Tagged: Doctor Who

The Point Radio: Russell Davies Breaking New TV Ground Again

After breaking new television ground with projects like TORCHWOOD, QUEER AS FOLK and of course DOCTOR WHO. Russell T. Davies is back with a pair of new shows for Logo TV. It’s a unique concept he details in our exclusive talk, plus is there a future for TORCHWOOD and what got him to DOCTOR WHO in the first place? Plus TBS revives the domestic sitcom with YOUR FAMILY OR MINE boasting an amazing cast of TV veterans. Kat Foster and JoeBeth Williams talk about how the show is a new twist on the familiar concept.

We are back in just a few days with an exclusive look at the new season of SYFY’s werewolf drama, BITTEN (this time we mean it!). Be sure to follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Tweeks: Adventures at WonderCon Anaheim 2015

Last weekend, we totally geeked out at WonderCon Anaheim. So, in this week’s video we bring you the sights & sounds of our adventure.  Stay tuned because there will be more to come in the next coming weeks.  We kept busy over the three-days finding new comics, interviewing creators, shopping (lots of that), and people-watching.  Soak in the experience and then stay tuned for more WCA action.

Maisie Williams to guest star on Doctor Who

Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams was announced as one of the guest stars on the new series of Doctor Who, filming now in Wales.

MaiseWhoWhile her exact role has not been revealed, Steven Moffat, lead writer and Executive Producer, added:

“We’re thrilled to have Maisie Williams joining us on Doctor Who. It’s not possible to say too much about who or what she’s playing, but she is going to challenge the Doctor in very unexpected ways. This time he might just be out of his depth, and we know Maisie is going to give him exactly the right sort of hell.”

The announcement also revealed two more episode titles for the new series, ‘The Girl Who Died’ written by Jamie Mathieson and Steven Moffat, and ‘The Woman Who Lived’ by Catherine Tregenna.  Tregenna has written several episodes of Torchwood, including “Captain Jack Harkness”, for which she received a Hugo nomination. She’s the first female writer on the show since 2008.

The titles seem thematically linked, sparking thought that they may be another two-parter, following the opening episodes “The Magician’s Apprentice” and “The Witch’s Familiar” which feature the return of Michelle Gomez as Missy, AKA the regenerated Master.

Other guest actors confirmed to appear in the new series are comedian Rufus Hound, Shakespearean actor Barnaby Kay and fellow GoT actor Paul Kaye.

Doctor Who is set to return this fall, “with further casting to be announced in due course”.

Marc Alan Fishman: I’m Now A Who From Whoville!

Well, it took me a while to make my way through it, but I’m pleased as punch to report I watched an entire season of Doctor Who. And no need to bury the lead: I’m a fan. Peter Capaldi made me a fan. As for the rest of the Whoniverse, not so much.

For those loosely following my journey to TARDIStowne, this has been a long and bumpy road. When I’d noted my friends had started to watch (somewhere between the 9th and 10th Doctors) I gave the show a tepid try. Because I’d not been privy to any Who lore – be it actual storylines, or knowledge of the production itself – I initially found the show to be too low-budget, and too in-jokey for me to care. As the world around me anointed their arms with tally marks, whispered “Don’t Blink,” or went on and on about something called Bad Wolf, I remained ever-snarky. And then, when a weekend left me with nothing to do but catch The Day of the Doctor with my wife and son, I’d openly declared my desire to jump on the bandwagon. And thus I programmed the Capaldi Who to Season Record. Cue the theme music.

It’s not that surprising – to me, at least – that Capaldi was the hook that grabbed me. My love of Gregory House would be the telltale heart there. At their cores, Greg and Twelve (can I call him Twelve?) are problem-solvers. And they are both likely to use their tongues as the tool to save the day. Unlike House though, Capaldi’s Who was never outright rude for rudeness sake. He was curt, yes, but always when danger or a mystery seemed to be afoot. Tie this into the season’s overarching question – Is the Doctor a good man? – and you have the conflicted lead taking charge each week as the universe finds new ways to unravel.

And whether Capaldi was debating a dying Dalek, scoffing at Robin Hood, or giving dimension to flat foes, he presented it all with a nuanced performance that I believed was deep. Unlike the current James Gordon on Gotham, the gravitas of the Doctor felt lived in. And given I personally knew nothing of the decades-long history of the character? Well, that sums up Capaldi’s talent and my fandom pretty easily.

