Doctor Who #134: The Tenth Planet Part 2

"Come to Mondas and you will have no need of emotions. You will become like us."TECHNICAL SPECS: Watched on Dailymotion. First aired Oct.15 1966.

IN THIS ONE... The Cybermen introduce themselves and their mission before Ben stages a revolt that kills them all. Except for the hundreds in space, of course.

REVIEW: This episode has a single function and that's to present the Cybermen to an unsuspecting public. They demonstrate their abilities and they discuss their planet, their philosophy and their plans. And we get to see them in the flat light of the base. These early models have their problems, namely the huge head and chest units, and that strange obsession with wearing found coats. But otherwise, I like them a great deal. Future models will look more like robots, whereas the original Cybermen look like burn victims with life-support equipment attached. The way they speak, just opening the mouth and letting the words come out as if from a speaker is creepy and wonderful, like twitchy fish taking breath. And that sing-song delivery is inhuman in its strange inflections. A great voice creation later Cybermen could have done with more of. And though the head gear is too big, it does turn them into impressive giants.

The science is, of course, nonsense. I'm down with the Earth having a twin in its orbit, but with upside down mirror continents? That's just silly. How does Mondas move around? Why doesn't it make the whole solar system fly apart with its gravitational field? How is it draining the Earth of its energy, and how much energy did it spend in the first place getting here from the edge of the system? The part of their plan that's interesting however is that they plan to save humanity after the Earth is dead and have us live with them on Mondas. No, not live, SURVIVE. As they tell Polly, that's all they really care about, and we can look forward to being assimilated into emotionless Cyber-culture. Cue the Doctor's outrage. And if the Daleks waited a few episodes before shouting "Exerminate!", the Cybermen are already warning that "you will become like uzzz".

The morality of this story is something suspect. The Cybermen no doubt believe they're doing us a favor. The government officials are willing to sacrifice the one for the good of the many, sending the general's son to replace the astronauts killed in orbit (in a slow, deliberate sequence that smacks of the era's NASA news). Ben is forced to kill the Cybermen with their own weapons, but relish being congratulated for it by the base commander. Polly condemns the general for his callousness, but immediately feels bad when she realizes he's hurting, what with his son in harm's way. And then there's the Doctor, cutting a striking figure, looking disapprovingly at the massacred Cybermen. It's like the Cybermen's amorality has permeated the entire story, and like them, we don't understand what we're supposed to be feeling about any of it.

REWATCHABILITY: Medium-High - The true introduction of the Cybermen is a good one. They're creepy and dangerous, but not entirely unsympathetic, the latter thanks to some excellent character work from the regulars.

The Justice League Paradox

How can this portrayal of the NuJustice League as media darlings who get anything they want from the government be true?I mean, I should believe NuDC's FLAGSHIP title (#7), right? It's my lead into all the other books. The stone upon which the entire monument is built. And yet, if the Justice League can do no wrong, how can THESE things also be true?

In Aquaman, Arthur is married to a woman wanted for questioning.
In Superman, Metropolis isn't exactly standing united behind the Kryptonian.
In Flash, the Scarlet Speedster recently caused a devastating EMP that has even his secret identity's girlfriend questioning his value.
I guess it's up to Batman, Wonder Woman and Cyborg to raise the P.R. level on this team (did you just ask about Hal Jordan? you're kidding, right?).

It's like Geoff Johns isn't reading the JL members' own books, and that's fine. We can't force him. Maybe the editors could send him a synopsis or something. Oh wait, he's writing TWO of the JL members' own books. I guess that means Justice League isn't canon. AND THAT'S ALL RIGHT WITH ME!

Doctor Who #133: The Tenth Planet Part 1

"Why don't you speak up, I'm deaf!" (The Doctor, hilariously, after being shouted at by an American officer)TECHNICAL SPECS: The Tenth Planet is not yet out on DVD, no doubt on account of its missing fourth episode, but Dailymotion has it. This will be my first time SEEING the surviving episodes, though I've heard to CD with narration by Anneke Wills. First aired Oct.8 1966.

IN THIS ONE... The TARDIS lands at an Antarctic base monitoring a space mission, and then the planet Mondas shows up and some really googly Cybermen.

