Part 334: Above and Beyond

Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE. A bumper post this week as I discuss my plans for the new financial year, the chaos in the Middle East, and the next entry on the list of greatest sci-fi shows…

Weekly Update

My legs are like jelly after a week of intense biking. We’ve explored some new areas, like Waverley and Catcliffe, and pushed ourselves to do more climbs. It’s always great to see progress and we’re already seeing the benefit as we can now climb hills on our bikes that we couldn’t just a few weeks ago.

The only downside to biking is having to leave Poppy on her own. We always make sure we’re not gone for too long, but whenever we leave she just looks so sad. It’s heartbreaking. I don’t think Poppy is herself generally due to the medication she started and then stopped. She has an overactive thyroid and we were told to give her meds twice a day. Although some of her symptoms calmed, the biggest adverse effect was lots of scratching around her cheeks and ears. On both sides of her face she now has cuts from scratching, and after talking with the vets again we’ve decided to stop the treatment and see if the scratching stops. It may be that she is sensitive or allergic to something in the meds, and we have to think about the quality of her life as she’s an elderly lady.

It’s no coincidence that with the upturn in weather, I’m feeling better in myself, apart from the usual stresses of work and generally being an adult. I’m going to try and reduce my antidepressant dose but it will have to be done very gradually. I’m taking 100mg of sertraline, whereas I used to take 200mg back in 2023 when I had an awful mental health crisis. This was around the time when I had to take a little break from posting weekly as I just wasn’t well enough mentally. 

In my life I can point to two times when I had a real dark time of it mentally; 2020, and then 2023. I thought 2020 was bad at the time, but 2023 was something I’d never wish on anyone.

If you are struggling with mental health, it’s important to remember that there’s always someone you can talk to, even if it’s just a stranger on a help line. I know some people have gained a lot of comfort from talking to ChatGPT as well. Don’t struggle alone.

Nicholas Brendon

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a show that sits close to my heart. I was roughly the same age as the characters as they moved through high school, and looking back, I think their struggles helped me navigate that period of my life.

Buffy had a way of taking the vague, ever-present anxieties of being a teenager and turning them into something tangible; literal monsters. It was never just about vampires or demons; it was about growing up, about that messy transition from childhood to adulthood, and all the fear and confusion that comes with it.

Despite everything that has come out over the years about Joss Whedon, the show still stands as one of the greatest of all time, for its storytelling, its character work, and its willingness to confront difficult themes head-on.

One of the core characters was Xander, played by Nicholas Brendon. Within the fandom, he’s never been universally loved. Some of the criticism aimed at him is valid as he could be insecure, entitled, and at times outright misogynistic. But some of it also feels disproportionate, more aggressive than it needs to be.

Because here’s the thing: flawless characters are boring. Xander’s flaws are precisely what made him feel real. He wasn’t the chosen one, he didn’t have supernatural powers; he was just a guy, muddling through, getting things wrong, and occasionally getting them right.

Unfortunately, that messiness wasn’t confined to the character. Brendon himself has struggled publicly with addiction and legal issues over the years. I don’t know the man, and I won’t pretend to, but what is out there doesn’t paint a particularly positive picture.

Which brings us back to that uncomfortable question: can you separate the art from the artist?

Because without Xander, Buffy wouldn’t have been the same. He grounded the show. He was the human perspective in a world full of the extraordinary.

When you look at Brendon’s life, it’s hard not to feel a sense of waste; of potential that never quite found its footing.

Now for someone who is just so incredibly stupid…

I mean, it wasn’t going to be anyone else was it?

Donald Trump has always mistaken volume for strength. He bellows, he pouts, he postures, and somewhere in that cacophony he seems to imagine the world will confuse theatrical aggression for leadership. It is the politics of a man who thinks swagger is a substitute for substance, as though sounding tough is the same thing as being competent. It never is. 

Strip away the noise and what remains is not some grand strategist or iron-willed statesman, but an insecure, petulant blowhard with the emotional steadiness of a pub bore who has mistaken his own reflection for a war cabinet.

It matters, because when a man like that sits in a position of enormous power, his stupidity does not remain a private embarrassment. It becomes a public hazard. And Trump’s recent complaints about NATO allies and Iran are a perfect example. Reuters reported on 17 March that Trump called NATO’s refusal to join the U.S.-Israeli operation against Iran a “very foolish mistake”, while pressing allies to help police the Strait of Hormuz. Three days later, Reuters reported that he escalated the rhetoric further, calling NATO allies “cowards” over their refusal to back the war effort. The wider picture, reported by AP and other outlets, is that the conflict has already caused large-scale casualties, regional instability, and major pressure on global energy supplies. (Reuters)

All this comes after he has stated the war is won, and after blasting the UK for wanting to enter a war once it’s already won, conveniently forgetting the US entering the First World War late in the day, and only entering the Second World War after it was attacked by Japan and after Germany declared war on the US. Let’s not also forget that the US made an absolute fortune selling weapons and supplies to the Allies fighting the Nazis before deciding to actually join the fighting. 

