Doctor Who

The sonic lipstick's last hurrah (Part 2 of 3)

There is but a single story left to tell before The Sarah Jane Adventures is done.

Following hard on the heels of last week's solid series opener, the program has hit one out of the proverbial ball-park.

The Curse of Clyde Langer was an emotionally involving and sometimes very creepy story that only faltered — maybe, a little — in a slightly too-easy resolution.

To add to the episodes' multiple pleasures, The Curse offered strong characterizations, a hefty dose of good humour and even a little unexpected romance. As usual, some spoilers ahead but no snark whatsoever.

The improbable plagiarist

Every so often a famous writer gets taken down for plagiarism. Usually it's something pretty blatant, words and concepts lifted almost verbatim from a well-known work, as if it had improbably never occurred to the culprit that he or she might get caught.

When they do get caught, they typically claim it was an accident, that they must have done it sub-consciously. And the rest of us wonder, How stupid do you think we are? Give us a break and just 'fess up!

But I am suddenly much more sympathetic to those claims than I once was.

In my ostensible leisure time this week, I've been working pretty hard on my response to The Wedding of River Song and, yesterday, had what I thought was a well-argued two thousand words merely in need of a little polishing.

Towards the end of it, I made reference to a review I wrote earlier this year. Decided to link to it. And, linking, re-read it.

Guess what? I had been plagiarizing myself.

It wasn't word-for-word, but it was close. It was was a dismaying, a frustrating and a scary discovery. I really do try to credit sources, to quote directly or to paraphrase with attribution — and here I was, ripping off my own work!

Honest go god, your Honour! It was all sub-conscious!.

And so it is that my review of The Wedding of River Song, now plagiarism-free (I hope!), is a lot shorter than I had expected it to be, with a very conscious link to that which I have written before. As usual, spoilers and snark below the icing ... of The Wedding Cake of River Song.

The god, complex?

Taken by itself, The God Complex is a mostly entertaining episode, competently-scripted and boasting quite stylish direction.

At least one guest star really shines, none of them bore us, and we're treated to the requisite chills expected of an encounter with the unknown in company of Doctor Who.

But The God Complex comes after three stand-alone adventure in what this viewer, at least, had thought had been advertised as a complex, series-long arc of single story, one that would presumably lead to a climax providing two series' worth of answers to dangling threads.

Does The God Complex deliver as prophesied? Click here to find out — spoilers and opinions as usual, so proceed at your own risk.

Where have you gone, Russell T, Russell T?

One of the most shockingly bad television series in recent memory crawled to a bloody close on Friday night.

The end of Torchwood: Miracle Day was not quite as obscenely amusing as some had predicted, but its climax prompted laughter in this reviewer, not tears.

No dangling plot-lines were tied up, no extraneous characters rescued from irrelevancy. The program is over — and so too, probably, is the franchise — but not even the most generous critic could with a straight face say that it was concluded.

Snark? Oh yes. For snark and bullet points and a reviewer's exhausted post-mortem, visit, Where have you gone, Russell T, Russell T?

Edited to fix broken (and vital) link. Many thanks to ShinyDinosaur.

Bring on the night (terrors)!

Before I say anything else, I'd like to make it known that, for a wonder, this reviewer liked Mark Gatiss' latest Doctor Who adventure, Night Terrors.

Derivative? Sure.

Cheesy? A little.

Funny? Quite a lot, at times.

And scary? Oh yes, indeed.

Whatever carps one might have about Night Terrors' similarities of plot to episodes like Fear Her, or its monsters' resemblance to those in The Beast Below, The Girl In the Fireplace or the gas-mask kids from The Empty Child, there can be — at least, there should be — no denying that Night Terrors is a well-crafted story, amusing and frightening by turn, that moves briskly along from beginning to end.

After The Doctor's Wife, Night Terrors is easily this reviewer's favourite episode of the 2011.

Not too many spoilers and fewer a lot less than a thousand words for once at Old story for old eyes (and new).

Hitler Lives!

Doctor Who survives a questionable gimmick

August 30, 2011, OTTAWA — I feel almost shell-shocked.

After eight episodes of Torchwood: Miracle Day, I had almost forgotten that a television program set in the Whoniverse can actually be fun, that it can move.

As a bonus, Steven Moffat has slipped a pretty major change into that universe's cannon, one likely to upset both traditionalists and racists alike.

Of course, it's not all roses. To my mind, Steven Moffat's Who still suffers from a disregard for world-building and characterization that has been the sadly surprising hall-mark of his run as show-runner on the venerable franchise.For the good, the bad, and the frustrating (with spoilers), Let's Visit Hitler.

Sins of the Show-Runner?

A commentator at the Tor.com discussion of The Middle Men passed along a "strong rumour" that Torchwood: Miracle Day was originally meant to be a five-episode series, but was expanded to ten, "so that Starz could get subscribers for longer".

Like any rumour, I take this one with the proverbial kilo of salt, but it does offer a credible, if not fully explanatory, hypothesis for the remarkably slow and inept story-telling to which we have been subject lo! these past seven weeks.

Less subtle than an average episode of South Park, the seventh episode is the best outing of the series so far. Or perhaps I should say, the least bad.

Immortal Sins at least boasts some action, some humour, some sex and even some romance.

On the other hand, the sex and romance is at best only as good as the merely competent fan-fic it will no doubt inspire, the action was counter-balanced by long, gruesome minutes of torture that would delight Mel Gibson and — of course! — a secondary plot and characterization that make no sense and which are in any case mostly negated by episode's end.

For skin, spoilers, stereotypes, structural analysis (and, yes, snark) see Mel Gibson comes to Torchwood or, The Passion of the Jack. Probably not safe for work.

The Categories of Idiot Plots

Why am I writing this? Why am I even still watching?

At the half-way mark of Torchwood's miraculously boring 2011 series, there are two answers to both questions.

The first is that I said I would and that I am trying to develop a reputation for reliability. The second is that there is some morbid fascination in watching to see just how bad this thing can get.

Contrary to a prediction made in an early draft of my my review of last week's Escape to L.A., the return of Jane Espenson, whose keyboard was behind the best episode in the series so far, didn't make for any improvement after all.

The Categories of Life is so slow moving and so driven by idiot plot devices that it's tempting to imagine Russell T Davies is playing some sort of Zen game of Patience with his audience, but on reflection, the evidence doesn't support that hypothesis.

A far more plausible explanation for the ineptness on display is that Davies was so excited about the huge sums of American money at his disposal, that he was so distracted by fantasies of crane shots and exploding helicopters, that he forgot to write a story in which to blow his toys up until mere days before shooting was scheduled to start.

Click here to read about the Miracle of the Legislatures and the Parliaments. Yes, there are lots of spoilers behind the link, but click away! I've watched it so you don't have to.

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Miracle Day's third episode marks another step on the road towards a fully-engaging story, but still with some mis-steps, awkwards steps and hints of dumbing-down for the new (yes, American) audience along the way.

Despite those cavils, a lot more seemed to happen in "Dead of Night" than in both of its predecessors put together, an important thing for a program that is trying to do tripple duty as a mystery, a science fiction thriller and a social satire.

Unfortunately, too much of what happens feels as if it was inserted according to Russell T Davies initial plans, rather than growing organically out of the characters and the action.

For thoughts on the good and the bad, the Bechdel Test and the long-awaited man-sex, click here (possibly not safe for work).