Day Three Hundred and Sixty-four - Dr.Who: Series 6, Episodes 8-14, "You just can't kill this SOB, can you? Even when you try."

Yes, I know about the hand off from Eleven to Twelve and, yes, it was the most watched thing in BBC history for its timeslot, apparently, but THAT season isn't on Netflix at the moment, is it? No, it most certainly is not. So no Fields of Trenzalore or John Hurt or Peter Capaldi or Clara Oswald.

No, no, no.

Instead, these last seven episodes currently available on Netflix encompass the much anticipated climax of River Song's much hinted marriage/murder of The Doctor. In fact, the beginning of the season was us watching The Impossible Astronaut actually doing so... and it's taken this long for everything else to catch up.

We start with Let's Kill Hitler, where a childhood friend of Amy and Rory's, whom we've never heard or seen before today but apparently was close enough that they named their daughter Melody after, forces our trio of time travelers to go to Berlin at gunpoint. Of course, it turns out that this Melody is actually their daughter Melody, in a regeneration she got after we last saw her dying on the streets... and she actually does manage to kill The Doctor after regenerating into the face we know so well before her better nature is appealed to and she spends all her regenerations (she can do that, apparently) to bring him back.

This is a fun episode for several reasons. For one, Hitler's in it for all of five minutes before he's shoved into a closet at gunpoint. Humiliating der Führer, then relegating him to a footnote in his own episode? Priceless. It's also great because it shows River before she's even River. I actually wish we had a bit more on that front, not to deny Alex Kingston screentime, but to not have everything be in such a rush, but oh well.

Next is a trip to a housing estate where a young boy is being tormented by his fears and manages to trap Amy, Rory, The Doctor, and his own father in a dimensional dollhouse where his fears live to torment him.

It's a sort of creepy episode, but never really gets beyond its own novelty. The whole "turning into dolls" device is boring as all get out, though I do like how The Doctor fast talks his way first into the apartment and then to the root of the problem, using his powers of persuasion to squeeze out answers from both father and son using only his words.

After that is a sort of "what if" episode that has Amy caught in a different time stream than The Doctor and Rory such that she is trapped for 30+ years in a quarantine facility in the future and her boys only catch up to her very, very late, leaving a possible paradox in that Old Amy doesn't want to die but that would mean leaving Young Amy to suffer through what her older self calls Hell.

I understand that Rory is the humanity anchor for the trio and his decisions all revolve around doing what is for the best and preserving life at any cost, but it feels like a simple decision both for him and for Old Amy to make. She's been living in her own private Hell for decades and has a chance to render it all moot. Sure, "rage, rage against the dying of the light" and all, but I can't see myself not making the choice to save my previous self all the trouble. I guess it's one of those impossible thought puzzles as I'll almost certainly never have to deal with anything similar, but my own feelings on the paradox spoiled the episode for me. That and the pancake makeup on Karen Gillan wearing thin in the closeups.

Moving on, we come to God Complex where the trio get caught in a spooky hotel where your worst nightmare is waiting for you to convert you to brainfood for a strange, hulking minotaur.

This is a silly as all get out episode, what with the Sad-faced Clown, the crap tons of ventriloquist dummies, and The Doctor seeing his fear but not having it revealed to the audience (personally, I think it's just Toby Jones again, or possibly just an empty universe). Still, the moment where he has to break Amy's faith in him is a pretty revealing one, even if he half-dials it back a bit after the fact. It just feels like ground we've already covered. For a bottle episode, it's not that bad, but could've been much better.

After dropping the Ponds off back at home, The Doctor starts making his last minute rounds to old friends and we get to see Closing Time where he reunites with Craig from The Lodger who is a new father now to Stormaggedon (at least, that's what the baby calls himself) and whose local department store is being targeted by damaged Cybermen. Cue The Doctor, male bonding, same-sex couple miscommunication, and plenty of comedy.

This is actually a fairly fun episode, almost purely due to The Doctor's non-adventure related antics and Stormaggedon. Having asides coming from the baby through The Doctor (because he speaks baby, remember) is cute as all get out, especially as Craig waffles between believing and not. I can always do without The Cybermen (and Daleks and so on), but since they're not the main focus of the episode, I can safely say that they don't annoy me here like they do elsewhere (same for their cameo a few nights back in A Good Man Goes to War).

I can safely say I was surprised, though, with The Wedding of River Song, which did NOT turn into the giant multipart episode that I was expecting and, instead, was merely the penultimate episode of the season since (by Netflix's reckoning and maybe the BBC's as I don't own the DVDs and haven't checked) the series ended on the Christmas special.

