How to Watch 'Room 237'

I've been reading some reviews of 'Room 237', both before and after watching the film itself, and it seems to me that the people who liked it all had one thing in common, and the people who disliked it all had an entirely different thing in common. To wit: People who hated the movie thought that it was about 'The Shining', and people who loved the movie (and I confess, I count myself among their number) thought that it was all about the interviewees.

And in that light, I think that both sets of reviews make perfect sense. Because as a movie about 'The Shining', 'Room 237' clearly fails. The interviewees are all (in the immortal words of XKCD) raising confirmation bias to an art form, viewing the film through the lens of their own preoccupations and focusing on irrelevant (or in some cases imaginary) details in the mistaken belief that Kubrick's "perfectionist" tendencies and refusal to provide people with easily-digested homilies about what his film "really means" translate into coded messages hidden in the film for the diligent. There's no benefit to be gained in listening to these people talk about how this is really a film about the Holocaust or the genocide of the Native Americans or the secret conspiracy to fake the moon landing footage, or at least not enough to justify sitting through a documentary on the subject.

But if you assume instead that this is a movie about obsession and fanaticism, about how a movie can become a sort of cinematic Rorschach test reflecting our own thoughts and ideas back at us, then it becomes fascinating. By allowing each of the interviewees to speak, unfiltered and uncensored, the film becomes a sort of Freudian analysis of the kind of person who would fall down the rabbit hole of conspiracy thought. Hearing person after person offer a variation of, "I don't know why nobody but me sees that this is what Kubrick was trying to do, maybe it was because I was thinking about this so much  just before I saw the film..." It's illuminating, as well as tremendously entertaining. (At one point, the camera freeze-frames on a scene where one commenter claims that Kubrick airbrushed his face into the clouds...and just pauses, as if to say, "Yeah, folks. We got nothing.")

So when you watch 'Room 237', don't think of it as a movie about a movie. Think of it as a movie about the people who watch movies. You'll be much happier.

Why 'Iron Man 3' **spoilers** Instead of **spoilers spoilers spoilers**

I went out and watched 'Iron Man 3' this weekend, and I did so with the movie's biggest plot twist already spoiled for me. Not that I minded--I have always been greatly of the opinion that if your twist is any good, you'd enjoy the story even if you knew it, and if it's not, then hiding it won't make it any better. (In that spirit, the killer in 'Saw' is the corpse on the floor. That's right, he fakes being shot in the head for ten freaking hours so well that the trained doctor sitting three feet away can't spot it. There. That saved you the cost of a rental.)

That said, I know not everyone feels the same way I do. So here's a spoiler cut, for those of you who want to experience 'Iron Man 3' without knowing the twist.

Review: The Wheel of Ice

'The Wheel of Ice', by Stephen Baxter, is the latest in the untitled series of "hardcover Doctor Who books by Proper Science Fiction Writers" that began with Michael Moorcock's 'The Coming of the Terraphiles'. It's interesting, really, how little difference there is between the Proper Science Fiction Writer books like 'Wheel' and the better parts of the existing Doctor Who series--this isn't a knock on Baxter so much as it is a paean to the way that the Doctor Who novels have produced quite a few stellar science-fiction writers who've gone on to have excellent careers of their own. Paul Cornell, Mark Gatiss, Russell T Davies, Ben Aaronovitch...there's no shortage of people who made their mark as a Doctor Who writer and went on to bigger and better things.

Many of them, in fact, were writing Doctor Who in the period that Baxter first began his own career, and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine that 'The Wheel of Ice' was a novel whose genesis was as a Missing Adventure that Baxter didn't wind up publishing. It might sound like more of a stretch to those unfamiliar with Baxter's career, but he did wind up having a short story in one of the later, non-Who Decalogs for Virgin, so he was clearly aware of them as a market. And as this book shows, he's clearly also a huge Doctor Who fan. This story is so filled with kisses to the series' past that it reads much like the first-time work of a Cornell or a Gatiss, someone utterly filled to the brim with talent but desperately afraid that this will be their only Doctor Who book and they'll have to fit in every single continuity reference right now or they'll never get another chance to bring up T-Mat and the Ice Warriors and the Karkus and and and--

Despite the slightly intrusive nature of the fan references, the Doctor Who aspects of this Doctor Who book are handled excellently. Jamie is wonderful, accessible and interesting and funny and resourceful all at once, while Zoe is written by someone who clearly gave the character's background actual thought instead of just treating it as a reason for her to act "smart". One of the other reviews I read of this book disliked the fact that she spends time near the end babysitting someone else's kid, but I liked the way that we saw Zoe doing something she never did on television...heck, maybe something she never thought she would do...and being very interesting while doing it. The Doctor isn't entirely Troughton--there are times he feels a bit Pertwee--but he's very recognizably the Doctor, in a wonderful way.

And the plot is exactly what you'd expect from Baxter, a hard sci-fi story that excellently synthesizes the genre with the humanist elements of New Wave science fiction. The characters are all sympathetic and interesting (especially MMAC, the robot raised as a human to calibrate its AI, who could sustain a novel all by himself) and the Big Idea at the story's heart is suitably big. And because this is Doctor Who, the series without a formula, you really can't be sure how things are going to go until the final page. Really, the only flaw is that Florian Hart, the human villain of the piece, can't decide whether she's a heartless mining tycooon or a comic-book supervillain. (Once you drop lines like, "You may have defused the bomb, Doctor, but you won't find it that easy to escape my wrath!" you've pretty much closed down the first option.)

On the whole, I'd happily recommend this one, and I think it's great that they're doing books like this again. Classic Series stories, written by great sci-fi writers, with appeal to adults...it's almost like the Virgin years all over again.

A Potpourri and an Apology

Mostly, this is one of those obnoxious "sorry there aren't more posts" posts--as I mentioned in my last post, there are new hires, which is significant in that it implies that there aren't enough people working here right now to handle the demand. So until the new hires are fully trained and able to help out, work is exhausting and not leaving me in much mood to blog at the end of the day. (Paradoxically, the new hires are making things worse, as we now have to dedicate people to train them, and if we had those people to spare, we wouldn't be doing hiring. Right now, we've got ten people doing the work of eighteen.)

But a quick potpourri of things I've been thinking/doing when I'm not utterly wiped--I'm enjoying the back half of Season Seven well enough, I guess, but I have to say that Moffat's non-Moffat episodes are worse than Davies' non-Davies episodes (of course, Davies had Moffat writing for him, and Moffat doesn't have Davies writing for him.) 'Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS' was a low point for me, though. It felt a bit like "What if the kid from 'Axe Cop' wrote a Doctor Who episode?" only without the charm of knowing that a five-year old did it all by himself.

I finished 'Into the Fire' in my B5 rewatch, and I'm amazed at how little energy I have to keep going now; some of that is that I have very little energy in general at the moment, see above, but given that I had very little enthusiasm for the bits of 'Return of the King' after Frodo destroyed the One Ring, I'm wondering if I'm not going to feel like the extended super-epilogue is a bit much here, too. On the other hand, the aftermath sub-plots were actually set up and foreshadowed (the Minbari, the humans, the Centauri, the Narn, and Psi-Corps all have so much stuff going on that I can see taking a season to wrap all that up), whereas the scouring of the Shire really felt like it came out of left-field.

Good on Jason Collins, although the Sports Illustrated blurb of "The Gay Athlete" made him sound like The Elephant Man. Maybe "A Gay Athlete", or even better yet "Jason Collins' Life As A Gay Athlete"? Oh, and the ESPN analyst who said he thought that it was sinful because "any sex outside of marriage is sinful"...first, better get cracking on those gay marriage laws, buddy! Second...um...how the heck do you have any friends in basketball? Or pro sports? Or broadcasting? Maybe he only hangs out with octegenarian broadcasters.

Hopefully, after this week, things will calm down a bit and I'll be able to resume a slightly less laggy blogging schedule. If not, I'll at least try to make the next post a little less Larry King-ish.

Why I Love My Job

I was asked to write the following quiz up by my boss, to distribute to the new hires. Let me repeat that: I was asked to write this by my boss, to distribute to the new hires.


in1. My ideal spaceship is:
a) the size of a small city, and capable of traveling at Warp 9
b) able to make the Kessel Run in less than two parsecs
c) blue, rectangular, and bigger on the inside
d) like a leaf on the wind; watch how it soars
e) don't know/no opinion

2. Who would win in a fight between these characters?
a) Kirk
b) Luke Skywalker
c) River Song
d) Buffy
e) Um...you know these are all fictional characters, right?

3. Which is cooler?
a) a phaser
b) a lightsaber
c) a bow tie
d) a wooden stake
e) an electric guitar

4. Vampires are:
a) aliens that draw the salt out of human bodies
b) dark Jedi that feed on the Force
c) fish people with perception filters
d) soulless monsters that drink human blood (with two notable exceptions)
e) sparkly and popular with teenagers right now

5. The handiest tool in the universe is:
a) a tricorder
b) an astromech droid
c) a sonic screwdriver
d) another wooden stake
e) a Swiss army knife

6. Telepathy is possible...
a) sure! Lwaxana Troi has it!
b) With the Force, young Padawan, all things are possible.
c) Yes, but don't make a habit of it.
d) Yes, but it drives you insane. (Unless you live on a spaceship.)
e) No. Don't be silly.

7. The scariest thing in the universe is:
a) the Borg.
b) the Death Star.
c) a Dalek.
d) a giant snake that used to be the town's Mayor.
e) a king cobra.

8. When someone dies...
a) You have to return their body to their home planet.
b) They get a blue ghost body.
c) They regenerate.
d) Joss Whedon marks another notch on his writing desk.
e) Let's not discuss that at work, shall we? It's a very serious topic.

9. A good length for a series is:
a) Seven years.
b) Three movies. That's where they should have stopped.
c) Fifty years and counting.
d) Seven years. You hear that, FOX? Not one, not two. SEVEN.
e) I don't know, it depends on the series. Which one were you talking about?

