Of "space Gandalfs" and sassy redheads

To celebrate Matt Smith's tenure as the Doctor, which will be coming to an end after this year's Christmas special, here's a pretty great deleted scene from the fifth season's "Flesh and Stone" where Eleven describes himself in Tolkien-esque terms. (It's also a great pick-me-up if you're still sad about Game of Thrones.)



This deleted scene is fun and entertaining, despite the fact that it reminds me of that awful time when Amy was trying to hook up with the Doctor. However, it also reminds me of the reason I so loved the second-greatest sassy redhead to ever grace the TARDIS: she is constantly calling the Doctor on his shit. (As did the greatest sassy redhead to travel with Space Gandalf, Donna Noble. I miss you every day, Donna.) After all, someone occasionally needs to point out the Doctor's propensity for traveling with young, hot girls and only young, hot girls.

I'm not too sad about Smith's departure yet; we still have two episodes to go before we have to bid farewell to Eleven. But I know that when the time comes I'll miss his antic energy, his awkward attempts to mimic human behavior, and the sadness and rage and fear that are just barely balanced by love and optimism. Even so, I'll be excited to see what the future brings; after all, I thought no one could ever match David Tennant, and Smith's fantastic performance proved me wrong time and time again. In the meantime, we have "The Name of the Doctor" and the reappearance of Ten and Rose Tyler (at least) to look forward to. Personally, I'm hoping for a Donna Noble cameo.

The Doctor is back, with a new companion and new threats

Doctor Who's return features the third incarnation of Clara Oswald, the reappearance of an old villain, and a dose of internet-age paranoia.

Jenna-Louise Coleman and Matt Smith in "The Bells of Saint John." Photo courtesy of telegraph.co.uk.

There is one genuinely horrifying moment in "The Bells of Saint John," the first episode of this half-season of Doctor Who. At the end of the hour, Miss Kizlet (Celia Imrie), who is working for the Great Intelligence (who originally appeared way back in the era of the Second Doctor, and who returned as the villain behind the evil snowmen in this year's Christmas special) is abandoned by the Intelligence and told to erase knowledge of the Intelligence's existence from the minds of herself and her staff. In a wickedly clever, creepy image, Kizlet hits a "Restore Factory Settings" command on the iPad app she's been using to run the operation, leaving behind a room full of suddenly bewildered employees who have no idea how they got there. It's a funny stinger that turns tragic when the UNIT troops sent to assess the situation bust into her office, only to find the formerly powerful woman reduced to the intellectual level of a child who can't find her parents. The Intelligence has discarded her, just as it discarded Dr. Simeon (Richard E. Grant), whose face and voice it now uses to communicate (apparently the show couldn't afford to retain Ian McKellen), in "The Snowmen," and the moment is sad and disturbing in equal measure.

The rest of "The Bells of Saint John" stays away from this kind of harrowing emotion, which is probably best for those of us still recovering from the events of "The Angels Take Manhattan." It's a generally light-hearted episode that serves primarily to re-introduce the audience to Jenna-Louise Coleman's new companion, Clara Oswald, and to establish Clara's relationship with the Doctor. The episode's actual plot, which involves uploading people's souls into the WiFi as food (or possibly pets) for the Great Intelligence, takes a backseat to the Doctor/Clara dynamic; the threat never seems terribly credible, and mostly serves as a platform for lots of Facebook and Twitter jokes. Not that I have a problem with these jokes; the way Matt Smith contemptuously enunciates "Twitter" is, and always has been, marvelous, and the scene in which Kizlet's second-in-command, Mahler (Robert Whitlock) realizes that every employee of their super-secret operation has posted their work information on Facebook is a brilliant little piece of comedy.

How To Get Your TV Fix This Summer (Without Watching True Blood

A thoughtfully funny priest, a bumbling spy and a downright Biblical clash of Kings provide a great antidote to vampires and werewolves.

Clockwise from top left: Jay Harrington and Portia de Rossi in Better Off Ted; Chris Egan in Kings; Jude Wright and Darren Boyd in Spy; and Tom Hollander in Rev.

With May sweeps a distant memory and early-summer series like Game of Thrones already finished, summer TV epitomizes Minow's famous "vast wasteland." Although many cable networks are starting to challenge traditional scheduling, the current television landscape consists mostly of reruns, reality series and True Blood. Even Doctor Who, normally a godsend for those of us who prefer quality programming to baking on the beach (not everyone tans, and not all of us enjoy slathering on SPF 1500 and donning a hat just so we can watch other people brown) has taken an extended hiatus, and won't be returning until an unspecified date in the fall.

Luckily, we live in an age of streaming video and HD laptop displays, which means that a world of TV is sitting at our fingertips, waiting for us to dispel the summer doldrums and dive right in. If you find yourself with some extra time between barbecues and beach parties, these five series are well worth your time and energy (and, in some cases, the cost of an Amazon Prime subscription).

Spy

Who should watch: Anyone who misses the covert ops shenanigans of Archer and adores Community's genre parodies.

Available on: Hulu

Hulu has become a great source of less-known British television, and Spy is one of the streaming service's best offerings. The show's protagonist, Tim (Darren Boyd), is a middle-aged loser working in an electronics store and fighting for the love (and custody rights) of his precocious, witheringly critical son Marcus (Jude Wright) when he stumbles into the wrong civil service exam and ends up as an MI6 agent. Spy combines the best elements of several shows - the set-up is pure Chuck, the portrayal of MI6 is right out of the Archer playbook, and later episodes have Marcus starring in parodies of gangster movies and Westerns that could have teleported in from Community - but the show makes them its own. Spy features a great cast of supporting characters (I'm a particular fan of Mathew Baynton's Chris), but the whole enterprise is anchored by the prickly, hilarious, often cruel and occasionally sweet relationship between Tim and Marcus, whose odd couple banter is like nothing else on TV.

Doctor Who news: guess what villain will be back this season?

Photo courtesy of io9.com. Follow the link for more pictures.

For those of you who need something to fill the emptiness that Doctor Who's hiatus has left in your hears, io9.com has just released some seriously spoiler-rific photos from the New York City set where Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill are filming part of the seventh season. Many of the pictures, like the one above, simply show the Doctor, Amy and Rory being their charming selves, but one set of images teases the return of one of the series' all-time great villains, whose identity will be revealed after the jump for those of you who want to go into the season with your minds untouched by any prior knowledge.

The Doctor meets... Robocop?!

On the heels of Stephen Moffat's announcement that Doctor Who's titular Time Lord is getting a new companion, the BBC has released a trailer for the as-yet-unscheduled seventh season. The awesome clip doesn't show any footage of Jenna-Louise Coleman's new character, but it does feature plenty of Amy and Rory, some clever jokes, and an antagonist who looks strikingly similar to Robocop (or KickPuncher, if you prefer).

I love Amy fumbling with the gun, and the cowboy requesting that anyone who isn't American put their guns down. On a related note, Doctor Who, after spending most of its existence confined to the British isles (well, the whole of time and space, but mostly Britain) has been coming to America rather frequently in the last couple seasons; last year's two-part season opener marked the first time the series had ever filmed in the U.S. (and in my home state of Utah no less!), and now the Wild West is making an appearance.

