Welcome to my SpaceBlog.

Doctor Who dominates. Star Trek seconds. Others make appearances.

Spoilers and squee abound. You’ve been warned.

Embrace the WTF.

Interesting that in an era supported by American money (D+), catering to American fans (7pm east coast release), the primary villains are:

American

America

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and my new favorite:

American

Coincidence?

It’s that time again!

SPOILER ALERT! ALERT! ALERT!

I’ve seen it billed variously as Season 14, Season 40, and Season 1. Whatever it is, it arrived yesterday on D+ to great promotional fanfare and lukewarm response (in my house anyway). We knew going in that 1) the new guy is a charmer, and 2) Russell has George Lucas disease; we were wrong on no counts.

Among the symptoms is apparently the decision that farting Slitheen aren’t scatological enough, and the result is Space Babies. This episode I cannot recommend. The gross-out humor is lame and ineffective; the babies are creepy; the Doctor and his companion have the same hyperactive energy, and spend half the ep repeating each other at ever-increasing volume. The solution is maximally hand wavey: how is that poop-propelled spaceship supposed to stop? what are they going to do with the snot monster you worked so hard to save?

The best part (as always) is the overworked and under-appreciated nanny.

There are also at least two shots copied directly from The End of the World. If I get around to pulling my own screencaps I’ll share them.

Edit: here’s one.

Episode 2 (or possibly 3, according to D+) makes up for a lot. It helps that I’m a sucker for stories about the power of music/fiction/art, and that “the devil’s chord” is a real thing. Not to mention, Portland drag queen Jinkx Monsoon gives us one of the biggest, loudest, most delightfully terrifying villains in all of Doctor Who.

Definitely the spawn of the Toymaker

The Maestro breaks the fourth wall, chews all the scenery in sight, defeats the Doctor, and does it all while looking glam af.

The devil went down to Georgia indeed.

The resolution, too, is perfect. In an ep about the importance of music in the 1960s, who better than the Beatles to save the day? Who better to find just the right note, the perfect chord? It could have ended there – but Russell, apparently still mad about Subspace Rhapsody, decided to tack on a mediocre song-and-dance number. Fortunately it does not detract from the whole.

Next week is Moffat’s ep, involving land mines, and our expectations are low.

… and once they’re right.

In the SNW episode The Serene Squall, the pirate captain Angel makes two major incorrect assessments.

Nature vs Nurture

“Aren’t you half human?” Angel asks Spock.
“That is merely genetics,” he replies. “I was born on Vulcan.”
“And that’s geography,” they counter.

They’re wrong.

Vulcan is not merely geography. It is a place, but it is also a people. It is a culture, arguably one of the foundational elements of a person’s character. Vulcan culture has imbued Spock with a specific set of values – logic, duty, honor, intellect – that have nothing to do with either place or parentage. Culture has more impact on his – and our – sense of self, choices, and motivations than any other single force we encounter in life.

Part of Spock’s journey is breaking free of that culture, but it’s still foundational to who he is.

Motivation

Later in the episode, Angel insists that both Spock and T’Pring are swayed by emotion. “Those poor sick colonists,” they moan. “My tragic lost love.” But in neither case was it emotion that prompted Vulcan action.

• Preserving and protecting life is one of Starfleet’s core principles. The crew of the Enterprise has a duty to do what they can for the missing colonists, even at the risk of their lives and their ship. Emotion is irrelevant, even for Spock’s human crewmates.
  • Angel suggests that Spock and his crew “fell for” their tale because of emotion, but this is also incorrect. The Enterprise crew believe the story about the colonists because they have no reason not to: Angel has Aspen’s credentials, and the details they provide align with what Starfleet knows of the sector in question. Again, emotion is irrelevant.
• The dead husband story has no impact on Spock’s actions. It gives him insight into Aspen’s motivation – their fear of pirates, their particular interest in him – but it does not distract him from his duty or sway him from his course.
  • Is this intentional on Angel’s part? Do they expect him to insist on defending the ship, therefore giving them access to the Enterprise’s systems? or were they hoping to get him alone in an escape pod, away from the influence of his ship and his crew?
• Nor is it love for Spock that moves T’Pring. As his betrothed, she is responsible for him; her duty to him is greater than her duty to her career, her family, or the V’tosh k’tur in her care. From a Vulcan point of view, the choice she makes, while distasteful, is logical.
  • This is also why the ruse works. T’Pring doesn’t need to believe that Spock loves another; she only needs an excuse to break the mating bond. Once she is no longer responsible for him, her patient’s safety becomes her primary duty.

Who vs What

When Spock points out that he must be either human or Vulcan, Angel suggests that maybe he’s neither.

