Restaurant Review: Dumpling Restaurant for Food

This is a repost from something that I tried to put on Yelp. However, the Yelp people have no sense of humor and denied my entry for a new restaurant. And for the record, my daughter named the place.


Dumpling Restaurant for Food

Category: Chinese Food

Hours: Mon-Fri; varies
Good for Kids: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: No
Parking: Street
Attire: Casual
Good for Groups: No
Price Range: $$$$
Takes Reservations: Yes
Delivery: No
Take-out: No
Waiter Service: Yes
Outdoor Seating: No
Wi-Fi: No
Good For: Lunch
Alcohol: No
Noise Level: Loud
Ambience: Hectic
Has TV: Yes
Caters: No
Wheelchair Accessible: Yes


It is easy to miss Dumpling Restaurant for Food since it is tucked away in the school-ager's room of Curious Kids Preschool Center. However, I kind of like finding little niche non-chain restaurants and when I went in to pick up my four-year old daughter, she quickly grabbed me and told me to eat at the new restaurant.

First of all, seating is sparse. I occupied one of the five chairs available. Seating is kind of hibachi style, as I was not given my own table, but rather sat down community style. This style of seating isn't bad, but it does take away from the intimacy of the dining experience.

The table I sat at already had the other four seats occupied and the other customers were arbitrarily yelling out their orders to the wait staff who also served as the cooks. By the frenzied pace that orders were being shouted out, it was difficult to tell what kind of food was being served since I was not given a menu when I sat down. Two of the girls at my table asked for dumplings while another customer shouted for corn on the cob and a donut, while the fourth customer just sat there. When I told the staff that I didn't have any silverware or a plate I was given one chopstick and told that I had to share with my neighbor. While I do not mind the communal seating, this was just ridiculous!

I barely had time to complain to the wait staff when one of them approached me and put a large white oniony looking thing on the table in front of me (since I did not yet have a plate) and told me that it was my dumpling. When I argued that I didn't order a dumpling and didn't even like dumplings, I was told to "pretend it's something else". The waitress then left. Mind you, she served me with her hands which I could visibly see dirt on. It was almost like she was playing in the dirt just before cooking my meal that I didn't even order.

I decided to try to make the best of my ordeal and asked what they served for drinks. I was given conflicting reports by the staff: one said that they didn't have any drinks (?!?) and the other told me that the only had tomato juice.

I passed on the drinks and told my daughter to get ready as we were going to leave. At this point I saw one of the customers at my table get up and go to the kitchen and get her own food. I do not blame her! As I was preparing to leave, I was given a menu by one of the staff. I told him that I was leaving and could have used one when I first arrived. He then told me to give it to someone else at the table then. He wouldn't even give it to them himself!

At this point I noticed that one of the other customers from the table got up and got plates and place-mats from the kitchen herself. Again, I don't blame her! As I gathered my daughter and we moved to leave, a staff member stepped in front of me and told me that my bill was two hundred hundred dollars. I balked at the price for the single dumpling that I never ordered. It made me realize why they are reluctant to give out the menus beforehand. Just wanting to leave, because I wanted to take my daughter bike riding, I asked if they took credit card. He said no, only money. I said I didn't have any cash on me and he said that was okay and let me pass.

Dumpling Restaurant for Food is a chaotic mess with no real organized business model. I'm all for niche little restaurants, but the ambiance is loud, distracting and half the staff looked like they had just been playing in the dirt. I really cannot recommend Dumpling Restaurant for Food to anyone. I do not see how the disorganized restaurant can last with the business model they support.

0 Stars.

Green Lantern

One of the Lantern Corps.

I've never been a huge fan of Green Lantern comics. I tried to get into them a few times, but it never worked out for me. Didn't matter if it was Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner or John Stewart (the black architect, not the Daily Show host). Part of the reason why it never meshed with me was because of the weirdly abstract and both unlimited and limited nature of the ring's powers and the application in the comics and cartoons. I mean, it was rife with scenes like, "Holy shit! That woman is falling off of the top of the Empire State building!" Well, thankfully the Green Lantern is there and moments before she smashes into the pavement, she is instead caught be a giant green catcher's mitt. That was always just awkwardly difficult for me to swallow.

And I guess that's where my problem with the majority of the DC comics line came from: other than modern Batman, the comics just seemed to lack a more gritty realism. DC heroes stand like Greek Gods to the humans they protect. They are above them with powers that are near limitless. Meanwhile, Marvel was fully of geeky guys who became powerful, but had to try to learn to work and contain their abilities through their flawed characters. These guys were relatable. And for some reason, someone shooting laser beams out of their eyeballs just seems more "realistic" to me than some guy making a giant baseball glove to catch falling damsels in distress.

Now, I do know enough about the Green Lantern to know that they played around a bit with his abilities in the movie. For example, in the comics, the ring does not allow the Lanterns to create complex machinery. However, in the movie, Hal Jordan was conjuring up Gatling guns and M-198 howitzers. However, to the movie's credit, there were two scenes in which people or things were falling and needed to be saved; neither one was caught in a catcher's mitt. Instead, the world's longest helicopter crash was instead saved by giving it green wheels and putting it on a winding kid's racetrack (incidentally, there is a Green Lantern/Hot Wheels product tie in that involves being able to purchase a Green Lantern race track). And when a woman who was smashed forcefully into a wall by the bad guy finally started to fall to the ground, Green Lantern didn't catch her with a catcher's mitt, but instead made green water for her to land in and she went splashing away in the turbulent waters, leading her presumably out of danger. Unless, of course, she had spinal or neck injuries from her initial crash. In which case, I'm sure she will now be a paraplegic.

 But that's my problem with Green Lantern. The powers seem limitless, but the application is always silly. I mean, were I the Green Lantern I'd be constantly worried about people thinking my creations were odd and geeky and people would laugh at them. So, despite having a power limited only by my imagination, I would be a Green Lantern that was much more subtle in application to minimize the potential laugh factor of on-lookers  so that I could still get girls.

Here's a quick comparison of how I would use my powers compared to "real" Green Lantern:

Woman falling to her death:
Real Green Lantern: Big Green Catcher's Mitt.
Me: Beam of green energy that makes her float.

Bad guy charging, ready to smash to bits:
Real Green Lantern: Big Green Baseball Bat to knock him away.
Me: Beam of green energy that knocks him away.

Huge alien attacking the city:
Real Green Lantern: Big Green sproingy spring to make a fuel tanker truck fly in its vicinity, followed by a big green howitzer to shoot the tanker truck to make it explode on the alien.
Me: Beam of green energy that hurts the alien.

So, yes, my ability would be much more subtle and subdued. But mine wouldn't look silly. I'd be a Green Lantern out to impress chicks and not 9 year olds with baseball fetishes.

But anyhow, the movie. It was standard, predictable superhero origin story. Nothing that interesting, except how the movie treated a few things strangely. Hal Jordan is a test pilot. And first of all, I hate when movies make pilots crazy-ass maverick wannabes instead of the calm, collected military specialist trained people they tend to be in real life. But whatever. Anyhow, they are testing out billion dollar AI fighter jets against the top pilots in hopes of winning a lucrative contract. Now, first of all, AI fighter jets are pointless. It would be a terrible investment. Wars are not fought with aircraft dogfights these days. AI drone bombers, maybe, but no real need to spend billions, if not trillions of dollars on these AI fighters for dogfights that won't happen. But anyhow, Hal beats the AI jets by breaking the "rules of engagement". But because he broke the rules of engagement, they didn't get the contract and so the company decides on the spot to lay off a shitload of people.

So, later, in the parking lot of a bar, Hal is grabbed and roughed up by three guys who proceed to beat the shit out of him for his causing them to lose the contract and therefore, them getting laid off.

These are aerospace engineers. I don't know if the three were aeronautical engineers or astronautical engineers or a combination of the two, but the movie essentially portrayed a gang of rocket scientist thugs beating the shit out of Hal Jordan. How fucked up was that?

Also, Hal eventually beat the giant monster by flying towards the sun. Because the monster is bigger than him, it is more effected by the sun's gravitational pull, because, as Hal learned earlier in the movie, bigger objects are more affected by gravity. Wait, what? What the fuck?!

Yes, apparently the movie was written by people who so despise science that the aerospace engineers are bullying thugs and they totally disregard basic, elementary physics.

Anyhow, the effects in the movie were actually pretty lame as well. The CGI effects really looked like a top end video game effects rather than effects you would expect to see in a movie. Really, I would have been fine seeing any of those scenes as a video game cutscene and would have thought nothing of it. But as a movie, they just were distractingly bad.

Anyhow, the movie. Big bad monster, uses the power of fear. Green Lanterns use the power of will. Fear is stronger than will. But Hal Jordan realizes that he can move past living in the shadow of his father who died in the world's longest jet crash and proves that humanity trumps all.

But the movie tells that last paragraph in a much more lackluster way than I did.



Molly: (As usual, Molly's portion of the review will be in Q&A form. I'll write what she says and format it later.)



Chuckie: What did you think about the movie, Green Lantern?
Molly: I liked it.

Chuckie: What did you like about it?
Molly: People was friendly, except the bad guys.

Chuckie: How were people friendly in it? What did they do that was friendly?
Molly: I'll get back to you on that one. (takes a big bit of her Devil Dog and chews it down, eventually swallowing and continuing.) I think there was a purple alien and he gave that ring to him.

