Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, TINK
The irony, I must say, is delicious.
Little did Joss Whedon know that his little catchphrase will become such an apt description for his latest breakaway hit/flaming wreckage of a show. But Dollhouse can be perfectly described using that little snippet of clever dialogue. The show, which aired its final episode last week, had a bumpy, uneven, harrowing ride through the world of broadcast television suffering threats of cancelation, actual cancelation, resurrection and a final cancelation once more.
I first heard of Dollhouse, back when its inception was first announced, as any other Whedonite would. By stalking Whedon with a telephoto lens reading about on a website. We all know the story, two old friends have lunch, catch up, one gets up to take a leak, thinks of a brilliant show starring the other while answering nature’s call. The rest, is history.
This is where Magic happens
The concept, and this is something I still believe, is brilliant. People wiped of their personalities, for whatever reason, are imprinted with fake yet full personalities complete with abilities as custom made to order what-have-yous. The show was set to explore what makes us us, the true meaning of “personality” and “identity” in a way Buffy could only scratch. Does a person who is a different guy (or girl) every week truly have a self? What happens when the different personalities start clashing (as glitches in the system are the bread and butter of sci-fi tech-oriented shows like this one was shaping up to be). What about the morality of imprinting these living dolls? Is it wrong to people? How would this affect the people in charge? The people being imprinted themselves?
This, too, is a TV actor’s dream come true. I am not a TV actor, but I’m sure playing the same part for several years can get tedious and boring – David Tennant left Doctor Who for these reasons, as did countless others before him. This part, however, lets you be someone else every week. You get to shift things around, you get to completely showcase your range. Unless, of course…
Ahem...
… You have the range of a ferret.
Look, I’m not here to bash Eliza Dushku. I’m really not, I like her and Faith was awesome. But the honest truth is, she has no range. She does one thing. She does it well, but she only does one thing. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Others have made a career out of doing one thing well. The bottom line is – this part was too big for her. The whole point of the Dolls in the Dollhouse was that you become someone else every week. What we were treating to week in and week out is a “someone else” who’s really an ass-kicking bad girl. Sure it may be an ass-kicking bad girl Lawyer, or School Girl or Scuba Instructor, but the bottom line, it was the same character in a different outfit. We basically got Faith/Tru/That chick from Bring It On again.
What makes this so incredibly frustrating is that each and every other actor on the show was good. Especially the other dolls. Take any one of them and put them in the starring role, and this would have been a show worth tuning into. Each one of these actors has proven themselves on more than one occasion that they are capable of shifting personalities, of doing exactly what it is that the show’s concept dictates. This shows, as the show’s best episode were the ones with minimal to no appearances by Eliza Dushku, and you can clearly see that towards the end it wasn’t really about her anymore.
All in all, Dollhouse was a brilliant concept. We got to see that throughout the show, in snippets in between the more mundane “engagement of the week” episodes. The last several episodes, once the show had already been canceled, showed you exactly what kind of toys Whedon had to play around with, and I, for one, would have loved seeing each of these get its due time and space, rather than the rapid-fire burst we got to see them in. Dollhouse will forever be remembered as just that – a fantastic concept that suffered a horrible execution due to a main actress that simply could not hold the show together. It’s a shame, but live and learn I guess.
So long, Dollhouse. I will say you will be missed, but that’s not really the case, is it. Here’s hoping the remake in 25 years will be better.
Doctor Who was never a show that would fare very well under heavy scrutiny. I mean, the show tries to sell us the above tin can with an egg beater and a plunger as the most terrifying thing in the known universe.
But we love it, with all our hearts.
I got into the Doctor Who game pretty late. When I started watching, the fourth season (or “series”, as those zany Brits call it) had just wrapped up, and that year’s Christmas special was right around the corner. Suffice it to say, I had to wait for the Christmas special. I swallowed up those episodes faster than you can *obscure Doctor Who reference* at. The show is just full of so much energy, so much zest, that you take the ridiculousness of some of the episodes and just run with it. It’s show in which you can accept a tin can as a deadly, genocidal being.
