6.30.2012

You Won't Believe This

The drama continues!!!  I logged onto my computer this morning, expecting an OoVoo-free toolbar, when I realized...it came back!  I totally saw this coming.  But I didn't want to believe it.  So I had to go back to settings, reset up my actual bookmarks bar, with the home button, and, once more, remove the OoVoo toolbar.  What the front door, Google Chrome?!!?!  It's not cool.  And you should know that.  So I have to go remove the program from my computer now...then restart it, so I should probably end this post...But I shall vanquish my foe!!!  Jeez, Google Chrome.  Way to dramatize my life.

6.29.2012

Ideas

Since nobody else had any ideas, I thought I would share some of my ideas of what to do while I have no Doctor Who to blog about.  There's obviously various posts like my OoVoo Toolbar drama and various complaints about the world.  But I was thinking I could maybe continue in the strain of reviews, of other TV shows I watch, or even movies.  I dunno which TV shows, since Merlin doesn't come back until January...I could do Masterpiece Mystery, like Inspector Lewis, with Laurence Fox...who's married to Billie Piper...and had a child on my mom's birthday...it's weird...but I like Inspector Lewis.  And there are four episodes this year!!!  So I could do that.  It'd be fun.  So, good talk.  Thanks for the lack of ideas.

Further Update on the whole OoVoo Toolbar thing

I can remove the OoVoo toolbar from Google Chrome!!!  It's a beautiful thing.  Because otherwise, every time my computer started up again, Google Chrome would forget my settings and add the OoVoo toolbar, so now, the OoVoo toolbar will not even exist!!!  I won't ever have to deal with it ever again!  So that was fun.  There probably won't be any more posts about the OoVoo toolbar, but it was my temporary nemesis, and it has been vanquished, so I thought I should share it with the world.  I'll get to the rest of my Doctor Who posts soon, but probably not today.  But allons-y!

6.27.2012

The Doctors: Ten and Eleven

Since I don't feel much like writing about episodes right now, I decided I would put my comparison of David Tennant and Matt Smith here, in the middle of Season 5.  Of course, for me, it's not, I'm near the end of season 6.  Anyways...David Tennant still remains my favorite Doctor.  That being said, I do enjoy Matt Smith as the Doctor.  Very much.  He's just different than David Tennant.  And while I like the different of David Tennant better, the different of Matt Smith is very much enjoyable, and he does a good different.  My friend was saying that she just really loves Tennant, that she's like in love with Tennant as the Doctor, and I agreed, but said that if I was in love with Tennant as the Doctor, then I have a crush on Matt Smith as the Doctor.  He's not as good, but still enjoyable.  I also like how Tennant was sort of the emotion of the Doctor, the passion and the sorrow and everything, while Smith is more of the whimsy and quirk of the Doctor.  He's just interesting.  Not that Tennant wasn't hilarious when he wanted to be, or that Smith doesn't have emotion, but they both are the best at both of those things.  Anyways, I felt that in the transition between the two Doctors, a comparison must be made between the two.  And I absolutely love Amy and Rory as companions, about as much as I loved Rose, and definitely more than I liked Martha and Donna.  So yes.  Rory's my favorite.  I'm so jealous of Amy.  Just sayin'.

Update on Irritation at Google Chrome

So I discovered that if I click the little wrench in the top right corner of Google Chrome, then go to Settings, then Extensions, I can disable the OoVoo Toolbar, the annoying thing blocking the top of my screen that replaced my precious bookmarks bar, and then re-add my bookmarks bar to "always show."  And maybe it's just me, but I feel like having or not having the bookmarks bar is like asking if you do or don't want convenience and wonderfulness in your life.  Like, who thinks, oh, man, I just hate having all of my favorite websites right there so I can just click a button and go to them, I'm going to disable the bookmarks bar.  And who thinks, oh, users of Google Chrome will be glad for us to remove their bookmarks bar and replace it with an utterly useless "OoVoo" toolbar.  Answer:  Google Chrome apparently.  Anyways, all is right with the world once more, and I'm no longer forced to use Internet Explorer.  Yay!  This has actually been a fixture in my life for about a week and a half, I just kept it from you guys to keep you in suspense about what happened with Google Chrome and my missing bookmarks bar...

Yeah, like you guys really cared.  But I thought I would share anyway, because this is my blog, and this is what you do with blogs.

Confessions of a Vamp1re Slayr

That is spelled incorrectly, I am aware of that.

Anyways...so I've toyed with the idea of making my very own vlog.  (that, too, is spelled correctly)  Inspired by such vloggers as Mr Stickm4n, Charlieissocoollike, theDOMINICshow, the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and the VlogBrothers, I think it would be super fun to make a vlog on YouTube.  I would call it "Confessions of a Vamp1reSlayr," since my channel name on YouTube is Vamp1re Slayr, off of my Xbox Live username...and so every episode I would have a confession that I make.  Such things as "I am not a vampire slayer," "I'm sort of a NerdFighter," "I'm addicted to Doctor Who," "I'm addicted to Monster Energy Drinks," etc...But I'm not sure.  I suppose I'm trying to identify my true motives in doing so.  If it's just to be famous and to do it for the subscribers, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, or if it's truly just because I think it would be fun.  I feel I'm leaning to the latter, because I do get attention on this blog, with around 150-200 blog views a month, if not more, as well as with various other activities I do.  And honestly I got the idea when I was just watching stuff.  And it's not like I haven't wanted to do a vlog with fun videos and stuff for a while now...about four or five years...But yeah.  It's just an idea for now.

