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godzilla77
Sci-fi and fantasy and surreality and adventure and comedy and wit and epics...
Cheers fan, Northern Exposure fan, Twin Peaks fan, David Attenborough fan...
I've got an MFA in Acting and a few years of teaching high school English under my belt.
Smart discussion of smart film/TV rocks. I hope I may contribute well.
My favorite Doctor is the 7th; my favorite actors to watch in the role are Tom Baker, Patrick Troughton, and Peter Capaldi. My favorite Trek is DS9; my favorite ever Trek episodes are TNG's Yesterday's Enterprise and Voyager's Muse; my favorite ever Trek captain is Picard; my favorite ever Trek character is Bones. My favorite movies to come out during my film buff days (since middle school) are Pleasantville, Fearless (1993), Wall-E, Moulin Rouge, and The Fall (2006); my favorite movies from before that period are The Empire Strikes Back, the 80s Indiana Jones films, The Shining (1980), Fantasia, Disney's Robin Hood, The Man Who Would Be King, Casablanca, The Man Who Planted Trees.
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Reviews
The West Wing: Privateers (2003)
Funniest episode of the show?
Someone needs to come out and say it: this is the funniest episode of the show. I mean, it's definitely a fantastic episode too. But it's not just hurrah and good suspense. It's workplace comedy with excellent actors and scenes. A great show doesn't have to do intense intrigue all the time. Let there be light points in amongst the darker ones. I can't believe the average rating is so low on here.
The nonsense about tresuring our family bloodlines in America as descendents of colonizers is not the topic, nut it may as well be. Marian Cotesworth-Hay is precisely the sort of figure that needs skewering in our political satire. She resembles a character from a Marx Brothers movie, as she was worthy of skewering then too. But such inane and grotesque pretensions and snobbery of the old money of America just cry out for pointing at and laughing.
Stargate: The Ark of Truth (2008)
Very simple: this is the end to the Ori arc.
Sorry this won't be a comprehensive review, more just simple rebuttal to some very silly other users' reviews. This is not the end of SG1; this is the end of the seasons 9 and 10 Stargate: SG1 Ori arc storyline. The actual end of the SG1 series is a double-episode called Moebius, an episode called Unending, and a second straight-to-DVD film called Continuum. All three of these are one. They all are the intentional, satisfying, lovely -- actually about ending the series -- final episode. Sure Continuum could have had more come after it. It sort of did in the other Stargate series and expanded media... But hey, focus, check your searches for Stargate movies: Continuum comes after this one, it's far more the final word on SG-1.
THIS MOVIE DOESN'T DO WHAT YOU THINK IT DOES IF YOU THINK IT ENDS THE SERIES.
Thank you for reading.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Playing God (1994)
A Tough Episode to Recommend Due to Very Silly Science, BUT a Great Look at Dax
I adore the development of Jadzia in DS9. It's gradually, lovingly done. This episode certainly is a fun, lighter DS9 hour with excellent development of Dax -- really picking up what Dax (the episode in season one) and Invasive Procedures had earlier established. Look how she grows ever more interesting and confident. I adore how she gets on with the Ferengi -- and is better at Tongo than Curzon Dax was. Seeing her judge another Trill initiate to see if he is ready really has given us the best look at Jadzia herself yet.
Unfortunately, Arjin the initiate is a bit of a loser. And the sci-fi plot is a HUGE loser. As interesting as it wants to be, it sadly just sits there looking ridiculous for half an hour. There's even a whole scene where Jadzia is gradually spewing technobabble for nearly a whole minute studying this "universe" where we just don't know what she's saying. It turns out later that she may have discovered evidence of life in this shiny bauble. But... the things she says... don't really indicate life -- unexplained they are. UFOs don't mean aliens. And science must come before leaping to insane conclusions. A few seconds later we're hearing about a civilization that must have transpired in this time. Um...
Um...
Yeah, it requires emptying your brain for about ten minutes. Fortunately, when Sisko discusses the challenges of deciding what to do what it really looks like is a sweet conversation with Jake about who he's dating. Yes, this is what matters. And this is why I love this series. Characters' journeys matter far more than the nonsense stories -- even as I can fall for any great sci-fi nonsense.
