Doctor Who - ''Curse of the Black Spot''

Spoiler Level: High 

The new season continues to be lots of fun. I can enjoy pirate stories more than, say, zombies or vampire stories, but when I saw the preview for this episode and saw that this was going to be a pirate story, I wasn't really excited.  I thought the Pirates of the Caribbean movies were okay, but after seeing them once I never cared if I saw them again.  To be honest, the only reason I saw them at all was because my daughter wanted to see them, and I was doing the responsible parent thing of monitoring what my kid watches.  But really I just didn't care.  You know what I'm going to say by now... not enough spaceships in them.

So, leave it to Doctor Who to have a pirate story... with a spaceship in it!  That was awesome!  That closing shot of Captain Avery and Toby watching the stars fly past them, as the crew all walked in and lined up behind them for the hero shot... now THAT'S what more pirate movies need! Spaceships!!!

I'm not kidding about this, by the way.

It's nice to see the Doctor having to keep revising his theories on what's going on.  I like it when the Doctor's the one who understands what's Really Going On, but that makes it all the more fun when he realizes he was wrong. When Rich and I were discussing the episode after it ended, we both agreed that the two most out-of-place moments were when the Doctor abandoned the TARDIS and when he did a 180 and decided that everyone wasn't being killed, they were probably being taken somewhere instead. At the time I said to Rich "It's probably one of those things that would have been better explained if this had been a 90-minute story."  And now that the episode has a day or two to percolate in my brain, I think I understand what changed the Doctor's mind in both cases.

Now usually when the Doctor says "I have no idea where the TARDIS is going to land!" it means he needs to stay with the ship, or risk losing it forever.  But in this case he (literally) says "Abandon ship!"  Why? Well, I got to thinking about how he told Amy "It's been towed" as opposed to "It ran away." He could tell there was something wrong with the dimensional planes when he tried to take off; maybe that was the key moment that caused him to start revising his theory again. So if the TARDIS was sliding into this parallel plane, then maybe the people were being taken as well.  Again, following the Doctor's train of thought might have been easier if this story had taken more time to be fleshed out.  But then again, the 11th Doctor tends to ramble on quite quickly and then throw in a "completely disregard what I just said," which can make following his train of thought difficult at the best of times.

And even though Rory's got full companion status now, I was still afraid he really might die. (Again.) Some nice little teases about the overall arc, as well. Nothing new on the pregnancy/future Doctor/glowing-little-girl front, but the return of Amy's dreamworld woman with the silver eyepatch.  Hmmm....

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Smallville - ''Dominion''

Spoiler Level: Highish

See, now this is why I still don't feel like I can watch Smallville with my 11-year-old daughter in the room.  This episode had a lot of blood.

Slade Wilson has turned up back in the outside world (so we're told-- we never see him), so Ollie comes back to join Clark in the Phantom Zone to figure out how he escaped.  While there, we learn that the spirit of the original General Zod has merged with the body of the clone Major Zod, so now he's just one Zod with a whole lotta hate.  That may sound a bit convoluted, but it actually works quite well for me.  And apparently Darkseid has given Zod the power to rule the Phantom Zone. So Zod spends his time making the inhabitants of the Phantom Zone fight each other to the death for his entertainment.

I'm glad to see Ollie back, because I felt the show was always stronger with him.  It's also nice to see they haven't forgotten about him being Omega marked by Darkseid, and used it to the full extent here by giving us a reason to believe that Ollie might have really been turned against Clark.  The reference to Orion having defeated Darkseid was also very nice, and finally getting Clark into a red cape was fantastic.

Sadly, showing so much blood and so many gruesome details during the combat (such as the blade coming out of Clark's back) really turned me off.  It just felt over the top and really unnecessary.

Lois pulling a gun on Tess also seemed a bit out of place; did she really need to go that far to get Tess to agree with her? Since Lois wasn't able to keep Tess at gunpoint for three weeks and Tess and Lois willingly  took shifts, I'd say obviously not.

Thanks as always to Home of the Nutty for the screen capture!

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This episode is still available to watch for free (with commercials) at http://www.cwtv.com/cw-video/smallville/.

Stargate Universe - ''Awakening''

Spoiler Level: High

You know, if there's a genre for movies called "feel good" movies -- works of film created with the deliberate intention of bringing you up-- then logically there must also be a "feel bad" genre, works of film created with the deliberate intention of bringing you down. Stargate Universe is determined to be a "feel bad" series.

