And Do the Other Things

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Cold War, communism, fake news, John F. Kennedy, Josip Broz Tito, space race, Yugoslavia

The 2016 film Houston, We Have a Problem! was released as an English/Slovene language film, premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival. It received some attention at various film festivals at which it played and was nominated as Slovenia’s entry for the Academy Awards Best Foreign Film category. However, it received far more attention for its premise.

The film purports to be an American-made documentary made based upon newly-declassified documents. Those documents show a previously-unknown historical basis for the U.S. manned space program; that it actually was intertwined with Yugoslavian-developed space technology.

As a foreign made film, Houston is bound to appeal to a much smaller audience right of the bat. Also, despite the attention it has received, seems to be difficult to get a hold of. I watched it on Netflix* streaming, but don’t see it available in the other usual places. Amazon doesn’t seem to have it for sale, either as a DVD or as a download, and Netflix has streaming only, no DVD. Netflix must have pushed it on me at some point. I’ve told you all before how I try to avoid reading the synopses of a movie before watching it. In this case, I kind of misread the blurb and thought it was going to be a “the moon landings were faked” film. Once I watched it, I realize the premise is both a lot more interesting, and a lot more complex.

If you want to watch the movie before I discuss it, do so now. This isn’t one of those films where there is a “big reveal” somewhere towards the end. Nevertheless, I believe that most films are meant to be presented in a certain way and are therefore enjoyed best coming into them cold. Fair warning.

So the first half the film develops a premise that the Yugoslavian came into possession of engineer Herman Potočnik‘s advanced rocketry work in the aftermath of the Second World War. The engineering has designed, on paper, a launch vehicle capable of sending humans to the moon. Using this work,  they jump start a space program which, initially, is competitive with the superpowers, getting so far as to launching a pig on a sub-orbital trajectory. At some point, Tito realizes that an expensive space program is a liability, particularly to a nation whose socialist policies are failing to provide for the basic needs. At the same time, the U.S. program is experiencing difficulties in their manned space programs and so Tito markets the Yugoslavian efforts to the Americans.

What’s interesting here is that the film is done absolutely straight. Comparisons are made with This Is Spinal Tap, but while that grandfather of all mockumentaries was made for obvious comedic effect, this one gives only very subtle hints that it is being less than truthful. The packaging material (if you can call it that for a streaming film) heavily emphasizes that the movie is “fake.” Perhaps such warnings are felt to be necessary given how believable the film might be to the unforewarned. The style is exactly what you would expect in a true documentary on the subject. There are current interviews with the participants mixed with archival footage mixed with the documentary crew visiting the key locations in the narrative.

The film proposes that the U.S. and Yugoslavia came to an agreement to transfer the entirety of the Yugoslavia space program to America for a substantial financial sum ($2.5 billion). It then explains that the April 8th, 1961 visit of Tito to Morocco was actually a coverup for the physical transfer of the Yugoslavian space assets to America. In Yugoslavia, the result is that the country succeeds above all the other countries in the Soviet orbit using this injection of Western cash. Meanwhile n the U.S., NASA engineers find out that the Yugoslavian technology is not a solution and, in fact, it has put them even further behind the Russians because now they have dumped billions of the space budget into propping up Tito.

The second half of the film characterizes the entire history of Yugoslavia, from 1961 through to the breakup of the country thirty-one-years later, in light of the ongoing conflict between the President(s) of the United States and Tito to either make the space technology work, or return the money. Again, there is heavy use of period footage shown in a way that clearly (?) supports the proposition. The narrative includes, amusingly, the sale of the failed Yugo automobiles in the U.S. and, ultimately, that the CIA engineered the disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1992 so as to make it easier to recoup the payments made for the space technology.

So the film isn’t really about the space program, U.S., Yugoslavian, or otherwise. In some ways it is about Cold War Yugoslavia, but even that is somewhat incidental. I see several themes here that are what this movie is really about.

First of all, it can be seen as a commentary on “fake news.” As the small print at the end of the credits finally says, some parts of the movie are real and some are utterly false. Watching the movie, could you spot the difference? The only way to discern between the two is to know, a priori, the true history for yourself. An early You Tube teaser for the film apparently resulted in leaving more than half of viewers convinced that, indeed, Yugoslavia had a space program and sold it to the United States.

On top of that, there is another level, presented by philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who opens the film and comments frequently throughout. He is portrayed on a set nearly identical to the one in The Matrix, where Morpheus instructs Neo as to the true nature of the world which he thought was real. Throughout, Žižek questions the nature of reality, deception, and conspiracy theories. One amusing scene has him reacting to his own involvement in the Yugoslavian space story, where he is portrayed as being on the payroll of the CIA.

At least one reviewer also suggested the film is a stab at jugonostalgija (Yugo-nostalgia), the sentiment that life was better under Tito as well as perhaps a hope that someone like him might restore the region to better times. Yugoslavia was a gateway between East and West during much of the Cold War. Tito was allowed some political independence, with which he was occasionally critical of Russian policy. Yugoslavia was allowed more economic interaction with Western Europe which, in part, accounted for a greater level of prosperity compared with the Soviet Republics. Being open, it also served as a showcase for the success of Socialism and thus it was in Russia’s interest for it to have a higher standard of living than the rest of the communist world. As the movie suggests, at least part of that prosperity resulted from playing both sides of Cold War game – itself one of the jugonostalgija legacies of Tito as a shrewd statesman and negotiator.

All-in-all, this is an excellent piece of filmmaking. The same article linked above suggested that the film might pass over the heads of even the more intelligent of viewers, both in the former Yugoslavia and in the United States. That may be true, but the filmmakers have cut a gem for those that can appreciate it.

*Since this post is largely appreciative of Netflix for providing access to a work that might otherwise be unavailable, I’ll mitigate that with a complaint. Netflix has changed the way they display search results. I don’t know how new the change was, but this movie made it obvious. Searching for a movie in the DVD panel will not turn up any results that are streaming only. Likewise, searching in the streaming panel will not turn up the results for available DVDs. When looking for something you want to watch, therefore, it is necessary to search both places.

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I End Up in the Same Old Place

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Cinderella, Civilization IV, Cold War, Max Riga, The Cold War Era, Twilight Struggle

Fifteen years on, the Cold War looked very different that it did at its start. Initially, while the United States assumed the Soviets had the largest and most powerful army on the planet, the Russians themselves knew that wasn’t so. The Kremlin may well have had a desire to project power globally, but they lacked the resources to do so. Recovery from the Second World War was a huge task, and Stalin knew he did not want to take on the West.

By the early 1960s, the Soviet Union seemed to be much more aggressive internationally, even if it was more bluster than action. Khrushchev emphasized his (largely illusionary) arsenal of ICBM missiles in combination with their early “space race” advances in an effort to force the United States into a negotiation position. For the public, it was seen as a threat of Russian superiority in an eminent World War III requiring rapid advancement in weapons capabilities. The shooting down of Gary Power’s U2 and then the confrontations in Berlin indicated a willingness of the USSR to resort to military force. In May of 1960, the Soviet Union established relations with the communist government in Cuba. The governments of China and Cuba also extended their reach into promoting communist revolution across the globe, leaving the United States with what appeared to be an ever-growing enemy.

Within this context, I am revisiting my look at the Cold War from a strategic level. Before, I looked at the board game Twilight Struggle. This time, I want to focus on computer treatments of the period and I’ll start with the scenarios available for Civilization IV.

