Songs For Saturday: Doctor Who Edition

Welcome to my weekly musical post I call Songs For Saturday wherein I post videos for songs that I like.

Over the past weekends I've posted this feature, I have shown myself to have a rather eclectic taste in music.  

Since tomorrow is the season finale for Doctor Who, I though this week I will feature a selection of songs for a special Doctor Who Edition of Songs For Saturday. Today's songs will be performed by the stars of Doctor Who. 

First up is Jodie Whitaker. 

I first listened to this song with the expectation that this might be a cringe worthy curiosity. I was more than mildly surprised by how much I actually enjoyed listening to this.

Here's Jodie's cover of Coldplay's "Yellow".

The Doctor Who clips edited together for the accompanying video are wonderfully effective for this song. 

But the song itself?  Jodie's unique accent is distinctive as it adds a moving level of intimacy. 

Click this link right here for a clip from Graham Norton's show with Jodie and some background on this.  

Next up is Peter Capaldi. Part of Capaldi's experience was playing in a punk rock band back in the 1970s. One of his band mates was actor, comedian and TV host Craig Ferguson. Capaldi's ability to shred an electric guitar was incorporated into his version of the Doctor.

What we have next is the Doctor Who theme from Capaldi's era on the show with a guitar track added played by Peter Capaldi himself.

Who wanna hear more of Peter Capaldi on the guitar? Click on this link right here, dude for MORE! 

Next up is David Tennant performing West End Girls. 

Sorry, David, but that was a cringe worthy curiosity. But it was fun, wasn't it? 

A little background. Doctor Who and David Tennant fans know that David's real name is David McDonald. But when he became an actor, there was already a David McDonald out there somewhere so he needed a new name to perform under. So David adopted the last name of Tennant after Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys whose biggest hit was West End Girls.  

Actually, West End Girls by the Pet Shop Boys is a favorite song of mine. Click this link right here for their original if you want to compare it to David's version.  


I really cannot do a post of musical performances by Doctor Who stars without including this. Put together as a tribute to outgoing producers Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner, here is the Ballad of Russell and Julie by David Tennant, Catherine Tate and John Barrowman.   

Man, I miss these people on Doctor Who so much! 12 years later, this performance remains a lot of fun. 

OK, that's that for today's Songs For Saturday. Tomorrow is the season finale of Doctor Who and my write up on The Timeless Children will be posted on Monday.

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and to always keep the music alive.  

The Coronavirus Conumdrum

I haven’t posted about the Coronavirus yet.

The big story here at the Fortress of Ineptitude is that my wife Andrea cannot pronounce it.

She keeps calling it the “KER-NOR-RER-virus” despite my best efforts to Henry Higgins her to a proper pronunciation.

More accurately, I sound like a Judoon from Doctor Who.

Andrea: Kernorrervirus!

ME: KO! RO! NAH!

Andrea: Colonel…..

ME: KO! RO! NAH!

Andrea: Kernel?  

Me: KO!

Andrea: KAH!

Me: KO!

Andrea: KO?

Me: Yes, KO!

Andrea: KO! NOR!

Me: KO! NO!

And so forth and so on.

Look, if this thing is coming to kill us, pronouncing it correctly will not likely save our lives.

Doctor: I’m sorry, sir, but your wife is dead. From the coronavirus. If only we could’ve caught it earlier.

Me: No! How could this happen?

Doctor: Well, she kept calling it “kernorrervirus” which kind of threw us off.

Me: Dammit!

But is the coronavirus coming to kill us?

Well, maybe.

Look, there are a lot of people sick and dying around the world. It started off in China but this is no longer a Chinese thing as cases of coronavirus have cropped up elsewhere in Asia, Europe and North America. 

Here’s the thing. As bad as this is, the likelihood of you contracting and dying from the coronavirus are mathematically slim. But somebody’s making up the numbers of those who are sick and dying and yes, it could be you.

Remember when everyone was scared of SARS? Now, do you know of anyone personally who got sick and or died of SARS?

And what about the big Ebola scare? There’s a very good chance that whatever random person reads this post from anywhere in the world even knows of someone who had Ebola.

But that does not diminish for a second that lots of people did die.

But there are those in this world where that does diminish that impact.  There are a lot of insulated, stupid people who have the view that if it isn’t happening to them, it’s not a big deal.

