Wilfred S1 Ep1: Happiness

While it is hardly high concept in this day and age to have a guy in the middle of an everyman's existential crisis to befriend a guy in an animal suit, there is something subversive about Wilfred. This feeling goes beyond the all the sight gags the series got out of the way tonight with Jason Gann in his dog get up humping women and kissing Elijah Wood on the mouth toward the show's hinting that Wilfred might be less of a force of good and more of just pure chaos.

The show opens on the fairly boring note of Wood's character, Ryan trying to kill himself with a pill overdose. Of course, it fails, (We find out later his OBGYN sister only prescribed him sugar pills.) but he is immediately asked by the hot neighbor, Jenna (Fiona Gubelmann), to watch her dog. This first scene of confusion between Wilfred and Ryan is thankfully short-lived, leaving the rest of the episode time to deal with Ryan's first steps toward taking control of his life. Mostly this means breaking into a loud neighbor's house to steal his weed plants, pooping in that neighbor's boots, and eventually turning down the job his sister got him in an office at her hospital. In all Ryan ends the episode celebrating his new found freedom without knowing much of where to go.

It will be interesting to see where exactly the show is willing to go. At this point the writing is sharp enough to keep everyone who saw it watching, but outside of a concept and awesome leads the show doesn't seem very sure of itself. Mostly, I feel like the writing is pretty boring. Wood can squeeze any amount of pathos out of an awkward laugh, but he needs actually interesting things to say the rest of the time. I am sure after next week we will be able to get a better sense of the series's overall writing.

Doctor Who: S6 Ep7, A Good Man Goes to War

Doctor Who excels at misdirection. This is kind of the fun of the show and why it, sort of like Lost, is so much fun to talk about. How unlike Lost, Doctor Who also has fewer rules that are hard and fast. Ironically, I guess that is why the Doctor is actually a good man. The misdirection of this episode though was on a more meta level though. What we expected to be a plot heavy episode turned out to be one full of simple yet meaningful character moments.

So the Doctor starts the episode totally pissed off and rallying troops to take over Demon's Run, then takes the place over with the kind of flare we are to expect from the Doctor. Of course, they save Amy, but the baby is in another castle. Oh, and once and for all the air is cleared over just how River and Amy is connected.

The plot of the episode fells even more rushed than that summery, but speeding things up like that let them fit in more character moments than they could have otherwise:

--Amy's story about the man who was coming to save her daughter shows us that the same traits that drew her to the Doctor once before are the same traits that she now sees in Rory.

--As the Doctor forced Colonel Manton to tell his troops to "run away" we have a clear moment of insight into just how the Doctor becomes the stuff of myth. To be punished to become "Colonel Run-Away" is like personally. Sure Manton will have small children mocking him in his old age, but he will also become remembered for all of time by that name. The power of such an action is stronger than any weapon known to man.

--As Commander Strax is dying, Rory tries to comfort him telling him that he is a warrior and might make it yet. Strax simply reminds Rory that he is a nurse, not a warrior but has had a good life. It's easy to forget that companions have lives outsides of the TARDIS (other than Martha did any of 10's companions have a steady job?) so this reminder that Rory was also once a nurse is somewhat unexpected. While he must still search the universe to save Amy, he is probably becoming more aware now that his adventures as the Last Centurian are nearing an end. Soon he will be a father for as long as he can be to River and a good husband to Amy. At one time he would have been happy with this, but now it seems like he might have doubts.

--The Doctor loves a good surprise doesn't he? I think this is part of why he left Demon's Run so quickly. He now understands that the events that have been happening to him since he picked up a bow tie have been more closely connected than he might have once expected. Leaving so quickly just means that he sees something that he doesn't want to explain to everyone else just yet.

This was a short recap, but I am busy thinking about video games and art so TV is taking a bit of a break in my head right now. I did write this out on an iPad using Pages though. If anyone knows of a word processor for the iPad that lets me input basic HTML tags more easily let me know.

Doctor Who: S6 Ep6, The Almost People

Sorry this is a bit late.

I guess if the Flesh had only been in one episode instead of this two-parter I would have felt less like Amy’s sort of pregnancy plot twist wasn’t some kind of total cop out. Maybe this was better than some timey-wimey thing being the cause, but I don’t feel like it. As it is I can just kind of be angry at the Doctor for not being very comforting when he dissolved Flesh-Amy causing Amy to wake up in her pod. Also, after so much talk of saving the Flesh, the Doctor must not count them as living beings if they are still connected to the original person.

