Lost Lit: Stephen King's Carrie

“We were kids.”

I was about ten when I first read this book. It left me with a series of images: A white bikini. A table thrust through a picture window. A Gigantic crucifix. Buckets of blood and lots of fire. Ever since, I’ve had a strong distaste for gym showers. And, come to think of it, I ditched my senior prom.

Now that I’m old enough to wonder what my parents were thinking when they let me read this book at such a tender age, and now that I’ve re-read it for the first time since those halcyon days of youth, I have a very different impression.

The standard wisdom on Carrie is that it’s a book about—well, about Carrie. (I think the movie, which I haven’t seen, probably contributed to this.) Even King’s new introduction, dated 1999, notes that his inspiration for this book came from two girls, whom he calls Tina and Sandy, he knew in his youth: social outcasts, pariahs, sacrificial goats. He says, “[The novel is] dated now, but still [has] a surprising power to hurt and horrify…Sometimes—quite often, in fact—I wish that Tina and Sandy were alive to read it. Or their daughters.”

This book definitely has the power to horrify. Carrie’s mother takes religious fervor firmly into the realm of child abuse, and Carrie’s schoolmates torture her regularly. Carrie herself isn’t anything special: she doesn’t have the brains or the beauty or the brio required to get herself out—out of her mother’s house, out of the vocational track at school, out of small-town Maine. We sympathize with Carrie, but we only empathize with her in the darkest, loneliest nights.

But this book also has the power to hurt. It hurts because this isn’t just a book about Carrie. It’s also about four unique women whose lives intersect with hers: her mother; Chris, the school’s female bully; Sue, the girl next door who wants to be a better person than she is; and Miss Desjardin, the gym teacher who just doesn’t try hard enough. All four of these women are disgusted with themselves for the disgust they feel for Carrie. This back-and-forth sneering ire eventually destroys the entire town and all of the women—if not physically, at least emotionally and psychically.

Carrie is, hands down, the most memorable creature in the book. But if you re-read it (or even if you check it out for the first time), I think you’ll notice, too, how the novel is about four women attempting to gain control over the world by manipulating others, both other women and the token, and rather flat, male characters. Chris is a sociopath who enjoys inflicting pain—and enjoys feeling like that infliction is justified. Sue talks a good game, redemptively speaking, but she doesn’t walk the walk: she gets her boyfriend to do her penance for her. Miss Desjardin, operating under the reflexive disgust, takes it out on her female students. And Carrie destroys the town, but hates herself as she does so: in trying to control everyone else, she loses control of herself. Sue, who survives the massacre, says that she can’t describe how everything rose to such a crazy convergence: “We were kids,” she says, pointing out that this manipulation wasn’t intentional; it was just the rules of the game they didn’t realize they were all playing.

Lost-wise, the interplay of disgust and manipulation is interesting to consider in light of Juliet’s assertion that this is her favorite book (3.1). While I have a hard time accepting that statement at face value, I can see Juliet digging the brutal portrayal of the harm we cause others as we desperately attempt to stack the decks in our own favor: think of her smarmy little ex-husband, or of that on-island therapist, or of Ben. Think even of Juliet herself, who, particularly in Seasons Three and Four, seemed to constantly be running her own game on the side. Giving Sawyer to Kate (I almost want to write, “giving Kate to Sawyer”) even has the flavor of Sue’s self-conscious martyrdom-by-proxy in coaxing her beau to take Carrie to the prom. Juliet, however, learns from the book’s message and commits a huge sacrifice, not for the redemptive possibilities, but because she loves her man. (The power of the book to break a cycle of manipulation might be part of the reason King wanted his muses’ daughters to read it. The other reason is just that he wished his Carrie-inspirations had lived long enough to have kids.)

There’s another thing I forgot about the book in the many years that have passed since my first reading: it’s a book that hints at the ending on page 6 and gives it away about fifty pages in. Because it’s not a traditional narrative: it’s a mix of third-person narration of the events leading up to prom night; first-person stream-of-consciousness (King gets better at this in later books); and mock-excerpts from scientific journals, popular magazines, depositions, and autobiographies.

All of these after-the-fact accounts attempt their own manipulation of Carrie and the mythos that begins to build up around her. They exhibit the same repulsion and fascination, and by attempting to answer the question of how something so impossible could happen, are trying to fit the answer into whatever pigeonhole they’ve decided is best. This is most obvious in Sue Snell’s autobiography, which she claims she is writing to inform people of the truth, also attempts to portray her as blameless and put-upon: the position she must occupy to live with the knowledge of the part she played in Carrie’s destruction.

The narrative mix-it-up, of course, is very Lost. Whereas Carrie gives us the bird’s-eye view of what has happened, is happening, and will happen (with the details filled in slowly), Lost always appears to be focused on a particular present, usually on the Island, with the past and future filled in more mysteriously. But the shuffled timeline isn’t entirely dissimilar from Carrie. And reading Carrie, knowing what was going to happen, I had the odd thought that maybe Jacob reads time the same way that we read Carrie: knowing where it’s going to end up, knowing the major beats along the way, but not knowing the little details, which sometimes includes who is going to live and who is going to die.

Fun Facts:

• King almost abandoned this novel, his first, because he and his wife needed money immediately, and he thought he’d have better luck selling another short story.

• Emilie de Ravin played Chris in the recent made-for-TV movie version (thanks, Lostpedia!).

• I mentioned in my review of The Stand that I think King has an Early, Middle, and Late Period. Perhaps obviously (it’s his first novel), this is very Early King. It’s only 250 pages, has only two quoted song lyrics, focuses on a small group of people, and has no apparent link to the Dark Tower.

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Doctor Who: Bad Wolf (1)

Doctor: "Rose."
Rose: "Yes, Doctor?"
Doctor: "I'm coming to get you."

I didn't see the trailer for this week's episode, so I was totally caught off guard by the re-emergence of the Daleks. So what started out as a fairly innocuous poke at popular British television, suddenly, and rather deliciously, transformed itself into something quite wonderful. I was chuffed at the prospect of seeing one Dalek this season. But seeing half a million of them? I must be dreaming!

The first thing this episode did was give some much needed "oomph" to earlier season episode "The Long Game," which felt decidedly weedy as a stand alone. But coupled with this episode (and undoubtedly the next), suddenly it all begins to make sense. "The Long Game" wasn't a crap episode after all. We just didn't know what it meant. Until now.

Society has effectively collapsed as a direct result of the Doctor's interference a hundred years previous. And in the absence of information, mankind has stopped progressing and instead spends its time watching whatever game/reality show the Game Station pumps out. Which to be fair, isn't too far removed from modern life. So the Doctor is essentially to blame for their problems this week. Which is a rather tasty consequence to what initially seemed to be an inferior earlier season episode. I just wished they'd slotted "The Long Game" in before "Bad Wolf," maybe making it a three episode arc. It would have made a far better lead-in than "Boom Town".

And it was surely an inspired choice to have narcissist Captain Jack appearing alongside futuristic robo-fashion advisers Trine-e and Zu-Zana. If ever a Who character was destined to get nekkid on national television, it's Jack. His clothes were off in a flash... disintegrated by a defabricator gun (well what else would it be used for?). And my, how shy John Barrowman looked. You saw that, right? No? Okay... I guess I was pushing reality a little there.

And Anne Robinson was just perfect as Anne Droid. It was so clever I didn't even wince at the sheer silliness of it all. Well, maybe just a little.

But the real meat of this week's episode was the return of the Daleks and the rise of the Dalek Emperor. Clearly he's not Davros, nor is he the Golden Emperor, or that conical dude from Dalek City. Instead we have a refugee from the Time War, a self proclaimed God of the Daleks, who appears to have rebuilt the Dalek race from mutated human genetic material. The Emperor Dalek looked excellent -- as did the Dalek army as they moved through space. So full marks to the visual effects team. My confidence in them has been somewhat restored.

Rose's "death" was a bit of a shock to the system. When this episode originally aired, it was common knowledge that Chris would be leaving after just one season. Distressingly, there were also rumours that Billie would be following suit. So for one horrible moment I thought the rumours had been confirmed. And then she came back. Dare I venture a quick... hurrah!?

And after weeks of being virtually ineffectual, the Doctor finally came into his own. At last he looked like the man he's supposed to be. Even in the face of an army of Daleks, he remained defiant. When he looked into the Big Brother camera and said... "then I'm going to find you"... before tapping the screen, I felt a twinge of excitement in my bones. And I have to admit to getting all misty eyed at his promise to Rose, that not only would he save her, but he would also wipe out every Dalek from the sky. Spoken like a true hero. All he needs to do now is come good on his promise.

Bits and Pieces:

-- Channel 44,000 was an allusion to UK television channel Channel 4. Anne Droid was voiced by Anne Robinson, host of UK quiz show The Weakest Link. Trine-e and Zu-Zana were played by Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine, fashion gurus from TV show What Not To Wear. And Davina Droid was played by Davina McCall, current host of Channel 4's Big Brother.

-- Rose correctly answered Anne Droid's Face of Boe question. The Face of Boe first appeared in the episode "The End Of The World", is mentioned in "The Long Game", and also features more prominently in the second season.

-- Why would there be a Groundforce show if no one has a garden any more?

-- Earlier episode "The Long Game" seems to have derived its name from a line of dialogue from this episode. The Doctor says "someone's been playing the long game, controlling the human race from behind the scenes for generations." See? I did remember to mention it!

-- Anne Droid makes the first ever reference to Torchwood tonight. Torchwood is an anagram of Doctor Who.

Billie says...

