Doctor Who: Goodbye Ponds

DOCTOR WHO:  7.05 “The Angels Take Manhattan”

KT always rips out the last page of a book. (No, that’s a lie, I’m sorry. That would be sacrilege.)

It’s been more than a week, and I’ve been remiss. I could tell you it was a busy week, but let’s be honest.  There may have been a bit of this going on, too:

Source: 24.media.tumblr.com via Katie on Pinterest

 

So I’m going to cheat a bit, and point you to my favorite review of the episode, courtesy of Tor.com.  I particularly like Jusino’s breakdown of the episode’s strengths and weaknesses—because, although I liked it very much and thought that it was a fitting send-off for the Ponds, nothing’s perfect, right?

In particular, the handwaving over why we couldn’t just pop back and get Rory one more time simply has to be accepted as “because we can’t”—thinking about it too hard makes it fall apart.  And I’m on board with Jusino’s conclusions that Lady Liberty could hardly be an Angel in the first place, and even if she were, could certainly never get so far away from home without being noticed.  On the other hand, the statue’s appearance was nicely foreshadowed by the poster in the elevator at Winter Quay, which I appreciated.  I also appreciated the way the noir styling helped to keep the pace in check, at least until Amy and Rory got to the roof.

Source: broriarty.tumblr.com via Ken on Pinterest

 

That, fortunately, is a fake-out.  It’s an emotional scene, regardless, because of the way we’ve seen Amy and Rory’s relationship grow and evolve, but writing them off by having them save the world through mutual suicide would have been horrible.  (The tendency in time travel stories to fix things through suicide is bad enough.)

Instead, it happened more or less like I thought it would—the only way the Doctor would ever stop returning to the Ponds is if they were beyond his reach, which is exactly where the Angels put them.  I loved that we got a brief afterword from Amy to reassure us, though I would have liked a glimpse in at their lives.  But this fan-written obituary for Amy fills in the gaps quite nicely.

Along the same lines, if you want a screencap:

Source: flickr.com via Ken on Pinterest

 

And after all…

Source: Uploaded by user via Ken on Pinterest

Doctor Who: “The first face this face saw”

KT is ready for the mini season finale this weekend.

DOCTOR WHO: 7.04 “The Power of Three”

Lovely bits, lovely acting from our regulars, but accompanied with some major narrative problems.

Most of the episode is build-up, and most of the lovely bits are here.  We get a nice sense of what the Ponds’ life is like in between adventures and how they’ve arranged their lifestyle to accommodate sporadic disappearances.  Rory—as we’ve always known—constant, dependable Rory!—is a nurse, but working part-time, or perhaps on some kind of temporary basis.  Amy, having given up the modelling jobs we’ve seen a time or two, has become a travel writer, which I love.  That sounds like the perfect way to get her fill of adventure, even without having the Doctor around.

That’s partly because she’ll always have Rory to share her adventures.  Yes, there was a rough spot at the beginning of the season, but at this point, I think the important thing about that rough spot was not why it happened but that it showed that their relationship is strong enough to handle rough spots (albeit with some help from the Doctor, perhaps).  Here we see them frankly discussing the pros and cons of life without the Doctor, and whether they ought to stop traveling with him at all.   Perhaps their insistence this season on going home for a bit at the end of each episode is their version of being eager to go out on a Friday, but also choosing to call it a night before twelve.

On the other hand, we did get a brief, brief look at their surprise seven-month anniversary trip, which was brilliant.  I’d love to have seen more of that!  But didn’t the Doctor say something offhandedly about leaving a phone charger under Henry VII’s bed last week—which presumably happened during this trip.  I’m not convinced that we’re seeing things in the right order… at least from the Doctor’s point of view.

I’m not sure what to say about the lovely moment Amy has with the Doctor on the rooftop, but I can’t not mention it.  “I’m not running away from things, I’m running to them before they flare and fade forever”—I love that.  He knows they’re pulling away, of course.  Perhaps he even knows what’s coming in the next episode.

The only new character this week is UNIT scientist Kate Stewart, who I also loved.  She’s introduced as the daughter of the Third Doctor’s old pal, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and she’s allowed to be smart, calm, and in charge, which is a pretty powerful trifecta.  (And for personal reasons, I love that the character called Kate is strong and smart.)  I hope we see her again.

