IFB PROGRAMMING IN THE REFUGEE FLEET An Episodic Essay (dedicated to the memory of Mother Phran) A viewer asked ===== Anyone ever consider what kinds of programs the IFB fills its channels with? Did tapes of various shows/movies survive? Which ones? Would there be more than one channel? Are they producing anything new for entertainment or education? Like what? ===== My thought is that recordings would have survived. Most of the ships of the fleet were private or corporate spacers. Look at all the sailors and marines who take CDs and such with them on long ocean cruises; I imagine more than a few of them have people at home videotaping shows that they watch while out at sea. Which shows survived would probably depend on the taste of the individual for whom the shows were done--I remember in Heidelberg (and again at Ft. Stewart), the mechanics at the shop had a little TV set (in Germany tuned into AFRTS) so that they could watch the one soap opera being shown (this was grown men, mind you); no doubt some spacer had relatives recording the functional equivalent of DAYS OF OUR LIVES or DARK SHADOWS for them. Others might want comedy, which is DEFINITELY a personal experience (try and explain ARE YOU BEING SERVED? or WAITING FOR GOD to someone who doesn't like British comedy in the first place). There were twelve planets, each with likely a multitude of countries, hopefully a multitude of cultures--you could probably count on finding a video of almost anything that suited you if you hunted hard enough. And I never served on an Army or Air Force base that didn't have a COMPLETE (to the point of tears) set of Military Training Films ("VD: Killer of Love" is a real title, I kid you not. Be glad I don't choose to remember "Red Asphalt 3" [or its barracks-level AIDS awareness equivalent, "Red Asshole 3"]). *sigh* Civilians never know how good they've got it... The viewer then went on to say ===== Suggested programming ideas welcomed. This could be as interesting as the nominees for the new Council of the 12. ===== You asked for it. On to the personal offering (you knew there was going to be one as soon as you saw who this was from, didn't you?). SERIES ONE: LOVE'S BLAZING SWORD There was, on the local PBS station for about six years ten years back, a three-hour block of Chinese language programming every Saturday night, 6 to 9. It was generally a hodgepodge of stuff, but for a long while there, they showed some sort of psuedo-historical drama series. Imagine the pomp of SHOGUN mixed in with all the bad hop'n'swish Kung Fu movies you ever saw on the USA network, and that's what this was like (including hops'n'swishes). I didn't understand a word of Chinese (still don't), but I'd follow that show every week as long as I could--it was just weird and fun. Well, Caprica had a serial (who knows if they sold soap, so we can't call 'em soap operas) for about twenty jahren: LOVE'S FLAMING SWORD (given much of the subject matter it could just as easily have been called LOVE'S HEAT- SEEKING MOISTURE MISSILE or LOVE'S ONE-EYED PYTHON). This was a "true dramatic series based on historical Sagitarra" (a charge Sagitarrans throughout the system tended to deny, much as real soldiers pooh-pooh MASH or ROLL OUT!). It followed the trials and tribulations (complete with hop'n'swish action scenes) of two major clans (who were constantly at war, even though fully a third of their youth population seemed to be having affairs with youth from the Enemy Camp at any given time) and a slew of minor clans (and the show included in its run the destruction of at least one of these minor clans, which almost led to a Political Incident between Sagitarra and Caprica). Many of the soap opera elements stemmed from the Noble Hero and Noble Heroine and her Noble Illborn Sister, all of whom had an affair with each other at some point during the series. The series could indeed be compared to GUNSMOKE on earth--a long run of a dramatic show, just with none of GUNSMOKE's redeeming qualities. Many Caprican vid stars got their start on the show, many media personalities vied to appear in an episode, and through the run of the series we watched fortunes rise and fall (much in the same way as the tempers of the Sagitarrans did at their Caprican cousins), clans war and wage peace, alliances be founded and broken, and in general a good time be had by all. Complete sets of the series were no doubt available on the colonial equivalent of DVDs (with boxed and collectors' sets available), and since it was a twice-sectonly affair at its peak (anyone remember BATMAN in the 60s?), there were a helluva lot of them. Many warriors, seeking to pass