Now, I'll be the first person to say that Star Trek the Star Trek also known as Star Trek Square Bracket Two Thousand and Nine Square Bracket or "The Star Trek reboot" or Star Trek 11 was a glitzy whizz-bang cash-in without a lot of heart. It just happened to be a particularly well-made glitzy whizz-bang cash in without a lot of heart.
I mention this because Star Trek 11 is the only other JJ Abrams film I've seen, and thus the only thing that I can compare it to. Now, what do I mean by "without a lot of heart?" That's a legitimate question. In between setting up seven characters (as if the audience had never heard of Star Trek) and doling out tons of 'splosions, there wasn't really time to go beneath the surface. For example, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is a film with a bunch of 'splosions, but it's also about Kirk's midlife crisis. Inception is a film with a bunch of zero-gravity fights, but it's also about a guy who may or may not have killed his wife, and how screwed-up his head is because of that. Wall-E, which I maintain is one of the best sci-fi films this decade (this decade hell, it's one of the best sci-fi films since The Empire Strikes Back) is a film with a bunch of cute robots, but it's also got cute robot love. Star Trek 11 just has Kirk do the tried and true Joseph Campell's Hero's Journey thing. Spock's homeworld does the firework and his mother dies, but he's an emotionless half-alien so we can't really relate to him. That's what I mean by "without a lot of heart." And for the record, Star Trek 11 was a really good glitzy cash-in. It just didn't have a lot of heart.
Now, is Star Trek 11 better than Super 8? Oh hell yes.
Okay, so where do I begin? Let's start with the locket. In Super 8 our hero carries around a locket containing a picture of his dead mother. Now, since it doesn't play a creepy-as-hell little tune, it is automatically not the coolest locket-containing-a-picture-of-a-dead-person in film history. Since I brought that up, let's take a look at it.
In For a Few Dollars More, Colonel Douglas Mortimer carries around a locket of his dead sister. Oh, by the way, SPOILER ALERT. Okay, so anyway, one of our heroes has this locket. We don't see it nearly as prominently as we do the villain's locket, which he gets out and plays every time he kills someone. Mortimer's in it for revenge (hint: his sister ain't alive no mo'), so when that theme plays at the end, it's personal as hell. This is because Sergio Leone really knows what he's doing. And one of the few things I really liked about the third Pirates of the Carribean film was that they also had the two musical lockets that really signified something.
Now, in Super 8, it's just a picture of his mother. I guarantee you it's not the only picture he has of her, since he's got a whole film reel that he shows to Elle Fanning halfway through for no real reason except that JJ Abrams has a film fetish (no, really! The whole reason why the kids are filmmakers is because JJ Abrams either loves leaning on the fourth wall, or has a film fetish, or both). And he carries it around with him. The army guys take it away from him, and he takes it back. Then the alien takes it away using a magnet (while at the same time not taking Elle Fanning's drunken father's necklace), and our hero just lets it go. Throughout the film, it's clearly been built up as this important thing, but then he decides to let it go for some reason. Someone please explain to me the reason, or what made him change his mind, because I don't get it.
There may very well be some symbolism here, but symbolism seems kind of out-of-place in a film where, earlier on, a bunch of kids stood right next to an implausible train wreck and they all escaped unscathed. This is clearly not a film that wants you to think very much, as evidenced by the fact that a bunch of kids stood right next to an implausble train wreck...
This brings me directly to point #2. Hopefully I don't need to explain the words "suspension of disbelief." Let's say you put a character in a building and then you blow that building up. If the character survives and isn't Superman, you need to come up with a way for them to survive, and no, "he's the main character" is not a reason. Your brain is telling you that that character should be mincemeat, and it's up to the storyteller to come up with a compelling reason why they're not. Abrams doesn't do that here. One-ton freight cars steamroll everything around the kids but leave them completely untouched. Later on, the army randomly starts shooting up the town, and the only thing that happens is one of the kids gets a broken leg (because remember, this ain't Battlestar; you can't go around killing children here). An alien who can communicate telepathically by touching you has been eating people - which I assume involves touching them, in fact you can see it grab one or two people during the cave sequence - but it's magically calmed down by our hero because he's our hero. Basically things happen because the plot demands that they happen, not because they make any sort of logical sense.
Still on the subject of trains... There was a time when I thought this movie wouldn't suck. It was that space of time between the point where I realized that all the kids could act, and the point where the train crash occured. But take a look at the way that scene is set up. They're out there at the train station (because the plot demands they be there) and they do a rehearsal that is quiet, low-key, and generally perfect. Then the director-kid spots a train in the background coming towards them. He shrieks something about "production values" and insists that they shoot the scene with the train thundering by. For one brief happy minute I thought Abrams was poking fun at the Michael Bay School of 'Splosions, but then... well... you know.
The train was transporting an alien and its magic atom-bricks that are apparently capable of turning into anything it needs them to be. Why was the government transporting an alien across the country? How did Professor Bleeding Heart get his hands on the train schedule? How did Professor Bleeding Heart get his hands on enough magic to derail that entire train and still not instantly die?
After a couple of days of searching for it, the government decides to just burn down the town and evacuate everyone. They set a massive fire that's set to burn down the town in four hours. At least four hours elapse between that point and the end of the movie, but the town's still standing. Did they put the fire out off-camera? Would it have hurt to have a single line of dialogue discussing that?
Then they go around the town randomly shooting. At least, I think they're randomly shooting. What exactly was the plan at this point? Were they gonna burn down the houses, or weren't they? If so, why did they put out the fire? And if not, how were they going to explain away all the 'splosion damage?
Meanwhile the alien sets about repairing its ship and eating people. It turns the water tower into a spaceship (gee, that would suck if the townies needed water in a hurry, y'know, like if there was a massive fire on their front doorstep) and starts stealing car engines. Of course, it knows exactly whose cars to steal engines from, so that Sheriff Dad can still drive around and Alcohol Dad can nearly get himself killed.
(By the way, when the alien's finishing his ship and everything made of metal is flying at it, notice how nobody's reacting. You'd think Steven Spielberg, who once shot golf balls past his actors' heads so they'd know where the dinosaurs were in Jurassic Park, would understand that you have to have your actors react to CGI. But then, he wasn't the director, he was just along for the ride.)
And did I mention that the alien ate people? Because it did; in fact, it eats the police chief twice just to be on the safe side. It was even gonna eat Elle Fanning before she could get to hold hands with our hero at the end. But the film's too busy shoving in pointless symbolism with the locket to address this issue. In accordance with simple Hollywood morality, the alien has carte blanche to eat as many civilians as it wants because it was previously tortured by the guv'ment, I guess. But wait! Didn't Professor Bleeding Heart say that the alien was in him and he was in the alien? Doesn't that mean that the alien already knows that most of mankind doesn't actually mean it any harm? Or is Professor Bleeding Heart a big misanthropic jerkwad who wants to see a bunch of people get eaten?
So the plot is resolved when the alien joins minds with a little boy. Now, any real little boy who just lost his mother and is so hung up on her that he takes that locket with him everywhere is probably going to have some grief issues. Add to that the fact that his dad and his girlfriend's dad hate each other and each other's offspring, and he almost certainly has emotional issues. Maybe the angst is what made the alien leave. But that's probably not what Abrams et al intended to have happen. Instead they have this scene were the alien gains innate knowledge of the kid's incorruptible pure pureness and decides not to eat him. I was really hoping that it was gonna possess Elle Fanning or something and actually use one of the characters as a mouthpiece, but because that would require actually explaining its actions, I can see why they didn't go with that idea.
