I find Doctor Who most enjoyable when it’s mysterious, full of accidental occurrences, and designed to frighten children (and you can include Angie in that). The Time of Angels has all of this going for it along with the added bonus that it’s part one of a two-part story. Spoilers to follow.

The action centers around one of the most fascinating of the recent additions to The Doctor’s rogues gallery, the Weeping Angels. First introduced in the episode Blink a few years ago, it seemed like it would be difficult to top some of the madness the Angels bring, but the inclusion of the mysterious River Song set the stage for a fantastic episode. From the dynamic and cleverly constructed opening to the seemingly inescapable conclusion, this is the type of episode that should make anyone love this show.

The mystery of River Song deepens as we see that she and The Doctor keep meeting in the “wrong order,” which is especially tragic as viewers saw her demise during her first appearance in the episodes Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead. While she was known as Professor River Song at that time, this River Song is actually a criminal trying to earn a pardon and is thrilled to know she’ll one day receive such a prestigious title.

We learn a great deal about the Weeping Angels from an ancient book about the creatures that is the only writing of its kind. Any image of an Angel becomes an Angel because of their unique nature in the timestream, and this threat includes any mental image. It’s also made clear that staring into the eyes of an Angel can give it influence over the mind of the observer. If the Angels weren’t creepy enough, these concepts add a whole new level of scary.

The inclusion of the military squadron of “clerics” as River’s escort while on work release made for a great dynamic and makes for a great commentary on the future of organized religion. There is a fun twist about the nature of the crash that brought everyone to the planet leaving them all in the gravest of danger.

The return of two of the most intriguing concepts from producer Steven Moffat required an exceptionally strong story and this one does not disappoint. It’s clear that there’s a larger story framework in place that is being masterfully revealed over the course of several seasons. Can’t wait to see what’s in store next week.

More on Doctor Who 2010:
Victory of the Daleks / Flesh and Stone

This post could have been something great.  It could have been completely about my ridiculous amount of excitement over going to see Lady Gaga in September.  Well I guess it still can be a little:

I AM REEEEEEDICULOUSLY EXCITED TO GO SEE LADY GAGA IN SEPTEMBER!!!

Ahhhhh.  Much better.  What I am not excited about it how expensive it was.  And how impossible it was to buy tickets.  Presale plus the moment they were available and Section 214 is the best available?  I wanted General Admission  🙁  Ok… $85…. It is going to be an amazing night.  Worth it.  Tack on all the fees/charges etc, and it actually ended up being over $100/ticket.  But at this point I was committed.  I was already going in my head and could not back down.

Then the tickets came.  And I was excited again. I wanted to take a picture of the tickets so that I could write up a post about my excitement.  That caused me to look closely at the tickets.  In Pennsylvania, you cannot scalp tickets.  It is illegal.  It’s considering scalping them if you sell them for more than face value.

I’m not considering selling these tickets.  I don’t want to give up this night unless something comes up that would prevent me from being able to go.  But I am annoyed about what is considered face value.  Where are al the stupid fees I paid?!  How is one fee listed for $3, but all the other fees are not?  Why if I sell my ticket at “face value” am I losing $15?  Four tickets, +$18 in fees per ticket.  We spent an unexpected +$72 more than we saw coming.  How is this legal?  How is this not bait and switch?  For four people to go to a show, we nearly had to pay for 5 tickets.

Nonsense, Comcast!  I call shenanigans!

I suppose there had to be a let down somewhere along this wild ride and X-Men: Second Coming Chapter ø6, you’re it. Spoilers to follow along with a lot a disappointment.

I looked at a preview for this book last week, so I knew I was going to have some problems with it. The problems come from some art choices that were out of place, and must have resulted from a miscommunication among the writer (Matt Fraction), artists (Terry and Rachel Dodson) and editor (Nick Lowe). It’s got nothing to do with the caliber of the work, in fact the issue looks decent although too cartoonish in places for my tastes, but I’ve come to expect this from the Dodsons’ style.

Read more of this article »

As Brightest Day, the follow up to DC Comics‘ hit miniseries Blackest Night, officially begins today (issue zero was released last month), ptb and I have taken few moments to reflect on what has come and speculate on what’s ahead.

ptb: The thing that stood out most to me about Blackest Night was the way it made me realize how little I know about the DC Universe. The major players and surface details I get, but as soon as you go a little deeper I’m lost. After reading issue one, we talked a bit about who was who and clarified a lot of civilian/code names. Knowing who people are is one thing, but understanding why they’re important is another. Barry Allen being back is kind of lost on me, but resurrections of guys like Max Lord are a complete mystery. The appearance of the Monitor (or was it the Anti-Monitor?) also didn’t mean much to me although I know it’s a big deal.

KevinMLD: Now you know how I feel when I read about Bastian!

The reason for Barry Allen being back is a mystery to me and so far DC has done very little to demonstrate why he’s something special beyond the fact that he was on the Super Friends when Geoff Johns was a kid.

