TNT’s MOB CITY not only brings to TV a stylized, noir look at a crime ridden Los Angeles, but it also signals the return of acclaimed show runner Frank Darabont. Franks talks about what hooked him on the project and how he chose the cast that fit the era just right. Plus DOCTOR WHO scores big and Warren Ellis takes a crack at MOON KNIGHT.
Thanks so much for responding to me! Action Files seems like a great program for schools. I’ll be sure to look into it more. With the new Common Core Standards, I’ve noticed that there isn’t really any standards related to the content of what needs to be taught in an English course and that it mostly revolves around “can students read and write?”
With that in mind, I created a Donors Choose to teach Grant Morrison’s All-Star Supermanto my high school seniors. I was given four months to raise the money and I did it in 13 hours. As long as curriculum revolves around analyzing literature and understanding tone and purpose, the state doesn’t really seem to care what they’re being taught. In a way, that’s great because it opens up content, but in another way it’s strange because the field is wide open.
If there is anything I can do to help from the perspective of an educator please let me know. I confess that I don’t know how much help I can be given how much research you’ve done already on your end, but anything I can do, I’d be happy to.
Thanks again for your articles on Bleeding Cool. They’re exceptionally fascinating and insightful. And (though I know you don’t need my advice or insight on this either) ignore all the haters. They’re jackasses anyway. You’re all kinds of awesome.
Cody Walker
Wow.
I’ve received cool letters over the years but this is one of if not the coolest letter I’ve ever gotten. It’s funny I just realized the fan mail I get comes from an eclectic group of people.
Over the years people have written me about things I’ve done in comics or some other media but I do so little published work in the comics creative space I still marvel when someone says they like my work.
Denys Cowan in his career I’m sure has thousands of letters of fan letters. How do I know this? I was in his studio once when he got one. “What’s that?” I asked.
“Fan letter. I get them all the time.”
“Define all the time.”
“All the time as in all the time.”
I let the matter drop knowing he was clearly setting me up when he opened up a file draw thick with documents and placed the new letter in. I wasn’t taking the bait.
I on the other hand have hundreds, maybe a bit over a thousand fan letters but I’m counting every singe letter I’ve gotten that praised me for something or the other.
Just wanted to let you know you rocked my world last night. That was the best three minutes I’ve ever had in my life!
Susan
Yep. That counts.
From all my fan letters I can tell you exactly how many were comic book art related.
One hundred seventy-one, of which one hundred fifty-eight were from France and no I’m not kidding.
It seems the French really loved the series I illustrated for the DC mature reader imprint, Piranha Press. I couple of people liked Shado (Stevie Wonder was one) and I got a really nice letter for a painted Green Hornet cover done for Now Comics as well as another painting I did for Now based on the book ‘The Time Machine.’
Most of the fan letters I get are from grade school kids I’ve spoken to, high schools, universities or organizations I’ve lectured at, young artists, educators, parents and some partridges in pear trees.
My absolute favorite letters to get are from young artist I’ve reached (just got a wonderful one from Allison Leung a major talent you will be seeing more from) and educators.
Oh. Did you perhaps think I was going to say grade school kids was my favorite?
Really? Don’t you know by now I’m not one to play to the crowd?
Darn.I am talking about kids here and people lose their minds when they think you are somehow anti-kid when you tell the truth about way receiving letters from grade school kids is not your favorite thing in the whole wide world. You think those haters will give nary a thought to all the good work I’ve for kids?
No. Those simians will lose their minds and call Chris Hanson! The backlash will be terrible…
OK. I know what to do. I’m so glad I like to write my thoughts down then erase them. Can you imagine what the fallout would be if those hairless monkeys saw this?
My absolute favorite letters to get are from young artists I’ve reached (just got a wonderful one from Allison Leung, a major talent you will be seeing more from) and grade school kids!
It’s so great when a 4th grader writes me a letter telling me how wonderful my visit was and it’s just amazing that 30 kids had the same idea at the same time and all 30 letters came in one envelope!
Wow. If kids were not just the most precious things in all creation I’d think that someone put them up to writing those letters. Not that it would lessen the intent, mind you.
I guess if I had to choose (way way way behind) the second most favorite letter I like receiving would be from educators.
Teachers take a no nonsense approach to what’s right for their students. The letter I received from Cody Walker warmed my kid loving heart in many reasons.
Chief among those reasons is this. Cody is teacher who had the guts to create a high school reading program from comic books.
High School!
Comics!
High School!
Think about that for a hot sec. It’s very likely his idea was not met with universal love from all his educational peers. Some may even have voiced opposition or even worse not voiced support.
I have no doubt in my mind if faced with a parent teacher revolt against comics in the classroom so fierce all the major networks would have 24/7 news coverage (except Fox News – they would continue their 24/7 reporting of Obama and the allegations he shot Lincoln) Cody would fight the good fight and win.
I know this because Cody took the time and effort to create and find funding for the program (in record time), which he did not have to do.
Teachers like Cody are not rare. They are plentiful. Most teachers labor countless hours not paid for to come up with other ways to engage their students.
Like I said: teachers like Cody are not rare, what’s rare is recognition for great work done on behalf our young people.
On the sporadic occasion when recognition is granted to a well deserving teacher that acknowledgment is slow in coming.
Well, I was so impressed with what Cody wrote me after he read my article in Bleeding Cool I wanted to recognize him as fast as possible, hence he writes me a fan letter through Bleeding Cool and I write him a fan letter through ComicMix.
Cody, I’m a fan of yours, my friend. Many (but not nearly enough) thanks for doing what you do.
