The Green Death
So here we have the last episode for Jo "I'll make a list" Grant. It was actually pretty good. She decides to go off on an adventure for the first time by herself, without the Doctor, to do things she has her own opinions on, and he finally gets to Mirabillis III, which they've been talking of visiting all season-- she falls in love with someone who reminds her of the Doctor, but younger, while he has a horrible time without a companion. He winds up in southern Wales where she is after she goes missing, and there's much quarry and UNIT and glowing green slime and the word 'fungus' instead of mushroom. And maggots. Two-foot-long mutant maggots. And environmentalism-- she goes to a coal mine where a psycho machine is getting people to dump toxic waste down in the closed shafts, except there's still people mining nearby, and they start getting sick with something that smells like rot and makes them glow green until they're dead. She hangs out with Proffessor Cliff who yells at her much the way the Doctor does, and she's immediately back to being a bumbling walking accident, but she gets to talk more, have opinions of her own, and tries to help with the problem of the freaky-large maggots, which they have to stop before they turn into mutant bugs and fly away.
Dispite Jo's habit lately of falling for guys, this one seems more realistic-- she already knew who he was, and he returned the affection and worried about her when she was stuck down the mineshaft. When he got sick, she did all the could to help him, and when he woke up, he was disarmingly happy to see her. And he was a fairly-well-rounded character who was basically a good man despite being a weird hippy scientist a bit over-fond of fungi. In the end, he asked her to go into the amazon with him and to marry him along the way, and she agreed-- and they actually got to kiss, which I was expecting would be disallowed by the BBC.
And this is really one of the first times we get to see a little of the Doctor's inner life. When Jo and Cliff start getting close, the Doctor tries to make up reasons to keep them apart, and when she decides to leave UNIT and leave him and give up travelling the galaxy for love, the Doctor says goodbye and then leaves the party alone, obviously sad. He yells at her, but he's fond of her, and the fact that she left him for someone who reminds her of him didn't help any.
A good end to the season and a good send-off for Jo, letting her be a person and not just an ankle-twister. I could have done without the BOSS smarmy computer, who got really irritating by the end, but the monsters and disasters main plot was fun.
Next up, Sarah-Jane Smith, and one more season of Pertwee before we get to Doctor Four, Tom Baker.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
weekly roundup 5 - oct 5 to 11 (part 1)
This week has been crazy, guys, so right now it's just a partial review. I haven't had the time to watch all the episodes, and so a few are missing, but here's what I've got, and I'll get back to the rest as soon as I can.
mon: sarah connor, heroes, sarah jane
More pieces falling into place, more allies made-- and more sadness dumped on poor John Connor's shoulders. Episode 5 sees John checking into military school to save someone who will become a major resistance leader, someone who has the actual training to get people organized behind future!John. Dereck manages to get a teaching gig at the same school-- way too conveniently, let me add, as it's just handed to him pretty much against his will. And there's a T-888 like the first one coming after all the Martin Bedells in LA, just like they came after all the Sarah Connors in the beginning, when Sarah became John's mother. She's determined to keep the two remaining ones safe, so she basically kidnaps a 10-ish-year-old moments before Triple8 takes him out, and John goes to military school.
While Sarah's playing mom for this kid, including a book report on John's favorite book (reliving the easier days when John wasn't a rebellious teenager much?), John and Dereck make friends and make plans with the actual Bedell. He's going to run away and get married; but the time he gets through helping to bust a T-888, he stays because he has to, gets the training he knows he'll need, and has bonded with John sufficiently to ensure loyalty later on... though, really, he should have bonded to Dereck, not John, as he's the one who made all the plans, planted all the claymores, organized the kidcruits to act like actual soldiers and finally took Triple8 down.
It was... a bit hasty, plotwise. Not really enough time to get in the depth of loyalty and friendship the episode needed, but at least they have him on their side. I wonder of Marty the younger will fight with them? Sarah promised him that if he needed help ever, she'd come from wherever she is and help him. Gave him a code word and all. And I wonder if the other kid soldiers will be more or less likely to want to go to war after being unwittingly used to stop something that's almost unstoppable?
Subplot land has Ellis investigating the power plant and seeing the damage they call caused a few weeks ago, and deducing that there were two robots who caught each other, which Ms T-1000 didn't know. And she offs the plant manager who was asking too many questions after Ellis mentioned to her that he wanted an investigation that would hold up the full automation of the plant in August 2009. I'm thinking that's the new Judegement Day.
But mostly, this ep serves to give John more info about the future, namely, when some of his friends are going to die, and how tender hearted his dad always was. Being the future leader of mankind sucks in so many ways, not the least of which is knowing that all the future-soldiers you send back are going to die, including the one who will be your dad, and that the people you ally with now are also going to die, and all in your name. I wonder waht kind of mentally messed up crazy future!John is?
Heroes has "Become Death"... only not really. Though they did kill a kid, which surprised me (because we hadn't been given a chance to care all that much). So here's the haps. Future!Claire is a sadist, I'm assuming because she went all super-emo when she couldn't feel pain anymore. Future!Peter messed up one last time by getting hissef killed before he could tell now!Peter what to do. Nathan's hooking up with Tracy who is the last of triplets (so at least we don't need to worry about her more-- she's not, like, a clone batch or something-- at least until they retconn it again). He becomes president, she's the first lady, and he gets killed by now!Peter when he takes future!Syler's abilities and therefore his hunger. So I'm seeing the two of them switch places in the coming season. Future!Syler's a dad, so that's that rumor sorted, but that's the kid that gets killed, and that's the beginning of the end cuz he goes all nuclear and blows away everything. Future!Claire apparently had everything taken from her. And neural-clone!Linderman claims to be an angel.
In subplot land, Parkman eventually marries speeDaphne and they have the hugest baby ever, and all she does in the future is cry. She doesn't survive the Syler-blast, and he witnesses it in the past while hopped up on African walkabout visionquest future-seeing drugs. Also, his totem might be a tortoise, which is far too appropriate. And he's still stuck in Africa. Meanwhile, Hiro and Ando try to escape Level Two and wind up taken to see Mama Pet, who tasks them with saving the formula because he's the only one who can, whatever that means, and he has the key... wich requires digging up a body. Mohinder's taken a turn for the worse, getting angry and violent and more scaly, not to mention slimy and sticky, and future!Mohinder has snaky sorts of sound effects.
So apparently everyone who can afford it or steal it gets powers in the future, and somehow, that leads to the world getting shattered. But President Nathan wants to start an army of mutants, so maybe that's what does it... Yeah, as if this wasn't tangled up enough. I think that web of connections made of yarn is the plot tracker the writers use to keep all this straight. Also, the future's almost as blue as the present is white. Lighting is weird on this show. I'm not even going to guess where this show is going; we're four eps in, and it's already crazy as hell, so I have no idea. But it's fun trying to remember where Peter got all his powers-- shouldn't he be unkillable, too, because he already took Claire's ability, or is this like a secondary mutation that wasn't active at that point?-- and now that Syler and Peter are kind of the same person, that'll be fun to follow.
Sarah Jane, who has faced down the likes of Sontarans and traveled the galaxy is afraid of clowns. Silly.
Anyway, Luke misses Maria, but insists that he doesn't fancy her, even though he's moping and sighing all over the place. They've left it open so that she can come back after she's done with her real-life test scores and can act again, so that's fun. Clyde was trying to be cool about it and act like he doesn't miss her, and when they meet Rani, he was immediately thunderstruck and went about being cool until she wasn't sure she wanted to talk to him. Luke, however, is weird and she likes weird-- she wants to be a reporter, and she is what is sometimes called 'nosy', meaning that the early decision to keep fresh new girl Rani out of the weirdness across the street from her house immediately went out the window.
Kids are disappearing from all around town, and when Clyde and Rani start seeing clowns, of course no one believes them but Sarah Jane, and certainly not Rani's dad, who happens to be the new Headmaster at the school. I'm inclined to think that headmasters are always bad news-- if Dr Who and Buffy have anything to say on the matter-- but he just seems to be tough. Anyway, as a first parter, this is all leading up to getting them in trouble, in the form of a Circus Museum that happens to be run by the Pied Piper who wants to steal all the children, and has already started by stealing the ones with the free tickets that were previously passed out. Sarah Jane is terrified, and so I'm assuming the kids will have to chip in to save themselves so she can face her fear, but that'll have to wait till next week.
tues: fringe
Fringe brings us more weirdness, and a little sinister edge to the dealings. It starts with a bald man who puts all sorts of weird hot things into a sandwich and waits around for a disaster to happen-- which comes right as he's finishing his meal. He goes to investigate and calls it in, unsurprised, as if he knew what it was before it happened.
