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Doctor Who in 2014

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This post was supported by my Patreon. If you would like to continue seeing essays on this blog, please consider backing it, as the continuation of all parts of this blog besides The Last War in Albion past February 9th is contingent on the success of the Patreon. Basically, for a dollar a week, I’ll keep blogging. Also, today is the last day of my post-Christmas ebook sale. All my Eruditorum Press books, for cheap. Comics reviews later today, though I think it’ll only be one issue. Last War in Albion tomorrow. 

I think it’s probably best to say everything in the form of the big, ultimate point of the exercise, which is a Top Twelve Doctor Who Stories of 2014 list. Here it is, with changes relative to my post-Death in Heaven list indicated and letter grades. This is based on having done a rewatch between Death in Heaven and Last Christmas, except for Last Christmas itself, which I rewatched tonight.

#12: Time Heist (-2, C)

Let me start by reiterating that 2014 was, for my money, the best year of Doctor Who I’ve been active for. I think it was better than 2005. Not more historically important or culturally impactful, but better. It’s the first year since 1989 you can credibly argue had no bad stories. And there aren’t a lot of years before 1989 you can really say that about either. Still, something has to be last.

Ultimately, the slight complaints I made about the direction in my initial review, on a rewatch, proved bigger than I thought. The Teller looks marvelous, but the lengthy section in the cement vaults with sets blatantly redressed with nothing but lighting gels looks cheap and tawdry. It’s worth going back and watching that leaked workprint, just for informational purposes. It is a much, much better episode in black and white. Mackinnon is, as I said in my Cold War Eruditorum post, kind of the Mark Gatiss of directors. He’s functional, but the direction is never the highlight of one of his stories. Here he’s given a script that’s functional, and nobody manages to raise it above that.

I observed early on that the first half of the season was all “let’s redo standards with a new Doctor, but with old Doctor Who veterans doing the scripts,” while the back half was very “let’s try something new.” That was the right way to structure a season that had a new Doctor to introduce, but I suspect nothing would have been harmed by having the transition to “let’s try something new” come with the sixth episode instead of the seventh. This, ultimately, is the skippable episode. Best damned with faint praise: it’s astonishingly good for a team-up of director of The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky and the writer of Curse of the Black Spot.

#11: Robot of Sherwood (+1, B-)

At the time, I described it as unambitious but well executed. That basically still applies. It’s damning with faint praise again, but the nice thing about Mark Gatiss is he doesn’t generate undue expectations.…

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Last Christmas Review

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Instant reaction has it with 76.88% at an 8-10, with an 8 being the most popular rating, which is pretty standard issue. And to be fair, its faults announce themselves somewhat forcefully. There’s a bit of a pacing problem – the ten minutes or so after Santa wakes everybody up the first time and before the sleigh sequence are an entirely unnecessary bit of padding, and I found myself getting restless on first viewing. Second viewing was kinder, but also solidified my sense that there’s a problem there. Yes, it resolves a few levels of the Inception pastiche, but it’s not delivering any significant development, and mostly seems there to get a forty-five minute story to take an hour. Also, the “last Christmas” metaphor is a bit vapid, or, at least, seemingly missing a definite article. 
But the reason these problems seem so visible is because this story’s chief virtue is its sheer level of confidence in what it’s doing. Inception meets Alien, only with Santa Claus. The fact that Doctor Who is at a point where it can do that, for a mass Christmas audience with an unusually large number of non-fans, is genuinely impressive. And yet the episode just gets on with it, trusting that the individual components of this are all broad and high concept enough to work so long as you spend a little time establishing them. 
A corresponding part of this is also the confidence that they can do all of this. Here the virtue of casting Nick Frost really announces itself. He’s a fantastic choice for Santa, or, at least, for Steven Moffat’s Santa, which, as you’d expect, is mostly a series of jokes about how Santa is no harder to explain than anything else in Doctor Who. Frost’s instincts on how serious to pitch the performance are spot on. But there’s also a tremendous amount of confidence in the visuals. The sequence in which Santa arrives to save the day, with an army of toys marching into the polar base is flat out one of the maddest things Doctor Who has ever done, but there’s not a trace of the program seeming embarrassed by this or worrying whether or not it can get away with it.
As a result, it pretty much does get away with everything. Even the obvious accusation that Moffat is recycling things, and he unabashedly is, seems silly here. It’s difficult to imagine how the sentence “it’s business as usual: Inception meets Alien, only with Santa Claus” would even seem like a sensible and coherent thing to say about Doctor Who only two years ago. That this feels like a completely organic and sensible thing for the show to be speaks volumes about the degree to which the program has become flexible and varied even by the standards of Doctor Who.
…

