Amazons are to Kryptonians as Wonder Woman is To …?

January 9, 2014 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ 2 Comments

Here is the scene.

We have Christopher Nolan’s Batman, who sounds like a chain smoker requiring subtitles, and Zack Snyder’s Superman, who might as well be renamed Collateral Damage. They will be in the next Collateral–I mean Man of Steel film (which might as well, from my understanding, be called Batman Vs. Superman). Just from my tone itself, you can already figure out how I feel about that. Based on how Superman leaves Metropolis at the end of Man of Steel, and also considering that Batman is going to be played by another actor, it already feels clunky in and of itself. But perhaps they can salvage something. Ben Affleck could possibly do a good job representing the Dark Knight and perhaps Snyder’s Superman might start to actually symbolize the House of El Kryptonian symbol of hope on his chest.

But all right. Fine. At least we are going to see a live-action Wonder Woman, played by Gal Gadot, on the big screen for the first time since, well, ever as all the other iterations have been television shows, pilots and a direct-to-video animated film. I mean, Wonder Woman’s presence in this very film can be seen as a segue into her finally having her own film. Perhaps DC and Warner Bros. believe that having her in this crossover will cement her presence in this gritty, contemporary, realistic version of the DC Universe or build up her market presence to the point of thinking that they will make an equal amount of box office returns from her as they would her male counterparts. All right. Fine. I would have loved to see that standalone Wonder Woman film directed by Joss Whedon we’ve been hearing about for years now, and I thought maybe that this still doesn’t rule it out.

And then this rumour came out.

Take a moment to read that article and let the prospect of it sink in. You know, it’s funny. In some ways this potential origin is an interesting interpretation. Wonder Woman and the Amazons, at least in one retelling of their origins, were created directly from the Earth by Hippolyta and the gods. In the spirit of the ancient Greek myths they come from, the Amazons literally “sprang from the soil” of their land. In other words, DC’s Amazons were not born of man and woman and neither were the Kryptonians if you look at Man of Steel and some Superman origin reinterpretations. Also if you want to interpret the Amazons from a scientific, as opposed to a supernatural, perspective it makes sense that advanced genetic engineering over time is how they can reproduce without a male breeding partner.

And you know, it is very clever to think about the descendants of some of the lost Kryptonian colonies evolving in this way, adapting to another world, making “truth-telling” technology in the form of a lasso, Invisible aircraft, and becoming something different from Superman is all very well and good except that these should not be Amazons …

And Wonder Woman should not be a descendant of watered-down Kryptonians.

Let’s put aside, for the moment, the question as to why Kryptonian settlers would feel the need to engineer solely female descendants over time and the fact that there is absolutely no reason as to why their descendants would become less powerful under Earth’s sun when you consider that Superman–first generation Kryptonian or no–lives on Earth for many years and only somehow gets stronger for it. We can look at continuity. I mean, you would totally think in Man of Steel that Zod or Jor-El would have known there was a colony on Earth and made some mention of it. There was also an old Kryptonian surveyor ship on Earth too that didn’t seem related to anything aside from being a plot-point to allow Superman to access his father’s AI. And when the Phantom Zone soldiers, and Superman himself, were causing chaos and havoc in Metropolis … I don’t know, you’d think that Wonder Woman would have stepped in at some point?

I mean, we can explain that away too. Perhaps the Amazons are on Paradise Island and don’t want to interfere with the dysfunctional nature of “Man’s World.” Perhaps they tried to a long time ago and they, and perhaps their male and female ancestors, were considered to be gods before that “experiment” didn’t work out. Maybe this is Wonder Woman’s first ever time away from Paradise Island, or its equivalent, and she has some kind of mandate that may, or may not, be like the one she has in the comics. I can even understand that DC and Snyder want to make a more contemporary “realistic” take on all DC superhero origins and come up with yet more “realistic” interpretations of these stories. I mean, it’s no accident that Snyder was the director of the film adaptation of Watchmen: the comic that was central to making an era of cynical and Revisionist superhero mythology. Ever since that comic and others like it, that gritty, hard realism has become a genre for comics and film.

But look at it like this. Despite the grittiness added to The Dark Knight trilogy, which admittedly didn’t take much, Batman’s origins are pretty much the same: Bruce Wayne’s parents die by crime and he decides to become Batman. Despite the grittiness and outright destruction in Man of Steel, Superman’s origins are also pretty much the same: Krypton is destroyed and Superman is sent to Earth and is raised by the Kents and so on. So the male orphans lose their parents, gain their surrogate parents, and go on. But Wonder Woman, who is one of many daughters born from what seems to be a single mother isn’t a demigoddess anymore. She isn’t born from the clay of the Earth. Wonder Woman isn’t born from a race of immortal women gifted with wisdom and power by the gods with their own traditions, cultural artifacts, and philosophy. She isn’t different from Superman with her own background and advantages.

No. Instead, after having stripped her world and origins of myth and magic (thus eliminating it entirely from the DC Universe on film) Wonder Woman is essentially a less-powerful genetically-modified descendant of Kryptonians and not nearly as strong as Superman.

And I know. No one in the DC Universe is as powerful or as skilled with that power as Superman. But the fact is: Wonder Woman has her own origin story. She had her own unique background that is completely unrelated to Krypton. Wonder Woman stands on her own. So while the idea of the Amazons or something like them being genetically-modified descendants of Kryptonians is clever, I’d rather it be someone else’s back-story as opposed to Wonder Woman’s. Would it seriously kill them to try something else? For instance, Paradise Island itself often feels like it exists in another interrelated, but separate reality from Earth’s. Perhaps millennia ago, there was something like magic a long time ago and the beings known as gods and their creations fled to this other reality when the world began to change. Maybe magic is the science and physics of Paradise Island’s dimension and Wonder Woman is sent back into “Man’s World” to address a cosmic balance that is in danger of being even disrupted further than it already is. Yes, this example of what else could be done does sound like a comic book idea, but for a comic book film I’d think that sort of logic would make sense and it would keep Wonder Woman’s story, and importance, relatively intact.