So the team is called in to investigate this weird stretched-egg thing, and Walter knows what it is without thinking he knows anything about it. With some help from an old firend of Olivia's who was there when the last one happened, they decide it's a torpedo that goes through land instead of the sea. Someone's out to get it and Walter hides it, but Peter is taken hostage to find out where it is-- and gives it away without knowing the answer, because of some creepy wires up his nose.
Blah blah blah chasey chasey, and they wind up where Walter, who's acting very stange, hid the thing, and manage to keep it from falling into enemy hands, byt not from exploding / escaping-- there was a very deep hole, so I can't say what that was supposed to be.
The upshot is that Peter, who had been ready to leave, to the point of calling in favors and having a new life set up for him, is not dedicated to figuring out exactly what happened and says he won't leave anymore, and there's a new player on the scene-- this bald guy, who seems to appear just in time to observe all these patter-related incidents, no matter where they are, and he always looks exactly the same. Weirder still, he was there when Walter ran off an icy road years ago and he saved both Walter and Peter, which may have something to do with Peter's hinted-at medical history, and it forged some sort of link between Water and the Observer, allowing him to have memories he never formed himself.
Will this link matter more later? Is Walter in with the Powers that Pattern? The Observer can get inside people's heads, and I'm sure that'll come back. And Walter lost Astrid the Labtech's trust by drugging her so he could steal the thing, so it'll be fun to see how they sort that out... and hopefully she isn't just being written out.
Not as great an episode as the last one, but it's fast-paced and adds lots more for the wiki-makers to sort out, and it's thickening up nicely.
weds: pushing daisies
Another cute episode, but perhaps a bit sadder. I really liked how in love Ned and Chuck were before, and now with her moving out, even if I entirely understand why, it's got a different dynamic-- more mopey and sad, less cute and shiny. I do like the Aunts getting more out and about, thought, and it's always fun to see them in the Pie Hole and the lengths Chuck goes to not to be seen. And without Olive, I'm super-curious to see what kind of kook they get to work there-- maybe two, if everyone's going to be leaving to solve crimes all the time. Although, the crime solving seems to have dropped out of focus a little... I hate to say it, and maybe it's just the fact that I'm resistant to new things, but it feels ever so slightly off, like they misplaced a bit of the vision when everyone went on hiatus, and that makes me sad. It's still cute and sweet, but it doesn't feel as sublime as it did before.
mon: sarah connor, heroes, sarah jane
More pieces falling into place, more allies made-- and more sadness dumped on poor John Connor's shoulders. Episode 5 sees John checking into military school to save someone who will become a major resistance leader, someone who has the actual training to get people organized behind future!John. Dereck manages to get a teaching gig at the same school-- way too conveniently, let me add, as it's just handed to him pretty much against his will. And there's a T-888 like the first one coming after all the Martin Bedells in LA, just like they came after all the Sarah Connors in the beginning, when Sarah became John's mother. She's determined to keep the two remaining ones safe, so she basically kidnaps a 10-ish-year-old moments before Triple8 takes him out, and John goes to military school.
While Sarah's playing mom for this kid, including a book report on John's favorite book (reliving the easier days when John wasn't a rebellious teenager much?), John and Dereck make friends and make plans with the actual Bedell. He's going to run away and get married; but the time he gets through helping to bust a T-888, he stays because he has to, gets the training he knows he'll need, and has bonded with John sufficiently to ensure loyalty later on... though, really, he should have bonded to Dereck, not John, as he's the one who made all the plans, planted all the claymores, organized the kidcruits to act like actual soldiers and finally took Triple8 down.
It was... a bit hasty, plotwise. Not really enough time to get in the depth of loyalty and friendship the episode needed, but at least they have him on their side. I wonder of Marty the younger will fight with them? Sarah promised him that if he needed help ever, she'd come from wherever she is and help him. Gave him a code word and all. And I wonder if the other kid soldiers will be more or less likely to want to go to war after being unwittingly used to stop something that's almost unstoppable?
Subplot land has Ellis investigating the power plant and seeing the damage they call caused a few weeks ago, and deducing that there were two robots who caught each other, which Ms T-1000 didn't know. And she offs the plant manager who was asking too many questions after Ellis mentioned to her that he wanted an investigation that would hold up the full automation of the plant in August 2009. I'm thinking that's the new Judegement Day.
But mostly, this ep serves to give John more info about the future, namely, when some of his friends are going to die, and how tender hearted his dad always was. Being the future leader of mankind sucks in so many ways, not the least of which is knowing that all the future-soldiers you send back are going to die, including the one who will be your dad, and that the people you ally with now are also going to die, and all in your name. I wonder waht kind of mentally messed up crazy future!John is?
Heroes has "Become Death"... only not really. Though they did kill a kid, which surprised me (because we hadn't been given a chance to care all that much). So here's the haps. Future!Claire is a sadist, I'm assuming because she went all super-emo when she couldn't feel pain anymore. Future!Peter messed up one last time by getting hissef killed before he could tell now!Peter what to do. Nathan's hooking up with Tracy who is the last of triplets (so at least we don't need to worry about her more-- she's not, like, a clone batch or something-- at least until they retconn it again). He becomes president, she's the first lady, and he gets killed by now!Peter when he takes future!Syler's abilities and therefore his hunger. So I'm seeing the two of them switch places in the coming season. Future!Syler's a dad, so that's that rumor sorted, but that's the kid that gets killed, and that's the beginning of the end cuz he goes all nuclear and blows away everything. Future!Claire apparently had everything taken from her. And neural-clone!Linderman claims to be an angel.
In subplot land, Parkman eventually marries speeDaphne and they have the hugest baby ever, and all she does in the future is cry. She doesn't survive the Syler-blast, and he witnesses it in the past while hopped up on African walkabout visionquest future-seeing drugs. Also, his totem might be a tortoise, which is far too appropriate. And he's still stuck in Africa. Meanwhile, Hiro and Ando try to escape Level Two and wind up taken to see Mama Pet, who tasks them with saving the formula because he's the only one who can, whatever that means, and he has the key... wich requires digging up a body. Mohinder's taken a turn for the worse, getting angry and violent and more scaly, not to mention slimy and sticky, and future!Mohinder has snaky sorts of sound effects.
So apparently everyone who can afford it or steal it gets powers in the future, and somehow, that leads to the world getting shattered. But President Nathan wants to start an army of mutants, so maybe that's what does it... Yeah, as if this wasn't tangled up enough. I think that web of connections made of yarn is the plot tracker the writers use to keep all this straight. Also, the future's almost as blue as the present is white. Lighting is weird on this show. I'm not even going to guess where this show is going; we're four eps in, and it's already crazy as hell, so I have no idea. But it's fun trying to remember where Peter got all his powers-- shouldn't he be unkillable, too, because he already took Claire's ability, or is this like a secondary mutation that wasn't active at that point?-- and now that Syler and Peter are kind of the same person, that'll be fun to follow.
Sarah Jane, who has faced down the likes of Sontarans and traveled the galaxy is afraid of clowns. Silly.
Anyway, Luke misses Maria, but insists that he doesn't fancy her, even though he's moping and sighing all over the place. They've left it open so that she can come back after she's done with her real-life test scores and can act again, so that's fun. Clyde was trying to be cool about it and act like he doesn't miss her, and when they meet Rani, he was immediately thunderstruck and went about being cool until she wasn't sure she wanted to talk to him. Luke, however, is weird and she likes weird-- she wants to be a reporter, and she is what is sometimes called 'nosy', meaning that the early decision to keep fresh new girl Rani out of the weirdness across the street from her house immediately went out the window.
Kids are disappearing from all around town, and when Clyde and Rani start seeing clowns, of course no one believes them but Sarah Jane, and certainly not Rani's dad, who happens to be the new Headmaster at the school. I'm inclined to think that headmasters are always bad news-- if Dr Who and Buffy have anything to say on the matter-- but he just seems to be tough. Anyway, as a first parter, this is all leading up to getting them in trouble, in the form of a Circus Museum that happens to be run by the Pied Piper who wants to steal all the children, and has already started by stealing the ones with the free tickets that were previously passed out. Sarah Jane is terrified, and so I'm assuming the kids will have to chip in to save themselves so she can face her fear, but that'll have to wait till next week.
tues: fringe
Fringe brings us more weirdness, and a little sinister edge to the dealings. It starts with a bald man who puts all sorts of weird hot things into a sandwich and waits around for a disaster to happen-- which comes right as he's finishing his meal. He goes to investigate and calls it in, unsurprised, as if he knew what it was before it happened.
