Year 7

Can you believe I've been doing this for 7 (lucky) years? At ±2 posts a day, that's meant 5299 articles over 2457 days (or an average 2.15 posts a day), not counting my work on other blogs (see top of side-bar). So thank you, thank you, thank you, everyone and anyone who's stopped by over the years, especially if you left a comment - you don't know how satisfying it is to get feedback unless you're a blogger yourself. As you know, I'm dedicated to sharing my love of geeky things, so you can expect more from where that came from in 2014.

A Year of Collaborations
2013 is very much the year when Siskoid's Blog of Geekery opened doors to collaborations. My Doctor Who RPG articles have been retuned and reprinted in the Diary of the Doctor Who Role-Playing Games fanzine and will continue to be. Through the DWAITAS forums, I've also started work on a series of Doctor Who RPG supplements based on Who's expanded universe, the first of which is out, the next to be finalized during the holidays. My reviews have gotten me a gig writing audio and book reviews for the long-running Enlightenment fanzine, and that's led to my writing a piece for Outside-In 2, a book of Doctor Who criticism slated to come out in the Spring. And then there's this podcasting business I've gotten myself into. I've had the honor of being included in the Fire and Water family of podcasts by collaborating with the Irredeemable Shag on the Hero Points 'cast (focused on the DC universe role-playing games; next episode after the holidays), and more recently, again through Shag, been invited to talk about the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary special on The Unique Geek vidcast. Thanks for all the opportunities, guys.

Other Year 7 Highlights
-Obviously, Doctor Who reviews have taken up a lot of my time this year, and I got through Docs 4 to part of 10, plus the attendant "Seasons of Doctor Who as a role-playing campaign" readers seem to like so much. A great way to spend Doctor Who's 50th year, but I've still got five or six months to go! For extra Anniversary fun, I've used amusing production photos from the show to create a Whoniverse-B.
-A feature I'd just started in December of last year and which has developed nicely is Who's This?, in which I take the more obscure characters in DC's Who's Who and explore them through one of their original appearances. I'm more or less following the Who's Who Podcast, though I did manage to get ahead of Rob and Shag there for a few weeks. We're up to the Ms, and I plan to keep this going. The way my mind works, I'd love to eventually have one of these done for EVERY entry in the Directory, even popular characters like Batman and Superman, but that's a really long-term goal. And an insane one.
-One feature I liked doing is a weekly look at superhero archetypes. I'm not sure it's completely spent though I haven't touched it in a while. Maybe 2014 could be the year of the villain? (Now I sound like DC Comics.)
-I also tried shedding some light on indie comics I like, which often need a little bit of a boost compared to the Big Two's output. I hope my recommendations have been useful and still aim to devote a week to such things every six months or so.
-I also devoted some space to Golden Age Canadian comics and developed a crush on Nelvana of the Northern Lights, a crush rewarded later in the year when I got to help fund a Kickstarter to reprint those books!
-And still on comics, I did a lot of looking back at how my reading habits developed, at first through a series of "Comic Book DNA" articles (Part I, Part II, Part III), which then led to Comics Recollected, a series of rough videos that take you and I back through memory lane to my early days of buying and readings comics.
-Plus, continued a weekly Reign of the Supermen; wrote capsule reviews of everything I saw, heard, read and played; threw some light-hearted venom at 80s Outsiders comics; gave advice to those who would date Lois Lane... y'know, the usual.

So, what's next?
Well, the big question is what happens after I finish reviewing Doctor Who and Doctor Who's spin-offs. The plan for now is to dive into comics (but not Doctor Who comics), just as I'd done Reign of the Supermen in between my Star Trek and Doctor Who projects. After writing a defense of the Legion of Super-Heroes, I was pretty sure I'd found a way to cover every Legion story ever over a year, so that's the tentative plan. If I stayed on TV stuff, the only universe big enough to maybe compete with the Trek and Who 'verses is the WB Animated DCU, and I feel like that's been well covered by other blogs. Or the Buffyverse, but it seems like I just watched all of that last year. My other option is to run briefer genre shows for however long they'd last, with longer ones like Babylon 5 and Space 1999 getting some word count alongside shorter programs like Space Above and Beyond or The Invaders. But I really need a break from having to watch a certain program every day, y'know?

Whatever happens, I hope you'll stick around. I'll try to have something interesting for everyone whatever their interests are.

Doctor Who #748: Out of Time

"Because when you take off together it's the next best thing to flying."

TECHNICAL SPECS: First aired Dec.17 2006.

IN THIS ONE... Three people from the 1950s fly to the present via the Rift.

REVIEW: Three people from 1953 fly out of the rift a week before Christmas (a day after the episode first aired) and become Torchwood's responsibility. It's an atypical story, melancholy and filled with older music, one that's used to reveal an equal number of regular characters (sorry Ianto and Tosh, though the former does get to have fun showing the three displaced characters around a supermarket). Three time-tossed characters, three different reactions to the present.

The youngest among them, Emma, is seduced by our world. Yes, she missed her family, but is far readier to embrace modern trappings and attitudes than her fellow travelers. In fact, her personal drama is that parental figures keep trying to hold her back. John Ellis wants to impose his strict 50s values on her, and even Gwen plays mother (or to be kind, let's say older sister) to the naive 18-year-old. It's this relationship that brings most of the comedy. Surely, Gwen's attempt at the "sex talk" is up there with Captain Kirk's in "The Apple" if we give points for awkwardness. Gwen's expressive face reveals how damned she is whatever side of the debate she falls on. Her arrival in the Cooper household makes Gwen vulnerable to Rhys, who soon realizes Emma's cover story doesn't hold up. Gwen's lies are about to come home to roost. For now, let's just enjoy the relative lightness of this story strand and Gwen's sisterly pride when Emma goes off to her new life in London.

The oldest among them, John Ellis, is unable to adapt to our world. Ellis is truly a man of his era. He finds our attitudes shocking and distasteful, and can't imagine himself starting over. He's had a wife, a son, a business. He's fought in a war. His investment in the past is too large, and the present has nothing to offer him. He tracks down his son, now an old man with Alzheimer's, with which he can't quite connect. It's poignant and tragic. Jack too is a man of of time, one that's lived through the same years AS John. And they do bond on that basis. But this friendship isn't enough to keep John among the living, and Jack is forced to keep the man company while he commits suicide by car exhaust, giving John the dignity he requests. The idea that death is darkness and loneliness is invoked again, but we're left hoping - on Christmas of all days - that John's fate is closer to Eugene's than Suzie's.

And then there's Diane Holmes, who not only adapts to our world, but is hungry for more. This is the most amazing and memorable of the three strands, a love story to balance the comedy and tragedy, bringing a mixture of both and a healthy dollop of romance as well. Diane is a modern woman born already out of her time. A pilot like Amelia Earhart, she's self-possessed, sexy and passionate, believes in equality AND chivalry. That Owen would fall for her is no surprise at all. She's magnificent. But he can't keep her. She's too much for him. The only relationships he's comfortable in is with "friends with benefits", and his love vow to Diane manifests as an anxiety attack. (He's lost somebody, that one.) And while Diane does love him, her wings won't be clipped. She wants to see what else is out there. She's an explorer and must be true to herself. And I for one am really sorry we never saw the character again, somewhere, somewhen, in the Whoniverse. Cumulatively, the ending of Out of Time is bittersweet, like this part of the story.