In addition to a villain who looks like Robocop (seriously), I also caught a glimpse of Mark Williams (Arthur Weasley), and have begun to to suspect that appearing on Doctor Who is a requirement for BAFTA membership, along with a role in a Harry Potter movie and an appearance in a BBC adaptation of either Dickens or Austen. And, as always, there is an enormous amount of running involved.

I'm really hoping that the shot of an eyestalk emerging from the snow, accompanied by a mention of the Daleks, doesn't foreshadow that species' return. I agree with Moffat that the sheer number of defeats they've suffered at the hands of the Doctor invalidates them as enemies. What I really want is the return of the scariest baddie in the Whoniverse, the literally unmemorable and yet absolutely unforgettable Silence. But I'll deal with the Daleks if it means the return of the Doctor, Amy and Rory. Season seven can't come soon enough!

The Doctor is getting a new companion, and Amy Pond fans everywhere are heartbroken

Jenna-Louise Coleman will play the new
companion on the seventh season of Doctor
Who. Photo courtesy of the Huffington Post.

Amy and Rory are really leaving the Tardis.

Stephen Moffat announced today that Jenna-Louise Coleman will be replacing everyone's favorite redhead and her husband as the Doctor's companion in the upcoming season of Doctor Who.

Coleman has been confirmed as the Doctor’s newest companion, with executive producer Stephen Moffatt saying the 25-year-old British actress will play a fast-talking live wire who will lead the Time Lord on “his merriest dance yet” (metaphorically speaking, presumably). Coleman is a relative unknown on these shores, although she has starred in the British soap Emmerdale, had a bit part in Captain America, and appears in the upcoming Titanic miniseries from Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes—none of which will matter once she plays the companion on Doctor Who, of course, because that’s how the Internet will look at her ever after. (Just ask Catherine Tate.) Anyway, Coleman’s entrance naturally means an exit for the Doctor’s current companions, the Ponds, which Moffat has said will occur in the fifth episode of next season and will be “heartbreaking.” But then, as so often happens on Doctor Who, a new pretty girl arrives to make it all better, so don’t worry too much about it. 

via The AV Club.

I've said this every time there's a cast changeover on Doctor Who - and every time I have been proven wrong - but I'll do it anyway: there is no possible way that Coleman will ever replace Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) in my heart. I love Amy. I love her relationship with the Doctor. God help me, I even love Rory (Arthur Darvill). And while I have come to adore Matt Smith in a way I never thought possible after falling for David Tennant, I refuse to accept that anyone could ever fill Amy's miniskirt.

Of course, since Miss Pond is (SPOILERS) River Song's (Alex Kingston) mother and, as of recently, the Doctor's mother-in-law, I'm assuming we haven't seen the last of her. Even a 900-year-old Time Lord has to take the occasional vacation with the in-laws, right?

And in the end, it's all about the blood

Lauren Ambrose in "The Blood Line," the season finale of Torchwood: Miracle Day. Photo courtesy of doctorwhotv.co.uk.

Torchwood: Miracle Day is now over, and just in time; I never thought I would say this, but if the show had continued into the start of the fall TV season, I would have been forced to jettison it in favor of something with a coherent plot and decent pacing. (On that note, The Vampire Diaries returns in less than a week! Hooray!) The season finale was, unlike various episodes throughout the season, not terrible (I'm looking at you, "The Middle Men") but it wasn't great either. After so much build-up I was expecting to find out more about the three Families and their motivations, or at least to find out that they had motivations that ranged beyond a generic let's-take-over-the-world plan. I was also hoping to see more of Lauren Ambrose's Jilly, a woman whose transition from bubbly publicist to fascism would have been extremely interesting if it hadn't happened so abruptly.

But let's start with the good. Eve Myles' Gwen was really the star of this episode, and she got to do more in this one episode than in the preceding nine put together. Her speech at the beginning about her father was reminiscent of the Gwen speech that opened the final episode of Children of Earth - and by "reminiscent" I mean "Russell T. Davies did the exact same thing he did in the last series" - but Myles gives a great speech, and this one really helped illuminate her personal motivations. Gwen's emotional phone call to Rhys was another highlight, as was her determination to kill Jack so he wouldn't have to commit suicide. All in all, it was a fantastic episode for Gwen, who even got to change out of her usual action clothes and into a great-looking dress for Esther's funeral.

Speaking of which, Esther died. Since Esther has generally been about as boring as drying paint for most of the series, I wasn't particularly upset at her death. I was expecting more resolution to the story about her sister and nieces, but I guess something good happened with that, as they were all alive for her funeral. It speaks to the general unimportance of her character that her death isn't big or heroic; she's shot in an attempt to keep Rex from ending the Miracle, which underlines her role as a person who helps define Rex, rather than an independent character. Although the idea she had to switch Rex's blood with Jack's was pretty clever, so I guess she wasn't completely useless.

Speaking of which, the solution to the Miracle - the introduction of Jack's special immortal blood to either side of the magic Earth vagina also known as the Blessing (and if you didn't think that's what it looked like, you have an admirably clean mind) was nifty and also frustratingly vague. I've mentioned this before,  but the idea of Jack's blood being special does not seem to fit with the established explanation for Jack's immortality. The explanation of the Miracle was equally vague - apparently, since the Blessing thought it was under attack, it decided to give a gift to humanity by making everyone immortal - although I did really enjoy the way Jack rattled off a few Doctor Who events (the Silurians, the Racnoss) as possible explanations before Gwen pointed out that he had no idea what he was talking about. It was a nice way to remind everyone that this show takes place in the Whoniverse.

I also enjoyed the twist at the end in which Rex becomes immortal, just like Jack (although once again, I'm not entirely sure how Jack's blood made him immortal, since it took the full strength of the TARDIS matrix to do the same to Jack). I really disliked Rex throughout the first half of the series, but by the end he had begun to grow on me. I'd like to see him learn to cope with immortality in future seasons, and having an immortal friend for Jack might lead to some interesting developments for his character.

This being Miracle Day, however, there were quite a few problems that distracted from the main plot. The Charlotte-is-a-mole plotline was glossed over throughout most of the episode, making the resolution of that story seem like an afterthought. The Families also came across as cartoonish rather than menacing, and the reintroduction of the blue-eyed frat boy at the end implied that they might come back, which... let's not bring them back. Please? If you're going to bring back anyone, bring back the 456. They were some scary bastards.

The biggest problem with the episode - as well as the season as a whole - was Oswald Danes. It was never entirely clear what purpose his character served, and the writers never seemed to know what to do with him. In one episode they would try to make him a broken man trying to make something of his life, while in the next he would return to being a monster. It seems clear that, in the finale, Oswald was supposed to have something of a subversive redemption arc, but the grating contrast between the classic redemption storyline and his final rant about chasing down the girl he molested in hell was too jarring to be subversive. Oswald's character has always suffered from the fact that he is completely unsympathetic; the man raped and murdered a little girl, and that fact hung over everything he did in the series. His arc showed some promise in the beginning, at the very least as a commentary on the state of the media, but that never went anywhere, and in the end all the audience was left with was a bad taste in our mouths.

