Sooo...

Don't suppose anyone needs a freelance writer or editor? Because I've got a little unexpected free time, job-wise, and I wouldn't mind a paying gig. Just curious.

My Bottom Five Candidates for the Big Bad of the Big Bang

I realize that British fans may now make fun of me, since this post is two days late and they, unlike me, have already seen "The Big Bang". But Moffat has done such a good job in avoiding spoilers for who the mysterious villain is for Series Five, I don't feel like I'm going to overlook a ludicrously obvious candidate. Speculation abounds, but nobody really seemed to know prior to broadcast. (Which is, of course, over in the UK. No spoilers in the comments sections, please!)

So this isn't my guesses as to who it is--it's my desperate hopes for who it isn't.

1. Davros. Please, please, please, please, please don't let it be Davros! It doesn't make any sense, it'd come totally out of left field, and Davros has just been used as the season-ending villain (and that came totally out of left field, too.) Anyone would be better than Davros, anyone at all.

2. The Dream Lord. Or the Valeyard, or Zagreus, or any iteration of the "evil Doctor" theme. I just don't think there's much that's interesting about the idea of a villain who's just "the Doctor, only bad", and I'm hoping we won't see that as the menace behind everything that's happened this year.

3. The Master. And speaking of "the Doctor, only bad", John Simm's Master is too self-consciously manic, too overwritten, and was just used in the last big "season finale" special. I'm ready to give the Master a nice long rest and a bit of a rethink before we see him again.

4. Rassilon. I really liked Timothy Dalton's performance, and it would fit the plan that we've seen so far, but as with the Master, didn't he just show up?

5. Amy/River. "Evil companion" isn't doing much more for me than "evil Doctor", plus I like those characters and want them back next season. (Oh, and "evil Rory" would also be on that list, as amusing as the idea would be.)

There we go--soon enough, we'll see whether Moffat disappointed me!

Personal Favorites: Messiah of Evil

"Messiah of Evil" isn't one of those movies that gets talked about a lot, even by cult movie enthusiasts. Made by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz (who would later go on to infamy by making "Howard the Duck"), it was released in 1971 to a sort of general disinterest. Which is a shame, because it's a surprisingly creepy and chilling little movie whose atmosphere of dread lingers long after you've finished watching it.

The plot concerns a young woman named Arletty (who's narrating the entire thing from inside an insane asylum) who moves to the tiny town of Point Dune to find out what happened to her father. He was a painter who lived in Point Dune, but he's gone missing, leaving behind only a cryptic diary that hints at bizarre occult rituals and hideous physical transformations. Arletty moves into his old house, and winds up giving crash space to Thom, a folklorist who came to Point Dune to investigate tales of a "dark stranger" who visited the town a hundred years ago, and to Thom's two friends/girlfriends/hey-look-it's-the-Seventies, Toni and Joanne. Arletty finds herself attracted to Thom, but isn't sure she wants to get involved in the complex dynamics of his relationships.

As time passes and the hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the stranger approaches, the townsfolk become increasingly creepy and murderous. Joanne and Toni both die two of the best deaths in horror-movie history (Joanne finds out that supermarkets at midnight are exactly as eerie and unnerving as you'd expect, while Toni goes to see a movie in a deserted theater, and is so engrossed in the film she doesn't even notice it slowly fill up with the transformed townspeople. By the time she does...) Arletty slowly succumbs to the same process that changed her father, and although she hasn't yet become insane and murderous, she knows it's just a matter of time.

Finally, things come to a head as the townspeople attack. Arletty and Thom are surrounded, and are forced to swim for it, but then Thom is pulled under. Arletty gives up and swims back to Point Dune, just in time for the dark stranger to return from his home underneath the waves and claim her as his bride. Afterwards, she is allowed to live and to spread her tale of the coming evil, but only because the messiah knows nobody will believe her...

The thing that makes the movie special is the way it understates. Key plot points are only hinted at, giving the film a dream-like atmosphere of paranoia and mystery that stays with you long after the credits. The dark stranger's face is never glimpsed...but he looks tantalizingly similar to Thom, and only appears after Thom is pulled under the waves. The transformation of the townspeople is different enough from typical horror-movie zombies/vampires/werewolves to be haunting. And the use of familiar settings to accentuate the horror is absolutely brilliant (one character is murdered under the neon lights of a 24-hour gas station.)

This one's worth checking out, with the understanding that it's not going to give you the answers a conventional horror film might. It's Lovecraftian without actually being a Lovecraft adaptation, which alone should be enough to entice some people into watching it.

The Insanometer: Casino Royale

Someday, I pray someone will make a movie about the making of the 1967 Bond spoof "Casino Royale". Because while the movie itself is wildly uneven at best, the story of how it was made is an epic tale of clashing egos, dueling directors, and Hollywood excess that is absolutely riveting. For those of you who don't know, producer Charles K. Feldman managed to get the film rights to the Bond novel before the series of books became a wildly successful series of movies. He tried to make a deal with the people at EON Productions, but when that fell through, he decided to produce the film as a Bond spoof (since he couldn't get things like the theme music, Connery as Bond, the Bond logo, et cetera.)

Feldman's reworked film involved a baccarat expert impersonating James Bond in order to trick Le Chiffre into competing against him, and getting into difficulties when he had to act as a suave superspy instead of the bookish mathematician he really was. The screenplay was finished, the film was cast, shooting began...and it turned out that stars Orson Welles and Peter Sellers could not stand each other. It was hatred at first sight. Sellers either quit or was fired (accounts differ as to which) with the film only half-finished.

Feldman's solution was, to say the least, unique. He hired several other directors, had them film comic vignettes featuring random actors as Bond, and then put together a framing sequence where David Niven, the "original" Bond, put together a complex scheme to confuse SMERSH by setting loose hordes of fake Bonds!

The result is a movie that perfectly encapsulates the experience of watching AMC when you have a high fever. You'll be watching a scene, and it doesn't make any sense to you, and then without any warning or transition it'll become some other scene with totally different characters and you're not sure how any of it fits together, and you don't remember falling asleep but you figure you must have because you don't recognize anything that's going on and none of it connects with anything else and then it ends in something that you're absolutely sure has to be one of those nightmares you get when you're not quite sick enough to go to the hospital, but very very close. It's a movie that has to be seen to be believed, and even then I'm not quite sure I didn't dream it. I can't even actually summarize the plot, because it doesn't follow any kind of linear logic. On the Insanometer, this one is a perfect ten, and I'm strongly resisting the temptation to give it an eleven.

The Dysfunctional-Relationship Tree

I cannot express how much I dislike "The Giving Tree".

