Celebrating the Time Lord's Genesis: A Review of the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special Episode

Today's theme song is The Doctor's Theme/Next Stop Everywhere

        After a long and agonizing wait, the day finally arrives.  It's not just any old day.  School day, business day, the Sabbath?  No, not at all!  A birthday?  Well, yes, for Chris Hardwick (Happy Birthday, nerd bro!), but that's not the point!  Today belongs to a science fiction icon.  It's named after him, and, fittingly enough, it lands on his favorite day of the week!
       For today (Saturday, November 23, 2013) is actually.....

THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR!!!!!

       Exactly 50 years ago today, a science fiction program named Doctor Who was born, the brainchild of Sydney Newman, which then grew up, died and regenerated over 12 (going on 13 times--John Hurt's War Doctor counts!) faces!  It gave a new definition to innocence, danger, time and space, and especially danger.  And so, to celebrate, I'm doing my usual REVIEW!  What else would I be doing?

Actually, it's 2 reviews in one blog post, one being spoiler-free for the people who have yet to watch this epic episode, and the other is for the ones who already watched it or just don't give a fuck.

So here we go, the review that I actually wrote down during the episode, which means that it's my real-time in the moment reaction to the special.

Spoiler-Free Review

       Huh. :O Oooh!  LOL!  Oh my gosh!  SQUEE!  Le gasp!  I want that Moment box--or a replica of it!  LOL again!  Ooooh!!  Whoa.  BWAHHHH!!!!!  Hahaheeheehee!  HA!  ROFL!  So that's where that came from....  EEWWW!  OH SHIT!  Heh!  ROFL, round things!  SQUEEGASM!  Little giggle.....  Aww!  Huge squeal!  WHOOOOAAAAAA!!!!!  Meta squee!  Le gasp!  Jaw drop!

       And of course, NERDING MY PANTS!  SUPER AWESOME!

       Now, for the more detailed review--so SPOILER ALERT!

 

Actual Review With Some Spoilers

       Well, if you've already seen it, congratulations!  Together, throughout 94 countries across 6 continents, we Whovians have all recreated the climax of Last of the Time Lords!  (Series 3, with David Tennant and Freema Agyeman)  Nothing can be more meta than that!

       Anyways, I was quite fortunate to watch it during that very broadcast at 2:50pm EST with my parents!  And to be honest, we were quite surprised to see that they used the old Doctor Who opening to kick off the transmission!  It was quite a sweet tribute!  And then, we have Clara, back to normal--I think.  How the HELL did the Doctor get her from that little temporal bubble thing where she passes out and he carries her away?  How did they get out of that?!  I'm more confused than a skunk on a black-and-white tiled floor!
       Thanks, Moffat, for that little plothole!

       But now, we've got John Hurt's War Doctor (who supposedly did something drastic to the race of the Time Lords), Doctor Tennant and Doctor Smith gallavanting about together!  What nerd wouldn't dream of that?!  And when we saw Tennant and Smith interacting with each other, pulling out the sonic screwdrivers and saying the same things at the same time, we were giggling and laughing.  And it made sense, knowing that they are the same person from different points in time!  Though, I've always dreamed how it would be: will they bicker at each other?  Will they have their companions meet each other?  Obviously, the companions never met, so, oh well.....

       But so many questions were answered, and if you've seen The Big Bang (Series 5 with Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill), make sure that you brace yourself: a similar bit of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey thing is going on, and it could be a little....bendy-wendy?  Not to mention that you could get headaches from that craziness, so make sure you have some painkillers on hand.

       The Daleks are also back, but they don't have a very strong presence in the story, despite the sheer size of the army attacking Gallifrey; they were more of a phantom threat, in a sense.  Like, they were a problem to be solved later on.  And has anyone noticed how it was the old Dalek casings?  This is, obviously, due to the Time War taking place long before Victory of the Daleks, which is where they get regenerated with the help of a progenator.  Oh well, my condolences to my Dalek tweeps!

       But seriously, to have the synchronicity going on between the three Doctors (three-fold man from Journey's End, anyone?) is quite clever, and awesome, and it just really tickles your nerd bits!

      I enjoyed Billie Piper as the sentient interface for The Moment, and she did really, really well!  She's got talent, that's for sure; I saw her in Shakespeare Retold's Much Ado About Nothing.  But the outfit--FANTABULOUS!  Though the ugly boots could be replaced with some badass ones.....  But it's still awesome enough to wear to a con!

