#and its not an attack on russel t davies to point that out | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

denimbex1986 · 10 months

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'If you go look at the Patreon-exclusive Discord thread I have for this episode—and yeah, I recognize this is an extremely venal opening sentence—there’s a moment where I note that the second pre-released clip, with the “David Tennant spits out ‘the Toymaker’ in the same voice he did ‘the Macra’” moment, was squarely at the twenty minute mark, and where I bet on another big turn at 40. And yes, I knew my spoilers and was expecting bi-generation, but I still just want to start by pointing out the fucking clockwork of it. In fact there’s another turn at roughly 30–that’s where the “return to 2023” beat happens, neatly bisecting the second act. And I think that’s key, in the face of the sheer, stupid cheek of this episode, to understanding why it works so well.

I mean, it’s worth saying it out loud, just so I can get it quote-posted on Tumblr—a pantsless Ncuti Gatwa emerges like Athena, instantly establishes himself as the faggiest Doctor ever to fag, then hits the TARDIS with a giant mallet because “we won the game, you get a prize honey” to split it in two so that David Tennant can be the Doctor forever. You can’t make it up, not least because Russell T Davies already did. It sounds like a joke, and in many ways is—the clue’s in the title and all. It was essentially spoiler-proofed, because anyone who’s the sort of fan that’s pouring over spoilers reads that and is just left wondering how this could possibly work out. And the answer is that it’s being done by a damn maestro of the form who understands how to structure the mother of all throat clears before you go and reset the show for gen alpha TikTok users.

The central trick is, of course, that third act pivot into doing a multi-Doctor story for the anniversary after all, with David Tennant having turned out to be the past Doctor all along. That is, above all else, simply fabulous television, and Davies understands that all you actually have to do is put it on a platter. Everything around it is just a series of decisions about tone—an almost mechanistic execution of scaffolding to ensure that moment is a thunderous drop that sends the dance floor wild instead of landing with a damp thud of authorial perversity. It’s fitting that he has the Toymaker attack through television because at the end of the day this operates through literally nothing save for the fact that Davies understands how to use the medium to engineer what is at the end of the day its original pleasure—its creation of cultural events. At the end of the day, there are rules, and Davies knows how to play.

Much as with Rose, there’s a real temptation to break it down scene by scene, but this is the fast reaction, so let’s work in outline. Like I said, three act structure. Act one uses a cold open to put two premises on the table: Neil Patrick Harris is a weird evil guy and he’s done something to television. Then, on the other side of the credits, it shows Harris again as an evil clown and has him wave goodbye and exit the story. Davies proceeds to enter the UNIT show—a backdoor pilot for an entirely coherent Kate Stewart show complete with whatever the fuck the V’linx is besides an absolutely gorgeous reveal (one of the rules there—if the Doctor just accepts something so will the viewer). We tarry in its pleasures a bit—reintroduce Shirley, reveal/establish Mel, and give everyone a couple good beats, including for the first time bothering to use the fact that you’ve got Jemma Redgreave in the part (her shattered horror at her own actions and apology to Shirley!). And we have the Doctor and Donna catch up with the cold open, untangling the “evil television” thing so it can be explained more slowly to the viewer. Twenty minutes in, he dutifully brings Harris back, catching the other ball thrown by the cold open and moving into the second act.

As I noted, this one’s bifurcated. We do ten minutes of spooky horror set pieces while we reiterate the emotional beats from Wild Blue Yonder (another rule there—explain something twice to the audience in rapid succession and they’ll both understand it and understand it as important), split the Doctor and Donna up, give them each a scene’s worth of puppet horror, then get them back together so the Doctor can confront the Toymaker. This mostly just means monologue set pieces—Davies rolls out a bit of rhythmic poetry and gives it to a good actor. We gesture at the past, then conspicuously throw a ball for the future to catch, thus reminding the audience there is one. And in a puff of smoke we vanish back to 2023, crashing the Toymaker back into the first premise. Ten more minutes of the UNIT show round out the act, anchored by the musical number because hey, you did hire Harris for the part, and then do a monologue duel before the Toymaker kills the Doctor fifteen minutes early to kick off the third act.

And it is here, of course, that Davies makes his move. At first it looks like we’re just going to do a shock pivot to Gatwa, which is already clever—an unexpected use of the rules right as the narrative collapses, like you do. And then we do a record-scratch moment—literally, as Gold cuts the soundtrack—use the Doctor accepting something to sell it (lol at the shrugged reprise of “feel’s different this time”), swirl the lights a different color, strike up the band a second time, and bigenerate (even bigger lol at splitting the triple what across characters).

From here, everything hinges on one bet—the same bet, ultimately, that everything hinges on in the larger cultural context. Davies has given us two hours and forty minutes of nostalgic greatest hits reprises. Now he needs to give us twenty minutes of Gatwa being phenomenal. There’s scaffolding, of course—it’s the mother of all “use the predecessor’s cast to establish the new guy” new Doctor stories, and an astonishing amount of the heavy lifting is done by Tennant’s no doubt entirely sincere reinvention of his character as “past Doctor fannishly awe-struck by the future.” But at the end of the day it comes down to Gatwa. And what can you say but that you see why Davies gave him the part.

There’s a trick that’s useful sometimes in analyzing horror films where you figure out the theme by just literally stating the premise—It Follows is about how the stigma of sexuality follows women, Us is about how Black people have suppressed second selves, Tetsuo the Iron Man is about the constant agony of living in an industrialized society. And here it seems relevant to note that Gatwa defeats the Toymaker through sheer physicality. In his underwear. Which is to say that his performance is electric and charismatic—an instantly libidinous Doctor so charming the plot stops mattering, collapsing instead into a queer-off between Gatwa and Harris. Gatwa wins, of course—how could he not with all that beach-off experience from Barbie—and Harris is ushered offstage with ten minutes to go.

All that remains is for Tennant to hand over the keys, which he does with grace, dutifully reprising the Time Lord Victorious in all its burnt out horror so that Gatwa can pull him into a hug and say “I’ve got you” before sending him off to heal himself in a queer platonic relationship with Donna. Gatwa’s the Doctor now. It happened, just about five hours ago. It’s majestic. I can’t wait for more.

* So here’s the most criminal act of burying the lede I’ll ever commit. TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 8 is out. Covering the strange and surreal wilderness years of Paul McGann and the show’s triumphant return in the birth of what I suppose is now the RTD1 era. I’m hitting publish on the ebook edition as we speak, so it might be a bit before it’s live on Amazon—here’s the Smashwords link, which is live now if you want to use that—but the paperback is available for order right now and will arrive before Christmas.

* Also, my Patrons have my Wild Blue Yonder podcast with Eruditorum Press’s very own Jack Graham and Christine Kelley. It features Jack learning, live on the air, what the Timeless Child is. I’ll be doing one on The Giggle with Kate Orman and Jon Blum, and I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be joined by Rachel Stott and Penn Wiggins for The Church on Ruby Road in two weeks. Patrons also get all my ebooks automatically, by the way.

* As for Church on Ruby Road, man, that trailer looks fun. Introducing the Doctor in a club is breathtakingly fresh, and the trailer handles the goblins reveal so well. The whole thing looks completely mad. Can’t wait to hear the single on Monday.

* So, um… Tennant and Tate pretty much have to come back some day, right? Like, Davies has season finales to execute, and he’s not going to leave a gun that big just sitting on the mantlepiece, is he?

* A detail I like is that this mirrors the plot of Journey’s End, right down to the spare Doctor going off and living a quasi-normal life with the companion. There’s a lot of quiet parallels to be had here actually—the fact that Rose was also a toymaker, for instance, or the fact that the Toymaker and the Not-Things largely share motivations. All left entirely to subtext, acting as thematic reverb to give the episode more heft and weight.

* For all that it’s funny to read the lack of Chibnall companions in the Toymaker’s monologue as a dig, the real shade is being playfully thrown at Moffat for his tic of fake-killing companions. Once that’s gone three iterations, Davies structurally has to move on and so captures the Chibnall era in a reprise of the Flux angst from Wild Blue Yonder. No, the Chibnall shade is “I made a jigsaw of your history. Did you like it?”

* Speaking of the rule of three, using “Mavic Chen” to round out a list with the Time War and the Pandorica is god tier.

* All right, all right, I’m obliged to give my Toymaker take. Which is that Davies is very clever retconning the Toymaker as a character who just likes doing absurd caricatures of various nationalities. It doesn’t actually make The Celestial Toymaker any better, but it’s enough to salvage the character for a reprise.

* The more interesting reprise to my mind is Mel. We knew she was coming back for Gatwa, so her appearance here is more a moment of fleeting surprise, but it’s yet another example of Davies’s cool-eyed savviness—Bonnie Langford is by an order of magnitude the highest profile actor to serve as a classic series companion, and as with Jemma Redgrave Davies doesn’t have to do much more than actually give her stuff to do. The callback to her nonexistent debut story to establish her as an orphan is such a deft bit of characterization, and an intriguing parallel to Ruby, and for that matter the Timeless Child, whether or not that’s ever picked up on explicity.

* Which, it has to be said, gives at least some setup justification for bigeneration, if only because it justifies a slightly more “eh fuck it” take on regeneration in general. I gather Davies goes further in this direction on the commentary, which I’ll catch before I do the podcast.

* The fact that the Toymaker claims to have killed God is given entertaining credibility by trapping the Guardians in voodoo dolls and the Master in a gold tooth. Which, love the “cultist hand saves the Master” reprise.

* The invocation of the Gods of Ragnarok makes the absence of Fenric conspicuous. Think I’ll place a long shot bet on him as the big bad for Gatwa’s first season.

* By far the best bit of continuity fetishism, however, is the Alex Jones remake of Trinity Wells.

* Also if you complain that I said Gatwa was pantsless because he was properly just trouserless I will fire you into the sun.

* Let’s close this out with a note on Fourteen, even if we’re probably not saying goodbye to him. First of all, I love him accepting regeneration calmly—“it’s time” instead of “I don’t want to go,” and a cavalier “allons-y” to match Whittaker’s “tag you’re it.” But more to the point, I love the Doctor relaxing into found family, building force fields for his beloved moles, happier than he’s ever been in his life. Tennant commented that he and Davies largely decided to approach the task of how to handle the fact that this version of Tennant’s Doctor is older by just assuming that the fact that they were both older would come through. And I think there’s nowhere that’s clearer than Davies having the Doctor find peace in a distinctly queer shape of love.

Rankings

1. The Giggle

2. Wild Blue Yonder

3. The Star Beast'

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husheduphistory · 3 years

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Little Green Men: The Alien Encounter of Kelly Kentucky

On the night of August 21st 1955 Sheriff Russell Greenwell was working in the police department for the tiny town of Hopkinsville, Kentucky when the night took a sharp turn into bizarre territory. Multiple adults and children stormed into the building highly distressed and saying they needed Greenwell’s help. One of the adults, Billy Ray Taylor, had a racing pulse twice the normal resting rate and the children were completely hysterical. All of them were known in town as very level-headed people. There was no trace of alcohol on anyone and they were a family who took care of themselves, preferring to involve their shotguns rather than the police. What they told Greenwell was that they had spent the last several hours defending their home from attackers, but these attackers were not of this world.

The Sutton Farm was located in nearby Kelly, Kentucky and was the home of Glennie Lankford, her young children Lonnie, Charlton, and Mary, her older sons Elmer "Lucky" Sutton and John Charley "J.C." Sutton, Lucky’s wife Vera, J.C.’s wife Arlene, and Arlene’s brother. Lucky Sutton was home with his family after his last stint with a traveling carnival and his friends Billy Ray Taylor and his wife took the opportunity to stop in and visit everyone. It was a hot Sunday night and at approximately 7pm Billy Ray went to get some water from the well in the backyard when he saw something he could not explain. When he returned to the house he told everyone that he just witnessed a large silver object smoothly traveling through the sky before it went over the house and dropped silently to the ground somewhere in the distance. He was laughed at and the night continued on.

Location of Kelly, Kentucky. Image via wikipedia.org.

The calm did not last long. One hour after Billy Ray’s sighting the Sutton’s dog began to bark incessantly at the back door. When Lucky and Billy Ray went to go see what was going on in the yard they found themselves staring at a glowing light hovering around a three and a half foot tall creature that shimmered like metal with an “oversized head…almost perfectly round, [its] arms extended almost to the ground, [its] hands had talons…and [its oversized] eyes glowed with a yellowish light.”

Frantic and terrified, Billy Ray and Lucky grabbed their shotguns and prepared to fire on the creatures with Glennie and the children watching in bewilderment. Glennie had lived on the property for decades without incident but the commotion coming from the two men concerned her and she sent her younger children to bed before they could get too upset over the outlandish claims coming from Billy Ray and Lucky. Was it a prank? She pressed the two for an explanation but there wasn’t time for any answers. A small glowing figure began to approach the house and for the first time that night shots rang out. The creature raised its arms and did a “flip” before disappearing into the darkness. It was only the beginning of their night.

According to the Sutton family and friends, over the next few hours they found themselves under attack from the little creatures that they could not explain. While hiding inside the home one pressed its face against a window and again flipped out of sight totally unfazed when bullets took out the screen. In a later interview Glennie recalled hiding in a hallway with Billy Ray when they saw one of the beings approaching the back door. She was overcome with shock and fell backwards before her sons carried her into a bedroom. She later stated that “It looked like a five-gallon gasoline can with a head on top and small legs. It was a shimmering bright metal like on my refrigerator.” At one point during the night Billy Ray stepped outside onto a porch where his head was covered by a small overhanging roof. By now the entire family was on alert and they were horrified to see what they described as a claw-like hand reaching down from the roof to grab Billy Ray’s hair from above. The screams cut through the night and Billy Ray was pulled back inside while Lucky ran out and began shooting toward the roof. More than one person reported seeing another small glowing creature jump down and charge into the woods.

Newspaper article showing the roof where one of the creatures reached for Billy Ray Taylor. Image via https://www.kentuckynewera.com/

For several hours the entire group remained huddled in the house listening to something scratching on the roof and waiting for the unimaginable. Finally, at approximately 11pm they all ran outside, leapt into their cars, and raced to the Hopkinsville police department.

As outlandish as their story sounded, Sheriff Greenwell could not ignore what he was hearing and he decided to go investigate. But, he was not going alone. When the team arrived back at the Sutton farm it included Greenwell, the state police, members of the military police from nearby Fort Campbell, and a photographer from the Kentucky New Era. While searching the premises they found casings from Billy Ray and Lucky’s guns but absolutely no other evidence to suggest anything had happened on the farm that night. Each family member was interviewed individually but all the stories were consistent. With nothing to go on they finally left the site with the family hesitantly returning inside the house. They were not inside long. Before dawn they were all back in their cars, fleeing the house after the creatures came back, appearing in Glennie’s bedroom window and clawing at the screen.

Newspaper article from the Nevada State Journal. Image via Skeptic.com.

