57 and the overall total is 121. The subtotal is about 44 percent of the total, so it too does not meet the 51 percent criteria, though it too is closer to being a "passive share." However, because combative adventure does not seem to have been as important to LOST IN SPACE as metaphenomenal content was to RAWHIDE KID, it's possible that the significant value of the former might have a negativizing effect upon the whole of the teleseries. More on that later, if I get suitably inspired.

PASSIVELY AGGRESSIVE

I've now completed my survey of the 1965-68 teleseries LOST IN SPACE, in order to determine whether or not this clearly marvelous-metaphenomenal series should be judged as belonging to the combative mode, and therefore as belonging to the category of "the superhero idiom." I've addressed this topic in various essays but the essay most relevant to this investigation is 2012's CHALLENGE OF THE SUPER-IDIOM LIST.  Though this piece concentrated primarily on how to make determinations as to a given work's "Fryean mythos," it was in this essay that I put forth the "51 percent rule,"which I'd formulated earlier in order to suss out what serial works belonged to the superhero idiom by virtue of being dominantly both metaphenomenal and combative. Here's what I wrote about the rule in CHALLENGE:

I term my solution to this problem the "51 Per Cent Solution."  In business dealings we're accustomed to hearing that a stockholder with 51% of a company's stocks has the greatest advantage, though not an unqualified dominion.  Thus, if one wished to determine the dominant mythos of the Briefer work, one would count up the total number of stories and determine which mythos-type was statistically dominant.  Only an unqualified 50/50 split between mythoi would make such a determination useless, but the paucity of these exceptions proves the rule: most creators start with a given mythos, make only token shifts to other mythoi, usually proving "loyal" to a particular emotional *dynamis.*

In 2015 I decided that the 51 percent rule, modeled on my perceptions of economic patterns, needed to be supplemented by a corollary principle, described in ACTIVE SHARE, PASSIVE SHARE:

Yet as I played around with the rule in the provisional "super-idiom list" that I mentioned in the first "51 percent" essay, I realized that even some characters who didn't satisfy the "51 percent rule" seemed important to the list... [so] I could and did do a statistical survey on another Old West hero: the Rawhide Kid of Marvel Comics, the company descended from the publisher who did "Ringo Kid" in the 1950s. When I counted the number of Rawhide's purely isophenomenal adventures, and compared them with those in which he'd enjoyed encounters with metaphenomenal entities, the latter worked out to about eight percent of the total stories. So, by the "51 percent rule," Rawhide could not belong to "the superhero idiom" any more than could the Ringo Kid. And yet, it's evident that for a time, the Kid's creators Lee and Kirby were making a significant attempt to place their combative cowpoke into superhero situations.

Thanks to a little more research, I evolved my corollary principle:

...from the strict view of the "51 percent rule," both Ringo and Rawhide are "minority shareholders" in the realm of the metaphenomenal. However, to extend the above distinction into the realm of literature, Ringo Kid's adventures display only a "minority passive interest" in matters metaphenomenal, while Rawhide Kid's display a "minority active interest"-- that is, Rawhide's encounters with metaphenomenal presences remain a vital part of his mythos, even if they're not numerically superior to all the naturalistic exploits.

So the "Marvel" serial character The Ringo Kid does not belong to the category of the superhero idiom because he satisfies the combative qualification but does not satisfy the qualification of the necessary phenomenality. LOST IN SPACE was my first attempt to evaluate a serial work in terms that was clearly metaphenomenal but was more "ambivalent" in terms of its combative elements. I posed the question thusly in the first LIS-survey essay:

...on what occasions is it possible for a given series to achieve the combative mode, less because of an emphasis on the continual encounter of megadynamic forces than because of an emphasis upon the outward *form* of such an encounter?...By way of exploring this "outward form" possibility further, I'm going to devote a series of posts to a television series whose status with regard to the combative mode has always been dubious to me.

