See you at Cleveland Concoction

We'll be a Cleveland Concoction this coming week... Will you be there?

 

My talented hubby AJ Matthews and I will be talking about writing, publishing, editing and, of course, science fiction at Cleveland Concoction at the lovely Airport Sheraton. We hope to see all our friends and make a lot of new friends over the weekend, so please, if you're in the area, come on down.

I know I haven't updated my blogs much lately, but The Bernie Blog editing and helping out with the campaign has taken a lot of my energy. I'm hoping by summer things will settle down a bit. One thing I've been amiss about is talking about our upcoming fiction release, the first in my husband's and my young adult science fiction BloodDark series coming in August from Desert Breeze Publishing. The first title is Olivia's Escape.

Retconning the Doctor (on New Doctor Who)

 Retconning the Doctor

by Cynthianna

***Spoiler Alert!***

"Am I supposed to understand anything you're saying?" -- Clara in the Matrix on Gallifrey

Take all the cool and interesting things that a multitude of writers have created for Doctor Who since its inception--the Time Lords, Gallifrey, the TARDIS, time travel, the Matrix, the cloister bells, those odd cardinal-like robes and funky head/shoulder gear the bigwigs wear--toss into a big pot, forget all about series canon, and stir. Upturn pot and pour out onto the page. Ta-da! You have the season finale, Hell Bent.

Of course, since this is Moffat's Who script you have to add in his creations--Clara and Ashildr (Me)--and plenty of creepy bits of his Blinking Angels and a Dalek stuck in a haunted-house-like data collection device known as the Matrix. (Google the Tom Baker episode The Deadly Assassin to see how different the original Matrix on Gallifrey is from this new incarnation. Yeah, it's that different!) There are some funny bits tossed in as well, such as Time Lords now regenerate without much of a hangover, changing gender/age/race simultaneously. Tack on a relatively satisfactory ending after a lot of head scratching and feet dragging.  Ta-da!

This time it's the Doctor who gets the mind wipe and not the companion (see Donna Noble) so he can move on. The undead Clara gets to have some "girlfriend time" with Ashildr in their own fifties diner-shaped TARDIS with a pure-white classic interior. How either of these young ladies know how to pilot a TARDIS isn't explained. Neither is the previous "rule" given that only a Time Lord could manage a TARDIS because of their psychic link. 

Is it good to violate the TV series canon? Nah, who cares! Nobody will notice.

Even for new Whovians who haven't a clue that Leela lives somewhere on Gallifrey, this "word salad" of a script seems to be missing something vital: emotional connection. Even with a script jumping all over the place like a hyperactive kid on a Christmas candy rush, you'd think it would be able to settle down long enough for the characters to connect with their audience. But therein lies its weakness: the emotions are telegraphed for you. 

You don't have to think or feel for yourself when you're told pretty much what is going to happen up front, similar to what happened in an earlier episode this season. (See my review for Before the Flood.) You know that Clara is going to "live" again, and the Doctor is going to forget all about her since we start out in a scene at the diner where this is made painfully obvious. I suspect the current show runner feels he has to spell everything out because he believes Doctor Who's viewers have IQs to match their shoe sizes, and we all have tiny feet.

I think my husband, a long time Whovian, said it best: "The show has gone from good scripts and wobbly sets to good sets and wobbly scripts."

All the lovely photography, location shoots, costuming, special effects, musical score, etc., do not a strong story make. (Just ask George Lucas.) Not even a classic character like the Doctor can withstand all the retconning that's happened to him in the Moffat era and come out for the better. He's been diminished somehow, made into a permanent fool, a pale shadow of the strong action character he used to be. 

Peter Capaldi reminds me of Pierce Brosnan when he finally got the part of James Bond after many years. Pierce made a great Bond, but unfortunately he got stuck with the weak scripts of that period and left early. If only the great writer Robert Holmes was around to give Peter's Doctor the shot in the arm he so badly needs after this season. A great actor like Peter Capaldi deserves the best!

We have the Christmas special with River Song to look forward to in a couple of weeks, and it appears to be a comical tale. That's good. After all the forced drama and tears of the Clara years, it'll be nice to see the Doctor relax and enjoy himself a bit with a mad romp. Fingers crossed!

