Cubicle 7 Entertainment has released a teaser image for their upcoming game, The Rocket Rangers.
“It’s an alternate history pulpy retro-sci-fi space opera planetary romance. It’s throttled up rocket packs burning radium on the long blast to the farthest reaches of the Solar System. It’s hunting thunder lizards in the upland jungles of Venus. It’s battling Ancient Martian killing machines piloted by the Deutsche Marserkorps across the baking red deserts of Mars. It’s exploring the deadly skies of Jupiter under the constant threat of Europan disintegration. It’s RAY gun wielding heroes bulls-eyeing mutants in the blasted ruins of Io” -Ken Spencer, Rocket Age Line Developer
Stay tuned.
About Cubicle 7 Entertainment: Cubicle 7 Entertainment are the creators of high quality roleplaying and card games such as The Doctor Who Card Game, The One Ring, Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space, Primeval, The Laundry, Victoriana and Cthulhu Britannica.
Neil Gaiman’s latest work, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, began as a short story and unexpectedly grew into a novella and then a novel. Neil also wasn’t sure at first whether it was going to be a story for children or adults, since much of the story, while narrated by an adult, takes place when the protagonist is seven years old. Finally the marketing dial landed on “adult;” and that makes sense, for the most part.
There is a lot of darkness in this book, which is also of a more personal or intimate nature than some of Neil’s more fantastical works. There is more of “Neil” (himself) in it as well; not in that it is his autobiographical experience, but in that it was born more truly from his personal history. This makes Ocean feel more solidly rooted in, not the almost-realistic fantasy world of many of his stories, but an almost-fantastical reality instead. The fantasy elements are tied so tightly into some pretty ugly human truths that it might be easier to view this book as reality through the eyes of an imaginative child now grown into adulthood than as a fantasy adventure.
And yet, despite the darkness and ugliness that are frequently present, there is light in this book as well, and comfort. In the Hempstocks, a solidly reliable family of women who “know things,” and are comfortably situated on the side of all that is warm and good and naturally right; in an adult’s memories of childhood haunts, which can be as bright as they are at other times dark; and in the more lighthearted flights of fancy, such as the discovery of some very unique kittens in a field. This is a book that faces darkness but also “takes pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumble.” It reminds adults of a time when they were children and took a child’s pleasure in the small things.
Yes, this is a book that will be enjoyed by adults; and yet despite, or in fact possibly because of some very intense and disturbing scenes, mostly involving the narrator’s father or Ursula Monkton, this is indeed also a book that I would have enjoyed as a child. Children’s worlds are not always made of sunshine and unicorns, much as we’d like them to be. They are often at least a little dark and twisty – whether that darkness originates in the home, or in the schoolyard, or elsewhere. From experiences like a childhood birthday party which none of our classmates attend; to the frustrations and helplessness of dealing with a controlling adult; to the threatened or actual dissolution of a nuclear family, children often experience darkness without any prior experiences to ready them for it, or guidance on how to deal with it.
For children who read, books can serve as a guide; or an assurance that one is not alone in the darkness, and that there is someone else out there who understands what it’s like to be a child in a world of adult things that are as yet only half understood. Books can be an escape, but they can also help children face realities. And books can be a comfort, when the darkness inherent in the story is balanced by light. This is one of those books that might serve these functions; for the right sort of child.
So is this a story for adults or children? Well, both. It is a book of many layers that can be approached from many angles. It is a thought-provoking story, and one that is worth re-reading and thinking about. It is a book that could be about a wondrous and frightening adventure; or about looking back at childhood through the eyes of an adult and realizing how past experiences have shaped you; or even a reminder to adults of the way our actions will impact our children, who are our responsibilities. It might also be an assurance that even if you’ve been through a childhood that gave you a hole in your heart – in which adults fought children, and the adults won, or in which your kitten was lost to you and any replacement for it was never your kitten again – you can bear it, and gradually heal, and never stop becoming a little more whole again.