"Outward form" was a clumsy way of saying that the work under investigation reproduced the form of some pattern that had been articulated frequently enough to become a literary archetype. My example in that essay, the Spectre of the Golden Age, conforms to the archetype of the "metaphenomenal combative" even though he spends an awful lot of time taking on enemies who can't really fight him, and only occasionally vying against entities of comparable power. So the Spectre would be an example of an "active share" type of character-- not in terms of his pheomenality, which is clearly marvelous-- but in terms of the rarity of his truly megadynamic encounters. Mundane gangsters are thus a lower manifestation of the general evil that the Spectre fights.

Now, I've defined the LOST IN SPACE characters as demiheroes in this essay, but characters belonging to that persona can belong to the category of the superhero idiom as easily as the other three personas of hero, villain, and monster. It's easy to determine a demihero's status with respect to the combative mode when he gets into fights all the time, like the one examined here.

From 1965 to 1968 LOST IN SPACE portrayed an ensemble of eight regular spacefaring characters: John Robinson and his wife Maureen, their children Will, Judy, and Penny, ship's navigator Don West, the cowardly stowaway Doctor Smith, and the ship's robot, known only as "the Robot." Doctor Smith had no combative abilities whatever, and Maureen and her three kids sometimes wielded guns but were never seen doing much of anything. As for Don West, he acted like a tough guy and could clearly handle a gun, but he was always played as "the sidekick who gets knocked out to make the main character look good." Ship's captain John Robinson-- played by the same actor who had played Zorro in a 1957-59 teleseries-- was the only human character who showed megadynamic power in his battle with aliens and androids. However, the Robot became something of an "ace in the hole" for the space travelers, and often used his superior technological arsenal against enemies too tough to be taken down by a human wielding a ray-gun (or a sword). Since the Robot soon evolved from a simple resource into a full-fledged (if cornball) character, I have no problem in judging him to be part of the ensemble, and thus the automaton and the ship's captain are the only "megadynamic" presences who starred in the series.

Since 19 episodes out of the total of 83 were combative, this means that 23% of the show's episodes featured megadynamic forces in contention. In my analysis of Marvel's RAWHIDE KID stories from 1960 to 1973, I found that only about seven percent of that character's stories were metaphenomenal, but I still judged that the *WAY* they were employed gave Rawhide a "minority active interest" in that phenomenality.

However, once one is below the 50th percentile, the quantity does not matter with respect to judging either phenomenal or combative elements. I judged that the Rawhide Kid saga showed a repeated intent to associate the hero with metaphenomenal elements, and that these became a vital part of his mythos. John Robinson and the Robot sometimes accomplish superhero-like feats-- Robinson sword-demifighting his way through an army of androids in "Space Destructors," or the Robot defeating a universe-conquering "robotoid" in "The War of the Robots"-- but these seem to be anomalies in the "mythos" of this series. (NOTE: in this and in ACTIVE SHARE PASSIVE SHARE, I'm using the word "mythos" in a general, non-Fryean sense.)

Some stories are resolved by overt peacemaking between factions who just need to know each other better, as in "The Sky is Falling." There are also enemies who display megadynamic powers and use those powers to menace the Robinson party, as in "Kidnapped in Space," wherein the group is attacked by androids serving a super-computer. However, in that story a combative conclusion is put aside in favor of another negotiation. Sometimes enemies are persuaded to abandon their hostile intentions, as with the Junkman of "Junkyard of Space," and sometimes villains who are utterly intransigent are destroyed by chance rather than pitched combat, as when Doctor Smith accidentally blows up the nasty alien in "The Golden Man." And as I covered in the survey, there are many stories in which some functional violence occurs at a narrative's end, but none of the spectacle one needs to create megadynamic conflict.

Thus I conclude that despite the presence of a few "superhero-like" adventures within the mythos of LOST IN SPACE, the dominant ethos is directed away from combative resolutions, in contrast to the serial's contemporary competitor STAR TREK, which talked a lot about peace and understanding but took a lot of pleasure in the spectacle of fight-scenes. For this reason LOST IN SPACE possesses only a "minority passive share" in the category of the combative, and so does not belong to the larger category of the superhero idiom.

