“Are you from a defective clone batch?”

Commander Strax at a kids’ Q&A session. Sample quote: “I serve a penance to restore the honor of my clone batch. As a result, The Doctor chose the most fearsome punishment a Sontaran can endure: helping the weak, and sick, and  feeble… or humans, as I like to call them.” Via io9. ☕

Doctor Who Series 7 ☕ “Hide”

“Hide” is probably not going to be remembered as a New Who classic the way “Blink” will be, but it has my vote for the best story of series 7 thus far. While I greatly admired “Asylum of the Daleks,” Moffat tried to pack oodles and oodles of stuff into it, and as a result, it felt a bit overstuffed, even if it did put its finger on a couple key veins running throughout the series and tap them brilliantly. “Hide” is also a bit overstuffed, but it feels complete and satisfying in a way that none of the other episodes has so far. (Kudos to writer Neil Cross for nailing the second time out!)

Charlie Jane Anders complains a bit that “Hide” exemplifies the trend in recent Who that “every story is a love story.” A true enough observation, but in the case of this particular episode, I don’t see it as a weakness. On the contrary, I think it grapples with this theme rather meaningfully while delivering some grand moments. (Spoilers after the jump!)

What about Ender Wiggin? Not epic enough?

The Doctor tops io9′s list of 8 Epic Heroes Who Committed Mass Murder. Just so. The case for (against?) him:

For a character who frequently makes moralistic pronouncements and shows plenty of righteous indignation towards other people’s actions, he is probably responsible for more deaths than any action hero or horror icon of the 1980′s. [...] In his 1103 years, the Doctor has racked up a body count that could be conservatively tallied in the trillions. It’s gotten so bad, for a while he was able to defuse any potential conflict by doing nothing more than introduce himself.

And now that he’s gone off grid with the whole faked-death thing, not even his reputation can hold him accountable to what he chooses to do. Prepare yourself, universe, for the Doctor unbound.☕

Doctor Who Series 7 ☕ “Asylum of the Daleks”

“Spoilers!” – Dr. River Song

This may be the best Dalek story since the relaunch of Doctor Who. Don’t get me wrong: there are things I didn’t like about it. Amy divorcing Rory because she can’t conceive a child for him? Ehwhat? Rory harping on Amy to have more kids, given what happened with Melody/River? Rory waiting two thousand years and then letting her go? Good heavens. Not to mention that the whole divorce subplot sort of makes you wonder what all those amusing “Pond Life” shorts were about. Did Amy draw up the divorce paperwork inside of, what, a week? Is that how fast no-fault divorces go now? None of this made much sense. As much as I love Amy and Rory as a couple, the fact that Moffat is now reduced to splitting them up and reunited them within a single episode testifies that there’s not much more material to be mined there. I’ll be sad to see them go, but it’s about time. The one cool thing that came out of the Pond divorce is the bit where the Doctor places the anti-nano cloud wristband on Amy before she even realizes it. Earlier, she’d told him that he can’t fix her marriage the same way he fixes his bow tie. Then, he puts them in a situation where he knows they’ll sort themselves out, and we get a shot of him pausing to adjust his tie in front of a camera. That’s one of the reasons that this is sort of a great episode, even with its flaws: it resurrects the ambiguous nature of the Doctor’s do-gooderism and puts it on trial.

Ood butler!

My favorite bit is Amy stealing Rory’s breakfast sausage. Husbands everywhere ought to relate to that.☕

Wizard World 2012!

Just returned from my first time at Wizard World Chicago. My wife and I managed to attend three panels (it would’ve been four, except Vic Mignogna canceled). Bruce Campbell leaned heavily on the insult comic button, accurately diagnosing most fans’ as stupid and beating up a ten year old kid (in order to show him how to beat up his brothers). The Star Trek captains were in fine form. Scott Bakula rescued Jean-Luc Picard from drowning in a water pitcher, William Shatner talked a bit about his documentary projects, and Avery Brooks exploded every brain in the room with his responses, each of which was basically the whole of Kantian metaphysics condensed (cogently) into two-minute sound bites. Perhaps the most delightful panel was James Hong’s. Swinging from goofball tomfoolery (when a woman asked him a probing question about what he, now an older character actor, might have wished to know when he was a younger actor playing older characters, he invited her up to dance, and promptly boogied like a man one-fifth his age) to thoughtful reflections on the trajectory of his career, he managed to come across as mercurial and grounded all at the same time. Plus, the man does uncanny Looney Tunes and Disney impressions. An amazing gentleman.

The biggest letdown of the week was going to see The Bourne Legacy. After a pretty decent Meal at Muvico’s in-house restaurant, we got to spend the next two hours wading through overdone exposition and poorly-crafted action scenes.

I picked up a few goodies, the coolest of which is a full-size print of the U.S. Millennium Actress poster. Other than that, I got a couple of pins and t-shirts. We had fun bumming around the main floor, hanging out with some friends, checking out all the cosplay (my wife found Carmen Sandiego!), and posing for a couple pictures with the Doctor’s oldest enemy. Overall, I had a blast.☕

The majestic tale of how the madman got his box

Oh, my giddy aunt: Mark Gatiss is writing a biopic about the behind-the-scenes origins of Doctor Who.

Via io9.

Avengers: UK

What, no room for the original UK Avengers?  Sheesh.  Still, I’d pay to see it twice.  A day.

