New Doctor Who Season 2 First Impressions: Episode 3 (The Well)

Oh yeah, second episode in a row with a big
MIRROR ALERT. And mercury, too. Based.

 I guess you could say... Well well well, another banger from New Doctor Who Season 2. Look, I'm not a dad but I'm middle-aged, what do you want from me? A Doctor Who first impression, probably, but lucky for you my fingers are currently crafting one for your eyeballs to scan. Ain't that a bit of serendipity? The Well is an odd one, in that it is once again one of those cowritten episodes, and the usual pitfalls and cautions apply. You can't just blindly speculate which parts of this script are newcomer Sharma Angel-Walfall and which are RTD. This was a problem back in the Chibnall years as well, where it was tempting to look at every cowritten episode and delineate who wrote which part based on if you liked it or not. I have a guess as to what happened here, with a prior episode to cite as evidence, but if the actual basic concept here was all Angel-Walfall? Keep her the fuck on, she gets it.

I say that, of course, while liking but not loving The Well. My podcast pals, whom I could not join for reasons of being in a basement hundreds of miles away, really loved this one. It is a strong episode and I will have much praise for it, but it is very much a sci-fi horror Gun story. There's more than a bit of Aliens in it, and that's all done very well, but it's not my absolute favorite mold of Doctor Who, y'know? At least it's better than Earthshock, but that's damning with faint praise so we will try a different tact. Let's talk about Aliss Fenly. I fucking love her. It should not have taken Doctor Who another literal decade to get some good deaf representation, but they did it and she's miles ahead of that girl from Toby Whithouse's Flood two-parter. I just wanted this poor girl to get out of it safe, and she did. Arguably, but we'll get to that. I love how her deafness is used in the story to add to the world and the plot, from the holographic screens that translate speech to her fears about people turning their back on her: both because she can't lipread and know what's being said, and because of that thing on her back.

Yes, we'll get to what that thing is supposed to be, but let me continue to jam and praise the everything around it that isn't that. As far as horror/monster concepts go, this thing is fucking genius. I love that we get these brief jumpscare glimpses of a something, and I forbid myself from going back and checking the screencaps to get a closer look. The concept of this thing latched onto the back that kills you if it is perceived is so damn effective, and I love the shot where the metaphor of the clock face is brought up and you then see the aerial shot of the huge circular room the action plays out in. The massacre in the second act is so goddamn macabre while still remaining safe enough for an all-ages sci-fi show that's doing a spooky one this week, and less is more in this case. Just like the mysterious monster on Aliss's back, not seeing shit often adds to the tension and scare. The fear of the unknown, and all... Ah, but then we do get a little of the known with this being. Yes, let's rip the bandaid off and talk about that, hmm?

So. This is Midnight 2. This is a sequel story to an old David Tennant tale from 2008. Now, there's a lot to be said about that from all sides. You have people who were floored by this, and excited at how this accentuates a really spooky David Tennant classic. You have people who are lamenting the fact that we're pissing away one of our precious Doctor Who slots on a sequel to a story that came out when current high school graduates were born, and worrying what this means for the rumours that Doctor Who Is Dead Forever #RIPDoctorWho. I'll be honest with you. If this were four years ago, I'd be in the latter camp. Go search through this blog for anything to do with Season 4 of Enterprise and you will find a version of me frothing at the mouth about this kind of shit. That version of me would rail and scream and shout about the lack of creativity at play, and wondering why this just couldn't be its own fucking thing instead of tying in to Midnight to light up a fan's brain. This is all true. That version of me is also six years in the past. I'm several critical regenerations ahead of that, so what do I think now?

I'm on the fence about it. I can see the arguments for how this choice enhances the episode, and how it also detracts. Eh. It does nothing for me. It sparks no particular joy to make the episode better, tying it to a Tennant classic, but it also doesn't fuck it all up for me like 2019 me would be screaming about. Settle down, you old dork. What we have here is a very strong original idea that gets a tie to Midnight, and this is my best guess as to how the thing was constructed. I could be wrong, but perception is everything. I think Sharma Angel-Walfall came up with this amazing horror monster concept, a thing on the back that kills if someone gets between it and other people like a clock face. I also think RTD went something like "Oh, that's rather like that episode Midnight I did" and then made the connection with his cowriting credit. It's not the first time he's done something like this: Cast your mind back to The Giggle, where RTD came up with that creepy puppet thing at the dawn of television, thought up a puppet master for it, and then went "Hey, doesn't Doctor Who have an evil gamesmaster weirdo in its canon already?" before dredging up the Toymaker. I think that's what happened. I could be wrong. Point is, I'm much more mellowed out and this doesn't help nor hinder things for me.