REWATCHABILITY: High - As melancholy as a good Christmas song. Doctor Who has had notoriously few female writers, but Torchwood used three in its first series, all of whom produced brilliant episodes. Helen Raynor on Ghost Machine, Jacquetta May on Random Shoes, and Catherine Tregenna on this and the upcoming Captain Jack Harkness. She and Raynor returned for the second series.

This Week in Geek (2-08/12/13)

Buys

Though DVD purchases this week: Castle Season 5 (see below) and Pacific Rim.

"Accomplishments"

DVDs: So season 5 is when Castle and Beckett are allowed to be together as a couple, which I have no problem with because there's only so much you can do with a Sam&Diane set-up before it becomes frustrating. And of course, it doesn't mean the relationship would be tried. After all, Castle is still the man-child who irritated her so much back in the day. Attraction is no guarantee when it comes to relationships. Of course, the show still churns out its weekly dose of unusual murder mysteries and keeps things relatively fresh by mixing it up formula-wise. The production correctly identifies the more interesting episodes and gives them commentary tracks - the amusing sci-fi convention that riffs on Fillion's own past with genre TV, the dramatic two-parter in which daughter Alexis is kidnapped, and the Rear Window mystery - but I'm also glad to see Esposito and Ryan each get a showcase episode, and even the clip show (really? in this day and age?) has an emotional core and suspenseful story/mystery. I guess the series still has some juice left. In addition to those commentary tracks, the DVD includes many deleted scenes, a tour of the sets with an eye on interior design, the actors going to tactical police training (played for laughs), and a neat in-character "making of" in which Martha talks us through the Rear Window scenes (with never-before heard sound).

Johnnie To's Breaking News has - and this is not unusual for his work - a few too many subplots, to the point where they register as texture and aren't clearly resolved. As such, they're not bothersome, but it might be worth watching the film more than once to get more out of them. On the surface, the story is a standard cops vs. robbers "under siege" scenario, with the criminals holed up in an apartment building, but the premise takes it in new directions. After the criminal gang humiliated the police in front of the media, the siege is turned into a show by the police force wishing to restore its reputation. So while there's a relentless amount of action in streets and corridors, the real battle is played out on TV. What does the police actually dare release and how do the criminals paint themselves as victims or folk heroes? The action is intelligent and well-choreographed, particularly in the opening 7-minute unbroken take of a street battle, and from there, we're in To's visual world. It's more about cinema storytelling than dialog exposition, and perhaps that's why the subplots don't register too well on first viewing. The extras are disappointing, I must say. A few rough deleted scenes that ARE actually expository, and a 3-minute "making of" that's only a montage of behind the scenes footage and clips from the movie.

Audio: Jonathan Morris' The Mists of Time, a Big Finish Companion Chronicles audio adventure starring Katy Manning as Jo Grant, gets in trouble early on. The setting, alien ruins where echoes of the past, or "ghosts", wander is atmospheric but as dull as a quarry, and Part 1 feels a bit padded out. Worse, perhaps, is that the third Doctor is given some of the fourth's most famous saying, as if to say Pertwee's Doctor originated them. I don't see what this brings to the table, nothing original, certainly. In Part 2, things get a lot better as we move ever closer to finding out the truth behind the ghosts and just why Jo is recounting this story. There's some satisfaction in figuring the mystery out before they end, and even more in its surprising you with a small twists even then. What I'm saying is, it's worth sticking with it.

The Many Deaths of Jo Grant by the writing team of Mark Wright and Cavan Scott, again starring Katy Manning, takes it starting point in all those old third Doctor stories where Jo selflessly tried to give her life to save the Doctor's (in The Daemons, for example). Through the mechanics of the plot, we actually get 3 or 4 stories for the price of one, and references to many more besides, all of them fast-paced and breathless. This is Katy Manning doing action, and she manages to make it exciting all the way through. But where there's action, there's often a lack of emotional depth. Beyond the affection obviously shared between Jo and the Doctor, and their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the other, the audio comes off as more of a structural exercise than a character-driven story. Not that there's anything wrong with that from time to time.

Eddie Robson's Binary is a Liz Shaw story starring Caroline John, with minimal use of the Doctor except as a voice (still played by Caroline John) on a P.A. system. As such, I didn't think he was all that well used, and felt like a sort of deus ex machina for when Liz got stuck, a voice from somewhere telling her what to do. Otherwise, it's quite a good story about Liz being called in to check out an alien computer and getting roped into its hologram-assisted manipulations. Despite the help she gets from the Doctor, it's her assessment of the situation that really saves the day, and I've always liked Liz Shaw's sardonic point of view in the Companion Chronicles. She's a competent, witty realist who could hold her own Doctorless solo feature (much as Sarah Jane Smith has, on Big Finish audio and on TV), if only Caroline John were still with us. Much missed.

Richard Dinnick's The Rings of Ikiria is a rare Mike Yates Companion Chronicle, though I hope they have plans to make more. Richard Franklin is excellent at doing Pertwee's trademark lisp, for one thing, and brings a lot of pathos to the failed UNIT golden boy he played on TV 40 years ago. Though the audio is nominally about a sentient ship drawing UNIT into the open with crop circles and taking it over with jewelry, the story is much more about Yates' status as a chronic outsider finding his true home in the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (which makes his ultimate fate all the more tragic). Yates hasn't been in UNIT long when we catch up to him here, and his star is on the rise, but the story's told from a point much later in the future, and has all the sadness of promises unfulfilled. One to discover for the characterization if not the plot.

Hyperion to a Satyr posts this week:
IV.vii. Claudius' Seduction - Olivier '48

Your Daily Splash Page this week features a splash from every DC title, alphabetically, from Superman Confidential to Superman: The Man of Tomorrow.

Doctor Who #747: Random Shoes

"The speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second. Pain travels through the body at 350 feet per second. Even a sneeze can reach 100 mph. And as for life, well, that just bloody whizzes by."

TECHNICAL SPECS: First aired Dec.10 2006.

IN THIS ONE... Gwen tracks a man's last days with the help of his ghost.

REVIEW: Between the narration by a sweet outsider and the use of pop tunes and imaginary sequences, this is very much Torchwood's answer to Love & Monsters, except it doesn't end with a fart monster. Instead, Random Shoes features an interesting mystery and a touching ghost tale that's also a kind of offbeat love story. Our protagonist is Eugene Jones, or at least, his ghost, the theme of whose life is the inability to make contact with others. His father left when he was a kid and even when he tracked him down, he was unable to go and meet him. The alien eye a teacher gave him never brought the alien to his doorstep, nor was he ever able to get Torchwood's attention, despite being a bit of a groupie (in actuality, he's one of those "scavengers" Mary was talking about two episodes ago, albeit a low-level one). Ironically, it's once he's dead that someone takes an interest, compassionate and empathic Gwen Cooper, who senses him on some level and wishes to unravel the mystery of his last two weeks. Compounding that irony is the fact that even then, he fails to elicit any interest from the rest of Torchwood, and Owen forgoes the autopsy that would have revealed the Dogon Sixth Eye (my ears perked up, as I'd read a lot about the Dogons, an African tribe reputed to have been influenced by aliens) in his stomach. Once contact has been made, with Gwen and with his father, his ghost is free to pass over.

