Author: Vinnie Bartilucci

A Doctor a Day – “The Long Game”

Using the new Doctor Who Limited Edition Gift Set, your noble author will make his way through as much of the modern series as he can before the Christmas episode, The Snowmen.

Making the same move for new Companion Adam he did for Rose, The Doctor takes the trio to the year 200,000 – the middle of the fourth great empire, mankind at its height.  So when everyone seems to be not a lot further up the social advancement scale than the 20th century, he suspects something’s wrong.  Someone is trying to change things, very slowly, playing…

THE LONG GAME
by Russell T Davies
Directed by Brian Grant

“Time travel’s like visiting Paris; you can’t just read the guidebook, you gotta throw yourself in. Eat the food, use the wrong verbs! Get charged double and end up kissing complete strangers! Or is that just me?”

jagrafess-300x198-4119236The Doctor and co arrive on Satellite Five, news center for the empire, streaming information from everywhere, to everywhere. Journalists and techs are all angling for promotion to Floor 500, where it’s said the walls are made of gold. They’re off by one letter – it’s deathly cold, to ensure the health of the mysterious “Editor-in Chief”, the Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe. The Jagrafess has been stunting the advancement of the human race, keeping them from achieving its potential.  His assistant, played with style by Simon Pegg, works for a consortium of banks who are manipulating the news, and as a result, the people, to make things better for their investments.

(Eerily prophetic, isn’t it?)

And meanwhile, new companion Adam has decided to take advantage of the opportunities that access to 198,000 years of future history can provide, and attempt to download enough info to make his former employer look like the owner of a lemonade stand.

A simple done-in-one episode with a strong message and a solid monster, It’s a great example of how much Russell could get into his stories.  The set is both well designed and very efficient, budget wise – a bit of redressing and it takes the role of several separate floors.  And it’ll return later in the season as the plot threads of the season start to get tied up.

Russell T Davies made a running gag of the alien and planet names getting progressively more complex, all culminating in next season’s “cheap episode”, Love and Monsters, where the baddie is from the planet Clom.

Simon Pegg is the first big name to appear in the series, the first of a still-growing list who are all too happy to become a part of the show’s history.  Simon also narrated the first season of Doctor Who Confidential.  While she’s not as well known in the US, Tamsin Greig is a popular comedic actress in the UK. She recently played Sacharissa Cripslock in the two part mini-series Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal.

Interestingly enough, in an earlier draft, Adam has quite a different reason for doing the old Back to the Future Sports Almanac trick.  Originally, it was written that Adam’s father has a disease of some type, and he tries to access medical information in the hopes of saving him. It’s an interesting idea, but for The Doctor to take the information away and chuck him out of the TARDIS in punishment would make him the jerk.  It’d be warranted for breaking the laws of time and space and all, but it would still come off as a dick move.  The idea that he simply wants to profit works much better, and it shows that once again, this new Doctor is not infallible.

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A Doctor a Day – “Dalek”

Using the new Doctor Who Limited Edition Gift Set, your noble author will make his way through as much of the modern series as he can before the Christmas episode, The Snowmen.

Mr. Henry Van Staaten owns the Internet.  He also has a museum of alien artifacts under Utah, including a Slitheen claw, a Cyberman head, and a…

DALEK  
by Robert Shearman
Directed by Joe Ahearne

“Broken…broken…hair dryer…”

The TARDIS lands in 2012 (!) in Utah, or more precisely, under it.  They’re in the personal horde of Henry Van Statten, an impossibly rich American who obtains alien artifacts, reverse engineers their technology, and sells it for profit.  The Doctor picked up a distress call from his one living exhibit, a mysterious creature that Van Statten calls a Metaltron.  Only when The Doctor sees it does he realize what it truly is – a Dalek, which somehow survived the Time War and fell back in time to Earth, damaged and alone.  The Doctor immediately tried to destroy it, but Van Statten, not wanting his most valuable item damaged, stops him.  But when Rose tries to reach out to the creature, touching it, the Dalek is able to user her DNA, charged with the energy of time travel, to restore its systems.  In seconds it breaks free of his chains, absorbs the power grid of the western United States, and downloads the Internet, searching for information about his people.  Finding nothing, it resorts to the primary command of all Daleks: exterminate.

