Archive for the ‘doctor who’ Category

Doctor Who The Star Beast Review (Plus Bonus Children in Need Destination: Skaro Review) UPDATE: Oh Please

Posted: November 27, 2023 by datechguy in culture, doctor who, entertainment
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It’s been a long time since I reviewed a Doctor Who Episode and most of those reviews are only found on the wayback machine as I’ve not bothered to retrieve them from the old blog so we’ll make this short and to the point:

Plot: The cute and cuddly Meep fleeing pursuit has fallen right into the hands of the Temple/Noble family. What danger does he bring, besides the Doctor?

Writing: Russell T Davies adapts this story from a 4th Doctor Comic Book story (You can read that here). It had actually been already adapted into a Big Finish audio four years ago by Allen Barnes staring Tom Baker (you can buy that here). Being familiar with both my take might be different than others without that familiarity. Given the limitations of squeezing’s the story down to 60 minutes of TV rather than the much less expensive visuals from the comics or from the imagination generated by the audio AND given the complexities of fitting this into a newly returned David Tennant he does an admirable job. There are a lot of balls in the air and he pretty much keeps them in said air. There is one elephant in the room that needs to be discussed but we’ll deal with that in a bit.

Acting: After four years of limbo David Tennant shows how it’s done again and Catherine Tate has not lost either a comic or a dramatic step. Nor has either lost a tiny bit of the chemistry they exhibited from day 1. The supporting cast does a good job as a whole but Jacqueline King REALLY shines and threatens to steal every scene she is in. I think Miriam Margoles overdid it as Beep but again you have the limits of squeezing a long story into a shorter time frame so the character couldn’t develop so it might not have been a reflection on her.

Best moment: The Trial great stuff very doctory.

Worst moment: The coffee business, seriously he couldn’t come up with better than that? Lame.

Funniest Moment: Donna’s blaming the Doctor for giving the money way

Ah HA Moment: Donna’s realization that she gave away the fortune to be like the Doctor harkened to Rory’s moment in Vampires of Venice where he notes people take stupid risks to impress him.

Oh Brother moment: The Meep pronouns business, was tempted to shut it off right there.

The elephant in the room: I didn’t mind the transgender child nor even how it was handled in the dynamics of the family. It seemed for a moment like Davies was reverting to his 2005-2012 form keeping making his “social agenda” points in the background while concentrating on story but alas no this is 2023 and not 2005 and like the Jew hating anti-Semitic Muslims of England who would not have dreamed of being so open about their “death to Israel, death to Jews” back then Russell Davies apparently feels freed from having to hide is social agenda and thus makes not just Donna having a child the basis for saving day but having a “non-binary” child being it. In fact the whole “you would have gotten this if you were a woman speech” was the type of in your face preaching that Davies would never have tried decades ago. Alas that means no change from the last three years except we get to be preached to with a higher quality writing and a better cast

I strongly suspected this would be the case and thus was not so much disgusted as disappointed.

Bottom line: I really thing The Star Beast suffered from the format. If this has been made as a two part story from the Tennant Era I think Davies would have done a better job with it and given more time to develop characters from the Noble family to Beep itself that would have at least diluted the preaching. An original story would have been a better choice for the reboot but taking it as it was my judgement is this:

If you grade the episode based on the last five years of the series it’s clearly better than anything fans have seen since the last episode of the Capaldi years and many will react accordingly but alas I’ve been following the series for since the I was in high school (graduated in 1981) so I’m grading it on based on actual Doctor Who. It’s pretty much a lower mid range Tennant episode say Unicorn and the Wasp or 42.

You know type you watch once or grab a scene to repeat online but not the one you’re dying to repeat or seek out. Only the return of Tennant & Tate make it memorable.

3 3/4 stars of five but I’d bet real money if Davies had another 30-40 minutes to play with it would have reached 4 or maybe even 4 1/2.

Bonus review Children in Need Doctor Who special Destination: Skaro: (takes place before the Star Beast) As it’s only 5 minutes long I’ll include it in its entirety at the end:

Plot: You all know that the Daleks were the Mark 4 Travel Machines, but what ever happened to the Mark 3?:

Writing: Davies mini episode is as close as a primer to how to write a Doctor Who episode as it gets. If there is a flaw in this mini episode I don’t see it.

Acting: Julian Bleach hits it out of the Park as Davros and plays the straight man to perfection. Mawaan Rizwan was hilarious and David Tennant brings back his Doctor in style. Again as good as it gets.

