Barney Miller premiered fifty years ago today, January 23rd, 1975. This is definitely high up on my list of most favorite television series ever.
Here's one of my favorite episode, "Hash". This is the one when most of the detectives get stoned from eating cannabis-laced brownies...
Happy fiftieth Captain Miller and the staff of the 12th Precinct!
Why didn't somebody tell me about this?? It was released three weeks ago!!
Oh alright, I guess I've just been so busy with things that I didn't notice. The past three months or so have been so whacked on my end. I'm sure an awful lot slipped under my radar.
But I'm glad to be seeing it now. Stranger Things has more or less become the only pop cultural franchise that I'm interested in anymore. Star Wars is now such a mess that I finally gave up being a fan. And Doctor Who has gone completely off the rails in the worst way.
Well, there is one final season left of Stranger Things. Feels like an enormous epoch of my life is winding down. This show is going to leave a vacuum and I don't know what is going to fill it.
So here is the teaser for season five, with the titles of the episodes to look forward to. Speculate away!
4 8 15 16 23 42
It was twenty years ago tonight - September 22, 2004 - that arguably the greatest television series of the new millennium premiered.
Lost was an instant sensation and for six seasons its tale of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 gripped the world's consciousness. ABC's hit broke all the rules, subverted expectations, and cooked long-held tropes like so many White Castle hamburgers. Lost was television of the highest order of storytelling. Yes, its story ended without every mystery getting a solid answer... and many maddeningly unresolved. But some things should be left to the imagination and Lost certainly provided viewers with fresh new enigmas seemingly every week to ruminate upon.
I think that Lost wasn't so much about the riddles as it was about the characters. That was the greatest ensemble cast assembled in the modern history of the medium and they brought to life some incredibly deep and multi-layered personas. My most favorite character was John Locke: the crippled "man of faith" who inexplicably regained the ability to walk after Oceanic 815 crashed on the island. There was so much about him that resonated with me. And I also came to have some sympathy for Benjamin Linus, perhaps the most flawed of the show's characters. I like to think that Ben found redemption in the end, and truly repented of his ways. It was as good an end to his arc as there could probably be had.
I'm not going to post about Lost without mentioning my personal favorite theory, something that I've never seen anyone else posit. I think that David, Jack's son from the flash-sideways world, was the child who came about when Jack and Kate made love before taking off on the Ajira flight. Eloise had told the people who came to the Lamp Post that they had to recreate as closely as possible the conditions of the original flight. What she told Kate was that she had to conceive a child so that Kate could be a proxy for Claire, who had been pregnant on the Oceanic 815 flight. Well, David had to come from somewhere. And he even looks like he could be a child of Kate and Jack, too. He was very well cast.
I also think that the Man in Black wasn't Jacob's brother at all. As evidenced by the hieroglypics that Ben found, the Smoke Monster had existed on the island long before Jacob's mother came. The Monster simply assumed the appearance of Jacob's brother. Jacob found his brother's body, it hadn't been transformed at all. Again, just a theory.
Well, I could go on. This show left us with so much that we're still discussing and debating fourteen years after its final episode. That says something about any series's timeless quality. And I doubt that in another twenty years we'll be too exhausted to still be talking about it.
So, let's raise our glasses of Dharma Initiative cola and toast Lost on its twentieth anniversary! Just as amazing today as it was in 2004.
Anyone else feeling like the Eighties are finally over?
We'll miss you Pat. Enjoy your retirement (and your new acting career I'm hearing about).
"War. War never changes."
But that can be forgiven, in light of how epically faithful a live-series adaptation of the Fallout saga is to the source material. It's all here: the vaults, the stimpacks, the Brotherhood of Steel, the retro-futuristic look of pre-war America... Heck in the second episode we even see a live-action brahmin (the two-headed cattle seen in most if not all of the games).
So I've just finished watching the third episode, and it's pretty well established that Lucy (Ella Purnell) from Vault 33 is way out of her element. Actually, just about all of the dwellers in Vault 33 are in over their heads. They are basically touchy-feely types who believe the wasteland and its denizens will be won over by progressive concepts like teaching them Shakespeare and beginner's calculus.
Ahhh yes, the wasteland. It's definitely in keeping with what is depicted in the games. It's that helping of Mad Max-style dystopia colored with 1950s-ish aesthetics and a healthy dash of mutant monsters and trademark Fallout humor. This ruined landscape two hundred-some years after World War III is no place for the weak of heart. But it's absolutely spot-on filled in with trademark elements from Bethesda's games (speaking of which, I need to finish Fallout: New Vegas sometime, but real life keeps popping up every time I pick up from the most recent save point).
Fallout boasts a strong cast. In addition to Purnell there is Aaron Moten as Maximus: an aspirant with the knight-like Brotherhood of Steel. Then there is Walton Goggins as "the Ghoul", who is pretty much like the ghouls you encounter in the games, if one were also decked out like "The Man with No Name" from Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns. Also featured is Kyle MachLachlan, who won acclaim playing Agent Dale Cooper on Twin Peaks as the Overseer of Vault 33. And it would be a grave error on my part if I did not mention Michael Emerson's presence. I became a great fan of his work on Lost and it's a delight to see him again.Little wonder Fallout is so good, when the series is helmed by Jonathan Nolan - who I thought did a magnificent job as showrunner of HBO's Westworld - along with Fallout games head honcho Todd Holland as executive producer. It's a practically perfect endeavor with everyone and everything falling into their proper places. THIS is what a live-action adaptation of a video game is supposed to look like (no, I haven't seen The Last Of Us yet but I'd like to check that out eventually). From the first episode Fallout the streaming series has sucked me in, just as Fallout 3 did when I first played it fifteen years ago (I played the first two games later on).
