Documentary Review: An Adventure in Space and Time

For Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary they really went all out and had a big special, screenings in theaters, and honest to goodness simulcast in the US and they also had this little thing, a nearly 90 minute dramatization of the situation surrounding Doctor Who as it just started and how it succeeded. I think that, almost more than anything, shows just how big this show has become, can anyone else think of any other show which has had a documentary on the making of it? I'm sure there might be a few others but I can't think of any at the moment, especially considering just how niche the audience for something like this must be.

An Adventure in Space and Time

TV Series Review: The Time of the Doctor (Doctor Who 2013 Christmas Special)

Wow, I thought I would have this up last night guys except 1) I was on a train which did not have wi-fi which caught me off guard 2) I got in amazingly late due to what shall now be referred to as The Great Virginia Manhunt. Sorry about that, my anime review for the week is already up and my end of year wrap up should be up later as well, although I always intended to publish that one on the 31st.

Here we are, it's been an odd ride but it's time once again for the Doctor to regenerate and, oh wait, Moffat is still the series runner too? I'm actually hoping he steps down soon in the next year or two as well not only because it's time for some new blood working on the show but also because this special in some ways summed up all of Matt Smith's tenure on Doctor Who: good parts and bad parts side by side in a single episode.

The Time of the Doctor

TV Review: The Day of the Doctor: The Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special

As long time readers of the blog probably already know, my feelings towards Doctor Who are mixed. At times I love it and at other times I grumble with my friends over what the show is doing and a lot of the news about the 50th had me grumbling. There were two ways they could have done this, one would have been a silly thing that was more about celebrating the show itself and the other was using the 50th as a chance to have a big story that would affect the entire show. Given the fact that the pre-revivial Doctors were saying that they hadn't been invited, and the news that they were suddenly adding in another Doctor, which really messed with the "mythology" of the show, it was clear they were taking the second route and I was getting rather nervous about it. I felt a bit reassured when they put out the Night of the Doctor short just before, and interested to see that in doing so they seem to have canonized a lot of the Big Finnish radio dramas (which I still really need to get around to listening to), but I was still a bit nervous going into the simulcast, who knew what was going to happen!

The Day of the Doctor (Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special)

Summary: The Doctor has just been summoned to UNIT (with Clara in tow, having just picked her up for another round of adventures) where he runs into a series of curious things, a painting of Gallifrey as it burned, pictures with their frames broken from the inside and missing figures, and a time vortex which seems to lead him to a past self we never knew of who is just about the destroy his home planet. Wait huh?!

The Good: I really did like about 2/3rds of this story (the part I liked the least was of course the ending so I can't really talk about it here) and the story was a far better one than I expected. The story was a large enough one that it made sense that there were multiple Doctors involved and it was fun to see Smith and Tennant bounce off of each other (and the show did a good job at keeping the side characters involved but without dominating the story and detracting from that interaction, I feel like the writers have finally hit their groove for how to balance Clara into the story and I like that). Really that's what made it for me, the UNIT side of the story would have been a pretty good episode if it had been just a regular tv one and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's just the other half of the story, dealing with the impending blowing-up of Gallifrey, that I had some problems with.

The Bad: I'm still confused as to what the purpose of the UNIT lab assistant wearing a homemade version of the Doctor's scarf was, I've seen people say she was supposed to be a stand in for the fans (and the show has done that several times since the revival) but I'm still rather confused about it. Minor quibbles aside, it's been two weeks and I'm still a bit torn on how I feel about how the story ended. On the one hand it does neatly tie up a problem that the story has had since the revival and gives the Doctor new purpose again, on the other hand I feel like it cheapens some of the emotions the Doctor went through and considering that the current doctor is going to regenerate in his next appearance, well, I feel like that quest just won't have the same emotional punch as it could have been. So I am left with the same feeling I have had after many an episode of the show, while I really did like parts of it I can't help but feel like they tried to write a "cleverer" story than needed and in the process made it weaker instead. I know that a lot of people liked John Hurt in this as the War Doctor but honestly I never warmed up to him, I can see they were trying to imitate the dynamic that The Three Doctors had but for one it just didn't work since we didn't have that connection to him (I saw a lot of people saying that you could tell the lines were written for Nine and, while I didn't feel that way when watching the show itself, I have to admit it would have worked so much better if he had consented to come back*). Two, you have to be a broken person to truly believe that eliminating every man, woman, and child of two races is the best solution to an unwinnable problem and Hurt didn't seem that broken to me, I just had a hard time believing that this character was supposed to have already been pushed to that point which made a lot of the conflict feel rather flat. Finally, I also feel like the plotline with Queen Elizabeth I was just odd, yes I know it culminates in a call-back (multiple ones actually!) but her acting just felt odd to me the entire time.

The Production Values: I guess the BBC realized they needed to give the show a larger budget than usual considering how many sets the characters go through. I thought everything looked fine, the zygons didn't quite work but having seen some 3rd/4th Doctor stories with some terrible alien costumes I'm just thankful it wasn't worse. Honestly I don't have much to say on it other than the fact that I really did like how the story had so many different sets and all the visual bonuses in them, that should make rewatching it with friends sometime rather fun.


Despite how lengthy that bad section is I did enjoy this way more than I expected and even if my expectations hadn't been super low I feel like I would have said the same thing. In many ways the ending is fitting but if it had just been a bit different, if it had been Nine's struggle, a character whom we've already seen deal with the fall-out, and knowing that Eleven would be the one to deal with a different kind of fall-out from the event, then I think I would have been much more satisfied with the event.

For those who have already seen the series and need more to watch, or haven't and want more to watch anyway, in addition to the short mentioned earlier I recommend The Five(ish) Doctors for people who are fans of the original show (in short, the fifth, sixth, and seventh Doctor's all team up to try and appear on the finale with a heck of a lot of in jokes and shout-outs for classic fans) and I still need to see An Adventure in Time and Space, a documentary on making the show, myself. Sadly it looks like neither of those are legally available online at the moment but since Netflix currently has all of NuWho streaming I bet both of them will pop up in the next few months or so, just when we need something to tide us over between the Christmas Special and whenever the next season starts!




*and from what I've read I understand why he didn't, sounds like the tensions were high when he had to leave and it has to do with the particular set of classism that still exists in Britain and not quite anywhere else.

TV Series Review: Doctor Who (The Edge of Destruction)

In case anyone is going "geeze, I wonder why Helen hasn't talked about that classic sixth doctor special BBCA ran!" well I didn't see it since they changed up the schedule on me and showed it Saturday night instead of Sunday so I plain missed it. I don't plan on having that happen again though, especially since I really like what I've seen of the seventh doctor so far. In any case, again no production values section on this one but I will note that this is what is referred to as a "bottle episode" (well, plural, two 30 minute episodes in this case) where they reuse the sets they already have and bring in little to no extra cast members, which in this case means our core four characters and the Tardis. Which is amusing since short of Journey to the center of the Tardis this season (and maybe The Doctor's Wife a few season's back) we've barely even seen the inside of the Tardis in NuWho, it's funny to think how the BBC actually had more than just a console set for it in the 60s!


Doctor Who: The Edge of Destruction

Summary: The Tardis is mysteriously malfunctioning and everyone is on edge as a result but nobody can figure out what's going on or how to fix it. 

