B7MP Update

I noticed three pages missing from Maximum Power and they are reposted below.

WARSHIP

Writer: Peter Anghelides

Director: Graeme Harper

Guest Stars: Terry Walsh, Pat Gorman, Mr. Blobby (Andromedans), Roy Skelton (Alien Voices), Harry ‘Aitch’ Fielder (General Howells), Walt Disney (Barni Stafford)

Opening Shot: The Liberator facing the alien fleet in stock footage from the previous episode.

You Just Described the Story:
Blake: After what we saw on Star One, I wasn’t expecting that.

Random Insult:
Cally: No one would want to read your mind, Vila.

In A Nutshell: Star (One) Wars. With Alien Suicide Ticks!

Story: The Liberator is joined by a fleet of civilian ships to face off the Andromedan invaders at Star One, but the Federation refuses to join the battle. Servalan has discovered that the dwarf planet Megiddo is an ancient doomsday weapon that will soon blow up the alien fleet and the expendable civilian ships as well. When the aliens blow up Star One and enter the galaxy en masse, Jenna performs a nifty slingshot orbit to lure the Andromedan fleet straight towards Servalan’s forces just as Megiddo detonates. Both space fleets are blown to smithereens but although the Liberator rides out the shockwaves, it is crippled by the damage from Alien Suicide Ticks and the crew are forced to abandon ship – perhaps forever.

Information:

Blake’s acting damned peculiar, isn’t he? After being shot through the heart, confronting an alien invasion and then being forced to put Avon in charge he decides to sit out the battle sitting on the Liberator’s verandah recording a self-pitying Captain’s Log.

Cally’s probably right to question Blake’s fanaticism, but why didn’t she do that during the search for Star One rather in the last minutes before they start fighting an intergalactic war?

Unlike all those Star Wars fans lionizing Han Solo, Blake’s 7 is always brave enough to admit that Avon fires first. Every single time.

Stress makes Vila recite his BBC character profile in an annoying high-pitched whine.

Orac can’t interface with the Andromedan ships because they don’t have Tarial Cells or the Megiddo systems because they were built before Tarial Cells were invented. Gosh, you wait ages for something Orac-proof and then two come along at the same time!

Vila wisely tells us how much he hates working on the hull in hull suits, something never seen on screen before, and then Avon tells him to put on a hull suit and work on the hull.

What’s all this stuff about Cally’s telepathy being boosted by an area of space? It doesn’t help her communicate with Jenna, or the aliens, or even allow her to read the thoughts of Avon and Blake telling her to focus on fighting a space battle. All it does is let her spot the human ships are human. They could have just had Zen say that for all the difference it makes. That said, she somehow knows to put on a thermal suit before she decides to travel to a freezing cold planet. But she still acts surprised. Silly Cally.

Blake uses his Liberator gun as a sonic screwdriver to open a locked door.

For his first episode as the man in charge of the Liberator, Avon spends the whole time sitting on the flight deck arguing with Zen and acting as an IT support phoneline.

No wonder the Federation changed their logo. That old one would be murder to get the fingers right.

One of the frozen Megiddo crew is named ‘Stafford Johns’. Stratford Johns would play Belkov in the Season R episode “Games” and the froggy Monarch in Doctor Who: “Four to Doomsday”.

If Megiddo pre-dates Star One by centuries… what was it protecting before? And why did the Federation give Star One a suitably nondescript name but gave their oh-so-secret doomsday weapon a name blatantly derived from “Armageddon”? This isn’t a cryptic crossword challenge!

Blake defeats an exploding Alien Suicide Tick by… shooting it. So it explodes. OK, that’s thinking outside the box, you’ve got to give him that.

This week’s plot seems to be either Cally or Vila pointing at things and screaming that they’re bombs.

Cally’s plan to hold her breath doesn’t prevent her from speaking aloud. Is that coz she’s an alien?

Matt Irvine must have paid off his mortgage with all the explosions in this episode. No sooner has Vila told us that a small explosion has happened off-screen than a whole planet is blown to smithereens.

Servalan is drinking a cocktail of GREEN while directing an intergalactic war. That’s pure class, that is.

When Zen says sixty per cent of the Federation fleet has been destroyed, is that overall or just the sixty per cent of the fleet Servalan was keeping to one side? Is it sixty per cent of that sixty per cent? What about the other forty per cent? What happened to that?

Avon is clearly struggling not to quote MacBeth in his final conversation with Blake.

Having flown the Liberator through an atomic explosion, hijacked an alien ship, slashed open a space monster’s throat with a screwdriver, and crushed the puny egos of all men in her path, it’s hard not to think Jenna’s done more in this one episode than all the episodes previously. It’s hard not feel sad this is her last appearance, especially as Tarrant turns up in the next story.

Blake stops talking to himself so he can listen to a tape recording of his own voice. Egotist, much?

Closing Shot: Blake’s life-capsule tumbling away from the Liberator into cartoon space.

Delightful Dialogue:

Avon: Is this where we embrace and make up?
Blake: Not while I’m in this sling.
Avon: That wasn’t what was stopping me.

Vila: We’re surrounded by alien suicide ticks!

Avon: You’d better know what you’re doing with this smuggler’s stunt, Blake.
Jenna: Don’t worry, Avon. He knows someone who does.

Amateur Hour:

The Alien Suicide Ticks are clearly just old Cybermat props with tiger stripes painted on them.

Despite the Liberator being constantly shot at, bombed, and sent spinning through space Orac never falls off the table. And then Avon makes a big thing about getting Cally to put it in a protective case?

When Blake opens the cryo-tube and the body inside turns to dust, he gets covered in the stuff but it disappears between camera shots.

Vila’s space helmet cracks open when he takes it off in the airlock.

Jenna’s angry Cally ruined her cunning trick to steal an Andromedan ship and fly out to the mine field. Why? If the aliens hadn’t blown her up, she would have been targeted by every human ship including the Liberator. What exactly was she planning to do if the others didn’t rescue her?

The Alien Suicide Tick doesn’t so much as singe the teleport controls when it explode, making Jenna look ridiculously overzealous with that fire extinguisher.

The wobbling Andromedan pilot watching the plasma explosion acts like a happy little Tellytubby.

Despite being told that Servalan is now President and Star One has been blown up by aliens, Avon doesn’t remember these facts in the very next episode. Either all those bumps on the head he gets cause amnesia or else he won’t believe it until Servalan herself tells them to his face.


ADDITIONAL SCRAPS OF KNOWLEDGE

Planets: Megiddo, Harnup, Maron plus a bunch of others (the frontier of the galaxy’s a crowded place).

Space-isms: sub-atomic probes (which can be dangerous), plasma wave explosion, portable medi-packs.

Dumb Guard Alert: That Andromedan pilot really should learn to lock his spaceship doors.

Special Mention: this is the only episode of Blake’s 7 with a pre-credit sequence. It’s filled with such pointless info-dumps and recycled model shots that you can see why they never tried it again.

