cryptonaut-in-exile

Dubious Cocktails & Genre Movie Night™: "Django Unchained"

2013-05-21T23:45:00.000-04:00

The Cocktail: Red Thunder, Cranberry/Pomegranate Juice, and Bacardi Rum w/ Pineapple Infusion
The Movie Genre: Exploitation

Django Unchained was movie I most wanted to see but didn't make it to the theaters for in 2012. So tonight, with a bit of booze to fuel the endeavor, I finally set about to see what I missed.

Let me start by saying this: I haven't watched a Tarantino movie yet that being a bit loaded didn't improve.

That may sound like damning with faint praise. It's not. There's drunk logic at work here. My drunk logic and the logic of a Tarantino's movies, which are exercises in lowered inhibitions, self-aggrandizement, bad decision-making, and altered reality. These are not weaknesses, not when guided by the cold-sober vision of a master craftsmen with an impeccable eye for the talent of actors who are not Quentin Tarantino. However, that Tarantino is a bad actor does not mean he should stop giving himself speaking roles in his own movies. Quite the opposite: his bad acting is the blemish needed when all the other actors are note-perfect and you might not realize acting is hard because they all inhabit their roles so perfectly and you need to be forced to appreciate, in the act of watching the movie, that you are, after all, just watching a ridiculously over-the-top revenge fantasy that's pushing your buttons. Because then you can more fully enjoy the act of enjoying the act of watching the movie. (See? Drunk logic.)

It's #49 on my flickchart.

The Unicorn and the Wasp - "I need to investigate. You just buttle off."

2013-05-21T20:00:00.000-04:00

The Unicorn and the Wasp (TV story) - Tardis Data Core, the Doctor Who Wiki

Season 4, Story 7 (Overall Series Story #194)

The Doctor convincing Agatha Christie she's the one to solve the murders.

The 1920s, a gathering at an English country house, with a murder. Oh, we're in Agatha Christie country now. Oh yes, with *the* Agatha Christie, even! After watching "Black Orchid" it seemed a natural pairing to view this New Who trip into familiar territory. The similarities pretty much stop at setting and the basic set up though: this story has an alien it, and nobody plays cricket. So, yeah, entirely different. I mean, Tegan ordered a Screwdriver at her party and Donna ordered Side Car! You can't tell me there's any connection between these two radically different stories. (Although, the Doctor tee-totaled both times ...)

I'm not sure what deeper themes we're going to be able to dig out of this one, but there's one well Ten and the companion went to several times: Rose trying to ape a Scots accent in "Tooth and Claw," Martha trotting out some "forsooth" and "verily" gibberish at Shakespeare, and here Donna tries to drop some posh "Spiffing! Top hole." on their hosts -- and each time the Doctor has to tamp down their enthusiasm with a bit of "No. Don't do that." Works every time. (If Rose, Martha, and Donna weren't all very different characters, we'd have to worry what interchangeability says about lack of variety; but, this isn't the difficulty some have identifying exactly what about Clara makes her a different character than Amelia Pond. Catherine Tate made Donna very much her own woman.)

With this story, you've got to choke down a Clue™ homage that somebody wanted to force in really bad, so bad we've got a character name Professor Peach getting killed in the library by a giant alien wasp with a section of lead pipe. Now, I understand the Professor had uncovered a secret that the giant alien wasp had motive to kill to keep secret, but did he really have to be named "Peach"? And, when you're a giant half-alien wasp disguised as a normal human, do you really need to go full wasp to wield a lead pipe? No, only if the writer is trying to collect on a bet or was dared to be so audacious. (Also insecure about it -- kids today with their video games might not know about Clue™, so better have Donna spell it out. Twice.) Luckily, the questioning of the suspects scenes are much more pluckily self-assured and willing to plant tongue firmly in cheek.

If the board game reference was too forced, this episode otherwise hits all the right notes. Well, until Donna attempts to comfort the jilted Christie by telling her how after her engagement ended in disaster, she was lucky enough to find the Doctor and he brought meaning back to her life. Earlier, Christie had chided her hostess for implying she was somehow incomplete without Mr. Christie. Yes, as Christie points out, a woman can make her own way in the world. She ought to have been lecturing Donna.

Despite expressing skepticism about finding any deeper themes, well ... we found some unfortunate sexism, but we also found another case of nurturing an artist. Eleven and Amy Pond will find themselves encouraging Vincent Van Gogh in much the same way Ten and Donna do Christie here. Dame Agatha doesn't get to flash forward to the year 5,000,000,000 to see her books are still in print, but both Donna and the Doctor make it clear her works have deep and lasting impact. Donna, in fact, can't help but make it abundantly clear by accidentally referring to works in Christie's future. (Luckily, some convenient amnesia undoes that.) Dickens, Shakespeare, Van Gogh, Agatha Christie (?!) ... well, the Doctor makes the case for her understanding humanity's motivations and using that understanding to craft mysteries that endure. And they have. Maybe we shouldn't dismiss her works quite so out of hand ...

Also, on the anti-religionist front, the speech when the Reverend is about to go full Vespiform he contemptuously dismisses the teachings of the Christian Fathers at the orphanage and their worship of a tribal Sky God. He, after all, knows a great deal more about the universe than they did.

Tennant, it's worth mentioning again, is like Tom Baker in that he brings so much energy and passion to every scene, it's genuinely fun to watch. The charades while he tries to expel the cyanide he was poisoned with, and his reactions to Donna's utter bollocksing her guesses based on his pantomiming is priceless. Those two worked so well together ... no companion since has had such a sparkling dynamic with the Doctor.

Have to admit, I'm not enough a Christie reader to have caught most of these myself, but there are tons of sly references and puns embedded in the script:

Image via ofmaraudersandtimelords

SCOTUS to rule on government prayer #secularism

2013-05-20T20:21:00.001-04:00

Court to rule on government prayer : SCOTUSblog:

Towns can have churches; churches can't have towns.

Returning for the first time in three decades to the constitutionality of saying prayers at the opening of a government meeting, the Supreme Court on Monday took on a case involving Town Board sessions in the upstate New York community named Greece, a city of about 100,000 people. For years, it followed the practice of having local clergy — mostly leaders of Christian congregations — recite prayers to start Town Board public meetings.

... [W]ill be heard and decided in the Term starting next October.

Because, apparently, news of the Bill of Rights still hasn't reached Greece, NY, or a thousand other towns across the U.S. where the Enlightenment is still eagerly awaited.

The Name of the Doctor - "Steal this one. The navigation system’s knackered but you’ll have much more fun."

2013-05-19T09:25:00.001-04:00

The Name of the Doctor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Series 7, Story 14 (Overall Series Story #239)

O! be some other name:
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title.
-- Romeo and Juliet

via magicmanula.tumbr.com

The one that was leaked. But, science (allegedly) has shown that spoilers don't actually spoil anything, so you won't hear any "It was ruined!" wailing out of me. Also because I resisted the urge to find a torrent or peek at a board where it was discussed, so I managed to keep myself in the dark to watch it live.

This is also the first time I was able to meet up with the Raleigh/Durham Doctor Who Meet Up group for a screening. It definitely adds to the experience to be in a room full of people who are really excited (Simon Pegg's words to heart) about the show and to hear all the different threads of conversations from different tables as the story of the Valeyard is explained in one corner, clarification of what we know about how River learned the Doctor's name in another, etc.

Each of the Moffat/Matt Smith seasons has been called, somewhere by someone, the most divisive of the new series yet. Of the blogs I read and communities I belong to, I find popular opinion to be generally approving and full of squee, but with an undercurrent of frustration and outright derisiveness from some of the more the critically (in the sense of being a critic as well as a fan) inclined. Whether attributed to the retrograde gender politics (a subject I've been too lax in criticizing myself), or the inconsistencies (e.g., the Doctor can save a falling River by catching her in the TARDIS, doesn't even bother to try to save falling Clara), or a lack of satisfaction with the season-long puzzles, with clues being doled out in dribs and drabs, winding through the otherwise one-off stories, it's not hard to see why there's a vocal minority of dissatisfied viewers. Many times, too, the complaints are along the lines of "there's too much being crammed in to one episode," but the two-parters have often been the most problematic of any season, with a few notable exceptions. We want them all to be as good as the Silence in the Library and Family of Blood two-parters, but those were the exceptions to the rule of mediocrity for the format. I'm not sure we'd want two-parters to be the solution to the cramming problem.

"The Name of the Doctor," has a lot riding on it to, in a sense, be the alchemical agent that transmutes the leaden series of episodes leading up to it into a season of gold. (Or, we can be more scientific than alchemical and say we are expecting NotD to be the seed that crystallizes the supersaturated solution that this season has been to this point.) Now, I want to be clear, that I've enjoyed the season as a whole, while I've been critical of certain lapses in logic and judgment, I think it has functioned successfully as a piece of entertainment despite those flaws. It will take a true bit of magic to wave away the Doctor's wildly inappropriate, borderline sexual assault on (married, lesbian) Jenny, or to undo the let's-stand-around-the-launch-pad-and-watch-this-rocket-take-off silliness, but the solution to the Clara mystery could redeem the bulk of the clue dropping and red herring waving. (I've been grading out the season assuming a satisfying answer; so, were it not, all the Clara episodes would drop a letter grade.) But, those complaints aside, I want to be clear that I don't love the show any less for being disappointed with elements of it.¹

The Great Intelligence prepares to take his sweet revenge.

