Doctor Who: A Few Notes on Season Arcs and River Song

During Eleven’s time on Who, the season arcs tend to get bigger every year.  Not that the Eleven era is unique in this; Twelve just had a pretty insane season-ender, and Ten’s years have their share of ramping up (companion-a-palooza, anyone?)  Still, Eleven’s big finales often feel the biggest to me, and as I’ve watched them, I’ve noticed a certain thread weaving through them in a very particular way, and that thread is River Song (spoilers for the finales of series 5, 6, and 7.)

To start things off, what are our end-of-season perils?  In series 5, the universe literally blows up – I wouldn’t have thought that could be topped in terms of high stakes, but it turns out Moffat was just getting warmed up.  Series 6 sees a massive paradox that causes time to collapse in on itself, with all of history happening at once until time as we know it simply disintegrates.  Compared to these two, the main catastrophe at the end of series 7 – all of the Doctor’s victories being rewritten into defeats, with the accompanying loss of life – is only moderately apocalyptic, with the Impossible Girl business as the episode’s more distinguishing factor.

So, that’s what we have to work with.  In each case, the big event is prefaced by portents, fixed points, or prophecies, and in two of them, the Doctor is targeted specifically because his enemies are aware of these impending disasters and try to avert them by capturing or killing him.  The Silence are really into this, making two attempts on the Doctor’s life to stop him from answering the “first question” at Trenzalore (technically speaking, I’d guess the prophecy probably refers to the incidents of “The Time of the Doctor,” but the circumstances fit “The Name of the Doctor” just as well for.)  However, both of these attempts cause disasters of their own that are arguably much worse than the one they’re trying to prevent.  Blowing up the TARDIS in an attempt to kill the Doctor makes the universe explode from the resulting cracks in time and space, and in sending an assassin after him, the paradox that breaks times is created.  No wonder the Silence give up trying after “The Wedding of River Song” – they’re menaces to the universe.

The thing is, in both these instances and the one in “The Name of the Doctor,” the Doctor isn’t actually the lynchpin of the situation; River is.  The Silence blow up the TARDIS in flight, assuming only the Doctor can pilot it (the Doctor’s conglomeration o’ nemeses assume the same and imprison him in the Pandorica to prevent said explosion,) but River is the one behind the console that day.  The Doctor finds his own, sneaky way to get around the fixed-point situation at Lake Silencio, but River, the Silence’s unwilling assassin, throws a wrench in the plan by refusing to go through with killing the Doctor – only on this show would that be a bad thing – creating two separate versions of the event and fracturing time in the process.  And the Great Intelligence gains entrance to the Doctor’s tomb, thus giving him the chance he needs to enter the Doctor’s timestream and rewrite his history, when River, not the Doctor, speaks the password:  his real name.  In that last one, River herself isn’t even there – it’s a projection of a copy of River on a data drive.  And yet, she’s still the reason everything goes to pot.

Why is this?  Why is River at the heart of all three separate occasions?  There’s something about it that makes me uncomfortable.  I don’t know – just this notion, like the show is subtly implying the Doctor wouldn’t have these problems if River would just get of the way and let him work.  And for a woman who’s held up as the nearest thing the Doctor might have to an equal, someone who frequently calls the shots, in fact, in their relationship, that doesn’t sit right with me.

Original: Making Time (2012)

Posted a day ahead of the usual end-of-month schedule so as not to disrupt the Sunday Who Review.  Given the subject of today's poem, it feels appropriate.

*          *          *

 

Making Time

 

If I could make time,

I’d start small,

Fashioning seconds by hand.

Once I’d formed enough moments

To string into minutes,

I’d lay them under my pillow

So I could catch

A bit of extra sleep at night.

Of course, an hour

Is really the shortest length

Of marketable time,

So I’ve have to expand

Before long.

I’d carve careful hours

To be bought by overworked friends

Looking to hang on

To the weekend

A little longer.

Soon, I’d have myself

A bustling little time-maker’s shop

With entire rows

Of summer afternoons,

A 2-for-1 rack

Of lost Daylight Saving’s hours,

And a glass case

Full of golden years

Polished to a good-old-days gleam.

