1. Finish review book
2. Start drafting review
3. Tidy up in kitchen
4. Tidy up in bathroom
5. Start organizing office [bah...this can wait...]
6. Watch new Downton Abbey episodes

And speaking of Downton Abbey, Sir Richard

is also Father Octavian from those second Weeping Angel episodes of Doctor Who:

And apparently the actor, Iain Glen, is also in Game of Thrones, which I have yet to watch.

That’s all I got today.

Related posts:

1. Today’s agenda
2. Lazy weekend
3. Slow blog day

The Daleks have been around since the very beginning, almost, of the Doctor Who series, and they’ve remained virtually unchanged since then, if not slightly updated. They were created out of the Kaled race on the planet Skaro by evil mastermind Davros; so, once humanoid, and now powered by hate and the desire to annihilate every single other species in the universe, thereby gaining supreme domination. EXTERMINATE.

They’re supposed to be the thing that scare the daylights out of everyone, but in the original series, as many have noted, they’re really just rather silly. Slow-moving, plunger-equipped salt shakers.

A Roomba is more terrifying.

So when a Dalek shows up in this eponymous episode, my first reaction is, “Well, I suppose they have to be here, given their prominent place in the Whoniverse, but . . . meh?” But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Doctor and Rose, pulled by the TARDIS responding to a distress call, turn up in the basement (and I use that term loosely, considering that they’re 53 stories below ground) of an enormous complex owned by a Mr. Henry Van Statten, multi-trillionaire or whathaveyou, the guy who owns the Internet (Rose: No one owns the Internet! Van Statten: And let’s just keep the whole world thinking that way), and collector of alien artifacts. The museum they stumble into contains an arm of a Raxacoricofallapatorian, which Rose refers to as a Slitheen even though we learned in the last episode that Slitheen is just a family name, but presumably Slitheen is just easier to remember and say, and the head of an old series Cyberman — kind of fun to see that there, I have to admit.

Turns out, Van Statten has obtained a living specimen, one which is refusing to communicate with him, and he’s having one of his minions torture the creature to get it to talk.

This creature is what sent out the distress call. It’s a Dalek.

I mean, of course it is. It’s a very good move on Russell Davies’ part, introducing the Dalek here. Fans of the old series will instantly get that the war that wiped out the Time Lords was with the Daleks, but it’s made clear here as a way of introducing new fans to this oldest of nemeses.

So there’s a showdown, sort of, between the two Time War survivors, but before the Doctor has a chance to kill this last Dalek, Van Statten intervenes. In the meantime, Rose is flirting with Adam, one of Van Statten’s flunkies and the stupidest “genius” ever, who shows off for Rose and brings her down to the Dalek, and Rose of course feels nothing but sympathy for this poor creature who’s being tortured, because she’s never seen or heard of the Daleks before. So she puts out a hand in comfort, and the Dalek absorbs her DNA and time energy and is instantly healed. Whoops!

And then we’re in another big chase scene between the humans and this one Dalek, who is WINNING because in this refashioned updated Doctor Who the Daleks are pretty badass. They look basically the same, and still have a plunger arm, but something about them is more menacing — I think the part where the Dalek plunges a man’s head to death helps.

They can also fly. I’ve learned through research that the precedent for hovering Daleks was established in “Remembrance of the Daleks,” but not having seen it I was, like most, under the assumption that the Daleks were always hindered by a simple flight of stairs.

So when Rose and Adam and one of the soldiers look back and see the Dalek stop at the foot of the stairs they’ve been climbing, and then LEVITATE up the stairs, I will admit, I yelled out “Oh shit, the Daleks can FLY.”

More than that, Rose’s touch and DNA have started to alter the Dalek, who has the chance to kill Rose but doesn’t, and gets all existential (much to my delight. An existential Dalek is pure comedy, people). But an existential Dalek isn’t really a Dalek, and it realizes that the freedom it asked for is only possible if it self-exterminates. Which it can’t do — or won’t — until Rose orders it to, which is annoying but I guess lack of free will is part of what makes Daleks Daleks. Even though they need no directive to kill. I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t be overthinking this.

It’s not my favorite episode, though whether that’s because of Dalek fatigue I couldn’t say. It’s one that I tend not to skip over, though, because it does establish the fraught symbiosis of the Doctor and the Daleks. It’s like none of the Doctor’s regular rules apply when it comes to the Daleks, and I suppose with good reason. But then, even the Doctor couldn’t kill the Dalek at the end of this episode, with Rose as its champion.

And the connection between Rose and the Daleks will come back into play at the end of this season.

But first, we’ve got more traveling to do. Rose invites Adam to join them in the TARDIS, much to the Doctor’s — and my — disappointment. At least it’s not for very long. (Spoilers!)

No related posts.

I’ve been putting off writing these recaps, even after opting to smush the episodes together, because I have very little to say about them. Not among my favorite episodes, these; in fact, pretty far removed from that list.

I think the story — aliens who look like this

The Slitheen

yet masquerade as humans in order to a) infiltrate the British government, b) arrange for a nuclear war so as to c) reduce planet Earth to slag and sell it off in parts –

is not a bad story. It’s been done before, sure, but it’s certainly an “Earth in peril” narrative kicked up a notch from the first episode’s alien villains, the Nestene Consciousness, wanting to take over the world for all its toxins. And a Doctor Who plot does not necessarily need to be original to be enjoyable, if the writing’s there.

And the writing’s not there. The story takes a backseat to one sustained fart joke. The Slitheen, in order to fit into human bodies, have some sort of compression device around their necks, but there’s something about the gas exchange involved in this compression, which leads to build up and then explusion, and this lengthy explanation for why they fart all the time not only doesn’t make it any funnier, it pretty much undercuts any attempt at it being funny in the first place. And I mean, I think farts are funny. But this is the same fart joke repeated over and over, and it never gets even halfway around the funny-not funny-funny again circuit. Never even gets out of the gate.

Anyway.

The only redeeming part of this episode is this woman:

Who is, as she introduces herself every possible chance she gets, and this IS a repeating joke that I find endearing, “Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North.” She shows up for her meeting with the Prime Minister just as all the kerfuffle is going down, and never gets the chance to introduce her proposal for cottage hospitals, inspired by her own sick mother.

Instead she gets to help the Doctor save the world. And will, we learn at the end of the episode, go on to be England’s Prime Minister for three consecutive terms and engineer Britain’s “Golden Age.” Expect to see her again.