Best Moment: The look on Mr Castavillian (Rizwan’s) face when Davros re-enters the room and sees the Dalek.

Worst Moment: I really don’t get the liking of “exterminate” as a phrase

Ah HA moment: The “Canons are rupturing” is a playful homage to the fans pissed of at Chibnall redoing the entire canon of the show.

WTF moment: The tip of the multi claw adaptable thing should not pierce the “wood” of the TARDIS shell

Hmmm moment: It’s plain that the Tardis interior redesign revealed in the new show (kind of meh) has not taken place yet from the glimpses we see.

Bottom line: Five Stars, Worth watching again and again and it doesn’t get any less entertaining the 17th time around.

UPDATE: Being a sane and rational man that this episode was set before Davros’ accident that made him into the character we know to cut down on the costs involved in the makeup etc for the Children in need special.

And then I saw this video from the Critical Drinker which had a clip from Russell T Davies saying that this was in fact a Davros redesign:

“There is a problem with the Davros of old in that he’s a wheelchair users who is evil and I had problems with that. “

Seriously?

Christmas musings from an alienated “bah humbug” conservative in a Blue State

Posted: December 25, 2022 by John Ruberry in Blame Trump, blogs, culture, doctor who, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics, Uncomfortable Truths
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Blogger on the right with a friend near Augusta, Georgia in 2021

By John Ruberry

Last week my wife was invited to a party hosted by one of my daughter’s friends. 

Who wasn’t? Me.

There was some-and-forth, but my daughter explained that the host, who has been to my home and whose mother I’ve known for years through an old job, didn’t think I’d be “comfortable” there. After some probing, it became clear that it was my conservative political views that were the problem for them. 

I pressed my daughter, “What kind of ogre do they think I am?” Well, I muscled my way into an invite–after all, I’ve lived all of my life in the Chicago area, so I know all about muscling–and do you know what? I showed up to the party. The guests found me whimsical and charming. In other words–I was lovable myself. 

Over on Facebook I’ve been unfriended by many old friends–now unfriends–and at least one relative over my posts there. 

In addition to my Sunday blog entries on this site I have my own blog, Marathon Pundit. The rollicking comment threads on my Facebook page–or more accurately, argument threads–bring traffic to my blog, and sometimes, here at Da Tech Guy. Friends–in the flesh ones that is–as well as co-workers, look forward to the next tiff on my Facebook page. I’m reminded of that constantly. And as I am now in my sixth decade, my real career, parts of which involve writing, is winding down. Moreso than ever, as William Shakespeare said to the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who, “Words are my trade.” Well, maybe not completely, but I do earn money blogging and I hope to earn more. 

Hey, I gotta eat.

And I absolutely do believe in what I write. And I voted for Donald J. Trump four times–twice in the Illinois Republican Primary and twice in the general election. I’m proud of those votes and I’m still 80/20 in regard to the former president. 

About those old friends: Many of them are carrying on without me. Sadly, but I suspect they see me as someone who has transformed himself into an SNL caricature of a conservative, a cross between the Muppets’ Sam Eagle and Archie Bunker, but sans the bigotry on the last one. 

I have long ears–and because of the blog–a long tongue. Oh, I stole that last line from Lawrence of Arabia. 

The invitations to get-togethers have stopped coming from most of them. I’ve been cancelled.

Bah humbug.

Oh, please don’t worry about me. I have a wife a daughter who love me. And many new friends. And I’m still in touch with some of those old friends. During my most recent vacations, in Alaska and Georgia, I re-connected with two of them–and I met a third friend in Texas, who I met through my blogging. That’s me up there on the right last year, with a high school friend who lives near Augusta, Georgia, who I hadn’t seen since we graduated so many years ago. That moment is my favorite of the current decade. 

A new friend–we met through Twitter–invited me for coffee when he visited Illinois this spring.

Even if I was really even partially Sam Eagle/Archie Bunker, your humble blogger is so much more. I work in an industry, automotive, that utterly fascinates people and I have numerous tips in regard to buying a car–without being ripped off. Your Marathon Pundit, currently nursing an injured hip, is really a runner. I’ve run 33 marathons. In addition to the blogging, I have another side hustle, stock photography. On the job, my real one, I’ve showed clients my portfolio, a couple of them are now selling pics online too.

I’m not a one trick eagle. 

