A power plant, an engineer, and a ton of processed materials. And then the engineer could make whatever I needed. Probably a luxurious resort and an airport. The resort would take up the entire island so no-one else could develop anything on it. Then I could either throw parties there all the time for me and a few of my friends, or I could lure stupid rich tourists there.
A time machine, Back in Black, and a really, really loud boom box. So I could go back in time and deafen whoever it was stuck me on this stupid desert island in the first place. He might have had a good reason, so I'll at least deafen him with really, really good music.
A guitar, a tape recorder, and sunscreen. Having nothing to do would probably be a great source of inspiration.
Three things I'd never ever in a bazillion years take with me to a desert island:
Any music album made in the last 20 years (with the possible exception of Brave New World or The Final Frontier), anyone I actually know personally, and a cell phone.
Those last two might require some explanation. I wouldn't want anyone I actually know personally to be on a desert island with me, and I have two reasons for this. If I don't like them, I wouldn't want them there because I'd much rather they be, oh, at the bottom of the sea (if I really hate them) or in jail (if I only mildly dislike them). But I wouldn't want anyone I actually like to be stuck with me on a desert island, because a) wishing doom on your friends is a really stupid thing, and b) it won't work out, for the exact same reason that being roommates with your best friend won't work out. You'll get on each others' nerves.
As for the cell phone, what a useless option. You're more likely to be in a shipping route than on an island with coverage. Also, chances are I'm on that desert island (or on the plane that wound up crashing on that desert island) because I was trying to get away from the people who knew my number.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Who Review: The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit
It's currently January 2011. The last time I saw this two-parter, prior to this weekend, was probably back in the spring of 2008 (though I may have watched the first part again that summer). Therefore, the things I remembered going in were:
It has Satan in it.
It has Sutekh in it (Gabriel Woolf plays the voice of the Beast; he was Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars).
It's an Alien knockoff, which is truly tragic when one considers that Alien is just The Ark In Space with a tiny bit of feminism and a better budget.
It has a security officer named Mr. Jefferson who, though he has a fairly pointless death (but a fairly awesome death scene), stood out as the most memorable character.
Oddly enough, on re-watching it I decided to play the Plinkett Challenge. If you've ever seen RedLetterMedia's review of The Phantom Menace, you know what I'm talking about: describe a character without mentioning how they look or what job they had. For example: Han Solo was a cocky jerk with a heart of gold (eventually). Mr. Jefferson: ...uh...
This is good acting: I'm assuming the script said nothing more than "Mr. Jefferson is a security chief who had some undefined problem with his wife." But actor Danny Webb took that little bit of one-dimensional characterization and ran with it, and made "...death by Ood" my favorite line in this two-parter.
But really, there aren't characters here (complaint 1). There's the Acting Captain, the Possessed Guy, the Older Woman, the Geek, the Security Chief, a couple of Nameless Redshirts, and the Chick Who Dies 20 Minutes In. And on top of that travesty, it took the production team 2 years to realize that the Doctor would have a problem with the Ood being a slave race (complaint 2). Good grief. Maybe it's because the new guy goes on and on with his speeches and refuses to take anything seriously.
Which brings us to Complaint 3: there's nothing for the Doctor to do in "The Satan Pit" other than make four (count 'em!) speeches, jump down a pit, and destroy an urn. All the action is happening upstairs. Now granted, it's a ton of techning the tech and running down corridors, but this is what Nu Who does. (Hell, it's what Old Who does too.)
I wonder if Ten would have been so fantastically anti-gun if he'd been upstairs when the sh*t hit the fan (cf. "The Doctor's Daughter"), and the answer is probably "yeah, why not."
Anyway, other complaints: Rose is an extra dose of annoying; this is going to be par for the course from here on out. Somehow, Buffy could take charge of a situation without sounding like she was trying to be her boyfriend... oh wait, that's because the show was about her. Having Rose try to just channel the Doctor seems like a big step back from Buffy, which is odd for a show that so heavily plunders Buffy's techniques.
Then there's the scene where the Doctor realizes he'll have to get a house (and a mortgage), and Rose suggests they share one. Yeah. You are the same Rose Tyler who sat through "School Reunion," yeah? And then "The Girl in the Fireplace?" Unless your brain is literally the size of a pea, you have to realize after going through those two back-to-back that "happily ever after" is not what the Doctor has in mind for your relationship. (Hey, at least Rose never begs the Doctor to bite her so she doesn't grow old and die. Yeah, I just tried to defend this plot by comparing it to Twilight; you know things aren't looking good for this episode.)
Next (or actually first): The Only Black Man is the Acting Captain because the Real Captain died in the landing. Um... what? When in the entire history of the show has anyone, ever, died in a rocket landing???
Yeah, I'm thinking Planet of the Daleks, and that is not something you want ever brought up in comparison to anything else, ever.
Finally: Jefferson's idiotic death. The moment he starts shooting at the Ood in the vent shafts, you know he's not going to make it. The Acting Captain yells at him to get moving, but he's so determined to hold the line, so he doesn't, not until he's all out of ammo and time. For a character that has thus far behaved so calmly and rationally, this just smacks of bad writing. On top of that, the entire vent shaft sequence doesn't make sense. Consider: Jefferson gets stuck at section 8.1 because Flane has to open 8.2. There are no doors between 8.2 and 9.1. Behind 9.1 are Ood; when 9.1 opens, Rose and the others go up. They push away some wire mesh and go up. Last time I checked, wire mesh isn't airtight. So Rose, in between 8.2 and 9.1, is not relying on the limited air that Flane can move around (which he does through, um, quantum). Ergo, there is no reason in the Universe why Flane can't re-fill 8.1-8.2, open 8.1, and save Jefferson. Impossible planet indeed.
Lastly, the villain of this episode is, in case you missed it, Satan himself (probably). But David Tennant treats this threat like he would any other golf ball in front of a green screen. No, that's not a dig at the cringe-worthy effects. This is a Doctor who utterly refuses to take anything seriously (unless it's a human being wielding a gun). Even Tom Baker was capable of the occasional bit of moral outrage. (Tom Baker had the advantage of never getting to face CGI monsters [with the possible and inane exception of The Stones of Blood], and usually instead had an actor in bad makeup to play off of.) But David Tennant just laughs in the monster's face, monologues a bit about how he believes in Rose, and waltzes merrily on his way. His fear (and therefore drama) -less confrontation with the Beast is at tremendous odds with his earlier performance on the lip of the pit, where he actually demonstrates trepidation for quite possibly the only time in his run.
"The Impossible Planet": 5 out of ten for a halfway decent setup but a truly lame cliffhanger (something is rising out of the pit OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! Next episode: jk).
"The Satan Pit": 3 out of 10 for giving the Doctor nothing to do for the better part of the episode, except be totally insincere to what should have been the greatest threat he ever faced.
Go read more snark about other episodes here.
It has Satan in it.
It has Sutekh in it (Gabriel Woolf plays the voice of the Beast; he was Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars).
It's an Alien knockoff, which is truly tragic when one considers that Alien is just The Ark In Space with a tiny bit of feminism and a better budget.
It has a security officer named Mr. Jefferson who, though he has a fairly pointless death (but a fairly awesome death scene), stood out as the most memorable character.
Oddly enough, on re-watching it I decided to play the Plinkett Challenge. If you've ever seen RedLetterMedia's review of The Phantom Menace, you know what I'm talking about: describe a character without mentioning how they look or what job they had. For example: Han Solo was a cocky jerk with a heart of gold (eventually). Mr. Jefferson: ...uh...
This is good acting: I'm assuming the script said nothing more than "Mr. Jefferson is a security chief who had some undefined problem with his wife." But actor Danny Webb took that little bit of one-dimensional characterization and ran with it, and made "...death by Ood" my favorite line in this two-parter.
But really, there aren't characters here (complaint 1). There's the Acting Captain, the Possessed Guy, the Older Woman, the Geek, the Security Chief, a couple of Nameless Redshirts, and the Chick Who Dies 20 Minutes In. And on top of that travesty, it took the production team 2 years to realize that the Doctor would have a problem with the Ood being a slave race (complaint 2). Good grief. Maybe it's because the new guy goes on and on with his speeches and refuses to take anything seriously.
Which brings us to Complaint 3: there's nothing for the Doctor to do in "The Satan Pit" other than make four (count 'em!) speeches, jump down a pit, and destroy an urn. All the action is happening upstairs. Now granted, it's a ton of techning the tech and running down corridors, but this is what Nu Who does. (Hell, it's what Old Who does too.)
I wonder if Ten would have been so fantastically anti-gun if he'd been upstairs when the sh*t hit the fan (cf. "The Doctor's Daughter"), and the answer is probably "yeah, why not."
Anyway, other complaints: Rose is an extra dose of annoying; this is going to be par for the course from here on out. Somehow, Buffy could take charge of a situation without sounding like she was trying to be her boyfriend... oh wait, that's because the show was about her. Having Rose try to just channel the Doctor seems like a big step back from Buffy, which is odd for a show that so heavily plunders Buffy's techniques.
Then there's the scene where the Doctor realizes he'll have to get a house (and a mortgage), and Rose suggests they share one. Yeah. You are the same Rose Tyler who sat through "School Reunion," yeah? And then "The Girl in the Fireplace?" Unless your brain is literally the size of a pea, you have to realize after going through those two back-to-back that "happily ever after" is not what the Doctor has in mind for your relationship. (Hey, at least Rose never begs the Doctor to bite her so she doesn't grow old and die. Yeah, I just tried to defend this plot by comparing it to Twilight; you know things aren't looking good for this episode.)
Next (or actually first): The Only Black Man is the Acting Captain because the Real Captain died in the landing. Um... what? When in the entire history of the show has anyone, ever, died in a rocket landing???
Yeah, I'm thinking Planet of the Daleks, and that is not something you want ever brought up in comparison to anything else, ever.
Finally: Jefferson's idiotic death. The moment he starts shooting at the Ood in the vent shafts, you know he's not going to make it. The Acting Captain yells at him to get moving, but he's so determined to hold the line, so he doesn't, not until he's all out of ammo and time. For a character that has thus far behaved so calmly and rationally, this just smacks of bad writing. On top of that, the entire vent shaft sequence doesn't make sense. Consider: Jefferson gets stuck at section 8.1 because Flane has to open 8.2. There are no doors between 8.2 and 9.1. Behind 9.1 are Ood; when 9.1 opens, Rose and the others go up. They push away some wire mesh and go up. Last time I checked, wire mesh isn't airtight. So Rose, in between 8.2 and 9.1, is not relying on the limited air that Flane can move around (which he does through, um, quantum). Ergo, there is no reason in the Universe why Flane can't re-fill 8.1-8.2, open 8.1, and save Jefferson. Impossible planet indeed.