When the Suttons returned to their farmhouse they arrived to a chaotic scene. The news of their encounter was spread all over the nation by radio hosts telling their stories and newspapers printing their words alongside shocking illustrations of the “little men” that came out of the sky that night. Curiosity seekers flocked to the farmhouse to investigate the scene for themselves and, in some cases, to take souvenirs. Unfortunately, some also arrived armed with accusations, claiming the family completely fabricated the entire encounter for publicity. The Suttons denied the claims but they did not help their case when they took down their “No Trespassing” signs and replaced them with a price list for admission to the property, information, and photographs. The adult members of the family were again interviewed separately by local radio personality and professional sketch artist Andrew "Bud" Ledwith and every account was the same. They all swore that they were attacked by creatures that stood just under three feet tall, glowed a shimmering metallic green, floated above the ground, and had pointed ears and claws. Tired of being harassed and spied on the family quickly stopped speaking to the media, left the property, and attempted to move on with their lives. Some reports state that after living in the country her entire life Glennie moved into an apartment building to be surrounded by people, she no longer felt safe in isolation.

Illustration of the creatures as described by Billy Ray Taylor. Image via history.com.

Illustration of the creatures as described by Lucky Sutton. Image via history.com.

With no concrete answers as to what haunted the Sutton family and their friends that night the floor was open for theories to fly. Despite Glennie and her sons insisting alcohol was not allowed in the house many said the entire incident was nothing more than a drunken hallucination. Others believed these little silver men were actually a pack of great horned owls which were known to act aggressively toward people. Some even claimed the creatures were monkeys that Lucky and Billy Ray brought home with them from their stint in the carnival.

Great horned owl at night. Image via Youtube.com.

In 1956 ufologist Isabel Davis began an investigation into what became known as the “Kelly–Hopkinsville Encounter”, an investigation that would result in a nearly 200 page report for the Center for UFO Studies. It was far from alone, as the years moved on many other ufologists became fascinated with the event and their varied explanation and opinions did little to pinpoint what happened that August night. The Air Force UFO-investigation program Project Blue Book was aware of the case but no documentation indicates that they officially pursued it. Project Blue Book’s civil investigator (and founder of the Center for UFO Studies) Dr. J. Allen Hynek called the ordeal "preposterous" and offensive to "common sense.” Ufologist Jerome Clark writes about the possible logical explanations, but also admits there was no evidence of a hoax. Some adopted the tale as solid truth, others became staunch supporters of the owl theory, but with every theory and re-visitation the Kelly–Hopkinsville encounter grew in notoriety. With newspapers focusing on the green metallic glow the world was given a term still familiar today, “little green men.”

In 2005 a commemorative event was held to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter and there was a very special guest in attendance. Geraldine Stith, the granddaughter of Glennie Lankford and daughter of Lucky Sutton was there to answer the questions and dispel the rumors. She stated “I thought, I heard it from the horse's mouth, if people want to hear the story, let's get it right.” In 2010 when the town of Kelly was looking for fundraising opportunities they focused on the alleged alien encounter and created an annual event, the Little Green Men Days Festival that still takes place every August. Stith is a guest every year, telling the tale of her family’s terrifying night of the unknown and listening to stories from others. Despite the festive atmosphere structured around the encounter, Stith does not want what her family endured to be lost stating “My family went through something, whether it be paranormal or extraterrestrial, that changed their lives forever. I just want people to realize the terror they went through that night.”

A scene from Little Green Men Days Festival. Image via wkms.org.

Despite countless studies, theories, books, interviews, and experiences, the answer to what haunted the Sutton family and friends that night in August has never been found.

********************

Sources:

“How the 'Little Green Men' Phenomenon Began on a Kentucky Farm” https://www.history.com/news/little-green-men-origins-aliens-hopkinsville-kelly

“The Eerie Story Behind the Small Town Everyone Is Flocking to for the Eclipse This Summer“ https://www.countryliving.com/life/a44064/eclipseville-hopkinsville-ky-history/

“Steven Spielberg, Some Green Men, and Hopkinsville“ https://kyforky.com/blogs/journal/steven-spielberg-some-green-men-and-hopkinsville

“Tales from the path of totality: 62 years ago today, they say, ‘little green men’ invaded this Kentucky farm town” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/08/21/tales-from-the-path-of-totality-62-years-ago-today-they-say-little-green-men-invaded-this-kentucky-farm-town/

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esonetwork · 3 years

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Timestamp #226: Let's Kill Hitler

New Post has been published on https://esonetwork.com/timestamp-226-lets-kill-hitler/

Timestamp #226: Let's Kill Hitler

Doctor Who: Let’s Kill Hitler (1 episode, s06e08, 2011)

Hello, sweetie.

Prequel

A phone rings as the TARDIS is in flight. The answering machine picks up and Amy leaves a message.

As the camera pans across the console and the dark control room, Amy asks if the Doctor will fulfill his promise to find Melody Pond. Even though she knows that everything turns out okay, she doesn’t want to miss Melody’s childhood.

The Doctor listens intently, but doesn’t pick up the phone. He’s clearly wracked with regret and sadness.

Let’s Kill Hitler

It was once a nice wheat field. Then the Ponds plowed through it, scrawling the word “Doctor” into the crop. They stop in the middle of the O – a giant crop circle – to find the TARDIS and the Doctor in his new pea green double-breasted coat. The Doctor shows them a newspaper article chronicling the event.

It turns out that this was the only way Amy and Rory could figure out to get the Doctor’s attention. He consoles Amy: He will find Melody because River lives. The moment is shattered by police sirens, a speeding red car, and a woman named Mels. The new arrival holds the Doctor at gunpoint and demands to be taken in the TARDIS. It seems that she wants to kill Adolf Hitler.

Flash back to a long time ago in Leadworth as young Amelia, your Rory, and young heretofore-unknown Mels grow up together. Apparently, Mels knows all about Amelia’s “imaginary” friend, the Doctor, and that knowledge gets her in trouble. A lot. Including stealing a bus. She’s also present when Amy finally figures out that Rory loves her.

In the present, Mels, Amy, and Rory take a trip in the TARDIS. Mels actually shoots the TARDIS console while in transit to Nazi Germany. In Berlin, 1938, those same Nazis are being observed by a team with future technology as a machine (posing as a custodian) shapeshifts into a Nazi officer. That team is inside the machine, a highly advanced ship called the Teselecta, which shrinks the Nazi officer and draws him inside. Since the officer is responsible for a series of hate crimes – after all, what Nazi wasn’t? – he is disposed of by a series of “antibodies”.

The Teselecta then goes to Adolf Hitler’s office and activates Justice Mode, but two things interfere in the plan. First, they are too early in Hitler’s time stream. Second, the TARDIS crashes through the wall into the office.

The Doctor evacuates everyone from the TARDIS as it smokes away, then stashes Mels’s handgun in a bowl of fruit. The travelers are beside themselves for actually saving Hitler. The Teselecta tries to attack Hitler again, but he shoots the ship before being stashed in a nearby cupboard by the Doctor and Rory. The Teselecta feigns a fainting spell while the crew analyzes the TARDIS and determines that the most wanted war criminal in history has arrived.

Also, Mels has been shot by Hitler.

Mels, short for Melody, regenerates into a very familiar form. Mission complete. Well… sort of. This new woman has no idea who any of her traveling companions are, she is incredibly self-centered, and has maintained her programming that demands murdering the Doctor. She tries multiple times with every weapon in the room, but the Doctor is several steps ahead of her, but he misses the poison lipstick.

Melody jumps out of window and takes on a squad of Nazis. The soldiers try to shoot her, but she survives due to her regenerative state and uses the discharged energy as a weapon. She picks up their guns and drives away on a motorcycle. Rory and Amy give chase with the sonic screwdriver, followed by the Teselecta disguised as a Nazi soldier.

The Doctor enters the TARDIS and extracts the smoke. He consults with the TARDIS voice interface – the sequence of trying to find a face that doesn’t remind him of his failures is hilarious – and determines that regeneration is impossible due to the poison extracted from the Judas tree. The interface mentions “fish fingers and custard,” inspiring the Doctor to set a course in the TARDIS.

Melody storms a restaurant and demands that the patrons give her their clothes. Outside, the Teselecta takes Amy’s form and miniaturizes Amy and Rory. Just before being killed by the antibodies, the Ponds are given clearance privileges and taken to the control room.

The Teselecta nearly passes judgment on Melody for killing the Doctor, but the Doctor arrives in a tuxedo and top hat. He uses a sonic cane to scan the ship. He also verifies that the Ponds are okay. The Teselecta places Melody in stasis before the crew explains that the mete out justice to war criminals at the ends of their respective timelines. Amy convinces the crew to offer any help they can to the Doctor.

The Silence, a religious cult who believe “silence will fall” when the oldest question in the universe is asked, are behind the plot to kill the Doctor. When the Teselecta crew reveals that they don’t know what the question is, the crew resumes their torture of Melody.

The Doctor asks Amy to save her daughter, so Amy disables the crew’s privileges so that they will all be attacked by the antibodies. The Teselecta releases Melody and the crew is teleported away to a mother ship. As the antibodies descend on Amy and Rory, the Doctor tells Melody to save her parents.

As the Doctor faces his imminent demise, he begs Melody to help him. She talks to the TARDIS and learns to fly the ship, rescuing Amy and Rory before returning everyone to the Doctor’s side. Melody Pond, a child of the TARDIS, wonders who she is. The Doctor asks her to find River Song and pass on a message.

As the Doctor falls unconscious, Melody asks who River Song is. Amy uses the Teselecta to show Melody her own face. Melody decides to pass on her regeneration energy – all her remaining lives – to the Doctor with a kiss, thus becoming River Song.

River wakes up in a hospital with the travelers looking on. The Doctor’s message was that no one could save him, which made her think that she could. This is how she learns Rule #1: The Doctor lies. The travelers leave her with the Sisters of the Infinite Schism to recover, complete with an empty TARDIS-shaped diary. She’ll find her way back to them in time.

As the Doctor ponders the data he downloaded from the Teselecta, River Song enrolls at the Luna University in 5123. Her motivations are simple: She’s looking for a good man.

There are a couple of items working against this fun ride: First, the introduction of the previously unknown Mels. Second, the crux of the assassination of the Doctor relies on him being the smartest man in the room again.

The first can be explained if we’re looking at the events of this season through Amy and Rory’s perspective, therefore seeing a low-impact change in the timeline after Melody’s birth and abduction. The second, while an annoying feature of the Steven Moffat era of Doctor Who, adds a lot of humor and hangs a lampshade on the Doctor’s blind spot for River Song. Especially considering the fact that she is the person who kills the Doctor, an act for which she is imprisoned and is now revealed to be a fixed point. The second also hearkens back to the Ninth Doctor in Boom Town, but it worked there because it wasn’t as much of a storytelling crutch for Russell T. Davies.

That humor, coupled with the character development for River and the Doctor, really makes this story work. The origin story for River Song helps tie off her story and could have provided a convenient story terminus if not for the character’s immense popularity.

The humor also worked because it was self-deprecating. The scene with the TARDIS voice interface poked at the ongoing theme with companion departures and shame, invoking Rose, Martha, and Donna in the process. The scene also point us back to a moment of combined shame and innocence by invoking Amelia Pond, whom the Doctor had not yet screwed up but did leave hanging for her childhood years.

Going back to Rule #1, we find out in this story that temporal grace – the state in which the TARDIS interior exists – houses a “clever lie”. The Fourth Doctor claimed that weapons could not be used inside the TARDIS in order to stop Eldrad in The Hand of Fear. Of course, we already knew that it wasn’t absolute from Arc of Infinity – “Nobody’s perfect,” claimed the Fifth Doctor when challenged by Nyssa about a Cyberman shooting in the console room – as well as The Invasion of Time, Earthshock, Attack of the Cybermen, The Visitation, and The Parting of the Ways.

With all of the discussions about Doctor Who canon/continuity in fandom, it’s a good reminder that Doctor Who canon/continuity has never been consistent.

This story also presents a fascinating parallel to The Caves of Androzani, during which the Doctor was poisoned by could survive by regenerating. The Doctor had several lives to spare at that point, but this encounter comes at the supposed end of the Doctor’s regeneration cycle due to the events of Journey’s End and The Night of the Doctor.

There are also several other franchise callbacks: We’ve seen “justice machines” in the past, though they were in the form of the Megara; We’ve previously seen the TARDIS materialize in a micro environment, courtesy of Carnival of Monsters, and materialize in a micro state, courtesy of Planet of Giants; We’ve seen the TARDIS materialize around people and objects before in Logopolis, Time-Flight, The Parting of the Ways, and The Waters of Mars; We’ve also heard about transferring regeneration energy in previous adventures like Mawdryn Undead, the TV movie, and The Ultimate Foe.

I’m also a sucker for the “Doctor who?” title drop gag, which has been around since the beginning. It makes me snicker every time.

All told, I really enjoy the action, the spirit, and the heart of this story. It takes a tired time-travel trope (“Let’s kill Hitler!”) and turns it on its ear to both develop characters and move a story along. Well done.

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

UP NEXT – Torchwood: The Gathering

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

#Doctor Who #Eleventh Doctor #Timestamps Project

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timeagainreviews · 5 years

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Sifting through the Dregs

For series twelve of Doctor Who, I have opted to take a casual approach. I've avoided spoilers as much as possible. Although I caught the trailers, and the odd press photo, I've managed to stay away from things as simple as episode descriptions, writers, or even episode titles. I want to come into each story with as little expectation as possible. This is so that I might avoid hype, both of the negative and positive varieties. So when I read the words "Part One," after "Spyfall," it was genuinely a surprise. And when I read the words "Orphan 55 by Ed Hime," I was suddenly very hopeful.

If you remember from series eleven, I was a big fan of Ed Hime's episode "It Takes You Away." I praised its brazen absurdity, likening it to something Douglas Adams may have done. The episode is rather divisive in the fandom, as some might call it one of the worst episodes ever. Obviously, I disagree. Ed Hime stands out to me as exactly the kind of writer Doctor Who needs. Someone with a bit of a taste for the absurd, while still managing to capture human moments. Ironic then, that despite my best efforts to approach the episode without expectation, the hype I would most contest with would be my own. Does "Orphan 55," live up to my expectations? Let's get into it!

As I said, Ed Hime lends a sort of mad weirdness to Doctor Who that I feel a certain section of writers possess. Think your Lawrence Mileses, your James Gosses, or even the occasional Steven Moffat. These are writers, who for better or worse understand one thing about Doctor Who- it's weird. Strangely, one of the common most aspects ignored by Doctor Who writers is the absurdity. A blue police box wrapped around an impossible machine, piloted by an ancient trickster somehow becomes mundane. Doctor Who's weirdness is an integral element that has been around since its inception. That's why when the gang gets teleported by a contest cube Graham has assembled, and the first person we meet is a furry, I feel we're already onto a good start. Especially when they just finished cleaning up the biggest calamari ever from the TARDIS floor. (Anyone else think of the Nestine Consciousness?)

Characters like "Hyphen with a 3" or "Hyph3n," remind me of some of the '80s era's odder characters. I could easily see her and her tail living in "Paradise Towers," or perhaps riding a bus in "Delta and the Bannermen." But another reason I love her is that she's not just a furry, it's part of her identity. You don't get the idea that she's an outlier like real-life Trekkie, Barbara Adams, who famously wore her Star Trek uniform to jury duty and her place of work. Instead, you get the feeling that in the future, people respect identities. To use Star Trek again, I remember watching an episode of "Star Trek: Enterprise," where the character Trip has a crisis over whether or not a girl "was a man." When you compare this to the dialogue we're having about transgender rights in 2020, you're automatically reminded that Enterprise came out in 2001. By today's standards, furries are still seeking acceptance. Seeing Hyp3n in a partial fursuit may seem absurd now, but in its own way, it's futuristic. How very Doctor Who.

Things in this future, however, aren't all progressive acceptance of our fine furry friends, there seems to be trouble in paradise. As I said, the gang is greeted by Hyp3n, a sort of porter for a relaxation destination called "Tranquility Spa." The companions immediately take to the spirit of things, as they settle in for a bit of rest and relaxation. The Doctor, of course, starts snooping around. Meanwhile, a security team of two, Kane and Vorm are responding to "another security breach." Whatever it is requires machine guns, which seems like quite a lot. And if you're like me you'll spend the next half hour trying to figure out where you've seen Kane before. I'll help you out- it was Lydia from Breaking Bad. You're welcome. I just saved you a trip to IMDb.

The next scene introduces us to a concept that will run strong within this episode- Yaz as a gooseberry. We see a couple of pensioners, Benni and Vilma, enjoying their spa getaway. Just as Benni is about to ask Vilma to marry him, Yaz stands right between them. I mean, I know the pool is for everyone, but read the vibe, Yaz. Jeez. Meanwhile, Ryan is checking out the interior of Tranquility Spa. The bar looks like the kind of place art vampires go to get lemongrass enemas. It reminded me a lot of "The Leisure Hive," with a budget, or even a more modern twist on the Centre of Leisure from "Time and the Rani. So much of this episode reminded me of classic Doctor Who.

Ryan notices a vending machine, but as he's retrieving his food is infected by a hopper virus. The Doctor explains the virus is capable of jumping from computers to humans. After expelling it from his system, the Doctor bags it to take to whoever is in charge. While Ryan is sucking his thumb to reduce the hallucinogenic side effects of the virus, he sees a cutie in a similar situation, a young woman by the name of Belle. It's pretty obvious at this point that Belle is to be a sort of romantic interest for Ryan, and who can blame him? She lives up to her namesake!

Everyone is rounded up for a "tranquillity drill," to a safe location while Kane and Vorm run through the lobby with their guns in tow. As with most companions, travelling with the Doctor embeds a deeper curiosity. Much like the Doctor would, Ryan questions what type of drill requires guns. This question entices Belle to follow him as they investigate. I really liked this pairing of the two of them as their chemistry was natural, despite Ryan's repeated failures at chatting her up. It only added to their charm.

The Doctor confronts Hyp3n who seems just about as confused and nervous as many of the guests. Whatever she's hiding is only because she's been instructed to by her superiors. Considering the hopper virus and drill, the Doctor deduces that the spa is under attack, and demands to know what they're hiding. Who would want to harm a spa? The spa has been using an ionic membrane to keep out unwanted visitors, visitors which appear to have breached the membrane. Now under a full-on attack by a group of monstrous beings, guests become casualties. Not only is the base under attack, but the viruses have also handicapped the systems, disabling the emergency teleportation devices. With everyone trapped the Doctor has to work fast to stop the killing, as well as survive.

Graham finds a pair of green haired servicemen in the form of Nevi and his son Sylas. Their entire character design once again had me thinking of classic Doctor Who characters such as the Swampies from "The Power of Kroll," or the Karfelon androids from "Timelash." I liked wondering if they were a kind of species that has naturally green hair, or if they had father/son hair dying nights. In this brief interaction, you learn that Sylas is the better mechanic between the two of them, but that Nevi does a bad job of acknowledging this. Graham gathers them and others to evacuate while Ryan and Belle hideaway in a sauna of sorts. While there, they confide in each other that neither of them is nearly as impressive as they initially led on, and the truth strengthens their bond.

Sadly, as Graham is rounding people up, Benni gets separated after backtracking to pick up Vilma's hat. As life signs extinguish across a computer screen, highlighting the trail of carnage, the Doctor finds a way to push back the onslaught. By repairing the ionic membrane, the creatures, known as Dregs, are physically pushed out of the spa by a force field. The crisis averted, the survivors search for the bodies of their loved ones. Much to Graham's relief, Ryan and Belle have both narrowly avoided the claws and teeth of an angry Dreg. Benni, however, is nowhere to be found.

After discovering a hole, which looks like a tear in reality, our heroes discover that Tranquility Spa is actually an illusion. A dome separates the spa from a hostile planet far too polluted to inhabit. This abandoned, or "orphan," planet is designated "Orphan 55." This is the reason guests are teleported to the spa- to cover up its seedy location. However, it would appear that whatever the Dregs are, they seem to be apex predators, able to survive the hostile environment of Orphan 55. And they want the spa and its inhabitants gone.

The Doctor makes Kane drive them out into the wasteland to find Benni, as his oxygen tank would allow him to survive outside of the dome for some time. It was a thin chance, but it might be enough to save at least one person among the carnage. I was really hoping for some silly "Moonbase," style helmets, but instead, we got these minimalist blue breath right strips across the bridge of the nose that linked to small wrist canisters as supplied by Nevi and Sylas.

The trip out onto the surface reminded me a lot of the great Russell T Davies episode "Midnight." And much like Midnight, the confined space of a vehicle traversing harsh conditions offers plenty opportunity to explore the people within. Remember how I said Yaz is a gooseberry? She wastes no time getting right between Ryan and Belle. I honestly can't tell what's going on between Yaz and Ryan at the moment. Last season, there was a bit of a "Will they or won't they?" vibe between them. But series twelve seems less interested in coupling them off. First, we had the Master and Yaz getting weirdly touchy-feely, which surprisingly never comes up again. And now we've got Yaz teasing Ryan in front of Belle like a jealous school girl. We learn that along with sucking their thumbs, Ryan and Belle also share having a dead parent in common, so that's something.

The vehicle picks up a bit of barbed wiring leaving it, as the Doctor put it- completely knackered. Keeping with the Midnight vibe, the surface of the planet is too dangerous due to monsters and killer sunlight. Afraid for her own self-interest, Kane wants to abandon the search mission, but a pleading Vilma begs her to continue looking for Benni. After callously accepting Vilma's necklace as payment, Kane agrees to continue with the rescue mission. The crew abandon their vehicle and run for the safety of an underground service tunnel, but Dregs attack from every direction causing them to return to the safety of the vehicle. But that safety won't last long.

It's then that they hear Benni calling for Vilma. He asks her to marry him and then asks them to shoot him as well. It's a morbid moment as you realise the only reason the Dregs have kept Benni alive is to taunt the survivors and prolong his suffering. I don't really understand what the point of having them run back into the vehicle actually was. They basically run back out a moment later with the new plan of Kane and Vorm covering with gunfire. I don't understand why it was so important that they leave one location just to return moments later.

As Kane and Vorm blast Dregs, the rest of the crew run to the safety of the service tunnel. In the scuffle, Vorm dies, but Kane catches up just in time to open the tunnel. The entrance to this tunnel had me thinking of the opening of "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers." I kept waiting for Rita Repulsa to pop out and say "Ah! After 10,000 years I'm free! It's time to conquer Earth!" They make it down into the tunnel where there is a short-range teleporter nearby. Vilma asks Kane if she saw what happened to Benni, and Kane coldly tells her not to worry, that she shot Benni as he requested. It's at this time that Belle steals Kane's gun. She reveals that Kane is her mother and that she's here for revenge for abandoning her and her father. Belle teleports back to the spa taking Ryan with her. Seeing as the teleporter only had enough juice for one go, the rest of the crew must go deeper into the tunnel to find their way back.

Back at the spa, Belle reveals a huge bomb she plans to use to blow up the spa. Poor Ryan, he just met this girl and already he's dealing with her baggage with her mum. I kid, but damn girl, take a guy to a movie first. It's lucky for the Doctor that this adventure isn't actually from the '80s. Had it been Ace in this position, she would have seen the bomb and said "Wicked!" while offering up Nitro 9 to add to the destruction. Instead, Ryan pleads with her not to blow up the spa, dooming everyone involved.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and crew discover a plaque written in Russian, cluing them in to the fact that not only is the planet abandoned, but it was also abandoned by humanity. Orphan 55 is in fact, Earth. This revelation hits Graham and Yaz hard, as they never imagined the fate of the world to be so ugly. Their grieving is cut short by the appearance of Dregs, who Vilma bravely sacrifices herself to, to save the others. The Doctor, at this time also appears to be running out of air. It appears that the ability to be the loudest talker isn't always helpful when oxygen preservation is to be considered.

The sole reason for her running out of oxygen serves only to discover the Dregs breathe out oxygen. She discovers this when she finds a Dreg conveniently hibernating within the tunnel. Why this is important is that it gives a bit of insight into the Dregs' motivation. Kane's big plan was to make a spa that slowly terraforms the planet, which would harm the Dregs. It also explains the trees seen on the surface of the planet. That or these trees are also apex predators able to adapt to anything. Using her Time Lord brain magic, the Doctor looks into the mind of the Dregs and affirms what she feared most- they evolved from humans.

Everyone has now made their way back to the spa. The Dregs are closing in and they need to fix the teleporter. We're treated to a series of people once again leaving and returning to the same location for the sake of upping the tension. Kane appears to sacrifice herself and Sylas gets in an argument with Nevi once more over being told he's not a mechanic causing him to run away. But both of them are ok, as they both return unscathed. Yaz and Ryan wheel Belle's bomb to try and take out a few of the baddies. It's kind of a clusterfuck if I am honest. Lots of characters get taken in and out of scenes merely to pad time and add to the tension. It's not egregious but could have been edited better.

Sylas appears just in time with a solution to use the hopper virus to convert fuel for the teleporter. I was happy they brought the virus back, even if they don’t make a whole lot of sense. Were the Dregs weaponising the hopper virus? Were the viruses remnants of human civilisation? Regardless, I’m glad they brought it back. Sadly, this entire end sequence acts as evidence that perhaps there are too many companions in the TARDIS at the moment. Graham's job is to stand over Nevi and Sylus saying things like "That's right lads!" Yaz and Ryan are basically running around doing busywork, while the Doctor and Belle are having a stand-off with a Dreg. The Doctor manages to equalise the air in the room so that it is mutually beneficial to keep her and Belle alive. What the Dreg breathes out, they breathe in, and vice versa. This stalemate allows them the ability to leave. With the teleports up and running, the Doctor and her crew are transported back aboard the TARDIS, but not before Belle steals a kiss from Ryan. Are she and her mother going to be okay? We're left to wonder.

The victory celebration is short-lived as the companions remember the fate of the earth. Now, I need to preface what I'm about to say with the following- I fully believe climate change is a thing. I say this because we need to talk about how Doctor Who handles the subject. I've seen a lot of people (see: morons) complain about when Doctor Who gets "too political." They seem to think anything they don't like is political. The Doctor being a woman is political to them. But as I said with episodes like "Rosa," and "Demons of the Punjab," it's not that Doctor Who shouldn't be political, it's that it's simply not very good at it.

I can appreciate that the message of climate change is a real and pressing matter, but the cautionary edutainment way in which they present the information was so cringe. It felt so unnatural and tacked on. In their desire to address the audience directly, they lose a level of reality that makes the dialogue seem fake. These scenes always feel badly acted to me, but it's the fault of the dialogue. There's no good way to break the fourth wall without also sacrificing the characters' voices. It's like one of those adverts where you have two people talking far too candidly about something like their period flow, or constipation. It's a way to disseminate information about a product or ideology, but don't mistake it for dialogue. Nobody talks like this.

All in all, this was your standard "base in peril," episode. While not as transcendent as "It Takes You Away," I believe Ed Hime has given us another solid episode of Doctor Who. It's hard for me to tell if Hime's ability to write action was wanting, or if it is simply the fault of the director, but it definitely suffers at points due to the janky pacing. Pacing has really been an odd sticking point for series 12, and I hope they work it out. Even still, I was hoping that after the two-parter of "Spyfall," we would get something a little more grounded. Having this odd little contained storyline with little homages to classic Who is actually more than I had hoped for. It also gave us a new character in Belle, whom I expect to see return eventually. And despite the heavy-handed and unnatural way in which they dealt with climate change, I understand that it's a family show. In keeping with classic Who, it aimed to be educational, and for that, I cannot fault it.

#doctor who #Thirteenth Doctor #Jodie Whittaker #Bradley Walsh #tosin cole #mandip gill #Graham O'Brien #Ryan Sinclair #yaz #yasmine khan #orphan 55 #ed hime #dregs #series 12 #TARDIS #BBC #Time and Time Again

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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Food-Adjacent TV to Stream This Weekend, According to Eater Staff

Actor Sandra Oh, wearing a black chef beanie and a white t-shirt, talks on an iPhone outside a restaurant kitchen. | BBC America

“Killing Eve,” reality TV favorites, classic sitcoms, and more

We at Eater spend a lot of time thinking about food, so when it appears on our TV screen, we take special interest. If you’re looking to stream some non-food TV that happens to be — at least tangentially — about food this weekend, here’s what we recommend.

Terrace House: Tokyo, Episode 11 (available to stream on Netflix)

Terrace House, the Japanese version of The Real World, has had a long history of food-related misdemeanors and crimes, but the most recent one entails broccoli, pasta water, and egg. Ruka, one of the housemates of the Tokyo house, is a complete enigma of a human being and maybe the most naive person to ever grace Terrace House (or the world?). In an attempt to cook broccoli pasta carbonara, he cracks an egg into the pasta water with the pasta, then adds broccoli. It seems he read the ingredient list, skipped the instructions, and simply winged it. Nothing matters, you know?!

In Netflix’s latest batch of episodes (Netflix US runs a couple of months behind Japan), Ruka attempts broccoli pasta carbonara again. I gasped when I saw he was making pasta FROM SCRATCH and squealed when he presented something that not only looked edible, but delicious! His housemates were (understandably) pleasantly shocked and I got very emotional. It’s rare when you see such dramatic growth. I imagine this is what parents feel when they see their children walk for the first time. — Pelin Keskin, Eater associate producer

Community (available to stream on Hulu and Netflix)

In 2009, when Community first aired, I was actually taking classes at a community college. Yet, somehow I’ve made it this long without watching this series created by Dan Harmon and featuring some of the current era’s most memorable actors (See: Donald Glover, Alison Brie, Gillian Jacobs, and Ken Jeong). The first season hinges on narcissistic student Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) starting classes at a Greendale Community College, where he’s pursuing his bachelor’s degree in an attempt to reclaim his suspended law license. Winger joins a Spanish 101 study group (remember when people still gathered in groups?) to incessantly hit on Britta Perry (played by Jacobs). But as the show evolves, episodes become more unhinged, playing into pop culture tropes observed by TV and movie obsessed student Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi). After a while, it becomes easier to view this show as sort of a live-action version of Harmon’s later work Rick and Morty, but with a slightly less noxious fandom attached. This is particularly encapsulated in episodes like Season 2’s “Epidemiology,” in which the whole student body is transformed into zombies after eating expired military rations. Season 2 also features an excellent example of weird TV sponcon in “Basic Rocket Science,” where the study group gets trapped inside a Kentucky Fried Chicken-branded space flight simulator. — Brenna Houck, Eater.com reporter and Eater Detroit editor

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Killing Eve (Season 3, Episode 1, available to stream on BBC America)

Killing Eve, a BBC show that for two seasons has been about feminism, fucking, and fighting, has added a fourth “f” to its roster: food. When we reunite with the show’s titular “Eve” (Sandra Oh), we watch her shopping the aisles of an Asian grocery, grabbing ramen cups and snacks from shelves that seem preposterously well-stocked to my pandemic-warped eyes. The multitudes the store holds are intoxicating. We then discover that since we last saw her — left for dead by Villanelle (Jodie Comer), an assassin with whom she is/was mutually obsessed — Eve’s fled her job at MI5 for a gig as a dumpling chef at an Asian restaurant, a perfect place, perhaps, for an Asian American woman to make herself invisible in a city like London. As audience members, we get to watch her deftly pinch pot sticker after pot sticker as she eavesdrops on her relationship-impaired colleagues (once a spy, always a spy, perhaps), a rote activity that probably has a lot more in common with tradecraft than most espionage-based thrillers would have us believe. It’s a nice job for a perfectionist like Eve, one that’ll do well enough until (one assumes) Villanelle returns to her life and again throws it into chaos. — Eve Batey, senior editor, Eater SF

Difficult People (Season 1, Episode 5, available on Hulu)

Much of this criminally short-lived sitcom starring comedians Billy Eichner (Billy on the Street) and Julie Klausner takes place in a restaurant where a struggling-artist version of Billy works to pay the bills. But this episode stands out for its art-imitating-life plot: Julie, who has “the palate of a seven-year-old” stops by Billy’s place of employment to eat, but finds the menu too fancy for her liking (“everything on [the] menu has some kind of chutney or jus on it,” Julie complains).