See, this is where my lack of cultural connection and unfamiliarity with reality shows comes in, because I was unfamiliar with all of them and most of the episode was lost on me. Instead of enjoying it as a parody, all I kept thinking was how improbable and unworkable it was that 21st century television would be going on that far in the future when everything we watch now is completely different than it was in, say, the fifties. Plus, game shows taken to life and death extremes is a fun sci-fi theme, but it's been done to death.

But I liked the rest of the episode. The Controller, who was on screen for maybe five minutes, was a hero; she was enslaved at the age of five, spent her entire life in a marginal sort of semi-existence, and yet she died trying to save her world. (Loved the look. Especially her hair.)

And I liked that the cool, calm Doctor completely lost interest in everything when he thought Rose was dead. He was impatient with Jack, cared nothing about Lynda with a Y, didn't care about saving the Earth any more. He really does love Rose.

Wow. That's a lot of Daleks.

Quotes:

Jack: "Okay. Defabricator. Does exactly what it says on the tin. Am I naked in front of millions of viewers?"
Trinny and Susannah: "Absolutely!"
Jack: "Ladies, your viewing figures just went up."

Anne Droid: "Broff, the great cobalt pyramid is built on the remains of which famous old earth institute?"
Broff: "Touchdown?"
Anne Droid: "Torchwood."

Lynda: "You were here 100 years ago?"
Doctor: "Yes."
Lynda: "You're looking good on it."
Doctor: "I moisturise."

Captain Jack: "Well ladies, the pleasure was all mine. Which is the only thing that matters in the end."

Doctor: "I'm going to rescue her. I'm going to save Rose Tyler from the middle of the Dalek fleet and then I'm going to save the Earth. And then, just to finish off, I'm going to wipe every last stinking Dalek out of the sky."
Dalek: "But you have no weapons. No defences. No plan."
Doctor: "Yeah, and doesn't that scare you to death?"

All of our Doctor Who reviews are archived here.
(Series 1, episode 12)

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Lost Lit: Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five

“So it goes.”
“No cat, no cradle.”

Vonnegut’s leitmotif is man, unmoored from the universe: not coming unmoored, or suddenly losing his way, but unstuck, untied. Lost. His books describe a state of being and the process of becoming aware of that state of being: ontology and epistemology, if you’re feeling fancy. The modern condition, if you’re feeling reductive.

Because Vonnegut’s books are about the gradual coming-into-consciousness of heroes who are constantly primed to become mini-Vonneguts, they’re pretty much impossible to review. Vonnegut’s books are impressionistic, fractured, piecemeal. This means they’re full of infinite interpretive possibilities and, I suspect, very little in the way of actual meaning. Also, their plots aren’t really that plotty, and, as Vonnegut himself says of Slaughterhouse-Five, most don’t even have characters. Slaughterhouse-Five is more or less about one man’s symbolic odyssey once he comes unstuck in time, with the firebombing of Dresden as the centerpiece. Cat’s Cradle is, I think, about one man unstuck in space. But I’ll get to that later.


You either like Vonnegut’s style, or you don’t. It’s a pleasant mix of deadpan and winkingly ironic: the reader feels like they’re in on the joke, which may be why his books are such a hit with young men transitioning into adulthood. His characters aren’t characters, they’re empty shells moved by whatever those forces are that move the world. They’re always a bit confused, a bit unwitting, and incapable of acknowledging any emotion deeper than annoyance or general gloominess. When I read them, I feel clued in to the universe. Once I’m done, I feel cheated.

Slaughterhouse-Five

In Slaughterhouse-Five, the unfortunately named William Pilgrim (no wonder he wants people to call him Billy) comes unstuck in time while behind enemy lines in World War II:

Billy Pilgrim had stopped in the forest. He was leaning against a tree with his eyes closed. His head was tilted back and his nostrils were flaring…This was when Billy first came unstuck in time. His attention began to swing grandly through the full arc of his life, passing into death, which was violet light. There wasn’t anybody else there, or any thing. There was just violet light—and a hum.

Either Billy is actually time-travelling, or his sensation of being unstuck in time (and, at some point, abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfmadorian and kept like a happy zoo animal) represents a psychic break, the snapping of the human soul under the existential weight of absurdity, futility, despair, and physical discomfort.

Either way, the possibilities are neat. The idea that trauma can result in a re-ordering of narrative events (a sort of mental reshuffling) isn’t too original—Virginia Woolf comes to mind, as do most other High Modernists. But the process of attempting to codify and understand that reshuffling by means of developing a complex explanation for it (being unstuck in time), instead of just being confused, points to the interconnectedness of structure and story. Think of the different ways that Daniel and Desmond were afflicted with time-travel related problems: Daniel is unable to understand what’s happening to him, unable to see the sense behind the fractured and occasionally missing narrative of his life after the lab disaster. But Desmond is able to experience the confusion of being lost in time and to make a story about being lost in time out of it. The structure of his plot, and the story that it’s telling, intertwine. The same is true for many of the Losties in Season Five, as narrative flashbacks and flashforwards became characters flashing back and forth.

Billy’s unstuck in time, which represents and intertwines with our modern inability to make sense out of our lives and the horror that they can contain. “So it goes,” the mantra of Slaughterhouse-Five, indicates the necessary ironic distance to forebear: Life is (to paraphrase the Tralfmadorians). It happens. The end (to quote Desmond).

Cat’s Cradle

Cat’s Cradle hasn’t been mentioned on Lost. But I think that, in terms of larger themes to consider, it’s actually more important than Slaughterhouse-Five. Like that book, Cat’s Cradle is a funny book about despair. The narrator, and the hero, is a writer just starting out on a book about what people were doing on the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. His research leads him to one Dr. Felix Hoenikker, now deceased, who helped invent the bomb—more importantly, the narrator’s research into Dr. H leads him to the Hoenikker family, then to the beautiful, barren, impoverished, and impossible island of San Lorenzo, in the Caribbean.

San Lorenzo has no arable soil; its numerous residents have no means of survival. It is nominally a Christian island, but everyone on it is a secret member of the Bokononist religion, even President “Papa” Monzano. It exists thanks to the aid of the American government, which has set it up as an anti-Communist banana republic. Without, y’know, the bananas.

Bokononism is a religion founded on puns and absurdity. The first sentence in the Book of Bokonon is “All of the true things I am going to tell you are shameless lies.” The narrator adds to this that “Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either.” Bokononism’s central tenet is a paradox: “the heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality, and the heartbreaking impossibility of lying about it.”

Dr. H’s three children have in their possession shards of ice-nine, a radically restructured version of water that turns all other regular waters into ice. Their ownership of this object—the most powerful weapon on earth—gets them love affairs, beautiful husbands, and prestigious San Lorenzo government posts. But when “Papa” Monzano commits by stealing a bit of the ice-nine, and is sent into the sunset in true Anglo-Saxon glory, the ice-nine spreads from the lukewarm Caribbean to the rest of the world. Almost everyone dies. Those who live no longer want to have sex, as the idea of bringing children into a dead world is quite the turn-off. They—the narrator, his beloved and beautiful wife, the Hoenikker family, and a few Hoosiers—begin to find life so unattractive that it is not worth it to reproduce.

They’re on an island, and they’re islanded in a cold, impersonal world, unable to even form a connection with the place they inhabit (you could compare this with the “Honey, I’m home” familiarity with Ohio that permeates many of Vonnegut’s other books). In Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy is unstuck in time. In Cat’s Cradle, our heroes are stuck in a space but unattached to the space they inhabit—which amounts to much the same thing, symbolically speaking.

Cat’s Cradle is traditionally read as statement about the death of hope in the dredges of the 20th century—the mechanization of death, the futility of hope in the face of that banal mortality, the unbearable nature of life in modernity. How can the world make sense (the traditional readers ask) if the answer to all the questions is a great big death rattle? The traditional reading makes sense in many ways: the book, first published in 1963, grapples with the aftermath of nationalism and patriotism in the wake of World War II and the McCarthy era, as well as with the ethical problems associated with American dominance, particularly in Latin America. In this reading, the impersonal murder of millions by science is the true terror.

I think that something different, something bigger, is going on. Sure, Vonnegut plays up the modern relevance, and he doesn’t skimp on the awareness of the brutality of murder at a distance—a theme in many of his books, Slaughterhouse Five among them. But Vonnegut also highlights the personal nature of some murders, particularly by emphasizing the odd method of execution on San Lorenzo: the hook. (Basically, you’re caught like a fish.)

The theme of distant murder—and the agony it can cause for the murderer—is prominent in Deadeye Dick, published almost 20 years after Cat’s Cradle. In that novel, the narrator, as a child, shoots a rifle into the air and kills a pregnant woman. His public humiliation, his uncaring and self-centered parents, his inability to feel deeply enough to connect with others, makes him feel like a leper in the Dark Ages (as he says early in the novel). His inability to forgive himself, which would require also admitting fault, however unwitting he may have been, also means that he cannot atone. The narrator’s final cry is an assertion of both the universality of that social leprosy and the futility of thinking that scientific progress means anything: “You want to know something? We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages—they haven’t ended yet.”

That might as well be a clarion call for all of Vonnegut’s novels. His beef isn’t with the perils of scientific progress (whatever that means), but with the belief that it can come to good. His novels ask us to realize that man is always inhuman to others, but wrapped up completely in himself and painfully aware of his own humanity: things like the atom bomb and ice-nine just make that inhumanity easier, and the pain of being human more obvious. Because how can we live life if the only truth is death? By lying, and by refusing to realize that lying is the means to truth. That fiction is the means to reality.

Time, Space, Narrative

In Slaughterhouse-Five, the Tralfmadorians tell Billy Pilgrim about their novels: “[E]ach clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message—describing a situation, a scene. We Tralfmadorians read them all at once, not one after the other. There isn’t any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.”