But let me know what you think, in the comments box!  I feel so lonely when I don't get comments...or followers...So if you like my blog and visit regularly, please, please, comment, and follow, and be a part of the Whovian/Nerdy awesomeness.

Haha, DFTBA.

Doctor Who S5:E7--Amy's Choice

The nightmares!  Well, the Doctor thought it was a nightmare, Rory thought it was a dream come true, and Amy preferred the other world.

The episode starts with Amy and Rory married.  Amy's about 9 months pregnant, and she's baking something.  Rory has a mullet.  When the Doctor shows up to say hello.  They walk through the village of Leadworth, which is admittedly insanely boring, when there's some bird song, and they all fall asleep...and wake up inside the TARDIS.  It takes a second, but they all realize that they had the exact same dream.  Eventually a man shows up (who shows up in lots of things) and says that he's crafted two worlds, and they must decide which is real and which is the dream.  He also said that there was a danger in each of the worlds.  If they died in the dream world, they'd wake up in reality, but if they died in reality, they were dead. ("Ask me what happens if you die in reality."  "What happens?" "You die, stupid." haha)  So they keep switching between the two worlds.  In the Leadworth world, the old people are killing people.  In the TARDIS world, the TARDIS has shut down, and they're floating towards an ice star.

Spoiler time, and usually I'd just do it, but these are important spoilers, so if you're not familiar with the story up to this point, I'd recommend just waiting.  Rory dies in Leadworth, and Amy is destroyed.  She decides that Leadworth can't be real if Rory isn't there, that it doesn't matter if he's not there.  They wake up in the TARDIS, and the Dream Lord admits defeat, but that they are still in danger.  The Doctor realizes a) who the Dream Lord is, someone who hates him more than anyone in the universe and b) even the TARDIS world is a dream.  They manage to wake up in reality, where Rory is waiting.  Amy has made her choice.  She chose Rory.  She still doesn't tell him she loves him.  Then, at the end of the episode you see the Doctor's reflection in the TARDIS, and it changes into the reflection of the Dream Lord.  This suggests that the Dream Lord was the Doctor, who hates himself more than anyone else in the universe.  So sad...

Doctor Who S5:E6--The Vampires of Venice

The Doctor goes to Rory's bachelor party (Rory is Amy's fiance, who we met back in Episode 1, when he was her sort of boyfriend), and gets him to go with Amy to Venice back in the Renaissance as a romantic getaway, a wedding present.  But, of course, wherever the Doctor goes, there's trouble.  He's worse than Miss Marple.  So there are "vampires."  They are operating under the guise of a school, but they are only accepting young women.  Eventually it comes out that they are not really vampires, but are some sort of fish people whose planet was destroyed, and they're breeding fish women to be the mates of the males who are still alive, living in the canals of Venice.  Then they will take over the city.

This episode wasn't great, but it was fun to see Rory.  It was also fun for five minutes when it really did seem that they were vampires, but, of course, that had to end.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not vampire-obsessed, and I'm anti-Twilight, but a Doctor Who vampire would have been awesome.  I mean, they did have a werewolf.  So that was disappointing.  But it was good.  It was one of those episodes where you start to question just for one episode if you really even like the new Doctor, you know?  Up until this point I'd been perfectly fine with Matt Smith, but this episode I just sort of didn't care for him.  He wasn't bad, but I guess memories of David Tennant seeped in, and I was discontent.  But no worries, the Doctor came back in the next episode, with a little bit of the emotion that David Tennant did so well.  Prepare for...

Eyes of the Dome

Guess what I'm doing this summer?  I'm going to be in a TV show!  ...on YouTube.  Yeah, not as cool, but still cool.  It's going to be called Eyes of the Dome, and I'm doing it with some of my friends from forensics.  It's a zombie apocalypse story, and it's going to be awesome!  I get to play this character named Katelyn, who, with her friend Margo, meet a trio of refugees from the Infected.  The Infected were poisoned with a disease that was meant to be used as a weapon, but went horribly wrong.  As a result they try to kill people. So the five of them (Katelyn, Margo, Amy, Mitch, and Haden) are staying together in this house when one day someone from the government lands on their doorstep.  She claims to know secrets about Margo.  When Keith, another government official shows up, it becomes necessary to find a cure.

So yeah.  I could give spoilers but I won't.  Anyways, the main reason for my posting about this, beyond just being very excited for it, is because I'm going to be posting the videos here when we finish them, so you all can see them.  It'll be awesome, so you should come check it out.  And I will, eventually, catch up on my Doctor Who posts.  I haven't seen any new ones since last Friday, and won't until probably next Thursday or Friday, so I'll try to finish it all off.  It's funny because I have a friend who posted about the end of season 2, and how it made them cry on Facebook, when we were on season 1, episode 4.  And now we're way ahead of him.  It's funny.  Anyways, yes, I'll get to those posts presently.  In the meantime, reminisce with older episodes.
Allons-y.