As with the last few episodes, there's some great things in this episode.  The alien was very cool; I liked how he was very complacent, like he was just another worker, just trying to do his job when he ran into a bunch of humans.  I loved the seed ship-- not only does it give us a glimpse into how Destiny works, it's a cool design and makes for some excellent ship shots of the two docking, and brings some of the thrill of discovery back to the series.  The brief glimpse we get of the gate manufacturing room is very exciting, as this is probably the first time in Stargate history that we've gotten a look into the manufacturing of Stargates, or seen so many in one place at one time.

But this season is really sliding backwards, and that's the kind of thing that will make me lose interest as a viewer. I've commented a lot on how I liked Rush's progression into a decent human being during the second half of last season, and it seems like with this season they've decided to just throw that all away.

Really, guys?  We had to go with Rush stranding Telford on the seed ship?  We couldn't have had the ships undock on their own, or the aliens be responsible?  We had to make it be Rush's decision?  And let's look at that from an in-universe perspective for a moment... Rush has got control of Destiny, which the seed ship is designed to work for, but he can't switch off or reverse the energy drain from the bridge?  He has to resort to undocking the ships and abandoning Telford?  That's just writing it with the deliberate goal of having a feel-bad story, logic be damned.  It's a major step backwards for the character, and it's getting to be the recurring theme of this series.

And speaking of recurring themes, having the closing shot of everyone by themselves in different parts of the ship while a sad, lonely song is sung has been used so much on this show that it's become a cliché.  I started making up my own vocals about how life sucks before the actual words kicked in, and I wasn't far off.

I'll stick with the show because it's already been canceled so there's only 17 episodes left, I've seen every Stargate up to now, and this show has improved before. But man, it's no wonder viewers kept leaving.  If I thought this show was going to run for another four seasons, I'd probably give up on it again and go finish Primeval instead.

Actually, that doesn't sound like a bad idea.  I might just do that anyway.

As always, thanks to Krissie's Caps for the screen captures.

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SGU Stargate Universe: Complete Final Season

Star Trek: The Next Generation - ''Q Who?''

Spoiler Level: High

This is it, this is the one that changes the face of Star Trek.  This is when we meet the Borg.

It's great to watch it in retrospect, knowing all we do about the Borg now.  Originally we were seeing the events unfold from the perspective of the Enterprise crew-- not knowing what's out there, but confident in our heroes' ability to handle it.  But after 21 years or so, we're now seeing events from the perspective of Guinan and Q-- we know the Borg, we know how unstoppable they are, and we know the crew has no idea what they're getting in to.  When Picard walks up to his first drone and tries to begin a discussion, it seemed perfectly rational when the episode first aired-- watching it now, we know how ridiculously futile the  gesture is.

A lot of things still hold up really well about this episode with the overall Trek mythos.  Guinan says the Borg destroyed her homeworld a century ago, which tracks perfectly with Star Trek Generations.  Q states that Guinan is centuries old, which we'll learn is true in "Times Arrow." And the Borg themselves are just as creepy as any later appearance, arguably even more so-- without the Borg Queen to speak for them, they're simply an unstoppable hive mind.

Not that everything tracks perfectly, mind you.  Guinan says she wasn't there for the actual destruction of her homeworld. While her being on a refugee ship in Generations makes me assume she had been, if you're away from home when it's destroyed you still become a refugee.  The voice of the Collective still sounds like a monotone voice, but it doesn't sound as much like a chorus as it would later.  And then there's the whole rivalry between Guinan and Q, which never really was explained.  There's never anything stating that Q has sent the Enterprise to the Delta Quadrant, like I had assumed there was-- where did that come from, anyway? If anything, they're only two years from the nearest Starbase at maximum warp, instead of the 70 years Voyager was, which confirms that the Borg had always been closer to home.

And while Q is the catalyst-- he's the one who gets to be the voice for the Borg, as the Enterprise's taunting guide-- he can't really have made that huge a difference in how soon the Federation encountered the Borg, since the Borg had already scooped up the colonies in the Neutral Zone.

I had read in Star Trek: The Magazine (which was a magazine I loved, but its title always made me laugh, because calling it The Magazine sounded like something right out of Spaceballs.  But I digress.  The magazine had an interview in it that said...)  that Maurice Hurley, who wrote this episode, intended for the Borg and Q to have a long history together and be something of rivals, and their stories were to be constantly intertwined on a larger scale of good and evil.  Then he left the show and that idea went with him, with the Q and the Borg taking totally separate routes in Trek history.

