The final trailer for Stranger Things season five

"William, you are going to help me... one last time."

Love that cover of Queen's "Who Wants To Live Forever?"  I have to wonder what that portends.

Feels like the end of an era of my lifetime is looming.  I really don't know what is going to fill the void left by Stranger Things after the finale airs, streams, whatever.  I watched the first season on my iPad one day in a hotel room in Albuquerque.  From the very first moments I loved it.  That was nine years ago.  So much has happened since then.  And now... well, what do I do now?

The final season begins with volume one on November 26th.

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So... the BBC just said that Doctor Who is still alive and that there will be a Christmas special in 2026

 I say FORGET IT!

From the good ol' days when a Doctor Who Christmas special really MEANT something.

I shall properly preface this post by noting that when the franchise has gotten so bad that Disney+ has washed their hands free of it, you know things are dire and not apt to get better anytime soon.

The BBC announced today that Doctor Who is still viable somehow and that there will be a Christmas special next year.  But according to the article, Russell T. Davies is still in charge of the show.

Like I said, forget THAT!!

As long as Davies is calling the shots, this show is dead and it's not regenerating.  Although I will confess that the twisted little "id" creature within me is harboring morbid fascination about what the '26 Christmas special will entail.  Because the last time we saw anything of Doctor Who, Ncuti Gatwa's dress-wearing Doctor (either the Fourteenth or Fifteenth, does it really matter anymore?) transitioned to Rose Tyler, again played by Billie Piper.  It was a cheap stunt born out of desperation and all it did was paint the saga into a corner with no way out.

As I said last time that the subject of Doctor Who was brought up on this site, the series needs to go away for awhile.  Maybe a long while.  Like, five or ten years, much like the "wilderness years" between 1989 and 2005.  Then brought back with an ENTIRELY new showrunner and production team.  Have it be people who truly get Doctor Who and what has made this show so beloved.  Make sure that they're committed to characters and story first, WITHOUT any ideological agenda (which in my opinion is at the heart meat of what killed this show, Davies was determined that it would be a platform for his personal beliefs and unfortunately he wasn't the only one).  Have the rebooted series jettison or at least thoroughly retcon away all that "Timeless Child" bull$hit (I'm being polite) and establish that the Doctor is always intended to be a male character.  There is a dynamic in this show between the Doctor and his companions and that must NEVER be tampered with.  I think the Doctor can be portrayed by a woman, playing against gender, but it has to be someone special (I've always thought that Tilda Swinton would make a terrific Doctor).  Or at least do NOT have the Doctor wearing a kilt, or whatever the h-ll that was that Gatwa's "Doctor In Name Only" was dancing around in.

It sounds like extremely invasive surgery.  And it is.  It will even require some amputations.  But the subject is beyond repair by normal procedure.  Doctor Who is NOT coming back anywhere close to the stature it had twelve years ago at the height of the Matt Smith era, and even the Peter Capaldi period (which despite some problems I really did end up liking a lot), without VERY drastic measures being taken.  It can't stay on its present course and it's insanity to believe it can go any further.  The BBC must fire Davies, learn from its mistakes, and let the show rest for awhile, and start anew.

That's the only way to make sure that there will again be a Doctor to save the universe every Saturday for the children to enjoy watching.  And I would love to see that again too, for that matter.

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Former writer admits what we all know: Doctor Who is DEAD

I know: this pic is from "The Name Of The Doctor" from the Steven Moffat era.  Its bleakness is plenty fitting for this post though.

There might well be volumes written, many years from now, about what happened to Doctor Who: the much-beloved British science-fiction television series that had delighted generations of viewers around the world.  Maybe those to come will take to heart the lesson of why the show defied so much, only to die at the hands of liberal ideology.

To Russell T. Davies and Chris Chibnall before him: the Doctor is dead... and you killed him!

Oh sure, Davies had his moments when he initially ran the show between 2005 and 2009, but there was still a good measure of respect for the saga, for the writing and for the audience.  Chibnall was the one who first pulled the trigger in earnest though, when he decided to make the Doctor a woman (there is a dynamic at work in Doctor Who and the Doctor should ALWAYS be male in keeping to that) and then made practically every episode a sermon about leftism.

Then Davies took over again.  And that's when the show truly went to hell.

Look, I had my hopes up.  I knew nothing of Ncuti Gatwa.  Just as I had known nothing of Peter Capaldi and Matt Smith when they were announced to be their respective Doctors.  But I was willing to give them a chance.  I was willing and eager to be surprised.

But Gatwa very quickly proved that of all the people who have ever played the Doctor, he is hands-down the very worst.  That he casually and chronically insulted everyone who didn't like the new direction of the show, telling them to "touch grass" instead, only made it worse.

(Maybe it's just me but I also don't think the Doctor should wear a dress.)

Here's what I think happened in the past few years: Doctor Who became Russell T. Davies' midlife crisis.  In the time between 2009 and 2022 Davies came to be confronted with his mortality.  He has no family of his own, his lifestyle prohibits having any progeny.  So Davies became driven to inflict his personal mark on the one thing that has proven to give him a sense of immortality: his work on Doctor Who.  And so Davies made it all about himself.  He opened up the spigot of his wokery.  In the process he drove away the core audience of Doctor Who.  Davies seriously believed that his fellow leftists were going to be legion enough to sustain his "work".