Random obsverations:

– OK, so Mickey helps save the world as well. And I think it’s funny, considering what’s to come, that the Doctor persists in addressing him as “Ricky.”

– I feel compelled to note that in the retooled Doctor Who series, the family life and relationships of the Earthling companion are much more important than they were in the previous incarnation of the show. I’m sure there are several cultural shifts of varying degrees of interest to credit for this, but I like to think that it’s because a 21st-century audience would not be able to suspend disbelief in this area, not question how it could be that Rose just travels all over and a) never misses her family and b) her family never misses her.

– This underscores, of course, that traveling with the Doctor, even for a little bit, changes the companion so drastically that, even though there are PLENTY of people in London alone with whom Rose could talk about her adventures, she feels as though no one else will get it. It’s an idea that threads throughout the series.

– Speaking of, nice to see a bit of continuity from the old series in UNIT (Unified Intelligence Taskforce — used to be United Nations Intelligence Taskforce but apparently the UN complained), with which the Third Doctor works following his exile on Earth. (I’ve seen a number of Third Doctor episodes. I recommend them.)

– Finally, yes, that’s Naoko Mori, Toshiko Sato on Who spin-off Torchwood, as the doctor examining the fake pig alien. She’s credited as “Doctor Sato,” so this is officially her first appearance. The fact that she’s not really a doctor is explained in a Torchwood episode, so again — points for continuity, even though the explanation falls just shy of implausible.

No related posts.

I think of “The Unquiet Dead” as the last installment of the retooled Doctor Who‘s introductory trilogy. We’ve met him, travelled with him far into the future and met all sorts of aliens — good, bad, and neutral — and now, we go with him to the past.

It’s Victorian England (my favorite!), and someone’s recently departed grandmother lies lifeless in her coffin . . . until some spooky blue smoky thing circles around her and brings her to life. Now she’s a zombie, much to the dismay of the undertaker, Mr. Sneed. “The stiffs are getting lively again,” he tells his servant girl, Gwyneth, as they race out into the night to track zombie grandma down.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Rose are in the TARDIS, planning to travel to Naples in 1860, only — running theme alert — the flight plan is a bit off and they wind up in 1869 Cardiff. Count me among those who believe the TARDIS plans these “diversions,” that she (all ships are she, right?) somehow senses where the Doctor will be needed and takes him there no matter how well he programs her otherwise. And sure enough, no sooner have the Doctor and Rose figured out where and when they are (the first of many “Oh god, Cardiff?” jokes) then they hear screams coming from the lodge at which Charles Dickens is giving a dramatic performance of A Christmas Carol. (Historical note: yes, he did this, quite often, and some historians think his grueling tour schedule contributed to the stroke that killed him in 1870.)

It’s Christmas, right, forgot to mention that. While special one-off Christmas Doctor Who episodes are now traditional, Christopher Eccleston never got to do one (sad face). I guess this serves as his, even though it’s Dickens, in the end, who goes meta while running through the snow shouting “Merry Christmas” to everyone. And this is also the first of several “celebrity” episodes; there’s at least one per Doctor (“celebrity” = canonical author/artist with whom children should be familiar). And actually, this may be my favorite one, though not simply because it takes place in the Victorian Era, a period with which I was once entirely too familiar.

It’s just that not only do the spooky blue smoky things fit thematically with the ghost story aspects of A Christmas Carol, thereby making Dickens the perfect secondary companion for this episode, this time period in general works extremely well for the show’s general themes and philosophy:

1. It turns out that the spooky blue smoky things are aliens that can only exist in gaseous form, known as The Gelth. The Gelth exist (or used to) elsewhere in the universe, and are using the Rift that’s opened up in Cardiff to come through to Earth. The Rift, explains the Doctor, is a weak spot in the fabric of time and space that, when wide enough, becomes a portal between places.

The Gelth tell the Doctor that they used to have corporeal form, but the Time War destroyed them and they want to use the Earth’s dead to return to their former state. Again, I wonder whether this is truth or whether they’re playing on the Doctor’s guilt and compassion to gain access through the Rift to take over the world, or whether they did indeed suffer as so many planets and species did from the War. But my point here is that they sort of live inside the gas lamps, or at least wait inside the gas lamps until they can possess a dead body, and these gas lamps are new, the latest technology. While London’s streets were lit with gas lamps in the early part of the 19th-century, they didn’t start appearing in homes until the middle of the century, and even then it was mostly the affluent who could afford them.

And while it’s hardly ever the message of Doctor Who that technology is bad, or has a bad side, it is true that the show often points out that every advancement the human race makes comes with a set of risks. Sometimes it’s simply that a scientist’s brilliance can be misunderstood or applied for insidious purposes, that something meant to benefit humankind winds up either in the wrong hands or not thoroughly tested.

Gas lamps are an important step in terms of human progress, but it’s risky, especially if you happen to live near a Rift. So what I like about this episode is that you have this technology that we consider primitive, but it was a huge deal back then, and it was just as risky for its time as something like, say, Skynet.

2. Dickens has an extremely hard time coming to terms with the idea that there are aliens, that the world is not as he thought it was. His epiphanic moment, so well played by Simon Callow, is filled with fear and self-doubt:

I’ve always railed against the fantasies. Oh, I loved an illusion as much as the next man, revelled in them — that’s what they were: illusions! The real world is something else. I dedicated myself to that. Injustices. Great social causes. I hoped that I was a force for good. Now you tell me that the real world is a realm of spectres and jack o’lanterns. In which case — have I wasted my brief span here, Doctor? Has it all been for nothing?

The 19th-century was a time of such extreme scientific discovery, each one challenging widely accepted notions of a divinely ordered universe, that I can’t help but place this fictional Dickens speech in that context.

Other things I like about this episode:

* “What the Shakespeare is going on?” (Although according to the Internet, the phrase “what the dickens” or “like the dickens” has nothing to do with Charles Dickens, “dickens” being a euphemism for “devil.”)

* The bonding scene between Rose and Gwyneth, that despite the 130-plus years of history between them, they can still talk about cutting class and boys. Also, hello, “Bad Wolf” alert, as Gwyneth sees where Rose is from and says, “The things you’ve seen . . . the darkness . . . the big bad wolf . . .”

