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Q: Why has it taken so long for V to show us what the Vs look like? I don’t remember the original series taking this long — and they didn’t even have CGI back then! — MAGPIE, Toronto, Canada

The Oracle Speaks:

If the network had had their way, it would’ve taken even longer still.

“When I took over the show [mid-way through the first season], there were some mandates from the people who pay my paycheck,” says V showrunner Scott Rosenbaum. “I was told I could not show what a visitor looked like, under any circumstances.”

Rosenbaum wasn’t happy.

“I reacted very negatively to that,” he says, “but I was put in a position where I couldn’t [show the Vs]. I fought that fight every day, every phone call, every [set of notes]. It was difficult for me, because I was reading this fan-stuff online [about the need to show the visitors], and I was thinking, ‘I agree with that!’”

Eventually, the network relented. “And it happened to coincide with what I think the fans wanted right from the start,” Rosenbaum says.

It’s hard to imagine what the suits were thinking, except to acknowledge that it had been a while since there’d been much sci-fi on broadcast television, and they may simply have been unfamiliar with what the audience wanted.

“Sometimes less is more, but this is a case where it definitely wasn’t,” Rosenbaum tells me. “I understood the fan frustration. Look, we know what they are [from the original]. It’s not a secret, so there’s no reason to hang onto it. There are a lot of other secrets to keep, but that was one that you owe it almost to show it to them. If it had been up to me, I would’ve showed them by the second episode.”

Q: Ever notice how Yoda’s words of wisdom are so often wrong?

The Oracle Speaks:

You have a point. Consider:

• “If you leave now, help them you could; but you would destroy all for which they have fought, and suffered.” [Not true: Luke saves them, but doesn't destroy all they have fought and suffered.]
• “Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.’ [Not true: with help from Luke, Darth Vadar turns away from the dark path in the end.]

And then there’s the fact that Yoda and Obi-Wan totally lie to Luke about the identify of his father, shrugging it off with the condescending, “Not ready for the burden were you.”

And I’m not even considering any Yoda dialogue from the prequel movies (which I’ve only seen once and am now basically pretending don’t exist).

On the other hand, Yoda is also right more than a few times:

• “No. Try not. Do… or do not. There is no try.”
• “That is why you fail.”
• “No. There is another.”

The point is, when your wisdom is as wise as Yoda’s sometimes is (and when you’re performed by someone as bad-ass as Frank Oz!), you’re allowed a few blind spots here and there.

Plus, as Yoda himself points out, “When 900 years you reach, look as good you will not, hmm?”

I’d say the same thing also applies to his mental acuity.

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Back again for another highly opinionated — some might even say downright cranky — look at some element of the fantasy genre. You’ve been warned!

DOES LOVING FANTASY MEAN I HAVE TO ROMANTICIZE THE PAST?

Can I make a confession? As much as I love fantasy, one part of the genre has always kind of bugged me:

The romanticization of the past.

I mean, I’m fine with romanticizing the past as, well, fantasy. In our era of media assault and cultural crudeness, who doesn’t smile at the idea of a simpler time, with sausages sizzling in the marketplace and a little stone cottage at the edge of a babbling brook with a pot of stew simmering over a roaring fire?

But, of course, that “past” never existed.

At all.

That’s pure fantasy. The reality is that, until just the last century and excepting for a lucky few — like royalty and people who lived in places of lush bounty like Pacific Islanders — human life has been a pretty miserable existence, at least by modern standards. The “past” had almost no safeguards or safety nets and, as a result, depended entirely on everything going absolutely right. Because if there was a famine or a war or an outbreak of disease — which happened a lot — things got really ugly really fast.

And even when times were good? The past was rife with ugly superstition, overwhelming bigotry, and plain old human ignorance. Who’s talking cultural crudeness now? And as for assaults, I’ll take a media assault over an actual one any day of the week.

I’m not saying anything particularly radical or extraordinary here. Talk to any historian, and he or she say exactly the same thing: for the vast majority of people in the vast majority of places, life was short and not-all-that sweet.

For the most part, I’m fine with pretending this isn’t true, or even simply agreeing to concentrate mostly on the positive aspects of the past — the stronger sense of community and, as a result, the accountability; the appreciation of tradition and cultural continuity; and the recognition that old people are not worthless and sometimes possess great wisdom and understanding.

But, of course, even here, all these “positive” aspects of the past had serious downsides as well: namely, a resistance to change and a lack of nimbleness, even in the face of obviously changing times. What if you want to argue that slavery is immoral, or that a women shouldn’t be consigned only to child-rearing and housework, or that gay people shouldn’t be burned at the stake?

Um, good luck with that.

But a lot of fantasy writers take it a step further even than this romantization of the past, and seem to be arguing that, with regard to human knowledge and understanding, the past was better too — that there is some great “wisdom of the ancients” or a “time of fairies” that has been lost, and that our current knowledge and understanding of the world just pales in comparison.

I’m so not down with this.

Okay, sure, I acknowledge that there is definitely some great wisdom in the past — especially in “advanced” cultures like the Ancient Greeks, the Chinese, the Islamic Golden Age, and the like.

And there is surely some “forgotten” wisdom too, perhaps in pagan peace-loving cultures that were tragically destroyed and suppressed by more war-inclined ones.

But superior to the modern world?

As bad as the present is — and I’m semi-convinced that corporations will ultimately be the death of us all — I still prefer it over the past.

It’s not even close.

