Very Hottest Photos

“Day of the Moon” sounds like someone might be dropping breeches before the end credits. Those of you with your fingers crossed for Karen Gillan will be disappointed. So will anyone else holding out hope for another character. The title actually refers to the Apollo moon landing, which plays heavily into the resolution of the silence story. For now, anyway. I assume we are not done with them this series.

Right off the bat, I liked this episode far better than part one. But it was still enormously overcomplicated and trying too hard to be clever. Steven Moffat is obviously dropping in all sorts of subtle points which will become more important in the overall series, but feel out of place at the moment. I can appreciate a writer attempting to make a deeper than usual show, but it does feel strange when the future repeat value when a viewer understands everything that is happening is a richer experience than watching the first time around. Some bits are too obtuse, I guess is the best way to put it.

The episode is the darkest we have seen in a long time. It begins months after the end of the previous story. The cliffhanger is resolved in such a blink and you will miss it manner that one has to wonder why it was set up in the first place. The real story begins with Team TARDIS being hunted down by Canton Delaware after they have spent all this time doing recon on the Silence. They are are “killed” by Delaware and taken to Area 51 where the Doctor has been held prisoner in the interim. It is all a ruse to get them together so they can surmise a way to defeat the Silence, who have ruled the Earth since the Stone Age through the power of suggestion.

The Doctor decides to use the moon landing and a highly unfortunate statement by a captured silence that humans “ought to kill them on sight” to broadcast that message to the whole world watching on television. Human do rise up to kill every Silence they see. The aliens are forced to flee Earth or face their own genocide.

The silence kidnap Amy in the middle of it all. Her kidnapping serves no real purpose other than some character development for Rory. His vow to find her anywhere harkens back to his guarding her inside the Pandorica for 2,000 years. His dedication makes his eavesdropping discovery Amy is pregnant and appears to hint it might be the doctor’s rather than Rory’s more painful. Rory is almost as put upon as Mickey Smith used to be.

The Doctor may very well have something to do with the baby. Any discovers photos of her with the same little girl in the space suit while searching a nest of Silence. The very last scene of the episode shows the little girl months later claiming to be dying, then regenerating like a Time Lord. Since the Doctor performs a discreet medical scan on Amy, he surely suspects something is up.

“Day of the Moon” is entertaining, but very little of it has to do with defeating the Silence. If more than ten minutes of screen time is devoted to their defeat, I would be shocked to know it. The bulk of screen time is hints at what is to come in the future. I am anxious to find out, mind you, but what an odd way to resolve a two part story. It is unusual to cast aside the main story in order to ask more questions.

Nitpick for old school Wholigans: When the Team TARDIS members are being “killed,” River Song actually does die by plunging out of a skyscraper. With the rest of the team assembled, the TARDIS travels back in time to position itself under her in order to break her fall. Although she died originally, the Doctor changes events to save her. But wait--he has said in the past that is against the rules of time travel. More specifically, he refused to travel back in time to save Adric after he sacrificed himself to destroy the Cybermen back in “Earthshock.” Can this be reconciled? Perhaps the doctor no longer cares about the rules of time since the Time Lords are gone. The Tenth Doctor was keen to break the rules there towards the ends of his tenure. The Eleventh Doctor maybe more so.

“Day of the Moon” is more exciting than the premiere. It can be puzzling in parts with the knowledge you do not know how long you will have to wait for a pauoff, but anticipating that you need to know this stuff to appreciate the impending payoff nakes it a must see.

Rating: *** (out of 5)

It is time once again to round up all the bloggers gracious enough to link to me this week.

Camp of the saints links to Raising McCain.
Motor City times links to Taco Bell Demands Apology from Law Firm Dropping Class Action Suit.
Sentry Journal links to Taco Bell Demands Apology from Law Firm Dropping Class Action Suit.
Classic Liberal links to The Significance of the Resurrection.
Proof Positive links to Drew Barrymore and Stevie Lynn Leow.
Say Anything Blog links to Drew Barrymore and Stevie Lynn Leow.
Teresamerica links to Drew Barrymore.
Drew Barrymore video links to Drew Barrymore.
So Kathy Griffin links to The X-Files "Fight Club."
New Horizon links to Doctor Who "The Impossible Astronaut" and FMJRA #94.
Anamiros links to Doctor Who "The Impossible Astronaut."
Pirate's Cove links to FMJRA #95, Blogroll Spotlight #91, and Karen Gillan.
Troglopundit links to The Eating Dead.

