“There shouldn’t be a Santa Claus.” Evan stared at the data on his multiple screens as the computer reconfigured it into countless visual iterations trying to find some sense in the numbers.

“I’ve got good news for you then.” Leonard, his grad student, said as he cut a slice off his meatball with the side of his fork.

“Funny.” Evan said. “I’ve been looking over this data for ages.  Every cultural, mythical and legendary figure can be placed in the Cambellian matrix. Each has a place in the collective unconscious and serves a role.  Sometimes their role is usurped, but they always have a hole to fill and holes will always be filled by new versions of the old concept. Except this one.” He tapped the screen where the computer had generated a dancing Santa Claus infographic whose limbs were proportional to the ages at which children in different cultures ceased believing in him.

“This is your guilt over making me work Christmas Eve isn’t it?” Leonard asked.

Evan ignored the question.  He found it best to ignore most of what Leonard said. He’d been an unfortunately noisy sounding board. “The character just doesn’t make sense. He’s attached to the second most sacred Christian holiday, yet he eclipses it in popularity. He’s known in every culture. He has dozens of different names, Sinterklaas, Saint Nicholas, SIr Christmas but those that vary away from Santa Claus tend to be quickly lost.  He’s evolved in other ways, too. He used to be a name with no face, but over the years he’s been imagined and reimagined until he’s come to this chubby old man with the red suit and white beard. The elves, the reindeer, the sleigh all are additions to the original story, but unlike other characters once a new aspect gets established it doesn’t change.  It doesn’t get lost, forgotten or rewritten.  I mean, just think about the meatballs.”

“What about them?” Leonard said while chewing a chunk of said meatballs.

“Did you ever eat Swedish meatballs as a kid for Christmas? Did anybody?”

“The Swedish?”

“Here look at this.” Evan typed away and produced a Santa Claus timeline, showing where each aspect entered the lore. “Right there. Fifteen years ago, the tradition of Swedish meatballs began with a particularly vehement ad campaign and now everyone eats meatballs for Christmas.”

“Whass yo point?” Leonard said a glob of ground beef escaping his mouth at the tip of the t.

“It’s almost like almost two-thousand years ago, someone infected the human race with an idea, that has slowly germinated in the mind of every man, woman and child since.  As the infections spread the idea became more defined until finally we find ourselves with the meatball-loving, fat man we all know today, but why? What’s the point?”

“You’re not allowed to work Christmas anymore.” Leonard licked his fork.

A familiar sound they’d never heard before filled the office, like sleigh bells and hoof beats. A blinding light followed.  What appeared next could only be described in terms of a Venn diagram, in one field Santa Claus in the other human. This creature lie completely in the Santa Claus field.  It’s face was pure white fur with a red nose protruding.  The rest of its body was likewise furry, but the colors alternated from red on the belly and legs to white trim at the wrists and ankles and black on the hands and feet.  Something like a sleigh/spaceship hybrid sat behind him, filling the rows between the office cubicles.  A team of eight brown quadrupeds with antennae where their head should be completed the tableau.

Leonard dropped his fork.

The creature opened it’s great jawed mouth. A black tongue protruded with a bulb on the tip. The bulb opened and released a puff of some dark gas.  He bit down on it and it reconfigured itself to speak. “Hello, ho, ho. Earth.  We are Santarclas. We’ve come for Peace on Earth and offer goodwill toward men. We’ve waited long for this moment.”

Evan, Leonard and every other person on Earth that was having this experience found themselves speechless. The Santarclas knew only one way to show their kind intent.  Each one produced from its bag a plate of warm rounded beef.

“May we offer you a meatball?”

Terra Nova.  I was excited. Time travel, dinosaurs, future technology, Steven Spielberg.  It sounded like a great combination.  What went wrong?  I tried.  Two and a half episodes. I turned it off when the woman remembered her college beau and not her husband.  What does this have to do with anything?

Here’s the problem: Terra Nova has three strong science fiction premises.  1) The people are from the future. 2) They time travel to an alternate past. 3) There are dinosaurs! Meanwhile the story centers on one particular family that travels back in time.  The writers have built a family drama into the show, which is fine, except for one thing.  This family has NO problems.

Here are the problems the writers think the family suffers from:

• They violated population laws to have a third child.
• The oldest boy left behind his girlfriend.
• The dad was in prision for two years before escaping to the past.
• The middle girl is too smart and awkward with boys.
• The man who recruited the family is/was in love with the mother.

Here’s why those aren’t problems:

• In the first episode the leader of the colony essentially forgives the family and tells them that those laws don’t apply here.  Problem solved.
• 1) He’s a teenager who moved. Yes it’s permanent, but we only saw two minutes of the left behind girl. A reasoned assumption (especially since the mother never mentions her) is that it was just a silly teenage romance. 2) He already has a new girlfriend, as of episode one. It’s hard to feel sorry for someone with two girlfriends.
• There could be drama here, except they’ve already shown him rebond with all his kids and they established that he had a strong bond to begin with.  As far as we can tell, prison didn’t affect him at all.  No psych trauma. No claustrophobia or agrophobia. He’s fine.
• Really? First of all she’s beautiful and smart in a place where they only recruit the brightest.  Secondly, she already has an admirer who goes to all lengths to be around her and is shown to be noble and attractive.  This is not a problem.
• They have established that this marriage is strong enough to survive law violations and long prison terms. The two worked together to break into the world’s most secure project and succeeded.  This marriage is not in trouble and never could be.

There could be drama here.  The sixers are interesting (if anonymous for now, but look for the suprise traitor coming soon – I vote orphan girlfriend). Dinosaurs are awesome. One way time travel has possibilities (although how are they communicating back to the present if it’s a one way ticket?). Someone, probably an executive, thinks that a large audience can’t handle these concepts and so has grafted a mild (and I mean Donna Reed mild) sitcom on top of it.

So … instead of focusing on the conflicts that might be interesting and new, they focus on the family problems that are underdeveloped and cliche.  Even worse, in good Hollywood style, they tie their A plot into the character development and we get the scene (where I stopped watching) where the wife only remembers the college boyfriend.  There’s a chance that the wife gets stuck in that place abandons the family and starts a new life, shattering the world view of her husband and children, thus creating, you know, conflict. Somehow, though, I think it probably all worked out okay.

Squandered Potential

The story centers around a central flip.  Religious extremism and what it causes people to do has been a central issue of the last decade. This causes many to place the blame for the acts on the beliefs behind them. In the story I posit someone taking a scientific principle to the extreme, mangling it and misinterpreting it and committing a horrific act. I enjoy it for its simplicity.

Interestingly, when some who know me read this story, they became quite concerned.  The distance between teller and tale that is evident and even frustrating to the author is often invisible to the audience. After some brief reassurances that I was fine and that no cats had been harmed in the creation of the story, life moved on. Still, I wonder sometimes if they haven’t put me on a watch for any unusual behaviors.

P.S.  The word, never spoken, in the story is … ain’t.