Conclusion: it's appalling that anyone could assemble a team of child actors who can actually act and then force them to be in a story this poorly thought out.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
People who annoy me:
People who ask "have you no decency" when they have none themselves.
People who say "I'm sick of you questioning my patriotism," when they have none.
People who say "dissent is the highest form of patriotism" when they have none.
People who insist on "tolerance" when they have none.
People who insist that one group of people must "learn to live within their means" while enabling another group to do the exact opposite.
People who "invest in the future" by borrowing money from it.
People who took their iPods to Occupy Wall Street.
People who tout "triumphs of democracy" over the rule of law, at any point in America since Reconstruction.
Republicans who vote to increase spending (I would say all politicians, but come on, hating a Democrat for increasing spending is like hating rain for being wet).
People who tailgate, people who slow down to see the car wreck, and people who stay in a merging lane well after the time to merge.
People who ask me to take stupid online quizzes.
People who say "I'm sick of you questioning my patriotism," when they have none.
People who say "dissent is the highest form of patriotism" when they have none.
People who insist on "tolerance" when they have none.
People who insist that one group of people must "learn to live within their means" while enabling another group to do the exact opposite.
People who "invest in the future" by borrowing money from it.
People who took their iPods to Occupy Wall Street.
People who tout "triumphs of democracy" over the rule of law, at any point in America since Reconstruction.
Republicans who vote to increase spending (I would say all politicians, but come on, hating a Democrat for increasing spending is like hating rain for being wet).
People who tailgate, people who slow down to see the car wreck, and people who stay in a merging lane well after the time to merge.
People who ask me to take stupid online quizzes.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Neither a review nor a defense of Battlestar Galactica's finale
It seems that every time anyone out there on the internet has ever brought up RDM BSG since the finale aired, they always preface the substance of their post/article/whatever with "yeah the finale sucked, but remember when the show was awesome?"
Or, "whatever your feelings on the finale..."
In my opinion, this sort of nonsense is completely unnecessary.
Now, this is not a defense of the finale, which other than the Luddite thing (and the fact that the "dying leader" prophecy simply doesn't come to pass) was actually pretty decent. Now, you could argue that "the Luddite thing" was the main point of the finale, since there was that tacked-on coda/epilogue that hammered it home, blah blah blah.
As I said, this is not a defense of the finale. This is just a request for the internet to stop going out of its way to mention its collective dislike of the finale as a requirement for holding any discussion whatsoever about the positive aspects of Battlestar Galactica.
I mean, we all hate "The Woman King" too - hell, I hate "Epiphanies" more than "Black Market" and "The Woman King" put together, but that's just my opinion. (Magic Cylon baby blood < Mr. Rule-of-Law killing a criminal in cold blood or everyone being stupid racist towards the Sagittarons.)
The thing is, "The Woman King," "Black Market," "Epiphanies," and yes, even "Daybreak, Part III" are all just episodes of a show.
And on the whole, that show was awesome.
I mean, hell, if "Daybreak, Part III" disgusts you so much, pretend the show ended on "Sometimes a Great Notion." (The other thing I didn't particularly like about "Daybreak" was that it undid the "holy crap, we are Cylons" wham that "Notion" had implied.)
I can hypothesize that people hate "Daybreak" extra-much because it was the finale, and it was supposed to be this grand concluding statement to the show and sum up the show's morals and values, and those morals and values evidently ended up being "technology is no good." Well, no, the moral of the show is "It's not enough to survive; one also must be worthy of survival." That's been the case ever since Adama said pretty much those words in the Miniseries.
It would be like me hating "Dirty Hands" because I thought the whole political subtext was a tad ham-fisted (or, hell, any time Lee says "hope" or "change" in Season 4.0 - or, to stretch a point, the fact that right around that time they put Roslin in a wig to make her look less like an older Sarah Palin. Don't lie, you were thinking it). The political subtext was a tad ham-fisted, I didn't wholly agree with it... but I still liked the episode. The political subtext of "Sine Qua Non" was absurdly ham-fisted if you buy into the Lee/Obama analogy (which, by the way, is simply ludicrous; to cite one example, as a former CAG and onetime commander of the Pegasus, Lee had more executive experience than Obama did in 2008), but to me, that was the point where the show got out of its slump, and everything from there to the finale was a thundering chourus of awesome. And the messages of those episodes were not necessarily the message of the show as a whole.
Now, maybe the finale should be treated differently. Well, from the start, you have to admit that this finale is completely different to pretty much anything else. Compare it to, say, The End of Time over on Doctor Who and it's almost like examining two entirely different media (although they do both spend way too much time at the end trying to wrap everything up and put a big bow on top). But even if The End of Time was the worst thing Rusty ever wrote, would we be trashing his entire tenure as Who's showrunner?
Point is, the quality of the finale should not color your opinion of the entire show.
And hell, if you wanna complain about the show ending on a sour note, are you forgetting The Plan or did you just wipe that from your memory?
I mean, for my money, The Plan, which came out after the finale, was worse than the finale... but so what? That doesn't change the fact that for 4+ years, Battlestar Galactica was the best damn thing on television.
So, please, internet in general, please stop prefacing all your comments about Battlestar with "no matter what we thought of the finale" or anything along those lines. Leave that to us; when we hook our family and friends on the show, we'll drop that caveat somewhere early on. You don't need to remind us what you thought of the finale; we'd much rather consider the show as a whole, and the show as a whole was awesome.
Or, "whatever your feelings on the finale..."
In my opinion, this sort of nonsense is completely unnecessary.
Now, this is not a defense of the finale, which other than the Luddite thing (and the fact that the "dying leader" prophecy simply doesn't come to pass) was actually pretty decent. Now, you could argue that "the Luddite thing" was the main point of the finale, since there was that tacked-on coda/epilogue that hammered it home, blah blah blah.
As I said, this is not a defense of the finale. This is just a request for the internet to stop going out of its way to mention its collective dislike of the finale as a requirement for holding any discussion whatsoever about the positive aspects of Battlestar Galactica.
I mean, we all hate "The Woman King" too - hell, I hate "Epiphanies" more than "Black Market" and "The Woman King" put together, but that's just my opinion. (Magic Cylon baby blood < Mr. Rule-of-Law killing a criminal in cold blood or everyone being stupid racist towards the Sagittarons.)
The thing is, "The Woman King," "Black Market," "Epiphanies," and yes, even "Daybreak, Part III" are all just episodes of a show.
And on the whole, that show was awesome.
I mean, hell, if "Daybreak, Part III" disgusts you so much, pretend the show ended on "Sometimes a Great Notion." (The other thing I didn't particularly like about "Daybreak" was that it undid the "holy crap, we are Cylons" wham that "Notion" had implied.)
I can hypothesize that people hate "Daybreak" extra-much because it was the finale, and it was supposed to be this grand concluding statement to the show and sum up the show's morals and values, and those morals and values evidently ended up being "technology is no good." Well, no, the moral of the show is "It's not enough to survive; one also must be worthy of survival." That's been the case ever since Adama said pretty much those words in the Miniseries.
It would be like me hating "Dirty Hands" because I thought the whole political subtext was a tad ham-fisted (or, hell, any time Lee says "hope" or "change" in Season 4.0 - or, to stretch a point, the fact that right around that time they put Roslin in a wig to make her look less like an older Sarah Palin. Don't lie, you were thinking it). The political subtext was a tad ham-fisted, I didn't wholly agree with it... but I still liked the episode. The political subtext of "Sine Qua Non" was absurdly ham-fisted if you buy into the Lee/Obama analogy (which, by the way, is simply ludicrous; to cite one example, as a former CAG and onetime commander of the Pegasus, Lee had more executive experience than Obama did in 2008), but to me, that was the point where the show got out of its slump, and everything from there to the finale was a thundering chourus of awesome. And the messages of those episodes were not necessarily the message of the show as a whole.
