We’re holding off on the podcast and I’m holding off my review of this story until next week’s episode, Cold Blood has aired, but honestly, it’s driving me to distraction not at least giving some random thoughts that the program has brought up.
So this illustration is just me, putting some ideas up from this season on a whiteboard. See if they draw you to the same conclusion they do me:
The Silurians, a classic Doctor Who “monster” have returned to our screens in Chris Chibnall’s new story The Hungry Earth. Sadly, the story has not done anything, so far, to correct an unfortunately horrid series of errors placing them in geologic time. In fact, by adding one more piece, he’s compounded the error yet again.
For the sake of this post, I’m going to call them “Silurians” but as you’ll see, as things stand now, we’re no closer to giving them a correct name as we were when they first appeared 40 years ago.
Consider: These reptilian creatures were first dubbed “Silurians” in the original series story, “Doctor Who and the Silurians.” This is clearly a misnomer. The Silurian Period spanned from 430 million years ago (mya) to 408 mya. By the end of the Silurian period, land-dwelling reptiles didn’t exist yet. A gross misnomer.
It was also pointed out that the so-called Silurians went into hibernation when a small planetoid threatened the Earth. The planetoid instead went into orbit and became the moon. Although not known that the time of the writing of that story, the moon is the result of collision with the primordial Earth, over 4 billions years ago. One this is for sure, the moon has orbited Earth for as long as life has been present.
Later, the Silurians cousins turned up in the story, The Sea Devils. The Doctor helpfully pointed out that the Silurians should have been called The Eocenes.
Problem: The Eocene Epoch spans from 57.8 mya to 35.6 mya. That’s over 7 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs. We know that the Silurians co-habitated the earth with dinosaurs which must put them into the late Triassic, the Jurrasic or the Cretaceous periods roughly 220 mya to 65 mya. Most likely they must have come from the end of that time as they have a pet Tyrannosaur, which only dates back about 68 mya.
Next problem: Even the original Silurians recognized apes, which didn’t evolve until just after the Eocene, in the Oligocene.
You’d think it couldn’t be any worse and then Hungry Earth comes along and not only does the Doctor call them Silurians and Eocenes, but he also refers to them as Homo Reptilia, and then suggest they’re from 300 mya – which is in the Carboniferious Period!
While the Carboniferous did have amphibians, the major reptilian lines didn’t really get going until the next period, the Permian.
Finally, I don’t know where he pulled the name Homo Reptilia from, but in biological classifications, you don’t just slap “homo” in front of a name if the creature is vaguely anthropomorphic. For it to be Homo Reptilia, these creatures would have to be our very close, mammalian relatives.
One could almost think Chibnall threw this stuff in just to push my buttons. Maybe he’ll fix it all better next week.
One thing in the original story’s favor. Although it was clearly intended and stated to have been the moon, time has given us an out. When the first Silurian story came out, nobody knew about the asteroid that struck the Earth at the end of the Cretaceous, now widely thought to have been the final straw in the extinction of the dinosaurs. It would be easy to retrofit the original explanation and say that it was that asteroid instead of the moon that the Silurians hid from.
But that just adds more fuel to the argument that the Silurians really should be called The Cretaceans.
Follow-up June 2, 2010:
There was no magical explanation in the final episode, Cold Blood and they even re-enforced the wandering moon problem, too. I guess I really was giving them too much credit.
I happened to be reading one of the blogs I normally peruse at lunch today and I noticed they were celebrating their fifth anniversary.
Honestly, it have never even occurred to me to have “anniversaries” for a blog.
In any case, that got me looking to see how old my blog was. And the answer is: Five years this coming July 1.
Should I have a party?
Episode 004 – Doctor Who: Amy’s Choice
We’ve put out the latest episode of the Fusion Patrol Podcast. This week we discuss Amy’s Choice.
Posted using ShareThis
Summary
The Doctor decides that Rory needs to go on a date with Amy and so he picks him up at his stag night and whisks the two off to Venice in 1580. They encounter a mysterious Countess who runs a school for pale, slightly creepy girls who hate the sunlight. They are, of course, not really vampires but alien crayfish refugees intent on sinking venice and repopulating their race.
Analysis
No matter how hard I try, I just could not care less about this episode. I don’t actively hate it (like Love and Monsters – go on, read my review of that, at least I had some emotions about it) but I am completely and utterly apathetic about it. It killed the better part of an hour and little more.