LOST IN SPACEFIGHTS PT. 4

Concluding my survey of the LOST IN SPACE series with season 3:

"Condemned of Space"-- the Robinson party lands on a penal asteroid, where the convicts have been held past their release-date. After some tense encounters, John manages to negotiate the convicts' release. (SC)

"Visit to a Hostile Planet"-- the Jupiter returns to Earth, but in a period where their own people deem them invading aliens. The ship escapes w/o serious incident. (SC)

"Kidnapped in Space"-- the Robinsons have some violent encounters with androids armed with guns and grenades (even a few female combatants), but the Robot manages to make peace. (SC)

"Hunter's Moon"-- alien hunter Megazor forces John Robinson to be the quarry in a most dangerous game. The professor beats the hunter in a pitched battle and Megazor returns home. (C)

"The Space Primevals" the group is menaced by cavemen, who are under the sway of an ancient computer. The Robot duels the computer, both unleashing considerable powers, but the Robot loses and the computer must be defeated by other means. (SC)

"Space Destructors"-- Smith falls under the control of a war-computer, programmed to produce an army of universe-conquering androids, all with Doctor Smith's face. Not only does actor Guy Williams (Professor Robinson) get to cut down dozens of androids with his Zorro sword-skills, he also gets to "kill" androids who wear the face of the actor who constantly upstaged him. (C)

"Haunted Lighthouse"-- the group meets an old man running a space-lighthouse. A primitive boy makes a lot of trouble for all involved. (SC)

"Flight into the Future"-- the Robinsons are subjected to intense illusions by an evil computer. In the end the Robot destroys the computer with electrical force. (C)

"Collision of Planets"-- space-hippies are charged with destroying the planet on which the Robinsons reside, and they won't wait till the Jupter is ready to take off. Smith gains Samson-like strength but in his only "fight" he's trounced by the hippie-leader. The professor solves the problem by wrecking the hippies' motorcycles, thus giving the Jupter time to lift off. (SC)

"The Space Creature"-- the Robinsons are put through the mill by a creation of Will's "Id" persona; the creature is defeated but not in a combative manner. (SC)

"Deadliest of the Species" -- the Robot falls in love with a malignant female robot, out to conquer the universe. Using an electrical device created by John Robinson, the Robot puts aside his feelings and lures her to a spectacular death. (C)

"A Day at the Zoo"-- Smith takes over as ringmaster of a space-circus, and cages West and Judy.  West gets free but must save the real ringmaster from a giant dragon. However, he simply uses his ray gun to drive the beast off. (SC)

"Two Weeks in Space"-- Smith invites aliens to stay at his "hotel," the Jupiter-2. They're actually thieves with murderous intent, but John Robinson defeats the two males in pitched combat. (C)

"Castles in Space"-- the travelers give refuge to a fleeing princess, hiding her from bounty hunter Chavo. The skillful hunter defeats West in a fight, but Chavo in turn is vanquished by the superior power of "El Toro," alias the Robot. (C)

"The Anti-Matter Man"-- John Robinson finds his role usurped his double from the anti-matter universe. The two of them battle in an anti-matter void and the impostor plunges to his death. (C)

"Target Earth"-- lookalike aliens try to assume the Robinsons' identity to infiltrate Earth-society, but Will foils their plans. (SC)

"Princess of Space"-- Penny is forced to pose as a princess, but the Robinsons liberate the real one just in time to thwart a robot revolt with very little violence. (SC)

"Time Merchant"-- Chronos, an alien with control of time, gets aggrieved at Will, and John Robinson must bargain for the boy's life. Smith complicates things by using Chronos' time-machine. John ends the struggle in a fight with Chronos and his henchman. (C)

"The Promised Planet"-- a race of juvenile who never grow old try to brainwash the crew. (SC)

"Fugitives in Space"-- West and Smith are condemned to a prison planet. They break out with the help of an alien criminal. However, when the alien is destroyed trying to get his treasure, the police let West and Smith go. (SC)