Pretty much as soon as the new show was announced, questions came up as to when the Daleks would appear.  The show was shot into the stratosphere once the Daleks appeared, and they’ve been linked inextricably ever since.  The Daleks almost didn’t make it to the new series of Doctor Who, and it was all Steve Martin’s fault.  When he was to appear in the film Looney Tunes: Back in Action, he insisted they include a Dalek in a madcap scene full of old movie aliens.  He was a big fan of the series, and thought it’d be a nice tip of the hat.  Permission was asked, but the estate of Terry Nation, who controls the rights to the characters, was not.  This caused offense, so when the BBC asked to bring them back for the new series, the estate originally refused.  When Steve Martin heard about it, he wrote a personal letter to the estate explaining the situation, and apologizing personally.  This calmed everyone down, and the proper paperwork was signed to allow the characters to appear.  But for about a month, Robert Sherman was forced to work on a draft of the script with another alien.

The new Dalek was designed to match the height of Billie Piper, so she could look it in the eye.  Similarly, the New Paradigm Daleks were designed to match Karen Gillan’s eyeline.  But in a recent interview on the BBC website, Steven Moffat wonders that making them too big was a mistake. “They’re scarier when they’re wee”, he says.  The scene of the Dalek at the bottom of the stairs was a clear reference to the classic gag about not being able to climb stairs. But of course, in the original series, Daleks had found a fix for this long since. They had anti-gravity mats in Planet of the Daleks, but the big reveal in Remembrance of the Daleks as the Imperial Dalek slowly floats up the stairs was the scene that had fans laughing and squeeing.

Nicholas Briggs, the voice of the Daleks, got his start working on fan productions and the Big Finish audio dramas.  He’s also provided voices for the Cybermen, the Nestene and the Judoon.

Eccleston played the episode as positively bloodthirsty.  After several episodes of offering the aliens a chance to leave in peace, he does not hesitate to try to kill it.  His rage at the Dalek, and later at Van Statten is a sight to see.  Billie Piper has equally good scenes against the Dalek from the other side of the spectrum, trying to help the unstoppable tank who is trying to get the hang of feelings.  This could have been a perfect final Dalek adventure, but as you’ll see, they’re far from gone.

There are a lot of parallels between this episode and the first of this season, Asylum of the Daleks.  Both this Dalek and the tragic prisoner in Asylum are kept in chains, and both are more than a little conflicted by being a mix of human and Dalek.  Both are capable of amazing destruction all on their own, even as far below the surface of their respective planets.  The idea of human and Dalek hybrids has been a theme as far back as Evil of the Daleks, where The Doctor introduces a “Human Factor” into a number of Daleks to start a civil war between factions.

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A Doctor a Day – “Aliens of London / World War Three”

Using the new Doctor Who Limited Edition Gift Set, your noble author will make his way through as much of the modern series as he can before the Christmas episode, The Snowmen. And thank you all for wearing your ID cards…

Rose has let time get away from her a bit, but once that’s sorted, she and The Doctor have come back just in time for the…

ALIENS OF LONDON / WORLD WAR THREE
by Russell T Davies
Directed by Keith Boak

“Harriet Jones, MP, Flydale North“

Rose returns home after a brief time away…no, sorry check that; she’s come back a year after she left, relative to the current timeline. So after a great deal of explanation to friends and family as to where she’s been, she ruminates about the things she’s seen on her roof, how nobody else knows about what she knows…until the giant alien spaceship comes careening through the skies over London and into the Thames.  Unable to make it past the police blockades in central, they watch the events on the TV.

Inside Number Ten, the Prime Minister is missing, and a minor back-bencher, in a staggering coincidence, is the highest-ranking politician in the city, and is named acting PM.  A little TOO coincidental – as soon as he and a couple of civil servants are alone in the PM’s conference room, they begin to laugh with the confidence that a plan has come together. The spaceship, and the alien within, are all a dodge to place these three people in power.  They are members of a race called the Slitheen, who are packed into the skins of the now deceased politicos like Wonder Wart-Hog into his Philbert Desanex suit.  They plan to panic the planet into releasing nuclear hell, wiping everyone out, and sell off radioactive chunks like a galactic Odd-Lot.  The Doctor needs the help of Jackie and Mickey to do the only thing that can be done to eliminate the threat – blow up Number Ten.