Stray Thoughts:

• The caricature of the old, superstitious Chinese woman really rubbed me the wrong way.
• The scene of Rhys finding Gwen's father to say goodbye was lovely, as was the image of P.C. Andy Davidson sitting by the side of the dying girl with no family. Can there be more Andy next season? Please?
• And while we're at it, more Rhys would also be appreciated.
• The shots of Jack and Rex spurting blood into the Blessing contained some special effects that looked more appropriate for an Evil Dead movie than Torchwood.
• Speaking of that scene, how long to do you think it will take some film studies major to write a paper about the significance of two men giving up their blood to the mystical Earth Vagina?
• Torchwood might not be back for a while, so let's just hope that Jack returns to Doctor Who soon. Maybe Rex could come with him?
• Gwen looked fabulous at Esther's funeral, but could Jack not have put on a black coat for the occasion?
• For more about the giant problem that was Oswald Danes, check out the excellent recaps over at the A.V. Club and io9.

The five scariest Doctor Who baddies (and no, the Daleks aren't included)

Doctor Who returns this Saturday for the second half of its sixth season, and I really couldn't be more excited. One of the reasons I'm so excited is that the fantastic trailer promises the return of two of my favorite Who villains, the Weeping Angels and the recently introduced Silence. So, in honor of the series' return, take a look at this list of the five scariest villains to grace Doctor Who's screens in the rebooted series. And no, this list won't contain any Daleks or Cybermen; I have to agree with Steven Moffat when he says that the Daleks have become "the most reliably defeatable enemies in the universe."

5. The mysterious presence
As seen in: "Midnight"

Photo courtesy of postmodernbarney.com.

"Midnight" is a classic bottle episode of Doctor Who. This follow-up to the large-scale two-parter "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" has a premise as simple as it is terrifying: the Doctor, along with other assorted vacationers, is taking a trip to see a sapphire waterfall on a diamond planet called Midnight when their vehicle breaks down and a mysterious presence takes over the mind of one of the passengers. They can't leave, because the sunlight on Midnight is so strong it would take them out in seconds and because the planet has no air. The Doctor is left trying to figure out why previously normal passenger Sky is suddenly repeating everything he says as he tries to mediate between the passengers who want to throw her to her death and those who don't. When Sky begins speaking the Doctor's words before he can, the hero suddenly becomes the object of fear. The baddie in "Midnight" doesn't even have a name, which makes the chaos it sows on the ship all the more frightening.

4. The Family
As seen in: "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood"

Photo courtesy of bbc.co.uk.

I may have mentioned before how much I absolutely love these two episodes of Doctor Who for the way the story delves into the meaning of humanity, the importance of love, and the burdens of being the Doctor. One thing I generally leave out, however, is the villainous Family of Blood who instigate the entire plot by chasing the Doctor until he is forced to disguise himself as human. The Family are a terrifying, bloodthirsty pack of hunters whose menace lies in their cold implacability; the Doctor knows that they will never, ever stop hunting him. The fact that one of the Family, Sister, takes over the body of an innocent girl with a balloon adds to the menace by playing on fears of evil children that can be seen in so many horror movies. The real reason the Family is so frightening, however, is their effect on the Doctor. He disguises himself not because he is afraid they will kill him, but because of the rage and terror that underlies his ultimate punishment of these hunters. Any villain who can turn the peaceful Doctor into a vengeful god is a force to be reckoned with.

3. The Master
As seen in: "Utopia"/"The Sound of Drums"/"Last of the Time Lords" and "The End of Time"

Photo courtesy of scifimania.com.

The Master is one of the few original Doctor Who villains to appear in the rebooted series, and he's the only one who actually stays menacing this time around. Much of the credit goes to John Simm, who plays the Master as a deranged god, an all-powerful Time Lord whose mind has been twisted to the point of insanity. His name says it all; he wants to control the world, the universe, time itself. We find out during "The End of Time" that the Master's madness is the result of the other Time Lords manipulation, but his ultimate redemption doesn't make his unhinged brutality any less unsettling. Just look at the way his wife, Lucy Saxon, cowers blank-eyed before him in "Last of the Time Lords," fresh bruises adorning her face, and try to question the terror the man inspires.

2. The Weeping Angels
As seen in: "Blink" and "The Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone"

Photo courtesy of geekalerts.com.

"Blink," the first Doctor Who episode to feature the Weeping Angels, is a magnificent piece of suspense filmmaking. When I went to the Home Depot several days after watching it and saw some angel-shaped figurines in the garden section, I stared at those things so long without blinking that I thought my eyeballs would dry up and fall out of my head. That's the thing that's so scary about the Angels; the only way to keep them away from you is to ignore all your natural instincts and physiological responses and stare at the thing you fear for as long as you can. The Angels are terrifying precisely because you can't run from them. You have to have a staring contest with your fear, with little chance of winning, and what could be scarier than that?

1. The Silence
As seen in: "The Impossible Astronaut"/"The Day of the Moon"

Photo courtesy of reprog.wordpress.com.

There is something scarier than having to stare, unblinking, at what you fear most, and that's being unable to remember what it is that you're so afraid of. The reason the Silence are, to me, the scariest villains in Who history, despite being the newest, is the knowledge that they are everywhere and you will never know, because even if you discover their existence you'll forget within seconds. If I see the Master or a Weeping Angel or the Family, I know to run, or to stay and fight. If I see the Silence, however, I will immediately forget about their existence. The thing that is so absolutely, oppressively frightening about these creatures is the idea that they are controlling every facet of your life and your world, and that there is no way you will ever stop them, because you won't even know what they're doing. And that is the one thing that is scarier than the Weeping Angels.

So, the last five episodes of "Miracle Day" were irrelevant?

Jack and Angelo on the run. Photo courtesy of digitalspy.com.

"Immortal Sins," the most recent episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day was awesome. Maybe not Children of Earth awesome, but in the context of the current, lackluster season, it was a breath of fresh air. The episode focused almost solely on Gwen and Jack with an absolute minimum of Rex and Esther, it featured some classic Russell T. Davies boundary-pushing, man-on-man action, and it actually advanced the plot in a meaningful way. The only problem was that the plot development rendered the previous five episodes - everything since the season premiere - completely irrelevant.

But let's star with the good. (Warning: SPOILERS ahead if you havent's seen "Immortal Sins".) The renewed focus on Jack and Gwen and their always-complicated relationship was excellent, allowing for some lovely emotional moments and a nice dose of character development. Eve Myles did a great job with the tricky beat where she described how she "got off" on her work with Torchwood, how it had hardened and made the deaths of Tosh, Owen and Ianto seem somewhow worth it. It was an excellent, dark spin on the way she described Torchwood in the opening episode of Children of Earth; if "the whole wide world is bigger," then the value of the people who inhabit that world begins to lessen.

Both Myles and Barrowman also did a great job selling the scene where they both vow to sacrifice each other in order to save what's most important: Gwen's daughter and Jack's life, respectively. Myles made Gwen's desperation palpable, but I was most impressed - not to mention disturbed - by Jack's coldness and absolute selfishness. If you've never watched Doctor Who you've never seen a mortal Jack before, a Jack who actually has something to lose. Even for those of us who remember mortal Jack, this new callousness is shocking. I wonder if Gwen and Jack's relationship can ever recover.

