A Blog of Thrones (Chapter 54) Daenerys VI: Bond Villain Stupidity

Previously on A Blog of Thrones, Bran was mopey. But not because he was a cripple, for once.

Daenerys is naked again, because she spends an awful lot of this book in fairly compromising positions. Speaking of fairly compromising positions, I thought I'd share with you the sexiest thing I found on Reddit the weekend of the nude celeb photo scandal. It's just below the fold (and perfectly safe for work).

A Blog of Thrones (Chapter 53) Bran VI: Something’s wrong with Robb’s leadership style, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

With the irritating repetition and tedious inevitability of a stupid commercial on YouTube, it is time yet again for a Bran chapter. I've got my sinuses all bogged up so I can't smell the stench of self-loathing. On the plus side, now I can do that nasal whine all the modern male singers use. And it could always be worse; I could suddenly decide that what I need in my life is an obsession with MOBAs.

Previously on A Blog of Thrones, Jon Snow broke. I still haven't explained that. Hahahahahahaha.

A Blog of Thrones (Chapter 52) Jon VII: The Sleepwalking Dead

Previously on A Blog of Thrones, we spent three chapters watching things go entirely to pot in King's Landing.

Dawnguard autopsy

I'm generally liking Skyrim. But not so much the Dawnguard DLC.

So, the good stuff: there are some new Dwemer ruins for you to run around in. There's a Werewolf perk tree, so that's not a complete waste now (yeah, immunity to disease is great and all, but it doesn't make up for an unarmored melee combat form or a lack of sleep bonuses).  There's a sidequest where you can explore another round of Dwemer ruins (because we weren't utterly sick of that by the time the Blackreach quest in the main game was over - oh, and, just for kicks and giggles, the Elder Scroll you used in the main game swings back into relevance here, so I hope you didn't sell it). Apparently there are new things to smith, yay.

The bad: This will take a while.

The main character of Dawnguard is an incredibly bored-sounding I Hate You Vampire Dad-style vampire lady named Serana. Literally everything she says is delivered in a tone of voice that suggests her actress really didn't want to be in the studio. (Disclosure: her actress is the same actress who ruined the female Demon Hunter in Diablo III's expansion, delivering every line with a husky whispershout.) This despite the fact that, towards the end of the story, she gets long drawn-out confrontations with two people who screwed her over. During the first one you're stuck - the game doesn't put you in "conversation mode," but it does stop you from drawing your weapon. (As soon as the basically-a-cutscene is over, just FUS RO DAH him off the balcony. Dullest boss fight ever, and this after he sends waves of obnoxious minions at you.) The second time there's nothing to stop you sneaking up behind the guy and stabbing him in the butt. "Fun."

The other characters are: Isran, a knight-templar vampire hunter who naturally acts incredibly prejudiced and... well, you know what, there are these two groups, the Vampires and the Dawnguard, and it's funny how the vampires really don't give two f*cks about the Dawnguard. That's really all you need to know.

The plot. Where to begin? Ah, what the hell, let's just go in order. Spoilers from here on out.

Some random James Bond thoughts

In the process of hunting down information about an outfit that Diana Rigg wore in one scene of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, I stumbled across this post on clothesonfilm. (Obviously it's a bit dated.)

Here's the interesting bit, comparing the issues post-Quantum to the kerfuffle that led to The Wizard Some Call Tim leaving the role back in the early 90s.

Hmm…Does anyone see this as a little bit of history repeating? A not entirely dissimilar situation occurred after Timothy Dalton signed as Bond for The Living Daylights in 1987. Soon followed License to Kill in ’89 and then nothing for six years, until Pierce Brosnan finally got his shot and saved the series from near extinction with GoldenEye.

Well. Quite. Edgy, serious, "back-to-Fleming" actor aw frak it, just see my Quantum of Solace post for an interminable list of comparisons between Licence to Kill and Quantum of Solace. Neither film was particularly well-received by general audiences (though both are utterly super and deserve a second look), and MGM held off on making another one afterwards, pleading "financial difficulties," which is fair enough.

Now, I know a thing or two about what The Property of a Lady (as Bond XVII was known while Dalton was still attached to the project) was going to look like, and what it was going to look like was Licence to Kill on speed. Bond kills the baddie with a frickin' blowtorch, for example.

Now, although Charles Helfenstein says, in the section his thoroughly-researched book The Making of the Living Daylights that deals with Dalton's departure from the role, that there's no evidence to suggest that MGM muscled Dalton out, the fact of the matter is that Dalton was still up for the job in early 1993 (after his contract had expired) and had changed his mind a year later. It probably wasn't friction with the Broccoli-Wilson family, given that Dalton popped up at Cubby Broccoli's birthday party two days after announcing his departure. So... what was it that made Dalton change his mind about coming back, if it wasn't MGM's refusal to green-light another film while he was in the lead role?

