Sunday, August 24, 2014

"You are a broom."


I never know where the faces come from.
Doctor Who, Deep Breath
At long last, the new Doctor Who:  the new series, and the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi.

Unfortunately, they kicked off with another one of those episodes that just didn't seem to make any sense, and as such didn't give the new fellow a lot to work with.  It may be that there was a sort of quiet assumption that the novelty of a new face would make up for that, with the debut of Mr. Capaldi filling in for any shortcomings in the story itself.

The funny thing is that if you ignore the plot, it's actually quite a good episode.*  There's a lot of discussion about the process of regeneration, and what it would actually mean to repeatedly recreate yourself, century after century.  During the now well-established post-regeneration mania, the new Doctor finds himself looking at his new face and wondering as to its origins - and quite validly so.  The human face is very much the result of experience, and as such, the lined visage that he sees in the mirror puzzles him:  as he says, "Who frowned with this face?"

The alien robot/android/cyborg villain, who has apparently been repairing and rebuilding himself for millennia, is well used as a comparative foil for this question during the climax:
 Question:  you take a broom. You replace the handle. And then later you replace the brush.  And you do that over and over again.  Is it still the same broom? Answer: no, of course it isn’t.
You have replaced every piece of yourself, mechanical and organic, time and time again. There’s not a trace of the original you left…you probably can’t even remember where you got that face from.
There is an evocative moment where the Doctor holds a polished silver plate in front of the cyborg to illustrate his point, a plate which also reflects his own face - and the same question.


The obvious subtext here would be that Steven Moffat, who wrote the episode, is laying the groundwork for the new Doctor being exactly that, a new man - not the same broom, in other words.  On the other hand, the episode ends with a poignant moment between the Doctor and Clara, where he desperately tries to convince her that he's the same person if only she would let herself see him as himself.

When you think about it, the same issues apply to Peter Capaldi. He's certainly going to give us a very different interpretation of the Doctor, and my initial impression is that it's going to be quite good, and, indeed, very different, I think he has enormous potential. 

But I also think he's going to need to establish himself in the role - Capaldi's Doctor is likely to be less flamboyant and outgoing than his predecessors, and perhaps a bit edgier.  As he says, "That's good, oooh...oooh... that's good... I'm Scottish... I'm Scottish...I am Scottish...I can complain about things, I can really complain about things now."

Finally, let's discuss the question of Missy, who appears at the end of the episode.  The first episode of each season of Doctor Who always sets up the final episode, and it's quite likely that we will see this enigmatic character again.  But who is she? I would dearly enjoy finding out that Missy is the new Master - if they're not going to give Helen Mirren a shot at the Doctor, it would at least be a step in the right direction to give the part of the Doctor's nemesis to a woman.
 - Sid

* It is a sad comment that there have been many, many, many episodes of the rebooted Doctor Who that fit into exactly that category:  quite good if you ignore the plot.

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Awesome Mix Vol. 1.



I can't stop this feeling
Deep inside of me.
Girl, you just don't realize
What you do to me.
When you hold me
In your arms so tight,
You let me know,
Everything's alright, ah-ahah-ahah...

I'm hooked on a feeling,
I'm high on believing,
That you're in love with me.

The soundtrack for The Guardians of the Galaxy is made up entirely of pop hits from the 70s - the selection of music is based on the single cassette tape that the young Peter Quill has in his Walkman when he's abducted by the alien Ravagers, and it's not so much a soundtrack as a combination plot point and running gag.  The only down side is that after seeing the movie, I've had Blue Swede's Hooked on a Feeling stuck in my head for the last few days.  To be fair, it's actually not that unpleasant, and people tend not to sit beside you on the bus if you're muttering "ooogah chaka, ooogah ooogah" under your breath.
 - Sid

Hooked on a Feeling.



Originally I wasn't planning to see The Guardians of the Galaxy: I sort of felt that I'd filled my quota for comic book movies this summer, they're not the first gen Guardians that I'm familiar with, and even then, to a certain extent the Guardians were B-side heroes in the Marvel universe (no offense).

However, the movie hit with a box office bang, so I succumbed to curiousity, recruited a couple of willing co-workers, and headed off to the Scotiabank Theatre earlier this week to see it in 3-D with full Dolby 7.2 Surround Sound.

Guardians is a lot of fun - it's got a quirky, entertaining script, Chris Pratt is a great casting choice for alien abductee turned outlaw Peter Quill (who desperately wants people to refer to him as Starlord but doesn't have much luck with it), Drax the Destroyer was surprisingly funny, Groot and Rocket were better than I expected, and overall, I felt that it almost lived up to the hype.

However, it's not perfect. The plot is more than a bit dodgy, the romantic relationship between Quill and Gamora, the female assassin played by Zoe Saldana, seemed to come from nowhere, and both Saldana and Karen Gillan, who plays Gamora's sister Nebula, are hugely underutilized, both as actresses and characters.

All that aside, the movie made me feel like a genius:  it appears that in some ways, I accurately predicted the next five years of Marvel Comics movies a full two years ago, when Thanos the mad Titan made his post-credit appearance in The Avengers

After the movie, I tried to explain the significance of Guardians to my two co-workers Glen and Terry over a pint, but ran into a minor problem.

I think that it's fairly clearly established at this point that I'm a geek.* As such, for me, Guardians of the Galaxy was filled with hints, references, foreshadowing and Easter Eggs.  To my educated eye, it's not so much a movie as a huge teaser for Avengers 3 - and yes, I realize that the second Avengers movie isn't even out yet.

Glen and Terry, although admirable people in their own right, completely lack the background for any of that. (Apparently they spent their childhoods enjoying fresh air and sports, that sort of thing.) Because of that, I actually felt a bit cautious in asking what they'd thought about the movie, I wasn't sure how much sense it would have made without some kind of back story. They both cheerfully announced that they'd really enjoyed the movie, but I couldn't help but be aware of how much they were missing.

As an analogy, imagine going to see a movie about D-Day with two people who had never heard of World War II.  D-Day certainly stands on its own as a significant event, filled with drama, excitement, sacrifice, and so forth, and as such would probably be accessible to people who skipped History class in high school.

But think of all of the depth that they'd be missing  - they wouldn't know anything about Hitler, the National Socialist movement, the Holocaust, Neville Chamberlain, Dunkirk, the Battle of the Bulge, Pearl Harbor, or Hiroshima, just for starters. (Not to mention the Cold War and the Iron Curtain.)


Taking that as a comparison, Glen and Terry don't know about the Kree, what the Nova Corps should really look like, Supremor, Captain Mar-vell, Jack Kirby's Celestials, Thanos' romance with Death, the possibility of the Skrull Empire showing up (or the Shi'ar, for that matter), the history of the Infinity Gauntlet (seen briefly in the first Thor movie), the other Infinity Stones (seen all over the place if you know where to look), the sad semi-suicidal life (and death - or not) of Adam Warlock, the Watcher, Eros/Starfox, Moondragon, the Magus, Pip the Troll, Gamora's death (or not), and how Spider-Man saves the galaxy.

Not to mention the identity of Peter Quill's father.

I did my best to explain some of this to Glen, and then asked him if he thought that he would retain any of the information until the third Avengers movie comes out.

"Sid," he replied, "I don't think that I'll ever forget this conversation, but I know that I'm gonna try really, really hard."
 - Sid

*Anyone who is reading this who hasn't figured that out, maybe you should go to the first posting and start reading, I'll wait