I’ve seen fandom do beautiful things. In point of fact, I can see because fandom (and some great friends) did a beautiful thing. And as we approach Thanksgiving, I wanted to revisit the story of something I’m thankful for every day.
You see, I have a degenerative, incurable eye disease called keratoconus. It’s relatively rare, and the causes of it are still not known for sure. In brief, keratoconus causes a thinning, malformation, and scarring of the corneas, leading to not only the typical bad vision one might correct with glasses or contacts, but also wacky fun stuff like “monocular polyopia,” other streaking and flaring around light sources, and sensitivity to light. Due to the way keratoconus distorts the cornea, once it reaches a certain point vision is not correctable with glasses or soft contact lenses. Hard (rigid gas permeable) lenses are required to, essentially, provide the proper shape for the corneas.
For some people, the disease will plateau and they may not reach that point. Or they may reach that point and live with hard lenses. For others, like myself, the disease keeps going. It is at that time that options narrow dramatically.
In 2010, my quality of vision and ability to wear hard contact lenses with any degree of comfort had lessened (imagine weirdly blurred vision and sudden, random stabbing eye pains every day and you’ll have my daily life), to the point where my specialist and I were seriously discussing the possibility of corneal transplants.
As you can imagine, I was dreading the possible need for a transplant. The recovery time is over a year, results are not guaranteed, and there’s a 20% chance of rejection, along with risks of detachment, displacement, and infection. So imagine my excitement when my dad found another option.
Remember how I said the disease is incurable? It is. However, my dad had learned of an experimental procedure called corneal collagen cross-linking, which had been in trials for about two years in the United States – 12 years in other countries – at the time. This procedure is much less invasive that a transplant, with a shorter and less difficult recovery time, as well as being less risky. And while it doesn’t fix your vision, if successful it can halt the corneal degeneration, and, in some cases, improve eyesight slightly through rebuilding the bonds between the layers of the cornea.
We looked into it further, and were happy to learn that I was a candidate for the clinical trial. However, the big downside to this procedure was that, due to it still being in the trial stages (only about 300 people had been treated in the U.S. by 2010), my insurance wouldn’t cover it. I would have to pay all$8,000 of the cost of the procedure; not to mention the costs of the medications, lost income from missed work during the recovery periods, and special scleral contact lenses that I now wear (which are, incidentally, what they use in special effects for things like whited-out or black eyes). And the plain fact of the matter was that I did not have the money for the procedure.
Although I had been living with the diagnosis of the disease for several years at that time, I rarely mentioned it. However, this difficulty was so distressing that I wrote about it in my online journal. And then, wonderful things began to happen. The first was that several friends in the broader LiveJournal community of which I am a part through my various fandom interests, including those I knew in person and those I only knew online, asked if they could contribute funds for the surgery.
Although I was touched by the generosity, I was raised to believe I should make my own way in the world, and didn’t know that I could be comfortable accepting the offer. So I called up my wonderful friend Cleolinda to talk it over. As we talked, she wisely pointed out to me that this was an unusual medical situation, and that, basically, yes, if nice friends wanted to help, I should let them. After I agreed with her point, she then surprised me by posting about my situation on her journal, and asking if people might want to help me.
Cue wonderful thing number two. Immediately, people began to donate; and after Cleo posted, Heather, an online friend of Cleo’s who I did not know but have since become good friends with, understood my discomfort with just accepting straight funds and suggested a fandom auction on LiveJournal – in which people could donate fandom or handmade items, and others could bid, and the resulting funds would go towards the surgery, with the donators of funds getting some return value for their contribution. She offered to run the whole thing, and did so with great efficiency, jumping right in to get the ball rolling on setting upa community and spreading the word with Cleolinda.
The auction ran for a little over three months, and was a great success. Many cool items were offered and purchased, many kind good wishes came my way (which meant a lot to me as well!), and by the end of the auction, fandom, consisting of some people I knew but many I didn’t, had raised the entire $8,000. Add to that a few other generous donations from friends who had learned of the online fundraising secondhand (as I still hadn’t really felt comfortable mentioning it outside of the online forum), and my recovery and medication expenses were covered as well. I could hardly believe it, but there it was. This tremendous burden lifted from my life by the kindness of a community.
Seeing fandom come together to help me like that was, and to this day is, one of the most amazing things I’ve ever experienced. I can’t even begin to describe how much it means to me that both friends and total strangers banded together to make it possible for me to see.
I can, however, describe the results (and if you are really interested in the blow-by-blow saga of both surgeries and the results, start from the bottom of this and scroll up. Although Cleolinda’s recap of my first surgery is way more amusing than mine). Although of course the procedure was no picnic and the recovery time was over six months, by the end not only had the deterioration been halted (presumably for good), but vision in my right eye, which was 20/400 uncorrected, had been vastly improved, and vision in my left had improved slightly as well.
On top of this, after the procedure I was fitted for special scleral lenses, sometimes prescribed for cases of advanced or very irregular keratoconus. They are the most wonderful thing imaginable for a keratoconus patient like me. Yes, they are a real annoyance to get in and out, but with them, I am able to see better than I had for about six years prior to the surgery; and there is no pain. So although I still live with the disease (and its quirks, which still include occasional and unpredictable vision problems), this procedure vastly improved my quality of life; and it was all thanks to a group of people who were brought together primarily by their enjoyment of various sci-fi, fantasy, comics, or other genre fandoms, and by the online fandom community that resulted from that enjoyment.