So the team is called in to investigate this weird stretched-egg thing, and Walter knows what it is without thinking he knows anything about it. With some help from an old firend of Olivia's who was there when the last one happened, they decide it's a torpedo that goes through land instead of the sea. Someone's out to get it and Walter hides it, but Peter is taken hostage to find out where it is-- and gives it away without knowing the answer, because of some creepy wires up his nose.
Blah blah blah chasey chasey, and they wind up where Walter, who's acting very stange, hid the thing, and manage to keep it from falling into enemy hands, byt not from exploding / escaping-- there was a very deep hole, so I can't say what that was supposed to be.
The upshot is that Peter, who had been ready to leave, to the point of calling in favors and having a new life set up for him, is not dedicated to figuring out exactly what happened and says he won't leave anymore, and there's a new player on the scene-- this bald guy, who seems to appear just in time to observe all these patter-related incidents, no matter where they are, and he always looks exactly the same. Weirder still, he was there when Walter ran off an icy road years ago and he saved both Walter and Peter, which may have something to do with Peter's hinted-at medical history, and it forged some sort of link between Water and the Observer, allowing him to have memories he never formed himself.
Will this link matter more later? Is Walter in with the Powers that Pattern? The Observer can get inside people's heads, and I'm sure that'll come back. And Walter lost Astrid the Labtech's trust by drugging her so he could steal the thing, so it'll be fun to see how they sort that out... and hopefully she isn't just being written out.
Not as great an episode as the last one, but it's fast-paced and adds lots more for the wiki-makers to sort out, and it's thickening up nicely.
weds: pushing daisies
Another cute episode, but perhaps a bit sadder. I really liked how in love Ned and Chuck were before, and now with her moving out, even if I entirely understand why, it's got a different dynamic-- more mopey and sad, less cute and shiny. I do like the Aunts getting more out and about, thought, and it's always fun to see them in the Pie Hole and the lengths Chuck goes to not to be seen. And without Olive, I'm super-curious to see what kind of kook they get to work there-- maybe two, if everyone's going to be leaving to solve crimes all the time. Although, the crime solving seems to have dropped out of focus a little... I hate to say it, and maybe it's just the fact that I'm resistant to new things, but it feels ever so slightly off, like they misplaced a bit of the vision when everyone went on hiatus, and that makes me sad. It's still cute and sweet, but it doesn't feel as sublime as it did before.
news: week 5
AMC is picking up Red Mars
Those who might have been the Doctor
Eight Cheap Tricks for Dr Who 4.5
Companions that might have been
Tom Baker to come back to Who?
Den of Geek revisits X-Files, one episode at a time
Details of Dr Who Series 4 DVD Special Features
Some predictions on Heroes So3
These are some of my thoughts exactly on SCC and it's immanent cancellation
Though it seems the rumors are unsubtantiated (says Fox, who we don't trust)
Classic 80s Scifi V is returning!
More reviews of the Series 4 Box Set, including a nice look at deleted scenes I can't wait to get my hands on.
The Seven Doctors up for Children in Need?
Those who might have been the Doctor
Eight Cheap Tricks for Dr Who 4.5
Companions that might have been
Tom Baker to come back to Who?
Den of Geek revisits X-Files, one episode at a time
Details of Dr Who Series 4 DVD Special Features
Some predictions on Heroes So3
These are some of my thoughts exactly on SCC and it's immanent cancellation
Though it seems the rumors are unsubtantiated (says Fox, who we don't trust)
Classic 80s Scifi V is returning!
More reviews of the Series 4 Box Set, including a nice look at deleted scenes I can't wait to get my hands on.
The Seven Doctors up for Children in Need?
movies: cloverfield
Yeah, I know, an old one, and if you're tired of hearing about it, I won't hold it against you if you don't read this review. Much. No, really. Go ahead and ignore me.
I've managed to stay fairly clean of spoilers, so other than the previews and trailers during commercial breaks, I didn't really know what to expect other than shaky camera and a lot of running. I liked it. The party scene went on almost longer than it needed to, and I was starting to get bored with it to the point where when they finally got out on the fire-escape and I recognized the setting from the trailer, I was relived, but I liked it. I don't think it was the best movie in the world, and I don't think it's even the best thing that JJA has had his hands on, but I liked the idea and it was a fresh voice in the glut of monster / apocalypse movies that I do so love and have probably seen far too many of. The frame story that this was found after the fact and is classified government info added a neat edge of conspiracy.
The monster was not like anything I've ever seen, and that meant that even when they were showing it-- earlier and with more clarity then I'd thought to get-- none of it made any sense to me, and that was great. If it's an alien, there's no reason it would make sense. And the parasites were almost scarier than the monster-- they were on a human scale, able to attack directly, and made it almost impossible to hide. I think the scenes in the subway tunnels were some of the best, and that that's what similar scenes in 28 Weeks Later should have been like. And that bleeding-eye body-asplody that happened from the bites? Unexpected and really gross. The characters were nicely human, scared, jabbering stupidly and latching on to random parts of what was happening, like you do in traumatic situations, blindly heroic because that's really all you can be like that-- better to die doing something then alone and hiding, right? And the random flashes of that one perfect day before everything went to hell pretty much accomplised the whole juxtaposition thing. It was real enough to get my brain going along those 'what would I do in this situation?' pathways, and that's really harder to accomplish than a plain gutteral fight or flight reaction. Adrenaline is mindless, but this managed to get inside my head and creep me out, though in the end it was more suspenseful then scary.
Don't read the Wikipedia page before hand, and really, don't read it after, either. The backstory somehow manages to make it less cool and more stupid.
There's talk of a sequel, and that makes me nervous. The only way I think it would be interesting would be if it was the same story from a radically different angle-- there were thousands of people in the City, and someone else must have recorded it (or several someones-- it'd be cool to see the thing from, say, five different angles, all different, all with differing goals, spliced together to give us a clearer look at the event). Other then that, something post-apocalyptic, the clean-up and dealing with the parasites might be neat, but I think it would be a different movie, a different subgenre. There was talk that this was a juvenile, and if it's not dead, as the credits seem to hint, a full adult might bring down the whole world-- and the concept art looks interestingly cthulu-esque, but if there's no way to stop it, it'll be harder to make the story anything but hopeless and depressing. A second Cloverfield will have to be more interesting to get out of the shadows of the first and to justify it's own existence, or it might as well not even happen.
I've managed to stay fairly clean of spoilers, so other than the previews and trailers during commercial breaks, I didn't really know what to expect other than shaky camera and a lot of running. I liked it. The party scene went on almost longer than it needed to, and I was starting to get bored with it to the point where when they finally got out on the fire-escape and I recognized the setting from the trailer, I was relived, but I liked it. I don't think it was the best movie in the world, and I don't think it's even the best thing that JJA has had his hands on, but I liked the idea and it was a fresh voice in the glut of monster / apocalypse movies that I do so love and have probably seen far too many of. The frame story that this was found after the fact and is classified government info added a neat edge of conspiracy.
The monster was not like anything I've ever seen, and that meant that even when they were showing it-- earlier and with more clarity then I'd thought to get-- none of it made any sense to me, and that was great. If it's an alien, there's no reason it would make sense. And the parasites were almost scarier than the monster-- they were on a human scale, able to attack directly, and made it almost impossible to hide. I think the scenes in the subway tunnels were some of the best, and that that's what similar scenes in 28 Weeks Later should have been like. And that bleeding-eye body-asplody that happened from the bites? Unexpected and really gross. The characters were nicely human, scared, jabbering stupidly and latching on to random parts of what was happening, like you do in traumatic situations, blindly heroic because that's really all you can be like that-- better to die doing something then alone and hiding, right? And the random flashes of that one perfect day before everything went to hell pretty much accomplised the whole juxtaposition thing. It was real enough to get my brain going along those 'what would I do in this situation?' pathways, and that's really harder to accomplish than a plain gutteral fight or flight reaction. Adrenaline is mindless, but this managed to get inside my head and creep me out, though in the end it was more suspenseful then scary.