Before I can get to the rest of the mostly enjoyable episode, we have to think about Amy’s pregnancy timeline. She must have been knocked up before getting the the invitation to go out to America, but does that mean that she was a ganger then? Or was there a point in the first episode of the series that she was replaced? If this is the case then it has been around 5 or 6 months since the day of the moon, relative to the TARDIS residents. My money is on somewhere within the first episode, if only because I feel like Moffat must have left some kind of small hint to that nature somewhere. It’s really no good to guess at this sort of thing in Doctor Who considering the flexible nature of all of the show’s rules.

The rest of the episode was pretty much as expected. The two Doctors work together to get both sides of the conflict to recognize their common humanity, while the ganger leader Jenny ends up turning into a monster straight out of Silent Hill. This last part is really disheartening considering her blatant manipulation of Rory, who will probably never learn to trust again. I don’t have much to say about this episode. It was poorly written, but once again Matt Smith’s acting kept things afloat.

doctor Who: S6 Ep5, The Rebel Flesh

Answering another distress call the TARDIS has decided that the Doctor is too worried about Amy’s pregnancy and should instead go focus on some acid miners who live in a monastery and play Dusty Springfield. Getting there they find (what was already established in the cold open) that the people running the place are copying themselves (making “gangers”) in order to perform dangerous acid harvesting tasks. Anyway, after a storm disrupts the power in the castle the copies get disconnected from the originals and everyone starts freaking out because they are suddenly being forced to deal with an existential crisis that was barely even all that edgy when Christopher Nolan made a movie about it.

So, of course, the two sides break off and start trying to kill each other. Everything is rather rushed though, so the only really fun part of the whole episode comes from the Doctor asking for some new shoes since his other ones got eaten up in the acid pool that the TARDIS is in. At least, with the introduction of the Ganger Doctor at the end of the episode we have a setup that might force the next episode take a few twists.

The best thing about this episode was Rory’s sudden gaining of a backbone. After a season and a half of clinging to Amy trying to just be safe, he seems to finally be taking some heroic initiative in trying to help one of the gangers whose plight as someone who has been uploaded into an imperfect body. This is clearly something he can relate to, and it doesn’t hurt that she’s a cute woman who is prone to hugging him and kissing his cheek before telling him how lucky Amy is. This all leads to him actually actively choosing to wonder away from Amy multiple times during the episode. Clearly, he and Amy are going to have a talk about this in the near future.

While many felt that The Curse of the Black Spot was a bit too simple and hokey, it was at least fun. This episode was far from fun as it was too busy just trying to make sure we were all kept up with the situation. This made it feel like the most un-Moffat Who yet, considering even the most complex Moffat episodes are all full of a good fun. Here’s hoping that next week will give us more whimsey since it already has the plot mostly set up.

Oh, and Eye Patch Lady popped up again. This is an even less subtle runner than Bad Wolf. Let’s hope we meet this woman soon.

Doctor Who: S6 Ep4, The Doctor's Wife

I know that most people who enjoy Doctor Who also love Neal Gaiman, so the two of them coming together for even just one episode seems like a possibility engineered to win over every geeky fan ever. And this week’s episode delivered exactly what we could have expected from such a pairing. For me, as someone who has never really understood the appeal of Gaiman, it was an episode that fully tested my love for the Doctor.

Seeing Matt Smith suddenly become full of joy is something I could have set the stage for every episode of Doctor Who, so starting out with the Doctor getting mail in the form of a floating cube was nothing less than a delight. The sudden revelation that there might be another Time Lord out there could have easily been a return to what looks like the season’s main arc, but instead we are taken to another universe that is attached to ours sort of like a little bubble attached to a bigger soap bubble (but not really). And once we’re there we find that the Doctor and the TARDIS were lured there so that some alien force going by the name House wants to eat the TARDIS.

This is all really promising, but the bubble universe is so Gaiman-y that it becomes almost painful. First, the place is an industrial graveyard. Second, it’s whole population is made up of patchwork people who have no souls and look like faux-steampunk 19th century Grey Gardens residents. Third, the place is basically a big trap. This kind of place pops up so often in Gaiman’s work that I wonder if he didn’t actually wonder into a junkyard inhabited by gypsies in his youth and suffer some kind of horrible trauma. Maybe if I were not so aware of Gaiman’s other work I would be totally simpatico with this, but as is, I spent most of the episode waiting for the wise creature that was going to hold the key to the Doctor’s escape. Luckily that last part turned the TARDIS into that creature, but they had to cut the script down considerably after Gaiman turned it in, so I wager that there was also a talking bird or something that was left the writers’ room floor.