Civilization, at its most basic, takes you from the founding of civilization, through today, and beyond. As such, it is bound to pass through the Atomic Era and the post-World War II technologies. Naturally, it is neither particularly suited as a representation of that time nor is it in any way a given that you’ll end up with a binary confrontation between superpowers when that time comes. As the Civilization franchise has evolved, however, the ability to create scenarios with their own special units and technology trees adds the ability to focus on specific eras, perhaps bringing some unique insights to the game as a historical tool.

The Mexican drug lords have been causing chaos in Texas. Time to send in the troops to bring order to the southern border.

Within Civilization IV, mod-maker MaxRiga put considerable effort into a series of modern mods, specifically targeting on 1901, 1941, 1961, and 2001. There are two scenarios created for the 1961 start, differing in the number of starting civilizations. I decided to start slow and went with the lower number of opponents and an easier setting. I also played as the United States, who starts the game pretty much on top of the world.

I also tried to, at least as far as is possible, funnel my play into the terms of history and interpret what I’m seeing likewise. Of course, this is Civilization. So divisions of Mexicans coming up over the Rio Grande was met with an occupation of both Mexico and Venezuela. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was seizing smaller, independent African countries.

Civilization isn’t a political and economic simulator, even in so much as it has any realism. So eventually the Cold War is bound to become a hot one, otherwise its going to be a long, boring couple of decades of clicking “End Turn.” In my first game, it was some kind of Suez Crisis type indecent that pushed the world over the brink. Egypt and NATO got into a shooting war. While the United States was able to distance herself from that one, the it was the start of the domino effect. By 1968, I was sucked into a Vietnam-style war in Argentina. Well, not quite. I smoked ’em in about a year and a half.

High tensions in the Cold War. NATO and the Warsaw Pact glare at each other across the Iron Curtain.

While asymmetric wars with third-world countries abound, a true Cold War situation prevails in Europe. (I think) it is a side-effect of Civilization mechanics, rather than anything too particular about the scenario or the mod. The Soviets have declared war on NATO. However, the border between the two remains rather calm. What I think is happening is, on the outbreak of war, I moved troops into Western Europe, augmenting what the scenario already stationed there. Because the NATO border cities are garrisoned with U.S. troops, it appears the Ruskies can’t make a move without declaring war on the United States. Like the real 1968, proxy wars are one thing, but the Kremlin doesn’t really want full-on war with the Americans.

So each turn has become a tense affair. Is this the turn that the USSR will hit me with a surprise attack? Will they find a hole in the NATO armor, forcing me to intervene? Am I going to regret  diverting all those resources to South America? For a fairly one-dimensional simulation, it actually serves up an interesting parallel of the Cold War. Of course, it can’t hurt that I’m deliberately interpreting everything that happens in that light.

Of course, when it comes down to it, it is still Civilization. When the wars do come about, it is a matter of stacking units in adjacent squares and trying to knock each other down. Rinse and repeat for each city until you get tired of warring. Again, you can try to stretch it into a plausible scenario. For example, I had forgotten how resistant cities were to permanent occupation in Civilization IV due to culture. When the war (above) eventually turned hot, I was able to grab Cuba, Poland, Kiev, Leningrad (NATO took this one), and Moscow before I called it a day. I also took Rostov, which oddly enough is located where Sevastopol should be. While holding on to Cuba was doable, Kiev and Moscow both had to be reverted to the Russians. Poland, now liberated, joined with NATO. Rostov (not Rostov) turned Islamic and joined the Caliphate. All-in-all a better (from the standpoint of the story) outcome than I would have hoped for.

The mod obviously was a lot of effort. There are some oddities, many caused by the Civilization IV palette itself, but others integral to the scenario/mod design. The tech tree gets a little unwieldy, with the U.S. getting a bunch of WWI era units (and German ones at that) when resources get a little thin. The deeper, Cold-War-themed tech tree adds some nice chrome, but it sometimes seems a bit unwieldy.  Particularly if you want to stick to the historical theme. I would like to engage in the Space Race starting in the 1960s, but the mechanics seem to make that prohibitive.

An army-group strength cohort of Navy Seals was representing something for the scenario design, but I’m not sure what. My Apache gunship can really slaughter me some commies in 1968-9, having been an initial placement in the scenario. The new units’ graphics can vary from a pretty nice add to the South Park-y “Modern Infantry.”

The biggest gap, to me, is the absence of nuclear weapons. An inverse missile gap, if you will. Nuclear bombs and their delivery systems would seem to me to be a defining feature for a Cold War game. The presence of a nuclear deterrent also should have kept me from (as I did) rolling through Western Russia in 1969 and completely eliminating the Red Chinese in 1975. One well placed nuke could completely neutralize my forces, but nobody has any nukes. I poured some research into the Manhattan Project and had, at least theoretically, some atomic capability by 1970, but nobody else did, and throughout the 1970s it does not appear that anyone has built a functioning bomb. A Cold War without an Arms Race? Why bother?

Now, Civilization IV is addictive as it ever was. So there is that. Think of it not as a Cold War game, using Civilization as the programming medium. Think of it as a Civilization game with some Cold War chrome. At the latter it is successful.

I’ve not delved too deeply into Civilization V and the modding capabilities, and I haven’t even taken a first glance at Civilization VI (V is hard enough on my graphics card). Civilization IV, with the expansions in place, seem to be the golden age for mods and user-made scenarios. If support for that really has been weakened in the new versions, it is a shame.

Can’t Take Me Home

Following a number of mods, the maker of the Cold War scenario formed his own company and set out to make a Cold War game from the ground up.

I first looked into this game a couple of years ago, when I first started writing about wargames. I was noticing the absence of strategic level Cold War games but came across his website through the above Civilization mods. At the time, the game The Cold War Era was only available as a download from the website. The download options included both a pay version and a demo.

The demo itself was well conceived. In single-player mode, the game is limited to 10 years of play (1950-1959). When playing multiplayer, the most permissive of the two installations prevails. In other words, if you download the “limited” version, but want to play against someone who has the full, paid-for version, you can play the entire game, unrestricted, in multiplayer.

The game itself gets less praise from me.

As I’ve said before, it pains me to be too harsh. This is not a product from some big game company, but from a fellow player and enthusiast who is trying to create games for which he sees a need. In this case, however, he has made a product which he is selling, and so while it may not be fair to compare it to triple-A titles, it is reasonable to compare to other products in the same price range.

The game is a continuous time, grand strategy treatment of the period from 1950 through to (I think) 2000. While it can be paused (and you can still do everything while paused) in single-player mode, when playing multiplayer there is no pausing. At least in the version I have, there is also no saving. So if you are going to play, you had better be prepared to play straight through.

Two months before the demo-version times out, and I am about to lose. I don’t always know why I lose, I just know that I always do. This was the only game I’ve played that featured armed revolution in West Germany.

Graphics are simple but functional. The user-interface, however, feels less than functional.

The game is a simple one. The world is divided into countries/regions, each of which are either pro-U.S., pro-Soviet, or neutral. Every one of these countries has three areas that you can influence. One is called Influence, and represents the relative domination of the superpowers within the internal politics of that nation. The second is the military, which has the government forces versus insurgent forces. The third is espionage. Having espionage within  a nation allows two other options to either enhance or undermine the stability of that country. Each month, you are able to add influence to any nation on earth in one of these three areas (subject to a couple of caveats), up to the ability of your budget to support it. And that is the entire game. Click, click, click, and then wait for the clock to tick forward (or tick, tick, tick in the case of the actions that take 3 months).