Doctor Who stopped being the show that it had been since 1963 and instead became a vehicle for leftist propaganda.  And the true fans departed.  They took Davies and Chibnall at their word: they had been told that they weren't welcome, so they grabbed their hats and left.

Former Doctor Who writer Robert Shearman has come forth to tell us what we all know: the show has been brought to a screeching halt right at the edge of an open grave.  And there is no foreseeable plan to bring it back.

The series is stuck where it last left off: Ncuti Gatwa's "Fourteenth Doctor" regenerating into the form of Billie Piper (who has at various times played the Doctor's companion Rose ever since the show first restarted in 2005).  It was a cheap stunt that underscored the obvious: the showrunners didn't know what they were doing.  Their ideology is all that mattered to them.  They were handed the keys to one of the most respected science-fiction mythologies ever crafted and they destroyed it with gross negligence.

For what it's worth, here's what I think: Doctor Who needs not just a hiatus but major invasive surgery under most potent anesthesia.  Let it be asleep for the next five or ten years.  And then pick up the show but ignoring everything from the Chibnall era on forward.  The final canonical words of the Doctor before regenerating should be those of the Twelfth: "Doctor, I let you go."  Let the Doctor disappear in that flash of light and in his place... a true Doctor.  One bereft of egotistical management and political agendas.

A dire measure?  Yes.  Yes it is.  But it's the only one I can see that will resurrect the Doctor Who franchise and correct its course.

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There's a trailer for Fallout season two?? Why didn't I know about this already??

Okay, the past few days have been a little wacky on my side of the screen.  Quite a bit of stuff going on that has been below my radar and this is one of them.  Five days ago the trailer for Fallout second season dropped and I'm just now looking at it.

And having just seen it I got to say: it looks glorious!  Now, Fallout: New Vegas is the one Fallout title that I've yet to complete.  I bought it when the game first came out in 2010 and, let's just say that real-world circumstances have kept me from finishing it.  The last thing that I did in the game before having to take a "leave of absence" from it was to get to New Vegas and explore around.  I'm pretty familiar with the landscape surrounding the city before arriving there.  So I already know much of the terrain that this trailer touches upon.

Which makes my appreciation for this trailer even more profound.  This looks amazing.  Season one was some of the best television I'd seen all this past decade and this next season looks to intensify that.

Okay well, on with the trailer!

Fallout second season premieres on Amazon Prime this December.  Who knows, maybe I'll finally finish the game by then.

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After Johnny Robertson: What happens to WGSR now?

Maybe I'm about to say too much, with this post.  But a few of you have asked me about recent events and my take on them.  And this does pertain to some people who I had blogged about much (though it's been awhile, like fifteen years or so).

I feel obligated, for sake of completion, to weigh in on the matter.  So here it goes...

As reported a few days ago, Johnny Robertson of the Martinsville Church of Christ died a week ago.  The funeral service was held this past weekend.  Robertson was cremated, which may or may not be germane to the conversation.

The manner of Robertson's death has become a topic of considerable discussion in the Martinsville, Virginia and Reidsville, North Carolina area.  I am aware of what the medical examination determined.  By now many people have correctly surmised how Johnny Robertson came to pass away.  Regardless of the history that existed between Robertson and myself, I am greatly troubled and even grieved that his end came in such a way.  "There but for the grace of God..."

Although I no longer live in that vicinity, I do maintain interest in what transpires around my old stompin' grounds.  And so it is that from where I see things, Johnny Robertson's death may have significant ramifications to that region. Especially in regard to WGSR, the television station from which Robertson's "Church of Christ" had three solid hours of broadcasting each week.

Here's what it comes down to: WGSR, the Star News station, is now on the brink of destruction.  It is far removed from the fairly vibrant television station that I first went to work at in 2006.  The WGSR of that time had a lot of variety of programming.  But that's dwindled away, from what I've heard.

For all of this time though, there has been one consistent constant: that the "Church of Christ" (which is nothing at all like the mainstream Church of Christ denomination) was WGSR's biggest-paying client.  Johnny Robertson kept the money coming into the station.  So long as Robertson kept stoking the flames of controversy, the "rich Texans" out west would send money for the broadcasts.  And stoking controversy has always been something right up WGSR general manager Charles Roark's alley.  The man trades and deals in strife.  Johnny Robertson and his confederates of the "Church of Christ" came loaded with footage  of their trespasses against decent Christians with seemingly each new hour of broadcast, and Roark was ever eager to put it on the air.  It was a vicious cycle that kept Robertson and his cronies doing their "work" and consequently kept WGSR in business.

But now, Johnny Robertson is gone.  And with him goes much if not most of the funding that WGSR has relied on for the past twenty years.  There will be no more shows from the Martinsville Church of Christ.  The "Church of Christ" as has been known in that area, represented by the Robertson family, is done with.  It's over.  It took awhile but they are finally extinguished.

Sources in the Martinsville/Reidsville area have told me that WGSR's management has been thrown into chaos.  Roark bet the farm on the Robertson gang, and he has now lost bigly.  But it was only a matter of time before this happened.  And now Roark is facing the very severe consequences of having hitched the WGSR wagon to Johnny Robertson's star to begin with.