Case in point, the episodes which worked best, were always the more low-key ones. The ones not being bombarded with special effects. Episodes like “Midnight” or “Blink” (by far the best episode in the current run), where the Doctor is not facing an army of Cybermen or alien invaders. The grandiose episodes, in particular the finales of each season were always such an over-the-top, hold-your-breath-til-its-over experience, that my initial reaction after watching each is “that was awesome”. Once I calmed down, and started thinking things over, I saw the gaping plot holes, the nonsensical chain of events, the handy coincidences. That doesn’t bother me, though. You’re not supposed to take the Doctor that seriously. The show is fun, it’s always an entertaining 45 minutes, even if the plot doesn’t make much sense. And, most importantly, it’s always energetic. In large part thanks to this guy:
Yes, thanks to Hamlet.
You see, David Tennant is a talented actor. He played one of the toughest Shakespearean roles, in the Royal Shakespeare Company, and had one of the most prominent performances of our time. This is a little known secret in the TV-making community, so don’t go repeating this, but in order to have a good show, you need good actors (I’m looking at you Heroes and FlashForward). Tennant’s sheer energy brought so much to the part, that, while Christopher Eccleston deserves credit where credit’s due, Tennant will go down in history as the man who brought Doctor Who into the mainstream. It’s his ability to convey both the wild-eyed wonderment as well as the sombre, serious, no-nonsense Doctor that made the role perfect.
Alas, Doctor who as we know it is over. David Tennant and Russel T. Davies (showr-unner of the show from it’s return) are off to better pastures. The TARDIS and fate of time of space are left in the hands of Matt Smith and Stephen Moffat (actor and show-runner, respectively). I don’t know enough about Smith to make a prediction, as the only acting of his I’ve seen is the last several seconds of “End of Time” (Tennant’s were better). Moffat, on the other hand, is a different story. I am beyond psyched to hear that he would be the big man calling the shots. Should Smith’s acting be up to par, I daresay we are in for one hell of a ride. Moffat’s Who-writing credits include some of the best episodes the show has seen to date – “The Girl in the Fire Place”, the “Silence in the Library”/”Forest of the Dead” two-parter, and, my personal favorite Doctor Who episode, the afore-mentioned “Blink”. I, for one, am interested to see what a Moffat-penned finale looks like, as I am pretty certain it will be a spectacle to behold. My guess would involve weeping angels, but that’s the topic to a whole different post.
Doctor Who, despite what others may say, is a thrill ride of a show. It proves that you don’t have to be dark and gritty to tell quality stories, and sometimes it is ok to just have fun. I hope the show continues to enjoy a long successful run. All that’s left is to see what lies ahead. So…. Allons-y Geronimo!
With NaNoWriMo set to start in a few hours, I’m revving up for the marathon that will be Novemebr.
Writing a 50k novel in 30 days is difficult enough in its own right, but add to that a full month of school, homework and such as well as juggling 3 jobs… let’s just say sleep will be a rare commodity in the coming days. The plus side being, sleep deprivation makes for excellent, imaginative writing. Whether it will actually be relevant to the work at hand is a different matter, one I will only be able to suss out once November has come and gone.
As to novel I plan to write in the coming month – it’s an as yet unnamed steampunk crime novel. One complete with clockwork body parts, a con-man with a split personality (trying to, incidentally, con himself) and one flying city. Throw in a nice helping of zeppelins and zeppelin-riding pirates, and we’ll see what happens out of this ecelctic collection of characters.
The only bit of prep I’ve done is write up a short (page and a bit) outline, so that I don’t lose sight of the plot itself. I may have dug myself into a hole here, as its a very convoluted, twisty-turny plot. So that’s why I need a map. Aside from those two sheets of paper, I’ve got nothing – I plan on just sitting in front of the laptop every night and letting it rip.
If you want to cheer me on/find out how’s it going – I’ll update regularly on Twitter (linked to the right), semi-regularly on Facebook (ditto), and I will most definitely have a weekly NaNo update right here.
So, in the immortal words of the Joker, “Here… we… go.”
I’ve signed up for NaNoWriMo.
They encourage people to announce that, so that the embarrassment of having to admit to failure will drive us to actually finish the novel. So, this is me, announcing that I signed up to NaNoWriMo – hopefully I’ll make it all the way through. If I do, I’ll have a crap-tastic (that’s part of the NaNoWriMo attitude – quantity over quality) steampunk crime novel.