There is more to it. Some of it obvious and some of it under-the-hood. The user manual is, well, let’s just call it a work in progress. For example, it describes the conditions in which “revolution” can be launched, but says nothing about what happens from there. From play, it is clear that an armed revolution prevails when it is unopposed by military forces from the other side. I think. But nothing is said about how military forces are eliminated. One assumes there is some additional random function which uses the relative strengths of the military, but who really can tell?

The user-interface feels patched on to the top of this “real-time spreadsheet” model, as opposed to being designed to present the best gaming experience. It’s not the worst design I’ve seen, but it means the game becomes less one of strategy than a challenge to see if you can keep track of all the moving parts within an interface that doesn’t necessarily highlight them. Winning likely involves being able to click away on a country that your opponent isn’t paying any attention to. Of course, playing single-player can eliminate the frantic feel of the game – I have been playing by pausing at every month to review all of the “hot spots” one-by-one.

Now the biggest caveat in all of this is that I am playing the demo version. The demo version is restricted to a 10-year period up until 1960, but it also seems set up to be nearly unwinnable. Unlike what I think is the normal scenario start, where the two superpower budgets are equal, the demo starts with the player having vastly inferior monetary resources. Add to that, it might be impossible to “win” given only 10 years in which to collect whatever points contribute to that win (again, not explained in the manual). It seems all kind of pointless.

And yet, there is some actual strategy in it. The basic move seems to be to identify neutral countries where you can slowly build support and stoke opposition to that neutral government, and thus be able to flip the government to your side. But the revolution option is a kind of a wild card in this pure-numbers strategy. Winning an armed revolt means flipping all the “opposition” into government, which can suddenly turn a battleground country into a solid lock for one of the superpowers. Within the plan to gain control, you also have to be budgeting for defensive moves as well as advancing along the tech track (Space Race in the basic game, but more to follow). Nothing will ruin your day like discovering that the opponent is about to execute a decisive move, but realizing you don’t have the budget to counter it.

Since I downloaded the demo, it no longer seems to be an option. The Cold War Era has moved its distribution to Steam, and advanced a few version iterations beyond what I have played. The company has also released a sequel, Arms Race – TCWE. The original game now sells for $4.99 and the sequel for $14.99 (the same price as Twilight Struggle, I might point out). The sequel appears to be more of the same, but with better graphics, deeper gameplay, and more bells and whistles. Let’s just say that the cost/benefit hasn’t yet tempted me to buy in at this point.

Another way to look at The Cold War Era is to think of it as a real-time simplification of Twilight Struggle. I say this, because as I was programming my Twilight Struggle opponent, I was thinking of the viability of just such a game. Gone are the Event Cards of Twilight Struggle, and you are left with simply placing Operations Points as a way to vie for control across the Cold War landscape. I think the idea is sound, but I’m not sure the real-time implementation of it actually works.

Sometimes I Feel So Cold

So if Twilight Struggle remains the standard, lets return to that.

My own programmed AI is theoretically capable of making it through an entire game, yet practically speaking, I’m usually met with a thrown exception rather than a victory. It also isn’t that good at winning, although it is good at matching the arc of game play to the historical timeline without being entirely stupid.

Shortly after I wrote my previous Twilight Struggle article, I did in fact spring for the computer version of the game. While much of what I’ve read treats the game as merely an adjunct to table-top play, I think many a gamer would be quite happy with the computer version plus a downloaded copy of the board game rules.

Much of what I’ve speculated upon before purchasing the game has been confirmed now that I’ve played it. The computer opponent is aggressive and challenging and it takes a decent player to beat it. Out the window are any concerns about how the play might conform or deviate from the course of history and, instead, you must concentrate on maximizing your cards’ value within the rules. Well into a game, I’m not sure I even know what countries are controlled or not. Instead, I focus on scanning the board for battleground states with the right combination of own-side and enemy control markers.

Of course, this isn’t a criticism of the computer version. As I said, this stems from the game design and the same would be said about a tabletop game between two competent players. To the contrary, the fact that the computer AI takes the role of “competent player” rather than the more haphazard, exception-throwing personality of my own model is an indication that the programmed opponent has been well done.

As the U.S., I’m attempting to draw Egypt into the North Yemen Civil War in an effort to destabilize the Nasser government and reduce Soviet influence. It didn’t work.

It is also a well done game all around. It’s an attractive interface that straddles the potentially conflicting needs of looking good on the computer while preserving everything about the board game. The controls work well and are easy enough to be intuitive. I’ve yet to see any crashes, glitches, or bugs. The game is designed to play either against the computer or against another player. I will think more often than not, playing against a friend on the computer would be a nice way to save the trouble of dealing with all the little pieces and such. Especially if you want to split the game over multiple sections, and you have cats, children, or a small apartment to deal with.

In addition to not having to deal with all the bits and pieces, the player no longer has to do so much math.

Back when, when I first bought the game, I played a couple of times and lost every game. The computer was clearly able to keep more balls in the air than I could, and while I fought him on one front, he finds a continent that I’m not working on to put a solid hold on. I intended to write this article explaining how I was unable to beat the AI.

It was a bit of an embarrassing position to be in. Shortly after I bought the game, I was telling a another gamer (of both computer and board games) about my purchase and he said something to the effect of , “yeah, that’s a good little game. I like to use it as training tool to prepare for board game nights.” Similar conversation has surrounded the game since it was first obvious that a computer version was coming out – that the audience was going to be the tabletop player who wanted a fix between opponents. To find that the game was too good for me to play against, well that is kind of embarrassing.

So I picked the game up again before I started writing so it will all be fresh in my mind, and I actually won my first game (both first game this year and first game I won). This win came despite being a little rusty with the rules. So I guess the AI isn’t the master that I’d assumed before. But though I am winning, the games are tense affairs with everything I do seeming to be critical. The game has a setting to handicap the game one way or the other, but I’m not entirely sure how that works or how effective it would be once one can reliably beat the AI.

While it’s nice to have some options for the cold war conflict on a strategic level, what I don’t feel here is a sense of the early 1960s. The Berlin Wall, The Bay of Pigs, Gary Powers U2 downing, Kennedy’s announcement of the Moon race, and the Tsar Bomba all hit the public consciousness in a matter of a year or two. So while strategically, we can’t really capture the spirit of the time, perhaps we can do better with some specific, nuclear-themed scenarios from CMANO.

(on to Part 2).

 

B-B-B-Benny and the Jets

Tags

Cold War, Elton John, Philippines

Playing Twilight Struggle put a focus on an otherwise little-considered arena of the Cold War, the newly-independent nation of the Philippines. The islands of that country provide a key node in the game, being the only link between Japan and Indonesia, the latter of which connects into the battleground (not, literally, in Twilight Struggle terms) countries of Southeast Asia.

When I was last looking at that game (surprisingly, it been a year-and-a-half), I did a little reading about the Hukbalahap Rebellion as a historical equivalent to the early war machinations in the Philippines. That insurgency saw a peasant organization which had fought against the Japanese occupation now at odds with the new and newly-independent (from the U.S.) government. The government had a number of reasons it didn’t trust “the Huk,” (as the insurgent group is called), from its anti-landlord politics, its close ties with other communist organizations, and alleged bad actions during the Second World War. The counter-insurgency lasted from fall of 1946 through the spring of 1954, when it largely petered out.

