Interlude: I Hope You Like Spoilers

I'm not sure what it says about a creative endeavor when one can't decide whether its brilliant or the worst possible thing ever.  That's how I feel about both Star Trek: Into Darkness and the Dr. Who season finale.  It is very confusing.

I suppose I'm cheating on my original idea for this blergblog thing in that I'm not talking about games right now.  I suppose I could point out that neither of the intellectual properties I'm talking about have (to my knowledge) a video game tie-in that isn't rubbish.  Seriously, has there ever been a Star Trek game that didn't suck?  And how exactly would the mechanics of a Dr. Who game work?  I want to say it would have to be a point-and-click adventure game but really most Dr. Who stories involve a lot of deus ex machina and not a whole lot of logic.  Case in point is one of my very favorite episodes - "New Earth" - where the Doctor uses pouches of Kool-Aid to cure a bunch of vat-grown humans of every known disease.  Now that I think about it, that sounds very point-and-click adventure-y and I would play the hell out of that game.  Someone get on that.

By the way... SPOILERS.  Spoilers for all things.  There are going to be spoilers EVERYWHERE.  I'll separate Star Trek spoilers from Dr. Who spoilers with the caps lock but after this sentence is done I take no responsibility whatsoever.  Leave now to remain unspoiled.

**BEGIN STAR TREK SPOILERS**

Remember when it was announced that Benedict Cummerbach was going to be a villain in the new Star Trek movie who "totally wasn't Khan"?  And then the whole Internet rolled its eyes because Mr. Cummerbach already plays a super-intelligent sociopath on the BBC and who the hell else would he be cast as?  And let me get one thing out in the open right away - I really did enjoy the movie.  It was a lot of fun and there were a couple moments where I was stifling squeals of fangirl-ish joy.  The gripes I have are pretty negligible in the grand scheme of how much fun I had.

To recap, at the end of the last movie it was established that the characters we knew and loved had been set on an alternate path because of interference from Nero and Future Spock.  As far as reboot concepts go, I am actually behind this one.  The fact that a huge event (Vulcan's destruction) happened changed all the characters in subtle ways, enabling the actors to put their own stamp on their roles without completely ticking off a huge loyal fanbase.

Its pretty obvious to me that the character who's changed the most is Spock.  Which makes sense - it was his home planet that was destroyed after all.  He still struggles with his emotions, but I feel like he lets his human side show more as a way to honor the mother he lost.  I am on board with that.  I even accepted him kissing Uhura on the transporter pad.  His home was dead, you can't judge a man for needing a little comforting.  What I am not ok with is making Zachary Quinto yell "KHAAAAAAAAAN!!"  No.  I wish I could erase my memory of that moment.  It worked when the Shat did it because he is William Shatner and melodrama is what he spreads on his toast in the morning.  He eats scenery for lunch.  This is all right and proper.  That moment was an icon and trying to replicate it made me laugh uncontrollably.  I don't think that was the emotional response it was intended to inspire.

Let's talk about the scene for a moment.  I have a freakish memory for movie and television plotlines, which may be one of the reasons I'm so on the fence about this movie.  The last time I watched The Wrath of Khan was about two years ago, but I remember Spock's death scene with absolute clarity, to the point where I could probably rattle off the whole dialogue if I thought about it hard enough.  And Spock's death scene is lifted very nearly intact and re-created in "Into Darkness" with Kirk being the one who dies.  There were whole bits of dialogue from that scene in "The Wrath of Khan" that are used unaltered.  The camera shot where (originally) Kirk realizes that the ship is saved and then looks over to Spock's empty chair?  That's there-ish.  Scotty yelling about how opening the door will "Flood the whole compartment".  Yep.  The list goes on.  And I honestly don't know how to feel about it.  Is it a brilliant tribute or lazy directing?  I really can't decide. Without committing to either opinion I will say it was an interesting reversal and it made sense for Kirk's character to finally realize that being a ship captain wasn't just whizzing around space and sleeping with cat-alien twins.

But Kirk's "death" felt a little cheap to me.  In The Wrath of Khan, Spock's death felt final.  And it took a whole entire movie for him to come back.  But that can't happen here because Kirk is human - he can't mind-meld with anyone to pass along his katra and as my sister pointed out its not like the creators would actually let Captain Kirk die for real.  They wouldn't be able to make any more movies.  So I there was kind of a lack of suspense.  You knew that Kirk would live, but you didn't know exactly how.  By the way....