It’s almost like DC and Snyder want to adapt the mentality behind the Thor movies to this character and the world they are trying to remake while not realizing that the Asgardians were already given their science-fictional origins in the comics from whence they came. Perhaps it is a marketing ploy, or their idea of how to make Wonder Woman “relatable” to a particular demographic. I don’t really know. But I believe that in what feels to be an immensely clunky and haphazard film to come that Wonder Woman should stand on her own merits and I sincerely hope that sigil of the House of El can be applied to this rumour and not to the Princess of the Amazons.

UPDATE:

Like mythology, a rumour spreads like wildfire: to the point where you don’t always know where it begins. Unfortunately, in this case, we at G33kPr0n have been made aware of where this rumour began and it was not from a reputable source. According to one commenter SuperheroEnthusiast, who was kind enough to link us to this following article (http://www.newsarama.com/19980-wonder-woman-is-kryptonian…), the rumour of Wonder Woman being a descendant of Kryptonians is not something that sanctioned by DC, Warner Bros. or anyone associated with them. Instead, it simply an opinion/theory by a Blog poster named Bill “Jett” Ramey. You can find Jett’s original post, who is in no way affiliated with the film project, at his site Batman-On-Film (http://www.batman-on-film.com/BOF-Mailbag_1-1-14.html). The fact of the matter is that our post on this subject was always based on a theory: a theory that became so widespread that it caught the attention and circulated through many other online magazines. Once again, thank you SuperheroEnthusiast for bringing this to our attention.

I Don’t Want to Go: An Adventure in Space and Time

December 2, 2013 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

There will be spoilers.

While Doctor Who has always been about traveling through time, it’s in Mark Gatniss’ docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time that we find ourselves at the point where it all began.

But just like the program itself, An Adventure in Space and Time neither begins nor continues in a completely linear fashion. The film starts off with William Hartnell, played by David Bradley, contemplating a blue police box in front of him, in his car in the night as a policeman asks him what he’s doing there. Hartnell looks far and away as the events of the film, from 1966 to 1963 and back again, unfold on the original TARDIS console’s counter display.

Before watching this docudrama, I didn’t know much about how Doctor Who was made beyond some very superficial details. We see Verity Lambert attempt to function, and gain recognition as a producer in an “old-boys’ dominated field. She finds solidarity with the British-Indian director Waris Hussein as he faces a background of racial discrimination. I will also admit that I did wonder why BBC executive producer Sydney Newman didn’t have a British accent and seemed to sound more American than anything else, until I realized at the end of the movie that he came from Canada.

It was also very fascinating to watch the development of Doctor Who: from the rudimentary production arrangements, the pioneering of certain forms of cameras to deal with the program, and all that difference between a character called “Dr. Who” and The Doctor. “Dr. Who” is a character that Newman envisions, and Lambert and Hussein sell to William Hartnell who is tired of playing soldier and “tough-guy” roles but he is not The Doctor as of yet.

As for William Hartnell himself, he is portrayed as both a cantankerous old man with a bit of a temper and a lack of patience towards stagehands and, at one point his own granddaughter, but at the same time he is a friend to his co-actors, emotionally attached to Verity Lambert, and always seeking the role of the old man with the twinkle in his eye.

His “Dr. Who” is at first gruff and cold to a point where it both bothers Newman and himself. Perhaps some of this dissatisfaction comes initially from his hesitation in attempting to portray a children’s show’s protagonist. After a career of playing soldiers and authorities, attempting to become a children’s hero might have seemed a considerable stretch to him. Yet An Adventure in Space and Time makes it more than that. It shows a man in poor health, in his mid-fifties wanting to do something more and different, to no longer be type-cast while at the same time trying to keep up with a hectic television actor’s schedule and his own professional standards. For instance, it really bothers Hartnell that the scenery of the TARDIS doesn’t even exist yet when he is rehearsing his lines in the studio and it takes a special kind of iron-willed effort on Verity Lambert’s part to make sure that the TARDIS and its console room happens.

But once the console room happens, we see that transition from “Dr. Who” into The Doctor, even if the producers and staff still refer to him as the former. I will admit it is still hard for me at times to look at David Bradley as William Hartnell, or at least with regards to his voice as the First Doctor. Hartnell has a higher voice that, while deep, has a trill at the end of his sentences that Bradley doesn’t seem to master. It could also be, based on what is left of the First Doctor’s episodes that his put-on voice sounds different on the audio at the time. It might also be that David Bradley’s previous roles like Argus Filch from Harry Potter and Walder Frey in Game of Thrones has biased me against him. However, what he may not completely capture in sound, he definitely expresses in spirit and presence. I suppose the difficulty here, at least for me, is that you have to remember that this is the story of the program’s production and William Hartnell’s role in it. This is the story of Doctor Who, not just William Hartnell, nor the character of The Doctor.

Nevertheless, the docudrama makes it abundantly clear just how close this whole argument came to becoming a moot point. From the bad conditions of their studio and its sprinkler system, to a lack of scenery, as well as Lambert’s authority being questioned and challenged, their first episode airing on the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and even Newman’s old insistence that Doctor Who be a show without “robots or bug-eyed monsters,” there were many instances where this program could have ended after the very first episode: becoming just another obscure, failed, black and white science-fiction oddity.

As the film progresses, we also get to see the development of the early Doctor Who fandom and Hartnell’s growing love for being The Doctor. He even interacts with children in the role off-screen and seems to enjoy it. But this docudrama is not ordinary. It isn’t linear or solely based in reality as we know it. Before it becomes too prosaic, there are at least three moments that hit me directly in the heart as a Doctor Who fan and went beyond my expectations. The first is that point when, after Hartnell is told about the concept of Regeneration (making so that, indeed, no one is irreplaceable and completing the idea of The Doctor as opposed to “Dr. Who”) he breaks down and begins to cry, saying, “I don’t want to go.” It makes me honestly wonder if Hartnell actually said this in real life and if in 2010 one Russell T. Davies wrote it into “The End of Time” for one David Tennant.

