This Week in Geek (3-09/03/14)

Buys

As you'll soon see, it's no surprise I got the China Beach Season 2 DVD set as soon as it came out. Plus, American Comic Book Chronicles - The 1950s; it's about the period in comics I probably know the least about, and if I like it, I might invest in other volumes of the series.

"Accomplishments"

DVDs: I was a huge fan of China Beach (it created a life-long crush on Dana Delaney) and it's finally coming on DVD. I wonder why it took so long? Music rights issues, I'll bet, because there's a lot of period music in the show. It wasn't the restoration effort, that's for sure, because the video is often murky and grainy, though it gets a pass because that seems to fit the Vietnam War setting. Otherwise, this feels as fresh and relevant as it did in 1988. Its subject matter is pretty universal. If you don't know it, China Beach is about the women lending support to the troops during the Vietnam War. A nurse (Delaney), a performer, a prostitute (Marg Helgenberger!), an officer, a Red Cross worker; with male support personnel completing the cast - a doctor (Robert Picardo before he became a literally archetypal doctor), a lifeguard, a coroner, a pilot, and so on. Tonally, it sits closer to lyrical films like The Thin Red Line or Apocalypse Now than it does to, say MASH or Tour of Duty. The pilot is remarkable, and if not for one or two unresolved subplots, plays as an effective, touching and thoughtful feature film. The second episode is a bit of a tonal mess, but otherwise, strong stuff all the way through (the first season was a mid-season replacement apparently because there are only 7 episodes). The DVD includes a retrospective featurette about how it all started, highlights from a touching 2012 cast reunion, a commentary track on the pilot, and the full interviews made with Dana Delaney and Chloe Webb. The latter was only on the show that first season and is far less eloquent than Delaney, but both are emotional and touching in their own right.

It's post-Oscars week, so I was in the mood to watch films that were nominated this year and last. Started with Silver Linings Playbook, a twisted romantic comedy about people struggling with mental illness. I was impressed by the performances and how David O. Russell could wring humor out of what could easily have been too controversial and touchy a subject. It's not just the main characters either, almost everyone in the film has a little "madness" going on, and somehow that just makes the cast more endearing, and the film more hopeful. The first step is acceptance, and these characters have no choice but to give it. The DVD includes deleted scenes, a making of that focuses a lot on tackling the issue of mental illness, and short behind-the-scenes bits during dance rehearsals and shooting. (Yes, there's dance in this film, and I like how it translates what the characters are going through in visual terms.)

Another film nominated last year is Les Misérables, which is not, I admit, my kind of musical (sung-through is a bit TOO artificial for me), AND I'm no Victor Hugo fan (the opposite might be said), but I was up for it because I AM a fan of director Tom Hooper's thoughtful approach to film-making. I did like it, even though Hugo's melodrama weighs heavy and the music has too few themes for my tastes, and certainly respect the achievement recording the singing on set represents. Basically, it puts emotion and performance first, as actors can vary their their tempo and delivery in performance. Once your ear is tuned to heightened style, it makes the film far more naturalistic than the usual lipsynch process. The actors bring a lot to their characters, adding motivation, humor and other touches to the stage musical and even novel, and they mostly have good voices, Russell Crowe excepted (he has both good and bad moments). Well constructed and worth your time if you're in the mood for something long and heavy. The DVD includes an insightful director's commentary and featurettes on the casting, production design and Victor Hugo.

From one literary masterpiece I never liked to another: The Great Gatsby. I read Fitzgerald's short novel at university, but had to rush through it, didn't connect to it, and found it boring. I probably would have given the film a pass too if it hadn't been on sale on Amazon, and if Baz Luhrmann wasn't the kind of visual director who could make anything at least INTERESTING. Well, for one thing, it's clear I remembered nothing at all from book except its setting. And now, I kind of want to read it again. While visually gorgeous, Luhrmann highlights some of the best lines (and not just in dialog) and makes his adaptation properly honor the literary work. The music and feeling is often anachronistic, but is meant to convey the feeling readers at the time would have gotten from the book. What was opulent, flashy and outrageous in the 1920s is not the same as what is today, so modern ideas are used as translation. It works, and perhaps that's the connection I wasn't able to make on that St-John-Digby ferry ride in the winter of 1993 (see? I remember the circumstances of my reading the book more than its content). The DVD has a collection of featurettes looking at everything from character to production design to shooting to music, plus behind-the-scenes material, deleted scenes and the trailer for the 1926 silent film version of the story.

Man of Tai Chi is Keanu Reeves' directorial debut, teaming up with martial artist Tiger Chen (as a fictionalized version of himself) and his Matrix choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping for what is essentially a pure fighting movie. The script is rather thin, though the idea of a tai chi adept being taken on the "dark path" is an interesting one, and the police subplot is only useful because it features Simon Yam in a small role, and I'm all about Simon Yam. Reeves himself plays the villain, a billionaire who promotes underground fighting that's an evolution towards dark Reality TV, and (to steal the words out of @MartyLight's mouth that night) he channels his inner Nick Cage to do it. Neither he nor Chen are particularly good actors in this, but to be frank, you should be watching it for the fight choreography, which is excellent. A lot of styles, a lot of philosophy, some cool settings, and remarkably, very little blood. The DVD has a pretty terrible commentary track in which neither Reeves nor Chen do much talking, sitting silently and calling out people's names as they come on screen. The 7-minute featurette is much better; I wish those versions of the two stars had been in the sound booth instead.

When it comes to Much Ado About Nothing, my favorite of Shakespeare's comedies, I'm able to revisit it several ways (in addition to, you know, READING it). I love the Branagh film, of course, and Joss Whedon's recent modernization, as well as the Globe Theatre performance and the Shakespeare Re-Told episode. The one I had in my collection, but not watched yet was the BBC's from 1984. Wow, a disappointment. It seems to me the characters in this version of the play are almost perpetually angry, giving the comedy a toxic, cynical feel that robs it of its charms. It's like the actors are desperate not to make it either funny or emotional. There are some bright spots - Vernon Dobtcheff is a quiet, suave Don Jon; the uncut friar makes the story much clearer; and Robert Lindsay's Benedick can be quite good, especially towards the end - but Dogberry is too straight to be effective, the Prince is effete, Hero is shrill and unlovable, and Beatrice - on whom the play's success hangs - is too glib and flippant by far. Cherie Lunghi (Guinevere in Excalibur) is a real beauty, but needs to show more vulnerability if we're to believe she's fallen for Benedick. A third dimension is missing. And overall, I think the production needed to have more fun with it. Not one I'll revisit as often as my other options, sorry.

