Month: December 2013

Doctor Who: “The Time of the Doctor”

It’s official: there’s a new Doctor in town. Matt Smith has handed the TARDIS keys to Peter Capaldi in the much-balyhooed Christmas special “The Time of the Doctor.” As a newcomer to the Whoniverse, this was the first time I’d actually seen a regeneration in ‘real time’ as opposed to watching it several years later on Netflix, and I thought the whole thing was something of a mixed bag.

Basically, a veritable “Who’s Who” of the Doctor’s enemies descended on Trenzalore so they could besiege him in a town called ‘Christmas’ that looks like it was built from Department 56 houses. Meanwhile, the Time Lords (who were revealed to be trapped in a pocket dimension in the 50th anniversary special), are trying to make a comeback by sending messages through the cracks in the universe that first appeared in series 5. The message is simply “Doctor Who?”; if the Doctor responds by telling them his real name, his fellow Time Lords will know they’ve found the right universe and burst in like the Kool-Aid Man.

The Doctor knows that, if he allows the Time Lords to return, it will simply reignite the Time War. At the same time, he’s determined to protect the people of Christmas and their cutesy, overpriced ceramic houses. He ends up spending 300 years defending Trenzalore, and he’s convinced that he’s finally going to bite the bullet since Time Lords are limited to thirteen incarnations[note]Even though Matt Smith’s Doctor has always been called Eleven, he’s technically the thirteenth Doctor when you take into account the War Doctor and Ten’s aborted regeneration in “Journey’s End.” The notion that Time Lords are limited to thirteen incarnations dates from “The Deadly Assassin.”[/note].

Obviously, the BBC is not going to let a technicality like that get in the way of such a lucrative franchise, so it was pretty much a given that they’d find some way around the regeneration limit. Unfortunately, their solution was somewhat hamfisted: the Doctor’s companion, Clara, talked to the Time Lords through the crack-in-the-universe and begged them to help him, saying that “the Doctor” was his name for all intents and purposes. This somehow convinces them to deliver a burst of extra regeneration energy through the crack, which the Doctor uses to slaughter the Daleks who are about to destroy Christmas. It all seemed too convenient, and if they could deliver the regeneration energy, I don’t know why they didn’t just break through then and there.

The pacing of “The Time of the Doctor” also felt rushed. The assembly of the Doctor’s enemies never really had a chance to feel menacing since it pretty much came out of the blue[note]Unlike earlier series, series 7 didn’t have any kind of overarching plot, so “The Time of the Doctor” pretty much stood on its own. I think the Siege of Trenzalore would have felt a lot more important if it had been foreshadowed throughout the series.[/note]and most of the enemies only got cameos. And while Steven Moffat did his best to wrap up existing plot threads, most of that material seemed better suited to a behind-the-scenes feature rather than an episode.

The episode did do a nice job of letting Matt Smith show off his acting chops. Although Eleven has never been my favorite Doctor (I’m a Ten man, myself), Smith is an excellent actor who arguably brought more nuance to the role than any of his predecessors (at least as far as the revived series is concerned–I haven’t seen any of the pre-2005 stuff). Smith was especially good at playing the aged Doctor after 300 years on Trenzalore. Done wrong, it could have degenerated into farce, but Smith managed to capture an old man’s physicality remarkably well.

I also loved Eleven’s final soliloquy. Capturing the essence of an entire character in a single piece of dialogue is no mean feat, yet Moffat managed to write a fitting tribute to Eleven. It had an understated poignance that stood in marked contrast to the overwrought melodrama of Ten’s sendoff.

Brief as it was, Karen Gillan’s cameo as Amy Pond also deserves a mention. The stories of Eleven and Amy were uniquely intertwined, so it was fitting that he should share his final moments with her, even if she was just a figment of his imagination.

Sadly, it will be a while before we get to see what Peter Capaldi’s Doctor is like. They haven’t even started filming series 8 yet, so we might have to wait until Fall of 2014 for new episodes. Damn you, British brevity!

