Author: Michael Rawdon

Doctor Who, Season Two

My thoughts on the second season of Doctor Who.

We finished watching the second season of the new Doctor Who series. As I did for the first season, here’s my ranking of the episodes, from best to worst:

  • School Reunion
  • The Girl in the Fireplace
  • Army of Ghosts/Doomsday
  • Tooth and Claw
  • Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel
  • The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit
  • New Earth
  • The Christmas Invasion (technially part of season one, but I saw it as part of season two)
  • The Idiot’s Lantern
  • Fear Her
  • Love & Monsters

Overall I was disappointed with this season, especially in comparison with the first season. There were several episodes which I thought were really quite poor (the last three in the list), and most that were either pretty shaky (“The Christmas Invasion” had some cute moments, but didn’t make a lot of sense) or seemed just rather routine (“Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel”). Fundamentally, I think the problem is that the stories strive to be creepy or suspenseful without having a solid plot. It’s situation-based plotting: “How can we get to the point that our heroes are about to be killed by a Christmas tree?”, or “How can we have people actually be sucked into a television set?”

David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor: I think he’s fine, although I don’t think he’s nearly as good as Christopher Eccleston was as the Ninth Doctor. Eccleston really grabbed the role and made it his own: Different from his predecessors, with his own visual look, and convincingly coping with PTSD following the Time War. I don’t think Tennant comes out looking as good, and his manias and eccentricities remind me of both the Peter Davison and Sylvester McCoy Doctors. Of course, it could just be that the writing wasn’t as good, and so the lead character didn’t feel as strong. Then again, Eccleston did have a really hard act to follow.

Okay, on to the episodes. Spoilers ahead:

As with “Dalek” in season one, “School Reunion” is the clear winner of the second season, and not just because it has Sarah Jane Smith in it (although she is my favorite companion of the original series). Although the emotional tension between the Doctor and Rose has never been a big seller of the series to me, retconning in Sarah’s crush on the Doctor, and her devastation when he abandoned her and never came back was just marvelous, and using her as a cautionary tale for Rose was equally clever. It’s an emotionally powerful story with a happy ending, as well as a treat for fans of the first series, to see Sarah Jane and K-9 again.

“The Girl in the Fireplace” is one of those stories whose plot doesn’t make a lot of sense (everything seems to work out just conveniently enough to hang a plot on), but it gets A’s for atmosphere and central tension: A woman in 18th century France has occasional visitations from the Doctor throughout her life, even as she is menaced by frightening-looking androids. Her attachment to the Doctor from these brief visits is very well drawn, and the episode as a whole has a wonderful sense of pyrrhic victory.

I was looking forward to the return of the Cybermen, but was kind of disappointed in it. The first two-parter (“Rise/Age”) was a decent adventure, but I was baffled by why the whole parallel-world angle needed to be introduced, since the Cybermen were a part of established continuity for the Doctor. The season-ender (“Army/Doomsday”) explained it: It was a convenient way to write out the whole supporting cast, and, I admit, a rather clever way. Plus it gave us the added bonus of answering the old question of what would happen if the Cybermen ever faced the Daleks (answer: The Daleks are seriously badass). And I admit that the appearance of thousands of Cybermen at the end of “Army” was very chilling.

(But: Raise your hands if you thought that the Genesis Ark would open and the Master would step out. I did!)

The other two-parter (“Planet/Satan Pit”) started off really strong (“What the heck is going on here?”), then kind of petered out (“Oh, it’s a Really Big Monster story and an excuse for the Doctor to pontificate to himself”). While I appreciate the effort to recapture some of the Tom Baker-era horror sensibilities (this one reminded me of “Planet of Evil”), I think bringing the devil into it and having the plot hinge on the Doctor making not one but two leaps of faith really undercuts the story. (And you know when I’m comparing you unfavorably to “Planet of Evil” that you’ve got some problems.)

In-between all these big productions, “Tooth and Claw” was a pretty good monster episode in Victorian England, with some terrific dialogue and an interesting teaser for the season’s running theme of the Torchwood Institute.