Now, maybe the finale should be treated differently. Well, from the start, you have to admit that this finale is completely different to pretty much anything else. Compare it to, say, The End of Time over on Doctor Who and it's almost like examining two entirely different media (although they do both spend way too much time at the end trying to wrap everything up and put a big bow on top). But even if The End of Time was the worst thing Rusty ever wrote, would we be trashing his entire tenure as Who's showrunner?
Point is, the quality of the finale should not color your opinion of the entire show.
And hell, if you wanna complain about the show ending on a sour note, are you forgetting The Plan or did you just wipe that from your memory?
I mean, for my money, The Plan, which came out after the finale, was worse than the finale... but so what? That doesn't change the fact that for 4+ years, Battlestar Galactica was the best damn thing on television.
So, please, internet in general, please stop prefacing all your comments about Battlestar with "no matter what we thought of the finale" or anything along those lines. Leave that to us; when we hook our family and friends on the show, we'll drop that caveat somewhere early on. You don't need to remind us what you thought of the finale; we'd much rather consider the show as a whole, and the show as a whole was awesome.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Who Review: Voyage of the Damned
I had the pleasure of watching this one with my good friend Tom, who once upon a distant time wrote a post or two for this blog. It was the first time he'd seen it, so I've taken the luxury of adding a few of his comments throughout this review.
The Titanic crashes through the TARDIS just cuz, and then it's not the Titanic, it's the starship Titanic, because the people in charge of this interstellar cruise line know nothing about history and it's kind of funny. (I also noticed that the tour guide thinks that human beings worship "the great god Santa," a good three years before Steven Moffat put it in an episode and I made it a running gag in my reviews.)
All right, it's time to meet our cast of characters this time around. Tom's comments are highlighted.
Astrid Peth - serving wench in an outfit that, as I recall, caused quite a stir. First time any companion's shown any cleavage while Rusty was at the helm!
Two fat people - comic relief. Wow, they're fat and they're eating.
A rich jerk - Yup, he's rich, so he's a jerk, what a surprise.
The aforementioned tour guide - Aaaargh, something that reminds me of Revelation of the Daleks!
Bannakaffalatta - Mini-Satan! Awesome!
They go down to Earth, which they can do because everyone's evacuated London because bad stuff always happens on Christmas. Hey, they finally realized that. But the honeymoon doesn't last long because this is Doctor Who and we didn't come to see everything go perfectly right.
Asteroids hit the ship and everything goes to hell, and angels start killing people (so it's Tron now). The Doctor maneuvers his company through a clogged stairwell. Hey, make the fat people go last. Hey, the rich guy said it! Why do I always agree with the rich jerks? The angels (excuse me, "Host") do this thing where they say "Information" at the beginning of every sentence. Information: kill. Hey, I called it! Oh, please, let Mini-Satan take down at least one of these things. Then I will be satisfied.
Then they get to that big wobbly bridge over a pit of death, because every ship has to have a big wobbly bridge over a pit of death. It's either that or chompy crushy things. There was a distinct lack of big wobbly bridges over pits of death in the Mass Effect games, but they made up for that with lots of fire, a horde of bad guys, and limited cover.
Fat person #1 abruptly falls to his death. Holy crap. I did not see that coming. Bannakaffalatta self-destructs, murdering the crap out of all the nearby Host. I believe Tom actually punched the air at this point. Fat person #2 ties herself to the one remaining Host and jumps to her death. Man, they're dropping like flies.
So then the Doctor leaves the rich guy, the tour guide, and the serving wench to go fight the villain himself because the plot demands it. Come on, Doctor, you need some more cannon fodder. At least take the rich guy with you...
So he meets the villain, who owns the cruise line, except not, so he's destroying the ship and the planet Earth as a means of revenge. He comes across as an unsatisfactory mix of Doctor Evil and Davros, and so Astrid grabs a forklift (aw, nothing along the lines of "get away from her, you bitch") and shoves him into a big fiery pit of doom. Okay, you better get out now... Only the brakes are gone so Astrid tumbles in as well.
The Doctor does the usual day-saving routine, which Tom kind of bought. And then he turns Astrid's ghost into atoms and leaves the inept tour guide on the planet with a million pounds. The end.
Satisfying, but not spectacular.
6 out of 10.
The Titanic crashes through the TARDIS just cuz, and then it's not the Titanic, it's the starship Titanic, because the people in charge of this interstellar cruise line know nothing about history and it's kind of funny. (I also noticed that the tour guide thinks that human beings worship "the great god Santa," a good three years before Steven Moffat put it in an episode and I made it a running gag in my reviews.)
All right, it's time to meet our cast of characters this time around. Tom's comments are highlighted.
Astrid Peth - serving wench in an outfit that, as I recall, caused quite a stir. First time any companion's shown any cleavage while Rusty was at the helm!
Two fat people - comic relief. Wow, they're fat and they're eating.
A rich jerk - Yup, he's rich, so he's a jerk, what a surprise.
The aforementioned tour guide - Aaaargh, something that reminds me of Revelation of the Daleks!
Bannakaffalatta - Mini-Satan! Awesome!
They go down to Earth, which they can do because everyone's evacuated London because bad stuff always happens on Christmas. Hey, they finally realized that. But the honeymoon doesn't last long because this is Doctor Who and we didn't come to see everything go perfectly right.
Asteroids hit the ship and everything goes to hell, and angels start killing people (so it's Tron now). The Doctor maneuvers his company through a clogged stairwell. Hey, make the fat people go last. Hey, the rich guy said it! Why do I always agree with the rich jerks? The angels (excuse me, "Host") do this thing where they say "Information" at the beginning of every sentence. Information: kill. Hey, I called it! Oh, please, let Mini-Satan take down at least one of these things. Then I will be satisfied.
Then they get to that big wobbly bridge over a pit of death, because every ship has to have a big wobbly bridge over a pit of death. It's either that or chompy crushy things. There was a distinct lack of big wobbly bridges over pits of death in the Mass Effect games, but they made up for that with lots of fire, a horde of bad guys, and limited cover.
Fat person #1 abruptly falls to his death. Holy crap. I did not see that coming. Bannakaffalatta self-destructs, murdering the crap out of all the nearby Host. I believe Tom actually punched the air at this point. Fat person #2 ties herself to the one remaining Host and jumps to her death. Man, they're dropping like flies.
So then the Doctor leaves the rich guy, the tour guide, and the serving wench to go fight the villain himself because the plot demands it. Come on, Doctor, you need some more cannon fodder. At least take the rich guy with you...
So he meets the villain, who owns the cruise line, except not, so he's destroying the ship and the planet Earth as a means of revenge. He comes across as an unsatisfactory mix of Doctor Evil and Davros, and so Astrid grabs a forklift (aw, nothing along the lines of "get away from her, you bitch") and shoves him into a big fiery pit of doom. Okay, you better get out now... Only the brakes are gone so Astrid tumbles in as well.
The Doctor does the usual day-saving routine, which Tom kind of bought. And then he turns Astrid's ghost into atoms and leaves the inept tour guide on the planet with a million pounds. The end.
Satisfying, but not spectacular.
6 out of 10.
Who Review: Utopia
I'm glad I haven't gotten around to reviewing this one yet. The first time I burned through my Series Three boxset, I was more interested in watching John Simm's version of the Master go insane in the next two episodes than in watching this episode and paying enough attention to it.