I suppose if nothing else, I'm writing this post out of an obligation to chronicle something that doesn't happen very often: the death of a television station.  Because that is what it seems is now happening to WGSR.  Reidsville has had a TV station for more than forty years, and suddenly it is facing the possibility that there will be no local television broadcasting anymore.  How it came to this point, is something well worth analyzing and discussing.  Because what may be about to happen, is something that could have been avoided had smarter and more mature management been in charge.  WGSR is about to become an object lesson in running a media outlet into the ground.

Maybe others will watch what happens with the station, and take from it a measure of wisdom.  The well of controversy has dried up at WGSR.  And that's what it had put its stock in.

It wouldn't surprise me if the station was defunct by the end of the year.  Barring significant reform, its days are certainly numbered.

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I know why CBS is canceling Stephen Colbert

 

Colbert and Trump in happier times (2015)

Stephen Colbert can stamp his feet all he wants about CBS ending his late-night show.  He can scream and tantrum to his heart's content.  But in the end the loss of The Late Show is squarely on him.  And the rest of the "talent" on late at night would do well to learn from his example.

Here's the secret to success at television after the eleven o'clock news.  Most people do not want the last thing that they allow into their minds before going to bed be unrelenting bitterness.  Late-night hosts like Johnny Carson, and Jay Leno after him, knew that people at that hour wanted one last shot of laughter to end their day on.  And those hosts provided that.  Viewers tuned in, got a good chuckle, and wound up going to sleep feeling that however rotten the day had been, it ended on a somewhat happy note after all.  It's a formula that kept television audiences tuned in for decades to those hosts of times past.

Colbert and the rest of his kind never understood that or ever really cared to.  That kind of "comedy" isn't their forté.  They believe that "humor" is vile and mean-spirited and they went to great lengths to proclaim that they represented "new comedy".

But in the end, their "comedy" for the past decade had only one setting: "Trump Bad And Republicans Evil"(tm).  People got tired of that.  Bitterness can only go so far in a business that is allegedly about entertaining people instead of preaching down to them.  If nothing else, Colbert was doing his best to insult half of his potential audience... and that's never a good practice, either.

No, it wasn't politics that led CBS to can The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.  It was solid numbers that Colbert and his staff weren't justifying having a presence with.  I'm seeing that it cost the network $40 million a year to keep the show running.  What kind of an audience does that kind of money supposed to achieve?  Carson had higher numbers than that during his long tenure on The Tonight Show, with far less a budget.

It wasn't politics.  It certainly wasn't President Donald Trump waving a cloaked sleeve like he's a Dark Lord of the Sith telling his minions to "do it!" to anyone who merits his wrath.  It was nothing but raw hatred and anger, perpetuated long past their expiration dates.  It's kind of ironic: Stephen Colbert liked cancel culture.  Until cancel culture came to cancel him.

Maybe the pendulum will begin to swing the other way now.  I've believed for awhile that the ground is fertile for a late-night host in the tradition of Carson and Leno.  Hosts who devoted at most three jokes a night about the president.  They were men who understood laughter and people's need for it.  Something that Colbert and his sort never did and probably never will.

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In memory of Malcolm-Jamal Warner

The very sad news broke today that Malcolm-Jamal Warner, the extremely talented actor and director and producer whose greatest role Theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show kept us uproariously laughing, has passed away at age 54.

It was hard to name a favorite character from that series, but Theo was definitely up there on my list.  Maybe because he was the only son of Cliff and Claire.  A lot of the comedy was his to bear because of that and he did it magnificently!

When I think of all the Theo-centric episodes of The Cosby Show, there is one stands out above the rest, and I believe that a lot of other people are going to say that this is funniest the character had.  Here in Warner's memory is a clip from the first season episode where Theo buys a "Gordon Gartrayal" shirt.  The interaction between Theo and his parents is hilarious!

Thoughts and prayers going out for his family.

EDIT: Wow, there's a part 2 from that episode that's been uploaded!  Here it is, Theo in the shirt that Denise made for him:

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"Found you": The trailer for the final season of Stranger Things just hit the Intertubes!

Just like "Running Up That Hill" did three years ago, "Child In Time" by Deep Purple is no doubt going to burn up the charts on Spotify and iTunes the next few days

Behold the trailer for the very last season of Stranger Things:

The kids look GREAT!  It's almost like no time has passed at all since we last saw them in 2022.  For all the delays that COVID and then the strikes caused to this series's production, it doesn't really seem like the cast has become too old for their parts.

Maybe we should call Stranger Things "the little Netflix series that could."

Part one of the final season drops the day before this Thanksgiving.  The second part on Christmas Day.  The grand finale on New Years Eve.  And I seriously don't know what my pop culture drug of choice is going to be after this series is finished.  For the past decade Stranger Things has been the only series of television or movies that has really interested me.  What's going to take the place of that?  Or could it be that the final season will herald my "growing up" at last ?  I like to think that I've still got a smidgeon of "the old fire" in me, waiting to be fanned into new life with the right kindling.  But I really don't know what that could be.

EDIT: late yesterday Netflix released the poster for season five.  I'm getting the shivers looking at this one....

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Watch the General Lee jump the fountain in Somerset, Kentucky

This is already the most beautiful thing I've seen all week.  A Dodge Charger kitted out to look like the famous General Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard goes roaring down the street in Somerset, Kentucky and jumps a ramp and goes soaring through the town's water fountain.

Behold the stunt!

Okay, yeah the car got banged up a bit (the driver didn't get a scratch apparently, thank the Lord) but that'll buff right out.  Throw on some Bondo and a good sanding and it'll be good as new!

