At this weekend’s 2012 World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago (a.k.a. Chicon 7), Neil Gaiman was awarded the coveted Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form). It seems he wrote an episode of Doctor Who last season you might have heard about – “The Doctor’s Wife.”
In his acceptance speech, the Britisher-turned-Minnesotan let slip the fact that if just so happens he’s writing another episode of Doctor Who for the latter half of this season, to be broadcast sometime in 2013; presumably well before the 50th anniversary celebrations.
Well, one good turn deserves another. And congratulations, Neil, on the Hugo!
(Thanks and a tip of the Golddome to RedEye Chicago, to our pals at Bleeding Cool for the pic, and to our own Glenn Hauman for being at the festivities.)
It’s all fun and games until someone loses a…well, anyway.
This week, as a run-up to the season premiere of Doctor Who, a mini web-series titled “Pond Life”, intended to share a look at the Ponds’ home life in between visits by The Doctor. It was four episodes of entertaining fun, right up until the moment Steven Moffat and writer Chris Chibnall seized our hearts, turned them sideways, and made a tasty broth from our tears.
Each episode summarizes a month between April and August, leading into the events of the first episode, Asylum of the Daleks. All five episodes of “Pond Life” are available on the BBC YouTube channel, mirrored on numerous websites, and is written into the sullen expressions of Who-fen everywhere. Take a look, then we’ll discuss:
In April we get the distinct impression that The Doctor has been keeping in touch quite closely with the Ponds via a series of phone messages. He relates a few of his solo adventures, including surfing the Fire Falls of Florial 9 to escape a cohort of his old enemies the Sontarans. He also met “Good little dancer, terrible spy” Mata Hari, and performed backing tracks for one of those hip-hop songs the kids seem to like.
May is in fact the only time The Doctor and The Ponds directly meet in all five episodes. He bursts into their bedroom, begging them to get dressed, only to realize he’s arrived earlier than he expected, and they’ve no idea what he’s talking about. As flashes of the events to come in the series flash across the screen, he assures them that all is well, the future is “really, really…fine”, and bids them return to sleep.
June and July is a bit of a two-part story – The Doctor has picked up a stray Ood who is still under his conditioning as a servant. Apparently wandering off the TARDIS during a stop at their apartment, and sits waiting in their bathroom for orders. The Doctor assures them the best thing to do is let him follow his conditioning, resulting in the Ponds getting a butler for a brief time.
The Doctor’s popped by to pick the Ood up and return him to Ood-Sphere in between July and the final chapter, assumed to be August, though the date is not specifically mentioned. It’s clearly a bit longer than that, as quite a bit has happened to Amy and Rory. Unaware to The Doctor, Amy and Rory have had a falling out, and we see Rory leaving their home carrying his belongings in a trash bag. And is you look at Amy’s lips, she’s NOT saying “Come back”.
So, quite a bit going on here, lots of fun, some tears and worry – in short, a solid Doctor Who episode.
THE MONSTER FILES –
The Sontarans were introduced in the Jon Pertwee adventures The Time Warrior. A militaristic clone race, they’ve cut swaths across the galaxy, either via simple conquering raids, or as part of their protracted war with their enemy, the Rutans. They were the race behind the invasion of Gallifrey in The Invasion of Time, and almost converted the Earth’s atmosphere to suit them on The Sontaran Stratagem. Christopher Ryan, best known to Americans as Mike “The Cool person” from the punk Britcom classic The Young Ones has appeared twice as two different Sontaran leaders.
The Ood first appeared more recently, in the Tennant adventures The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit. They were portrayed as a servant race, seemingly low in intelligence, communicating via an implanted communication device. In their next appearance Planet of the Ood, it was revealed their situation was far more insidious. Ood are indeed sentient and intelligent, and are born with a second, exterior brain that they use to communicate telepathically to each other, selected people outside their race, and the physical Ood hive mind. This second brain is amputated as part of their “conditioning” process, which severs their link to the hive mind, and effectively lobotomizes them. The Doctor is horrified at the news, and helps to free them from their captivity. Their de facto leader, Ood Sigma, the first conditioned Ood to re-connect to the hive mind, returns to guide The Doctor through his final adventures before his regeneration. An Ood was found on The Junkyard at the End of the Universe in Neil Gaiman’s The Doctor’s Wife, but only because there wasn’t enough in the budget to created the alien Neil had written into the script.