So, when Billy’s boss leaves town for a few days, the duo convert the restaurant into a pop-up named the Children’s Menu, serving items that would belong on a kids’ menu someplace like Applebee’s. The pair set about marking up chicken tenders and fish sticks and peddling it to food blogs. And because Difficult People is set in New York, home to many people with poor taste but lots of money, crowds lap it up. It’s a fun skewering of a side of the food world that values creatively bankrupt novelty above all else. Looking at you, “cereal bars” and Museum of Ice Cream. — Tim Forster, editor, Eater Montreal

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Lodge 49 (available to purchase on Amazon Prime)

I‘m not surprised Lodge 49 was cancelled after two seasons on AMC last fall; I’m delighted it aired at all. This shaggy dog show stars Wyatt Russell (the waggish spawn of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell) as Dud, an adrift surfer in recession-hit Long Beach, who finds connection through a fraternal lodge along the lines of the Freemasons. Meanwhile his sister Liz (Sonya Cassidy) works at a shitty Hooters knockoff called Shamroxx, run by a ghoulish regional corporate conglomerate, Omni Capital. These days, I’m reminded of Liz’s Season 2 story arc: She’s made manager of Omni’s replacement for Shamroxx, a stupid new steakhouse concept called Higher Steaks. When the restaurant struggles, the way Liz sticks up for her colleagues, who are some of the show’s best minor characters, is an inspiring rebuke of winner-takes-all capitalism — no surprise, as the whole show is basically a socialist document. Ironically it’s not streaming for free, but Lodge 49 is special and well worth buying to watch. — Caleb Pershan, Eater.com reporter

Frasier, Season 1, Episode 3 (available to stream on Hulu)

I know I’m incredibly late getting into Fraiser (most of my coworkers are obsessed with it), but it’s been about a week now and I’m already halfway through the second season. I can’t get enough of it. While Frasier’s advice to his listeners can be a little “meh,” it’s absolutely delightful to watch the main characters give each other therapy through their conversations. And watching each episode unfold feels like much needed therapy right now.

I could go on and on about all the episodes I love, but “Dinner at Eight” is my absolute favorite. Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) and his brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) decide to take their father Martin (John Mahoney) out to dinner as a way to spend more quality time with him. When the restaurant loses their reservation, they decide to visit a steakhouse at Martin’s suggestion. His pitch: “You can get a steak this thick for $8.95.”

The Timber Mill is nothing like the trendy, pretentious restaurants Frasier and Niles frequent and the duration of the entire meal is a culinary culture clash. For example, when the beef trolley arrives and everyone at the table has to pick their cut of steak, Frasier asks, “How much extra would I have to pay to get one from the refrigerator?”

It’s absolutely heartbreaking to watch Martin get more and more aggravated as Frasier and Niles make ridiculously elaborate orders (a petite filet mignon “very lean, not so lean that it lacks flavor but not so fat that it leaves drippings on the plate”), poke fun at the restaurant, and give the servers a hard time. That’s why it’s so satisfying to watch Martin skewer Frasier and Niles for their snobbery, leaving them to eat the rest of their dinner alone under the scornful eyes of the Timber Mill’s servers as “Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs” plays in the background. — Esra Erol, senior social media manager, Eater

Real Housewives of New York, Season 8, Episodes 6 & 7

In times of uncertainty, we seek comfort in consistency: The sun will rise in the east, the tides will ebb and flow, and rich women will scream at each other for our enjoyment on Bravo. Recently, I’ve been rewatching old episodes of Real Housewives of New York and am currently in the midst of its landmark eighth season (“Please don’t let it be about Tom.” “It’s about Tom”). Practically every episode is a hit, but “Tipsying Point” and “Air Your Dirty Laundry” conveniently double as a lesson in the booze business. When jack of all trades/master of none Sonja Morgan announces that she’s releasing a signature prosecco called Tipsy Girl, she faces the wrath of Bethenny Frankel, founder of the Skinny Girl brand. As even the most casual Housewives watcher will tell you, Bethenny is famously protective of her business and turns vicious at any perceived attack on it. “I thought the alcohol was a great idea. I really looked up to what you did and I thought it would be a great way for me to get ahead,” Sonja blubbers to Bethenny in her Skinny Girl brand-blazoned office. It’s because of this episode, and this fight in particular, that I know what a “cheater brand” is.

By the way, I’ve tried Tipsy Girl prosecco and it’s... not the worst wine I’ve had. — Madeleine Davies, Eater.com daily editor

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3eoMvVY https://ift.tt/2xDhUn5

Actor Sandra Oh, wearing a black chef beanie and a white t-shirt, talks on an iPhone outside a restaurant kitchen. | BBC America

“Killing Eve,” reality TV favorites, classic sitcoms, and more

Terrace House: Tokyo, Episode 11 (available to stream on Netflix)

Community (available to stream on Hulu and Netflix)

youtube

Killing Eve (Season 3, Episode 1, available to stream on BBC America)

Difficult People (Season 1, Episode 5, available on Hulu)

youtube

Lodge 49 (available to purchase on Amazon Prime)

Frasier, Season 1, Episode 3 (available to stream on Hulu)

Real Housewives of New York, Season 8, Episodes 6 & 7

By the way, I’ve tried Tipsy Girl prosecco and it’s... not the worst wine I’ve had. — Madeleine Davies, Eater.com daily editor

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3eoMvVY via Blogger https://ift.tt/2xuewen

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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the-desolated-quill · 7 years

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Victory Of The Daleks - Doctor Who blog (Matt Smith And The Amazing Technicolor Pepper Pots)

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

When did Mark Gatiss lose his bollocks? Back when he worked as part of the dark comedy quartet the League of Gentlemen, he wrote some truly great stuff. Even his first Who story, The Unquiet Dead, was pretty good, although he was somewhat hindered because he was having to write for children as well as adults and so had to dampen his dark material down a bit. But since then his work has slipped further and further downhill. The Idiot’s Lantern was rubbish. The less said about his work on the god awful Sherlock, the better. Now we’ve got Victory Of The Daleks.

The Doctor and Amy arrive in WW2 to meet up with Winston Churchill, who has a new secret weapon that could help turn the tide of the war in Britain’s favour. But these so called Ironsides may have a more sinister goal in mind...

First let’s quickly talk about the WW2 setting. Not exactly original, I know, considering we’ve already explored it in The Empty Child two parter, but to be fair that story was told more from the perspective of the civilians. We haven’t seen the soldiers and higher up’s perspective yet, so there could still be some gold in this mine yet. Pity they don’t bother digging for it.

Yes this is WW2, but it’s the stereotypical WW2. Pilots and generals shouting ‘tally-ho’ in OTT Received Pronunciation British accents. People saluting the Union flag while composer Murray Gold gives himself a patriotic boner with his constant fanfares crashing and banging in the background of every scene. Even Winston Churchill (who is portrayed exceptionally well by Ian McNeice) is little more than a caricature (did he have to smoke a cigar in every scene?). There’s no effort to really explore the grim reality of fighting in a war like this. There is an effort to get us to form an emotional connection with that woman whose boyfriend gets shot down whilst flying over the Channel, but it just felt a bit half-arsed. This is a romanticised version of war. Heroic men and women doing their bit for Queen and country, and back home in time for tea. Compared to the likes of, say, Genesis Of The Daleks where they don’t shy away from the morbid and tragic misery of battle, Victory Of The Daleks feels a bit pathetic by comparison.

While I’m not too fond of the romanticised WW2 setting, and this episode in general, I must confess I do love the first 15 minutes. The Daleks feel right at home here, which is not surprising considering that they’re supposed to be an allegory for the Nazis. And a shiny gold star has to go Matt Smith’s performance. His frustration toward Churchill and his pure rage toward the Daleks, culminating in him hitting one of them repeatedly with an oversized wrench, was incredibly powerful. After centuries of fighting these pepper pots, the Doctor has just about had enough of this shit, and Smith conveys that perfectly. He’s no slouch at the comedy neither. I love how he uses a Jammy Dodger to trick the Daleks into standing down. That feels so utterly Doctorly.

Ideally Victory Of The Daleks should have been a two part story, I feel. The first 15 minutes has some legitimately good ideas, but they’re not given the time to fully develop. Gatiss is clearly taking a lot of inspiration from the Patrick Troughton era story The Power Of The Daleks, with the Daleks operating from a position of weakness and tricking a bunch of humans into thinking they’re harmless (they even substitute the line ‘I am your servant’ with ‘I am your soldier’). But the reason why The Power Of The Daleks works so well is because it takes its time. We really get to know the characters and get drawn into their deception, making the final reveal that much more tragic and horrifying. It would have been really nice if the first 15 minutes could have been extended to a full episode. That way we could have explored Churchill’s desperation to win the war a bit more, we would get a chance to properly get to know Professor Bracewell, the supposed creator of the ‘Ironsides’, and perhaps draw out the mystery as to whether or not Bracewell is being genuine or not, with the reveal that he’s actually a robot making a great cliffhanger ending. It would also give us a chance to see just how cunning the Daleks are. That’s the reason why they’ve endured for so long after all. They’re not mindless killing machines. They’re scheming, malevolent killing machines, which The Power Of The Daleks managed to demonstrate so effectively.

So having rushed through quite possibly the most interesting part of the story, the Doctor takes the TARDIS to the Dalek spaceship. And this is where things go horribly wrong.

What are the Daleks most famous for? Killing. Russell T Davies understood that, hence why we got Dalek and The Parting Of The Ways. Two stories that demonstrated how merciless and unstoppable the Daleks were (before they were reduced to toothless stand up comedians during the David Tennant era). What are the Daleks not doing in this episode? Killing.

That’s really my main problem with Victory Of The Daleks. Outside of the Jammy Dodger scene, it feels like the majority of this episode consists of nothing but the Doctor and the Daleks just talking each other’s ears off, and nothing they have to say to each other is particularly interesting. As it goes on, you realise that the purpose of this story is not to entertain us, but rather to establish a new status quo for the Daleks. A new and improved Paradigm of Daleks that were no longer constantly fighting for survival. From this episode onward, they would be back in full force and would come in a variety of colours.

Yeah. You all knew this was coming. I’m sure you’re all excited to know what I thought of the Mighty Morphin Dalek Rangers. Take a random guess what I thought.

Seriously, whoever came up with this design, I hope they got sacked. They look fucking hideous. It’s not just the awful colour scheme. It’s everything. The plastic look. The over-sized midsection. The weird eyeball on a stalk. Their MASSIVE arses (which is apparently supposed to hold a secondary weapon that we will never get to see). And they’re so ridiculously tall to the point where the white Dalek Supreme’s domed head was inches from hitting a light fixture on the ceiling. The new design is just laughably bad. Even with a khaki paint job, the older Daleks look a squillion times better and I’m relieved that in the series to come, the BBC would eventually come to their senses and slowly phase out these new Daleks and subtly return to the old ones. So we’ll never know what was the mysterious purpose behind the yellow ‘Eternal’ Daleks. Never mind. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been very interesting.

But how did this new Paradigm come about? Well the Daleks have got their hands on this Progenitor thing that can create all these shiny new Daleks, except the Progenitor doesn’t recognise these Daleks as pure (oh the irony). They’re going to need a character reference. How about their greatest enemy? But they can’t just ask him obviously. They’ll have to lure him there and trick him into giving a reference. So how do they do that? Do they start attacking the Earth and killing people, knowing it will draw the Doctor’s attention eventually? Oh no. That’s far too sensible. Instead they invent a robot to pretend to invent them, even going to the trouble of implanting human memories and feelings into him, before becoming war machines for Winston Churchill. Then Churchill will call the Doctor because... despite coming across as obedient servants, they’re still suspicious enough to warrant calling a Time Lord for advice? Wait... so they want to look like allies, but their whole plan hinges on not looking like allies.

That makes no sodding sense.

So having been bored senseless with the Doctor and the Daleks’ constant monologuing about what they’re going to do to each other like kids in a school playground arguing over whose dad could beat up whose, the Daleks then reveal their trump card. Bracewell is actually a bomb. But don’t worry. Amy can solve that by making him horny. Um... I mean... reminding him of his humanity.

Putting aside the whole disarming a bomb through the power of love crap, since when did the Doctor turn into Mr. Spock? The same thing happened in The Beast Below where Amy figures out the solution using her humany goodness as though the Doctor is completely out of touch with human emotion. But we know that’s not the case. He’s alien, but he’s not that alien. Also Amy’s reaction to the Daleks escaping annoyed me. Yes they saved the Earth, but a bunch of multi-coloured space Nazis are now free to rain death and destruction across time and space. This is not what I call a win. Mind you, the Doctor annoyed me too at that point. He feels so powerless when the Daleks escape. If only he had a time machine. That way he could go back in time and stop the Daleks before they escape.

...

Oh wait. He does have a time machine. WHY DON’T YOU JUST GO BACK IN TIME AND STOP THE DALEKS BEFORE THEY ESCAPE?

So that was Victory Of The Daleks. It had some potential in the first 15 minutes, but it all turned to shit the moment the plot reared its ugly head. Better luck next time.

#victory of the daleks #mark gatiss #doctor who #eleventh doctor #matt smith #amy pond #karen gillan #daleks #steven moffat #bbc #review #spoilers

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stfumoffathaters · 7 years

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That io9 article

As you may or may not be aware, io9 used a story about Russell T Davies knowing who the next Doctor is a jumping off point to run an attack article on Steven Moffat’s history of comments about a female Doctor. As you might expect from the previous snippet I posted, it is rather an unfair representation, so let’s unpack it a bit:

It looks like the new Doctor has been cast. After accepting an award at the British LGBT Awards, former Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies told Guys Like U that the next season already has its next Doctor. Davies was responding to a question about whether the new lead should be a woman, a question posed to current showrunner Steven Moffat multiple times over the years. And he’s been very consistent.