As with the original Star Trek, Firefly, or any number of other science-fiction shows I would eventually find an affinity for, the key to my kindness has always been strong characterization. Beyond Capaldi, I must give credit where it’s due. In spite of being plucky to the point of annoyance, Jenna Coleman’s Clara did eventually win me over. And her beau for the season, Danny Pink (“P.E.”!), while being a bit too much of a nondescript archetype when action was required, did eventually find his place. Funny then right as I was enjoying his grounded nature… that he (SPOILER ALERT) got smashed by a random plot device… err… car. In any event, the companions of this season were built to show us sides of the Doctor that were necessary in an introductory season. Now, a dozen or so episodes later… we know Twelve is not a leader of men, a lover of the ladies (though he creepily sorta dug kissing his arch, no?), or anything beyond an admitted “idiot with a box and a screwdriver, passing through, helping out.”

Long before I enjoyed the show, I’d considered Doctor Who to be as much (if not more) about the universe the he inhabited versus himself. But Capaldi’s season proved to me that to be untrue. While the episodes throughout the season were chocked in references that scooted way over my head, the most potent moments were never about anyone or anything more important than the Doctor himself.

Obviously tied to the aforementioned Good Man motif, it was clear even in the more lackluster or frustrating episodes (Earth taken over by trees, I’m looking at you…) that the definition of this iteration of the Doctor was at the heart of the show. And even in the face of his newly reformed nemesis, with the entire Earth under the threat of annihilation, Capaldi’s grimaces and line delivery sucked every scene into his orbit.

If I were to be critical, it’d revolve mostly around the specific adventures themselves. I found the show to be at its best when the plots were small and specific. When the Doctor had to handle a murder mystery on the space-faring Orient Express, or dealing with an unknown flat threat targeting a small town, there was a wonderful balance between the threat and the solution. When the show went big, with Earth-swallowing fairy tale forests, or the season finale’s masterful plot, things tended to get out of hand. Heady concepts are the bread and butter of the science fiction serial… but in a season that is built around a introspection, these few-too-many universe-shattering melodramas felt like loose Star Trek plottos, not quirky BBC fare.

With a dozen adventures now under his belt, I’m excited for the future. With the prospect of a new companion to roam all of space and time with pending, as well as litany of returning alien allies and foes, I expect a second season of Capaldi to move outside of the reactionary into something more proactive. Let’s see where this Doctor really wants to travel.

That is of course, unless his new companion Bogarts the TARDIS for their own agenda. Either way, I’m on for the ride…

Eyebrows and all.

 

How Much Does It Cost To Build A Dalek?

Not a cosplay project – there’s plenty of resources for that.  Heck, the BBC used to send out official plans for one. But an actual, proper one, with the mutant and the hoverpad and the exterminatey-ready-to-go-ness?

The UK’s Horror Channel are now running classic Doctor Who episodes, and they took the opportunity to run the numbers.

Cost-of-making-a-Real-Dalek

Click to embiggenate

These numbers include all the startup costs; R&D, as well as initial set up of the factory locations. So we’re looking at the cost of rolling that first Dalek off the line – presumably the per-unit costs would decrease as time goes on.  Allowing for depreciation, once production gets up to speed, costs could drop precipitously. Though of course, even the first Dalek could get quite a bit done.

Also, with a number of nuclear plants already in existence, one might be able to cut a deal with a forward-thinking city to set up a lab in an extant plant, not to mention the various tax breaks many municipalities would offer to such a job-creating endeavour.

The cost of raw materials would drop over time as well as more areas are conquered, allowing for greater collection activities.  And since Daleks are in a sealed system capable of surviving in the vacuum of space, odds are they aren’t too worried about the effects of fracking on the environment. That would certainly reduce the costs of mining – no need to worry about EPA restrictions.

The Horror Channel’s website has more info on The Doctor, as well as a neat web game that lets you demolish Daleks at various locations  around England.

Tweeks Draw 2014

DrawOurYearThumbWe seemed to watch a lot of “Draw My Life” videos this past year, so we felt it was appropriate to recap our 2014 with a white board and some dry erase markers. In under 3 minutes, we quickly doodle this year’s top movies, tv shows, books & comics.  We also draw our favorite Con experiences, the pop culture headlines that stuck with us, and the best hair of the year (belonging to Blythe from IDW’s Littlest Pet Shop Comics)!   Lots of wishes for a fabulous 2015, everyone!

Mindy Newell’s Year-End Bests And Worsts

So here we are at the end of 2014, which is the time for media folk to opine about the best and the worst of the year in all the different areas of our overcrowded, put-upon lives. So though I rarely think of myself as part of the media folk crowd, I’ll include me in that description for this column, since all of you have so kindly considered my words, thoughts, judgments, attitudes, and so forth important enough to peruse over the last twelve months.

