Opinion: Iranians raise degree of self-awareness through low degree of production value

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For Your Consideration: Middle East Media Research Institute comes up with a clip from the Iranian science fiction show Land of Wishes, in which an evil Jewish queen and a young girl who can’t act square off in a battle of the virtual martial arts warriors. Like all of MEMRITV’s great Persian finds, this one is an intriguing glimpse of a hidden culture that’s simultaneously appalling, fascinating, pathetic, and unintentionally promising. On the ‘unintentionally promising’ front, I’d say it’s a hopeful sign that Iranian kids are watching science fiction at all—at least to the extent that any consumption of non-traditional pop culture is always good.

What’s appalling is not only the anti-semitic space queen character, but that they’ve managed to make her so un-hot. If your evil pan-galactic empress is rubbing her palms together and chortling lasciviously about making her earthling slaves obey her every perverse whim, you’re on the right track. If she’s saying lines like ‘Raise the degree of self-awareness of the agent,’ you’re in trouble.

MEMRI tries, with considerable success, to show the toxic culture of the Islamic world, but this entry should inspire more pity than horror. There’s clearly some money and effort involved in this production, but these drab costumes and warmed-over effects (how poor do you have to be to be using Lucasfilm sound effects for your R2D2/Twiki comic relief character at this late date?) make you wonder how the country can entertain serious nuclear ambitions. This is what happens when bearded wise men have veto power over everything in your culture: You end up with science fiction that lacks even the larcenous brio of Turkish Star Trek: