No, this isn’t my review of the first half of the two part story that started thus week with the Time of Angels.
I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a podcast on science fiction/fantasy TV shows and, while we’re experimenting, it looks like we’ll get our feet wet with podcasts on the remaining episodes of the year’s Doctor Who.
More details soon.
This is really going to me more about the Daleks than this week’s episode of Doctor Who, but we’ll do both.
Victory of the Daleks is the Moffat-era reboot of the Daleks, and they desperately needed a reboot, but will this really be an improvement?
Summary
Winston Churchill calls the Doctor to the Cabinet War Rooms during the London Blitz to introduce his new secret weapon against the Nazi’s, the Daleks – although he doesn’t know them as Daleks, but instead as Ironsides, created by Prof. Bracewell.
The Doctor goes F-ing crazy to try to prove they’re nasty little alien Daleks and when he finally confronts them face-to-face proclaiming himself to be the Doctor and they to be the Daleks they get all happy and leave, but not before revealing that Bracewell is an android they created as a cover story, but he thinks he’s a real boy.
Back on the Dalek ship, they use the recording of the Doctor to prove they’re really Daleks and start the Progenitor device: A Dalek gene-bank to create a new army of Daleks. The Daleks threaten to destroy the Earth, the Doctor saves the Earth, but the Daleks escape.
Analysis
This first non-Moffat story of the Moffat-era is entertaining, but ultimately empty. It’s nothing more than a vehicle to unleash the Daleks into the Who-universe once more. The Dalek plan seems nearly hare-brained, the plot device that says the genetically-imperfect Daleks can’t activate the Progenitor device is ridiculous to begin with (wouldn’t it be better if anyone could turn it on with the right passcode?) and the resolution of just having the Doctor admit they’re Daleks being good enough to overcome the lockout beggar’s belief.
Before I go on about the Daleks, let me take a moment to talk about the rest of the episode. Spitfires in space, fighting Daleks, yeah, Ok, that was fun. Winston Churchill, not much of a key player, looked a little fatter than I remember. Amy did a nice job, but then she’d brighten any scene she’s in. Prof. Bracewell as the misguided android did a nice job. (And he likes girls.)
But let’s go back to the Daleks.
Do you know what it takes to make a genuinely mediocre episode of Doctor Who? Answer: The Daleks.
Confined in their metal city on Skaro, in a claustrophobic setting, they were a credible threat. Unleashed on the universe, they’re a joke. I’m sure the writers of the original Doctor Who knew that. Just look at the Dalek stories starting in the Pertwee era. They are absolutely the most unconvincing villains ever created, but they’re popular with the punters and they just had to keep bringing them back. Even back then, their master plans were idiotic. Hollowing out the cores of planets, running their own funeral parlor, etc. The power of nostalgia overcomes people when thinking about the Daleks.
Then a funny thing happened, Russell T. Davies, an admittedly massively nostalgic fan of the original series, came along and he wanted his Daleks to be menacing – like he remembered them in the misty, poorly remembered corners of his mind. (Keep this in mind, They were never menacing, it’s just his memory failing.) So, during his reign, the Daleks were brilliant and massively powerful. One single Dalek could wipe out an entire city. They’re really, really dangerous.
Problem is, if they’re so smart, that might be able to learn and adapt and become peaceful, even productive members of the universe. Not to mention that, but, if they did take over the universe, what would they do with it? Really, they’ve got no good motivation, either. Can’t have that, let’s make them insane too! It doesn’t matter how dumb the idea, right up to and including destroying reality itself, they’re up for it. They’re crazy, the audience will buy anything they want to do.
No, we won’t.
The Daleks should never have been made so smart and all-powerful that they could destroy all of reality, no more than the Time Lords should have been made powerful enough to destroy all of time itself. When you get villains that big and powerful any plot you come up with just gets dumber and dumber and the resolution more insane.
The Daleks desperately needed a reboot (as do the Time Lords). Perhaps these new Daleks, unaware of what’s transpired, will be closer to the older Daleks. Big enough of a threat to take over whole planets, subjugate whole races of people, launch intergalactic wars. but not big enough to contemplate the total destruction of the fabric of reality. Let’s give the Doctor something I can believe he could defeat using his wits.
So with this story, let’s all wish on the first star we see tonight and send Stephen Moffat some psychic messages. If we can’t have “no Daleks, ever”, then at least let’s wish for “sensible Daleks.”