So here we go, in no particular order, and not divided into “best” and “worst”…

I applaud Marvel Comics’ writer G. Willow Wilson (great name, by the way, so alliterative!) and artist Adrian Alphona for introducing the comics world to Kamala Khan, an American Muslim teenager from Jersey City, New Jersey. Kamala’s parents and family are traditional, observant Muslims (for the most part), but Kamala just wants to be what every teenage girl wants to be – not different from her peers. But she is. Not just because she’s Muslim. It’s because she’s also Ms. Marvel.

In a time when bigotry is rampant in these United States – our President is a Muslim Kenyan socialist dictator terrorist determined to destroy America, and, oh, by the way, he’s *gasp* B-L-A-C-K – I just absolutely love that the House of Ideas has embraced the opposite of the disease named xenophobia. There is no better cure.

Just a few weeks ago at my daughter’s birthday dinner, we got into a discussion of the state of music these days. I said that I think there is nothing out there that can compare to the music produced during the ‘60s, certainly nothing like the great concept albums of the Beatles, the Stones, and so forth. Not for the mass public, anyway. It’s all manufactured pop crap. Certainly nothing that is going to hold up to the test of time. Said brother Glenn, “So where do you think great popular art is being produced?”

“Television,” I said instantly. “We in a new ‘Golden Age.”

“When she’s right, she’s right,” said Glenn.

There’s been a lot of really fantastic television these days. Game of Thrones, Orange is the New Black, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Downton Abbey, Transparent, Outlander, and certainly comics are rocking our personal screens with The Flash, Arrow, Gotham, and Marvel’s Agents of Shield. But my vote for the best TV show of 2014 – as if regular readers can’t guess before I type out the letters – is Homeland.

Homeland not only made everyone forget – well, sort of – Brody (for more see my earlier column on the series here), but it amped up the tension to equal the heyday of 24 – and beat Jack Bauer at his own game by never forgetting that it is also a study of the emotional, and psychological scars borne by those who serve their patriotism in the coldest of wars.

Best taking on of a role already inhabited by fan favorites: Peter Capaldi as the Time Lord in Doctor Who. David Tennant and Matt Smith made indelible marks on the saga of the Gallifreyan, between them raising the Doctor into the realms of a worldwide phenomenon shared by only two modern myths – Star Trek and Star Wars. I can well imagine the trepidation with which Mr. Capaldi must have felt when he was given the keys to the TARDIS, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t slept the night before the his debut premiered. But he made it his own; an original interpretation in which, im-not-so-ho, the Doctor had to figure out if, of if not, he’s a good man. “I don’t know,” said Clara. And I’m still not sure if the Doctor can accept that maybe he is, even if he did, at long last, salute Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.

Politics and World Affairs 101. (Hey, you know me – I wasn’t going to let this topic slip away.) This year was definitely one that went way beyond any introductory college course. The most “do-nothing” Congress in the history of this country, all based – again, im-not-so-ho, on the biases held against our President. (Reference first sentence in fourth paragraph of this column, please.) ISIS, jihadist Crusaders determined to raise the Ottoman Empire from the dust of history using beheadings with modern-day scimitars and social media propaganda, is the biggest threat to any type of peace in the Middle East – and the world – since Adolph Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party. And yes, that is really how I feel.

Meanwhile Vladimir Putin seems determined to lead a new Soviet Union – and for those who may point out that the Russian economy is in freefall…well, countries have gone to war because of failed domestic policies. And homosexuals in Russia are the new scapegoat, replacing Jews.

Best (and worst) on the domestic front this year. It seems to me that the American people have finally woken up and are marching in protest again against our own “black boots” (not to reference Nazis again, but…) who – shades of the pre-Civil Rights Act era – seem to feel they have a right to kill black men and anyone else who doesn’t “salute” them fast enough. I only hope the protests continue to the level of the social activism in which I grew up during the ‘60’s, and now dwindle away like the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Worst “Oh, God, I knew this was going to happen” moment: “The Mystery of Malaysian Flight 370” was televised on CNN. Just waiting for it to show up as an episode of “Ancient Aliens” sometime in 2015.

Dumbest comics controversy of 2014 (though I can understand the uproar) was that cover. Yeah, you know the one I mean. Jessica Jones as Spider-Woman with her ass up in the air.