Unfortunately, the epside goes a bit downhill from there.  As everything moves into crisis mode, the narrative issues start kicking in as well.  Despite having plenty of time to lay the groundwork, the climax is scattered and confusing, and we get about two Time Lord heartbeats’ worth of denoument.

Although this show will never be the sort of whodunnit where the audience is given enough pieces to make a hunch as the plot rolls along, dammit, I want to feel that the puzzle pieces I have been shown are falling into their logical places.  But instead, after hacking the cubes to be able to revive all the people who had cube-triggered heart attacks, Team TARDIS declares victory and the episode ends. The number of unanswered questions left standing is just silly:

• What happened to all the cubes?  Were they collected and destroyed?  Are they still sitting in people’s cupboards and offices?  And if so, are we quite sure they have been totally neutralized?
• Did the Shakri just shrug and toddle off?  As far as we know, isn’t that ship still out there?  What was it they wanted anyway, and why were they snatching people?
• Was the little girl in the hospital the only android that the Shakri sent down, or are there others still lurking around the world?  And what were those orderlies with the big “O” shaped mouths?

It felt to me as though the mysterious cubes and their tricks and their danger was awkwardly stitched onto the subplot with the sinister orderlies, the android girl, and the Shakri.  None of these last three seemed integral to the story being told—and I think you could even have cut them all out—because the heart of the episode lies in the idea of bringing the Doctor into the Ponds’ everyday life and the slow burning mystery of the black cubes.

And last, a prediction:  My bet for the Ponds’ departure is that the Weeping Angels (who are clearly in the episode) are really going to get them this time.  The Ponds will live out their days as normal people—but in a different era…

Doctor Who: Seeing ‘Keep Out’ signs as suggestions

DOCTOR WHO: 7.03 “A Town Called Mercy”

KT is still behind.

After last year’s flirtation with using a stronger season-long arc, we are solidly back in the stand-alone adventure groove.  This week’s installment comes from Toby “School Reunion” Whithouse, and he’s here to school Chibnall in how to construct three dimensional supporting characters.

In recent seasons, it has often seemed that, wherever the Doctor went, he found someone who knew him, or had heard of him, or was waiting for him.  That made a good echo of Amy being (repeatedly) the Girl Who Waited, and there also was a certain logic—the Doctor has traveled so widely and been part of so many crises, naturally word would spread.  But it’s refreshing this season for him to be able to show up as just another stranger again. And where does the motif of a stranger coming to town fit better than a Western? When he, Amy, and Rory walk into a town called Mercy, nobody knows who they are, and past a certain point, nobody cares.

For a change, the town is caught up in a crisis brought on by ANOTHER alien doctor—a man with a dark past called Kahler-Jex. And in another classic Western theme, he’s being hunted by a man seeking vengence.

The exact nature of the wrongs done to Kahler-Mas by Kahler-Jex are both horrific (yet get some credit for helping to end a long and terrible war) and suggestive of things the Doctor has done in the course of trying to help others.  It’s not a terribly subtle comparison—keeping in mind that we are aiming to include a fairly young audience here—but it is apt, and it clearly bothers the Doctor a great deal.  As you might guess, there’s a thematic focus on mercy.  I think I would have liked even more discussion among the various characters of who has earned it and why, but I liked what was there.

I also liked that there was plenty of gray.  Like the Doctor, both Jex and Mas desperately need absolution and some kind of fresh start, and—short of perhaps the townsfolk—no one here is entirely innocent.  The notion of who the villain is, and according to whom, is very fluid.  I like that.

Like most Westerns, the character list skewed male this week, so I appreciated that they chose a woman to do the narration at the beginning and end—she and Amy may have been the only female speaking roles.  But we also had this, which was pretty awesome:

The Doctor: Can I borrow your horse, please? It’s official marshal business.
The Preacher: He’s called Joshua. It’s from the Bible. It means ‘The Deliverer.’
The Doctor: No, he isn’t.
The Preacher: What?
The Doctor: I speak horse. His name is Susan, and he wants you to respect his life choices.

Doctor Who: How do you start a triceratops?

DOCTOR WHO: 7.02 “Dinosaurs in Space”

KT is a week behind, but bear with me.

