Day Three Hundred and Fifty-six - Dr.Who: Series 4, Episodes 12-18, "The Last Great Battles of The Tenth Doctor..."

...not to mention his companions all make appearances, everyone from Sarah Jane to Martha to Jack to Rose-freaking-Tyler, herself.

The first episode of this long slog to the advent of the Eleventh is entitled Turn Left and features Donna almost exclusively as she gets attacked by some sort of "potentiality consuming" beetle that feeds on the alterations to a timeline that could change a persons life... like say Donna turning left for a job closer to home than the temp gig that introduced her to The Doctor. That one choice leads not only to The Doctor's death (without regeneration) after the Christmas confrontation with the Racnoss and the other major battles on modern Earth. With each Doctor-less dilemma, more and more of Earth's heroes lose their lives to stem the tide of destruction.

This is a fun concept episode to watch, especially since the writers decided to pay particular attention to the causality issues of The Doctor being absent. With no Doctor there would be no Yana regeneration into The Master, which means no Saxon. What I don't get is how Rose manages to avoid the causality shifts and knows why Donna is the focal point.

After Donna pulls it back together and dies for her regular self, she and The Doctor have to confront an ancient enemy that has stolen the entire Earth, along with dozens of other planets from space and time, in order to destroy all of reality that doesn't please them. Any guesses as to who? I mean, it could be any number of enemies, but it's the Daleks. Of course it's the Daleks.

It's a two-parter that drags the conflict out with lots more cameos from companions past. Sarah Jane, Captain Jack, Mickey, Rose, Jackie, and even Harriet Jones (former Prime Minister) defy the Daleks and Davros himself in order to save the Doctor and the world... but that's not all, thanks to an almost death at the end of a Dalek egg-beater, the Doctor regenerates not only his severed hand, but Donna as well, giving her his mind and his doppelganger a human heart... as well as all of his memories and experiences.

It's rather hilarious to see The Doctor Donna fasttalk her way through typical Whovian MacGuffin speak and easily defeat/confound/spin the Daleks. I also rather like the episode because it gives lots of action to all of the various companions that the Tenth has had over the years. Because of it all, I actually found myself enjoying seeing Mickey and Jackie. Maybe it's because they weren't daft idiots the whole time, actually proving useful with their guns and teleporters. Maybe it's because of nostalgia. I don't know. Either way, I was fairly happy with them... all of them. It was just the actual Dalek Doomsday itself that was silly and stupid.

After another tearful sendoff for Rose, et al., The Doctor goes back in time to the mid-18th century where The Cybermen have some grand plan in the works and it's up to The Doctor... both of them... to stop it. At first, it seems like The Doctor has caught up with some future incarnation of himself, but as time goes on, the truth is revealed that it's just a brainscramble that's tricked a local human into thinking he's The Doctor.

It's a cute episode to see a degenerated almost-Doctor trying to fight evil with his "sonic" screwdriver and inflatable TARDIS ballon, but that's all it is, really... cute. For the most part, the villains are boring and pedantic as we've all seen Cybermen before, this episode only taking a few new slants like the cat/dog Cybers, the female Cyberking, and the giant Cyber robot. It's all so much sound a noise. Spectacle to cater to the fans with no real substance.

The Waters of Mars, however, this is prime soft-scifi material worthy of The Outer Limits. The Doctor travels to mid-twenty-first century Mars where he encounters the first human colonists on the day of their deaths. It seems the commander of the mission is fated to trigger a nuclear explosion that wipes them and their base off the face of the Red Planet. The Doctor discovers that its their fate, a fixed moment in time, to die running from a sentient water virus... and has the hubris to defy the rules of paradox and help the survivors.

While I may enjoy the cheese and melodrama of other episodes, it's The Waters of Mars that makes the series for me. It shows The Doctor as having as much arrogance as the rest of us humans and, despite the guise of his immortality and alien-ness, The Doctor is a most compelling HUMAN character. It's not necessarily a fun or well-written episode, what with its one-off villain being so bad, conceptually, but the moral questions it begs are tremendous.

Last, but not least, is the two-parter that sends David Tennant off and welcomes Matt Smith as The Eleventh. After falling from grace, The Doctor gets a visit from Ood Sigma and races off to commune with the Ood for a warning about the return of The Master. Events have been set in motion (and retconned on the freaking fly by Timothy Dalton) to bring the Timelords trapped in the Time Lock back. It's all just one loop. The Timelords, The Master, Earth... everything is shoe-horned together in order to present The Tenth with a single choice: murder his race again or doom the entire universe.

Easy choice, that, I think... but it's all so much noise again, cheap melodrama with no actual worth aside from nostalgia. It's nice to see all of the companions for a second time this season as The Tenth has enough time before regenerating to hop in the TARDIS and see them all. I think my favorite was Jack and Alonso at a deep space Mos Eisley.

At the end of the fourth series and the last of David Tennant's run (save for his series 7 cameo with John Hurt), I find myself both content and disgusted. There are far better series out there and Doctor Who can be fun, but it's so very stupid half the time, with all of its handwaving. These are arguments that I should probably save till I'm well and done (hopefully by the end of the year), but I still feel a little bummed even now.