 

Once Upon a Time: “Going Home”

After weeks of tedious Neverland episodes, Once Upon a Time has finally emerged from the doldrums. Last Sunday’s mid-season finale, “Going Home,” closed the book on the Peter Pan storyline and sent the plot off in new and unexpected directions.

At the end of the previous episode, Pan!Henry stole The Curse from Regina in a bid to turn Storybrooke into the new Neverland. I’d been wondering how he was going to cast it since it has a rather nasty material component (the heart of the thing you love most). As far as I can tell, Pan never loved anyone except himself, and ripping out his own heart to cast The Curse would be rather counterproductive.

But, as Pan!Henry helpfully explains to Felix, love isn’t just romance or a familial bond. It can also be loyal friendship, and Felix has always been devoted to Pan. Sadly, Pan repays this loyalty by ripping out Felix’s heart and crushing it to dust before dropping it into the magic wishing well along with the other ingredients for The Curse. Great clouds of green smoke start billowing out of the well, letting us know that something wicked is coming to Storybrooke.

Naturally, the only way to stop The Curse is with the aid of a magical MacGuffin: the wand of the never-before-mentioned ‘Black Fairy.’  Apparently, the Blue Fairy/Mother Superior had it stashed in the convent, and Hook, Charming, Neal, and Tinkerbell rush off to find it. They go to the chapel, where the Blue Fairy is apparently lying in state after being killed in the previous episode, only to run into Pan’s shadow. There’s a CGI fight and Tinkerbell ends up trapping the shadow in Neal’s coconut nightlight thingy before throwing it onto a very conveniently located fire. Once the shadow is dead, the Blue Fairy springs back to life and hands over the wand. Oddly enough, the other townspeople seem pretty blase about her sudden revivification.

Fun fact: evil magical shadows can't penetrate wooden pews.
Photo Credit: ABC/Jack Rowand

Stopping The Curse will also require the destruction of the scroll on which it was written. In order to get it, the townspeople decide to pull a reverse Freaky Friday and switch Pan and Henry back into their proper bodies. As a precaution, Rumple decides to slap Greg and Tamara’s (remember them?) anti-magic bracelet on Pan’s arm so that he’ll be powerless when he returns to his body.

The body-switch spell works perfectly, but alas, Rumple forgot that Pan was Greg and Tamara’s boss, so the cuff doesn’t work on him. Pan promptly transfers the cuff to Rumple’s arm, divesting the Dark One of all his tricks. Pan also takes the opportunity to rub salt into the wound by telling his son that he never loved him, not even for a moment. Ouch. He leaves Rumple on the floor, confident that his father will revert to his cowardly nature now that he can’t hide behind his magic.

I really like the following scene where Rumple struggles to get the cuff off. For a moment, it looks like he might hack off his hand with a cutlass, which is a nice little callback to how he deliberately injured himself in order to get out of fighting in the Ogre Wars.

Meanwhile, Henry is reunited with his body and has a nice group hug with his family. Regina takes The Curse and immediately collapses. When she wakes up, Pan arrives and freezes everyone as he tries to figure out who to kill first. But he’s stopped by Rumple (who didn’t cut off his hand after all), who reminds Pan that he isn’t the only one with a detachable shadow. Rumple’s shadow returns with the Dark One dagger that Rumple hid when he was in Neverland, which Rumple uses to skewer his dad.. Pan transforms back into a middle-aged man, and there’s a sweet little moment as Rumple kisses his dad right before they poof away in a cloud of smoke. It’s hard to believe that Rumple is actually gone for good when a tertiary character like the Blue Fairy didn’t even stay dead for an entire episode, but it was still a very touching scene. It was also a nice way for the writers to fulfill the longstanding prophecy that “the boy” would be Rumple’s undoing.