the time on long voyages, probably had relatives (or automatic accounts) at home taping this dreck--er, classic for them, and took it with them to the stars (what a message to send to unsuspecting aliens). Matter of fact, during the second half of its air lifetime, it was broadcast on one of Caprica's five FTL broadcast stations (and it was at this point that the Sagitarrans had to be physically restrained from declaring war on the Capricans). Just another offering to the mythos from Feral Hamster Productions. Now: just picture people cooped up in these ships with the functional equivalent of a boxed set of the complete GENERAL HOSPITAL showing every day... = = = = = SERIES TWO: BAST OF THE COLONIAL PATROL On Caprica, children's programming was not ignored. BAST OF THE COLONIAL PATROL was an animated show that presented the Millenium War to the children of that world (and achieved a little success on Aquaria, Liber and Scorp/Taura) with much the same attention to detail that the producers of BARNEY used to teach children about Velociraptors. BAST portrayed the adventures of a cartoony koshek (a feline-type animal found on most of the colonies in one form or another) who operated his own Special Forces-type Colonial Military unit. He tended to run into more than his fair share of silly cylon take-offs, always emerging triumphant in the end (frequently several times a half-centar)--and he had no objection to using weapons up to and including atomic bombs (which tended to be hard on the surrounding territory in his cartoons). Parents groups naturally enough objected to the saccharine content of the show, but perhaps the ultimate indignity to any audience member with an IQ higher than that of lettuce was the fact that Bast sang. Incessantly. All the military anthems (which pleased the military not a whit), all the planetary anthems (which sequences got cut on several syndicated worlds), and all the sappy children's songs that twelve planets worth of adults had every come up with. As of the second season (it ran continuously for almost fifteen jahren, much to the chagrin of almost everyone over the age of four), Bast took on a partner: ROCKET RODON (a rodon is a rodent-like animal, analogues of which can be found anywhere). Rocket Rodon was a special-forces rodon, complete with hulking armor and weaponry more suited to fixed planetary installations. The two not only sang their way to their victories over the cylons, but now made up a dance team as well. The first BAST feature-length 'movie' featured not only Bast and RR's standard enemy, the Evil Cylon Qosmic Qat(tm), but a new, more demonic one (apparently one of the producers had seen some sort of dark-haired white- garbed demon in his dreams on a night after a particularly loud party), the Pinhead Trilobyte* . Those parents that managed to retain consciousness until the end of the feature had nothing to show for it but headaches. Children, however, ate this stuff up. So did colonials warriors stuck in maintenance bays or in ready rooms on long, interminable tours of duty. As a result, multiple copies of these shows survived the holocaust (which fact many other survivors regret), and are currently shown on IFB on a regular basis. = = = = = SERIES THREE: GENTLE PHRAN Liber is a colony best known for being wallpapered with Bureauticians, so it came as a genuine surprise to many others in the colonies when a vid program from Liber achieved no small measure of success. GENTLE PHRAN was a show (considered high drama on Liber, it was marketed as a sitcom on Sagitarra, Taura (who enjoy much the same blessing, presence-of-ursins- wise) and Caprica, and as a documentary [detailing the dangers of democracy] on Aer) that detailed the adventures of a family with a big, clumsy pet. The father was a new bureautician, recently put in charge of one of the smaller prefectures on Liber (total population only 150,000), who spent most of his waking hours on schemes to get Those Who Lead to put more inhabitants in his prefecture (and a 100-square-kilom prefecture with only 150,000 people is considered low-population on Liber) so that his influence in government would increase. His wife tended to aid his schemes (when she wasn't having affairs with other Bureauticians from neighboring, rival prefectures) and be the more intelligent of the two. They had a young son who was supposed to be learning his father's job so that he could succeed him properly when the time came, but who tended to be more interested in the merchantry (whence came the drama/comedy aspect of the series. Nobody wants a merchant in their family--a sentiment that was oft expressed, leading