Lastly, the villain of this episode is, in case you missed it, Satan himself (probably). But David Tennant treats this threat like he would any other golf ball in front of a green screen. No, that's not a dig at the cringe-worthy effects. This is a Doctor who utterly refuses to take anything seriously (unless it's a human being wielding a gun). Even Tom Baker was capable of the occasional bit of moral outrage. (Tom Baker had the advantage of never getting to face CGI monsters [with the possible and inane exception of The Stones of Blood], and usually instead had an actor in bad makeup to play off of.) But David Tennant just laughs in the monster's face, monologues a bit about how he believes in Rose, and waltzes merrily on his way. His fear (and therefore drama) -less confrontation with the Beast is at tremendous odds with his earlier performance on the lip of the pit, where he actually demonstrates trepidation for quite possibly the only time in his run.
"The Impossible Planet": 5 out of ten for a halfway decent setup but a truly lame cliffhanger (something is rising out of the pit OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! Next episode: jk).
"The Satan Pit": 3 out of 10 for giving the Doctor nothing to do for the better part of the episode, except be totally insincere to what should have been the greatest threat he ever faced.
Go read more snark about other episodes here.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Who Review: The Idiot's Lantern
I've been putting off this one for quite a while, mostly because to me it represents the nadir of Season 2/28. Note that I said "nadir." Not "the worst," because it's not. That dishonor goes to "Love and Monsters" and/or "Fear Her." I mean "nadir." See, I'm looking forward to "Love and Monsters" and "Fear Her" because those are so horribly bad. "The Idiot's Lantern" is just kind of dull. The constant tilted camera angles are incredibly annoying, the "television will rot your brain" shtick being sold on TV was a gimmick that worked last year in "The Long Game," but not so much this year. It's old. We've seen it.
So let's start. Rose should never say "Daddy-o." Ever. The Doctor riding around on a motorbike is funny, but that annoying Camera-tiltiness doesn't let us properly enjoy it. They're done just for the hell of it. They're just about acceptable to demonstrate that something is off, but we don't even have that here. Euros Lyn is better than this; that he ever got the change to prove it, though, boggles the mind.
The goofy camera angles continue as we go to the House of the Family We'll Follow This Time. And then they're still goofy when things get creepy.
The Doctor's nicely on form, going on about how nice 1953 is; we're going to see more of this from Tennant in later, better seasons.
There is a very slow chase full of tilted cameras, and then we go to the villan's lair, which is also full of tilted cameras. Except, hilariously, when the camera is right behind the television. Are we supposed to be seeing the alien's world as the norm and everything else as twisted and distorted? Because if so, we can dispense with the Family We'll Follow This Time, with the rediculously stereotypical abusive father and everything else. "I AM TALKING!!!!" It's fairly annoying when the Doctor bullies him, and it's even more so when Rose does it. Did Mark Gatiss have daddy issues? And frankly, the kid's surprisingly helpful: if my father was that much of a jackass, I guarantee I'd be introverted to the tenth degree.
So the Doctor tails the government guys to their super-secret hideout (apparently this is Stalin's Russia after all) and discovers a horde of faceless ones. Meanwhile Rose actually does some decent detective work for once, but she doesn't immediately go into panic mode when Magpie locks her in. You'd think she'd know better by now: the last time she wandered off, she got possessed!
The Doctor meets Faceless!Rose and goes berserk; it's our first glimpse of the darker version of Ten, a version some sections of fandom have started calling The Time Lord Victorious.
Anyway, there's a plot resolution that involves a giant transmitter, bringing to mind both "Rose" and Logopolis while being quite as entertaining as neither. And then at the end, the Doctor sends Tommy off with his abusive father. Um, right. Ooops, actually Rose does. (Fair enough, given her daddy issues.)
5 out of 10. This is bland, generic Doctor Who with silly camera angles and a dull B-plot.
So let's start. Rose should never say "Daddy-o." Ever. The Doctor riding around on a motorbike is funny, but that annoying Camera-tiltiness doesn't let us properly enjoy it. They're done just for the hell of it. They're just about acceptable to demonstrate that something is off, but we don't even have that here. Euros Lyn is better than this; that he ever got the change to prove it, though, boggles the mind.
The goofy camera angles continue as we go to the House of the Family We'll Follow This Time. And then they're still goofy when things get creepy.
The Doctor's nicely on form, going on about how nice 1953 is; we're going to see more of this from Tennant in later, better seasons.
There is a very slow chase full of tilted cameras, and then we go to the villan's lair, which is also full of tilted cameras. Except, hilariously, when the camera is right behind the television. Are we supposed to be seeing the alien's world as the norm and everything else as twisted and distorted? Because if so, we can dispense with the Family We'll Follow This Time, with the rediculously stereotypical abusive father and everything else. "I AM TALKING!!!!" It's fairly annoying when the Doctor bullies him, and it's even more so when Rose does it. Did Mark Gatiss have daddy issues? And frankly, the kid's surprisingly helpful: if my father was that much of a jackass, I guarantee I'd be introverted to the tenth degree.
So the Doctor tails the government guys to their super-secret hideout (apparently this is Stalin's Russia after all) and discovers a horde of faceless ones. Meanwhile Rose actually does some decent detective work for once, but she doesn't immediately go into panic mode when Magpie locks her in. You'd think she'd know better by now: the last time she wandered off, she got possessed!
The Doctor meets Faceless!Rose and goes berserk; it's our first glimpse of the darker version of Ten, a version some sections of fandom have started calling The Time Lord Victorious.
Anyway, there's a plot resolution that involves a giant transmitter, bringing to mind both "Rose" and Logopolis while being quite as entertaining as neither. And then at the end, the Doctor sends Tommy off with his abusive father. Um, right. Ooops, actually Rose does. (Fair enough, given her daddy issues.)
5 out of 10. This is bland, generic Doctor Who with silly camera angles and a dull B-plot.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
StarCraft: All In
So because that last level is apparently hella hard (I don't know, I did have to do it twice because I made some stupid mistakes the first time), let me give you all some advice. And by some, I mean a lot. And by you all, I probably mean no one. But I'm bored.
The pre-game is actually much more important than you could believe. You should definitely get the automated refinery upgrade, the refinery filter upgrade, and the self-healing metal upgrade (whatever the hell that one was called). If you do this, you shouldn't need to waste any money on SCVs in the final battle. Your two refineries will pump out gas for you at a fantastic rate, and you can have all but one of your SCVs gather minerals while that last one goes around building stuff and repairing critical units.
And yeah, you might lose track of that SCV at some point; while one of the changes I absolutely adore is the fact that there's now an icon you can click to instantly select an idle SCV, the little buggers have a habit of going off and repairing things once they're done doing whatever it is you told them to do. Then they're not technically idle, so there's no icon for them, so you think they're dead. Is it too much to ask to change that criteria from "idle" to "not currently doing something you told them to do, i.e building or gathering materials?" Also, whenever you have then build a bunker right next to a cliff, they always manage to finish the bunker while they're wedged between it and the cliff, so you have to build a Medivac just to get them out. That's one less Banshee you have time to build. Wah. (I guess you could load the SCV into the bunker and then unload it, but in the heat of battle you can't really think beyond "build more dudes and kill their dudes.")
I'd also recommend the tech lab upgrade, plus any upgrades for the Siege Tank and Banshee units. This is because victory is going to depend largely on how many of those things you have. I'd also get the bunker turret, increased bunker capacity, and those maintenance drone things that put out fires on your buildings. The Psi Disruptors will also help tremendously, but I'll understand if you can't resist the urge to mind-control an Ultralisk.
The last important bit of pre-game you have to do is to do the "Shatter the Sky" mission. This is absolutely vital, especially if you've already seen the base layout for your last mission. The thingy you have to defend is near a lake of lava, and on the other side of that is the main enemy base. Incoming air units don't really have a lot of land they need to go over, which means that there's very few Thors/turrets/Goliaths you can station up there. So making sure enemy air attacks are kept to a minimum is a very important goal, and that's precisely what you can do in "Shatter the Sky." Yes, you'll have to deal with an Overlord invasion at one point, but that really shouldn't give you too much of a problem.
Okay, now for the mission itself. There are three paths into your base that you need to defend; there's an entrance at the north that already has a Battlecruiser, a bunker, a small infantry squad and possibly a Siege Tank guarding it.
The other two paths converge on a point that's guarded similarly; these paths come from the west and the northwest. There's a small hill in between these two paths that you might think is ideal for a Siege Tank; don't bother, it's actually surprisingly vulnerable there.
You'll be able to hold off the first wave or so with what you've got, but if you've got the bunker capacity upgrade you're going to need to churn out more infantry to staff them. When the game starts, order up five marines. Send your builder SCV to one of the entrances to build a second bunker and a Psi Disruptor. Build the tech lab for both your factory and your starport; as soon as the five Marines are ready, do the same to your barracks. For the first part of the level, churn out an equal mix of Siege Tanks and Thors from the factory, but focus exclusively on Banshees from your starport. I'll explain why in just a moment.
Meanwhile, send your builder SCV over to the other entrance and build a second bunker and a Psi Disruptor there too. As soon as the tech lab on the barracks is done, start churning out Marines. Your builder SCV is going to spend the rest of the mission building supply depots and rebuilding bunkers; just send him back whenever one gets blown up. If you don't have the bunker upgrades, you may need three at each entrance instead of two.
Siege Tank placement: there should be a Siege Tank behind each bunker (remember, bunkers are cheapter than Siege Tanks), plus at least three more at each entrance: two up on the cliff with the artifact, and one on the cliff opposite (for the north entrance). For the western entrance, your third tank goes to the right of the southern ramp. Stick a Thor next to it. The Siege Tank commands that ramp; the Thor blasts anything that gets through.
You'll eventually have extra tanks behind your bunkers or maybe up on the artifact's cliff; that's fine, you need something to deal with the Nydus Worms that appear from time to time. The tanks, extra marines, and Thors should be able to handle everything that pops up inside your base (remember, if your build queues are empty, you're doing something wrong).
Meanwhile, you're going to want a large squad (at least 8, preferably 12-18) of Banshees. These are the only units you will ever send outside your perimeter; their job is to knock down the Nydus Worms that pop up outside your base. You might be thinking that that's a waste of time, but as far as I can figure it out, the Nydus Worms behave like Zerg spawners; whereas the other rushes do have to play by the normal rules, the Worms will just keep spitting stronger and stronger units out until they overwhelm your defenses. Your Banshees have to fly around the map and kill the Worms. Get the ones closest to your base first; this will usually mean the one in the southwestern Zerg base first, followed by the one in the northeastern Zerg base, followed by at least one in the northwest part of the map.
See, here's the reason that I think you're so much better off dealing with Nydus Worms than air units: one, Brood Lords are an absolute pain to kill. Two, you're dealing with an enemy that specializes in close-range ground combat. Your Siege Tanks can make short work of any number of Zerglings, and they're not at all shabby against Nydus Worms, but they're easy prey for air units. Build enough Siege Tanks and it won't matter how many ground units the enemy can send against you; just remember to keep something (bunkers preferably) in between the Zerglings and your tanks.
Your Banshee squadron is also your first and best line of defense against the Queen of Blades. While it may be tempting to let her wander into range of all your Siege Tanks, remember that your Siege Tanks are your main base defense; you do not want her messing them up. (Remember: Banshees are cheaper than Siege Tanks.) You're safe enough letting her get in range of your outermost tank and then pounding her with the Banshees while the tank wails on her from afar.