Yes, fandom can be, and in this instance certainly was, a beautiful thing. Not only is my daily life improved thanks to fandom, but my fandom life is as well. As Marvel artist Reilly Brown pointed out when he generously donated a gorgeous Deadpool sketch to the auction, a comics fan no longer being able to see comics would be very sad. Now, not only can I continue to read comics, but I can also continue to pursue favorite hobbies like making tiny clay sculptures. And for those blessings and so many more, I am so, so thankful.
It’s been just over three years since my cross-linking procedures, and even if I don’t say it every day, I am constantly grateful for the help and kindness of those who contributed to those procedures; and I want each of you to know that through your caring, you touched a life forever. And I want everyone else who reads this to know what a great thing happened thanks to a bunch of awesome nerds and geeks and fans and friends caring enough about another one of their community to give something of themselves. I hope one day to be able to pay that forward in some manner. But until that time comes – a Happy Thanksgiving to all, and an eternal thank you to everyone who gave me such an amazing gift to be thankful for.
And until next time, Servo Lectio!
Editor’s Note: Due to other commitments, Emily will be shifting to a monthly posting schedule through May of 2014. So look for her column on a monthly basis, starting in December. Emily will be back to her weekly posting schedule after May of next year. And we can hardly wait to have her back fulltime.
After a steady diet of stupid buddy movies, including this summer’s Grown-Ups 2 flop, I welcomed Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s unique take on the concept in The World’s End. After a steady stream of funny and inventive films, this one hewed closer to a traditional premise: five high school buddies reunite for one last blast. However, being from this duo, one could expect something different.
The first forty minutes of the film felt fairly straightforward as the one who refused to grow up gathered his peers, all mired in staid existences, and convinced them to do what they failed to accomplish in their teens. In this case it meant visiting and quaffing a brew at all twelve pubs along the Golden Mile, finishing at the fabled World’s End. We see them struggling to reconnect, all annoyed at their leader for one reason or another. Unlike other films in this manner, the men are archetypal, not caricatures, and you feel the weight of adulthood on their shoulders. Their resentment towards Gary King (Pegg) is also tinged with envy as he has never lost that boyhood spirit, that Can Do attitude that made the next step an adventure.
Then things take an unexpected twist and we’re plunged into an entirely different story that pits these five against an alien threat with the very world’s fate at stake. How they handle this fuels the remainder of the satisfying film, out now on Blu-ray from Universal Studios Home Entertainment. Considered the final installment in the Cornetto Trilogy, viewers should be aware it has absolutely no connection to Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. What they do share in common is an ensemble cast and smart, witty writing that never trips over the line into dumb humor or slapstick.
Wright nicely skewers the horror, cop, and science fiction conventions in these films, always taking ordinary people with ordinary problems and sticking them in extraordinary circumstances. Gary King is the boy who never grew up and as an adult, his actions now appear inappropriate but it is his spirit to never give up that forces the others — — Steven Prince (Paddy Considine), Oliver “O-Man” Chamberlain (Martin Freeman), Peter Page (Eddie Marsan) and best friend Andy Knightley (Nick Frost) – into action. The quiet home of Newton Haven is too quiet and the looks the quintet receive from the patrons borders on The Stepford Wives, even their old college professor (Pierce Brosnan) seem s a little off. When King rips the head off a young punk, he discovers the inhabitants have been replaced with robots out to “civilize” humanity.
There’s a tremendous amount of running, fighting, screaming and humor but in the end it all comes down to King and Andy debating the Voice (Bill Nighy) behind it all. As climaxes go, it falls a little flat but is whimsical in a nice way. And there’s even a touch of romance with Oliver’s sister Sam (Rosamund Pike), the sole major female role in the film, a failing on the Bechdel scale.
The film’s tone is a steady one, despite the rising complications and activity. The performances are strong as one would expect from the cast, who have worked together for many a year, making this one of the strongest and best comedies of the year. Out on a combo disc (Blu-ray, DVD and Ultraviolet digital), the video transfer is fine, matched by sharp audio. Unlike a lot of recent releases, this one comes with an excellent abundance of material staring with Commentary from Wright and Pegg and Wright and director of photography Bill Pope and Pegg with co-stars Frost and Considine. The first is funny and interesting, the second interesting for technical folk, and the third is as hilarious as you would expect.
U-Control Storyboard PiP lets you see the film’s storyboards alongside the film which is interesting for storytellers. Better is Completing the Golden Mile: The Making of The World’s End (48:00) which takes us through the concept to production although you know some of this through the commentaries.
Additionally, there’s Filling in the Blanks: The Stunts and FX of The World’s End (28:00); VFX Breakdown (9:00); Edgar & Simon’s Flip Chart (13:00), a fascinating look at the beat by beat breakdowns writers use to craft screenplays; Director at Work (3:00); Pegg + Frost = Fried Gold (3:00) Friends Reunited (4:00), mostly culled from a press kit; Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy (5:00); Animatics (11:00), for two scenes; Hair and Make-Up Tests (4:00); Rehearsal Footage (6:00); Stunt Tapes (9:00); There’s Only One Gary King: Osymyso’s Inibri-8 Megamix (5:00); Music remix montage; Signs & Omens (8:00); Deleted Scene (1 minute); Outtakes (11:00); Alternate Edits (SD, 5 minutes); Bits and Pieces (3:00), additional alternate takes and shots; and, Trailers & TV Spots including the TV Safe Version. Finally, there are Galleries of photographs, concept art, animatronics, prosthetics, theatrical posters and pub signs and a fun Trivia Track.
By all means, check this one out and enjoy the bonus features which enhance the enjoyment.