The episode throws us right into the middle of all of Time (with a capital "T") mashing Earth's history together and The Doctor explaining to old friend Winston Churchill, Caesar of the Holy Roman Empire, why it's always two minutes after five on the same day... forever. This leads us to a sort of frame story where The Doctor explains how River managed to circumvent the fixed moment in Time that was The Doctor's death and is blowing up reality. From there it's just a hop, skip, and a jump to Amy, Rory, and River leading a revolution and only River and The Doctor knowing why.

Of course everything turns out alright in the end as the heavily hinted at solution to the whole thing (from Let's Kill Hitler) just happens to have shown up earlier in the episode. Well, at least the writers managed to seed their solution earlier than the ABSOLUTE last minute like so many other episodes of Doctor Who, but still. Could've been a little more elegant.

The last episode that is currently available on Netflix's Instant Stream, The Doctor, The Widow, And The Wardrobe, is a little bittersweet... both for me, personally, and in general. There's no River, barely a moment for Rory and Amy, and features a whole cast of one-off characters that are just entirely too sweet to occupy a single episode. But that's the way of it, I guess.

For some reason, during the cold open, The Doctor is on an exploding ship in orbit over Earth just before the Second World War and manages to get help from a mother who takes his spacesuit and alien-ness right in stride. After that brief intro sequence, time shifts forward a few years where that same mother is spending Christmas with her two children in the country to be safe from The Blitz and she's dreading telling them that her husband is MIA, presumed dead. The Doctor shows up as The Caretaker of the estate they're staying in and has souped up the place with gadgets and gizmos and extraplanar doors, oh my. This leads to an almost deadly adventure, concerning the entire family, where it's up to the mom to save the day.

This one really pulls at the heart-strings thanks to all of The Doctor's "child of wonder" antics and repeated "I know"'s. The trio of future forestry engineers are really rather precious as well, played as they are by Bill Bailey, Arabella Weir, and Paul Bazely. I do think the best moment, though, was at the end when The Doctor goes to visit Amy and Rory for Christmas dinner. Sure, it would've been nice for River to have been there as well, but you can't always get what you want.

And... I think that about does it. For my time with Doctor Who on Netflix anyways, at least until they put Series 7 on the Instant Stream.

It's been a weird couple of weeks and a very long year for me in terms of Whovian consumption. Yes, I will admit that the series has grown on me as time has worn on. Not those first few seasons, of course, but definitely during David Tennant's later episodes and most certainly during Matt Smith's run. I think Smith and Gillan made Doctor Who infinitely more palatable for me with their charm, wit, and charisma... not to mention their (and Darvill's) chemistry. And River... oh, River Song, even though I think you got shortchanged by all the rushing towards the end, you are by far my favorite character. Kudos, Alex Kingston.

Welp, just one more day before I'm done for the year. Any guesses as to how I'm going to finish out the Couchbound Project? My Year With Netflix? Place your bets now, because tomorrow is coming right quick!

Until that tomorrow, Potatoes~

1!

Day Three Hundred and Sixty-two - Dr.Who: Series 6, Episodes 1-7, "At last, River Song's origins are explained."

I want to say something immediately and highly critical of Series 6... it has a stupid intro sequence. For some reason that has yet to be explained to me, there's an introduction in front of every episode that is narrated from Amy Pond's perspective explaining her life with The Doctor.

Why... oh, WHY... was this deemed necessary or expedient?

After successfully (via deus ex) rebooting the universe at the end of Series 5, and apparently having dropped Rory and Amy back off to live their lives separate for a while, the newlyweds plus River Song receive invitations from The Doctor to visit America, which they do... only to witness him being murdered by someone in an Apollo-era spacesuit.

With The Doctor dead, they meet up with a younger version of himself and find themselves unable to tell him about it but vow to investigate with him and their only clue, the name of the fifth party invited to the soiree which turns out to be that of an ex-FBI agent. This leads them on a mad quest which includes Richard Nixon, creepy Men-in-Black called The Silence, and a little girl running from said spacemen.

This is a pretty sweet two-parter, even despite the weird MacGuffins and convenient saves. For one thing, it has Mark Sheppard playing the FBI agent, and that's just grand as I miss his Badger in Firefly. Hell, I miss Firefly. For another, there's the great opening device of half a dozen quick moments in The Doctor's history. From Charles II to a POW camp to Laurel and Hardy, it's a great series of gags. Oddly enough, I also like the gimmick of The Silence, who can erase every thought of them from your consciousness when you look away. It's a great enemy with an interesting solution that is seeded rather well throughout both episodes.