The Good: Finally the characters are starting to match up with the characters I met in The Aztecs, I actually hadn't been planning on seeing this episode (it was bundled together with The Daleks) until I looked at the summary for it and noticed that was the main point to this episode. The Doctor especially but even Susan and Barbara are changing a growing (Ian seems to be changing the least but he starts out the most "developed," already someone with a logical head on their shoulders with leadership skills). And it was a bit fun to actually see more of the inner workings of the Tardis, although considering how old the film is you still don't actually see that much of it.

The Bad: I was a bit thrown at how the Doctor was starting to be nicer in the previous serial and then goes back to being mean and suspicious here at first, I wonder if not all the writers were talking to each other and that's where the inconsistency comes from. And I also had a bit of a hard time following just what the characters were trying to do to fix the Tardis and why everyone was getting so mad. Part of this can be blamed on the quality of the footage and I'm sure some of it was because I had a damaged DVD again but I do think part of it was that the writing wasn't as clear as it could be (or maybe it just needed more camera angles so I could better see what was going on).

So, to watch or not? Well, it does help show how the Doctor of the very first episode becomes the nicer Doctor of later on and the serial is only an hour long, but I did find it a bit boring. There isn't exactly a better serial I can recommend instead but if you're not trying to watch every single serial and just casually picking and choosing then you might want to skip this one.

TV Series Review: Doctor Who (The Daleks)

Continuing along with my First Doctor watch I'm now on the second serial of the series, The Daleks and I was surprised how early on they were introduced, for some reason I had always assumed that they came later. But nope and, looking at the list of episodes, it appears that they pop up at least once more in even the first season, although my inner cynic wonders if they did that partially to recycle props. Speaking of which, like I said before I don't see much point in devoting an entire section to talking about how a 50 year old tv show looks so briefly, there are a few spots in the very first episode (out of seven, this is a long one) where I think something happened to the film and all the settings and costumes look hideously cheap but if you're going to watch Doctor Who, especially these early episodes, this is to be expected.

Doctor Who: The Daleks

Summary: After escaping the cavemen it's clear that the Doctor still doesn't have a very good grasp on how to fly the tardis and they end up on the planet Skaro. Some of the group are curious about the nearby abandoned city but when they go exploring they find themselves trapped by strange creatures called the Daleks and end up being in a fight between daleks and the thals.

The Good: Oh good, that character development for Barbara I had been so worried about last time started coming through here, heck it's noticeable even within the course of the serial. I'm a little sad to see that she seems to be changing by growing harder and a bit less nice than she started out but, if it means less screaming than the first serial, then I'm fine with it. There's not much change in either Susan or Ian this episode, although I am starting to see some in Ian, but there was also a bit of a change in the Doctor this episode. It's clear that he'll have to start opening up to at least his granddaughter soon, and is starting to regret some of his actions and is starting to get along with Barbara. Although Doctor, were you seriously the one who gave the daleks information on how to time travel? I know you were trying to bargain but that was a terrible idea.

The Bad: So you're on the second serial of your brand new show, no idea how long it's going to be around or (probably) even what characters aside from your main four will be reoccurring later, naturally this is going to lead to some ret-conning of things that happen early on and I think that's partially what happened here. I rechecked the wikipedia page for Genesis of the Daleks and everything does match up better than I initially thought but by this point there have simply been so many dalek stories that trying to keep everything straight and chronological is daunting. For that reason I feel like this serial isn't as necessary for a fan to see as you might first think; sure it's the first appearance of the daleks but again it's not their creation and I just think there are better dalek based stories out there. Now if you want to watch the episode in order to see the characters change then it's more necessary but if you're just looking for a dalek episode to watch I say skip it.



So, if you want to watch this to see how the characters, and the show develops then by all means watch this serial, it's long but it's okay. If you just want to watch a dalek story though, ehhhhh there are better ones. I already mentioned Genesis of the Daleks, Remembrance of the Daleks was also a good one (and chronologically it happens within a month of An Unearthly Child I believe) and while I'm not so fond of a lot of Nu Who dalek episodes Dalek was quite good (I want to recommend Asylum of the Daleks as well buuuut it does kind of screw up continuity by existing, there's no way the Doctor should be able to get to Skaro after the time war). Finally I'm way more amused than I should be that it only took until the second episode to bring up nuclear fallout and such, welcome to the Cold War everyone! (no not the recent episode)

TV Series Review: Doctor Who: An Unearthly Child

As I said previously, I really want to watch even more Classic Doctor Who this summer and, presented with a small selection at the local college library and no recommendations I panicked and decided that I might as well start with the beginning. In light of the fact that this episode is just a few months under 50 years old I'm going to cut out the production values part of the review since, well, it's a 50 year old tv episode, it's not going to look fantastic (and I might do this for other first doctor episodes since I rather doubt I'll have more to say on them). With that in mind, onto the review and I'm going to try and make sure that all of my reviews go back to their proper days this week, sorry about all of that everyone!


Doctor Who: An Unearthly Child

Summary: Ian and Barbara are school teachers who both are having trouble with one of their more brilliant students, a young teen named Susan who seems to both know more about their subjects than they do and also is bored by a lot of parts of them. Under the pretense of being concerned about her sudden bad grades the two attempt to find out where she lives with her grandfather but all they find at the address is an old junkyard with, well, junk and a police box inside. As any sci-fi fan knows this is not a police box however and soon all four of them find themselves in 10,000 BCE and caught up in a fight between cavemen.  

The Good: As I believe I've said before, I like it when the Doctor is written as a slightly darker, or even just grumpier, character and the Doctor here is a quite grumpy old man. It's a little hard to reconcile that with the man who stole a TARDIS to explore the universe, although considering that element must have been added in earlier I'll live (heck, here Susan says that she came up with tardis as a nickname which is completely different from what the rest of the series implies, again especially considering these are details I can let them slide here). Funny enough I think I liked the way this serial introduced the companions and the Doctor more than how a lot of the Nu Who companions were introduced, probably because I like the "ordinary people thrown into adventure" trope quite a bit (although I do feel like that scene dragged a bit, although that was certainly just to fill time within the episode) and after seeing Nu Who repeat the "person tries to track down the Doctor" trick a few times it's gotten a bit dull. Plus Ian and Barbara clicked for me almost immediately, I hope they stay around for a while since I want more adventures with them in it, well, I would like one detail to go away though. 

The Bad: There was a lot of screaming in this serial, like enough to fill a slasher horror film. It was a bit jarring since in The Aztecs there was no screaming at all and I've got the second and third serials checked out to watch next so I'll be interested to see if Barbara and Susan (but mostly Barbara) gradually stop screaming or if that was written out early on for being annoying (it also felt a little incongruent with Barbara's character earlier in the episode and with the fact that Susan is an adventurer, I really hope that all the screaming vanishes sooner rather than later). 


I feel like someone told me before that this serial wasn't really worth watching, or maybe that it wasn't that good, and while it certainly wasn't the best there's no reason I'd advise people to not watch it. It drags a bit and the characterization is a bit off but considering that later Doctor Who serials do refer back to it, and that in general it's good to know where something comes from, but it's hardly a bad serial and with the break until November it's not as if fans don't have the time to watch the older stuff.