In the end, it is certainly Jadzia's development that matters here. If I could divorce it from the terrible science I would.
Star Trek: Voyager: Muse (2000)
Number One Best Episode of the Series
So rare to see sci-fi as smart as this and as compelling on the subject of storytelling. This is what Trek has always been about. Super metatextual and fun, but it's also super satisfying.
Meanwhile, yeah, no big explosions. Definitely one of the last gasps of great Voyager. Joe Menosky's best script too.
Doctor Who: Praxeus (2020)
So Strong, But So Fast (and yet another win for season 12)
Yeah people are complaining about preaching again. But the preaching this time was so cool: everything on Earth is connected and humans are smart and brave and can solve problems and matter. The plastics hazard stuff was messaging, but it was also plot. And it is real. I actually loved this episode in broad strokes. So many cool ideas.
A bunch of frustrating unanswered questions that we get left with from it though. Did cool Madagascar beach doctor die? How did Adam text Jake from Hong Kong? Were the aliens bad shots in Hong Kong because they were dying from Praxeus? And more... 😏.
Gabriela the Vlogger girl was annoyingly unsympathetic. I think that was meant to be funny about her questions about her own fame. She just needed more time to develop though. It was so fast -- and it did put its finger on all the right stuff for the most part -- but while it felt so urgent it also made it tough to care about some characters and moments.
But yeah, where I'm very much cool with the messaging, this time things that bothered me were to do with pace mainly, and a kind of typical clumsiness in Chibnall Who writing. Still, where Orphan 55 was a mess with a sledgehammer message, this was a pretty cool, intense, and fun ride with an atmospheric dispersion of a message.
I really felt for Adam and Jake myself, the birds were scary ass, and so was Praxeus. Definitely a serious thumbs up from me. Wish it was a two parter though. Had even more plot in it than Spyfall. I would have loved to have just gotten more time with the characters, suspense building, and mystery here.
Doctor Who: Demons of the Punjab (2018)
Fantastic episode in a rough season
Despite Chris Chibnall's best efforts towards mediocrity and poorly developing his characters and his new Doctor Who, this episode notably without his name on the writing credit really shines. It is beautiful both by script and by appearance. Spain stands in for Pakistan in location shots, but boy does this episode make me want to explore both places. I was moved to tears by this one, but also thrilled.
Doctor Who fans who complain about the lack of scary monsters and super creeps in it seem to have forgotten about the middle third of the thing. Sure the focus turns towards the human horrors of the Partition of India, quite brilliantly, but the premise of these demons is complex and interesting. (Why can't they come back as scary monsters? This is a time travel show!)
The Legend of Korra: Venom of the Red Lotus (2014)
A nitpick...
If Zaheer can only fly if he's abandoned all worldly desires (hey, hey, nirvana), how can he still fly if he wants to kill the avatar and possibly create a utopia of free nationless societies? Sounds pretty damned worldly to me. I don't think this flying works quute the way he thinks it does. But it's sure working. Otherwise... stunning season three finale.
Fringe: Subject 13 (2011)
Sequel to last season's "Peter"
This is one of the series of really emotionally tender and marvelous episodes of this season, so very tender in its treatment of Peter and Olivia's relationship. It's as obvious as can be, though, that most of the user reviewers here missed the emotional centers of the episode in Olivia's childhood relationship with Peter tying in with his and Walter's very dark ongoing connection to the coming apocalypse. And it's all based in this relationship.
Peter and Olivia as children center the story, with two universes' different take on Peter's really sad and mythic displacement. A story of two tender and awesome orphans, basically, is what it becomes. With the previous episode we got the notion that "spooky action at a distance" (Einstein) can keep kids from two universes connected the same as two old lovers. Epic and lovely sci-fi premises, lovingly explored here.
Also, without too much for spoilers, it's clear that this episode shows how Walternate actually figured out what to do to get his son back long ago. Nifty-tifty.
Some reviewers may see this stuff as soap opera. I see it as fantastic sci-fi opera.