A lot of ire has been spreading across the ‘net regarding the look of the new Daleks. I can take it or leave it. Since they barely ever looked menacing, I don’t think the new ones are much of a departure. They’re bigger, they’re colorful, they’re still laughable.
Not a review of Victory of the Daleks but does contain a reasonably small spoiler.
Something extraordinary happened in Victory of the Daleks that really made me feel like Russell T. Davies is finally gone.
As the Doctor and Amy tried to bring out Prof. Bracewell’s humanity, Amy asked him if he’d ever fancied someone he knew he shouldn’t. Bracewell admitted that he had and that the person had been… a woman!!!
I hate to apply generalizations, but you know damned good and well if RTD were in charge it would have been a man.
I’ve been doing some testing today on the iBook e-reader that Apple provides for the iPad. I’ve not-so-much been testing the reading experience, but testing the capabilities for outside material.
You can, of course, buy books directly from Apple’s iBookstore and they even have a selection of free e-books – of exactly the kind you’d expect from Project Gutenberg – but you’re not limited to e-books strictly from the iBookstore. Apple has chose to use the epub standard. so I thought I’d give that a test.
First, I went to epubbooks.com and downloaded a free book. By simply dropping it in iTunes, it transferred to my iPad on the next synch. No glitches.
Next, I was working on a programming project and I needed to consult the online, PDF manual. Of course, I could have easily brought the PDF up on the iPad, but I remembered that some people used software to convert PDFs to epubs. I downloaded a piece of software called Calibre and soon had my PDF document converted to epub. The results were passable, although the PDF conversion didn’t always get the pages or pictures formatted correctly.
I also used Calibre to convert and RSS feed into an e-book with mixed results. My own blog came out near picture perfect, but a friends apparently upset the applecart and the whole thing came out an unreadable mess.
Finally, I took a Fusion Patrol novel I started writing last year and converted it to an e-book. Like some many other writing projects, I made it about a third of the way through and got distracted from finishing it. For a lark, rather than just checking out how well it had formatted, I decided to read it end to end.
I don’t know how other people interact with their writing, but for me, writing is somewhere between a torturous chore to a matter of necessity. There are times when I just must write, but then as the steam wears off, it becomes painful to continue.
Then comes the second-guessing phase. After a certain period of time, if I go back and re-read my earlier works I usually find (A) typos and (B) that I hate what I wrote.
But every once in a while, I look back and I say, “Hey, that’s not bad.” and so it was with Fusion Patrol: The Penny Dreadful (working title). I actually like what I wrote.
It looks good as an e-book, too. Consider this to be a “sample”.
Now I have to finish it.
It seems that most of the feedback about the new Doctor Who series is positive, save for one thing – the new credits and the new music.
Now, I must admit the new music was immediately a huge letdown for me. It grows on you a bit, but overall I’m not impressed. I decided that I might be prejudiced against it because it was new and different. I decided I needed to listen to it – a lot. The other day, I put that version on the iPhone, hit repeat one song and let it fly during my entire commute. I contemplated every note, every sound, every voice and internalized them.
Then, by way of comparison, I put all versions of the theme music (sans the 8th Doctor telemovie) into a playlist, put them on random and did much the same on my next commute. I’m now ready to pronounce judgement.
First though, let’s standardize our frame of reference. The Doctor Who theme consists in four basic parts: There’s the opening beat, that, thinking back to the Tom Baker years, represented the opening of the time vortex, which follows the main theme itself, which is the sort of howly bits, then there’s the fanfare, which I believe Murray Gold called “the middle third” and was absent from Eccleston’s theme music but added back for the Christmas Invasion. This bit was also usually missing during Tom Baker’s era and only showed up on six-parters that required longer end credits. Finally there’s the ending which is mostly a rehash of bits of the main theme repeating out sometimes ending with a sting.
Taking this new theme apart, I dislike the intro. Gold has added a new theme that isn’t Doctor Who at all overlaying and overpowering the proper parts.
The main theme could be good, perhaps great. It starts well with something similar to the original electronic version, but they discordantly crashes into something orchestral with little high-pitched noisemakers that set my teeth on edge. They’re probably flutes or piccolos or something. Get rid of them. On the other hand, he also uses a small, discreet bit of choral music which works well, and makes it sound darker. best of all, it’s just a little bit, not like his overpowering choral Dalek tunes.
The fanfare suffers the same problem, good foundation, damaged by high-pitched squeaky wind instruments. Some points for some very subtle wobbly sound effects that sound like things flying off into space.
