In this story by old New Adventures scribe Paul Cornell[ftn], Rose asks the Doctor if it wouldn’t be too much trouble to pop back and watch her Dad die. Ever eager to impress — a character trait of the Ninth Doctor I really enjoy — her friend takes her right to that point, and… she saves his life instead. From that point on, wackiness ensues, as crazy Time Dragons appear out of nowhere to remove the paradox from existence, and the Doctor finds himself short on options, and rather angry with his best friend…

Christopher Eccleston is on record saying that this is his favourite episode. It’s easy to see why. If the Doctor gets a better story this season I’ll be impressed. Previous episodes have sidelined and neglected him on occasion — ‘Father’s Day’ does the former, but not the latter. The scowl on his face after Rose screws with time; his reaction to the TARDIS’ unexpected dimensions; his stern admonishing of baby Rose; “Just.. say you’re sorry”; updating the congregation on his plans via the pulpit, and looking sheepish while fiddling with the key; his disgust at Jackie’s stupidity. And that’s barely scratching the surface. Christopher Eccleston IS the Doctor, as they say, and I’m expecting to shed a manly tear when he regenerates.

Of course, this story is mostly about Rose and her Dad, and it’s great. I’ve watched a lot of TV about father-daughter relations in my time[ftn]. This one manages to be reasonably fresh while dealing with a lot of things that’ve been said before. The disillusionment of Rose as she sees how her parents really are is something we can probably all relate to in some form. Billie Piper is, as always, fantastic, but Shaun Dingwell gives the best guest performance so far this season as her dear old, useless, Dad. What I love about a show like Doctor Who, or Season One of Angel, is that the format allows a guest actor to come in and get equal screen time and emphasis with the regulars. I’m not necessarily against the large regular cast that accumulates in shows like Alias and Buffy, but it does mean that guest characters usually get shafted in deference to regular characters’ development. Dingwell presents both the pathetic and heroic natures of his character marvellously, and sells his rather clever deductions about what’s actually going on.

Finally, for us nerds, there’s the whole crazy aspect to the time shennanigans this episode. In more clinical Sci-Fi universes, like Stargate‘s, time travel can get a bit awkward. Who‘s universe is the sort of semi-magical one where the idea that Time would actually try to sort herself out fits right in. ‘Father’s Day’ pulls off a bit of a Matrix — there’s enough explanations for everything to make sense the first time, and plenty of room for fun speculation afterwards. Where do the Dragons come from? Who remembers what? What’s the limit of Time’s ability to heal itself? Of course, the danger with such scripts is that some people insist on calling them plot “holes”,[ftn] which hardly seems fair. Maybe one day I’ll write an essay on the difference between the two. But not today. You can all relax.

It seems Doctor Who‘s dull patch is over after one episode. Some shows take whole seasons to break out of such things! We should all be grateful.

Footnotes

1. I’ve been thinking about Donnie. Clearly the events of that film are set before the Time War, and the forces manipulating young Mr Darko are Time Lords doing what they used to do to sort out such things.
2. Author of awesome books such as Timewyrm: Revelation, Love and War and Human Nature. And of crummy ones like The Shadows of Avalon, but you can’t win them all.
3. Pretty much every episode of Alias, for example.
4. Ugh, I’ve just found such an idiot. The sort of person who doesn’t realise that “I don’t understand why this happened” and “This shouldn’t have happened” aren’t the same thing. All people who haven’t worked out on a second viewing why the first Doctor and Rose disappear after Rose interferes — or why the TARDIS is in a different space at the end — and complain about it deserve to be shot.

‘The Long Game’ is the first really average episode of Doctor Who to my mind. There were heaps of good elements this week; The Editor, an actual sub-plot, the woman from Black Books, nifty head-opening special effects… But it didn’t all feel like it meshed.

Part of the problem, I felt, was the world-building, or lack thereof. In the year 200,000, the Earth is the centre of a huge empire, we’re told. But there’s no aliens when the Doctor, Rose and Adam step out onto a massive space station — everyone’s human, and the news is just generic reports of disasters and such. While it all turns out to have been part of a clever ruse, I found myself strongly conscious of the budget limitations. If we’d seen some of the news reports, and had them a little more in-depth, the whole thing might have come across better. Perhaps we could have had ‘ad breaks’?