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Comics Reviews (December 24th, 2014)

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From worst to best, with everything something I willingly paid money for, if not wisely.

Also, as I am now more aware of my Christmas schedule, my Last Christmas review should manage to go up sometime tomorrow, and not, as previously expected, on Boxing Day. You can still back that at Patreon, as well as my Doctor Who in 2014 wrap-up post and, starting in January, coverage of Sherlock Season Three, just to fill the gap between the last Eruditorum and the start of the Capaldi reviews.

But now, comics.

The Massive #30

Thirty issues of my life I’ll never get back.

All-New X-Men Annual #1

I’d hoped that this would cohere more in its second issue, but it didn’t really. There’s no sense in which this story needed two over-sized issues and $10 to tell, and it didn’t benefit from being held back for months after the actual event in the comics. On the whole, kind of a mess.

Daredevil #11

New storyline. I think I’ve definitely hit the point of being a bit bored with Mark Waid on Daredevil. This is a perfectly serviceable “the sort of thing Mark Waid does on Daredevil” story, but it’s increasingly clear he’s gone through his best ideas and is on to the second tier of them.

Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #3

Woo! Axis is over! This book can actually get on with doing interesting stories now! This isn’t bad, and has a good fight scene, to be fair.

Loki: Agent of Asgard #9

Loki wielding Thor’s hammer is beautiful, but I have to say, this entire arc gets overshadowed by its cliffhanger. Still, this is the only Axis-related comic that’s held my interest at all, and that deserves some credit. Was this the worst Marvel crossover in recent memory? I struggle to think of something quite this dire in a while. Given the one-two punch of Original Sin and this… well, at least I have hope for Secret Wars.

New Avengers #28

Hickman’s finally gotten his eight months later pieces on the board how he wants them, it seems, and is now getting around to making interesting things happen. And this issue, while not necessarily full of interesting things, at least has some interesting things that happen in the final couple of pages.

Uncanny X-Men #29

Surprisingly eventful, with an absolutely fascinating state of play at the end of the issue. I’m excited to see where this goes, not least because of the teases for Cyclops’s future offered by Hickman in Avengers.

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor #6

I worried that the Rob Williams issues of this were going to be weaker than the Ewing issues, but this is a fantastic formal experiment that makes strong use of the structure of a comic book, and has a Nimon in it to boot. THE NIMON BE PRAISED.…

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Reviews (December 17th, 2014)

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So, just reviews this week, because I want to open with music, as Seeming has a new album out called Silent DiscoVery, so let’s start with that.

It’s a discipline worth maintaining, I increasingly feel, to remain aggressively plugged into the rhythms and promotional cycle of pop media. Television and comics both work well for this, but given that the entire rhetoric of “pop media” comes from music, one really ought to have at least one. For me, it’s Seeming, for a variety of reasons. Yes, Alex is a dear friend, and Aaron’s a lovely bloke as well. Yes, it really does help with the “stay plugged into the immense nowness of pop” thing when Alex sends you a new demo every couple of weeks. (I’ve been rocking out to the lead single off the next release for months now.)

Also, I love it. I just unabashedly fucking love the stuff Alex is doing right now, and I want everybody to listen to it. It’s at once well plugged in to current pop culture concerns (it’s a wonderful time for eschatology and utopian nihilism) and vibrantly idiosyncratic. So, new album, very exciting, let’s talk about what it says.