The other dumb comics controversy – the stupidest, I mean – was DC’s decision not to allow Batwoman to marry her long-time love, civil rights lawyer Maggie Sawyer. Not only does it reek of bigotry and ignorance, not only does it go against the biggest non-issue in recent American history, i.e., gay marriage, but it’s based on an edict that “no DC superhero is allowed to be married” as “heroes shouldn’t have happy personal lives” because it would make for “less dramatic stories.” As if marriage is always a state of bliss. Um…no. And kudos to J.H. Williams and W. Haden Blackman for walking away from such ignoramity.

Most exposed comic character: Starfire. Once upon a time, back in the Wolfman-Pérez days of New Teen Titans, she was a nuanced character. Now she’s just…exposed.

Speaking of DC and stupidest. How about their contest concerning Harley Quinn? the company asked for tyro artists to draw a scene from Harley Quinn #0 which specifically asked for: “Harley sitting in a bathtub with toasters, blow dryers, blenders, appliances, all dangling above the bathtub and she has a cord that will release them all. We are watching the moment before her inevitable death. Her expression is one of, ‘Oh, well, I guess that’s it for me,’ and she has resigned herself to the moment is going to happen.”

Announced just before National Suicide Prevention Week.

Oh, wait, a lot of that happened in 2013.

Well, it’s still “worst of” bad news.

So what kind of stupidest stuff has DC done in 2014?

Turned Wonder Woman into a caricature of a feminist icon – whiney, spoiled, and bitchy.

Batgirl featured a literal “cartoon” of transgender characterization in the imposter Batgirl, who was actually a dangerous, deranged man. Um, btw, that’s not transgender. That’s cross-dressing. Either way, it was incredibly insulting to too many individuals. (The creative team of Brendan Fletcher, Cameron Stewart and Babs Tarr apologized…and meant it.).

Merchandizing sexualized and insulting t-shirts with Superman “scoring” with Wonder Woman, and mottos like “Training To Be Batman’s Wife.”

Releasing a book for toddlers and early readers called “Superheroes Opposites” in which “Wonder Woman pushes a swing” with a little girl on it, while Superman, on the opposing page, “pulls the machine,” which looks like some combination of a Deere tractor and deep-sea oilrig. Anyway, it’s enormous and definitely very heavy. Yeah, I’ll be buying that book for my 15-month-old grandson soon.

DC sure isn’t Jenette Khan’s company anymore!

But DC didn’t just become the leading anti-feminist comics company in 2014. I found this at www.Whatculture.com:

2014 also saw DC leaning on some wonderfully old-school gimmicks to try and boost sales, including falling back into the nineties speculator boom trope of providing shiny covers to try and entice people into buying flagging books. They planned to provide 3D variant covers for climactic final issues of their year-long crossover event Future’s End, a process which apparently requires certain special chemicals.

One of which is called microcystin, and is highly toxic. Exactly the sort of thing you wouldn’t want to, say, get into a municipal water supply.” Woops, that’s exactly what happened though! Some sort of spill at the printing plant where the books were being published caused the deadly toxin to end up in Lake Eerie, which provides the water supply of eleven million coastal inhabitants in Northwestern Ohio.

Yes, DC poisoned the water supply of eleven million people. Lex Luthor would be proud.”

Okay, I’m sure DC comics weren’t the only books being published at the printing plant. But I just have three things to say:

How come stuff like this doesn’t happen at Marvel?

And, at least based on this list of “worsts,” I don’t think I’ll be working for DC anytime soon.

And, based on this list of “worsts,” I’m not sure I would want to.

 

Interview: Steven Moffat – No Sheets for Companions

In a recent interview with Steven Moffat, I had the opportunity to discuss The Doctor’s companions with him.  He shared his opinions on whether or not we always need to have a dramatic departure for his friends, and whether or not we couldn’t see a more polite and happy departure where his friend says “Thanks for the fun, I’m off to buy new sheets now”. His response was rather emphatic:

“Yes that would be the least talked about moment in television history wouldn’t it? I mean really if you did a scene ‘I’m going to buy some sheets now,’ no one is ever going to write a fan letter about that one. So no, we’re not going to do that”.

He also called foul on the popular thought about The Doctor’s companions always ending up worse for the wear.  “I mean, that’s not true about all the Doctor’s companions. It’s maybe what the Doctor thinks in his darker moments and when he’s dying in “Let’s Kill Hitler.” He worries that he might’ve done them terrible harm.  But Rose is off in a parallel universe. She’ll be with her – with a human version of the Doctor. She’s fine. Martha learns to stand up for herself and got over her crush on the Doctor and she soars off. Yes Donna has a more miserable thing. But she doesn’t know she’s miserable. She ends up actually quite happy and married to a good bloke. Rory and Amy are perfectly happy in New York. They’re dead, but, you know, everyone from that year is dead so that’s all right. They lived to a ripe old age and had a lovely time.

