Category: Reviews

New Who Review – “Time Heist”

“Are you in or out?”

The Doctor and Clara wake in the company of two strangers and are quickly told they are to rob a bank.  Everything is planned so well, almost as if the planner knows what’s going to happen, that The Doctor quickly realizes that this isn’t a mere bank heist, but a…

TIME HEIST
By Steve Thompson and Steven Moffat
Directed by Douglas MacKinnon

The Bank of Karabraxos is the single most secure bank in human history.  A loyal staff, redundant security systems, and a guard dog that literally smells guilt in the customers.  When The Doctor picks up the phone of the TARDIS and suddenly recovers from a blackout in a strange room with two criminals, it’s too tantalizing not to move ahead with.  Being chased by the bank’s security at all times, the quartet must breach unbreachable security, all the while not actually know what they’re supposed to steal.

A solid thriller with questions and puzzles all the way through.  Once again, the idea of breaking into the perfect bank is not new, but with the right character work and a delightful twist at the end, it works wonderfully.

GUEST STAR REPORT – Keeley Hawes (Ms. Delphox, Mme. Karabraxos ) is best known to genre fans as the voice of Lara Croft in seven games to date over nearly ten years.  She’s played Lady Agnes Holland on the new version of Upstairs Downstairs, and DI Alex Drake on Ashes to Ashes, the sequel to Life on Mars.

Jonathan Bailey (Pai) appeared with David Tennant in the murder procedural Broadchurch and had the titles role in Leonardo.

THE MONSTER FILES – The Teller is a magnificent beast, both in design and ability.  Unlike a number of creatures in the new series, it was made with practical effects, which meant it was on set with the actors and they didn’t have to imagine what it looked like.  Like the Crooked Man from Hide, the being was driven by the loss of its mate, and once they were reunited, its rage and malice abated.  There have been plenty of telepathic species in the show, though few with such a weaponized form.  The Sensorites could affect the minds of other beings, and their planetary neighbors the Ood could communicate at amazing distances from each other.

BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS –

THE FACES OF THOSE HE’S WRONGED FLOAT UP AT HIM – In that fast flip of hardened criminals, more than a few recognizable faces can be seen.  There was a Sensorite from the Hartnell adventure, a Tereliptil from the Davison years, an Ice Warrior, a group of Slitheen, and a Weevil and John Hart from Torchwood. But most interesting is a character from the Doctor Who comics – Absalom Daak, Dalek Killer. Created by Steve Moore and Steve Dillon, Daak enjoyed a long run in the Doctor Who Weekly.

BECAUSE IT ORBITS URANUS AND LOOKS FOR KLINGONS – One of the treasures in Madame Karabraxos’ vault is quite valuable to episode director Douglas MacKinnon.  It’s a rocket ship made from a toilet paper tube, made for him by her daughter for Christmas.

ONE CAN DO THE WORK OF TWO – They only made one Teller suit.  Even the last scene as they walk away was a double-exposure, the suit actor playing both the male and female.

“It’s a memory worm” – First seen in The Snowmen, the memory worm is a creature whose slimy coating has the defensive ability to erase the past hour of memory from any being who touches it.  In the aforementioned adventure, Sontaran Strax keeps touching it, as he is a boob.  Here, they’re used to erase the memories of The Doctor’s gang (he has a gang now) before beginning their little expedition.  The effects of the worms seem to have changed a bit, or at least clarified – here it’s shown that the memories are not erased as much as blocked. Not exactly a big change, and effectively no difference when attempting to get away from a predator.

“Why are we not using the TARDIS?” – It’s always fun to get to answer the questions the viewer are already thinking of.  Let’s them know you’re a step ahead.  Solar Storms affected the navigation of the TARDIS in The Rebel Flash, so there’s precedent for keeping away from the interference.  Of course, as we’ll find out later, there’s a more ulterior motive for not using it – to make things more fun.

“He’s gone already, it’s over” – Once again, while the Tennant or Smith incarnations would sweat and suffer over not being able to save someone they’ve not even met, this Doctor is a pragmatist.  Even when it looks like their own compatriots are killed, he moves forward, eyes on the prize. Of course, one could note that Clara seems to have rather quickly gotten over the loss of Psi and Saibra once that big tantalizing vault opens.

“Basically, it’s the eyebrows” – Not to mention the air of knowledge and authority The Doctor gives off.  He uses a trick yr. obt. svt. uses whenever he can – act like you’re supposed to be there.  Nine times out of ten, people take your unspoken word for it, and follow your lead.

“You can delete your memories?” – Psi’s story is somewhat of a mirror to Captain Jack Harkness’ original backstory, which has since been somewhat forgotten.  While a Time Agent, he had a large part of his memories deleted, and was trying to find who did it, and if possible recover them.