The second moment that got me was the realization that Hartnell actually knew, perhaps more than the new generation of production crewmen and staff, how to make the prop of the TARDIS console work. And then, there was the last moment which I am not going to spoil. You should definitely watch this film. I will say, however, that in that one fourth-wall breaking moment at the end Hartnell realizes that The Doctor will continue long after his successor Patrick Troughton and that even though it is fan-service, it’s fan-service of the most beautiful kind.

Not too long ago, in “The Day of the Doctor” we Whovians discovered the existence of an incarnation of The Doctor that sacrificed his name to become a soldier. Two days before the 50th Anniversary episode we are reintroduced to a man who was tired of playing soldiers and wanted to portray something different, to a show that became something more and with many great people behind it created a legacy, one that doesn’t want to go, and one that is still with us even now.

CORRECTION: John F. Kennedy’s assassination happened one day before “An Unearthly Child” premiered, not on the same day.

Everybody Lives: A Review of The Day of The Doctor

November 25, 2013 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

I am going to quote River Song again when I say, “Spoilers.”

So for those of you who haven’t put on your Tenth Doctor’s 3D glasses this weekend or this coming week please don’t read any further.

Before The Day, there was The Night, and then Last Day. I am time-stamped on G33kpr0n in What Will Happen on The Day of The Doctor? as stating that it is quite impossible to predict a Doctor Who episode, never mind the 50th Anniversary Special. But I did make a few theories, just as I did in What Is a Doctor and When Does He Stop Running? in my Mythic Bios Blog.

I am not upset that my possible theories were wrong, not really. I went into watching “The Day of The Doctor,” on Space at 2:50 pm with no other expectations save for the fact that we were going to see how Gallifrey died. I mean, this is what we’ve been told since 2005. Gallifrey is no more. Gallifrey falls. The Doctor is the last of his kind and he keeps losing his Companions over and again. As the last of the Time Lords, The Doctor is alone. From 2005 to the present, this is the story that we have been told and that we have seen play out time and again. But just as we all had our theories about how this would all go down, there was what we thought and then there was what happened, what will happen, or what is happening right now to those of you watching this for the first time.

The episode begins with the original 1963 Doctor Who introduction sequence, complete in black and white, and so close to the junkyard owned by one I.M. Foreman where the adventures of The Doctor began. After Clara leaves from her new work at a school, where The Doctor’s first Companions may have once taught his granddaughter, to go see him and U.N.I.T. is in so much of a rush to get The Doctor to help him that they basically tow away him and his TARDIS by helicopter, The Doctor finds his past catching up with him.

U.N.I.T., led by the Brigadier’s daughter Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, brings The Doctor to their Under-Gallery, where Queen Elizabeth the First placed all paintings deemed “not fit for public consumption” to see a sample of Time Lord-painting. This painting is a depiction of the last day of The Last Great Time War and the fall of Gallifrey’s second city Arcadia. Suddenly, The Doctor remembers that incarnation of himself that he doesn’t like to think about, the one he and Clara saw again in “The Name of The Doctor” when he crossed into his own time stream. We are treated to a look at the three-dimensional painting, which is bigger on the inside, of a golden, blood-red ravaged Gallifrey…

And then we are right in the War.

Murray Gold’s “The Dark and Endless Dalek Night” plays grandiose and horrifying in the background as Dalek saucers and Time Lord defences battle it out. But we see something new on Gallifrey’s surface. In “The End of Time,” all we saw was the Time Lord High Council in fascist red and gold proclaiming what would be the Ultimate Sanction, or the obliteration of the universe to assure their ascension as beings of pure consciousness. The Doctor made it clear that the Time Lords had been completely corrupted and irredeemable by battle lust and war. I mean, think about for a few moments. Imagine a whole people that can Regenerate and manipulate the laws of Time itself. Now think about Rassilon, the founder of Time Lord society and the inventor of much of their technology, removing the thirteen Regeneration limit and with modified Battle TARDISes dying over and over again. The Time Lords and, by extension, Gallifrey were basically deemed as bad as the Daleks and this was the reason for The Doctor’s terrible decision. This was the reason he used The Moment to destroy all of them.

In my own Mythic Bios article, I saw it as an act of euthanasia, of basically putting an entire people that had gone rabid with a hunger for power to sleep out of mercy for them and the Universe. I saw it as a hard, but necessary thing. But we had hints that just as the Time Lords had done terrible things, they also weren’t all monsters even at this point in this game. Look at the mini-episode “The Last Day” for instance. Those soldiers were just people. They were just trying to defend their home. You see from the perspective of a Gallifreyan or Time Lord soldier another giving you a helmet and he has this look of empathy and shared suffering on his face. This is not a madman or a monster. They are the front-line that has to defend their home and their families.

Yes, Time Lord society has families. Despite earlier versions of the Doctor Who mythos where Time Lords were Loomed or artificially woven and grown into existence, Time Lords and Gallifreyans have parents … and children. And this is where the episode punches you in the stomach. You assume that all the Time Lords were engineered adults, even if they were once children. I even had the belief that an elder race like the Time Lords would have few, if any children at this stage in their evolution. But you see them. You see the Gallifreyan children cowering with their protective and very terrified parents. All of that over-exaggerated Gallifreyan fashion that we have seen over the years is tattered and clothing essentially war refugees that die by Dalek and friendly-fire. It is truly awful and perhaps that is the reason why Moffat does not show gratuitous Regeneration scenes. First of all, I am pretty sure that the Daleks could have replicated something like staser fire, one of the few weapons that can kill Time Lords instantly, and second of all it illustrates that there are no take backs in war where innocents die.