“The Doctor – so he’s not – they all don’t leave under terrible circumstances at all. I think the tragedy when Amy and Rory went was the Doctor lost them not – and that in the end they, you know, of course that, you know, Amy would choose Rory over the Doctor in a heartbeat. And he actually had some trouble quite dealing with that.   But the fact is, no he doesn’t ruin their lives. He can induce a certain amount of trauma, it must be said. But no they’re not all destroyed by any means. And no, every time, every time the Doctor loses a regular character from this show it will happen in a moment that makes people talk. Because the episode that you described no one would talk about that. That wouldn’t be thrilling.

“If a friendship is severed for good or for bad reasons, that’s a big moment in your life. And if you walk away from a great friend but then you’re not crying a little then you’ve not been reading the memos frankly. You’ve not been paying attention. So, no, Doctor Who will not take the un-dramatic path because we’d like to stay on television and popular.”

So far in the new series, all the Companions have been from modern day Britain.  That wasn’t always the case in the old series. You’ve got Leela. You’ve got Dodo. You’ve got folks from different places, different times. Still human looking so you save money on the makeup. But how likely or how perhaps harder or different to write is it to write for a companion that isn’t just from modern day Earth?

“Well if we found that difficult,” he replied, “then we’d have tremendous difficulty writing the main character wouldn’t we? It’s not a question of whether it is difficult to do or not. It’s a question of whether it’s the right thing to do or not. Now in fact, the old series doesn’t do a hell of a lot of it. If you looked at the vast majority of the companions come from contemporary era. Even the ones who don’t come from contemporary era are pretty much normalized ones like with Jamie and Victoria. Then it’s hardly any time at all before Victoria is wearing short skirts. No Victorian would actually do that. You know, so the problem is – and I don’t say it’s an unsolvable problem, but the majority solution will always be a contemporary companion. But the problem is you need an anchoring point for the audience. You need someone who represents their world and their point of view. And the simplest, purest and best answer to that is somebody from their world.

“Now somebody who’s watched Doctor Who for an unseasonably long time like I have, like possibly you have, I don’t know, might get bored of that and say ‘I wish it was, you know, a two headed alien from the planet Prang’. The new audience don’t think that. They want an anchoring point on that mysterious alien the Doctor. Doesn’t mean we’ll always do it this way. But the reality is it’s always going to be somebody from contemporary era or somebody who ends up being very like somebody from contemporary era.

“I think it was great – the one that broke the mold really I would argue was Leela. We actually went for somebody who was quite different. I would sort of say that Jamie and Victoria ended up – when I was a kid watching I wasn’t particularly aware that they were historical characters. And I do remember watching them. And Romana just came across as, you know, in the end like a very, very clever young woman. She wasn’t that different from Liz Shaw. It’s going to be – it’s going to be the relatable half of the partnership. Keep in mind Doctor Who has to not just appeal to sci-fi fans, it has to appeal to a huge mainstream audience who dwarf the sci-fi audience. You sort of need that way in for them. Having said that, you know, who knows maybe there’ll be a robot dog next. I don’t know.”

One thing that has changed about the companions in the new series is we’ve seen much more about their family lives.  Time was they’d be whisked away and dropped off with nary a word about who they left behind, save for the odd joke about a maiden aunt of perhaps a pot on the stove.  Clara doesn’t even travel with The Doctor full time.  Is that the “New Normal” as Peter Pachal from Mashable asked, or will we see a more traditional companion relationship in the future?

“Well, I mean there’s never going to be a ‘new normal’. Everybody who comes aboard the TARDIS will have a different story and do it a different way. You know, it’s not a dictate of any kind it’s just – Clara’s personality did not suit the idea of simply abandoning everything else she does and running off with the Doctor. I mean you wouldn’t believe it if I wrote that scene. Yes I’ll just go move into the TARDIS with you and I’ll keep in the spare room and you tell me where to go and you drive. That’s just – Clara’s never going to do that in a million years, just wouldn’t.