What do you think? Please leave your comments below, and check out my reviews of earlier episodes of this season of Doctor Who:

Heaven Sent
Face the Raven  
Sleep No More
The Zygon Inversion (or Inversion of the Zygons)
The Zygon Invasion

The Woman Who Lived

The Girl Who Died    
Before the Flood

Under the Lake

The Witch's Familiar

The Magician's Apprentice

Classic Who on Retro TV

Inconsistencies in Tone (in New Doctor Who)

A great actor in need of a better script.

Inconsistencies in Tone (in New Doctor Who)

by Cynthianna

***Spoiler Alert!***


Face the Raven is presented as a "swan song" for the character of Clara Oswald, without the pay-off of being one. There is a genuinely interesting mystery happening at the first and it sucks the Doctor and us in immediately. Rigsy (a nice young man from last year's strongly written episode Flatline) is now grown up and a daddy to an adorable baby girl. Unfortunately, he's missing an entire day from his memory and discovers a macabre tattoo that acts like a bomb countdown on the back of his neck. He, of course, contacts the Doctor for help. 

After all, that's what characters do on Doctor Who--they look to the Doctor for solutions to their problems. Right?

The Doctor, Clara and Rigsy trace Rigsy's last known whereabouts before his amnesia kicked in and discover all isn't as it appears. The  "alien refugee camp" hidden in plain sight in the middle of London is a very cool setting, and the rag-tag lot of aliens who dwell in its Tudor-like maze of shops are all visualized nicely. Once again, the Doctor encounters the immortal Viking girl Ashildr (Madame Me) and finds she's been doing the dirty work for some unknown villains. The script has a creepy Edgar Allen Poe feel to it up to this point, and it comes complete with ravens that punish capital offenders by stealing their lives away. (Quoth the raven: Nevermore!)

The acting is good, the costuming inventive. The horror set-up seems to be working well--but then everything goes off the rails with a seemingly tacked on "death scene." It just doesn't fit the tone of the rest of the story. In classic Doctor Who, the Doctor solves the mystery and saves the day and rights wrongs, but in this tale he just steps back and allows the "Impossible Girl" Clara to die because she's foolishly traded places with Rigsy and taken his "killer tattoo" as her own. 
 

What's a stasis chamber for?

What about sticking countdown Clara into the stasis chamber standing which held the apparently dead Janus woman who Rigsy was accused of murdering? What about hopping into the TARDIS and going back in time to stop Clara from acting foolishly or to put her into another stasis-type situation to stop the clock? What about implanting an immortality chip into Clara, the chip Doctor gave to Ashildr to prevent her from dying earlier this season? There are no good explanations for the Doctor's passivity in the situation given other than we're suppose to see Clara die.

As I recall, the Doctor saw Clara as an old woman in the future in the 2014 Christmas special, but she's not going to live this long now because...? In the 50th Anniversary special year, Clara was shown to have lived throughout the Doctor's twelve (thirteen) lives, being there since the day he stole the TARDIS. She seems immortal as Ashildr. She's been a  girl in the future (turned into a Dalek), and she's been a Victorian-era nanny (who also died). But now we the viewers are to take it that Clara is finally dead and gone because they needed to write Jenna Coleman out of the series. That's the only explanation that works really.

The inconsistencies in tone in the new Who series are troublesome. At least the fifth Doctor's companion Adric was written out in a very noble way--he blew up when the spaceship crashed into Earth, saving the lives of others, and there was no logical sci-fi way to bring Adric back after the ship crashed. But Clara Oswald--love her or leave her--has been given a "rebirth" several times in the Moffat era. We're suppose to think she's used up all her nine lives now? 

Nope, doesn't make sense really. So, I suspect we'll see Clara again soon in some other incarnation. It would make the most sense in a fantasy universe, after all, one where heroes have held the power over of life and death on numerous occasions. Or we won't see her again. She's finally as dead as her late boyfriend Danny is, who may or may not be dead, either, if he's a Cyberman. 

Confused? I know I am! Inconsistent plot points abound in Moffat's Doctor Who. Why didn't the script editor check the "series bible" to make sure they all added up?