Speaking of Torchwood, I was troubled by how it was presented: Given that it was set up in answer to the Doctor, is ostensibly opposed to alien activity on Earth, and is over a hundred years old, it seems to clash rather badly with the presence of the Doctor-friendly organization UNIT in Doctor Who continuity.

The rest of the stories I thought were either unremarkable, or poor. I would like to say that I appreciated the spirit of what they were trying to do in “Love & Monsters” – not entirely unlike the Doctor Who novel Who Killed Kennedy in its portrayal of how the Doctor is perceived from outside his own adventures. I found the sitcom-like set-up of the story to be extremely bland, and the narrator, Elton, to be too goofy to be likeable. And the kicker at the end to be downright nauseating. A promising idea, but the story really went wrong at every turn, and it was the sort of story which was going to be a delicate balancing act from the get-go. Yick.

I was pleased with the handling of writing out Rose, although it’s sad that her Mum gets to have a happy ending and she doesn’t. (Although, if there is another Doctor in that parallel world…) I didn’t think the series really relied on the romantic tension between the Doctor and Rose, and I was glad it rarely became more than a vague undercurrent.

So all in all, the season felt like a step backwards. Ultimately, I think the problem was with the writing: Some uninspired or ridiculous stories, and not enough attention to premises that made sense. I also admit I’m eager to see the Doctor spend a little time away from Earth (only two stories in the season fit that bill). Here’s hoping season three will be better!

The Creeping Crud

Last night Debbi took me out for dinner at Don Giovanni’s, for a yummy meal. Unfortunately, as we were sitting there I said, “I think I’m coming down with something.” “Something” laid me low and we went to bed before 9:30. Overnight I developed a sore throat, too.

Usually when I get sick it happens just on a day when I really can’t take a day off from work for some reason or other. This time, happily, is different, so I’m home sick today. I slept nearly 12 hours, so I really needed it, and I’m just curled up on the couch this morning.

The cold snap seems to have broken last night, with some rain moving in, but it’s still pretty chilly out. My illness probably makes me a little more sensitive to it. But, I’ve just made some tea, and I’m getting a rotation of cats lying with me on the couch, so it’ll be okay.

I’m hoping I feel better by tonight.

Thirty-Eight

If it’s January 16, then I must be another year older! I turn 38 today, which is probably more amazing to only my parents than it is to me!

20 years ago I was mid-way through my senior year of high school. 16 years ago today the US launched Operation Desert Storm, thus making me profoundly worried that we’d institute a draft and I’d end up in the armed forces (it’s hard to imagine a career with which I’d be less well matched). 8 years ago I was more-or-less on the path to coming to California to work at Apple. Did I expect to still be there 8 years later? I probably didn’t think about it that way at the time.

This year seems to be off to a good start: I’ve been feeling generally upbeat and in an unusually silly range of moods (even for me). I must be feeling pretty comfortable with where my life is these days, and what I’m doing with it. You can’t put a price tag on that!

This Week’s Haul

Comic books I bought the week of 10 January 2007.

Okay, at this point this is last week’s haul, but I’ve been a little busy!

I think Graeme McMillan’s review of JSA #2 (scroll down a bit on the other side of the link to find it) says everything I could say about it, and more succinctly.

I’m only halfway through the second Manhunter volume, which is (or at least starts with) one extended story. It’s pretty good, better than the first volume. The characterization is still not too deep, but the book as a whole is feeling more fully-realized.

I mentioned Jack Staff last week in connection with Paul Grist’s other series, Kane. Thumbing through this one again, I notice just how disconnected so much of the story is: Threads which seem barely connected, extremely nonlinear storytelling, etc. While I enjoy Grist’s sense of humor, I wish he could streamline his storytelling somewhat. Characterization really suffers, and it becomes difficult to care about all the little plot threads.

I think the fundamental problem with Jack Staff, though, is that its lead character is a World War II superhero (who resembles Marvel’s Union Jack). He’s very long-lived, his secret identity is a general contractor, and his motives and personality are really basically unknown. I keep expecting all of this backstory to go somewhere, but it never really does. I think that’s what makes Kane the better series: Despite being similarly disjointed, Kane is haunted by his past, and it colors everything he does in the present, and therefore despite all the side issues, it works as a portrait of a man trying to overcome the demons of his past (made all the harder by the fact that he feels his actions were justified, even if others don’t). Jack Staff is just this quirky enigma of a superhero.