If there is a fault I find in Fallout the television series, it's the profanity. I can't recall there being that much swearing in the games. There's a modicum of cussin' in the Bethesda works, but not nearly as at times overwhelming as in the Amazon show. Just because this is a series with production value on par with Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead doesn't mean the crew must go all-out crazy with harsh language. But then again, I doubt it's going to be small children who are playing the Fallout games. These are games for a mature audience and I can overlook the show's language, kinda.
Otherwise, consider me a fan, and that's hard to pull off when I've become so jaded about entertainment in general that the only other thing I'm looking forward to is the final season of Stranger Things.
There are five episodes left in Fallout's first season. I'm going to try to watch the rest sometime over the weekend, in between working on other projects. If the following installments are as good as these three are, then I am already anticipating more seasons to come.
"Doctor... I let you go."
~ final words of the Twelfth Doctor
Oh dear Lord. It was so much worse than I was ready for.
I keep hearing Peter Capaldi's last words as The Doctor, now several minutes after watching "The Star Beast": the first of the three hour-long specials "celebrating" the sixtieth anniversary of Doctor Who.
Because that is what I'm feeling now.
This GIF that I made a few years ago, taken from the Mel Brooks film Silent Movie, somehow expresses the disgust and sense of being let down that I'm experiencing at this hour:
I had been a fan of Doctor Who ever since I was six years old, and sneaking in watching it WAY past my bedtime when WFMY in Greensboro aired episodes of it after the 11 o'clock news on Sunday nights. Those were mostly from the Tom Baker era, and I'll never forget the first time I heard that theme by Ron Grainer. Then I discovered that PBS ran Doctor Who at respectable hours on Saturday afternoons, and I got to see those and not have to worry about Dad catching me out of bed.
I was an on-and-off fan of Who throughout childhood and adolescence, and then came the day when a lady from PBS (standing in front of a graphic of the TARDIS) announced that there would be no further broadcasts of Doctor Who on public television.
So began the show's "time in the wilderness", apart from the "Dimensions In Time" 3-D special for Children in Need, when there was no new Who. It seemed the show had finally run its course. But I never lost my appreciation for it.
And then one night in the fall of 1994, I was logged into the bulletin board system run by a friend. His BBS featured FidoNET, which was sort of a USENET (remember that?) connected to bulletin boards all around the world. And there was a group on it called the Doctor Who Echo.
It was like that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where everyone realized they've had similar experiences with the UFOs. It was finding others, out there, who were just as much Doctor Who fans as I was and indeed many who were much more Whovian than I thought possible.
A few months later I got Internet access for the first time. Rec.Arts.SciFi.DoctorWho was one of the first newsgroups I subscribed to. Using the Netscape Navigator browser I found (and bookmarked) the Doctor Who Home Page and discovered reams of text files of not only serious information but also bloopers, a "drinking game", just gobs of humor that had my sides hurting from laughter (literally!).
January 1996. I had just gotten my first apartment. My roomie was off in England as part of Elon's winter term. Days before I was going to get seriously started moving in there threatened to be a fierce winter storm. Mom convinced me to take the bare essentials and some clothing on to the apartment, 45 minutes away. On the way I stopped at the mall in Burlington, looking for some entertainment. I found the Doctor Who 1983 special "The Five Doctors" on VHS. I bought it, got my things into the apartment and watched that tape while eating pizza from Little Caesar's. I felt like I was king of the world, or at least my little corner of it. I watched "The Five Doctors" a few more times while being iced in with nowhere to go. It has become a tradition: every first night I spend in a new home, I've watched "The Five Doctors" while dining on pizza.
Then came the buildup to the premiere of the 1996 Doctor Who television movie, starring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor (regenerating from Sylvester McCoy's previous Doctor). Some were disappointed in the TV movie. I thought it showed great promise and it was a let-down that it gained no further traction.
But true to form, The Doctor refused to die.
I need not go into the return of the Doctor Who series in 2005. Even if you're fairly new to Who you probably know something about how long its "Nu Who" incarnation has been around, beginning with Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor.
Russell T. Davies was the showrunner then. And I thought he pulled off a magnificent job in bringing the show back. Oh sure, there were some fits and starts. There were a few rough edges. And maybe a little "progressiveness", but that never overwhelmed how amazing the new series was. I was willing to overlook those. The first of the new episodes I saw was "Dalek", featuring the return of The Doctor's most classic enemy. And then some weeks later I downloaded (the revived series was strictly on the British side of the pond, not legally available in the States) the two-part story "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances", written by a chap named Steven Moffat. That tale completely blew me away with its awesomeness. And when Moffat brought us "The Girl in the Fireplace" during the following season, David Tennant's first as the Tenth Doctor...
...that one genuinely brought on the tears. I couldn't remember any television story that had so moved me.
I could go on. But I wanted to establish my credentials first. If I haven't driven home the point yet, here it is: I GET Doctor Who. Arguably better than many if not most modern fans can.
When it was announced that after Peter Capaldi's time in the role ended, that The Doctor would regenerate into his/their first female incarnation as Jodie Whittaker in the role, well... I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't cautiously optimistic. I was willing to give her a chance. But such a change was fraught with risk, and I'll say something here that I've said many times in the past few years: there is a dynamic at work throughout the Doctor Who franchise, between The Doctor and his companions, and that should never be "tinkered" with.