I will dock RTD a little for the ending, though. It is a strong ending, and really could have had a fun ambiguous horror vibe to it. Are they paranoid, or did the monster really escape? That ambiguity could fit really well with the idea of this being a sequel to Midnight, that episode being all about how paranoia and mistrust turns ordinary people into mob mentality monsters. Then he has to have that shot of the airlock occupancy. Prominently. If it had been a background detail for someone to notice and speculate on, great! The fact that it's right there is a bit much for me. It's the same as RTD actually trying to give an explanation to 73 Yards. Take a page from David Lynch, buddy, and don't go saying the answers. Let us come up with them! That being said, there is still plenty of speculation about that ending, so I guess things aren't all doom and gloom. The Well, then. A very strong Doctor Who episode that isn't hurt by its flirtations with the past, but not my favorite mode of the show. Lux remains my favorite of the season thus far, but this is a close second. Not bad at all. 

Okay, what's next-- OH FOR FUCK'S SAKES PETE MCTIGHE AGAIN? GOD WHY COULDN'T WE GET VINAY PATEL BACK I HATE THIS--

New Doctor Who Season 2 First Impressions: Episode 2 (Lux)

(With thanks to Lena Mactíre for some magical consultations)

I got you, moonlight, you're my starlight...

I'll echo what I said a year and a half ago, in a brief 5-star review of Wild Blue Yonder: RTD, holy fuck. With Lux, we have something we've not had in a long time: an episode I really love which other people actually agree with me on. It was a harsh period there where I thought the pervasive toxic stink of fandom was poisoning this show to death in the public opinion. I almost wrote a hit piece about how the true Empire Of Death were the fans who were convinced this shit was going away forever. I did not do that, but I have a very different piece simmering in my mind. A piece about the new RTD era, and about how its more magical elements let not just gods and goblins into the world of Doctor Who, but open holes in the fourth wall for our own perceptions and assumptions to seep in and affect the program. Boy howdy am I glad I waited until this season concluded to write that, because RTD just fucking goes for it here. Let me gush about Lux for an amount of words, and give my praises as the magic returns to Doctor Who (not that it left, but it did for a lot of nerds!). 

New Doctor Who Season 2 First Impressions: Episode 1 (The Robot Revolution)

OOOOOOOOOOOOOORB

God damn it, I went and did it again. Two solid damn months of procrastinating on writing anything. I had this really neat show that fascinated me I was going to write about, and after than an anime, and then after that another anime for the summer. Now look at me, in goddamn April with five months of time left before the double fall whammy of Screams marathon and Non-Specific November Writing Month take up all my spoons. Frezno Inferno, you dingus. Well, at least I played some good computer games. Oh yeah, and also time has forced me to get back into the writing mode because there's a new season of Doctor Who, so let's talk about the opener to that for a while like we do. I have taken to joking around whenever this season comes up, calling it The Last Ever Season Of Doctor Who because of all the doomscrollers and naysayers who didn't like Empire Of Death and are thus convinced that that big dumb Welshman RTD has run this time travel show into the ground, that Gatwa is leaving at the end of this, that we're not renewed into 2030 so the show is clearly cancelled forever, and that we'll all have to go back to reading Wilderness 2 era books and hearing Big Finish plays while yelling loudly that Doctor fucking Who has been worse than it's ever fucking been. DON'T YOU JUST FUCKING LOVE MODERN FANDOMS? I fled to Quantum Leap to get away from shit like this, Christ.

Frezno's Comics Challenge: One More Final? (Tokyo These Days)

Well, here we are. The end, I think. It will be very embarrassing and there will be egg on my face if Sean in fact had more comics planned after this, but those are the breaks. That would almost be a shame, though. Not because I would be grumpy about doing more comics critique, to be clear, but because this feels like a true and fitting ending place for the Comics Challenge. A comic about making comics, with this elegiac finality to its proceedings. Taiyo Matsumoto's Tokyo These Days isn't our first dance with manga, or even the longest: I actually think it's the shortest manga I had to cover, considering that I covered mammoths like Pluto or Kamen Rider. Let's go for one more burst of brevity, then. Let's talk about the vibe of this comic, and what it's bringing to the table.