As mere humans, we see just bits and pieces and are forced to glue them together—forced to make meaning out of the synecdoche of our perception. Most of us, I’ll wager, tend towards the linear and teleological (moving in a straight line towards an endpoint) mode of understanding the world. But shows like Lost, and books like Slaughterhouse-Five, shuffle the pieces and create new connections between causes and effects, which alter our perceptions of both the causes and the effects. Different truths emerge when situations are presented in a different frame.

Narrative play gives us a new perspective on epistemology. So does naming. The title of Cat’s Cradle refers to the structure you can make out of strings. Newt Hoenikker, son of Dr. H, points out the absurdity of this construction: you show it to a child, and say “Look! A cat in a cradle!” But what the child sees is a mess of strings: “No cat, no cradle.” Just string. What the child sees is disorder, while the adult attempts to find a design in the madness, to claim some agency over what appears to be random. But “no cat, no cradle” then becomes a truth of its own, a truth about the lies we tell to give meaning and shape to our universe.

Cat’s Cradle isn’t just a stringy pastime, though. It’s also the novel we’re discussing. This is how it starts:

Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.
Jonah—John—if I had been a Sam, I would have been a Jonah still—not because I have been unlucky for others, but because somebody or something has compelled me to be certain places at certain times, without fail.

Jonah was a biblical prophet who really didn’t want to be a prophet. God kept saying: “Be a prophet!” And Jonah kept running away, until he finally realized he would have to accept his fate and deal with it. That’s Allusion One.

Allusion Two is to the narrator’s real name, John. Of the four gospel writers, John is considered the most esoteric. His is the gospel that starts off with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.” A subset of Allusion Two is the possible reference to John the Baptist, who prefigured Christ.

Allusion Three is to Melville’s Moby Dick. There’s a full review of Moby Dick somewhere in my future, but to sum up quickly: it starts off with the line “Call me Ishmael” (a biblical allusion itself). Ishmael is witness to Captain Ahab’s monomania, and nearly loses his life to another man’s obsession. But he also gains an appreciation for his own life by witnessing the destruction of another man’s.

As a prophet, Jonah must speak the truth. Gospel-writer John muddies the connection between language and truth by hinting that they’re the same thing, but in the most confusing way possible. He also makes language the creator of truth, by making language God. Ishmael relies on his own storytelling abilities to make sense of the world, much as our narrator Jonah does. But because our Jonah has so much language (because what is allusion if not the language of literature) built into his name, we get a series of languages we have to master before we can get to the truth. The same way that ice has multiform potential, so does language. And Vonnegut’s playing with it all, creating a web of allusion that hides the truth of his book (which is that truth and lies are the same thing).

The cat’s cradle stands for precisely this process of obfuscation. But, as John says, this obfuscation is how you get at truth, because it is the truth. The cat’s cradle is both the symbol of truth and the truth itself, because it is just a symbol. The universe does have a design, because we create it in thinking it has one.

The island appears to one character, lost at sea, as “a glorious mountain peak above the clouds.” He wonders: “Was this Fata Morgana—the cruel deception of a mirage?” As the narrator proceeds to tell us, Fata Morgana is a mirage phenomenon named after Morgan le Fay, who was rumored to have lived at the bottom of a lake. The phenomenon causes distant objects to appear even further away, and elongated—sometimes even elevated above the horizon.

This is a neat trick: notice how a fictional character (Morgan le Fay) is used to describe and understand a natural phenomenon? Language/allusion gets you to truth. But language also points out the unreliability of sensory perception. The natural world is actually working against your understanding the natural world. As a sorceress, Morgan is all about the unnatural, or magic. But as “Papa” says, “Magic is science that works.” The natural and the unnatural, the scientific, the rational, and the unreliable, all start to tangle up into a cat’s cradle of perception—we can’t understand anything except the incomprehensibility of the universe.

The Universe

In the Bokonon faith, one is a member of a karass: “We the Bokonists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God’s Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass.” Some object is the wampeter: “A wampeter is the pivot of a karass. No karass is without a wampeter…just as no wheel is without a hub.”

Opposed to this message of incomprehensibility is the religion/philosophy of Bokononism as outlined in Cat’s Cradle. Bokonon contradicts himself, and gets to the truth through lies. But many of those lies are ones that wind up being believed by the narrator Jonah (who is, after all, something of a prophet for us). Key among them the concepts of the karass and the wampeter. The karass is the group of people that you wind up with—your non-kin family, your destined group. You are committed to them without realizing it at the time; only in retrospect do you see how you are all united. Sound familiar? Like our Losties?

What unites you is the wampeter: it the hub, and you and other members of your karass are scattered along the rim of the metaphor-wheel. The object, though, pales in comparison to the wheel that binds you. We’ll see this image again, in slightly different form, in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, where the karass is called a ka-tet, and the wampeter is the Dark Tower itself, holding the universe in place. On Lost, it’s the island.

Final Thoughts

Well, some of that I want to leave up to your imagination—hopefully at some of my analysis of these books has made you go “Oh! Like on Lost!” without me spelling it out (or maybe I’ve failed. Always an option). And some of it I want to return to in later reviews. But some obvious highlights include:

• Cat’s Cradle is about an island, dude. Where people are fated to go.

• Jonah/John/Jack. I’ll let you play with that.

• The term ‘string theory’ wasn’t coined until 1970, seven years after Cat’s Cradle was published. But it’s interesting to consider string theory’s attempt at finding the TOE (Theory Of Everything) in light of the futility of the cat’s cradle to express any essential truth other than the truth that all is lies. Because physics are important for our island.

• Cat’s Cradle is all about futility, lies, impossibility, and the sad fatelessness of the average human. But the Bokonon philosophy that the narrator espouses resists such a facile explanation. In other words, this is a book about fate vs. free will, or fate vs. no-design-at-all.

• In Moby Dick, as in Cat’s Cradle, the way that a story is told (plot) affects the way that we understand the story itself (which we’ll just call a story). Lost has played with plot/story differences in all of the five seasons so far. Lately, as Doc Jensen recently pointed out, the scenes that we see from multiple perspectives (like the Long Beach Marina scene) have had small differences, depending on whose eyes we’re seeing through. So can it really all be about perception? And if so, who’s right, the Bokononists or the rest of us?

• Big shout-out to reader Chris for convincing me to review Slaughterhouse-Five instead of just Cat’s Cradle. Thanks, Chris!

Look for my Lost Lit Review of The Gunslinger (Dark Tower I) next week.

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True Blood: Escape from Dragon House

Sookie: "This feels a little bit like what a vampire bar would look like if it were a ride at Disneyworld."

The best so far. I laughed out loud several times.

Gotta love a vampire bar called Fangtasia. The decor was all red and black, which reminded me of Buffy. The vampires on staff and even the patrons all wore black, too -- except for Sookie, who was dressed like Sandra Dee or Annette Funicello. And I was so pleased that we got to meet two of my favorite characters from the books, Eric and Pam. They looked a lot like I saw them in my head, so good casting, there.

Eric just found out that Sookie isn't your average fangbanger. As Bill said, uh oh.

I thought Bill being pulled over because he was DWV (driving while vampire) was pretty funny. The comparisons of vampires to minority groups is a constant. Even Sam believes vampires and humans should be separate but equal. But you know, Sam has a point. The underlying theme of the episode was that consorting with vampires is a walk on the wild side. Two young women in Bon Temps have been murdered, probably because they had sex with vampires. People who go to Fangtasia are deliberately flirting with death. Even Bill can be dangerous; he literally scared the piss out of that cop.

Okay, Jason's unfortunate bout with priapism actually made me laugh a little. Big with the karma there, so to speak. And the fact that he protected little Tara from her violent, drunken mother back when they were kids made me (1) understand Tara's love for him better, and (2) like him a little more. Although I wish she hadn't lied for him.

The end was hilarious, as well as ambiguous. Sam pulled on rubber gloves to... break into Dawn's apartment and roll around on her bed to the tune of "Oooh, that smell." Was he getting off, or was he trying to smell who killed Dawn? Woof.

Bits and pieces:

-- The level of intoxication for vampire blood seems inconsistent. Sookie drank a lot from Bill and it only healed her and "enhanced her senses," while a drop or two is comparable to a dose of Viagra and tube will put you in the hospital?

-- Sookie is 25 years old.

-- Detective Andy Bellefleur gets no respect. Probably because Sheriff Dearborn seems to be the better detective.

-- Gran asked Sookie to "listen in" to try to clear Jason, and she got a headful of nasty thoughts. Except for Hoyt Fortenberry, who was the only one thinking kindly of poor, murdered Dawn.

-- I absolutely loved the painting on black velvet of George W. Bush biting the neck of the Statue of Liberty. (If you didn't see it, it was behind Long Shadow at the bar.)

-- Bill likes Cambodian music. Where did that come from?

Quotes:

Jason: "Will you listen to me? I've got gout of the dick."

Sookie: "Apparently, there's this vampire bar where Maudette and Dawn used to hang out at, in Shreveport. You know it?"
Bill: "Fangtasia."
Sookie: (aghast) "Fangtasia?"
Bill: "You have to remember that most vampires are very old. Puns used to be the highest form of humor."

Bill: "You look like vampire bait."

Bill: "Uh oh."
Sookie: "Don't say uh oh. Vampires are not supposed to say uh oh."

If I were still doing ratings, this would get three out of four stakes,

Billie

All of my True Blood reviews are archived here.
(Season 1, episode 4)

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True Blood: Mine

Sookie: "Why on earth would I continue seeing you?"
Bill: "Because you will never find a human man you can be yourself with."

This one was fun. Sookie the mind-reading virgin has got it bad for vampire Bill (because of that sexy, forbidden vamp blood -- or maybe it's more than that) and he seems to feel the same way. I have to say again that Stephen Moyer is really breathing life, pardon the pun, into Bill for me. I even like the way he says her name.