Don't read the Wikipedia page before hand, and really, don't read it after, either. The backstory somehow manages to make it less cool and more stupid.
There's talk of a sequel, and that makes me nervous. The only way I think it would be interesting would be if it was the same story from a radically different angle-- there were thousands of people in the City, and someone else must have recorded it (or several someones-- it'd be cool to see the thing from, say, five different angles, all different, all with differing goals, spliced together to give us a clearer look at the event). Other then that, something post-apocalyptic, the clean-up and dealing with the parasites might be neat, but I think it would be a different movie, a different subgenre. There was talk that this was a juvenile, and if it's not dead, as the credits seem to hint, a full adult might bring down the whole world-- and the concept art looks interestingly cthulu-esque, but if there's no way to stop it, it'll be harder to make the story anything but hopeless and depressing. A second Cloverfield will have to be more interesting to get out of the shadows of the first and to justify it's own existence, or it might as well not even happen.
side project: nu who revisted
Gridlock and Daleks in Manhattan
I mostly remember series three as sub-par. I didn't love Martha (hertofore called Marfa), and I wasn't a fan of the tone of the season. But we watched all of it before introducing it to D, and we've been re-watching it in a piecemeal sort of way to catch him up with where we are now. Tonight, we watched eps three and four.
Gridlock was one of the better episodes of the season, and I did remember liking it, but I didn't remember a whole lot about the events in it. The Doctor and Marfa land on New Earth and quickly get separated, Marfa taken into the depths of permanent traffic jams and the Doctor to a Senate where only Novice Haim and The Face of Boe are still alive, and it's up to the Doctor to put everything right, as usual. The plot is fun, but it's the characters that make this episode-- Brannigan the Cat and his lovely human wife and their litter of hybrid kittens who have never seen the ground; The Sisters, who are actually a married lesbian couple who have been on the road for twenty three years; all the random characters the Doctor drops down on as he hops from car to car, looking for Marfa before Haim kidnaps him. It's fun and it's straight forward, and it's good Who. Not the best, not like Blink, but good, and definitely a high point of the season. But even this is haunted by the fact that the Doctor's heart is broken and he's in willing denial, trying to start over with Marfa without really letting her know anything at all about why he won't talk about things and where he's from and what he's running from. We get some stories of Gallifrey in the end, and it sounds lovely, and we get the all important "you are not alone" that will define the end of the season, but that's not the point of this ep. The point is the Doctor being the Doctor and saving people.
Daleks in Manhattan is another issue all together. It's just not good. I'll admit that on my second watch through, it's not as bad as I remembered, but I know how bad it's going to get, and I think it's because now I know how it all goes, I can be more forgiving. There isn't the shock of it's badness smacking me in the face like before. But it's still bad. Why are there pig slaves? Why pigs? And there's no wait on the big bad's reveal. I mean, we know it's Daleks, but they're right there, plain as day, in the first fifteen minutes and that leaves nothing to the imagination and flattens any excitement the reveal might have had. The Doctor plays with a squishy jellyfish that has no purpose by to tell him where it's from, there's Tallulah who could stand to be less annoying, though I do like her love-conquers-all approach to the fact that her boyfriend's a pig now, and then-- then there's that whole crap with the Worst Villain Evar. D's reaction when he was revealed: 'seriously??', and mine back 'yeah. see?', and then he understood why we didn't want to rewatch this one. The season would be better if these two eps were just removed-- or, better yet, if they were replaced with something better. When I first watched this season as it aired, this was almost enough to make me walk away entirely, and only my love of a certain lead male kept me watching, hoping it would improve, and this two-part set is a large part of why I didn't like this season. One and two were so good, so rich, everything worked and even the dumb eps were passable, but three... three feels like it's limping, damaged, things are missing. If that's what they were aiming for, they hit it dead on. But mostly I think it was missing the joy; a heatbroken Doctor screams too much and has that horrible about-to-cry face that I can hardly stand to look at. And the lack in this season allows this ep to just fall flat.
I mostly remember series three as sub-par. I didn't love Martha (hertofore called Marfa), and I wasn't a fan of the tone of the season. But we watched all of it before introducing it to D, and we've been re-watching it in a piecemeal sort of way to catch him up with where we are now. Tonight, we watched eps three and four.
Gridlock was one of the better episodes of the season, and I did remember liking it, but I didn't remember a whole lot about the events in it. The Doctor and Marfa land on New Earth and quickly get separated, Marfa taken into the depths of permanent traffic jams and the Doctor to a Senate where only Novice Haim and The Face of Boe are still alive, and it's up to the Doctor to put everything right, as usual. The plot is fun, but it's the characters that make this episode-- Brannigan the Cat and his lovely human wife and their litter of hybrid kittens who have never seen the ground; The Sisters, who are actually a married lesbian couple who have been on the road for twenty three years; all the random characters the Doctor drops down on as he hops from car to car, looking for Marfa before Haim kidnaps him. It's fun and it's straight forward, and it's good Who. Not the best, not like Blink, but good, and definitely a high point of the season. But even this is haunted by the fact that the Doctor's heart is broken and he's in willing denial, trying to start over with Marfa without really letting her know anything at all about why he won't talk about things and where he's from and what he's running from. We get some stories of Gallifrey in the end, and it sounds lovely, and we get the all important "you are not alone" that will define the end of the season, but that's not the point of this ep. The point is the Doctor being the Doctor and saving people.
Daleks in Manhattan is another issue all together. It's just not good. I'll admit that on my second watch through, it's not as bad as I remembered, but I know how bad it's going to get, and I think it's because now I know how it all goes, I can be more forgiving. There isn't the shock of it's badness smacking me in the face like before. But it's still bad. Why are there pig slaves? Why pigs? And there's no wait on the big bad's reveal. I mean, we know it's Daleks, but they're right there, plain as day, in the first fifteen minutes and that leaves nothing to the imagination and flattens any excitement the reveal might have had. The Doctor plays with a squishy jellyfish that has no purpose by to tell him where it's from, there's Tallulah who could stand to be less annoying, though I do like her love-conquers-all approach to the fact that her boyfriend's a pig now, and then-- then there's that whole crap with the Worst Villain Evar. D's reaction when he was revealed: 'seriously??', and mine back 'yeah. see?', and then he understood why we didn't want to rewatch this one. The season would be better if these two eps were just removed-- or, better yet, if they were replaced with something better. When I first watched this season as it aired, this was almost enough to make me walk away entirely, and only my love of a certain lead male kept me watching, hoping it would improve, and this two-part set is a large part of why I didn't like this season. One and two were so good, so rich, everything worked and even the dumb eps were passable, but three... three feels like it's limping, damaged, things are missing. If that's what they were aiming for, they hit it dead on. But mostly I think it was missing the joy; a heatbroken Doctor screams too much and has that horrible about-to-cry face that I can hardly stand to look at. And the lack in this season allows this ep to just fall flat.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
side project week 5: classic who
This week brings us Planet of the Daleks!
Which totally doesn't deserve that exclamation point at all. I found it long and boring, and weird in that what-were-they-thinking way. Liquid ice that never hardens? A whole planetary core made of it? A jungle that the Daleks want to trundle around in? Plants that spit tobacco juice that makes a gross fungal coating that has nothing to do with anything except that Jo gets it and spends a big portion of the serial unconscious? Big hairy purple creatures?? A guy that Jo falls in love with, only to very easily tell him no, which he doesn't fight at all, knowing that she's leaving at the end of the next serial?
Not at all impressed. Hopefully the last Jo story will show her at her best so she can go out on a high note.
Which totally doesn't deserve that exclamation point at all. I found it long and boring, and weird in that what-were-they-thinking way. Liquid ice that never hardens? A whole planetary core made of it? A jungle that the Daleks want to trundle around in? Plants that spit tobacco juice that makes a gross fungal coating that has nothing to do with anything except that Jo gets it and spends a big portion of the serial unconscious? Big hairy purple creatures?? A guy that Jo falls in love with, only to very easily tell him no, which he doesn't fight at all, knowing that she's leaving at the end of the next serial?
Not at all impressed. Hopefully the last Jo story will show her at her best so she can go out on a high note.
books: fool moon, book two of the dresden files
I'm always a little leery of reading a second book in a series when I really enjoyed the first one, on the chance that it'll suck and ruin it for me (not that it kept me from diving right in this time...). I'm glad to say, however, that the series continues nicely, and somehow manages to top itself here in the second book of the series, which I read-- no, devoured-- in an equally short amount of time.