Moffat’s been answering this question since at least 2013. Exactly one day after it was announced that Peter Capaldi would take over as the new Doctor, Moffat explained his decision to DigitalSpy, saying that it “didn’t feel right” to cast a woman at the time since he didn’t think enough fans would want one. He even went so far as to say female fans were the ones most adamantly against it.

It’s absolutely narratively possible [that the Doctor could be a woman]... And when it’s the right decision, maybe we’ll do it. It didn’t feel right to me, right now. I didn’t feel enough people wanted it... Oddly enough most people who said they were dead against it – and I know I’ll get into trouble for saying this – were women. [They were] saying, “No, no, don’t make him a woman!”

To start with, it seems slightly unfair to start an attack on Moffat over this by using Russell T Davies; a man who previously gave this bizarre quote on the subject in 2008:

“I am often tempted to say yes to that to placate everyone but, while I think kids will not have a problem with [a female Doctor], I think fathers will have a problem with it because they will then imagine they will have to describe sex changes to their children. I think fathers can describe sex changes to their children and I think they should and it’s part of the world, but I think it would simply introduce genitalia into family viewing. You’re not talking about actresses or style, you’re talking about genitalia, and a lot of parents would get embarrassed.”

I still don’t even know what the fuck this means, unless the Doctor is suddenly going to become a nudist after regeneration. Yes, Russell has learned over the years but it’s definitely still the worst thing either of them has said on the subject.

Moving on, the argument that Moffat’s statements on this are consistent (ie. consistently anti a female Doctor), there’s this from their own website. As for the answer Moffat gives, there is nothing there that wasn’t true at the time according to polls. He wasn’t saying most women were ‘vehemently’ opposed to it, he was saying that most of those that were were women. As far as I can remember from polls that were conducted around the time, more men were against overall but of those that were vehemently against more were women. There’s an argument that people not being ready for a female Doctor (which I wasn’t at the time) is no reason to not actually do it, but when there would have been huge BBC pressure to keep everything stable, I’m not surprised that he didn’t and went with Missy instead.

Moffat would later shy away from the “women don’t want a female Doctor” defense and double down on suggesting it could happen one day, but not that day.

Speaking at the Hay Festival in May 2014, he said he’d consider casting a woman in the role, but only when the time was right, adding that it shouldn’t be a forced “political decision.”

A person will pop into the showrunner’s head and they’ll think. “Oh, my God, what if it was that person?” And when that person is a woman, that’s the day it will happen... It will not happen that somebody sits down and say we must turn the Doctor into a woman. That is not how you cast the Doctor.

Beyond the fact that “political decision” is a loaded term that justifies continuing the status quo, Moffat is kind of a hypocrite.

For example, during the same Q&A session, Moffat revealed that Capaldi was the only person he brought in to audition for the Doctor. The “person that popped into his head”:

Peter Capaldi just kept popping into my head. I got him round to my house to audition. And he didn’t know he was the only person auditioning.

This mirrors his selection of Matt Smith, who had previously auditioned for Sherlock (another role Moffat defended as quintessentially male back in March). This means only those in Moffat’s immediate line of sight stood a chance, and no one else was given an opportunity to show what they could bring to the role.

The political decision thing is a fair point, but the full context of the quote is interesting:

“A person will pop into the showrunner’s head and they’ll think. ‘Oh, my God, what if it was that person?’ And when that person is a woman, that’s the day it will happen.

Casting is the dark arts of television. It is everything. That decision is central and absolute to everything you do. It’s the difference between a television programme and a sensation.

So you don’t mess around with that; you don’t cast for any other reason than for passion and for aesthetics. It’s not a political decision, it’s an aesthetic decision and will always be.”

I’m not sure whether Moffat realises that and considers deliberately casting a white man just as political as casting a woman or a POC; as some of his comments about casting Bill Potts would indicate; or simply doesn’t understand that it’s not politically neutral, which is problematic.

The charge of hypocrisy on the other hand is a reach. The worst that can be said of the Capaldi decision is after an immensely stressful anniversary year Moffat wanted to work someone who he got on well with; who liked his work, a known fan of the show; and a brilliant actor who was perfect for the part. Had it been pretty much anyone other than Peter it would have been approaching unacceptable. In regards to Matt Smith, it’s simply bullshit. To start with he auditioned for Watson, not Sherlock, and was told he would be more of a Sherlock. Secondly, we know through Neil Gaiman the role was offered to a black actor (it’s not specifically said to have been 11, but the circumstances for 9 and 10 don’t fit) before it was offered to Smith. Thirdly, and finally, this from Andy Pryor:

“And then with Matt [Smith], Steven Moffat [the writer] really didn't want a younger Doctor, but I just insisted on auditioning Matt because he's an old man in a young man's body."

So, the idea Moffat always wanted Matt (when outside of the Sherlock audition he had likely never seen him, if he was involved in that audition at all) is complete nonsense.

He says a woman “could” be the Doctor, if she’s the first person to pop into his head. But after over 50 years of white men, it’s absolutely always going to be a white man that pops in there first — especially if the person who is the showrunner is himself a white man who surrounds himself with roles that are traditionally played by white men.

Yes, it’s difficult to argue this isn’t an element sometimes, but I don’t think it necessarily applies to the casting of either Capaldi or Smith, Capaldi because of the aforementioned reasons and Smith because he had to go through an audition process and the guy who initially popped into Moffat’s head was black, inferring from Gaiman’s statement.

However, it’s not just about women not getting the opportunity to try out for the role, though that’s a big factor. Moffat never really thought about having a woman be the Doctor because he thinks they’re better suited as the Doctor’s companions, saying as much during a BAFTA talk in 2015.

There’s an aspect to it where you could say that if you made the Doctor female you’d lose a fairly unique rare role model, I’m not sure if I’m completely persuaded by that argument purely because I don’t think the Doctor is the role model of Doctor Who. He isn’t. Because you can’t really base yourself on the Doctor. He’s off the spectrum, barking mad, from space and has lots of mysterious abilities that we do not. How do you base yourself on that? The role model is actually the other character, his best friend, the person who deals with this out of control, overgrown schoolboy racing around the universe being rather too imperious and too interfering for his own good.

This isn’t the only time that Moffat has said he doesn’t see the Doctor as a role model, but his track record doesn’t support the companion being the true hero (and not just because he’s called the Doctor the “hero figure”).

While companions are given more character development, coming into the Doctor’s life to learn something about themselves and teach the Doctor something in the meantime, Moffat’s defense is pretty insulting. It assumes that only men can be emotionally stunted, hyper-intelligent weirdos who roam the galaxy causing and solving mischief.

We’ve had male companions in the past, albeit typically alongside female ones. And in his argument, Moffat never says the companion has to be female here, but he is saying that the Doctor is male, so the only female lead in the show could be the companion. And as he describes companions, they’re put in the uncomfortable position of being the Doctor’s emotional core. This reinforces the stereotype that it’s a woman’s role to bring emotional balance to a man, but men can’t or shouldn’t do the same for a woman.

I’ve already covered the first bit of this, where I’ve said he’s arguing that the Doctor isn’t really a role model, which is why the argument that making the character a woman would not be specifically a loss of a unique male role model (which is an argument I’ve seen put forward by a female writer of DW tie-in books in Doctor Who Magazine). A hero figure and a role model aren’t necessarily the same thing, especially given the multiple deconstructions of what the Doctor actually is during Moffat’s tenure.

Also, ‘it assumes that only men can be emotionally stunted, hyper-intelligent weirdos who roam the galaxy causing and solving mischief’? Errrr, River Song and Missy, anyone? Definitely Clara’s style too, it’s only her humanity that stops her being the Doctor, not her gender (and there’s sort of a fix for the former).

‘but he is saying that the Doctor is male, so the only female lead in the show could be the companion’. He’s very specifically not saying that, but if you misunderstand if not deliberately misread what he says you are going to continue making an arse of yourself. The rest is rather undermined by Rory and Danny being much more the emotional balances in their relationships with Amy and Clara than vice versa.

It gets even more muddled when you consider Moffat’s actual track record. A 2014 study showed that Moffat’s female companions had, on average, fewer speaking lines than Davies’, and Amy failed the Bechdel Test far more times than her predecessors. Clara did improve the scales, and Bill has been pretty solid so far, but the numbers still tend to fall below what existed before.

Ughhhhhhhh. Long time readers and followers of this discourse will be aware of the so-called study the author references here, which was discredited (well, by us, at least) because of falsified data and bias, and no rigour whatsoever. This is the point where this becomes a loaded article, attempting to prove an assessment already decided (much like that study!)

Moffat himself was asked about the accusations of sexism later in 2015, replying that he understood the concerns, in theory, but also didn’t think they applied to his show specifically. He also added that his wife is a “powerful woman,” which is always a helpful defense.

It’s a big and complicated issue and I never quite know how to respond to it. The general point being made by these people is correct. We need better female role models and representation on screen. We need all of that. Maybe this is my dim-wittery but I do not understand why Doctor Who of all shows is singled out as a misogynist show. And I’m really not like that. I’m sure I’m to the left of a lot of my detractors, but I don’t want to argue with them because I think generally they’re right. We do need to do better.

The interview was not just about sexism, but took in a range of topics and oh, look; the ‘powerful woman’ quote was not a defence but in response to one of a series of questions about his themes; this particular one being ‘you’ve often introduced a strong woman with an enigma at her core’, to which Moffat responds: ‘It’s hardly something only I’ve done. And I’m married to a very powerful woman.‘ Presumably meaning that his character creation is in part inspired by his wife.

As for the quote...he’s not saying he doesn’t deserve criticism, but when questions need to be asked about shows such as Game of Thrones, The 100, maybe even Once Upon A Time (in my opinion, please do not ask what I mean by this) it is very unfair to single him out in particular.

Moffat’s years-long pattern has been to evade the question with a “maybe at some point,” or defending his decision to cast male Doctors for... insert his latest reason here. I honestly don’t believe Moffat ever seriously considered a woman for the job during his tenure as Doctor Who’s showrunner, and probably still wouldn’t be if he were sticking around next season.

He’s continually said he’d think about it, pointing to his choice to turn The Master into a woman, but his hiring practices have continually put himself in situations where a male Doctor was a given. And his reluctance to alter his (male) Doctor and (female) companion dynamic is apparent.

This is all a belief, and it’s therefore difficult to disprove, but I have already disproved or significantly undermined the bits based on facts. It’s not known whether or not women auditioned for Eleven, either.

There’s also his attitude that selecting a woman would be a forced political choice, instead of something that could serve and grow the narrative. It’s even echoed in his advice to new showrunner Chris Chibnall, published in March of this year, saying his next Doctor should be a “friend” instead of someone who serves an “agenda.”

Just choose the best person for the job and any other agenda, however worthy, should be ignored. It has to be the best person for the Doctor that Chris is writing for... Chris is going to be working with the actor for quite a few years and it is a pressure cooker. It can be tough, so you need to choose your friend wisely. So long as it works for the good of the show, that’s fine.

I mean, I have genuine issues with the political choice idea, but there’s an argument here that he genuinely just might not want to get people’s hopes up or protect Chris Chibnall from backlash of dashed hopes as his friend, or both (especially if he didn’t yet know the casting, where he could be under orders from above to be diplomatic if asked)?

Additionally, he could well be saying that if you decide you’re going to make this change, you do that as part of the narrative and then cast for it, rather than casting first and then writing around it. Which would make sense, because it’s how he cast Missy and Bill. The friend thing is ‘choose someone you can actually stand to work with’, nothing more.

Moffat’s most recent answer to this question came just a few days ago in an interview with BBC Radio 4 (via We Got This Covered), Moffat went into how he chose Smith and Capaldi as his Doctors, saying it wasn’t a matter of purposefully choosing white men for the job, it just so happened that the perfect actors for the job were both white men. What are the odds, right?

“I didn’t not cast a woman… I cast a man. I didn’t [cast a woman] because I wanted to cast Matt Smith and I wanted to cast Peter Capaldi. I didn’t think it was a terrible idea, I just thought, ‘I want to cast those people’ – that was it.”

Of course, we know that he didn’t see anyone else and he didn’t want to let any one else’s thoughts intrude onto his mystical process of waiting for someone to pop into his head. This is why Moffat’s reasons are so elliptical and confusing: he didn’t affirmatively rule out women, he just never gave anyone but his preferred choices any thought whatsoever. So when asked to defend it, he can’t, really.

Hmm, okay. We’ve been over that Moffat’s probable first choice to play Eleven was a black man but even if it wasn’t, Matt didn’t just pop into Moffat’s head as anything other than the results of the audition process. He proved himself more suited for what Moffat wanted as a result of that. There may have been subconscious bias involved in that decision but that statement just isn’t true.

Despite Moffat’s insistence to continue playing the same tune, there are hopes the new showrunner will change things up, giving audiences a female Doctor or having the iconic character regenerate as a person of color. The actor’s been picked, so it’s too late to petition, but it’s never too late to hope. Casting a more diverse Doctor would revitalize the show, encouraging a new audience while challenging current fans. So, what does Chibnall himself have to say about it?

Nothing is ruled out, but I don’t want the casting to be a gimmick and that’s all I can say.

Shit.

For once, I completely agree, though I note the statement was made before Moffat’s advice was given. And tbh Chibnall has no real excuses left, and puts the show at risk of stagnating if he doesn’t change.

#Doctor Who #Steven Moffat #Pro Moffat #Russell T Davies #Chris Chibnall #female doctor #female doctor debate #female representation #misogyny #rebuttals

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havesomereviews · 8 years

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Doctor Who 2x04: The Girl in the Fireplace

Writer: Stevn Moffat Director: Euros Lyn Main Cast: David Tennant, Billie Piper, Noel Clarke, Sophia Myles

Synopsis: The Doctor, Rose and Mickey land on a 51st century spaceship that is riddled with time windows that lead to 18th century France. And it all seems to be centred around the life of one woman: Madame de Pompadour.

Monster of the Week: Clockwork service droids who are trying to repair their broken spaceship with whatever they can, including the crew.

Quote of the Episode:

Reinette: What do monsters have nightmares about?

Doctor: Me!

Standout Moment: The scene where the Doctor notices the broken clock is truly chilling and will have you nervously checking your own clock every time you hear it ticking.

Cringeworthy Moment: The Doctor truly is a terrible singer. Or maybe that was just because he was pretending to be drunk.

Main Review: What we have here is a story about things that don’t belong. There’s an 18th century French fireplace on a 51st century spaceship. There’s the Doctor temporarily trapped in the past with no TARDIS. And there’s the fact that the The Girl in the Fireplace does not belong in season two of Doctor Who.

Season two was the Doctor and Rose’s honeymoon period. The Doctor was finally forgiving himself for the Time War and was allowing himself to have fun, sometimes even a little too much fun (like in Tooth and Claw). And this episode doesn’t really fit in with that. But it so easily could have done. The overall plot is fantastic and would have made an intriguing episode if it weren’t for three things.

The first being the unbelievable love story between the Doctor and Reinette. I can understand a slight infatuation on Reinette’s part. This handsome man sweeps into her life and saves her when she needs it most but those instances were so few and far between that it should have been nothing more than a schoolgirl’s crush, not this huge love story that the episode tried to turn it into. As for the Doctor, he has obviously admired Madame de Pompadour for a long time and knows a lot about her... but he still hardly knew her. From his point of view he only knew her for a few hours. Although, his side of this “romance” is thankfully underplayed (other than being jealous of King Louis) and the question of his true feelings for Reinette is left unanswered.

