Bookish Notes: Dr Who, Wolves, and Invisible husbands, OH MY!

 

Yesterday was James 22nd birthday and he was very pleased to receive Dr Who: The Movie with the regeneration of the doctor to Paul McGann.  Eric Roberts made for a silly over the top Master. 

I finished Jenn McKinley's first book Books can be Deceiving which was a fun cozy murder mystery and look forward to reading more in the series. 

Claimed (#1 Lair of the Wolven) by J.R. Ward set in the world of the BDB was a hot mess which is disappointing.   Characters were one dimensional and too many plot threads left in the air and of course ended in a cliff hanger. I most likely won't be reading any more of the wolven series. 

Currently reading The Invisible Husband of Frick Island by Colleen Oakley which I'm totally enjoying.  Love the characters and the mystery involved.

"Piper Parrish's life on Frick Island—a tiny, remote town smack in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay—is nearly perfect. Well, aside from one pesky detail: Her darling husband, Tom, is dead. When Tom's crab boat capsized and his body wasn't recovered, Piper, rocked to the core, did a most peculiar thing: carried on as if her husband was not only still alive, but right there beside her, cooking him breakfast, walking him to the docks each morning, meeting him for their standard Friday night dinner date at the One-Eyed Crab. And what were the townspeople to do but go along with their beloved widowed Piper?
 
Anders Caldwell’s career is not going well. A young ambitious journalist, he’d rather hoped he’d be a national award-winning podcaster by now, rather than writing fluff pieces for a small town newspaper. But when he gets an assignment to travel to the remote Frick Island and cover their boring annual Cake Walk fundraiser, he stumbles upon a much more fascinating tale: an entire town pretending to see and interact with a man who does not actually exist. Determined it’s the career-making story he’s been needing for his podcast, Anders returns to the island to begin covert research and spend more time with the enigmatic Piper—but he has no idea out of all the lives he’s about to upend, it’s his that will change the most."

Guest Post -James M's review of Doctor Who Series 12/Season 38

Hullo Whovians. With the twelfth season of New Who behind us, it's time to take a look at the season as a whole including the season finale, the story arc of the Timeless Child and a bit more. So let's get started.

After Series 11 finished in December 2018 and the Dalek episode "Resolution" aired on New Year's Day in 2019, it would be a long time before we heard from The Doctor in  January 2020 with the two part episode Spyfall,  a James Bond parody. The two-parter saw the return of The Doctor's rival Time Lord The Master while the 13th Doctor and her companions Graham, Ryan and Yaz work to solve a mystery involving strange beings made of energy, working with The Master and a madman who wants humanity destroyed. By the end of the episode, the rest of the season was set up with the Timeless Child being mentioned again, having not been mentioned since the episode "Ghost Monument". Also, The Master destroyed Gallifrey and The Doctor's now the last Time Lord once again.

The next episode Orphan 55 saw Team Tardis visit a spa on an unknown orphan planet where they dealt with creatures known as Dregs and discovered that Orphan 55 is actually Earth in a possible future following a thermo-nuclear war. The episode was intense and it ended with The Doctor saying that we have to protect the planet, otherwise, we'll destroy it with our fighting among each other. Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror saw The Doctor meet Nikola Tesla and good old James Edison, history's most brilliant inventors in the United States of America, and them teaming up to deal with aliens who want to use Mr. Tesla for his intelligence.

Fugitive of the Judoon was a big one as it saw the return of the Judoon, who had not been seen in ages, and Captain Jack Harkness, who was last seen in The End of Time Part 2 as well as a couple episodes of the spin-off Torchwood, with John Barrowman reprising his role. Not only that, we ended up meeting Ruth Clayton who turned out to be... The Doctor. Where does she fit in The Doctor's regenerations? Who knows, we'll leave that for later when we tackle the finale.

Skipping past the weird episode Praxeus, we come to the episode Can You Hear Me which continues the Timeless Child arc and sees The Doctor face off against two immortal gods who are stirring up trouble and have to be stopped. Following this episode, we come to the episode The Haunting of Villa Diodati where Team Tardis meets the writer of Frankenstein, Mary Shelly, and encounter the Lone Cyberman known as Ashad, who is a partially converted Cyberman with a visible human face and seeks to restore Cyberman supremacy. During the encounter, The Doctor gives Ashad the Cyberium, an unknown Cyberman substance that can allow you to create Cyberman.

