When the program returned in 2005, I tuned in. I was very excited and while I recognized that this was not the same series I had watched as a child, it was decent. Through the following five years I struggled with the program which presented the Doctor as a traumatized bachelor I’m search of a woman who could fix him. Capaldi arrived and it was course-corrected for a bit then it turned back to the previous iteration when he nearly broke time to save his companion. The Tenth season was an improvement on what I had seen before. The stories were tightly written and the Doctor was in fine form. It was a good time but the arrival of Chris Chibnall meant that it was all going to change. Not being a fan of his scripts for the series, I wasn’t excites. I was blown away by the Chibnall era. Jodie Whittaker, with her quirky awkwardness and brave and bold attitude won me over. This was easily the best era of the new series since 2005. I checked online to see what other fans thought and saw that the ratings were awful and fans hated this female Doctor with blinding force. In any case I was excited to see Ncuti Gatwa and drew a few pictures of him. The season arrived and it was a disaster. The scripts were abysmal first draft affairs. Davies hammered in his political message every week. The messages themselves aren’t a problem, but he lacks the subtlety and skill to integrate his politics into the stories, resulting in obnoxious tawdry stories. The ratings have been terrible and the general reception is mixed at best. I say all this to bring into focus where I am coming from as a Doctor Who fan. I’m a terribly invested fan and each week I ready myself to be entertained and proven wrong… only to be presented with idiotic stories lacking details and full of over emotional characters. I want the program to succeed. But to do so, a massive course correction (much like I saw in season 10) to bring life back to the series I used to love watching. Is it possible? I don’t know.

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Ruby and the Doctor disrupt a magic circle (who put it there?) and the Doctor didappears (for no reason), leaving Ruby with a nonfunctional TARDIS. Ruby wanders about haunted by a woman who stays 73 yards away. Any time someone approaches the woman, they run off afraid. This is never explained. Ruby tries to live her life and move on but the haunting woman ruins every relationship she tries to have. She then assists Mad Jack, a nuclear war-crazy political candidate of a third party. Mad Jack becomes PM and before he can procure nukes, Ruby ruins him… somehow. Also Davies invented an app that calculates distance. Then she becomes a time and space traveling old lady who haunts herself and sees the Doctor and Ruby arrive. Somehow this last appearance stops the Doctor from disrupting the circle but then Mad Jack still becomes PM and starts WW3. Wtf??

What does the old woman tell people? How does she affect time and travel through time? How does Ruby stop time from going astray? So does Mad Jack become PM now and nuke the world?

It’s Davies so the answers are not on screen. First draft Davies is at it again. Total waste of time. 2 stars. Unwatchable

I’ve seen fans say they hope all will be explained in future episodes and the lack of logic is not a sign of poor writing. I weep for these people.

The entire world is going mad through as thinly veiled jab at online forums only we barely see any fallout from this aside from litter and the occasional traffic obstruction.

References to cancel culture, anti-vaxxers, online dating and “kids with their joysticks” (someone tell Davies it’s not 1978).

Some bizarre image that never existed infected every single TV screen ever with a sinister giggle.

More past companions are hired by SHIE-er… UNIT.

A reference to a missing story with Neal Patrick Harris playing a reject from Cabaret.

Donna (or Shouty McWorkingClass, as I call her) knows computer logic now.

The Doctor totally loses his cool and has a series of near nervous breakdowns as Tennant place him as being totally unhinged.

Davies rewrites the rules of regeneration (again) and the new Doctor uses ‘Toymaker magic’ to create a duplicate TARDIS all ready for the new spinoff.

The Toymaker is defeated by a game of catch (I cannot believe Davies tried to make that dynamic… it’s catch) and even though the Giggle is erased, many are dead which doesn’t add up but nothing in this story does.

More awkward gender politics and of course she’s vegan. Equally awkward racial statements (‘do you come in a variety of colors?’).

Ncuti was quite good, though Donna’s joke ‘Do you come in a variety of colors?’ was worrying. How will Davies write for Gatwa?

If you’re thinking this should have been better written, so could the episode. As poor as the previous two were, this one was the worst of the lot. There was nothing celebratory about any of these specials and if the 60th episodes and the ‘Goblin Song’ are what we should judge this new era by, I think I may just sit this one out.