Gwen was perhaps the only member of Torchwood suited to "hearing" Eugene, not just because she's the heart of the team, but because she's the most rooted in the real world Eugene inhabited and wanted to escape. It's a world of telemarketers and office romances, with diners and the jerkiest video store employee this side of Randall in Clerks, of disappointing mathletes and tea going cold. This is what a Gwen Cooper cop show might have been like, and the mystery is well constructed, with plenty of clues to follow, witnesses to interview, and twists to reveal. The only real difference between this and a normal cop show (until the end anyway) is that Gwen's leaps of logic are caused by Eugene whispering in her ear. It's this interaction that makes the episode so endearing however. Gwen acting on impulses and never questioning them. Eugene waking up next to the woman he's loved from afar and blowing in her hair. Guiding her to the people in his life, in effect guiding himself there so he can "look back" with (and you'll pardon the turn of phrase) a detached eye. The way he looks at his estranged father singing "Danny Boy" at his funeral is effectively rescued from the cliché by the father's awkwardness and Eugene looking at him with open curiosity. These are answers to his questions. Who was my father? Will I be missed? Did I matter?

Eugene's story pieced together and told, there's nothing else for the ghost to do. Or is there? In a moment of fantastical transcendence, Eugene is finally admitted into the Torchwood world, and becomes solid and visible enough to save Gwen from the fate he himself met. He saves her from being run over, is seen, gets a kiss, and is even glimpsed by his family. How these things are possible is all down to the nebulous properties of the Eye. It hardly matters. It needs to happen for his story to conclude, and for his soul to be released into the universe. Somehow, it reverses what we learned in They Keep Killing Suzie while making the same point. Eugene's soul ascends into a bright light and then into space (you can decide whether the Whoniverse has a Heaven or an Eye's users are somehow taken to some planet), it is not sent howling into the Void. And yet, Eugene tells us the same thing Suzie did. Life is there to be lived, every moment is precious, and it can so easily pass you by. Both characters had their lives cut short, and both had a chance to come back and take stock of their too-brief time on Earth. Eugene's conclusions were hopeful and positive however, making this a veritable ray of sunshine in the middle of the otherwise bleak first series.

REWATCHABILITY: High - A sweet story with a fun mystery at the heart of it. Gwen shines as a character and you hardly miss the others.

Reign of the Supermen #507: Superior-Man

Source: Superman Adventures #27 (1999)
Type: Analog/Replacement/Impostor

Superior-Man! He came out of nowhere not to help Superman in the never-ending battle, but to replace him! He beat the Parasite, Titano, and more!

He made Metropolis a virtually crime-free zone, while Superman was left rescuing cats from trees. He paired up with Lex Luthor to bring might AND technology to bear in creating a new golden age for Metropolis. Lex Luthor? Uh-oh. That explains why Superior-Man turns on the Man of Steel with his kryptonite vision and tries to destroy him when Supes refuses to leave town. Well, two can play the power-vision game, and the application of a little heat vision reveals...

Metallo! Superman, friendly advice, ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS use your x-ray vision on someone you're not sure you should trust. Metallo's been brainwashed by Luthor into thinking he's really Superior-Man so he goes crazy and tries to make Luthor eat a scrunched-up helicopter (no joke; where's Tenzil Kem when you need him?). I guess Superman's going to have to save the man who put 8 billion dollars into trying to kill him over the last four quarters.

Classic. Just like a lot of these stories set in the Bruce Timm animated DC Universe are. We even get some insight into why Lex Luthor hates Superman so much. If only Mark Millar's other work (yes, Mark Millar wrote a long run on this series, MARK MILLAR!) was anything like this...

Doctor Who #746: They Keep Killing Suzie

"What do you want me to say on the death certificate?" "Good question." "She had quite a few deaths in the end." "I don't know. Death by Torchwood."

TECHNICAL SPECS: First aired Dec.3 2006.

IN THIS ONE... Suzie's back from the Void and she won't die!

REVIEW: You know, the Resurrection Glove didn't get much of a chance to shine as an "artifact that reveals something about the human condition" in Everything Changes, seeing as it was relegated to the B-plot as Gwen's discovery of Torchwood took center stage. So it makes sense to get back to it, and in that context, bringing Suzie back as a villain is just about perfect. And if she'd been an unwilling consultant, desperately clinging to her new-found (un)life, giving her insights into what lies beyond, as she first appears to be, it would have been an incredible episode. Making Suzie this supervillain who masterminded the events that led to her resurrection before she died makes me less sure. How believable is it? How long had Torchwood been fiddling with the glove that Suzie had time to retcon and reprogram her confidant to murder members of her Luddite support group so that Torchwood would inevitably be led back to her corpse? For it to work, she would have had to know beforehand how to use the glove to transfer (in this case) Gwen's life into herself before she started, but in the pilot, she was still experimenting with flies and her record resurrection was 2 minutes. So that's even before we start looking at whether Torchwood would really have felt Suzie was their only lead in the case (and it takes Gwen's pushing for it for Jack to even consider using the glove again). What I'm saying is, the story works without that crazy, convoluted plan, so why do it? Just find a way for Gwen and Suzie to make their escape without resorting to the poetry-triggered lockdown (after all, Gwen seemed to think they could drive off without the team immediately following), which would also have cut Tosh's ridiculous jumping to the conclusion that the ISBN number of the poetry book would reverse the lockdown, and the idea that an unpowered keyboard could sense the code input (I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and say she just knew how Suzie thought, but only just). These kinds of contrivances are part and parcel of Doctor Who, but ill-fitting with Torchwood's "real world" grit.

That said and plot holes identified, it's still quite a good episode and it does what I want it to do. Torchwood is never more adult than when it takes the time to frankly discuss adult issues. Is there an after-life? There is, and it seems to be the Void. Suzie was AWARE in the darkness and felt the season's big bad moving in Jack's direction. (Could be a lie to freak Jack out, but as an immortal, he'd be a magnet for anything that fed on souls.) This bleak vision doesn't invalidate Gwen's "primary school" Heaven, of course. Suzie was a very bad person, in fact even more psychotic than Everything Changes indicated, and the Void (which the Doctor called Hell) could be one of several destinations for life energy. So there's hope here too, if you wish to see it. And though Suzie is a villainous killer/vampire, she's also a sympathetic character. She kills her own father, but he was obviously at the root of her being so screwed-up, on the run, etc. Her holding on to life, desperately and tenaciously, also weighs her down with guilt and anguish. She obviously feels great shame about her actions, but lets her ugliest traits, anger and bitterness, drive them. Her contention that, seeing as there's "nothing" on the other side, life is precious and must be lived, is a positive message, though she's clearly corrupted it (her own is precious, others' are disposable). Mixed in with all this is the idea of how quickly one is replaced after dying, as a co-worker, as a friend, as a lover (oh Owen, everyone BUT Tosh, is it?), one of the more selfish anxieties about dying.