Everyone's familiar with this one, right? The one with the kid who keeps coming back to the tree that loves him, demanding more and more from it as he grows older until by the end of the book, he's reduced it to a pathetic stump of dead wood...but it's just fine as far as the tree is concerned, because that means it can give him a nice place to sit.

I love Shel Silverstein, but man...dude had issues. I mean, we're talking "my wife was secretly sleeping with my brother while embezzling from my company funds and framing me for possession of kiddie porn" issues with relationships, judging by that story. It views love as nothing more than an endless, voracious cycle of selfishness, where one party is capricious and oblivious to the depths of the sacrifices made by the other, while the other is a doormat for abuse.

If "The Giving Tree" were reflective of real love, there would be a forest at the end of that story. Because that's what real love does. It makes you bloom.

Why Merit Pay for Teachers Is a Bad Idea

Everyone knows that our nation's public schools are in a state of crisis. (Everyone also knows that the public school their individual child goes to is doing a good job, but they assume that there must be a problem with all the others because they keep hearing about "the crisis in our nation's public schools". But that's a whole other post.) But nobody seems to know what to do about it. One of the most popular suggestions involves "merit pay increases" for teachers whose students do well in school.

First and foremost, this is fundamentally wrong-headed. It betrays a lot of the unintentional biases of the people complaining about our nation's education that they think it can be solved by incentive pay; they're assuming that teachers don't really care about the kids, so long as they get a good paycheck out of the deal, and that they only way to motivate them is with a few extra bucks if they make the kid smarter. News flash to everyone involved: Nobody becomes a teacher for the money. The job is thankless enough that you only do it if you really, genuinely like educating kids.

Second, this rests on a false assumption; namely, that teachers can control the learning ability of their students. A host of other factors, from parental involvement to socio-economic background to plain old innate intelligence, helps or hinders a child's education. Doling out merit pay to teachers would be like giving incentive pay to someone for assembling a machine within a certain time frame, then pointing them to a pile of random car parts and saying, "Get to it."

And third, this violates one of the most fundamental and basic rules of doling out money, which is "Never put incentive pay in the hands of someone who controls the conditions of it being released." As mentioned, teachers don't make a ton of money. Telling them that they can have extra cash if they're lenient graders or give the children unethical amounts of assistance on standardized tests is putting a lot of temptation in the way of people who might be in some serious need of money. While most teachers don't do the job for the money, it's Rule Number One: Don't put temptation in people's way, or they might just take it.

Of course, you could take the time, effort, and expense to enforce ethical guidelines and make sure teachers can't cheat...but honestly, you could also just hire more teachers, since the clearest correlation has always been between class size and academic success. But since the whole "crisis" is a thinly-disguised attempt to get rid of the teachers' union to begin with, it's not likely that anyone will propose a solution that involves hiring extra ones.

Next Week on Documentaries for Sharks: Human Abductions?

Many sharks believe "human abduction" to be a myth. But we here at the Documentaries for Sharks channel have heard chilling eyewitness testimony that the accounts of sharks being abducted by human beings are terrifyingly real. One shark, Keiko, described her horrific experience.

"I was eating," she said, "when suddenly I felt an agonizing pain in my mouth, and a sensation of impossible lightness. It was as though I was being drawn upwards; no matter how I struggled, I couldn't dive. Then suddenly, the water simply vanished--I could see it all around me, but I was trapped in a strange, perfectly square area of pure air. They had taken me to their mothership.

"They placed a tube in my mouth so I could breathe, and began to examine me. One of them probed my reproductive organs, while another drew blood from me. Then they implanted a piece of their strange alien technology on my fin." Chillingly, examinations show this alien device to be very real. Is it a clever hoax...or evidence that human beings are real, too? Shark scientists have long hypothesized about a race that can survive in outer air, and the strange (but delicious) bodies discovered over the years have given us much cause to speculate about the biology and culture of such a species. But this is the clearest proof so far.

"Then just as suddenly as the water had vanished, it returned," Keiko finished. "The humans retreated to their mothership and allowed me to swim away. Even the pain in my mouth was gone. I don't know if I'll ever feel the same way, though." Perhaps none of us will, Keiko. Perhaps none of us will.

Birds of Prey #1, And Everything That's Wrong With DC

Recently, after a post I made on mightygodking.com about the similarities between 90s comics and modern comics, someone commented, "You know, if you don't like these comics, you can just stop reading them." Which is amusing to me because fundamentally, I don't. I haven't picked up a DC book since before Final Crisis, and I haven't picked up a Marvel book since World War Hulk. (This would be the current, mainstream "Marvel/DC Universe" comics; I still pick up trades and compilations of out-of-continuity material or older stuff from time to time.) It's just that really, if you are curious about finding out what's going on at the Big Two, it's remarkably easy to keep informed without ever buying a book. (And I'm not talking about pirating, here. Just the news and reviews alone will let you know the basic plot beats of the major crossovers, and let's face it--the selling point of most crossovers is "What's going to happen?", not "Isn't this spectacularly well-written?") I don't have to give DC my money to find out that Blackest Night sucked, and I'm much happier not doing so.

But all that changed last week, when I finally broke down and bought a copy of Birds of Prey #1. It wasn't that I'm a huge Gail Simone fan, although I have liked her writing ever since the days of "You'll All Be Sorry!" It wasn't that I was a huge BoP fan, although I've got quite a few collections of the series...especially the Gail Simone run. Those two things were enticing, but not enough to get me to dive back into comics for the first time in well over a year. No, the thing that sealed the deal was the return of Hawk and Dove.

I make no secret of it--I'm a huge Hawk and Dove fan. The Karl and Barbara Kesel series was the very first DC comic I ever collected, and I still adore it to pieces to this day. The dialogue was sharp and witty, the plots moved swiftly, and I loved that it did things like create all-new villains (while also rehabilitating some obscure ones like Copperhead and Velvet Tiger.) Finding out that they had revived the characters and were using them in a book I already liked with a writer I already liked made a "hmmm..." into an "Oooooh!"

But it took them nineteen years to get to that point. Because in '91, immediately after the cancellation of their series, first Dove died, then Hawk turned evil, then they created a new Hawk and Dove, then those two fell into instant comics obscurity, then Hawk died, then Dove came back, then they created a new Hawk, then the old Hawk came back as a zombie and killed the new Hawk, and finally after all that they used Blackest Night to sweep the whole damn mess under the rug and bring back Hawk and Dove as the team I remembered. And what did I do? I went out and bought a comic book solely because they guest-starred in it. (And it was very good, thanks. Gail Simone clearly has the same kind of fond memories of the Kesel series that I do, and portrayed them very faithfully.)

