30 Years Ago: Doctor Who (Fox TV, May 14, 1996)

While transporting the remains of his dead rival, The Master, from Skaro to Gallifrey, the Seventh Doctor’s (Sylvester McCoy) TARDIS experiences a “timing malfunction” and lands on Earth in the “Humanian Era,” on the eve of the new millennium, December 30, 1999

Unfortunately, the malfunction has been caused by the Master himself, who in a strange, slimy reptilian form, escapes from captivity and moves into the body of an unsuspecting American paramedic (Eric Roberts). 

Upon venturing out of the TARDIS, the Doctor is almost immediately injured in urban San Francisco’s gang violence.  He is rushed to a hospital, where a cardiac surgeon Grace Holloway (Daphne Ashbrook) operates on him.  Unfortunately, he appears to die on the table, though he actually regenerates that night, in the morgue.

The new Doctor (Paul McGann) -- suffering from amnesia -- befriends Dr. Holloway, and together the duo must prevent the Master from opening The Eye of Harmony inside the TARDIS for the express purpose of stealing all the Doctor’s future lives…

Worse, the Master’s plan will destroy Earth’s future, meaning that the world will stop, permanently, when New Year’s Day, 2000, happens.

An American co-production with the BBC, the 1996 Doctor Who movie stars Paul McGann as the eighth incarnation of the Doctor, and also features a good-sized role for Sylvester McCoy, the seventh Doctor, who hands off the role to his successor with style and grace.

Like many Doctor Who serials of the classic series, the Doctor Who TV movie functions primarily in “pastiche” mode.  This means, essentially, that it skillfully pulls ideas from popular productions in the culture, and then blends them together in a new and frequently amusing fashion.  

The Paul McGann movie, directed by Geoffrey Sax pulls ideas from The Terminator movie franchise (right down to visual framing, at one point), the pre-eminent genre franchise of the day, The X-Files (in terms of an Earth-based mystery involving aliens), and also the increasingly popular post-modernism of horror genre films such as Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) and Scream (1996)

In terms of The Terminator (1984), the Doctor Who features two time travelers from another culture (otherworldly, rather than the future…) duking it out on modern-day Earth, while a human bystander is pulled into the action.  The Terminator and the Master both wear sun-glasses and leather, and both cause much destruction.  Both are also endeavoring to re-shape the future.

The X-Files, meanwhile, famously gave 1990s audiences “the black oil,” a kind of sentient ooze that would crawl up inside of human beings and take them over.  Those possessed by the evil of the black ooze on the Chris Carter would then also boast black eyeballs.  In The Doctor Who movie, the Master is seen as a kind of reptilian ooze, sliming to the TARDIS console, and down the throat of an unwitting EMT.  Similarly, those possessed by the Master (in this case, Grace), showcase the telltale black eyes of the oil.

Finally, the eighth doctor movie explicitly compares the Doctor’s regeneration to the famous “It’s Alive” moment of revival of the monster in James Whales’ Frankenstein (1932), which happens to be playing on television during the Time Lord’s regeneration process.  

At one point the film explicitly cross-cuts from the Monster’s hand twitching to the Doctor’s hand undertaking the very same motion.  The allusion is intriguing, but it ultimately doesn’t serve as anything beyond a recognition of the fact that the makers of the movie are aware of pop culture. Is the Doctor being compared to a monster? Is his regeneration, monstrous?  It’s a nice allusion a beloved old film, but nothing more.  The moment would have worked better if the Master’s resurrection had been intercut with footage from Frankenstein.

Although Paul McGann is splendid in the role of the Eighth Doctor and certainly deserved his own long run in the role, his TV Movie isn’t especially good.  It looks like what it is: a cheap TV production circa the mid-1990s.  The special effects haven’t aged particularly well, the acting is generally pretty bad, and there doesn’t seem to be much by way of budget which could show audiences anything special.  Most of the action is very tame, and the details surrounding the Eye of Harmony are quite confusing.  

Alas, the 1996 Doctor Who movie also adds some baffling new ideas to the long-standing canon.  

First among those is the Doctor’s surprising revelation that he is half-human (on his mother’s side).  This is a shock to say the least, and may not be accepted as canon by fans.  I suspect this was a bone thrown to American producers so the character would seem “relatable,” or some other such nonsense.

Secondly, the Master -- though described as a rival Time Lord -- is depicted in his natural form as a kind of snake or reptile.  We see his reptilian eyes, and his coiled, snake-like body, at points.  What’s this about?  If he is a Time Lord, are all Time Lords reptilian?  If the Doctor and The Master are both Time Lords, why are they physiologically so different from one another? There are no doubt fan ret-cons for this mystery, but no explanation appears in the movie.

Finally, since when is the TARDIS’s chameleon circuit known as a “cloaking device?”

Despite such stumbles, this Doctor Who TV-movie makes an honorable attempt to continue faithfully the ideas and characters of the franchise as seen on the BBC series, circa 1963-1989.  The Doctor’s old sonic screwdriver makes an appearance, for instance, and the series even resurrects an old logo from Jon Pertwee’s era. 

Similarly, the film went to the trouble of casting Sylvester McCoy for the pre-regeneration scenes, thus establishing a direct link between seventh and eighth Doctors.  Had the filmmakers not taken this step, the TV movie today would likely be remembered as completely apocryphal (like the Cushing films of the 1960s).

It’s also fair to state that this Doctor Who movie pointed the way towards the re-invention in several regards. 

For one thing, we get a very attractive, young, leading man-type Doctor in Paul McGann’s incarnation, as we later get with Eccleston, Tennant, and Smith.  No grandfatherly or father types, as was the case with Hartnell and Pertwee.