“Don’t think” – Once again, a simple act is made scary. From trying not to Blink, to Clara having to hold her breath at the beginning of the season to trying not to think of anything here, they’re all things that the viewer can’t help but trying not to do along with her as they watch. We can only hope that nobody thought of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

“It’s a neophyte circuit – I’ve only ever seen one once before” – And I’ll lay odds this is the same one. The Doctor set this entire adventure up – the request from Madame Karabraxos could have been done any number of ways, but he chose to set it up in a way that would not only be the most interesting for himself and Clara, but to help cure/repair two people who he’d clearly never met before he did his research and found them.

“I hate the Architect!” – The theme of the episode is the idea of not being able to trust, or even stand, someone who looked exactly like you.  It’s why Saibra couldn’t touch anyone (“Could you trust someone who looked like you, out of your own eyes?”), it’s why Madame Karabraxos’ relationship with her cloned employees was to tense, and why The Doctor thought The Architect was such a bossy prat.  At that point he didn’t know he’d planned all this, he only suspected, based on an analysis of the mysterious man’s personality.  It’s not the first time he’s displayed such a low opinion of himself – once he realizes who the Dream Lord was in Amy’s Choice,  he said there was only one person in the universe who could hate him that much.

BIG BAD WOLF REPORT – Not much mention of the plot in this episode, save for a brief appearance by Danny Pink, who is certainly (OK, hopefully) not the Big Bad, but is certainly setting up to be important to Clara.

“I’m giving you my telephone number” – At the beginning of the episode, The Doctor once again mentions that there’s only a handful of people who has the phone number to the TARDIS, including a mysterious lady in a shop who gave it to Clara back in The Bells of St. John.  Madame Karakraxos is now a member of that group, which also includes most of of The Doctor’s recent companions (like Martha Jones who used it to call him to stop The Sontaran Stratagem), Winston Churchill (from well before Victory of the Daleks) and, apparently, Marilyn Monroe, whose marriage to The Doctor did not count.  And apparently, he’s STILL been too busy to re-route the line to the control panel, as he asked Handles to remind him to do.

“Beat that for a date” – And right there, all the questions about “Why would The Doctor go through all that rigmarole” are answered.  He set the whole thing up as a game to give himself and Clara something to do that day.  In DC Comics, wealthy socialite Sue Dearborn Dibny would get the ultimate Birthday present for her husband, Ralph Dibny, AKA The Elongated Man.  She would set up an elaborate mystery game for him, usually with the assistance of other members of the Justice League, to give him an adventure he’d not soon forget. It’s entirely likely that’s the motivation for The Doctor here.

NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – Clara tries to give Danny more of her time, but The Doctor finds a problem that needs solving by any means necessary.  The Caretaker starts his new job this Saturday

Tweeks: Run Up to The Maze Runner

mazeThe Maze Runner, based on James Dashner’s novel, comes out in theaters tomorrow. Yay! Another YA dystopian novel made into a movie! Maddy reviews the book and is encouraged by the author’s enthusiasm of the movie (Percy Jackson has emotionally scarred her), while Anya reviews Dylan O’Brien.   Anya also warns that you better stay clear of Maddy and her tendency for spoilers!

Mike Gold: Marvel’s 75-Year Marvel

Marvel 75th Anniversary MagazineIf you can find a decent magazine rack near you, or you are lucky enough to live near a bone fide comic book store, you might want to check out Marvel’s 75th Anniversary magazine, conveniently pictured to our left.

Oh, look! Rocket Raccoon and Star Lord and Groot and Nova! And no Sub-Mariner or Human Torch! Man, 75 years go by so fast we forget our roots.

Look, these magazines are rarely more than the team programs they sell us as we walk into sports stadia, and by that measure this one is a lot more attractive than most. It’s good for what it is – an opportunity to get people excited about new talent, new media and new movies. In other words, it’s really more about Marvel’s next 75 years than it is a tribute to its past. Not a lot about Bill Everett, Carl Burgos, Steve Ditko or even Jack Kirby here.

A real Marvel history would run a hell of a lot more than four-dozen pages, and there are plenty of such histories in the bookstores to prove that. The only real “history” is the article about Marvel’s golden age written by ComicMix’s own Robert Greenberger.

Bobby, as we affectionately call him, was once DC Comics’ own Robert Greenberger. And Marvel’s own Robert Greenberger. And Starlog’s own Robert Greenberger. And Star Trek’s own Robert Greenberger. He’s also been my friend long enough to deserve a medal for perseverance. Oh, and his daughter is getting married this month, so he’s The Father-of-the-Bride Kathleen Michelle’s own Robert Greenberger. And, as pictured here, he’s also Deb Greenberger’s Robert Greenberger. Woof.B&DGreenberger

OK. Enough fawning about a talented old buddy. I’m embarrassing him. (OK, I’ve been doing that for three decades. Hey, it’s a living.)

