Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor

I started watching and then awesomeness happened.

I’m going to be honest, I was expecting to be let down by thus episode. It had a massive task; introduce a new Doctor, while balancing the massive personalities of Ten and Eleven. This is something that could have gone very wrong.

Steven Moffat pulls this off by giving himself enough time to do each. It sounds simplistic to say that, but with this kind of Blockbuster phenomenon that’s built up around the 50^th anniversary, there would have been massive pressure to get straight to the action. But no, Moffat takes his time and sets all the pieces in place.

The real masterstroke is the John Hurt’s War Doctor; rejected by his later selves and then treated like he might pull out an Uzi and let loose as soon as they see him. But the point is, that he is the Doctor. The impression that Eleven gave in “The Name of the Doctor” was that the War Doctor was a complete departure from the Doctor persona, taking no elements whatsoever from his previous incarnations and (even in appearance) having more in common with the Master.

But Hurt’s performance shows elements of at least the First and Sixth Doctors. This could have very easily been about an evil version of the Doctor forcing his later selves to unite to defeat him, but instead Moffat went for the harder job; show the Doctor (not a bitter, bruised or insane version) but someone who could clearly be recognised as the Doctor, by classic fans and new, stooping to the level of mass genocide.

The War Doctor has been misrepresented by his later selves; he is not evil, he is not insane; he is desperate.

The contrast between Ten and Eleven is pretty good as well. Their dislike for each other’s outfits serves as a nice bit of comedy and Eleven’s mocking of Ten’s err investigative techniques is a very nice send up of the Everybody-kisses-David-Tennant convention that built up during his run. On that point, the war Doctor’s reaction to that mirrors Colin Baker’s reaction (outside the show) to the idea of the Doctor and romance. In fact there are too many intertextual references like this to count.

I also like that Rose Tyler wasn’t in this episode, in favour of the Bad Wolf persona. I’ve made my feelings about the Rose love story clear in another post and the last thing that such an important episode needed was that weighing it down.

There really isn’t much else to say; this is a really good episode and more than a fitting 50^th Birthday present for Who. A very well written script, paired with top-notch performances from David Tennant, Matt Smith, John Hurt and Peter Capaldi’s angry eyes.

Student Loans to be Privatised

So apparently the government is planning on selling all student loans taken out between 1988 and 2012 to private companies.

Well that’s good isn’t it? No more strain on the old public purse and the private sector will be obliged to keep to those good old low interest rates…oh wait my mistake, that’s utter rubbish.

There has been no confirmation that the private companies buying the debts will have any obligation to keep to the current interest rates and I can tell you now that they won’t.

First reason for this; well what kind of business would you be running if you charged such little interest on money owed to you? A really bad one is the answer, s no one in their right mind would ever take on such a massive amount of debtors without the government having to sweeten the deal by allowing them to get creative with the amount they can make off it. 

Second reason; have you ever encountered a bank or private financial agency that didn’t try to screw you over with interest?

So here’s the thing; I took out a student loan in 2009 to pay for my Law Degree and in my time at Uni, I don’t think I met single person who didn’t. I (and everyone I met at Uni), agreed to the loans we agreed to; the reason we did that was because they were such a good deal.

You go from Uni and start at the bottom of the jobs ladder (for which ever profession you choose). I knew that when I started University in 2009 and part of being willing to do it was knowing that when I went into work and started earning enough, paying back the money I was borrowing wouldn’t be a massive strain.

Under a private company, it will be, under a private company, I’ll be paying back twice as much. It’s not right and it’s not what I agreed to.

Why I don’t like Gaming

So I don’t like gaming…which I imagine is strange, being that I come from the generation that’s made it what it is.

I don’t have a problem with game violence, interactive story-telling (even when the story is stupidly unoriginal) or people spending all day glued to a screen. What you do with your own time, is your business. This is what I don’t like about gaming:

“you’re a noob”

“you’re a jew”

“that move is totally gay”

Why do people think that it’s alright to be anti-sematic, homophobic and generally act in an aggressive and bullying manner, just because they’re on a keyboard or holding an X-box controller?