Important Fact: Ian Levine, in revenge for the BBC strike that scuppered the Doctor Who story “Shada”, stole all the master tapes of this episode of Blake’s 7 which had actually been completed. It wasn’t until 2013 that this episode was finally tracked down and we got to finally see if it was good or not.

RIP 2BG

The other night, I idly checked out a youtube WhatCulture vid which was listing TV shows that jus---

*three hours of nation-wide power blackout later*

Yes, well, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, I was on youtube the other night checking out a video entitled 10 TV Shows Which Just Have To Be Cancelled. This proved to be a misnomer as the actual topic was 10 TV Shows Which Have Just Been Cancelled, an entirely different kettle of fish. The majority were a list of series I'd never seen, many barely having finished their first series before being chopped for poor ratings and public disinterest.

Upon noticing that this video was less than a week old, I idly thought to myself, Gosh I hope 2 Broke Girls isn't on that list.

And literally the next show in the list was 2 Broke Girls.

I consider this a terrible thing. Particularly as, unlike the nine other programs, it was not axed from poor ratings or public disinterest but because it had breasted (so to speak) the 52 episode limit needed for syndication rights overseas. The same fate had struck down Blake's 7 and Red Dwarf, and was also considered for RTD's Doctor Who. It's horrific.

Alas, I am one of the few people in my very small circle of acquaintances to love this show. I'll be blunt and say it fell into a formula with its fourth series, as the titular girls inevitably hit the big time in the middle of the season only for them to wind up back to their starting point before the series ends. And, truth be told, six seasons is not a bad life for a sitcom that everyone seemed to watch but no one admitted to liking, but the fact it was axed rather than ending is the bummer. The story is unfinished. There is no closure.

But frankly, it's sad because 2 Broke Girls has been a constant comfort to me. The jokes made me laugh, the plots surprised me, and more importantly it was a series about people being nice to each other when they don't have to be. The whole premise involves acts of kindness and refusal to blind prejudice, but also accepting that not everyone will get a happy ending even if they deserve it. Bad luck will happen, opportunities will be missed, but as long as you have people who care about you there's no reason to give up. And that's a lesson that's kept me going quite a few times.

Indeed, Max and Caroline cameoed in my own nervous breakdown trying to save me.

I dunno what that means, but it merits my anger when pure greed ends their universe.

It's one of a very few TV shows I'd actually write fan-fic for, the characters inspiring me in ways that even other franchises I enjoy - House, Parks and Recreation, Drop the Dead Donkey, Nightingales - never has. I recommend it unreservedly, and any complaints that it's just two bitches insulting minorities shows the kind of closed-minded stupidity that deserves such "high brow" entertainment as Fuck Me, I Baked A Cake!, Unpaid Amateurs Decorate Someone Else's House and Hard Chat.

G'bye, girls. Things were better when you were around.

Doctor Who - Matrix Glitch

Of course, there are innumerable differences in the approach between Moffat and RTD as showrunners but one that I dwell on is that RTD despises the "it's all a dream" approach. Massive rewrites were carried out on The Satan Pit as the original saw Rose caught in a dreamscape as the Beast tried to possesses and Turn Left set its stall as an AU ep from the start. Yet Moff's casual Donna-in-dream-world stuffed things up to require episodes reshuffled and without Big Russell, things have spiraled out.

Meh. This isn't even as bad as the Pope clit-blocking you earlier in the episode.

While some complain of numerous episodes invoking the malfunction tech plot (which in the Classic Series was pretty much limited to The Edge of Destruction and The Face of Evil), ever since Moffat took over we've had a massive increase in episodes that never happened, that were either dreams, simulations or totally reset at the endings. Not only did his first series decanonize itself at the climax, Amy's Choice and The Big Bang were set in nightmare worlds that were never mentioned again. Then there was The Girl Who Waited But Never Actually Did or The Wedding of River Song That Wasn't. The Angels Take Manhattan, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, The Name of the Doctor, Dark Water, Last Christmas, Sleep No More, Heaven Sent... all episodes that basically waste up to 95% of their run-time undoing their existences.

Of course, some times it's justified. Amy and Rory's one canonical farewell scene would have no meaning without the false history they just escaped, but would the previous series really have suffered if the Doctor went straight from Trap Street to Gallifrey? Moffat's sociopathy when it comes to his work, taking a self-confessed sadism in torturing characters for the hell of it, reaches an even greater meta-textual peak than ever before. He refused to work with Big Finish in 1999 because he couldn't write a story where the Eighth Doctor is repeatedly tortured into insanity, and when he actually completed the script in Heaven Sent he ended up having to go to great lengths to put things back in the box.

The ultimate blasphemous truth... you can totally skip this episode. Seriously, you're wasting an hour of your life watching it. I mean, you think The Idiot's Lantern was totally irrelevant to the ongoing series but that was peanuts compared to this...

And now we have an episode about a bunch of aliens who are just pissing about with the Doctor for shits and giggles. Their true motivations are briefly described and will no doubt be the focus of the next two episodes which, lest we forget, are not written by Moffat. But for this episode, the world ends, companions are killed off, the Doctor suffers horribly and dies for the simple reason that the bad guys just want to see him suffer for the hell of it. You really could skip this episode entirely, it has no actual impact on anything else. Everything in it is a waste of time, existing only to freak out the characters and the audience.

And, it should be said, it does that immensely well.

Like the Sam Neill film The Mouth of Madness, there's a fine line between showing the breakdown of cause and effect against the forces of truly alien power and simply pulling off crazy shit in the random hope some of it sticks. Indeed, this story of a book that turns you mad and suicidal with the truth reality is fiction, and ends with the world sinking into anarchy and destruction as our hero is unable to do more than outlive the other characters and realize what the hell is going on.

The subliminal flashes of crime scenes as the Doctor is told of the deaths, the cheerful suicide parties, the dead bodies in the Oval Office (alas, it's clear this was written when the idea Obama's replacement would be someone we'd regret killing themselves), the slowly dawning horror of "oh shit, I'm not real" when even the TARDIS crew end up not immune. It's creepy, it's unsettling, and the bits with a blind Doctor being chased around a library by some badly-lipsynched red-robed monks who aren't even worth keeping in focus are, if anything, reassuring in comparison. Drawing the Catholic Church of today rather than some lesbo-vampire-ruled-space-army also adds some real weight to another convenient labyrinth of old macguffins.

Wow. I bet a lot of thought and effort went into that monster design.

Catholicism gets a pretty light ride here. Apart from a genuinely hilarious gag about the Pope interrupting a gay date, the cardinals are all shown to be intelligent and worthy of respect. They are shown to be totally right in their belief the Doctor can help and that the situation needs his attention, they even try to offer him absolution, and it's clear that while they keep the history of a female pope secret they don't consider her any lesser a leader of their religion. No choir boys are molested, no money resting in the account...

Maybe that was the first clue none of this is real?

Yep. It really IS the opening credits to The Last Leg. Nothing more to say.