"Space Beauty"-- Judy wins a space-beauty contest, but the prize is to be married to an alien fire-being. Before the alien can reach Judy, the Robinsons' weather-machine-- activated before the aliens' advent-- causes the area to be blanketed in snow, putting out the alien's fiery ardor. (SC)

"The Flaming Planet"-- an alien warlord, last of his race, wants someone from the Jupter to stay on his world and fight him to the death. The Robinsons manage to distract him by introducing him to a bevy of plant-monsters, with whom he can fight to his heart's content. (SC)

"The Great Vegetable Rebellion"-- when an alien carrot-man tries to turn everyone in the crew into plants, Robinson and West sabotage the stystem that keeps the plant-man's plants alive, and he's forced to capitulate. (SC)

"Junkyard in Space"-- the ruler of a junk-planet wants to take over the Jupiter, but Will manages to appeal to his better nature. (SC)

LOST IN SPACEFIGHTS PT. 3

I last delved into sussing out the combative/subcombative episodes of LOST IN SPACE back in October, and here's my take on Season 2.

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"Blast Off into Space"-- a space miner imperils the planet on which the Jupiter 2 resides. By accident a statue comes to life, menaces Smith and Will, and is destroyed by John Robinson. (C)

"Wild Adventure"-- a green space-siren lures Smith out of the ship. (SC)

"Ghost Planet"-- Smith gets captured by a super-computer and the Robot must kick the asses of other robotic minions to save him. John Robinson gets to karate-chop a couple robots, too. (C)

"Forbidden World"-- Smith drinks an explosive liquid. (SC)

"Space Circus"-- the owner of a space-circus tries to enslave Will, There's a very lethargic tussle between John Robinson and an ape-creature, but the ringmaster interrupts it. (SC)

"Prisoners of Space"-- aliens put the Jupiter-2 crew on trial. (SC)

"The Android Machine"-- a machine from a galactic department store creates a female android, who then seeks to learn humanity from the Robinsons and avoid being captured by officials from the store. (SC)

"The Deadly Games of Gamma 6"-- an alien entrepreneur lands on the Robinsons' current planet of residence, and challenges the Earth-people to fight for their world. Dr. Robinson wins a match against a vanishing midget, but fails to beat a more muscular opponent, partly because the fight is interrupted. The issue is settled by a "Russian Roulette" test of courage. (SC)

"Thief of Outer Space"-- near the conclusion an Arabian-looking alien thief swordfights John Robinson, but Major West interrupts the fight. A genie-like being attacks the group and Will banishes him with a magic ring. (SC)

"Curse of Cousin Smith"-- Smith's equally sneaky cousin Jeremiah comes calling, and gets both of them embroiled in a deadly wager. Robinson gets them out of it with a clever hoax. (SC)

"West of Mars"-- Zeno, a wanted outlaw, looks just like Smith and seeks to switch places with him. Episode ends with no battle, Zeno fleeing the law and law-enforcer in hot pursuit. (SC)

"A Visit to Hades"-- an imprisoned alien who looks like the Devil tries to trick Smith into setting him free. Episode ends with a comic fight in which West tries to slug the Devil; not only can West not even hurt his opponent, he's accidentally knocked out by his girlfriend Judy. (SC)

"Wreck of the Robot"-- aliens capture the Robot and study him in order to make a super-computer capable of controlling Earth mechanisms, for the purpose of conquering Earth. At the climax the Robot seeks to destroy the computer. The computer defends itself with a gale-like force but the Robot wins through and smashes it. (C)

"The Dream Monster"-- a short but combative fight at the end, when a mad scientist's android tries to kill the Robinsons and is blasted by the Robot. (C)

"The Golden Man"-- two enemy aliens try to destroy each other, thus catching the Robinsons in the middle. The good alien is almost defeated, but the bad one throws a grenade. Smith accidentally catches it, flings it away from him, and slays the bad alien. (SC)