Dr. McCoy saves him with a tribble.  And Khan's magic blood.  In case you thought there weren't enough spoilers already.  So, did I enjoy the movie?  Yes, yes I did.  But I feel confused and a little bit guilty for enjoying it.  There were more than a few genuinely awesome moments, but I really feel like it could have been better.  And the "KHAAAAN!" thing.  As the 10th Doctor would say - stop.  No, just... don't do that.

**END STAR TREK SPOILERS, BEGIN DR. WHO SPOILERS**

You may call me the Mistress of Segue.

The current season of Dr. Who has been an exercise in disappointment for me.  It took me forever to accept Matt Smith as the Doctor, but eventually I did because A Doctor is eternally better than No Doctor.  And there are some genuinely amazing bits about the 11th Doctor's run.  The reason I fell in love with Dr. Who was because it embraces whimsy and optimism so whole-heartedly that there could be an episode where the Doctor saves the universe with a kettle and a bit of string (see what I did there?) and you would be so starry-eyed and in love that you wouldn't care that it didn't make a lick of sense.  The starry-eyed optimism is not present for me in this season, but the not-making-sense has definitely stuck around.  In short, this season has been promises crushed by disappointment every step of the way.

"Dinosaurs on a Spaceship"!!!  How could that ever possibly suck?  By being boring.  Which is what it was.

"Journey to the Center of the TARDIS"!!!  No, there is no way this could be bad.  Finding out what was in the TARDIS this whole time?  And yet, it was not good.

Neil Gaiman is writing another episode?!?  About Cybermen??!  Be still my thumping heart, surely this will save the Doctor from this horrendous pit of mediocrity.

Cue the sobbing.  Other than a few good moments, Neil Gaiman has written something that I did not like.    My heart is broken into a trillion tiny pieces.

So I didn't have very high hopes for the season finale.  And while I would like to say that it blew my mind and my faith is restored, that would not be the truth.  Let's bullet-point this nonsense.

1)  The villain.  I had to look up The Great Intelligence because I was certain that someone who had so much enmity for the Doctor that he was willing to destroy himself to kill the Doctor couldn't be just a side character.  Who was this Great Intelligence and why was he so upset?  Turns out the Great Intelligence has met the Doctor exactly twice.  Once in the Christmas special of this year and once back in 1968-era Who.  And he was willing to burn up his own existence for the satisfaction of foiling the Doctor over and over again?

2) The Impossible Girl.  The explanation behind Clara was so neat I could practically see the bow wrapped around it.  And while I kind of liked the sequences where they inserted her into old footage from the 60's and 70's in the end I felt let down.  It felt like everything was explained but nothing was explained.  The inside of the Doctor's timestream is a ruined planet?  The Doctor doesn't have a corpse (he's had loads of bodies), his remains are a hole in time?  Does Clara get out of his timestream?  Did he just jump into his own corpse?  The non-sense-making has reached a critical mass at this point.

3)  John Hurt.  Don't get me wrong, John Hurt is an amazing actor.  But his aesthetic in the finale illustrated something I didn't want to have to admit.  The whimsy and optimism and sense of wonder is going away.  John Hurt as the Doctor looks sad and tired and run down and his tragedy appears to be catching up with him.  That's not the Doctor I want.  I'm not even asking for Tilda Swinton, though that would be amazing.  Please let me have the illogical optimism.

4) River Song.  What was going on with her in this episode?  Was she a ghost, was she still living in the Library?  Nobody can see her but the door can hear her saying the Doctor's name?  I'm going to go on record here and say I really don't like her as a character.  "Forest of the Dead" was such a good episode and the part where the Doctor says that time can be rewritten and she says "Not those times.  Not one line.  Don't you dare." is simply heart-wrenching.  But when she comes back in the 11th Doctor's run nearly every time she opens her mouth I want to throw her off a cliff.  The smug smiling and the "Spoilers" and the "Hello Sweetie" and the guns... AGH I can't even.

All that being said, there were some moments I did appreciate.  Jenny saying in a panic "Ma'am I think I've been murdered" choked me up, and Strax is just the best thing in the world.  The Whispermen were incredibly scary as well.  Stephen Moffat comes up with some of the most amazing monsters I have ever seen, I'll give him that.  But that's just not enough.  This is really more vitriolic than I originally intended but that is because I love Dr. Who so much and it is seriously hurting my soul to see it so bland and mediocre.  I only have one thing to say about the 50th Anniversary special... Please, David Tennant, bring your glorious sticky-uppey hair back and save this thing that I love.  And don't be the meta-crisis Doctor.