In this case, they’re actually right. Spock is at the effect of his genetics, of the Vulcan culture he grew up in, and of the mostly human culture that surrounds him in his day to day life. But he does not fit into one box or another. Logic, emotion, duty, compassion, humor, and pain are all parts of him, but but he is not divisible by them. He is only entirely himself.

Part of his journey is figuring that out.

Melissa Navia answered my questions on Open Pike Night!

https://openpike.com/episode/melissa-navia-season-2-interview-oops-alltegas

I wasn’t alone. Navia’s ep drew more first-time callers than any other, and she answered all their questions too. She was, as expected, a delight: sharing her dreams, gushing about the Star Trek family, tearing up over fans’ appreciation, telling secrets –

this delightful moment was an ad lib!

and generally being awesome. I had a lot of Thoughts while listening – to the point where I may have to listen again – but one thing in particular stuck with me:

There’s a narrative out there that the reason Ortegas didn’t get more screen time in S2 is that Navia requested time off to deal with the loss of her partner. I thought this was bullshit in the moment; I’d read and heard many interviews where she spoke openly of her grief, and she never said anything about asking for a lighter workload. Quite the opposite: she said more than once that work kept her going, that the people she works with were everything to her in an impossibly difficult time. This made sense to me; having lost someone who was a hugely important part of her life, why would she give up another hugely important part? One that she’d worked toward so hard, and that her partner had supported her in? Wouldn’t giving that up be giving up another part of him?

I can also tell you that when you’re dealing with fresh grief, the worst thing you can do is sit around with your thoughts, looking at all the empty spaces. In her shoes I wouldn’t want to be at home either; I’d want to be out, doing hard, consuming work that I love with people who care about me.

And I was right. In the podcast, Navia debunks the narrative in the strongest terms. She worked hard, she says; she worked through her grief, and she was proud of the places she got to go with her character. The narrative dismisses that work and devalues both actor and character. She was warned, she says, that people would take her words and make up their own stories with them; she shared openly about her grief anyway, because she felt it was so important. (It was! It made a huge difference for many people, including me, and many of them have told her so.) When her words got twisted, she says, she was hurt and frustrated – especially since she was on strike and couldn’t address it in the moment.

In the podcast she asks of us, when people who are grieving tell us what they need, or what they feel, listen to them. The narrative came about because people weren’t listening; they took her words and made up their own story about her, with no regard for her or her experience. They took her words and made them say something else entirely.

I also reacted strongly to the narrative, to the point of blocking people who shared it. I don’t even know why it upset me. I’m touchy about criticism of things I love – so much of it is disingenuous, ignorant, or intentionally unkind – and I hated the idea of people spreading lies. At the same time, I don’t know everything. I began to think that maybe I was the one who had it wrong; maybe I’d misremembered what she said in that long essay that I wasn’t going to read again because it hurt so much. (Wow, even just looking up the link stressed me out. Grief is a bitch.) Hearing her react the way she did was vindicating, but also heartbreaking: the last thing she needed in her grief was more pain.

Assholes.

In spite of that, she expressed nothing but love for fans and fandom. She loves your fan art, y’all.

I mean who wouldn’t?

by bexminx

Other items:

• Navia observes that the reason Ortegas didn’t have her own song in the musical is that she’s not having an emotional crisis. Everyone around her is going through high-school levels of relationship drama, and she’s having none of it.
• When talking about Ortegas’ friends, Navia primarily mentions Mitchell and Sam Kirk. In their scenes together, she says, she and her fellow actors have their own things going on, their own backstories, that may or may not come to light – or entirely change – down the line.
• In response to a fan question, she tells us that Ortegas’ ideal shore leave would be fishing with Dr. M’Benga.
• She mentions Chapel only in passing, which hurts my little shipper heart, but I don’t lose hope. Navia is very good at obfuscating what’s coming – which makes me wonder if what she’s NOT saying is as important as what she is.
• She’s generally pretty philosophical about scenes that get cut or moments that don’t make the final edit; she trusts the show’s editors and directors, and knows that’s how these things work. At the same time, she lamented the loss of this scene in the bar with Chapel and M’Benga, and was delighted to learn that it’s on the DVD.

The whole interview is a delight. Obviously. And I still can’t wait for S3.

So we’re told that two of Starfleet’s greatest captains are absentee dads.

The fundamental problem with this is that unintended pregnancy in the 23rd and 24th centuries is not a thing. Even now we have highly effective prophylactic technology; the primary barriers to access are social, not medical, and should be obviated by the utopian society Star Trek promises. If such immense problems as war and hunger and racism are solved, how is it plausible that anyone, male or female, lacks control of their own fertility? In the Star Trek universe, all persons have the power to choose whether, when, and with whom to create a child: anything less is beneath the aspirations of that society, and the promise of Star Trek.

