tv
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I can’t decide on whether to use the old-school all caps, since it’s an acronym, or the more modern approach of making it a standard word. I wonder: what would Nasa do? Oh. Yes. ↩︎
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It’s in The Doll’s House, issue # 13, “Men of Good Fortune”. Hob Gadling; he’s got his own Wikipedia entry ↩︎
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People often say that parliamentary elections “shouldn’t become a popularity contest.” But that, of course, is exactly what prom ones are. ↩︎
Hell and Heaven
We come to the end of what I can now confidently say was my favourite series of new Doctor Who so far. No matter how good it was when it all came back with Chris Ecc (as we still like to call him in my family); how much we liked David Tennant; how manically brilliant Matt Smith was from day one: Peter Capaldi was on fire this season, and Stephen Moffat is at the top of his game as showrunner.
Were this last pair as good as “The Empty Child”/“The Doctor Dances” or “Blink”? It’s hard to say definitively, because those were so shockingly good when they hit us. But I think in time we’ll say so. I don’t doubt that Capaldi and the production team will win BAFTAs this year, and I’m sure that one of the last two will get the Hugo.
Awards may not mean that much (though let’s face it, they do) but when you see an award-worthy performance, or read something that you know is likely to win, that deserves to win – you know you’ve experienced something special.
And we experienced something very special in this season of Doctor Who And particularly in the last three episodes.
I just read a foolish comment on a Tor.com post about how great Capaldi is. It said, in effect, “That episode was only about the gender & skin-colour switching regeneration.” Yes, that was it: it was about that one thing and nothing else.
Seriously, though, that was a nice touch.
One thing I haven’t seen or heard mentioned is how terrified the Time Lords were of him – well, Rassilon, at least: one guy, and they send a vast floating gun platform to bring him in. Of course, it turns out that Rassilon was right to be afraid.
One thing about this episode and more importantly, the previous, seems to be causing people some confusion. The Doctor didn’t spend two billion years (or whatever) in the clockwork castle. Two billion years worth of copies of him – each with some awareness of its past iterations, triggered by the word “bird” – go through a near-identical experience.
Though Hell Bent proves that even The Doctor – or Stephen Moffat – is confused by this.
Mind you, the planet on which the castle is built does experience all that time, we must assume, as The Doctor observes how the stars have changed.
What the episode does do is address the old philosophical question of whether matter transmitters make copies. In the Whoniverse at least, they do.
Unless the whole thing is a simulation, including the changing stars.
Anyway, masterful, glorious work. I’m looking forward to the Christmas special.
Heaven and Lords
I wouldn't have minded if I had guessed it myself. But one little line in the Guardian Guide prompted me. All it did was make me think of something I hadn't thought of before, but it felt like a spoiler: "The Doctor comes closer than ever before to returning to Gallifrey," or some such.
And there it was: “They” from last week had to be the Time Lords.
But why? Why did they do it? Why put the Doctor through that, just to get him to Gallifrey? And also, how? of course: how can he get to Gallifrey when it’s supposed to be locked away in some pocket universe?
And titling: why was it called “Heaven Sent”?
Great episode, by the way. Best of the season. Indeed, I predict a Hugo.
And I expect we’ll find out some of the answers next week.
Raven and... What?
Well. Well, well well.
Well.
I have to say (and spoilers here for “Face the Raven”, if you haven’t seen it yet): that was companion-exit that guarantees they won’t be able to bring her back.
OK, yes, nothing is forever in Doctor Who, and there are already rumours or suggestions that Clara will be appearing in flashbacks or similar in the next two episodes. But that really felt properly final.
And I have to say, I hope it stays that way. Nothing against Clara, or Jenna Coleman – I think she was a good companion played by a very good actor – but it just feels that they’ve done too much of bringing companions back. Sure, we all love to see them again, but really? She’s gone out with a heroic and tragic last scene. It would cheapen it to bring her back.
Unless there was a very good reason, of course.
It occurs to me: if the planned new spinoff programme, Class, is to be set in and around Coal Hill School, where Clara was teaching: what does her death mean for that, for the characters in it? Presumably some of them will be her students, or teachers who knew her.