Silent DiscoVery is the outtakes album from his brilliant Madness and Extinction. If you’ve not bought or at least listened to that album, please do. It’s streaming free on Bandcamp here. It’s worth checking out. And if you’ve not listened to it… well, Silent DiscoVery isn’t necessarily the place to start, although it’s worth checking out some of the songs.

But that’s outtakes albums for you – their entire conceit, in the end, is that they’re the stuff that didn’t quite work on the album proper. That doesn’t mean not good enough, certainly. But every track on an outtakes album, by its very existence, opens up a fan debate on “was this rightly excluded from the album?” Tellingly, the answer, for all ten of these songs, is “because they were great ideas that belonged on a different album” and not “because they weren’t good enough.”

So, for instance, the first track, “Everything,” is a great song. Brilliant, sweeping, epic, all sorts of fun. Only problem is that it’s not quite as good as “Everything Could Change,” and the two songs not only have similar titles, they have musically similar endings, and you just can’t put both of them on the same album. So to the outtake pile this gem goes. (I’ve been loving the line “do you see your reflection when my glass is dark” for years, though actually, at the time of writing, it’s “did you know birds and metal outlive the likes of you” that’s stuck on a loop in my head.)

Elsewhere you’ve got “Bayonet,” which is a great song for Alex’s previous band, ThouShaltNot, but that flounders ever so slightly as a Seeming song. And “Name Those Stars,” a peppy little number with a synth line that sounds uncannily like the bass hook from John Linnell’s “South Carolina,” and that, perhaps more importantly, is just a little too peppy and too upbeat for an album called Madness and Extinction.…

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The Game and How Toby Whithouse Lost It

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Right, I suppose I should start with what this thing is and why I want to write about it. The Game is Toby Whithouse’s six episode 1970s-set spy drama, seemingly originally intended to be a big BBC production before never quite making it to the schedule and making its debut on BBC America, where it got next to no coverage and largely sunk like a stone. To some extent, this last fact is what interests me about it. When announced, it felt like Whithouse’s audition piece: his big BBC One drama with which he’d become the inevitable successor to Steven Moffat. But between his absence from both 2013 and 2014’s Doctor Who and the fact that this basically landed flat on its face, the landscape has changed, such that Whithouse has largely fallen away as the heir apparent. And since this really looks like it’s going to disappear without much of a trace, that seems worth documenting.

So, first, because I assume essentially none of you have seen it, the basics. The Game follows an elite MI-5 team as they investigate a seemingly massive Russian operation involving sleeper agents in the UK. You’ve got a pretty standard set of stock characters. Brian Cox is charming as MI-5 head “Daddy,” Paul Ritter is the poorly closeted gay high society type, Chloe Pirrie is the secretary who proves terribly competent and eventually becomes an agent in her own right, Victoria Hamilton is what in a more modern-set show would be the profiler, Jonathan Aris is her autism-spectrum husband and audio specialist, Shaun Dooley is a cop assigned to MI-5, and Tom Hughes is the protagonist, Joe Lambe, who was blatantly cast on the principle of “cast me somebody who looks like Benedict Cumberbatch only a decade younger.” Over the course of the story, it becomes obvious that someone’s a mole. Is it Joe Lambe, whose loyalties have been questioned since a botched operation a year ago that resulted in the death of his lover, and who has old scores to settle now?

No, it’s totally Sarah, Victoria Hamilton’s character, which is in hindsight obvious because she’s the only one of the set who isn’t a blatant cliche, so clearly she has to turn out to be a femme fatale in the end.

This is making The Game sound like it’s excessively easy to mock, which, to be fair, it in many ways is. The 1970s espionage setting means that it’s unabashedly competing with two of the great heavyweights of British television drama: the BBC adaptations John Le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s People, and The Sandbaggers, an ITV number that famously only ran for three seasons when its creator Ian Mackintosh disappeared, prompting endless conspiracy theories suggesting that Mackintosh, a former Royal Navy officer, had revealed something he shouldn’t have on the show.…

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Comics Reviews (12/10/14)

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Worst to best, everything good enough to buy. Second Thursday post coming later in the day, btw – had hoped to have it ready by the usual 5am EST, but ended up having a more eventful Wednesday than I’d budgeted for.