Consequently, there is no universe in which Beverly Crusher has Picard’s child without his knowledge and consent.

“… what?”

It’s surely possible for an unethical person – especially a doctor – to overcome a partner’s medical barriers to conception, but Dr. Crusher is not that person. No matter how much she might want a child by Picard – and there’s no evidence that she does – she is not inclined to steal genetic material, force parenthood, or raise another fatherless child. She has far too much integrity, maturity, and experience to consider such an act.

I’m not sure the same can be said for Carol Marcus.

Dr. Marcus is portrayed as someone who gets what she wants. She’s less concerned with the ethical problems of her work than she is with the science: proving her concept is too important to be sidelined by concerns about unintended consequences. She doesn’t care what others think of her; she only cares that she’s free to act the way she believes she needs to.

This woman could plausibly steal genetic material and bear a child without her partner’s consent. However, it’s equally plausible that she could persuade him. Marcus and Kirk are on different paths, neither of them willing to compromise their careers or ask the other to do so. Perhaps she convinced him that giving her a child and getting on with his life was the best possible outcome of their relationship.

Being young, neither of them could foresee the emotional consequences of their choice. The existence and storyline of David Marcus is plausible.

“That young man is my son.”

The existence of Jack Crusher is not only implausible, but entirely unnecessary. Picard S3 already had more characters than it could effectively make use of, and TNG already had a reputation for sidelining female characters; the addition of Crusher made both problems worse. The show could have been much more successful without him.

“Where we’re going, we don’t need men.”

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I realize I never wrote anything about The Church on Ruby Road.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like the episode; I mostly did. I also didn’t care that much. However, I do like the new Doctor very much, and this was my favorite scene:

https://www.tumblr.com/ayo-edebiri/737714621059923968/doctor-who-i-the-church-on-ruby-road

“Name: The Doctor; occupation, not a doctor; current status, just passing by, employer, myself; address, that blue box over there.”

Also: she’s going to say yes. What a sweetie.

The story was basically Labyrinth, with a side of foster family-hood, some fun new parallels between the Doctor and his companion, and the recurrence of Davina McCall – previously murdered by a naked Jack Harkness in Bad Wolf. Given that, I was hoping for a more David Bowie-esque demon king. Instead, we get DW’s first musical number: an interesting choice, and way less successful in my opinion than Star Trek‘s.

It never gets old.

We don’t yet have a release date for the rest of S1, but May seems likely. I look forward to more fabulously dressed Fifteenth Doctor adventures.

I just rewatched Hegemony, and Erica is killing me.

“Then we need to think harder.”

The Cayuga is debris. Scans for life signs are inconclusive. She put her feelings for Christine aside when another Klingon war was at stake; can she do it again now?

“If there’s anyone alive down there, I want to know it.”

For the moment, there’s hope – but not much.

“I believe it is a Gorn hunter ship.”

Further, the landing party gets a close-up look at the wreckage on the way down. If there had been escape pods, or any other signs of life, they’d have seen them. Once she learns that Christine beamed back to the ship, that shred of hope is gone.

“She does a better me.”

The Gorn already took Hemmer; now they have all the other people we’ve seen her get close to, as well as the civilians they are sworn to protect. Does Erica still strive to get her party home safely? or is she more interested in killing as many Gorn as she possibly can? If Christine is dead, what does she have left to lose?

Other (persistent) thoughts on the rewatch:

• Spock claims the mission to the Cayuga, insisting he’s the only one capable. No one disagrees with his assessment, but no one explains why. What special Vulcan skill or tolerance is at play here – and why don’t we know?
• Chapel had time to look for other survivors, at least in sickbay, and we should have seen her do it. At least one body, or one scan, or one throwaway line about the improbability of her being the only one left alive. As a bonus, it could be a great meta joke about legacy characters and plot armor.
• (In the above situations, I’d suspect that the episode ran long & the answers ended up on the cutting room floor – but nothing was recovered for the DVD. Will we find out more in S3?)
• Sam Kirk makes the relevant observations about locusts, CMEs, and light sensitivity. I still think he’s going to be the great Gorn problem-solver. I still think he and La’an – and now Captain Pike – are going to have to revise their prior views of the Gorn.
• Captain Pike is emotionally compromised. Commander Chin-Riley’s cool head will prevail.

Don’t fuck with Number One.

Whew.

