Clarification is always necessary. If you hold the viewpoints of one of the things on this list, or you sorta liked or kind of agree with some of the things mentioned, it doesn’t mean you irrecoverably have bad taste. But you might.

“Bridesmaids” is Oscar-Worthy

A thoroughly lazy and mediocre comedy. Too long, too many stretches where you feel like you’re watching a tossed-out SNL sketch idea get beaten into the ground. I probably wouldn’t hate this movie so much if it weren’t for the ridiculous praise it gets from lazy bloggers and media people. Oscar-worthy? Be fucking serious. There is a fallacy I see a lot of writers fall into, especially those writers who live in LA, where when something is successful its inherent quality becomes this unquestionable given. This is not a well-made movie. It’s standard Apatow hackery, just with more girls this time. And put away your aspirations of Feminism, it’s a movie about weddings and stupid wedding bullshit, about as gender-stereotyped as you can get.

So is “Drive”

This movie reminded me so much of all the bad LA crime film knock-offs that exploded out of the woodwork in the mid-90s after Pulp Fiction came out. Oh look, it’s a an overly-stylized troubled anti-hero in a cliched heist plot where there’s lots of over-the-top violence and some scenery chewing by cast-against-type comedy actor playing a mob bro. But the main guy doesn’t talk much, cause the director read a book about Sergio Leone once! And there’s an against-the-grain soundtrack! And… … Why the hell are so many critics in love with this movie? I’m baffled. The visual style evokes a freshman film school student discovering the low-light setting on his Canon 5D. I really wanted to like this movie, but the longer it went on without any discernible substance, the less I did.

Andy Serkis deserves a nomination for “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”

No he doesn’t. Also, his Gollum was totally over-rated. If you think that’s good acting and not just scenery chewing, you’re probably amazed by the performances in high school plays too. Plus, he’s just providing a rough draft, there’s an army of animators and effects people working on every frame of his performance to make it better.

(Note: I did not see “Attack the Block” nor do I intend to, but judging by the way Harry Knowles and his acolytes gush about it, I’m just going to assume that it actually sucks.)

The Swedish version was better

No it wasn’t. It had all the quality and production value of a Lifetime channel movie. Noomi Rapace was a formulaic goth chick straight from central casting. You’re just saying that because you think pretending to like foreign films makes you more cultured. Fincher’s version is so well made that you kinda regret just a bit that his talents aren’t being put to use on better source material.

(The 2012 version of this is going to be “‘The Hunger Games’ is just a ‘Battle Royale’ rip-off.” It isn’t, and despite my distaste for Jennifer Lawrence, it will probably be much better than the supremely over-rated “Battle Royale.”)

The important new dynamic in modern human communication.

The first image (fucking finally) from Joss Whedon/Drew Goddard’s Cabin In The Woods.

Are wide male faces a predictor for unethical behavior?

James Spader is joining The Office, but not as the boss, not for long.

Zadie Smith turning to speculative fiction and sci fi.

Infidelity might just keep us together.

Spike Lee to direct the American remake of Oldboy?

Above: Katie West summer print sale.

An oral history of Explosions In The Sky.

Antonia Fraser and Harold Pinter.

The paradox that was G. K. Chesteron.

Don’t let them cut off your balls, boys.

At least Glenn Beck is gone from the airwaves.

An oral history of Michael Fucking Bay.

9 steps to foolproof outdoor sex.

“In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant…. My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known—no wonder, then, that I return the love. “

-Søren Kierkegaard

Harry Potter’s favorite magic potion is booze.

Speaking of which, some of your favorite fast food chains are now serving alcohol.

Also, the “experts” are now saying that some “light drinking” may be “safe” while you’re pregnant.

And: An oral history of the Harry Potter film series.

The evils of “like” culture.

“All I want is to have incredibly violent sex.”

from here.

Massive amounts of cheating discovered in Atlanta public schools.

Topless sunbathing in the bit city.

How Charlotte’s Web was conceived.

The perfect penis.

Alfred Hitchcock recalls working with Salvador Dali.

“You are a computer salesman – I am fucking JAMES BOND.”

Ours might not be a holographic universe after all

and this week we delve into…

23 Thoughts About The Mid-Season Finale of Doctor Who:

1. Well, the episode certainly felt epic as shit.

2. From the opening to the middle to the very end, I am starting to think that the biggest recurring flaw to Doctor Who, at least under the current creative administration, is the constraints of television. The rules, the limitations on time and budget, the fact that you can take the spectacle and the content only so far, and not much farther than that. This is a dumb question, I know, but how tremendously awesome would a Doctor Who movie written by Steven Moffat be?