Then we see The Doctor, The War Doctor, who has frankly become my favourite. He is a worn, haunted, sad old man who has seen and dealt more death than any self-conscious being ever need to. Even as he rescues some refugees by having the TARDIS smash into some Daleks, he uses a gun to carve the words “No more” into a wall. It is as though he is writing his own name as the artist of the Time Lord painting we see from Doctor Eleven’s perspective. He might as well be.

After some very concerned Time Lord soldiers, who are fed up with the High Council for doing essentially nothing (which is another indication that not all Time Lords were aware of, or even agreed with the Ultimate Sanction) realize that The Doctor has stolen the most powerful super weapon in existence we think we know where this is going. It is The Moment.

We find The Doctor in an isolated spot, having left his TARDIS miles away, either because she won’t have to see him detonate the device or watch him die. Despite the lack of hope in his eyes and his weathered, unkempt face he is still The Doctor. He is tinkering with The Moment and trying to puzzle it out like he does any other toy he comes across.

And then we see Rose.

No. We actually see The Moment, as the device’s sentient program, taking on Rose’s Bad Wolf incarnation and deciding to make The Doctor fully aware of the consequences of what he intends to do. She is beautiful and golden in the feral way that her moniker suggests. The Moment has taken the image of someone from The Doctor’s past, or future, to attempt to relate to him. It is her that confronts him about the children. And you can see in his eyes even before he says anything that he intends to die with The War. It makes too much sense. After all the horror and the loss even later in his life, it is a miracle that The Doctor has never committed suicide. But The Moment, Bad Wolf, or Rose will not make it that easy for him. For some reason, The Moment has decided to make him face his decisions and his future by opening warps through the War’s time lock. Talk about an excellent piece of Ancient Time Lord technology huh?

These warps are how Doctor Eleven, Ten, and The War Doctor end up meeting in 1562 England. Despite the grimness of everything I’ve described so far, there is your typical Doctor Who silliness. Doctor Ten continuously mistakes Elizabeth the First as being a shape-shifting Zygon imposter (I’m thinking his shape shifter device kept getting confused by his own energy), while Doctor Eleven threw a fez through two of the warps that brought them all together. Even The War Doctor is exasperated by these younger, future versions of himself. In the scene where he meets them for the first time, convinced by The Moment to talk with his future selves, he actually mistakes them for The Doctor’s Companions. At first, I thought he was totally messing around with them, asking for The Doctor and calling them Companions until I began to realize that he genuinely didn’t know.

I will say that at this point in the venture, I thought Eleven would react much more angrily to The War Doctor given his denunciation of him in “The Name of The Doctor.” But he and Doctor Ten just seemed shocked. And after they are captured by Elizabeth’s guards, seemingly under the Zygon imposter’s command we see them pretty much face each other down. The War Doctor asks them if they ever thought about how many children there were on Gallifrey. There is another punch in the stomach for everyone in the audience. But whereas Doctor Ten does, in fact remember, Doctor Eleven claims not to and there is this very real, very angry moment between him and Ten about how he could “move past” something of that kind. Basically, even in a jail cell The Doctor is still running from his past and what he did that one time during The Time War. Meanwhile The Moment, who is still Rose and can only be seen by The War Doctor, is feeding him lines and asking him to consider matters. I was thinking about all those Doctor/Rose fan-shippers that were crying inside about how close this approximation of Rose was to Doctor Ten and Eleven, and yet so far away.

Then each of them is led by The Moment, through The War Doctor, to realize that despite the different appearances of their sonic screwdrivers they all still have the same software. They are about to use them to break out when Clara, who the Zygons underestimated rather stupidly, just opens the unlocked door. Yes, all three Doctors are that absent-minded: constantly searching for complex solutions, when the answer is right in front of them. It happens to us all. But then what seems to be the Elizabeth imposter leads them out to show them how the Zygons are planning to conquer Earth. With their homeworld having been destroyed in the beginnings of the Time War, the Zygons somehow reverse-engineered Time Lord art technology (perhaps through the presence of the Time War painting that is somehow at some point in Elizabethan England) send themselves into other paintings to release themselves in Earth’s future. All of these events are components to another, greater Moment that comes up very soon.

So after realizing that Elizabeth I is the real one pretending to be her imposter (that she stabbed to death in the forest) and her impromptu wedding with Doctor Ten, all three Doctors come into the TARDIS and find a way to go back to 2013 into a “TARDIS-proofed” U.N.I.T. Black Tower and stop the mutually-assured destruction of London situation happening between the Zygon infiltrators and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. It is here that we see Doctors Ten and Eleven taking their regret over what happened in The Time War and using it and craftiness to get both sides to agree to peace-talks. Clara then has some alone time with The War Doctor, a far cry from the young energetic man she has been travelling with and says that his eyes “look young” while those of his counterparts look so terribly old.

It is here that The War Doctor comes to his decision. He realizes that his “necessary mistake” in destroying Gallifrey is the only way to get his future incarnations to “grow-up” into the people that they have become. He plans to be the force that they learn from. And I know that I, as part of the audience watching this commercial-less simulcast, braced for what was going to come.

But even though this was not a Christmas Special, a 50th Anniversary counts for something. Even as The Moment makes him pause again, the other two Doctors with Clara in tow come to where he is now. It is heartbreaking to see The War Doctor want them to leave him so that he can do what he, albeit doubtfully now, still believes is necessary and Regenerate alone. But they accept that he is a part of them, after denying his memory for so long and they are all about to activate The Moment’s Big Red Button when…

Clara comes in and reminds The Doctor why he named himself The Doctor. The Moment too takes the opportunity to show all of them Gallifrey’s families and children. There have so far been two reoccurring themes in this episode. The first part of the episode starts at a school house with children in an English public school with its old private-school trappings. It is not unlike the Time Lord Academy in which The Doctor and so many others grew up. We see the children in the War. We see them at play in the sunlight of The War Doctor’s dusty memories. And then we see them hanging up colourful ribbons and streamers despite the destruction around them. We see something that we have not seen so far in this whole episode.

We see hope.