The BBC did a cracking job of filling the week before the Doctor Who 50th anniversary with new programming to appeal to Whovians across the globe. Noted scientist Brian Cox hosted a seminar about the nature of space and time, while noted actor Brian Cox starred in An Adventure in Space and Time. Paul McGann starred in a short adventure featuring the eighth Doctor, while Doctors Five, Six, and Seven hatched their own plan to crash the festivities.
David Bradley as William Hartnell as The Doctor in An Adventure in Space and Time
Mark Gatiss penned An Adventure in Space and Time, a dramatic adaptation of the early years of the classic series. Brian Cox and Jessica Raine (Call the Midwife) starred as Sydney Newman and Verity Lambert respectively, the minds behind the show, while David Bradley (Game of Thrones, Harry Potter) took the role of William Hartnell, the first Doctor. Hartnell was unsure of his ability to take on the role, and Verity supported and encouraged him, each helping the other make a name for themselves in television history. Bradley does a wonderful job of showing Hartnell’s range of emotion as the harsh schedule of the show takes its toll on him in only three years. A recurring motif of a series of publicity pictures for each new cast change portrays the progression wonderfully.
There’s a number of cameos of classic Who actors in the film. William Russell (the original Ian Chesterton) plays a BBC guard, and early companions Anneke Wills and Jean Marsh (Upstairs Downstairs), and current voice of the Daleks Nicholas Briggs as the original voice of the Daleks, Peter Hawkins. One final cameo at the end is too wonderful and precious to spoil – let’s just say Gatiss is not afraid to let the line between reality and fantasy blur if needs be.
While the adventure is scheduled for release in the UK on December 2, there’s no date for a US release as of yet.
A lot of fans were upset that the “classic Doctors” were not asked to participate in the anniversary episode (save for McGann, who naturally had to keep his appearance strictly secret), so Peter Davison decided to take matters into his own hands. He wrote and directed The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, a half-hour adventure in which, well, in which Peter Davison takes matters into his own hands about not being asked to participate in the anniversary. He, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy hatch a mad plan to crash the filming of The Day of the Doctor and garner appearances. In a series of mad escapades worthy of Lucy Ricardo trying to get into Ricky’s show (ask your parents), the trio get help from John Barrowman, Peter’s daughter Georgia Moffett and her husband, one David Tennant.
The adventure was filmed alongside the anniversary episode, with our heroes conspiring behind the scenes as the “actual” footage is filmed off-camera It features cameos from just about everyone that’s been on Doctor Who that “wasn’t invited” to be in the anniversary, up to and including Russel T. Davies. Tom Baker does not appear, instead using the very same footage from The Five Doctors that they pulled from Shada to cover for his non-appearance there. Georgia gets a producer’s credit for the adventure, with Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin as executive producers. It’s a wonderful piece of work from all involved, clearly a love letter to both the old guard and its fans.
The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot is also available for viewing at the BBC website.
It is the privilege of lesser men to light the flame.
Whatever the cost.”
The Warrior Doctor (John Hurt), The Day of the Doctor, November 23, 2013
After all the press, after all the hype, after a week of BBC America’s Doctor Who Takeover, I was really afraid that actual episode was going to suck, that I was going to be miserably let down, wretchedly disappointed.
I. Was. Absolutely. Completely. Totally. Utterly. Positively.
Blown. Away.
The whole wide world became the whole wide Whovian world yesterday, as the BBC simulcast The Day Of The Doctor in over 75 countries – Angola, Australia, Bangladesh, Benin, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde Islands, the Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, the Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Honduras, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Russia, Rwanda, Sao Tome & Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Taiwan, Tanzania & Zanzibar, Thailand, Togo, Turkey, Uganda, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Uruguay, Venezuela, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
I mean, seriously, has the United Nations ever been able to bring about such a coalition? I mean, seriously, I think the last time so many countries and their citizens came together to celebrate and raise a glass or two as they did on Saturday was for the end of World War II 68 years ago.
I mean, seriously, think about it, people. So many of these nations are embattled and torn apart by violence and terror and war—and yet the Doctor, fictional character though he may be, hits such a powerful chord of hope and peace and unity among the peoples of this Earth, is it possible that even in places like Somalia and Myanmar and Colombia and the Congo that a truce was called for one hour and twenty minutes on Saturday, November 23rd, 2013?
Once before has the world been stopped on this date. 50 years ago President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot dead in Daley Plaza, Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, and the world held its breath for the next four days as his body was returned to Washington, where it laid in state, first in the White House and then at the Capitol Rotunda, to finally come to rest in Arlington Cemetery across the Potomac River in Virginia – and so in England no one, or very, very few, saw the BBC’s debut, on November 23rd, 1963, of a science fiction television show about a grandfatherly man and his niece and her two teachers adventuring in time and space in a contraption called the TARDIS, which was an acronym, the niece informed us, for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, and which looked like an English 1950’s police box.
But the BBC reran the premiere episode of Doctor Who and its ratings took off, and when William Hartnell, the first actor to play the Doctor, became too ill to continue, an innovative idea was born to explain the introduction of Patrick Troughton as his replacement—regeneration.
And now Doctor Who, the series, has regenerated.
I won’t go into depth, so as not to spoil it for those who were unable to see The Day Of The Doctor this past weekend, but I will say this – the driving force behind the Time Lord has been changed.
It’s not often you get to describe an event as being fifty years in the making. even less so do you get to mean it. Three Doctors in three timelines converge to give them all a chance to change a terrible moment in their collective past.