The real developments of the night - the ones that create so many problems with the previous five episodes - happen during flashbacks to the 1920s. Over the course of the episodes we see Jack meet, seduce, freak out and ultimately get betrayed by Angelo Colasanto (Daniele Favilli), a young Italian immigrant who, we learn at the end of the episode, is still alive and has information about the Miracle, presumably because he's behind it.

This is a pretty fantastic plot development, because it ties the Miracle directly to Jack. The fact that Angelo obviously has something to do with it, along with a conspicuous shot of a women holding a bottle of Jack's blood, seems to imply that Angelo and his allies (which hopefully include Phicirp, just to keep that story from being completely pointless) managed to synthesize something from the blood that keeps people from dying. I'm not sure that I buy that being a fixed point in time and space - something I always equated to Earth in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series being like a bubble in wallpaper that always comes back no matter how many times you push it down - is something you can find in blood, but I'm willing to go with it for the sake of the story.

(Speaking of being a fixed point in time and space, I think it's a continuity error when Jack describes himself to Angelo using those words. According to the Doctor Who timeline, Jack becomes immortal in "The Parting of the Ways," when TARDIS-possessed Rose brings him back to life. He then gets left behind, finds his way to Earth in an attempt to find the Doctor but accidentally lands in the 1800s, where he joins Torchwood and waits for the Doctor. Jack doesn't find out why he's immortal - the fixed point thing - until "Utopia," which takes place in the early 2000s, between the first and second seasons of Torchwood, which means that he couldn't have possibly explained his immortality to Angelo in 1928. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that scene breaks continuity, which someone should have been watching out for. Anyway, back to the point...)

The problem with the revelation about Angelo, fascinating as it is, is that it invalidates every episode since the premiere. Why did we spend so much time with Phicorp and the overflow camps when it really got us no closer to the solution to the Miracle? This is the first episode in a while that's actually left me eager to watch next week, but it's also frustrating to know that so much of the season has been a waste of time. Clearly, Davies needs to stick to either episodic television or five-episode, Children of Earth-style arcs.

Stray Thoughts:

• Jack's new willingness to protect his own life at all costs provides a terrible answer to a burning question from Children of Earth - why did Jack take Ianto into Thames House, knowing what he did about the 456? It's starting to look like he either didn't care at all, or didn't care enough.
• On the other hand, his description of the short-lived Firebird was gorgeous, and the idea of a creature that only lives for a moment is a resonant one for an immortal.
• Rex and Esther actually did something useful this week!
• No Jilly and Oswald for the second episode in a row. Are they just as irrelevant as everything else? (I'm going to say yes.)
• Yay for the return of PC Andy Davidson! I love him.
• "You're Welsh. You wouldn't notice if all the vowels were missing."

True Blood: Eric's Vampire Nature

David Tennant as the Doctor in "Human Nature" and Alexander Skarsgard as Eric in "You Smell Like Dinner." Photos courtesy of danowen.blogspot.com and breesays.buzznet.com.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love the Doctor Who two-parter "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood," and anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows that I am enjoying the hell out of Eric's amnesia storyline on True Blood. It wasn't until the most recent episode, "I Wish I Was the Moon," that I realized that these two things were connected. Much of my fascination with the new, memory-wiped Eric Northman has to do with my deep and abiding love for those two Doctor Who episodes.

I put this together during the last episode, when Eric, captured by Bill and knowing that he was about to face the "true death," told Pam that he didn't want to become the "viking god" Eric again; that he didn't want to know the man who, along with Pam, "killed and fucked" his way through humanity. Sweet, guileless new Eric wanted to remain the man he had become, the man who loved Sookie and would do anything to protect her. Anyone who has seen "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood" will see the similarities. In these episodes, David Tennant's Doctor becomes completely and fully human in order to escape from the titular ruthless family. He settles down in England under the name John Smith, teaching at a boy's school and falling in love with Joan Redfern (Jessica Stevenson). He knows nothing of his past as The Doctor.

Eric's line to Pam is heavily reminiscent of John Smith's reaction when he finds out his true identity, and is forced to make a choice: whether to remain John Smith and live happily with Joan, or whether to become the Doctor, the man who is "like night and the storm and the heart of the sun." When told by his companion Martha that the Doctor never gave her instructions on what to do if he should fall in love, he is horrified, fearful of dying in order to become a man to whom it would never occur that he might fall in love. It makes his ultimate decision to turn back into the Doctor and save the world painful and tragic rather than triumphant, and emphasizes the loneliness of the last Time Lord.

The Doctor and Eric are similar characters in many ways, even without their amnesia arcs echoing one another. They are both deeply lonely men, constantly living with the knowledge that they are different and that they cannot have the one thing they want: love, whether it be with Joan Redfern or Sookie Stackhouse. Eric is violent and frightening, but the Doctor is as well, a man whose name in Lorna Bucket's language does not mean "healer," but "warrior." And they are both marked by deep tragedy; Eric by the murders of his family and the death of his maker, the Doctor by the extinction of his own people at his hands. The personas they take on when their memories are lost are their only chance at redemption. Redemption through love.

I know, as (I hope) do the True Blood writers, that Eric can't remain amnesiac forever. The vampires need their Viking God to defeat the witch who wants them all to burn. Bill needs his sheriff. Pam needs her maker. Having seen "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood," I know how Eric's relationship with Sookie must end. As beautiful and hopeful as he is now, he must at some point go back to being his true self, and break her heart in the process. Let's just hope that, like the Doctor, he learns a few things along the way.

The New Doctor Who Trailer Is Here!

Filming for the episode "Let's Kill Hitler" featuring Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill and, unsurprisingly, a Nazi soldier. Photo courtesy of scifipulse.net.

San Diego Comic-Con is just the gift that keeps on giving. At the convention the BBC premiered a trailer for the remainder of the sixth series, which comes back August 27 with an episode titled "Let's Kill Hitler." Let's take a look, shall we? (And yes, if you've been following this, I will address the very uncontroversial controversy that has accompanied the clip.)

The "controversy" here stems from the moment when the Doctor (Matt Smith), Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill) are thanked by Hitler for saving his life. However, producer Piers Wenger was quick to debunk the rumor that the doctor would save Hitler to the Television Critics Association this morning, telling the assembled reporters, "we're not going to save Hitler," according to TheWrap.com. Of course, you probably already figured that out, given that Rory can be seen punching the Fuhrer at the 0:36 mark, and, of course, the fact that the episode is called "Let's Kill Hitler."

Now that we're done with that, let's talk about the rest of the trailer. The minute-long clip indicates that the main arc of the series' second half will revolve around the Doctor's death, as seen in the first episode, as well as dealing with the remifications of River Song's newly discovered identity. One thing I like about this season is the way that Steven Moffat has really foregrounded the overarching story. Too often during the Russell T. Davies years (and, to an extent, during Moffat's first season as showrunner), the bigger story that was concluded during the finale was seemingly ignored until the final three episodes, only to be retconned into the preceding season via the inclusion of some seemingly insignificant details. This was especially the case with the Torchwood storyline during series two and the Master storyline during series three. However, the current season has, to all appearances, solved this problem by making the mystery of the Doctor's death and Amy and Rory's daughter a major factor in well over half the episodes (the mediocre "Curse of the Black Spot" and phenomenal "The Doctor's Wife" notwithstanding). This could also explain why this season has been much less uneven than Doctor Who normally is.