A CMANO scenario set in June of 1958 imagines that the Huk was more successful that it really was and, by 1958, has control of a significant portion of Luzon and threatens, with Soviet help, to expand the revolution country-wide. The United States finds itself intervening on the side of the Filipino government with an available carrier task force.

The Bennington Task Force of the coast of the Philippines. I’ve managed to take out one bridge so far, but the airport (that clump of three enemy targets) seems better defended. My carrier is right in the path for non-hostile planes landing at the airfield, so tensions are high as unidentified planes pass right overhead.

The scenario is purely hypothetical. The Huk Rebellion was entirely over by the time the scenario takes place. Furthermore, in May of 1958, the USS Bennington was between cruises. Bennington was actually deployed during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis during a cruise that began on August 21st, 1958. The “Benny’s Sweep” incident imagines something like a Korea or a Vietnam, but with a technology that straddles the two periods. The air groups are pretty much what one would have expected from a Korean War deployment, but some newer technology is involved. For example, the first combat deployment of Air-to-Air Sidewinder missiles occurred during the Second Taiwan Straight Crisis. In this scenario, the missiles are ready to use in the Philippines. These are an earlier (less capable) model of those that would be used in Vietnam, but we also are facing the relative less effective anti-aircraft cannons rather that Surface-to-Air missiles.

Some advanced tech showing its stuff. Some AGM-12, really still in R&D in 1958, are peppering the runways. Bringing up the rear, I got some advanced-design air-launch rockets which I’ll be unloading on an anti-aircraft battery.

The scenario is user-made, but it seems to be a pretty solid (and fun) one. It doesn’t really explain why the U.S. needs to start blowing up stuff in the Philippines with only a single carrier at the ready, except to cite “other international obligations” preventing other forces from being there. It also mentions that the U.S. finds the situation in the Philippines “intolerable” implying, I suppose, that delaying an airstrike is impossible.

Spoiler Warning (perhaps) in the next screenshot/paragraph.

 

The Russian cruiser Dzerzhinsky lurks off to the Southwest of the operational area, but could get dangerous. See also the contact designated GOBLIN #103. Who else but the Soviets have submarines?

The Huk’s forces aren’t terribly effective, and as the U.S. you can operate from a position of superior firepower. I do like these scenarios. This superiority is tempered by the presence of Soviet forces in the vicinity. While not hostile initially, it is a fair bet that they would be happy to sink a U.S. carrier if given half a chance. A cruiser against a pair of destroyers is not a fight I want to have. While the Huk also have naval assets, they seem easy enough to steer around or defeat as needed.

In 1949, American was fairly certain the Soviets were behind the rebellion in the Philippines. The U.S. had close ties to the Filipino government and provided counter-insurgency funding, but the conflict ended without escalating into another Korea or Vietnam.

In 2018, we are just as certain that the Soviets were not involved with the Huk. While the movement found fellow political travelers among the communist groups in the Philippines, those communists tended to look down on the peasants as too simple to understand and advocate for Marxist theory. Even still, it would surprise me if the Soviets weren’t at least interested in causing heartache for a U.S. ally as well as exerting a global reach. In 1949, however, their resources were rather limited and it is quite possible that whatever aid they might have tried to provide to the Huk would have been limited on that account.

By 1958, however, it may well have been a very different story. I find it hard to believe that the Soviet Union would not have backed a Filipino uprising simply because they were peasants and, as such, not fully up-to-snuff on dialectical materialism. A post-Sputnik Russia, on the other hand, may well have had the resources to do what they may have been unable to do in 1949 or 1950.

All This Science, I Don’t Understand

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Buzz Aldrin, Cold War, David Bowie, Elton John, game design, Kerbal Space Program, Leaving Earth, Liftoff!, Race into Space, Race to Space, rocket science, Space Program Manager, space race

While I was looking into some information on ICBM development (relative to the SAC games I was playing), I remembered the very popular game of yesteryear, Buzz Aldrin’s Race Into Space. Except that I couldn’t remember that it was actually called “Buzz Aldrin’s Race Into Space.”

I began googling “Race for Space” and came across instead an old “board game” (sort of) from… well, I have no idea. Probably at least 20 years ago.

No copies of the game seem to be for sale anywhere and there is very little detail, either direct or descriptive, about the contents and working of the game. But this image…

Some geeky charts, lifted from a review on Board Game Geek.

really has me intrigued; a very numbers-heavy modeling of R&D costs for spacecraft development presented as a visual space-and-counter game. The engineer in me wants to work through these charts and their ability to predict development. It looks like a nice way to depict the space development process, with the potential of getting stuck iterating on a design (without making progress) or hitting a technological dead-end.

A very similar game (who inspired whom, I have no idea) called Liftoff! was released in 1989. That looked much more like a real game, with board, cards, money (megabucks), and even a poster (woo-hoo!) included in the colorful box. Of course, we wouldn’t expect to find 30-year-old games of this type still on the shelves, so this too is something that, in 2017, is left to admire from afar.

One of the more interesting points, though, is that Liftoff! was turned into a computer game called “Buzz Aldrin’s Race into Space” (Oh right… that was the name). In 1993 BARIS, as it is often referred to, was released for MS-DOS, and like Steel Panthers, the BARIS story managed to put a happy coda onto its eventual commercial end. When the developer ceased work on the game, he released the source under a GPL license and the executable as freeware. It has since been ported to Windows, and undergone minor improvements, as well as being available as phone/tablet app.

Of course, when people are still pouring time and effort into 25-30 year old stuff, it only makes sense that a “modern” version might sell. Enter Leaving Earth on your tabletop and Buzz Aldrin’s Space Program Manager on your desktop – not to mention the crazy popularity of Kerbal Space Program and its physics simulation. Leaving Earth streamlines, simplifies, and converts entirely to a card game, the mechanics of the Space Race simulation – making a modern game to replace the old classics. BASPM (that’s not cool like BARIS, is it?) revamps the graphics and adds technical depth to the old classic.

So a quest to figure out what those charts meant left me with far too many games to contemplate. When in doubt, start with the freeware.

BARIS

The freeware version still has the original graphics and interface, but it runs as a (really tiny) window on the modern desktop. In my time spent with the program, I have seen no crashes and no obvious bugs. I will rank it among the better efforts to salvage an old DOS program that I’ve seen. Of course, it is still a 25-year-old game. The features of the game, such as the videos (compiled, mostly, from actual footage), do not make for the most exciting interactions. Even when it was newly on the shelves, The Guardian criticized the game as being “lifeless.”

As I have complained about before, the interface employs what at the time was considered a neat trick. Improved graphics, and the ability to deliver more and better within a game via CD, inspired a form of UI where the player interacts with “the real world” by navigating through (in this case) the various buildings of the space facility to initiate actions. Between the painstaking navigation from building to building and the necessity to prepare, possibly years in advance, for missions, this nifty interface makes it tougher than in needs to be to do what you need to do. Particularly annoying are the buildings you have to click on simply to confirm that the parameters set up elsewhere are, indeed, to be applied. Especially in contrast to current games that help the user along, this is game that probably requires keeping a notebook outside of the game to get it right.