The previous week’s special was a (very) loose adaptation of the comic strip The Star Beast. The latest special was wrapped in secrecy with only Tennant and Davies expressing great anticipation of the viewers’ reaction to what they promised to be an altogether unique and “shocking” adventure. Shortly before it aired, Davies stated it was one of the greatest experiences of his life. So… stakes were quite high. As there had been nothing very celebratory so fr in the specials and the final installment was known to feature the Celestial Toymaker, rumors flew far and wide that Wild Blue Yonder would feature past Doctor Who actors Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi (previous anniversaries had united past Doctors on screen)… but nothing doing.

Wild Blue Yonder is yet again poorly written, lazily produced and cheaply directed. A story set aboard a spacecraft on the edge of the known universe, the first 12 whole minutes are spent recycling three facts; Donna is concerned that her family are waiting for her, they have lost the TARDIS and they don’t know where they are. These facts are regurgitated endlessly as if the audience has experienced a concussion. The lead actors wander around a green screen environment consisting of poorly conceived cgi imagery and chat to each other about the song “Wild Blue Yonder.” For a program that was hinted at being the most exciting and shocking yet and possessing the largest budget that it had ever seen, it looked incredibly cheap.

I have been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation at night recently and the award winning series has not disappointed. Each installment has been impressive with its storytelling, character development and top notch special effects. Given that it ran for roughly 23-26 episodes a season, not all of the stories are mind blowing but at worst it is gripping drama. The latest episode I watched was “Schisms,” a mystery that slowly developed. It starts with Commander Rider experiencing difficulty sleeping. He becomes increasingly on edge and out of sorts and soon more crew members aboard the Enterprise report similar symptoms. Ship counselor Troi brings the affected crew members to the holodeck where they compare notes on what they can recall about their lost time and scant memories. Using the ship computer’s hard light holograms, they recreate the dream scenario and are left with an examination table complete with surgical apparatus. It’s a chilling moment and slowly unravels the plot in front of the audience’s eyes.

That’s how you tell a mystery; have the characters slowly unravel the clues with plenty of mood and atmosphere while maintaining a high level of sophistication and drama. Wild Blue Yonder simply has the characters chatter at each other nervously and discover magic buttons that assist them in solving the mystery.

Soon, the pair are separated (for no clear reason- Donna suddenly pleads with the Doctor to not leave her when she could have simply left with him) and each is joined by a duplicate of the other. Even though the duplicates (or No-Things as the subtitles describe them) are in plain sight, they have exceedingly long arms, a visual trick achieved by very dodgy looking visual effects. Davies falls back on ‘quirky’ dialog with the line “my arms are too long” repeated several times before the Doctor and Donna realize that they are in the company of some alien being.

The pair rejoin each other then are chased by the creatures which distort into mammoth monster parodies of themselves. In fact, that term suits this episode quite well; parody. While watching this episode I had great difficulty hearing the dialog as the lead actors mumbled and the score played over their words. I also had my patience tried as the plot was stretched out painfully over the long running time. This was the celebratory set of specials and we were being “treated” to a trumped up theatrical two-hander on a green screen soundstage. At one point, The Doctor and Donna are separated between several floors and the Doctor appears to descend a ladder… onto the same set with the same camera angle. My son and I howled with laughter at this. At another point, Donna experiences a “jump scare” as a door closes on its own. The “scare” was so poorly made that I was more perturbed by the laundry I needed rot tackle that weekend. There was no tension, no drama and no danger as the pair of actors scurried about a small series of sets and yammered at each other, trying to work out the mystery.

As was evident in his previous turn as show runner, this story is a first draft. It could benefit from tightening up, adding some more danger or intrigue along with drama. The end result is a poorly written and cheaply made episode that made me embarrassed for the program. I kept thinking that a friend would mistakenly see this and realize that I am a huge Doctor Who fan and wonder if there was something wrong with me for loving something like this so much.

Both Tennant and Tate play the Doctor and Donna along with the No-Thing duplicates and try to act all sinister and evil; contorting their bodies, growing scary vampire teeth and behaving in a bestial manner. It’s all terribly embarrassing as they overact to the moon and back and lost all integrity.

There is a kid to the previous season as the duplicate No-Thing Donna acquires the Doctor’s memories and talks to him about the past fifteen years (surely to was far longer for the Doctor) and how he not only discovered his true origins but also experienced the Flux that destroyed a great portion of creation. Both are sterling stories that I quite enjoyed and fans have been split as to how or of Davies would acknowledge them. Disappointingly, he simply jury-rigs both story ideas into the new Time War and has the Doctor express intense grief and responsibility over the Flux. What a waste.

