5 posts tagged “cccp”

I’m not sure how my friend Pearl came up with the scenario of Agent Smith from The Matrix (shown at left in one of his many guises—I think this was the scene where he battled Neo in a gay bar, before one of his stilettos broke) battling Joseph Stalin, but I took her lead:

   Smith: Mr Stalin.
   Stalin: Who are you? How did you get in to the Kremlin?
   Smith: It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you’re not actually mammals.
   Stalin: Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.
   Smith: You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area.
   Stalin: Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach.
   Smith: There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we are the cure.
   Stalin: Death is the solution to all problems. No man, no problem.

As Agent Smith contemplates Stalin’s response, a Soviet Red Guard shoots Smith in the back with an AK-47. As Smith appears to die, Joseph Stalin turns into Agent Smith.
   Agent Smith 1, Soviet Union 0.

After a duffer last week, the latest US Life on Mars was, for a change, brilliant.
   There was no British equivalent to this ninth episode, which continues from the cliff-hanger of the seventh. We discover Ray Carling has a brother and the plot appears to be an inquiry into his disappearance.
   But Sam was hearing a strange message from someone who seems to know he is in 1973. Considering he came up, in the seventh episode, with the address at 35 Stewart Drive from printer’s codes at the bottom of forms, it’s too coincidental for him to find a dead body there. Someone is pulling the strings.
   The great thing is that there were good Sam and Annie scenes, one of the things that worked with the original series.
   However, as with last week, we no longer hear his life-support machines or any sign of the present.
   Annie is puzzled by Sam’s ability to predict her close call at the hands of Vic Tyler in the seventh episode—a remake of the original eighth. In the American version, Sam shares his visions of a woman with a red dress with Annie, which his British counterpart did not. She also reveals some of the things he has told her about 2008—Sam’s knowledge of “the future” was another entertaining element of the original, which this episode had.
   I think we can write off the coma theory. The mystery caller appears at the end of this episode, though his face is not shown. He takes the tape of Sam’s interview from the FBI agent leading the inquiry, smashing those of Gene Hunt and Ray Carling. (Does smashing the plastic spool do anything to magnetic tape? Clearly this chap is not from 1973!) He places the tape into a folder marked ‘Aries Project’, clearly connected to the CCCP—the Soviet Union. (If it is top secret, why would this be marked? Why would the logo even have English lettering?) Inside the folder are plans of one of the miniature “toys” that US Sam has been seeing.

   This is a great departure from the original, and sets up a great mystery—I am getting the same buzz I did as the second series in the UK came to a conclusion and the fan base was speculating like crazy over what was happening to Sam.
   I can also say this is the first totally original script—the third aired so far—that has the same level of intrigue as the British episodes.
   Remember, as with Ashes to Ashes and Alex Drake, there are scenes in US Life on Mars that do not feature Sam Tyler, so Gene, Ray, Chris and Annie have their own lives independently of him—which means this is not of Sam’s mind’s making.
   So, what has happened to American Sam Tyler? Because I do not think Aries is a red herring and the original script is penned by one of the story editors, Bryan Oh, along with Tracy McMillan (Journeyman). Last week there was a mention of nanobots and a Soviet scientist.
   If there are Journeyman shades here, then who else knows about Sam? Is he a Soviet agent who is part of an experiment in remote future projection, someone who has believed so much in the visions that he does not believe he is back in his own time? But that the experiments left him in New York, and his Soviet masters are trying to learn about his experiences? That during the height of the Cold War, the Soviets used this method to get future technology (hence Sam is a cop, in a position of authority) and that one of the few things that can get sent back are nanobots? That the Mars Rover in US episode 2 actually was sent to space as part of this experiment? Does the USSR have stations scattered through time rather than space? Is there an astrological significance to Aries, the first sign of the zodiac? How does this tie in with the Cataldo Houses?
   It sounds way-out to anyone who has only ever seen the original series, and I certainly never heard this theory bandied about chat rooms back in 2006 when Life on Mars neared its end.
   If US Life on Mars continues on this path, with this depth of writing, I will be very pleased, and ABC should be as well.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn has died aged 89, according to the Associated Press.
   Not only was he a great author (admission: I have only ever read passages of his books), he was one of Russia’s straight-shooters.
   I like to think Solzhenitsyn was largely fair, pointing out the faults of Russia and the west.
   These excerpts from the AP report in the International Herald–Tribune interested me most, because they continue to hold lessons for us today:

He attacked the complicity of millions of Russians in the horrors of Stalin’s reign. “Suddenly all the professors and engineers turned out to be saboteurs—and they believed it? … Or all of Lenin’s old guard were vile renegades—and they believed it? Suddenly all their friends and acquaintances were enemies of the people—and they believed it?”
   The Stalinist era, he wrote, quoting from a poem by Alexander Pushkin, forced Soviet citizens to choose one of three roles: tyrant, traitor, prisoner.

and:

While avoiding a partisan political role, Solzhenitsyn vowed to speak “the whole truth about Russia, until they shut my mouth like before.”

   The first quote is an important reminder that we need to always be vigilant, and remember—rather than rely on others to tell us what we should remember.
   The second reminds us of our own duties.
   And Solzhenitsyn’s life—staying firm despite being sent to the gulag—is an inspiration to us to remain firm in our truest beliefs. It is a romantic notion to say ‘[His accounts] inspired millions, perhaps, with the knowledge that one person’s courage and integrity could, in the end, defeat the totalitarian machinery of an empire,’ but one that finds instant appeal for me.

[Cross-posted] As we watch the tributes flow in for the late former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, the article that seems to be best balanced that I have encountered so far is from the Associated Press. It is not for me to speak in depth of Mr Yeltsin, as I only know of his image—outside Russia, it was often congenial, but more often confusing. I might not have agreed totally with his approach, but he led at a difficult time. I hope his passing yesterday helps the Russian people create dialogue, learning and understanding that they can apply to their collective future as world citizens. The fact we can even consider them, and so many former Soviet republics, our neighbours on this planet is, perhaps, due in some great respect to Mr Yeltsin.

Why did Vladimir Putin attack the US most recently? Simple: he’s been watching the American MSM and seeing how division has crept in to the United States, and figures, ‘I’d rather go back to that old CCCP system. If we follow this democratic route that the US wants us to, we’ll become divided and fight one another. I’ll have a population that doesn’t even vote for the most part, and half the bunch spends the rest of the time hating the guy at the top. I might as well side with the Red Chinese: at least they are keeping their population in check with few revolutionary elements that get out of hand, depriving them of their basic human rights.’