Quodlibets and Sockdolagers
Hailing Frequencies #6, 4.28.24
Hail and well-met, fellow travelers.
It’s a quiet Sunday evening here in Los Angeles, and quietude tends to put me in a contemplative state of mind. My baby is asleep, my cat is dozing on my lap, and crickets are chirping softly in the oak tree outside. It’s time to write a newsletter!
YESTERDAY’S TOMORROW TODAY
My good friends of the Yesterday’s Tomorrow Today comedy podcast invited me on their show to discuss my favorite guilty pleasure 1999 science fiction movie, Bicentennial Man. Arguably Asimov’s most faithful adaptation, I find the film remains as moving and profound in its explorations of the human condition as it is unapologetically weird in places. Exactly my type of film, if I’m being honest!
If you’re unfamiliar with their podcast, it features in-depth and humorous conversations discussing movies that show a future that have since passed us by — for instance, the ‘future’ of 2015 in Back To the Future Part II, or the dystopian Year 2000 seen in Escape from LA.
You can watch the interview on YouTube below, or listen in podcast form everywhere!
A WEEK IN REVIEW
Something that often happens in screenwriting (and in life) is that timelines shift and suddenly things are needed yesterday.
Such a thing happened with PROJECT FIRMAMENT, where a pitch bible was required ASAP for some meetings that were moved up. Luckily, a bible already existed — but the original version was created for the IP holders and was extremely dense with existing lore (to demonstrate to them how we were adapting it). It had to be slimmed down and conformed to our pilot treatment to be considered readable by… well, normal humans. Most of my week was spent jumping between that and the treatment for the pilot — but both are shaping up nicely.
A LITTLE Q&A
Starfleet Sohail asks,
What minor aspect in the world of Star Trek as far as you know it, do you obsess about the most?
I daresay my obsessions with Star Trek tend to leak into the episodes of the show I write or oversee— and some may prove to be spoilers! That said, I remember growing up that I was quite fascinated by the tiny aspects of continuity that Trek managed to sneak into what was otherwise pressed to be an episodic show. Picard playing his Ressikan flute several episodes (or seasons!) later after an alien probe gave him memories of a lifetime he never lived. The ongoing running gags of O’Brien injuring himself in a holographic kayak adventure he’d just gotten back from. Tantalizing glimpses of Parisses Squares that we never actually get to see played.
I also love multiple series having such reverence for the Starfleet Academy groundskeeper, Boothby, and returning to him time and again. I’m a Boothby stan.
ONE COOL THING
I have a habit of collecting interesting words wherever I find them, like shiny baubles hoarded in a lexicographical dragon’s den. For example, some good ones I’ve come across this month are sockdolager, psychopomp, and winklepicker, to name a few.
Most recently, I learned the word quodlibet. The definition is as follows:
(archaic) A topic or exorcise in philosophical or theological discussion.
(literary) A lighthearted medley of well-known tunes.
The former definition is what excited me most. Of course, you can always launch into a topic of philosophical debate without having the name for it. But how exciting it would be to declare to a group of mixed company, “Everyone! It’s high time we unveil the quodlibet!” I’d imagine a theodicy would count as a quodlibet. So would haecceity, I would think.
If you get tired of philosophical discussions, you could just launch into a jukebox musical like Mamma Mia! and that technically would count as a quodlibet, too, I suppose.
Have a great weekend,
Aaron J. Waltke
Glendale, CA
4.28.24