to the show's failure in the Piscean markets). Now: On Liber (and on Taura, explaining the series' reasonable popularity there. One planet or the other evolved these things, and the other had it transplanted there by the Lords of Kobol, giving many pause to reconsider the alleged wisdom of those same Lords) there is a massive species of animal called the Urs (urso for the sires, ursa for the dams). In addition to being large, clumsy and slow, these beasts also have a popogai-like* tendency to mimic speech, and will indeed memorize entire phrases of text to be repeated at the worst possible times. Phran, as the ursa who starred in the series came to be known by the boy, was a motherly creature, whose utterances tended toward the supportive and critical ("Oy, gevalt, you shoulda married a bureautician" and "Eat, EAT, you don't eat enough to keep body and soul together, EAT" were two of her more popular ones). Her tendency to show up at the father's office when he was in the midst of a meeting (or occasionally outside the window during one of the mother's assignations) also lent the series much of its tense/comedic atmosphere. The youngster frequently got into trouble and had to have Phran save him (who can forget the episode where the family's vehicle tipped over, perched on the edge of a cliff above a speedway, and Phran had to get back home, dial the number with her snout, and notify the police with her normal vocabulary ("Oy, he should'a been a bureautician")? That one remains popular). The series ran for twelve seasons on Liber, and four more seasons were made for the offworld syndication audiences. A feature film was made, but by then the original ursa playing Phran was old and fat and sick and couldn't play the part any more, and the replacement just didn't please audiences very much. Nonetheless, a large number of episodes of GENTLE PHRAN remain in the current Fleet, and enjoy a wide (if puzzled) audience. = = = = = SERIES THREE: THE ADAMMAS FAMILY Cantseras was never considered prime real estate by anyone, including the Cantserans. It's generally cooler than most people like, darker than anyone but criminals and politicians prefer, and there are things there that consider humans to be very tasty snacks (and this is aside from any carnivorous fauna). So when a Cantseran vid show made it out into the intercolony syndication circuit, few people were more surprised than the rest of the colonies. (An example of the general Cantseran outlook on life is found in a Cantseran children's story, which is pretty much like any other Cantseran children's story. A little girl is playing with her ball down by the river near her village, when she stumbles and the ball bounces into the river to be washed away. The local women come up to her as she cries and slap her, telling her to cease crying, the ball is gone for good, and she might as well get used to it. About that time one of the vodovoy reaches out, snags the girl's grandmother, and drags the harridan to a watery grave ["burp"]. The other women guide the child back to the village and put her to work doing the chores. This is considered a very good example of Cantseran teaching methods.) THE ADAMMAS FAMILY was a sitcom on Cantseras (and God knows they had little enough to laugh about) about a family who just could not seem to please the dverovoy who inhabited their home (and the zemovoy in the yard and the vodovoy in the nearby river [and one episode even featured a visiting atmovoy who was as disgusted with the family as their regular familiars]...). Although it was high comedy on Cantseras, it's worth noting that it was marketed on Liber and Aquaria as a documentary series, and was banned completely on Caprica (by a horrified legislature that enacted severe penalties for even possessing copies of episodes, which immediately led to a short-lived but thriving black-market in the eps, most of whose buyers then wondered why the hells they'd paid so much for them). THE ADAMMAS FAMILY followed the escapades of the Adammas Family, a collection of misfits, who could never seem to attract guests that pleased their ovoys. Parenthetically, pleasing the dverovoys, vodovoys and zemovoys in one's home life took priority over almost anything, and a guest who was eaten (or merely consumed) by one such while visiting was generally considered to be a Good Friend Of The Family. Anyway: episodes followed one another with a steady stream of guests who would be killed and eaten (or occasionally eaten first) by the voys, only to be spat out or regurgitated, and the family would then have to find some other way of pleasing their voys (most were short