A sincere thank you to all who linked this week. If you linked to me in the last week, but I do not have you here, you unfortunately fell through the cracks of Technorati, Google Blog Search, and Sitemeter. Please drop me a note in the comments and I will update with your link.

“Invocation” revisit’s the hit and miss motif of the creepy, murderous child which The X-Files did frequently in its early years, but mercifully leet pass on in later seasons. While some episodes with such kids are very good, I am inclined to think it is a worn out gimmick that does not have the emotional impact it once did. It does not pack much of a wallop here, either, but it is not really the point. “Invocation” gives Doggett some much needed character development, though still with too many blank spots to make the episode a classic.

Billy Underwood, a seven year old child who was kidnapped from a playground ten years ago mysteriously returns to the same playground ten years later having not aged a day. In fact, a medical exam shows he still has the remnants of an illness he was treated for days before his disappearance. Not only has he not aged, but he is literally the exact same as he was the day he went missing.

Doggett has a particularly high emotional response to missing children cases. He does not buy that billy is the exacyt age he was when he disappeared. He is more inclined to think a teenage suspect who was questioned in the matter a decade ago has held Billy all this time, perhaps stunting his growth. While Doggett harasses the suspect now, Scully, while not quite pinning down a paranormal cause, is nevertheless there is not a normal explanation for the case.

Billy turns out to be homicidal with all the trimmings. He tries to stab his little brother on two occasions. Everyone but Scully rationalizes he has been traumatized by whatever he experienced the previous ten years. But Billy also keeps disappearing and reappearing His reappearance in the former suspect’s car leads to his arrest, interrogation, and eventual admission that he was bullied by his stepfather to kidnap billy years ago. He tried to protect the boy, but his stepfather eventually murdered him. In a twist, Billy’s brother has now been kidnapped, too. The “ghost” of Billy, lead the agents to his brother’s rescue as well as his own, shallow grave.

While Billy and his family’s plight evokes a lot of sympathy, “Invocation” is a character driven episode. The emphasis is on Doggett. There is a clearly personal need for him to solve this case, and he does not want to hear any supernatural goings on as the sole explanation. We discover subtly exactly why as he pulls out a photo of a young boy from his wallet during a quiet moment. We are not clued in on anything beyond that at this point, which is a shame. It is obvious the boy is his son. He must have been kidnapped with the outcome of the kidnapping turning out badly. But why do the writers not let us in on that? We do not even learn his name is Luke yet.

What is worse than the lack of overt explanation is Scully. She yanks Doggett back once when he gets too insistent Billy talk about his ordeal the first time they meet. Doggett insists he has much experience dealing with missing children. At that point, we are thinking professional experience, and that may very well be the case, but he also talking about personal experience. Scully tells him he is full of it. Okay, I realize he lied to her when they first met, so she still questions his honestly. But where is the old Scully who had an empathy for suffering people? The one who used to bring mulder back to reality whenever his obsession with proving the paranormal made him lose sight of the real people involved? Lord, I miss her.

There was a time when she would have known something was up with Doggett. They would have discussed the issue of Luke’s kidnapping. You would think after spending so much time with mulder’s obsession over discovering the fate of his sister, she would be more in tuned with Doggett’s pain. The revelation would have created a bond between the two of them while also letting the audience in on Doggett’s past. We might have even started liking the guy. But no, it is a wasted opportunity.

Another point I dislike about Scully now is how rapidly she accepts paranormal explanations for things, but cannot explain why because she lacks Mulder’s expertise in the subject. She compensates by being cold and rigid. Doggett has taken her old role of urging to consider the case a normal crime that may happen again to another little boy if it is not solved. The problem is that Mulder, whom she is trying pitifully to channel, could be snapped out of his one track mind towards the paranormal when a person was in danger. She is not channeling that aspect of Mulder’s personality. Doggett lascks her old skill of pulling the True Believer back to reality.

Quite frankly, s\Scully is useless here. She does literally nothing but stand around and berate Doggett while he does all the investigative legwork. He is the one to eventually rescue Billy’s kidnapped brother and arrest the culprit beyond the crime while Scully trots along behind him without any proactive gestures on her part. Top cap it all off, when Doggett wants some explanation at the end for how Billy’s ghost appeared, she tells him there is not one and storms off brooding. I get it. She is in pain over mulder being missing, good heavens, her behavior is atrocious.

Before any X-Phile asks, yes, I have taken into consideration Gillian Anderson is tired of the role at this point, so her negative feelings are shining through. That is not as good excuse, however., nor is it a serious evaluation of the problem. The writers are changing the dynamic of Scully from Skeptic to Reluctant Believer, but it is simply not working. That is not what the Scully we all know and love is about.

