Chris Baer

A New Who: Peter Capaldi is the Twelfth Doctor

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Evil, by Stuart Crawford on flickr.com, via a Creative Commons Attribution/Noncommerical/No Derivatives license.Well, that didn’t take long. A scant two months after announcing that Matt Smith would vacate the role of the Doctor, the BBC has announced that Peter Capaldi will be the next inhabitant of the TARDIS.

Unlike, well, all the new Who actors to play the Doctor, I actually knew of Capaldi’s work prior to the announcement, though solely from his turns on Torchwood and, interestingly, Doctor Who (in “The Fires of Pompeii”). I’m heartened by the fact that an actor with some considerable experience has taken on the role, particularly after the relative neophyte Matt Smith. Though hard to imagine, Capaldi is roughly the same age as William Hartnell when he took on the role of the First Doctor in 1963; and, like Hartnell, Capaldi brings both a dramatic and comedic background to the role.

I don’t find it difficult to see a sharper Doctor in Capaldi, one with a harder edge than Smith or Tennant, closer, indeed to Hartnell, but with some of the impishness of Troughton. I can’t imagine this Doctor being gravitas-deficient.

Time will only tell if showrunner Steven Moffat allows Capaldi to shape the character in an uniquely personal way or if he’ll simply ask Capaldi to parrot some catch-phrase (“Bow ties are allons-y!”) while the younger companion(s) run around chasing some MacGuffin that promises to tie up a season’s worth of loose ends in an utterly unsatisfying and frankly insulting manner.

(Image courtesy of Stuart Crawford via a Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike license.)

Road Bites: Bojangles’ Biscuits

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Biscuits every hour of the day! Filled with sausage and other fine meats! That’s road trip worthy right there.

As it turns out, I didn’t actually need to travel south towards Greensboro, North Carolina, to stop at a Bojangles—there’s one in the food court at Union Station in DC. But have you ever been in the food court at Union Station around lunch time? Much simpler to drive six hours for a biscuit fix. Plus, I’m convinced that, much like hoagies and cheesesteaks are best within twenty miles of the Schyukyll River, biscuits get better the further south you go, even if they’re institutionally made.

Besides, I was already in North Carolina on a road trip, and I made sure that one of our first stops was at the Bojangles just off exit 214 on I-40. Super friendly staff (making sure I didn’t miss out on any deals and offers, unlike some places I stopped on this trip) only helped make the experience better. But frankly, for these biscuits, I would have endured surly.

Bojangles Steak Biscuit (left) and Country Ham Biscuit (right)

My culinary companion and I sampled several types of filled biscuits—for some reason, I don’t feel comfortable calling them sandwiches—and the clear winner is the country ham biscuit, two thin slices of salty ham nestled in a fluffy, slightly crumbly biscuit. Any more ham and the saltiness would have overwhelmed the experience, but those two slices brought just the right amount of flavor to the biscuit, which was thus allowed equal play in the taste.

The cajun chicken filet biscuit was acceptable, if a little low on the spice. There was some cajun flavoring that snuck up a few bites in, but it seemed tame to me, and the size of the filet rivaled that of the biscuit itself, making the proportions a bit off kilter. Much better was the steak biscuit, a piece of country-fried steak that found a better fit, proportionally. It might seem slightly odd that you would eat a breaded piece of meat between bread, but frankly, it works.

For actual road trip purposes, these biscuits are not ideal. While not greasy per se, there’s a bit of grease involved in eating them, and one doesn’t want a sheen on the steering wheel. So pull over, go into the restaurant, and eat them. A true road trip doesn’t have a timetable.

Doctor Who Project: Mission to the Unknown

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It is done. The seven great powers of the galaxy are one.

Obviously, far too much time has passed since the Daleks last appeared on Doctor Who in “The Chase,” a whole eight episodes ago. And so, to set up their epic return in the twelve-part “The Daleks’ Master Plan” one story hence, we are treated to Terry Nation’s “Mission to the Unknown” (Story Production Code T/A), a one episode “prologue” also known as the Dalek Cutaway but mostly known because there’s no Doctor in it. At all.

From the start, one imagines “Mission to the Unknown” to be Terry Nation’s vision of the Daleks outside of Doctor Who, with neither the Doctor nor his Companions even mentioned in the episode. The music itself seems a departure from the established series norm, with an excessive use of musical “stings”—quick, crashing, slightly discordant sounds more commonly associated with horror or thriller films.