"The Girl from the Green Dimension"-- The green siren is back, and so is her brawny boyfriend, who challenges Smith to a duel. Smith spends most of the duel running away and the siren persuades her lover not to kill him. (SC)

"The Questing Beast"-- a not-too-bright knight has spent 40 years chasing a dragon through space. Penny learns that the dragon is both female and intelligent. The knight tries to kill the dragon, but the revelation of its nature puts the damper on the crusade. Then the dragon, for old times' sake, chooses to keep the chase going, and they depart. (SC)

"The Toymaker"-- a genius toymaker comes into conflict with the galactic department store that once employed him, but the conflict is resolved peacefully. (SC)

"Mutiny in Space"-- a crazy admiral abducts Smith and Will to serve on his ship, but eventually returns them home. (SC)

"Space Vikings"-- Smith gets mixed up with a doppelganger for Thor. At the conclusion Thor hurls his hammer and drives some barely seen Frost Giants, but it's not more than functional violence. (SC)

"Rocket to Earth"-- wizard Zalto tries to trap Smith into doing his dirty work. (SC)

"Cave of the Wizards"-- Smith is possessed by an alien supercomputer, but manages to break his re-progamming thanks to Will. (SC)

"Treasure of the Lost Planet'-- a good pirate and several bad pirates make trouble for the Robinsons. (SC)

"Revolt of the Androids"-- two powerful androids battle, and the less powerful one triumphs. (C)

"The Colonists"-- alien queen Niolani enslaves the Robinsons, but they manage to sabotage her transmitter-device before she can summon her people to their planet, (SC)

"Trip Through the Robot"-- the Robot becomes Fantastically large and the Robinsons must Voyage inside him to effect repairs, only he starts shrinking again. (SC)

"The Phantom Family"-- an alien mad scientist creates doubles of the Robinsons. There's a lively scuffle between the scientist and the two alpha males, but it doesn't affect the conclusion, where the Smith double sacrifices itself to save the real Smith. (SC)

"The Mechanical Men"-- a race of miniature mechanical men want the Robot to lead them, so they transfer Smith's devilish personality into the Robot, and the Robot's into Smith's body. There's a short battle in which the Robinsons exchange laser-fire with the robot horde. Then John Robinson disables the Robot with a laser-shot, which also reverses the mind-transfer and convinces the little robots to leave. (C)

"The Astral Traveler"-- a Scottish ghost tries to avenge himself for the wrongs of Smith's ancestor. (SC)

"The Galaxy Gift"-- an alien named Arcon entrusts Penny with a special amulet, and Arcon's enemies try to get it from her. The bad aliens create an Earth-like world to hoax Smith and Penny, but Arcon intervenes at the end, causing the fake Earth to fall apart. (SC)

Hmm, only about five-six combative episodes out of thirty. It's not likely Season 3 will make any difference...

LOST IN SPACEFIGHTS PT. 2

Following up with the rest of LOST IN SPACE's Season 1 episodes, which I began analyzing for the combative mode here.

"One of Our Dogs is Missing"-- the Robinsons find an Earth-dog on their planet, also a castaway from a space-voyage. The dog helps them drive away a powerful native monster, but the violence is only functional and is therefore subcombative. (SC)

"Attack of the Monster Plants"-- Dr. Smith causes some of the local flora to mutate wildly, so that the "monster plants" attack the ship. The crew destroys the plants with a chemical attack. (SC)

"Return from Outer Space"-- Will accidentally time-travels back to early 20th-century Earth, and eventually returns to the usual planet. (SC)

"The Keeper, Parts 1-2"-- An alien collector of rare animals shows up and shows interest in collecting Earth-people. In the first part, his weapon fends off laser-fire, but is temporarily incapacitated when its mechanism is broken by a stone from Will's slingshot.  In the second part, the Keeper tries to blackmail the Robinsons into giving up two of their kids, but he changes his mind when exposed to their familial goodness. (SC)

"The Sky Pirate"-- a piratical alien, Captain Tucker, shows up. He poses no violent threat, but an alien blob-monster pursues him for his treasure. When the blob has what it wants, it departs without violence. (SC)