Chuckie: What did the ring do?
Molly: Chose him.
Chuckie: Well, yes, but what could the ring do?
Molly: Um, I don't even know.

Chuckie: Well, let's talk about this for a moment. What kind of powers did the ring have? What could it do? What could he make with it?
Molly: A brick wall.

Chuckie: Well, yes, but were there rules or limits to what he could make with it?
Molly: Yeah.
Chuckie: What were they?
Molly: He can't make the whole universe with the ring.
Chuckie: Why not?
Molly: Because he doesn't have that kind of power and you can't put a universe inside of another universe.
Chuckie: Oh. Okay. Out of curiosity, why can't you put a universe inside of another universe?
Molly: Um, because you can't take another universe and put it into another universe because there can't be two universes there so they would just be one universe.

Chuckie: Wow. Okay. Anyhow, back to the movie.
Molly: That alien, he gave him the ring. I wonder why he was purple.

Chuckie: Sorry, Pixie, you really stumped me with your universe talk.
Molly: What does "stunked" mean?
Chuckie: No, stumped. That means you said some things that really threw Daddy off. I wasn't expecting it.
Molly: Oh.

Chuckie: So, tell me what happened in the movie?
Molly: He was going to turn green, but he needed more batteries and then he charged it with the ring lantern and then he turned green and he sang the pledge allegiance to the lantern that the dying purple alien that gave him it. And I think he saved somebody. Oh, yeah! He did save somebody. He saved some people in his universe from a giant octopus.

Chuckie: Yeah, the bad guy in this was kind of weird looking, huh?
Molly: Yeah. So I thought it was an octopus.

Chuckie: Can you tell me about Sinestro?
Molly: Who is Sinestro?
Chuckie: He was the purple guy who wanted the yellow ring.
Molly: Yes. He was the purple guy who wanted the yellow ring.
Chuckie: Well, yes, that's just what I said though.
Molly: I know. I copied you. And the yellow ring is bad though. And we had to wait through the words at the end of the movie to see him take the yellow ring. I can't read though.

Chuckie: So, do you think that Green Lantern was a good hero?
Molly: Yes.

Chuckie: Who do you think were better heroes, Green Lantern or the X-Men?
Molly: I think Green Lantern was  better hero. The helmet guy from the other movie yelled at that girl. But Captain America is an even better hero. He's there to help! And Iron Man.
Chuckie: Are you excited about the Captain America movie?
Molly: Yes!  Now I'm ready for Captain America.
Chuckie: Well, we'll have to wait a little bit for that movie.
Molly: Oh barnacles!

Chuckie: So, Daddy always thought that Green Lantern's powers were sort of ill-defined and it really hurt the storytelling as a result of that. DC's character tended to be almost Greek Gods in stature, powers and abilities, which made them less relatable to me. Daddy liked heroes who were flawed people, but strove to do good nonetheless. What do you think?
Molly: I'm on your team.

Chuckie: Good. Glad to hear that.
Molly: Thank you.

Chuckie: So, how would you rate this movie?
Molly: Stars, moons and suns. Daddy, I got over what I was sad about.

Chuckie: What were you sad about?
Molly: Well, I was sad about Jonesy and I was sad about that dying alien in Doctor Who.
Chuckie: Yeah, you took that last one kind of hard, didn't you?
Molly: Yeah.
Chuckie: Brave heart, Molly.
Molly: Thank you.

Chuckie: So, how many stars would you give the movie?
Molly: Ten.
Chuckie: Out of how many?
Molly: Out of one.
Chuckie: So you're giving it nine stars more than it could possibly have?
Molly: No! I said ten.

Chuckie: Okay. How many moons would you give the movie?
Molly: Ten.
Chuckie: Out of how many?
Molly: Out of two. Ah! I mean, out of ten! No, out of zero!
Chuckie: You know that by making it out of zero, it's not a real number?
Molly: I know. But it's just a big round "o", Daddy, so you don't have to worry so much.

Chuckie: (laughs) Fair enough. So how many suns would you give the movie?
Molly: Um, eight million. That's a big number.
Chuckie: Out of how many?
Molly: Out of the carnival?
Chuckie: The carnival?
Molly: Yes. I like the carnival and I want it to be sun shiny when I go there.

Chuckie: Fair enough.
Molly: Daddy, I wish we had thirty-five suns in the sky.
Chuckie: Why?
Molly: Then, in summer, I could go swimming every summer day.
Chuckie: You can do that already with one sun in the sky.
Molly: Okay, just eleven suns then in the sky so it can be a little bit more cooler than with thirty-five, but still hot enough that you'll have to let me go swimming.

Chuckie: So, who do you think would like this movie?
Molly: People who have Green Lantern shirts.
Chuckie: True. But Daddy has one, and I wasn't thrilled with the movie?
Molly: Barnacles!

Chuckie: So anything else that you wanted to say about the movie?
Molly: The Green Lantern can fly, but he can't fly faster than light because that's the fastest thing in the universe.



So, that's our review. I thought it was uninspiringly standard for an origin story. The CGI effects were on par with modern video games, but were distractingly poor for a major motion picture. The subplot of the xeno-biologist gaining powers only to get killed (not by the protagonist of the movie) at the start of the third act was just rather weird. All it did was lead to a final confrontation and battle with a bad guy that the movie failed to develop, resulting in a rather unemotionally satisfying end battle scene.

I give the movie one star out of five. I would have given it more, but the movie made me afraid that scientists are going to beat the shit out of me now.

Molly gives the movie ten out of one star, ten out of zero moons and eight million suns out of the carnival, so it would be bright and shiny when she went there. She also posited that you cannot put a universe inside of another universe because since a universe is everything, they will, by definition just be one universe. She also pointed out that Green Lantern cannot exceed the speed of light, because nothing in the universe can go faster than light. So, perhaps I should be concerned since my little girl is on the path to growing up to be a bully thug scientist.

X-Men: First Class

Yes, we got the metaphor.

Note: I was a huge fan of the X-Men comics, back when there was only the Uncanny X-Men and there was only one incarnation of the team. Claremont wrote good stories and the metaphor was there but not blatant. Good stories were told and sometimes there was fighting, but the best issues involved things like Wolverine betting Nightcrawler to walk down a street to see how people would react. I abandoned ship right around when things got shitty, that way, I still have fond memories of the X-Men stories.

The X-Men comic was always about metaphor and subtext. But it was subtle enough that it didn't overtake the story and it could be relatable to many different things: civil rights based on race, gay rights, gender equality--essentially whatever might be oppressing you, the X-Men was there to provide a relatable metaphor of how to deal with the injustices of the world.

Later in my reading, other less subtle metaphors began to creep into the stories: the Legacy Virus (AIDS) and the Mutant Registration act (which popped up around the time that the idea of people having the join a registry if they have AIDS was being tossed around). However, for the most part, even these more blatant metaphors still took backstage to the story.

With this incarnation of the X-Men, however, the metaphor was blatant and the subtext was replaced with obvious text. X-Men: First Class is a story about gay rights and LBGT acceptance, understanding and tolerance and how that was responsible for the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Don't get me wrong, I really did enjoy the movie. It was a good one. However, they were less than subtle about the metaphor, so I'll recap the movie and parse the metaphor for them.

So, our story begins in a concentration camp, where young Erik Lehnsherr was been incarcerated for being Jewish. However, his secret mutant power gayness is detected by the camp overseer who is also a closeted mutant homosexual, and wants to develop the mutant powers of out Erik.

Meanwhile, young Charles Xavier has found Raven, a young mutant lesbian, who has been rejected by society because of her obvious physical mutations she's flaming. He outs himself to her as well, and agrees to protect and shield her from society as he teaches her how to fit in live in the closet.

So years pass and Erik is bent on vengeance and Charles is questing to find acceptance from society. Charles and Raven are still close, but there is no sexual tension between them because they are both mutants gay. Charles' quest for acceptance brings him to the US military where he out himself before them to prove that despite being a mutant gay, he is still capable of doing things just as well as everyone else. He accidentally out another mutant homosexual already in the CIA with his mental powers gaydar. In response, the outed military man tells his commander officer, "No one asked, so I didn't tell."

Anyhow, the story moves along to the point where Charles and Erik team up and find young mutants gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people and offer them a place of acceptance. Each is surprised and happy to be around others like them. They had each thought that they were the only ones who were born felt that way and they take to one another quickly, even as the military soldiers around them mock them for their genetics orientation. Soon, they sit around and begin to take pride in who they are and accept themselves for who they are, despite society's pressures for them to conform. This outing and acceptance is symbolized by each of them accepting their mutant gay persona by coming up with a flamboyant code club name.

There is a subplot where Hank McCoy and Raven do not fully accept their nature and wish to suppress their mutations feelings even to the point where Hank works on a "cure", to which comes the question: does it really require a "cure"? Raven comes to accept who she is and Hank finds out that repressing what he is does not work. There is a true side to him that cannot be masked.

Oh, and during all of this, the Russians and the US are ready to start World War III, but the group works together and use all of their mutant gay powers to stop them.

