Doctor Who Planet of the Dead was another entertaining installment into the  series, if not quite spectacular. It was a variation on a David Tennant’s Doctor trope of having the Doctor fall into a situation with a group of innocents with a dangerous alien threat emerging, and the Doctor miraculously pulling off a save. The episode in particular very much reminded me of “Midnight” from Season 4, with a little added mortal peril and special affects for flair.

Honestly though, with the knowledge there will be at least two more appearances before David Tennant steps down as The Doctor and his new replacement, Matt Smith, steps in the peril was obviously little. Instead Planet of the Dead viewed as a light hearted love song, with perhaps subtle themes to the Doctor’s end being sown (The Doctor feels this might be planned). There was very little actual push towards the end until the final few moments of the episode.

Tennant’s Doctor does a nice job summarizing the major part of his character’s evolution and arch throughout the episode. This is most pointedly done when The Doctor responds to a somewhat snide remark from the Lady Christina de Souza, his companion for this stand along episode, in the midst of danger.

One scene deftly illustrates the nature of who The Doctor is when he points out that the most important things are the everyday ones like food, home, and people we love when trying to assure the passengers on a bus that travelled to a barren planet through a wormhole. After receiving a cheeky response from Lady Christina de Souza about him being just all full of hope The Doctor hits the nail on the head.

“I live in hope,” he dead pan responds.

As the series progresses other small nuances of the 10th Doctor’s character quirks are brought to light as well. As we learn that a mindless alien horde has devoured the planet the Doctor and bus crew were sucked into, and that they are also the source of the wormhole that will lead the horde to Earth to devour it too, The Doctor, and Lady de Souza become quite animated. We see the familiar gleam of Tennant’s Doctor rising to the challenge of beating an almost unbeatable set of circumstances

“The worse it gets the more I love it,” The Doctor exclaims.

“Me too,” said Lady de Souza, played by the wonderfully sassy and strong Michelle Ryan.

Perhaps the saddest part of the whole series is the fact that Ryan was not able to become a more permanent fixture in the Who Universe. I fell in love with her interaction with Tennant almost immediately.

The episode ends with the help of some lovely secondary casts members such as Professor Malcom Taylor played by Lee Evans. Taylor is a professor on the Earth side of the rift who ultimately acts heroic by standing up to his superior in UNIT in waiting for the Doctor to come through before closing the wormhole. He is also ga-ga for the Doctor and hangs onto every little word the Doctor speaks to him through one of his “doctored” cell phones from the Planet of the Dead.

Malcom can also be viewed as a stand in for many fans of Tennant’s Doctor at the end of the episode, when finally meeting the Doctor in person all Taylor can do is grab him and say “I love you. I love you.”

After what appears to be a nice and tidy solution, with The Doctor receiving a huge round of applause and love the audience is reminded that Tennant’s end as The Doctor is near. Carmen, a clairvoyant psychic, tells The Doctor  an unnamed it travels back through the dark and that “he” will come with four knocks. This of course is setting up the 10th Doctor’s demise.

We still have one more Tennant/Doctor mini- movie to go with Waters of Mars before the final episode.

And looking ahead, some details were revealed on the ending of the 10th Doctor on Sunday, July 26 during the San Diego Comic-Con conclusion which Tennant and Russel T. Davies attended.

It seems that The Master will return to bridge between the 10th and 11th Doctor and that Timothy Dalton plays a mysterious role, possibly as another Time Lord? Ah, the speculation begins. And I must say, I’ve learned to love every version of the Doctor from my introduction to him played by Tom Baker repeats of Doctor Who on my local PBS station as a child throughout the reboot. And Tennant himself reflected that sentiment too, according to the What’s Alan Watching? blog coverage of the SDCC panel.

“And I never forgot him, or loved him any less, but then Peter Davison came along, and within three weeks, I thought he was the best. I think what makes the show go on forever.”

The end of Torchwood: Children of Earth culminated in an emotional, gripping, and uncompromising hour of science fiction television. Day Five was a pitch perfect crescendo to the past four days blazing bitter-sweetly across the screen with a plot line that gave no quarter and threw more surprises into the mix within the first 3o minutes compared to 21 episode seasons of some shows. Comparisons to Battlestar Galactica, the penultimate science fiction programing that gave no quarter in its  allegory of the modern day war on terror, were definitely fair comparisons.