Also, the interior of the TARDIS is redesigned here and for the first time actually looks gigantic, much as it would in the modern era.  But the central column is clearly recognizable, as it remains to this day.

Last but not least -- and this is probably the most controversial touch -- there’s a hint of romance here between the Doctor and his companion, Grace.  On more than one occasion, the duo locks lips, and, well, you can pretty easily sense the desire. 

Once more, the new series has picked up on this dimension, with the Doctor and Rose falling in love, and Martha Jones also falling hard for the Time Lord.  

In the original series, the Doctor never made eyes at any of his beautiful male or female companions…and there were many, to be certain.  In the new show, there seems to be a hint of romance or attraction between the Doctor and virtually every companion (well, not Rory…).    

Today, contextualize the McGann movie as a not entirely-effective missing link between the original series and the new series.  In many ways, it is more nimble and fun than the last seasons on BBC were, but some aspects -- like the acknowledgment of the Doctor’s human half -- seem way off.  The film’s plot-line is also muddled, and the Doctor’s solution to the closing of the Eye of Harmony doesn’t seem to make sense in light of what we know about time travel.

Doctor Who would not reach its full potential, again, until 2005, and yet I’m still grateful to have this 1996 movie in the catalog.

Finally, there is one visual composition in this TV movie that I absolutely love.  An amnesiac doctor wanders through an abandoned wing of a San Francisco hospital, and sees his reflection for the first time…in eight mirrors.  We get eight views of him with his new face, because, of course, this is his eighth incarnation.  I love that moment.  It’s as if the mirror is explicitly reminding him of his long and noble history…

Guest Post: Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (2026)

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come -  Most Dangerous Game Night

By Jonas Schwartz-Owen

 

In other hands, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come could’ve been a wasted experience: the premise rhymes a little too closely with the original, our heroine occasionally feels like she’s lost a few hard-won survival points since movie one, and there are only so many ways to run a chase-and-capture story - where the villains hold all the money, guns, and institutions - without snapping the audience’s suspension of disbelief in half. Thankfully, returning directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (who also took the wheel for Scream (2022) and Scream VI) walk you down a familiar path… then flip the carriage, set it on fire, and leave everyone dazed, confused, and delighted.

Picking up in the immediate aftermath of the first film, we find Grace (Samara Weaving) punch-drunk, half-feral, and very much not enjoying the post-wedding glow - unless you count the kind of glow that comes from a mansion exploding behind you. She wakes in a hospital, handcuffed to the bed, blamed for the very messy pile of Le Domas bodies left behind (or at least the ones that were still recognizable as bodies). Her emergency contact is her estranged sister, Faith (Kathryn Newton), who shows up with the enthusiasm of someone asked to help you move on a weekend… after you “moved” to New York and basically vanished years ago.

But Grace’s victory lap is premature. The game she survived wasn’t the end of anything - it was an audition. What started as one cursed family’s tradition has metastasized into an international sport for the obscenely wealthy: a “Most Dangerous Game” tournament where various one-percent dynasties compete for the ultimate prize - status, power, bragging rights, and (because these people are monsters) the sisters’ dead bodies as the trophy. Among the contenders is the Danforth patriarch (director David Cronenberg, radiating cold-blooded menace) and his twin heirs: Titus (Shawn Hatosy) and Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar, yes, Buffy the FRIGGIN’ Vampire Slayer herself). May the worst family win.

Like the first film, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett paint with thick, gleeful brushstrokes - a live-action cartoon in the Wile E. Coyote tradition, if Acme also sold ritual daggers and private security. The gore is grotesque but consistently funny, and sometimes it’s not the successful kills but the spectacularly abortive attempts that land hardest, including a botched rocket launcher and a bout of fisticuffs while everyone’s essentially high on pepper spray.

The script - again from original scribes Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy - knows exactly where you think this sequel is headed. It offers just enough familiar beats to lull you into smug prediction mode, then yanks the floor away at the moment you’re about to congratulate yourself. When it zigzags, it commits, and the new direction feels less like a gimmick and more like the movie finally showing its hand.

The directors make smart use of the whole cast, but the best upgrade is Newton, who’s been quietly building a horror-comedy résumé (Freaky, Lisa Frankenstein, Abigail) and slides into this world like she was born holding a taser. Weaving and Newton make winning heroes - scrappy enough to survive, sharp enough to adapt, and stubborn enough to turn the hunted-into-hunter switch the second an opening appears. Their chemistry sells the messy, believable way estranged sisters can go from “we don’t talk” to “I will absolutely set a billionaire on fire for you.”

Gellar - on the wrong side of morality this time - clearly has a blast as the twin who got the brains in the womb, and she plays Ursula with the kind of polished cruelty that probably comes with a private tennis court. But the real standout villain is Shawn Hatosy’s Titus: all flippancy, ignorance, and entitlement, delivered with the oily confidence of someone who’s never once faced a consequence he couldn’t pay to delete. He’s basically a walking comment section - one of those billionaire manchildren you see in the news saying something defiant and wildly uninformed, then acting stunned when the public doesn’t applaud.

Not since Uma Thurman’s blood-stained Bride has anyone in a white gown weaponized matrimony with this much style. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come understands the secret sauce of the original: let the rich be ridiculous, let the violence be inventive, and let the heroine earn every inch of her fury. It’s a sequel that could’ve coasted on brand recognition and bridal trauma, but instead levels up the satire, the set pieces, and the sisterhood at its center. By the time the credits roll, you’re not just cheering because Grace (and Faith) lived - you’re cheering because, for once, the “family values” crowd gets exactly what they deserve. Family is everything… especially when you’re the kind of family willing to burn the whole rotten dynasty down.

