The Final ... Frontier?

OOAC on Indigenous Futurism

"Did we really say that?"

We sure did, and do. Sometimes it just takes hearing someone point something out and you realize, again, how growing up in a settler colonial state bakes in some messed up shit.

The connection this episode made for me was with Stan Robinson's Aurora, where the dark side of Roddenberry's vision of the space exploration, and how closely we need to scrutinize how that vision informs our collective ideas about, and implementation of, the space program. 

KSR on The Antifada Podcast

Currently listening ... Antifada ft. Will Menaker: Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism w/ Kim Stanley Robinson

Attack the Blockheads: The Doctor Is a Woman, Deal With It

Jodie Whittaker debuts as 13 in the announcement video.

It's as simple as this: the "the character must be a man" argument is invalid. The Corsair, the General, the Master/Missy all prove canon allows it. Time Lords can change gender and skin pigmentation during regeneration, exactly as you'd expect given their hair color, eye color, apparent age, etc., can all change. (We'll come back to skin pigmentation in a bit ...)  There is absolutely no canonical, in-universe reason the character we know as the Doctor can't be female. The argument that the Doctor must be a man, when made despite these clear examples, reveals itself to be no more than: "I can only accept the character as male." You don't have to like it. But, I'm afraid you do have to accept that you can't argue against it except to argue that your feelings on the matter should trump the decisions of the shows producers. Which, of course, is patently ridiculous.

If you can't accept a female Doctor, then see you, wouldn't want to be you. I'm sure the feeling is mutual and we can agree to disagree without speaking to each other about the matter again. But what that means is if you go on twitter or the fan group on facebook to continue making the bad argument, the rest of us don't have to humor you.

Nobody's saying you have to like the casting, or even that you aren't entitled to your opinion based on your feelings about the whole thing. Only that you need to recognize an opinion isn't an argument, and doesn't warrant being treated like one. When you've got a reactionary opinion, you should expect to mocked and/or blocked for it.

There's an argument that the decision is bad because the show's ratings are down, and the controversy will drive away more fans than it will draw back or retain, and this could kill the show. That's a lousy argument as well. For one, we won't know until next season starts how the ratings will be impacted. Even when we get the overnights for the first episode, we'll need to see how the new writers do, and what impact the new production team has on the show overall, as well as how well Whittaker does in the role; it's only the combination of all those factors, plus other factors (what the show is up against on other networks, for example) that will drive the ratings. It's far more likely, IMO, the first episode will get higher ratings because of all the attention the casting has received ... how much of that initial bump can be retained once the novelty wears off will be interesting to see. Without the data, arguing that "change is too risky" with regard to this show in particular looks disingenuous. Leaning on this argument signals that you're concern trolling to mask the fact you're actually making a case for your He-Man Woman Hating Club position. All the indications I've seen are that there's skepticism about Chibnall, and had he cast another white dude, it would've only endeared him to reactionaries, while giving fans looking for the show to stop emulating the post-Jackie Robinson Red Sox (famously and shamefully the last MLB team to field an African-American player) even more reason to de-prioritize watching.

I hope to see more public support from past Doctors and companions ... Sylvester, Billie, Freema, Karen, Arthur, Janet Fielding, and others have shown their support. Hoping to see a new video message from Tom Baker, something from McGann, Eccleston, Tennant, and Smith.

I've been watching with interest how Six has outclassed Five by a wide margin since the announcement. What's with Davison saying give the frightened a coddle first thing, anyways? That's your first reaction, before congratulating the new Doctor? Harumph. I've always liked Davison, never saw or heard anything that made me think he might be a jerk, but this hasn't sat well with me ...

I didn't make it to Raleigh's Con this past weekend, but there's video of the Alex "River Song" Kingston getting the news ... and it's priceless:



A little more intersectionality might've been in order, the Doctor is *still* white. Let's hope that's also addressed in the next regeneration. We don't know yet how they'll handle her sexuality, it's been a little fluid the last several years, but it remains to be seen if she'll have any, for starters, and how much of whatever type it turns out to be.

---

Some more tweets that caught my eye getting appended below:

Flipping marvelous news that the supremely talented #JodieWhittaker is DW13 with @ChrisChibnall in the chair your in for a treat #abouttime pic.twitter.com/LCxerMx0k0

— Sean Pertwee (@seanpertwee) July 17, 2017

Welcome, JODIE!

I happen to know one of your sparkling predecessors, my beloved Jon Pertwee, would be over his... https://t.co/7hV8tdTZQt

— John Levene OFFICIAL (@John_Levene) July 18, 2017

Holy moley! The BBC are brave enough! Jodie Whittaker is the 13th Doctor. I'm sure she will be brilliant❣️👏🏻👍🏻💕Great choice @ChrisChibnall 💝

— Nicola Bryant (@thenicolabryant) July 16, 2017

a message from Sylvester!

"Congratulations Jodie Whittaker!!!!! One small step for Women, one Giant leap for Womenkind!!"

— Sylvester McCoy (@4SylvesterMcCoy) July 16, 2017

G'wan Jodie !!!! This is amazing news. Well done Dr Who world #drwho #jodiewhittaker #ladiesnight .... 🌎👏🌎👏🌎 pic.twitter.com/BpGIXc0cwS

— Billie Piper (@billiepiper) July 17, 2017

Meet the 13th!

Meet the Thirteenth Doctor #DoctorWho #Doctor13 http://pic.twitter.com/wycdcneZ7o

— BBC One (@BBCOne) July 16, 2017

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Thin Ice - "Human progress isn't measured by industry, it's measured by the value you place on a life. An unimportant life. A life without privilege."

Thin Ice (Doctor Who) - Wikipedia

Series 10, Story 03 (Overall Series Story #268) | Previous - Next | Index

Image via lauraforthewinoswald

The question comes up all the time, "What's a good episode of Doctor Who for a newbie to start with?" "Thin Ice" may be my new answer.

