New Who, Same Crush

This is my third attempt at this Doctor Who-related post and I'm really hoping that it works out OK.

Anyone who is the right kind of nerd knows that Matt Smith began his tenure as the 11th Doctor a few weeks ago. Well, nerds who are torrenters do. Law-abiding nerds are still waiting for the April 17th BBC America premiere. Being the more impatient sort, I and some friends were good to go the night of the BBC One premiere.

There were some serious concerns about the new Doctor: he is very young (well, 28 now but that's still younger than me), he is mostly forehead and chin, and well, he's not David Tennant. But this (obvs) isn't the first time a Doctor has been replaced, and I'm sure it won't be the last, so I swallowed my trepidation and tried not to make any(more) snap judgements.

The first episode, The Eleventh Hour, was a bit frenetic, so I couldn't really decide how I felt about Smith's Doctor. There was much vaulting of hedges, a reasonably entertaining bit with the Doctor trying (and rejecting various foodstuffs), and the introduction of the new companion, Amy Pond (Karen Gillan). Side note: I was VERY concerned that I was going to hate the new companion. Not because I have an undying loyalty to any of the past companions, but because in every teaser I saw she had this wide-eyed look of surprise that drove me mad. I did not want her to be the baffled, constantly needing-to-be-rescued companion. Also, with any luck, there will be no romantic overtones at all. The Rose Tyler thing was fine, but Martha Jones was painfully awful (no offense to Freema Agyeman). I think I liked Donna so much because there was definitely a matey vibe to the whole thing that was very refreshing after three seasons of shmoopishness. But this isn't about the companions.

After watching the second episode, The Beast Below, I was in love...again. Don't get me wrong, I'm still very fond of Tennant and his zany hairdo, and Eccleston's jug handle ears, but Smith has firmly established himself as a crush-worthy Doctor. Yes, he looks like he was half-sculpted from Silly Putty, but he's the bloody Doctor. The Doctor is the crush, not the actor. I think Steve Buscemi (again, no offense) could pop out of the TARDIS and I would still be ready to jaunt across space and time. It's the idea of being with this "very old and very kind" Time Lord that makes me all happy in my pants, not necessarily wanting to shag Tennant or Smith. Not that I wouldn't shag Tennant. I think it's the hair. And while I'm not fond of Smith's little bow tie, I'd happily rip it off and proceed to blow his Gallifreyan(?) mind.

I apologize for all the parenthetical asides but it felt right.

Wooooooooo!

I'm fucking psychic.

I was making dinner last night and getting ready to watch House. (Spoilers ahead) I had a random thought: What if they brought back the private detective guy from the beginning of last season? Wouldn't that be something?

And BANG! There he was, in Cuddy's hotel room, just when House was attempting to be a good guy and offering to babysit.

So either I'm psychic, or I should be writing for TV.

Selections from the Trash Heap

It is truly amazing what you can recall with a tiny bit of prompting.

My dad sent me a link to an article on Salon about the demise of the 3-D View-Master. I, my mom, and my dad all had one when we were kids. My dad's was extra special because it came with a record to play as you ka-chunked your way around the View-Master disk. Fancy. I started thinking back to what stories I had for my View-Master. I seem to remember a Chip n Dale adventure, and maybe something with The Borrowers. But memory is a fickle thing and I could be totally wrong.

Thoughts of the Disney chipmunks led me to this gem: the theme song for Duck Tales. Yeah, that's right. The theme song for a show about Unca Scrooge, Huey, Dewey, and Louie. I watched that religiously everyday after school. That, and Rescue Rangers and Darkwing Duck. What? I like cartoons.

This thing that horrifies me is how much of the damn theme song I can remember.

"Life is like a hurricane,
Here in Duckburg.
Race cars, lasers (?), aeroplanes
It's a duck blur.
Might solve a mystery
Or rewrite history
Duck Tales! Woo-oo!"

AHHHHHHHH! Or how 'bout this one?

"They're tiny, they're toony
they're all a little looney
And in this cartoon-y
we're invading your TV!"

Or:

"It's time for Animaniacs!
And we're zany to the max!
So just sit back and relax
You'll laugh 'til you collapse!"

Grrrr.

Ironically enough, I have no recollection of the Rescue Rangers theme.

"The science was sound."

WARNING: Fringe Spoilers ahead.

Fringe is my new guilty pleasure. In case you don't know anything about the show, here's a quick sum-up. There is this thing called "The Pattern" which involves bizarre science, the Dept. of Homeland Security, the FBI, a corporation called Massive Dynamic, a bland Special Agent named Olivia Dunham, a ne'er do well genius and his lovably crazy scientist dad (Peter and Dr. Walter Bishop respectively). The show is nominally about "fringe" science: teleportation, reading dead people's brain waves, super-awful super weapons, etc. What it actually is nonsense - wonderful, crazy, not-science nonsense.

Tonight's episode revolved around a series of seemingly impossible bank robberies. We the viewers get to see the robbers in action. There's some black curtains, a bunch of laptops, and some gobbledygook about having a grid. What this all amounts to is that these robbers can walk through walls. Did I mention that they are all spiffed out in scuba gear? And have to haul themselves into the vault using a rope attached to a super magnet? And one of the robbers gets stuck in the wall?

It turns out that the criminals are stealing safety deposit boxes that were stocked with funky camera-looking things. It also turns out that our very own Dr. Walter had opened those boxes 20-odd years ago (the boxes are based on Fibonacci numbers - go math!) to hide away a device he had made in an insane attempt to cure his son, Peter, of some rare bird flu. Walter created this device in order to reach back to the 1930s and retrieve the only doctor who had ever successfully treated this rare bird flu. Luckily for this bird flu doc, Peter got better all by himself and Walter secreted away his temporal lasso.

Do you see now why I love this show? It's completely preposterous. Walter spent almost 20 years in a mental institution but somehow a good percentage of his research is being used for nefarious purposes, Olivia is sharing her dead boyfriend's memories, the lady who runs Massive Dynamic has an arm that any Terminator would envy and there is a cow in their basement lab on Harvard's campus. The science, my friends, is anything but sound.