Television shows need to find themselves pretty quickly. They need to nail down a style and they need to attract an audience in mere weeks, or network executives will pull the plug. That's probably as true today as it was in 1964, when Doctor Who's second-ever serial, The Daleks, introduced us to fascist saltshakers that would quickly becomes as iconic as the TARDIS itself. The audience reaction was incredibly positive; over the course of the serial, the viewing figures increased from 6.9 million (a figure any network would kill for today) to 10.4. (This despite the fact that the serial itself rapidly declined in quality from about episode four on.)
Despite the fact that the Daleks were destroyed at the end, the higher-ups quickly demanded a rematch, and once it was clear that the show would be renewed for a second season, a rematch was duly arranged. The apparent destruction of the Daleks at the end of their eponymous serial was brilliantly handwaved away; this is a show about time-travel after all, and if the invasion of Earth took place in 2164, the adventure on Skaro could very well have taken place in, say 3000. Problem solved.
So it was decided to have the Daleks invade Earth. Which meant, coincidentally, that this was the first time the Doctor actually got to save Earth, as opposed to saving some other planet, or having an adventure on Earth while trying desperately not to interfere in the timeline. (A note on that; it's always okay for the Doctor to stop alien invasions, and everyone assumes he's in it for the greater morality of it all. Yet he'll insist that you can't re-write history, not one line; what does he think he's doing all throughout the UNIT era? Especially whenever the Silurians get involved?)
It was also the first time they really got to go outside. The production team did a considerable amount of location work (of course, it blends a bit better if you can't tell the difference between film and videotape), and the Daleks were outfitted with what were basically tricycles under their "skirts" to enable them to zip around tossing each other Nazi salutes.
The setup is fantastic; Earth is largely deserted when the Doctor and company arrive, but they quickly run into the Daleks and the last, desperate resistance, led by a Churchillian figure (because this was less than 20 years after WWII, remember, and yeah, this is so very much about the Blitz). Things look remarkably bleak; the title is misleading. The invasion has already happened, and the bad guys have won. With the exception of Churchill's stand-in, nobody really thinks they'll actually throw off the shackles and free the world. And to be fair, they really don't have a chance except that the Daleks manage to have an even worse time trying to occupy enemy territory than the US has had in the last decade.
See, the Doctor and company eventually make their way out of occupied London and into occupied Bedfordshire, where there's now a massive mining complex. As I've alluded to elsewhere, when I've complained about "The Almost People" being delayed because of Memorial Day, I'm not from Britain, but I am given to understand that Bedfordshire is not the sort of place from which a sane man would try to dig a hole to the center of the Earth.
But that's okay because the Dalek plan is in no way sane; see, they want to rip out Earth's magnetic core, dump an engine in there, and steer it around the Universe like a gigantic warship. A... well, there's no point being coy about it, they want a ready-made Death Star. No, you read that correctly, and yes, that is the plot. The serial holds together pretty well until then, but after that it's a bit hard to take seriously.
Well, that plot is defeated, not by the dead hand of Isaac Newton, but rather by Ian jumping into the bomb cart himself while Barbara mimics a Dalek voice. And in case you're wondering why the Doctor doesn't do anything overly clever, well, this really isn't his show yet, and it won't be until Ian and Barbara leave. At this point, he's a glorified cabbie. People who compare Doctor Who to Star Trek often miss out on this point; Doctor Who would be a lot more like Star Trek if Uhura and Scotty were Trek's main characters for its first two seasons.
And in case you're wondering about Susan, well, she's getting hitched. Susan was the Doctor's granddaughter, created because Sydney Newman wanted a kid for the kids in the audience to identify with, and made the doctor's granddaughter because he thought that otherwise there would be some unfortunate implications about a 650-year-old* man tooling around the Universe with a teenager. Apparently nobody voiced those concerns when the show was revived in 2005.
*A note on the Doctor's age; in Tomb of the Cybermen, the (Second) Doctor claims to be 450, and unless I'm wrong, this is the first time his age is stated onscreen. I've given you the 650 figure for this, a serial that aired three years earlier, because 650 was the number on the original character sheet when the series was being concieved, and there's no evidence to suggest that anyone at the time thought his age was anything else.
Anyway, Susan's role on the show quickly devolved into "scream and get into trouble," and so Carole Ann Ford was only too happy not to renew her contract, and thus became the first regular to leave the show. She was duly written out, and while her exit (she's locked out of the TARDIS by the Doctor, who apparently wants her to settle down and have kids with a guy she's just met) isn't the most graceful, it's still a lot better than what a number of later companions got. Ian and Barbara finally got home after two years, and that felt like an event, but by and large, companion departures have been rather crap. Vicki, Jo and Leela (and maybe Peri) got "romantic" exits in the mold of Susan; Steven and Dodo got dumped; Ben and Polly got left behind because the plot (and budget) demanded it; Victoria got stranded in a completely different era; Zoe and Jamie got mind-wiped; Liz was unceremoniously dropped between seasons, as was Romana 1; Romana 2, K-9, Nyssa and Mel randomly decided to stick behind to help the natives du jour; Sarah and Tegan quit; Turlough actually got a whole serial that was all about him; and Katarina, Sara Kingdom, Adric (and maybe Peri) got killed. So, really, aside from Susan, Ian and Barbara, the only companion who actually got a dignified exit was... Turlough??? Woof.
In the past I've given "good setup, terrible resolution" stories a 7 out of 10. I can't do that here, and I'm trying not to do that anymore. You shouldn't make things so bleak if you can't actually come up with a good way of fixing it. So The Dalek Invasion of Earth gets a 4. The Daleks are back, in their big crowd-pleasing stunt, but they, well, wobble; they're frankly not nearly as threatening here as they were in their impressionist city on Skaro. Juggling the plot between four separate characters all off doing their own things might work on an hour-long show, but in 25-minute installments it really doesn't advance the plot enough for each character each week. I do like the "conquered Earth" setting, and I do wish that there had been more of that in the show - Day of the Daleks, while not stellar, was at least entertaining. But as it is, it's not enough.
Nevertheless, consider this: a science-fiction story set in the aftermath of a war that mankind lost, with a soundtrack composed almost entirely of drumming. One wonders if Ron Moore was taking notes...
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
An explanation
Yes, this blog is called the Daily Dose of Dirty Deeds, and yes, the word "Daily" is most definitely a lie. Usually this is due to either laziness or writers' block, but since I've gotten back from college my internet has been mostly nonexistent.
And with Doctor Who on break this week (for the American audience, at any rate), and with its big summer hiatus coming up, I'm going to broaden my horizons in terms of episode reviews. I started working on Dollhouse reviews a long time ago, but frankly, despite its strong second season, it still seems like the ugly duckling of the Whedon shows for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. Bottom line on that is, they'll come, one day, but not anytime soon.
Before I saw a little something called City of Death, my favorite sci-fi show was Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It's certainly the only one of the post-TNG shows that has any serious merit. As a point of massive irony, back when I saw television shows as these episodic, self-contained adventures a la TNG, I was hesitant to approach Voyager because I thought it would be too continuity-heavy. As if. Of course, if Voyager had actually stayed true to its remit... well, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Anyway, City of Death turned me on to Doctor Who, both the old and new series. I found out New Who was heavily influenced by Buffy, which encouraged me to check out all of Joss Whedon's shows. After burning through Buffy and Angel, I moved on to Firefly, eager to see how my newest hero would do science fiction.
And of course I was completely blown away. By now continuity had become second nature to me, and instead of thinking of a season as 22 45-minute films, I thought of a season as one super-extra-long film (DS9's arcs in its last few seasons probably helped). But with all the clever writing, I felt on some level - not that I could put my finger on it - that something was missing. Perhaps because I'm so obsessed with Doctor Who, I never thought about what could be done in a show with the tone of DS9 and the style of Firefly...
...yeah, I finally got around to starting in on Battlestar Galactica.
So what's coming up in the near future is: a few classic Who Reviews, maybe a Buffy episode or two, and then I'll start in on the first season of BSG. Stay tuned; if my internet holds up, I really will be on every day this week.
And with Doctor Who on break this week (for the American audience, at any rate), and with its big summer hiatus coming up, I'm going to broaden my horizons in terms of episode reviews. I started working on Dollhouse reviews a long time ago, but frankly, despite its strong second season, it still seems like the ugly duckling of the Whedon shows for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. Bottom line on that is, they'll come, one day, but not anytime soon.