Anyway, back to Clara, and the Raven. And maybe her death wish?
I was pleased that she mentioned Danny Pink at the end, because I’ve been thinking that it was strange that neither she nor The Doctor had mentioned him in this season. It seemed that she really hadn’t had a chance go grieve properly – or hadn’t let herself do so.
Though we don’t know how long is supposed to have passed. It could be a year, two, since the events of “Death in Heaven”. Which doesn’t mean she’d have stopped grieving – certainly not that she’d have forgotten him. But she could have got to a place where she could carry on without always thinking of him.
But then there’s her mood this series, her mad drive for more adventures, her carelessness – best shown in this very episode with the way she hung out of the Tardis1
So if we want to psychoanlayse her, we can say that she has spent the last ten episodes (and maybe longer) running away from Danny’s death, from her own feelings about it; or running towards her own eventual death, her sacrifice.
This episode for me was one of the best I’ve seen in a long time. I was considered quite contentious in my family when I said I thought that the current season was the best of New-Who. That led to much discussion of other past seasons, and my eventual acquiescence into the idea that it’s mainly the best because it’s the one that’s happening now. Like my friend Paul said a while back: “My favourite episode of Doctor Who? The next one.”
But I think the truth of it is that it has been a very even series: not great highs (except maybe this very episode) – no “Blink” or “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances” or “Father’s Day”. But no real lows, either (arguably the previous episode, but I still think it was worthwhile.) An entire season (so far) of solid, strong episodes, leading to a climax like this – and who knows what will come next?
I note in passing that this reviewer thinks like me.
Anyway. There is much more I could say – like who are the “they” who have kidnapped The Doctor? The obvious answer would be Davros and the Daleks, possibly with help from Missy. That would bookend the season nicely, and make some sense of Ashildr asking for his “Confession Dial”. But that might be too obvious.
But that’s enough for now. Quoth the Raven, “Neverwhere’s all about hidden London, isn’t it?"
Sleep and No Raven?
Well, as far as we can tell, this one isn't part one of a two parter. So I guess I should write about it on its own.
I enjoyed it immensely – well, quite a lot – but I just wish sometimes they would take the trouble to come up with good, rational explanations for the events. Relatively simple steps, only needing a few extra words – or different words – in the script, could make these episodes be so much better.
The critical example of a story like this from last season is “Kill the Moon”. As I wrote at that link, they could relatively easily have included a few words that would have made the idea less preposterous. It wouldn’t necessarily be good science, but it would at least be less-ridiculous science than the explanation that was actually given.
So too here, then, with “Sleep No More.” The atmosphere and style of the episode were great. And the plot was fine. It was just the execution of the plot, including in particular the explanation for the problem, that let it down.
Let me explain what I mean. The plot, in summary, was: In found footage a mad scientist tells us the story of some soldiers investigating a space station that has dropped out of communication. The crew have been turned into dust-zombies by a machine that enables them to function on five minutes sleep a day. The explanation for the dust conversion is stupid.
The Doctor and Clara, of course, have arrived on the station and help to investigate. Clara gets sucked into the sleep machine, which means she will become a dust monster too.
Our heroes and the surviving troops escape in the TARDIS, and the mad scientist reveals he is a dust monster and is spreading the infection via the very recording we’re watching.
As I write that I realise that the whole Clara/infection thing wasn’t resolved, and nor, of course, was the infection via radio business (it reminded me slightly of Snow Crash, incidentally). So maybe they will revisit it, next week or later.
But the ostensible explanation – before we got the radio part from the mad scientist – was that somehow the sleep-compression machine caused the sleep in the corner of your eyes to – what, grow sentient and consume humans, generating more of itself in the process? It’s hard even to explain what they were getting at.
Yet all they had to do was to say it was an alien intelligence that hade got into the mad scientist’s head and convinced him that helping it to spread was the right thing. then even have the sleep-machines infecting people via nanotechnology.
The aliens could even be cousin-species of the Vashta Nerada, as there’s a certain similarity.
Of course, that way we’d lose the radio-transmission-based spread, which was a nice touch too. So maybe nanotech that is quiescent until activated by the code sent in the transmssion.