…and… that’s… about… it.
Oh, surely I can come up with something to bitch about.
This reminds me a lot of Toby Whithouse’s other Doctor Who script, School Reunion, which was mostly enjoyable only for the return of Sarah Jane Smith and not for the imaginative story-telling. He’s got a thing for vampires and faux-vampires, though. Next thing you know, he’ll probably be writing a series about them…
I’m sick of the low-level perception filter gimmick. Let’s get back to aliens that either look human or look like guys in rubber suits.
The Doctor is completely trying to be Jerry Lewis in this episode. I hate Jerry Lewis.
Ben and I discuss this story on Episode 3 of the Fusion Patrol Podcast.
You can listen to it here
We’ve heading into uncharted territory now. Historically, I’ve reviewed most new Doctor Who episodes right here on the blog, but now that we’re doing the Fusion Patrol Podcast, I’ve been letting it slip.
The fact is, we’re not really doing reviews at the podcast. I’ve likened to a book club discussion, although, not having attended a book club, how would I know? Basically, we’re just having a discussion about what we think about the episode – so, maybe it is a review. In any case, I’ll try to synthesize some of that down here as my “review.”
Summary
In Time of Angels, the Doctor is re-united with River Song, the archaeologist from the Doctor’s future, first introduced in Silence in the Library. River has cleverly arranged for the Doctor to answer her call and come to her assistance, where she is helping a crack military squad of clerics to neutralize a Weeping Angel: a bizarre quantum-locked alien species that can only move when they’re not being observed. The starliner Byzantium was carrying the angel, but it crashed on a planet, releasing the angel.
As the clerics attempt to work their way through catacombs towards the wrecked ship, Amy is unwittingly infected by one of the angels. The clerics are being killed off one-by-one and only too late does the Doctor realize that all the statues in the catacombs are angels, and they are being brought back to life by the energy from the wrecked starliner. Surrounded, and trapped in a cave just meters below the wrecked ship, things look very bleak indeed.
In Flesh and Stone, the Doctor manages to get the survivors aboard the ship, but the angels are aboard, too. As they make their way through an artificial forest inside the ship, the mysterious crack from Amy’s bedroom wall puts in an appearance, threatening to swallow everything.
Amy must keep her eyes shut to stay alive, and she is left in the care of the cleric, but one-by-one, they are swallowed by the crack and cease to have ever existed. Amy must pretend to be able to see, to fool the angels into leaving her alone, and navigate blindly through the forest to reach the Doctor and River.
Can the Doctor stop the angels and close the crack which threatens to devour the entire universe?
Analysis
From my point of view, this two-parter was an exemplary episode of Doctor Who. While it’s still fresh in my mind, I’d almost say the best episode since the series returned in 2005.
In pacing, it is unlike any new series episode to date. Even though it maintains suspense from end to end, it is slower than most new series episodes. Midpoint during each 45 minute episode, comes an almost perfect “cliffhanger” point – as if this story was written to be four, 22 minute episodes ala the classic series. I much prefer this pacing and really wish Steven Moffat would convert all the stories into two-parters. That said, the resolution to the problem of both the angels and the crack did present itself rather quickly and conveniently right at the end and wasn’t really any of the Doctor’s doing. In effect, his cleverness just kept them alive long enough for them to get lucky. That was probably the most dissatisfying part of the whole story to me.
We (the audience and the Doctor) are meeting River Song for only the second time, but from her timeline, she’s met the Doctor many times before, and knows about his future. Last time, we learned that she was someone very, very important to the Doctor in his future and that he trusted her with enough knowing his real name. This time, which is much earlier in her timeline, we learn that she is a murderer and is being held in prison for that crime. She has only been released so that she can help the expedition, “control” the Doctor and try to earn herself a pardon.
During the first episode, it’s not revealed that she’s a prisoner, but it is revealed that the Doctor might not help her if he knew “…who and what [she is]…” At that point, I began to suspect that a beautiful piece of plot contrivance on the Grand Moff’s part would be to have had River die in the first episode that the Doctor meets (which she did) and for the Doctor to die the first time River meets him. That idea was bolstered in my mind when she stated that she had “pictures of all his incarnations” which is only possible if she’s in a timeline after the Doctor is dead. That she was his killer also fit with the “who and what” comment, in that what she is is his murderer. Logical to assume that he’d not want to help her under those conditions.