Yes, there were surely some wise sages back then — but there are wise sages now. Read any Ursula Le Guin lately? And if we’re going to compare the “best” cultures of the past, isn’t it only fair to compare them to the “best” cultures of the present? Been to any Scandinavian countries lately? I defy you not to be impressed by their ingenuity, egalitarianism, and, well, civilization.

The past, meanwhile, was mostly an endless slog against superstition and ignorance.

Is it possible that there was a true “golden” age that existed before known civilization? A time of faeries?

Eh, maybe. But we haven’t found much evidence of it, and based on what we do know about the past, and about our species, it doesn’t seem very likely.

You know, I get that this isn’t necessarily a “literal” belief, that it’s all basically a wish, a metaphor for a particular world-view — the idea that “now,” that the modern world, is failing us all, morally and spiritually.

But I think it’s the metaphor that I’m most objecting to. When I look at human history, I see plenty to disgust and outrage me — just as when I look at the modern world.

But you know what? I also see a mostly steady, upward trajectory for our species: from blind superstition and ignorance, to increasing understanding and reason. From ignorance to enlightenment.

I know this is (very generally) the world-view of the science fiction genre, while fantasy tends to be much more critical of the present and suspicious of the future. Optimism in humanity and the future versus pessimism and a worship of the past.

And that kinda bums me out: I love fantasy, but my particular world-view seems to coincide more with sci-fi.

Is there a way to reconcile my two passions?

There is, but it’ll have to be the subject of another essay.

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Q: I’m curious how Jane Badler, who played Diana in the original V, came to be involved with the V remake. It seems like such obvious stunt casting (although she’s terrific so far). Was it planned from the start — or did they bring her in once the ratings started to flag? — MAGPIE, Toronto, Canada

The Oracle Speaks:

Neither, according to V producer and showrunner Scott Rosenbaum. Despite some reports to the contrary, Rosenbaum tells TheTorchOnline.com that the new character of “Diana,” Anna’s mother, was conceived without Jane Badler in mind.

Mother, daughter, grandmother

“I had this idea at the end of last season about what season two was going to be, and I thought it would be interesting to do a little back-story of the Visitors,” Rosenbaum says. “I started with Anna, and I thought, ‘Does she have a mother?’ I spent some time figuring out who that mother was, why there was conflict between them.”

At this point, Rosenbaum says he still hadn’t even considered Jane Balder for the role, but that he got a message that she was in town and wanted to meet him. “But we hadn’t even started casting yet,” Rosenbaum says. “She didn’t even know there was a role.”

It wasn’t until they were actually chatting that Rosenbaum put two and two together. “She was talking about her kid in Australia, and I was completely zoning out, thinking, ‘She could be Diana!’”

Rosenbaum says Badler auditioned for the role — something Badler confirms.

“There were sixty or seventy very well-known actors who auditioned for that role,” he says. “I was shocked by the names that came in. I didn’t think we’d have such a pool of recognizable actors — some who’d had B+ TV roles. But I chose [Jane] because she was the best. I didn’t do it at all because she was from the original.”

Rosenbaum acknowledges that it turned out to be something of a publicity coup for the show.  “But I didn’t do it because I thought the fans would be excited,” he says. “The thing is, they could’ve reacted the opposite way. You have to just pick the best person.”

Rosenbaum’s story strains credibility a bit — I’m assuming the character wasn’t really named “Diana” from the beginning — but he seemed sincere to me. And he did take over as showrunner partway through the first season, so it’s possible that previous producers were working on casting Jane as well, and Rosenbaum simply wasn’t aware.

Incidentally, why did Rosenbaum decide to make the next series story-arc about three women — Anna, Diana, and Lisa — in conflict?

“I felt like there needed to be more pressure on Anna,” Rosenbaum says. “And there’s an expression I heard years ago that stuck with me. The reason why grandparents and grandchildren get along is because they share a common enemy: the mother! That’s all you need to know about this three-women dynamic.”

Q: I agree with your opinion that prequels are really, really hard to pull off (e.g. Star Wars). So is Spartacus going to do it? How? — E.J., Lake Hope, OH

The Oracle Speaks:

I’ve only seen the first episode, so I can’t say how they’ll do it. But the producers have talked about what they learned from the first season, acknowledging that their storytelling grew stronger as the season went on. Maybe it’s just spin, but what they say is so in sync with how I perceived the first season to be that they’ve convinced me that they really do know what they’re doing.

“From the first episode on, we ratchet up the tension and the stakes,” writer-producer Steven DeKnight tells us in an exclusive interview. “There’s a lot of things that happen in the prequel that inform season one. You don’t have to have seen season one to know what happens, but in true Spartacus fashion, a lot of characters won’t see in the end of the prequel.”

What does DeKnight think of the finished product?

“Honestly, it turned out better than I had ever hoped,” he says. “We really got a chance to go back and flesh out so many of the characters and tell a story that I don’t think we ever would’ve ever been able to tell otherwise.”

In fact, DeKnight says that the existence of the first season, the events of which still lie ahead in the time-line, gave them the major theme of the prequel.

“Your actions will decide your fate,” he says. “It’s something that Batiatus’s father will warn him of, and we draw directly between what happens in the prequel and where it leads him in season one.”

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Q: What’s the deal with Steven Spielberg’s time-travel, dinosaur series Terra Nova? I thought it was coming in January. — Dan, Vancouver, WA

The Oracle Speaks:

Because this is such a high-profile project – Steven Spielberg doing a big-budget time-travel TV series about dinosaurs – interest has obviously been sky-high. Not surprisingly, every little move has been chronicled by the media (including a controversy last fall, which the show’s producers now deny even happened, attributing it all to mere scheduling problems).