Audio: Flip's first arc as companion to the 6th Doctor is Wirrn Isle by William Gallagher, a strong entry that cements her place aboard the TARDIS and in listeners' hearts. There have been three Wirrn stories on audio now (or three Nerva sequels to The Ark in Space, at any rate) and this might be the best one. It takes place 40 years after humanity has reclaimed the Earth and finds an effective way to cut the Doctor off from the TARDIS using transmat technology. From there, it's a claustrophobic thriller in an arctic clime, harking back to The Thing as much as the original Wirrn story, with a family on the frontier under threat and every member of the cast given a strong and active role. A good adventure, and I'm looking forward to purchasing and reviewing more Flip stories (I just kind of wish her name wasn't so silly).

But first, back to the Lost Stories. Philip Martin reworked his own script (and novelization) for Mission to Magnus, the second entry in the range, and it suffers from having too many elements. Sil, the Ice Warriors, a Time Lord bully from the Doctor's Academy days... You can tell this was ordered by the JNT regime. It's also about gender politics, which classic Who has never done right. This is no exception. Martin seeks to balance out (as he says on the audio extras) man-hating Amazon aliens with a terribly sexist Time Lord guest-star. They don't balance each other out, they just BOTH come off as misogyny! Still, Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant are as good as ever (as is Nabil Shaban as Sil), and I'm happy to report the child in the story is actually played by a child actor and not a woman with a high voice. There's a timey-wimey element to the story, and the Ice Warriors have a big brash plan, so Mission to Magnus is entertaining, but flawed.

Hyperion to a Satyr posts this week:
IV.vii. Ophelia's Death - Kline '90
IV.vii. Ophelia's Death - Hamlet 2000

Doctor Who #838: The Gift Part 2

"So they farted themselves to death?"

TECHNICAL SPECS: First aired Nov.20 2009.

IN THIS ONE... The Rakweed spreads, but the Blathereen are exposed and defeated.

REVIEW: What is it with sonics in the Whoniverse? The Doctor and Sarah Jane use sonic gadgets that can do virtually anything, and it also appears sound by itself - or at least amplified sound - can work wonders too. Rakweed spores disintegrate  when exposed to the school bell, adult plants shrivel up and die, and Blathereen bellies full of the stuff make their eaters blow up. The connection between plants and sound isn't unheard of. High-pitched sounds had an effect on the Krynoid in The Seeds of Doom, for example, though nothing so dramatic and final. If it were a weapon found by serendipity to use against the Rakweed, then fine, but it's all a bit convenient, even acting as a cure to the infection the spores cause in humans. And Mr. Smith making everything blare at the right frequency in London, including car alarms and flame detectors, well, we're in deus ex machina land, no two ways about it.

While exploding Slitheen (and assorted cousins) in the context of this show has always made me squirm, at least Sarah feels the need to justify her actions and evoke the Doctor's "better way". Even her carrying a vinegar gun felt warranted - she was in full Momma Bear mode at the time. It was self-defense, but beyond that, one could say the Blathereen deserved their fate, being drug dealers and all. The realization that the alien weed (what is it with Brits and killer plants anyway?) is addictive and that the Blathereen are both users and pushers is a fairly adult notion for a kids show, but certainly welcome. It shows the program isn't as juvenile as those who don't watch it think, despite the gross-out gunksplosions and fart humor in this one.

And does Clyde learn his lesson about cheating on tests? Probably. It's all a redo because of the day's events, and hopefully Sarah Jane's speech about his trusting his abilities did the trick. As is often the case with cheaters, if he put as much thought and energy into his studies as he does into his cheating strategy, there wouldn't be a problem. I kind of like Rani's reaction to it all. She's outwardly angry at him, but hides a smile afterwards. Bad boys, eh? The message is sends to viewers is not a good one, but it is a REALISTIC one. This episode - and indeed, this season - could have done with more real character moments as opposed to fantastical threats and solutions.

REWATCHABILITY: Medium - I can't wait to watch Season 4 again, because 3 has been a lot like this episode, fine but somewhat unremarkable action adventure stuff, disappointing because the show got so much better.

Reign of the Supermen #520: Faux Bronze Age Superman

Source: Action Comics #745-747 (1998)
Type: Alternate Earth(ish)

Dominus' reality trap creates a 1977 version of the Superman comics that more or less successfully harks back to the Bronze Age. Like the previous "faux" ages, they don't really LOOK or are paced like comics of the actual era, but it at least puts Clark Kent at WGBS, co-anchor to fashion model Lana Lang, and wearing some very 70s suits. Not fashionable ones, however.

Aside from the continuity detail, I think writer Stuart Immonen struggles with bringing the era to life. In contrast to the other books' attempts, he does give us more of a soap opera, and the villain sticks around for several issues, and yes, perhaps there's more exposition than what we were used to in 1998, but 1977 is perhaps too close to the modern era to be that distinctive, while still making use of Silver Age tropes. At best, it feels like a slightly old-fashioned modern comic. Even the choice of villain is problematic:

Oswald Loomis, the Prankster, is really more of a Golden Age villain, even though he did return in the late 70s to plague the Man of Steel several times. And his wedding ploy here, that's straight out of the Silver Age. I suppose it's the checkered jacket. He LOOKS 70s. Good enough. Otherwise, Immonen uses the setting to either contrast the world of my youth with today's (well, 15 years ago's), so Jimmy dreams of a time when computers are no bigger than dictionaries and can access Wikipedia, or to make pop culture references vaguely associated with the 70s. And when I say "vaguely":

Tarantino certain channeled 70s exploitation films in Pulp Fiction (well, across his entire oeuvre), but it's not really a 70s reference, is it? He does better in a later issue when Superman fights the shark from Jaws:

It really is "Bruce" too, because he's revealed to be mechanical. The movie references make me wonder why Immonen didn't just evoke the Richard Donner Superman films beyond setting it in 1977 specifically. A be-wigged Luthor, Otis in tow, a crystal Fortress of Solitude, etc. would have gone a long way setting this part of the reality trap apart.