So, this most recent, 'most divisive' series yet draws to an end. The mystery of Clara is solved and we learned that she was ... exactly what she seemed, a girl splintered across time, not a great-granddaughter, not anything to do with Rose's Bad Wolf ... just what the Doctor had learned and nothing more. It wasn't her identity that was the mystery, it was just the how she got to be all over time. The answer as presented makes a certain amount of sense, but something was missing: she went into the scar of the Doctor's travels to counteract the Great Intelligence's attempt to thwart the Doctor at every point in his timeline. We saw Clara and GI go in, but how she actually helped undo the damage of the GI all those times was unclear to me. For example, we know how she helped in "Asylum of the Daleks," but where was the GI in that? The flashing back to all those times she tried to get each iteration of The Doctor's attention never made it clear what she actually did vs. the GI? Maybe I missed something a re-watch will turn up?

William Hartnell's Doctor gets advice from Clara.

With one giant, glaring exception, I loved how this show continued and upped the ante on the trend of embracing and celebrating the Classic series. Hartnell's Doctor talking to a Clara, Troughton's Doctor bumping into her while he does his iconic bow-legged sprint, we saw all except 8 and 10 -- I think, and will revise here if I need to be corrected -- and not just as pictures flashed in the background, but archival footage and body doubles integrated into Clara's flashing through time and ending up in the collapsing time stream, her work done. The glaring exception? At least twice we saw that McCoy cliffhanger, the one I fumed about in my "Dragonfire" post. Burned off a ton of good will each time I was forced to remember that mess.

Moffat put one over on us good in this one. The mystery we thought was the big mystery was wrapped up fairly cleanly. But along comes a bigger, more mysterious mystery in the formidably grizzled visage of John Hurt, a mystery for which we'll have to wait at least six months to see the resolution. Since The Valeyard was mentioned in this episode, I think it's safe to assume that's not who this new/old/alternate Doctor is. Or not. I've heard numerous other theories: he's a splinter, a regeneration somehow cast off to do a job the Doctor couldn't do, presumably his role in ending the Time War; or, he's a regeneration between 8 and what we thought was 9; or, he's the original, from before the Doctor chose his name, so all the Doctors would need their numbers +1ed; or, he's just 8 gotten old. (But Clara said she saw all 11, so even though I didn't see the McGann Doctor, maybe I just missed it?)

As for the name, I think we all breathed easier once it was clear we weren't going to hear it. The one that was chosen represents the promise made, the other wasn't his choosing and really could only have been something like the Gallifreyan equivalent of Robert or Juan or Bertram or something and would have been had to played for laughs. (I mean, come on, if it were something like Thor or Loki that we'd attach some meaning to, that's a muddy rabbit hole to go down. Or if it were something with some of kind of power to describe or assign a role, He Who Will Rule or Dances With Time Wolves, that would have been unbearably hokey.)

But what Moffat has done by taking the "Not in the name of The Doctor" tack is open up the story to an examination of the Doctor's duty, his chosen purpose, and what exactly he had no choice to do to preserve peace and sanity. What's our madman with a box done, we wonder? That's a fundamentally more interesting question, I think, and one I'm eager to see the answer to unfold ...

Critical reaction round up:

The A.V. Club gave it a C+ and has the same issue I did with the nature of the conflict between the GI and Clara after she goes into the timestream.

The RadioTimes is, per usual, generous with its praise, focusing on Vastra's explanation that the time travel has always been possible in dreams. I purposely avoided talking about the conference call because, well, it was plot device I was willing to live with, but I wouldn't want it to be regular thing.

The Guardian calls it the best of the season, and we agree it is the best finale. Look, I like River, too, but there's no mention here of how all these women are suffering and, sort of, dying for the Doctor. I thought it was about time Matt Smith showed some genuine affection and distress over River. But, in so doing, he also made it all about it him. River is supposed to just suffer and forgive the Doctor for his callousness because ... his suffering is so much more meaningful?

IGN's review is sloppily edited with a repeated paragraph at the end which I trust they'll catch and clean soon -- glass-housed stone thrower, here. But it does acknowledge some of the issues with GI as the season's big bad while also calling it the best of the finales.

And, finally, here's the always interesting Philip Sandifer discussing the finale over at Slate.

^{1. But ... I'm ready for a new show runner and a new Doctor. I'm reading that season 8 is already being written and Matt Smith has confirmed he's on board. Disappointment isn't exactly the word that encompasses my feeling about that, but I think Moffat needs to step up in at least one way: he's got to make the Doctor less of a creepy stalker and have the show overall be less weird about women. So two things, really, but they're closely related. Strax, consistently reliable to provide comic relief, even has one of his moments undercut by that weird tension. "Surrender your women and intellectuals!" he orders upon arriving on Trenzalore. First of all, what does he want with either of those groups? But more importantly, did we really need a joke that implies they are separate groups?

I'll consider potential show runners and actors to the play the Doctor as a post, or posts, to fill the time between the finale and the 50th Anniversary Special.↩}

Black Orchid - "What do you do with a cocktail in a bath?" "Drink it, old boy. "

2013-05-17T23:27:00.000-04:00

BBC - Doctor Who Classic Episode Guide - Black Orchid - Details

Series 19, Story 4 (Overall Series Story #121)

This two-parter was not well-liked by the cast and enjoys a mixed reputation at best. Where praised, it's slight praise for being a bit of whimsy, a chance enjoy a country house party in 1925 with a couple of murders to solve, and as something a little outside the norm for the series -- having virtually no science fiction elements apart from the use of the TARDIS to clear the Doctor's good name and transport some characters from the railway station back to the house where the story occurred.

Mostly though, critical reaction finds it dull, far from being a Christie-level whodunit, and we are recommended to skip it.

I find both reactions fair enough and can't fault either. Personally, it's a treat to see the Doctor play cricket and for this lot of companions to relax a bit and enjoy some cocktails and dancing. The lovely Sarah Sutton wasn't done a lot of favors by the costuming department during her time on the show, so it's nice to see her get a chance to fancy dress flapper-style. (One can't help but feel for the actresses though, clearly the weather wasn't cooperating and they probably wished they had warm coats on.) As a Wodehouse fan, I also got a smile out of the reference to an Uncle Bertie Wooster. But, unless you are a die-hard fan, these don't amount to much of a reason to watch a TV show.

Were the mystery a proper mystery instead of one where we knew who the murderer was all along, there would be a case to make for the show being able to stand on its merits, but I'm afraid all we've really got is Doctor Who characters in a period piece. Adric chowing down, the ladies dancing (when they aren't screaming and fainting *eye roll*), and a few clumsy murders to sort out.

This seems like an opportune time to argue that the show can, and should, do more of this sort of thing. (I both mean, and don't only mean, shows like "The Unicorn and the Wasp"¹.) By "this sort of thing," I don't mean making a hash of a murder myster, what I'm getting at is the idea that the show's format allows for the characters to drop into other sorts of shows, genres other than sci-fi. Here, it's a whodunit, or a period drama, it can't quite settle on which. It ought to have been a better one of whatever it was, but still, it's a chance to do something besides have the Doctor be the Great and Grand Last of the Timelords Speechifying at Armies of Aliens and Entities With God-Like Powers, Striking Fear Into Their Hearts Because He Will Protect This Planet and the Universe. That character is unsustainable. It's fine in small doses for the really big events, but too large for proper drama over the long haul, and Doctor Who is in for the long haul.

Don't worry, Doctor, not *that* Master. (via tumblr)

Too often, the new series has done this sort of story by dropping the Doctor into, well, a soap. Now, there are times where that works. "Rose" kicked it all off that way, sort of. I recommend reading Sandifer's take on "Rose" for a much more in-depth analysis of the way RTD and co. played with our familiarity with different sorts of genres and narratives.

"Father's Day," "The Lodger," "The Power of Three," all drop the Doctor into bits of life that feel soap-y as well, but a little too soap-y. Those stories have more sci-fi (or fantasy) as elements, but it's really more the recurring incidence of the Doctor getting involved in the family life and relationships of his companions (if we can call Craig a "companion," which I guess we sort of can) that ties them all together, and it's a bit more than I'm fond of. Not General Hospital or Passions level soap-y, but I guess, based on the little I've seen, EastEnders-ish.

I'd prefer that the Doctor drop into a straightforward historical adventure, or, a Sherlock, or Law & Order, (not cross-over, just take the crime procedural format and make it its own) rather than straight soap. Unfortunately, reality TV (and so we get episodes like "Bad Wolf") and the new soaps are the dominant form of TV storytelling over the last decade or more, and so I suppose it's natural those would be the genres it would attempt to play with and subvert.

