Halo (TV Series)

Really whether in main canon or not, the Insurrectionists have a big problem about prioritizing.

Reading The Cole Protocol did not do me any favors about them.

Someone on r/Halo posted an interesting tidbit: the idea of the SPARTANs getting their memories selectively erased actually goes all the way back to the first novel. It gets mentioned early on as one of several rejected ideas Halsey's team had for indoctrinating the kids, saying that a "selective neural paralysis" could produce "targeted amnesia". Wouldn't be surprised if the writers took the idea directly from there, and use the exact same terminology when they explain it later on in the series.

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Mar 26th 2022 at 8:24:13 AM

As someone who isn't a fan of the games, I thought this was pretty good. I don't mind Chief taking his helmet off, personally. I've always found that bit of Halo kinda stupid. The Mass Effect shout out was cute.

In expanded universe material, John takes his helmet off fairly frequently.

Having him remove it for the show is maybe a textbook example of a good adaptational change. The new medium lends itself to this alteration not because the original choice is wrong (John being faceless but not voiceless is not bad at all in the games), but simply because when you change the medium, you also change the message, if I can get all Mc Luhan for a moment.

I admit part of this is due to the fact we the audience have information the UNSC didn't bother to tell her: specifically that the Covenant is going to exterminate all of humanity regardless. Assuming they haven't changed this element, it's more the case of, "The French troops will then kill everyone in Britain and then India because everything that has ever been touched by British must be purged and there's no way to make peace with us."

It IS an existential threat to humanity that they all have to band together against but the UNSC is so repulsive and untrustworthy that it's arguable no one would believe them.

And implied to be the case when that Han Solo guy went, "I thought it was UNSC propaganda."

Yeah like I said there's no perfect metaphor for this situation, but I do think it's a bit harsh to be judging Kwan's reaction as "selfish" when the show has so far established that A) the UNSC has been especially brutal and oppressive towards the colonies and Kwan has suffered immense personal tragedy for it and B) the invasion is in such an early stage that many civilians don't believe it's real and the military doesn't have any idea what the Covenant's goal is.

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Mar 26th 2022 at 10:37:45 AM

True, though I'm blaming she's a teenage girl and traumatized for not seeing how threatening the oppressive The Empire would end badly for her.

I hope later episodes show Kwan meeting other Insurrectionists from other the planets and star system but learns they are more worse than the UNSC and her people, like these other Innies are more selfish or fascist, even to other Innies. Which might make Kwan wonder if this is the reason why the UNSC is brutal to the colonies.

I typically try looking at things from a narrative perspective over trying to make a real world analogy. In this case, Kwan has zero sensitive information to share and in no position to cause any future harm to the UNSC by merely existing. At this point, all she has said is that she will not go along with the propaganda proposal offered to her, and that refusal is just to not make a video for them. For that reason, having Jacob Keyes try to justify the termination order to his daughter comes across as a fundamentally skewed morality of the entire UNSC rather than just a Necessarily Evil of a handful of people making hard decisions. To compare with The Mandalorian, where people have said Chief and Kwan are giving off Din and Grogu vibes, the episode started with Din as a ruthless bounty hunter and second guessing himself because Grogu himself was a surprise reveal and that mystery underlines most of the show. Whatever you think of Kwan as a character so far, she does not have any mystery behind her and while I'm certain she will prove to be of some worth that lack of mystery is dulling the core motivations of the show.

Regarding removing the helmet, I'm of two thoughts on that. One is I do get rather annoyed at the MCU movies going so far to include nanotech Collapsible Helmet and otherwise insisting on the characters removing face coverings for near every bit of dialogue. It comes across as a focus group insisting on being able to see the actors face rather than the movie bothering to convey something with actual dialogue and body language. Two is that keeping a mask/helmet on and NEVER showing the actors face can become its' own needless in-joke, and Bungie themselves said their vision of Master Chief was as a projection of the player above all else. 343 has tried to peel that back just a little, not changing the core personality but bringing the sense of weight and responsibility more to the surface. By having Chief remove his helmet in the first episode it comes across more like that they aren't going to play that game, but because it is tradition I would prefer it to not be a regular occurrence. Again comparing it to The Mandalorian, once they showed Din's face the significance of removing the helmet is diminished each time. I think getting away with it early can bypass it from being another joke.

I watched the first episode with my dad, and I liked it. As other people have said, watching it with someone who doesn't know the lore can be fun. "So what's this secret project the doctor lady is working on?" "Well, there are like three secret immoral projects it could be at this point in the timeline, so I'm not sure which one it is."

Most of my problems with the episode were minor narrative framing issues. I feel like having the UNSC watching and narrating everything Chief was doing in the climax was just redundant. We know him giving Kwan a weapon is a big deal, we don't need to see the admiral yelling about it. Showing one or two reaction shots would have been fine, but having them react to everything was just a little too much.