TV Series Review: Doctor Who 7.2

And to wrap up the live action shows I was following live (as opposed to hearing about them years later and then scouring my libraries/Netflix for them), the latest half season of Doctor Who. Man, guys I hope we go back to full seasons soon, having only six or seven at a time just doesn't feel right, and since I see people talking about the 50th anniversary special in November but not about more episodes I guess we probably won't even get anymore this year beyond that and the Christmas special. 


Doctor Who

Summary: Still grieving after losing Amy and Rory and also Clara in the Christmas special the Doctor has become curious, why did he meet what seems to have been the same girl twice even though that should be impossible? So he tracks her down again, this time to contemporary England where the similarities between her and the others persist and she falls into adventuring with him while he tries to puzzle out this impossible girl. 

The Good: I was a fan who was already okay with Clara when the season started but I didn't have really high hopes for her. But lo and behold I ended up really liking her, more than I liked Amy at points but honestly Amy was never one of my favorite companions. And I seem to be in the minority here but I really liked all the individual episodes too, some of them had weird premises but everything actually managed to work for me. Best of all we got to really see the range of Matt Smith's acting this season, I find it hard whenever I watch something with an unfamiliar actor in it to always tell how much they're acting (especially since from the video interviews it seems like Matt is bit of a silly guy anyway) but here he had a great chance to show his range and now I want to see him play all kinds of different characters in future stories just to see what else he can really do.

The Bad: I think I've figured out why even though I like more of the individual episodes of Moffat's tenure more than RTD (or at least, with those episodes I tend to not remember half of them and when they come up in conversations they feel like something I fever-dreamed) but not the whole show, I just don't like how he structures overall story arcs. It's a bit frustrating how every time the companions are super-special-important people (which RTD didn't do as much, you could argue he did something similar with Donna in Turn Left but more or less Rose/Martha/Donna became special through their travels, Amy/Rory/Clara were already special because they were it feels like) and part of me always goes "how do you expect me to believe that this character is insanely special when we've only had a season or half a season to foreshadow that?" even if I know (logically) that few shows are even written out far enough in advance that they could sprinkle these clues to my satisfaction. And they did actually make an attempt to retcon part of Clara which I did like (although they revealed that at the completely wrong point of the episode, it just completely upset the feel to have the reveal at the very beginning but not get to the moment of the reveal until 3/4ths of the way through) but in any case, can we have some more characters who become awesome and amazing because of what they go through, not characters who start as mere plot devices to ignite a story and only later begin to feel real?

The Production Values: Gonna try renaming this section, in any case, this season looked pretty good, for once I have no complaints about how anything looked! Sure there were plenty of scenes where the effects weren't movie standard quality but nothing looked so off that I was drawn out of the show visual wise or sound wise, I'm a happy fan here!


Sooooo, I guess I'll give this a 3 or 3.5 out of 5 stars and again, in a bit of an unpopular opinion, I'm not looking forward to November for reasons that come up in the last few minutes of the last episode so it's too spoilerly to state. It shouldn't take most fans long to piece together what's going on but if you aren't sure talk to me and I can fill in some details that I read prior to that episode airing. In any case, now that there's no new Doctor Who for a while I'm going to try and watch some more Classic Who so if anyone has any suggestions for what serials to watch leave them in the comments/shoot them to me on twitter. Ideally I want to start with the First Doctor and work my way forwards but I'll take any suggestions people give me!

TV Series Review: Doctor Who: The Pyramids of Mars

And it's time for another classic Doctor Who serial, I really like how the serials that BBC decided to air complement each other so well. The Aztecs had one of the shows famous lines about not being able to rewrite time and in this episode when Sarah Jane questions if they really need to save the day since she obviously came from the future the Doctor shows her how much the future will change if they don't (and I really do think these two go together given the shows guidelines about what can be changed and what can't). In Tomb of the Cybermen we see the character Victoria and in this serial Sarah Jane is running around in some of her clothes (which are actually period appropirate for once!). And in Spearhead from Space the Doctor begins his long term relationship working for/with UNIT and here they were aiming to go back to them for a bit, and as usual end up in the right place but the wrong time by several decades. 


Doctor Who Classic: The Pyramid of Mars

Summary: While the Doctor and Sarah Jane were attempting to get back to UNIT after some adventuring they accidentally end up in what would become their headquarters a few decades too early, although knowing the Doctor and his relationship with UNIT that might have been on purpose. Also, knowing how adventure calls to the TARDIS it may also be no coincidence that they land in the middle of a plot to unseal an alien known as the Egyptian god Set from his prison on Mars. 

The Good: This was a fairly solid serial, it shows something that I've been thinking about a lot lately which is how it seems like in Classic DW the companions were always having their own side adventures instead of just tagging along with the Doctor (like they seem to do most of the time in Nu Who) and I like that, even if it's still a bit hard to see the companions as fully fleshed out characters when you only see a single story with them. Especially since in Sarah Jane's case my first experience with her was in Nu Who when she was completely and fully an independent adult whose a bit more jaded than she is here, honestly that made for some odd dissonance but that's my problem, not the show's. Other than that, while the twist on Egyptian mythology didn't work 100% for me it worked better than I would have thought if someone had just said "they were all aliens-" "suuuuure, because everything on Doctor Who is aliens-" "who sealed Set on Mars" and it's always a good thing when DW actually pulls off their bizarre set-ups.

The Bad: One thing I think I've said a lot over the years is how I don't like it when Doctor Who kills off a lot of it's one episode characters. Not because this is a family friendly show or such but because it always feels so pointless, the Doctor (and companions) rarely seem to be torn up over it and we never see how other people react to their friends and family mysteriously dying and that does frustrate me. I did feel like the story got a bit too overly complicated by the end but I guess that was the result of them needing to fill time. 

The Audio/Visuals: Oh dear, we’ve entered that weird era of British television where the shows were at least partially shot on a higher frame rate, here it’s really obvious to me that it’s not the usual 24 frames per second when the characters move around quickly. Even though I would love for us to move to a higher frame rate in general it’s still unusual enough to look jarring and, considering most of the special effects look cheesy to start with and I’ve heard it’s even harder to make them look good at higher frame rates, yeaaaaah. Weirdly enough there are some moments when the special effects look really good but by and large you can tell that most of their props were made of foam and for some reason that detail pulls me out faster than almost anything else. Also, there are some shots where the video looked a little distorted, like they were shot with a lens that was slightly fisheye, and I don’t think that was on purpose. I could be crazy and imagining something that wasn’t there, and it could be a result of aging over the years, but that didn’t really help the show regardless.


Yep I really can't wait until I'm back near my libraries that have a pretty good selection of classic Doctor Who (/the time to browse and see just what Netflix has for streaming), the more I watch of it the more I like it, bit sad that by the time the next classic serial rolls around I won't have BBCA anymore so who knows how I'm going to watch it. Actually, at this rate I won't have BBCA for the finale of the current season, that's going to be frustrating considering how spoiler laden the internet will be.....

TV Review: Classic Doctor Who, Spearhead From Space

It's that time of the month again, well it will be next Sunday since that's when the Fourth Doctor Classic Serial will be anyway, time to dive into the BBC archives! And this is interesting, the only bit of the Third Doctor I had seen before was the Three Doctors special which apparently is the end of a story arc which starts with this episode, the very first episode of the Third Doctor (and I've already seen Two regenerate into Three). I went in a bit hesistant since I didn't really like Three in the special but hey, I didn't really like One there either and ended up loving The Aztecs so this should probably end well!


