Doctor Who: “The Waters of Mars” (2009)

*Episode premise spoilers*

This has always been my favorite of the 2009 Tenth Doctor specials, even though it really freaks me out (any type of “the infected” narrative invariably gets to me.) Gripping story, I’m invested in the oneshot characters, and it’s a fascinating scenario to put the Doctor in.

As the Tenth Doctor runs from his own destiny, he encounters a human colony on Mars. But not just any colony, the first—it’s 2059, and this is Bowie Base One. Their future is history for the Doctor, and although the details are a mystery, he knows that their mission is doomed to end in death and destruction. Knowing that this is a fixed point and he can’t interfere, the Doctor tries to best to just get out, but the end has already begun.

We’ve seen the Doctor run into fixed points in time before. It’s always agonizing for them to let people suffer as history takes its course. But “The Waters of Mars” does something interesting, because this isn’t history from the audience’s perspective. This is our future, and yet the Doctor knows the inevitable course it has to take, just like he knows the course of Pompeii or the French Revolution. I really like the scene where he discovers where/when he is and he realizes who everyone on the base is, calling each of them by name and citing their role in the mission.

In this way, it’s also a celebrity historical about the future, since the Doctor is thoroughly taken with the captain, Adelaide Brooke. It’s easy for him to slip into his fanboy tendencies with her, even though she’s severe and by-the-book and has no time for nonsense from him. And the Doctor comes by his adoration honestly—she proves herself shrewd and observant, recognizing how much more the Doctor knows than he tries to let on.

In addition to Lindsay Duncan, who brings a steely intelligence to Adelaide, the crew of Bowie Base One offers up a few familiar faces of the “before I knew them” variety. There’s Gemma Chan, who went on to play Astrid in Crazy Rich Asians, as Mia, and Joplin Sibtain (a.k.a. my beloved Brasso from Andor) plays Tarak. Both are relatively small roles, and we now know they can both do much more than that, but it’s still fun to see them!

The story is very well done. There’s a strong emotional core here, and even though it’s not my absolute favorite base-under-siege story, it still does a good job of making me feel for the characters. The Flood are super creepy baddies—they look really unsettling, and as I said, any type of infection angle always gets to me. And the connection between water and zombies is apt:

ADELAIDE: “We're safe. It's hermetically sealed. They can't get in.”

DOCTOR: “Water is patient, Adelaide. Water just waits. It wears down the clifftops, the mountains, the whole of the world. Water always wins.”

It’s quite the episode for the Doctor. There are points where, for me, it gets a little too deep into the Ten angst, but I do understand where it’s coming from on that score. The Doctor has been traveling alone ever since what happened with Donna at the end of series 4, he’s been avoiding portents for the end of this life, and although he’s just run into one of his heroes, the laws of time demand that he stand by and watch her meet her doom. He’s going through a lot. One of David Tennant’s talents in his performance as Ten is how quickly he can shift from silly to scary, and he makes good use of that here.

Joel Fry-days: Game of Thrones: Season 4, Episode 3 – “Breaker of Chains” (2014)

 

*Major spoilers for episodes 1 and 2*

*CW: rape*

When I looked up Joel Fry’s IMDb after season 1 of Our Flag Means Death, I recalled him as the friend from Yesterday, but I couldn’t place him as this Game of Thrones character. To be fair, Game of Thrones had frillions of characters, and the majority of Fry’s screentime is in season 5, when my interest in the show in general started to wane. I’ve since placed which character this was, in a sort of, “Oh right, him,” kind of way—we’ll see if he leaves more of an impression on me this time around.

Note: I’m just going to write these reviews from the perspective of someone who knows Game of Thrones reasonably well. There are just too many characters and plotlines to contextualize every one.

In the wake of Joffrey’s murder, Tyrion has been arrested and Sansa has disappeared. Cersei is grieving her son, while Tywin is already looking for ways to press an advantage. Farther north, Arya and the Hound are uneasy traveling companions, Sam worries about Gilly’s safety at the Wall, and the Night’s Watch debate how to handle recent attacks from the wildlings. Meanwhile, over in Essos, Daenerys has taken command of the army of the Unsullied. She’s now set her sights on freeing the city-state of Meereen.

This is the sort of episode where no character gets more than one or two sequences of scenes. There are over half a dozen different plots going on here, and we kind of check in briefly with all of them. Game of Thrones did this a lot. Rather than go into much detail on each one, I think I’ll just hit the highlights of my favorite parts. For this show, it might be the best way to handle the non-Joel Fry stuff.