There is so much substance to this short novel that I could write about what it is or is not for a long time. Instead, I recommend that you go and read it.
The Revelry
As I’ve mentioned before, this is a particularly prolific year in the life of Mr. Neil Himself. Possibly in reaction to all of the busyness, Neil decided to do a massive signing tour for The Ocean at the End of the Lane, after which he plans to take a long and well-deserved break from such events.
Washington, DC was the fourth stop on the tour, and fortunately I was able to attend. It was a great event, organized by Politics & Prose Bookstore but held at the Lisner Auditorium on The George Washington University campus. The auditorium was packed, with somewhere around 1,500 fans in attendance.
Neil took the stage at 7 p.m. and kept everyone enthralled for the next hour-and-some; first discussing the genesis of the book, which contains more “feelings” than some of his other works. “I don’t do feelings very much, being both English and male,” joked Neil. He then read from Chapter 4 of the novel, in which the narrator and Lettie Hempstock meet a very scary Thing. It is quite creepy.
After the reading, Neil answered questions collected from the audience beforehand. Some he answered with humorous efficiency:
“What was it like to work on Doctor Who?”
“It was enormously fun.”
“Do you choose your audience (adults or children) before writing?”
“Mostly!”
“Once someone has written things, what is your advice for getting published?”
“Sell the things you’ve written!”
Others he devoted more time to. A question about where the idea of the Hempstock family (members of which have also made appearances in Stardust and The Graveyard Book) originated resulted in a story about when Neil was young and his mother told him that the farm nearby was in the Domesday Book, which meant it was about a thousand years old – “and it didn’t occur to me that it would have been a hovel at that time. I just assumed that the red brick farmhouse had always been there, and that the same family would have been living there for a thousand years as well.” Neil named that imagined family the Hempstocks, and in reference to their appearances in other books, said “it just made sense that some of them would have gone off into the world.”
After answering a plethora of questions, Neil closed with a short reading from a more humorous bit of Ocean, and then stated that he would sign for us “until my hand falls off.” And so he would have, I am sure, but thankfully, despite signing well into the night, I believe he still has both of his hands. Which is good, because it’s much easier to write with hands, and I want Neil to keep on writing more amazing stories like The Ocean at the End of the Lane for a long time to come.
If you haven’t read the novel yet, I highly recommend it. And until next time, Servo Lectio!
About every dozen years or so, I sit myself down and ogle King Kong. It’s a great movie, all the more impressive as it only offers a merely adequate cast (by and large). It ain’t Casablanca or Citizen Kane, and some (often me) say Mighty Joe Young is a better ape flick. But King Kong is responsible for two major events: it taught the moviegoer that movies are capable of playing to our sense of wonder on an astonishing level… and it gave birth to the whole ape-fad thing.
Outside of movies circa 1930s and 40s, nowhere is this phenomenon more visible than in comics. To this very day, massive primates threatening our safety if not our sanity are common to the comics racks. While Hollywood keeps on grinding out pathetic great ape imitations and senseless remakes of the original, comics seem to churn out contemporary simians like clockwork.
A partial list – very partial – of simians both sinister and simply silly includes The Ape Gang (Judge Dredd), Axewell Tiberius (Monkeyman and O’Brien), Brainiape (Savage Dragon), Captain Apemerica (MCU), Congorilla (Congo Bill), Cy-Gor (Spawn), Djuba (B’wana Beast), The Gibbon (MCU), The Gorilla Boss of Gotham City (Batman; a personal favorite), Gorilla Grodd (DCU), Gorilla-Man (Atlas/MCU), King Solomon (Tom Strong), Kriegaffe (Hellboy), The Mod Gorilla Boss (Animal Man), Monsieur Mallah (Doom Patrol), The Primate Patrol (Nazi gorillas; go figure), Sam Simeon (Angel and the Ape), Solovar (The Flash), Super-Apes (Fantastic Four), Titano (Superman), and the Ultra-Humanite (Superman, his first continuing villain)… and that doesn’t even count the apes who dominated Julie Schwartz’s science-fiction line or who possess their own planet, as well as those many apes who answer to the name Cheeta or to “Bolgani” or “Mangani.”
