Archive for December, 2023

Doctor Who The Giggle Review (Spoilers near the end)

Posted: December 10, 2023 by datechguy in doctor who, entertainment
Tags: , , ,

Plot: Earth is going crazy the people are completely polarized can the Doctor, Donna and Unit save the day from one of the Doctor’s oldest foes? Or will he need some help.

Writing: Given Davies statement about pissing off fans I expected the absolute worst from this episode. I’ve never been so pleasantly surprised in my life. This had just about everything. A solid villain, old friends and a bunch of twists and turns to keep you guessing. It seemed both longer than it was and shorter than it should have been and while some of the things seemed recycled it still worked. The penultimate twists I’ll deal with at the end to try to minimize spoilers but put simply, everything worked. If h

Acting: I will be very disappointed if we don’t see Neil Patrick Harris as the Toymaker again, he did his best to steal every scene he was in. Jemima Redgrave’s Kate Stewart was excellent and her performance invoked memories of Nick Courtney (more on that later) Bonnie Lankford was a pleasant surprise and the potential of her Mel as a reoccurring character bodes well. Tennant and Tate continued to shine as for the newest member of the cast, well to steal a line from the 1st Doctor he did well, quite well, perhaps the future is in safe hands.

Best Moment: Lot’s to choose from here but being an old Doctor Who guy I’ll say the reuniting of the Doctor and Mel and her giving the story of coming back to earth.

Worst Moment: The Doctor’s speech inviting the Toymaker to travel with him seemed completely recycled from his offer to the Master back in Davies first run.

Annoying moment: This is going to sound odd but unless I missed something there was no apparent reason for the Doctor to realize where the Toymaker’s shop was or where the doll came from.

That’s a shame moment: The realization that Bernard Cribbins didn’t live enough to finish the scenes for this one.

Fun Moment: Donna’s job offer and the negotiation

Nostalgia Moment(s): Return of Mel, Kate Stewart blazing away, the toy store invoked the 8th Doctor Big Finish story Solitaire when the Toymaker fights Charlie in a toyshop. The tooth being picked up like the ring and the list of adventures.

The What’s the Hell’s going on? Moment: That line was seen an awful lot in the last year we finally saw it in action

The “I’ll tell you when Big Finish is canon or not” Moment: There have been at least 3 toymaker stories in Big Finish, one with the 6th that I’ve not heard, one with the 7th with Ace & Hex that was Ok and a companion chronicles with the 8th and Charlie Pollard that was first rate. This episode suggests none of those take place, in fact the very plot of this episode is dependent on them not taking place, although technically on the 8th doctor adventure it’s Charlie not the Doctor who wins the game. So maybe that cancels out the 7th doctor’s win to keep the score even.

The “Where’s Osgood?” moment: Osgood missing from Unit at that moment would seem odd, but then again the resolution might have been too much for her inhaler.

Don’t think for a moment that I didn’t notice: While the Toymaker was going through Smith & Capaldi’s companions none of the companions from the Whitaker era got a mention. Remember Davies was brought on for the 60th anniversary to stop the bleeding of the Whitaker era I suspect that while he’s going to embrace the new canon to show whose boss 13th Doctor instead of being lovingly called “Doctor Karen” is now going to be “She who must not be named.”

The Elephant in the Room Part 3: Are we expected to believe that the Doctor made a trip with Mel to the gilded age and with Donna’s kid to the moon and there was absolutely no alien invasion or deadly menace that happened to show up. Mathematically I guess that’s possible but just sayin…

The (Spock Must Die) Spoiler moment(s): At first I like everyone else assumed Davies had decided to be bold by having the regeneration 3/4 in but instead we got the whole “bi-generation” business. Very original, completely unexpected and it worked. Of course it leaves a lot of questions.

  1. When the Tennant Doctor Finally dies does he
    • Regenerate into The Current 15th doctor?
    • Regeneration into someone else?
    • Just die?
    • Depending on how it happens cause 15 to cease to Exist?
  2. Does Doctor 15 at this moment have all the memories of Doctor 14
    • Up to the moment the bi-generation?
    • To the moment of Doctor 14’s death?
    • Or does he remember them as they happen (See Out of Time Tennant 10 meets Baker’s 4th)
  3. Does this mean that Tennant’s 14th doctor will be a reoccurring character?

And that’s just the start of it. With the Doctor living with Donna’s family doesn’t that make them a sitting target for every enemy looking for revenge? But hey, the War Doctor business brought complications too. We don’t know it all, but that’s OK. We don’t need to.

The a Tad too far moment: The splitting the TARDIS into two, that’s kinda weak, I submit and suggest it didn’t split I think it means that it’s just one TARDIS at different points in it’s timeline.

The Doctor No Pants Moment: What’s with the no-pants stuff? The new doctor is going to get damn cold if he meets the Ice warriors.

Bottom Line: This story is a solid winner and frankly the only one of the three that is worthy as a 60th anniversary special in the sense that it’s more than a regular episode. I think 10 minutes more mixed in here and there might have worked better, but this is a really first class episode and 5 minutes of “Rose” at the dinner table and passing references to things I don’t like doesn’t mess it up.

5 stars.

Ranking in the current season (counting the children in need special) 1st of Four and by an awful lot. Perhaps the idea was to push the agenda heavy in the Star Beast then put it in the background so the increasing quality would sell it but if the Star Beast had been anything near as good as this one there would have been a lot less fuss. But regardless of the reason this one is a class act.