I played through one time without relying on the manual and the result was a bit confusing. After getting far enough in, and pretty much failing in my charge as Space Director, I then turned to the manual for clues. I realize that the failure of the undirected trial-and-error approach is probably designed in purposely. By design, the game allows you to take actions for expedience’s sake that ultimately will result in failure. Rather than just make it obvious (e.g. a rule that says you can’t fly a man mission without X hours testing) it attempts to “teach” you why such a rule would be necessary by mathematical equations based on probability. It is a useful lesson, to be sure, but does it make for the best game? That, I’m not so sure.

As I alternate between game and manual, I think I begin to see the intended use for this game. First, several play-throughs will be necessary to learn the mechanics. There are certain rhythms in the game that a player has to learn. How to keep funding balanced over the budget cycle, for example, or the two-turn cycle necessary to setup launches. Once that is mastered, then several more play-throughs will be required to get the hand of the development/risk cycle. For example, when is a lack of research and testing going to end up in dead astronauts and program failures versus when a excess of research and testing will slow the program to a crawl? Finally, the player can embark in a new series of games focused on finding alternate development paths to get to the moon.

The Soviets get a jump in the Space Race. So far, so historical.

It seems to me that an awful lot of playtime is required to get to the actual purpose of the game. It is designed, perhaps, for when a player might purchase the game at full price and then dedicate months to master it. It is not a design that favors grabbing a quick download to enjoy for a night or two.

Another goal of the game is to provide a view into the Space Race to a generation who was born decades after it ended. They also might be surprised by the popularity of Ben-Hur in its day.

The game was considered to be a difficult one upon release and that hasn’t changed with the years. After a couple of preparatory games, where missions are left undone because I didn’t to all the right preparation, I finally feel like understand enough to make an actual game of it. Still, I’m pretty far from knowing what I am doing. While I am managing to advance my Mercury program without killing any astronauts, I am a bit demoralized by the announcements of Soviet achievements far outpacing my own. I suspect that what I really need to do is create a timeline of the actual NASA program, and try to keep my game program on or ahead of the real-life schedule. Without such guidance, I’m sure I’ll never be (for example) testing Saturn V rockets soon enough to be ready for a first-man-on-the-moon lunar mission.

Gus Grissom returns safely to earth and is lifted aboard a carrier, making him the first American to orbit the earth. My Mercury program has finally borne fruit, although Grissom became demoralized and dropped out within a few years of his historic achievement.

Despite the DOS graphics and the MIDI synth score, the game is still playable today. I think the key to appreciating it is to recognize that the numbers model and the percentages are the real game and that the interface is loosely built around it. Does that suggest that a rework of the AI to streamline and modernize it would greatly improve the game? Would hiding some of the numbers behind a better narrative improve the feel? As I speculated about translating a board game to the computer recently, it could go either way. When the game is the numbers, hiding the numbers and automating the “spreadsheet” portion of the game could actually take away from what makes the game what it is. What is the best way to update this game for the twenty-teens?

Why Buy the Cow?

The Race Into Space story has another parallel with Steel Panthers, although without quite the bitterness involved. While a volunteer team has created an maintained the freeware version of the original code, the company Polar Motion reworked it into a completely new version. Buzz Aldrin’s Space Program Manager, released by Slitherine/Matrix, is quite clearly an updated version of BARIS. Now I have no idea how much code is shared between the two versions, if any, but it is clear that it was the starting point for the new project.

Unlike with Steel Panthers, however, the end result looks very different. Graphics have been updated and the current ability of consumer’s desktops to display a realistic, 3D representation of Space Hardware can look impressive. The interface corresponds to modern design standards, although it still seems to feature the aerial view of the space complex with selectable buildings. From what I’m reading, the game has both added to the technical depth as well as expanded the scope of the missions beyond the “Space Race” into the realm of modern planetary exploration.

I say “from what I’m reading” because, unless I’m missing something, I’m looking at basically an upgrade of a freeware product for the price of a top-shelf game. Yes, some of the graphics look pretty cool, but not necessarily $40 cool. I’m also pretty sure I’m not hankering for a more complex version of BARIS with some additional missions. Mostly, I mention Space Program Manager here as a compare-and-contrast exercise for my next section.

Similarly, I’m not going to dig into Kerbal at this point, except to show the demand for this type of game is out there. I’ve long meant to download and try the demo, but for right now, it looks like the game has got ahead of the demo and none is available.

State of the Art

Let’s compare to the design of Leaving Earth. At a first glance, this game is a re-implementation of Liftoff! It covers the same time period, the same Cold War struggle, and is played through assigning resources to the design and execution of missions. It’s hard to imagine that the Leaving Earth designers weren’t also familiar with Liftoff!, but looking at the details, no one would say that one is an upgrade or revamp of the other.

The compare and contrast shows much of how game design has changed between the boardgame heyday of the 1980s and the boardgame revival of today. First, as a board game, the design reflects the necessity to put value in the product beyond the rules and mechanisms. The components are unique, a pleasure to look at and handle, and have an aesthetic to reflect the period being played. I think this is a huge part of what makes the boardgaming market so big. The designers have learned to make products that players look at and want to own.

But the design is also heavily influenced by the changes in that Eurogames and the subsequent rethinking of game design. It’s a game of cards and tokens, minimizing the role of dice. It’s also hugely streamlined. Does that mean it’s more of a casual game, and less of a “simulation?” Is it, like many Eurogames, simply a mechanic with some contextual chrome lain upon it?

I would argue no.

First of all, Leaving Earth (perhaps more than its predecessor) exists in part to be a teaching game. A chunk of the manual is dedicated to explain the fundamentals of rocketry and orbits and how to plan missions. The relationship between engine impulse and Delta V are all explained to illuminate what a mission “difficulty” number entails. While it is possible to simply look up, on tables, the relationships between payload and booster size, the player is encouraged to design a launch system backwards from final playload through each staging.

Two of the obvious simplifications are costs and reliability.

The cost model in Leaving Earth is greatly simplified relative to its predecessors. Gone are concepts like inflation or managing budget allocations over multiple years. Instead, the costs in the game are charged a fixed amount that expires each turn, and they are adjusted accordingly. So the cost of a Saturn V during the height of that program can be proportional to the much higher budgets of that period. It is a decent way to simulate spending in an governmental environment while also eliminating the lion’s share of the in-game accounting.

Similarly, Leaving Earth has dramatically changed the reliability model that is the core of pretty much every space program simulation. The earlier versions have a reliability percentage that the user interacts with. These can be raised and lowered by events or improved with research spending and are eventually are compared to a die-roll when attempting a mission. What that means is that the probability of a mission success is always known in advance, but there is always some chance for failure. While engineers do spend a great deal of time calculating safety factors and estimating the possibility of failure, in truth, the predictability of mission success is not a known quantity. Worst of all, in the cases of actual mission failures, the cause of the failure is typically not a component that had a chance of failing and did. The cause is usually something behaving in a way that was unforeseen.

In Leaving Earth, the percentage reliability is replaced with a set of dealt cards that either have success or failure. These cards are drawn (while remaining unknown) in the “research” portion of a program. Unlike BARIS and others, research is a one-time cost, not something that is continuously managed relative to the percentages. Testing, on the other hand, is much more explicit. A booster with, essentially, unknown reliability can and should be flown in unmanned missions to prove its capabilities before chancing a failure in an unmanned mission. Ongoing research is modeled by the ability to, after a mission failure, invest additional research money to remove that failure card from the deck. Unlike the dice-rolling version of mission probability, it becomes possible to eventually reveal and/or remove all the cards associated with a particular component making it 100% reliable for the purposes of the game. While this also may not be a “real” representation of a space hardware, which may end up failing even after you are completely confident in its reliability, it does vastly simplify the game.  It also improves it, in my opinion. It is tough to model a historical space program when, at any given time, a freak role can wipe out your schedule and a team of astronauts in a system that you have thoroughly vetted as maximally reliable. It precludes a Space Shuttle Discovery, but fits well within the other simplifications of the game.

