Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

I stopped my cable service earlier this year and therefore missed the final three episodes of Doctor Who’s Season Five.

Vincent and the Doctor was a strong episode, and I was hearing nice things about the rest of the end run so I was very much looking forward to the DVD release.

Episode: The Lodger
Not too bad, but not too good either. The premise is sufficiently creepy: A voice comes over the intercom of a home asking passers-by for help. There’s been an accident… A little girl has lost her mummy…

The passers-by go in. Something horrible happens. They don’t come out.

That is one scary premise because while we would all feel cautious and uneasy, I still think most people would answer that call for help.

But the scariness is put in the background because the live and living people downstairs, of which the Doctor is one, is played for a lot of laughs. And that, while very enjoyable, also undercuts the sad and serious theme of Home that always runs through Doctor Who.

I don’t think this is a bad episode at all. The guest stars are charming. It is a smidge better than OK. I just had higher expectations, that’s all.

Episodes: The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang
It’s one of those stories during which you’re just not supposed to think too much. As an ending and a wrap-up to an otherwise unfulfilling season, it did fine. I was engaged while watching it, and emitted the appropriate gasps and what!?s.

But the main issue is that by the end, I wasn’t sure if any of it made any sense. And worse, I didn’t feel that I could rewatch or think about what I saw some more and be able to nitpick appropriately. (Besides the weirdness that River remembering doesn’t make any difference. Amy has to remember.)

I wrote about Moffat‘s tendency to throw everything into an episode just for effect rather than purpose back during Flesh and Stone. And that’s what I felt here.

It was too much all the time. After a certain point, that’s just the mark of a scared and unsure writer who uses manipulation rather than storytelling to get the drama across. Why does everything feel so shallow when the Who of Russell T Davis felt so epic and deep?

Spoilers below.

Did every single character have to die? Did we need all of the Doctor Who monsters? To achieve what?

The Crack is only coincidentally connected to Amy, who is only coincidentally connected to the Pandorica, which is only coincidentally connected to the Alliance because of the Crack.

I find it disappointing that they’ve built an entire season on coincidences. And the Doctor can talk about not ignoring coincidences all he wants but we still don’t have the answers we need.

The Crack is somehow connected to the Doctor and the Tardis but we don’t know how. Who is the Big Bad that wants this Silence? And why does the Crack make Amy God, creating the world from her memory?

See, don’t think too much.

Tags: TV by Ms. SP
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Hey, guess what? I finally finished Twilight.

Ok, so the book does get tolerable at about page 368, when things actually begin to happen and the characters actually get to do stuff. Before this point though, there is just terrible, terrible dialogue and insipidly conveyed thoughts by Bella, our heroine narrator.

She’s supposed to be special and smart so that we get on her side quickly, but using perfect a hundred times to describe everything—hair, eyes, skin, smile—about the mysterious and gorgeous boy in school does not make one special or smart.

She does get to demonstrate these traits later, but such proof should have come in, oh, chapter one. Until later, all we know of Edward’s attraction to her is that she smells good and that he can’t read her mind.

I optimistically got New Moon when I first obtained Twilight so I’ll go ahead and continue into the second book of the series, but I sincerely hope that there will be more action and less thinking in this next installment. Meyer seems better at writing the former than the latter.

Tags: Books by Ms. SP
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Everyone who reads this raves about the first chapter. If nothing else, do yourself a favor and go find The Things They Carried in a bookstore or library and just stand there and read the first chapter.

It will blow you away.

And chapter one is not even the best one of the book. Seriously, this is one amazing read.

I criticized The Hurt Locker because I felt that it didn’t have anything new or special to say about war. That is certainly not the case with The Things They Carried. Everything feels… not just new… but new in a way that brand new truths are found in it.

In these stories, Tim O’Brien uses words like music notes, and the music seeks to get as close to emotions, feelings, and ideas as possible.

You know how all Art is representational?

Words, for example, are never the thing they name, describe, whatever. There are even ideas and emotions that simply are not assigned words.

For example, how exactly should the scene of having a living, breathing, existing man in front of you one second and chunks of unidentifiable meat the next be described exactly? Sure there are the facts of the event, but there are so many things beyond the realm of words too. And how do you get that across to people who have never been there?

But in these stories, the scenes described come into focus, and somehow we know some things that feel like we should have always known them… but didn’t. O’Brien even has an interesting back and forth throughout the book about whether something has to be true to be truth.

I think you’ll get what he means if you decide to delve into this wonderful and unforgettable book.

1% Well Read Challenge: five down, eight to go.
1001 Books To Read Before You Die list: 87 down.

Tags: Books by Ms. SP
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