10. The best movie ever made is:
a) Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
b) The Empire Strikes Back.
c) Doctor Who and the Daleks.
d) Either Serenity, Cabin in the Woods or Avengers. Don't make me choose!
e) Citizen Kane.

Reviews: 'Plague of the Cybermen', 'The Dalek Generation', 'Shroud of Sorrow'

One of the nice things about the return of Doctor Who to our screens is the way that it also gives a shot in the arm to the nigh-dormant book line. As someone who really spent most of his formative fan period during the Wilderness Years, I'm thrilled to see any new book. Was I thrilled after reading them? Well...

Plague of the Cybermen: This one was not so much "thrilling" as "standard". Everything about this was absolutely straightforward and done according to the tropes of Doctor Who, with just the minimal amount of energy to keep you from falling asleep while reading. The Doctor arrives in a vaguely European, vaguely pre-industrial village so generic that I literally expected the big twist to be that it wasn't Earth, and begins to track down the source of mysterious deaths and disappearances. (Hint: The novel is called 'Plague of the Cybermen'. There are a limited number of ways to surprise the audience with the cause of the disappearances.)

The actual plague is dealt with in about the first thirty pages, and proves to be more or less irrelevant to the plot; it's there mostly because "...stuff, I guess of the Cybermen" wouldn't have been a great title. The Doctor finds a villager who's sufficiently spunky-yet-vulnerable to be his pseudo-companion, and they investigate anachronistic technology, a castle with hidden passageways, grave robbings, and mysterious disappearances until Justin Richards has filled out enough of the page count. Then the Cybermen come out in force and rampage a bit, until the Doctor does something clever and vaguely inspiring and they all die. (I'd say "spoilers", but really, you can pretty much see this one coming from about page one.) I's not bad, I'll stress. Justin Richards is incapable of turning in a truly bad novel; he's just too competent on a fundamental level to make mistakes in plot, character or tone. But at the same time, he's not really trying to turn in a great one, either. Just "good enough". It feels weird to say that the two weakest books of the last few years have both been his, but that's as much a tribute to his work as an editor as it is an indictment of him as an author. Even so, I wish he'd done more of that great editorial work and commissioned someone else for this slot.

The Dalek Generation: Technically speaking, this is the work of a first-time author, but Nicholas Briggs has written a lot of Doctor Who. Just not for the novels. He's a veteran of the Big Finish range (where he wrote excellent stories like 'Creatures of Beauty' and...um, less than excellent ones like 'The Sirens of Time') and he's probably best known to the average passerby as the voice of the Daleks and Cybermen on the new series. So all in all, it's about time that he wrote a novel. How was it?

Well, the concept is glorious. It's set in a distant galaxy where the Daleks are the benevolent creators of an interplanetary utopia known as the Sunlight Worlds, and an entire generation of humans knows them as nothing other than benefactors. When the Doctor shows up and tries to denounce them as evil, he's prosecuted for incitement to hate crimes. Every part of this is nothing short of brilliant. Having seen the Daleks as often as we have, it's easy to understand (as the Doctor does) that this has to be part of some sinister scheme. But it's rare to see the Daleks portrayed as such utterly Machiavellian schemers; Briggs shows them as clever, patient, and manipulative, which is something that's more often told than shown. And Briggs revels in showing the whole thing from just enough of an outside perspective that we can see how the Doctor is reduced to utter impotence in the face of this gambit; he can't rally a population to fight the Daleks when they don't have anything they want to fight against, and seeing him reduced to a ranting nutter in the street is genuinely unsettling in a way that the series rarely is.

Next to that, the actual plot (Spoilers: The Daleks aren't really good guys after all!) is kind of boring, but it does provide a reasonable explanation as to why the Daleks are doing everything. My only real complaint is that it seems like they're heading towards an ending that makes the Doctor's hiding in misery in Victorian London make sense, but they pull back. The ending should be very bleak, and it's sort of "whew, that was too close! Better stop traveling and righting wrongs, then."

Shroud of Sorrow: Another new writer for the novels, and unlike Nick Briggs, Tommy Donbavand doesn't have a ton of Who credits in another medium. He's a genuinely new voice for the range (and as an aside, Justin Richards has been doing an admirable job of this lately. Oli Smith, Una McCormack, James Goss, Paul Finch, George Mann, Naomi Alderman...that's a lot of new authors getting their shot, and there've been a lot of successes in that batch. Yay Justin!) How did he do? Well, the concept is strong, and thematically linked to the 50th anniversary; the Shroud feed on grief, and the death of Kennedy (which, of course, took place the same weekend as the debut of a certain television series) has provided them with a feast to end all feasts. It's a strong idea, and for the first three-fourths of the book, it's quite well executed. Donbavand has a good ear for dialogue, and evokes the slightly fairy-tale feel of Matt Smith's character quite well. The plot also jumps straight into gear; there are no slow, creeping menaces here. The Shroud rapidly spreads over a whole city, and the Doctor's got maybe eleven hours before Earth is irretrievably parasitized. (Although I'm not crazy about the idea that if your grief gets "eaten", another emotion gets stronger to fill the breach. As menacing fates for the human race go, it's been topped.)

The book goes off the rails a tiny bit towards the end, when the Doctor goes to a planet previously victimized by the Shroud and finds...um, clown therapists. Who travel to Earth in a dimensionally transcendental clown car to battle the Shroud with laughter. I think this is one of those concepts that will either work for you or it won't. For me, it didn't. And after that, we get several more strategies deployed to battle the Shroud at the rate of about one every other page, which is a bit too fast paced even for me. On the other hand, this section does contain one of the finest sequences in the book, where the Doctor lures the Shroud to him with memories of the Brigadier's funeral. It's a wonderful tribute to one of the show's touchstones. On the strength of that, and some of the other vivid and clever sequences, I'd like to see another book from Tommy Donbavand, even if this one contains a few first-time writer flaws.

"Who Are You, Doctor?"

The Doctor attempted to rub his head, but was distracted by the strangely familiar tugging sensation on his other wrist when he reached up. He spent a moment or two moving each hand in turn, noticing the way that the other was forced to follow. As his vision cleared, he was finally able to place it--of course. His hands were cuffed together. That would explain it. And likewise, the pain in his head and foggy vision would imply being knocked unconscious. He smiled. For the first time since he'd come to Babylon 5, the Doctor felt like he was finally on familiar ground.

"You didn't answer the question," the voice rang out in strident, arrogant tones. "Who are you?"

The Doctor rolled onto his back and looked up at the man in Victorian dress. "I'm the Doctor. And you are...?"

"Unacceptable!" the man shouted. He cracked his cane against the ground and pain flared up through the cuffs, into the Doctor's arms, and across his entire body.

"Ah," the Doctor said mournfully, half to himself. "It's one of those sorts of conversations, then. Yes, you look the sort. Always a bit too excited about the wrong answers, always a bit too eager to crack the whip. No, don't bother responding, I've heard it all before. You couldn't have 'sadist' written all over you more obviously if you were at a BDSM convention full of graffiti artists." With a bit of effort, he sat up. "Now I'm sorry, you had a question for me?"

"Yes, Doctor," the man said, making a visible effort to control his petulant fury. "My masters wish to know more about you. If lives are to be entrusted into your care, if the future is to depend on you, then they must be sure that you are doing the right things for the right reasons. And so I will ask, as many times as I have to until they are satisfied or you are dead. Who are you?"

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said, slowly and delicately rising to his feet. "Is it a curriculum vitae that they're looking for? My monster-fighting résumé? Let me see, I'm a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey--actually, I'm the last Time Lord from the former planet Gallifrey, it's rather a long story and you don't strike me as the patient sort. I've fought the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, the Slitheen, the Adipose, well I say I fought them but they were actually babies, so it was really more sort of giving their governess a stern talking to, I've died ten times, well, call it nine and a half, and I travel through time and space in a box that's bigger on the inside than the outside. And if you believe even half of that, you're far more open-minded than I'm giving you credit for, so why don't we just skip to the bit where you say..." The Doctor smiled grimly, gesturing in expectation.

"Unacceptable!" The cane cracked against the floor again. The Doctor staggered but did not fall. "Listen to yourself, Doctor! That's not who you are, merely what you've done! Where you're from! You're so filled with blinkered, arrogant pride over your history that you haven't even thought about the question! How can you come here, set yourself up as savior, ask people to follow you into death--"

The Doctor raised himself up to his full height. "I have never asked them to follow me!" he roared. His eyes were filled with ageless sorrow. For the first time in three centuries, the inquisitor flinched. "I have  traveled this universe for eleven hundred years, and I have seen agony beyond your capacity to understand. And where I go, I try to help. Because, well..." he shrugged. "What else am I supposed to do? Cluck my tongue and step back into the TARDIS? I've seen where that path leads, I have seen what happens to people who decide that not everyone is worth helping, and I cannot follow it. I would die first. I have died first.

"And so where I travel, when I see pain...I help. A little. Have I succeeded? I like to think so. I know there are a few worlds...well, a few galaxies...well, a few universes, no false modesty here...that wouldn't be around if not for me. But I have never...I have NEVER...told anyone that I am their savior. I've never been anything other than what I am. I'm just a traveler who's sometimes in the right place at the right time to do something good. I'm just a clever old Doctor who tries to fix things when they're broken. I might save people, but I'm no savior. I'm a madman with a box. No more, no less."

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a slim wand. He touched a button, and with a high-pitched whirr, the cuffs sprang free. He caught them before they reached the floor and handed them to the inquisitor. "And if that answer doesn't satisfy your masters, then I suggest they come and ask me themselves. Because unlike them, I'm not hiding from anything."

My Tiny Contribution to the 'Under the Dome' TV Series

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm really looking forward to the 'Under the Dome' series. I thought it was a great book, and my one complaint about it was that clearly at some point Stephen King thought to himself, "I could literally be stuck writing this book for the rest of my life if I don't find some way to wrap everything up," and so he takes out all the plotlines in one big boom. Which is a good way of doing it, if you have to end your story, but I think it could go for a long time on television just watching everything unfold. The talent behind it sounds good, the cast so far looks good...there's just one thing they need. A theme song.