The Ood bear more then a small resemblance to the Hartnell-era aliens The Sensorites, from an adventure of the same name. show runner Russell T. Davies noticed that, and as a tip of the hat, placed their homewold, Ood-Sphere in the same star system as Sense-Sphere, homeworld of the first race.
BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details
ANY LANDING YOU CAN WALK AWAY FROM IS A GOOD ONE – The Helmic Regulator is a recurring issue in the mini-adventure. The Helmic Regulator helps control the precision of the landing of a TARDIS. If not correctly calibrated, the landing point can vary in either space or time.
When Harry Sullivan (accidentally) touched the Helmic Regulator, the TARDIS landed on Nerva Beacon instead of the moon, back in The Ark In Space.
The Doctor made special mention of it again when showing Martha Jones how he prepared the TARDIS for takeoff in Smith and Jones. In the new design (desktop setting) of that console, it resembles a bicycle pump. He was also able to use it, in concert with the thermo-buffer and the zeiton crystals, to prevent a two-Doctor paradox from blowing a hole in the universe the size of Belgium in the mini-adventure Time Crash.
While the Helmic regulator still exists on the new design of the TARDIS, it’s not yet been pointed out specifically on the show.
Interesting fact – the TARDIS console on the set has a user’s manual. The controls on each panel are specifically named, and each has a specific function. Matt Smith was given the manual and had to learn it. He had to learn a precise series of actions to launch or pilot the capsule “properly”. He’s not just making it up.
Doctor Who premieres September 1st on the BBC and BBC America.
Last Saturday was a busy day if you were a Doctor Who fan in New York City. The first episode of the new series, Asylum of the Daleks, had its US premiere at the Ziegfeld Theater, the largest single-screen theater in the city they could lay their hands on. After a minor frenzy to obtain tickets, fans were treated to an hour-long thrill ride as The Doctor and his friends Amy and Rory fought against more Daleks than you could shake an eye-stalk at. But the activity began earlier in the day, as the folks at BBC America made stars Matt Smith and Karen Gillan, as well as co-producer Caroline Skinner available for interviews to the appreciative hordes of the working press.
Matt Smith (The Doctor) is currently shooting the Christmas special (“Which you have to shoot in August, because what could be more silly” explained Caro Skinner) and arranged a break in his schedule so he could fly to New York specifically to attend the premiere. “I want to film every single episode in New York, I want to get that out there right now. I absolutely love this place. Any way you point a camera, there’s something wonderful and beautiful to look at. The Light here sort of falls between the grids of the buildings so wonderfully. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’d like to come live here one day. And it’s great to do a sort of periody piece here – the locations afford you so much.”
In the aforementioned special, “[The Doctor] meets his new chum…or someone he thinks is his new chum”, played by newcomer to the series, Jenna-Louise Coleman. When asked about how The Doctor acts when he hasn’t got a companion, Matt admits he’s “really interested by the time he spends on his own. I think he gets more dangerous when he’s on his own. I think he needs that sort of human moral compass, that human sensibility. He needs that, he doesn’t have the same grasp of it. It’s interesting to think about the character becoming more reclusive, and on his own. Just this old man, wandering around the universe, trying to put things right…killing loads of innocent people along the way. when you look at it, there’s a lot of clerics that die in certain episodes.”
