O Captain: Patrick Stewart Dead at 86

He's been looking more and more frail for years.

Stewart died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles following "a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia," longtime spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak announced.

"He has been held in the warm embrace of family and friends, surrounded by live music, prayer, tears, laughter and the kind of profound emotion that only he could inspire after a lifetime of devotion to us all," Bush Novak wrote. "We will forever cherish the peaceful ease and reflection on his face, an enduring reminder of his invincible grace."

Please feel free to use this thread to talk about off-topic stuff, like movies or shows or books you'd recommend. I had not planned a mid-day entertainment thread, so I have not much to add here. I wasn't a fan of Star Trek: TNG or Stewart for that matter, but I know that many people were.

As everyone always points out, he was one of the first knights to declare for Arthur in Excalibur. Which, as everyone also always says, was filled with no-name actors who would soon become big names: Gabriel Byrne and Liam Neeson, for example. Plus Helen Mirren and the great Nicole Williamson, who had previously dated and absolutely loathed each other and had to be cajoled into working together. But I think they were already kinda well-known, and they didn't become big stars like Byrne and Neeson.

So here's what I'm watching: Elementary, again, and Person of Interest, this time, for the third time.

Both shows are good but Person of Interest continually surprises me with how many genuinely good moments it has and how much smart science fiction stuff. It was commenters who recommended it to me, ten or twelve years ago. I think maybe Garrett said it was "Daredevil in a business suit," which is semi-accurate, but actually downplays how good it is.

If you don't know the premise: An ultra-reclusive computer genius with the fake name "Harold Finch" created an artificial super-intelligence after 9/11 to scan all of the trillions of megabytes of data being hoovered up to find the actual terrorists and their plots. But the ASI, called "The Machine," was too good at its job and didn't just find terror plots, but any kind of premeditated crime like kidnapping and murder. It began alerting the government to these threats, but the government wanted to limit what The Machine did, largely because the entire scheme was unconstitutional and illegal and they didn't want to have to explain how they're suddenly showing up at murder scenes before the murder is committed. They can tell some lies to explain how they foil the occasional terrorist attack, but they don't want to like 1,500 times a year about the murders they thwart.

So they declare all non-terrorism-related threats "irrelevant" and ignore them.

But Harold Finch is haunted by these preventable murders that he could stop but doesn't. So he uses the backdoor he built into the computer to tell it to send him the social security numbers, and only the social security numbers, of people The Machine predicts are either going to be the victim of serious violence, or the perpetrator.

And because he's a pencil-necked geek, he recruits a special forces ex-terrorist-hunter with the pseudonym "John Reese" to be the strongman of the team and actually deal with the threats.

So the premise is: This is a murder mystery show, but we enter the murder mystery before murder happens, and if we can figure out who is being threatened and by whom, we won't just solve the murder, we'll prevent the murder.

It's a great premise.

Many shows would just take this premise and run with it, ignoring the background story of how this is even possible.

But Person of Interest takes it to the next level and also features stories about The Machine itself, and specifically, dangerous foreign nations who have figured out that America now has an ASI and want to seize it for themselves.

Most episodes are about stopping murders and kidnappings, but a fair number are about the fight to keep The Machine secret and safe from the very dangerous people who would like to hijack it.

And the sci-fi and legal framework is solid. For example, the reason the government says it's legal to scan everyone's emails and bank statements is that it's just a computer looking, and it doesn't count as a "search" until a human sees the information. (That's why Finch's machine only supplies social security numbers -- the humans have to do the real digging themselves.)

The point is: this isn't just something they made up for the show. This is the real-world government legal position on the use of computers and artificial intelligence to search and analyze records.

The show doesn't treat you like a moron (mostly). For example, we'll see a POV shot from Reese, where he looks down at a man's pantleg and there's a slight bulge at his ankle. He doesn't say "ankle gun" to the audience. The show relies on you having seen the bulge yourself, so you know why Reese reaches for the man's ankle after punching him in the gut.

And it has a lot of espionage stuff too. It's basically a mix of your four favorite genres: Mystery/detective, spy action-adventure, science-fiction, and street-level superhero.

Highly recommended, including for a rewatch, if you haven't seen it again. It holds up.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:30 PM

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