Doctor Who A Town Called Mercy S7E3 ::Spoilers!::

Last review for the day! Then I get to enjoy The Angels Take Manhattan and take my sweet time to review it because we won't have any new Doctor Who until Christmas. That is so incredibly sad. If the story tonight doesn't break my heart, that will certainly do it. I've said this in my last two posts too but, I'm rushing to review all of the series before tonight's episode, my reason is in my Pond Life review.

I think I sound like a broken record but, I loved this episode too. Hey, I warned everyone in my introduction post that my reviews would go like this.

I really like this "movie poster" episodes idea that Moffat had. It is working really well. I didn't have too much of a problem with series 6 but, I know that when I do re-watch episodes, I am less likely to pick a two parter. This was definitely a stand alone episode but, I was glad to see that the Doctor's building darkness was addressed, as I knew it would be. Amy played a very important role in this episode even though companions didn't seem very necessary to resolve the conflict. I enjoyed the fact that Rory and Amy disagreed about the Doctor's actions. I feel like logically if one guy is causing the whole town to starve and that man happens to be a war criminal why not throw him out of town? Because of course, it is wrong and it isn't what the Doctor strives to be. I am glad that Amy and Isaac helped him to realize that.

Kahler-Jex was a complex character that seems to have caused the Doctor do some soul searching of his own and he crossed his path at the right time, I think. It is really interesting to explore right and wrong in such ways and Doctor Who does it well, often. 

The music was fabulous, again separating this episode from the others very distinctly. Thank goodness it was no Gunfighters, that Last Chance Saloon song, oh man it's stuck in my head now! Get out!

The scenery was beautiful and Ben Browder was amazing as Isaac. I loved the Doctor walking into that saloon, acting the part with a toothpick in his mouth and ordering, "tea but, the strong stuff. Leave the bag in."

I probably, no definitely have a lot more to say but, I think I've hit a wall. Maybe I'll edit this later if I think of something after the fact that I definitely wanted to mention. For now, I'm going to gather some boxes of tissues and get ready for The Angels Take Manhattan. I am going to cry like a baby and I am not ashamed of that at all.



  

Doctor Who Dinosaurs on a Spaceship S7E2 ::Spoilers!::

I can't even tell you how much I loved Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. I know it was just a fun romp but, beyond that there was a terrifically despicable villain, some really great touching moments and some decent character development plus, Brian Pond Williams!

Amy being the HBIC in this episode was really awesome. She just took control and I loved it. She had her companions and he had his and they all played an important role in this episode. I could write forever about Dinosaurs on a Spaceship but, I've set this silly deadline for myself to write reviews for all of series 7 before I watch The Angels Take Manhattan. I explain the reason for the rush at the end of my Pond Life review.

So, to make meeting that deadline easier I'm going to post this really long piece, which is what inspired this blog, about how The Doctor killing Solomon wasn't out of character. It's a little nerdy which I'm fine with but, in a "I think you'll find..." way so I wasn't planning to post it but, it's what I was feeling after reading the reviews. I was royally bummed out. I went online thinking everyone would have already made pins for Pinterest featuring all of Amy's amazing lines or that everyone would be talking about how much they loved it and all I saw on twitter was a lot of hate. So this might be awful but, I'm not getting paid or even graded for this so, on with the show.

After reading a few comments and reviews on Dinosaurs on a Spaceship (which I loved) stating that the Doctor's killing of Solomon was out of character, I began to worry that some fans may have been suffering from amnesia.

Being outraged by that action is fine. You have a right to be upset if you don't like that aspect of the Doctor. I have no problem with that point of view. I would like to respond, however, to the folks stating that it was out of character with this well-made video by @TMDWP which provides a whole slew of examples of the Doctor killing people from the classic series:

I know that not everyone has watched classic Doctor Who. I'm in the process of doing so myself and it isn't easy considering the video for so many episodes were lost but, it is definitely worth it. Anywho, since some fans have only watched "New Who" I decided that I should point out some examples that they should be familiar with.

