#mar’s tag for rambling | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

littlecello · 5 months

Text

Lazarus: An Autopsy

So. I just got back home, and though I have to get up at stupid o'clock for work tomorrow morning, I am sitting down at my computer to give you all as much of a detailed write-up of the table read as I can. Please bear in mind these are my and Fern's opinions personal opinions, so if you disagree with anything said here, that's totally fine! This is all coming from the perspective of people who have been in the fandom since 2012 and 2009 respectively, and both of us love the show very dearly.

Now, without further ado - here is a summary and discussion of the table-read of the pilot episode of Lazarus. The detailed write-up is under the cut, but I want to share this shaky train-doodle I banged out on the way home to give shape to my own feelings:

Set Up

This was a dramatic table-read, meaning actors were sat on stage, taking the roles of the main and side characters, plus one narrator who read out the scene-set ups in the script. This was a complete reading of the pilot-episode as it would have aired on TV, complete with songs playing over the speakers as they appeared in the show (off the top of my head - Another Brick In The Wall, Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Ukulele Version), Life on Mars (yes they went there), Merry Christmas Everybody, and several more). It's important to note that this was not performed by the original actors; rather, they brought in a troupe of actors associated with the BFI, called the BFI Players. Unfortunately they aren't credited on the BFI website and there were no printed programme notes, so I can't tell you their names. Notably, though, Ashley Pharoah (co-writer of LoM) was present; after the table-read, there was a short-ish Q&A session.

Lazarus Pilot: A Summary

We start in 2024, with a car chase. Sam Tyler, now DCI of Internal Affairs of Greater Manchester Police, is hot on the pursuit of a Constable who we later learn has raped multiple women while on duty. Notably, Sam is driving exactly the way Gene would, ignoring regulations, nearly running over pedestrians and a cyclist. Sam apprehends the PC on the campus of Manchester University, which is filmed by the assembled students of the lecture that's been interrupted (a quote from the script: "heteronormative queer trans students") - that video subsequently goes viral as another example of police violence. It's clear that the PC is guilty of his crime, but he's let off, and most of CID pretty much turns against Sam. Sam's DI, incidentally, is biromantic and asexual, which is also turned into a joke with Sam making some acephobic remarks.

The next day, Sam finds the rapist PC dead - hanging from a lamppost as though he's died by suicide. CCTV reveals that about an hour before his death, a car idled in front of his home, and the PC had hurled abuse at said car. The driver cannot be seen. That same car is seen at a carehome in Didsbury, idling there just like it did in front of that house... and that car is also confronted, by none other than a geriatric Gene Hunt.

Here is where we start to realise that this Sam is different. It seems he never went back to 1973. He never had that accident, he never met Gene Hunt - he is, however, married to Annie Cartwright (only until half of the episode though, at which point she says they need to get a divorce). A lot of anachronisms going on here, but those will get explained a little later in the episode. Sam also starts having visions - first of a Space Hopper that keeps passing him by, later Clangers from the Planet of the Clangers appear to him. He keeps remembering lines we've heard in Life on Mars ("I never stitched anyone up who didn't deserve it", "If you can feel things you are alive, but it's when you can't feel things that you know you aren't alive", etc). Eventually, he goes to visit Gene in the care home and invites him for a drive, to see if that will jog any memories.

Gene, however, has other ideas - he eventually forces Sam to stop by the roadside, insisting "I'm going back! I'm going BACK!" The two start arguing, and then it devolves into a physical fight, which pushes them into the road... at which point, they are both his by a car. A red Audi Quattro, in fact, and just as everything fades to black, we see someone with white cowboy boots and a white leather jacket get out of the car...

