I am le wrong

Well, okay technically, I was right, the phrase was in the episode. But let's face it, that's not what I mean. Then again, the only time I was able to accurately predict what insane plot twist Joss Whedon was throwing my way was, ironically, when Mal said "they're not gonna see this coming" in Serenity.

Whedonist ramblings, part 1

Dollhouse, that show about sex slaves that nobody watches and is thus never going to get another season, returns briefly to our screens for the next two months. Given what I know about who's going to be in these episodes (and who's not going to be in episodes after the ones airing tonight), I won't be at all surprised if we hear the line "there are three flowers in a vase" come up tonight. Just sayin'.

That was going to be the extent of my post until I read yet another cracked.com article making fun of Twilight. The fact that it threw Spike in there as an example of an anti-Edward at first didn't gel; as any Buffy fan can tell you, Spike was the most whipped former badass of all time until Edward came along. Then it occured to me that mid-Season Five Spike (I'm thinking specifically the episode "Triangle," where he wants credit for not feeding on bleeding disaster victims, but that just shows you how much of an unforgivable geek I am) is still more badass than Edward. When your main vampire is more pathetic than a chipped, whipped whiner, you're not doing anyone any favors. To round off my descent into unforgivable nerdhood: Spike may be love's bitch, but he's man enough to admit it.

Also? Football good. No beat scrawny geek up, cavemen. Please?

New Market Enterprises Product #807353076260

What follows is a work of fiction.

We here at New Market Enterprises have been working on a new sort of gun. It's part disintegrator, part mind-control ray, and its intended use is 1) to play inappropriate jokes on college drunkards and 2) to publicly embarass our enemies.

What Product #807353076260 does is remove the target's clothing, while inducing the target to think, no matter what evidence to the contrary, that they are still fully clothed. We're calling it the Emperor's New Gun.

Now some of you, our corporate financers, might be wondering why we've made such an immature piece of technology. Surely, you say, we're just going to go around zapping every hot girl we see. We would like to assure you that we are professional scientists and take our work very seriously. We would never use our science for nefarious purposes. Any e-mails you might have read to the contrary are blatant lies foisted on you by a vast right-wing conspiracy.

And at any rate, we've had some problems in the testing stage, so even if we wanted to (and we don't), we couldn't make the 6 o'clock news by turning innocent girls into indecent exposure criminals. Maybe that would be on late night news instead, because of the risque content. Anyway, that's not happening.

What happened was this: the blast radius is too big. Scientists could detect no change in the clothing of our (totally willing) test subject. Ethan Sanderson, after a minute of staring intently at the subject, abruptly stood up and ran to a supply closet. After a muffled discussion it was revealed that Doctor Sanderson was convinced that everyone had been hit by the ray, and that everyone was now naked an unaware of it.

It soon became evident, as personell not present during the initial test entered the testing area, that only the subject was no longer clothed. All of the scientists were hit merely by the mind-control ray and forced to believe, as the subject did, that she was still wearing clothes.

Doctor Lawrence Vaughan has suggested that we implement the device on a global scale, for no better reason than "it will make an excellent literary allegory." The Science Division was reminded that Doctor Vaughan's doctorate is in Literary Studies, and therefore "not real." His suggestion was ignored and he was sent back to the library.

We'd just like to point out again that we will not do as Doctor Vaughan suggests, nor will we employ the device at all outside of laboratory conditions in the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, it has been twenty-six hours and we have not been able to coax Doctor Sanderson out of the supply closet.

-Doctor Foster

Waters of Mars

What I didn't like about Waters of Mars:

1 - "I'm (person)." Boom "Person's name. Died 2059." Repeat about ten times in three minutes. This is my single biggest complaint about the episode. It got annoying the second time it happened.

2 - Doctor, this isn't Pompeii. There aren't going to be petrified bodies for people to find centuries later. All you have to the instant you know it's doomsday for Bowie Base is park the TARDIS inside the base, shepherd everyone in, set the auto-destruct, and drop the crew off somewhen else, well before or after their impact on history would be largely negated.

3 - RTD continuing his slide into the delusion that he can write a season finale like Joss Whedon.

4 - "Gadget gadget."

5 - Is this episode supposed to be a silly jab at the water-fearing aliens in Signs? Cuz that's what it feels like.

What I liked about Waters of Mars:

1 - The fact that the actors were all able to pull off being afraid of water. Bravo.

2 - "Name, Rank, Intention." "Doctor. Doctor. Fun."

3 - The last five minutes. I do not mind a bit of megalomania in my Doctor. And David Tennant is now officially giving Troughton a run for his money for the second-best slot behind Tom Baker.

4 - Gadget.

5 - It wasn't about a bus in the desert. The minor characters are all so brilliantly written and played that as they die off, you really wish you'd gotten to see more of them. I especially like the guy who blows himself up in the shuttle.


Now, I've heard the DWO Whocast about the episode, and they spend a bit of time ranting about the "it's just a theory" line re: fixed points in time. This didn't bother me. A) at the time, I thought the Doctor was just dumbing it all down for his would-be companion. B) it's a nice bit of foreshadowing for what he tries to do at the end of the episode.

And I'd also like to say that it's about damn time we got a "fixed point in time" after the present day. Nice touch.

4 sonic screwdrivers out of 5.

-James

Halloween playlist

"Fear of the Dark" Fear of the Dark Iron Maiden

"The Call of Ktulu" Ride the Lightning Metallica
(Turn up the bass frequencies for the first 2 1/2 minutes to hear Cliff Burton at his absolute best.)

"Highway to Hell" Highway to Hell AC/DC

"Dazed and Confused" Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin

"Black Sabbath" Black Sabbath Black Sabbath

"Hells Bells" Back in Black AC/DC

"The Right to Go Insane" Endgame Megadeth
(Okay, actually half the songs off Peace Sells would work as well, but I'm addicted to this one.)

"Children of the Damned" The Number of the Beast Iron Maiden

"Welcome to the Machine" Wish You Were Here Pink Floyd
(Odd man out? Just a bit. Tough.)

"The Thing That Should Not Be" Master of Puppets Metallica

"Still Life" Piece of Mind Iron Maiden

"Brain Damage/Eclipse" The Dark Side of the Moon Pink Floyd
(Because songs about going crazy are always good.)

I also understand that the original version of the Doctor Who theme frightened young children.

-James

(Edit: I'm listening to Megadeth Radio's Halloween mix. "Fear of the Dark" just came up. Nya ha.)

(Edit #2: It just came on again. There's a reason it's at the top of the list.)

Barry Letts 26 March 1925 – 9 October 2009

As you might have guesses by my last post, I am behind the times. News takes a while to reach my delicate ears. I found out that Barry Letts died only by reading Paul Cornell's blog, which I was only reading because a link from Whedonesque told me to go there for something completely unrelated.

So, this means that, to the best of my knowledge, the only living producer from Classic Who is Phillip Hinchcliffe. Derrick Sherwin might be, but he was the producer for exactly one serial (Spearhead from Space) before resigning from the post and letting Barry get a shot at it.

Now, the pacing of the show wasn't exactly stellar whem Mr. Letts was producing, and the switch to color meant that it really didn't hold up as well as it used to. The political subtext, as I stated in an older post, I tended to disagree with but didn't dislike. But still, Barry served as producer for 5 years and managed to not get the show cancelled, and nobody else can stake a similar claim (except RTD, if you count this year's specials as an actual season). On top of that, his last important act as producer was to cast Tom Baker. Of course, for most of his tenure, he was producing a show that really doesn't resemble the show that came before or after his term. The Doctor was for the most part stuck on Earth with a solid base of support and can't fly the TARDIS at all, as opposed to barely being able to fly it.

And yet it's easy to look back on those, the dandy-Doctor days, with considerable nostalgia, and we have Mr. Letts primarily to thank for that.

In other news, please please please tell me that this is not the title that's actually going to appear on-screen for the new series.

Fall Break or: Sometimes I Wonder If My Brain Is Doing Drugs Behind My Back

If I could remember a single thing about the drive home, I'd relate it.

Moving on: the average age of the items I purchased at Best Buy: 13.333333. Yikes. This is what happens when you're naturally behind the times, and also short on cash thanks to a speeding ticket. They were, in order of age:

Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here (1975)
I'll never tire of this band. Even though I don't own anything from before Meddle, but hey, I'm missing out on the one with the guy who went crazy from the drugs and the several that are meandering experimental wrecks. (I jest. Piper, at the very least, I intend to pick up one of these days, and the band themselves have pretty much disowned everything between Piper and Meddle.) Anyway, the album's only 5 songs long, but damn. These boys could write music. Or, more probably, these boys could jam flawlessly for hours on end and then edit it down to stick it on vinyl.

Serenity (even though the collector's edition came out in 07, I'm crediting this one as 2005, otherwise I have to go back and do the math again.)
It's one of those movies I honestly wish I hadn't known who was going to die beforehand. Oh, by the way, for anyone who hasn't seen it (and you're seriously depriving yourselves), spoiler alert: people die. Well, it's Joss Whedon. I won't claim to be surprised. Anyway, it's good. Really, really good. And for someone who grew up on Star Wars and felt badly cheated by the prequels, really really good is good enough for me.

Super Mario Galaxy (it says (C)2007 on the title screen, so I'll assume that's accurate).
Finally, I got a Wii game that requires the use of the Wii-mote and did not cause me to throw said Wii-mote down in frustration within two minutes. I'm considerably less apprehensive about the sequel now. Having said that, I hope they iron out the difficulty curve; the levels alternate between "I could have done that in my sleep" and "screw this, let's watch Serenity again." And back again. There is no middle ground. The Deep Dark Galaxy, for example, there's a trick you can use with the cannon to make levels one and two (and possibly three; I can't remember it) much easier. Otherwise in level two you're supposed to do this... you know what? I'm not even sure what you're supposed to do in level two. Oh, and they're not "galaxies;" they're star systems at best. Then again, "Super" Mario Sunshine proved that the developers never passed a 200-level Physics course, so I'm not really surprised that they got the nomenclature wrong here.

