Doctor Who Is NEW! Boom!

 And we are back with another installment of Doctor Who Is NEW! where I post about new episodes of Doctor Who.

Since Russell T Davies returned to Doctor Who and the series made it's move to Disney+, this week's post is about the first episode of this new series not written by RTD. 

Welcome back to a guy who knows his way around a Doctor Who story, Steven Moffat.  

Say what you will about the Moff and I know he has his detractors but me, I like the guy and I usually like what he writes. 

Can the Moff still deliver in this new era of Doctor Who? 

We'll find out after the break.

There will be spoilers as we take a look at "Boom!" by Steven Moffat.   

 

In a wasteland battlefield on Kastarian 3, the TARDIS has materialized and the Doctor hears a cry for help. He races out to help but winds up stepping a land mine. 

Well, almost...?

The Doctor has one foot on the mine which as activated it but by balancing himself on that one foot, the mine is not sensing his full weight and hasn't fully activated.

Well, the Doctor can't stand on one foot forever and anyway, the mine is on a timer. After awhile, even if the Doctor remains motionless, it will detonate anyway.  

Bad problem made worse: the mine itself contains no explosive but has the nasty ability of turning the poor sap who activates it into a bomb.

Bad enough for a mere human but image the bang that mine could make out of a 2000+ year old Time Lord. 

The mine is brought to you by those fine weapon building folks at Villengard.   (First referenced in Moffat's "The Doctor Dances" back in 2005.) Villengard's devices follow a warfare algorithm to limit the number of bodies in the battle zone at one time, while also dragging wars on profitably and indefinitely.  

Beware the Ambulances. If their algorithm determines it will cost more to cure you than kill you, they will kill you.  The Ambulances will kindly download your memories into an interactive A.I. and send "thoughts and prayers" to your next of kin.  

This will be important when Ruby gets killed and the Ambulance is flummoxed on who to send "thoughts and prayers" to. 

Oh don't worry. Ruby recovers from her case of death.  

(And that mysterious snow appears again.)    

By the way what's going on with this war anyway?  

An army of Anglicans clerics have been fighting a war for six months against an enemy that’s never seen or heard.

The Doctor works it out:  there’s no enemy on the planet at all — it’s barren. Villengard's algorithm is sending soldiers out to die with the traps they themselves bought and probably placed. 

The only way to make all the Villengard tech (including the mine the Doctor is standing on) to stop killing everyone is for the Anglicans to surrender.

Which is an uphill battle in itself as the Anglicans have faith their war is justified and Villengard is making a tidy profit on a war with technically only one side.  

Long story made short: love and reason triumph over mindless faith and cruel capitalism, Ruby is cured of death and the Doctor finally gets to step off the mine without getting blowed up real good.

OK, I feel like I'm giving this story short shrift.  There are a lot of moving parts here with an endearing supporting cast and an examination of complex themes about faith, parenthood, war, capitalism and even life & death.   

Other than a bit of a rushed "love conquers all" ending, I think "Boom!" is a veritable Steven Moffat classic. He ratchets up the tension considerably by taking away what the Doctor usually does, running about as he talks a mile a minute and thinking even faster. Forced to stay rooted in one spot, the Doctor is forced to save himself, Ruby and the whole dang planet with only his words and the sheer force of his personality.  

The forced limitation on the Doctor's ability to move brings us a bravura performance by Ncuti Gatwa.  He also gets to sing.  In order to steady himself when he first encounters the mine, the Doctor sings "The Skye Boat Song" which we recognize as the theme from Outlander.   

Guest star alert: Susan Twist is in this episode as the holographic face of the insidious Ambulances.  So far, Susan Twist as been in every episode as a different character.  

And Varada Sethu plays the character of Mundy.   It has been announced that Vardada will be joining the TARDIS crew as a companion next season.  Does her appearance in this episode mean anything?  

It's been 7 years since his last script for Doctor Who but I think with "Boom!", Steven Moffat has shown he can still deliver a solid and entertaining episode.  

Cinema Sunday: It's Always Fair Weather

Today's Cinema Sunday goes back to 1955 for a movie musical from MGM: It's Always Fair Weather.  The film was scripted by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who also wrote the show's lyrics, with music by André Previn and starring Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey, Cyd Charisse, Dolores Gray, and dancer/choreographer Michael Kidd in his first film acting role.

Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen co-directed the film  which was not a big success when it was released but has become over the years a well regarded movie due to some really inventive dance numbers. 