Yet it is only Sam Eagle/Archie Bunker the liberals only see. Perhaps that is all they want to see. Such is life as a conservative in Deep Blue Illinois. 

Maybe I am the bad guy. On the flipside, I don’t believe so. According to a couple of polls, one here and another one here, it is the denizens of the left who are more likely to unfriend someone on social media than conservatives over politics. Oh yeah, liberals. The ones who so often have “Coexist” bumper stickers on their cars and “Hate Has No Home Here” signs on their lawn. 

Everyone is welcome in their world. Except for folks who don’t share their political beliefs. As for myself, I’ve never unfriended anyone on social media because of their political views.

Well, this is not the Christmas message you are accustomed to, but please let me reiterate, I am fine–please don’t tell Mrs. Marathon Pundit to hide the sharp objects. 

Christmas is a time for welcoming others. In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Scrooge’s nephew always invited the miser to his home for Christmas dinner. 

Next Sunday is New Year’s Day. As Robert Burns wrote, “Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never thought upon.”

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. 

And God bless us, everyone.

Never forget.

Now it’s time for me to get dressed in my finest and head over to my sister’s home for a Christmas feast.

A special thanks goes to that friend in Georgia for permission to use the above photograph for this blog entry.

John Ruberry regularly blogs from the Chicago area at Marathon Pundit.

Doctor Who New Old Doctor That’s Weird and Likely Won’t Work

Posted: October 27, 2022 by datechguy in culture, doctor who, entertainment, Vive L'Empereur
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11th Doctor: I never forget a face

The Curator (4th Doctor): I know you don’t and over time you might revisit a few, but just the old favorites eh?.

Doctor Who Day of the Doctor 2013

As you might know I have not watched a new episode of Doctor Who since the last scene of Peter Capaldi run

Jodi Whitiaker’s Doctor was a disaster for the ratings, for the sales of the show, for the merchandizing and according to my oldest who did in fact watch those episodes was an era with the writing so bad that according to him, A Doctor Who fan all his life, only three episodes of the run might be recognized as Doctor Who Episodes.

Like the Sylvester McCoy era it was all about the agenda and ignoring the fans even to the point of rewriting the canon of the series. In fact it was so bad that they decided that when the current showrunner left with Ms Whitaker they would bring back Russell T. Davies who was the original showrunner of the revival in the hope to get people to start watching again.

But a lot of people like myself still weren’t interested. I understood that Davies would while still writing woke (and believe me his era was plenty woke but it wasn’t in your face and with the exception of the whole “President Obama is going to fix the economy” BS in his final episode “woke” took 3rd place to providing fans with good writing and good characters.

Thus I had absolutely no intention of bothering to watch what was to follow and was content to, in my mind, have Capaldi’s Doctor decide to die, and I suspect a awful lot of those who left the series behind likely had the same idea. So what do you do to gain the interest of those who walked away and took their eyeballs and wallets with them?

Well apparently you do this: (Rather large spoiler)

I didn’t watch the episode so I had no idea this had happened that until I saw something on Youtube.

This was a complete shock to me as it likely was to everyone else who wasn’t in the know. I think it’s in terms of marketing, rather smart. It’s an attempt to get people like me who didn’t want anything to do with the Jodi Whitaker era to give it a shot.

How bad did they want to get away from the Jodi Whitaker era? They wanted to get away from it so bad that for the very first time ever the Doctor’s Clothes regenerated into David Tennant’s clothes so that there would be absolutely NO reminder of the Jodi Whitaker on screen when Tennant, the favorite Doctor for most fans of the new era (Mine was Smith) returned.

In fact think about the episode itself assuming you’ve watched it. Apparently the only thing anybody is talking about concerning the series was cameos by the 1st, 5th, 6th, 7th & 8th doctors which was a good idea in terms of drawing some eyeballs but was a really bad idea because all those cameos underscored just how much better each one of those characters were as the Doctor than Whitaker’s.

I must admit I find myself wanting to see the three David Tennant Episodes they are planning but I may not be in the majority. The good folks at Nerdrotic did a livestream reviewing the show and their reaction in the fan world seems otherwise.

As Nerdrotic put it at the start of his Doctor Who Livestream on the finale:

This is obligation and we’ll certainly talk about the VERY long episode made longer because I was stealing the iplayer and I had to refresh it every five ten minutes for it to work. Yeah she’s gone, it’s over. I know everybody’s going to be excited about David Tennant and then Russell T Davies coming back in two years but I’m not. There were some nice little moments, none of them included Jodi Whitaker the first female Doctor played by Jodi Whitaker Who will now be the last female doctor played by Jodi Whitaker who we will lovingly called Dr. Karen SHE DEAD so now that’s good finally gone.