Interested to see where the human "prophet" goes. I agree that she doesn't seem to actually be in charge, just in an honored position. I suspect there's going to be a lot of parallels between her and the SPARTANs. Furthermore, Mercy seemed a bit surprised that the Chief could activate the artifact, so I suspect it's a bit more than just any random human being able to use it. Which in turn means that she's more than just some baby they grabbed from one of their first raids and raised as a living access key.

Not a huge fan of the amnesia plot; as noted, it's an idea Halsey specifically shot down in the original canon. One of the things that I liked in the original was how all the SPARTANs knew where they came from and what had been done to them; they were just so indoctrinated that they didn't care. Likewise, I'm a little leery on "the Chief is only becoming a good person because he touched a magic rock." In the original canon, it was emphasized that he was a good man, doing his best to save humanity, he was just indoctrinated to believe that serving the UNSC was always the right thing to do. But we'll see how it goes. His squad certainly jumped straight to protecting him with only the smallest push, and there were no magic rocks there.

So curious for who have seen it. How is Pablo Schrieber as Master Chief?

I've only seen him as Complete Monster Willaim Lewis in Law and order SVU. So am curious how he does a heroic role ?

Edited by miraculous on Mar 27th 2022 at 9:03:13 AM

Not much to go on yet since he spends most of the episode in "following orders robotically" mode and the character is still very much The Quiet One, but overall he's selling it pretty well in my opinion.

As said, it's still the first episode but I've seen several reviews that were impressed with his take on the character. He's not trying to copy Steve Downes but he does well mixing emotionless killing machine with subtle moments of humanity. The "nuts, bolts, microchips" line is a sort of bad joke that works because it gives him a moment of being approachable.

Plus Schreiber is 6'5 and I was thinking when he took the helmet off that he manages to look naturally huge without relying too much on the armor and camera tricks.

Watching Chief have no idea how to talk to a teenage girl was definitely my favorite part of the episode. Spartans not knowing how to deal with civilians is a severely underused source of comedy in Halo.

And furthermore, I will lie to my people that you didn't rescue me but in fact carried out the massacre yourselves.

That is definitely Too Dumb to Live territory.

I mean what do you think she's gonna do, escape the 6-foot-fuck-you killing machine or the mountain of armed guards that are going to be escorting her to a prison cell for her association with the rebellion? They had so many other options than "kill her immediately".

True but they want a propaganda victory and "Woman who declares she's an enemy combatant" is perhaps less sympathetic a victim than they think and her dying on the rescue is the best they can come up with.

I think a lot of this hinges on the key issue that it's very much within their power to just disappear her without anyone ever finding out non-lethally, which would leave her alive for other potential purposes. The whole thing's kind of a What An Idiot moment for both sides the longer I think about it, but moreso the UNSC since Kwan at least has the excuse of being in shock.

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Mar 27th 2022 at 9:56:13 AM

Halsey and both of the Keyes were kind of like "wait, why is this your solution?" (even if Captain Keyes was resigned to it and Halsey didn't actually care enough to do anything). I definitely did not get the impression that this was supposed to be a Pragmatic Villainy "yeah they're evil but at least their plan has merit" thing. Kwan was lashing out like a child because she's in shock and has been rescued by people she hates with every fiber of her being. The UNSC's response is to... lash right back like a bully on a playground.

As noted, at least Kwan had an excuse.

Edited by Discar on Mar 28th 2022 at 5:56:18 AM

The show is also so far portraying the Innies very sympathetically which is definitely not something they should be doing.

The impression I'm getting is that the show might go for the angle of like, the UNSC has been extremely brutal to the Innies the whole time, most of it unjustified, and they're wasting significant resources on the conflict there that they could be aiming at the actual enemy. And them keeping up the crackdowns while disseminating propaganda about how the UNSC is the only thing protecting humanity from the Covenant makes the propaganda look way fake.

The Covenant want to take out all of humanity, yes, but there's a lot of the rebellion that would probably lose quite a bit of steam if the UNSC would just generally leave them alone.

I could be totally wrong though.

True, it's only the first episode. Maybe the Innie girl doesn't even know the kind of shit her people have been stirring up.

I do find it curious how they basically truncated the decades of backstory into a smaller timeframe. It makes me think they might be looking to depict some of the major events like the systematic attacks on the outer colonies to the Fall of Reach.

Considering how soon Madrigal fell after Harvest, we might be at the very beginning of the war? Because the Insurrection is apparently still in full swing and the Innies don't know who the Covenant are. But yeah, I imagine they may truncate the narrative because putting 20 years of war into a show might not be realistic.

Edited by theLibrarian on Mar 28th 2022 at 1:13:31 PM

There definitely compressing, since, by the year shown in the episode, Reach should have already fallen.