6.25.2012

Doctor Who S5: E4, E5--The Time of the Angels; Flesh and Stone

The weeping angels!  I actually just went on a poll this morning and voted the Weeping Angels as the creepiest Doctor Who villain/monster.  They were winning by like 60% or something, but I digress.

The Doctor and Amy save River from a ship and join her on an adventure underground.  They've found a weeping angel in a crashed ship--the very ship River was in, actually.  They have a monitoring system that recorded about four seconds of video of the Weeping Angel.  They're trying to figure out what to do, so they resort to River's TARDIS notebook.  They left Amy to watch the video, when they discover that anything that bears the image of an angel becomes an angel.  They discover this too lagte, because the Angel is advancing on Amy, who is now locked in the trailer.  She's also born the image of the Angel.  But she manages to find and use the blip on the tape to get rid of the angel so it doesn't kill her, and they get her out.  They enter the ruins and quickly discover that all the statues are weeping angels.  So the Doctor activates the crashed ship's antigravity and they all go into the ship.  They eventually end up in a forest and Amy must keep her eyes closed or she'll turn into an angel.  When the crack appears!

These episodes are full of wonderfully fun weeping angels frights (again, creepiest creature in Doctor Who), especially when they used the voice of that one dude and were just casually talking about their plans and the people they've killed...it was beautiful.  I love Steven Moffat.  I dunno if he wrote these episodes, but even if he didn't, he's wonderful.  Anyways...there was also a lot of questions raised about River's connection to the Doctor, like all of her terms of endearment.  The question was raised of her possibly being the Doctor's wife, and I really, really, really, just don't want her to be.  I like her okay, but I don't like her enough to be his wife.  You know?  Like, if he was going to marry anybody, it should have been Rose.  Just sayin'... but whatevs.  I'll find out with the finale of season 6, which I'm so close to.  So...the whole crack thing was also interesting.

And the ending...Amy has "decided" what she wants, but the Doctor knows it's just an illusion, which leads into the next episode, where...

Doctor Who S5: E3--Victory of the Daleks

This one was funny.  Just because it was so unexpected.  First, the Doctor gets a call inside the TARDIS from Winston Churchill.  Then Winston Churchill is played by the same guy who plays a bumbling plumber in "Doc Martin," another British TV show.  Then the Doctor and Amy show up to find that the Brits' new weapon is the Daleks.  Then it turns out that the Daleks don't remember the Doctor, or at least, or are pretending to not remember.  That drives the Doctor crazy.  But then, Amy doesn't remember the Daleks invading the world (see season 4.5, specifically the End of Time).  So it's just the Doctor's word...which is exactly what the Daleks wanted.  They needed some sort of verification that they were the Daleks.  Then they made a bunch more of themselves, in pretty new colors.  Then it turns out that the scientist that supposedly created the Daleks was actually a robot created by the Daleks (sorry, spoilers).  This whole episode was just surprising.  And fun, I mean, I love Winston Churchill.  So, good episode.  And there was another crack!!!  Just like the one in Amy's room.  Hmm...

Okay, I'll be honest, I'm writing this after I've seen the entire season 5, and most of season 6, so it's hard to feign suspense and wonderment about what's going on, cuz now I know what's going on.  But whatevs.  I'll keep the suspense up for those of you who don't know yet.

Doctor Who S5: E2--The Beast Below

The Doctor returns two years (again, five minutes) later, and Amy decides to go with him, as long as she can get back in the morning.  They go to Starship UK, a ship travelling the sky after some sort of apocalypse falls on earth.  People are disappearing below, and there seems to be some sort of beast.  Amy, while investigating a tented pair of tentacles, gets taken to a room.  There she is shown a video that tells her she will discover the truth about Starship UK, then will be given the choice to either remember it, or to forget it.  Amy watches the video, and presses the "Forget" button, as indeed does everyone else on the ship who has seen the video.  The Doctor and Amy decide to go down into the belly of the beast--or, rather, the mouth.  The Doctor and Amy escape by making the creature vomit.  Then they meet the Queen of England.  She, too, wants to know what's going on.  They're led to a control room.  They discover that the thing leading the ship is a star whale.  And it's being tortured into keeping going.  The Queen has repeatedly hit the Forget button over the course of her reign.  It comes down to a choice between freeing the star whale and killing the entire UK and letting the star whale be tortured, which causes major conflict in the Doctor.  Eventually Amy must make the choice for him, but what does she choose?

I liked this episode.  I liked how smart Amy was.  Her decision and like quick-thinking and good analysis of the situation was brilliant.  It's not my favorite episode, but I enjoyed it.