Nearing the end, we come to Ascension Of The Cybermen where The Doctor and her companions team up with a group of humans to fend off and survive against Ashad and his Cybermen forces. The team splits up as they try to escape. The Doctor and Ryan end up at The Boundry at the edge of space while Graham and Yaz end up on a Cyberman troop carrier where they find thousands of Cybermen and end up cornered by Ashad.

On The Doctor's side, as if things could not get any worse, a portal appears and shows the ruins of her home planet before The Master himself pops through, leading into the big finale of the season where The Master takes The Doctor to Gallifrey and they tour the ruins of the citadel, even going into The Matrix where we finally learn about how the Time Lords came to be and who was The Timeless Child.

Spoiler warning, The Timeless Child is The Doctor and she's had numerous lives well before the William Hartnell incarnation. Lore breaking? Not really. She's still a Time Lord.

Anyways, as The Doctor tries to recover from the big shocker, The Master takes out Ashad and uses the Cyberium to turn the remains of dead Time Lords into hybrids known as CyberMasters. What makes these new Cybermen special? They can regenerate. Also, as The Master taunts The Doctor, we get a reference to the Russel T Davies era episode The End of Time Part 1. What is it?

The Master: For Gallifrey!
CyberMasters: For Gallifrey!

The Master: For the Time Lords!
Cybermasters: For the Time Lords!

The Master: For the end of the Universe itself...!
CyberMasters: FOR THE END OF THE UNIVERSE ITSELF!

Yup, its the famous speech Rassilon did towards the end of the Last Great Time War as he prepared to unleash the Ultimate Sanction which was thankfully stopped by the Tenth Doctor. What was the speech like in the episode compared to this.

R: For Gallifrey!

Time Lords: FOR GALLIFREY!

Rassilon: FOR VICTORY! (spit flies from his mouth)

Time Lords: FOR VICTORY!

Rassilon: FOR THE END OF TIME ITSELF!

Time Lords: FOR THE END... OF TIME... ITSELF!

Well, isn't that something?

Anyway, despite the odds, The Doctor is able to come to terms with the Timeless Child revelation and the Cybermen (including The Master) are defeated. But just as we're about to get a sweet, happy but bittersweet ending (with The Doctor's companions and most of the surviving Cyber-War refugees going to 21st Century Earth while The Doctor is in the Tardis coping), things hit the fan when the Judoon show up and throw The Doctor in jail, ending the season and setting up the Christmas Special.

Final thoughts:

This season was pretty good, not a lot of road bumps like with season 11. The only road bump was the freaking Praxeus episode, which I feel is not worth talking about as its a bit gross with creepy stuff appearing on people's skins.

This series/season gets an 8/10. It would've gotten a ten if Praxeus wasn't made or if The Judoon had not arrested The Doctor.

Anyways, can't wait to see whats is in store for The Doctor.
Later!

-JMM

Guest Post -James M's Doctor Who 56th Anniversary Review + Retrospective

Salutations my friends, I'm here to discuss the popular British Sci-Fi show of all time, the wonderful, the well-acclaimed and incredible DOCTOR WHO.

"Allons-y!"
-Tenth Doctor, David Tennant
(Various episodes) 2005 to 2009-2010



I am so honored to be a fan of this amazing franchise and it has a special place in my heart as it had from the moment I started watching this show back in 2015 after a few years of reluctance about the show. Back when I was young, my only exposure to Doctor Who was through the Daleks, who appeared in stop-motion videos I watched on the internet, and a brief appearance by The Doctor himself in a LEGO Harry Potter video. However, in 2013, when I was 13 years old, my pop showed me a montage of Daleks shouting "Exterminate" and I freaked out. I decided, "No, I'm not gonna watch Doctor Who."



A few years later, with pop bugging me about Doctor Who, I was like "Fine I'll give it a shot" and I recorded the episode "Lets Kill Hitler", given my interest in Nazis then, and I soon fell in love with the show. Over time, I immersed myself in the lore of Doctor Who and the show's history, understanding everything about The Doctor, the Time Lords, The Doctor's friends and foes, the universe and everything else including the infamous event known as The Last Great Time War where it originally ended with The Doctor wiping out all the Time Lords and almost all The Daleks. Looking at when the show first aired that fateful day in 1963, I am amazed that it became more than what it was intended to be and survived beyond the sixties, despite cancellation in the 80s.