One of the things this episode does is start redeeming Ianto as a character. He's got to climb a very steep hill, you'll agree, but making him the resident quipster (the bits about naming the artifacts, for example, or reminding us that gloves come in pairs) puts him on the road to Series 2, and he even shows some resourcefulness when he ties his phone to the Hub's water tower. They get out of Suzie's trap specifically because of him. I'm less enamored with his change of attitude about Jack, going from "I hate you because you killed the love of my life" to "let's play bizarre sex games with a stopwatch". I don't even know what THAT'S all about. Weird dialog in support of an even weirder about-face. Cardiff's own change in attitude towards Torchwood feels a little more earned. The special ops group has been stomping all over town, taking over crime scenes and such, and now the coppers have stopped being resentful and have instead turned it into a joke. D.I. Swanson is the voice of the police in this, and gets to speak truth to power (seriously and jokingly). Even gets to help out. I'm a little surprised she never returned to the series (except in some of the books) because she makes a pretty good Commissioner Gordon type (that's a pretty appropriate allusion since the episode is about a threat created by Torchwood, a bit like how the Batman "created"/inspired his rogues gallery).

REWATCHABILITY: Medium-High - The plot strains credulity, but the themes, acting, suspense, darkness and brief moments of humor all bring this one up to a higher level.

Siskoid's Comics Recollected - March 1984

Siskoid's Comics Recollected is a nostalgic video series in which I go back in time to the first months of my buying American comics. And whatever YOU remember, I'm interested in too!

Related images
Some classic Metal Men forms from DC Comics Presents #70:

Badass Rogue takes down the Helicarrier with a coin:

Related links
What If... the Hulk Went Berserk?
This project would just not be possible without Mike's Amazing World of Comics and its comics-by-release-date database.

What comics did YOU get in March of 1984? Or alternately, in your 11th month of reading comics (ooh, almost a year)?

Doctor Who #745: Greeks Bearing Gifts

"Speaking orally, using a pre-arranged and finite number of words, it's so archaic and kind of gross to look at."

TECHNICAL SPECS: First aired Nov.26 2006.

IN THIS ONE... Tosh gets herself an alien lover and some telepathy.

REVIEW: Toshiko's waited seven episodes before getting more than slimmest character development, and boy, what an episode. Tosh meets Mary (Daniela Denby-Ashe, who couldn't possibly be any sexier), a seductive (and highly literate, but I can see how a telepath learning language would respond well to poetry) "scavenger" who gives her a telepathic pendant and access to the Torchwood team's minds. It's all part of a plan to seduce Tosh and get inside the Hub to get her transporter and get off our planet because she's a centuries-old alien criminal. In the process, we discover who Toshiko is. She's probably the best soul in the team, in it for what one might call "the right reasons", finding hope in an alien letter to its family, counteracting the despair of finding so many weapons as well. But she's also lonely, heartbreakingly so. There's the unrequited love for the perpetually cruel and alienating Owen, and her refusal to admit to it or get between him and his current lover, Gwen. Seeing into her teammates minds only makes her feel more isolated, and even her relationship with Mary is initially tainted by shame. But by the time Jack kills the alien, it's clear she had fallen for Mary, and it's betrayal (Mary's) on top of betrayal (Jack's). Gwen's observation that Tosh was at her best when in love is the kind of accidental cruelty people commit because they CAN'T read your mind. My heart really goes out to her, and this is a rather personal observation, but "Greeks" makes Tosh the Torchwood character I most identify with.

Like Ghost Machine, this is about using an alien artifact to explore the human condition. How awful are we in our private thoughts? How unbearable would it be to hear everyone's? The episode represents human existence as an essentially lonely and isolated thing. Each of us an island, cut off from the rest. Even the playful Gwen-Owen relationship has the two of them question the other's commitment and their own. It feels like we've heard all these conversations, but no, we're cheating. They haven't expressed any of this to each other. Can we know, TRULY know anyone but ourselves? Jack is the loneliest of all, without even a mind to read. At first I thought, well, he's got some psychic training from his Time Agent days, but even he's surprised to hear he's not giving off anything, as if he were dead. As the Doctor figure in Torchwood, he's the ultimate outsider - an outsider among outsiders, you might say - a man out of time, unfixed in time and the normal parameters of human mortality, and ignorant of how his own existence can even be possible. This is why Mary's so seductive to Tosh (beyond the looks and outrageous confidence, I mean); she's a respite from the loneliness, someone who can actually BE with her on her "island" (a metaphor she herself uses to denote her exile). Tosh can be manipulated because when two people share island space, there's no telling who's idea is who's.

Granted, Tosh's gaylien encounter loses some of its shine because Gwen already did the girl-on-alien-girl thing in Day One, but that's really that first episode's crime. Here, the seduction is well played, the confusion, shame and elation all explored. Ianto is currently the only member of Torchwood that isn't sexually polymorphic, and we know that's gonna change. Must be all the 51st-century Jack pheromones in the Hub's confined space. Plot-wise, Owen's work on the dead body is a nice reverse-mislead, initially feeling procedural background noise (just like the PM taking phone calls from Jack), and then awakening a memory in him of Mary's past victims (she steals hearts, another metaphor with a literal sign), effectively justifying Jack's actions at the end. Writer Toby Whithouse has done well enough with Doctor Who, but this might be his strongest work for the Whoniverse.

REWATCHABILITY: Medium-High - A sexy guest star and some thematically sound writing help make me fall in love with sad Toshiko. I still cringe at the Gwen-Owen romance a little bit, and Ianto is a drain, so not quite perfect. But the show is definitely heading back up.

Geo-Force Gets a Makeover, Still Not Enough

Batman and the Outsiders Annual #1 - Pages 4-7
July 2nd. World UFO Day (why would I kid about that?). There's been a break-in at STAR Labs Gotham (same curved building, 50% more break-ins), and Lt. Freeman AKA Gordon-Lite has been waiting a whole hour for the Batman. Clearly, Bats is off his game (read on), but Freeman's work ethic may also be in question.

Only in a superhero comic would a huge hole in the wall indicate a "typical breaking and entering". Better not ask why STAR Labs' new computer circuit was in a large box on their loading dock instead of, y'know, a LAB. So who broke in?

Uhm... Does Barr realize he didn't give any member of the Force of July invisibility powers? If Blairman used someone else, well, that criminal is never brought to justice.

So okay, let's leave the scene of the plot and head for Geo-Force's beach house.

This happens after Tales of the New Teen Titans Annual #3, in which Terra dies and is buried under a creepy memorial on Titans Island. The Outsiders were, in fact, the only other people at the funeral. There, Nightwing told GF his sister died fighting the Terminator (Deathstroke). Probably better that way. No need to tell him Terra turned traitor.