Two very important notes: you will bleed Banshees doing this. Keep your starport queues full. Second, spread your Banshees out when you get to Kerrigan. She has a psychic attack that can destroy any number of units in a given area. Don't clump your units together when dealing with her.
If for whatever reason Kerrigan attacks at the same time as a regular Zerg rush or a Nydus Worm attack, use the Artifact when Kerrigan gets in range. It'll wipe out every Zerg in the area and do some damage to her as well. As long as you stop Kerrigan before she gets to your base, keep each entrance guarded by two bunkers backed up by at least 4 Siege Tanks backed up by a Thor or three, and maintain a strong Banshee squadron, you really shouldn't have that much trouble.
(The trick, of course, is that the Zerg will regularly chew through your frontline defenses. Unit replacement is key.) Good luck.
The pre-game is actually much more important than you could believe. You should definitely get the automated refinery upgrade, the refinery filter upgrade, and the self-healing metal upgrade (whatever the hell that one was called). If you do this, you shouldn't need to waste any money on SCVs in the final battle. Your two refineries will pump out gas for you at a fantastic rate, and you can have all but one of your SCVs gather minerals while that last one goes around building stuff and repairing critical units.
And yeah, you might lose track of that SCV at some point; while one of the changes I absolutely adore is the fact that there's now an icon you can click to instantly select an idle SCV, the little buggers have a habit of going off and repairing things once they're done doing whatever it is you told them to do. Then they're not technically idle, so there's no icon for them, so you think they're dead. Is it too much to ask to change that criteria from "idle" to "not currently doing something you told them to do, i.e building or gathering materials?" Also, whenever you have then build a bunker right next to a cliff, they always manage to finish the bunker while they're wedged between it and the cliff, so you have to build a Medivac just to get them out. That's one less Banshee you have time to build. Wah. (I guess you could load the SCV into the bunker and then unload it, but in the heat of battle you can't really think beyond "build more dudes and kill their dudes.")
I'd also recommend the tech lab upgrade, plus any upgrades for the Siege Tank and Banshee units. This is because victory is going to depend largely on how many of those things you have. I'd also get the bunker turret, increased bunker capacity, and those maintenance drone things that put out fires on your buildings. The Psi Disruptors will also help tremendously, but I'll understand if you can't resist the urge to mind-control an Ultralisk.
The last important bit of pre-game you have to do is to do the "Shatter the Sky" mission. This is absolutely vital, especially if you've already seen the base layout for your last mission. The thingy you have to defend is near a lake of lava, and on the other side of that is the main enemy base. Incoming air units don't really have a lot of land they need to go over, which means that there's very few Thors/turrets/Goliaths you can station up there. So making sure enemy air attacks are kept to a minimum is a very important goal, and that's precisely what you can do in "Shatter the Sky." Yes, you'll have to deal with an Overlord invasion at one point, but that really shouldn't give you too much of a problem.
Okay, now for the mission itself. There are three paths into your base that you need to defend; there's an entrance at the north that already has a Battlecruiser, a bunker, a small infantry squad and possibly a Siege Tank guarding it.
The other two paths converge on a point that's guarded similarly; these paths come from the west and the northwest. There's a small hill in between these two paths that you might think is ideal for a Siege Tank; don't bother, it's actually surprisingly vulnerable there.
You'll be able to hold off the first wave or so with what you've got, but if you've got the bunker capacity upgrade you're going to need to churn out more infantry to staff them. When the game starts, order up five marines. Send your builder SCV to one of the entrances to build a second bunker and a Psi Disruptor. Build the tech lab for both your factory and your starport; as soon as the five Marines are ready, do the same to your barracks. For the first part of the level, churn out an equal mix of Siege Tanks and Thors from the factory, but focus exclusively on Banshees from your starport. I'll explain why in just a moment.
Meanwhile, send your builder SCV over to the other entrance and build a second bunker and a Psi Disruptor there too. As soon as the tech lab on the barracks is done, start churning out Marines. Your builder SCV is going to spend the rest of the mission building supply depots and rebuilding bunkers; just send him back whenever one gets blown up. If you don't have the bunker upgrades, you may need three at each entrance instead of two.
Siege Tank placement: there should be a Siege Tank behind each bunker (remember, bunkers are cheapter than Siege Tanks), plus at least three more at each entrance: two up on the cliff with the artifact, and one on the cliff opposite (for the north entrance). For the western entrance, your third tank goes to the right of the southern ramp. Stick a Thor next to it. The Siege Tank commands that ramp; the Thor blasts anything that gets through.
You'll eventually have extra tanks behind your bunkers or maybe up on the artifact's cliff; that's fine, you need something to deal with the Nydus Worms that appear from time to time. The tanks, extra marines, and Thors should be able to handle everything that pops up inside your base (remember, if your build queues are empty, you're doing something wrong).
Meanwhile, you're going to want a large squad (at least 8, preferably 12-18) of Banshees. These are the only units you will ever send outside your perimeter; their job is to knock down the Nydus Worms that pop up outside your base. You might be thinking that that's a waste of time, but as far as I can figure it out, the Nydus Worms behave like Zerg spawners; whereas the other rushes do have to play by the normal rules, the Worms will just keep spitting stronger and stronger units out until they overwhelm your defenses. Your Banshees have to fly around the map and kill the Worms. Get the ones closest to your base first; this will usually mean the one in the southwestern Zerg base first, followed by the one in the northeastern Zerg base, followed by at least one in the northwest part of the map.
See, here's the reason that I think you're so much better off dealing with Nydus Worms than air units: one, Brood Lords are an absolute pain to kill. Two, you're dealing with an enemy that specializes in close-range ground combat. Your Siege Tanks can make short work of any number of Zerglings, and they're not at all shabby against Nydus Worms, but they're easy prey for air units. Build enough Siege Tanks and it won't matter how many ground units the enemy can send against you; just remember to keep something (bunkers preferably) in between the Zerglings and your tanks.
Your Banshee squadron is also your first and best line of defense against the Queen of Blades. While it may be tempting to let her wander into range of all your Siege Tanks, remember that your Siege Tanks are your main base defense; you do not want her messing them up. (Remember: Banshees are cheaper than Siege Tanks.) You're safe enough letting her get in range of your outermost tank and then pounding her with the Banshees while the tank wails on her from afar.
Two very important notes: you will bleed Banshees doing this. Keep your starport queues full. Second, spread your Banshees out when you get to Kerrigan. She has a psychic attack that can destroy any number of units in a given area. Don't clump your units together when dealing with her.
If for whatever reason Kerrigan attacks at the same time as a regular Zerg rush or a Nydus Worm attack, use the Artifact when Kerrigan gets in range. It'll wipe out every Zerg in the area and do some damage to her as well. As long as you stop Kerrigan before she gets to your base, keep each entrance guarded by two bunkers backed up by at least 4 Siege Tanks backed up by a Thor or three, and maintain a strong Banshee squadron, you really shouldn't have that much trouble.
(The trick, of course, is that the Zerg will regularly chew through your frontline defenses. Unit replacement is key.) Good luck.
Monday, January 24, 2011
StarCraft II, Part 2
I did this one a while ago... here if you're interested. I finished the campaign today, and now I'll go ahead and present my spoiler-free review of the whole thing, even though the thing's been out for almost a year already.
(In part I'm only doing this because Yahtzee didn't; likewise, now that sfdebris is doing critiques of Doctor Who episodes, I'm feeling generally inferior and haven't been posting my reviews as a result. That's why, honest. Laziness has nothing to do with it.)
Okay, so Brood War left off with the Protoss more or less bitch-slapped, the Terrans reeling, and the Zerg more or less utterly triumphant. Then the Queen of Blades sits on her ass for four years doing apparently ####-all.
Then Jim Raynor's old buddy Tychus Findlay gets busted from prison,* and suddenly everyone's off on a quest to kick ass, repeat the most famous set-piece battles from the first game, and take names.
*Okay, yeah, here's my first problem with the game: the opening cinematic reveals that Mengsk freed Tychus for a reason. So having Tychus claimed he escaped, and then claiming he escaped with the help of the Mobius Foundation kind of made me distrust him. Because I have an IQ that's at least slightly higher than that of a retarded kindergartner. And then he goes on and on about "old times" and reveals that Raynor was an outlaw before he became the Marshal on Mar Sara. Um whut... (also, why is Raynor back on Mar Sara? Remember that really famous battle in level 3 of the first game where you had to evacuate? That battle that gets repeated here? ...oh.)
See, I liked the plot of the first game. It seems like one epic fall from grace for Raynor: he starts out as the Marshal on some backwater planet (as much grace as anyone in this verse gets), falls in with some terrorists because they're the only ones fighting the Zerg, falls for a hot, hot girl, loses the hot, hot girl to the monsters, becomes disillusioned with the terrorists, but since the terrorists take over the sector, now he's stuck on the run.
All that's in Chapter 1 on StarCraft. In the rest of the original game and the expansion (Chapters 2-6), Raynor gets to... um, make friends with the Protoss and whine about betrayal. Meanwhile, Kerrigan goes from pawn of the Overlord to the Queen Bitch of the Universe (nobody remembers that that line's originally from The Abyss, do they?), and the Protoss, um, do stuff. Never really liked them, other than Fenix (dammit, Blizzard...)
So, StarCraft II. After 4 years of doing pretty much nothing, Raynor's suddenly thrown into overdrive, gallivanting across the sector killing Zerg, undermining Mengsk and finding artifacts. His story's interesting enough and the characters are largely well done. I complained about the gameplay before, but what's nice about the campaign is that pretty much every old unit there comes back. Of course, did I build a single Goliath during the final mission? Um, no.
(Geez! My original point got the hell away from me. My point was this: at no point in the first game (as far as I remember) did anyone suggest Raynor had been an outlaw before the events on Mar Sara. This is a far more annoying retcon than the relocation of New Gettysburg from a space platform to the surface of Tarsonis.)
Skipping ahead to the final mission, let me just rant about the game's autosave feature. I only had to use it once, so I don't really know whether this was a regular problem or not, but the game autosaved on my right after I repelled an utterly devastating Zerg attack with Kerrigan at the helm. I took terrible, terrible damage. Before I could rebuild, another push came through and killed all my dudes. The game then reloaded and stuck me right back in the same spot. Gee, thanks.
Anyway, campaign's over, very nice, fairly polished, I'm somewhat perplexed about Blizzard's decision to render the majority of the cutscenes using the in-game graphics, but to do a couple (opening, closing, Fall of Tarsonis flashback - which was awesome, by the way, I'm so glad they included it in a game that was so very much about Raynor and the demons of his past) with their own special graphics. It's like shooting a film partly in 35 mm and partly in hi-def, and now I've just compared StarCraft II to The Room. (Though to be fair, I've also just compared StarCraft II to Collateral.) It's like shooting a television episode partly on film and partly on video (oh, hello, Doctor Who, Monty Python). It's weird and jarring and screams of cut corners. Most of the in-game cinematics aren't really all that important anyway; I'd keep the one where the Hyperion escapes from Mar Sara, the one where Raynor encounters Valerian, and the one where Raynor beats up Tychus,** but the others aren't really that necessary.