Doctor Who: Spearhead from Space

Summary: Directly after The War Games, the Doctor has been forcibly regenerated by the Time Lords who have also played with his memory (as well as his previous assistants/companions who are back in their own time and places) and left him stranded on Earth with a TARDIS that can't move. He's soon picked up by UNIT

The Good: The more I see of Classic Who the more I'm mazed at just how many aliens/villains they brought back for the new series, I had no idea that shop maniquens had been a source of terror for British children for decades! On that note, it's probably a good thing I never saw these episodes as a kid myself, while some things looked a bit hooky to my young adult self the basic idea is sound and certainly works. Also, as I mentioned earlier I was a bit worried going into this since I didn't really like Three in The Three Doctors (thinking back on that I just didn't like that special at all, I was a bit offended by how bad the costumes were to be honest) but yet again I ended up liking him. I caught a bit of the documentary about the third doctor beforehand and they were talking about how this Doctor was a bit James Bond like and yep, I can see that with how the Doctor was acting and it was a fun change of pace to see him more as a guy who is actively seeking out action rather than a guy who seeks out mystery and adventure and just happens to find adventure along the way.

The Bad: Weirdly enough, since I've seen episodes with UNIT in it before but they felt a little awkward here. Of course, that might have been the intention, setting up future conflicts with the Doctor since he's going to be stuck on Earth for a while, but I couldn't even tell if the Brigadier and the Doctor has met before, I think so but I'm still not 100% positive. It was also a little hard to keep some of the various characters/factions straight but I think that was more my fault for trying to knit and watch at the same time, overall I think that yet again the BBC made a really good choice here.

The Audio/Visuals: It's our first serial in color, yay! And, according to the internet, because there were some interesting production problems the serial was shot on film (as opposed to, erm, whatever they normally shot on, film is apparently superior to whatever that was) and apparently it's good enough to be released on blu-ray (the only pre-2005 serial to do so). The special effects seem less hooky than the cybermen last time, which is funny since the reason for the whole "the Doctor is grounded on Earth" storyline is because the BBC was having budget cuts. Then again, if Doctor Who ever manages to have a cheaper looking costumes than those cybermen ones then they probably had negative budget to work with.....


Not much to add one, bring on the Fourth Doctor and I can't wait until I'm near a library with more Classic Doctor Who serials again!

TV Series Review: Doctor Who: Tomb of the Cybermen

As a head's up, tomorrow (erm, later today EST) starts webcomic review month so I guess I just won't get my last anime review of the month in (which is fine since I've had barely any time to watch a full series anyway) and I'm planning to try and post every other day so I can get through all the titles I have. Planning anyway, as you guys can tell this semester has been a bit of a ride and this blog just isn't as important as any of my classes.

In any case, this was the second Classic Doctor Who serial BBC America decided to show this year, although I missed it since the tv was otherwise occupied and this one is not streaming on Netflix (in fact, I'm not sure if any Second Doctor serials are streaming on Netflix, they only have 13 Classic serials avaiable for streaming to start with). It can be found elsewhere on the internet however, and surprisingly easy, and obviously is available on DVD for the US and I would assume in the rest of the English speaking world and elsewhere.


Doctor Who: Tomb of the Cybermen

Summary: The (second) Doctor and assistants Jamie (the kilt wearing Scotsman) and Victoria (a Victorian-era young lady) arrive on a distant planet to investigate what is believed to be the tomb of the cybermen and run into a group of archeologist doing the exact same thing. However, some of them want to do more than merely investigate the cybermen and there are many people in the group hiding secrets.

The Good: I've been told that Victoria has a really good character arc through out the show and it seems like she just joined the Doctor and Jamie the previous episode so it's interesting to see her start changing even as the serial progresses. The Doctor has some more quite moments with her which I also really like, I love it when the show contrasts his adventurous side with a quieter side that shows that he does care about the people who travel with him, and I still like Jamie as well. 

The Bad: I had a bit of a hard time keeping track of which characters were backstabbing who by the end of the episode (I think, including the Doctor and company there were three or four, maybe five, different factions?) and at one point I thought one character was actually a cyberman but either they abandoned that idea halfway through filming or they just had some really weird writing at that point. There were a few too many handwaves involving the technology for my taste ("how do we figure this out? Oh it's based on logic so it's going to be easy!") but that's hardly a new thing in the show. Again it seems like BBC America has chosen some rather solid serials to show so I don't have many bad things to say about them.

The Audio: Everything sounded fine, honestly I was so distracted by some of the costuming that I didn't really notice anything weird here.

The Visuals: I know that classic Doctor Who had a (practically literal) shoestring budget and I've seen that in the past. However, the cybermen costumes were literally the crappiest costumes I have ever seen and guys, I've been to half a dozen anime conventions where half of the cosplays there were thrown together out of someone's closet. Not to bash those outfits but those costumes that people put together for fun with no budget still look eons better than costumes from a professionally produced show which supposedly had a budget. Honestly I don't want to see any more older cybermen stories (since it sounds like this wasn't the first time they had appeared) if this is the kind of quality I'm going to get, at least the actual video quality wasn't that bad for having been discovered (if I recall correctly) in someone's private collection a decade or two back.


Based on the current pattern I'm not expecting them to show the Third Doctor classic serial until late March (right around when the new, erm, half season starts) and that I'm really curious about, like the First Doctor I've only see the Third Doctor in the The Three Doctors special and I didn't like him as much there. So BBC America, show me what you have in those archives!

TV Series Review: Doctor Who: The Aztecs

So the BBC (or at least BBC America) has decided to show a serial from each of the previous Doctors, one a month in order, this year and started with a well-known serial from the first Doctor's run, The Aztecs (well known for it's line about how you can't change history, funny enough the producers, of the current episodes, were quoting it in the behind-the-scenes look left and right even though they like to ignore the idea when it suits them.....). First time seeing the first Doctor, hoping that Netflix has more serials to help tide me over until the new episodes in March.

Doctor Who: The Aztecs

Summary: The Doctor, his granddaughter Susan, and school teachers from 1960s England Ian and Barbara have landed back in ancient Central America at the height of the Aztec civilization and Barbara is mistaken as a reincarnation of a former high priest. The group goes along with it, mainly since they accidentally locked the Tardis in said former high priest's tomb and can't get it out but all run into cultural differences as they try to sort their way through the political structure and choose whether or not to try and interfere with history.

The Good: One difference I’ve noticed between the classic doctor who and Nu Who is how the companions feel less like people who accompany the Doctor and more like people who are just traveling along with him. In Nu Who the Doctor comes in, something is strange, and he, along with the companion(s), try to fix it. In Classic Doctor Who, the Tardis lands somewhere, the Doctor goes off to explore, everyone else goes off to explore and everyone ends up having, well, adventures that end up intersecting throughout the course of the story. It makes the companions feel much more like rounded characters instead of the story devices they sometimes come off as in the new series (heck, in the new series it’s been stated that the Doctor keeps people around to keep him from doing stupid stuff, the story even acknowledges that they are partially devices). I’m finding that I prefer this approach a bit more than the way it works in the Nu Who series, although I think part of the reason the new series doesn’t do this as much is because the stories are shorter time wise and this would be tricker to pull off in one hour vs two or three.