      So, to catch a ride with the Doctor, the Doctor and the War Doctor was certainly fun.  I'm sure my parents enjoyed it almost as much as I did.  And a ton of questions that were raised by the trailer (How many Doctors were there really?  What was the red jewel thing? [A BIG RED BUTTON!]  And what really happened to Gallifrey?)  Not to mention that having a little meta moment going on, with Doctor Tennant speaking to Doctor Smith--major tearjerking moment there for me, because I still miss Doctor Tennant!  And lastly, you can't help but really nerd your pants, especially with all of the Doctors in one place together, looking at Gallifrey at the same time.  I enjoyed it!  I really did, and I hope that sometime soon, the series will take us to Gallifrey (again, for all the more experienced Whovians).

      Oh, and there's a surprise guest in the episode!  Thank you Tom Baker for making the episode extra meta by taking up your role again!  But I'm still waiting on that 4-foot TARDIS cake!

P.S.  Oh, yeah!  I almost forgot!  I didn't get to meet my cursing quota!  Soooo.....  SHITFUCKSHITMOTHERFUCKINGCOCKSUCKINGCRAPFUCKITYFUCKERFUCKGODDAMNDAVROSDAMNASSHOLEWHORENUTS!!!!!!
MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!

The World Will End Without BBCAmerica In Every Hotel Across the United States (alternatively Dear Internetz and Parents of Whovians)

            My apologies for giving a ranty post more directed towards my parents and a couple of friends who care about me than doing a "Hey, Whovians!  Check this out!" kind of post.  Here's some theme music....

            In case you haven't heard, there will be a giant global television event that takes place November 23, 2013 at 2:50pm EST, where one major special episode of Doctor Who will be simultaneously broadcast on television in a shit ton of countries.  But let's take a moment to objectively analyze this particular moment.

            IT'S A MOMENT THAT IS NOT TO BE MISSED!

            Seriously, since when is it okay to just say, "Oh, that's nice," then wait for the next time it happens when basically, each moment itself cannot be revisited without a TARDIS or time-traveling Delorean?  Those of us who are not time travelers have to live life in a single straight line.  Which means those people (me being one of them) should avoid traveling or working away from a television set that gets a channel that will air Day of the Doctor during that very moment.  I wish that it's easier to explain but it isn't.  Basically, who are you to say, "You'll be fine, it's just a TV show," when I'll practically be an emotional Aspie OCDing wreck holed up in a hotel room cursing everything living and dead and real and imaginary the moment I realize I'll be completely missing that episode?  I will NOT be fine!  I understand that it will be repeated, I really do (but I very highly doubt that anyways), but it's like the royal wedding of the Duke and Dutchess of Cambridge: you either watch it, or you don't and curse yourself for missing it.

            "Did you say hotel room?"  Yes, I'll be traveling through three-dimensional space in my territory on Earth to visit my sister and her boyfriend, and then my grandparents in a pocket of Virginia I consider to be part of my territory, and according to my parents, we'll be leaving the day before the epic event airs, and we won't be back until November 30th.  Which is basically my parents' way of saying, "FUCK YOUR PLANS!  WE CONTROL YOUR LIFE!" in a subtle way.  And that's yet another reason for me to hate them, which I'll add to my mental list of "Why the Hell Are You Still Hovering Over My Shoulder?"

            I know you're wondering why I'm being so anal with my watch-it-or-go-fuck-yourself attitude.  I like to think of it as a real-life version of that episode with David Tennant and Freema Agyeman and John Barrowman of that last part of that story arc (SPOILER ALERT!) where the Master managed to take over the world and Freema's character Martha managed to get everyone in the world to think "Doctor" at the same time in order to overthrow him.  It's like that only everyone gets to put everything down and watch this episode together in that one moment and enjoy it.  It's about world peace, bro, and anyone who says otherwise is a clueless git.

            This isn't an episode you just put off for the future (much like the Transylvania Halloween special the Ghost Adventures Crew did ON Halloween!  Epic birthday present!).  I mean, come on!  Look at it!

LOOK AT IT!

Open your eyes, reader.

JUST FUCKING LOOK AT IT!

You do not just watch that trailer and say, "Hey, let's ignore it and go on a trip!" You reschedule everything so it does not go against your being able to watch it, you prepare generators that will fire up as soon as the power goes out, you get food ready and eaten with bathroom breaks taken well before it airs.  And it's not up for debate either; you'll be yelling at your kids to shut the fuck up and watch it with you because the Doctor out-ranks whatever teen "sensation" they're into (yeah, the Doctor is more important than Bieber, Black, Gomez, and Katy Perry combined!) and it'll save lives, it'll cure cancer, or whatever other claims I have to make up to get you to watch it!