His piece is called “The Timely Birth of Marvel.” Get it? Timely Comics begat Atlas Comics which begat Marvel Comics which is now the Pac Man inside the Disney empire. It’s worth the price of admission. I said it was about the golden age, but to be clear Bobby’s piece is not just about the Golden Age – it’s about the company’s founding right up to the founding of the contemporary Marvel Universe.

There’s a hell of a lot of information in this article. It is the Secret Origin of Marvel Comics, which is vaguely ironic in that Bobby edited DC’s Secret Origins title.

Marvel survived on enthusiasm. Bigger publishers – Fawcett and Dell/Gold Key, to be sure – went blooie in the mid-1950s, as did Quality, EC, Gleason, Gilberton (Classics Illustrated), Charlton, Harvey and a great, great many others. Only DC and Archie join Marvel in its unbroken timeline from the beginnings of the Golden Age, and it survived by respecting the readers’ intelligence while consistently catering to our sense of wonder.

You did ‘em justice, pal.

 

New Who Review – “Listen”

“The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door…”

The idea is so close to implausible, it only makes it more plausible.  What if there really is someone in the shadows?  What if that isn’t just a passing breeze across the back of your neck?  What if there is something under the bed?

The Doctor is unreasonably convinced of something, Clara is a non-stop chatterbox on dates, and Danny Pink’s real name is Rupert.  And if you want to learn more, you have to not be worried about spoilers, and just…

LISTEN
By Steven Moffat
Directed by Douglas MacKinnon

The Doctor is roaming about the TARDIS alone (we assume) slowly convincing himself of a patently ridiculous concept – the idea that there are invisible creatures who follow people around, and it’s they were are talking to when we are alone, and talking to ourselves.  He’s doing quite a good job of it.  Meanwhile, Clara has met new teacher and former soldier Danny Pink for drinks and dinner, and she’s done a proper mess of it.  So when The Doctor picks her up to investigate his theory, her slight distraction causes The Doctor’s experiment to go awry – specifically in the sense of the subject.  They travel back, not to her childhood, but Danny Pink’s, who is having a bad dream…possibly…in his room at an orphanage.  The adventure proceeds to other members of Danny’s family, the end of time, and a barn that we didn’t know we’d seen before.

For all the things people like to say about Moffat (mostly bad), when he gets it right, it’s almost unholy how good it is.  By going back to the ideas he loves to hit – making something commonplace patently terrifying – he’s made another classic.  He’s like the boorish boyfriend who eats all your spinach dip and leaves the seat up, and you wander why you’re going out with him, but then he shows up with flowers, puts exactly the right song on the stereo, and you remember.

THE MONSTER FILES – There’s quite a bit of argument if there was any monster in the episode at all, but the concepts touched on are very much a recurring theme for Steven Moffat.  The idea of there really being something under the bed was first touched on in The Girl in the Fireplace, where The Doctor first tries to protect young Reinette.  Things in the dark became the Vashta Nerada in Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead.  The Silence and Prisoner Zero are both examples of beings you only see out of the corner of your eye.  And they ALL started in a prose story of the same name Steven wrote in 2006.  “Corner of the Eye” was a story for The Doctor Who Storybook 2007, and introduced us to the Floofs, a race who, exactly as The Doctor has theorized, evolved to be perfect hiders, so much so there’s no record of their existence.

The out of focus figure we see in Young Rupert’s room seems to match the description in the story, that of a short bald humanoid.  But again, the story is left tantalizingly nebulous enough that yeah, it could have been one of the other kids.  Note that every other seeming example of “evidence” is (potentially) explained – the chalk just rolled off the book, The Doctor took the coffee, etc.

Oh, yes, the TV…I forgot about that one…

BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details

The quote that starts this article is the first (and last) line of the story “Knock”, written by Fredric Brown.  It’s based on a nugget of an idea found in the notes of novelist Thomas Bailey Aldrich,  One could draw comparisons between it any any number of classic sci-fi and horror stories involving Armageddon and such things. the first adaptation of Matheson’s I Am Legend was literally called The Last Man on Earth. 

“TARDIS telepathic interface” – This is one of the sections of the control panel that was redesigned for the new series and Doctor.  Aside from the new bits on the walls, the control panel was made much sturdier, built to last.

“…to the moment of your death” – This is a dark version of the conversation Clara had with Strax in Deep Breath – he saw all the “young men doing sport” in her subconscious, and was about to announce her age at death, were like here, she stopped him abruptly.  Two scene where Clara doesn’t want to know about her death.  That leaves one more before we can declare it enemy action.

