New "Flash Gordon" Fizzles

When I first heard the announcement that they were going to do a "Flash Gordon" series I was excited. One of the books I read over and over when I was growing up was one my Dad had owned as a kid - "Flash Gordon On the Planet Mongo" published in 1934. On New Years Eve one of the local TV stations would run a marathon of Flash Gordon serials through the night and I'd stay up with my Dad and watch them. When the 1980's movie with the Queen soundtrack came out of course I had to see it. Yes it was campy, but also didn't stray too far from the source material. It's too bad Sci-Fi Channel decided to "re-imagine" this classic, because when they did they got it all wrong in every possible way.

Flash is a team player, whether it's on the Polo Grounds or Football field. His name might evoke notions of a marathon runner, but it's wrong for his idiom. Yes, Flash is supposed to be the All-American Boy who is good to his mother, but he shouldn't still be LIVING with her.

If they hadn't made a point of TELLING us Dale Arden and Flash had been a couple you'd have thought they were estranged siblings.

Dammit, I like my Ming's Merciless. Oh, and add Megalomaniacal too. Less like Donald Trump and more like Adolph Hitler. Hmm, my theory is that maybe "Ming the Merciless" was this Ming's granddad, but he's building a kinder, gentler Mongo with at least some mercy. Emperor Ming is supposed to be badass, he's the original "Grim Shady" Palpatine tried to emulate! Chaotica in the "Captain Proton" episodes of Voyager was able to get the character right in style if not in name. Why was this beyond the grasp of Sci-Fi's writers?

Dr. Zarkov is supposed to be a brilliant, if misunderstood, scientific genius. NOT the neurotic lab assistant of Flash's missing Dad (and don't even get me started on the tired old "Find His Father" plot device).

No Zeppelinesque rocket ships? Jeez, dangle them on obvious strings we can see in the shot, stick sparklers in their tailpipe - it's Flash F---ing Gordon, we'd be okay with it! Nope, they decide to go with dimensional gateways, but don't even make them look as nice as the one's from "Sliders," and Quinn Mallory made his with a remote control he modded in his basement! Just how low budget was this stinker, anyway?

And, oh yes, let's shoot yet another sci-fi show in the forests of Canada, pretend it's the United States, and then use bad special effects to connect it to a strange alien world or dimension. Don't you think "Stargate SG-1" beat that dead horse enough in 10 years on the air? I actually miss the days when sci-fi shows did all their location shoots in front of that same angled rock in the California desert. And, you know, if you HAVE to shoot in Canada, the X-Files did the New Mexico scenes of the "Anasazi" episodes in a quarry up there - couldn't THAT desolate backdrop be Mongo? Please?

Let's see, what else? Pacing of the story: slow to stalled. Writing: formulaic and generally terrible. Acting: wooden, with no two actors ever demonstrating on-screen chemistry. Oh, and lastly if Sci-Fi is going to insist on using the Queen theme song in all the ads, the least they could do is actually use it in the show, though Freddie Mercury would probably roll over in his grave and then rise seeking vengeance and succulent brains if they did. But who doesn't want a Zombie Mercury belting out an undead rendition of "Princes of the Universe?" It would certainly be light years more entertaining than this dreck.

Well, if I'm looking for a silver lining, I guess my Friday nights are still free, since there's clearly nothing to rush home and watch.

The End of Doctor Who

If you're going to do a three-part season finale it should be the strongest, bestest story of the whole season. It isn't. "Blink" remains the one really shiny episodes of this series. So what do we find out? Well, who the other of the "Last of the Time Lords" is (though it's not a big surprise, frankly), it's the Master. We possibly find out who the "Face of Bo" is/was/will be - unless it's just a coinicidence - it's Capt. Jack. We also FINALLY get to see Gallifrey (albeit in a flashback sequence).

Extra stupid stuff? The "Darth Vader funeral pyre" ending for the Master, but wait! Let's toss in the "Ming the Merciless pick the ring out of the ashes" ending as well! Clearly the ring holds a Timelord consciousness the same as the pocket watch did, and the woman's hand with the firely red fingernails is obviously the Master's wife - or will be the Master the next time we see him (her). It's not like the Master hasn't stolen a body or two before, right? But, bar none, the WORST part is the whole "Dobby Doctor" effect. Shame on you RTD for subjecting us to that!

The set-up for the next Christmas special is questionable as well. I sincerely hope this show gets back on track in Series 4 because I was - if you hadn't guessed - generally disappointed in with this years' offering.

DON'T BLINK! BLINK AND YOU'RE DEAD!