And since yesterday marked the first time I'd seen this episode since... wait for it... I'd gotten hooked on Battlestar, I was highly amused by the very subtle BSG nod in "Utopia." No, not the whole plot about the last humans in existence trying to find a mythical haven, because there aren't enough clear parallels so I'm willing to give Rusty the benefit of the doubt on that one. No, I'm talking about the Memorial Wall. You see it for all of two seconds and its nowhere near as impressive as the one on Galactica, but it's still there, and I got the reference.
I like to give Rusty a lot of crap for his end-of-season shenanigans, and to be sure "Last of the Time Lords" and its Tinkerbell-Jesus conclusion is a clusterfrak. This is sad, considering the attention to detail he pays elsewhere. As I said in my review for The End of Time, when he juggles his balls correctly, the result is impressive. "Utopia" plays to these strenghths. You don't need to know that he's spent an entire season on Torchwood teasing Captain Jack's immortality; you don't even need to know who Captain Jack is. John Barrowman plays off David Tennant like they've been a double-act for years, even though this is the first time they've appeared together. Their conversation about why Jack is immortal is woven into the plot perfectly; while the Doctor's giving us exposition, he's also triggering Professor Yana's memories.
Professor Yana is also particularly well done (although You Are Not Alone is unnecessary). Derek Jacobi does a wonderful job with a character who is deliberately not very fleshed out. The fob watch chain is visible from very early on, but it's part of his anachronistic costume so you completely ignore it. Somewhat less impressive is his idiosyncratic assistant Chan'tho, but she's really just there to be a foil for Yana (and occasionally Martha), so we'll give her a pass as well.
And then there's the Doctor's hand, Chekov's Gun extraordinaire. It gets cleverly maneuvered into the TARDIS, where it will stay for an entire season, right under everyone's noses. For all his faults, Rusty is a master at moving puzzle pieces around and dropping them into place without you noticing.
The plot is fairly straightforward: it's the end of the Universe, and the Doctor fixes a rocket so the last remnants of humanity can escape Mad Max Vampire World. The guy who was fixing the rocket before the Doctor showed up turns out to be the Master, who escapes with the TARDIS and leaves the Doctor stranded at the end of the Universe (but fortunately he has Plot Coupon Captain Jack with him, so all's well).
The problem with the three-part season finale is that this episode gets cast aside as the "prelude" chapter. Let's face it, the John Simm version of the Master is just more fun to watch than an amnesiac Derek Jacobi. But the plot of "Drums/Time Lords" explodes into lunacy, whereas this episode is a nice, neat, relatively cheap bit that ties in so much that has come before - the chameleon watches, Captain Jack, Rose - without ever feeling dull or repetitive.
8 out of 10.
And since yesterday marked the first time I'd seen this episode since... wait for it... I'd gotten hooked on Battlestar, I was highly amused by the very subtle BSG nod in "Utopia." No, not the whole plot about the last humans in existence trying to find a mythical haven, because there aren't enough clear parallels so I'm willing to give Rusty the benefit of the doubt on that one. No, I'm talking about the Memorial Wall. You see it for all of two seconds and its nowhere near as impressive as the one on Galactica, but it's still there, and I got the reference.
I like to give Rusty a lot of crap for his end-of-season shenanigans, and to be sure "Last of the Time Lords" and its Tinkerbell-Jesus conclusion is a clusterfrak. This is sad, considering the attention to detail he pays elsewhere. As I said in my review for The End of Time, when he juggles his balls correctly, the result is impressive. "Utopia" plays to these strenghths. You don't need to know that he's spent an entire season on Torchwood teasing Captain Jack's immortality; you don't even need to know who Captain Jack is. John Barrowman plays off David Tennant like they've been a double-act for years, even though this is the first time they've appeared together. Their conversation about why Jack is immortal is woven into the plot perfectly; while the Doctor's giving us exposition, he's also triggering Professor Yana's memories.
Professor Yana is also particularly well done (although You Are Not Alone is unnecessary). Derek Jacobi does a wonderful job with a character who is deliberately not very fleshed out. The fob watch chain is visible from very early on, but it's part of his anachronistic costume so you completely ignore it. Somewhat less impressive is his idiosyncratic assistant Chan'tho, but she's really just there to be a foil for Yana (and occasionally Martha), so we'll give her a pass as well.
And then there's the Doctor's hand, Chekov's Gun extraordinaire. It gets cleverly maneuvered into the TARDIS, where it will stay for an entire season, right under everyone's noses. For all his faults, Rusty is a master at moving puzzle pieces around and dropping them into place without you noticing.
The plot is fairly straightforward: it's the end of the Universe, and the Doctor fixes a rocket so the last remnants of humanity can escape Mad Max Vampire World. The guy who was fixing the rocket before the Doctor showed up turns out to be the Master, who escapes with the TARDIS and leaves the Doctor stranded at the end of the Universe (but fortunately he has Plot Coupon Captain Jack with him, so all's well).
The problem with the three-part season finale is that this episode gets cast aside as the "prelude" chapter. Let's face it, the John Simm version of the Master is just more fun to watch than an amnesiac Derek Jacobi. But the plot of "Drums/Time Lords" explodes into lunacy, whereas this episode is a nice, neat, relatively cheap bit that ties in so much that has come before - the chameleon watches, Captain Jack, Rose - without ever feeling dull or repetitive.
8 out of 10.
two quick thoughts
Thought #1: Whenever anyone praises anything as a "triumph of democracy," especially in America, my first thought is always, "triumph over what?" "Fiscal sanity" and "the rule of law" are two things democracy should not triumph over.
Thought #2: The first episode of Doctor Who Series 7 is going to be called (Blank) of the (Blank). What a completely original title.
Thought #2: The first episode of Doctor Who Series 7 is going to be called (Blank) of the (Blank). What a completely original title.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Time to dive headfirst into the mess that is the Republican Primary...
Those of you adverse to right-wing insanity can just wait until tomorrow for "Utopia" and "Voyage of the Damned." I promise this time.
It's with considerable trepidation that I even approached news of Republican primary debates at all. This is mostly for the same reason that I stay away from live entertainment: I really don't like seeing people screw up. But at this point it's pretty much inevitable: those of us who lean to the right need to find someone to go head-to-head against Obama in 2012.
I never for one second thought that Palin would be in the running, and sure enough, she's not. Everyone's opinion of her, mine included, is somewhat tainted by her abysmal performance as John McCain's running mate three years ago. (Then there are the lunatics who think she cost McCain the election. That's simply not true. McCain's doubly-abysmal strategy of neither attacking Obama nor securing a conservative base during the primary - which forced him to spend the entire election cycle pandering to the right instead of the center - cost him the election.)
I had a discussion with a friend of mine right at the start of the campaign season. My general impression is that my friend Bill was for Romney right from the start, because, and I quote, "he'll run America like a business."
I was less sure. I thought Romney was the right choice in 2008, as far as the center-right-moderate-with-an-iffy-record-but-a-solid-message-and-great-communication-skills category goes. (Not that it would have mattered; a potted plant could have run against the Republicans and won. Actually, a potted plant could have run a better campaign than McCain.) But given the slew of attacks against Romney from the right, I figured we'd probably end up with a more conservative.
Some conservative pundit once said that every time the Republican candidate distinguishes himself from the Democrat - that is, every time the Republican tacks right - he wins, and every time he doesn't, he loses. Look at Reagan. Look at what happened to Bush I. Bush II doesn't count, seeing as he lost the popular vote to a global warming liar and then ran for re-election against a man who had less charisma than my desk. Look at what happened to McCain.
