By Roy Mathur, on 2021-12-27, at 23:02:10--23:34:06 GMT, for Captain Roy's Rocket Radio Show, Listen
Happy New Year and welcome to a special New Year's Day pod.
I hope you enjoyed, or will enjoy when I edit it together, some sounds from last night's celebrations (extracted from amongst the family bickering that you did not hear because I edited it out).
Doctor Who: Eve of the Daleks: seen, watched, liked. One Special down, two to go, then Jodie's sadly out.
I found Chris Chibnall's take on Groundhog Day plus Noel Clarke's Storage 24 inoffensive. It was saved by the quirky couple played by a fiery Aisling Bea and nerdy Adjani Salmon.
I enjoyed it, but it didn't seem like an event, more like a less memorable episode of the series proper. However, as always, I'm still appreciative that it's a new episode of a series I love, and I am looking forward to the next special, Legend of the Sea Devils; with pirates; Chinese pirates!
In the New Doctor, I'd like to see some personality changes. I like the Jodie Whittaker Doctor. She's personable and friendly. Actually, I like all the Doctors, NewWho and OldWho, so I'm a captive audience. But I'd have preferred a sinister Doctor (Colin Baker/Peter Capaldi), and bonus points if they could add a little more charisma to the character too. Jo Martin ticked both those boxes and I'm one of those who greatly admired her take. But, oh my Whovians, she's not getting the next spot. Why? Because she's a special exception; like Peter Cushing, Paul McGann, or John Hurt. At best, right now, she's a red herring, like David Morrissey's Doctor, for whoever's next to drive the wonky time machine.
I heard Jodie Whittaker say in an interview that she regards Doctor Who as an ensemble show. I do not. I did not like the DW "fam" idea. I wish she had more screen time. I hope the next Doctor has one, or even better---here's something to think about Russell T. Davies---no companions. That way we get to know more about the Doctor. Let's have a lone-wolf Doctor.
I hope the next Doctor really dials up the alien. Even if he's an Earther by choice, after Capaldi, he's billions of years old, and that changes a sentient being, even more than the odd extra organ. Add The Timeless Children factor, and you have a Doctor is very far from the norm, even for a an orphan adopted by a Gallifreyan.
'ship the Doctor and Rose or Yas? No. I'm done with the romance. The Doctor's at the stage when it, nice as it is, must regard most species as insects. Even the ones the Doctor is attracted to must seem, at best, mere fireflies. To be completely fair, even William Hartnell's Doctor was occasionally a bit of a ladies' man (Doctor Who: The Aztecs in pod 37), so romance in Who is nothing new (rhymes), but let's change this paradigm, at least for a while.
Finally, make the Doctor less important, less powerful, and more anonynmous. Bring in the threat of personal failure and death, and the accompanying thrills that come with those possibilities.
The Christmas tale of the famous archer passing the flame his young protege is finished. I don't know if there will be a second season, but I enjoyed the first.
The last episode had some gems. The slapstick moments were fantastic. First, Hawkeye falling into a giant Christmas tree. Then a bunch of thugs shrunk by a Hank Pym particle armed arrow and carried off by an owl.
In the first film, The Matrix, there is naive and cringey (for techies) dialogue when tech is involved. Let's look at some particularly egregious examples.
Neo says "dbase" when referring to a database to show his tech cred. Unfortunately, no one does that. "dbase" is not an semi-acronym/abbreviation for "database". In this case arrangement of letters, "dBase" is software; a database management system; the best known versions were marketed by the Ashton-Tate Corporation. I couldn't let this go because this is such a well-known fact to programmers and developers, and the whole computer industry, that it is embarrassing when one hears it. There is no abbreviation. The abbreviation for "database" is "database". By the way, lowercase "db", unless its letters are re-used as part of the upper case "DBA" (database administrator), is also not an acronym for "database".
Then there's the piece of dialogue in which Neo has emits the most utterly useless piece of exposition ever, explaining that the acronym for artificial intelligence is AI. Really? Even a none-techie, for at least the last twenty years would know this, so why bother? I get that it's there to keep Neo involved in the conversation with Morpheus, but it makes him sound like a moron, further exacerbated by Keanu's dull delivery.
I love the Wachowskis and most of their work, except Cloud Atlas, which sucks, but, hey, Wachowskis, if you want to speak tech and not sound like complete morons, get a bloody tech consultant, take a leaf out of Sam Esmail's Mr. Robot, especially in a film about the god of uber-hackers.
This is the Kong: Skull Island (2017) "data wrangler" fiasco all over again. (Thanks Dan Gilroy et al. Listen to pod 170).
It always amazes me how filmmakers skimp on the script; the actual story; the thing that makes their movie not just a random senseless pile of wasted film.
I know this makes me sound like a tetchy techie, but listening to this creaking nonsense in movies is as unbearable as the itch from an evil school bully putting pencil sharpenings down your shirt collar.
If they don't know something, they shouldn't put it in their films, or get help.
But, hey, sci-fi filmmakers shouldn't feel singled out for past cock-ups. They are not alone. I'm sure horror filmmakers' science of zombie flicks has not entirely convinced epidemiologists either..
Do you like this show? Do you hate this show? Are you ambivalent about this show? I need to know and you can help me. What are you waiting for, keyboard warriors?