Tag Archives: television

The end of the Doctor (for now)

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Christmas is coming, and that means only one thing to me: a new Doctor Who Christmas special. And this one will be the end of the 11th (or is it 12th? — seriously, who knows for sure) Doctor, as played by Matt Smith.

The preview clip is up now, and it seems like Steven Moffat is throwing another grab-bag of Doctor Who villains at us: Daleks, Weeping Angels, Cybermen, and the Silence.

Seriously, Steve? Anyone else you want to include? This hodgepodge of villainy has been a specialty of the Moffat era of Doctor Who. It never works for me. Too distracting.

What else to expect from Moffat? His writing shuttles between brilliance and incoherence. Not much of a middle ground. At least he’s always entertaining. Can’t wait to see how he offs Smith’s Doctor.

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DON’T read this book: Under the Dome

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The ending is throw-the-book-across-the-room horrible, and it’s why I won’t waste my time on the TV show.

There’s nothing worse in the world of fandom when one of your favorites screws up epically (see Star Wars: Jar Jar Binks). I’ve been a fan of Stephen King since I was 15, and his Dark Tower series, aside from when he stuck himself in the books as a character, remains one of my favorite series of books (I’ll write a more comprehensive blog post on the Dark Tower books – the good, the bad and the weird – later).

Now I realize that sci-fi/horror/speculative fiction is a landmine for plot missteps. You begin with a fantastical premise and must go from there. It’s easy to paint yourself into a corner plot-wise, and there are plenty of well-known controversial creative choices (see the final seasons of Lost and Battlestar Galactica for two).

But none are as horrendous or unforgivable as Stephen King’s ending to Under the Dome.

The plot: a dome suddenly covers a small Maine (duh – it’s King) town. Nothing can get in or out. Lord of the Flies style chaos ensues.

The ending reads like a rejected Twilight Zone script. Maybe I’d be more generous if there was a single likable character. It’s bad enough that the villains were mustache-twirling caricatures; the heroes were either cardboard or they were jerks. The TV show Lost had some plot convolutions that required hefty suspensions of logic, but at least the writers had you invested in the characters – even the villains were multifaceted. By the end of Under the Dome I would have voted to keep them all trapped and smothered.

So how exactly did it end? You really want to know? Okay.

SPOILER BELOW…

….

….

It turns out the dome was set in place by a child alien on another planet. He was playing with the town as a human child would use a magnifying glass to torture ants. The alien parent calls, and the alien child lifts the dome. The End.

Eleven hundred words for that. Ugh.

King needed a good editor. He needed someone to say HELL NO, try again. All writers need at least one pair of non-starstruck eyes.

I’ve read that the TV show will deviate from the book. I’m not wasting my time.

American Horror Story: Coven – horror or camp?

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There’s a scene near the opening of the first episode of American Horror Story: Coven that is the definition of horror. The year is 1834, and a society madam, played by Kathy Bates, is a vain, sadistic woman who keeps a collection of slaves chained and tortured in the attic of her New Orleans mansion. The camera fixes on the mutilated people. You hear their moans and screams. It is pure horror.

But why?

Because it is grounded in the very real horror of slavery.

I’ve seen 3 episodes of this series so far (I haven’t seen the first or second seasons), and nothing else has compared to this one scene.

Don’t get me wrong, American Horror Story: Coven is entertaining and compelling. It follows a coven of witches in New Orleans (with roots in Salem) as they battle each other and the outside world. But it doesn’t know whether it wants to be a campfest or a gory/horror thriller. Too often it slides into camp.

The actors are big names. Jessica Lange is a great fit for the role of a witch obsessed with holding on to her fading looks and power. But there are times when Lange, Angela Bassett, and Kathy Bates play it way over the top. There’s not much subtlety going on. Or maybe they’re just too big for the small screen.

The best horror is rooted in real-life tragedy, both small and large, because it gets us where we live. Case-in-point: the slave/torture scene. And American Horror Story: Coven has more of this. There’s an infertile woman desperate to get pregnant, and there’s a young man who is revealed to have been molested — both are great set-ups for horror. In the latter, you get the payoff (the pregnancy storyline is developing).

So there is potential. The writers are highly skilled in keeping you watching (and I”ll definitely watch on). I just wish they wouldn’t rely on lazy tropes like the rapist fraternity brothers or Jesus freak neighbor, scale back the camp, and stick with the horror.