Before I saw a little something called City of Death, my favorite sci-fi show was Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It's certainly the only one of the post-TNG shows that has any serious merit. As a point of massive irony, back when I saw television shows as these episodic, self-contained adventures a la TNG, I was hesitant to approach Voyager because I thought it would be too continuity-heavy. As if. Of course, if Voyager had actually stayed true to its remit... well, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Anyway, City of Death turned me on to Doctor Who, both the old and new series. I found out New Who was heavily influenced by Buffy, which encouraged me to check out all of Joss Whedon's shows. After burning through Buffy and Angel, I moved on to Firefly, eager to see how my newest hero would do science fiction.
And of course I was completely blown away. By now continuity had become second nature to me, and instead of thinking of a season as 22 45-minute films, I thought of a season as one super-extra-long film (DS9's arcs in its last few seasons probably helped). But with all the clever writing, I felt on some level - not that I could put my finger on it - that something was missing. Perhaps because I'm so obsessed with Doctor Who, I never thought about what could be done in a show with the tone of DS9 and the style of Firefly...
...yeah, I finally got around to starting in on Battlestar Galactica.
So what's coming up in the near future is: a few classic Who Reviews, maybe a Buffy episode or two, and then I'll start in on the first season of BSG. Stay tuned; if my internet holds up, I really will be on every day this week.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Who Review: Curse of the Black Spot
"Ignore everything I've said up till now."
Take one part Horror of Fang Rock and add one part "The Empty Child," one half-part The Stones of Blood and one part Pirates of the Carribean and you pretty much have the recipe for this episode.
...I really don't know what else needs to be said, but anyway, here goes.
Ever since The Time Meddler, Doctor Who has had this habit of getting science fiction in my historical dramas. Or perhaps historical dramas in my science fiction, I'm not sure which. Anyways, there's a pirate ship, and anyone on it who gets sick or injured gets the black spot on their hand, and then a siren comes up and vaporizes them. The Doctor et al appear, and after a brief sword-fight, Rory gets injured. The Siren shows up to claim him, but the crew manages to hide on various different parts of the ship. The TARDIS gets stolen and one by one, the crew are killed. When the captain's son gets vaporized, you just know that you're not getting the whole story.
Here's the problem with this episode. The audience knows that no kid is ever going to die on Doctor Who (aside from Adric, and not counting what happens in Rory's dream. And also not counting the Astronaut/Time Lord, which doesn't count anyway). So when Toby gets zapped, we know the Siren's "good," but the Doctor simply asks his companions to take a leap of faith. This is the sort of antic we could expect from anyone from Indiana Jones to Captain Jack Sparrow, but the Doctor has (generally) actually had a good reason for doing what he does, and for him to take the "what the hell" approach seems a bit off.
(Okay, he and Amy did it in "Amy's Choice," but that was prompted by her. It's generally true that while the Doctor may throw himself willy-nilly into dangerous situations, he's never before - to the best of my knowledge - shaken hands with death quite like this.)
Anyway, there is another ship occupying the same space as the pirate ship (this is where Stones of Blood comes in), and it's got a sickbay with a mind of its own (this is where "The Empty Child" comes in). The Siren is actually an emergency medical hologram... but alas, it does not refer to itself as "the Doctor." The black spot is what gets left over when the Siren takes a tissue sample, which a) is a staggeringly inane explanation for the black spot, and b) leaves open the gaping plot hole of why the Siren needs to take a tissue sample in the first place. If the ship has the technology to take a tissue sample of the afflicted crewman so the Siren knows who to take, why doesn't the ship just take all the tissue samples, i.e, the entire person?
Anyway, Rory dies (again), and comes back (again), and the captain and his crew and his son go gallivanting off in the spaceship. Everybody lives.
The bottom line is, it's another "Medical Tech Run Amok Disguised As A Horror Story" episode. Parts of it were very well done, especially all the pirate ship stuff on a BBC budget. Nevertheless, it seems like the author was trying too hard to cram both the Siren and the black spot into the episode and, as I pointed out above, it suffers for that.
5 out of 10.
Take one part Horror of Fang Rock and add one part "The Empty Child," one half-part The Stones of Blood and one part Pirates of the Carribean and you pretty much have the recipe for this episode.
...I really don't know what else needs to be said, but anyway, here goes.
Ever since The Time Meddler, Doctor Who has had this habit of getting science fiction in my historical dramas. Or perhaps historical dramas in my science fiction, I'm not sure which. Anyways, there's a pirate ship, and anyone on it who gets sick or injured gets the black spot on their hand, and then a siren comes up and vaporizes them. The Doctor et al appear, and after a brief sword-fight, Rory gets injured. The Siren shows up to claim him, but the crew manages to hide on various different parts of the ship. The TARDIS gets stolen and one by one, the crew are killed. When the captain's son gets vaporized, you just know that you're not getting the whole story.
Here's the problem with this episode. The audience knows that no kid is ever going to die on Doctor Who (aside from Adric, and not counting what happens in Rory's dream. And also not counting the Astronaut/Time Lord, which doesn't count anyway). So when Toby gets zapped, we know the Siren's "good," but the Doctor simply asks his companions to take a leap of faith. This is the sort of antic we could expect from anyone from Indiana Jones to Captain Jack Sparrow, but the Doctor has (generally) actually had a good reason for doing what he does, and for him to take the "what the hell" approach seems a bit off.
(Okay, he and Amy did it in "Amy's Choice," but that was prompted by her. It's generally true that while the Doctor may throw himself willy-nilly into dangerous situations, he's never before - to the best of my knowledge - shaken hands with death quite like this.)
Anyway, there is another ship occupying the same space as the pirate ship (this is where Stones of Blood comes in), and it's got a sickbay with a mind of its own (this is where "The Empty Child" comes in). The Siren is actually an emergency medical hologram... but alas, it does not refer to itself as "the Doctor." The black spot is what gets left over when the Siren takes a tissue sample, which a) is a staggeringly inane explanation for the black spot, and b) leaves open the gaping plot hole of why the Siren needs to take a tissue sample in the first place. If the ship has the technology to take a tissue sample of the afflicted crewman so the Siren knows who to take, why doesn't the ship just take all the tissue samples, i.e, the entire person?
Anyway, Rory dies (again), and comes back (again), and the captain and his crew and his son go gallivanting off in the spaceship. Everybody lives.
The bottom line is, it's another "Medical Tech Run Amok Disguised As A Horror Story" episode. Parts of it were very well done, especially all the pirate ship stuff on a BBC budget. Nevertheless, it seems like the author was trying too hard to cram both the Siren and the black spot into the episode and, as I pointed out above, it suffers for that.
5 out of 10.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Rebel Flesh first impressions
Unless Part 2 really impresses in two weeks, consider this a snarky preview of the whole thing.
"Replicants are like any other machine. They're either a benefit or a hazard."
-Deckard, Blade Runner
The premise of this episode relies on artificial people, the age-old fallback of a bored uninspired sci-fi author looking to try to make a clever take on the old "robot rebellion" story.
It's the future, and a bunch of "Gangers" - remote-controlled carbon copies of people - are digging for acid beneath a monastery. If we ever figure out why, it was edited out of the BBC America version, which is unfortuantely all I have to go on at the moment. (Incidentally, BBCA shot itself in the foot here by airing ads for an upcoming showing of Blade Runner during this episode, hence all the references.) To relate to us that nobody thinks at all about these things, the episode opens with one of then getting "decomissioned" in a vat of acid, only for its replacement to show up afterward and snark at his co-workers about it. It's only marginally more subtle than calling them "skin-jobs," as Blade Runner and Battlestar Galactica do. The Doctor arrives and explains the whole thing for the benefit of the slow, and then there's a massive solar storm and everyone gets knocked out for an hour.
(I'm tempted to say that the TNG episode this rips off the most is "Measure of a Man," the one where Data gets put on trial to determine whether he's sentient or not, and that's a close second. The actual closest TNG analogue is "Clues," in which some very important things happen during a gap in everyone's memories that is much longer than anyone first suspects.)
(I'm also tempted to say the version of the Doctor who got shot on the beach in "The Impossible Astronaut" might have been a Ganger, but I kind of doubt that Moffat would resort to a bailout that crass. Please don't make me eat those words this October...)