News Satire Roundup: January 25th-January 28th

Monday, January 25 – I liked the Republican candidate catchup story.  Of course Trump would announce he could shoot someone and not lose any support, and I love the idea of Bush mailing people videos because he thinks that’s how going viral works.  The section on Fiorina was the strongest, especially the comment that bringing a bunch of appropriated preschoolers onstage while you describe un-kid-friendly abortion details suggests you’re not interested in protecting children after they’re born.  I disliked Ronny’s piece on a same-sex couple who obtained legal rights through adoption and are now struggling to overturn it and get married.  He wasn’t a good choice here, although he was better playing off the guy spewing homophobic false equivalencies.  The interview with comedian Gad Elmaleh was all right, nothing special.  My favorite part was Trevor downplaying the number of languages he speaks so as not to show up his guest.

Tuesday, January 26 – Great jokes in the ISIS story.  I like the show’s penchant for bizarrely “normal” aspects of the group, and “ISIS dating site” was too insane to pass up.  I can’t believe the term “jihottie” exists.  I like the coverage of the Democratic town hall, especially the “subtext subtitles” over one of Clinton’s responses.  My highlight, though, was the interview with Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson.  I’d have liked them to go further (check out the extended interview online for more,) but I think the time spent addressing criticisms of BLM was both smart and a sad commentary on perceptions of the group.  People get so caught up shouting, “All Lives Matter!!!” or, “If you wanna stop violence, talk to the Black people committing crimes!!!” that they don’t hear what the group is really about, and McKesson’s succinct, articulate rebuttals to every comment simultaneously explained why BLM is so important.

Wednesday, January 27 – Great show for me, firing on all cylinders.   After all of Trump's general posturing, backing out of the Republican debate is a total punk move (as the show delightfully pointed out,) and the African dictator callback was much appreciated.  The Planned Parenthood story was terrific, especially Trevor's obvious delight at the outcome and his continued emphasis on how remarkable it was given the numerous ways the deck had been stacked against PP.  I also loved the crack about a grand jury “indicting a ham sandwich… unless it was a cop” – I really like that commentary on/jokes about race come up even in segments that aren’t “about” race.  The show is great at keeping that subject present.  The interview with Jerry Seinfeld was amusing.  I got a kick out of Seinfeld's treatise on how great it is to be 61 and the accompanying evidence he gave for that claim.

Thursday, January 28 – Trevor did a nice job highlighting the ridiculousness of the Joseph-Fiennes-playing-Michael-Jackson debacle, especially on the heels of #OscarsSoWhite.  I laughed at him declaring he might have accepted Meryl Streep being cast instead.  The Cruz-Trump story was somewhere between funny and depressing, the idea that Republicans are basing their support on who they hate marginally less.  Jordan and Hasan debating that very topic, however, was great, particularly when they discussed which fatal medical condition was the best analogy for which candidate.  I enjoyed Advertisement Tonight, though the commentary wasn’t as sharp this time.  For me, the most amusing part was putting demographic-specific music on the Sanders ad.  I really liked the interview with New Yorker contributor Ryan Lizza – his experiences covering Trump rallies sounded fascinating.  I can hardly imagine how bizarre/unnerving that must be.

Carol (2015, R)

While this film wasn’t the knockout I was anticipating, it’s incredibly well-made and definitely worth watching.  All the actors do fine work in this beautifully-directed period piece, which immerses you in the quietly-repressed world they inhabit.

Therese, an intelligent but undistinguished girl living in 1950s New York, doesn’t know what’s about to begin when a chance encounter turns her on her head.  At the department store where she works, Therese is drawn to one of her customers, the alluring, soon-to-be divorcee Carol.  Carol is older, wealthier, and surer of what she wants.  Meanwhile, Carol is just as taken with young, artless Therese.  The two start taking small, unspoken steps toward one another but are thrown together by an unexpected hardship that besets Carol.

I had a tricky time pinning this film down.  It looks and sounds gorgeous from beginning to end – director Todd Haynes (who I know best from Velvet Goldmine) lets the essence of the period soak into every frame.  For me, though, it’s less successful on an emotional level.  The story is an intimate one, but for the most part, the direction doesn’t feel all that intimate.  This is a movie that feels like it’s holding you at arm’s length, which made it difficult for me to connect with the characters.