Okay, what else did I do? I did not do what I'd intended to do, which is get my guitar serviced. I decided to save that for Thanxgiving/Xmas instead. Good luck... I probably learned a new song, but at this point I don't remember what is and isn't in my repertoire. This may have something to do with the fact that I automatically assume that I can work out anything in my iTunes library that's lighter than Iron Maiden in less than three minutes. But enough about me; let's talk about me for a while.

On the way back the three noteworthy things were the three police cars pulling three people over in the construction zone on I-90. Rockford's getting a fat paycheck...

Also I did the bare minimum of homework.

-James

Who Review! The Deadly Assasin

The Deadly Assassin begins with a Star Wars-esque caption scroll providing a general background, segues into a Manchurian Candidate-esque political thriller, and then goes into a virtual reality world called the Matrix. It was first broadcast in 1976, meaning that it pre-dates both Star Wars and The Matrix.

Blah blah Time Lords blah blah boring MP soundalikes blah blah. The serial came under fire at the time for two reasons: 1) the third episode, which I'll get to later, and 2) the fact that it turned the Time Lords from the mystical all powerful race that they'd been ever since their introduction in 1969, into a bunch of doddering old men. This revision certainly goes a long way towards explaining why the Doctor left their society, but it left a lot of viewers upset that the great and powerful Time Lords had been reduced to a bigger version of Parliament.

The setup is excellent: the Doctor's coming back to Gallifrey because the President (not the Prime Minister! odd for a British show) of Gallifrey is resigning. En route he gets a vision of the assassination, and the astute viewer will note that in this vision, the Doctor is the one holding the gun. He gets to Gallifrey, sneaks past the guards for no adequately explained reason beyond the fact that the Doctor sneaks past the guards on every planet he ever goes to, and arrives in what appears to be the only large room on the planet. This is where the President will resign, but the Doctor notices a rifle protruding from the shadows up above. He goes to investigate, picks up the rifle, aims, fires, and the President drops dead, and the credits roll on Episode One. Brilliant! Did the Doctor just assassinate the President of Gallifrey? Tune in next week and find out!

Episode two: no. No he didn't. In fact, in a shot added to the reprise from the previous episode, we find that he was actually aiming at the real assassin. After being arrested and using a legal loophole to wriggle his way out of being vaporized on the spot, he enlists the security chief who arrested him to help prove his innocence, which he does by entering the Matrix. It's right about here that all the credibility of this serial begins to wash away.

Episode three is a big filler episode set in the Matrix, with the assassin hunting the Doctor. It ends with a "violent" fight and a freeze-frame of the Doctor's head being held underwater. This drew fire from some people who thought that children couldn't tell the difference between fantasy and reality.

Episode four contains a revelation that the New Who writers must by now be desperately wondering how to wriggle out of: Time Lords have a total of 13 lives. Also, the Master, who is the villain of the piece (this isn't a spoiler - he's called "Master" in the first episode and they find a trademark shrunken doll in episode two), holds a gun on the Doctor, says something along the lines of "No more delays, now you die," and stuns him. Stuns. Him. After saying he wouldn't delay the Doctor's execution any further. Then he returns to the aforementioned only big room on the planet where he raises a monolith that nobody noticed before, ever. He and the Doctor fight while the camera shakes a lot and styrofoam falls from on high, and then he falls down a big crack in the floor. End of story.

Rrrrgh.

Long story short, if he were still alive, Robert Holmes could probably sue the Wachowskis for $zillions, and the story goes all wonky about halfway through episode two and never really recovers.

I'm trying to figure out why this story is held in such high regard. It derailed the Time Lords forever, featured Tom Baker talking to himself because he didn't have a companion, and reintroduced the Master in his most absurd plot ever (I'm going to lure the one man who knows I exist to Gallifrey, frame him for a murder he can easily prove he didn't commit, and then while nobody's looking, steal stuff from the dead President, enter the grand chamber and blow up the planet).

Okay, the Master's mask is good by 1976 standards. Hell, if they could have just made the jaw move a bit more when he spoke, it might have even been good by 1977 (read: Star Wars) standards. It had tubes for pumping blood over the face and everything, but this wasn't used because of the poor lighting. It's the "the regeneration limit is capped at 12" story, the continuity fans' favorite story. I kinda like the sets on this verison of Gallifrey better than all the subsequent ones (espcially Arc of Infinity). And it's a story of political intrigue first broadcast in a time of political intrigue. We got a companion-less story, and the first story set mostly on the Doctor's home planet. And the acting, which is usually fairly good on Doctor Who, is better than average here. Is The Deadly Assassin well-remembered for the sum of these perks?

Bottom line: it's a good story, but it's no Talons of Weng-Chiang, which was broadcast only a few months later. I'm not entirely sure Deadly Assassin deserves to be on the top 10 list. Top 20, absolutely. Top 15, probably. Top 10 intact stories, maybe.

Me and my music tastes

A friend of mine on Facebook recently published a status update that featured 26 bands in alphabetical order, one for each letter of the alphabet.

Let's see how I do with that:

AC/DC, Black Sabbath... dammit.
And every band on his list was, I presume, heavier than either band I just mentioned.

It's just a fact that pretty much every music act (with a few exceptions) that started after 1980 is more or less crap.

Now for the exceptions. Metallica (80s only), Megadeth (Peace Sells, Rust in Peace, and another album of your choice), Stevie Ray Vaughan... that is about it. No, really it is, and if you disagree with me then I'm glad you're not my neighbor and I don't have to listen to your aural bleach all day.

Again, it has to do with the change in emphasis from talent to... I'm not sure what. Radio-friendliness? Maybe. Whenever someone asks me to name the five best guitarists of all time, I have to separate that question and name the five greatest metal guitarists and the five greatest non-metal guitarists (in no particular order: David Gilmour, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, and insert-other-guitarist-here). Notice that three of those four are predominantly associated with Fender Stratocasters?

Anyway, I'm off topic. Disregarding punk as the hideous untalented freak show that it was, music followed a simple progression from the Beatles to Metallica, getting heavier and more complex, with better solos. Production values increased as well. As did the average bpm of the songs on an album. Unfortunately, there's only so fast you can play,* and instrumentals are fairly boring.**

*please no-one tell Chris Broderick this.

**please someone tell Satch and Vai this.

Speaking of singing and the lack thereof, thrash metal (I'm looking predominantly at Slayer here) helped to disabuse people of the notion that frontmen should actually be able to sing. Thus, despite the fact that it produced a lot of music that I like (most of it coming from American bands whose names begin with "M"), the thrash movement also, sadly, helped kill off good music forever. Wah.

Because when the concept of singing came back, it did so in the form of mass-produced pop. And despite what the top 40 says, nobody actually likes that crap.

There's a reason Led Zeppelin are often considered to be the greatest band of all time.*** It's not that Jimmy Page was an awesome guitarist (though he was/still kinda is). It's not that John Bonham was the greatest drummer ever (though he was). This was a band that went out of its way to do things differently. Punks take notice: I did not say that this was a band that went out of its way to be crap, no matter how sloppy the "Heartbreaker" solo is. This band would gleefully throw time signatures around. 5/4? Can any of you even think in 5/4?

***yeah, I said it, Beatles fans. Deal.

They straddled styles and did it with brilliance. I defy you to find a great album by another band that has blues, folk and metal (well, hard rock anyway) on it. Hell, I defy you to find a great album by anybody whose career started after 1990.

Thoughts

1) Who came up with rap "music?" No, really. Who decided "hey, I can't sing at all and I'm going to make a career out of it?"

2) In a similar vein, who came up with punk music? Who decided "hey, I can't play my instrument at all and I'm going to make a career out of it?"

3) Stop listening to what he says. Look at the people he's appointed. Look at the world leaders he's supported. Look at the allies he's stabbed in the back. Obama's the most left-wing President the country's ever had, and he's earned that position in months. What's this country going to look like in 2012?

4) 2009 deaths I give a crap about: Patrick McGoohan, Andy Hallet, Les Paul. End of list.

5) If everybody chose not to drive for 24 hours, people would die. Food wouldn't get to where it was needed.

6) You can have "clean" energy, or you can have your plains and deserts unmolested and your view unobscured. You can't have both.

7) You can't have only clean energy. It's just not viable.

8) If no band/artist that hadn't released an album by 1980 were allowed to release an album after 1980, we'd a) miss out on a couple of awesome bands and b) live in a much saner world.

9) ACORN should be dismantled and every politician with ties to them should be thrown out of office. We wouldn't have a viable government anymore, but we'd be better off.

10) If the government really wants to lower the cost of anything, they should get the hell out of it.

The top ten Iron Maiden songs

(according to me)

10. Aces High - Powerslave
9. Fear of the Dark - Fear of the Dark
8. Wasted Years - Somewhere in Time
7. The Trooper - Piece of Mind
6. 2 Minutes to Midnight - Powerslave
5. The Wicker Man - Brave New World
4. The Number of the Beast - The Number of the Beast
3. Phantom of the Opera - Iron Maiden (Yes, I am going with the version sung by Paul Di'Anno, with Dennis Stratton's Queen-esque backing vocals.)
2. Revelations - Piece of Mind (The live version from Flight 666 is also quite awesome.)
1. Hallowed be Thy Name - The Number of the Beast (Not just the greatest Iron Maiden song, but the greatest metal song. Ever.)

Songs that just didn't quite make the cut include Powerslave, Remember Tomorrow and Can I Play With Madness. Also Drifter and Die With Your Boots On are way, way underrated, but there was no way I could actually put them in a top 10 list. And no, Run To The Hills was never in the running, because it is overrated.

Dead Musicians are Better

"He's famous cos he's dead."