**And really, I'd just keep that one because of "Sweet Home Alabama" and the music so blatantly pinched from Firefly at the end.
Let's see, other minor complaints: Tosh randomly disappears when you get to the last set of missions. His random, cryptic mutterings were fun to listen to. Once the campaign's over, you can't go back and spend any money you've got left (though why should you have any left?). There are so many awesome things in there that should have been included in multiplayer, like the diamondback and the automated vespene refinery (make that a high-level research thingy, please!)
Gameplay-wise, the thing that bugged the hell out of me the most was some random change made to the attack-move command. In the old game, you could select a group of units, press A, and then click a spot on the map. Your dudes would head to that spot and blast anything that got in their way, while you went about your business doing other stuff. Now in the new game, sometimes that works just fine. Sometimes, however, the attack command stays on for some reason, and so your massive killing squadron ends up shooting at the next unit you select.
Why the hell do I need an attack-move command anyway? The Ghosts now have a hold-fire command; why can't everyone else? The only case I can think of where I wouldn't want my dudes to kill things while they move around the map would be if they were in retreat. If I had my way, you'd left-click to select a unit, and you'd right-click another unit to have the first unit kill the second (this happens already). Or you'd right-click a spot on the map to send the unit on the warpath (this does not). If you want your dudes to attack a specific unit and ignore the others, right-click that unit. If you want your dudes not to fire as they go, that should be a special command, not the default. And if it's not going to be the default, please for the love of God do it right.
So yeah, friendly fire is my biggest complaint about this game. I've accidentally wrecked very expensive units this way - I had a group of Banshees attack-move somewhere, clicked on a Thor, and watched my Banshees blow it sky-high.
My second biggest complaint is that once you've done the campaign there's very little to do. Multiplayer? That's not really my thing, honestly. I loved the original game's scenario editor; I made a bunch of single-player scenarios that were, in my own humble opinion, rather fun to play through. The sequel's scenario editor blows chunks.
Really the smoking gun here is the fact that the Diamondback was originally intended to be in the multiplayer, but was then cut from that and put in the campaign. As nicely-made as the campaign is, it seems like it's just window-decoration for the multiplayer. And even in the age of the internet, that's still bass-ackwards for a PC game.
Final note: am I wrong in being strangely attracted to Infested Kerrigan? I mean, dyamn.
(In part I'm only doing this because Yahtzee didn't; likewise, now that sfdebris is doing critiques of Doctor Who episodes, I'm feeling generally inferior and haven't been posting my reviews as a result. That's why, honest. Laziness has nothing to do with it.)
Okay, so Brood War left off with the Protoss more or less bitch-slapped, the Terrans reeling, and the Zerg more or less utterly triumphant. Then the Queen of Blades sits on her ass for four years doing apparently ####-all.
Then Jim Raynor's old buddy Tychus Findlay gets busted from prison,* and suddenly everyone's off on a quest to kick ass, repeat the most famous set-piece battles from the first game, and take names.
*Okay, yeah, here's my first problem with the game: the opening cinematic reveals that Mengsk freed Tychus for a reason. So having Tychus claimed he escaped, and then claiming he escaped with the help of the Mobius Foundation kind of made me distrust him. Because I have an IQ that's at least slightly higher than that of a retarded kindergartner. And then he goes on and on about "old times" and reveals that Raynor was an outlaw before he became the Marshal on Mar Sara. Um whut... (also, why is Raynor back on Mar Sara? Remember that really famous battle in level 3 of the first game where you had to evacuate? That battle that gets repeated here? ...oh.)
See, I liked the plot of the first game. It seems like one epic fall from grace for Raynor: he starts out as the Marshal on some backwater planet (as much grace as anyone in this verse gets), falls in with some terrorists because they're the only ones fighting the Zerg, falls for a hot, hot girl, loses the hot, hot girl to the monsters, becomes disillusioned with the terrorists, but since the terrorists take over the sector, now he's stuck on the run.
All that's in Chapter 1 on StarCraft. In the rest of the original game and the expansion (Chapters 2-6), Raynor gets to... um, make friends with the Protoss and whine about betrayal. Meanwhile, Kerrigan goes from pawn of the Overlord to the Queen Bitch of the Universe (nobody remembers that that line's originally from The Abyss, do they?), and the Protoss, um, do stuff. Never really liked them, other than Fenix (dammit, Blizzard...)
So, StarCraft II. After 4 years of doing pretty much nothing, Raynor's suddenly thrown into overdrive, gallivanting across the sector killing Zerg, undermining Mengsk and finding artifacts. His story's interesting enough and the characters are largely well done. I complained about the gameplay before, but what's nice about the campaign is that pretty much every old unit there comes back. Of course, did I build a single Goliath during the final mission? Um, no.
(Geez! My original point got the hell away from me. My point was this: at no point in the first game (as far as I remember) did anyone suggest Raynor had been an outlaw before the events on Mar Sara. This is a far more annoying retcon than the relocation of New Gettysburg from a space platform to the surface of Tarsonis.)
Skipping ahead to the final mission, let me just rant about the game's autosave feature. I only had to use it once, so I don't really know whether this was a regular problem or not, but the game autosaved on my right after I repelled an utterly devastating Zerg attack with Kerrigan at the helm. I took terrible, terrible damage. Before I could rebuild, another push came through and killed all my dudes. The game then reloaded and stuck me right back in the same spot. Gee, thanks.
Anyway, campaign's over, very nice, fairly polished, I'm somewhat perplexed about Blizzard's decision to render the majority of the cutscenes using the in-game graphics, but to do a couple (opening, closing, Fall of Tarsonis flashback - which was awesome, by the way, I'm so glad they included it in a game that was so very much about Raynor and the demons of his past) with their own special graphics. It's like shooting a film partly in 35 mm and partly in hi-def, and now I've just compared StarCraft II to The Room. (Though to be fair, I've also just compared StarCraft II to Collateral.) It's like shooting a television episode partly on film and partly on video (oh, hello, Doctor Who, Monty Python). It's weird and jarring and screams of cut corners. Most of the in-game cinematics aren't really all that important anyway; I'd keep the one where the Hyperion escapes from Mar Sara, the one where Raynor encounters Valerian, and the one where Raynor beats up Tychus,** but the others aren't really that necessary.
**And really, I'd just keep that one because of "Sweet Home Alabama" and the music so blatantly pinched from Firefly at the end.
Let's see, other minor complaints: Tosh randomly disappears when you get to the last set of missions. His random, cryptic mutterings were fun to listen to. Once the campaign's over, you can't go back and spend any money you've got left (though why should you have any left?). There are so many awesome things in there that should have been included in multiplayer, like the diamondback and the automated vespene refinery (make that a high-level research thingy, please!)
Gameplay-wise, the thing that bugged the hell out of me the most was some random change made to the attack-move command. In the old game, you could select a group of units, press A, and then click a spot on the map. Your dudes would head to that spot and blast anything that got in their way, while you went about your business doing other stuff. Now in the new game, sometimes that works just fine. Sometimes, however, the attack command stays on for some reason, and so your massive killing squadron ends up shooting at the next unit you select.
Why the hell do I need an attack-move command anyway? The Ghosts now have a hold-fire command; why can't everyone else? The only case I can think of where I wouldn't want my dudes to kill things while they move around the map would be if they were in retreat. If I had my way, you'd left-click to select a unit, and you'd right-click another unit to have the first unit kill the second (this happens already). Or you'd right-click a spot on the map to send the unit on the warpath (this does not). If you want your dudes to attack a specific unit and ignore the others, right-click that unit. If you want your dudes not to fire as they go, that should be a special command, not the default. And if it's not going to be the default, please for the love of God do it right.
So yeah, friendly fire is my biggest complaint about this game. I've accidentally wrecked very expensive units this way - I had a group of Banshees attack-move somewhere, clicked on a Thor, and watched my Banshees blow it sky-high.
My second biggest complaint is that once you've done the campaign there's very little to do. Multiplayer? That's not really my thing, honestly. I loved the original game's scenario editor; I made a bunch of single-player scenarios that were, in my own humble opinion, rather fun to play through. The sequel's scenario editor blows chunks.
Really the smoking gun here is the fact that the Diamondback was originally intended to be in the multiplayer, but was then cut from that and put in the campaign. As nicely-made as the campaign is, it seems like it's just window-decoration for the multiplayer. And even in the age of the internet, that's still bass-ackwards for a PC game.
Final note: am I wrong in being strangely attracted to Infested Kerrigan? I mean, dyamn.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Who Review: The Beast Below
Right, time to do this properly (for a previous attempt, go here). The Doctor takes Amy on a trip to the 29th century and Starship UK. See, in the future there are solar flares that caused everyone to pack up and leave the Earth (see also The Ark in Space and The Sontaran Experiment). Scotland got their own ship, so again KAREN GILLAN'S LEGS Amy sticks out like a sore thumb.
(Actually KAREN GILLAN'S LEGS aren't so prominently on display here, on account of the nightie she's wearing. Nevertheless, I love my running gag a bit too much to give it up.)
The Doctor insists that they can't interfere, and the very next moment he's comforting a crying child. What's brilliant is that this isn't just a little gag; it comes back at the end of the episode. Unlike RTD, who tended to craft his episodes around one or two major gimmicks, Moff likes to leave a trail of clues, Sherlock Holmes-style (appropriate, considering that other show he runs) for the characters to put together at the end. This episode is perhaps the best example of this approach, as Amy draws all the parallels between the Star Whale and the Doctor.
The Doctor puts a glass of water on the ground ("there's an escaped fish" - why oh why didn't Matt Smith land the role of Ford Prefect in any of the Hitchhiker's adaptations? He'd be perfect) and anyone who's seen Jurassic Park knows exactly what the lack of vibrations means. Um. Sorta. Anyone who's been on an airplane knows exactly what the lack of vibrations mean. It means the ship's engines aren't running.
I don't really like it when the audience gets ahead of the Doctor - it worked in "The Eleventh Hour" when we all knew Amy was Amelia before the Doctor did, but that's because it was funny how badly he'd overshot. In contrast, in an episode like "The Time of Angels," when everybody and his mum was screaming at the screen that all the statues had one head, I got annoyed. Here it happens twice (sort of) and is handled decently each time. First off, the glass of water trick: the Doctor knows what it means, just like we do. It just takes him a little while to act on that knowledge. It's not like he knows an innocent creature is being tortured at the time. The second time, at the end, we're working it out alongside Amy. Of course, we're also going "who was the genius who started zapping the Beast in the first place?" but that kind of gets ignored.
So yeah, who was the genius who started zapping the Beast in the first place? Can we throw them off Starship UK? Or did they step into that crack in the Universe, and thus nobody remembers them? (Hey, that's my new excuse for everything. Inane flirtation dialogue in The Curse of Fenric? Crack in the Universe.)