Either that or I’m really missing something. (If it’s just supposed to be a loving tribute to some old British comic book characters then, well, shrug.)

A Little Party

Saturday night I threw my almost-annual birthday party (which means every few years I don’t have the energy and I don’t throw one). I get later and later each year with sending out invitations, and this year I didn’t send them until last Monday. This means a lot of people already have plans, but on the other hand the holidays leave me not too movitated to plan until after New Year’s.

Anyway, we had a small group this year, but it was a lot of fun anyway. Debbi and I spent most of Saturday shopping and cleaning the house. As usual, I bought cakes from The Prolific Oven.

The crowd this year included:

  • Me and Debbi
  • Josh
  • Susan and Subrata
  • Chad
  • James

(Several people didn’t view the Evite I sent out, making me wonder if it ended up in their junk mailboxes. Oh, well!)

Josh showed up first, and handed me a bag and said “This isn’t exactly a present for you…”, and I looked inside and it was a pair of cat toys: One a catnip sock and the other a cigar-sized potent catnip toy. We put the sock on the living room floor, and all the cats took turns licking it, grabbing it, rat-kicking it, and dragging it around. It’s their new favorite toy! They’re surprisingly egalitarian about it, taking turns with playing with it. Even Jefferson, who is not the most active cat in the world, enjoys rolling around with it! (It interacts well with the cat tunnel Mom gave us, as it gives them a target when running through the tunnel.)_

We haven’t left the cigar out much yet, since we don’t want to overload their poor little brains without supervision!

Chad gave me a Thumb Thing, which actually looks like it will be really useful for reading my mass market paperbacks.

We had a fun evening chatting, and then playing Apples to Apples, which Debbi gave me for Christmas. There’s a game that’s guaranteed to get a lot of laughs during a party!

I gave James one of my copies of Jack McDevitt’s novel A Talent for War, which is one of my favorite books. I own several copies because it had not been reprinted until last year, so I had horded a couple of the paperbacks. Even that was rendered kind of moot when I happened on a copy of the U.K. hardcover edition (geek geek). But I was happy to give it to him, especially since he’d already read and enjoyed its nominal sequels, Polaris and Seeker, and Talent is much better than either of those!

The cake always goes over well, but this year we decided – through happenstance, really, since drove past it while prepping for the party – to get ice cream from Rick’s Rather Rich Ice Cream – and it went over amazingly well. Several people got that “I’ll have to go check them out” gleam in their eye while eating the ice cream (which was just plain ol’ chocolate chip!), and Debbi gave me a hard time for only buying one quart for the party (she’d been pushing for two quarts). So that ought to push a little more business their way. CJ and David introduced me to Rick’s back when I first moved here, and then I forgot where it was until I passed it a few years later.

The fringe benefit of throwing a party is that now our house is cleaner than it’s been in months!

I really, really need to try to throw a party or two this year during the warmer months. Especially since several of my best friends (including Subrata) are allergic to cats, so being able to congregate on the patio would let them stay longer.

But as always it was a lot of fun to have this one, and it was worth all the effort!

Getting My Scone Fix

Debbi’s actually the one who’s been all about scones these past few years, ever since Costco had some orange cranberry scones she really liked. Sadly, they only had them for a few months, and we’ve never seen them since.

However, she bought some scone mix from Iveta Gourmet (just down the freeway in Santa Cruz), and we both like their scones a lot. Debbi is actually quite amused at just how much I like them! (I especially like the chocolate chip scones!)

We just received a large order from them yesterday, and we’re going to try one each of their biscuit and muffin mixes. But right now (as in, “we’re baking some right now”) we’re all about the scones!

Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler’s Wife

Review of the novel The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger.

The_Time_Traveler__s_Wife.jpg
The Time
Traveler’s Wife

The Time Traveler’s Wife is a fascinating, thought-provoking, and emotional book about a couple who are drawn together because of, and stay together despite, a crippling science-fictional condition one of them possesses. It has its flaws, but I can genuinely say that it held my attention all the way through (and despite its length it’s actually a pretty fast read), and that I’ve kept thinking about it for days after finishing it.