• The time: October 1945.
• The place: Tim's Bar & Grill in New York City.
• The players:  ex-G.I.'s Ted Riley, Doug Hallerton and Angie Valentine have served in World War II together and become best friends and vow they'll stay friends forever and ever.

Tim the Barman is skeptical of their devotion so the three men make a bet they will reunite in this very bar in 10 years. So there!!!

So....

• The time: October 1955.
• The place: Tim's Bar & Grill in New York City.
• The players:  Ted Riley, Doug Hallerton and Angie Valentine reunite at Tim's just as they promised they would.

But...

• Hallerton planned to become a painter but instead has gone into a high-stress job in advertising, and his marriage is crumbling. 
• Valentine wanted to become a gourmet chef, is now running a hamburger stand in Schenectady, New York that he calls "The Cordon Bleu" where the closest he gets to French cuisine are the fries. He has a wife and several children.
• Riley had wanted to become an idealistic lawyer, but instead has become a fight promoter and gambler, associating with shady underworld characters.

They don't really like themselves very much but their self loathing explodes outward. Each man expresses how much they can't stand the other two.  

Intersecting with our miserable trio is Jackie Leighton, an attractive and brainy advertising executive. Jackie gets the idea of reuniting the three men later that evening on a TV show to spotlight the heartwarming story of 3 war buddies who reunite after 10 years.  

Well it would be heartwarming if they didn't outright despise each other so Jackie has her work cut out for her.  

And her meet cute flirtatious relationship with Riley complicates things as well.  

Meanwhile, Riley's got trouble with mobsters because he refuses to fix a fight. Evading the gangsters by dashing inside a roller skating ring, he skates out on the streets of Manhattan where Gene Kelly does what is perhaps the most audacious dance routine of his career: tap dancing in roller skates! 

Somehow the three "buddies" met up at the TV station where the mobsters have followed Riley.  The trio mixes it up with the mobsters in a brawl on live TV  where the head gangster confesses his crimes. 

By the end, our three war buddies are friends again, but go their separate ways without making plans for another reunion.    

Michael Kidd, Gene Kelly & Dan Dailey

It's Always Fair Weather was once prepped as a potential sequel to On The Town which followed 3 US Navy sailors on shore leave but none of the principals involved could (or would) return so the 3 guys are now different guys and Army soldiers.

How much the cast of On The Town were really hung up with legitimate logistical issues versus just not wanting to put up with notoriously prickly Gene Kelly again, who can say. 

It's Always Fair Weather was the death knell of Kelly's collaboration with Stanley Donen.  

Donen had just scored a major success with Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (with Michael Kidd as choreographer) and really did not want to go back to work with Gene Kelly but reluctantly agreed. Kelly and Donen clashed over creative issues in the film, with Donen tending to side with Kidd against Kelly. 

After It's Always Fair Weather, Donen and Kelly never worked together again and their friendship was over forever.   

It's Always Fair Weather is a bit unusual for an MGM movie musical dealing as it does with dark themes centered around anxiety and self loathing. The 3 war buddies find their spark again at the end of the movie but it is note worthy that the film ends with them not making plans to meet up again.  

If nothing else, you gotta give it up for a guy who can tap dance in roller skates. 

Cinema Saturday: Unfrosted

After a week away, Cinema Saturday is back with a new movie that debuted on Netflix a week ago.  A film that rivals Oppenheimer in it's historic scope, it is the story of a secret project to develop something new and unprecedented that would change the course of human kind. 

Yes, I am of course referring to the origin of.... Pop Tarts! 

This week's Saturday movie post is about Unfrosted  starring Jerry Seinfeld who also directed the movie and co-wrote the screenplay. 

The year: 1963.

The place: Battle Creek, Michigan 

The man: Bob Cabana,  head of development at the Kellogg's corporation.

The project: creating a shelf-stable, fruit-based pastry breakfast food before their cross town rival, Post.  

Post may have an edge thanks to plans they stole from Kellogg's. Before Post can work out the kinks in their stolen plans (the pastry tends to set toasters on fire), Bob recruits former co-worker Donna "Stan" Stankowski from NASA to come back to Kellogg's and beat Post to the grocery store shelves which is more vital to the country than beating the Russians to the moon. 

Caution: you should NOT be taking ANY of this seriously.

At all!   

Tensions ratchet up.  

Kellogg's obtains  exclusive rights to 99% of the world's sugar by making a deal with Puerto Rican criminal El Sucre.

Post secures secure rights to Cuban sugar after a visit to Nikita Khrushchev in the USSR. 

It's enough to get President Kennedy involved.   

