#dumb sci-fi show my beloved
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please take possibly the dumbest thing ive ever made
#doctor who#classic doctor who#first doctor#william hartnell#dumb sci-fi show my beloved#60s sci fi#doctor who season 2#the web planet#idk how to tag lol#this is so stupid#why did i make this#more importantly why am i sharing it#dr who
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It baffles me that some ppl will still defend Chibnall because we actually 100% know for a fact, as in explicitly said in interviews, that:
Chibnall didn't even want the job, executives just thought of genre fiction as lesser BS anyone can do
He submitted first drafts
He had no plan for plot or characters
He decided to "simplify it for children"/ dumb it down (...by not thinking about the moral implications of anything??)
He explicitly told Whittaker NOT TO WATCH PAST EPISODES
As a writer, I am so angry because imagine getting such a big chance & then being so cavalier about it... If I got to be in charge of a beloved big-name sci-fi franchise, you bet that I would put in some fucking effort!
Like I've always been baffled by how ppl keep saying Whittaker was so good in her other shows when I only saw her being aggressively bad & forgettably meh in Doctor Who, especially considering that Colin Baker consistently managed to be the most interesting thing on screen even with bad script & hostile execs, to the point that he's one of my faves - and no, it's not to do with gender. I really liked Gomez' performance because she actually bothered to, you know, play the Master. You really bought that she's a dangerous inhuman creature but at the same time she still had nuance & depht going on like the Delgado incarnation.
but... now I realize that Colin Baker had the advantage that he was a fan before he got the job.
He knew what Character he's supposed to be playing; Whittaker only had Chibnall's superficial-ass scripts to go on, no wonder we ended up with what feels like a completely different character.
I wonder if Chibs wanted a lead author that wouldn't argue with him, especially given how he insisted on writing 80% of the episodes, the rumors that he turned down Capaldi's offer to stay longer & that he brought in someone who had previously worked for him. Capaldi would have called out OOC stuff. So would a new hire who was actually familiar with the show.
It's such a difference from having super-fan like Capaldi or Tennant on the job who deeply cared. (This is also why hearing that Gatwa had a similar background was actually the main thing that made me give the show a chance again)
But that said, Eccleston & Smith were new to the show when they got hired & still kicked ass. The difference being that, of course, Matt Smith DID watch past episodes & quickly decided that he loved & wanted to emulate Patrick Troughton.
As much as Whittaker sucked, there's no doubt in my mind that ANY actor in the world would have done better if they had seen past episodes, especially if she really is so much better in those other shows.
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Thanks for tagging me @birdstiel 💕
I guess we are doing it. Let's expose ourselves.
8 series to get to know me:
- Supernatural - obviously. my current hyperfixation as you can all tell. I am rather obsessive consumer of media but there are not that many shows close to my heart. and while I despise it deeply (I am a writer and bad storytelling kills me), I am also unable to not love it. this show had many great ideas and even bigger potential, many amazing characters who's story I woul love to explore. the unused or misused or badly used possibilities... damn it.
- Once Upon a Time - listen, i know it's low budget with shitty special effects (the poorly done fire every fucking time). but this is my comfort show. the idea is great, there are a lot of strong women (and one pirate who I am madly in love with). it's not very bright but I never needed it to be. it's just... fairytales, you know. comfort. and my beloved trait of gray morality - evil is made, not born ect, ect
- Doctor Who - this shit saved me. i am not sci fi person much (with exceptions, sure). but this silly man(I use it as a gender neutral term, like - damn, man) in a box, that fights the good fight... a pacifist that killed whole races (the bad ones, sure, but you know). and this otherworldly creature just struggles with so many emotions and is damned to feel forever lonely while having so many people live them... It's AAAAA. sure there are bad episodes. but who cares. i love it
- Our flag means death - you may not now this about me (but everyone in rl DOES as it's my personality) but I love pirates. like a lot. so obviously I care the silly gay pirates show. and I generally like Taika's projects. it's just adorable. makes me feel warm and fuzzy. and has a bit of angst. niceeee
- What we do in the shadows - again, silly and gay. i like gay media, what a suprise. and I love dumb characters. and they are all sooooo fucking stupid. love it. and ya know, vampires ( i have pirates and vampires, I need silly gay cowboys next)
- Game of Thrones - I am still so fucking mad. but I am also a sucker for dark fantasy. the costumes, the drama, the freaking politics and magic. also Jaime and Brienne. this dynamic is all to me. i've read the books to. and it's good storytelling. but unfinished... so sure the show fucked it up. tragic, really (still not emotionally ready to rewatch it dhdjdjd)
- Good Omens - Neil Gaiman is my favourite author. Really. Terry Pratchett is high on that list too. and as Neil supervised this adaptation... and it has David Tennant and Michael Sheen... couldn't go wrong. and is just hilarious and tender and full of love (and biblical motives which is something I value a lot - Gabriel shouting he's buying pornography lives rent free in my head)
- Broadchurch - you can't tell by this list but I like criminal shows too! (I was thinking os putting Sherlock on the list cause I care it a lot too and bonded with my mum over it buuuuut... somehow Broadchurch won, being fresher in my memory) again it has David Tennant, who's work I enjoy a great deal. and it's really good story that kept me on my toes. first season is my favourite
Huh. It was hard choosing only 8. Special mentions go to Sherlock, The Terror and One Piece (pirates!)