Moving on, there's a bit of a throwaway episode where the trio get stranded on a becalmed pirate ship that is being haunted by a mermaid who seemingly destroys any crew member who is the least bit sick or injured.

The pirate storyline, couple with the stowaway son, isn't really interesting at all. I can say that Karen Gillan looks great as an Elizabeth Swann impersonator... but then, both she and Keira look good in pretty much any get up.

Following that, The Doctor gets a message from an old friend called The Corsair which leads the adventurers outside the universe to be stranded on a living asteroid called The House which toys with them long enough to drain the TARDIS' soul and begin consuming its energy but, finding out that it's the last TARDIS, decides to abscond with it instead, heading back to the universe proper with Amy and Rory inside, leaving The Doctor and the newly human TARDIS to catch up and save the day.

The episode is more than a little bit crazy, but that can be attributed to its writer, one of my personal favorite authors, Neil Gaiman. You can definitely see more than a little bit of Delirium in the human iteration of the TARDIS and the episode definitely shows Gaiman's tendency to mix tragedy and sentiment into one big ball of happy/sad. I can't say that I was all that impressed with his villain, The House, but there's enough of everything else to keep me fat and relatively happy.

Episodes 5 & 6 for the night are a two parter about homunculi who are turned human by a solar storm, with the full memories of their human drivers, that are trapped in an island acid-factory with their twins, both sides becoming hostile to one another.

It's a simple tale of human nature and prejudice, both for the one-off humans and Amy and Rory, themselves. I like the device of the two Doctors and their silly game with the shoes even if it's horribly telegraphed and hamfisted in the writing. I wasn't too impressed with the progression of madness back and forth between the two sets of factory workers. Yes, they're under a lot of stress and, yes, suffering an extreme existential crisis, but I'd like to think humanity would act better than just Rory and The Doctors. Oh well.

Last for the night, but not least, is A Good Man Goes To War... which has The Doctor and Rory racing to save Amy from her mysterious captors after the revelation that her consciousness has been inhabiting a flesh clone like the ones from the previous episodes. Somewhere off in the future there is a cabal of humans, aliens, and other... things... that wish to entrap and destroy The Doctor, using Amy Pond's child somehow. In order to save them, The Doctor and Rory enlist the help of many folks that owe him favors, taking out squadrons of Cybermen in the process and all but winning, only to be shown in the last moments that they were outsmarted yet again.

I think this episode shows the culmination of a lot of the strengths that the show has gathered over the past couple of seasons in terms of writing and seeding hints... particularly when it comes to River Song and Amy's captivity. Sure, there's still plenty of things that will need explaining in a later episode, such as The Doctor's death at the hands of the Astronaut, but it's all sufficiently hinted at via out of sequence clues. I also like the side characters introduced here, like Vastra and Jenny. Something about women with katanas makes me happy.

It's weird to think of how much the modern series has evolved over the years from its humble beginnings in the mid-2000's. True, I'd still prefer Farscape to Doctor Who as the former handles its MacGuffins with much more aplomb and tact, but Tennant was a definite improvement over Eccleston and Smith the same over Tennant. Series 5 and 6 have so far been better examples of writing, as well. There's still cheese, to be sure, but it's far more engaging that it has ever been before. We'll see if the last seven episodes prove the same, day after next.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

3!

Day Three Hundred and Sixty - Dr.Who: Series 5, Episodes 8-13, "It's the End of the Universe... AGAIN! Wait. 'Again' again? Or just 'Again?'"

As the first of Matt Smith's seasons draws to a close, it's relatively fun (and sometimes mildly annoying) to watch he and Karen Gillan (and Arthur Darvill) fend off beasties and cease to exist only to come back from the brink in typical Deus Ex Whovian fashion. There's something so much more appealing about Smith's goofy charisma and Gillan's self-assured rawr-factor. Of the spread, as much as nostalgia dictates I should pick Baker or angsty aggression says I should pick Tennant, Matt Smith's run has definitely been the most pleasing to me so far.

Anyways, onwards through the episodes... gotta chug away if I'm going to make the end of Series 6 by New Year's.

Tonight starts with the two parter The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood where The Doctor, Amy, and Rory get trapped in a small English town where miners have accidentally broken into an ancient civilization of dinosaur peoples' hibernation creche and have managed to piss off it's overly aggressive war leader. Tensions mount as each side takes hostages and inflict casualties, leading to Rory's heroic death to save The Doctor from a Homo Reptilia firehose weapon (seriously, that prop looked ridiculous). Still, peace may be possible yet, in a thousand years, thanks to the cooler heads of the diplomatic and science castes of reptiloids helping The Doctor, et al., save the day.