S1E2 The End of The World - Of course I'm referring to Cassandra. After the 9th Doctor foils her plan, he brings her back to Platform One without her "boys" to moisturize her. The Doctor points out that she's creaking. She realizes she is drying out and begs him to help her. Rose can't bare to watch and she also asks him to help to which he responds, "Everything has its time and everything dies." He might not have been able to help her but, the point is, he didn't want to help her and he watched her die.

S2E1 The Christmas Invasion - The Tenth Doctor killed someone in his first episode. After he quotes the Lion King to try to persuade the Sycorax to leave(I fell in love with him at that very moment) and they refuse, he challenges the leader to a battle for the planet. The sword fight moves outside onto awing of the ship where the Doctor defeats his opponent but, he doesn't kill him, yet. He tells him to leave Earth and never return and then cheerfully rejoins Rose. The Sycorax leader gets back up and runs towards the Doctor with his sword drawn. The Doctor throws the satsuma he found in his robe skillfully at a button that causes the part of the wing his opponent was standing on to fold and the Sycorax leader falls to his death. The Doctor says as he walkaway without ever looking back, "No second chances. I'm that sort of a man."

S3E1 The Runaway Bride - This was the first appearance of my favorite companion, Donna. I loved this episode and yes it includes the Doctor basically committing genocide, right? He floods the pit which contains thousands of the Empress of the Rachnoss' children. And he does so with cold rage in his eyes as the place is flooding and burning and he is just standing there, unmoving,watching the destruction. As we know, Donna drags him away before it's too late and after she turns down his offer to join him in the TARDIS she says something to him that may seem obvious to fans but, needed to be said, "Find someone...because sometimes I think you need someone to stop you."

S3E10 The Family of Blood - I know he didn't kill anyone but, if you ask me what he did to them was worse than murder. It showed an extremely malicious streak. It is one thing to kill someone as they are running at you with a sword but, in this episode he plotted out each elaborate and cruel eternal punishment for them. I feel the same way about death vs. eternal torture with unforgivable Curses. Avada Kedavra is thought of as the most terrible of the three but, I just can't get on board with that. Avada Kedavra kills you instantly. You just drop dead which is horrible but, I would rather die quickly than live a lifetime in excruciating agony so for my money, the Cruciatus curse is far worse. But, I digress. This isn't about Harry Potter, I just think the analogy explains why I think this example belongs here.

Now, let's talk about Solomon. He is the epitome of evil and greed. I haven't seen such a good bad guy in ages. He repulsed and angered me and I can't say that I was sad when the Doctor sent him off to die. So many of The Doctor's enemies have a deeper, albeit evil ideology or purpose for their actions. That is not the case here. He kills and steals for his own gain. When he told Nefertiti he would take great pleasure in breaking her in it literally gave me chills.Not only did he commit genocide of the peaceful and brilliant Silurians by ejecting a handful at a time into space, he killed a beautiful innocent creature, poor Tricey, and also made the mistake of insulting the Doctor by offering him financial reward for saving his life. The Doctor told him to leave, twice, he warned him about the missiles and only Solomon's greed stopped him from doing so. I have no problem with his death.

That being said, I do not want the Doctor to start killing people left and right and, even though this episode was a bit of fluff or a throw away, I don't think that action was throw away at all. I feel as though it is going to be addressed directly or indirectly. I think we'll find that it was a consequence of not having consistent companions, which we've seen in the past. I say this based on Amy's line in the trailer for A Town Called Mercy, "You see, this is what happens when you travel on your own for too long."

I could be wrong and if I am maybe I won't feel the same about the killing of Solomon but, even if they don't follow up on this I don't think it would bother me very much. The Doctor is a very complicated man which is to be expected after all he's seen and done. I love his strong stance against hatred and violence, I love how noble and moral he is but, I can understand how the lines might get blurry sometimes and he is forgiven, always and completely forgiven.Well, I think my cheesy use of that quote is my cue to wrap this up.