We don’t put up with this kind of behaviour in any other medium, we wouldn’t let anyone on TV voice an anti-sematic view, we wouldn’t support a film that was clearly homophobic, why are gamers allowed to act in this way?

Before anyone says anything, I’m not tarnishing every single gamer with the same brush, I’m saying that the culture of gaming allows people to act in this way and barely bats an eyelash. Why?

Wouldn’t it be great…

Smallville.

Wouldn’t it be great if Lex Luthor had only appeared in the last episode of the ever series of Smallville. What we got instead was a baby-faced Lex who went on a journey of dark side conversion that was so stupid that George Lucus could have written it.

But imagine if we had never seen Lex until the very last scene of the entire show; no need to even see his face. Clark accepts his destiny as Superman and then we see him flying around on multiple monitors, as the camera pans back to reveal that signature bald head. We all know who it is and it would have left the audience wanting more from the show. The actual show we got was one that ended because the audience was sick of it.

Miley Cyrus

Wouldn't it be great if no one had batted an eyelid at the “stunt” Miley Cyrus pulled –what’s it called “twerking”? all the public outrage from celebrities and member of the public alike is blatantly exactly what she wanted to happen. It was a textbook way of generating publicity (Justin Bieber did the same thing by tweeting a picture of himself holding a fake scrip for Batman vs Superman) and if you’re really offended by it the only way to make it stop is by ignoring it.

Doctor Who

Wouldn’t it be great if the Comic Con trailer for 50^th Anniversary Who was a massive red herring and deliberately edited (or even shot) to mislead everyone who saw it. I mean they could threaten their way to no one releasing illegal copies of it online, but they couldn’t stop people describing it. It would be awesome if the whole thing was intended to send the fandom in completely the wrong direction in guessing things story-wise. Plus, it would be just like Moffat to pull a stunt like that.

The Wolverine

Yeah it’s not bad. It was fun to watch and just about gets to the quality level of X-Men and X2, which I suppose is something we should all be happy about in light of the third X-men installment and that other Wolverine film.

There are a good amount of stupid moments:

“what was done to me – what I am can’t be undone”  - err yeah it can, remember that third X-Men film where they figured out how to remove your mutation? You were there, the events haunt you to this day…

On that point, framing the film in Logan’s emotional trauma following the events of “The Last Stand” is probably the best part of this film. The Last Stand suffered mainly because it lacked any kind of focus and “Origins” was just a shameless cash-in. Making this film about Wolverine recovering from the events of the third X-Men installment, gives it a meaning that goes beyond “let’s have a big fight.”

Also, making Wolverine an emotionally vulnerable character is the way to go. X2 gave the impression that Wolverine was so traumatised by the event of being filled with Adimantium, that he suppressed the memories of who he was. Of course this was changed by “Origins” which asked us to swallow that Wolverine lost his memory as a result of shot in the head, causing damage to the memory centre of his brain…to digress slightly from this review, that makes no sense. His power is to heal from anything and you’re saying that destroying a particular section of his brain will erase his memories.

If he can heal his physical body from anything to restore it to the condition it was in before and there is a physical part of his brain where his memories are stored, then destroying it wouldn’t do anything. It would heal and be exactly the same as it was before, memories and all.

Saying that Logan was so emotionally damaged by certain events of his life is a far more plausible a way of him becoming the Wolverine that we see in X-Men and all the films that follow it. It’s also an important message about people; even those who are literally invincible can be destroyed when something horrific enough is done to them.

This is exactly what “The Wolverine” does and it moves to get the character back on track, in time for “Days of Future Past.”

So anyway, it’s alright, not great by any stretch of the imagination, but alright, which will do after the last Wolverine-centric films.