• I’ve always liked Margaery Tyrell, and her and Lady Olenna together are great. When Margaery laments that she’s had two husbands—one gay, one a sadist—and they were both murdered, Olenna scoffs, “Nonsense! Your circumstances have improved remarkably.”
• Tywin is stone cold, wasting no time in beginning the work of molding Tommen into the kind of king he can control. Tommen and Cersei are literally standing over Joffrey’s dead body, and Tywin is like, “All right, my boy, lesson time!” Unrepentant bastard from start to finish.
• In Stannis’s storyline, I always preferred Ser Davos (Liam Cunningham!) and Shireen over him, and their reading lesson in this episode is very sweet. That said, I really do like this line from Stannis – “If I do not press my claim, my claim will be forgotten. I will not become a page in someone else’s history book.”
• It’s a shame that Joel Fry is only in a couple season 4 episodes, because this is the season with the wonderful Oberyn Martell in it. Like probably a lot of people, this wasn’t the first thing I saw Pedro Pascal in, but it was the one that made me take notice of him. He’s endlessly great as Oberyn, and Indira Varma matches him note for note as Ellaria. Here, I like how Oberyn describes being bi—“When it comes to war, I fight for Dorne. When it comes to love, I don’t choose sides”—and he has a really strong scene with Tywin.
• Tyrion also has a strong story this season, with the murder accusation and his trial. Peter Dinklage kills it throughout. In this episode, the whole scene of Podrick visiting Tyrion in prison is great. I’m touched that Tyrion forces Podrick not to return for his own safety, and I love this line – “Whenever something bad happens to me, I assume it’s my sister who had a hand in it. But say what you will of Cersei, she loves her children. She is the only one I’m certain had nothing to do with this murder—which makes it unique, as King’s Landing murders go.”
• Another way this episode follows a very typical Game of Thrones format is to end on a big badass Daenerys scene. Her arrival in Meereen makes a big splash—she doesn’t brook their insults against her, and she makes it very clear who she is and what she does. Also, this loving diatribe about Jacob Anderson’s delivery of Astapori Valyrian (from David J. Peterson, the linguist who created it,) recently came back across my dashboard, so I was even happier than usual to get a few crumbs of Grey Worm. Not to mention, Anderson absolutely wowed me in season 2 of Interview with the Vampire!

All that said, this episode has a very major downside: it’s the one where Jaime rapes Cersei in the sept over their son’s dead body, and then prominent people involved with the scene went, “Well, actually…” about it. Even for a show that traffics a lot in sexual violence, this was gross.

As for Joel Fry? Well, very little to say so far. Per IMDb, he’s playing Hizdahr zo Loraq. In his debut episode, he has one scene and zero lines, part of the crowd watching Daenerys’s big entrance in Meereen. From his dress, we know he’s one of the Masters. Like the other slaveholders of Meereen, his wordless reactions are first unconcerned/cocky, then grow more somber as Dany shows them what she’s about.

The one thing I will say is that, even though he doesn’t have any lines, the show does indicate that Hizdahr is going to be someone. As the Masters watch Dany, we get multiple shots focusing on his reaction, including some close-ups. It has a “watch this space” feel—like Hizdahr’s presence here is a placeholder, so when he shows up to actually do something, you can be like, “I’ve seen that guy before!”

Accent Watch

Nothing yet. Will report back when he speaks!

Recommend?

In General – A cautious yes. Game of Thrones fell off quite a bit by the end, but at this point, I was still pretty into it. However, this comes with the huge caveat that the show has lots of graphic violence and sex, including sexual violence.

Joel Fry – Too early to say.

Warnings

Violence (including sexual violence,) sexual content, language (including sexist insults,) strong thematic elements (including incest,) violence against animals, and drinking.

Y tu Luna también: Narcos: Mexico: Season 1, Episode 3 – “El Padrino” (2018)

As we get deeper into this story and the establishment of the Guadalajara cartel, Félix just becomes more and more interesting as a character. This episode offers up some good chances for Diego Luna to sink his teeth into the material in an understated but compelling way.

Félix’s vision for a cartel of unified plazas across the country has gotten off the ground, and the money is rolling in. But even as everyone in the ecosystem starts reaping the rewards, greed and ego quickly lead to resentment and posturing. In particular, the DFS (the federal secret police) offering the cartel protection start to feud with Félix’s nephews Benjamín and Ramón, who run the Tijuana plaza. Though Félix is eager to project the public image of a respected tycoon, he’s forced to put out fires between his own people. And over at the DEA, Kiki has spotted the signs that the Mexican weed industry is organizing. Now he just has to convince any of the higher-ups to believe him and approve an investigation.

Kiki’s a smart and observant guy, and the phrase “go-getter” doesn’t even begin to describe him. So naturally, he’s frustrated at being hampered by red tape and indifference on every side. He’s put it together that the price of marijuana all across Mexico is now the same, suggesting collaboration between all the traffickers, but nobody in charge seems to care. One official brushes off his suspicions, smugly telling him, “Mexicans don’t work like that, Kiki. Organized, structure? They just—no offense.”