It's a great opportunity for the new stars to strut their stuff. Matt still gives off Tennant-y vibes, but I'll forgive that because I know he becomes his own character by the end of the season. I absolutely adore the "used future" feel (see the original Star Wars trilogy, Blade Runner, Alien, Firefly, and Doctor Who's own "The Long Game" and "Utopia" for more examples). The only real flaw is the premise - who the hell was the moron who started zapping the Beast in the first place? As much as it pains me to penalize an otherwise-great episode on the basis of one tiny flaw, the fact of the matter is that this flaw lies at the very heart of the story.
6 out of 10.
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(Actually KAREN GILLAN'S LEGS aren't so prominently on display here, on account of the nightie she's wearing. Nevertheless, I love my running gag a bit too much to give it up.)
The Doctor insists that they can't interfere, and the very next moment he's comforting a crying child. What's brilliant is that this isn't just a little gag; it comes back at the end of the episode. Unlike RTD, who tended to craft his episodes around one or two major gimmicks, Moff likes to leave a trail of clues, Sherlock Holmes-style (appropriate, considering that other show he runs) for the characters to put together at the end. This episode is perhaps the best example of this approach, as Amy draws all the parallels between the Star Whale and the Doctor.
The Doctor puts a glass of water on the ground ("there's an escaped fish" - why oh why didn't Matt Smith land the role of Ford Prefect in any of the Hitchhiker's adaptations? He'd be perfect) and anyone who's seen Jurassic Park knows exactly what the lack of vibrations means. Um. Sorta. Anyone who's been on an airplane knows exactly what the lack of vibrations mean. It means the ship's engines aren't running.
I don't really like it when the audience gets ahead of the Doctor - it worked in "The Eleventh Hour" when we all knew Amy was Amelia before the Doctor did, but that's because it was funny how badly he'd overshot. In contrast, in an episode like "The Time of Angels," when everybody and his mum was screaming at the screen that all the statues had one head, I got annoyed. Here it happens twice (sort of) and is handled decently each time. First off, the glass of water trick: the Doctor knows what it means, just like we do. It just takes him a little while to act on that knowledge. It's not like he knows an innocent creature is being tortured at the time. The second time, at the end, we're working it out alongside Amy. Of course, we're also going "who was the genius who started zapping the Beast in the first place?" but that kind of gets ignored.
So yeah, who was the genius who started zapping the Beast in the first place? Can we throw them off Starship UK? Or did they step into that crack in the Universe, and thus nobody remembers them? (Hey, that's my new excuse for everything. Inane flirtation dialogue in The Curse of Fenric? Crack in the Universe.)
It's a great opportunity for the new stars to strut their stuff. Matt still gives off Tennant-y vibes, but I'll forgive that because I know he becomes his own character by the end of the season. I absolutely adore the "used future" feel (see the original Star Wars trilogy, Blade Runner, Alien, Firefly, and Doctor Who's own "The Long Game" and "Utopia" for more examples). The only real flaw is the premise - who the hell was the moron who started zapping the Beast in the first place? As much as it pains me to penalize an otherwise-great episode on the basis of one tiny flaw, the fact of the matter is that this flaw lies at the very heart of the story.
6 out of 10.
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Friday, January 14, 2011
Who Review: The Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel
If they pulled this sort of thing with the Daleks, I would have complained. Dalek stories are always first and foremost about the Daleks. It's never a case of "it's an X story with Daleks in." I just can't imagine a parallel universe story with Daleks in. But it works with the Cybermen, because I don't like the Cybermen, so keeping them in the background for the first half works really nicely.
"But the new series Cybermen are so much more impressive than the old tinfoil suits! What's not to like?"
How about the fact that in between Silver Nemesis and this, we were treated to something called the Borg Collective? Which were everything the Cybermen should have been? The Borg - which, mind you, were created in the dying days of Classic Who - look more impressive than the new Cybermen, which were made nearly 20 years later!
I really don't want to get into a Doctor Who vs Star Trek debate, but the point stands that by the time Who returned in 2005, we'd already seen everything thanks to Captains Picard and Sisko, and we'd already seen some of that twice thanks to Captains Janeway and Archer. Parallel realities? Check. Cyborg monsters? Check. I don't think Star Trek ever did an episode quite like "Father's Day," unless it was "City on the Edge of Forever," but that was way back when Patrick Troughton was the Doctor and therefore it doesn't count.
But "Father's Day" was a great episode (there's a point to all this, trust me on this). When Pete Tyler suddenly came back from the dead in "The Rise of the Cybermen," I felt betrayed. They were cheapening one of the most emotional moments of Season 27/Series 1. (They'd go on to do it again when they brought Rose back after "Doomsday;" it'd be like coming back to the characters we just saw in "A Christmas Carol" and suddenly learning that Abigail can now be cured.)
Still. Parallel worlds haven't been done in Doctor Who since Inferno, so I wouldn't have minded... if they hadn't cropped up again at the end of the season. Getting ahead of myself, sorry.
Rather than show us how different this world is, we get Zeppelins, a pet dog named Rose, and a name change for Mickey. That's it (oh and his Gran is still alive). It's still a world that is implausibly recognizably ours - none of that "for want of a nail" nonsense, thank you very much.
And then they chuck the Cybermen into it. In Lumic there was a chance to make a really sympathetic villain - he's dying, all he wants to do is go on, once he sees what his creation has unleashed, he recants and dies heroically - but instead they made him Davros Lite. Why? Because Rusty likes his cookie-cutter morality. Villains are evil; they never repent.
And then there's the completely unsurprising death of Rickey. Again, something they'd do better in 2 seasons; see "Turn Left."
This story tries so hard to be an EPIC TWO PARTER and it just falls flat on its face. The Cybermen have made their triumphant return, but now they've got a stupid catchphrase. Pete Tyler's back, but it takes nearly 90 minutes for him to have any sort of emotional moment with his not-quite daughter, when he managed it in 30 last time. The Doctor has to deal with another threat from his past, one that doesn't carry with it nearly the emotional weight of the Daleks.
4 out of 10
"But the new series Cybermen are so much more impressive than the old tinfoil suits! What's not to like?"
How about the fact that in between Silver Nemesis and this, we were treated to something called the Borg Collective? Which were everything the Cybermen should have been? The Borg - which, mind you, were created in the dying days of Classic Who - look more impressive than the new Cybermen, which were made nearly 20 years later!
I really don't want to get into a Doctor Who vs Star Trek debate, but the point stands that by the time Who returned in 2005, we'd already seen everything thanks to Captains Picard and Sisko, and we'd already seen some of that twice thanks to Captains Janeway and Archer. Parallel realities? Check. Cyborg monsters? Check. I don't think Star Trek ever did an episode quite like "Father's Day," unless it was "City on the Edge of Forever," but that was way back when Patrick Troughton was the Doctor and therefore it doesn't count.
But "Father's Day" was a great episode (there's a point to all this, trust me on this). When Pete Tyler suddenly came back from the dead in "The Rise of the Cybermen," I felt betrayed. They were cheapening one of the most emotional moments of Season 27/Series 1. (They'd go on to do it again when they brought Rose back after "Doomsday;" it'd be like coming back to the characters we just saw in "A Christmas Carol" and suddenly learning that Abigail can now be cured.)
Still. Parallel worlds haven't been done in Doctor Who since Inferno, so I wouldn't have minded... if they hadn't cropped up again at the end of the season. Getting ahead of myself, sorry.
Rather than show us how different this world is, we get Zeppelins, a pet dog named Rose, and a name change for Mickey. That's it (oh and his Gran is still alive). It's still a world that is implausibly recognizably ours - none of that "for want of a nail" nonsense, thank you very much.
And then they chuck the Cybermen into it. In Lumic there was a chance to make a really sympathetic villain - he's dying, all he wants to do is go on, once he sees what his creation has unleashed, he recants and dies heroically - but instead they made him Davros Lite. Why? Because Rusty likes his cookie-cutter morality. Villains are evil; they never repent.
And then there's the completely unsurprising death of Rickey. Again, something they'd do better in 2 seasons; see "Turn Left."
This story tries so hard to be an EPIC TWO PARTER and it just falls flat on its face. The Cybermen have made their triumphant return, but now they've got a stupid catchphrase. Pete Tyler's back, but it takes nearly 90 minutes for him to have any sort of emotional moment with his not-quite daughter, when he managed it in 30 last time. The Doctor has to deal with another threat from his past, one that doesn't carry with it nearly the emotional weight of the Daleks.
4 out of 10
Who Review: Revenge of the Cybermen
About bloody time. I saw parts 1-2, what, a week ago? Anyway, I think I'd rate this story a little bit higher if it weren't the freaking cybermen. I'm sorry, but no matter how evil you make them, men in silver suits are simply not as impressive as men in tin cans, and trying to take these guys seriously is next to impossible (and this is before they got that inane delete catchphrase).
It's well worth watching, because things get nicely turned on their heads and you spend most of Episode 3 rooting for the "bad" guys, i.e, the "evil" Vogans and the human "traitor." Okay, the word "traitor" probably shouldn't be in quotation marks because he did kill a bunch of people. His death is horribly anticlimactic though; rocks fall, everyone dies. It's really the only major let-down of the show. Well, that and the last five or so minutes. Having stopped the main plot, the Doctor must now deal with the inane backup plot; smash the space station into the planet. While the Doctor is still on board. After he's only been merely tied up. By himself.
We can draw two conclusions from this:
1) the Cybermen are stupid, and were never, ever properly realized on Doctor Who. I maintain that the best Cybermen episode ever is Star Trek TNG's "The Best of Both Worlds." But beyond that, the cyber-backup plan is hopelessly dumb.
2) they Cyber-stupidity is the result of some hasty editing that led to the last episode needing 5 extra minutes of stuff. The behind-the-scenes interviews kind of lend some weight to this idea; Hinchcliffe and Holmes had about a bazillion re-writes, and then the director came in and demanded even more. (Oddly, Hinchcliffe spent most of his interview defending the episode's shortcomings and complaining that he didn't have enough money. I thought most of the money was impressively well spent - the location work is fantastic - and the real shortcoming is the Cybermen, which weren't really budgeted for.)
Revenge of the Cybermen gets a 7 out of 10. It's a very solid story, certainly doesn't require a lot of thought to follow it in terms of who the goodies and the baddies are, and it's only let down by a couple of things.
Planet of the Daleks suffers in part because it followed Frontier in Space, but also just because Planet was, frankly, bad. In contrast, while whatever serial followed Genesis of the Daleks was always going to suffer, it's still one of the better serials of the season.
It's well worth watching, because things get nicely turned on their heads and you spend most of Episode 3 rooting for the "bad" guys, i.e, the "evil" Vogans and the human "traitor." Okay, the word "traitor" probably shouldn't be in quotation marks because he did kill a bunch of people. His death is horribly anticlimactic though; rocks fall, everyone dies. It's really the only major let-down of the show. Well, that and the last five or so minutes. Having stopped the main plot, the Doctor must now deal with the inane backup plot; smash the space station into the planet. While the Doctor is still on board. After he's only been merely tied up. By himself.