Doctor Who #837: The Gift Part 1

"And what's on the menu? Clyde burgers with a side of Rani?"

TECHNICAL SPECS: First aired Nov.19 2009.

IN THIS ONE... The Blathereen give Sarah Jane the gift of a miracle plant that soon attacks London with life-draining spores.

REVIEW: We're off running after overweight kids again - I knew the whole Slitheen thing would encourage bullying - and hey, I thought they'd fixed the farting thing back in The Lost Boy? Whatever, this is all really the end of an adventure and a prequel to what this two-parter will actually be about. Still, memorable for the Slitheen's absurd plan for compressing Earth into a giant diamond, and K9's mention of "hover mode" (how else would he get out of the car or, you know, get over the TARDIS door's threshold?). The Slitheen are just there to be apprehended by another family, the Blathereen, who represent the "goodie" members of the race, which we know must exist if the Slitheen are distinguished by their criminal behavior. In a strange subversion of Boom Town, Sarah and the kids have dinner with the Slitheen's executioners and there's no real moral dilemma about the criminals' final fate. After all, these kids have blown up Slitheen with pickle juice themselves.

The Blathereen have strange names like Leef Apple and Tree (connected to their gift), so either these are pseudonyms, artifacts of their translator collars, or silliness in the script. Not sure how much of their stories to believe given their miracle plant turns out to be a Trojan horse, but they do add color to their species with their world's political history and so on. It's all on a kind of a slow beat, talking and sloppy eating (Clyde is an able young chef, continuing his rise as an artist of all stripes), but it's not boring. Rakweed could feed the world and is a pretty wonderful gift, to which I say, "Remember the Axons!" - Sarah's right, it's too good to be true. Which is too bad, because I think Sarah mistrusting good aliens because SOME of their race were baddies was the better story. I hold out hope that the Blathereen never intended this particular effect on our ecology.

In the background of this biological invasion, with cool evil spores flying around like they're in a 3D movie, is the kids' biology exam. It's Luke's first sick day, so he won't make it. Clyde brings K9 to school to help him cheat, which doesn't sound like a good plan at all given the tin dog's usual control over his voice's volume (but Mr. Smith sure is happy for the break, but he's a House of Cards fan and couldn't possibly comment). Rani agrees with me, but I kind of wish she would screw with Clyde's plan just to keep him honest. Like order K9 not to help or something. She IS the head teacher's daughter, after all, she should do more than not cheat herself.

REWATCHABILITY: Medium - Interesting, but potentially a missed opportunity to REALLY fill out the Raxacoricofallapatorian race.

Questionable Friday: Origins of the Specious

This week's question comes from my favoritest person, Isabel, which is why the pun in the title is so bad. She asks "What's your favorite origin story?", a query that proves sometimes the simplest questions can be the hardest to answer.

Steeped as I am in comic book lore, it may be a problem related to an embarrassment of riches. My brain doesn't even want to go to some other medium where origin stories would necessarily be less epic. But which superhero origin do I pick? Examined with a "favorite" criterion, they all seem somehow lacking!

Superman's origin might as well be Moses'! Having your family killed was only ever fine the first time it happened, but then Batman's origin dovetails into a silly bat flying through the window. Wonder Woman mixes Greek myth and gun rituals and most unhealthy manner. Green Lantern... nobody thought it was strange for a flight simulator to take off? Flash's is entirely too convenient. Who let Firestorm's constituents walk into a nuclear reactor?! Oh and Marvel heroes? 80% of the ones not "born with them" (BORING!) are exposed to, or shot up with, radiation. So do I go for crazier, more convoluted, more obscure origins? Super stunt-suits melded to one's body by eldritch energies, that kind of thing?

You know what kind of origin I actually love? Heroes inspired by other heroes. All the 2nd/3rd generation guys from DC's post-Crisis era. I love that. I can relate to having a mentor and being a mentor, and it shows how a hero can have a major positive impact on another life. But that's not a very sexy answer, nor does it narrow things down enough for me to pick only one "legacy hero".

So here's my answer instead: Jonah Hex.

Ok, on the surface of it, it boils down to the dude getting hit in the face with a heated tomahawk and surviving with the "Mark of the Demon". Leaving aside the fact that THIS IS CLEARLY AWESOME, what I really love is the tendency Hex once had to invent all sorts of glib answers for people who dared ask about it. This trick was poached by Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight, but Jonah was there first! Here are a series of potential origins for Hex's scar from the Joe Lansdale Vertigo comics starring the character. Let me know which is your favorite.

 

 

 

 

 

 And of course, I have to end by asking YOU what your favorite origin story is. Have at it!

Doctor Who #836: Mona Lisa's Revenge Part 2

"I know art is subjective, but I think she looks as pretty as a picture."

TECHNICAL SPECS: First aired Nov.13 2009.

IN THIS ONE... The kids fight paintings come to life to get Sarah Jane back.

REVIEW: There are some clever bits in Part 2 just as there was in Part 1, but the modern-speak Northerner Mona Lisa is still a problem for me. In fact, it's difficult to believe most of the adult characters in this. They're in some sort of comedy or spoof, while the kids try to have a proper tension-filled fantasy adventure. So the Mona Lisa is a cackling villain that never belies her Florentine origins, and does comedy cross-eyes when using her powers. Meanwhile, Harders the curator is a blind sycophant who apparently can't understand why the kids think she's dangerous. Or he does and merely plays along so he doesn't get thrown into a painting, which is how it's played from the last act on, but his character has been so silly, it may be a case of too little too late. There's certainly a sense that it's meant to be a proper twist, but the early performance lacks the subtlety required.

