Author: Erik

Rating: Murdoch Mysteries, Season 5

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Season 5 of Murdoch Mysteries sees a new addition to the cast, ongoing relationship drama, and the return of some of our favorite and least favorite recurring characters. Here’s how we rated the season’s episodes:

  1. “Murdoch of the Klondike” – 7
  2. “Back and to the Left” – 8
  3. “Evil Eye of Egypt” – 6
  4. “War on Terror” – 6
  5. “Murdoch at the Opera” – 4
  6. “Who Killed the Electric Carriage” – 7
  7. “Stroll on the Wild Side, Part 1” – 5.5
  8. “Stroll on the Wild Side, Part 2” – 4
  9. “Invention Convention” – 8.5
  10. “Staircase to Heaven” – 4
  11. “Murdoch in Toyland” – 2
  12. “Murdoch Night in Canada” – 4.5
  13. “Twentieth Century Murdoch” – 5

The average rating this season is 5.5, a little weak but still decent. This season has a lot going for it, but at the same time has some problems that weigh it down. The season starts off strong with “Murdoch of the Klondike” in which a disillusioned Murdoch turned prospector decides to take up the badge once again, and “Back and to the Left,” an ingenious case of political intrigue which plays with the tropes of Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. The latter half of the season drags a bit under the weight of a few too many recurring characters whose stories get in the way of Murdoch doing what Murdoch does best.

Our least favorite episode of the season is “Murdoch in Toyland,” which we gave a 2. James Gillies, from season 2‘s “Big Murderer on Campus” returns with an overdone and rather absurd plot to annoy Murdoch. We have absolutely had our fill of clever serial killers who follow detectives around like puppies pooping on the furniture for attention. No more.

At the top, we rated “Invention Convention” an 8.5. In this episode, an ingenious device used to murder a competitive inventor seems to have been a collaborative effort by his rivals, but turns out to have been even more insidious. This episode features Alexander Graham Bell and lets Murdoch geek out over some before-their-time inventions ranging from the Lazy Susan to e-mail.

One of the best features of this season is the introduction of Dr. Emily Grace as Dr. Ogden’s assistant-on-the-way-to-replacement in the morgue. We enjoy Dr. Grace’s fresh and sometimes shockingly modern (for 1899) perspective, and she has great onscreen chemistry with the established characters. For a series that in the past has struggled to even nominally pass the Bechdel test, adding a second regular female character is also very welcome (although quite a few of this season’s episodes still fail the test, or squeak by on technicalities).

Many familiar guest stars return for another go this season, some more welcome than others. James Gillies we have already mentioned—he worked well for one episode, but he should have ended there. Canadian secret agent Terrence Myers makes a return appearance, as does his American counterpart Allen Clegg. Both actors are always wonderful to watch, but their episode falls a bit flat. Anna Fulford, who helped Murdoch when he was on the run in England and suffering from amnesia back in season 3, makes a welcome return, but her double episode doesn’t use the character nearly as well. On the other hand, James Pendrick is back Pendricking things up with a solar-powered electric car and a gentleman’s feud with Henry Ford that makes for an entertaining episode.

How about the rest of you? What did you love (or not) from this season?

Image: Murdoch Mysteries ladies doing science via IMDb

In the Seen on Screen occasional feature, we discuss movies and television shows of interest.

Cap’n Crackers

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Pour, O pour the pirates’ sherry, fill, O fill the pirates’ glass!

As a thank-you for participating in her positive WoW-ing experiment, Alunaria has very generously given us new pets! Here’s my rogue with Cap’n Crackers, a shoulder-sitting parrot, living the pirate life.

Thank you, Alunaria! It was fun, and the new friend is a lovely bonus!

Of Dice and Dragons is an occasional feature about games and gaming.

Bread and Cheese

Erik

A sturdy adventurer in a fantasy novel pauses to take a break from their journey to the Land of Quest Completion. They open their knapsack looking for something to eat and what do they find? Bread and cheese.

Always bread and cheese.

It’s a well enough known trope to make an easy, low-hanging joke. It’s the sort of thing you expect in fantasy media whose worldbuilding can be charitably described as “medieval Europe but with magic and dragons and also I’ve never actually read a book on medieval Europe.”