“But Amy the night before her wedding, all anxious about whether she’s getting married too young. She can run away from awhile. But once she gets married of course she’ll do that. I think you’ve got to look at the Doctor as somebody who’s got a fantastic car that likes to take you for a spin now and then. That doesn’t mean you move in.  Now Rose was in a very different place, wasn’t she? She lived in a council estate. She didn’t like her job. She had a vexed relationship with her mother. She had a, you know, she had a boyfriend she wasn’t sure of. She ran away because that was right for her character. It’s purely whether or not you want to run away. And whether or not you might need the idea that you might be number two in this particular relationship.

“Clara is never going to – from the first moment you meet her she’s never going to be somebody who thinks that they live in the spare room while his nibs drives the TARDIS. That’s just not what she’s like.

“Doesn’t mean that the next one won’t be like that. Who knows?”

 

New Who Review – “Last Christmas”

This day has been an emotional rollercoaster.

The facts and details of the Christmas episode have been kept strictly secret, and for good reason.  Rumors flew that Jenna Coleman was leaving the series just as the new season was a-borning, and her go-to answer for the events of the special was “If you know if I’m staying with the series, it’ll ruin the ending”.  A spectacularly surprising cameo, a hilarious guest star, and a plot that keeps unfolding like a fried onion makes for a ripping yarn for the holiday.  But for most of the year, we were never sure or not if this was to be Clara’s…

LAST CHRISTMAS
By  Steven Moffat
Directed by Paul Wilmshurst

Clara and The Doctor team up again after Santa crashes on her roof. You heard me – Sweet Papa Chrimbo himself appears atop Clara’s home, and before any sense can be made of that, The Doctor reappears and snatches her away.  They arrive at a mysterious science base where the scientists are combating Dream Crabs, an alien species that lull their victims into a peaceful dream-state while they quietly eat their brains.  Clara is attacked by one, and “awakens” at home on Christmas morning, met by Danny Pink, inexplicably hale and hearty.  It’s only when she properly awakens does she, The Doctor, and the scientists realize that they may well be all still asleep.  Oh, and Santa Claus keeps appearing to help.

Moffat took full advantage of the rumors surrounding Jenna Coleman’s status on the show to deliver a series of heart-gripping false moves that left the viewer exhausted, but fully entertained.  Moffat has always been good at creating characters that you immediately feel for, and this is no exception.  Even when it’s eventually revealed that we actually knew nothing about the people, we’re happy to see them survive.

THE MONSTER FILES –  The Dream Crabs are based on a very common concept, the idea of dreams being used to cloak a slow death.  Comics fans will likely already thought of the Alan Moore story For the Man Who Has Everything, which featured Mongul using an alien plant called a Black Mercy to place Superman in a dream state where he believes he had grown up on Krypton with his loving family.  It was even adapted into an episode of Justice League Unlimited, adapted by J. M. DeMatteis.

Fans of Red Dwarf will also recall the despair squid, a being that takes the opposite tack – inducing dreams to make its victims despair, causing them to take their own lives in the dream.  The female of said species follows more the standard trope, causing a happy dream from which the victim(s) from which would be loath to awaken. The Dream Lord tried the same thing in Amy’s Choice –  Heck, you could even argue that the Master’s plan with the Nethersphere was the same scheme – a artificial reality to keep the victims placated and off-balance until they were needed.  Moffat takes a page from Inception as well, folding in the idea of multi-layered dreams, resulting in never being sure if they were truly awake.

GUEST STAR REPORT –

Nick Frost (Santa) is best know in the US for his frequent collaborations with fellow Who-lumnus Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright.  But he’s got a long list of solo projects in the UK as well.  He starred in the Sci-Fi comedy Hyperdrive, which also starred Kevin Eldon and the delightful and huge Miranda Hart. He hosted a mock “worst case scenario” style show called DANGER! 50,000 Volts! and worked with Daisy Haggard (Sophie from The Lodger and Closing Time) on the sketch show Man Stroke Woman.

Michael Troughton (Professor Albert) is the son of Patrick Troughton, the second Doctor.  He has quite a respectable acting career in his own right, including a regular role on Rik Mayall’s The New Statesman.  He took several years off from acting to care for his ailing wife, who passed away recently.  This episode is the second acting role he’s taken in his return to the boards.  He and his father are far from the only actors in the family. His brother David played King Peladon in the classic series Pertwee adventure The Monster of Peladon, and Professor Hobbs in Tennant’s Midnight. His nephew, Harry Melling, played Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter films.

Dan Starkey (Ian) is well known to Who-fen as Strax the Sontaran, not to mention practically every Sontaran to appear in the last few years of the show.  They chose to have him play an elf in this episode because as Moffat explains in a recent interview, “we thought it would be nice for him not to have to wear so much rubber. And I’m talking about his professional rubber not his personal life”.  