If you've read this blog or my twitter, you know where I stand on the "Should Nazis Be Punched?" question. (My position, in case you don't me, is yes. Yes, Nazis should be punched, no-platformed, heckled, jeered and otherwise made to feel Nazism is unacceptable behavior.) When the Doctor decks a white supremacist, this became my instant favorite of the new season. The speech -- people are calling it a speech, but it isn't exactly the "The Zygon Invasion/Inversion," Black Archive speech -- is that comes a moment after the punch made we want to leap off the couch and punch the sky.

SUTCLIFFE: Girl, you show the ignorance of all your kind. Without that beast, my mills would rely on coal mines, and men die in coal mines all the time.
DOCTOR: I preferred it when you were alien.
SUTCLIFFE: When I was?
DOCTOR: Well, that explained the lack of humanity. What makes you so sure that your life is worth more than those people out there on the ice? Is it the money? The accident of birth that puts you inside the big, fancy house?
SUTCLIFFE: I help move this country forward. I move this Empire forward.
DOCTOR: Human progress isn't measured by industry, it's measured by the value you place on a life. An unimportant life. A life without privilege. The boy who died on the river, that boy's value is your value. That's what defines an age. That's what defines a species.
SUTCLIFFE: What a beautiful speech. The rhythm and, and vocabulary, quite outstanding. It's enough to move anyone with an ounce of compassion. So, it's really not your day, is it?

Such fisticuffs and moralizing, it's feeling very Pertwee Era up in here. (As Sandifer notes, the first death, a drunk who wanders away from the crowd, is also reminiscent of the Pertwee era where local color fatalities were often used to establish the menace in the early going.) There's one other way this episode put me in the mind of tail end of Pertwee's run ... it has to do with the companion.

Bill's anguish upon witness her first death is heart-breaking. She's great here. (Bill, the character, and Pearl playing the role of Bill.) It's early, but as much as I've loved Rose, Martha, Donna, and Clara, Bill is the first companion I've found myself feeling the same way I felt (gulp) about Sarah Jane Smith. There, I said it. Just a few days after the anniversary of Lis Sladen passing away it feels like there is another character on the show capable of inspiring the same affection.. Still, it's early, and thanks to all the information/rumor we fans have available to us about the production, I'm already accepting that she's meant to be a one season companion who'll be replaced, along with this Doctor, in the change to a new showrunner for Series 11. I don't expect she'll have enough time to fully inherit that mantle, much as I find myself wishing now she'd be allowed the time to do so.

This season's start is significantly strengthened by the third episode, surpassing the introduction and rebounding nicely from the slight misstep of the second episode. Next week's has a bit of the look of the Series 7 haunted house story, "Hide." Or maybe it puts you in the mind of the house where Sally Sparrow finds the Angels?


Odds-n-ends:

• There were maybe two wrong notes struck in the episode. First, Bill's appreciative glance at the Doctor after his mini-speech was how we all felt, but shooting that to really draw our attention to Bill's reaction, right in that moment, felt a bit over-the-top. Weirdly, because as I said, I think every viewer with an ounce compassion reacted exactly as she did. Second, the Pete joke would've totally worked for me in any episode prior to Rory being disappeared and Amy forgetting he ever existed. Sure, the Doctor moves on, as this episode makes clear but given how he's seen that actually play out ... and moreover knowing that his memory of Clara had been expunged, it just didn't seem like joke he could make at this point in his timeline. Then again, Capaldi is always reminding us the Doctor is alien, a Time Lord, and to expect human reactions or inhibitions from him is a mistake. 
• Sorry, a third off-note, the Jesus name drop. Don't get me wrong, I love that he references the whitewashing of history. It's just I don't ever want to see a show that does this many Christmas specials go anywhere near a Jesus story, or even imply such a story could happen. When the Doctor mentioned Jesus, it immediately made me think of mawkishness in "The Romans," and that awful Third Doctor Puffin e-book, "The Spear of Destiny."
• This episode was written by Sarah Dollard. If Chris Chibnall doesn't bring her back when he takes over the show, shame on him.

---

Additional Resources:
Tardis Wikia Entry
chakoteya.net transcript
Sandifer post

There is of course a thin line between this and just saying I like the episode because of its politics. And to be fair, I do like the episode because of its politics. I mean, the Doctor literally sucker punches a racist. Of course I like it. Shit, I suspect even Jack is going to turn out to like it. Yes, most of its overtly political statements are very right-on and generic ones that are easily traced to common social justice rhetoric on Twitter. But Smile’s politics were just as generic. The difference, and the reason this works as opposed to just being a confused mess, isn’t just that the politics are good, it’s that they’re coherent. This is a story where all the ideas are actually pointing the same way. The story is about exploitation, and so Bill talks about slavery, points out the erasure of black people from history, and confronts a racist shitlord. Where Smile spent most of its time having no idea what it wanted to be, taking up and discarding ideas willy nilly, Thin Ice knows exactly what it wants to do.

AV Club review (A grade)

After a pair of introductory episodes that established a promising new TARDIS team amid only so-so adventures, the Doctor and Bill finally get a story and a script worthy of them with Sarah Dollard’s brilliant “Thin Ice.” There’s much to celebrate about this episode, but more than anything else is just how much watching it made me smile. Peter Capaldi and Pearl Mackie are a brilliant comedic double act, with the Doctor especially getting a ton of great lines. Their early exchange about the temporally deleted companion Pete has fun with what could otherwise be standard companion questions about the perils of time travel. 

TV Tropes recap
The Guardian recap

Smile - "Well, it would be a worry, so best not to dwell on it."

Smile (Doctor Who) - Wikipedia 

Series 10, Story 02 (Overall Series Story #267) | Previous - Next | Index

Image via the official Doctor Who tumblr

My first thought was the lazy, "Make the reaction post all emojis," one. In my defense, this episode was unremarkable enough that I didn't feel like putting much thought into trying tease any meaning out of it, put it down, or boost it up. Or anything really. I wasn't bothered by it. I watched it twice without being irritated. I was just never engaged.