And this is where Trump reveals himself again, because the tone is less “commander-in-chief” and more “toxic man-child furious that nobody wants to join his stupid scheme”. He comes across like the angry, rejected wannabe alpha male who cannot believe the room has failed to applaud his performance. He launches or backs a catastrophic escalation, then starts snarling because other countries are not rushing to validate him, subsidise him, or share the consequences of his decisions. It is not serious. It is not disciplined. It is not even especially masculine, if we are being honest. It is just a brittle ego trying to hide behind fake tan and DARVO; Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.

What makes it even more grotesque is the contrast between Trump’s chest-thumping rhetoric and his own history when actual personal risk was involved. The Associated Press has reported that Trump received a series of Vietnam-era draft deferments, including one based on bone spurs. National Archives records also confirm the existence of his Selective Service documents. So yes, the line lands because it gets to the heart of the man: the difference between Vietnam and Iran is that Trump had a plan to get out of Vietnam. That is not just a joke at his expense. It is a summary of his entire character. When danger was his problem, he found the exit. When danger is somebody else’s problem, he discovers the language of toughness. (AP News)

That, in miniature, is Trumpism. It is borrowed courage. It is the political philosophy of a man forever demanding that other people do the bleeding while he does the boasting. He has spent years cultivating this cartoon image of himself as some kind of ultimate hard man, but the historical record is far less flattering. The man who dodged Vietnam now wants to wrap himself in the language of martial resolve. The man who avoided service wants to cosplay as a war leader. The man who never stops sneering at weakness seems permanently dependent on others to carry the real burden. He is seemingly so desperate to be respected as a leader of legend. He is so far from that, he’s not even in the same reality.

And that is why his rhetoric about NATO is so revealing. Alliances, in Trump’s mind, are not partnerships. They are stage props. He expects other countries to exist as backup dancers in the permanent musical of his own ego. If they say no, he does not ask whether his strategy is reckless, incoherent, illegal, counterproductive or deranged. He simply lashes out. The tantrum is the point. He cannot bear the thought that others might judge his ideas and conclude, quite reasonably, that they are idiotic. He’s like that guy, and we’ve all seen him, you know, the one who gets rejected by a woman and he then starts screaming “well, you’re ugly anyway!”

There is also a thick layer of hypocrisy smeared over the whole performance. Trump has long liked to market himself as the only adult in the room, the only one with “strength”, the only one who can impose order on chaos. But everywhere he goes, chaos seems to billow out behind him like smoke from an electrical fire. Even in the current Iran crisis, the reporting points to mixed signals, contradictory messaging, and uncertainty about what the actual endgame is supposed to be. Reuters described Trump pressing allies to support the maritime mission while simultaneously saying the U.S. did not need NATO’s help. AP reported that as of 21 March he was considering a possible military “wind down” even as Israeli officials signalled an escalation and Congress demanded a clearer strategy. That is not clarity. That is not resolve. That is a man wandering into a minefield while insisting everybody else is overreacting. (Reuters) 

Which brings me to the tortoise on top of a lamppost. The old line fits Trump almost too perfectly. We do not know how he got up there, he clearly cannot get down on his own, and it is painfully obvious to everyone watching that he does not belong there. That has always been Trump. A grotesque accident of politics somehow elevated into a role for which he is visibly unsuited. The presidency demands patience, discipline, curiosity, judgement, and at least a passing ability to understand consequences. Trump offers the opposite: vanity, grievance, ignorance, spite, and the attention span of a labrador in a butcher’s shop.

His defenders often mistake shamelessness for authenticity, but being shameless does not make a man honest. It just means he is willing to say stupid things with confidence. And confidence, in politics, is one of the most dangerous disguises stupidity can wear. Plenty of fools are certain. Plenty of idiots are loud. Plenty of destructive men are utterly convinced of their own genius. Trump belongs squarely in that tradition: the kind of fool who mistakes impulse for instinct and who thinks gut feeling is superior to expertise because his gut has never once had the decency to tell him to shut up.

That is what makes him so dangerous. A competent authoritarian would be frightening in one way. Trump is frightening in another. He combines malice with incompetence, vanity with ignorance, and power with a level of childish emotional fragility that would be embarrassing in a pub manager, never mind a head of state. He is not some grand master moving pieces around the board with terrifying precision. He is the bloke flipping the board over because he was losing, then screaming that everyone else is unfair.