Oops! I guess Batman knows best. Regulating the perfect amount of anguish each of his teammates must feel must be a full-time job. Look, it's Geo-Force, I'm not actually complaining that someone was needlessly cruel to him. His grief is interrupted when...

Those Jehovah's Witnesses don't know what boring evening they're about to have!

See, if I were Geo-Force (and I thank my lucky stars that is the most remote of possibilities), the Outsiders wouldn't have been a surprise at all, since I wouldn't actually know anyone else! So he's was all up for religious missionaries or insurance salesmen or, perhaps by some off-chance, Barr remembered the girl GF spoke to in college once. But the Outsiders? TOTAL SURPRISE. Dude. Or maybe the surprise is Black Lightning doing the Vulcan salute. Do they get Star Trek in Markovia? Still, a better greeting than Metamorpho making a crack about Ouija boards TO A GUY WHO'S JUST LOST HIS SISTER!!! A time and a place, Rex. GF should frickin' quit on the back of that comment.

Wait... is my dream about to come true? Is it possible Geo-Force will quit the team?

Obviously his only memory of Terra is the Outsiders-Titans crossover because, hey, the characters really have no other scenes together in the whole of the DC canon. It's just like on TV, clip shows only feature memories we were privy to (except Community, because Community is the balls). But it's what this memory illustrates. He has to quit the Outsiders and - beyond my wildest expectations - superheroing altogether because... his uniform reminds him too much of Terra. Yes, Brion, not only have you been wearing a girl's costume all this while, but it's inconceivable that you would change it to keep doing your thing. Or hey, since you don't know how to sew or whatever, you might have decided to celebrate your sister's life by wearing her colors. But no, it's Geo-Force no more, costume in the garbage can, etc. because his suit makes him sad. As ridiculous as the motivation is, BATMAN PREDICTED IT:

If you can't recognize a box with a clothes in it or by Halo's comment about "trying it on", then you're, well, stupider than Halo. But I think this has already been established. So let's see this new costume already:

Two major changes. The color scheme, from beige and brown to green and yellow, which only gives me the urge to go pee in the woods, and a big fat "GF" on his chest, which given the way Gothamites continue to not know any of their names, is sure to make the media dub him GirlFriend. The important thing is, it cures his funk. Girlfriend's a simple man with simple motivations. But he's been taking college courses, so he can at least analyze the thing:

Gold? I see canary yellow, dude, but you keep telling yourself that. And your former brown was even more "power of the earth" than the green. Anyone else think he's talking bull?

Thank yewww. Yeah, let Geo-Force talk, it'll do him good, but what it'll do to US? Thankfully, Batman ALSO knew this would happen, so he installed an interrupting beeper right in Geo-Force's ear.

Festivities?! The guy was having a one-man wake for his sister when the rest showed up. Some festivities. (Does anyone else get the feeling Batman has everyone's apartment bugged?) Anyway, the Batman couldn't show up to GF's place because, y'know, bed rest and chicken soup following his recent poisoning.

He still managed to literally swing by STAR Labs to get information he could have gotten from a PHONE CALL. Or hell, sent one of the Outsiders. Alfred has a right to be peeved. This is a very big step for Bruce though. Letting the Outsiders handle something alone? Are they ready? Even after more than a year? There is very little evidence that says they might be.

Next: They are not.

Doctor Who #744: Countrycide

"Let me question him. I have to understand. I want to know why. Otherwise this, this is too much."

TECHNICAL SPECS: First aired Nov.19 2006.

IN THIS ONE... There are cannibals in the Welsh countryside.

REVIEW: Cyberwoman was Chibnall's bottle show, this is his all-location episode, and it's not QUITE as much of a misstep. But I wouldn't recommend it regardless. It does feature at least an attempt at character development, with Tosh's unrequited love for Owen showing, and his cruelty deeply wounding her. Unfortunately, Chibnall also uses this as a sequel to Cyberwoman's objectionable character bits. This is where Gwen's affair with Owen ignites, and it at least moves away from violent sex and towards a sort of kinship, mutual respect and maybe even a certain amount of warmth. But I still can't get behind it. When Gwen says the job is changing her, yes, of course, it would, but the WAY she's changed isn't earned, in my opinion. And then there's the moment Gwen's campfire game thoughtlessly brings up the whole Lisa issue for Ianto, something we hardly need reminding of. It's a good thing Ianto goes on to headbutt the lead cannibal, because otherwise, he looks like a proper Torchwood agent, but does a lot of whining and scared acting. Chibnall definitely has him on the slow track (just compare him to Gwen). And what's this about Jack being a master torturer now? Jeezus, it's Harkness, not Bauer!

Of course, everyone's freaking out in this episode, and yes, man-eaters are unsettling, but the show plays them as a supernatural threat, which they aren't. For some reason, eating human meat makes them super-strong and super-stealthy, able to get the better of trained, armed Torchwood agents while snarling like animals. The production's just not playing fair with the audience. Just look at the scene where Ma Cannibal gets Ianto and Tosh out of storage as an example. She plays scared and is utterly convincing. That's because we're not allowed to realize the threat isn't alien after all. When you know the mystery's solution, the first half hour feels especially cheap and manipulative. Even when you don't, it take way too long to show its hand and becomes a collection of sequences where characters run around, open creaky doors and find gory body parts or corpses. With the reveal, we're left wondering why Torchwood even went to the country, outside of rift's usual influence, and how they can be such rubbish when facing a non-alien threat, from leaving the keys in the SUV to getting Gwen shot. Good thing Jack was there, though the American action hero moment with the shells flying was fairly cheesy. Ironically, it's the case that's most "police work" that sends Gwen flipping over the edge.

If the episode is saved from ignominy at all, it's thanks to Owen Teale's performance as the lead cannibal. Unfortunately, he shows up really late. Can that last moment where he tells Gwen he ate people because it made him happy, as surprising, creepy and somehow poignant as it is, redeem Countrycide? Well, that's up to you to decide. I like the moment, but hardly anything that comes before. It's just too early to pull the un-supernatural twist on the series, and the hicksploitation angle wouldn't be so bad if 1) Owen didn't have that whole rant about the country, implying all country folk are barbaric hicks and 2) the Welsh weren't the butt of the UK's jokes (just as the people of Newfoundland are Canada's, or the Belgians France's). It's a slick city show taking cheap shots. It's all too smug for my tastes.

REWATCHABILITY: Medium-Low - Much suspense about nothing. Teale rescues it from the Low column, just.

Big Brother Knows How Much the Outsiders Suck

Batman and the Outsiders Annual #1 - Pages 1-3

For the uninitiated, my overly-critical reviews of the Outsiders are up to the first Annual, which chronologically comes after issue 13 of the regular series, and we're going to go over this thing panel by panel. If you don't know who the Outsiders are, then don't fret, the villain of the piece is about to give us a small brief on each. See, he HAS to explain who the Outsiders are because no one ever seems to know who they are! How writer Mike Barr can justify portraying them as DC's most obscure team while having them led by DC's most popular hero is... par for the course, really.