Batgirl #37

Other than the kind of nasty transphobic streak, this is a marvelous issue. Pity about the kind of nasty transphobic streak, then. It’s thoroughly sickening, and serves as an unpleasant reminder that underneath the hood, this is still a New 52-era DC comic, with all the thudding “comics for boys” that this implies. Strictly on storytelling, this would be higher on the list, but I just can’t.

Guardians of the Galaxy Annual #1

Had this come out before Original Sin, it would have been a perfectly nice, fun, lightweight story, albeit one that in no way needed thirty-three pages to tell. (Frank Cho’s a fine and dynamic artist, but the book is saturated with big panels to the point where they stop having any impact.) Unfortunately, it came out after Original Sin, and so is instead a painfully predictable lightweight story that in no way needed thirty-three pages to tell.

Uncanny X-Men Annual #1

Part one of a two-part story filling in an old mystery of how Eva Bell, a character I only vaguely have a handle on who is, aged several years in a time travel accident. Some predictable beats, though the “seven years later” jump is clever. But one does rather suspect, if only because it’s how Bendis tends to work, that the second half of this is going to be the issue that carries the weight.

Avengers #39

A fine comic, although there’s something very strange about Reed Richards giving advice on “making plans and the proper execution thereof” to someone who is currently being fostered by Doctor Doom.

Thor #3

I feel like Aaron’s Thor run suffers occasionally from being unable or unwilling to quite make up its mind whether it wants to be epic or a bit wryly funny and personal. At its best, it’s… wryly funny and personal, and the thought bubbles approach to the new Thor is marvelous – I absolutely adore her character. Still, I want answers and flesh, not mystery. Still, glad we’re doing the inevitable Thor vs Thor next issue, if only so we can move on to the less inevitable stuff.

The Amazing Spider-Man #11

After a rough second installment, Spider-Verse gets back on track here. The relationship to the spin-offs is still a bit rough – I don’t think I’ve ever read a crossover that feels quite this insistent on spending time selling me the auxiliary books. But there are moments of real charm and wit here, and three issues in the mythos of the crossover is starting to actually stick for me.

Supreme Blue Rose #5

I remain happy to be along for the ride on this deliciously strange bit of Warren Ellis comic. I’d wonder if it’s any good, but it seems beside the point.…

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Comics Reviews (12/3/14)

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From worst to best, with everything being something I like enough to pay for.

Gotham Academy #3

I admit, I’m thinking of dropping this. Three issues in, and each one I’ve wanted to enjoy more than I do. The characters aren’t standing out for me, the plots aren’t grabbing me, and this is settling in as a book I like the idea of rather more than I actually like paying for. One or two more, and I may sit down and reread them as a chunk to see if the characters get better defined for me before I do, but I’m finding disappointment growing here.

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor #5

It’s a very good week to put this second from bottom, let me say. Interesting, good character work here. Good stuff here, and a story that really did benefit from the extra issue to breathe. And I’m really curious about the rapidly inflating TARDIS crew, not least because the book remains so focused on Alice Obiefune as the secondary lead, making Arc and Jones odd sort of side characters. Is this the best Doctor Who comic ever? I think it might be.

Chew #45

This came in strong this week. After playing at a mass of ugly deaths last week, this one goes in a surprising direction, with a kind of beautifully shocking last page twist that feels, to me, exactly as mean as it should be. I’m really finding myself to be into this book at the moment, which is quite nice.

Uber #20

A bit of a slow issue for Uber. The rapidly spiralling sense of world in Uber occasionally makes for tough going, and this is, for me, an example. Much of this issue consists of events that were made basically inevitable by past issues, so that it feels slightly glacial. Gillen knows how to mash the “disturbing as fuck” button hard enough to cover the gaps, and the use of Mengele is very, very savvy. And then the end is smart and clever and interesting. I love this book, even on the off months.