Bill didn't seem thrilled with his "friends" and didn't want them around; the reference to a higher authority hinted that Bill really didn't have a choice. If Bill had by chance been down at the GrabbitKwik picking up a six-pack of Tru Blood, Sookie could have been in real trouble. Bill said vamps that "nest" tend to fall back on their old, killing ways. Maybe it's peer pressure. Tell me why vamps are supposed to get equal rights again? Aren't killers supposed to be in prison? Are there special prisons for vamps?

Tara and Sam were also a lot of fun. I enjoyed every scene they had together, including their "friends with benefits" awkward segue on the couch. And it was jarring that we went from sexy romantic vibes with Sookie and Bill, and sexy comic relief with Tara and Sam, to Jason and Dawn banging away. Anything involving Jason is leaving me cold. I hope they'll lessen the emphasis on him; he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and I'm not interested in him at all.

Another cliffhanger. Not a surprise that Dawn was next; they signaled it pretty clearly in the last episode. The tatted-up vamp with the eyes who was with Maudette in the video is the obvious suspect, considering what he and his two nest buddies just did to two of their pet humans. But again, too obvious. We can probably surmise that it's someone that hates women who consort with vamps, or someone trying to frame Jason for murder. Or both.

Bits and pieces:

-- A vampire can "claim" a human ("mine"), like a master/slave sort of thing, and other vamps have to respect their dibs.

-- Poor Tara. She hasn't learned yet that you can't fix an alcoholic; they have to fix themselves, and all you can do is offer to be there for them when they do.

-- Tara discovered that Sam barks in his sleep. :) But he may not be a part-time dog, after all, since there was a scene with Sam *and* the dog we've been seeing. But then again, Sam did call the dog "brother."

-- I like Bill's house. It's full of dilapidated charm, and actually looks like a vampire lives there.

-- It was hinted that Sookie got her "gift" from her grandfather.

-- The vamp nest had plastic on the furniture. To keep the blood from staining, maybe?

-- I'm not sure if it was intended or not, but there was more than one reference to suicide. The girl in the vamp nest. Great-Uncle Francis.

-- Lafayette apparently has four jobs: short order cook, road crew, hooker, and drug dealer. He's not a drainer; he seems to have a pay for play arrangement with a vamp. Good thing, because I sort of like Lafayette and I wouldn't want him to be a drainer.

-- Bill and Malcolm mentioned Eric, the "higher authority." Actually, Eric is one of my favorite characters in the books, and I can't wait to see him. And hey. I got all the way to the end of my review before mentioning the books.

Quotes:

Tara: "Low self-esteem, childhood trauma, blah blah snore. What's your excuse?"

Bill: "We're all kept alive by magic, Sookie. My magic's just a little different from yours, that's all."

Tara: "You know what? He barks in his sleep."
Lafayette: "Oh, damn. White folks just all fucked up."

Sam: (to the dog) "You know what I really wish would come to Marthaville? Buffy. Blade. Or any one of those badass vampire killers to take care of Mr. Bill Compton. That's what I wish."

Better. I'm encouraged,

Billie

All of my True Blood reviews are archived here.
(Season 1, episode 3)

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Doctor Who: Boom Town

Mickey: "What are you captain of? The innuendo squad?"

After three top notch stories in a row, this week's episode was a bit of a let down. I'm not against the slower, more reflective episodes. It's nice to take time out to explore the knock on effects of prior events. But, after three of the most cleverly plotted/realised stories of the season so far, this felt like a dud. The moral dilemma faced by the Doctor was genuinely engaging -- or at least it would have been had they not fudged it. I was curious as to how the Doctor would respond to Blon's pleas for mercy. Would he send her back to Raxacoricofallapatorius and certain death? Or would he somehow come up with a more humane solution? Unfortunately, we never got to find out. She shed her skin and turned into an egg (I know!!! Seriously!).

This week also saw the return of the Slitheen. I'll admit, I'm not their greatest fan (though to be fair, they did tone the farting down this week). Nevertheless, I still found it extremely difficult to sympathise with Blon. Wasn't she trying to obliterate mankind just five episodes ago? And wasn't her plan this week to rip the earth apart to facilitate a crazy "surfboard" style escape? Isn't she a bit... you know... mental? So although I could empathise to some degree (yes the death penalty is a terrible thing, and boiling people alive in acetic acid is definitely not good times) it still doesn't change the fact that Blon's a cold blooded killer. So although the episode's moral soapboxiness had some validity, I really didn't feel much compassion for Blon at all. Trying to elicit sympathy for a genocidal maniac by riffing on the wrongness of the death penalty is, to my mind, like comparing apples and oranges. This episode was about justice. Letting Blon go would have been a more heinous crime than sending her to her death (particularly in light of later events which prove beyond all doubt that she really hasn't changed). So, interesting premise and a nice moral quandary. But it all ended in an unsatisfactory non-conclusion, which kind of made the whole issue anticlimactic to say the least.

And Rose seemed all over the place again this week. One minute she's hot for the Doctor... the next she's mooning over Adam... then she's throwing herself at Jack... and this week, to top it all off, she agrees to spend the night with Mickey. And Mickey, cheeky fellow that he is, after confessing to Rose that he has a new patootie (used in the non-arse sense... though buttock transplants may well be possible in the future), still wants to know whether he should book the hotel room! Err.... nice try Mickey.

The Doctor flirting with Jack was cute. But if romance is going to play such a big part in the series then we're going to need more cast members. Doesn't Rose fancy just about everyone in the show at present?

There were a few great moments though. As usual, the humour was spot on. The dinner scene was a superbly crafted piece of comedy, with the Doctor switching the poisoned wine, catching the poisoned dart and then spraying Blon's mouth with breath freshener. Ridiculous of course, but very funny.

But I have to come clean -- I am not a Mickey fan. His character bores me to tears and I'm not overly fond of Noel Clarke's acting chops either. So I was overjoyed to hear that he'd moved on (though evidently not far enough to refuse one last round of nudie prod games with Rose). Maybe Trisha Delaney will be good for him. The way he follows Rose around like a doting pet makes me want to throttle him. Plus, if it gets him off screen for a while, that can only be good news for me. Sorry, Mickey.

Probably the worst episode of the season so far. Not absolutely terrible, but still well below par.

Bits And Pieces:

-- The Slitheen are from Raxacoricofallapatorius, yet for some reason, the DVD subtitles spell it Rexicoricophalvitorius. Sack the subtitler, please!

-- Aren't the Slitheen (for want of a better name) only susceptible to acetic acid in their compressed form? In their natural state, would acetic acid even be a threat?

-- Bad Wolf reference of the week -- mention was made of the Blaidd Drwg project. Blaidd Drwg is Welsh for Bad Wolf.

-- Venom Grubs first appeared in the Classic Who episode, The Web Planet (William Hartnell - 1965).

Billie says...

The Slitheen were probably the worst creative decision Russell T. Davies made in this first season. I can't imagine why he'd want to bring them back. But I liked this one better than the previous Slitheen episodes. So there's that.

The dinner scene was the high point; it was sort of fascinating. Steak and chips and life and death. It's an interesting moral dilemma. I don't think Margaret/Blon deserved it, but sending her back to the beginning and letting her try again, this time without being born into a crime family, sort of worked for me. Sort of.

Again, what I enjoyed most was seeing the Doctor, Rose and Jack working together as if they'd been friends forever. Mickey could have had that; he could have joined them and traveled the stars. But he and Rose are on completely different pages now: she's visiting amazing planets with frozen waves of ice, and he's dating Trisha Delaney and throwing jealous tantrums. Goodbye, Mickey. You idiot.

Quotes:

Jack: "Aw, sweet. Look at these two. How come I never get any of that?"
Doctor: "Buy me a drink first."
Jack: "You're such hard work."
Doctor: "But worth it."

Jack: "Is that a tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator?"

Margaret: "What did I ever do to you?"
Doctor: "You tried to kill me and destroy this entire planet."
Margaret: "Apart from that."

Margaret: "We're in Cardiff. London doesn't care. The South Wales coast could fall into the sea and they wouldn't notice. Oh! I sound like a Welshman. God help me, I've gone native."

Doctor: "You've been in that skin suit too long. You've forgotten there used to be a real Margaret Blaine. You killed her and stripped her and used the skin. You're pleading for mercy from a dead woman's lips."

Rose: "We have a prisoner. The police box is really a police box."

All of our Doctor Who reviews are archived here.
(Series 1, episode 11)

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True Blood: The First Taste

Bill: "What are you?"
Sookie: "Well, apparently, I'm not dead."

So vampire blood is better than just about anything. It can heal a devastating spinal injury, enhance your senses, and turn you on at the same time. And of course, it's a metaphor for forbidden sex. Yum. I think.

Vampires can move very fast, and they're very strong. Bill crushed the Rattrays's bodies under their trailer; that's pretty strong. They also seem to commit murder fairly often. Bill taking out the Rattrays was completely understandable, considering they tried to kill him as well as Sookie. But according to the TV, the minister from the "Fellowship of the Sun," an organization that thinks vampires don't deserve "special rights" (shades of gay marriage), died mysteriously in a "freak accident." Meaning a vampire did it.

And yet, Bill seems to be quite a guy. I liked Sookie and Bill together. Their encounter by the water where he healed her (and also licked her all over) was quite sexy, and the way they flirted as they walked through the cemetery reminded me of Buffy and Angel. Bill seemed bemused by Sookie's innocent fixation on him -- and I mean "innocent" as compared to fangbangers and blood-drainers. Sookie doesn't want more from Bill than Bill himself. And you gotta love a guy who goes out of his way to be kind to your grandmother. (I liked Sookie's grandmother, too. She's sweet as well as open-minded.)