The monsters of the week (or two weeks, really) are rather boring, with their inevitable conflicts and betrayals being telegraphed too obviously, but there are still some strong points to the episode. For one, there's the time paradox device of Rory and Amy standing on a hilly overlook at a far distance waving at themselves. It's not explained this season, but there's a moment where present Amy and The Doctor have to rationalize why Future Rory has disappeared from the hill. Mysteries for some future date... as it's certainly not explained THIS season.

Moving on, now Rory-less as he, the love of Amy's life, is no more, eaten by the time crack (important season arc plot point that) and she has forgotten him, The Doctor and Amy go to the aid of Vincent Van Gogh (pronounced "gouggghf?" I never knew that) thanks to spotting a possible alien in one of his paintings. Along they way they bond with the moody painter and thwart the strange, invisible monster of the week while managing to inspire the doomed artist to his greatness.

The conflict, like with most episodes, is boring and convenient dreck, but the interpersonal relations between Vincent and the time travelers is emotive enough to be pleasing. While I think it's the height of irresponsibility to take someone into the future just to show them they haven't been forgotten, I'm not a Time Lord so I don't get to decide. I should point out that I really enjoyed Bill Nighy's cameo as the museum director. While he doesn't have much screen time, his back and forth with Matt Smith over bow ties is delightful.

Quick shoutout to the imagination sequence that has Starry Night playing out in fully CGI glory in the night sky for Vincent, The Doctor, and Amy. Beautiful.

Next is "The Lodger" where Amy gets trapped in a time jumping TARDIS and The Doctor gets stranded in modern England, forced via hints to take up lodging with a shy man who is secretly in love with his best friend and whose upstairs tenant is a mystery that The Doctor needs to solve in order to save both local lives and the TARDIS, itself.

Like the others, I find the threat an afterthought and the small bits of The Doctor interacting with humans to be genius. I love the way he inserts himself into the life of young Craig and manages to both help and threaten the man's existence. Sure, the romance is a little bit of nerd wish-fulfillment, a la Chuck, but it's cute nevertheless. This episode also helps to set up the time travel device of leaving notes to help oneself in the future/past that will be of paramount importance in the next couple of episodes.

Said device is immediately apparent at the beginning of The Pandorica Opens where River Song leaves a message for The Doctor that takes him and Amy back to Roman era Britannia where she delivers a message from Vincent Van Gough that was relayed through Winston Churchill to her (look at all of the Seasonal Continuity). It's a warning for the near future about the destruction of the TARDIS and leads them to a giant plot MacGuffin called the Pandorica, which all the hostile aliens in existence are swarming to 100AD Earth to deal with.

This is another two-parter, combined with The Big Bang, in which The Doctor tries to stave off the combined forces of all his old enemies... Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen, Judoon, etc., plus the dinosaur people from "The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood" for some reason (my guess is "because the costumes were available")... but it turns out the whole thing was a trap to seal off The Doctor from the universe in order to save it from the cracks in time. Weird, twisted, Whovian logic that should piss me off but instead just washes over me. I accept things like this now, but that doesn't mean I enjoy it.

I do like having River back, of course. She'll always flip my switch as the concept of her character is just so damned intriguing. Plus, it's hard not to enjoy Karen Gillan. I think she's the perfect companion. Adventurous and direct, aggressive, but not violent... emotive and loyal. Just an all around well written personality played by a beautiful actress.

I can't say that I was all that impressed with the return of Rory (more Deus Ex drivel) or the saving of the universe. I actually could've been behind the whole "Big Bang Two" bit if they'd followed through and NOT kept the series going. If that had been the end of Doctor Who, I probably would've been satisfied with it. Instead, more Deus Ex nonsense and fan pandering. At least they'll explain River's backstory next season, which we'll start on Saturday. Still, feels like false drama looking back.

That being said, the "Crack in Time" story-arcing that they did this season was much more effective than the whole of the Bad Wolf seeding that the showrunners did during Eccleston's and Tennant's runs. Much tighter and entertaining, and oddly more believable. Can't believe I'm saying that in concert with Doctor Who.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

5!

Uh-oh, Netflix is DOWN at the moment. Luckily I had finished today's binge before the crash, but I hope it resolves before tomorrow. Wouldn't do to not be able to finish Couchbound this late in the game!