This season of thirteen regular episodes is broken into a short set of five, the final eight coming in 2013, after the Christmas special. The only “arc” in this five is what matt calls “The fall of the Ponds”. “We start off exactly where we left him,” Matt explains, “a man who is trying to step back a bit, into the shadows, and be less prominent, less famous, less apparent, less destructive. less of all those things that he started to struggle with. We see him trying to deal with that, as a character, or personality trait, it’s absolutely something he’s trying to deal with. Perhaps it does make his soul a bit darker, because he’s alone a lot more. As Amy says, it’s unhealthy for him, I think, ultimately, to be alone too long.”
When discussing the new episode, everyone has said the Daleks are “scary again”. “We’ve got the design of them better,” says Matt. “We’ve drawn from every Dalek, every one ever on its…well, you can’t say ‘legs’, can you? On their…space wheels. And The Asylum, you’ll see tonight, it’s…Dalek-Land. Like a perfect theme park – everything’s made for Daleks, it’s sort of ridiculous. The doors all go like that (makes a triangle shape with his hands) cause they’re all fat at the bottom. The world is really sort of gruesome and frightening. The design, and the tone, and the way it’s lit, I think we’ve achieved our intention with their nature.”
Karen Gillan (Amy Pond Williams) admitted something fairly major – “I’ve never found the Daleks…all that scary. I’ve loved them, cause they’re so iconic. But in this episode, they’re properly frightening.
I wondered if this “asylum” was more in the sense of a place where you keep mad people, of a place where dangerous people beg to be kept safe. Matt surmised, “I think it is [the first], but I rather like the idea of Daleks SO mad, they’re asking, ‘don’t let me out’. If they had more of a human consciousness, the latter could apply, but the Daleks don’t have that, it’s just not there. It’s just alien evil, encased in a tank. That’s why The Doctor has had this life-long war, that’s why they are his greatest foe, there’s nothing redemptive about them. They are only evil, and that’s the way he sees them; only evil.”
“This is an interesting episode for the nature of the Daleks”, Matt thinks. “We learn a lot, Steven cleverly reveals. As I think you have to with any villain that comes back. They have to have moved on somehow. And I think Steven’s done that here, he’s explored their nature in a very interesting way.”
The recurring theme of meeting historical figures will come round again, in an odd way. “In episode four, we encounter someone’s feet. He was a king, and he’s chasing us…and I’m not gonna give anything else away.” When asked what figure he might like to see appear, Matt was introspective. “Was Tarzan real? He wasn’t real was he? I kind of like the idea of The Doctor swinging from the branches, but being really bad at it.”
Gillan had a rather definite opinion about her character, specifically about the possibility of a return after this season’s assuredly dramatic departure. “I’ve always said that when I go, I want it to be for good. Because I want that final scene to have that same impact, maybe ten years on. I want people to be able to revisit it and still have the same emotion. That’s really important for me, so for that reason, I think I’m going to rule out any returns.” However, when I quietly complimented her on her ability to lie, she replied, “I learned it from the best!”
This season will start with a five-part webisode prequel, Pond Life, which will be made available on the BBC’s You Tube channel. “That was really interesting,” Karen recalls. “Cause you never get to see the snippets in between their adventures with The Doctor. And that’s what Pond Life is all about. And the in episode four (The Power of Three) that’s what the whole episode is about – these two people trying to deal with their domestic life, with this time-traveler popping in and out of their lives, whisking them off into these crazy adventures.”
“Steven (Moffat) and I wanted to do a fairly substantial piece about the Ponds and their relationship with The Doctor,” explained Executive producer Caroline Skinner, “kind of in general, and in between series six and seven. And one of the exciting thing about this series of episodes is you’ve got Amy and Rory as a married couple, and The Doctor popping in and out of their life, and taking them on adventures, and then dropping them off again. And we wanted something to set up that context, and really let people get an emotional sense of their relationship. And to see what The Doctor popping in and out meant from their point of view. You’ve got him coming in like that crazy little child, and throwing everything up in the air.”
“We were working at the time with brilliant writer Chris Chibnall (writer of 42 and The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood for Who, and numerous episodes of Torchwood), and he’s just got the most beautiful way for writing for Amy and Rory, and we asked him to put pen to paper, and that’s what we got.”