We can draw two conclusions from this:
1) the Cybermen are stupid, and were never, ever properly realized on Doctor Who. I maintain that the best Cybermen episode ever is Star Trek TNG's "The Best of Both Worlds." But beyond that, the cyber-backup plan is hopelessly dumb.
2) they Cyber-stupidity is the result of some hasty editing that led to the last episode needing 5 extra minutes of stuff. The behind-the-scenes interviews kind of lend some weight to this idea; Hinchcliffe and Holmes had about a bazillion re-writes, and then the director came in and demanded even more. (Oddly, Hinchcliffe spent most of his interview defending the episode's shortcomings and complaining that he didn't have enough money. I thought most of the money was impressively well spent - the location work is fantastic - and the real shortcoming is the Cybermen, which weren't really budgeted for.)
Revenge of the Cybermen gets a 7 out of 10. It's a very solid story, certainly doesn't require a lot of thought to follow it in terms of who the goodies and the baddies are, and it's only let down by a couple of things.
Planet of the Daleks suffers in part because it followed Frontier in Space, but also just because Planet was, frankly, bad. In contrast, while whatever serial followed Genesis of the Daleks was always going to suffer, it's still one of the better serials of the season.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
...not that I've got anything against StarCraft
Today I saw Starship Troopers for the third time (also for the first time after I saw Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Amusing).
I still think it's the 3rd-best adaptation of the novel. Well, "adaptation of the novel" might not be entirely accurate, since I read it about seven years ago and skimmed everything that wasn't shooty kablooies (I was 15). The 2nd-best is of course the movie Aliens, and the 1st-best, even more obviously, was StarCraft.
Good Lord, I adore StarCraft. I'm nowhere near good enough to play it on a professional level (I still really, really suck at getting my base up and running in next to no time), but I love the game anyway.
Brood War came out and was generally awesome too, though I, like a bunch of other fans, absolutely hated having to kill Fenix near the end (yeah, if that's a spoiler, you'd probably be shocked to learn that the princess is in another castle). But hey, you got to build Dark Templar. That alone made the expansion worth owning.
StarCraft II. Hoo boy. Or as I like to call it, StarCraft II Episode One. Well, I don't hate it. Well, other than the map editor, which blows, I don't hate it. No, seriously. The map editor for SCII is such utter crap. The one in the original was utter perfection. How do you mess it up that badly?
Anyway, all the cheap units are utterly nerfed, so say goodbye to your Zerg Rushes as well as my favorite tactic of just building up one hundred Marines, a couple of Medics, giving them extra armor, firepower and range, and sending them to waste everything. They also took away the Goliaths, which were by far my favorite unit (Brood War gave them a bigger range with their rockets and made them even more awesome). In its place is... well, nothing, really. There's Thor, a giant mecha who talks like Ahnold, and there are the Vikings, which can be mechas that shoot stuff on the ground or fighters that shoot stuff in the air. They're pretty cool too, I guess. But I miss me my Goliaths!
The other thing about the Terrans is that now you can do other stuff with the Command Center, like make it a fortress (with turrets and all), or give it the ability to boost supply depots' outputs. Which is kinda nice.
The Protoss are as broken as ever; now the Carriers already have 4 interceptors to start with (i.e, they're built when the thing arrives) and you don't have to research the extra capacity. Also, you can summon a Mothership, which can do pretty much everything the Arbiter could and fight as well. You can only summon one, but you only need one. And then there's the Collossus, which can walk right up and down cliffs. Yikes.
The Zerg. Well, frankly I'm terrible at playing the Zerg, and I always was, but they've got some new tricks. For one thing, creep now goes down ramps so you don't have to start a new colony every time you change elevation. Also, your dudes move faster on the creep, so it's a great idea to just flood the map in the gunk. There's a unit that can move while buried, which seems like it would lend itself easily to some freaking terrifying stealth attacks. And the Ultralisks no longer look like elephants. That said, the Zerglings are downright useless (because the cheap units got nerfed; see above).
On the whole, StarCraft II seems all right. I don't think it's a good idea to subject the balance to the whims of the playing community - if something was broken in the original game, we worked a way around it. Changing the rules every month or so hardly seems fair.
But still, it's a fairly solid game, and it continues StarCraft's noble tradition of turning things I like into video games; StarCraft was "Aliens the Video Game," Brood War was "Starship Troopers the Video Game," and StarCraft II is "Firefly the Video Game."
I still think it's the 3rd-best adaptation of the novel. Well, "adaptation of the novel" might not be entirely accurate, since I read it about seven years ago and skimmed everything that wasn't shooty kablooies (I was 15). The 2nd-best is of course the movie Aliens, and the 1st-best, even more obviously, was StarCraft.
Good Lord, I adore StarCraft. I'm nowhere near good enough to play it on a professional level (I still really, really suck at getting my base up and running in next to no time), but I love the game anyway.
Brood War came out and was generally awesome too, though I, like a bunch of other fans, absolutely hated having to kill Fenix near the end (yeah, if that's a spoiler, you'd probably be shocked to learn that the princess is in another castle). But hey, you got to build Dark Templar. That alone made the expansion worth owning.
StarCraft II. Hoo boy. Or as I like to call it, StarCraft II Episode One. Well, I don't hate it. Well, other than the map editor, which blows, I don't hate it. No, seriously. The map editor for SCII is such utter crap. The one in the original was utter perfection. How do you mess it up that badly?
Anyway, all the cheap units are utterly nerfed, so say goodbye to your Zerg Rushes as well as my favorite tactic of just building up one hundred Marines, a couple of Medics, giving them extra armor, firepower and range, and sending them to waste everything. They also took away the Goliaths, which were by far my favorite unit (Brood War gave them a bigger range with their rockets and made them even more awesome). In its place is... well, nothing, really. There's Thor, a giant mecha who talks like Ahnold, and there are the Vikings, which can be mechas that shoot stuff on the ground or fighters that shoot stuff in the air. They're pretty cool too, I guess. But I miss me my Goliaths!
The other thing about the Terrans is that now you can do other stuff with the Command Center, like make it a fortress (with turrets and all), or give it the ability to boost supply depots' outputs. Which is kinda nice.
The Protoss are as broken as ever; now the Carriers already have 4 interceptors to start with (i.e, they're built when the thing arrives) and you don't have to research the extra capacity. Also, you can summon a Mothership, which can do pretty much everything the Arbiter could and fight as well. You can only summon one, but you only need one. And then there's the Collossus, which can walk right up and down cliffs. Yikes.
The Zerg. Well, frankly I'm terrible at playing the Zerg, and I always was, but they've got some new tricks. For one thing, creep now goes down ramps so you don't have to start a new colony every time you change elevation. Also, your dudes move faster on the creep, so it's a great idea to just flood the map in the gunk. There's a unit that can move while buried, which seems like it would lend itself easily to some freaking terrifying stealth attacks. And the Ultralisks no longer look like elephants. That said, the Zerglings are downright useless (because the cheap units got nerfed; see above).
On the whole, StarCraft II seems all right. I don't think it's a good idea to subject the balance to the whims of the playing community - if something was broken in the original game, we worked a way around it. Changing the rules every month or so hardly seems fair.
But still, it's a fairly solid game, and it continues StarCraft's noble tradition of turning things I like into video games; StarCraft was "Aliens the Video Game," Brood War was "Starship Troopers the Video Game," and StarCraft II is "Firefly the Video Game."
Why Super Mario Galaxy and SMG2 are Not Good Signs of Things to Come
There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of single-player video games.
I don't mean multiplayer games with single-player aspects (StarCraft, any sports game ever, hell, even Team Fortress 2). I mean single-player games. Games that either don't have a multiplayer mode, or games with a multiplayer mode so pathetic you have to assume that it was included merely because someone higher up read a report saying multiplayer was a great idea, even though they had no idea how to implement it well.
I'm talking about games like Half-Life 2 or Donkey Kong 64.
Half-Life 2 is a quintissential example of a railshooter. In a railshooter, there are exactly two ways to go: forward, where the bad guys are, or backwards, where the bad guys' corpses are. It is a shooter on rails. Hence, railshooter.
Donkey Kong 64 is an RPG (Role-Playing Game). You can go anywhere and do anything, and a lot of the time you have to backtrack to an earlier area because you didn't have the skills to do something when you were there before. Your character levels up and gains new abilities and a bigger health bar.
Every real single-player game ever sits somewhere on the railshooter-RPG axis. StarFox 64 and all its not-horrible sequels were railshooters. When they tried to make a StarFox RPG, they crapped out Dinosaur Planet. The original Mario Brothers games were all technically railshooters. There was no levelling up, there was just "go to the goal and kill everything in your way." Banjo-Tooie was an RPG. I can't imagine it as a railshooter, and neither should you. The Paper Mario series was comprised of RPGs as well.
Super Mario 64 sits somewhere in the middle. Your health bar never increases past 8, and you know all your moves from the outset (mostly; you have to unlock the flying, metal and invisible caps). But you can go through the objectives in pretty much any order you like. Super Mario Sunshine largely followed this trend, though instead of caps there were nozzels. Simple, really.
Now let's just remember that Super Mario 64 was considered to be one of the greatest games of all time when it came out. It was the game that essentially launched the N64 and paved the way for superior games like DK64 and Banjo-Tooie. It was in 3 dimensions, yes, but it was also delightfully nonlinear.
Now you tell me, where do the Super Mario Galaxy games fall on that axis? SMG and SMG2 are railshooters. Yes, you can walk on the ceiling now, but that's it. For the Mario games, this is a step backwards. Hell, Team Fortress 2 had more RPG elements, and that's not even a single-player game!
Who the hell decided that Super Mario 64 was a step in the wrong direction? Who decided that we needed to remake Super Mario Brothers in 3-d with zonky physics?
...probably the same people who thought the problem with Super Mario Sunshine was that it wasn't Super Mario 64 2.
As the Sniper would say, "Buggah!"
I don't mean multiplayer games with single-player aspects (StarCraft, any sports game ever, hell, even Team Fortress 2). I mean single-player games. Games that either don't have a multiplayer mode, or games with a multiplayer mode so pathetic you have to assume that it was included merely because someone higher up read a report saying multiplayer was a great idea, even though they had no idea how to implement it well.
I'm talking about games like Half-Life 2 or Donkey Kong 64.
Half-Life 2 is a quintissential example of a railshooter. In a railshooter, there are exactly two ways to go: forward, where the bad guys are, or backwards, where the bad guys' corpses are. It is a shooter on rails. Hence, railshooter.
Donkey Kong 64 is an RPG (Role-Playing Game). You can go anywhere and do anything, and a lot of the time you have to backtrack to an earlier area because you didn't have the skills to do something when you were there before. Your character levels up and gains new abilities and a bigger health bar.
Every real single-player game ever sits somewhere on the railshooter-RPG axis. StarFox 64 and all its not-horrible sequels were railshooters. When they tried to make a StarFox RPG, they crapped out Dinosaur Planet. The original Mario Brothers games were all technically railshooters. There was no levelling up, there was just "go to the goal and kill everything in your way." Banjo-Tooie was an RPG. I can't imagine it as a railshooter, and neither should you. The Paper Mario series was comprised of RPGs as well.