* And that it’s Gwyneth, ultimately, who saves the day. One of the other things this show does repeatedly is champion the average person, precisely because according to the Doctor there’s nothing average at all about people. Every person is fantastic and brilliant. So while Rose is a little melancholy at the idea that Gwyneth sacrificed herself to save everyone and no one will ever know, we do get to see Gwyneth the heroine, the savior, and it’s a little like seeing the world through the Doctor’s eyes.

And then, of course, the actress playing Gwyneth, Eve Myles, plays Gwen in Torchwood, which also takes place in Cardiff, and that’s a piece of interseries continuity that I’ve always enjoyed. It’s like Gwen is a direct descendent of Gwyneth, even though that would be impossible.

No related posts.

Here’s the other Doctor Who post from June. Look for new ones early next week.

Right, so: after the introductory episode in which we establish that the Doctor is alien and has a spaceship that can travel through time and space, that he’s a bit dangerous and maybe unstable, that he seems to have a special vested interest in Earth, and he’s invited Rose, a compassionate, stubborn, savvy Londoner along for the ride; now that we’ve established all that, let’s see what this baby can DO.

In the first few minutes of this episode we get another aspect of the Doctor’s personality: he likes showing off. Rose suggests they travel 100 years into the future and the Doctor one-ups her by taking her 10,000 years into the future, to “The New Roman Empire.” She recognizes his flaunting for what it is, they have a nice banter moment, and then he pulls out all the stops (almost literally — there are stops that he pulls to make the TARDIS go) and takes her to the day the sun expands and obliterates Earth.

It’s a bit much, don’t you think? She’s just left Earth. Her experience with these sorts of things is limited to a couple lame zombie-like mannequins. And now the Doctor’s brought her to a place five billion years in the future, where she’s surrounded by myriad aliens and can watch her world — all that she’s ever known — blow up.

DOCTOR: The great and the good are gathering to watch the planet burn.
ROSE: What for?
DOCTOR: Fun.

The Doctor’s plan, spontaneous as it is, affirms that he’s drawn to disaster and destruction. Yet he doesn’t seem to perceive that Rose might witness these sorts of events — and this one in particular — in a vastly different way, from a vastly different perspective. It’s like the difference between theory and practice, the oftentimes wide gulf between studying a subject and living it. The Doctor observes things from an emotional distance, his Ivory Tower — the whole universe is both his playground and his canvas, but no matter how passionate he may be about a certain species or planet, it’s not the same as being a part of it, being in it, as Rose is. Her lived experience means that she’s going to have a deeply profound reaction while watching the Earth die, and the Doctor doesn’t seem to get that.

Then again, the Doctor’s own planet has just burned as well, we learn at the end of this episode, a casualty of the war mentioned in the last episode. There must be something subconscious but just under the surface that compels him to witness the destruction of another planet that has been so dear to him. To relive the experience, perhaps as a sort of self-punishment? To keep the pain fresh? To remind himself that “everything has its time and everything dies”?

And that’s nothing to say of the other tragic and dark moments in this episode. Jabe sacrifices herself to help the Doctor reach the override switch for the sun shields. The Doctor stands by and watches The Lady Cassandra dry up and explode. She caused people to die; she deserves to die as well. Very Old Testament. Other innocents we barely get to know are killed. In the previous episode Rose asks the Doctor if his travels are always as dangerous as battling the Autons and the Nestene Consciousness. Oh, honey. You have NO IDEA.

And yet there are lovely light moments as well, including one of my favorite moments of the entire season. It’s right after Rose has it out with the Doctor, after realizing that she knows absolutely nothing about him (she tells Raffalo “I just sort of hitched a lift with this man . . . I didn’t even think about it. I don’t even know who he is . . . “) and her questions about who he is and where he’s from go unanswered, and she gets more and more upset. After she calms down a bit, makes a couple jokes about how her cell phone can’t find a signal, the Doctor takes her phone to give it a sonic boost.

DOCTOR
: With a little bit of jiggery pokery . . .
ROSE: 
Is that a technical term, ‘jiggery pokery’?
DOCTOR: 
Yeah, I came first in jiggery pokery, what about you?
ROSE
: Nah, I failed hullabaloo.

And just like that, they’re back on good terms. The chemistry between Billie Piper and Christopher Eccleston is so good. It’s light, friendly, you can see the bonds of mutual admiration and respect grow almost from the beginning. (I prefer this, frankly, to the sexually charged chemistry between David Tennant’s Doctor and a couple of his Companions, but, well, what are you gonna do. It is David Tennant, after all.)

And of course we realize later why he keeps this information from her; the wounds are still too present, he can’t give voice to them yet. It’s only after she sees HER planet die, after he sees her reaction to it (“all that history, gone”), that he can tell her about his planet.

This episode also introduces The Lady Cassandra to us. She serves both as the episode’s baddy and as counterpoint to Rose. She arrives at Platform One with all the pomp of a decaying aristocracy, touting herself as “The Last Human,” crowing, “Look how THIN I am.” In Cassandra we’re supposed to see what our excessive obsession with standards of female beauty have wrought over five billion years — standards which, in Cassandra, are tied in with notions of racial purity. Her sense of self is inflated because she “kept [herself] pure,” didn’t “mingle” with other species. Rose sees right through this:

You’re not human. You’ve had it all nipped and tucked and flattened till there’s nothing left. Anything human got chucked in the bin. You’re just skin, Cassandra. Lipstick and skin.

Ah, but don’t worry — this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the “bitchy trampoline” (one of my other favorite phrases from this episode).

Face of Boe!

It’s also not the last we’ve seen of the Face of Boe, one of my favorite alien concepts — and I’m not saying that because of the role the Face plays in later episodes. It’s because, well, he’s just a face. Just a head in a jar. And yet it’s not at all goofy, not like in Futurama. You want to know more about him. He’s sponsoring the whole Watch the Earth Burn event, so he’s clearly a Face of means. Did he used to have a body? Does he come from a planet of just Faces? Do those bulbs hanging off his head grow into other Faces and that’s how his species reproduces? Is he as serene as he appears to be? Maybe he’s some sort of diplomat.

One final note: this is the first time we hear the term “bad wolf.” It comes in a background conversation at the beginning of a scene, in which we hear the Moxx of Balhoon tell the Face of Boe that “this is the Bad Wolf scenario.” If you’re watching these episodes for the first time, just keep that in mind.

No related posts.