Okay, I will shut up now. This is way too long anyhow
No pressure tags (I still hate tagging people, I don't want to annoy anyone but I am curious about yours!)
@naughtystiel @fluffsnake @valeron99 @archervale @werepires (still intimated by you but if you want 👉👈)
And anyone who wants to! You can tag me and I will defo read it! I would gladly see all of my mutuals do it, but as I haven't talked to most of you, I am still shy about bothering you...
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sigh... it very much does erk me when people have this certain attitude around the effects in classic star trek shows where they are like (well I'll just quote directly here) "bad 90s sci fi special effects my beloved" its like okay.. so your gonna talk about how something looks so bad and so cheesy but then say you love it anyway... how about you just LOVE IT... people wonder why we are seeing less and less practical effects and yet they do nothing but shit on practical effects... anyway im tired of this attitude where people for some reason need to point out how "bad" something looks even if they apparently like it anyway? I think people are really afraid to look dumb, they cant just like something cheesy without specifically stating first that they acknowledge that it is cheesy. anyway just puts a bad taste in my mouth. love things with your whole heart and dont be afraid what others think.
FACTSSSSSSSS you're right about people being afraid to look dumb, like you're allowed to just enjoy things and not have to explain yourself.
sometimes I think people think this way about enjoying star trek as a whole, where they talk about about how it’s all kinda stupid, but they like it anyway, and it's like BUT IT'S ALSO GOOD THO. AND U CAN THINK IT'S GOOD. IT'S OKAY.
but then I’m like but who am I to tell people how they’re supposed to like stuff right?? like maybe someone does think it’s stupid and likes it on a surface level bc it’s so stupid and that’s okay, right?? like live ur life, like am I just insane about this bc I love star trek sm and think everyone should like it as much as me bc that’s dumb right?? anyway.......... society
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“About the blogger” meme
@not-so-mundane-after-all thank you for tagging me bby 🫂
Star sign: Aquarius
Favorite holidays: CHRISTMAS !!! My beloved holiday of giving and eating and celebrating Jesus. Also Thanksgiving and July 4th!! The food is delicious and it’s always been a good time with my family 🫶🏻
Last meal: Olive Garden today where I mistakenly said “yes” to a refill on my soup when I thought she was saying it for my drink 💀
Current favorite musician: mmmmm this is difficult bc I don’t really just… have one, which I know may sound dumb 💀 I’ve been listening to a lot of CHPTRS and they’re good. Erik Nieder. John Allan.