Let's forget we're all intelligent for a moment, shall we?

The teen-angst, soap opera tone of Clara's drawn-out death scene brings the entire episode down and ruined the first part of it for me. I like science fiction/fantasy adventure because the heroes usually can change the laws of time, physics and life/death itself so the viewers can enjoy a satisfying ending. Sure, the "logic" is made up at times (since we've yet to discover time travelers or travel faster than the speed of light), but at least it's consistent within its own fantasy universe rules. And usually the Doctor's companions have left the TARDIS alive and on their own terms--for instance, Barbara and Ian, Jo Grant, Romana, and Martha Jones.

If the character of the Doctor has the knowledge of time travel and advanced science, then of course he can save Clara by sticking her in a stasis chamber conveniently located in the same room she's standing in when she's "dying." He's not an idiot, is he? But once again, in Face the Raven inconsistencies strike. Clara is no longer the "Impossible Girl" and the Doctor is not quite as clever as one would expect him to be in the situation.

I see why my British husband has stopped watching the new series altogether. He started watching the show when the first Doctor, William Hartnell, was on the air. The charm of the sci-fi/fantasy adventure has been bled away and replaced with dreary inconsistencies of a daytime drama. What could have been an interesting mystery story full of fascinating alien creatures languishes in the end with a downer demise of a controversial character who was never quite one thing or the other. The hero has become yet another soap opera character battered in the seas of angst, unable to engage his brain and come up with a solution when a challenges arises before the next commercial break.

It all leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Oh, well, perhaps when we hear the news the series is being moved to a daytime slot (next to the other soap operas) it won't hit us quite so hard.

What do you think? Please leave your comments below. And check out my reviews of earlier episodes of this season of Doctor Who:

Sleep No More
The Zygon Invasion

The Woman Who Lived

The Girl Who Died    
Before the Flood

Under the Lake

The Witch's Familiar

The Magician's Apprentice

Classic Who on Retro TV

Resurrecting a Classic Who Monster (on New Doctor Who)

Resurrecting a Classic Monster (on New Doctor Who)

by Cynthianna

***Spoiler Alert!***

You gotta love those suckers! I’ve been a big Zygon fan since the early days, so I had great expectations for The Zygon Invasion. Fortunately, some of those expectations were delivered.
The Zygons have not gone through a “make-over” for the hundredth time like the Cybermen—and for this I’m glad. How can you improve upon a ruddy, sucker-studded, walking-squid-like humanoid creature which can act like a chameleon and become any person you know and trust? You can’t really, can you?  They are Doctor Who monster perfection at its finest.

But you can change their back story a bit, and for this I’m not quite as pleased. The intrepid Osgood in her Classic Who accessories is dead—she was sucked out of an airplane at 30,000 feet. We weren’t very happy about that bit of  wanton cruelty in last season’s episode, and apparently the fans got very vocal and protested her treatment to the BBC. Lo and behold, Osgood’s alive! Or is she? Zygons in classic Who could only change themselves to look like a living human, so is this Osgood the Doctor meets the real thing? She won’t say, but she hints that Zygons aren’t limited by keeping their originals alive to copy anymore, and they are all hybrids now. Hmm, if you take away their Achilles’ heel, you sort of take away the best way the Doctor can conquer them. Perhaps not such a good plotting choice in the dramatic sense, but we’ll see in part two.

The locales this time out are a breath of fresh (desert) air: a fictional ex-Soviet central Asian republic and Truth-or-Consequences, New Mexico? Well, if you lived in a dryer part of the world (like I have), you’d probably want to get out and invade the planet eventually, too. So, good marks for settings outside of London, but bad marks for sending the Brigadier’s daughter out on her own. Uh, it’s called “back up." We both couldn’t visualize the Brig ever going anywhere far away from UNIT headquarters without at least his two right hand people—Sergeant Benton and Captain Yates—to watch his back. But Ms. Lethbridge-Stewart doesn’t seem to have much training in tactics, so she goes off to New Mexico alone where, of course, she’s going to be captured by the Zygons. Doh! With all these good women, and all the main UNIT positions are now filled with females, you'd think she could have had picked the cream of the crop to come along with her? (How progressive the U.N. has become! Or are all these actresses cast as intelligent, authority figures to make up for the less-than-feminist characters Moffat has been accused of writing in previous episodes?)