This is the first two-parter  of the new series, and the end of the first episode is a perfect old-school cliffhanger, with every member of the cast in peril in separate locations.  This also gives the impression there’s more than a couple Slitheen suits, as well.  Even now, the subtle art of sleight of hand can stretch a dollar.

As he did with the Nestene, The Doctor offers the Slitheen a chance to walk away.  We see that happen quite a bit in the new series; like Sun-Tzu said, do everything you can to prevent going to war, but when you have to, go in hard and fast, with intent to win. Odds are The Doctor helped co-write that book.

Once again, the collection of recurring characters grows.  Penelope Wilton brings us the spectacular Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North, who will move on to great things in a very short period of time.  And another member of the Torchwood crew makes an appearance; Toshiko Sato, seen here as the coroner examining (and running from) the little alien.  The Slitheen themselves became recurring characters – they’ll return later this season, as well as more than a couple times on The Sarah Jane Adventures.  One recurring actor, Lachele Carl, is almost unnoticed, but she’s the only one to appear as a named character on all three Who series. The American newsreader she plays doesn’t even get a name in this adventure, but does eventually – Trinity Wells.  She appears every time news about aliens is reported from the US in future episodes throughout the Davies run of the show.

There’s an extra on the DVD that talks about the miniature work used to get the shot of the ship crashing through Big Ben.  After the shot was completed with the LEFT wing of the ship tearing through the clock, the CGI team realized it looked better with the RIGHT wing going through.  So the miniature shot was flipped, but not corrected – if you look quickly, you’ll see the number on the clock faces are reversed.

Re-watching the Eccletson season, I’m struck as how much more realistic the world feels.  The look on everyone’s faces as an alien ship crashed in their midst is that of not horror, but mild inconvenience.  Jackie’s reaction to Rose’s prodigal return is honest and angry. The series of shots as a progressively larger number of people fill up Rose and Jackie’s flat, more there to scold Rose than to see the events on the telly are hilarious. And at the same time, he shoehorns in the fact that uncontrollable flatulence is a tell for a Slitheen.  The balance of the serious and the silly is expertly done. Moffat’s interpretation of the world is much broader, more tongue in cheek,  Not better or worse, just different.  Similarly, each of The Doctor’s companions had family, as I’ve mentioned before.  Amy didn’t – no parents, just a mysterious aunt who never even appeared on screen.  This allowed the trips they took to be less tied to home.  When they brought Rory into the narrative in a larger way, he joined the crew, resulting in no substantive reason to pop back to Earth for a while.  Only in the first half of the season did we meet Rory’s Dad, and we learned that their visiting times on Earth were few and far between.

If anything, I think the more serious (relatively speaking) take Davies took in his years gave Steven the freedom go go bigger in his run of the show.  If they’d started that big, it might not have caught on.  It certainly looks like the back half of the new series will take a more serious turn, as the last couple of episode certainly did, but we’ll see how much of a balance Moffat can keep.

A Doctor A Day – “The Unquiet Dead”

Using the new Doctor Who Limited Edition Gift Set, your noble author will make his way through as much of the modern series as he can before the Christmas episode, The Snowmen. This is not a mere shadow play.

If you want to get picky, this is a Christmas episode before they started doing them officially.  On Christmas Eve in 1869 Wales, The Doctor, Rose and of all people, Charles Dickens, join together to fight…

THE UNQUIET DEAD
By Mark Gatiss
Directed by Euros Lyn

“In what way do you resemble a means of  keeping oneself cool?”

Having shown her the future, The Doctor plans to show Rose the past.  Aiming for 1860 Naples, they land in 1869 Cardiff. Now, as a rule, the TARDIS doesn’t land where there’s nothing going on, and this was no exception.  At a local funeral home, the dead are rising again, and at an increasing rate.  This evening, an old woman rises and continues on with her planned events of the day, which included a trip to the theater to see Chares Dickens live.  This causes some consternation at the theater, which draws the attention of The Doctor.