The Editor was a bright spot in a slightly dreary plot. Simon Pegg (of Shaun of the Dead fame) was clearly loving his time as this smarmy, self-satisfied villain, and his scenes were great fun — though he benefited when he had someone to talk to.

“Is a slave a slave if he doesn’t know he’s being enslaved?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I was hoping for a philosophical debate. Is that all I’m going to get — Yes?”
“Yes.”

As I mentioned, we did get a subplot, though. Adam gets split up from the Doctor and Rose early on, and finds that not only is he lacking in the adventuring spirit, but also has a bit of a tendency towards the greedy side of the force. This was great fun: it’s nice to have a character like Adam walking around who could so easily die. The neat connection between the two plots worked nicely, too. The Doctor and Rose’s plot line is somewhat less exciting. After sneaking their way up to the 500th level of the facility, the Doctor has some excellent dialogue with the Editor and then… gets locked up.

And he stays locked up. While someone else saves the day. AGAIN.

In previous episodes, this hasn’t really gotten to me. It made sense for Rose to save the day in ‘Rose‘. Charles Dickens is a pretty big guest star and perhaps deserves his moment in the sun. And it was something of a plot point that the Doctor wasn’t himself in ‘Dalek‘. But there was no obvious reason for the Doctor not to save the day here, and he failed to be clever even in the slightest. Admittedly, he pretty much tells Cathica what to do while chained up, but I’d really like a chance to see him manage a really impressive victory.

The bit players were quite interesting at least; Cathica in particular is a quite believable character stuck in an artificial environment. Tamsin Grieg plays her Nurse with just the right level of salesman to suck poor Adam into his very very bad choice. And Adam himself balances his sneaky greed with a kind of stupid ignorance that almost made me sorry for him. His final talk with the Doctor was excellent, although somewhat spoiled by the lame joke to finish the story off.

So, average Who. I’d cope with it a bit better if there were 22 episodes of the show. As there’s 13, and we’re now over half way, let’s have no more of this mediocrity, please.[ftn]

Footnotes

1. Next week’s ‘Father’s Day’ by New Adventures writer Paul Cornell looks pretty awesome, at any rate.

I want to quit playing video games. I really do. At least cut down. But now E3 comes along and reveals so MANY SHINY THINGS! LOOK AT THEM!! I CAN SEE MY REFLECTION!!!

It’s not fair. And Jade Empire is out. Which isn’t fair either. And Andy has ordered heaps of shiny things from Hong Kong which should be getting here soon. Don’t get me started on how distracting that will be.

After seeing everything this week, I would like to officially announce my retirement from gaming in 2008. I have to be around for the next generation. This date of course is subject to change and will come under review in 2007.

However, as this new series has progressed, it’s become perfectly obvious where the Daleks should fit in, and why they’d be so perfect. With the Doctor’s home destroyed, how perfect to make the Daleks responsible? Suddenly, these lame-looking dustbins become a credible threat simply by having won on at least one occasion.[ftn] Add this vital ingredient to the general public’s association between the Daleks and the Doctor, and you’ve got yourself a good mix. And it’s one that’s exploited perfectly in ‘Dalek’.

This Ninth Doctor has proven himself a particularly fallible one. More of a galactic backpacker than a superhero,[ftn] he regularly screws things up, having to be bailed out by Rose, historical figures, or lame missile-related plot devices. While I’ve enjoyed all the episodes this year, it’s probably not a coincidence that my favourite is ‘The End of the World‘, which featured a very proactive Doctor, who did at least manage to save a whole bunch of people. In ‘Dalek’, he’s still a bit useless, but at least the story’s about it this time. Specifically, concerning just how damaged he is by the “Time War” that’s gone on somewhere between the TV Movie and ‘Rose’.[ftn] It seems, quite a bit, which is a decent excuse, but he’d still better have an awesome hero moment at some point.

Naturally, they bring this out by placing him face to face with the only representative of the other side in that war — a Dalek. Eccleston’s performance in this first scene is amazing. Some British actors have a knack for going over the top, yet still maintaining the reality of the scene — Eccleston has it in spades. His delivery of “Exterminate” was probably the creepiest mix of joy and hate I’ve ever witnessed; spine-tinglingly good. The rest of the episode is damn fine, but things never quite hit the heights of that first scene.