3. In that thought though is the gist of my overall feelings about “A Good Man Goes To War.” There was not enough of certain things, like general story, for example, or time to get into and play with that story. It was nice to see the Doctor and his associates take on their enemies through cunning sneakiness and ambushery, but there was a lot of elements that we just didn’t have enough time to invest in. Like the idea of the angry Doctor at war, or the characters, like the thin/fact gay married Anglican marines, or even Lorna Bucket (the Amy Pond who wasn’t).

And then there’s River Song… Always the best part of any episode she’s been in before, yet here in the episode where we get her big revelation (or one of, more on that later), she just feels sadly… kind of tacked on, you know?

4. River Song is Cable from the X-Men. Only way hotter, of course. And minus the glowing bionic eye.

I mean… seriously.

I guess that means that Amy Pond is Jean Grey and Rory is Cyclops, which makes kind of sense, only with the Phoenix thing reversed for Rory as “the last centurion.” That’s some total nerditude for you.

Speaking of nerditude… For now reason at all, this:

from here.

5. Speaking of which… I love that Steven Moffat teased that Doctor/Amy coupling as the cause of the baby until the very last.

It’s fascinating (and fun, to me, I guess), but sooo verrryy Steven Moffat. A lot of what Russell T. Davies wrote had, at its heart, a goofy or a very sweet core. Moffat can do that too, but a lot of where his stories and characters come from seems to be rooted in sex. In something very naughty and very human, and I like it.

6. A moment ago I mentioned the first of River Song’s revelations, the biggest of course being who she is? But that’s kind of splintered into a second question of what she is? A la is she the Doctor’s  future girlfriend/wife? Or, other wife?

And who did she kill? Who was that very good man, a hero to many? Is he the same one who went to war here in this very episode, I wonder?

7. Also, during the ending there, was I the only one who felt for a moment there like they were implying that she was the Doctor from the future? What, with the Gallifreyan writing on the crib, his crib, that is supposed to reveal who she was, and his shock at the kissy kissy they’ve made in the past, and the question about how he looks. I mean, right? Who would make a better mirror for you other than yourself from the future?

I wonder if they’re going to suggest that at some point the Doctor has to have a hand in raising young River Song…

8. “Flesh Avatar.” That just sounds like a porn version of the Jame Cameron film.

I mean, right?

9. Good news: The show is definitely coming back for a seventh series/season and so is Matt Smith as the Doctor.

10. Bad news: It’s looking more and more like Amy and Rory will be leaving at the end of this series/season.

11. And them leaving does kind of make sense, regardless of what happens with the Melody Pond/River Song situation. Once you’ve gotten married, traveled through space and experienced everything that ever happened or ever will happen, then died a bunch of times, then lived for two millennium as a Roman centurion made of plastic, then had a baby in captivity that was fashioned as a weapon against your best friend, and then met that same child when they’re a badass doctor of archaeology… well, there’s not too many higher levels you can take it to from there, I’m guessing.

12. I guess, going back to questions/queries/complaints about this episode, that one of the bigger of those three things is who these villains are? Presumably this is the same militarized Church that we heard about in “The Time Of Angels,” and the Headless Monks were also mentioned first in that episode, I believe. And then there’s Madame Kovarian, whom we didn’t get too much info about, but who are these people, really?

Even though I felt like they didn’t do nearly enough with it, the alliance of baddies seen there at the end of “The Pandorica Opens” made sense. They were all recognizable villains and the cause for joining in together to take down the Doctor made sense from a certain perspective.

And how do the the Silence fit into all this (if at all)?

13. I’m a simple guy, but…

…the idea of a Sontaran breastfeeding a baby is one of the funniest things in the world to me.

Also, interesting that a nurse finally died in this episode, just not the one we were expecting.

14. Now, again, while I felt like it was odd to put the thin/fat married gay Anglican marines in the episode for a bit of exposition and then a tragic death that you didn’t have much time to ponder over, nor car about, on the other hand, the gay couple that I did fall in love with this episode was…

Fuck yeah.

And no, it wasn’t just because everyone likes fictional lesbian power couples. At least, I don’t think so. But come on, just imagine a spinoff about an interspecies lesbian couple that hunts Jack The Ripper with swords in Victorian times. That would blow Torchwood out of the fucking water.

from here.

15. I read somewhere that Captain Jack Harkness was intended to make a cameo if nothing else in this episode but it couldn’t be worked out because of Torchwood now filming in America. Too bad considering that Captain Jack is always better back at home in Doctor Who.