1977. Sam wakes up utterly hungover in the Cortina, next to Gene who's driving. These are their 70s selves. They get to the station, where they find out that they've both been suspended due to Gene assaulting the Superintendent ("I didn't assault him, I strategically placed him... in a bin."). The department has been disbanded and taken over by none other than Derek Litton. Sam and Gene leave, with Sam driving home... to his wife Annie. On his way, he realises that he must have dreamt about 2024, and obviously doesn't understand what is going on. He talks to Annie about it, who becomes upset that he's starting to talk about all the future stuff again. It becomes clear that the case that Sam was investigating in 2024 (the dead rapist PC) is mirrored in 1977. And, crucially, near the end of the episode we realise that Gene also has memories of what we saw happen in 2024... and just at the end, when Annie is on her own, she suddenly sees the video footage mentioned at the very top (the fight at the MU) playing on the TV, and realises that Sam was telling the truth.

The Good

Let me start with the really enjoyable part of this afternoon - the actors who performed the script for us. They all did a brilliant job, especially Sam's actor. I'm pretty sure he must have studied up on John Simm's performance, because he got Sam's tone and cadence so closely to the original that I could really believe he was the character. The production was done well too, with the songs being played over the speaker system; plus, the narrator was absolutely brilliant at setting the scene, reading the descriptive bits of the script with loads of character and humour. The other actors were great too (Litton got a fantastic impression). The only one I wasn't convinced by was Gene's actor, because he gave his Manc accent a very theatric drawl that sometimes made him sound like a pirate. Definitely didn't come close to Philip Glenister's brilliant delivery of his lines.

Speaking of lines, there were some genuinely funny jokes in this. The whole scene with Litton was hilarious, and some of the modern-day jokes landed quite well too (Sam's DI pulls an "ok boomer" on him, to which he responds "that's Gen X I'll have you know").

And of course, I have to mention that it was SO LOVELY to meet a bunch of you in person!!!! It was lovely to chat, and thank you especially to @bisexualroger and friends who came and said hello, you genuinely made my day 🥹 The Bad

Sigh. Buckle up.

This table-reading really cemented for me what I've been saying for several years: The writing in Life on Mars is very mediocre. What made the show so amazing and special was the fact that the crew and actors took that material and elevated it to the heights we know and love. If you take that away... All of its shortcomings become very glaring.

This was even more obvious with Lazarus. Although we have to remember that this was a pilot, which means it was basically a sales pitch to studios and as such they tried to cram as much exciting stuff into it as possible, on the whole it just came across as very confused and embarrassingly self-referential. The characters often (but not always) came across as caricatures of themselves. The script often pointed out the race/ethnicity of characters in ways that felt very unnecessary and strange (more on that later). Most of the dialogue that took place in 2024 was incredibly stilted (again, more on that in a little bit). Most crucially, although it's clear that Lazarus was trying to bring Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes together to tie them up in a neat little bow, it just felt far too all over the place, even for a set-up episode (Lazarus as a whole was planned to be two series with 6 episodes each, like LoM). The Ugly

Basically, this show was supposed to be commentary on the present-day commentary between the public and the police... written from the perspective of two Old White Men(tm) with an unhealthy amount of nostalgia for the past who seem to think of the police as literal guardian angel, which is why they made Gene an actual angel (this is confirmed by what Ashley told us the ending of Lazarus would have been, which I will write up tomorrow because this would be too much for this post).

So, what does that mean in practice? It means that everything that was set in 2024 was an absolute shitshow. There were jokes about "wokeness" in every scene - things such as gender identities, diversity, ethnic food, vegan food, recycling, climate activism and more were only ever played for laughs, with a clear emphasis that everything was better in the "good old days". Especially all the jokes about gender and sexuality made me so angry, seeing as the fandom who has kept the show alive for the last 10 years is overwhelmingly queer.