It's Sunday, July 1st, 1984. Canada Day. Mysterious Figure has it right, "self-proclaimed" Outsiders. And if the art looks a little strange to you, here's why:

Aparo is only INKING (and lettering) the story on top of various artists. That's why his trademark faces sometimes appear on bodies posed quite unlike anything Aparo's done. Mike Barr also has some help from a variety of quotable speakers throughout the story, including, apparently, the ordained writer of Starman and Earth 2, James Robinson. So who are these self-proclaimers?

Geo-Force! Sounds like a Russkie, must be a Commie. (Note how his unamerican origin is a point of contention, it becomes important later.)

Halo! She's American, so she's got to be an unwitting pawn. Gotta be. She's not an alien-possessed zombie or anything like that, we swear!

Black Lightning and Katana! Wait... "foreign blood?" What kind of American sees a black man and think "foreign"? Well, I think we know what kind of American, but it's odd nonetheless. A lot of Anglo-White Americans can't retrace their American roots quite as far as most African-Americans. Katana is just as foreign as Geo-Force though, so yeah, whoever the villain is, he's a total racist.

Metamorpho! Yes, what IS he? For someone narrating a slideshow, Mysterious Figure sure hasn't done his homework. I mean, Rex has been around since the Silver Age, so there should be SOME newspaper clippings available to (as we find out later) DC's thinly-veiled version of the NSA! Speaking of terrible research:

That's right, Batman is suspect because he quit the Justice League of AMERICA! It's unamerican! When he left, the League had, what, four aliens and at least two foreign nationals? And wasn't based in the United States! This is all pre-Google, but geez. Turn on the lights, who IS this bigoted ill-informed constitution-thumper?

If B. Eric Blairman (an Orwellian reference, as George's real name was Eric Blair) was around today, he' be a FOX News pundit or have his own all-talk all-rant radio show, part of the knee-jerk Conservative response to the lying media controlled by the Far Left. I bet the Liberal Media doesn't have a nice Kodak carousel like you do, Mr. Blairman! Who ARE the heroes he's talking to, though?

Ladies and gentlemen, the Force of July (geddit? geddit?). Speaking of pawns. I'm getting all the patriot feels. Are you? (Ok, I'm not. Because I'm Canadian. But if this was all maple leafs, beavers and martyred patriots, I would be all the Force of July. Except they'd be called, uhm... the Burst of July? Thirst? Durst? I GOT IT. The Firm of July. Lawyers by day, superhosers by night. Thank you. That you.)

Next: Geo-Force's emergency makeover!

Doctor Who #743: Small Worlds

"Come away, O human child."

TECHNICAL SPECS: First aired Nov.12 2006.

IN THIS ONE... Torchwood comes across fairies that steal away children.

REVIEW: This is pretty much what Peter J. Hammond always writes about, a variation of the same premise to be found in the first series of Sapphire & Steel, and the later Torchwood episode Out of the Rain. In each, something timeless and tinged with nostalgia intrudes upon our world and so weird things and ultimately kidnap someone from our sphere. It's no surprise that his stories are the most overtly supernatural of the series, indeed, of the entire Whoniverse canon. Still, the clues we're given do justify the monstrous fairies' existence. They are ancient beings from the dawn of time untethered to a fixed point in time, so just like the Carrionites, they appear to do magical things, and could be linked to the various Elder Gods Who shares with Lovecraft. Jack compares them to the Mara, a reference that makes me joyously giddy. The Fairies might Earth's version, a "part of us" that can escape our subconscious, our child-self, the fairy tales we tell our kids. The story has its starting point in real world fairy lore, and specifically uses the Cottingley Fairies (a famous hoax) to timey-wimey effect.

Torchwood is still trying a bit hard to be "adult", so that two episodes after we've had a rape, we get another sex offender, a pedophile. And frankly, it makes this episode rather humorless. In both cases, the mere notion that these things exist in the Whoniverse is subversive enough, and we're not assaulted with anything graphic, thank God. The way the Fairies kill, choking their victims with rose petals, is a powerful and memorable visual, and director Alice Troughton (no relation) does a good job of evoking an enchanted forest with her choice of woodland, angles and filters. The CG monsters are effective enough, and their jamming their arms into people mouths violent enough, but a nowhere near as effective as the more subtle effects used when we're NOT allowed to see them. The little girl is suitably creepy too, so either the Chosen Ones are chosen because they're sociopaths, or the Fairies make them that way by whispering in their ears for however long it takes for them to be ready. Shades of Fear Her, but done right.

And it's a Jack-centric episode, with Gwen as his sole confidante. The rest have very basic roles in the drama, the coroner stuff actually divided between Tosh and Owen, which I suppose shows she knew what she was doing in Aliens of London well enough. But you can tell it's really because the magic plot had nothing for the techie to do. I'm glad for every short bit we get with Rhys, though it almost feels a waste that he doesn't get to meet Jack when the good Captain goes over to Gwen's apartment. So we'll have to wait a while yet for the team to get fleshed out. I'm a bit impatient. Still, some good Jack material here, showing him operating in 1909, having a lover in the 40s who currently thinks he's her boyfriend's son, seeing that person die, and so on. It's Jack who has nightmares about his first meeting with the Fairies, and we start to understand how he might have lost some of his joie de vivre in between The Parting of the Ways and today. In fact, a few years on, the scene where he has to let Jasmine go with the monsters in exchange for preventing the apocalypse is much more resonant after Children of Earth, or for that matter, the revelation that Jack lost his little brother. It seems there's a running theme in his life of letting children go into the dark beyond. Barrowman's delivery is often strange and mannered, especially in Series 1, but I think he acquits himself rather well in this rather emotional episode. He does well by doing less, and his stunned expression after Estelle dies is just perfect, as is his visible anguish at losing Jasmine.

REWATCHABILITY: Medium - It's good, but we're missing Torchwood's trademark humor, and I'm growing more and more impatient waiting for Tosh and Owen to actually DO something substantial.

Batman and the Outsiders Annual #1 - Critical Analysis

December is upon us, and if there's one thing I think is crap, it's the Holiday Season(TM). And if there's another thing I think is crap, it's Batman and the Outsiders. So let's flip the bird to both by 1) examining the series' first Annual in excruciatingly critical detail, and 2) doing this special 4th of July story during the build-up to CHRISTMAS. By no means am I staging one of those attacks on Christmas we hear so much about on FOX News, but Conservatives may still find a lot to offend them in this Mike Barr story. Hey, it's right there on the cover. A burning U.S. flag. Mike Barr is a pinko hippie, clearly.