We also see women. It is no original idea or trope for a female archetype to be the helper or saviour of a male character. The Moment does everything she can to lead The Doctor to an informed decision not determined by despair. Clara reminds The Doctor of his purpose and is always his Companion. Elizabeth the First flat out states that arrogance typifies all men. Even the TARDIS, Sexy, won’t leave The Doctor in any incarnation. She even smashed down some Daleks like a Battle TARDIS. Where The Doctors act, these characters ask and question. And yes, they help save The Doctor from the spiritual damnation we’ve seen him struggle with since 2005.

In them, we see life.

And then a potential catastrophe becomes a eucastrophe: a happy-ending.

Between the three Doctors and all of their other incarnations–including the Thirteenth Doctor–they use the time-freezing technology used by the Zygons–the “cup of soups”–to capture Gallifrey and deposit it into another pocket universe.

In this way, it looks like Gallifrey is destroyed along with the Daleks. But Gallifrey is not destroyed. Through loops and contradictions and layers of Space and Time Gallifrey doesn’t rise, or fall, or die. It lives.

In the words of the Ninth Doctor, “everybody lives.”

The ages-old and weary War Doctor leaves, finally at peace and although his later incarnations lose all memory of this crossover event, he Regenerates. We don’t see Doctor Nine, which is a little disappointing, but this is not unexpected. Ten also leaves knowing that he will not remember, but stating that they need a new destination aside from the doom of Trenzalore. But Doctor Eleven remembers.

I am almost finished. Like a TARDIS, this 50th Anniversary Special is “bigger on the inside.” As Doctor Eleven wonders if they succeeded in saving Gallifrey, and ponders embracing Elizabeth’s role to him as the curator of the Under-Gallery he … meets or reacquaints himself with someone. At first, I wondered how this was possible and who the elderly Curator could possibly be. But after re-watching the episode to write this review, I realized that The Doctor can actually decide what face he takes on in his Regenerations. He can even take on old faces.

So when an elderly Tom Baker all but confirms that Gallifrey is saved and that the painting in front of them is called Gallifrey Falls No More. It is left ambiguous as to whether or not The Curator is a future version of The Doctor, or a possibility, or someone else entirely. Ending the episode with that gentle, wise lighthearted moment, with a potential Doctor without bitterness and regret and filled only with a kindly acceptance, changed the whole tone of the series in that one moment. And Doctor Eleven taking his place alongside his other incarnations with the First Doctor standing in back of them with his arms crossed is positively inspiring.

There is so much I know I’ve missed in this review and I have tried to capture all of it in something like a Time Lord-painting. There are those who would say that this whole Special was a cop-out: that it negated all of The Doctor’s experiences and that it leaves plot holes and weaves itself with clichés. But I think that now, this Special leaves a whole other level of possibility and paths yet to travel. I asked a question in the title of my Mythic Bios post. I asked “When does The Doctor stop running?”

The answer is that he doesn’t. The Doctor will never stop running. It is his nature to run. But he has changed. Because now, for the first time in ages The Doctor won’t be running from something. Rather, The Doctor will be running to his destination, to his end and Gallifrey and all the possibilities beyond it. Everybody lives, gentlebeings and now perhaps we can see The Doctor do that as well. Perhaps we can now see him truly live.

The Last Day: Another Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Mini-Episode

November 21, 2013 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

This is now my thirteenth post and I wouldn’t be surprised if I turned into The Valeyard at this point. All right, before I go on just watch this video. Please watch it.

Are you done?

All right. I came across this today from Jenna-Louise Coleman’s Facebook profile. At first, it was a broken link until she linked to it from another Doctor Who Profile. Now, we have seen a lot of trailers and one other mini-episode “The Night of The Doctor.” So when I came across this, I felt like the soldier from whose perspective we are viewing the situation.

I will admit, I didn’t know who these soldiers were, or even what episode this was even going to be. It was like seeing that small little speck, you know? You are that soldier and you are looking for a bird or some kind of avian in the sky.

But then you realize This. Is. Gallifrey.

And then you look at the title to this mini-episode, Steven Moffat’s “The Last Day,” you as the viewer already know where this is going.

That’s not a bird.

At first, in a manner not unlike the soldier and his, or her, fellows I wondered if this was real: if Coleman wasn’t linking us to an especially zealous fan-made video about The Last Great Time War. But as I went online, I saw a whole slew of links to this one video and, by the time I got to Doctor Who TV I knew that this was legitimate. There were some other indications too for more nuanced viewers of the series. For instance, G33kpr0n’s editor Rob pointed out that the soldiers of Gallifrey are all wearing The Seal of Rassilon on their armour. It goes to show you that even now I still have a lot to learn as a geek which, frankly, is a whole load of awesomesauce.

Now I am just going to go into some conjecture of my own. I’m guessing that the helmets the soldiers (who may have been recruited from the Chancellery Guard or the non-Time Lord Gallifreyan citizenry) are wearing to access the memories of dead soldiers are extensions or an adaptation of The Matrix (which is a super-computer that, among other things, contains the memories of deceased Time Lords and stores information to predict the future, hence the soldier’s insistence that what “you” are seeing is “not a premonition”). It would be useful to store all of this information to transfer to the next mind of the newest soldier, you, for your very first day guarding the planet of Gallifrey.

Unfortunately, as you see through this unique second-person perspective of the War that also manages to humanize the Time Lords and their army while showing just how Frontline Combat they have become, you realize that you are not viewing a bird or even a flock of birds.

It’s a murder of Daleks.

And while there is “The Night of The Doctor,” “The Day of The Doctor,” and what should have been your first day on the job guarding your home world ultimately becomes your “Last Day”: The Last Day of Gallifrey.

Sexy and Clara: A Doctor Who Mini-Episode

November 19, 2013 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

I seem to be reaching my twelfth regeneration, or twelfth post, on G33kpr0n and I find it really interesting how even though I am a Star Wars fanatic I’ve really been focusing on Doctor Who lately. I suppose it can’t be helped. After all, we have the Adventures in Space and Time documentary drama and Neil Gaiman’s Nothing O’Clock both happening on November 21, and that isn’t even mentioning the 50th Anniversary episode “The Day of The Doctor” happening on November 23. There is all this gravitas and doom and glory that is about to hit a whole ton of of Whovians, and sometimes it can just seem like too much.

