December with the Doctor: Redemption

If you haven't seen "The End of Time: Part 1" yet, there's a spoiler ahead.
I've been watching the previous Master trilogy ("Utopia"/"The Sound of Drums"/"Last of the Time Lords") both in preparation for "The End of Time" and as research for another post I'm writing.

So, as silly as I thought the "Master race" cliffhanger was, given how the Master was defeated in "Last of the Time Lords," it's actually kind of genius. The Doctor restored himself (as silly as that was) using the focused psychic energy of the vast majority of the human race. Now, the Master has become the human race, not only eliminating them as potential allies for the Doctor, but also providing himself with some of the means to supercharge himself with the focused psychic energy of billions of people. Although there's always the chance that it wouldn't work, or that it'd be spread out over billions of Masters, but it's either a very lucky or very clever solution.

Also, while some seem to be bothered by the "Secret Books of Saxon," I can't say that I am. After all, the Master ruled the world for a whole year; he had to do more than just humiliate the Doctor, order the Toclafane to kill humans, and smack around Lucy. It's fitting, given his past and his obsessions, that he'd spend a good chunk of time seeking immortality and looking for ways to extend his lifespan and plan for his own death. After all, that's been his schtick since day one.

December with the Doctor: Nomenclature

"Doctor Who" has followed many different conventions for naming new alien species. Sometimes it's been adding "oid" to various word parts or random syllables (Krynoid, Mechanoid), sometimes it's been putting together something that just sounds cool (Dalek, Forest of Cheem), and occasionally it's been taking potentially-appropriate words from science and adapting them (Silurians, Adipose). I've collected a small list of other science terms (mostly biological) that I think would make good names for Doctor Who aliens. Steven Moffatt, you can thank me later.

• Volvox
  
• Thylakoid
  
• Stroma
  
• Hox
  
• Golgi
  
• Elegans
  
• Oleracea
  
• Coccinellid
  
• Cyminae
  
• Milax
  
• Muroidea
  
• Beliops
  
• Culex

Feel free to add your own!

December with the Doctor: "The End of Time: Part 1"

Yeah, this whole thing is pretty much all spoilers. Non-spoilery: very interesting, Wilf was great, sad to see Tennant leaving (especially after this performance).

I'm just going to post some short, mostly random thoughts, if that's all right. There's no way I'd be able to review this until after part 2 anyway.

• Interestingly, John Simm got second billing in the opening credits sequence, the spot usually reserved for the Companion. Bernard Cribbins came third.
  
• New aliens the Vinvocci were pretty cool-looking, and I liked the (unexpected) explicit callback to Bannakaffalatta and implicit callback to the Abzorbaloff/Slitheen relationship. I can't say I'm entirely sure what purpose they're going to serve.
  
• As I said, Wilf was brilliant. So was Donna, for that matter, and it's good to see her starting to remember--even if it means bad things for the Doctor-Donna. It's also interesting to see the Doctor's admiration for her, something that got lost a bit in the end of the fourth season.
  
• Wilf has a nice subtle callback to his last time in the Tardis. This is especially interesting given that production shots for Season 5 appear to be bringing back that era's TARDIS exterior.
  
• The Doctor wonders why he and Wilf keep running into each other. Wilf keeps seeing a woman, who tells him strange things and disappears. Wilf's also the only person on Earth who remembers his dreams of the Master. I think it's pretty safe to say that Wilf is a Time Lord in hiding, but we'll know next week.
  
• As long as I'm on about Wilf, the best scene in the episode is where Wilf and the Doctor share a heartfelt conversation over coffee. It's touching, and it's the only place you can go to see the Time Lord Lacrimose!
  
• Lucy Saxon shows up in the beginning, an unwilling part of the process to resurrect the Master. She gets her last revenge, though, when she screws up his revival and leaves him in the desperate state he's in throughout the episode.
  
• This take on the Master requires some getting used to. He has some nice moments of lucidity (the best being when he laments that the one-time master of disguise is now trapped with the easily-recognizable face of the former Prime Minister), but spends large portions of the episode stark raving mad. He rambles so incoherently that Dalek Caan looks like Hemingway by comparison, and his deteriorating condition has him frequently eating like a cross between a pig and a savage, ravenous barbarian pig. He jumps around like Spider-Man and shoots energy from his hands, and by now you've all seen his skin go all transparenty. Initially, this seems like it diminishes the threat posed by the Master, but ultimately it's fairly similar to the situation he was in in "The Deadly Assassin," where he was effectively decomposing and engaging in a last-ditch effort to gain immortality and stop the Doctor. Except now the relentless greed and desire for power is translated into actual, physical hunger. He ends up being a disgusting figure, raw and inhuman in a way that the typically dignified Master hasn't really been before, which rather underscores the desperation of his character.
  