But I still was willing to let Whittaker, and new showrunner Chris Chibnall, prove themselves.
Folks, I will readily admit to being one of the Chibnall era's biggest detractors. For the first time it was readily obvious that THE MESSAGE(tm) really was seriously becoming more important in the show than... GASP!... actual character and plot. And then there was the "Timeless Child" notion that completely obliterated most of the canon about The Doctor's very existence. Strangely I don't blame Whittaker herself. She was just playing the role, she had no say in what the show's execs intended for her time as The Doctor. I absolutely believe that in better hands she could have been an amazing Doctor.
But that wasn't to be.
And then it was announced over a year ago that Russell T. Davies was coming back to helm Doctor Who. And again, I found myself cautiously optimistic. Ideally it would be Steven Moffat, who took over the reins following Davies' first tenure, as THE ONE who would restore order to the Whoniverse. But it seems that is not going to ever happen again, leaving Moffat's era - which encompassed Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi's respective Doctors - a brilliant diamond forever shining bright across the annals of the television medium.
"Cautiously optimistic". I really was.
Then came the past few weeks, and Davies' insane changes to much-beloved villain Davros. One fan posted an eloquent defense of the original Davros design on X/Twitter. Davies replied: "Tough". Which was definitely not an act becoming a conscientious and responsible steward of the Doctor Who mythos.
And then the advance word of "The Star Beast" special started filtering down. And even the BBC admitted that the special was being driven by "The Message".
Much like what happened that night on the Doctor Who Echo on FidoNET nearly three decades ago, I began finding other devoted Who fans, who were becoming increasingly rattled by these developments and Davies' attitude. Some serious dissent was brewing across the Intertubes.
It all came to a head yesterday, with the premiere on BBC and on Disney+ (yes, Disney is now partly running Doctor Who, which may explain some things) of "The Star Beast". And X/Twitter's most trending topic for most of the day was "RIP Doctor Who".
I read a lot of those tweets. I made a few of my own also, sharing some thoughts about how liberalism corrupts and destroys everything it touches (it really does). And could it be that liberalism has now brought down Doctor Who?
Well, I made up my mind as I was working throughout most of the day. I had to see "The Star Beast" for myself. And make up my own mind about it. A longtime reader of this blog made it available to me.
I just spent an hour watching "The Star Beast".
People, it's impossible to shine a turd. But it can sure have lots of glitter thrown at it, in the desperate hope that some of it will actually stick. However in the end all you're left with is glittery sh-t.
Words cannot possibly contain or convey how much I absolutely hate this "special". It was so much WORSE than anything I was braced for. So many times I wanted to give up, but noooooo I had to ride it out. Had to be willing to give it a chance to redeem itself.
There is no redemption for "The Star Beast" and it's glaringly evident that there is no redemption for the Doctor Who franchise in Russell T. Davies' grip.
Yes, THE MESSAGE does loom large. Like the atrocious Absorbaloff from the reprehensible "Love & Monsters" episode (don't go looking for that, please), it gobbles up and dissolves into nothing everything it touches. The only people who are apparently crazy about this hour-long chapter are hardcore leftists, the sexually deviant and trans-activists of the kind that lately stalk J.K. Rowling like so many rabid hyenas. Not even the return of David Tennant and Catherine Tate to the saga can raise hopes that the Davies era is going to be anything but "progressive" in your face as long as he's in the big chair.
("Binary gender" is now a superpower. And The Doctor must now take care not to tread wrongly and "mis-gender" anyone. Just two of the atrocities committed during the running time of this... thing.)
I have a theory. I've shared it on X/Twitter a few times. Here it is: Russell T. Davis has become aware that he is mortal. That one day he will shuffle off his mortal coil. As a homosexual man he has no children. He has no posterity, other than his body of work. But that's not enough to satisfy him. Davies is suddenly aware of the ingrained NEED to perpetuate himself. And that's what is driving him most with his return to Doctor Who. Russell T. Davies of 2005 was not like this. THAT Russell T. Davies also had no issue with bringing Davros back in his classic form. But TODAY's Russell T. Davies is now cognizant of the reality that he will DIE someday, and maybe sooner than later. So he is now hell-bent on proliferating his sexual politics and hard-left agenda through Doctor Who and impose that upon generations to come.
Perpetuating himself through his creations, which are only meant to tear apart and destroy.
Clearly, Russel T. Davies has become that which he claims to hate. Davies has become Davros.
I feel like I'm just getting started with how much "The Star Beast" let me down. And apparently it let a lot of other people down also. Broadcast figures from its premiere indicated that only about 5 million or so people tuned in. Definitely not the ratings that "The Day of the Doctor" special ten years ago on the fiftieth anniversary earned.
The next special, "The Wild Blue Yonder", transmits this coming Saturday. Followed by "The Giggle" and then the Christmas special that sees Ncuti Gatwa becoming the Fifteenth Doctor. I have to wonder what these upcoming specials will gain in terms of viewership... if they gain anything substantial at all. I kind of feel sorry for Gatwa. I've seen some of his work and he would make an outstanding Doctor... but then again, Whittaker could have been an outstanding Doctor already, had it not been for The Message(tm) having the priority over everything else.
Okay, that's it. I'm done with Doctor Who. Maybe forever. This show died in that blinding white light at the end of the Twelfth Doctor's regeneration. Nothing since has been up to snuff and it sure looks like nothing yet to come is going to be proper Who either.