The idea that the Zygons numbered twenty million (whew!) and were allowed to stay on Earth after their last run-in with humanity seems a bit far-fetched as well. Twenty million? Uh, if countries in Europe are currently having conniptions over thousands of refugees pouring across their borders, then how do you think twenty million aliens would be handled and kept quiet throughout the world? Not very well! This logic gap is bigger than the Grand Canyon (to stay with the desert analogies) and needs filling in the second part.

Clara acts particularly acerbic in this episode, and it is revealed at the close why her behavior has been “off." One wonders if this hasn’t been the reason why she’s seemed disconnected from her emotions in earlier episodes, or if this was just tossed in to explain her actions in this particular episode. Either way, a countdown seems to have started for her character. Is her final departure nigh?

Peter Capaldi’s performance is spot on again with his Tom Baker-like Doctor. He’s mischievous yet involved, cautious yet not afraid to take action. The way the story opens, we’re not sure what his relationship with Clara is since she’s not there—she’s not a “Sarah Jane” who lives in the TARDIS between adventures. He’s more of a David Tennant-loner type of Doctor who comes and goes more than stays all the time with his companion. Possibly this is the reason behind his dark character? But why take the airplane when you have a TARDIS, Doctor? Surely you remembered what happened on board to Osgood last time?

Over all, The Zygon Invasion is an enjoyable adventure with a few niggling plot points that don’t take away from its overall entertainment value. We can't wait to see what those sucker-critters get up to next week.

What do you think? Please leave your comments below. And check out my reviews of earlier episodes of this season of Doctor Who:

The Woman Who Lived

The Girl Who Died  
Before the Flood

Under the Lake

The Witch's Familiar

The Magician's Apprentice

Classic Who on Retro TV

The Story That Gives (More on New Doctor Who)

The Story That Gives (More on New Doctor Who)  

by Cynthianna

***Spoiler Alert!***

                                                                  

At last! Finally, fans are treated to a story this season which actually dares to explore the complexity of character within a science fiction format. Well done screenplay author Catherine Tregenna and director Ed Bazalgette! 

With the set-up story to The Woman Who Lived being a bit on the uneven side, our hopes for the sequel showing what became of the young Viking girl, Ashildr, weren’t all that great. However, we were pleasantly surprised to find a tale about the meaning of immortality and how tedious life must be for a human being forced to live one day at a time for over 800 years while everyone and everything around her fades away. 

While the Doctor represents a long-lived (but probably not immortal) character who is able to bounce about space and time at will, “Me” (as Ashildr renames herself) is forced to live one day at a time and limited by primitive technology to staying put in medieval times and then finally in Cromwell’s England of the 1650s when she encounters the Doctor again. Is it any wonder she’s taken to being a highwayman for the cheap thrills to lighten her otherwise dreary existence?

But the story doesn’t stop simply there at Me’s superficial existence as a robber—no, it actually treats the viewers as thinking individuals and gives us more. Much more. The Doctor scans her journals of 800 years and learns just how much the Viking woman has suffered as she’s loved and lost and loved and lost over and over again. We understand how painful it is for her to lose her children to the plague, as she is able to survive it while her family about her dies a horrible death. This is what good science fiction is—it’s about showing character and suffering, wonder and hope. It’s not just about piling on the special effects or the monster costumes or dumping sometimes puerile, sometimes nasty non sequiturs into the script just for laughs. Science fiction is at its best when it’s used to demonstrate what it means to be human, even when the characters aren’t quite “human” themselves.

There are a few weaknesses in the production, but the strength of the acting and story itself more than offset them, as was often the case in the classic series. After all, how many fire-breathing “lions” have you ever seen? (We wondered why the alien couldn’t have been a fire-breathing dragon-like humanoid, instead of a Beauty and the Beast clone.) How can a petite woman sound like a baritone highwayman without access to more advanced technology to alter her voice? And, if Ashildr/Me has an alien chip that could have made at least one of her lovers or her children immortal, why hasn’t she used it before now? (Is it because she sees immortality as a curse but can't bring herself to destroy herself?) Stronger reasoning here would have been appreciated and possibly given us some more insight into the immortal woman’s character and motivations. 