The rest of the episode is pretty much a conga line of sadness. Regina says that the only way to save everyone from The Curse is to transport them back to the Enchanted Forest, but Henry, having been born in the Land Without Magic, won’t be able to come, though Emma can stay with him because she’s the Savior. As always, magic comes with a price, and Regina’s price is that she’ll never be able to see her beloved son again. Emma and Henry will also lose all their memories of Storybrooke and its inhabitants.

With Green Clouds of Doom rushing across town, Henry and Emma say their goodbyes, and I loved how Henry finally told Regina that he was wrong about her: she wasn’t a villain after all, and he loved her. As a final gift to Emma and Henry, Regina gives them false memories of a happy life together, one where Emma never gave Henry up for adoption. Regina re-casts The Curse to send everyone back to the Enchanted Forest, and her Purple Clouds of Doom envelop everyone just as Emma and Henry cross the town line in her trusty yellow Beetle.

We then jump ahead a year and see Emma and Henry going about their usual morning routine in New York City. It’s all very happy and domestic, but then there’s a knock at the door. When Emma goes to answer it, there’s a hunky pirate on her doorstep who breathlessly tells her that her parents are in trouble. She’s like “WTF?” and Hook tries to make her remember using True Love’s Kiss (TM), but she responds by kneeing him in his treasure chest before slamming the door in his stubbly face.

I swear I don't just watch the show for the eye candy.
Gratuitous Captain Hook pic. You’re welcome. Photo Credit: ABC/Jack Rowand

Although there were some uneven moments (Felix being the thing that Pan loved most seemed like a bit of an asspull, as did the Black Fairy’s wand) and the repeated bits about hope and happy endings got a bit saccharine, the final moments more than make up for those deficiencies. Even though we viewers know that the Storybrookers aren’t saying goodbye for realz (this is a mid-season finale, not a series finale!), the scenes between Rumple and Pan and Regina, Emma, and Henry still tugged at the heartstrings. I also liked how the episode contributed to Rumple and Regina’s character development. Regina finally shed her villain persona, while Rumple showed once and for all that he’s not a coward.

The only bad news is that the show is on hiatus until the spring premiere on March 9. The promos suggest that the Wicked Witch of the West will become the new Big Bad. It will be interesting to see her as a villain again after Gregory Maguire rehabilitated her in Wicked.

Ahistorical fiction

The Elder Mr. Loch recently alerted me to The Final Sacrament by James Forrester. Set in Elizabethan England, the premise of the book is that Queen Elizabeth I is not the legitimate Queen of England because of Anne Boleyn’s previous relationship with the Earl of Northumberland. William Harley, who holds the office of Clarenceux King of Arms, has  proof of Boleyn’s precontract, which makes him a wanted man.

Even today, the Kings of Arms still dress like playing cards.
Clarenceux King of Arms. Public Domain image via Wikimedia Commons.

My first reaction upon hearing of the plot was to roll my eyes. The idea that Anne Boleyn might have been precontracted to the Earl of Northumberland was not exactly a secret. In fact, the Countess of Northumberland even tried to use it as grounds for annulling her marriage to the Earl. But Lord Northumberland swore on two separate occasions that there had been no such precontract. He even stuck to his story when agents of Henry VIII wanted him to say the opposite. If there had been a precontract between Boleyn and Northumberland, it would have arguably given Henry grounds for seeking an annulment of his marriage. As we all know, Henry found another way of getting rid of his queen.

While it’s true that a precontract might have rendered Elizabeth illegitimate, she was declared illegitimate anyway by Act of Parliament after her mother’s execution. A few years later, she was legitimized and returned to the line of succession. Since her legitimacy was ultimately determined by Parliament, I’m not sure the document that forms the book’s MacGuffin would really be as explosive as it might seem as first glance. I’m sorely tempted to pick up the book just to see how he deals with the succession legislation!