6.21.2012

Doctor Who S5: E1--The Eleventh Hour

Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor crash lands in a little girl's backyard.  He then proceeds to attempt to eat her out of house and home, and she shows him a crack in her bedroom.  Something comes out of it, but the TARDIS is overheating so the Doctor must leave.  He promises to take the girl, Amelia Pond, with him, and he'll be back in five minutes. He returns about 12 years later.  Amelia is now Amy, and she's a Kiss-a-Gram.  And something has made its way out of her house, the same something from the crack in her room.  And it's changing shape.  The Doctor only has so long before the aliens trying to apprehend the creature destroy the planet in their search.  With the help of Amy and her sort-of boyfriend Rory, The Doctor manages to save the day and retrieve his outfit from the hospital.
Bow ties are cool.  So is fish fingers and custard.

6.20.2012

Irritation at Google Chrome

I'm using Internet Explorer right now, because I cannot stand Google Chrome since it changed everything yesterday.  They added a new toolbar thing that got rid of my bookmarks bar I've been working on for forever.  It also cuts off the top of every page, so trying to sign into blogger was a right pain in the butt.  I got sick of it so I'm trying to use Internet Explorer but it's not much better.  The toolbar is crowded, and for some reason it's not picking up my clicking on keys.  It's also irritating to have to fully type in all of my log-in information because it's not saved on this browser.  I'll probably also have to reset up the cookie that doesn't count my pageviews on my blog.  So that's insanely irritating.  I can't edit or remove the toolbar on Google Chrome as far as I can tell, which is lamesauce.  Maybe I'll Google it once I stop being mad at Google...

6.16.2012

Doctor Who: The End of Time

I'm gonna be honest, I don't remember this one very clearly, since I've since watched an entire other season of Doctor Who.  But I shall do my best.

The Master has returned, resurrected by an imprint, I'd guess, on his ring.  But something went wrong, and he's a little crazy.  Well, more crazy than before, with an insatiable hunger.  The Doctor teams up with Donna's gramps, Wilf.  There's this dude who is trying to create some sort of machine that will make his daughter live forever, and the Master is kidnapped to try to fix it to make it work.  Of course, the Master rigs it so that it turns everyone on the planet into the Master.  Except for a couple of people, of course, such as Donna, Gramps, and the Doctor.

Now we get to the spoilers.  Over the course of the first part, we see flashbacks and hear voice-overs from the Timelords.  It is revealed that the Master is going to try to bring the Timelords back.  They had put the drumbeat into the Master's head, cuz apparently it's the heartbeat of a Timelord, and set it all up so that they could come back into the present day, bringing everything with them (Gallifrey, the Time War, etc) where they would end time itself and become gods.  They sound like lovely people.

The Doctor has a gun.  With one shot in it.  He struggles a lot in this episode about whether he should kill someone.  Obviously his gut tells him no, but Wilf in a very emotional outburst begs him to kill the Master so he (the Doctor) can live.  And he goes back and forth, first between killing someone, then between killing the Master or the Timelord leader person, finally deciding on shooting the machine that had made the whole planet the Master, breaking the signal to the Timelords, sending them back to die again.

Meanwhile, Wilf got himself stuck in some machine thing with two compartments.  There has to be one person in one of the compartments at all times, so the worker people would switch off, so when one went in, the other could come out. Wilf knocked four times on the window.  He asked the Doctor to let him out.  The Doctor found out that the machine, if it was opened and closed again would release intense radiation, which would kill the Doctor.  He had a little bit of a pity party, which was entirely justified and moving, and, despite Wilf's pleas to let him die instead, the Doctor went in.

And the regeneration process was begun.  Before he died, the Doctor went back and visited all of his past friends for closure.  He visited Martha and Mickey, who apparently got married.  He visited Donna and gave her a winning lottery ticket.  And he visited Rose.  Before she had met him, on New Year's Day.  Then it was time.

And voila!  Matt Smith.  Who's still got legs, and isn't a ginger.

6.12.2012

Doctor Who S4.5--Planet of the Dead

I did like this one, though.  The Doctor is on a bus for whatever reason, and he meets a girl who just stole something from a museum.  When all of a sudden, the bus goes through a wormhole and disappears into another world.  There's only sand, everywhere.  One of the women says she can hear their voices, their voices crying out as they die.  The thief, Christina, takes charge.  She and the Doctor get kidnapped by these fly-looking creatures.  They discover a swarm of something that is coming, towards them and opening a wormhole.  They also discover that the sand around them is a planet that was destroyed by the swarm and that the swarm is going to do the same to Earth.
They retrieve anti-gravity claws, attach them to the bus, and they fly through the wormhole.  The hole is closed by possibly the Doctor's biggest fan, ever.  Christina asks to go with the Doctor, but he refuses, because he can't handle losing someone else.  The psychic lady who hears things tells the Doctor that he's going to die, soon, and that his death would be heralded by four knocks...

Doctor Who S4.5--The Next Doctor

The name of this one was incredibly misleading, just so you know.  But anyways, there's this guy who thinks he's the Doctor, and he has this TARDIS which is an air balloon (and stands for something stupid) and has a companion named Rosita.  And a "sonic screwdriver" which isn't sonic.  Anyways, the Cybermen are in town, led by a very angry young woman.  This was, I believe, the Christmas special that did not air on Christmas.  That honor went to The End of Time Part 1.  But this is another "Christmas special" that I just don't love.  It's not a bad episode, I just don't love it.  And it's consistently the Christmas specials...whatevs.  It was a good episode, and a good transition from the season to the rest of the interim, ending with the end of time.