"Ghost in Space"-- an invisible alien, acting like a poltergeist, wreaks havoc upon the Robinsons. At the end he is either slain or driven off by the dawning of the sun. (SC)

"War of the Robots"-- a "robotoid," a robot capable of free choice, menaces the family and is overcome by the Robot in a climactic battle. (C)

"The Magic Mirror"-- Penny must escape from a strange world inside a mirror. (SC)

"The Challenge"-- Will engages in a series of contests with alien boy Quano. overseen by John Robinson and Quano's father, "The Leader." The Leader usurps the tests to challenge the professor, resulting in a duel with "volta swords," which John wins. The story ends with the alien father and son squaring off against a cave-monster. (NOTE: this was the first time actor Guy Williams got to do more sword-dueling a la his earlier character Zorro.) (C)

"The Space Trader"-- an alien trader tries to add Smith to his collection. The Robot cancels his contract and drives him and his pet monsters away with some sort of sonic attack. (C)

"His Majesty Smith"-- an alien race selects Smith to be their sacrificial king; they are defeated by deception rather than force of arms. (SC)

"The Space Croppers"-- a trio of aliens who look like refugees from "Tobacco Road" show up on the planet. They plant a deadly crop which the Robinsons must destroy with gas-bombs. (SC)

"All That Glitters"-- Smith acquires the Midas touch from an alien artifact. Faced with a space-cop who wants to repossess the artifact, Smith chases them away by threatening to "metallize" them. (SC)

"The Lost Civilization"-- When Will plays "Sleeping Beauty" with an alien child-princess, he also awakens her army, all devoted to galactic conquest. John Robinson and the Robot manage to stop the invasion force by clobbering their commander and his flunkies. (C)

"A Change of Space"-- Will and Smith undergo weird changes after entering a space-warp capsule. The capsule's owner threatens the family when he learns they've messed with his property, but no real violence ensues. (SC)

"Follow the Leader"-- an alien warlord's spirit possesses the body of John Robinson. Though the possessed  Robinson has one short fight with Major West, the spirit is only exorcised when Will declares his love for John and causes John to expel the evil from his body. (SC)

______

I'll note that if the series had ended with this season, I probably would not deem it to be in the combative mode, any more than other Irwin Allen serials like "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" and "Land of the Giants."

LOST IN SPACEFIGHTS PT. 1

I'm returning once more to a topic raised in the second part of THE AMPLITUDE ATTITUDE: on what occasions is it possible for a given series to achieve the combative mode, less because of an emphasis on the continual encounter of megadynamic forces than because of an emphasis upon the outward *form* of such an encounter? In the aforesaid piece I noted that the majority of the Golden Age Spectre's adventures pitted him against mundane crooks, as opposed to devils or demigods-- yet the crooks did have the effect of being "the evil that forces the undead avenger to keep up his crusade." By way of exploring this "outward form" possibility further, I'm going to devote a series of posts to a television series whose status with regard to the combative mode has always been dubious to me.

In my various reviews of STAR TREK episodes, I've made no bones about labeling the entire series as "combative," even those episodes that don't climax in combat-scenes. Few persons familiar with pop culture would doubt that the series stressed the image of Captain Kirk, and occasionally other crewmen, heroically battling super-psychics and lizard-people and so on, all firmly in the "superhero idiom."

The 1965-68 series LOST IN SPACE seems more ambivalent. In contrast to TREK, which was clearly a series with military overtones, SPACE followed the travails of a group of castaways as they bounced around various planets, sometimes resolving their conflicts through spectacular violence, sometimes not. I've decided to examine all the episodes purely in terms of how often they used spectacular violence. If an episode used such violence in a manner typical of the "superhero idiom," it will fall into the combative mode; if not, it will fall into the subcombative mode. Since I'll only talk about the climaxes, it may be possible to get through all three seasons with dispatch. "C" meets combative; "SC" subcombative.