👀X2
"😃😓💀😵😶"
😑


Odds-n-ends:

• When the Doctor mentions he's encountered some of these Earth evacuation ships before, I took him to mean the events described in "The Ark," and "The Beast Below." "The Ark in Space" also felt relevant here. (Now there's a story I'm ready to watch again.) But, that trying to figure out what this one might have to do with anyof the others I'll leave as an exercise for a future date. (These posts are stubs I mean to come back to and flesh out later, rememember.)
• The colony ship is named for a Samuel Butler novel that I haven't read. And (you may be sensing a theme here) I wasn't intrigued enough by the selection, or what I found out about it by scanning the wikipedia entry, to read it and search for deeper connections.
• Nitpicky, but I was underwhelmed by the robots' emoji face designs. The death skull one looked amateur. For walking UIs of a new AI life form, they weren't very expressive.
• Read some comparisons to Black Mirror when checking the reviews for this story. The setting did feel Black Mirror, but even by BM's kind of low bar, this didn't feel as Twilight Zone-y as a BM usually does.
• Bill continues to work well as a companion, and I didn't mind Nardole getting the brush off. Her (ignored) curiosity about why the Earth had to be evacuated after seeing the history e-book felt like it might be significant, like we might find out more. (Or, maybe we already have and I'm forgetting it ...)
• Only in reading the AV Club review linked below did it become clear that this episode revisits the theme of the "baddie" who's just different. Hunger looks like evil when you're on the wrong end of the cutlery, the Doctor observed last week. This week he points out the Vardie (sp?) were an emergent new life form without the proper context to interpret their coding.

---

Additional Resources:
Tardis Wikia Entry
chakoteya.net transcript
Sandifer post

The “damn with faint praise” aspect, however, comes from the fact that you can’t actually put the bar much higher than “oh, hey, Cottrell-Boyce avoided fucking up this time.” The script still never soars. Worse, as with In the Forest of the Night, the moments where it tries to soar are generally its weak points. The script has an awkward habit of leering in and insisting that you find it clever, and these bits don’t often correspond to when it’s being clever. The repetition of the “skeleton crew” joke twice in rapid succession and the thickly laid on “can’t you call the police” line are the two most obvious examples. But equally frustrating are the things it doesn’t unpack - the declaration that the Vardies are a form of sentient life isn’t set up nearly well enough, and more broadly the resolution is full of ideas that are actually worth exploring, but that the script has left no time to explore because it wanted to be an ostentatious two-hander for a while.

AV Club review - Grades it B+ (seems high)

As a story in its own right, well… this is the early-season, far-future episode for a new TARDIS team. In that regard, it follows “The End Of The World,” “New Earth,” “Gridlock,” “Planet Of The Ood,” “The Beast Below,” and “Into The Dalek.” There are some good episodes in that bunch—“Planet Of The Ood” is legitimately great—and a few underrated efforts, but there’s a general pattern there of undercooked narratives that favor characterization over airtight plotting. That’s not such a bad thing for a story whose function is to establish the new iteration of the show’s central characters, but it can only excuse so much the flimsiness of this episode’s premise. The trouble is that, like the magic haddock the Doctor keeps mentioning, the Vardi aren’t meant to be good or evil, just different in their thinking from the humans.

TV Tropes page
Simon's Incoherent Blog

... Smile was a fairly average, even derivative episode salvaged somewhat by some excellent direction, some nice dialogue and the usual excellent performances. I’m heartened that, unlike last time, Frank Cottrell Boyce has given us a script that feels like it belongs in Doctor Who; next time though, he might want to try relying rather less on its past.

 Locations Guide
I read somewhere this was shot in Valencia, expect the location guide will be updated to reflect that when the entry for this story is created.

The Pilot - "Look, I know you know lots of stuff about, well, basically everything, but do you know any sci-fi?"

The Pilot - Wikipedia

Series 10, Story 01 (Overall Series Story #266) | Previous - Next | Index

Trippy Bill, image via GIPHY

In "Hell Bent," the Doctor explains the Matrix to Clara as "a big computer made of ghosts, in a crypt, guarded by more ghosts." He might as well have been a critic analyzing the show itself. This episode hammers the point home: Doctor Who is a show made of ghosts. Ghosts, echoes, reflections ... positively every scene is haunted by an element of its past.

And, that's OK. Everything old becomes new again, after all.

But, I don't want to start there. Rather, let's consider how Doctor Who exists in a TV universe alongside a show like The Expanse -- a series which I also enjoy very much, despite it's stark differences from DW. This is a tangent that probably has no place in a reaction post to this episode, but hear me out. The Expanse is classic, almost Heinlein-ian hard sci-fi. No time travel, no FTL travel, not even transporters or replicators; it's a show that, at first, we could be excused for thinking could never have anything to do with the magic-y, ghost-laden sci-fi/fantasy of the DW universe. Yet the Roci and her crew are exactly the sort of ship the TARDIS has materialized aboard any number of times. This Doctor and Bill could totally drop in to any of The Expanse's settings and the show would instantly be Doctor Who in a way Doctor Who could never be The Expanse.

Consider "The Waters of Mars," for instance. It's one of the haunts in "The Pilot," you couldn't help but recall it when Heather got all watery. That crew and that base are an example of exactly the kind of milieu the Doctor drops into all the time; but, imagine if the TARDIS never materialized near that particular base. The story of the Mars colony in "Waters" could have been a show of it's own. A show that might have been very, very like The Expanse. (The protomolecule not so unlike the life found on Mars ... ) This isn't to say DW is better than The Expanse, or that they *should* crossover, only how easy it is to imagine they could once you concede that DW, while not hard sci-fi, encompasses that genre, without being of it. DW is large, it contains multitudes. It is, after a fashion, bigger on the inside.

(This isn't to argue that Doctor Who is better than The Expanse, as a series or episode vs. episode. I dig The Expanse and don't intend to slog it, only to use it as a means to consider one facet of what's magical about DW.)

Reviewers that get to watch the episodes and write about them well before I do have already done an ace job ticking off all the boxes I might've here -- things like noticing the piece of the Mary Celeste down in the basement of the university where the Doctor's got a vault he's protecting -- so I'll link them, per usual, below and recommend giving 'em a read through.