I liked Sookie's friend, Tara, too. I loved the way she freaked out the guy who was hitting on her at the party. Tara, like Sookie, is choosy. Unfortunately, Tara has chosen Jason, who is clearly not worthy of her affections. It's probably a good thing that he's busy screwing everyone else in sight and hasn't realized that Tara is a sure thing. Jason is prejudiced against vampires. Maybe he's prejudiced in other ways, as well.

You'd think his experience at the police station would have slowed him down some, but no. We got yet more of Jason having kinky sex. This time with another Merlotte's waitress, Dawn, who also had fang marks on her. Clearly signaling that she'll be the next victim.

Bits and pieces:

-- The credits contain some powerful images: prejudice, predators, sex, religion, death. Every time I watch it, I see something else. Pretty fascinating.

-- Sookie's mind-reading talent sometimes manifests as images.

-- If you share blood with a vampire, you can "feel" each other. Vampires can "glamour" their human victims, but interestingly enough, it doesn't work on Sookie. (Because she's special and different from other people.) And vamps in this 'verse have invitation rules. I like invitation rules.

-- After Bill and Sookie kissed, his fangs popped out. You can make a pretty obvious analogy there. :)

-- Bill was vamped in 1865, when he was 30. He fought in the Civil War, and lost his wife and children. Sookie lost her parents when she was seven. They have loss in common.

-- Tara and Lafayette, the cook who also works on Jason's road crew, are cousins. Tara's mother is a serious alcoholic.

-- There was a picture on the wall of Sam's office of a dog watching over a sleeping girl. And that dog from the previous episode kept showing up, watching Sookie with Bill. Um. Could the dog be jealous?

-- Loved the National Inquiry headline: "Angelina adopts vampire baby."

-- Another cliffhanger ending: Sookie went to Bill's and some dangerous-looking strange vamps answered the door and immediately started licking their lips. Loved the bumper stickers on the car; they were right out of "Dead until Dark." See? I got all the way to the end of the review before mentioning the books, so good on me.

-- Speaking of which, I'm not going to be able to speculate about whodunit or what's coming like I usually do in my reviews, since I know. It sort of limits me as a reviewer of this series, but I'll do my best.

Quotes:

Bill: "May I ask you a personal question?"
Sookie: "Bill, you were just licking blood out of my head. I don't think it gets much more personal than that."

Sookie: "I don't think Jesus would mind if somebody was a vampire."
Gran: "I don't either, honey."

Jason: "Thanks for making me look like a fool in front of him, Gran."
Gran: "Jason, you don't need any help looking like a fool."

Interesting,

Billie

My True Blood reviews are archived here. And I just did a review of the books that this series is based on. You can find it here.
(Season 1, episode 2)

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Wonderfalls: Pink Flamingos

Objects: Pink Flamingos, Mounted Fish, Booster Rooster
Mission: “Get off your ass” and “Destroy Gretchen”

This episode’s misadventures start with Jaye attempting to ignore her mission imperative and accidentally backing over her dad with the car as a result. She’s soon forced to help a detested former classmate with their 6½ year high school reunion, then to “destroy” said classmate at the reunion. Plus, she causes a second car accident, when she again ignores her instructions. (“Screw the chicken! I’m gonna save that bitch’s marriage.”) As per usual, even though it causes Jaye nothing but grief along the way, all’s well that ends well. Her efforts ultimately result in her classmate freeing herself from a loveless marriage, the soon-to-be ex-husband finding his true love, and Jaye’s dad discovering a potentially fatal blood clot before it's too late.

My favorite aspects of ‘Pink Flamingos’ were the Jaye and Mahandra arguments about helping/ destroying Gretchen, and Jaye’s struggles with her role as “fate’s bitch.” Mahandra’s disdain for all things Gretchen and reunion was hilarious (“You’re throwing a reunion with the Anti-Christ”), and her declaration about being the Universe’s “right-hand fist of fate” had me rolling. “And tonight, accounts are coming due.” Equally funny were her complete change of heart when Jaye was finally ready to destroy Gretchen and her anger at Jaye for making her feel sorry for Gretchen. Poor Jaye. Even her best friend can’t understand what it’s like to be the Universe’s butt puppet.

There were also several nice moments between Jaye and Eric in this episode. I loved his reaction to Jaye telling his wife that he couldn’t talk to her because he was too busy servicing Jaye sexually. His little “uh-uh” to her “was that inappropriate?” was too cute. I also liked him trying to help her with her Destroy Gretchen dilemma. His deadpan responses to her various crazy statements crack me up.

Eric: “So, did you defy the chicken?”
Jaye: “Uh-huh.”
Eric: “How’d that work out for you?”
Jaye: “I think I may have killed a man.”
Eric: “Oh. So not as well as we’d hoped then.”

I also enjoyed the subplot with Jaye’s dad and sister. It was nice to see Sharon trying to pursue a relationship, even though her family would totally disapprove. The cookie and milk preparation and delivery scene was a riot. So sinister and ominous, with the music and the camera angles. I especially loved the long overhead shot of Sharon walking down the hall carrying the plate. And, of course, the scene of her dad just standing in the living room completely stoned, in nothing but his undies and his cast, was fall down funny. (Later made all the more hilarious by the closing line of the episode, “Say, did you know our basic cable carries lesbian porn?”)

Jaye’s mom, Karen, got some fun scenes this week, too. I love Karen. Perfectly poised and soft spoken, yet bitingly critical. So “supportive” in her disapproving way. “Your sister’s not a cold-blooded murderer. She’s never been a planner.” I’m endlessly entertained by her tone and her not-so-subtle efforts to control her daughters’ lives. “Sharon, I’m so glad I caught you. I saw this on my way out. It’s an in-patient smoking cessation clinic. I thought it could be fun!” But you know, as catty and pushy as she can be, it seems pretty clear to me that she does love her children and wants them to be happy. She just has her own ideas about what they need to make them happy.

Other Thoughts

I dig the opening credits and the catchy theme song. “I wonder, wonder why the wonder fa-a-alls. I wonder why the wonder falls on me ...”

They played the Veronica Mars theme song! Twice! “We used to be friends, a long time ago, but I haven’t thought of you lately at all ...” Nice to see the song got some airplay in the pre-Veronica days.

I was amused by how self-aware Gretchen actually was about her motives for throwing the reunion. “People don’t see me as a pathetic blond who peaked in high school and is so desperate to recapture her past glory that she moved the 10-year reunion up by 3½ years?”

I really liked the Asian-style dress that Jaye wore to the reunion. Karen looked really snazzy, too.

Quotes

Jaye’s Dad: “Don’t denigrate what you do.”
Jaye: “I sell plastic canoes and refrigerator magnets.”

Gretchen: “I’m sort of a Christmas and Easter Jew.”

Mahandra: “Your father’s in the hospital?”
Jaye: “He got run over.”
Mahandra: “I’m sure you didn’t mean it.”

Jaye: “I don’t have a choice. I’m a puppet. The universe just sticks its hand up my butt and if I don’t dance, people get hurt.”

Jaye (about Gretchen): “I actually want to help her. It’s making me sick.”

Final Analysis: A fun outing, with some more good stuff from Jaye’s family and friends. I wish they’d spent a little less time on Gretchen and more time on the core cast, but overall a good episode.

(Season 1, episode 2)
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The X-Files: Deep Throat

Case: The disappearance of Colonel Robert Budahas, a U.S. Air Force test pilot.
Destination: Ellens Air Force Base, Southwest Idaho

For our second outing, we continue with the overarching alien and government conspiracy plot. Agent Mulder believes that the missing Colonel Budahas was a test pilot for UFO-based military aircraft. In theory, the colonel cracked because of the extreme stresses his body experienced, and was then "disappeared" by the military because he knew too much. When Mulder and Scully come to investigate, the colonel suddenly returns, but it appears part of his memory was wiped. All of which, of course, is unsubstantiated. Once again, Mulder and Scully get serious interference during their investigation and their evidence gets taken/destroyed, leaving them with nothing, except the cryptic musings of a new mysterious figure we come to know as ‘Deep Throat.’

This episode is notable, not so much for the case of the week, but for the title character it introduces and its further elaboration on the government conspiracy at the heart of the series mythology. Even though Mulder’s “consuming devotion” to his beliefs often makes him seem like a UFO-obsessed, conspiracy theorist nutjob, it turns out he’s right. His search for The Truth isn’t just the pipe dream of a deranged man. The government is most definitely covering something up, very possibly the existence of extra-terrestrials. Now, the primary question is what exactly are they hiding and why? And why is this mysterious ‘Deep Throat’ trying to help Mulder to expose the conspiracy?

The episode also gives us an interesting look at the evolution of the Mulder and Scully partnership. It seems as though it has been a little while since the pilot episode. Scully has gone from new kid on the block to alternately resigned, exasperated, frustrated, and bemused by Mulder’s interests and modus operandi. (The looks she gives him throughout the episode make me chuckle.) But when the going gets tough and things get serious, she stands by him and gets him out of trouble, even though he brought it on himself with his impulsive behavior.

I give Mulder credit for not dragging Scully along with him, but sneaking onto that air base was just plain irrational and stupid. After all these years, I still don’t understand why any part of him thought that was a good idea. What was he hoping to get? Photographs? Did he just want to see what they were doing, so he could know for his own edification? What on earth made him think he wouldn’t get caught? I know he said that finding out what they are hiding is all that matters to him, but this episode really demonstrates just how driven and desperate he is.

Other Thoughts

We got opening credits this week, which are some of my all-time favorite show credits. From the haunting “whistle,” to the blurry UFO and freaky paranormal images (my favorite has always been the white corpse outline falling into the blue ethereal handprint), to the closing shot of the show’s clever mantra “The Truth is Out There.”