  1. The Giggle
  2. Destination Skaro
  3. The Wild Blue Yonder
  4. The Star Beast

Since we were comparing to the Capaldi years let’s do the same here. Unlike Wild Blue Yonder. This one definitely makes the list but in fifth place. Not because it is bad, but because those four episodes ahead of it were so damn good. I must confess I was close to putting it above the caretaker but that episode was just so damn fun.

1st The Husbands of River Song
2nd World Enough and Time
3rd. Last Christmas 
4th. The Caretaker
5th  The Giggle
6th. Extremis
7th. The Return of Doctor Mysterio
8th. The Girl who Died
9th.  The Witch’s Familiar
10th. Hell Bent

But as it’s a special episode let’s compare Apples to Apples, Specials to specials that I’ve reviewed which are from the Matt Smith and Capaldi Era 4th of 10 although it was a close thing between A Christmas Carol and this one.

1st The Husbands of River Song
2nd The Day of the Doctor
3rd. Last Christmas 
4th. The Giggle
5th  A Christmas Carol
6th.  The Time of the Doctor
7th.  The Return of Doctor Mysterio
8th.  The Snowmen
9th.  The Doctor, the Widow & the Wardrobe
10th. Twice Upon a Time

The Navy finally embraced warfighting

Posted: December 9, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in war
Tags: , , , ,

Well, at least a little anyway.

For the longest time multiple people have raised the alarm about the Chinese Navy developing more ships, more capabilities and especially more missiles. The worry has been the US Navy would get “out-sticked,” as in the range of Chinese missiles would be so great they could hit US ships before those ships could even fire back.

This was true over the past decades because the Navy primarily used the Harpoon anti-ship missile, which has an effective range of 75 miles, and has been in service since 1977. Meanwhile, the Chinese Navy rolled out a nearly matching missile, the C-705, in 2006, and kept rolling out missiles, from the YJ-12 and YJ-18 to now the YJ-21, which claims to be a hypersonic, sea-borne anti-ship missile. During this time, the US sat on its hands and did almost nothing to increase the range of our missiles.

This was made worse by the fact we already HAD a long range missile. The Tomahawk, normally considered a land-strike missile, had a maritime strike version known as the TASM as early as 1990, yet they were all scrapped after the first Gulf War. The TASM had an effective range of around 900 miles, making it far superior to the Harpoon in all things but speed.

Range makes a big difference…if I can shoot first and force an enemy to maneuver to avoid getting hit, I get to call the shots and drive any engagement. While Chinese missiles aren’t known for their quality (just ask the Indonesians, who watched two failed C705 launches from his vessels in 2016), having multiple missiles hurtling towards, even if they aren’t the greatest quality, still puts you in a reactive mode.

Thankfully, this story has a better ending than most. In 2020 the Navy asked Raytheon to re-develop the maritime strike tomahawk. Not surprisingly, since this had been done once before, it rolled out quickly in 2021, and made front page news today.

This proves a much bigger point though: decline is a choice. We never had to give up long range missiles. Even if we would have kept them in low production, we could have easily updated the design over the 90s and 2000s to keep a competitive edge over any adversary. Instead, we pissed away our advantage for years and are now playing catch up. We chose to decline, but thankfully we’re slowly choosing to do otherwise.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

The BBC Chibnall / Davies BBC Doctor Who Completely Explained In Under A Minute Update: A Pleasant Surprise

Posted: December 9, 2023 by datechguy in doctor who, entertainment
Tags: ,

You had better sign those, they’re the ones paying your salary.

Jimmy Stewart 1968 on the set of Bandalero to Raquel Welsh when he heard her complain about signing autographs.

In an interview released this week Russell T Davies, who was briefly the great fan hope for the return of the Doctor Who franchise to what the fans loved for decades made it clear to all that this is not the case.

Russell T Davies has said that new Doctor Who episodes will upset die-hard fans of the science fiction franchise.

The Welsh screenwriter and television producer, 60, discussed the new release, which will be the centrepiece of the BBC’s Christmas Day line-up.

It would seem rather odd that Davies who was instrumental in the revival of the series that I’ve enjoyed for four decades and, like many other fans passed on that enjoyment to our children to be something in common as a family even as we’ve grown older, would be so callus as to spit in our faces and throw us away. But last night as I slept the explanation finally came to me, the truth of what Doctor Who is. It’s a rather ironic explanation that can be summed up in a just a few seconds below the fold:

(more…)

CAIR: What Are You Going to Believe, Me or Your Own Eyes?

Posted: December 8, 2023 by datechguy in Israel, Israel vs Hamas
Tags: , ,

Katherine McClintock: [walking out of her bedroom to find G.W. and Mrs. Warren at the bottom of the stairs] What’s going on here?

George Washington McLintock: [Intoxicated, with Mrs. Warren sitting on his lap] Now Katherine, are you going to believe what you see, or what I tell you?

McLintock! 1963

One of the fact of life is that people reap what they sow.

Here is what CAIR has sown:

and remember what he’s praising:

Now consider, he’s not equivocating, he not massaging the message, he’s blunting saying this to a Muslim audience that is lapping it up.

Given what we’ve seen in the west I guess he figured they reached the point where it’s not a problem to say what they actually think…

…or not:

The White House is frantically trying to distance itself from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) after its executive director Nihad Awad claimed he was “happy” to watch the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack unfold. Speaking at the 16th Annual Convention for Palestine in the U.S. on Nov. 24, he said that the people of Gaza were merely “breaking the siege”

Now in response to the incredible backlash CAIR has put out the following statement:

Far be it for me to tell you what to believe so feel free to look at the video and read that statement and decide who is telling the truth and who is not?

Older Entries
Newer Entries