And the subversion's the thing. Nobody in their right mind would argue Doctor Who ought to try to be Law & Order, but I'm just enough of a TV junkie to suggest it can introduce a wild card into the format and help pull it apart and help show what makes that formula entertaining, and how it could be improved. I'm imagining the Doctor with Lenny Briscoe at a crime scene, turning the Briscoe & Curtis dynamic on its ear, but basically working to solve a murder, one with actual suspects, not the perpetrator handed to us on a silver platter as here in "Black Orchid."

^{1. I'm probably the last person to remark this, but, "The Unicorn and the Wasp" is, at least in set up, very similar to "Black Orchid". Same era, TUATW's 1926 vs. BO's 1925, the same sort of stumble into a party, a whodunit ensues ... I'll have re-watch that while BO is fresh in mind. ↩}

Clone Wars, Revisited

2013-05-16T08:19:00.000-04:00

Scientists Clone Human Embryos To Make Stem Cells : Shots - Health News : NPR:

Image via NPR

Scientists say they have, for the first time, cloned human embryos capable of producing embryonic stem cells.

The accomplishment is a long-sought step toward harnessing the potential power of embryonic stem cells to treat many human diseases. But the work also raises a host of ethical concerns.

Ethical concerns? Oh my, let's ask an organization renowned for sheltering an army of child molesters, and raking in a fortune by amassing Nazi gold, and running a money-laundering operation through their secrecy-shrouded private bank. Because those are the guys I think can offer some really valuable ethical insights based on their supernatural belief system.

And then there's how some of us take our analysis of Doctor Who kind of seriously ...

2013-05-13T22:19:00.000-04:00

Morphosis: Out of the Frye-ing pan:

c-i-e Pop Quiz: which sci-fi critic archetype in this image is a specialist in Doctor Who studies?

... this resonates so strongly with me partly because science fiction was something I fell in love with as a child-reader. I still love it; still write it and write about it. But I'm increasingly conscious of the ways in which the exercise is based upon a kind of structural hermeneutic inadequacy. 'Our most deeply satisfying responses are often made in childhood, to be seen later as immature over-reacting' is almost a too perfect thumbnail of the adult apprehension of SF; and SF criticism always a kind of running-to-catch-up uttering various post-facto justifications.

It's not really germane but, if someone said this to me face-to-face, as much as it's a thoughtful and provocative insight into the act and art of criticism, I'm pretty sure I couldn't resist saying: "I got y'r 'structural hermeneutic inadequacy' right here, buddy."

↬ Gerry Canavan

So, basically I need to stay off the internet all week? (Like that's going to happen.)

2013-05-12T20:21:00.001-04:00

The Doctor Who Finale Has Escaped Into The Wild - The Name Of The Doctor Is Out - Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movies and TV News and Rumors:

Image via Bleeding Cool

"So… Did anyone else get their pre-order early? This is a HUGE mistake via BBC America, one I’m very happy to be victimized by. I get to see Nightmare in Silver AND The Name of the Doctor early!

So, I feel like I have the awesome power of being able to spoil something really really big in the palm of my hands but I refuse sir, I REFUSE! Just know that The Name of the Doctor is a seriously game-changing episode. And that Clara’s explanation will BLOW classic Whovians out of the water."

I haven't looked. Yet. I'd like to just watch it and get the story first-hand, not mediated by internet yobbos, such as myself. But I might change my mind.

Don't worry. Either way, I won't say anything until the BBCA broadcast is complete.

But, good grief, the "No spoilers!" whining is going to be simply unbearable, isn't it?

Nightmare in Silver - "And don't blow up the planet!" "Is that something they're likely to do?"

2013-05-11T23:54:00.000-04:00

Nightmare in Silver - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Series 7, Story 13 (Overall Series Story #238)

via a tumblr (google image search doesn't make it easy to give credit where due)

There's a tricky bit of genre navigation I think we find ourselves faced with looking at a Neil Gaiman Doctor Who. We tend, I think, to call Doctor Who "science fiction," and I label my posts about it with the 'sci-fi' tag, but I suspect, and you won't have to look too far to find more accomplished blogger/critics than myself making that case in some detail, that Doctor Who is more properly categorized as science fantasy. With that in mind, Neil Gaiman looks like an excellent candidate to write a story that plays to the show's straddling of sci-fi and fantasy genres -- or at least the creative tension between the two.

I'll be frank, I haven't really been interested in anything Gaiman has done since Sandman, well, until "The Doctor's Wife". Not that I hate his work, it's just, for me, Sandman was enough of a good thing and nothing else seemed necessary. Now, I haven't read American Gods, but it just don't look appealing to me, so it may be that I haven't given him enough of a chance to win me over. But, I can't stand Tim Burton films (or, any since Beetlejuice, which -- again -- was enough of a good thing) and, fairly or not, I lump those two together in the same category. (I've probably just alienated anyone who might've read this far and should stop slagging wildly popular authors and directors now.)

Gaiman's last outing, The Doctor's Wife, was fine episode that I thought channeled some of the "The Brain of Morbius" vibe and successfully avoided a ruining the TARDIS as an element of the show's mythos. (There was some risk in going beyond mere anthropomorphizing and making it a walking, talking autonomous character, I think, that doing so would pull the series too far into the realm of fable and fantasy, unmooring it from the realm of sci-fi all together.) So, I didn't have too much concern about this episode leading up to it. He's shown he can do the show well.

That's not to say there weren't red flags. The kids, for one. The theme park setting, for another.

And then there's the whole Seven of Nine / Cyber of Eleven thing ...

Wait, that's not a problem. Nothing that calls to mind Seven is a problem.

Maybe I'm getting old, but why the Doctor didn't get those kids off the planet as soon as he sensed danger, which was almost straightaway, is beyond me. He should've, and could've popped them off back home and done their trip another day. But he didn't, and he got them home safely in the end, so all's well that ends well. I guess.

One of things I find myself looking for in these stories is whether or not the Doctor actually does anything clever to resolve the crisis he finds himself in. This time he certainly does. Well, he does something; actually, he pulls a Kirk. Which was dodgy storytelling when Kirk pulled a Kirk to defeat a supercomputer that time, or those times. But at least he's doing something: fighting off the Cyber Planner in an internal conflict that plays not only within his mind, but over a chess board, giving him a chance to exercise some Shatnerian acting chops. (And, to be fair, it's not exactly the Logic Bomb trope -- he tricks the Cyber-Planner into borrowing the processing resources of the Cybermen to slow them down.)

The kids weren't horrible, and the theme park setting was actually well-executed and not overly surreal. This episode didn't fail in the ways we might have reasonably assumed it might. But did it succeed?

Gaiman's mission, we were told, was to make the Cybermen scary again, and I think he pulled the right strings there. My young son watched with me tonight, and he did get scared, so I've got evidence to back up my suspicion they'd do the trick for younger viewers. I liked the way Gaiman established the only way to beat them was to utterly destroy any planet they were encountered on. "Cold War" a few weeks ago I think set us up nicely for this level of conflict. Mutual assured destruction, or a variation of it at least, played out in the stalemate between the Doctor and the Cyber-Planner, as well as on the galactic scale, where it left a starless hole in the sky.

So, if successful in that regard, in any other ways? It looked great. It had some funny lines. It gave some actors a chance to shine. For example: Clara got to a bit more this episode, getting put in charge of the platoon of punished buffoons gave her a chance to play an authority figure and Jenna Louise Coleman rose to the occasion. I think we get why the Emperor proposed to her. Warwick Davis, as Porridge/the Emperor, was also quite good.

It didn't occur to me until after a second viewing that Gaiman has done something rather crafty here by taking the Base Under Siege trope and playing two ways, where the Base is both Natty Longshoe's Comical Castle (it's got a moat and a drawbridge, but comical) and the Doctor's mind, and breaking the siege in the latter does the same for the former. Well played.

But, some of it was just too sloppy. Angie moronically seems to believe she's actually on the Moon in the opening scene, despite the fact we know she can see where the ride she's on ends once the camera shows us what's in the direction she's facing as she saying it. Also, the gravity and atmosphere should have been clues as well. Yes, this same bizarrely oblivious child is also the only one who figured out Porridge was slumming. She recognized him from the coin and the waxwork dummy when nobody else did. So is she super observant or a dunce? (Or, as a commenter has noted, an extremely bratty teen being obtuse for the sake of it?) And, what exactly was holding those three million Cybermen back? I loved the homage to "Tomb of the Cybermen," but the mites had humans to work with and that should have been enough. And Artie: the kid is in Chess Club and falls for the Fool's Mate?! Give me a break. Like the rocket not incinerating everyone in launch tower last week in "The Crimson Horror," some of this stuff is so stupid it's impossible to maintain suspension of disbelief. If the Doctor was written out of history and can't be found in any database, how were Angie and Artie able to find him (alongside Clara) in, y'know, history they found on the internet -- that is to say, in databases?

Oh, and let's ask Sheryl Sandberg, the author of Lean In, how she feels about the Doctor calling Clara "bossy."

The Cybermechanical Turk

Mystery of Clara observation: they are hammering the whole The-Doctor-must-act-uncomfortable-after-showing-affection-for-Clara thing so hard it's either the incest taboo or the most overworked red herring of the season.