You've heard it before. I've heard it before in regards to:
John Bonham
Keith Moon
Cliff Burton

And probably lots of others, so I just wanna set the record straight here. John Bonham was the greatest drummer of all time. Cliff Burton was the greatest bassist of all time. End of discussion.

Keith Moon? My opinion of the Who is kind of distorted because of the fact that they're all a bunch of dicks, but he was a good drummer. Besides, the Who were collectively on the receiving end of the most epic burn in the history of music, so hey.

What was that burn? You can find the full version somewhere on Cracked.com, but here's the condensed version, complete with the jokes that I stole from that site:

See, Keith Moon and John Entwistle (bass) were at a party. So was this well-known supertalented session guitarist, who we'll just call J for now. J tells the Who guys about a band that he's putting together with a well-known supertalented session bassist/keyboardist. The band will feature some skinny long-haired hippies with tight pants and open shirts singing songs in falsetto about orcs invading Middle-Earth. The Who guys, being, as I said before, dicks, respond:
"That'll go down like a lead zeppelin." Meaning it'll crash and burn.
Our guitarist, J(immy Page), goes to practice the next day and says, "Guys! I got a name for our band!"

The Who who? All hail Led Zeppelin.

Anyway, returning to the original purpose of this rant, which is basically to get a few more digs in at a dead man (really, you think I'd be above this)...
"He's famous cos he's dead" absolutely applies to Kurt Cobain. Sorry. Again, no respect for suicides. None whatsoever. Believe me, I'd much rather he hadn't blown his brains out so he and his band could be relegated to the dust heap of music history, but because he was grunge's martyr, we're stuck with that crap now.

Guitar Hero 5's necrophilia scandal

No, I don't own it. No, I don't plan on owning it. Perusing the setlist, I come across exactly one song that I like - "2 Minutes to Midnight" by Iron Maiden.

On the one hand, I get it. "The Number of the Beast" was great on 3, and apparently there was a cover of "The Trooper" on the Xbox version of 1. But even 3, bad though its setlist was, had a couple of decent songs for every stage.

But 5's setlist is godawful. Rap "music" has no business being on a Guitar Hero game, end of discussion. Screw them and their drop-tuned "riffs" and their disgusting lyrics. Iron Maiden did themselves a disservice by letting their music get associated with this dung pile. It's not like they needed the money.

Okay, okay. "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash isn't bad. Santana, The Stones, Megadeth, Deep Purple, the Police... there are a bunch of decent artists on here. (But... are songs like "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Sweating Bullets," which are both fairly long and repetitive, going to really be that much fun? I vaguely recall there being more piano work on "Sympathy" than riffage...) And then there's Attack! Attack! Are you kidding me? They're on the same stage as Dire Straits! "Sultans of Swing!" There are a lot of B+ songs on here... and then there are a handful of truly horrible bands that go and ruin it.

Y'know who else gets a major disservice here? Kurt Cobain, and I don't even like Nirvana. I don't blame Burnt Cocaine and company for "killing" metal, because they didn't- they were just the parasite that crawled into metal's empty shell. Hell, Pearl Jam outsold Nirvana until Kurt blew his brains out. Dead musicians are better (more on that on my next post).

Anyway, Kurt's ex-wife, who we all know is the pinnacle of politeness and decency, has allowed his image to be used in the game. I don't know why they made a big deal about it. I'd be more happy to see Stevie Ray Vaughan or Randy Rhodes in the game if we're going to have a famous dead guitarist. At least these people's deaths were genuine tragedies. I don't respect suicide "victims." And I dare you to find a Cobain solo that trumps a Vaughan one.

Anyway, all of Nirvana's whiny fans got to jizz their pants when the news was announced that yes, Kurt would be in the game.

The word got out that he'd be an unlockable character. Dear God you could hear the complaints from the moon. They'll have him rapping along to Public Enemy or playing a Motley Crue song. Well you got your hero in the game, didn't you? I don't recall people bitching about the fact that you could make Slash play the bad songs in GH3! So shut up.

Also, Courtney Love is stupid for selling Kurt's body like that.

The ink's rather dry on this...

...but I feel somewhat obliged, as somebody who knows a thing or two about this, to speak up. Not that anybody reads this blog.

It starts here.

The important quote is this: " it suggests prior knowledge of Ulrich’s near-sacking. But there can’t be prior knowledge of said incident, as this little factoid is not common knowledge" (emphasis mine)

Yes, it damn well is! I knew it, and I barely pay attention to anything! Specifically, I heard it here. Check the info box. It aired in April 2008. A year and a half ago.

By the way, for anybody who doesn't know what the hell I'm going on about, this might be a useful 4-minute primer.

Also regarding that article: "many fans, rightly or wrongly, think of Burton as the anti-Ulrich who would’ve ensured many more years of awesome metal, and would protect the world from Load and St. Anger and the other Load and whatever that thing that came out last year was called." I'm going to weigh in on the "wrongly" side. No disrespect to Cliff, because anyone who disrespects Cliff deserves to have all their teeth pulled out without any anesthesia (ho ho, I'm clever there, aren't I?), but the guy who insisted on wearing bell-bottoms at all times was certainly not the most "metal" member of that band. I'm not talking out of my ass here. Read Joel McIver's book To Live Is To Die: The Life and Death of Metallica's Cliff Burton and you'll know whereof I speak.

Oh, and Scott Ian has since retracted his statement. Which he apparently didn't make in the first place. So nobody's denied it yet. Scott hasn't denied telling Dave (and Anthrax opened for Metallica in 86 on the tour when Cliff died, so there's every possibility that he would know). Nobody from Metallica has addressed it. Lars did note a while back that Dave tends to slam him in the press whenever a new Megadeth album's about to come out... but again, I don't think that this was a planted question. Dave mentioned it a year and a half ago, so people knew. Apparently nobody watched Navarro's show, but Mustaine did say it.

The best argument that it didn't happen is that it didn't come up in Some Kind Of Monster. James and Lars were pretty much at each others' throats, and that entire damn movie demonstrates that the band's not above exploiting inter-band tension for financial gain.

And if it's true, so what? If Kirk, James and Lars managed not to kill each other back in 02/03, they're not going to kill each other over something that didn't come to pass 23 years ago. I wouldn't put it past Lars to own the Metallica name today, not sure if that was the case back in 86...

I'm straining myself to come up with one incident where a band fired someone they managed to part ways on good terms, and all I've come up with is Iron Maiden and Blaze Bayley. And nobody will admit to liking him. So huh.

It's been a while...

Whoa, there went the summer. We got most of the police scenes shot, but unfortunately, we're not happy with about half of them. When you see the finished movie, you'll realize that that's about 1/3rd of the movie, and we've got to re-shoot half that... so really the things' about 1/6th of the way done. I eagerly anticipate a Christmas '14 release!

What else happened this summer? I got a new guitar, which will feature in the movie. And I spent a lot of time putting blisters on my fingers and wondering what that ringing in my ears was. I learned a lot of Iron Maiden songs as well: The Trooper, Fear of the Dark, Killers, Murders in the Rue Morgue, Wasted Years, Powerslave, Ancient Mariner... to my eternal surprise, the first album that I know half the songs from is not an AC/DC or Metallica album, but is in fact the Number of the Beast!

There wasn't a great deal of Doctor Who to be watched. I did see a couple more classic serials - The War Machines and The Power of Kroll. And I got Series 4 (30) on DVD... despite the production team's boasts, it did lag horribly in the middle, especially the Agatha Christie episode, my reaction to which alternated between "zzz" and "wtf" for most of the episode's running time. The Doctor's visited H.G. Wells (way back in a forgettable Sixth Doctor serial called Timelash), Charles "Paid-by-the-word" Dickens, Shakespeare, and Agatha Christie (and I don't hold very high opinions of any of those episodes, except maybe the Shakespeare one). High time he visited H.P. Lovecraft, in my opinion.

But here's the thing: they already did a story where the Doctor went to a Roaring 20s-esque setting, way back in the old series, in a serial called Black Orchid, and that wasn't very good either.

Now, my favorite part of Season 30 comes in the penultimate episode, when the Doctor starts going all nostalgic on Davros, in the same way he went nostalgic on the Master at the end of the previous season. Then he subverts it. Brilliantly: "After everything we've been through, I have only one thing to say to you... bye!"

As for the older serials I watched, The War Machines feels like a precursor to The Invasion, though I must admit that it is very, very good for the last intact Hartnell adventure. The Power of Kroll starts off very promising with the hovercraft stuff, but making a majority of the characters half-naked and covered in green paint was probably not the series' best move ever. Also, after the first episode the plot doesn't feel like it's going anywhere particularly fast, and while the giant octopus moster looks halfway decent by 1978 standards, the modelwork is godawful.

Everything said below is true.

"Many fans of Metallica insist that they released nothing after that bus crash. Others say that their recording career ended immediately before the Black Album, or immediately after it. The tiny fraction of fans left insist that they went on to make three more albums after this, but when faced with a copy of St. Anger, go into violent conniptions."
-tvtropes.org

In actual fact, of course, their studio burnt down during the recording of the Black Album, along with all the notes they'd taken about which songs to leave off. A studio exec somewhere left the last three songs on the album despite the fact that they were clearly slated for deletion. Lost in the fire was a glorious three-minute solo in 6/8 time that would have appeared on "Nothing Else Matters." In recognition of what they lost, Metallica never entered the studio again, except briefly in 2006-07 to record no more than three songs.

And just in case it's not obviously clear, nothing said above is true.

StudyFail

Collegehumor.com got this first, but hey, here it is:

Study = no fail
No study = fail

Study + No Study = Fail + No Fail
(No + 1) Study = (No + 1) Fail

Study = Fail

Okay, let's take a look at the math behind that. I'll assume the following values.
Study = 1
No = -1
Fail = -1

Ergo
1 = -1 * -1
-1 * 1 = -1

So far so good.