In this, her first full season producing the show, Caro brings to the table “A huge amount of passion for [the series], I’ve always loved it, and massive enthusiasm and ambition to make this the biggest series ever. And so does Steven. I sat down on day minus-one, just before I got the job, and he pitched me what he wanted to do with the series. And miraculously, in fifteen minutes, he’d pitched me all 13 stories for each episode, and I was just sat there saying ‘Wow, that’s quite a lot.’ And it was just so exciting to hear, to be honest, and I just wanted to bring my enthusiasm to bear to make all those ideas come to life, in the most ambitious way that we could.”
While chatting, Karen shared a problem she had with the many deaths of Rory Williams: “Each time, I have to invent a sort of new ‘death reaction.’ What am I going to do now?” She didn’t have any such problems filming her final scenes. “It not even acting, it’s just real. And it was honestly, just one of the most powerful feelings, and I just related it to how I genuinely felt. [that scene] was fairly far along in the shooting, but our very last scene was kind of an insignificant one, just us getting into the TARDIS, going ‘bye!’ But it became significant, cause it was the last time were going into the TARDIS together. So Matt closed the door, and we were in total darkness, and we all had a massive hug in the dark. And I cried, and milked it for all it was worth. It was amazing.”
Of all the episodes she’s filmed, Karen still considered The Eleventh Hour to be her favorite. “There was a particular magic to that episode. We were introducing the characters and establishing their relationship for the first time, and it was all so exciting. Actually, my favorite scene doesn’t even involve me at all, it’s the fish/custard scene, with my little cousin (Caitlin Blackwood) and Matt.”
Karen’s met some very wonderful fans, but had a couple stories about a couple that…stuck in her mind. One was a fellow who had actually had his name changed to “River Song”, and dressed as her for the convention, and a second fellow from Australia who had customized his house to a Doctor Who theme – “He had a TARDIS elevator, the gates had the logo – it had to cost some money.”
All three of the guests agreed that filming in New York City was a wonderful experience. “We filmed in Central Park and had hundreds of fans,” Matt recalls, “following us. It was remarkable, like nothing I’d ever witnessed before.” Karen agreed – ” Just to contain the excitement of being in Central Park was a challenge. We didn’t have any sort of security, we didn’t think anything like [hundreds of fans] was going to happen. But what was really nice is everybody respected the shooting, they were really quiet, and the they said ‘Cut,’ and it was all ‘Sign my TARDIS!'” Caroline explained, “When we shoot in the UK, we’ll get quite a few people following us around, and the fan base absolutely adore the show. But in my career, I’ve never known anything…I don’t think anyone had prepared themselves for what shooting in New York would be like. Least of all, our producers here in New York, who had done various movies here, and they’re all saying, ‘Caro, I don’t mean to be funny, but you’ve got twice as many people as Julia Roberts here!’ Just a wonderful experience. We had maybe twenty, thirty people in central park in the morning, and the crowd just grew, and by the end, we were shooting at a big fountain, and we could hardly hold the people back. And the sheer love and passion for the show was in the air, and it made the entire experience so special.
Indeed, Caroline called Angels in Manhattan the most challenging episode of this front half of the season. “Challenging for Steven because he’s written the most beautiful and heartbreaking exit story and there are some scenes in there that just so absolutely emotional. It’s an enormous thing to change companions, and you absolutely have to get that story right. And at the same time, we wanted to make the New York setting as resonant as we possibly could, and really make it feel to every detail, that we’d set it over here. And we did, we came here. We worked incredibly hard to get to get out and about to every New York landmark that we could, but more so to create that sort of noirish atmosphere that shooting in this city is so famous for. To make the story feel as beautiful as it possibly could do.