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"The Reluctant Stowaway"-- The sabotage of the Jupiter 2 culminates in the Robot going berserk and seeking to destroy the ship: there's some violence as the Robot fends off the male space-jockeys but it is defeated when Major West pulls off its power pack. (SC)

"The Derelict"-- the ship is trapped inside a derelict and must blast its way out. (SC)

"Island in the Sky"-- Jupiter-2 makes planetfall, and their land-chariot is attacked by an electrical tumbleweed. (SC)

"There Were Giants in the Earth"-- the spacefarers must fend off a gigantic Cyclops with their ray-weapons. (C)

"The Hungry Sea"-- the spacefarers seek to escape devastating waves of heat and cold on the planet (SC).

"Welcome Stranger"-- the spacefarers meet their first oddball human: Hapgood, an astronaut who preceded the Jupiter into space. Hapgood and West have a brawl but it does not occur at the climax nor influence the main plot (SC).

"My Friend, Mister Nobody"-- Penny befriends an invisible cosmic force. When she's hurt, the force goes berserk and attacks the other spacefarers. The Robot discharges energy at the creature but the group is only spared when the creature backs off. (SC)

""Invaders from the 5th Dimension"-- aliens try to take Will Robinson away, to use his brain as their new computer: they're defeated not by force of arms but because Will's humanity undermines their devices (SC).

"The Oasis"-- Doctor Smith temporarily changes into a giant (SC).

"The Sky is Falling"-- an alien family lands on the planet; mutual suspicions lead to a ray-gun fight but the quarrel is obviated by peacemaking overtures (SC).

"Wish Upon a Star"-- Smith acquires a wish-fulfilling machine; an alien comes to reclaim the machine and does so with no violence (SC).

"The Raft"-- Smith and Will are held prisoner by a plant-humanoid, who is summarily killed when John Robinson shoots the creature with his raygun. (SC)

I note that "the Raft" comes close to the combative in presenting a menace that is vanquished by violence. However, said violence is over and done with so quickly that I tend to label it "functional violence." In contrast, the incidents in "There Were Giants" shows a dramatic buildup, in which the spacefarers face considerable menace from the giant before they defeat it with their lasers. This "buildup" is essentially what I'm looking for in terms of exploring the "outward form" of the combative mode.

EXPENDITURE ACCOUNTS PT. 3

Since writing the conclusion to EXPENDITURE ACCOUNTS PT. 2, I've decided that it might be simpler to illustrate my point about the distinctions between "glory" and "persistence" with another pair of hero/demihero examples.

This essay was somewhat informed by consideration of the notion of character-types introduced in Vladimir Propp's MORPHOLOGY OF THE FOLKTALE, of which I wrote:

What Propp's paradigm [of the "seeker"type of folklore-protagonist and the "victimized hero"] describes is essentially a difference between "heroism in activity" versus "heroism in passivity." "Heroism" in this context must be divorced from the nature of any particular hero: in folklore studies it connotes simply the actions (or non-actions) of the characters with whom the audience is supposed to sympathize. The same parallel obtains with characters who dominantly represent the forces of chaos, with villains representing a very active form of evil, while monsters tend toward greater passivity (dragons who are minding their own business guarding their hoards when knights come calling, and so on.)

Propp's characterization of the latter protagonist-type, the "victimized hero," puts me in mind of a particular type of hero-type which seems, on the face of things, to conform to the paradigm: the castaway-protagonist, who, either alone or as part of a group, is stranded in some unfamiliar locale or environment.  At first glance one might assume all castaway-types to be passive and victimized figures, given that they are generally focused purely on survival and, where possible, finding a way back to familiar territory.  One might inquire as to whether the castaway's efforts to find his way home do not make him the sort of "seeker" Propp writes about in his first category.  Again, in my reading of Propp, the actions of a seeker imply a much more active status than the usual castaway-type-- though there are, as I will show, exceptions to that generalization.