Hey guys. I’m cheating a bit with the “blog every day” thing, but it’s been so long since I first wrote these Doctor Who posts that I thought it would be a good idea to refresh before I do the third episode of the first season. So. There it is. And here you go.

++++++++

If you’re from another planet, how come you sound like you’re from the North?
Lots of planets have a North.

'Do you want to come with me?' God, YES.

Wait, one more thing: I am totally cross stitching “lots of planets have a north” next.

Confession: Though I enjoyed the few episodes I watched, I was never a huge Doctor Who fan. If I remember correctly, in the early 80s the show came on directly after 3-2-1 Contact, and I remember getting sucked into the show because of Tom Baker, on whom I developed an enormous crush. His grin was so devilish. His manner was so dryly funny and a bit dangerous. His hair was so curly. I didn’t stand a chance. He was my first Doctor, and so enthralled was I by him that, when I realized that “regeneration” meant that someone entirely different would now be the Doctor, I completely lost interest and didn’t watch the show again.

(I realize now what I missed in Peter Davison.)

When it was announced that in 2005 BBC was bringing Doctor Who back, I was still clinging to my “No Tom Baker? No thanks!” philosophy. Silly me.

I don’t know why I turned to the SciFi Channel (as it once was known, seems like forever ago) to catch a glimpse of what Doctor Who had become — probably someone told me I should watch it — but it was the second to the last episode of the first season (yes, the one with “Ladies. Your viewing figures just went up”) and two minutes of watching Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor was enough to erase nearly all memory of Tom Baker. (Please note: this is a recurring motif.)

And fortunately SciFi was/is in the habit of running marathons, so I was able to catch up completely on the first season before the final episode. It’s possibly because I mainlined it that it remains to date my favorite season, my favorite Doctor of the new series. But I think maybe that’s not all of it. Anyway, by popular demand (OK, three people. But that’s still like 25% of my readership, and I want it to be known that I do take requests), I’m going to start writing about the new Doctor Who series starting from the beginning: with “Rose.”

It starts on Earth, in London, present day. We meet Rose first. No idea who she is, but she’s got a mom, a decent enough boyfriend, and a mundane job at a shop. Totally ordinary; she could be anybody. (Sidenote: she’s in sweats at work? At a department store? Really?) And then by chance she has to drop off the lottery money to Wilson, the store’s chief electrician who works in the basement, but he’s not answering, so she explores through plastic sheeting (listen, one thing I’ve learned about Doctor Who is that when there’s plastic sheeting around, things are not going to go well.) and then the mannequins start moving. She’s trying to pass it off as a joke but as the mannequins advance, Rose is getting more and more freaked out, and then they have her up against a door and at the last minute, someone grabs her hand and tells her to RUN. And it’s the Doctor. I love that the Doctor’s first word of this brand new series is “RUN.”

He leads her to an elevator, plastic men in pursuit, and pulls off one of their arms as the elevator doors close on it. And here’s where Rose first makes an impression on the Doctor. She thinks it could be a student prank, because it’s so many people in one place and it’s so ridiculous. I don’t know if I buy that (Improv Everywhere notwithstanding), but the Doctor likes her logical, practical mind.

And then we get to my first favorite moment of the episode, and the main reason I can watch and re-watch this episode without getting tired of it:

Doctor: I’m the Doctor, by the way. What’s your name?
Rose: Rose.
Doctor: Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!

And that’s it. He’s the Doctor. He’s so completely the Doctor. Waving the bomb in a hearty fare-thee-well.

I also love the much quieter scene where they’re walking and talking and Rose is trying to get the Doctor to tell her everything but she’s not really ready to process it, and she stops and asks, “Who ARE you?” and the camera cuts to a shot of the Doctor with the TARDIS in the background — that’s just good work there. And he takes her hand again when he tells her that he can feel the Earth revolving. And he waves goodbye to her with the plastic arm, and then the Rose theme kicks in, and you know she is NOT about to let it go. Nope. She goes straight to the nearest Internet search engine (love that Mickey’s all “Do NOT read my emails!”) and narrows down her search parameters to “Doctor blue box” and finds Clive.

Clive (a LINDA precursor, if that idea was already in Russell T. Davies‘ mind) gives us the idea that the Doctor means death. When he’s around, bad things happen. But shouldn’t it be the other way around? While most of the episodes involve the Doctor showing up somewhere just in time to see something go horribly horribly wrong, the evidence Clive shows Rose — the Kennedy assassination, the Titanic, the sketch taken just before Krakatoa erupts — indicates that the Doctor appears to enjoy traveling through time to visit historical disasters. But not to change them. To . . . watch? That’s a little dark.

But then, that’s one of the main reasons why I love the show. Yes, it is silly, sometimes immeasurably so. Yes, it’s basically sci-fi lite despite the TARDIS and outer space and freaky-deaky aliens. Yes, a lot of the time the monsters/aliens aren’t particularly scary — and the Autons in this episode are one of the least threatening monsters to appear on the show. But there’s still something menacing going on. We get glimpses of that when the Doctor pleads with the Nestene Consciousness that he couldn’t save their planet, couldn’t save any of them. Suddenly we realize that there has been a war — when the Doctor referenced it earlier, he wasn’t speaking metaphorically — and he was on the front lines, and something horrible and tragic has happened. Despite this happening during the climax of the show, it’s a little moment, one I only caught on my first re-watch.

But then he’s also so spirited, joyful, spilling over with delight at the thought of potential danger. And his love for Earth and her inhabitants is infinite — rather inexplicably, perhaps undeservedly. But even so, he is not human, and doesn’t think like a human, and his long line of companions have always helped provide that necessary element. And no matter how you feel about Rose by the end of her run, you can’t deny that she’s very good at the feelings thing. She berates the Doctor for forgetting about Mickey, for not telling her about the possibility that he’d die. And it’s Rose that swings in and saves the day, ultimately, kicking the test tube of antiplastic into the Nestene Consciousness. And defiantly demands credit from the Doctor, which he willingly gives.

Earlier, when they’re running from Plastic Mickey, Rose gets her first glimpse of the TARDIS. She freaks, runs right out again (like you do), and then returns because she’s got nowhere else to run. “It’s bigger on the inside,” she stammers. “It’s alien.” Which means the Doctor is alien. He asks if that’s all right with her and she replies without hesitation: “yeah.” She’s still FREAKED the hell out, and she has a little breakdown — “culture shock,” the Doctor sympathizes — and then she’s more or less OK. Rose’s resilience, her ability to process things quickly — makes her an ideal companion.