The Day of the Doctor
by Steven Moffat
Directed by Nick Hurran
The Doctor is in the present, in his most recent incarnation, picking up Clara, when he gets picked up himself, by UNIT, to investigate a mystery at the National Museum. Meanwhile (well, I say meanwhile…) in his previous incarnation, he’s investigating a mystery in Elizabethan Britain, an attack by the Zygons that could lead all the way to the Queen herself. And in another part of the Universe entirely, The War Doctor is making a decision that will put the lives of countless innocents in his hands, a choice that will darken and color his life for centuries to come.
Considering that it is physically impossible to create an episode that has everyone and everything that every fan wants, this episode was as close to perfect as could be. It embraced plotlines that were started in the Davies era, tied in moments and points in Moffat’s own time of running the show, and did a job of undoing a dark moment in The Doctor’s history worthy of Geoff Johns. I screamed out loud three times, and it would have been four, if one fellow had been able to keep his mouth shut.
THE MONSTER FILES:The Zygons only got one appearance in the original series, the eponymous Terror of the Zygons, but it was enough to keep the popular in the alternative media for years. Shapeshifting beings, they invade by taking over from within, taking the forms of important people. They got an off-camera return in The Power of Three as they tried to invade during Amy and Rory’s second honeymoon.
BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS:Trivia and production details
Oh my GOD is this gonna be a long one. This episode is packed with self-references and tips of the hat, as well as calling back to points from many other episodes. I’ll see if I can hit them all…
THE QUESTION ISN’T WHERE, IT’S WHEN: More precisely, from when. Matt Smith’s Doctor is clearly experiencing this adventure in the “present,” as in after the events of the last season. Considering Ten(nant) is traveling alone, and is having the adventure he refers to when talking to Ood Sigma in the beginning of The End of Time, he’s clearly from a period between The Waters of Mars and that episode. We don’t know exactly how much time he spent gallivanting about between those episodes, clearly long enough for his memories of the details of this paradoxical adventure (while still remembering the bits about the Virgin Queen) that he still saw a need to re-imprison the Time Lords with the help of The Master.
Similarly, The War Doctor is experiencing this adventure at the end of this regeneration. But while we saw his “birth” in the Paul McGann mini-episode, we don’t know exactly how long he has been around, fighting in (and against) the Time War. He was in his seven hundreds at the end of the original series, and nine hundred at the beginning of the new, so there’s quite a lot of years to spread around between Seven, Eight, and The War Doctor.
So in brief, we’re seeing all three Doctors having this adventure very near the end of their respective regenerations. So each of them have seen all they’re going to see through their eyes, and that’s about the best time.
CALL FOR THE DOCTOR QUICK, QUICK, QUICK: Kate Stewart, the head of UNIT, daughter of The Brig, has a custom ring for The Doctor on her phone.
Also, note that The Doctor’s number is once again 07700900461, as it was in The Stolen Earth. About 2500 people thought that might be a working number (at least for a tie-in recording or bit of marketing, anyway) when that adventure aired, and tried calling it. no idea how many will try it this time.
“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be: Be one”: They hit the ground running with the self-references. I.M. Foreman‘s scrap yard was where we first met the Doctor, Susan and the TARDIS, lo those fifty years ago. Susan attended Coal Hill secondary school, where she aroused the curiosity of teachers Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton, who as we see here, now serves as headmaster. Sarah Jane Smith did a bit of investigating, and tracked down Ian and Barbara (now Barbara Chesterton), and reported to her son Luke that they no longer appear to age. Also, notice that as we see Clara erasing the quote from Marcus Aurelius on her whiteboard, the words “NO MORE” are in the center of the screen.
“Draft”: The Triumph Clara’s driving is the one The Doctor drove up the side of The Shard in The Bells of Saint John. When last we saw Clara and The Doctor, she was not getting along with the TARDIS, now she’d shutting the doors with a click of her fingers. Clearly quite some time has passed since the events of The Name of the Doctor – enough time for her to get a job as a teacher, and to make peace with the TARDIS. And yet she and The Doctor still keep their “See you next Wednesday” relationship, as it’s clear she’s not traveling with him regularly, tho she has no problem with picking up and running when he pops by.
“Tell Malcolm we need new batteries” – Malcolm Taylor is the acting scientific advisor for UNIT, and was played by Lee Evans in Planet of the Dead, and when I heard his name, I let loose with my third-loudest shout of the evening. If you folks think you were upset that Rose or Eccleston didn’t appear…
And those are presumably the “Ravens of Death” she claimed to have in The Power of Three.
“Nice Scarf” – Considering what we appear to learn at the end of the episode, that scarf MAY not be a replica. It might have been a gift. From the original owner.
There’s a bit of debate going on as to exactly who Osgood is. Rich Johnson at Bleeding Cool seems to believe that she’s Kate’s daughter – while her first line was her calling “Mum”, I took that to mean the honorific “Ma’am”, and not “Mom”. But we both noticed there was a UNIT tech named Tom Osgood in The Daemons, and a few of the prose stories, so that seems a more possible guess on her father, anyway.
“I’d be brilliant at having a job”: Well, he really does work for UNIT, when he’s around, and he did pretty well in the two jobs he took when he was helping Craig Owen in The Lodger and Closing Time.
“The High Council is in emergency session, they have plans of their own”: Those would be the plans set into action in The End of Time. We first heard of The Moment in that episode, as it too took place (partly, in flashback) during the end of the Time War.
“The Doctor has The Moment”: In a delightful bit of ingenious design, the initial gear-like design for of The Moment somewhat resembles the Antikythera mechanism, an Out Of Place Artifact found in Greece that (theoretically) could plot the positions of the stars to astounding accuracy.