Because writer Phil Ford writes in a NUMBER of twists. The comedy romance between Harders and Trupp at the end is given a big ol' needle scratch showing she's no sap. The Dark Rider isn't Lisa's brother as we're meant to think, but just another painting she's brought to life. Harders doesn't fold when threatened and actually destroys the puzzle key that would release the Abomination, which is a surprising move. And Luke makes Clyde draw a new key only to make the drawing of K9 underneath come to life as well to save the day. It's all a bit convenient, of course, and reliant on Luke guessing not only Mona Lisa's true nature in an earlier scene, but also figuring out exactly how her powers work. He's not the only lucky one; Rani also finds the exact book that explains the legend of the Abomination - a painting too scary to look at - in the gift shop (the Doctor would have been proud). It creates an ending that seems to come out of nowhere though. The climax could have been clearer.

Despite the entirely too magical nature of the Mona Lisa's powers (for example, how are personalities and loyalties, like K9's, somehow encoded into a drawing?) and the lack of explanation for such thing as her drying in the sun (I know light is bad for paintings, but she comes off as an odd vampire or gorgon here), the story does better with the implications of what is drawn and what isn't, for example giving the highwayman no voice because he has no mouth. I wish there'd been more of that. And of course there's a reconciliation between Sarah Jane (who's been entirely absent and let the kids figure things out, which I like as a rule) and Luke, without her losing parental control. In fact, the understanding they come to means she has MORE. So there's a little arc in there too.

THEORIES: So how does this story connect to City of Death and the Mona Lisa(s) in THAT classic Doctor Who story? Is there a contradiction? There need not be. If we assume Luke is right in his deductions about the alien, what manifests as a living painting is actually an alien mineral/energy life-form that came down in a meteorite, wound up as an ingredient in oil paint, which subsequently used both for da Vinci's Mona Lisa and di Cattivo's The Abomination. Two entities were thus separated for five centuries until their proximity awakened them. Now, we know da Vinci painted six extra copies of the Mona Lisa for Scaroth, all but one of which, along with the original, burned in a fire. So it was one of the copies that was returned to the Louvre and now shows up as an alien. This makes sense. If da Vinci had to borrow some paint from his neighbor, it's because he wasn't expecting to make several copies of his work and ran out towards the end. Lisa here might be the last of the six copies. If there's a contradiction, it's that she talks about being an object viewed for a few seconds by thousands of people, but that might be true even if she's only been on display since the late 70s. And I was asked if she's got THIS IS A FAKE written on her back thanks to the Doctor's ploy in City of Death - the answer is no. The words were put on there by the Doctor long before Leonardo ever had to run next door for bad oil. ;-)

REWATCHABILITY: Medium - Perhaps tries to be too clever for its own good, and only comes off as "anything goes" Who (though that has its charms too) with problematic performances thrown in.

Who's Onyx?

Who's This? The minor hero who, despite being an 80s music video nightmare, is the most gorgeous pic in all of Who's Who vol.XVII (art by Jerome K. Moore, on page 16).

The facts: Onyx first appeared in the Green Arrow back-up from Detective Comics #546 to #548 (1985) then went on to feature in that same strip in #551-552, 556-557 and 564 before getting her entry in Who's Who. 'Tec #565-567 (1986) finished that story.
How you could have heard of her: Onyx wouldn't make another appearance until 2001, when she was part of Wonder Woman's team fighting Circe (Wonder Woman vol.2 #174-175), a glorified cameo, no more. From there, and with a completely OTHER dated look, she became a member of the Batman Family shortly before and during the War Games and Family Reunion storylines of the mid-2000s. Her last post-Crisis appearance was another cameo, in 2008's Birds of Prey #114. A new Onyx has shown up in the New52's Green Arrow book, looking deathly pale leading some to call DC Comics out (again) for white-washing a character. Jeff Lemire says she's not Caucasian, but it's unclear from the art what her ethnicity might be.
Example story: Detective Comics #566-567 by Joey Cavalieri with Jerome Moore and Dell Barras (566) and Stan Woch and Dave Hunt (567)

Such a gorgeous Who's Who page, the martial arts hero it depicts can't possibly live up to expectations stuck in someone else's back-up strip, can she? No. No, she can't. It's not just that there's no room for it, the story isn't do her any favors either. In the previous issue, Onyx, on the run from an unknown party, checked up on her love interest Tommie with an "ie", but because she wouldn't tell him what was going on, he locked the door of his store so she couldn't get out. THIS issue, with Green Arrow and Black Canary heading her way (the crucial clue: a message on the "phone machine"... oh 80s!), we find her all tied up at the back of that store.

So she's not using her martial arts prowess on purpose. Feminism! I don't know what Tommie ate for lunch, but she immediately regrets putting the moves on him.

He wants to get her headband because it's part of the Wisdom Key that will open the Book of the Ages. I don't really care, I just want to see Onyx kick some butt:

Bit of a dodge, bit of a kick, bit of a whip, chases her overprotective boyfriend off before he gets killed, and then, just as Barricade rips her headband off, Green Arrow shows up. Our hero. Olie already has Black Canary killing his macho mojo, so he's not about to let Onyx take Barricade on. So he gets brutally beaten in her stead. Hahaha. Who's Barricade anyway? He takes his helmet off...

Ok, I'm no closer to an answer. Kind of zoned out during his origin story too. More of that Wisdom Key stuff, whatever. Onyx gets back into the game by teaming up with Black Canary for a game of keep-away with the headband.

That gives GA the time to pull his skeleton-busting arrow and kill (rekill?) Barricade. While he gets existential about it, Onyx slips out through a window and heads to the park where Tommie finds her.

He's pissed because when she gave him that kiss, she slipped him the Wisdom Key (I guess that thing was in the headband? I guess it was all an act after that for Barricade's benefit?), making him - and he's right about that - a target for all those super-powered assassins looking for it. Onyx is right too, he was all about trying to protect her during the crisis even though he was far less equipped to deal with Barricade than she was. But it doesn't necessarily track that he'd want to be the Key's keeper and take all that heat, girl! I guess you kids aren't meant for each other after all.

The end for now was pretty much the end forever.

Well, aside from a cool look and a REALLY cool Who's Who entry (and a lot of characters have returned just based on that), if Onyx's portrayal was like this all the way through her Green Arrow appearances, I can't really blame anyone for not picking up those story threads. She's kind of flighty, marginally boy-crazy, and once Green Arrow shows up, takes a back seat to the white male hero. It's really too bad and falls far short of the character's potential.