It looked like Mulder was going to kiss Scully when he first came up to her in the bar. Weird. At this point, I don’t get the sense that they are into each other in that way. I wonder if he does that kind of stuff just to keep her off balance.

I loved seeing a pre-Buffy Seth Green as the stoner kid. Hilarious!

It was great fun to see uber-tough Scully. Especially when she turned her anger back on Mulder and lashed out at him for continuing to pursue a non-existent case. You tell him, Scully! The man needs to learn when to just let things go. (Good luck with that.)

Quotes

Mulder: “Tell me I’m crazy.”
Scully: “Mulder, you’re crazy.”

Paul: “Everything you’ve seen here is equal to the protection we give it. It is you who have acted inappropriately.” In that moment, it’s kind of hard not to agree with Paul.

Deep Throat: “Mr. Mulder, why are those---like yourself---who believe in the existence of extra-terrestrial life on this earth, not dissuaded by all the evidence to the contrary?”
Mulder: “Because all the evidence to the contrary is not entirely dissuasive.”
Deep Throat: “Precisely.”

Mulder: “They’re here, aren’t they?”
Deep Throat: “Mr. Mulder, they’ve been here for a long, long time.”

Final Analysis: For me, not as good as the pilot, but it was interesting and certainly more humorous. The episode furthered the series mythology by showing us that Mulder’s not crazy and by providing him with his very own secret informant, presumably from inside the conspiracy. It also showed us just how far Mulder is willing go to find his answers, no matter the cost.

(Season 1, episode 2)
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Terminator Salvation

My guy friends tell me that a great action movie doesn’t need a plot. All an action movie really needs to succeed is a string of intense, adrenaline-pumping chase sequences, shoot-‘em-ups, etc. A cohesive story with well-rounded characters doesn’t necessarily hurt, but such elements run the risk of detracting from the action, thus bringing the whole movie down.

As a woman, I never quite understood this line of thinking. For me, a movie is a story, not just a visceral thrill ride. I love me some great action, but I also want to get invested in the characters and a well-told tale. The idea that you could have a great or even decent movie without at least one of these features seemed completely ridiculous to me. At least until I saw Terminator Salvation. Now, I’m suddenly seeing the potential wisdom in just leaving characters and plot off the table. Because, when it isn’t done right, it really does bring the whole movie down, despite some truly fantastic action sequences.

I wanted to like Terminator Salvation. I really did. I loved the first two movies and was excited by the idea of seeing a post-Judgment Day story. Christian Bale as an adult John Connor seemed like a perfect fit. I loved the movie trailer. I was very excited to see this movie. But, as open minded as I tried to be about it, I just didn’t like Terminator Salvation as much as I wanted.

(The rest of this review includes spoilers. Consider yourself warned.)

I think the movie worked from a purely “action movie” standpoint. It had a great, washed out, post-apocalyptic look. The action sequences were tight and intense, and the special effects were outstanding. Maybe if that had been all there was to the movie, I would have liked it more. But they tried to add in character and story elements, and they did it so poorly that whole thing left me pretty unsatisfied.

I think my main issue was that the movie never felt like it had a cohesive story or a clear “mission objective.” Terminator and Terminator 2 had simple, but very clear mission objectives to drive all the action. In Terminator, the T-800 was sent to kill Sarah Connor before she could become the mother of the future savior of mankind and Kyle Reese was sent to save her. In Terminator 2, the T-1000 is sent to kill John and the T-800 is sent to protect him. The Connor crew also tries to stop Judgment Day by destroying Skynet in its infancy. All very straightforward, and they balanced outstanding special effects and action with character beats that let the audience get invested in the characters and care about what happens to them.

In Terminator Salvation, the objectives felt all over the place. It was three separate stories (Marcus Wright, the latest resistance war efforts, John’s search for Kyle) that came together at points, and kind of got tied together in the end, but along the way it felt confused and unfocused. The “story” kicks off with a note about some thinking John Connor is the savior of mankind and others thinking he is a false prophet, but then it mostly seems like a tale about this Marcus Wright guy, a death row inmate who signed his body over to Cyberdyne. Who/what the heck is this guy and why do we care what happens to him? Why does he care what happens to Kyle? Why do people think John is possibly a savior? What exactly is his position in the resistance? Why doesn’t Skynet just kill Kyle immediately? I had so many questions along the way (many of which never got answered), and it just didn’t feel like a cohesive story.

To make matters worse, they spent so little time letting us get to know the characters, that I had a hard time caring about their trials and travails. Obviously, I cared about John and Kyle, but only because I “know” them from the previous movies. Most of the characters barely had enough screen time to make us care. Did most of them even have names? And Marcus Wright was shrouded in so much mystery that when he had his devastating revelatory moments (first learning he was a machine, then nothing more than a Skynet pawn), I didn’t have enough emotional connection to him to care. Plus, it made the ending where he sacrifices himself to save John just seem cheesy instead of powerful and resonant.

I will say that Terminator Salvation felt like it was meant to set the stage for better things to come. It gave us little glimpses of John’s post-Judgment Day life, let us kind of see how he became the leader of the resistance, and let us see how Kyle came into the fold. I may not have enjoyed this jumbled outing very much, but I’m very intrigued by the story possibilities going forward.

Other things to like ...

I really liked the casting. Christian Bale was a great choice for John Connor, although it felt like he did more action than acting. I know that’s par for the course with Terminator movies, but I was kind of hoping he’d get to do more than emote into a radio handset. I think I got spoiled by the television series, which spent a bit more time on character beats. When you've got a great actor like Christian Bale, you should play to his strengths. I’m hoping he’ll get to do more in the future movies they’ve got planned.

I especially liked Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese. I raised an eyebrow when I saw his name in the cast, since I just saw him as Chekov in the Star Trek reboot, but he was an excellent choice for young Kyle. He played the part well and really looked like he could be a younger Michael Biehn.

I liked that they gave John a wife, with a child on the way. (Bryce Dallas Howard was really beautiful. She looked radiant.) It was nice to see he had someone he could open up to about his horrible past and the tough choices he’s facing. I wish we’d gotten to see more of their relationship and that Ms. Howard had gotten to do more in the story.

The inclusion of the photo and the tapes that Sarah recorded for John was a nice nod to the established history.

Even though they weren’t clear until the very end, I liked Skynet’s new tactics. Both the use of the infiltrator model and the false radio signal were very devious. I couldn’t help flashing on The Hunt for Red October in that moment when the command ship gets blown up: “You arrogant ass. You’ve killed us!”

Loved the inclusion of the original T-800. Was that actually Arnie or special effects? Because it looked more like young Arnie than current Arnie. If it was special effects, it was incredibly well done.

Danny Elfman’s musical score was great. Especially the phrases that evoked the musical themes from the previous movies.

Final Rating: 3 out of 5. Not a terrible movie, but it didn’t work nearly as well as I would have liked. It had great action and fantastic special effects, but I’m hoping for a more cohesive story with a better character-focus in the next outing.
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Doctor Who: The Doctor Dances (2)

Doctor: "Go to your room. I mean it. I'm very, very angry with you. I'm very, very cross. Go to your room. (pause) I'm really glad that worked. They would have been terrible last words."

Not only would they have been terrible last words, they were also a slightly ropey resolution to last week's cliffhanger. I suppose there was a modicum of logic to it. But it still feels like we were cheated. Still, not to worry. There was enough good stuff in tonight's episode to make up for its somewhat shaky start.

Despite Rose's burgeoning interesting in Captain Jack, the flames of romance were slightly dampened this week after Rose discovered that Jack's a con man. His intention was to sell them a broken down ambulance, under the pretence of it being a Chula warship, and to then have it bombed out of existence before they could recover it. Unfortunately for Jack, the Doctor and Rose aren't stupid. Yet despite Jack's plan being exposed, it's impossible to dislike him. In fact, he comes clean in such an up front, matter-of-fact way, that forgiveness seems almost mandatory; a testament to Jack's charm and likability.

I'd already guessed that Jamie was Nancy's son. When she said to Ernie "he always comes after me" it was obvious that he had some specific interest in Nancy. Couple that with his frequent refrain of "are you my mummy" and the truth was self-evident. And for once, as the Doctor said, everyone lived! This is the first episode of the new series where no one's actually died, although, I suppose, we didn't really have a clearly defined villain this week. We were told about the Chula, but didn't see them. And the nanobots, although responsible for the "deaths" of dozens, were only doing their job. There was nothing inherently malicious about them.

Bags of humour, too, this episode. The gun turning into a banana scene was fun. And I had to suppress a snigger when Jack called Rose "flag girl" and the Doctor "U-boat Captain". Wow... yeah! I hadn't really noticed before, but yeah! In fact, this whole episode was chock-a-block full of witty banter. Having Captain Jack along certainly provides a nice opposite for the Doctor. Jack seems to out-gun him in every department. Everything he has is better, or bigger, or slicker; which makes you wonder whether Jack's all front and no substance. Yet in the end he makes the selfless choice, almost forfeiting his own life to save a bunch of folks he hardly knows. Thank goodness the dancing Doctor saved him!

And it seems that no matter who catches Rose's eye, she always ends up going back to the Doctor. I loved it when she said "I trust him because he's like you." Perhaps not the best method of judging a person's character, but it was a nice sentiment anyway and showed us the respect that Rose has for the Doctor. He may not be as handsome as Captain Jack... he may not "dance" as well as Captain Jack... and the TARDIS may not be the babe magnet that Jack's ship is. But the Doctor's dependable and loyal and heroic. And it's these qualities that keep Rose coming back.

Bits and Pieces:

-- It was revealed in Doctor Who Confidential (the "making of" show that follows every broadcast episode) that "dancing" is a metaphor for sex; hence the Doctor's offence at Rose's comment that he never dances.