Apparently it’s been happening from some time.  But they’re not ghosts, but aliens, known as the Gelth, a gaseous lifeform who inhabit the bodies of the dead as temporary accommodations.  Falling through a rift in spacetime, conveniently located in the basement of the funeral home, their request is simple – let them use the bodies of the recent dead so they can survive.  But like so many times before, the aliens beg for an inch, and they want to take over.  A simple chambermaid is the key to both their arrival, and their stopping.

Mark Gatiss

Mark Gatiss (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Second only to Moffat (who will be joining us in a day or two), Mark Gatiss is the writer who is the closest to being genetically bred to write Doctor Who.  Writing for many fan productions and acting in a couple as well, he brought decades of love for the series to the table, and his story is both a great Victorian adventure as well as a solid and emotional Doctor Who script.  It’s peppered with tips of the hat as well, from the Dickensian name of the mortician, Sneed, and the door knocker that takes on a ghostly visage as the Gelth pass through it.  And not to mention the idea that after seeing a series of ghosts on Christmas Eve, he’s inspired to change his life. One of the extra’s on the disc is a video blog of Gatiss talking about the process of writing the script, from the first meeting on.  It’s interesting to hear about early ideas for the story, not to mention how seriously he’s taking the idea of bringing back a show he loves so much.  A big moment includes a gang of four including Rob Shearman, Paul Cornell, and Steven Moffat, before and after the first readthrough. The level of suppressed glee among the four is priceless.

Simon Callow, the prominent stage and screen actor, is possibly more associated with Charles Dickens than any living performer.  Appearing as the writer in several different works and media, he hesitated at playing the character in Doctor Who, fearing it’s be a simple cameo or camp parody. Only after reading Gatiss’ script did he agree, realizing he’d done a stellar job of getting Dickens’ character right.

This is also the second episode in a row where Rose talks to the service class folks, as equals.  She has a nice conversation with a plumber in Platform One, and with Gwyneth here.  In both cases, she gets them to open up a bit about themselves, and both seem quite appreciative to get a chance to just chat.  Interesting that things don’t change much in five billion years – people don’t notice the help.

Once again we see that this is a very different Doctor from before.  While everyone sees the idea of “spirits” taking over corpses as anything from shocking to blasphemous, The Doctor sees as perfectly reasonable, an extreme form of recycling.  His practicality is…well, alien. Of course, the emotional response when he hears that once again, this is a race almost destroyed by the Time War, named for the first time here, colored that choice. And once again, he makes the wrong choice, and as a result, people die.  That takes some getting used to.

Three episodes in, and we’re already starting to see the beginnings of the spinoff series, Torchwood.  Eve Myles plays Gwyneth, the maid and assistant to the funeral home.  Centuries later, her descendent (well, not HER descendant, clearly) Gwen Cooper will become a policewoman and become involved with the mysterious organization.  Russell T Davies referred to Myles as Wales greatest hidden treasure, and begorrah, he’s not far wrong.  This episode also introduces the rift under Cardiff, a source of extradimensional energy that will return as a plot point for both series, a fuel source for the TARDIS and a source of McGuffins for Torchwood.

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A Doctor A Day – “The End of the World”

Cassandra (Doctor Who)

Cassandra (Doctor Who) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Using the new Doctor Who Limited Edition Gift Set, your noble author will make his way through as much of the modern series as he can before the Christmas episode, The Snowmen. Travelers are advised against the use of weapons, teleportation, and religion.

In this episode, it looks like it’ll be a fabulous evening’s apocalypse, but The Doctor and Rose find out that there’s a chance they may be in danger during…

The End of the World
by Russell T Davies
directed by Euros Lyn

“Moisturize me, moisturize me!”

Rose wants to visit the future – The Doctor takes her to the year 5.5/apple/26, five billion years on, the day the Earth will be destroyed by the sudden expansion of the sun as it dies.  Humanity has long since moved on throughout the galaxy, and the death of their homeworld is seen as more of a celebratory experience.  Platform One, a massive force-shielded spacestation is the floating ballroom for a huge party to watch the planet get the finger, and that’s where Rose and The Doctor have landed.  Enjoying the opportunity to hobnob with extraterrestrials, Rose begins to notice that some…THING is wrong on Platform One.  The force fields are brought down, and Lady Cassandra stands revealed as behind a plot to put everyone in danger solely to collect on a massive compensation suit.  As The Doctor says, five billion years later, it all comes down to money.