CULT TV FLASHBACK: Dead of Night (1994-1997)

This year, Dead of Night: The Complete Series, was released on Blu-Ray by Vinegar Syndrome, and I just had the pleasure of falling into its unusual, low-budget and highly creative world. 

The title - Dead of Night -- may ring a bell. 

This low-budget, indie series was created by author Wayne Spitzer, with author Andy Kumpon back in the mid-1990s. They also star in the series as security guards Status (Spitzer) and AK (Kumpon), our protagonists.

What struck me immediately watching the first episode "Introductions," is that this show thrives in its analog universe, from the dawn of the CGI and Internet age. This is sturdy, old-school independent filmmaking.  Shot on location, well-lit, and with a flair for doing more with less.

Revisiting Dead of Night today is much like encountering a (wonderful) time-capsule. For instance, watching the splendidly-realized night-time scenes, you'll see visual "bleed" on the footage from bright lights in the frame, an artifact of video-recordings of the nineties. It's also a look I happen to love, and which grants Dead of Night a feel of almost documentary-type realism at times.

Dead of Night was shot in Spokane, Washington, and consisted, ultimately of twelve episodes (with an unfinished thirteenth one, "Tool," which has been completed for this blu-ray release), and here's just one more amazing thing about the Dead of Night story: The series aired on local television, on public access (Cox Cable Spokane), for three years.

What that means is that these young, ambitious, independent filmmakers didn't just make a low-budget, 80-minute movie by maxing out their credits cards, they constructed and developed a whole universe and mythology, week after week, on a wing and a prayer (and duct tape, as reported by Wayne Spitzer in a local news report of the era; below). 

In other words, the creators of Dead of Night made, essentially, 12 independent films, and on top of that, they got their series on TV, seen by millions.  

I love the enterprising, uncompromising, independent spirit of the series, and can see why for many fans, Dead of Night is absolute cult-TV nirvana. People can compare it to The X-Files, or Kolchak, or Twin Peaks, but the great thing about the show is that, ultimately, it is its own animal.

"Introductions," the first episode, commences with Status (Spitzer) meeting his new partner, AK (Kumpon), on his first night on the job as a new security officer for the Viktor Corporation. AK gives Status his badge, a gun, a walkie-talkie and a also friendly warning:

"Things out here happen a little differently." 

Immediately, Kumpon and Spitzer fall into an easy rapport with one another. Kumpon is affable and jocular, but with an edge that suggests he knows more than he is revealing to his new partner. Spitzer -- who is a great smoker on screen, by the way, and yes, that is harder than it looks -- is the newbie trying to figure things out, and the one a bit suspicious of his new environs.  

Did he just see a snake out there, in the dark, climbing a tree?

Status and AK work for the Viktor Corporation in Viktorville, a strange suburb with different sectors, and drive a squad car equipped with a high-tech "monitor," so denizens can contact them instantaneously when trouble arises. 

On his first night, Status receives a message on the monitor about a home intrusion. 

"Please hurry, there's someone in my house." 

This message leads the viewer into a tale about some unusual individuals, including an attractive woman, who appear to materialize and de-materialize out of our reality.  In some way, the laconic performances seem to flow well with the story-telling here. No explanations are given for the odd events in "Introductions," only the suggestion that we will learn more as the series develops. "Auld Lang Syne" plays on the soundtrack, and that's a song.about acquaintances not forgotten (even if they disappear from our sight?)  The choice of song heightens the eerie mood and contributes to the overall montage.

Sound quality is variable in some episodes, and yet it hardly matters, because Dead of Night develops and maintains an immersive spell, courtesy of an exquisite Carpenter-esque soundtrack, the ubiquitous falling snow, and the capable performances of the leads. The second episode, "Basilisk" finds Status and AK hunting a murderous giant serpent in Sector 8 with cattle prods, and there's the aura here of the characters descending into a nighttime, industrial underworld.  I like the lack of fakery in the choice of locations, and in the selection of shots. When it is freezing out, we see the characters cold breath exhaled, and back in the 1990s, you couldn't fake that effect.  You just know the actors are out at night, freezing, grinding through a long and arduous night shoot. 

This approach works well because on a low budget (as I can testify, as creator of The House Between and Abnormal Fixation), a good independent filmmaker must do more with suggestion, with tone, with mood, because the budget doesn't typically permit for more.

Watching Dead of Night, I see that approach playing out in the writing, the tantalizing revealing of one clue at a time, or on the dependence upon eerie location shots to carry whole passages of an episode.  It's the kind of low-budget filmmaking I admire, to be frank. A little goes a long way, and can carry huge weight.  

In "Introductions," an exploration of a creepy apartment gives us extreme-close-up shots of a clock, a wall-outlet, a cat, and then P.O.V. subjective shots of the interior terrain to establish both pace and a sense of space, geography.  Then we get in-camera-type effects to convey the slipping in and out of our reality.  It's rugged, analog filmmaking from a time when the opportunity simply did not exist to "fix things in post," or as is the case these days, with AI. 

But as the series develops, the special effects, the monsters and the story-telling all grow more elaborate and robust, and, finally, you can detect, this is how cult-TV obsessions (and fandoms) are made. With creators experimenting, finding what works, getting stronger, getting better, growing more effective, and leaning into their characters and themes.

If you want to check out a cult-TV series that is unique, experimental, edgy, sharp and fun at the same time, you can find it all here....in The Dead of Night.