Doctor Who: Terminus: Part Four (1983)
Nutty But Beautiful Enough
Four talking Vanir really aren't enough. But it does tell the story.
The blooming heart of Nyssa's new Terminus,healing there at the center of the universe, a sweet and technically minded princess there in the rough -- it does play a lovely chord. And then there's her tearful departure scene with her lovely theme.
The Black Guardian straight up clobbers Turlough for not doing something he was totally unable to even attempt. To say the Black Guardian is a tough master is a vast understatement.
The end of the universe stuff adds up to a nice scene of freeing the heroic Garm. He's good in that scene. But in the scene with Olvir a little earlier, his voice and his mouth clearly don't align in use. Still, the later scene is a fine payoff. Much of this episode is.
In the end, Terminus is a tone poem about finding a rotten core for all things, and then giving your sweetest hero to repair it and let some flowers grow in that rotten core. It carries along the themes of Mawdryn Undead, allowing the the TARDIS crew to continually explore issues of fate and opportunity. This story could have been a really great masterpiece, but industrial action issues limited sets, props, and shooting time. "Lackluster" is indeed the apt word, but it's primarily a case of a great dark nightmare poorly served rather than a dull mess poorly served -- as often is asserted. Terminus still enchants me a good bit.
Also, the commentary track on the DVD is pretty terrific. Gotta love the brutal honesty of these folks some 30 years after the story is over. It's Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton, Mark Strickson, and Stephen Gallagher.
Doctor Who: Terminus: Part Three (1983)
Stoically Falling Into Total Oblivion
The Garm is interesting. Despite his weirdly lame mouth, he's nicely expressive in his movements. His big red eyes do some neat tricks to my sympathy+fear.
The premise of the Big Bang happening all over again because of the fuel release is wild and wonderful, but very oddly reached. I have no idea how Bor figured it out. Why was Terminus capable of time travel. Why is the fuel so incredibly unstable? What in the world gave the Doctor his epiphany? Why does this second explosion undoubtedly destroy the universe? That more than anything else, the primary jeopardy factor and biggest idea of the story, just doesn't make any sense. And it bothers me.
As a boy, I didn't really care that that sequence of epiphanies didn't make any sense. It now just seems pretty darn nonsensical and unsubstantiated by anything other than that the Doctor said it. That must be some super duper unstable fuel.
Alongside the silliness of Turlough's continued checking in with the Black Guardian while he can barely do anything, we also get more skulking about in shafts with Tegan. They do get freed this episode, but it's to then hang out in the very stressful center of the universe shuttle control room.
Tone and style very much star in this story. It's still nightmarish. Nyssa's fate looks grimmer than ever, poor thing. The poorly explained nonsense has started to beat out the style, though, by this episode.
Doctor Who: Terminus: Part Two (1983)
Deep into the Nightmare
WATCH THIS STORY WITH THE CGI EFFECTS TURNED ON if you have the DVD. It's a big improvement and very impressive multiple times over. Terminus really wanted to be a big budget space horror film.
Now that we get to see Turlough and Tegan just stuck in the ventilation shafts and tunnels for no reason other than that they hid there and now can't get out, it does really seem like -- claustrophobic effects or no -- we're getting our time wasted. And that applies especially when Turlough chats with the Black Guardian, totally unable to do anything useful.
The greatest strength of this story is its oppressively bleak and operatically nightmarish tone coupled with its apocalyptic ideas, but it does tend to see many of the best occasions to show off that strength totally wasted on lame considerations about practicality. The armor for the Vanir is stylishly creepy and fantastic, but really impractical. The acting is mainly pretty great -- soulful and edgy. The showing of the hydromel drug usage convinces and sells the horror of this world nicely. There's that good acting, nifty disease make up, and then the shame of several of the scenes with the Vanir feeling like there are only 5 or 6 of them, rather than enough to work the whole station of Terminus.
The reveal that we're in the center of the universe is done with a graphic that suggests we're with thousands of other galaxies also in the center of the universe. It's just ridiculous. Doctor, did you really get that this is the center of the universe from that image?
The character of Bor, the broken and prophetic Vanir, is my favorite in this story.