Day Three Hundred and Fifty-eight - Dr.Who: Series 5, Episodes 1-7, "And it's Matt Smith and Karen Gillan for the win... sortof! Win-ish? Win-ny? Win-like? Win-adjacent?"

With David Tennant bowing out of his role as the Tenth Doctor and Matt Smith tagging in, it's a whole new Doctor, TARDIS, and companion as the fifth series of modern Doctor Who visits old enemies and new, all with a brand new face.

The first episode of the series picks up where the poignant finale of the last left off, with Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor crashing the TARDIS post regeneration. He winds up landing in a small English village where a young Scottish girl (the difference is important) is praying for help dealing with a strange crack in her wall. This crack is the series arc dilemma for this season, but we'll get to that. The main thing is new Doctor, new companion, new everything!

Getting his face on The Doctor briefly (from his perspective) leaves young Amy Pond to rough in his new TARDIS and meets her again in the same spot twelve years later where she has become a fetching lass with a humdrum life... and is still in danger from what escaped the crack in her wall, a multiform alien who is being chased by jailers who have no problem razing the Earth to get it.

This is a very fun episode mostly due to the cooking scene at the beginning where child-Amy fixes the brand new Doctor almost everything she has in her cupboard one after another while he rejects them comically. It drags on a good five minutes or so and is cute and funny. The alien menace itself is rather boring, be it Prisoner Zero or the Atraxi. There is one moment, though, at the end, where The Doctor rolls a natural 20 on his intimidation roll against the Atraxi that almost gives me chills and references all of the Doctors through the ages on up to him.

The world saved once more, The Doctor and Amy travel to a far-flung future where the United Kingdom is a ship soaring through space, but something sinister lurks in the shadows (and has an appropriately creepy series of faces). Along the way, they meet Queen Elizabeth the Tenth, who is very fetching, and managed to save both the last Space Whale and the entire United Kingdom.

The memory gimmick in this episode is by far the most interesting aspect, though I do love the Winders' plastic heads. There's something very Bioshock about this episode that really appeals to my aesthetic sensibilities. Plus, Karen Gillan in PJs... even chaste-cover-everything-PJs... rawr!

From there they go back in time to World War 2 where Winston Churchill (played by Ian McNeice, whom I last saw in Doc Martin) is fighting off the Nazi Blitz with the help of one of The Doctor's oldest enemies... of course, The Daleks. I suppose it could've been The Cybermen, but seriously? Did we need more Daleks? Isn't it so convenient that ANOTHER set of Daleks survived the apocalypse that supposedly destroyed them all the previous season?

Ugh.

Honestly, the only thing to like about this episode is McNeice's Churchhill, which is surprising less grumpier than I ever imagined him, and Amy's bouncy attitude, despite being in the middle of the Second World War.

Moving on, we get to something I really liked... a two-parter that features both my favorite villain, The Weeping Angels, and my favorite companion, River Song. Set in the future, The Doctor comes to River's rescue and joins a team of religious soldiers who are tasked with neutralizing a single Angel but find themselves facing an army of them.

River (Alex Kingston) is a delight, as always, but I do find myself disappointed a bit with the Angels. While the device of "Angel Bob" is pretty catchy, one of the things I really liked about the Angels is that they never moved in our sight because the act of observing them turned them to stone. This was a device that applied to the Fourth Wall as well! They never moved in the VIEWER'S sight... which was a brilliant nod to quantum mechanics. Sadly, this device is betrayed late in the second half of the two-parter when the Angels start moving to chase Amy. So disappointing.

Still... River Song. Love her sooooooo much.

Two more episodes for the day and the first is a trip to historical Venice after picking up Rory, Amy's fiance. Seems that Amy's a little confused thanks to all the adventuring and has a bit of a jones for The Doctor, now, that he is eager to nip in the bud with a romantic trip for the young couple to Venice... which is being dominated by not-vampires.

For the most part, this episode is a throwaway. The villains are boring (and occasionally CGI) and the problems/solutions are your typical Whovian nonsense. I do, however, like the competition between Rory and The Doctor. The pseudo-love triangle at play here is the only real fun to be had.

Lastly for the night, The Doctor, Amy, and Rory are trapped in dreamworlds being tormented by a Dream Lord who has it in for them for some reason. In one world, Rory and Amy are married with a bun in the oven and in the other they're falling into a "cold star." The trick is only one world is real and they have to choose which one to abandon via death. Choose right, they die in one world and wake in the real one. Choose wrong? Well, I think you get the idea.

It's a silly premise that is supposed to add emotional weight to the characters, but I don't think we've had enough time with them for the sort of deep, personal epiphanies that Amy and Rory are having here. That said, the Dream Lord is being played by Toby Jones, an actor whom I quite like (check out Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and his other works when you get a chance).