Book two finds our Harry up against werewolves. And not just any weres, but ALL the weres, all four main kinds of wolf-person there are. Add in mobsters, Internal Affairs, the FBI, and an old apprentice, and you've got the fixings for another crazy adventure.
What I like best about these books is how Harry is entirely believable. He's got all the powers, sure, but he's also got a heart and a mind that are understandable and caring, and no matter how messed up things get, no matter how far behind the badguys' plans he is, he always goes for what's right, and when things go very wrong, he's willing to power through even if it means he'll definitely wind up dead. Though he hasn't yet (and there's eight more books after this)(though, with this weird world, I wouldn't put it past him to die and keep going).
Things are tense with Murphy who thinks he's betrayed her. Things are heating up with Susan who isn't just after stories now. Marcone's plotting and planning and trying to get Harry on his side. Baby weres are looking up to him. Magic is all crazy all the time.
The show was never this great.
Book two finds our Harry up against werewolves. And not just any weres, but ALL the weres, all four main kinds of wolf-person there are. Add in mobsters, Internal Affairs, the FBI, and an old apprentice, and you've got the fixings for another crazy adventure.
What I like best about these books is how Harry is entirely believable. He's got all the powers, sure, but he's also got a heart and a mind that are understandable and caring, and no matter how messed up things get, no matter how far behind the badguys' plans he is, he always goes for what's right, and when things go very wrong, he's willing to power through even if it means he'll definitely wind up dead. Though he hasn't yet (and there's eight more books after this)(though, with this weird world, I wouldn't put it past him to die and keep going).
Things are tense with Murphy who thinks he's betrayed her. Things are heating up with Susan who isn't just after stories now. Marcone's plotting and planning and trying to get Harry on his side. Baby weres are looking up to him. Magic is all crazy all the time.
The show was never this great.
Monday, October 6, 2008
books: storm front, book one of the dresden files
By Jim Bucher
Meet Harry Dresden. Chicago's only openly practicing Wizard.
If you've seen the show, you know the basic idea of what the story's about: scruffy, poor wizard tries to solve crimes like a sort of magical PI-- more of the noir type then the Magnum type. He's got no money, he's never sleeping or eating enough, he's stubbornly old-fashioned, cocky, self-assured in an entirely lunatic way sometimes, and he's used to walking the lines between crazy and law-abiding. He works with Murphy in the Police Department to solve weird cases of a magical sort to supplement the little money he makes on his own.
Book One starts with three problems: A police case where people's hearts are blown out, a scared woman looking for her husband, and the Mob wanting to pay him not to bother with either. And from there, it all gets weird.
Guys, it's a really fun book to read. I started late Saturday night, and had it finished by 1:30 this morning, and that was with time off to do actual day-time things like clean the house, cook dinner and go to the store at eleven thirty for groceries. It's well-written in a way that isn't at all self-complicating-- all first person, all inside Harry's head, and while his magical skills give him extra insight, he's really just a normal guy with a strong sense of right and wrong, duty and debt, and he knows when he messes up, knows when he's not being nice and has to and feels bad about it, and is resigned to the fact that he can't really have a normal life, but still isn't all that happy about it. He's an appealing POV, a man who knows what he has to do and tries his best to do it right, and when things go wrong, still tries to get the right thing done, even if it means his death, and even if he's got a mystical death sentence hanging over him, restricting what he's allowed to do.
There's fairies, ghosts, all sorts of spirits and demons, a black wizard, conjured monsters, Mafioso, a tabloid reporter with unclear motives, damsels in distress, chicks that'll kick your ass, really neat magic...
When I finished this one, I went up stairs to my neighbor's house and immediately borrowed the next one, and started it before I went to bed. There's nine more to go: let's see how they hold up, shall we?
Meet Harry Dresden. Chicago's only openly practicing Wizard.
If you've seen the show, you know the basic idea of what the story's about: scruffy, poor wizard tries to solve crimes like a sort of magical PI-- more of the noir type then the Magnum type. He's got no money, he's never sleeping or eating enough, he's stubbornly old-fashioned, cocky, self-assured in an entirely lunatic way sometimes, and he's used to walking the lines between crazy and law-abiding. He works with Murphy in the Police Department to solve weird cases of a magical sort to supplement the little money he makes on his own.
Book One starts with three problems: A police case where people's hearts are blown out, a scared woman looking for her husband, and the Mob wanting to pay him not to bother with either. And from there, it all gets weird.
Guys, it's a really fun book to read. I started late Saturday night, and had it finished by 1:30 this morning, and that was with time off to do actual day-time things like clean the house, cook dinner and go to the store at eleven thirty for groceries. It's well-written in a way that isn't at all self-complicating-- all first person, all inside Harry's head, and while his magical skills give him extra insight, he's really just a normal guy with a strong sense of right and wrong, duty and debt, and he knows when he messes up, knows when he's not being nice and has to and feels bad about it, and is resigned to the fact that he can't really have a normal life, but still isn't all that happy about it. He's an appealing POV, a man who knows what he has to do and tries his best to do it right, and when things go wrong, still tries to get the right thing done, even if it means his death, and even if he's got a mystical death sentence hanging over him, restricting what he's allowed to do.
There's fairies, ghosts, all sorts of spirits and demons, a black wizard, conjured monsters, Mafioso, a tabloid reporter with unclear motives, damsels in distress, chicks that'll kick your ass, really neat magic...
When I finished this one, I went up stairs to my neighbor's house and immediately borrowed the next one, and started it before I went to bed. There's nine more to go: let's see how they hold up, shall we?
Weekly Roundup 4 - Sept 28 to Oct 4
sun: true blood
Okay, so one thing true blood has going for it is weirdness. Jason's accused of murder for the second time in four episodes, and when he's in cuffs in the back of the cop car, he downs that v-juice he got last ep. Tara gets him out by lying directly to the cops saying she's Jason's alliby, which complicates things because she was with Sam that night. And all the v-juice goes right to J's little man, and he gets a case of 'accute priapism' which is both funny and gross. We never get to see it, but with the looks on everyone's faces, including the doctor, I think it's better that way-- imagination is way stronger than reality sometimes. Meanwhile, Gram asks Sookie to listen in on people's brains, and everyone just wants to see her brother hang and knows nothing-- except Hoit, who's probably the sweetest one on the show-- so she decides to go check out this vampire bar both the dead girls were known to visit.
Now, this bar-- Fangtasia, which is so cheesy it's great-- is something like the way puritanical churchies think goth clubs are, except the vamps are real. And it was less scary then I thought it should be the way everyone's going on about it. Kinda like the vamp-gang from last ep. There's a fine line between stupid and cool when you're being a vamp, and most of those we've seen are like people playing dressup. Bill's got that Angel I-feel-bad-for-killing-people thing, and then there's Eric, who sits like a king and has the Curse of Eternal Coolness. Watch him walk through that door and see if he isn't neat. Though, it's better if he doesn't talk.
Anyway, the bar scene was a letdown, but it's made up for with Bill freaking out a county sheriff that pulls him and Sookie over on the way back. Finally a little vampire mojo! Though I do feel a little bad for the guy.
And then, just in case the weirdness wasn't at a high enough level, Sam breaks into deadgirl's house and starts sniffing all over the bed where she was found, rolling around in the smell of her-- just like a dog. Yup, I'm sure there's something going on with that boy now.
I don't think this episodes was as enthralling as the previous three, but this is the point when a show has to actually get itself into a plot, so that's okay. Story happened. Let's see what happens next week.
mon: sarah connor, heroes
Cameron's acting really weird now, reverting to previous versions of herself and apparently confusing herself for the real human she was based on. It makes cam really really creepy as well as more unstable than before, and it makes her history more convoluted-- she was 'chosen' by John in the future, probably because she already knew him in his past. We already sort of knew that he chose her to reprogram because he already knew her-- but if he already knew T-Cam, and then chose Real!Cam for whatever reason, and then remade T-Cam because of that... Time travel implications mess with my head. There's alot going on with Cameron and John, in the current time and in the future, and if there's romantic feelings on one side or the other, and if John remembers all this stuff already...
It must really suck to be the one who has to organize all the time-travel that will result in the life you already have.
