Saturday Waffling (January 24th, 2015)
As we find ourselves increasingly adrift from when it was an appropriate question, what were your favorite pieces of media of 1994? Films, TV shows, comics, books, music, video games, plays, whatever.…
Elizabeth Sandifer
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Hey, Turn That Down: The Doctors Revisited (David Tennant)
At last, we reach the end of history, with an episode that is set up to, basically, repeat the same talking points about the Tenth Doctor that were being used when he was still on screen. This is as straightforward as it is possible to be – an unabashed display case for an era of Doctor Who that everybody knows is a classic.
Which, fair enough. There’s really no getting around the fact that the Tennant era was wildly popular, and that Tennant is always going to be one of the iconic portrayals of the Doctor. There are no apologias to make, and as of 2013, at least, the Tennant era hadn’t slipped into history, not least because Tennant was going to be making a return in less than a month anyway, with no explanation of why he looked older or anything like that necessary. There was, really, no other way to do this.
That said, the selection of what to focus on is interesting. Noticeably absent is any standing in the rain. There’s a little bit of the Bad Wolf Bay scene from Doomsday, but for the most part the two iconic emotional scenes from Tennant’s era, the departures of Rose and Donna, are entirely skipped over. This is even more striking given that Martha’s departure is featured in detail. There’s no mention of Human Nature/Family of Blood either. In other words, all the moments of Tennant’s Doctor being pushed to extremes are skipped.
Instead we get a focus on Tennant in default mode. There are sizeable clips from The Sontaran Stratagem and The Idiot’s Lantern, both of which are fine scenes, but which would appear on almost nobody’s instinctive list of major David Tennant scenes. To some extent, this demonstrates the level of confidence that they clearly have in the material: nobody is trying to sell David Tennant. Indeed, it’s somewhat refreshing to look at him in these scenes. Tennant’s best scenes are indeed extraordinary, but it’s easy to forget that he was also extraordinarily good at just being a foundation for the show to build on.
This also gets at the closest thing to a problem with this episode, however. For all its confidence, it shares the Peter Davison episode’s strange failure to actually ever describe what this iteration of the Doctor is actually like. Loads of talking heads are ready to line up and, quite rightly, say how wonderful David Tennant is, but nobody can actually nail down what his Doctor was like and why he was so iconic. Perhaps it’s simply too soon, but either way, it’s a glaring omission.
The other strange thing is the story chosen. It’s not that it’s a poor choice – indeed, there may be no story quite so Tennanty as The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End. But the story notably, gets no coverage in the episode itself, unlike the previous few, which took pains to get the viewer up to speed on what they were going to watch. This works fine – really, who needs a substantial introduction to the most popular Doctor Who story ever?…
A Wishful Past, All Jungled Over (The Last War in Albion Part 80: Anarchism, Inspiration, Guy Fawkes)
This is the eighth of fifteen parts of The Last War in Albion Chapter Nine, focusing on Alan Moore’s work on V for Vendetta for Warrior (in effect, Books One and Two of the DC Comics collection). An omnibus of all fifteen parts can be purchased at Smashwords. If you purchased serialization via the Kickstarter, check your Kickstarter messages for a free download code.
The stories discussed in this chapter are currently available in a collected edition, along with the eventual completion of the story. UK-based readers can buy it here.
Previously in The Last War in Albion: One of the major themes of V for Vendetta is the idea of anarchism, a philosophical movement Moore eventually described in some detail in an essay for Dodgem Logic, in which he listed various historical forms of the concept.
“Sounds like a wishful past, all jungled over, a heroic run and the what-for of everything fuck simple.” -Alan Moore, Crossed +100
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| Figure 613: William Godwin |
He turns also to Mikhail Bakunin’s Collectivist Anarchism, with was an important predecessor to Marxism, along with Peter Kropotkin’s rejection of private property, and, more contemporarily, Hakim Bey (who in addition to being an anarchist and pedophilia advocate was an open sorcerer, defining the concept as “the systematic cultivation of enhanced consciousness or non-ordinary awareness and its deployment in the world of deeds and objects to bring about desired results”). But for the purposes of understanding Blake, perhaps the most important thinker Moore touches upon is William Godwin, whose Political Justice, in Moore’s account, advocated “that the individual act according to his or her individual judgement while allowing every single other individual the same liberty.”