While I try to avoid speculating what might have been when reviewing episodes, this is the first of the eighth season episodes I am certain would have been vastly improved if it was a Mulder and Scully case. I cannot put my finger on exactly why, since Doggett’s personal issues are what we are supposed to hang our hat on. Maybe it is because Mulder always had a soft spot for children who were crime victims. Scully did, too, back in better days.

As far as comparing “Invocation” to episodes from the final two seasons, it is still one of the most solid. The continued unnecessary tension between Scully and Doggett is annoyingly ridiculous, particularly considering what he has done for her over the last couple episodes. She had bonded with Mulder over far less far more quickly. Certainly there is a desire to keep him at arm’s length in hopes Mulder will return, but she is still acting like an unprofessional ingrate. If I were Doggett, I would be begging for a transfer after this one. It is definitely a Doggett episode, but it would have been better if we had been given more details about his son--like his name--to build up more sympathy, but there you go.

Rating: *** (out of 5)

Last week’s of the first episode of Doctor Who series six broke ratings records. My cashing in on the interest in Karen Gillan photos paid dividends right along with it, so I am not going to let a good thing pass me by. Here are two more of the lovely Ms. Gillan, including one those shows off what is generally considered her best asset--those gams:(Part of The Other McCain's Rule 5 Sunday.)

As the resident comic book guy, I should comment on the recent revelation superman is about to renounce his American citizenship because he is tired of his actions being associated with American policy. In other words, truth and justice are now separate from the American way as far as he is concerned.

First and foremost, this is a stunt to boost sales. A tasteless stunt, but a stunt nevertheless. Sales for comic books have taken a huge dive in recent years. They sell half as much as they did a decade ago. There are a lot of reasons for this--cover prices rising much higher than inflation, the popularity of Pokemon cards, and kids reading Harry Potter instead. But what you can really trace the problem back to is collector speculation over stunts like this. In other words, comics publishers never learn.

I was at my peak as a comics fan back in 1990 when it became an industry driven more by superstar artists than characters. There were a handful of artists who were able to sell just about any comic by drawing the issue. Marvel Comics, the company who was fortunate enough to employ most of these artists, got the idea to give each of these artists a new title featuring a major, popular character to both draw and write for themselves.

To make the launch of these new titles special, each one had a gimmick. There were multiple covers, trading cards included, hog rams on the covers--all sorts of peculiar variations. Collectors brought up multiple copies of these issues in all variations tas speculation on their value. To illustrate, the Amazing Spider-Man was the best selling title featuring the character, selling 400,000 copies per month in 1990. When Todd McFarlane, arguably the hottest artist in comics at the time, launched the adjective free Spider-Man #1 in the summer of 1990, it was sold with three different covers: a black, a silver, and a scarce platinum cover. Marvel sold five million copies. A years later, their were six variations of Jim Lee’s X-Men #1 for which marvel sold eight million.

The problem is that the same 400,00 regular readers were buying up all the millions of copies expecting to eventually make a mint off them. Anyone who understood supply and demand knew that was foolhardy, but comic publishers do not care about the secondary market like fans do. They kept pumping out comics with all sorts of special gimmicks while creating ’events” to justify them. Remember that Superman has been dead? Batman had his back broken? Captain America was murdered? Spider-man revealed his secret identity to the world? Now Superman is renouncing his citizenship. After being dead, for a while, no less.

The gravy train did not last for publishers. By about 1994 oor so, collectors started seeing those millions of copies of comics they had boxes of in the closet flooding the market. Comics stores could not give them away because everyone had at least ten copies they wre trying to unload themselves. Including me, in all honest. Fans left the hobby in droves even as publishers attempted to adjust to their misjudgment. Even a publisher of new comics needs to watch what is happening in the secondary market.

These days comics have been relegated to maintaining the copyrights in order to license characters out for movies, toys, and fast food premiums. The only reason Disney bought Marvel comics was to produce film projects and have Spider-Man appear at Disneyland. The content of comics is pretty much irrelevant beyond keeping characters in the public’s awareness. Hence, we are back to stunts in order to do so.

If history is any indication, two things will happen. One, Superman will return to status quo once interest in his citizenship renunciation dies down. Two, publishers making so much money off licensing fees they can consider publishing comics a loss leader can ignore how fans feel about these gimmicks. There is nothing anyone can do about it other than lament the rapid death of the comic book industry.