50 Years Ago: Godzilla vs. Megalon (May 9, 1976)

Although it was produced in 1973, Godzilla vs. Megalon was not released in the United States until 1976, the very year of King Kong’s return to the silver screen under the auspices of Dino De Laurentiis.

Accordingly, this Japanese monster mash was a huge success in an America primed for a new monster movie.  

Godzilla vs. Megalon’s success may have been due in part to the evocative and colorful poster art of the film which dramatically aped King Kong’s and showed Godzilla and Megalon standing astride the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers.

Needless to say, in the actual film, Godzilla and Megalon never got close to Manhattan, or anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, for that matter.  Still, that poster is gorgeous.

After an incredibly successful run at the American box office, Godzilla vs. Megalon took another victory lap, airing on prime-time NBC in 1977 -- in an hour-long slot -- and it drew impressive ratings. John Belushi hosted the presentation.

In the early 1990s, the Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988 – 1999) gang riffed on Godzilla vs. Megalon to great comedic effect, and for years the series’ opening credits showed a clip of Godzilla’s impressive -- and bizarrely humorous -- jump kick in the movie.

Despite all the pop culture success and sense of nostalgia that surrounds this election year entry of the Godzilla saga, Godzilla vs. Megalon has never struck me as a particularly good movie, or a particularly strong entry in the Godzilla canon.

The reason why is simple: the movie needs more Godzilla and less Jet Jaguar.

The underwater kingdom of Seatopia sends a giant creature called Megalon, to destroy the surface world, which has been conducting dangerous nuclear tests for years, and therefore is threatening all life on the Earth. 

Meanwhile, a Japanese scientist, Goro and his young nephew, Rokuro test an amazing new robot called Jet Jaguar that becomes of great importance to the Seatopians and Megalon.  

Realizing that their robot can help save the world, Goro and Rokuro summon Jaguar to call on the help of Godzilla, who is now living on Monster Island.

But the Seatopians also call for reinforcements, and tag the monstrous Gigan to help Megalon destroy Godzilla.

With the survival of Tokyo and the world hanging in the balance, Jet Jaguar grows to enormous size to team up with Godzilla.

With apologies to my son, Joel -- who loved Megalon with a passion as a kid -- Godzilla vs. Megalon is not one of my favorite Godzilla movies. in part, Godzilla vs. Megalon fails because Godzilla does not even appear until late in the action, and seems to be an after-thought in the narrative. Instead, the film functions largely as origin story for the unknown and new hero: Jet Jaguar, a robot with the baffling ability to grow to Godzilla-esque proportions and then shrink back.

How on Earth (or Seatopia for that matter) is his metal so flexible that it can stretch to giant size and then retract to human size?   

Alas, even putting aside such question of logic, Jet Jaguar -- a kind of poor man’s Ultraman -- just can’t carry the story on his silver shoulders, or make-up for Godzilla’s frequent absence.  Imagine a James Bond film in which 007 didn’t appear until sometime late in the second act, and you get the idea.

Godzilla vs. Megalon is not entirely bereft of good ideas, to be certain. Though barely enunciated, there’s absolutely a critique here about nuclear arms that fits in with the franchise’s noble tradition of questioning atomic power and man’s usage of it.  

Here, the Seatopians send Megalon to the surface because of the nuclear testing performed by the nations of the world.  

The Seatopians’ final solution to a world risking destruction…is to destroy that world.  Thus, they attempt to wring peace out of war, a metaphor very clear to audiences in the Vietnam Era of “You have to destroy the village to save it.”  

Still, this message does not transmit nearly as powerfully as the anti-pollution message of the superior Godzilla vs. Hedorah.

I would be a curmudgeon if I didn’t note that the movie features some really fun battles.  

That aforementioned Godzilla jump kick, for instance, is just so bizarre, gravity-defying and over-the-top.  I don’t know how it could elicit anything but laughs, but it is a clear indicator that the films of this era have moved definitively into fantasy-comedy territory. 

In the final analysis, however, this film looks like a TV pilot for a Jet Jaguar series, with Godzilla coming in for a cameo tag team, and that fact doesn’t do the big green dragon any favors. 

People go to see Godzilla movies for Godzilla, and in some critical sense, Godzilla vs. Megalon breaks (or at least severely stretches…) that contract with the audience with its bait-and-switch strategy.

20 Years Ago: Doctor Who: "The Girl in the Fireplace" (May 6, 2006)

When The TARDIS lands on a derelict vessel deep in space, The Doctor (David Tennant), Rose Tyler (Billie Tyler) and Mickey (Noel Clarke) investigate the situation, and discover a time door aboard the craft leading to eighteenth century Paris, on Earth.

There, the Doctor spies a young girl, Reinette in her bedroom, and realizes she is in danger from a strange Clockwork Man automaton.  He saves her from it, but the young girl imagines it all a bad dream, and fantasizes the Doctor as a protector and imaginary friend. 

Since time on each side of the fireplace flows differently, when the Doctor next attempts to save Reinette (Sophia Myles) from a clockwork android, she is an adult, and remembers him from her childhood dreams. The Doctor also soon realizes that she is soon to become the infamous mistress of King Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour.

While the Doctor interfaces with 1700s France, Rose and Mickey discover that the clockwork androids are using surgically-removed body parts from the (dead) starship crew to repair the vessel’s massive damage.  The Doctor fears that the androids have set their sights on the one human brain they believe can power the ship’s computer: Reinette’s.

The Doctor attempts to save Reinette from a fate worse than death, but recognizes a kindred spirit in her, and begins to grow close to her…

In general, I’m not a big fan of stories in which The Doctor falls in love with a human being.  