But the point is, DC missed out on nineteen years of sales because they decided that they could boost the circulation of Armageddon 2001 #2 if they killed off one hero and had another do a heel turn. Instead of growing a well-rounded, diverse set of supporting characters who could boost sales of a book and eventually break out from B-list to A-list status, they have decided on a slash-and-burn strategy of managing their intellectual properties. Obviously, in the case of Hawk and Dove, they've repented. But what about all the people who might pick up a copy of the new Ray Palmer Atom comic because they really like Ryan Choi and he's a regular secondary character? What about the people who liked Holly Granger as Hawk, and would have bought a comic with her in it? What about the Elongated Man fans, the Tempest fans, the Azrael fans, the people who will support their favorite character even if they don't have their own book?

Killing off characters isn't just bleak, unpleasant storytelling that's shock purely for shock's sake. It's also a dumb business decision. While Birds of Prey itself is demonstrating what DC could be doing right, it's also demonstrating exactly what everywhere else in DC is doing wrong.

Warning: Geek Rant Ahead

Seriously: This is going to be nerdy, pointless, and probably offensive to some other geeks with deeply-held opinions about science-fiction movies. Depending on your feelings about "Blade Runner", you might want to turn back now.

OK, going to assume anyone who's still here either agrees with me, or at least won't take it personally when I say the following: Deckard is not, I repeat not a replicant. Because if he was a replicant, then "Blade Runner" would be entirely pointless and uninteresting instead of just being mostly pointless and uninteresting.

For one thing, "Deckard is a replicant" is the laziest, hackiest, dullest possible ending anyone could come up with given the basic set-up of the film. Seriously, it's the goddamned Tomato in the Mirror ending! "Dude...what if the guy who was hunting replicants...was a replicant himself? Whoa. I think I just sprained my brain." It's the sort of thing that you think of in the short story you wrote in eighth grade, not the ending you want to give your multi-million dollar budget sci-fi motion picture.

Also, it doesn't make a ton of sense. Yes, Rachel's example does show that you can make a replicant with false memories, one that believes itself to be human, but what about everyone Deckard interacts with? Are they all in on it, every single person in the movie, and pretending to have known Deckard for ages in order to provide verisimilitude for his memory implant so that he won't go rogue? (Except for his partner, who apparently knows he's a replicant but only tells him by leaving cryptic hints in the form of origami unicorns.) And would they really let a replicant wander around without his partner as much as he does, given that they're supposed to be so highly dangerous? (Speaking of, if you were going to make a replicant to hunt replicants, wouldn't you make one that isn't quite so likely to get his ass kicked on an almost-continual basis? If Deckard's a replicant, he's a candy-ass replicant.) And would they really, at the end, not be waiting at his apartment in force to retire him if he was actually a replicant? That's a lot of plot holes that get resolved simply by taking things at face value. Occam's Razor alone tells us Deckard was human.

But more importantly, it misses the whole point of the film, which is that all of the stated reasons society gives for needing to hunt down the replicants are entirely false, and the real reason that Blade Runners hunt down replicants was the same reason plantation owners hunted escaped slaves. Their entire society relies on replicants doing the dirty, nasty, ugly jobs out in space. It relies on disposable human labor. So they have to convince themselves that "replicants aren't like us." They're not humans. They're things. You can do whatever you want to things.

But what's the supposed difference between "replicants" and "people"? Replicants lack empathy. They don't care about anything but themselves. They can't feel for others. Simple, and apparently even testable. (Although gosh, you have to wonder how many entirely human sociopaths failed that test and died unmourned.) The people have feelings for each other, the replicants don't. It's how you know who to kill.

But that's what they tell each other in the movie. What do we see? We see replicants banding together against a strange, hostile world. We see them mourning each other, avenging each other's deaths...and most importantly, we see the last act of Roy Batty. He saves Deckard's life at the end, an act that has absolutely no explanation other than as an act of pure empathic kindness. He gains nothing from it: He's in the last minutes of his life, and saving Deckard or letting him die won't prolong it. He has no reason to care about Deckard--the man killed his lover just minutes ago. He saves him because he looks down, he sees Deckard struggling pathetically like an overturned turtle, and he feels something.

And on the flip side, we have Deckard. A man who's such a good Blade Runner that his own partner can't help but wonder if he's a replicant under some sort of deep cover, simply because Deckard has spent so many years gunning down things that look like people that he's had to shut down all his emotions just to keep from committing suicide. Deckard quit because he found out he was forgetting how to be a human being. How many Blade Runners could pass the Voight-Kampf test? How many of them have lost their empathy just to survive a job that involves killing people all day, every day?

That's the point of Blade Runner. It's about a replicant who acts like a man, saving a man who acts like a replicant. It's about the lie at the heart of the world Deckard lives in. Once Deckard has seen that lie first-hand, once he's learned that replicants can love others selflessly and truly, he can be with Rachel at last. He can start remembering how to be human again. (It's no coincidence that the Deckard in the book had a wife that was written out for the movie.)

It's still not a perfect movie. It's so bloodlessly subtextual that there's almost no text to it. It's a movie about slavery where nobody ever talks about slavery, a movie about a man who realizes that it's just as wrong to murder artificial humans as natural ones, but who never gets around to saying so. It's a movie that actually did need a voice-over, just not the one that we got. We needed to be inside Deckard's head; instead, we got something added in post-production by nervous execs.

But if it were really about Deckard being a replicant who doesn't know it? Then it would be utterly without redeeming value as a story. It'd be nothing but a bunch of pretty aesthetics, a decent performance from Rutger Hauer, and a Vangelis score that plays about three times louder than the dialogue. And the worst part is, sometimes I think that's what most Blade Runner fans actually want.

Why LOST's Series Finale Disappointed

Because LOST was six seasons long. That's 121 episodes, or eighty-four hours and forty-two minutes of solid television. Think about that. If you decided to do nothing but watch LOST for eight hours a day, five days a week, it would take you more than two weeks to get through the whole thing. That's a lot of build-up to get to a one-hour payoff.

And of course, that's not even the full story. Because let's face it, the people who were really into the LOST finale had been watching the show since the beginning. Sure, it wasn't a continuous time commitment, but the really big LOST fans put six years of anticipation into the ending of the series. Six years of discussing, dissecting, examining and cross-examining in the firm and fervent belief that the series would reward that degree of enthusiasm. (Ironically, Penny Arcade got it more or less right from the start.)

And what did they get? A fairy-tale ending. The Island is a big magic power source guarded by an immortal, who is looking for a replacement. The guardian has an evil shapeshifting brother who covets the power and hates the guardian. There's a big fight. Good wins, but not without cost. It's a decent enough ending, fairly common and no better or worse than the people writing it, but the people who put six years and eighty-four hours of emotional investment into the show were never going to be satisfied with that.