We’ve seen in the first episode how well the new Who crew can do a story set on Earth, so they chose to impress us quickly and go big with a quick trip into the future.  A wide assortment of wonderful makeup, mechanical effects and CGI provide a solid and believable experience, with no “wobbly sets” as they playfully reference in the commentary and on confidential the occasional cheesiness of the original series.  Davies keeps a good balance of the dramatic and the silly here.  Billie Piper gets some great scenes as she comes to grips with the fact that she hopped into the proverbial car with a total stranger, and stands a severe chance of getting burned over it. Literally.

There’s quite a few first appearances in this episode.  In addition to recurring characters like the Face of Boe and Cassandra O’Brien, it’s the first appearance of the Psychic Paper. Another brilliant little idea to explain how easily the Doctor can get into any situation so smoothly, it’s a tool that’s rapidly become as commonplace and popular as the Sonic Screwdriver.  It’s also the first time a running concept was used clearly – when the TARDIS travels into the future, the Time Vortex is red, when they travel into the past, it’s blue.  When Tennant and Smith take over the role, that color theme carries through to their costumes – check the colors of Ten’s outfits, and Eleven’s bowtie.  And assuming you already know how the season ends, you might notice this is the first mention of “Bad Wolf” – two aliens are chatting, and one mentions that this is “The bad wolf scenario”.

Davies starts another tradition going here as well – spectacular characters who appear once alone yet appear fully formed.  Jabe of the Forest of Cheem is the first person to sacrifice herself to help The Doctor,  She’s also the first to reveal a bit more about the Great Time War. It was mentioned in the previous episode; the war was the reason the Nestene food planets were lost, and The Doctor admits he couldn’t stop it.  But here we learn that the rest of the Time Lords are gone, and his world is destroyed.  The details are yet to come, but it’s a major departure from the previous series.  The Time Lords were always seen as unassailable, undefeatable.  For them to fall shows that no one in the universe is infallible.  And that carries through to The Doctor.  In the new series, he makes mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes put people in danger.  It gives the Companions a chance to save the day, and generally increases the sense of drama: The Doctor will not always have the answer.

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A Doctor A Day: “Rose”

Rose TylerUsing the new Doctor Who Limited Edition Gift Set, your noble author will make his way through as much of the modern series as he can before the Christmas episode, The Snowmen. Come along.

Shop girl Rose Tyler was not expecting much to change in her life.  In a very brief time, she faces down animated plastic shop dummies, teams up with a 900 year old time traveler, and helps save the world.  There’s no doubt why the episode was named after her…

ROSE
By Russell T. Davies
Directed by Keith Boak

“Nice to meet you, Rose; run for your life!”

After a long dark silence, peppered only with books, audio adventures, comics, magazines and…well, ok, but no new TV adventures, Doctor Who returned to the air with a lot to prove, and not a lot of time to do it in.  Russell T. Davies had to grab the new audience, and at the same time, assure the old fans that the show was in good hands.  He achieved it all brilliantly.

Billie Piper as Rose Tyler is very much a new style of Companion for The Doctor – sure of herself, independent, and much more likely to fight than to scream.  We also see another change to the companions; we meet her family and friends.  The glorious Camille Coduri as her Mom, Jackie, and her boyfriend Mickey as played by Noel Clarke are different from other Companion’s family in they’re not dead, usually killed by the monster of the week, if we see them at all.  They give Rose more of a grounding; she’s happy to go off and explore the world, but there’s people waiting for her at home, and that naturally brings them back to Earth often, something that doesn’t hurt the budget.

And at the center, Christopher Eccleston as a very different and modern Doctor.  His clothing is nondescript, his manner gruff, his opinion of Humanity seemingly dismissive, but when he speaks in their defense, it’s clear he loves them.  His tongue is sharp; his first few lines to Rose are delightful, telling her to go off and eat her beans on toast, but congratulating her for coming up with a logical explanation for what she’s seeing. But shortly later, he gives a peek at the emotion he’s feeling every day, about he can actually feel the planet spinning under his feet.