What to do...

So, I realized the other day that I just finished season 4 of Doctor Who, and there's only seven in existence at this point.  Which means that I only have seasons 5 and 6 to watch now, until 7 comes out in the fall.  And once I write about all those things...what will I write about?  I will have lost the essential purpose of this blog.

Though, I guess if there's one thing doing this blog has taught me, it's that it's relatively easy to post two or three times a week, or even a day.  It's gotten me in the habit of writing something, and giving me guilt if I go five days without posting.  So I will be relying on that when I run out of Doctor Who to post about.  I can post about funny YouTube videos, my Doctor Who withdrawals, issues with the world that have nothing to do with politics...it'll be good.

But...if you have ideas, please share them!  Maybe for another series.  So instead of randomness, I'd once more have something regular.  So if you have an idea for a series of blog posts I could do, or just for stand-alone blog posts, please share!  You can just comment on this post or any other with your idea, and I will probably take it at some point.

But I still have some Doctor to write about yet!  Onwards...

Doctor Who S4: E12--The Stolen Earth; E13--Journey's End

Wow.  These episodes are insane.  Everyone comes back, and everything happens.  But I'll do my best.
The earth is stolen.  Literally just removed form orbit and stuck in the middle of a bunch of other planets.  Harriet Jones, Former Prime Minister, returns and contacts Martha, Captain Jack, and Sarah Jane (who's weird).  Rose watches their conversation.  They need to get the Doctor down to earth, but he can't get there because they're stuck in a pocket of time.  So they triangulate a phone signal from every phone on earth.  The Daleks, who are responsible for this mess, as they are in nearly every season finale up to this point, track the signal to Harriet, and exterminate her.  But Torchwood continues the signal, and the Doctor manages to use the signal to take him to earth.  Rose leaves to go find him.

They got to see each other.  It was so wonderful and happy.  David Tennant is such brilliant actor.  Anyways, as they were running towards each other, the Doctor got exterminated.  He was carried back into the TARDIS by Rose with Mickey and Jackie's help.  He regnerated, but transferred his regeneration energy into his decapitated hand, which had, up to this point, sat in a corner of the TARDIS.  And he stayed the same.

Martha, meanwhile, is going to Germany to trigger the AusterHagen key (sp?  I don't speak German!), which will blow up the earth, and disrupt the Daleks' (really, Davros' ((the creator of the Daleks)) ) weapon which will destroy reality.  I won't spoil the ending, but it was really good.

Overall, I really enjoyed these episodes.  Really, I really enjoyed this season, once Donna stopped being irritating.  It was just such a good season that really framed the finale perfectly.  Really.  And they resolved the Rose thing perfectly (hint: she doesn't die).  It was just so well done, and sad, and it made me cry, especially the part with Donna's Gramps.  It was perfect.  A little confusing, but perfect.

We've reached the Journey's End
Having a laugh inside the TARDIS.
Though it didn't make much sense,
It's always nice to see them Daleks.
~Journey's End by Chameleon Circuit

6.10.2012

Doctor Who S4: E11--Turn Left

Donna gets persuaded to enter a fortune teller's tent, where she's forced to change her past, and therefore the future.  She never meets Lance, so never meets the Doctor, so never helps with various things there.  And because Donna wasn't there, there was no one to stop the Doctor when he was killing the Raknoss, so he died, and so didn't stop a number of things he did stop with Rose and Martha.  So the world falls apart, and the Holocaust starts again, but not just with Jews.  Then Rose comes back.  She tells Donna that the stars are going out, that the darkness is coming.  That Donna changed the past, but needed to go back and turn left, not right, to set the world okay again and get the Doctor back, to mend the future.  So they do.  Simple as that.  But this was a very dark episode, too, because the world was falling apart, and there was a very moving part when the lively foreign people living with Donna were sent off to labor camps.  That's what they were called last time.

Doctor Who S4: E10--Midnight

To begin, this is definitely my favorite episode.  It was amazing.  And it had Colin Morgan, who plays Merlin in the BBC series, and I love him, so that was definitely part of it.

So the Doctor and Donna are on this planet, taking a vacation.  Donna stays behind to stay at a spa and rejuvenate.  The Doctor decides to go on a tour of the planet, to see the diamonds on the planet.  This episode was just so wonderful.  Everyone is very awkward on the shuttle at first, but then the Doctor (who is obviously an extrovert) starts talking to everyone, and they're all laughing and having a good time.  And Colin Morgan is being awesome and Goth, and wonderful.