For one thing, such a love affair doesn’t seem likely given the vast differences between species.  In “Rose,” for instance, the Doctor refers to humans, in a fit of rage, as “apes.”  This descriptor suggests how the character views the distance between his race, the Time Lords, and the human race.

Humans don’t fall in apes, and if the metaphor holds, Time Lords shouldn’t fall in love with humans, either.  

After all, how many apes -- even the most intelligent apes -- have you felt the desire to be involved in a physical romance with?

I’ve always considered it a bridge too far in terms of fan service to suggest that the Doctor might fall in love with and engage in a sexual relationship with a human, given the apparent -- and acknowledged -- gulf between species.  

I’m absolutely okay with Amy Pond and Martha Jone being hot for the Doctor, since he appears human (and also attractive), and since their desires for physical love go unrequited. The Doctor rejects their attempts to become intimate with him.  

But otherwise, frankly, it starts to get icky.  

Already in the early days of the new series, we’ve seen the beloved Sarah Jane Smith ret-conned so as suggest she was always in love with the Doctor (“School Reunion”), an idea that feels cheap given the great and sturdy friendship the two characters actually shared during the eras of the Third and Fourth Doctor.  

I enjoy tremendously the sentimentality and nostalgia of “School Reunion,” but the idea that Sarah is a spurned “ex” who must come to terms with her displacement in the Doctor’s romantic life for a younger model (Rose) is an absolute disservice to Elisabeth Sladen’s strong character, who -- for many fans -- remains a 1970s feminist icon.  Does anyone else remember her discussion of female power in “Monster of Peladon?”

Of course, Rose obviously falls in love with the Doctor during her time with him in the TARDIS too, and has those feelings reciprocated even though a physical relationship never resulted until a human clone of the Doctor came into the picture.   

In the long run, I feel that this kind of material doesn't serve the characters, or the series itself.

Yet sometimes -- as is abundantly the case with “The Girl in the Fireplace" -- a romance in the Doctor’s life is necessary, dramatically-speaking, because it reflects or suggests something crucial about the Doctor’s non-human nature (and not merely that he would romance an ape, given half the chance.)

“The Girl in the Fireplace” is a beautiful tale not because it is about a tragic, and unfulfilled love affair, but because it exemplifies the very nature of the Doctor’s existence in a way that his relationship with the companions simply cannot, given the limitations of our human viewpoint.  

The Doctor views time differently than we do, and lives an extended life-span by our standards.  So his time with Rose, or Donna, or Martha, is but a blip.  They age and die, and he is still young.  The Doctor tells us this many times. We know it intellectually, but on a week-to-week basis, we don't really see it.  We see them together, not separated by time.

However, that very idea -- of being separated by fast-moving time and a long life-span  -- is expressed beautifully with the concept of the Time Door in this episode.  The Doctor appears in Reinette’s life when she is young.  But literally every time he sees her again, she is older…and different.  When he returns for her the final time, she is dead.  

She is gone, in other words, in the blink of an eye, a least by the Doctor’s (and audience's...) perspective

We see the companions in every adventure and so, in essence, we are on “their” time, and don’t experience their travels by the Doctor’s  perspective.The magic of “The Girl in the Fireplace” (and also “The Eleventh Hour” and “The Girl Who Waited”) is that the writer has found a way for us to viscerally experience the Doctor’s life; as a man alone who out-lives all those around him. He barely has time to make a move before it is too late.  Time robs him of his friends and companions.

Thus, the romance angle in "The Girl in the Fireplace" is actually a symbol for something other than physical love. It is a representation of the fleeting connection between the Doctor and any soul who isn’t a Time Lord.  

The Doctor wants to connect, but just when that connection gets interesting, the other person in the relationship grows old and dies.  

People complain a great deal about Moffat’s stories, and his stewardship of Doctor Who, but I admire his work because he writes emotional stories that help us experience what it might be like to be an ageless time traveler.  

Instead of focusing just on the fact that one can travel anywhere and anywhere, his work permits audiences to see that there are drawbacks too. We learn that the Doctor visits other worlds, meets many people, and helps lots more.  But in the end, every day, he is alone, a solitary figure.  

This is a perspective we might have intuited in the classic series and even felt on occasion (like the Third Doctor's sad goodbye to Jo, in "The Green Death"), but in Tennant's era (under Davies stewardship),  it is the dominant theme, the story behind all the stories. And no story captures that theme better than this one, penned by Moffat.

David Tennant, the tenth iteration of the Doctor, is especially strong in dealing with this sort of material.  He plays the most sensitive of all Doctors, and can express mourning, loneliness, and regret beautifully.  This makes sense in terms of the character’s overall “arc.”  He is a little further away from the guilt of the Time War than Eccleston’s incarnation, but growing ever more aware of how “alone” he is as the last time lord.   

Tennant is not my favorite Doctor -- I would vote for Patrick Troughton, Tom Baker, Peter Capaldi, or Matt Smith – but I like and admire Tennant's incarnation, and feel he is a great Doctor.  It is difficult to imagine a different actor pulling off a story like “The Girl in the Fireplace” or “Human Nature,” but Tennant is the right Doctor at the right time. You can see in every performance his longing to connect, and his reluctance to connect. 

In the final analysis, “The Girl in the Fireplace” is a great Doctor Who story because it makes us feel the Doctor’s agony at being alone, and even share his viewpoint of human life going by at warp speed.  

Also, the Clockwork robots are magnificent and diabolical villains in terms of their appearance.  In some way, they are perfect monsters for Doctor Who: they drive the story from point to point, but don’t get in the way of character development.  And they’re scary as hell.