Davies and co chose well for the series first villain; the Nestene Consciousness and its plastic commandos the Autons.  Only seen twice in the original series, they were obscure enough that it’d please the fans, but easy enough to explain to the newcomers.  From the dramatic scenes of gun-handed mannequins taking people out left and right in a mall to the ridiculous scene of Mickey getting kidnapped by a garbage bin, the show did what it always did well – take commonplace things and make them scary.

In this episode’s commentary, we hear about how they chose to keep the first appearance of The Doctor very underplayed, as opposed to giving him a big dramatic entrance. Also, the episode ran sort of short, and the scene with The Doctor talking about how he can feel the rotation of the Earth was added later, and then re-shot, as Chris decided he could do it better. One of the few times they had time to re-shoot something for quality.

The episodes of Confidential on this first series are the edited versions that appeared later on the website and other locations, not the full half-hour version that were run after the original broadcast.  They’re still quite interesting to get a look at how the show was put together.  It’s interesting to see the interviews with Chris Eccleston, both here and in additional extras on the disc.  Remember by this point he’d already decided to leave, they’d already filmed the whole series, and they already had his regeneration in the can.  But he’s happily giving these interviews, talking about what a joy it was, and gamefully smiling and nodding when asked how long he plans to stay with the series.

In one episode they do a perfect job of reintroducing the character to a new audience.  It was kept simple, but let everyone know the show was very much to be taker seriously. The special effects were very much up to modern standards, and the writing of Davies did not talk down to the show’s traditional primary audience of children.  Like it had been before, there was no guarantee the show would fly, but it got a damn fine running start.

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Review: Little Inferno

The Wii U, released on 11/18, has a good assortment of games available, both in stores and through the Nintendo E-Store.  A happy surprise is the large  number of smaller indie games available on the system, and of them all, the most blissfully wacky is Little Inferno, from the Tomorrow Corporation, makes of World of Goo.  Little Inferno combines the infuriating “What do I DO?” feeling of the open form game, the dark whimsy of a Tim Burton movie, and the purifying warmth of fire, and creates a deceptively simple game that unfolds like an onion in a deep fryer, and is just as delicious.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0TniR3Ghxc]

The game consists of a fireplace, more specifically, the Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace.  Your job – burn things.  Buy things from a series of catalogs of flammable objects, place them in the furnace, set them aflame, find money contained within, use the money to buy more things to burn.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  As you buy objects, more become available.  As you burn more and more, you begin receiving mail from  the manufacturer, congratulating you on your proficiency.  Letters also begin arriving from another Little Inferno owner who seems to have learned a bit more about the company, and the purpose of the fireplace.

The game is dark, disturbing, and tantalizing.  Exactly WHY does the magnet make the gears in the Fireplace spin faster?  Where did Someone Else’s Credit Card come from, and why can you buy then in almost infinite quantity?  Why is the world getting colder?

For a company as family-friendly as Nintendo to select such a bent little masterpiece for not only a game for its new console, let alone a day-of-release game, is a bold move indeed.  This is a game CLEARLY not for everybody (It’s rated T-for-Teen), but for those who like dark humor, not to mention burning things, it’s a perfect little brain-bender.

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The Doctor Who Gift Set, for the fan with all the time in the world

If you’re not sure what to buy somebody who’s a fan of something, you can’t go wrong by giving them everything.

dr-who-big-box-set-300x300-8467015This year’s Doctor Who analogue to the Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle is the Doctor Who Limited Edition Gift Set, collecting the entire run of the new series on DVD, from Eccleston to Tennant to Smith.  It also includes a replica (dang) of the eleventh Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver, a copy of IDW’s Doctor Who comic, specifically the San Diego Comic-Con special issue, and a set of lovely art cards of the Doctors of the new series and their companions.

Each of the series sets is as complete as they can physically be without including DNA samples.  All the episodes, plus the episodes of the late lamented Doctor Who Confidential, cut scenes, episode commentaries, prequel episodes, the Children in Need and Comic Relief sketches, features from the website, and believe it or not, many more.

Rounding out the set is the trilogy of specials BBC America did as a lead-up to the new season: The Women, Destinations and Timey-Wimey of Doctor Who.  In each, cast members, celebrities and various dignitaries all ruminate and reminisce about the series, discuss the possibility of the technology of the show crossing over to the real world, and compare how quickly they’d race into the old TT40 if it landed and The Doctor held out his hand and said “Join me”.