Now, leaving aside the Red Dwarf template of "hang on, we're real but we're all just dreaming" we've got perhaps the more Stargate-initiated "we are real but we want to stop that from the greater good" types as I'm sure I remember an ep set in the future where SG1 had accidentally let aliens invade and sacrificed themselves to send a warning back into the past, altering history. Or that brilliant SGU ep where we get a glimpse of the timeline between everything went wrong and everything went right. And there's also the jaw-drapping Angel episode where it seems the vampire with a soul has saved the whole world, reunited his friends and got the girl... only to turn out that whole bit was an illusion and that they stuck with the far more dangerous Plan A instead. Rather similar to Dark Angel that...

My point is, I could forgive this "it wasn't quite all a dream" business if I felt confident it mattered. The only person who knows of what might have been is the ever-secretive Doctor, about aliens who aren't doing what they're going to be defined as doing to people who don't exist. It's not even a twist ending, the whole plot revolves around a plot idea even Nardole suspects was done first with Picard and the holodeck. It doesn't exist in isolation like, say, Amy's Choice did on it's own terms. No one learns anything or even has the slightest bit of closure. It's ostensibly part one of a trilogy, the same way The Last was supposed to foreshadow The Next Life (bringing things neatly back round to McGann BF stories).

Ultimately, Extremis can be summarized as a dream sequence interspersed with flashbacks.

And the flashbacks aren't really up to much, there's no surprise that they didn't merit an episode on their own and despite the dialogue, actors and the like still manages to feel less epic than the opening scene of the Telemovie. The Master/Missy is to be executed and the Doctor left to deal with the remains, but by turning it into a Game of Thrones cutaway outside Westeros with ye olde hang-on-I'm-not-the-Time-Lord-we're-talking-about-she-is "twist" it lacks the bewildering shock of flying eyes and exploding planets. Missy has the least funny and memorable dialogue she's been given, Nardole's shock arrival as a non-headless monk is only remarkable for his Garth Marenghi monologue, and I was actually surprised we got to see the Doctor save Missy given Moff's preferred "never mind what happened next" fetish he mastered in Sherlock.

Still waiting for jammy dodgers, a fez and proper monsters with decent story arc.

So. Missy is in the vault.

Is anyone surprised? A clue: no.

The moment anyone even considered the idea the vault might be a prison for an individual, everyone assumed it was Missy. I mean, everyone. In fact, this drove speculation wild because, of course, it surely couldn't be that simple, could it? But, no, it's Missy. And she's in the vault because, um, the Doctor pinky-promised to bury her alive for a thousand years to trick her executioners, even though he defeated them with the "fear me, bitches" approach that, together with River's diary and Nardole, are completely unexplained to the so-called new audience. In fact, it's never made clear bitchy Mary Poppins lady is actually called "Missy" or that the Fatality Index might have had reason to want her executed - I dare say any new viewers would have ended up with the confused impression Michelle Gomez is playing the Doctor's wife, and he's now a nutter who locks her in the cellar.

"For my final request, I want the Doctor, a rival Time Lord, to take my remains home to Gallifrey and you're not going to fall for this one again, are you?"

Of course, Moffat doesn't want to go arc-heavy this year but let's be honest - he's rubbish at arcs. Not just resolving them, but even sustaining them. What is the Pandorica and who is inside? No idea, we only find out it's a prison three minutes before the twist it was empty, and no one bar the Doctor and River have heard of it the previous twelve weeks. What are the cracks in the universe? Most of them aren't being even spotted by the main characters, so they aren't wondering. What's up with Amy's pregnancy, the little girl in the spacesuit, the eyepatch lady and the future Doctor's death? Well, Amy's not willing to do anything about any of those, so who gives a flying fuck?

Even when he realized that character arcs were the way to go - how can the Doctor cope without the Ponds? what the hell is happening to Clara? - he blows it all away by expecting us to wet ourselves with excitement about mentioning the word "hybrid" in random contexts, apparently due to that ancient Gallifreyan prophecy never mentioned before or since and explained by a gloating Davros in a scene you can barely hear because Capaldi's screaming at the top of his head.

This year, we've just had one arc that was clearly less important than Bill joining the universe. What is in the vault, and why is the Doctor guarding it? Now we know it's Missy and... for no obvious reason whatsoever, and Nardole's rant about the threat Missy poses seems completely bizarre since he went to the trouble of helping save Missy's life. And if she's happy to have Mexican takeaway without trying to escape and destroy the world, is it really so important the vault stay closed?

To be blunt, Moffat manages to turn in the biggest failure of the season by giving us an important episode that has no import, shocks us with stuff we already knew, and offers us a threat that has nothing to do with with anything seen before or since.

For the first time, yes, I think Moff's finally become more trouble than he's worth.

At last, there's actually real effort going into these designs.

And now, out of sheer muscular habit, a quick review of Whovians which has as we all known driven me to the clocktower with an automatic rifle far too many times than even Chris Lilly. This week wasn't so gut-churningly offensive - the "little nerd" from last week was allowed his revenge to upstage Rove several times and humiliate Adam Richards who now has little to say between random squawks of despair and pointing out how little his theories actually make sense. Bargo is still more amphetamines than a season of House, and it's painfully obvious they've had to dragoon two random ABC celebs to sit on the panel with them since no one else is willing to tolerate the assholes. Not once did these ladies convince me they were fans, and indeed I doubted they actually watched the episode shown directly in front of them.

It went from pathetic to painful as the revelation Missy was in the vault robbed them of anything to actually talk about, given the whole episode never happened and their desperate vamping to pad out thirty minutes shows just how flawed it was. It was so bad even the Shadow Test Autocue Gag (which was genuinely funny) didn't even make me care they weren't all going to kill themselves, when last week I would have sacrificed a virgin carrot to grant myself the liberty of their deaths...

So, in short, a wasted week.

"Forgive me for the indulgence," begged Moffat in DWM.

You're forgiven. Now piss off and don't come back.

"Come on, can't you let a brutha have one last pointless pre-credit sequence more interesting and exciting than the rest of the episode put together? Huh? Gimme some skin!"

Doctor Who - Air Supply And Demand

Doctor Who has often got stuck into mini-ruts - the base-under-siege years, the UNIT era, Saward unbound, the Powell Estate, Silence is Falling - where suddenly there seems to be a deliberate formula that all stories must follow to a lesser or greater degree that starts to choke away any variety.

"Let me guess, Bill - mysterious disappearances in a spooky labyrinth, right? Called it."

Although this series has completely met the challenges of letting in a new audience and recoiling from needlessly depressing adult material, the episodes all seem to follow a basic pattern. Bill distracts the Doctor and Nardole from the Vault with a mystery about vanishing people who are being consumed by an unstoppable monstrous force. After being chased around a lot, the Doctor says they should stop running and together with Bill twigs that the motivation of this force is not what we think and indeed the ravenous force isn't strictly evil. This leads to a final confrontation where the conflict is ended rather awkwardly and the Doctor sods off while everyone tries to come to terms with what they've just experienced.

They've all been like that this season, and next week's episode doesn't look like it's going to be a radical alteration to the pattern. Is that a bad thing, though? The five stories have been all very good if slightly unengaging with the last couple (which didn't get the mix of regulars/new characters right), but hardly the variety roller-coaster trip of a lifetime you'd expect. To put it harsh, the show hasn't slammed into full gear yet but that feels deliberate and careful rather than a break-neck lunge to the end sequence.