However, I think much of this is probably intentional.  In this time and place, among Carol’s class, women weren’t free to love in the open, and so much of the connection between Carol and Therese is understated, implied, both characters stopping just shy of where it seems they want to go.  In a situation like that, it’s vital for a film to convey the desire simmering underneath the polite phrases and carefully-arranged distance, and at times, it does so wonderfully.  This element comes through at different points in the film, always to good effect, but I feel it most strongly in a scene where both women are in the car and Therese is stealing glances at Carol.  We see only pieces of them in extreme close-ups – lips, hands, eyes – and it creates the sense that Therese is just skimming the surface of Carol because she’s not yet sure how to go further.  Unfortunately, there are stretches of the movie where this tug between inward and outward appearances isn’t very apparent, which makes the film feel kind of remote.

This distance carries over into the acting as well, although I think both (Oscar-nominated) leading ladies do what they can to reach us with the characters despite that.  As Carol, Cate Blanchett probably has the tougher job, since Carol is less a character in her own right and more a reflection of how Therese perceives her.  In scenes with her daughter, her (impending) ex-husband, and a friend/former lover, Carol feels better-realized than she does with Therese, where her characterization can sometimes get lost in being “mysterious and alluring Carol.”  Rooney Mara does well with Therese; she’s quiet and sensitive without being milquetoast, and she nicely portrays Therese’s gradual education and awakening.  Kyle Chandler is highly effective in the unflattering role of Carol’s husband, and Sarah Paulson, playing Carol’s best friend, lends an earnest, down-to-earth air to every scene she’s in.

Warnings

Drinking, smoking, language, thematic elements, and sexual content (including one sex scene.)

Beasts of No Nation (2015)

This is a hard, harrowing movie to watch, but it’s also incredibly affecting and stunningly well-done.  If it were up to me, the film would be swimming in Oscar nods.  As I said earlier, it really seems like the sort of movie the Academy would adore, and in this case, it would wholeheartedly deserve all the love it could lavish.

For young Agu, the war in his country was once a far-off abstraction.  Now, however, he’s lost most of his family, and the rest is lost to him.  Alone, wandering, and starving, he is “rescued” by a rebel army who elects to make him one of them.  Torn between his horrors at the brutality of war, his need for his strange new “family,” and the corrupting influence of his deceptively-charismatic Commandant, Agu fights to survive in what his world has become.

For me, the most powerful thing about this film is that it’s not all abject horror and misery.  That sounds really strange, but it’s true.  As he becomes a child soldier, yes, Agu is terrified, guilt-ridden, and running on pure survival instincts.  He commits horrible atrocities, sees his friends die, suffers abuse, and is used as an expendable pawn in someone else’s war.  There’s no question that his situation is monumentally terrible.  But it’s not all terrible, which is part of what makes it so dangerous.  After seeing his father and brother killed by soldiers, the rebel army becomes an outlet for Agu’s grief and anger.  His fellow soldiers become his brothers, and there are times when he feels strong, enfranchised, needed.  That’s the insidiousness the runs through all the undisguised monstrosity.  The Commandant feeds and clothes Agu, trains him, gives him a sense of purpose, and, the way he tells it, saves Agu’s life.  Agu is raised on the Commandant’s propaganda – taught to love his war and crave his approval.  In these moments where it isn’t blatantly horrific, the Commandant and the rebel army worm their way into Agu.  This, just as much as his fear of surviving on his own or being despised as a war criminal by any stable community, is what keeps him from escaping.  I give the movie so much credit for getting this, that the psychological damage runs even deeper than the trauma and horror that’s already there.