But I really picked us this story because it reveals best the Tennant Doctor.  

He is a man who wants to connect, but sees connection shut down at every juncture ("The Girl in the Fireplace," "Doomsday," "Human Nature.")  He is so shattered by this fact that by the end of his era, he is loudly embracing his alone-ness, and calling himself "Time Lord Victorious."  

Because of Tennant's remarkable performances -- and humanity -- you can see how that destroys him inside.

May the Fourth Be With You: Star Wars (1977)

Okay, it may not be the best movie ever made.  It may not even be the best movie I have ever seen.  However, I can safely assert that Star Wars (1977) is the movie that most changed my young life. 

I first saw director George Lucas’s blockbuster space opera when I was seven years-old.  Up to that point, I had never witnessed a fantasy/sci-fi/monster movie crafted on such a grand scale, or one presented with such an incredible, unshakable sense of reality.

Unlike many genre films of the epoch (for example, Damnation Alley [1977]) there was never even a single moment during Star Wars when the “spell” was broken, or the fantasy facade broke down to accommodate a bad special effect, a lousy performance, a cheap set/costume, or some other weak production component. 

Rather, that atmosphere of reality – of a different and fantastic reality, no less – was rigorously and impeccably sustained for two hours.

And because of that fact, Star Wars was the most exhilarating movie I’d seen up to that point.  I remember coming out of the movie for the first time and feeling like I had been holding my breath for two hours.  Then, over a period of several weeks, I saw the film in the theater at least three more times...and felt precisely the same way.

The great joy of Star Wars, even today, all comes down to George Lucas’s incredible ability to ground his otherworldly “space opera” world in a reality that is immediately recognizable to all of us.  For instance, underneath the flashy lasers and colored light sabers, or the strange aliens and robots, the film boasts this driving, human feeling of yearning, of almost anticipatory anxiety.

Star Wars’ lead character, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) gazes up at the night sky of Tatooine, and he wonders what awaits him.  Where will he go next?  When does his life really begin? When does he finally get to grow up and chart his own destiny?  What is he supposed to believe in?

Lucas grounds the viewer in Luke’s personal “coming of age” story, yet that’s far from the only grounding the director accomplishes here.  Without explaining in significant terms a back-story, Lucas crafts in Star Wars a lived-in world which nonetheless points to previous adventures, and to a larger universe beyond the main narrative. 

It’s such a big (and yet consistent…) place, in fact, that it almost can’t all fit within the boundaries of the movie frame.  Thu,s at times, it almost seems as if Lucas didn’t make it up his universe at all, or build it all from scratch.  Rather, it’s as though he took a camera in-hand and actually traveled to a galaxy far, far away, filmed what he saw there, and brought that footage back for us to enjoy.

The film’s dialogue, filled with descriptors like “this time,” or “no more,” captures obliquely the notion that this adventure is set on just another day in this faraway galaxy, and that there are many, many other adventures to witness, and personalities to meet there.  The film boasts many half-explored implications, from intimations about unseen characters like The Emperor, Captain Antilles and Jabba the Hutt, to tantalizing hints about the previous adventures of Han Solo, Obi-Wan Kenobi, R2-D2 and C-3P0. The scenery or set design itself possesses a kind of unexplored depth and breadth. There's a staircase leading up -- where precisely? -- beyond Docking Bay 94 on Tattooine. There's the packed-to-the-gills interior of a bustling, junk-filled Sandcrawler.  There are even alligators in the sewers, so-to-speak, or rather a Dia Noga in the trash compactor.

The visual form of Star Wars reflects this narrative content in a most unusual and resonant fashion.  Specifically, Lucas utilizes visual homage or visual tributes to previous and well-established cinematic productions to help us -- the audience -- process quickly and thoroughly the essential nature of life in the world of the Galactic Empire. 

So even if we don’t consciously recognize or identify all the visual touches in terms of the original source material (such as The Hidden Fortress [1958], Metropolis [1927] or 633 Squadron [1964]), our eyes nonetheless understand the touches as belonging to some common “language” we all share.  Star Wars is an accomplished blend of the familiar with the unfamiliar, the past with the present, and with the (imaginative) future.  And Lucas’s choice to re-purpose imagery from film history is one key to help us understand his universe.  Underneath this technique of tribute or homage is a simple yet elegant message about man's nature, and not least of all, his spirituality.  In short, Star Wars offers a renewal of movie spirituality in an era of anti-heroes, cynicism, and the personal, idiosyncratic cinema.

“If there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from.”

While being pursued by the Emperor’s minion, Lord Darth Vader (David Prowse), Princess Leia of Alderaan (Carrie Fisher) hides the tactical plans for an Imperial battle station called the Death Star with a small droid called R2-D2 (Kenny Baker). 

With his counterpart, protocol droid C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) in tow, R2-D2 escapes to the desert world of Tatooine with the goal of finding former Jedi Knight, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness) and soliciting his aid.

On Tatooine, however, the droids are captured by scavengers called Jawas and sold to the Skywalker farm. There, a young man, Luke (Hamill), hopes to leave his dreary life working at the moisture farm, and tender his application to the Academy.  But his uncle resists.  He doesn't want Luke to go.  He doesn't want Luke to grow up.

Soon, Luke and the droids meet up with Kenobi,  an old man who urges the young man to help him  reach Alderaan with R2 and the technical schematics.  After his aunt and uncle are murdered by Imperial Stormtroopers, Luke agrees to join Obi-Wan's quest.  They book passage to Alderaan aboard the Millennium Falcon, captained by Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and co-piloted by a Wookie named Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew).