Incidentally, I spent Thanksgiving Day afternoon - the sixtieth anniversary of "An Unearthly Child", the very first Doctor Who episode - watching some of my many DVDs of the show's classic era. First was the Fourth Doctor story "The Deadly Assassin" and then there was "The Five Doctors". I celebrated The Doctor and everything good that he has stood for, for decades. I'm very thankful for those DVDs (and I still have that VHS tape of "The Five Doctors").
To me, there is no more Doctor Who now. It began with "An Unearthly Child" in 1963 and it ended with the final Peter Capaldi episode. Everything since has been about nothing but forwarding THE AGENDA. Doctor Who is now in the hands of people who do not now and might never have truly appreciated The Doctor and his universe.
But as Russell T. Davies put it so beautifully: "Tough".
Let us be grateful that we had The Doctor and his companions and their adventures for as long as we did. And for now, there is still physical media of the classic series (and even many of the revived show) that can be purchased and archived away. I recommend that you do that now, before Disney+ becomes the only means of watching the show at least here in America. There is some genuine value in physical DVDs and Blu-rays and even videocassettes.
But as for what Doctor Who has now become?
Maybe there is some value in what the show is turning into. Perhaps people better than I will look at what Doctor Who is morphing toward, and politely tell Davies and his woke minions that "oh yes that's nice!" when secretly they loathe it. Kind of like a grown-up looking at the mad scribblings in crayon of a five-year old, who insists that it's a beautiful work of art. And maybe the drawing will be put on a refrigerator door, before eventually being taken down and relocated to the basement. Where rats and roaches will finally chew up its fading paper.
Let it fade.
The Doctor - the titular hero of the long-running BBC series Doctor Who - has had many, many enemies in his sixty years of saving the universe. Everyone from Cybermen to The Master to the Weeping Angels to... well just about anything you can come up with has been a potential threat.
But there is one foe who is above and beyond the rest: Davros. The insane creator of The Doctor's oldest nemesis, the Daleks.
From his first appearance in the 1975 Tom Baker-era story "Genesis Of The Daleks", Davros has gripped viewers as few Who characters did. Bound to a life-support vehicle, only one usable arm, his natural eyes blinded necessitating a cybernetic replacement... Davros is someone who sought to perpetuate himself through his creations. And he never cared who got in the way. That one mechanical hand of his is stained with the blood of trillions of sentient beings across the span of thousands of years. It could be readily argued that Davros is the greatest villain in fictional history, in terms of people killed and civilizations destroyed.
And now, returning Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davis has gone and ruined Davros in the name of leftist insanity.
Davros returned the other night for a Doctor Who "Children in Need" special. And though it was billed as a comedy sketch, Davies has been most forthcoming in declaring that this is the Davros we are going to be seeing from now on (or at least as long as Davies is in the big chair).
Behold "Davros" on the left, compared to classic original Davros on the right:
Yup. Davros is now just a regular Joe Shmoe, without ANY of the accoutrements that obviously inspired him to create the Daleks in his image.
As for WHY Davies is doing this to such a classic and iconic character, his reasons are... well, ridiculous. From the story at the Radio Times website:
Speaking on new BBC Three companion series Doctor Who Unleashed, Davies said: "We had long conversations about bringing Davros back, because he's a fantastic character, [but] time and society and culture and taste has moved on. And there's a problem with the Davros of old in that he's a wheelchair user, who is evil. And I had problems with that. And a lot of us on the production team had problems with that, of associating disability with evil. And trust me, there's a very long tradition of this."I'm not blaming people in the past at all, but the world changes and when the world changes, Doctor Who has to change as well.
"So we made the choice to bring back Davros without the facial scarring and without the wheelchair – or his support unit, which functions as a wheelchair.
"I say, this is how we see Davros now, this is what he looks like. This is 2023. This is our lens. This is our eye. Things used to be black and white, they're not in black and white anymore, and Davros used to look like that and he looks like this now, and that we are absolutely standing by."
This ranks right up there with how the show fired Colin Baker back in the day. It's even right up there with the reason American network ABC cancelled Police Squad! forty years ago (ostensibly because people actually had to WATCH the show in order to "get" it).
Where does this stop? Will Cybermen now be referred to as "Cyberpeople"?
Hey, I know: Disney is the American distributor of Doctor Who now. Let's go all out and get rid of Darth Vader's trademark breathing, since it's obviously unfair to asthmatics!
I say not for the first time: leftism corrupts and destroys everything that it touches. There is nothing progressive about "progressivism".
Look dammit, that is NOT a "wheelchair". That is a mobile life-support system, that gives Davros a range of movement after he was direly wounded in an attack by the Kaleds' mortal enemies the Thalls. Davros can't live without it. That it gives him lower body mobility is beside the point... or not. After all it did inspire the look of the Daleks.
I honestly cannot believe the BBC is letting Davies eviscerate such a renowned character. It is beyond crazy.
Well, if this is the way they want to go, let 'em. I don't have to watch Doctor Who and neither does anyone else. But the beautiful thing about this series is that there's no real consistency. Perhaps someday a more sane showrunner will bring back Davros as he is most known and feared. Just as I look forward to the "Timeless Child" being retconned out eventually.
Until then, Who has lost me. And I imagine it will have lost a lot of older and more dedicated fans as well.
Dear Mr. Davies,
Greetings good sir! I know this is a very exciting time for you, so I thank you for taking the time (I hope) to read this proposal. Please know that I have been a fan of your helming of Doctor Who since that very first episode with Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor. I am looking forward to where you are taking the series next, especially with the return of The Toymaker and the debut of Ncuti Gatwa as the next Doctor.