But bread and cheese is not a joke. It is, in fact, a very good and sensible choice for an adventurer to pack for a long and difficult journey.

The human body needs nourishment. For long term health, there are a lot of things you need: a proper balance of amino acids, vitamins, minerals, fiber, and so on. Doing without any of these essentials for prolonged periods means risking malnutrition, disease, and other serious health problems. For getting through several days or weeks of hard physical work, like traveling in rough terrain or fighting monsters, though, three things are crucial: water, calories, and protein.

An average adult human requires a minimum of about 2 liters of water, 3,000 calories, and 70 grams of protein each day in order to remain fit for physically demanding labor. More is better, but these will get you through if you don’t keep it up for too long. These are the requirements a meal must meet to be suitable for basic adventuring rations.

Water can be found in most parts of the world where people live. It may not be available in large quantities and it may not be safe or pleasant to drink straight from the source, but chances are your standard adventurer can find enough to survive on in most terrains. That leaves calories and protein.

There are lots of different ways of getting both. Your adventurer might eat meat, fish, eggs, milk, beans, vegetables, mushrooms, fruit, nuts, seeds, honey, insects, or plenty of other things. When a variety of food options is available, people like to indulge themselves (as we moderns and our waistlines know all too well). But not all these food items travel well. Fresh vegetables and fruit will wilt and rot. Meat and fish go bad and may attract dangerous animals. Eggs won’t hold up well to being jostled around in a traveler’s knapsack. Some of these products can be dried, salted, pickled, or otherwise preserved to last longer, but processing adds to cost. Depending on growing seasons and local farming practices, these foods may not be available when your adventurer needs them.

Hence the advantages of bread and cheese. In agricultural regions, staple crops like grain are almost always available. Unprocessed grain, if kept dry and safe from vermin, can be kept for a long time. Bread kept similarly dry and safe may become unappealing and tough to chew, but will preserve its nutritional value even after many days of jostling around in a hero’s handy haversack. Cheese can be made wherever there are milk-giving animals (often reared on marginal or fallow land in agrarian communities), and will last a long time without deterioration if well taken care of. In farming societies throughout large parts of the world, bread and cheese are both readily available, inexpensive, and easy to make portable.

Bread provides a good dose of calories and protein; cheese even more. Combined, they provide the complete set of amino acids that the body needs. (It turns out that combining different protein sources is nowhere near as complicated as conventional wisdom says it is. As long as you have a variety of different foods in your diet and you’re not trying to subsist on on a single non-animal source of calories, you’re pretty much covered. Still, for an adventurer braving the wilderness without a lot of variety easily available, it doesn’t hurt to make sure you’ve got everything your body needs in one meal.)

Bread and cheese. Don’t leave on an adventure without it.

Thoughts for writers

Bread and cheese make good sense for adventurers’ traveling rations in a lot of settings, but that doesn’t mean that if you’re writing an adventure you should just fall back on bread and cheese for all your heroes’ dietary needs.

Food is a fundamental part of life. As such, it is an indispensable element in worldbuilding. People eat the things they eat for good reasons, and societies are often structured, in very basic ways, around the production and distribution of foodstuffs. The availability of a single plant can have far-reaching effects on the culture that grows it. The consequences for worldbuilding don’t end with the food itself but carry on into how it is produced and consumed. Descriptions of food in fantasy literature often feature just as local color, but food can in fact inform major parts of your worldbuilding.

Bread and cheese may seem like an overused cliché, but it has been used so much for a reason. It is an entirely sensible and realistic choice of provisions for travelers in the hinterlands of any fantasy world that broadly resembles the living conditions across most of the premodern world. Don’t be afraid to fall back on bread and cheese if it is the right choice for your story, as long as you are choosing it for a reason and not just because it’s what fantasy adventurers always eat.

Image: Bread and cheese wheel, photograph by Andrew Malone via Flickr

History for Writers is a weekly feature which looks at how history can be a fiction writer’s most useful tool. From worldbuilding to dialogue, history helps you write. Check out the introduction to History for Writers here.