There were some great visuals in the trailer as well. Spooky images are something at which Doctor Who has always excelled, and it appears that the second half of series six will be no exception. I'm extremely excited for the return of the terrifying Weeping Angels and the equally frightening, if much newer, Silence. I'm less enthusiastic about the return of the Cybermen, golden-age Doctor Who villains who are second only to the Daleks as a holdover from a different era. (On that note, however, I was very pleased to learn that Moffat is retiring the Daleks, at least for a little while. They never really worked for me as villains, and I'm glad to know that others agree with me.) The creepily aware dolls that make an appearance around 0:30 are also scary, and yet more proof that ventriloquist dummies are never cute. They are terrifying.

The trailer also includes some lovely non-spooky visuals. I'm particularly fond of the shot of Amy walking into some sort of Wonderland-looking topiary garden at 0:21. I can't wait to find out the context of that otherworldy image. I'm also intrigued by the shots (at 0:37 and 0:39) that show Amy and Rory battling their way through an all-white setting that brings to mind I, Robot (the movie, not the book), not least because I like it when they fight side-by-side, a couple against the universe.

The two most promising developments, however, are the return of James Corden's Craig (who first appeared in "The Lodger") and that shot of River Song (Alex Kingston) wearing an eyepatch. The crazy eyepatch lady's eyepatch, to be exact! (Yes, I realize her name is Madame Kovarian, but she will always be Crazy Eyepatch Lady to me.) I quite enjoyed Corden's character, even though I felt that "The Lodger" was a very tonally strange episode of Doctor Who, and I'm quite excited to see how he fits into the larger story of the season. Plus, their kissing joke at 0:18 is funny, despite the potential to be totally lame, largely because of the odd-couple chemistry between Corden and Smith.

The second promising development, however, is the one that I'm sure people will be talking about. Why is River wearing that eyepatch? Is she in league with Kovarian? Has she grown up warped and twisted because she was taken from her parents? Is there some sort of bizarre time-loop thing going on, where she can't be born unless her older self meets the Doctor, and therefore she must be kidnapped in order to preserve her own existence? Are we going to find out why she's in prison? I personally love River, and I can't wait to have all these questions answered.

Stray Thoughts:

• That shot of a much older-looking Amy at 0:15, combined with the voiceover saying "something has happened to time," has to be significant. I just don't know how.
• While the shots of the Silence and the Weeping Angels are genuinely creepy, the moving skulls are trying just a little too hard to be scary. Hopefully they'll be better in the context of an episode.
• I've mentioned it before, but I really like when the show goes dark, and the Doctor's worries about his own death are definitely dark.
• Rory on a motorcycle!
• The Doctor in a top hat and tails!
• I'm excited for the appearance of Atonement's Daniel Mays, playing a character named Alex. Which is the best name.
• Less excited for the return of Ian McNeice's Winston Churchill, largely because he reminds me of "Victory of the Daleks," and I really prefer to pretend that episode doesn't exist.
• Nice shout-out to the filming location of Monument Valley, UT, in the shot of information about the Doctor's death.
• Who do you think the astronaut is?

"Doctor Who:" Series Six So Far

Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill and Alex Kingston in "A Good Man Goes To War." Photo courtesy of topuspost.com.

The first half of Doctor Who's sixth series came to an end with "A Good Man Goes To War" on Saturday. (Warning: This episode has not yet aired in the U.S. If you haven't seen "A Good Man Goes To War," stop reading now, because there are major SPOILERS ahead.) Since the show won't be back until the fall, I thought now would be a good time to discuss what has happened so far, and to predict what might come to pass when the show returns.

I'll get to the serious OMG-moments later in this post, but I first want to note that this is one of the most consistent runs of Doctor Who I have ever seen. This show can be remarkably inconsistent - for every "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood" or "The Girl in the Fireplace," there is a "Daleks in Manhattan" or "Fear Her" - but the first seven episodes of the sixth series have all been remarkable in their consistency. The weakest episode was probably "The Curse of the Black Spot," but even the pirate-centric episode was entertaining (unlike "Fear Her"), and the pirates even made a return appearance in "A Good Man Goes To War."

While there were no truly bad episodes in the first half of the season, these episodes also featured one of the my new favorite episodes of the series as a whole. "The Doctor's Wife" ranks with the aforementioned "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood" and "The Girl in the Fireplace," as well as the other excellent episodes "Blink" and "Vincent and the Doctor," as one of the top episodes of the rebooted series' run. Even if the other episodes had been terrible, I would have loved the season purely for the inclusion of "The Doctor's Wife;" as it was, it has been a great seven episodes, with that most excellent episode as a true standout in a series of solidly good-to-great hours.

Another excellent feature of these seven episodes has been the way that the season's major storyline has been prominently featured. Often in Doctor Who, the big story has been teased only intermittently throughout the season, and then come to play an important role in the final two or three episodes. (This is especially the case in Series Three, with the appearance of the Master, and Series Four, where the excellent Doctor-Donna revelation was barely brought up in the season's earlier episodes.) It's only Episode Seven, and many hints - the appearance of the Flesh and the creepy woman with the eye patch as two examples - have already been integrated into the major story.

It was clear as early as the first trailer for the season that Alex Kingston's River Song would play an important role in the season, and the seventh episode brought her character into the story in a big way. (Seriously, if you haven't seen "A Good Man Goes To War," stop reading NOW.) I still don't know how I feel about River Song being Amy and Rory's daughter, Melody Pond, largely because it makes her (apparently romantic) relationship with the Doctor seem a little creepy. However, I can't deny that the revelation seriously complicates the storyline as we know it so far. I'm a little worried, though, that this twist will take away from the suspense of the series. After all, we now know that little Melody will be safe, and will ultimately be protected by the Doctor, which makes the quest for her recovery less of an issue. Since it appears that finding Melody will make up the bulk of the second half of the season - which it might not, because what do I know? - it lessens the dramatic tension quite a bit to know that she will ultimately be alright.

I said before that the knowledge of River's true identity makes her relationship with the Doctor... strange, to say the least. However, there is dramatic potential here. Throughout the rebooted series, we've seen the Doctor's (mostly female) companions develop a romantic attachment to him, an idea that has been explored even more potently with Karen Gillan's Amy, who met the Doctor as a child and became extremely attached. Now, Amy has moved on and is happy with Rory, but another example was forthcoming in "A Good Man Goes To War:" Lorna Bucket, the young Cleric who joined the military purely to find the Doctor, having met him once as a child. Her story is similar to that of the individuals in the Series Two episode "Love and Monsters" - the people who aren't privileged enough to become companions, those who are touched by the Doctor and then spend their lives trying to regain the magic. The notion of the way the Doctor draws people to him, sometimes to an unhealthy extent, is one that is ripe with potential. This is the facet of the Doctor's relationship with River that could blossom into something really interesting.