Henry DeTamble is the man with the condition: From time to time he unwillingly disappears from wherever he is and reappears at some other time and place. Nothing comes with him – he arrives naked – and he has no control over when it happens or where he ends up. He has a tendency to travel to places near where he was in “normal time” at that point in time, or near where his wife Clare was, and he typically travels into the past, although not always. Henry’s condition is genetic. His parents were both musicians, although his mother died when he was young and his father was disconsolate from that point on, leaving Henry largely on his own, growing up among American punk culture in the 1970s and becoming a librarian in the 1980s. His condition can be life-threatening, as appearing stark naked in some locations without warning (say, in the middle of a freeway) can be quite dangerous. Henry is a running freak, since, as he points out, his survival frequently hinges on his being able to run faster or longer than other people.

His wife, Clare Abshire, is the daughter of a wealthy family in Michigan. She meets Henry for the first time when he appears in a field near her house when she is six years old, and they become friends during his irregular visits throughout her childhood. Henry, on the other hand, first mets Clare when he is 28 and she is 20, when she runs into him at the library. She of course knows a lot about him, while he’s extricating himself from a bad relationship and has never seen her before.

The novel is the story of their romance, and how they each cope with his condition: Henry’s problems are obvious, but Clare has to deal with his regular disappearances, not know where he’s gone, how long he’ll be, or what condition he’ll be in when he returns. The story is narrated by Clare and Henry each, in the present tense, and with sections detailing the date and their respective ages at the time (important due to Henry’s travels). The first half of the book focuses on Clare meeting Henry, and Henry meeting Clare. The second half concerns their married life and destiny.

Niffenegger has pretty cleverly worked out the timeline of Henry and Clare’s lives, and everything holds together in a consistent fashion. She does a fine job of addressing the paradoxes of time travel, positing a universe in which the past cannot be changed, nor can the known future, and the characters discuss this philosophically from time to time. While she keeps things simple by not having the characters lie to each other (at least, not to purposely try to change things), the intellectual character of Henry’s condition works well and is rewarding.

The book seems mis-named, however, since the story is really more Henry’s than Clare’s: Henry is a more fully-realized character, he’s the one who is more squarely in danger, and his reactions seem more visceral and believable. Clare always seems like a bit of a tabula rasa, an extension of Henry but not a lot more than that. She’s an artist, but that has almost no impact on the story. While The Time Traveler’s Wife implies that the book is about how Clare deals with Henry’s condition, it’s really about how Henry deals with Henry’s condition, and how he tries to shield and protect Clare, and help enrich her life despite his handicap. This is not to say that Clare is selfish or unlikeable, she’s just not as well-drawn as Henry.

(I kept finding it very odd that Henry is a big fan of the American punk rock scene, since I hate punk rock. But, oh well!)

The book’s plot is fairly straightforward, as it becomes clear that in 2006 something is going to happen, and the larger story concerns the couple living their lives as they head towards that time. But there are many episodes along the way which provide the real meat of the story: Clare falling in love with Henry as a teenager and trying to seduce him, Henry being overwhelmed by Clare when he first meets her, Henry meeting Clare’s family, Clare meeting Henry’s father, their marriage, Henry trying to find medical help for his problem, their attempts to have children. Many of these have some really clever elements to them: The wedding in particular is quite cool.

Despite Clare’s shortcomings as a character, the relationship between Henry and Clare is very powerful, especially since Henry is such an emotional character, deeply conflicted about many of his relationships, but wholly devoted to Clare. By the book’s final third, their love and their pain are both crystal-clear and fully drive the events which close the book.

I was disappointed in the ending, though. I think Niffenegger missed an opportunity to surprise and delight us in the ending, and thereby craft a better story. I’ll comment more about it after a spoiler warning down below.