"Yay! Long have we yearned for meaningless bloodshed! MORE DEATH!" - average GB poster

Moffat has this year definitely decided to focus on character over story arc. The mystery of the vault, its contents and the threat it poses have barely been sketched in, instead focusing on the burden it places on the Doctor and Nardole and their increasingly strained relationship. There were whole episodes where Amy existed only to try and excite us about River Song, rather than be there to react to events as a human being (or even a Ganger duplicate) while one of the core problems with Clara was that she had literally seen everything in her time-splinter-journey which meant that, combined with her control issues, made her a wisecrack dispenser rather than someone the audience could identify with.

Thankfully, no one is risking that this year. Bill has been described by writers as revolutionary, forcing them to challenge their very perspectives on DW cliches and go in unexpected routes - like Bill's understandable attempt to chuck the Doctor out of her share house from social embarrassment, or the Doctor confronting the fact that for all the fun of the frost fair that racial intolerance is going to ruin his day. This time we get her take on the "trust me" scene as the Doctor seemingly leaves her to die, wanting to do so but humanly realizing she's going to die whatever clever plan is used. Or as she finds herself being mistaken for racist by blue Richard O'Brien and also how awkward it is for anyone in that position to dig their way out.

"This calls for a very special blend of psychology... and extreme violence."

She's not the focus this episode, though, as she is forced to share an adventure with Nardole once again which in turn gives Matt Lucas a chance to do more than giggle shrilly an impersonate a dwarf version of Eddie Hitler. The hints we get in this story that Nardole is actually a criminal murderer who transformed himself into a lovable camp bald midget to escape justice, as well as his brutal explosion of anger in the final scenes. For a character that seemed a kind of homage to K9, he's now a bit more like Turlough, if he stopped trying to charm the Doctor and just treated him like Tegan.

As for the Doctor, well, we all know Moffat has been the character's biggest critic since day one. The first thing he wrote for the show in an official capacity had a subtitle calling the Doctor "an utter bastard", considering him a charming sociopathic loose canon in the universe and his enemies like Daleks and Cybermen were simply persecuted because they didn't fall for his blarney. However, Moff's attempts to paint the Doctor in this darkest shade have not, let's be fair, worked quite well.

The goggles... they did nothing...

Partially this is down to Matt Smith's incredible charisma. He simply doesn't across like the manipulative, arrogant dick he was written as in Time of the Angels or A Good Man Goes To War. Yes, his life brings harsh consequences to those he cares about, but the whole Silence Arc ends up with "they started it" and the Doctor being morally blameless for it all (the endless bitter war simply is motivated by him protecting innocent bystanders on Trenzalore). Part of Capaldi's characterization was meant to strip away the Doctor's charm and let his actions speak for themselves, but the problem is... he came across like a dick, not someone who's flaws have finally been exposed. The idea of Kill the Moon was Clara would, like Amy in Cold Blood, be dumped to face the moral problems, and find it insulting. The trouble is, the Doctor just left Amy in a room saying "you sort it out, I have faith in you" whereas he fled in the TARDIS leaving Clara to choose whether to die by nuclear bomb or moon disintegration.

Moffat's attempts to show the Doctor as heroic despite a bigoted personality haven't come across at all. He's the only sympathetic character in a story that's sold as the one where the Doctor's the villain. He's likewise the most horrible character in the story where he has to prove himself with more principles than anyone else. You can't have an insufferable genius be wrong all the time, or else the genius bit is totally redundant. At last, with this series, it seems he's finally worked out how to get that across by having the Doctor constantly breaking his own promises and getting punished as a result. Oxygen sees him risk his life to save his friends, but acknowledges that he endangered them in the first place. Nardole's fury at the end makes it clear that the Doctor's noble sacrifice ultimately would be selfish, as he risks the whole universe just because he's getting bored hanging around in a university. We both agree with Nardole the Doctor was wrong, yet how can we disagree with the Doctor for answering a distress call and showing his best friend the universe?

In short, it's taken three years but for the first time we have sympathetic Doctor the audience can understand.

Oh well, better late than never.

Of course, true fans yearn for the good old days where the Doctor called ethnic minorities "pudding brains" and left them to die while he doodled on chalk boards.

Oxygen's guest cast are so thinly-sketched it's hard to remember their names, the only memorable ones being the bright blue Richard O'Brien alien and the baby-crazy lady who stupidly does the whole "one day from retirement and then I can marry my sweetheart" speech before being killed. There's also a black chick and two interchangeable guys with beards. They were all basically just basically decent space plumbers who were being killed in nasty ways, less-well-defined than the basically decent students who were being killed in nasty ways last week, or the basically decent street urchins the week before.

"It's astounding... time is fleeting... madness takes its toll..."

That they engender any sympathy at all is entirely down to the social satire and commentary on this episode of poor workers being crushed by uncaring business. Rather like the other episodes, with villains basically making other people pay their debts and reaping the rewards - like that old story about the chicken that goes to all the trouble of baking a loaf of bread but the rest of the farmyard animals want a bite even though they all refused to get off their asses and help. Even in Smile, the idea is humanity was for better or worse exploiting the Emojibots to do their hard work and The Pilot used Heather as a spare part.

But is this all a subtle overarcing theme, rather like insatiable hunger in Season 22, or just the same old stuff being thrown at us again and again? In five episodes we've all been given the blunt message that past, present or future, life sucks and if you don't stand up to the bastards they will grind you down. Mind you, in five episodes we've had lots of toilet jokes from Bill who is more lavatorially-obsesssed than a box set of 80s Alternative Comedy skits.

The blind Doctor deeply regrets his improved sense of smell when Nardole breaks wind.

Social relevance is, it must be said, not exactly something highly prioritized in Moffat's Who - the sociopolitical satire in Matt Smith's first year (where elections are shown to be pointless, the Daleks rebrand themselves in political colours, then there's a massive coalition that does nothing) was entirely incidental. The infamous Space Whale Aesop, as tv tropes call it, was the order of the day where the morals of the story are far from applicable to everyday life - don't use a space whale to pilot your ship, don't mine for acid with liquid clones, it's wrong to shoot dinosaurs through the head and rape Egyptian princesses. Oh, an wifi might be run by aliens stealing our souls. The most political episode of the Eleventh Doctor was Cold War, and that was about 1980s Nuclear Brinkmanship with most of the discussion of that edited out and replaced with "stop the missile, save the world" simplicity!

The Doctor's anti-war speech in Nightmare Scenario of the Zygons is rightly hailed as a brilliant bit of acting, but there are some who recoil from the blatant unsubtlety of it all. Perhaps that's because after years of being more concerned with basic morality and shades of grey, having Doctor Who tackle radicalized refugee immigration policy after an episode where an evil fire-breathing lion burns 18th Century highwayman is effectively whiplash. Especially as Leandro also did the "no home planet pity me no wait I'm evil" shtick, which is like an expose on steroid addiction following an episode of Roger Ramjet.