“Isn’t it bad if I meet myself?” – It caused the church where Rose’s parents were attending a wedding to be sealed off from reality when she held herself as a baby in Father’s Day. There’s been a number of moments where The Doctor and/or one of his companions met and even spoke to each other for a few moments, but most of them were within, or in the proximity of the TARDIS, which likely prevented any timey-explodey results.

“Your door must be faulty” – This is the first appearance of the psychic paper in this series.  That, combined with the relative absence of the Sonic Screwdriver is another sign of the rules of the show changing.  People were getting quite upset with the two items being used like magic wands at every opportunity.  Save for the over the top uses last week, we’ve seen the Screwdriver used much more sparingly, and more back to its initial (for the new series anyway) job of opening doors and assembling/dissembling wiring and the like.

“Wally…he’s nowhere in this book” – In England, the character we know as Waldo is called Wally.  And the idea that there’s an unseen character in every book is a hilarious microcosm of the plot of this episode.

“Turn your back on him” – This is The Doctor’s first conversation with a child in this incarnation, something that as a rule he’s well known for.  He’s kind and helpful, but hidden behind the pep talk is just a desire to get your Rupert to be brave enough to turn around.  Once again, true motives disguised by flowery prose.  Perhaps not changed too much.

FEAR WOULD BE THE MAIN PROPULSION – The Doctor’s speech about fear is perfectly correct – the fight-or-flight mechanism has gotten humanity out of a lot of jams.

“Once upon a time…The End” – aaaand piano. This is the response The Doctor was expecting when Vastra asked him to project an image of perfect calm into her mind Deep Breath.

“Mind you…Rupert Pink” – Could you hear the glass dropping in the background? Perfect sound design.

“Last Man Standing in the universe – I always thought that’d be me” – As with the Who’d Die Last contest last week, we’re seeing a lot more of The Doctor’s competitive nature coming out.

“DO AS YOU ARE TOLD!” – That’s what The Doctor’s friends do, as pointed out by River Song.

“It’s not a plan, it’s a thing” – The Doctor has a Thing in Vincent and the Doctor, which he described as “Like a plan, but with more greatness”

“This is just a dream” – The Doctor spent a long time talking to the young Amy Pond in her sleep at the end of The Big Bang, telling her about his life and how grand it’ll be.  Clara spends her whole life saving The Doctor over and over – now we know it started quite early.

BIG BAD WOLF REPORT – The advance of the season’s narrative was much more in the further introduction of Mr. Danny Pink.  He’s clearly a very sensitive man, as in he’s sensitive about his past, and reads too much into things said to him.  Also, he seems to be all thumbs and elbows when talking to Clara, and she to him, usually a sure sign that a pair are going to become a couple.  The

“Family stuff” – But we learned in this episode…Danny’s an orphan.

“Make a promise…you’re never going to look” – These events as a kid can color your experiences in your future. Both psychiatrists and readers of Dianetics believe that.  Remembering it or not, Dan the Soldier Man got quite a kick in a particular direction this evening.

A soldier so brave he doesn’t need a gun.. He  can keep the whole world safe” – Clara, in her Victorian iteration, once told a fairy tale about a man who rides around on a cloud in the sky keeping everyone safe.  Clara is very good at making people feel protected.

NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – To break into the best bank, you need to assemble the best crew.  By any means necessary. Time Heist, coming up this Saturday.

Tweeks: Review Tomboy by Liz Prince

Liz-Prince-Tomboy-coverBeing a kid is hard.  You don’t know who you are exactly, but it’s really important that you find out where you fit in.  So, we imagine it was especially hard for Liz Prince when she was growing up because she wasn’t a girly girl who wanted to play dolls and wear dresses and yet she also wasn’t a boy.  In her new graphic memoir, Tomboy, she takes us on her journey to find a happy medium between gender norm stereotypes.   It’s funny and frustrating and in the end offers hope that eventually we will all find our niche.  It’s also a great reminder that you don’t have to be girly to be a girl.

New Who Review – “Robot of Sherwood”

Robot Hood, Robot Hood, riding through the glen,
Robot Hood, Robot Hood, and his band of men…

Clara wants to meet someone legendary, The Doctor tells her they’re all made up, so when he actually shows up, The Doctor is convinced he’s a…

ROBOT OF SHERWOOD
By Mark Gatiss
Directed by Paul Murphy

Clara admits she’s always wanted to meet Robin Hood, who The Doctor waves off as merely a legend.  But as we’ve learned, one does not simply tell Clara Oswald she can’t have something, so off they go to Sherwood.  The Doctor is shocked to discover Robin Hood show up and attempt to appropriate his conveyance.  The Doctor is naturally convinced this is all a trick or plot of some type.  He is at once right, and wrong.  There is a plot, but it’s on the part of the (also real) Sheriff of Nottingham, who has allied himself with a race of robotic spacefarers whose ship is secreted within his castle.  The district-wide canvassing for gold is to built circuitry for the alien craft, to allow it to generate enough power to take off, from which the Sheriff will (dare I say it) rule the world.