Natalie Gumede (Ashley Carter) is known in England for an extended run on Coronation Street, and is currently starring in a web comedy called Sally the Life Coach. Her biggest mass media appearance was a tie for second-place showing in Strictly Come Dancing, the original British version of what came over here as Dancing with the Stars.

BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO – Apparently Jenna Coleman did initially plan to leave the show at the end of the season – the original ending of the special was for Clara to really be 80-odd years old, and would die in bed after a long-awaited reunion with The Doctor.  She had a change of heart (much like Clara did mid-season) and the ending was hastily amended.  It’s one of the few times where “it was all a dream” was a perfectly logical progression of the story, and not merely a desperate hat-pull.

DWNobodySET PIECES – The unnamed planet upon which The Doctor was attacked by the Dream Crabs looked remarkably similar to the planet that Clara attempted to threaten him into saving Danny in Death in Heaven.  That that version of that world was also only a dream only makes it more fitting that the same set be used again when it isn’t…IF it isn’t/

“It’s time to start living in the real world” – It’s always fun when one of the first things said in an episode turns out to be the solution all along, and you never notice. See also Clara’s line shortly after re-entering the TARDIS, “This is real, yeah?”

“Clara Oswald…mostly favors travel books” – When we first meet (this) Clara in The Bells of St. John, her room is filled with travel books, starting with the one she got from her mom.

“Don’t think about them…don’t look at them” – Once again, Moffat takes a commonplace thing and makes it scary.  The old joke “try not to think about a tap-dancing elephant” comes to mind here – it’s almost impossible NOT to think of something once it’s been brought to your attention.  Trying to keep your mind blank was also touched on in Time Heist as well as a way to stay clear of The Teller.

“They can only see you if you see them” – The idea of a being that hacks into your senses to get a look at where they are is a neat idea, but I couldn’t keep from thinking of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, “a mind-bogglingly stupid beast; it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you” from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

“Three hundred and four minus seventeen” – The Doctor would often start asking his Companion maths questions as a method of getting them to concentrate, and keep from being distracted by the wild situations they were in.  He once asked Sarah Jane Smith to recite the alphabet backwards.

“It’s Christmas Eve ; early to bed” – Santa speaks to the Sleepers like children, a trick that that worked very well for The Doctor in The Doctor Dances, written by…Steven Moffat!

“It’s a long story” is right up there with “I’ll explain later” as a standard hand-wave to get past having to provide a large amount of exposition to cover a point that really doesn’t need explaining.  Moffat simply uses the cliché as an actual plot point, confounding expectations.

“That’s a bit rude, coming from a magician” – Moffat does love his callbacks.  That’s a reference from Time Heist, where The Doctor says his new look “was trying for minimalist, but ended up with magician”.

“They’re a bit like face-huggers, aren’t they?” – Professor Albert points out the similarity to the egg-laying form of the Xenomorph from Alien, but did you notice that when Shona awakens at home, one of the things on her Christmas To Do list was to watch not only Alien, but The Thing from Another World?

“Four manuals” – In yet another example of the “dream trap” genre, Batman is trapped in an electronic dream by the Mad Hatter in Perchance to Dream.  Books play a role in his realization of his predicament – Dreams are generated in another part of the brain than the ability to read, so when Bruce opens a book, it’s filled with illegible gibberish.

DWFeels1“Time travel is always possible…in dreams” – It’s the method Madame Vastra used to have a quorum across several centuries, with one person that was already dead, albeit electronically saved, in The Name of the Doctor.

“About sixty-two years” – The Doctor has shown up late for more than a few of his friends.  He was too late to see the Madame du Pompadour in The Girl in the Fireplace and he missed The Brigadier.

“I travelled” – This may be the closest we’ll see to a clean break between The Doctor and Clara, and it’s a good look at how being a Companion changes people. After only dreaming about seeing the world as a younger girl, she up and did it in this dream-version of her time after The Doctor.

Also note that When The Doctor has to help Clara pop the cracker, it’s a mirror of Clara having to help her Grandmother pop the poem-filled cracker in The Time of the Doctor.

NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – This is a very unique scenario, in that we actually DO know what’s up next time.  If only to drive home the fact that Clara (and through her, Ms. Coleman) was staying, they’ve actually given us the title of next season’s first episode – The Magician’s Apprentice. Whether that’s yet another reference to The Doctor’s new look is something we can only guess.