1 + (-1*1) = -1 + (-1*-1)
(-1+1)*1=(-1+1)*-1
1=-1

Turns out the wiseguy just did the old "divide by zero" trick made famous by the following riddle:
x=y
therefore 2x=2y
x-y=2x-2y (because they're both zero)
1(x-y)=2(x-y)
1=2

And the Doctors

Okay, let's do this. This is really going to hurt at the end, trying to figure out who gets stuck in last place.

1. Tom Baker (4). Um, duh.

2. Patrick Troughton (2). Simply magical.

(these two are a few light-years ahead of all the others)

3. David Tennant (10). He's clearly doing throwbacks to Peter Davison, but Tom's madcap lunacy shines through on more than one occasion.

4. Jon Pertwee (3). James Bond - Lothario + in space = Third Doctor. (Snappy dresser, too.)

5. Sylvester McCoy (7). He got off to a rocky start, and his script quality was always sketchy at best (JNT had a thing about not letting old hands write for the show, which was stupid^infinity).
6. Tie. Paul McGann (8). The Shada remake gives us an example of what could have been, had we only had a decent script. He was witty and charming and reminded me of Pertwee (who died just before the telemovie aired) in every way that matters. Christopher Eccleston (9). Manic and loony, just as the Doctor should be. They both come in so low because neither had a great deal of time in the part; given a couple more years, either one could be up in 3rd or 4th place.

8. Peter Davison (5). Coming in for only three short years in between the two most bombastic Doctors would make anybody seem bland. To his credit, Peter underplayed the part, which was exactly what the role needed after 7 years of Tom Baker. Unfortunately, he came off as a weakling. He'd rate higher if he could have, on occasion, saved some people. That, and he bears the unfortunate distinction of being the first Doctor to be stuck in a bad costume. A cricket theme would have been all right, but the end result was too much.

...Okay. I'm not really in a last-place mood, and William Hartnell (1) and Colin Baker (6) both have redeeming qualities. Hartnell comes in so low because he wasn't much more than a typical absent-minded scientist (and yes, there were real-life reasons, tragically, for his absent-mindedness) and Colin's Doctor, as I've said before, was an awesome character but was just all wrong for The Doctor. Ergo, cop-out and tie for 9th place.

...and the greatest Sci-fi show of all time is...

Wait, you really had to ask? http://www.wizarduniverse.com/25greatestscfishowsever6.html

A different sort of Who Review

Yeah, whatever I said however many weeks back when I said whatever it was... forget it. Not happening, primarily because the way my life's going at the moment I can't be bothered to watch the 75 minutes of boring that are An Unearthly Child episodes 2-4. Though there is some skull-crushery in Ep 4. Children's program my @$$.

Speaking of deaths, how about Tom Baker's plunge at the end of Logopolis? Love the absurdly fake miniature effects, the pointless grab-the-support-thingy, the fact that the Master gets away while the Doctor dies... Everybody talks about The Caves of Androzani being the greatest exit story, but really that thing's absurdly nihilistic. Everybody dies, Rose... just this once, everybody dies! Tom went out saving the entire freaking Universe, and all Peter managed to save was one girl with a fake American accent. (Granted, she was the only person in that serial worth saving, except the real Maj. Salateen, but hey, this being a Robert Holmes script and him being a somewhat bitter survivor, he was a walking dead man from the word go.) Not only that, but take a look at the villains the Doctor has to ally with. 4 has to work with the Master, the most evil evil evil evil ad nauseam person in the entire Universe (bar possibly Davros). 5 has to work with the Phantom of the Opera's cousin.

(That's another thing. Holmes already did the Phantom bit in Talons of Weng-Chiang, and oh he did it well there. Sharaz Jek was a somewhat disappointing re-do of Magnus Greel. Hell, Greel's costume beat Jek's gimp suit.)

The thing that's really cool about Logopolis is the fact that the Doctor knows, after a discussion in the second episode, that he's going to die. Gee, wait, in Caves, the Doctor also finds out that he's dying in the second episode.

I like the political complexities of Androzani, but in a post-9/11 world they leave a bit of a sour taste - the government's corrupt, the President's a tool, the army is apparently run by a corporation of some sort (can't really remember Morgus's deal at the moment), and the terrorist is just out for some well-deserved revenge. As I said, sour taste. At least there wasn't an economic crisis. Oh, wait, there was a hint of that too when they were talking about the Spectrox shortages. (I like how everybody was a Spectrox junkie. Not sure what the subtext there was, but I liked it.) Oh well, at least there was no Swine Flu. (Insert jokes about the Doctor being retarded enough to not immediately administer the antidote to himself when pigs fly here.)

See, when the Master tilts that platform, 4 knows it's the end. He's gonna yank that cable out, and then he's gonna fall. (Gee, cult television show, high platform, very bizarre and poorly-explained setup/solution that requires the main character to go splat in order to save the Universe... history sure doesn't repeat itself does it?)

The 5th Doctor's last word is "...Adric?"
The 4th Doctor's last words are "It's the end... but the moment has been prepared for."

Which is better? Seriously?

-James

Oh, and in case you had to ask, yes, that other show did it a hell of a lot better... but it was still poorly set up.

The Decline of the Music Industry (in deaths)

Here's the lowdown:

No Great Music was recorded after John Bonham (of Led Zeppelin) died. No Very Good Music was recorded after Cliff Burton (of Metallica) died (and certainly not by Metallica, "One" notwithstanding), and no Good Music was recorded after Stevie Ray Vaughan died.

This means:
Back in Black - Great. Just barely. In fact, the last Truly Great album, ever.
The Number of the Beast - Very Good. Very, very very very very very good. But Back in Black has four or five (depending on whether you count "Rock & Roll Ain't Noise Pollution") concert staples, and The Number of the Beast only has three.
Master of Puppets - Very Good. Just as on their previous release, Ride the Lightning, it seems as though the weak track comes in at #6 and leaves a sour taste in your mouth before the thrashfest/instrumental conclusion.
Blow Up Your Video - Good. It's not Back in Black, but nothing on it makes me gag. The same cannot be said for anything Iron Maiden would churn out with a Roman numeral in the title, and certainly cannot be said for Metallica's 90s decadebacle.*

*I am hereby updating the dictionary to include the word "decadebacle," which means literally ten years of Epic Fail. It is pronounced DE-KA-de-BA-kel.

The true Who

Oh dear. This is funny, but perhaps only if you know enough about the show to be able to discern the half-truths from the flat-out lies. Anywho, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJPhhaXiUTE

Oh, the criminally insane, what fun we have at your expense.

Planet of the Dead

Courtesy of Youtube, I finally have a chance to watch the Doctor Who Easter special. My thoughts thus far:

1) it's a damn shame Tennant's leaving

2) the 2008/09 version of the theme is rediculous.

3) "aw, the little dish is going around" is funny, but does not beat "it goes ding when there's stuff."

4) Thanks to Star Trek, turbulance acting never convinces me.

5) The plot evidently concerns a bus in the middle of a desert. Feels like a budget cutback to me.

6) Now they're doing the "what's your real name" routine. At least without the TARDIS in sight, there won't be any "it's bigger on the inside."

7) Doctor following orders is funny.

8) "The smell inside this thing is reaching quite atrocious levels." So stop sweating. Funny.

9) Ooookay, the UIT hero-worship is kinda silly.

10) Look, a crashed spaceship. Look, the interior set appears to be a single corridor.

Okay, that's the first half. Next half coming after lunch.

-James

Random stream of consciousness randomness

Have no fear, Sarah Jane. Where there's life, there's hope. And change. Loose change for the masses held in churches where the steeple lurches. Was Lurch a guy in the Aadams family? Probably. The probability that you'll die within 24 hours increases minutely each day. I'd like to know the value of that increase. Some increases, like the one I just mentioned and also taxes, are bad. Others are good. A naughty example comes to mind. "More naughty bits," ah, Monty Python. You crazy crazy lot. Douglas Adams collaborated with a few Pythons. He also, apparently, played rhythm guitar at a Pink Floyd concert once. Right before he was kicked out, Syd Barret came up with this song called "have you got it yet?" He'd play it to the rest of the band over and over, but they'd never get it. Alternatively, that is, from a sane perspective (a different point of view, if you will), he started playing something else as soon as anybody picked up the old pattern. Oh, different points of view. It's been probably close to 14 years since I saw Return of the Jedi and I'm still rather insistent on the fact that "betrayed and murdered" is in no way the same as "is." That's just Lucas covering his butt, because according to somebody, he didn't come up with the "Darth Vader is Luke's father" plot twist until 1978. But come on, Lucas had to know that "Vader" is Nazi for "father." Just like RTD had to know that "Mister Saxon" is obviously an anagram for "Master No. Six." New Who is the only show I can name off the top of my head where I liked the third season better than the second. However, I didn't like the Third Doctor quite as much as the Second. What was Three's last words again? Oh right. "Have no fear, Sarah Jane. Where there's life, there's..."

And so on. This is really how my mind works.

-James

Addictions

First off: http://www.asylum.com/2009/04/21/almost-one-in-ten-kids-addicted-to-video-games/
Apparently Nintendo's got a lot to answer for. Seriously, nine out of ten kids aren't getting hooked on living out vapid fantasy lives that range from beating up turtles to beating up hookers to playing guitar to playing freaking bass guitar.* Seriously, something is wrong with their advertising campaign.

*Look, a bassist is a critical part of a band. But seriously, the only song on any Guitar Hero game that should cause you to be fighting each other for control of the bass is Metallica's "Orion." I suppose they could put Pink Floyd's "Money" on there to bring the count up to two, but they'd have to make a saxophone controller to go with it, and that song's long and easy, which basically disqualifies it from being potential Guitar Hero fodder.

This segues directly into my next topic: namely my guitar addiction. As far as addictions go, this one's healthy except for where my ears, my fingers, and my neighbor's mental health are concerned. But he likes to watch movies late at night; he'll inevitably start one as soon as I hit the sack, and he apparently doesn't own a pair of headphones. By the way, the previous sentence makes a lot more sense if you remember that I'm in a college dorm. Anyway, I really don't care about him.