Anyway, the episode was neat, no explosions, but lots of new pieces of the puzzle, with John doing things on his own and Dereck nowhere to be seen. In subplot-land, Ellis takes the job with Terminator!CEO, who has a daughter (huh? can Terminators have babies now? Is she also based on a real person? Is the daughter a clone or something?), and a crash that left her without a husband and with a driving need to find the stuff that will be Skynet. (More questions: Does she not know that she's the same as the robots, even though she obviously has full control of shape-shifting? Was her husband another posing terminator, and it's his arm that was in those pictures, or is she doing the play-human bit to get to whoever that husband was? Was she the 'mechanical error'? Is Ellis to blame for Skynet happening anyway, now that previous blame-ees have been stopped? Why's it always gotta be a black man? I'm sure there's a paper in there somewhere...) And Casey went into false labor and had some bonding time with Sarah, which is interesting because she's really the first mother Sarah's had any real interaction with that we've seen, and she's so very very normal. But I still think there must be something special about that baby they keep making up stories for.
This week's Heroes still has too much going on, but it might be okay if they can pull it all together... though their track record on that is not so great. Anyway, Parkman may not be a useless lump after all, Tracy is apparently part of a Samantha Mulder-esque clone batch (so I guess she can die hundreds of times and not leave the show) and Micah took her appearance remarkably well, future!Peter is trying to clean up his messes, Mama Pet is kinda creepy and acting like an incestuous cougar, Syler's having little crises of the existential variety while using his new job to nomnom more powers, HRG is plotting and planning, Hiro is still fumbling stuff and Ando is 'tired of being your sidekick' which doesn't bode well in light of the flash-forward, Claire is going all freelance and we know how that turns out... so yeah. Alot going on. But at least we didn't have to waste time on Mohinder-Fly and Now-Wimpy-Maya. I don't know. Always when I'm watching this show, I feel like it's making sense and being entertaining, but then when I talk about it later, it really doesn't and kind of isn't, but it feels like they're actually trying to make it work. I think they need to stop introducing new characters, though, because, I mean, the German was not so great, and Jesse is now nom-ed, and Baldy McFlame-On is back in jail with Knox the Angry, and that's four of the twelve down, and we haven't even met the other eight yet. Introduce and toss away. We've already got more than we can follow, guys.
tues: fringe
Fringe was on fire tonight. The plot was tight and made sense, the characters were true to themselves, there was a good mystery, and there were good questions raised. Peter has reached a believeable point where he isn't going to go off the handle and leave, and there's a new player in this game: the Observer... who almost seems like he isn't quite human. We get to hear a little more about this weird medical history of Peter's-- a terrible accident when he was a kid, which doesn't rule out weirder things, and, in fact, gives an opportunity for them. And there's a weird connection between Walter and the observer that I hope they get back to.
See, this is what the show promised it could be when I watched the pilot. Tight, sharp, strange. Good characters with lots of issues they have to work through. Lots of back story we don't know and have to explore. Show mythos that feels right, rather than tacked on and nonsensical. I can see how that same mythos can drown it-- it happened to X-Files, and it's happening to Lost-- but at this point, four eps in, I can also see how it can expand and enrich the show and make it like this all the time. Episodes 2 and 3 were good, but this one was great. And this is how I want it to always be.
wed: daisies
Pushing Daisies is back! And what a fun weird episode. Chuck gets a job! Olive moves away to a nunnery! Chuck moves into Olive's house! The aunts go outside of their own accord and without thinking about it!
It starts off months after the previous season left off, which makes me hate the strike even more, because it feels like I was cheated of watching fun stories that happened in the meantime. There was a bee-related death, which means only Chuck has the experience needed to go undercover. The design of the Betty Bee company makes me want to live in a bee hive and / or hire everyone who does the set design for this show to build a house for me. Missy Pyle was fun and weird, and delivered those introductory speeches just amazingly, and French Stewart was silly in a way just disturbing enough to be a villain. But it wasn't really the story that was great so much as everyone's interactions, and now that Olive's gone, I wonder if we'll get a new kooky waitress? I wonder if Chuck will keep her honey-soaked new job? And I hope the Aunts have more to do with the lovely saturated-color world they all live in.
thurs: supernatural, knightrider
Oh my, how the Winchester boys manage to get in trouble. Castiel sends Dean back in time to the moment when the curse happened-- and found out his family was not the way he thought it was, and there was no way to change it. He still has no mom, the Demon still kills everyone, but he gets to meet his grandpa Asistant Director Skinner, which is where his grumpy skeptic strak comes from. You know, this is a very fatalistic show-- they all fave a destiny, and even angels can't change it.
Anyway, the whole point was to show him exactly how it happened so that he can stop whatever the End Game is-- whatever Sam is off with demons doing. And if Dean can't stop it, Heaven will. While it might be interesting to see someone Struck Down, there's still most of a season to go, and leaving only one brother will really change the dynamic.
Of course, this is a two parter, which means I have no idea what happens and I have to scratch at my eyeballs for a week waiting for the conclusion, but it's the sort of captivating that means I will tune in again, so I guess they accomplished their goal. I wonder if anyone will point out that Dean being there is what introduced his mom to the family demon-- before his foreknowledge of events in the early seventies, the Campbell hunter clan wouldn't have gone to see Liddy, and so wouldn't have met Azazael (who was in Hex on the Beeb, wasn't he?), and the family wouldn't have been cursed. But, also, if fate is decided and nothing can be changed, he was already there anyway, and the loop in his timeline is unchangable, and his being there was because that's where he was meant to be, not because he was sent there. Ah, temporal paradox. If I ever write that paper on the subject, I have more fodder.
Before I tell you about Knight Rider, let me just say: Coolest. Interface. Evar. I want my computer to be as cool as the ones they use. And if I can flick a screen from a handheld to the hood of a car, all the better. Also, Kitt has a built in printer AND a matter replicator??? Why do I not have a car like this?
Anyway, it was bound to happen: a show about cars decides to do racing for pinks. And there's the prerequisite bony hot chick. See, I'm a girl, and I'm not all that into cars, but I am into computers, and things that go fast are always an easy way to bypass the ovaries, so this was fun. Exciting. There's racing, there's explosions, there's grand theft auto! It's great that badguys are lousy shots, too, because they would have trashed that cherry ride Sarah has gone through all the trouble to jack.
More racing! And the inevitable betrayal of someone we've never seen before who's introduced as a most-trusted old friend. It's not every day you see a girl get pistol-whipped, but what pisses me off is that she stopped fighting after that-- until it was time to kick someone to stop them from burrying her in the desert up to her neck. The one Chang Brother kept getting punched in the face, and the other kept being coldly angry, and that's about all they had. Oh, and they were selling classified tech to the Chinese or something. Blah blah blah explosions!
And in subplot news, Michael's tattoo somehow was read by Kitt's hood-screen and made a bunch of files pop up that they didn't have time to read before the baddies came. What happened in those Captain-Jack-esque missing years?
fri: sanctuary
Sanctuary is cool. A little slow and talky, but it makes up for it with the action. Even knowing that all the backgrounds are CGI and greenscreen, it's gorgeous, and the story moves at a nice pace. Helen Magnus is way different than Sam Carter, and that helps get past that issue, and as Helen, she gets to be all soft and pretty in a way Carter never really could be. Will Zimmerman is only passingly like Daniel Jackson. And the Sanctuary itself is full of fun and freaky monsters and mythical people. I especially liked the design of the mermaid, with her scaly body and sea-weed hair. It's one part zoo, one part embassy, and one part Torchwood Hub, all of which is fine by me.
But the best is that there's a lot of room for the show to grow. It's set up as a monster of the week show, with the twist that they're saving the monsters to better understand them and help them survive in a modern world. That pretty much allows them to do whatever they like along the way. And Helen is a big ball of mysteries that I think will only get more tangled as the show progresses. The pilot only barely touched on her past and how the Sanctuary happened-- apparently by the 1880s, she was already special and knew enough about her specialness that she was helping strange people, and I'm assuming that that was the start of the Sanctuary. And there's hints that the baddie of the week isn't the only one, and that she may actually be one of them.
All in all, a good start. Atmospheric, fun, full of action and distinct, fun characters as well as really cool weird people, and enough mystery already to keep me interested, even if it was a bit talky and the 'sets' were a bit... cold? That's kind of the fallback of anything fully CGI, though, so I can get over that. Here's to hoping it only gets better.
