Did you know Jeff McBride was in an episode of Star Trek? They actually wrote the whole episode of Deep Space Nine with him in mind as the character Joran Belar. Penn and Teller, conversely, were in an episode of Babylon 5, as Rebo and Zooty, a pair of intergalactic entertainers, one of whom doesn’t speak.
What’s fascinating to me is that Deep Space Nine is a knockoff of Babylon 5.
J. Michael Straczynski took the idea of a space opera set in a stationary location near a warp gate with themes of intergalactic war, the recent end of the Centauris’ oppresive regime over the Narns, and alien religion which selects the station’s captain as it’s chosen one, to Paramount and they said “Eh, not our bag”…. and then made Deep Space Nine, where a space station near a wormhole is the central key location in an intergalactic war, featuring the Cardassians whom until recently were oppressing the Bajorans, whose religious prophets select the captain as their next… you know, no, I’m sure Paramount totally came up with that on their own.
Anyway Babylon 5 was better, but Deep Space Nine got the drop on them because while JMS was still looking for a production company, Paramount were ramping up and selecting a cast.
Equilibrium, guest starring Jeff McBride was first aired on October 17th 1994, whereas Day of the Dead didn’t air until March 11th 1998, more than 3 solid years later. Some people might say that Babylon 5 stole the idea of guest starring a famous magical act from Deep Space Nine, but frankly I think they deserved a little payback.
Also, Babylon 5 was far superior in every way and Jeff McBride has to live with that.
Hey, did you see Jeff McBride on Penn and Teller Fool us?
Jeff’s act was nothing like the one his character on Deep Space Nine was based on, but Penn and Teller were exactly like Rebo and Zooty. Seeing Jeff McBride fool Penn and Teller was… I’m going to say disappointing. Not because I wanted to see Jeff defeated, he was in Deep Space Nine (which is enough to defeat anyone) but because Jeff’s act didn’t fool me. This has happened a few times now where they have been fooled by acts which haven’t really impressed me at all. They say that often it means they’re not fooled in the moment but they later figure it out, but I also remembered hearing that in the first series¹ Penn would stand up and rip the felt off of tables to look for the methods. They didn’t even guess at the method, and that’s my favourite bit of the show these days.
That bit after the act where Penn speaks in euphemisms secretly coded with the magical principles they believe the act to have been based on. It’s great when they outline how they think the trick was done and the performer just says “Nope.”
But with Jeff they just… You know what, here, watch it, I’ll wait.
They KNOW how that works. Perhaps they didn’t want to say because the method is too elegant? But they said no to elegant methods before without doing their hint banter. Perhaps it’s because Jeff is essentially magic royalty at this point? But they’re usually so anti-establishment…
The effect isn’t really Jeff’s anyway². The staging and the presentation are all his, but the actual bones of the method are an absolute classic, the roots of the water bowls go back further than the more modern and arguably more convincing rice bowls.
I’m in a pickle right now because being in the magic circle, I can’t go into any detail here. See as a member of the magic circle I’m honour bound not to reveal any magic tricks to muggles reading this blog by accident. Just because I adhere to the rule doesn’t necessarily mean I agree with it wholeheartedly. I think there’s a certain mischievous joy to the Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra³ explanations given in Fool Us, partly because in the olden days if you heard the name of a magical principle or subtlety you would need to research for days, weeks, months or even years to find what it meant, who invented it and only then obtain a source to begin to learn it.
Now you can type in the misspelled name of a card sleight on Google and be immediately presented with an 8 minute video of a teenage wunderkind teaching it. Jim Steinmeyer famously said “magicians guard an empty safe” but nowadays we guard an empty safe with a big hole in the side.
The relationship between Penn and Teller and The Magic Circle has developed to mythological levels now, to the point where they refuse to be members of what they consider to be a jumped up club full of posers, and the Circle insists that it wants nothing to do with the kind of irreverent spoilsports who give away the secrets to their tricks so freely. This relationship is excellent PR for everyone involved and exists despite the fact that whenever they are in London, Penn and Teller will visit the Circle as guests and they are accepted with open arms. One time they dropped in on the Circle’s Young Magicians Club and it was pretty much the highlight of those kids’ year. Every time they drop in like this, the collective membership of the club will start demanding that Penn and Teller be allowed to join, questioning whether what they do is really against the spirit of The Magic Circle’s rules or just against the letter, and they’ve done so much to forward the art, surely we could be flexible.
