Life on Queen Street

There has been far too much red wine this evening to write about Doctor Who but I'm about to do it anyway...

( River Song says 'spoilers!' )

Wow, infant Jared Paladecki almost doesn't set my teeth on edge.

But frankly, the hair is a problem. Floppy haired boys have that Hugh Grant thing - all ineffectual on the outside, nasty chauvinism on the inside.

Aside - the cat is seeing snakes and trying to climb the walls, scratching at absolutely nothing. It's amusing but also weird.

Emily Bishop is brilliant - playing the Queen Bitch without entirely forfeiting the audience's sympathy is a rare trick. Also, Amy Sherman-Palladino: if it ain't on the page, it ain't on the screen.

"I'm okay. It's just - do I look shorter? Because I feel shorter."


Episode 2

"Dinner, Friday night - no spurs, please."

Let's face it, the mirroring between Lorelai and Emily Gilmore, Lorelai and Rory, and (later) Emily and Rory is neither an accident nor an original dramatic concept but it is executed brilliantly. So I watched all or most of these before between the original run and syndication - at one point it seemed like there was a cable convention that any channel not airing a L&O repeat must air GG to balance cable's chi or something - and it's only just struck me now that Gilmore Girls is one of the great matriarchal tales of the current era. The entire series, all seven seasons, was basically an exploration of the negotiation of power between three generations of women - the maiden, the mother and the crone.

While I'm thinking archetypes, Gilmore Girls is a great example of an Odyssey tale. When Gilmore Girls begins, Lorelai has already completed the "heroic" part of her journey - she has left the known world of her parents home and grown into her own power as a woman and a mother. Lorelai has, as we are reminded, raised her daughter and built a career without any help from her parents. The show's pilot revolves around the return of the prodigal daughter, Lorelai, to her parents' kingdom (Hartford, Connecticut) and the run of the series is basically Lorelai's reluctant assent to the leadership of her family, running parallel with the first two acts of Rory's own Achilles-like rise to power.

It's also very funny.

Lorelai Gilmore, Tami Taylor and Sarah Connor walk into the bar at the end of the world - it'd totally be A Thing (I wonder if that requires me to AU Sarah a daughter...).

Just finished rewatching Ultraviolet on DVD. If fandom were a just universe (if TV were a just universe) there would be lots of hawt, angsty fic about Vaughan Rice (young Mr. Idris Elba) and his stoic, faithful and doomed to be unrequited love for the utterly emotionally unavailable because vampires ate her family Angie March (Susannah Harker).

Instead I found some slash involving the POV prat played by Jack Davenport. Bleargh.

Yes, Jack Davenport is very handsome in that floppy-haired, ineffectually masculine, chinless English way (see Pirates of the Caribbean 1, 2 and 3) but IDRIS ELBA - Stringer Bell in the house fighting vampires, y'all - and people get all slashy with the pouty chinless wonder?

So. Wrong.

Amy Pond is very fucking wonderful, eh? Oh, and Christmas is coming:



This looks like Steven Moffat has gotten well and truly Moffat-y with the now trad DW Christmas episode. Even in the few scenes here, I'm struck by how well Matt Smith has embodied The Doctor. I wasn't terribly whelmed by his casting and the hair, good God - was there anyone who thought Flock of Seagulls would make a good Doctor?

There are times when it is a joy to be proven wrong about something.

My favourite, 100 per cent Canadian, 'diversity is awesome and needs nurturing and protecting', kickass chicks in leather, SF monster show is back tonight at 10/9c on SyFy in the US and at 9 on SPACE here at home.

I really, really, really loathe SGU.

While I don't want to see Stargate end, God, this turd needs to be off my TV now.

· Things I really kinda love - Amanda Tapping & SANCTUARY:

Tapping is charming as hell and Helen Magnus is a different kind of SF badass - both explicitly feminine and explicitly hardcore (like Scully if Scully had been allowed to actually have balls?). SANCTUARY has not always avoided the pitfalls of genrefail but the show's premise - that diversity is valuable in itself & worth protecting - is a refreshing change from 'kill the monster/alien' SF and so typically Canadian that the very idea makes me grin.

· Things I kinda hate: Katee Sackhoff and other actors/fanbait writing comic books.