Opposing the cumbersome pepperpots this time is not a Time Lord but Marc Cory, an agent of Earth’s Space Security Service (also called the Special Security Service in this episode). Had Marc Cory survived the episode, I would have suspected an Earth vs. Dalek spin-off series in the making. But one feels nothing for the deaths of Cory and his unwitting colleagues Garvey and Lowery; they are essentially set dressing.

Ultimately, the episode serves as an info-dump more than a teaser. The actors (Dalek and human alike) fairly stumble over big blocks of text as Terry Nation spends most of the story in expositional mode, setting up the scenario (a thousand years after the last Dalek invasion of Earth) and letting us know what the Daleks have been up to in the intervening years (conquering planets millions of light years away). And now they’re back for another crack at Earth, this time in a great alliance with the galaxy’s six other great powers, noted in the script as Gearon, Trantis, Malpha, Sentreal, Beaus, and Celation. And note, too the black dome of the Dalek Supreme.

As is somewhat typical of early (and, who are we kidding, current) Doctor Who, astronomical terms are thrown around with imprecise abandon. One of the delegates at the Daleks’ alliance meeting, from Malpha, proclaims:

This is indeed an historic moment in the history of the universe. We six from the outer galaxies, joining with a power from the solar system: the Daleks.

Universe, galaxy, solar system? Even the location of the planet Kembel, where the action takes place, is unclear. Cory and his fellows suggest that Earth has a huge galactic network, though, so Earth is no slouch in terms of colonization and, perhaps, conquest.

As with “Galaxy 4” before it, “Mission to the Unknown” no longer exists on film, and given the effects work hinted at in the publicity stills and the script, one hopes fervently that a copy turns up at a jumble sale somewhere after decades in an attic, if only to see the giant headed cone alien walk around.

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Road Bites: Hardee’s Jumbo Chili Dog

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The whole point of a road trip, besides getting somewhere, is to experience the road. You can’t take a road trip on a major highway; you’ve gotta get on the lesser byways, the routes and throughways and bypasses. At the very least, you have to get off at an exit you’ve never taken and sample the regional fare.

But sometimes, you don’t have a lot of choices, especially right off of an exit or along a busy route, and the local restaurants tend to seem quite similar, with lots of Tony’s and Toni’s and Spitoni’s and Antony’s Pizzas that bespeak not regionalism but lack-of-originalityism. Perhaps there’s an authentic, regional specialty lurking in there somewhere, but at 55 MPH, it’s hard to tell. So what’s an intrepid road trip grazer to do? Regional fast food is where it’s at…

For the inaugural Road Bites review, I’m visiting a chain, Hardee’s, that was once a major player in the metro Washington, DC, area but now counts as a rare breed, at least within an hour of the Beltway. There’s certainly nothing particularly regional about their hamburgers, though they are well regarded for their fried chicken. But I’m not much of a fried chicken person, so, on the expert advice of my culinary companion, we stopped in at the Hardee’s on Route 29 in Charlottesville, Virginia, and picked up chili dogs, Jumbo Chili Dogs, to be precise.

Hardee's Jumbo Chili Dog

Now this is quintessential road trip food. You just don’t find hot dogs on fast food menus these days, and these were grilled. Grilling should be the only legal way to cook hot dogs. The quality of the dog was sufficient—I’m not expecting locally sourced organic Angus beef here—and it fit just so in the toasted bun.

Likewise, the chili sauce (it would be a stretch to call it chili) matched my expectations for a fast food chili dog. The meat was finely ground, moderately spiced, and modestly portioned; the sauce itself was loose but not watery. It stuck to the dog and the bun, and whatever spilled out could be easily scooped up with the serviceable french fries. Topped off with very finely diced onions, the Jumbo Chili Dog hit the spot. Lucky I got two of them.

I’m not thinking that the Michelin inspectors need to stop by, and I wouldn’t necessarily even recommend that a hungry traveller make a detour, but for a bite on the road that takes one back a few decades, it works.

Philly on the Potomac: Cheesesteak from Taylor Charles Steak & Ice

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Far and wide in this country, you find sandwich shops and corner takeouts and bland chain restaurants offering “Philadelphia Cheesesteaks” on their menus. But they’re not real cheesesteaks. Slathering cheese on chopped meat does not magically yield a cheesesteak any more than stuffing cold cuts into a hard roll causes a hoagie to appear. Without proper ingredients, preparation, and construction, you just have a sandwich.

And while I’m capable of enjoying a sub (though always wishing it were a hoagie), I’m incapable of enjoying the faux cheesesteaks that have been foisted upon an unsuspecting populace by shops outside the greater Philadelphia area.