And that is the thing people still too often miss. Trump is not terrifying because he is brilliant. He is terrifying because he is a moron with reach. He is the sort of man who can drag countries towards disaster not through cunning, but through ignorance, ego, and the endless need to look strong in front of people he despises and fears in equal measure. There is no nobility in that. No strategy. No doctrine worthy of the name. Just a vulgar, combustible little man stamping around on the world stage, demanding applause while setting fire to the scenery.

If history is kind, it will remember him not as a titan, not as a visionary, and certainly not as the alpha male of his own fantasies, but as what he so often appears to be: an angry mediocrity inflated by money, television, and a political culture degraded enough to mistake performative cruelty for strength. A tortoise on a lamppost with the nuclear codes would be funny if it were fiction. In real life, it is merely obscene.

The Greatest Science Fiction Shows

I’ve noticed a few posts recently listing sci-fi shows and movies with titles like “best ever” and “greatest of all time”.  I thought I’d enter the chat and list my top ten sci-fi shows of all time, starting at number ten and working my way to the best one of all over the next ten weeks.

Note: for a show to qualify, it has to have finished.

So far, I’ve covered:

10 – The Outer Limits

9 – The X-Files

On to number eight…

8 – Space: Above and Beyond (1995–1996)

Space: Above and Beyond was ahead of its time but feels a little dated when watched back now. It was also frustratingly cut short. Airing for just a single season in the mid-1990s, it never had the chance to fully realise its long-term vision, but what it did deliver remains one of the most grounded and emotionally resonant depictions of war in science fiction television.

Set in the 2060s, the series imagines humanity’s first interstellar war against a mysterious alien species known as the Chigs. Rather than focusing on admirals, politicians, or grand strategy, the show places its lens firmly on the individuals fighting the war. At the centre of the story is a squadron of Marine Corps space aviators known as the Wildcards, operating from the US space carrier Saratoga. 

From the outset, the tone is clear: this is not a glossy space opera about heroism and adventure. It is a story about survival, sacrifice, and the grinding reality of war.

What sets Space: Above and Beyond apart is how deliberately it avoids romanticising conflict. The Wildcards are not invincible heroes; they are young, flawed, inexperienced pilots thrown into an unforgiving war where losses are frequent and sometimes meaningless.

The show takes clear inspiration from World War II and Vietnam dramas, but transplants those ideas into a science fiction setting. Dogfights in space feel less like spectacle and more like aerial combat, with tension built around fuel, positioning, and the ever-present risk of not making it back.

Identity and the “In Vitros”

One of the most interesting threads running through the series is the presence of “In Vitros”; genetically engineered humans created artificially to serve as soldiers. They are bred to serve humanity, raised in controlled environments, and treated with suspicion or outright prejudice by “natural-born” humans.

This creates a powerful undercurrent throughout the show. Characters like Hawkes and McQueen represent the struggle for identity in a world that views them as tools rather than people. The discrimination faced by In Vitros mirrors real-world themes of racism, class division, and what it means to be considered fully human. This is something that good science fiction has always done, by using fictional examples to highlight the struggles of minority groups facing persecution. 

The Enemy You Don’t Understand

Unlike many science fiction series, the Chigs are not immediately humanised or explained. For much of the show, they remain an unknown and deeply unsettling enemy. You only see them in their full body armour, with their true appearance a secret until the last episode. 

Their motivations are unclear, their culture largely hidden, and their methods often brutal. Their soldiers dig up the graves of fallen human soldiers to mutilate the corpses. The theory is that they misunderstood human religions that talk of an afterlife, with the Chigs afraid that killed humans will reanimate after death.

This ambiguity works in the show’s favour. Rather than presenting a simple good-versus-evil conflict, Space: Above and Beyond leans into the fear of fighting an opponent you do not understand. The war feels chaotic, uncertain, and driven as much by misunderstanding as by intent.

Over time, hints emerge that the conflict may be more complicated than it first appears, suggesting that humanity itself may not be entirely blameless in how events unfolded. There was a remarkable level of restraint shown by the writers to not immediately answer every mystery.

A Show That Ended Too Soon

Perhaps the most enduring aspect of Space: Above and Beyond is the sense of what might have been. The show was clearly building toward a larger narrative about the origins of the war, the nature of the Chigs, and the future of humanity’s expansion into space.

Unfortunately, it was cancelled after just one season, leaving many of those threads unresolved.