Either way, it doesn’t take a lot of thought to come up with an idea that doesn’t break the story, but which also doesn’t jerk the viewer out of their suspension of disbelief.
And don’t get me started on the Star Trek-style powered orbit.
In my family we have concluded that what the show needs is, like UNIT, a Scientific Advisor.
Invasion and Inversion
I thought of a couple of alternative titles for this: "Old Enough to be Your Messiah." (I'll bet that played well in parts of America.) "The Basil & Petronella Show." "Who's Gonna Make the Violins?" But for consistency with my other posts. I'm sticking with this.
This was a great pair of episodes. True, some will have found it hard to understand what was going on in the first episode; and true also, the whole Zygon plot might not have entirely made sense (why, in particular, do they have electric zappy powers now, and why does that turn people into sparking wire wool?) But the overall mood, and tone, and writing, were fantastic.
Not to mention the fanservice. The references to Harry Sullivan; the portrait of the first Doctor over the safe; “Five Rounds Rapid!” (Which, I discover, is the title of Nicholas Courtney’s autobiography.) I Loved it all.
This season feels to me like it’s really solid. There are no real highs: no “Blink”, no “The Empty Child” or “Father’s Day”. But there have been no really weak episodes yet either.
On second watching I caught an interesting snippet. When the Doctor is telling Zygella why he didn’t press the big button, he says he “let Clara Oswald get into [his] head.” Then he says, “she doesn’t leave.” Maybe that’ll be the big secret reveal of this season: Clara doesn’t leave after all.
No, I realise that can’t be so, as official BBC announcements have been made. But it was an interesting change from the heavy-handed foreshadowing of her departure that we’ve seen. Clara has been the Doctor’s – and our – companion for a long time now, and it’ll be strange for all of us to adjust to someone new.
I loved the Doctor’s speech – soliloquy, you might say – that reinstated the ceasefire. It’s his statement of Doctoriness.
Still wondering if there’s a big thing for this season. I mean, apart from Clara leaving. It has to be something to do with hybrids of some kind – I noticed that the second part didn’t use that word, though the first did. The Osgoods could be said to be a hybrid, but I can’t see them coming back before the end of this run. There’s the Dalek/Time Lord thing, which will have to play out at some point.
Then there’s the Minister of War – which could just be a throwaway name like the Nightmare Child; but I think it was placed too specifically for that. And Lady Me, or Ashildr. I fully expect to see her again.
I expect we’ll have to wait for the closing two-parter, “Heaven Sent”/“Hell Bent” to find out.
But before that we’ve got “Sleep No More” on Saturday. I don’t know if it’s a two-parter with the one after, “Face the Raven”, but I’m looking forward to finding out.
Apprentice and Familiar
Out of sequence, but for completeness I should write a piece about the first two-parter in this year's Doctor Who series. "The Magician's Apprentice" and "The Witch's Familiar".
Excellent that they managed not to include the word “Dalek” in the title of a Dalek story. A genuine surprise when the boy in the minefield said his name.
And great, great interplay between Missy and Clara, especially.
But if we assume, as we must, that the Magician is The Doctor and Missy is the Witch , does that make Clara both the Apprentice and the Familar? Or is Davros one of all of the above? It’s all very mysterious.
And Dalek/Time Lord hybrids? This can’t end well.
Wait, though: following on from my previous: The Doctor isn’t the Scarecrow: he’s the Wizard. But then, who is behind the curtain?
Died and Lived
Some quick thoughts on the "The Girl Who Died"/"The Woman Who LIved" Doctor Who diptych.
It’s unusual and intriguing to see what was effectively a two-part story with different writing credits for each part. Yet there was no real need for these two episodes to be shown back-to-back, and indeed I partly got the sense that they might have been stronger if they had been separated by a few other stories.
On the other hand I’m fairly sure that the second part had to happen now because they’re gearing up to something. Maisie Williams’s Ashildr or “Me” character is, I feel sure, fundamental to this season’s overall story, if it has one.
After the first part I had the idea that Ashildr was going to become “The Minister of War”, the mysterious figure that was referred to by O’Donnell in “Under the Lake” as being something that 1980 was before – along with the moon blowing up and Harold Saxon.
