After a year layoff, Spike's cult hit Deadliest Warrior is back with season three, bringing what series co-host Geoff Desmoulin calls "a ton of additions."
Debuting last week with an episode pitting George Washington against Napoleon Bonaparte, the show's seen many changes, both the cosmetic — several new in-show segments illustrating various aspects of the battles — and the major, specifically a new co-host in the form of Richard "Mack" Machowicz, who hosted Discovery's Future Weapons from 2006 to 2008.
Machowicz is replacing former co-host Max Geiger, and with 10 years experience as a Navy SEAL, he's the first permanent member of the cast with a military background.
In a December visit to Deadliest Warrior's Los Angeles set, Machowicz told Newsarama that his past will help viewers gain a greater insight into the mindset of the warriors being featured.
"Hopefully it will increase the takeaway value for the audience member," Machowicz said of his role on the show. "A little more history, a little more functionality of the weapons, a lot more of the warrior behind the weapon. How do they show up? What is their mentality? How do they approach strategy and tactics?"
When talking to the hosts, there seemed to be a much stronger focus on education in all aspects of Deadliest Warrior this season, though given that the show's popularity was forged from simulating bloody battlefield scenes, those involved aren't looking to lecture anyone with boring lessons.
"If there's one attribute that I have that allows me to be successful in doing what I do, I tend to take what people make complicated, and I simplify it," Machowicz said. "If we can make it simple, but effective, clean and concise — and fun — then you have a really 'infotaining' way to look at this stuff, and have a blast with it.
Desmoulin, the show's biomedical scientist, will also be upping the learning factor with a new laboratory sequence, explaining the scientific facts of the weekly matchups in a focused segment.
"Although they've let me talk about science in the past, it was always a bunch of hand-waving," Desmoulin said. "We take the meatiest science portion of the show, and I'm able break it down with diagrams, demonstrations, full-on explanations."
Armand Dorian is the show's medical consultant, and expressed excitment over getting similarly further in-depth for the current season.
"I've been able to start explaining more anatomical features, describing what's happening in the body a little bit more, throw out a little more complex medical conditions than just a straight up 'bullet in the head' kind of thing," Dorian said. "Who's ever been able to evaluate a crush injury from an elephant? Sure, it's going to hurt, sure, it's going to kill, but what actually happens?"
Dave Baker, who fashions the replica weapons used in the show's battle scenes, has made moves to increase historical accuracy.
"Everything on our show has to have a minimum of three, curated sources," Baker said. "Not three articles on Wikipedia. Last year we got in some fan trouble by using some stuff that maybe wasn't as curated as we'd like it to be."
Video game developer Robert Daly has also joined the show, running a simulation program calculating multiple intangibles for each contest. Daly is the studio head of Pipeworks Software, who produced last year's Deadliest Warrior video game.
Desmoulin said the changes were made based on feedback from the first two seasons.
"The format of the show was something that everyone wanted to see," Desmoulin said. "Everyone likes to see history, everyone likes to see science, everyone wants to see these warriors in action, and settle these hypothetical bar bets.
"The second season, we upped the gore factor, and I think we lost some people, the older viewers. That matters when you're talking about advertising dollars."
Yet Desmoulin stressed that the alterations to the show don't change Deadiest Warrior's central appeal — seeing different historical factions throw down in fantasy warfare.
"Anyone who's been watching the show is still going to be entertained because the sizzle is still there, we've just added more meat," he said.
Desmoulin said that many of season three's bouts were directly inspired by fan requests, specifically noting the season premiere and the upcoming clash between Genghis Khan and Hannibal. Later in the season, the show takes a much more modern bent with an installment depicting Saddam Hussein versus Pol Pot.
"We're introducing the idea of evil on the battlefield, and how that actually shows up," Machowicz said of the episode.
Another notable season three skirmish is between vampires and zombies, with 30 Days of Night writer Steve Niles appearing as a guest expert on the side of the vamps, and World War Z author Max Brooks representing the living dead. Spike hosted a panel at Comic-Con International: San Diego last week to promote the episode, which is scheduled to air on Sept. 14.
Deadliest Warrior airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on Spike. Tonight's episode: "Joan of Arc vs. William the Conqueror."
“A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.”
Those words of wisdom come from Napoleon Bonaparte, who knew a bit about the battlefield himself (that, and big hats). There’s a long military tradition of awarding combat veterans medals and campaign ribbons to commemorate their service, something that has become a staple of the American military, as well. In fact, just last month, the Department of Defense announced additional campaign stars for wear on the Iraq Campaign Medal and the Afghanistan Campaign Medal. Campaign stars are military decorations that denote participation in specific parts of a conflict — for these wars, this translates to identifying when a service member deployed overseas.
While scanning over the Defense Department’s press release for these campaign stars, my Orwellian Bone tingled. The phase breakdowns and names of both the Iraq war and Afghanistan war seemed a bit off to me and rather, well, misleading.
What’s that? Not familiar with the Orwellian Bone? It’s right next to the funny bone, but it doesn’t protrude quite as much. I first discovered mine when the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would be called the Department of Homeland Security. Fatherland and Motherland were already taken, or something.