Part of the (minor, very minor) problem is the Dalek. This episode was under a bit of pressure to make them scary again, and debunk all the popular myths. Easily killable? Nope. Stupid plunger arm? Nup. Stupid? No sir. Unfortunately, when you start debunking myths, you can accidentally hurt yourself. It’s like those McDonalds ads which assured us all that it really was 100 percent Australian Beef. It can make you seem defensive. When it comes time to (again) debunk the belief that Daleks can’t get up stairs, the episode falls into that trap. If Daleks don’t have a problem with stairs, why the hell do they have to wait in front of them for five minutes before starting to slowly glide up them? Why don’t they just damn well shoot the people that they can see on the higher landing? Why don’t they bloody fly up the middle of the stairwell?

And you’ll notice I said “slowly” earlier. This Dalek may be nigh-on invulnerable, but it’s still a slow bugger. If a Dalek moved too fast, then yeah, it’d look silly. But it’s barely moving faster than a brisk walking pace in this story, and that’s a problem for me. I can walk quite briskly.

But when the story isn’t becoming bogged down in ticking off things that Daleks are supposed to be crap at, it’s fantastic. “Why don’t you just DIE?” and the Dalek’s retort are amazing. The inversion of the Doctor/Dalek relationship is pretty cleverly handled. The Doctor should really have a chat to Yoda; we all know that fear leads to anger, leads to hate, leads to suffering.[ftn] Rose gets a bit of the plot for once and does well with it, making her own decisions, and going from being initially foolish to arguing down the Doctor at the end. The Doctor and Rose really are a good partnership; perhaps they’ll both get cool at the same time.

The series’ clichés are begining to show, too, so allow me to present some nostalgia for the Andy era of Buffy reviews with my very own checklist:

• Doctor screws up: Yep, his fear gets the better of him and he spends most of the episode panicking first, thinking later.
• Rose looks cute: “He’s a bit pretty.” “I hadn’t noticed.” Not a fan of the singlet look though, let’s fix that.
• Aliens not as they seem: Well, it turns out the Dalek was as it seemed, but then later switched while the Doctor wasn’t looking.
• Doctor says “Fantastic”: Yes, but it’s more threatening than normal.
• Semi-naked interrogation scene: I list this in the vain hope that Rose is next.
• Climactic action that goes on too long: The aforementioned stairs scene.

Overall, ‘Dalek’ is probably one of the strongest episodes so far — certainly the most moving. The Doctor and his backstory are getting more intriguing all the time. Rose is gaining confidence, and the show itself seems to be developing some style. Now if we could just pack a bit more into the forty-five minutes next time.

Footnotes

1. Well, alright, a draw most likely, given the Doctor’s description this week.
2. Coulthurst, Andrew. Coversations with a Rabid Who Fan, 2005.
3. Or between ‘The Gallifrey Chronicles’ and ‘Rose’ if you’re like me.
4. Gosh, I’ve just realised that The Phantom Menace has a quotable line of dialogue. That’s one more than the Matrix sequels managed between them. They should really be ashamed.

Ben Browder in an SG-1 uniform is cool. Ben Browder holding a sword is cooler. Claudia Black in an outfit like that is cool on a different scale that’s hard to compare to the previous two. I’m looking forward to the next season more than I’d have thought. It should helpfully turn up just as Doctor Who ends.

Firstly — Grapefruit isn’t a super popular site. You all knew that. I just thought I’d get it out of the way. In the last week there have been 208 ‘unique’ viewers. But this includes crawlers and search engines, which account for 41% of our traffic, apparently. I myself am responsible for 13% of our bandwidth, unless someone else out there is using Safari. Our most popular Web browser is Firefox. Go Firefox! Yay! Our most popular country is the USA. Yay America! W00t!

The funny stuff comes from the searches though. Not google searches, because they take you to decent sites that people know about. No, it’s MSN and Yahoo! searchers that come our way. Here’s a few of their strings:

• personnel sex show. Bad spellers out for porn I suppose.
• shannon me riley. Looks like someone wants Marc Blucas and our dear Shannon in a threesome.
• my giddy aunt. Now they want my aunt. Those stinky perverts.
• Angel Cordy Buffy. A much more sensible threesome. This one I’d watch.
• do people come back from the dead. When you’re asking Jeeves about such weighty issues you’ve really got problems. I hope we could help, in a ninth page of results kind of capacity.
• will smith the grapefruit. Further proof that when people search, they add random fruit names to their seaches.
• funny animated gif. Heh. You won’t find any of those on the net. Did you mean…
• “mutating humans” -porn -articles -movies -films -comics. How specific. It didn’t even occur to me that people would have mutating human porn. Now I’m oddly curious. I mean, no I’m not.
• Kate Shearman. This was from an Australian site, too. Googling yourself Kate? You’ll go blind. Well, OK, not googling. But Yahooing doesn’t sounds as funny.