Doctor Who Asylum of the Daleks S7E1 ::Spoilers!::

Yeah I know, delayed reaction but, I didn't start my blog until after A Town Called Mercy which I will be writing my review for today as well. Crazy deadline, 3 reviews in about 6 hours? Can it be done? I hope so. I gave my reason for this rush at the end of my Pond Life review.

So, let's dive right in, I'm going to review the episode and the prequel in the order that I saw them.

The Episode

I loved it, surprise! The music, Skaro, the sets, the planet was gorgeous, the wardrobe was really well done, the fact that the Skittles Daleks were few and far between, the Dalek Human puppets and obviously the woman who stole the show, Oswin Oswald.

Not sure whether to start in order of how the episode happened or just write about each element on it's own. I'm going with elements and I'm starting with...

The Dalek Human Puppets

They're pretty creepy. Particularly the fact that they are able to access their former selves/memories to go into deep cover. When the first one we see, Darla, responds to "You had a daughter" with "I know, I've read my file." Ooh that was really just awesomely chilling. The man from the Alaska, Harvey, was also great. I love when he goes from deep cover back to Dalek mode and talks about how he, "forgot about dying." It was another great creepy moment. The living or dead aspect definitely worked in their favor as well and I liked that Amy had to make the Doctor realize what he had just said and that they were in a room full of corpses. I think the nano cloud was a clever way for the Daleks to protect the asylum, though I admit that a force field that can only be shut off from inside the asylum may not have been quite as smart.

Doctor Who Pond Life, meh ::Spoilers!::

I think I made it all too clear in my review of The Power of Three that I wasn't crazy about Pond Life. Not to beat a dead horse (sorry Susan) but my disappointment stemmed more from my expectations than the quality of the mini episodes themselves. Here is what we were told we were going to get:

I thought, based on that, we would see things like Amy and Rory at a party starting to tell a story about one of their adventures and catching themselves mid sentence or friends asking where they've been or being really bored. Doesn't sound exciting but, I really wanted it. Unfortunately, what we got was this:

That is all of the episodes strung together but, I think I've made my point about Pond Life as a whole so I'm going to talk about my initial reaction to each mini episode very briefly.

Doctor Who Series 7 Episode 4 Review ::Spoilers!::

Note: This is my first review and I've decided to go in blind. I'm avoiding twitter and podcasts until this is posted so that my writing isn't tainted by public opinion. I plan to do this with all new/new to me episodes in the future.

The Power of Three

I feel like this was the one episode that no one knew that much about or if the podcast world knew anything they weren't talking. I didn't have a clue, I knew it was about cubes that is all. Then I saw the "next time" trailer at the end of A Town Called Mercy. Oh I got excited quick! I am going to contradict the description of this blog with my next statement but, I was disappointed by Pond Life. It didn't do what it said on the tin. It turned out to be a whole lot of the Doctor talking at full speed which I enjoy and I think I would have enjoyed those 5 mini episodes a lot more if I hadn't been told by the Ponds themselves that it was going to be a peek into their life without the Doctor. So, knowing that I loved the advertised premise of Pond Life, you can imagine how excited I was that we would get a whole episode set in Amy and Rory's house.

The standalone episodes theme was very apparent again with the music, obviously the setting, the style of it all was just neat and not like what we've seen in this series yet. I wish I knew the technical term for this but, I don't so I'll try to describe it, poorly I'm sure, I really liked how they displayed the months. The fact that they matched up with some element of the scene and were cleverly placed. I don't know that just looked pretty awesome to me. Oh that description was awful. Here's a picture, they're worth a thousand words:

90's Fashion...I mean TV

My friend Sara inspired this post, well her birthday party did. It's a 90's party happening today. We are supposed to wear clothes from that decade and being a procrastinator I still have no idea what I'm wearing. I'm having a hard time thinking of the 90's as a fashionable era but, that may be due to the fact that I wore some horrible clothing back then. I actually had a nightmare recently after thinking about this before bed...it was the last minute and I still hadn't picked an outfit, the only option I had was to wear this pair of green overall shorts than I owned back in my TLC phase. Yikes!