several digits by the end of the series' run, and one character even sacrificed himself at one point- -only to be spat back, hilariously/horribly enough). One classic episode involved a young visitor who was snagged and snacked upon by the dverovoy, spat back still living (just well-chewed up), and then hidden in all sorts of unlikely places as the family tried desperately to muffle his tortured screams while a visiting Druzh Priest wandered the house commenting on their bohemian lifestyle. Parenthetically, if the Druzh Priests, the ultimate repositories of Law On Cantseras, didn't like you, you were in sorry straits. ANYway, in the end the family simply tossed the young man into the river and went back into the house. Amused audiences watched the credits roll as the vodovoy spat the visitor back out. High comedy in the classic Cantseran style! Needless to say, certain members of the Ruling Military Junta of the Fleet attempted to keep this fun series from being resurrected (some have said this is an appropriate term, too) for IFB viewing pleasure; fortunately, the Cantseran Councilor of the Twelve was himself a fan of the series, and insisted on its being included in this season's lineup. The rest of us can, of course, be properly grateful that this classic comedy/documentary is now available for the rest of us. (And contrary to popular rumor, the show RELIGIONS LEFT AND RIGHT was not scheduled to follow THE ADAMMAS FAMILY out of spite, but simply because that's the only place it fit in the schedule...) = = = = = SERIES FOUR: THOSE ANNOYING AERIANS At one point the Scorps undertook to produce a comedy series intended for intercolony sale. Their success surprised even them (although they'd never admit it). This series ended up becoming very popular on all the colonies but Aer, and during its run of over 200 episodes, generated no less than seven declarations of war on Scorp by the King of Aer. Needless to say, the Council of Regents on Aer did have their hands full between the irate Regent and the rest of the colony laughing at this show. This series, generally known as THOSE ANNOYING AERIANS (in some markets it was called THOSE OBNOXIOUS AERIANS, and on Caprica it was called YOU'RE A SLAYER, TSURA, after an obscure Caprican pun on the name of the lead character), followed the adventures of the Aerian Princess Tsura. Tsura, an Aerian princess (it turned out about two-thirds of the way through the series' run, that Tsura was actually a by-blow of the King, which led to two of the declarations of war), was on a sort of post- graduation Grand Tour of the Colonies. She overslept one morning (her date had disappeared, taking with him her wallet), got to the spaceport, and found that the ship, never one to concern itself with a younger royal scion, had left without her (and didn't miss her for some time). Never one to give up, Tsura immediately set out to win herself some status on this planet (although the planet was never named, critics tended to view it as either Caprica or Scorp, charges neither colony considered worth denying) by challenging the local athlete to various contests of skill. In the end, she ended up losing the match to her opponent, and, classically-Aerian- female (this view led to the Queen of Aer introducing one declaration of war), immediately fell hopelessly in love with her conqueror. Deciding that her erstwhile opponent was the only man she could accept as a husband, she spent the rest of the series displaying her jealousy toward his other female friends (several deaths were attributed to her schemes) and trying to trick her 'man' into marriage. Midway through the series, other Aerians showed up (two more declarations of war there)--apparently someone finally noticed that one of the princesses was missing. The rest of the visiting Aerian royalty, however, found this local planet to be too quaint (and easily scuppered) to be believed, and stuck around, amusing themselves and the audiences at the locals' expense for several seasons. Indeed, several other Aerian princesses cast a roving eye on Tsura's reluctant boyfriend, with the result that several city areas (and one entire city) were demolished in the resulting carnage. Somehow, destruction of surrounding property never slowed the Aerians down much in their squabbling. The first movie, ONLY YOU (AND YOU AND YOU), almost had Tsuras and her unfortunate paramour getting sealed. Several misadventures led to the entire troupe--misplaced Aerians and natives alike--getting transplanted to Aer (two more declarations of war, and a trade embargo on Piscean waterlilions) for the ceremony. It turned out that the King of