I thought I was being particularly clever reasoning that out in the first episode, but then they started beating it over our heads in the second episode. Revealing that she was in prison for murder, they she’d murdered a great man, a hero to many. She herself even tells the Doctor, when confronted, that she killed the greatest man she’s ever known.
In slippery Grand Moff style, though, the crack in time has put the idea in the Doctor’s head that time can be “unwritten” and he seems oddly comforted by that idea. Perhaps he thinks he can unwrite River’s crime, or, on a bigger scale, perhaps he can unwrite the Time War, the rise of Rassilon and the destruction of Gallifrey.
On the other hand, if he tries something that big, perhaps he causes the crack himself?
I would like to point out that, while I don’t really give a toss about season-spanning story arcs, I am pleased that this seasons story arc at least appears to be playing out meaningfully during the season, rather than just being a series of catchphrases badly interjected into the scripts with no bearing on the stories. The Bad Wolf syndrome has a been a great, dead albatross hanging around the nexk of the past four series, and I hope it’s gone forever.
Amy, in this episode, is both playful, brilliant and somewhat useless in equal measures. The later is not really her fault, as she’s blind, about to die, all alone in a forest full of angels and terrified out of her wits. Who wouldn’t be useless under those conditions?
All-in-all, one of the best episodes for a long, long time.
No review of this episode would be complete without discussing the final scene, set in Amy’s bedroom, on the night before her wedding (also the night she left with the Doctor.) In no uncertain terms, Amy, having just been terrified for her life, tries to get a leg over on the Doctor.
Prudish I might be, but the tone and content of the scene just felt wrong to me. It didn’t really have a place in a program aimed (partially) at such a young audience, but this is a criticism I’ve had ever since the series returned in 2005. This was just the single most overt expression of it yet.
While I didn’t like it, it was logical. It’s the logical extension (at least in the TV world) of Amy’s lifelong obsession with the Doctor, her fears about marriage and her very near brush with death. It was a accurate portrayal of humanity.
What I did appreciate, though, was that the Doctor clearly felt the same way: This is a totally inappropriate Doctor/Companion interaction, and he puts a stop to it. My hope is that this is the Grand Moff telling us that, “…we’ve pushed the issue to it’s logical conclusion and there’ll no more of that going on in the TARDIS while I’m at the helm.”
I’ve got no real to make a blog post this morning, I just feel like I’ve been neglecting the blog lately.
Ben and I have put out three episodes of the Fusion Patrol Podcast and we’ve got over a hundred subscribers, which boggles my mind. Pretty good considering we’re just rambling on about Doctor Who.
I suspect that the statistics don’t account for unsubscriptions, but that could just be my pessimism in action.
Recording via Skype is both remarkably simple (w/extra software) and incredibly frustrating, as there’s no obvious way to “balance” the various inputs. We’ve been swapping microphones and I think much of the problem is in the microphone input. If I could get two identical mike/headsets, it might work.. That wouldn’t address the possibility of bringing in a guest host in the future.
After the current series of Doctor Who, we’ll be moving on to the classic series, Sapphire and Steel. It’s a real weird one.
Last week, Ben and I put together our first podcast.
I’ve decided to revive Fusion Patrol in a slightly different format. Originally, Fusion Patrol (made for public access television) was intended to be a community affairs type program for the science fiction community. It was supposed to be news and events and a showcase for local talent. As these things happen, it evolved quickly into more of a science fiction comedy skit program. Such is life.
The new Fusion Patrol Podcast isn’t any of that. It about TV and Movies (science fiction, mostly, of course). I’ve always enjoyed watching a program and then sitting around with similarly inclined people and picking it apart discussing its merits and shortcomings. In that respect, I rather like the recent fad of book clubs, I just want to make this into a different media form.
We’re picking the low-haning fruit for the next 8 weeks ago and we’re watching and reviewing the new episodes of Doctor Who as their air, but after that, we’ll be launching into old classics like Space: 1999, UFO, The Star Lost and The Prisoner.
The podcast is now available in iTunes, or you can find it at podcast.fusionpatrol.com. You can also interact with us on twitter. We’re @fusionpatrol.