Now, a set like this demands one’s attention.  And that’s exactly what I’m going to give it.  Starting tomorrow, I’ll be doing A Doctor A Day, where I’ll watch and review (at least) one episode a day, all in preparation for the new Christmas episode The Snowmen, lensing, oddly enough, on Christmas Day.

The Doctor Who Limited Edition Giftset is available via Amazon and any number of online purveyors of fabulous.

Review: Indestructible Hulk #1

DC and Marvel revamp their characters a lot. A lot. They’ll give suits and names to new people, give them back to the originals again, come up with interpretations so far afield of the original that there’s nothing left but the name. And they all fail or succeed at varying degrees. While it may not actually be the case, Aquaman is generally considered to be the most-rebooted character in DC Comics. There were so many versions of him that he was declared “radioactive”, and left to lay fallow for many years until Geoff Johns had the time to come back to him and start him anew, largely by going back to basics. Not exactly ignoring everything that’s come before, but by creating a good enough current version that people were willing to forgive and forget the past.

After a bit of thought, I came to the conclusion that the most rebooted character in Marvel Comics is The Hulk. Not in the sense of a new origin or person in the suit, so to speak, but in the vibe between the character and his alter-ego. The battle for control between Bruce Banner and The Hulk has been there since day one. But the winner in the game, and the playing field on which the battle has taken place, has changed more often than Katy Perry after her third encore. The Hulk has been made intelligent, made less intelligent, been shot off into space, made MORE intelligent, been separated from Bruce Banner, been re-integrated, and any number of permutations of those scenarios in between. Some have lasted years, like Peter David’s awesome run, and some, like John Byrne’s, barely got out of the gate. Most recently, we’re gained three more Hulks of varying genders, hues and textures, the original Green guy has been separated from Banner (again, see above list), and Banner was some sort of Dr. Moreauesque madman that The Hulk was out to kill. In honesty, it’s gotten so incomprehensible that I had to walk away from it all and just wait for the inevitable turn of the wheel.

And turn it has.

DC took the plunge a year ago and rebooted everything, giving them a chance to wipe the slate clean for any character that wasn’t working at what they thought at their full ability, and subtly leave alone the stuff that was (i.e., Batman and Green Lantern). And largely, it’s been a success. Marvel, all the while swearing it isn’t a knee-jerk reaction to DC’s relative win, has chosen to drink from the same hole. They’re restarting their books, with new titles, numbering and creative teams (save for Dan Slott remaining on Spider-Man, for which we are all rightly thankful). The new books do not reboot the characters in the brute-force way that DC has, but with each new creative team comes the opportunity to take the characters in A Bold New Direction.

Mark Waid, who has recently shown great style and grace on Daredevil, has been handed the reins to The Hulk in his new title, The Indestructible Hulk. Like all the new titles, it features a new hook to hang the character on. Banner and Hulk are one again, And Banner has taken a new tack in the battle – management, as opposed to containment or cure. So he resolves to do as much as he can to make amends for The Hulk’s actions while he’s in charge, and when he’s not, places himself in trust of people who can point The Hulk in the right direction so he can at least smash things that need smashing. Both of these strategies are achieved by both turning himself in to, and applying for a job with, SHIELD. He makes the case for both by presenting an invention that can purify the atmosphere and eliminate airborne diseases, and by taking out The Mad Thinker virtually single-handed – I’ll leave it to you to determine which alter-ego does which.

It’s a neat idea that goes in new directions. Like Hank Pym and Peter Parker, most writers forget that Bruce Banner is a top-level scientist, one of the greatest minds in the world. But, as he says in the book, he’s largely courted not for his brains but his body. In the past, Banner’s role has largely been that of plot-device. When he’s not his own hapless sidekick that gets in trouble at the worst moments, he’s the guy who creates a device at the last moment to control The Hulk, or at least try to. Both Pym and Parker have gotten more of a chance to let their genius shine brighter, and so far it’s stuck. Giving Banner a chance to do the same is a good idea.