However, Mr, Davies, I am somewhat dismayed that you are apparently not turning some attention toward addressing the matter of "the Timeless Child": by far THE most controversial thing that has happened to the franchise in its entire history.
It's an issue I have devoted maybe too much time toward pondering about. How does Doctor Who regain its sense of original mystery again?
So let me cut to the heart meat of the matter, my good fellow:
I have come up with a solution to the problem of the Timeless Child.
It is simple. It is elegant. It makes The Doctor an entity shrouded in mystery once again.
Here's the kicker: it does NOT invalidate or repudiate the work of your predecessor, Chris Chibnall. It actually BUILDS upon that, in a pretty cool way.
I am presently living in South Carolina, in the United States. Currently I am an aide to students with special learning needs. I have also been a mental health worker, a filmmaker, and technical writer among many other professions. I would not want monetary compensation or even any acclaim, if you might permit me to come to the United Kingdom and offer my assistance. All I want is a chance to bring The Doctor back to his/her/their place of enigma.
Okay, there is ONE thing I would ask for, if you happen to have a spare one around. I would like a full-size Dalek. The classic design from the Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker eras. Because that's the style that most sent me hiding behind the sofa when I first discovered Doctor Who as a child in the 1980s. That would be a very nice conversation piece in my living room.
Well, that is my proposal. If you believe this is something you would be interested in, please feel free to contact me at theknightshift@gmail.com and we can discuss moving forward from there.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. And again, I am most eager to see what you have cooked up for Doctor Who's sixtieth anniversary!
Most sincerely yours,
Christopher Knight
Doctor Who needs a hard and fresh return to the franchise that that we know and love, above and away from the mess of the Thirteenth Doctor era (which if we're going to be honest really can't be pinned on Jodie Whittaker, she was just working with some really bad material).
I don't know if that's what is coming in the next few months with the specials commemorating the show's sixtieth anniversary (seems like just yesterday we were celebrating its fiftieth) but the pics and the new trailer that dropped over the weekend have me warefully optimistic.
The last time we saw The Doctor, she (ugh!) had regenerated - clothes and all - into a perfect facscimile of the Tenth Doctor, once again played by David Tennant. However the showrunners seem to insist that Tennant is playing the Fourteenth Doctor. Which means this is really Tennant's fourth or fifth character with the Tenth Doctor's face he's portrayed since 2005 (just work with me 'mkay?).
So going into the sixtieth anniversary specials it will be David Tennant as... Doctor Who-ever... and joining him is none other than Donna Noble, again played by the delightful Catherine Tate! Although one seems to remember that last time we saw The Doctor and Donna together it was made clear that they couldn't see each other again.
Clearly, the BBC is throwing caution to the wind...
Here's the trailer for the specials, which materialized about 48 hours ago:
And at last, the BBC is confirming that Neil Patrick Harris, who had long already been announced as being in the specials, is going to be playing The Toymaker: a villain not seen since the William Hartnell era in 1966.
Is it just me, or does Harris as The Toymaker seem poised to chew up the scenery more than any Who bad guy since Davros?
The big celebration kicks off in November. And I'm very much hoping we get at least a fleeting cameo of Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor.
The announcement already came a year ago, that the Fifteenth Doctor on the British television series Doctor Who is going to be portrayed by Rwandan-Scottish actor Ncuti Gatwa. Now as things begin really ramping up for the show's sixtieth anniversary in November, the BBC is showing its cards a bit.
Here is Gatwa giving us a glimpse of what's to come:
Number Fifteen's attire reminds me a bit of Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor. The way he's got his hand gesturing brings to mind the early photos of the Twelfth Doctor played by Peter Capaldi, or maybe Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor. Gatwa's Doctor looks like he means business, as if he's saying "Okay, fun and games are over, let's get down to brass tacks."
Be mad at me if you will, but I'm very glad the Doctor is a man again. No offense to Jodie Whittaker, but there is a dynamic between the Doctor and his companions and you just don't mess with that. My personal favorites to be the Doctor after Thirteen's regeneration were Idris Elba, and Tilda Swinton playing against gender and portraying a male Doctor. But I think Gatwa will be fine.
Now, if new/previous showrunner Russell T. Davies can just fix that STOOPID "Timeless Child" nonsense...
I should probably preface what you're about to see with something. For the past few months, well...
There's really no other way to put it: I've lost my interest in Star Wars.
I can't finger any one particular reason why. But what Disney has done with the franchise, what Disney has done period, is a major factor in that. I find myself no longer able to support a company that apparently no longer desires me or my hard-earned cash. It's much worse than that even: Disney is now trying to rewrite and redefine history so as to advance an extreme leftist agenda.
How do I in good conscience, as a citizen and as a Christian, find myself able to support that? I can't.
Which makes what I'm about to post seem direly hypocritical. But I think that this once, the good memories can take priority. I mean, I have spent almost two-thirds of my life waiting to see this.
Disney's upcoming Star Wars series Ahsoka dropped a new trailer today, and for a few fleeting seconds in it we get our first look at how Grand Admiral Thrawn appears in live-action. Thrawn first appeared in Timothy Zahn's 1991 novel Heir to the Empire. Thrawn became such a respected character that he was one of the few elements to be adapted from the "Expanded Universe" and into the current Star Wars canon. He has probably become even more popular as a result.