Last music listened to: Heaven Is Where You Are by Erik Nieder
Last movie watched: I think it was Gran Turismo? I was going to watch the Creator, and I did start it, but it was way too late when i did and only got about twenty minutes in before I crashed 💀 I gotta get back to it
Last TV show watched: Ahsoka 🫶🏻 I miss it
Last book/fic finished: I will admit I have not read anything in a while, so book is out of the question. But fic was…….. maybe Mundi’s most recent for THG (IVE MEANT TO COMMENT IM SO SORRY)? I don’t think I’ve read anything since
Last book/fic abandoned: I don’t think I have one? At least not off the top of my head. Maybe a father-daughter one that had sketchy undertones
Currently reading: I have like four or five Star Wars books right next to my bed that I want to start soon, so one of them will be (soon)
Last thing researched for art/writing/hyperfixation: I’m sure it was something related to woodwork as I’ve been really getting into that recently! I want to make so many things
Favorite online fandom memory: that’s tough. There’s so many. First day on here after the tlou pilot was a lot of fun. Meg and I’s complete fail at thinking the winter hug was actually two and people actually believing us 💀 A lot of the interactions with the core wolfpack lovers on here were so fun. I’ve also had interactions and conversations with big Instagram editors + followings that I’ve really enjoyed, too
Favorite old fandom you wish would drag you back in/have a resurgence: ooh Travelers probably. Or Arrow. Or Agents of Shield. Or Dark Matter—it was cancelled, but I really enjoyed that show 😭 it got cancelled on the worst note too. I remember finishing the last episode and writing down every unanswered thing and I came to like… 13 things. I was so upset 💀 still an enjoyable sci-fi show and a really sweet father-daughter / big brother-little sister coded relationship that I still think about!
Favorite thing you enjoy that never had an active or big “fandom” but you wish it did: PROSPECT!! We’re so small (please join please watch the movie I’m begging you please it’s such a good time and there’s so many good Ezra & cee fics you’re missing out on and a whole WORLD that’s so fun to explore). And, again, Travelers and Dark Matter
Tempting project you’re trying to rein in/don’t have time for: Tlou amnesia fic, prospect snuffing fic (there’s two. maybe.) Other sad tlou fic. Haymitch and Katniss fic that I’d write if I’d actually watch the movies and understand them to the fullest degree instead of going in guns blazing as the Rot, led only gifs alone, leads me
tags for my loves: @outer-edges @blooming-gwens @dilf-din
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my initial thoughts on SNW S2E6 "Lost in Translation:"
i liked it! one of the better ones in season 2 so far. i have a lot of things to say about it
-yippee uhura-centric episode!
-the whole "that thing is actually alive!" plot is very star trek. personally i love this plot so i don't mind seeing it again! i think the hallucination aspect makes it unique enough. however, we consumers of sci-fi television will see it coming from a million kellicams away. since we're genre-savvy and the characters aren't, that has the unintentional consequence of making uhura look kinda dumb, since it took so so so long to get to the foregone conclusion of a reveal :(
-"lost in translation" made me so excited because yippee! translation! (i love linguistics) i really liked the part where uhura "translated" the aliens' message but it was very short. if it were up to me, that would take up more of the episode
-KIRK!!!! i don't know who had to sell their soul to achieve such good kirk characterization on strange new worlds of all shows, but a soul well spent!! he makes me so happy whenever he's on screen because that's him! that's James T. Kirk! (if only spock made me feel the same way...)
-really i will defend this hill. kirk is written (and acted!) SO well on this show!!!
-"but what about kirk slash spock???????" i'm hesitant to touch that with a ten foot pole. i have Opinions on this snw kirk/spock discourse but i won't discuss them here
-similarly spock and chapel. their scene was kinda weird??? and i'm also hesitant to touch this discourse so i'll leave it at that for now
-i think it's nice to revisit hemmer. like his death is still affecting the characters because of course it would!
-la'an my beloved <3 <3 <3 it was just one scene but <3 <3 <3
-chief kyle mention????????? (only the tos girlies care about that one. actually more likely only a very small subset of the tos girlies care about that one. but i do)
-pelia and una's subplot was good! stuff dealing with hierarchical/military discipline and the friction that can create when one adheres far more strictly than another? right up my alley! also pelia is awesome
-ok so this episode wants me to believe that Una is super strict and by-the-book and only cares about orders and regulations? actually laughed when pelia said that. NO ONE on this damn show cares about discipline! pike does not run a tight ship! it's a pet peeve of mine. i wish this were more than just an informed attribute because that would make me like una a lot more. imagine this: Pike, the laid-back captain, with his tight-laced Number One. what a great dynamic that would be! i mean it's kiiiiiiinda implied to be the dynamic but i'd like to see it
-the music in this episode was even better than usual. so so good. really good.