There are a lot of interesting plot threads leading into the second half of the season. The use of the Flesh, for one, holds a lot of promise, as its existence has already proved critical for several plot devices. I'm also looking forward to the reemergence of the angry Doctor, the terrifying man whose name, in the language of Lorna's people, has come to mean "great warrior," the man who can summon an army at the mere mention of his name. The tension between who the Doctor is and what he has done has always been an excellent source of dramatic tension for the series, the knowledge that the man who never carries a weapon was responsible for the destruction of two species and countless other deaths. Davros used this contradiction to mock the Doctor in "Journey's End," and it was flung in his face again by Madame Kovarian in "A Good Man Goes To War." Watching the Doctor reconcile the two halves of himself - the one that strives for peace, and the one born in blood - has made for some compelling television in the past. I have no doubt that the second half of this season will be even more compelling, and that River Song and Melody Pond will play an important role in allowing the Doctor to embrace the mess of contradictions that makes up his self.

Analyzing the first full trailer for "Torchwood: Miracle Day"

Mekhi Phifer, John Barrowman, Kai Owen and Eve Myles in Torchwood: Miracle Day. Photo courtesy of scifipulse.net.

The first full trailer for this summer's Torchwood: Miracle Day is out, and it is certainly promising. I already mentioned how excited I am about the first season of Torchwood to be set in America (although it does take place in Los Angeles), and the trailer has only increased my anticipation.

One of the reasons I'm so excited about the new season of Torchwood is the format: ten episodes that function more as a miniseries than a series, heavily serialized and following a single story. This format made the third season, Torchwood: Children of Earth, far superior to the first two, much more episodic, seasons. The similar format of Miracle Day is encouraging.

A major difference between this season and Children of Earth, however, is the prevalence of American accents in the trailer, which is certainly jarring in a series that spun off from the quintessential British series Doctor Who. Besides Alexa Havins, who plays Esther Drummond, an American who joins forces with John Barrowman's Captain Jack Harkness and Eve Myles' Gwen Cooper, the series features Mekhi Phifer, Bill Pullman and Lauren Ambrose in supporting roles.

Phifer and Pullman are visible early in the trailer as, respectively, a man who survives a fatal car crash and a convict who survives execution. Those early moments establish the creepiness that underlies the premise of the season - a single day in which not a single person on earth dies - which is celebrated by the media, but which has the potential for devastating consequences. The premise is intriguingly vague, much like the premise underlying Children of Earth, and based on the trailer it appears to be well-executed.

While the trailer is certainly ominous, there are moments of humor there to remind us Whovians of why we fell in love with Captain Jack and Gwen in the first place, and to entice newcomers who like a bit of fun with their sci-fi. The moment when Captain Jack, having just dived into a fountain with Havins, offers his hand and, with a rakish grin, his name to the blond American girl is a reminder of Barrowman's rougish, Nathan Fillion-esque charm, and the sight of Gwen shooting a gun with one hand while holding her baby with the other is a great juxtaposition. My favorite, however, is the trailer's final tag, where Gwen responds to a snide American's comment about being "the best England has to offer" with a resounding "I'm Welsh," followed by a punch. It's a great character moment for Gwen, while also ribbing those Americans who probably don't know anything about Wales' relationship to Great Britain.

All in all, the trailer leaves me even more excited for Miracle Day's July 8th premiere. But what about you? Does the trailer get you excited for the new season? Are you as excited to see John Barrowman escape from the hell of Desperate Housewives as I am?

The Best TV Season and Series Finales

Clockwise from top left, photos courtesy of tvaddictsblog.com; connectin.com; combom.co.uk; unrealitymag.com.

Sorry to have been MIA for the last week, but I was busy graduating from college. (Your dear writer is now the proud holder of a Bachelor of Arts! Yay!) Today however, as promised, I'll be finishing off FinaleStravaganza with a list of the five best season and series finales of all time. (Well, at least my favorite season and series finales.) Without any further ado, I'll start with the list of season finales.

5. South Park, "Cartman's Mom Is A Dirty Slut"

The first season finale of Trey Parker and Matt Stone's filthy, sharply satirical, button-pushing series both showcased the dirty humor the show was known for, but also provided an on-the-nose parody of cliffhanger season finales. The plot centered on Cartman's quest to find out who his father was, from a lineup of suspects that ranged from Chef to the Denver Broncos. The ending provided an absurd cliffhanger, in which Cartman's test results are delayed because someone shot the geneticist who knew the results. The episode was not only a razor-sharp parody of season finales, but it also provided viewers with the knowledge that, if Cartman ever hears the beginning of the Styx song "Come Sail away," he has to sing the entire song. And thus, a viral video was born.

4. Community, "A Fistful of Paintballs" and "For a Few Paintballs More"

 This finale was recent, but boy was it great. The two-part paintball war was as epic as they come, and the genre parodies - first a Western, then a Star Wars-style action film - were clever without being too all-consuming. You can read my full recap here, but the final hour of Community's second season managed to be laugh-out-loud funny, action-packed and emotional, all within the absurdist framework of a giant paintball war. This finale proved that Community is one of the smartest, funniest, most original shows on TV.

3. Fringe, "Over There Part 2"

Many people prefer the first season finale of Fringe, "There's More Than One of Everything," in which the parallel universe was revealed through a jaw-dropping shot of Olivia in an office in the World Trade Center. I, however, prefer the second season finale, with its action-packed fight between the Fringe team from our world and the team from Over There, the sacrifice of Leonard Nimoy's William Bell, and the final shocking twist. The last image of the episode - Ourlivia staring out of a cell on Liberty Island, begging for her freedom, while the other Olivia was safe on our side - was absolutely chilling, a perfect ending to the season and a great set-up for the war between the universes that culminated in the third season finale.

2. The Vampire Diaries, "Founder's Day"

The first season finale of the CW's addictive drama was, like most other episodes, packed to the gills with revelations, plot twists, emotional moments, and snarky Damon humor. The high point, however, was the final-scene revelation in which the woman we though was Elena, who had just shared a kiss with Damon, was revealed to be none other than Katherine Pierce. Bringing Katherine into the story was brilliant, and made the audience rethink every scene featuring Elena in the episode. The reveal of Tyler's supernatural abilities and Caroline's car accident were also great, and very important for the next season, but even these moments paled in comparison to the Katherine reveal. After the first season finale, the second season kept the action going as fast as possible, and never let up on the twists or the reveals. That's the mark of the good season finale; it kick starts an excellent next season, and The Vampire Diaries certainly did that.

1. Lost, "Through the Looking Glass," parts 1 and 2

The series finale of Lost may have left a bad taste in many viewers' mouths - I certainly felt it was too heavy on the spirituality, and too light on the answers - but no one can deny the power of the third season finale. "Through the Looking Glass" was full of emotional moments, like the tear-jerking death of Charlie Pace and the arrival of the helicopter that, at least for the moment, signaled rescue. However, the real impact of the episode came with the final scene, where a disheveled, alcoholic Jack was revealed to be not in a flashback, but in a flash-forward. The scene completely reinvented the show, introducing a whole new set of questions - how did Jack make it off the island? Who else managed to escape? Who was in the coffin? - while leaving our collective minds reeling. These two episodes were so powerful, they set a new standard for the show, one that the final season never managed to live up to. For the two hours of "Through the Looking Glass," however, the potential was unlimited.