Anyway, the part of the whole script I have to give Gaiman credit for is the dialog between the Doctor and the TARDIS, Sexy (that’s what the Doctor calls her when they are alone after all). Once the zany kissing and biting are done with we get to some awesome dialogue that really works to show us that the Doctor’s love for the TARDIS is not one way. They choose each other to runaway with, and Sexy always makes sure that the Doctor gets to where he needs to go, even if it isn’t exactly where he wants to go sometimes. Why the whole episode was not just the two of them building a TARDIS and flirting is beyond me. The whole ending where they end up in the old control room only to go to the main one when House makes the old one disappear wraps things up almost too quickly, making the Doctor and Sexy’s last words to each other happen so fast that by the time she is a spaceship again, the whole episode feels just too sudden.

Of course, because we are in the middle of a season we still have Amy and Rory around to get locked in the box under House arrest, if you will. Wondering around the halls of the TARDIS the pair keep getting separated and Rory keeps getting old and dying. The whole sequence does show just how wacky the inside of a ship that is bigger on the inside than the outside can be, but it is also even more pointless than the drama the couple is already used to.

As much fun as this episode is, the build up to it was more fun. The Internet had already figured out the whole TARDIS as wife thing so all of the rest of the posturing by Gaiman et al about how they couldn’t talk about the episode made me hope for something more. Years from now if I rewatch this episode I will likely be happier with it because I will be so totally without expectation or as worried about it being a Gaiman story.

Doctor Who: S6 Ep3, The Curse of the Black Spot

Last week's Doctor Who was fun if only for the few lines about the Doctor's desire for a pirate hat. Most of my original write-up for it has turned into a rant about pirates, and the episode was too boring to recap. In fact, the only thing about this episode that I really enjoyed was the little kid and the way he reflected the Doctor and his companions' childishness. So that is what I will focus on here.

If the whole of last season was about mending the past so that it might finally be possible for Amy (and maybe the Doctor, thanks to River) to grow up, this season has forced everyone to wonder just what it means for everyone else to grow up. For Amy this means knowing that the Doctor might not be able to grow up since he is going to die. For the Doctor this comes to the question of Amy's yes/no pregnancy. In each case the characters are keeping something upsetting about the other's future from each other with a kind of blind hope that they will be able to change the future without ever having to worry the other one with "spoilers."

Of course, this leaves Rory out. Poor Rory. The Boy Who Waited.* His angst this season comes not from a sense that he might not be able to change the future or that the future is in flux, but that he has no control over anything. Because of this, he actually wants to grow up. He wants to know where he stands in the universe, but he wants to do that with Amy (and sort of with the Doctor). In the first two episodes of the season it was all about whether or not his love really loves him no matter how long he stands guard of her. He knows he has her hand, but can never be so sure that he has her heart. This episode it was his inability to do more than hide after Amy's pirate play leaves him cursed. He later can only rely on Amy to save him from drowning. This lack of control is what Rory wants to grow up away from, but can't so long as his best friends are busy pretending to be pirates.**

*Everyone is a boy or girl in Moffat's Who. This is why I constantly doubt that it is the Doctor whom River kills after all he is the "greatest man she has ever known."

**The Doctor's obsession with hats is just the tip of the ice berg in the Doctor's long history of dressing as a very specific part. Just going back so far as the last two Doctors, Nine dressed like a 2000s version of the knight from The Seventh Seal and Ten who dressed like some kind of young private school teacher. However, Eleven seems much more comfortable adopting much more flexible in taking on play roles that can be traded quickly, thus denying himself the need to be sincere and authentic in any absolute way. Amy has picked up on this it seems having found it necessary to put on a jacket and hat before saving the Doctor from the plank. It is also worth noting here that Moffat and his directors seem to be very aware of this considering the extremely long establishing shot of the coat as Amy finds.

This is why River's presence is so wonderful. She is a grownup going the other direction. She is becoming less of a grownup all the time. This both seems appealing to the Doctor and Amy while at the same time is a reminder that they are growing up whether they like it or not simply because they will soon start to become more experienced than River, making their relationship suddenly become reversed. When that day happens, that will be the day I expect Amy and the Doctor will be forced to do what Rory has wanted this whole time, and become a little more mature.

Doctor Who: S6 Ep2, Day of the Moon

Sorry for the tardiness of this post. I had most of it written out, just never got around to finishing it. Thanks to other stuff this week.

The second part of this season’s opening two parter will either be remembered as the point that Stephen Moffat broke Doctor Who or we will all look back at this episode at the end of summer and realize just how detailed Moffat’s idea of the Doctor really is. No matter what though, we will hopefully remember just how silly this whole episode seems now.