Worse than that, this show would have been absolutely choc-full of copaganda. We already learn in the pilot that the entire philosophy is that "bad cops" are simply "rotten apples" that need to be removed from the force, which can only happen from the inside (this is Sam's role as DCI of Internal Affairs). And also, the public are just way too mean to cops, for no reason whatsoever - this is very literally shown in a scene in 2024 where a male PC touches a drunk woman's arm in sympathy and she yells at him "DON'T TOUCH ME", whereas in a mirrored scene in 1977 we see a PC giving a woman advice, who seems to be extremely grateful for it and even squeezes his hand for it. Which, if you know ANYTHING about what was going in Manchester at the time, in the wake of the Yorkshire Ripper and the associated police failings, is laughable at best, and an insult at worst.

Furthermore, during the Q&A, Ashley Pharoah unintentionally told on himself and Matthew Graham. I'm paraphrasing, but he basically said that when they both realised during the watchalong on twitter back in 2021 there still were a lot of fans of the show, that's when they felt compelled to properly give Lazarus a go. It very much came across as him saying "we loved the attention and wanted more of it, oh and also we thought we had something to say about the state of affairs regarding the police". Which, as I have laid out above, frankly is a sick joke. After everything that's happened - the protests in 2020, the way police forces in the whole country handled the Sarah Everard case, the fact that the current Chief Superintendent of GMP is an old conservative guy - the fact that Matt and Ash had the audacity to shop a show like Lazarus around to be picked up for TV is... astonishing. The confidence of white men, eh?

In Conclusion

Both Fern and I are very, extremely glad that Lazarus was not, and never will be made into a TV show. We are very glad that we get to keep Sam, Gene, Annie and all the others as they are. And we are also very glad that we went to this table-read, since we can now stop wondering what could have been. It's done and dusted. And, funnily enough, this has invigorated my fandom fire for LoM. I now want to create art of the characters I've come to know and love, to reinforce who they are to me. They are our characters now, Ashley and Matt. You don't get to play with them anymore. You don't get to twist them and put them through the wringer.

Tl;Dr

#Life on Mars #Lazarus #drawing lark #cello rambles #uhh I don't know what else to tag #I don't want to start fandom drama but I also wanted to give my personal opinion #off to bed I go now

99 notes · View notes

daeva-agas · 8 months

Text

Speaking of the Senshi/Shitennou pairs. I was kind of curious why those stones in particular, right. Kunzite and zoisite are so unusual that I think only gemstone aficionados know them, and even though jadeite and nephrite are somewhat more commonly known names IIRC it still made people mess up the mineral names back in the day.

Well, uh, so, it was alleged that Takeuchi-sensei chose them to match the character and personalities of the senshi they're partnered with, so... Excuse me while I go overthink this and have a meltdown in suffering.

In the first place, supposedly the "inner senshi" are officially meant to be called "guardians"/"guardian deities" (守護 or 守護神). Haven't seen the raws, so I can't confirm, but that's what the JP media says. The term "Shitennou", as many are already aware of, are originally a term used to refer to a set of 4 Buddhist guardian deities.

If true then it just feels like they're all intended to be perfectly matching sets from the start, and it just never made it into the story.

I read that Sailor Moon was originally meant to just end with the Dark Kingdom plot, so maybe sensei intended to have a Romeo and Juliet sad ending where everyone just dies in the end?

These are all based on Japanese gemology guides (same as what I used to research for the Shitennou knight titles), since I imagine it's more likely to be the one Takeuchi-sensei had access to. These may differ from international ones.

(Warning: Long post)

In the manga sensei specified that the zoisite is the blue one, that's also known as "tanzanite". The blue variety of zoisite, among other things, means "calm and intelligence".

The connection to Ami/Mercury's character is very straightforward and obvious.

In terms of romance, a zoisite also means "subdued expressions of love". It really makes me think of how gentle this pair looks in the splash art sensei drew.

Kunzite means "premonition of a lover". It's specifically oh dang when I saw this because Minako was "special" among the senshi in the way that her character vibes are based on "love" (because Venus, goddess of love), rather than the original elemental name attached to the planet. It fits enough to make you pause and wonder if this it truly a coincidence.