Is there life on Mars?

One other area of game design is something that this product really gets. I discussed earlier about the importance of a historical game simulating not what we know now to be true, but what historical figures knew at the time to be true.

One example discussed in the rule book is how scientists at the time expected to find life on other planets. First (although predating the period of the game) there was an expectation of life on the Moon. There was also long an assumption that observations made of the Martian surface showed signs of life. While during the period of the space program, scientists had discounted some of the wilder “martian” theories, the first lunar missions, in fact, had returning astronauts go through a period of quarantine to ensure that they weren’t bringing back any dormant bacteria from the moon. Although we now understand the impossibility of finding living organisms on the moon, the players in the game should (and do) face the possibilities that these wild possibilities are true. An unexplored planet might produce alien life, or valuable resources, or even exotic alien technology.

In another rulebook example, the fleeting belief that Phobos was an artificial satellite created by advanced alien technology ,was held by the Russians. It was based on a calculation of density compared to the orbital mechanics, which found that the moon was far lighter than any naturally-occurring space body could be. It turns out to have been based on bad observations of the orbit and was corrected before it had much of a practical effect on the Soviet space program. Had the misconception persisted, surely the Soviet military would have made a mission to Phobos to obtain this advanced alien technology an absolute priority. Unless the aliens are a real possibility, the players would never commit to a mission we know to be obviously based on a mistake.

This game reminds me of an experience as a tween. I was absolutely enthralled by space-based science fiction, probably due to the influence of Star Wars. I had the novelization of that movie, which I had read over and over, but had to rely on the local public library for variety for my science fiction diet. Unfortunately, nearly all of their science fiction had been published in the early 60s and, even with that caveat, wasn’t of particularly high quality.

I remember checking out one book set around the construction of a space station. The cover had a drawing of the large doughnut-style station, which one imagined as a way to produce an artificial gravity. It wasn’t a great book, but it wasn’t truly terrible either. I don’t really remember the plot, but I believe it had something to do with sabotage during the construction of the space station. What really got me (and the heartbreak stays with me even today) was the final paragraph of the book. Our heroes have defeated evil and put the construction of the station back on track. Once the station is completed, we are told, mankind can continue on their next step of their great journey into space – to the Moon!

I wept in my pillow that night. When the book was written, possibly in the 50s, the direction that the space program would go was unknown. When the book was read, probably in the late 70s, trips to the moon had come and gone and were considered by many to be, to reference the film Apollo 13, routine. The idea that the whole book that I read was not part of some fantastic future, but of a discredited past, just made me feel like I’d wasted the many hours that I’d put into reading the book.

A game like Leaving Earth actually resurrects the mindset of that much resented (by me, at least) author. Depending on the parameters of the game, the path to the moon may actually be via a earth orbiting space station.

I don’t know how popular Leaving Earth is in the boardgaming world, but I do have to wonder whether this is a viable path for a computer game to take. Rather than, like Kerbal Space Program, go down the path of ever more realistic physics, orbital mechanics, and flight simulation, is there a market for essentially a casual game? Something that lets players make a few of the Space Race decisions and, in doing so, appreciate the trade-offs the the physics presents, but not force the player to commit months of their lives to learning the system.

I Never Thought I’d See..

Tags

13 Days, 13 Minutes, 1960: The Making of the President, Cold War, Cuban Missile Crisis, Fire in the Lake, Freedom: The Underground Railroad, Memoire '44, Twilight Struggle

I an “I never thought I’d see the day” moment, the Wall St. Journal this weekend has an article on the historical genre of board gaming. It’s more of a side bar format, really, than an article. After a brief orientation about how Settlers of Catan is a better experience for adults than Candyland, they recommend five strategy games based on historical events. In the original order:

1. 13 Minutes,

2. Freedom: The Underground Railroad,

3. Memoire ’44,

4. 1960: The Making of the President, and

5. Fire in the Lake.

The article features a nice picture of the Freedom board, set up for play. (I can’t see any of this on line – you may need to have the printed Wall St. Journal to see it at all). What drew my interest most is the first title on the list. I’ve seen all the others at some point or the other, but their #1 was new to me.

On Amazon, 13 Minutes is sold for (at present) $10 and is also suggested as a three game package, together with 13 Days:The Cuban Missile Crisis (this I’ve glanced at before) and a game called Twilight Squabble. Together, the trio offer ways to play Cold War in very short game play. 13 Minutes is described as the time it would take missiles to reach the U.S. from Cuba, and also the typical length of a game. 13 Days is described as a 45 minute game, but online reviews discuss whether it can be finished in 30 minutes. Twilight Squabble offers the entire Cold War in 10 minutes.

While the third may be overdoing it a little, the first two receive fairly good marks on Board Game Geek. In fact, not at all obvious to me until I began reading, the two games are made by the same designers. Further it would appear that the former is a deliberate condensing of the latter (although, remember, I haven’t played these games – I’m just looking at them on-line).

In addition to that bit of enlightenment, the mix of the games in the article is also interesting. First, with the exception of Memoire, the games’ pedigree all flows back to Twilight Struggle. 13 Days is obviously an attempt to streamline the Twilight Struggle gameplay, and 13 Minutes is a further streamlining of that. 1960 was another GMT release, a few years after Twilight Struggle, and (at least at first glance) looks like a variation on the theme. Fire in the Lake is one of the COIN-series games that followed on from Labyrinth, itself and extension of Twilight Struggle mechanics to the war on terror.

The most tenuous connection is Freedom. It is from different designers and different publishers that the children of Twilight Struggle. However, Freedom shares with Twilight Struggle the card-driven mechanics as well as the point-to-point mapboard. I’ll go so far as to say that, appearance-wise, the components resemble those of Fire in the Lake. I suspect that Freedom was also included in the list because it is a cooperative game, a novel concept to those who abandoned board gaming with one two too many games of Candyland.

Likewise, Memoire ’44 is an obvious inclusion. It predates Twilight Struggle by a year. It was not entirely a novel concept at that time. Memoire followed the Battle Cry civil war game using similar mechanics, a game system that would eventually be the Commands and Colors series. Likely the World War II theme of Memoire had a broader appeal making  Memoire an entry point into the hex-and-counter wargaming genre for the non-wargaming public.

Seen this way, the list can be examples of various genres, using the American History theme to unite them. The micro-game, the cooperative game, the wargame, and a political game. The only obvious missing element is an economic game (unless the lead-in introduction to Catan counts). In this, the odd man out becomes Fire in the Lake.

Fire in the Lake has the best Board Game Geek scores of any on the list. It is also ranked as the most complex on this list. In fact, even by the standards of the COIN series (themselves something of a master-level gaming experience), Fire in the Lake is one of the more complex of the bunch. The giant leap from Candyland to Fire in the Lake would likely give Neil Armstrong pause. Maybe this game is included for readers like me. While familiar with strategy and historical boardgaming, 13 Minutes was something new for me to ponder. For others already primed for a very deep boardgame experience and interested in Cold War history, perhaps they just never realized that there was such a game as Fire in the Lake. More importantly, one might realize realize that Fire in the Lake is due up for a reprint and is discounted for pre-order.