The Bad: Despite all of this I found myself not looking at the screen much or looking at stuff in another window for a lot of the story which usually means it's not as engaging. Of course, part of this could be that the visuals weren't that impressive, or even the fact that it was in English and I didn't have to read subtitles meant that I wasn't missing much, if anything, of the story by not looking but I still feel like this means the story didn't grab me as much as it could've if I did think about doing something at the same time. And part of this may be because while I saw part of the serial on BBCA I had to turn in and caught the rest on Netflix and couldn't recall exactly where I stopped and had to rewatch a good chunk to find my place, all in all it was a very solid story but it did seem like it was missing just one or two important things.

The Audio: Not much to say here, it's fun to hear how similar, yet different, the opening and ending themes are for the show almost fifty years ago and the serial itself was well mic-ed so I could hear everyone clearly.

The Visuals: As mentioned earlier, the show was shot in black and white, is letterboxed, and somewhat grainy. So it's not super great to look at but it's not terrible. The costuming seemed fairly good (although my knowledge of Aztec costumery is sadly lacking) and they created quite a few settings (although you can tell that the background for one of the rather dramatic scenes is just painted on which is a bit distracting and the material used for a lot of the sets looks distinctly, fake as well). Also, still no idea how they thought to pass Susan off for a student (middle school? high school?) back in the very first serial, here she looks much older and it really makes me shake my head and wonder what they were thinking there.

So I'll give this one a hearty recommendation for being accessible to relative newcomers of Class Doctor Who (holy crap it's a serial that has no aliens in it aside from the Doctor and Susan!), has a good story, and is a bit slow but overall well paced (streaming on Netflix for those interested but you have to search Classic Doctor Who, searching Docto Who: The Aztecs takes you to the DVDs but not the streaming section oddly). Now, onto Tom of the Cybermen!

TV (Special) Review: The 2012 Doctor Who Christmas Special

Originally I wasn't sure if I was going to watch this let alone talk about it, just been feeling a bit burned out on Moffat's projects lately (for no real reason), but then I remembered that the new companion was supposed to be introduced in this episode and that's rather important. And, after watching the special, I realized I had a lot of thoughts about it (both good and bad) so I guess I'm also going to talk about it!


Doctor Who Christmas Special 2012: The Snowman

Summary: The events of Angles Take Manhattan are still affecting the Doctor strongly and he has sworn off helping humanity again, although it seems like he can't stay away and can't stop being curious about all the strange and unusual things around him. Like, snow with a memory and a habit for producing snowmen with toothy grins, although it's going to take that and a human girl named Clara to get him back into the saving-the-world business.  

The Good: I really liked how the Doctor was written and handled here, it's immediately clear that the end of the previous (half) season has had a strong effect on him but that he's still the same Doctor we've seen for the past few years, he can conquer grief or at least be distracted from it. And it was fun to see Clara unsettle him and show just how much he likes to show off to his companions (and the audience as well), all in all it was a pretty entertaining episode and reminded me that yes, I would like the second half to hurry up and get here already.

The Bad: I'm in two minds about Clara, on the one hand she's fun, sassy, and the dynamic she creates with the Doctor is fun (since through her actions she shows how set he is in some of his ways, also just how much the Doctor loves to mentor his companions to become greater than they were) but, well, she did come off to me as a bit shallow by the end. Sure it's hard to completely flesh out a character in one episode (and should you really completely flesh someone out in their first appearance) but the show has done that with some of it's side characters before, it's certainly possible. So yes, rather mixed feelings and I'm also a bit worried about Jenna-Louise Coleman's character for a completely different reason, apparently it was a last minute choice to have her play a character in the first half and I'm worried that Moffat is going to make the series more timey-wimey than it needs to be again. Yes Doctor Who is a show that has a lot of camp and a lot of strange stuff in it but it still needs well, call it a base of logic to stand on, rules that it can't contradict, and I'm afraid that it's about to do some very odd stuff that's going to mess with the continuity*.

The Audio: Hmm, didn't notice anything really new music wise. The intro may have changed but I was a little distracted by the (trippy) visuals to notice. All the music worked however so no complaints here.

The Visuals: Well I finally figured out why Vastra looks odd to me, despite all of the prosthetics on the actresses face it still has a very human facial structure (and eyes), I do wish in that the designers went even father with the design. Other than that small revelation on my part, no real comments on the episode. It seemed weird that Jenny was wearing pants at one point but I don't know nearly enough about Victorian era fashion to actually say if the rest of the clothes were accurate or not and as for the setting, well, you see one Christmas story set in a snowy, especially Victorian, London and you've seen them all.


It feels odd to rate a single episode so I shall sum this all up by saying that while awkward at times this was still enjoyable, even if it makes me worried about what's coming next. Which I guess is also your average Doctor Who episode.....



*for those who want spoilers, doesn't the end of it imply that reincarnation or something similar exists in the Whoverse? Which I think would just make things complicated or I could be over-thinking it, only the second half will tell and who knows when that is coming out.  

TV Series Review: Doctor Who 7A

Geeze, is it just me or are they making anime shorter these days? ....wait this is a regular tv show not anime, whaddya mean they're making these seasons shorter too? It feels like season seven had barely began before it was over and there's a two month gap until the Christmas special and I don't know when the second half of the season starts after that. So after two years of this kind of pacing I can say quite certainly, no I don't like this half season nonsense and sadly there was a bunch of other stuff in this season I didn't like either.

Doctor Who

Summary: The Doctor continues to travel around all of time and space in his little blue box and companions Amy and Rory return. As the years go on however they're starting to get a little tired of being thrown into adventures at the drop of a hat with no prior warning. But they don't want to completely cut the Doctor out of their lives and finding a balance between these two lives is proving hard. 

The Good: My favorite parts of this season (and the parts I thought were the best) were the ones that really looked at the relationship Amy/Rory/the Doctor have now since, someone correct me if I'm wrong, this is the first time the series has had companions to the Doctor who don't always travel around with him and I loved how they explored that (yes there have been reoccurring characters like that, such as the Brigadier, but that's slightly different). There was also a particular line of the Doctor's from the fourth episode that I liked, where he says that he's tired of giving people second chances, they take advantage of it, and then he has to go and lay down the smack anyway. His change in attitude, from being a "coward" who gives people second chances to someone who is becoming much harder is something that's been happening since the series restarted with the ninth doctor and, given what the 12th Doctor is supposed to be like (as was established in the original series) I think this is on purpose and I really like where it's going. Given how this half season ended I foresee this trend continuing and I really do want to see how the Doctor changes next.

The Bad: For me there was something off in nearly every episode and, well, they bugged me. In the first episode sure it's a cool idea to see all the damaged daleks from wars and such, there's just the teensy-weeny problem that Skaro is supposed to be time locked so that episode shouldn't have happened at all (plus Amy's line, I've known some people with a similar problem say it killed a relationship but Amy just wasn't in a relationship where that should've mattered). The second episode was tons of fun and, while I can see the Doctor galloping through the universe with Nekfertiti as a companion, why grab everyone else as well? (Hell, why did the daleks grab Amy and Rory before that? This all feels much too convenient) I didn't like the third episode at all, aside from the Doctor's aforementioned lines, it felt like someone said "hey you know what's cool? WESTERNS" "yeah let's do one!" , they tried too hard to play with gray and grey mortality (I was feeling pretty unsympathetic to both sides by the end) and I also felt like the framing was pointless. While I had no problems with the fourth episode (which shared a writer with the second episode funny enough) the fifth episode, ehhhhhhh. Doctor Who is not a serious science fiction show but it uses time-travel a lot anyway, that's okay. But it's not okay when it says "okay, here are the mechanics the show operates by" (in this specific instance, time paradoxes) and then disregards them when the plot calls for it, it really felt like Moffat was fighting the plot to get the story to go where he wanted it and that's not very encouraging. 