Many of these very apes made it to the animated incarnations of their host characters.
The reason for all this is so obvious I won’t insult your intelligence by stating it. However, to update this for the modern Doctor Who fan, “apes are cool.”
So. Why did I choose to bring this to your attention?
Because I haven’t seen Man of Steel yet… and, gosh-darn-it, I like apes!
There is a lot riding on MAN OF STEEL – ranging from making Superman a successful movie franchise to starting the path to a line of DC superhero films. So with so much at stake, you might be shocked to hear who decided to follow the path of there character from TV & comics, and who did not. We’ve got the confessions from Henry Cavill to Russell Crowe to Amy Adams. Plus more on SyFy‘s second season of CONTINIUUM and who really will be the new DOCTOR WHO?
The Beeb announced this week that Matt Smith, the current actor playing the Doctor on Doctor Who, its long running (50 years!) SF series, will be leaving the show with the Christmas Special this year. For those of you living outside the Whovian time-space continuum, the Doctor is a time traveling alien who can regenerate entirely at points of mortality. Different face, different body, largely different personality, completely different actor in the role. They’ve done this eleven times so far so, in general, they have the procedure down pat.
I’ve seen some interesting speculations as to who will be the next Doctor. While usually the actor cast as the Doctor is not so well known, a names of a lot of well known actors are being currently tossed around by that mysterious series of tubes running underground known as the Internet. Hugh Laurie, best known as Doctor House here in America was one name mentioned and I think he would be very highly entertaining. I’ve seen Mr. Laurie in any number of different roles and he was marvelous in all of them. I don’t think the Beeb can afford his salary but it’s still interesting to think what might happen.
I read an interview where Helen Mirren had voiced a desire to the play the Doctor. Could the Doctor change into a woman? In the first episode that Neil Gaiman wrote for Doctor Who, “The Doctor’s Wife”, the Doctor mentions in passing a fellow time-lord who did regenerate into a woman so we have to take it as a possibility. Dame Helen Mirren has done a switched character before when she played Prospera, a female version of the character Prospero, in Julie Taymor’s movie adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. If she could do that, I have a feeling she could do the Doctor with no problem.
At one point before Matt Smith was cast as the current Doctor, Idris Elba’s name was bounced around as a candidate for the role. Elba is a fine actor who happens to be black; some Americans will know him as the title character on the BBC series Luther while others might know him as the character Heimdall in 2011’s Thor, a fact that cheesed off some Aryan neo-Nazi types who whined that Heimdall was supposed to be white. Mr. Elba has tremendous strengths as an actor and incredible charisma; I would love to see what he would do rattling around in the TARDIS.
Especially interesting to me is that the last two candidates are very non-traditional approaches to the character of the Doctor. I think that would invigorate the show. For example, I would love to see Helen Mirren’s Doctor meeting River Song or, for that matter, Captain Jack Harkness. You could argue that a show that’s hit 50 can use some fresh air and a dusting away of the cobwebs.
One person who will not be playing the Doctor, I can predict with some certainty, is – me. Not for want of trying. Years ago, during my acting days, the part I most wanted to play was the Doctor. I realized back then that the odds of an unknown American actor living in Chicago would ever be cast in the part were in the infinity range.
However, I was part of a vibrant Chicago theater scene – I was not only an actor but I had been a writer, a director, and a producer. What about the odds of my putting on an all-new Doctor Who play in Chicago? I could cast myself in the part and I knew the mythos well enough, I felt, to write a convincing new adventure.