So now, for the moment, we turn away from The Doctor and what will probably be another potential universal apocalypse to the two current women in his life right now. “Clara and the TARDIS” is actually a mini-episode made exclusively for the Series 7 DVD and Blue-Ray box sets. It apparently takes place before “The Rings of Akhaten” and “Hide,” and therefore long before “The Name of The Doctor.” It’s been long known by most Doctor Who fans that the TARDIS is a sentient being (who has, relatively recently, chosen a name for herself) with her own sensibilities and feelings on certain matters, especially with regards to her beloved Doctor. And Clara herself, at this point in the game, seems to be new enough a Companion to be unaware of the others that came before her, but old enough to have her own room on board … for all the good that does her at this point.

I won’t say anymore than that except to add that, aside from the obvious fan-service that Steve Moffat produces between Sexy and Clara with this mini-episode, there is some actual foreshadowing with regards to Clara’s character arc in this confrontation. But all that really being said, Sexy either really doesn’t like Clara Oswin Oswald at this stage, or she really enjoys messing with her.

A Doctor Who Retrospective: An Adventure in Space and Time

November 15, 2013 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

It is appropriate for the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who that even as “The Day of the Doctor” focuses on the very beginning of the current series’ story arc, The Last Great Time War that has influenced Doctors 9, 10 and 11, An Adventure in Space and Time celebrates the very origin of Doctor Who itself.

An Adventure in Space and Time is a two-hour television documentary drama that not only details the creation of the program in 1963, but also particularly focuses on the story of William Hartnell, the actor that plays the very first incarnation of The Doctor from 1963 to 1966. According to the writer of An Adventure in Space and Time, Mark Gatniss, the film will focus on a few of the program’s first few episodes (including the design of some retro and vintage-looking props). It also examines how Hartnell’s role as the First Doctor essentially changes his life, even as his ill-health forces him to turn over the character to another.

I have to admit that this film fascinates me on a few levels. When I heard that something was going to be made with The First Doctor before the 50th Anniversary Special, I had no idea that it was going to be a documentary drama about the series’ genesis. For me, it is kind of like a meta-narrative: a work that tells the story of the cast of a show that attempts to portray fictional characters: something that seems to illustrate how art attempts to go beyond space and time in a way that even a TARDIS would have difficulty attempting to do. Certainly, the fact that William Russell and Carol Ann Ford, the original actors for the human Companion Ian Chesterton and The Doctor’s granddaughter Susan respectively, will be playing other roles in the film gives it all a certain nuance and perspective.

And then there is that fact that the First Doctor is one of my favourites. Apparently Hartnell himself was like the First Doctor, cantankerous and likes to have his own way. And when you look at the character himself, in those early episodes that were supposed to be “Saturday tea-time television for children,” there is something morally ambiguous and calculating about how this old man, who turns out to be much older than he even appears to be, interacts with his very strange and terrifying universe. In fact, it seems that only Susan and both human Companions Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright begin to humanize him a bit. Yet even Hartnell’s Doctor always has a quirky sense of humour underneath that stern and snappish exterior, along with a sense of real gravitas that gets passed on throughout the rest of his incarnations.

But I think what really grabs me about the above trailer is the line that Doctor Who‘s first producer Verity Lambert (played by Jessica Raine) pitches to William Hartnell; “C.S. Lewis meets H.G. Wells meets Father Christmas, that is The Doctor.” After hearing this, strangely for the first time, it explains so much to me as to why I really like Doctor Who, and it is something that holds no less true even now. Just seeing this first trailer for An Adventure in Space and Time is enough to remind me of that point when I used to think that The Doctor, who I only knew as Dr. Who, was merely a time-traveller in a phone booth, only to find out that he and the program around him are so much more.

For even though this documentary drama may not be a TARDIS, when you look at the surface and go deeper, the depth you can already see makes it definitely look bigger on the inside.

An Adventure in Space and Time is scheduled to air on BBC Two November 21, 2013. If you are interested, here are some links to interviews with writer Mark Gatniss and David Bradley who plays William Hartnell.

The Moment is Arriving: The New 50th Anniversary Doctor Who Trailer

November 11, 2013 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ 2 Comments

For seven months, many Doctor Who Fans, including myself, have been waiting impatiently for “The Day of the Doctor.” We had a grandiose hint of a trailer earlier, but not much else. But while today is not “The Day of the Doctor,” it is most certainly the day of the New 50th Anniversary Doctor Who Trailer. It’s in this trailer that we find out a little more about what is about to go down.

Warning, SPOILERS ahead! If you’re not caught up on season seven of Doctor Who, you may want to skip this next bit.

When last we last saw the Doctor back in “The Name of the Doctor” many truths were revealed. We see Clara Oswin Oswald choose to save The Doctor by jumping into his time-stream in the ruined future version of the TARDIS (his tomb on Trenzalore) and manifest herself into different times of his life. Then we watched The Doctor say goodbye to the virtual psychic image of his wife River Song as he goes to rescue the Clara that he knows, his Clara, that has not yet split off into many lives in different places and different times. The Doctor even manages to finds her. And then … we see him. We find out that The Doctor’s secret isn’t his original name. It isn’t what he was known by before making a promise to himself and the universe by choosing his moniker. Instead, we are introduced to his real secret, to the person that supposedly broke the promise.

Achievement unlocked. Hidden player-character: The Unknown Doctor.

Now take a look at the actual YouTube page and its about page, you will find this blurb waiting for you:

“The Doctors embark on their greatest adventure in this 50th Anniversary Special: In 2013, something terrible is awakening in London’s National Gallery; in 1562, a murderous plot is afoot in Elizabethan England; and somewhere in space an ancient battle reaches its devastating conclusion.