But I’m not sure the show is as far behind schedule as some people think, or as any other show of this magnitude might be; I think it’s simply a question of higher visibility coupled with viewer impatience. Regardless, it will definitely debut in May with a two-hour premiere movie, setting it up for a regular run in the fall.

Truthfully? While I’m interested in the show, I’m also mostly pessimistic about it.

First, I was at the network’s preview presentation of the show at last week’s Television Critics Association conference in Pasadena: they showed brief clips, and the cast and crew all talked about the project (Spielberg wasn’t there).

I was unimpressed. They emphasized that this is big, broad entertainment, nothing like Lost, which, for all my issues with it, was smart and complicated. I interpreted this talk to mean they’re dumbing the show down. I’m all for popcorn entertainment, but the central dramatic premise — about a family trying to reconnect with each other by going back through time — screamed “cliche”.

Next, the showrunner is Brannon Braga of Star Trek fame. For some, that’s a good sign, but while Braga did some interesting work on ST: The Next Generation and Voyager, he’s stayed decidedly old-school and proven mostly unable to reinvent himself in this era of changes in the TV sci-fi genre: Battlestar Galactica was the Star Trek project that Enterprise should’ve been, and Threshold and Flash Forward, which Braga was intimately involved with, ended up being major disappointments to me.

And perhaps apropos of nothing, I just finished watching Steven Spielberg’s other high profile TV “event” of the year, the alien invasion series Fallen Skies, coming this summer on TNT.

It. Is. Terrible. I mean, shockingly bad: horribly written, cheaply produced, and a complete cliche is almost every way.

It’s debatable how involved Spielberg has been with either of these shows (and given the fair amount of crap Spielberg has produced in his career, an argument can also be made that he may not be the brilliant visionary he’s sometimes made out to be; his TV record is even more mixed than his movie one: Seaquest 2032 anyone? ).

Like I said, all this makes me a little pessimistic.

Q: It depressed me to see the new movie The Rite, which seems like yet another rip-off of The Exorcist. Just out of curiosity, how many “demon possession” movies have their been now anyway? – MM, Calgary, Canada

The Oracle Speaks:

It’s a little depressing, isn’t it? The Rite opens January 28th in the US and certainly proves the long-standing fascination with the Catholic ritual, doesn’t it?

But it’s an interesting question: how many Exorcist rip-offs er, films about exorcism have their been?

In addition to four Exorcist sequels or prequels, movies where exorcism plays at least a semi-major plot element include The Exorcism of Emily Rose; Exorcism: The Possession of Gail Bowers (2006); End of Days (1999); The Order (2003); Exorcismus (2010); Stigmata(1999): Possessed (2000); The Unborn (2009); Requiem (2006); and two parody films, The Last Exorcism (2010) and Repossessed (1990).

Q: A new year, a new slate of genre movies. Which are you most looking forward to? — Andrew, Miami, FL

The Oracle Speaks:

In the months ahead, fantasy or sci-fi movies I’m looking forward to include The Adjustment Bureau, starring Matt Damon (March 4), about a man who decides to defy his “destiny,” and The Source Code (April 1), about Jake Gyllenhaal forced to relive the last eight minutes of his life (it’s by the director of Moon, which was flawed but interesting).

Incidentally, expect to see many many such Inception-like movies in the years ahead!

Based solely on the premise of a man suing the devil for $8 trillion, I’m intrigue by Suing the Devil (March 11).

The word on the fantasy spoof Your Highness (April 8) is pretty good, and the cast (James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel) is to die for, but the trailer was unfunny to me.

Movies I don’t want to see?

The worst actor in movies today, Nic Cage, has another movie I will naturally try to avoid, Drive Angry (February 25), and I’m already tired of the trend of “reclaiming” children’s fairy tales, so that rules out Beastly (March 3) and Red Riding Hood (March 11).

I’m think I’m mostly done with superhero movies for a few years, even Thor (May 6), but I may be talked into going to X-Men: First Class (June 3).

They’re pushing Limitless (March 18), about a man who takes a pill to tap into his potential, way too hard, and you obviously couldn’t pay me to see Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides (May 20).

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Back again for another highly opinionated — some might even say downright cranky — look at some element of the fantasy genre. You’ve been warned!

TWO FANTASY MOVIES CLEARLY DESERVE TO BE NOMINATED FOR BEST PICTURE

Over a year ago, I wrote an article asking if the current “renaissance” in animated movies was possibly coming to an end.

We now know the answer: absolutely fricking not! 

This year saw the release of two animated movies, Toy Story 3 and Tangled, that are among the best the medium has ever released.

The year also saw a number of other animated movies that, while not close to being in the same league, were also pretty good: How to Train Your Dragon, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, and (to an even lesser degree) Shrek: Forever After.

Interestingly, all these movies were fantasy-themed.

And even more interestingly, most of these animated movies were considerably better than the year’s live-action fantasy movies. Twilight: Eclipse? Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1? Alice in Wonderland? The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time? Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World?

Please. And don’t get me started on the monstrosity that was the Clash of the Titans remake.

Boy, is the animation renaissance not yet over!

But Toy Story3 and Tangled aren’t just two of the best movies in the fantasy or animated genres: they’re also clearly two of the best movies of the year.

They both deserve to be nominated for Oscars — and I don’t mean Best Animated Feature Oscars (though they’ll obviously get those nominations too).

I mean Best Picture Oscars — especially now that they’ve expanded the category to include ten nominees, up from five.

Will they be nominated?

Toy Story 3 almost certainly will be: Pixar is beloved by Academy members (much the way their now-corporate parent, Disney, used to be).