Although the historian in me took a dim view of the way Forrester seemed to approach his subject, I had a change of heart when I checked out his website. “James Forrester” is actually the pen name of of Dr. Ian J. F. Mortimer, who is a rather well-known historian. On his James Forrester website, he explains why he felt the need to adopt a separate persona for writing fiction. He’s quite upfront about the fact that he’s willing to change the details if it suits the story:

In Sacred Treason I changed the name of Henry Machyn’s wife from Dorothy to Rebecca because one of the early readers of the manuscript said ‘I couldn’t help thinking of the Yellow Brick Road every time she was mentioned’. I also changed the name of my main protagonist from Harvey to Harley. It’s close enough to show I know who the real Clarenceux King of Arms was in 1563; but I deliberately wanted to be inaccurate so people could be sure he is fictional. This is very different from most historical novelists’ way of working, many of whom have a strict rule about not contradicting the ‘known facts’.

You might think that this would have me frothing at the mouth, but it doesn’t. I’m willing to tell my inner pedant to STFU if it’s clear that the author did their homework and took the trouble to get things right whenever possible. But if you can’t even get the big things right, you’re not going to get any slack at all.

Once Upon a Time: “Save Henry”

I’ll be honest, I have mixed feelings about season 3 of Once Upon a Time. The Neverland plot has been plodding along at a glacial pace, and the persistent relegation of Regina to the background is rather annoying (seriously, taking one of the most interesting characters in the show and giving her one or two lines an episode doesn’t make for compelling TV). But in last Sunday’s episode, “Save Henry,” Regina finally gets to do something beyond occasional snark AND we finally get to leave Neverland behind. That’s definitely a win-win situation.

The flashback portion of the episode seems to answer one of the core mysteries of the show: why the hell did Regina decide to adopt Henry in the first place? To some extent, it’s always felt like something of an ass pull since the Regina we saw in the Enchanted Forest wasn’t exactly agonizing over the ticking of her biological clock, though season 2’s “Welcome to Storybrooke” helped lay the groundwork for the explanation by showing us how Regina bonded with Owen.

Maybe if I cast "Silence" on him...
Photo credit: ABC/Jack Rowland.

In “Save Henry,” we learn that Regina’s desire for a child is shown to be a side-effect of her decision to commit patricide in order to cast the Curse. That left her with a hole in her own heart, though it can’t be too vexing since she waits 18 years before deciding that a child might help fill the void. Rather than jump through the hoops of the standard adoption process, Regina decides to ask Mr. Gold for help (I have to admit that I snickered when he thought that Regina was asking him for some, ahem, biological help with obtaining a baby). Since this is Mr. Gold, he has no problem sourcing a baby in Boston.

After agreeing to a closed adoption, Regina now has her very own bouncing bundle of pain-in-the-ass, but it isn’t long until little Henry’s incessant crying is driving her up the fucking wall. She takes Henry to Dr. Whale, who suggests that it’s vaguely possible that Henry has some sort of genetic problem, which seems like a naked plot contrivance designed to give Regina a reason to send her lackey Sydney (remember him?) on a hunt for the identity of Henry’s birth mother.

When Regina finds out that Henry’s mother was discovered outside Storybrooke just after the Curse struck, she yells at Mr. Gold, accusing him of playing his own game. Although he feigns confusion, the show definitely gives the impression that he knows more than he lets on. If that is indeed the case, the writers have a problem on their hands. Previously, they said in an interview that Mr. Gold didn’t remember that he was Rumpelstiltskin until Emma came to Storybrooke. Although this has never been explicitly stated in the show itself, it’s been heavily implied.[end]Mr. Gold has an obvious reaction when learning Emma’s name in the first episode, and when Regina goes to see him in “Welcome to Storybrooke,” he seems oblivious to his past life as the Dark One.[/end] At this point, it’s hard to say whether this is a retcon or just careless writing.

Speaking of retcons, there’s an unambiguous one later on in this episode. After flirting with the idea of handing Henry back to the adoption agency, Regina decides that the best thing for her to do is take a magic roofie potion that will make her forget about Henry’s birth mother as well as Mr. Gold’s shady baby-procurement methods. But this causes all sorts of plot problems, since in the first season it’s clear that Regina remembers how she got Henry, and it’s also strongly implied that she knew who Emma was the moment she showed up in Storybrooke. So what happened to the magic roofie? Did it wear off? Did Emma’s arrival nullify it? It’s not at all clear, and the writers appear have created a rather nasty plot hole.