The episode is simply too charming and funny to call it anything from a delight.  The dialogue, especially the pissing contests between The Doctor and Robin are hilarious, and for of his claims that he hates banter, The Doctor is very good at it.

At its core, however, it’s far too similar to the series opener – a spaceship, lost in time, crashing to earth and needing help from the locals to take off again, albeit the stuff it needs to repair itself is a bit different.

THE MONSTER FILES – The Robot Knights are more of a minion than a monster, but they’re far from the first.  From The Robots of Death to the Heavenly Host in Voyage of the Damned, they’re powerful and useful.

GUEST STAR REPORT 

Tom Riley (Robin Hood) is known for playing another historical figure; Leonardo Da Vinci on the show Da Vinci’s Demons,.and Oh My God he was in the second St Trinian’s movie as well, a film whose venn diagram with Doctor Who is rapidly approaching a single circle.

Ben Miller (Sheriff of Nottingham) looked way too much like The Master for it to have been anything but a massive in-joke by the crew.  He was going to be a physicist before he met Alexander Armstrong, with whom he went off to start a very successful career in comedy.  He played Johnny English’s assistant Bough in the first film, and appeared

BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details

A PICTURE IS WORTH… – That one photograph in the middle of the montage of interpretations of Robin in the alien computer?

10301_gall_002-6126401

Yeah, that was Patrick Troughton.  before he was the second Doctor, he was the first person to play Robin Hood on television.

 WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO CUT THIS ONE SHORT – This episode originally featured a scene of a beheading, specifically, that of the Sheriff of Nottingham, who is as a result revealed as a cyborg (and presumably puts the head right back on).  Due to recent events featuring actual beheadings of two journalists by terrorists in the Middle East, it was decided such a scene might be traumatic to some, and the scene was edited.  However, the episode also featured a robot’s head being severed and falling to the floor, not to mention The Doctor joking about the idea of Robin Hood’s head still laughing after it was removed from his neck, so clearly the desire to avoid triggering was somewhat limited.

“Old fashioned heroes only exist in old fashioned storybooks” – And that right there is the theme of the episode.  What happens to Robert of Loxley – to sink into myth and legend – is exactly what The Doctor tried to do to himself in the previous season.  He attempted to erase himself from history and all the databases in the universe.  He naturally had a harder time of it as while Robin Hood only operated for a few years, tops, in one area of England, The Doctor has been poking it in and shaking it all about all over the universe throughout time.

“What about Mars?  The Ice warrior Hives!” – Clara met the Ice Warriors last season in Cold War, and The Doctor of course met them a few times before.

“…or we might be inside a Miniscope!” – The Miniscope is a device designed to allow appreciative audiences to observe the activities of captive (tho unaware of same) beings in a miniaturized and sealed natural environment. The Doctor and Jo Grant were briefly trapped in one in the adventure Carnival of Monsters.

“And this is my spoon” – The Seventh Doctor played the spoons, though he didn’t use them in the more defensive manner he did here.  This scene is much more a Robin Hood reference than anything else – it’s a tip of the hat to the iconic quarterstaff(*) battle between Robin Hood and Little John, as portrayed in too many iterations of the tale to count.

“I’ve had some experience –Richard the Lionheart” – Indeed he has – back in the first Doctor’s adventure The Crusade.  The story was preceded by The Web Planet, the last episode of which had been recovered from a Middle Eastern broadcaster. As a result, it was edited to not include the “next episode” card for The Crusade, as for obvious reasons, that episode was not sold to the Middle East.

“Hai!” – Another callback to the Pertwee era, The Doctor strikes Robin with a Venusian Akido blow.

“Who will rid me of this turbulent Doctor?” – Henry II, King of England once famously asked “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” in reference to Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.

BIG BAD WOLF REPORT – Further increasing the similarities to this episode and Deep Breath, this alien ship is also heading for “The Promised Land”, just as the main Clockwork Droid said he was aiming to reach in the earlier episode.  While we don’t see Missy back, The Doctor did notice the similarity.  What’s interesting is that The Doctor assumed the Droid was speaking metaphorically, based on the humanity he’d picked up over the years, but this ship had a course set for it, as if it were a physical location.

NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – …and gentle be present…to all you’ve ever close kept in your loving heart.  Listen, coming up this Saturday.