Beyond this door lies contemporary social commentary. Do you enter? Y/N

Since Sleep No More, there's been an increasing attempt to do a little more than just scare people with slow-moving monsters in tunnels. Since that's what 50% of SNM is about, it's impressive that Mark Gatiss of all people wants to focus on the world that created the monsters, where humanity's focus on "time is money" means they're getting rid of sleep and growing Sontaran-like expendable soldiers because they're cheaper to maintain. People who crave the good old days are dismissed as wierdo luddites (and, intelligently, the anti-Morpheous soapbox git is the only one who's prejudiced against GM soldiers and treat them like dirt, so things are more complicated than they need to be).

After Smile tried to actually look at what future society might be like, where we all wear mood-detecting emjoibadges and have names like "Goodthing" and "Steadfast", Oxygen shows what future capitalism will be like when - like an old Lenny Henry joke - the big businesses are making you pay for the air you breath. You need to top up your credit rating, and distance is now measured in breaths. It's almost a twist that obvious solution to the deaths - that the corrupt corporate execs are behind it all - turns out to be true. When it's cheaper to kill someone than let them live, does a spreadsheet care?

That's an appalling pun based on one of Asimov's seminal works. Never mind, it's just the Fendahl talking.

Worship the Death God! The Fendahl created everything! Olag Gan is a sex killer!

Oxygen's utter gut-hatred for that sort of immoral, amoral penny-pinching evil hits home because let's be honest, if the corporations actually could control air supply, they damn well would. Yet, the same basic premise terrified me back in 1992 when Nightingales (the Shakespearan sitcom I've bored all my friends and relatives about with ages ago) did pretty much the same thing. I'm not saying this is a ripoff, just a coincidence that the biggest nightmare people can think of is becoming expendable to your employers.

"Is anybody there?" "There's nobody here but us chickens..."

For the record, the dark finale to Nightingales - Someone To Watch Over You, an episode that might make Chris Boucher go "Wow, that's grim!" - focuses on the trio of security guards discovering the company that employs them are going through major cutbacks, yet have apparently rewarded them with a new security system and a birthday cake. It becomes clear the cake is poisoned, and the bosses want to kill them so they won't have to have pay redundancy. And then, when the question of "who'd be stupid enough to sign up to replace us?" is asked, we discover there are three security guards ready to take over their position. And in true Nightingales never-mind-that-now logic, they're identical clones of the three main characters with no explanation at all except that they are here for the job and will kill their predecessors to get it. The final sequence, where Robert Lindsey's Carter decides - like the Doctor - it's better to die screwing over the suits than live in fear as their lackey, has the same stomach-sinking dread as we realize there is no happy ending this time, just a moral victory. A Pyrrhic victory, at that.

In summary, if Doctor Who has fallen into a pattern, it's at least being used to say something rather than freak out the characters and audience for 45 minutes a week. And just typical that after I pitch to Big Finish a story about the companion being blinded, the Doctor gets blinded as well.

That's more like it.

As for the rapidly-becoming-unwatchable Whovians, it has now reached the point I feel genuinely sorry for Rove being stuck on a couch with two of the worst people to watch anything with. Bargo from Good Game is now so hyperactive he threatens to topple Iggy Pop on Countdown as "most obviously on drugs during an interview" with a jaw-dropping scene of him having a toddler tantrum over the destruction of the sonic screwdriver before the rest of the guests delicately break it to him that the Doctor has a cup full of the bastards on his desk, which has been shown on screen numerous times before. Or his inability to understand what a spacesuit helmet is, and refers to it as "their big space hats". When he sees a remote controlled Dalek and screams "IT MOVESSSS!!", you're not surprised that Tegan wonders if he's hearing voices from his five-buck Christmas decoration K9.

And while little Dexter (a ten year old Matt Smith cosplayer) immediately proves a better theorist than the incoherent garbage Adam Richard spews out - if Capaldi's Doctor is in a season-long regeneration scene, it's a bit odd his eyes haven't healed, don't you think? And seriously would anyone think "Bill is a fob-watched Susan" is a good way to win an audience? - the show dropped the ball when George Christensen came on to review a show that is 180 degrees opposed to all his politics.

Rove, to his credit, tries to ask why a show preaching tolerance, equality and gay rights is the lifelong favorite of a bloke who wants to bring back hanging, treat all from Islam as terrorists and is physically disgusted at the idea of women marrying other women. Christensen's awkward grunt from his Mr. Creosote-like blobby form (seriously, his Tom Baker scarf is too small for his Jabba the Hutt frame) is that Doctor Who is English and ergo whatever happens in England stays in England. Given that Christensen is without doubt the first person the Doctor would tear a strip off for such incoherent prejudice and hypocrisy, this sort of thing has the potential to make Whovians the next Enough Rope!

Yet, with Bargo vibrating on an ultrasonic frequency in one corner and Adam Richards squealing every negative gay stereotype in the other (enough to make you vote against gay marriage just to piss him off), Rove finds himself unable to get a word in edgeways or clarify what the hell a racist misogynist bigot find so enjoyable about a show that stands for everything he doesn't. It's kind of like finding out the Black Panthers were fans of the Black and White Minstrel Show. What?!?!

But no, Adam wails camply the sort of "you're a politician, you should make things better for me" one-liners that would be considered pathetic by the characters from Housos, and the whole thing ends feeling like a pointless waste of time that's twenty minutes of padding after people say "I like that episode." Once the gag that Tegan finally got the blue-faced alien guy she's been craving all year (apparently not having watched a single trailer of any kind whatsoever) is made, it's just a couple of wise cracks short of a test card.

I too felt the distinct urge to purge the cast of Whovians after this...

And George Costas as the Doctor was strangely endearing as it was clear he had no interest in the show whatsoever and was just doing it as a favor to pad the show out. At least he had the decency to get it over with quick and didn't even bother to research how to pronounce monster names, so at least he doesn't come across as a hypocrite like the "hardcore fans" who don't remember Derek Jacobi played the Master...

Purge-atives

"It's Purge Night - you don't sneak up on black people!"

Idly been watching The Purge franchise, that saga of films about a dystopian future where USA declares that for one night a year, murder is legal. The premise is that one night of guilt-free mass slaughter and mayhem is an incredibly social catharsis and means the rest of the year society is perfect. I get the black satire on man's inherent darkness and desire for violence but, still... what crap.


1) The plots always revolve around poor nice schmucks getting caught outdoors/unprotected in the Purge. Why? I mean, it's not like this comes out of the blue? It gets total media coverage. You get 364.2 days a year to prepare for this? Why isn't everyone fleeing America for two weeks if they don't want to be caught in the crossfire? You can spend a fortune on dodgy security systems and hide in the cellar... or you can check out Barbados for a fortnight. Or even Canada. Doesn't anyone think of this?

2) So all the homicidal postal workers and quiet, shy suicide bomber types are happy to wait for Purge Night? No high school shootings now? That's ridiculous. If I want to put a cap in the ass of my enemies, waiting for the one night they're ready for it and also perfectly prepared to do the same to me is the last thing that would work.