I was gonna write more about how at least a guitar addiction gives you some possible real-world potential, but I suddenly have an insatiable craving to play StarCraft. War out.

-James

Update: whenever I play against the Terrans, I pretend that their Command Center is manned exclusively by the Blizzard execs who decided it would be funny to make me kill Fenix.

A very very belated Who Review

Survival. The end of the classic series. Anthony Ainley's final canonical performance as the Master. Sophie Aldred's last appearance as Ace. The last time that the TARDIS windows wouldn't be lit (yay budgets).

Okay, blah blah, pacifist and feminist elements woven all throughout the three-part script by newcomer Rona Munroe, blah blah silly-looking Cheetah People and sillier-looking black cats. I wanna talk about Ainley and McCoy's one and only story together.

By this point in the series, Anthony Ainley had been the longest-serving recurring character, first appearing (spoiler alert) in The Keeper of Traken (1981). He'd (spoiler alert) killed off Tom Baker's doctor and had survived both Peter Davison and Colin Baker. So it's not all that surprising, then, when he and the Seventh Doctor begin their conversation at the start of Episode 2, Ainley's giving McCoy "I'm going to outlast you too" looks that work absolutely perfectly for his character. McCoy is shooting back looks of absolute disgust. The other Doctors Ainley worked with didn't have that same chemistry. Tom Baker was horrified, not particularly disgusted. Peter Davison seemed to always spend more time feeling sorry for the Master's victims than actually being angry at the Master himself, and Colin almost treated him as a friendly enemy (oh, wait, that's because the Master wasn't the main villain in the only 6th Doctor serial he appeared in).

Gone are the Bond/Blofeldesque Pertwee/Delgado exchanges. The Master is becoming completely unhinged (in a good way; Eric Roberts was all wrong) and the Doctor knows he's going to have to put his enemy down once and for all, which he does, abandoning him on a planet that's blowing up around them. I'd like to see David Tennant do that.

Okay, McCoy overacts when he's talking to the cat and pretending to talk to Ace. This is Doctor Who. Everybody's guilty of that at some point. Still, check out this serial for yet more Ace character development (*-seriously, it took them 24 years and how many companions to realize that they could have some serious character development on the show?), pure, unadulterated Ainley evil the way he always wanted to do it, and one of McCoy's greatest performances.

...and what show had the best tune?

http://totalscifionline.com/features/3393-doctor-who-wins-best-sci-fi-tv-theme-tune-of-all-time

It doesn't go into a lot of detail, but I wish to point out that the original theme was not played on a synth or anything like that to record it. Wikipedia explains in more detail:

Each and every note was individually created by cutting, splicing, speeding up and slowing down segments of analogue tape containing recordings of a single plucked string, white noise, and the simple harmonic waveforms of test-tone oscillators which were used for calibrating equipment and rooms, not creating music. The swooping melody and pulsating bass rhythm was created by manually adjusting the pitch of oscillator banks to a carefully-timed pattern. The rhythmic hissing sounds, "bubbles" and "clouds", were created by cutting tape recordings of filtered white noise.

The theme was not recorded using a synth until 1980.

Star Wars vs Star Trek, round 1

...or, why I'll be seeing the Star Trek reboot agaist the wishes of my inner Yoda:

Star Trek has no Jar Jar Binks.

That is all.

Good songs off bad albums

1. The Unforgiven II, ReLoad, Metallica



First off let me go on record as saying that ReLoad is quite possibly one of the worst albums I have in my music collection, and is quite possibly the worst CD I've paid for. Having said that, I don't own Load or St. Anger, so I really wouldn't know if it's truly the worst Metallica album ever made. Let me also say that in order to truly appreciate this song, you first have to hear "The Unforgiven," which I just nixed off the list of the top ten Metallica songs.



Having said that, ReLoad actually gets off to a decent start. "Fuel" is the closest thing to a shredfest we're going to get on this album, "The Memory Remains" is a treat, and "Devil's Dance" is a stomper a la "Sad But True." After that comes "The Unforgiven II," and after that the album goes to Hell.



2. Brain Shake, Flick of the Switch, AC/DC



Flick of the Switch was a nightmare to make and is a nightmare to listen to. They went back to their stripped-down sound that had propelled them to stardom, but their attempts to self-produce (and thereby self-edit) are sloppy at best. Add to the trouble drummer Phil Rudd's firing and you have yourself an album that's already, to quote another track's title, deep in the hole. Having said that, Brain Shake is surprisingly catchy. The title track also has a nice riff, but this one takes the cake.

...and that's it. In general, if your friend says an album's crap, don't get it. If there's one song on there that's good, get it on iTunes for God's sake.

-James

The Top Ten Metallica Songs

According to a site I found, these are

10. Sad But True, Metallica
9. ...And Justice for All, ...And Justice for All
8. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ride the Lightning
7. Creeping Death, Ride The Lightning
6. Enter Sandman, Metallica
5. Nothing Else Matters, Metallica
4. The Unforgiven, Metallica
3. Seek and Destroy, Kill 'em All
2. One, ...And Justice For All
1. Master of Puppets, Master of Puppets

To which I say - despite the fact that ...And Justice for All has singlehandedly proved that I do not in fact have ADD, neither it nor The Unforgiven really should be on this list. Also, in general Metallica is overrepresented and Master of Puppets is underrepresented. Come to think of it, I'm not sure what Sad But True is doing on that list either. If you want a heavy slow song, think The Thing That Should Not Be. Also on the list somewhere should be Battery. Plus one of the classic instrumentals - I'd go with The Call of Ktulu, but that's just me.

With that in mind, I hereby present my version of the top 10 Metallica songs


10. Battery, Master of Puppets
9. The Call of Ktulu, Ride the Lightning
8. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ride the Lightning
7. The Thing That Should Not Be, Master of Puppets
6. Nothing Else Matters, Metallica
5. Seek And Destroy, Kill 'Em All
4. Creeping Death, Ride the Lightning
3. Enter Sandman, Metallica
2. One, ...And Justice for All
1. Master of Puppets, Master of Puppets

...gee, can you tell that Lightning and Puppets are two of my favorite albums?

Splat

There goes my week, folks. If I'm still coherent on Wednesday I'll bang out a Who Review for you.

Basically, I thought everything was under control until I discovered I have exactly one more project to do than I thought I did.

On the other hand, after watching too much TV this weekend I have come up with the Sex Importance Index. Basically you can apply this formula to any TV show to determine whether the sex in it is just to attract the 99% of the show's audience that are perverts, or whether it actually serves a purpose.

But before I revealed it to you, I realized that Scrubs really doesn't fit the model, which involves factors such as nudity, the age of the characters, and the characters' importance in the show itself. Since there's no naughty bits and most of the main characters are fairly young, my model would seem to indicate that the sex there was important, when it really, really wasn't.

Then I realized that 99% of all TV shows don't portray sex as having any significance whatsoever. Unless it results in a pregnancy, or it's somebody's first time, or the very first time there's any sex on the show, it won't be important. (Scrubs is especially guilty of this - JD and Elliot's numerous pelvic encounters had less ongoing significance than JD and Jordan's one time, which just happened to be the first time JD got any on the show, took place in the 7th episode, and had ramifications that lasted into the second season. The only other sex that ever has any significance on that show are the ones that get Carla, Jordan and Kim pregnant. Then again, this is the show that has said repeatedly that sex doesn't have to be special or important.)

Have fun trying to keep your mind pure, and Easter blessings on you all.
-James

Some Sort of Hit List

He says he got the idea for this from a car in a courthouse. I think he got it from the Blues Brothers.


Oh, what else is going on in the world?

Ah. Apparently I was supposed to do a Who Review a couple of days ago, and if memory serves, it was for Survival, the last one ever. It's in the works. It's got a lot of subtext for three episodes and I want to do that justice, plus take a look at the end of Classic Who. Next week isn't looking any better (worse in face) as far as real life issues go.

Tom's working on another script for another movie. We're absolutely going to shoot the first one this summer, plus do a little project we're calling Jedi People... but depending on how fast/poorly we make the first movie, we might have time for the second one. I'll get him on here to explain it.

Anyway, about the movie, it's not all actors and directors. There's also design and music to consider. Music involves doing things that will make Lars Ulrich mad at us as opposed to making our own, so we're covered there. Most of the time design involves, especially in the case of low-budget pieces of crap like the movie we're making, buying or renting a house or a car or a gun, etc. Sets and props and whatnot. However, part of our movie is set on a college campus, and even though we have access to one, we'll be shooting in the summer. If you've been to a college campus you know that they're plastered with flyers for events that you never imagined could or even should exist. Guess who has to make those flyers for the movie?

Yeah. Me.

-James

Two Things

One: Keep this thing away from me.

Two: I recently gave a lot of props to Metallica on their R&R Hall of Fame induction, so I thought I'd toss a shout-out to their biggest rival, Megadeth. Dave Mustaine really doesn't take crap from anyone, including pricks who shine lasers at him (strong language warning; the fun starts about a minute in). Also, given his shirt in this clip, he and I have similar heroes.

Obama Wants a "Stronger Global Regime"

What, the United Nations isn't bad/incompetent/anti-American/anti-freedom enough?

Metallica are Awesome

...or is it "is?" I don't know, grammar was never my strong point.

Anyway, apparently they have the record for the biggest show in a specific London arena. Also, it's possible (see the pictures) that James Hetfield has enough tattoos now.

They're getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tomorrow.

And they've also got that game. Check out the suggestions, especially the last one. God, that song is pure awesome.

Whoa

It's about time.

Wow

Apparently when you kick a mouse into a wall, it freaking explodes.

Or, to put it in the words of my RA, "goes pop."