Now, the fact of the matter is, there's a glass ceiling when it comes to the presidency. Sarah Palin probably did considerable damage to female (vice-)presidential hopefuls (and this from a guy who voted for her). I'm not that excited about another shrill caricature* running around the campaign trail. And even if Michelle Bachmann hadn't imploded a while back, she just threw away her last chance to be VP at the most recent debate when she threw out a number of at-best-misleading-and-at-worst-blatantly-untrue "facts" about Gingrich and Romney. I never really had high hopes for her in the first place, although my father apparently did.
*Hyperbole.
When Bill - my Romney-supporting friend - asked who I'd want for President, my first thought was "gee, it's a shame Paul Ryan's too young." This is the guy who's spent the most time going toe-to-toe with Obama's policies at the legislative stage. He's the guy who punched holes in every plan the President came up with and came up with fiscally sane alternatives. I don't know too much about his other politics, but if you want someone to nail Obama to the wall... well, it's a shame Paul Ryan's too young.
I never took Cain seriously, and even less so once it became obvious that his entire agenda was "9-9-9, I refuse to take Foreign Policy 101." Huntsman who? And Santorum was the only candidate at last weekend's debate that I didn't recognize on sight. It's not going to be him, although he's apparently brown-nosing for Gingrich's VP slot.
Rick Perry looked like a contender, but he completely dropped the ball on illegal immigration, and when he ran away from his liberal position, it was too little too late. His other policies would be good, but this country isn't about to elect another inarticulate Texan (by "inarticulate" I do not mean that he cannot string two words together without the aide of a teleprompter but rather that he seems to have a really hard time communicating what he means; Santorum made better use of his floor time in the most recent debate).
A nice word to use in describing Ron Paul would be "cantankerous." "Abrasive," "crank," "lunatic," or "nutty libertarian gasbag* with a foreign policy worse than Obama's" would also be accurate, but considerably less kind. Frankly, if not for his dogmatic adherence to the Constitution, he'd belong squarely in the other tent. His announcement that he'll run as a third-party candidate in a year where any vote that's not for the Republican candidate is a vote for Obama essentially amounts to treason.*
*Hyperbole, but much less so than above.
Let's be honest here, at this point it's Romney or Gingrich. At various other points, it's been Romney or Bachmann, or Romney or Perry, or Romney or Cain, but in each of those cases the anti-Romney went and self-destructed. Gingrich is way too smart to do that. Republicans - especially Tea-Party Republicans - are desperate to nominate anyone but Romney, and after their first three heroes, it's hard to see why. Gingrich is considerably better, but he doesn't come baggage-free either.
Conservative author/pundit/troll* (delete according to personal taste) Ann Coulter wrote a highly controversial column that basically amounted to an endorsement of Romney. Her argument was essentially: "Don't vote for Gingrich because he's a center-right moderate with a lot of baggage. Vote for Romney, even though he's a center-right moderate with (admittedly considerably less) baggage." I didn't exactly buy it, and neither did most of the rest of us on this side of the aisle.
*Hyperbole. I read her stuff, but I take it with a massive grain of salt.
So over the weekend, Santorum, Perry, Romney, Gingrich, Paul and Bachmann gathered together for various purposes. First and foremost, everybody except for Romney and Gingrich were invited so they'd bring in their supporters, who could then decide between Romney and Gingrich because that's what it's down to at this point in the game. But there were other reasons as well:
Santorum was there to ingratiate himself to Camp Gingrich, because he really wants to be Gingrich's VP. (If that's not what his strategy was, he needs to fire his strategist immediately.)
Bachmann was there to demonstrate her utter lack of political acumen; she wasted an entire question sniping at Santorum, who is never going to be the nominee, and most of the rest of her time sniping at Romney and Gingrich. Since the nominee is going to be one of those two people, she just blew her last chance at being VP.
Perry was likewise there because he thought he still had a horse in the race. The whole "moderate president, conservative VP" didn't work last time around, but that's also because the presidential candidate refused to go on the offensive while the vice-presidential candidate refused to do her homework. It'll never happen for a number of reasons, but it would be nice to see Perry show up in the number-two slot on the ticket.
Ron Paul was there so that Mitt Romney could use words like "federalism" and phrases like "Article I, Section 8" without being the Constitution's biggest cheerleader on the stage. He was also there to churn out pithy slogans like "we can't have a government that'll save us from ourselves," which other, smarter candidates (I'm thinking mostly Romney here) were able to turn into actual talking points. Seriously, you could probably run an entire campaign just by listening to what Ron Paul says about the Constitution and then watering it down for a more moderate, sensible audience. I'm not saying you would win, but you could certainly do it...
Gingrich was there because his campaign lives and dies based on his debate performance. Also, suddenly being the front-runner helped. And Romney was there because he's going to get the nomination if Gingrich loses any traction... which, by the way, is exactly what Perry, Bachmann, and yes, even Paul were all trying to accomplish.
Romney and Gingrich were there to differentiate themselves from each other, which makes it all the more alarming that Romney stumbled when he was asked to... differentiate himself from Gingrich! The horror! I really couldn't see that one coming! Talk about blindsiding a candidate with a trick question! I assume he went home and fired someone after the debate. Somebody dropped the ball there, and as someone running against a man who rarely makes mistakes, Romney can't afford any.
Now, the number-one issue in this country is what Joe Biden thinks is a three-letter word: jobs. However, the number-one issue in this election cycle is not jobs. Those will come later. The number-one issue this election cycle is ObamaCare, which will, incidentally, make the economy much worse and will therefore destroy jobs. Since both Romney and Gingrich have previously been in favor of the individual mandate - the most flagrantly unconstitutional part of ObamaCare - they have a lot of 'splainin' to do.
There was a lot of talk about this. Romney made an politically unwise but economically sound $10,000 bet that he didn't endorse the individual mandate in his book, and that seems to be about the only thing anyone took away from this debate, which is a shame.
Both Romney and Gingrich were asked about their past support of the mandate, and they both responded with the time-honored "yes but..." For Romney, it was "yes but, under Federalism, each state gets to decide what's best for that state, so if other states don't like the mandate, they don't have to take it." For Gingrich, it was "yes but, it was better than HillaryCare."
Now, I know that Gingrich is a master deb... um, he's very good at debating, but frankly, this was not his strongest moment. The fact that Romney's dodge included a nod to federalism endeared him to me a lot more than Gingrich's allusion to a failed piece of legislation from 18 years ago.
I expected that Romney's mention of federalism was just a clever political calculation, meant to endear him to that wing of the party that gives a rat's about the Constitution (oh, hello*). But after poking around on his website for a little bit, it appears that he's serious: federalism and states' rights are actual planks in his platform, or are at least the fibers woven into those planks.
*The fact that I give a rat's about the Constitution is the number-two reason I'm a conservative. The number-one reason is that I once took an Economics course and aced everything except the section on Keynesian economics. Keynesian economics struck me as being a lot like everything I had to memorize in Biology: made-up, nonsensical, illogical, and useless. Mild hyperbole.
But look at those answers. Romney: "yes, but X, and here's a brief explanation of X." Gingrich: "yes, but Y." X is federalism, as in "the political philosophy our nation was founded on." Y is a piece of failed legislation from 18 years ago. I would hope that the average voter knows more about the former than the latter. (I don't know, maybe it came up in the Bam-Hil debates back in 07.)