Idris Elba has, quite understandably, been getting most of the film’s attention for his dynamic performance as the Commandant.  As horrible, as self-serving, as manipulative as he is, you can see exactly why Agu and the other boys/young men would be drawn to him.  (It’s totally the sort of alluringly-complex villain role that Christoph Waltz would get Oscars for.)  As Agu, Abraham Attah makes a breathtaking film debut.  Agu’s world is one that most people, blessedly, will never experience, but in Attah’s hands, there’s no sense of distant, removed suffering.  Instead, Agu’s confusion, terror, and turmoil feel real and immediate, his character achingly specific.  Attah also beautifully sells the antithetical feelings warring within Agu.  I really, really hope we see more from him.  Additional shoutout to Emmanuel Nii Adom Quaye, who plays fellow child soldier Strika.  Without a single line of dialogue, he creates a richly compelling character whose relationship with Agu is one of the highlights in a film crammed with knockout moments.

Warnings

Extreme violence involving children (including graphic battle scenes, executions, and implied sexual abuse,) additional war violence and sexual content (including rape,) language, drinking, drug use, thematic elements, and disturbing images.

Bridge of Spies (2015, PG-13)

I knew very little about this movie going in, other than that it was presumably about the Cold War, Tom Hanks was in it, it had the look of an Oscar movie, and it gave off Spielberg vibes (though I didn’t realize it actually was a Spielberg film.)  While I find it to be interesting and well-made, I’d probably rank it behind the other three best picture nominees I’ve seen so far.

This “based on a true story” film centers on James Donovan, a good lawyer tasked with a very undesirable job:  defending Rudolf Abel, an accused Russian spy.  The higher-ups explain that they have to give the impression of not running a kangaroo court, and so even though the guilty verdict is basically inevitable, they need a credible attorney defending him.  Donovan takes the case and is almost universally reviled when he then does his job and gives his client the best defense he can.  This places him in an incredibly difficult position, but sometime later, it also makes him the prime candidate for another highly sensitive job.  This time, he’s brought in to arrange the delicate prisoner exchange of Abel for captured U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers.

Since I only knew the historical basics on Powers and nothing about Donovan specifically, I had no idea where the film was going, which made for an interesting viewing experience.  I was kind of baffled when the movie gave a lot of buildup to a trial we didn’t really see, but of course, that’s not what the film really centers around.  It’s not the trial itself – it’s Donovan’s association with Abel and his conduct throughout, both of which lead to his role in the Abel-for-Powers swap.  It was a different sort of experience for me, waiting to figure out what the film was about.

One thing I had no idea of was the fact that this movie was co-written by the Coen Brothers (who, along with fellow writer Mark Charman, are up for best original screenplay.)  That completely shocked me during the end credits, but looking back, I can see it.  Not only is the story set up very well, but it also contains a surprising amount of quirky, incidental humor for a movie about war/espionage/interrogation/what it means to be a patriot or a traitor.  There are random off-the-wall quips that are sort of startling but also really fun, as well as nice little human touches throughout.  I imagine that many of these moments come down to the Coen influence.

This might seem like an unfair critique, but my biggest gripe with the movie is that it feels kind of routine.  Compared to the other best picture nominees I’ve seen – Mad Max:  Fury Road, The Martian, and The Big Short – it seems obvious, a safe and familiar choice.  It’s very well done, but it doesn’t really capture my interest like the other three do.  (And I suppose it doesn’t help that I don’t think it measures up to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, my favorite Cold War spy movie.)

As Donovan, Tom Hanks is just as good as you expect him to be.  I’m not sure what it is – even though, for me, the majority of Hanks’s characters feel very much like Hanks, they still work really well.  Nominated supporting actor Mark Rylance (who I mainly know from his wonderfully-bizarre Tony Award acceptance speeches) gives a nice, understated performance as Abel, and Amy Ryan gets in a few good scenes as Donovan’s wife.

Warnings

Violence, swearing, and drinking/smoking.

The Haunted House (1921)

Objectively, I’d call this a fairly good midrange Buster Keaton short.  Subjectively?  I just love it.  Even while I know the plot has some clunkiness and “being scared of fake ghosts” is a pretty flimsy theme to hang a story on, I have such a good time watching this short.

Buster is a well-meaning but disaster-prone bank teller who finds himself on the wrong side of an accusation of counterfeiting (because of course.)  Unjustly on the lam, he winds up fleeing to the actual counterfeiters’ hideout, which they’ve rigged up to seem like a haunted house – ostensibly, it’s so the police won’t poke around, but it feels like they’ve put way more effort into this than the idea strictly warrants.  Anyway, Buster has his hands full dodging “ghosts,” trying to expose the real crooks, and maybe even saving a pretty girl along the way.