Another you can tell is because he READS. He reads OLD BOOKS. The Commie. Who else would 1984, a banner year for the Reagan administration, as a cue to riff on Orwell's SOCIALIST classic. What can you expect from this little piece of summer across the next couple weeks?
-The secret origin and meaning of Geo-Force's new, extra-garish costume!
-The introduction of America's last line of defense against liberal fascism: The Force of July! (They do 4th of July puns too)
-The Outsiders get owned and then prevail! (Yes, I realize this is the plot to every single Outsiders storyline to date)
-Conservative so evil, 1984's kids probably all asked their parents if they could get a membership in the Democratic Party for Christmas!
-95% less Batman! (Oh Lord.)
-Halo's dating woes! (Oh Looooorrrrrrrrdd.)

Set the wayback machine to 1984, I'm going to be unfairly critical, but I promise not to use any that Newspeak the kids like to use these days. It'll be doubleplusfun!

Doctor Who #742: Cyberwoman

"You need to figure out whose side you're on here. Because if you don't know... you're not going to make it out of this alive."

TECHNICAL SPECS: First aired Nov.5 2006.

IN THIS ONE... Ianto's keeping a sexy Cybergirl in the basement.

REVIEW: Horrendous. There's very little I like about Cyberwoman, and what I do enjoy, I resent for being in this piece of crap. Where to begin? How about with the eponymous threat? Ianto's been keeping a cybergirlfriend in the basement all this time, and because this is Chibnall's Torchwood, she's completely off-model. Though Lisa was partly converted by the Cybusmen at Canary Wharf, she's completely unlike any Cybusman ever. These guys convert you by putting your brain in a metal suit. Lisa's whole body is mid-conversion, and the pieces of armor she does have include revealing metal panties, a midriff, a bra and, get this, high heels! So when the cybernetics experts comes to visit and fondles her breasts, it's not just Ianto who squirms, it's the entire audience. The gratuitous sex isn't limited to the objectification of a Cyberman either. When Gwen and Owen hide inside a cabinet, it's all kissing and hard-ons, beginning what is possibly the most annoying subplot of the entire series. I like the eventual pay-off (we'll get to it later), but I find this attack on the Gwen-Rhys relationship difficult to swallow. Sure, at this point, it's just sexual harrassment, but it grows to a full-blown affair very quickly, just you watch. In the other room, Jack is resuscitating Ianto with what looks like French kissing. Whatever. Somewhere in town, Rhys leaves Gwen a message about recording "Wife Swap", ho ho you're so clever Chibnall.

If the sex is gratuitous, so is the level of violence, reaching the level of Grand Guignol, which I find tasteless and uninvolving. It's not the Cyber fights, or the cyberneticist's gory death even (the single eye makes him look like a Borg, and this is indeed very much a Borg script rather than a Cyberman one), but how the pizza girl is lobotomized and her body, complete with extra-bloody skull seam, is used by Lisa. This is meant to be disturbing, and it is, but by that point, you're just ready for it to END ALREADY. A large part of the problem is that the episode almost makes Ianto irredeemable. He does this stupid thing, for love, and we sympathize, but then never gets to make the right choice. It's taken out of his hands. Instead, he blubbers more than Rose Tyler through the whole damn thing, punctuated by self-serving whining, and it's OPPRESSIVE. His big heroic action is to start picking up trash in the epilogue, as if moving on is enough. And it might be, if only I knew who Ianto WAS. But I don't at this point. This is the first time he's gotten more than a handful of lines and I HATE HIM. (He somehow becomes my favorite character of Series 2, but we're far from that here.) His conflict with the team also makes Jack nearly irredeemable as well. Jack's been getting more and more angry at the group for screwing up, not following instructions, or pulling selfish dick moves, and here he very much blows up. But asking Ianto to execute his girlfriend under pain of being executed himself? That's way too far for a former companion of the Doctor's. Chibnall wants all this to be so HBO-intense, edgy, sexy and violent, that he loses sight of what we already know of these characters and of this world. (Heck, Tosh's magic lockpicking device is the same artifact she used to record books in the pilot, that's pretty shoddy too.)

So anything to recommend? Well, the banter between the group going out to the pub is what I like to see from an ensemble show. The score going electric when the Cybergirl is revealed shows not every department was thoughtless. The trick with the BBQ sauce and the pterodactyl is cool, but rather wasted on such a wreck of an episode. Imagine how much cooler this would have been against an equally physical foe later down the line. Torchwood's pet dinosaur's cachet is spent too early and on a threat we'd all rather forget about. Some might enjoy it as a straight "locked inside with a monster" suspense thriller, but I found the whole runaround rather cliché, even when I wasn't distracted by its other flaws.

VERSIONS: Deleted scenes on the DVD include Owen mentioning his disinterest in cricket and Tosh trying to be nice to Ianto, a scene that works as an alternative to the episode's actual ending.

REWATCHABILITY: Low - The very worst of the New Whoniverse's entire canon, I should think. Gratuitous and juvenile, trite and melodramatic, flying in the face of established continuity, it almost sinks the entire program with it.

Doctor Who RPG: Series 2

On the occasion of completing reviews on the 2006 series of Doctor Who, I should like to re-imagine it as a role-playing game campaign using Cubicle 7's Doctor Who RPG. (Go back one, to Series 1.)

The GM

-Russell is doing two things at once over the course of this series. GMing it is one, of course, the other is slowly developing a secondary campaign about Torchwood, a group of alien hunters, tonally much darker and more adult. He wants this to be part of the campaign universe to start the ball rolling on possible crossovers between games sponsored by the RPG club. So Torchwood becomes a meme throughout the season. Otherwise, business as usual, flying by the seat of his pants by giving players a lot of leeway with what their Story Points can be used for, while engineering an epic finale built from components peppered throughout the season.

The Players
-David is the new Doctor. Very enthusiastic about the game (in a way Chris was not), he wants his Time Lord to be a romantic lead and action hero and puts lots of points in the proper Skills and Traits. He comes at it as a fan of the website, having for a long time dreamed of joining the main game after doing a few things online (he played a UNIT Brigadier in a short UNIT campaign, for example).
-Billie is back for another season, but soon realizes this will be her last because there's nowhere for her character to go but down. She's already been a goddess (and liking the relevant ideas so much, developed a Special Trait to keep it in play, see her Character Sheet for more), and proven her love to the Doctor. She's got to go before they wind up playing house together. Convinced Rose would think of herself as a veteran by now, she tries to emulate the Doctor as much as she can, taking things less than seriously, trading emotional moments for pure fun.
-Noel played a couple games with Mickey in Series 1, and still means to only comes to occasional games, but asks to be included in at least a couple of real TARDIS trips. The GM promises, and intrigued by the idea of a character going from zero to hero, gives him extra character creation points when he thinks sufficient time has passed for the Mickey character in between the Doctor and Rose's adventures.

The Christmas Invasion. Before the series starts proper, Russell proposes the players get together on the holidays for a special Christmas-themed session, during which they can let their hair down, have a little implausible fun with egg nog in hand, and introduce this new Doctor. All three players agree, and David gets used to the mechanics (and accumulates the Story Points he needs to carry off his "heroic" Doctor) by allowing his Doctor to start life in a virtual coma. It's how he's introduced to Rose's crazy family (including Harriet Jones, now Prime Minister), which becomes his own. Robot Santas, killer Christmas trees, voodoo-using alien warriors over London... finally the Doctor wakes up, and David brings considerable wit to the role, using his shallow knowledge of how to play the character to question and build his Doctor up right there at the table, LITERALLY putting the final touches on his character sheet as play proceeds. When he loses a hand in a sword fight, let's just say he's pretty happy he hoarded Story Points earlier.