Odds-n-ends:

• Pearl Mackie deserves every nice thing that's been said about her as Bill. If some asshole has disparaged her performance in print, on the web, or out and about ... well, fuck that asshole because he's an idiot.
• Look, it's very meta. But it stays this side of being entertaining because and in spite of how meta it is. It's not a new pilot, but it toys with the idea it could be.
• I'm OK with Nardole, for now. I wasn't sure about him coming back for the last special, am less sure I want him sticking around as companion for a full season ... but maybe there's a point to him, and he's got good chemistry with the Doctor anyways. Worried though that I'll be sick of him soon.
• Susan is going to be back, in some way, shape, or form, yeah? I mean, OK, I was sure she was going to be back a while ago, too, but this time it looks like a mortal lock.
• Starting to read rumors today, not sure how credible, that David Bradley is going to return to play the First Doctor like we nearly have been asking for him to do since An Adventure in Space and Time. That would certainly make the return of Susan more likely. 
• It should probably go without saying, but how great is it that Bill is gay and it's not A Very Special Episode of Doctor Who forced big deal? Extra great.
• The way this episode shows moments in time as fixed images during the Doctor's lecture on the subject was quite well-executed, I thought. More of this kind of visual storytelling, please. Will the show take little risks like that under Chibnall? I worry that it won't. As much as we all have Moffat-fatigue to some degree or other, we may miss him more than even his biggest fans might think possible when he's no longer involved.
• I cringed at the "I fatted her" joke even though it wasn't body shaming, the opposite, in fact. So I shouldn't have cringed, but I still wished Moffat hadn't even gone there. Is that some vestigial liberal guilt thing holding me back from appreciating a moment where a TV show, perhaps bravely, says "yeah, that girl is big, but she's sexy, deal with it"? 
• The badge on Bill's jacket, that's the ghost of Ace. (Whose badges, it must be said, were much cooler.)

---

Additional Resources:
Tardis Wikia Entry
chakoteya.net transcript
Sandifer post 

This results in an episode that’s not so much uneven as threadbare. He [Moffat] clears so much room for selling the mundaneness of Bill that the episode plot is an afterthought. The puddle - that’s clearly what this monster needs to be called - is, charitably, a minimalist creation. Its explanation does not make anything vaguely resembling sense, and more to the point doesn’t actually try to. The best bits end up being what they often are with Moffat, which is the ritual performance of set pieces. His last big “bigger on the inside” is his most baroque yet, a glorious shaggy dog working its way towards the straightforward classic resolution. Objecting to the TARDIS being named in English is a solid choice of “let’s have Bill say something different.” The Australia gag’s actually great. As are a plethora of details: the Doctor’s “how can I help,” Bill’s “I don’t think they’re mine,” and of course Susan, River, and the TARDIS yelling at the Doctor to take her as a companion. But the whole is less than the sum of its parts. It still adds up to a lot, but that’s still an entirely true statement about “The Pilot.”

AV Club review - gives it a B grade.

A Steven Moffat episode is always good for at least one brilliant, off-kilter observation on the nature of the world. The Doctor’s explanation of how hungry looks a lot like evil from the wrong end of the cutlery is this episode’s entry in that particular canon.

TV Tropes page

When Bill and Heather first meet, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is playing in the background.

Forgot to mention how much I loved that.

Radio Times

Locations guide

All 26 seasons of classic Doctor Who finally have a U.S. streaming home

All 26 seasons of classic Doctor Who finally have a U.S. streaming home | SyfyWire

This is legit exciting for me, at least, because I haven't been able to get a hold of Pertwee's final story, "Planet of the Spiders," and haven't seen it in probably 35 years.

~whispers~ BritBox won't want to hear this, but I'm planning to take advantage of the free trial to binge the heck out of stories I haven't seen in ages and don't own on DVD.

As We Await New York 2140, Worth Remembering How Great "The Gold Coast" Is

Of course the great modern SF novel of the suburbs' failed promise is Kim Stanley Robinson's THE GOLD COAST. http://pic.twitter.com/PAlBMeiifF

— P Nielsen Hayden (@pnh) March 5, 2017

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"If we fight like animals, we will die like animals!"

BBC Latest News - Doctor Who - The 2017 Series… Returning Writers, Cast Updates and More!:

Episode 9 of Doctor Who’s 2017 series is written by Rona Munro, author of the very last Doctor Who story of the show’s original 26-year run – the seminal and highly acclaimed 1989 Seventh Doctor adventure Survival.

Personally, I'd like to see even more Munros writing Doctor Who.

Apropos of my recent "Vengeance on Varos" post ...

I don't mean to get all CONTROVERSIAL but Kathryn VanArendonk wrote my favorite paragraph of at least this month: http://pic.twitter.com/sdSSV7akRx

— Joss Whedon (@joss) October 27, 2016

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Vengeance on Varos - "I think he needs more than water, Peri. Eh?"

BBC - Doctor Who Classic Episode Guide - Vengeance on Varos - Details

Season 22, Story 02 (Overall Series Story #139) | Previous - Next | Index

Peri, we feel the same way about Season 22.

"Fifteen Million Merits," the second episode of Black Mirror is ostensibly (per wikipedia) a "satire on entertainment shows and our insatiable thirst for distraction," an assessment I don't agree with, but I was struck by how much its world-building proceeds from "Vengeance on Varos." I don't mean to say anyone involved in Black Mirror cares, or even knows, about Doctor Who's lamentable 22nd season, only that it's a straight line from Arak's and Etta's living room in 1985's dystopian future to Abi's and Bing's lives in 2011's dystopian future. Saward & company hadn't lived through the turn of the millennium and the ascent of reality TV yet, but they were onto something.

The Black Mirror episode tacks, I think, towards blaming the politics of mass distraction on the distracted. It's better television than what DW was managing, but DW has the virtue, in this case, of being more radical. It ends with a question, and what could be read as a dawning realization ... where Black Mirror feels far more cynical. Now, that's a real surprise, as mid-80s Doctor Who, until its demise, felt like little more than an exercise in cynical brand exploitation with a side of all-but-incoherent philosophizing.

