Greatest Hits

So I hate the new theme song. Let's just get that out of the way, first. The negativity. Because I am a geek and therefore on some level cannot be happy unless I have something to grouse about. I hate the new theme song. Beyond that, when "Silence in the Library" came out back in 08, and Steven Moffat was announced to be Dr Who's new show-runner, some fans worried that he'd rather run out of ideas. The squareness gun, the 51st-century setting, the "Everybody Lives" moment. (So far no one has died in a Moffat story save from old age, still, unless you count River and company, which the message of "Forest of the Dead" seems to philosophically contradict. Ie: Everybody Lives, Even When They Don't.) And "The Eleventh Hour" certainly keeps up this tradition of running through previous Greatest Hits of The Doctor, especially those from Moffat's stories. Amy's story is much like poor Reinette's in "The Girl in the Fireplace;" the aliens-talking-through-anything-with-speakers is the same as "The Doctor Dances;" and the central conflict of the episode--an alien prisoner loose on Earth being pursued by some pretty draconian aliens--is pretty much the exact storyline of Russel Davies' season-3 opener, "Smith and Jones."

But who the hell cares about plot? This is Doctor Who! There are monsters every week; that's not important. What's important is how our hero and his companion react to those monsters. Much more importantly, this is a new Doctor story, and there's only one question: How'd he do?



I'll admit I was put off by his youth. When the announcement was made, when the first publicity photos hit the air, I was a bit miffed. He's younger than I am, for God's sake. I am older than the Doctor, now. That's just not right. Not right at all.

However, I'm pleased to inform that my petty first impressions were entirely unfounded. Smith knocks it out of the park. And the script gives him ample opportunity to do so. There are a few lines which sound as though they could have been written for Tennant, but Smith does the one thing, the most crucial thing in this role: he makes it his own.

Favorite line: "Do you know when adults tell you everything's going to be fine and you're pretty sure they're lying?"
"Yeah."
"Everything's going to be fine."

Just the reading of that line is fantastic. Smith takes to the role with energy and authority and absolute commitment. And he moves, the way he moves, all awkward and gangly, in direct contrast to Tennant's bounding about the place and Eccleston's stalking swagger. (Which was awesome, don't get me wrong. Awesome.)

Bit of trivia: This is the third time the Doctor has stolen his clothes from a hospital.

I quite like the new companion, Amy. With "Rose" in 2005 we got reintroduced to the Doctor through his companion's eyes, and it happens the same here, only with a slightly different, fractured-fairy-tale spin. He becomes an imaginary friend, a story she tells herself then forgets was ever real, until he comes back. This is the kind of thing Steven Moffat has been doing extremely well in his Doctor Who stories these past five years. I'm entirely confident that the next five years will be utterly brilliant. I can't wait.

Don't Let Them Take Babs, Neither

Not only do there continue to be little whispers of rumors of a US Torchwood remake (and the almost inevitably straightened-out Captain Jack that would follow) but another rumor rumbles and bubbles and gurgles and does other nasty things, that of a Barbarella remake.

This is a terrible idea, for the following reason: Americans would make it.

When Barbarella premiered in 1968 it was a French production (albeit with an American actress) based on a French comic. And not anything against American movies in general, but let's just go through the plot of 1968's 'Barbarella,' shall we?

Barbarella gets the call to go to Tau Ceti and stop evil scientist Durand-Durand. She rather crash lands, runs afoul of some evil children, gets rescued by this hairy dude, sleeps with the hairy dude, goes on her way, meets an angel, bangs the angel in to being able to fly again, gets in to some trouble in the City of Night, hooks up with the resistance, saves her angel, defeats Durand-Durand's orgasmerator and the evil one-horned cyclops chick whose name I can't recall and books out of the City of Night with her angel Pygar and the aforementioned cyclops lady.