That’s what Donald Trump is counting on.

He’s got an entire base of supporters who do not give a rats ass about anyone sick in China, South Korea, Japan, Italy or wherever.   

Here’s the math on this. On a worldwide scale, let’s say ½ million people die from the coronavirus. Let’s say in the United States, the virus kills maybe a hundred people tops.

100 vs. 500,000. Well, it could’ve been worse, Trump declares victory and his base praises his leadership in keeping the death count low.

Trump has openly made this calculus before. Remember after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico and the initial death count in the first few days was low. Trump compared it to the higher death toll after Hurricane Katrina and declared it a victory. 

So efforts to educate the American public on the hazards of the coronavirus and what can be done to curb its spread get pushed back by Trump with lies and denials. 

Trump who is President of Only the Part of the United States That Voted For Him doesn’t see this as a problem.

The news of the coronavirus is what irks him as he accuses the media of needlessly spreading bad news that’s depressing the stock market.

Not human lives but the indices of Wall Street, that’s where Trump’s concerns lay. 

Indeed, the right wing blogosphere is already hard at work on cultivating a conspiracy that this whole coronavirus thing is just a liberal plot to hurt Donald Trump's re-election.

And Trump's buying into it.

And he’s counting on his base getting through this with “well, no one I know had this ‘kernorrervirus’. Just another liberal fake news thing!”

But it is a real thing, even if no one you know gets it or if you can't pronounce it. 

Remember to be good to one another and stay safe.  

Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

Yesterday, I posted about some stuff going on in the business of comics. Today, I thought I might talk about an actual comic book.

That comic book is Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.

Criminal is not an easy book to describe; it’s like trying to explain Doctor Who.

Essentially, Criminal is about a life of crime at the lower echelons of criminal activity.  The guys who pull off the petty busts with an occasional big score tossed in every now and then.

At the center of the Criminal saga is a minor league crook named Teeg Lawless.  Now to say he’s at the center of this saga may be a bit misleading. There are lots of Criminal stories that do not feature Teeg at all. Some feature his son, others feature fellow crooks and cons who know Teeg. 

Criminal is not linear. Stories jump back and for the across the decades from the 1970s to the present day and anywhere in between.

I’m only now beginning to immerse myself in the Criminal universe with the recently completed 12 issues series that chronicled among other things the death of Teeg Lawless.  Not a spoiler. The death of Teeg Lawless has hung over this story for years. 

Prior Criminal projects have been short mini series and one shots and I hope to catch up on those earlier stories via collected editions now that the Criminal monthly is over. 

What makes Criminal such captivating reading is Ed Brubaker’s almost surgeon like skill at digging into the damaged characters that populate his narrative. Many of those men and women know they are on a path to ruin with the lives they lead on the periphery of the law and of what might be called “normal life”.  Even as someone is plotting to rob somebody, I find myself rooting for them even as I know things will go badly. Inevitably, someone goes to jail, get hurt (and usually, very badly) or dies. This is no way to live but these flawed men and women keep trying to live this way.

Sean Phillips does an astonishing job bringing Brubaker’s stories to life, sometimes dark, sometimes scratchy but always evocative of the emotions in Brubaker’s script. Hope, fear, doubt, worry, all the nuances of emotion are conveyed in the faces of the characters Sean Phillips draws. And Phillips is adept at raw, bloody violence.

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are an almost cottage industry of producing comic books that are not super hero books. I followed The Fade Out, a noir mystery set in the film industry of the 1950s. Kill Or Be Killed was about a serial killer who may or may not be possessed by a demon. Fatale turns the concept of the femme fatale on its head with a story about an immortal woman whose ability to get men to do what she wants is a virtual super power. 

If you’re a comic book reader who has outgrown super heroes or never cared for them or you just crave something different, almost any project by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips will captivate you. 

Here is some art by Sean Phillips from the recent Criminal series with a cover and some pages spotlighting Jane, the woman who would change Teeg Lawless's life and plant the seeds for his tragic end.  

Goodbye to Dan Didio....And DC?

I haven’t done a post on comic books in awhile and it seems now would be a good time to do one.

 

For one thing, I want to address the recent firing of Dan Didio from DC.

 

On one hand, I have never doubted Dan’s love and enthusiasm for comic books in general and for DC specifically.