16. Also, Fuck Yeah Catrin Stewart!

When they released a picture of her character in “A Good Man Goes To War” a while back and listed the character’s name as Jenny, people just freaked out. The return of the Doctor’s daughter! But recast! Had that been the case, though a highly unlikely case though it would’ve been, it would’ve made a little bit sense since I believe that Georgia Moffett is currently super pregnant, right?

Also, concerning Catrin Stewart: I think I’m in love with a girl who will never like me back. Equal parts that she is probably gay and also because she is fictional. Sigh. Isn’t that how it always goes? People are always telling me that I should watch Misfits and I think I heard she was in an episode, so maybe that’ll happen now.

17. Steve Wonder sang in 1814, but shhh, we must never tell him!

18. It’s River Song’s birthday. And the day she was born!

19. Running, both in fear and in excitement, makes a recurrence yet again, but so does the idea of a separate war between the head and the heart.

20. Some fun facts about Frances Barber, who plays Madame Kovarian: She’s previously dated Danny Boyle and her best friend is Ian McKellen, who had built a library in India in her name.

21. This:

Also: this. If, for nothing else, for the musical choice.

22. Maybe I’m weird, but I’m always fascinated at the teasing of the Doctor’s dark side. Especially this season I’m always curious to see more from him than the excited manchild adventurer. I think Matt Smith does that very well but I guess I just like seeing him take it darker or playing the character as the demented old man that he really is. Its’ a rare thing.

So I was especially intrigued by that brief moment when River Song did finally show up at the end of the episode and he tore into her. No “Spoilers!” and no “Hello, sweetie,” just anger and reality checks. It was certainly a lot more raw than what we saw him give Colonel Runaway earlier in the episode. For an episode about the Doctor finally unleashing and going after his enemies for a change, I think it’s surprising that, as one reviewer of the show already put it online, David Tennant’s Doctor already got angrier most weeks, and usually with even less in the way of provocation.

I like the idea of Matt Smith sticking around for a while, but it makes me laugh to think that perhaps the next Doctor could have some ferocity to him, like a young Ray Winstone or Ian McShane, that kind of quality. I’d like to see a Doctor who could terrorize the paint off of walls with just the sound of his voice, I think.

22A. I mentioned the RTD era earlier, and he did correctly posit that the Doctor turns people into weapons as he needs them, whether intentionally or unintentionally. I think a lot of people really wanted Moffat to just throw out so much of what Davies did previously but I think he actually did the smarter thing: He built on a lot of those concepts and followed them to their next stages.

Especially here with the idea of people being turned into weapons to be used.

23. I watched this episode last Saturday, but have just kind of let this post slide til now, unfortunately. Partly because of a busy personal life, whatever that is, but honestly also because I’ve not been entirely sure what to say, or at least in the sense of focusing down to some key points. Only seven episodes into this season and it’s already been a wild ride and the several months between us and the rest of the season could not expire fast enough as far as I’m concerned. In fact, if I did have a time machine, I’d already be in the middle of episode 8. I guess I’ll see you there.

Next time: See you again in a couple months’ time and then “Let’s Kill Hitler!”

This is going to be awkward.

Jon Hamm will direct Mad Men‘s season 5 premiere (in 2012).

Terrorist “pre-crime” detector field tested.

The wisdom of crowds is a dangerous, stupid thing.

Of course Annie Hardy has a tumblr.

Important news: Ciara likes being naked.

Michael Jackson’s daughter is going to be a star some day.

Idris Elba is so hot right now.

Pictures from here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Food prices will double by 2030.

Here’s that Jonathan Franzen link that every other fucker has posted somewhere on your facebook, tumblr, twitter, or whatever.

Copanhagen suborbitals upcoming launch attempt in June.

Kevin Fanning on the daily commute.

Read more about that terrible sounding Wonder Woman pilot.

To the blogger who thinks saying “fuck” means I’m dumb.

An excerpt from Mindy Kaling’s new book.

The Hangover Part II has to be the laziest fucking movie ever.

The gospel according to Bill Clinton.

In September, DC Comics will relaunch all their superhero titles with new #1s, other changes.

Here’s a wild new drug that you should surely know about: Oxi.

Michael Kupperman doing Mark Twain’s Autobiography.

Is Donald Sutherland the last person to join the cast of The Hunger Games or could there possibly be more?

Hip-hop loved Gil Scott-Heron.

A drug that could erase your memories of being afraid.

PBS website hacked with a story about Tupac still being alive.