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| Figure 614: One of Blake’s illustrations for Mary Wollstonecraft’s Original Stories from Real Life. (1791) |
Political Justice, more properly titled Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Morals and Happiness, was published in 1793, the same year as America a Prophecy, and Godwin and Blake traveled in similar circles – Blake did a series of illustrations for Godwin’s future wife Mary Wollstonecraft’s Original Stories from Real Life in 1791, for instance. (Godwin and Wollstonecraft’s daughter, also named Mary, would go on to have a significant career of her own, largely under her married name, acquired from “Ozymandias” poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.) Blake followed Godwin no more than he did any other man, but the intellectual similarities are clear enough.
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| Figure 615: The cover for the third issue of The Northampton Arts Group Magazine, featuring an iteration of Alan Moore’s concept for “the Doll.” (c. 1973) |
For Moore’s part, at least in terms of V for Vendetta, the most obvious anarchist to mention is Colin Ward, whose Anarchy in Action was first published in 1973, when Moore was working with the Northampton Arts Group, putting out zines while writing spoken word pieces like “Old Gangsters Never Die,” submitting a doomed proposal for “a freakish terrorist in white-face make-up who traded under the name of the Doll and waged war upon a totalitarian state sometime in the late 1980s” to future Starblazer publisher DC Thomson, dreaming up his sci-fi epic Sun Dodgers and the character of Five, “a mental patient of undefined but unusual abilities who had been kept in a particular room, room five,” and meeting Phyllis Dixon, who he quickly married the next year.
Comics Reviews (January 21st, 2015)
Worst to best.
Moon Knight #11
One of the most pointlessly decompressed comics I think I have ever read. All the optimism I had when the very cool twist of someone stealing Khonshu from Marc Spector has thoroughly evaporated in the face of this.
All-New X-Men #35
So, next month issue #38 of this ties in with the not-very-interesting sounding Black Vortex, which does rather make one wonder what the release schedule of this is meant to look like. I can only assume that this Ultimate Universe crossover arc was not, in fact, intended to stretch out past the announcement of how Secret Wars would be working such that it was drained of all its excitement, and that this was not meant to become the exercise in “dear god is this arc still going on” that it’s become. Oh well.
Fables #148
It says very little good about this exercise in “oh god why have I bought over 150 comics called Fables in my lifetime” that the story of Lauda, which has very little to do with anything else in the plot, is by miles the best thing going on in the issue.
Amazing Spider-Man #13
This has lost some momentum from an exciting start, but has at least gained some of it back for the finish. I have to say, though, the Uncle Ben stuff feels like it was introduced far too late in the game to have the impact that the story seems to want from it. I just can’t bring myself to get that invested in the personal struggles of an alternate universe Uncle Ben, and the conceit of “he blames his own honorable nature for everything going wrong” is, while clever, just not doing it for me. I absolutely do not look forward to his inevitable heroic sacrifice next issue.
Captain American and the Mighty Avengers #4
This finally settles into being the book it wants to be, with Ewing getting to do his take on Sam Wilson as Captain America, as opposed to Sam Wilson as evil. It’s a promising book. I wish this had gotten to be the first issue. Still, four months to enjoy this before Secret Wars comes and fucks everything up again, I guess?
Guardians of the Galaxy #23
A few pages into its last issue, Planet of the Symbiotes reaches the planet of the symbiotes. I am to some extent reviewing past issues here, but I’m at a genuine loss for why we spent two near-identical issues fighting in space instead of just letting this be a two issue arc like it really wanted to be. Still, love the final page cliffhanger.
Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor #7
An extremely compelling first half of a two-part story, with some excellent plot twists for Alice and some compelling mysteries for the other characters. I love the Eternal Dogfight, and there’s some excellent Eleven-specific beats in this. Continues to be the best Doctor Who comic ever.