When the shuttle shuts down.  It just stops working.  The stewardess says that it's just part of a routine check, nothing to worry about, but the Doctor isn't fooled.  He goes back, using his Psychic Paper and discovers that nothing happened.  It just stopped.  They open the front to look at the planet.  It is gorgeous.  The diamonds form large formations (which is redundant I suppose), and the Doctor and two captains/pilots just stare at the beauty.  Then one of them sees a shadow.  It moves.  Then they close it again, and the Doctor goes back out and confirms what the stewardess had said.  He guaranteed nothing was wrong.  Right at that moment something crashed into the side of the shuttle.  Famous last words.  Eventually whatever it is outside (after some truly brilliant creepy stuff happening) gets inside, and goes inside one of the people on the shuttle.  It repeats everything they say, then says it at the same time as them.  They all want to throw her out of the shuttle, but the Doctor won't let them.  The creature is making them all argue.  Eventually the creature steals the Doctor's voice, and convinces everyone that the Doctor has the creature now...I'm not gonna spoil the ending.  But I love this episode.  Love it.  It was so intense.  This is also the episode where the darkness that kind of pervades the next six or seven episodes begins, as it steadily gets darker and darker and darker until the End of Time.

Impatience. AKA Doctor Who S4: E7-E9

Augh!!!  I don't want to write about episodes 7, 8, and 9, but just want to skip ahead to all of the craziness that begins in episode 10 and doesn't end until the End of Time.  But I have to.  So I'm hereby clumping those episodes into this one post, to make it go faster.  Not that it will be faster, but it's the illusion that counts.

Episode 7: The Unicorn and the Wasp.
Agatha Christie!!!  I love her.  The Doctor and Donna go back to the 1920's to see Agatha Christie, the day she mysteriously vanishes.  There's a huge wasp, and it turns into a wonderful murder mystery, culminating in the stereotypical Agatha Christie fashion.  Everyone gathers in the drawing room (or, occasionally, the parlor) and one by one they have some secret revealed, ending in the revealing of the murder.  This was a style particularly favored by Poirot, actually.  He's cool, too.  Anyways, this was a fun episode.  I loved how Donna kept making references to Christie's books which she hadn't written yet, and the Doctor had to keep going "Not yet."  It was funny.

Episode 8:  Silence in the Library.
This was interesting.  There is something, in the shadows, eating people.  If you have more than one shadow, you're about to get eaten.  The Doctor teams up with some archaeologists, led by the mysterious River Song (with a TARDIS journal that I envy) to fight off the Vashta Nerada (which is a very Indian-sounding name), the creatures in the shadows at a huge library.  One by one the whole crew gets picked off.  There's also this strange other world that seems to be linked to the Library by a little girl who can control what happens in the Library.  Donna disappears...

Episode 9: Forest of the Dead.
...and reappears in the other world.  She gets married, pregnant, and has children in a matter of seconds.  She's obviously being brainwashed by Dr. Moon.  Meanwhile, back in the library, people are still dying.  One of the more obnoxious archaeologists reveals that the alternate world is a save haven for his little sister (or some other relative), so she could stay alive, and have the library to keep her happy because she loved books.  And she's saving people in the library from the Vashta Nerada by beaming them into her alternate world, which is what  happened to Donna.  Donna meanwhile meets one of the archaeologists, who explains what's going on, but Donna doesn't believe her (she finds it hard to believe that her children are non-existent) and so she doesn't get out until the Doctor and River Song beam everyone back.  River Song does so by killing herself.  The Doctor eventually manages to save her by using her imprint in the sonic screwdriver he apparently gives her in the future at some point.  She knows a ton of stuff about him, and obviously knows a future Doctor, all of which information she records in her journal that looks like a TARDIS.  The Doctor, despite being severely tempted (as anyone would be) doesn't open it and read it.  Spoilers.

6.05.2012

Doctor Who S4: E6--The Doctor's Daughter

It's a girl!  The Doctor has a daughter, born from entirely his own DNA.  And there is the threat of war between the Hath and some humans who are stupid and are birthing people at impossible speeds. Martha (who happened to be in the TARDIS when it mysteriously took off) makes friends with a Hath who ends up dying trying to save her.  It turns out that this war between the Hath and the humans has been going on for a week tops, which to them has been several generations.  It ends, and the Doctor's daughter (who has two hearts, like him) ends up dying.  They don't think she's going to regenerate, so they leave her, after the Doctor has his little pity party which really was moving.  I didn't cry or anything, but I wasn't irritated by the sentiment so I consider it to have been well done.  I'm just sort of that way.  Then (spoiler!) after they take Martha home and everything, the Doctor's daughter wakes up, having regenerated (but not changed form...whatevs) and goes off in a spaceship to follow in her father's footsteps.  She comes back later, but idk when.  We'll see.  Onwards!

My Favorite Vloggers

This is a detour from my usual topic.  Today (or at least in this post) I will be talking about Vloggers I particularly enjoy.  The first is Charlie McDonnell.  I'm sure you've heard of him.  If not, you're probably in the minority.  Charlieissocoollike is his channel name.  He blogs about many things, mostly nerdy things, like Doctor Who.  Charlieissocoollike is also part of a band that performs "trock," that is, "timelord rock."  AKA, songs about Doctor Who.  It's called Chameleon Circuit, and my absolute favorite song right now is by them, called "Exterminate, Regenerate."