-also the refinery looked really cool
-i was really convinced that we wouldn't get a kirk and spock interaction in SNW.....i had hoped that we wouldn't......but alas, it has happened. right at the end. torn about the execution of this. on the one hand, it could have been worse. commiserating about sam is funny i guess. on the other hand this is an important moment, and it's almost unceremonious. then again if it had pomp and circumstance it would probably suck. so i'll go with "ok it could have been worse"
so yeah i had a lot of thoughts!
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Listening to Ben Bova’s Power series and my god I think it might be one of the most sexist things I’ve ever read. It doesn’t seem intentionally malicious, but it does seem like it was written in, idk, the fucking 50s? It’s got the sensibilities and attitudes I wouldn’t blink twice at in mid-grade sci-fi from the 50s. But it was published in the early 2010s, but feels like it’s taking place in some kind of weird fantasy of Bova’s. It’s all kinds of dumb shit — the main character goes to a political bigwig’s cocktail party and the only woman in the room is a woman who is compared to a cheerleader and exists only to be attractive to the main character. There aren’t even wives or mistresses about? Nope, all men. Then the main character goes to this demonstration of a piece of tech and there are “only men in the room” (direct quote) and when the one woman involved finally shows up (late! because of car trouble!) the guy who went ahead and started the test without her is a pissant about it and when she leaves he tells the other guys she “slept her way into the problem.” The text does not undercut this assertion in any way, nor does it use the “only men” thing as a comment on sexism in STEM. Nope, it’s just the natural order. THEN on his way back to his office the main character encounters her stuck on the road (car trouble!) and has to rescue her. The only other women in the text so far are (1) the main guy’s dead wife (who exists only to be a beloved memory who makes him guilty about finding the grown-up cheerleader sexy, and to supply a charming memory about how he, even tho he’s an academic and nerd, can use a gun, but women find them too complicated and difficult), and (2) the wife of the main guy’s mentor, a woman who exists primarily to serve a lovely home-cooked meal while the main character and his mentor talk about real things.
This was published in 2012 and it’s supposed to be a thriller about how green energy is cool! I was not expecting Republican tradwife social propaganda! I’ve read stuff actually written in the 50s that’s less sexist! Im not even 1/4 of the way thru the book.
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5, 15, 25 for the tv show asks!
5: Favorite ship you discovered last year.
Answered :)
15: A TV show that’s been on your “to watch later” list forever and you’ve finally watched last year.
I don't think I did that at all adsfg
Darn list just keeps growing like a Very Hungry Caterpillar
Leverage got on that list just last year and I watched it pretty much immediately tho...
I suppose Numbers and Ghost Whisperer were still on the list even tho I had watched parts before, now I started watching them properly from the beginning!
25: Rec me a TV show I should watch this year!
I can't just pick one, I'll go by genre so you can pick which genre you like best :) and if you want to know more about any of the shows feel free to ask!
Fantasy: The Witcher
Fantasy comedy: Good Omens
Sci-fi: Star Trek, especially Deep Space Nine
Sci-fi comedy: A Town Called EUReKA
Mystery dramedy: Warehouse 13 my beloved (but it ends at s4, ignore s5 trust me just trust me)
Sitcom: One Day at a Time
Young Adult/family: Atypical
Kids shows: a gURLs wURLd (honestly, still reccing this not just to kids but especially to stressed adults as well, it's a very relaxing show that isn't painfully dumb but just mind numbing in that nothing dangerous happens? And the storylines and friendships are very sweet, plus you learn a bit about 3 different cultures. Also it's on YouTube for free)
Crime: Bones especially the first few seasons
Thriller: Hannah tho I've only seen s1 myself so idk about the rest yet
&, idk what genre that even is, action thief crime humour something something, but definitely watch Leverage if you haven't yet! I'll need to catch up with the reboot myself :)
Thanks for the ask, and happy new year!!! ♡
TV ask | 2022 ask
#ask the blogger#sarah-fiers#daniwouldnever#answered#mine#non anon#not f#jan'22#02.01.22#end of year ask#tv end of year ask#tv#personal#personal 2022
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hi char :) feel free to answer (or not) whenever, but I was just wondering about what your favorite parts/the parts that you're drawn to of star trek are? but really this is just me coming into your inbox asking you to talk about something that excites you, so also really any answer goes. <3
Ooh! One thing I really love is all Treks are a sign of the times. Like as much as I complain about Enterprise and JJ Abrams, those are heavily based on 9/11 and the response, DS9 and TOS are various cold wars, Picard is both American imperialism and discussing previous Trek’s own issues with that, etc. Obviously you can enjoy without those contexts, but it’s always *trying* to say something. Even Lower Decks!