Long and short, I did try and I very nearly succeeded – although I couldn’t get the part of the Doctor which explains part of the reason why I left acting far behind. I mean, if I couldn’t even get the part I wanted in a play that I has written and was producing, that was the epitome of futility, wasn’t it?
The play never got produced although we got close but all that will have to be a column for another day. One lasting thing did happen as a result of all that – I met and got to know Kimberly Ann Yale, my late wife.
And the Doctor was partially to thank for that. Thanks, Doc.
The BBC announced officially this weekend that Matt Smith, current star of Doctor Who, will be leaving the series in the Christmas episode.
Both Matt and showrunner Steven Moffat have already been quoted heaping glowing praise on each other, and rightly so. Doctor Who fandom has already kicked into overdrive, showering tumblr and other blog pages with a deluge of tribute graphics, please to remain, and other spontaneous eruptions of raw emotion.
Doctor Who fans will now once again pass through the seven stages of grief, a process that some have never experienced, being new to the show, some have already seen once or twice, or for older fans (raises hand), seven, eight, or as many as eleven times.
One of the most amazing things about Doctor Who is this process of regeneration. While other actors have been replaced on television shows, Doctor Who invented a process that made it a part of the narrative. Time Lords, the Doctor’s people, have the ability to completely rejuvenate themselves in times of extreme trauma, completely reborn, with a new body and a new personalty. It allows the show to not only move on past the departure of its star, but forge into brand new directions.
Along with the regeneration process will be an equally traditional series of events:
The news media will kick the rumor mills into high gear – Names will be floated, denials will be made, and actors will play coy, taking advantage of the publicity to get their name in the sun.
The betting will begin – Gambling is legal in the UK, and the local bookies have traditionally taken wagers on the identity of the new Doctor. And the aforementioned media will report the current oddsmaking, as if it has some connection to reality. As in the rumor mill, new names will emerge and rise and fall in the rankings, and it’ll be a delight to watch.Unless you’ve put money down, in which case it’ll be harrowing.
The discussions about making The Doctor a woman will re-emerge – So too making him black, or Asian, or any of the other “types” of people a character can be. Both Mike Gold and Yr obt svt. have discussed the recurring meme, more about the fervor and hysteria around it.
The fans will swear blind it will never be as good as (insert name here) – Nothing is ever as good as what you have now, or if you are older (just leaves hand in air), than what you had when you were younger. Each Doctor was perfect, and nobody can ever replace him, until about five minutes into the first new episode when the new guy grabs you and rubs your tummy with his acting and makes you forget the last guy’s name for a moment. The show will careen off in a new direction, just like a trip in the TARDIS itself, and the trip will be thrilling and terrifying, and ultimately satisfying.
Someone’s life will never be the same again – Moffat has it right – “Somewhere out there right now – all unknowing, just going about their business – is someone who’s about to become the Doctor“. The show was popular during its original run, but now it’s dead center in popular culture, and the person selected to play The Doctor will shoot to super-stardom before a frame’s been shot. Matt Smith has already taken advantage of the opportunities the role has afforded him – he’s currently filming Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut How to Make a Monster, and plans to direct himself.
With six months to go before the final Smith adventure airs, and several weeks before it starts filming, fandom will be filled with many emotions, a rampant desire to learn new details, and will spent a great deal of time trying to separate reality from fantasy. Moffat and the BBC will begin the arduous process of choosing the actor to entrust with their golden franchise (if, indeed, they haven’t already started…or even finished), all the time trying to ride the line between keeping it all a secret and letting just enough details slip to keep the media hungry.
There may be an important wrinkle to the new Doctor’s story that may take the show in a dramatic direction. Matt’s Doctor is the eleventh regeneration, but events at the end of the final episode of the series suggest that there’s one more to be accounted for. John Hurt was revealed to be playing The Doctor as well, and fans has surmised he may be (have been) a regeneration between Eight (Paul McGann) and Nine (Christopher Eccleston). If so, even though Matt’s calls himself the eleventh Doctor, he’d be the twelfth…and the next one would be the thirteenth. According to the show’s history, a Time Lord can only regenerate twelve times, for a total of thirteen bodies, which would make the next Doctor…the last.