Okay, so one thing true blood has going for it is weirdness. Jason's accused of murder for the second time in four episodes, and when he's in cuffs in the back of the cop car, he downs that v-juice he got last ep. Tara gets him out by lying directly to the cops saying she's Jason's alliby, which complicates things because she was with Sam that night. And all the v-juice goes right to J's little man, and he gets a case of 'accute priapism' which is both funny and gross. We never get to see it, but with the looks on everyone's faces, including the doctor, I think it's better that way-- imagination is way stronger than reality sometimes. Meanwhile, Gram asks Sookie to listen in on people's brains, and everyone just wants to see her brother hang and knows nothing-- except Hoit, who's probably the sweetest one on the show-- so she decides to go check out this vampire bar both the dead girls were known to visit.
Now, this bar-- Fangtasia, which is so cheesy it's great-- is something like the way puritanical churchies think goth clubs are, except the vamps are real. And it was less scary then I thought it should be the way everyone's going on about it. Kinda like the vamp-gang from last ep. There's a fine line between stupid and cool when you're being a vamp, and most of those we've seen are like people playing dressup. Bill's got that Angel I-feel-bad-for-killing-people thing, and then there's Eric, who sits like a king and has the Curse of Eternal Coolness. Watch him walk through that door and see if he isn't neat. Though, it's better if he doesn't talk.
Anyway, the bar scene was a letdown, but it's made up for with Bill freaking out a county sheriff that pulls him and Sookie over on the way back. Finally a little vampire mojo! Though I do feel a little bad for the guy.
And then, just in case the weirdness wasn't at a high enough level, Sam breaks into deadgirl's house and starts sniffing all over the bed where she was found, rolling around in the smell of her-- just like a dog. Yup, I'm sure there's something going on with that boy now.
I don't think this episodes was as enthralling as the previous three, but this is the point when a show has to actually get itself into a plot, so that's okay. Story happened. Let's see what happens next week.
mon: sarah connor, heroes
Cameron's acting really weird now, reverting to previous versions of herself and apparently confusing herself for the real human she was based on. It makes cam really really creepy as well as more unstable than before, and it makes her history more convoluted-- she was 'chosen' by John in the future, probably because she already knew him in his past. We already sort of knew that he chose her to reprogram because he already knew her-- but if he already knew T-Cam, and then chose Real!Cam for whatever reason, and then remade T-Cam because of that... Time travel implications mess with my head. There's alot going on with Cameron and John, in the current time and in the future, and if there's romantic feelings on one side or the other, and if John remembers all this stuff already...
It must really suck to be the one who has to organize all the time-travel that will result in the life you already have.
Anyway, the episode was neat, no explosions, but lots of new pieces of the puzzle, with John doing things on his own and Dereck nowhere to be seen. In subplot-land, Ellis takes the job with Terminator!CEO, who has a daughter (huh? can Terminators have babies now? Is she also based on a real person? Is the daughter a clone or something?), and a crash that left her without a husband and with a driving need to find the stuff that will be Skynet. (More questions: Does she not know that she's the same as the robots, even though she obviously has full control of shape-shifting? Was her husband another posing terminator, and it's his arm that was in those pictures, or is she doing the play-human bit to get to whoever that husband was? Was she the 'mechanical error'? Is Ellis to blame for Skynet happening anyway, now that previous blame-ees have been stopped? Why's it always gotta be a black man? I'm sure there's a paper in there somewhere...) And Casey went into false labor and had some bonding time with Sarah, which is interesting because she's really the first mother Sarah's had any real interaction with that we've seen, and she's so very very normal. But I still think there must be something special about that baby they keep making up stories for.
This week's Heroes still has too much going on, but it might be okay if they can pull it all together... though their track record on that is not so great. Anyway, Parkman may not be a useless lump after all, Tracy is apparently part of a Samantha Mulder-esque clone batch (so I guess she can die hundreds of times and not leave the show) and Micah took her appearance remarkably well, future!Peter is trying to clean up his messes, Mama Pet is kinda creepy and acting like an incestuous cougar, Syler's having little crises of the existential variety while using his new job to nomnom more powers, HRG is plotting and planning, Hiro is still fumbling stuff and Ando is 'tired of being your sidekick' which doesn't bode well in light of the flash-forward, Claire is going all freelance and we know how that turns out... so yeah. Alot going on. But at least we didn't have to waste time on Mohinder-Fly and Now-Wimpy-Maya. I don't know. Always when I'm watching this show, I feel like it's making sense and being entertaining, but then when I talk about it later, it really doesn't and kind of isn't, but it feels like they're actually trying to make it work. I think they need to stop introducing new characters, though, because, I mean, the German was not so great, and Jesse is now nom-ed, and Baldy McFlame-On is back in jail with Knox the Angry, and that's four of the twelve down, and we haven't even met the other eight yet. Introduce and toss away. We've already got more than we can follow, guys.
tues: fringe
Fringe was on fire tonight. The plot was tight and made sense, the characters were true to themselves, there was a good mystery, and there were good questions raised. Peter has reached a believeable point where he isn't going to go off the handle and leave, and there's a new player in this game: the Observer... who almost seems like he isn't quite human. We get to hear a little more about this weird medical history of Peter's-- a terrible accident when he was a kid, which doesn't rule out weirder things, and, in fact, gives an opportunity for them. And there's a weird connection between Walter and the observer that I hope they get back to.
See, this is what the show promised it could be when I watched the pilot. Tight, sharp, strange. Good characters with lots of issues they have to work through. Lots of back story we don't know and have to explore. Show mythos that feels right, rather than tacked on and nonsensical. I can see how that same mythos can drown it-- it happened to X-Files, and it's happening to Lost-- but at this point, four eps in, I can also see how it can expand and enrich the show and make it like this all the time. Episodes 2 and 3 were good, but this one was great. And this is how I want it to always be.
wed: daisies
Pushing Daisies is back! And what a fun weird episode. Chuck gets a job! Olive moves away to a nunnery! Chuck moves into Olive's house! The aunts go outside of their own accord and without thinking about it!
It starts off months after the previous season left off, which makes me hate the strike even more, because it feels like I was cheated of watching fun stories that happened in the meantime. There was a bee-related death, which means only Chuck has the experience needed to go undercover. The design of the Betty Bee company makes me want to live in a bee hive and / or hire everyone who does the set design for this show to build a house for me. Missy Pyle was fun and weird, and delivered those introductory speeches just amazingly, and French Stewart was silly in a way just disturbing enough to be a villain. But it wasn't really the story that was great so much as everyone's interactions, and now that Olive's gone, I wonder if we'll get a new kooky waitress? I wonder if Chuck will keep her honey-soaked new job? And I hope the Aunts have more to do with the lovely saturated-color world they all live in.
thurs: supernatural, knightrider
Oh my, how the Winchester boys manage to get in trouble. Castiel sends Dean back in time to the moment when the curse happened-- and found out his family was not the way he thought it was, and there was no way to change it. He still has no mom, the Demon still kills everyone, but he gets to meet his grandpa Asistant Director Skinner, which is where his grumpy skeptic strak comes from. You know, this is a very fatalistic show-- they all fave a destiny, and even angels can't change it.
Anyway, the whole point was to show him exactly how it happened so that he can stop whatever the End Game is-- whatever Sam is off with demons doing. And if Dean can't stop it, Heaven will. While it might be interesting to see someone Struck Down, there's still most of a season to go, and leaving only one brother will really change the dynamic.
Of course, this is a two parter, which means I have no idea what happens and I have to scratch at my eyeballs for a week waiting for the conclusion, but it's the sort of captivating that means I will tune in again, so I guess they accomplished their goal. I wonder if anyone will point out that Dean being there is what introduced his mom to the family demon-- before his foreknowledge of events in the early seventies, the Campbell hunter clan wouldn't have gone to see Liddy, and so wouldn't have met Azazael (who was in Hex on the Beeb, wasn't he?), and the family wouldn't have been cursed. But, also, if fate is decided and nothing can be changed, he was already there anyway, and the loop in his timeline is unchangable, and his being there was because that's where he was meant to be, not because he was sent there. Ah, temporal paradox. If I ever write that paper on the subject, I have more fodder.
Before I tell you about Knight Rider, let me just say: Coolest. Interface. Evar. I want my computer to be as cool as the ones they use. And if I can flick a screen from a handheld to the hood of a car, all the better. Also, Kitt has a built in printer AND a matter replicator??? Why do I not have a car like this?