"Memories. You're talking about memories."
-Dekard, Blade Runner
When they come to, they quickly discover that some members of the mining crew have been replaced by Gangers. The Doctor sympathizes with the Gangers because a) they have memories and therefore souls - somehow, and b) because this is exactly the sort of thing he's been known for doing since 1970, when the show lost its black-and-white morality along with its black-and-white video. There's an entire scene built around the Doctor and company discovering that these things have memories and, sadly, Blade Runner did it better. For those of you who don't know, Blade Runner is a cult film from 1982 - by "cult," I mean it's awkwardly paced, has one of the most uncomfortable romantic subplots I've ever seen, and was savaged by the critics when it came out, but it nonetheless has a following. Don't get me wrong, it has a lot going for it, but the only thing that makes its pacing better than that of 2001: A Space Odyssey is the fact that Blade Runner doesn't have an overture or intermission. It's about a man who may or may not be an android (the evidence changes with each re-release) hunting down a bunch of androids while at the same time falling in love with yet another android. These are not "artificial people" like Data from TNG or even Ash and Bishop from the Alien films - they're the closest things Karel Capek's robots from Rossum's Universal Robots have ever gotten to appearing on screen (at the time; we've since had the Cylons in BSG). Flesh and blood all the way through, they're completely indistinguishable from human beings, except that they're supposedly completely sociopathic - ironic, then, that the relationship between two of the antagonists seems a lot more stable than the one between Deckard and his love interest.
And, yes, it's unfair to compare a television episode to a cult sci-fi film (except that, once again, Battlestar Galactica pulled it off), but as characters, Batty and Pris seem a hell of a lot better fleshed out (sorry, no pun intended) than any of the orange-shirts this week. Blade Runner is perhaps a film with the focus on the wrong character, as Batty's desperate quest to increase his four-year lifespan (which concludes with him murdering "God") is altogether more interesting than Deckard's quest to "retire" a bunch of fugitives. "The Rebel Flesh" doesn't really offer us any compelling reason to sympathize with either side. The supporting cast don't even have the amount of character development that the crowd in "The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit" got - and, arguably, they need it here more than there. We knew the Doctor was going to get cloned because the Doctor poked at the Flesh, but for this story to have any real dramatic weight, what it needed was a clone of Amy or Rory. Especially of Rory. He hasn't died enough this season.
"Have you ever retired a human by mistake?"
-Rachel, Blade Runner
You sometimes get some help in figuring out who's what because the Gangers' faces occasionally look more... plastic, molded, artificial, what have you. Which would normally be fine, except that there's already a pretty egregious unfinished-looking face... on the leading man. (What they have to resort to when the Doctor's double shows up boggles the mind.)
And there's another, more serious problem (Matt's face is fine, honest - I couldn't resist pointing that out, though). Amy and Rory don't wake up in the same room as we last saw them, so there's really no guarantee that the Amy and Rory we follow around for the remainder of the episode are real. When Rory and one of the Gangers get separated from the group, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell whether the person we're watching at this particular moment is a Ganger or not.
(BBCA also showed ads for Battlestar Galactica during this episode. I knew fantastically little about that show when I wrote the bulk of this review, which is admittedly kind of silly since Ron Moore used to write for DS9. But I can't help but feel that commercials for yet another "rediculously human robot" premise really didn't help this episode.)
Oh, and just to round it out - faceless corporation employs an army of clones in a hostile work environment? Moon. So, yeah, most of this episode, it seems, originated somewhere else. And the most notable part that didn't - the Doctor climbing a power during the middle of a solar event - reeked uncomfortably of "Evolution of the Daleks."
Bottom line: between the tired premise and the unintentional difficulties involved in telling who's a Ganger and who's not, Part 2 had better impress, or this is going to end up getting the worst rating thus far in Matt Smith's run.
"Replicants are like any other machine. They're either a benefit or a hazard."
-Deckard, Blade Runner
The premise of this episode relies on artificial people, the age-old fallback of a bored uninspired sci-fi author looking to try to make a clever take on the old "robot rebellion" story.
It's the future, and a bunch of "Gangers" - remote-controlled carbon copies of people - are digging for acid beneath a monastery. If we ever figure out why, it was edited out of the BBC America version, which is unfortuantely all I have to go on at the moment. (Incidentally, BBCA shot itself in the foot here by airing ads for an upcoming showing of Blade Runner during this episode, hence all the references.) To relate to us that nobody thinks at all about these things, the episode opens with one of then getting "decomissioned" in a vat of acid, only for its replacement to show up afterward and snark at his co-workers about it. It's only marginally more subtle than calling them "skin-jobs," as Blade Runner and Battlestar Galactica do. The Doctor arrives and explains the whole thing for the benefit of the slow, and then there's a massive solar storm and everyone gets knocked out for an hour.
(I'm tempted to say that the TNG episode this rips off the most is "Measure of a Man," the one where Data gets put on trial to determine whether he's sentient or not, and that's a close second. The actual closest TNG analogue is "Clues," in which some very important things happen during a gap in everyone's memories that is much longer than anyone first suspects.)
(I'm also tempted to say the version of the Doctor who got shot on the beach in "The Impossible Astronaut" might have been a Ganger, but I kind of doubt that Moffat would resort to a bailout that crass. Please don't make me eat those words this October...)
"Memories. You're talking about memories."
-Dekard, Blade Runner
When they come to, they quickly discover that some members of the mining crew have been replaced by Gangers. The Doctor sympathizes with the Gangers because a) they have memories and therefore souls - somehow, and b) because this is exactly the sort of thing he's been known for doing since 1970, when the show lost its black-and-white morality along with its black-and-white video. There's an entire scene built around the Doctor and company discovering that these things have memories and, sadly, Blade Runner did it better. For those of you who don't know, Blade Runner is a cult film from 1982 - by "cult," I mean it's awkwardly paced, has one of the most uncomfortable romantic subplots I've ever seen, and was savaged by the critics when it came out, but it nonetheless has a following. Don't get me wrong, it has a lot going for it, but the only thing that makes its pacing better than that of 2001: A Space Odyssey is the fact that Blade Runner doesn't have an overture or intermission. It's about a man who may or may not be an android (the evidence changes with each re-release) hunting down a bunch of androids while at the same time falling in love with yet another android. These are not "artificial people" like Data from TNG or even Ash and Bishop from the Alien films - they're the closest things Karel Capek's robots from Rossum's Universal Robots have ever gotten to appearing on screen (at the time; we've since had the Cylons in BSG). Flesh and blood all the way through, they're completely indistinguishable from human beings, except that they're supposedly completely sociopathic - ironic, then, that the relationship between two of the antagonists seems a lot more stable than the one between Deckard and his love interest.
And, yes, it's unfair to compare a television episode to a cult sci-fi film (except that, once again, Battlestar Galactica pulled it off), but as characters, Batty and Pris seem a hell of a lot better fleshed out (sorry, no pun intended) than any of the orange-shirts this week. Blade Runner is perhaps a film with the focus on the wrong character, as Batty's desperate quest to increase his four-year lifespan (which concludes with him murdering "God") is altogether more interesting than Deckard's quest to "retire" a bunch of fugitives. "The Rebel Flesh" doesn't really offer us any compelling reason to sympathize with either side. The supporting cast don't even have the amount of character development that the crowd in "The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit" got - and, arguably, they need it here more than there. We knew the Doctor was going to get cloned because the Doctor poked at the Flesh, but for this story to have any real dramatic weight, what it needed was a clone of Amy or Rory. Especially of Rory. He hasn't died enough this season.
"Have you ever retired a human by mistake?"
-Rachel, Blade Runner
You sometimes get some help in figuring out who's what because the Gangers' faces occasionally look more... plastic, molded, artificial, what have you. Which would normally be fine, except that there's already a pretty egregious unfinished-looking face... on the leading man. (What they have to resort to when the Doctor's double shows up boggles the mind.)
And there's another, more serious problem (Matt's face is fine, honest - I couldn't resist pointing that out, though). Amy and Rory don't wake up in the same room as we last saw them, so there's really no guarantee that the Amy and Rory we follow around for the remainder of the episode are real. When Rory and one of the Gangers get separated from the group, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell whether the person we're watching at this particular moment is a Ganger or not.