The values of "persistence" and "survival" are strongly encoded in the 1965-68 teleseries LOST IN SPACE, whose family of space-castaways take their name from the novel SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON.  The Robinsons' original mission is one of space-exploration, which again might be read as a sort of "seeking," though not one that necessarily carries the value of "glory."  The characters' spaceship is thrown off course, and for the remainder of the series they follow the standard pattern of castaway-fiction, alternating between attempts to survive and attempts to find a way home.

Many episodes-- possibly a majority-- involve some violent conflict between the Robinsons and various aliens who menace them for assorted reasons.  The explorers command a limited number of space-age weapons.  These register as having high dynamicity-- even though said weapons usually prove ineffective-- and their artificial cast-member the Robot also commands a fair amount of power, as well.  In keeping with my observations on the nature of the combative mode, this opposition of superlative forces does imbue the series with the narrative value of the combative, in that combative conflicts do take place. However, the significant value is not satsisfied, in that the conflicts do not dominate the theme of the narrative, as they do in a comparable series like STAR TREK.

Despite the family's original purpose of space-exploration, the majority of the castaways-- mother Maureen Robinson, children Judy, Penny, and Will, and the cowardly stowaway Doctor Sniith-- are presented as being far from inclined to fight under most circumstances.  Only two of the male protagonists-- "alpha male" John Robinson and "beta male" Major Don West-- show much competence in the combat department, and even then, Major West only rarely shines as being more than just a "good" fighter.  John Robinson-- played by Guy Williams, the former TV "Zorro"-- is more frequently positioned as an above-average combatant, occasionally even displaying Zorro-style swordfighting skills.

Though the Robinsons are potrayed as being willing to go to the wall to save persecuted or put-upon victims from aggressors, they only do so as a last resort, which makes them very different from the concept of the hero as a more active defender of right.  For this reason I find that the tenor of the Space Family Robinson's adventures is concerned with "persistence" first and "glory" second if at all.

But as I indicated above, not all castaway-series necessarily follow this pattern.  Consider in contrast another teleseries, the 1999-2002 "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World."

For simplicity's sake I'll pass over any analysis of the original Arthur Conan Doyle novel, which was a novel of exploration but did not involve any castaway-themes, as well as the various films that purported to adapt the novel.  The syndicated series takes only a few elements from the novel, such as the names of several characters in the party that ends up stranded within the "lost world," a plateau in South America where prehistoric creatures and quasi-human tribes still exist.

On the surface, the "Lost World" party was concerned with the same contingencies as the Robinson party, surviving amidst abnormal dangers and searching for a way back to the real world.  However, from the first, the value of "glory" is emphasized, even in the voice-over to the series' introductory theme:

“At the dawn of the last century, a band of explorers searched for a prehistoric world, driven by ambition, secret desires, a thirst for adventure, and seeking the ultimate story..."

These four thumbnail motivations were meant to suggest respectively the four dominant (and most combat-worthy) members of the original party: Sir John Challenger, Marguerite Krux, Lord John Roxton, and Ned Malone.  The theme also references the "late addition" of the fifth character, Veronica the jungle-girl, introduced as "an untamed beauty."  Veronica was transparently modeled on such jungle-heroes as Tarzan and Sheena, and unlike the others, is eventually given an official status as a mystical protector of the plateau-world.

However, even without focusing on the function of Veronica, the Challenger party don't act as the Robinsons do, simply trying to mind their own business and survive.  Over their three seasons all of them (with the exception of noncombatant character Summerlee, who's killed off in Season One) become de facto "policemen" to the plateau, constantly intervening to sort out good from evil.  Admittedly none of the other regular characters verbally expouse the sort of "mission" that Veronica does.  Still, their various reasons for coming to the plateau all suggest the desire to be magnified in some way.  Since the aim of the LOST WORLD series is to be as exciting as possible-- rather than emphasizing the melodramatic persuasions of LOST IN SPACE-- all five of the heroes are constantly engaging in combative activities, and are seen, more often than not, enjoying the "glory" of martial triumph.

On to "villain vs. monster" in Part 4.