Angela: Asgard’s Assassin #1

So, Kieron Gillen does an Asgardian take on Iain M. Banks’s Use of Weapons. I was a bit leery of this one, simply because it’s such an odd property to put Gillen on, and the co-author vaguely suggests that this could be one of those “have a major writer half-involved in the first arc and then wander off” books that Marvel pulls occasionally. The structure here is really sharp and interesting, though, with Gillen writing the present-day section, and Marguerite Bennett doing the flashback in the middle. Good first issue. Worth checking out.

Crossed +One Hundred #1

A deliciously slow, methodical start to this comic, of the sort that every writer wishes they could do, but really only Alan Moore working for Avatar could get away with. It does the thing that many annoying first issues do of simply introducing the book’s premise. But this is Alan Moore, and the book’s premise is a beautifully layered slab of theme.…

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Comics Reviews (November 26th, 2014)

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From worst to best, but I paid for everything.

The Massive #29

One of those comics that leaves you going “really? That’s it?” Which is impressive for a comic featuring the apocalypse, and yet Brian Wood nevertheless makes it feel a bit underwhelming. I aspire, in the future, not to waste two and a half years of my life and $105 on comics this not good.

ODY-C #1

Not my thing, but if it is your thing, very good. Some lovely psychedelia and epic sci-fi, it’s all terribly pretty, and the opening octuple splash with two fold-out timelines and maps manage to out-Multiversity Multiversity and out-Hickman Hickman in one shot. Really, this is a fabulous comic that’s just not my cup of tea. If psychedelic sci-fi epics sound like yours, do check it out.

New Avengers #27

One of those Hickman comics that relies on the idea that the reader has remembered the mythology he’s been building up. I don’t, so, you know, oh well. The knowledge that the answer to all of these questions are in some fashion “Secret Wars” is a bit of a non-starter. But mostly… eh.

Stumptown #3

One that’s going to have to be reread when it’s finished for me, as I’ve definitely lost all sense of who most of the characters are. It looks very good, and has Rucka’s usual sense of characterization, at least in the bits that are self-contained enough to be understandable entirely from this issue, but this is definitely the comic I want to vote “most in need of a recap page and character guide” this week.

The Unwritten Apocalypse #11

I believe that this is the penultimate issue of this. In any case, it’s a lovely issue, building to a great cliffhanger and going through some nice paces to get there. Really, really looking forward to the “it’s all done” reread of this series.

Trees #7

Another series kicking into high gear, with a sense of things happening, if not of things converging. A bit puzzled by the decision to not bother with location captions, but if Ellis wants that level of attentiveness, he’s a writer who’s entitled to it, frankly. In any case, things happen. Is interesting.

Lazarus #13

Not only are things heating up, I feel like I understand them without having to reread a ton of past issues. There’s no recap page, but pertinent information is given through dialogue reminders, and there’s solid character work – I love the poker game amongst the Lazari, in particular. Not a jumping on point, but a solid reminder of why this is one of my favorite series going.…

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Comics Reviews (11/19/14)

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You know the drill. Worst to best, but everything something I paid money for.

Annihilator #3

This isn’t really working for me. It feels like the sort of default setting of Grant Morrison – like it’s the statistical average of his other work. The sci-fi sections feel like Morrison doing self-parody, which, to be fair, they might well deliberately be, but with the real-world sections feeling a bit flat, this is just feeling like a mess to me.

Fables #146

Four to go, yes?

The Amazing Spider-Man #10

Here the basic operational problem of the Spider-Verse crossover becomes clear, which is that your storytelling gets really muddy when essentially every character is in the same costume. I also find my basic not-much-liking Superior Spider-Man to be a problem here, and the sequence that amounts to “here’s where all the other books spin off from this” is painful. Hoping this finds its keel quickly, as I loved the start.

Guardians of the Galaxy #21

All the typical problems of the first issue of a Bendis arc, namely that the entire issue is spent slowly walking up to the stated premise of the arc. The last splash is brilliant, though.