So I feel for him. At the same time, I understand why most of his coworkers are at their wit’s end with him. Because he’s the new guy in town, he’s only just experiencing all this corruption and obstruction, so he’s fired up to do something about it, and he sees everyone else’s apathy as laziness instead of a jaded resignation. At one point, he asks one of his colleagues, “Is it that you don’t give a shit, or it’s been so long you forgot what doing your job actually looks like?” Yeah, not winning any popularity contests there!

Félix goes in a few different directions here. Because, as the narrator points out, “he just understood the game better than anyone else,” the cartel enjoys success that no one but Félix could have imagined. He revels in his profits, buying a swanky hotel and showing up in sleek suits that are worlds away from his old police uniform. He used to work as a bodyguard for the governor of Sinaloa, and now his hotel is hosting the wedding of the governor’s son. He’s definitely flexing, and it feels good to rub elbows with people who used to be his social betters.

But not everyone involved in the cartel is content to rake in the money as they go along with Félix’s innovative system. Nava, the head of the DFS, is throwing his weight around in a pretty devastating way, and as his officers lock horns with Benjamín and Ramón, their escalating conflict threatens the stability of the whole operation. Much of Félix’s role within the cartel involves playing referee between a lot of dangerous men with fragile egos, and he has to calculate when to placate and when to lay down the law.

One thing I really like about Luna’s performance is seeing the seismic activity rippling beneath Félix’s calm exterior. While everyone around him gets heated, he generally keeps his eyes on the prize, remembering that their obscene profits depend on everyone playing nice with each other. So he keeps an even keel when Nava shows up at the hotel making threats and poking at his sore spots, and when it becomes clear that, no matter how immense his wealth, some people will always view him as a small fry from Sinaloa. He knows how to demand respect when he needs to, but this is always a strategic move, not an impulsive response to an insult. No, when people come along and make insinuations about him, he keeps his cool, seething only under the surface. During his meeting with Nava, it’s not until Nava leaves that Félix breaks.

Other Doctor Lives: Twenty Twelve: Series 1, Episode 1: “Countdown” (2011)

I’ve reviewed actors’ performances for narration before, but I think this will be my first time covering such a lengthy project in that capacity. David Tennant was the narrator, not just for both seasons of this show, but for all three seasons of the spinoff that followed it. We’ll see how much I wind up having to say about his performance here. However, Joel Fry is going to show up as a recurring character in both series, so some of these reviews will wind up doubling as Joel Fry-days posts. (And yes, that is of course the reason I decided to start watching it now!)

Twenty Twelve is a mockumentary following the Olympics Deliverance Commission as they prepare for the London Olympics. On the cusp of reaching the “1,000 Days to Go” mark, the commission gets ready to kick things off with a bang. Siobhan has commissioned an artist to create a giant countdown clock and has her team designing the London Olympics website. Graham is testing a new system to improve traffic in London ahead of the Games, while Kay is on a mission to line up uses for the various Olympic arenas after the Games are over. They’re led by Ian, who’s doing his best to steer a fairly rudderless ship.

Since we’ll be here a while across two shows, I’ll throw in a character-of-the-week thing so we can get to know the non-David Tennant and non-Joel Fry participants here. Naturally, we’ll start with head of deliverance Ian Fletcher, played by Hugh Bonneville. Ian is a pretty quintessential British manager type, and Bonneville can do a role like this in his sleep. He’s diligent and thoughtful but also nebbish and a bit feckless. He can barely keep their morning meetings on track, so at the moment, managing the Olympics feels like a stretch.

It’s the pilot, so we’re mainly getting to know the characters and establishing the premise here. While the episode starts a little dry, I got into the humor more as it went on. So far, Siobhan’s dialogue is way overseasoned with fillers, a la, “Okay, cool,” “Right, so like…”, and, “So the thing about…” I get that she’s supposed to be grating, but it’s too over-the-top for me, and I hope they turn it down a bit in future episodes. I’m entertained by Graham. As Ian instructs him to deal with the traffic issue, he keeps shifting between looking absolutely bewildered at the thought of getting anything accomplished by Friday and blandly assuring him that Friday is no problem. Hee!

As I said, David Tennant is the show’s narrator. Like with the episode itself, the narration starts a little dry but reveals more of its humor in time. The narrator describes the artist who creates the clock as someone “who’s probably been best known up to now for gaining a reputation,” and as we see a stressed-out Ian arrive at the office, wrestling with his bike and talking on the phone, I enjoy the solemn, “It’s recently become increasingly clear to him that he’s going to have a weekend away with his wife in Barcelona.”

First impressions:

Accent Watch

Scottish.

Recommend?

In General – Too early to say. I enjoyed this first episode, but I’m not hooked yet.

David Tennant – Again, it’s too early. I’m not sure whether a narrator role will ultimately warrant a recommendation purely for Tennant’s performance. We’ll see.

Warnings

Language and a jumpscare involving a J.K. Rowling reference (her name comes up when they’re batting around “British icons” to serve as potential torchbearers.)