The actual events of the episode start to get silly after a bit. Richard Nixon starts popping up in various locations to make officials stand down which I guess makes as much sense as psychic paper, but is distracting thanks to just how bland Stuart Milligan’s Nixon embodiment is. Canton Delaware on the Doctor’s side, but it doesn’t even seem like he really understands just why he is working almost against his government to help the Doctor. Also, why do they have to act like Amy, Rory, and River are enemies of the state? Any reason why that building the little girl was calling from wasn’t sealed off after they had to escape is beyond me. Oh, and how did the Doctor figure out that whole post-hypnotic suggestion thing?

Putting all of that aside though, the Doctor sends his companions out all around the US (but mostly the Southwest and some random urban local) to see just how vast the Silence’s network really is. Turns out they have been around since the stone age getting humans to build stuff for them, most likely because their hands seem kind of useless. The Doctor seems to have figured out that the Silence give off, even through video media, not just forgetfulness but suggestion. That’s how they are able to control humanity. So the Doctor goes off and puts a transceiver in the Apollo XI going to the moon soon.

Meanwhile, Amy and Canton go in search of the girl, something it seems like someone would have already done (or maybe they did…). So they go to an orphanage, because Moffat knows that orphanages are as scary as bow ties are cool. There they find a guy who has been driven a little mad by having constantly forgotten the Silence who have taken up residence there. After a scary scene in a room with the Silence sleeping upside down on the ceiling, Amy finds a photo of her with child then encounters the little girl in her space suit and is quickly taken by the Silence. Luckily Canton is a little more competent (and actually has a weapon). He shoots a Silence and calls the Doctor for backup. They also find the astronaut suit and Amy’s recorder which is not a little radio for everything she is saying.

Down an Amy, up a Silent and a astronaut suit, Canton takes the wounded creature back to the Doctor’s prison to fix up the alien and record it basically saying that Canton should “kill the Silence on sight.” River and the Doctor find that the suit was some kind of life support unit that could make distress calls to the president of the United States. Rory spends his time uselessly trying to figure out if Amy is using vague insults to talk about him or the Doctor. Why Amy is talking as if someone could hear here…?

Using the chip to find Amy the Doctor shows up shows the Silence that he has just used their own powers to tell every human watching the moon landing to kill the Silence on sight (thanks to the Doctor’s transceiver he couldn’t have known he would use and Canton’s lucky recording). This makes the Silence mad, but River shoots them all as they untie Amy and all get in the TARDIS.

In between all of this there were a few other things going on, but they all amount to the kinds of unanswered questions that the Doctor always seems all too comfortable with. Most crazy is the child. Outside of her life support suit she is wondering the dark alleys of Florida dying. She reveals to a vagrant that she okay though because she can just regenerate, and proceeds to do just that. Considering the Doctor just left her in 1969 he seems to be okay with having no idea why this girl was so important, so it will be a while before the Doctor meets whomever this person is (the Master?).

Amy’s is/isn’t preggers. The Doctor probably made sure to pop a few Allegra after finding this out, since last time that happen it was just allergies. This time it is probably safe to say that everything Amy and Rory have been through have clearly time radiated their reproductive parts so much that this was bound to happen if they tried to have a child.

Rory needs to get over his jealousy of the Doctor. Amy loves him, and seems to only have eyes for him. This has been established.

At this point it seems like River and the Doctor’s Benjamin Button relationship just hit a milestone: their last/first kiss. River has made it pretty clear what the Doctor’s next stop in River’s life will be up to this point, but she didn’t this time, other than that they will be on kissing terms. There can’t be more than just one time period in River’s life that she and the Doctor make out for serious right? Otherwise, the next time the Doctor stops in on River will be just as awkward as that last scene with River was this episode.

Other stuff I expect to see later this season:

The Doctor’s Perfect Prison - There is no way that something so pointless is going to mean so little to Moffat as to just let it sit empty in a government building in 1969.

Hand Recorders - When they weren’t turning Rory into a creep they were useful as a plot device, and serve to echo River’s fate.

The Eye Patch Lady - This one is obvious, but I didn’t mention it before now. While searching the orphanage, Amy sees a woman with an eye patch looking through a slot in a door. When she goes up to look at it, she finds that the door has no slot nor are there andy women with pirate accessories to be found.

The whole episode is a mess. Moffat seems to have been desperate to fit so many little hints and clues into episode that, unlike the whispers of the Silence in the last season, it is too obvious that he is setting something up. During Lost many talked about the long treks across the island as the piece moving that was so vital to making anything happening. Here we are not just seeing every piece move, we are being told in explicit terms that those pieces exist. Unfortunately, we don’t have any reason other than some love of the show to care about the pieces. The little girl may be a Time Lord, but who cares. Same for the Silence’s underground network, Canton, and the Eye Patch Lady. Amy’s pregnancy is something meaningful to me, I guess… I just hope next week is less smug with itself.