Chemists discovered why Van Gogh’s yellows were fading; a Dutch ornithologist remained unsure whether the yellow breasts of great tits change with age but found that the offspring of older females are likelier to die young. In Finland, tawny owls were evolving from gray to brown and sperm quality in humans was deteriorating. Religion was going in extinct in the Czech Republic. A sacred soft-shelled turtle in Hanoi, one of only four species left in the world, was gravely ill yet continued to evade capture. A female mite preserved in amber with her mate was observed to have been controlling the terms of their copulation. Florida could be up to 50 percent older than previously believed. Astrobiologists hypothesized that the first multi-cellular animal resembled cancer. Tonsillectomies make children gain weight. Weight-loss surgery makes children lose weight. Doctors touted the benefits of removing the gallbladder through the vagina. Texas scientists cut holes in the hearts of baby mice; the hearts then healed themselves.

The passages above are from the “Findings” section in the May 2011 issue of Harper’s and were written by Rafil Kroll-Zaidi.

See previously: here, here, here, here, and here.

And all that said, I think we’ll keep it brief this week with

9 thoughts on tonight’s episode of Doctor Who…

1. Interesting cliffhanger/twist. So the real Amy either got switched out after the bit with the orphanage in “The Day Of The Moon,” or most likely somewhere in that three month break between “The Impossible Astronaut” and “The Day Of Moon,” yeah? And the Doctor and Rory have been off having adventures and journeys with her ganger duplicate but now they realize that she’s out there somewhere and they’re going after her! Exciting.

from here.

2. Farscape actually did almost this exact same twist in an episode towards the end of its run called called “Bringing Home The Beacon,” though it’s actually played out much nicer, much niftier here. Of course.

3. The problem with having such a nifty cliffhanger at the end of this episode is that it make of nullifies any value the rest of the episode might have, you know? I wasn’t particularly enamored with much of the second part of this story… Something about it just didn’t click with me. “Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!” It was nice seeing the little callbacks to previous Doctors, be it with quotes or the use of the voices of Tom Baker and David Tennant (and the sublte mention that we’ve moved on from the Tenth Doctor).

The switcheroo with the Doctor and his ganger could be seen coming from a mile away, as did the Scottish guy’s ganger eventually having to replace him as the father of his son. It’s Doctor who, so there had to be a monster at the end, so of course the girl morphed into one, similarly to the “The Lazarus Effect” from season 3, I felt.

4. I don’t know, just felt odd that I liked the conceit behind the episode, and where it fit into this season so far, more than the episode itself. We finally get a reasoning behind Amy’s Schrodinger’s Pregnancy: Her ganger can’t quite handle that noise.

And we discover how the Doctor knows a little more about what’s going on with the Gangers, especially at this stage, when they’re still “primitive technology.”

Of course there’s still some questions about the “time memory” of Amy’s ganger remembering the sinister eyepatched midwife, Madame Kovarian, and the fact that there appears to be two sonic screwdrivers there at the end (the ganger Doctor dissolves himself and the other gangers with one and the real Doctor dissolves ganger Amy with one). Which Doctor was it that Amy confessed to about having seen him die? And there’s also the question of: Will the ganger Doctor return, possibly to get killed by the astronaut on the beach?

from here.

Questions aside, the purpose of the episode felt good, felt interesting and special – it’s the beginning of rescuing Amy Pond! – even if the story in this episode itself wasn’t that spectacular. Does that make sense?

5. This:

And this:

And also this:

Gross, right? Genetic horror! I feel like there were some interesting aspects to this episode that should have lead to it being a lot more fun than it actually was.

6. “I’ll break out the big guns.”

Interesting stuff for Rory though. He’s taken an ideological stand, and had a bit of a connection with the Ganger Jennifer, making him all that much easier for her to use. Twice in this episode he kind of turns on or abandons his wife (or, her doppelganger), and I wonder if this is the rumored evilness we were going to see from him this season?

7. This is the special online prequel for next week’s mid-season finale:

Sentient money!

8. Just a reminder, this is what David Tennant’s up to now:

And I believe I just read tonight that Matt Smith has indeed announced his confirmation for Series 7. I’ve been reading a lot of stuff lately about how So and So can be your Doctor, and that everyone that came after them was just someone playing the role of the Doctor. I guess that David Tennant is still my Doctor, but I feel like I’m definitely at a place where I’m happy seeing Matt Smith continue on in this role. In fact, the only thing that hurts his portrayal of the character, quite frankly, is the quality of the scripts that he gets.

9. I’m excited about next week, though I am, of course, upset that it’ll be the last episode for a few months. But next week’s episode certainly does feel epic with the return of the Cybermen and the Sontarans and the Silurians and who knows what else. Like Madame Kovarian and Dorium Maldova, returning from “The Pandorica Opens,” as we saw in that prequel episode up above. And like those guys who look like monks but have laser swords! Who or what are they?