Such an ominous-sounding figure is surely going to be an enemy of The Doctor, and at the end of “The Girl Who Died” he had created a near immortal who might not be at all happy with him about the situation, and who might use her longevity to gain power.
As indeed was the case, as we saw in “The Woman Who Lived”. However by the end of the second part I was less sure that Ashildr’s future role will be that one. It seems fairly likely that she’s going to have one, though, with her promise to pick up the pieces after The Doctor runs away, the giant foreshadowing of Clara’s departure, and of course her appearance in the background of Clara’s pupil’s photo.
However I get the feeling that her intentions will be more benign.
All just wild speculation, of course.
This pair of episodes were probably the weakest of the series so far, but they were still very good. Effective lightening of the mood with the comedy elements, while still not shying away from the darkness.
One last thought: in the pub scene at the end there were two people at a table in the foreground. I haven’t checked yet, but I’m fairly sure that the shot was a visual allusion to the Sandman episode whose title escapes me,1 but in which Death agrees with her brother that she won’t take this one guy, and Morpheus meets him in taverns every hundred years. Which would tie in with the immortality theme, of course.
Oh, and: on Jason Snell’s Incomparable Flashcast about the second part (which episode Mr Snell wasn’t on, but never mind), the alien was likened to an “angry Cowardly Lion”. Now I’m sure there was also a mention by The Doctor of Ashildr’s heart “rusting” or “needing lubrication”, or some such – which was surely a reference to the Tin Woodsman. Which makes The Doctor The Scarecrow?
And Clara is Toto, of course, since Missy already likened her to a small dog.
I’m sure it’ll all make sense eventually.
Lake and Flood
Well, I'm not quite sure that Toby Whithouse quite managed to make the second episode as good as the first, but I'm loving the new series of Doctor Who.
The Beethoven bit at the start was unnecessary: a rare example of the modern show not expecting the viewer to keep up, but assuming they’ll need an explanation – a pre-explanation in this case, but still. (Also breaking the fourth wall; most unusual.)
On the other hand, maybe some people would have been a bit lost at the end without it. Maybe all of us would have missed the point and weeks later we’d have gone “Wait, but he only did that because he –” Which has its own pleasure too, of course.
My main concern was that The Doctor let O’Donnell die, without any apparent remorse. I have a feeling that might come back to haunt him.
Also: loving the two-parters. Proper cliffhangers and all. How about a traditional four-parter next season?
Newsflash: the Firefly guys were villains
Malcolm Reynolds’ twelve-headed hydra wang of hate for the alliance doesn’t come from outrage over the dubious morality of a couple of black bag cabals within the government
An excellent analysis of Firefly and Serenity, by someone who loves them as all right-thinking people should.
via Newsflash: the Firefly guys were villains | Jay Kristoff - Literary Giant.
An elective monarchy, again
I was reminded of my recent post when I watched Thursday night’s The Big Bang Theory. It was the episode where they try to recreate a high-school prom — at their originals of which, all of them but Penny had bad experiences, of course.
Sheldon refers to the possibility of him being “elected Prom King,” and goes on to say that he’ll point out that kings aren’t elected.
He’s smart, but not that smart. Prom Kings and Queens, by definition, are elected, and in that context, that’s what the words mean.1
And words mean what we make them mean, and meanings change all the time.
Space bat angel dragons hatch in their own way
Sometimes you're thinking about writing a blog post and then you write a long comment on someone else's post that contains most of what you were planning on saying. So I wrote this as a comment on The Reinvigorated Programmer, and thought I should repeat it here.
The background: Mike, the Programmer and Doctor Who fan, if that’s not too tautologous, was complaining about the latest episode, “Kill the Moon”. Now, I didn’t think it was all that bad, as these things go, but I knew that other people, on Facebook and elsewhere, have both complained about it and praised it. Which seems to be par for the course this series (and maybe every series). Anyway, I had some thoughts on the matter, and put them like this.
I was disappointed that they didn’t put in at least a handwavy explanation of the extra mass (which they could have done: posit highly-effecient energy-to-mass conversion, and the sun). But as people have said in other places, you’re accepting a time-travelling, dimensionally-transcendental blue box, and a regenerating Time Lord, so…?