“The interface is hot”: For those who are grousing that Billie Piper is not playing Rose, not my comment above. If we were watching an adventure where The Doctor was traveling with Rose, we’d be watching a Doctor who had not yet met Martha, Donna Noble, the crew of Bowie Base One, a Doctor who had, in short, barely begun to live. This was a way to have Billie a part of the show, while still giving us the best Doctor to experience the story. Also note that it’s a lovely parallel to Ten meeting Rose at the end of The End of Time, before they’ve met in that first adventure, Rose. The War Doctor meets her (or at least sees her visage) before he regenerates and meets (and saves) her in that department store. So once again, The Bad Wolf was guiding them all to fulfill the almost predestined moment so far in the future.
“Elizabeth the First…you knew her, then?”: Based on what we see here, and what Ten implies later, we shall have to leave tactfully alone the question of what definition of “knew” is being used here… This is England 1562, 37 years before The Shakespeare Code, where we “First” meet the queen, and The Doctor is totally unaware of why she’d be so angry at him. I expect that happens a lot.
It’s a machine that goes “ding”: It’s presumably similar to The Machine That Goes “Ding” When There’s Stuff, as seen in Blink. While that one was more tuned to temporal anomalies, this one is attuned to physical ones, like the energy expended by a shapeshifting alien.
“Is it important?” “In 1,200 years, I haven’t stepped in anything that wasn’t”” Another callback, this time to A Christmas Carol, when he said it about people.
“I need you to send me one of my father’s incident files”: She is almost certainly asking for the files on the incident we know as The Three Doctors, the tenth anniversary adventure. As they had to do in the past, they had to come up with a way around using one Doctor, but not for the same reason. William Hartnell was not well at the time, an advancement of the illness that cause him to leave the show in the first place. So he was not able to take an active part in the story, instead relegated to appearing via the scanner screen. Ten years later, Tom Baker wasn’t able to appear in The Five Doctors, so they used footage from Shada in his stead. Hartnell had already passed, so Richard Hurndall took on the role of the First Doctor.
For all the grousing many fans are making that they “left out Eccleston” from this adventure, it’s been verified via the man himself and he chose not to participate in the episode. His departure from the series was not entirely cordial; no firm details have come to light because he’s a professional, but it’s generally understood there was no small amount of bad blood.
The reference to “Seventies or eighties, depending” is a sly nod to the fact that the Pertwee years of the show were filmed in the seventies, but were supposed to be taking place an unspecified number of years in the future, to try and explain the higher tech items that were sprinkled around.
“Reverse the polarity”: “Reverse the polarity of the Neutron Flow” was one of Jon Pertwee’s legendary catch phrases, but like “Beam me up Scotty”, usually misremembered. That exact phrase was only used once in the series, and as a hat tip in The Five Doctors”, it was the shorter quote used here that got used in numerous episodes.
“Why are you pointing your screwdrivers like that?”: The War Doctor gives voice to many of the complaints old-guard fans have had about the new series – all the kissing, the Sonic Screwdriver acting more like a weapon (and a magic wand), and much more. Not to mock the fans, but more to point out the fact that the creators know full well how much the show has changed. And indeed, it’s the constant change of the show that has kept it alive.
“We’ll need access to the Black Archive”: Of all the stuff in that warehouse, I spotted River Song’s Manolos, a Cyberman head, a Sontaran blaster and the chair they had Ten trussed up in in The End of Time, which at this point in time…hasn’t happened yet. The Black Archive first got mentioned on Sarah Jane Adventures, in the episode Enemy of the Bane, guest-starring Nicholas Courtney in his last appearances as The Brigadier.
“You have a top-level security rating from your last visit”: The question is, is that just a continuance of the fact that everyone has their memories wiped as they leave, one of the many times that Clara has appeared in The Doctor’s past, or a precursor to an upcoming story? Also on that board with the more recent Companions are Tegan Jovanka, Nyssa of Traken, Kamelion, Five’s short-lived android companion, even Ian and Barbara. Also, photographed with Captain Erisa Magambo is Rose Tyler…but there’s a problem there. The only time they met were in the alternate timeline of Turn Left. So…where did that photo come from?
“We don’t have the activation code”: The numbers The Doctor scratches into the wall of their cell is 1716231163. Or more clearly, 17:16 23/11/63, the exact date and time that episode one of An Unearthly Child was originally broadcast.
“Same software…different face”: We’re not talking about the screwdriver any more, are we, blondie? Because later on in the episode, we find out that in a very similar way, The Doctor has been mulling a problem over for the same 400 years, one that he gets to solve himself, not by someone just opening the right door at the last minute.
Moffat is so so good at playing with time as a plot point. Sending the activation code into the future by writing it on the wall, and the idea of the scan taking the long way round and finishing up just as it’s needed.
“Oh, you’ve redecorated…I don’t like it”: A twice-joked joke, back for a third time. Patrick Troughton said it about Jon Pertwee’s TARDIS in The Three Doctors, and Eleven said it about Craig’s home in Closing Time.
“At worst, we failed at doing the right thing, as opposed to succeeding in doing the wrong”: What this episode does is essentially undoes an act that The Doctor has regretted for centuries. But as is always true of situations like this, it has to be undone in a way so nobody KNOWS it was undone, otherwise any events springing from it will not happen as they did, and you get paradoxes springing up like dandelions. So that, more than any other, is why all the Doctors from the time The Moment was supposedly used had to believe they DID use it. Only until after the present Doctor lives through his portion of the history can he be allowed to remember. It’s a temporal version of eating your cake and having it too.
“Wearing a bit thin”: Which is exactly how Hartnell described himself shortly before the first regeneration in The Tenth Planet, ushering in the miracle that would keep the show going for five decades.
