Doctor Who – “42”

9/10 – The edge of my seat … literally.

Plot - After a week off mid-season, Doctor Who came back with a very strong “real time” episode in which the Doctor and Martha find themselves on a spaceship 42 minutes away from crashing into a sun.



To make matters worse (and that really is what Doctor Who does best) they are immediately cut off from the TARDIS, find that someone has sabotaged the engines, and a security lock-down closes the (28 or 29) doors that lead to the auxiliary control area.



Oh, and one of the crew, the captain’s husband Korwin seems to be infected by the sun itself and begins picking the crew off one by one. His eyes blaze with light and vaporize the crew into smudges on the walls saying “burn with me.”





The Sun is alive and in pain (?) because the crew have been using fusion scoops to extract the energy for fuel (illegal in the 42nd century, apparently.) Martha and this guy Riley eventually get cornered in an airlock and are jettisoned into space toward the sun. the Doctor must risk everything just to save her.










Rant – Well, this was quite good. I can’t even complain that the plot was almost identical to the Tom Baker story “Planet of Evil” or that the sets were all the same/similar to last years “Impossible Planet/Satan Pit.” It could have been worse -- for example, they could have reversed it … and used the plot from “Impossible …” and the costumes from the 1975 “Planet of Evil” ...

THEN ...


NOW ...



Also, there was the ever so cheesy title “42” which cannot help but remind fans of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and the real time aspect which is “24” (an inversion of the numbers.) These seem to be the sticking points for most of the fans, but frankly they are surface issues. The story really had a gripping pace and the Doctor admitting he was scared was pretty well shocking.

Review – The frantic pacing of this story gave the viewer little time to think about what might or might not be wrong about the story. There is a small, but vocal group of fans out there who immediately bashed it as terrible, but they were soon overwhelmed by the “norms” (or the “not we”) fans and viewers who pretty much thought it was great. As a TV viewer I thought the pacing and characterization was solid and as a fan, I thought it was quite traditional Doctor Who with a bit of extra juice. The special effects – and this is always a shocking statement for Doctor Who – were on par with the program thus far (i.e., excellent). And, there was no actual villain … even more interesting.







In fact, in the group of episodes we can call “modern” Doctor Who, this one lingers on very few of the “personal” moments that, frankly, seem shoehorned into the program to appeal to female viewers. This is all about 42 minutes until the ship crashes into the sun. How could there be room for anything else? This is the first time I can ever remember sitting on the actual edge of my seat for a few minutes. When I realized this, I sort of couldn’t believe it. “That cliché actually means something?” I thought.

The week that was … Roundup

I think we are into a sweeps period because it certainly seemed like television got a bit better. Obviously, I can’t be everywhere or all things to all people. In fact, I don’t watch a lot of prime time shows (and most of the time I catch up “later” on dvd.)

24
Let’s see, last week’s “24” was good, but not quite into the sweeps month, so I’m sure they were holding back.

“As the clock ticks closer to the final hours of Day Six, Jack Bauer copes with the consequences of taking matters into his own hands while Audrey endures what appears to be a post-traumatic reaction to being held captive. Emotions escalate as CTU responds to a setback and the Administration receives an alarming message from Russian President Suvarov.” (TVrage.com) Also, the president’s squeeze is a feed for a Russian spy.

As I said, it was good … not great. As I said before, this show is largely one massive blast at credulity the moment they asked us to believe Jack Bauer could get across Los Angeles in less than 5 minutes. And, it is getting pretty well dumped on by the media and the public.

Heroes




“Five Years Gone” – This was easily the best episode of the season. Hiro and Ando are five years into the future where the bomb has gone off and New York is destroyed. He immediately meets his future self and then the cop Parkman bursts in and takes him prisoner. Nathan is president and Mohinder has been working with him since the bombs went off.




An awful lot happens and frankly it isn’t fair to spoil it. But, it is definitely the best episode of the season. Not only does it contain a hell of a lot of material and very little padding, but it also leaves a lot of possibilities open for future episodes.

Frankly, I’m surprised this show has been a hit at all, beating “24” most nights. The only problem with it is that it tends to take a month off at a time, throwing the viewer off track a bit. I suppose this is the problem with having huge special effects budgets and more imaginative storylines.

House
While the plot might not have been memorable, this episode rang with witty dialogue:

"He has acute scrotum."
"Adorable, at least. Ah, come on, how was not going to go for that joke?"

Lost“The Brig” – Well, we finally get a good Locke episode, with the added bonus of giving Sawyer something to do. Locke comes back from the others (after a really crytic opening) and tells him that he has infiltrated the Others' camp and has taken Ben hostage, and needs Sawyer to kill him. Sawyer questions why Locke would come to him, and Locke explains that, thanks to the files the Others have on all of the Flight 815 survivors, he knows that Sawyer killed a man in Sydney. Locke turns and leaves, and Sawyer reluctantly follows.



In fact, it turns out that Locke’s father (the same man who took his kidney and threw him out a window) was the man who Sawyer has been hunting all these years. How’d he get to the island? Well, of course, we don’t really know that do we. We assume he’s been kidnapped by the “Others.”




And now the theory has been somewhat addressed and teasingly floated out there … “Are they all dead? Is this purgatory or hell?”

Well, probably not either.

Lost has been renewed to 2012, but the number of episodes per year has been cut down to 16 and will run in one chunk. How this will effect the overall quality of the show (Better or Worse?)


Jericho

I’ve been catching up on this show. End of the world. Nuclear war and … yet, a lot of people survived quite well. Well enough to have the usual host of rather banal every day problem. I sort of wish that CBS wasn’t behind it, because it has to be very family oriented. In fact this is a combination of “Survivors” (BBC) and “The Waltons.”



I suppose the problem that continually keeps coming up is the reluctance for the show to deal with real problems. Months and months go by and the issue of the complete breakdown of society is almost never really dealt with (unlike “Survivors” where the question “Would you know how to make something if you had to?” is asked almost immediately.) The mom and pop, down-home, leaving my wife, having a baby, the old values are still the best values stuff drags the story down.

And, is it any wonder that in the Pilot the only black people we see is Mr. Hawkins … the man who turns out to me “not what he seems” ???