The quirky adventure ends (just as The Star Beast did) with a magic button press and the TARDIS magically appearing in the air as “Wild Blue Yonder” is belted out. Eventually, the Doctor and Donna escape and are on their way to another adventure. They land on contemporary London where they encounter Donna’s granddad, Wilf, who had been waiting for them. This is a heart string-tugging moment as the actor Bernard Cribbins (who had previously appeared on not only the new series but one of the 1960s feature films). Soon after the reunion, all hell breaks loose and Wilf pleads with the Doctor to do something. This is almost exactly like the End of Time finale many years ago when the Master took over the world.

There are no new ideas in Davies’ head. He had stated that he *had* to return to Doctor Who as he had so many more stories to tell but Wild Blue Yonder is a mishmash of several old ideas we had already seen before told with computer effects that are not up to snuff with today’s top sci-fi programs. There is a classic Doctor Who story called Underworld that was almost entirely shot on green screen to save money and Wild Blue Yonder is essentially the 21st century answer to that experiment.

I am not against experimental stories or two-handers, but have some ability to tell a compelling adventure is all I ask. Don’t have the characters rehash facts over and over as if you are trying to desperately fill up the run time and don’t try to fill the production with computer trickery unless you are sure it looks impressive.

This is hardly a celebratory adventure. It’s filler to kill time before the finale. As my son put it “this is great because it completely empties your head before the next episode!” and that sums things up quite well. This was a vapid experience that meant nothing and did nothing with its time.

And the less said about the “mavity” joke and Sir Issac Newton opener, the better.

One out of ten. Total waste.

For ages in the United States, all we had to watch on the public television channel was Tom Baker episodes. From the mid-70’s until about 82, it was the same 6 seasons of Tom Baker back-to-back. There were some areas that got Jon Pertwee episodes, but predominantly all we had was the guy in the scarf. Then all of that changed with the new theme tune, new credits and eventually a new younger Doctor and all new companions. A couple of years after that he left and we got an entirely new actor and yet newer credits, them another new actor… we had a lot of changes to keep up with and each time the program shifted greatly. My friends who had inducted me into the fandom jumped ship when Colin Baker arrived but I was hooked. After the new episodes ended, we got the black and white material and I became educated in the rest of Who; then the comics and novels… for a period when the program was off the screens there was a lot of Doctor Who to digest.

This all brings me to the latest “special,” The Star Beast. The modern iteration of Doctor Who, to be fair, is not my preferred way to watch. I much prefer the original ‘classic’ series. However, with some adjustment, I can appreciate it. It’s lighter, moves faster (much faster in some cases) and is more centered on character than plot. So I have to make some provisions when watching the new episodes. Even so, when I learned of Russell T Davies returning to the program, I was not enthused for a couple of reasons; one was that I thought that the series should move forward with new voices rather than backwards and secondly I never really liked his vision of the program. Davies’ vision of Doctor Who is bombastic, garishly vibrant and filled with soap opera elements rather than sci-fi adventure. So I prepared myself for this special as best as I could. I knew that at its best it would not be what I wanted.

Nothing could have prepared me, however, for what came to pass. The introduction featured a pair of narratives explaining events that took place thirteen years ago on screen as if they were the most important events ever. The program had moved well beyond these events and it was very strange to me that Davies couldn’t find a better way to convey all of this than just having the characters tell us. Whenever a character physically faces the camera and states facts… you’re in trouble. Here we had both the Doctor and Donna explain that they once had adventures together then he had to take all of those memories away to save her life. If she ever remembered their time together, she would DIE (all caps).

But on to our jolly Christmasstime adventure. The TARDIS arrives in contemporary London and the Doctor twirls out, sauntering about in a giddy haze. He had just regenerated, but there seemed to be no post-regenerative state as there usually was. He had inherited a past face for some reason but that was not explained either. Then he suddenly bumps into the one person he should definitely not see; Donna. Then he meets Donna’s daughter Rose (a name that causes the Doctor to look about as if someone had tugged at his heart strings. Then a space craft crashes nearby and Donna refuses to notice… for some reason. The Doctor hails a cab which just so happens to be driven by Donna’s husband. He directs the cab to the space craft crash and learns a bit about how his friend has been living.

From here there are three plot threads that are hammered home several times over; an alien is stranded in London, Donna gave away her lottery money and her daughter is transgender. All are treated with the same level of importance. Star Beast, I should note, is an adaptation of a beloved comic strip by Pat Mills and Dave (Watchmen) Gibbons. Both are credited in the opening credits and both were paid by Bad Wolf Productions (they didn’t *have* to do that). The comic strip is a grand adventure and introduces the bizarre Beep the Meep. This one does as well… only with less success.