So, yes, Romney fumbled his way through the "what do you and Newt disagree on" question. Yeah, he made a $10,000 bet when the average American is tightening their belt. I still thought he was able to make a number of valid points, whereas Gingrich had to spend most of the time on the defensive. Yeah, I know he was the frontrunner and all, so everyone ganged up on him, but that's just how the cookie gets stepped on and obliterated.
It's with considerable trepidation that I even approached news of Republican primary debates at all. This is mostly for the same reason that I stay away from live entertainment: I really don't like seeing people screw up. But at this point it's pretty much inevitable: those of us who lean to the right need to find someone to go head-to-head against Obama in 2012.
I never for one second thought that Palin would be in the running, and sure enough, she's not. Everyone's opinion of her, mine included, is somewhat tainted by her abysmal performance as John McCain's running mate three years ago. (Then there are the lunatics who think she cost McCain the election. That's simply not true. McCain's doubly-abysmal strategy of neither attacking Obama nor securing a conservative base during the primary - which forced him to spend the entire election cycle pandering to the right instead of the center - cost him the election.)
I had a discussion with a friend of mine right at the start of the campaign season. My general impression is that my friend Bill was for Romney right from the start, because, and I quote, "he'll run America like a business."
I was less sure. I thought Romney was the right choice in 2008, as far as the center-right-moderate-with-an-iffy-record-but-a-solid-message-and-great-communication-skills category goes. (Not that it would have mattered; a potted plant could have run against the Republicans and won. Actually, a potted plant could have run a better campaign than McCain.) But given the slew of attacks against Romney from the right, I figured we'd probably end up with a more conservative.
Some conservative pundit once said that every time the Republican candidate distinguishes himself from the Democrat - that is, every time the Republican tacks right - he wins, and every time he doesn't, he loses. Look at Reagan. Look at what happened to Bush I. Bush II doesn't count, seeing as he lost the popular vote to a global warming liar and then ran for re-election against a man who had less charisma than my desk. Look at what happened to McCain.
Now, the fact of the matter is, there's a glass ceiling when it comes to the presidency. Sarah Palin probably did considerable damage to female (vice-)presidential hopefuls (and this from a guy who voted for her). I'm not that excited about another shrill caricature* running around the campaign trail. And even if Michelle Bachmann hadn't imploded a while back, she just threw away her last chance to be VP at the most recent debate when she threw out a number of at-best-misleading-and-at-worst-blatantly-untrue "facts" about Gingrich and Romney. I never really had high hopes for her in the first place, although my father apparently did.
*Hyperbole.
When Bill - my Romney-supporting friend - asked who I'd want for President, my first thought was "gee, it's a shame Paul Ryan's too young." This is the guy who's spent the most time going toe-to-toe with Obama's policies at the legislative stage. He's the guy who punched holes in every plan the President came up with and came up with fiscally sane alternatives. I don't know too much about his other politics, but if you want someone to nail Obama to the wall... well, it's a shame Paul Ryan's too young.
I never took Cain seriously, and even less so once it became obvious that his entire agenda was "9-9-9, I refuse to take Foreign Policy 101." Huntsman who? And Santorum was the only candidate at last weekend's debate that I didn't recognize on sight. It's not going to be him, although he's apparently brown-nosing for Gingrich's VP slot.
Rick Perry looked like a contender, but he completely dropped the ball on illegal immigration, and when he ran away from his liberal position, it was too little too late. His other policies would be good, but this country isn't about to elect another inarticulate Texan (by "inarticulate" I do not mean that he cannot string two words together without the aide of a teleprompter but rather that he seems to have a really hard time communicating what he means; Santorum made better use of his floor time in the most recent debate).
A nice word to use in describing Ron Paul would be "cantankerous." "Abrasive," "crank," "lunatic," or "nutty libertarian gasbag* with a foreign policy worse than Obama's" would also be accurate, but considerably less kind. Frankly, if not for his dogmatic adherence to the Constitution, he'd belong squarely in the other tent. His announcement that he'll run as a third-party candidate in a year where any vote that's not for the Republican candidate is a vote for Obama essentially amounts to treason.*
*Hyperbole, but much less so than above.
Let's be honest here, at this point it's Romney or Gingrich. At various other points, it's been Romney or Bachmann, or Romney or Perry, or Romney or Cain, but in each of those cases the anti-Romney went and self-destructed. Gingrich is way too smart to do that. Republicans - especially Tea-Party Republicans - are desperate to nominate anyone but Romney, and after their first three heroes, it's hard to see why. Gingrich is considerably better, but he doesn't come baggage-free either.
Conservative author/pundit/troll* (delete according to personal taste) Ann Coulter wrote a highly controversial column that basically amounted to an endorsement of Romney. Her argument was essentially: "Don't vote for Gingrich because he's a center-right moderate with a lot of baggage. Vote for Romney, even though he's a center-right moderate with (admittedly considerably less) baggage." I didn't exactly buy it, and neither did most of the rest of us on this side of the aisle.
*Hyperbole. I read her stuff, but I take it with a massive grain of salt.
So over the weekend, Santorum, Perry, Romney, Gingrich, Paul and Bachmann gathered together for various purposes. First and foremost, everybody except for Romney and Gingrich were invited so they'd bring in their supporters, who could then decide between Romney and Gingrich because that's what it's down to at this point in the game. But there were other reasons as well:
Santorum was there to ingratiate himself to Camp Gingrich, because he really wants to be Gingrich's VP. (If that's not what his strategy was, he needs to fire his strategist immediately.)
Bachmann was there to demonstrate her utter lack of political acumen; she wasted an entire question sniping at Santorum, who is never going to be the nominee, and most of the rest of her time sniping at Romney and Gingrich. Since the nominee is going to be one of those two people, she just blew her last chance at being VP.
Perry was likewise there because he thought he still had a horse in the race. The whole "moderate president, conservative VP" didn't work last time around, but that's also because the presidential candidate refused to go on the offensive while the vice-presidential candidate refused to do her homework. It'll never happen for a number of reasons, but it would be nice to see Perry show up in the number-two slot on the ticket.
Ron Paul was there so that Mitt Romney could use words like "federalism" and phrases like "Article I, Section 8" without being the Constitution's biggest cheerleader on the stage. He was also there to churn out pithy slogans like "we can't have a government that'll save us from ourselves," which other, smarter candidates (I'm thinking mostly Romney here) were able to turn into actual talking points. Seriously, you could probably run an entire campaign just by listening to what Ron Paul says about the Constitution and then watering it down for a more moderate, sensible audience. I'm not saying you would win, but you could certainly do it...
Gingrich was there because his campaign lives and dies based on his debate performance. Also, suddenly being the front-runner helped. And Romney was there because he's going to get the nomination if Gingrich loses any traction... which, by the way, is exactly what Perry, Bachmann, and yes, even Paul were all trying to accomplish.
Romney and Gingrich were there to differentiate themselves from each other, which makes it all the more alarming that Romney stumbled when he was asked to... differentiate himself from Gingrich! The horror! I really couldn't see that one coming! Talk about blindsiding a candidate with a trick question! I assume he went home and fired someone after the debate. Somebody dropped the ball there, and as someone running against a man who rarely makes mistakes, Romney can't afford any.
Now, the number-one issue in this country is what Joe Biden thinks is a three-letter word: jobs. However, the number-one issue in this election cycle is not jobs. Those will come later. The number-one issue this election cycle is ObamaCare, which will, incidentally, make the economy much worse and will therefore destroy jobs. Since both Romney and Gingrich have previously been in favor of the individual mandate - the most flagrantly unconstitutional part of ObamaCare - they have a lot of 'splainin' to do.
