io9 is proud to present fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE.
Once a month, we feature a story from LIGHTSPEEDs current issue.
This months selection is Reconstructing The Goldenrod Conspiracy, Edina Room, Saturday 2:30-3:30 by Gabriela Santiago.
© Lightspeed Magazine
it’s possible for you to also listen to the storyhere.
We dont need another fainting incident.
The scripts were gone, not even a rough draft in Boris Tidhars old typewriter.
If you cant enjoy that, youve lost what it means to be human.
For years, this was the closest thing we had to canon for this episode.
It got referenced in novelizations and fanfic and academic texts and wikis and TV Tropes.
Of course, not everyone was happy.
Speaking of hope, in 2010, when that first censorship clip came out!
A full year, and nothing had come out from behind the Firewalled countries?
But never underestimate the power of bureaucracy.
What kept them carefully filed and labeled under their locks and keys for decades.
What does it mean, to owe a piece ofof culture, to people like that?
Lets watch that first clip.
Did you hear that?
You all heard that, right?
As the camera pans along the gray gravel beach?
I am becoming strange.
I am becoming stranger.
And thenI am becoming a stranger!
Now, what impact does this have on the story?
Pick an episode at randomhe makes a new friend within the first thirty seconds.
But anyway, I am becoming a stranger.
Its just one word, but it casts a whole new light on the episode.
That faint cast of melancholy on his face.
The way he hesitates before speaking.
The way he looks at the face of General Silver when the general isnt lookingthat yearning.
That so many of us have argued about, because it doesnt make sense, because nothing prompted it?
That begins here, with a single word that slipped our collective memory.
Lets watch the next one.
Forrest, not Ferris!
Did you hear that?
Weve been calling them the wrong name for decades.
I absolutely love this scene.
I wish we knew the actors names, weve tried, believe me .
They bring such a, a sweetness.
The way Forrest says A wizard?
with their eyes all big!
How hard Kat is trying not to laugh at them!
Both playing the roles very young, but it works.
It brings a sense of personal stakes.
How much easier is it to understand the loss of one person than tragedy on such a massive scale?
Sometimes even the bodies stacked up on the street corners become like firewood, a piece of background scenery.
In our efforts to preserve this story, how much of it have we actually created?
Anyway, this next clip is from what we would call the midpoint.
This is a short one, but fun!
I know, right!
Now, I know a lot of you are thinking, Well, its obvious why they censored that.
If it werent, wed have a lot more censored clips, especially from Mara Davis era!
Only one camera angle, so they scrapped the whole scene.
What a shame, right?
I hope some of you are going to write some fanfic tonight!
The Ministry of Feathers is just .
She did that with cardboard and gold spray paint and a box of turkey feathers.
You dont get practical effects like that these days.
Now this next clip is one that actually creates more questions than answers.
What the actual hell, right?
Who is The Lash?
Why dont we see him or hear about him in any of the other clips?
And what exactly is the Redgrave effect?
Why is Kat crying?
Why doesnt the Backwards Man say anything when Forrest makes their accusation?
Where the hell is Pameladuring all of this?
As if that werent mysterious enough, we dont even know why this clip was censored.
But theres no label, so there are a lot of theories.
Lets watch one thats a little less upsetting.
This is such a good Pamela moment!
Shes not taking any of the Backwards Mans crap.
Shell accept his apology, but she wont forget.
This is a small moment, but it makes so much more sense of her character arc going forward.
Of course the Backwards Man trusts her judgment in The Electric Devils.
Again, a stranger!
The way she holds her breath until he nods, her shoulders just barely trembling!
Get Mara Davis autograph this weekend, is what Im saying.
That was another one for Florida.
Sometimes I think about the person who must have had this job.
Theyd have to watch every episode.
A little screening later, in the privacy of their own homes.
By the time the Lagos Accords were assigned, I was more cynical.
Of course, even this vision was romanticized, or at least old-fashioned.
In some ways, for some countries behind the Firewall, things have gotten worse.
Not that things are peachy keen here, but at least we havea little escape.
Because I want to believe that she loved this show.
I want to be grateful to her without hating myself.
Would that be better?
Would we forgive her for everything else she hid away, everyone else she suppressed?
I would at least understand why.