As you can see, it has taken me a while to figure out what to say about this one.  I found it a fun romp (In space!  With dinosaurs!), but it wasn’t what I would call a critical success.

For one thing, there was just too much going on—by which I don’t mean that it was fast-paced or full of plot twists.  There were just more unrelated elements crammed into the episode than a one-hour story could even begin to explore.  Lemme show you what I mean. This episode includes:

1. Dinosaurs
2. On a spaceship
3. That turns out to be a Silurian ark
4. Stolen by a hateful old man called Solomon
5. And his two bickering robots (“I hate funny robots,” the Doctor said in “The Waters of Mars.” I’m inclined to agree.)

We also brought along:

1.  Rory’s dad
2. A big game hunter from 1903
3. Queen Nefertiti

All this is not to say that every episode should have the tight focus of the Van Gogh episode. But this feels like it could have used a few more drafts.

For example, with so much going on, the new characters are more rough around the edges than usual.  I liked the idea of bringing in Nefertiti as a companion (and in general, I like it when we have a companions from different times and places). Since she’s more famous for what she looked like than for anything she did historically, the writers had plenty of room to invent her personality. Only, they didn’t bother to do much of that.  She comes across as strong, but generic.

The real dud, though was the game hunter. It really seemed that no one thought through his character any further than “He likes to shoot stuff and being from 1903 makes him massively sexist.”  Which, (a) is terrifically sloppy writing and (b, and this is key) does nothing to show us why the Doctor would want him around.  On top of which, the notion that Neffi decides at the end to go hang out with him is puzzling at best, forcing us to assume that he must have redeemed himself off-screen—the alternatives being that she’s so hungry for adventure, she’s willing to put up with him or that she’s so unbelievably bored by her husband, even this lout is preferable.

Rory’s dad is played mostly for laughs, sitcom-dad style, which seems a bit of a waste, though father and son get some nice moments, like Rory getting to show off his nursing skills and bragging self-deprecatingly about the way he picks up nursing supplies wherever they go.

Amy gets some nice moments, too.  Despite having to put up with Game Hunter Dud Guy, she clearly establishes herself as the surrogate Doctor when the group splits up.  I loved the way she showed off her prowess at button pushing.  I also loved the way she doesn’t became the damsel in distress, as she has so often in the past.

The moment I wasn’t sure what to make of was her whispered conversation with the Doctor about having to wait longer and longer for the Doctor to the point where she quits jobs and feels unable to move on.  I’m sure that’s meant to build somehow to the Ponds’ departure, but it isn’t clear how.  She and Rory spend most of the episode bickering, too, which doesn’t seem like a good sign.

On the villain side of things, I imagine that Chibnall wrote Solomon by continually asking himself “What is the most horrific or offensive thing I can make this man do?” Threaten our protagonists with every other breath? Check.  Kill an adorable triceratops to show how serious/dangerous he is? Yep.  Airlock a shipful of helpless Silurians in order to steal their dinosaurs? Got it.  Treat Nefertiti as an object, abduct her, and threaten her with bodily harm in the creepiest manner possible?  Oh yeah.

In the end, the Doctor uses Solomon as missile bait—highly deserved, if also a bit uncharactaristic for the gun hating, last-chance offering Doctor. I understand that some fans were upset by the Doctor’s callousness in the face of Solomon’s doom, but I disagree.  For one, Solomon blew any chance of getting another chance when he abducted Nefertiti.  Plus, in a Chibnall episode, everyone has their clearly delineated purpose from which they are not permitted to stray, and Solomon’s purpose is to be nasty for half an hour, then eat those missiles.  And to make us all uncomfortable when we notice that a character defined by his greed has been given an historically Jewish name. This could have been called Stereotypes in Space.

Doctor Who: Come and meet the girl who can.

DOCTOR WHO:  7.01 “Asylum of the Daleks”

KT is pleased to have her returning favorite back.

We seem to have dropped any vestiges of RTD-era surprise at finding yet more Daleks after supposedly wiping them out on multiple occasions.  That’s a relief, since there are plenty of other things that need explaining, such as why the Dalek race (motto: EXTERMINATE) has set up a whole planet for individuals who pose a danger to society.  Take a moment to think about what the Dalek standard for that would have to be.