Jenna Coleman has been confirmed for the full series, and Peter Capaldi for the next two, so we’re in a position where we don’t have to worry about anyone leaving for at least a little while. But I must admit, as well as Jenna and Peter work together, I don’t know if the ending of Death in Heaven wasn’t the right “out”. A bittersweet ending that left both characters sad at their parting, but both feeling that they’d done something good for the other, to let them move on with their lives. Much as with  Amy and Rory’s first farewell at the end of The God Complex, everybody lives.  But Steven had to bring them back that last half-season and give them a more dramatic and sad finish (for The Doctor, anyway), not to mention more final departure.  Not to mention that to a degree, Clara has lost a bit of her independence – the overly emotional realization of how much she’s missed the sound of the TARDIS, and yet another overly sappy statement of what she thinks of The Doctor.

When we call back to the description of wanting to keep traveling as an “addiction” – even though she was allegedly asking it about The Doctor, it’s clearly a question that could be asked to, and about Clara.  I can but hope that come the end of next series, we aren’t debating whether Clara overstayed her welcome.

Mike Gold: More Superhero Movies of the Ancients

Last week, I taunted you with visions of ancient superhero movies – serials, as they were called back then. Today we’d call them really low-budget webcasts. Here’s a few more worthy of your consideration, and this time we’re delving into a trio of iconic heroes from the pulps and newspaper strips – and now, of course, comic books.

The ShadowThe Shadow is the best-known of all the classic pulp heroes, and for a very good reason: many of the more than 300 stories published were quite good. Walter B. Gibson created something magical – a series with a lead character who had plenty of secrets but no secret identity, aided and abetted by a slew of agents who had no idea who their master was. The character’s popularity was enhanced massively by a highly successful radio series, one that gave The Shadow an alter-ego and a female companion and took away most of his agents.

Sadly, The Shadow didn’t fare as well on the silver screen. I don’t think the sundry producers could ever reconcile the differences between the pulp stories and the radio show, and they certainly were restricted in the deployment of violent action. But there is one major exception, the 15-chapter Columbia serial from 1940. Whereas they did a decent job of using three agents (including Margo Lane), the real beauty of this production was the man who played the lead, Victor Jory. A talented and accomplished actor (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Miracle Worker), Jory had the additional benefit of actually looking like The Shadow and his adopted form of Lamont Cranston, as portrayed in the pulps. Serials generally lacked verisimilitude; The Shadow had it in spades. And it’s a damn fine actioner, by serial standards.

spider_serial2If you found The Shadow pulps to be lacking in action, The Spider made up for it and then some. Every plot revolved around a madman’s quest to destroy humanity. New York City got trashed more often than a Thing vs. Hulk fightfest. The death count in your average Spider story was at least in triple digits. The books should have been published in red ink.

Obviously, they couldn’t duplicate that degree of violence in the movie serials. But they got the flavor and the spirit right, giving the Spider a real costume (he didn’t have one in the pulps), keeping his cast of associates intact, and using Warren Hull, who played the lead, in the various disguises typical to the pulp hero. There were two Spider serials: The Spider’s Web and The Spider Returns, and both are quite worthy.

Flash GordonI’ve left the best for last. The one series of serials I would recommend even to people who don’t like serials or kids who can’t handle black and white and cheesy special effects.

The Flash Gordon serials, Space Soldiers, Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars, and Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe, are blessed with a cast that, by and large, looks as though they were designed by Flash Gordon creator Alex Raymond. All three follow the spirit and direction of the classic newspaper strip, and the first serial is as close to a literal transition from comics to film as I’ve ever seen. Whereas Buster Crabbe is impeccable as Flash and his relative inexperience as an actor inures to the benefit of this part, it is Charles Middleton as Ming who steals the show, as well as the popcorn off your lap.

In my jaded worldview, Middleton’s Ming is the best villain on film, period. He’s evil, he’s imperial, he’s a warrior, he’s a master scientist. He is everything Fu Manchu wanted to be. Middleton pulls it off with style and aplomb without overacting – which, in serials, is unique. The only actor who comes close was Roger Delgado as the original Master in Doctor Who. Even when Ming is being cooperative with our heroes, he doesn’t have a shred of sympathy to draw upon. Ming’s nobility works hand-in-glove with his position as Emperor of all he sees.

These serials are generally available from the usual sources – you might have to Google around for The Spider, but the Flash Gordon trio is easily available. Much of it all is on Hulu, YouTube, and sundry other streaming services.

These are the characters that provided the budding comic book medium with its backbone. It set the standard for all future heroic fantasy films. Check a few out.