The Doctor encounters UNIT soldiers at the crash site along with the latest scientific advisor who is wheelchair bound (I only mention as the script makes a fuss out of this). The soldiers try to enter the fallen craft while the Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to draw diagrams in the air as it can now make holograms. The soldiers are overcome by a weird light emanating from the capsule and get taken over.

The Meep finds its way to just outside Donna’s home where Rose brings it in to her shed in. the back. They share some copyright infringing ET moments and she attempts to hide Beep from her mum. Donna discovers the Meep, the Doctor arrives (even though he has expressly said that he cannot see Donna at the beginning of the episode for fear of killing her with memories) and highjinx ensue.

Some alien soldiers and possessed UNIT soldiers ,one of whom is a Sikh (I only mention because the camera focuses on him a lot even though he never does anything unique or noteworthy), fight through the Noble residence and the Doctor creates a pair of force fields (another new thing the sonic, a device that Davies notoriously used as a get to of jail card several times over during his tenure, can do).

Some running about and highjinx continue as all of the characters escape to a car park where the Doctor puts on a judge’s wig and magically brings the alien soldiers to him for a trial. There he exposes the Meep for not being a fuzzy innocent creature but instead a vicious monster. More high jinx and the Meep regains its place in the spacecraft (which I guess can now take off fine… so why didn’t the Meep just leave earlier?) where Beep activates the deadly star drive which will destroy much of London if it takes off. The Doctor leaves the Noble party in safety and jumps into a part of the rocket filled with switches where he proceeds to madly contort his body and hop around as he activates different buttons. Donna insists, for some reason, to join him and he directs her as to which buttons to press as a dividing wall drops between them (what this wall is for I cannot guess).

Suddenly it becomes necessary for the Doctor to forcibly cause Donna to not only recall who he is and what adventures they had but also all of the power that she ounce possessed as the “Doctor-Donna” thirteen years ago. Yes, this will kill her. Keep in mind that the Doctor is just randomly pushing buttons and was perfectly capable of directing Donna a moment ago. Also keep in mind the importance of Donna’s memory coming back as it will kill a dear friend. Got all that? I don’t think Davies had.

Donna becomes part Timelord again and madly flips switches as Beep the Meep is frustrated. All the while, London is being torn apart; great rifts tearing through the streets. Somehow all of this succeeds and the Meep is ejected from the rocket which shuts down and somehow all of the damage to London is undone as if someone wiped it away with a cloth. The alien Wrath Warriors take custody of the Meep who for some strange reason. refers to Rose as a “weird kid.” There is a nod to someone higher up above the Meep being in control who the Doctor will eventually have to answer to and they’re off. The Doctor then is faced with the dilemma ofd Donna’s Timelord powers which somehow Rose also obtained (she played a role in defeating the Meep) and Donna says it is a shame the Doctor isn’t a woman anymore. Donna and Rose simply let go of the energy and free saved.

Huh.

The Doctor is about to say goodbye to the Nobles and asks Donna along for just one trip. Keep in mind the last time they traveled together she almost died and her family lived in fear for the past thirteen years that she may remember the Doctor and suddenly die. In the face of all that, everyone present agrees that it can’t hurt and the pair enter the TARDIS which is now a disco roller rink. Donna dramatically spills coffee into the time rotor and the craft jerks as it dematerializes for some doom-laden location.

So… the first of three 60th anniversary specials that reintroduces the Tenth Doctor as the Fourteenth and rings in the celebratory season… what utter crap.

Your mileage may, of course, vary, but as I had mentioned previously, I have taken issue with Davies’ writing previously as he a) ignores large important plots for family drama, b) fails to resolve plots in a satisfactory way and c) uses magical resolution devices. In this story we are told over and over that Donna cannot remember who the Doctor is yet he not only allows this to happen, he forces the situation on her. In order to defeat the Meep, the Doctor just presses random buttons.

This happens a lot in Davies’ scripts. He has no idea how to defeat any foe, so instead he just has the Doctor press lots of buttons because he has seen that resolution in big budget films (I’m guessing). The soap opera angle of the episode is played up very strongly, despite the fact that the episode has such great material to adapt. I know that Mills and Gibbons were invited on set and while I think it is great that they received recognition, their material was given a distinct disservice.

And finally, allow me to address the elephant in the room; representation.