I have worries, or more correctly, facets of the same worry. Namely, the book is eternally named after the muscular side of the pairing, and I’ll be curious to see how long readers will read about a scientist before they demand they Get To The Fucking Monkey. Waid has done an astounding job at character work in his career, and it’s that talent that will be needed to make the readers care as much about the brains as they do about the brawn. The first issue goes a long way towards that goal – Hulk appears less than Banner does, and Banner’s scenes in a small town diner do more to drive the plot than the Hulk pager do. Banner talks a good game, but his words could just as easily be interpreted as those of an addict trying to explain how he’s got it all figured out, this time it’ll work, he can cope with his issues.

And that sort of leads into the other facet of my worry. Like Aquaman, Hulk has been re-imagined SO many times, it’s hard for me to imagine a take that will last. It seems almost as if Waid has taken that into consideration here. Anything, ANYTHING that Banner tries to do with The Hulk is one tantrum away from falling apart. This seems like a very good idea, and Waid’s writing makes me want it to last. But too often in comics is the desire, both by the readers and the company, for a character to return to first position. So as much as I like the new improved Hank Pym, I fear that another writer is going to revert him to the bitch-slapping paranoid. So too here – I dread the day that Banner’s best-laid plans go astray once again. This is a good enough take that I WANT it to succeed, though I know that it will be decided by a power over which Banner has no control: the readership.

Wii U offers new power, new games, long wait times

  • News
  • November 22, 2012

Wii U ControllerThe [[[Wii U]]] was released on November 18 to a gleefully waiting public with midnight release events and the requisite pomp and circumstance.  The system offers a big jump in power and screen resolution, the first system from Nintendo that’s HDMI-compatible.  Add to that a good raft of first and third-party games available, a new layer of social media interaction and a strong (albeit coming-soon) set of media streaming functions, and you get a solid system designed for the family and the hardcore player in mind.

The system is not without faults, tho. It’s slow. Painfully slow.  It required a system update before any games could be played (taking almost 90 minutes to download, exacerbated by the demand on Nintendo’s systems from EVERYONE needing it), as well as a separate update for each and every game before they started up, averaging five minutes each to download and install.

Once the games load, however, they are gorgeous.  The new addition to the Mario Bros franchise draws from a number of chapters of the series, including many from the latest 3DS edition, and adds on many more.  The showpiece game, [[[Nintendo Land]]], (included with the Deluxe Set, available separately for Basic Set purchasers) is a series of “mini-games”, but in name only.  Each is an engrossing and deep game featuring franchise titles like Metroid and Pikmin, games not yet featured in stand-alone games on the system, but do a good job of keeping them in the public’s mind.  The new GamePad works well with the new games, as well as being able to function as a TV remote, allowing you to power up everything at once to use the system.  Many games can be played entirely on the GamePad, allowing the TV to be used by the rest of the family.  It lacks any local storage to allow you to play games independent of the main unit, but that’s more wishful thinking than a real issue.

The system is backwards-compatible with the Wii, but this too is very slow.  It runs through a software-based emulator that provides a bare-bones Wii menu and interface.  Gone is the ability  to send email to other Wii systems, as well as the ability to import Miis, the system’s personal avatars.  You have the option to transfer your Wii’s system data to the new Wii U, but it’s an all-or-nothing option; there’s no way to pick and choose what game saves, Miis or other system data, and once it’s transferred, your old Wii is returned to Factory specs.   Fine if you’re  planning on tossing it in the closet, or on ebay, but if you were hoping to keep it as a second system, you’re somewhat out of luck.

Each game has its own bulletin board in the MiiVerse, part of the social media platform the Nintendo Network, where you can both write and draw notes about the games, share game tips and if possible, get a few laughs.  At the moment, there’s no way to choose what game boards to see,  or to sort the so the games you own and play, making accessing your preferred boards a bit cumbersome.  And of course, getting to the MiiVerse is…slow.

Coming in the next month are the various streaming media channels like Amazon Video and Hulu Plus, joining Netflix which is already up and running.  The Gamepad will also be the center of a service known as TVii, the details on which are a bit sketchy; details will be forthcoming as the service is unveiled in December.

There’s clearly room for improvement in the system, but what’s available now is well worth the expense, and  if you’ve not already gotten a Wii U, the wait.

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