As a youngster I loathed "Vengeance." The flaws I remember all too well are still evident, but I'm more inclined to excuse its terrible acting, unsubtle writing, and even its didactic tendencies, because it at least is willing to wear its anger on its sleeve. Even if it's pretty much incoherent on the subject. BM, on the other hand, deployed its superior acting and writing in the service of satire that fails give a baddie as blameworthy as Sil.

I disagree with the consensus on this one: it's not better than "Attack of the Cybermen." It is merely the second-best story of Season 22. Or, put another way, the second prettiest turd in the sewer.


Odds-n-ends:

• On what level, if any, does the infamous "Forgive me if I don't join you" line work? Is it a critique of Bond and Schwarzenegger? Is it mere apeing?  How is that a Doctor line?  It can't be, can it? Could it have worked if delivered sadly? Delivered smugly, it's one of the most un-Doctorly lines in all the series. That later incarnations of the Doctor disavow the War Doctor, but not this one, doesn't jibe.
• Jason Connery, Sean's son, later plays Robin Hood in what I remember being as dreary a take on the legend as ever was made. His acting must have improved though. It being notably dreadful isn't one of the first things to come to mind about it, at least.
• The opening scene, Jondar (Connery) being tortured on TV, doesn't only present violence as entertainment as a moral failing, the voting aspect makes it a political commentary as well. 
• "That is what our secret payments to you are for." Clumsy Expository Writing 101
• The set up isn't half-bad. A one-resource world, at the mercy of capitalist exploitation, where the militarized government doesn't serve its citizenry (militarized as it is primarily against its own people), but members of it have to stand for sham elections -- this remains relevant.  
• The Doctor materializes into a liminal space in the sick society ... a starting point from which he is able to turn the weapon on the security force. By the end of the first episode though, he is subjected to a series of psychological attacks while being broadcasted as entertainment to the Varosians.  The Doctor's dramatic cliffhanger "death" is given in-episode direction by the Governor, who decides when to cut the coverage so episode 1 puts us in the viewers' seat. OK, I admit, it's somewhat well conceived. Our experience mirroring the viewers' can't help but force us to identify with them. 
• The diapered cannibals are ... lamentable.

---

Additional Resources:
Tardis Wikia Entry
Wikipedia entry
chakoteya.net transcript
Eruditorum Press's Commentary podcast
Wife in Space post

Me: Do you think the programme is having its cake and eating it by criticising violence and showing so much violence at the same time?
Sue: That’s a bit deep, isn’t it? You’re not writing one of your essays now, you know. I don’t mind it personally, I just don’t think it’s appropriate for younger children.

AV Club review

It’s really no wonder, looking at season 22 with 2012’s hindsight, that this was all a terrible idea that would wind up nearly destroying the series. “Varos” gives us a Doctor who is a foolish, abrasive clown, and almost totally lacking in the charm and larger-than-life qualities that made his earlier incarnations tick. Indeed, those very qualities are savagely parodied by every aspect of his character from the bipolar yaws between arrogance and pathetic whining to the fact that his candy-colored costume only makes sense as a caustic satire on the Doctor’s own eccentricity. And that’s not automatically a bad way to go—a bumbling Doctor could be comedy gold if written the right way. I’m just not sure what producer John Nathan-Turner and script editor Eric Saward thought they were getting out of destroying their own show by making its central character such an unpleasant person to be around, or by making the show as a whole so grim, bleak, and ugly. 

TV Tropes page

Reading lately ...

I've been slow to check out the Kindle First selections that are starting to back up in my "to read" queue, but it's largely because I've been grabbing some recent Hugo award winning authors I was asleep on. N.K. Jemisin and Ann Leckie have woke me up. The Puppies, and their attempts to game the Hugos in the name of patriarchy and white nationalism for the last few years, have overshadowed, to some degree, how good the winners have been.

On the non-fiction side, Haidt's The Righteous Mind was an intriguing read -- perhaps supplying the science behind what many have argued is the insufferable arrogance of the New Atheism. (Mind, it doesn't make a case for the existence of a deity, nor does it suggest government and religion should be intertwined; rather, it puts the case for religiosity being more than a manifestation of a parasitic, viral meme in terms rationalists will be open to.)

Long time Tryptic Cryptic / c-i-e favorite Kevin Murphy has co-authored a new book, The Past and Future City, which will be released in October. The review call it "an articulate call to action that should be of interest to scholars, community organizers, and policy makers in municipalities across the country." Neither scholar, organizer, nor policy maker myself, I plan to read it because the case for historic preservation is one that ought to made for, and by, the citizenry at large.

Durham's Duffer Bros. On "Stranger Things"

Two Brothers Funnel Their Nostalgia for Eighties-Era Durham Summers Into New Netflix Series Stranger Things | TV | Indy Week: 

Image via Vulture

Fans of the era's genre films will spot plenty of visual and narrative homages in Stranger Things, from the synthesizer-driven score and the Stephen King-style title card to the presence of eighties mainstays Winona Ryder and Matthew Modine in major roles. There are shout-outs to movies such as Poltergeist, The Goonies, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Less Than Zero, and to pop-culture touchstones from X-Men comics to Dungeons & Dragons.

More, if only slightly, than a mere nostalgia machine, Stranger Things aimed to subvert at least one horror trope -- the sexually active teenager will be murdered -- and possibly a second if we consider the wealthy, entitled sport/prep boyfriend has no redeeming features. (The latter, I suppose it could be argued, wasn't crying out for subversion.)

Not a classic, but if a summer read is a thing, then I'd call this a serviceable summer series. Flawed, but not fatally. For example, Winona Ryder didn't really get a chance to shine until the back half of the series, but her character finally got a little room to breathe, so she wasn't completely wasted. Did the "upside-down" parallel dimension make sense? No.

Black Mirror and Les Revenants have been languishing in my queue, think I'm going to finish them off before I finally give Breaking Bad a try.