But Tangled seems like a much, much longer shot.

Why? In part, because of Toy Story 3’s seeming “lock” on a nomination: there may be an attitude, unconscious or not, that animated movies only deserve one slot among the ten nominees.

I also don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say that the Academy, which is comprised of established industry professionals (who tend to be both older and male), probably has something of an anti-”princess” (and kids’ movie) bias, and perhaps an outright anti-female bias. They definitely have an anti-”genre” bias, displaying a long track record that clearly indicates that they think “drama” is more important and award-worthy than anything sci-fi or fantasy.

Toy Story 3 seems to have threaded the needle perfectly: it doesn’t “seem” like straight fantasy or an outright kids’ movie. And, sure enough, both the humor and theme work on several levels: simple enough to appeal to kids, but with subtext and subtle cultural references that also appeal to (smart) adults.

And I can’t begrudge Toy Story 3 its success: it’s a flat-out terrific movie — the first wholly successful movie Pixar has produced in years, IMHO.

But Tangled is flat-out terrific too — simultaneously old-fashioned and contemporary, with a terrifically original visual look. Like Toy Story 3, it also appeals to both kids and adults.

Even apart from the Oscar race, the release of these two movies (and the year’s other fine animated movies) gives me reason for great optimism when it comes to film: at least I now know that Hollywood can still produce quality “popular” entertainment when it wants to.

Now if the town would only apply some of this obvious ingenuity to its live-action movie offerings — and stop their creativity-destroying reliance on remake, sequels, and “re-imaginings.”

Yeah, I know that’s crazy talk. But hey, a guy can dream!

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Q: Okay, so I’m thoroughly confused about the green mist in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Who or what was it exactly? — MAGPIE, Toronto, Canada

The Oracle Speaks:

I’m not sure I can clear up the confusion, because the movie’s whole concept of the green mist was confusing. It’s obviously a sentient evil of sorts — though this is never explained or developed — and it’s attempting to reach Narnia to destroy it, and it’s already well past the Lone Islands. But the people of the Lone Islands have somehow made a “deal” with the mist so it will bypass them, at least temporarily, if they occasionally sacrifice people to it — people who are not killed, but are somehow magically transported into the source of the mist, which is Dark Island.

Look, this is obviously just a not-very-well-thought-out attempt to give the movie an “antagonist” of sorts, and an over-arching “goal” for the main characters to achieve — something that is noticeably lacking in the book. To their credit, they at least tried to do it by assembling existing pieces from the book — Dark Island, Ramandu’s Island and daughter, and the Seven Lords (who now each possess a magical sword, which, when assembled, can destroy the mist).

But it’s all plot contrivance, and it really, really shows.

Incidentally, will there be a fourth movie in the series? It’s true that The Voyage of the Dawn Treader opened poorly, but it hasn’t been a complete disaster domestically, and it’s performed much stronger overseas. Since the budget was considerably lower than Prince Caspian, I don’t think a movie version of The Silver Chair is out of the question.

I’ll have a full report on the question of the next movie very soon.

Stardust

Q: Movies based on kids’ fantasy books always seem to be huge hits — e.g. Harry Potter, Twilight, etc. I don’t understand why they don’t turn every kids’ fantasy into a movie. — Nina, Corvallis, OR

The Oracle Speaks:

You’re just remembering the hits. The fact is, while plenty of films based on children’s fantasies have done well, (1) they’re usually special-effects-intensive and, therefore, very expensive to make, and (2) the genre is also littered with plenty of flops — recently, The Seeker: The Dark is Rising (based on The Seeker books), Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant, and Eragon — and there are lots of only middling successes as well, like Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Stardust, Where the Wild Things Are, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader),  and The Golden Compass (which did much better internationally than it did domestically).

Can we at least say that contemporary fantasies (like Harry Potter and Twilight) do better than “classic” stories, if only because they have large, passionate, existing fanbases? If you consider Alice in Wonderland and The Lord of the Rings to be children’s “classics” even that isn’t necessarily true.

The conventional wisdom is that it takes a certain kind of kids’ fantasy story to make a successful movie (and I agree) — and even then, some movies will be poorly executed and will be more or less destined to fail.

But rest assured: plenty more movies based on kids’ fantasy books are in the works.

Q: My husband and I home-school our daughter.  She is in 6th grade and loves role playing games such as D&D and Free Realms.  I am trying to figure out ways to itemize RPG’s in her school transcript so she gets school credit for playing RPG’s.  I know the obvious ways to incorporate these games into her schooling in areas such as math, reading, logic, and problem-solving, but I am having a hard time coming up with other educational benefits of RPG’s that I can list.  My husband and I support her playing (my husband even plays D&D along with her) and we would like to be able to give her school credit for doing so.  Do you have any suggestions on how to include RPG’s in a school transcript? — Debbie

The Oracle Speaks:

Truthfully, the details of school transcripts are beyond the purview of even the great Fantasy-Question-Answering Oracle, but I’m including your question here because (a) there might be someone reading this who would be more qualified to answer it, and hopefully they’ll include their perspective in the “comments” below, and (b) to add a few thoughts of my own.

First, here’s my take on the educational value of D&D.

The reason why it’s difficult to fit role-playing games into a school transcript is because American society has an extremely limited, and very traditional, notion of “education,” which reduces “knowledge” into specific parts (usually to be memorized or assembled).

Basically, we don’t see knowledge as all inter-connected, we worship “facts” not processes, and we don’t see education as holistic.