All in all, an uneven start, I think, for Matt Smith's Doctor... but he's still better than Eccleston and has almost as much charisma and pluck as David Tennant. Speaking of, The Tenth seemed to have more fire and wrath to him that The Eleventh just doesn't seem to engender just yet. I do like the sexier TARDIS and opening theme song, though, so there's that.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

7!

Day Three Hundred and Forty-four - Call the Midwife: Season 1, Episode 6, "Oh, Chummy, you're a delightful bride~"

It's been a long while since I watched any Call the Midwife, probably because there is only so much I can take in regards to my heartstrings being pulled. Still, today's a busy day and I needed something familiar, but not recent... shortish, but not too brief... and proven, not untested. So, Call the Midwife it is, and this episode features the trial of dementia-ridden Sister Monica Joan for theft and Chummy wrestles with the class differences between her and her beau, PC Noakes.

It's a hard thing to watch a dear character fall under both suspicion and illness. Sister Monica Joan's deterioration leaves her prey of both as she's caught filching knick-knacks from the market and accused to swiping quite a bit of expensive jewelry as well. Watching her begin to doubt herself is almost as painful as the pained looks she gets from her adopted family at Nonnatus House.

Conversely, it's not at all difficult to watch Chummy deal with her own issues. When her prim and proper mother comes to visit and finds her dating well below her station, it puts quite a bit of strain on her and PC Noakes' relationship such that she decides to break the whole thing off. It requires being taken into confidence by a desperate young mother living in squalor to become brave enough to take the plunge and defy her mother's wishes... and quite handsomely, too, dutifully informing her that a white wedding dress would no longer be appropriate (ooo, such scandal)!

As for Jenny Lee, herself, she has to come to terms with the intense feelings that she holds for her previous lover and the ramifications of the affair on her present life. Does she reach out for what her heart truly wants... or does she hold back from becoming a married man's mistress? The drama is mildly amped by the fact that her long time crush (well, one-sided on his part anyway), Jimmy, returns to help her (and Sister Monica Joan) in an hour of need.

As the series has worn on, while I still enjoy all of its period nostalgia and remembrances, I think the only things that keep me coming back anymore are the brief moments of character drama with Chummy. I can't find myself all that interested in Jenny Lee's love troubles, and just about every other character is simply static, even if the writers try and show a measure of roundness to everyone. While it's quality television, watching poor young mothers in urban London smoke or drink or live in terrible conditions, it all just loses its shock value after a while and I find myself a bit bored. That said, I'll probably always come back for Miranda Hart's portrayal of the ever awkward and sweet Chummy. There's just something so endearing about her drive, naivete, and innocence. It's almost (dare I say) moe.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Three Hundred and Twenty-seven - Dr.Who: Series 2, Episode 7, "Good thing there was an extra Rickey... er, Mickey... whatever."

As far as two-parters go, Age of Steel was definitely better than it's companion piece, Rise of the Cybermen. It felt very much like its predecessor was all about the tease of Cybermen than about the silly threat they post.

I mean, sure, they have no mercy or need for sleep, and can march endlessly in their quest for more humans to upgrade, but their only weapon is grabbing onto you with their electric jazz hands of death. I have a suspicious feeling that, without their Deus Ex mind control ear buds, just about every soul under seventy could've easily avoided their wrath long enough to find The Doctor's eventual solution.

Still, in spite of that, Age of Steel is a quaint little tale of free will versus control, as evidenced by several of the minor characters who don't survive the night, including (but not limited to): the evil henchman, Rickey, Mrs.Moore, Jackie 2.0, and thousands more residents of London. I honestly don't get why the CyberController didn't just upgrade The Doctor, Rose, and Pete. It's what I would've done as a metallic despot with no soul, but then we wouldn't have had a chance to see David Tennant's stirring speech about the imagination, creativity, passion, and pain of humanity.

Personally, I think I could've written a better one... but that's just my opinion and the Free Market has spoken as I haven't gotten paid the big bucks to do just that.

Another thing to like about this episode is that it finally gives Mickey a chance to be something other than an afterthought, something that the writers were apparently aware of and struggling with for some time. Sure, we'll see him again later (or will we?), but I think this was a fitting enough sendoff to the character such that he didn't need to come back.

As far as cheesy (often alien, but not here) threats go, I don't hate how the Cybermen were presented. They're just as ridiculous as they've always been, but in comparison to the majority of Whovian villainy (Weeping Angels notwithstanding), they're not horrible. I don't know, I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I'm glad they didn't get all that radical a redesign (just look at the furor over Daleks of different colors) from their classic motif, but they're still utterly laughable to look at.

