Most Doctor Who stories can be divided into one of two categories: ones where The Doctor is basically forced to confront an old adversary and ones where he chooses to confront or investigate something unknown out of curiosity. “Under The Lake” is a fine example of the latter category and one of the better installments thereof in some time in terms of quality.
This was a fun one. The “pissing contests” between The Doctor and Robin Hood were particularly entertaining. This is the first time we’ve gotten to see this new Doctor play the cranky old man to a younger hero type, something they obviously couldn’t do with Tennant or Smith but something they should now take full advantage of. Continue reading
I’m sure I’m not the only one who already feels like Peter Capaldi has already been the Doctor for a long time now. By the end of “Deep Breath” his performance felt both familiar and fresh at the same time. I’m not sure what more one could ask for from a transition than that very feeling I just described. I can’t go so far as to say that the transition has been seamless; to do so would be ignoring how dissatisfied I was with “The Time of the Doctor,” but I will say that on this back-end of the change, on the transition from one Doctor I liked immensely to one I was giddily excited for did not disappoint. Continue reading
Surely we are in the midst of a Golden Age of the episodic crime drama. Between Sherlock, True Detective, Luther, Broadchurch, Breaking Bad, Dexter, Top of the Lake, and a plethora of enormously successful CBS procedurals that I admit I have never seen but people seem to enjoy (NCIS, Elementary, post-Petersen CSI). I have seen Criminal Minds several times (its a favorite of my parents) and have usually enjoyed it, but for a variety of reasons, traditional procedurals favored by the likes of CBS in particular and networks in general don’t really fit into my main argument, which I’ll present herein. Continue reading
Mixed American Film Buff 