3) How the hell does society function the rest of the year? In the first film, someone rings up a phone in and informs millions he's going to murder his boss. OK, it's Purge Night, he won't get in trouble, but who the hell is going to employ him tomorrow? "Yeah, I want to be your boss because you intend to kill me next year and you'll tell everyone about it first!" Wouldn't everyone be forced, Happiness Patrol style, to be perfectly kind and polite to each other so they don't provoke their fellow men to slaughter them? Just how do arguments go in PurgeVerse? "Jimmy, you're on detention!" "Oh Miss Turby I will kill you on Purge Night!" "Not if I kill you bitches first!" Why would anyone even turn up to work in days leading up to Purge Night when they can be slaughtered with impunity? The bosses could sack them... but then the ex-employees could come back on Purge Night and murder them!

4) And that's just before the Purge Night. Imagine afterwards when the streets are full of bloody corpses. Uh, that sounds like a health hazard to me. (The third movie has a "bring out your dead" van but the first two manifestly don't - only took them 25 years to think it might be a good idea...) Plus: "We need a paramedic!" "Sorry, they all got murdered last night." "I need someone to do my tax return?" "They got murdered." "Seems our ratings are down." "Yeah, the studio audience got murdered." Not to mention the awkwardness of failed murders. "Hey, Mr. Jenkinson, you tried to kill and rape my daughter yesterday." "Yeah, damn miss-timed it, huh? Still, we're still okay for golf, right?" "Sorry, got to bury my wife. You murdered her, remember?" "Damn. I suppose you're not going to lend me your lawnmower after this..."

5) The initial idea was, apparently, for all the upper middle-class people to Purge the homeless, destitute and Mexican. That means that all bar 1% of the unemployed, homeless, Mexican have been wiped out. Which means the Purge has no more "acceptable targets". What happens when the B Ark is empty? They turn on the A and C Arks. With machetes. This means, logically, that the population of the USA is dropping rapidly every year - and they can hardly invite tourists or immigrants over? "Come to the Land of Opportunity, and um, try not to get killed when we all go on a murder spree. That's getting awkward."

6) How the hell did they sell this to the public? "OK, now, I know we're all based on liberty, free enterprise and manifest destiny... so once a year let's kill each other." Exactly which focus groups went along with that idea? What feasibility studies said it was bound to work? Why wasn't the USA immediately cut off from the rest of the planet on the ground they're now an institutionalized bunch of psychos? And you're trusting them with the nuclear launch codes? What's to stop someone deciding "Bugger it, it's purge night, goodbye Dubai!"?

7) Why aren't terrorists attacking America on Purge Night, the one night there are no law enforcement agencies that could possibly stop them or even keep track of their movements? Whole cities are full of homicidal nutjobs in carnival masks, and Al Qaeda hasn't got a single foothold there?

8) There is an amazing amount of trust involved in the Purge. Not only does it depend on everyone having total control of their bloodlust carnage until they hear the pips on the radio, the government expects that everyone will adhere to the "level 4" statue on weapons. And that none of the knife-wielding, gun-waving loons will turn on each other but work in coordinated gangs. Given the very first movie has someone kill their friend for ruing a dramatic speech, why would anyone trust anyone else that night? Yet we have gangs of Arkham rejects organized and full of trust exercises as they wave axes around school-buses and never once turn on each other as they face the inevitable frustration of trying to find helpless victims in an underpopulated capital with everyone hiding indoors.

9) In the first film, there's a lot of rationalization from the killers that going on Purge rampage is a spiritual experience that gets all the evil out of you and that it is the duty of all Americans to reach this point of emotional equilibrium. So I take it no therapists exist in America any more? Or anyone who thought maybe you could just put LSD in the water supplies, TELL everyone they'd had a religious experience? Maybe they could put anti-psychotics in the tap water and at least control the carnage before it spirals out of control.

10) Things spiral out of control. By the second movie, people seems to have noticed that after six years there are no law enforcement folk who punish you for violating purge rules despite what they say on the brochure. This means that people start using ridiculously amounts of dakka, flame-throwers, bazookas. It also means that the Purge's secondary option - you can go looting without getting arrested - is overtaken by murderers who don't want to let any witnesses see them breaking the rules.

11) The punishment for violating the Purge rules is apparent summary execution by hanging. Rather than say shoot the rabid fucker through the head. No, take on the chainsaw-waving nutter in the Guy Fawkes mask and try to hang him from a lamppost. That'll intimidate the rest of the nutters and they won't at all murder you en masse and then firebomb your corpses to remove the evidence. Morons.

12) Yeah, everyone gets a whole year to prepare. But somehow, no one thought of selling bullet proof vests, body armor or even knock-out gas grenades to the minorities to protect themselves - even though this would A) make them a fortune and B) create and maintain a large client base. Or at least to the killing crews, not one of which seem prepared even for friendly fire.

13) Why hasn't, say, the radical Greenpeace faction used drones to slaughter everyone on the streets of America on Purge Night as clear proof they intended to murder people? What's America doing to do? Complain about legal murder they made legal? The only explanation is that the rest of the global village has looked at the idiots who thought this up, shaken their heads wearily, and decided to take over the USA once they've all killed each other.

14) I cannot stress this enough, dead people do not make you money. They don't pay taxes. They don't contribute to society. There's not even a Solyent Green Davrosburger scheme to recycle the corpses! And then the New Founding Fathers realize that all the murderers have murdered each other, and so have to hire out hit squads to murder more people. That's smart long term economic investment, isn't it? If they're so fussed, just let off a neutron bomb in downtown New York to cleanse the population! Quicker, cheaper and arguably more humane. I'd say it was ridiculous people this stupid got into power but, you know, Trump.

15) Even aside from the bizarre idea that everyone has perfect self control bar one day of the year, America is still left a corpse-filled ruin every twelve months. Subway systems are set on fire. Bridges blown up. That's got to take a lot of time and money to repair, and what about the other stuff like earthquakes, fires and floods that might occur as well? Plus everyone needs to be innocculated with cholera from all the rotting corpses. Won't the grieving middle-class families need counseling and reparations? And America can forget all about foreign aid because, get this, NO ONE WILL SUPPORT THESE PSYCHOS.

16) Just how do all the killer folk become experts on high-speed sadistic torture, flame-throwing and sadistic knife-throwing unless they train throughout the year? Makes their insistence on hiding their faces with horror masks bewildering. "Dear Nigella, always working in the gym on her neck-snap holds... I'm glad she wasn't there when that doll-faced psycho the exact size, weight, age and gender in a silly mask gutted my children like a Filipino fishmonger. So dear, how did you celebrate the holiday?"

17) Yes, that's right, Purge Day is officially a holiday. Does this mean ex-pats overseas take the day off to do some recreational homicide? Because, of course, that's perfectly logical anywhere outside America.