Let’s see how it goes.
So here’s how it is.
You have a computer and on this computer runs a program, right? It can be any program – word processor, iTunes, a chat client or even Duke Nukem. Now, you start up another program. For the sake of the argument, these programs are not of the kind that can “talk” to each other. It’s not Photoshop and Flash or something like that. Let’s say it’s iTunes and a spreadsheet thing. These two programs are operating in the same confined space, that is – your computer. They, however, have no knowledge of each other. Each operates on its own, unaware of other programs which may be running right “next” to it.
This is much like our universe. We each run on our own “program” or planet, there may be other planets running next to us (“next” being a relative term, of course) and we will never know. Programs start being aware of each other either when you add some feature that enables them to do so, a plugin or something like that, or when they start competing for system (i.e. natural) resources. So that is how we’ll eventually become aware of other sentient beings – once we improve our capabilities to the point where we’re able to properly communicate with them, or once we start fighting for resources.
It doesn’t end there, however. Cause your tiny little computer is not the only computer out there. You have iTunes running on your machine, but your buddy also has it. As does that chick who works at the Starbucks. You all have your own, special copy of iTunes. Hell, you and the Starbucks chick may, by some weird coincidence, have the exact same songs in your music library. Hers, however, are arranged by album name, while yours are by artist. That’s a tiny difference that affects and amazingly huge list of things. This is what is known as alternate universe. The same program (or planet), with the same data (people), but something tiny that’s a little different. Your buddy’s iTunes may be completely different, he may listen to death metal while you’re a jazz type – that’s how we get an Earth where Hitler won the war.
If you want your computer, your little universe, to talk to other universes, you need to connect them, hook them up together somehow. What you need, is some sort of protocol. For computer we have one, we have several actually. For trans-universal communication we don’t. Or rather, we didn’t. Not until this thing I’m holding right here. TUCP – TransUnivsersal Communication Protocol. Let’s make a phone call, shall we?
So there’s a bunch of geeky going ons right now, I figured I’d address them all (or at least the ones that come to mind as I write this).
- Marvel/Disney – This is already “old” news, happening well over two weeks ago, but there are two things I want to happen out of the Marvel/Disney merger. Firstly, I want a Marvel TV show on ABC. There are many ways you can go here, with a “Heroes for Hire” concept pitched somewhere, or, to capitalize on the X-Men brand – an X-Factor series. Runaways is an option, or a S.H.I.E.L.D. (with a potential H.A.M.M.E.R title change after season 4 or so) espionage series. Personally, I would like a “Marvel Street”-type show. The Marvel Universe is ripe with street-level characters, and a show jumping from character to character would be very interesting. You could have an ensemble cast of Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Daredevil, Punisher, Elektra, Spider-Woman, Jessica Jones, Hawkeye, Ronin and many, many more. Every once in a while, feature a big name character like Captain America or Spider-Man. The show, however, should focus on the lesser known heroes and weave story lines between them – think Heroes, just not crappy. The second thing I want to see out of the Marvel/Disney deal is a fleshing out of the Epic imprint, and have Marvel turn it into a worthy competitor to Vertigo. I think a creator-owned line powered by Marvel ideology will be a wonderful thing, and just thinking of the type of stories we’ll get to see out of such an imprint is putting a smile on my face. We can see the amount of effort Marvel are willing to put into a creator-owned book with Ed Brubaker’s Criminial, which is a spectacular book. Think 20-40 of those a month. Glory will be had by all.
- True Blood Season 2 – The finale just aired, and I gotta say, I’m disappointed. This season of True Blood was insane, and it seemed there was no holding the creators back. The scene in the penultimate episode, where Sookie wanders through her own house and just witnesses one long line of crazy was spectacularly eerie, and I expected more of those for the finale. The actual finale was very laid back, predictable and boring. When MaryAnn finally meets her demise, I checked the time stamp and saw the episode was only halfway through. I knew we were heading for trouble right then and there. It was all over too easily. Maryann was built up to be this awesome big bad, and it just fizzled at the end. The egg was pointless, Eggs was pointless, and I was never quite clear on how exactly Tara fit into the Maryann equation – if she summoned her, how did Maryann sleep with a young Sam? Tara in general seems to be the weak link of the show, I never liked her, and probably never will. Her whole story arc throughout this season was disjointed and chaotic. And then we were left with the myraid of loose-end tying scene. The writers apparently decided to turn the camp up to 11, as any scene involving Bill was painful to watch. I can honestly say I’ve grown accustomed to his incredibly thick accent and odd sentence structures, but this was unbearable. Overall, I’d give the episode a 6-6.5 in a season that as a whole was more like a 9. It’s a shame that such a great season to a great show leaves us with a sour taste in our mouth… though that might be because we licked an ostrich egg with blood.