Day Five opens with a Gwen Cooper staring at the audience in a grainy home camera frame as some past time capsule to the human raise. Initially, we are not sure when the message was filmed, but by tenor and tone we can assume the worst. Gwen addresses the nagging question of any Torchwood fan when an emergency of such epic proportions comes to Earth: where is the Doctor? Her answer is chilling and practical. She concludes humanity’s behavior is at times so pitiful, so low, that the only the Doctor can do is turn away in shame. And so begins the end of the story that is at once tearful, yet triumphant song of the complicated human experience.

With Torchwood’s card played in Day Four and thoroughly defeated the world and its leaders are left with but one option, to gather the 10 percent to give to the 456. Jack Harkness, defeated and crushed by the death of Ianto agrees, with Gwen Cooper being the last  hold out. The immortal man cannot stand to see any more fragile humanity lost, even if it means damnation for the species’ spirit. He sends her out on one last mission to protect Ianto’s neice and nephew from the collection.

Even in agreeing to the sacrifice, the reasoning of the 456 only makes the last option more loathsome. Almost immediately in the episode the powers that be learn that the chemicals produced in children’s brains are like a sweet drug to the 456, hence why they demand more.

Ultimately, humanity is whoring out its lowest class of children in a drug exchange for a superior alien race chipping for the next high.

Noone, with the possible exception of Gwen, Rhys, PC Andy Davidson, Ianto’s sister, and the masses who eventually rise up against their own governments as children are taken away are left unscathed. Everyone else is left haunted by the horrible decisions they are willing to live with in order to survive.

John Frobisher’s own haunting past drives him to illustrate  end to idealism, to not be willing to make the sacrifice of his children to the 456 by decree of the Prime Minister. When it is demanded for him to give his own children to create a plausible cover story that the government was “betrayed” by the 456 when the children disappeared Frobisher refuses. He sees his haunting mistake, the sins played back upon his own house for his actions in 1965, and does the only thing he can think of. If he is not to defeat the enemy, then he chooses to execute his wife, children, and himself so those children do not become drug sources, attached for eons to the 456. The scene plays out with excellent framing and visual storytelling that makes it one of the most haunting few minutes on television.

Jack too is to pay for his collusion in the sacrificing of 12 children. In no other place or storyline, not even his guilt over losing his brother, is Jack’s immortality seen to be a curse. He will forever be haunted by the compromising actions, the killing of his own grandson, in order to save humanity. That grandson become a conduit to repelling the 456. Somehow the children are a bridge to a psychic and frequency connection with the alien force who can cause the menace harm. Jack deduces this after he is freed by Johnson and told to do what he does best, save humanity.

The sacrifice of his own flesh and blood is made when the grandson is used as a focal point to create a cascading wave that we can only assume by the red blood splatter actually does the child the 456 feeds on to die, and in turn wounds the 456. In the process Jack’s grandson’s brain is also fried. The act was a wound that cut against what he learned from the Doctor and repeated in Day 4, an injury to one is an injury to all. Jack would carry the weight of saving humanity from perpetual enslavement, and his daughter’s hatred, for all eternity.

In the end, it would appear the elasticity of humanity’s self absorption prevails. The Prime Minister gets his comeuppance when he is forced to stand aside. And six months later, as the story jumps, we are left with seeing Rhys and a much bigger Gwen driving and stopping at the end of a road, a pretty recognizable symbol for what is about to happen. At the end of that road is Jack, who has walked the earth for months, but still found no peace. His only option is to run further away, into the stars, at the dismay of Gwen, who must stay, yet not go back, with nowhere to run.

He wonders if his mere presence is what brings death and destruction. He reiterates a common hero trope – is it the nature of the universe that the greater the hero, the greater the danger and threat. If Jack leaves, he seems to suggests, perhaps the safe status quo can return without consequences or repercussions.

The question now of course is, will Torchwood return with Captain Jack? Or will the next time we see him (in a linear timeline of the Doctor Who universe) be as the Face of Boe? If the series can keep the pace and questioning up that it has in Children of Earth, this reviewer truly does hope for its return.

In Torchwood Children of Earth Day Four the other shoe drops in a very heavy fashion. We learn more clearly the real significance of the name of the mini-series. And the brilliance of humor and character in Day Three is brought low by episode’s end.

If there is one thing to be said about service in Torchwood it is that to be a member usually means seeing that service end tragically. This has been established over the series with Gwen’s introduction to the team in Season 1 to Season 2′s episode, “Fragments” where we see how Jack Harkness inherited the team. With that in mind, and feeling the short life spans of characters was planned and not part of some throw away plot device with the threat of series cancellation, the biggest plot twist of the mini-series is the boldest and most heartfelt.