On the whole, I can be happy with this episode because 1)they killed Jackie (well, alt-Jackie, anyway), 2)they killed Mickey (Rickey), 3)Mickey is done being a companion, and 4)Pete isn't ready to be a father in ANY universe. It's still mostly crap to me, but it didn't hurt to watch as much as many other episodes of Dr.Who.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Three Hundred and Twenty-five - Dr.Who: Series 2, Episode 6, "DELETE! DELETE! DELETE!"

If there's one thing that I hate about Dr.Who, and I've probably mentioned this before, it's the constant refresh of old fan-favorite villains. I know that I'm the minority, but I despise the Daleks and Cybermen, and guess who shows up in this alternate reality of Earth that The Doctor, Rose, and Mickey manage to MacGuffin their way into?

The Cybermen.

Toasters on their heads and everything, the Cybermen have returned to the Whovian universe... well, a version of it anyway, where Britain is a society under siege with curfews for the poor and zeppelins for the rich. This is also a Britain where Rose's father, Pete, is still alive and married to Jackie. Also, they're in the money... and there's no Rose. Well, there is a Rose, but not the one played by Billy Piper. No, the Rose in this universe is a lapdog. Literally.

Anyways, the meat of the episode is the coup that a Howard Hughes type attempts against the President of the UK (Get it? President instead of Prime Minister? It really IS a parallel universe! XP) in the form of the Human 2.0 Upgrade, which turns out to be a forced conversion into Cybermen.

Aside from the return of the Cybermen, I'm also annoyed by the instant stupidity that both Mickey and Rose seem to catch when they find out that they're in an alternate reality. Despite Mickey knowing just what can happen in A-U stories thanks to movies and television, he still runs off to visit his not-dead A-U grandma... and Rose does the same in looking for Pete, her father. I mean, really? Have they learned absolutely nothing thanks to their time traveling antics? Especially Rose after she nearly destroyed all reality by trying to save her father from the car accident that killed him in her own universe?

It's also annoying how spoonfed the clues are concerning the "eventual" reveal of the Cybermen. Whether it's the earbud antennae that form the familiar head box or the out of focus Cyber at the beginning and the near constant shots of their stomping feet during the rank and file attack on Jackie's birthday party... it's all just one big already spoiled tease.

More ham-fisted writing on behalf of the crew, I suppose. Only so much you can do to get the primary conflicts of an episode this ridiculous started.

But, it's all to be expected, I guess. Dr.Who is only okay on its best of days, so there are bound to be some pandering crapfests here and there, even if it had been improving lately. Sad thing for me is that this is a two part episode (which I will get to, probably in the next few days). Such is life.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Three Hundred and Seventeen - Dr Who: Series 2, Episode 5, "Love for a Time Traveller"

It's been a loooooong while since I've done any Doctor Who and, with the 50th Anniversary looming on the horizon (and friends posting about it on Facebook), I decided it was time to take a step back and resume my viewings. The result? A fairly sweet little love story, even if its burdened by the typical Whovian MacGuffins and Handwaves.

Set dually on a warp ship in the 51st century far in the expanses of space and in many slivers of time in the life of Madame de Pompadour in 18th century France, the story unfolds on clockwork automatons employed by the ship to haunt her years until the time is ripe to harvest her brain. It's all very silly, but gives rise to an infatuation on her part for the rescuing Doctor who visits her at many different moments in her life, both saving and intriguing her. This infatuation develops into an intimacy that even Rose cannot compete with.

As far as Doctor Who episodes go, its rather fun, despite its sad and lonely ending. Sure, its a bit of a stretch for the Doctor to form such an enormous attachment in such a small amount of time considering how long-lived (and already taken, unofficially, by Rose) he is, but it's nice to see the Doctor experience love, for however short a period of time, that isn't to one of his convenient, long-time companions. It's one of the reasons I love River Song (whom we technically haven't met yet... but soonish).

Now, maybe all of the lingering looks and chemistry had a little something to do with the fact that the actress portraying Madame de Pompadour (Sophia Myles) was actually dating David Tennant at the time, or maybe it has to do with the period clothing and the ample cleavage it shows off, but who knows?

Mickey and Rose aren't as annoying here as they usually can be, which is a blessing as I've hated Mickey as the mope he was previously. Their explorations throughout the ship while the Doctor is playing kissyface are cute, as is the bit of "girl talk" that Reinette and Rose share that lampshades the trials and triumphs of loving the Doctor.