Loki: Agent of Asgard #10
This promised to finally pay off the long-simmering consequences of Kieron Gillen’s landmark Journey into Mystery run, and it does so in spades, carefully and meticulously dooming Loki in a fascinating way.…
The Sign of Three
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“These tales of ratiocination owe most of their popularity to being something in a new key. I do not mean to say that they are not ingenious — but people think them more ingenious than they are — on account of their method and air of method. In the “Murders in the Rue Morgue”, for instance, where is the ingenuity of unravelling a web which you yourself (the author) have woven for the express purpose of unravelling? The reader is made to confound the ingenuity of the supposititious Dupin with that of the writer of the story.” – Edgar Allen Poe
The basic dramatic engine of Sherlock, by this point, has become the cathartic click as the puzzle box’s mechanisms slide into place in a moment of triumphant Aristoteleanism. Over ninety minutes, this produces an interesting effect. Because ninety minutes is also more or less your basic length for a film, there is a tendency to describe Sherlock in those terms – as periodic triptychs of Sherlock Holmes films. With two thirds of the episodes set as event episodes (that is, premieres or finales), it’s easy to get swept up in this.
Nevertheless, Sherlock is unmistakably television. The Sign of Three is a prime example – it is well aware that it has no obligation to make a stirring case for its scale and scope. Its end is a self-consciously subdued homage to The Green Death, it contains not a single overt tease of Magnusson. It is confident that people who are watching it will probably do so again in a week, and so does not engage in the sort of sprawling, ambitious cliffhanger that films (and, to be fair, series finales) do to hold interest over the course of months and years.
Perhaps more importantly, it shares Doctor Who‘s willingness to push against traditional dramatic structures. If one pauses Sherlock to ask “how much time is left,”one is almost always slightly surprised – the big plot beats never happen at quite the moment they’re scheduled. The dramatic climax of The Sign of Three comes a full ten minutes from the end, which isn’t unheard of, except that the last ten minutes are all quite subdued and tension free, as opposed to an exploration of the consequences of the climax or setup for something else. The plot is based around a pair of extended flashbacks that don’t seem connected to each other or the larger episode until the end. Instead there’s the continual anticipation of resolution – of the moment where things slot into place and the seemingly disjointed plotting is suddenly revealed as the precise clockwork of dramatic unity.
The Sign of Three, in other words, shows Sherlock as a well-oiled machine. Sherlock’s best man speech – contributed largely (and obviously) by Moffat – is a marvel.…
Regeneration: A Personal History of Doctor Who
A planned guest post for today fell through at the last minute, and Anna Wiggins graciously stepped in to deliver her thoughts on Missy and trans issues, which is not really in chronological sequence, but again, the planned post fell through. And more to the point, it’s brilliant, so really, who cares about chronology. This is a blog about time travel, dammit.
Also! The fantastic folks at the Pex Lives podcast invited me on this month to talk about The Ribos Operation and Last Christmas. It was a hoot to record. I’m mostly just ranting and pontificating, but if you enjoy me spontaneously staking out excessively bold critical positions, you’ll love this.
It is the summer of 1993. I am watching PBS, which is showing a weird old British sci-fi show that I enjoy watching whenever I catch it on. On screen, Romana (a character I like a lot) is trying on different bodies. It’s silly, and the Doctor is being kind of mean to her, (I don’t know to use the word sexist yet) but the idea of trying on a new body is amazing. In the most secret part of myself, I wish I could do that. I wish I could look like princess Astra.
It is the end of summer, 1998. I don’t want to be alive any more. In a couple of weeks, I will try to kill myself. I will slip outside in the middle of the night, walk several miles into the woods down trails only I know about, to a clearing I spend a lot of time hiding in. I will take the razor blade on my swiss army knife and try to cut my wrist open. But the blade won’t be sharp enough, and the pain and shock of seeing my own blood will stop me before I go too far.
I will spend the next ten years feeling like a coward. I will regret failing. I will think often about trying again.
It is April of 2010. A new friend of mine is in town, and is talking about how great the new Doctor Who is. He suggests I watch it some time. My hazy, pleasant memories of Mary Tamm and Lalla Ward help make his case, and a few weeks later I marathon series 1 with my husband. I am hooked, and catch up just after series 5 ends.