There was a lot of talk about this. Romney made an politically unwise but economically sound $10,000 bet that he didn't endorse the individual mandate in his book, and that seems to be about the only thing anyone took away from this debate, which is a shame.
Both Romney and Gingrich were asked about their past support of the mandate, and they both responded with the time-honored "yes but..." For Romney, it was "yes but, under Federalism, each state gets to decide what's best for that state, so if other states don't like the mandate, they don't have to take it." For Gingrich, it was "yes but, it was better than HillaryCare."
Now, I know that Gingrich is a master deb... um, he's very good at debating, but frankly, this was not his strongest moment. The fact that Romney's dodge included a nod to federalism endeared him to me a lot more than Gingrich's allusion to a failed piece of legislation from 18 years ago.
I expected that Romney's mention of federalism was just a clever political calculation, meant to endear him to that wing of the party that gives a rat's about the Constitution (oh, hello*). But after poking around on his website for a little bit, it appears that he's serious: federalism and states' rights are actual planks in his platform, or are at least the fibers woven into those planks.
*The fact that I give a rat's about the Constitution is the number-two reason I'm a conservative. The number-one reason is that I once took an Economics course and aced everything except the section on Keynesian economics. Keynesian economics struck me as being a lot like everything I had to memorize in Biology: made-up, nonsensical, illogical, and useless. Mild hyperbole.
But look at those answers. Romney: "yes, but X, and here's a brief explanation of X." Gingrich: "yes, but Y." X is federalism, as in "the political philosophy our nation was founded on." Y is a piece of failed legislation from 18 years ago. I would hope that the average voter knows more about the former than the latter. (I don't know, maybe it came up in the Bam-Hil debates back in 07.)
So, yes, Romney fumbled his way through the "what do you and Newt disagree on" question. Yeah, he made a $10,000 bet when the average American is tightening their belt. I still thought he was able to make a number of valid points, whereas Gingrich had to spend most of the time on the defensive. Yeah, I know he was the frontrunner and all, so everyone ganged up on him, but that's just how the cookie gets stepped on and obliterated.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Random Dr. Who and Star Trek rumors
Okay, been out of the loop, lied about doing S3 reviews last week, bad me. Expect "Utopia" either today or tomorrow, just cuz.
Right, so, first things first. There's talk that Star Trek the Star Trek 2 will involve Khan. In other words, it will be yet another remake of Star Trek II: The Best Star Trek Film Ever Made. For those of you who were late to the party, Star Trek the Star Trek (which is what I'm calling the 2009 film to differentiate it from the Trek franchise as a whole) was essentially a remake of Star Trek Nemesis, which was a remake of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. What do I mean by that? Well, Khan and Nemesis both involve a villain who spent the last decade in an inhospitable environment nursing a grudge against the captain of the Enterprise. Eventually he breaks free and gets ahold of a powerful ship and a superweapon. A battle takes place in a nebula, where the Enterprise has trouble seeing the other ship. When his ship is too badly damaged, the villain activates the superweapon, requiring a Heroic Sacrifice on the part of the Asperger's character to save the day. Then Nemesis and The Star Trek both involved Romulans, hyperpowerful ships, superweapons, ships ramming other ships, and oh, yeah, a villain who had a grudge against one of the Enterprise crew.
Look, Khan has only been decently remade once, and that was as First Contact. (2009 was different enough for me not to call it a remake.) And First Contact was clever enough to change the paradigm so that the Captain Ahab character was the good guy this time around. Beyond that, Khan is easily the best Star Trek film ever (the only real competition being The Undiscovered Country). This is ironic, given the sheer number of things that could have gone wrong with it. (Note to self: write a separate blog post entitled The Sheer Number of Things that Could Have Gone Horribly Wrong with Star Trek II.) But just trying to recapture that magic seems like a horrible mistake.
This is, of course, from the same guy who thought re-casting Kirk was a stupid thing to do and that Star Trek the Star Trek would just be a heartless cash-in. I certainly didn't think it was the greatest science-fiction film of the last decade (I'd nominate the Battlestar Galactica minseries if I could bend the rules a little bit, but otherwise it's Inception or Wall-E), but it was still about ten times better than I thought it would be, and better than seven of the other ten films with Star Trek in the title to boot. So what do I know? They might surprise me.
Okay, next up is the David Yates Doctor Who film. There are essentially four things you could do: Doctor Who and the Daleks, The Enemy Within, Star Trek Generations, or Battlestar Galactica Razor. Here's what I mean by that:
Doctor Who and the Daleks was a 60s film that had absolutely nothing to do with the show's continuity. Doctor Who was the real name of a human who built a Tardis in his backyard. Then they re-enact The Daleks on the big screen. That's about it. I'm not saying that Yates should re-do City of Death or something, but that is one possibility: just cast a completely different Doctor and acknowledge that the film has nothing to do with the show's continuity. This will piss off the least number of fans.
The Enemy Within was the unofficial name of the 1996 Doctor Who telemovie. You know, the one starring Withnail's flatmate as the Doctor, while Eric Roberts drezzed for the occasion. The one that was made by people on the wrong side of the Atlantic with an aim to continue the show, which had been cancelled back in 1989. It was an absolute disaster. We all kind of pretend that it didn't happen. Yes, Paul McGann was the 8th Doctor, but he had a bunch of adventures we didn't get to see. Very sad. Even if Yates were to do a Who movie, it's unlikely that he would take this approach, for the very simple reason that the show isn't cancelled right now and isn't likely to be any time in the near future.
Star Trek Generations was the first attempt to put the crew of Star Trek TNG on the big screen. It was co-written by Ron Moore, and his failure to make it as good as his later output on some other show is the main reason why I rank it worse than Star Trek I on my overall list (which goes 2, 6, 8, 11, 3, 4, 1, 7, 5, 9, 10, in case you were wondering). It also served as the death knell for the TNG show, but that was for reasons other than the film's lackluster quality. As in The Enemy Within, somebody died as a means of passing the torch on, although I honestly couldn't tell you whose death was more ignoble. Since The Moff has categorically denied any plans to do a film, I think it's safe to rule out both the Enemy and Generations models.
Battlestar Galactica Razor was made just before Season 4 but set at the end of Season 2, and as long as you don't mind the minor spoiler that a certain death near the end of Season 3 isn't exactly permanent, you might as well watch it just before the end of Season 2. Though it more or less fails as a stand-alone film because it tries to tie in too many plotlines (which, come to think of it, is probably Moore's greatest fault as a storyteller), it could have worked. Eccleston's out, Tennant's probably running away, but my understanding is that McGann would still be game provided he didn't have to wear a wig. Of course, I say the words "Doctor Who film starring McGann" and everyone runs away. I'm speculating here. Basically, you could use this opportunity to tell the lost Doctor Who story, the one that you couldn't do on the show's budget or which just wouldn't work in the show's regular format.
Frankly, I'd like to see the Doctor on the big screen. I actually thought that last year's Christmas special (which I shouldn't have to remind you is in my opinion the best thing the show's ever given us since City of Death) could be adapted really easily to a film. (So there I go saying you could do stuff you couldn't do on the show in a movie, then I say that the Christmas special should have been a movie... but the Christmas special was a special instead of a regular episode. So there.)
So, should Star Trek 2 be a remake of Star Trek II? No. Should David Yates make a Doctor Who film? Why not?