The second thing that failed this episode is the Doctor’s characterisation. Much like Rose in School Reunion, the Doctor’s characterisation in this episode isn’t exactly off, just a little over-the-top. He pretty much ignores Mickey the whole time (which may not be too out of character for him but the two men have come further than that by this point in the show); he is unnecessarily snarky to Rose when he is rescuing her from the droids; and he saves history only to endanger it again by offering Reinette a trip in the TARDIS.

But the what’s off most about the Doctor’s characterisation is how he left Rose and Mickey alone on a spaceship that he didn’t even know the name of, knowing he couldn’t get back to them. There really needed to be a scene or line of dialogue that showed us that he had a way of getting them back to their own time (like telling them to use Emergency Program One) or a clearer look at the Doctor’s struggle to make the decision to leave. Because he had to go save Reinette, that was for sure - history was at stake - it’s just that the way that the Doctor did it was what was wrong. Its understandable to not want to fly TARDIS through time to get there (what if he got the dates wrong?) but he could have flown the TARDIS through the window. A blue box flying through the mirror would have been no different to the people of France - and by extension, history - than seeing a man on a horse jump through it. They were already being attacked by clockwork robots anyway so it’s not like they were unfamiliar with strange things happening. And while we’re on it, when you need something with the force of a truck to smash through something, who the hell thinks that a horse would be an acceptable substitute? I know horses are pretty darn strong but it was quite a cramp spaceship and there wasn’t exactly a lot of room for a run up. Not to mention how it may have hurt the poor horse.

But the worst thing about this situation is that it is totally forgotten about afterwards. Rose is already a bit insecure of being left behind after finding out about Sarah Jane and then less than 24 hours later, the Doctor does just that, he leaves her behind... and there are no ramifications what so ever. Steven Moffat may have written the episode but the lack of fallout from it, that is on Russell T Davies.

Rose’s characterisation however is spot on. Rather than being catty like she was in School Reunion, Rose handles her jealousy towards Reinette much more like you would expect her to. She keeps it to herself. The only time she shows it to someone else is when Mickey is baiting her. And when everything is all done, instead of confronting the Doctor about it, she sees that he is grieving and asks if he is okay.

And the last thing that doesn’t fit in with the rest of the season is the fixation on the Doctor’s loneliness. Yes, he is still the last of his kind and that loneliness is never going to go away (at least not until The Day of the Doctor) but he has come a long way in the past year or so. He not only has Rose now, he has Mickey and Jackie as well and in a weird way they have all become a sort of family. The talk of “Lonely Gods” is something that would be more suited to series one or three or the 2009 specials. Or even after the Doctor loses the Ponds in series seven. Or maybe they were just trying to refer to the point made in the last episode that a long life is a curse and how the Doctor knows that he will eventually lose all those he cares about.

Overall Rating: 4/10. An interesting story that had its potential squandered on an unbelievable romance, a slightly uncharacteristic Doctor, and the exclusion of a few vital scenes. But hey, at least it gave us some good fan fiction.

#Doctor Who #The Girl in the Fireplace #Tenth Doctor #Rose Tyler #Mickey Smith

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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How Doctor Who Was Quietly Revolutionised By Its Least Popular Season

https://ift.tt/3q4tiPv

In 2014, when Doctor Who Magazine asked its readers to rank the show’s first 50 years, out of 241 options, Season 24 stories ‘Time and the Rani’ came 239th, ‘Paradise Towers’ 230th, ‘Delta and the Bannermen’ 217th, with ‘Dragonfire’ thought best of in 215th place. This was largely a repeat of its 2009 poll, although then readers rated ‘Delta and the Bannermen’ above ‘Dragonfire’. Season 24 was also ranked bottom in a GQ article ranking every series of Doctor Who – a combination of words I never thought I’d write.

Season 24 of Doctor Who went into production just as its 23rd season, the 14-episode ‘The Trial of a Time-Lord’ was finishing up on TV. By late 1986, producer John Nathan-Turner was expecting to be moved onto another show and had lost both his script-editor and the show’s most prolific writer (the former quitting after long-simmering tensions erupted behind the scenes, and the latter passing away during the making of the series).

A surprised Nathan-Turner was given 13 months to hire a new script editor and produce 14 episodes under a BBC edict that Doctor Who had to become lighter and funnier (not dissimilar to the instructions producer Graham Williams found himself under in the Seventies). He also ended up having to cast a new Doctor, after Colin Baker was sacked and didn’t want to return for one story just to regenerate. Sylvester McCoy was formally cast at the end of February and started filming ‘Time and the Rani’ in April.

‘Time in the Rani’ was written by husband-and-wife duo Pip and Jane Baker (UK readers may remember their early-Nineties CBBC show Watt on Earth), who were given the job because there were no scripts either ready to go or in development. Nathan-Turner knew they could write quickly after they’d completed the final episode of ‘Trial of a Time Lord’ at extremely short notice earlier in the year.

The Bakers’ writing style was to produce frothy and campy nonsense and then act as if they’d just written The Seventh Seal. ‘Time and the Rani’ contains continuity references such as costume shout outs to past Doctors, a returning villain and references to the Lord President of Gallifrey. It’s set on an alien planet and makes no attempt to engage with contemporary life either directly or allegorically, and is happy to be adventure for adventure’s sake. It’s not a last hurrah for that style of story, but is a strong argument for why it had to be stop being the House Style after five years (though, to be fair to it, it has some nice ideas in it and the scene with the Doctor chatting away to the universe’s geniuses is great).

New Script Editor Andrew Cartmel wasn’t a fan of ‘Time and the Rani’ but arrived too late in the day to have much impact on it. He was able to influence writer Stephen Wyatt away from a story steeped in continuity and towards what became ‘Paradise Towers’. This was based on a combination of the novel High Rise by J.G. Ballard, Wyatt’s real-life experience in London’s East End, and Cartmel’s fondness for Alan Moore comics. Not only is it the first story for years to not refer to other Doctor Who stories and doesn’t feature the TARDIS interior but it is, in stark contrast to ‘Time and the Rani’, clearly about something real.

What ‘Paradise Towers’ did, which few Doctor Who stories had done before, was sympathetically reflect a working class setting by depicting people trapped in a block of flats by the whims of an aloof architect. In doing so, it didn’t go for realism. The show has rarely been in a position to, and here the budget and imposed tone meant it couldn’t. What it does have is a coherent approach: everything is big, be it the cleaning robots, the performances or the costuming.

So we have a Doctor Who story that isn’t aiming at its usual audience (Considering it had lost viewers this is clearly sensible) and is trying to overcome its restrictions by putting on a pantomime about social structures featuring cannibals and killer robots. Criticising it for lacking a realism it could never achieve is harsh.

Doctor Who: revisiting Sylvester McCoy’s first season 30 years on

By Jamie Andrew

Doctor Who: the Historical Places the Show Has Never Visited (But Should)

By Chris Farnell

Season 24 follows ‘Paradise Towers’ with a story set in a holiday camp and then in a shopping centre. Being Doctor Who, the shopping centre is in space and run by an intergalactic criminal, and the holiday camp becomes the battleground for an attempted genocide (“Now, let me try and get this right. Are you telling me that you are not the Happy Hearts Holiday Club from Bolton, but instead are spacemen in fear of an attack from some other spacemen?”) set to the backdrop of the space race and the coming of rock and roll. Again, it seems to be courting an audience other than organised fandom for the first time in five years, using recognisable aspects of contemporary life and mashing them up with fresh takes on Doctor Who staples.

While the tone is cartoonish, the satire of a building, designed by a celebrated architect, that actively harms its residents is clearly pointed. In fact, because the tone is cartoonish, it gets away with more. Over the past few series Doctor Who had been very ‘LOOK how NASTY this is. LOOK. It’s HORRIBLE’, whereas Season 24 knowingly presented things that were both silly and horrible simultaneously, revelling in the dissonance. This is one of the many ways in which the Seventh Doctor era prefigures Russell T. Davies’ approach. The survivors of ‘Paradise Towers’ coming together to fight their attackers feels very RTD.

In fact, given that ‘Survival’ is often heralded as a mirror image of ‘Rose’, it’s worth noting how Season 24 combines the recognisable with the fantastical in the same way we’d see Autons in shopping centres or plumbers and burger vans in space during Series 1. The Doctor was part of this too. McCoy was instructed to play the role like Patrick Troughton, but specifically Troughton’s lighter moments. Ultimately McCoy would gravitate towards how Troughton fully played the Doctor in the Sixties, but here he’s mostly being silly and avuncular. Indeed McCoy was clowning more than the role demanded.

What this allows, though, is for the Doctor to engage more with the people in these stories. In an extremely Troughton-esque move, the Doctor happily mixes and enthuses with the tourists in ‘Delta and the Bannermen’. In one scene he’s following an alien princess but stops to check on the sound of someone crying. He leaves a Doctor Who story to step into the real world, sitting in people’s bedrooms holding a guitar and making wistful observations about love. And he belongs. This Doctor fits in this world, and this version of the Seventh Doctor lingers even amidst the Winging-It-Chess-Playing manipulations of later series. It expands what the character is capable of in a positive way.

I’m not going to claim here that Season 24 as a whole should be thought of amongst the very best of Doctor Who, but it’s important to address how much it achieved in difficult circumstances. Despite the rushed production it managed to take Doctor Who from the lows of cancellation and its flawed return and point it in the direction of Seasons 25 and 26. Beyond this we have the New Adventures and the show’s return in 2005, all going further with ideas brought into the show in the late Eighties. I am going to claim that ‘Paradise Towers’ is great and ‘Delta and the Bannermen’ is charming in a delirious way. ‘Dragonfire’ is the only real dud of the new approach, being somewhat plodding and incoherent. What Season 24’s unpopularity demonstrates is that fans are far more willing to overlook a poverty of ideas over a poverty of appearance.

Once I’ve put my flameproof hat on, I’m going to say ‘Terror of the Zygons’ is a great example of a very well-made story that is ultimately just a fun yarn with some particularly egregious examples of ‘Activate the Unnecessarily Slow Dipping Mechanism’ type monsters. It’s not about anything. It’s just a blast. ‘Paradise Towers’ is furious and inventive, witty and (in Doctor Who terms) novel. It just looks like someone asked CBBC to adapt a 2000AD strip, and this is too much for some fans.

The show’s reach exceeded its grasp, however. Doctor Who had been temporarily cancelled and then returned diminished. It had become harder to disguise the lack of budget. This was a period of recovery and transition, and so the ambitions of the scripts (the caretakers being older men and Pex being a Stallone-esque slab of a man) were beyond Doctor Who in the late Eighties. If ‘Paradise Towers’ had been made in 2007, Richard Briers would certainly have taken it more seriously. Equally, given his influences, Cartmel’s Doctor Who would make a great series of comics.

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You don’t have to enjoy it, but you should acknowledge that without Season 24 Doctor Who would be a much duller place.

The Doctor Who Season 24 Blu-ray box set is released on June 21st.

The post How Doctor Who Was Quietly Revolutionised By Its Least Popular Season appeared first on Den of Geek.

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newssplashy · 6 years

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Opinion: Touring the deep south, where the confederacy is set in stone

VICKSBURG, Miss. — Slavery, Gordon Cotton explains, “did some good for some people.”

A white retired journalist, Cotton is propped on a stool in his cluttered kitchen, holding court before another black reporter and myself.

We showed up unannounced at his home just off a dirt road in a heavily wooded area on the outskirts of this city in the Deep South.

His great-great-grandmother owned about 30 slaves, and “she provided nice little homes for them,” he says. “She provided clothing and food and medical care. She had one who made baskets, and she always bought his baskets.”

However society feels about slavery now, Cotton says, he won’t let it diminish his admiration for ancestors like his great-great-grandmother or spiritual forebears like Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president whom Cotton, 82, calls his hero.

“Looking back 150, 200 years ago, it was a way of life,” he says. “It may not have been right, but it was the way of life at the time.”

That personal connection to, and quick empathy for, the Old South has shaped Cotton’s view that Confederate monuments belong in the public square; that the Davises and Robert E. Lees of the world deserve to be honored, not shamed.

That belief, of course, is the source of a fierce debate, one that reached a violent climax in August 2017 when white supremacists, rallying against a proposal to remove a statue of Lee from a public park in Charlottesville, Virginia, clashed with counterdemonstrators. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed when a white supremacist plowed his car into a crowd.

The ugly episode aggravated the country’s frayed racial dynamic — even more so after President Donald Trump equated the counterprotesters with the white supremacists by blaming “many sides” for the violence.

A year later, public debate over Confederate iconography has quieted down. But have feelings really evolved? Are we any closer as a country to coming to terms with how to confront our shameful history, or are we quietly hurtling toward another eruption of violence?

— The Immovable Monuments

I recently traveled through the South with Trymaine Lee, a MSNBC correspondent. Our trip took us through Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama.

We found that the legacy of the Confederacy has become so embedded in daily life that it will take more than the removal of a statue here or a plaque there to address it. To forget the atrocities that occurred on the serene plantations where you take prom pictures or walks with your family amid stone sculptures and bright flowers.

What’s left is a complicated calculus when it comes to finding common ground on the monument debate.

In some cases, the structures are simply too massive to remove — take the 351-foot obelisk honoring Davis in his birthplace of Fairview, Kentucky. In others, as in Alabama, a law has been established to prohibit the removal of Confederate monuments.

But in many instances, Confederate memorials are not physical. They are better understood as emotional, spiritual and familial connections.

Cotton is a historian whose ancestors owned slaves and fought for the Confederacy. His house is decorated like a shrine to the rebellion. He has Confederate flags and Treasury notes alongside portraits of Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader. He also has racist iconography amid the clutter: a book of sheet music titled “Pickaninny Rag” with a caricature of a black boy on the cover; a CD of a white comedian who performs in blackface.

As we sit down for the interview, we ask him to spell his name. “C-O-T-T-O-N,” he says, then adds, matter-of-factly, “Cotton, just like you pick.”

Cotton lives near Brierfield, Davis’ former estate. He also went to a school named for the Confederacy’s only president. Like many pro-Confederates in the South, Cotton plays down the role of slavery in the Civil War. He believes it had more to do with the North trying to control, and eventually invade, the South than anything else.

“He’s one of my heroes, and nobody will ever take that away from me,” he says of Davis. “You can take his statues down if you want to. They can destroy what they can, but they’ll never destroy the legend of the man.”

For Cotton and other Davis supporters, much of that legend was built on what Davis did before he became president of the Confederacy. They see him as a heroic West Point graduate who served in the Mexican-American War, and as a U.S. senator representing Mississippi.

What they don’t highlight are his beliefs about slavery. Davis thought that the institution should be expanded and that black people were an inferior race. These white supremacist beliefs continued to shape U.S. society long after the Civil War was over and efforts to integrate freed slaves gave way to an era of racially motivated killings.

That violence touched a generation of Southerners for whom the legacy of the Confederacy is also poignant, only for reasons very different from pro-Confederates like Cotton.

