I don't need to settle for "Stranger Things"

by Doctor Science

I'm making the big push to read/view everything I need to make my Hugo Awards decisions, due no later than July 15. Right now I'm thinking about Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form. "Long Form" means more than 90 minutes, "Short Form" less than 90 minutes, which usually translates to "Movies" versus "TV episodes" -- but doesn't have to. This year's nominees are:

• Arrival (trailer)
• Deadpool (trailer)
• Ghostbusters (trailer)
• Hidden Figures (trailer)
• Rogue One (trailer)
• Stranger Things, Season One considered as a single work (trailer)

I'd already seen all but Deadpool and Stranger Things when the nominations list came out. I got Deadpool out of the public library and we watched it, but to watch Stranger Things we had to sign up for a free trial of Netflix.

We got to the end of the second episode and I realized I didn't have to watch any more to make a decision. Maybe in a different year I would have kept going to see if it would be "good enough", but this year I don't have to settle for a work I find fundamentally annoying.

Cut for spoilers:

What bugged us (the whole family agreed: no-one really wanted to see more episodes) about Stranger Things was the teenager subplot, not the parts with the adults and of course not the parts with the kids. The trouble was twofold.

First, we turned out to be 100% on Team Barb, and killing her off so early killed off a lot of our interest.

Second, we all found the subplot about Nancy's love-life tedious in the EXTREME. We felt no honest chemistry or interest in her scenes with Steve, and he came across as kind of an asshole.

Then there's Jonathan, who also seems to be interested in Nancy and might have been OK--but when he started hiding in the bushes taking pictures of her and her friends, our girls were vehemently disgusted, calling him a stalker and a creep, YUCK make it stop. I realized that they're totally right to judge him that way, but that I'm so used to Hollywood excusing (male) stalking and obsessive behavior that it hadn't even registered with me at first.

In another year, I would have kept going with Stranger Things, with a story that bored or annoyed me at least a third of the time, where I had the persistent itchy feeling that the person who immediately identified with Barb wasn't supposed to be there. And that's not even getting into the fact that (per the Wikipedia summary) in the final episode "Mike asks Eleven to a school dance called the Snow Ball and kisses her", which makes me want to flip tables. I'm used to settling for movies and TV shows like that, and it's kind of amazing to realize that I don't have to, this time.

So what *am* I going to vote for? Hugo voting is complex because I have to come up with a ranked list, not just pick my favorite. For me, there are two clear front-runners: Arrival and Hidden Figures. I will be *very* surprised if Arrival doesn't win, because it's a true science fiction movie, and we don't get many of those, still fewer ones that are any good.

I think I'm going to vote for Hidden Figures, though, with Arrival in second place: mostly because I want HF to be high up on the final tally, but also because it's the one that *really* grabbed my heart. Now, there's a school of Hugo voter thought that says HF isn't science fiction because it's not fiction, duh. But I'm part of the school that says ALL UR SPACE R BELONG 2 US: space flight is ALWAYS part of science fiction, even when it's non-fiction.

The other two nominees that I really liked are Ghostbusters and Rogue One, and there's just no question that Rogue One is science-fictionally better, so it gets to be #3. Then between Stranger Things and Deadpool, ST is more SF/fantasy-like, it has more of the crucial world-building element. So my final ballot for BDP: Long Form will be:

1. Hidden Figures
2. Arrival
3. Rogue One
4. Ghostbusters
5. Stranger Things
6. Deadpool

"Barb" mural, found in Los Angeles.

Comments

[american_nihilist]

Well, to each their own, but I liked the way ST played with the romantic subplot tropes. *spoilers* Steve actually has a character arc, and ends up changing considerably. Jonathan's stalker behavior is discovered, and does cause him problems. It doesn't end up as the classic outsider gets the girl away from douchebag, and I really appreciated it.

The main thing that bothered me about Barb was how quickly the town ignored her disappearance. That was just weird.

[formerly known as cleek]

i gotta agree with 'Hidden Things isn't SF because it's not even F'.

Arrival was good. RO was good. ST was good enough - best as an 80's nostalgia piece, but the story had some big holes in it. DP was fine but Yet Another Super Hero Movie.

i'd go:
RO
ST
Arrival
HF
DP
(didn't see GB)

[wj]

I can agree with the thesis that Hidden Things isn't SF because it isn't even fiction.