The Anti-Monitor has played major roles in both Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis as well as the Sinestro Corps War. He single-handedly destroyed the original DC multiverse. That’s literally all you need to know about him. He’s the biggest of the big bads.

Max Lord is a little more complicated and stupid. He kind of ran or financed the Justice League during the 80’s sitcom years from what I know. He has some mind control powers. He was basically ignored as a character for years, but made a comeback just prior to Infinite Crisis. He turned heel in a big way and took over the organization Checkmate, which is a DC universe spy organization similar to Marvel’s SHIELD. He had big evil plans that involved using his mind control powers on Superman to do some supervillainy stuff until Wonder Woman snapped his neck on national television. This led to people distrusting Wonder Woman because no one knew how naughty Max Lord had been.

ptb: A second major issue I had with Blackest Night was the fact that throughout it, I was hearing about what was happening in Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps and those seemed to be the books I should have been reading. Blackest Night gave the main story from a DCU-wide perspective, but I’m honestly more interested in the spectrum of Lanterns than how Blackest Night affects the Atom (and he may be a bad example since he became a Lantern).

KevinMLD: The Blackest Night story obviously concluded in the Blackest Night main book, but I definitely think most of the major story beats took place in Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps. The main War of Light stuff took place in GLC, with the adventures of Hal Jordan and the main allied rainbow corps members taking place in the GL book. In fact, the Blackest Night main series felt like it was a tacked on, money grab on DC’s part until the last two issues.

This also reminds me of how I felt reading Civil War. Why did Spider-man side with Tony Stark again? If these companies are going to run major events like this, they need the information that is most important to the story to take place in the main title.

ptb: I read the whole thing and I definitely liked it, but I know there was a lot that I missed. Brightest Day #0 didn’t really change much of this. The tone and perspective of this issue may have been different from what’s to come in order to set things up since it is a zero issue, but it’s going to have a hard time maintaining my interest if it focuses only on the White Ring resurrected characters. The covers indicate that Hal Jordan is involved so maybe that will help.

Both series look great and that’s a big plus, but I’m definitely unsure of how long I’ll be sticking around from here. How many issues does this series run?

KevinMLD: I like that Aquaman is back, but a lot of the other resurrections aren’t very exciting… Especially Hawkman and Hawkgirl (not to be confused with Hawk who was also resurrected) who were killed twice in the last year and Martian Manhunter who just died during Final Crisis. But I am really excited about the resurrection of Deadman. That’s a brilliant concept. Deadman is a character who was completely content being dead. Being dead has always been his gimmick. This is brand new ground for the character. I’m kind of sad that the now “Aliveman” has powers. I wanted to see him just be human for awhile and come to grips with his new life. I hope there are interesting plans in place for him.

Anyway, even as a big DC fan I’m not totally sold on Brightest Day yet as there has been very little revealed about the story and due to the fact that it’s going to run for 26 issues. I’ll be there for the first few issues though.

More on this series can be found at our Brightest Day hub.

Spoilers to follow. Despite being a Dalek episode with some interesting moments and obvious set up for future episodes, this was the weakest offering so far this season. You’d think I’d love this one since it has an Empire Strikes Back-like ending.

I just didn’t like that the Dalek’s scheme to activate the Progenitor device relied too much on them predicting exactly what The Doctor would do.  The telephones ringing also made me a little crazy, and I just couldn’t get into the “gravity bubble” fighter jets. Also, I just don’t see The Doctor leaving the android to live out his life on Earth and find his humanity. That’s a major piece of alien technology running around since the 1940’s and we’ve seen him prevent that very thing in the past. He even takes the time to dismantle all of Professor Gracewell’s other devices in this episode.

I liked the World War II setting and seeing Daleks in camouflage, serving tea and being called “Ironsides” was kind of awesome. This deception created an opportunity for The Doctor to interact side by side with the Daleks without being under the threat of death. As a result, there are times you almost doubt The Doctor. Everyone around him certainly did. You see more of The Doctor’s dark side/mania as he lashes out at the Daleks, playing right into their suction cups with his “testimony.” It’s really tragic to hear The Doctor utter “I wanted to know what they wanted, what their plan was. I was their plan.” These new Daleks could be interesting and the notion of them being “pure” Daleks has me thinking a trip to their home planet of Skaro may be in the Doctor and Amy’s future.

Again we’re presented with the theme of forgetting as Amy doesn’t remember the Dalek attack on Earth. This could be a consequence of her choice on Starship UK, or it could be part of something bigger going on with Amy. Considering we once again see the crack on the wall as the TARDIS dematerializes, it must be something big. I can’t help but think the crack has something to do with Amy saving the day again. I’m beginning to wonder if maybe that’s not a good thing. It seems like just after she does, we see the crack. We also see that The Doctor is late again…

Next week, Weeping Angels and River Song. This should be fantastic.

More on Doctor Who 2010:
The Beast Below / The Time of Angels