Doctor Who Project: The Wheel in Space

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Doctor Who Project: The Wheel in Space

There seems to be rather a lot of metal around us.

Season Five of Doctor Who ends more or less as it began, with the Second Doctor facing off against the Cybermen. Regular series writer David Whitaker takes his first crack at the metal monstrosities in “The Wheel in Space” (Story Production Code SS), based on a story by Cybermen originator Kit Pedler. They’ve become much more Dalek-like in their intentions, looking to conquer the Earth with a convoluted plan that hinges on capturing Station Three, the titular wheel in space. It’s certainly not the first time the Cybermen have tried to take over Earth, but one wouldn’t know it from this story, as no one on the station seems to have ever encountered a Cyberman previously. Even though, um, the planet Mondas appeared in Earth’s sky back in the 1980s and the Cybermen invaded the Moon in the year 2070, both events prior to the setting of this story.

New and Improved Cybermen

This narrative amnesia neatly encapsulates the current state of Doctor Who in 1968 (and, one might say, through to the current day). The needs of the story outweigh the needs of the established canon. Yet at the same time, there’s an almost reverent attention to small continuity details pitched solely at dedicated viewers (who would be the ones most likely to recognize, and resent, this amnesia). In the case of “The Wheel in Space,” the Doctor and Jamie are trapped in their predicament by a faulty fluid link; the escaping mercury vapor requires them to abandon the TARDIS and search (eventually) for more mercury. The fluid link connects back to “The Daleks” some four seasons prior when the First Doctor disabled the fluid links to force an ill-advised exploration of the Dalek city to look for mercury—and for adventure.

As has become somewhat standard, the Cybermen are attempting to infiltrate a base that they need to keep intact, so as to use the equipment therein for various nefarious purposes. This time, they have upgraded substantially, with the little Cybermats having energy beams (and the ability to detect brain waves and corrode metals) and the Cybermen themselves equipped with the ability to control human minds. What they haven’t upgraded is their tactical planning apparatus, as the entire scheme to take over Station Three hinges on ionizing a distant star to create a meteorite storm which threatens the station—so far, so good—and then, ah, hiding in a box.

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Beer Notebook: My First Growler

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Good beer, fresh from the tap, just sings. But short of a slightly expensive renovation job to install a keg stand and tap, getting that just-poured beer requires a trip out, and sometimes you want to sit at home and enjoy a pint. So how to get that fresh beer in a comfortable setting of your own choosing?

Dogfish Head Growler

Enter the growler, an old concept made new again with the rise of microbreweries and their associated brewpubs. At heart, a growler is just a glass jug with a tight-sealing cap, filled with your favorite brew at your friendly local tavern for consumption off-premises, and almost every microbrewery will fill them, in 32 and 64 ounce sizes. Most microbreweries sell their own glass growlers, with brand logo (and the all-important government warning) printed on the glass; further, as long as that warning is on the growler (and the growler is clean), most will fill other breweries’ growlers as well.

Growlers, at least as shorthand for large containers for beer, have been around a long time. Joseph Mitchell, in his collection Up in the Old Hotel, recounts their use before Prohibition, quoting a butcher preparing for a massive beefsteak feast:

“In the old days they didn’t even use tables and chairs. They sat on beer crates and ate off the tops of beer barrels. You’d be surprised how much fun that was. Somehow it made old men feel young again. And they’d drink beer out of cans, or growlers. Those beefsteaks were run in halls or the cellars or back rooms of big saloons.”

The emphasis seems to be on excess, and yet the modern iteration of the growler centers on freshness and the ability to take that liquid ambrosia home.

I acquired my first growler on a recent trip to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, home of the Dogfish Head Brewpub. In addition to sampling their brewpub-only offerings—Wet Hop After Dark, a fresh hop dark IPA that sadly managed to hide the fresh hop taste, and a very fine cask version of their 75 Minute IPA—I availed myself of their growler selection and went with a classic, the stellar 60 Minute IPA. I didn’t even mind that the server who brought me the growler called my 32 ounce version “a cute little baby growler,” as I had acquired what I came for: fresh beer the next day at home.

And it was fresh. The gasket-sealed cap kept the carbonation going, resulting in a near-tap pour with a generous and creamy head. I’m sure purists could taste the difference between my growler beer and beer right out of the tap, but it was more than close enough for me. I had one of my favorite beers, at the peak of freshness, in the comfort of my home.

So long live the growler! I’m lucky enough to live someplace with several microbreweries nearby that fill growlers, and I look forward to walking in there with my Dogfish Head jug asking for a fill.