As for next year, which will of course be 2013, the fiftieth anniversary year for the series. “All I can say at this point”, said Caroline, guardedly, “Is that next year i going to be the biggest year of Doctor Who, bar none. I spent a lot of my time in strange underground rooms, with senior people at the BBC, and talking about what we might do. And not just on television; but other things, cause obviously Doctor Who has a lot of live events. So there are many plans afoot, which are all wonderful, and are all absolutely top secret.”
Writing for science fiction is always a challenge, as eventually someone has to ask how much things will cost, and that’s ultimately Caroline’s job. “We are treated very nicely by the BBC, but it’s always, whatever show you do, however big of small the budget is, you always want more. The thing we do on Doctor Who, as much as we possibly can do, is to let writers write exactly what they want, and then try not to cut anything, What you tend to get, in a Doctor Who script, is if it doesn’t, in terms of the production challenges, within it, in terms of location, in terms of special effects, just sheer story-based ambition…if it doesn’t scare you, as well as the monsters, we’re none of us are working hard enough.”
Later that evening, Matt and Karen arrived at the Ziegfeld theater in twin DeLoreans, to the sound of the cheering crowds, and of reality folding in upon itself. The episode itself was met with delight by the audience, and as the trio were so earnest in their requests to keep it all a secret (especially the BIG where where…ok, sorry), well, who are we to refuse them. suffice to say we learn about a great deal more about how Daleks think, how they treat their failures, and what they see as beautiful. The question and answer session was filled with laughs as, among other things, we learned that Matt had to help Karen zip up her dress (“Twice!”), the cast think that Peter Sellers and Bill Nighy would make great Doctors, and in answer to a young girl who asked “Why does Amy always get in trouble?”, Karen simply answered “Well, she’s a risk-taker”. Matt shared a story about his Mum, who was with him at the premiere (and was received with great cheers). She’s quite the fan of the series herself, and when they were looking for the new Doctor, she sent him a text saying “You should be the new Doctor”, and he had already gotten cast, and couldn’t even tell her. So if he’s that good at keeping secrets, surely the 1,200 member of the audience can keep schtum for a week.
Asylum of the Daleks premieres September 1st at 9PM EDT on BBC America. Check you local listing, especially in HD as several major cable and satellite carries have recently added the BBC America HD channel to their lineups.
(Maxims: Political, Philosophical, and Moral, by Edward Counsel)
Except in comics.
I was doing a search for quotes about death when I found this one, which is so apropos. I never heard of Edward Counsel; did a Google search, but couldn’t find him?? Found a reproduction of his book on Amazon; the original was published before 1923. All I can gather is that he was an Australian who was born before 1900. Anyone who has more info is welcome to let me know in the comments section.
The reason I was looking for a quote about death – of which there seems to be milllllllllions – is because all us comic fans are buzzing about the YouTube video The Death and Return of Superman, by Max Landis (son of John Landis), who stars in The Chronicle. I was going to post it here, but Martha (Thomases) beat me to it three days ago – which amazingly points out that DC actually thought Tim Drake’s/Robin’s new costume was more of a P.R. event than Supe’s kicking of the bucket – so I won’t do that. All I can say is that, if by any chance you haven’t seen it, do so at once. You have my permission to stop reading this column, go watch it (it’s about 16:00 long) and then come back. It is bitingly hilarious, and exceptionally on the mark!!!! (Major kudos to Landis and his fellow actors btw!)
SPOILER ALERT!: Okay, I’m going to assume that you have either already seen the video or have taken the 16:00 to watch it before returning here, because I’m going to give away the ending here.
Landis concludes his short film by stating that Superman’s death and return opened the floodgates for other comic characters to die and then resurrect. In other words, said resurrection cheapened the dramatic impact of said death, and ended the ability of readers to mourn the loss of the character, because the reader knew the character would eventually return. Cynics like me will always point out that the death of a character in the comic book world is always due to (1) marketing; and (2) the dictates of Hollywood – as Martha ably points out in her column concerning Lois And Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.
As a comics writer, a editor, and a reader, the “make-believe” of death in comics really pisses me off.