So...

BARBIE: Julia, listen to me. The outside world, it's a mess. Life under the dome is better than anything they got up there!

The meth labs are always greener
With someone to buy that crank
You dream about going out there
But that is a big mistake
Just look at the world around you
Right here stuck inside this dome
Such wonderful things surround you
This place is your only home!

Under the dome
Under the dome
All the pollution
Needs no solution
Why would you roam?
Out in the world they tried and tried
But they can't find a way inside
Our hope is wanin'
Hoardin' propanin'
Under the dome

In here all the gals are happy
Except Big Jim's son's girlfriends
Those gals, they ain't quite so happy
They met some unpleasant ends
But Junior still loves to see them
At night when it's gettin' late
And after eleven P.M.
The corpses will be his date

Under the dome
Under the dome
Nobody save us
Big Jim enslave us
Just watch, you'll see
He and his cronies run this town
Under the dome we stick around
We got no choice now
We got no voice now
Under the dome
Under the dome
Since we can't leave here
We got to be here
Naturally
Even the kiddies know the score
Prophetic dreams will tell them more
Aliens did it
Leaving? Forget it!
Under the dome

The cop's for the chop
The plane's split in twain
The air's barely there
We're goin' insane
There's dread in our head
The priest was a beast
But Jim's at the brim of Hell
(Yeah)
The stiffs die in shifts
Till death's out of breath
The gas took a pass
To make crystal meth
Sanders and the chef
The only ones lef'
While Barbie's in his cell

Under the dome
Under the dome
Trapped like sardines
Send in the marines
This crisis hits home!
All of those soldiers right outside
Will we get help from them? DENIED!
Soldiers get framed here
Barbie gets blamed here
Under the dome
We gonna croak here
Choke on the smoke here
Under the dome
Dreams all forebode here
Meth labs explode here
It's getting hotter
There's no fresh water
We gonna die here
Kiss butts g'bye here
Under the dome

Looking for a Good Game Review Site

I've been kind of glancing over a few games lately. In no particular order, Legendary, King of Tokyo, the Star Wars LCG, Miskatonic School for Girls, DC Comics Deck-Building Game, Red November, and Zombie Dice are all drawing my eye as I wander through games stores. (To say nothing of Zombicide, which is no doubt going to be my first purchase after I win the lottery.)

That said, the cheapest of those is about twenty bucks, and in the current economy, it's not easy to just drop $40 on a game without being sure that it's something I'm actually going to enjoy playing. What's needed is a games review site. The problem is, there's not really something that works as an actual games review site--all my google searches redirect me to BoardGameGeek, which is an interesting Metafilter-esque site, but which has the huge problem that unlike the actual Metafilter, it's not aggregating professional reviews; it's aggregating individual reviews. And unlike RottenTomatoes, which does that for movies quite well, games are very much a niche market with very different tastes, and all the games seem to be rated in the 6-7 range because the people who like it love it, and the people who hate it absolutely loathe it.

So I'm looking for a few individual reviewers who I can use to gauge individual games prior to their purchase. First, are there any game review blogs/websites out there that you'd recommend? (I'd also be looking for ones worth reading for their own sakes, as well as ones I'd use to help make decisions. Funny games blogs are funny.) And second, as previously noted, gamers have very different tastes. I'd be generally looking for multiplayer games (5-6 players, although games robust enough to handle 8-10 players are awesome!), generally with short playtimes (30-45 minutes a round), and I prefer humor (of all types) to serious games. And I'd be looking for a reviewer whose tastes reflected mine. (So, for example, if someone gave 'Diplomacy' and 'Axis and Allies' great reviews, but disdained 'Grave Robbers From Outer Space', they're probably not going to recommend games I like, even if they understand very well what makes a good game.)

With all that in mind, any recommendations? Or do I need to start a site like this myself? (If I do, feel free to send me reviewers' copies, game designers!)

Crazy Cat-Man Update!

At this point, I must announce that we have added an additional two cats to the household. Here is Cat #1: 

His name is Moon, he has a brother named Star, and together they probably weigh about 32-35 pounds. To put this in perspective, my daughter weighed about 40 pounds when she was four. They are going on a program of diet and exercise to get them down to a leaner body shape (although they'll still probably weigh about 24 pounds combined.) I, meanwhile, am maintaining that you do not become a crazy cat person until the number of cats in the household is larger than the number of people. We still just barely qualify.

I Can't Watch Anything Without Developing a Crazy Fan Theory

As previously noted on this blog, I'm watching my way through 'Babylon 5', and last night I got to 'Interludes and Examinations'. For those of you who don't want to know what happens in a twenty-year-old TV series, you should probably navigate to a different page, because the spoilers are going to hit hard and fast here, but for those of you who either do want to know or have already seen the series and just don't remember specific episode titles that well, this is the episode that features the death of Kosh.

Or does it?

Because let's face it, the whole episode hinges on the idea that Kosh finally breaks the millennia-old pattern of being a lying, scheming, untrustworthy manipulative bastard who somehow still thinks of himself as holding the moral high ground, and does the right thing for once in his life even though it kills him...and then is promptly replaced a few episodes later by a Vorlon who's a lying, scheming, untrustworthy manipulative bastard who somehow thinks of himself as holding the moral high ground. And he's totally not the same Vorlon, and we know this because he wears a different outfit. And because, well, Kosh just wouldn't play emotionally manipulative games like that with Sheridan's head, not this time. That's why he appeared to Sheridan as his father and forced Sheridan to see a vision of his beloved parent dying before his eyes, to show how he was done being emotionally manipulative!

My theory is this. When Sheridan confronted Kosh in the hallway, Kosh rapidly realized that this was one time when his usual "cryptic jackass" schtick wasn't going to work. Sheridan wasn't about to back down, and no longer respected Kosh's moral authority to conduct the war in his own fashion. The thought of actually respecting Sheridan's autonomy and treating him as an equal partner clearly never even occurred to Kosh; if it did, he'd have said to Sheridan, "If the Vorlons enter the war, the Shadows will kill me in reprisal," instead of saying, "If you do this, there will be a price. I will not be with you when you go to Z'ha'dum." The former allows Sheridan to make an informed, rational decision over the value of risking the life of a friend and ally in order to make a decisive strike against the Shadow forces (as well as allowing him to prepare for the counter-strike when it does occur, and possibly saving Kosh's life)...the latter is a thinly-veiled threat, the kind a parent makes against a petulant child. (While simultaneously being the act of a petulant child: "Well, fine! If you're going to tell me what to do, maybe I'll just die, huh? I bet you'd be really sorry if I died and you had to fight the Shadows all by yourself!")

At this point, Kosh goes off, rallies the Vorlons, and they have their decisive battle...and then he walks right back to his quarters at Babylon 5. This is an action that really only makes sense if he's either a) going to fake his own death, or b) if the "petulant child" theory is correct, and he's really so into his Vorlon Pity Party that he's going to let the Shadows kill him just to make a point to Sheridan that acting like you know better than a Vorlon has serious negative consequences. (In fairness, JMS says that he goes to his death willingly because he doesn't want to risk anyone else dying to defend him, but that's really a slightly nicer way of saying, "Vorlon Pity Party" all over again. "No, I don't trust you to make a rational, informed decision that might cost someone their life. I'll just sit here and die so that you don't get hurt. Don't feel bad for me or anything. It's not your fault that I died saving your species, just because you wouldn't listen to me when I told you I knew best.")

Which is pretty much what Kosh says, at the end. And just to really twist the emotional knife in good and hard, he says it wearing Sheridan's father's face. Sheridan is forced to watch his father die, which is emotional sadism of the highest order even if he does know it's Kosh behind it. Given that, and given Kosh's history of manipulating people towards what he sees as benevolent ends without any real regard for them as people--let's face it, Kosh only acts even remotely nice in order to reward people for doing what he wants them to--I don't see any reason why we can't assume he escapes the Shadows (he's already duked it out with them once and only received minor damage to his encounter suit) and then comes back as Ulkesh in order to punish Sheridan for disobeying. (Yes, I'm aware that this will require a little work to make fit into the events of "Falling Towards Apotheosis". More on this later.)

I think that the only reason people ever believed Kosh would die for someone else like that is because he slots into the Wise Mentor role for Sheridan in the Campbellian ur-myth, and Wise Mentors always die mid-way through the story so that the hero can find his own way in the world. But if you instead assume that the younger races are not so much being taught by the Vorlons as relentlessly patronized and used as catspaws in an ancient, petty feud, it becomes pretty clear that there's no way Kosh is going to sacrifice himself for anyone. It's completely out of character for him. Whereas lying, shamelessly using guilt as a tool to make people do what he wants, and using his chameleonic abilities to appear to someone in a form that they will listen to, well...that fits right in.

Quiz: Babylon 5 Episode Title Or Prog-Rock Song Title?

Five of the titles below are Babylon 5 episode titles. Five are prog-rock songs. Without resorting to Google, which is which?

1. "Dharma for One"

2. "Midnight on the Firing Line"

3. "The Geometry of Shadows"

4. "In the Court of the Crimson King"

5. "On the Silent Wings of Freedom"

6. "Requiem for Methuselah"

7. "The Enemy God Dances With the Black Spirits"

8. "Passing Through Gethsemane"

9. "Intersections In Real Time"

10. "Stormbringer"

(The astute among you will notice at least one trick question.)

"What Do You Want, Doctor?"

I absolutely cannot get this scene out of my head, so...

Anyone walking through the Zocalo would have noticed nothing more than two nice young men. They might even have spared a passing thought to just how nice they seemed; both of them were well-kept and smartly-dressed, a far cry from the usual riff-raff and shady sorts that were attracted to Babylon 5. Admittedly, the bow tie made one of them look a little old-fashioned, but there was nothing wrong with that. Two nice young men, smiling pleasantly and having a friendly chat. Nothing to draw much attention. Nothing worth talking about. Nothing worth a second glance. That's what anyone walking through the Zocalo would have thought...because they weren't looking at either man's eyes.