So, despite the parsing of the metaphor above, I did really enjoy the movie. I liked it more than I thought I would. It was not at all actiony schlock and instead told a good story. I just wish that Hollywood wouldn't think that we are such idiots and did not have to make a metaphor so blatant and obvious. Messages are deeper and more meaningful when we unlock them in our subconscious, rather than when you have people running around shouting "Mutant pride".

A couple of quick comments though:

*Both Charles and Erik were cast and acted so well. Each threatened to upstage each other and when either was on screen, no one else mattered. They were both excellently acted.
*Emma Frost was horribly acted. Really, she was just terrible.
*Kevin Bacon should stop making movies unless they specifically require Kevin Bacon to play himself. He takes you out of the movie and you cannot help but think, "Hey, that's Kevin Bacon on the screen".
*I am beginning to believe that it is utterly impossible to have the blue "Beast" form of Hank McCoy to be portrayed in a non-distracting manner in any live action X-Men movie.
*X-Men purists will cringe at the new backstory and the fact that Havoc and Mystique were original X-Men; let alone the fact that Mystique was Xavier's foster sister and Juggernaut wasn't his step-brother.
*The movie was much more sympathetic to Erik's plight rather than Charles' dream.



Molly: (Molly's portion of the review will be in Q&A form. This is due primarily to her age. She's by my computer now and I'll transcribe our conversation and format it later.)



Chuckie: So, Molly, what did you think of the movie, X-Men: First Class?
Molly: Um, I liked it.

Chuckie: What did you like about it?
Molly: Um, that there was nice people.

Chuckie: What nice people?
Molly: The ones that were fighting the bad guys.

Chuckie: Do you want to tell me a little about those people?
Molly: Why?

Chuckie: Um, because it'll help the review.
Molly: Well, um, they showed their powers. Um, one can fly and I forget the one that sticks his head in the water.
Chuckie: He could adapt.
Molly: Huh?
Chuckie: He could adapt to survive.
Molly: Oh. I was going to say the one that kind of slowed things. (Molly's kitten, Pond, jumps and attacks her feet as she is talking to me.) Hey! Pond, we're doing a review now so I can't play with you.

Chuckie: The one that slowed things?
Molly: Mm-hm. The one that said, "Stand back."
Chuckie: Oh! Havoc. He didn't slow things, they just showed him shooting in slow motion.
Molly: Oh.

Chuckie: What did you think about the girl who could change forms?
Molly: Um, I liked her. I liked that she could change forms. Probably she could change into me. If she was pretending to be me she'd do everything that I'd do. She could even turn into you. But if she turned into you, what would you think she would do?

Chuckie: I don't know. The comics implied that she'd kind of like to hang out with Mommy.
Molly: It would be funny if Mommy kissed her.

Chuckie: Yeah. Well, what did you think about the girl with the wings?
Molly: I liked her.

Chuckie: So, was there anything you didn't like about the movie?
Molly: Yes.
Chuckie: What?
Molly: The exploding.
Chuckie: All the fighting and explosions?
Molly: Mm-hm.
Chuckie: What didn't you like about that?
Molly: 'Cause there was exploding and there was fighting.

Chuckie: Tell me about the movie and what it was about.
Molly: Um, people was fighting. People was , um, um, pretending.

Chuckie: Pretending what?
Molly: Well, they were actors. They weren't really those people. So they were pretending.

Chuckie: Okay, true, but what happened in the story?
Molly: There was bad guys and they fighted the good guys and the good girls.

Chuckie: Now, you disagreed with me when we left the theater. I said that the actor who played Emma Frost was terrible, but you defended her. Do you still think she was a good actor?
Molly: Yes! 'Cause I liked her.
Chuckie: But was it just the character that you liked?
Molly: Yes.
Chuckie: But the acting was bad.
Molly: I liked the acting!
Chuckie: Really?
Molly: Yes.

Chuckie: Okay. Fine. So tell me about the differences between Charles and Erik.
Molly: Um, well, I liked the mind guy a little bit better, but I liked the other guy little less better.
Chuckie: Why?
Molly: Because the metal guy after he got the helmet blamed the girl that the mind guy got hurt but it was really his fault. And he also broke out the diamond girl which was bad and that's why I liked him less.

Chuckie: Did you feel that they pressed the mutant acceptance metaphor a little too strong?
Molly: I forget that part.

Chuckie: Fair enough. So, how do you want to rate the movie?
Molly: (laughs) In my head I thought it would be funny if I said I hated it. But I liked it.

Chuckie: Yeah, that would really trick the movie-goers who rely on the opinions of four-year olds before choosing their feature.
Molly: (laughs) Daddy!

Chuckie: So, do you want to give it stars?
Molly: Yes. And moons. That will be it.

Chuckie: Okay.
Molly: If I was to rate the movie, I would give it one star.
Chuckie: Out of how many?
Molly: Out of nine. Because that's the only number I could think of.

Chuckie: And how many moons would you give it?
Molly: Hm. One.
Chuckie: Out of how many?
Molly: Out of one.

Chuckie: Okay. I guess that's pretty good.
Molly: Yeah, it's great.

Chuckie: Okay. So who do you think would like this movie?
Molly: Um, the people who watched it.
Chuckie: But I mean, what kinds of people would like to go and see it?
Molly: Um, everybody.
Chuckie: You don't think anybody wouldn't like this movie?
Molly: Yup, I think that everybody would like the movie.

Chuckie: Even with all the fighting?
Molly: Yeah. Why wouldn't they?

Chuckie: Because didn't you say that you didn't like all the fighting when we first left?
Molly: Yeah. But I meant everybody that isn't me, so I don't count.

Chuckie: Okay, so anything else you'd like to say about the movie?
Molly: Yes. (She waits a long beat and doesn't say anything.)
Chuckie: Okay. What?
Molly: Well, the people came to I think that it was a house and the people wrecked it. The people that had the powers.



So, that's our review. I really liked the movie. I wished that they could accept that the audience wasn't so stupid and let the subtext remain subtle instead of beating us over the head with the message. It happens to be a message that I believe in and agree with totally anyhow. There wasn't a need to make it blatant. You risk offending those who disagree with the message instead of letting it sink into their subconscious.  And the lack of subtlety was even more disappointing because the story was really a more cerebral story (for an X-Men movie, at least) instead of a fighty action flick. If Hollywood would trust it's audience more, it could have produced a much better movie.

I give it three and three-quarters out of five stars. Erik and Charles's characters were both compelling and masterfully acted and were, fortunately, on the screen much more than Emma Frost's cardboard acting. I would have given it a half-star more if the movie would have been a little more subtle in its message: gay people should be accepted because they have cool superpowers.

Molly gives it one out of nine stars and one out of one moon. She also thinks that Emma Frost's character was played by a masterful actor capable of emotion and depth. That and the fact that she is four makes me wonder why anyone would take her portion of our reviews seriously.

Doctor Who: A Good Man Goes to War

You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

I usually don't worry about spoiler alerts. However, this episode has not aired yet in the US, so I kind of feel guilty in not warning people that there will be spoilers in this review about this episode. So, if you don't want to know about Amy's baby and River Song, you should probably stop reading.

Anyhow, so the Doctor finally decides to rescue Amy Pond after melting the ganger that was sitting in her place. However, he realizes that he'll need an army to help him "go to war". So, who does the Doctor round up to help him in his epic battle where he will "rise higher than he's ever risen before"? Well, he checks out the wardrobe and raises an army based on the extra costumes they have laying around.

Really, none of these people gathered were of any importance to the Doctor. At least not from the viewer's perspective. There is no Captain Jack, Leela, Ace, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart leading a squad of UNIT commandos, or any other warriors or fighters that would make sense in a time traveler's continuity to bring along with him. Instead we get random lesbian Silurian and her lover maid, a lactating Sontaran and that blue guy that was in a fraction of a scene last season. Oh, plus he also grabbed the pirates from the siren episode and Danny Boy and the space Spitfires (you know, because they are so much more effective than actual ships designed to fly and operate in space).

These are the people that owed the Doctor the most? These are the Doctor's trusted army? No. These are what was in the wardrobe and the actors who aren't too old to play their old roles now. So that was rather disappointing.

But anyhow, for all of the hype of River's speech, "The Doctor will rise higher than he ever has before, then fall to his darkest place," it actually played out rather undramatically. The Doctor falling was apparently him being annoyed and frustrated and giving up for half a minute. For all of the focus on that speech, there was not much pay off in the story's drama.

As far as the revelation that River is Amy's daughter? That was inadvertently guessed at the start of this episode for us. When Amy's daughter was shown I read the name of the crib to Molly, "Melody Pond." Molly then asked, "What's a melody?" Jessica responded, "It's a song." Then woosh. It clicked for me and we figured it out. And in our second viewing the relevance of River's two birthdays was not missed.

There was a lot of flash, but little substance to this story. I hate that I keep delaying my reaction to see how these two-parters will conclude, especially with Moffat's style, but we'll see. Really not much happened in this episode. It was a big build up with fewer answers given about anything other than who River is. However, that was an exterior question and wasn't really a question that I had about this episode's plot at all (such as, who the hell is the eyepatch lady and who is she working for?).

However, there are a few things I would like to comment on:

The Headless Monks. The moment you introduce characters in heavy robes with their hoods up and make a point that you are not allowed to look under their hoods, you just know it is a matter of time before the Doctor, Rory, River or whomever pops back the hood and yells surprise. However, their use of light sabers and shooting Jedi bolts out of their hands was really just a little silly and over the top.