For example, the second phase of the Iraq war, from May 2, 2003, to June 28, 2004, is referred to officially as the “Transition of Iraq.” Post-invasion Iraq was a transition, that much is true — a transition to disorder that included the disbandment of the entire Iraqi Army and mass looting across the country. And in 2004 and 2005? It seems to me there was a lot less “Iraqi Governance” going on than I.E.D. attacks.
As for Afghanistan, late 2006 to late 2009 has been decreed “Consolidation II.” I mean, really — does that terminology mean anything to anyone? What the Pentagon’s campaign description glosses over is that we were too tied up in Iraq to fully focus our efforts on the Taliban, so we tried to call a timeout and the enemy didn’t cooperate. Which was rather rude of them, now that I think about it.
I served in Iraq for 15 months, from late 2007 to early 2009, as a scout platoon leader and a targeting officer. I mainly remember a lot of sand, a lot of chai and the time that AK-47 rounds got close enough to my head to crack instead of whistle. According to official military history, though, these times are known as the “Iraqi Surge” and “Iraqi Sovereignty.” Eternal truth: war hearts irony. Because during my time in the surge, my platoon was chronically undermanned, and during my time in “Iraqi Sovereignty,” I saw mostly dependent Iraqi security force units. Not trying to be derogatory or cynical here; just trying to keep it real.
Anyway, after reading about the new campaign phases, the aforementioned Orwellian Bone tingle in my elbow returned, as disagreeable and absurdist as ever. These were my wars (well, one of them was), and my war hadn’t been quite so impersonal and official-sounding. So I took the liberty of rewriting the phase titles, in an attempt to more accurately capture what actually went down in the Iraqistan. Well, that, and to type the words “To hell with Newspeak.”
Iraq
Phase 1 (March 19, 2003, to May 1, 2003)
DoD Title: Liberation of Iraq
My Title: Lost: W.M.D.’s. Found: Lots of Old Def Leppard Shirts
Phase 2 (May 2, 2003, to June 28, 2004)
DoD Title: Transition of Iraq
My Title: “We Disbanded What?” A Whodunit Mystery
Phase 3 (June 29, 2004, to Dec. 15, 2005)
DoD Title: Iraqi Governance
My Title: The Last Throes of an Insurgency
Phase 4 (Dec. 16, 2005, to Jan. 9, 2007)
DoD Title: National Resolution
My Title: The Last Throes of an Insurgency, Part II
Phase 5 (Jan. 10, 2007, to Dec. 31, 2008)
DoD Title: Iraqi Surge
My Title: Counterinsurgency! It Works!
Phase 6 (Jan. 1, 2009, to Aug. 31, 2010)
DoD Title: Iraqi Sovereignty
My Title: Noncombat Operations (That Still Include Combat)
Phase 7 (Sept. 1, 2010, to present)
DoD Title: New Dawn
My Title: Another Day, Another Dollar
Afghanistan
Phase 1 (Sept. 11, 2001, to Nov. 30, 2001)
DoD Title: Liberation of Afghanistan
My Title: Operation American Fury
Phase 2 (Dec. 1, 2001, to Sept. 30, 2006)
DoD Title: Consolidation I
My Title: The Five-Year Tora Bora Facepalm
Phase 3 (Oct. 1, 2006, to Nov. 30, 2009)
DoD Title: Consolidation II
My Title: We Really Should’ve Read Up on the Soviet War in Afghanistan
Phase 4 (Dec. 1, 2009, to present)
DoD Title: Consolidation III
My Title: Counterinsurgency! It Doesn’t Work! (But Who Cares, Bin Laden’s Dead!)
So, there it is, Department of Defense: a list of suitable replacement phase titles to better reflect the highs and lows of these savage little wars of ours. It’s certainly not comprehensive, but hey — it’s a start. I humbly request that all royalty proceeds these earn be donated to medical science, for a study of why so many Americans can’t find their Orwellian Bone.
Since I opened this piece with a quote by a Frenchman (eh, Corsican, close enough), I’m going to finish it with one, as well. “War is too serious a matter,” Georges Clemenceau famously quipped, “to entrust to the generals.” (The fact that, contrary to popular attribution, he may have said “military men” rather than “generals” will be purposefully overlooked in the pursuit of greater profundity.) That statement, laced with so much ironic disdain, would seem to seek to extend its wisdom to Pentagon spin doctors in these modern times.
The power of language isn’t just a writer thing or an Orwell thing. It’s a human thing. Words already struggle mightily to capture the horrors, moral ambiguities and ethical black holes of war. But all too often, words are all we have to offer the ages, in order to prove we were here and we experienced and we learned. Let’s prove we learned something from the past decade of war. Let’s write what we mean and mean what we write, for the sake of oldspeak.
Matt Gallagher is the senior writing manager of the nonprofit organization Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA). He spent 15 months in Iraq with the Army as an armored cavalry officer. His memoir “Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War” was published in 2010 by Da Capo Press.
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