Reflecting on Day Four it cannot be helped but to reflect on the loss of Ianto by day’s end. He dies by viral infection while spurring Jack on to be great, instead of repeating the mistakes of his past, namely the giving up of 12 children to the 456 and the subsequent cover up in 1965 that Jack willfully participated in, in order to save humanity from an Indonesian flu virus that would kill 25 million. The whole episode builds to that moment with exposition of plot surrounding Jack and Ianto’s growing relationship,  on the 456′s demands for 10 percent of the world’s children, a cruel and callous government choosing to reach the 10 percent of margin of the world’s children by handing over the poorest and most powerless children instead of possibly sacrificing their own, and a horrifying scene where viewers get to see what happens to the children in the grasp of the 456.

Operating outside the law and the norm has its advantages and prices to be paid in the world of Torchwood. Ianto and crew live within a  crisp set of philosophical terms, put life in focus, but at the same time cut their time short in comparison to the safe and compromising world represented by civil servants and elected officials in the series.

The comentary on the status quo, like most of the run of the David Tennet Doctor Who run, is biting though. Weighed against what is said about powers that be and the nominal safety of soul numbing sacrifices, living fully, if not shortly always seems the better option.

The 4-5-6 make this point clear as Jack and Ianto confront the alien menace in its tank after a craftily handed plot to get them into the facility and a superb job of acting and bravery by Lois who basically blackmails the British government and US military into submitting to Torchwood’s will. (Identifying herself as a revolutionary in the process interestingly enough)

When Jack says the citizens of Earth won’t be giving up any more children the 456 react with feigned surprise. Nearly scoffing the alien finds it interesting that nearly 29,000 preventable childhood deaths occur everyday, one every 3 seconds, 10 million a year and yet humanity “adapts.” So, why is it so difficult to give up 10 percent now it poses? The number of course is real, and based on a 2005 U.N. study on preventable deaths in poor countries. The 456 (and well the writers of this series) weigh the horrible decisions humans often make in reality, versus their idealism. And when Jack looses Ianto this is no more true. It is when the 456 calls his bluff that the reality of actual sacrifice sets in. Perhaps a little over-played, Ianto is the brave soldier, dying for his beliefs, knowing that his sister’s own children and those in the project he visits in Day One would be the one’s sacrificed.

Day Four of Torchwood:Children of Earth most certainly stands up to the praise the series has received in pre-screen reviewing. It is the strongest Torchwood story yet told and does measurably well in comparison to Doctor Who stories, such as The Master story arch.

Day 5 should definitely be a treat and this has definitely been a series worth watching.

It saddens me that the game has been in development this long. I remember seeing it at the Con last year and wanting to purchase it and play it, like, today. Wolfman’s interview only has me that much more stoked. Plus, I do enjoy the fact that the creative team are comic artists and Wolfman is part of that. His gaming tweets definitely show his credentials for wanting to help create a great online gaming experience.

Technorati Tags: Marv Wolfman, DC Comics Universe Online, video game

Our job is thankless… but we do what has to be done. Right now, we’re humanity’s only hope. Be heroes.

– Superman

Or it could be added, an editor.

Tales offers itself as a primer to each corps origins, powers, and weaknesses nicely. Told in small takes we get an actual feel for how emotions are harnessed by the various cores, or tribes, throughout the universe. For someone trying to catch up on years of Lantern history and lore after being out of touch for a while the primer is great. With a story this epic for the Green Lantern title it is smart too, otherwise a new reader may be totally lost. (And even with the three issue mini, I know there are still nuances to the story missed that does not allow one to fully appreciated.

As far as the actual meat of Blackest Night, well that is played out in Green Lantern #44. What a story and portrayal of J’onn J’onzz by Geoff Johns. The action is pretty much full on within the first few pages of the book, as a dead J’onzz returns to Earth as the harbinger of death for his former allies, Barry and Hal, both of whom died in their own pasts. In the view of the new Black Lantern, both should have stayed dead. And as he notes, it would be sort of justice (since justice too is dead) since The Flash refused full fusion with the Speed Force and if Hal would have permanently laid down his life at one point he’d be in Hell for his past actions.

Over the rest of the book Hal and Barry are in the fight for their lives as Geoff Johns and artist Doug Mahnke deftly and imaginatively use the Martian Manhunter’s power sets to push them both about. A reader feels the confusion as Barry and Hal wonder where J’onn went after his initial appearance at the Gotham cemetery where they are investigating Bruce Wayne’s grave. Sudden with no warning and a swoosh the characters are pummeled. After all, J’onn can cloak himself with invisibility. As a Black Lantern J’onn’s mental powers play to good affect too, as Barry is tricked into seeing Hal as the Martian Manhunter, who it would seem Barry is handing a beat down to. The reveal of the trick is beautifully played out in a two page splash.  Mahnke is spectacular in his craft in this book.