The present-time storyline is focused, as the title of the episode suggests, on saving Henry, who is now comatose after giving his heart to Peter Pan (literally) in the previous episode. They can’t revive him, so Regina casts a preservation spell on him to keep him fresh while they go after Pan. For some reason, this preservation spell will only last an hour even though Regina used a similar spell to keep her dead boyfriend on ice for years.

Although Regina wants to extract Pan’s whereabouts from the Lost Boys through torture, Emma manages to get them to spill the beans with nothing more than a liberal application of maternal love. Apparently, he’s at the “Thinking Tree” (which sounds like it’s the Giving Tree‘s more intellectual sibling). Emma, Regina, and Snow White go hunting for Pan and find Pandora’s Box waiting for them in a clearing. Because Snow is kind of an idiot, she immediately grabs it. Obviously, it’s a trap, and the three ladies are tied to the tree by CGI vines. Pan comes down to snark at them, telling them that the tree will feed off their regrets. At this point, I was afraid the show would give us a long, angsty scene where the three of them come to terms with their regrets, but instead, Regina points out that she doesn’t regret anything she’s done and bursts through the vines. She rips Henry’s heart out of Pan’s chest without further ado, and I rejoice at the welcome acceleration of the plot.

After Henry gets his heart back, everyone piles on board the Jolly Roger to go home. Rumpelstiltskin is reunited with his son (aww!) and good vibes abound. Regina is somehow able to tether the Evil Shadow that serves as the genus loci of Neverland to the Jolly Roger‘s sail (they trapped it in Neal’s coconut nightlight earlier in the season), which allows them to fly away. However, they inexplicably left Henry unguarded down below, and he’s attacked by Peter Pan. Pan can’t re-take Henry’s heart since Regina at least had the foresight to put the magical version of The Club on it, so he tries to tear Henry’s shadow away instead.

Up above, Rumpelstiltskin realizes that something’s wrong and runs downstairs to trap Pan in Pandora’s Box (turnabout is fair play, after all). But while Pan is struggling against the pull of the box, Henry’s eyes flash, which kind of telegraphs the last-minute plot twist. Pan and Henry have done a Freaky Friday, so Henry’s now trapped in the box and Pan is free to cause more mischief. The episode ends with Pan!Henry telling chief Lost Boy Felix that it’s “time to play.” Dun dun duuuuun…

Despite the retconning and some shaky aspects of the Henry Adoption Plot,[end]I find it a little hard to believe that the adoption agency would just let Regina change her mind about giving Henry back at the last minute, considering they already had another placement lined up. Speaking of which, the other placement turned out to be Wendy’s brothers, who wanted to hand Henry over to Pan. Somehow, I’m not sure that an adoption agency would see two seemingly college-aged brothers as ideal candidates for a baby’s new parents![/end] I liked this episode. I’m so glad to be out of Neverland at last. This season’s episodes have crawled along at a snail’s pace, and having everyone team up to search for Henry has really thrown the show’s dynamic off. 

Demon Advent Calendar

The Demonology Project has come up with a cool way to promote themselves over the festive season: the Demon Advent Calendar. Each day, they’ll post a different Egyptian demon, and they’re certainly drawing from eclectic sources. Day 1 featured “He Who Drives Off Those Who Would Demolish” from the Book of Two Ways, while Day 2 featured an unnamed man-eating hippo demon from a magician’s wand in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This is a great example of how academic projects can engage with the public in a fun and interesting manner. One of my big gripes about the Academy is its tendency to ignore the little people outside the ivory tower, so I’m always happy when I see academics bucking that trend. I also like that the Demonology Project hasn’t felt the need to dumb things down. They provide just the right amount of info to get the point across without burying non-specialists in a bunch of extraneous details.