-James

The world is officially out of control

This is not an April Fool's post. The whole point of a constitution is to prevent the government from going insane with power. But that's exactly what is happening today. The people running our country today are completely unhinged, and nobody's going to stop them before it's too late.

Look, I'm well aware that you could chart the growth of the government since the New Deal, and it's basically a straight line regardless of who's in office. Ronald Reagan, the so-called champion of limited government, tripled the national deficit. This isn't a Democrat vs. Republican thing. It's not a liberal vs. conservative thing, because conservatives run as libertarians and govern as liberals.

What it is is this: I don't want to be a government junkie. I don't think you do either. I don't want some guy in Washington to decide that my children will starve this week because he got up on the wrong side of bed. I don't want to be a puppet, though I know that everyone's got strings. Nobody's fully the master of their own destiny because in the end we're all going to die. But I see no reason why the government should get to screw with our lives in the meantime.

-James

Tuesday Who: Revelation of the Daleks

The Doctor: But did you bother to tell anyone that they might be eating their own relatives?

Davros: Certainly not! That would have created what I believe is termed... "consumer resistance".

Eric Saward. Colin Baker. John Nathan-Turner. These are the names of three people (Script Editor, Doctor, and Producer, respectively) who get a great deal of the blame when the question "Who killed Doctor Who?" gets raised. Certainly Nathan-Turner and Saward overstayed their welcome, but the same cannot be said of Colin Baker.

See, it's confession time. I like the Sixth Doctor. I'm certainly glad that Colin never got his wish to tear open a Dalek casing and eat the goop inside (no, apparently he really said that), but I didn't mind the violence and the flippant disdain for practically everything and everybody. To be sure, The Twin Dilemma was utter crap, but oh yeah this isn't that. See, the Doctor's essentially a god. The only things that are certainly more powerful than him are the Eternals and the Black and White Guardians. The Sixth Doctor (until the Ninth and Tenth came around and nobody minded) was the only one who acted like it. Yes, One and Three were sanctimonious, yes Two and Seven were dastardly schemers...

But Four and Five... as much as I like Tom Baker (and I'll say it again: he's my favorite), he turned the Doctor into a goofy lunatic. And Peter Davison underplayed the role, making the Doctor seem weaker and at times completely overwhelmed by the proceedings.

Anyway, Six. He's the guy who's saved the Universe countless times over, and he's not going to let you forget it. He's bombastic. He's loud. He has a very questionable fashion sense:

(er, I'd upload a picture of Six in his absurd technicolor coat, but that would probably violate some sort of copyright and thus Blogger's terms of service. Just go here instead.)

Anyways, this is a Dalek story (duh. With that title, you'd have to be a moron not to expect that the first cliffhanger is a Dalek menacing the Doctor. And oh yeah you'd be wrong, because a giant statue of himself does the menacing instead. I kid you not).

Actually, the statue's really the serial's only major letdown. Considering how generally awful most of that era of Doctor Who is, Revelation stands out as not only not-bad, but actually quite good. By far the most rockin' guest character is the bounty hunter Orcini, who, because Eric Saward has an obsession with mercenaries, gets to save the day.

The script's got about as much black humor as Doctor Strangelove, and just happens to feature a wheelchair-bound genius with only one functioning hand. Interesting.

Oh, and the DJ is pure comic gold. Hell, the whole script is somewhat absurd. There's a mortuary. The Doctor's been summoned to the mortuary to pay his final respects to somebody we've never met before, and who, as it turns out, is only mostly dead (at the moment; his own daughter will fry him before the first episode ends). The mortuary is overseen by Jobel, a general sarcastic bastard who cares as much for his dead clients as Scrubs's Doctor Cox appears to care for his living ones. The staff includes Tasambeker, who lusts after him, a Laurel-and-Hardy-esque security team, and a DJ who plays music at the dead.

Yes, you read that right. A DJ who plays music at the dead. Also a head in a tank. Who is breaking down the bodies and turning them into either Daleks or food. And supplying the food to the villainous Kara, who just sent Orcini the assassin to kill him.

Confused yet? Did I mention the not-dead-yet-guy's daughter and her drunken associate? ("If I open that door too soon, the molecular structure of the body will break down. Poor old Stengos will turn into a pool of high-protein water! Even if I were confident that I could reconstitute him, we do not have a suitable vessel into which he could be ladled.") This is a script that is bursting at the seams before you even throw the Doctor in. Which is probably why Colin has jack squat to do in the first episode except climb over a fence and get a statue of himself dropped on him.

-James

Clockwork Zombie

Droogs: I've just had the strangest dream. It involved me piloting Air Force One in a dogfight against the Nazis, the Soviets, and Batman.

That is all.

-James

Conspiracy

If anything important happened last weekend, I missed it. I can't tell you where I was. It'd normally be the "if I told you, I'd have to kill you" routine, but I'm not going there because

a) death threats, especially vague death threats, are nobody's friend.

b) the odds of me suddenly gaining the power to reach through your computer screen and throttle you are incredibly low.

So with that in mind, I'll amend the usual cliche to "I'd tell you, but it would make your hard drive melt."

I promise, however, that it had nothing to do with feral tigers, chemical weapons, or daffodils.

-James

Weekend blah list

...I finally saw Neil Gaiman's interview on The Colbert Report. Good stuff.

...I stumbled across an emergency recall from the folks who make Hummers. Apparently any civilians whose Hummers have machine guns mounted on the roof need to return their Hummers to the lot, as they were accidentally given the military model. Civilian model Hummers, of course, have the machine guns hidden behind the headlights.

...I have discovered that if you play simple scales on a guitar relatively fast it sounds like you have no idea what you're doing. If, on the other hand, you randomly hit notes at insanely fast speeds, you sound like a god. The important thing is to keep switching strings so the notes are somewhat far apart.

...Rush Limbaugh wants to debate Obama. Apparently Rush has now forgotten what every single Democrat forgot more than ten years ago, namely that the man is a pundit, not a pol.

...There was an incredibly stupid crime committed somewhere in one of those Eastern states. This has apparently depressed my next-door neighbor, as he was evidently planning on doing the same thing.

...I must learn some new songs. Also, I must stop publishing posts where one in five "facts" are blatant lies and another one contains unfounded libel. Also, I must go get my laundry.

-James

Who Review: The Five Doctors

First, the obligatory quoting of this episode's most (in)famous line:
"What? No, not the mind probe!"

Okay, now that that's over with...

The Five Doctors is a goofy 20th anniversary special written by former script editor Terrance Dicks and starring three of the then-five Doctors (Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, and Peter Davison). Tom Baker had no intention of coming back to the show so soon after his departure, and William Hartnell was, er, living impaired (though he did appear in the very first scene, courtesy of archive footage from The Dalek Invasion of Earth). Richard Hurndall did a passable First Doctor impression, and the catch-all script allowed for virtually any companion matchup.

It's just as well that Tom Baker didn't show up, because the action is disjointed enough with four Doctors. It's worth mentioning that even though he has the least interesting adventure, Patrick Troughton still manages to steal the show from the incumbent Doctor, who at the time was half his age. Pertwee also has his moments (he reduces the polarity of the neutron flow for only the second time, which brings that catchphrase's usage count to two more than that of Star Trek's "beam me up, Scotty"), but as you'll hear me say often in regards to the Second Doctor, Troughton was simply magical.

Anthony Ainley gets to cover some new ground as the Master; he's offered the chance to play the hero for once and rescue the Doctors. This leads to the episode's most famous line: "A cosmos without the Doctor scarcely bears thinking about." Of course, he's absolutely right. Of course, he reverts to evil, but because his help is constantly rejected by the Doctors (even though he saves Hurndall's bacon). And this is the series' only Ainley/Pertwee interaction, which I gather was fairly strained; Pertwee had enjoyed playing against Roger Delgado, a more Professor Moriartyesque Bond villian of a Master, whereas Ainley's interpretation seems at times to be a pale foreshadowing of Jack Nicholson's Joker in the 1989 Batman film, with hammy laughter and a constant over-the-top performance.

Sadly, this is one of the Doctor Who stories that it's safer to just not think too hard about. After all, the Fifth Doctor has lived through these events three times before; he should know who the real villain is by now. There's some subtext about failed quests for power and redemption, but the fact is that The Five Doctors is first and foremost a reunion show, a celebration of the show's past at the expense of plot, something that would plague the show in years to come.

Oh. One last thing. The Raston Warrior Robot is the cheapest part of the show. It's a guy in a silver suit and some camera tricks that you could pull off in your backyard. It's also the best part of the show. Keep that in mind when you consider Doctor Who's notorious low budget.

-James

Somebody find a way to resurrect the Crocodile Hunter...

...now. This is why.

In other news, I'm far too lazy to watch The Five Doctors and review it tonight. Come back tomorrow.

Presidential Quotations

Courtesy of Wikiquote:

"Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery."
-Calvin Coolidge

"The people can never understand why the President does not use his powers to make them behave. Well all the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway. "
-Harry Truman

"If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power. "
-Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."
-Ronald Reagan

"The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth."
-Bill Clinton

Proud to be a... What?

Dear people: go to this site. Eventually you will learn that this country owns a house in Canada, an island, part of one planet, part of an ex-planet, and part of a planet that doesn't exist. They also may or may not own a space station.

Also one of their national holidays falls on January 29th and is Idiot's Day. The Daily Dose of Dirty Deeds will henceforth be acknowledging this holiday.

...oh, and they worship a penguin.

On the other hand, their citizens have names like Adeonothas Darksbane, Pikathulu, Xiao Li [the] Accordion Pillager, and Al. So hey, they might have something going for them.

-James

...uh, a note on the Enemies List(s)

This is just my way of saying "I don't like these people." That's literally all the Enemies List is. Like Colbert wagging his finger at somebody.

The very first Enemies List!!

The very first Enemies List contains the names of every Representative and Senator who voted for the "Stimulus" package(s) without reading it. Rather than re-type the entire damn thing, you can find it under the "yeas" here and here.