Anyway, it was bound to happen: a show about cars decides to do racing for pinks. And there's the prerequisite bony hot chick. See, I'm a girl, and I'm not all that into cars, but I am into computers, and things that go fast are always an easy way to bypass the ovaries, so this was fun. Exciting. There's racing, there's explosions, there's grand theft auto! It's great that badguys are lousy shots, too, because they would have trashed that cherry ride Sarah has gone through all the trouble to jack.
More racing! And the inevitable betrayal of someone we've never seen before who's introduced as a most-trusted old friend. It's not every day you see a girl get pistol-whipped, but what pisses me off is that she stopped fighting after that-- until it was time to kick someone to stop them from burrying her in the desert up to her neck. The one Chang Brother kept getting punched in the face, and the other kept being coldly angry, and that's about all they had. Oh, and they were selling classified tech to the Chinese or something. Blah blah blah explosions!
And in subplot news, Michael's tattoo somehow was read by Kitt's hood-screen and made a bunch of files pop up that they didn't have time to read before the baddies came. What happened in those Captain-Jack-esque missing years?
fri: sanctuary
Sanctuary is cool. A little slow and talky, but it makes up for it with the action. Even knowing that all the backgrounds are CGI and greenscreen, it's gorgeous, and the story moves at a nice pace. Helen Magnus is way different than Sam Carter, and that helps get past that issue, and as Helen, she gets to be all soft and pretty in a way Carter never really could be. Will Zimmerman is only passingly like Daniel Jackson. And the Sanctuary itself is full of fun and freaky monsters and mythical people. I especially liked the design of the mermaid, with her scaly body and sea-weed hair. It's one part zoo, one part embassy, and one part Torchwood Hub, all of which is fine by me.
But the best is that there's a lot of room for the show to grow. It's set up as a monster of the week show, with the twist that they're saving the monsters to better understand them and help them survive in a modern world. That pretty much allows them to do whatever they like along the way. And Helen is a big ball of mysteries that I think will only get more tangled as the show progresses. The pilot only barely touched on her past and how the Sanctuary happened-- apparently by the 1880s, she was already special and knew enough about her specialness that she was helping strange people, and I'm assuming that that was the start of the Sanctuary. And there's hints that the baddie of the week isn't the only one, and that she may actually be one of them.
All in all, a good start. Atmospheric, fun, full of action and distinct, fun characters as well as really cool weird people, and enough mystery already to keep me interested, even if it was a bit talky and the 'sets' were a bit... cold? That's kind of the fallback of anything fully CGI, though, so I can get over that. Here's to hoping it only gets better.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
imports: merlin s01e02, sarah jane s02e01-2
Merlin continues to take us back to a pretty, clean, racially integrated Camelot for fun and adventures! This week's villain had no motivation, but he wanted to kill the bossy Prince Arthur, and it was up to Merlin to prove he was using magic. Pretty standard already. But Arthur had a little more depth this week, coming across less as a flat-out jerk and more as a young man who can't afford to lose face and who has too many things that are expected of him. Which was nice. He managed to trust his manservant Merlin, and stood up for him when proof was rather thin, and was willing to walk headfirst into death to keep up appearances when that thin proof didn't hold up-- honor and honesty. I think it'll be fin watching this young boy become the semi-mythical king.
Meanwhile, Merlin continues to recklessly use magic, which looks like it might get him in trouble next week (and you know, I really love short BBC seasons for this: no reason to draw out out like they do on US TV). I wonder what they're going to do with the dog he conjured?
Other questions: I wonder how long Morgana can hide that she dreams the future? I wonder what Hardass McKing will say about that when it comes out? How will Gwen the Blacksmith's Daughter make her way to queenhood?
Really, I think the real appeal of this show is not so much the storylines, at least from my adult and fannish point of view, which are silly and pretty straight forward so far, but the way the characters show hints of who they're supposed to be, and how the writers are moving them around. My biggest problem with the whole Arthurian Saga Remake is that you know where everyone's supposed to be and how they're going to end up, but this one is light and fun and adventuresome, and maybe it can get around the craziness and potential boredom that set mythology sticks it with.
Sarah Jane is back! Whoo! My quasi-Who fix has returned!
And it's adventure right off the bat with The Last Sontaran, which is exactly what is says.
There's a radio telescope off in a place called Goblin's Copse, which is very evocative, and Karg, the afore-mentioned last of the Sontarans, has set up base there by taking over the only scientist there and locking up his daughter Lucy. He's going to use all the satillites in orbit to burn the planet into ash in payment for the Doctor offing the invasion fleet after the ATMOS incident. This is great because Sarah Jane knows who they are from her first story-- which we're almost up to in our Classic Who so that it's like we're time travellers, too, knowing her in two different timeframes-- and because it's another incident of others having to clean up after our dear Doctor. He save the day and then he leaves; fall out is for sidekicks.
Anyway, the first episode is mostly set up, with the real story happening in the second; Sarah Jane and the Who Crew arrive, do some poking around, notice that things are weird, and they're quickly split up and she's captured defending Clyde. Karg the Not So Bright locks her up with Lucy in a room full of odds and ends, while there's much running about in the woods by the kids. Lucy is a ankle-twister is training. Maria and Clyde don't manage to stop the antenna, but Luke does crack the program. There's one more attempt before they save the day-- by way of Crissy-Maria's-mom going all shoe-attack on the Sontaran... which they don't let her remember. Except that she does. Even though she didn't. What gets me is that there's still people in this version of London who don't belive in aliens. I mean, every Christmas, something undeniable happens, and at least three times a season, the Doctor's there, saving everyone, and there's a whole series of Sarah Jane doing the same. Are Londoners that cynical?
It's fun that Karg the Underestimator keeps calling the kids Half-Forms. I love that Sarah Jane remembers the Sontarans from her first story in Sontar's future and her past. But Maria moves away! And next week, some new girl name Rani (as in The Rani??) moves into her house! And there's creepy clowns!
Meanwhile, Merlin continues to recklessly use magic, which looks like it might get him in trouble next week (and you know, I really love short BBC seasons for this: no reason to draw out out like they do on US TV). I wonder what they're going to do with the dog he conjured?
Other questions: I wonder how long Morgana can hide that she dreams the future? I wonder what Hardass McKing will say about that when it comes out? How will Gwen the Blacksmith's Daughter make her way to queenhood?
Really, I think the real appeal of this show is not so much the storylines, at least from my adult and fannish point of view, which are silly and pretty straight forward so far, but the way the characters show hints of who they're supposed to be, and how the writers are moving them around. My biggest problem with the whole Arthurian Saga Remake is that you know where everyone's supposed to be and how they're going to end up, but this one is light and fun and adventuresome, and maybe it can get around the craziness and potential boredom that set mythology sticks it with.
Sarah Jane is back! Whoo! My quasi-Who fix has returned!
And it's adventure right off the bat with The Last Sontaran, which is exactly what is says.
There's a radio telescope off in a place called Goblin's Copse, which is very evocative, and Karg, the afore-mentioned last of the Sontarans, has set up base there by taking over the only scientist there and locking up his daughter Lucy. He's going to use all the satillites in orbit to burn the planet into ash in payment for the Doctor offing the invasion fleet after the ATMOS incident. This is great because Sarah Jane knows who they are from her first story-- which we're almost up to in our Classic Who so that it's like we're time travellers, too, knowing her in two different timeframes-- and because it's another incident of others having to clean up after our dear Doctor. He save the day and then he leaves; fall out is for sidekicks.
Anyway, the first episode is mostly set up, with the real story happening in the second; Sarah Jane and the Who Crew arrive, do some poking around, notice that things are weird, and they're quickly split up and she's captured defending Clyde. Karg the Not So Bright locks her up with Lucy in a room full of odds and ends, while there's much running about in the woods by the kids. Lucy is a ankle-twister is training. Maria and Clyde don't manage to stop the antenna, but Luke does crack the program. There's one more attempt before they save the day-- by way of Crissy-Maria's-mom going all shoe-attack on the Sontaran... which they don't let her remember. Except that she does. Even though she didn't. What gets me is that there's still people in this version of London who don't belive in aliens. I mean, every Christmas, something undeniable happens, and at least three times a season, the Doctor's there, saving everyone, and there's a whole series of Sarah Jane doing the same. Are Londoners that cynical?
It's fun that Karg the Underestimator keeps calling the kids Half-Forms. I love that Sarah Jane remembers the Sontarans from her first story in Sontar's future and her past. But Maria moves away! And next week, some new girl name Rani (as in The Rani??) moves into her house! And there's creepy clowns!
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