‘Torchwood’ blogging: “Random Shoes”
Man, this is grim. Nerd wakes up to the possibility of life outside nerdom, and dies immediately thereafter. What’s the point?
Russell T Davies
‘Doctor Who’ blogging: “The Impossible Planet”/“The Satan Pit”
It’s like Milliway’s, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, except without the bar, this station on the impossible edge of a black hole, hovering at the edge of oblivion, and for what? Really, for what?
‘Torchwood’ blogging: “They Keep Killing Suzie”
We snark about how no one ever dies in science fiction (or in comic books) but still… this is the weirdest extrapolation of that idea ever. *Torchwood* is a deeply weird show, of course, but it gets weird *and* profound in this episode.
‘Doctor Who’ blogging: “The Idiot’s Lantern”
So I started by Googling the phrase “idiot’s lantern” because it’s *such* a perfect euphemism for television, even better than “boob tube,” but I’d never heard it before, and I wondered whether scriptwriter Mark Gatiss invented it.
‘Doctor Who’ blogging: “Rise of the Cybermen”/“The Age of Steel”
It’s probably not in the least bit surprising that the genre of the Information Revolution — science fiction — is the one that does satire on the tentacly power of the corporation so well.
‘Doctor Who’ blogging: “Girl in the Fireplace”
It’s the Doctor’s tragedy in a nutshell. He meets an extraordinary woman, and in the space of an afternoon, falls in love with her, is challenged by her, and then loses her across the unspannable abyss of death…
‘Doctor Who’ blogging: “School Reunion”
How I bawled and bawled, the first time I saw this episode. Because this is it, right here, the Doctor’s tragedy, and the tragedy of everyone who loves him: he’s destined to be lonely, and we’re destined to be left because he thinks he can deny the loneliness by shutting us out when we get too close.
‘Doctor Who’ blogging: “Tooth and Claw”
The most interesting stuff in this episode is not the werewolf — not that the werewolf ain’t cool and all. It’s the Doctor and Rose, and how relaxed and easy with each other they suddenly are.
‘Torchwood’ blogging: “Greeks Bearing Gifts”
Man, this is a bleak show. Not bleak about how the universe is out to get poor (almost) defenseless planet Earth or anything like that. Bleak about people. About how damaged we all are, even the healthiest of us, and about how hard it is to find people we can at least be comfortably damaged with.
‘Doctor Who’ blogging: “New Earth”
Lying on his coat, on the applegrass, gazing at the ridiculously romantic skyline of New New York, that’s the time, Rose. I want to shout at her, at that moment, every time I watch this episode: “Kiss him, you fool!”