I love the crossover mash ups that Moffat works into his finales and I’ve said it before, but he really plots his series like the best comic book writers handle theirs. It makes even a filler two parter like the one we saw concluded tonight (unless you rely on BBC America for your Doctor Who fix, because I guess they’re holding onto “The Almost People” until next week?) seem epic and important and very necessary.

We know that next week that “A Good Man Goes To War,” meaning the Doctor, one presumes, but it’s important to consider the other titles that weren’t used for the episode: “Demons Run” and “His Darkest Hour.” The second of those two being important if you remember River Song’s monologue from the trailer for this season, in which she warned that the Doctor’s greatest triumph would also be his darkest hour and from that he would fall so hard…

Next week: Demons Run and the hunt for Amy Pond and her baby and the return of old friends and enemies, and new enemies, and maybe, just maybe we will finally learn the true identity/secret of River Song!

from here.

Oh well, a shame. But I suppose the Internet will quickly find something else for itself to get excited about, right? But there’s still us and there’s tomorrow and a little more juice to be squeezed out of whatever could be “the future” and there’s whatever could possibly come with that…

Mad linkage:

Here’s 10 other recent predictions for the End Times that didn’t come true either.

German insurance firm held orgy to reward salesmen.

Learn how to tie your shoes right.

Quite possibly our first look at Tom Hardy as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises.

Kirk Cameron vs. Stephen Hawking.

Ricky Gervais on The Office‘s finale.

If you do go up in the Rapture, don’t worry, the atheists will take care of your pets… for a price.

An excerpt from Chris Adrian’s new novel.

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”

-Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

by Beth Hoeckel, from here.

What really goes on in Area 51?

A volcano in Iceland called Grímsvötn has erupted.

Twitter shit about the Rapture from yesterday.

Inside the Robert Redford biography.

Stephen Fry joins The Hobbit.

New discovery about mosquitoes reveals why vampires will never exist.

Speaking of which, Joe Jackson is still a bloodsucking piece of shit.

from here.

“The future is already here… It’s just not even distributed.”

-William Gibson

David Lynch to release an album later this year.

The visual impact of gossip.

The story of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s doomed/failed/totally fucking crazy would be adaptation of Dune to become a documentary. Here’s Dan O’Bannon talking about it a little.

Related: the team up between Salvador Dali and Walt Disney.

Just checking: Still no Rapture, right? Whew.

NBC cancels Outsourced. Good.

The trailer for the new film by Miranda July.

Carrie is being remade and Stephen King suggests Lindsay Lohan for the lead.

from here.

This trailer/movie looks really terrible: Horrible Bosses.

This trailer looks so so, but the movie will probably suck: Another Earth.

It’s Pilot Season! Trailers for (just a few of the) new TV shows that were just picked up:

Awake. Which… looks good, looks interesting, but I just don’t see a TV show that I would follow/watch for years and years there. Funny how both it and Another Earth‘s trailer use that song by the Cinematic Orchestra.

Alcatraz. The latest from the J.J. Abrams camp… The 4400 meets Prison Break, featuring Sam Neill and Hurley from Lost. This looks ridiculous, and I’ll watch it and just hope that it’s not another letdown like Fringe.

Person Of Interest. Another from J. J. Abrams, although it seems like it’s mostly just his name on it and the real creative juice is from Jonathan Nolan, writer of The Dark Knight and brother of Christopher. Looks interesting-ish, but Jim Caviezel? Was that really necessary?

A trailer for the documentary on the showrunners of all your favorite TV shows.

And a nice guide to the shows that didn’t make it to the Fall 2011 season.

“The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.”

-Dennis Gabor

I had a dream a while back that the world was ending… It was an odd dream, but not a terrible one, I guess. It’s just not something you can prepare for, the end of the world. You can’t ever really be ready for it. You just gotta keep on living, don’t you? And loving and listening to music and dancing and pursuing impossible things and enjoying mundane moments and people and doing all kinds of stupid shit. Take things seriously but maybe enjoy the ridiculous things that surround you just a little bit more? I don’t want to tell you something terribly cliched, like… Live every moment like it’s your last!

No, don’t do that. You’ll probably hurt yourself trying to do that.

But maybe every once in a while, take a single moment and consider that it is your last moment on this beautiful, insane planet, and just really ponder that. And think about what you would do if it wasn’t. Beam yourself into the future and peek in on yourself and see what you’re up to. Take a vacation into the future and see who you are there. Interview yourself and find out what went right and wrong in your life in the moments/weeks/months/years between now and then, and take good notes. And when you come back to the present, remember that little trip. Remember that time you went to the future and appreciate that you’re back here, and now, and then go there again.