Super Mario 64 sits somewhere in the middle. Your health bar never increases past 8, and you know all your moves from the outset (mostly; you have to unlock the flying, metal and invisible caps). But you can go through the objectives in pretty much any order you like. Super Mario Sunshine largely followed this trend, though instead of caps there were nozzels. Simple, really.
Now let's just remember that Super Mario 64 was considered to be one of the greatest games of all time when it came out. It was the game that essentially launched the N64 and paved the way for superior games like DK64 and Banjo-Tooie. It was in 3 dimensions, yes, but it was also delightfully nonlinear.
Now you tell me, where do the Super Mario Galaxy games fall on that axis? SMG and SMG2 are railshooters. Yes, you can walk on the ceiling now, but that's it. For the Mario games, this is a step backwards. Hell, Team Fortress 2 had more RPG elements, and that's not even a single-player game!
Who the hell decided that Super Mario 64 was a step in the wrong direction? Who decided that we needed to remake Super Mario Brothers in 3-d with zonky physics?
...probably the same people who thought the problem with Super Mario Sunshine was that it wasn't Super Mario 64 2.
As the Sniper would say, "Buggah!"
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Who Review: The Girl in the Fireplace
"One must bear a world of demons for the sake of one angel."
Well well. There's a girl who's on the slow path. Meanwhile, the Doctor can flit into and out of her time stream as he pleases, but it'll all end in tragedy. See also The Time Traveller's Wife, "A Christmas Carol," and anything with River Song in it. Hey, maybe Stephen Moffat's not quite as clever as we all thought.
(On that note, note that the episode ends with Madame de Pompadour calling the Doctor a lonely angel. The next episode that Moffat wrote was...)
Stupid thing Rose does this time around: goes wandering off after being told explicitly not to go wandering off. Yeah, she did it back in "The Empty Child," but at least then there was a kid on a building to distract her attention. This time she does it pretty much to impress Mickey. Yeah, my hatred for this character might occasionally spill over into irrational, but take a look at her so far; she's let herself get sucked into an idiotic possession plot, baited Queen Victoria, gotten in a bitch-fest with the Doctor's Best Companion Ever, and now gone wandering off for really no good reason whatsoever. Adam got off to easy.
Look, this is obviously the weakest episode Moffat wrote until he took over the show. It still stands out as one of the better entries in a comparatively weak season.
7 out of 10.
Well well. There's a girl who's on the slow path. Meanwhile, the Doctor can flit into and out of her time stream as he pleases, but it'll all end in tragedy. See also The Time Traveller's Wife, "A Christmas Carol," and anything with River Song in it. Hey, maybe Stephen Moffat's not quite as clever as we all thought.
(On that note, note that the episode ends with Madame de Pompadour calling the Doctor a lonely angel. The next episode that Moffat wrote was...)
Stupid thing Rose does this time around: goes wandering off after being told explicitly not to go wandering off. Yeah, she did it back in "The Empty Child," but at least then there was a kid on a building to distract her attention. This time she does it pretty much to impress Mickey. Yeah, my hatred for this character might occasionally spill over into irrational, but take a look at her so far; she's let herself get sucked into an idiotic possession plot, baited Queen Victoria, gotten in a bitch-fest with the Doctor's Best Companion Ever, and now gone wandering off for really no good reason whatsoever. Adam got off to easy.
Look, this is obviously the weakest episode Moffat wrote until he took over the show. It still stands out as one of the better entries in a comparatively weak season.
7 out of 10.
Who Review: School Reunion
Uncomfortable inklings of pedophilia. Sarah Jane Smith gets in a bitch-fest with the Doctor's new dye-job companion and doesn't come out the clear winner. That's what's wrong with this episode. The rest of it is generally Anthony Stewart Head either playing an Evil Guy with understated malice, or chewing a bunch of scenery. Also K9 shows up and manages not to be annoying. But most of it - and they say so on the commentary - is just Doctor Who meets Sex and the City, as the missus and the ex duke it out.
Now, the pedophilia charge. Yeah, that might seem a bit much, but once you see it from that perspective, you can't unsee it. We're talking about a bunch of aliens who harvest genetic material - it is their m.o. - using children's souls to re-make the Universe. So, um, yeah. Also, what British child in their right mind would ever trust their teachers again?
Then there's the other other problem; you see, if behind-the-scenes sources are to be believed, Elizabeth Sladen was offered at least one chance to return to the show right around the time Tom Baker decided to leave (yeah, Sarah and Adric - I can't picture it either). So when Sarah Jane complains about being left behind, I can't quite separate the fictional events from what went on behind the scenes. The only thing that kept the Doctor from swinging back to pick up Sarah again after The Deadly Assassin was an expired contract in a BBC cabinet somewhere. I'm not blaming Sladen for leaving - everyone's got to at some point - although I will confess that I'm questioning her logic in returning to the show here. Really, it's her and Head that save it.
6 out of 10.
Now, the pedophilia charge. Yeah, that might seem a bit much, but once you see it from that perspective, you can't unsee it. We're talking about a bunch of aliens who harvest genetic material - it is their m.o. - using children's souls to re-make the Universe. So, um, yeah. Also, what British child in their right mind would ever trust their teachers again?
Then there's the other other problem; you see, if behind-the-scenes sources are to be believed, Elizabeth Sladen was offered at least one chance to return to the show right around the time Tom Baker decided to leave (yeah, Sarah and Adric - I can't picture it either). So when Sarah Jane complains about being left behind, I can't quite separate the fictional events from what went on behind the scenes. The only thing that kept the Doctor from swinging back to pick up Sarah again after The Deadly Assassin was an expired contract in a BBC cabinet somewhere. I'm not blaming Sladen for leaving - everyone's got to at some point - although I will confess that I'm questioning her logic in returning to the show here. Really, it's her and Head that save it.
6 out of 10.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Who Review: Tooth and Claw
We are not amused by the ongoing attempts to make Queen Victoria say "we are not amused." If the interrupted curses were the Awful Dialogue Bane of "New Earth," then almost every one of Rose's lines are the Awful Dialogue Banes of "Tooth and Claw." Is RTD deliberately trying to make her unlikeable so that her exit at the end of the season is less dramatic? And if so, why does the Doctor spend all of Series 3 and a good chunk of Series 4 moping about her?
Other than that, the only real complaint I have (aside from the Matrix-esque slo-mo fight shots) is the fact that the Doctor never really takes Sir Robert to task for his "treason." Having him go one way or the other is perfectly fine, but the Doctor doesn't even address the issue. Of course, Sir Robert gets a Redemption Equals Death, so it's not exactly like the script doesn't pick a side. But our Guiding Moral Compass doesn't seem to want to chime in. "Your wife or the Queen!" "Neither! Me! Yarrrahrahharahrha!"
Yeah, anyway, nice werewolf story, can't stand Rose in it at all, glad she spends a good chunk of it chained up. She'll be tolerable after this and she's been great before it, but this is where RTD lost it - I told you he reconfigured her character in the previous episode, and this proves it.
Conclusion: woof. 6 out of 10. Not bad, not special either. The werewolf motif is probably my favorite musical cue of the season, which isn't surprising given the fact that it's a subtle ripoff of Darth Vader's theme.
Other than that, the only real complaint I have (aside from the Matrix-esque slo-mo fight shots) is the fact that the Doctor never really takes Sir Robert to task for his "treason." Having him go one way or the other is perfectly fine, but the Doctor doesn't even address the issue. Of course, Sir Robert gets a Redemption Equals Death, so it's not exactly like the script doesn't pick a side. But our Guiding Moral Compass doesn't seem to want to chime in. "Your wife or the Queen!" "Neither! Me! Yarrrahrahharahrha!"
Yeah, anyway, nice werewolf story, can't stand Rose in it at all, glad she spends a good chunk of it chained up. She'll be tolerable after this and she's been great before it, but this is where RTD lost it - I told you he reconfigured her character in the previous episode, and this proves it.
Conclusion: woof. 6 out of 10. Not bad, not special either. The werewolf motif is probably my favorite musical cue of the season, which isn't surprising given the fact that it's a subtle ripoff of Darth Vader's theme.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Who Review: A Christmas Carol
Pardon me, I think I've got something in my eye...
It's amazing and wonderful and yeah, the setup is a bit daft, but honestly you should watch it.
It's amazing and wonderful and yeah, the setup is a bit daft, but honestly you should watch it.
Who Review: New Earth
So, you want to see Doctor Who Series 2 but don't want to fork over the money for another DVD box set and have an ethical code against obtaining it illegally? Cool, because you probably can weld it together from a bunch of DVDs you already own. For example, take Revelation of the Daleks, add in a dash of Dead End, mix in the inane possession subplot from somewhere, sprinkle with Soylent Green, and voila.
Let's recap: the proper way to introduce a new Doctor is not to have him lie on his back for half the episode (Castrovalva, "The Christmas Invasion), it is not to give him amnesia (The One With Paul McGann), and it is not to have him act horribly out of character (The Twin Dilemma). Unfortunately, the psycho possession subplot requires just this. On the plus side, several lingering shots of Billie Piper's cleavage (or maybe that was just me; okay, add The Secret Diary of a Call-Girl to the list at the top).
Cat people, ooh, arr, because nobody would accept an average human as the villain (cf. The Caves of Androzani). And the ending is junk science. The zombies were infected with 1,000 diseases. The Doctor randomly mashes about 10 serums together, has Cassandra!Rose do something - like that lever function is ever explained... this is Nu Who's Awful Formula at its absolute worst: fart around for 40 minutes and then neatly wrap everything up implausibly. Yeah, Buffy did that occasionally, but at least they had the grace to pretend to take it seriously. (Side rant: count the episodes in Buffy or Angel, starting with "Witch"and ending with "You're Welcome," where the people actually doing the fighting are saved by someone doing magic off in a different room. It was old by the end of "Becoming, Part II." At least "Origin" had the decency to do it with some gravitas.) Also, the little -
-bit rich, coming from you...
Yeah, hiding your swear words like that? It was an antique piece the first time you did it, and it was just sad the second.
But the possession subplot's there to mask one (sadly) clever thing in the writing. Just as The Edge of Destruction saw everyone act out of character as a means of reconfiguring the Doctor from "jerkass grandpa" to "kind old wizard man," this is the episode where Rose starts as Billie the Dalek Slayer and ends as the Clingy Girl Who Gets Left On the Beach. Ugh, 12 more episodes of this. At least the next one's got some awesome music, and the one after that has Anthony Stewart Head.
I bashed up The Mysterious Planet a bit extra for not being the kick in the pants the show desperately needed, and I guess I'm going to do that here as well. Because this farce somehow was made as a season opener and not buried away in the middle somewhere with "Love and Monsters," I'm giving it a 3 out of 10. Series 2 has its moments; this is not one of them.
To read more abuse, click here.