As to the biology of the creature… well, it’s alien. Possibly one of a kind. Why wouldn’t it lay an egg as soon as it hatched? Remembering that “egg” and “hatch” are only our Terracentrist words for something entirely other.
Indeed, that could be exactly why the creature’s mass spikes in the last few years or months of its dormant cycle: it’s forming the new “egg” so it itself will be ready to “hatch”.
And by default it would be in the same orbit, unless something displaced it.
But yes, while you can argue all that, the story would have been improved if it had included at least a nod to those points. And they should have got their sums right.
But I think there’s something bigger going on across this whole series. It’s the development of Clara’s character, and Danny’s secret, and everything. It’s more: I just have a feeling that there’s something else behind it all. Maybe I’ve just been trained to expect a season arc since the Bad Wolf, but… there’s definitely something going on.
And Missy and the promised land, of course.
Someone somewhere suggested that maybe the whole series is taking place in a miniscope, since the Doc mentioned them in episode 3. I hope it’s more than that.
The Felice Brothers
As if there weren’t enough reasons to love Outnumbered already, we recently saw an old Christmas special. It ended with the family watching the telly and singing along to a song. I didn’t know it, but liked the sound of it.
The internet knows all, and a bit of googling told me it was ‘Frankie’s Gun!’ by The Felice Brothers.
Emusic has the relevant album, and it’s great. Highly recommended.
Also their site tells me they’re playing London on the 20th of March. Hmmm…
Aliens Among Us
I never bothered to watch Alien Resurrection because I didn’t like Alien3 (or Cubed, as I always see it). So now, browsing the new, freshly-in-beta SF Encyclopaedia I find it was written by Joss Whedon (who doesn’t yet have an entry in said volume, but no doubt will have eventually).
Why did nobody tell me this?
It seems a particularly timely piece of information as we’ve been introducing the kids to Buffy recently (in part to get us all over the lack of Doctor Who), and also to Firefly. We are deep in the Whedonverse.
Golden times of British TV comedy
It has come to my attention that there are some of you who are not aware of two of the best British comedy programmes to come out over the last year or so. Both have links to Green Wing1, which was, of course, famously described (by me) as “the funniest thing since Absolutely“.
First we have Episodes (actually a British-American coproduction), starring Tamsin Greig and Stephen Mangan, in which a married-couple writing team go to Hollywood to adapt their hit British comedy show for the American market. It also stars Matt LeBlanc, playing himself. Yes, it’s all very meta, and what’s wrong with that?
Then there’s Campus, which has some of the Green Wing writing team, and could lazily be described as “Green Wing, but set in a university instead of a hospital”2.
If you are one such person, then I slightly envy you: you still have these joys ahead of you. And with both of them, don’t worry if the first episode doesn’t overwhelm you; just watch the next, and you’ll be hooked.
Cheerleader Saved, World Saved...
... for now, at least
(What, you think that’s a spoiler? You saw the future world when Sylar had healing powers: obviously that one wasn’t going to come true).
You know, some things shouldn’t have a second series. They are perfect bite-sized little vignettes as they are (OK, pretty big bites, and not so much of the “ette”, in this case). Their story is told, and while it may not have a tidy conclusion to every thread, it has at least reached a satisfying point at which to stop; there are no downright cliffhangers left.
And that’s like life: there are no beginnings, no endings; not really. Only a continuing narrative that we pay more or less attention to; and that we eventually have to stop reading (or writing), and put away forever (which last fact is intensely annoying, and the sooner we can edit it out of our reality, the better).
I’m sad that Heroes is over; but in a way I’m sadder that it’s going to go on. Because there will be inevitable deterioration – I read recently that Tim Kring has apologised about the quality of some Season 2 eps (oh, there are a few mild spoilers for Season 2 at that link; or not so mild, depending on how you feel about them) – there will be shark-jumping. And eventually it may fall to the lowest common denominator of all serial drama: soap opera.
I’m looking at you, Desperate Housewives.