Another vlogger I enjoy who is very cool, is MrStickm4n.  MrStickm4n's channel is called Stickm4nPr0ductions, and he vlogs about many things, mostly nerdy.  He is not part of a band, but also records videos about Minecraft.  He is rather skilled at making and crafting things on the game, and he's recorded several videos about his "adventures."  The series is called the Great Stickm4n Adventure.  I'd definitely recommend checking him out.  He has two blogs.  One is a "pleasure" blog, where he posts about random things, while the other is particularly related to his vlogging.  Often on this second blog he will post videos you cannot get on YouTube, so it's definitely worth checking out. Some of his posts are old, but he has expressed an interest in posting more, especially if he knows his blog is being viewed.

So, back to Doctor Who.

A link to the acoustic version of the song I mentioned:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKK-yIrMNUg&ob=av3n

And both links to Stickm4n's blogs:
http://www.randomnessandhappiness.blogspot.com/
http://stickm4npr0ductions.blogspot.com/

6.04.2012

SPOILER! The Re-Appearances of Rose

If you've seen the season 2 finale of Doctor Who, then you'll know that Rose was transported into an alternate dimension, along with Mickey, her mom, and her dad.  After a gut-wrenching good-bye, Rose disappeared, never to be found again.  I, personally, have loved seeing the Doctor's reaction to it, how destroyed he is by it, and yet how he keeps it together.  I love it when he says her name, because when he says it, there's so much emotion.  Yeah, I know.  But whatevs.

So, anyways, since Episode 1, Partners in Crime, Rose has made appearances in various episodes.  Her first appearance was at the end of that episode, when Donna talked to her, and afterwards Rose just disappeared.  Her next appearance was in Episode 5, when Donna was watching the screen in the TARDIS during a transmission between the Doctor and the Sontaran.  Rose's face appeared on the screen before Donna looked.  She mouthed the word, "Doctor!"  Her next appearance was in Episode 10, Midnight (which I'll get to soon) when she appeared on a TV screen while the Doctor's back was turned.  She mouthed "Doctor!  Doctor!"

Having seen the previews for the next episode, Episode 11, Turn Left, I know Rose returns for real.  And I'm thrilled.  I've missed her so much, and dealt with withdrawals while trying to make do with Donna and Martha, who just aren't the same.  My mom thinks that Rose has to die, or no one can ever move on, just as I haven't been able to move on.  She's probably right.  If she just goes back to the alternate dimension at the end of the season, it won't change anything for me, and I'll just keep pining.  So we'll see.  I'm excited.  But I thought I should devote a post to doing these appearances justice.

Doctor Who S4: E4, E5--The Sontaran Strategem; The Poison Sky

I lied.  I am on Episode 11.  IMDb doesn't count the Christmas special as an episode, while Netflix does, and according to IMDb, I'm on episode 11.  Anyways, onwards...

Another two-part episode.  I swear, I've never seen a TV show that did anywhere near as many two- and three-part episodes as this one.  It's amazing really.  Anyways, the Sontaran have joined forces with an idiotic, socially stunted genius to take over earth through the cars of earth.  All the cars on the planet release a toxic gas that will allow the Sontarans to clone themselves and thereby take over earth.  Martha comes back, and ends up being cloned and made evil by the Sontarans, but of course the Doctor realizes because he's awesome, and saves her, and Donna gets saved, having been put in the TARDIS, then transported to the Sontaran satellite in earth's orbit.  Good episodes, I liked them, and they're where Donna started to become tolerable.

Doctor Who S4: E3--Planet of the Ood

Top 7 Reasons I Didn't Like This Episode (in no particular order)
1. The Ood are creepy looking.
2.  Their singing is both creepy and girlish.
3.  This episode was far too sentimental.
4.  It tried far too hard to push a message.
5.  Donna was irritating and just needed to decide if she was going to stay with the Doctor or not.
6.  The Indian woman let me down.  And when I thought she had a chance for redemption, she died.
7.  It was a weird ending.

Doctor Who S4: E2--Fires of Pompeii

I lied.  I'm not on Episode 11, it's actually Episode 10, but IMDb threw me off because it counts the Christmas Special as Episode 1, while Netflix does not.  Just needed to clear my conscience.

So...the most irritating thing about this episode was the treatment of Latin.  Because I, in fact, spent several years studying Latin (not that I'm an expert or anything) and the mispronunciation of "Veni, vidi, vici," and its use was frustrating, to say the least.  (In Latin, v's are pronounced like w's, and c's are hard, so it would be Weni, Widi, Wicki, meaning, I came, I saw, I conquered)  But I thought it was funny that every time they used a Latin phrase (that one excluded) it was assumed they were Gaelic.  Celtic, sorry.  Very similar though, in my defense.

But on to the episode!  This episode was largely irritating to me because Donna just could not get it through her thick skull that the Doctor couldn't screw with time by preventing the eruption of Pompeii.  It's like, have you never seen a time travel movie in your life?  People screw stuff up all the time.  And even when he explained it, she just wouldn't shut up about it.  And then the part at the end (spoiler!) when they were leaving, you'd think that if the Doctor really does see everything as either fixed or in flux, then he would have seen that that family was in flux, and could be saved, and wouldn't have needed Donna to make him go back.  So that was a flaw in the story.  But whatevs.  Good episode, otherwise.  It was really interesting.