The Audio: While there must have been some new pieces of background music in this season it was music from previous seasons that I noticed the most (also, I hadn't realized it before but a lot of the character's themes are rather similar to each other which I like, it helps give the music some continuity). Honestly I didn't notice the music most of the time, only when things were quite for a moment and then the music picked up as if to say "nope, the worst is yet to come!" but I think during the break I'll make an effort to look up the soundtrack since I do like what I remember.

The Visuals: While various bits of CGI weren't movie quality, nothing this season looked terrible. The dinosaurs on the spaceship looked fine, I've heard that they used a lot of real daleks from collections and such for some of the scenes in Asylum of the Daleks yet I couldn't tell the real daleks apart from the CGI ones. I feel like Doctor Who is becoming a bit smarter with their budget, or maybe the second half of the show is going to look absolutely terrible in comparison.


So in short, this season had a lot of weak spots and some good spots and I'm very confused about how I feel about it. By now I would like someone else to replace Moffat as the showrunner, the way he writes just feels a bit awkward and yes, I'm one of those people who isn't too impressed by how he writes women (I wanted to say some stuff about River Song here but I was afraid that might make the review too long, I'll probably put something on my tumblr in the next month or so when I have a chance). But I'll be back for the second half, fingers crossed that it has more strong episodes than this part did however. 

TV Series Review: Doctor Who 2011 Christmas Special, The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

I've debated in the past whether or not to review these Christmas specials since they're only an hour long but, partially since it is a self-contained story (and it looks like it will help connect season 6 to season 7) and partially since I don't have much else to talk about right now (unless you guys want me to talk about the 17th Precinct pilot that surfaced on the web which is pretty darn cool). As usual with these Doctor Who Christmas specials I was a little nervous about it, I haven't liked most of them but there's no more new DW until next fall so I wasn't in a position to be picky about it. 

Doctor Who 2011 Christmas Special: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

Summary: After being helped out by Madge Adwell in 1938 Great Britain, the Doctor returns in 1941 to help her throw a great Christmas for her two children while she is putting off telling them that there father has been killed. However one of the children opens up a Christmas present before Christmas day, a portal to another world, and the Doctor discovers that the world isn't as safe as he had thought it was.

The Good: While there were plenty of over dramatic and cheesy moments there were also quite a few genuinely touching moments, something that caught me off guard. I thought the story was well paced and worked well both as a standalone story and as a nice connecting point between the end of season six and the beginning of season seven and has a few other nods to earlier episodes in the series. I was also surprised by Madge Adwell, from the trailers she seemed like a rather stern and un-fun parent but instead she had a surprisingly amount of whimsy and tolerance for the strange, something that you really need to have to be a likable Doctor Who character.   

The Bad: That said, at times Madge seemed a little odd, like she wasn't a fully fleshed out character, her conversations with the miners were very strange. There was also a little plothole at the very end* but thankfully it's not one that should ruin the episode for most people. Honestly this was pretty well done but those some of the bits with Madge and all the parts with the miners came off as just awkward for me.

The Audio: Lots of lovely music in there, not sure if any of it was new but I recognized a few familiar theme and thought that everything worked well together.

The Visuals: There were some shots in the episode where the lighting didn't look quite right (it looked more like the lighting you would see for a promotional shot, like the one at the top of the review, rather than light you would actually find at the scene^) but other than that the episode looked great. There wasn't any strange CGI (by television standards anyway), the settings looked good, the costumes looked just fine, overall this was a really well put together special.


This is probably my favorite Doctor Who Christmas special now (mind you considering that I actually dislike most of the others this doesn't mean too much) and overall I thought it worked really well, wonder if it'll be on the season six DVD sets.



*spoilers! Where was the rest of the crew for the airplane? Dead? Didn't make it somehow? Just out of sight? I'm also assuming in this case that Madge has a "reading steiner" in effect so she can remember the earlier time line.
^come to think of it, Doctor Who has a very distinct way they light their promotional images and the lighting in the show looks different as well, but then again I've noticed that British tv shows and American tv shows do lighting differently so that's probably why.

TV Series Review: Doctor Who (season six part two)

And here's the current Doctor Who review! Again, this is the second part of the sixth season so you need really need to see the first part and I would recommend watching season five since that's a good place for a new viewer to start (there are multiple good places to start in DW but season six is not one of them). Other than that, there's not much I can say to introduce this show that's not a spoiler, this season has been heavily structured around a central plot arc, although it does still have some episodic episodes, and I'm a little torn because I wanted a more central plot focused season but this didn't quite seem to work.

Doctor Who

Summary: Following the game-changing revelation at the end of the first half, the Doctor is traveling across the universe trying to find Melody Pond and after a summer of waiting Amy and Rory are tired of waiting, meet up with him again and join up. But another big revelation is just around the corner which changes everything again and the Doctor is becoming more and more worried about his impending death from the very first episode. 


The Good: Overall I like what Moffat is doing to the Doctor, Russel T. Davis made him into a larger than life character (one who was occasionally declaring himself as a god by the end) but Moffat seems to be bringing him back down to just "a mad man in a box." This season had two episodes that were both very good at doing this, The Girl Who Waited and The God Complex, which were both excellent episodes on their own and I thought were among the best of the combined season. The Girl Who Waited really let Karen Gillian (Amy) show off her acting chops (I'll admit, Amy is sometimes such a static role that I was wondering how good an actor she is, this episode removed all doubts in my mind) and Closing Time was a really good episodic episode that did what it needed to, provide a quick chance for everyone to catch their breath and then move into the final episode.


The Bad: The final episode was both convoluted and too simple, complicated in execution and simple in result is probably the best way to put it. I feel that there was a better way to tell this story so I did feel a bit disappointed with the final episode. I also wish that Night Terrors had been kept in the first half of the story like it was supposed to and either had that push A Good Man Goes to War back one episode or nixed The Curse of the Black Spot (the episode it switched with) entirely and put in a different episode which showed the characters dealing with the big twist of Let's Kill Hitler. I feel like that revelation was dealt with partially but really needed more screen time, perhaps not a full episode but at least a full scene which it never got. I do believe that this season actually could have been better if they weren't constrained by the 13 episode limit/requirement (especially with the mid-season split*) but that's a part of the series that the writers know from the start so it's their job to make it work one way or another, not to leave someone like me wishing they had more or less episodes to do it in.

The Audio: No changes have been made to the opening theme and I feel like I'm starting to notice the background music for this series more and more, there are a few tracks from it I would love to own but have no idea how to find. Other than that there's not much to talk about, it's silly to talk about voice acting instead of regular acting for a live action series, and there was some creepy children chanting but that did it's job well also.