Honestly? They were never going to be satisfied, period. You can't come up with an ending good enough to justify 121 episodes of build-up. That's the danger of series built around big mysteries, from LOST to BSG to Twin Peaks. The answer to "Who killed Laura Palmer?" is always just going to be, "Some person," and the longer you wait before revealing the answer, the more irritated people are going to be that they waited that long. Building a series around one big mystery is risky for that very reason. Sometimes it's better to have a show where every episode can stand alone. The pay-off may not be as big, but at least it won't fall flat.

The Mythos Wall

Interesting question (well, I hope it is...) At what point does a series' mythos become an impenetrable barrier to attracting new viewers?

Obviously, I ask because of a certain television series that has just recently reached its conclusion. I'm pretty sure that it's a bit late now for me to start watching 'Lost', seeing as how it's not actually airing anymore; but even before last night's series finale, I was already getting the feeling that if I wanted to watch the show, I'd need to do it by buying DVDs and starting from Season One. There are plenty of other shows like that, as well: The X-Files, Babylon 5, even the Stargate serieses tend to get pretty deeply into their backstories by a few years in. (Doctor Who, a show that's in it for the long haul, tends to resolve everything and start over every five years or so, but it's the exception to the rule.)

So how long does it take for a show to become something that "you really have to start at the beginning" to watch? Is it a good thing, or a bad thing? And when did it start?

Taking the latter first; as a science-fiction trend, I'd say the push for longer and more involved story-arcs arrived alongside the home video market. Before that, we had soap operas, which obviously involved a lot of involved backstory...but we'll get back to that later...but really, the episodes of most sci-fi shows before Babylon 5 could be seen in any order without confusing the viewer too much. Occasionally, you'd find a new doctor on ST: TNG (or a new Doctor on Doctor Who) but for the most part, producers didn't think they could do stories with long, involved arcs, because they couldn't guarantee that people would see the episodes that set up the episode they were watching right now.

Home video changed all that. Even before DVD, series like B5 and Highlander were putting out big, chunky season sets that took up whole bookshelves. Sure in the knowledge that people would be able to follow their plotlines for only a minimal $100 investment, they could do longer, more involved storylines. DVD only accelerated the evolution of the trend.

But unsurprisingly, some people didn't necessarily want to shell out $50 (it got cheaper by the time DVD rolled around) to catch up on the show everyone was talking about. Or, for that matter, to invest thirty-two hours of viewing time, either. For those people, comments by the fans along the lines of "oh, you really need to watch it from the beginning to get the full effect" might as well have been saying, "Too late, buddy!"

Which is probably not what the producers wanted. Because let's face it, for all that shows like "Lost" have more involved backstories, it's still not like you're watching one long movie cut up into a couple hundred hour-long chunks. Fans tend to overestimate the impenetrability of their favorite shows and continuities, perhaps because it makes them feel a little more special to know that they're one of the Chosen Few who can understand everything that's going on in their favorite show. They love to start telling people that a show really rewards patient viewers as soon as the second episode, creating an almost self-fulfilling prophecy of confusion. But soap operas specialize in tangled plots that go on for years, and they've been able to consistently attract new viewers. Obviously, if what's going on that moment on screen is interesting, people will be willing to sit down and watch until they've picked up all the stuff they didn't understand.

Unless the series is, y'know, over. Then it probably is a bit too late.

Controversial Statement of the Day

There is no such thing as a "science-fiction" genre. Or, for that matter, a fantasy one. These are just labels applied to books with certain narrative elements by people who are deeply uncomfortable with made-up things, and want to be sure that they can avoid any work of fiction that they can't pretend is real.

The proof is this: You can find a "pure" horror story, one that crosses no genre boundaries and is plain and simple an attempt to scare the ever-loving crap out of someone. (Like, say, "Friday the 13th", or "The Collector".) You can find a "pure" comedy, a "pure" romance, a "pure" drama, a "pure" adventure...

But it's impossible to find a science-fiction story that isn't also part of another genre. "Star Wars" is sci-fi/adventure, "Alien" is sci-fi/horror, "Ghostbusters" is sci-fi/comedy, "Dark City" is sci-fi/mystery/horror/adventure/horror/back-to-the-mystery-for-a-bit/romance/adventure...it's no coincidence that science-fiction/fantasy tends to be a pioneer in genre-blending. How can it not? It has to steal other genres simply to exist.

"Science-fiction" is simply a collection of narrative elements, involving speculations based on what we know of science, applied to stories in other genres. "Fantasy" is similar, but involves speculations based on what we used to think was true in science but now know better. (Which means that Isaac Asimov's "Lucky Starr" books went from being a sci-fi adventure series to a fantasy adventure series over the course of sixty years.) Neither one is a genre.

I am, of course, open to contradictions on this. Anyone want to cite a "pure" sci-fi or fantasy story? (Keeping in mind, of course, that "satire" is a genre.)

Handicapping Palin

And not in the Jeff Gilooly sense, either.

It does seem to be one of the big political questions out there. Will Sarah Palin run for President in 2012? Political pundits are divided; some see her as a serious, transformative candidate (her boosters imagine her as a populist revolutionary, her detractors as a willfully ignorant demagogue) while others believe her to be a slick-talking huckster who's left politics for the far more lucrative profession of entertainer/pundit. The key moment that will tell who's right is 2012. If she makes a serious bid for the Presidency, then she clearly hasn't given up her political ambitions. If she sits it out, she's another Glenn Beck. (Which would be two more Glenn Becks than we actually need.)

My feelings? I think that on the one hand, it's pretty clear that she likes being rich. (Hey, who doesn't?) She quit halfway through her only term of elected office in order to cash in on her celebrity status, something that she had to know might come back to haunt her later on. (More on this...) And notably, running a political campaign is not something that makes money, it costs money. Especially when she doesn't have the kind of fund-raising apparatus and insider connections needed to raise the big donations, the way Dubya did. If she runs, she's going to be hemorrhaging cash, something that she's been very averse to doing, and she won't get any potential payoff until 2016 at the earliest. Unless, of course, she becomes the first President to quit after two years to do speaking tours...

On the other hand, a Presidential bid, even a failed one, boosts her credibility as a political pundit and gives her another fifteen minutes of fame. Her fanbase is demanding it, and they're a fickle group; failure to run could seriously tarnish her status as a populist revolutionary in their eyes, while failure to win can only increase it. ("Sarah's too much of a maverick to break through the Washington establishment! At least, that's what she's saying at her latest rally! Let's all buy tickets!") And it's easy to throw your hat into the ring, at least at first; you can always drop out when it starts getting expensive.

But most importantly, Sarah Palin has a lot of weaknesses as a politician that she has so far managed to conceal because they haven't been exposed to much scrutiny--Alaska has a small population, and she was hand-picked to run for Vice-President. A Presidential bid is going to expose those weaknesses. She will not be able to avoid unscripted interviews with tough media figures the way she has for much of her political career--George W. Bush pulled it off, but he had a lot of family connections to experienced political operators who could arrange that kind of strategy. Sarah Palin does not trust and is not trusted by those same campaign experts.