    • “Actually, it’s a buck-and-a-quarter quarterstaff, but I’m not teillin’ HIM that…”

REVIEW: Young Justice

YoungJusticeBluray1DC Comics has always had a special place in its heart for the teen sidekicks and since the 1960s, there have been numerous books dedicated to their collaborative efforts. Little wonder then, that Cartoon Network would want series based on Teen Titans and Young Justice. While the former reduced them to far younger incarnations, the latter took the Peter David-written comic and expanded its scope in vastly satisfying ways. Young Justice ran a mere two seasons but retains an ardent fan following so it’s nice to see the entire first season out now as a two-disc Blu-ray package.

The show was developed for the cable channel by former DC assistant editor Greg Weisman, who discovered his forte with animation as witnessed by the wild success of his Gargoyles. Here, he’s partnered with Brandon Vietti, no stranger to translating comics to cartoons. Their premise takes the teens – Robin, Aqualad, Kid Flash, and Arrowette  – and sees them declare their independence from their mentors and are turned into The Team, covert operatives. The android Red Tornado watches over them in the JLA’s original mountain HQ and they receive missions from Batman so there’s a tight connection to the Justice League which is expanded throughout the first season.

Early on, the teens are on a case within Cadmus and discover the clone named Superboy and his adjustment to life away from the lab is a major thread through the series. The team is rounded out with the arrival of M’gann M’orzz, Miss Martian.

Interestingly, rather than trying to justify their choices to play fast and loose with DC Universe print continuity, the producers declared up front that these adventures occur on Earth-16 in the New 52 multiverse and I’m okay with that, since it shuts down the critics really fast. This certainly explains the new brown-skinned Aqualad, created by Vietti and Weisman, but does not justify his inclusion in the New 52. With that said, there are plenty of nice touches to the larger fraternity of heroes such as Zatara’s appearance in the opening episode. There’s a lovely nod to original Titans as the new team takes on Mister Twister. Episode 10 is touching as Superboy and Miss Martian take on the Conner Kent and Megan Morse identities as they begin their first day of school, meeting Super Friends’ Wendy and Marvin, one-tome Titans Mal Duncan and Karen Beecher, while their teacher is Lucas “Snapper” Carr.

Reviewing these 26 episodes is interesting to watch seeds planted early finally sprout or connections other DC animated series are made clear. Additionally, it’s fun to see familiar behind-the-scenes names such as director Jay Oliva who graduated from episodic stories to the feature animated films including the recent Assault on Arkham. Peter David gets his due by contributing a few episode scripts as well.

Weisman does a nice job with the themes teens experience such as love, jealously heightened emotions and the desire to live up the adults’ expectations while still trying forge a unique identity. He also has a clear through-line for the stories so the chronology ticks off days at a time and is internally consistent unlike so many other animated shows. Secrets that have been introduced previously come into play in the penultimate episode which also sees Milestone’s Rocket join the team. Then comes the season one finale which brings many threads together and reveals Vandal Savage being behind much of the trouble. There’s fighting but also a 16-hour gap when Batman, Hawkwoman, John Stewart, Martian Manhunter, Superman, and Wonder Woman were absent and their whereabouts helps set the stage for season two, when the series was renamed Young Justice: Invasion.

While not the best of the DC animated fare, it is among the top five shows and despite its fans does not get its just due. Rewatching these, I was reminded how much fun this series was and it looks great on high definition disc. There are no extras, but that’s par for Warner Archives.

New Who Review – “Into the Dalek”

“Demons run when a Good Man goes to war,” went the ancient line.  But the problem is, The Doctor is no longer sure he’s a good man.  Further problem is, neither is Clara.  So The Doctor’s not quite sure what he’s going to do when he’s invited to go…

INTO THE DALEK
By Phil Ford and Steven Moffat
Directed by Ben Wheatley

Human rebel fighter Journey Blue is about to have her ship destroyed by a Dalek saucer when The Doctor saves her by materializing the ship around her, a move for which he expects and demands a thank you.  Returning her back to her command ship, he’s quickly arrested, until Journey tells them he’s a Doctor…which is lucky because they have a patient.  The patient is a Dalek, who is malfunctioning.  As in, it has become good – it is raving that the Daleks must be defeated.

The Doctor retrieves Clara, who is on Earth, having just met Danny Pink, new teacher at Coal Hill School.  The Doctor and his companion are miniaturized so they can physically enter the wounded Dalek and fix it.  The Dalek is suffering from a radiation leak in its power source that was causing its mind to open to new ideas.  Witnessing the birth of a star, it recognized it as beautiful and had a epiphany.  Life will win – no matter how many stars the Daleks have destroyed, new ones are born, in greater number.  The Doctor has a fleeting hope that if he could heal this Dalek and still keep it “good,” he could turn the tide of the future.