Quotes: Gentlemen

Erik

Miss Marple made a contribution to the conversation. “Gentlemen,” she said with her old maid’s way of referring to the opposite sex as if it were a species of wild animal, “are frequently not so levelheaded as they seem.”

– Agatha Christie, The Body in the Library

Speaking as a member of that peculiar species, I do not object in the least to Miss Marple’s observation.

Christie, Agatha. The Body in the Library. New York, NY: Black Dog & Leventhal, 1941, p. 103.

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

Race in Antiquity: Short Answers

Erik

Over the past year, I’ve been posting on the topic of race in ancient Greek and Roman society. The subject is a much more complicated one than it may at first appear and there is a lot to say about it. Today, to bring things to a conclusion, I’d like to offer some short, simple answers to some basic questions. Like most things in history, the full answers are always more complicated, but these are a start.

Did ancient Greeks and Romans have a concept of race?

Not as we understand it today. They primarily thought of human populations as defined by language, culture, family, and legal status. While they were aware of the kinds of natural variations in skin tone, face shapes, hair types, and other physical features we typically use to categorize race today, they did not generally regard these variations as markers of identity.

Did skin color matter in Greek and Roman society?

Yes, but not as an indicator of race. Across much of the ancient Mediterranean world there was a cultural ideal (at least among the elite levels of society who have left us written evidence) that men should work outdoors, preferably as farmers or soldiers, and women should work indoors, especially at textile production. As a result, dark skin was valued in men—a sign that they had spent plenty of time working in the sun—and light skin was valued in women. Light-skinned men and dark-skinned women were often looked down on for failing to meet this social standard. Judgments about skin color stemmed from prejudices relating to gender and class, not race.

Were there any black people in ancient Greece or Rome?

Yes. Blackness is a modern identity grounded not just in physical features but in historical experience and which we cannot simply apply onto people in the past; however, in simple biological terms, people whose features we would today associate with blackness have been identified in Greek and Roman contexts from as early as the thirteenth century BCE to as as late as the fourth century CE. As genetic evidence becomes more available in archaeological research, the number of known examples will surely grow, but literary and artistic evidence is already abundant.

Were there any East Asian people in ancient Greece or Rome?

Yes. Contacts of trade and diplomacy across Eurasia are well documented and people from East and Southeast Asia have been identified in Greek and Roman contexts as far north and west as Roman London.

Were there any Indigenous American, Australian, or Oceanian people in ancient Greece or Rome?

Not as far as I know, but the development of genetic research may yet surprise us on this score. As far as the present evidence will take us, we can say that Greece and Rome were connected to networks of trade, travel, and migration that spanned Eurasia and Africa, but that appears to be their limit.

Were the black and East Asian people who lived in Greece and Rome seen as different?

It’s hard to say. Ancient authors didn’t spend much time writing about the issue, which in itself may suggest that these sorts of differences didn’t matter, but arguments from silence are hard to rely on. Since Greek and Roman culture did not have a concept of race, though, it seems unlikely that these sorts of variations mattered very much. Just as we notice peoples’ hair and eye color today but don’t generally attach much meaning to it, Greeks and Romans may well have noticed if someone had a different skin tone or facial shape, but they didn’t necessarily think it mattered very much.

Were the black and East Asian people who lived in Greece and Rome also Greeks and Romans?

Most of them probably were. The definition of who could be counted as a Greek or a Roman was flexible and depended on circumstance. In some times and places, lines of identity were tightly policed and newcomers were not welcomed in; in other times and places, the definitions were expansive and new people were easily incorporated. A lot of people who came to the Mediterranean from other parts of the world settled down and had families. Even if the original immigrants were not accepted as Greeks and Romans, there is a good chance that their children and grandchildren thought of themselves and were thought of by their neighbors as being just as Greek or Roman as anyone else.

Were ancient Greece and Rome white civilizations?

No. The majority of people who identified as Greeks and Romans in any given time and place were probably, in modern terms, white, but that does not mean that Greek and Roman culture were themselves “white” or had any necessary connection with whiteness. The category of “white” did not exist in Greek or Roman culture, nor did Greeks and Romans believe that their culture was inherently linked to their ancestry. Indeed, they were generally quite happy to point out where they had taken cultural ideas and influences from other peoples. The idea of a “white civilization” would have sounded very strange to Greek and Roman ears.