(BBCA also showed ads for Battlestar Galactica during this episode. I knew fantastically little about that show when I wrote the bulk of this review, which is admittedly kind of silly since Ron Moore used to write for DS9. But I can't help but feel that commercials for yet another "rediculously human robot" premise really didn't help this episode.)
Oh, and just to round it out - faceless corporation employs an army of clones in a hostile work environment? Moon. So, yeah, most of this episode, it seems, originated somewhere else. And the most notable part that didn't - the Doctor climbing a power during the middle of a solar event - reeked uncomfortably of "Evolution of the Daleks."
Bottom line: between the tired premise and the unintentional difficulties involved in telling who's a Ganger and who's not, Part 2 had better impress, or this is going to end up getting the worst rating thus far in Matt Smith's run.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Who Review: The Doctor's Wife
Fan-lore: "The Doctor's Wife" was proposed as an episode title all the way back in 1984. That was never the serial's real title (the real title was The Caves of Androzani); JN-T thought there was a leak in the production office and used the fake title as a means of exposing it.
Needless to say, I assumed something similar was going on here. It's Neil Gaiman, for crying out loud, I thought, it'll just be some celebrity guest-writer with a good plot and probably some throwbacks to the old series.
I was pleasantly surprised. So it's not really his wife, in that the person we meet in this episode is in no way related to Susan Foreman, but aw, bless, what a clever plot regardless.
In a nutshell: something knocks out the TARDIS's soul and puts it in a woman. She goes absolutely ape, but for about 40 minutes we get mad, talking TARDIS. It is mad, mad, mad, mad mad!
In order to save his TARDIS, the Doctor must construct another TARDIS out of the remnants of broken TARDISes, which is a nifty thing. Less nifty is the sub-plot: Amy and Rory do a lot of running around the TARDIS's (that'd be the Doctor's one, or rather, the part of the Doctor's TARDIS that is not currently a woman) corridors while the villain plays tricks on them.
Now, Gaiman is a famous British author, so I kind of assume he's at least somewhat familiar with the old show. He should know that episodes with lots of running around inside the TARDIS are, um, not very good. (The Edge of Destruction and The Invasion of Time are blatant examples, and there's a case to be made for the first episode of Castrovalva as well.) This is the first time we've seen TARDIS corridors in the new series, and the result is... underwhelming. They look like something the proposed 90s show with McGann might have come up with.
Which brings me to my second complaint about the episode. It turns out all the old console rooms are stored somewhere in the TARDIS. This makes sense, and there's precedent for it (see The Masque of Mandragora, The Hand of Fear, The Deadly Assassin, and The Robots of Death). But I thought it was kind of... odd, really, to go out of their way to get 11, Amy and Rory into the Eccleston/Tennant console room. When they said that all the rooms were stored there, for one fleeting moment I thought we might get one of the classic rooms rendered in a 21st-century budget. And then they said that there were console rooms that hadn't even been used yet, and I thought "awesome!" But no, they trot out the "Coral" desktop, which the BBC has evidently kept in storage for some reason. Come on, guys, that's a massive set! Give it to the fan club and move on.
Third complaint: the minor characters are disposed of entirely too quickly and conveniently. Fourth complaint: the Doctor gets upset when it's clear that Idris is going to die, but he never once seems concerned for the woman Idris used to be before she got a TARDIS rammed into her brain.
Niggling complaints out of the way... I love the idea that the TARDIS stole the Doctor and not the other way around. Or rather both. It's the logical conclusion of the aforementioned disaster, The Edge of Destruction, which happens to be the very first time that the TARDIS's sentience is brought up.
"The Doctor's Wife" is the episode for all the Doctor/TARDIS shippers out there. You know who you are. It's a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad episode, where the last thing you should do is take anything seriously. I didn't think Gaiman could be this lighthearted - the closest parallel in his written work is Good Omens, and I chalked all the lighthearted bits in that up to Terry Pratchett after I'd read more of each author's solo work.
Aside from some random Chekhov's Guns being set up at the end, you could probablyuse this to introduce a Classic Who fan to Matt Smith. It doesn't rely on the season's arc for validity - rather, it relies on the series' mythology, the Doctor/TARDIS relationship in particular.
9 out of 10. A great concept let down by some downright terrible TARDIS corridors, this is nevertheless the greatest TARDIS-centric story ever made.
Needless to say, I assumed something similar was going on here. It's Neil Gaiman, for crying out loud, I thought, it'll just be some celebrity guest-writer with a good plot and probably some throwbacks to the old series.
I was pleasantly surprised. So it's not really his wife, in that the person we meet in this episode is in no way related to Susan Foreman, but aw, bless, what a clever plot regardless.
In a nutshell: something knocks out the TARDIS's soul and puts it in a woman. She goes absolutely ape, but for about 40 minutes we get mad, talking TARDIS. It is mad, mad, mad, mad mad!
In order to save his TARDIS, the Doctor must construct another TARDIS out of the remnants of broken TARDISes, which is a nifty thing. Less nifty is the sub-plot: Amy and Rory do a lot of running around the TARDIS's (that'd be the Doctor's one, or rather, the part of the Doctor's TARDIS that is not currently a woman) corridors while the villain plays tricks on them.
Now, Gaiman is a famous British author, so I kind of assume he's at least somewhat familiar with the old show. He should know that episodes with lots of running around inside the TARDIS are, um, not very good. (The Edge of Destruction and The Invasion of Time are blatant examples, and there's a case to be made for the first episode of Castrovalva as well.) This is the first time we've seen TARDIS corridors in the new series, and the result is... underwhelming. They look like something the proposed 90s show with McGann might have come up with.
Which brings me to my second complaint about the episode. It turns out all the old console rooms are stored somewhere in the TARDIS. This makes sense, and there's precedent for it (see The Masque of Mandragora, The Hand of Fear, The Deadly Assassin, and The Robots of Death). But I thought it was kind of... odd, really, to go out of their way to get 11, Amy and Rory into the Eccleston/Tennant console room. When they said that all the rooms were stored there, for one fleeting moment I thought we might get one of the classic rooms rendered in a 21st-century budget. And then they said that there were console rooms that hadn't even been used yet, and I thought "awesome!" But no, they trot out the "Coral" desktop, which the BBC has evidently kept in storage for some reason. Come on, guys, that's a massive set! Give it to the fan club and move on.
Third complaint: the minor characters are disposed of entirely too quickly and conveniently. Fourth complaint: the Doctor gets upset when it's clear that Idris is going to die, but he never once seems concerned for the woman Idris used to be before she got a TARDIS rammed into her brain.
Niggling complaints out of the way... I love the idea that the TARDIS stole the Doctor and not the other way around. Or rather both. It's the logical conclusion of the aforementioned disaster, The Edge of Destruction, which happens to be the very first time that the TARDIS's sentience is brought up.
"The Doctor's Wife" is the episode for all the Doctor/TARDIS shippers out there. You know who you are. It's a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad episode, where the last thing you should do is take anything seriously. I didn't think Gaiman could be this lighthearted - the closest parallel in his written work is Good Omens, and I chalked all the lighthearted bits in that up to Terry Pratchett after I'd read more of each author's solo work.
Aside from some random Chekhov's Guns being set up at the end, you could probablyuse this to introduce a Classic Who fan to Matt Smith. It doesn't rely on the season's arc for validity - rather, it relies on the series' mythology, the Doctor/TARDIS relationship in particular.
9 out of 10. A great concept let down by some downright terrible TARDIS corridors, this is nevertheless the greatest TARDIS-centric story ever made.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Who Review: The Hand of Fear
Just pause for a second and consider that title. "The Hand of Fear." Not "the crawling disembodied hand," not "Eldrad Must Live," but "The Hand of Fear." I suspect that title was there to make us wonder, just for a few minutes in Episode 3, whether or not Eldrad was actually the villain, and whether we were all just letting fear control us... No.
...The job of the companion is to scream and ask, "what's that, Doctor?" Lis Sladen was never one for screaming, and after three-plus years, had finally run out of ways to ask that question...
...It's a bit disconcerting to see Lis Sladen walk into a nuclear reactor in her final story...
...For a supposedly feminist character, Sarah Jane says farewell in a story with absurdly nonfeminist themes...
...Gender-bending a good 20 years before any other major SF show tried it...