(Maybe the fact that Dalton read the books, in which Bond was stated to be 37, and faced mandatory retirement from 00-status at 45, and Dalton was nearing the age of 50 when he stepped down. That's all I've got. I'm sympathetic to the argument that Dalton wasn't as enthusiastic about him playing Bond as Cubby Broccoli was, but that doesn't explain why he was willing to come back in 1993 only to change his mind within a year.)

That makes me wonder if Skyfall, twisted and confused and decidedly overrated wretch that it is, wasn't the result of a compromise that Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson made with MGM to retain Mr. Craig's formidable services. Shove the tone back Goldfinger-wards, despite the massive step backwards that represents, in the name of money.

Oh well.

In other news, RIP Richard Kiel, aka Jaws.

I'm really just dropping this link here because I'm on my other computer and can't be bothered to save it there for myself.

In other news, my law school schedule sucks.

"Deep Breath" and "Into The Dalek" mini-Who Reviews

Before I begin, I want to make one thing clear:

Steven Moffat is full of himself.

There, now that that's out of the way, we can talk about Peter Capaldi's first two episodes as The Best Doctor Who Ever.

...you know, aside from [insert all your other favorites here], and Patrick Troughton.

Who Review: The Enemy of the World

You really miss something when you only get a dozen episodes of Who a year. Everything is just flung at you with no time for the plot to breathe organically or for the Doctor to really get involved in the setting into which he's been deposited.

The Enemy of the World is from Season Five of the classic series, which means it's in black and white and stars Patrick Troughton, the second Doctor. You might find a bit of Matt Smith in his characterization, especially at the beginning as he strips down to his long johns just to have a bit of a splash in the water. This harmless bit of characterization is probably overdone, but it works nicely because Troughton pulls double duty in this serial and also plays the villain.

Without giving too much away, the Doctor is approached by a resistance group that wants him to impersonate the villainous Salamander so that they (or he) can kill him, although a) not everything is as it seems, and b) the scheme seems to be overly complicated, given that Jamie at one point breaches Salamander's security all by himself. Despite that rather glaring plot hole, the script does move along at a solid pace, drip-feeding you information, innuendo and plot twists at just the right pace. You can watch the entire thing in one sitting without feeling its two-and-a-half hour runtime.

Obviously, goes the usual yarn, you have to make allowances for the shoestring budget and rushed schedule of the classic Who production. To be sure, there is a little bit of that here, but it shows up shockingly late in the serial. No, I'm not talking about the bit where they stick George Pravda in a hallway because they couldn't afford to build a prison cell. That's glossed over about as well as it is in any other serial. No, I'm talking about the underground fallout shelter, about which more later. But while I'm on the production values, I want to praise the team for taking the time to set up a complicated effects shot at the very end of the story, where both of Troughton's characters are in-shot at the same time.

Another amazing thing about this serial is the lack of black and white morality that certain other adventures, both classic and modern, have fallen prey to. To be sure, Salamander is an evil man. The show can never come right out and say this, but it's pretty clear from the subtext that he's taking sexual advantage of his food-taster. But his security chief turns out to be a decent human being, while his bitterest enemy is not quite the saint you might expect him to be. (Of course, the Doctor's suspicions are spot-on from the start.)

The script in general sings, crackling with little bits of characterization to breathe life into ordinarily dry info-dumps. It's astonishing to watch the first episode of this and think that it's written by the same man who wrote The Edge of Destruction, possibly the most boring Doctor Who serial ever. And Barry Letts slips behind the camera and delivers the goods - there's an amazing handheld POV shot from a helicopter taking off that looks like it belongs in a film, not in a notoriously cheap television show.

The pacing is unusually good for a black-and-white serial; it's basically the Doctor Who equivalent of Casablanca, or perhaps The Third Man, given the ambiguous morality of one of the main characters and the fact that a protracted sequence takes place in a tunnel. 

And that brings us to the one significant problem with this otherwise-magnificent gem of a serial. It turns out there are a bunch of underground proles that Salamander has duped in order to carry out his plan (because it's so evil he can't entrust his minions to do it - see what I mean about the unusual morality of this serial?). The problem is, we see these "oppressed underground proles" too often in other serials, and neither their costumes nor their performances are up to par with the rest of the serial. 

The action also gets a little bit confusing towards the end, mainly because they try to pull two switcheroos in a row, making us think in one scene that the Doctor is actually Salamander, and that Salamander is the Doctor in a subsequent scene. The first scene is utterly brilliant and so quintessentially Troughton, but I'm not convinced the payoff is worth the attempt to confuse the audience. The second time, it's pretty obvious what's going on given that "The Doctor" won't speak (Salamander speaks like Speedy Gonzales, and the Doctor mentions a few times that he's concerned he won't be able to master Salamander's accent in time).

These are ultimately minor quibbles. It's great to have this back in the archive after 35 years. Bravo to the people who found it, and double bravo to the people who made it. Final grade: A-.

Roger Moore was the worst thing ever to happen to James Bond (but not for the reasons you think)

Sir Roger Moore is one of the greatest human beings on the planet. I'm not talking about his work with UNICEF but rather how he saved the James Bond film franchise from certain demise after Sean Connery stormed off in a huff (twice) and George Lazenby totally failed to live up to audience expectations (those expectations being Be Sean Connery). Across seven films and twelve years, Roger Moore left his indelible stamp on the franchise and saved it from an ignominious death through the medium of Having Lots of Screen Presence and Being Really Really Really Good At The Jokes.