The upshot? You might have to do a little fudging. You and I both know the value of role-playing games, but other educators are not yet able to see its value, and no matter how you massage the information, I’m not sure that square peg is ever going to fit into their round hole.

But a word of warning is in order: role-playing games can be educational, but they can also be just plain goofing off (which is perfectly okay, but it shouldn’t necessarily gain one school credit).

My advice would be to have your “students” justify the value of their playing to you, an understanding and sympathetic adult. If they can do that effectively (making the success of that part of the assignment), then I think you’re ethically okay in fudging things as necessary for the school transcript.

Have a question about something fantasy-related? Please send an email to thetorchonlineoracle@gmail.com and be sure and include your city and state and/or country.

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Q: I know that opinions differ on “A Solstice Carol,” the Christmas episode of Xena: Warrior Princess (I love it), but I’ve always wondered why they didn’t do another holiday episode? — Mehran, Camden, NJ

The Oracle Speaks:

Very few scripted TV shows do a dedicated Christmas episode every year — some, like Xena, just do a single one over the course of their run, which they can then run every year.

Why? Because TV viewership is down during the holiday weeks, many shows go into re-runs, making December sort of a mid-season hiatus.

That was definitely true in the case of Xena, which was a syndicated show: original episodes of the show tended to run from September to November, then again from January to May or June, with re-runs the rest of the year.

In other words, it works perfectly to have one Christmas episode, which they can then re-run every year even during the show’s original run. According to the writer of the episode Chris Manheim, that was always the plan with “A Solstice Carol.”

Incidentally, regarding “A Solstice Carol,” I agree with those who say that a Christmas Carol rip-off is just about the most hackneyed Christmas episode plot possible, but I still thought the Xena folks mostly pulled this one off. I especially like the use of toys as weapons.

Q: Dude, what the hell happened to Santa and his elves between the 1964 Christmas Special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and 1974’s The Year Without a Santa Claus? They look totally different! The elves don’t even look like the same species! — Mark, Hudson River Valley, NY

The Oracle Speaks:

You’ll recall that between the filming of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, Mark “Luke Skywalker” Hamill was in a disfiguring car crash (which was “explained” by the Wampa attack)?

Sadly, The Oracle can finally reveal that something similar happened to Santa in 1969: a sleigh crash with a Russian satellite that was so disfiguring that it somehow even managed to move Santa’s eyes much farther apart.

Lest you feel too sorry for Santa, keep in mind that he’s also responsible for altered look of the elves. In 1972, the Rudolph elves unionized in order to ask for both heat and the option to not always be singing a happy tune. Santa immediately fired them all and hired scab-elves, two of whom, Jingle and Jangle, were featured prominently in 1974’s The Year Without a Santa Claus.

But shortly after the filming of that Christmas special, these new elves complained about the horrible, sub-freezing working conditions, and Santa fired them too, replacing them with the gang from A Charlie Brown Christmas. Since the children from Peanuts never age, and since the North Pole is excluded from international child labor treaties, Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, and Snoopy continue to toil in Santa’s toy factory to this day.

Q: If an angel gets its wings every time a bell rings, wouldn’t heaven be overrun with angels? – MAGPIE, Toronto, Canada

The Oracle Speaks:

It’s worse than you think. Every single individual “clang” of any bell results in an angel getting his or her wings — which means that a single jingle bell can produce hundreds of winged angels over the course of a minute.

Which means that, yes, heaven should be overrun with angels. Fortunately, there’s another rule that every time someone grinds their clutch, an entire legion of angels is instantly obliterated, so things have pretty much tended to even out.

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Back again for another highly opinionated — some might even say downright cranky — look at some element of the fantasy genre. You’ve been warned!

NO, VIRGINIA, THERE IS NO SANTA CLAUS

Okay, I’m going to confess something that’s sure to make me very unpopular with many readers.

If my kid asked me if Santa Claus was real, I’d absolutely say no. I feel that if a kid is old enough to ask, he or she is old enough to know the truth.

Yes, I realize this is making me sound like Ebeneezer Scrooge, but hear me out.

I’ve heard all the arguments about how believing in Santa Claus makes Christmas “magical,” and how innocence is a fragile thing that must be maintained at all costs.

But is that really true? Is Christmas really any less magical when a gift is given not by some mythical being who is watching over you and granting the gift as a reward for your “good” behavior, but by someone you love, carefully chosen to express that love?

As for preserving innocence, is there anyone among us who would deliberately want important information withheld from us, so we stay happier? Maybe so, but not me. Anyway, when someone specifically asks a trusted adult for the truth, there’s an expectation that that adult will actually give him or her the truth.

Sure, use age-appropriate language! But to lie outright? That seems to me to just invite either simple-mindedness (”The lesson here is it’s better to not ask questions in order to maintain your illusions”) or cynicism (”They lied to me about that — what else are they lying about?”). And don’t tell me a five-year-old isn’t aware enough to pick this up.

For the record, I’m (mostly) completely serious about this.

“But Santa Claus isn’t a lie!” you might be saying, citing that famous 1897 editorial in the New York Sun.

“Yes,Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” the editorial states. “He exists as certainly as love and devotion and generosity exist.”

Sure, love and devotion and generosity exist — along with the human imagination, which the essay also pays homage to (”You might as well not believe in fairies!”).

But whether love and devotion and imagination exist is not what Virginia is asking, now, is it?

She’s asking: is there a literal Santa Claus, a man in red suit with a bushy beard who comes down my chimney on Christmas Eve?

And the answer to that, of course, is no.