I’m all for representation and I’m all for stories that tackle important issues and well as entertain but… this isn’t how you do it. Just reiterating that a character is trans over and over and having characters express undying love (Donna says something dramatic like I would burn down whole galaxies for you) is not how you do it. Likewise the Sikh and the wheelchair bound UNIT scientific advisor who later fired rockets from her chair.

There is an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation that addressed gender politics in 1992 (The Outcast). The story featured an androgynous character who asked crew members of the Enterprise to define what it meant to be male or female and described a society that denied both in favor of a race without gender. It is a poignant and erudite episode that addressed some important issues in an adult way.

Davies (an award winning author) gives us none of this and instead has Rose bring up pronouns, a couple of kids yell at her in an alley, her grandmother admit befuddlement as to how to deal with her and an alien call her weird. This is damningly inept and fails to properly address the issue. In short, if you can’t do it… don’t. Rather than provide representation, Davies shows transgendered individuals as bizarre in some way and if they are capable of being loved, they must get all of the love in the most expressed way possible.

The Start Beast was anticipated as the beginning of a new “Golden Age” of Doctor Who as the series had fallen in public regard since the 50th anniversary and ratings had fallen. A deal was struck with Disney+ for worldwide distribution and an enhanced budget. This would be the most expensive production budget Doctor Who had ever enjoyed and a much bigger audience as well.

Star Beast had an overnight ratings result of 5.08 million. The previous episode, Power of the Doctor, received 5.3 million. This was not a roaring success. Reviews have been mixed. Many had said that Davies had grown as a writer since he was last at the helm of Who in 2010 and Davies himself has said that we should expect something new… but this was all something we had seen many many times before. We got the same tired jokes, the same tired dramatic resolution and the same focus on soap opera rather than sci-fi. Additionally, for such an expensive program, it all looked so tiresome and cheap. The cinematography was predictable and flat, the effects and location work we had seen countless times before and the rubber monsters frankly embarrassing.

I never want to speak ill of something (even in the face of all that I have said). Doctor Who has held a special place in my heart (and in my home where countless collectibles hold court), but this was a major disappointment and from what I am seeing online, I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Additionally; the sonic screwdriver, which was already a magic wand device capable of anything, is now even more powerful. My mate Philip even proposed that Doctor Who be renamed “Sonic, the Screwdriver” and adventures would simply consist of the TARDIS landing, the Doctor leaning out the door and waving his device about, then the door would close and the TARDIS would leave. There is obviously no dramatic tension. anymore, so why not take up this approach? It would certainly save us all some time.

Two stars out of ten

Via CBR:

Director Matt Reeves has debuted the official logo for The Batman, along with Jim Lee artwork for DC FanDome.

Reeves shared the logo and artwork on Twitter with the caption, “Excited to share the very first look at our official #TheBatman logo, and some very cool additional #DCFanDome artwork by the amazing @jimlee — see more of #TheBatman at the #DCFanDome global event in the Hall of Heroes this Saturday, 8/22! #TheBatman #DCFanDome #ForTheFans” Much like the first look at Robert Pattinson in the Bat suit, the logo for The Batman finds the film’s title filled in dark red.

The Batman is directed by Matt Reeves and co-written by Reeves and Mattson Tomlin. The film stars Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne/ Batman, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle/ Catwoman, Colin Farrell as Oswald Cobblepot/ The Penguin, Paul Dano as Edward Nashton/ The Riddler, John Turturro as Carmine Falcone and Peter Sarsgaard as District Attorney Gil Colson. The Batman is set to be released in theaters on October 1, 2021.

Sometimes all it takes to revive a project that’s languished in the shadows like Tron 3 is the right amount of buzz. Recently, that sort of anticipation is what’s been powering the project, as director Garth Davis and star Jared Leto have boarded the project’s early stages of active development. But another interesting note has been making the rounds with fans, as it looked like Leto, in his excitement, may have accidentally let the working title of this new film slip: Tron: Ares.

Should this be the actual title, or even just the name of the film in this phase of development, we could be looking at some very exciting developments for the future of the Tron franchise. Here’s what I’m thinking about the possibilities of Tron: Ares:

It’s been rumored for some time that Jared Leto was playing a mysterious character named Ares in the world of Tron. So if the title of Tron: Ares is accurate, this assumption sounds like it’s finally been confirmed. Right from the beginning, knowing that Leto could very much be playing that figure shrouded in secrecy is a pretty powerful key to unlocking the rest of the project’s strategy moving forward. It also leads to some exciting assumptions and pathways that Tron 3 could take to make an interesting sequel even more promising.