"So tell me, Doctor," Morden said, "what brings you to Babylon 5? What do you want?"

The Doctor smiled. It didn't make him look younger; far from it. The smile was the weary, cynical grin of a thousand years, entirely out of place on such a young face. "'What do you want?' That's a dangerous question. Possibly the most dangerous question in existence. Well, apart from 'What does this button do?' and 'Do you think I should cut the red wire first?' Both of which tend to get some remarkably shirty and unhelpful reactions--"

"How can it be dangerous, Doctor?" Morden smiled disarmingly. It didn't make him look younger, either. Morden smiled the same way that burglars jimmied open windows. "It's just a simple question. I'm trying to help you. And I can't help you unless you tell me what you want."

"But that's exactly why it's dangerous. When I answer that question, I give you information about what it is that I value. If I answer, 'Jammie Dodgers'--" the Doctor held up a hand quickly-- "just as a hypothetical example, mind you, I have some in my pocket already, they're a bit fluffy but still perfectly good--but if I do answer 'Jammie Dodgers', then you have a hold on me. If I have something you want, or something you need, you can get it from me by promising me Jammie Dodgers." The Doctor's tone was light, his voice rattling through the words as though they were in a hurry to leave, but his eyes were as cold and dark as galaxies.

"And since you know what I value, but I don't know what you want, you can make it seem as though your offer is highly prized...and mine almost worthless. Why wouldn't I trade whatever little trifle you ask for in return for my heart's desire? And before you know it, you're asking for a little more each time and giving away a little less, and I don't even realize the value of what I've lost and what you've gained, and I don't notice how much power you have over me until I've given away an entire universe...for a single stale biscuit." The Doctor leaned forward in his seat. His smile had vanished entirely. "A person who knows exactly what people want is the second most dangerous man in the universe, Mister Morden."

Morden stared back, his own smile still present but looking decidedly strained. "It sounds like you've already made up your mind, then," he said. "That's a shame, Doctor. I think my associates would have been very interested in you."

The Doctor looked to Morden's immediate left. Then his immediate right. "Oh, I suspect they will be anyway. People like them usually are. Assuming you have a very broad definition of the word 'people', which I generally do. I'm sure I'll be seeing you again, Mister Morden. Just like I'm sure you'll be seeing me." He rose to leave.

Morden let him get almost out of earshot before his curiosity got the better of him. "Doctor?" he called out.

The Doctor turned, looking as though he wasn't obeying quite the same laws of physics as everyone else did when he did so. "Yes?"

"You said the second." Morden's voice was very steady when he asked. It was the sound of someone trying very hard not to sound nervous. "What would the most dangerous man be?"

The Doctor smiled sadly, the sort of smile given by a teacher when a prize pupil made an expected mistake. "I should have thought that was obvious," he said softly. "The most dangerous man in the universe is a man who doesn't want anything you can provide." He turned away again, and his casual, "Goodbye, Mister Morden," was lost in the crowd.

Morden looked to his left. Then to his right. If he spoke, it was nothing anyone in the Zocalo heard.

My Family, It Brings the Crazy

Tonight my daughter, who is now seven and in first grade, went to the school carnival with her biological dad. He bought her cotton candy, which he jokingly told her was a new pet named 'Fluffy'.

"And now I'm devouring his flesh," she said.

I don't think I really need to add anything to that, other than to say, that's my little girl.

Why It Sucks Sometimes Being a Doctor Who Fan

BBC: I'm sorry, I'm afraid that we're going to have to postpone the start of your season again. Budget concerns, you know. You'll just have do make do with the back half of Season Seven and a couple of specials for your 50th anniversary.

Doctor Who Producer: But our series is a phenomenal success! It's getting astounding ratings and great audience appreciation numbers every year, year in and year out!

BBC: Well, yes, but you see it's a question of money. Doctor Who is quite expensive to make, you see, and we've got a limited budget.

Doctor Who: But when you factor in overseas sales, merchandising, spin-offs, tie-ins, and the DVD market, the show is actually the most profitable thing the BBC makes!

BBC: AHEM. We do not sully our hands with mere commerce. We are the BBC, proud guardians of the glorious cultural heritage of Great Britain! It doesn't matter how much grubby, filthy lucre your series makes--we don't even keep track of such things!* What's important is the artistic merit of what you create, dear boy.

Doctor Who: Well, our AI numbers haven't dipped below the mid-80s since the series started. By the BBC's own standards, we're making a series that everyone who watches considers to be some of the finest material on television.

BBC: Yes, and that's wonderful. But you see, it's very expensive...

(wash, rinse, repeat...)

*Not literally true, but more or less accurate; money that 'Doctor Who' merchandising doesn't go back to making more 'Doctor Who', it goes back to the BBC's general Dramatic Series pool. They might keep track of it, but it doesn't count in the series' favor, because the BBC is not supposed to be concerned with turning a profit.

City of Heroes Update: Next Year in Jerusalem!

If you're reading this, you might very well share my interest in 'City of Heroes', and my frustration with the shutdown of the game last November. (If you're not reading this, then you have no taste in literature and you probably hunt puppies for sport. So nyeah.) I've been following the efforts of various fans to restore the game in some form or other, and thought that those of you not in the loop might appreciate an update on the matter. Because, of course, I totally have a bigger audience than the Titan forums and it entirely consists of people who don't know how to use Google.

There are three basic plans being advanced at this point. The first, which is probably the most desired outcome, is a plan to purchase the property from NCSoft, rehire the most essential Paragon Studios staff, and restart the game. This is probably the plan with the lowest chance of success, as everyone involved is aware, but it's not hopeless by any means. Acclaimed fantasy author Mercedes Lackey, who was a long-time member of the community almost since its inception (she even wrote a short story set in the CoH universe) is using her contacts in the science-fiction and fantasy industry (and within the former Paragon Studios) to craft business proposals that actually stand a chance of being listened to. The current target is Google Play, who have already expressed some tentative interest in the idea. We should know more on this in a month or so.

The second plan, which is probably the most likely to see results first, is a plan to "reverse engineer" the servers using the data from eight years' of gameplay and the client saved to the hard drive of each player. The idea behind this is that while NCSoft owns the intellectual property, and they own the code on the servers, each player owns the software that they bought and paid for and still have on their hard drive. So if you can make a server that uses none of NCSoft's code or IP, and people interact with it using a legally-purchased copy of 'City of Heroes', then you can make a CoH clone and NCSoft can't do squat about it. (Of course, some people have pointed out that frivolous C&D letters are a common tool of big companies, but it's at least worth trying to follow the copyright laws in a situation like this.) The coders involved have already made big progress; you can apparently log into their server and move around the first city zone, albeit as a translucent ghost-person who skids around through the air like you're sliding on invisible ice. But for three months of work, that's hellishly impressive progress.

The third plan, which is in some ways the most interesting, is what started as "Plan Z". It's an attempt to create an entirely new game from scratch, one that retains no aspects of CoH's code, mechanics or IP, but retains a similar "feel" in its gameplay and theme. There are currently two projects going on under this banner, "Project: Phoenix" and "Heroes and Villains", and while both of them are still in very early development and unlikely to be playable even in an alpha state anytime soon, they are both moving and could result in an embarrassment of riches if they turn out to be as good as the game that inspired them. In short, while this is a frustrating time to be a fan of the best superhero MMO ever, the future does have a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel!

Evolutionary Biology for Jackasses

The other day, I was reading an article on the Gawker network about American culture and obesity. The article didn't really stick in my head (which is why I didn't link to it) but one of the comments did. It was someone insisting that all of the medical information indicating that there is a heritable component to obesity, and that it's easier for some people to lose weight than others, is all being completely overstated and overblown by fat people who don't want to admit that they're too lazy to lose weight. His argument was that there couldn't be a genetic element to obesity, because there's no way evolution would select for a trait that made you overweight, because you'd have a hard time escaping predators.

Now, I know that you, my regular audience, is far too intelligent to fall for that line. But on the off-chance that someone is wandering into my blog for the first time and actually believes this, I will explain it to you in simple terms.

For approximately 99.999995% of the 3.5 billion years life has existed on this planet, for approximately 99.999995% of the living beings on this planet, food has been scarce. Starvation has been a real and omnipresent risk for every single living thing for longer than human beings can actually comprehend, and even today, a relatively tiny percentage of a relatively tiny number of species can actually avoid this food scarcity. As a result, life on Earth has spent 3.5 billion years adapting to become the most efficient energy storage machines it is possible to be. Your mind may know that there is food in the store on the corner, but your body is the inheritor of a vast and complex legacy that knows, on a genetic level, that the next meal may not come for days.

Human beings have not adapted to deal well with a super-abundance of food for the same reason that we have not adapted to deal well with leprechaun attacks, or rampaging unicorns. It's just fundamentally something we have never encountered in any meaningful sense. To suggest that somehow primitive Twinkies tempted our proto-hominid ancestors, and that evolution favored the lean and the mean over the mastodon-hide couch potatoes until the modern generation started going to hell in a handbasket, is to be fundamentally ignorant of the basic facts of biology. You know how you can tell this? Because actual evolutionary biologists are telling you.

So let's face that basic fact. Losing weight is something that basic biology makes it hard for many people to do. If you are one of the people for whom it is easy, congratulations. I'm very happy for you. But please don't imagine that this is somehow due to your superior moral fiber, OK? Thanks.

Relationship Advice for Max and Katie of Amazing Race 22

For those of you who don't watch 'The Amazing Race', one of the teams is actually a pair of newlyweds named Max and Katie. The Race is serving as their honeymoon as well as a chance at a million bucks, which would be kind of sweet except for the fact that they're this season's token "I'm Not Here To Make Friends" team. (For those of you who don't watch 'The Amazing Race', this is a phrase that at least one team breaks out in their introductory video every season. It is code for, "The guy on this team is a hyper-competitive douchebag with anger management issues, who will take it out on his partner. The woman is passive-aggressive and prone to emotional collapse at the slightest difficulty. Both of them will take every opportunity to snipe at other teams, claiming it's because the other teams are their opponents when in fact you begin to suspect pretty quickly that they're like this to everybody.")