I'm wondering if River's prison sentence is for killing the Doctor, since she may have been the one to do it when she was younger and in the space suit. I believe at one point she said that she was in prison for killing "a good man".

The best moment of the show was when Rory was tending to the dying Sontaran. Rory was in his "war" garb and as he tried to comfort the dying Sontaran as the Doctor listened in, the Sontaran tells him that isn't really a warrior. He's a nurse. That is the same for Rory. The Doctor turned his nurse into a centurion warrior and the moment was probably the most interesting one in the episode. And it isn't the only time that the Doctor has had this effect on people. Look at Martha the doctor and what she became. I've come to really like Rory. He's developed and become interesting. I'm rather impressed, since I really thought that they didn't know what they were doing with him and he was just "tag along" at the start of this series.

But overall, the episode didn't explain itself. It was too fast and furious and relied on too much flash over substance. What could have been a good story was lost in the process as new characters were introduced to die valiantly (with no audience connect because they are new characters that we have no attachment to their sacrifices) and no time was taken to explore and reveal anything from the current story. Villains need motives and backstories. This one doesn't have any.

And one last annoyance that I had. They had to open with one last "is the Doctor the baby's daddy?" moment as Amy was talking to baby Melody. Hopefully that was poking fun at themselves and they've move beyond any need for this in the future.


Episode Highs:
*The scene with Rory and the dying Sontaran made the episode and helped build Rory's character.
*Rory now has kept his no-dying streak to three episodes now!
*The lactating Sontaran was actually kind of cutely funny.
*Seeing the reveal of the next episode's title made me chuckle.

Episode Lows:
*The Doctor's army was really uninspired and was a hodge-podge of "what's available in wardrobe".
*The story was lacking in explanation and depth and the only question answered this episode was really one that wasn't even brought up by this episode or story arc at all. So it was a misdirection as they "satisfied" us with a reveal of something that wasn't even pertinent to the current story.
*So the Doctor isn't just older than River, but knew her and interacted with her when she was a wee baby. Doesn't that just make their romance all the more... creepy?



Molly: (As usual Molly is beside me as I write this. Her portion of the review will be in Q&A form and I will transcribe what she says and format it later.)


Note: Molly was rather down and a bit dour in giving this review. Apparently she was really affected by the death of Commander Strax in the episode, even to the point where we had to pause it and talk to her because she was crying. She apparently wasn't too happy with the death of the lactating Sontaran.

Chuckie: So, what did you think about the episode, "A Good Man Goes to War"?
Molly: It's Doctor Who.
Chuckie: Yes, but that's what the episode of Doctor Who was called.
Molly: There was... um... their pirate friends came.

Chuckie: But how did you like it?
Molly: I liked it and don't like it.

Chuckie: Okay. What did you like about it?
Molly: That there was... um... the Doctor in it.
Chuckie: Anything else?
Molly: No.

Chuckie: What didn't you like about it?
Molly: There was fighting and people died.
Chuckie: I know, that made you sad, didn't it?
Molly: Mm-hm.

Chuckie: Well, let's talk about the story. What happened in the episode?
Molly: Um, the Doctor came down the stairs and the baby wasn't real. It was really a... what's the melting white stuff called?

Chuckie: Gangers?
Molly: No, the white stuff.
Chuckie: Flesh?
Molly: Yeah. The flesh... The baby wasn't really real because it was made of flesh.

Chuckie: Anything else happen?
Molly: I don't remember anything else.

Chuckie: Really? Not even anything about River?
Molly: She's really the baby.

Chuckie: What baby?
Molly: Rory's and Amelia Pond's. (She looks at her kitten that she's named Pond.) And not you, Pond. It's a different baby.

Chuckie: So, how is it that she's their baby?
Molly: Amelia had a baby.

Chuckie: But how did it end up being River?
Molly: Crap.
Chuckie: (Laughs.)
Molly: What? Well they didn't tell us about it good enough so its crap. Time box?
Chuckie: What about time box?
Molly: Well, I thought that was the reason she was her baby and old. She traveled through time.

Chuckie: You kept saying that you were confused during this episode. Was the storyline too confusing for a four year old to follow?
Molly: No. Remember there was two rivers?

Chuckie: What two Rivers?
Molly: The baby and the one who was older.

Chuckie: That wasn't too confusing for you?
Molly: That part was.

Chuckie: Okay, well, did you think that this episode was good for kids?
Molly: No.
Chuckie: Why?
Molly: Because somebody died.

Chuckie: Fair enough, Pixie. So, how would you rate this episode?
Molly: Good. I mean bad.
Chuckie: Which one?
Molly: Bad and good. There was some good parts and a lot of bad parts.

Chuckie: Did you want to give it stars?
Molly: Um. One.
Chuckie: Wow. That's not many.
Molly: Because I really didn't like this episode.
Chuckie: Out of how many?
Molly: Two.

Chuckie: Okay. Any moons?
Molly: I don't want any suns, Daddy. Just one moon, Daddy.
Chuckie: Out of how many?
Molly: Six.

Chuckie: So anything else--
Molly: Daddy. I'll give it suns.
Chuckie: You don't have to, Sweetie. That's fine.
Molly: I'll do it for you.
Chuckie: Really, Pixie. It's up to you.
Molly: Okay. Then I'll give them.

Chuckie: Alright. How many suns?
Molly: One.
Chuckie: Out of how many?
Molly: Nine.

Chuckie: Okay, so, who do you think would like this episode?
Molly: Everybody except Ava at my school and Karlie from dance.
Chuckie: Why wouldn't they like it?
Molly: Fighting and killing and all that stuff.

Chuckie: Okay, fair enough. Anything else you want to say about this episode?
Molly: I liked seeing the pirates again.
Chuckie: The Black Spot pirates?
Molly: Yeah. I liked that one. No one died and there was much more no crap in it.



So, that's our review. I thought that it was all-flash with little substance. Sure, questions were answered, but just not the ones posed by this story arc. There were a couple of good moments in it, but it set up a few moments for the characters to reflect what they have become, but also for the series to reflect on what it has become. From the Doctor being known to the soldier for being a mighty warrior and saying "Run!" to the Doctor being a name feared throughout all times of the universe, perhaps the show has gotten away from itself. Just as the Doctor was given the moment to reflect about what the nurse Rory had become under him, hopefully this is a chance for Moffat to reflect about what the Doctor has become under him. Hopefully River's words about the Doctor falling so far were meant for Moffat. It shouldn't be all running from monsters, explosions and action-packed battles-- I mean, the show began with the Doctor being fucking ancient. Hopefully River's words will be heard and things will be tempered a bit from this point on.

But I doubt it. The show isn't a kid's show anymore, but rather a show for those who remembered it as kids. But it still has its moments.

Anyhow, I give it two and a half out of five stars. The episode was entertaining, but it was lacking substance. Moffat was too busy giving us set-up moments to milk the last bit of "the Doctor is really the baby daddy" plot dry to give us actual character development, background and real plot. (Though I'm certain the fan-fic writers are doing a fine job of continuing the Doctor is the baby-daddy thread along)

Molly gave it one out of two stars, one out of two moons and a very reluctant one out of nine suns. This was definitely her least enthused review because of the death of Commander Strax. However, she was at least a little pleased to see the pirates make a return, as ridiculous as that may have been.

Doctor Who: The Almost People

Here's a bunch of Almost People now.

So when we last left off, the Doctor was in the Gamma Quadrant where he discovered the Founders had been imitating certain members of the crew in order to infiltrate before the big Jem'Hadar attack, but Odo had rebelled and would not rejoin the Great Link and... wait. That's not right.

Actually, the Doctor had just found a ganger Doctor and a small scale war had just broken out between the gangers and the "real" people.

Unlike Moffat two-parters, this episode picks up where the last one left off in story, theme and mood. I had enjoyed the first half of this story and felt that it was a little more along the lines of a "traditional" old-school Doctor Who episode. This continued that theme, but it wavered a bit at the end.

Ignoring the sudden change in the ending, there were a couple of parts of the episode that stood out to me. First of all, the ganger Jennifer brought Rory to see the discarded flesh, left deformed and dying as Rory began to feel even more sympathy for the plight of the gangers. The discarded flesh still left conscious brings up a few problems; like first of all, why didn't the humans begin to consider the ramifications of the flesh if the discarded flesh remained conscious after the link? But whatever, I thought that it was an unnecessary means of getting the point of the story across too bluntly. But then it became even more blunt with Jennifer's line of, "Who are the real monsters?" Yeah. We got it. We got it a while ago. That really wasn't necessary and it kind of felt like the audience was being treated as if we were morons and couldn't figure out the ethical dilemma that was set up in the previous 80 minutes.

I was also a bit disappointed that for a story about morality, they had to end it with Jennifer turning into a monster for a final runaway and battle scene. Really, I wish that they would have enough faith in the audience to give us a more cerebral ending instead of ending it with a monster to fight. Plus, the fact that Jennifer could turn into this ravaging beast threatening to destroy half a dozen people on her own kind of hurts their message about the gangers being just like people and acceptance. Maybe it's just me, but I think I'd be a little wary of someone who could turn into a rampaging murderous beast and kill everyone around them with little effort telling me that he just wants to be accepted and treated like everyone else.

