Attack of the Lizard-People
So...I saw "Amy's Choice" and the two-parter, "The Hungry Earth" and "Cold Blood" since the last time I posted. What did I think?
I KNOW this is probably not gonna last, which is why I'm posting this now before I see "Vincent and the Doctor" and realise that the irritating things I've always liked least about the new series have come right back, but for now? This is proper Who! It was intelligent, silly, campy, scary, had NO drooling over the Doctor, from a Companion or anybody else, in all three episodes, had proper oldschool style plots, but also the new series' bonuses of a much prettier look and more intense emotions/relationships between its characters.
"Amy's Choice" was freaky and brilliant, and one of those things where, once you know the twist, you can indeed go back and see that the clues were there all along. All over the place. (I caught the thing about the "cold-burning star" myself early on--HOW can anything be colder than the absolute zero of space itself? Cold isn't something you can keep increasing indefinitely. Absolute zero temperature happens at absolute zero molecular movement. You can't NOT move in any more intense way, than just plain stopping!) And everything with Amy and Rory at the end was absolutely heartwrenching. Awww...
And then in the Silurian two-parter...I agree with people saying that the pace was a bit too slow. It's weird--I only occasionally think the pace felt padded back in the old series when the stories were often WAY longer, but here it didn't quite work. There's gotta be some trick to it. Anyway, I enjoyed all the Pertwee references, even if they were a bit overdone--I had to, I mean, he's My Doctor--and for once, it didn't feel fake and cheap, like "Hey, let's throw the oldschool fans a quick bone to show we haven't forgotten them and then get back to what we really wanna do!" and why? Because, again, nobody was flirting with or worshipping the Doctor. So it felt like a GENUINE respect for the old days of Who, not just lip-service.
Then...the last five minutes.
:(
But now that...GAH!!! has happened, I get the feeling that the stupid flirting will come right back, since...yeah, so that's why I'm writing this now, before "Vincent and the Doctor" potentially puts me in a bad mood again. At the moment, I've finally seen three episodes of New Who that feel EXACTLY THE WAY I'VE WANTED ALL ALONG, so I want to celebrate that. Give the show some credit where it's due.
In other news, you ever found yourself liking a character you're not sure you should like that much? Well, here are some tips as to what NOT to do to make that go away:
1. Look up the show on TVTropes, and from there get linked to actual canon (NOT fanfic!) things that not only confirm what you had suspected about this character's nicer side, but completely blow you away and rip your HEART out...
2. Read about everybody on TVTropes drooling over said character, especially the trait you yourself like best.
3. Watch a scene (again, canon) in which the character you like is the one to do something along the lines of HOLY CRAP THAT WAS AWESOME!, like, sheer bloody-minded Green Lantern level willpower, in a startlingly dark/intense scene that kinda comes out of nowhere in what's normally a really light-hearted series, so that all you can do is stagger back into your seat under the sheer weight of the awesome, and ask yourself "...what the HELL did I just watch?!"
Yeah. Don't do those things. (Of course, one could argue that since all this ended up proving that the character in question IS awesome, that it is now okay to like him and I don't have to worry about it anymore. Still.)
In other other news, in my Chronological Superhero Cartoons Project, I've finished up the '60s Fantastic Four cartoon--which actually isn't that bad, if you can get past the oldschool Hanna Barbera-ness--and now I'm up to the 1978 Plastic Man cartoon.
Plastic Man is a character I knew very little about beforehand, but already I can see EXACTLY why he tends to show up fairly often on "Batman: The Brave and the Bold"--he was ALREADY a comedy character! This might be the first American superhero cartoon to be deliberately rather than accidentally funny due to campy lines and horrible animation, and although it's clunky and doesn't quite work...I can kinda see the seeds for other, greater shows later on in this. There's deliberate sarcasm, goofy plots, and the SILLIEST villians you ever did see. I mean, one of them is a clam. And not even a giant clam--a little, normal-sized one. With an eyepatch. His henchmen have to carry him around in a bucket of water.
There's all these references to bizzarre adventures we don't get to see, ala when Launchpad mentions "that last battle against Dr. Slug" or when Kim and Ron are talking to their ride about how whatever favor they did off-screen for this person was "no big". It's THAT kind of thing. And it's 1978!
My main problem with this show is Bad-Luck Hula, the Hawaiian sidekick kid, who talks in a more tropical version of the way Hal Jordan's Inuit buddy "Pieface" used to talk in the early '60s Green Lantern comics--where everything is somehow related to his state. "Leapin' lava!" vs. "Jumpin' fishhooks!" But, Hula is actually useful as it turns out that apparently he knows everybody everywhere and has tons of aliases in every country. Somehow. So, whenever they need a contact, that's who Plas and Penny turn to.
So far I've only seen four episodes, and although it has that oldschool kids'-show kinda humour that comes across as just plain cheesy nowadays, it looks to be an interesting ride--a deliberate spoof superhero cartoon from that far back. Darkwing dialogue meets disco? Possibly.
...Notorious