Who could've thought back in November of 1963, the day An Unearthly Child  first aired, that Doctor Who would become a sci-fi mainstay? Who could've foreseen The Doctor's first regeneration and the changing/recasting of actors?? Who else could've expected our first glimpse at the Doctor's arch enemies, the pepper pot-looking humanoid-turned mutant robot race known as The Daleks? Almost nobody. But if you went back in time to the night Doctor Who first aired and you told somebody in England "Hey, you know about that cool show that just aired? Well guess what, Doctor Who's gonna be a sci-fi staple and become the longest-running TV show fifty years from now." nobody would believe you and would think that you're some sort of madman.

But fifty six years later, those who saw Doctor Who back in 1963 and still alive today would believe you now. This show has had a long history of success with highs and lows, incredible stories and being a bit weird... in a good way. When Doctor Who went off the air in 1989 and experienced a 16 year hiatus, with the show briefly returning in 1996 with a movie for one night, nobody could've anticipated its return thanks to Russel T Davies and the incredible Christopher Eccleston and the lovely Billie Piper. But hey, Doctor Who is still with us and always will be, long after we've kicked the can and the show has long moved on a thousand years from now.



Also, back when the show returned in 2005, who expected The Doctor to be played by a female by the name of Jodie Whitaker. I mean, thats crazy weird, the main character played by men for decades becomes a female played by a woman. The whole idea has been in discussion as far back as 1983 when Peter Davidson was about to leave the show. But Colin Baker came in, the discussion continued, even after Sylvester McCoy came and went and after the show was cancelled. 2017 came along and BOOM, Female Doctor. I had expectations for the Twelfth Doctor's final episode Twice Upon a Time and how The Doctor would react to becoming a woman. I actually expected the Doctor to check herself, look in the mirror and be in absolute shock and be like, "You gotta be kidding me."

But instead, all we got was The Doctor smiling and saying "Oh brilliant" happily before The TARDIS went haywire and started to blow up. *Facepalm* Nobody likes it when expectations are subverted! Either way, Doctor Who has proven to be the best, even when its off the air. In its decades long history, there have been more than just the show. We've gotten comics, novels and video games to name a whole ton. Yes, I've actually collected some Doctor Who comics and I've just about read a few novels. Video games? Thats a different story but I will play one of them soon. I have a few Doctor Who favorites, I have my least favorites like that two parter where The Doctor encountered a creature who claimed to be "The Demon" himself which was interesting but absurd at the same time.

Doctor Who has a legacy, one that will be respected forever. As of this review, series 12 of the revival series has not aired so its best to wait patiently by watching old Doctor Who episodes, writing Dr Who stories (if you're a writer and fanfics are your thing), read Doctor Who stories, play some video games and, yes, listen to some audio adventures. This is CrazyGamerHistorian1999 signing off and I shall leave you all be.

-James M

Not resting on my laurels!

Courtesy of BBC: The Runaway Bride

What exactly does that mean, resting on your laurels?  It basically means glorifying what you've accomplished in the past and not try to further yourself.  I've written a lot of essays, flash fiction and little stories over the past couple years for classes and the temptation to pick one when I'm having an off day or busy day is hard to resist.  However, the point of this exercise, posting everyday is to work on my writing and I don't want to regurgitate or revise something just a little to do a quick post.   I did that a couple years back with most of the posts for an A to Z monthly writing challenge and it was most unsatisfying.   I didn't feel any sense of accomplishment.   So, I'm promising myself not to rest on my laurels.  

Today's goal:  clean up the bookshelves, box up all the 11th grade books, notebooks and papers and make room for the new.   There are always a few books or things that simply disappear through a black hole and no matter how hard I look, they can't be found.  I've been looking all over the house for months for the Artograph Light pad we'd gotten for James to help with his drawing. Something I liked to play with as well.  Just a side benefit of home school.  *grin*   It wasn't in the box nor in his room, my room or anywhere else I looked.  Guess what?  Yep, it was hiding between two large books on the bottom shelf all this time.  Sigh!   It's now in residence in my writing space to play with during the summer.   Yeah!   

James has turned me into a Whovian.  We've been watching the older seasons out of order, which means they sometimes don't make much sense to me.  One of these days he will get tired of me pausing the show to say "Wait, what happened when..."  :)     A few weeks ago  I wanted to know where Donna came into play so watched The Runaway Bride by myself.  Guess what he picked for us to watch today? Yep!