— ‘It’s a Reminder of Hatred’

As Susie Jones browses an exhibit at the Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery, Alabama, she stops in her tracks when she comes across a name etched onto a gray wall: Milton Russell.

“This is my daddy’s cousin,” she says.

Russell was one of several dozen people who died from racially motivated violence to be honored in the exhibit, put together by the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was killed Jan. 21, 1956, in an arson attack at his home in Belzoni, Mississippi.

The exhibit featured another person from Belzoni who was killed: the Rev. George Lee, murdered May 7, 1955, for registering black voters.

“Rev. Lee used to be my neighbor,” Jones, who is black, adds.

He lived across the street and owned a store and “kind of took care of all of the black people in the area.”

Jones, 66, now lives in Jacksonville. She is in Montgomery on a trip through the South with her granddaughters, ages 12 and 9. Her goal is to teach them about their African-American heritage, plenty of which can be found in Montgomery: From the bus stop where Rosa Parks boarded for her fateful ride, to the church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a preacher.

But it also is a place steeped in Confederate lore.

The state Capitol features a gold star on its steps marking where Davis took his oath of office and a tall column celebrating Confederate soldiers. There is a statue of Davis nearby, next to one of James Marion Sims, the “father of modern gynecology” who experimented on enslaved women without using anesthesia.

“It’s a reminder of hatred and all the wrongdoings that’s been done against African-Americans,” Jones says of Confederate symbols. “I do believe they have a right to their history, but not at the sake of ours. If you’re going to write part of the story, write the whole story. Tell what you did.”

For many black people, Confederate symbols often read like Do Not Enter signs. We felt this in the pits of our stomachs as we rolled up to Cotton’s home and were greeted by two cars with Confederate flags on the bumpers. The angst quickly subsided when Cotton, referred to us by a local resident, appeared from behind a green door and welcomed us into his home.

Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, if you live in the South, Confederate symbols come with the territory. You can barely walk without stubbing your toe on one.

My first two hotels were on thoroughfares named for Davis. Trymaine and I stayed at Anchuca, a bed-and-breakfast in Vicksburg, where Davis’ older brother Joseph once lived. Jefferson Davis State Park, at the obelisk site in Fairview, is one of the nicest places to have a cookout in the area, and indeed black people visit regularly.

Kitty Calhoun, who is white and a partner at a restaurant in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, said that she appreciates monuments like the obelisk for their artistic beauty, not their negative symbolism.

“I don’t try to think about the representation,” says Calhoun, 68. Rather, she adds, it is “the history that’s behind it, as far as it being there, how long it’s been there, is more what I’m into.”

But ignoring the misdeeds of Confederate leaders — seeing Davis the statesman without seeing Davis the slave owner — is not a luxury available to black people.

At the same time, the pride that descendants of the Confederacy have in their ancestors is very real and isn’t going to go away any time soon.

— An Unlikely Messenger

“We have to understand him from a very broad perspective,” Bertram Hayes-Davis says of his great-great-grandfather, Jefferson Davis.

Hayes-Davis, 69, is a living, breathing monument to his great-great-grandfather. When I met him at his home in Vicksburg, he was loose and inviting.

He sometimes nestles into a chair once owned by Davis while channeling his great-great-grandfather’s thoughts on uniting the country after the war. He keeps a well-worn book of the Confederate constitution signed by Davis in a glass-encased bookshelf and a letter written by Davis over the fireplace mantel.

Hayes-Davis, who grew up in Colorado, knows full well the admiration that his name draws among certain communities in the South. But in a strange way, he may also be the conduit that we need to bridge the divide on Confederate monuments.

Hayes-Davis’ life’s mission is to prevent people — whether pro- or anti-Confederate — from reducing his great-great-grandfather’s legacy to his time as president of the Confederacy. He believes that racists have hijacked Confederate symbols in an effort to deepen the country’s racial divide.

While he says that people who support the removal of monuments are often misguided, Hayes-Davis also agrees that, if a statue offends someone, it should be moved to a private area where it could be used for teaching.

He is unafraid to point out Davis’ flaws — “Was he a white supremacist? Yes, he was,” Hayes-Davis says, always adding that he was so much more.

Hayes-Davis’ moderated stance has put him at odds with staunch Confederate groups. Some of them, he says, cling to the past so tightly that they are willing to deny certain realities about the Confederacy and the war.

“They’re holding onto that one small piece of history,” he says. “Their ancestor’s legacy as a soldier in the Confederate States of America.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

source http://www.newssplashy.com/2018/08/opinion-touring-deep-south-where_12.html

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freeforpublicuse · 7 years

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13 reasons we’re excited to meet Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor Today (Monday 26th March 2018) marks the 13 anniversary of modern Doctor Who, which began with Russell T Davies’ Rose in 2005 and is soon to have another exciting reinvention under new showrunner Chris Chibnall and first female Doctor Jodie Whittaker. So with that past in mind, and given that Whittaker is playing the thirteenth incarnation of the character (not including the War Doctor) we thought it was the perfect time to look ahead at the future of Doctor Who in its new and exciting form. 1. The new Doctor sounds pretty exciting Jodie Whittaker in Doctor Who (BBC, HF) While we still haven’t seen much of Jodie Whittaker’s new Time Lord, a few descriptions of her character have been released, with the BBC describing her as “a super-smart force of nature” and co-star Sharon D Clarke suggesting this is a fun and ass-kicking version of the Time Lord. “Jodie is phenomenal. She’s just joy, absolutely joy. She’s gonna slay it,” Clarke said. “And what’s lovely about Jodie […] because she always plays these kind of dour characters who are downtrodden, [is to play] someone who’s up and hopeful and fighting crime – she’s just bouncing around the set. “She’s definitely earning those two hearts that the Doctor has,” Clarke concluded. “She’s wonderful, I absolutely adore her.” In other words, this sounds like Whittaker’s Doctor is an upbeat woman of action, and just the sort of dynamic presence the series needs. 2. It’s a back-to-basics take on the series Chris Chibnall Ever since new showrunner Chris Chibnall took over, it’s been emphasised that he will be bringing Doctor Who back to its roots, with sources within the series previously telling RadioTimes.com that the Broadchurch creator is looking to expand the sci-fi drama’s appeal. “There is a feeling that the drama has been complicated by self-referential plotting at times and Chris wants his Doctor Who to be a show notable for its emotional intelligence,” a source said last month. This account was backed up in an interview for Royal Television Society magazine Television, where Chibnall said he was looking for “risk and boldness” and his longtime collaborator James Strong agreed there had been a need for a change. “It used to be – and I stress this is my personal opinion – at the heart of the schedule, an unmissable family show and, for some reason, it’s slipped a bit from the national consciousness,” said Strong. “For me, when it goes towards storylines that are a little bit more for the fans, I think you can lose that general appeal. I think Chris is going to offer a slightly different take on what the show should be… I think Chris, essentially, writes emotional thrillers, and that’s perfect for that show.” In other words, this could be a version of Who to bring the series back to the mainstream. 3. Intriguing new writers Apart from Chibnall himself, we don’t know who’s writing for the new series, with various regular contributors like Sarah Dollard, Mark Gatiss and Jamie Mathieson ruling themselves out of contention. However, thanks to various sources (including former series star David Tennant) we know that pretty much all the guest writers will be entirely new to the series, meaning we could be getting some interesting new takes on the half century-old series. 4. In fact, pretty much everything is new When taking over Chibnall cleaned the slate even more than predecessor Steven Moffat did from the Russell T Davies years, with almost every part of production down to the writers, VFX artists and even composer Murray Gold replaced with new faces. While it isn’t true that new is always better, it’s good to see that Chibnall is committed to refreshing the show behind-the-scenes as well as on screen. 5. A whole team of companions Doctor Who stars Mandip Gill, Bradley Walsh, Jodie Whittaker and Tosin Cole (BBC, BD) One of the earliest details revealed about series 11 was that Jodie Whittaker would have a whole group of companions, with Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill and Tosin Cole playing Graham, Yasmin and Ryan respectively. This is sure to create a rather different dynamic in the Tardis – in the modern series, the Doctor has tended to have no more than two regular companions – perhaps evidenced by the BBC’s insistence that the trio be referred to as the Doctor’s “Tardis team” rather than her companions. We’re intrigued to see how it plays out on screen. 6. A “family” feel Speaking of the Tardis team, RadioTimes.com sources have previously suggested that there’s a “family” feel to the new series, with new crew supposed to evoke the vibe of First Doctor William Hartnell and his companions Susan, Ian and Barbara. “The first Doctor played by William Hartnell was a grandfather to Susan and he had the companions Ian and Barbara in these early adventures,” said a source. “Chris’s show will be very much its own thing but that is kind of the vibe.” And rumours suggest the series will also have a “family” feel in appealing to all viewing generations, rather than just the die-hard fans who’d watch Doctor Who anyway. 7. Exciting guest stars Alan Cummings (Getty, EH) While the BBC have remained tight-lipped about details of the new series, a few guest actors have accidentally confirmed their involvement including actor Alan Cumming (who revealed he was set to play King James I in an upcoming episode) and comedian Lee Mack, who says he “harassed” Chris Chibnall into giving him a small role. There are also rumours that Sex and the City/The Good Wife star Chris Noth could be popping in for a guest spot, but even if he’s not, the calibre of actors joining the series leave us intrigued to see who else is involved. 8. A different side to the UK This might sound a little strange, but it’s kind of great to see the series focusing on areas of the UK outside of London, with large swathes of the series set to take place in Chibnall’s university town of Sheffield according to set reports. This is sure to make the series feel more representative of its home country as a whole, while also expanding the scope of the storytelling to tell different tales of weird and wonderful alien attacks. 9. Tricky (and educational) historical periods BBC, Getty, TL While Doctor Who has always visited weird and wonderful historical locales, one rumoured destination this year has a bit more bite to it than usual – segregation-era Alabama, supposedly featuring the story of Civil Rights icon Rosa Parks. While the details of this episode are scarce and the BBC aren’t confirming or denying its inclusion, the story looks set to address race and racism more than Doctor Who has done before, while reports elsewhere suggest that the series is looking to have a more educational aspect. This could be a good or a bad thing, as we’ve discussed elsewhere, but at the very least Chibnall seems to be trying to take the show in a direction that feels fresh while honouring the original concept created by Sydney Newman and Verity Lambert in the 1960s. 10. A spooky Halloween episode? More unsubstantiated reports suggest that Doctor Who’s late airing this year has allowed the BBC to include a Halloween-themed episode, possibly involving witchcraft and Alan Cumming’s King James I and airing around the end of October. If the rumours do turn out to be accurate it would be a nice addition to Doctor Who’s scarier episodes. 11. A brand new Tardis Doctor Who_Series 11_Costume Reveal We can talk as much as we like about social issues, new writers and the changing world’s influences on the new series, but we know that most fans are more excited about seeing things like the new Doctor’s costumes, sonic screwdriver and other paraphernalia that have constantly updated throughout the years. Chief among these exciting new designs will be the Thirteenth Doctor’s Tardis interior, which seems set to be redecorated following the destruction of the Twelfth Doctor’s console room at the end of Christmas special Twice Upon a Time. Frankly, we can’t wait to see what new look we have in store for the Doctor’s Tardis, and based on the striking cosmetic changes to the exterior that we’ve seen already (well, as striking as another blue box can be) we’re expecting great things. 12. The return of old foes Doctor Who Daleks If it’s a Doctor Who series, you can pretty much always expect iconic villains the Daleks to turn up at some point, and according to rumours the new series will be no exception. Sure, it’d be great to see Whittaker’s Doctor take on some brand-new monsters as well, but it’s become a traditional baptism of fire for new incarnations to come face-to-stalk with the tinpot terrors so we’re glad they’re apparently back in the new series. And who knows? Maybe there’s another new design in the offing… 13. And finally – Doctor Who could be appointment TV once again (BBC, TL) We kind of touched on this point earlier on, but it bears repeating – how good would it be if Doctor Who became PROPERLY popular again? Obviously, “popular” is pretty subjective here – it’s a hugely successful show beloved by millions – but as James Strong noted above, in the 13 years that Doctor Who has been back on TV it has recently not quite matched the days of Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant’s Time Lords. That is, until now – because since the announcement of Jodie Whittaker’s casting, the world has become interested in Doctor Who again. People who had drifted away may now be tempted back by the buzz around the series, while others who may have never considered watching might decide the new take on the series is finally one they can get involved with. We won’t reach the viewing heights of the mid-noughties, of course – the way people consume TV has changed a lot in the past 13 years – but for at least a while, Doctor Who might become the TV event of the year once again. And no matter what you think about any changes to the series, you have to agree that increased interest in a 13-year-old reboot of a 55-year-old TV series can only be a good thing. For Doctor Who to survive, it has to change – and so far, we’re liking what we’re seeing.

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365footballorg-blog · 7 years

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Armchair Analyst: Complete guide to the 6-game Week 4 slate

March 23, 20189:21AM EDT

Into the weekend we dive. It’s just Saturday this time …

New England vs. NYCFC

1:30pm ET | Full preview | TV & streaming info

We know what NYCFC’s about at this point, right? They’ve hammered teams with their high pressure through the first three weeks, are the only perfect (3-0-0) team in MLS, and have done it in spite of more than a few injuries. This week that includes d-mid Alex Ring, who’s on international duty and wouldn’t be available anyway, but seems to have picked up some sort of knock of indeterminate severity (anybody read Finnish?).

But … well, this is the whole point of what the Cityzens did this offseason. They’re now in their fourth MLS season and have, over that time, built one of the league’s deepest teams. David Villa’s their best player and they were fine without him last week. Ring’s their most important, and while his absence hurts, it’s not like they’re unprepared for this eventuality. The braintrust in the Bronx deserves some dap.

New England’s more of a mystery, especially after their weird first two weeks – two red cards in a listless Week 1 loss, a makeshift central defense in a necessary Week 2 home win over the Rapids. What’s their real identity? Hard to say.

However, it seems clear that Brad Friedel is leaning toward Teal Bunbury as the starting center forward for the express purpose of getting behind opposing defenses. Bunbury had significant success against the league’s high-pressing teams last season, getting on the board against NYCFC, RBNY and SKC. The problem, though, might be getting him the ball. Nobody in central midfield is connecting particularly telling passes:

That’s the chalkboard for Scott Caldwell and Wilfried Zahibo against Colorado. Green arrows are completed passes, red incomplete and yellow are key passes (passes that lead to a shot). There’s a lot of moving the ball side-to-side, but not much moving it forward.

Maybe that’s something they figure out in Week 4.

FC Dallas vs. Portland

3:30pm ET | Full preview | UniMás – TV & streaming info

We saw big chunks of what looked like 2015/16-era FC Dallas last weekend vs. the Sounders. Remember the team that won the Supporters’ Shield/US Open Cup double? The one that became the first team in MLS history to post back-to-back 60-point seasons? The one who had the league’s most entertaining player ripping teams apart in central midfield with his magical passing ability?

Armchair Analyst: What is your decision-making process when you’re on the break? Let FC Dallas provide you some clarity pic.twitter.com/k3EybLN2CV

— Matthew Doyle (@MattDoyle76) March 18, 2018

I love Mauro Diaz and don’t care who knows it. And I’m sure I’m only fractionally as happy to see him back and spraying passes like that one as Dallas fans are.

