The Strain, Season 4, Episode 1: The Worm Turns

I honestly started watching this episode and I couldn’t quite remember what happened last season - then I remembered. Zach is the worst. The utter worst. In a pouting fit he decided to set off a nuclear bomb, because THE WORST

This caused a nuclear winter and we see Ephraim moving through modern day Philadelphia. The city, and presumably a lot of the rest of the world, or at least the cities, is run by something called “The Partnership”. A happy propaganda video tells us that since the “illumination” strigoi can now walk around during the now dull day and be equal partners in this wonderful utopian world where everyone has all the resources they need, there are jobs for everyone and so long as you keep your blood donations up to date, you get fully comprehensive health care in the “freedom centres.”

Hey, I’ve seen worse healthcare plans.

We also see a big tanker which is clearly filling up with blood out of a tower block which is ominous

Ephraim himself has pretty much embracing defeat, doing black market doctor jobs (understandably, a lot of people are duly suspicious of the Freedom Centres) in exchange for trade items, though he still flinches when accused of profiteering but has generally lost all hope. He’s also still angsting over Zach

One of these trades ends up with him being captured by a Strigoi raid and transported away on a bus - which is then bombed.

Yes there’s a resistance. Ephraim objects fiercely to them blowing up a bus that contained human prisoners. I don’t know the name of the brother-sister resistance team but she has an awesome responds with:

“If we wait for the perfect moment to resist, we never will”. Which is brutally true. Her brother was injured in the explosion and Ephraim treats him… when he tries to leave she shames him for passive complicity with the Partnership. This clearly scores a bullseye (we’ve seen him struggling with the idea repeatedly, sounding out his fellow black marketeers about vague ideas of resistance while not willing to build up hope) and he agrees to stay.He claims for trade but we know he’s been pricked in the conscience

Game of Thrones, Season 7, Episode 1: Dragonstone

It’s back! And it has a previously?

On Game of Thrones? We may be here for several hours. Or it could be very short “he’s dead and him and him and definitely her and him and him and him”.

My a lot has happened on this show. And a whole lot have died.

ARYA

And many more are going to if Arya has her way. Because we open with Walder Frey who gathered his whole very very very very very big family to celebrate how they defeated the Starks. A toast to Victory! A toast to murdering pregnant women, and mothers of children, and guests you’ve offered safety to… at which point the gathered family realise they’re something up because it’s a very dubious toast. And then they all die to poison - except Walder Frey’s young wife who Walder stopped drinking

Walder then takes off his face and reveals, Arya. Oh yes, she just massacred the entire Frey family. Arya’s learning of Faceless Man skills has made her deeply terrifying

“Tell them the north remembers. Tell them winter came for House Frey”

And with a nifty flare for the dramatic.

Still to temper the ruthlessness as she leaves she runs into Ed Sheeren doing a cameo and a bunch of Lannister soldiers who are almost impossibly nice; reminding us that while kings and queens fight and kill and plot and scheme, the ordinary people on every side just want to live their lives and not fight these endless pointless wars. It’s a nice break of normality among the endless violence

The North

We also have a scene of the marching horde of White Walkers, reminding us what’s coming. It’s almost as a scary as Arya

Bran and Meera have finally made it to the wall, bringing some ominous prophecy with them. This could be interesting because technically Bran has a stronger claim to the throne than Jon does.

Jon has gathered his followers and is an inspirational and passionate ruler. He has them gathering dragonglass to kill white walkers, has Tormund have the Wildlings defending the wall and the castles, he wants everyone over the age of 10 to learn how to fight: including women

Some object. But Lyanna Mormont agrees women should also learn to fight. I’d also back her against a white walker giant any day.

Of course, not one man dare speak against her because she’s Lyanna Mormont and can slay dragons with her withering stare.

Next on the agenda is the castles of the Umbers and the Karstarks who betrayed House Stark. Sir Royce wants to tear them down for being traitors - he has a sense of honour and stupidity to make him a Stark, without the compassion. Sansa points out castles have done nothing wrong and are useful things to have. There follows a very public argument between Sansa and Jon: Sansa says give them to loyal houses as a reward and to punish traitors while Jon says the house has been loyal for generations and you can’t punish the current house leaders (who are little more than children) for the sins of their fathers. They argue and in the end Jon lays down the law and insists - before making a big charismatic speech which everyone cheers as they accept his new vassals.

