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.

A Trove of Richard’s Poor Almanacs

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Richard's Poor AlmanacLike a farmer delivering fresh produce to the local market, “Cul de Sac” creator Richard Thompson just announced on his site that he has delivered another signed batch of Richard’s Poor Almanacs—the much-sought-after collected edition of his “Richard’s Poor Almanac” cartoons—to One More Page Books in Arlington, VA.

Given that copies on the second hand market go for $75 and up, the fact that these new, signed copies will run you a twenty, shipped, with change back means you should run, (or type a very fast e-mail) to the store.

Every literate bookshelf needs one!

Doctor Who Project: Galaxy 4

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My dear young man, this isn’t a joyride! This is a scientific expedition.

Season breaks in Doctor Who give the writers a chance to step off of the teaser treadmill, as most stories end with a glimpse of the next story to come. So instead of catapulting the Doctor, Vicki, and Steven immediately into yet another perilous setting, the season three opener, “Galaxy 4” (Story Production Code T), by William Emms, starts with a tranquil scene. Vicki is cutting Steven’s hair—in the TARDIS control room, of course—while the Doctor putters around the console, handling what would appear to be another normal materialization. The overarching sense is that this form of time and space travel has become commonplace for the two companions, in an “If it’s Tuesday, it must be Skaro” sort of way.

Once the TARDIS doors open on an apparently lifeless planet, though, the action picks up with a pleasant pace and doesn’t stop for four episodes. No elaborate and detailed exposition here, as our travellers are captured and removed from the TARDIS and then captured again in record speed. After the rather plodding plot presentation in “The Time Meddler,” a bit of immediate action is not unwelcome.

Vicki christens their first captors, squat, apparently vision-less, dome-headed robots, as Chumblies. She’s frankly enamored of them and anthropomorphizes them. Who can blame her? Relative to the Daleks and the Mechanoids, we have soft, rounded robots, albeit with death rays. But then again, Vicki did have a pet Sand Monster before Susan killed it in cold blood, so her cute-meter might need some adjusting.

The Drahvin, emotionless female warriors, quickly replace the Chumblies as the villains in the piece, “rescuing” the Doctor and his companions from the robots. A space conflict between the Drahvin and the Rill, who control the Chumblies, resulted in both parties crashing on this unnamed planet, which will, according to the Rill, explode in “fourteen dawns.” Maaga, the leader of the Drahvin, does not trust the “disgusting” Rill, claiming that they shot her down and killed one of her soldiers, so she holds Vicki as a de facto hostage to force the Doctor to verify the claims. It turns out the Rill were wrong—the planet does not have fourteen dawns left. It has two.

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A Mixed Bag: Peanuts in the Late ’80s

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I’ve been collecting Fantagraphics’ sumptuous Complete Peanuts series since the beginning of the run way back in 2004—and reading “Peanuts” strips since the early ’70s—so it is with some trepidation that I approach the most recent volume in the series, covering 1987-1988. Charles Schultz’s unsurpassed accomplishment with “Peanuts,” his seventeen thousand plus strips without a break, brooks no creditable criticism, and yet I find that the strip by this point in the run has become, not stale, but somewhat routinized.

We have Snoopy and the “bird” scout troop trekking about, Charlie Brown and the baseball team, Schroeder and Lucy at the Piano, Snoopy and his incessant hunger for dinner, Spike writing letters from the desert, the kite-eating tree, Sally not wanting to do her homework, Peppermint Patty not doing her homework, Snoopy fighting World War I, and then back again to the beginning with only a few deviations. There’s a comfort in the routine, and each passage through the expected sequence brings pleasant nuances (particularly when Spike appears as a WWI Doughboy). Peppermint Patty, Marcie, and Sally all feature far more frequently than they did in years past, and Schultz is not afraid to indulge himself in a long sequence of strips with these characters from time to time. Charlie Brown goes weeks without an appearance in this compilation.

Lydia and Linus, January 28, 1987, from The Complete Peanuts: 1987 to 1988The one major new addition to the rotation Schultz adds in this time period—a girl with multiple names for whom Linus pines—feels forced rather than fresh, emphasizing that the shopworn is better than the new when it comes to “Peanuts,” indeed, even making us long for a strip with Spike or Rerun, Linus’ kid brother who looks pretty much exactly like Linus, just smaller. The attempt to expand Linus’ role in the strip by giving him a counterpart to Charlie Brown’s Little Red Headed Girl is appreciated here, but Lydia (or whatever her name is) comes across as the one-note joke that she is.