So of course the Doctor invites her to join him, and it’s Mickey who grabs her like a little child, physically preventing her from leaving. (I’m sure I’m not alone in really disliking Mickey at the beginning of the series.) But Rose gets a second chance and in what is probably the episode’s cheesiest moment (which still works for me, gets me every time, makes my heart skip a little) we get a slow motion shot of Rose running into the TARDIS, that huge infectious smile on her face — in this moment I defy you not to love Rose with all of your being.

No related posts.

It’s hard to believe that the decision to renew Rubicon still hasn’t been reached, a frustration that Sunday’s (season? series?) finale exacerbated with its loose threads and open ending. As much as I am a fan of leaving some questions unanswered, this show makes me want to know what happens next.

When Rubicon started, what grabbed me was the complexity of its mystery and, as I mentioned in my first post about it, the fact that people still used tangible paper documents and actually thought about things and worked things out long hand rather than turning to the all-powerful super computer with groovy space-age algorithm graphics that don’t actually exist in real life. What I still love about this show is that while the API staff do use computers, it’s only for search functions and those searches are either performed on a DHARMA-esque computer hidden away in the white papers archives, or by “Hal” (his name’s not Hal, but do we ever find out what it is? Just one of the unanswered questions, though admittedly not a very pressing one) using the most awesomely complicated search string I have ever seen. The drudgery of analysis as shown on this show feels very real to me.

But then a few episodes in, I realized that the show was not as plot-centric as I thought it would be, and I had to regroup a little. OH. You want me to care about the CHARACTERS too? And you’re going to make them complex and layered so that even by the end of the season we still rather admire the villain? I am SO cool with that. I wouldn’t say that this season was stellar, there were a few episodes that I didn’t much care for, but I think overall these 13 episodes prove that Rubicon deserves more time to develop. I know that if this is the end, I will miss its intelligence (pun! not intended) and its actors and especially its cinematography.

And if it is indeed the end, then I have to say that I think “You Never Can Win” was a rather mediocre way to go out. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts; a number individual scenes and story elements really worked for me, a few of them didn’t. And yet if “You Never Can Win” is simply a season finale, with the following season picking up where this episode left off, then I think it worked very well.

Most of my disappointment with the epiosde relates to the Katherine Rhumor part of it. I don’t understand why, if Tom didn’t want Katherine to be involved with any of this, he still plants a bunch of clues for her to find out about it and thus put herself in danger. And the DVD! Which is not a red herring as I suspected last week, but still — how do you record over a store-bought DVD? This show is so much NOT about superfly computer tricks that I find it hard to believe that either Tom Rhumor or David Hadas would know how to do that. Which means then that they recorded part of Meet Me In St. Louis on a blank DVD, did their little expose scene, and then pasted a Meet Me In St. Louis label on the DVD and . . . man, I know this is a totally nitpicky thing to be buggin’ about, but IT BUGGED ME.

Not as much, however, as the fact that in all of the 13 episodes of this show, Miranda Richardson did little more than stammer out half-sentences and cower in fear. And that’s just not right.

And what in blazes was going on with Andy? I mean, VINDICATION — she WAS a spy of some sort! But whose side was she on? What did she mean, “We were never supposed to meet?” Then why did Tom give Katherine the Mott St. address? Why did she just skedaddle after Katherine falls? Will runs away too, so maybe Andy’s fleeing the scene isn’t suspicious, but still — that whole situation happened way too quickly and without any warning or clues and it wound up pissing me off more than intriguing me.

What doesn’t piss me off so much is that Will doesn’t even seem to notice the DVD that Katherine is holding out to him as she starts to stumble. It does bug me, but in the long run having that DVD would have been too easy. Again, this show is all about figuring things out, not having the answers simply handed to you. Will still needed to find the connection between Atlas MacDowell and Bloom to tie everything back to Spangler.

What sticks out most to me is Kale’s admonishment to Will that he’s too emotionally involved. I liked Kale’s assessment of intelligence as a “failure industry” in which you’re wrong far more than you’re right, and you just need to accept that as part of the business. I appreciate the “feelings get you killed” mentality and the fact that in order to succeed in the intelligence field you need to be able to abstract yourself from what you’re analyzing, and what we’ve seen all season is how difficult that is for everyone. Everyone but Kale, anyway. Even Spangler is motivated by greed/power and thus is emotionally invested. But Kale? Even having lunch with Bloom way back at the beginning of the season, Kale isn’t interested in waxing sentimental about their days in the Middle East.

I liked the very end as well, and the way it was set up: first the scene between Spangler and another member of the Fishers Island Group who tells Spangler that the rest of the group wants to pull the plug on the operation. Spangler refuses, because he believes in the long run that it won’t matter what Will knows, since in a matter of days the entire country will be gearing up for war with Iran. The fact that Spangler is probably right is pretty chilling. But his stubbornness of course prompts the FIG members to meet in their underground lair and vote on cloverizing Spangler. Seriously, what was up with that scene? My first thought was that they were meeting in Dr. Strangelove’s War Room; Dan had a better line: “Only Bond villains meet in a room like that.” This part, though minor, was a little ridiculous.

And then Spangler receives his clover — and OK, where the hell do they find all those four-leaf clovers? Is there a special field of them on Fishers Island? — which makes me think, “Yeah, RIGHT. Like he’s going to just accept that. Think again, FIG!” You can’t just cloverize a guy like Truxton Spangler. And this is one of those elements of the finale that works really well as either a series or a season closer — either we sit and debate whether Spangler’s going to put a bullet in his brain, or we debate for eight months and then find out. And either way, “You really think anyone’s going to give a shit” is a fantastic exit line.

But even then, Spangler’s allusion to the motives behind the conspiracy that are bigger than any one individual, is one of those open ended questions that begs for a second season. You mean this whole Galveston Bay/war with Iran deal wasn’t simply to fill your pockets? What’s SO HUGE that Will’s report on how Atlas MacDowell engineered the whole thing isn’t going to amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world?

And that’s a wrap for me! I admit, although I have no idea what I’m going to write about next, it’s going to be nice to have Monday mornings to myself again. For a little while, anyway.