And that's also worth mentioning all by itself--Sarah Palin does not have a staff, and she doesn't want one. She is fast becoming notorious for being slapdash, organizationally speaking...something that works fine when you're just co-ordinating your speaking appearances and media engagements, but not so much when you're running for President. She doesn't have the kind of apparatus in place that you need for a serious political campaign, and more importantly, her experiences with that kind of apparatus in 2008 have left her very wary of putting them into place. She's going to try to go it alone, if she goes.

And that might not work very well, because the campaigning process (especially on a national stage) is brutal. She's not going to be able to conduct her Presidential bid through Facebook, speaking rallies, and appearances on Fox News. She's going to have to get in there and face off against other candidates who will be happy to use her weaknesses against her--remember that "quit halfway through her term as governor" thing? You can bet Mitt Romney will remind you, if you forget. And if Palin has shown a single defining character trait through her time in the political spotlight, it's that she's thin-skinned and holds grudges easily. (Or is that two traits?)

Put it all together and my guess is that you get something like this: Palin will make a Presidential bid in 2012, but it won't last long. She'll last through a few primaries, then drop out, citing a desire to protect her family from the vicious, unmotivated attacks that her opponents have unfairly leveled at them. Experts will cite the fact that she was running out of money and didn't do well in those first few primaries, but Palin will have already retreated back to the world of entertainment, where she can create her own reality. And make good money doing it, too.

The Insanometer: Doomsday

Every once in a while, I watch a movie that I'm not quite sure how to review it afterwards. It's certainly not good, but at the same time, there's a certain verve, a wonderfully strange vitality to it that prevents me from hating it even while I notice its flaws. A movie that I can only call insane. And how does one measure these films? With an insanometer, of course! So let's calibrate this thing by turning it on the 2008 film Doomsday.

Doomsday was director Neil Marshall's third flick, following his breakout hit Dog Soldiers and his well-received horror film The Descent. For this movie, he decided to pull out all the stops and most of the cliches for a semi-post-apocalyptic movie set in a semi-futuristic Great Britain. Well, most of Great Britain at any rate--as the film opens, we see that a deadly plague called the Reaper virus has infected Scotland. Naturally, the decision is made to build a big wall across Scotland, as this will stop the plague from getting across. No, really. That's actually what they do. Apparently, everyone in Scotland politely waits for them to finish building the big wall, and only then do they decide to charge the big door in the middle to try to escape. (Boats? Pffh. Everyone knows that Scotland is land-locked.)

Sure enough, the British close the big door, sealing up all the Scottish people inside, whether infected or not. Oh, except for a cute little girl. Because everyone knows plagues don't affect cute little girls. That cute little girl grows up to be Rhona Mitra, a bad-ass super-spy undercover future-cop with a cyborg eye that records everything she sees. (And there's certainly no way that this will become a plot point later.) She works for hard-boiled tough-but-loveable Bob Hoskins, who is good in every damn thing he's in and this is no exception. And after an obligatory action sequence to show her bad-assness and her rebellious "I don't do things by the book" streak, she gets an important assignment from Prime Minister Julian Bashir. (Yes, yes, I know, he's actually Alexander Siddig. He's also actually good in this too. He's still Doctor Bashir to me.)

See, it turns out that somehow, walling off Scotland didn't stop the plague after all. It's popped up in the heart of London. People are dying. But they've been watching Scotland with satellites, and it turns out that in fact, lots of people survived the plague. The assumption is that they're immune, and Rhona Mitra needs to go in there with a team of scientists to find whatever makes them immune and bring it back. Oh, and there's a scientist who was working on a cure in there. He's bound to be dead, of course, but he might have left research. And he certainly isn't still alive and played by Malcolm McDowell. (This is 90% of the reason this movie works, by the way. It's just got so damn many good actors who aren't afraid to give it their all in silly parts.)

So Rhona Mitra and her crew of redshirts go into Scotland, only to fall victim to a civil war among the plague survivors. See, Malcolm McDowell's scientist character has decided that the only way to survive in the devastated post-plague Scotland is to set up his very own Renaissance Festival in one of the abandoned castles, while his son Sol (played with absolutely berserk gusto by Craig Conway) feels strongly that it'd be better to do a touring production of "Mad Max: The Musical". Sol and his ragtag band of vicious cannibals survives in the post-apocalyptic wasteland with only their wits, their weapons, and an unlimited supply of hair gel and tattooing equipment. Oh, and cars and motorcycles and stuff that they still have gas for after twenty years. And metric tons of sheep.

Meanwhile, back in London, Prime Minister Bashir's second-in-command is saying, "Hey, you know, we've got a little bit of an overpopulation problem...and we've got an incurable plague ravaging Britain. Why don't we let these two things solve each other before we distribute any hypothetical cure Rhona Mitra might find?" The Prime Minister is receptive, until a crazed plague victim breaks in and infects him, forcing the rest of the government to quarantine him in his own office. With no cure, and a potentially agonizing death awaiting him, Bashir is forced to end the holodeck program, if you know what I mean.

Back in Scotland, Rhona Mitra finds out that Malcolm McDowell never bothered to cure the plague--he found out that a lot of people, himself included, are just naturally immune. (Does this actually work with any virus outside of a movie? I mean, do people just happen to naturally be immune to yellow fever or cholera? I always kind of thought that the people who didn't get sick were just lucky enough not to be infected.) He decides to kill Rhona and the two or three surviving redshirts in a trial by combat. Unfortunately for him, Rhona is a main character, and the giant evil guy with the armor and the spiked mace isn't. And in movies like this, that's more than enough to even the odds.

Rhona escapes with her last surviving redshirt and one of the locals. After a truly spectacularly bizarre chase sequence with the Road Warrior rejects that ends in the death of Sol, she makes it back to the border, and tells the new Prime Minister (the evil second-in-command) that the local's blood contains the immunity factor they need. He says, "Oh, goodie! But of course, we won't distribute it until all those icky poor people are dead. By the way, is your cyborg eye getting my good side? I'd really hate to have my vicious evil speech captured on tape with my mole showing."

Rhona passes the disc with the recording on it to Bob Hoskins, thus ensuring that gruff-but-lovable will triumph over evil. But she tells him that she wants to return to her roots and stay in Scotland, where she doesn't have to deal with all the corruption and politics. Then she goes and finds Sol's corpse, hacks his head off, and presents it to the tribe of cannibals. They say, "Oh, God, no! You killed our friend and leader! He was a wonderful man, once you got to know him, kind and generous! He had five kids! What are we going to tell his wife? You murderous, murderous monster! What kind of people do you think we are, savages?"