Obviously, I am no expert on the Race. I've never run, and it would be foolish to give them racing advice...especially because the episodes don't air live and the outcome is predetermined, even if not known. But I have been in a successful relationship for a long time, so I figure that even if I can't give racing tips, I can give marriage tips.

1. The phrase "You're the albatross around our neck here", while entertaining, does not foster a sense of partnership and trust that is so necessary to a good relationship. Alternatives might include, "Good job, honey, I think you'll get it next time," or "Try a little bit of acceleration into the turn next time." Alternatives probably should not include, "You're killing us," or "Who'd have thought it, I'm better at this than you are."

2. Long drives in unfamiliar territory can be stressful on any couple. Try to avoid blaming each other for wrong turns. Try especially hard to avoid blaming the driver when he asks you point-blank, "Do you want me to turn around?" and you respond with, "No, I just have a feeling that we're going the wrong way."

3. An important part of any relationship is knowing your partner's strengths and weaknesses. It is not, however, wise to announce your partner's weaknesses directly to the camera on national television. (Especially when it's not exactly like you're strong in that area yourself, Max. I don't know that either one of you is going to be winning any likability contests, frankly.)

Those are just a few tips--I look forward to giving more as the Race goes on!

...well, strictly speaking I look forward to giving one more and then watching these two bickering twits get Philiminated, but if not I'm sure they'll at least provide me with a few more cheap jokes.

"Do No Harm"

I don't normally dabble in fanfic these days--if I write fiction, I'm going to try to sell it, and I've always considered fanfic to be a labor of love by definition--but I certainly have done so, and since it's already Thursday and I haven't written my Monday entry, I figured I'd show one of my efforts that never showed up anywhere else. Jump behind the cut for a Ten/Martha story called, unimaginatively enough, "Do No Harm"!

When I Stopped Caring About the Oscars

I was a little stuck for a post idea today, because I'm assuming you aren't interested in "Why Boxers Are the Cutest Dogs in the World, Oh Yes You Are, Oh Yes You Are!!!" (We've been spending our last several Saturdays looking at rescue puppies.) I thought about doing my Oscar picks...but then I looked at the list, and realized that a) I had absolutely no idea which way those withered old prunes at the Academy would vote, since it seemed to have no correlation at all with the actual quality of the films, and b) I had absolutely no ability to care, since I had no respect for the decision-making ability of the Academy and no longer view an Oscar as any kind of sign of a film's quality or lack thereof.

So instead I'm going to talk about when that started and why.

Let's take a quick trip back to 1996. I'm in college, I'm a lit major, and Kenneth Branagh's 'Hamlet' is in limited release. The film pretty much only did a limited release; it was so damn crazy prestigious and ambitious they couldn't get most theaters to show it. A four-hour long unabridged, uncut adaptation of 'Hamlet'? Every scene, every line of a Shakespeare play? Yeah, that's not going to Mall of America 14. The only theater in the Twin Cities to even show it was the Uptown, an independent arthouse theater that showed prestige films and foreign movies. I didn't care about any of that; I just knew I had to see this movie. It was 'Hamlet', my favorite Shakespeare play, as performed by Ken Branagh, who'd done previous adaptations I liked a lot. (I forgive him his casting of Keanu. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time.)

So off I went, one cold January day in 1997, to see 'Hamlet' when it finally got around to Minnesota. And I was stunned. The film was lush, it was vivid, and it was spectacularly dynamic--there are scenes in the play that I still feel like I never truly understood until I watched the Branagh version. (His treatment of the "get thee to a nunnery" confrontation with Ophelia, for example, is absolutely astounding and explains Hamlet's abhorrent treatment of her in terms that the audience can understand--he thinks that she's in on Claudius' full conspiracy, not recognizing that she's being used. Which is entirely in keeping of his murder of Polonius and his actions throughout the play.) This was, in short, a magnificent experience.

About halfway through, the heating broke.

Let's repeat this: The heating broke, in January, in Minnesota, during a four-hour movie. And I sat through it anyway. And the next day, I went back out and saw it again. The heating still wasn't working. I didn't care. That is how good Ken Branagh's 'Hamlet' is--I will watch it in sub-freezing temperatures.

The Academy nominated it for four awards. It was not nominated for its direction, for any acting awards (despite having a cast that included Derek Jacobi, Julie Christie, Kate Winslet and Richard Briers as well as Branagh himself) or for Best Picture. All it got were two technical nominations (Art Direction and Costume Design), Original Score and Screenplay. It lost three of those to 'The English Patient', and the fourth to 'Sling Blade'. Let's repeat that--what is arguably the greatest work of literature in the history of the English language, in the eyes of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,  somewhere in the same neighborhood but not nearly as good as "Forrest Gump Meets Psycho". (Actually, more like "Psycho II".)

After that, I just couldn't respect their decision-making abilities any further. I watched the awards a few more times (most notably a psychologically-scarring night out in 2002 at a cinema grill in Raleigh that "livened up" the commercial breaks with their amateur variety show. Emphasis on "amateur".) But ultimately, the show isn't entertaining when you don't care who wins, and I don't.

There are other "WTF?" moments in the history of the Oscars, like their inexcusable failure to nominate 'WALL-E' for Best Picture or their snub of 'Pulp Fiction' in favor of the overhyped 'Forrest Gump'. But 'Hamlet' is always going to be the one that sticks with me. So yeah, it'll probably be 'Lincoln' or 'Argo' or something that wins 'Best Picture', or possibly 'Django Unchained' simply because someone will have decided that Tarantino deserves a "make-up" Oscar for the one he should have gotten. But it won't matter to me.

Must Resist...Urge to Troll!

I've been reading "Manboobz" again. I really shouldn't, because it's depressing as all get-out to realize that there are real, genuine human beings out there so damaged and broken that they blame their mental image of women for all their problems (and frequently seem to be about one step away from snapping and committing a horrific act of violence) but the site also provides a valuable dose of perspective on these people by pointing out that no, they are not moral crusaders or oppressed masculinists or anything other than pathetic, lonely men who haven't figured out yet that the reason they can't get laid is because women don't like guys who hate women. (Funny that.)

And then there are the pickup artists. I admit, those are my favorite posts on the site, because I'm slowly developing a theory that the entire "pickup artist community" out there is basically composed of all those guys in high school who bragged about how they got laid every single night, explaining to virgins how it was done because virgins were the only people who wouldn't spot their total lack of knowledge about what an actual naked woman looked like, only it's ten years later and they're still doing it. Seriously. It would not surprise me if there was not a single one of these guys who had ever even spoken to a real life flesh-and-blood woman in a social context, and their entire "game" consisted of them repeating tips they'd heard from some other pickup artist and boasting about how well they worked for him so that people didn't start accusing him of being a virgin. (Or gay. Unsurprisingly, these guys are homophobes as well as misogynists.)

And so I am fighting the urge to troll. Because it occurs to me that if you're dealing with an entire group of people who a) have no knowledge of what they speak, and b) cannot, even for a second, admit said lack of knowledge lest they be exposed as frauds, it might be kind of interesting to pretend to be a pickup artist and see just how big a lie you can get away with spreading. You know, start going into their forums and insisting that the hardest part of picking up a woman is making sure that afterwards she doesn't inject you with her paralyzing venom, allowing her to implant her eggs in your stomach. Or stating that the external breasts are nice, but it's not until the woman gets aroused enough for her second set of breasts to unfold from her hidden hip pouches that you know you've got her turned on. Nobody would call you on it, because they'd all be afraid if they said you were a liar, a chorus of voices would suddenly say, "Oh, you didn't know about the hidden breast pouches? Geez, no wonder you have a hard time getting a second date."

The flaw of this, of course, is the same reason why I'm having an easy time fighting the urge. I'd have to spend time around pickup artists in order to make the whole thing work. And, well...these are the sort of people I avoided in high school, and y'know what? They haven't gotten any better with age.

In Defense of 'Moonraker'

'Moonraker' has somehow, over the years, become reviled as an example of everything that went wrong with the Roger Moore era of James Bond (which has, in turn, become reviled as everything that's wrong with the Bond franchise, but in this case that's more or less correct so I won't call that out.) It's supposedly an example of relentless camp and bad comedy, nothing but a blatant attempt to cash in on the 'Star Wars' fad by putting James Bond in space. Even 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' commented on it in Season Six, when the Trio use it as an example of why Roger Moore sucked in their running argument as to which Bond was best. (Which is something of an irony when people use the claims raised in that argument, as it's intentionally placed there as an example of people who get into silly and pointless arguments where there's no real "right" and "wrong".)

In fact, it feels like most of the people complaining about 'Moonraker' really just saw that scene in 'Buffy', because the camp that most people complain about is actually pretty seriously toned down compared to 'Octopussy' (probably the campiest of the Moore movies.) Really, the movie hangs together pretty well; Bond is saved only once by an improbable gadget (the gondola that the Trio complain about) ...which is about on a par with 'The Spy Who Loved Me', universally held up as an example of the best of Roger Moore's Bond work.

And while 'Spy' is good, 'Moonraker' is a step above it simply because this is just about the only Bond movie where the female love interest is demonstrated to be intelligent, capable, and isn't also the peril monkey. It's not perfect--we get Corinne Dufour, who's victimized in a pretty misogynist scene--but Holly Goodhead, the scientist/CIA agent, is smart and every bit as competent as Bond and plays a key role at the end instead of just sitting there and going, "OK, James, it's time for the man to step up and be heroic!" And she's played by a smart actress, which isn't true in 'Spy'. Barbara Bach is wooden, vapid, and utterly cannot do her part justice, and is the weak link in that film.