Who else? I was almost tempted to say I was done with volume XVII, but I think there may be one more entry I could do...

Doctor Who #835: Mona Lisa's Revenge Part 1

"Everything comes down to maths." "See, not art. Art is in the soul. You don't think it, you feel it."

TECHNICAL SPECS: First aired Nov.12 2009.

IN THIS ONE... The Mona Lisa walks out of her painting and she's a gun-totting alien with a Northern accent. (Other planets really do have a North.)

REVIEW: The Mona Lisa coming out of a painting (and trapping people in works of art) is a fantastical idea that's cousin to Doctor Who's Fear Her (uh-oh), the audio story Dust Breeding (which used Munch's The Scream), and the Doom Patrol's The Painting That Ate Paris. Unfortunately, some bad decisions on the production end of things turn a perfectly good script (though some elements appear to have been written down) into a real head scratcher. I'm not going to be too hard on Suranne Jones (she plays another object given life in The Doctor's Wife) for looking or not looking the part of the Joconde. Where are you actually going to find a person that does look exactly like that? I do question the whole Northern accent bit, however. That the Mona Lisa is an earthy, base born, violent merc is fine - it's part of the twist - but it sounds wrong. She's an Italian painting, and there's no TARDIS around to translate. It's distracting, is what it is.

But her accent isn't the only miscast thing in the episode. I'm quite happy to see Clyde's artwork making a comeback, but there are several things wrong with the pieces we see. First, they're not as described. The curator goes on and on about heavily detailed art that just isn't, and one wonders just how Clyde won a contest for "most promising young artist" with illustration work rather than any effort in fine arts. It just doesn't ring true. The other problem is that the most featured piece is of three hot space girls with guns, à la Charlie's Angels. If you're going to make a big thing of Clyde's limitless imagination actually being grounded in his real life chasing after aliens, why not make this piece a recognizable alien. A Judoon, for example, would have been a much better idea for something the curator marvels at AND also had a gun. The idea that the Mona Lisa can create a working Sontaran blaster from the painting is the most far-fetched of her powers (even once you know what she really is), but I think grabbing it from so immature an illustration, in an art museum context, is what's actually jarring.

For all that, it's still a fairly fun adventure. It's got action and thrills: Sarah Jane ending up in a painting at the end. It's got comedy: Mr. Smith reading from Miss Trupp's lonely hearts webpage. And it's got family drama: Luke growing up, feeling smothered and refusing to call his mum for help. And those elements work well. There's nothing so frustrating as a story that clicks in most ways, but has one or two omnipresent sore thumbs sticking out of it.

REWATCHABILITY: Medium - A fun premise and the characters getting some fine moments, all put in jeopardy by a couple of ill-considered decisions.

All the Swine Wants for his Birthday Is for You to EAT YOURSELF TO DEATH!

My first ever issue of Captain America (and the Falcon) was #206 by Jack Kirby, and it's always stuck with me something fierce. It figures in my waking nightmares!

The villain of the piece is a banana republic dictator called Hector Santiago, AKA the Swine, who celebrates his birthday by having starving prisoners/slaves to share his feast. Sounds like a nice guy, right?

Wrong! He's gonna kill that old dude with kindness!

LITERALLY!

In all probability, you couldn't die from overeating, even in such extreme conditions. You'd start throwing up before that could happen. But such is the power of comics that I believed this could happen for years. I still kind of believe it. (Edit: A friend with a History degree just told me it can happen, and in fact did, see comments section for what Kirby was likely alluding to.)

One sadistic villain that definitely deserved his death - being ripped in half by a Kirby mutation - two issues later. And then Arnim Zola showed up. VERY memorable comics.

Doctor Who #834: The Eternity Trap Part 2

"I have fought the worst things from the darkest corners of the universe. You don't stand a ghost of a chance!"

TECHNICAL SPECS: First aired Nov.6 2009.

IN THIS ONE... The team's final battle with Erasmus Darkening to hopefully free the ghosts.

REVIEW: Though "scientific" revelations fly, they really can't explain the Sapphire&Steel level of spooky shenanigans happening in The Eternity Trap - Rivers talking through a phonograph record and so on - nor does the story answer all the questions it raises to bring it to a satisfying close. Marchwood and his kids are evidently reunited at the end, though still "ghosts", but what happens to the rest of the house's inhabitants who felt they were in "Purgatory"? If their lives were snuffed out, why are the Marchwoods still "alive"? Either way, Sarah Jane's a bit flippant about the whole thing. Either she's just condemned all those people to death or to eternal haunting. And what happened to the growling creature that escaped from the portal/rift created by the house? Did Marchwood finally kill it, was the portal closed with the monster behind it, what?

As an adventure story, it still works fairly well, give or take some lighting issues (some scenes are too dark, which doesn't come off as atmospheric so much as murky). Erasmus Darkening is an effective if two-dimensional villain, brilliant but arrogant. And though the episode threatens to become the ghosts' story, the regular cast manages to retain some agency. Lord Marchwood saves the day once too many times, but it's still Sarah Jane who hatches and ultimately puts into effect the plan to destroy the baddie. The kids need more to do than run away from the ghostly phenomena (especially considering that most of it was created by Marchwood to get them away from danger) and fabricating outrageous puns.

Oddly, it looks like they're trying to start something with the character of Toby, but it's never followed up on. He was visited as a child by a gray entity with no face (could be the Trickster or something else entirely), which has sent him into paranormal studies, in spite of his famous physicist father's objections. That's a lot of unexplored backstory for a one-off character. Maybe there were plans for it, I have no idea. I would have taken that over Professor Rivers returning (which she does, once more). She's one of those comedy adults I find so unbelievable as people.