Afterwards, I re-watched the associated Ready Room. As the designers talked about developing the monster, they teased that we haven’t really seen the adult Gorn yet: we’ve seen hatchlings, and younglings, and an adult in an EV suit, but the big reveal is still yet to come.

I only hope it’s wearing this outfit.

Give it to me, SNW.

It’s not unusual for a companion to leave after a single season; just ask Martha, Donna, or Bill.

It’s a bit unusual to get the news before the season has properly begun, but that too has happened before. Just ask Christopher Eccleston.

It’s unusual – even unheard of – to have no white people in the TARDIS. Season 15 could be a first.

Varada Sethu, future companion, as Cinta Kaz in Andor

It’s also the second Andor/DW crossover, as Cinta’s partner Vel has a prior appearance:

Faye Marsay, future rebel, as Shona in Last Christmas

I’ll be watching S14. I may not be as excited as I’ve been for SNW, or for Thirteen’s run, but I look forward to and expect to enjoy it. For S15, I might get excited.

 

What kind of companion will Sethu be? Goofy and adorable like Ruby? Serious and grounded like Yaz? Passionate and unstoppable? Brilliant and cold? Lost, aimless, or on a quest for adventure?

Wait and see.

The anticipation, that is.

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A post shared by Davy Perez (@davyperez)

SNW writer/producer Davy Perez and director Chris Fisher both posted about shooting S3 this week. Perez wrote both S1 appearances of the Gorn, though Henry Alonso Myers is credited with the S2 finale. Fisher is responsible for A Quality of Mercy and the excessively melodramatic Broken Circle. Did Perez write S3E1, or is he on set in a producer capacity? Is Fisher taking the Hegemony reins from Maja Vrvilo, juicing up the melodrama for part II? Or is he also there for something other than E1?

In any case, it’s E1 on my mind. Last we saw, four key Enterprise crew – including two redshirts – were captured by the Gorn.

I have to believe they survive. What is life for, otherwise?

I’ve tried to write a part II of my own, with limited success so far. I can’t wait to see the resolution – but at the same time, I fear disappointment.

• Will another member of the crew be killed? M’Benga and Kirk have plot armor in the form of appearances in the original series, but the truth is that no one is safe.
• Will Batel die? Her fridging was telegraphed in S2 – maybe a little too much for credibility.
• Will the Gorn be redeemed? The TOS version were only trying to protect their own, while SNW has made them out to be monsters. Again, something in the setup makes me think a shift is coming.
• Will my OT3 get the reunion they deserve?

Give them all the love pls.

I’ve said over and over again that since S2 was half shot before S1 even aired, the writers are off the hook for underusing Ortegas. Not so for S3. Have they learned their lesson? Writer/producer Bill Wolkoff promised “mortegas” in a recent appearance on Open Pike Night; did he mean it? Will she finally get the screen time – and the story – she deserves?

Not that there’s any such thing as “enough.”

And – the biggest question of all – when? Shooting began December 11, and is not scheduled to wrap until June. Months of post-production follow, then more months of P+ dithering, before we get so much as an air date. S1 wrapped principal photography in August of 2021, and first aired in April 2022. S2 wrapped that July, and didn’t air until the following June. My estimate for S3 is spring of 2025 at the earliest.

That’s a long time to wait.

The Davies/Tennant vanity project is complete. We may now return to our regularly scheduled Doctor Who.

Sorry, Tennant fangirls: Gatwa is objectively the sexiest actor ever to play the Doctor.

“The Giggle” has a lot of positive elements: creepy dolls, Neil Patrick Harris, Mel Bush, Fifteen in his underwear, Sarah Jane, the Doctor hugging himself, Kate handing out UNIT jobs like candy. It also suffers, like its predecessors, from excessive melodrama and Picard levels of niche fan service. Russell clearly couldn’t let his Doctor or his favorite companion go, so he wrote the fix-it fic he wanted for them and made the rest of us watch it.

He also:

• never explained in-universe why Thirteen’s clothes regenerated along with her body. We’re left with my original assessment that Russell is a coward, expressed much more effectively here.
• never paid off the “mavity” thing. I really thought the three eps were a three-parter, and we were going to find we’d been in the Toymaker’s universe all along. Instead, we just got a dumb joke.
• forgot about Liz Shaw, UNIT’s actual first scientific advisor and the Doctor’s first ginger companion.
• ignored Thirteen’s companions – though I’d accept that their memory is too fresh and painful for the newest Doctor, while Rose, River, and Sarah Jane are all safely in the past. (The newest-but-one is an aberration, mysteriously fixated on Donna as if no one else ever mattered to him.)

Enough Russell. Bring on Fifteen and Ruby Road.