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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   1892 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 3, 2025

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So, what are you reading?

I’m finally on ‘The Far Side of the World’ – perhaps the most famous novel in the Aubrey/Maturin series.

Captain Jack Aubrey, expert sloth debaucher, knowingly recruits enough lunatics and mutineers to fill out the complement of the ‘Joyful’ Surprise, before pursuing an American cough ‘French’ Man of War around Cape Horn and into the Pacific.

And after spending nine novels vociferously proselytizing his hatred of alcohol abuse to anyone who will listen, Dr Stephen Maturin has now chewed, injected, snorted, smoked, enema’d, or otherwise ingested most drugs found anywhere in, on, or adjacent to, the entire Seven Seas.

Aware of his addiction to the laudanum from his own medicine chest (that somehow didn’t make it into the screenplay), junkie Maturin decides that the only sane course of action is to wean himself off with the aid of a new wonder drug; Cocaine.

And that’s before he tries to cover up a fellow officer’s cuckoldry.

Unhappily, Peter Weir somehow felt the need to rewrite the film version to appeal to a broader audience.

For shame.

I’m finally on ‘The Far Side of the World’

Give you joy on reaching the antipodal point on your circumnavigation of the series. I think The Far Side of the World is where O'Brian was at the height of his powers. The five novel sequence from The Thirteen-Gun Salute through the The Commodore is where I most like to get lost in though. One just flows into the the next.

junkie Maturin

To be fair to Maturin its clear he deals with chronic pain from his physical torture in HMS Surprise and the physiological torture by Diana.

It's quite clear his physical recovery was very slow from the bowling-green scene in The Commodore.

Even though the film could never live up to the novels, I have mixed feelings about a sequel. I think they still did a beautiful job, especially with the sound stage. I wish we could have had more of at least the same quality, but I'm afraid that any sequel moves would be a shameless cash grab at far lower quality.

The five novel sequence from The Thirteen-Gun Salute through the The Commodore is where I most like to get lost in though. One just flows into the the next.

The sequences are one off my favourite thing about the series. I really enjoyed The Mauritius Command > Desolation Island > Fortune of War > The Surgeon's Mate where it takes 4 novels for the protagonists to finally return to England for a debrief. I also like how where the novels begin and end is fairly inconsequential as the series covers most of a career over the Napoleonic wars and the War of 1812.

Even though the film could never live up to the novels, I have mixed feelings about a sequel. I think they still did a beautiful job, especially with the sound stage. I wish we could have had more of at least the same quality, but I'm afraid that any sequel moves would be a shameless cash grab at far lower quality.

I'd hope instead that as AI improves, film production costs will drop and it would become viable to make a film or tv series that can adequately portray naval life in the Age of Sail. It's historically been notoriously expensive to film things like this and I think it led to the end of the Hornblower TV Film series. (Which btw is up on YouTube)

My dream is to either have an updated streaming TV/Film series with a new cast, or complete AI generation with digital likenesses of Crowe and Bettany (which someone else wished for on The Motte a few weeks ago). There's so much material to mine in a 20 novel series, but I can see how it might not have mass appeal.

Edit:

To be fair to Maturin its clear he deals with chronic pain

I know. Others have said that Maturin has the most character development in the series and is perhaps the real lead character. His fallibility is why I like him. He is a leading physician and naturalist, invited to lecture at the Royal Society and salons in France. Perhaps the greatest intelligence agent of his Age.

And he is a simp for a very very particular type of woman, physically uncoordinated to the point where he would be drowned (or worse) many times over if he wasn't beloved by the crew and a drug addict. An idealist and despairing cynic with a deep deep hatred of authoritarianism. He is naive and ruthless all at once. Great character, and I have to sadly say that Paul Bettany didn't do him justice (probably for screenplay reasons).

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