The Laws of Robotics Applied to Comment Spam Filtering

Comment system: "Prove you're not a robot."
Me: *allows a human being, through inaction, to come to harm*

— A̕.̢́ ͏͘Ķ̕͝o͜f͢͝ord (@apelad) June 17, 2016

Blogged with IFTTT

Coming Fall 2016, Timeless

First thing I noticed in the comments were a barrage of, "this rips off El Ministerio Del Tiempo," accusations. My initial reaction is, what time travel to fix/save history show isn't a rip-off of previous time travel to fix/save history shows? But, it looks like there was a pitch to adapt that NBC turned down before green-lighting this one, and the plot around the lead history saver's role and the composition of her team may be the elements ganked.

Didn't find EMDT on streaming sites, but it's available through rtve.es (without English subtitles), but with a transcript to facilitate translation.

The Guys That Thought Rey Was Too Heroic Are Going To Blow Their Gaskets

BTW the #RogueOne trailer passes the Bechdel test. THE. TRAILER. http://pic.twitter.com/U95yzEJzBN

— Rebecca Keegan (@ThatRebecca) April 7, 2016

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The Husbands of River Song - "Hello, sweetie."

The Husbands of River Song - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

xmas 2015 (Overall Series Story #264) | Previous - Next | Index

"One should always have something to sensational to read on a spaceship."

We learned recently that the next Doctor Who episode to broadcast will be the 2016 xmas special, which will be followed by Series 10 in the spring of 2017, so this was the last new Doctor Who we'll see for a long while. (We also learned that the forthcoming Series 10 will be the last for Steven Moffat, who Chris Chibnall as his replacement ... but more on that later.) These developments distract a bit from my intent to discuss this episode for its merits, as did the broadcast of that other Moffat holiday special, "The Abominable Bride," heightening our linked awareness of all these irregular husbands and wives swirling around their common creator (well, co-creator, well, current co-creator working off characters created long ago by someone else) in an inseparable year-end event. I'll resist the urge to talk about the Sherlock special with this one though, despite my sense that there are revealing comparisons to be made between this one and a story in which a genius male characters notes that the suffragettes are the right side of history, but we learn they are also a secret society of murderers. Not that an immediate connection leaps out, but whether we're talking about River here, or Mary and John in Sherlock, we're talking about empowered, adventurous female characters who are still tightly bound to extraordinary male characters. (There's also the justifiably murderous women who are linked to the investigator who uncovers their secrets, and there's the memory of Irene Adler's connection to Sherlock.) The two specials coming out at about the same time makes considering them together inevitable, but impractical for this post.

And then there's this: though no one xmas special puts me off the idea the tradition, enough is e-freaking-nough. How many snowy Doctor Who stories incorporating yuletide themes, however great the stretch ("The first available slot I have is Christmas Day in four years' time,") do we need? Maybe the answer is "more than one," but I feel certain we've exceeded the recommended dose. Concerned as I am about this Chibnall bloke, my first reaction to the breaking news was, basically, "*groan* Not another xmas special." (I'm trying not to talk about the showrunner news so much, but doesn't a run of Halloween specials in the Ben Wheatley era sound intriguing?) Still, that's also more than ought to be crammed into this review.

Before ticking off the problems with "The Husbands of River Song," and there few, my basic stance on this one is that it is perfectly fine for what it is. Delightful, even. The hard left to farce after the last few episodes of Series 9 was a relief, if it seemed to come rather suddenly -- generally speaking, we're accustomed to a little more buffer between our series finales and the xmas special-- and it's not the worst way to send off the River character. A twenty four year-long night on Darillium leaves her plenty of room to enjoy life and have adventures with the Doctor at the tail-end of her augmented lifespan.

The characters, with the exception of poor old Nardole and probably Ramon, get happy endings and or relatively just desserts. The viewers get to enjoy a romp with plenty of hammy humor. As a stocking stuffer, this isn't bad at all.

"I have an irritable bowel."

Considered as anything more than a stocking stuffer, it gets trickier. If we think too hard about River's motivations and her means to her ends, she's not going to be a likeable character for long. Erasing her husband Ramon's memory of their marriage on a whim? Employing a surgeon to kill a patient? Marrying a monster as part of an incredibly complicated and risky scheme to extract wealth from doomed criminals? If we knew she was planning to do something with that wealth to do something for Hydroflax's oppressed peoples, that might something we could credit her for, but no evidence of any such motive was given that I noticed. No reason, we are assured, to mourn for the cannibalistic, genocidal Hydroflax (now there's a character for a holiday special!) nor for any of the passengers or crew aboard the Harmony & Redemption intergalactic cruise ship, which is convenient. But, ultimately Nardole's and Ramon's fates as severed heads in a gundam would seem to be largely due to her scheming? Not that they are blameless in taking on the risk of getting involved in her plans...

Where's there's righteousness for us to revel in would seem to be in the Doctor's refusal to bow to Hydroflax, and his accompanying monologue against monarchy. One might wish there'd been a bit more barb in that exchange, but that's just nitpicking. But even he comes across as wanting, if only slightly, on the character front. It's not even that taking River to dinner at the Singing Towers of Darillium is putting her in line for her imminent demise in the library, as I think many of us might also question. (Shouldn't he delay that as long as possible?) It's his tone when he encounters the would-be rescuer at the crash site. Something about class jumped out when I read Jameson on Chandler's Marlowe, the PI cutting across class lines as an outsider. The Doctor is like this. He mixes with all classes, but should never be contemptuous or condescending to the working classes, and his attitude toward Alphonse borders on, if it's not actually, patronizing. Moffat's writing Alphonse as instantly deferential to the Doctor contributes to making that scene cringeworthy. Here we have the Doctor as philanthropist, using charity and a figurative pat on the head to guide a working class ethnic character in his career, engineered to serve the Doctor's ends. It just doesn't sit right.

The biggest problem I had with the episode wasn't the dodginess of its morality and it's failure to live up to my anti-capitalist hopes. It's a plot goof that undercuts the fabulous scene of the Doctor and River on the balcony at dinner that hurts this episode the most, and may be the chief reason I'll be glad to see Moffat go.

