Review: "Into the Dalek"

Yeah.... I'm not even sure how to review this.

I'm not even sure doing spoilers would help or hurt.

It's... um... yeah. It's got Daleks and if you took a dozen classic Dalek episodes and put them in a blender. And... yeah.

I got nothin'.

It's episode two of the Capaldi era and I'm seeing lots of choppy, weak writing thus far.

Not really interested in delving into this one.

Please let them stop with the Daleks. Good lord...

I'm all shook up

I was sound asleep and rather enjoying it.

First came dim perception of something amiss. I think it was the windows rattling. That's usually the case.

Then came the shaking. It wasn't too crazy, but it was enough for me to awaken and realize an earthquake was going on. And it went on for a bit.

I didn't hear the sound of breaking glass or car alarms, so I went back to sleep pretty quickly.

I'm a California boy. I have my moments of being blase about earthquakes.

Hours later I stirred, got up, and eventually turned on the TV as I wolfed down breakfast.

Apparently there was a 6.1 quake up in the American Canyon area.

6.1 is... not small. Huh.

Review: "Deep Breath"

So... yeah. Series Eight of "Doctor Who" started today.

Peter Capaldi's premier episode was written by Steven Moffatt.

Aaaaaand... reactions that follow are going to be just loaded with spoilers and opinions. I shall endeavor to conceal all the spoilers behind obscuring text (highlight to read), but do keep in mind this doesn't do jack on handhelds, so...




















































Still there? Let's see if my trick works.








The episode opens with a T-Rex in Victorian London. We get our obligatory disoriented-new-Doctor schtick done by Capaldi and we get our Madam Vastra and the gang. There's a series of spontaneous human combustion events going on instigated by a weird, clockwork man for reasons.

The Doctor, now seeming to take on a rather sinister new personality, goes about his standard, random and chaotic investigations. In the meantime, Clara is having the standard female companion reaction to a new Doctor. She's freaking out. In fairness, the Doctor is giving her some reasons to freak out.

Turns out the clockwork man is a homicidal robot-cyborg-thing using humans as spare parts to build giant balloons and rebuild itself as a human-ish being. For... um... reasons.

Yeah.

So Moffatt tried his best to go for a nice, dark villain. He got somewhere in the neighborhood but the entire episode felt a bit navel-gazing with his references to the "Girl in the Fireplace". The writing seemed too proud of the past reference, leaving the villain feeling a bit flat.

Capaldi and Coleman did great in their roles. The new 12th (13th?) Doctor's incarnation felt a bit choppy, but I credit that to first episode jitters. Capaldi has a lot of promise as an intriguing future Doctor.

Certainly Moffatt gives Capaldi's Doctor a decidedly sinister air. He's got more of a dangerous feel than Hurt's "War Doctor" ever had. And he's certainly willing to take extreme measures.

I can't say I'm warming to Clara. I like Jenna Coleman as an actress and I think the only reason I can stomach the character of Clara at all is due to Coleman giving her some sort of charm, but the 21st Century "version" of Clara has always sort of left me cold. In this episode, she went from sort of a zero to being annoyingly-whiny. To her credit, she didn't consistently stay whiny. There was good bits when the character was convincingly scared.

Still, the episode felt a bit choppy. The ending was vaguely unsatisfying and the Vastra gang inclusion felt like a pandering afterthought.

I did like the TARDIS interior redesign.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the odd character added at the end of the episode.

I guess we'll see how it goes.

A sign of the endtimes?

Hayen Christiansen and Nicholas Cage together in a sword flick. Sort of set in China. I think. With Cage doing a bad English accent.

Will this be "so bad it's funny-good" or will it be "oh god, please let me claw out the memory centers of my brain through my eyes" bad?

Is it a sign there's no god or a sign that there is a god?

Review: "Seven Forges" by James A. Moore

On an Amazon recommendation, I picked up "Seven Forges", a fantasy novel by James A. Moore.

I finished it about an hour ago.