Reassuringly, some people google for things like “buffy girl in question” or “Knights of the Old Republic” and come here. Good to know.

• In 2001, the Australian government accidentally deported a mentally ill Australian, apparently to the Philippines, because they thought she was an illegal immigrant. No one noticed this until four years later and now they can’t find her. Over the past three years over 100 people have mistakenly been put in detention for being illegal immigrants when they were lawfully in Australia. Oops!
• Florida has passed a law making it legal to shoot someone on the street in self-defence, without trying to get away first. According to one Florida Republican, “This is about meeting force with force. I’m sorry, but if I’m attacked, I shouldn’t have a duty to retreat. That’s a good way to get shot in the back.” Governor Jeb Bush described it as “a good, common sense, anti-crime issue.” It seems that with this law, attempts to prevent a 13 year old girl having an abortion and to deny Terri Shiavo the right to die with just a smidgen of dignity that we can start looking forward to President Bush III from 2008.

And why do I get a strange feeling of deja vu?:

“This election will be about trust,” said Mr Howard, Leader of the Australian ‘Liberal’ Party, August 2004

“…Character is an issue at this election, trust is an issue at this election,” said Mr Howard, Leader of the British Conservative Party, April 2005

“We … have an absolute right to decide who comes to this country, and there is a concern inside the Government, and I suspect in the broader community, that we are fast reaching a stage where we are losing that right because of the increasing numbers of people, illegal immigrants, who are coming to Australia.” said Mr (Aussie) Howard, August 2001

“…People want to know that immigration is controlled. They want to know that the asylum system is being used to protect those genuinely fleeing persecution, and not abused by those seeking a back door into Britain … I want to see a new approach to immigration and asylum – an approach based on clear principles. No one should be allowed to claim asylum when they reach Britain.” said Mr (Pommie) Howard, February 2005

And I thought human cloning was banned. Well, at least it seems that the British will have a little more sense and vote for the slightly less evil party today.

These are sweet machines. I love waiting for these little increments, rather than, say, buying a 15GB iPod for $700 and then next month meeting someone who bought a 20GB one for $600. Not that that happened to anyone I know. The top-of-the-line, 20″ iMac is now $200 cheaper than it used to be, but has an 0.2 GHz processor boost (to 2 GHz), a way better graphics card with twice the video memory, bluetooth and wireless built in, and various other cool things.

I was going to order it online tonight, but I’ve been persuaded that it’d be far more fun to order it and pick it up from the store. Maybe I’ll get me one of these too. But, er, probably not.

The Apple Blogosphere is alight with talk of Tiger. Perhaps soon I’ll be able to use the damned thing.

One of the players at the event had an entirely foiled Goblin Bidding deck. He used white out correctional tape on all of the text boxes, obscuring the entire box. Then he wrote a different biblical quote on every card. This was caught in a deck check midway through the tournament. Since the correctional tape used to white out the text boxes had no appreciable thickness to it, the cards were not marked in any noticeable way. After the head judge was advised of the matter, he took pictures of the deck, and then talked to the player. The player had the full Oracle text for each of the cards in question, which allowed him to narrowly avert a penalty.

On to the Uba madness… :) Say I’ve got an Uba Mask in play, and a Goblin Welder. In my opponent’s draw step he removes his card from the game, as per Uba Mask. Then he passes priority, and I weld out the Uba Mask (preferably for another Mask). Then we go to his main phase and the removed card can no longer be played, because ‘its’ Uba Mask is gone. Using this trick, I can lock out any card my opponent draws unless it’s an instant. (Which is where the Null Brooch comes in!)

Now, say I’ve got TWO Uba Masks in play, and a Goblin Welder, and a Memory Jar… This is where things get interesting. I’ve got no cards in hand, of course, because the Masks replace actual drawing. So, what happens when I activate the Memory Jar…? (The aim, of course, being to ‘switch off’ any counterspells my opponent ‘draws’.)