New Avengers #26

Love the Doctor Doom stuff, but found Tony kind of fruitless here. His ranting arrogance at the end is nice, I suppose, if you get off on “Tony Stark is an arrogant, selfish bastard,” but I don’t. I like “Tony Stark is flawed but self-evidently one of the good guys,” and find the entire amoral Tony thing to just not be my cup of tea. If you like it, you’ll probably like this.

Loki: Agent of Axis #8

Much as I don’t like Axis, I have to admit that inverting Loki is an absolutely genius premise, and Ewing does some lovely work in changing the underlying tone of the book. The mock heroic stuff is great, and Verity really jumps out as a character here. Good stuff, though I admit, knowing that this two-parter is going to be followed by a Kid Loki story makes me ever so slightly restless about it.

Avengers #38

I adore Cyclops here. I can’t wait for X-Men to catch up to this status quo. I love who the Avengers are here – it’s such a deliciously weird team. And it ends with an army of Shang-Chis. This is basically what comics exist for, no?

Daredevil #10

This Purple Man story was probably an issue too long on the whole, but the end here, and especially the comic equivalent to a post-credit scene is absolutely brilliant. In general, on this book, I’m a bit torn between feeling like Waid is kinda played out on Daredevil and the sad knowledge that whoever follows him is just going to Frank Miller all over the rug.

Uncanny X-Men #28

Bendis has a good premise here, and the good sense to keep the focus on it. The decision to properly have Cyclops get off the mat and start being awesome is a good one – you can see from here to Avengers #38 here, and it’s a lovely line of sight.…

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Comics Reviews (November 12th, 2014)

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I liked the “post this as soon as it’s ready” approach last week, so I think I shall make it a regular thing. As ever, ranked from worst to best of the week, with everything being something I voluntarily paid money for…

Captain America #1

If not necessarily deliberately paid money for. This was picked up in a miscommunication (Jill did the comics run today, and mistook my request for Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #1 as a request for Captain America #1 and The Mighty Avengers #1, which I submit as an illustration of the sheer number of stupid bars to entry for people who aren’t obsessive about comics purchasing, because really, who the fuck thought it was a good idea to release two comics called Captain America #1 on the same fucking day). In any case, it’s an action sequence with captions that are some of the most cliched “white person writing about black people” ever. It’s heart’s in the right place – the joke about America’s prison system is wonderfully bleak. But it’s… not good, and is in fact that other thing.

Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #1

I’m sure this will be a lovely series once it’s not tying into Axis, but right now it’s exactly nothing I want out of a book called Captain America and the Mighty Avengers. 

Captain Marvel #9

Wonderfully silly one-off space romp with gratuitous rhyming. Good fun. I still don’t feel like I enjoy this book as much as I should, though – it often, as with this issue, feels competent without having any spark. The big cleverness here is the gratuitous rhyming, which is… forced, to say the least. Fun, but inessential.

Thor #2

This really should have been Thor #1, as it’s charming. The use of thought bubbles to convey the new Thor’s uncertainty and self-doubt is delightful, and there’s some good characterization here. I’m still not sure about the “don’t tell us who the main character is” hook, as it makes characterization for her trickier, but this was at least a good, fun Thor comic.

Wytches #2

I love what the book is doing, particularly with its transitions among scenes, but I find the obliqueness challenging. No recap page, no captions telling us what or where a scene is, and Jock’s scratchy art makes it hard to know what’s going on – it took me a couple tries to get that Sailor’s father and uncle were different characters, which made the final scene a challenge. A cast page or a recap page or something would be nice – I completely forget what Lucy’s deal is. But this remains a promising horror comic.

Spider-Verse #1

A collection of shorts. In general, the shorter the better – the one-page Hostess Fruitcakes pastiche and the two-page newspaper comic one were both particularly brilliant. Quite liked Skottie Young’s as well. I continue to really be enjoying this Spider-Verse crossover, and I’m glad I snagged the silly tie-in anthology.

Batgirl #36

There’s some awkwardness at the start – the book’s post-Young Avengers social media aesthetic runs aground with some dodgy pseudo-computer stuff where finding a couple terabytes of storage to use is actually something that requires time and effort.…

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