And now, for the my four favorite series finales.

4. Freaks and Geeks, "Discos and Dragons"

Freaks and Geeks is a show that falls firmly in the category of "canceled too soon." The Judd Apatow-produced series featured many of today's leading comedic actors - Seth Rogen, James Franco and Jason Segel to name a few - in a show that was both heartwarming, funny and honest, a fine-grained portrait of the struggles of high school. The series finale was nothing more and nothing less than an encapsulation of the character's struggles, the most poignant being a storyline that featured Linda Cardellini's Lindsay struggling to decide whether to take part in an academic summit, or to spend the summer following the Grateful Dead around the country. It doesn't seem like that big a decision, but in the world of Freaks and Geeks it seemed like it could determine the course of Lindsay's entire life. The final episode was just as deft, funny and touching as the rest of the series, and left the rest of us wondering why this lovely, subtle show would never get a second season.

3. Arrested Development, "Development Arrested"

Another episode that perfectly sums up the series that preceded it, "Development Arrested" was a showcase for the meta humor and absurdist twists that made the series so funny and unpredictable. From Michael finally realizing that he doesn't want to take care of his family, to Buster apparently losing his other hand to the seal with the bowtie, to producer and narrator extraordinaire Ron Howard making a cameo and sparking hope of an Arrested Development movie (hope that just keeps getting destroyed), the episode was everything we loved about this too-short-lived sitcom. Save our Bluths, everyone, and pray for the movie!

2. Doctor Who, "The End of Time" parts 1 and 2

I know that "The End of Time" isn't technically a series finale, but since it marked the end of both David Tennant's performance as the Doctor and Russell T. Davies as showrunner, I'm counting it. The episode wasn't necessarily the best Doctor Who episode ever - that would be the Series Three two-parter "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood" - but it featured great performances by Tennant, John Simm as the Master, and Bernard Cribbins as Wilfred Mott, as well as some memorable visuals and a lovely final sequence in which the Doctor silently bids goodbye to all his past companions. The storyline with the return of the Time Lords - led by Timothy Dalton of all people - may have been a bit silly, but it offered a wonderful moment of redemption for the Master, and the Doctor's death and desperation to hang on to life were sad and, given the way he died to save Wilfred rather than at the hand of the Master, tragically ironic. Plus, there were no Daleks!

1. Scrubs, "My Finale"

Whatever you may think of the later seasons of Scrubs - I for one certainly found them uneven, and Zach Braff's J.D. became much whinier and more self-involved as the series went on - you can't deny the pitch-perfect emotional power of the finale. (And yes, this is the real finale, because I choose to pretend that the strange medical school spinoff never happened.)  From J.D. and Turk's inability to get their goodbye right to Braff's final scene with Dr. Cox. every moment struck a wonderful balance of sadness and laughter. The final scene, in which J.D. imagines his life playing, in a series of home movies, to the sound of Peter Gabriel's cover of "The Book of Love," it is a moment of bittersweet sadness that never fails to bring tears to my eyes. It's a beautiful scene that brings magnificent closure to the show and J.D.'s character, and leaves the audience perfectly satisfied.

Of course, I'm sure you all have opinions about what I did and did not include, so sound off in the comments! (Although if any of you include the Lost finale in the best-of list, we will have words.)

"Doctor Who" and Neil Gaiman: A Match Made in the Universe's Junkyard

Matt Smith and Suranne Jones in "The Doctors Wife." Photo courtesy of www.screenrant.com.

I know that this week is Pencils Down, Pass the Remote's Finale-Stravaganza, and that "The Doctor's Wife," the fourth episode in the sixth season of Doctor Who, is not a finale. However, I loved this episode so much that I couldn't wait to write about it, and I suspect (given the amount of traffic my previous Doctor Who post has been getting) that some of my readers feel the same. So today I will be taking a short break from my finale reviews and writing a little about why "The Doctor's Wife" was such a stand-out episode. The break won't be too long, I promise; if you come back later today, you might just find a review of the Fringe finale. Clearly, I'm in a sci-fi sort of a mood today.

I had extremely high hopes for this episode of Doctor Who, as it was written by one of my favorite authors, the incomparable Neil Gaiman. The great thing about this episode was the way that Gaiman made his influence felt throughout the hour while not distracting from the snappy pace. Gaiman's influence was evident in the episode's setting, a conscious planet named "House" (voiced by an exceptionally creepy Michael Sheen) that exists outside the universe, sort of like a small bubble clinging to the outside of a larger bubble, only not really. The Victorian junkyard look of House and it's patchwork inhabitants - a woman named Auntie, a man named Uncle, and an Ood known as Nephew - was straight out of Gaiman's novel Neverwhere, and boy was it a creepy place. And the ouroboros, or snake eating its own tail, is a fertile trope that has appeared in science fiction stories from Lost to Red Dwarf.

The best element of the hour, however, was Suranne Jone's portrayal of the personified Tardis, trapped in the body of a woman named Idris by House. Gaiman's dialogue for the Tardis was spot-on, her confusion of tenses showing both his quick-witted sensibilities and drawing a connection to Douglas Adam's novel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. (Adams, by the way, is another former Doctor Who writer). The conceit of having the Doctor finally be able to talk to the Tardis, to explore their long and complicated relationship, was great fun in addition to being extremely illuminating. After all, the Doctor's relationship with the Tardis is by far the longest, deepest one in his life, and it was lovely to see him able to interact with her for the first time.

The dichotomy between the Tardis, the good, wise living matrix, and House, the twisted, evil sentient planet, is a fairly simple one, but it's powerful nonetheless. The scenes in which House tortures Amy and Rory as they run through seemingly endless corridors are, for my money, some of the creepiest in the rebooted series' run. The moment in which Amy stumbled upon a corridor, covered in graffiti that repeats "hate Amy," "kill Amy," and "die Amy," before finding the dessicated skeleton of Rory, ranks right up there with the Weeping Angels in terms of sheer terror. I've mentioned before that I often find the Rory-is-going-to-die moments a fairly cheap grab for emotional resonance on the part of the show's writers, but this scene was so terrifying, and so completely organic to the episode and the character of House, that I believed it completely. Karen Gillan's performance in these moments was perfect, and her grief over Rory's seeming death and hatred of her sold the moment. She also provided a nice counterpoint when, while giving the telepathic password to the Tardis' control room, she summoned "delight" by thinking about her wedding.

The character of House made for an excellent villain, one who I wouldn't mind seeing again at some point (although how he would be brought back I have no idea). The way that he cannibalizes both Time Lords and Tardises - brought home in the moments when the Doctor sees that another Time Lord's arm has been grafted to Auntie, and the human Tardis' grief at seeing the broken corpses of her sisters - is a perfect device for highlighting the Doctor's ultimate loneliness and bringing him closer to the Tardis. One of the great truths about the Doctor is his ultimate loneliness, brought to the forefront here when he discovers that the lost Time Lords he's been hoping to find are nothing more than old messages, constantly playing on repeat.

