The Talat Five remake (episode one)

So, I finally managed to watch the first few episodes. I want to discuss my thoughts on the remake, and I don't have anyone at hand, you know? First, I know that it's a children's show, okay? But I watched the original, and it's well-regarded, really, lots of adults like it - Dalatrass Vertal is a fan. Plus, I've seen the archives, you discussed everything from Pretty Dalatrass Girl to My Little Moxie here, so, er, no mocking.

Honestly, it's very good. Or the first one was. So far, I think this one's doing okay.

Episode One, Part One

The opening was good, it put me in a cautiously optimistic mood about the whole thing. I was worried they'd botch it right away or something, but this looked promising. There's all this nice animation of Talat, and then (interestingly I guess?) we open on the villain. The main villain, anyway. That's Remness. He's a corrupt politician who's running the day-to-day interests of his clan because his mother's ill and his sister has gone missing (that will be important in later seasons, assuming they're keeping his original arc, which I guess they are).



Whoever it is doing the voice of Remness (it's Octamisin Vrendal, my guide says, but I've never heard of him), he does a good job. I remember liking the old voice, but I thought Octamisin had a great take on the character. His Remness sounds menacing, but not cartoonishly so, and you get a real sense of richness to the character, like you want to know more about him? I don't know if the children will grasp all the nuances, but we're a curious people, and we need that intellectual hook. I just hope nostalgic appreciation hasn't blinded the writers to the needs of the target audience. Other target audience. You know what I mean. The children.

So, we have Remness leading some secret board meeting or something - I don't know who the other two are, but I'm pretty sure the guy with the split horn is Luren - and we learn that he's under pressure because of some impending conference on the Citadel, and if his clan isn't invited somehow it will delay his plans.

Anyway, after that five-minute intro, we meet the main character. That's Jiuk. Sur'Kesh Dalata Feniss-Oxsess Petra Sallek Jiuk, which is not something many non-salarian viewers will remember or care about.



We're not going to meet the other main characters until the second and third episodes (I have the season guide, I know how this works out), but I guess they wanted us to get a sense of the lead character first. I remember the original Jiuk being a bit more trusting than this one, but I guess it's a sign of the times. Perhaps because she's the main character or perhaps because I wasn't in the right demographic, but I always preferred the other four - don't get me wrong, she wasn't boring or anything, but I preferred the rest of the team. I guess all the characters are supposed to represent different types of salarian socialization, you know, include/appeal to everyone? I'll expand on that when I get to the other episodes. Jiuk is the stand-in for the girls who are going to grow up to be leaders. She's about - or was about, in the old one - the responsibility of leadership, the need for discipline and ruthlessness mixed with compassion, the, er, the isolation and the strain of it all. Not really my thing. I haven't got many close salarian friends - okay, none - and so I don't know how this Jiuk measures up, but I like her well enough. She's engaging, and you can tell that while she tries to be cynical she just can't, that it's not in her nature. But she's pretty damaged underneath that smile.

She'll represent the first precept, obviously. The first precept - okay, it sort of translates as "self-awareness", but there's an element of "truth" or "righteous identification" in there, the idea that knowledge is useful or meaningful only so far as the vessel in which it's stored is able to value the truth of the self? Am I explaining this okay? I'm not a philosopher, and it's harder for non-salarians to pick up because you need it explained rather than just understanding it...

I guess I'll give the basics now, so it's all here.

First precept: Salar. Self-awareness. Understanding and acceptance of self, of strengths and limits, allowing for ever purer self-concepts that will empower one with the true capacity to know.

Second precept: Meshtuk. It's a sort of passion that finds the balance between building on what you have and yearning for more, a sort of unity between ambitious discovery and stability/preservation. Think of the scientific method or the social balance between the old and the new, you know?

Third precept: Kuvus. It's a type of restraint, or the balance between passivity/acceptance and action. Understanding when to let things unfold as they will, and when to act. When to let go, when to grasp. Tactics, I guess turians would call it?

Fourth precept: Difush. A sort of acceptance/inquisitiveness that is incorporated into the character, so that one naturally sees opportunity and exploits it, without fear. This one's sort of a bit controversial with aliens especially, I think, given that it led to things like rachni wars, but the original arc exploring it was the best part of the show.

Fifth precept: Ekeleks. Endurance/memory/permanence. Holding on to what you've gathered, not letting it go to waste. Exerting yourself but in service to something that isn't your own ego.

There's some speculation that the remake is going to introduce a sixth precept, which has no basis in the underlying mythology but then, you know, Reapers, Prothean revelations, general chaos, etc, etc.

So, anyway, the new backstory is a mix of the old and some post-Reaper War stuff. She's living in a run-down area of Feniss Oxsess when it all begins.

Am I babbling here?

Oh, convenient. I have next to no time to watch holo shows right now, good to have a bit of a recap of this show, maybe I'll catch it on reruns or per view. This stuff reminds me of my childhood, good material to actually relax.

But what could a sixth precept be? The season guide is not telling anything, isn't it, so it's just an extranet rumour?

Probably. I mean, the mythology the show was built on is quite well established, but with all the upheaval we've all been through, I guess people think they can't avoid the truth that, well, what we thought we knew about what we think we know and don't know isn't enough and now we know we don't know what we knew as well as we know we should?

Or... something.

I'll continue this soon. Nice to know someone is interested...

Alright, I'm going to be stuck in a lot of lines over the next couple weeks, so I downloaded this on a lark...never watched the original.