The anniversary of Bikini Atoll is coming up.

Chinese “dinosaur city” reshapes understanding of prehistoric era.

Brittany Julious is sexy.

The kind of guys who stay single?

The Cat Rapture for Caturday!

Neil Gaiman on Gene Wolf.

Grant Morrison to write a movie about dinosaurs vs. aliens, Barry Sonnenfield to direct.

from here.

RIP “Macho Man.”

The fashion of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Fleetwood Mac to reunite in time for the end of the world.

The never before seen original ending to Alexander Payne’s Election, which is much closer to the book’s ending.

I don’t think I’m all that crazy about these Odd Future guys.

Skeeter Davis and Henry Moore.

Tom Cruise is a lonely robot repairman.

from here.

How to survive a mass extinction.

Plot details from the upcoming Tim Burton/Johnny Depp big screen version of Dark Shadows.

Will the internet destroy academic freedom?

A history of bedwetting.

Bionic hands! The future is now!

A good prank for the Rapture.

Oh well, hopefully this one was good practice for the next time the world (supposedly) ends. Still plenty of time to get your Rapture Playlist just fucking perfect. No sleep til 2012!

17 things about tonight’s episode of Doctor Who…

1. There’s a Supermassive Black Hole on the TARDIS!

2. Tonight’s episode was a bit… so so, I guess? I mean, not terrible, with some interesting concepts, but I just didn’t feel like I was watching something classic and lovely. Similar, as far as two parters would go, would perhaps be last year’s Silurian episodes, I think. Although it might turn itself around in the second part… An example of a good filler two parter on Doctor Who, for me, would be probably “The Impossible Planet” and “The Satan Pit.”

3. Doctor Who likes things that are impossible, that’s for sure.

4. Castles! Clones and/or shapeshifters! Old scary monasteries and darkness and weird mysteries that should just not be poked at and pondered by humans, who may be the real monsters themselves… I like it. There’s a little bit of a Frankenstein flair to this episode… Like I said, interesting concepts. Also… The Thing, maybe? And Solaris, sorta.

I never saw more than YouTube clips of the original British Life On Mars, or its sequel, Ashes To Ashes, but I’ve always heard it praised, and Matthew Graham’s writing especially. His script here wasn’t terrible, not really, and so far feels better than his previous effort, “Fear Her,” which he had to write in a pinch during the second season when Stephen Fry fell through on his writing commitment to the show.

5. Solar Tsunamis! That’s just goddamn fun to say. Say it five times fast, then a couple of more times.

6. The pacing of this episode was a bit of a problem, I think. It just didn’t grab you, and then if it did, it didn’t keep you. The episode came up a bit reaching on the level of “moody” and “atmospheric” that I think it would’ve needed to survive…

In fact, the more I think about it, it really feels like they did smash “The Impossible Planet”/”The Satan Pit” together with “The Hungry Earth“/”Cold Blood” and mashed them together. Two sides warring. The doctor pleading with peace. A new life form. Sharing and caring. Isolated away from others, trapped in the darkness, focusing on the guest stars, and ehhh…

7. By a bit of that logic, I wonder if that means that Rory will have to die again?

8. I kept waiting for Amy to hit him with a dart in the opening scene in the TARDIS. I mean, I like Rory and all, don’t get me wrong, but he seems like the kind of guy who should be getting hit in the balls with a football or something every other episode.

9. And, ugh, once the Doctor touched that goo, besides the copious hints of a some shadowy monstrous figure whispering “Trust me!” you just knew that the Doctor would have to face off with his fleshy (Doppel)Ganger.

10. In their in between shifting state, the Gangers do look a lot like Odo, from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, don’t they?

But, oooh, does the Doctor know more about the future of “The Flesh?” He does refer to them as “primitive technology,” and evades questions about what he may already know about them, yes? Is this one of those episodes where he finds himself stuck at the crossroads of time, having to reinforce an event that he already knows must happen? What does the future hold for the Gangers that the Doctor already knows about? And is he trying to fight/change that future?

11. I really want to see the Ganger Doctor fighting the real Doctor. Who doesn’t want an evil twin?  Of course, that can only end one way: With you having to wrestle your evil twin to death while your friends look on, unsure of which of you is the real you and which is the fake…

Kill us both, Spock!

12. It was nice of them to give Rory a very human moment, and let him connect with someone who feels real, as far as being human goes, but isn’t quite. After spending two millenniums as plastic, you’d expect the man to have a little empathy. And it was nice watching him do something other than feel left out when the Doctor and Amy are off having fun/adventures/sexy flirtatious hijinks.