Nah, I kid. They cheer her on and elect her as their new chief. This is, I guess, good?

On the insanometer, this one ranks quite high. Star Trek actor in vastly out-of-Trek-character role? Check. Inexplicable, unworkable post-apocalyptic society, complete with hair gel and tattoos? Check. Said post-apocalyptic cannibals playing Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Two Tribes"? Believe it or not, check. Bad-ass hot woman as the hero? Check. (Said woman not played Milla Jovovitch? Happily enough, check.) Malcolm McDowell as a bad guy? That's a big check. Lots of scenes of people dying of hideous plague? Check. On the insanometer, I'm going to call this one...an eight.

Breathless Anticipation

For those of you who are interested, rumor has it (spoilers for the upcoming season of Doctor Who, but ones that have already been reported extensively elsewhere) that the Silurians are going to be returning. (Yes, I know. It's not even "rumor" anymore, the BBC has confirmed it. Hush.) Having just watched "Warriors of the Deep", I'm absolutely thrilled to see these classic Doctor Who monsters return, and I'm certainly wondering if the new series will keep all the best elements of these classic monsters. To wit:

• Will we see a return of the Sea Devils, and will they continue their proud warrior tradition of discussing all military matters using only ventriloquism?
• Will the Myrka be back, and will it still be willing to use its stubby little arms for kung fu?
• Will the Silurians keep their adorable sweater vests, or will they return to the nudist ways of the Third Doctor era?
• Will the Silurians still blink their third eye rapidly in time with their conversation?
• Do the Silurians still have that perky smile, even when things are at their worst? (The Myrka also seems to have a bit of a jaunty grin, too. I hope they'll retain that.)
  

And most importantly of all...

• Will the Myrka have liposuction, or do Real Myrkas Have Curves?
  

Bleak, Pessimistic, and Hopefully Wrong

I'm a bit worried about the future of Marvel's movie division. I don't think it even needs saying, at this point, that Marvel's track record at making movies of their characters is much better than DC's; even counting high-profile misfires like Elektra and Daredevil, they've had more and better films than DC--the latter has really only had two major franchises that they've managed to translate into movies, and those have both had long fallow periods (between Batman and Robin and Batman Begins, and between Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and Superman Returns.)

Why? If you study the disastrous history of DC's film franchises, the answer becomes pretty obvious; as a subsidiary of Warner Brothers Entertainment, DC has not been in a position to exercise control over their intellectual properties. Despite a long and relatively successful track record of managing their characters well ("Identity Crisis" notwithstanding) they're forced to bow to the whims of studio executives who don't necessarily understand the appeal of the characters. Everyone has their own set of demands to impose on the next Superman movie, and there's nobody with a strong, singular vision behind the wheel to keep those demands from tearing the film apart in a mess of confusion and conflicts between fanboyish enthusiasm ("Dude, we've got to put in the Eradicator! It'll be an easter egg for the fans!") and outsider indifference ("Why do we really need to have Superman in costume, or flying? Seems kinda corny to me.")

But Marvel...they're the client, not the employee. They're the customer, and the customer is always right. By demanding script approval when they sell the property, they can ensure that the brand isn't diluted by incompetent or indifferent adaptations. They can make the movies a strong translation of their original stories, instead of a vague, generic, corporatized blockbuster (like, say, the GI Joe or Transformers movies.) That power is something that they should not surrender lightly, because it's a big part of what makes the movies work.

But, um...they did, didn't they? They're now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Disney. Marvel Studios is possibly redundant, and even if it survives, it'll be as part of a larger company. Admittedly, a company that's downright famous for being ferociously protective of its intellectual properties, but nonetheless a company that views Marvel as just one of its many projects. Marvel will no longer have the same leverage it once had when dealing with directors, producers and screenwriters, and I'm worried that this might translate into weaker films. I hope I'm wrong, of course. As I say, Disney is quite protective of its characters, and might at least be willing to listen to people who think like they do. But if Thor has a wacky, jive-talking robot as his sidekick, you know who's to blame.

Free Comic Book Day Post-Mortem

Yes, I know. It's probably a little bleak to use the term "post-mortem" to describe what's supposed to be the big, exciting, happy holiday that gets everyone into comics stores. But honestly, when I look at FCBD, I can't help but see one more botched marketing opportunity masquerading as a great idea. The problem with FCBD, as with pretty much every marketing opportunity everywhere in the comic book industry these days, is that it's targeted primarily at the people who are already walking into comic book stores...that is to say, the people who don't need to be told to go into comic book stores. If it was me running Marvel, I would make damn sure 'Iron Man 2' was contractually obligated to open April 30th, not May 7th, and that it was contractually obligated to carry an ad right before the start of the movie touting "Free Comic Book Day at your local comic store!"

Depending on your local comic store, of course. Of the two I visited, one had no free comics available at all. Admittedly, it's mostly a collectibles store that also sells comics, but still... Luckily, the other store had the freebies (and a nice sale going, but I'm keeping a close eye on the budget right now. Next year, for sure.) What did I grab?

DC Kids Sampler: On the one hand, it does lose a few points for being the beginnings to several stories. I don't really like being so overtly teased by a free comic; I'd rather get a self-contained story that makes me want to pick up the next issue than a "To Be Continued". That said, it gains loads and loads of points for being kid-friendly, entertaining, and having some top-flight talent working on it. Well done.

Del Rey Showcase: The "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" sample is worth picking up, the rest is sort of filler. Not bad, just sort of filler. Perhaps I'd feel differently if I was more of a Stephen King fanatic and less of a zombie lover, though.

Green Hornet: Wow. People really weren't exaggerating when they said that Kevin Smith's Green Hornet comic was utterly unreadable crap, were they? This was only six pages, and I found myself wishing it had stopped at one. Smith has an absolute tin ear for dialogue, making every single character sound like they stepped out of 'Clerks', and the section of plot we see couldn't be a more hackneyed and lazy introduction. The Matt Wagner Green Hornet: Year One section is much better, but I was already pretty soured on the concept by then. The rest of the comic feels almost too unfinished to grade...which might be part of the problem. Very much undercooked.

War of the Supermen: Why does it always seem to me when I read a DC comic published in the last decade that DC hates their own flagship character? They seem to have a vested interest in portraying him as an ineffectual, whiny, useless relic of an outdated moral code. I'm aware that this is meant to be a prologue to the actual story, and that this is meant to be the "darkest before the dawn" moment...but it seems like DC has played that card non-stop ever since "Identity Crisis", and it's tiresome. Not to mention, it's another "introductory comic" where nothing happens. I'm calling this one a failure.