THEORIES: There is a theory going around that Erasmus was a Time Lord, and referencing the Doctor as an alien that also has a human form, and then the TARDIS which apparently also has a "transdimensional accelerator" might point to some intent, though not confirmation, from writer Phil Ford. Perhaps the impulse to make Donald Sumpter into a Time Lord is too strong to fight. To be fair, his costume isn't unlike what Time Lords routinely wear, and his secret chamber could have been a TARDIS damaged so that the whole house became dimensionally unstable (see TARDIS malfunction episodes in the Moffat era). His obsession with immortality is rather like that of other villainous Time Lords like the Master and Borusa; he may be on his last regeneration. As to why the Doctor doesn't sense him, vibrating at some ghostly dimensional frequency could certainly account for it. Imagine if the Doctor knew Sarah had destroyed one the last remaining members of his species...

REWATCHABILITY: Medium - The review makes it sound worse than it is. It's a fine spooky SF story with a charismatic villain. It just falls short of its potential, is all, and on almost every front.

February's Issue Ones Part 2

As promised, here's a second batch of comics titles that made their debut in February. Hits or misses? Keep reading or move on?

Loki Agent of Asgard by Al Ewing and Lee Garbett for Marvel. Heroic Loki without Kieron Gillen at the helm? I was already disappointed that he'd turned the kid into Teen Loki towards the end of Young Avengers (I certainly don't care for the look), with a completely different writer taking the character over, I was expecting the worst. But Al Ewing actually brings the same comedic vibe to the God of Mischief's new book, and more besides. Loki now embraces his role as the All-Mother's special agent and is expected to work his cons for Asgard, though his version of "M" doesn't necessarily have his best interests at heart(s). The book has some interesting things to say about magic, features the Avengers (in what seems to be slightly puzzling continuity - more a nod to the film than actual events in the MU, I dunno) and a surprise villain. Is it quite on the level of Gillen's Journey Into Mystery? How could it be, at this point? But it's certainly a promising continuation, not a disappointing new direction.
Keep reading? Yes, looks like the mischief-maker is in good hands still.

The Fuse by Antony Johnston and Justin Greenwood for Image. If you're going to do a "buddy cop" detective series these days, you need two things. One is a contrasting pair of characters people will want to follow, and the other is a twist to set the series apart from everything else that's ever been done with the genre (especially on TV). While The Fuse doesn't exactly knock those two elements right out of the park, it does offer a few solid base runs (disclaimer: I have no idea if my sports metaphor makes any sense). The twist in this case is the setting. The Fuse is a space station at the Lagrange point between Earth and the Moon, a world that should be interesting to explore. Already, we know it's a rather grotty place where many go to disappear and escape their troubles, and there must be a reason why most people are extremely pale, like no exposure to the sun. If I have to quibble, I'd say its common areas don't look enough like interiors. That's a lot of wasted space over people's heads. Maybe that'll be explained too. As for the characters, we've got a female Russian ex-pat caustic veteran still smarting from her last partner's retirement, and a male black German recruit/supercop who volunteered for this shift for reasons of his own, and that creates conflict and chemistry right from the outset. Image has been coming out with lots of neat SF books of late, and this promises to be one of them.
Keep reading? Yes.

One-Hit Wonder by Fabrice Sapolsky and Ariel Olivetti for Image. The premise: A former child actor has become a hitman. That could have been an interesting hook, perhaps as an extreme example of how has-beens have been known to restart their careers with bad reality TV, etc. Instead, it's a pretty gratuitous sex and violence comic in which the protagonist has no tangible redeeming quality. He's just a psychopath for hire, and if there are potshots taken at Hollywood, celebrities, etc., they fall well short of satire. Seems like a lot more could have been done to be irreverent and topical there. The cinematically-rendered art is just as soulless. Not bad, but stiff in presentation.
Keep reading? No thanks.

Fantastic Four by James Robinson, Leonard Kirk and Karl Kesel. Marvel is pushing a lot of new books this month, among them some straight relaunches of various franchises, advertizing them clearly as jumping-on points. But every jumping-on point is also potentially somewhere you can jump OFF as well. Let's start with aesthetics. Kirk and Kesel are good artists and I have no problem with them, but the uniform redesigns in red and black seems wrong somehow. Are they actively trying to evoke the Incredibles? And the new "Fant4stik" masthead, wow, horrendous. As for the story, it's got Robinson's trademark references to past continuity, and normally I would be all about a story featuring Fin Fang Foom and Marvel's "Age of Monsters", if it weren't for the opening and closing narrations that make it clear this is going to take a dark, family-destroying turn soon. So keeping the First Foundation kids around and bringing back Alicia Masters both get applause, but if it's just a set up for dark, dreary days ahead, I'm not sure I'm interested.
Keep reading? As with Robinson's All-New Invaders, I'm feeling much too ambivalent to be trusted to keep reading, and I'm disappointed by that.

The White Suits by Frank J. Barbiere and Toby Cypress for Dark Horse. They were the scourge of the Soviet underworld and then disappeared. Now they're back, these mysterious killers and sweeping through American organized crime. Who are they? It's a mystery seen through the eyes of various parties on both sides of the law and quite violent, but Cypress' art is cool and expressionistic, making great use of a limited color palette, and giving the book an artful beauty that's, quite simply, the #1 reason for sticking with title.
Keep reading? I think I'm in for the whole 4-issue mini.

Go-Getters by Shawn Aldridge and Christopher Peterson for Monkeybrain. Some pure comics right here. Essentially, this is Angel and the Ape running a retrieval service (hostages, stolen items, whatever), if the Ape was less talkative and Angel was sassier by a factor of ten. She's actually called Maya Diaz (the albino gorilla is George Harrison), and she's a hoot, just the kind of character you need to take the stuffing right out of the usual adventure strip clichés. I'm very rarely disappointed with Monkeybrain Comics and it looks like Go-Getters won't buck that trend.
Keep reading? I can't wait for the next installment.

Hope that helped you make choices in the future. Let's do this again end of March, ok?

Doctor Who #833: The Eternity Trap Part 1

"I bet he made a mean balloon giraffe at kids' parties."

TECHNICAL SPECS: First aired Nov.5 2009.

IN THIS ONE... The team gets up to some ghost-breaking in a house haunted by a 17th-century alchemist.