Okay, I give up. I can't peg down the right way to introduce this one.
It's the last story with Sarah Jane Smith as the companion.
It's the one with the creepy-crawly hand.
It's the one where you'd be forgiven for thinking David Bowie was the villain.
It's the one where Sarah gets possessed. Other than Planet of the Spiders. And another brush with mind-control in The Masque of Mandragora. And another brush with mind-control in The Time Warrior. I'm still probably leaving something out, but I'm done now.
So the plot in a nutshell: the Doctor does something very stupid and nearly gets himself and Sarah killed in an explosion. Sarah is buried under two feet of polystyrene - I mean, rocks - and when they dig her out, she's clutching a hand. Spouting stuff about how Eldrad must live, Sarah walks into a nuclear reactor, and the hand starts crawling. For the Episode 1 cliffhanger, it looks terrifyingly real. Unfortunately, in Episode 2, it's blatantly CSO'd in.
Let me just get this out of the way - Lis Sladen did brainwashed and evil like no other. In The Time Warrior, she's kind of bland and vacant when Lynx zaps her (and she doesn't even get to do full-on evil then), but her performance only improved with time. In Masque she passes as normal so well that her "tell" is something that we all completely missed - hell, she asks a question that's been on our minds for 14 years, and that's what somehow gave her away. Here in The Hand of Fear, she clutches that box, gives shifty, almost nervous looks, and calmly zaps guards with the most ridiculous fashion accessory the show had between Jo Grant and the Sixth Doctor. It's not some alien entity using Sarah's body like a puppet against her will; you really believe that her will has been fundamentally bent. And it's worth pointing out that the cure for this is time - Eldrad stops controlling her once he/she no longer needs her. It's not clear that the Doctor could have saved her.
Moving right along, Eldrad reincarnates in female form. This is the mid 70s, so naturally "the female form" means a skintight diamond-studded bodysuit. (The fact that I just made the outfit seem only mildly cooler than it actually is should tell you something.) Eldrad tells the Doctor what turns out to be an enormous fib, but he takes her back to her home planet anyway. There, she is able to regenerate (no, that's not the term, but what actually happens is considerably less impressive - she gets shot with a booby-trapped poison dart and has to be restored) into a hulking masculine form, which is promptly dispatched by a stunt Tom Baker tried to pull all the way back in Robot.
What exactly are the writers trying to say? That women are sly, seductive liars while men are just outright evil and brainless? There's not a single person who can watch this episode and honestly think that Eldrad is more effective as a man than as a woman, yet Eldrad itself is obviously overjoyed to be done with that lithe figure.
It only becomes really obvious in the last episode, but it's worth stating: there is nothing for the Doctor to do in all four episodes. Okay, here is a complete run-down of what he accomplishes.
He gets himself and his companion nearly blown up.
He gets a laughably bad fight scene.
He gets to stand around saying "I told you so" during an airstrike.
He gets duped by the villain and then gets to stand around and watch as a long-dead force derails the villain's plan. (This might be why Harrison Ford didn't like Blade Runner very much, and also why Asimov's Foundation series is pretty much unfilmable.)
And that is it. There is not a single spark of cleverness, no quintessential "Doctor" moment here... and nor is there much of Tom Baker gooning about. Between Eldrad's shenanigans and Sarah's departure, there's not a lot of stuff for him to do.
Sarah's departure is odd. She's maybe fed up with being brainwashed and possessed, but she might just be bluffing to try to get some reaction out of the Doctor. (This is also the start of Tom Baker being completely insufferable and not giving a damn what happens to anyone else, be they fictional companions or real-life co-stars. It's worth noting that it's at this point that the show starts to unravel; by the time he was on speaking terms with Louise Jameson, Phillip Hinchcliffe had been sacked as producer and the show was in decline.) Meanwhile, the Doctor gets a distress call from Gallifrey and has to leave her behind - but come on, Sarah's the most blatant precursor to Rose that the show ever had! The woman had a day job, for crying out loud! There is absolutely no reason that the Doctor couldn't have come back and picked her up again after sorting out that business with the Master. (In the original draft, Sarah was due to be killed off... make of that what you will.)
Okay, that's the griping over and done with. Lis Sladen may have been ready to leave, but you'd never know it from her performace. There's one last great Sarah-Doctor moment when, after she recovers from her possession, she zones out for a second and goes "Eldrad must live." She's just riling the Doctor up, and he loves it. Episode Three belongs to Judith Paris, who plays Female Eldrad and generally makes the second half of the story watchable; no wonder Episode Four is terrible. There are nice touches with the nuclear plant's director phoning his family and trying to pick up the pieces, and it's genuinely surprising that he lives through it all.
Episodes One and Two are fantastic at building the tension. Episode Three is truly wonderful; Episode Four is just such a terrible letdown.
7 out of 10, which is quickly becoming my go-to score for "great setup, terrible resolution."
...The job of the companion is to scream and ask, "what's that, Doctor?" Lis Sladen was never one for screaming, and after three-plus years, had finally run out of ways to ask that question...
...It's a bit disconcerting to see Lis Sladen walk into a nuclear reactor in her final story...
...For a supposedly feminist character, Sarah Jane says farewell in a story with absurdly nonfeminist themes...
...Gender-bending a good 20 years before any other major SF show tried it...
Okay, I give up. I can't peg down the right way to introduce this one.
Facts:
It's the last story with Sarah Jane Smith as the companion.
It's the one with the creepy-crawly hand.
It's the one where you'd be forgiven for thinking David Bowie was the villain.
It's the one where Sarah gets possessed. Other than Planet of the Spiders. And another brush with mind-control in The Masque of Mandragora. And another brush with mind-control in The Time Warrior. I'm still probably leaving something out, but I'm done now.
So the plot in a nutshell: the Doctor does something very stupid and nearly gets himself and Sarah killed in an explosion. Sarah is buried under two feet of polystyrene - I mean, rocks - and when they dig her out, she's clutching a hand. Spouting stuff about how Eldrad must live, Sarah walks into a nuclear reactor, and the hand starts crawling. For the Episode 1 cliffhanger, it looks terrifyingly real. Unfortunately, in Episode 2, it's blatantly CSO'd in.
Let me just get this out of the way - Lis Sladen did brainwashed and evil like no other. In The Time Warrior, she's kind of bland and vacant when Lynx zaps her (and she doesn't even get to do full-on evil then), but her performance only improved with time. In Masque she passes as normal so well that her "tell" is something that we all completely missed - hell, she asks a question that's been on our minds for 14 years, and that's what somehow gave her away. Here in The Hand of Fear, she clutches that box, gives shifty, almost nervous looks, and calmly zaps guards with the most ridiculous fashion accessory the show had between Jo Grant and the Sixth Doctor. It's not some alien entity using Sarah's body like a puppet against her will; you really believe that her will has been fundamentally bent. And it's worth pointing out that the cure for this is time - Eldrad stops controlling her once he/she no longer needs her. It's not clear that the Doctor could have saved her.
Moving right along, Eldrad reincarnates in female form. This is the mid 70s, so naturally "the female form" means a skintight diamond-studded bodysuit. (The fact that I just made the outfit seem only mildly cooler than it actually is should tell you something.) Eldrad tells the Doctor what turns out to be an enormous fib, but he takes her back to her home planet anyway. There, she is able to regenerate (no, that's not the term, but what actually happens is considerably less impressive - she gets shot with a booby-trapped poison dart and has to be restored) into a hulking masculine form, which is promptly dispatched by a stunt Tom Baker tried to pull all the way back in Robot.
What exactly are the writers trying to say? That women are sly, seductive liars while men are just outright evil and brainless? There's not a single person who can watch this episode and honestly think that Eldrad is more effective as a man than as a woman, yet Eldrad itself is obviously overjoyed to be done with that lithe figure.
It only becomes really obvious in the last episode, but it's worth stating: there is nothing for the Doctor to do in all four episodes. Okay, here is a complete run-down of what he accomplishes.
He gets himself and his companion nearly blown up.
He gets a laughably bad fight scene.
He gets to stand around saying "I told you so" during an airstrike.
He gets duped by the villain and then gets to stand around and watch as a long-dead force derails the villain's plan. (This might be why Harrison Ford didn't like Blade Runner very much, and also why Asimov's Foundation series is pretty much unfilmable.)