Iron Man/Thor: I'm very much torn about this one. On the one hand, it reminds me of everything I've hated about Iron Man for the last four years, now; he doesn't ever seem to connect the bad things he does with the bad things that happen to him. "Huh. I designed a weather control machine capable of slaughtering tens of thousands of people in artificial catastrophes. Now someone is using a stolen weather control machine to slaughter tens of thousands of people in artificial catastrophes. How could I possibly have foreseen that outcome!?!" On the other hand, it does show Tony being genuinely heroic in dealing with said "unforeseen" outcome, there's plenty of good action, and there are some good bits of banter between him and Thor. And I liked the ending. "You're trespassing on private property!" "So take us to Moon Court."

Radical Comics Sampler: A random sampling of comics from a company I've never heard of, picked up on a whim. None of it really grabbed me, to be honest; Driver for the Dead seemed kind of interesting, but not enough to make me pick it up; Time Bomb was too short to detail its own elaborate concept; After Dark seemed bland and uninteresting; and The Rising felt like a by-the-numbers "human resistance" story. The art was nice, though.

Fractured Fables: This was very cute, and exactly how a sample comic should work. It was light and entertaining, self-contained, and showed off enough of the premise of the comic it's advertising to get you interested. I could very easily see myself picking up this collection when I have a little money.

Bongo Comics Free-For-All: Likewise, this is a good job at putting together a comic that showcases the output of the company, while still giving a good experience in and of itself. If you like The Simpsons enough to buy a Simpsons comic, this will probably convince you that they're doing a good job at Bongo Comics. (I don't think I'm quite that much of a Simpsons fan, but was entertained nonetheless.)

Overall, I'd say that there's still a major lesson to be learned by the Big Two. They need to remember that the hook for any series is the character, and it's important to give you something to root for...and to have things happen. Oh, and sell the event outside of comics stores. It's designed to get people through the doors, after all.

Batman Versus Doctor Who

No, not literally. (Although tell me that wouldn't be awesome. Perhaps the Pertwee Doctor? He could probably hold his own against Batman, he knows Venusian Aikido.) No, what I was referring to is that these are probably the two most prominent fictional characters who make a point of disliking guns. Other characters might not use them or carry them, but Batman and the Doctor are almost alone in very vocally disdaining them. (The only other that immediately comes to mind is MacGyver, who was of course created by a prominent Doctor Who writer, Terry Nation.)

Interestingly, neither one of them had their anti-firearm stance as part of their original character bible. Batman, of course, started out as a pistol-packing pulp hero, who notoriously gunned down his early opponents before Bob Kane and Bill Finger figured out that a) there's more money in being kid-friendly, and b) it's easier to write a continuing series if you don't keep killing off your best villains. The Doctor didn't start out with any particular opinion on guns one way or the other; he was an elderly inventor, an eccentric scientist with a brisk trade in improvised gizmos. It was only later, as he was put into a military setting, that his decision not to carry a gun became a character point instead of an afterthought. (Hmm, improvised gizmos, no guns...wonder where Terry Nation got the idea for MacGyver, exactly?)

So we have two characters who have a very similar aspect to their personality...except that they don't, do they? After all, the Doctor disdains beating people up pretty much in general. (Venusian Aikido notwithstanding.) He carries a screwdriver in his pockets--a tool, not a weapon. Batman, on the other hand, leaves the gun behind to carry weapons that he can apply with better precision and non-lethal force. He's more than happy to punch, kick, thump, and batter enemies into submission. He packs a Batarang, not a Bat-Screwdriver. (Except the Adam West Batman, who naturally packed both.)

So with that in mind, you'd think that it would be more shocking to see the Doctor pick up a gun, right? After all, he's the self-proclaimed "man of peace", the one who always gives his enemies the chance to surrender, the one who doesn't solve his problems with his fists. One would imagine that to see him pick up a gun and use it to solve his problems, well...that'd be a sign of a crisis so grave that it shakes his moral foundations to their very core, even more so than Batman (who, as mentioned, started off his career as a card-carrying NRA superhero.)

Except that both heroes have done exactly that, lately. First in 'The End of Time', then just this last week in Doctor Who (well, last week in Britain...next week in America...um, spoilers, okay?) the Doctor used a gun; and last year, Batman had a dramatic face-off against Darkseid that ended with him shooting the god in cold blood. Which was more out of character? Batman's shot, by far. The question is, why?

The answer can be found in their respective moral codes. It's actually a pretty interesting study in contrasts--Batman's moral code is very inflexible, the Doctor's...well, let's just say it's less so. Once Batman makes a decision (no killing, no guns) he holds himself to it with steely determination. The Doctor? He's against killing as a general rule, and he's always trying to find a non-violent solution...but when he comes up against an enemy that can only be stopped with lethal force, he's willing to use it. He's against guns, but not for the same reason as Batman--Bruce Wayne refuses to use guns because they're the cowardly instrument of death that wiped out two of the finest people he ever knew.

The Doctor doesn't carry a gun because he feels like they limit the mind. "If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail," as they say. If all you have is a gun, then you'll see every problem in terms of "What needs to be shot?" And when you come up against as many bullet-proof enemies as the Doctor, it can be downright suicidal if your first instinct is to reach for your gun. He doesn't carry one because it makes him tactically flexible, not because he hates the things. (Although he's not fond of them, either. But there's a difference between disliking guns and having a visceral hatred of them.)

So when the Doctor reaches for a gun, it means that the situation genuinely requires a gun. When Batman reaches for a gun, he's overcoming a lifetime of loathing and a traumatic association between the weapon and the man who used it to shatter his life forever. And that's why it will always be more dramatic to have Batman use a gun than the Doctor. Even though their philosophies seem alike on the surface, they really couldn't be more different. And despite the fact that Batman seems like the more violent character, it's really the Doctor who's willing to be more ruthless with his enemies.

(But tell me a team-up between them wouldn't be awesome. Batman and the Doctor fighting Ra's Al-Ghul and the Master? Oh, yeah.)

Stop a Limited, Specific Quantity of the Hate! (No, Not That Hate. The Other Hate.)

Television Without Pity has weighed in this week on the current season of The Amazing Race, providing a detailed and specific listing of why they hate it. (In handy slideshow format, no less.) Speaking as someone who has now watched...um...a full two-and-a-bit seasons of the show, and hence clearly an expert, I thought I'd weigh in on their weighing in. (I know, I've got strong opinions on The Amazing Race. I feel so bourgeois. But I'm stuck for topics this week, and it's either this or the NFL draft.)

