Geek Girls Rule! #107 – Moving the Household What Rules

Ok, so I told you I’d be around a little more, perhaps writing a little more often.

I lied.

The Household What Rules is pulling up stakes and moving back into Seattle proper, where culture lives.  Also, where about 80% of our friends live so we can have lives again.  Also, we won’t be spending more than ten hours a week on our commute.

We’ll be living about three blocks from the Headmistress of Gothic Charm School, two blocks from the delightful folks who own the Dreaming and three blocks from the Wayward Coffee house.   I will live close enough to work that I can bike there, weather permitting.  The Husband What Rules’s commute will suck slightly more, but he says it’ll be worth it.  I’m holding him to that.

The cats, sensing something’s up, are less than pleased with us, with the exception of Jimmie who is leaping gaily into and out of boxes as fast as we can put them together.

With any luck we’ll have everything done and organized by Christmas.  So, expect a big drunken post sometime around then.

Thanks for your patience, guys.  And I promise, once the move’s done, more posting.  Promise.

Review: Doctor Who, Episode 4.16, “The Waters of Mars”

The Tenth Doctor’s time is growing short. As promised by outgoing showrunner Russell T Davies, things begin to get dark here. That’s an understatement.

2059. The Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) arrives on Mars at the first human outpost on the planet, Bowie Base One, under the command of the formidable Adelaide Brooke (Lindsay Duncan), just as terrible events begin to occur. Only he knows the truth of how it will end, and the laws of time forbid him from stopping it.

As written by Davies and Phil Ford (a previous contributor to spinoffs The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood), it’s a compelling hour of drama for Who fans. At its core, it’s a story about choices and their consequences, invested with a sense of inescapable tragedy that begins at a low level and slowly climbs to a wrenching climax. While it’s not quite in the same league as the brilliant Torchwood: Children of Earth, it does share a similar theme and tone, and Davies is a writer who always works best on an emotional level (something his critics so often misunderstand).

Veteran director Graeme Harper, whose involvement in the show dates back to 1966, confidently renders the story on screen with maximum suspense and some strong performances. In grand Who tradition, the exterior Mars scenes were shot in a quarry, but the CG effects render it believable. The monsters of the week are effective, and much like director Hideo Nakata did in the film Honogurai Mizu No Soko Kara, Harper turns even a single drop of water into a source of dread. I’ve read complaints that some viewers wanted more explanation of what the monsters were and what they were after, but that’s really missing the point: the monsters are a classic MacGuffin, used to setup the Doctor’s later actions. It’s all about the Doctor’s emotional journey here.

What we’re left with at the end is the idea that there are some lines a Time Lord (not even the last of the Time Lords) shouldn’t cross, and doing so will have terrible consequences for the Doctor. The past three seasons have offered numerous stories of the Tenth Doctor operating as an almost messianic figure with great powers. Now we’re beginning to get the payoff…and, oh, is it a doozy. Davies has clearly planned this all along, with the Tenth Doctor increasingly abusing his Time Lord powers for good ends and slowly creeping toward a line that should have remained uncrossed.

Tom Baker will always be my favorite Doctor, but Tennant is a close second because he’s the best actor to have played the role, and he delivers a bravura performance in this special. His expressive face details every emotion the Doctor goes through, from joy to sadness to a frightening arrogance to horror at his own actions. We see aspects of the Doctor that we’ve never seen before, or at least have only been hinted at. After all the horror and death the Doctor has seen since the Time War, he finally cracks, if only for a few minutes, but that’s long enough to make a serious error.

Duncan is marvelous as Adelaide, displaying humanity, grace, and courage. Much like Lady Christina in the previous special, Adelaide would have made an amazing companion for the Doctor under other circumstances. Tennant and Duncan play especially well off each other, adding to the emotional depth of the story.

I enjoyed “The Waters of Mars” very much, even if I felt uncomfortable with where it was taking the Doctor, which is precisely the effect it needed to have. The stage is now set for the two-part “The End of Time,” which is sure to be a brilliant finish for David Tennant as the Doctor and Davies as showrunner.

(And I loved GADGET!)

Geek Girls Rule! #106 – Sorry about the radio silence there.

Wow!  Life has been nuts.  Some good, some bad. 

Last Wednesday we had to put the Elderly Cat to sleep.  Ronin was 14, and when he started exhibiting the symptoms of kidney disease we did what we could to make him comfortable and then took him in once he wasn’t.   After going through heroic measures with Punkin 3 years ago, we decided that it would just be better not to.  Ronin wouldn’t have stood for subcutaneous fluids, and it just would have made his last days even more miserable than they already were.  He got his extra special elderly cat gooshy food, and lots of loves and the heated kitty bed, and last Wednesday when he started having trouble walking, we took him in and held him until the end.  The last couple of days I carried him with me everywhere and prayed we could stave it off, but really when it comes to kidney disease in cats, all the treatments do is rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic until the water hits your neck.  We just couldn’t do it again. 