Which is why he's the worst thing to ever happen to the franchise.

A Game of Thrones, Skyrim edition

The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends. It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace. They never are.
-Ser Jorah Mormont, A Game of Thrones chapter 23

All right, let's go through and compare all the Stormcloak and Imperial Jarls to figure out, if you don't give a fig and/or will worship Talos anyway, which side you might as well support. I aim to answer one simple question: which side will result in having more "good" Jarls and fewer "bad" Jarls?


Haafignar: Elisif the Fair v. Elisif the Fair

Um. Elisif gets to keep her job no matter what, it's just a question of whether she's a puppet for noted drunk Colonel Tigh... I mean, noted bigot General Tullius or noted bigot Ulfric Stormcloak. Huh. No score.


Hjaalmarch: Idgrod Ravencrone v. Sorli the Builder

Idgrod has visions. Sorli has... a mine? Neither seem overwhelmingly supportive of their "side," in that Idgrod kind of evades the question and Sorli holds to the Eight rather than the Nine. At the end of the day I think a mystic is a better choice to rule over a haunted swamp than... uh, whatever qualification Sorli has. (And no, I totally haven't modded the game to marry Idgrod the Younger, why do you ask?*) Point to the Empire.


The Reach (and, for that matter, The Rift): Igmund and Laila Law-Giver v. Thongvor Silver-Blood and Maven Black-Briar
So both the Imperials and the Stormcloaks have a naive idiot who will get replaced by a haughty crime-lord whose position can be furthered (or not) depending on what actions the Dragonborn takes. A begrudging point to each side. 2-1 for the Imps.


Falkreath Hold: Siddgeir v. Dengeir of Stuhn

Dengeir is, to be sure, old and paranoid, but Siddgeir is such a tool. 2-2. (By the way, this could just be a glitch in my game, but if Dengeir grabs the throne, does that letter Siddgeir sent you when you reached level 9 suddenly change its authorship to Dengeir's?)


Whiterun Hold: Balgruuf the Greater v. Vignar Grey-Mane

On the one hand, Balgruuf is quick to respond to the dragon threat. On the other hand, he sends you into a zombie-infested tomb for no reason. Furthermore the man dithers forever in taking a side, and only throws down with the Empire against the Stormcloaks because there's more money in it.

But as not-overwhelmingly-good-as-his-reputation-suggests Balgruuf is, Vignar's worse. He's all too happy to let bandits plunder the Battle-Born home just because they backed the other side. Dick move, Vignar, and 3-2 for the Empire.


The Pale: Skald the Elder v. Brina Merilis

Skald the Elder's a dick. Like, a Joffrey Baratheon-level dick. 4-2 for the Empire. Far and away the easiest call of them all.


Winterhold: Korir v. Kraldar

Korir reminds me of Stannis Baratheon in that he's got a tiny holding in an inhospitable hell and he's determined to survive anyway. I respect that. He doesn't like the College much, even though it's the only tourist trap in his godsforsaken hold (other than the shrine of Azura, and if you haven't been there, go: it'll do wonders for your enchanting (not a euphemism, though it could be)). A bit unreasonable, there, Korir. His replacement is exquisitely bland, so much so that I had to look his name up. I'm going to give this one a tie, though. Korir's badassery is mitigated by his misguided hatred for the College. Still 4-2 for the Empire.


Windhelm: Ulfric Stormcloak Ulfric Stormcloak the Kingslayer 
Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak the Kingslayer v. Brunwulf Free-Winter

Well, either way this goes, the Empire still comes out ahead. This saves me the trouble of having to drag my own politics into this one, and is why I saved it for last. I will just note, on the subject of Ulfric's so-called racism, that he never comments on your race (even in a condescending way, i.e., "You're a credit to cat-people everywhere") and the first person to call you (say) a lizard is the Imperial captain trying to cut your head off at the beginning. So really it's not that he doesn't give a frak about non-Nords; he doesn't give a frak about people not sworn to his cause, and given that the man is fighting a frickin' civil war, I think that's understandable.

*No, I really haven't. I mean, just for a start, a comparison of their respective mothers shows that Ingun Black-Briar will age much better than she will.

Which side to pick in Skyrim?

Stormcloaks

• Religious freedom
• Get to wear pants
• Empire is dessicated and needs to die
• Get to oust that dumbo Siddgeir and the indecisive prattler Balgruuf
• Don't have to pretend Dark Elves are people
• Don't have to pretend High Elves are people
• Boss has superpowers
• Cooler titles

Imperials

• Not racist
• Cmdr. Ivanova is your boss; Col. Tigh is her boss
• Better armor
• Quick access to iron and steel
• Only real chance at beating Thalmor
• Don't have to oust Balgruuf and Ravencrone
• Do get to oust the morons in Dawnstar and Winterhold