REVIEW: I often find that haunted house stories kind of twiddle their thumbs plot-wise, showing varied manifestations of the haunting in various scenes that nevertheless make the same point, and that's the case here. It does manage a few spooky scenes, among them books fidgeting behind Sarah Jane and Professor Rivers' sudden abduction, but most of it is, not surprisingly, fairly tame. Donald Sumpter, lately of Game of Thrones, plays the "ghost" of Erasmus Darkening (is that really a proper name though?), and has a great face for it. And of course the series continues to play on the theme of child abductions, a recurring anxiety on the Adventures, though the twist is that these kids (and others) were taken centuries ago.

Sarah Jane perhaps protests too much that ghost and such are impossible and have no scientific basis, even though she admits "stone tapes" are a possible explanation. This is the woman who's dealt with Egyptian gods, gorgons, and astrology (twice!) and they've all turned out to have a "scientific basis". Rani is more open to the possibility, and clearly having fun with the concept, while Clyde hides his fears behind his trademark humor. Luke's not in this one - the actor was taking his exams - because he REALLY doesn't believe in this stuff. They make the best of it by having other eggheads around which might have been made redundant by his presence.

Of these, I was impressed with Adam Gillen as the asocial Toby who found a creepy, awkward performance just shy of caricature. It's not the type of character we're used to seeing on SJA, where young people tend to be precocious, charismatic and positive, and Sarah quickly divines he's got a personal stake in proving the paranormal exists, which hopefully will figure in the climax. I'm less enthused about Professor Rivers of the Pharos Institute, a recurring character that seems to be applied to any situation, like an all-purpose Emil Hamilton in the Superman comics, every time they need a scientist. What's her specific field of study anyway? And how does she still trust Sarah after she took a huge chunk off a priceless meteorite the last time we saw her? Her wide-eyed performance speaks to her existing in a kind of vacuum, ready to get plugged into any script and motivations be damned.

REWATCHABILITY: Medium - A perfectly fine ghost story, but feels like we're counting the minutes until something important happens.

Dating Princess Diana: A Bit Stiff at First

In the spirit of Dating Lois Lane, and because Superman's moved on, nothing we can do about it but accept it, here is the first entry in a second dating series that's sure to be a hit.

The New52 may play it like being an item is all new to Clark and Diana, but there are plenty of stories, going all the way back to the Silver Age, in which these two frolicked together and danced the night away. It just took her all this time to relax into the relationship, is all.

Doctor Who #832: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith Part 2

"The Trickster doesn't want us helping Sarah, so he's separated us, trapped us in two different seconds."

TECHNICAL SPECS: First aired Oct.30 2009.

IN THIS ONE... The kids help the Doctor stop the Trickster and Sarah Jane must give up her love.

REVIEW: If the Sarah Jane Adventures are meant to be wish fulfillment for kids who'd like to live in the Whoniverse, run off to a magic hideout after school, and save the planet without getting into too much danger - and I believe it is - then this episode is the ultimate bit of wish fulfillment as the kids meet the Doctor. And it's rather like it would play out in the real world, by which I mean to say it's scripted a heck of a lot like a special appearance by David Tennant, in-character, at some school or shopping mall. He barges in, empowers the kids (literally, in Clyde's case), does all his manic, shouty and "I'm so sorry" bits, lets them peek at the TARDIS, and leaves. I know it's not his show, and I don't really want him to steal the kids' thunder, but he could still have contributed a little more than this. He's totally dependent on the TARDIS which comes and goes as needed by the script, gets some help from Clyde pulling an Adric on the Trickster (convenient charged by artron energy which is just as conveniently "opposite" to the Trickster's), and tells Sarah she already has the answer to her dilemma, and she does. He's almost as much of an accessory as K9 or Mr. Smith are.

The solution is, of course, for someone to sacrifice themselves to save the timeline, or in this case, to destroy the potential timeline created if Sarah Jane gets married (it's pretty much the Doctor's from The Family of Blood). We've seen Andrea, Sarah's parents and now Peter do this to confound the Trickster, so no real surprises. Lis Sladen still takes us to that emotional place, however, from having her heart broken through betrayal, to understanding Peter meant well and that they really are in love, to having to ask him to sacrifice himself so that order might reign. The scene in which she stands at the altar alone, then leaves, packs a real punch, and her sitting alone in her attic before finally reactivating Mr. Smith speaks volumes. It's unfortunate that Peter comes off as a rather cheesy in his professions of love, though the sentiment is appreciated. Perhaps if their relationship had lasted longer - say, if he'd been introduced a couple of stories earlier - the strength he gained from loving Sarah would be more believable.

But though the emotional beats mostly work, there's no getting away from the Doctor's "special appearance" and everything seems to take a back seat to it. This is unfortunate because it soon turns into fan service, with everyone saying how amazing and unforgettable he is, by which they mean Tennant in the role. I'll only accept the self-serving "Don't forget me" because it echoes the fourth Doctor's goodbye to Sarah and THAT was a real winner. There's also some love lavished on the program's own characters, in case people finally tried SJA because of Ten's guest spot and needed dialog to convince them. Whatever. Ten's got so few stories in 2009, it's a shame so many of them are about celebrating his run rather than really adding to it.

REWATCHABILITY: Medium - The Doctor's appearance is, let's call it what it is, lame, stealing attention away from what should have been a powerful and emotional Sarah Jane story.

This Week in Geek (24/02-02/03/14)

Buys

Just got Gravity on DVD so I could watch it before the Oscars ceremony (and did, see below).

"Accomplishments"

DVDs: With an eye towards Oscar predictions, I at first put Gravity in the Captain Phillips camp, i.e. too much of a procedural to have the richness and fullness a true contender needs. But I was soon disabused of that notion. Despite serving as a realistic and exciting accident in space (I'd put it in a The Right Stuff/From the Earth to the Moon/Apollo 13 marathon easily), it's also lyrical and poetic, exploring themes of isolation and connecting to the rest of humanity, and is visually and thematically a story of death and rebirth. It's an incredibly sensual film that puts you in the protagonist's head space all the way through, even the score is from her point of view. Visual and auditory details aplenty, though a certain tactile element as well. Obviously, it looks like it was made for an IMAX experience, but it was no slouch on my TV. I'm a big fan. The DVD has some very nice stuff as well, including a short film showing the other side of Ryan's conversation with a Greenland trapper, as well as a couple hours' worth of making of material, and a short documentary on the very real problem facing astronauts as depicted in the film. The making of is rather fascinating because the production had to invent quite a lot of stuff to make the shots work, so there was a lot of novelty even for this veteran DVD extras watcher.