Frezno's Comics Challenge: Final (Britain A Prophecy)

And now, near the end, we come to the Comics Challenge post most likely to get me in trouble, because it's the most likely one to be read by the actual people behind the comic. Yeah, a handful of the other ones got the post on Twitter announcing them liked, but this is different. This is Britain A Prophecy by Elizabeth Sandifer and Penn Wiggins, among others, and already we have to stop and pause. As Sean put it when giving me this entry, "WE OWE THEM". I don't know what precise debt Sean has to repay, but I know how it's true for me. As I have stated before, this space would not exist without Elizabeth Sandifer. She inspired me not just with her TARDIS Eruditorum, but with her old defunct Nintendo game blog, and when I decided in a pique of madness to ask to resume it, she gave me the equivalent of a "Yeah, sure". Eleven and a half years later, here we are. I feel like I am what you'd call thriving creatively, but now here's a daunting one. Analyze the work of a mentor figure. Scary stuff. If you are here, El, thanks for everything. I hope this is up to par, and if it's not... Well, apologies.

A Tribute To David Lynch

I wasn't supposed to be writing this today.

No, today should have been one of the last posts of the Comics Challenge which started a year ago. It's this comic and then one more, and then that's all done. The Comics Challenge, which I started on the urgings of my friend Sean Dillon in exchange for getting the answer to a burning question. A question that became a bit of a meme between us, held over my head like a funny little tease. Why is The Straight Story the best Star Trek movie ever? Sean has an answer, a legitimate one, and their word count is ballooning. I should have had a post on this comic up yesterday, but I was delayed in running my errands. That's fine, I thought. I could put it off for one more day, it wouldn't hurt. So there I was, on Thursday afternoon, scrolling Bluesky, when I saw a funny thing. A little thing about David Lynch, the story about his Woody Woodpecker dolls. Cute story. Then I saw another David Lynch thing. I copied the link, about to send it to my pal Joe. My pal Joe, who watched Twin Peaks in near tandem with me, who bought me a copy of Mulholland Drive for us to watch together because he wanted to share one of his favorite films with me. A friend whom I bonded with over many things, but the works of David Lynch among them. It was there in those DMs that I saw the link, that I learned that such a sadness had occured.

It was there that I learned David Lynch was no longer with us.

What can you say about David Lynch? I have to say something, as I feel it's only right. Here is a man whose strange vision and esoteric filmography literally rewired my brain, shuffled me about and changed me for the better. Here is a man who was so good at imbuing his work with a specific surreal vibe that his own name has become a shorthand for other works of media which share that energy. There never was a filmmaker quite like David Lynch, and I fear there never may be one again. I can tell you all about my brushes with him in the past. I have spoken of the day my old neighbor gave away old books to me, and how I came across and read The Secret Diary Of Laura Palmer and was haunted by it. I can talk about taping the movie themed around that book off of TV, not engaging with it, and having that tape come back like a phoenix from the ashes once I had truly understood its source material. I can talk about the fall of 2005, the dying days of one phase of my life, and being in the city with the man who would become my roommate as he showed me a strange and bizarre adaptation of that sci-fi novel he turned me on to. I could talk about all these things and more, but I have one clear focus. One thing I need to thank David Lynch for, as I say farewell to him.

David Lynch helped me to open my eyes and see. His work challenged you to a different and deeper sense of understanding, where what happened was not as important as how it made you feel. Trying to explain the plot progression of something like Eraserhead, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, or Inland Empire will leave you with something functional but lacking a certain totemic power. Explaining how it made you feel, the vibe you get from those films, is the key to that deeper understanding. It's fitting that the Comics Challenge had that essay in comic form called Unflattening, the book about perspective and understanding the relation between word and image that only comics can convey. David Lynch helped unflatten me and make me a better media critic. When I finished Twin Peaks, I wanted to cover it on the blog. I could have gone through every little weird thing which happens in that show, but I didn't. I went for the brevity. Instead of telling you what happened, I told you how it made me feel. It resulted in a fresh new lease on life for me and my writing, a new way to express myself. It made my words better. I lost the plot a little here and there in the intervening posts since, but I got it back. The Bocchi The Rock post was of that ilk. I talked about a few things that happened, yes, but only to give greater context to how that show made me feel, how it resonated with me. People I look up to praised it as some of the best writing I've ever done, and it truly humbles me. I could not have done it without David Lynch and his work, and now he's gone.

There's another moment I was proud of in my media analysis journey on this blog, and it was in 2023 again. It was during the Criterion Challenge, when I was covering the film Carnival Of Souls. I remember selecting it for that slot at the start of the year because of what a critic's list had to say about the way they understood that film, a different way of seeing which I wanted to learn for myself. By the time I finally got to watch Carnival Of Souls, I had seen most of David Lynch's filmography. I knew how to analyze those films, and so in watching Carnival Of Souls I realized that I had already taught myself this different way of seeing. It was gratifying and rewarding, and made me incredibly pleased with myself. The worlds David Lynch crafted, worlds full of the darkest things but also the blindingly beautiful light of empathy and kindness, will stick with me for years to come. I could gush about his films for ages, but in the spirit of brevity let me say a few things about what I've seen.