REVIEW: Nice to see the show is still experimenting with unique title sequences, here following a space launch with computer code, a code I was surprised to see whizz by in the end credits themselves, along with modem-like distortions. Neat! The Antarctic base isn't so special, however. Oh, the outside is well done, with its surprising (if light-weight) hatch in the permafrost, and swirling snow flurries. The interior has rather a lot of television screens and that's about all I can say about it. And people with accents. Some bordering on national clichés, like the lascivious Italian or the obnoxious idiomatic American. Throw in a model sequence that really isn't the best the program has seen, lots of stock shots, and an upside down Earth spinning too quickly for science, and the Cybermen's first appearance might just be in a stinker.

It's not though. A story obviously conceived in the shadow of the space race, The Tenth Planet tries to imagine 1986 as a time when we'll regularly go to the Moon, and have astronauts of color. Well, one out of two isn't bad. Polly and Ben are rather excited about this space program stuff, as they should as proper kids of the 1960s. Polly's also loving the Doctor's wardrobe, but thankfully not pulling out the most awful costumes like Dodo used to. And she has an effect on the female-starved military men that Dodo wouldn't have. Ben fits this setting even better because he IS a military man, and quick to give name, rank and serial number too. But they don't get to do too much yet, not with all these guest characters to introduce (the usual problem with these base under siege stories). The Doctor knows too much about Mondas, so he seems suspect, but this is one of Hartnell's better days. It's hard to believe he would be too ill to work in a couple episodes' time, because he's really been sharp lately. Whole episodes go by without a single fluff. I'm already missing him.

And then there are the Cybermen, very different here than in any other story, but I'll leave my comments for tomorrow when they at least have some lines. For now, director Derek Martinus keeps the mystery alive, obscuring the aliens with a snow storm, and ending the cliffhanger on one's creepy bandaged face. The bit were one disguises itself with a borrowed coat verges on silliness, but they're otherwise effect. Now let's hear them speak!

REWATCHABILITY: Medium - Whostorians might make it higher because the Doctor's second greatest foes make their first appearance, but the generic international base of bad accents makes the episode rather ordinary-looking and sounding.

Star Trek #1431: Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes Part 6

1431. Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes Part 6

PUBLICATION: Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes #6, IDW Comics/DC Comics, March 2012

CREATORS: Chris Roberson (writer), Jeffrey and Philip Moy (artists)

STARDATE: Unknown (follows previous issue).

PLOT: While Kirk tells Vandar where he can stick his empire, the combined Enterprise-Legion crew in prehistory gets Q out of his genie's bottle which restores the timeline.

CONTINUITY: See previous issues (Flint, Fatal Five, Q). The restored timeline features the planet Holberg 917G (Requiem for Methuselah) and Q dressed as Trelaine (The Squire of Gothos). Agony booths were used in Mirror, Mirror.

DIVERGENCES: The inference that Q and Trelaine are the same entity contradicts the novel Q-Squared.

PANEL OF THE DAY - Kirk loves those agony booth treatments.
REVIEW: The trip is over, but what fun we had. Structurally, one might complain that the crew that stayed in the "present" didn't have anything to do except get tortured and expositioned to, so they might as well have gone back in time with the rest where all the action was. One might, but then we'd miss out on Kirk being a cocky son of a bitch to Vandar and that's where 90% of the comic's entertainment value lies. Roberson's Kirk is just awesome and I hope he gets to write him again some day. It takes real balls to taunt a villain from inside a still-warm agony booth, and Kirk keeps putting on the pressure just to see if the caveman is still in there somewhere. Best of all, he gets one of those Kirk-trademarked speeches where he talks about the great thing about both franchises - the hope their respective utopias give us, the readers/viewers, for a better tomorrow. That's the power of Star Trek and Legion, showing that there'll come a day when we all work together regardless of gender, race or creed, that we'll be able to beat back poverty, famine and oppression. Back in time, while it's fun to see Spock and Brainy spark off each other, the story is more plot-driven. Q is treated like a genie who'll do your bidding if you only know how to ask. It's literally a deus ex machina type of thing, but then, the story sorta needed to push the reset button. Since no one but Q remembers it happening, we can go on believing it did despite it never being mentioned in the original episodes/comics. If there ever was a coda that deserved its "Never the end", this was it...

Doctor Who #132: The Smugglers Part 4

"Do as ye bid, ye dog, or I'll leave ye in the coffin as a souvenir."
TECHNICAL SPECS: Except for a violent censored clip, the episode does not exist in the archives, so I've used a reconstruction (Part 1, Part 2). First aired Oct.1 1966.

IN THIS ONE... The treasure is found and the pirates get themselves killed.