So how does Thrawn come across in our first live-action glimpse of him?
Pretty darn close to what I've always imagined he would look:
That's Lars Mikkelsen in the role. Mikkelsen previously voiced Thrawn in the animated Rebels series. I'd say he seems to be projecting the gravitas and dignity (for a major villain) that the Thrawn of the books has always presented. I could accept this as being Grand Admiral Thrawn, if I ever find that I'm getting my love for the saga back.
Well, like I said, I've waited a very long time for this day to come. And to be honest I had come to believe it would never happen. But it has. It's enough to pique my curiosity, at least.
It was released earlier today. I've watched this trailer for Babylon 5: The Road Home at least five times now... and I am stoked. It looks beautiful. And it seems that they've done an excellent job at casting the voice actors for the characters whose original portrayers have "gone beyond the Rim" over the years.
(I'm hoping that we get at least one look inside Garibaldi's quarters aboard Babylon 5. Just to see if the painting of Daffy Duck is still there.)
Anyhoo... enjoy!
Babylon 5: The Road Home hits digital download, 4K, and Blu-ray on August 15th, 2023.
I was reminded of something earlier today, and I can't believe that this somehow slipped past the radar screen...
Last week, May 1st, was the fortieth anniversary of the premiere of the NBC television miniseries V.
That doesn't seem possible. It's like it was only yesterday that creator Kenneth Johnson unleashed his nightmarish vision of fascism on a global scale. The Visitors came to major cities across the planet, in fifty ships each three miles in diameter. They looked like us. They came from a dying planet and they needed humanity's help. They came in peace.
And it was all a damnable lie. Their intent was to rape the Earth, seizing every precious natural resource. And the fate of mankind? Something truly horrifying. Four decades later and the scene of all those humans in cold storage still sends a shiver up my spine.
It was a grand endeavor. What if Nazism had conquered the planet? V was about that. Every aspect of true-life fascism was portrayed, magnified through the lens of science-fiction. But it was also about hope, and taking a stand and fighting back. More than it frightened us, V inspired us. The film was dedicated to the resistance fighters, wherever they have been found, past present and future.
This franchise deserved better! Johnson's original plan as he presented it to NBC was that after the original miniseries, there would be three or four television movies each season, depicting the Visitors' occupation of Earth in various places. But the executives didn't want that. They wanted a second miniseries and using that to launch a weekly series. They got that, but the follow-ups lost a lot of the spirit of the original. V wasn't something like Star Wars, it was about a much deeper notion. And then around 2009 ABC tried to reboot the franchise, but it failed for various reasons (I thought it was quite an admirable effort though).
It was an awe-some television experience. So many moments from it that no doubt still stick out in the minds of many.
But here is my favorite moment. Not just of the miniseries, but one of my most favorite moments in television, ever. The final scene of Part One of V, the original miniseries. Abraham, the elderly Holocaust survivor and his friend Ruby, find a group of teenagers who are vandalizing Visitor propaganda posters. He stops them.
No, I won't say anything else. Let the scene speak for itself:
And from that moment, humanity has a symbol of resistance.
It's a little dated now, but what do you expect from a television miniseries forty years old? Don't let that stop you from watching it. And you'll probably be like the rest of us were at the time: wondering how the HECK did any major broadcast network get away with all the stuff that they showed in this movie?
You'll see what I mean when you watch it.
I'm feeling some geeky gears in my gray matter starting to rotate like they haven't in a VERY long time.
Babylon 5 - the single greatest television series that the Nineties ever spawned - is coming back as an animated film.
The show's creator J. Michael Straczynski unloaded the news on Twitter earlier this afternoon. More details are coming soon, including the movie's title and release date.
I cannot emphasize enough how stoked I am about this. Babylon 5 was like an extra few years of education on top of what I got in college. The five-season story about that miles-long space station all alone in the night, the "last best hope for peace" in a galaxy rife with plotting and intrigue, shattered the ceiling both as a broadcast series and for what the medium was capable of giving viewers. Had it not been for Babylon 5 paving the way, there may have never been a rebooted Battlestar Galactica, or Lost. Or The Walking Dead for that matter, along with an armful of other shows.
I'm really looking forward to seeing how this goes. One thing that popped into mind: wouldn't it be really sweet if we saw an animated Garibaldi watching Daffy Duck cartoons? That would be soooo meta.
If this show has always been just off your radar screen and you want to "get a feel" for it, I wracked my brain trying to think of a clip from the show to put in this post, just a little iota of what it's about. Someone on Facebook found one and it's perfect. From the third season episode "Passing Through Gethsemane", Brad Dourif as Brother Edward, telling Delenn (the late Mira Furlan) and Lennier (Bill Mumy) about the last night that Christ spent before His death:
Yes, a science-fiction series that is respectful toward the concept of religion. Just one of many such moments that Babylon 5 came to be renowned for.
This would be something that would compel me to get HBO Max, just to watch this. I've always loved this show, its universe and this amazing cast of characters. Ever since first reading about it in Starlog several months before it premiered in the winter of 1993, I've been enchanted by what this series was attempting. And it pulled it off beautifully.
And now, more is coming. Thing I'll celebrate by making some bagna cauda. Hey, it's easier to find than Zima...
...maybe I should give it time to still prove itself?
So I'm a real fan. And I've been looking forward to seeing how it would fare as a Netflix series: arguably the perfect medium for an adaptation.
And now, having seen the first couple of episodes?