• The Master also presents a kind of counterpoint to the Doctor (as usual), who is also fearing his imminent demise and looking to postpone it. The Doctor is more somber than usual in this outing, dreading his coming regeneration and sobered by his frightening abuse of power in the previous special. The Master fears death, and so he tries to accumulate power; the Doctor fears death, but fears power more.
  
• All that aside, however, the Master's world-conquering plan ends up being more than a little silly. It's not just the sight gags either, it's the whole bizarre concept. I'm curious how this will play out in the next episode.
  
• The Naismiths, who appeared in the previews to be relatively significant, really don't play much of a role here. They serve to push the plot along, and they make decent patsies, but they don't have any personality to speak of.
  
• Russel T. Davies has this weird fanboyish habit of tying up loose plot threads that almost no one would otherwise notice. The mention of Bannakaffalatta is one, and connecting Torchwood's Gwen to "The Unquiet Dead"'s Gwyneth in "Journey's End" is probably the most obvious example. Here, though, it's a callback to "The Shakespeare Code," explaining why Queen Elizabeth was so angry at the Doctor--turns out he married (then left) her. He mentions that she won't have her nickname anymore, though it's left unclear if that means she's not "good" Queen Bess (the name he uses), or that she's not "the Virgin Queen" (the more commonly-used nickname in my experience).
  
• There's an interesting pace to this episode, which has a kind of mini-climax in the middle (where the omniscient narration starts up again). It felt a lot like watching two episodes of a classic serial, and I'm curious if that will carry through to the 75-minute finale.
  
• So, the Time Lords (and apparently Gallifrey) are back, in what looks a lot like the Senate chamber from the Star Wars prequels, and led by James Bond. Clips from Part 2 suggest that we'll finally get to see some of the Time War, which gives me (almost certainly unrequited) hope that we'll get a glimpse of Paul McGann as the Doctor again. If nothing else, it's going to be interesting to see what happens in Part 2 and in Season 5 if the Time Lords manage to reassert themselves as the arbiters of time. What this means for "the end of time" is still unclear.

So, overall, a good episode (though prior experience has me wondering if Davies will be able to maintain the quality through to the end, without resorting to deus ex machina) that has me salivating for the next one. This is significantly less bloated and meandering than "The Stolen Earth," so that's a plus, and I'd say so far that it's at least the equal of "The Waters of Mars." It's going to be a very long week.

December with the Doctor: Doctor's Orders

And now, a very special message from the Doctor.

Courtesy of WhoSprites, a fan project designed to animate some of the Doctor Who episodes that have been lost due to BBC's shortsighted purges.

Happy holidays, everyone!

December with the Doctor: Monk-y Business

I'll be honest: I kind of like a universe with only one Time Lord. It's similar to why I like a universe with only one Kryptonian¹. That being said, I'd really like to see one of two things happen:

1. More exploration of the ramifications of a universe sans Time Lords.
   
2. A return of the Time Lords--one at a time, or en masse.

The former has been touched on a few times, here and there. In "Father's Day," the Doctor says/suggests that the Time Lords kept the Reapers from entering the timestream. In "Rise of the Cybermen," the Doctor suggested that the Time Lords made it easier to travel between alternate universes. In "The Waters of Mars," the most recent special, the Doctor takes charge of the laws of time, attempting to alter even a fixed point in time without a Time Lord infrastructure to stop him.

The nice thing about this is that it's given us some idea about what the Time Lords actually did, besides generally practicing a doctrine of noninterference--except when it came to the Doctor, where they were mostly bureaucratic obstructions. I'd like to see more of this kind of thing, if the status quo is to remain as it is, with only one² remaining Time Lord.

However, one of the biggest sources of rumor-fuel has been new showrunner Steven Moffat's "THEY'RE BACK" comment, which could be referring to any number of things--his Weeping Angels, River Song and Jenny, the Daleks (possibly in older-series style), the original Cybermen, (highlight for potential spoiler) if pictures of shooting are accurate, the Silurians, and the Time Lords. If the latter is the case, I think I'd rather see a slow trickle of Time Lord revivals than a full-fledged restoration of Gallifrey and such.

And if we're going to have a slow trickle of Time Lords, the first one I want to see is the Monk, from the First Doctor serial "The Time Meddler." I've been reluctant to watch some of the older Doctors' serials, knowing that they tended to be padded out, and knowing that the low-budget cheese factor would be at a maximum. But I thought it'd be interesting to see our first glimpse of another Time Lord (Susan excluded), and I wasn't disappointed. I'm not going to review the episode--it's entertaining, showcasing the Doctor's cleverness and recklessness in a way that would stick with the series for the duration. It also worked in some history about William the Conqueror's invasion in 1066, as a reminder that the show started out as an educational series.