The Unlikeliest Love Letter: LEGO Dimensions Doctor Who

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I tempered my expectations going into the recently released Doctor Who Level Pack for LEGO Dimensions, the “toys to life” console video game. Playing through the base game (plus The Simpsons Level Pack) provided a bit of fun in seeing Homer and Gandalf running around on the same screen, bashing baddies into bricks and solving simple puzzles, and the tactile component of the game—building and manipulating the LEGO figures and objects as a part of the gameplay—filled me with some nostalgic glee. But, as a game, the experience proved somewhat underwhelming, and once I completed the campaign missions and noodled around in the various themed “adventure worlds” dedicated to the franchises I owned figures for, I shelved the game, almost forgetting that I had the Doctor Who pack on order.

I knew, going in, that each of the Doctor’s regenerations (including, sigh, the “War Doctor”) would be playable, but based on my experience with The Simpsons Level Pack, I figured there would be some minor homages to big moments in Doctor Who‘s recent history and that the playable regenerations would just be minor variants on the default Twelfth Doctor figure.

I was, as they say, wrong.

The First Doctor in the TARDIS in LEGO Dimensions

The level of attention, of detail, to the individual Doctors stunned me. LEGO Dimensions Doctor Who is a love letter to the show.

The First Doctor figure captures, broadly, William Hartnell’s mannerisms, from the lapel-pulling and slightly haughty leaning to his penchant for pulling out a magnifying glass. Even his combat move involves his signature cane (given to him, of course, by Kublai Khan). When the player enters the TARDIS in the game, the interior matches the TARDIS that the specific Doctor used—circular wall panels for the First, Victorian sitting room for the Eighth—with even the appropriate set dressings, like the sitting chair in the First Doctor’s TARDIS. The background music changes as well based on the Doctor, utilizing the dominant theme music for each.

My shock compounded when I explored the “adventure world” for Doctor Who and found one of the locations to be Telos. Yes, that Telos, home of the Tomb of the Cybermen. I can expect most casual fans of the show to recognize the I.M. Foreman scrap yard (it’s in the game), but to reach back to 1967 and the criminally under-appreciated Second Doctor for a setting demonstrates that the team responsible both knows Doctor Who and, more to the point, respects it.

The Second Doctor on Telos in LEGO Dimensions

Even the associated game objective in the area of the Tomb harkens back to “The Tomb of the Cybermen,” which ended with a lone Cybermat escaping the destruction of the Tomb. In the game, Lady Vastra (from the new series) tasks the player with destroying thirty Cybermats before they can awaken the Cybermen in the Tomb. Even though the gameplay associated with it provides no real challenge for an adult gamer, much joy comes from bashing the little cybercreatures with the Second Doctor, who wields a flute (!) as a weapon. I really don’t know that I could ask for more.

While, of course, the majority of the Doctor Who Level Pack focuses on the new series, and the middle Doctors don’t have quite as much focus as the early or late ones, I’m still smiling broadly from my experience thus far with the game. The cost for the base game and the level pack verges on the steep, but I found the experience more than worthwhile for a fan of the series.

Besides, where else can you have the Doctor offer Homer Simpson a jelly baby?

Doctor Who Project: Fury from the Deep

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Doctor Who Project: Fury from the Deep

There’s molecular movement!

For anyone keeping track at home, with Victor Pemberton’s “Fury from the Deep” (Story Production Code RR), the Doctor and his companions have now spent five straight stories (thirty episodes total) on Earth, at various times in that planet’s history, an unprecedented run. Not until the Third Doctor is stranded on Earth by the as-yet-unknown Time Lords (and by BBC budgets) will the Doctor rack up quite so many frequent flyer miles in the general vicinity of London. What’s more, the TARDIS displays an increasing tendency towards the sea, this time materializing above the waves close to the North Sea coastline. The TARDIS can float, at least, which is more than can be said for the story’s plot.

Thankfully equipped with flotation devices

To be fair, the story moves along with some pace, though it’s not the fare one has come to expect from Doctor Who. Indeed, the Doctor barely figures in the first four episodes, which are given over instead to the intramural power struggle between a grizzled old rig hand and a fancy college educated technocrat whose wife just happens to have sprouted weed tentacles from her wrist. While Robson, the vet, and Harris, the know-it-all, fight, the Doctor dithers about until Victoria is finally (and inevitably) captured, spurring him to action. Throw in a meddling Dutchman appointed by the multi-national organization overseeing the gas extraction, a Laurel-and-Hardy-esque pair of villains named Mr. Oak and Mr. Quill, an overactive foam machine, and lots of helicopters flying to and fro, and you’ve got “Fury from the Deep” in a nutshell.

“Fury from the Deep” shows Doctor Who in a rut, with another isolated base (this time a set of gas drilling rigs in the North Sea) under attack from another enemy that can control minds and generate copious amounts of foam. Only this time, unlike the Great Intelligence and the Yeti, the foe has no intelligence of its own. Because it’s seaweed. Evil seaweed. Six episodes of evil seaweed.