As a final personal note, while I’ve fairly recently been playing at Candyland, I’ve never played The Settlers of Catan.

 

I’m Feeling Lucky

Tags

Cold War, netflix, wargames, wordpress

Why are word clouds so fascinating?

If I look at my own most-used tags and categories, it left me wondering what are the top articles in the WordPress universe that use those same tags?

review

wargames

History of Games

Cold War

Fascinating.

Number 5 on my own list is Netflix, which is largely me griping about my own experience with their service. Part of me really thought that I’d find similar content associated with the Netflix tag elsewhere. Of course that is silly. It’s pretty much reviews of Netflix’s in-house content.

I’m Not Saying It Was Aliens But…

Tags

Cold War, Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Russian

I was talked into watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull by my kids, who wanted to round out their watching of the series of Indiana Jones films. It’s not a terrible movie. In fact, it is roughly all the stuff that made up the originals, but now with 2008 CGI.

Possibly because of that CGI, the story went from classic-movie suspension of disbelieve to crazy-cartoon-superhero suspension of disbelief. Yes the original was filled with crazy stunts and frequent sure-to-be-deadly situations for the heroes, but there seemed to be some limits. Spielberg was deliberately trying to reproduce the feel of the serials of the 1930s and 40s, where each episode would end with the hero in ineluctable mortal danger. Of course, if you paid your dime and came out to the theater for the next episode, you would get to watch how the hero was able to defy his doom. Compared to the original, a line seems to have been crossed. There is a difference between surviving being sealed into a tomb versus being tossed a half mile into the air by a nuclear blast while riding in a kitchen appliance. And yet for both, Indy merely has to dust himself off a little.

I’m not angry I watched it, but I don’t regret waiting almost a decade to do so.

For what its worth, I’ll give an extra quarter star for working “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” into Harrison’s dialog.

Anyone Want To Buy Some Poo?

Tags

Cold War, Dosotoyevsky, plutonium, poo, Pu-239, Russian

Is it a black comedy, or is it a tragedy?

Perhaps it is a sign of its quality that one can’t really tell.

Pu-239 was released in 2006. The film was based on a 1999 short story, and was originally shown in the Toronto International Film Festival as The Half Life of Timofey Berezin. Following its positive reception there, HBO picked it up the following year and released it under the films working title, also the title of the short story.

The film follows two characters. One is a technician in a nuclear processing facility who, through the incompetence and malfeasance of the operators of the facility is severely contaminated by a nuclear mishap. The second is a low-level gangster on the streets of Moscow who, through the ignorance of his comrades, takes on a debt to the local crime lord which he is unable to pay. When the two meet, they appear to be perhaps the only way out of each other’s crisis.

The movie gets into the physics of nuclear radiation, and as far as I could tell does so accurately, but it is not a scientific movie. The descriptions of atomic particles are more metaphorical, drawing parallels with the human drama which is occurring. One assumes (again, I haven’t read the short story) that this much was taking from the literary source when the film was created. Likewise, the portrayal of the post-Soviet-collapse Russian society seems pretty spot on, as far as I could tell. But, once again, the focus is not on trying to paint a picture of the time and place.

The story is very vaguely based on actual incidents. The story was set in 1995, and at that time there were several cases of stolen nuclear material from ex-Soviet facilities. Some of the cases were disgruntled workers, and other were just citizens finding themselves in a newly- “captitalist” society and trying to make their fortune (both of which ARE themes of the film). In one incident, some stolen Plutonium was traced to a facility called Arzamas-16 during the Cold War. The town, which did not exist on any map, was the location of a nuclear weapons design facility. Arzamas-16, or sometimes Kremlyov, was renamed Sarov in 1995. As far as I know, the details of the theft were never discovered. The Plutonium was recovered in Munich during attempted sale and was traced back to the Russian facility through its radiological signature.

The city in the movie is called Skotoprigonyevsk-16, which is not a real location. In fact, Skotoprigonyevsk itself is taken from The Brothers Karmazov, where it is revealed (at the very end of the novel) to be the location of “our town.” The name was probably intended to sound “made up” in the Dosotoyevsky and certainly intended to evoke a place apart from the big city (Dosotoyevsky’s St. Petersburg or Pu-239‘s Moscow) – remote, rural, and culturally disconnected. In 1995, the cultural disconnect was between the Soviet hierarchy where scientists and their military research commanded respected and status, and the “New Russian” mobsters who grew instantly rich and became to dominate and, indeed, define modern Russia.

Unlike some of my other recent reviews, this is not a foreign-language production. See the trailer and cover-art, I actually assumed that it was. Although I should have known, the “translated” title is Ru-239 using Cyrillic characters, one of those Hollywood devices that really gets me spun up, although for most of the movie the Russian translations (and the non-Russian actors’ Russian accents) seem quite a bit more authentic. While filmed in Romania, it was obviously intended for the English-speaking consumer. Nonetheless, it is a independent film that, despite critical attention and the backing of HBO (Time Warner), seemed to have mostly slid under the radar.

It’s a shame. This is a fine little story that translates well to the screen. For those that would appreciate it (and it’s not going to appeal to the masses), it will be unfortunately if they never know what they are missing. Even if I don’t know what to call it.

He Told Us Where We Stand

Tags

Cold War, Farewell to the Master, science fiction, social contract, The Day the Earth Stood Still, UN

The Day the Earth Stood Still came out in 1951, just as the Korean War was grinding to a stalemate. Korea is never mentioned in the movie, although the film’s Washington DC certainly has a very high military presence that indicates this is a “wartime” setting.

As seems to be popular with movies of the era, the film has plenty of famous locations shown. The monuments and sights of Washington DC are featured prominently, even though the actual filming took place elsewhere. Similarly, the reaction of “the World” to events is show by flashing people in London, Paris, etc., set against some landmark scenery from each location. At least, all of the place except one. The shot of Moscow is an obvious fake, for obvious reasons.

In general, the cinematography is a mixed bag. Along the same lines as above, the film opening shot is a descent from outer space. It’s meant to, I’m sure, dazzle the film-goer with sights he’s probably never seen outside of the theater. Today, the “special effects” shot from space looks pretty hokey. Once actual footage from aircraft is mixed in, it begins to look a lot better. From a technical standpoint, that pretty much sets the stage for the whole film. The special effects are frightfully bad.  The shots of regular people look considerable better. Particularly closeups stood out with that genuine style that seems unique to the black-and-white medium.

The film’s story also improves once in moves away from the space man and laser beams of the opening. I initially found the alien pretty annoying as he smirked at the petty humans around him, but once he decides to hide himself among the hoi polloi, the character and the story improve.

I’m quite sure I watched this at least once as a kid, but I honestly didn’t remember anything except the space man and laser beams. If you also don’t remember the story, I’m going to go ahead a ruin it for you. He dies.

But seriously…

The concept is that this man from outer space comes to our planet with a warning. As our warlike species is developing the technology for intergalactic travel, the various aliens in our vicinity who, up to this point have been content to leave us alone, now grow very concerned about our ability to threaten them via nuclear and space technology. They’ve developed a Doomsday Machine, of sorts, that we risk triggering, resulting in the annihilation of our species if we don’t find within us the capacity for peace and love. Or something like that.