Ok, I'm just going to say it. This is the best episode I've seen so far in Series Three. The irony is that the Doctor is in very little of the episode (titled "Blink"), and most of the time he is - we only see him on a television screen. Because of the holiday specials they do each year, contractually it means they have to do one regular season episode that is a bit "light" on the Doctor and his companion, and I'm guessing that this must be that episode. Nonetheless, it was very well done! It is loosely based on a short story that appeared in the 2006 Doctor Who Annual, and having already read that story I can tell you this version is lightyears and away superior to the inspiration piece. Alright then, so here's the premise: Quantum creatures who feed on the "potential" life energy of beings, but if they are looked upon they "cease to exist" appearing only as stone statues. They're very lonely creatures too, because they can never look upon one another either. But if they aren't being observed, then they exist, and THAT is when they can get you! They "kill you nicely" (as the Doctor puts it) by sending you randomly back in time to live out your life in the past. Then they "feed" on the potential energy of the days you *should* have lived, but never got to live. They're hiding out at some condemned mansion, where everyone who goes there disappears - including the Doctor and Martha who end up sent back to 1969 while the TARDIS remains in 2007. There's some good temporal paradox/self-fulfilling stuff in the episode, and the way the statue/creatures are done is definitely spooky, and the epilogue may leave you never trusting a statue again. It's really too bad this season didn't seem to get it's sea-legs until episode TEN.

Bloody Human

This was a mid-season two-parter, with Part I being titled "Human Nature" and Part II titled "Family of Blood." The premise is that the Doctor and Martha are being chased by some aliens known as "The Family" who have a fairly limited lifespan, that is unless they can feed off the Doctor's Timelord energy. Despite their "mayfly-like" lifespans, they can apparently track the Doctor anywhere in time and space - so he and Martha need to hide somewhere and wait out the aliens' lifespans (which is only a couple months or so). However, the Doctor's biology is too unique and would allow them to easily find him no matter where he goes - so the Doctor uses a contraption he "never thought he'd have to use" to re-write his own biology to that of a normal human being. He stores his Timelord consciousness in a device that looks like a normal pocket watch. Then he and Martha hide out in 1914 Great Britain - with the Doctor playing school teacher, and Martha as a maid (having to endure the racism of the era as well). Problems arise because the Doctor doesn't remember who he is, falls in love with the school nurse, and Martha fears she's losing him. She's also pissed off that he's fallen in love with someone other than her. The Family does track them down, however, because the watch with the Doctor's conscience is stolen by a school boy who opens it. He's kinda psychic anyway, apparently, and can "hear" the Doctor speaking to him from the watch. The Family each steal the bodies of some locals, animate an army of scarecrows, and go about killing people until the Doctor accepts that he is not human, downloads his true self from the watch, and tricks The Family consequently blowing up their cloaked space ship. But not before the Doctor gets a glimpse of the life he might have had as a human - with a wife, kids, grandchildren, and a death in old age. YAWN! The Doctor deserves better than an average, boring, early 20th Century life! Thankfully he's never relegated to that mundane existence. The Family, however, realize that when the Doctor ran from them he wasn't doing so because he feared them. "He was being compassionate." Because the Doctor gives the members of the Family what they wanted - IMMORTALITY - just not how they wanted it: trapped in mirrors, eternally falling into the event horizon of a black hole, perpetual (but apparently conscious) stasis as a scarecrow - you know, that sort of thing. All in all not a terrible story, and it did revisit the Doctor's claim that he has little mercy left for such evil-doers.

Caution: "42" May Cause A Burning Sensation

This episode is evidence that my fears are being confirmed. I said before the start of Series 3 how I was concerned RTD was spreading himself too thinly over too many Doctor Who-related projects, and the likely outcome was they'd ALL suffer. I'm sorry, but this season just can't seem to get it's legs. When you title an episode of a BBC show "42" you should at least have a passing reference to the late, great Douglas Adams' "Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe." Nope, the number in this case refers to a "real time" episode where they have 42 minutes to save their butts before the cargo frieghter spaceship they're on crashes into a star. While that may sound like an exciting set-up for a good show, this episode has its problems for sure. First of all it is WAY too similar to last season's spectacularly done "Impossible Planet/Satan Pit" two-parter, but is nowhere near as good. It's not only that this one doesn't have the time to do decent character development, they don't even bother to try. When the "possessed" guys start killing off the crew there's really no reason the audience should care whether any (or all) of them are killed off. As you might recall in last season's "firey" episode it was the Ood who got possessed by the entity. This time it was just a couple of space-faring idiot humans. Possessed by what, you ask? Well, the star they're falling into of course! Why didn't I see it before? OBVIOUSLY the star is really a living, sentient being. Jeez, think the writers were watching re-runs of "Andromeda" when they came up with that? Too bad for them "Andromeda" did the concept better (with Avatars). Saying "Andromeda" did something better is, well, um, that's not good. Then the Doctor gets possessed by the star shortly after realizing it's alive - that leads to a particular line the truly rubbed me the wrong way. The Doctor says he's scared. The Doctor isn't supposed to be afraid, he's the frickin' DOCTOR. Well, I'll just hope that this season will get better, but it's pretty clear to me that the quality of the show isn't up to the same level it was for Series One or Two.