It looks right. It's hitting on all the right cues visually. That isn't a problem at all (though at the risk of being labeled a racist I do think that Death should be the pale goth girl that she is in the comic). But something is off and it's making it hard for me to get completely engorged by this series. The first episode is a fine replication of The Sandman's premiere issue, other than introducing the Corinthian WAY too early in the story. But the pacing could have been better. The episode ran a little long and with some editing could have spanned maybe half an hour. There are ten episodes in this first season and I'm wondering if Netflix erred in devoting almost an hour to each one, when perhaps each issue could have thirty minutes of screen time devoted to it.
Speaking of the Corinthian, I don't really care for him being turned into the stereotypical bad guy of the tale. Again he looks perfect, but his execution is so wildly off that it corrupts the story around him. Then again, that is perhaps counterbalanced with touches like Cain and Abel, who are exactly like I imagined they would be from the book.
Apart from the matter of Death (which to be fair, I haven't gotten to see her really in action yet) the casting is strong in this series. Tom Sturridge is as close to a perfect portrayal of Morpheus as we're apt to get, and he brings the right intensity and sense of vengeance to the role. Vivienne Acheampong has won my approval as Lucienne. In fact, other than being gender-flipped from the graphic novel her attitude and speech are pretty much how I envisioned Lucien's. Charles Dance turns in a fine performance as Roderick Burgess, the sorcerer whose dark ritual imprisons Dream for a century.
Yes, all the right ingredients are there. But two episodes in and it's not resonating with me at all.
Or, maybe it really is simply the matter of being unfeasible to adapt The Sandman books. Reading about Morpheus and the spheres he influences is a dense exercise. It requires a fluid mind switching on and off between the worlds of waking and the Dreaming. Gaiman weaves a thick tapestry rich in metaphor. Which, is what the Endless (Dream and his siblings) are: anthropomorphic embodiments of the base concepts of the universe. How does that translate off the page and onto the screen?
I suppose I'll give The Sandman a few more episodes to convince me. But if not, there are the books and I will always treasure them for the company they have provided. Imagination is a beautifully protean thing, and some things don't need to be seen on the screen to be fully appreciated.
But I will say this: Netflix's The Sandman it is an admirable attempt. Maybe others will find it suits them in ways that a book cannot. And that will be fine, too.
On July 1st I was having a severe headache, that had persisted since the night before. I went home early from work and took some medicine and quietly prayed that I would be feeling better soon. Because I did not want to miss volume two of the fourth season of Stranger Things on the day that it had dropped onto Netflix.
I haven't written nearly enough about Stranger Things on this blog. Actually, I don't think I've written about it at all. When this is a series that for the past six years has absolutely arrested me whenever a new season has been released. The first part of this latest season premiered on the same day as Disney+'s Obi-Wan Kenobi and having seen both of them in their entirety now, there is no question as to which is the superior show... and I say that being a hopeless lifelong Star Wars fanatic.
So, about Stranger Things. This show debuted in the summer of 2016, when Tammy (my dog) and I were journeying across America looking for a new home. We were in Albuquerque, New Mexico when I finally decided to see what the big to-do about this show was about. So one morning after taking Tammy out for a walk around the hotel (where she had become a big celebrity, they let her run up and down the hallways to her heart's content) I showered and shaved and put on clean clothes and then pulled out my iPad Pro and curled up on the bed and began watching the first episode, "The Vanishing of Will Byers".
My friends, it is RARE that any television series sucks me hard in from the start. I can probably number them on one hand: Twin Peaks, Lost, maybe a few others. Stranger Things had them all beat, with even fewer episodes. After witnessing the death and destruction going on inside Hawkins Laboratory and the title credits (which I will never fast forward past, not for this show) the episode cuts to the basement of Mike Wheeler, whose friends are engaged in an hours-long Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
That's what did it. That's what hooked and reeled me in.
This is a series about "my kind" of people. I grew up in the Nineteen Eighties also, just as Mike and Will and Lucas and Dustin are in Stranger Things. I "get" them and the world they inhabit. This show has captured and conveyed that perfectly. Stranger Things is a homage, a love letter, a monument to all that made the Eighties so amazing. Ronald Reagan was President of the United States. Vietnam wasn't long ago at all and our country was locked in cold war with Russia. Comic books were mostly read, not adapted into blockbuster movies at the drop of a hat. We listened to Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper and Devo and Eurythmics. On television He-Man was constantly outsmarting Skeletor and Mr. T was shouting "Suckal!" on The A-Team. We quoted from movies like Star Trek II and we speculated about Star Wars Episode One which was probably just three years away. And kids still did things like ride their bikes to their friend's house and hang out for hours after school before the phone rang and it was Mom telling you to come home for dinner.
We were young people who lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation at any time and chose to make the most of the moments we were given. I think that when The Day After aired in the fall of 1983, it drove the point home that much more. It made us cling ever more so to that fleeting sense of childhood. And now, forty years later, I think many of us are still clinging to it. There isn't going to be quite the same reminiscing about the Nineties or the Aughts as there is now about the Reagan years. In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and I think we all knew that the Iron Curtain's days were numbered. It was the sheer weight of the Eighties come smashing against that bulwark of the old ways. If only that same spirit could still prevail against people like Putin who seem determined to restore the Soviet Union to it's former borders. But, I digress...
Back to Stranger Things. I had watched the first two episodes and then came the only interruption that day was when housekeeping came around about eleven. I picked up Tammy and we went and got lunch and went for a quick walk and came back to our room. And I binged the HECK out of the rest of that season. It is VERY seldom that I binge watch anything... but I kept having to see "what happens next?!?" At last we came to the Byers house at Christmas, watching this family that had endured so much over the past month... before shrieking anew at the sight of that thing from the Upside-Down coming out of Will's mouth.