It is May 14th, 2011. The Doctor’s Wife is on TV. Neil Gaiman just used some throwaway dialogue to casually write in the possibility of time lords changing gender when they regenerate. The exact dialogue is a bit irksome, but I don’t care; this is huge and affirming and very clearly a challenge for the showrunners to live up to. I’m thrilled about this. Exactly one month ago, I legally changed my name to Anna Rose Wiggins.
It is August 4th, 2013. I am watching a live stream of the Peter Capaldi announcement. The last few weeks have been interesting for me, because this is the first regeneration I’ve been an active fan for.…
Saturday Waffling (January 17th, 2014)
As we exit the season where it’s an appropriate question, what were your favorite pieces of media of 2014? Films, TV shows, comics, books, music, video games, plays, whatever.…
Bye: The Doctors Revisited (Christopher Eccleston)
It’s surprising how easily this era slips into history. On the one hand, there is nothing being said here that was not said in DVD commentaries and Doctor Who Confidential ten years ago, often by the same people. And yet there is none of the breathless self-promotion of Confidential, which is what this most obviously resembles. The imminent, thrilling need to celebrate the basic existence of Doctor Who is absent. Just as the tail end of the classic series was drained of all its conflict, this is drained of all its triumph.
For those who remember what the Eccleston series actually felt like as it happened – that is, classic series fans – this is slightly disorienting. Eccleston is basically explained as “he was a Doctor for the 21st century and not quite what anyone expected.” And yet the scenes shown are exactly the ones you’d expect, with no real oddities among them. In marked contrast to the McCoy era, where we spent bizarre amounts of time on Time and the Rani, here we get Eccleston’s Emmy reel.
The issue, one quickly realizes, is that this is essentially the first time these set pieces of the “Doctor Who Season One as vital text in television history” argument have been done without Russell T Davies, who continued his politely silent 2013. And, of course, Eccleston is absent as well. As with the McGann episode, there’s a hole in the middle of this narrative.
It is worth noting that there is actually some suspense at this point in time. This went out on September 29th, the day after it was announced that there would be a trailer soon for Day of the Doctor, but nearly two months after the announcement of Peter Capaldi. “What is Doctor Who these days” was an astonishingly relevant question, with, at that moment in time, essentially three Doctors besides the incumbent having some sort of active “what’s going on with” question, one who’d never appeared, and one who’d only had a minute of speaking time.
The result was a historical moment where there was a past/present line on what Doctor Who was that Eccleston was exactly on the wrong side of. Which was at the time useful. Doctor Who was not a young series – it was already into season numbers well higher than most shows get, and it was at the time highly visible that it was a half-century old. Finding ways to justify calling your “this is where you should start watching” point as recent as possible mattered. So declaring Eccleston to be history was an easy decision to make.
And he’s history by his own choosing, admittedly – we should remember that the entire landscape of Doctor Who would have looked different right now had Eccleston been in Day of the Doctor, or, at least, certainly this special would have. But no, right now the scale of Doctor Who is very much 2006-14. And all of this is bluntly literalized in the closing moments of Moffat’s introduction to Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways, when he mentions the fleeting appearance of David Tennant as a highlight.…
Dolorous Hissings and Poisons (The Last War in Albion Part 79: Europe a Prophecy, Anarchy)
This is the seventh of fifteen parts of The Last War in Albion Chapter Nine, focusing on Alan Moore’s work on V for Vendetta for Warrior (in effect, Books One and Two of the DC Comics collection). An omnibus of all fifteen parts can be purchased at Smashwords. If you purchased serialization via the Kickstarter, check your Kickstarter messages for a free download code.
The stories discussed in this chapter are currently available in a collected edition, along with the eventual completion of the story. UK-based readers can buy it here.