Let me tell you how this would work in the United States in 2012, or whenever. Barbarella (now played by Megan Fox or some other Real-Doll) crash lands on Tau Ceti, where she's rescued by Sam Worthington or some other hunky bottomless pit of charisma from whence there is no escape, they banter "sexily," she stays hung up on him the whole film despite some second-act Lipstick Lesbianism, they blow the living SHIT out of the City of Night, and Worthington conquers her in some soft-focus missionary that cuts out with a bad pun before the movie ends.

Shoot me.

Take the American TV landscape, for instance. Tell me if I'm wrong, but with the exception of 'Sex and the City' and other ostensible "by girls, for girls" TV--and especially in the case of genre TV, something usually fronted by guys--if you're a Lady Protagonist you're bound to spend the entire series shacked up with pretty much one guy while the Highlander two channels over is busy banging chicks from here to 16th-century Scotland. The Ghost Whisperer, that chick from Underworld, that Medium lady, the girls of 'Charmed' (one of whom, Rose McGowan, was rumored for the part when she was dating Robert Rodriguez) they all have some constant male companion of greater or equal ability in the Getting Shit Done Dep't, or they're like Sydney from Alias: one lover dies early on and the other is this slow burn for half the gawdang series.

In the original film, Babs is free, self-assured, and capable of doing her thing without using sex as manipulative tool or following some dude around doe-eyed because one time he looked at her funny. A character like this, in full possession of her sexual superpowers would like as not be a villain in any major US production. So, please, Hollywood. Make 'Transformers 5' instead.

Addendum: Because it amuses me, here is the entirely NSFW Orgasmerator scene:

Seven Days

If I had a tumblr, this is what it'd look like:

And then it hit me

If St. Patrick's Day is essentially a celebration of the broadest, most negative of stereotypes about the Irish, suppose we expand on this? For example:

St. Patrick is also the Patron Saint of Nigeria, so next March 17th, try and commit as much Internet fraud as possible.

May 3rd. Take May 3rd off. It's the feast day of St. James the Lesser, patron saint of Paraguay. Nobody gives a crap about Paraguay.

May 30th is the Feast Day of St. Joan, the Patron Saint of France. Let's all commit adultery and surrender to somebody.

June 5th is St. Boniface, of Germany. Get yourself really organized, exterminate some innocents, and annex Czechoslovakia.

June 22 is the feast day for St. Nicetas of Romania. Give your children away.

Doubting Thomas is the Patron Saint of Pakistan. His feast day is July 3rd, so you have two months to get really good at cricket and then blow yourself up.

Saint Rose of Lima's Feast Day is the 23rd of August. She's the Patron Saint of the Philippines, so you have until then to learn "My Way" and then kill a bunch of people.

October 4th is St. Francis of Assisi, Patron of Italy. Go out and steal something.

November 30th is St. Andrew's Day. Andrew the Apostle is the Patron Saint of Russia, so drink vodka until you're silly, embrace political corruption and try to get involved with the meanest gang you possibly can.

December 3rd: St. Francis Xavier. Japan. Two words: Tentacle. Porn.

December 4: Iran. St. Mathuas. Death to America. You know what to do.

December 12th is the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patron Saint of Mexico. Stop working.

By the time the new year rolls around you'll be ready for St. Ansgar, patron saint of Sweden, and you'll finally have something to do with all those Allen wrenches.

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

There are many things which fill me with anger. Other drivers. John Boehner. Things that make no sense. John Boehner. The Texas Board of Education. The Itawamba School Board. Drunk people on a Wednesday afternoon. John Boehner. But there's one thing that sticks most in my craw, today.

Mad Men Barbie.

Now, normally I'd be content to dismiss this as yet another marketing scheme, like, say, Mad Men Transformers, My Little Mad Pony Men, or Lego. But this is beyond the pale.



Barbie Joan.

Mattel: This:



Does not equal this:



Not here. Not anywhere. The only way in which these two could possibly be confused is by inhuman tentacled alien explorers from the Andromeda Galaxy who, without frame of reference, might confuse the two for being in the same genus.

There are a perishing few unapologetically curvy actresses in the state of Hollywood, and the sight of one being reduced to an impossible caricature just FILLS ME WITH RAGE. I want to kill them with fire.