Afterwards Jon is super pouty with Sansa for “undermining” him but she isn’t going to meekly take it. She, rather brutally but extremely accurately, says he has to be smarter than their dad and than Rob - and she’s not wrong. He asks if smarter means “listening to you” and she says that wouldn’t be so bad. She points out that Joffrey was a king who wouldn’t listen to people criticising or commenting either: Jon takes exception to the comparison but she says he’s nothing like Joffrey - and that’s not entirely a compliment: because whatever else he was, Joffrey was vicious to his enemies. She also has a level of admiration for Cersei who “taught her a lot”

This argument wasn’t resolved but I can see it rumbling for some time.

She also recognises (we also see how Jon, a northerner, cannot be buttered up) how sheltered she was before - and how unhelpful and useless that was.

I actually think they work well together - Sansa is smarter, more politically savvy and more ruthless while Jon is charismatic and impressed and good and noble (i.e. he’s a damn stupid Stark whose Stupid Good Alignment will get him both loved and killed, while she has honed a sufficient dose of Kings Landing ruthless politicking to keep him alive). And as for openly arguing - again, after several dictatorial rulers a bit of open descent and questioning isn’t a bad thing: especially since Sansa publically putting in a world will also touch on anyone a little wavery about Jon being a Bastard. Also, Northerners aren’t like Kings Landing - they speak out.

I want to see how this dynamic develops t

The Mist by Stephen King

When a dangerous storm rolls into town, all the residents can think about is the insurance claims they'll have to make and clearing away the debris. What they don't realise is that that the storm will quickly become the least of their worries. It's not long before 80 people find themselves trapped in a grocery store, unable to leave because something primordial and dangerous is living in the mist.  As the claustrophobia threatens to consume them, they must decide whether or not to take their chances with the outside world or get carried away with the hysteria. 

The Mist is a typical Stephen King horror/suspense story.  Everyone has been in the kind of fog where you can only see a few feet away.  It's never a comforting feeling to have darkness descend, particularly in a world that has become accustomed to electricity and convenience. In this case, the mist hides deadly creatures who few humans as prey. 

I must admit to picking up The Mist because we are currently recapping and reviewing the television show. I believe it's always important to be familiar with the source material when possible. From the very beginning, even before we are introduced to the mist as hiding real danger, the story feels anachronistic for something published in 2007.  Cell phones may not have completely decimated people's use of payphones yet but making a call for ten cents most certainly wasn't possible. 

We meet several characters who are stuck together in the supermarket but the story is told entirely from the perspective of David.  David is an artist, father and husband.  David's one of the first to believe in the danger the mist poses because he's given hard evidence that the world they knew is gone.  Even as the evidence mounts that they are in mortal danger, not everyone in the store is willing to believe.  David's neighbour, who tagged along with him to the market to pick up a few things steadfastly believes that this is all one big prank on him and goes into denial. Norton simply cannot reconcile what he knows to be true. 

The people stranded in the supermarket fall into three categories: 

• people like David who accept with difficulty the world as it's presented to them
• people like Norton, who are determined to imagine that what they are seeing isn't real and that they aren't in any mortal danger
• people like Mrs. Carmody, who has a complete mental break and goes down a dangerous path of superstition and fear.

It's easy to identify with the fears of all of the characters and put yourself in their place.  I don't know however if I would find Mrs.Carmody, who starts going on about human sacrifice all that appealing, no matter how scared I happened to be.

Orphan Black, Season Five, Episode Six: Manacled Slim Wrists

I know that fans of Orphan Black were freaking out when Krystal appeared on their screen.  It's fair to say that outside of the original seistras that Krystal is the favourite clone of many. For me however, Krystal is an irritant at best who took away screen time for Felix Helena and Allison, who I am far more interested in. With so little time left in the series, it feels a shame to waste it on the clone for which I have the least patience and interest. 