All those mentions of the Cyberiad in this show, it had me looking through my bookshelves for an old copy of Stanislaw Lem's The Cyberiad I know I owned years ago. (The paperback edition with the giant blocky robot on the cover.) I don't know if it was just coincidence, or if Gaiman was paying tribute, or if there's some deeper reference there. It's depressing that one can get old enough to have read something, and later have it be just a fleeting memory. Like I said, getting old.

City of Death - "I say, what a wonderful butler! He's so violent!"

2013-05-07T20:16:00.000-04:00

BBC - Doctor Who Classic Episode Guide - City of Death - Details

Series 17, Story 2 (Overall Series Story #105)

Scaroth, getting the DW version of the "You are our only hope"
speech before getting splintered across time.

This is the one ... well, at least one of the ones ... everybody says is a must-see Tom Baker classic. It's the one with John Cleese in it after all! The thing is, I don't remember actually liking it that much. It's been ages since I watched it so settling in for a re-watch, I'm hoping to discover whatever I found tedious and disappointing about it all those years ago on the first couple times watching was in my mind and not actually faults with the story.

Critiquing the TARDIS as art, hah! How ridiculous is that, amirite?
Wait a minute ... *questions own life*

Frankly, I don't remember much about it at all. In the Fourth Doctor retrospective broadcast as part of the Doctors Revisited series, Moffatt selected a clip from this one as an example of Tom Baker's ability to impose his character on a situation (or control the narrative?) by force of will and charm. And Baker does it brilliantly. With that big, toothy grin and the wide eyes, he really sells that he disarm, figuratively, his captors by being sort of outrageous and presumptive. (Can't help but wonder if Derren Brown's advice about how to handle aggressive situations isn't in some way just a little bit inspired by Tom Baker.) I remember the brief Cleese cameo, a bunch of Mona Lisas, that Romana II was the companion, and a bit about Count Scarlioni being Scaroth the Jagaroth, splintered throughout time -- perhaps like Clara Oswin Oswald? (Nah, that theory's a non-starter for Series 7, right?)

It turns out my bad memories weren't entirely inaccurate, but all the bad ones were almost all from Episode One. It's really not a bad story on the whole, quite the opposite. It's just, I don't think they knew what to do with themselves in Paris; so, they had Tom and Lalla run across a bunch of streets to get places in a hurry. There's a lot of street crossing and Metro riding that definitely establishes the setting. We get it, you're filming in Paris, but if you're going to film your actors on the Metro, maybe just don't have them sitting there looking self-conscious about their costumes? (Although, to be fair, one of my favorite lines is in an early Metro scene. Romana: "Where are we going?" The Doctor: "Do you mean geographically or philosophically?" Romana: "Philosophically." The Doctor: "Then we're going to lunch.")

This story owns the record for most scenes of street crossings.

Repetition works against Episode One in other ways. During the first experiment scene in the lab at the chateau, we are shown how Scarlioni's working the professor like a dog, keeping imprisoned and exhausted, and also telling him about the importance of time. Count Scarlioni says "time" a lot. A lot, a lot in that first scene. Then, after a brief scene of The Doctor and Leela crossing streets or something, we have yet another scene where he's forcing the professor to run another experiment. It's almost as much of a slog for us as it is for the character at this point. Then there's a couple time slips, so in addition to watching our heroes cross the road several times, we also get to watch a few of their bits a of dialogue a second time through. And, there's that seemingly interminable stroll after they leave the Louvre where Duggan is following them, and following them, and following them. Again, yes, we get that they're being followed through the streets of Paris. Enough.

But after all that, things really do pick up and we get into the investigation of what the Count is up to, and how important it is to stop him. (Odd there, how the Doctor is callously indifferent to the fate of the Jagaroth race, when we've seen him so torn up about whether to do away with the Daleks. "The universe won't miss them," he utters offhandedly.) The trip to Da Vinci's room, the discovery of the other Mona Lisa's, all that sleuthing and adventuring works well. Romana/Lalla Ward's charm is endearing and you can tell The Doctor/Tom Baker is having the time of his life with her.

One of the key themes of the series is also played out in this story. Both the professor and the Countess are guilty of putting self-interest ahead of an understanding of what they're doing, and what they're enabling, by not asking questions. "Where does the money come from?" is truly one of the most important questions we need to be asking, all of us, all the time. The professor, a scientist, ought to know the importance of asking questions, it's a moral failing not to. He may have had virtuous motivations when he started with Scarlioni, but he clearly has let his ambition and vanity turn him into a witting dupe.

This theme of caution about scientists and technocrats, not because they do science and not of science itself, but because they do science in systems lacking controls and accountability to the truth and social justice, runs through Doctor Who across the decades.

Horror of Fang Rock - "Don't fire until you see the green of its tentacles."

2013-05-05T13:49:00.003-04:00

Horror of Fang Rock (TV story) - Tardis Data Core, the Doctor Who Wiki

Series 15, Story 1 (Overall Series Story #92)

The superstitious and the 'modern' face an alien invader in a lighthouse off the coast of England in the early 1900s, but every human in this story meets the same fate, eventually. Reuben ("Stubborn old mule."), Vince, and Ben, are the crew of an electric lighthouse with nothing much to do but chat about the virtues of oil versus electricity for powering lighthouses until a red object, witnessed by Vince, streaks across the sky and crashes to Earth. Shortly thereafter, a cold fog rolls in, they experience power interruptions, and Ben has gone missing just as the Doctor and Leela turn up, slightly off course from their planned arrival in Brighton.

A shipwreck brings some upper class toffs for the Doctor to barely tolerate. Their arrival also brings a subplot about the incompetence and criminal scheming of one of their number. Leela's threat to cut the heart of the dangerously stupid, entitled, and arrogant one, Palmerdale, and the Doctor's smiling reaction to her threat may be a best thing I've seen on Doctor Who in a while. This is another episode where Leela shines. Her savage background is a handy way to send up bogus civility and prudish mores, as she does when asking for some clothes, men's will do fine thanks, and immediately starts unbuttoning to the shock of poor Vince who doesn't get to socialize much with womenfolk.

Leela has enough of her screaming and fainting.

The atmosphere is brilliantly realized. We're immersed in thick fog, dark shadows, and the sound of waves crashing against the rocks is punctuated by the deep bass of the fog horn, sound that gets you in the midsection and makes you uneasy almost without realizing it. The fog and dark help make this a claustrophobic story. It's as tight as any with, I think, only five different settings: the lamp room (and surrounding catwalk), crew room, Reuben's room, the boiler room, the stairway, and the rocky immediate surroundings.

... O chill clutch on our breath--
We thought how ill-chance came to all
Who kept the Flannan Light:
And how the rock had been the death
Of many a likely lad:
How six had come to a sudden end
And three had gone stark mad ...
- Excerpt from "Flannan Isle" by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

The Doctor quotes Leela a different passage as they depart, the Rutan menace dealt with thanks to Palmerdale's diamond stash and the Doctor's ingenuity, I just thought this worked well to establish the mood as well.

There's nothing to complain about in this story. It's a showcase for Leela, the Doctor is engaged and decisive in the resolution (as is far too often not the case), and the story moves along briskly layering the Rutan's strategic retreat from the Sontaran's over the machinations of Palmerdale and, to a lesser extent Col. Skinsale. We see a thoughtful bit of interplay between the young and the old, the superstitious and the progressive, in the early going, giving us a sense of the lives and times of the crew of the lighthouse that makes them more than just Rutan fodder later. The visuals and audio effects support the story and the atmosphere quite well, partly because of the limited scope. It all comes together nicely with the reference to Gibson's poem like a bow tied on top. Following "The Talons of Wen Chiang," it would've natural to expect a let down, and while Adelaide's hysterics are annoying, they're dealt with hilariously; it's really only that the supporting characters aren't quite as dynamic and colorful as some of the other classics from this era where this one falls even a bit short.

The Crimson Horror - "Would it be impolite to ask why you and Mr. Sweet are petrifying your workforce with diluted prehistoric leech venom?"

2013-05-04T22:06:00.000-04:00

The Crimson Horror | Wikipedia

Series 7, Story 12 (Overall Series Story #237)

The 50th Anniversary special is looming now. It's still several months away, but only two episodes after this remain in Series 7 to hold us over until The Event. I'm not sure there's quite as much excitement out on the web for this one, the 100th since the series returned in 2005, as there has been for the previous episodes this season, although I feel, for a number of reasons, there should be.

First and foremost, the legendary Dame Diana Rigg stars, and that's something I think we look at and wonder why it's only just happening now?! It's 2013, for crying out loud; The Avengers brought her to fame in 1965! However, in terms of excitement among the younger sector of the fanbase, it seems she's not exactly buzzworthy. Fair enough. They just don't know how lucky they are.