So when the founders of DC’s Taylor Gourmet, purveyors of fine, and authentic, Philadelphia sandwiches, opened their cheesesteakerie, Taylor Charles Steak & Ice at the end of 2012, I was hopeful yet wary. Their hoagies, roast porks, and chicken cutlets could well pass muster on any Philadelphia street corner, but for all their apparent simplicity, cheesesteaks require some significant griddle work. No matter how good your ingredients and intentions, you can’t fake it.

It’s not just chopping the meat while cooking it; there’s a flow to getting the meat to the proper consistency while folding in the cheese and grilled onions and scooping it all into the soft roll. Nailing the cheesesteak requires training and lots of it, and if you’re not moving enough volume over your griddle, you’ll never be able to replicate the “just-in-time” cheesesteak that the premier joints up in Philly turn out in consistently amazing quantity and quality.

My uncertainty kept me from making the trek up to H Street. Plus, they offer a “fixings bar” with mustard, ketchup, hot sauce, and mayo. Just, no. Such condiments never go on a cheesesteak. But once they offered delivery, I knew I had to give them a chance. And they nailed it.

Ribeye wit' Provolone Cheesesteak from Taylor Charles Steak and Ice

Precision is paramount to the Philadelphia sandwich aficionado. As I experienced with my first hoagie from the Taylor team, the proportions and construction of this ribeye wit’ provolone were spot on. Not too many onions, not too much cheese—the steak remains paramount. The cheese was delivered into the roll, coating the soft bread and melding all the flavors, rather than sitting uselessly on top. The good-quality ribeye was chopped finely but not so fine that it lacked texture. The addition of some long hots for a buck helped add a bit of heat and an additional textural counterpoint. (And yes, adding hot peppers to a cheesesteak is quite properly Philly; all the cheesesteak joints up there have them available.)

The roll held up quite agreeably, with a nice, chewy give, and kept all the ingredients together from first bite to last. Not quite an Amoroso, the Philadelphia cheesesteak standard, but a very close approximation.

This home-grown roll works far better than the hard rolls they bake for Taylor Gourmet. My last several sandwiches there were made slightly less enjoyable by those rolls, which impart their own taste, somewhat sweet, into the mix. Hoagie rolls need to be sturdy, blank canvases, and while I would happily eat a Sarcone’s roll alone, significant taste is not their role (only slight pun intended). Taylor’s switch from Sarcone’s rolls to their own recipe makes sense—it’s an understandably unsustainable business model, given the volume and the potential for logistical disaster—but I still long for a more neutral hard roll from them. The soft roll for their cheesesteaks makes up for it, though.

I have it on good authority that the homemade “white whiz” also earns high marks. My culinary counterpart had the ribeye wit’ white whiz and was duly impressed. I’m strictly a provolone guy, so I’ll have to take her word for it.

Simply put, the folks at Taylor Charles Steak & Ice have put together the best cheesesteak this far from the Schuylkill. Good value, great ingredients, careful preparation. All I need now is a gruff voice on the other end of the phone when I place a delivery order and it’s like I’m in Philly…

A Doctor Who’s Dozen: Twelfth Doctor on the Way

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The recent news that Matt Smith will be vacating his role as the Eleventh Doctor finds me in a mixed mood. I’ve made no real secret that I find Smith’s rendition of Doctor Who to be less than satisfying, but upon reflection, my displeasure stems less from the actor than from the scripts and the general direction the show has taken under showrunner Steven Moffat.

Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor

Regenerations give Doctor Who a chance to shake up the series, add new elements, bring about new dramatic directions; the change from William Hartnell’s persnickety, slightly crotchety First Doctor to Patrick Troughton’s flighty, insouciant Second Doctor provided a brilliant transition that brought new life to the show (somewhat literally) and yet still honored where the show had been. The change from David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor to Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor felt to me like playing to a younger demographic, and the companions during most of Smith’s run, the Ponds, only served to remind us that Moffat was also responsible for the romantic comedy series Coupling. Not that Coupling wasn’t an intermittently enjoyable show, but silly relationship banter isn’t why I watch Doctor Who.

So, I’m excited about the possibility of a new Doctor Who—perhaps a female Doctor, finally, or a return to an older, more distinguished male actor?—but so long as Steven Moffat is at the helm, we’ll still have disjointed “arcs” that promise much and fulfill nothing, pandering rehashes of old series villains, and an absolute disregard for even the most basic canonical standards of the series. I’m no stranger to the fact that the old series pretty much made it all up as they went along—the Dalek chronology was pretty much a disaster by the second season—but they took it seriously even as they made an earnest hash of it all. William Hartnell took pains to keep the then-young show’s continuity intact. I don’t ask for perfection from my shows, only respect.

Here’s to hoping, I suppose.