The goof is this: River would have had to have known the planet they were crashing on was Darillium since she did the archaeology on the crash, presumably in the shadow in the Singing Towers. She should not have been surprised to recognize where the ship was crashing. Kingston plays the dawning realization that River's correct to be concerned about the few pages left in her diary perfectly. But, baked into River's plan, which included the expectation she would run in the Doctor (code name: Damsel), was the understanding the Harmony & Redemption was going to crash where it did. This flaw spoils the illusion of cleverness. Moffat has a reputation for crafting delightful puzzle box stories. But, sleight of hand is always like this: the trick loses its magic when you see what you're not supposed to, and this, despite the high points of his run, is ultimately why Moffat has to go. He's flirting with brilliance, but regularly papers over incoherence, and that's the sort of thing I routinely rail against the JN-T era for. Justly, I believe.

"Nobody really understands where the music comes from. It's probably something to do with the precise positions, the distance between both towers."

"All anyone will ever tell you is that when the wind stands fair and the night is perfect, when you least expect it but always when you need it the most there is a song."

So, it's flawed, yes. But Capaldi and Kingston are so good together that what does work, and the fact that is ultimately, to my mind, a stocking stuffer, actually make this my second favorite of the abundant xmas specials, after last Christmas's "Last Christmas." If only every Christmas were last Christmas.


Odds-n-ends:

• Jane chimed in with her ranking of the xmas specials in the comments of the Sandifer post:
• The Time of the Doctor
• The Snowmen
• A Christmas Carol
• Last Christmas
• The Husbands of River Song
• The End of Time
• The Christmas Invasion
• The Runaway Bride
• The Next Doctor
• Voyage of the Damned
• The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe
• My off-the-cuff ranking would be:
• Last Christmas 
• The Husbands of River Song
• The Next Doctor
• A Christmas Carol
• The Snowmen
• The Runaway Bride
• The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe (Oops, this is lower, upon review, than my current rankings indicate I last assessed it. Need to check myself here.)
• The End of Time
• The Voyage of the Damned
• The Christmas Invasion
• The Time of the Doctor
• Going in, I wondered how much time would they put between Clara departing and this adventure? Indeterminate.  How long, and how much longer, will the Doctor be companionless? Left open.
• Speaking of Jane, she's improved my mood on Chibnall. [comment]  I had forgotten he did "42," which is criminally under-rated. That she defends "The Power of Three," a sign that I may be under-rating it. Chibnall still give me pause though. Broadchurch S2 and Gracepoint were snoozers. Word on the street, again leaning on Jack Graham for his commentary, is that his Camelot was utter shite.
• I'm not sure how the Stephen Fry reference was supposed to work there, in that exchange where they tick off each other's spouses/romantic entanglements?
• I think it was one Jack Graham's tweets that spotlighted the concern Moffat may be low on ideas. We've already had a scene of the Doctor in a restaurant where all the other patrons turned out to be baddies. So when the other diners turn out to be with Scratch, it feels like the "they're all clockwork droids" scene in "Deep Breath" getting recycled. I love the play on having the background characters we, as viewers, are trained to ignore, turn out to be something more hiding in plain sight. And I dug it when Sherlock did it with the serial killing cabbie. There's an old saying about being third on a match though ...
• So many charming moments. The Doctor laughing at the head in the bag, and commenting how long it's been since he had good laugh. All the mentions of him being a doctor while he's waiting for River to recognize him. This is better than it really has a right to be for how over the top it is. Like playing up the bigger on the inside gag. And the revelation that River routinely sneaks the TARDIS off for adventures. And he didn't know about the liquor roundel. I'm a sucker for all of it.

---

Additional Resources:

Tardis Wikia Entry

chakoteya.net transcript

Sandifer for Eruditorum Press

What holds it together, though, is that Capaldi and Kingston are just good together. Capaldi has not been entirely well-served by the efforts to give him outright comedy episodes thus far (which is different from saying he’s not been well-served by the comedy bits), but this works for him. The trick, I think, is that it’s really played as an episode of River Song, with Alex Kingston serving as the main hero (which is nice, as despite that always having been the premise of River she’s never actually gotten to do it) and Capaldi misbehaving in the margins. It’s reliably funny and charming, and its quality is a lot of why the episode gets away with overstretching its plot so much.

Charlie Jane Anders for io9

So on the one hand, River Song is a wild and individualistic explorer, who is busy cavorting around the galaxy when she’s not trading saucy banter with the Doctor. But on the other, her whole life story revolves around the Doctor, even more than most characters on this show, and she seems to have a pathologically one-sided devotion to him. (He’s responsible for her birth, her childhood brainwashing by creepy aliens, her career choice and her death. She’s created as a weapon against him, gives up regeneration for him, and finally gives her life to save him. It’s a storyline that never quite holds water, despite having many fantastic moments along the way.) [We all need a bigger flow chart. - CM]

A.V. Club review

For Peter Capaldi and the Doctor, this Christmas special finds him walking in the footsteps of both his immediate predecessors, particularly Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor. The result is … well, it’s not bad, honestly. But it’s absolutely a weird episode, and it probably doesn’t have quite enough genius and emotion in the end to quite justify the oddness of its construction.

Vulture review

An unquestionably great moment: River's deliriously impassioned speech about what it means to love the Doctor, the truth of his identity finally dawning across her face, and the sly look on Peter Capaldi coupled with him uttering "Hello sweetie." She must have felt like a real idiot in that moment, because few Doctors instantly scream "I'm the Doctor!" with as much clarity as Capaldi.

TV Tropes page

The MarySue review

This year’s Christmas special gave River Song’s entire journey context, and I was thrilled about that. It’s unlikely that we’ll see River Song again (unless the Twelfth Doctor visits The Library), so “The Husbands of River Song” was a wonderful send-off for one of the best, most nuanced female characters in the Whoniverse.

Just Busy Is All ...

via phys.org

Yep, I've watched "The Husbands of River Song" and hope to finally get my review post up this weekend. Trying to think of a way to incorporate thoughts on the other Moffat-y holiday special, "The Abominable Bride" along with it; but, things have been more hectic than normal since the run-up to the holidays, our family trip to Utah, my weeks of illness (nothing major, just a stubborn, exhausting chest cold and sinus infection -- all better now), and I'll probably need a refresher re-watch before finishing it up.