Notice how this car is all-out faithful to the General Lee of the show.  Including the Confederate flat on the roof.  That's a really good touch, completely in the spirit of the TV series.

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Svengoolie! Or: How I spend many Saturday nights

Not looking like there's going to be any going about this evening.  There are a few things I've got on my plate, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  And there is always church in the morning, so that accomplishes my spiritual and social needs in great part.

So on a Saturday like this I do some errands around the house, play with my miniature dachshund, make dinner, and for the rest of the afternoon and early evening it's usually sitting up on my sofa with my iPad and keyboard and working on writing.  And that's how a lot of my other nights develop into: writing for my book or op-ed pieces, or the fantasy romance novel that I've been inspired to start (seriously).

But since this is Saturday I've also got the weekly entertainment to look forward to, straight outta Berwyn.

Every Saturday night at 8 p.m. Eastern (and 7 Central) sees the next two and a half hours blocked off for Svengoolie on the MeTV network.  Svengoolie is a madcap "horror host" of the kind that many television stations had back in the day who every week would present a scary(?) movie.  These actually ran the gamut from straight-up horror classics to science-fiction extravaganzas to mélanges of both and sometimes it would be more comic fare.  It was all good and great fun!  And the hosts were as much a hoot to behold as the movies themselves.

Svengoolie - whose real name is Rich Koz - has been upholding this noble tradition from the Chicago market since 1979 (yes, more than 45 years now!).  Some time ago he and his franchise were picked up by MeTV and he's now presenting his favorite films for a nationwide audience.  And the nation has certainly taken notice.  Svengoolie is now one of the most-watched programs during the weekend.  It has become a true Saturday night ritual for countless fans, who show their appreciation in many different ways (being photographed wearing a Svengoolie shirt in some exotic location is particularly popular).

It's a terrific formula for good hearty entertainment!  And it has also introduced me to a lot of movies that I otherwise might have never seen.  A few weeks ago Svengoolie presented Strait-Jacket from 1964 starring Joan Crawford.  I thought it was an amazing film that more than deserved to be seen by a modern audience.  And last week's feature was Village of the Damned (a movie I first saw in 1989 on "Billy Bobb's Action Theatre" on Greensboro's Channel 48).  That is also a motion picture that merits appreciation by people of our era.  Whether the movie of the week is terrifying or thought-inducing or evoking laughter, you can't go wrong with Svengoolie (and his pals on the Sven Squad).

If you've never had the pleasure, I can't recommend Svengoolie nearly enough for Saturday night.  It's a rollicking fun time to be had by all.  And hey Sven, if you're reading this, I would like to suggest that some week you might run Yor: The Hunter From The Future.  It's perfect Eighties schlock that deserves some modern appreciation.  The #svengooolie hashtag on X/Twitter will be burning up with commentary!

'We will need a lot more hemp before we're through."

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Release dates announced for Stranger Things final season

Well, I know what I'll be doing from Thanksgiving to New Year's Eve in another six months...

"RUN!!  RUUUUUUUNNNN!!!!!"

Volume One at Thanksgiving.  Volume 2 on Christmas.  The finale on New Year's Eve.

Stranger Things has been the only show that I've followed at all during this past decade. I seriously don't know what's going to fill that void in my life.  It's one of the few things pop culture-wise that I've been interested in all this time.  I haven't watched Star Wars: Andor though I keep getting told that I must see that, it's supposed to be the best thing that Disney has done with that franchise since it took over.

But Stranger Things will forever have a very special place in my heart, just from when it started.  When I was on the road going across America for a year.  That it's ending this coming holiday season, well.. it's almost like that extended life journey since 2016 is finally drawing to a close for me.  Maybe something else will come along now.

EDIT: Netflix has released some pics from season five.  The kids don't look that much older than they did in the previous season three years ago (though it's good that the show is wrapping up now cuz this is no doubt the last time they'll be able to pull off that trick).  Click each image to embiggen it.

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Just hitting the Intertubes: Trailers for Superman and second season of Fallout!

A couple of things went online today that I've watch a few times.  I've got a good feeling about both of these.

First, it's the first trailer for the second season of Amazon's  Fallout series.  As a die-hard fan of the Fallout games I absolutely loved the first season.  They completely nailed the look and feel of the franchise.  It was an astounding surprise that throughly delighted me.  Season two debuts in December, which may be a busy month for streaming if the final volume of Stranger Things comes out then also (as many are speculating).

So here's the trailer for Fallout season two:

And then there's this: the new (and probably final) trailer for Superman.  This is a project that has gotten me increasingly intrigued with each new spot that's been released.  I think David Corenswet is going to do much as the great Christopher Reeve did in the role: making Superman and Clark Kent two entirely separate personas in the eyes of the world.  Reeve's portrayal is the platinum standard of that and Corenswet seems poised to tap into that also.

More than that though, I can't help but believe that this is going to be a movie we need right now.  The idea of Superman being good and upright and moral in a world that has grown cold and jaded and cruel, like ours has become... there is something uplifting about that.  It seems that there are few absolutes on this earth anymore.  A Superman who can inspire us to be our best should be one of them.

I could say a lot more about that, but anyhoo here's the trailer:

Superman flies into theaters on July 11.

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Remember that time when Mister Rogers got REALLY angry?

This episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood is legendary.  It dates to around 1980-ish and it shows something that had never been seen before and was not seen again anytime after.  It's the episode where Mister Rogers got mad.

Seriously, he was honked-off.  I mean VERY outraged.  He comes into the house and doesn't even put on a sweater or change his shoes.  He's not "Mister Rogers" the friendly neighbor but instead "Fred Rogers" the irate citizen.  Seems that he was given a parking ticket and he thinks that it's wrong.  His entire demeanor is angry and frustrated.

But a little song and an appearance before the judge later, and all is set right again.  Fred Rogers returns and after properly changing accoutrements the show is back on course.

Here is the episode where Mister Rogers gets upset and goes to traffic court.  It made a significant impact on me from the first time I saw it.  Every time since when I've had to go to court I ask myself "What would Mister Rogers do?"  It helps to calm my nerves.  I imagine there are other people who think back to this episode too.

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Fiftieth anniversary of "Genesis of the Daleks"

It was fifty years ago today, on March 8th 1975, that the BBC transmitted part one of the Doctor Who story "Genesis of the Daleks".

It has since gone on to be regarded as one of the very best Doctor Who tales in the history of the franchise and one of the greatest science-fiction stories ever committed to the visual medium.  "Genesis of the Daleks", written by Terry Nation, packed a lot!  The part that I most often think about is when The Doctor (the Fourth, played by Tom Baker) is agonizing over the choice that is his to make: to either destroy the Daleks before they can become the universal menace he knows them to be, or to save them and let history run its course.  It was pretty strong stuff for a show still considered at the time to be made primarily for young audiences.

So it is that today is the fiftieth anniversary of the debut of Davros, the genius-but-insane creator of the Daleks.  Personally, I think that Davros is one of the greatest villains in fictional history.  When you consider that he has only one hand but that hand is stained with the blood of trillions of innocent lives... that is incalculable evil.

And to celebrate, here is a video that I discovered many years ago that someone very brilliant compiled and posted to YouTube. This predates Davros's appearance in the series that has been running since 2005, so it's almost all from the classic productions.

Here is "Davros Versus The Universe":

EDIT: 03/10/2025:  A reader of this blog has informed me that the complete "Genesis of the Daleks", all six episodes, is available to watch on the official Doctor Who YouTube channel!

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Happy Birthday Barney Miller!

Barney Miller premiered fifty years ago today, January 23rd, 1975.  This is definitely high up on my list of most favorite television series ever.

Here's one of my favorite episode, "Hash".  This is the one when most of the detectives get stoned from eating cannabis-laced brownies...

Happy fiftieth Captain Miller and the staff of the 12th Precinct!

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Teaser video for the final season of Stranger Things

Why didn't somebody tell me about this??  It was released three weeks ago!!

Oh alright, I guess I've just been so busy with things that I didn't notice.  The past three months or so have been so whacked on my end.  I'm sure an awful lot slipped under my radar.

But I'm glad to be seeing it now.  Stranger Things has more or less become the only pop cultural franchise that I'm interested in anymore.  Star Wars is now such a mess that I finally gave up being a fan.  And Doctor Who has gone completely off the rails in the worst way.

Well, there is one final season left of Stranger Things.  Feels like an enormous epoch of my life is winding down.  This show is going to leave a vacuum and I don't know what is going to fill it.

So here is the teaser for season five, with the titles of the episodes to look forward to.  Speculate away!

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Lost turns twenty

4 8 15 16 23 42

 

It was twenty years ago tonight - September 22, 2004 - that arguably the greatest television series of the new millennium premiered.

Lost was an instant sensation and for six seasons its tale of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 gripped the world's consciousness.  ABC's hit broke all the rules, subverted expectations, and cooked long-held tropes like so many White Castle hamburgers.  Lost was television of the highest order of storytelling.  Yes, its story ended without every mystery getting a solid answer... and many maddeningly unresolved.  But some things should be left to the imagination and Lost certainly provided viewers with fresh new enigmas seemingly every week to ruminate upon.

I think that Lost wasn't so much about the riddles as it was about the characters.  That was the greatest ensemble cast assembled in the modern history of the medium and they brought to life some incredibly deep and multi-layered personas.  My most favorite character was John Locke: the crippled "man of faith" who inexplicably regained the ability to walk after Oceanic 815 crashed on the island.  There was so much about him that resonated with me.  And I also came to have some sympathy for Benjamin Linus, perhaps the most flawed of the show's characters.  I like to think that Ben found redemption in the end, and truly repented of his ways.  It was as good an end to his arc as there could probably be had.

I'm not going to post about Lost without mentioning my personal favorite theory, something that I've never seen anyone else posit.  I think that David, Jack's son from the flash-sideways world, was the child who came about when Jack and Kate made love before taking off on the Ajira flight.  Eloise had told the people who came to the Lamp Post that they had to recreate as closely as possible the conditions of the original flight. What she told Kate was that she had to conceive a child so that Kate could be a proxy for Claire, who had been pregnant on the Oceanic 815 flight.  Well, David had to come from somewhere.  And he even looks like he could be a child of Kate and Jack, too.  He was very well cast.

I also think that the Man in Black wasn't Jacob's brother at all.  As evidenced by the hieroglypics that Ben found, the Smoke Monster had existed on the island long before Jacob's mother came.  The Monster simply assumed the appearance of Jacob's brother.  Jacob found his brother's body, it hadn't been transformed at all.  Again, just a theory.