Albuquerque did many things to me, in the five weeks that I was there. Leaving town as a new fan of Stranger Things is one of them. I don't lend my fanship to many things from pop culture. But Stranger Things more than earned it. And when we hit the road again the first season soundtrack was playing loud from my car's stereo. It was as good as anything to listen to as we set out again across the New Mexico desert.
Season two came a little over a year later, and we were in decidedly different environs: living for awhile with friends in South Carolina. It hadn't been the ending of our traipsing across America that I had originally intended. But for the situation, it sufficed and even bore some fruit that I had not imagined. Once again, I binged Stranger Things on my iPad Pro, pausing only to take Tammy out. Season two ended well, but lacked the "bang" that I was expecting. It did have a resolution that I was happy with though, especially Mike and Eleven dancing at the Snow Ball.
Season three... ahhh yes. July of 2019. Months before "the plague" hit and stopped everything in its tracks. Who could have guessed that this would be the last Stranger Things that we would get for another three years? "Not I, said the dog." Speaking of which, by this point Tammy had become WELL trained to use the pee pads I set down for her. So there was very little interruption while binging season three. I started at about eleven and finished with "The Battle of Starcourt" around 8 and by that time was wiped out. What a rush! And not for the first time I thought that the show had perfectly captured the Eighties. We really did use to hang out in shopping malls, ya know. Most of them didn't have Soviets tunneling beneath them though, thankfully.
And that was all until May of this year, when I watched the entire series again, only now taking time to pause every so often and tend to other things. I wanted the show to have room to "percolate" in my mind, instead of assaulting the senses full-blast. By the time season four premiered I was refreshed and ready for the new episodes. I took half a day off from work so that I could get home and started watching the next season... which is something I have not done at all for the Star Wars series on Disney+ and likely never would either. Season four was split into two "volumes" by Netflix, because the last two episodes are so long. After finishing volume one's "The Massacre at Hawkins Lab" I just sat there stunned and dazed. And all I could think of was "how are they going to top THAT??"
Well, the last two episodes of the season came out three days ago. I took a few hours break between them. And it dropped my jaw hard on the floor too many times than could be counted. And then came those final minutes, as Stranger Things theme music began then developed into a full instrumental composition, as our heroes see what's falling around them...
Yowza! Season three had cliffhangers. Season four has everyone dangling from that cliff by their fingernails. It was eight hours before I could fall to sleep. No episode of television since Lost's "Through the Looking Glass" has had that kind of effect on me.
So now we're awaiting the fifth and final season of Stranger Things. I am hoping and praying that there will be a panel for the show at this year's Comic-Con, and that they'll announce production of the new season beginning soon after. But I will trust them to get it right. The Duffer Brothers, the creators of Stranger Things, have done all right so far. They have given us what is perhaps the best written and finest acted television series currently in production. I can wait. Even if it's another two years, by which time I'll be fifty.
Which seems the perfect time to enjoy a series about the years when many of us came of age.
It's the latest film The Batman movie but with Adam West! Check out the Batmobile!
Today is Good Friday: the commemoration of the day that Jesus Christ died at Calvary. It's only fitting, then, that today's installment of "blogging for Lent" should be mindful of that.
Good friend of this blog and all around amazing guy "Lowbridge" found this a little while ago and shared it on another forum. I decided it was well worth passing along to this blog's readers as well. As good a thing as any for the occasion.
Longtime television viewers will recognize Agnes Morehead for her portrayal of Samantha's mother on the 1960s sitcom Bewitched. What I didn't know until just now was that Morehead was a devout Christian. She grew up in a Presbyterian house where her father was a minister. It's been said that Morehead brought her Bible with her to work every day, and would read from it between scenes. It also goes without saying that she was a phenomenal actress.
As part of Oral Roberts's Easter special in 1970, Morehead performed a dramatic reading of the Easter story. Here it is, for your edification:
Gonna be WAY easy to post today! The trailer for Stranger Things season four dropped this morning. I may or may not have watched this a few times at the office today.
Holy smokes! Hard to believe it's been three years since season three. Looks like the wait will be worth it though. Love the use of Journey's "Separate Ways" in this. Just... epic, man.
War is coming indeed. And did you catch Robert Englund's character with the gouged-out eyes? What the heck?!
Stranger Things season four hits Netflix on May 27th.
So, Duke fell to North Carolina last night. I now have no one to cheer for in this tournament. Kansas always seemed too overhyped to me, and they beat Villanova yesterday. Or maybe I'll root for UNC tomorrow night just because they're still from my neck of the woods.
Mike Krzyzewski made a mistake in announcing his retirement well before the season. He should have waited until after the tournament. Instead he made this entire season about himself and his ego. When it should have been about the players and the program in general. He fell victim to hubris, and I really thought more of him.
Even so, let's never forget that he contributed a lot to the game. Mock him all one wants, but the man deserves respect.
Okay, that's everything substantive I have to say today. Currently I'm enduring hay fever and all kinds of exotic antihistamines are floating around inside my biochemistry, working hard to keep the mast cells from unloading their allergy-induced contents. So I'm feeling pretty hopped-up at the moment.
So since it's Sunday, and I haven't posted a Sesame Street sketch in a WAY long time, here is a timeless classic: Bert and Ernie in "Water Dripping"...