When it comes to cultural references, Schultz seems to have been willing to explore his own interests moreso than in the past. Though no stranger to Biblical references, the “Peanuts” strips in this collection abound with them, and for some reason, Sally (putatively in the second or third grade?) is assigned a book report on Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, and a long Hardy quotation serves as a set-up for a punch line. One wonders if Schultz himself weren’t working his way through Hardy’s works at this time.

Hardy Quotation Wide Panel, August 9, 1988, from The Complete Peanuts: 1987 to 1988

That said, the popular culture emphasis is as strong as ever in this collection. We get Joe Garagiola, the Seoul Summer Olympics, Wayne Gretzky, Garfield, Spuds MacKenzie (!?), Kermit the Frog, and plenty of references that a contemporary child would never have understood, like Beau Geste and, for some reason, Norman Manley, a prodigious hole-in-one golfer. There’s even a rather pointed strip on gun control, where Snoopy gets licenses for everything from being a dog to fishing, but doesn’t need one for an assault rifle, which he carries over his shoulder (December 17, 1988).

Of note, the daily strip changes from four panels to three starting with the February 29, 1988, strip. I’m not sure whether or not this was a personal choice or a change requested by the syndicate. Though I have not made an exhaustive search of all the prior strips, seemingly once this change in size happens, he begins to play with panel sizes, putting together two extra-wide panels or one full width panel or some combination of widths for daily strips. In some instances, like May 16, July 1, and August 9, 1988 (see above), the full width panels are quite detailed, giving a scope to the world of the characters that the usually sparse backgrounds seldom convey.

The Complete Peanuts: 1987 to 1988 feels comfortable if not awe inspiring. Schultz still delivers some memorable strips and story arcs, and the change in panel sizes feels refreshing, but on the whole, the reader gets what she or he expects: familiar (mostly) characters in familiar situations providing that uniquely Schultz-ian outlook on life. If only because the strips represented in this collection are (almost) never re-printed in the daily paper, it’s a worthwhile purchase.

(Images from The Complete Peanuts: 1987 to 1988)

The Complete Cul de Sac Announced

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Detail from Cul de Sac, 2013-03-27, via gocomics.comI’m a bit late with this news, but news this good never gets old: Richard Thompson announced on his site that this November brings with it the publication of The Complete Cul de Sac, collecting all of the “Cul de Sac” strips, including from pre-syndication in the Washington Post and, per a comment he made, tantalizing “other stuff.”

While I’m saddened that “Cul de Sac” is at a point where it can be considered complete, I trust that this collection will do justice to the best comic strip of the past decade (and more). It’s conveniently coming out for the holidays, so buy bigger stockings if you must, but stuff this book in there for all your friends and family.

(Image via gocomics.com)

Rolling the Dice on Kickstarter

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I’ve backed enough Kickstarter projects by now to fully understand that it’s not really a “pre-order” site. You’re supporting a concept, a product, or an idea, and hopefully said concept, product, or idea comes to fruition. As a wiser person than I once said, “You pays your money and you takes your chances.”

Indeed, of all the Kickstarter projects I’ve backed, only two have, thus far, delivered, though I’m not worried quite yet. I knew the lead times would be long, and my investment is hardly large. I received my most recent Kickstarter backer rewards just last week, a set of four Precision Machined Dice, and the results are quite stunning.

Precision Machined Dice

These anodized aluminum dice were machined from solid blocks of aluminum and have significant heft (and sharp corners). They’re not really practical for actually rolling, but they make lovely display pieces. I consider them propitiations to whatever forces control the flow of luck in the universe.

Thankfully, though, the creator of these dice, Amber Rix, has launched another Kickstarter project for Precision Machined Metal Gaming Dice, a little smaller (at either 16mm or ½”) than the casino sized dice from the original project and with rounded edges. As with the original project, they will be available in a variety of metals and, for the aluminum, a variety of colors. Plus, looks like you could roll them without damaging a table, though you’d still likely put your glass dice cup at risk. The creator of these projects has also mooted the possibility of metal polyhedrons as a future Kickstarter project. Yes, please!

Because at a certain point in every gamer’s life, you have to ask: Why roll plastic?