And Sarah Smart was really good as the woman who is no longer human but still remembers being human. Some interesting moral quandaries and questions there and if there’s anything that science fiction loves devouring, it’s moral quandaries. And questions. And Sarah Smart, I always thought, was good in Kenneth Branagh’s Wallander series, though criminally wasted. Nice to see Mark Bonnar too, whom I thought was decent in a show called Paradox that just didn’t get nearly enough respect out there. I’m surprised that Amy didn’t bond with him since she seems to bond with every Scottish person that she meets.

13. Spoilers…

Coming soon: Meredith Vieira, the Silurians, Winston Churchill, the Romans, and the Cybermen!

14. I keep hearing rumors that Rory is going to be evil or do something slightly evil this season…

Is it possible that he still has naughty evil programming in his head from when he was an Auton? And is he actually human now? How does all that work, that stuff from “The Big Bang,” with the Doctor restarting the universe and Amy wishing everyone/everything she loves back into existence? Seems to be like there would be some wiggle room there for plotline nastiness to be throw in as the season progresses.

15. After next week’s “The Almost People,” we have the big mid-season finale, “A Good Man Goes To War.” Should be exciting. The released synopsis for it says something about Amy being kidnapped and Rory and the Doctor racing around the universe gathering allies and calling it old debts to rescue her. And that River Song has to prepare herself to escape from prison and that the time for her to reveal her big, crazy secret is fast approaching.

Fuck, I miss River Song.

16. Also, Amy is still Shrodinger’s Preggers!

And her:

And also:

Eesh.

17. Also, I love Dusty Springfield.

Just know that before you say anything bad about her, well, then you better be bringing a fight with you.

Next time: More with the almost people and the rebel flesh and the Doctor vs. the Doctor! And also a massive cliffhanger of some sort…

23 thoughts about Neil Gaiman’s Doctor Who episode…

1. It wasn’t all that impressive.

2. That’s not true. It was really good. It was a very lovely, very silly episode. I felt like it was getting mega-hyped across the internets, that Neil Gaiman was being set up as the savior as all of Doctor Who and all of science fiction and all of television and men and women and children and puppies and humanity and that all the stories of the universe would be made more beautiful because he sat down one day and wrote “INT. TARDIS” and went from there…

Granted, that’s a bit ridiculous. Maybe it was just me reading a little too much into all of it. The hype that I was personally feeling built up around this episode, well, there’s no way it could’ve lived up to that, but it didn’t really need to, I guess. It was good.

3. I remember reading that the episode was originally called “The House Of Nothing” and was supposedly a good bit longer. This is probably when it was first intended to be done last year and proved to be too expensive to be filmed at the end of Series 5′s production. Supposedly one of the several early drafts included a scene with the TARDIS’ swimming pool, something that has gotten quite a few mentions in the Matt Smith era. That said, I would’d liked to see this expanded a bit more.

Also would kill to read more about the evolution of this story.

from here.

I know there’s something that British writers all say, how they’ve all been lucky enough to grow up watching Doctor Who so they therefore all have at least one Doctor Who story somewhere in their head, but other writers aren’t Neil Gaiman. Or, at least, other writers haven’t set the asses on fire like the announce that Neil Gaiman would be writing this episode did over a year ago.

4. Idris, the female embodiment of the TARDIS, was amazing. And even more amazing was Suranne Jones’ bringing her to life. I felt like too much was cramped into too tight of a space. This is me again saying that I would’ve loved to see this episode expanded.

5. Classic Neil Gaiman though. Patchwork people. The scattered debris in a spaceship graveyard, each item with its own story to be told. A talking planet. Aunties and Uncles and Nephews. A little steampunkyness. A sense of horror that’s far more sinister than you’re expecting. The only thing missing here was a talking cat or perhaps a bird.

Or if the Doctor could have a pixie punk big sister who brings death with her touch… and also teaches people AIDS awareness.

6. “Biting’s excellent. It’s like kissing, only there’s a winner.”

7. The Timelord buddy of the Doctor’s, the enigmatically titled Corsair (with his ouroboros tattoo), is mentioned to have changed gender from regeneration to regeneration. You can already feel the heat of internet chatter demanding a female 12th Doctor already.

That said, Joanna Lumley was really good in her brief cameo as the Doctor in Steven Moffat’s The Curse Of Fatal Death, wasn’t she?

8. I love that the TARDIS has archived all the previous control rooms, even the ones that have yet to happen. All of those Desktop themes! Ha ha.