I’d like to point out that the ability of fiction (any fiction, from comics to television to movies) to help children understand and cope with finality of death is incredibly important. J. M. Barrie understood this, as he has Peter Pan say “To die will be an awfully big adventure.” And of course, J.K. Rowling did not flinch from the meaning of death in the Harry Potter And The novels; it was one of the themes of her “magnus opus” – beginning with the main character. Need I remind you that Harry was an orphan?
Okay, young readers of comics are scarce these days. We all know that. But they are still out there; my eleven-year old niece Isabel being one of them. And children are curious about death. About six months after my husband left me, the family was out to dinner. Right in the middle of the laughter and the eating, Isabel, six years old at the time, said to me, “Is John dead?” (That was a conversation stopper, let me tell you.) Of course her parents had explained what had happened. But obviously Isabel couldn’t grasp the concept of marital separation and divorce, so all she knew was that John was gone, which in her thoughts equaled death… because, as her mom told me later, she had just seen a movie – I don’t remember which one, it might have been one of the Harry Potter’s – in which one of the characters died. And she was trying to wrap her young mind around “death.”
Which I think is good; our society tends to put death into a dark, dusty corner where it molders and mildews and mutates into something unbearably monstrous. Remember the uproar over Terry Schiavo? How about the Republican bullshit of equating Obama’s healthcare bill with death panels? And as a registered nurse in the operating room, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen terminally ill or extremely aged patients subjected to the stress of unneeded or useless surgery or treatment because the family insists on it because they can’t deal with the impending death of their loved one.
Death can be welcomed as an end to unending pain and torment. Death can be aggressively fought against with all the tools of modern medicine. Death can be sudden, or it can be stretched out into nanoseconds.
But death is real.
I’m still reeling from the death of Kara Zor-El – Supergirl – in Crisis On Infinite Earth. Don’t talk to me about the reboots.
The Very Short List of Comic Book Superheroes Who Have Died And Returned: Alfred Pennyworth, Aquaman, Aunt May, Big Barda, Bucky, Captain America, The Doctor, Elektra, Fahrenheit, The Flash, Firestorm, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, Hawkman, The Human Torch, Jean Grey, Moon Knight, Negative Man, Punisher, Robin, Supergirl, Superman, The Thing, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (many if not all), Wonder Man, Wonder Woman, Yellowjacket.
TUESDAY: Michael Davis. Sponsored by the Bacon Council.
SFScope friend Fred Lerner alerts us to this BBC article alerting us to the fact that two of the missing Doctor Who episodes have been rediscovered.
As with most early television, producers and broadcasters as a rule did not keep copies once programs had aired. As a very-long-running, well-loved series, Doctor Who is one of the targets of the ongoing Missing Believed Wiped project (part of the British Film Institute).
At Sunday’s event, the recovery of two episodes was announced: one from 1965, with William Hartnell as The Doctor; and one from 1967, with Patrick Troughton.
The recovered 1965 episode is part three of the four-part series “Galaxy Four,” in which the race of cloned females called Drahvins attempt to escape a planet which is about to explode. The story is the only appearance of the tiny robots called the Chumblies.The 1967 episode was part two of “The Underwater Menace,” in which a mad scientist tries to restore Atlantis by draining the ocean into the Earth’s core.
A television series reaches middle age around its fifth or sixth season and it rests on the shoulders of the production team whether or not to get rejuvenated or quietly enter the complacency of old age, leading to a far swifter demise. Thankfully, Hart Hanson and the crew of Bones used last season as a chance to shake up the status quo in numerous ways resulting in a reset of sorts when the seventh season begins November 3. Meantime, [[[Bones: The Complete Sixth Season]]] was recently released by 20th Century Home Entertainment and is once more a handsome package.