Well, I could go on.  This show left us with so much that we're still discussing and debating fourteen years after its final episode.  That says something about any series's timeless quality.  And I doubt that in another twenty years we'll be too exhausted to still be talking about it.

So, let's raise our glasses of Dharma Initiative cola and toast Lost on its twentieth anniversary!  Just as amazing today as it was in 2004.

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Dear Pat Sajak

Thanks for forty-one years of Wheel of Fortune.  You've been an awesome host and I've also enjoyed your writing whenever you've published something.

Anyone else feeling like the Eighties are finally over?

We'll miss you Pat.  Enjoy your retirement (and your new acting career I'm hearing about).

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I'm three episodes into Amazon Prime's new series Fallout...

 "War.  War never changes."

Actually, Ron Perlman's voice for opening narration is pretty much the only thing missing from Fallout: Amazon Prime's new streaming show based on the legendary video/computer game series.  I was looking forward to what those first words would be.

But that can be forgiven, in light of how epically faithful a live-series adaptation of the Fallout saga is to the source material.  It's all here: the vaults, the stimpacks, the Brotherhood of Steel, the retro-futuristic look of pre-war America... Heck in the second episode we even see a live-action brahmin (the two-headed cattle seen in most if not all of the games).

So I've just finished watching the third episode, and it's pretty well established that Lucy (Ella Purnell) from Vault 33 is way out of her element.  Actually, just about all of the dwellers in Vault 33 are in over their heads.  They are basically touchy-feely types who believe the wasteland and its denizens will be won over by progressive concepts like teaching them Shakespeare and beginner's calculus.

Ahhh yes, the wasteland.  It's definitely in keeping with what is depicted in the games.  It's that helping of Mad Max-style dystopia colored with 1950s-ish aesthetics and a healthy dash of mutant monsters and trademark Fallout humor.  This ruined landscape two hundred-some years after World War III is no place for the weak of heart.  But it's absolutely spot-on filled in with trademark elements from Bethesda's games (speaking of which, I need to finish Fallout: New Vegas sometime, but real life keeps popping up every time I pick up from the most recent save point).

Fallout boasts a strong cast.  In addition to Purnell there is Aaron Moten as Maximus: an aspirant with the knight-like Brotherhood of Steel.  Then there is Walton Goggins as "the Ghoul", who is pretty much like the ghouls you encounter in the games, if one were also decked out like "The Man with No Name" from Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns.  Also featured is Kyle MachLachlan, who won acclaim playing Agent Dale Cooper on Twin Peaks as the Overseer of Vault 33.  And it would be a grave error on my part if I did not mention Michael Emerson's presence.  I became a great fan of his work on Lost and it's a delight to see him again.

Little wonder Fallout is so good, when the series is helmed by Jonathan Nolan - who I thought did a magnificent job as showrunner of HBO's Westworld - along with Fallout games head honcho Todd Holland as executive producer.  It's a practically perfect endeavor with everyone and everything falling into their proper places.  THIS is what a live-action adaptation of a video game is supposed to look like (no, I haven't seen The Last Of Us yet but I'd like to check that out eventually).  From the first episode Fallout the streaming series has sucked me in, just as Fallout 3 did when I first played it fifteen years ago (I played the first two games later on).

If there is a fault I find in Fallout the television series, it's the profanity.  I can't recall there being that much swearing in the games.  There's a modicum of cussin' in the Bethesda works, but not nearly as at times overwhelming as in the Amazon show.  Just because this is a series with production value on par with Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead doesn't mean the crew must go all-out crazy with harsh language.  But then again, I doubt it's going to be small children who are playing the Fallout games.  These are games for a mature audience and I can overlook the show's language, kinda.

 Otherwise, consider me a fan, and that's hard to pull off when I've become so jaded about entertainment in general that the only other thing I'm looking forward to is the final season of Stranger Things.

There are five episodes left in Fallout's first season.  I'm going to try to watch the rest sometime over the weekend, in between working on other projects.  If the following installments are as good as these three are, then I am already anticipating more seasons to come.

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Chris sees Doctor Who's "The Star Beast" so you don't have to

"Doctor... I let you go."

~ final words of the Twelfth Doctor

 

 Oh dear Lord.  It was so much worse than I was ready for.

I keep hearing Peter Capaldi's last words as The Doctor, now several minutes after watching "The Star Beast": the first of the three hour-long specials "celebrating" the sixtieth anniversary of Doctor Who.  

Because that is what I'm feeling now.

This GIF that I made a few years ago, taken from the Mel Brooks film Silent Movie, somehow expresses the disgust and sense of being let down that I'm experiencing at this hour:

 

I had been a fan of Doctor Who ever since I was six years old, and sneaking in watching it WAY past my bedtime when WFMY in Greensboro aired episodes of it after the 11 o'clock news on Sunday nights.  Those were mostly from the Tom Baker era, and I'll never forget the first time I heard that theme by Ron Grainer.  Then I discovered that PBS ran Doctor Who at respectable hours on Saturday afternoons, and I got to see those and not have to worry about Dad catching me out of bed.

I was an on-and-off fan of Who throughout childhood and adolescence, and then came the day when a lady from PBS (standing in front of a graphic of the TARDIS) announced that there would be no further broadcasts of Doctor Who on public television.