Nyssa's skirt comes off with delirium and fever far more easily than it should.
Still, neat ideas and a great tone greatly sell this black as pitch story, despite production flaws.
Doctor Who: Terminus: Part One (1983)
Grim, Punk, Edgy, Mythic
I've got to admit it. I've always been a fan of this story. The complaints I read from fan critics about this thing being all corridors and groaning always suggest to me that fans don't actually keep up with plots very well. The cramped, nasty, creepy world of this story is the point of it. It's a nightmare of decadent pestilence at the center of the universe -- nifty idea upon nifty idea in a wonderfully, operatically grim-tastic setting.
Meanwhile, there was the problem of having the Black Guardian still just hollering down at Turlough to kill the Doctor again and again, all while he's totally incapable of getting to the Doctor. It's only in the opening episode when he's able to almost destroy the TARDIS that Turlough gets close to real menace in this story. That, here in this episode, and then Turlough's lovely snake in the TARDIS role extended as he chats Tegan into accepting him just a bit do add up to a great continuation of his character's arc just here. It's the next three episodes where he unfortunately doesn't do very much, despite all the build up from last Mawdryn Undead.
We also get sexy Kate Bush space pirates. Who I just like. It was the 80s. That's all I've got to say about how they look.
We'll see the Vanir in the next three episodes. But so far, this is such a maze of a nightmare. I was terrified and enthralled by this story as a child and as an adult still find part one a masterpiece of creepy 80s Who style.
Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead: Part Four (1983)
Creepy and Clever, a Very Neat Conclusion
Here we get an ending all about fate and things falling into their natural place. Perhaps it's a deus ex machina -- a Brigadier ex machina? -- but it also disappointingly features a couple of notorious drawbacks. The UNIT dating mess that comes of this sits alongside many questions about how time travel works in Who. It can be a good conversation between fans, or it can be a real headache and probably an inevitable bit of regret for trying to make sense of it.
The cleverness is all about setting up the two Brigadiers and their necessity to have always been the way this plot gets both driven and concluded. The ellipse of the ship in space and time appears to be still attracting an ellipse of the Brigadier's own progress in space and time. The extra creepy jeopardy of the infectiousness of Mawdryn's disease to Nyssa and Tegan in the TARDIS makes for a really terrifying pair of quick scenes, both compelling and still laden with chronobabble.
The Doctor gets forced to be a Doctor Kevorkian here. The discussion of right to die issues isn't forced so much as just left to our discretion as a discerning audience. Nifty, nifty. What's more disturbing is really the issue of fate at stake here as the plot finally totally plays out and the two Brigadiers meet. Was this always the only way things could happen? According to the Black Guardian, it doesn't appear so. But it does appear as though it's the only thing that works out all right.
The Black Guardian perhaps isn't completely omniscient, but very much terrifies anyway. Sadly, he's mainly just shouting and posturing and creepy manipulating of Turlough. There is an arc for him, but it's rather limited what he and Turlough are able to do without actually killing the Doctor
Turlough is creepier than Mawdryn. I love watching him follow the Brigadier in the maze of Mawdryn's ship. His little steps, light voice, and sly manner make him always interesting on screen.
Good old stalwart Brigadier. This story brings him back to us, but it also makes him a bit of an anomaly. It was always meant to have this teacher character be William Russell's Ian Chesterton until he ended up not being able to make the shoot. When Nicholas Courtney returned to play the Brig, he brought with him so much warmth and confidence and presence as this great old hero of the series, despite oddly becoming a maths teacher. I can accept him as a teacher -- but especially I can accept him coming back into service occasionally for UNIT after this. There really have been very few companions whose whole lives have been so well chronicled.
Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead: Part Three (1983)
And the Plot All Comes Together
The two Brigadiers, the mutants trying to become Time Lords, the problem of the Black Guardian manipulating Turlough -- it all comes together and portends disaster for the Doctor.