Unfortunately, the commanding officer on the Death Star, Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing) plans to make Princess Leia reveal the location of the secret rebel base, and destroys her home planet of Alderaan to coerce her cooperation.  

When the Millennium Falcon arrives in the Alderaan system from Tatooine, it finds not a beautiful planet, but the Death Star.

Now, Luke and his friends must rescue Leia, Ben must confront his old student, Vader, and they all must get the plans to the rebels, before the Empire and the Death Star carry the day…

For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the 

Old Republic. Before the dark times... before the Empire.

When you stand back and gaze at Star Wars from a good distance, you can detect that the film tells a very old story: the hero's journey.  But it tells that tale in a new way, and in a new (final?) frontier: outer space.  

Rather, it is the explicit details of the narrative that are new to audiences, from the history of the Jedi Knights and The Force to the explanations of such things as snub-nosed fighters, T.I.E. fighters, tractor beams, hyper-drive, Wookies, land-speeders and droids.  The way to make all these people, concepts, and ideas immediately understandable, Lucas understands, is to mine much of film history for visual antecedents, ones that make the story graspable for audiences, even though they don't know the precise details of the Old Republic, the Galactic Empire, or the Clone Wars.

From the film’s opening crawl, this is the very technique Lucas regularly deploys.  In particular, the crawl that appears immediately after the film's title harks back to Flash Gordon (1936), and the title cards used in each serial opener. In Flash Gordon, such screens conveyed important information about previous episodes in the thirteen installment production.  This crawl is actually our first visual indication that Star Wars is a pastiche, or a work of art imitating and honoring the work of previous artists.   It also sets the jaunty, almost retro tone of the picture. By recruiting this technique from the Flash Gordon films, Star Wars announces, specifically, its intention to be pulpy, lighthearted, swashbuckling fantasy and fun.

This was not a small detail in the 1970s.  The disco decade was an era when such swashbuckling adventure films were not in vogue.  In terms of the sci-fi genre, Dystopian-styled films dominated the landscape (The Omega Man, Soylent Green, Logan’s Run, and Damnation Alley, for example.).  Not coincidentally, the same decade was the age of growling, violent anti-heroes like Dirty Harry and Paul Kersey (of the Death Wish films).  

By commencing Star Wars with a 1930s-era, serial-like crawl, George Lucas effectively renounced contemporary cinema, and reached back to an older tradition, a “golden age” of more innocent fantasy fare. Not incidentally, the screenplay seems to share his point of view, describing the light saber of the old Republic as an "elegant" weapon for a more "civilized time."  In other words, the past inside the Star Wars universe, and the past of Hollywood history outside Star Wars were both more elegant and civilized than the present of the Galactic Empire/anti-hero cinema.

Our invitation to adventure in a more elegant and civilized time: Flash Gordon (1936).

Our invitation to innocence in a cynical time: Star Wars (1977).

After the opening crawl, Star Wars very much begins to deliberately ape elements and details from Akira Kurosawa’s film, The Hidden Fortress.  That film also used “wipes” as visual transitions between scenes, but more importantly, involved two pseudo-comic individuals, Tahei and Mataschici, who escaped a pitched battle, wandered for a time in a wasteland, and were then captured and enslaved.  They then became involved with the rescue of a Princess and the exploits of a General.  

This familiar sequence of events is repeated with the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO in Star Wars.  Two likable (and funny) robots escape from the rebel blockade runner battle, become lost in the Tatooine desert, and unwittingly become involved with the rescue of a princess and the exploits of a Jedi-Knight.  The point in both films is to highlight two unassuming, even “common” individuals who become caught up in huge, important events beyond their control, and even their understanding.  It's a ground's eye view of world-shaking incidents, of history unfolding.

In terms of Star Wars, the first twenty minutes of the film or so mostly revolve around the droids and their exploits, and this kind of “macro” focus is one way to introduce the Star Wars universe without inundating audiences with tech-talk and difficult-to-pronounce names or sci-fi concepts.  Matters of galactic import (like the Death Star), can wait, and Lucas introduces his core concepts one at a time without risk of sensory overkill or confusion.

Two common men get caught up in world-changing events, in The Hidden Fortress (1958).

Two lowly droids get caught up in galaxy-changing events, in Star Wars (1977).

A trek through the wilderness, their future uncertain.

A trek through the desert, their future uncertain.

The first hour of the Lucas film is, on retrospect, my favorite portion of the film. After things settle down a bit, there's a quiet yet vital scene set in Ben Kenobi’s desert home. What Star Wars accomplishes here, again, is revolutionary, if in an unassuming kind of way.  Kenobi quietly and steadfastly introduces us to his faith.  He describes the Force as the thing that “gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.”  

Again dismissing the tenets of the contemporary and cynical 1970s Hollywood, Star Wars thus reintroduces “spirituality” to a cinema that had asked, explicitly, “Is God Dead” in films such as 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby, and also, to some degree, Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973).  Certainly  Lucas's film is not a strict re-assertion of Christianity, necessarily, but rather a non-denominational acknowledgment of man’s inherent spirituality and interconnection.  The Force, like belief and faith in Jesus Christ, is a promise of immortality in  the Star Wars universe.  We see this quality of belief depicted in Ben Kenobi’s heroic death – or disappearance – after his duel with Vader.

This famous Time cover set the tone for the late 1960s and early 1970s American cinema.

But Star Wars re-introduces spirituality in the form of "The Force..."

And the film even promises "eternal life" for those who believe in its precepts.