Who, as an aside, is the modern day Diana Rigg? Who lights up the small screen the way she did as Mrs. Peel in a hip, sci-fi adventure show? Back in the Alias days, Jennifer Garner would've been an obvious candidate (though lacking the sharp wit), and Sarah Michelle Gellar's Buffy probably owed a little to Ms. Rigg, but nobody else is leaping to mind to fill that brainy, sexy, cool, and witty role. Jenna Louise Coleman, you might suggest? Or Karen Gillan before her? Well, sure, both have some of the qualities to one degree or another, but Doctor Who probably isn't quite the right genre/format for a Mrs. Peel -- although with the River Song character we get pretty close.

Zoe was a charming little knock-off.

The other chief reason for anticipating TCH is the return of Madame Vastra, Jenny, and everyone's favorite potato, Strax. There's also the fact this one was written by the multi-talented Mark Gatiss, who most recently authored "Cold War," for Who and most notably before that, "The Unquiet Dead".

Working against fan excitement, I perceive, a fair amount of Clara's Mystery Fatigue setting in. Lots of crazy theories floating around. Some of them look reasonable based on the clues unearthed, but we're spinning our wheels waiting for substantive new information with which to work. There's also Neil Gaiman's Cyberman outing lurking just over the horizon, so this episode finds itself almost an unwelcome delay before we get to one that is so eagerly awaited.

So, Yorkshire, 1893. Remember, The Snowmen was set in December, 1892, so Clara's just missing her earlier self, at least in terms of timeframe. With a Victorian England setting, the first thing I wonder is, are there other incarnations of the Doctor running around that we know about from past stories and I'm surprised to find, upon initial investigation, that -- at least in terms of the TV stories -- we haven't spent much time in the 1890s, if any. Lots of audio stories were set in the decade, but I can't speak with any knowledge about those. I thought of "Talons" first, but that was set in London, 1889. "Tooth & Claw" was set twenty years prior to that. "The Unquiet Dead" was ten years earlier than that. "The Horror of Fang Rock" is listed as being set in the 1900s.

The other thing about the time and subject matter of this episode is it should look very familiar to anyone even passing familiar with labor history. The Pullman Strike was 1894 which, while not an exact match, certainly puts Sweetville in the same economic milieu, so I think it'll be worth having at least the notion in mind to watch for commentary on capitalist paternalism in this episode.

You can probably find tons of faults with my commentaries, but you
can't fault me for not having some research material for context on hand!

Of course, as an American, I immediately thought of our most famous company town, but Doctor Who being English (or Welsh, I suppose) it's more likely we'll want to be cognizant of the Cadbury chocolatiers' Bournville as well as Port Sunlight, the company town of soap magnates the Lever brothers. (If the name Lever makes you think of giant multi-national conglomerates, it should. The Lever brothers eventually merged with some Dutch spun grease¹ mongers to form what has become the ubiquitous Unilever.) Notebooks out, Marxists! We've got something to sink our teeth into here.

Always on the lookout for humanist themes, I can't help but note Mrs. Gillyflower's use of the phrase "the city upon a hill," which we most vividly remember via Reagan and Kennedy, who of course got it from the Winthrop sermon to the Pilgrims in 1630 as he called back to the language of Matthew 5:14. It's a nifty little subversion to have Gillyflower preaching to a bunch of gullible maroons that they can be elites by joining her, effectively folding the original sermon on the virtues of suffering into her plan to inflict suffering upon others to serve her ends.

Of course, it's asking a lot of show that has a bunch of people standing around a launching rocket ship in an enclosed space not getting so much as an eyelash singed to deliver a really effective critique of the use of religion by cynical plutocrats to control and subjugate the working class. So we might be better served figuring out how this story serves the season's Clara mystery, if at all.

Significantly, the Doctor mutters that the parasite probably had some help (Great Intelligence) surviving into the modern world from the days the Silurians ruled the Earth. Why the GI would want the Crimson Horror to succeed ... ? Is this just one of a scatter-shot myriad of plans it's hoping it just needs one to succeed to destroy humanity? This kind of byzantine, overly complex plotting calls to mind the Doctor's other overly complicated plot-hatching nemesis, the Master.

Perhaps because my pet theory of the season is that Clara is the Doctor's great-granddaughter via a Chameleon-arched Susan I'm just looking for evidence to back it up, but notice the difference in how the Doctor smooches the ladies in this story. Three times he plants a kiss on someone: first Jenny, and it's a bend her over backward lay a big one her smooch that ends with him getting slapped and liking it (Oi, verging into Fifty Shades of Please Not In Doctor Who territory); later, he kisses Clara in a moment of happy pride, but he kisses her chastely on the forehead -- like a grandfather, eh? The third kiss does nothing to support my theory (not mine originally, just one of many I've read, which I'm thinking I'll mash up with the Rose/Bad Wolf theorizing and posit Rose is behind him meeting up with great-granddaughter), when he kisses Ada on the cheek, so nothing to see here let's move on ...

In the closing scene -- is it too late to mention this is full of spoilers and you shouldn't have even started it if you haven't seen it yet? Yeah, more spoilers coming up -- we learn that the children for whom Clara is nannying have managed to find pictures of Clara aboard the 1980s Soviet submarine, in the 1970s with the paranormal investigators, and a portrait of Clara in Victorian London from when she was a nanny in previous incarnation, a stunning find for her. But, more annoyingly, an absolutely mind-blowing find by these precocious youngsters who've managed to track these photos down since what was for them, what, yesterday? (Not sure we know how long it's been since present day Clara popped out in the TARDIS, but the kids clearly haven't aged much, so it's not like they've spent a lifetime gathering this evidence of her time travels.)

Busted.

There's a lot to like about this episode, but much of what I'm seeing it given credit for I would've chalked up to the production crew having fun pinching a bit of the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes films -- from the incidental music to they style of the flashback exposition sequence. Ah well, as they say, everything's a remix.

I'll certainly watch this again and enjoy it. Diana Rigg really gets into the role and is delight to watch. One imagines it must have been tremendous fun for her to camp it up and have her daughter there with her to play off of. Matt Smith's Frankenberry act as a red venom reject is grade A mugging and stomping, bet you never thought you'd see the Doctor quite like that? I didn't. Which reminds me, did the Doctor actually do anything here besides get himself and Clara captured so they had to be rescued by the Madame Vastra squad? Would Vastra, Jenny, and Strax have handled this all on their own?

And what was the Doctor planning to do with Clara in London immediately after that era's Clara's death?

Looks like we'll have to tune in next week to find out more ...

^{1. "Spun grease" is how my family referred to margarine when I was growing up. My grandfather was partial to cheap, disgusting alternatives for things that tasted good -- he'd buy maple syrup, but cut it with corn syrup to make it last longer, store brand margarine instead of Land o' Lakes butter, that sort of thing -- so my grandmother used to needle him by correcting us if we ever asked for the butter to be passed at the dinner table by pointing out she could only pass the spun grease, there was no butter to be had. ↩}

Philosophical review of Balloon Pop Outlaw Black By Patricia Lockwood

2013-05-03T13:44:00.000-04:00

Balloon Pop Outlaw Black By Patricia Lockwood - The Rumpus.net:

Poetry can explore philosophical ideas that are too abstract or chaotic for the usual grammar of reason. As the moorings of human culture and civilization are dislodged from place and nation and as art culture and consumer culture devour each other in Escherian permutations of natural selection while physicists discover mysteries where they used to derive laws, poetry becomes more relevant as a tool for understanding what is going on around us ... What can we know about the things in our lives? What is the relationship between the thing and its properties? How do things possess their properties? ... Lockwood leverages the philosophical capacity of poetry to explore how mass media, the fluidity of quantum physics, and the idea of precession of simulacra, destabilize the idea of “properties,” and how that destabilization changes the relationship between the things and the properties that define them. Along the way, she writes strange, brilliant, fantastic poems.

This is on my "to read" list, but I haven't got to it yet. It should follow naturally from my current reading of TARDIS Eruditorum though. How can we know Doctor Who? Perhaps Lockwood's poetic examination of Popeye can help us suss mysteries like this out.

Read: "The Last of the Late Great Gorilla-Suit Actors"

Happy 80th Willie!

2013-04-30T07:00:00.000-04:00

If I were President, I'd find an excuse to pin a medal on the Red-Headed Stranger. He may be a part outlaw, part fool, part genius, part Coyote? Or he may just be a good ol' boy who's been true to himself, flaws-n-all, and enriched us all with decades of great music.

Cheers, Willie. Here's hoping you enjoy many more years making music with your friends.

Jason Collins sets the stage for Lindsey Graham (similar qualifiers apply).

2013-04-29T14:45:00.000-04:00

Jason Collins reveals he is gay: Inside SI's interview - The Magazine - Jon Wertheim - SI.com:

Jason Collins image via SI.com

Last Wednesday Collins invited two Sports Illustrated writers to his home. With both solemnity and humor (as well as a nervous pause to make sure his backyard pool wasn't overflowing), he began crafting today's account, a public declaration that he is gay.

At some point the idea of having no openly gay athletes in a league might sound as unimaginable as a ball field segregated by race. But today Collins becomes the first active male athlete in a major U.S. team sport to come out of the closet. Yes, that's a lot of qualifiers. Yes, it may be an artificial construct. But it is a milestone. Tens of thousands of men have played in the NFL, NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball. Until today none had expressed his homosexuality before retirement.