House, however, was more than just a plot device. His level of sadistic cruelty toward Amy and Rory was disturbing, and the way he made them watch each other die was a nice reminder of the fact that these two companions are constantly haunted by the specter of the Doctor's death. House's pure hatred of these life forms was reminiscent of Harlan Ellison short story, "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (thanks to Ben Yelsey for the reference!). This story tells the tale of the last five humans left on earth, who are forced by a cruel supercomputer to live underground, who are kept from death by the computer purely so he can torture them. The character of House is so frightening because of the way he enjoys Amy and Rory's suffering. In that way, he shares similarities with John Simm's incarnation of the Master, who laughs and dances to the screams of the dying population of Earth.

The main thrust of the episode, however, was the Doctor's relationship with the Tardis that he so often takes for granted. I liked the way that the episode's title perfectly fit the hour's happenings, even though some might have been given the wrong impression. (I for one assumed that the episode would be about the Doctor's relationship with River Song.) It was the perfect title because, no matter River's or Amy's or even Rose Tyler's relationship with the Doctor, it can never approach the depth of his relationship with his Tardis. He is, after all, a madman with a blue box. The Tardis is part of his identity, and he finally got to talk to her, to tell her how much he loves her and how important she is. His heartbreak at her death was so genuine, and so well played by Matt Smith, that I could understand his grief despite the knowledge that she had returned to her own body. The final moment, when he spoke to her and she responded by moving the levers and sending him to wherever he needed to be, was one of the best of the season so far.

A few stray notes:

• I made this episode sound really dark. It wasn't, and some of the funniest scenes came from the Doctor bickering with the Tardis like they were an old married couple.
• Also loved the way that the Tardis offers her side of the story: she stole the Doctor, and she decides where he needs to go.
• Amy and Rory requesting that their new bedroom not have bunk beds, and the Doctor replying that "bunk beds are cool!"
• The return of the old control room! It was nice to see it again.
• In the old series, the other rooms of the Tardis were explored. Are we ever going to see anything but the control room? I personally want to get a look at the oft-mentioned swimming pool.

Romance and SciFi: When is Enough Enough?

Anna Torv and Joshua Jackson share a tender moment

Warning: SPOILERS ahead for those who haven't seen the most recent episodes of Fringe or Doctor Who.

The first three episodes of the new Doctor Who season have been heavy on the romance; in fact, there's more romance in this season than there was even in season two, when Billie Piper's Rose spent most of the season mooning over David Tennant's Doctor. In a mere three episodes we've seen not only sexy (some would say inappropriate for a family show) interactions between the Doctor's current companion Amy (Karen Gillan) and her husband Rory (Arthur Darvill), but some serious flirtation between Alex Kingston's mysterious River Song and the Doctor (Matt Smith). The relationship between Amy and Rory in particular has been milked for plot fodder, via a Rory-is-dying storyline, a few too many times.

Of course, Doctor Who is hardly the only science fiction show that makes time for romantic plotlines in between the time travel and telekinesis. Everyone who watches Fringe knows that, for the past season, much of the time that wasn't spend on possible world-ending cataclysms was spent on a love triangle between Joshua Jackson's Peter, Olivia and alternate-universe Olivia (both played by Anna Torv). Even though I would be terribly upset by Fringe without Peter after he blinked out of existence at the end of the finale (!), it might be nice to have a few episodes where we don't have to worry about whether alt-Olivia's new baby will throw a wrench into Peter and Olivia's relationship. (Also, it's possible that the baby blinked out of existence with Peter, which would serve the same purpose.)

While I certainly like to see some relationships on even my sci-fi shows, and while I enjoy rooting for both Peter and Olivia and Amy and Rory, sometimes it's a little too much. On the most recent episode of Doctor Who, a thoroughly entertaining romp involving pirates and a siren who was actually a medical program, an unnecessary emotional climax was added when Amy had to perform CPR on an unconscious Rory. This moment played extremely over-the-top, to the point where it was reminiscent of the moment in the first season of Lost when Jack pounded Charlie's chest in the rain, while Kate looked on crying, for what seemed like five minutes.

Additionally, while the build-up to the Fringe finale was certainly epic and while I loved all the twists and turns, I was extremely happy when the idea that the home of whichever Olivia Peter chose would be saved, while the other universe would perish. I had a hard time believing that the destruction of a universe could hinge on something so... well, silly, and I didn't like the way that the rather tired love triangle was forced into the main story arc.

So, here's my question for you; when it comes to science fiction, how much romance is too much?

"Doctor Who" Countdown: Dissecting the Trailer

Karen Gillan as Amy Pond and Matt Smith as the Doctor

Who else is crazy excited for the premiere of the new series of Doctor Who this Saturday (which, coincidentally, will mark the first time that the show will air on the same night in the US, on BBC America, as it will in Britain). In honor of the Series 6 premiere, let's take a look at the trailer.

First of all, the moment when Amy asks the Doctor "Where are we?" and he responds "Where we've never, ever been" is a nice shout-out to the fact that, for the first time in the show's forty-year history, this season features a storyline set in America! That gorgeous red rock scenery glimpsed at the 42 second mark is Monument Valley, Utah, a place of spectacular natural beauty that has been previously seen in films like Stagecoach, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Mission: Impossible II and Thelma and Louise. Who else is excited to see what the quintessential British series can do with an American setting?

I'm also excited by the return of Alex Kingston's River Song, and the promise of a greater role for her character in this series. I know that River has her haters, but I've enjoyed her presence since she first appeared with the Tenth Doctor in "Silence in the Library," and I'm excited to learn more about her relationship with the Doctor.

Another exciting moment in the trailer comes 30 seconds in, when the mysterious voice tells the Doctor, "Fear me. I've killed hundreds of Time Lords," and the Doctor responds in the most awesome way possible: "Fear me. I've killed all of them." I hope that this signals the return of the darker side of the Doctor, most memorably realized by David Tennant in episodes like "The Family of Blood," "The Sound of Drums," "Last of the Time Lords," and "The Waters of Mars." As much I love the goofy side of the Doctor - and goofy is something that both Tennant and Matt Smith do extremely well - my favorite episodes of Doctor Who are those that dig down deep into the tortured psyche of the man who exterminated two races, who has lived alone for hundreds of years, and who has never stopped running.

Other fun tidbits: it seems that Doctor Who is continuing its tradition of disturbing villains. I highly doubt any of this season's antagonists can reach the blood-chilling level of the Weeping Angels, but the quick shots of those frozen people were nicely creepy, and the beings with the doll-like masks reminded me in the best way possible of the frightening clockwork robots from "The Girl in the Fireplace." Smith wearing both the Stetson and an astronaut's helmet bodes extremely well for the Doctor who, last season, insisted that both bow ties and fezzes were "cool." While I do love the tormented Doctor, I also really enjoy seeing him in a silly hat. Go figure.

Who else is looking forward to the premiere? Are you as excited for the return of River Song as I am? Do you prefer your Doctor goofy or tortured? And, most importantly, which of the Doctor's silly hats is your favorite?