Let's recap: the proper way to introduce a new Doctor is not to have him lie on his back for half the episode (Castrovalva, "The Christmas Invasion), it is not to give him amnesia (The One With Paul McGann), and it is not to have him act horribly out of character (The Twin Dilemma). Unfortunately, the psycho possession subplot requires just this. On the plus side, several lingering shots of Billie Piper's cleavage (or maybe that was just me; okay, add The Secret Diary of a Call-Girl to the list at the top).
Cat people, ooh, arr, because nobody would accept an average human as the villain (cf. The Caves of Androzani). And the ending is junk science. The zombies were infected with 1,000 diseases. The Doctor randomly mashes about 10 serums together, has Cassandra!Rose do something - like that lever function is ever explained... this is Nu Who's Awful Formula at its absolute worst: fart around for 40 minutes and then neatly wrap everything up implausibly. Yeah, Buffy did that occasionally, but at least they had the grace to pretend to take it seriously. (Side rant: count the episodes in Buffy or Angel, starting with "Witch"and ending with "You're Welcome," where the people actually doing the fighting are saved by someone doing magic off in a different room. It was old by the end of "Becoming, Part II." At least "Origin" had the decency to do it with some gravitas.) Also, the little -
-bit rich, coming from you...
Yeah, hiding your swear words like that? It was an antique piece the first time you did it, and it was just sad the second.
But the possession subplot's there to mask one (sadly) clever thing in the writing. Just as The Edge of Destruction saw everyone act out of character as a means of reconfiguring the Doctor from "jerkass grandpa" to "kind old wizard man," this is the episode where Rose starts as Billie the Dalek Slayer and ends as the Clingy Girl Who Gets Left On the Beach. Ugh, 12 more episodes of this. At least the next one's got some awesome music, and the one after that has Anthony Stewart Head.
I bashed up The Mysterious Planet a bit extra for not being the kick in the pants the show desperately needed, and I guess I'm going to do that here as well. Because this farce somehow was made as a season opener and not buried away in the middle somewhere with "Love and Monsters," I'm giving it a 3 out of 10. Series 2 has its moments; this is not one of them.
To read more abuse, click here.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Who Review: The Christmas Invasion
Yup, still behind on everything. Oh well, here's a review of the 2005 Christmas episode.
The TARDIS lands on Earth on Christmas Eve, just in time for a giant asteroid spaceship to descend, hypnotize a fair portion of the Earth's population, and hold their lives hostage until Earth's leader - the Prime Minister of Great Britain - surrenders the planet.
The PM? Not the President?
"You may tell the President, and please use these exact words, he is not my boss, and I won't let him turn this into a war." This from the woman who nukes the spaceship at the end of the episode. Bwa ha ha.
Anyway, the Doctor is no longer Mr Lots-Of-Planets-Have-A-North; now he's Captain Jack Sparrow, and if you think I'm kidding, listen to the "big button what must not ever be pressed" scene side-by-side with the "it's the honest ones you have to worry about because you can never tell when they're going to do something... stupid" scene. And on top of that, he swordfights. Sort of.
Because let me tell you, compared to, say The End of Time, the effects and stunts here are almost laughably bad. (Speaking of The End of Time, I'm kind of amused that pretty much the last thing 10 looks at is his fightin' hand.)
Anyway, this Doctor insists that he's a "no second chances" sort of man, even though nothing but nothing in that scene makes any damn sense. Why is there a trap door right there? Why can they even go outside the spaceship like that? What kind of civilization could possibly have a use for both a skeletizing energy whip and a freaking broadsword? How high up are they, because it looks like Rose should probably need an oxygen mask. How does Rose throwing the Doctor a sword not violate the "no interfering" rule?
Anyway, we have a no-second-chances Doctor get upset when a PM who's not going to turn this into a war vaporizes a ship that tried to enslave the planet. If that makes any sense to you, you'll probably like both this and some of the other inane excesses in Tennant's run. Yes, it's a Christmas episode - so what? Four years from now we're going to have a dire little spectacle as the Master turns every human being into a copy of himself and the Time Lords prepare to eradicate the Universe. Just because it's Christmas doesn't mean nobody needs to put any effort into it. "The Christmas Invasion" makes The Three Doctors look like Masterpiece Theater, when what it should really be doing is introducing the new boy. I wonder if it was in Tennant's contract that he, like his favorite Doctor (Peter Davison), had to spend most of his first story unconscious. Eccleston (and Smith) aside, the last time Doctor Who did a good job introducing its new leading man was back when Tom Baker took over in 1974.
Yeah, I didn't think too much of it. I don't think too much of most of Series 2, aside from "School Reunion" because it has Sarah Jane and Giles in it, and maybe "The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit" because it was Doctor Who finally doing Alien. I'm not going to give "The Christmas Invasion" a number out of ten because it's a Christmas episode and we just know that they couldn't possibly have been taking this very seriously.
The TARDIS lands on Earth on Christmas Eve, just in time for a giant asteroid spaceship to descend, hypnotize a fair portion of the Earth's population, and hold their lives hostage until Earth's leader - the Prime Minister of Great Britain - surrenders the planet.
The PM? Not the President?
"You may tell the President, and please use these exact words, he is not my boss, and I won't let him turn this into a war." This from the woman who nukes the spaceship at the end of the episode. Bwa ha ha.
Anyway, the Doctor is no longer Mr Lots-Of-Planets-Have-A-North; now he's Captain Jack Sparrow, and if you think I'm kidding, listen to the "big button what must not ever be pressed" scene side-by-side with the "it's the honest ones you have to worry about because you can never tell when they're going to do something... stupid" scene. And on top of that, he swordfights. Sort of.
Because let me tell you, compared to, say The End of Time, the effects and stunts here are almost laughably bad. (Speaking of The End of Time, I'm kind of amused that pretty much the last thing 10 looks at is his fightin' hand.)
Anyway, this Doctor insists that he's a "no second chances" sort of man, even though nothing but nothing in that scene makes any damn sense. Why is there a trap door right there? Why can they even go outside the spaceship like that? What kind of civilization could possibly have a use for both a skeletizing energy whip and a freaking broadsword? How high up are they, because it looks like Rose should probably need an oxygen mask. How does Rose throwing the Doctor a sword not violate the "no interfering" rule?
Anyway, we have a no-second-chances Doctor get upset when a PM who's not going to turn this into a war vaporizes a ship that tried to enslave the planet. If that makes any sense to you, you'll probably like both this and some of the other inane excesses in Tennant's run. Yes, it's a Christmas episode - so what? Four years from now we're going to have a dire little spectacle as the Master turns every human being into a copy of himself and the Time Lords prepare to eradicate the Universe. Just because it's Christmas doesn't mean nobody needs to put any effort into it. "The Christmas Invasion" makes The Three Doctors look like Masterpiece Theater, when what it should really be doing is introducing the new boy. I wonder if it was in Tennant's contract that he, like his favorite Doctor (Peter Davison), had to spend most of his first story unconscious. Eccleston (and Smith) aside, the last time Doctor Who did a good job introducing its new leading man was back when Tom Baker took over in 1974.
Yeah, I didn't think too much of it. I don't think too much of most of Series 2, aside from "School Reunion" because it has Sarah Jane and Giles in it, and maybe "The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit" because it was Doctor Who finally doing Alien. I'm not going to give "The Christmas Invasion" a number out of ten because it's a Christmas episode and we just know that they couldn't possibly have been taking this very seriously.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Parts 1-2 of Revenge of the Cybermen
I honestly had some doubts about actually putting the "Who Review" tag on this one, because it's not a review so much as it is my thoughts about the first two episodes, or as I like to call them, the One That Aired Right Before William Hartnell Died, and the One That Aired Right After William Hartnell Died.
See, my new year's resolution was to blog more often, but I have this thing about only watching one episode a day in order to digest it all. Having gotten through Fenric, I watched Part One of Revenge yesterday and Part Two today, and here are my thoughts about it. Yeah, it's not really a review, but nobody reads this blog anyway.
Right off the bat, I like that the plot seems to be a whole lot less complicated than Fenric's. No Viking runes, no bizarre chess allegories, no trying to figure out whose motive is what; from very early on, it's so obvious who the bad guy is that the episode flat-out tells us.
In a distinct contrast to Fenric's budget-saving measure of shooting on location, most of Revenge is shot on a set recycled from The Ark in Space, but there's also a lavish Vogon set made of gold... makes me wonder where the jewelled crabs that they smash are. Yeah, I made a Hitchhiker's joke, and yeah, it's actually "Vogan." Oh well.
So what do I think of the 70s Cybermen? Well, I can't really say, because I haven't exactly seen a lot of them. The music at the end of Part 2, when they burst in and zap everyone, Doctor included, reminded me of the Imperial March, and I actually had to remind myself that The Empire Strikes Back was still 5 years off (RIP Irvin Kershner, since I don't think I mentioned that earlier - see what I get for not blogging enough? The director of what was once my all-time favorite film dies, and I only mention it in passing, well after the fact, in a completely unrelated post). Anyway, for some reason I went into this story thinking it was a terribly weak follow up to Genesis of the Daleks, but I'm actually quite enjoying it. The scene were the Doctor threatens to let a Cybermat bite the traitor is surprisingly dark for a man who just refused to wipe out the most evil species in the Galaxy...
Ah, there I go again.
See, my new year's resolution was to blog more often, but I have this thing about only watching one episode a day in order to digest it all. Having gotten through Fenric, I watched Part One of Revenge yesterday and Part Two today, and here are my thoughts about it. Yeah, it's not really a review, but nobody reads this blog anyway.
Right off the bat, I like that the plot seems to be a whole lot less complicated than Fenric's. No Viking runes, no bizarre chess allegories, no trying to figure out whose motive is what; from very early on, it's so obvious who the bad guy is that the episode flat-out tells us.
In a distinct contrast to Fenric's budget-saving measure of shooting on location, most of Revenge is shot on a set recycled from The Ark in Space, but there's also a lavish Vogon set made of gold... makes me wonder where the jewelled crabs that they smash are. Yeah, I made a Hitchhiker's joke, and yeah, it's actually "Vogan." Oh well.
So what do I think of the 70s Cybermen? Well, I can't really say, because I haven't exactly seen a lot of them. The music at the end of Part 2, when they burst in and zap everyone, Doctor included, reminded me of the Imperial March, and I actually had to remind myself that The Empire Strikes Back was still 5 years off (RIP Irvin Kershner, since I don't think I mentioned that earlier - see what I get for not blogging enough? The director of what was once my all-time favorite film dies, and I only mention it in passing, well after the fact, in a completely unrelated post). Anyway, for some reason I went into this story thinking it was a terribly weak follow up to Genesis of the Daleks, but I'm actually quite enjoying it. The scene were the Doctor threatens to let a Cybermat bite the traitor is surprisingly dark for a man who just refused to wipe out the most evil species in the Galaxy...
Ah, there I go again.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
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Image of the Week: Pearl Harbor and the Fog of War
I follow a lot of naval history accounts, so this "Japanese map showing their assessment of the damage done to the United States flee...