The show is far more character-driven than its competitor procedurals on the other networks, so we’ve come to know and love not only the staff at the Jeffersonian and FBI agent Sealy Booth, but the interns and extended family that are part of their world. The series does not shy away from dealing with the consequences of their cases and as one menace is finally dealt with, another arrives to keep things interesting. The Gravedigger, Heather Taffet (Deirdre Lovejoy), had her creepy storyline brought to a satisfying conclusion but as one door closed, another opened and in walked Jacob Broadsky (Arnold Vosloo), an ex-Army sniper who has a history with Booth.
This show has always had an appealing cast, with terrific chemistry among the regulars and the producers make certain we see them at work and at play, mixing and matching the characters to see what happens. David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel anchor the show and their “will they or won’t they” relationship kept things going for the previous five seasons. Still, to everyone but one another, it was clear they belonged together, and it finally was addressed in the waning season five episodes. As season six opened, Booth had been in the Middle East for months and returned a changed man, accompanied by Hannah Burley (Katheryn Winnick). Having Booth seemingly happy in love was just the spark Deschanel’s Temperance Brennan needed to get back in touch with her emotional heart. Their arc was a very strong one, a spine for the season that ended with them finally making love, resulting in a pregnancy that will charge the new season. (more…)
Doctor Who returned to TV last night and my household is thrilled. Big fans of the Doctor here; I once wrote and tried to produce a Doctor Who stage play with the idea that this was the only way I would ever get to play the Doctor. The play never got to production and, despite being the writer and the producer, I couldn’t get cast as the Doctor which tells you, right there, one of the big reasons I gave up acting.
There’s a lot to be done in this new series of episodes, including explaining how the Doctor, who was shot dead in the first episode of this season’s series of episodes, escapes (the Doctor who was killed was from 200 years down the time stream; did I mention that Doctor Who is about time travel?). If the show does not explain that by this end of this season, I will personally hunt down the show’s brilliant writer and show-runner, Stephen Moffat, and throw him into a Pandorica until he tells. (If you haven’t seen the show, don’t bother trying to understand the reference. In show in-joke.)
However, that’s not the point of this rant. When last seen, the current Doctor (Matt Smith) went to war to recover his companion, Amy Pond, and her newborn child who would grow up to become River Song who would become the Doctor’s wife at some point later in the time stream. The adult River is along for the adventure, by the way. Sound confusing, perhaps, I know; it’s a timey-wimey-wivey thing. It works. Trust me.
However, towards the end of the episode, River gives the Doctor crap about how his life is going, how he is becoming too much the warrior, and some such bilge. Excuse me? The Doctor goes up against nasty horrible bad guys that are trying to take over the Earth and/or destroy/enslave humanity and/or destroy the universe or time itself and the Doctor time and again defeats them armed with nothing but his wits and a sonic screwdriver.
This has happened before. The previous incarnation of the Doctor – David Tennant (The Doctor regenerates from time to time when they need to change the lead actor and it’s a wonderful idea that keeps the series fresh) – got taken to task by one of the worst of his enemies, a fiend called Davros who invented the Daleks who go around killing anything that isn’t a Dalek. Said fiend accuses the Doctor of manipulating his companions so that they do the dirty work so the Doctor doesn’t have to. And the Doctor appears to take him seriously! Where does the creator of the Daleks have any moral ground against the hero who has saved the universe time and again from the product of Davros’ invention?
Is the Doctor supposed to feel bad about being the hero? Am I supposed to think the Doctor is not the hero me thinks him is? The Doctor is the good guy here, folks; I don’t want him all angsty and doubting his own motives. I mean, c’mon – the next thing you know, he’ll be doubting that bow ties are cool!
I know bow ties are cool. The Doctor told me so. And I trust the Doctor.
Doctor Who, under producer Steven Moffat, feels very different than that of the shows from Russell T. Davies. In some ways, it feels as if Moffat needs to top Davies so we go from the terrifying Weeping Angels to The Silence. And we go younger, with Matt Smith as Eleventh Doctor, the youngest yet. Everything old is new again, it seems, while a show once aimed strictly at kids is now being criticized for being too scary for the audience.