The only thing really super duper missing from this episode: What did the TARDIS think about exploding last year and destroying all of time and space, hmmm?

9. Rory is Kenny from South Park.

He was turned to ash by a ancient looking alien in a dream. He was shot and killed by a Silurian last year and sucked into a smiled-shaped crack in the universe and erased from time. Then he came back as a plastic centurion in a universe that rebooted. And then last week he was drowned in the ocean while running away from an alien harpy. And this week… neglected and left to age away into nothing in a darkened corridor in the TARDIS. Well, Rory, you know what they say. You only continuously murder the ones you love.

10. One rumor I read was that Rory, like so many other things, is not supposed to exist in this new universe after Big Bang Two, and that it’s only Amy’s constant love that keeps him existing, but the universe keeps testing that. That’s kind of nasty, but I like it for some reason.

11. Tenses are difficult, aren’t they?

12. Bunk beds!

Again, I like the idea of the Doctor being childlike, of being a little boy who loves playing with box that flies him about in time and space, of always running away from real responsibilities and what have you, but at the same time… does he have to be totally clueless about all aspects of human sexuality? I think not.

That said, a bed with a ladder is wonderful.

13. The Ood!

14. The previous TARDIS control room!

It’s nice to see this call backs to the previous era, the RTD era of Doctor Who. I’m glad they’ve really acknowledged that the Ood is one of the best designs for new monsters/aliens in the new series, and yet they’ve unfortunately written themselves into a tough spot by making them a peaceful, benevolent race who holds hands and sings and what have you. It’s hard to use them as scary glowy-eyed monsters now, except only occasionally.

15. That bit where the Doctor opens up the cabinet and sees all those old Time Lord psychic distress boxes, the “little boxes that will make you angry,” was very poignant, and perfect. That’s one aspect of the Doctor’s backstory that they’ve not done much with the Eleventh Doctor, the continuing emotional fallout of the Time War and the death of all the Time Lords, etc. Which I guess I’m fine with, especially since they don’t want to do the Eleventh Doctor as guilt ridden as the Tenth Doctor was.

But of course he wants to be forgiven. We all want to be forgiven for something, I suppose.

16. Suranne Jones as Idris, the embodiment of the soul of the TARDIS. Too good. Such a simple story, about a guy who’s spent 50 years on TV traveling around with a time machine and for the first time he gets to talk to her and she gets to talk to him. Explains why they’ve really ramped up the Doctor referring to the TARDIS as “She” the past few weeks.

17. Especially loved that her first words to the Doctor are “Goodbye” and the last thing she says to him is “Hello.”

from here.

18. For no reason at all other than “just because,” here is Kenneth Branagh on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson discussing Doctor Who and Roger Moore and Sean Connery and “The Dalek,” the sexual move that you can do with other people, but also by yourself…

It’s worth it alone to see two very talented and very dirty old men talking about the hotness of Karen Gillan.

19. “The only water in the forest is the river!”

20. That can’t be about River Song, can it? That’s just too blatant, isn’t it? And yet… so vague. That’ll keep the kids guessing for weeks.

Side note: River Song and the TARDIS seem to get along pretty well, don’t they? It’s nice to know that in the Doctor’s future, his wife and his… other wife… are on good terms with one another.

21. My feeling is that Amy Pond is still River Song’s mother. River Pond? That’s just plain funny right there.

22. Even though it was a minor part, Michael Sheen was wonderful as the voice of The House. That said, should they ever go older for the next Doctor (and if they keep him male), my vote would be for Sheen, who’s quite the chameleon. I quite like the idea of a future Doctor having been a vampire several times, having romanced Liz Lemon, and also having been Tony Blair.

23. Anyway, not a great episode, but a greeaaattttt one. That Neil Gaiman knows how to write something that is weird and funny and so fucking touching, doesn’t he? What could’ve been a rather disturbing tale about a man in love with his vehicle actually became somewhat beautiful, and still disturbing, but wonderfully so. And empowering. And “sexy.” I love that the Doctor may have stole the TARDIS, sure, but she stole him right back, because he was the one for her, the only one crazy about for her…

I could wax on for a good bit about it all, but it all comes down to this… The Doctor tells the TARDIS that she is not reliable, and that she never takes him where he wants to go. But she counters with a simple reminder, that she always took him where he needed to go.

Just beautiful.

Next time: We’re getting closer to the mid-season break/cliffhanger and the guy who wrote the British version of Life On Mars is going to take the Doctor, Amy, and Rory to the future of Earth with doppelgangers and solar tsunamis and a whole mess of weird, interesting stuff. See you then.