It took so long it's almost hard to believe it hasn't been done already, not by a guy in one of the Big Four -- MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL.

I had hoped an MLB player would be first, and I suspect it will now be very soon as Jason Collins shows it's really not that big a deal.

I mean, it's a big deal. It's a big f'ing deal. It's a big deal today and it's a big deal that it happened. As a society though, we've largely moved beyond this being an issue for any but the most retrograde among us. Sure, some of those folks are in positions of power, disproportionately so, and while the percentages are down, in raw numbers, there are a lot of bigots out there still. But, like other manifestations of cowardice and self-loathing -- misogyny, racism, fundamentalist religion, "Shall not be infringed" shouting, etc. -- homophobia is something for which the majority of people feel sorry and ashamed for those who cling to it. So when I say it's not that big a deal, I think I could more accurately say, "It won't be long before we all wonder what the big deal was and why it took so long."

Mr. Collins has taken a brave, undiminishable step and, I'm sure, has won millions of new fans in so doing. Here's hoping his teammates, his team's management and ownership, and the fans have his back, because he's bound to get some ugly mail.

The moment I can't wait to see: when some unabashed bigot brings a nasty sign to a game, or heckles him for being gay, and the fans around that guy give him the old Klingon discommendation. And maybe "accidentally" spill their beers on him.

Update: Cleaning up some typos, I realized I was assuming Mr. Collins will actually have a team next year. I looked at his stats and that might be a generous assumption. He may only be an active player in that he hasn't officially resigned yet.

Good grief, Mississippi, don't give the NC GOP any other ideas about how to force religion down our throats. #secularism

2013-04-28T11:30:00.003-04:00

Mississippi School Forces Students To Listen To Christian Lecture, Teachers Block Exits | Addicting Info:

Image via WAFB.com

Northwest Rankin High School in Flowood, Mississippi is under fire for allegedly forcing its students to attend and listen to Christian lectures during three assemblies held in April alone. Worse yet, students were barred from leaving and teachers blocked the exits to prevent any of them from doing so. One student was able to film one of the assemblies. As a result, a lawsuit has been filed on behalf of the students by the American Humanist Association.

You know, Mississippi, in some parts of the world that called Sharia Law. You know what that makes you, right? Christian Taliban, Mississippi Chapter.

Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS - "I think I'm more scared of you than anything else on that Tardis right now."

2013-04-27T21:50:00.000-04:00

Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS | Wikipedia

Series 7, Story 11 (Overall Series Story #236)

The scent of fan service is strong on this one. So, as a fan not above being serviced a bit, I say, "Bring it." You guys, you know I'm game for a show that's going to show us more of the TARDIS than we've ever seen before (which reminds me I need to re-watch "The Invasion of Time") when I've got one of these ...

... on hand.

Of course, the fear is that not everyone has one of those, or even wants one, and those that don't might not be as stoked to delve into Heart of Nerdness. Nor should they have to be to enjoy an episode.

There's also the recent trend of personifying the TARDIS and treating it as a character with its own motives. Is the TARDIS a simply a machine, or a machine that happens to contain an intelligence, or an AI that happens to be a time machine/space ship? Neil Gaiman's "The Doctor's Wife" presented us a TARDIS that is certainly more than a machine, but was that really what the TARDIS is? I'm a little skeptical about the wisdom of making the TARDIS more than a ship. Sure, it's an amazing ship, a fantastical ship even. But ... I like it to be feat of engineering, not an autonomous character. I'm fine with the Doctor treating like a person, but I'm less comfortable, with it actually being a person.

I'm also not sure how I feel about it possibly containing a ... um ... mountain range?

Wood-paneled atlernate control room? Sure.

Candle-lit study console room? I'm down with that.

In order for this episode to succeed, it's got to do four things: first, it's got to be a real story, not just a bit of fan service; second, it's got satisfy fans titillated by the title and eager for the tour; third, it doesn't need to solve the mystery of Clara, but given the way this season is constructed, it's got to give us a meaningful clue, or at least do something besides rehash the same clues we've already seen -- somebody needs to learn something they didn't already know, whether it's the viewer or one of the characters, we need something; and, finally, it can't make the TARDIS something it's not ... and here I'm worried about the monsters that appear to be lurking within because we've never had any reason to believe the TARDIS is a prison ship, carrying monsters villains the Doctor didn't know what else to do but lock away, nor do I think it's reasonable to make them some aspect of the TARDIS itself, so whatever the explanation for them is, it'd better be good.

Pre-show prefatory remarks out of the way, let's watch the show and see whether it succeeds or fails ...

1 - Real story? Well, it's the dirtiest trick in the sci-fi writer's bag, the reset button. Stuff happens and then wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey, no it didn't. Well it did a little, because one big brother found his last shred of decency. ST:TNG did this better, but this wasn't the worst of its kind. Partial credit.

2 - Did we see enough of the TARDIS to satisfy our nerd hunger? Yes. The library was a bit of showing off and good on the Doctor for it. And I loved how the audio of past Doctors was weaved in as echoes floated around. Heard Tom Baker's voice, and Eccleston's, and probably missed others I'll catch on re-watch. The mountains were an illusion and the Eye of Harmony looked damned good, so yes, I'm quite pleased with how that turned out.

3 - Meaningful clues? Well, half way here. I think we already knew Clara doesn't know if she's a "trick or trap," but I think that was the closest we'll get to confirmation she's not behind her own mystery. Clara finds out the Doctor's name. Then, of course, wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey, no she didn't. Ugh. More on secrets in a moment. But I won't give demerits or points for this one.

4 - The TARDIS is not overly anthropomorphized, or timelordopomorphized, whatever, and the monsters aren't prisoners or some dark secret about how the TARDIS was made or anything like that, so good.

Based on my pre-watch criteria, I'll call this one a success, but mostly on the TARDIS reveal front because it was cool enough to outweigh the stupid reset button ending.

But let's come back to the idea that secrets are good, that secrets keep us safe and are necessary. As a pseudonymous writer, clearly I value some level of privacy. But here's the thing, I don't think it should be necessary for atheists and pro-union progressives to have to be very careful about who they let know who they are because some employers don't look kindly on the latter or the former and a fellow needs to be able to work and provide for his family with fear of reprisals or prejudice. What I do and and say here I've always felt has to be judged on its merits, the words and pictures on the screen and nothing else. Convincing, or at least persuasive, or not, based on solely on what's on the page, not on any kind of credentials or personal authority. The decision to use a pseudonym was made over thirteen years ago and I've never had reason to change my mind.

In the Doctor Who universe though, or really in just about any fictional universe, I'm inclined to think the the storyteller's duty is to help us imagine a world we can make that is as good as it can be. Even dystopian fiction serves this purpose. The theme of every story, at core, if not about striving for justice, for a moral perfection we may never attain but can improve ourselves by striving for, if not about that, I fear it can only be a wasted effort, an irredeemable narrative. That doesn't mean no villains can ever win, nor does it mean the heroes always have to be perfect. Ultimately, however, stories without humanist values are always something other than about awakening us to the possibility of being better and, to go a bit binary/Manichean here, when they're not humanist, they're worthless.

Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, despite some pretty epic coolness, left me disappointed because it espoused the same values we hear the Doctor blurt out here: namely that humanity needs false idols, can't handle the truth, is better served by secrecy. Secrecy is bad public policy for a reason. Secrecy leads to a lack of accountability, and when you combine a lack of accountability with power, you're practically begging to be exploited. If we can't handle the truth, it's only because we're not accustomed to it. Progress comes from reasoned decisions about facts in evidence. Hiding the facts sells us short.

Now, it's not clear to me why the Doctor's name is a secret, and there's plenty of room left in the storytelling for it be thematically valid for it be desirable for that particular secret to be kept. It's just ... I've got hackles ... and when a character says "You can't handle the truth," well just like Lt. Kaffee's hackles were raised by Col. Jessup, so too are mine.

Oi, got off on a bit of a rant there. So, in terms of this episode, it's re-watchable and shows us lots of TARDIS. Despite the too-neat-for-its-own-good ending, a keeper.

Apropos of nothing, I'll just leave you with a peek behind the scenes of Cdog family life on the way out.

We don't do religion in this house, but you could
say my daughter is being inDoctorinated nonetheless.

Pyramids of Mars - "How do I look?" "It must have been a nasty accident." "Don't provoke me."

2013-04-27T13:00:00.000-04:00

BBC - Doctor Who Classic Episode Guide - Pyramids of Mars - Details

Series 13, Story 3 (Overall Series Story #82)

The 1970s, in case you missed them, were largely like this: Leonard Nimoy hosted In Search Of, we were inundated with UFO silliness, alien sasquatch robots on The Six Million Dollar Man, and the like. Erich von Däniken was a wildly popular purveyor of pseudo-science and UFO inflected conspiratorialist history: ancient peoples accomplished feats of engineering? Impossible, must have been aliens, or so the 'reasoning' went. Sociologists must have sourced this by now to a combination of Cold War fatigue, Watergate disillusionment, a 60s hangover, and polyester blood poisoning, but that's beyond the scope of this piece.