 

On the other hand, a lot of what has driven me away from my nearly lifelong love of DC comics occurred under Didio’s leadership. On over emphasis on events and character deaths, a constant shifting of the foundations of DC’s continuity, a drive to always shake things up before we’ve had a chance to assess the situation from the last shake up.

 

It may be unfair to unload all of this at Dan Didio’s feet. All that stuff I griped about above also fits the current state of Marvel Comics as well.  And there is the idea that a lot of what Dan Didio instigated In his time as Publisher at DC was at the beck and call of corporate masters who were attuned to  bolstering the bottom line through whatever short term hair brained idea that could be workshopped over a conference call. 

 

It seems Dan was shown the door in a rather inglorious fashion. He showed up for work Friday morning at the DC offices in Burbank with plans for some big events for the weekend to roll out some new DC projects. A couple of hours later, Dan Didio was escorted by security out the door.

 

In the aftermath, a lot of people went on Twitter to speak very well of Dan, writers and artists who spoke of their respect and affection for this man. Even with the caveat of their being some disagreements with Dan, the consensus was that Dan Didio was a good guy and deserved a better wrap up to his story at DC. 

 

Of course, the end of Dan Didio’s time at DC does not necessarily mean the end of Dan Didio. Any of these writers and artists might need to make nice with Dan Didio, Executive Editor of Image, Dark Horse, IDW or even Marvel.  

 

Rob Liefeld was virtually the lone exception to this outpouring of good will with a veritable “ding dong, the wicked witch is dead” proclamation of joy.

 

It would be funny if Dan did wind up at Marvel and wound up running DC anyway? Which brings us to the recent rampant rumors of a potential acquisition of DC by Marvel Comics.

 

The idea of Marvel taking over DC is not a new one. Back about four decades ago, there was a potential pitch for Marvel to take over DC that was serious enough for Marvel Editor in Chief Jim Shooter to actually solicit some pitches from Marvel’s best and brightest to write and draw DC’s characters.  

 

The idea then was that Warners would not relinquish ownership of the DC characters but license them to Marvel to make comic books.  The logic for Warners was that Superman made more money for them being on TV, in movies and on peanut butter, lunch boxes and underwear than they were seeing off of the comic books.

 

Apparently, this is the logic of AT&T, DC’s current corporate masters. Why not turn the production of DC comic books into a pure profit center? Why not have Marvel/Disney pay AT&T money for the privilege of making DC comic books and AT&T doesn’t have to pay for one damn editor, writer or artist?  

 

But why would Marvel want to pay AT&T to publish Superman when they can make as much money or more on Spider-Man which they don’t have to pay anyone for the privilege since they own Spider-Man? 

 

Hell, there have been rumors of Disney wanting to do the same thing with Marvel: make money off the characters in movies and TV shows and license off the comics to somebody else. 

 

Of course, AT&T looking to cut itself loose from making comic books is just a rumor. But comic books is an ever shrinking slice of the pie for any media company to make money off of an Intellectual Property (IP).  Right now, the comic book industry is doing well enough to stay in business and for writers and artists to make a living and for comic shops to keep their doors  open. But the sad reality is that the momentum of the comic book industry is not heading towards bigger and greater things.  And with corporate overlords watching the bottom line ever more closely, the future of comic books is probably more short than it is long. 

The question now is how I can blame this on Dan Didio? 

Tuesday TV Touchbase: Star Trek:Picard and Batwoman

My wife Andrea and I like to watch TV.  To quote Less Nessman from WKRP In Cincinatti, TV "makes life simple somehow."  

For this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase, I'm going to look at two shows did not make life less simple at all. 

Star Trek Picard
Last week's episode "Stardust City Rag" opens with the most brutal opening I've ever seen in anything, especially a Star Trek TV series. 

In a flashback to 13 years ago, a young man in a Starfleet uniform is being dissected while he's still alive including a really gross and bloody extraction of his eyeball which really plays into every single fear and neuroses I have and it wasn't doing anything good for Andrea either. Damn, this is freaking brutal! 

Seven of Nine shows up to put a stop to things but she's too late. The young man in a Starfleet uniform, brutalized by his intense torture and quivering in pain can only die and the only mercy Seven can provide is to kill him.  This is getting darker still.