The powers of the Black Lantern continue to play out as well. Beyond raising the dead, the Martian Manhunter is able to read his preys emotion through the color spectrum, and obviously builds on a theme that is revealed by Scar half way through the issue. The mission of the Black Lantern’s is to stamp out all of the erratic emotions playing out all willy-nilly over the Universe, a mission it would seem is a core part of the Green Lanterns who are ruled by the Will for order. The Black Lantern’s approach, Scar believes, is better in terms of imparting peace and order – that being death.

And the issue finishes as any good installment of a multi-part storyline should, with a mind blowing cliff hanger with John Stewart that leaves the reading slightly dumbstruck by the shear brilliance and audacity of the next possibly Black Lantern to be resurrected. Johns’ story telling makes one glad to come back to the big superhero comics.

As the plot continues the emphasis on family, and need for it, becomes more apparent. Rhys is integrated into the Torchwood team as the group finds new digs and takes on creative approaches to furnishing it. The warm and fuzzies don’t last though, in a tongue and cheek way when Rhys realizes Jack knew before himself about Gwen’s pregnancy. He storms off with Gwen chasing, a metaphor for the strengths and trials of family life.

Ianto cements this by saying  ruefully to Jack, “All together, the old team.”

The humor and bonding continues for about the first half of the third day as a montage plays out of team Torchwood actually breaking laws.

“If they are going to treat us like criminals, lets be criminals,” Gwen says as they all go on a pick-pocket and grafting spree.

Another touching moment is played out between Jack and Ianto to soften Jack’s character for a stiff slap to what the viewer thinks they know of Jack later.

As Ianto muses about Jack’s immortality (and his own mortality) he concludes, “”You best make the best of it then.”

And, as the show progresses Jack really should have because his daughter and grandson we are introduced to in Day One are taken in by the government, who in turn give us some more backstory about Jack’s little family unit, and the 456 arrive.

What we can see of the 456 show them to be a grossly tentacled and slimy mess within their glass tank. Government squabbling and the inane behavior of elected politicians ensue, with an even more damning meta-commentary on the civil servants, as seen by Frobisher, who keep it going.

Basically, a lot of sweeping exposition and action that move the actual mystery forward take place in Day Three, compared to Day Two. Torchwood quite literally is reminded it operates outside the law, with a hint that this may not have always been so as is revealed with the introduction of Jack to Clem MacDonald, the sole boy to escape the 1965 event that introduced the British Empire to the 456.

We learn just how far Jack is willing to go for a mission, but why that mission was is still rather vague. In the end what we are left with is an episode, the center point for the whole mini-series that propels us forward. Into what we are not sure. What perhaps should have been the lowest point for the team, the destruction of Torchwood base has passed. The teams been reunited. They have their own space again. And it looks as if they are racing to save the universe with the helps of Lois and those with a conscious. And the very real theme of family, and what would a person do for it is emphasized family by the demands of the 456.

The question is, how much worse can it get for the team in two days?

(Is it wrong to admit that I don’t watch tons of television?)

Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps #2

Green Lantern #44

Richard Stark’s Parker: The Hunter HC

Wednesday Comics #3

I know there are a lot of great hero books out there, but I’ve decided to try to limit my big one to GL right now. As far as offbeat hero books are concerned, I’ve been told Ed Brubaker’s Incognito is a must.

This is perhaps the lamest question to ask, and I know there are a ton of podcasts out there that talk new comics each week, but which books should I absolutely be reading right now and why?

I’m not saying it doesn’t have the potential to be a good movie with Raimi at the helm (definitely skeptical though), it’s just hilarious that Hollywood is jumping over anything with geek culture.  We are taking over the world!

I loved Raimi’s first two Spidey movies and want to see Drag Me to Hell after hearing the horror flick was surprisingly better than its trailer made it appear. Plus, come on, he’s the legendary director of the Evil Dead series.

I’m sure a lot of fans of WoW will be stoked, but I have yet to see, or ever been excited to see a video game film adaptation since I was so disappointed with Street Fighter (<– a funny).  I don’t know why I have more of a problem with video game adaptations than comic books, but these movies so often smell of quick buck opportunism (not that comic book movies historically have not). Perhaps that is because Raimi hasn’t made this great one yet?

Technorati Tags: Raimi, WoW