doctor who

Happy Cuckoo Day

According to my desk calendar, today was traditionally Cuckoo Day in Britain:

In Marsden, West Yorkshire, residents still honor the “Welsh ambassador,” as the cuckoo was known, since its migratory route begins in Wales.

No word on what the celebrations entail. Me, I spent the day mostly just hanging around the house.

I did some much needed cleaning and listened to several of John Cleese’s commentaries on the Fawlty Towers DVDs.

I mailed a few more issues of Kaleidotrope, and learned that a story from issue #6 had been nominated for an award.

I quite liked this week’s episode of Doctor Who, even if it was mostly just a mash-up of two of Steven Moffat’s earlier episodes (“Blink” and “Silence in the Library”/”Forest of the Dead”) with some clever bits added on here and there. I can hardly blame him for revisiting the Weeping Angels, which remain genuinely scary, and I’m quite looking forward to the continuation next week.

And then this evening, I watched The Limey, which I think I enjoyed more as a series of expertly composed shots than as an engaging story.

And that was my Cuckoo Day.

Monday various

  • I’m not afraid of clowns — sometimes I think I’m maybe in the minority on this — but how can an evil clown who stalks children possibly be a good idea for a birthday present? [via]

  • Doctor Who regeneration was ‘modelled on LSD trips’ [via]

  • Meanwhile, I think I like Stephen Moffat’s definition of the show:

    It’s about a man who can travel in time. It’s a television show set at every point in history at every place in the universe. It’s not bound by logic or genre.

    How could that not be fun?

  • Don’t you forget about me. A.O. Scott on The Breakfast Club.
  • And finally, David Simon on Treme [via]:

    Well, Pablo Picasso famously said that art is the lie that shows us the truth. Such might be the case of a celebrated artist claiming more for himself and his work than he ought, or perhaps, this Picasso fella was on to something.

    By referencing what is real, or historical, a fictional narrative can speak in a powerful, full-throated way to the problems and issues of our time. And a wholly imagined tale, set amid the intricate and accurate details of a real place and time, can resonate with readers in profound ways. In short, drama is its own argument.

These go to 11

“You know when grown-ups tell you everything’s going to be fine and you think they’re probably lying to make you feel better?”
“Yes…?”
“Everything’s going to be fine.”

Yesterday, I watched the first episode of the new season of Doctor Who. It’s an episode that introduces a whole lot of new elements — a new Doctor (Matt Smith), a new companion (Karen Gillan), and a new showrunner (Stephen Moffat), just for starters — but I think it’s also an episode that’s immediately accessible to anyone who’s never seen the show before, which is probably not something you could say about the last few episodes under Russell T. Davies’ aegis. I thoroughly enjoyed the episode, and whatever worries I might have had going into it — and I’ll admit I had a couple — were squashed by just how delightful the whole thing turned out to be. From the slightly different look of the show and the madcap humor of the script, to the chemistry between the two leads and the winning performances from both, there was a lot to like, and the preview of things to come had me very excited.

So a few observations. Only mild spoilers follow, although there might be more in any of the links:

  • I’m not sure I’m crazy about the changes they made to the theme music, even if there is something of a history of fiddling with it between incarnations of the Doctor. But, at the same time, I couldn’t help but think: well yes, absolutely, make this thing wholly your own, Mr. Moffat. If that means toying with the music, I think I’m okay with that. Certainly the heart of the score (which has still got to be one of the best television themes ever recorded) is still there.

  • One thing I hope they don’t revisit, however, is that click-click-click tracking shot back through whatever the Doctor has recently seen, as if he’s a supercomputer and he’s slowing down or zooming in on the footage that computer has recorded. There were better (and simpler) ways to introduce that necessary eureka moment, and the effect just did not work at all.

  • Caitlin Blackwood is really quite good as ten-year-old Amelia Pond. Apparently she and Karen Gillan are cousins (hence the resemblance), though they met for the first time on the set. Blackwood has fewer scenes than her older counterpart, but she hits every note of childhood wonder and fear just right.

  • For a show whose central element is a time machine, Doctor Who has precious few real time travel stories — that is, stories that play with causation and paradox, rather than just land the TARDIS in ancient Rome or Victorian England or wherever. Moffat may be one of the few Doctor Who writers who actually play with this element of the show, makes it the central element of his stories. He has done in all of his episodes so far. That he seems to be bringing back both the Weeping Angels and River Song in this new series suggests that this kind of chronological peculiarity will be a running theme. Rarely is the gulf between the Doctor’s “present” and that of his companions more keenly felt than in Moffat’s stories.

  • I think I like the new TARDIS interior. It’s a little more cluttered and makeshift, in a good way, but not so different as to be unrecognizable from the previous version. And there were hints — “When I was a kid, you said there was a swimming pool and a library, and the swimming pool was in the library.” — that we may see more than that one room. (Or at least that the characters will.)

  • I think the best description I’ve seen so far of Matt Smith’s winning performance was this one via Twitter: “The Doctor Is Tigger.”

  • Dear lord, fish sticks and custard?

I think the real test of the new series will be future episodes, those not written by Moffat, and those with quieter moments. But this was a very strong start, a completely engaging hour (plus) of television, and I like the direction it seems to be headed.

Tuesday various