The Visuals: It's rather obvious that a good chunk of the budget was spent on CGI in the final episode but a lot of the imagery still felt awkward and obvious, I would have liked it to have been toned down a bit to make it look better. The rest of the series, both CGI and traditional sets, were good and I thought that the settings for some of the episodes (such as The Girl Who Waited and The God Complex) were really well done. So all and in all this season looked pretty good and I, like pretty much every other fan, love the Doctor's new green jacket, such a nice cut.

I didn't like this season as much as I hoped to which made me sad but I hardly think it was the worst thing ever (good lord, the last time I saw so many passionate people trying to explain why a show is the best/worst thing ever was all the debates that people had over my summer reading book my freshman year of college, even in the anime fandom I've never seen arguments this vehement and often). I'm a little hesitant about the Christmas Special since I generally don't like those as much (also, I'm agnostic, it's strange to see a tv episode focused solely around a holiday that I don't have a religious connection to any more) but I've seen a few production pictures for it which did make me a bit excited for it. Until then, back to the Classic Who! 


*which reminds me, if the reason for the split was Sherlock, which I know they started filming back in April, then why isn't it out yet? The BBC recently made some budget cuts but I'm suspecting they've had budget issues for a while and that's the real reason this season was split and why next years is delayed.

TV Series Review: Doctor Who (The Curse of Fenric)

Hah, you guys thought this would be on season six didn't you? Well I haven't actually had time to watch the last episode yet plus I like to give myself more than a day to reflect on things before I write a review, the timing here is actually just a coincidence. But why did I go back to Classic Who now when I have so much else to watch you might ask, it was actually because of one of the new episodes. Some of my friends on facebook had seen the episode before I had a chance to and were half freaking out half saddened by it so naturally I start speculating what happened. I guessed, from their comments, that something happened to a companion (I guessed it was probably to Amy) came up with a few theories, discarded an obvious one and then thought of something that I had only heard about happening once in Doctor Who and lo and behold that's what happened. I remembered what serial it came from, asked a friend of mine who loves Classic Who if they happened to have the DVDs for it (and they realized immediately why I was asking for them) and it turns out this was one of their favorites as well so I was in luck. And now, back to the Seventh Doctor and amazing companion Ace for a very satisfying serial.

Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric

Summary: The Doctor and Ace have landed in Northern UK in World War II and the Doctor is intrigued by one of the scientists who is using a code cracking machine to try and translate centuries old Viking runes in the local church crypt. The runes don't tell a happy story though and with mysterious Russian soldiers showing up on the beach will this story end unhappily as well?

The Good: On the advice of my friend I watched the special edition of this serial which had edited together all the episodes into one movie and, going by what my friend said, rearranged some scenes to better match the order they were in the originals script (apparently the order had to be changed to fit in the broadcast times). I liked not having to fast-forward through the opening and ending credits each time so this was a nice feature, although I'm curious which parts were switched around for the tv version. Regardless, Ace is now one of my favorite companions after this episode (partially because she is one of the few to really yell at the Doctor when he's keeping her in the dark) for how resourceful and capable she is. She's a fully recognized character and, something I've pointed out before as a difference between Class and Nu companions, it feels like she's traveling with the Doctor for her own reasons and expects to have some fun and adventures without him, unlike all the current companions who travel with the Doctor just because of the Doctor.

The Bad: Part of the reason I'm so curious about the change in order of events in this serial is because there were several points when I didn't understand why there was a scene change from one to another one, why that second one was so important at that moment, and had a little bit of trouble figuring out what was going on at a few points. The head of the English forces also seemed mad for no reason (was he paranoid? possessed? just plain crazy?) and I was completely confused by his motivations for the entire story, it felt like the writers needed someone to cause problems and that he was the man for the job. Honestly there were a number of little bits about this serial that I either didn't pick up or that confused me, perhaps they would make more sense on a second watch-though but I already knew all the major plot points of this episode and that didn't seem to help much.

The Audio: One thing that I didn't even notice while I was watching is how absolutely none of the English characters sound like they're in northern UK and apparently it was even in the script that some of the actors accents should change but that certainly didn't happen here. The opening theme still sounds incredibly 80s (which for me isn't a good thing) but other than that I was paying more attention to the visuals on screen than any of the background music, background music from live action shows just doesn't stick with me as well for some reason.

The Visuals: My friend mentioned that the special edition included some touch-ups to the special effects and either they were wrong or the touch-ups were really good since none of the special effects jumped out at me in a jarring manner (they still weren't the best but they were regular, Doctor Who level, looking decent effects). The prosthetics on some of the creatures still looked rather silly however (and I wanted to burst out laughing each time the two girls-turned-monsters appeared on screen, such 80s hair) but again, Doctor Who has never had the budget needed to do a lot of really quality special effects.

So a good character episode but I didn't think the actual plot was so great, or at least that it was execute in the past manner it could have been. But oh well, I like the Seventh Doctor and Ace pretty well so I did enjoy this serial pretty well, now let's see how I enjoy the current stuff!

And now for something different, Diversity in everything else under the sun

 As I said in the first post, books are hardly the only kind of fiction I consume. I read somewhere between 30 and 50 webcomics a week, I've spent this past summer watching waaaaay too much anime and rounded that out with a few movies and tv shows and I've noticed some interesting and different trends in each medium concerning LGTB and PoC characters. So I'll cover all of that in this post starting with anime and working my way through each medium (warning, I watch/read some really weird stuff, it's just that most of it is good weird stuff). As a refresher, the point of the original challenge by the Diversity in YA people was:
By diverse we mean: (1) main characters or major secondary characters (e.g., a love interest or best friend kind of character) who are of color or are LGBT; or (2) written by a person of color or LGBT author.
LGTB=Lesbian, Gay, Transsexual or Bisexual
PoC=Person of Color, anyone who isn't of white European ancestory


Despite the fact that I watch a lot of anime I'm actually even less of the target audience for it than I am for western YA novels but since that didn't stop me from talking about books I don't see why that should stop me from talking about anime. Also, in the context of this challenge, anime is a bit odd since all of these titles are produced by Japanese staff (original creators, voice actors, directors, producers and animators in most cases) and nearly every show is set in Japan so, hair colors notwithstanding, most of these shows feature entirely Japanese casts as well. However, most of these anime are really lacking in the LGTB character department and sadly in the strong female character department as well (and almost every foreigner that appears in any anime ever will be heavily stereotyped, Japan has some issues there). However, when I was making up this list I noticed something funny, the shows that aren't explicitly set in Japan (in most cases I can tell just by looking at the architecture or other little things) actually do much better in in LGTB/PoC departments so I'm going to highlight those shows instead.