Aer had been keeping a large number of pretty girls in suspended animation for jahren (seventeen declarations of war, but these all came from the Council of Regents, so they don't count), all of whom were turned loose in typical madcap TOA style. The romantic lead ended up declaring his emancipation, and the romantic chase continued for another several seasons and six more feature length vids. Although at one point Aer invested heavily in FTL technology in order to jam Scorp's own FTL stations, the series nonetheless achieved immense popularity and financial success, spawning not only toys but books and readers (indeed, several TOA adventures were adapted into schoolbook form for foreign language instruction). Although the attempt was made by Aerian insurgents to destroy all known copies of these hilarious escapades, most of the episodes survived, and IFB is proud to present them on a twice-a- secton basis. = = = = = SERIES FIVE: COLONIAL FAUNAGRAPHIC With twelve inhabitable planets spread out around five suns in an unsteady cloud of planetary matter, it was possible and then some that each of these particular planets would evolve their own unique lifeforms. In fact, the Lords of Kobol stated that the life forms on any given world would never look anything like those of any other. Unfortunately, the Lords of Kobol had not consulted Arrhennius when they published that particular paper. Most of the planets that came to be known as the Twelve Colonies had the usual classes and genera of life, and generally had insectoid, reptilian, avian and mammalian life (no one ever seems to worry about fish and mollusks, so we won't either). However, although each world's life forms might bear at least a surface resemblance to some found on others (the popogai, which were found everywhere but Sagitarra [and it's widely believed that they were simply eaten to extinction there]; the urs, found on both Taura and Liber [neither of which wished to claim the beast as native], the rodon [nature's little survivor, with its dark little eyes and cute tiny paws with their little wriggling fingers and their problem- solving intelligence and--huh? Oh, yeah], the lupus [in its many variations, a large number of which were actually domesticated for work or pets, and occasionally food], the lepus [known by many names on many worlds]), the variants almost always had something unusual and striking about them that was different from all the others. These slight but significant differences fascinated vid audiences, and when irregular specials concerning such failed to whet the appetite of the people for more Weird Animals, the producers of COLONIAL FAUNAGRAPHIC stepped in to fill the gap. COLONIAL FAUNAGRAPHIC was a Caprican-produced 50-centon show (occasional double-length episodes went a full centar) that each five days (yes, twice a secton; it was very popular) took the astounded and delighted viewers on a tour of some of the most out-of-the-way places to show them not only the strange and unusual wildlife of their fellow colonies (few animals can match the Piscean mac, for example, for being able to lurk so well and still pounce so successfully and so often ["Hey, where's Berto? He was here just a michron ago!"]), but the strangely familiar as well (daggit lovers on Caprica were horrified and fascinated alike at the use to which Scorps put their hunds). Many a local viewing record was set as CF took their cameras into some remote jungle to capture scenes never before seen by the eyes of man (the episode concerning the fire sretsil of Gemon, for example, who tend to overwhelm their much-larger prey through sheer numbers, seldom having to resort to the formicon-acid pouches in their cheeks ["Aw, look at the little rodon, with his tiny little dark eyes and those cute little paws just a'twitchin'. Cootchy-coo" *ptui* "AAARGH! My Eyes!"] caused riots in the streets of Taura, where a rumor had been started that a breeding pair of such sretsil had escaped custody). And the footage detailing the Piscean yort, which has such a successful hunting technique (it uses pheromones to induce hallucinations so real-seeming that they fool everyone. Many animals, of course, use pheromones to attract prey {or mates or whatever}; the yort's claim to fame is how it gets those phermones on target ["Look out! That yort's liftin' his--" "AAAGH! Eeeew! Somebody get me a towel!"]) that three production crewmen died recording its antics, was a show-stopper on Aquaria. The Caprican elehcim (spelled with only one 'l', scientists always took pains to point out) which spits different corrosive mutagenic substances depending on which species