Now if only the Demon Advent Calendar came with chocolate… 🙂

The Legend of Korra disappoints, again

The Physicist and I finally got around to finishing Book 2 of The Legend of Korra, and I was underwhelmed, to say the least. Warning: spoilers ahead.

First of all, what the hell is up with Jinora? Her last-minute-save-the-world intervention seemed like a total ass-pull, and it was hard to tell exactly what was going on. If you’re going to have a tertiary character save your protagonist’s ass, you need to do a much better job of foreshadowing it–a propensity for cuddling cute spirit animals isn’t enough.

Korra’s duel with UberUnalaq was also unsatisfying. It didn’t really have any emotion–it was just two giant beings slugging it out like they’re in a Godzilla movie. I would have liked to have seen more of an emotional conflict between the two of them. Unalaq is Korra’s uncle and he had her father thrown in jail on trumped up charges, but Korra basically reacts to him like he’s a random Monster of the Week.

The other problem with Unalaq is that his character development was incredibly uneven. At first he starts out as a well-intentioned extremist, but he abruptly becomes a garden-variety villain in the last few episodes. I would have liked to have had a better idea of why he thinks that unleashing Vaatu is going to make the world a better place. Even if he thinks that the spirits have gotten a raw deal, releasing the spirit of chaos and darkness isn’t exactly the next logical step. Now it seems that he just did it for the Evulz, and that’s unsatisfying.

Compare that with Zuko and Azula from the first series: we had a much better idea of what made them tick and why they acted the way they did. Because the audience actually got to bond with them, they were much more satisfying as villains.

The lack of character development isn’t confined to Unalaq. Korra suffers from it, too. The problem is that she doesn’t seem to learn from her mistakes. At the end of Book 1, she supposedly learned that it’s okay to rely on others, yet when Book 2 began, she was back to being a lone wolf. It also doesn’t help that she remains a flat and uninteresting protagonist. She needs to have more depth beyond a kick-ass-and-take-names attitude. And I wish the writers would lay off the Korra/Mako relationship drama. It’s tepid at the best of times since the two characters don’t really have any chemistry.

I was also kind of annoyed by the whole Varrick subplot. It felt like little more than a series of plot contrivances, and in the end, it didn’t really go anywhere. Varrick certainly isn’t punished for his crimes: the last we see of him, he’s escaping with his loyal assistant on his back (trust me, it makes sense in context).

I think a lot of Korra’s problems ultimately stem from the decision to have these truncated seasons. Filler episodes are not bad. Done right, they can help the characters grow and advance the meta plot. I think the best example of this is probably “The Beach” from Book 3 of The Last Airbender. That episode really had nothing to do with the main plot, but it did a great job of giving us background info about Zuko and Azula. There’s nothing like that in Korra, which is why everyone seems so damn flat.

On a more positive note, I liked that the writers actually did something risky by having Korra’s connection to her past lives severed permanently (?), though the impact of this change was somewhat reduced by the fact that Korra never really had much of a relationship with the past Avatars.  That could set the stage for some truly interesting plot developments in Book 3, provided they don’t go and hit the reset button within the first few episodes.

I enjoyed watching the interactions between Tenzin, Bumi, and Kya. We don’t really know what Aang was like as an adult, so it’s interesting to hear what his kids thought of him. It seems that he wasn’t exactly a model father, and he played favorites with Tenzin since Tenzin was the only airbender among his progeny. One thing I’ve always liked about Aang is that he’s generally not a Gary Stu. He’s always had flaws, and that made him a lot more interesting.

Finally, I really liked the art of Book 2, particularly the glimpses of the Spirit World and the flashbacks that made up “Beginnings” parts 1 and 2. Avatar has always been exceptionally well animated, and Book 2 has some of the most stunning episodes of the entire series.

Despite my disillusionment with Korra, I’ll still watch Books 3 and 4. I just hope it gets better….