New Earth. The GM brings Cassandra the bitchy trampoline back from the dead in a tale of a hospital run by amoral cat nuns, actually giving his players a shot at PLAYING the "last human" as she jumps from person to person. That's why he needed a secondary villain, since he planned to effectively give them control of his main antagonist.

Tooth and Claw. Russell's mentioned Torchwood before, but now he gives the organization its origin in a "cut scene" shared with the players though their characters are absent, at Queen Victoria's order. His scenario features warrior monks and an alien werewolf who wants to bite Queen Vic. He notes his players have already established a great chemistry.

QUEEN VICTORIA
Attributes: Awareness 4, Coordination 2, Ingenuity 4, Presence 5, Resolve 5, Strength 2
Skills: Convince 3, Craft 1, Knowledge 3, Marksman 2
Traits: Adversary (Enemies of the British Empire), Authority Figure, Brave, Charming, Epicurean Tastes, Indomitable, Obligation (to Empire), Voice of Authority. Story Points: 12
Home Tech Level: 4 (Equipment: Handgun, Koh-i-Noor)

School Reunion. Time to throw a wrench into the works. The GM contacts two old players to see if they want to come and play a round, and they accept! That's how Lis returns as Sarah Jane Smith and John as K-9, investigating strange happenings at a school, where they join David, Billie and Noel. Amusingly, the girls decide to play up the "old boyfriend" angle and fight over the Doctor, while Noel and John similarly compare notes as recurring but not main players. It's a grand old time, and Billie asks Lis to stick around, in-game, though she must refuse, for now. Maybe later, she lets slip in Russell's ear. Noel will stick around for a couple of trips though.

The Girl in the Fireplace. David gets a chance to play romantic lead, finally, when the Doctor meets Madame de Pompadour, in a story that jumps across the years in a rather incredible use of time travel. Meanwhile, Rose and Mickey explore a ship guarded by Clockwork Men, so Russell has to skip back and forth between the two halves of the party. An intricate adventures that proves this group is just as interested in doing high drama as the one the GM had for the previous season.

Rise of the Cybermen/Cold Steel. Having had great success with resurrecting the Daleks, the GM decides to give the Cybermen a similar treatment. They're reborn in an alternate universe where, not coincidentally (Russell has to play up Rose's goddess Trait), an alternate version of Pete Tyler exists, just to torture Rose a little. Mickey gets to meet his alternate self as well, and after the big action finale, chooses to stay behind and continue to fight the Cybermen there. There are a lot of protestations about the universe being closed off forever, but one look at the GM's grin and Noel knows Mickey hasn't necessarily reached the end of his story yet.

PETE TYLER ("GEMINI")
Attributes: Awareness 3, Coordination 3, Ingenuity 5, Presence 4, Resolve 3, Strength 3
Skills: Athletics 1, Convince 4, Craft 2, Fighting 1, Knowledge 2, Marksman 3, Medicine 1, Science 3, Subterfuge 4, Technology 4 (AoE: Computers), Transport 2
Traits: Adversary (Cybermen), Charming, Code Breaker, Cutting Edge Technology, Distinctive (on his own world, Face in the Crowd on ours), Friends (Major; Preachers, his world's Torchwood), Technically Adept. Story Points: 12
Home Tech Level: 5

The Idiot's Lantern. A scenario set in the 1950s, with a television creature absorbing people. After a very bad roll, Rose spends an inordinate amount of time trapped in a telly. It can happen.

The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit. An exciting paranoid horror thriller in space, Russell creates a large cast of NPCs, the better to kill or possess them and in an old school move, takes the TARDIS right out of the equation. His villain is the Devil himself. While the Doctor goes down into the center of an impossible planet orbiting a black hole (where David really shows he understands this stuff), Billie is allowed to take control of the remaining Torchwood Archive team, and rises to the challenge, orchestrating a complicated escape-and-defeat strategy against the Devil's forces, a new and very cool alien race called the Ood. Both players rock it out in one of their most legendary game sessions.

Love & Monsters. Russell wants to try an experiment, which his players agree to. He invites two new players, Marc and Shirley, to come and play, but does not have them meet the Doctor and Rose exactly. They're playing Elton and Ursula, people obsessed with finding the Doctor and tracking his appearances through history as a hobby. The style of play is very loose. Marc is asked how he might have reacted to this or that threat played out in past games, gets to recount how he met Ursula, and the two of them role-play the creation of an organized group (LINDA) dedicated to finding the Doctor. The GM improvises a monster that, in human guise, disrupts the group's activities and sends Elton on a mission to find Rose (he finds Jackie instead) and only the Doctor's intervention at the end saves the two guest PCs from death. David and Billie mostly wait patiently and help the new players with the mechanics, though they do stage a strange battle against an alien that Elton can "witness", going really absurd (though rolling for real) on the premise that outsiders wouldn't understand what's going on. All of this driven by lots of music played off Russell's computer. Perhaps because it's improvised and the monster shoehorned in (Russell even adapts a little nephew's drawing), the climax is quite ridiculous, but nonetheless, the players thinks this kind of "Doctor-lite" scenario is worth doing again, if only to introduce potential players to the game.

ELTON POPE
Attributes: Awareness 4, Coordination 3, Ingenuity 3, Presence 3, Resolve 3, Strength 3
Skills: Athletics 2, Convince 3, Craft 2 (AoE: Music, Videos), Fighting 1, Knowledge 2, Subterfuge 2, Technology 1
Traits: Amnesia (Minor; why the Doctor was in his house that day), Attractive, Charming, Face in the Crowd, Friends (Major; LINDA), Impulsive, Insatiable Curiosity, Lucky, Obsession (find the Doctor), Run for Your Life! Story Points: 12
Home Tech Level: 5 (Equipment: Video camera with remote control zoom)

Fear Her. His use of a child's drawing in the previous adventure, inspires the GM to build a whole scenario from the concept, with a young girl somehow trapping people (and eventually, the Doctor) in her drawings. Props make a world of difference in this.

Army of Ghosts/Doomsday. The big finale must end with Rose leaving the table for good, so Billie does this whole flash-forward this about the day she died, but in the end, she doesn't need to because she's taken to the parallel Earth where Mickey now lives (its inclusion gives Noel a chance to come back for some Cyberman-killing action). Russell surprises everyone by resurrecting the Daleks again, making them the big bad on top of the Cybermen AND Torchwood, so this is epic. The two main players follow suit in their farewell scene, making themselves tear up and everything. Billie's sure she won't come back, really sure. Sure? Yes, she's sure. What's that twinkle in the GM's eye then? Maybe it's just the cliffhanger twist he throws at David at the very end. A woman in a wedding dress in the TARDIS? What?!

But what about that other game Russell is working on? Stay tuned!