Bob learns that creating a breakfast product that is served without milk can be a dangerous idea. Bob is kidnapped and threatened by dairy industry's milkmen syndicate.  

A "taste pilot" at Kellogg's is killed in an pastry testing accident. He is buried with full cereal honors:

• Snap, Krackle and Pop presents the widow with a ceremonially folded "prize inside"
• Toucan Sam sings "Ave Maria".
• After the coffin is lowered in the ground, the grave is filled with cereal and milk.

The widow wonders what the hell is going on here.

We're all wondering what the hell is going on here.

But Bob and Stan have done it: they have created a rectangular, fruit-filled food packaged in foil that can be toasted called the.....  Wait for it! 

...

TRAT POP! 

....

What? 

Yes, Trat Pop. 

Anyway....

Thurl Ravenscroft, frustrated Shakespearean actor who is Tony the Tiger for Kellogg's, is convinced by the milk syndicate that the new breakfast pastry will make the cereal mascot obsolete. So Thurl convinces the other mascots to go on strike.  

Just as Mike Puntz of the FDA is set to arrive to certify the...  Trat Pop (they were still calling it that) as safe and ready for public consumption,  Thurl  (his Tony the Tiger garb ripped and shredded to make him resemble the  Q-Anon Shaman) leads his fellow mascots to violently breach Kellogg's headquarters, hoping to stop the...  Trat Pop from being certified by the FDA. 

Does this remind you of anything? 

Is director Jerry Seinfeld being too subtle?  

Mike Puntz? 

Get it? 

...

Is this thing on? 

Anyway...

Too late.  The Trat Pop is certified and Walter Cronkite addresses an anxious and nervous nation, reading a news brief from a piece of Silly Putty (there are reasons) that the attack on Kellogg's is over and the company will be sending to the nation's grocery shelves the new Pop Tart.   

Well, the most trusted man in TV news just told millions of viewers the damn thing is a Pop Tart so Kellogg's immediately changes the packaging to Pop Tart.  

Post rushes it's competing pastry product called Country Squares to grocery stores where the boring staid packaged product just sits there while Pop Tarts fly off the shelves.  

Now famous, Bob is doing an interview on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson when he is shot by Andy Warhol, who is furious that the name "Pop-Tart" sounds like "pop art." Bob survives thanks to the foil packet of Pop Tarts in his jacket pocket.

And then there is an elaborate musical dance number featuring the entire cast of the movie over the closing credits and...

Oh my God! What was that?   

Andrea and I went into watching Unfrosted thinking this would be a profoundly stupid movie.   

Unfrosted is a profoundly stupid movie so on a positive note, this movie met our expectations. 

Unfrosted has a lot of jokes, stumbling and tumbling over each other. If a joke bombs, don't worry. Another one will be along in 10 seconds.  A lot of jokes depend on knowing things like a person who is old as Jerry Seinfeld or me would know as children of the 1960's. 

If you were born in THIS century, there's not a lot for you in Unfrosted. 

Jerry Seinfeld as Bob Cabana is just Jerry Seinfeld as himself.

After bitchin' and whinin' about being an Oompa Loompa in Wonka, Hugh Grant signs on to play Thurl Ravenscroft as a Shakespearean Tony the Tiger furry.  Does Hugh Grant lose a bet? Does he owe a bookie a lot of money?

Amy Schumer as Marjorie Post doesn't really land but Melissa McCarthy as "Stan" is on point and funny as she can be.  

Look, I could hedge my bets and say Unfrosted is not THAT bad and there's some good mixed in with the not so good but...

Yeah, I'm going to render my verdict.

Unfrosted is bad. 

But I kind of knew that going in. So...

So to quote Walter Kronkite, "Well, that's the way it is."  

Your Friday Video Link: The Doctor Who Twist

We've got another new episode of Doctor Who on tonight.

Meanwhile, Your Friday Video Link is the musical dance number from last week's episode, "The Devil's Chord".

Remember, there's always a twist in the end.

Blog Bidness: Please Stand By....

Please stand by....

Or don't.

Just wander off, if you wanna.

Maybe go make yourself a sandwich. 

There will be no post for Wednesday.

Well, other than what this is.

And nothing for Thursday at all either.

Your Friday Video Link will post (on Friday, duh!). It's a Doctor Who thing! 

And my posts on movies will be back this Saturday and Sunday.

Until next time, remember to be good to one another.   

Tuesday TV Touchbase: Dead Boy Detectives and Everybody’s in L.A

Hi there and welcome to the Tuesday TV Touchbase, my weekly post where I write about what I'm watching on TV.