So I am clueless about the fashion of the 90's but, I remember 90's television all too well. I say that like it's bad thing and of course it isn't, it's just that all of my memories of 90's television are making it almost impossible to finish this post which is, in case you couldn't tell, about the shows I loved back in the day, which was a Wednesday. I could just write about them all but, this would be incredibly long so I've decided to do this award show style and pick one show from each category.

Disclaimer: I don't know if each is my favorite, picking favorites gives me agita. They are just the ones I have something interesting to say about and I know I'm leaving things out. 

Sketch Comedy Show 
The nominees: Saturday Night Live, The Tracey Ullman Show, In Living Color, The State, The Kids in the Hall, MADtv, Roundhouse, All That

And the winner is...The Tracey Ullman Show (1987-1990)

Julie Kavner & Dan Castellaneta

(AKA Marge & Homer Simpson)

Finding sketch comedy at a young age sealed the deal, I was destined to be a comedy nerd. One woman in particular got that ball rolling, Tracey Ullman. I was probably too young for this show (I'm 33) but, I was too young for a lot of my favorite childhood shows/movies. (I loved Hunter before I was in double digits and my favorite movie at the age of 3 was Poltergeist). I loved this show and I'm sure any inappropriate jokes went over my head anyway but, even if I didn't get references or innuendos, the delivery of those jokes were enough to crack me up. I wish I remembered more specifics about this show but, it's been 22 years and unlike some of the other shows listed it's not as accessible. The impact it had on me is the reason it's Singled Out. Also, in addition to being hilarious, this show gave me hipster dibs on The Simpsons. I really did know about them before they were cool.
(This has inspired an outfit idea: I could wear a bathrobe to Sara's party and tell all of her guests to go home!)

Obligatory Introduction Post

I hate writing these things. Not blog posts. It would be awful silly of me to start a blog if I hated the act of blogging. No, I hate writing these introductory posts. It’s like filling out the “about me” section on MySpace or picking your Xbox Live gamertag. Do you know how long it took me to pick my gamertag? Actually now that I think of it, I am far less committed to this post than my gamertag. This is my blog, I can delete this post really easily if I decide it’s too awful for strangers to read so, I guess I shouldn’t sweat it. I feel, after all that rambling, it might be a good time to state on the record that I'm not a pothead...I am a Potterhead but, that's neither here nor there.

Now that I’ve broken the ice with my awkwardness, let’s get down to brass tacks. The main focus of this blog will be television because I love television and I think the amount of time I like to spend talking about it, drives my friends & family crazy so, from now on I’m going to try to get it all out of my system here. It will become very obvious early on that I am a huge fan of Doctor Who and I think I should say up front that the content of this blog might be about 70% Doctor Who and 30% other TV, Comedy, entertainment, and general nerd culture stuff.

I plan to write reviews, though I’m not sure they will be very useful because most of the things I am going to write about are things that I love and the reviews will probably go like this, “I loved it! This was my favorite part…” It’ll be fun for me but, I think in order to be a credible critic you have to criticize something once in a while and I guess I just like liking things. (Hey! That’s the name of this blog.) I’ll also be covering speculation swirling around fandom, and defending widely disliked episodes (Yes Whovians, I’m talking about Love and Monsters).

As the description and name of my blog indicates, I won’t be outright bashing anything. I might try to dissect flaws or weak points in an episode but, not in an overly negative way and mostly just to address things that other fans are complaining about. And this brings me to why I really started this blog.