And 'Moonraker' has some great action sequences--the opening skydiving fight is spectacular, the swordfight is great, and while it does require some suspension of disbelief to imagine that there are space Marines in the Bond universe, the battle itself is staged incredibly well. Jaws is well used from his opening appearance through to his hiring as Drax's replacement heavy ("Oh! Well, if he's available...") to the end. I've always liked Jaws; he feels like he's a character from another series of films about a morally-ambiguous indestructible cyborg mercenary that just didn't get made in our reality, and he's used well here.

And Hugo Drax is awesome. I repeat--Hugo Drax is awesome. He is the best Bond villain in the whole Moore era, a visionary idealist who's clearly unimpressed with Bond's suavity and charm, and handles the whole bother with dry wit and skilled managerial delegation. I love his every scene and every line, and he's actually better than Goldfinger, which is not easy.

Of course, there are quite a few other Moore Bond films, but I immediately disqualify 'Octopussy', 'Live and Let Die' and 'The Man With the Golden Gun' on the grounds of cringeworthy racism, 'A View to a Kill' suffers from the fact that Moore is clearly too old to be playing the part by that point, and 'For Your Eyes Only' criminally misuses Julian Glover, one of the best actors to ever be a Bond villain. Really, the only competition is 'The Spy Who Loved Me', and 'Moonraker' beats it handily.

So yes, if you can't accept laser guns alongside jetpacks, invisible cars, and...um...slow-moving lasers aimed at tables...in your Bond movies, I don't think I'll be able to convince you of how good 'Moonraker' is. But I know which of us is missing out.

Fun Games I've Played Lately: Red Dragon Inn

We've finally been getting back into tabletop gaming in our household after a long period of inactivity--for years, my friends and I played 'City of Heroes' when we wanted to do stuff together, because a) we all liked being superheroes and b) co-operative games felt more like our "thing" than competitive ones; then, when my wife moved in, there were always scheduling issues (I worked nights, then she worked weekends and nights, then our roommate worked nights...) But now everyone is working weekdays, and we have Saturday nights free to game. And 'City of Heroes' is temporarily unplayable. (I refuse to believe it is anything other than temporary.)

So we've been playing some of the games I've accumulated over the years. Including my most recent purchase, 'Red Dragon Inn', which is just fun. The basic premise is that you are one of a party of adventurers who has just returned from an epic dungeon crawl, replete with gold and high on life. As such, you do what adventurers everywhere do when they're full of cash and on an adrenalin high...you go to a tavern and you gamble, carouse and brawl until you pass out or get kicked out.

In this case, that's literal. Every character starts with a stash of cash, a Fortitude score of 20, and an Alcohol Content of 0. Every turn, you play cards that help you win (or cheat) at gambling, (probably) accidentally injure your friends, and keep you (marginally) sober in the face of a seemingly endless supply of drinks given to you by your friends/opponents. If you ever run out of gold, or if your Fortitude score ever equals your Alcohol Content, you are either kicked out or pass out. Winner is the last one standing.

The mechanism is clever; each player uses their own deck, custom-made to reflect that character's strengths and weaknesses. Gerki the Sneak has plenty of cash-grabbing cards, and unsurprisingly he's the best of all of them at gambling (and cheating.) Deirdre the Priestess has healing magic that keeps her Fortitude up, but isn't really that good at staying sober. Fiona the Volatile is tough and hearty, but loses money quickly; while Zot the Wizard is a well-balanced character with a little of everything (and a psychotic rabbit familiar named Pooky.) The sequels, which can be combined freely with the original game, add other characters to the mix.

But what's best about the game is the sense of fun involved in the design. The art is spectacular, giving each character a personality that seems to come right off the cards. The card names give you a vivid idea of what's going on in the game; countering a drink with Fiona's "This is just the thing to polish my armor!" or injuring someone with Deirdre's "Oops! Sometimes my healing spells just wear off!" evokes the sort of punishing camaraderie you see in a role-playing group. (Or, in the case of cards like, "Oh no! Pooky's on a drunken rampage again!", just how freaking weird roleplaying games can get sometimes.)

It's a perfect "end of the night" game, best played among people who aren't too competitive, and we'll definitely be picking up the sequels. If for no other reason than one of them actually lets you play as Pooky.

I Wish

I wish I could have met Michael O'Hare after having seen the first season of 'Babylon 5'. I wish I could have told him that he had a real gift for playing the straight man; some of his best moments in the series come when he's playing opposite Jerry Doyle's Garibaldi, pretending to be oh-so-dignified and above this kind of silly behavior, but with a tiny little secret smile that lets you know he's in on the joke.

I've said in the past that I felt really lucky to be able to tell creators like Don Rosa, Gene Colan, and Al Feldstein what they meant to me and how much I think of them as creators and as people. It's always sad to realize that no matter how many people you can share that with, there are always going to be some people that you never get the chance to talk to.

Remember that, when you're at the next convention and you see someone you admire passing by. There's not always going to be the chance to do it again.

If Series Set In the Modern Day Were Written Like Sci-Fi Series

1. The main characters' tastes in music would all tend towards 18th century classical music. Occasionally, characters would get into arguments over one person's preference for Mozart over Bach, which the other dismisses as "just noise".

2. Foolish characters or great wits would be referred to as "a regular Thomas Betterton/Elizabeth Barry"; a particularly wacky or comedic situation would be referred to as "like something Thomas Sheridan would have come up with."

3. At least one character would have an eccentric fondness for leyden jars or spinning jennys, building them in his spare time as a quirky character touch.

4. At least one character would have a desire to travel by paddleboat, horse, or railway carriage, feeling that cars and planes "lack romance".

5. Characters would frequently and casually analogize events in the present-day as being "somewhat akin to the Treaty of Westminster helping to cause the Seven Years War". Nobody would ever need the Treaty of Westminster explained to them. Nobody would ever confuse it with the Treaty of Westminster that ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War, either.

6. In a related issue, people would recognize the Prussian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian flags on sight.

7. Everyone would exclusively quote Shakespeare. EXCLUSIVELY.

8. When not wearing their professional outfits, people would dress in slightly more utilitarian versions of waistcoats, ruffs, and powdered wigs. (The powdered wigs would be smaller, for example, to show the changing times and fashions.)

9. Sports fans would follow cricket, boxing or horse racing, and would occasionally express a longing to be able to travel back in time to the days when Lumpy Stevens beat John Small only for the ball to pass through the wicket without being disturbed. They would, on occasion, insist that the sport was better before they added the third stump to the wicket.

10. If anyone ever did reference a modern-day piece of pop culture, whether in the form of music, books, comedy, theatre, movies, or television, it would be only in reference to an actual celebrity in that particular field visiting them. The celebrity in question would never actually perform in their chosen field, but at least one character would always have been a fan.

Top 5 Things I'm Looking Forward To in the Worlds of Warcraft Movie

1. The preview screenings, which last fifteen minutes before the projector crashing. Everyone is asked to try watching from the beginning again to see if they can replicate the problem.

2. The first screening, which is filled with epic battles, fantastic special effects, and a whole bunch of jerks shouting spoilers for the ending in the lower-left corner of the screen.

3. The spectacular ending, in which the heroes take on the evil Naxxaramas...and all wipe within the first minute. Then, in voice-over, the leader of the group explains to everyone that there's going to be new footage next weekend, in which they gear up by running some dungeons and getting some potions, and tighten up their tactics for the next run.

4. The disastrous piracy problem due to Blizzard's trumpeting of the ease and smoothness of their bit-torrented download system.

5. The DVD, in which the heroes win only to find out that the level cap has gone up, their gear that they worked months to get is now obsolete, and they have to pay fifty bucks to fight the next villain.

Trying Not To Talk About Babylon 5, But...

Here's the thing. I am currently going through and mainlining Babylon 5 into my brain, for a secret writerly reason of which I cannot speak at this moment. (Because it is secret. And writerly.) I never watched the show when it was on, for a wide variety of reasons including the fact that I am very apathetic about popular culture as a whole: My general philosophy is that if it's still fondly remembered by the time I get around to watching it two decades after the fact, it's probably very good and well worth waiting for. If it drops completely off the radar and everyone scorns it for being a failure that started off promising and proceeded to head downhill like a rocket-powered toboggan, it's probably 'Heroes'. (But I kid the series!) Seriously, if it's not worth watching, I probably will find out about it in the decade or so before I get around to it. It's the Planetary philosophy: "We're archaeologists. We'll dig you up and work it all out in a couple of years."

(The best part of this philosophy is that by the time I get around to watching it, the DVDs are cheap and I don't have to wait through the offseasons.)

So the point is, I have a lot of thoughts about Babylon 5, many of which I am restraining myself from saying due to writerly secret reasons. But one thing I do keep thinking about, and am allowing myself to talk about even though I'm shutting up about a lot of it, is, "Why did the series never come back?" I have heard from my lovely and intelligent wife that JMS, creator/producer of the series, doesn't really have an interest in doing more on account of how hard it was to get the first series made, and how many of the actors have unfortunately passed on, and how he's more or less told the story he wanted to tell. And while those strike me as true (because I know my wife and in addition to being lovely and intelligent, she knows metric tons about 'Babylon 5'), they also strike me as good things to tell yourself, if you're a former producer of a science-fiction series with a small-but-devoted fanbase that can't get renewed. It does seem to me that there has to be at least an element of falsehood there...because 'Crusade'. Clearly, JMS at one point felt like there were enough ideas floating around in the B5 universe to sustain a second five-year series. That series was canceled with four years of stories left untold. That suggests to me that there are more stories he at least was willing to try to tell.

The question is, "Why can't he?" Because let's face it, we live in a very different era than we did in 1999 (when the series was canceled.) Shows with cult followings and long tails now routinely make returns, from 'Family Guy' to 'Doctor Who' to 'Futurama' to 'Serenity' (which itself is probably due for another return a few years from now. Big Red Button, guys!) We live in an archival culture now, where quality television is not dependent on the vagaries of an inconsistent syndication schedule to gain a following among science-fiction fans. So why is it that Babylon 5 nostalgia isn't leading us back towards a revival of the series and an explanation of the Drakh war? At the very least, Dark Horse should be putting out a comic book of this stuff.