Is the book science fiction, or fantasy? I say the former. While Henry’s condition has no scientific explanation, the spirit of the book is one of rational exploration of the bounds and ramifications of Henry’s condition. Well-regarded SF novels such as those of Vernor Vinge (Marooned in Realtime and A Fire Upon The Deep) have similarly-implausible premises, but take a rationalistic approach to working with them. More than the scientific nuts-and-bolts of the backdrop, I think that sort of attitude makes a book solidly science fiction, rather than fantasy.

Despite its flaws, The Time Traveler’s Wife really is a terrific read, a very good example of crafting a “high concept” story, and I think much more successful than its near-contemporary in “mainstream fantasy”, Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. It may not get my highest recommendation, but I think you’ll be glad you read it.

Spoiler comments about the ending follow:

Continue reading “Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler’s Wife”

Magic Tournament

One thing I probably haven’t mentioned much in 9 years of journalling is that I was once sucked into the maw of Magic: The Gathering, the original collectible card game often referred to as “gamer crack”. (See also the Wikipedia article.)

For me, it started in November 1995 when I broke up with my girlfriend at the time, and some of my friends in Madison hauled me out to Gene‘s house and introduced me to Magic. I played regularly until around 1998, and a very little bit (mostly with Ceej) when I moved to California, but haven’t really played in years. By contrast, Subrata and Mark started playing before me. This mostly means that the decks I played with were considerably newer than – and often less powerful than – those Subrata and Mark played with. So we have fairly different memories of playing. Subrata, at least, actually played in Magic tournaments, while I just played with friends.

For those of you who might be Magic geeks, when I started playing the set Ice Age had been released the previous summer, so that was mainly what I played with. The Chronicles and Homelands expansions were also available, and Fallen Empires – which had apparently been wildly overprinted – was available everywhere at deep discounts. While I played, I picked up the expansions Alliances, Mirage, Visions, Weatherlight, and Tempest, and then decided I basically had enough cards. I only ever played under the Fourth and Fifth Edition rules. I guess the game has changed rather a lot since those days.

I remember my then-cow-orker Mike and I went in on a box of Mirage booster packs, which cost us about $90 (i.e., $45 each), and we spent several hours after work going through all the packs exploring the cards and trading back and forth until we’d split them fairly evenly. Ah, fond memories. I still have all my cards, since it’s a good game, and I figured I would still play it from time to time.

Anyway, I bring all this up because Subrata put together a day of Magic gaming last Saturday: He had seven other people come over, and we had a booster draft from three booster packs (two Ice Age and one Mirage), and then we assembled decks (with whatever land we wanted) and played for a few hours. I’d never done this sort of deck construction before, and it was actually a lot of fun. I ended up with a mainly black-and-green deck, with a touch of blue.

Playing went somewhat less well, because I had a number of expensive creatures which were pretty good if I could get them out, but the deck was susceptible to faster decks. So I had a couple of successful games, but got pretty badly pounded in my other matches. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about deck construction, so I’m clearly just very rusty.

On the bright side, I did get to meet a couple of people who are still active Magic players, and they’re even on my floor at work! One of them said they sometimes get together for booster draft evenings or weekend games, and asked if I’d be interested. I said I would, as time permits. I don’t necessarily want to get on the Magic roller-coaster again, but I wouldn’t mind playing that sort of game from time to time.

Besides which, for all that Magic has the reputation of being a big money sink, I would have to buy one hell of a lot of cards for it to come anywhere close to my comic book habit! And I am curious now what some of the recent sets have been like…

Rating the Las Vegas Poker Tournaments

This is pretty neat for those of us who play poker and visit Las Vegas: A day-by-day list of Las Vegas poker tournaments, with difficulty ratings. (The sidebar has links to similar pages for other locales. None yet for northern California.)

For reference, here’s a map of hotel-casinos on the Strip.

The patience factor and skill levels referenced in those tables are interesting: “Low-skill” tournaments are ones which have rapidly increasing blinds and are much more affected by luck, while “high-skill” tournaments last longer and provide more opportunity for skilled players to gain an edge through smart play. Which makes sense if you think about it. Moreover, it seems like the high-skill tournaments tend to be more expensive to enter, which also makes sense since the poker rooms need to charge more for the expected hourly use of their tables by the tournament.

(Via Wil Wheaton.)