I think I like that it's specifically us mainly because the whole show is so clearly a cypher for "us" anyway, that even if it was an AU Earth I'd still have all the problems I have about what they're saying about "us"
No, I agree that a simple switch of location doesn't solve anything and create potentially more problems for them to solve and screw up. And you might have a point about perspectives on this. Growing up reading scifi, I've been pretty comfortable with the idea that it's always us, so my response to the show announcing that is, "Yes. And?" And it's in the answer of that question that I'm not sure what we're left with, because there were a few pretty strange ideas implicated in the finale, starting with the anti-technology bent. So for me at least, holding up the mirror isn't a satisfying conclusion. But I might be out of the norm on that.
On a longer scale every civilisation disappears. Every culture. Every language.
Yes. And this is such an intensely uncomfortable idea (though true) to me personally, that my initial reaction is, OMG, TRAGEDY! A large number of my older relatives are very concerned with ancestry and I've followed this theme of recording narratives in the photography that I do. So viewing on a personal level how quickly information is lost, to the point I'll probably wave vaguely at any potential offspring of mine and go, "well, your great-grandmother was Czech", it does strike me as terribly final being taken on such a large scale. But you're right that it is just what happens.
It's a bit strong for me to frame it as disappearing forever, because I don't really think that's what the show was trying to tell us. There's legacies and then legacies, and there is a kind of elegance to this particular story melding into our larger history, even just biologically, and ours into the whole of "all of this has happened before." I wish I'd gotten more of this sense from the show, because as played, I don't really see how they changed the cycle in any way, if that was the goal. Unless the message is that it's now our responsibility to do so?
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Date: 2009-03-22 03:16 pm (UTC)No, I agree that a simple switch of location doesn't solve anything and create potentially more problems for them to solve and screw up. And you might have a point about perspectives on this. Growing up reading scifi, I've been pretty comfortable with the idea that it's always us, so my response to the show announcing that is, "Yes. And?" And it's in the answer of that question that I'm not sure what we're left with, because there were a few pretty strange ideas implicated in the finale, starting with the anti-technology bent. So for me at least, holding up the mirror isn't a satisfying conclusion. But I might be out of the norm on that.
On a longer scale every civilisation disappears. Every culture. Every language.
Yes. And this is such an intensely uncomfortable idea (though true) to me personally, that my initial reaction is, OMG, TRAGEDY! A large number of my older relatives are very concerned with ancestry and I've followed this theme of recording narratives in the photography that I do. So viewing on a personal level how quickly information is lost, to the point I'll probably wave vaguely at any potential offspring of mine and go, "well, your great-grandmother was Czech", it does strike me as terribly final being taken on such a large scale. But you're right that it is just what happens.
It's a bit strong for me to frame it as disappearing forever, because I don't really think that's what the show was trying to tell us. There's legacies and then legacies, and there is a kind of elegance to this particular story melding into our larger history, even just biologically, and ours into the whole of "all of this has happened before." I wish I'd gotten more of this sense from the show, because as played, I don't really see how they changed the cycle in any way, if that was the goal. Unless the message is that it's now our responsibility to do so?
Sorry, I'm getting rambly myself at this point.