All in all, not a bad bit of television. Still a crap series, overall, but one I don't have problems watching idly. I don't think I'll ever be a full blown, die-hard Whovian like many of my friends, but this episode serves as an example that they're not all bad. They're just mostly 'not great!'

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Three Hundred and Fifteen - Exile: Episode 1, "Conspiracy, Disease, Family, Homecoming."

Holy Crap! This one snuck up on me!

Such a busy day with so much to do and so little time to do it in, I still managed to tear myself away from work and other responsibilities to sit down to Chinese takeout and Exile from BBC One... and man, was it worth it.

The opening moments have you reeling from a career and, well, life thrown down the toilet when main character Tom (John Sim) must flee his posh existence in London and return to the country where his sister is caring for their Alzheimer's-affected father (Jim Broadbent). While he's there, old demons haunt him amid the new realities of caring for his demented father and the story becomes one of reopening old wounds while dealing with the new ones.

Let me first say that this is some powerfully compelling storytelling. Tom is no saint and its established very early on how complex and flawed his character is. The same is eventually revealed about his father through a combination of flashbacks and present day revelations.

Stretching the moments between are rather poignant bits of weakness and connection as Tom hooks up with an old acquaintance, realizes she's married to his old best mate from school, and has to deal with the fallout of that while trying to piece together a mystery that begins to present itself in the form of old memories, taped confessions, and a steady stream of payments nobody knows anything about in hidden bank accounts.

This is really good television, and I'll be shocked if it doesn't get play over here in the States. It's on Netflix, now, of course, but I haven't heard of it turning up on BBC America yet or PBS (I'll have to search for that later).

The cinematography is pretty high grade, almost feature-level, and the acting is quite tremendous... especially from its two leads. I think I'd love Jim Broadbent in anything, but I'm pretty convinced by his portrayal of Alzheimer's (save for a bit of awkwardness in the beginning that comes off a little rehearsed). Still, kudos to him and John Simm who has just as much, if not more, intensity when it comes to his par.

If you haven't seen Exile and are looking for smart and emotive drama that plays with both ethics and family ties, check it out immediately. One of the best shows I've seen in a long time.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Two Hundred and Fifty-nine - Call the Midwife: Season 1, Episode 5, "Love Is."

It's been yet another month since I watched any Call the Midwife, so I felt it was about time... especially since it seems that Season 2 just hit the Instant Stream and I'm going to have to catch up on those so my mother and I can trade notes.

A bit of a difficult one to watch, this one was, as Jenny Lee is once again confronted with a situation almost too hard to bear... this time with a middle-aged brother and sister whose relationship is too close for comfort.

Peggy, the cleaning lady at the Nonnatus House, grew up in the workhouses of near-myth... horrible, Dickensian conditions that separated her from her brother. When they finally found each other again in adulthood, the two were much changed and only able to find solace in one another. This fact at first repels Jenny Lee, but over time and witnessing both the declining health of the cancer-ridden Frank and the true warmth that both Frank and Peggy have for each other, at least comes to a certain acceptance.

The main plot, at the very least, serves as a nice contrast to Jenny Lee's own love woes as she's actively courted by Jimmy despite receiving a phone call from her mysterious past suitor who left her heartbroken. It's a bit difficult to be sympathetic to Jenny Lee's personal problems as she seems far to selfish and self-righteous when it comes to her love life, a bit of a tragic figure of her own making. Still, her personal drama is entertaining, if not depressing.

The not quite skinny-dipping party is a little fun as they're all trespassing in their slips and underwear and boxers, risque (and somewhat criminal) for PBS, but an interesting look at the dating rituals of the age... especially in comparison to nowadays. It's only a bit of a downer when Jenny Lee has an asthma fit after spurning Jimmy yet again.

As always, there's more fun to be found in Chummy's courtship with PC Noakes as she spends pretty much the entire episode fretting over meeting the constable's mother. While it does feel like it's dragging on a bit, it's still cute to see her blossom over the course of the season. Of course, having been inadvertently spoiled already as to their fate, I'm a bit underwhelmed and just want it to get over with, it's still good times in comparison to Jenny Lee.

I think the only subplot that really annoyed me was Fred's sow and her birthing. If I want livestock drama, I'll watch Silver Spoon, thank you very much. Sadly, it's not on Netflix or I would.

Call the Midwife is still the quality series it started off as, even if this particular episode isn't one of the strongest. It always challenges preconceptions and manages to surprise, both in its tragedies and its delights.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~