For me, the absolute zenith of this short is the first 6-7 minutes, while Buster is still working at the bank.  It’s true that the connections between this sequence and the haunted house stuff are tenuous at best, but it’s so fantastically funny that I’ll never complain.  I adore Buster accidently getting glue on his hands, which in turn gets on the money, the customers, and basically everything in the nearby vicinity.  It’s such a simple concept and, compared to some of Buster’s other work, a pretty obvious gag, but he does it masterfully.  When I think of The Haunted House, the first thing that pops into my head is invariably Buster trying to “put ‘em up” while his hands are glued to the insides of his pockets.  I die.

Compared to that, the haunted-house portion of the short isn’t as memorable to me.  The fact that Buster is genuinely scared of all these shenanigans is kind of cheesy, and the gags tend more toward the disjointed-running-around variety, not building as organically.  Still, there are some incredibly fun gags to be had.  There’s a set of disappearing stairs that Buster just works comic wonders with – I think he comes up with an entirely new hook every time it’s used.  He has a fabulous method for knocking one of the bad guys out, he plays around with some fun camera trickery, and he fights a fierce battle against a red cape.  And for all that his being scared of the haunted house is silly, his acting scared is wonderful.  Even with the stone face, he does such terrifically funny “frightened” acting.  The ending is just sort of there, but it’s immediately prefaced with a delightfully off-the-wall comedic tangent about Buster’s misadventures in trying to reach the afterlife.

The short also features old Buster favorites Big Joe Roberts as the head counterfeiter (what can I say?  The guy gives good heavy) and Virginia Fox as the girl, charming but pretty underdeveloped.

Warnings

Slapstick violence and a little gunplay.

Thoughts on the Upcoming Changes to Who

I had a different post for today, but the announcement that Steven Moffat is stepping down as showrunner after series 10 takes precedence.  Here are my thoughts on the change.

As someone who’s grown disillusioned with Moffat, I’m glad we’re getting someone new.  Under his guidance, I feel the series arcs have gotten sloppier and more overly-convoluted, and it often seems the plot drives the characters rather than vice versa (poor Clara – we got an entirely different person each season, with further inconsistencies between episodes.)  Moffat putting his stamp on the show frequently feels more like him planting a flag, Who’s owner instead of its caretaker.  I loved every episode Moffat wrote in the RTD era, but since he took over, his writing has felt increasingly derivative – I feel I know all his tricks, and I’m ready to move on.

First wrinkle:  the move isn’t taking place until after next season, and the BBC is gearing up for the “event” that will be Moffat’s last year.  Promises that Moffat will go out with a bang worry me; if I’ve been less impressed with his writing lately, that goes double for his Big Episodes, his season openers, season finales, regeneration episodes, companion exits, and anniversary specials.  Increasingly for me, they feel like overwrought, twist-filled concoctions that collapse under their own weight the second logic is applied to them.  While each has some good individual scenes, some beautiful lines, and some phenomenal acting, my prevailing impression is usually “self-indulgent mess.”  I worry that his entire final season will be approached with that mindset.

Second wrinkle:  to better position series 10 for this epic farewell, it’s not airing until 2017.  The official word is that it’s to avoid the Olympics, and I assume filming for Sherlock’s long-awaited fourth series also has something to do with it (I’ve always felt Who is bigger than the person running it, and if you’re too busy to devote to it the time it needs, the only responsible thing to do is step down,) but the result is that we’re only getting a Christmas special this year.  By the time Moffat leaves, he’ll have run the show for eight years and only given us six seasons.  That’s two whole years of Eleven and/or Twelve swallowed up by time cracks, which is just uncool.