And who better to deal with the possibility of a mass escape of insane Daleks than the “predator” who keeps (all but) exterminating the exterminators? Being fairly genre savvy little pepperpots, they’ve even done him the service of providing his companions as well.

As we saw in the BBC’s Pond Life vignettes, the Ponds seem to be in trouble.  Not just the usual run-for-your-life, threatened-by-evil-aliens kind of trouble—although, that too—as the episode opens, they’re actually filing for divorce.  Fortunately, though, the papers Amy signs at the beginning don’t seem to make it through the episode.  Even legal documents can’t stand up to a visit to the Dalek own insane asylum.

What can hold up is the cheeky humor of one junior entertainment manager.  Oswin Oswald may be the best part of the episode, though she dances on the verge of being just a little too perfect.  Maybe that’s what makes her such obvious monster bait—we all so desperately want her not to be because she is made of win.  But in the meantime, she’s brave, she’s funny, she has a stunning red dress, and she’s terribly handy with Dalek technology…

Perhaps the most interesting twist that comes out of the episode is that, in order to get the Doctor out of a tight corner, Oswin manages to wipe all reference to the Doctor out of the shared Dalek consciousness.  Clearly, they won’t be hauling him over to come fix their problems for a while.  I wonder if this is also Moffat’s way of telling us that he’s going to put the Daleks away for a while.  Props for that, if so.

That said, this was probably my favorite Dalek outing since season one’s “Dalek”—which also featured a fairly atypical Dalek in a prison-like setting.  The usual Dalek personality (shouty and over-confident) doesn’t have much range, but when a story pushes them out of their usual limits, the storytelling possibilities open up.

The other thing that helps this episode is that the Daleks are mostly used as window dressing around the more human characters while the Doctor engineers a situation in which Amy and Rory will start really talking again and Oswin tries to engineer an escape for them all.

There’s also an unusual graying of the line between human and Dalek, starting with the messenger puppet who meets with the Doctor at the beginning of the episode.  For once it’s impossible to tell who’s really a Dalek, while it is possible to turn into one.  Amy’s hallucination—the well-dressed people in the dingy room who all turn out to be Daleks, even the little the little dancer doing pirouettes—is fascinating and heartbreaking.  And of course it’s all a clue to what’s really happened to Oswin.

Sharp-eyed viewers noticed that, of course, Oswin is played by Jenna-Louise Colman, who has been announced as the next companion, starting in this year’s Christmas special.  My bet is that the companion will be a different, though possibly related, character (along the lines of of Martha’s identical cousin, Adeola, and of course she’s not the only one).   Of course there’s also the possibility of meeting up with Oswin prior to her crash on the Asylum, but I think one River Song scenario is really enough for one show.

One last note for a clever bit of writing—and for once I don’t mean a good joke or a snappy bit of dialogue.  Notice that there were an awful lot of eggs in this episode?  I really liked the way that Rory’s confusion with  the rustily awakening Dalek (“Eggs? Uh, is this your egg?”) was echoed in the question that the Doctor latched onto (“Where did you get the milk and eggs for the souffle?”).  And, of course, there are no eggs, because that’s only the first syllable…

Once Upon a Time: True Love and Purple Fog

ONCE UPON A TIME: 1.22 “A Land Without Magic”

KT is glad we got some happy endings with our cliffhangers.

I’m not sure what exactly I was expecting, but despite not one but two dragon fights, that actually felt fairly tame.  Henry, of course, was never really in any danger.

What I wasn’t sure of was how bold the writers were willing to be about changing the basic premise of the show (and we’ll have to wait until fall to get the full answer).  Henry has been a bit of a broken record all season about breaking the curse, to the point where the poor kid developed suicidal tendencies in order to make something happen.  The idea of getting a second season of trying to break the curse certainly seemed like a tedious proposition to me, so I’m glad that’s not what they’re doing.

The question is, what are we getting?  Fairy tale characters having to deal with our world, only now they all know who they are?  Fairy tale characters dealing with our world, only now they all know who they are and have magic?  Or is Mr. Gold’s roiling purple fog going to change Storybrook in an even more fundamental way?  Will it send them all home?