But probably my biggest problem with the resolution is that they spent two hours making the case for the fact that the gangers are in fact a valid life and are worthy of an existence in their own right, but then they casually discarded them at the end. The ganger Doctor and the ganger head-ache girl stay back to fight off the monster Jennifer and everyone is fine with their impending deaths. Just a quick, "Thanks, mates!" and they leave them to die.

Had the human head-ache girl stayed behind instead of the ganger one, I think there would have been more pause. Plus, the two gangers who stayed behind stopped the Jennifer monster by using the sonic screwdriver to revert the flesh, also taking themselves out in the process. Why the fuck didn't the real Doctor send all of the flesh gangers into the TARDIS and close the door and sonic the Jennifer monster to death himself? It was really just sloppy writing at the end to try to get rid of the ganger Doctor who would have caused some story problems, but also make sure that there are no pairs of identical humans and gangers left, because that would have caused potential off-stage complications if you thought about it.

So really, the Doctor spent all of this time validating the existence of the gangers to casually shrug off their deaths at the end. Kind of depressing.

And so, the only survivors of the acid mine are the ganger father, who is dropped off early to see his "inherited" kid, the real head-ache girl and the ganger of someone who did so little in the fucking two episodes that I'm not even entirely sure he was even in the first half.

And the little twist of the Doctor and the ganger Doctor swapping shoes was guessed by me very early into the episode. There were far too many lines of Amy saying, "I know the real Doctor and that's you," and, "Yep, you are the one and only real Doctor alright. I can tell the difference," and, "There's no way you are really a ganger who swapped shoes. I can tell and I'm not just being overly blunt about a message about prejudice." Well, maybe she didn't say the last line. But she really implied it.

But the extra twist comes at the end of the episode where we discover that Amy has really been a ganger and the "real" Amy is pregnant and being held captive, which is why the TARDIS couldn't accurately read her pregnancy. There are a shitload of continuity issues that come along with this revelation, such as how and when her abduction took place. It also annoys me that the Doctor supposedly knew about this (or at least suspected) since the first pregnancy readings. Well, if that's the case, then why didn't he prioritize that little fact and not go on random pirate adventures? He's also the most incompetent time traveler when he cannot solve a lot of these problems. I understand the whole not affecting his own timeline stuff, but he could have decommissioned the flesh Amy much earlier, spent fifty years preparing to save her, then go back in time to the moment he decommissioned the flesh Amy to save the real one.

But, whatever. Instead, we get yet another awkward instance of the Doctor decommissioning a flesh being after we just spent two hours of him validating their existence as worthy of life.

Anyhow, I still liked the theme of the storyline, but was disappointed at the ending and I'm wary of the little Amy ganger swerve at the end. I figure they'll never fully satisfy the logic behind that for me, but I'll still enjoy the ride well enough.



Molly: (As usual, Molly's portion of the review will be in Q&A form due to her age and inability to write on her own. She's by my computer and I'll ask her questions and transcribe the best I can as she answers me. I'll format it afterward.)


Chuckie: What did you think of the episode, the Almost People?
Molly: Um, well, I liked it.

Chuckie: What did you like about it?
Molly: That there was... that she had her baby.

Chuckie: Who had a baby?
Molly: Amelia Pond.

Chuckie: So, what happened? How did Amelia Pond have her baby?
Molly: Well, in the other episode, the TARDIS said she was pregnant and not pregnant and she had her baby. She was a ganger.

Chuckie: So, tell me what happened in this episode?
Molly: Well, um, at the end, he blowed balloons as a ganger. To his kid. The white haired boy ganger did that. Um, and there was, um, and, and, Amelia Pond, um, well when Rory stepped closer to her, she was really a ganger and that one.

Chuckie: Yeah, but what happened with the rest of the gangers and the acid factory?
Molly: Well, one ganger that wasn't made of acid, he died.

Chuckie: How?
Molly: Acid.

Chuckie: Oh. What else happened?
Molly: Um, Rory and a ganger runned, and then Rory, like, was near a wall and the gangers and the two Doctors and one of them was a ganger and ganger Amelia Pond went to try to find Jennifer and Rory.

Chuckie: Okay. So, tell me about the ganger who became the boy's daddy.
Molly: He, um, well, he was taking over the one of his real daddy's job to take care of his kid.

Chuckie: That was his job?
Molly: Yeah.

Chuckie: Well, what do you think that means that the ganger was going to be his dad?
Molly: That he was going to be nice to the kid and register him for kindergarten  because he turned 5.

Chuckie: So, do you think that the gangers could be real people and live real lives, or are they really still monsters?
Molly: One is still a monster. Jennifer Lucas.
Chuckie: Lucas? Was that her last name?
Molly: Yeah, probably.
Chuckie: Okay, you might be right.
Molly: She was a monster at the end. Her head was so long and she had four feet.

Chuckie: What happened to the ganger Doctor?
Molly: Well, now I'm getting confused again. Because one was holding the door and the other was going inside the TARDIS, but I couldn't see their shoes. So I don't know which one made it into the TARDIS.

Chuckie: Well, the one that stayed behind got turned into the white flesh goop. So, don't you think that one was the ganger?
Molly: So, the ganger Doctor was holding the door?

Chuckie: Yeah. The real Doctor escaped in the TARDIS.
Molly: Yes!
Chuckie: You weren't sure?
Molly: Yeah, I didn't see the shoes, so I wasn't all the way sure.

Chuckie: So, how would you rate this episode?
Molly: Twenty million stars and it was okay.
Chuckie: Out of how many?
Molly: One. And a million eleven moons. That's not even a real number, right Daddy?

Chuckie: Well, a million eleven could be one million and eleven which is a real number.
Molly: But I'd rather pick a not real number.
Chuckie: Okay, like what?
Molly: Um, one hundred and one.
Chuckie: That's a real number.
Molly: Fine. Can we just get on with the suns?

Chuckie: Okay. How many suns?
Molly: One hundred and forty-two.
Chuckie: That's a real number. Out of how many?
Molly: Out of zero.

Chuckie: That makes it not a real number.
Molly: I know. That's why I picked it. You said that when I make it out of zero it's not a real number.
Chuckie: Wow. You mean you actually remember what I said about real numbers?
Molly: Mm-hm.

Chuckie: So how do you think this episode ranks with the other episodes this season?
Molly: I don't even know what that means.

Chuckie: I mean, do you think it was better than the other episodes or worse than them or somewhere in the middle?
Molly: It was okay.

Chuckie: Fair enough. Anything else you'd like say about this episode?
Molly: Pop Pop might like it.
Chuckie: Why?
Molly: Because he likes Doctor Who. Because there's a doctor in it.



So, that's our review. I thought the first two-thirds of it was good, even if they were a bit blunt with the morality and messaging of the episode. The ending was a bit disappointing because of the Jennifer Monster (which is, however, a fun term to write) and the casual sacrificing of the gangers after spending all of that time validating their existence. And the real Doctor's little speech before the sacrifice of the gangers was, "Well, there is a chance that your consciousness might be preserved somewhere, somehow," wasn't overly validating for that sacrifice. I mean, isn't that the same thing that we say to real humans when they are about to die?

I give it two and a half out of five stars. I would have given it more if not for the bluntness and the off-message endings. I still like the concept of the story and a fair bit of the execution, but it just didn't quite pull it off and some of the errors are ones that were hard to forgive.

Molly gives it twenty millions stars out of one, either a million and eleven or one hundred and one moons, and one hundred forty-two suns out of zero, making it a not-real number. She also remembered that dividing by zero does not produce a real number. So apparently our reviews are turning my little girl into a math nerd.

Doctor Who: The Rebel Flesh

The Rebel, Rebel Flesh*

I have a feeling that most people didn't like this last episode. I happened to enjoy it a fair amount, but I think there was so much Gaiman fan-boyism from the last episode that no one really paid attention to the lack of character development and interest to see that Gaiman really just wrote a Gaiman story and not a Doctor Who episode. And now, with a story with develop, pacing and moral decisions to be made (in other words, classic Doctor Who), most fans forgot what an episode was supposed to be like and instead pined over random good quotes about biting being like kissing with a winner.

I hope that isn't true. But I somehow think that there won't be much love for this episode because it followed Gaiman's tribute to Gaiman.

The episode was penned by Mathhew Graham, who co-created "Life on Mars" and "Ashes to Ashes". He also wrote the really shitty second series episode, "Fear Her", but found much more of a place with this script.

It is a two-parter episode and I usually like non-Moffat two-parters. The classic Who episodes were serials and often had cliffhangers (just as predictable as this one's)as we needed to wait until next week to find out what was going on. Moffat's two-parter's aren't bad, but are very rarely consistent in theme and mood and might as well be two different stories.

But the cold opening of the episode was nice. It really was a brilliantly disturbing scene to see how casually everyone dealt with the death of one of the workers. This also set up the attitudes that will propel the story later: these are things, casually discarded as carelessly as worn gloves by the workers.

Anyhow, the Doctor plans on dropping off Amy and Rory for a little while (to get some fish and chips) as he has business to do. A solar tsunami (really?!) blows them to this location, however. And we find that there is a living plastic "flesh" that the workers use to create doppelgangers (or gangers) of themselves to work in dangerous conditions with. Well, of course, things go wrong and the gangers seem to be able to live on their own, keeping the memories and personalities of their counterparts. So, the morality here is, are they alive? What is alive? Are they soulless machines with just some AI that lets them believe they are alive? Or are they sentient beings? And what exactly does being alive mean? The gangers have just as vivid memories and attachments to their counterparts in every way, including a bond with their counterpart's children.