Mawdryn's tragic fate ties to a faustian bargain he and his comrades made just as poor Turlough looks to be in for it with his agreement with the Black Guardian/Satan. The twists all fall into place and we do see David Collings (Mawdryn) once more a very dramatic guest star on Who (previously in Revenge of the Cybermen and Robots of Death), all tragic, all damaged. His voice and his bearing is never anything but classical heroics. He's the kind of actor born to play Hamlet in his 30s and Lear in his 60s.
"A metamorphic symbiosis regenerator" -- tragic Mawdryn was a cunning bloke to steal something from Gallifrey.
I love the ease in this story that the Doctor, newly more youthful and a fair way more innocent than he used to be, as portrayed by Tom Baker, has with Turlough. Davison always seems to allow the Fifth Doctor a charm of knowing far more than he's willing to say, a bit like the Troughton did as the Second Doctor. But in this story his ease with Turlough, right from the beginning, never seems actually too blithe. It's like he actually does know what's going on.
Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead: Part Two (1983)
The Brig Gets into It; Mawdryn Shows Up
The Brigadier's post-UNIT days are well established in this episode. But his PTSD involves something very strange having happened to him six years ago. Could it possibly be that it was this story????
Mawdryn Undead gets better as it goes along. This episode, though, actually features many fans' favorite part of the story, the nostalgiafest as the Fifth Doctor meets up with the Brig for the first time. Even though he's happy teaching maths, it's clear this isn't the place for him. Fortunately, we will see him in a better place for his legacy in a few more stories.
Turlough and his scenes still captivate and dominate the story, though.
Infamously, this is where Peter Grimwade's very clever script forgets completely about the UNIT time period always being a few years ahead in the near future. Suddenly its dating goes all wrong just so we can get a plot about creepy would-be Time Lords messing with time and their own lifespans. While the story has some fascinating things to say about the value of life, it really throws a big kink into series chronology.
The only thing in this episode that doesn't ring true in its really lovely and twisty plot is Mawdryn's initial appearance. Tegan and Nyssa mistake him for a newly either regenerating or totally damaged Doctor. It makes sense enough to keep watching, but David Collings, lovely as he is, certainly doesn't play as a wet and bloodied Peter Davison. Surely some costuming help in creating that misapprehension would have been worthy.
Other than that doozy, this is a terrific second part. I do love a good antihero. The sets, music, and costumes are all pretty great.
Note -- if you've got the DVD, do try watching it with the CGI on. It's much prettier. However, one does lose some of the detail on Turlough's crystal.
Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead: Part One (1983)
Meet the Black Guardian, Devil; Meet Turlough, Devil's Henchman
Turlough is a Devil's henchman of a companion, time travel shenanigans begin, and the Brigadier turns out to be a boys' school maths teacher.
This is the beginning of a very clever and a rather creepy story. It's also briefly a hard core nostalgia-fest.
The Brigadier returns, and it's fun to see him, certainly. But his return is greatly about being a bit of a PTSD sufferer. He's terrific to watch and, along with the new dark and wonderful companion, Turlough, right at the center of the plot. In this first episode, he's not got a huge amount to do besides just show up at a school and sound wonderfully crusty.
The Black Guardian returns. And it's the great and horrifying Valentine Dyall scaring us all again with his black as midnight villainy voice. He does mean to kill the Doctor -- after embarrassing him -- might as well be the Master again. But this Guardian fellow is a huge monster of a demon, Bad Q, perhaps, to take a Star Trek reference. But Satan is basically here, tempting a young and vulnerable humanoid trapped on Earth to be his assistant and kill the Doctor for him.
Turlough's set up takes up at least half of this first episode, and it's lumbered with a few of the more embarrassing moments of 80s Who. But it's also Valentine Dyall and Mark Strickson, greatly -- both totally entertaining fellows. Strickson's Turlough weasels and menaces and cowers all over the place. And Dyall's nothing if not terrifying.
At episode's end, we're left wondering, though -- not whether the Doctor will get killed by Turlough so much -- even as that's the crux of this and the next 11 episodes -- but whether the Doctor actually knows Turlough has it in for him. And, really, the other question: how will Turlough get out of this horrible situation?
The most interesting protagonist of the show, really, is suddenly Turlough... until the end of Enlightenment.