(Tangent:  I get that going home is a strong draw.  But after living in the modern world with, say, a modern hospital, would you really want to go back?  Magic is great, but if the price of magic is so very high, you wouldn’t want to strike that bargain every time you need an antibiotic, would you?)

I got it:  Maybe season two is the inverse of season one.  It’s set in fairy tale land, and everyone knows who they are except Henry and Emma.  Er, yeah.

Anyway, all we can do is guess until fall.  So let’s talk about the episode for a minute:

• Regina’s confirmation to Emma that yes, it’s all true—a hurried moment in the hospital supply room—was surprisingly anticlimactic.  At least that avoids some of the usual cliches.
• I can’t decide how to feel about Emma waking Henry with “true love’s kiss.”  On the one hand, I’m not about to suggest that a mother’s love isn’t a strong, incredible bond (and how appropriate for this to air on Mother’s Day, no?).  On the other hand, I don’t remember the show ever talking about “true love” as anything other than romantic love, which makes this feel vaguely incestuous and icky.  On the other other hand, Emma’s attachment to Henry has been a key aspect of her character development all season, so then this becomes the culmination of that arc.
• Mr. Gold continues to be the show’s true puppet master, generally two steps ahead of even Regina.
• On the other hand, probably the whole audience was yelling at Emma that no one ever in the history of pop culture has ever said “Here, throw it up to me and then I’ll help you up,” and not been double-crossing the poor schmuck in the hole.
• This is a show that loves its villains.  Gold is one of the most interesting people around, and there continues to be altogether too much focus on Regina’s personal losses to simply hate her.  I almost wonder if, down the road, she’ll just be one more resident of Storybrook with a dark, troubled past full of unfortunate choices.

What did you think?  And what do you think the purple fog will reveal?

Once Upon a Time: How do you solve a problem like Regina?

ONCE UPON A TIME: 1.21 “An Apple as Red as Blood”

KT thinks Regina’s life would have turned out so differently if Jiminy Cricket had gone to visit once in a while. 

In a fairy tale, we know that good it supposed to triumph over evil—that’s what we’ve been rooting for all along here.  But exactly what form do we expect that to take, and what will be the cost?  That what we’re starting to explore in this week’s episode, and to varying degrees, the last several.

Regina’s dream sequence—in which she finds a mob of furious townspeople on her doorstep—got me thinking.  The scene is obviously disturbing to Regina, but it’s also clearly supposed to be disturbing to those of us who don’t necessarily sympathize with her.  Seeing the townsfolk gang up on her like this isn’t noble or heroic or any of the things their victory is supposed to be.  We don’t want to see them resort to this.  But it made me sit back and say, Wait. I’m not rooting for Regina!

The episode seemed to want us to question that, however.  Revisiting the stables—and the stable boy’s grave with it’s big red heart—called back the tragedies of Regina’s youth that we were shown a few episodes ago. Similarly, Emma’s attempt to leave town with Henry brings out Regina’s maternal side with a depth that we don’t always see.  Although she is the Evil Queen, she’s also a hard working single mom—and though she was playing David’s heartstrings a little obviously during the lasagna dinner, it’s more than just a façade.  She’s also the adoptive parent who hates the idea that the birthmother has any claim (emotional, if not legal) on her son. After so many episodes of smirking nefariously, Regina is threatening to become a three-dimensional character.

I’ll almost be sorry to see Regina go down.  (…Almost. Evil queen is still pretty evil, yo.)

What do you think we’ll get in the season finale this weekend?  My bet is on two parts resolution, one part cliffhanger, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that everyone will remember who they really are—but that’s all I’ve got.  What about you?

Taste Testing ‘2 Broke Girls’

TWO BROKE GIRLS: 1.23-24 “And Martha Stewart Have a Ball”

KT likes the flavor, but isn’t sure about the texture.

My in-laws visited last week, and as we were gathered around the TV, they asked if we’d been watching “that broke girls show.”  We haven’t, though Tivo keeps recommending it to us, so when they insisted that it was hilarious, I told the machine to record it for us.

For the record, my in-laws helped get my husband watching Big Bang Theory (which we love) so this recommendation seemed worth a shot.  And I can solidly say I do not regret spending forty-some minutes on Two Broke Girls (turns out I caught the full hour season finale).  I was left with zero interest in the supporting characters, but the leads are charming, and though there were an awful lot of really terrible jokes, there were also a good number of genuine laughs.