Ancient Egypt was fertile ground for the imagination of quacks. Pyramids, sphinxes, mummies, and dog-headed gods brought out the best in them. Remember Pyramid Power? Good times. (For an example of the scientific basis of the phenomenon, check out this quote by the Doctor: "DOCTOR: It transposes with its projection. Pyramid power." Ok, yeah.

When we watch "Pyramids of Mars," we have to remember the milieu from which it emerged. Those of us born early in the 70s weren't necessarily suckers for that mess, but many of us, yours truly included, never lost our fascination with some aspects of the era's obsessions. Full disclosure:

The relevant thing here is the Eye of Horus tat as a testament to my abiding fondness for Egyptology,
not the hairy arm as evidence of possible ancestral sasquatch-human interbreeding.

Only a fool would think aliens directed the building of the pyramids, but that doesn't take the fun out a sci-fi yarn that puts the last of the ancient race of Osirans, paralyzed and imprisoned under a pyramid controlled by a power source on Mars, with a link to an English country house through a sarcophagus in the possession of a Edwardian-era Egyptologist. (I wonder if Horus had to negotiate with the Ice Warriors to set up his gear?) Fans of the new series, infatuated by fezzes, will also enjoy henchman Namin's headgear.

I'll spare you my usual fawning over Sarah Jane, this one time, and just complain that they stuck her in Victoria's old dress. (But, quickly, she's fabulous here. Her gentle teasing of the Doctor behind his back when he goes on solemnly about what a Time Lord he is, walking through eternity, yadda-yadda ... is priceless.)

The general consensus that this is one of the best stories in the history of Doctor Who is, in this case, correct. Sutekh is an intriguing villain -- sure, he's very much like Omega, and I suppose we could list a few other imprisoned/exiled super-powerful villains -- but he's got a great, menacing voice, a dope costume, and he's nihilist of the first order: he brings death, darkness, and dust wherever he treads, is the enemy of all life, and he finds that good. I'm not sure we get his equal until Davros threatens the universe with his Reality Bomb at the end of Ten's run, but this guy's more powerful, with his green eye rays, he can break the Doctor down by force of mind as easily as swatting a fly.

Great story, strong supporting cast, lovely atmosphere, tremendous chemistry and comic timing between Lis Sladen and Tom Baker, genuine menace (alternate 1980 is desolation -- no fixed points in time after 1911 if Sutekh has his way, I guess), and the nitpicks aren't worth mentioning; this is simply one of the must-sees and should be one of your first stories if you're new to classic Who.

This poacher gets one of the all-time great death scenes.

He didn't just play Doctor Who, he was Doctor Who.

2013-04-26T20:23:00.001-04:00

The Doctors Revisited series on BBCA takes on the inimitable Tom Baker this weekend leading into a broadcast of "The Pyramids of Mars."

I made Monday morning extra tough for myself last time around by staying up late to watch Pertwee in action. This time I'll watch the classic episode in advance and just watch the documentary special at 8pm.

Probably.

I probably won't watch "Pyramids" twice this weekend.

The Time Warrior - "Is this 'Doctor' a longshanked rascal with a mighty nose?"

2013-04-24T20:00:00.000-04:00

BBC - Doctor Who Classic Episode Guide - The Time Warrior - Details

Series 11, Story 1 (Overall Series Story #70)

Sometimes, the experience of watching a story with a friend makes it more memorable. For example, I'd have no willingness to sit through "The Curse of Fenric" again if I hadn't watched it for the first time on VHS over a friend's house as part of our classic sci-fi viewing sessions lo, those many years ago. Our mutual bafflement, the way that episode made us question our very sanity -- even now I wince and shake my head to get straight -- I'll watch it again (one of these days) just to confirm we didn't miss the bigger picture and it really was a muddled, crappy waste of time and the human spirit.

Other times, watching with a friend is the icing on the cake, and a fine, fun adventure is improved by the camaraderie of enjoying the good in it, while gently teasing the silly bits, with an old friend. (Oh my, that sounded much more like gay code upon re-reading! Where's my editor?) "The Time Warrior" is a classic bit of Pertwee that I thoroughly enjoyed watching on my own a few times over the years, and enjoyed even more watching with another fan of the classic series last year. Because I watched it on a vacation trip and wasn't on a computer at all, I didn't get to write this up while it was fresh in mind. Undaunted though, I'll take a stab at it five or so months later ...

If you're after a story with adventure, Pertwee gets plenty of opportunity to show his action chops in this one. There's a scene where he's attempting to evade capture within the walls of Irongron's keep that is, I think, filmed from atop one of the walls looking down on the action which is unlike any other in the run of the series. It includes a fairly long shot of Pertwee running back and forth, tangling with Irongron's men as he hops over bales of hay and such, that feels very dynamic. (I could be wrong about its uniqueness, but I've thought every time I've watched this one, "Why didn't they do that more often?") He also gets to do a bit of an Errol Flynn impression in another action sequence against Linx's robot knight. There really is a lot to like in this one. Irongron and Bloodaxe are a great pair of louts, and Holmes gives them a bevy of great lines. If there hadn't been a Linx, could we have a Strax today? The introduction of the Sontarans in the potato-ish person of Linx in make it worth the viewing all by itself.

Now, look, Yuen Woo-Ping had only just gotten started in 1973 and his influence wouldn't be seen in fight sequences here in the West for many years, so we watch these keeping in mind -- as we always must! -- that Doctor Who is a children's show made so the parents can watch along. Then, as now, it wasn't being made to push the boundaries of technique or storytelling -- good grief it was unbearable when it tried the latter, see my reference to TCoF above -- so we must watch it, and judge it, for what it is. And that was some pretty well done action for an early 70s, low-budget British children's show.

Linx gets an earful from Irongron.
(Image via An Unearthly Doctor)

But it's the other first that makes this one more than just worth watching, it makes it special: this is the introduction of Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith. She's marvelous, even if they introduced her by the credulity straining device of having her journalist character penetrating a top secret, military installation with a daft cover story that'd never have worked. But never mind that, our little "narrow-hipped vixen" (thanks again, Mr. Holmes) is a spunky and intrepid reporter with a perfectly natural reaction to being an unwitting time-traveler dropped in medieval England.

I swoon a little, and then feel a bit heartbroken every time I watch an episode with Sarah Jane. I had a mad crush on her as an adolescent that evolved into ... well, I guess it was still a mad crush all those years later when she came back for "School Reunion". I was every bit as pie-eyed and gushy watching it as Tennant was playing Ten when he met Sarah again. (I'll put Tennant's foreword to Ms. Sladen's autobiography below -- if you've not heard it, it's quite touching.)

If this episode has a drawback, it's one that's typical of the show as a whole from the classic series: the mechanics of getting the story from point A to point B in the four cliffhanger format tends to lead to a bit of A to B back to A back to B as characters get captured, thrown in the dungeon, escape, make their way back to the dungeon, have to escape again, and so on. I will say though, that it's more than a little refreshing to watch the first story of a season and not to be inspecting it for clues to a mystery we know will take a full season to play out, and probably wind up an incomprehensible jumble in the end anyways. *cough* New series. *cough*

My advice is to watch it with a like-minded friend, ideally with an adult beverage or two as well, and appreciate Pertwee at his finest, the fresh-faced Sarah Jane, and the dialogue of Robert Holmes.

Adventures of an inexpert reader of French language newspapers ...

2013-04-24T08:10:00.001-04:00

Aux Etats-Unis, le succès des yaourts grecs oblige Danone à contre-attaquer:

Un nouveau pot vert à la marque Activia de Danone a fait son apparition dans les rayons des supermarchés aux Etats-Unis depuis quelques jours. Sur l'emballage un mot magique, grec, et des mentions tout aussi évocatrices pour le consommateur américain : 0 % de gras, deux fois plus de protéines.

Avec cette composition, encensée par les experts de la diététique, le yaourt grec fait un tabac outre-Atlantique. Dans un supermarché à l'enseigne Pathmark de la banlieue de New York, il représente près d'un tiers des produits en rayon.

To call my French "rusty," would imply it was ever a steely, gleaming precision instrument. It was never thus. Comme un fou, peut-être, I elected to study French when given the opportunity to choose a language in middle school. "One day, I will live in Paris, a successful expat novelist drinking espresso in cafés on the shores of the Seine," 11-year-old me thought. It's possible that, in my daydreams, I was wearing a jaunty beret and had a pet monkey. (Look, if you weren't a pretentious idiot as an 11-year-old, I can only take my lumps and congratulate you on your advanced development as pre-teen.)

Photo by Le Xuan-Cung on flickr

Anyways, I've kept tabs on a few French-language blogs over the years, and had a stream of French language headlines pour through my reader feed. (They're interesting for perspective on American politics, not always very liberal as you might think, immigration is not exactly a settled topic and xenophobia seems to be more of a problem there than here; but, recently also for perspective on the struggle for gay rights as marriage equality makes gains overseas.) Estimating generously, maybe a quarter of it makes sense to me. But I will go a few articles and try to figure them out. Online translators occasionally helped, but were often more like those silly text generators that spewed gibberish to fill fake publications in publicity materials. Incapable of handling idiom, or even standard usage, they were good for maybe helping with a translation of a word, but almost never with the meaning. Over the last few years though, they've been getting better and Google Translate, while still a muddle, at least provides useful clues now is convenient in the browser. Still the mysteries of literal translations generally provoke a chuckle.