-Jim

Saturday night, er, morning, and I'm still hangin' around...

Facebook may be evil, but it can't do this. Yet.

In other news, my sunburn resolutely refuses to go away.

We're all gonna die!!

But those of us with children in college will die much faster.

-Jim

A penny for your thoughts? You overcharge.

This weekend promises to be better than the rest of the week has been. Of course, I'm almost out of food. I might very well starve. Then my ghost would probably go someplace nicer, like the Bahamas. Can ghosts get sunburns? What would that look like?

In unrelated news, all three versions I have of AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" have played on my iTunes in the past hour. I wonder if God is trying to tell me something.

It might be that I need to branch out a bit, musically. That's it. Somebody please tell me that's it.

Bailouts, Bonuses, and the News

What he said.

-Jim

A very very short album review

AC/DC's Let There Be Rock is quite possibly the greatest showcase of raw guitar music ever.

-Jim

Random thought list

1- it occured to me that my Ark In Space review is less a review and more a half-arsed analysis. I'm still trying to find a comfortable middle ground between the two.

2- Everything moved slowly today. Classes took forever. On the plus side, this also meant that for the first time ever while playing Metallica's "One," I thought that the recording I was playing along to was going too slow. Nice.

3- Tomorrow I shall try an experiment, and remain outside my dorm room from eight in the morning until eight in the evening. It shall be... interesting.

Tuesday Who Review: The Ark In Space

"He talks to himself sometimes because he's the only one who understands what he's talking about."
-Sarah Jane on the Fourth Doctor

So there's this... thingy. In space. And a bunch of people in cryogenic sleep. And a parasite that infests one of them. And Jones the Cat.

No, wait. Sorry, The Ark In Space precedes Alien by five years and a considerable amount of production quality (but hey, this is no-budget 70s tv - what did you expect?)

Okay, 1974, big year for Doctor Who. New Doctor - Tom Baker, wide-eyed looney in a scarf three times as long as it needs to be. New producer - Phillip Hinchcliffe, eager to grab new audiences. New script editor - Robert Holmes, eager to scare the crap out of children.

So, Ark. Commanded by a guy named Noah. Who gets influenced by some powerful force far greater than human comprehension. No, there's no religious subtext here, honest!

No, actually, the subtext has less to do with religion and more to do with charismatic leaders. Noah's subordinates will slavishly obey his every command even as they begin to question his judgement.

Vira: "My duty is to supervise the re-vivification."
Doctor: "No. Noah has passed the command to you. Your duties have been widened."

Vira's a med-tech. In the "highly compartmentalized" caste system enacted in the future, she is completely overwhelmed by anything irregular - and this is Doctor Who, meaning that soon enough there will be irregularities crawling over the hull, towards your only escape ship...

The serial is full of references to life and death:

Harry: "I say, what a place for a mortuary."
Doctor: "This isn't a mortuary, Harry, quite the reverse."
Harry: "Reverse? I wouldn't call it a nursery."

But a nursery is exactly what it is; every human that awakens from the cryogenic sleep (except Sarah) has essentially been re-born into a new world. A world where even the most charismatic leaders need to be replaced. Somebody else must always step up to the plate.

Doctor: "Homo sapiens. What an inventive, invincible species. It's only a few million years since they crawled up out of the mud and learned to walk. [...] And now, here they are, out among the stars, waiting to begin a new life."

It's human intelligence that has brought the species this far, made us, in the Doctor's words, indomitable. If we ignore our human spirit and unquestioningly follow the charismatic leader, we'll be nothing more than the Wirrn swarm, led into a shuttle and launched away to an explosive destiny.

Pros:
Tom Baker and the others are on top form in this early episode. The 4/Sarah dynamic is already clearly developed. It's a Robert Holmes script, so you already know it's good.

Cons:
The Wirrn aren't nearly as frightening as they could be - for one thing, the move far too slowly to present a credible threat. And of course, the sets are far too brightly lit.

Bottom line:
Quite understandably, this one's ranked as one of the greatest Who serials of all time.
-Jim

Monday Night Musing

Tentatively, the Who Review list for the next five weeks is going to look something like this:

3/17 - The Ark In Space (1974 - Tom Baker)
3/24 - The Five Doctors (1983 - Peter Davison)
3/31 - Revelation of the Daleks (1985 - Colin Baker)
4/7 - Survival (1989 - Sylvester McCoy)
4/14 - An Unearthly Child (1963 - William Hartnell)

Having thus gotten 1 serial for every Doctor plus the very first one out of the way, I'm probably going to start going out of order from then on in, owing to the fact that I only own 3 Troughton serials and 2 each from C. Baker and McCoy.

Voter fraud is an ugly, ugly thing, and my college's student congress evidently doesn't care.

I left my spare guitar strings at home. Silly me.

My computer arbitrarily decided to log me out of all the usual sites (Facebook, YouTube) that it usually logs me into automatically.

Here is the grand total of my thoughts:

I almost (almost) wish I were back in school.

It's been about two years since my last confession.

Dehydration will probably be the end of me.

That, or sunburns.

The next two months are gonna be crazy insane.

...that's about it.

The Time Warrior

"Your species has a primary and secondary reproductive system. It is an inefficient system, you should change it."
-Lynx, on discovering that women exist on Earth.

Okay. First off, as a kind of right-of-center cynic/quasi-libertarian, some people might expect me to frown on the Third Doctor. After all, that era's producer, Barry Letts, self-identified as a "trendy lefty liberal" on one of the DVD commentaries, and the Third Doctor's stories are far and away the most politically charged. That is to say, they're rockin' sci-fi stories about a small group of people who prevent alien invasions every week, with political undertones.

The fact that I just referred to the episodes as "rockin" should be a giveaway; I don't hate the Third. He's one of my favorites. Behind Troughton and Baker, of course, but still. And the pacing is sometimes godawful (see any serial from Season 7), but that's more or less par for the course for Doctor Who.

See, I like political stuff when it's done right. Er, correctly. (Michael Moore, take note; you could learn a thing or two.) And 99% of the time you can appreciate the story without really worrying about the politics.

For the record, the two most political Third Doctor serials were, in my opinion, Doctor Who and the Silurians, and The Green Death. (Invasion of the Dinosaurs doesn't count.) So if you want to avoid the politics, just don't watch those serials.

Okay, anyway, the political talking points of The Time Warrior are colonialism and feminism. The series puts an already advanced-for-our-time alien into the middle ages, and then sends the series' first female lead who can look out for herself more than 50% of the time along with the Doctor to sort it all out.

So the alien guy is providing the evil and improbably-named Irongron and his equally-improbably-named lieutenant Bloodaxe (you cannot make this stuff up) with single-shot muskets from circa the American Revolution. This causes trouble for the local lord, who is not evil, just infirm and incompetent. His lady-Macbeth-esque (but in a good way) wife sends Hal the Archer (played by Jeremy Bulloch - Star Wars fans know him as a certain iconic badass before his character's coolness quotient was raped to hell by Attack of the Clones... er, I digress) to shoot Irongron, because 14th century assassination plots didn't really need any thought. Fett, er, Hal runs into Sarah Jane Smith, a reporter from 1974/80 (I will not discuss the UNIT dating controversy here), and all hell breaks loose.

It's a Robert Holmes script. There are two things you must know about Robert Holmes. 1- he loved terrifying the crap out of small children. (He'd get more of a chance to do this when he became Script Editor the following year.) 2- he doesn't like killing off female characters. Thus, all of his scripts feature very few women (...okay, except The Talons of Weng-Chiang, but come on, eight of the ten women killed by the villain were killed before the serial even started) and the women who do show up are usually rather strong roles. Sarah Jane Smith is no exception, nor is "Lady Macbeth", nor, in her own way, is the jaded serving wench Sarah encounters in the fourth episode. Point is, Sarah Jane is probably one of television's stronger female characters of the 70s. And she's generally awesome for it.

Okay, summary/ramblings over. Down to brass tacks:

Effects: ugh. See, this is the problem with color. You could get away with incredibly low-quality crap in black-and-white. You can't in color. Not helping matters is director Alan Bromly's decision to signify the destruction of Irongron's castle with stock footage of a quarry explosion.

Politics: in case I didn't make it clear, this serial has a near Buffyesque style of feminism some 20 years before Joss Whedon became a household name. I'm not talking "women don't need men," fish and bicycles here, just some nice, very strong female characters. Gone is the era of the companion being strapped to the railroad tracks or threatened with the circular saw.

Stunts: mostly because the most impressive swordfight takes place whilst the Doctor is encased inside a suit of armor (i.e, it's easy to put in a double), the stunts get a B rating, which is about as high as they're ever going to get. There's also a nice, if strangely-timed, chandelier swing.

Anyway, bottom line is, it's a rockin' story sans most of the familiar 3rd Doctor elements - Jo's gone, UNIT's barely in the picture, the Master's a no-show... but it's still good.

Next week - my favorite Doctor finds an ark in space in... The Ark in Space

I'm rather doomed.

...and this is why:
http://www.cracked.com/article_17052_circle-life-jocks-vs-nerds.html

On a separate note, this is funny:
http://www.cracked.com/article_17123_5-most-retarded-wars-ever-fought.html

...and this is just what the country needs:
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/pentagons_unmanned_spokesdrone

Well, that and more beer.

[Update:
...and this is what I think of Wanted. It's funny how it's not even mine:
http://www.the-editing-room.com/wanted.html ]

Okay, now that the linkage is over, it's time for a Sunday/Monday post.

First up: there is about a 50% chance that this week's Tuesday Who Review will be on Wednesday. There is about a 100% chance that it will concern the serial The Time Warrior, because that's the only 3rd Doctor serial I took on vacation with me. There's also about a 63% chance that I'm pulling these numbers out of nowhere.

Second up: Because I'm on vacation I get to take a week off from my otherwise rampant political cynicism. And having said that, we're all doomed.