Gallifreyan via Hello Sweetie.

Doctor Who Season 24 (1987) ☕ “Paradise Towers”

The indispensable Blogtor Who describes “Paradise Towers” as “an absolute stinker, a sign of the times that spewed it – but that’s also what makes it such an intriguing watch. It’s the decline of the Eighties in front of your very eyes.”  His discussion is nuanced, appreciative, and ultimately disappointed in the final product.  All told, that’s entirely fair, but even though he describes the DVD as a “fascinating release,” the overall impression of his review doesn’t convey that as much of an actual recommendation.  I’d like to argue that its ultimate failure makes it almost essential.

Doctor Benny and Mister Smith

I finally got around to watching Wheels on Meals (1984) in its entirety (thank you, Netflix streaming!). Apart from the sheer glory that materializes every time you put Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Yuen Biao on screen together, Benny Urquidez blew a hole in the space-time continuum. No, not with his jaw-popping high kicks, but with his wardrobe. The first time he showed up, I did a double-take and shot my wife a single, dazed question, “Why is Benny the Jet dressed like the Eleventh Doctor?”

Muppet Doctor Who

Amy Mebberson is freaking awesome.

I know I’ve been MIA for the last few weeks. I’ve got several posts in the works, including reactions to the new Who episodes, but this was too great to pass up. I caught Mebberson’s latest masterpiece on io9, and it seemed like a good opportunity to tell anyone who’s reading this blog to check out her stuff. The pic is linked to her Tumblr account, but check out her blog and DeviantArt pages as well.  Lots of great stuff in there. Just for reference, I jotted down a list of who’s Who in the pic. I believe I’ve got it all correct, but let me know if I’m wrong.

Video proof that you really don’t want to cross paths with the Seventh Doctor

I suppose I knew, somewhere in the recesses of my cavernous skull, that the era of the Seventh Doctor was epically nasty.  Seeing it all collected in one place — and hearing it scored by Clint Mansell and the Kronos Quartet — has given me a new, profound fear of panama hats.  H/t Babelcolour, whose tributes for the First, Second, and Third Doctors are also highly entertaining, and a little less heavy on the ‘splosion sauce. ☕

Doctor Who Series 6 ☕ “The Rebel Flesh”/”The Almost People”

“Spoilers!”
-Dr. River Song

Yeah, okay — there’s a lot of padding here.  Lots of chasing about or debating the morality of armed conflict from the relative safety of a fortified room, when we know that this is all just killing time until Something Big happens.  Matthew Graham took a lot of heat for writing “Fear Her,” which is not actually a terrible episode.  I rather liked that the monster of that particular week turned out not be a horrible monster; the episode was imaginative and nonsensical.  Perhaps not very tight, but memorable.  Maybe the backlash against that episode is what persuaded Graham to dig deep into Who history and come up with a story that… is strongly reminiscent of the Silurian stories from Pertwee and Smith’s respective first seasons.  I’ll be honest: I wasn’t really looking forward to a two-parter of the Doctor running around crying, “Why can’t we all just get along?!”  That never works out for him.  (“Doctor’s Daughter,” anyone?)  The brilliance of the “The Rebel Flesh” and “The Almost People” is that its moral probing is augmented by that delicious twist at the end of the first episode: the Doctor finding himself literally on both sides of the divide, which an emotional stake in whether or not the characters around him buy into his self-righteous sermons.  On top of all that, the entire thing leads up to yet another stunning twist that underlines and undercuts the (often literal) hand-wringing that preceded it.

Doctor Who Series 6 ☕ “The Doctor’s Wife”

“Spoilers!”
-Dr. River Song

Great casting is when an actor fits his role so perfectly that you feel like you’ve seen that person before — at the grocery store, passing by on the sidewalk — even if you have, in fact, never seen that person before in your life.  As it turns out, I had never seen Adrian Schiller (Uncle), though I felt sure I had.  Then there are the people you’ve seen, but there’s no reason you should remember, like Elizabeth Berrington (Auntie), who has been in several notable films and shows, but of the ones I’d seen, she did not play major roles.  That’s also great casting.  But perhaps the greatest casting — let’s call it Sublime Casting — is when an actor fits his role so perfectly that you feel like you’ve never seen that person before, even if, in fact, you know the person intimately, or have seen them very recently.  As it turns out, I’d seen Suranne Jones not more than a few months ago, when my wife and I watched series 3 of The Sarah Jane Adventures.  She played Mona Lisa, a deliciously batty and malevolent monster-of-the-week that made me sit up and go, “Wow.  What a great villain of the week.”  You’d think that I would recognize someone I had seen so recently, and of whom I’d thought so highly.  Nope.  Instead, Jones gave the best kind of performance in this last week’s episode: the kind that, no matter how many times you watch it, feels like a total revelation.

Doctor Who Series 6 ☕ “The Curse of the Black Spot”

“Spoilers!”
-Dr. River Song

You remember the Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager, don’t you?  “Please state the nature of your medical emergency.”  It blew my mind that he was the monster of the week in this week’s episode, and that Robert Picardo now looks like Lily Cole.  (His singing voice isn’t bad, either.)  The Doctor — our Doctor — doesn’t get to meet a lot of other doctors in his line of work.  At least, not ones that are as mysterious to him as he is to everyone else.  Certainly not many that are willing and able to burn your face off with a Ha-Do-Ken.  Definitely none that spend their time terrorizing pirates.