HOWEVER, given that it was nominated, it seems like the question before voters is not whether it should have been nominated. Rather it is how it compares to other nominees. If the movie (which I haven't seen) is anywhere near as good as the book (which I have read), it's a damn strong contender.

[ral]

wj, I think you will enjoy Hidden Figures (the movie); besides the excellent story there's the IBM hardware nostalgia value.

[Dave W.]

I'm going to be putting Arrival as my #1, because I think it's one of the best SF movies I've ever seen, but Hidden Figures will probably be my #2. I'm not worried about juggling my ballot to make HF finish high up in the final tally. If lots of people vote my way, HF might get eliminated early in the first round due to lack of 1st place votes, but it would bounce back strong in the balloting for second place, after the first place winner is eliminated from all the ballots, and then the calculation is re-run with the remaining challengers. (Plus, there might not be anyone officially eliminated in the first round if Arrival gets an outright majority of the ballots).

My current ballot for long form
1. Arrival
2. Hidden Figures
3. Rogue One
4. Ghostbusters
5. Hidden Things (haven't seen yet, this is my "don't care" position. Appreciate the review of the partial season, as it suggests that my ranking wouldn't change much if I did have time to see it.).
6. No Award
7. Deadpool (Strongly disliked, don't think was a worthy entry, especially when Dr. Strange was much better. Got on the ballot with slate help.)

[Dave W.]

Er, make that Stranger Things in #5. Argh.

[Marty]

Stranger Things was a little treasure in a boring year. As usual it takes a few shows to get a rhythm but the season was both satisfying and left one wanting more.

Of the rest, I haven't seen Arrival, HF is good, not SF, Deadpool would not get any vote, RO and Ghostbusters are what I usually call "fine" which is short for enjoyable but not rewatchable.

So any order is ok with me as long as Stranger Things is first. Again, I'm hoping to enjoy Arrival, it could take 1.

[Ugh]

Loved ST and RO. Will eventually watch DP and Arrival, not the others.

Mentioned this in another thread but I finally read the ancillary justice trilogy and... it was okay. Probably needed to be in a different mindset when I started reading it. Other SF read in last 18mo or so: Liked Dark Matter and The Passage trilogy a lot. The Girl With All the Gifts was awesome. Didnt like the city and the city. Fellside was ok. Didn't like Man in the High Castle (does tha count as SF?).

[JakeB]

I quite liked Arrival, and observe it's of that rare breed where the movie is actually better than the written story it's based on.

[Nous]

The Man in the High Castle is Alternate History, which is one of the sub-genres of SF (though some would argue that the SF in question for Alternate History is the somewhat more expansive genre of Speculative Fiction rather than Science Fiction proper).

My personal opinion is that The Man in the High Castle has enough parallel universe stuff going on that it would qualify as science fiction under either the strict or the looser definition, since it embraces more than one historical alternative.

[formerly known as cleek]

Man in the High Castle has great potential, but what Amazon has done with the series is... not great. it's well shot and the set design is great and the concept is fine and several of the actors are great. but the writing is soooooo slow.

[sapient]

I loved Stranger Things. Wasn't it a huge reference to Freaks and Geeks? I read, somewhere, that it was. Having never seen Freaks and Geeks, I then watched Freaks and Geeks. And watched it again. Maybe will do a third time. Don't usually do that. The second time, that is. The third, never.

[sapient]

Again, Stranger Things .... wasn't it about ET too? It was fun to think about what they were trying to do with all of that, I thought (and am not particularly good at modern cultural references).

[sapient]

Weird that we expect so much of our artists when we ask nothing from out President.

[formerly known as cleek]

Freaks and Geeks and Stand By Me and ET and X-Files and ... given Winona Ryder: Beetlejuice.

[Ugh]

Goonies too

[Ugh]

also what american_nihilist said about ST and Steve/Jonathan. On the latter, he didn't set out to stalk anyone, as I recall, it was happenstance and as noted he pays a price for it and doesn't end up with the stalkee, which would have been the hollywood M.O. ISTM.

[Ugh]

His dark materials was kind of "eh" too.

[Robert P.]

Any thoughts about the other categories? Here are my votes for first place in the categories that I have seriously examined:

Dramatic Presentation (Long Form): Arrival

Dramatic Presentation (Short Form): Black Mirror, "San Junipero"

Novel: "A Closed and Common Orbit"

Novella: (still working my way through these - no clear favorite so far)

Novellette: "Touring with the alien"

Short Story: "That game we played during the war"

Related Work: "The geek feminist revolution"