Also, at work, we’ve been going through Accreditation.  Accreditation is the process by which the powers that be decide if you should be allowed to grant degrees in your field or not.  It is a long, painful, agonizing process.  And, it has occupied the majority of my brain for about the last 6-9 months. 

Now, the big fun oh boy! news of the month is that the weekend before last was Ambercon NW!  Ta DA!  Brilliant, as always.  Many thanks to Simone, Guy and everyone else who works so hard to make that weekend so awesome and such a freaking success!

Thursday night was the Porn Game, in which I played professional dominatrix Martina Votkanova.  The porn game is usually really light and fluffy, and as we started one of the players, Joe, laughingly said, “I bet there’s really a ’save the pattern, save the universe’ plot in here, but we’ve just been having so much fun with the smut that we’ve never found it.”  Well, we found it.  The game climaxed (pun intended) with an orgy to save the Serpent in Chaos and the Universe. 

Friday morning, I took off to hang out with my friend Karrin, affectionately known as the Keeper of the Other Half of my Brain.  Friday afternoon Karrin, myself, and our friend Madelaine, who are apparently known as the Trifecta of Female Gamer Evil, played with several other folks in a game called the Hooded Men run by Jules, and using a system written by Ben Lehmann.  We played bandits in Arden during the time of the Black Road, charged by Julian with destroying a terrifying monster or being eaten by his hounds.  Of course, Madelaine, Karrin and I decided that we were a lesbian bandit love triangle, and hilarity ensued.  Ben Lehmann came up with the idea, as a shaman, to essentially hit the reset button on Arden by sacrificing himself to the forest at it’s heart.  I got to sacrifice myself for true love, by dying in flames with Karrin’s character, while Madelaine looked on and said, “Wow, glad I got out of that relationship.”  Much fun was had.

Friday night, after a freakout brought on by concern for the elderly cat, I ran Attack of the B-Movies, using the 2-die or Bridge System written by Jordan, Chris and Ogre.  I had my four players play elder Amberites as horror movie tropes.  We had Dierdre the Cheerleader, Corwin the Sexy Outsider, Brand the Accidental Hero and Benedict the Hyper-Competent guy.  They killed Werewolf Julian.  Brand was attacked by Vampire Fiona.  Corwin got suckered into a trap by Flora tied to a bed.  And ultimately they faced down Vampire Master Caine with Corwin tied to an altar, Fiona and Flora crouching at Caine’s feet.  A lot of fun, very silly.  I described the scene of the final conflict as “Caine, as painted by Frank Frazetta.”  Having been bitten by Fiona, Brand had to obey Caine, but Benedict killed Caine just as Brand lunged, and so Brand stopped up short in his attack, dusted off Benedict’s lapels and said, “Good job.”

Saturday morning I played in Nursery Crimes PDX game run by my friend Jen.  Again, a blast.  This was based loosely off Jaspre Fforde’s Nursery Crimes books.  I played a vet who had developed an allergy to cats and dogs, who signed on with Nursery Crimes because she could still deal with talking bears, horses and lions.  We faced off against the Evil Mayor and Shere Khan from the Jungle Book, helped by Bagheera and the Lion from either Daniel in the Lion’s Den or Androcoles and the Lion, not sure which.  Lives were saved, man-eating tigers were caged, Evil Mayor was arrested.  Truly epic. 

Saturday night I ran the Amber/Harry Potter crossover game for the fourth year running.  This year the players decided that it was time to wreak some havoc on canon.  Usually I’m pretty careful to run them parallel to the books, but not intrude on canon.  Oh, not this bunch.  They got to save the day.  And I got introduced to the wonder that is the Bourbon Furnace.  Oooo, amazing drink. 