Also have it in mind it's time to make a mix CD for one of my distant friends. Am leaning towards a theme like North Carolina music through the years -- but not the stadium fillers like Clay Aiken, James Taylor, and Ben Folds, nor the folk/bluegrass/country old-timey stuff we're known for (though the Carolina Chocolate Drops will almost certainly be represented). Want to design it up like how archaeologists of post-anthropocene Earth, the highly evolved descendants of today's cockroaches, might speculate Hopscotch looked based on the scant few clues our civilization will leave behind.

This is all by way of saying I didn't want you all -- or you, if there's only one of you left -- to think I'd forgotten about the joint.

Anything you'd like to discuss in the meantime? #OscarsSoWhite? Me, I'd love to see more folks join Jada Pinkett Smith, her hubs, Spike Lee, and Michael Moore in declining to attend on principle. Actually, I'd especially like to see more Anglo actors and filmmakers step up and call out their brethren (my people, the "whites") ... keep Chris Rock as host, let the audience be nearly all black, asian, and latino; let's see how that ceremony goes and what we'd hear about the Academy being run as a white supremacist group then. I'd pop corn and watch the hell out of that. I bet Ruffalo's down.

As it is, I expected I'll just read about it the next day and see what highlights come out of it.

Or, we could marvel at the observation that David Bowie died, and suddenly there's a ninth planet out there.

bowie leaves us and then a 9th planet appears, i don't need to read your science article

— Stephen Bell (@atstephenbell) January 20, 2016

And, no, none of us were the first to hope it has a satellite we could name the "Alan Rick-Moon."

What else you got? Palin and Trump forming a mutual admiration society to amplify the accusation that Obama made Palin's son into a domestic abuser? Are there more despicable people alive than the GOP's celebrity grifters?

Snowstorm bearing down on the Northeast so climate denialists can point to snow somewhere on Earth where it's winter and deliberately not talk about how hot 2015 was?

Did I mention yet that we cut the cord and dropped cable? SlingTV, pbs.org, Hulu, Netflix, and Prime covering most of the bases, only struggle so far has been not being able to see the Huskies on the ESPN app. Treme, you guys. I think a lot of us slept on Treme. Finally gave House of Cards a try as well and might get hooked ... but I feel like they're walking a fine line when it comes to product placement. I don't mind my characters using brands, I mean, we all do, that's life. However, the degree to which a show can draw attention to it, or pretend it's not drawing attention to it, and still be a drama (as opposed to a fancy commercial) is the question ...

Oh, and how could I forget about the Duke losing streak?! How great is that? The way it rolls of the tongue ... Duke losing streak. Coach K so pissed he can't remember how to shake hands. Maybe the only good thing about 2016 so far?

The Savages - "There is much work to be done."

The Savages (Doctor Who) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Season 3, Story 9 (Overall Series Story #26) | Previous - Next | Index

The city guards' haberdashery convinces the Doctor this is a truly advanced society.

Bearing in mind my last Hartnell was the execrable "The Celestial Toymaker," you'll understand why I was not eager to queue up a story that had a working title of "The White Savages." Mercifully, this story was only tedious and (probably) not racist (much, anyways).  It has a few slight charms and what is almost certainly a well-intentioned anti-colonialist theme. So, huzzah for that.

If only it were watchable. And, no, I don't think if the original tapes were found it would make a lick of difference.

Steven elects to stay behind and work to broker the peace between the Elders and the Savages. It's a much more dignified departure than Dodo will get in "The War Machines," one that, by the end of this story it hardly seems he deserves. Dodo's the one carrying the load of keeping the plot moving and getting to the bottom of things in the first couple of episodes; Steven, meanwhile, is basically a dick to her the entire time, doubting everything she says and implying she's just flighty bird not worth paying attention to. The show doesn't really hold Steven accountable for his douche-y behavior either. Dodo is basically treated with contempt by all everyone and it's unbecoming.

Hartnell's thunder is a stolen in this one as the actor playing the leader of the Council of Elders gets to imitate him, delightfully, for most of episodes three and four after vampiring the Doctor's juice. (Or, whatever.) That's one of the slight charms I alluded to earlier. The Doctor refusing to leave until he's done something to help the oppressed people is a bright spot. The other, more dubiously, is the for-the-dads, derriere-revealing animal skin worn by the savage Nanina.

Odds-n-ends:

• First story to have a title and episode numbers. Up until this point, all the episodes had names and we've backfilled the names of the stories.
• The only surprising development in E2 is that the Doctor is captured and the technique used on him rather than Dodo or Steven. Like everything else in this story, it takes for ever for the events to unfold. 
• Speaking of Dodo being treated with contempt, there's a scene where Steven asks to her give the drained Doctor some of the restorative capsules they used on the savage Tor after he had been sapped of his life force. They are on the only capsules mentioned in the episode and Steven couldn't possibly be referring to anything else. Dodo, she's cluelessly forgotten all about them. That's a character being mocked. It's grating. This story's biggest problem is its pace and we're taking time to make Dodo look like an idiot? Stop it, you guys.
• At various times during this one, I found myself wishing it more like Star Trek's "The Cloud Minders,"
• Even the anti-colonialist theme is somewhat undermined in the telling of the story. The savages don't liberate themselves, they're liberated by liberal elitist do-gooders. The Doctor's influence results in the leader of the Elders developing a conscience and issuing a directive to stop exploiting the defenseless. The story of a top-down revolution almost inevitably patronizes the liberated.
• The planet in this one seems to consist of a small city surrounded by a small band of savages who stay within walking distance of their oppressors because ... ? No effort to go the extra mile here in terms of world-building. 

---

Additional Resources:

Tardis Wikia Entry

chakoteya.net transcript

Sandifer post

Shabogan Graffiti

Wife in Space post

Sue: So, is this story racist or not?
Me: Well, assuming that it’s possible to black-up and not be racist, I’m still not 100 per cent sure.
Sue: But what is it trying to say? Is it that you can be an arsehole regardless of the colour of your skin? Or is he black because he’s the bad guy? Why are all the savages white? It’s got to be intentional.

AV Club review

TV Tropes page

Locations guide