And things that should go on, that need to go on, don’t get to. One of these days – and it must be soon, I think – Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip is going to finish, and then it’ll be gone forever, irrespective of what plot threads are dangling. Bummer.
I fully support the WGA writers' strike, by the way.
Alias Doc and Martha
The new __Doctor Who__ episode was butt-kicking excellence! And Martha is a worthy successor to Rose.
Just replacing the sonic screwdriver like that was a bit of a copout, mind: given that it got destroyed, I thought that they might try to make something of him _not_ having it.
Still, that’s a very minor nitpick; it was much better than the start of the previous series (also set in a hospital, curiously).
A really strong start.
Updated to say: I’m guessing that the “Vote Saxon” poster is the first reference to whatever this season’s “Bad Wolf” may be.
Unless it’s just a reference to a dodgy heavy metal band.
[tags]Doctor Who, tv, sf[/tags]
Welcome to Torchwood
Well, Saturday the 1st of July, 2006 will go down in my personal history as something of a special day. First I manage to end up actually feeling sorry for the England football team (except for the idiot Wayne Rooney) — or more for their supporters, really, in the form of my kids. Then Russell T Davies and the BBC give us the glory that is ‘Army of Ghosts’. Warning: spoilers follow.
Calling all Green Wing fans
Would any kind person out there have a copy of last Friday’s Green Wing on video they could lend me? I had an accidental-taping-over-disaster before we had watched it.
Other formats are acceptable too, of course.
Thanks.
TV roundup: what I've been watching recently
Turning away from politics, for a wee while, I’ve been finding things have been pretty good in the TV world, recently.
I thoroughly enjoyed Life On Mars on BBC 1, recently. I expected slightly better — or at least different — of it when it was first announced: I thought there would be more (or some) ambiguity or doubt about whether Sam Tyler was experiencing it all in his mind while in a coma, or had actually travelled in time.
Shortly after the start there was no such ambiguity about that, and we were deep in The Bridge or Marabou Stork Nightmares territory (if you can compare a TV series with a novel, then I’d say it’s better than the latter but nowhere near as good (obviously) as the former). What I was hoping for in the final episode, though, is that Sam would wake up back in 2006; and that he would then look into the history of the personnel at the station, and find that Gene Hunt and the others (and DI Sam Tyler, for that matter) really existed. Maybe he would even look up a now-aged and retired Gene, an Annie who is a grandmother.
Obvious, maybe, but it could have been a nice touch.
I had some mixed feelings about the whole thing, though. I wanted it to be resolved and completed, for dramatic satisfaction. But I so much enjoyed the interactions between the characters (especially the growing and grudging respect between Tyler and Hunt) and the quality of most of the stories that I became (and remain) keen to see more. If he had woken up, there would be no going back.
The West Wing maintained its high standard through the recent season (in fact this season, 6, was significantly better than 5 was, I would say) and I’m profoundly glad that we got a digibox and so could watch it on the excellent More4, rather than having to wait for the DVDs to be released. More4 are taking us straight into season 7, so only 22 21 more weeks and then it’s over forever.
More4 is also where we get The Daily Show With John Stewart, to give it its full-length name. This is just a fabulous show; hilarious, thought-provoking and informative. What more could you ask for?
Well, I could ask for something as good — and in a similar vein — for Britain.
The IT Crowd was disappointing enough after two or three episodes that I didn’t bother to work around its clashing with The West Wing on Friday nights). I’ve read some positive comments on it, though, and it ought to have been good, given its pedigree; so maybe I’ll watch out for the repeats. I wonder if that stupid announcer ever stopped calling it ‘The it Crowd’, though?
Hyperdrive was largely disappointing, and Invasion just petered out: that is, I petered out of watching it.
Most importantly (in comedy, at least): at last they’ve started showing the trailers I’ve been waiting for: “New Green Wing. Nearly ready.” Hooray! The funniest comedy of the last few years: right up there with Absolutely I can hardly wait.
And to top all that, my old friend from uni, Paul Cockburn inadvertently reminds me that the new Doctor Who will be starting quite soon. Fantastic!
[tags]tv, television, green wing, Doctor Who, absolutely, the west wing, the daily show[/tags]