And that was pretty much the nicest thing they had to say about it in two hours.

Dave Cullen had nothing better to say on his show either.

In conclusion I believe it doesn’t matter if they bring back one of the most popular Doctors in the form of David Tennant. In my opinion the damage to Doctor Who’s lore and it’s legacy is already done.

Will the gamble work. Will it be too little too late and will they decide that the 1st Doctor is William Hartnell after all?

And of course the Doctor as Mr. Cullen reminds us after Tennant the next doctor is going to be portrayed as a Gay Black Doctor with a Trans companion. I kid you not.

Well that’s going to bring the folks back who didn’t want to have an agenda shoved down their throats is it? In fact the whole idea that you will have three episodes of Tennant with Catherine Tate returning as Donna (and hopefully Bernard Cribbins too if he’s physically able) recreating the glory days will, in my opinion draw an even bigger contrast to the in your face gay/trans agenda pushed on a show that was a nationwide English icon.

Given that the woke is dying and losing all over the world maybe they will change their minds. Perhaps this is to give the BBC time to see if the shift is permanent and settle for the first black Doctor rather than pushing a LBBTQRSTURWXYZ card in 2024 and attempt to make the show right again.

I doubt it, the show. No matter how much the country rejects this agenda, the folks in charge at the BBC have embraced it fully and unless and until their own jobs are in jeopardy the agenda trumps all.

I think Nerdrotic & Dave Cullen are right, I think the Tennant gamble will fail to save the show but I’ll give the three episodes a shot to see if it’s Doctor Who or if it’s the Woke agenda delivered by a familiar face.

I have a feeling it’s the latter.

Update: Was not aware that Bernard Cribbins had died in July but it is possible that he shot scenes before his death.

Mike Myers’ Netflix debacle, The Pentaverate, attacks good taste and conservatives

Posted: May 15, 2022 by John Ruberry in comedy, culture, doctor who, entertainment
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By John Ruberry

After a long day at work earlier this month I clicked on the “Surprise Me” feature on Netflix. What popped up was Mike Myers’ new vehicle, The Pentaverate.

“Well,” I said to myself, “this might be pretty good.” 

In fact, The Pentaverate doesn’t even measure up to “pretty bad.” The six episode limited series is one of the worst shows I’ve suffered through. Oh, somehow I managed to view a couple episodes of The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer. I know about awful.

Warning: There are numerous spoilers and some rather disgusting things that I will mention in my review of this Netflix series.

The origin of The Pentaverate dates back to a throwaway line from Myers’ second film, So I Married an Axe Murderer, where the father of Myers’ lead character, also played by Myers, claims that a secret society, the Pentaverate, a five-man cabal, which at one time included Colonel Sanders as a member, rules the world. In this series narrator Jeremy Irons tells us, the original members of the Pentaverate discovered in 1347, contrary to the belief of the Catholic Church, it was fleas that spread the bubonic plague. 

As the first episode begins, the newest member of the group of five, Dr. Hobart Clark (Keegan-Michael Key), a scientist, is accepted into the Pentaverate after he is kidnapped. Apparently, he is the first non-white fellow of the all-male group, replacing a member who mysteriously died. The other members are played by Myers. Lord Lordington, an elderly Englishman, Bruce Baldwin, an Australian media mogul, who of course is based on Rupert Murdoch, Shep Gordon, a manager of various rock acts, a real person who is the subject of a documentary directed by Myers, and Mishu Ivanov, a Russian oligarch and Vladimir Putin crony.

Warning! Not-safe-for-work language in the trailer.

But Myers isn’t done with his roles. The lead character of The Pentaverate is Ken Scarborough, a television reporter who wears plaid sportscoats; he is a quirky throwback from the 1970s who does man-on-the-street interviews of other oddballs, while overshadowing them. Scarborough works for, wait for it, Toronto-based CACA news. Yep, caca. 

The other four Pentaverate members manufacture a story that Dr. Clark, who was invited into the secret society because they believe he can reverse climate change, is dead. Clark’s phony passing occurs while attempting to mimic an internet video fad–kissing your own anus. Clark’s room at Pentaverate headquarters is guarded by a sasquatch, who immediately defecates outside the scientist’s door. 