Something else interesting I discovered from rewatching this episode-- the Borg emblem is actually used.  I first saw it with the Borg action figure by Playmates, and I thought to myself, where did they get that from? The Borg don't need symbols.  Symbols are irrelevant. I figured Playmates had just made it up.  Then when Lore had his group of emotional Borg in "Descent" they used the symbol, so I figured it was something the art department had come up with, given to the toy company, and it never made it on screen until then.

Well, I was wrong on all counts.  Here it is on the wall in this episode. I've highlighted it in the screen capture.  I guess symbols aren't irrelevant.

And last but not least, in contrast with the darkness of the Borg we have the introduction of Ensign Sonya Gomez, an engineer who's enthusiastic, chatty, bubbly, and a bit wet behind the ears.  La Forge mentions that she came aboard on Starbase 173, which we saw the Enterprise visit seven episodes ago in "The Measure of a Man," so that's a nice little continuity touch.  Ensign Gomez only got to appear in two episodes, but she did go on to become the star in the eBook series Starfleet Corps of Engineers (aka S.C.E. and later Corps of Engineers). 

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Survivors - ''Genesis''

Spoiler Level: High

The only thing cooler than Survivors having "Genesis" as their second episode title is Red Dwarf's having "The End" as their first episode's title.

We're introduced to some new players, and even though the plague is over, conditions are so harsh you're still never sure if they're going to survive or not.

In this episode, the various survivors are starting to find each other.  Some want to stay alone, but most want to band together to start new communities-- and of course, there are a few who want to make sure that they're the ones in charge.

The extremes are shown on a small scale in the case of Greg and Anne.  Greg is a survivor with nowhere to go and no plan in mind; he runs in to Anne, who needs help.  Anne has been staying with Vic, where they've been setting up camp in a quarry.  They were gathering supplies when Vic's tractor fell on him.  Greg helps get the tractor off of Vic and does what he can to help set his legs, but none of them are doctors, and there's a very real chance that they won't heal right and Vic will never be able to walk again.  Anne tells Greg of Vic's plan to try and gather supplies so they'll be secure for as long as possible, but elaborates on her interpretation of the plan-- things are the new currency, and with all the things they've been gathering, they can get other people to work for them in exchange for food. Disgusted, Greg leaves, but not without going into the closest town and trying to scavenge any medicines that might help Vic pull through.  Anne, by contrast, leaves Vic to die, and when she finds Greg returning tells him that Vic is already dead.

Greg is no hero, he has no master plan to put the human race back on track-- he just sees someone who needs help and does what he can.  Anne, by contrast, is not only unwilling to help anyone else, but she wants someone else to do all the work to help her.  Life means so little to her that she'd rather let someone die than exert the effort to help him herself.

I suppose it could be that having seen so much death, one of two things happens-- you either become desensitized to it and find life to be meaningless and valueless, or you cherish the life that's still left.  And while we see a lot of the former in this episode, we also see Abby, one of the few to survive from the first episode.  Her only plan is to build a community where they can take care of themselves and each other.  Hopefully, the new world will follow her example more than Anne's.

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K9 - ''The Cambridge Spy''

Spoiler Level: High

A very good episode of K9!  Professor Gryffen is playing about with his Space Time Manipulator, and Jorjie gets zapped back into the past, arriving in 1963.  There she meets Darius's great-grandfather (also played by Daniel Webber) who's a very nice stand-up kind of guy.  Unfortunately she interferes with his timeline, so Darius is starting to pull a Back to the Future and fade away.  Starkey and K9 have to enter the Space Time Manipulator, go back to 1963, rescue Jorjie, and try to repair the damage to the timeline.

It works great.  Dairus is brusque but not whiney, cowardly or otherwise annoying, and Daniel Webber does a great job of coming across as a completely different person playing Darius' grandfather Bill.  Most of the dialogue works well, even K9's attempts at 1960's slang.  (Well, most of them.  A few are cringe-worthy, but a few of them work great, especially when he gets them wrong.) And there's even an implication made that Thorne's ancestor is partially responsible for the totalitarian state we see as England's future.

The kids also recognize Thorne's ancestor, who's played by Jared Robinsen, the same actor who plays Thorne.  Since Thorne was only brought in at the end of the previous episode on a viewscreen with Jorjie's mother I originally thought that this episode must somehow be out of order;  but after doing a search on Thorne to find the actor's name I realized they met him way back in episode 2, "Liberation."  So even that works.