For more information and further discussion, check out other entries in this series:

History for Writers is a weekly feature which looks at how history can be a fiction writer’s most useful tool. From worldbuilding to dialogue, history helps you write. Check out the introduction to History for Writers here.

Reconstructing an Ancient Andean Structure Block by Block

Erik

The basin of Lake Titicaca, on the border between Bolivia and Peru, is one of the few places in the world where large-scale, complex societies have developed independently, out of contact with other, earlier large-scale societies. Between about 500 and 1000 CE, the people who lived at the site of Tiwanaku, on the modern-day Bolivian shore, built a number of megalithic structures using highly accurate stonecutting to fit together enormous blocks of intricately carved stone.

Remains at Pumapunku, a site associated with Tiwanaku. Photograph by Brattarb via Wikimedia

 

In the past millennium and a half, these structures have been the victims of neglect, colonial looting, and reconstruction efforts driven more by the impetus to create suitably impressive national monuments than by archaeological evidence. As a result of these pressures, the various Tiwanaku structures are now in a very poor state and it is difficult to know how they were originally put together, what they looked like, or how they were used.

Now a team of archaeologists has brought a new approach to the problem. Working with the site known as Pumapunku, or the Gate of the Puma, they used data from earlier efforts to measure and reconstruct the surviving stones at the site to create small 3D printed blocks with a high degree of precision. These small blocks could be quickly and easily reassembled to test various ways of reconstructing the site and find a reconstruction that fit the original pieces together. Theories that are impossible to test on the ground, given the enormous size of the stone blocks and the fragile condition of the site, were easy to try out with the scale model blocks.

Working with printed blocks to reconstruct Pumapunku. Photograph from Alexei Vranich “Reconstructing Ancient Architecture at Tiwanaku, Bolivia: The Potential and Promise of 3D Printing,” Heritage Science 6 (2018), accessible here under Creative Commons

 

This experiment yielded some important new results. Where earlier archaeologists had reconstructed sections of what they believed to be a single long wall, the team discovered that those sections actually fit together better to create a rectangular enclosure, similar to some other, earlier sites in the region which can now be looked to as a basis for better understanding Pumapunku.

As a historian, I’m excited by the potential this new approach offers to archaeologists for reconstructing damaged or poorly preserved structures. As someone who used to spend hours playing with Legos, I’m thrilled to see such interesting applications for plastic bricks!

Updated for proofreading errors

How It Happens is an occasional feature looking at the inner workings of various creative efforts.

Rating: Murdoch Mysteries, Season 4

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The adventures of Victorian Toronto’s most scientifically-minded detective continue in Murdoch Mysteries season 4, and we’re here to rate them.

  1. “Tattered and Torn” – 4
  2. “Kommando” – 5
  3. “Buffalo Shuffle” – 5.5
  4. “Downstairs, Upstairs” – 6.5
  5. “Monsieur Murdoch” – 4
  6. “Dead End Street” – 10
  7. “Confederate Treasure” – 7.5
  8. “Dial M for Murdoch” – 5
  9. “The Black Hand” – 5.5
  10. “Voices” – 6
  11. “Bloodlust” – 7
  12. “The Kissing Bandit” – 6
  13. “Murdoch in Wonderland” – 5.5

The average rating for this season is 6, down a little bit from last season’s 6.6, but still perfectly respectable. This season represents a good mix of the usual Murdoch fare: there’s a Victorian-flavored version of a contemporary-feeling story (“Kommando,” about soldiers experiencing frightening side effects of experimental drugs), Murdoch-ized takes on popular modern shows and movies (“Downstairs, Upstairs,” about a murder in a house full of servants, and “Dial M for Murdoch” about a telephone operator who thinks she overhears a murder), nineteenth-century international intrigue (“Confederate Treasure,” about the hunt for a missing fortune in gold from the time of the American Civil War), and Murdoch inventing modern technologies (sonar in “Confederate Treasure,” image scanning in “Monsieur Murdoch”). This season also brings us a tedious new turn in the will-they-or-won’t-they tease of Murdoch and Dr. Julia Ogden, as Dr. Ogden moves away from Toronto, moves back, and marries her new beau Dr. Darcy Garland, while Detective Murdoch wallows in uninteresting tongue-tied despair. Still, all in all, a solid season of Murdoch.