The suspension of disbelief for the 1951 audience may have been fairly high when it comes to science fiction. I like my science fiction hard, as I like my… well, never mind that. Point is, I like the “science” to make some sense. This one has a lot of holes, some of which significantly distract from the story. As an example, there are some things the aliens know with perfect knowledge, and other things they don’t understand at all. Is there any possible logic to it except that it made for clever dialog?

Another incongruous detail to my sensibility, likely generational, is the portrayal of the military. First off, there are men in uniform everywhere. Street scenes almost always feature a soldier in uniform as one of the bystanders. This may have been normal and/or expected in post-World War II America, or at this phase of the Korean War. It may even be normal for Washington DC today – I tried to avoid that wretched hive of scum and villainy if at all possible. I was also impressed with the eagerness and rapidity that martial law could be declared and implemented. Furthermore, the portrayal of martial law is as an unequivocal common good. The populous and the audience accepts the quick intervention of the military as the right and proper defense against an unknown threat – this despite the fact that it is ineptitude by members of the same that escalate the crisis in the first place, several times throughout the film shooting alien Klaatu.

By comparison, the source for the story, a magazine published short story “Farewell to the Master” is written (and set) before the U.S.’s entry into the Second World War. In that version, it is a “lunatic” who murders Klaatu. He is killed, in fact, before he can do anything to explain his presence. Thus the message of “Peace and Love or Die!” is not part of the story. Also, the resurrection of Klaatu by the robot, included in both the movie and the book, has a little more SciFi continuity in the book form. In that, the robot simply struggles to recreate Klaatu (from his voice? well, OK) and, ultimately fails to be entirely successful. Klaatu is regenerated, but imperfectly, and quickly dies again. No such explanation, except for some pseudo-spirituality, surrounds the movie Klaatu’s recovery from his second and fatal shooting.

The simultaneous acceptance of martial law and criticism of the military (the shootings plus the failure of the “brass” to appreciate Klaatu’s mission) is in fact in line with the message of the filmmaker. If not already obvious, it is a post-World War II call for increasing the role of the United Nations in world affairs, and the deemphasization, if not elimination, of nationalism.

It also explains what, to me, looks like a contradiction. Even to the most imaginative, it is hard to understand how any process of the United Nations could approach Gort’s Doomsday Machine. The best the U.N. was capable of was (and remains) bringing in a “coalition of the willing” on the side with the casus belli. The more comprehensible analogy is the submission of the individual and his freedom to the power of the State. Thus the State, as just ruler, deserves deference when mobilizing to protect us. It deserves scorn when it acts the self-centered individual, and squabbles with other States.

The filmmaker may or may not have fully thought through this analogy, beyond what was necessary to make his point. The ability of the State to annihilate the individual who breaks his “social contract” is not only valid, but necessary. Without the, as modern parlance would have it, “nuclear option,” there will remain insufficient motivation to accept the social contract except when it is convenient. That may seem extreme, but 65 years of experience with U.N. intervention has not lead to the realization of that ideal, peaceful world. The Superpowers may not (as of yet) started World War III, but it unlikely that the U.N. has been a particular deterrent. Where the U.N. has intervened, questions do arise about the judgment, effectiveness, and motivation of that intervention. Furthermore, wars between minor countries continue, and the major powers continue to bypass the U.N. when global politics make it necessary.

The film may be dated and the sentiment may be naive, but the debate over the benefits of an omnipotent but benevolent overlord continue apace. In the U.S. we continue to fight against the ever-growing power of our government. In places like England, the extent of control that the government exercises over the populace would have been unthinkable in 1951. Similarly, the push towards one-world government and the dissolution of national boarders continues to gain momentum.

Perhaps “Klaatu barada nikto” is the only real answer.

Cold War, Reggae Style

Tags

CMANO, Cold War, Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Tropico 3, Trujillo

I continue to toy with the Tropico 3 scenarios, and I’ve yet to crack open Tropico 4.

The latest scenario is based, very loosely, on Jamaica and its independence moves in the late 1950s and final decolonization in 1962. The key, says the scenario description, is to move away from the agricultural and raw materials markets that were controlled by Great Britain and develop a self-sufficient industrial economy. All the while, as is the key to the game, I try to stay in the right place in the middle of the Cold War politics going on around me.

Of course, as the victory conditions point out, my real goal is to stay in office through the duration of the game until 1980.

Trade has picked up and I have plenty of money. Now, if I can just get those construction workers to actually build something.

As the years advance into the 1960s, more of the game’s “color” becomes evident. Through radio broadcasts, I witness the Cuban missile crisis taking place nearby, as well as the crisis in the Dominican Republic. Perhaps because I’m getting a little better with the game, the Superpower interplay was also more evident this time around. Having secured an independence of sorts from the United Kingdom, I began courting the Soviets through my local Communist party. Although at one point I became a little too closely aligned with the Russians, I managed to shift the balance by allowing development by some U.S. -connected corporations.

I didn’t manage to anger either superpower sufficiently that they sent warships to my seas, nor did I need to align with either one for protection. I triggered (for the first time) a military conflict with a neighbor, but quickly dispatched them with some U.S. military support.

One might speculate about how many smaller countries have attempted to play such a political game, feigning alignment with communism or capitalism with absolutely know fundamental belief in the system, other than the aid and support that it will bring. Is it a reflection of the real world, or just a clever gameplay element.

Moving on to that Dominican Republic crisis, and a scenario that imagines the assassination of Trujillo took place some years earlier, triggering the installation of a communist-aligned government. As Soviet military aid begins building up on the island, the U.S. government decides it must rely on military force. The result far more detail of what it might look like when that U.S. fleet shows up in the harbor.

Time to send that Soviet equipment to the bottom of the Caribbean, where it belongs. Orange is Dominican ships and air, with the orange square in the lower left being the target of my operation.

This scenario has the player in the drivers seat. We are working with a carrier (plus escorts), a destroyer and a sub. Our task is to use a carrier strike to eliminate the Soviet equipment from our backyard. The primary goal is the airfield where Russian Migs and bombers are stationed. In addition to whatever advantages we have in force, we also have the element of surprise. We can initiate our attack at our leisure with little-to-no expectation that our presence will provoke a first response from the enemy. In the screen shot above, I’ve located what appears to be all of the enemy forces and am positioning my initial strike. I’ve also noticed that the Dominicans are out buzzing my ships and aircraft in waves, so I’d like to hit them when they’re at the end of their fuel.

This scenario has a lot going for it, and satisfies many of my earlier complaints. First of all, the what to do is pretty obvious. No need to spend days hunting for enemies that may or may not be there. Second is the operation from the position of strength. I have the numbers and decent assets, so I don’t feel that I need to solve a complex puzzle to avoid slaughter. Of course, even with all my advantages, I got creamed in the first play-through.

The scenario, at this point, also solved another complaint I’d had about CMANO scenarios. When I lost and lost big, it was glaringly obvious what I’d done wrong. And at the risk of ruining the scenario for my readers, I’ll tell you what I did. I ignored the third dimension, altitude. I left the altitude settings for all my aircraft at the default assuming, I guess, that the game could deal with it. Thus, all my bombing attacks were from high-altitude while the enemy delivered their bombs rocketing in a sea level, both evading radar and being impossible to intercept by that 36,000 ft patrol. Being so obvious what I did wrong, it became pretty easy to tweak my gameplay and vastly improve my performance in a restart.

That’s the way I like it. Uh huh.