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Mad Men’s season finale, “Tomorrowland,” was one of the densest episodes of the season. How do the writers cram all that story into one 43 minute episode? Amazing.

We start with Don + Faye and end with Don + Megan, and the only thing surprising is how quickly that story turned around. I admit, I was half expecting Don’s proposal scene to be a dream sequence, as hackneyed as that would have been. I never got any sense of urgency from him; rather, it was like once he got Anna’s old engagement ring, he was compelled to use it, and Megan was conveniently there.

I dislike this story direction, as much as I did when the show first hinted at it, which is not to say that I dislike Megan. I actually like her quite a bit, and honestly, for the same reasons I think Don does: she’s great with his kids, she’s smart and ambitious, she’s sincere and mature and sophisticated, and she’s level headed.

But between Megan and Faye, who I also like quite a bit, Megan is much more the conventional choice for Don. And I think that’s what disappoints me in the end, that Don turns to a relationship that isn’t going to be challenging for him — and I mean good-challenging. Megan reflects back the image of himself Don wants to see, whereas Faye knows the real Don — who has potential! But self-development is tricky and hard and so why bother?

Slightly less disappointing was the news that Joan decided to keep Roger’s baby. Everyone called that except me, I guess, but that’s not why I’m disappointed. I guess the only problem I have with this is that I think it’s a total TV cliche to bring audiences all the way up to the clinic and then have the character change her mind. But I’m not even bothered that she did change her mind, because I remember the scene in the waiting room with the other woman asking how old Joan’s daughter is and I can see the reminder of how old Joan is, the knowledge that she’s already had two abortions and the uncertainty of Greg’s Vietnam tour, all weighing on her and causing her to walk out the door and take the risk. I dislike that she’s keeping this news from Roger, even though I understand why she is, and I dislike that she’s lying to Greg as well, as much as I don’t like Greg. It all just feels so…SOAPY.

All that said, how much did I love Christina Hendrick’s delivery of “Yes, honey, they’re bigger”? That woman is my homegirl.

It should be also noted that Joan got a title bump in last night’s episode and is now Director of Agency Operations. There’s no monetary compensation at the moment, though, and won’t be until the agency gets back on its financial feet, and honestly, it sounds to me like a very fancy way of saying “Office Manager,” and I say that as someone who has had a few very impressive-sounding job titles while doing very little other than administrative work, and Joan herself makes some remark about still pushing the mail cart, so. I’m just sayin’. I think she sees this for what it is as well.

In the meantime, Peggy lands the agency’s first new business since Lucky Strike split, and this is major news even if the account isn’t going to single-handedly save the company — as Don points out, she broke the streak. Don himself only managed to secure another meeting with the Cancer Association, and doesn’t say a single word about any business meetings he has in California. Topaz pantyhose may only be a quarter of a million dollars, but it’s a start. And yet her news is eclipsed by Don’s engagement news, which pisses Peggy off — though I think she’s more annoyed because they had their bonding moment however many weeks ago and now there’s a whole side to his life that she knew nothing about — and it’s possible that she’s also pissed because Don’s a little condescending when he tells Peggy that Megan reminds him of her and admires her?

I loved the scene between Peggy and Joan, when Joan predicts that Don will make Megan a copywriter because he won’t want to be married to his secretary — interesting that she assumes Megan will keep working, but then I think Megan will want to keep working, and this is a small change between 1965 and 1963, when Roger married Jane, who was only interested in working until she found a (rich) husband. What I loved most was when Peggy literally called Joan out on her bullshit and Joan started to giggle. A nice moment between them.

Betty was at her most vengeful, hateful self. How do you fire Carla for anything, let alone something so entirely in your own head? Granted, Carla knew that Betty didn’t want Glenn in the house, and I do think that Betty is entitled to be angry that Carla allowed him in and allowed him to go up to Sally’s room instead of, say, calling Sally downstairs. But to dismiss her that way, and without a letter of reference? For this one error of judgment in the however many years Carla has watched over the kids? The only reason Betty hates Glenn is because Glenn asked her to do something about which she is now embarrassed, and the way she lets that control her behavior and emotions is ridiculous. He’s weird and gross, but he’s not evil. And for Betty to lash out at Carla, asking “when did you decide you’re [Sally's] mother” when Carla has BEEN the surrogate mother to all of Betty’s kids since — forever? — was just so hard to watch. Carla, you were like the one sane thing in these kids’ lives, and you will be missed.

And then Henry gets angry at Betty for the way she treated Carla — very angry! he withholds beer! deservedly so! — and Betty goes to pout in Sally’s room, and then arranges to still be in the house when Don comes by to meet with the realtor. The way she was fixing her makeup and posing with the box of stuff she “forgot,” it was clear to me that Betty was deliberately at the house for the sole purpose of running into Don. And then she starts talking to Don about how things aren’t perfect and there’s all this change and I got the distinct impression she was waiting for an opening to tell him how much she wanted things to go back to where they were and then Don drops the news that he’s engaged and you can see Betty’s face go THUNK. There was something very satisfying about that whole scene, how quiet it was, how Don knew where that secret bottle of scotch was, how Don and Betty were able to have an entire conversation without yelling at each other, and then Betty hands Don the keys to the house. So long, Ossining.

Other well done moments:

Interesting that Ken is reluctant to play the family connections card for the sake of SCDP, that he places more value on his family than his work. Fundamental difference between Ken and Pete, for one thing, but also Ken and the rest of the advertising world, as we witnessed in “Chinese Wall.” On the one hand, I see this as a limitation of Ken’s. On the other hand, good for him!

But then Ken’s not at all averse to regular networking, as he jumps on board the Topaz pantyhose line after Joyce brings the fired model to Peggy’s office. At first I thought Joyce was trying to help the model out, but then she would know that SCDP is strapped at the moment, so it’s another example of Joyce being awesome and bringing Peggy a lead.

The reactions of everyone else to Don and Megan’s news were pitch perfect, from Pete’s “What?” (because he’d just seen Faye in Don’s apartment) to Roger’s “Who the hell is that?”

My breath caught in my throat when Sally asked Don who Dick was. And I thought his response, if not entirely accurate, was appropriate for the situation: “It’s me…a nickname I sometimes have.” A half-truth, but enough of the truth in it to satisfy me. And if being with Megan is Don’s way of saying goodbye to all the Dick Whitman mishegas, I’m OK with that. Let Season 5 start with something entirely new.