Doctor Who S4: E1--Partners In Crime, AKA, My Feelings About Donna

This episode made me slightly afraid of losing weight, I'll be honest.  Oh, and both Kirby and the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

Donna returns, looking for the Doctor.  So she's on the trail of a fishy pill that makes the weight "fall off."  Literally.  Turns out, the Doctor is too, and they end up joining together.

I should pause to explain something.  I watched this episode about two weeks ago (that's my guess anyway), and at the time I just really did not like Donna, so I'll say I don't like Donna when writing about these episodes, but I eventually got over that and started to like her, though I almost hate myself for it.  I always hate when I hate someone then end up liking them.  I feel like such a hypocrite.  Anyways, in this episode, and the next few I didn't like Donna.  I felt she was annoying, and just complained about the Doctor and everything he did, and was far, far too sentimental and touchy-feely for my tastes.  But she got better.  She stopped complaining about everything, and threatening to go home.  I think it was after episode 4 that I started to like her and enjoy her and the Doctor's relationship and little stuff.  It's fun now.  So yes.  That was that episode.  She decided to go with the Doctor, obviously.  And she's the new companion.

Doctor Who S4 Christmas Special

The Doctor is on the Titanic.  No, not the ship Titanic that sank a hundred years ago.  A spaceship named after that ship, which is sort of a cruise vessel.  I didn't really like this episode.  It was really predictable (though I didn't, and, indeed, couldn't have noticed that the owner of the stand was Donna's grandfather--spoiler!) and boring.  Yeah, I didn't love it.  The only Christmas special I've really enjoyed was the one where David Tennant was introduced...anyways...onwards!

Doctor Who S3: Season Finale, Parts 1, 2, & 3

I have a lot to cover (being on about episode 11 of season 4), so I'm lumping these three episodes together.  This is okay, really, because the finale of season 3 is really a three-parter.  Beginning with Utopia.  The Doctor and Martha are hitchhiked by Captain Jack, who's back, and incapable of dying. So they run away from these vampire things, and take refuge in a ship that is supposed to go to Utopia.  They help this weird doctor/professor dude launch the ship.  In this process, Jack finds out what happened to Rose, Martha makes a friend.  Oh, and another Timelord rises.  Then regenerates.  Then runs away with the TARDIS.  This episode ends.

The Sound of Drums.  Said Timelord (who's evil and calls himself the Master) is the Prime Minister of England (I'd assume after Harriet Jones resigned, because I don't think she could have finished her term...) and Martha's family is all kidnapped.  So then this plan the Master has sort of comes out, cuz there are these little metal ball things that look like the Oracle from Halo who want him to do something (presumably take over earth for them).  And...everyone goes up in this huge Avengers-esque ship in the sky, and the Doctor gets captured by the Master, and made old...honestly, I'm just going to overlap into the final episode, because I'm not sure where the gap is...So yes, the Doctor is made old in varying stages.  First he's just made like 100 or something, but then the second time, he's made 903, the Doctor's actual age.  And he's super tiny now.  Anyways, Martha escapes and goes around the world, to help set up a plan the Doctor came up with.  Oh, and Jack is also captured, but no one cares cuz he can't die.  So then Martha gets captured, and the Master tries to execute his plan, but then the Doctor's plan triggers, and every single person in the world (a number that is smaller, by the way--oh, and the TARDIS is being transformed into a paradox, which is significant, but I never really understood it so whatevs) thinks the words "the Doctor" and creates a telepathic field that saves the Doctor and makes him young again, and then the Master is defeated, and then he gets shot, and the Doctor tries to get him to regenerate, but the Master is smart, and doesn't.  Just to hurt the Doctor, he decides to die.  I thought that was brilliant (sad, but brilliant).  So then, as far as we know, the Doctor is, again, the last Timelord.  The paradox in the TARDIS does something, and everything goes back to where it was before the whole Master thing happened.  So the world isn't half in ruins, and the Master isn't the Prime Minister, but the elections are going on.  So, yes.  

Martha decides to stay behind and do her medical stuff to become a doctor.  Then Jack is musing about his inability to die, and if that means he'll live forever.  Maybe he'll live millions of years.  And what'll he look like.  The Doctor says he can't know.  
Jack: Ok, vanity, sorry. Yeah... can't help it. Used to be a poster boy when I was a kid, living in the Bo-shang peninsula... tiny little place. I was the first one ever to be signed up for the Time Agency, they were so proud of me. The Face of Bo they called me... hummm! I'll see you! [Author's note: thanks to IMDb for this quote!]

So...Captain Jack is the Face of Bo.  That's freaking crazy!  We all sort of freaked out (as, indeed, did the Doctor and Martha haha)  That was a fun ending.  So, going into the Christmas special, the TARDIS crashes into the Titanic.  I love this show.  

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