Right, so, first things first. There's talk that Star Trek the Star Trek 2 will involve Khan. In other words, it will be yet another remake of Star Trek II: The Best Star Trek Film Ever Made. For those of you who were late to the party, Star Trek the Star Trek (which is what I'm calling the 2009 film to differentiate it from the Trek franchise as a whole) was essentially a remake of Star Trek Nemesis, which was a remake of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. What do I mean by that? Well, Khan and Nemesis both involve a villain who spent the last decade in an inhospitable environment nursing a grudge against the captain of the Enterprise. Eventually he breaks free and gets ahold of a powerful ship and a superweapon. A battle takes place in a nebula, where the Enterprise has trouble seeing the other ship. When his ship is too badly damaged, the villain activates the superweapon, requiring a Heroic Sacrifice on the part of the Asperger's character to save the day. Then Nemesis and The Star Trek both involved Romulans, hyperpowerful ships, superweapons, ships ramming other ships, and oh, yeah, a villain who had a grudge against one of the Enterprise crew.
Look, Khan has only been decently remade once, and that was as First Contact. (2009 was different enough for me not to call it a remake.) And First Contact was clever enough to change the paradigm so that the Captain Ahab character was the good guy this time around. Beyond that, Khan is easily the best Star Trek film ever (the only real competition being The Undiscovered Country). This is ironic, given the sheer number of things that could have gone wrong with it. (Note to self: write a separate blog post entitled The Sheer Number of Things that Could Have Gone Horribly Wrong with Star Trek II.) But just trying to recapture that magic seems like a horrible mistake.
This is, of course, from the same guy who thought re-casting Kirk was a stupid thing to do and that Star Trek the Star Trek would just be a heartless cash-in. I certainly didn't think it was the greatest science-fiction film of the last decade (I'd nominate the Battlestar Galactica minseries if I could bend the rules a little bit, but otherwise it's Inception or Wall-E), but it was still about ten times better than I thought it would be, and better than seven of the other ten films with Star Trek in the title to boot. So what do I know? They might surprise me.
Okay, next up is the David Yates Doctor Who film. There are essentially four things you could do: Doctor Who and the Daleks, The Enemy Within, Star Trek Generations, or Battlestar Galactica Razor. Here's what I mean by that:
Doctor Who and the Daleks was a 60s film that had absolutely nothing to do with the show's continuity. Doctor Who was the real name of a human who built a Tardis in his backyard. Then they re-enact The Daleks on the big screen. That's about it. I'm not saying that Yates should re-do City of Death or something, but that is one possibility: just cast a completely different Doctor and acknowledge that the film has nothing to do with the show's continuity. This will piss off the least number of fans.
The Enemy Within was the unofficial name of the 1996 Doctor Who telemovie. You know, the one starring Withnail's flatmate as the Doctor, while Eric Roberts drezzed for the occasion. The one that was made by people on the wrong side of the Atlantic with an aim to continue the show, which had been cancelled back in 1989. It was an absolute disaster. We all kind of pretend that it didn't happen. Yes, Paul McGann was the 8th Doctor, but he had a bunch of adventures we didn't get to see. Very sad. Even if Yates were to do a Who movie, it's unlikely that he would take this approach, for the very simple reason that the show isn't cancelled right now and isn't likely to be any time in the near future.
Star Trek Generations was the first attempt to put the crew of Star Trek TNG on the big screen. It was co-written by Ron Moore, and his failure to make it as good as his later output on some other show is the main reason why I rank it worse than Star Trek I on my overall list (which goes 2, 6, 8, 11, 3, 4, 1, 7, 5, 9, 10, in case you were wondering). It also served as the death knell for the TNG show, but that was for reasons other than the film's lackluster quality. As in The Enemy Within, somebody died as a means of passing the torch on, although I honestly couldn't tell you whose death was more ignoble. Since The Moff has categorically denied any plans to do a film, I think it's safe to rule out both the Enemy and Generations models.
Battlestar Galactica Razor was made just before Season 4 but set at the end of Season 2, and as long as you don't mind the minor spoiler that a certain death near the end of Season 3 isn't exactly permanent, you might as well watch it just before the end of Season 2. Though it more or less fails as a stand-alone film because it tries to tie in too many plotlines (which, come to think of it, is probably Moore's greatest fault as a storyteller), it could have worked. Eccleston's out, Tennant's probably running away, but my understanding is that McGann would still be game provided he didn't have to wear a wig. Of course, I say the words "Doctor Who film starring McGann" and everyone runs away. I'm speculating here. Basically, you could use this opportunity to tell the lost Doctor Who story, the one that you couldn't do on the show's budget or which just wouldn't work in the show's regular format.
Frankly, I'd like to see the Doctor on the big screen. I actually thought that last year's Christmas special (which I shouldn't have to remind you is in my opinion the best thing the show's ever given us since City of Death) could be adapted really easily to a film. (So there I go saying you could do stuff you couldn't do on the show in a movie, then I say that the Christmas special should have been a movie... but the Christmas special was a special instead of a regular episode. So there.)
So, should Star Trek 2 be a remake of Star Trek II? No. Should David Yates make a Doctor Who film? Why not?
Friday, December 2, 2011
In praise of a good photoplasty contest for once
For whatever reason, this time Cracked's photoplasty contest is actually quite amusing from the word go. Maybe it's because they limited it to only 13 entries, or maybe because the subject matter is better. I don't know. Anyway, here they are.
#13: Waldo as a missing person. That got a little chuckle.
#12: Bad text message rap as poetry. More a sad reflection on our culture than anything else.
#11: This one took me a moment because I didn't immediately look at the picture. I'm weird like that. As soon as I got the joke, I was giggling hysterically. Go see it yourself; I can't do it justice with a description.
#10: WWII as told by a WWII shooter. Yeah, there are too many WWII shooters out there (mostly because WWI and 'Nam don't make good shooters; in one you're just hunkering in your trench until you're ordered over the top, and then you die, while the other can't do better than Apocalypse Now). Eh.
#9: Uh... okay... If I were going to do a joke about pop culture and the Berlin Wall, I'd do The Wall.
#8: Dongs. Moving on.
#7: Moving on.
#6: I don't get it.
#5: Uh... the Lolcat meme as ancient art? I guess? How do these people judge these things?
#4: World War Two as told by an insane Wikipedia editor. "Occupation of Wall Street by USSR" is a nice touch.
#3: Historians are jokes. Or comics. Or something.
#2: Boobs. Moving on.
#1: Santa Claus is the father of us all, as evidenced by the sheer number of family pictures he's in. It's kind of funny, I guess.
Biggest missed opportunity: Pink Floyd's Berlin Wall.
#13: Waldo as a missing person. That got a little chuckle.
#12: Bad text message rap as poetry. More a sad reflection on our culture than anything else.
#11: This one took me a moment because I didn't immediately look at the picture. I'm weird like that. As soon as I got the joke, I was giggling hysterically. Go see it yourself; I can't do it justice with a description.
#10: WWII as told by a WWII shooter. Yeah, there are too many WWII shooters out there (mostly because WWI and 'Nam don't make good shooters; in one you're just hunkering in your trench until you're ordered over the top, and then you die, while the other can't do better than Apocalypse Now). Eh.
#9: Uh... okay... If I were going to do a joke about pop culture and the Berlin Wall, I'd do The Wall.
#8: Dongs. Moving on.
#7: Moving on.
#6: I don't get it.
#5: Uh... the Lolcat meme as ancient art? I guess? How do these people judge these things?
#4: World War Two as told by an insane Wikipedia editor. "Occupation of Wall Street by USSR" is a nice touch.
#3: Historians are jokes. Or comics. Or something.
#2: Boobs. Moving on.
#1: Santa Claus is the father of us all, as evidenced by the sheer number of family pictures he's in. It's kind of funny, I guess.
Biggest missed opportunity: Pink Floyd's Berlin Wall.
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