And that is it. There is not a single spark of cleverness, no quintessential "Doctor" moment here... and nor is there much of Tom Baker gooning about. Between Eldrad's shenanigans and Sarah's departure, there's not a lot of stuff for him to do.
Sarah's departure is odd. She's maybe fed up with being brainwashed and possessed, but she might just be bluffing to try to get some reaction out of the Doctor. (This is also the start of Tom Baker being completely insufferable and not giving a damn what happens to anyone else, be they fictional companions or real-life co-stars. It's worth noting that it's at this point that the show starts to unravel; by the time he was on speaking terms with Louise Jameson, Phillip Hinchcliffe had been sacked as producer and the show was in decline.) Meanwhile, the Doctor gets a distress call from Gallifrey and has to leave her behind - but come on, Sarah's the most blatant precursor to Rose that the show ever had! The woman had a day job, for crying out loud! There is absolutely no reason that the Doctor couldn't have come back and picked her up again after sorting out that business with the Master. (In the original draft, Sarah was due to be killed off... make of that what you will.)
Okay, that's the griping over and done with. Lis Sladen may have been ready to leave, but you'd never know it from her performace. There's one last great Sarah-Doctor moment when, after she recovers from her possession, she zones out for a second and goes "Eldrad must live." She's just riling the Doctor up, and he loves it. Episode Three belongs to Judith Paris, who plays Female Eldrad and generally makes the second half of the story watchable; no wonder Episode Four is terrible. There are nice touches with the nuclear plant's director phoning his family and trying to pick up the pieces, and it's genuinely surprising that he lives through it all.
Episodes One and Two are fantastic at building the tension. Episode Three is truly wonderful; Episode Four is just such a terrible letdown.
7 out of 10, which is quickly becoming my go-to score for "great setup, terrible resolution."
Who Review: "The Impossible Astronaut"/"Day of the Moon"
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD. This is pretty much unavoidable, but by this point I think everyone’s seen the episodes, so oh well.
The story opens in 2011. It’s been a few months since Amy and Rory have seen the Doctor, it’ll be a few months until River experiences “The Big Bang” (no, not that. Get your mind out of the gutter), and it’s been about 200 years for the Doctor. We’ll call this Doctor 11.2. They all meet in America, and the Doctor and River compare diaries.
As a side note, why do they do this? Aside from this one time, the Doctor and River always meet in reverse order – the Doctor’s traveling backwards along River’s timeline. This means that if River has experienced Event X yet, then the Doctor hasn’t, and all she’s doing is spoilering it. Or maybe – hey, here’s a thought – the Doctor set up the diary thing with River specifically to manipulate her to this point, this one precious time when they do sync up. Given that 11 is shaping up to be the most manipulative and devious Doctor since 7 (and clearly draws a lot of inspiration from the quintessential wolf in sheep’s clothing, 2), I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that…
That what, this is some secret test of character? Hey look, I’m rambling.
Anyway, the Doctor suggests they go watch the Moon landing, but then takes them on a picnic instead, where he gets shot and killed mid-regeneration by a spacesuit that may or may not have someone inside, and if there is someone inside, it may or may not be a little girl, and the little girl may or may not be Amy’s daughter but is definitely a Time Lord. (I did say there would be major spoilers.)
Okay, here are a number of facts that we need to consider before we go any further.
1. River is in prison for killing a good man, the best man she ever met. You have eleven guesses as to who that might be.
2. We never see the astronaut’s face during the shooting sequence. For that matter, we learn that the suit is capable of moving on its own.
3. Aside from her death in “Forest of the Dead,” a death that would have permanently killed 10 (a Time Lord), we never see River get injured.
4. River knows how to fly the TARDIS, and she’s had lessons from the best. It’s implied that she means the Doctor, but one never knows.
5. Amy is pretty clearly not a Gallifreyan – she would have regenerated at the end of “The Pandorica Opens” if she were.
6. Rory is… clutzy, nerdy, picks up the phrase “dimensionally transcendental” a lot faster than any other companion except River, and while it’s true that he did die that one time, the Silurians have fought the Doctor before and it’s not entirely unthinkable that they developed anti-Time Lord technology. (Do remember, the woman who shot him was aiming for the Doctor.) Alternatively, he may have been in shock.
7. The River/Doctor story is a pretty blatant re-imagining of “The Time Traveler’s Wife.” At one point(s) in that novel, the time traveler and his wife try to have a kid. It doesn’t go very well, because the fetus inherits Dad’s ability to jump through time and space… Meanwhile, Amy may or may not be pregnant. Yikes.
8. As confirmed in “The Doctor’s Wife,” Time Lords can indeed change sex when they regenerate.
Is any of this in any way conclusive? No, but I have hunches, and I can’t wait to see if they’re right or not.
Anyways, with 11.2 dead, 11.1 shows up. He’s 200 years younger and it hasn’t been that long since the events of “A Christmas Carol” for him. They all pack off for 1969, with Amy clearly dying to tell the Doctor what’s going to happen to him in 200/42 years. They get to the White House and meet President Nixon, as well as former FBI agent Canton Everett Delaware III. I’m just going to call him “Agent Badger.” Agent Badger starts working with the Doctor to investigate a case of a mysterious girl who keeps calling the President. However, they quickly run into a bunch of aliens they forget about as soon as they look away, and the astronaut shows up again. Amy reveals that she’s pregnant, and then shoots the astronaut, who had just lifted her helmet to reveal a little girl inside.
“Day of the Moon” inexplicably opens 3 months later. Amy doesn’t look any different, aside from the fact that she’s got some marks on her arms – she’s been keeping track of how many monsters she’s seen. Agent Badger has been reinstated and is hunting down all the Doctor’s associates. Amy and Rory are shot, and River jumps off a building because “she does that.” But it turns out that they’re not really dead, Badger’s still working with the Doctor, and everything’s hunky-dory aside from the fact that the aliens – the Silence – have been secretly ruling the Earth for forever. The Doctor examines the spacesuit and finds that it’s capable of moving on its own, though whatever implications that has for the case of his murder remain unclear. He also advises Nixon to record all of his conversations because of the Silence (ha!) and he later mentions that they’ll never forget Nixon (double ha!).
The climax is genuinely clever, even though it leaves so much unsolved (who’s the girl, why was she in that spacesuit, why is Amy important to the Silence, was anyone in the spacesuit when the Doctor was shot, and if so, who?) The Silence work via post-hypnotic suggestion; you forget them the moment you look away, but you remember their commands. So the Doctor gets one of them to say “you should kill all of us on sight” into Amy’s video-phone, and then broadcasts that during the Moon landing. Once again, if only this guy had been sent to murder the Daleks instead of Scarfman…
On its own, this two-parter has the same problem that "The Big Bang" did, in that it didn't completely wrap up the story, and there are still a number of threads left hanging. That's much less of a problem for a season opener than it is for a season finale, though. Because Moffat seems to be an arc-heavy writer, I've decided that all scores for Season Six are going to be tentative until after the season finale, at which point I'll fix them.
For now, "The Impossible Astronaut" and "Day of the Moon" have scores of 7 and 7.5 out of 10. Strong opening, good conclusion. The .5 is there to indicate that although I did like "Day of the Moon" a bit more, I don't particularly like the three-month gap in between the two stories, and I'm blaming "Day of the Moon" for that for now.
...as one final side note... 10 saw the Moon landing four times while he was stuck in 1969 (cf. "Blink"). Shouldn't the Doctor be brainwashed to kill the Silence on sight, and if so, why does he not?
The story opens in 2011. It’s been a few months since Amy and Rory have seen the Doctor, it’ll be a few months until River experiences “The Big Bang” (no, not that. Get your mind out of the gutter), and it’s been about 200 years for the Doctor. We’ll call this Doctor 11.2. They all meet in America, and the Doctor and River compare diaries.
As a side note, why do they do this? Aside from this one time, the Doctor and River always meet in reverse order – the Doctor’s traveling backwards along River’s timeline. This means that if River has experienced Event X yet, then the Doctor hasn’t, and all she’s doing is spoilering it. Or maybe – hey, here’s a thought – the Doctor set up the diary thing with River specifically to manipulate her to this point, this one precious time when they do sync up. Given that 11 is shaping up to be the most manipulative and devious Doctor since 7 (and clearly draws a lot of inspiration from the quintessential wolf in sheep’s clothing, 2), I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that…
That what, this is some secret test of character? Hey look, I’m rambling.