-- The German bomb that Jack was riding had "schlechter wolf" stenciled on the side; which when translated means... you guessed it... Bad Wolf!

-- Both songs played in tonight's episode were Glenn Miller tunes: "Moonlight Serenade" and "In The Mood."

Billie says...

The nanogenes and Nancy as the resolution of the story was okay; at least the Doctor saved the day for a change, instead of Rose, and I loved the Doctor's joy at the end that, this time, everybody lived. Including, fortunately, Captain Jack.

The best part of this episode, for me, was the Doctor, Rose, and Jack together. The chemistry was great, and the banter was a joy. The continuing banana joke reminded me of the skit on Monty Python about how to attack an opponent with a piece of fruit, and adding in the screwdriver made it a silly mine-is-bigger-than-yours take-off of the sex-as-dancing metaphor. It was quite cute. (I guess "The Doctor has had sex" didn't quite work as an episode title.)

Yes, Jack is too good to be true, but I really do love him. He told Rose and the Doctor the truth about his con, and he saved their lives. We learned that he used to be a time agent, and quit when he realized he'd lost two years of memories. Faced with certain death, he relaxed and accepted it, and toasted his death with a martini. I particularly loved Jack "distracting the guard" instead of Rose. And the way it was left, with Jack clearly wanting to cut in as the Doctor and Rose were dancing, made me wonder if Jack wants to "dance" with Rose or the Doctor? Probably both. While Rose, seeing the Doctor and Jack together, refocused on the Doctor. (Well, it is his show.)

Quotes:

Doctor: "Funny little human brains. How do you get around in those things?"
Rose: "When he's stressed, he likes to insult species."

Doctor: "Go, now! Don't drop the banana!"
Rose: "Why not?"
Doctor: "Good source of potassium!"

Captain Jack: "Who has a sonic screwdriver?"
Doctor: "I do."
Captain Jack: "Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks, ooh, this could be a little more sonic?"
Doctor: "What, you've never been bored? Never had a long night? Never had a lot of cabinets to put up?"

Doctor: "Come on. Assets? Assets?"
Captain Jack: "Well, I've got a banana. And in a pinch, you could put up some shelves."

Doctor: "So where'd you pick this one up?"
Rose: "Doctor!"
Captain Jack: "She was hanging from a barrage balloon. I had an invisible spaceship. I never stood a chance."

Rose: "Okay, so he's vanished into thin air. Why is it always the great-looking ones who do that?"
Doctor: "I'm making an effort not to be insulted."
Rose: "I mean, men."
Doctor: "Okay, thanks. That really helped."

Rose: "Why don't you trust him?"
Doctor: "Why do you?"
Rose: "Saved my life. Bloke-wise, that's up there with flossing."

Rose: "You've got the moves? Show me your moves."
Doctor: "Rose, I'm trying to resonate concrete."

All of our Doctor Who reviews are here.
(Series 1, episode 10)
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True Blood: Strange Love

Bill: "What are you?"
Sookie: "I told you. I'm a waitress."

Surprisingly, True Blood doesn't suck. I don't know why I thought it would.

I had two reasons for avoiding this first season when it originally aired: (1) I'm way too familiar with (and fond of) the series of books that it is based on so I didn't think I'd like it, and (2) I'm too cheap to pay for HBO. I was fairly certain I wouldn't want to review it, and to be honest, I'm still not sure if I should. But I just saw the first episode and I seem to want to write about it, so here you go.

This first episode was fine, although for me, I had that weird "I know everything that's going to happen" feeling you get when you're watching a live action version of a book you know really well. If the entire first season is based on the first book, I already know who killed Maudette and why. Here's hoping that Alan Ball uses the characters and setting as a jumping off point, so that I won't know everything that is going to happen this season. Or maybe next season.

The differences from the book were what jumped out at me. Like the graphic sex. The books are sexy, but not like this. And I didn't feel that it worked; it was like they were going, hey, this is HBO, look at the sex. The other big difference was Rutina Wesley as Tara, Sookie's best friend. Tara here is a completely different character than the one in the books. Which is actually okay by me, because I immediately liked her and her mouth.

But everything else did feel like the books: the town of Bon Temps, Merlotte's Bar and Grill, and all of the townie characters were quite familiar to me. Most importantly, they were faithful to the character of Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), who is the core of the Southern Vampire books. Born a mind reader, Sookie has spent her life being treated like a freak by many because she can't help reacting to the din she is constantly hearing in her head. And yet, her friends, who see beneath the surface, love her dearly. There were several references to her not dating, not having a boyfriend; the constant din in her head, we assume, makes dating impossible. Bill the vampire gave her something a human man couldn't; he quieted the din in her head.

And yay for the casting of Stephen Moyer as Bill. I always felt that Bill was something of a one-note character in the books, but Stephen Moyer has presence and makes Bill as sexy and mysterious as he could possibly be. I also liked Sam Trammell as Sookie's boss, Sam, another key character from the books.

I was less thrilled with Jason, Sookie's "selfish, egotistical, complete horndog" of a brother. Well, actually, I don't like him in the books, either. Jason Stackhouse is the most obvious suspect in Maudette's murder, so of course, it can't be him. (That's Billie's second rule of television, although it also applies to movies and books: the most obvious murder suspect in real life is usually the one whodunit, while in television, the opposite is true.)

These vampires look exactly like humans, except when their fangs come out. They are burned by silver. Their blood is addictive and intoxicating as well as sexually arousing (and clearly, drinking it doesn't make one a vampire). There are vampire drainers who prey on them. Vampires in this 'verse are a persecuted "minority group." In fact, one can assign a whole gay subtext, if you like. Or not, if you choose.

"Tru Blood", the title of the series as well as the synthetic blood that allowed vampires to "come out of the coffin," is a metaphor for the artificiality of vampire existence in the human world. Aptly compared at one point to Slim-Fast, synthetic blood isn't the real thing and doesn't satisfy. Vampires pretend it's enough for them, but it's not.

I enjoyed the quirky bits throughout, mostly pertaining to the vampires. My favorite was the billboard that read, "God hates fangs." (You can hear the intolerant "God hates gays" in your head as you're reading it.)

Bits and pieces:

-- I thought the opening scene was sort of stupid. The point was that the scary-looking clerk was the human, and the ordinary Billy Bob guy was the vamp. Meaning what? That vampires, at their core, are just people who happen to be undead? That we should expect the unexpected? Probably both.

-- The lights literally dimmed for her when Sookie first saw Bill.

-- Sam, Sookie's cute boss who is in love with her, started out of the bar to save Sookie, and a dog showed up. A dog that Sookie sees around the bar now and then.

-- Maudette was clearly death wish girl, and she got her wish. Bill was set up as a suspect because he told Sookie he prefers biting the artery in the groin. Sookie's brother Jason, of course, is also a suspect.

-- Gran was reading a book by Charlaine Harris, the author of the books this series is based upon. I couldn't quite make out the title.

-- I'm not southern, so I can't tell if the southern-ness was stereotypical or on target. In the books (I really should shut up about the books, but I love them and can't help myself) it feels genuine, probably because the author, Charlaine Harris, is a southerner.

-- Bill Maher did a cameo, interviewing "Nan Flanagan," who represents the American Vampire League.

-- New Orleans is apparently a mecca for vampires. They must all love Anne Rice.

-- I love that there are "fangbangers." I really, really do.

-- The episode ended with a cliffhanger: the Rattrays (perfect name for them) were beating Sookie up behind Merlotte's as payback for rescuing Bill.

Quotes:

Jason: "You know, I read in Hustler that everybody should have sex with a vampire at least once before they die."

Sookie: "Oh, don't worry about Sam. He's cool. I know for a fact he supports the Vampire Rights Amendment."
Bill: "How progressive of him."

Bill: "What are you?"
Sookie: "Well, I'm Sookie Stackhouse. And I'm a waitress. What's your name?"
Bill: "Bill."
Sookie: "Bill? I thought it might be Antoine or Basil or, or, like, Langford, maybe, but Bill? Vampire Bill?"

Fairly effective pilot episode. It certainly made me want to see more,

Billie

[Yes, I'm taking on another show, and I'm going to review the second season of True Blood as it airs starting next month.]

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Doctor Who: The Empty Child (1)

Rose: "Not very Spock, is it? Just asking."

Well, Rose finally got to meet her Spock. And kind of went to pieces over him. I'm not gay, but I suspect that if I were (or a woman for that matter), I'd probably go to pieces over him too. Captain Jack Harkness (played by the impossibly handsome John Barrowman) is clearly one fine looking individual. And he's everything the Doctor's not. For a start, he has a sexy space ship... better (not to mention bigger) sonic equipment... in fact, he has all the trappings of a intergalactic hero. Even the way he wears his criminality is charming. The man's damn near perfect.

Of course, shame on Rose for falling for him. What is it with her and her wandering eye? Initially she left boyfriend Mickey for the Doctor, a man with whom she has a currently undetermined fascination. Then, in "Dalek," she got all down and flirty with pretty boy Adam. And now, here she is falling for Captain Jack's rather smooth spiel and getting all breathless and panty in the process. I guess geniuses (or maybe genii - do we really care?) and spacemen are Rose's thing.

A very atmospheric tale tonight, with some genuinely eerie moments. War-torn London looked pretty spectacular and I enjoyed Rose's barrage balloon antics. But what on earth was she thinking, climbing up some random rope that just happened to be hanging from the sky? And are barrage balloons seriously tethered with just rope? I thought they used big steel cables? Likewise, why did she go after that spooky bemasked child without the Doctor? If I'd seen what Rose has seen these past few weeks I'd be viewing every situation with extreme caution. Nothing is ever as it seems.