We're kicking off this week's Touchbase with Dead Boy Detectives.  Based on a comic book created by writer Neil Gaiman and artist Matt Wagner, Dead Boy Detectives is about a pair of boys who are dead (ghosts) and work as detectives. 

I hope that settles things for you.  

While the comic book version of Dead Boy Detectives was part of Gaiman's Sandman universe, the TV version of the DBD made their debut in an episode of the Max series Doom Patrol and it's the writing/producing team from that series that is behind Dead Boy Detectives.   

Originally commissioned by Max, they passed on the series and it went to Netflix, home of the TV version of The Sandman.  So DBD is free to connect to Sandman once more. For example, Kirby Howell-Baptiste who plays Death in The Sandman is also Death in Dead Boy Detectives.

Who pray tell are the Dead Boy Detectives? 

Edwin Payne was killed in 1916 when his classmates performed a sacrifice ritual as a prank to scare him, inadvertently summoning a demon (Sa'al) who took him to Hell. Edwin spent 70 years on Hell. No, he is NOT happy about that.  

Charles Rowland died in 1989 from hypothermia and internal bleeding.     

They avoid being seen by Death and taken to the afterlife. They wanna stick around this ol' Earth for awhile longer.  

Because they are ghosts and cannot be seen by human beings, their clients as detectives are other ghosts who need help only they can provide.  

But a case of demonic possession leads Edwin and Charles to cross paths with a young woman named Crystal Palace, a psychic who can among her various abilities see ghosts. 

Crystal wants to be a part of their detective agency and help the living as well as the undead with their supernatural problems.  Charles is OK with this but Edwin is a bit testy on the subject of her joining the Dead Boy Detectives as she is NOT dead and NOT a boy. 

For the record, Crystal thinks "Dead Boy Detectives" is a stupid name.  

Suffice to say, the duo becomes a trio and act as detectives for the living and the dead. Dead Boy Detectives brings it's world to life with the absurdist dark humor we came to know from Doom Patrol matched up with the ethereal wonder of Neil Gaiman's Sandman.   

Elsewhere on Netflix....

John Mulaney has a talk show called Everybody’s in L.A..

Why?  

John Mulaney asked the same question of special guest Jerry Seinfeld about his Pop-Tarts origin movie Unfrosted.*   

Seinfeld's answer: “I don’t know. Because they (Netflix) let me. Probably the same reason why you’re doing this. It makes sense to them, I guess, why they wanted to make it.” 

*For more about Unfrosted, see this weekend's Cinema Saturday post. 

Everybody’s in L.A. ran for six episodes. And ONLY six! 

As John Mulaney explained, "This show will NEVER find it's groove."  

Everybody’s in L.A. has all the working parts of a talk show. The host has a monologue (mostly John riffing on how life in Los Angeles is just so fucking weird), a sidekick (an off the rails Richard Kind), recurring bits (Saymo, the food delivery robot), musical guests, first guests who are A-list celebrities and later guests who are not quite as well known and other guests with specific expertise (what's a talk show without at least one wild life expert?).   

Is this... for real? Or is this some kind of satirical parody of the talk show format. 

As John Mulaney says in episode 3, "We have received feedback. Look, this is really me trying to actually do a good job."   

What is Everybody’s in L.A.  and why does it exists? Mulaney’s issues with substance abuse may provided some context as he explained in the first episode:  “Why even do this show? I dunno. But it gives me something to do. And structure is key for me."   On screen, a graphic identifies him as John Mulaney: Recovering Alcoholic and Other Stuff.

Jerry Seinfeld remarked at one point that it “does seem a guy coming out of rehab would do a show like this… someone who’s going through something, and this is how they’re expressing it.”

Whatever the reason, Everybody’s in L.A.  is an amusing and unusual experience to behold.  

Next week's Touchbase, the series finale of Young Sheldon.   

PLUS in the weeks to come....

The return of Hacks and Interview With the Vampire.   

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here. 

Doctor Who Is NEW!: Space Babies and The Devil's Chord

Well, after a build up of not weeks or months but literally years we get the first new episodes of Doctor Who under the stewardship of the returning Russell T Davies.  

After 4 specials in 2023, we get the first episodes of a new season of Doctor Who from RTD and his new stars Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson.  

Are we relieved? Ecstatic? Confused? Worried? 

We'll dive in after the break with this double-decker edition of Doctor Who Is NEW!  

Caution: there will be spoilers. 