“I don’t want to go”: Technically, this is the first time he says that – he’ll say it again in The End of Time. They even worked it into the script of An Adventure in Space and Time.
“I could be a curator”: He is the Curator. The letter from Elizabeth I appoints The Doctor as official Curator of the Undergallery, “to be summoned in the event of any crises concerning it.” Now, how he gets all the way back around to the time, place and form we see here, well, that’s all the fun is finding out, isn’t it?
BIG BAD REPORT /CLEVER THEORY DEPARTMENT: For once, the arc of the upcoming season might be a positive. Gallifrey Falls No More, and clearly The Doctor wants to find it. But there’s a problem. They may not have been destroyed, but this is clearly still the Time Lords who saw no problem with breaking out of their temporal prison by destroying the Earth, with the goal of controlling all of time and space. Now one could argue that it was more the mad plans of the Lord President (played by Timothy Dalton in The End of Time) nd the rest of the Time Lords (save two) fell into line. But that’s an argument we heard around the middle of last century, and it didn’t fly too well or too often. If I have the timeline right, The Time Lords will be banished back into the Time Lock after EoT, and find almost immediately that their plan was unneeded, as The Doctor saves the planet and shunts it off somewhere. So in the time that has passed, have they come to their senses and spent their time rebuilding, or have the grown even more enraged as they pounded at the walls of their temporal prison? It’s the same question Wilf asked in EoT – will the Time Lords’ return be a good thing? A lot of possibilities.
“No , sir…all thirteen”: In two seconds, Peter Capaldi premiered as The Doctor, and his eyebrows have already garnered their own fandom. It also verifies what has been assumed to be true since new news of the New Doctor came out: The next Doctor is the last of his current cycle of regenerations. Moffat has stated clearly that the 12-regeneration limit is still in place, whimsical comment in Sarah Jane Adventures notwithstanding. So in addition to the search for Gallifrey, we’ll certainly hear more than a bit about him reaching the seeming end of his lives. One has to wonder if the resolution of one plotline will resolve the other.
An unusual convergence of historical dates of different emotional resonances for me occurred this weekend – the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and what would have been the sixtieth birthday of my late wife, Kimberly Ann Yale.
Like many Americans, I remember where I was when I heard the news of JFK. I was in my history class at Quigley Preparatory Seminary North near downtown Chicago. The word that the President was shot came over the loudspeaker used for school announcements, followed a little later by the news of his death. I was stunned, in denial. I remember little else of that day. I think school was closed and we were sent home.
Kim’s dad was a Navy chaplain and they were living on-base at the time. She later told me how she was at school off-base and had to hurry back. The base was going into lockdown after the assassination and if she was outside when the gates closed, she wouldn’t have been able to get home. That was her tenth birthday.
For me, I place the days of my youth between two sets of gunshots – the ones that killed JFK and the ones that killed John Lennon on December 8, 1980. I was 14 for the former and 31 for the latter. Both gave me a slightly darker sense of the world around me and the country in which I lived. Both events inform my writing to this day.
The day after Kennedy was killed, a new TV series was launched over in the UK – Doctor Who. The series tells of the adventures of a time-traveling alien Time Lord and his (usually) human companions through time and space. When William Hartnell, the original actor playing the part, became too ill to continue the series, the producers came up with a key concept to the longevity of the series: when a Time Lord faced the death of his mortal body, it can “regenerate” into a wholly new form and, even more significant, a different character. Most important, there’s a whole new actor with a new interpretation of the main character. That, I think, has been key to keeping the series fresh and vital.
I met Kim through Doctor Who. I loved the Doctor and wanted to be the Doctor. I also knew that the odds, then or now, of an American ever playing the part was virtually non-existent. However, I was an actor in Chicago and a sometimes playwright and less often a producer. So I conceived of an idea of getting the rights to put on a play version of the Doctor in Chicago.
I managed to arrange a meeting with show runner John Nathan-Turner during a combined Chicago Comic Con and Doctor Who Convention (sometimes referred to as the Sweat Con since the hotel’s air conditioning unit proved inadequate to the number of people attending and outside it was a 106° Chicago August day). John Nathan-Turner brought along Terry Nation (creator of the Daleks for Doctor Who) and Mr. Nation brought along a lovely young woman with big eyes, curly hair, and a megawatt smile who was his assistant for the Con. That was Kim.
To describe Kim as a Doctor Who fan doesn’t begin to describe it. She was also very knowledgeable on all things Time Lord and I used her an a consultant as I developed the script. Nothing else developed at the time; Kim was married and I don’t fool around that way.
We became a couple only later, after the play project had folded and her marriage had broken up. My romantic life at that point was, if anything, even worse than my theatrical career. I’d given up dating; I hadn’t seen anyone in almost two years. It just seemed too painful to try. Kim and I had kept in touch and she was also a big fan of my work on GrimJack, the comic book I had created for First Comics.
I should note here that Doctor Who was an influence on creating GrimJack. It might seem that the two couldn’t be less alike but one of the things I loved about Doctor Who was that you could do any kind of story. They did horror, they did Westerns, they did everything and I wanted to do that with GrimJack. In that sense, he was my Doctor. Later, we showed he could even reincarnate. There is a darkness to the series that I can, in part, trace back to the assassination of Jack Kennedy.
Kim wrote to me about a specific issue of GrimJack that had affected and resonated with her; I found it a little strange that she would write since we lived less than a mile apart and she had my phone number. I told her this and she replied that some things were best expressed in writing. What can I say? I’m a writer; I understood that. Kim was a writer as well. That night was the night our relationship changed. That was the night we started to become a couple.