And this is where the Monk becomes really interesting; his reason for being at the Battle of Hastings is to supply future technology and knowhow to the Saxons in order to defeat the invading Vikings and win the inevitable battle--all for his own personal gain, apparently. The Monk is one of those rare Doctor Who characters whose alterations to the timeline have apparently been necessary for time to go ahead as expected³--he helped build Stonehenge with antigravity devices, he met with Leonardo da Vinci (doesn't everyone?) regarding powered flight, and he's taken advantage of compound interest like a certain Philip J. Fry.

And this is what I find so compelling about the Monk: he's out for himself, but he's not particularly destructive like the Master (though the impact his actions have on the Web of Time might be deleterious). Like the Doctor, he bucks the Time Lords' non-interventionist stance, but he does so for (apparently) purely selfish ends. Ultimately, this makes him surprisingly human for a Time Lord, with easy-to-understand ambitions. Add onto that his cavalier attitude, the façade of geniality he presents, and the way he functions as mild comic relief (while still seeming like a threat), and you have a relatable, interesting, entertaining Time Lord running about.

Plus, the guy got defeated when the Doctor made it so his TARDIS wasn't bigger on the inside anymore, and that's just awesome.

The Monk could be a great foil for the Doctor and a great way to explore various aspects of the Web of Time that haven't been touched yet--at least in this series. If any Time Lord is going to return, I'd like it to be the Monk.

---

1. With one caveat: Superman's uniqueness is artificial, while the Doctor really is the only person in the series who can do the things he can do. Being the last Time Lord actually does confer uniqueness on the Doctor; being the last Kryptonian only confers in-name-only uniqueness to Superman.

2. Ignoring the Master, who appears to be returning, and Jenny, who will likely be returning.

3. For instance, Scaroth was necessary for the start of life on Earth, Adric caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, the Racnoss ship catalyzed Earth's formation, the Doctor caused the eruption of Vesuvius, etc.

December with the Doctor: "Dreamland"

A few days ago, I watched the new Doctor Who animated adventure, "Dreamland." And I must say, it was a pretty good audio drama.

The video, on the other hand...

Spoilers ahead!

It's a shame, because there's a lot to like about "Dreamland." The story is set around Roswell in 1958, which means the whole thing centers around the typical American Roswell/alien mythology. There's something particularly interesting about seeing such a thoroughly British show tackle such a thoroughly US-centric myth, and I think the "Doctor Who" sensibilities bring a different flair to this otherwise well-worn territory.

So, all the usual pieces are present: the Roswell crash, flying saucers, the Men in Black, Area 51, gray aliens, a military cover-up of alien visitations and alliances, a distrustful and belligerent Army leader, the Cold War, even Native Americans and a '50s diner. There are some interesting twists: the MIB are alien robots, the Army is allied with one faction of aliens against another in a plot to wipe out the Soviets, the belligerent Army leader is in league with the evil alien bugs in order to wipe out the Soviet threat, etc. The Doctor brings a lot more running and talking to a story that would traditionally be focused on technobabble, explosions, and violence, so that's a nice change of pace.

And the pacing works well, too. The story was broken up into six-minute chunks for a total runtime about the same as a typical episode of the new series. That format kept the story moving along at a good clip, with plenty of compression.

The best thing about it, though, is the central conflict/Macguffin. The gray aliens were at war with the insectoid Viperox, and had developed a biological weapon to wipe out all of their enemies. The Viperox, naturally, are after that weapon, which was lost in the Roswell crash. The Americans assist the Viperox, because the bugs have promised to alter the weapon so it kills off all the Russians. And finally, the Viperox are reproducing underground to invade the planet. All this--plus a little romance plot--comes together quite well. Not only that, but all the American accents are convincing (though Georgia Moffett's meanders occasionally). Take that, Peri.

Really, the only thing to dislike about "Dreamland" is the animation. The stylization isn't bad, but the stiffness is. It's fine for the aliens--who look incredible--but as soon as humanoids start talking or emoting or running, the stiffness and awkwardness really sticks out. "Beast Wars" had better animation a decade ago; there's really no excuse for this.

Overall, "Dreamland" is worth a listen, and it's nice to have this kind of story that would be difficult to do on a BBC budget--big, inhuman aliens, non-British settings, etc. Just don't look at it too closely.

December with the Doctor: A little light reading

Apologies for sparse posting. It's been a busy couple of weeks. Better-than-regular posting will resume shortly. In the meantime, here's a really cool article about David Tennant. Enjoy!

Oh no, you won't get me that easily.

Superboy is returning to Teen Titans. Now, my love for Kon-El is no secret, and I've been greatly enjoying Kon-El's return to the land of the living.

That being said, it's going to take an awful lot more than Superboy to get me to read "Teen Titans" again. That book was broken well before Johns left, and never quite recovered its...what, third foray into an evil counterpart team. It's similar to how Mon-El on the Justice League isn't enough to get me to resubscribe to that chronically broken book (especially with increasingly inconsistent James Robinson at the helm and the Cry For Justice status quo in place).

Look, DC, you're heart's in the right place. Can we just get your writers and editors to that place too?