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As much as I’d love to see Rubicon renewed for a second season, there is a part of me that sees this show as the closest an American TV show has come to a British series, like, ever. A short, perfectly encapsulated show that was only ever meant to be on for 13 episodes.

It’s a small part of me. Most of me would very much like this show to continue. It’s just so freakin’ good, and smart, and well written, and well acted. And well shot! The camera work on this show is amazeballs, from exterior downtown New York images to the way that hazy late afternoon sun comes through the blinds in Kateb’s hotel room, sometimes I lose track of the action or dialogue because I get distracted by how beautiful the cinematography is — and this is not something I often notice. We deserve this show on our TVs.

And if “Wayward Sons” didn’t leave you feeling hollowed out, then you haven’t been paying attention. Everything came together in this episode, all the little pieces and character developments that have been building for the last 11 episodes came to fruition.

The rivalry between API and the rest of the intelligence community, for example. The subtitle for this post was inspired by Miles’ frustration with the FBI agent over all the time they’re wasting in arguing which strategy to take to try and figure out where Kateb will strike — he’s representing a team that not only has more intel, but better analysis tactics. They’re simply smarter, the smartest at this, and this is what we saw Spangler arguing way back at the beginning of the season while meeting with all the lobby groups for more money and access to information. Of course, greater access to intelligence is also going to help Spangler’s Fishers Island Group as well.

The two separate conspiracy plots come together as well, as Will is able to use Tenaz’s travel records to connect her with Donald Bloom, and the whole picture comes into focus: the crossword puzzle clue, the “Houston problem,” Kateb, Atlas MacDowell — it is all connected (as we suspected), and it all points to a major attack in Galveston Bay. Blow up a tanker in the Bay and you create “an aneurysm in the energy system.” You cripple the U.S. economy.

(I suspected that Kateb was on his way to blow up something relating to oil, but given the BP spill I thought he was going to target an offshore rigger or something. I was thinking small potatoes, apparently.)

But Will arrives at this conclusion too late to prevent it — there were all sorts of obstacles in his way: Tenaz’s travel records had apparently been kept secret until the final hour, and Will was sent off to New Jersey so that he couldn’t have seen those records straight away. It would have been impossible for Will or anyone on that team to figure out what was going to happen, but watching that realization, that they’re too late, sink in — and especially in the final scene with Will alone in his apartment wholly overcome with despair — that was gut-wrenching.

Gut-wrenching turns to chilling as we cut to Spangler’s office, and even though his face is hard to make out because he’s covering his mouth with his hands, I could almost see victory, mixed with a little relief, on his face. It was almost like he enjoyed watching API scurry to try and prevent something that he was confident was going to happen. Except for that moment he receives the photo of Kale, Maggie and Katherine and you can see his hand shaking.

And even that’s nothing to the scene between Spangler and Kale, in which it seems that Spangler is giving him the same sort of farewell gratitude that he gave Will last week. “I can’t imagine this place without you,” he says. It’s his version of the kiss of death. Loved Kale’s response that the two of them are so integral to API that they’d have to be carried out. Because — yeah. Which one’s first, though?

And now I’m starting to wonder (yeah, one episode from the end) whether the whole Katherine Rhumor part is a giant red herring, and that Tom never meant for her to be caught up in all this. Especially if his suicide was a Cato-esque attempt to save her. (I also liked that little Kale Ingram Explains It All moment when he gives her — and us — a brief lesson in Roman history, explaining both the suicides and the show title.) I don’t understand why his note to her was secreted away in an old jewelry box, unless it was to keep other Fishers Island guys from finding it, but then I don’t know how he could have expected her to know to break open the box to find the letter. If “observe our anniversary” is so important as a clue, then why make it so hard to find? Maybe the Meet Me in St. Louis DVD is just a Meet Me in St. Louis DVD. Though it did make me briefly wonder whether the attack was going to be in St. Louis. Or have something to do with trolleys.

A few final things:

I really didn’t like Grant at the beginning of the season, but wow has he grown on me. I liked the scene between Will and Grant in New Jersey, where they marvel first at all the STUFF (and Grant cracked me up with “Why don’t WE have stuff?”) and then at how disorganized the FBI is. In fact, I really liked that observation, because on any given day their team room table is COVERED in loose documents and other non-techno STUFF, but they are NEVER disorganized. But then they move away to have their mini-conference about what motivates an American convert to Islam, they run down the profile based on previous cases, and it’s just a nice moment of them working together. I thought this followed very nicely on the heels of Kale asking Will whether he trusts Grant and Will answering “yes.”

I also thought Tanya’s backsliding moment — if you can call it that — was well done. That moment of hesitation when she finds the pill, the way everything else in the room recedes as she contemplates it, and of course she’s going to take it. Stakes are way too high right now.

I even liked Maggie in this episode, especially when she goes to Andy’s apartment to grab Will’s papers out of the bathroom. I laughed out loud when she actually flushed the toilet. She’s a horrible liar, which made that one part even funnier, and completely in character.

But still, between Maggie’s superfluous toilet flush and Will turning on the shower as opposed to the sink faucet to wet a piece of toilet paper, this show seems to be wasting an awful lot of water.

I cannot wait for next week’s finale. What do you think is going to happen?

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I’ll be honest with you, I was nervous going into last night’s episode of Mad Men (“Blowing Smoke”), since the previous episode left such a bad taste in my mouth. Thankfully it was back to business as usual — which, of course, given the previous episode, isn’t exactly the best of all possible worlds.

SCDP continues to deal with the fallout of Lucky Strike’s departure, and though there’s still very much an end-of-days feeling in the office, it seems as though it’s calmed down a bit. Practical measures are taken — Don meets with Heinz, Lane takes out collateral to ensure the company can stay afloat (if barely) for the next few months — yet these don’t necessarily prompt confidence in either SCDP employees or potential clients.

Heinz wants to wait to see where SCDP will end up, which is entirely reasonable. I thought the scene between Don and the Heinz guy was interesting if only for the idea that beans sold well during the war, which makes sense, but now “ketchup is king.” I would not have pegged ketchup as all that emblematic of America’s post-war prosperity. It was also interesting, and typical of the series, that this scene then cut to Betty feeding her kids beans and franks, with Heinz condiments on the table. See, you sell the beans WITH the ketchup, as a total meal package. This also made me recall the episode in which Betty buys Heineken beer for her dinner party, not knowing that SC was trying to land that account.