Still, I question the team around him – behind him, really. The defense posted a shutout last week but were gappy, and while using Carlos Gruezo a little bit higher has its merits (he was good against the Sounders), he’s still better as a No. 6. And more to the point: when he’s not playing as a No. 6, the backline is likelier to be exposed.

Obviously, the question is “Can the Portland Timbers pull themselves together enough to actually expose it?” They were kind of bad in Week 1 at LA and then famously bad in Week 2 against the Red Bulls’ back-ups. Gio Savarese seems to want his team to press high and win the ball back in dangerous spots, but so far, so bad. He might be wise to have his team sit deeper and more compact, mimicking what Caleb Porter did over the last four seasons, instead of asking them to be on the front foot.

Two big reasons for this. First, no (or limited) Diego Chara means no safety net. Second, neither Diego Valeri nor Fanendo Adi are particularly adept pressing players. Add in a so-slow-they’re-running-in-mud central defense, and those are compelling reasons to play a little bit more on the back foot.

Crew SC vs. D.C. United

6pm ET | Full preview | TV & streaming info

Federico Higuain had the kicker in our own Andrew King’s look at the Crew SC system from earlier this week:

“We’ve been playing this way for [four years] now,” Higuain said with a laugh. “I’m surprised the media is talking about it now.”

Columbus launch their fullbacks higher than any other team in MLS, and Higuain’s movement makes him the hardest-to-track No. 10 in MLS. When he drags defenses around, that opens up gaps in the channels for inverted, attacking wingers, which forces the opposing backline into a series of rapidfire decisions about who to step to and how hard. The overall effect is to constantly put the Columbus center forward into spots where he has only one CB to beat off the ball, and that leads to tap-ins.

Unless, of course, you cut the supply chain at its genesis:

#CrewSC had about 100 more passes against Philly than the other two matches this season. An issue was that these extra passes were between the 4 defenders as well as them not going through @wil_trapp. Gif of each game’s passing networks (h/t @AnalysisEvolved for raw data): pic.twitter.com/uDylnIA5fN

— Eliot (@etmckinley) March 21, 2018

With no Wil Trapp this weekend, it’ll be beyond interesting to see how Columbus adjust.

D.C. United have to be prepared to take advantage of that. I’ve been kind of lukewarm on their 4-1-4-1 so far – the formation doesn’t make a ton of sense if your center forward can’t hold the ball up – but this is a week in which it might actually be the best choice. Get two attacking midfielders forcing turnovers in that spot (or at the very least denying real distribution), and they may be able to force Columbus to scramble, or at the very least disrupt their rhythm.

There’s also a decent chance D.C.’s own distribution could force a dislocation between the Crew SC midfield and backline:

Chris Durkin’s been legit in limited minutes. He’s probably going to start, and this is going to be a huge weekend for him.

RBNY vs. Minnesota United FC

7pm ET | Full preview | TV & streaming info

The New York Red Bulls got Rimando’d in last weekend’s 1-0 loss at RSL, plain and simple. They were the better team for the vast majority of that game, but succumbed to the greatest goalkeeper in league history putting on a vintage performance.

Which is to say, there’s not much for them to worry about at this point. Even when digging deep down into the roster, they’ve been able to come out and play the same way: Frenetic, front-foot, high pressure soccer. They’ll be missing a cadre of internationals this weekend, but go ahead and bet everything you own that the Red Bulls will still look very much like the Red Bulls (the only question is whether they’ll do so out of a 4-2-3-1 or a 3-3-3-1).

There are bigger questions about Minnesota United FC, who are off to a surprising 2-1-0 start. The Loons’ central defense is gone, as is 2/3 of what was supposed to make up their starting central midfield. Add in an injury to right back Tyrone Mears … my on-the-face-of-it take is that they have nowhere near the depth to survive this weekend, so go right ahead and load up your MLS Fantasy team with Red Bulls.

Colorado Rapids vs. Sporting KC

9pm ET | Full preview | TV & streaming info

One thing we know about the Colorado Rapids at this point is that they’re playing out of a 5-3-2/3-5-2 for pretty much the full 90. They’ve generally lacked a bit of creativity through central midfield – which we can chalk up, at least in part, to the absence of Stefan Aigner. Their most reliable plan, through 270 competitive minutes, is to find Dominique Badji on the counter. And man do they love to hit long balls.

Here’s d-mid Jack Price’s distribution chart against the Revs in Colorado’s only regular season match to date:

Price has the green light to just launch it.

They play direct and over-the-top, and while it’s not exactly pretty, it’s been at least a little bit effective – remember the chances they spurned against TFC in the Concacaf Champions League? Or Niki Jackson’s goal vs. New England? Say what you want about the tenets of Route One, dude – at least it’s an ethos. There’s mileage to be gained by knowing who you are.

The same, of course, applies to Sporting KC. Their defense has been bad this year, which is and remains shocking, but they’re still a high-pressing team, and if you (attempt to) play long-balls over the press, it makes it more difficult to then set up any sort of press yourself. Those launches get gobbled up by any decent backline, and then it’s once more unto the breach.

So far in 2018, “unto the breach” has proved fruitful for SKC by way of their wingers. Johnny Russell has been particularly good at making direct, north-south runs, which has occupied opposing backlines enough to create gaps for Felipe Gutierrez, who’s got three goals in three games.

Vancouver Whitecaps FC vs. LA Galaxy

10pm ET | Full preview | TSN – Full TV & streaming info

Hello, Zlatan. I wrote a bunch about how the LA Galaxy could work the legendary striker into their plans. I’m certain that won’t be germane this weekend, but in general: Boy, LA have a lot of injuries and absences; and boy, would this be a nice weekend for Sebastian Lletget to show he’s back to 100-percent fit.

Other than that, it’s hard to see how LA walk into this one. The Vancouver Whitecaps are short-handed themselves, but have enough depth to make up for injuries, suspensions and international absences. This really isn’t bad:

(4-1-4-1) Stefan Marinovic — Jakob Nerwinski, Jose Aja, Aaron Maund, Marcel de Jong — Russell Teibert — Alphonso Davies, Felipe, Efrain Juarez, Yordy Reyna — Kei Kamara</li> </ul>

The question I have is whether or not Vancouver will really try to carry play, as they did in Week 1 at home against the Impact. They’re still much more comfortable scrunched up in their own end then hitting on the counter, but diversifying that approach could be the tactical Plan B this group needs to go one step further than last year.

One more thing to ponder

Happy weekending, everyone.

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Armchair Analyst: Complete guide to the 6-game Week 4 slate was originally published on 365 Football

#6game #Analyst #Armchair #complete #Guide #slate #week

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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Actor Sandra Oh, wearing a black chef beanie and a white t-shirt, talks on an iPhone outside a restaurant kitchen. | BBC America “Killing Eve,” reality TV favorites, classic sitcoms, and more We at Eater spend a lot of time thinking about food, so when it appears on our TV screen, we take special interest. If you’re looking to stream some non-food TV that happens to be — at least tangentially — about food this weekend, here’s what we recommend. Terrace House: Tokyo, Episode 11 (available to stream on Netflix) Terrace House, the Japanese version of The Real World, has had a long history of food-related misdemeanors and crimes, but the most recent one entails broccoli, pasta water, and egg. Ruka, one of the housemates of the Tokyo house, is a complete enigma of a human being and maybe the most naive person to ever grace Terrace House (or the world?). In an attempt to cook broccoli pasta carbonara, he cracks an egg into the pasta water with the pasta, then adds broccoli. It seems he read the ingredient list, skipped the instructions, and simply winged it. Nothing matters, you know?! In Netflix’s latest batch of episodes (Netflix US runs a couple of months behind Japan), Ruka attempts broccoli pasta carbonara again. I gasped when I saw he was making pasta FROM SCRATCH and squealed when he presented something that not only looked edible, but delicious! His housemates were (understandably) pleasantly shocked and I got very emotional. It’s rare when you see such dramatic growth. I imagine this is what parents feel when they see their children walk for the first time. — Pelin Keskin, Eater associate producer Community (available to stream on Hulu and Netflix) In 2009, when Community first aired, I was actually taking classes at a community college. Yet, somehow I’ve made it this long without watching this series created by Dan Harmon and featuring some of the current era’s most memorable actors (See: Donald Glover, Alison Brie, Gillian Jacobs, and Ken Jeong). The first season hinges on narcissistic student Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) starting classes at a Greendale Community College, where he’s pursuing his bachelor’s degree in an attempt to reclaim his suspended law license. Winger joins a Spanish 101 study group (remember when people still gathered in groups?) to incessantly hit on Britta Perry (played by Jacobs). But as the show evolves, episodes become more unhinged, playing into pop culture tropes observed by TV and movie obsessed student Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi). After a while, it becomes easier to view this show as sort of a live-action version of Harmon’s later work Rick and Morty, but with a slightly less noxious fandom attached. This is particularly encapsulated in episodes like Season 2’s “Epidemiology,” in which the whole student body is transformed into zombies after eating expired military rations. Season 2 also features an excellent example of weird TV sponcon in “Basic Rocket Science,” where the study group gets trapped inside a Kentucky Fried Chicken-branded space flight simulator. — Brenna Houck, Eater.com reporter and Eater Detroit editor Killing Eve (Season 3, Episode 1, available to stream on BBC America) Killing Eve, a BBC show that for two seasons has been about feminism, fucking, and fighting, has added a fourth “f” to its roster: food. When we reunite with the show’s titular “Eve” (Sandra Oh), we watch her shopping the aisles of an Asian grocery, grabbing ramen cups and snacks from shelves that seem preposterously well-stocked to my pandemic-warped eyes. The multitudes the store holds are intoxicating. We then discover that since we last saw her — left for dead by Villanelle (Jodie Comer), an assassin with whom she is/was mutually obsessed — Eve’s fled her job at MI5 for a gig as a dumpling chef at an Asian restaurant, a perfect place, perhaps, for an Asian American woman to make herself invisible in a city like London. As audience members, we get to watch her deftly pinch pot sticker after pot sticker as she eavesdrops on her relationship-impaired colleagues (once a spy, always a spy, perhaps), a rote activity that probably has a lot more in common with tradecraft than most espionage-based thrillers would have us believe. It’s a nice job for a perfectionist like Eve, one that’ll do well enough until (one assumes) Villanelle returns to her life and again throws it into chaos. — Eve Batey, senior editor, Eater SF Difficult People (Season 1, Episode 5, available on Hulu) Much of this criminally short-lived sitcom starring comedians Billy Eichner (Billy on the Street) and Julie Klausner takes place in a restaurant where a struggling-artist version of Billy works to pay the bills. But this episode stands out for its art-imitating-life plot: Julie, who has “the palate of a seven-year-old” stops by Billy’s place of employment to eat, but finds the menu too fancy for her liking (“everything on [the] menu has some kind of chutney or jus on it,” Julie complains). So, when Billy’s boss leaves town for a few days, the duo convert the restaurant into a pop-up named the Children’s Menu, serving items that would belong on a kids’ menu someplace like Applebee’s. The pair set about marking up chicken tenders and fish sticks and peddling it to food blogs. And because Difficult People is set in New York, home to many people with poor taste but lots of money, crowds lap it up. It’s a fun skewering of a side of the food world that values creatively bankrupt novelty above all else. Looking at you, “cereal bars” and Museum of Ice Cream. — Tim Forster, editor, Eater Montreal Lodge 49 (available to purchase on Amazon Prime) I‘m not surprised Lodge 49 was cancelled after two seasons on AMC last fall; I’m delighted it aired at all. This shaggy dog show stars Wyatt Russell (the waggish spawn of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell) as Dud, an adrift surfer in recession-hit Long Beach, who finds connection through a fraternal lodge along the lines of the Freemasons. Meanwhile his sister Liz (Sonya Cassidy) works at a shitty Hooters knockoff called Shamroxx, run by a ghoulish regional corporate conglomerate, Omni Capital. These days, I’m reminded of Liz’s Season 2 story arc: She’s made manager of Omni’s replacement for Shamroxx, a stupid new steakhouse concept called Higher Steaks. When the restaurant struggles, the way Liz sticks up for her colleagues, who are some of the show’s best minor characters, is an inspiring rebuke of winner-takes-all capitalism — no surprise, as the whole show is basically a socialist document. Ironically it’s not streaming for free, but Lodge 49 is special and well worth buying to watch. — Caleb Pershan, Eater.com reporter Frasier, Season 1, Episode 3 (available to stream on Hulu) I know I’m incredibly late getting into Fraiser (most of my coworkers are obsessed with it), but it’s been about a week now and I’m already halfway through the second season. I can’t get enough of it. While Frasier’s advice to his listeners can be a little “meh,” it’s absolutely delightful to watch the main characters give each other therapy through their conversations. And watching each episode unfold feels like much needed therapy right now. I could go on and on about all the episodes I love, but “Dinner at Eight” is my absolute favorite. Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) and his brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) decide to take their father Martin (John Mahoney) out to dinner as a way to spend more quality time with him. When the restaurant loses their reservation, they decide to visit a steakhouse at Martin’s suggestion. His pitch: “You can get a steak this thick for $8.95.” The Timber Mill is nothing like the trendy, pretentious restaurants Frasier and Niles frequent and the duration of the entire meal is a culinary culture clash. For example, when the beef trolley arrives and everyone at the table has to pick their cut of steak, Frasier asks, “How much extra would I have to pay to get one from the refrigerator?” It’s absolutely heartbreaking to watch Martin get more and more aggravated as Frasier and Niles make ridiculously elaborate orders (a petite filet mignon “very lean, not so lean that it lacks flavor but not so fat that it leaves drippings on the plate”), poke fun at the restaurant, and give the servers a hard time. That’s why it’s so satisfying to watch Martin skewer Frasier and Niles for their snobbery, leaving them to eat the rest of their dinner alone under the scornful eyes of the Timber Mill’s servers as “Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs” plays in the background. — Esra Erol, senior social media manager, Eater Real Housewives of New York, Season 8, Episodes 6 & 7 In times of uncertainty, we seek comfort in consistency: The sun will rise in the east, the tides will ebb and flow, and rich women will scream at each other for our enjoyment on Bravo. Recently, I’ve been rewatching old episodes of Real Housewives of New York and am currently in the midst of its landmark eighth season (“Please don’t let it be about Tom.” “It’s about Tom”). Practically every episode is a hit, but “Tipsying Point” and “Air Your Dirty Laundry” conveniently double as a lesson in the booze business. When jack of all trades/master of none Sonja Morgan announces that she’s releasing a signature prosecco called Tipsy Girl, she faces the wrath of Bethenny Frankel, founder of the Skinny Girl brand. As even the most casual Housewives watcher will tell you, Bethenny is famously protective of her business and turns vicious at any perceived attack on it. “I thought the alcohol was a great idea. I really looked up to what you did and I thought it would be a great way for me to get ahead,” Sonja blubbers to Bethenny in her Skinny Girl brand-blazoned office. It’s because of this episode, and this fight in particular, that I know what a “cheater brand” is. By the way, I’ve tried Tipsy Girl prosecco and it’s... not the worst wine I’ve had. — Madeleine Davies, Eater.com daily editor from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3eoMvVY

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#EasyFoodNetwork #ComfortFoodRecipes #EasyRecipes #GoodFood #BestComfortFoodRecipes #TastyFoodv

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