...Yeah, is the villain a common salarian stock type? I'm really curious now. 'Cause I had to admit, I burst out laughing: Oh noes a dude with political power! Truly the natural order must be restored, posthaste! Bring out the noble dalatrass to whose rule no one could object!

(This really is just how my mind works. I'm not trying to be an overly political prat. It's just THERE. The thing is, I actually enjoyed the show. The animation is high quality and Jiuk is interesting.)

You know, obviously I can only really speak of the original at the moment, and what you're alluding to has become more of an issue than it was, but I do understand. I mean, you're probably right, in that it's "just there", and I - well I know you, er, you latch onto these things, that you don't try to be political, you just... are.

Ahem.

I mean, your point is probably a valid one, that's where the trope originates, though I'd argue that Remness was never just a trope. Salarian media is a bit leery of male-led structures, not because the leader is male as such, but because the imprinting is off. Okay, salarians do imprint on those we know in youth across the board, but nothing compares to the attachment to the mother, right? We're all centred on this one person, shrell take her. Clan instability isn't a good thing, not when you have minds like ours. It would all fall apart. I mean, the population is so skewed towards males that males hold a lot of influential positions by default, but, yes, there's the mothers behind them, the ultimate authority. Still, I don't think the character (the old character, anyway, and so far this interpretation of him doesn't seem too different) is intended to make an argument or a point in any way, but I guess you could read that into him.

I'm glad you seem to be enjoying it. I wonder if this remake will feature drell at any point. I mean, the old one didn't, but this one has a krogan as an ally, so who knows?

There are many shows I love even when the politics annoy me. I am like, a huge fan of Teyths Reeve.


But the Krogan/Salarian relationship is super important, and people want to spin it as being functional. Of course there be a Krogan ally. I think the odds are against us showing up-we're a minority population in a minor power, which is cool.

Well, it's better than some of the human crap I've seen...

The animation is *really* good, I must say- not many shows seem to get water right, and if they do, it's commonly at the cost of other things in the show.

I'm intrigued - I mentioned this to Eafina and she told me a little about the original (much of it about the fourth precept, which I can understand how it could be controversial, but I find really appealing, so I'm interested in its presentation this time round). The animation's really quite lovely too, I like how on top of the lifelike motion and attention to detail there's that watercolour quality to it, like a painting come to life - not obviously, but if you look for it. I have to admit one of the things that's kept me from enjoying more animation than I have in the past couple of decades has been the rise of realism as the be-all and end-all of the medium. Admittedly things become very subjective when you go stylised (I can't pretend I liked what Edri Mur did with Sequence Overload, no matter how good the underlying writing may have been) but you're never going to please everyone - I'd rather see a plurality of styles, taking advantage of the potential of animation as artistic visual expression, than just trying to echo live action as close as they can.

Besides, the last animation I saw any amount of was Space Protectors (no, I will not spell it 'properly'), and I need to wash that taste out of my mouth.

So, we have a scene or two of Jiuk on the streets, sleeping in homeless shelters, interacting with kindly and not-so kindly volunteers. All just character stuff, to make her endearing and interesting. I think it mostly succeeds, though whether it all translates for non-salarians I don't know. Some of it's a bit goofy - I mean, it's a kids show, right? - but not, you know, intolerably so.

One thing that's different this time is that in the original, we didn't learn why she was alone and clanless until late in the season - I suppose they got it out of the way with this time 'round because that never really led anywhere in the original; there was no real reason to keep it hidden in the end. So, her clan were all killed in what's essentially a terrorist attack. Yeah. This was written pre-Entish, of course, but, really, there's not that much in common, despite what some people are saying. It was a targeted purge of her clan, everyone knows it, but no-one really knows who's responsible. So, she was left as one of the only survivors, and she's slunk off onto the streets. Why? Well, the implication is that her clan were largely criminal, almost "Lystheni-lite", if not quite so obvious about their feelings, and that while blowing up their estate was far beyond the pail, not too many people are mourning them.

In the original, I think being homeless and clanless was mostly just a convenient means to have Jiuk start off alone, which only became an important part of the character later on, but here they're playing it up from the start. She's the {idiom untranslatable} of the family, the jewel among the mud, I guess, and she survived, which might be a reward from {translator error: do you mean "fate"?} and all that, but it leaves her confused. Unsure if she deserves to join her family or be free of them, so she's sort of chosen something in-between. She's a little fatalistically self-loathing behind her outward cheer. I think most of this comes across okay. I mean, obviously, it isn't the most nuanced presentation, because this is for the young, but it's good stuff. They've put some effort into it.

Anyway, soon we have the important scene that introduces the magical element to the story. Why its these children in particular that end up sensitive to magic wasn't that clear in the old one, which was a little odd given the depth to the backstory. In the original, Her Knowingness mentioned several times that there's a reasonable number who have the potential but only a handful in which it manifests. Obviously, each of the children corresponds to, er, to an exploration of one of the precepts, which helps the viewing children understand their complexities, but.. oh, I'll say more next time, I need to meet Farlon about something. I'll think about how to explain this.

Er, thanks for reading.

Yeah, I am a lot more into this now.

I'm interested how they play her family-because it could be a criticism of the system-or it could be...argh, the translator hates me today: The Fallacy of the Good Kings? The idea that what's wrong with a monarchy is that the King is not Good, when the problem is that it's a monarchy.