Krystal 

Krystal hasn't changed much since we last saw her. She's presently hard at work with her roommate Bree on V Blog about the corruption in big cosmetics. Who's surprised that this is how Krystal had been occupying her time? 

Today's lesson involves using straws as curlers and as to be expected, it doesn't end well. When Bree starts to remove the straws, a heap of her hair comes with it. Yeah, I'm not impressed that the Black chick got her hair messed up while the ever so White Krystal stayed looking on point. Dear white people, stop messing with our hair. 

Krystal immediately assumes that Bree has been poisoned and decides that to invoke clone club. Krystal's assertions are blown off as nonsense by both Art and Sarah, until her interactions with Blue Zone Cosmetics , a company recently purchased by Dyad, is revealed. Effectively, the writers have retroactively made Krystal right about Neolution to jam her irrelevant, irritating character into the plot. 

Now they need to find out if Dyad is interested in Blue Zone Cosmetics because of  LIN28A. The plan is for Sarah to masquerade as Krystal to pump information from Blue Zone Cosmetics CEO Len.  At this point in the story, I started getting excited for another round of clone playing a clone but alas, it was not to be. 

Of course, Krystal being Krystal, just had to wreck a perfectly good plan by deciding that she didn't want anyone, "particularly that Australian girl" (read: Sarah) messing with her source. I suppose Art and Sarah should be thankful that Krystal set up surveillance for them to listen in and see what's happening when she meets with Len. 

The word subtle seems not to be in Krystal's vocabulary.  Despite being told not to make out with Len, she jumps on him passionately.  When Art and Sarah ask her to bring up Dyad, shes broaches the subject like an elephant entering a china shop. Len of course claims ignorance as to Dyad's true goals.

It's The 13th Doctor and We're Still Waiting

But times change and so must I. We all change, when you think about it.
We are all different people all through our lives and that's okay, that's good you've got to keep moving so long as you remember all the people that you used to be.
I will not forget one line of this, not one day, I swear. I will always remember when The Doctor was me...

                                                                       ---The Doctor

Like many Whovians, I sat through a tennis match I wasn’t interested in yesterday in order to watch the live announcement on who the 13th Doctor would be.  The speculation began the moment that Peter Capaldi announced that he was leaving this iconic role. Naturally, everyone had opinions as several names were bandied about.  Some of the names in rotation were: Kris Marshall, Natalie Dormer, Alexander Siddig, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Sacha Dhawan, Cyril Nri etc.  When it came to the casting, the central question always seemed to be would the Doctor remain a man, as he has been for over fifty years, or would he follow Missy’s lead and become a woman?  

When it came to conversations about a male Doctor, the challenge seemed to be about whether or not the Doctor would be of colour or be yet another incarnation of straight, cisgender white masculinity.  Naturally, the traditionalists spit their damn dummy out at the very idea that the Doctor might no longer be white, even if they were relieved that he could potentially stay male. This of course is the problem with toxic fandom, of which Whovians are only a part of.  Think about the character of the Doctor. He sweeps in when things are at their most desperate and he saves the day.  The Doctor is always the smartest one in the room, the first to solve the puzzle and if necessary, the one to cast judgement and lay down the law.  No wonder people continue to see the Doctor as male - he is the perfect example of our patriarchal power structure.  

The majority of heads of state are male, the majority of judges are male, the majority of police officer are also male.  These are positions of authority which are responsible for laying down the law, figuring out what went wrong and assigning punishment. For as much as I love the Doctor, he is a cop, politician (president of the world) and finally judge. How could any being embodying these roles and not be considered male, when women are still very much outliers in these careers despite the gains of feminism?  Because this bullshit has gone on so long, it reads as traditional; the problem is that no one wants to think about what these damn traditions are based in because to do would be to admit the toxicity not just of a fandom we gleefully participate in but a deep rooted rot in our system.