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Materializing Soon: LEGO Doctor Who Set Scheduled

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Not that there was much doubt it would eventually happen, but LEGO has finally scheduled the release for what, one hopes, is the first of many Doctor Who building sets. Landing right after Thanksgiving, on December 1st, the inaugural Doctor Who LEGO set features the TARDIS (with detachable police box and console play area), buildable Daleks, and minifigs for the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors, plus current companion Clara and a Weeping Angel for good measure.

Image via https://ideas.lego.com/blogs/a4ae09b6-0d4c-4307-9da8-3ee9f3d368d6/post/365e88bc-4011-449a-8c67-b86616e599ee

I had put my money on a November 23rd release, to coincide with the series’ anniversary, but December 1st isn’t too far off. I certainly hope that LEGO has sufficiently estimated demand for this product, as the early rumblings seem to suggest the Venn diagram of LEGO enthusiasts and Whovians overlaps to a fair (OK, absurd) extent, and the LEGO Ideas line tends to be limited run. Even at the US$60 price point, Doctor Who fans will not find it a difficult purchasing decision, though the choice of Doctors and companion leaves, perhaps, something to be desired. I realize my dream set of the First Doctor, Vicki, and Steven facing off the the Dhravins from “Galaxy Four” would make for a hard sell, but still, no Doctor from the original run? Not even a K-9?

Given that this set will sell as well as Yeti take to the Underground, ideally LEGO will produce variant consoles and the proper Doctors to go with them, either as separate sets or as expansions to this set. They’ve already done something similar with their planned LEGO Dimensions Doctor Who set, albeit in a mostly digital fashion, so I imagine that the licensing would not be impossibly prohibitive.

The popularity of the current iteration of the series makes the inclusion of the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors essentially mandatory, but a Whovian can dream of LEGO Sensorites…

(Image via LEGO Ideas Blog)

Triple Threat: Churchill (GMT Games)

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Three players is an odd number. Well, literally, of course, but also in terms of finding a good game. Some games play well with three, but the purpose-built three player game tends to be a rarer beast, particularly with wargames. One of GMT Games’ latest offerings, Churchill: Big Three Struggle for Peace, by Mark Herman, fits the bill with an intriguing blend of office politics and abstracted grand strategic combat.

Players take the role of one of the three leaders of the Allies during World War II: the eponymous Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin. While nominally a co-operative game wherein the players allocate resources to various theaters of war against the Axis powers, it’s co-operative only in the sense that while everyone loses together, only one person really wins. And balancing that desire for a non-lose state (surrender of both Axis powers by the end of the game) against an individual win (most victory points without going too far above your opponents) provides the game’s essential tension.

Churchill: European Front

The conference system sits the heart of Churchill’s gameplay. Cards representing cabinet-level assistants are played to debate various agenda items during one of the war’s ten conferences, corresponding to historic meetings of the leaders and their teams during the war. Winning an agenda item through debate, be it resources for combat or political shifts in conquered Europe and Asia, gives you the ability to shape the outcome of the war. But, as long-time gaming buddies Doug Bush and Mike Vogt and I found during our initial playthrough at the first ever WashingCon last month, just because you win the debate doesn’t mean you win the war.

Doug took the Soviet side and painted almost all of Eastern Europe red on the road to taking Berlin, giving him a big VP lead, but because Mike’s Americans and my British failed to muster enough strength to knock Japan out of the war—caused mostly by our attempts to counter Doug’s clandestine machinations—at end game, we wound up with a group loss. The system played smoothly, and we managed to finish the five turn Tournament scenario in about four hours. Dice do play a role (no pun intended), but proper planning (and resource allocation) can overcome almost all luck-dependent situations.

The Churchill box comes filled with bits, mostly of the wooden variety, to justify its price tag. Counters take the form of GMT’s deluxe “rounded” counters, with individual counter die-cutting rather than die-cut strips, and the fifty-odd cards are of typical size and with a nice finish. The mounted map has a good matte finish and works ergonomically for the most part. A note to the sticker-averse, however: some of the wooden blocks do require stickering. Thankfully GMT provides extra stickers and blocks in case your manual dexterity just isn’t what it used to be.

Churchill fits a good niche: a grand strategic World War II game designed for three players that focuses on the conduct of the war more than combat. There’s no real panzer pushing here, just perilous politicking over production. Charts included with the game allow one or more sides to be run via flowchart in the event that you have fewer than three players, but the deal-making (and deal-breaking) at the heart of the game make Churchill best with three. Churchill occupies a prime spot on my very short list of games I’ll bring out when three players are on hand.