Third wrinkle:  Chris Chibnall is taking over, which doesn’t instill me with confidence.  Torchwood was wildly uneven under Chibnall – while series 2 was a big improvement over series 1, it remains my least favorite Whoniverse show.  He wrote a few great episodes there, like “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” and “Fragments,” but he also wrote the monstrosities “Cyberwoman” and “End of Days,” and his work on Who doesn’t really light up the screen.  He penned series 3’s “42,” the Silurian two-parter from series 5, and “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” and “The Power of Three” in series 7, all of which are middling at best.  He’s also run Broadchurch, and while I liked its first season (haven’t seen series 2,) the central mystery and overall plot progression could have been much tighter.  I’ve long wanted to see Twelve with a different showrunner, but I’m not sure Chibnall is the answer.  I’d been hoping for either Gareth Roberts or Toby Whithouse.  Both have written some superb Who episodes, such as “The Unicorn and the Wasp” and “The Lodger” for Roberts and “School Reunion” and “The God Complex” for Whithouse (not that writing great episodes necessarily makes you a great showrunner – see:  Moffat – but it’s still a good thing.)  Both also have prior showrunning experience.  Whithouse’s is more extensive, with Being Human, while Roberts’s is in the Whoniverse, having run series 1 of The Sarah Jane Adventures.  I’d have felt a lot more confident with either of them taking the reins.

Ex Machina (2015, R)

This is the sort of movie the Oscars don’t pay attention to but is good enough that they can’t ignore it entirely.  What to do with such a film?  Nominate it for best original screenplay!  But in all seriousness, I found this a stylish, cerebral film that explores what it means to be human.

Caleb, a skilled coder, is thrilled when his name is drawn for the ultimate company prize:  a week of exclusive face-time with the company’s brilliant but reclusive owner in his private mountain retreat.  Upon his arrival, Caleb’s boss Nathan ups the ante even further.  He reveals to Caleb that he’s built a functioning AI, and Caleb will have the privilege of being the human component in the Turing test he’s running on his creation.  Over the course of Caleb’s sessions with the AI, called Ava, he looks for flaws or “tells” in her programming, but he soon finds himself pulled into the intense drama of an artificial being fighting for her right to survive.

I’ve not seen writer (now writer-director) Alex Garland’s other work, though I’ve heard excellent things about 28 Days Later and Sunshine; however, this movie makes a fine case for his abilities.  The script keeps the viewer guessing alongside Caleb, constantly challenging the idea of who is human, what makes us that way, and what rights that gives us.  The plot moves seamlessly between philosophical sci-fi, extreme suspense, and deeply personal, intimate character drama. 

I really like that the film pulls in questions, not just of humanity at large, but of gender-specific humanity as well.  There’s Nathan’s frank discussion of Ava’s anatomy and sexuality and his observation that it’s no wonder she’s drawn to Caleb, the first man she’s seen besides her creator.  There’s the way he treats Kyoko, his gorgeous servant who “doesn’t speak a word of English” (to protect the secrecy of his work, you know,) like an object.  There’s the way Ava explores herself as a woman, and of course, there’s the fact that the creator-creation dynamic takes a more unnerving slant when it’s a heterosexual male creating a beautiful female that he keeps locked up in his house, especially one made in such a state of near-nakedness that most of her body doesn’t even have skin to cover her.  Is Nathan Ava’s god?  Her father?  Her captor?  Her voyeur?  Her owner?  The gender relations make all these issues even more engrossing than they already were.

No surprise, the acting MVP is Alicia Vikander’s Ava.  I love that she speaks and moves like a robot but still infuses the role with such humanity.  Tiny gestures and inflections forever remind you that, while Ava isn’t human, that doesn’t mean she’s not real.  Domhnall Gleeson (Bill Weasley from Harry Potter) does a solid job as Caleb, a smart man who’s in no way prepared for the head-trip he endures in this movie.  And in #OscarsSoWhite news, I’d previously heard great things about Oscar Isaac (the hugely likeable Poe from Star Wars:  The Force Awakens) as Nathan, and his performance is fascinating – he strikes a perfect balance between affable and a-hole, disarming and dangerous.  Realistically, though, he’s too understated and the film is too outside-the-box for award notice; if the Academy didn’t recognize Vikander’s incredible work, there was no way they’d look twice at Isaac’s terrific but non-showy performance.

Warnings

Sexual content (including nudity and implied nonconsensual sex,) language, violence, drinking, and thematic elements.