Hagiography II: Stigmatic Boogaloo

Once again it is St. Patrick's Day and despite my move from downtown Ann Arbor to downtown Ypsilanti, my (admittedly beautiful) afternoon was smudged a bit by random bouts of emerald-clad drunken revelers. So, in lieu of buying a three-piece orange suit and pissing off the people to whom this holiday actually matters, I'll act out by pointing out more saints than the Patron of Delirium Tremens:

For heaven's sake, how did I miss him last year? Today is the Feastday of St. Joseph of Arimathea, so we should all be drinking our watered-down green piss out of clay cups, because if you've seen 'The Last Crusade,' you know what his deal was. HOLY GRAIL, people. Holy Grail.

Paul of Cyprus was martyred for not being an iconoclast and Jan Sarkander was canonized by none other than JP2 for being a Catholic with the wrong zip code at the start of the Thirty Years War.

And if you missed celebrating today, raise a glass tomorrow to St. Cyril of Jerusalem (not to be confused with that son of a bitch Cyril of Alexandria) who fed the poor in Jerusalem and hung fast with the Athanasians rather than the Arians during the whole Nicea business.

Gay Panic

Rumors persist that Torchwood, the BBC's "for adults" Doctor Who spinoff starring the omnisexually fabulous Captain Jack Harkness may be making the trip across the pond, like so many successful British shows, to a series in the United States. And like so many UK/US remixes, including the DOA travesty that was 1996's FOX 'Doctor Who' TV movie, this fact is troubling. Take a look at this comparison between Steven Moffat's wonderful early-aught's sitcom 'Coupling' and its US version.



It's called acting. Google it. And while you're there, check out the televisual abortion that was the US version of 'Red Dwarf.' Worst. Adaptation. Ever.

It's not that Torchwood is a phenomenal show, either, and occasionally the sun shines and the wind is in the right direction and we get something like 'The Office' (hell, 'All in the Family' is a remake of a British show). What concerns me more is Captain Jack.



Captain Jack Harkness sauntered on to the scene in 2005, and by the time he got his own show a year later, had emerged as really the gayest action hero ever. Tell me, America, because I'm dying to learn. Is there anyone else? With the exception of Ianto Jones, Jack's lover in the second and abbreviated third seasons of Torchwood, alternative sexualities don't fare very well in actioners. Sure, you can be a butch lesbian Vasquez-esque action hero if you're a gal, but if you're a guy and you enjoy anything other than the love of a good woman (not that there's anything wrong with that) you're reduced to mincing ineffectuality. The only exception I can possibly think of is from 2008's 'Death Race,' in which it's slyly hinted that Tyrese Gibson's Machine Gun Joe is, possibly, gay as hell.

Would a US version of the show smooth Jack out for NASCAR Dads? Is America ready for a bisexual male action character? Adam Lambert, openly gay American Idol contestant raised the collective hackles of America when he smooched his dancing partner in the finale for 'So You Think You Can Dance.' Angry letters were written. Call-in shows were called in to. "My kids watch this crap," they say, though we've been getting girl-on-girl love at prime time hours for at least a decade. It's totally fine if Olivia Wilde makes out with some lady (or ladies) in a given episode of 'House,' but if Omar Epps were to do it? (Admittedly, it might finally make Foreman interesting.)

My money is on "you betcha." Should Torchwood emerge in the United States with the same male lead it had in Britain, my presumption is that Harnkess' proclivities won't, to say nothing of a relationship between two men that doesn't paint itself in a super-broad, 'Will & Grace' sized brush.

If you ask me (and you haven't) at root of all this is the fact that female sexuality is not taken seriously by the media at large. Perhaps not by the culture. Olivia Wilde's makeout scene in House is harmless because lady-to-lady sexuality is harmless, unthreatening, and, let's face it, kind of awesome. But male sexuality, now that is serious business; and male homosexuality, if it's used in an action-TV show context at all is likely to be employed as threatening, prison-set Soap of Damocles. This is a shame.

Here's hoping they prove me wrong.