Finally the outgoing part is mostly fine, gone are the obnoxious instruments, leaving us with the pleasant version, but all too soon, it’s over. Here’s hoping next year they’ll try again and learn from this mistake.
It used to be that there were “Science Fiction Theme Song” albums where various artists where Neil Norman, Jeff Love or some orchestra would cover Sci-Fi theme songs. Universally, Doctor Who did not make the translation well. Particularly bad were the orchestral versions, for precisely the reasons I’ve outlined here. The pitch isn’t suited for an orchestra. It shocked the heck out of me when Gold was able to pull the Eccleston/Tennant version off using an orchestra. I think part of the success was lowering the tone and not hitting those high notes.
Still, it’s not the worst “official” version of the Who theme tune, that honor goes (as with so many other “worsts” in Doctor Who history) to the Sylvester McCoy version.
It’s all subjective, but here’s my countdown.
So there it is. I’ve been meaning to rank the theme songs for years now and I’ve finally gotten around to it. Let the complaints begin! 🙂
*Edit 2014-09-20 – edited to properly reflect the guilty and clear Mark Ayres name!
I promised my incoherent thoughts on the iPad after days of use and here they are… in no particular order.
iPad notes
Those are my thoughts so far. Perhaps they seem a bit negative, but they aren’t. All in all it’s a great little device and the potential seems limitless. Next time, I’ll talk about some of the specific applications, like Popular Science Mag+ electronic magazine and Marvel Comics e-comic reader. (I’m going to have a guest reviewer and well-placed insider in the comic book trade giving me his feedback before I write that one. Will the iPad finally kill the comic book? Will there be a super-hero created by bitten by a radioactive iPad? Find out next time… or whenever I get around to it, same bat-time, same bat channel.)
*Oh, and people, that part about the driving and stuff… totally a joke. Like my wife would let me have the iPad when I driving. She’s totally monopolizing it to read The Lightening Thief.
I’d written up this long, convoluted post about my travails trying to get an iPad, but by the time I’ve gotten around to posting it… I finally got an iPad. I guess I’ll recount the story anyway.
Let’s rewind to Saturday, April 3rd, the very first day of iPad sales. As you may recall, it was at that point that I started saying, “I want an iPad.”
Saturday: We went into the Best Buy on Camelback road at around 8:00PM and, although the store wasn’t terribly busy, there was still a cluster of people around the Apple mini-store. There were 4 iPads on display, all of them was being tested by children. A small group of people were standing by hoping to get to play with them.
One teenager, the oldest, seemed the most oblivious, so I came and stood right next to him and made a big production out of trying to watch everything he was doing. He was still oblivious.
After about 5 minutes, his parents and a couple other kids came over, he then started to explain the iPad to them in great detail. After two or three minutes of him gushing on, his mom said, “Have you been on this the entire time since we left you?”
“Yeah.”
She looked at me, “Are you waiting to try this?”
“Yeah”
…and she kicked him off and gave him a bit of an earful. Good for her.
While I’d been waiting, I’d noticed that people were actually buying iPads – they weren’t out of stock.
I played around with it and came to my somewhat surprised conclusion. (Which I’ve documented elsewhere) I went and got Irene and the kids and, after a little wait, got them onto an iPad. Moments after Irene said, “I want one.” I checked with the Apple guy who told me they had a “couple left” of each of the models; however, Irene wasn’t quite ready to buy.
We went home, leaving that damned teenager once again reattached to the iPad and giving his family a lecture.
On the way how we thought about it. We considered turning back. Best Buy closed in under 30 minutes. We just had time… but… we didn’t.
We went home to check to see if there were any government employee discounts. There aren’t.
We checked to see of there are any educator discounts. There aren’t.
Amazon hasn’t got them, so there’s no tax-free option.
Basically, if we wanted an iPad, there’s no option save for paying the $499 + tax.
I checked online and realized that Best Buy was closed on Easter. That meant that whatever stock they had at closing time Saturday would still be there at opening time on Monday. I hatched my cunning plan: An early lunch, timed to arrive exactly when Best Buy opened and an iPad would be mine!
Other obstacles got in the way, but ultimately, I found myself pulling into the parking lot of Best Buy, 5 minutes before they opened, fully expecting to walk in, straight to the iPads and buy one before they had a chance to run out.
Apparently, 40 other people had that idea, too, because there were that many people standing at the door waiting for it to open… and so I didn’t get an iPad. Again.