Lazarus Pit

Hmm. Not sure what to say about the Doctor Who episode titled "The Lazarus Experiment." I know during the Christmas concert special David Tennant made a reference to "Dr. Lazarus" and his experiment, but of course the episode hadn't aired yet so nobody knew what he was talking about.

This episode left me kind of flat. It is clearly setting up something with the whole "this information comes from Harold Saxon himself" regarding who the Doctor really is - and it's pretty bloody obvious that Torchwood is involved. Okay, for a low budget BBC show the monster wasn't half bad, if you (as you usually have to) discount the whole issue of the creature's MASS - especially when bundling itself into a human size body again.

But I'm growing a bit tired of these sorts of episodes - with the whole "Oh let's visit the family of the Doctor's companion" and going back to Earth YET AGAIN, and of course we only get to see Cardiff (though sometimes it stands in for London), but I remember when the Doctor actually WENT places. Yes, most of those planets looked curiously like a quarry, but if you think about it most planets probably DO. At any rate, it feels like a bit of a "filler" or "set-up" episode, where RTD was really thinking about some other story down the line. Well, maybe he should consider just skipping over these lame scripts and go for the GOOD story?

My verdict? I hope the "Lazarus Experiment" isn't resurrected anytime soon.

So You Say You Want An Evolution?

This entry is going to be about both "Daleks In Manhattan" and "Evolution of the Daleks" since they're actually a single story (continuing the new Doctor Who series practice of not simply calling two-parters "Part I" and "Part II" - though I don't know why they don't do that).

"Daleks In Manhattan" reveals to us where the "Cult of Skaro" disappeared to when they executed an emergency temporal jump after the Dalek-Cyberman war. Poor little Daleks, stranded in New York City during the Great Depression. Somehow (which isn't explained) they take over the Empire State Building construction project. Not only are they modifying the building plans for some nefarious purpose (do Daleks have any other kind of purpose?), they're kidnapping transients from the Hoovervilles and experimenting on them. Dumb ones are crossed with pigs and turned into oinking slaves. Smart ones apparently get a different treatment - the Daleks are trying to modify the genetic structure and resurrect their almost dead species! Though WHY they are trying to do this is beyond me, assuming the Cult of Skaro were aware of Davros' attempts to do something similar. By the end of the episode the Dalek Sek has transgenetically merged with a human to become a hybrid - though, again, I have to wonder how he missed that whole business with the "Human Factor" that the Doctor introduced to Daleks ages ago.

"Evolution of the Daleks" picks up on Sek's plan to merge humans and Daleks. Apparently the leader of the Cult of Skaro is quite an admirer of humanity's ability to survive - while lamenting the "purity" of the Daleks having been their own undoing. Too bad for Sek that the other members of the Cult don't share his "vision" for the future evolution of the Daleks. Somehow (again this is not explained) these FOUR last Daleks have kidnapped and wiped the minds of literally THOUSANDS of human beings. Granted, with the mass migrations of the Great Depression it's likely mass disappearances might go unnoticed, but HOW did they do this, exactly? Plus, Sek says they have other such repositories just like the one under the Empire State Building. Regardless, these people are effectively already dead as human beings - their minds are wiped with no way to put them back. That's probably the ONLY reason the Doctor agrees to actually HELP Sek with his plan to use them for the creation of a hybrid Dalek-Human race, which the Doctor sort of agrees to transplant to somewhere else since Earth can't support two sentient species (so the Doctor says). The problem, though, is the other members of the Cult of Skaro aren't on board with this plan. They don't want touchy-feely Daleks that can dance, and love, and sing. They want human bodies with minds that think like Daleks (you know the drill: obey! exterminate! obey!). When the Doctor realizes the plan to send the Daleks in a kinder, gentler direction is doomed he knows he has to intercept the Gamma Radiation burst from a solar flare from powering the Dalek's transgenic process. He doesn't get the collectors all removed in time and has to take the brunt of the blast - though for a Timelord that's not a big deal. He's absorbed the energy of the time stream before, what's a little gamma radiation? By doing so, though, he introduces just a hint of Gallifreyan traits into the hybrids, enough to give them free will and question the Cult of Skaro's orders. A shoot-out between two of the Cult and the hybrids takes care of those Daleks, but the remaining one triggers a self-destruct signal on the hybrids just before he makes another "emergency temporal jump" to escape.

The supporting characters - the showgirl "Tullulla," her part-piggyfied boyfriend "Laslo," and a couple of Hoovervillians don't add that much to the story, and frankly had the Daleks killed them all it wouldn't have affected the story that much. I didn't think this story really had enough "meat" to be a two-parter, and probably would have been better served as a one-hour episode since they didn't bother to do much in the way of character development anyway (not like the "Planet Hell" story last season, which was excellent!). Compressing it would have also improved the pacing and made it a bit more exciting. I'm guessing, though, the Doctor is going to run into that Dalek again - most likely in the far flung future.