Of course, things go wrong and some clod of a character starts a war and the episode ends with the Doctor having a ganger of his own, making his decisions on life and identity more personal leading into the next episode. But that's just how Doctor Who works.

Anyhow, less about the plot and more about a few specific things:

First of all, as much as I've been railing about the Amy/Rory jealous stories as intellectually lazy, there was a prime chance to play it up in this episode and they didn't. There was an attraction between Rory and Jennifer and Amy didn't freak out or whine. In fact, it made sense. Firstly, Rory is a nurse. It stands to reason that he'd be drawn to help the vulnerable character, even as the Doctor chastises him and tells him not to. This is character development, folks. Rory is finally getting some personality other than dying every week to make Amy's plight seem worse. But secondly, Rory spent 2000 years as a plastic Auton, convinced that because of his memories and feelings for Amy, that he was human and his identity was valid. It stands strongly to reason that he would be drawn to defend Jennifer and the plight of the gangers. And you know what the best part of this is? It was all played without Amy being jealous (at least so far, there is a second half that could fuck this up).

Second, I am wary about something meta-plotwise in this episode. First of all, the Doctor knew about the living flesh before arriving. It stands to reason he was intentionally going there. Was this where he was planning on going after dropping off Amy and Rory? If so, I am really very cautious about making a ganger Doctor to go and die in his place (from the Impossible Astronaut). That would just be too lazy of a way around the season's story arc. There are a lot of reasons why it doesn't seem to work (memories; all of the future off-stage experiences that he had with River would have been as a ganger thus demeaning their relationship; the similarities to the intellectually lazy way of creating a Doctor Mark II sex doll to give to Rose to end that storyline), and I hope that they do not go there. But I am worried.

Third, why the hell (other than plot convenience) does the next century's military need to mine for acid? I mean, does acid become really incredibly useful? That just seemed like such an odd thing to have such an intense factory mining operation to be built around.


Molly: (As usual, Molly is next to me as I do this. Because of her age, her portion will be as a Q&A format and I'll type what she says as she says it and format it later.)



Chuckie: So, what did you think about the episode, "The Rebel Flesh"?
Molly: What's a rabble flash?

Chuckie: No, the Rebel Flesh. That was what the episode was called.
Molly: No, it's called Doctor Who.

Chuckie: Yes, well, this episode of Doctor Who was called "The Rebel Flesh".
Molly: Oh.

Chuckie: So, what did you think of it?
Molly: I liked it.

Chuckie: What did you like about it?
Molly: Um, that... that... that... um, well... that... um... um... that they was playing games.

Chuckie: What games were they playing?
Molly: That one like were you throw that fuzzy thing with the point on it at the circle with the black thing on it.

Chuckie: You mean darts?
Molly: Mm-hm.

Chuckie: You liked that they were playing darts in the TARDIS during the opening?
Molly: Yeah.

Chuckie: Was there anything else that you liked about the episode?
Molly: No. It was full of... (She pauses, then reaches up and pulls my head to her ear to whisper the next word to me.) ...crap because they didn't explain anything.

Chuckie: (laughs)  Wow. You remembered me talking about crap in other episodes, huh?
Molly: They didn't explain why they was goop.

Chuckie: What happened in this episode?
Molly: Um, well, they couldn't control the TARDIS and they were traveling with no control of anything and they found a new world and there was acid in the tubes and there was people like, then there was an alarm and they said "Don't move" and then the Amelia Pond talked to them and the people were on the machines that made their arms stick out and they found that girl and they, um, like, Rory and her went into the bathroom and she broke the mirror and she turned into a snake body and then, um, Rory ran and he got out of the place and she said, "Rory, where are you? Rory, where are you?" and she, um, Rory was behind the place and she went and looked and she said she was stronger than me, well, the me with the same name and she looked in the mirror.

Chuckie: Wow. Is that it?
Molly: Mm-hm. I knowed a lot, right?

Chuckie: Yeah. But can you tell me a little about the gangers?
Molly: Oh, and I kind of forgot about this stuff... and they, well, the Doctor touched the goop and like hard goop and the gangers made new people and the Doctor like the other people now is two people.

Chuckie: Well, one of them is a ganger, right?
Molly: Mm-hm.

Chuckie: But tell me about the gangers. What do they want?
Molly: They, um... the girl ganger?

Chuckie: Yeah, okay.
Molly: Rory.

Chuckie: What do you mean?
Molly: (She grabs my head and pulls it down to her mouth to whisper in my ear.) She wants to kiss him.

Chuckie: Oh. Do you think Amy should be jealous?
Molly: Not Amy. Amelia Pond. And no. They both like him. It's not like they're boyfriend and girlfriend.

Chuckie: Well, no, but they're married.
Molly: So? You can be married and still have a girlfriend.

Chuckie: Oh. You should let mommy know that. Daddy's been arguing that with her for a while now.
Molly: They both like him!

Chuckie: Okay, sweetie.
Molly: And it's not like Amelia Pond and Rory walked down a red carpet. And she called him stupid head.

Chuckie: So, who should Rory be with?
Molly: Amelia Pond.

Chuckie: And what about Jennifer, the other girl?
Molly: She can get one of the boy gangers.

Chuckie: Then she shouldn't kiss Rory?
Molly: No. That's still okay.

Chuckie: Well, this is coming from a girl with five boyfriends.
Molly: Daddy! The cats can hear you.

Chuckie: Sorry. Anyhow, what happened at the end of the episode?
Molly: There was a ganger of the Doctor. And we have to wait for the next episode.

Chuckie: What do you think will happen in the next episode?
Molly: They'll tell us what's happening and it won't be full of crap.

Chuckie: Well, hopefully. So, Pixie, how would you rate this episode?
Molly: Um, eight million ninety-nine moons.

Chuckie: Wow. That's a lot. You're starting with moons and not stars?
Molly: Start with moons.

Chuckie: Okay. Out of how many?
Molly: Out of six.

Chuckie: Okay.
Molly: Sixty-six stars.

Chuckie: Out of how many?
Molly: Out of ten.

Chuckie: Okay, anything else?
Molly: Um, eight-sixty-six suns. Then it would be very bright outside.

Chuckie: I guess so. Out of how many?
Molly: Out of ten.

Chuckie: You know that you gave more stars, moons and suns than it was out of, right?
Molly: Mm-hm. Because I liked it very much.

Chuckie: Out of the episodes you've seen this season, where do you put it?
Molly: In the middle. Well, wait. I don't know yet. There was some crap in it, but there was also some not crap in it too. But there's going to be a next one. I'll need to find out the next one then I'll know how much crap was in it once it's all over.

Chuckie: Very good, Sweetie. Daddy likes to get the whole story first too.
Molly: You mean, do what I did?

Chuckie: Yeah. So, anything else that you wanted to say about this episode?
Molly: I think the people who watch Doctor Who would like this episode.

Chuckie: You really don't like to go out on a ledge, do you, Pixie?
Molly: No. I don't want to fall.

Chuckie: Fair enough. Is that it?
Molly: We have to find out if Amelia Pond is pregnant or not pregnant. I think we'll find out in the last episode.

Chuckie: Yeah, you've got it down how it works, don't you?
Molly: Mm-hm.



So, that's our review. I thought that this was more of a return to classic Doctor Who episodes, even if it did steal a bit from "the Thing". Graham did much better this time around than with "Fear Her" and it was nice to see Chris Skelton banging about, even if it wasn't Ray or Gene bossing him around. Since it's a two-parter, I have some reservations since the story could always go to crap, but I am actually rather hopeful this time around. I'm just hoping that this isn't a silly means of wrapping up the "Doctor dies" storyline.

I give it three and a half stars out of five. There was character development that made some semblance of sense as well as an intentional aversion to the trope marriage jealousy storyline which could have easily been a factor in this episode. We'll see how the next episode goes though. I could see it knocking this rating up or down a half-star depending on how it pans out. But mostly I was happy to see a return to a more classic Doctor Who storyline.

Molly gives it eight million ninety-nine moons out of six, sixty-six out of ten stars and eight sixty-six suns out of ten. She also would have thought that this would be a middle-of-the-pack episode for this season so far, but she wants to wait to see the conclusion to see if there is either crap or not crap involved in the story resolution.


*For the record, yes, I am aware that the lightning mark I put on her face is from the album "Aladdin Sane" and that the song, "Rebel, Rebel" was on Bowie's "Diamond Dogs" album. However, I thought that this image was more iconic than putting her face on a lounging dog's body with its penis visible.

Doctor Who: The Doctor's Wife

Yet another capital D character for Gaiman to write about.

I have a love-hate relationship with Neil Gaiman. First of all, I have to respect him since my high school and early college dating scene has been with goth theater girls, so my familiarity of his Sandman comics kept many a girlfriend in my early dating life wet. I also really liked most of the Sandman comics as well as some of his other works (most notably, when he has a co-author). However, as I got older, I started to realize that too much of Gaiman's work falls within a very strict scripting. There is little exploration beyond the style that he writes well at. That isn't a put-down. He's damn good at what he does, but eventually I decided that I wanted to see different things other than fanciful quasi-good characters painted with broad strokes more interested in getting out a singular good line of dialogue rather than actually develop as a character. So I felt Gaiman behind. Plus, I started to sleep with non-goth girls, so there wasn't a need to be up to date on his writing anymore anyhow.