Third up: I cannot get AC/DC's "Rock N Roll Train" out of my head. I have yet to determine whether this is a bad thing.

Fourth up: "Could not contact Blogger.com. Saving and publishing may fail. Retrying..."
And here I thought I left very bad internet connections behind when I left the mainland.

-Jim

P.S. Indoor plumbing is a wonderful thing - I just wish they could get it right.

Travel

I forgot to take my ziploc toiletry bag out for security screening.

Security forgot to notice.

This is what your tax dollars are going to, people!

Quick Hit List #2

Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, who was the center of a massive burst of backlash back in 2000 for leading the anti-Napster charge, admits to having illegally downloaded… his own album.
http://www2.kerrang.com/2009/03/lars_ulrich_i_downloaded_death.html

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20090302

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/doctor-who/4935903/Dr-Who-Dalek-found-in-pond.html

http://www.switched.com/2009/02/26/vp-biden-forgets-his-website-number/

...yeah it's a short list this week, and cuz I'm gonna be out of town, next week doesn't look all that promising.

Thought for the day

David Brooks, a man I can't claim to have agreed with often since, oh, the 2008 election cycle began, seems to have realized that our President is not in fact the moderate some people evidently thought he ran as:

"The only thing more scary [sic] than Obama’s experiment is the thought that it might fail and the political power will swing over to a Republican Party that is currently unfit to wield it.”

Well, the Russians could load a bunch of balloons with some sort of zombie plague virus, float them over the Pacific, and infect us all - I'd say that that would qualify as being scarier than either.

Anyway, a number of prominent conservatives are denouncing Brooks' jab at the Republicans - but this time, I'm gonna say that Brooks is right on. The party is fractured and, at the moment, totally unfit to lead. The Republicans are in danger of becoming Democrat Lite, and if that happens, you can expect my dream of a three-party system to come true: Democrats, rushing further and further left, Republicans, teetering on the center, and finally a new party, made up of conservative diehards disgusted by the path the Republicans are taking.

Fact of the matter is, America needs an opposition party. Primarily so that the party in charge doesn't get too power drunk, ignore the will of the people, and eventually end up declaring bunnies to be a national security threat. Republicans, agree with them or not, need to get their act together.

And now, in addition to Russian plague balloons, here is a list of things scarier than the thought of a fractured and incompetent party returning to power:

Congress passing a law that declares money obsolete.

Dying alone, never knowing true love.

Domestic terrorism in the US on a scale that puts Gaza to shame.

The Hadron Collider killing us all because somebody forgot to carry a 2 (see the retards-in-power scenario above).

The Internet just abruptly shutting down forever.

James Buchanan, Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, or George W. Bush somehow becoming President again (hat tip Tom).

Nancy Pelosi or Dick Cheney ever becoming President.

Metallica going back to their Load-era "style."

The implementation of a state religion (hat tip Tom).

Athiests being right, and there being absolutely nothing after we die.

Sexual impotence (duh).

A world without any/all of the following (i.e, they never existed): Doctor Who, Star Wars (the original trilogy), the United States Constitution, Led Zeppelin, deodorant, Lord of the Rings, Arthur C. Clarke, love, morality, indoor plumbing, freedom of speech, shoes, Monty Python, cheeseburgers, positive role models, and free will.

Hell being a small room full of your ex-girl/boyfriends.

Quentin Tarantino renouncing Pulp Fiction and dedicating his career to making documentaries.

Another Godd*mn Twilight book.

Tuesday Who Review: Tomb of the Cybermen

With the casting of Patrick Troughton in 1966, Doctor Who took a distinct turn. No longer was the Doctor an old, grim figure lecturing everyone in sight about the consequences of interfering with history; now he was a short, funny, cosmic hobo with a penchant for dissembling madly, acting like a madman while secretly gaining control of any situation he blundered into. (Tom Baker would make this an art, but Troughton was the one who started it.)

The monsters were different, too. The Daleks were written out at the end of Season Four per a request by their creator, Terry Nation, and so the Cybermen stepped up to the plate as the Doctor's most consistent enemy. This meant that "cyber" quickly became a prefix in the Doctor Who lingo - Cyberman, Cybermat, Cyberleader, Cyber-Controller, cyber-conversion... have you cyber-had enough already?

Tomb of the Cybermen remains both the earliest intact Cyberman story and the earliest intact Second Doctor story, and it deals with the Doctor stumbling across an expedition to Telos, which appears to be the name of both the planet and the city where the Cybermen ruled, "long ago."

They (or rather, the Doctor, but he lets the archaeologists take the credit) solve a number of puzzles and eventually gain access to the tombs themselves, where a horde of (read: about 8) Cybermen lurk, waiting to put their master plan into action. Evidently the Cybermen were on the verge of extinction some five hundred years ago and had themselves frozen. They engineered an absurdly complicated security system around their tomb so that only the smartest of adventurers could find them. The plan was then to convert these adventurers into "the new race of Cybermen." Unfortunately, somebody who can outsmart the Cybermen's security systems can also, ipso facto, outsmart the Cybermen. They really should have seen that coming. (Also *Spoiler Alert* they really should have put their "revitalisation unit" down in the tombs with them, instead of in the city above.)

As it turns out, though, the Cybermen aren't the only ones with a plan - three unscrupulous bankrollers of the expedition intend to form an alliance with the Cybermen, using the other archaeologists as sacrifices to be cyber-converted (and suddenly I'm reminded of the subplot of the first Alien movie). They generally cause mayhem with the Doctor's plan... but that doesn't matter, because the Doctor's actually the most unscrupulous of the lot, luring everybody down into the tombs and risking their lives, never fully enunciating the extent of the danger, all in the name of attempting to seal up the Cybermen in their tombs forever.

(And of course, the Cybermen being the series' main villain at this point, there is the requisite scene where the Doctor makes one mistake that sets the stage for the silver monsters' return... and it's annoyingly egregious. How did nobody notice that annoying noise the Cybermat made as it scuttled away from the city?)

Sets: lovely. You have a hard time believing the usual complaint that the studios were small and cramped when you see the main room of the Telos city - it's fairly impressive for 1967 standards.

Stunts: god-awful. Special mention goes to the dummy Cyber-Leader, whose head gets detached as it's thrown across the room... only for its head to be back in place when it rises from the dead to necessitate one more sacrifice from the expedition team.

Politics: god-awful, rare for Doctor Who. In The Tenth Planet, the Cybermen's first appearance about a year previously and set in 1986, they'd had a black astronaut. This time around, the cast's sole black member is, I kid you not, an indentured servant. Seriously?

Filler: gah. Aside from making Victoria scream, what exactly is the threat presented by the Cybermats? They're the size of large rats, they move slowly, and they're defeated by a surprisingly big electric wire... but their attack is the big action event of Episode Three.
...On the other hand, Episode Three also has a wonderful scene that has absolutely nothing to do with the story and is all character development, where the Doctor, for what is probably the only time in the entirety of the show, talks about his family.

Bottom line: Patrick Troughton shines. The man was positively magical, and anybody who doubts this after watching Tomb clearly wasn't watching very much, or indeed at all. To a small but substantial degree, the entire story is just backdrop for Troughton to run rampant over, especially the aforementioned "family" scene - it starts with him mock-surrendering to an overly jumpy Victoria, and concludes with him telling her to get some sleep, and let the "tired old man" - that's him - stay on watch, right before the literally incredible Cybermat attack. The scene was clearly written in as filler, but Troughton sells it perfectly.

And at the end of the day, that's the huge difference between the Troughton and Hartnell doctors- Hartnell very much didn't want to be involved, where as Troughton's Doctor saw himself as being on the front line in the battle between good and evil. As a result, Troughton is much more in the foreground than Hartnell ever was. The Doctor was still using his brain more often than his fists, and leaving fights to his younger companions (or, as was often the case during Troughton's tenure, flight; "When I say run... run!"). It wouldn't be until his next incarnation that he started regularly trading blows with evil... and in full color too.

Untitled Symphony No. 1 (a quick thoughts list)

1, I missed Highway to Hell day. Again. At the start of every February it's the one thing I care about for that entire month. But by the time February 19 rolls around, I've magically managed to forget it. If I forget next year, the 30th anniversary of Bon Scott's death...

2, I just watched a video clip of Metallica beating the hell out of a trash can. Good stuff.

3, I've decided to start breaking the fourth wall in real life. This means turning to look in random directions and grinning often.

4, My guitar is on its last A-string. If that thing breaks, I'm out of commission for a week. Screw the risk, rock on. (Note, "Screw the risk, rock on," might make a good album title one day.)

-Jim

On 'Inglorious Bastards' Preview

I'm taking a break from studying for mid-terms to comment about a worry of mine: Quentin Tarantino's new film. 'Inglorious Bastards' is a remake of a 70's war film I know nothing about about. Tarantino's version concerns eight or so Jewish American soldiers in Nazi occupied France who are out to maim and brutally kill German infantry. Apparently Nazis didn't hate the Jews enough already. The preview, available on IMDB, does not look promising. We get blood spattered inter titles about how war will look different through the eyes of Tarantino and a Brad Pitt monologue concerning the mission at hand. There are two possibilities here: 1.) the movie is a shallow shell with only the desire to showcase torture a la Eli Roth's 'Hostel'. Roth, amusingly, is in 'Bastards'. 2.) The preview showcases the film as nothing more than violence because that will sell better. This is possible since the film seems like it could have something to say concerning war and what humans do to each other under the umbrella of 'moral killing'. Does the title just refer to the eight or so men sent on this brutal Nazi scalping mission, or (gulp) to anyone who takes up arms against his fellow human for something as intangible and opinionated as Glory? I have faith in Tarantino, but this will be his first "serious" film since Jackie Brown. Hopefully he's not fallen permanently into the groove of tongue-in-cheek homages like 'Kill Bill' and 'Death Proof' but only time will tell-August 21st to be exact.

By Tom.