This vessel is described as "
Vegas, New York City and Oz all rolled into one." I immediately thought of Sinoloa in the
Buck Rogers episode "Vegas in Space" and "Space City," the so-called "Satellite of Sin" in
Blake's 7.
In
Space: Above and Beyond, this viper's den looks like a Trump Casino in space, and the futuristic Cabaret's master-of-ceremonies is none other than Coolio (!). He promptly informs the visiting soldiers that Bacchus is the place "
where what you can only imagine, we make happen."
He also notes that this is not a world of virtual reality or "
phony Holodecks," a pointed line which clearly differentiates
Space: Above and Beyond's gritty, hard-bitten universe from that of another 1990s outer space franchise,
Star Trek: The Next Generation. Remember,
Star Trek off-spring dominated the 1990s, and
Space: Above and Beyond was a first dramatic step away from that Utopian world of plenty. Again -- in the heyday of
BSG and
SGU -- we might not appreciate the pioneering aspects of Morgan and Wong's space combat series as much as we should. Not entirely unlike
Space:1999, this program ventured to present a realistic look at man in space; rather than going for an idealistic approach.
Back to "R & R." In short order, the pilots of the 58th start to let their hair down. On Bacchus ,Lt. Shane Vansen (Kristen Cloke) sets about winning some dough in the ship's pool hall, only to be verbally upbraided and relentlessly "played" by a psychologically-adroit android pool-shark, Alvin...an uncredited David Duchovny. This characters snarls like Clint Eastood and even asks Vansen
"do you feel lucky?" I loved this subplot because it played on expectations (the audience's
and the character's): Vansen arrives in the pool hall in a slinky black dress, manhandles her pool cue seductively (!) and vamps it up...expecting to get one by the other players on sex appeal.
Didn't count on a robot, I guess...
Meanwhile, Hawkes has to deal with the specter of drug addiction because of the pain medication he's been prescribed, for his injury. On The Bacchus, goes in search of sexual comfort. A virgin, Hawkes soon meets up with a beautiful in-vitro hooker who is far less glamorous than she appears. She's addicted to drugs too (so she doesn't have to think about how she earns her cash...), and she's the mother of an infant.
And yes, this distinctly un-romantic subplot indeed sounds familiar if you've seen the re-imagined, second season
Battlestar Galactica episode "Black Market."
As "R & R" continues, another sub-plot: West (Morgan Weisser) learns that the seemingly-humorless colonel, McQueen, has a fondness for old, black-and-white, W.C. Fields movies. Before long, however, the brief respite from war is called off, and the pilots are back to combat. Hawkes, for his part, has trouble leaving the events on The Bacchus behind. The Colonel, who has also faced drug addiction, tells him "
There is there . And here is here."
What we get in "R & R," which aired originally on April 12, 1996, is a dissection of virtually all the program's
dramatis personae. Sometimes that dissection is explicit: Alvin (Duchovny) finds the right words about Shane's family life to shake her; to make her lose at pool. Sometimes the character dissection is more subtle: the episode tackles everything from loneliness and virginity to the way "closeness" in combat sometimes creates a false sense of intimacy. James Morrison's character, McQueen doesn't have a tremendous amount of screen time, and yet we learn a lot about him here.
It isn't often in
Space: Above and Beyond that audiences got see the characters relate to one another and their universe outside of the battle situation, and their time on the Bacchus (except for the W.C. Fields movies...) doesn't seem relaxing at all.
But perhaps that's part of human nature too: our need to pursue love, money and yes, danger, even when we're off the job, supposedly taking it easy. Of course, there's even more danger in pursuing these things when outside the confines of "responsibility. It's hard, as Vansen might say (especially after her encounter with Alvin), to "
keep your head screwed on straight" in an environment like the pleasure ship.
Space: Above & Beyond is a remarkably prophetic show. I wrote a few months back about the sense of anticipatory anxiety evident in the works of Chris Carter, and I think you might detect that quality here too, in the efforts of Wong and Morgan. It's the belief that the apparent good times don't last forever, and bad times are imminent. The re-imagined
Battlestar Galactica of the 21st century also highlighted artificial people, sneak attacks, hookers, R & R, psychological mind-fucks, and gritty space combat, yet it's hard to ignore that
Space: Above and Beyond hit the same notes (and without some of the more questionable soap opera plotting) almost ten years earlier. Also,
Space: Above and Beyond always remained humanistic, rather than telling us that we are all the fools of the Gods, the victims of a fate we can't control.
So much of success in Hollywood is based on timing.
Space: Above and Beyond in the Roaring Nineties, apparently didn't resonate with a wide audience (though its ratings were higher than many genre shows airing on television today). If it the program aired after 9/11, maybe we would have gotten to know Morgan and Wong's intriguing characters and solid writing for four seasons, or more...