All of reality is at stake as the Doctor’s own dangerous past comes back to haunt him.
World, are you ready? #SaveTheDay”

Now look at the trailer itself. We already knew that Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor was going to be meeting the epic vainglorious David Tennant’s 10th Doctor for this venture. And we knew that John Hurt’s Unknown Doctor would be working with them: or involved with them as well. But remember this promotional image?

When you see the shattered Dalek carapaces and the march-like stride of The Unknown Doctor, there is already an indication that he was The Doctor that fought in–and ended–the Last Great Time War. We also got a hint from Steve Moffat that the Last Great Time War would play a role in this season with Clara’s discovery of The History of the Last Great Time War book in “Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS.” But that aside, look back at the above image. You can also see the golden light behind The Doctor that, while part of the fire, can symbolize two things: Regeneration energy, and the Heart of the TARDIS. And on that note, take a look at the broken wall with the graffiti on at the bottom half of the image’s left side.

I bet many people thought that we were all done with that trans-temporal and spatial psychic meme known fondly as “Bad Wolf.” And just as Bad Wolf is alive and well, so is the other Companion who created, and embodied it, to begin with. It’s no surprise that Rose Tyler is going to be in “The Day of the Doctor.” Rose, who in case you were wondering is my favourite Companion before Martha and Clara, seems to feature relatively prominently in the trailer, especially in one particular scene.

Do you remember The Moment? If you click on that link to the TARDIS Data Core, you will see that it was more than just an event, but a weapon assembled from Doctor Who continuity. We know the Time Lord that assembled and used it, and why. Originally, I know I thought he was alone, that the time lock either kept out any other version of Clara or bound her memories of any possible Time War version into the lock. I also wondered, since The Doctor very clearly suffers from something along the lines of post-traumatic stress syndrome due to the War, if his memories of that time were entirely that clear.

But, as you can see, while Clara may not have been there during The War and the Moment … Rose as Bad Wolf was, and is.

After looking at the new 50th Anniversary Doctor Who trailer, I can honestly say that “The Day of the Doctor” has so many other meanings behind it and that the Moment of November 23 cannot come too soon.

Geronimo.

A Man Gets to Make his Monster: Neil Gaiman’s Doctor Who: Nothing O’Clock

November 6, 2013 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

Neil Gaiman once wrote, in his short story “Other People” that, “Time is fluid here.” Despite–or even because of–the presence of time-travel in Doctor Who, his words are no less relevant. The creator of Sandman, American Gods, Stardust, Coraline, and a multitude of other comics, novels, short stories and films fulfilled his dream in writing for Doctor Who: twice. First, we got to see his episode “The Doctor’s Wife” in which we experience the horror of a House and meet the TARDIS for the very first time; which was followed much later by “Nightmare in Silver” with a whole other more miniaturized, upgraded, and truly horrifying version of the Cybermen. These achievements, in and of themselves, are impressive and in a lot of ways alter the time-line details of the Whoniverse; which is part and parcel of the entire program really. However, after creating these episodes, Neil Gaiman always expressed the wish to do something else with Doctor Who. To do more than expanding on its continuity and manipulating its flow of plot and time.

Doctor Who is, when you come down to it, a haphazard construct of science-fiction, comedy, the fantastic, the result of many add-on elements, seeming improvisations, retcons … and horror. Yes, Doctor Who is a monster filled with monsters, and Neil Gaiman has expressed his wish to create an original one of his own. And so it is that on November 21st, two days before “The Day of the Doctor” comes to television and movie screens alike, that a new story will come to another kind of screen: a computer screen to be precise.

It is on November 21st that a man gets to make his monster … on “Nothing O’Clock.”

At this time, there isn’t much yet to say about the Doctor Who short story “Nothing O’Clock” to apparently be released on its own and included in the Eleventh Doctor: 50th Anniversary ebook anthology: except for a few details. Much in the way that time is fluid in the television program, this story takes place during the first season of Matt Smith’s role as The Doctor: in which he, and a young Amy Pond find themselves in 1984 and also, as Neil Gaiman puts it “somewhere else, a very, very long time ago.” Then there is also the brief description on Amazon to consider. In any case, sometimes I find that Doctor Who takes on a very fairytale-like quality, especially when you consider that “The Snowmen” Christmas Special began in a similar manner. Yet when Neil Gaiman comes into the mix, the program can again become an outright cautionary tale. As for the rest of it: all that is known at this time is that there is something called the Kin, and that you should be very, very wary if a man in a rabbit mask comes to your door and asks to buy your house.

Bunny — Beware Bunnies Bearing No Baskets, especially when time travel is involved …

If you would like to hear the man who makes the monster for himself, please check out BlogTor Who. What is also interesting is that The Mary Sue, which claims that the story itself will be published on its own and then released in the e-book anthology, also states that its release date will be on November 23: which differs from the November 21 date displayed on Amazon. I would go by the Amazon date. In any case I rarely ever purchase e-books, but I know, like many others, that this time I am going to make another exception: at the fluid and arbitrary time of “Nothing O’Clock.”

Why Do You Write These Strong Women Characters?

November 1, 2013 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

It’s amazing how one person can answer the same question more than once. It’s even more amazing how many times someone has to repeat themselves before they get to the point where they reply to the same question with multiple choice answers. Joss Whedon–the creator of Buffy, Angel, and the Avengers film– is always asked, time and again, “Why do you write these strong women characters?” I’m not going to recap everything that he has already said. Whedon has more than done his part in answering this question and if you would like to see his responses, please watch the video linked above. Instead, I’m going to do something else.

I am going to answer this question.

Why do you write these strong women characters? This question can be modified further. For instance, the question could also be “Why do you write about strong women characters?” or “Why do you like writing about strong women characters?” or better yet, “Why do you like writing these strong women characters and why is this so important?” But now I am just being annoying in the gadfly Socratic way: answering a question with other questions. So let me give you an answer without a question mark punctuating it for a while. Women are a part of our world. They are half of the global human population. They are a part of us. They are us.