Sunday morning I ran Amber Family Therapy.  This is an idea that Debra Donoghue and Ogre came up with at our first Ambercon, and I got tired of waiting for her to come back and run it.  Ogre asked me if I were going to play the therapist as “the one true family therapist, or some poor clueless therapist out of Shadow?”  I opted for choice two as I found it far funnier, and Oh it was, therapist Harmony Stone.  I had Karrin as Brand “There’s always room on Team Destroy Them All, Harmony.”  Also a Corwin (sleazy), Martin, Fiona, Llewella, Merlin, Gerard, and Julian.  Oh, Julian.  My buddy Craig played the creepiest most fucked up Julian ever, with repressed homosexuality and incest issues, an unnatural attraction to Morgenstern and REALLY inappopriate crush on Flora.  Craig won the game.  One moment both Karrin (out of character) and I just wanted to hug him because he was so pitiable, and then he’d say something just… WHOA! and we’d recoil in horror.  Everyone else was awesome as well, but Craig went the extra distance.  After about two hours of that we declared Craig the winner, and then just talked about sex, Karrin and I performed dramatic readings of bad porn from the internet, and laid around the room nursing our hangovers. 

I now have a request to run Amber Family Therapy up in Seattle for people up here, and I’m considering banning Craig.  I don’t know if I’m up for that much more icky in my life.  Kidding.  I love sharing the wrinkles in my brain with everyone else. 

Ok, that’s about it.  Sorry again about it taking so long to do stuff, but damn has life been crazy.

Review: V, Episode 1, “Pilot”

This reimagining of the classic 1980s television miniseries starts off on the right foot.

The premise remains the same: dozens of massive spaceships suddenly appear over major world cities. The human-looking aliens, who become known as the Visitors, claim that they come in peace and wish only to help humanity, but it soon becomes apparent that they have a more sinister agenda, and an underground human resistance movement is formed to combat the invasion.

The original V miniseries was created by Kenneth Johnson and arrived on American television screens in 1983, followed by the sequel miniseries V: The Final Battle in 1984, itself followed by V: The Series later that year, which aired a single season of nineteen episodes before being canceled.

This reimagining was developed by Scott Peters, co-creator of The 4400, an underrated science fiction drama that ran for four seasons (2004-07) on the USA Network. Peters also serves as showrunner for the first four episodes before former The Shield and Chuck staff writer/producer Scott Rosenbaum replaces him in that capacity (some sources say Peters stepped down, others say that ABC network executives forced him out). Johnson retains a creator’s credit and a co-writer’s credit for the first episode, but he has no actual involvement in the remake.

The first season was given a thirteen episode order. Only four episodes have been produced so far and are being aired now, with the remaining nine episodes set to go into production in January under Rosenbaum’s supervision and scheduled to air in the spring after the Winter Olympics.

This episode, written by Peters, wastes no time in getting the audience into the story, and the first five minutes are as memorable as the opening of the original miniseries. The writing is crisp, replacing the fascism allegory of the original with a post-9/11 one, while still maintaining the core of what made the original good. Some critics have pointed out that certain elements can be seen as a satire of the personality cult surrounding Barack Obama, although Peters has denied that interpretation.

If I have one complaint, it’s that this episode is too fast paced, with so much plot development shoehorned into its forty-two minute running time that character and thematic development suffer a bit. It’s not a major flaw, and now that the setup is out of the way, hopefully they can slow the pace down in future episodes. Capable direction by Yves Simoneau, who also directed the first episode of The 4400, holds everything together from beginning to end.

The main cast is comprised of Morena Baccarin (Firefly) as Anna, the leader of the Visitors; Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost) as FBI Agent Erica Evans, whose investigation of a supposed terrorist cell leads her to the resistance; Logan Huffman as Erica’s rebellious teenaged son Tyler; Joel Gretsch (The 4400, and incidentally William Shatner’s son-in-law) as Father Jack, a Catholic priest who doesn’t trust the Visitors’ motives; Laura Vandervoort (Smallville) as Lisa, a Visitor who recruits young humans to serve as spies; and Morris Chestnut as Ryan, a man with a secret that could derail his happy life with his girlfriend Valerie, played by Lourdes Benedicto; and Scott Wolf as ambitious reporter Chad Decker. Firefly’s Alan Tudyk also guest stars in the first episode as FBI Agent Dale Maddox.

The cast is solid across the board, with several core actors having previous genre experience, and Baccarin in particular makes an impression as Anna, capably portraying both the seductive and alien qualities of the character. Baccarin is a gorgeous woman, making the response of some human men to her entirely believable, and then her acting talent takes it to another level by suggesting a creepy otherness.

Based on this first episode, V is a generally successful reimagining of its source material. Crisp writing, solid cast, lots of potential. I want to see where the story goes from here and how the change in showrunners affects the show.

Geek Girls Rule! Podcast – Halloween 2009

I was stuck at home with the plague, so you guys get half an hour of me rambling.

Enjoy!  There will be two interviews, one with Emily Care Boss and one with Meguey Baker, coming up.  And THEN perhaps I can address the Nerd clutter syndrome in another podcast.