So began the show's "time in the wilderness", apart from the "Dimensions In Time" 3-D special for Children in Need, when there was no new Who.  It seemed the show had finally run its course.  But I never lost my appreciation for it.

And then one night in the fall of 1994, I was logged into the bulletin board system run by a friend.  His BBS featured FidoNET, which was sort of a USENET (remember that?) connected to bulletin boards all around the world.  And there was a group on it called the Doctor Who Echo.

It was like that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where everyone realized they've had similar experiences with the UFOs.  It was finding others, out there, who were just as much Doctor Who fans as I was and indeed many who were much more Whovian than I thought possible.

A few months later I got Internet access for the first time.  Rec.Arts.SciFi.DoctorWho was one of the first newsgroups I subscribed to.  Using the Netscape Navigator browser I found (and bookmarked) the Doctor Who Home Page and discovered reams of text files of not only serious information but also bloopers, a "drinking game", just gobs of humor that had my sides hurting from laughter (literally!).

January 1996.  I had just gotten my first apartment.  My roomie was off in England as part of Elon's winter term.  Days before I was going to get seriously started moving in there threatened to be a fierce winter storm.  Mom convinced me to take the bare essentials and some clothing on to the apartment, 45 minutes away.  On the way I stopped at the mall in Burlington, looking for some entertainment.  I found the Doctor Who 1983 special "The Five Doctors" on VHS.  I bought it, got my things into the apartment and watched that tape while eating pizza from Little Caesar's.  I felt like I was king of the world, or at least my little corner of it.  I watched "The Five Doctors" a few more times while being iced in with nowhere to go.  It has become a tradition: every first night I spend in a new home, I've watched "The Five Doctors" while dining on pizza.

Then came the buildup to the premiere of the 1996 Doctor Who television movie, starring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor (regenerating from Sylvester McCoy's previous Doctor).  Some were disappointed in the TV movie.  I thought it showed great promise and it was a let-down that it gained no further traction.

But true to form, The Doctor refused to die.

I need not go into the return of the Doctor Who series in 2005.  Even if you're fairly new to Who you probably know something about how long its "Nu Who" incarnation has been around, beginning with Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor.

Russell T. Davies was the showrunner then.  And I thought he pulled off a magnificent job in bringing the show back.  Oh sure, there were some fits and starts.  There were a few rough edges.  And maybe a little "progressiveness", but that never overwhelmed how amazing the new series was.  I was willing to overlook those.  The first of the new episodes I saw was "Dalek", featuring the return of The Doctor's most classic enemy.  And then some weeks later I downloaded (the revived series was strictly on the British side of the pond, not legally available in the States) the two-part story "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances", written by a chap named Steven Moffat.  That tale completely blew me away with its awesomeness.  And when Moffat brought us "The Girl in the Fireplace" during the following season, David Tennant's first as the Tenth Doctor...

...that one genuinely brought on the tears.  I couldn't remember any television story that had so moved me.

I could go on.  But I wanted to establish my credentials first.  If I haven't driven home the point yet, here it is: I GET Doctor Who.  Arguably better than many if not most modern fans can.

When it was announced that after Peter Capaldi's time in the role ended, that The Doctor would regenerate into his/their first female incarnation as Jodie Whittaker in the role, well... I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't cautiously optimistic.  I was willing to give her a chance.  But such a change was fraught with risk, and I'll say something here that I've said many times in the past few years: there is a dynamic at work throughout the Doctor Who franchise, between The Doctor and his companions, and that should never be "tinkered" with.

But I still was willing to let Whittaker, and new showrunner Chris Chibnall, prove themselves.

Folks, I will readily admit to being one of the Chibnall era's biggest detractors.  For the first time it was readily obvious that THE MESSAGE(tm) really was seriously becoming more important in the show than... GASP!... actual character and plot.  And then there was the "Timeless Child" notion that completely obliterated most of the canon about The Doctor's very existence.  Strangely I don't blame Whittaker herself.  She was just playing the role, she had no say in what the show's execs intended for her time as The Doctor.  I absolutely believe that in better hands she could have been an amazing Doctor.

But that wasn't to be.

And then it was announced over a year ago that Russell T. Davies was coming back to helm Doctor Who.  And again, I found myself cautiously optimistic.  Ideally it would be Steven Moffat, who took over the reins following Davies' first tenure, as THE ONE who would restore order to the Whoniverse.  But it seems that is not going to ever happen again, leaving Moffat's era - which encompassed Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi's respective Doctors - a brilliant diamond forever shining bright across the annals of the television medium.

"Cautiously optimistic".  I really was.

Then came the past few weeks, and Davies' insane changes to much-beloved villain Davros.  One fan posted an eloquent defense of the original Davros design on X/Twitter.  Davies replied: "Tough".  Which was definitely not an act becoming a conscientious and responsible steward of the Doctor Who mythos.

And then the advance word of "The Star Beast" special started filtering down.  And even the BBC admitted that the special was being driven by "The Message".

Much like what happened that night on the Doctor Who Echo on FidoNET nearly three decades ago, I began finding other devoted Who fans, who were becoming increasingly rattled by these developments and Davies' attitude.  Some serious dissent was brewing across the Intertubes.

It all came to a head yesterday, with the premiere on BBC and on Disney+ (yes, Disney is now partly running Doctor Who, which may explain some things) of "The Star Beast".  And X/Twitter's most trending topic for most of the day was "RIP Doctor Who".