At the same time, women have different experiences. And for the longest time, even to this day and probably beyond it, the default setting in many cultures has always focused on men: on male desire, conflict, and experience: which is very one-sided. Frankly, there is a whole other segment of the global population that is also born with self-awareness, desire, wants, dreams, fears, flaws, thoughts, feelings, and something to say: and there is a lot that can be written, created, made, and said about that. And then you add the rest of it: the discrimination, the stereotyping, the impossible and contradictory cultural and societal standards, the hurting, and the imposed silences–the ones that people impose from the outside and the one that people create inside themselves out of genuine mortal and spiritual fear–where every day is more often than not an unwanted comment, a gesture, a touch, a violation, and ridicule that eats up your metaphorical life-bar faster than if you were Samus Aran in lava or acid baths, and then ask a different question.

Where do you see the inspiration for these strong women characters?

My own answer is that I see and hear about them everywhere and more is never too many.

So why am I talking about all of this? Why am I rehashing what should be old ground and said much better than me by people better than me? I am a writer. I write fiction and non-fiction. I am also male. So is Joss Whedon, but I am not Joss Whedon. I am nowhere near as established or even as cognizant. When this video was first linked to me, I hesitated. Who am I to talk about writing strong women characters? I have tried. Sometimes, I even think I succeeded, while other times I’ve realized I still need to improve to that regard: both as a creator and as a human being. Whedon says something in his speech about how a strong female protagonist can help a man express a part of himself that he might not be comfortable looking at from any other perspective. And I have to admit: I am not entirely sure what he means by that and yet it’s definitely something that can be explored further and it should be. I want to write strong women characters. I want to identify and acknowledge and put into words the strong female personalities from my own life and do them justice: to show that they have power, courage and humanity, and that, as Whedon put it, there are men who respect, acknowledge, and love those elements.

If someone asked me, again, why I like to write strong women characters I would say that I would like to write weak female characters, angry female characters, sad female characters, intelligent female characters and the whole wide gamut of female characters because, in the end, the ultimate secret here is that female characters are people: and people are interesting to write about and explore.

This all being said and hopefully done, and even more hopefully made into a redundant discussion one day that will continue to go on regardless, if someone kept badgering me about why (if and when I get to this point in the future) I write strong women characters, I would just stare them in the face and ask them the following question.

Why not?

Feel free to click on the following link to the entirety of Joss Whedon’s Equality Now Speech. Also, if you do, notice how they are talking about the “upcoming Wonder Woman movie.” This video was uploaded in 2006 and this film has still not been made. That is definitely one strong female character that I want to see.

The Dark Crystal Author Quest

October 9, 2013 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

If you were a child that was either born or grew up in the 1980s, chances are you watched the 1982 film called The Dark Crystal: a movie in which Jen–the last of the Gelfling race–undertakes a quest to repair the broken Crystal of Truth in the strange world of Thra while evading its many dangers and the horrors of the evil Skeksis and their Garthim minions. The world of The Dark Crystal–of Thra itself–was created by Jim Henson: the master puppeteer and creator of the Muppets, Labyrinth and many other shows and films.

The Dark Crystal is a world onto itself and despite talk about a sequel this world has only been expanded on so far in two graphic novels: Tokyopop’s Legends of the Dark Crystal and Archaia Entertainment’s The Dark Crystal: Creation Myths. In addition to Brian Froud’s The World of the Dark Crystal–an art book illustrated by the conceptual designer of the film itself which expands further on the actual identities and roles of the Mystics and Skeksis as well as the lore of Thra–there had been no other official creative forays into the world of The Dark Crystal…

Until now.

On October 1, The Dark Crystal Author Quest began accepting submissions for the next Dark Crystal novel. It is a writing contest created and organized by the Jim Henson Company and the publisher Grosset & Dunlap of the Penguin Young Readers Group–While the Rules for this contest can be found under the Author Quest Rules and Regulations section on the site, basically anyone can submit a 75,000-10,000 word entry–either a short story or chapter excerpts–to the Contest in order to qualify for review by the Jim Henson Company and Grosset & Dunlap. Then of all those entries, five writers will be selected and go to the second round where–with revisions and editorial suggestions–they will expand their story into a 50,000 word manuscript. After that process, and in the immortal words of Highlander, there can be only one. The winner of The Dark Crystal Author Quest will thereby receive a $10,000 book contract for the next Dark Crystal young adult novel.

This story is not supposed to be a sequel. It is a prequel event that occurs during that the time of what is called The Gelfling Gathering: in which the Gelfling people, once ruled over by the Skeksis Empire, realize what their overlords truly are and begin the process of creating the Wall of Destiny or the Prophecy that will one day liberate them. It is a time where the Skeksis still rule over Thra and have supporters among the Gelfling that they will one day commit genocide against. During this time there are seven distinct Clans of Gelfling, sixteen pairs of Mystics and Skeksis that are still alive and a lot of world-building toys to work with: found in both The Gelfling Gathering Author’s Resource and the still-developing Encyclopedia, Mythological timeline and other goodies at darkcrystal.com.

As I said, submissions opened October 1 and will close December 31, 2013, so feel free to join this wonderful Contest, or the official Dark Crystal website listed above.

As the urSkek at the end of The Dark Crystal film states, everything is connected. I myself am a participant in The Dark Crystal Author Quest and as a new writer to G33kpr0n I thought I’d be very remiss in neglecting to mention the existence of such a Contest. It is a rare thing for an established creative world to be opened up like a playground to prospective writers to make what has so far generally been fanfiction into a possible literary and fantastic reality. At the top of the page is The Dark Crystal Author Quest Panel from the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con if you would like to hear about some of what it is going on from the Contest organizers themselves.

Whether as a participant or an observer, or a dedicated fan or someone coming in new to the franchise, I hope that you get to experience the expansion of cult-classic mythos that has been so inspirational to so very many.