18) The Purge was instituted in 2017. It's still going strong by 2042. Did New Coke last that long? How has America survived this flawed process for a quarter of a century? Why is anyone on the continent still alive? Who would choose to stay there, let alone go there? Even those unaware of the New Founding Fathers being a corrupt quasi-Illuminati fascist regime would surely notice that only white men are allowed in positions of authority and all ethnic minorities have been exterminated in America?

19) So in 25 years time, calling people "cunt" and "cocksucker" will be the height of offensiveness? Hell, Deadwood took the sting out of those terms a decade ago. Given the evolution of language and the shifting of meanings - did you know, for example, "bloke" means a victim of anal rape? Yet we have Prime Ministers who crave ordinary folk calling them that - it suggests rather than some horrible old WASP insulting his enemies than Dr. Evil trying to do the Macarena and look cool...

20) And it takes 25 years before anyone points out the Purge technically counts as murder? I mean, you could believe no one accepted it, but apparently pointing out ritualized slaughter is a bit morally-iffy has never once occurred to folk who presumably grew up with Game of Thrones instead of The Brady Bunch as a baseline for wholesome American values. Did they all watch the Red Wedding and think that was awesome? How do they cope with all the episodes following that treat it as A BAD THING?

21) Given that the NFF haven't ever used the Purge to take out political opponents, it means no one for that era of death ever thought to challenge them. I mean, how do they keep winning over the public who all have murdered children, lovers, and parents. "Vote for me, and you have more uncertainty and death guaranteed!" "Our schools are awesome except they're all burnt down and all the kids are dead!" "Your leaders stab people to death in a church for shits and giggles but, hey, no GFC - is that a good deal or what?"

22) How come security cameras are still needed if crime is non-existent? Given the whole purpose of Godwin's Law, did no one notice a slight Nazi vibe to Aryan political leaders doing the Heil salute and shouting "WHITE POWER! PURGE AND PURIFY!"? Why is marijuana still illegal when murder isn't? Why hasn't anyone taken a first aide course given how useful that would be? Shouldn't combat armor for government death squads be tough enough to withstand razor blades? If the Purge is Halloween for Adults... what the hell happens on Halloween? Why has technology not improved by the year 2042 do people still do crossword books and not on iPads? If 99% of the population refuse to carry out the Purge and are the victims... why is the 1% not been hunted down and wiped out by now, since 100% are allowed access to weapons, etc. It should be a city of Home Alone lethal pranks! Going out to kill should logically be the riskiest thing you could do!

23) I'll be nihilistic and accept that there are Murder Tourists who come to America only to join in the killing - though notably they're all white Seth Efriken psychos - but why aren't they worried the natives won't use them as target practice? (Which - spoiler alert - they do.) And while murder may be legal in America that day, it isn't the rest of the world (or else they'd stay home) so now all the murder tourists are now infamous across the globe as murderers. Good luck with them getting jobs. "Hey, you were the bloke who went on TV saying you wanted to cruise the world killing people, you sick fuck!" "Yeah, but I got it out of my system!" "Wow, that sure makes you sound trustworthy YOU FUCKING MURDERER!" See how this falls down on even the basic idea of self-preservation? No one would trust you if the only thing stopping you going on a killing spree is the fear it might not be legal that particular day!

24) Purge Insurance, while expensive, apparently fixes absolutely damn everything no questions asked. They also raise the premiums before Purge Night. So they piss off all their customers within 24 hours of them being allowed to go on a killing spree. Smaaaaaaart.

25) The rowdy teen black girls who murder their own parents, literally cover their car in Christmas Tree lights so it's visible for miles and can't be driven properly, then run around in blood-encrusted tutus with creepy masks and absolutely no defense against other people shooting them when they decide they want a candy bar. At gun point. Frankly, you start to wonder how pathetic the 99% normal people are that they haven't dealt with a threat so lame even Operation: Delta could defeat them. Seriously, one gunshot wound to the leg and these harridans of apocalypse would be undone. Lame. And just what are the girls supposed to do tomorrow when their families are dead and the evil fascist government don't give a damn?

26) Their pal in the giant furry pig outfit using a buzz-saw sending sparks everywhere... shouldn't he be on fire by now?

27) All in all, the only good thing to come from this franchise was Rick & Morty's season two extravaganza Look Who's Purging Now. Which is freaking awesome. Especially the Purganol-free candy bars.

Ooh, well, for millennia, our society has been free of crime and war, living in perfect peace. Oh, I know what this is! You've been able to sustain world peace because you have one night a year where you all run around robbing and murdering each other without consequence. That's right. What?! It's like "the purge," Morty. That movie "the purge"? Oh, have you been here before? No, no, but I've been to a few planets with the same gimmick. You know, sometimes it's called the cleansing or the red time. There was this one world that called it just murder night. I-it's a purge planet. They're peaceful, and then, you know, they just purge. T-that's horrible! Yeah. You want to check it out?

Read more at: http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?f=364&t=22643&sid=49dca89dbfae954002569d3958f86264

Ooh, well, for millennia, our society has been free of crime and war, living in perfect peace. Oh, I know what this is! You've been able to sustain world peace because you have one night a year where you all run around robbing and murdering each other without consequence. That's right. What?! It's like "the purge," Morty. That movie "the purge"? Oh, have you been here before? No, no, but I've been to a few planets with the same gimmick. You know, sometimes it's called the cleansing or the red time. There was this one world that called it just murder night. I-it's a purge planet. They're peaceful, and then, you know, they just purge. T-that's horrible! Yeah. You want to check it out?

Read more at: http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?f=364&t=22643&sid=49dca89dbfae954002569d3958f86264

Ooh, well, for millennia, our society has been free of crime and war, living in perfect peace. Oh, I know what this is! You've been able to sustain world peace because you have one night a year where you all run around robbing and murdering each other without consequence. That's right. What?! It's like "the purge," Morty. That movie "the purge"? Oh, have you been here before? No, no, but I've been to a few planets with the same gimmick. You know, sometimes it's called the cleansing or the red time. There was this one world that called it just murder night. I-it's a purge planet. They're peaceful, and then, you know, they just purge. T-that's horrible! Yeah. You want to check it out?

Read more at: http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?f=364&t=22643&sid=49dca89dbfae954002569d3958f86264

Ooh, well, for millennia, our society has been free of crime and war, living in perfect peace. Oh, I know what this is! You've been able to sustain world peace because you have one night a year where you all run around robbing and murdering each other without consequence. That's right. What?! It's like "the purge," Morty. That movie "the purge"? Oh, have you been here before? No, no, but I've been to a few planets with the same gimmick. You know, sometimes it's called the cleansing or the red time. There was this one world that called it just murder night. I-it's a purge planet. They're peaceful, and then, you know, they just purge. T-that's horrible! Yeah. You want to check it out?

Read more at: http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?f=364&t=22643&sid=49dca89dbfae954002569d3958f86264

SHOPKEEPER: Ooh, well, for millennia, our society has been free of crime and war, living in perfect peace.

RICK: Oh, I know what this is! You've been able to sustain world peace because you have one night a year where you all run around robbing and murdering each other without consequence.

SHOPKEEPER: That's right.

MORTY: What?!

RICK: It's like The Purge, Morty. That movie? The Purge?