I think the answer is that the very thing that Babylon 5 fans loved has given the series a reputation that prevents it from gaining that kind of return following. Everyone talked, during the period the series was on the air, about its intricate continuity and long-running storyarcs. About hints that began in the pilot and slowly unfolded over the course of five whole seasons. (I used to have a button that said on it, "Doctor Who explained, Babylon 5 predicted, Star Trek...apologized for." It's funny if you're an obsessive Doctor Who geek.) The problem with this is that it intimidates people away from the show. Even in an archival era, where the series is ten bucks a season and you can get through the whole thing in a couple of months if you work at it, Babylon 5 is legendary for requiring an investment to get through. (And it's also got an entirely undeserved reputation as having a long slog of dull episodes to get through before you hit the "good stuff", by which fans tend to mean the metastory-heavy shows. Personally, I think that Season One's standalone episodes are plenty good...but I'd never have known that if I'd listened to the people telling me to watch the show.)

The long and short of it is, we are now in an era where practically every series takes its model from B5, and sci-fi fans should not be scared away from a series with storyarcs. But because it was so innovative at the time, and because so many people talk about nothing but the arc plots, I think people somehow assume they're going to be harder to follow or require more attentive viewing than any other series, and they don't know if they want to put in the effort. Which prevents the show from developing the kind of following that sells DVDs, comics, merchandising, and other stuff that would make the bean-counters in Hollywood stand up, take notice, and shove a dump truck full of money in Straczynski's face and say, "Is this enough to make the kind of show you want?" Which is probably what it would take to overcome his reluctance to dive back into it all.

Basically, what I think I'm saying is, "If you've been waiting 20 years to watch 'Babylon 5' because you were worried about having to mainline the whole thing into your brain over the course of a month or so, you don't need to be. I'm not doing that because it's the only way to watch the show. I'm doing it for secret reasons. Shhhhhh."

Why I Can't Believe Manti Te'o

For those of you who don't follow college football (and given the Venn diagram of my blog and college football fans, I suspect that's a whole lot of you) allow me to first explain who Manti Te'o is before I explain why I can't believe him. Te'o is a linebacker for Notre Dame (or was--he's going out for the NFL draft this spring) who had a pretty serious string of really excellent games this year, and was in line for the Heisman trophy. In his interviews and press appearances, he talked a lot about how hard it was to keep playing after the personal tragedies he'd experienced, but how hard he tried to be inspired by them. See, Te'o's girlfriend and his grandmother had both died that year.

The grandmother hadn't come as much of a shock--she was elderly and in poor health--but his girlfriend, now that was a real sob story. She'd gotten into a car crash, and when she came out of her coma in the hospital, it was to the news that she had cancer. She fought valiantly against the disease, but in the end, it claimed her not long before...or possibly after, accounts vary...Te'o's grandma died.

Actually, accounts vary on a lot of things involving Te'o's girlfriend. Primarily because, as the sports news site Deadspin revealed, she never existed. Everything about her was made up out of whole cloth. The pictures were of a different girl, one who was an acquaintance of a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, who may or may not have known Te'o. The Twitter account was a fake, the school she supposedly went to had no records of a student with her name, the hospital she was supposedly staying at had no records of her, and there was no birth or death certificate for her.

Te'o and his agent (since he's gone out for the draft, he now has an agent) were quick to turn this into a brand new inspirational story--Te'o was the victim of a crushing, malicious hoax that nearly ripped his heart out, but nonetheless he plans to keep on playing to show them that...um, something. The fact that Te'o spent months talking about all the time he and his girlfriend had spent together in Hawaii, and how they'd met at a game? Te'o had fudged the truth, slightly embarrassed to admit that he had never met the love of his life. The fact that even by his own timeline, he'd found out about the hoax in early December, and had made public statements about his dead girlfriend right up until the story broke in January? He wasn't sure how to tell everyone about it all, and just decided to keep it under wraps until he could figure it out. The fact that he apparently never visited his dying girlfriend in the hospital, despite flying through her home city on his way back to Hawaii to visit his grandparents? "It just never crossed my mind."

And that's where I draw the line. I can believe gullibility, I can believe catfishing, I can believe that some people are really good liars and willing to take advantage of people...but I have been in a long-distance relationship. I met my current wife over the Internet. And I can tell you with 100% certainty, if you care anything at all about your long-distance significant other, you are going to make an effort to see them. If you are passing through the city where they live, during a period where you have free time, while she is dying of freaking cancer, not going to see her either means that you know she's a fake, or you're a sociopath of the highest order. And I am willing to give Te'o enough of the benefit of the doubt to believe that he's not a sociopath of the highest order.

I do feel kind of bad for him, of course. He's too stupid to know how to tell a believable lie about his fake Internet girlfriend. Saying that she made excuses to avoid him, that she told him she didn't want to see him with her hair missing or something? Barely plausible. Saying that it just slipped his mind to visit the dying girlfriend that he couldn't shut up about to the media while everyone thought she was real? You couldn't be clearer about the fact that you were BS'ing if you did the interview in a pile of horse manure.

Te'o's lying. Even if it's never proven (which is unlikely, given how much scrutiny is on him right now) I will always know it.

My Big Terminator Question

Why, apart from the obvious reason that his name was at one point a big box-office draw and he's currently attempting to suck the last dregs from the addictive teat of fame, does more than one Terminator ever look like Arnold Schwarzenegger? Let's remember, these are meant to be top secret infiltration devices, made to go where humans congregate without drawing attention to themselves, and then unleash a hellstorm of violence when the humans have dropped their guard. Doesn't it kind of give the game away if the human guards manning the barricades say, "Oh, crap! It's the former governor of California again! Aim for the eyes, I always freaking hated 'The Running Man'!"

I know that they did show Terminators with different faces in the original movie (although they still had a certain muscular bodybuilder look to them. Really, if you're going to be cunning in your pursuit of the human race, make a Terminator who looks like Wil Wheaton.) But in the second movie, we go right back to Ah-nuld, even though there is no sane, rational or sensible reason for John Connor to send back an identical duplicate of the T-800 that Skynet sent to kill his mother, and several extremely good reasons not to. (They almost died trying to convince Sarah that it wasn't the same Terminator, they almost died fighting cops convinced that they mysterious cop-killer had made a return appearance...) Really, the only person with a sensible reason to look like Arnie in T2 was the T1000, who has a vested interest in impersonating his counterpart to sow confusion and dissent among his targets, and he never does it.

Really, the only place it makes actual sense is in T3, the one that gets mocked by people who weren't paying attention for all the plot holes it doesn't have. There, Skynet sent a Terminator specifically to use John Connor's affection for the Schwarzenegger model against him, and it was captured and reprogrammed and sent back to stop the TX. (Which, you'll note, was also designed to look skinny and vulnerable and not like what people picture when they see a Terminator, because that's what you'd do with an infiltration unit. Because T3 was a much better sequel than T2, but nobody remembers that because hearing Arnie say, "liquid metal" and "Hasta la vista, baby," in an Austrian accent was so cool that it wiped everyone's memory of how stupid the plot was.)

Unfortunately, it's too late to suggest that maybe the Terminator series isn't exactly begging for a return appearance from a washed-up 80s action movie actor, or at least that if they want one of those, Steven Seagal is much cheaper. Schwarzenegger has already been signed for Terminator 5: You Knew It Was Going To Happen, and that's final. But could we at least see something different done with him?

We Miss You, Gilda Radner

For those of you unfamiliar with the world of football, the talk of the playoffs this year has been San Francisco. Even though they're the number two seed in the playoffs and will have to win a road game against the Atlanta Falcons, everyone's hot pick is the 49ers, and people can't stop gushing about the team's new wookie quarterback.

Don't get me wrong--I agree with everyone who said that coach Jim Harbaugh made a big gamble by benching Alex Smith and putting in a wookie at quarterback. And apparently it's paid off for them so far. I just don't know if it's a good idea. I mean, I can see the advantages; wookies are faster and stronger than humans, and a wookie quarterback could probably throw a football farther than even Joe Flacco's cannonball arm. Plus, a wookie would be awfully hard to bring down in the backfield, even for a sack artist like John Abraham.

But is a wookie temperamentally suited to the position of QB? Let's not forget, wookies are easily distracted by strong scents, particularly the smell of food, and pretty much every stadium in the country has a whole crowd of fans enjoying the offerings of the concessions stand. Do you really want to have to stand up at a post-game press conference and explain why, with two minutes left, your team captain leapt into the stands and started grabbing bratwursts away from people, gobbling them with both hands?

For that matter, wookies are infamous for their temper. They've been known to rip people's arms off for losing; is that really the kind of person you want under center in a tense game? Ron Jaworski once said that the most important skill a quarterback needs to have is amnesia, the ability to shrug off mistakes and go back out to win the game. A wookie quarterback is unlikely to be able to regain that kind of mental equilibrium, even if he doesn't get ejected for tearing Ray Lewis' legs off and beating him. (At the very least, this would cost his team fifteen yards in personal foul penalties at a time they can ill afford it.)

And if the NFL does allow wookie quarterbacks, what then? Will other teams respond with Trandoshan linebackers? Will we see Gamorrean tackles? Twi'lek wide receivers struggling to get their lekku under their helmets? Eventually, human beings will be crowded out of the sport completely in favor of some sort of violent alien gladiatorial contest. That's why, for the sake of the integrity of the sport, I think we need to tell San Francisco to bench their wook...wookie...

Oh. I see.

Never mind.

Possibly Interesting Question

Currently, copyright law in Britain puts the expiration date of copyright at 70 years from the death of the author. (The same holds true in America, although it's 120 years from creation/95 years from first publication for works for hire, although that isn't germane in this particular case for reasons that should become obvious shortly.)

Sax Rohmer, creator of Fu Manchu, perished in 1959. This means that in 2029, a relatively short sixteen years from now, Fu Manchu will go into the public domain. (unless his Fu Manchu novels were done as work for hire, which means that the copyright wouldn't expire any later than 95 years from 1913, date of publication of the first Fu Manchu novel. Since Fu Manchu didn't go into public domain five years ago, I think we can assume that it wasn't work for hire.)