it is, definitely wowed the audiences (even as the camera crews kept having to replace their equipment [*ptui* "Ahh, treen. Somebody shoot that stupid elehcim. That's three cameras it's ruined so far today."]). And of course, the urs of Liber (or Taura, depending on who's winning the argument), seemingly so slow and placid, fooled not only the audiences but several camera crew into a sense of security that was brutally shattered--on camera, mind you, which was another ratings sensation--when the urs on location began spouting their mimicked phrases even as they chased and consumed various camera crew personnel. Parenthetically, CF went through a lot of production personnel during its run. The episode which smashed all previous ratings records--indeed, becoming #1 on all twelve colonies, something not before nor afterwards achieved by any other show anywhere--featured such a seemingly-harmless animal that most people were falling asleep until, two-thirds of the way through the episode, the trump card was played. The lepus is a small rodon-type animal found on most of the colonies, known by many names--rajacks, haare, pechonoks. Mammalian, anything from a half- kilon to two kilons in mass, with a short, cottononny tail and large elliptical ears, and very timid, it was usually a calm, reliable pet or the meal of choice (depending on who and where you asked). The CF special on same did little to dispel this view, so that when the shock footage came, it had the same effect that dropping an Imperious Leader doll into a room full of grandmothers might have had. After the commercial break, the camera crews retired from the field, and special 'live' footage--recovered, it turned out, from the remains of one of the team members--came on. The view followed a Scorpian tactical unit, on maneuvers in the deeper jungles of Taura. The unit reached the edge of the forest (fighting off the carnivorous weeds almost without a thought, snapping off shots at distant hulking shapes that threatened bloody death-- these men gave the impression that they were professional killers) and stopped. Their local guide quavered fearfully, entreating them to turn back and seek another route to the lair of the Tauran insurrectionists they had been tracking. The leader of the Scorps said something disdainfully, and motioned his men forward. In the clearing sat a lone lepus, calmly chewing its cud. The Scorps advanced on it. Suddenly, without warning, total carnage ensued. The lepus seemed to be everywhere, leaping, biting, clawing, screaming an attack cry- -most people had until then assumed that lepuses only made a noise if they bit a power cord in two--here ripping a throat out, there tearing a man limb from limb. The incident was heart-stoppingly brief--only ten michrons elapsed from start to finish. Only one of the Scorps made it back to the pack (where the local guide was quavering something about "ah told yew so, bhut yew woodn't lissen, wood'yoo?"), and it appeared at first that the Scorps might withdraw and lick their wounds. The Scorps (being Scorps) had other ideas. One man tossed a grenade into the clearing, where it apparently obliterated the strangely savage lepus. Unfortunately, the noise awoke the now-deceased lepus' parents and fellow pack members. In the ensuing slaughter, the only reason the camera survived was because the cameraman, attacked by three separate fluffy killers, convulsed and threw the recorder into a tree. Most of the colonies quickly cut to commercial breaks at this point in time; Aquaria and Gemon, who were seldom ashamed of anything, went ahead and showed the lepuses feeding on their kill and tripled their already-unbelievable high ratings. The lepus in question, it turned out, was a unique Taurian variant on the species--the only carnivorous lepus known to exist--and it came to be known as the lepusis carnivoris bizlethis, or the Taurian Bizleth. COLONIAL FAUNAGRAPHIC held nothing back in its pursuit of intellectual freedom and skyrocketing ratings. Indeed, our own commentator Serina got her start as an apprentice and voiceover technician during the seventeenth season of CF, and we have prevailed upon her (despite her obvious modesty about her earlier roles) to do brand-new introductory narratives now that the surviving episodes of the series are airing on IFB regularly. * I'm sorry. I've been trying for ten years to find someplace to work this in. * The popogai is an avis (a birdlike beasty) found on many of the colonies. These brightly colored birds have the ability to memorize and repeat speech. Most have the IQ of mayonnaise, and so tend to memorize exactly the wrong phrases.