            I expect great things to come from this episode; understand, there have been flops before, which gave some nerds reason to send hate tweets to Stephen Moffat, who then left twitter because of all the hate.  I expect to learn the reason behind the Valeyard's reappearance in the Whoniverse, I expect to know why Doctor version number 10 will be back in the TARDIS, and I half-expect to learn the Doctor's real name.  I also expect that everything goes right because goddammit, I'm scared that I'll never be able to catch it thanks to some curse or whatever.

            Yes, I'm scared.  I'm scared that the power will go out as soon as I catch a glimpse of the episode.  I'm scared that something will happen and it will become one of the Lost Episodes of Doctor Who (a couple of which were actually found quite recently).  I'm serious, I also don't want spoilers on Twitter.  I've been a situation like this before, with The Angels Take Manhattan (which is the last episode Amy and Rory Pond were ever in) and all the damn black cube accounts were spoiling the goddamn episode.  I asked them politely not to spoil it because there are viewers who have yet to view it, and one idiot just replied with, "Oh, well, then just don't be on Twitter."  I utterly blocked that idiot and several others who mindlessly spoiled that episode (one of them being a River Song account I believe I roleplayed with), and I didn't look back until now.  So how can I avoid Twitter and the spoilers for an entire week?  I can't!  Seriously, take a look at my Twitter feed (which I've added to this blog as a widget--you're welcome).  I tend to tweet about almost everything.

            So, to avoid Whovians like myself not being an emotional homicidal wreck, I implore the American hotel owners to add BBCAmerica to the list of channels guests can access in the hotel rooms, I ask for no spoilers if I miss it, I beg of my sister and her boyfriend to fucking get digital cable already so we can watch it together, and I plan on having my grandparents tape it just in case my family has the "brilliant" (read: utterly stupid) idea to not ever watch it.  And for God's sake, if you ever say, "It's just a TV show," to me one more time, I'll wind up feeling stabby with a mechanical pencil.

P.S., Thought you should leave with a light hearted feeling.... here's some twitter fun....

.@blogtorwho @tsdcakeco wait, what? oh. A cakesmith. I thought you meant Tom Baker. #doctorwho #wtf #nerdy
— Eden Pyrithea (@LadyEden1337) November 9, 2013

P.P.S. And here's a lolcat!

       Doctor Who's Day of the Doctor will air November 23 at 2:50pm EST on BBCAmerica.

Be sure to #SaveTheDay.

A Film Review and an Update--Hamlet Starring Doctor Bacon

            I understand that I haven't been posting as much lately, but mostly because I really want more people to enjoy my writings.  So sharing is extremely encouraged--and if you don't share my entries, I can send my Daleks in to EXTERMINATE YOU!  Ha, ha, just kidding!  Mostly.

            Yeah, I'm SUCH a troll to y'all……

            Anyways, for the moment, I am drafting up my blog entries away from the library through Microsoft Word so I can just copy, paste, add shit, format shit…  (Not that any of my entries are shit--I'm like Stan "The Man" Lee in that I highly believe that my blog posts are just made of AWESOME SAUCE AND BACON, despite needing some improvements…)  And there might be times when I would just wind up doing some twofers and threesomes…  Yeah, I know, it sounds kinky, but it's a SHIT TON OF WORK when you have a week to review three movies + three books and you have to space it out a little when you post it all!  So I might just get a shit ton of posts ready and then schedule its publishing date so I don't have to simply freak out.  Unless it's like that drunk person episode I'm still laughing about; who DOESN'T like Dalek-hugging drunks, hmmm?  Despite being a little unpredictable, they're just so LOVABLE and stuffs!  But as I was saying, if anything like that ever happens again, or if I really need to get a message out I can't keep bottled up inside (i.e. rants, which I tend to do a lot), I'll get that post out of the way, and then delay the others a bit.  I plan on getting a minimum of five posts published over a two week period.  Which shouldn't seem that hard…  And, yes, Universe/God/Loki/Force/Karma, I can fucking see the wheels turning in your head, plotting how to fuck me the FUCK over.  Give it up, cuz I'm not letting this bitch die, since it's a cute and sexy bitch that has Doctors, drunk people, cats, and is BETTER THAN TWILIGHT!!!!  (Twihards, shut up--you know I'm right!)

            So, now that's all clear with y'all, on with the kickass review of one of the best Shakespearean films ever made…

Hamlet starring David Super-Sexy Tennant and Sir Patrick Bacon-Baron Stewart!!!

             Why did William Shakespeare write something like HAMLET?

            So that the BBC could make a modern day version of it out of BACON, with BACON-CLASS ACTORS such as David "Doctor 10" Tennant and Sir Patrick "Captain Picard" Stewart!

            I know--hacky joke.  But it's so full of bacon that the Whovians and the Trekkies might as well have had an endless orgy together and made a sex tape of it, releasing it as this version of Hamlet!