So why not say to a kid: “Santa Claus is an entertaining story we tell around the holidays. So he’s ‘real’ in the sense that the imagination is real — and what exactly is ‘reality’ anyway? But no, he doesn’t literally exist, not any more than Mickey Mouse or Bilbo the Hobbit exist.”

A kid won’t understand this? The thing is, all my life, people have been telling me what kids won’t or can’t understand. And most of the time, these people have been wrong. But in any event, why in the world would you deliberately want to dumb something down for your kid? Isn’t the point of being a parent to get your kid to aspire to be smarter and more sophisticated than he or she was the day before? Wouldn’t you want to reward your kid for being skeptical of those in authority and questioning the status quo?

Why do things have to be literally true for them to be beautiful and magical and meaningful anyway? We don’t insist that Dr. Seuss or Where the Wild Things Are are literally true — and they’re still pretty wonderful.

And I haven’t even touched upon the idea of the kind of moral framework the whole “Santa” thing is developing: be a good person not because of an empathetic awareness of other people and realization that humanity is all in this together, but because … well, you’ll get lots and lots presents!

Which brings me to the part of this essay where I lose even the few readers who are still with me (and yes, I realize I’m burying the lead!).

Part of what bugs me about teaching kids about Santa Claus is that it seems like a precursor to — an important building block in– a particularly immature brand of morality in general and religious belief in particular: the idea of God as an all-powerful magical being, watching and judging everything, and granting special favors to those who follow a set of existing black-and-white “rules.”

Whenever I hear a parent insisting to a child that Santa Claus is literally “real,” I always feel like the next step will be to replace The Man in the Red Suit with The Man with White Snowy Beard.

What’s wrong with that exactly? I guess I’m one of those who thinks that that immature kind of religious belief is the source of a very large percentage of the world’s problems — either inspiring misguided and often hateful zealots, or creating an equally scary group of people who, having rejected simple-minded religion, have no moral framework to replace it with and end up being evil in other ways.

Is this all too much to lay on Santa’s jolly’s shoulders? Maybe. But it’s what I think of every time I hear a parent insisting that Santa is “real,” even over their kid’s skeptical — and, to my mind, absolutely wonderful — objections.

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Q: I thought Donna Murphy, the voice-actress who played Mother Gothel in Tangled, was FANTASTIC! I’ve seen pictures of her, and I know I’ve seen her before, but I can’t think where. I know she’s a Broadway actress, but that’s not it. — Marcy, Fairbanks, AK

Donna Murphy in "Star Trek"

The Oracle Speaks:

It was driving me crazy too. The two-time Tony-winning was Picard’s love interest in Star Trek: Insurrection (she was also Octavius’ wife in Spider-Man 2).

And I agree that Murphy was fantastic in Tangled — one of the best Disney villains ever. I thought this recent interview with her was interesting, because she points out something I wish I’d written in my review: unlike most Disney villains, Mother Gothel has no “powers” — just her intelligence, her ruthless scheming, and a complete lack of conscience.

Murphy also mentions how the character’s great dialogue was created. “[The folks at Disney] polled many people who worked [there] about their relationships with their mothers and the things that annoyed them — the things that they’re mothers would do that made them feel trapped or made them feel smothered,” Murphy says. “Or made them feel like their mothers were trying to manipulate them. So they used a lot of that in the film, so it wasn’t just a woman who had stolen this child for her own purposes would do, but what a certain kind of mother might do to prevent her own child from having her own life, which is much more relatable and familiar to your average audience.”

I thought they got the “mother” thing spot-on!

Q: How do you think heaven looks/works? – Jaimie

The Oracle Speaks:

Um, well, gee. Truthfully, I personally think the odds of an afterlife that is anything like how we imagine it are virtually nil.

The way I see it, the existence of a heaven requires some manner of a literal “soul” — some part of the human experience that exists apart from the physical. But everything we’ve learned to date about ourselves and the universe suggests that there is no such thing. Do we all agree that single-celled organisms have no souls? What about houseflies? So the existence of a soul requires intelligence, right? But if humans evolved from less intelligent animals, doesn’t that imply that there was once a being that didn’t have a soul that gave birth to a being that did? Or did our evolutionary ancestors have a degree of a soul?

Or maybe all living things do have a soul, and they grow more sophisticated as beings evolve intelligence. But speaking evolutionarily, where’d the souls come from — and why? They could be a by-product of intelligence, but if a soul is linked to intelligence, does that mean a mentally-impaired or catatonic person has less of a soul, or none at all?

People say there must be a heaven, that there has to be something after death. But why? There’s nothing before birth, is there?

The whole thing doesn’t make a lot of sense when you think about it in modern terms.

Sure enough, most of our notions of “heaven” were formulated in a pre-scientific era. Science has since proved that almost everything else that pre-scientific humans believed about the physical world was wrong. As a result, we no longer believe that the sun revolves around the earth, or that every body is made up of “humors” — so why do we persist in holding fast to a pre-scientific view of the afterlife?

The answer is obvious: our belief in heaven isn’t about logic or reason; it’s about some long-standing human need for an “answer” to the greatest mystery of all. And that’s perfectly okay, even if it does require a little bit of willful ignorance.

Still, if we’re going to apply full-throated logic to the whole idea of heaven, here’s what I think is the best-case-scenario: since energy never ceases to exist (it simply changes forms), when humans die, our psychic energy somehow blends into some sort of cosmos, but we also somehow manage to maintain some form of consciousness.

But regrettably, even this seems like a really long shot to me.

Q: The ads for the new Narnia movie coming out last week say its going to be in 3D.  Was the movie made in 3D from the very beginning or was it converted after the fact? — Angela, Mooresville, NC

The Oracle Speaks:

It’s a 3D conversion, done after-the-fact.