Their first complaint, about the eating challenge in Leg Four, I'm going to rate as bogus. Yes, sauerkraut is arguably less disgusting than some of the things that contestants have had to eat in the past (I say arguably because I personally consider the stuff to be about as appetizing as toenail clippings, and would eat it only at gunpoint) but to me, the addition of a time limit makes it an innovative twist on the conventional eating challenge. (For those who missed the episode, you had to choke down a massive plate of the stuff in the amount of time it took a polka band to play "The Sauerkraut Polka." Didn't finish before the song ended? They refill your plate. So the more times you fail, the harder it gets.)

Their second complaint--that a disproportionate time was spent on the bizarre feud between Carol and Brandy and Brent and Caite--is absolutely true. Carol and Brandy were irritating and whiny, Caite was blatantly homophobic and trying to justify it with claims that "they were mean" to her (claims that relied pretty much entirely on a single incident that was relayed to her second-hand in Leg One) and in general, I do not watch The Amazing Race for interpersonal drama anyway. I watch it for the, y'know, racing. Every time they play up the "teams don't like each other" crap, I find myself wanting to fast-forward.

Their third complaint, that the cops are obnoxious catchphrase-spouting stereotypes that seem to be angling for a spin-off series--is true, but it hasn't really bothered me. But this is definitely the funniest complaint, and is worth reading simply for the humor value.

Their fourth complaint...seriously, Television Without Pity? "The cowboys have gotten lucky"? Seriously? Come freaking on. Every winning team gets a healthy dose of good luck to go with their good decisions. Remember when Tammy and Victor had the good luck to be stupid on the one leg where another couple missed their connecting flight and got there the next day? Or when the penultimate leg went through China, which gave them (the only team fluent in Chinese) a huge advantage? TAR is luck-based as well as skill-based. Get used to it.

Their fifth complaint...yes. "Mom-trepreneurs" was extraordinarily stupid. You had to put up with it for three episodes. Get over it.

Their sixth complaint was about the Blind U-Turn returning. (See my previous post on The Amazing Race for an explanation of how U-Turns work. Blind U-Turns work like that, except you don't have to let anyone know who it was that U-Turned.) This is a silly complaint to me, because a) Joe and Heidi did know who U-Turned them, because there were only two teams ahead of them and they got there less than ten seconds after the second team did, b) knowing who U-Turned them didn't help them, because they got eliminated by the U-Turn, and c) nobody else cared that they'd been U-Turned, because the only thing you care about when a U-Turn is used is, "Was it used on me?" If it wasn't, you're too busy thanking Fate to care about whichever team got hosed. This is not a game where long-term strategic alliances matter. The only way the "Blind/Non-Blind" option makes an actual difference is if 1) you U-Turn a team that survives the U-Turn, 2) it's not obvious to the other teams that you did it, and 3) you don't tell anyone. Since those are pretty unlikely, I say it doesn't matter. In fact, I think all U-Turns should be Blind, because as previously mentioned, I hate Drama, and anything that the actual producers use to "start shit" between two teams irritates the hell out of me. It's a game, not high school.

Their seventh complaint...yep. Brent and Caite are tremendously irritating on every level. No arguments there.

Their eighth complaint...again, yep. This season seems to have had a pretty weak field in general, with several teams that feel like they'd have been eliminated a long time ago if they'd been in any other group of racers. The fact that Jeff and Jordan lasted until Leg Six speaks volumes.

And finally, their ninth complaint--I honestly don't think that the drinking challenge was intended to be a major hurdle. (Teams had to share an oversized beer at a German bar. Actually, this one would have been a major hurdle for me, since I don't drink, and it was a similar problem for many teams. But I don't think that's "incompetence" on the part of the teams in question, like TVw/oP does.) But it wasn't a Road Block, it wasn't a Detour, it was just one of those little things they throw in to dick with the racers. I certainly don't think it qualifies as a reason to hate the season. (Certainly not as much as Brent and Caite do. Good Lord, if I have to hear her complaining about "the Lesbians" one more time...)

Personal Favorites: Vengeance on Varos

Some part of me feels a little guilty rhapsodizing about Doctor Who--after all, I've been a Doctor Who fan so long that I just assume that everyone already knows about every episode. I feel like I could almost just say, "Vengeance on Varos--pretty awesome, right?" and everyone would know what I was talking about.

But then I remember that not everyone comes to this blog through Doctor Who fandom. Some people might only have seen the new series, or not seen the show at all. So for those folks, let me sum up Vengeance on Varos for you a little bit better than, "pretty awesome, right?"

Vengeance on Varos is one of those stories that seems a little bit smarter every year. It's set on a mining colony (a staple of Doctor Who) that was originally a prison colony, a la Australia. There's a lot of social unrest, with the workers constantly in thrall to the "company store" (an off-planet mining consortium run by slimy aliens. The alien representative, Sil, is one of the series' few genuine special effects triumphs; the actor who played him, Nabil Shaban, was born without legs, and the costume is designed around that. There's a great scene where he's resting on a platform that you assume houses the actor, and then his manservants pick him up while he continues to talk and gesture.) As a gesture to ease the unrest, the ruling class televises the execution of prisoners in a grotesque form of reality television (a good decade or so before the term was coined.) Prisoners must run a demented obstacle course called "The Punishment Dome", with numerous fatal traps for the unwary. The audience delights in the spectacle of watching them match wits against the designers of the traps.

The Doctor and his companion, Peri, stumble into all this when the TARDIS malfunctions, and the Doctor needs the mineral Varos produces in order to restore it to working order. Of course, the TARDIS materializes square in the heart of the Punishment Dome, and to escape, the Doctor winds up assisting a group of rebels who are trying to overthrow the social order. There's lots of fun to be had with the metatextual layers of story; after all, we're watching the Doctor struggle for his life against the Dome, putting us in the position of the miners in a sense. (The ultimate example of this is the frankly brilliant cliff-hanger at the end of Part One. The Doctor has entered a virtual reality trap that convinces him he's dying of thirst in the middle of a trackless desert; his slow, agonizing struggles against the seamless illusion are contrasted with the TV execs cutting from camera to camera, finding the best angles to catch his death throes. He collapses, and the director says, "Perfect. And cut it...now." And on cue, the end credits roll.)

In the end, this is probably the only Sixth Doctor story to really make good use of the era's strengths. The violence is grotesque and over-the-top, much like the rest of the Sixth Doctor's run, but here it seems genuinely disconcerting, instead of simply layered on for shock value. The Sixth Doctor is manic, unstable, self-righteous and arrogant, but he's fighting a system so obscene that his theatrical gestures (and nearly un-Doctorishness tendency towards violence) seem in keeping with the story. And the actors (particularly Martin Jarvis, playing an ineffectual governor who's trying to change the system from within) do real justice to the script. If you ever want to watch a Colin Baker story, but have been turned off by the reputation of his time as the Doctor, this one is the one to watch to get a real feel for the potential of what his era could have been.