I've read comic books for over 30 years (eep!) and it's not something just anyone can do. The rapid repacking of high-profile monthly titles into six or eight-issue trade paperbacks disguised the fact that Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men was largely awful, unreadable as a monthly, suffering from poor pacing and tiresome exposition. Kevin Smith, while slightly better at writing for the medium, was congenitally unable to meet a deadline. And don't even get me started on Peter Petrelli and his "please make this into a movie" vanity project. The good comics out there (and there are a few - some of them are even published by Marvel/DC) have one thing in common - the writers write primarily (although not necessarily exclusively) for comics. Because distilling a story into chunks of 22 visual pages is a skill just like any other technical understaking - it's not something you can do just because you read Betty and Veronica or Detective Comics as a kid.

· Things I'm kinda undecided about - Riese the Series:

For starters, it insists on calling itself Riese the Series, a title which feels like if it isn't some sort of taxonomical party foul, it should be. For seconds, our hero, Riese, is protected by her wolf companion, Fenrir, and I have a rule about "no telepathic pets" in my entertainment. I don't even like Pets of Special Narrative Significance and let's face it: companion wolves? Done to death.

That said, Riese the Series, a Vancouver-based web series about a mysterious wanderer in a strange steam-punky world is sort of interesting, if mostly in a "name that Stargate/Smallville/Sanctuary/BSG actor" way. The first "chapter" is broken up into five or so installments, released on youtube at two week intervals. We're up to episode three and soon, I hope, something will actually happen.

I feel slightly guilty crabbing about Riese the Series. I admire the creators' initiative and the use of the internet to create new and different stories (SANCTUARY also started life as a web series and the two projects share a determination to tack away from standard genre asethetics) but Riese the Series has yet to nail down my interest.

Maybe it needs more wolf.

Defying Gravity, I'll miss you, baby. You're kind of dumb but you've got more imagination that I suspected when we first met. And you totally avoided that plot twist I was worried about and really upped your game to leave most of the trite, regressive soap beats behind. I'll miss you.

Sanctuary, when you're good, I find you really quite affecting. Christopher Heyerdahl as John Druitt was especially moving tonight, all anguished, unquenchable rage and regret. I thought you were extremely campy and silly when we met but I'm becoming quite attached. And I love watching Amanda Tapping getting to play top dog after sidekicking her way through SG-1. That never gets old.

Stargate Universe, I want to like you sweetie but you're only five weeks old and already I'm fast-forwarding. Here's a hint: Lt. Scott and the Ingenue are beyond boring and David Blue's schlub act is very one-note. More mysteriously anguished medic and Ming-Na, please, but do try to keep Robert Carlyle off the scenery.

And finally...

Dollhouse, you're still a sexist, exploitative, hypocritical piece of shit. I'm not sorry you're being pulled from the schedule and I look forward to your cancellation. I hope your cast and crew find work on other projects quickly. I hope your writers find jobs at Starbucks.

So a couple of weeks back, I declared I was quitting TV. Some people agreed with me. Some people no doubt rolled their eyes, muttering "whatevs" as they scrolled by. I'm sure my buds said "yeah, right. And the check is in the mail."

So far, though, not bad. In the past week, except for a moment of weakness where I reached out to the new episodes of SONS OF ANARCHY, I'm holding the line, watching MAD MEN on PVR and DEFYING GRAVITY streamed from CTV.ca but otherwise, I've been able to resist the new season. And I don't really feel like I've missed anything, which shows you the extent to which TV, as a cultural activity, has lost its relevance. Not only are audiences smaller and viewing habits largely fragmented, the Internet empowers cultural discussion in a totally different way. You don't need to sit infront of Letterman or watch HOUSE to participate in the cultural dialogue the way you did 20 years ago. Anything exciting, unusual, worthy of comment will be tweeted, linked, uploaded and commented on 47,289 times before I get my first cup of coffee. I can stay looped into digital culture without having to participate in cultural activity, which causes a certain problem for people dependent on audience for money.

Meanwhile, still not reading as much as I want but getting more writing done. Not productive writing but writing all the same.

Fuck.

I'm going to have to read G.R.R. Martin now, aren't I?

ETA: QED as I have not read A GAME OF THRONES, I don't know who the character is or what she does and would like to avoid any more fucking spoilers. Book spoilers are the sand in the crack of my universe. My vengeance shall be swift and terrible upon you who tell me how this fucking tome ends. If I'm going to read 500 pages of High-fucking-Fantasy, I'd like the ending to be a surprise, so I have something to be pissed off about later.

Ta, muchly, me.


... O HAI TV. I C WHAT U DID THAR. U CAN HAZ BATTLE. I WILL WIN TEH WAR. O YESH.