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.

The Color Blue is Exactly the Same as an Octave

Seriously. I know what they are, I can identify either one on sight/sound, but I can describe neither the color blue to a colorblind person nor a octave to someone who doesn't know musical theory.

And on that note, I have a buttload of Doctor Who to watch in preparation for tomorrow's review...

-Jim

Kill It With Fire

When something goes wrong on your PC, you press Ctrl-Alt-Del. Everybody knows this. Then you select the offending program and choose "End Task."

I want them to replace "End Task" with "Kill With Fire."

That is all.