The two broke girls themselves, Caroline and Max, are THE reason to watch the show.  I don’t know how much of this season it’s taken them to get here, but they clearly have a genuine affection for each other and their banter is sisterly, cute, and often funny.

Less funny were the supporting characters, who consistently got poor material, worn out jokes, and easy stereotypes.  Maybe the writers do better by them in other episodes, but I don’t have a lot of hope.  When Caroline and Max are around these caricatures, they flatten out into the stereotype premise of their characters. Ditzy rich girl. Sarcastic waitress.

By themselves, though, or at least away from the diner where they work, they have space to show us more of themselves. Some of the interactions and reaction shots in the boutique scene were funnier than all the diner scenes put together.  And by the end, I easily liked Max and Caroline enough to be happy about their triumph.

Castle: Explosions and slow burns

CASTLE:  4.19 “47 Seconds”

KT can’t come up with the right fire pun for this line.

In the best tradition of plotting by juxtaposition, this week’s plot is driven by an explosion—but it also helps to further the slow burn of Castle and Beckett’s relationship.  Which, to be fair, has gone way past “will they/won’t they” and into “will they/OH FOR CARP’S SAKE WILL THEY ALREADY?!”

But I digress.

Castle’s urge to seize the day after the senseless deaths of the protesters feels natural. Between his work and his research habits, he may be somewhat desensitized to murder, but he can certainly still be shocked.  High time he made a move, I thought. And in the best tradition of TV romance, he is just. so. close.

Beckett’s decision early this season—to pretend she couldn’t remember the moments after she was shot—has been an open plot point long enough that I’d almost forgotten about it. I liked the way it came up again—using the experience to intimidate a suspect with both her first-hand knowledge and her general badass-ery.

It’s a good thing that Alexis is around to give Castle some scenes in which he can be sensible, perhaps even wise—because he annoyingly reacts to the news about Beckett’s memory in about the worst way possible.  It hits him squarely in the ego, to the point where he recoils without giving Beckett a chance to explain. He feels wounded now, but I think he’s not quite remembering the severity of her trauma at the beginning of the season. Admittedly, though, it doesn’t help that she’s throwing the information around with a suspect—someone who’s a stranger at best, and possible a cold-blooded killer—when she hasn’t confided in him.

What I’m wondering now is whether Kate will figure out what Castle heard her say.  She certainly noticed that he was in a twist over something, and since she found the coffee, she knows he was in the building.  Surely she’ll get it—she’s a deductive kind of girl.  The real question is, how long will Castle waste on blonde bimbos like the one in the preview before something happens to smack him over the head?

Once Upon a Time: Snow Dark

ONCE UPON A TIME:1.16 “Heart of Darkness”

KT is heading into the woods.

Is it just me, or did adding a little more darkness to Snow White make her twice as interesting?

To be fair, disclaimer #1 here is that I missed the first couple months of the show, so I’m not operating with all the information, and disclaimer #2 is that “yes, it’s cheating, but it’s twu wuv, so it’s really okay!” plotlines just leave me cold.  So up to now, Snow White and Mary Margaret just haven’t been much of a draw for me.

And it’s not that I think she actually killed Kathryn — I’m pretty confident that Regina is setting her up — it’s the way she’s reacting to the accusations.  Especially toward the end of the episode, her demeanor has changed and we’re starting to see a gritty determination from her that I think will take this character to some interesting places.

I was very surprised when Emma announced that DNA testing revealed the heart to really be Kathryn’s. The metaphor is apt — here’s the literal heart of a woman who had her figurative heart broken by her unfaithful husband — but I really expected it to be an animal heart (like the one the huntsman takes back to the Queen in place of Snow White’s in the original tale).

I’ve been increasingly drawn into this show lately. I really liked the twist they put on Little Red Riding Hood, and I’m eager to find out more about how Regina came to have Beauty committed as a mental patient.

The March Madness brackets Raked has put together suggest we’ve got more than a few Once Upon a Time fans here.  What do you guys think about Mary Margaret behind bars — and what do you think she’ll do now that she’s escaped?!