Anyway, the Doctor suggests they go watch the Moon landing, but then takes them on a picnic instead, where he gets shot and killed mid-regeneration by a spacesuit that may or may not have someone inside, and if there is someone inside, it may or may not be a little girl, and the little girl may or may not be Amy’s daughter but is definitely a Time Lord. (I did say there would be major spoilers.)
Okay, here are a number of facts that we need to consider before we go any further.
1. River is in prison for killing a good man, the best man she ever met. You have eleven guesses as to who that might be.
2. We never see the astronaut’s face during the shooting sequence. For that matter, we learn that the suit is capable of moving on its own.
3. Aside from her death in “Forest of the Dead,” a death that would have permanently killed 10 (a Time Lord), we never see River get injured.
4. River knows how to fly the TARDIS, and she’s had lessons from the best. It’s implied that she means the Doctor, but one never knows.
5. Amy is pretty clearly not a Gallifreyan – she would have regenerated at the end of “The Pandorica Opens” if she were.
6. Rory is… clutzy, nerdy, picks up the phrase “dimensionally transcendental” a lot faster than any other companion except River, and while it’s true that he did die that one time, the Silurians have fought the Doctor before and it’s not entirely unthinkable that they developed anti-Time Lord technology. (Do remember, the woman who shot him was aiming for the Doctor.) Alternatively, he may have been in shock.
7. The River/Doctor story is a pretty blatant re-imagining of “The Time Traveler’s Wife.” At one point(s) in that novel, the time traveler and his wife try to have a kid. It doesn’t go very well, because the fetus inherits Dad’s ability to jump through time and space… Meanwhile, Amy may or may not be pregnant. Yikes.
8. As confirmed in “The Doctor’s Wife,” Time Lords can indeed change sex when they regenerate.
Is any of this in any way conclusive? No, but I have hunches, and I can’t wait to see if they’re right or not.
Anyways, with 11.2 dead, 11.1 shows up. He’s 200 years younger and it hasn’t been that long since the events of “A Christmas Carol” for him. They all pack off for 1969, with Amy clearly dying to tell the Doctor what’s going to happen to him in 200/42 years. They get to the White House and meet President Nixon, as well as former FBI agent Canton Everett Delaware III. I’m just going to call him “Agent Badger.” Agent Badger starts working with the Doctor to investigate a case of a mysterious girl who keeps calling the President. However, they quickly run into a bunch of aliens they forget about as soon as they look away, and the astronaut shows up again. Amy reveals that she’s pregnant, and then shoots the astronaut, who had just lifted her helmet to reveal a little girl inside.
“Day of the Moon” inexplicably opens 3 months later. Amy doesn’t look any different, aside from the fact that she’s got some marks on her arms – she’s been keeping track of how many monsters she’s seen. Agent Badger has been reinstated and is hunting down all the Doctor’s associates. Amy and Rory are shot, and River jumps off a building because “she does that.” But it turns out that they’re not really dead, Badger’s still working with the Doctor, and everything’s hunky-dory aside from the fact that the aliens – the Silence – have been secretly ruling the Earth for forever. The Doctor examines the spacesuit and finds that it’s capable of moving on its own, though whatever implications that has for the case of his murder remain unclear. He also advises Nixon to record all of his conversations because of the Silence (ha!) and he later mentions that they’ll never forget Nixon (double ha!).
The climax is genuinely clever, even though it leaves so much unsolved (who’s the girl, why was she in that spacesuit, why is Amy important to the Silence, was anyone in the spacesuit when the Doctor was shot, and if so, who?) The Silence work via post-hypnotic suggestion; you forget them the moment you look away, but you remember their commands. So the Doctor gets one of them to say “you should kill all of us on sight” into Amy’s video-phone, and then broadcasts that during the Moon landing. Once again, if only this guy had been sent to murder the Daleks instead of Scarfman…
On its own, this two-parter has the same problem that "The Big Bang" did, in that it didn't completely wrap up the story, and there are still a number of threads left hanging. That's much less of a problem for a season opener than it is for a season finale, though. Because Moffat seems to be an arc-heavy writer, I've decided that all scores for Season Six are going to be tentative until after the season finale, at which point I'll fix them.
For now, "The Impossible Astronaut" and "Day of the Moon" have scores of 7 and 7.5 out of 10. Strong opening, good conclusion. The .5 is there to indicate that although I did like "Day of the Moon" a bit more, I don't particularly like the three-month gap in between the two stories, and I'm blaming "Day of the Moon" for that for now.
...as one final side note... 10 saw the Moon landing four times while he was stuck in 1969 (cf. "Blink"). Shouldn't the Doctor be brainwashed to kill the Silence on sight, and if so, why does he not?
Thursday, May 5, 2011
3 things Obama has done recently that I agree with
For my 300th post, I thought I'd do something completely different. I'm not a big fan of the statist in the White House, but hey, that's democracy for you. Nevertheless, the President has recently done three things I wholeheartedly agree with.
1) Released his birth certificate.
About damn time, in my opinion. What, did it take him three years to mock up a passable fake? No, I kid, the evidence is there, he was born in America, drop the issue. Now that the matter of his legitimacy is no longer an issue, we can actually start criticizing his actual policies. On top of that, it makes Trump look like an attention-grabbing blowhard.
2) Gave the "kill" order.
Yes, the story is ever changing. Osama had a weapon. He used his wife as a human shield. Or not. Whatever. Why they need to hide behind self-defense jargon is beyond me. The man was evil and had to be put down. No matter how little else President Obama did, he still deserves credit for sparing us a lengthy media circus and trial, and instead giving the go-ahead to just shoot the bastard.
3) Won't release the death photos.
Because releasing the photos worked so well with Che. You want proof that Satan's Little Helper is dead? See if any more of his little vlogs turn up. (Note: if he flip-flops on the death photo issue, call him out on it.)
1) Released his birth certificate.
About damn time, in my opinion. What, did it take him three years to mock up a passable fake? No, I kid, the evidence is there, he was born in America, drop the issue. Now that the matter of his legitimacy is no longer an issue, we can actually start criticizing his actual policies. On top of that, it makes Trump look like an attention-grabbing blowhard.
2) Gave the "kill" order.
Yes, the story is ever changing. Osama had a weapon. He used his wife as a human shield. Or not. Whatever. Why they need to hide behind self-defense jargon is beyond me. The man was evil and had to be put down. No matter how little else President Obama did, he still deserves credit for sparing us a lengthy media circus and trial, and instead giving the go-ahead to just shoot the bastard.
3) Won't release the death photos.
Because releasing the photos worked so well with Che. You want proof that Satan's Little Helper is dead? See if any more of his little vlogs turn up. (Note: if he flip-flops on the death photo issue, call him out on it.)
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Who Review: Planet of Evil
When the news broke that Elisabeth Sladen died, the third thing that crossed my mind was, "I should do a review of one of the serials that best highlight her rapport with Tom Baker."
The first thing that crossed my mind, incidentally, was "What?" and the second thing was "Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
Anyway, my first thought for highlighting the Baker-Sladen dynamic, which I maintain was the best ever in the entire history of the show, was Pyramids of Mars. Since I misplaced that DVD, you get Planet of Evil instead.
Which is good, in a way, because if you're a new-Who fan, and you've done a tiny bit of research on the old series, you probably know exactly two things about Planet of Evil.
1) the plot is ripped straight from Forbidden Planet, and
2) the planet set is the greatest set the show ever made. (Too bad the other sets all suck in comparison.)
Strangely enough, the script and the sets tend to be the things I focus on in my reviews - hell, I'm going to keep The Caves of Androzani from getting a perfect 10 because its "caves" all have flat floors - and yet, because those two things are what everyone else already knows, this gives me the perfect chance to actually look at the interaction between Baker and Sladen. Which is exactly what I wanted to do in the first place.
So the episode begins on the titular planet, which does in fact look like an alien world. It's so good, it kind of looks like the zerg-infected areas of Starcraft II. Professor Sorenson won't be persuaded to leave his work just because night is coming, so his co-worker leaves without him. The co-worker travels from a television studio to a film set, where we get the full effect of the awesome set design, and then he and another person die fighting an invisible monster, which is no more convincing than it was in "Vincent and the Doctor." Some things never change.