Also connected to the Oscars experience is His Majesty the Scarecrow of Oz, not because this 1915 silent film is in any way Oscar-worthy, but because I won it in last year's Oscar pool. Now, if I win an Oscar pool, I promise to watch every damn DVD I won, which means my friends are keen to dump some terrifyingly awful stuff in the pile. And I've won twice in the last three years; you've seen the results here. I did NOT win last year, so I consider myself exempt from my usual rules even though, as runner-up, I did get a pretty large stack (stuff the winner had put in there or simply didn't want - obviously, she's not as strict about the rules as I am). I'm putting the worst of the worst back in the pile (sorry, Fat Albert), but did make an effort to watch at least one of the prize DVDs this week. This strange tale of Oz, written and produced by L. Frank Baum himself might play better for someone who's read the original stories. For me, it was a strange experience filled with characters I didn't know (plus a truly creepy Scarecrow). However, it was worth my time if only for the primitive special effects, which were quite clever at times, working from simple dissolves, costuming and camera angles. The print is in dire need of restoration, though the action never becomes confused because of it, and the music added much later is terrible. Where's Dark Side of the Moon when you need it? The DVD comes with a Little Rascals short, which is always a welcome bonus.

Finished Breaking Bad with the DVD set called "The Final Season", i.e. the last 8 episodes of Season 5, after the first 8 left us with a cracking cliffhanger. The final set isn't, as one might have expected, an 8-chapter conflict between Hank and Walt, though that's a big part of it. We've done that kind of chess match (in Season 4) and so events take a darker turn. It's all falling apart, and none of the characters are expected to live to see the end of the series. I'm not going to go into spoilers, but I will say that the end is satisfying by being both a victory and a cathartic tragedy. Vince Gilligan has produced a textured and morally ambiguous 5-season series that's just about perfect, and which was far less about cancer than I thought it would be. The melodrama implied by the initial premise is what initially kept me away; I'm glad I took the plunge anyway. The DVD package is just as strong as every set that came before - this is actually rare, because by the time they make the extras, the production has usually lost access to cast and crew - with fun commentary tracks on each episode, plenty of making of featurettes, an amusing alternate ending/sketch, a gag reel, and more.

Books: I've been nursing About Time 7 for months, but when I stopped reading while walking to work, it just slowed things down. The latest volume in a series of critical (and unauthorized) guides to Doctor Who, it covers Series 1 and 2 of the new series in some 460 dense pages. The first six volumes were often dismissive of the new series, so there was some concern volume 7 would have too strong a bias to be useful, but Lawrence Miles' absence, letting Tat Wood author it alone, has produced a more balanced approach. There are differences with the previous books, of course, including a sort of glossary of British terms and references explained for international audiences, and production notes that - thanks to the way information has been disseminated about the new series through Confidential, etc. - are much more or a play-by-play of shooting schedules than pure anecdote. Perhaps too many of the essays are about the outside world (as opposed to continuity) - fandom, public opinion, Wales, the making of programs, and so on - which aren't my favorites, but still some strong one on the implications of the Bad Wolf, making sense of the in-story political landscape, how TARDIS translation works and the Cyber-races. I'm ready for the next one, Norwegian Press!

Audio: The very first of Big Finish's Lost Stories Doctor Who audios is The Nightmare Fair, a 6th Doctor adventure that should have started Colin Baker's second season, the one that was turned into an 18-month hiatus instead. It was turned into a book I didn't read, so the audio seems a bit redundant to those who have. Even to fresh ears, I can't say it did much for me. The Doctor and Peri are as good as ever, no problems there, but I'm afraid I just can't get into the Celestial Toymaker as an antagonist (even when played by cool actors). I didn't like the original Hartnell story, and I don't like this one either. The Toymaker is just too dependent on silly game-inspired set pieces, and in fact, Graham Williams' original story flails about with no direction despite John Ainsworth's efforts to adapt it. On screen, I would probably have jeered at the video game element, which on audio, just doesn't make much of a splash. I was really more interested in the included interviews, which discuss how the Lost Stories came about and how the cast feels about finally being able to do this old script. Sorry.

In The Curse of Davros, the 6th Doctor gets a new companion, Flip (as played by Lisa Greenwood), someone we've met before, in The Crimes of Thomas Brewster (also by writer Jonathan Morris), but who didn't really register with me. But she's good, even if not entirely original. Am I the only one who thinks she both sounds and acts like 8th Doctor companion Lucy Miller? And again, that's not a bad thing, and certainly brings some comedy to the proceedings. The story itself is an odd duck, with the Doctor acting quite a bit out of character (it's part of the plot, not a problem) and both Flip and Jared from that previous story finding themselves facing Daleks during the Napoleonic Wars. Plenty of that Whovian brand of jarring imagery, temporal shenanigans and the Doctor's greatest enemies as well. Plus, is there any companion Colin Baker doesn't generate instant chemistry with?

And is there any type of story John Dorney can't write? The Fourth Wall is an extremely amusing comedy (but still with high stakes) about a cheesy SF television program made real by super-technology. It taps into Doctor Who's own clichés and comments on them lovingly, and also features the Porcians, pig-like aliens who have failed at every invasion they've ever attempted. They are HILARIOUS. Again the 6th Doctor and Flip shine, though separately instead of as a duo (being separated is just par for the course in the Whoniverse), and the guest cast is good. It seems like Big Finish's comedies always feature among my favorites in any given year's output, even if the "best ofs" (mine included) usually go for the momentous, epic tragedies and puzzle scenarios. For all the Spare Parts and The Chimes of Midnight BF has produced, it's still comedies like this I most look forward to revisiting.

Lego Marvel Super Heroes completion: 91.5% (I'm now convinced I won't make it to 100% on account of some glitches the makers need to patch up)

Hyperion to a Satyr posts this week:
IV.vii. Ophelia's Death - Zeffirelli '90