An odd first example is Tiger and Bunny which was actually designed with marketing to an American audience in mind, abet probably not myself in mind (a male 14-22 year old audience although, thanks to a huge female following in Japan, never underestimate the fujoshi, it's become a hit over there as well). The basic concept is that it's an alternate New York City where people with superpowers (NEXT) exist and some of them work as superheroes that are sponsored by big companies in the city. Despite the weird set-up for the show (it's basically a buddy-cop movie with superheroes instead of cops who are corporate mascots with real world companies helping sponsor the show) it's a really good reconstruction of the American superhero genre and I would whole-heartedly recommend it to people who aren't bit fans of the superhero genre such as myself and it has a surprisingly diverse cast. However, at first glance it's a bit cringe worthy, one of the heros (Nathan/Fire Emblem) is a twofer character, black and gay, and he's flamboyently gay with fire superpowers, he's a flaming gay! Honestly, from seeing an interview or two about how the show was designed and it appears the staff had (and possibly still don't) have any idea about that stereotype, and generally today we would say "camp" instead of "flaming" but it's still a pretty cringe-worthy moment (apparently one of the real-world sponsors decided not to sponsor him after finding out he was gay which is really unfortunate). Later episodes show that he's a very capable character and he gets fleshed out (he's actually the CEO of the biggest energy company in the city) but it takes a few episodes to get to that point. And, while he is the only LGTB character he is far from being the only PoC character, a good portion of the cast is. One of the leads (Kotetsu/Wild Tiger) is Japanese (he's a native to the city though, his hometown is just outside and has the unfortunate name of "Oriental Town" the general fan theory is that his mother is from Japan) and one of the side characters appears to be Japanese based on his name, Doc Saito. Pao Lin (/Dragon Kid) is shown to be from either China or Hong Kong, Antonio (/Rock Bison) is Hispanic and I've seen people suspect that one of the major villains, Jake Martinez, was also Hispanic based on his name (I can't tell from looking at him since frankly I'm more interested in his multi-colored hair and tattoos). Yet another character (Ivan/Origami Cyclon) is also explicitly stated to be from Russia (although that would make him just white, the entire fandom questions his sexuality however and there are some canon hints that could be taken either way) and Kotetsu's former manager (who appears a lot in the second half of the show) is black, all in all making for an incredibly diverse show with the main cast alone. I actually have a theory about this, since it was a more diverse show than normal that was being produced for a more American audience, so remember that, I'm coming back to it later on. 

Next up is an example which I kinda think fits and kinda think it doesn't, No. 6. The two main characters in this show are male and while some people didn't think any of it at first (I didn't) there were some shippers who were hoping that it would become a boy's love series (although it seems like most of them already knew the story before the anime started or waited a few episodes before really starting to hope) and then there were tons and tons of people who whined about the characters being "teh gay" after just one episode, because the two characters (both 12) fell asleep holding hands. That's pretty disturbing that people are put off of a show for something not even specifically romantic like that which does bring me to the problem with listing this show here, it's never made explicitly clear if our two leads (Sion and Nezumi) are in a romantic relationship or have romantic feelings for each other. If there was a word for the kind of relationship that is between platonic and romantic then that's what I would label them as but the author of the original novels intentionally wrote a very ambiguous relationship between them (I think she said in one interview she was tired of seeing how the main boy and girl of a story would be paired up, something I found interesting especially after a friend said that people wouldn't be freaking out if one of the characters was a girl instead, or possibly if they were both girls) so it's hard to tell. And having said that, there are two, on the lip kisses between the two boys (and clearly shown on screen, no cuts to black or to an alternate view to make it hard to tell) which is still considered a bit unusual and, as one poster I saw pointed out, you have to be in a certain kind of relationship for that to be considered normal.


Finally, the third show I've seen this past summer which I thought best fit this challenge (again, by the challenge's definition practically any anime would have actually qualified) was Croiseé in a Foreign Labyrinth, a rather sweet show about a young Japanese girl (Yune) who comes to 1880s Paris to help manage a shop as an apprenticeship of sorts and the culture clash between her and the rest of the cast comes up quite often. Sometimes it's played for laughs and other times it's more serious (with one character, usually Claude but this happens to Yune as well quite often, misunderstanding the other because they are still adjusting to how people of the other culture feel/act and then apologizing to make things right). It's a character driven series so those bits make up a good deal of the series and, since I remember calling out Clockwork Angel on it earlier, no Yune does not experience any kind of racism which would be expected towards an Asian person in 1880s France. However, unlike Clockwork Angel, it would have been completely against the mood of the series so I'm glad the author chose to focus on how the difference in race effects Yune's relationships with other characters rather than how the world as a whole perceives her.

Related to anime, I also read a far bit of manga when I have time and sadly there are very few PoC or LGBT characters in any of the series I read. I will say however that I prefer to read stories without any romance in them so a good half of the series I follow don't have any romance in them at all (either the characters are too young or just too busy with the plot to have a relationship, straight or otherwise). I will admit that I do read a lot of shojo (which, if the story isn't primarily a romance to start with usually has it as a strong secondary genre) but even the stuff I'm reading is generally a decade or two old, American YA wasn't that diverse back in the '80s or '90s either. I would really like to see more stories with diversity in mainstream titles, not relgating PoC characters to side positions or LGBT characters just to BL and GL stories. Finally, this applies to the anime as well, in most series I'm not looking for PoC or LGTB characters, I'm looking for a capable female lead, if a medium is having a hard time representing half of a population I'm not expecting them to be any better at representing minorities.

Some summers I watch a lot of movies and some summers I don't, this was one of the summers where I didn't see a lot of movies (although I am starting to catch up with what my school is showing). The only two recently made movies I've seen recently that come to mind are Thor and X-Men: First Class which aren't really great in this department either. Thor actually did alright with having some likable and capable female and PoC side characters, many of whom I thought were even cooler than the main characters, but they were only side characters and the story probably could have existed without them. X-Men was a bit strange because by the very end of the story every character who wasn't white and male (and presumably straight, none of the characters had any indications that they weren't straight) was evil. Since the story already had to contradict some of X-Men continuity couldn't they have worked around this? Heck, that's the first time in a while I've seen the "black man dies first" trope played straight and didn't even make any sense in this context, it just felt like they weren't even trying here.


When I was first coming up with the categories for this post I thought "oh crap, but I don't watch any tv!" and then I remembered that Doctor Who was airing this summer and breathed a sigh of relief. Back when I started watching DW two years ago (starting with the 2005 series and working my way up to the currently airing episodes) I was surprised at how many PoC or LGTB background characters there were in the episodes set in contemporary Britain. The UK has an even higher population of Caucasian people than the US does (90% vs 72%, source Wikipedia) so the show could have been technically accurate if it had had all white background characters, by not doing so it highlighted to me just how strange US television is for doing just that. When the first episode of the current season premiered this year there was some discussion on the internet on the fact that there was a black secret service man who was personally assigned to President Nixon, set in 1969, something that many people, including several who self-identified as PoC, found strange. Apparently there were black secret service men at this time but some people still debated whether someone like Nixon would have had one on their personal staff and someone made a comment that really struck me, there was a black man there because the British audience expected to see one there. Going back to Tiger and Bunny, who also had a much more diverse cast set in a US setting than a US show in a US setting would have, the world seems to view the US as a diverse country (which it is) and therefore makes an extra effort to show them that way in their stories, something we don't seem to do, wohoops. And beyond that one scene character, there are two couples (one lesbian and one gay) in the mid-season finale, two characters who fit the challenge's definition but would be spoilers to mention, and a Muslim girl who was an important character in one episode and who I really really liked. Also, before people point out that these characters normally end up dead by the end of the episode, most side characters in DW who are kinda important to the story but not especially end up dead, gender/sexuality/skin tone play no part in it. Thankfully the series doesn't kill off as many characters as it used to (one reason I like the switch in showrunners) but it does tend to kill off a lot of great characters that way. And, since I've rambled too long on just one property now, check out this great post for a breakdown on all PoC/LGTB characters in NuWho and other details.