Still, miles to go before I sleep. As Tennant's Doctor would say... Alons-y!

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

9!

Day Three Hundred and Forty - Farscape: Season 2, Episode 16, "Time Flies When You're Trapped in a Halo of It."

For all of you regular Whovian watchers out there, if you haven't seen Farscape, I'm pretty confident to say that it was much superior despite having similar aesthetics and budget. Maybe that's sacrilege, but I'm going to stand by it, and use this episode as an example... because it's one of the "time travel" ones.

The episode starts us off in mid-crisis as Aeryn Sun has been off-ship scouting a mysterious mass of interstellar mist and is late for her rendezvous with Moya. When she does return, she seems to have aged hundreds of cycles (years) and is an old woman. It seems as though the mist is a "Halo" of time in which Moya has become trapped and while only a small amount of time has passed for them, years and years are passing for the planet they observe through a disappearing vortex.

This is one of those great thought problem episodes that I believe Farscape is spectacular for. What are the implications of a thought experiment gone awry, as in "what happens to John and Aeryn when they get stuck in Time's passing lane for 55 years (200+ for Aeryn). It's one of those soft scifi conundrums that are only glanced upon in other shows (Doctor Who) or are merely used as a device (TNG, Deep Space Nine).

While it's not exactly the stuff of philosophical legend or anything, the premise is delivered with a good deal more tact and style than in other places, I think. But that's mainly just opinion. I can see where arguments would be leveled against me thanks to the very Deus Ex way the crew solves their "out of time" predicament, but I find that it's easier to forgive Farscape their shortcuts than the ones we find in other shows like Doctor Who.

I also really like the device of the eponymous locket, which holds the image of Aeryn's one true love of her life, which has disintegrated when the now memory stricken John and Aeryn look inside of it at the end of the episode. A metaphor for roads not taken or just the promise of things yet to come (fans of the series know which)... either way, great stuff. 

There is one thing I find a bit of a disservice, though. At the end of the episode, only Zhaan and Stark remember the events from inside the mist, to explain how they would choose not to enter the Halo to begin with. With those memories, they speculate that the offspring that Aeryn have quite possibly avoided paradox thanks to the infinite universes theory.

Let me say that such an aside really annoys me... especially since Deep Space Nine had done a similar episode several years earlier (Children of Time) that took the brave path and made the consequences for rewriting history very harsh indeed (the complete erasure of the Defiant Crew's descendants from the continuum). I definitely would've gone the brave route, not because it's been done before, but because it would add to the emotional burdens of Zhaan and Stark to know that the crew of Moya, in order to save themselves, doomed probably dozens of innocents to nonexistence. This would be especially poignant from Stark's perspective, considering his "dispersal" the very next episode.

I have to admit, though, that THIS is what I wanted Doctor Who to be in terms of soft scifi adventure. A pity that it rarely comes close.

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 One Hundred and Fifteen - Continuum: Season 1, Pilot, "So Vancouver is going to be the center of the world in 2077?"

I mean, really?

...

Vancouver?

I guess I can suspend my disbelief a little. Probably more than I ever could for Lost Girl in terms of the universe conspiring to have all Fae politics center somewhere in Canada, but still.

Continuum's first season just hit Netflix and various folks have been prodding me to give it a go, so what the hey, am I right? It has a pretty interesting looking scifi bent to it even if main character Kiera (Rachel Nichols) is married to the douchiest corporate tool that I've seen in a while (who is hinted in the opening "timejump" event to be somehow involved or, at least, prescient to what would happen).

It does look stereotypically rough. The future scenes look like they're trying for Deus Ex:Human Revolution, but fall a bit short as it all looks way too clean. This is supposed to be a cyberpunk dystopia, after all, only six months after the main villains have destroyed several buildings in Future-Vancouver's skyline, yet there's not a mote of dust in the air or discarded paper or trash blowing by in the elevated train's platform. The air is smogfree and the view from Kiera's apartment is magnificent.

Bleh.

Say one thing about Future-Vancouver, though... it does have The Smoking Man (William Davis of X-Files fame) playing the future version of Alec Sadler. I have to say, that small smile he gave right after the "timejump" in the first act really worked for me... and I hope, as I continue in the season, that he shows up more and more.

I'm really intrigued both by the old Sadler and the young one (played by Eric Knudsen whom folks might recognize as Dale from Jericho)... especially his own personal connections to the revolutionary groups.

On the other hand, I'm not sure how I feel about Rachel Nichols yet. Her portrayal of a distressed mother was unconvincing and her cop-walk in the future was wooden at best. I wasn't really bothered with her procedural behavior in the past (our present), but we'll see how that develops along with her obviously budding partnership with past-detective Carlos (Victor Webster).

I think what seems to have the most potential for me are the Liber8 cell members themselves... well, a few of them anyway. Tony Amendola, Roger Cross, and Lexa Doig are all veterans of Stargate: SG-1 and it's good to see them back on a scifi show. You can bet I'll be crossing my fingers that they show up often for fun villainy.

Continuum gets off to a shaky start, but I think I'm willing to give it a fair try. Here's hoping that it doesn't disappoint.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~