So this episode goes firmly in the win column, making K9's score to date 10 wins, 6 losses.

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Sadly, K9 is still not available in the US, but Amazon has now started listing import DVDs. While they are region free, these are in PAL format, so you'll need a player that can convert them to NTSC to play them here in America. Oh, and they're out of stock. But hey, it's a start.

Tiger & Bunny - ''Go for Broke!''

Spoiler Level: Kinda High.

Another episode where we examine how well Kotetsu and Barnaby are coming together as a team, which is to say not well.  Barnaby is fed up with Kotetsu (again), and Kotetsu can't stop himself from getting involved in Barnaby's personal life.  In this case, it's organizing a surprise party for Barnaby's birthday.

We also get a very cool villain, whose body covers itself in diamond armor.  (Didn't Marvel make that the White Queen's ability at some point?) We get some great fight sequences, and a lot of it is through Hero TV's lens, although they neglect to award points as events are going along this time.  Doc Saito also comes up with some cute little Tiger and Bunny icons on their armor, and we get a cool transformation sequence where we see how they suit up.

So while not earth-shattering, this show continues to be enjoyable and entertaining.


As of this writing, this episode (and all previous episodes!) are available to watch for free at http://www.vizanime.com/tiger-and-bunny. Remember, new episodes debut the same day they air in Japan!

Doctor Who - The Impossible Astronaut, Part 2: ''Day of the Moon''

Spoiler Level: Very, Very High

First off, let me just say "Wow" and scrape my jaw up off of the floor.  This season is really taking the long view for its story arc, following up on unresolved plot threads from last season and laying lots more for the rest of this season.  At least, I hope they're going to be resolved this season.  I think this episode raised more questions than it answered.

So okay, "Silence will fall" is referring to this species, the Silence, who have been running the human race for thousands of years.  I've got mixed feelings on that; on the one hand, I hate it when SF attributes all of humanity's achievements to alien influences. I feel like it cheapens us as a species, and takes away the pride in our accomplishments.  This episode is a perfect example-- we didn't go to the moon because we wanted to, but because the Silence wanted us to.  Heck, did we even develop the technology to do it on our own?  But on the other hand, the concept that they've been in control of humanity for all of recorded time is truly terrifying.  The concept that we could be being controlled, rise up in revolution, overthrow our controllers and then never remember any of it because it all happens "between the scenes" of our normal lives is just mind-blowing.

But all that leads to another unresolved point: Why did the Silence want us to go to the moon?  Is it only so they could create the Impossible Astronaut's space suit?

Along those lines, we now know that the Impossible Astronaut is a self-controlled, self-healing spacesuit, presumably created by the Silence, created for the purpose of containing the little girl.  And... that's it.

Unanswered questions: why?  Which I guess leads us to...

Amy's pregnancy:  Okay, she didn't tell Rory because she was afraid there might be something wrong with the baby.  Nice answer.  Now to the implied answers-- I was under the impression that the Silence took her baby, and she has no memory of it, and the little girl was in fact her child, based on the photos Amy found in the orphanage. Then the kid goes and regenerates, and the TARDIS keeps reading Amy as both pregnant and not pregnant.  Oookay.  A "time head" indeed.  As we were discussing the episode after wards, a friend of mine hit upon the idea that the little girl might be The Doctor's and River's daughter, and that the photo was actually of Amy holding their baby.  I rather like that idea, but I suspect it won't be as simple as that (if that is at all simple).

So the unresolved questions are who is the little girl, who are her parents, and what's Really Going On with Amy's pregnancy?

Poor River.  The Doctor's really getting comfortable with her, even falling in love with her, and as it's beginning for him it's ending for her.  I have to say I'm not totally thrilled with the idea that they're always moving in reverse order; I rather liked the idea that it's more of a jumble. Maybe she only thinks it's in reverse during this meeting? Or perhaps Steven Moffat prefers to do it in reverse order so it's easier for him to keep it all straight in his head.  All I know is that he better have this all written down somewhere so it all makes sense when he's all done!  I look forward to rewatching all of River's stories in order from her perspective when that day comes.

Nothing really new about the unanswered questions about River; it's the usual stuff, is she really the Doctor's wife, and who did she kill and why did she kill him/her?