In addition to a Shrek cameo, Myers plays two other characters, internet personality Rex Smith, a stand-in for Alex Jones, and Anthony Lansdowne, a conspiracy theorist from New Hampshire. 

Besides being an assault on good taste, The Pentaverate is an attack on right-wingers, with the implied message that all conservatives are conspiracy whackos like Lansdowne. He is a believer, or has been a believer, in QAnon, Pizzagate, and the Illuminati. His last words as he falls to his death is, “But what about her emails?” 

Lansdowne, in his bumper-sticker laden van, which not surprisingly has a malfunctioning portable toilet, drives Scarborough and his pre-woke Doctor Who-like young female companion, Reilly Clayton (Lydia West) to New York City, which looks nothing like today’s NYC, but more like your standard Doctor Who “future metropolis.” Scarborough, recently fired by CACA, is convinced by Clayton and Lansdowne to infiltrate Pentaverate headquarters, and he does so after a painful penis tug initiation. 

Clark, following an intimate evening with the Pentaverate’s executive assistant Patty Davis (Debi Mazar) in the Moon Room studio–did the Pentaverate fake the moon landings?–suddenly dies, this time for real. He is promptly replaced by casino billionaire Skip Cho (Ken Jeong). Oh, I have never thought Jeong was funny. Jeong recently showed his true political colors after childishly storming off the set of The Masked Singer after Rudy Giuliani was revealed as a contestant.

Myers seemingly hasn’t emotionally moved on from being an 11-year-old. Flatulence jokes are among the things that ruined his cinema take on Dr. Seuss’ Cat in the Hat, a children’s film, by the way. Scatological so-called humor also undermined another Myers movie bomb, The Love Guru. 

Outside of Myers’ fading fame, why did Netflix greenlight this debacle? Could it be that woke Netflix executives fell in love with The Pentaverate’s snide attacks on conservatives, who they probably believe are personified by Smith and Lansdowne? I have liberal friends. Really, I do. And many of them insist that I take marching orders from Alex Jones.

Here’s a tip for Netflix and Myers: the first rule of comedy is that comedies need to be funny.

Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022. Its stock value plummeted 35-percent last month. Yes, when you go woke you go broke. And I can’t think of a single Netflix dramatic series that is aimed at conservatives. Longmire was the closest show I can think of, but production of it ended in 2017, and Longmire was originally an A&E offering. And as I wrote in last week’s review of Ozark, that otherwise quite enjoyable show contorted itself to find ways to attack Republicans.

Over 70 million Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2020. That’s a lot of viewers, Netflix. We don’t live in vans with clogged toilets. We own televisions. 

Cloying use of easter eggs, that is, references to other works that do nothing to advance the story or add laughs–assuming of course there is even one laugh in The Pentaverate–is also another problem here. Winks to other Myers’ works, along with yet another tired replay of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as Game of Thrones, are simply annoying. Rob Lowe, a veteran of several Myers movies, makes an unnecessary appearance.

Myers’ acting, outside of his sympathetic portrayal of Scarborough, is subpar. In his review of The Cat in the Hat, Roger Ebert noticed that at times Myers sounded a bit like his Linda Richman “Coffee Talk” character from SNL. The use of convincing accents is supposed to be one of Myers’ strengths, but his Lansdowne character’s accent, rather than sounding like what you’ll hear from a rustic New Englander, varies from a Canadian to a New Yorker style of speech–that is, when Lansdowne isn’t coming across like Wayne Campbell from Wayne’s World.

Oh, when there is a crack within the five members of the Pentaverate, who do you think is behind it? Why of course! It’s the casino billionaire and the Murdoch stand-in. 

I hated The Pentaverate. Hated, hated, hated. If you have any sense of taste or decency, you will hate it too. 

You have been warned. 

Oh, if you think I am just a grumpy old man with a minority opinion on this actual sh*t show, as of May 15, the average critic score on Rotten Tomatoes is just 20 percent. Only once in the last week have I noticed The Pentaverate ranking as a top-ten most viewed program on Netflix. And based on the CGI and the A-List (to some people) cast, I imagine Netflix wasted a lot of money on this fiasco.

The Pentaverate is rated TV-MA for full frontal (possibly with use of prosthetics) nudity, animals engaged in sex, violence, suicide, adult situations, foul language, and scatological references. Well, at least no one smokes in it. 

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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