In the article above, which I read because we buy greek yogurt, despite the fact I can barely choke it down and frequently gag in the effort, the phrase fait un tabac caught my eye. I took it mean "does very well," or something to that effect, but tabac I understood to be 'tobacco' so I wondered if it could an expression like our 'making a killing.' Sure enough, Google Translate rendered it as "make a tobacco," but the link I imagined between 'tobacco' and 'killing' doesn't seem to be there, I think the link is more along the lines of people loving something as much as they love to smoke to tobacco. The nicotine effect, not the carcinogenic. No surprise there given the European love of cigarettes, and the relatively recent, relative to tobacco's introduction to European culture, understanding of smoking as a health hazard.

Attempting to contribute an alternative translation using Transalate turned out to be a bit more difficult than I expected, where I would put "diet experts" instead of "experts of diet" the way the translation groups the French words didn't allow for my English to map directly to the group of words I was trying to offer a translation. A sign, perhaps, that online translators are going to be overly literal and resistant to crowd-sourced fixing for a while yet.

Hide - "Don't trust him. He's got a sliver of ice in his heart."

2013-04-20T22:56:00.000-04:00

Hide

Series 7, Story 10 (Overall Series Story #235)

Doctor Who has a rich tradition of gothic, ghostly, horror-tinged stories. "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" is a personal favorite and "The Horror of Fang Rock" also leaps to mind, but we could go on and: "Planet of Evil," "The Daemons," "The Brain of Morbius," "The Pyramids of Mars," and I'm sure many others. I suppose we need to include the McCoy-era "Ghost Light," at least. More recently we've had "The God Complex," "Asylum of the Daleks," "Night Terrors," and "The Eleventh Hour."

4 and Leela in Victorian London. Not related to this episode,
just establishing a dark and shadowy mood.

Intolerant of superstitious mumbo-jumbo, as I am, these episodes tend to appeal to the humanist-rationalist aspect of my worldview. Just like the old Scooby-Doo cartoons, where I enjoyed the revelation in each one that the mystery never had anything to do with actual ghosts, zombies, cryptids, aliens, or what have you, there was always a con-man behind the whole thing for our intrepid investigators to unmask. In Doctor Who, we have to substitute the alien, generally speaking, for the human agent behind the mystery, but the same satisfaction can be derived from the debunking of the supernatural explanation. Those vampires in Venice? Aliens with a human-understandable motive. The witches at Shakespeare's Globe Theater? Aliens with a human-understandable motive. Ghosts and re-animated corpses running across Dickens in Cardiff? Aliens with a human-understandable motive. Werewolf in Scotland? Alien with human-understandable motive, natch. (Yeah, so those were all episodes I could have listed in the show's horror tradition as well. It's an oft-tapped vein.)

Check out Fred's arm in that scarecrow unmasking. O_o

"Hide" is every bit the atmospheric suspense story a fan could hope for. I'm not sure it all quite made sense (that is to say I'm pretty sure it made almost none if we start pulling at the threads), and the Witch in the Well seemed a little underwritten as a character once she was rescued from the well, as it were. But the house and the misty woods were plenty spooky, and the mystery met the Scooby test, so I was satisfied. Like last week, the show is proving it can hit the notes in just about any genre or sub-genre, and bring it's sensibility to bear in an entertaining fashion.

That the trip to visit the empathic psychic turned out to be a dead-end in the Doctor's investigation into Clara was fine. Some lines of inquiry don't pan out, that's how it goes. Her warning to Clara about the sliver of ice in the Doctor's heart was a deft touch and set the stage for Clara's probing the Doctor for answers about why he would care about humans at all when we must all be ghosts to him.

All that said, I can see why some of the initial response to the episode has been frustration. It didn't seem to move the season's arc at all -- though who knows what might have been a clue that we all missed. Some diligent frame-by-frame dissecter had already started reading into the brand of wine on an upside-down crate in one of the scenes in the time between the show's broadcast in the U.K. and its airing here in the U.S. (Trying too hard on that front, I think.) I also felt like the whole TARDIS not liking Clara thing was hammered a bit too hard, and I'm starting to suspect we're being beaten with a red herring. We get it, so either make it mean something or give it a rest. Last nitpick: the Professor with the rich past as a WWII special agent seemed too young, as played by Dougray Scott (mid-40s in age I reckon), considering the story is set thirty years after war ended. I was confused at first whether he was meant to be a veteran of Vietnam, Korea, or WWII -- but he already looked too old to be a love interest for Emma, either both those roles needed to be cast with older actors, or the setting should have a been at least five, if not ten, years earlier.

As far as the season goes, my favorite theory to this point -- meaning it's bound to be off by a mile and I'll have to admit later I was completely fooled -- is that Clara is the Doctor's great-granddaughter via Susan, who must have been chameleon-arched at some point after leaving the TARDIS. Sadly, this makes almost no sense and would do nothing to explain why Clara is popping up throughout time with the same name. Still, I like it.

The Fires of Pompeii: "Oh, you're Celtic. That's lovely."

2013-04-20T13:28:00.000-04:00

The Fires of Pompeii (TV story) - Tardis Data Core, the Doctor Who Wiki

Season 4, Story 2 (Overall Series Story #190)

For me, this story is basically an excuse to see Peter Capaldi in Doctor Who. Mr. Capaldi is one of those actors I'll watch in anything; he's just brilliant. Whether he's tearing a swath through the political world as the vicious Malcom Tucker from In The Thick Of It or trying to cop a kisu off Marina as Danny Oldsen in Local Hero, he nails it. He's a bit alien, and yet passionate in a way that makes him perfectly identifiable.

"The what-ano?"

Not for nothing, if it were up to me to cast the next Doctor, Mr. Capaldi would be at the top of my wishlist.

Catherine Tate, on the other hand, is not a favorite of mine, at least she wasn't until she played Donna Noble. She's wonderful with David Tennant, in this -- and everything else I've seen them do together. Their chemistry works in a way -- and I still blame the writers not this, not the actress -- 10 and Martha's never really did. Donna's "Oi, Space Man ..." is a breath of fresh air after too much, well, romantic longing. OK, so she does say, "I bloody love you!" But we know she's just impressed he held off a stony alien-possessed monstrosity with a water pistol. Her delivery of "Never mind us" when it looks like Donna will need to sacrifice herself along with the Doctor is absolutely winning. And the way she's gutted when she realizes she can't save them all. She's really very good.

"Oh no! We're not ..."

Re-watching this leading up to 50th Anniversary, which we learned this week will be called "The Name of The Doctor," added some timeliness. This is one of the episodes where we get an intimation that the Doctor's true name is deeply significant. "Even the word, 'Doctor,' is false. Your real name is hidden. It burns in the stars -- in the Cascade of Medusa herself."

After the last two weeks, it's fun to revisit the explanation of the TARDIS translation matrix. It's a well-written episode with snappy dialogue and genuine wit built around that bit of explanation. A bit of a contrast actually, from how it's been handled in season 7.

The key to this episode though is the conflict between the Doctor and Donna about the fate of Pompeii. Donna's desire to save as many as possible is in conflict with the Doctor's understanding -- the burden of the Time Lord, he calls it -- of Pompeii as a fixed point. ("Someone must make a choice. A terrible choice.") That conflict adds depth to the story of the vapor huffing oracles and their puppet master, which was interesting enough on its own in the context of the historical events. This weaving of humanist themes and sci-fi adventure, with snappy dialogue and strong supporting cast around the dynamic charm of Ten, this when the series fires on all cylinders. Again, we see how how superstition makes people dupes, more of one of my favorite themes of the series. We also see the Doctor and Donna revered as household gods, but knowing how they came to be so, and seeing the smile on young Quintus's face as he pays his respects, on his way out the door to study to be a doctor himself, it doesn't offend the sensibilities.

Look, I'm not saying it's perfect. The water pistol isn't really very convincing. The Doctor and Donna should have been roasted to ash. They weren't. Sorry if that's a spoiler. And the bright light from within the TARDIS when the Doctor decides he can save someone and goes back for Caecilius's family, it's all a bit much. Minor quibbles though.

It all comes together at the end. If overwrought in the rescue, it's note-perfect in the aftermath.

And I'd completely forgotten this episode contained a sneak peek of an almost-unrecognizable-beneath-all-that-makeup-and-robery future companion:

Karen Gillan, pre-Amy Pond.

Heart of the Dragon -- Jackie Chan

2013-04-20T08:29:00.001-04:00

Watch "Jackie Chan comes out..." on YouTube

Nate Silver crunches the numbers on the the relative conservatism of GOP Governors

2013-04-20T06:00:00.000-04:00

In State Governments, Signs of a Healthier G.O.P. - NYTimes.com

More conservative than Perry. Ugh.