First up is "Space Babies".

So the Doctor and Ruby Sunday encounter babies!

In SPACE!!

....

(cracks knuckles)

Well, my work here is done! 

'Bye, everybody!  

OK, OK, OK! 

Maybe a little bit more detail....??

The Doctor takes Ruby on her first TARDIS trip to....

Wyoming! 

Millions of the years in the past when dinosaurs roamed the Earth!!! 

Ruby steps on a butterfly, fucks up history, the Doctor saves the butterfly, restores history and remembers to turn on the butterfly compensator in the TARDIS.   

But that is just our opener. 

Forward in time to the year 21506! 

The Doctor and Ruby arrive at a space station that functions as a baby farm. It is also, curiously, managed by several babies. Babies who are six years old, but still have the bodies of babies and very advanced strollers to carry them around. 

There's also a monster on the lower deck, a Bogeyman who scares the babies and also the Doctor.

In case you're wondering why there are babies running a baby farm, the government that runs the farm decrees that babies gestating in their various test tubes MUST be born but that same government also decrees there is no money to actually run the baby farm and take care of those babies.  

Did everybody get that? Is RTD being too subtle?  

Never mind the threatening Bogeyman, there is the matter that space station baby farm has limited food and air. All the babies are doomed! Unless the Doctor can make the station not stationary and move it towards a more benign planet that will take care of the cosmic tots.

Thankfully the baby farm's version of a diaper genie has 6 years of poopie diapers building up sufficient methane to propel the station through space. 

The space station is propelled through space to deliver the space babies to safety thanks to a gigantic space fart.

Well, that is... new.  

Keep it classy, Russell!  

There is a scene in "Space Babies" that echoes one from “The End of the World"  featuring the 9th Doctor and Rose Tyler. 

Ruby and The Doctor gaze upon the beauty of space and Ruby marvels that humanity makes it to the stars. And like the 9th Doctor did for Rose, the 15th Doctor sonics Ruby's cell phone so she can reach across time and space to check in on her mother. 

Those points aside, "Space Babies" is very much it's own thing and Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson have a fresh spin on the Doctor/companion dynamic.

Take a breather.  We're back with the 2nd episode for this week's  Doctor Who Is NEW!  

Next up we have "The Devil's Chord" as the Doctor and Ruby visit 1963 to meet the Beatles on to find a malevolent being is stealing music from the world. That being is the Maestro (Jinkx Monsoon), a cosmic being who is to music what the Toymaker is to fun and games.

Jinkx Monsoon is a veritable FORCE, devouring every scene like it's a honey baked pineapple glazed Easter ham. The Maestro make an indelible impact on the Doctor Who mythos thanks the uniquely powerful and outrageous performance of Jinkx Monsoon.   

If this seems too similar in tone to the Toymaker's appearance in "The Giggle", well that is intentional, it seems as the Maestro is the progeny of the Toymaker.  They are part of a Pantheon of cosmic trickster gods that Russell is building to bedevil the Doctor, all in service to a mysterious "the One Who Waits".  

But "The Devil's Chord" does seem less of a coherent story and more of a sequence of increasingly absurd acts of chaos.  Since the Maestro wants to steal music from the world just to watch the world burn, there's a lack of narrative cohesion.

In a call back to the classic series "Pyramids of Mars", Ruby points out that the Maestro could not have destroyed the world in 1963 since she is from the future and the world is not destroyed. The Doctor arranges a short hop to Ruby's present (June 2024) and oh look, the world is destroyed.  

Side note: it seems 6 months have passed between "Space Babies" and "The Devil's Chord".  

For an episode billed as "Doctor Who Meets the Beatles", the Fab Four are little more than an ancillary prop to the proceedings. And it seems Disney+ money is not enough to secure the rights to use even a small part of one Beatles song.  

The episode ends with a big musical number that features the cast dancing through the Abbey Road sets, delighted at the return of music. I suppose the Maestro's cosmic influence was still in effect or something. 

Or Russell said "What the hell, let's have a musical number" and that is all there is to say about that. 

RTD's version of Doctor Who is leaning more on the absurd and the silly, a camp science fantasy perspective as opposed to a more serious science fiction view point.  I am not quite sure how I feel about that approach but I can honestly say I am not bored and I trust Russell enough to see how this plays out.  

And I will say that Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson have lived up to the ridiculous levels of hype and expectation and I am enjoying their turns as the Doctor and Ruby. 

This Friday another new episode drops on Disney+ and I will be back on the following Monday with another Doctor Who Is NEW!