Which will likely never occur. Russell T. Davies has already said that when the time to get around that little plot device that seemed SO far away when they came up with it decades ago, “I’m sure someone will wave the Amulet of Zog and sort it all out”. But it’ll be the process to get to that eventual happy end that will make the show all the more exciting,.
THE VENTURE BROTHERS kicks off a new season on Adult Swim this Sunday at midnight. we talk to the brains behind the cartoon to see what is coming up, plus there is more summer TV this week with a new season of AMERICA’S GOT TALENT. Judges Howie Mandel and Mel B tell us why this season has a lot of differences. And Doctor Who…a racist? Really?
Yeah, I’m gonna get political on your ass. Pop culture and politics; gasoline and fire.
I do not know which is worse: the self-victimization that we call being “politically correct” or the rampant naval-snorting of the cloistered elite. I do know there’s a book coming out this August called Doctor Who And Race, and it couldn’t be more full of shit if it had been printed on toilet paper.
Here’s the bird’s-eye lowdown on the book: a bunch of narcissistic holy-holy academicians got together to prove they are smarter than you are by writing a whole bunch of essays that definitively declare the 50-year old television phenomenon Doctor Who to be racist and, oh yeah, sexist.
What evidence do they offer? Their central point is that the lead character, the Doctor, is a white male and has remained that way despite many “regenerations.” To tell the truth, each incarnation of the Doctor also was humanoid, so it follows that the hundreds of producers, script editors, directors, actors and writers, lo these many years, are also anti-space alien. After all, the Doctor clearly favors Earth humans over such space alien races as, oh, say, the Daleks. When’s he going to regenerate into a being made of anti-matter?
(By the way, I am compelled to point out that the phrase “space alien” is amazingly stupid, and if you don’t use it when referring to all those outworlders out there, you are not necessarily prejudiced against Mexicans or the Irish.)
Now I don’t know if Gallifreyans are capable of changing sex and/or race upon regeneration. I’d be perfectly fine if Doctor Twelve were a woman and/or of a different race. Way back in 1963, the original producer of Doctor Who was a woman named Verity Lambert. Can we stop for a minute and appreciate just how revolutionary that was back in the day? She produced the first 86 episodes, moving on to other projects in 1965. There weren’t a lot of women producing television series back then. Or today, for that matter.
Integral to the show are its co-stars, often referred to as companions. Since Elisabeth Sladen was cast as Sarah Jane Smith in the early 1970s, the women who have labored alongside the Doctor have been strong professionals who were much more than set decoration and “save me” victims. Indeed, that tradition actually got its start with the very first episode, with the highly intelligent and cosmically capable Susan Foreman, played by Carole Ann Ford. That, too, was a big deal in 1963.
Since its highly successful revival in 2005, the TARDIS has opened its blue doors to black co-stars and to women co-stars, and even to a black woman co-star. And to many actors of differing origins, reflecting contemporary sensibilities.
This book also cites the 36-year old episode “The Talons Of Weng-Chiang” as proof of the program’s racism because the villain was a Chinese man who was played by a white dude. Well, there’s no argument that Asians have gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to casting decisions, but in 1977 casting white people was more than merely the norm. It’s like slamming Kabuki for not having employed enough women.
Yes, indeed, the lead actor has always been a white male. That doesn’t mean it always will be, unless there’s something about Gallifreyan physiognomy that I don’t understand (and, doubtless, there’s a lot about Gallifreyan physiognomy that I don’t understand). But, deal with this absolute fact, you simpering monkeys of myopia and self-hatred: there is nothing inherently wrong with being a white male. If you are looking to create a new apartheid for that species, you are as disgusting and as morally diseased as those you blanketly define as racist and sexist.