Even though the series has spent some considerable effort explaining gender through the perspective of Time Lords and actually portrayed two Time Lords changing gender from male to female, traditionalists simply could not, nay would not consider a woman in the role of Doctor.  Even as I write this, there are people across the globe pouting, shaking their fists and spitting their dummies out en masse. Some even having the nerve to question why their disapproval of a female Doctor makes them sexist. There is always controversy when a new Doctor is cast. Many were not happy when a relatively unknown Matt Smith was cast as the 11th Doctor; however, by the time he left, many (though I am not part of that group) came to consider Matt Smith as their favourite Doctor (these people are wrong, of course). It’s hardly surprising now that Peter Capaldi is leaving that those who found him to be old, grumpy and just plain too mean to be the Doctor are now all up in their feelings, blowing through boxes of Kleenex, expressing their sorrow at losing him. This is the cycle of how Whovians mourn the loss of one Doctor and prepare for the arrival of a new one. Certainly, no one expected near universal praise for the casting of Jodie Whittaker, but to base that disapproval solely on her gender, rather than, say, her previous work, is SEXIST.  In fact it’s undeniable SEXISM.

Wynonna Earp, Season 2, Episode 6: Whiskey Lullaby

Time to return to the big bads - the veiled ghostly women who have possessed Mercedes and her sister and got Tucker The Worst to run around and do their bidding in exchange for “a girl”

These are known as “the Widows” and they want to break those seals and unleash evilness.

The problem for them is finding the last seals which aren’t where they should be any more since Bobo moved them (one goes into a church and ends up killing a priest looking for it) and they’re working to a time line: they’ve only got so long to find the seals. They also reference their husband (one man) who gives them gifts, Constance the Stone Witch (who Doc killed) and Juan Carlo so ALL THE STORYLINES

Ultimately they need more time. To that end they send Tucker with a gun and a magic-immunity charm to an old man called Hypnose who is being tended by his daughter Poppy

To the main gang!

Wynonna is pregnant as we found out last episode. And Waverley and her are pegging Doc as the father which is a bit of an issue with Dolls coming back and the big romance brewing there. Wynonna and Doc had a great friends-with-benefits-maybe-more thing going on but she and Dolls had the love-you-hate-you-drama-will-they-won’t-they which is Tvlandia’s ULTIMATE ROMANCE.

Waverley hovers around fluffing and fussing about not drinking caffein and generally threatening to reveal the secret to all and complaining that it’s not fair to Doc and Dolls not to tell them to which Wynonna has this line:

“Tough shit. It’s my decision who to tell and when and it’s my situation and no-one gets to decide how to handle it by me. Stop pushing me and stop judging me.”

ALL HAIL WYNONNA

Waverley backs off, acknowledging her issues. SHe has issues with Nicole anyway as Nicole is unsure how much of their relationship was tentacle demon and not - Waverley reinforces them and they have make up sex. And while they don’t show sex, this tv series is increasingly not flinching away from Waverley and Nicole’s affection

Dolls and Doc catch up with Dolls’ ex boss to figure out what has happened to Black Badge- apparently Black badge was never a government agency, doesn’t want to spend resources on a fight they can’t win, has utterly written off the ghost river triangle and is pulling out. They do give Dolls a picture of one of the Widows so he knows what he’s facing

Ok, I don’t know how far the writers have followed this through, but this implies that we’re not facing a world ending threat or a major country devastating threat or clearly more widespread: if there was then the idea of “not being worth the investment” would be ridiculous.

They return to explain this to everyone and everyone questions what this means. I’m here for Jeremy asking “wait, are we fired, do I get a reference, who pays us” sadly no-one answers this question but it’s a point. Who is paying the bills? Money and livelihood matter guys!

Wynonna shuts down speculation with “hey I have a gun and kill monsters, so let’s do this!”

So world building addressed, we have a Widow kill a priest and a blood stained nun come to the police station to say

“My boss was killed”

To which Wynonna replies without missing a beat:

“God really is dead”.

If you didn’t laugh you’re… probably a better person than me.

Anyway this leads the gang to realise that the seal is on consecrated ground so Jeremy does the research thing. While he does that Wynonna goes to a coffee shop with Dolls on a sortadate and Dolls is clearly trying to take their relationship to the next level and she’s all awkward because of the pregnancy

And the 13th Doctor Is.....