Oh but the knife hasn't been twisted enough, has it? The young man in a Starfleet uniform is Icheb who like Seven was recovered by Voyager from the Borg Collective and restored to a more human state. Icheb was like a son to Seven and she just had to kill him.  

Seven of Nine is pissed off. 

And so am I. Damn it! 

The rest of the episode has a funny caper bit in the middle where Rios is dressed like a pimp from the 1970s and Picard  with an eye patch and an absurdly bad French accent pull a con to rescue Bruce Maddox from Freecloud. The scheme to save Maddox also puts Seven right in front of Bjayzl, the woman responsibly for Icheb's torture and she phasers her to death. 

Then gets darker still. 

Back on the ship, Bruce Maddox is in really bad shape from the torture he endured but he's in the medical bay for treatment. When left alone with Bruce, Dr. Agnes Jurati kills him!

WHAT THE HELL???

Batwoman
Having two Beth Kanes from two different universes in one universe is not a good thing.  The bad Beth, the murderous psycho Alice, and the good Beth, the one who did not turn into the murderous psycho Alice, are both dying and the clock is ticking. If one dies, the other lives. But if nothing is done within in a certain time frame, both will die.

It seems Mary, Kate's step-sister, has the answer. When Alice poisoned Mary and her mother Catherine, Alice gave Mary an antidote that serves as cure-all. The cure-all in Mary's blood can help sustain one of the two Beths past the time frame.  

After giving the good Beth the cure-all, Kate goes to Alice to stay with her until she dies.  

But then stuff that has nothing to do with this does down to screw it all up. 

Seems Mouse's dad is back in the picture and he's pissed off that Alice has led Mouse astray from his father. So dear old dad goes off to kill Alice. 

He shoots the wrong Beth Kane.  

And Alice, now the lone Beth Kane on this Earth, does not die. 

WHAT THE HELL???

So if you thought Alice was already pissed off and crazy because of her lot in life, her pissed off crazy is off the charts now with the knowledge that Kate was going to let her die. 

Andrea asked, "Why do I watch this crazy show?" I told her she doesn't have to but she said she's invested now. 

She sounds like a comic book fan now. 

You know, sometimes Less Nessman from WKRP In Cincinatti is right. If you settle in for Wheel of Fortune or TBS's ubiquitous reruns of Big Bang Theory, " TV makes life simple somehow."  

And then there are TV shows that dare to not make life simple at all. 

Next week, I'll play catch up with Supergirl and her 100th episode.  

Doctor Who: Ascension of the Cybermen

Ready or not but here we are for stage one of the season's end for Doctor Who.  

Much has been made of ratcheting up the stakes for this season of Doctor Who. The return of the Master, Gallifrey destroyed (again!) by the Master, the secret of the Timeless Child, the return of Captain Jack Harkness, the introduction of a heretofore unknown incarnation of the Doctor and now the return of the Cybermen.

Harkness warned the Doctor's companions to beware of the Lone Cyberman and not to give it what it wants at any cost. 

As we saw last week, the Lone Cyberman shows up and the Doctor goes indeed give it what it wants. 

This week takes us to a dark and terrible future where the Cybermen have won and humanity is all but destroyed.

There are hints and insinuations that the Doctor's fam is not going to get out of this intact.  

So where does this week take us? Do we get answers or just more questions? Is there a chance at victory or does the Doctor and her team just face more losses?

We'll find out more after the spoiler break. 

ASCENSION OF THE CYBERMEN

by Chris Chibnall 

Things start off in a rustic corner of Ireland with a man riding a bike on a dirt road where he finds a baby in a basket. The man brings the baby home to his wife and like Jonathan and Martha Kent, they raise the child they name Brendon as their own. 

We will check in with Brendon over the course of his life at  various points of this episode that appears to have nothing to to with Cybermen. 

Then it's off to the future where the Doctor and the fam are there to save a scrappy handful of humans from the Cybermen. The Doctor has a bunch of tech designed to mess with Cybermen. 

And none of it works after they get blitzed by a horde of Cyber drones, flying Cybermen heads with glowing blue eyes. 

The Doctor and the fam get separated.  Conveniently, they can't get back to the TARDIS which does not make an appearance in this episode at all.  

The Doctor, Ryan and a surviving human steal a Cyber ship to zip off into space. 