REVIEW: The Doctor is equal parts rogue and diplomat in the final chapter, as he sells his share of the treasure for his friends' safe passage, but also manipulates Cherub and Pike into helping him figure out Avery's puzzle so he can get the upper hand. Sending Ben and Polly away to safety (and yet not safety, since the pirates have found the TARDIS), there remains the question of why he stays behind. Is he so curious to see how it all ends? Can't he be happy unless he sees if he's right about the treasure's location? Or does he figure he can reason Pike into leaving the village alone? I dare say a mix of the three. Not that Ben will let him face the finale alone. Polly gets the short end of the stick and is told to put the kettle on. While it's a call back to Ben's machismo and what will be remembered as Polly's cliché of her relegated to making tea or coffee, it still speaks to a kind of homeyness between the characters, already present in this, their second adventure.

From the smugglers' loot hidden inside a tomb to Avery's treasure at the intersection of four names of pirates who died at sea and couldn't possibly be buried in the crypt, there are clever plot points in Part 4 that are worthy of the genre. Because this is far more a genre piece than it is a historical adventure, and that's what justifies the colorful language and the brutal violence. At the climax, true natures are revealed. Pike rants and raves, his greed making him clutch at treasure while his men die around him, all pretense of being a gentleman lost. At his end, he's an animal. All the pirates are, really, with Cherub prepared to betray his captain for loot, and the rest of the crew untrustworthy as they come. The Squire, a rogue who nevertheless never killed anyone in cold blood, reveals a noble spirit instead, inspired by the Doctor's selflessness, and it looks like he and Blake make up at the end. There's a lot of heinous behavior in The Smugglers, but at its heart, it is a moral story. Everyone who made the wrong choices is dead by the end.

Consequently, we have a lot of death scene clips (Cherub's from this episode), but it would be interesting to recover the rest of this episode. The large fight between the pirates and the militia was apparently the biggest ever attempted on Doctor Who, but on audio, just sounds like a big mess. Alas, like its characters, it fell prey to Avery's curse.

VERSIONS: There's a Target novelization, of course, but I'm unaware of any major changes to the story.

REWATCHABILITY: Medium - A big finale (bigger if we had picture) with clever ideas within the trappings of the genre.

STORY REWATCHABILITY: Medium - It's really bloody, isn't it? Doesn't help that the only remaining film is of the various murders. Still, it works as a pirate story where safety is in short supply, and the villains get their just deserts.

This Week in Geek (26/03-01/04/12)

Buys

Got a couple DVDs this week - Eureka Season 4.5 (getting right on that) and the Korean film War of the Arrows.

"Accomplishments"

DVDs: The Guild Season 5 started off slow for me, and I've no doubt it's because I've never been to a convention and never plan to. This is the season where the Knights of Good go to one, see. But I COULD get into the "sharing a hotel room" comedy, and eventually caught up with this world. The relationships between the characters continues to evolve, Tink finally gets some backstory, and it's fun to see all the con regulars make cameos of some kind. There's Nathan Fillion, and Erin Gray, and Brent Spiner, and Zack Levy, and Eliza Dushku, and Stan Lee... So lots of fun once I got into it. The DVD includes a commentary track with the whole gang, , cast and crew interviews, a gag reel, the table read for the first episode, and featurettes on how they built the con and the steampunk stuff, and created twins out of one extra on a shoestring budget.

I've seen both versions of The Machurian Candidate, but the original is the only one I wanted in my collection. Still, I'd forgotten how insane some of the dialog (straight out of the Condon novel) was, and how much it ramped up the tension. The meeting between Sinatra and Janet Leigh's characters, for example, feels like she might be saying code words to activate him as a sleeper agent. You just don't know. But the actors make it work like they're veterans of Mamet's plays, none more so than Angela Lansbury as the emasculating mother, a role that got her nominated for an Oscar. It's an austere film, with little music, but it takes a lot of chances both in style and content, no doubt hitting too close to home back in 1962, coming out not long before JFK's assassination. The DVD includes a sporadic but always interesting director's commentary, a vintage interview with Sinatra and the director upon the film's re-release in 1988, a large photo gallery, and remembrances by Lansbury and a fawning exec.