            Can you tell how much I love this film already?  Oh, you can't because you're not telepathic enough, not counting the Ood?  Aw, shit, I thought you could!  But I think it's for the best because dangerous things lurk within the shadows of my mind that should never see the light of day…  Yeah, I agree, I should never think those thoughts, but who put you in charge of my mind?  I never did, even when I was buzzed!  (Yes, that happens, but I never allow myself to get Dalek-hugging drunk.)  Anyways, PAY ATTENTION FOR YOU WILL BE QUIZZED!

This is Nerdface!  Like it?

            First of all, majorly mad Master props to the BBC and Gregory Doran (Wow, I know the name of the director!  Impressed yet?) and the cast and crew for getting this badass masterpiece together, because they executed the film so well it seems like nobody else could make it so amazingly delicious like this!  It's like the stars are aligned so perfectly that it seemed Shakespeare himself didn't die, but aged hundreds of years just to help us make this film!  (Or his ghost kept up with modern society as time crept along and then helped out.  Hey, a nerd like me can dream, can't she?)  Never have I seen a modernization of a Shakespearean performance be produced so well since that modern version of Romeo and Juliet starring Leonardo DiCaprio.  Oi, please don't groan like that: I grew up in quite a small town, sheltered a lot, so my tastes in film may be a little different, okay?  *NERD FACE*

             But as I was saying, the film was made so well, and David Tennant did excellent in his role, even to the point when I could see the Doctor inside of him, just echoes of the heroic-yet-dangerous Time Lord living inside, influencing him subtly enough to the point where it seems like that version of the Doctor hadn't really died and all you can do is make grabby hands at the screen while clutching your sonic screwdriver (as in either the tool or the alcoholic drink--your choice) and silently screaming "DOCTORRRRRR!" every time you see certain elements of this character emerge in that featurette.  Yes, I did this sans screwdriver and it didn't help much…at all.  And yes, Shakespeare wrote the play but the ones who created the visual interpretation of it, with the retro film camera, the security camera, the hidden passages, the modern attire and military technology mixed with old-fashioned scandalous monarchy should be considered members of the Hollywood and English-version-of-Hollywood royalty.

            And Sir Patrick Stewart kicked ass!  Not only as Claudius, but also as Hamlet's dead father's ghost (of the rightful but murdered king)!  For some reason, he not only oozed Enterprise's TNG Captain (with facial hair) but he did so well that he made the characters bear his face now, whenever someone thinks "King Claudius".  The only complaints I have are the mysterious shrug before he drinks the poisoned cup (it seems a little out of place--I don't know why, though) and the scene with the military not having enough background; it just looked like snow on a platform and blackness in the background--not very worldly in my opinion.  If it were me, I'd have done a military base or a forest or a field next to a forest, all covered in snow in the background, because a limited setting just doesn't cut it, despite bringing more attention to Tennant's Hamlet.  Might I suggest some sort of snowy fog at night?

            All in all, well executed, especially the set and the soliloquoys, including "To be or not to be; that is the question"--so well done!  (And yet, my squirrelly brain can't help bring up a scene of Sir Patrick Stewart doing a different version of that monologue for Sesame Street for the letter B.  In case you missed it, here you go…)

            I absolutely recommend it be shown in schools across the country for English class because if you're a badass nerdy teacher who is making his own scalemail for the class trip to the Renaissance Faire, WHY THE FUCK NOT?!  (You know I mean you, Mr. Perelli, who taught me English in the 11th grade!  Feel free to fangasm as you watch this film for the first time.  And bring your own sonic screwdriver.  Yes, I recommend the tool instead of the drink, though I'd like to have one of the latter right now, to be honest…)

            But raving aside, why not inject a little comedy, eh?  Here's a CSI:Denmark cutscene from my buddy, Nick "Nutcase Nightmare" Liow, creator of the :the game: series and Interwebz master of Craftyy, the online game remixer!

            May your fencing foils never be tipped with a very potent and deadly venom and your drinks never be poisoned!  Oh, and may your sister(s and brothers) never drown in any bodies of water, giving you cause to murder someone who looks like David Tennant, and may Lieutenant Horatio Caine of Miami-Dade PD always bid you "Goodnight, sweet prince."

            P.S.  I think that it should be of note that after I finished watching the film and the special features that I couldn't stop thinking in Shakespearean English.  I know there's a technical term for this, but I can't think of it at the moment of my drafting this entry, so please forgive me.  But really, I mean, I just could do like, Freudian Shakespeare that I can't stop coming up with until after I went to bed!

            Cue the Picardian facepalm!

            P.P.S. Sorry.  I lied about the quiz.  Mr. Perelli can give you one if you want, though! J