Yaz and Graham are with three other human refugees on a ship called a Grav Raft which is a veritable bucket of bolts with bolts falling off. 

Ashad, the Cyberman with a face, is back and can monologue like he's freaking Davros or something. 

The last ditch hope of humanity is to get to Ko Sharmus and from there past the Boundary, a refuge beyond the known galaxy where humanity will be safe from the Cybermen.  

Yaz, Graham and their three human refugees are not safe, having pushed a badly damaged Grav Raft onto what was supposed to be an abandoned Cybership.  But the ship is not empty but filled thousands of Cybermen awaiting to be activated. And along comes Ashad to wake 'em up.  

Meanwhile the Doctor has made it to Ko Sharmus who is a person, not a place. She sees the Boundary, a swirling vortex of energy that leads to... Gallifrey? 

And hopping out of this vortex is... The Master! 

Well, of course he does! 

And that is where we end things. For now! 

OK, a LOT is going on in this episode. 

I take issue with the TARDIS being conveniently too far away to be of help. As Graham complained last week, why does the Doctor always park the darn thing so far away? 

Anyway, I understand that for reasons of plot that the Doctor and the fam need to be separated from the TARDIS but just being parked too far away seems like a copout. 

And if that seems like a petty detail to complain about, that's because that's the worst thing I can think of to complain about. 

This is a fairly solid episode with the Doctor and her companions facing serious levels of jeopardy and a most confounding mystery.  

What is Ashad's endgame? What are the Cybermen are up to? How does this connect to Gallifrey? And the Master? And the Timeless Child? 

And what the hell is going on with Brendon? 

And we're left waiting anxiously until next week for answers! 

Cinema Sunday: A Face In the Crowd

For today's Cinema Sunday, I want to take a look at movie that came out in 1957 but is unnervingly prescient regards to the current state of our culture and politics in the present day. 

When I first saw this movie a few years back, I found it more than a little shocking.  The movie stars Andy Griffith and if all you know of Andy is from The Andy Griffith Show and his genial take of Sheriff Andy Taylor, well, Griffith's turn in his film debut will shock you too.  

The movie is A Face in the Crowd about a drifter called Lonesome Rhodes (played by Andy Griffith) who parlays a lucky shot at singing and talking on a local Arkansas radio program to a television career of ever growing national fame that threatens to extend his reach to grasp the levers of political power.   

Rhodes' talent, his folksy humor and his personal charm carries him along on a wild ride of fame and fortune. Behind the scenes, however, Rhodes is a dark and fractured soul, an angry man with a raging ego, always in the grip of drunken debauchery and sex.  Even as his public profile grows into some kind of inspirational role model. Rhodes' private dark excesses continue to grow.   

Caught in the conflicting chaos of Rhodes' parallel ascents and descents is Marcia Jeffries, played by Patricia Neal. Marcia is the one who discovers Rhodes in Arkansas and becomes instrumental in developing his burgeoning success. She is also attracted to Rhodes' charms and has an affair with Rhodes. But her front row seat for Rhodes' growing fame also puts her front and center to his worse impulses where she is consistently hurt and betrayed.  Marcia regrets her role in creating Lonesome Rhodes but nothing can stop his ascent, not just as a performing celebrity but also as a force in politics.  

For a movie made in 1957, A Face in the Crowd remains a remarkably sharp mirror on the world today.  I thought that when I first saw this movie about 10 years ago and sadly, it is even more true today.  Lonesome Rhodes isn't a genius but he knows his audience and he knows how to play them. Rhodes heads up a cult of personality that holds and builds his audience. 

Rhodes does things that should hurt him. There's a bit when he insults his sponsor. His sponsor pulls their ads and takes Rhodes off the air, only to find their sales increased after Rhodes' on air jabs.  Back on the air once more, Lonesome Rhodes learns a powerful lesson about his ability to influence people, adding to his lust to appease his ego.  

Lonesome Rhodes can convince people of anything. It is the source of his seemingly limitless power. 

It will be, ultimately, the only thing than stop him. 

This is a very powerful movie. Warning, though. After seeing Andy Griffith as Lonesome Rhodes, life in Mayberry may never be the same. 

"Must kill Barney Fife! Must kill Barney Fife!
Use a gun or use a knife!Must kill Barney Fife!"