I read a lot of those tweets.  I made a few of my own also, sharing some thoughts about how liberalism corrupts and destroys everything it touches (it really does).  And could it be that liberalism has now brought down Doctor Who?

Well, I made up my mind as I was working throughout most of the day.  I had to see "The Star Beast" for myself.  And make up my own mind about it.  A longtime reader of this blog made it available to me.

I just spent an hour watching "The Star Beast".

People, it's impossible to shine a turd.  But it can sure have lots of glitter thrown at it, in the desperate hope that some of it will actually stick.  However in the end all you're left with is glittery sh-t.

Words cannot possibly contain or convey how much I absolutely hate this "special".  It was so much WORSE than anything I was braced for.  So many times I wanted to give up, but noooooo I had to ride it out.  Had to be willing to give it a chance to redeem itself.

There is no redemption for "The Star Beast" and it's glaringly evident that there is no redemption for the Doctor Who franchise in Russell T. Davies' grip.

Yes, THE MESSAGE does loom large.  Like the atrocious Absorbaloff from the reprehensible "Love & Monsters" episode (don't go looking for that, please), it gobbles up and dissolves into nothing everything it touches.  The only people who are apparently crazy about this hour-long chapter are hardcore leftists, the sexually deviant and trans-activists of the kind that lately stalk J.K. Rowling like so many rabid hyenas.  Not even the return of David Tennant and Catherine Tate to the saga can raise hopes that the Davies era is going to be anything but "progressive" in your face as long as he's in the big chair.

("Binary gender" is now a superpower.  And The Doctor must now take care not to tread wrongly and "mis-gender" anyone.  Just two of the atrocities committed during the running time of this... thing.)

I have a theory.  I've shared it on X/Twitter a few times.  Here it is: Russell T. Davis has become aware that he is mortal.  That one day he will shuffle off his mortal coil.  As a homosexual man he has no children.  He has no posterity, other than his body of work.  But that's not enough to satisfy him.  Davies is suddenly aware of the ingrained NEED to perpetuate himself.  And that's what is driving him most with his return to Doctor Who.  Russell T. Davies of 2005 was not like this.  THAT Russell T. Davies also had no issue with bringing Davros back in his classic form.  But TODAY's Russell T. Davies is now cognizant of the reality that he will DIE someday, and maybe sooner than later.  So he is now hell-bent on proliferating his sexual politics and hard-left agenda through Doctor Who and impose that upon generations to come.

Perpetuating himself through his creations, which are only meant to tear apart and destroy.

Clearly, Russel T. Davies has become that which he claims to hate.  Davies has become Davros.

I feel like I'm just getting started with how much "The Star Beast" let me down.  And apparently it let a lot of other people down also.  Broadcast figures from its premiere indicated that only about 5 million or so people tuned in.  Definitely not the ratings that "The Day of the Doctor" special ten years ago on the fiftieth anniversary earned.

The next special, "The Wild Blue Yonder", transmits this coming Saturday.  Followed by "The Giggle" and then the Christmas special that sees Ncuti Gatwa becoming the Fifteenth Doctor.  I have to wonder what these upcoming specials will gain in terms of viewership... if they gain anything substantial at all.  I kind of feel sorry for Gatwa.  I've seen some of his work and he would make an outstanding Doctor... but then again, Whittaker could have been an outstanding Doctor already, had it not been for The Message(tm) having the priority over everything else.

Okay, that's it.  I'm done with Doctor Who.  Maybe forever.  This show died in that blinding white light at the end of the Twelfth Doctor's regeneration.  Nothing since has been up to snuff and it sure looks like nothing yet to come is going to be proper Who either.

Incidentally, I spent Thanksgiving Day afternoon - the sixtieth anniversary of "An Unearthly Child", the very first Doctor Who episode - watching some of my many DVDs of the show's classic era.  First was the Fourth Doctor story "The Deadly Assassin" and then there was "The Five Doctors".  I celebrated The Doctor and everything good that he has stood for, for decades.  I'm very thankful for those DVDs (and I still have that VHS tape of "The Five Doctors").

To me, there is no more Doctor Who now.  It began with "An Unearthly Child" in 1963 and it ended with the final Peter Capaldi episode.  Everything since has been about nothing but forwarding THE AGENDA.  Doctor Who is now in the hands of people who do not now and might never have truly appreciated The Doctor and his universe.

But as Russell T. Davies put it so beautifully: "Tough".

Let us be grateful that we had The Doctor and his companions and their adventures for as long as we did.  And for now, there is still physical media of the classic series (and even many of the revived show) that can be purchased and archived away.  I recommend that you do that now, before Disney+ becomes the only means of watching the show at least here in America.  There is some genuine value in physical DVDs and Blu-rays and even videocassettes.

But as for what Doctor Who has now become?

Maybe there is some value in what the show is turning into.  Perhaps people better than I will look at what Doctor Who is morphing toward, and politely tell Davies and his woke minions that "oh yes that's nice!" when secretly they loathe it.  Kind of like a grown-up looking at the mad scribblings in crayon of a five-year old, who insists that it's a beautiful work of art.  And maybe the drawing will be put on a refrigerator door, before eventually being taken down and relocated to the basement.  Where rats and roaches will finally chew up its fading paper.

Let it fade.

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