Let me just interrupt here and say something that might go over the heads of younger viewers, or people who never saw Monty Python, or whatever. Part of the reason the planet set looks so damn good is because they shot it on film. That's not because film magically hid the wobbliness of it or whatever, but rather because in 70s British TV, film was used when they needed to go on location, and videotape was used in the studio. So going to a film studio and shooting the planet set on film made everyone who could tell the difference between film and videotape (and really, that should be everyone under 50) briefly think that they actually shot the planet stuff on location.
Okay, after two "gruesome" deaths, we get to the Doctor and Sarah. By the end of Season 12 (Tom Baker's first season), Lis Sladen wanted out of her contract because the character seemed to have regressed. The producers agreed about the regression, but not about letting her go, and instead to their credit focused on the Sarah-Doctor relationship. No, Rose/Ten shippers, not like that.
Their first scene is a great example of what I'm talking about. Sarah's confident enough in her relationship with the Doctor to jokingly berate him for being unable to get her home. The Doctor's actually on the defensive about his inability to fly the TARDIS - showing any sort of vulnerability is pretty much anathema to Tom Baker's Doctor, so the fact that he does it here demonstrates either how much Baker and Sladen were able to get along, or else how much the Fourth actually cares about Sarah's opinion.
Here's another thing: shortly after arriving on the planet, the Doctor finds "a hand tool of some sort." Sarah deduces that they must be humanoid because "they've got hands." This never happens on the new series, and it rarely happens on the old series. On the one hand, Sarah Jane Smith the character is stating the obvious because the writers know they don't have the budget to do a non-humanoid monster (well...) On the other hand, Lis Sladen sells us on the notion that Sarah's an incredibly insightful character who has had (offscreen) adventures with the Doctor involving people who don't have hands. It's touches like this that bring the magic.
A spaceship arrives, carrying a crew led by a young idiot who has no idea what he's doing, while the second-in-command is a white-haired old guy who does know what he's doing but pretty much stays in the background. Draw your own conclusions about unintentional parallels to certain US Presidents and Vice-Presidents.
Anyway, the crew gets slaughtered one by one while the Doctor gets accused of doing the slaughtering, and really it's just Forbidden Planet with Doctor Who trappings. The only major difference is that the "for science" guy doesn't get it at the end. There's really not a lot of point in going over the plot in detail.
In Genesis of the Daleks, Sarah Jane was reduced to nearly being radiation-poisoned and tortured to make the Doctor give up information. In this story, her biggest near-death experience is when she's almost flushed out an airlock - and the Doctor is right alongside her. This was the start of Sladen's third year in the role, and it's at about this point that it stops being "The Doctor and a companion" and starts being "Four-and-Sarah." It's even more evident in a specific scene in the next serial, the aforementioned Pyramids of Mars, when the two of them enter a room, notice the villain, and turn and exit as one.
It's still the Doctor's show; with Tom Baker settling into his role, it's impossible for it not to be. But by establishing such a strong rapport with Baker (and by using her own not-inconsiderable acting chops), Sladen was able to grab a decent section of the spotlight herself. With the benefit of hindsight, Rose is going to be "the Doctor's first serious love interest," Ace is going to be "that girl who blew things up," and Romana is going to be "the one who was in book-smarts what the Doctor was in experience." But Sarah Jane Smith will always be Sarah Jane Smith. No glib summary will suffice.
On the strength of the set and the Baker-Sladen tag-team alone, Planet of Evil gets an 8 out of 10.
Next review: The Masque of Mandragora.
The first thing that crossed my mind, incidentally, was "What?" and the second thing was "Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
Anyway, my first thought for highlighting the Baker-Sladen dynamic, which I maintain was the best ever in the entire history of the show, was Pyramids of Mars. Since I misplaced that DVD, you get Planet of Evil instead.
Which is good, in a way, because if you're a new-Who fan, and you've done a tiny bit of research on the old series, you probably know exactly two things about Planet of Evil.
1) the plot is ripped straight from Forbidden Planet, and
2) the planet set is the greatest set the show ever made. (Too bad the other sets all suck in comparison.)
Strangely enough, the script and the sets tend to be the things I focus on in my reviews - hell, I'm going to keep The Caves of Androzani from getting a perfect 10 because its "caves" all have flat floors - and yet, because those two things are what everyone else already knows, this gives me the perfect chance to actually look at the interaction between Baker and Sladen. Which is exactly what I wanted to do in the first place.
So the episode begins on the titular planet, which does in fact look like an alien world. It's so good, it kind of looks like the zerg-infected areas of Starcraft II. Professor Sorenson won't be persuaded to leave his work just because night is coming, so his co-worker leaves without him. The co-worker travels from a television studio to a film set, where we get the full effect of the awesome set design, and then he and another person die fighting an invisible monster, which is no more convincing than it was in "Vincent and the Doctor." Some things never change.
Let me just interrupt here and say something that might go over the heads of younger viewers, or people who never saw Monty Python, or whatever. Part of the reason the planet set looks so damn good is because they shot it on film. That's not because film magically hid the wobbliness of it or whatever, but rather because in 70s British TV, film was used when they needed to go on location, and videotape was used in the studio. So going to a film studio and shooting the planet set on film made everyone who could tell the difference between film and videotape (and really, that should be everyone under 50) briefly think that they actually shot the planet stuff on location.
Okay, after two "gruesome" deaths, we get to the Doctor and Sarah. By the end of Season 12 (Tom Baker's first season), Lis Sladen wanted out of her contract because the character seemed to have regressed. The producers agreed about the regression, but not about letting her go, and instead to their credit focused on the Sarah-Doctor relationship. No, Rose/Ten shippers, not like that.
Their first scene is a great example of what I'm talking about. Sarah's confident enough in her relationship with the Doctor to jokingly berate him for being unable to get her home. The Doctor's actually on the defensive about his inability to fly the TARDIS - showing any sort of vulnerability is pretty much anathema to Tom Baker's Doctor, so the fact that he does it here demonstrates either how much Baker and Sladen were able to get along, or else how much the Fourth actually cares about Sarah's opinion.
Here's another thing: shortly after arriving on the planet, the Doctor finds "a hand tool of some sort." Sarah deduces that they must be humanoid because "they've got hands." This never happens on the new series, and it rarely happens on the old series. On the one hand, Sarah Jane Smith the character is stating the obvious because the writers know they don't have the budget to do a non-humanoid monster (well...) On the other hand, Lis Sladen sells us on the notion that Sarah's an incredibly insightful character who has had (offscreen) adventures with the Doctor involving people who don't have hands. It's touches like this that bring the magic.
A spaceship arrives, carrying a crew led by a young idiot who has no idea what he's doing, while the second-in-command is a white-haired old guy who does know what he's doing but pretty much stays in the background. Draw your own conclusions about unintentional parallels to certain US Presidents and Vice-Presidents.
Anyway, the crew gets slaughtered one by one while the Doctor gets accused of doing the slaughtering, and really it's just Forbidden Planet with Doctor Who trappings. The only major difference is that the "for science" guy doesn't get it at the end. There's really not a lot of point in going over the plot in detail.
In Genesis of the Daleks, Sarah Jane was reduced to nearly being radiation-poisoned and tortured to make the Doctor give up information. In this story, her biggest near-death experience is when she's almost flushed out an airlock - and the Doctor is right alongside her. This was the start of Sladen's third year in the role, and it's at about this point that it stops being "The Doctor and a companion" and starts being "Four-and-Sarah." It's even more evident in a specific scene in the next serial, the aforementioned Pyramids of Mars, when the two of them enter a room, notice the villain, and turn and exit as one.
It's still the Doctor's show; with Tom Baker settling into his role, it's impossible for it not to be. But by establishing such a strong rapport with Baker (and by using her own not-inconsiderable acting chops), Sladen was able to grab a decent section of the spotlight herself. With the benefit of hindsight, Rose is going to be "the Doctor's first serious love interest," Ace is going to be "that girl who blew things up," and Romana is going to be "the one who was in book-smarts what the Doctor was in experience." But Sarah Jane Smith will always be Sarah Jane Smith. No glib summary will suffice.
On the strength of the set and the Baker-Sladen tag-team alone, Planet of Evil gets an 8 out of 10.
Next review: The Masque of Mandragora.
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