And yet, in some ways, that abrupt ending adds to its legacy. Like the soldiers it portrays, the story feels incomplete, cut short before its time. There is no neat resolution, no triumphant conclusion and just the lingering sense of a conflict still unfolding.

Why It Still Matters

Space: Above and Beyond stands out for its restraint. It treats war not as an adventure, but as an experience that shapes and scars the people who endure it. We see PTSD treated seriously as marines are tortured and have to deal with those memories once freed. It also tackles loyalty, and how and why some orders should be disobeyed.

Long before shows like Battlestar Galactica (2004) brought a darker, more grounded tone to science fiction television, Space: Above and Beyond was already exploring similar territory. It asked difficult questions about duty, identity, and the cost of survival.

It may only have lasted a single season, but it left behind something rare: a science fiction series that feels less like escapism and more like a reflection of very real human experiences just set among the stars.

The Show That Quietly Set the Tone

It’s hard to talk about Space: Above and Beyond without acknowledging the shadow it casts over later science fiction, particularly Battlestar Galactica which I mentioned before.

That might sound like a bold claim at first glance. After all, Battlestar Galactica (2004) is often credited as the show that redefined television sci-fi, dragging it away from idealism and into something darker, more grounded, and more reflective of real-world conflict. But if you look closely, many of the elements that made Battlestar Galactica so compelling were already present, at least in embryonic form, in Space: Above and Beyond nearly a decade earlier.

The tone is the most obvious parallel. Both shows treat war not as spectacle, but as something grinding, uncertain, and deeply personal. Victory is never clean. Loss is frequent. Characters carry the psychological weight of what they’ve experienced, and that weight doesn’t conveniently disappear at the end of an episode.

There’s also the focus on the people inside the war machine. Rather than centering the narrative on high-level strategy or political leadership, both shows spend most of their time with those actually doing the fighting. In Space: Above and Beyond, it’s the Wildcards, young pilots trying to survive one mission at a time. In Galactica, it’s the crew of the fleet, soldiers and civilians alike, all struggling to endure under impossible circumstances.

Even the themes of identity and what it means to be human echo across both series. The In Vitros and the Silicates in Space: Above and Beyond, engineered, distrusted, and treated as expendable, feel like a clear thematic precursor to the Cylons. Both raise uncomfortable questions about artificial life, prejudice, and whether humanity’s definition of “human” is more about biology or about something deeper.

That’s not to say Battlestar Galactica directly copied Space: Above and Beyond. Rather, it feels like Space helped lay the groundwork for a different kind of science fiction, one that moved away from clean heroism and towards moral ambiguity, emotional realism, and the idea that the future might not be as tidy as we’d like to imagine.

The key difference is that Battlestar Galactica arrived at a time when television was ready for that shift. It had the budget, the platform, and the cultural moment behind it. Space: Above and Beyond, by contrast, arrived just a little too early.

But without shows willing to push in that direction, without series like Space: Above and Beyond testing the waters, it’s entirely possible that Battlestar Galactica would not have taken the form it did, or perhaps would not have been made at all.

Sometimes the most important shows aren’t the ones that succeed, but the ones that show what’s possible before the world is ready for it.

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What I’m Doing

Listening: Empire: Chess Team Book 8 by Jeremy Robinson and Sean Ellis.

Watching: –

Reading: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Financial Update

Assets

Premium Bonds: £3,000.00.

Stocks and Shares ISA: £126,518.72.

Fuck It Fund: £5,114.83.

Pensions: £111,310.27.

Residential Property Value: £243,430.00. 

Total Assets: £489,373.82.

Debts

Residential Mortgage: £174,369.33. 

Total Debts: £174,369.33.

Total Wealth: £315,004.49.

The market is taking a battering at the moment with, well, *gestures at the Middle East and The White House*

During Trump’s first term, I felt like we just had to survive those four years, and I feel the same about this term. Every so often there will be stupid people doing stupid things, just like the Truss fiasco a few years ago. The important point is to not react out of fear or panic. The seas will calm and the ship will steady itself. 

The new financial year is almost upon us and I need to start thinking about how I’m going to handle my ISA. I suspect my decision will be forced by the funds I have available. I would love to be able to throw £20k in there as soon as possible, but I think it’s going to have to happen in stages.

What are your plans for the new financial year? Let me know in the comments.

DISCLAIMER

The views and opinions in this blog are my own, and do not represent the views or opinions of my former, current, or future employers, nor should they be considered advice.

If you want personalised financial advice, seek an appropriate professional.  If you are in financial difficulty, seek advice via the resources below:

StepChange

MoneyHelper

Biolink 

You can now find all my social media pages by checking out my Biolink:

bio.link/davidscothern.