Can wecan we get a bit of quiet here?
Okay, so yes.
At first glance, this does seem to vindicate the Tin Soldiers choice to go the Crusher route.
No, wait a minute, okay?
The way his eyebrows come together, very angry.
So Im sorry, but no, I dont think this has resolved the eternal debate.
Did he love his friend enough to save him?
Did he love the universe enough to save it?
I dont know if we can ever resolve that.
What we can resolve, though, is one tiny detail about The Lash.
You see that repeating diamond pattern in the background there?
Do you remember where we last saw it?
It takes place in The Lashs pocket dimension skipper, whatever the hell that is.
Was that scene censored too?
I think thats pretty unlikely, at this point, given that no other clips have resurfaced.
So he almost certainly was in the original broadcast episode everyone saw.
Maybe what we take from this is how little actually shocks children.
Or maybe what we take away is how random taboos areno, thats the wrong word.
My Floridian censor isnt real.
The real people are Osceola, Senator Marsha Johnson, William Cooper.
Because they fought, because they marched, because they spoke outthey made people in power afraid.
And as a side effect, we eventually got a little more of a thing we love.
And we just take a stab at live, every day.
And I hope our ancestors dont judge us too harshly if we thank them for this.
I just wonderdid it change anything?
Not enough, thats not what Iof course it couldnt beI just want
Is hope possible?
Itsall those stories that will never be told.
That arent waiting in some canister in a backroom, because they were never allowed to be filmed.
They were just lives, and now theyre gone.
I do see all those hands, and were going to get to questions in just a sec.
I guess I just want to say, I do see both sides.
But time is another thing that makes things more real, time and love, like the Velveteen Rabbit.
This one is official.
But it doesnt mean I love the others any less.
It doesnt mean that last summer they didnt offer me some blessed distraction.
All stories are important.
We have about ten minutes left for questions
The additional evidence ofyou mean that line where he says .
Thats certainly a very interesting theory about the Lash.
Look, I want to be a Crusher.
I would love to be a Crusher.
I love the Backwards Man, and I dont want to believe hed send General Silver to his death.
But I cant just forget The Isles of Calm, Delight, and Terror.
Not to mention most of Season Twenty-seven.
For me, I just have to face that the Backwards Man is more complicated than that.
And honestly, it helps.
To be able to see that complexity, and to still find hope.
It helps right now, so much.
I love that theory about the Lash!
You should write that into a fic if you havent already.
Well, it certainly wasnt my intention to present Boris Tidhar as an apolitical figure.
He was a passionate voice on many social issues, both in his creative writing and his journalism.
But these are not the themes we see him writing about.
Honestly, its a free for all.
Youre right, of courseit probably was much more complicated than the evil censors and the noble oppressed.
Oppressed people joined the ranks of the censors too.
They needed jobs, they needed to eat.
People do not stay in clear-cut categories of good and evil.
We are often so much more ready to slip the bounds of our beliefs than we want to believe.
Some of the things we saw last year, the things we didWell.
Its why we need stories.
Im sure theartificial scarcity has built it up in some peoples heads.
But who needs something to be a HolyGrail to love it?
I think thats a very valuable perspective.
Would you be interested in proposing a panel nextyear?
Okay, we have time for just one more.
No, I dont think well find any more.
I think we forgetlook,The Backwards Manis great.
Its the greatest show of all time.
It didnt saturate that deep.
The clips we got, those are the clips that were there to be found.
I really, really doubt that after ten years, were going to find any more.
Were not the Backwards Man himself, after all.
Where well find a reason for our sacrifices, our suffering.
No one answer, only so many questions: Will the food shortages be worse this summer?
Will the grocery stores be repaired in time for the second round of riots?
Yes, thats the one.
Anyway, what Im saying is, all we get when we look to the future is questions.
Certainty belongs to our pasts, and we arent the Backwards Manwe cant travel there.
I dont believe there is a great unbroken treasure waiting for us.
Of course, even as I say thatwe never stop hoping, do we?
Thats the power of story.
You cant prove a negative.
Is there something noble in that?
Had we but world enough, and time .
If youd like to chat further, Ill be in line for the hotel restaurant.
I hear a rumor theyve got some rice, and maybe even some canned peaches.
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