It’s weird that for a group of people supposedly well versed in deception and illusion, they can’t grasp a simple bit of PR subterfuge.
Jeff McBride did a live cast to the circle recently in association with the Society of American Magicians and he talked about his career and also about his mystery school which I’ll probably write a whole other blog about, but it’s essentially a school for magicians. The mystery school isn’t cheap, you can sign up for live stream courses or attend in person but just like buying a magic book you pay per lesson. I’ve never partaken myself but lots of people swear by it.
Meanwhile Penn and Teller also run a magic school, it’s called Fool Us and the coursework involves googling the things they say in their explanations to learn foundational principles of magic. Their course comes free with a Netflix subscription and whilst it requires a little more study and external reading, so did my degree and that was worthwhile.
The most fascinating difference between Jeff McBride and Penn and Teller is that while Jeff McBride’s worldview is deeply philosophical based upon various strains of eastern mysticism⁴ his approach to forwarding the magical arts is very much focussed on capital, wherein anyone wishing to learn secrets from the master must be willing to pay, in order to keep the school financially afloat. Penn and Teller meanwhile are libertarians, but have opted to redistribute the wealth of magic’s secrets by giving away knowledge for free and remaining financially stable by charging the borgoise to watch their magic shows in Vegas.
In the Deep Space Nine episode Equilibrium, guest starring Jeff McBride, his character Joran Belar is a manifestation of a secret, the secret being that in Dax’s culture, there is a made up statistic about only 1 in 1000 Trill being suitable for the very desirable process of symbiosis, when in fact it’s more like 50%. The people in charge restrict access to symbiosis to a very select few, when in fact they are merely trying to control a resource (the symbiotes). I’m not saying this is intended a metaphor for the tight control of secrets within magic to a selected few, but it’s quite easy to read it as such.
In the Babylon 5 Episode Day of the Dead, Rebo and Zooty are not quite as central to the plot of the show, but it is noted that they are often outspoken on matters which others wouldn’t talk about in public, but they want to give up showbiz in favour of politics because they feel like the things they speak up about are ignored as mere entertainment. That’s not even subtext, half the things Rebo says could have been lifted straight from Penn’s own podcast.
This whole post is about metaphors, and it got a little tangled along the way but in summation, I think in a futuristic society where magic was controlled by a small elite, Jeff would be amongst the elites in a tall palace drinking wine from some kind of bowl, and Penn would be leading a charge on the front gates of said palace, rallying the people to rise up and seize the means of prestidigitation.
Teller would be holding a placard.
And yet, like Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, these opposing ideologies met on the set of Fool Us, where Penn and Teller were in control, and they chose to spare Jeff, working together for the betterment of the magical arts.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is Bablyon 5 was better and J Michael Straczynski was robbed.
¹ One fascinating story I heard about the first series is that they filmed it in the UK mainly because if they had wanted to make it in America it would have been owned by whatever network it went out on, like how Showtime owned the rights to Bullshit, but in the UK the contracts weren’t as restrictive and so they could get a series under their belt and essentially own the rights, ensuring no network they approached could demand exclusivity.
² This concept of trick ownership is something I should really do into in more detail later.
³ Okay since I mentioned it and made it the post title I should probably explain that Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra is a key line from an episode of Star Trek the next generation in which Picard must cooperate with an alien whose language is entirely based on historical metaphors. As such even though the universal translator understands the simple words like “and” and “at” all the key information is the names of people and places from their culture, which have no direct translation. Darmok and Jalad are enemies who had to work together to survive at Tanagra and Picard eventually figures this out, just like regular viewers of Fool Us have probably read up a little on Robert Harbin and a few other name dropped figures from the history of magic. If only Picard had Google on his tricorder.
⁴ Now you know why I did the cultural appropriation post first