The scramble to put in money leads to more stress for Pete, since he doesn’t have a spare 50K lying around to put in as his contribution. Oh, the things you don’t think of when you demand to be made partner. And this leads to a confrontation with Trudy that feels like the good old days of Seasons 1, 2, and part of 3, in which I want to yell at both of them to just stop and listen to each other, even though this scene in particular resonates with the idea from “Chinese Wall,” that family is always going to be sacrificed for business. Still, for Trudy to forbid Pete from asking her father for money when Pete had no intention of doing so was, well, totally a Trudy thing to do, but irritating nonetheless.

And then Don bails Pete out at the end of the episode, at once reaffirming his commitment to the company, doing whatever it takes to save it, and mirroring all the times he’s either written checks or handed out cash (or bought gifts) in order to fix a particular situation, and not just in this episode. Which brings me to Midge.

Seeing Rosemary DeWitt’s name in the credits surprised me, since I wasn’t expecting to see Midge ever again. And then she’s basically positioned in the episode as Don’s shadier self — how far we have come this season, to have someone who sadder than Don. But Midge’s fall is incredibly sad. Once she lived in a light, cheerfully bohemian apartment; where she is now is greyer and dingier than Don’s bachelor pad. (Man, this show really makes Greenwich Village unappetizing.) She’s married to some dude named Harry who got her hooked on heroin, and it would seem they got married only to get cash for more smack, and now — how different are they from that hitchhiking couple Don picked up a few years ago? And even though Don knows he’s being taken, that he didn’t accidentally run into Midge but that she orchestrated this whole thing in order to squeeze money out of him, it is ultimately their history that prompts him to give her money (as he did so long ago, signing over his bonus check to her as they ended their relationship) — and this is the saddest part yet. He tries to give her $300 but she has nowhere to deposit a check (anymore, that is, since I assume she was able to use the aforementioned bonus check) so he gives her the $120 he has on him, and she doesn’t view this as a loss. And I don’t think Don gives her money out of guilt, or really as a way of helping her — this is a fix for him, a way to get himself out of an uncomfortable situation.

But then it winds up helping him in a different way, in the one scene I thought was a little much, the whole “I’m going to throw this painting out — but wait, now I see myself in it” move. But looking at the painting brings back Midge’s words, that she knows heroin is bad for her but she can’t stop, and this is what inspires Don to write his anti-tobacco-advertising manifesto for what I’m guessing is the New York Times.

I love it when the characters on this show act so completely in accordance with who they are, or at least who I understand them to be, yet in ways that surprise me. Perhaps my discomfort with last week’s episode (I just can’t let it go!) was because their reaction to the loss of Lucky Strike caused them all to go so far to the extreme of their ruthless business practices, to the extent that none of their humanity remained. I don’t know. Is that too easy? While in this episode, that ruthlessness is still there, but it’s tempered by desperation, which provides Don and Pete and — well, Roger’s still being an ass — with a vulnerability that I suppose is essential for me to, well, understand them.

So Don listens to Peggy quote himself back to him — “if you don’t like what people are saying, change the conversation” — and that’s exactly what he does, writing an ad for SCDP, full of that special brand of Don Draper bravado, and while it’s not as good as his Kodak Carousel pitch, it ain’t half bad. And it works — after that ad appears, no one’s talking about Lucky Strike dumping SCDP (loved the way Megan compared it to the rewriting of relationship history — wonder if she’s feeling a little fallout from her tryst with Don? What was with that look she shoots at Faye?). They are, however, talking about Don effectively killing the company, and I liked that this was left open ended, a cliffhanger that may not even be resolved by next week’s finale.

Still, I don’t see the argument the other partners made, not entirely. I see their point about being left out of the loop, that they didn’t even know this was happening, but for them to complain that their names aren’t on the ad as signatures as well, when they’ve always, from the beginning, relied on Don to be the public face of the company, didn’t sit right with me.

And what a way for Bert Cooper to go. “Get my shoes!” is . . . well, that’s an exit line only Bert would have. Is it really the end for him, though? Not that he’s had much to do with the new company.

I haven’t even gotten to the Sally/Glen/Betty business. If this is an end to creepy Glen, I’m OK with it. Offering Sally first a cigarette and then his Coke backwash? GROSS. I mean, Betty’s got a point when she tells Sally that Glen is bad. I wonder if she knows, or suspects, that Glen was behind the trashing of her house — and ultimately, Glen does succeed, however indirectly, in making Betty think that it’s time to move. But holy crap, is that a rash and petty reason. It would be one thing if she thought she were protecting Sally, but that’s not what’s happening at all. And it’s this brief scene at the end that threatens to undo all the progress Sally made over the summer in therapy — that she now knows that her mother isn’t interested in the truth of any situation as long as Sally obeys her, and Sally can play that game as long as she can hold on to the anger that her mother doesn’t see. The moment that got to me most, which won’t surprise you at all, is when Dr Edna makes sure Sally knows how proud Dr. Edna is of her. Because Dr. Edna KNOWS that Sally is not getting that sort of positive reinforcement at home.

Other stuff:

* In the meantime, Betty isn’t making any progress at all, and I’m not sure I liked the part when Dr. Edna explains that she’s probably not the most qualified to keep talking with Betty since she’s a child psychologist. Betty’s a child. I get it.

* Lane’s family is back in New York. Interesting that this information is conveyed as a Bee Tee Dubs.

* Teddy Chaough’s prank call seemed perfectly in keeping with the character I’ve come to understand is obnoxious and petty and dim. Still, at the beginning I was all, “Who did they get to be the voice of RFK? That is a HORRIBLE impression!”

* This episode was full of nice moments — I mean, really NICE moments. Pete’s acknowledgement and silent thanks to Don at the end. Peggy and Faye, with Peggy expressing her genuine admiration for the way Faye carries herself in a male-dominated business. Henry coming home early to have dinner with the family — what was the backstory there? Whether this was a coincidence or whether Betty said something to him about Sally’s desire to eat with the grownups, it made me like him better.

* Bert yelling at Harry to get out of the conference room made me laugh, since it was exactly the sort of place-putting Harry’s needed from the beginning of the season.

* And finally, was I the only one who, after Danny says “It’s a dog-eat-dog world,” followed up with “and I’m wearing Milkbone underwear“?

I can’t be the only one.

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