From time to time, I've picked up a Gaiman story to revisit his style of storytelling and while the stories are never bad, per se, they are all such cookie-cutter formula for his style. We get fanciful, yet unexplained things that happen as if for no reason other than to dictate that Gaimon wishes to write a fairy tale, and not a proper fiction story, so that he can be excused from logic or science or rational plot devices to bring his story to a conclusion. Again, this is fine. He does it well. But I've outgrown that. Or, more accurately, I've found a certain niche of girl who can still get turned on without in their heads pretending that I am one of the Endless.

So, I was a little worried about Gaiman taking on a Doctor Who episode. Sure, Doctor Who isn't science-fiction... It isn't even science-fantasy; it is pure fantasy. So, it is within Gaiman's realm of writing style. But what would he do with the characters that I know and understand that are not a part of his universe. I mean, sure, the Doctor's name begins with a capital "D", but he shouldn't be treated as Dream, Destiny, Delirium, Desire, Despair, Destiny and Destruction.

However, it turns out that it wasn't that bad. The story was pure Gaiman. He introduces us to fanciful patchwork characters in the form of Auntie and Uncle who seem interesting, but are left unexplained, and then are summarily discarded unceremoniously once the last interesting bit of dialogue is extracted from them. The TARDIS is inexplicably put into a human shell to deliver interesting dialogue (rather than to develop as a character, such as discovering a purpose or meaning to being a living creature) and then is discarded at the episode's end. The existing characters, primarily Amy and Rory, are characters that Gaiman did not create on his own and therefore were offered the least interesting role in the story. Amy's psychological torture by "House" was rather uninspired and didn't really fit the character well. Gaiman was much too interested in playing with his own creations than evolving someone else's characters. But, to his credit, he didn't make their marriage "teevee interesting" by making them jealous of one another.

But the episode had some charm to it. Gaiman's good at that. The episode was supposed to be in last season's stories, but it was bumped due to budgeting and was replaced with the cheaper to produce (and more interesting ) episode,  "The Lodger".  But it still wasn't a bad episode. Just one that I fear is ultimately forgettable because it does not really fit well in the over-all arc of stories, but it doesn't stand out as a particularly grand one-shot episode.

Episode Highs:
*Seeing the old-style TARDIS console that the Doctor built was a little bit of fan-boy nostalgia for me.
*Yes, there were good lines of dialogue in the episode.
*The TARDIS thinks Rory is pretty.
*The episode looked like a Gaiman story. I'm counting that as a positive because it at least had his feel in the visuals as well as the story.
*There were interesting characters introduced in the episode.

Episode Lows:
*Those interesting characters were never developed and quickly discarded once it was realized that to continue to give them lines would mean that they should probably be developed.
*The existing characters (Amy, Rory) were really given an uninspired path as the focus was on the one-shot characters instead.
*The fact that they explored more of the TARDIS outside of the console room was interesting, but the fact that it was merely the same hallway used again and again made the gigantic TARDIS interior seem even more claustrophobic  than other episodes where we only see the console room.
*Rory died yet again in a Doctor Who episode.



Molly: (So, as usual, Molly is sitting next to me as we do this. Due to her age, her portion of the review will be in Q&A form. I'll transcribe everything that she says and format it later.)



Chuckie: What did you think about the episode of Doctor Who, "The Doctor's Wife"?
Molly:  I liked it, but not very much.

Chuckie: Why not?
Molly:  Um, that she was being mean to River. River kissed the Doctor first and she kissed the Doctor and that wasn't a very nice thing to do to River.

Chuckie: Okay. Wow. I wasn't expecting that.
Molly:  Why?

Chuckie: Because usually you like everything and you are fine with having upwards of seven boyfriends, so I didn't think you'd be upset about the Doctor kissing multiple people.
Molly:  It's not seven boyfriends. I only have one, two, three. Three. Well, maybe four. Or five. But not seven, Daddy.

Chuckie: Who are they now?
Molly:  But it's not private, Daddy. You said people read reviews and so it's not private.

Chuckie: Fair enough, Pixie. So, what did you like about the episode?
Molly:  Um, I don't know. I liked that the Doctor was happy.

Chuckie: What made him happy?
Molly:  Because he got to talk to the TARDIS, but then he was sad because he couldn't talk to her again. The TARDIS.

Chuckie: So, tell me what happened in this episode.
Molly:  That... um... he... um... um... she... um... she... she was with her Auntie and Uncle.

Chuckie: Who was?
Molly:  The girl.

Chuckie: Well, what girl?
Molly:  The TARDIS.

Chuckie: So what was the story about? What happened in the story?
Molly:  Um, the Doctor and the girl TARDIS made a, with the old TARDIS, they made a TARDIS with the old pieces.

Chuckie: And what did they do with it?
Molly:  Um, they goed somewhere. They goed and saved Rory and Amelia Pond. Um, he said that they had to run. He said, "Run!" He said it to Amelia and Rory and they ran inside the TARDIS. Um, and then it tricked Amelia Pond. It was pretending to be Rory.

Chuckie: So, what happened to the girl TARDIS at the end?
Molly:  She disappeared. Poof. She was the TARDIS again.
(Molly sings.)
I'm a little TARDIS,
a little blue TARDIS,
And I don't know what to do.
Then I found a girl named Molly
And I flyed her to America
And we went to the beach.

Chuckie: Nice song, Pixie. So, are you going to sing a song for every episode now?
Molly: I don't know. Maybe.

Chuckie: How did you like this episode compared to the other ones this season?
Molly:  Medium. Can we do stars and suns and all that now?

Chuckie: Sure. How many stars would you give this episode?
Molly:  Fifty million sixty-one. Wait. I accidentally made it too much.

Chuckie: Okay, we can fix that. How many stars then?
Molly:  One.

Chuckie: Okay. Out of how many?
Molly:  Zero.

Chuckie: Molly, we've gone through this before. It can't be out of zero, otherwise it's not a real number.
Molly:  What? Fine. Then ten.

Chuckie: Okay.
Molly:  I want to do moons.

Chuckie: Sure, how many moons, Sweetie?
Molly:  Two.

Chuckie: Out of how many?
Molly:  Out of, um, nine. At least I'm going backwards.

Chuckie: Are you giving it any suns?
Molly:  Um, yeah.

Chuckie: How many suns?
Molly:  Three. What? I'm doing everything in order.

Chuckie: Okay. So, let me guess then. It's out of eight suns?
Molly:  No! Out of seven.

Chuckie: Okay, you got me there, I guess. Who do you think would like this episode?
Molly:  Um, the people that would want to watch Doctor Who and that would like this episode.

Chuckie: That's a pretty safe guess. So, which did you like more, this episode or the pirate episode?
Molly:  Pirate because the siren was a nice doctor.

Chuckie: What do you think would have made this episode better?
Molly:  If there was a little more everything nice.

Chuckie: Like what? What nice things were missing?
Molly:  Um, that they tricked Amelia Pond and they got trapped.

Chuckie: So, you'd prefer that everything was nice and there was no obstacles for the characters to overcome?
Molly:  What's obstacles?

Chuckie: It's something in the way of the characters achieving their goals.
Molly:  What is goals? Is it like when someone is on a team? Like a goalie?

Chuckie: Well, that can be a goal. In that case, the obstacle would be the other team trying to stop you from scoring, and your goal would be to get a goal.
Molly:  Like in a hockey team?

Chuckie: Yes.
Molly:  And a soccer team?

Chuckie: Yes.
Molly:  How about baseball team?

Chuckie: Yes. Any team sport. Anyhow, would you prefer that there were no obstacles?
Molly:  Yes. Because the Doctor could get more points than the other team.

Chuckie: Metaphors are tough at four, aren't they?
Molly:  Mm-hm. Like you really want to win real bad, but you try real hard and you might not win, but you still might.

Chuckie: Okay, anything else you wanted to say about episode?
Molly:  Um, Rory asked a question for the Doctor, "Do you have a bed?"

Chuckie: What was the answer?
Molly:  Nothing. I think that the answer was "no", do you, Daddy?

Chuckie: I don't know.
Molly:  Do you think the answer is no?

Chuckie: I don't know.
Molly:  I think the answer's no.

Chuckie: That's fair enough.
Molly:  Okay. Review's over, Daddy.



So that's our review. I thought it was pure Gaiman and, despite that, it wasn't bad. It wasn't anything great or memorable, but it surely was much better than the pirate shit that was offered last week. Entertaining, but forgettable. However, I was dreading much worse.

I give it three out of five stars. This rating is with full knowledge that the episode probably left a number of my ex-girlfriends with damp sofa cushions just by the fact that Gaiman was writing.

Molly gives it one out of ten stars, two out of nine moons and three out of seven suns. I would be shocked that this is probably our first review in which I rated something higher than her, but I have no idea how the hell her rating system works anyway.

Doctor Who: The Curse of the Black Spot

The Black Spot claims another victim.