Alas, once the radiation leak is fixed, the Dalek’s systems come back on line and it reverts to form.  But Clara insists there more they can do, and with the help of a couple of clever things, they attempt to awaken the goodness this Dalek experienced for just a moment of its horrific life.

All told, and episode that came close to some great moments, but mostly. only close.  It was a story that served to illuminate the relationship between The Doctor and The Daleks in a new way, a connection that deserved a few more lines than it got.  It opened up a possibility for a couple of returning characters, and showed us more of The Doctor’s new, cold demeanor.  I enjoyed it, but it could have been so much more.

THE MONSTER FILES – It’s the Daleks.  You could walk up to any drunken Sterno bum in the UK and they could tell you who they are.  At this point, a fair amount of American bums could.  Bork on Skaro as the end result of a war of attrition between the Kaleds and the Thals, battle-scarred scientist Davros mutated sample of his people’s DNA into what he declared was their final, perfect form (a tentacled blob of flesh that hates everybody) and put them into wee, almost indestructible tanks.

The Doctor met the Daleks in his second televised adventure, and there’s little argument that Terry nation’s creation was what sent the popularity of the show into orbit.  They’ve been back too many times to try to calculate.  The show tried to stop using them twice, once in a story that somewhat paralleled this one, but the allure of such a perfect enemy (not to mention the requisite ratings) is ever too tempting.

WELL EXCUUUUUSE ME – The Daleks almost didn’t make it into the new series, and it’s all comedian Steve Martin’s fault.  He was to appear in Looney Tunes: Back in Action as the head of the Acme Corporation.  There’s a scene in a secret government base where a bunch of aliens escape and wreak havoc.  Being a big Doctor Who fan, Steve thought it would be funny if one of them was a Dalek.  Warner Bros contacted the BBC for permission, and someone at the BBC gave it.  Problem: the BBC don’t own the Daleks, the Terry Nation estate does (Insert long tirade about how much better creators’ rights are handled in other countries here).

The estate was very put out that this was done, and a couple years later when the new series was in pre-production, they considered refusing permission to use the iconic monsters.  Steve Martin wrote a letter to the executors of the estate, personally apologizing for the mess-up.  The estate relented, and The Doctor got to face his greatest enemy again. And again.

The Dalek antibodies are technically the new monster for the episode, and they serve the same purpose as ones in a human body do – stopping invading organisms from damaging anything.  We saw antibody machines in the Teselecta in Let’s Kill Hitler, serving largely the same purpose they did here – to provide an additional threat.  The City of the Exxilons created antibodies to protect itself in the Pertwee adventure Death to the Daleks.

GUEST STAR REPORT  – Phil Ford (Co-writer) has a long history with the new series. He wrote the animated adventure Dreamland, as well as the Tennant adventure Waters of Mars. When Russell T Davies began The Sarah Jane Adventures, Phil worked with him, moving up to head writer for series 2.  He’s most recently worked with RTD on Wizards vs Aliens.  He was also the main writer for the recent CGI remake of classic Supermarionation series Captain Scarlet.

Samuel Anderson (Danny Pink) like most British actors (remember, there’s only 47 of them) has an interesting Venn diagram with other Doctor Who stars.  He was on Emmerdale which also featured Jenna Coleman, and Gavin and Stacey which starred James Corden, a.k.a. Craig Owens from The Lodger and Closing Time.

Michael Smiley (Colonel Morgan Blue) has appeared in several of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s collaborations, including Spaced and two third of the Cornetto Trilogy.  He was Benny Deadhead on Luther, and was in BBC America’s series Ripper Street.

BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details

“Good idea for a movie” – Hanging a lampshade on a classic trope takes the curse off it.  Aside from the obvious, the Fantastic Voyage (and Innerspace) plot has been done on almost every science fiction show you can think of, not to mention plenty of cartoon series.  Heck, it’s been done on the show already: The Doctor was able to shrink clones of himself and Leela into his own brain to fight The Invisible Enemy, and fellow Time Lord Drax shrinks himself and The Doctor in The Armageddon Factor.  Just a little way back the Teselecta had a crew of shrunken humans  as it caught criminals through time.

“He was dead already” – This is another aspect of the more “alien” feel of the new Doctor. Gone, gone is the “I’m so sorry” mindset of Tennant who would sturm and drang over each being he couldn’t save, this Doctor is pragmatic, to point of being callous.

“I saw beauty” – in the adventure Asylum of the Daleks, we learned that the Daleks see beauty in hatred.  “Perhaps that is why we has always had trouble killing you,” the leader Dalek then theorized.  This Dalek saw what it recognized as true beauty in the birth of a star, but at the end of the episode, it sees the hatred The Doctor has for the Daleks, and his head is turned again to that which he has recognized as beauty for so long.