SHOPKEEPER: Oh, have you been here before?

RICK: No, no, but I've been to a few planets with the same gimmick. You know, sometimes it's called the Cleansing or the Red Time. There was this one world that called it just Murder Night. It's a purge planet. They're peaceful, and then, you know, they just purge.

MORTY: T-that's horrible!

RICK: Yeah. You want to check it out?

MORTY: What?! No! What is your problem?!

RICK: Morty, grow up. If you don't want to watch, don't watch, but, you know, if you tell your mom about this, I'll purge you.

MORTY: You're the worst. And this planet is the worst. How can you be into this? You know, people are gonna kill each other.

RICK: So? What, you trying to sit here and tell me that if there's a video online with someone getting decapitated, you don't click on it?

MORTY: No! Why... why would I do that? You do that?

RICK: I don't, because it would bore me. I see shit like that for breakfast, Morty. But if you don't do it, I say it's because you're afraid of your own primal instincts. So you stuff them down and...

(The bells chime.)

RICK: Oh, oh! Shh. Shh. It's starting. Oh-ho-ho! Here we go.

MORTY: I'm not watching.

RICK: Yeah, yeah, yeah, your medal's in the mail. I'm gonna get a closer look. Whoa! Whoa, they are purging the fuck out of each other! Oh, my God! Oh fuck... That was... okay, yeah. T-that was gross. Wow. Man, I think my eyes were bigger than my stomach on this one, Morty. Ugh. My appetite for purge-spectating got filled pretty quick. Oh, God...

(Rick throws up.)

Read more at: http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?f=364&t=22643&sid=49dca89dbfae954002569d3958f86264

Doctor Who - TKO

What do you get if you cross Psycho with The Dionaea House?

Well, an episode of The Young Ones, normally, but this time it's the fourth episode of the new Doctor Who. So this week it's an emotionally-unbalanced landlord with undead mummy issues manipulating students into a living eldritch house that consumes its inhabitants like a giant Venus flytrap.

...well, actually that does rather sound like The Young Ones as well, really...

 
After having an enemy that isn't evil, an enemy that doesn't realize it's doing harm, and an enemy that's absolutely subhuman filth, we now get a moderate - whereupon although the Landlord's killing sprees started out as bare necessity to save his beloved mother, an act that neither the Doctor nor Bill can truly condemn (as, we know, they both lost their mothers and have the potential to undo that via the TARDIS), the fact is he's now spent seventy years doing it and kind of gets a kinky thrill out of mass-murder. Similarly, his mother goes from creepy evil monster to tragic soul to redemptive hero in about the same time it took to type this sentence.

"Nice cup of tea. I put some coffee in it for some flavor."

Not that I'm complaining, but if this was a classic serial, people would be wondering if the last episode was written by the same bloke that did the others. A contemporary social satire slasher suddenly turns into a magical alien bug Secret Garden no-Eliza-I-am-not-your-father one-act-play, with all the speaking part students all killed off to allow maximum narratorial focus on the main players.

Pictured: those not appearing in the climax with the Doctor, Bill, the Landlord and Eliza

Now, having Bill's best friend and also four other folk she kind of likes brutally murdered in her fourth episode would, methinks, have been a bit of a downer. She would have been traumatized, devastated even and probably lose all wonder and excitement at the universe after having her life ruined by a glorified Norman Bates impersonator. Yet there are numerous journalistic reviewers and of course Adam Psycho Richards in Whovians who bemoan the fact this is not the case.

This, frankly, I can't quite wrap my head around. Of course, Moff himself invented the "everybody lives" trope as a direct contrast to RTD's comparatively-vicious kill em all season finales. When RTD consciously tried to avert this, in New Earth, it was a disaster. Not, I hasten, for the idea the Doctor cures all the plague zombies, but the fact he does it all by mixing some random chemicals into an ultimate cure because he's damn clever and stuff like that. The Doctor can cure death now?! But would the story be better if it ended with the brand new Doctor standing atop a heap of corpses looking miserable?

People watch sci-fi fantasy escape for gritty realism where the dead stay dead.

But apparently, this episode would be much better if Bill's scooby gang were dead forever. Even though you can't scream "ooh, dramatic copout" when they're revived because "getting absorbed by a wave of chameleonic space weevils with deely-bopper eyes to provide life energy for a wooden 19th Century matriarch" is on shaky ground to begin with. Having them all shot dead by crack-crazed pensioners and then revived by passing space beetles would be a cheat. Having space beetles briefly digest them and spit them back out is, when all is said and done, quite reasonable given that all the Landlord's previous victims stay dead and he and Mummy dear and also sacrificed.

This just brings me back to my increased loathing for "gritty, hardcore" fandom who seem to suffer existential erectile dysfunction unless they're watching a show where people die horribly and stay dead. And they seem to hate children, as well. For example, people consider Journey's End a cop out resolution for not killing off Donna, but they're quite happy for that bit where we see Daleks incinerate a whole family including children on screen. They applauded the sacrifice of younglings in Children of Earth. They booed Moffat for having the War Doctor stay his hand when children were threatened. They even lied and claimed there were dead babies in Flatline when there weren't.

What is WRONG with you SICK FUCKS?!

"WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE MAGIC OF DOCTOR WHO?!?!"

It bleeds into Whovians which has hit a level of rock-bottom exactly at the same time they get their high profile David Suchet interview. Despite Rove's best efforts, and Tegan's wry affectionate mockery, we still have to put up with Bargo wanking on about how rubbish the episode in while Adam Richards insults absolutely everything - acting, design, concept, people being allowed to live, fellow fans. He's just a bile-spewing machine that does it with a girly giggle. The fact the ABC have declined to advertise the show since suggests that audiences are sick of having to watch the episodes with that Sontaran-shaped jerk sitting there complaining about literally everything. Including the studio audience, who still have to listen to his increasingly-cretinous attempts at fan theories that, if right, he would also bitch about for being crap.

And Giggle and Hoot auditioning for "Dr. Hoot" was less funny than cholera.

L to R: David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, Christopher Eccleston, John Hurt

In short, a pleasantly-mediocre companion-tries-to-return-to-normal-life story (which in turn is slagged off for Bill not choosing to live in the TARDIS full time, despite the Doctor spending 80% of time out of it lecturing at a university and thus impractical) ruined by the increasing sociopathic hypocrisy of those reacting in the media. Especially those sods who whined it wasn't complicated or dark enough after bitching it was too dark and complicated. No one's FORCING you to watch, you bastards! SHUT THE FUCK UP!

"Okay, jeez, I give up. Take a chill pill!"

It says so much fandom seems to identify with the deranged serial killer refusing to get a life rather than his innocent and unwilling victims.

Seriously, would any of the posters this year make you tune in?

David Suchet was very good, though. Did you really need this review to learn that?

Ricky's Review of Planet of the Daleks

A marvelous chap known as Ricky is currently embarked on a marathon review of classic Doctor Who and, having reached Planet of the Daleks, has magnanimously put in as much effort in his review as Terry Nation did writing it. I post his comic-book panels here for easy reference.