A lot was said when this season first aired about Russell T. Davies and his supposedly gay agenda. Which makes it kind of amusing that this episode, which introduces us to the overtly bi-sexual Captain Jack, was actually written by Steven Moffat (who at the time of writing this review, is signed up to take over from Russell T. Davies as head writer of Who from 2010 onwards... hurrah!). I don't recall anyone saying that he has a gay agenda. But that's probably because he's not gay. It's amazing how gay writers who write about gay characters have a gay agenda, yet straight writers who write about gay characters are just talented writers. Go figure!

Richard Wilson put in a sterling performance too as Dr Constantine. Richard's in just about everything these days. Older British viewers with recognize him as cantankerous old fart Victor Meldrew from One Foot in the Grave, and some of our younger viewers will no doubt recognise him from the current BBC series Merlin... or from new ITV show Demons (where he plays Father Simeon). And I did NOT expect that gas mask to come out of his face! That really wasn't nice at all. Some pretty kewl special effects there.

I thought Eccleston made a decent effort too of the comedy in tonight's episode. I'll be honest, I laugh more at his facial expressions than I do his delivery. But his "thanks Miss" quip around the dinner table was both unexpected and jolly. And it was clever of Moffat to include a few digs at Eccleston's facial characteristics ("Do your ears have special powers too?"). That made me feel a little less guilty about laughing at Eccleston's, shall we say, somewhat unusual features.

Bits and Pieces:

-- The Doctor's response of "I know the feeling" to Constantine's comment about once being a father and a grandfather, is, I'm guessing, a reference to his granddaughter Susan Foreman. She was the Doctor's first companion.

-- I probably don't have to mention the significance of the Spock reference. So, in not doing so, I just did.

-- The name Chula comes from a restaurant in Hammersmith, where the writers used to congregate to discuss scripts.

Billie says...

Yes, I'm going to gush about Captain Jack. Because I love him. I'm not at all surprised that the producers of this show fell over themselves creating a spinoff series for him. John Barrowman is one of those actors that just jumps off the screen; he's as charismatic as he is beautiful, and he's remarkably beautiful. A friend of mine described him as a bombshell.

And yes, unfortunately, Captain Jack did make the Doctor seem stodgy and older. I wasn't surprised that Rose was literally swept off her feet. Loved the flirtatious psychic paper scene in Captain Jack's ship. I also loved Rose asking Jack for the time while they were suspended in air a couple of feet from Big Ben.

Captain Jack was established as bisexual in his first sixty seconds onscreen. Has to be a new world record. And it just works for the character.

"Are you my mummy?" started out creepy but quickly got annoying, although the gas mask being fused to the skin managed to get even creepier as it turned out to be catching. I thought it was a great World War II-related way to make people look alien without an actual bug-eyed monster mask or make-up. I also liked Rose in a Union Jack tee shirt hanging from a barrage balloon in London in the middle of the blitz, as improbable as it was. Hey, it was fun. And there was something appealing about those homeless kids stealing a sit-down meal as the bombs were falling.

All in all, a great part one that made me more than ready for part two.

Quotes:

Rose: "What's the emergency?"
Doctor: "It's mauve."
Rose: "Mauve?"
Doctor: "Universally recognised colour for danger."
Rose: "What happened to red?"
Doctor: "That's just humans. By everyone elses's standards, red's camp."

Doctor: "Know how long you can knock around space without happening to bump into Earth?"
Rose: "Five days? Or is that when we're out of milk?"

Rose: "I think you should do a scan for alien tech. Give me some Spock for once. Would it kill you?"

Captain Jack: "Can you switch off your cell phone? No, seriously. It interferes with my instruments."
Rose: "No one ever believes that."

Nancy: "Something wrong with that?"
Doctor: "Wrong with it? It's brilliant. I'm not sure if it's Marxism in action or a West End musical."

Doctor: "I want to find a blonde in a Union Jack. I mean, a specific one. I didn't just wake up this morning with a craving."

Rose: "Okay, you have an invisible spaceship."
Captain Jack: "Yeah."
Rose: "Tethered up to Big Ben for some reason."
Captain Jack: "First rule of active camouflage. Park somewhere you'll remember."

Dr Constantine: "Before this war began, I was both a father and a grandfather. Now I'm neither. But I'm still a doctor."
Doctor: "Yeah. I know the feeling."

Captain Jack: "It's a real pleasure to meet you, Mr Spock." (leaves)
Doctor: "Mr Spock?"
Rose: "What was I supposed to say? You don't have a name. Don't you ever get tired of 'doctor'? Doctor who?"
Doctor: "Nine centuries in, I'm coping."

All of our Doctor Who reviews are archived here.
(Season 1, episode 9)

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Doctor Who: Father's Day

Pete: "Who am I, love?"
Rose: "My daddy."

This episode shouldn't have worked! It had too many things wrong with it. It was more soap opera than sci-fi... the special effects were naff... and some of the science was appalling (where the hell did that glowing TARDIS key stuff come from?). Yet it was my favourite episode of the season so far! How the did that happen? I'll tell you how -- because despite its many shortcomings, on an emotional level it totally worked.

The scenes between Rose and Pete were perfect. I really can't praise Paul Cornell's script highly enough. In the character of Pete Tyler he created a flawed, fallible father for Rose. Pete isn't a saint (particularly if the duffle coat incident's to be believed). He's essentially a failed Del boy... his flat full of duff business stock. His comment about someone inventing a window sill with a milk and yoghurt compartment probably best demonstrates why he's such a failure. He simply has no head for business -- which for an entrepreneur is the kiss of death.

However, for all his failings, Pete's no fool. Rose tries her best to hide the truth from him; she even lies and tells him what a good Father he was. But Pete knows himself well enough to realise her story doesn't ring true. He knows that he's never been reliable. He knows too that he was never there for Rose. Her insistence that he would have been, had he been given the chance, was both beautiful and sad in equal measure; revealing the blind love Rose has for her Dad. But, in all the sadness, Pete sees a way to make amends and in the end, saves them all. Even the Doctor, powerful though he is, could do nothing this week to help them.

**And while we're on the topic of the "window sill invention", I rewound this part of the story eight times. The Doctor's face is an absolute picture in this scene. Pete outlines for him what must surely be the most stupid invention idea the world has ever known. And the Doctor's reaction? He just nods and smiles, as if Pete had actually said something worthwhile. I have no idea why this scene tickled me so much. It's not really that funny. But, by the eighth watch I was doing that over-laugh thing that sometimes happens, where you can't breathe and think you're going to die; so I had to stop rewinding. Sheesh! Cracking up, or what?**

Every time Rose called Pete "Daddy" my eyes filled up. This was such a well handled story and explains too why the Doctor hasn't tried to change the fate of his own people. Altering events in time can have bad, even fatal, consequences. The Doctor's always known this. Poor Rose has had to learn it the hard way and almost at a terrible cost.

The Doctor and Rose's relationship shifted too this week. The way he touched her face (a mirror image of how Pete touched her earlier in the episode), added an extra element to their relationship. Is this why the Doctor doesn't like Mickey, and why he didn't want to take Adam along with them? Has the Doctor been filling in for Rose's father all along -- and is Rose the daughter he never had?

And in the end, Pete didn't die alone. Rose was there to hold his hand. She did what she came to do and thus history was changed; but only a little. The story surrounding Pete's death was altered slightly. But at least everyone lived. Apart from Pete.

Bits and Pieces:

-- I thought at first that the line..."the past is another country".....was a quote from L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between. On further investigation, it turns out that the Hartley line is "the past is a foreign country". So I did a bit of digging and came up with a quote by Greil Marcus: "The past is another country. A nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there" (from the book, Lipstick Traces: a Secret History of the 20th Century).

-- The monsters this week were Reapers. They're not specifically named on-screen, but were originally scripted as being Grim Reaper type creatures, with scythes. This was later changed.

-- Rose's eyes are brown... the baby's eyes were blue.

Billie says...

I loved this episode. I loved that Rose just couldn't help herself, that saving her father wasn't even a conscious decision on her part. (The Doctor should have known she wouldn't be able to resist.) Billie Piper was so terrific in every scene, her emotions written all over her face. And I particularly liked that Pete figured out who Rose was all by himself, and knew what he had to do to save her. Her faith in him almost certainly pushed him into living (or dying) up to her expectations. In his last moments, he became the father she needed, worthy of her adoration.

And it was pretty much perfect that Rose was able to change one thing: she was with him when he died, after all. The last thing he saw was her, his baby all grown up. What a gift, to see your child's future in your last moment on earth. I'm actually tearing up as I'm writing this. It was an emotional episode, and all of the emotions were just dead on.

Of course, the big question is, how come this "wound in time" thing doesn't happen every time the Doctor goes somewhere? And you know what? I might be able to answer that. Because it was Rose's past that changed, and Rose was with him. Okay, works for me.

Setting the siege in that church was a great idea. It helped create an end-of-the-world type mood. Also loved the Tardis appearing at the altar. I even liked the part about the key. (When I love the heart of an episode, I can be very forgiving about its flaws.)

Quotes:

Doctor: "Your wish is my command. But be careful what you wish for."

Doctor: "The past is another country. 1987 is just the Isle of Wight."

Doctor: (to baby Rose) "Rose, you're not going to bring about the end of the world. Are you? Are you?"

Pete: "I never read you those bedtime stories. I never took you on those picnics. I was never there for you."
Rose: "You would have been."
Pete: "But I can do this for you. I can be a proper Dad to you now."
Rose: "But it's not fair."
Pete: "I've had all these extra hours. No one else in the world has ever had that. And on top of that I get to see you. And you're beautiful. How lucky am I, eh?"

All of our Doctor Who reviews are archived here.
(Season 1, episode 8)

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