It’s just coincidence, I suppose, that the three dates are in such proximity to one another. We assign meaning to dates, both as a people and as individuals. It’s an accident that the significant anniversaries of the assassination, Kim’s birthday, and the launching of Doctor Who are in conjunction this year. The connections that I see, that I feel, among them are mine. We are all the results of the various events that have happened in our lives and none of them occur in a vacuum. This weekend, I remember and honor three that were significant to me.
The professional wrestler C.M. Punk truly made his mark and broke free of the shackles of mid-card obscurity by way of his infamous pipe bomb shoot promo. For those not in-the-know, a shoot in wrestling is an interview (or soliloquy some of the time) wherein said grappler breaks the fourth wall. As relived in this week’s WTF podcast, Punk was vivid in saying that <a href=”
this promo was done because he was at the end of his rope.
With the WWE wanting him to resign for three more years and Punk decidedly against continuing to not be the guy on the roster, Vince McMahon allowed him to air his grievances live on their Monday night broadcast. If Punk captured the zeitgeist, he’d be a made-man forever in wrestling (which, by my count, is a little over two years). If he failed, he’d be gone, buried back in VA halls wrestling for gas money, and be nothing more than a footnote in WWE’s now 50-year history.
The shoot worked. Punk resigned, and ruled the company with an iron fist until he literally could give no more. The glass ceiling was shattered on the “norm” of the product, and wrestling now is forever changed. Well, maybe not, but I’ll circle back round that idea in a bit.
Why do I bring this up? Well, for one, because it’s topical to me. I was just listening to the podcast on my way home from work tonight. Beyond that, it dawned on me that with all the coverage and snark that exists in the world of comics… there is no C.M. Punk. There is no shoot promo to cut, on any live broadcast. There’s only guys like me; indie creators and op-ed columnists chasing windmills and yelling into the wind. But this here is my stage. This here is my time. So, allow me to speak ill of the industry I wish every damned day I was a part of, but know full well I’ll never actually see.
The WWE’s CEO lives a double life as an on-screen performer. He enjoys his product not only for the money it makes but for the crafted product it actually is. Warner Bros and Disney are just faceless boardrooms ruled not by the glee in little kids’ faces, but cold hard cash. Their publishing branches exist for one reason, and one reason only: to keep the movie and TV machines churning. Don’t think for a second that your issues of Batman mean any more to the execs in Burbank than a roll of teepee. It doesn’t. That rag in your hands? The one that has the blood, sweat, and tears of a dozen hard working men and women broiled into its pulp? It’s an incubator of ideas for a movie or cartoon show. It’s a crockpot keeping the license warm. It’s a mosquito light that keeps the most vocal fans distracted. Go ahead, post your death threats if we make Afflec Batman… but hey! Look over there! It’s Zero Year!
We all desire the notion that those behind the rich mahogany desks (being packed up in Midtown Manhattan in 18 months) lie overgrown fanboys and girls that just want to knock the socks off us, the ever-enduring fans of a dying medium. But it too is just a pipedream. The suits that run your comic book publishing companies are shackled to boulders far too big to drag up the mountain. Beyond the goodwill garnered by our little niche market, and the fervent fans that exist at comic cons lie those aforementioned suits in bigger boardrooms that still demand that at the end of the day everything be profitable. Profits occur when sales increase. Sales increase when gimmicks, #1s, and creators that draw a crowd are given the top spots. When a book stops earning what meager profits it can when it’s hot, it’s tossed out with the bathwater and things start again. The era of continuity is long dead. All hail the retcon.
The closest thing we had to C.M. Punk in comics was Robert Kirkman. He took his indie prowess and love of the craft and turned out The Walking Dead. Now, Kirkman is a suit. Behind a desk. Of a multi-media empire. He won the championship belt, and didn’t even have to work for the man to do it. Now, he is the man, and no longer a voice of the voiceless. Like so many though, atop his mountain of money many years ago he gave birth to his manifesto wherein he challenged the industry to veer towards creator-owned projects. Hey Robbie! Trickle-down economics don’t work in real life or in comics. If every known talent jumped off their pedestals at Marvel and DC to come make indie books at Dark Horse, Image, and Boom! the line to replace them would still be wrapped around the vacant Midtown offices and land somewhere in the opposite ocean. Everyone is replaceable when the end goal is product. Not good product. Just product.
The fact is this: After he changed the world and held the WWE title for longer than any wrestler in the last two decades or so, Punk took a much-needed break. When he returned, he was just as our resurrected Jean Greys, Steve Rogers, or Hal Jordans… a hero to be celebrated for what he was, not who he is now. A long and listless program against his on-screen mentor, and Punk is now booked right back in the mid-card where he started. The comic book industry has no panacea to cure itself of the ills we rally against. Just as the WWE fans buy their John Cena Fruity Pebbles Lunchboxes… so too do we comic fans flock to every worthless gimmick they shove on the racks. We make our excuses, we plunk down our money, and we bitch about it on the Internet later.
The only way to make change, is to make it. There is no utopia. There’s only revolution.
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A lot of fans were upset that the “classic Doctors” were not asked to participate in the anniversary episode (save for McGann, who naturally had to keep his appearance strictly secret), so Peter Davison decided to take matters into his own hands. He wrote and directed The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, a half-hour adventure in which, well, in which Peter Davison takes matters into his own hands about not being asked to participate in the anniversary. He, Colin Baker and 
It’s not often you get to describe an event as being fifty years in the making. even less so do you get to mean it. Three Doctors in three timelines converge to give them all a chance to change a terrible moment in their collective past.