Tuesday:
At lunch, John and I went to the Apple Store at the Biltmore. They have many more iPads on display and, just as at Best Buy the other day, Could see that people were buying and leaving with them. I decided to buy one right then and there. When I finally got the Apple Store employee’s attention (they were very busy) I learned that they didn’t have any 16GB models left, just 32s and 64s. I won’t be too harsh on him, but he indicated first that they got less 16s than the others and that people were realizing that 16 just wasn’t enough. I felt like I was being given a very direct suggestion that I should buy a bigger iPad; however, that’s not in the cards. The 16 is absolutely the most I can possibly afford
The Apple Store guy had no idea of when the next shipment would be in.
Friday: I had read on Thursday that people who had pre-ordered their iPads and didn’t get an April 3 delivery date, began receiving notices that their iPads were winging their way out of China. Figuring that Apple would no doubt also getting more stock at this time, I decided to try again. The kids had a half day at school and so I left work at lunchtime and still had an hour to go before picking up the kids. I stopped in the Apple Store and the same guy was there. I asked again about the 16s and the answer was negative. “Just 30 minutes ago we got a truck load of 32s and 64s, but not 16s. They don’t tell me how many we’re getting, what types or when they’ll arrive.”
Discouraged, but still with about 45 minutes to kill, I started playing with the iPads on display. 5 minutes later a female Apple Store employee came up to me and said, “Excuse me, [Apple Sore guy] (indicating the guy I’d previously spoken to) tells me you’re interested in a 16GB iPad.”
“Yes”, I said.
“I’ve got good news. 3 minutes ago a truck pulled up with a shipment of 16GB iPads.”
…and so I have an iPad, but not before she really put the hard press on me to buy… MobileMe (which would have extended my existing subscription out to about 3 years), AppleCare for the iPad (even if you want an extended warranty, you don’t need to buy it until 1 year has nearly passed), a case and/or docking accessories.
I existed the store 5 minutes later with nothing except an iPad.
I’ll post some thoughts on it tomorrow, but for now, the whole family is really enjoying it: Except when I have to fight to get to use it, that’s already becoming a problem.
I really need to catch up on my writing!
After my initial analysis of my MacBook Pro, I thought I should point out a few things after using it for a few weeks.
In no particular order:
Still… I love it.
“Say, ‘Whee!’” – the Doctor
I’ll skip the usual synopsis/analysis section and cut right to the bone: this was another fine episode of Doctor Who. With only two episodes of Smith’s reign and Moffat’s stewardship, I could hardly be happier with their start.
This episode we get to see Smith in all his gangly, oddly walking Time Lord glory and he really does fit perfectly. I’m convinced now that he’s not aping Troughton and Davison, but that’s he’s settled on a persona that bears resemblances to them without being the copies. It’s perhaps the best example of “same man, different face” that we’ve yet seen in the actors who play the Doctor.
For the first time ever, the Doctor finds himself in a truly unwinnable situation: He has three choices and in all of them innocents will be grievously harmed or killed. Gone is Russell T. Davies “the Doctor is an absolute moral compass” – or perhaps it’s still there, but we realize even with a compass, sometimes life’s decisions are about taking the least of bad situations.
In the previous episode, the only thing that bothered me about the story was the fact that there were so many coma victims in such a small town, in this episode there were several points that bothered me:
All that said, all is forgiven for this story, a truly unique Doctor Who story.
Next week, the Daleks – I can already tell that I don’t like the idea of a phone-line to the TARDIS.
Spring in in the air here in Phoenix, and with it warm, comfortable outside temperatures. We’ve often got the doors open to let in the outside air.
Monday, when I was home taking care of a sick James, it was rather windy, and I kept hearing this noise. It was a very familiar knocking noise and yet at the same time, I couldn’t quite place it. I was certain it was something rattling in the wind.
Today; however, it was dead calm, but the noise was still there.
It was then that I realized what it sounded like: A woodpecker. I’ve never seen, heard or even heard of a woodpecker in Phoenix, but they’re not uncommon up in the mountains.
I went out to the back yard and there in the pecan tree was a little red-headed woodpecker, knocking away at the tree. It also seemed to be paying a lot of attention to a hole in the tree I’ve never noticed before. A nest hole perhaps?
Despite my life-long fascination with extinct dinosaurs, I’ve never cared much for our modern, avian dinosaurs – save for a few of the larger, majestic (and terrifying) birds of prey.
Nonetheless, it was kind of cool to discover something other than those damned pigeons around the house.
Full disclosure, there is no Ivory-Billed Woodpecker in my backyard because they, like non-avian dinosaurs, are extinct.