Still, overall, the costuming and sets are well done and give the viewer a great feel for mid-17th century England. The acting by Peter Capaldi and Maisie Williams is superb. We never doubt Me’s inner torment for a second or the Doctor’s growing concern that perhaps he’s done the wrong thing by helping this young woman live as an immortal. In fact, she makes it obvious later that “friends” can sometime be more dangerous than enemies. 

As a “Clara light” episode, The Woman Who Lived gives the audience some hope that perhaps better things are yet to come for Capaldi’s Doctor, that perhaps we won’t have to wait 800 years for another decent episode in which he can shine.

What do you think? Please leave your comments below. And check out my reviews of earlier episodes of this season of Doctor Who:

The Girl Who Died  
Before the Flood

Under the Lake

The Witch's Familiar

The Magician's Apprentice

Classic Who on Retro TV

The Logic Gaps of (New) Doctor Who

The Logic Gaps of (New) Doctor Who 

by Cynthianna 

***Spoiler Alert! You might want to watch the show first.***

I apologize if this is a bit late, but we’re in between two sci-fi cons and life keeps getting in the way. We hope to see you this weekend at Conclave in Dearborn, Michigan. 

After seeing this week’s episode, Under the Lake, I am in two minds about it. First off, the special effects and sets are superb. When the Doctor and Clara walk out of the TARDIS and into the underwater base it looked like the real deal and had that “lived-in” look. Very nicely done! Secondly, the viewer has to check his/her brain in at the door when trying to explain the plot to another person because the logic gaps in the story are bigger than a sinkhole after a flood. 

Since I live with a British person, I usually go to him for explanation about the setting. He informs me that the town in Scotland isn’t on a lake but lies along the North Sea, so the title seems a bit misleading. Even if it’s one hundred years into the future and climate change has raised the ocean levels, this town in Scotland probably isn’t going under he assures me since Scotland is actually rising up as the southern part of Great Britain tilts down and will receive the worse of the sea inundation. So, are they in “fresh water” or “salt water” in this story? Confusing. 

Another confusing story detail—why would they be drilling for oil in Scotland a century from now? Sure, it could be used for plastics and the like, but wouldn’t they still be pumping the petroleum from the North Sea platforms and using the sideways drilling techniques the fracking industry espouses? And why would you go underwater and live in an underwater base to drill in the first place? It’s pretty costly. Once again, geography and geology don’t quite jive. Doctor Who has traveled a long way from its original premise of being a family friendly show that tries to teach science and history to its audience. 

The “ghosts” haunting the underwater base were creepy, but I also found them somewhat confusing. They could lift and carry solid objects of size, but then they couldn’t take them through walls with them. Usually, ghosts can’t touch or manipulate solid matter, so perhaps next week we’ll find out what they really are? Aliens? Here’s hoping! The casting of a deaf actress (one assumes) as leader of the group was a pleasant surprise. It’s nice to know the Doctor can read sign language even if he can’t figure out the alien runes on the inside of the spaceship. 

But what really had us scratching our heads was the idea that the “ghosts” were sending out a message to a rescue mission somewhere in the vicinity of the constellation of Orion. Somehow, by killing more and more humans, it makes a stronger “signal” to broadcast to the alien rescuers. Huh? Last time I checked, usually you needed a device such as a radio dish to send out a message across interstellar space. Maybe this bit of confusion will also be solved by next week’s episode? 

I found Peter Capaldi channeling Tom Baker throughout Under the Lake intriguing. He’s slightly more lovable this season so far, even when he’s acting arrogant and ill-mannered. Clara’s personality has all the clarity of a cipher, however. No flashbacks to her horrible experiences losing her boyfriend at all? It’s like she’s a completely different young woman. Odd, really. Whenever most people lose a loved one it leaves a lasting mark on the psyche that’s noticeable by their words and actions. 

Creepy baddies and a cool set are nice, but a story and characters that aren’t as full of holes as Swiss cheese would be welcome.