Hey, do you know which other white British male has been around for a half-century? James Bond, as in the James Bond movie franchise. And in all those movies, not once have they cast anybody except a white British male in the lead. Not a single actor from Togo has been above the title. What’s up with that? Clearly, producer Barbara Broccoli is a racist, sexist pig.
Here’s the rub. Around the year 2063, bunch of professors and self-endowed intellectuals are going to rip you a new asshole because you were astonishingly insensitive to groups of people and to ways of thinking that presently are beyond your ken. This will happen; our history makes this perfectly clear. So pull your head out of your own vomit and realize you are no better than anyone else.
Bottom line: if you’re looking to feel your exploitation, start by looking in the mirror.
This weekend, Director Todd Phillips brings us the final chapter in the HANGOVER saga. We talk to Todd as well as Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis on the pluses and minuses of doing a third sequel. Plus more on the alien life on SYFY’s DEFIANCE as Jamie Murray admits she is just a bit “creepy”. And Amazon is ready to buy your fan fiction.
We’re taking the holiday off, but we’ll be back late next week with our exclusive preview of the new season of THE VENTURE BROTHERS on Adult Swim.
The strength of the Doctor Who reboot has been in its emphasis on relationships.
The name of this season’s finale was The Name of the Doctor, but everything we’ve ever really needed to know about him has been expressed through all those relationships.
The relationship between the Doctor and all of the millions and billions of lives that he has saved through all his 11 incarnations.
The relationship between the Doctor and his companions.
The relationship between the Doctor and River Song.
And the relationship between the Doctor and the girl who lived and died and lived again and died again.
The Impossible Girl.
The girl born to save the Doctor.
Clara Oswald.
We first met Clara in this year’s season premiere, Asylum of the Daleks, only her name was Oswin Oswald. Oswin is the only surviving member of the crew of the starship Alaska, which crashed onto the prison planet of the Daleks. When the Doctor attempts to rescue her, he discovers that she has become a Dalek; in order to survive, Oswin created a fantasy life—which includes trying to make the perfect soufflé. She saved the Doctor (and Amy and Rory) by erasing the memory of the Doctor from the memory banks of the Daleks, telling him to “Run, you clever boy. And remember,” but sacrifices her own life to do so.
We met Clara again in Victorian London in The Snowmen, 2012’s Christmas Special, but now she is a governess and barmaid. Clara dies after again saving the Doctor, and when he sees her tombstone, he is mystified and stunned – for it reads Clara Oswin Oswald. The Doctor realizes that this Clara and the Oswin from the Dalek Asylum are one and the same person. He becomes determined to find her again, sure that she is alive somewhere in time. And in the epilogue, we see a contemporary version of the same woman walking through a cemetery, and past the Victorian Clara’s grave. Her name is Clara Oswald.
For Clara Oswald is the “impossible girl.” Last night, the opening sequence showed Clara interacting with William Hartnell as he was about to steal a Tardis, telling him that he was taking the wrong one, that. We saw her calling after Jon Pertwee, chasing Tom Baker, yelling after Sylvester McCoy, trying to help Peter Davison and Colin Baker (shades of Zelig, Forest Gump, and Tibbles and Tribulations!) She tells us that she was born to save the Doctor, saying, “He always looks different, but I always know it’s him.”
The Doctor told Clara there is one place a time traveler must never go—to his grave. For the Doctor that is the planet Tenzalore. But it is on Tenzalore where Clara realizes her destiny—to become the “impossible girl,” and save the Doctor, and by saving the Doctor, saving millions. The regenerative energy will break her into a million pieces, confetti strips made of Clara, echoes of the original, but, she says, “it’s like my mother always said, the soufflé isn’t the soufflé, the soufflé is the recipe.”
She jumps in, and she is lost in time.
She calls out for the Doctor.
Again and again.
And then she hears the Doctor’s voice.
He sends her something to hold on to, something which will lead her to him.