The planet venus originally has the element of "gold/metal". The gold is reflected in her design somewhat, but her senshi identity is more related to "love". The other girls' names matches their planets' element names. E.g Jupiter = mokusei = wood, Ki(no) = wood/tree. Mercury = suisei = water, Mizu(no) = water.

Also Venus's relationship with Kunzite ended up being the one who got the most hints actually shown in the manga, so... I do wonder.

The two jades are less overly specific like this, especially Nephrite, but well.

Jadeite is the native jade from Japan, and has been long used to make magatama since ancient times. As such it's always seen as a deeply spiritual stone, that can protect against and/or ward off evil. A perfect match for Rei, who is a miko. One wonders if sensei chose the stone because of Rei being a miko, or if she made Rei a miko after choosing this name for the one matched with her.

Edit: Japanese Wiki claims Rei being a miko was based on Takeuchi-sensei's personal experience as a part time miko. So then Jadeite had to have been named/chosen to fit her, if this theory is true.

Not to mention that Akuryou Taisan, the evil-banishing spell, is something that she uses quite often.

Nephrite is the most confusing one here, because I'm not really able to find the connection. That's why I initially had strong doubts about the rumour/claim about the gemstone names' connection to the senshi.

In the gemology guide that I referenced, its meaning is "charm of maturity". I suppose Mako has always felt like she's older than the other girls, because her hobbies (cooking and home decor) feels really motherly.

Other than that and the stone being a deep green colour similar to Jupiter's senshi outfit I'm not entirely sure. (in the manga, sensei says nephrites are "always deep green" even though IRL that's not the case)

----

Just my additional comments after reading everything that I did:

In terms of colour, I like to think Jadeite is a red jade. Not just to match Rei, but in the manga Jadeite's stone is always coloured the darkest (it's almost all-black). Of all the various jades, red is one of the darker-toned ones.

The shading can be arbitrary, especially if sensei was just tracing from reference photos. Dark green jadeite also exist, so for all I know this is intended to be green too.

But if I use the logic that the stones are matched with the girls' character, I think red just fits the best. In gemstone language the red jade means "tenacity" and "willpower". Green jades tends to be associated with things like harmony, prosperity, luck, and so on. It doesn't feel very Rei-like.

Also, the nephrite jade being a "soft jade", it's associated with very cuddly meanings such as "warm" or "gentle", which makes me laugh even more than the "wisdom" one.

Unless, again, these words are more attached to the matching girls' character, rather than the guy in question, because yes I think Mako is definitely very warm and gentle and fluffy and very huggable.

Although other-coloured zoisite varieties were said to have different meaning, it looks like blue is the predominant zoisite colour in Japan. A lot of Japanese gem sites tend to automatically just say "it's blue" while describing zoisite, even though there's obviously other colours out there.

Sensei did specify it's "blue zoisite, a.k.a tanzanite" in the manga, so I think she's aware of the other colours having different meanings attached. Some articles also had mentioned Takeuchi-sensei's family runs a jewellery store?

I wonder if this is why Crystal went with the gemstone's healing properties for Zoi's title though, because the gemstone words overlaps too much with Mercury in a very in-the-face way. The other meanings are Hope, Mystery, Pride, and Noble, and maybe those don't make very good title names? Like, the only viable one is probably Hope, though I feel like it would be even more confusing if Crystal said Zoi is the "Knight of Hope" or whatever.

Another thing about Kunzite is that its meaning also include "pure and everlasting love", but the website caveated this that this is a saintly kind of love (for the gem's association with Holy Mother Mary). So it's not necessarily something to get overly excited about in terms of SenShi headcanoning, but, well, it's there.

"Shitennou" in Japanese pop culture is generally used to just mean "4 very important people", so it didn't have to actually mean anything. Like, a few samurai in history had their "shitennou", who are just the best 4 generals serving under them. Most famous being the Tokugawa shitennou, but other samurai lords actually have their own so-called shitennou. It's just that if the senshi are officially named "Guardians", then this changes the context.

99 notes · View notes