Thoughts: So "Seven Forges" is ostensibly about a mercenary named Merros Dulver and his meeting a strange, gray-skinned people who live in a forbidding place called the Seven Forges, set amidst an icy wasteland of monsters and not much else.

The story is slow going, at first. Lots of setup as Dulver gets to know the mysterious inhabitants of the Seven Forges. And there's much (chapters and chapters of much) description of how badass these gray-skinned people are.

It's an entertaining read, if a bit plodding in parts. It diverges about a third through the book to a different point-of-view character then about halfway through, jumps to more POV characters. By the last quarter of the book, there's shit actually going down and multiple POVs introduced.

I can't say that I ever really got a good feel for any of the characters, save the later-added Andover who gets horribly mauled a few pages after his introduction.

Moore's narrative style is engaging enough, but I found the introduction and evolution of the characters left me cold. The end of the book was an obvious lead-in to the next novel but also sort of left me with a "huh, that's it?" kind of feeling.

I'm honestly not sure if I'll pick up the next book in the series. It was an okay diversion, but I can't say I care about any of the characters or what happens to them.

A hard read after the likes of Anthony Ryan and Jim Butcher.

Ia Ia Cthulhu fhtagn!

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

Also: a happy celebration of the spawning forth of the demi-lich known as "Mackie". We who continue to exist in another corner of reality also celebrate the dark shadow you cast across reality. A toast of something appropriately dark shall be made before the stars fall out of alignment.

D&D and boys & girls

When I was a kid, Dungeons & Dragons (aka "D&D") was pretty much only something boys played.

Nerdy boys, at that.

It wasn't until college when we'd have ladies join our gaming groups. Usually it was the girlfriend of one of the players, but not always.

I'm not sure why my gaming groups never regularly had female players. I'd like to think we weren't driving them away, but who knows? Certainly they rocked at it.

Why am I pondering this? BoingBoing had an article on the topic of girls playing D&D.

I personally think girls should be encouraged to participate in this hobby. Hell, I think schools should encourage role-playing games as part of the educational process for both boys and girls. I think table-top RPGs, done correctly, encourage imagination, open-mindedness, and empathy.

Given how utterly fucked-up the world seems to be, I think we could all benefit from some more imagination, open-mindedness, and empathy.

My Friday

Taking a long weekend.

Hell of a week. Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall both exit the stage. Williams is especially tragic. I find myself shocked that there's assholes out there trolling his daughter on Twitter. It's amazing that I still get shocked by that kind of behavior. Goddamn there's some terrible people out there in the world.

The Peter Capaldi season of "Doctor Who" starts next week. I'm thinking of seeing it in theaters, though I may just try to catch the broadcast on the 23rd instead. I'm not convinced a theater broadcast will be worth it.

Monday Musings

• Apparently, J. Michael Straczynski may reboot Babylon-5 as a feature film. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Sure, the series is a bit dated in FX, but those could be fixed pretty easily. Hell, they did it for "Star Trek: The Original Series". With Andreas Katsulas gone, there simply isn't another G'Kar out there.
  
  Then again, it's JMS at the helm, so it will still probably be awesome.
• Started my morning with one of the senior developers handing me a bottle of beer. Some kind of lager he recommends. If this is starting a trend in which my co-workers are going to be giving me beer, I may need to be pinched 'cause I'm pretty sure I'm dreaming.
• I know there's something seriously-wrong with my bike when a new inner-tube goes flat before I even ride the bike. I think my bike has become an inner-tube vampire.

Wait, Who now?

(via io9)

I'm torn between being fascinated and appalled.

While I'm on the topic of my favorite Time Lord, I saw this on rpg.net:



This pleases me.

Grootastic

Yep. Watched Guardians of the Galaxy again last night. Good times. Damn that movie is awesome!

Groot Times

To say it's rare to see rain in August is a bit of an understatement.

And yet, there it is. Yup, actual droplets of water coming out of the sky.

Oh, it's probably an exaggeration to call it "rain". It's more spitting-drizzle, but it's still unusual.