Also just how much of it there is? Fandom is like Who fandom in that they’re very boring and hate the new stuff (I keep saying this, TOS was deemed dumb sci fi with cute boys when it first aired) no matter what, but whether celebrating or deconstructing, there’s always a slew of content and a million connections you can make.
I know people focus too much on shipping in general but I genuinely do enjoy all the queercoding. You have Jadzia Dax who had a male host before and her close friends don’t make any big deal over it, obviously Kirk and Spock started slash as we know it (and it’s always funny when people are like “they had no idea and it was just innocent”, Roddenberry thought it was free advertising, and Shatner/Nimoy worked with slash fans for content), Garak and Bashir were an intentional middle finger to Berman, Frakes was disappointed that Riker couldn’t get with male aliens, and so on and so on. I think young ones tend to forget that even in 2000s, you had to fly under the radar for this stuff.
The designs! Enterprise(s) my beloved, Discovery is gorgeous and spinny, and DS9 the space station is a (grubby but lived in) gender in itself.
This is getting so long, so I’ll end off with characters. Kirk, Spock and Bones all admit they’ve never been happy but cling together, Uhura inspired so many more black actresses like Whoopi Goldberg, Michael Burnham is allowed to be impulsive and traumatised, called out for it but never squashed out by the show, Kira Nerys fought in a war and is so angry, Sisko has the best speech of all time (and most damning of all, I think I can live with it) and I could go on forever with this. Sorry Christian!
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A List of Older Fandoms for Quarantine Viewing
I thought it might be fun to put out a list of older fandoms or smaller fandoms that might be of interest to folks here. As we’re all still stuck with quarantine, perhaps you’re looking for some new/old media? Perhaps this list could help?
This is halfway between a rec list and a charting of my own fandom history. For anyone looking for some new fandoms to check out that are various flavors of interesting and a little older, check ‘em out!
Feel free to add your own!
In no specific order (other than maybe my DVD shelf??)
Patrick O’Brien books/Master and Commander - this was a fairly good-sized fandom back when the movie ‘Master and Commander’ came out. A must-watch for anyone who likes historical fiction, age of sail, and powerful homoeroticism.
David Drake’s Royal Cinnabar Navy series - did you ever want Master and Commander in space, but Stephen Maturin is a librarian named Adele Mundy who is a sharpshooter and utterly terrifying and wonderful and beloved ace representation? Fair warning: this series contains grapic descriptions of violence from an author who’s still working through his Vietnam PTSD. Here be dragons.
Adam Adamant Lives! - an Edwardian adventurer got frozen in a block of ice by his arch-nemesis The Face, thawed out in 1969, and now fights crime with a young woman sidekick and an actor-turned-butler who spouts limericks. It is a completely insane show and joyously dumb. Everyone involved is having a whale of a time. It’s hard to come by, but so worth watching it for the pure silliness.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - I can’t believe this has become a fandom some people haven’t heard of, but here we are, far enough out from the massive cultural impact of Buffy that I need to remind folks. 1990s series about a cheerleader-turned-vampire slayer, struggling with both the supernatural and with high school (which is much worse).
Angel - spinoff of Buffy, and in some ways my preferred series? It has so many problems, and the writing of seasons 3 and 4 is quite weak, but the characters are strong, the stories are solid, and Alexis Denisof’s Wesley Wyndam-Pryce remains one of my favorite character arcs in television.
Marble Hornets - here’s another fandom that doesn’t feel like it should be old, but it’s now over a decade since its premiere. One of the early webseries, Marble Hornets is still one of the best. Well done horror with occasionally iffy amateur acting, easily overcome with a surprising touch for cinematography. I’m a sucker for amateur film, especially when it’s well done and ambitious.
Babylon 5 - This was the first fandom I posted about on here, and still one of my great loves. Arcs before arcs on television were a thing. Huge overarching stories playing out over seasons. Great political intrigue on a space station. The grandest, most tragic Shakespearean romance that ever played out between two middle-aged alien diplomats.
