Day: 29 October 2019

That ‘last throw of the dice’ episode

So I was watching an episode of the oddly excellent Another Life: the one where the captain is floating in space, watching her spaceship searching for her. She knows that there’s no chance they’ll see her in the void so she makes a win or bust decision: she vents the last of her oxygen into space in the hope that someone will see the vapour trail and rescue her.

I have definitely seen this episode before. In fact, I’ve been seeing this episode since the late 70s.

The first time was in Star Trek. The crew had ventured down to a hostile planet, lost everyone wearing a red pullover (aside from Mr Scott, whose red shirt was blessed by wood elves), and had to escape from the surface in a damaged shuttle running on … er … shuttle fumes. Anyway, the good ship Enterprise had no chance of seeing the shuttle which was already falling back to the planet. Then, in a move that apparently defied logic, Mr Spock jettisons the last of the fuel to create … yes, a vapour trail.

Now, I’m not sure how many times I’ve seen this happen in sci-fi, but it does seem to be a favourite way of getting spotted in thousands of kilometres of empty space.

Western Stars: a film by Bruce Springsteen

Okay, full disclosure: I’m not really a Bruuuuuce fan. Yes, like every other Springsteen not-actually-a-fan fan, I have a handful of tracks that I trot out every year or so when I’m taking a long drive, working through daddy issues, or collapsing under the strain of bein’ a hard workin’ man.

Springsteen’s nineteenth studio album is called Western Stars, and instead of touring it, he’s decided to make a concert reel to promote it. It was showing at our local multiplex, so my smarter half (a Bruce fan from years back) dragged me along to see the great man perform the album live, in his shed. Well, I say ‘shed’, but it’s actually a barn, and when I say ‘barn’ it’s actually big enough to hold a band, an orchestra, a bar, all his mates, and a film crew … Anyway, the seats in our local picture house recline, so at the very least I was expecting a decent nap. I was also expecting about ninety minutes of self-indulgent rambling interspersed with a few songs about travelling long and dusty roads.

Well, I was wrong …

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