Despite my griping when I review, I like Doctor Who. There is a certain mythology and wonder that lingers with me from my childhood enjoyment of the series and despite every change in theme and companion and Doctor, that wonderment of the youthful journeys that the show has taken my mind on linger on and I still love every moment of it and am so willing to overlook the small flaws of an episode to enjoy the newest peak placed upon this high mountain of television history presented before me.

Then an episode like "The Curse of the Black Spot" comes around and I wonder why the fuck I'm watching this shit.

Since Moffat taking over the helm of the series, this is definitely the series low-point episode. There was a neat idea in it: the idea of any wound, no matter how small, could kill. It could make for some tense moments and adds a bit of mystery to what is happening. However, that concept was poorly executed in an hour long episode.

In fact, the way they tried to add tension was by having the captain stumble and have his hand "dangerously" hover over an exposed nail. Shit. The threat of the smallest wound is better than the supposedly "hold your breath moment" as he stops just before cutting himself. That works well with falling and stopping just before impaling on a pitchfork, but that is not the way to handle the drama of a small wound threat. It's a subtle threat, so play it subtly. Don't fucking play dramatic dum-dum-dum music when someone drearfully announces that they have a hangnail.

Anyhow, the Doctor, Amy and Rory find themselves on a pirate ship where the crew has been languishing at sea for eight days with a mysterious siren arriving and attacking anyone who has even the slightest wound. Rory gets cut in a silly manner and now they have to protect him from the siren. The siren at first appears to need water to appear to take a man away, but then they discover that it is still water... or the reflection that it offers that is her source of travel. So anything that casts a reflection is a portal for her arrival. So, the Doctor stupidly smashes a mirror to get rid of a reflective surface without realizing that he's just made scores of tiny reflective surfaces with sharp pointy edges that could easily cause an injury to doom a man. It would have been much better to just toss the mirror overboard. Anyhow, the pirate captain's son has been stowing away on board all this time and has Scarlet Fever, and also suffers from the black spot, showing that the siren is also targeting the sick, not just the injured and my god, this even sucks in summary. Shit happens. Eventually they find out the siren's transporting them to a spaceship in an alternate universe and everyone's okay. The pirate captain figures out how to pilot the space ship and he and his son (whose fever is "cured" by the siren) and the rest of the pirates now fly through space in their new ship. Presumably until they either run out of fuel or try to enter a planet's atmosphere or anything else that should be really fucking complicated to pilot a goddamned alien spaceship, especially with a 17th century mindset.

This episode sucked. And it sucked hard. Even seeing Karen Gillan in pirate garb wasn't enough to save this episode. It stunk. It stunk bad.

Episode Highs:
*The woman who played the Siren was cute. I was at least able to distract myself from the terribly plodding and silly dialogue by idly wondering what sex with her might be like.
*Amelia Pond looked cute dressed up like a pirate. Pointless, plot-wise, as it was just a convenient way to get her dressed up like a pirate.
*Rory mentioned that Amy should dress up like a pirate more often. Maybe this means that instead of focusing on jealousy, they are going to make their marriage "television interesting" by making them kinky role-players in bed.

Episode Lows:
*Everything from after the title sequence to the end credits. Admittedly, the two minutes before the opening title sequence wasn't too bad.
*Amy is jealous of Rory being enraptured by the Siren, making me think that they will instead make their marriage "television interesting" by adding jealousy at every turn.
*As the plot unfolded it made less and less sense.
*Leaving the pirates on an alien spaceship is just a cruel extended death sentence offered by the Doctor. Really, they have no idea how to refuel or land. So their fate will just be a lot of lonely gay-pirate sex until they eventually burn up in some alien atmosphere as they try to land as the captain cockily says, "Ah, a port is a port, even if it is spaceport."



Molly: (As always, Molly is sitting next to me at my computer as we do this review. I'll transcribe everything that she says. Due to her age, her portion of the review will be in Q&A format.)


Chuckie: What did you think about the episode of Doctor Who, "The Curse of the Black Spot"?
Molly: Um, I wonder how she made the black spots. Daddy, do you know.

Chuckie: Well, the Doctor said that they were tissue samples.
Molly: No, how did she make them.

Chuckie: I don't know. They really didn't do a good job of explaining anything.
Molly: I guess we'll have to find out by watching another episode.

Chuckie: We'll, see. I don't think we'll ever get these answers though.
Molly: What?! But how did she make them? And Daddy, how was they... they, um... how was she getting mad at them before, but she wasn't when they were at the hosbital? (Yes, she said "hosbital" instead of "hospital".)

Chuckie: I don't know, Pixie. They really didn't explain.
Molly: Why can't they explain that to us? Maybe they just weren't letting her do her doctor skills.

Chuckie: Maybe, or maybe it was just really, really crappy writing.
Molly: No, Daddy!

Chuckie: Okay. Well, so what did you think about the episode though?
Molly: I liked it.

Chuckie: What did you like about it?
Molly: Um, the girl was being nice. She letted her take care of Rory for a while.

Chuckie: What happened in this episode?
Molly: Well, I wanted to tell you something about the ring.

Chuckie: Okay. What?
Molly: Like the circle. Not the black circle.

Chuckie: Okay. What about the ring?
Molly: Um, why was it on her head?

Chuckie: Huh?
Molly: Why was it on her head?

Chuckie: What ring are you talking about?
Molly: The big yellow one that was like this big.

Chuckie: I still have no idea what ring you were talking about. On whose head?
Molly: No, it was a ring around and she let Amelia Pond touch it and make her hand go through it.

Chuckie: Oh! That was how the siren let Amy take--
Molly: Amelia.

Chuckie: That's how the siren let Amelia take care of Rory.
Molly: By why was it on her head?

Chuckie: I don't know, Sweetie. A lot of things really didn't make sense in this episode if you thought about them.
Molly: Why?

Chuckie: Crappy writing.
Molly: Why did they make crappy writing?

Chuckie: Well, because sometimes someone has an idea that sounds really good on paper or in their head, but when they work it out, they realize that only a small bit of it was really cool and they just need to spend a lot of time filling up space in the episode to try to make the small bit that was good play out.
Molly: So... So much crap.

Chuckie: Yup. Exactly.

Chuckie: Anyway, tell me about the story in this episode.
Molly: Um, the Doctor said, "Yo ho ho!" and he said, "I shouldn't have said that." And Rory and Amelia Pond was behind him and they opened the cabinet and they met the pirates and then when the boys got cut they just went to another place. (She begins to sing like the siren.) OooooOooooOooooo!

Chuckie: That's it?
Molly: That's all I remember.

Chuckie: So what did the black spot mean?
Molly: There were boogers on it.

Chuckie: No, the black spot people got on their hands.
Molly: The ghost came for them and they went to another place.

Chuckie: What did you think of the characters in this episode?
Molly: I liked them.

Chuckie: Which ones?
Molly: Um, Amelia Pond.

Chuckie: What did you like about her in this episode?
Molly: That she was saving Rory's life.

Chuckie: How did the siren get around in the episode?
Molly: (points to my glasses) Reflections. Duh. How could she ever get there again if she didn't use reflections? She's a ghost. Duh. (She starts to sing out the note like the Siren did in the episode.) OoooOoooOooo.  
(She sings a song she makes up on the spot.)

There was a siren on board.
We couldn't get out.
We found some humans that can help us.
They put the black spots on them because
they had to save the other people.
And then she goed away on sail.

Chuckie: Beauty song, Sweetie.
Molly: Thank you. Can we do stars now?

Chuckie: Sure. How many stars would you give this episode?
Molly: Eight million.

Chuckie: Why so many?
Molly: Because I like it so much.

Chuckie: Okay. Out of how many stars?
Molly: Out of one hundred.

Chuckie: Let's try this: would you rate the episode Excellent, Good, Okay, or Bad?
Molly: Excellent.

Chuckie: Really?
Molly: Yup. I like it.

Chuckie: Okay. Anything else you wanted to say about this episode?
Molly: I want to do moons and suns, please.

Chuckie: Okay. How many moons would you give it?
Molly: Eight hundred and one thousand.
Chuckie: Out of how many?
Molly: Out of Africa.

Chuckie: Okay. And how many Suns?
Molly: Um, one hundred and two.
Chuckie: Out of how many?
Molly: Out of America.

Chuckie: Okay, so anything else you wanted to say about this episode?
Molly: Um, I think it would have been better if there was a little more not crap.

Chuckie: That's what I was saying, Sweetie. Then why are you rating it so well?
Molly: Um, because I thought a lot of parts were good. Just not the parts with the crap in them.

Chuckie: Fair enough, Pixie. Don't say crap anymore. Daddy shouldn't have mentioned it.
Molly: Okay.



So, that's our review. I thought it was complete and absolute crap. There was a decent tense premise, but it was poorly expanded upon and poorly executed in the episode. This was definitely the low of the Moffat episodes so far, and possibly of the who new series if I really put the time to think back on some of the shittier Davies episodes.

I give it one-half star out of five. I would give it less, but I do still think that it would be physically possible to make something less entertaining than this hour I saw, so I need to reserve the zero score based upon merely a principle that things could have been worse. Not sure how, but it is theoretically possible.

Molly thought it was excellent and gave it eight million stars. I need to interject, however, and point out that she is only four. However, she did seem to agree with my points about crap writing, even if it will get me in trouble with my wife for getting her to say it as well.