“The Doctor is not the Daleks” – This moment, and this scene, really needed a bit more emphasis.  As I’ve said before, The Daleks largely defined what kind of show Doctor Who was to be.  Sydney Newman had a “No bug-eyed-monsters” ban on the show, initially seeing the series as educational in nature, visiting historical moments to teach history of a sort to kids.  Once The Daleks hit as big as they did, the focus of the show shifted, away from the pure historical adventures and on to the fantastic.  It’s in this speech that that “definition” of The Doctor is applied to the character as well.  It acknowledges that before meeting the Daleks, The Doctor didn’t know what he wanted to do, or what kind of person he wanted to be.  He realized if there was an evil this great in the world, there had to be a good that great to combat it.

“You are a good Dalek” – The sheer hatred The Doctor has for the Daleks was made clear in the Eccleston episode Dalek.  In it, the lone Dalek in Henry van Statten’s collection listens to The Doctor’s wish that it “just die” and says “You would make a good Dalek.”

The parallels between that episode and this are numerous – a lone Dalek, broken and damaged, repaired by The Doctor (or Rose in the first of the two) and then being forced to combat it.  Both point out exactly how powerful a single Dalek is.

“If I can turn one Dalek, I can turn all of them. I can save the future.” –This is not the first time The Doctor has tried something like this.  In The Evil of the Daleks, The Doctor is pressed into finding the “Human Factor,” the mysterious brew of ingenuity, creativity and will to succeed that if added to the Dalek mind, would render them able to win any fight.  The Doctor, however, injects (infects, if you will) a series of Daleks with the human attributes of freedom, the desire to question authority and a grasp of justice, creating an army of  “Human Daleks” which immediately begin fighting with the “real” Daleks, a battle that The Doctor called “The final end.”  Indeed, it was supposed to be – that was supposed to be the last Dalek story, and it was for about five years, into the Pertwee years.  Genesis of the Daleks was also intended to be a “final” Dalek story, and like Evil, started a multi-year Dalek-free period, ending with Destiny of the Daleks.

“Gretchen Alison Carlisle. Do something good and name it after me.”

DWGretchen2

And henceforth, this Dalek’s name is Gretchen Alison Carlisle.

“I just wish you hadn’t been a soldier” – The Doctor’s disdain for soldiers and the military mindset was set in stone back in the Pertwee years.  He would constantly mock the small-minded literalness of soldiers, most members of UNIT, and The Brigadier in particular.  Tennant got a bunch of good digs in during The Sontaran Stratagem.  Tying into the cold nature of this new Doctor, his disdain is much more absolute.

BIG BAD WOLF REPORT – Missy is back, here meeting brave soldier Gretchen for a splosh of tea.  So the initial thought that she’s collecting The Doctor’s enemies is incorrect.  It now appears she’s collecting people who have died because of The Doctor.  While the jury is still out on whether the clockwork droid died at his own hand in last week’s adventure, Gretchen clearly sacrificed herself to make sure The Doctor’s plan worked.

Near the end of Tennant’s run, The Doctor is thinking about his life while chatting in a cafe with Wilfrid Mott (Bernard Cribbins).  “I’ve killed,” he said “But then I got clever – I convinced people to kill themselves.”  What we are seeing here are people who are the victims of The Doctor’s cleverness.  Depending on which side Missy is on, both of these people so far could be talked into believing they were responsible for saving the lives of countless people by a hero, or that they were callously killed by a madman.

“I thought you might have a rule against soldiers” – Clara clearly doesn’t, but one wonders how much this budding relationship with Danny Pink will be colored and affected by The Doctor and his mindset against soldiers.  Danny will be playing a much more active role in the proceedings in the near future; it’ll be interesting to see if he’ll be more of an Ian Chesterton type of fellow on the TARDIS… or a Turlough.

– NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO Don’t you worry, never fear –  Robot of Sherwood will soon be here, namely this weekend.

Tweeks: Taking a Deep Breath with the New Doctor

ecsp8f8-5266229The Tweeks are big fans of Doctor Who, but they are not fans of change.  It was scary times going into the Season 8 Premiere episode “Deep Breath” because Peter Capaldi looked pretty stern and serious in the promo pictures.  Could The Tweeks possibly love a doctor with those eyebrows when the last one had no eyebrows at all?  Watch this episode and see if the 12th Doctor is indeed Tweeks Approved.

Tweeks Review: Sisters by Raina Teglemeier

sisters-pb-cover_final1-9181329As Tweeks! viewers know, Raina Telgemeier is one of our all-time favorite authors, so we were  excited from the second we heard she would be writing another book about the autobiographical characters from Smile.  And then when we found it was called Sisters?!  How much more perfect does it get, right?  So, the question is, does Sisters – In stores today! – hold up to the hype? Um, yes! Get yourself to a bookstore, tweens!

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