Good times.

---

I think my neighbors are getting tired of me playing "Hooked on a Feeling", but I do like the "Ooga-chakka".

---

Saw the first seven minutes of "Star Wars: Rebels". You can see it here if your Google-fu is weak. io9 pegs it. It's very Aladdin in feel. The Disney influence is certainly clear. I'm ambivalent about it one way or the other. "Clone Wars" was okay as a series, but I'm kinda done with prequel story material. Especially prequel material that more-or-less retcons the original series. Or if it doesn't, then "Rebels" is going to have one hell of a depressing ending...

---

Snipped from io9:

Speaking at London Film and Comic Con, Steven Moffat gave a few more details about how the previous Who appearance by Peter Capaldi will be explained. He said, again, that Russell T. Davies' previous idea would provide the basis, but added:

Truthfully I don't think it's something you have to resolve because audiences do understand that the same actor can play different parts.
When Peter Capaldi turned up in Torchwood, Russell said he had a plan in his head on why he looked like the guy in The Fires of Pompeii. So I emailed him and said what was the explanation and does it fit with the new Doctor? And it sort of does.
So in a very low-key way we'll address it. It won't be a major deal because in the end people know the real reason is he's played by the same actor.
What's really worrying me is Karen Gillan in The Fires of Pompeii. That's just inexplicable – I'm going to get to that eventually.

Okay, seriously? THIS is the sort of continuity stuff that keeps Moffat awake? Having actors play different roles across a series? Seriously?

Dude, Steven, I gotta say something to you: THIS IS NOT IMPORTANT! What is important is writing stories that explain plot points instead of doing timey-whimey hand-waving. Examples:

• Bad guys blow up the TARDIS, causing a rift in time-and-space. How? Never explained. (see the Pandorica storyline)
• Bad guys existing in a timeline in which they shouldn't (Cybermen shouldn't exist during the Roman era on Earth. Mondas wasn't there yet... again: Pandorica storyline)
• Everything about River Song and her timey-whimey past. All of it. How she syncs with the Doctor (hint: not as advertised) and the rationale behind making her an assassin to kill the Doctor (if the bad guys could time travel and use memory-wiping, lightning-throwing monsters, why bother with River at all?).
• The Name of the Doctor. Just... what?
• The hand-regeneration. Seriously?
• The entire plot of "The Time of the Doctor". All of it. I look at it and get too wound-up to even start to take the plot apart.

Dude, stop worrying about casting minutiae. Focus on sane stories with logical narratives. The rest will attend to itself.

---

The post title means nothing save that my brain is still on Guardians of the Galaxy.

Review: Guardians of the Galaxy

Saw it.

If you haven't yet seen Guardians of the Galaxy, drop what you are doing and go see it.

If you have seen it... OH MY GOD WASN'T THAT THE BEST MOVIE EVER????

It was the perfect mix of engaging characters, humor ("I need that guy's eye"), action, effects, and fun.

Guardians of the Galaxy is the story of Peter Quill, an Earth-born lad who is abducted by aliens and grows up to be a sort of thief-pirate. Peter (who prefers to go by the nickname of "Star Lord") acquires a sphere, which he tries to fence. He runs afoul of Gamora, a lovely, green-skinned, assassin who is the surrogate daughter of the evil Thanos. She and her "sister", Nebula, serve the insane Kree warlord Ronan the Accuser. While Peter and Gamora duke it out, in comes "Rocket", an intelligent and bipedal raccoon and Groot, a walking tree with a limited vocabulary ("I am Groot").

Stuff happens and these four find themselves in a bad situation and meet Drax the Destroyer, a big, bald, humor-deficient killing machine.

And then the fun really begins.

If you're a fan of the Marvel comics for Guardians of the Galaxy or Nova, you'll doubtless find much to entertain you. If you have no idea of these comics, you'll still love the movie. It's Star Wars level of fun with a better plot and dialog.

I'm going to see this movie again. And again. And again...