It's official, the BBC has announced that the new Doctor is English actress Jodie Whittaker.  Joddie is the first woman to be cast in the iconic role as Doctor Who. Each time a new Doctor is cast Whovians wring their hands and carry on and I suspect that this will be amplified by Chris Chibnall's selection. There will of course be the sexist whose heads explode about the fact that the Doctor is now a woman, even though it's been thoroughly shown on Doctor Who that Timelords do in fact shift their gender when they regenerate. The conversation will probably be polarized between those who want to keep the White man's club and those who are anxious to see a real shift.

We've written countless times about the fact that Doctor Who tends to benefit from the diversity of its spinoffs even if Doctor Who itself hasn't really been all that inclusive.  The casting of Jodie Whittaker is a step in the right direction.  Whittaker has set herself a tough task ahead because while no new incarnation is free of criticism, it's quite certain that hers will be absolutely laced with misogyny regardless of how good she performs in the role, or the work that the writers give her to do. 

To be clear, I'm going to miss Peter Capaldi a lot. I think that he's been an excellent Doctor and completely compelling to watch but it's time to say goodbye. Just like Doctor's we've come to love before he will be remembered for his unique approach to this role and thanked for giving the world angry eyebrows. As we move forward into a new incarnation, I hope that we can embrace the new and give Whittaker a real chance to embody this role.  I hope that we can be everything that the Doctor has always wanted humanity to be. 

Killjoys, Season 3, Episode 3: The Hullen Have Eyes

Also known as the episode where Paul realises he’s been spelling Hullen wrong for so many reviews

So Johnny is back which means he has to be reinstated as part of the RAC which means interview with Banyon-designated-evil-lady-who-Dutch-hates. She is super angry about all the RAC agents who went missing, including Johnny. Johnny objects that he went AWOL for personal reqasons afvter Pawter died and it had nothing to do with any kind of RAC issue.

Baynon isn’t buying that but hey she’ll run with it if Johnny is willing to spy on Dutch and implicate her on the AWOLs. Johnny is clearly not having that. He has a counter proposal: why is she making an enemy of the one agent who came back when he could be their poster boy

Banyon: I thought you were the funny one

Johnny: I multi-task

He has the best lines. She also tells him to remove the finger banger- which he displays to her (it’s on his middle finger). Still he does have it removed and rejoins the crew

He also meets Zeph, he’s not a huge fan, there’s definite nerd competition going on here; she has an organic specialty she doesn’t, but he’s not here to be replaced or out-alpha nerded so lots of conflict follows.

Their mission of the week is a weird Hollen ship that has arrived on Lethe, now they need to get on board and figure out what’s going on with it. Nerding follows and they track it to a specific point of origin. This involves a little awkwardness with Johnny fitting back into the group dynamic - and him being nerdy and careful before they set off while Dutch just pushes D’avin’s hand onto the button

“I skipped to the fun part, you know you wanted me to.”

Yes, yes Dutch we did.

They arrive at a cold forested world and Dutch and D’avin get off to investigate. There they discover background radiation and regular solar flares that fry people and destroy eye sight so it’s best not to hang around. There’s also a creepy old fashioned town dating back 100 years that was protected by a radiation shield but isn’t any more. There’s a hologram in the middle of the town that basically tries to teach people basic things like smiling

This town is a Hollen training camp, it exists to train empathyless Hollen on how to take basic human interaction.

At which point a solar flare arrives, the ship’s automatic safety features make it flee to orbit complete with nerds) leaving Dutch and D’avin to run around with their eyes clothes, have their guns taken by creepy capering people and trying to hide in a building. There they’re met by a woman with her eyes sewn shut (something she calls a blessing) leads them to the basement tunnels which is another huge complex… where they’re captured, held at gun point and thrown in cages.

Meanwhile with Johnny teaching Zeph about the need to keep calm and focus in a crisis (a definite contrast between lab experience vs field experience) as well as emphasising how much nerds save the day. Sure, the warriors charge in, but it’s the nerds who come up with the solutions - and nerds gotta nerd when the shit hits the fan