The lowest-rating episodes this season are a couple of 4s: “Tattered and Torn,” in which the discovery of multiple mutilated bodies encased in concrete leads Detective Murdoch to revisit an old rape and murder case, and “Monsieur Murdoch,” in which Murdoch investigates the disappearance of a young French woman who may not be who claimed to be at all. There is nothing particularly wrong with either of these episodes. Both are perfectly competent, but they are also both a little lacking. The pacing sags a bit, the casting is a little off, and the conclusions don’t entirely live up to the promise of the opening mysteries. Still, even these lesser efforts of Murdoch are fun to watch and worth coming back to now and then.

On the other hand, this season has one outstanding episode that gets a full 10 from us: “Dead End Street,” in which Murdoch discovers the clues to a murder in an intricate model of a neighborhood made by a woman who does not communicate in any other way. This case unfolds quietly but intricately as Murdoch faces the challenge of learning about the crime from a witness with an extraordinarily detailed recall of events, but whom he cannot question. Liisa Repo-Martell delivers a powerful guest performance as the model-building woman, conveying the deep intelligence and sensitivity of a person who relates to the world around her in a way very unlike her neighbors.

All in all, an excellent season of Murdcoh, with a lot worth coming back to.

Image: Murdoch Mysteries main cast via IMDb

In the Seen on Screen occasional feature, we discuss movies and television shows of interest.

Joy to the World (of Warcraft), Final Thoughts

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Well, we’ve come to the end of Alunaria’s positive WoW-ing challenge, and here’s how it went.

We posted 14 times with fun transmogs (Erik) and reflections on things in World of Warcraft that make us happy (Eppu). We don’t usually post very much at this time of year, so it was a change for us. It’s been fun.

Alunaria also asked for a final reflection on the experience of staying positive for two weeks, so here goes.

Did you make it through?

Yep. For the last two weeks, I’ve been playing as usual and having a good time. I’ve also stayed away from negative posts, which wasn’t hard for me since I don’t go in for that much anyway. One time I was looking through the comments on a Blizzard Watch post and things were starting to get testy, so I backed out, but that was it. I just don’t spend my time on YouTube or the forums listening to people complain, so staying away was just an ordinary day for me. While there are still things about the current expansion that I don’t like, there is a lot that I do enjoy, and that’s what I spend my time doing anyway, so there wasn’t any real change in how I played the game, either.

What proved to be the most difficult?

Honestly, not much. Like I said, I just don’t do the parts of the game I don’t like, and I don’t spend much of my time listening to people complain about parts of the game they don’t like. Keeping up regular posts at a time of year when we usually take a break required a little effort, but it was also a fun thing to do over the holidays.

Did you manage your minimum of seven posts?

We got 14 posts between the two of us (7 from Erik, 7 from Eppu), so both jointly and severally, we sure did.

Do you feel any different now?

Not really. It was fun, but it also wasn’t much of a change for me. There are things I like about the current expansion and things I don’t, and none of that has changed. Fortunately for us, we’re able to play in a way that avoids most of the things we don’t like and focuses on the things we do, but other people have different tastes and priorities, and if this expansion isn’t working for them, their feelings are as valid as ours. I suppose I’m just not the target audience for this experiment.

We hope you’ve enjoyed reading our posts as much as we’ve enjoyed writing them. Happy New Year all around! May it fill your days with joy, in and out of Azeroth!

Of Dice and Dragons is an occasional feature about games and gaming.

Joy to the World (of Warcraft) 12

Erik1 Comment

One last holiday transmog for Alunaria’s positive WoW-ing challenge!

My blood death knight decided long ago to walk away from the grim, painful history she can’t remember and dedicate herself to fighting for light and righteousness, so she’s here to bring the holiday season to a close in her Gifts of Gold mog.

Of Dice and Dragons is an occasional feature about games and gaming.