As to which episode title should be considered the story title-- that's a bit of a tough one with this story.  On the one hand, the actual "Day of the Moon" refers to July 20, 1969, where the bulk of this episode takes place, which would seem to make it a more episode specific title, whereas the Impossible Astronaut was very prominent in both halves and is the catalyst for the entire thing.  Put all that together and "The Impossible Astronaut" should probably be the story title.  On the other hand, The Apollo 11 and Silence stories are the only plot lines that are wrapped up, and we're still not really any closer to understanding just what the Impossible Astronaut itself is, so from that perspective "Day of the Moon" might make a better story title.  But for me personally, since "Day of the Moon" is more episode specific, "Impossible Astronaut" wins out.

And now I'm off to read Jonathan's latest "Eleven for Eleven" installment for this episode over at Dislocated Life.  Yeah, I'm recommending it sight-unseen, but you can always trust Captain JLS.  I generally try to do my own write-ups before reading anyone else's so I can be sure my opinions are really mine.  You never knew when some outside force is influencing you...

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Smallville - ''Booster''

Spoiler Level: High

Booster Gold and Blue Beetle!  And not just the new Blue Beetle, but Ted Kord too!  I always love Geoff Johns episodes.

With this episode, Clark has really turned a corner.  First off, he spent all his public time rockin' the glasses.  While I don't necessarily agree with the bumbling Clark persona-- the comics have done just fine without it for over 20 years now-- I'm happy to see him establishing his secret identity.  Secondly, we got that absolutely wonderful scene of Clark changing in the phone booth.  And lastly (and most importantly), Clark doesn't talk down to Booster Gold and lecture him like he used to lecture Green Arrow, he inspires him.  That's the way Superman should be.

As usual, thanks to Home of the Nutty for the screen caps.  (Sadly, there was no scene in the episode of Booster, Beetle and Blur all together.) And also as usual, this episode is still available to watch for free at http://www.cwtv.com/cw-video/smallville/.

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Star Wars: The Old Republic - Deceived by Paul S. Kemp

Spoiler Level: Medium - High

Ahh, now this is more like it.  This is what I wanted from the previous Old Republic novel, Fatal Alliance.

I thought that this book was going to climax with the attack on the Jedi Temple and Coruscant as seen in the "Deceived" game trailer, but instead it uses it as a launching point.  Perhaps author Paul S. Kemp figured that at this point we've all seen that trailer a zillion times and it might be anti-climactic.  And he might be right; as excited as I was for this book, I did find that I knew that battle too well already.

Instead we get to learn much more about Darth Malgus, the Sith Lord who kicked so much butt in the trailer, and the Twi-lek girl that's with him as the battle begins.  And he is a much, much more interesting subject that the Sith we saw in Fatal Alliance. This book works much better at showing us the political machinations that come with a Sith Empire, as Malgus, while high up in the Sith hierarchy, isn't quite high enough to make sure things are done his way.  It helps that Malgus isn't particularly good at politics; we see his frustration at being outmaneuvered by his fellow Sith Lords who are a bit more cunning, and more interestingly, in their different interpretations of the Dark Side of the Force; while Malgus believes that war and chaos are essential to burn away the weak and strengthen those who remain, others believe that the Force serves power for power's own sake, and that ruling half a galaxy is preferable to eternal war.

Just like his previous book Crosscurrent, Kemp shows us a Jedi who feels so enraged by a particular Sith that (s)he's willing to throw away everything to kill him.  In this case it's Aryn Leneer, former padawan of Ven Zallow, the Jedi Master we see killed in the trailer. After what the Sith have done to the Jedi Temple (and Zallow in particular) Aryn feels that the Sith must be punished, but the rest of the Jedi instead are willing to continue peace talks.

And so we have Aryn on one side and Malgus on the other, each feeling that they've been let down by their respective orders, and with only one thing in common-- a burning hatred of each other. Kemp crafts a wonderful tale showing us the parallels between the two characters, with Aryn walking too close to the dark out of a need for justice, and Malgus walking too close to the light (by Sith standards) by his love for his Twi-lek slave, both feeling betrayed and deceived by their respective orders.

I'll probably still wait to read any more Old Republic books until I cycle back around to that part in the timeline (and that's gonna take me a few years), but I'd really welcome more books about Darth Malgus, especially since he has such a rich backstory.  Although not as cool as Darth Bane, he is one tough Sith, and it would be great to see his origins, especially if they're written by Paul S. Kemp.  So far I've really enjoyed both of his Star Wars books, which makes me look forward to his Crosscurrent follow-up Riptide all the more.

In addition to the game trailer, this book has its own trailer, along with links to preview the first three chapters at http://www.swtor.com/news/news-article/20110304-1.

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