Previously in The Last War in Albion: The radical and anarchic spirit of V for Vendetta resembled that of William Blake, particularly in his Continental Prophecies, the second of which was Europe a Prophecy
“With dolorous hissings & poisons Round Enitharmons loins folding, Coild within Enitharmons womb The serpent grew casting its scales.” – William Blake, The Book of Urizen
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| Figure 606: Vala hiding beneath the ground. (William Blake, Europe a Prophecy, Copy K, Object 4, Written 1794, printed 1821) |
Vala opens Europe a Prophecy by railing against Enitharmon, asking her, “wilt thou bring forth other sons? To cause my name to vanish, that my place may not be found.” She speaks of how she, “sitting in fathomless abyss of my immortal shrine” looks up at heaven and the stars and seizes “their burning power” so she can “bring forth howling terrors, all devouring fiery kings. Devouring & devour’d roaming on dark and desolate mountains In forests of eternal death, shrieking in hollow trees.” But Enitharmon, she claims, foils her in this. “I bring forth from my teeming bosom myriads of flames,” she says, “and thou dost stamp them with a signet, then they roam abroad and leave me void as death.” But the prelude ends with a strange sense of hope, with the shadowy female asking “who shall bind the infinite with an eternal band? To compass it with swaddling bands? and who shall cherish it With milk and honey? I see it smile & I roll inward & my voice is past.”
This prelude poses an interesting ambiguity, especially when taken in light of the remainder of Europe a Prophecy and, for that matter, of Blake’s mythology. Vala/the shadowy female is not generally a positive figure, but rather an embodiment of nature (itself a complex concept within Blake’s system), and a warlike death goddess. She speaks of her nature, saying “my roots are brandish’d in the heavens, my fruits in earth beneath Surge, foam, and labour into Life, first born & first consum’d! Consumed and consuming!” Ultimately, she will prove responsible for Albion’s fall. And yet it is difficult not to see her as a sympathetic figure in this exchange with Enitharmon – her revolutionary, destructive spirit is the obvious tonic to Urizen’s ghastly order. And it is worth stressing that it is Blake’s most famous image of Urizen, as the Ancient of Days, that serves as the frontispiece to Europe a Prophecy, a fact that further strengthen’s Vala’s moral legitimacy.
Comics Reviews (January 14th, 2015)
Worst to best, everything I paid money for.
Also, boo to Marvel for not reprinting Miracleman #14. As someone who has paid $65 towards getting a full run of Miracleman in single issue form, I find the fact that they’ve decided to just not release a readable version of one of the best issues in the run a slap in the face. What, would it just not be a run of Miracleman without completely fucking up at some point? Moore was wise not to have his name on this shitshow.
Rat Queens Special: Bragga #1
I’ve not been excited about this book in a bit, and so came at this as a sort of “why am I pulling you again” issue, since a one-off special ought be a good place to showcase the book’s strengths. This was competent but doesn’t seem to have anything new to say over the last few issues, and I think I’ll drop it.
Captain Marvel #11
I’ve more or less enjoyed DeConnick’s Captain Marvel, and I like the basic idea of the character and DeConnick’s approach, but I haven’t felt excited by the book in a while, and I think this is my jumping off point. I thought the “let’s do an issue back on Earth” was going to be a great premise. Instead it’s mostly concerned with stopping a kind of two-bit villain from the end of DeConnick’s Avengers Assemble run. With both this and Rat Queens, I have the sense that the writers had a brilliant miniseries worth of concept, and are wasting it on a pretty good extended run.
SHIELD #2
Will not be adding this. I see what it’s going for, and the ending is sweet. Waid is good at this sort of book – I remain fond of his unloved The Brave and the Bold at DC. But it’s not grabbing me, and even Kamala Khan, who looks a strong contender for “most important new Marvel character of the last ten years,” doesn’t enliven this much, in part as I’m not massively sold on her characterization by Waid.
Daredevil #12
As I’ve said, we’re into the tail end of this run, and it’s best ideas are used. This is fine and fun, and I’ll read it to the end. Was a great Daredevil run. But I’m not going to miss it when that end comes.
Star Wars #1
Adequate. I’m not much of a Star Wars fan, but this is solidly written and paced. It seems to cover the same basic conceptual ground as Brian Wood’s Star Wars series late in the Dark Horse license. But it’s well done. I’m mostly sticking around because it’s got a Kieron Gillen series to tie into, though.
Silver Surfer #8
I’m interested to see how this plays out, which is good for the first issue of a storyline, but equally, it’s the sort of plot that tends to go very wrong for me when it goes wrong. Still, we’re getting Michael Allred-drawn Galactus next issue, and that’s exciting no matter how you slice it.…