Here’s James Cameron, the director of Avatar, on the idea of 3D film conversions, and I think he’s spot-on. “After Toy Story, there were ten really bad CG movies because everybody thought the success of that film was CG and not great characters that were beautifully designed and heartwarming. Now, you’ve got people quickly converting movies from 2D to 3D, which is not what we did. They’re expecting the same result, when in fact they will probably work against the adoption of 3D because they’ll be putting out an inferior product.”

In fairness to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, however, this was not a “rush” conversion (like the widely-panned Clash of the Titans). They’ve had plenty of time to presumably get it as right as they can after-the-fact.

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Just because someone’s fictional, that doesn’t mean they can’t be involved in juicy scandal! Here’s all the gossip on your favorite fantasy characters:

• The search for the next Spartacus is over! The Poison Pen is pleased to announce that the producers have settled on an actor to replace Andy Whitfield, who had to bow out of the role due to cancer. But in a move that has thoroughly befuddled industry observers, producers have declined to hire any of the actors thought to be auditioning for the role and have instead turned to a method of mysticism used to pick the next Dalai Lama. In other words, the “next” Spartacus is a newly-born infant in Shigatse, Tibet. Unfortunately for fans, this means the second full season of Spartacus will not arrive until January 2032.
  

• Who better to write a tell-all book about Harry Potter than Hedwig the Owl (who, contrary to popular belief, is not dead)? In her upcoming autobiography I Eat Mice For Breakfast, Hedwig reveals the “shocking,” decidedly owl-centric news that Harry Potter has absolutely no night vision and smells vaguely of chipmunk guts. Hedwig’s book also takes on former friend Woodsy the Owl, the “Give a hoot, don’t pollute” Forest Service icon, exposing the little-known fact that he is a major shareholder in Royal Dutch Shell Oil, a company whose sloppy environmental practices have polluted much of the Niger-Delta in Africa. Oh, and Woodsy is terrible in bed.

• The Bureau of Tourism for the barren apocalypse of Modor is lamenting the fact that they’ve had only three tourists in the last 500 years — and those three, Sam, Frodo, and Gollum, only came to destroy the Ring of Power, completely ignoring the area’s struggling bed & breakfasts. So they’ve rolled out several new publicity slogans: “Mordor: So Much More Than Just Volcanoes and Orcs!” and “If You Don’t Come to Mordor, We’re Going to Come to You and Suck the Blood From Your Veins and the Marrow From Your Bones.” Analysts are skeptical that the campaign will be any more successful than last year’s “Wrap Yourself In Giant Spiderwebs … In Mirkwood!” P.R. offensive that was, not surprisingly, a total flop.

• Galadriel is neither confirming nor denying that the grainy sex tape that raced through the blogosphere last week that appeared to be of her and a strung-out Lord Celeborn in a hotel suite with a couple of well-known swingers is, in fact, of her and her husband. Is the mystical Elven Queen polyamorous with a penchant for strap-ons? A spokesman says, “Galadriel has diminished and gone into the West. She has no comment.”

• Finally, I’ll leave you with this blind item about this talking, rapier-wielding mouse who values honor above all things and who … Oh, hell, it’s Reepicheep, okay? Blind items in fantasy are hard!

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Q: The Poltergeist curse: real or not?

A: Look, it makes a great story, okay? The set of a movie about vengeful spirits was inhabited by actual vengeful spirits?

What are the facts? Dominique Dunne, who played older Poltergeist daughter Dana Freeling, was tragically strangled by an abusive boyfriend five months after the film’s release.

Heather O’Rourke, who played Carol Anne “They’re here!” Freeling, died of a bowel obstruction at age 12 while filming Poltergeist 3.

And Oliver Robins, who played Robbie Freeling, was reportedly almost chocked by the toy clown in one classic scene, the result of a prop-malfunction, and was only saved when Steven Spielberg realized he wasn’t acting.

(When talking of a Poltergeist “curse,” some people sometimes also mention two older actors from Poltergeist 2 who died with two years of filming that movie, but this strikes me as almost too stupid to mention because, um, older people die all the time, and out of a cast of hundreds between all the movies, it stands to reason some people are going to die. One the illnesses even predated the film.)

It is unusual to have two young actors die from the same film. But none of the deaths took place on the set of the movies, or even at the time of the movies, nor did they involve seemingly “supernatural” elements. In fact, O’Rourke’s death may have only come because she was misdiagnosed by a doctor — not the usual method of ghostly execution.

And a curse implies it’s the result of some intelligent force, something that’s able to distinguish people who worked on the film from those who didn’t. If so, why target the kids? Wouldn’t producer (and rumored co-director) Steven Spielberg have been a much better target (especially after the travesty that was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull)? Or the set designer to chose the supposedly “real” bones used in the swimming pool scene and some later scenes in Poltergeist 2?

And if the kids were targeted for some reason, why’d the spirit give up on Robins after one lame attempt? He’s still alive.

The likeliest explanation? It was coincidence that both Dunne and O’Rourke died so young, and from that, people searched for other “evidence” of a curse, like the Robins prop mishap (probably exaggerated because, let’s fact it, that’s the story everyone wants to hear) and a few randoms deaths in subsequent movies.

But like I said, it makes a great story, right?

Q: Why has there never been a Xanth movie (based on the Piers Anthony books)? Will there ever be a Xanth movie?– Gelfling, Corvallis, OR

A: A movie based on A Spell For Chameleon has been in development (with Wolfgang Petersen producing) at least since 2006. I asked Piers Anthony for an update, and he tells me, “A producer was interested, but needed to get financing for it. No word so far on how that is progressing. But a movie from Split Infinity is due 2013.”