The new season, Series 6 of the reboot, is the first to be shown in halves, a marketing device that cable channels in the USA have been quite successful using, nabbing viewers during major network lull periods. It also provides a dramatic cliffhanger, which may be thrilling for viewers but no doubt causes headaches for the producers.
Speaking of commercial, BBC Video, distributed here through Warner Home Video, today releasesDoctor Who Series 6 Part 1, collecting the seven episodes aired to date while we eagerly await part two this fall (with Part 2 and Complete Series 6 DVDs no doubt to come).
Moffat has introduced meta arcs and mini arcs that require a fair amount of attention and makes the series increasingly difficult to attract newcomers. Miss an episode and vital clues to the Big Picture are absent, potentially confusing the viewer the next time a story is watched.
At this point, the Doctor, along with Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill), has settled into a comfortable relationship. The couple continues to act like newlyweds and the Doctor delights in having them around. As a result, it’s business as usual with the opening two-parter “The Impossible Astronaut”/ “The Day of the Moon” which sets up the big threat, that of The Silence, referenced in previous seasons and made manifest here. They are an eerie addition, for sure, but what they want and how they’ll be defeated seem saved for the second half season. We also learn Amy is pregnant and the little girl, who manages to call President Nixon and ask for help, leads audiences to believe she is Amy’s child. The story opens with the Doctor being shot dead but we discover he’s a Doctor from 200 years into the future so the duo conceals this information only to fret about it in every subsequent episode. (more…)
About the only reason we’re interested in the remake of Fright Night is because it features the current incarnation of Pavel Chekov and the previous version of The Doctor. The film, opening August 19, the same day as Spy Kids 4, will hopefully be entertaining. We have a newly released clip for you to check out:
The DreamWorks release stars Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, David Tennant, Imogen Poots and Toni Collette and was directed by Craig Gillespie from a script by Marti Noxon (another reason we’re interested).
Senior Charlie Brewster (Anton Yelchin) finally has it all—he’s running with the popular crowd and dating the hottest girl in high school. In fact, he’s so cool he’s even dissing his best friend Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). But trouble arrives when an intriguing stranger Jerry (Colin Farrell) moves in next door. He seems like a great guy at first, but there’s something not quite right—and everyone, including Charlie’s mom (Toni Collette), doesn’t notice. After witnessing some very unusual activity, Charlie comes to an unmistakable conclusion: Jerry is a vampire preying on his neighborhood. Unable to convince anyone that he’s telling the truth, Charlie has to find a way to get rid of the monster himself in this Craig Gillespie-helmed revamp of the comedy-horror classic.
The two-part finale to the 31st season of Doctor Who will feature The Daleks, The Cybermen, The Sontarans, and the return of River Song, the woman who may or may not be the Doctor’s mother. Or ex-wife. Or bookie. Whatever.
According to Digital Spy UK, producer/overseer Steven Moffet is writing both episodes, entitled The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang. The Doctor and his assistant Amy Pond have been dealing with a large glowing crack in the space/time continuum all season, along with Amy’s neurotic betrothed. It is expected this two-parter will resolve the former storyline, if not the latter as well. With all those alien bad guys oozing around, there might not be time. Broadcast time, that is: Doctor Who is entirely about time.
The shows will air June 19 and 26th in the United Kingdom and June 26th and July 3 on BBC America. After that, the Doctor zots off to The Sarah Jane Adventures to meet his old friend and former assistant and recurring playmate…. for the first time.
At this weekend’s 2012 World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago (a.k.a. Chicon 7), Neil Gaiman was awarded the coveted Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form). It seems he wrote an episode of Doctor Who last season you might have heard about – “The Doctor’s Wife.”
The two-part finale to the 31st season of Doctor Who will feature The Daleks, The Cybermen, The Sontarans, and the return of River Song, the woman who may or may not be the Doctor’s mother. Or ex-wife. Or bookie. Whatever.
