New Doctor Who Season 1 First Impressions: Episode 7 (The Legend Of Ruby Sunday)

Oh good lord. I did not want to be back here again, but here we are. After a string of absolute bangers from Boom to Rogue, I am sad to report that The Legend Of Ruby Sunday is the first real dud from Doctor Who for me since Chibnall left. I did not care for this one, and the reasons for it are so innately tied to it being June the 16th of 2024 as I write these words. We are once again in the ballpark of what I coined as "temporal grace", where we as viewers are sitting in the wake of part 1 of a two-part season finale trying to wonder where the hell the back half is going to take us. Sometimes that leads to intense anticipation, but sometimes it also leads to a sense that the proceedings were lacking. The Legend Of Ruby Sunday unfortunately fell in that latter camp for me. It might improve in six days when I get to see Empire of Death, but here on June 16th this is a massive letdown. Allow me to tell you why.

New Doctor Who Season 1 First Impressions: Episode 6 (Rogue)

Heated drama between men.

 So far with the first season of the New Doctor Who (or Series 14 if you wanna be like that) there has been this renewed freshness to the proceedings. Some of it has been re-introducing old concepts to the new folks jumping on board, like Space Babies was. Much more of it introducing new ideas and concepts to the show, as 73 Yards was. Thus far, however, we have had no returning villains or anything like that. The closest recoccuring element has been Kate, and I guess Mel is back next week as well. It reminds me a lot of the 13th Doctor's first season, and I will forever stand behind the idea of having all-new shit in that season (until Resolution anyway) being a good one. The writing was less good that season, but at least there was that freshness. We've seen what happens when that quality of writing gets paired with the opening of the continuity floodgates, and it's bad. Rogue, on the other hand, is quite good. It's fresh but familiar, and it paves the way forward for a new vision of Doctor Who.

New Doctor Who Season 1 First Impressions: Episode 5 (Dot And Bubble)

Good Christ, the bangers just keep on coming. I genuinely am not used to this level of consistent quality from Doctor Who after that fugue state of the Chibnall era. I don't just bring up that old bugbear to pick at an old scab for the thousandth time, however. There are genuine comparisons you can make between certain aspects of it and Dot And Bubble. There's a very big one coming at the end when we get to the ending and how it makes one read the episode, but there's a more obvious one at play when you get into the swing of things at first. Digging into that will help uncover just what I think RTD is doing with this particular story, and where its strengths really lie.

Frezno's Comics Challenge: May 2024 (Unflattening)

We're back at it again with the Comics Challenge, but this time is even wilder than usual. Having gotten a good third of a year to get adjusted to the mysterious world of comics critique, getting used to the medium's strengths in conveying intriguing narratives, we are now thrown straight into the deep end. Nick Sousanis's Unflattening is not a traditional comic by any measure of the word. There is no fictional narrative to summarize here. No, Unflattening is an honest to God Harvard dissertation on the very nature of perspective, sight, and human understanding delivered to you in the form of a comic. It's the kind of thing I can't just sum up, either succinctly or without brevity. Much like my analysis of Twin Peaks, my back is against the wall in trying to analyze it. Such adversity leads to strength, though. Let's tackle this thing as best as I can, and come to the start of an understanding from it.

New Doctor Who Season 1 First Impressions: Episode 4 (73 Yards)

I want to apologize to Steven Moffat right now for thinking that the reaction to Boom was divisive, because Jesus.

If ever there was an episode of this show that split opinion between realists and formalists, this is the one. From a realist sense, 73 Yards is an absolute dealbreaker of a nonsense episode. A bunch of mysterious and horrible shit happens to Ruby over these 45 minutes, and none of it is given any explicit explanation. You do not get a succinct piece of technobabble where Ncuti Gatwa says OH RUBY A QUANTUM LIMITATION BUBBLE WAS AROUND YOU breathlessly with great charm to soothe your queries. You do not even get any sort of handwave that says "Oh wow, it was magic, really shouldn't have done that salt thing huh?". Shit happens, it all gets cancelled out at the end due to some sort of loop, and we move on without ever knowing the specifics of what or why. From a realist stance, it's an absolute dealbreaker. Things must happen in the television program for good and clearly defined reasons, the logistics of which all make enough sense in the end to cohere. There can be a wiggle room of ambiguity, but there must be at least an attempt at definition. As an example, think of the episode Midnight. The antagonistic force in that story is never truly defined or explained, but there are enough rules and logic in play for us to understand how this creature possesses and takes over, and how its mirroring works when it latches on to a new target.

New Doctor Who Season 1 First Impressions: Episode 3 (Boom)

Let's get it out of the way immediately: There can be no measure of "objectivity" when it comes to this first impression. This is the return of Steven Moffat to the show after 6 1/2 years, and that is absolutely monumental to my sense of self and my internal landscape. Moffat's run was peak Doctor Who for me, particularly during the Peter Capaldi years. Not only that, but it was both reading and writing critique and analysis of it that I honed myself into the me you're reading right now. Suffice to say, I would not be who I was without the words and thoughts of Steven Moffat on this time travel show. The significance of this to me cannot be understated, and it bolds and underlines anything I have to say about Boom before a single word gets typed. With all that being said, Boom is (pun unintended) an absolute banger of an episode, and I don't want to wait any longer so let me launch right into it.

The Dark Heart Of America, Pumping Putrefied Pastels (Miami Vice) [Part 4]

(Continued from Part 3)

The first episode of the arc is even called 
"Mirror Image", for Christ's sakes.

Dovetailing between the end of Season 4 and the beginning of Season 5 is a three-episode story arc which brings about the threatened narrative collapse after Crockett shot and killed Hackman. The infamous "Burnett Arc" begins in the very next episode, and sees Crockett caught in a boat explosion while undercover and suffering from amnesia. He's reconstructed and healed by criminal underworld doctors, and they think he's Sonny Burnett, and as such so does he. It's the ultimate Nietzschean nightmare as one of our leads has fallen to the side of the shadows, becoming a terrifying and effective criminal mastermind who easily slots into the world of drug smuggling and rising up the ranks in the organization, killing those who would oppose him. The only hint of otherwise are the flashes of random memory he gets, and the hazy dreams of another life, a good man on the other side of the mirror pounding against the glass and begging to be let out. Eventually his memory comes back, and Crockett must now grapple with what he did as hearings and therapy sessions and other consequences force him to face the monster that he became.