Q: Do you think Katherine will get out the original tomb this season on The Vampire Diaries? Before, I would’ve said no, but with this show, you never know. — Myna, Monterrey, CA

A: I agree with you completely. With any other show, I would’ve said, “They’ll let Katherine lie low for a season or two, and bring her back during sweeps.” But this show’s trademark is its tendency to do the unexpected — and its break-neck pacing. I’m actually thinking she will get out this season, sooner rather than later.

There’s a certain logic to what Katherine told Elena: that now that she hasn’t been able to secure the elements to break the Petrova Curse, Klaus will be angrier than ever with her — but he won’t be able to kill Katherine because she’s “safe” inside the tomb where other vampires can’t enter.

I’m guessing, but I’m predicting some kind of alliance between Elena, Stefan, and Katherine against Klaus (much like how Xena and Gabrielle once teamed up with uber-nemesis Callisto), and as a result of that alliance, Katherine will be released from the tomb and eventually escape — and this time, she will be gone for a season or two.

Incidentally, there are no clues in the original Vampire Diaries book series upon which the series is based. Katherine first appears in The Fury, the third book in the series, but by that time, Elena has been turned into a vampire, and at the end of the book, Katherine is killed — but at the same time, Katherine also kills Elena, who later returns as a ghost!

Speaking of which, the last time I interviewed series creators Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec, right before the show debuted, they told me that they did plan to cover most of the plot of the books, but not necessarily in the same order. What about the fact that Elena eventually dies and returns as that ghost?

They laughed at the idea of having to deal with that. But you know what? As I said before, on this show, I wouldn’t put it past them.

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Q: What’s the real reason they split Deathly Hallows into two movies? Was it greed? – Erik, Athens, GA

The Oracle Speaks:

Not to hear the filmmakers tell it.

“When Steve Kloves began working on the screenplay, it became clear we would have to omit too much to do justice to Jo’s book in one film,” says producer David Heyman. “There were simply too many details that were integral to the resolution of the series.”

“The seventh book is all about resolution—the dotting of all the i’s and the crossing of all the t’s,” adds producer David Barron.

As for Daniel Radcliffe, he told the Los Angeles Times, “There have been compartmentalized subplots in the other books that have made them easier to cut — although those cuts were still to the horror of some fans — but the seventh book doesn’t really have any subplots. It’s one driving, pounding story from the word go…. [Two movies] was the only way we could tell the story in a complete and fulfilling way.”

Then again, that’s what they would say, isn’t it? It’s not like they’d come out and say, “Yeah, we just wanted to make a lot more money.”

Look, let’s be real here, okay? The Harry Potter movies have grossed a total of $5.4 billion dollars — with billions of dollars more in ancillary revenue (up to $20 billion total by some estimates). Does anyone really think they wouldn’t look for another reason to extend the franchise — a way that doesn’t seem too craven or cynical, so as to not provoke a backlash on the part of the audience?

It’s absolutely not a question of necessity: Deathly Hallows isn’t even the longest of the Harry Potter books — that’s Order of the Phoenix (although it’s arguable that, unlike Deathly Hallows, that book is simply over-written, and as Radcliffe suggests, that there’s more actual “story” in Hallows).

But do the fans really care that much? On the contrary, you could argue that fans would rather have the entire story told in two movies than have it be abbreviated for one.

Truthfully, I think the filmmakers were easily convinced to do something that would please most fans and just happened to be enormously profitable for them.

“Obviously the studio are very happy with that decision, let’s not kid ourselves,” Heyman has also said. “[Screenwriter] Steve [Kloves] called me the other day and said, ‘I think we can do three.’ I think he was joking of course.”

Q: Voldemort’s nose-less face: is that make-up or CGI? — Amy, Henderson, NV

A: It’s actually a combination of the two. The nose of Ralph Fiennes, who plays Voldemort, is removed digitally, but most of the rest of the face is prosthetics (on the forehead and eyebrows), make-up (covering the skin), and a network of temporary tattoos (for the veins).

Incidentally, this is how Rowling describes Voldemort: “a man, tall and skeletally thin” with a face that was “whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was as flat as a snake’s with slits for nostrils … His hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cat’s, gleamed still more brightly through the darkness.”

I think they’ve done a reasonably effective, if pretty straightforward realization of the character.

Incidentally, what about Mad-Eye Moody’s eye? That’s entirely a prosthetic.

Q: Is it true that they didn’t decide where to split the story into two movies until they’d already written one long script and filmed it? — Myrna, Edmonton, Alberta

A: No. There was some confusion in the press, because the screenplays for the two movies were written at the same time, the movies were filmed at the same time, and some of the producers talked publicly about their tinkering with the ending once filming was completed. And, of course, they did test-screenings to find out if the ending they chose was “working.”

But even before the movie’s two scripts were written, the producers had a pretty clear idea of where they were going to end the first movie — and screenwriter Steve Kloves wrote that ending in his script (although it was subsequently altered).

Here’s producer David Heyman earlier this year:

The script [for Part 1] was written with an end in mind. The first draft was written with one ending and as we developed it, it went to another ending. And then we reverted in part to the original ending because we felt it allowed us a more emotional conclusion and felt like it was more complete, as it were. But we’ve added this other scene which I think is really amazing — and I can’t tell you where the break is, I’m sorry — but I do feel it will be incredibly dramatic, very moving and make people want to watch the next film.

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