- Arkham Asylum – Damn, this game was brilliant. I’ve finished the main story and started venturing into the challenge room, but it’s nice to have a superhero game done right, and a Batman one to boot. Developers should watch very closely what Arkham Asylum did right and take notes. From the story (which, granted, wasn’t mind shattering, but it served its purpose) to the superb voice acting, to a unified, inventive design perspective, this is how you do it folks.
So, after another attempt of trying to commit to regular bloggery, I find myself facing another failure. Both “Something Awesome/Something Terrifying” and “Let Me Tell You Something” failed as attempts at a regular column-esque thing. The latter was removed because it was just plain embarrassing to have a “regular” column with one installment.
So the question must be asked – should I just give up on a blog, as all my previous attempt at regularly maintaining one failed?
As I was contemplating this, the answer came to me in a flash of light and a crash of booming thunder (granted, that may have been the bus that swerved from running me over). I need to stop trying to fill some sort of niche with this blog. That is not the purpose of this thing. Forcing myself to write into a specific pattern is killing the will and need to write on this particular platform. This blog/website/what-have-you has my name blazoned across the top, so I do what I will with it, and not try to please others with my sharp-as-a-wed-blanket wit. That’ll come naturally, or it won’t.
So the new mission statement is thus: I will update this blog when I feel like, with what I fell like however often I feel like. It may 4 times a day, it may be once every 3 months. The bottom line is – if you enjoy listening to what I have to say, come by, check the blog, sign up for the RSS, do whatever you want. I may do another “Something Awesome/Something Terrible” if I feel like, I may never touch that particular idea ever again.
As of right now, this blog isn’t attempting to be a specialized blog, it’s just me, ranting and raving about whatever I see fit.
It’s sort of a back-to-basics approach really, as the blog always sported the tagline – “Plenty of fuss, no content”. Somewhere along the line, I made the mistake of trying to deliver content. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.
My short comic story, “One Last Ballad”, is now available for purchase.
It is in the anthology FTL #2, published by Orang Utan Comics.
The art is by Gary Heaney, with inks by Nick Dismas and greyscales by Matt Santorelli. The letters are done by Richard Nelson.
You can pick up a copy at IndyPlanet.
The Second issue is now out and can be found at:
http://thewritersink.wordpress.com
Check it out and spread the word!
If you’re having trouble wading through the sea of awesome, my story, “Winter by the Wayside”, is HERE.
As an aside, Blogification will continue soon. I’m working on a new angle… again.
Something Awesome
Ninjas.
And I mean both this kind:
And this kind:
Looking at the stealthy killers of the night, you can’t not appreciate their subtle ways, their absolute martial-art kick-assery and they’re swanky outfits. I mean, black looks good with everything, and everything includes a bitchin’ katana and a set of shurikens.
The never ending debate of Ninjas vs. Pirates is a really tough pickle, but overall, I think Ninjas really do overpower Pirates, the sea scalawags will never even see ‘em coming. And if you don’t believe such a debate exists merely turn your eyes here, here, here, here or here.
Ok, that last one is a video of Jig-dancing monkeys. It has nothing to do with ninjas, but it’s still awesome.
Pictured - 77 Ninjas.
Something Terrifying
Mimes.
They don’t talk. That’s unnatural. Forget clowns (who can be pretty damn scary), Mimes are the real creepy bastards of the “lets put make up on and do weird stuff” brigade.
That's mime for "I'm going to feed you your own bowels"
I, for one, am dying to know what the hell will cause a sane man to decide to never utter another word for the rest of his life and paint his face white. Don’t get me wrong, I love charades just as much as the next guy, but I don’t want to be playing it for my entire life.
I’m also scared I might get stuck in one of those invisible boxes…