As Star Wars continues, the film spends more time in space, and indeed, in space combat.  Again, George Lucas chooses to make his “space opera” one that visually resonates in terms of film history.  When Luke and Han take to the guns of The Millennium Falcon to destroy several pursuing TIE fighters, Lucas explicitly references combat visuals from Twelve O’Clock High (1949), a film about American flying fortresses in aerial combat during World War II.  

Once more, viewers may not exactly recognize the specific reference, but they absolutely "get" the allusion to a previous  global conflict, and a previous form of warfare.  We may not understand how lasers work, or what powers TIE Fighters, but we do understand the settings and dynamics of aerial combat, even translated to space.

The underside gun of a flying fortress in Twelve O'Clock High.

A view on the inside looking out (from the same film) as a gunner targets evading fighters.

From Star Wars: Targeting evading fighters.

And again, an underside gun mount.

The battle to destroy the Death Star follows the same film making approach. Only this time, Lucas re-casts a critical set-piece from the 1964 British film 633 Squadron as his point of origin and point of audience recognition.  In that film, several Allied Bombers make a run against a Nazi base lodged between two mountains (essentially in a trench...).  As the bombers make their attack run, they  attempt to avoid blistering anti-aircraft guns.  There is also an initial false start, and a false detonation at the target site.  Additionally, enemy fighters swoop in to challenge the bombers and pick them off as they focus on their quarry on the ground.   If you’re at all familiar with Star Wars, you will recognize the setting, sequence, and outcome of the Death Star trench scene as being very similar indeed to 633 Squadron.

The point isn’t that Lucas stole anything.  The point is that when “you’ve taken your first step into a larger world,” to quote Obi Wan Kenobi, elements of that world need to be understandable immediately, so that other important concepts can be grasped.  In other words, if you’re focusing on something like how a tractor beam works, or what is hyper-drive is, you’re not paying attention to the details of Luke’s quest, and Lucas’s story.  

By updating old cinematic imagery, Lucas conveys his story -- and his message about spirituality -- in a way that we visually accept and understand, almost at once.

From 633 Squadron: the Nazi's strike back at attacking Allied aircraft.

From Star Wars: The Empire Strikes back at attacking rebel spaceships.

On the horizon, enemy fighters swoop in for the kill (in 633 Squadron).

TIE Fighters swoop in for the kill (in Star Wars).

In the trench, planes avoid blistering gunfire. (633 Squadron).

In the trench, rebel X-fighters avoid blistering gunfire (Star Wars).

I’ve long argued that Star Wars may not be a perfect film, but that the film offers a perfect presentation of a galaxy “far, far, away,” and I think that’s the point of all the tributes and re-framing of scenes from The Hidden Fortress or 633 Squadron.  But the deeper point is the one I mentioned in connection with the Force and Flash Gordon.  George Lucas’s epic space fantasy serves as an explicit indictment of the 1970s self-involved “personal cinema,” and harks back to a time of greater innocence and greater adventure in terms of movie narratives. 

I suspect this is the reason why, seriously, that George Lucas altered the dynamic of the Han Solo/Greedo sequence. In that scene as it was originally crafted, Han fires his blaster, and Greedo doesn’t shoot at all.  It’s an almost anti-hero, Dirty Harry-esque moment for the Solo character.  I believe that’s precisely the kind of aesthetic Lucas wanted to eschew and avoid, and so on retrospect, did just that by making Greedo shoot first.  Han’s act was thus transformed from one of preemptive murder to self-defense.  I’m not arguing that his selection was the right one, or that Lucas should have tampered with the scene, only that some of the changes Lucas has forged in terms of Star Wars tend to play into this very notion of Star Wars as pastiche, of a call-back to an earlier, more innocent generation of film productions.  

Even the idea to title his Star Wars films numerically and with melodramatic sub-title fits in with this tradition of the crawl concept of Flash Gordon which boasted titles such as “The Unseen Peril.”  That sounds a lot like The Phantom Menace, doesn’t it?

If Han Solo shoots first, is he Dirty Harry?

The two concepts I have discussed most frequently in this review are: 1.) how Lucas grounds the reality of Star Wars by creating a lived-in, recognizable universe and 2.) how Lucas attempts to hark back to a more innocent, swashbuckling, spiritual age of movies.  If you link those two concepts, you will arrive at my unified theory of Star Wars, and at the very essence of the film itself.  Star Wars presents a universe so authentically-rendered and well-thought out that you can truly believe in it. The careful forging of the world discourages cynicism or disbelief.  

The idea of “May the Force be With You,” not unlike the exclamation “Go with God,” is inherently about belief; about believing in yourself and your capacity to tap the spiritual center of existence itself.  Yet no one would possibly believe in Lucas's world or in that inspirational message if the special effects in Star Wars were unconvincing, if the aliens looked hokey, or if the space battles were confusing. 

I believe that by referencing these older films and older visuals, Lucas was making certain that we could relate to Star Wars. It’s a unique and intriguing technique, and I submit it actually works very well.  The later films in the franchise depend on vast, special effects set-pieces with digital backdrops and drooling creatures, and yet the greatest emotional thrill I felt during the saga occurred here, in the original Star Wars, as Luke and Leia swung boldly across a chasm together, and John Williams’ scored blared heroically underneath their leap. 

A boy, a girl and a universe.  The thrill and appeal of Star Wars are almost literally that simple. Despite making a high-tech film filled with laser blasts, spaceships, robots, and a complex internal history Lucas directs us through this complexity and gets right to the mythic, spiritual heart of his film.

As of today -- how many years after I first saw the film?? -- that pure-hearted (but intellectually-conceived) approach still works for me.