My possibly interesting question is: Do you think that people will make use of Fu Manchu once the character becomes public domain? On the one hand, the "Yellow Peril" stereotype, which Fu Manchu exemplifies and arguably created, is at this point an embarrassing legacy of an era in which racial stereotypes were common and accepted. Pretty much any story involving Fu Manchu, in any medium, is going to be analyzed with a very skeptical eye by anyone who has any interest in racial sensitivity. These days, that's a lot of people (which is something I'm tremendously heartened by, honestly.)

On the other hand, modern sci-fi/fantasy is a descendant of the pulp novels like the Fu Manchu series, and in some ways is inextricably linked to them right at the roots. Anyone trying to make a serious exploration of the racial politics of cult fiction has to take the Yellow Peril stereotype into account, and if you're going to do that, what better symbol to use than the original Yellow Peril himself? (To say nothing of those people who just can't resist making use of an iconic character simply because he is an iconic character. There's already been at least one "Fu Manchu Versus Sherlock Holmes" novel, and I can imagine that it might be hard to resist the temptation to do a Fu Manchu/Dracula team-up, or a "Fu Manchu and the Cult of Cthulhu" story.)

I do believe there will be some use of the character starting in 2029; but given the problematic nature of the character, I'll be very interested to find out how much.

Self-Taught Superheroes, Part Nineteen

The portal chamber was huge. I mean, I was expecting something pretty big, because this was Lord Raptor and the portal chamber was the showpiece of his big plan to conquer a thousand worlds and stuff, so I knew his ego was going to make him overcompensate for...something. (Well, I mean, I also noticed that he did make his personal armor with a really silly-looking codpiece. But I'm refusing to guess why.) But the logistics of it made it even bigger.

After all, the whole thing was designed to move an army through. You needed to be able to file tanks into that thing three or four abreast, wheel airplanes and fly helicopters. The staging area on this side alone could probably have hosted a couple of games of football back to back. (And it opened out to the outside, which would have made me more nervous if Kevin hadn't insisted that he'd fused the door controls. Of course, knowing what I know now about Kevin, that actually makes me even more nervous in hindsight.) And the portal itself...it was monstrous. It dwarfed me. And in case you didn't think that sounded impressive because of my size, it dwarfed Captain Light, whose hair I have to stand on tippytoes to ruffle. This thing was giant, and it kind of intimidated us.

"You sure I can power this whole thing?" Josh said, looking a little bit nervous.

"Positive," Kevin said, cinching a weird metal band that looked sort of like the offspring of a blood pressure cuff and Robocop's armor around Josh's right arm. He began hooking up another one around the left. "You're powering a force field that can stop tank shells, discharging enough energy with each punch to dent battleship steel, and oh yeah, you're also projecting a psychokinetic field that can move two hundred pounds of mass at sixty miles an hour against the pull of gravity. And I'm guessing you don't get tired doing any of that, right?"

"Um...not sure," Josh said. "I mean, I don't exactly know what 'tired' feels like, so..." He flexed experimentally, and the cuff moved with him. "But you think that's more power than a nuclear reactor?"

Kevin fluttered his hand back and forth. "Well, I'm always going to side with the reactor, don't get me wrong, but...your energy source is a lot less lossy. There's no heat, no radiation, only a little bit of visible light...we can tap your energy directly, unlike a reactor, which is basically just a fancier way of boiling water to run a steam-powered turbine. I mean, I'm always working on ways to reduce the loss, but you can only go so far before you run into Maxwell's Demon, you know? Now, you...your body is doing some things that would reduce a lot of very talented physicists to nervous wrecks. Lucky for you I'm not a lot of physicists." He plugged a cable as thick as my wrist into each of the cuffs. "In fact, I'm just one." He paused. "Um. Little grammar joke, there."

Josh just nodded. He really did look pretty nervous about this whole thing. Then again, I'd probably have looked nervous if a physicist with crazy mad-scientist hair said he was going to use me as a living battery to power a teleportation jaunt halfway across the country. That was our plan, in case it wasn't clear to everyone. Josh, better known as Captain Light, was going to single-handedly power a dimensional portal that a full nuclear reactor couldn't get going for more than a few seconds at a time so that our seventy-odd hostages could scramble through it into the middle of Yankee Stadium (we needed a big open space, and we wanted somewhere public so that Lord Raptor wouldn't be able to go after them in retaliation. And John Q. Public is a Sox fan.) So yeah, I was learning that real life was like the comics in one key aspect--we came up with some pretty crazy stuff and passed it off as a "plan".

Kevin tightened up a few more connections on the portal end, then flicked a few switches. "Okay, co-ordinates are set...receptors are aligned...attractors are spinning...we're all set here, just waiting for power on your end."

"How do I do that?" Josh asked. "I mean, I don't normally think about using my power. It just sort of...happens. When I hit things, they break, when things hit me, they break...it's not really conscious, you know?"

Kevin shrugged. "I don't know. Try to hover or something."

Josh closed his eyes, slowly lifted an inch or three off the ground...and the portal began to open. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. It looked like the desert on a really hot day, the kind where the air is shimmering in the heat like you're watching it all through a veil of tears, but at the same time, it was spinning, too. The wall on the other side of the portal looked distorted, warped and almost melted in a weird, sickening way...and then it resolved itself into another place. A place with green grass, and a throng of cheering fans whose cheering slowly stopped dead.

We all watched in total fascination. It seemed so surreal, like everything we'd ever believed about our world had just gone and dissolved. It seemed like some sort of crazy, big-screen TV with perfect sound and perfect picture. I almost didn't believe it was real until the baseball rolled through it.

That snapped us all out of our stupor. "Go!" I shouted to the hostages. "Go, run, move, go go go go go!" I realized I sounded like Biff McLargeHuge or something, but I couldn't stop myself. The hostages didn't need my encouragement, that was for sure. They saw the outside world for the first time in a month and they ran for it. I helped the last few through, the ones who'd gotten sick or injured during their stint of hard labor, and then made a last quick scan around for stragglers.

What I saw was John Q. Public staggering to his feet, and Lord Raptor already at the side door hammering away at the keypad.

Should We Know Who the Enemy Was?

This is sort of "old business", and very Who-related, so I apologize in advance for those of you who come here for other things and don't care much about pre-Eccleston Who. But before there was the Time Wars that destroyed the Time Lords, there was the War. Same basic premise--the Time Lords were fighting a war against a time-active power just as powerful as they are, but with two key differences--one, the war occurred in the Doctor's personal future, starting the day he died as Gallifrey's enemies finally felt safe enough to move against them. The glimpses the Doctor got of the War (starting with 'Alien Bodies') were scenes from his own personal future, but simply knowing about it warped it and brought it ominously closer.

And two, which is more relevant here, the enemy wasn't the Daleks. In fact, the enemy's identity was never satisfactorily explained. Lawrence Miles, who wrote most of the significant novels in the War arc, intended them to be someone other than the Daleks, but the novel in which he finally intended to reveal their identity was never published. Instead, then-line editor Stephen Cole co-wrote a novel called 'The Ancestor Cell', where they were explained as a collection of technobabble from the dawn of time shortly before the War arc, and Gallifrey, were neatly excised from the line never to be mentioned again.

Lawrence Miles, in turn, went on to write a spin-off series in which the Time Lords and the War are carefully changed just enough that he can use his own concepts freely, called 'Faction Paradox'. In it, the enemy is simply known as The Enemy, with the details of their identity being described as "irrelevant".

As a fan of both Doctor Who and Faction Paradox, I'm not sure this was the right move. At this point, I think that the identity of the Enemy risks drifting gradually into irrelevance if not revealed, while revealing it might drum up useful publicity for a somewhat cult spin-off. I'd really like to see Lawrence Miles (ideally) write a book that explains who the Enemy was intended to be, or if that's not possible due to rights issues (it was hinted at as being an old foe of the Doctor's in some way, shape or form) at least get it out in an interview who it was originally intended to be so we finally can put the question to rest. However, I'll admit that part of my desire just stems from being a fan who hates unsolved mysteries, so I can't say I'm unbiased here. Anyone else remember the Enemy? And do those people want to see it come back and get finally answered? Feel free to make your thoughts known in the comments!

Review: Whispers Underground

'Whispers Underground' is the third book in what appears to be an ongoing series (wonderfully, author Ben Aaronovitch has said that he plans to keep going until he can afford a yacht) about Peter Grant, official apprentice to the last officially-sanctioned wizard in Britain. Although, as one of the threads running through the novel shows, the last officially-sanctioned wizard is very much not the same thing as the last wizard. This thread, which was frustrating to me at the end of 'Moon Over Soho', has been developed quite well here (there's a great gag where the mysterious rogue wizard leaves a psychic trap in Elvish that Tolkien fans translate as, "If you can read this, not only are you dead but you're also a huge nerd.") I don't even mind the fact that it's still dangling by the end of this book, now that I'm used to the idea.

One of the other minor complaints I had about the last book turns out to have been very well-thought out for the long haul as well. Not to unduly spoil 'Moon Over Soho', but Peter has a very different attitude when it comes to "monsters" than his superior. In the last book, this kind of came to nothing, because fate sort of took its own course, but that only heightened the tension of this novel. When Peter finds an entire underground civilization beneath London, one with a tangled and extra-legal relationship with the seedier denizens of the city, the question of what exactly is going to happen to them once the larger world finds out becomes all the more razor-edged due to the events of 'Moon Over Soho'. By showing that the world isn't always cute and cuddly towards the inhuman, Aaronovitch gives us one more reason to find the story gripping.

And it is. What starts as an ordinary murder turns into an exploration of the magical underworld, literal and figurative, of London. It's exciting stuff, and Aaronovitch makes it (as always) witty and exciting and funny and scary and nerve-wracking and just generally excellent. Oh, and recurring character Lesley May gets a hugely expanded role for this one, which is just plain awesome because she deserves it.

In case I'm not being clear here, this one's a good buy too.