We knew we wanted something silly this Kung Fu Friday because we would go to a housewarming party straight after. That's how the blaxploitation film Hot Potato got on the ticket. Black Belt Jones and a team of operatives fight their way through Thailand to rescue an ambassador's daughter kidnapped by a crime lord, fighting or helping what seems like a dozen tribes each with their own specific costume along the way. At its best, Hot Potato looks like it should be turned into an Icecapades spectacle (I blame the costumes and the choreography both). At its worst, you want to kill the loathsome White Rhino character played by George Memmoli, a heinously terrible comic relief character that very nearly ruins what is otherwise an ok martial arts comedy. Can't believe Memmoli almost played in the lead in Taxi Driver. Geoffrey Binney plays another agent, Johnny Chicago, who I'd swear was the inspiration for Indiana Jones if he wasn't so awful too. So it's a good thing we have cool cat Black Belt Jones (Jim Kelly) and his girl-du-jour, a super-competent Thai agent played by Irene Tsu. One to mock, and sometimes groan at.

Audios: Frazer Hynes narrates the audio CD version of Doctor Who's The Abominable Snowmen, which makes for a better than average "base under siege" story by virtue of its setting. A Tibetan monastery beset by robotic Yeti controlled by a Lovecraftian god called the Great Intelligence that eventually manifests as great gobs of foam spilling down a mountain, well, that's the kind of mix you only find in Doctor Who. Hynes does a good job relating the story's visual beats, not forgetting to let us in on the complex expressions of the characters. Victoria is charming enough as the easily-mesmerized damsel in distress. And the second Doctor is, as usual, pretty darn great. As I listen to these audios, Pat Troughton keeps climbing up my list of favorite Doctors.

Mentions: The most recent issue of Diary of the Doctor Who Role-Playing Games (#16), a pdf 'zine that touches on every aspect of Who gaming, including material for all three published RPGs, featured a number of blogs I visit frequently, mine among them! Thanks, Diarists! You know, I should offer to write something for the Diary. I quite like what they're doing.

Hyperion to a Satyr posts this week:
III.ii. The Mouse-Trap - Hamlet 2000

Doctor Who #131: The Smugglers Part 3

"Threaten you me with the rope? Then you shall stand with me on the gallows."TECHNICAL SPECS: Missing except from two violent clips, I've used a reconstruction (Part 1, Part 2). First aired Sep.24 1966.

IN THIS ONE... The Doctor escapes and finds the key to Avery's treasure, as the villains bear down on him and on each other.

REVIEW: Having two villainous factions creates interesting levels of morality in this episode, with Pike and Cherub at the lowest possible level, and Kewper and the Squire somewhere in the middle. So Kewper does indeed help the Doctor escape the Black Albatross, but he turns against him once they're free, and uses what he's found out on the ship to prepare a trap for Pike's men and get Avery's treasure for his side. There are lines his ally the Squire won't cross, however, and while he's quite happy to run a smuggling ring, he balks at killing someone in cold blood. Kewper's a lot more flexible when it comes to that. Pike and Cherub's morality isn't so much flexible as it is completely absent. Pike kills one of his own men for allowing the Doctor and Kewper to escape, and plans not only to take Avery's treasure, but to steal the smuggler's hoard as well. His gentlemanly facade drops completely when he is angered, and there's no doubt the man is a monster. As for Cherub, he skulks around the episode, much as Blake had in the previous one, and pops out at the end just to kill Kewper and shoot the Squire.

It's in this cutthroat environment that our heroes must survive. This is made easier by two things: First, some of the characters are dumb, so Jamaica lets himself be distracted by the Doctor's card reading and gets knocked out for his trouble. It's a fun scene because the Doctor delights in making the cards tell the story, and doesn't play too much on Jamaica's superstitious nature. Yes, he feigns a supernatural ability, but he could have been doing card tricks or inventing fizzbin and the outcome would have been the same. The other advantage they have is Blake, who knows better than to trust the Squire, but needs more evidence before going up against him. Look for him to get a posse together to fight off the pirates. Jamaica is really the only rube in the episode, because the other villains are actively trying to outsmart one another. Even as Kewper plans an ambush for that night, Pike is accelerating his plans to attack in broad daylight to keep the element of surprise. Cherub plays spy, and both sides plan to use the Doctor to lead them to the treasure.

The Doctor might have the three names the churchwarden gave him, but it's his companions' enthusiasm that unlocks the code. During a short breather from the action and intrigue, they walk through the church cemetary and marvel at some colorful epitaphs, which in turn makes the Doctor realize the names were like a map of the crypt under the church. I think this is the first time a companion has accidentally given the Doctor the answer and been complimented for it. These days, all the companions are "brilliant" even if they don't mean to be, but "inspired" Polly might have been the first. Other companions have contributed, but they were doing so on purpose. The start of a charming Doctor Who tradition.

REWATCHABILITY: Medium - The intrigue between the villains keep the episode humming along nicely, and the brutality of the character deaths keeps our heroes in constant danger.