I love Eraserhead's use of grinding industrial noise mixed with the fervent cries of an infant which combine to form this oppressive soundscape that feels like what it must be to be awoken by your newborn child every night to care for them. I love The Elephant Man for how it takes that same industrial vibe and turns back the clock by a century to its own origins in Victoriana, and the way it shines that light of empathy and tragedy onto John Merrick. I love Dune for retaining that spark of strangeness and mystery, despite attempts by those that did not understand Lynch to sanitize it. I love Blue Velvet for being David Lynch's thesis statement on the heart of America, a beautiful candy shell with a festering darkness lurking at its core. I love Twin Peaks for being a dream, equal parts ethereal beauty and nightmarish id lurking within the subconscious. I love Wild At Heart for being a movie that burns with a fury and a passion, a raging fire of equal parts love and violence. I love Fire Walk With Me for perfectly balancing that and escalating both halves of the show, it being one of the most harrowing and haunting films I have ever watched but also one of the most beautiful and moving. I love Lost Highway for the way it reframes the act of seeing and perception, asking questions about who sees themselves as the hero of their own story. I love Mulholland Drive for taking that strangeness and duality and applying it to the world David Lynch knew, the world of Hollywood. I love Inland Empire for just how far Lynch pushes it, it looking and feeling utterly unique in the world of motion pictures with its offbeat storytelling and filmic style. I love Twin Peaks: The Return for truly interrogating what it means to be a legacy sequel, and what we expect of such a return.

That's David Lynch. The only film of his I have yet to see is The Straight Story. I was saving it until I finished the Comics Challenge. Sean even sent me a VHS copy of the movie for maximum aesthetic. I will watch it at some point, probably late in the month or early February. As I understand, the film is heartbreaking and moving on its own. Knowing it is the last motion picture from David Lynch I will ever see, and knowing that he is gone now, will only add to the heartbreak. I am not one to get choked up over famous people deaths. It's sad and tragic and I have empathy, yes, but I don't end up personally shedding tears over it. Not so with David Lynch. I have wept for the loss of this man, this artist, and even now as I write this I'm getting misty-eyed. I owe him so damn much, and seeing the outpouring of support and sadness from the community has shown me that David Lynch mattered to so many people who I call friends and colleagues. Not just the ones who I have discussed his work with, but others whom I never knew were Lynch fans have mourned his loss. I want to close this by sharing the one piece of tribute which did break me, which is breaking me right now thinking about it (I'll be okay, don't worry):

He just wanted us to have fun. I did have fun, David. I had a lot of fun watching your work, analyzing it, becoming better at critique and expressing myself. I have fun when I get to do that, and I enjoy working on my favorite projects. I enjoyed watching Bocchi The Rock and getting to tell everyone what that meant to me. I'm currently 1/3rd of the way through another show, one which has a dreamlike and ethereal vibe that resembles Lynch's work, but has its own quirks and whatnot. I'm excited to talk about that too. Then there are other Japanese cartoons I want to talk about, and who knows where 2025 will take me? It will take me to wondrous places, I'm sure, but they will be places in a world with one less genius auteur in it, and that's tragic. Still, I must move forward, but not without paying tribute to someone who inspired me so much, whose work truly helped me get better at getting my thoughts out on the page. I'd like to think I did that, and in keeping with the ways in which Lynch inspired me.

This is not a post about what happened to David Lynch. This is a post about how it made me feel.

Goodbye, David. 

The Introverted Intonations Of An Anxious Act (Bocchi The Rock)

But the right words never come

It all comes out silly-dumb

And all the things I need to say

And all the big words seem to stay

On the inside

On the inside

Hi, welcome to 2025! I'm Frezno Inferno, and I am an incredibly anxious person and an introvert.

This is important information to know up front before I get into analyzing this here Japanese cartoon. In a lot of ways, this post is an opening up of my very soul for you all to read, and more so than usual. I have to do it in order to properly convey just what it is about the show that resonates with me. I have also chosen to attempt to add a little brevity to this writeup and just do it all in one reasonable shot, rather than a 10,000 word affair where I go over everything that happened in it. In the first place, the structure of the show doesn't really allow for that. More than that, opening myself up to that degree for that length would destroy me. Let's not do that. Let's instead open up about that anxious introversion, what I deal with, and define myself a little before we truly begin. I have to transmute myself into a fucking tuning fork so that you can hear how I and the show resonate. Weird metaphor, I know, but let us commence.