Carnivale - HBO prestige show before they had prestige shows. Bought the DVDs on the cover art alone, and they were so worth it: “1934. The Dustbowl. The last great age of magic.” Like most HBO shows, every possible content warning does probably apply to this show, though it’s not nearly as extreme as Game of Thrones, so if you could watch that, you can probably watch Carnivale.
Firefly - space western courtesy of Joss Whedon. Only one series long, but really well done. Probably Whedon’s best work.
Homicide: Life on the Streets - early 1990s police procedural with a twist: it wanted to be a very accurate, realistic portrayal of a homicide unit, based on a documentary novel. The characters all feel real, you’re certain they all smell like cigarettes, coffee, and sweat. Also, can we applaud a show that has a female homicide detective who doesn’t wear makeup, has frizzy red hair, and never wears heels? Kay Howard is such a fantastic character. Frank Pembleton and Tim Bayliss and John Munch and Gee are all such wonderful, real characters. Another great show for prestige-television-before-it-existed.
The Last Detective - British detective series about a detective who gets small, mournful cases ignored by everyone else and solves them mostly through dogged work rather than brilliance. This show is the most melancholy show I have ever seen, shockingly good in the quietest way possible, and remains one of my favorite detective series ever.
M*A*S*H - have you ever wanted a proper tragicomedy billed as a sitcom? There’s a reason this show is still considered the greatest sitcom ever made. Fair warning: the early seasons really haven’t aged well, and a lot of the comedy doesn’t land. But if you’re willing to stick with it to the later seasons, you’ll find a show that shifts toward one of the greatest tragicomedies ever.
Sapphire and Steel - 1970s/1980s British horror/sci-fi show about two mysterious beings that appear to resolve science fiction reinterpretations of horror concepts. Despite a shoestring budget, the writing is phenomenal, and the acting is perfect, particularly the icy intimacy between the two leads, David McCallum and Joanna Lumley.
Sherlock Holmes - before the modern interpretations, there was the 1980s series starring Jeremy Brett. If you want the single most accurate interpretation of Conan Doyle’s work, with characters who feel and look like they’ve stepped off the page (and the series that singlehandedly rehabilitated the character of Inspector Lestrade), this series is a must-watch. This has been my go-to comfort viewing for years.
Also, if you’re a Sherlock Holmes nut, and you’re desperate for more content, and willing to navigate a Cyrillic DVD menu for subtitles, might I suggest the late 70s Russian Sherlock Holmes series? Vasiliy Livanov’s Holmes is such a different interpretation of the character, and he’s a delight. And Vitaliy Solomin’s Watson is possibly my favorite Watson ever. He’s so done with everything.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - sort of the forgotten middle child of the Star Trek series, but in many ways it’s one of the most ambitious. It was a rival/developed at the same time and somewhat by the same team as Babylon 5, so there are some striking similarities (space station, overarching stories, etc), but while B5 manages the political intrigue better, DS9 does a war better. It’s the darkest of the Star Trek series, investigating the more tarnished edges of the utopia. The characters are more deeply developed and flawed, and I love them all. Andrew Robinson’s portrayal of tailor-with-a-mysterious-past Garak is probably the best character Star Trek ever created in any series.
Hope those of you looking for new things to watch and dig into might find something in this list!
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I hate doctor 11 but ive never been able to explain why in like words lmao. He feels like such a mary sue character imo and like theres something about his characterisation that was always just really ineffective (like the stuff about fishfingers and custard or whatever it was). Imo i'd love to hear you give top 5 worst things about the 11 era because i rlly just love when it gets torn apart
i hold nothing but a seething contempt and loathing for that man. every time he appeared on screen i felt ready to snap like a riled up chimpanzee in my enclosure. i am frothing at the mouth and overcome with a desire to start flinging heavy objects. this might be incoherent and inconsistent but i started this rewatch in feb 2020 and only finished this week so i got through 11′s episodes last august/september time and i refuse to revisit it to jog my memory or fact check anything i’m saying here because this man does not deserve the space in my mind for that.
the first thing is i can’t fucking STAND the quirky whimsy timey wimey bit he has going on all of the time. i can’t even say this is because this is a kids show and i was a teen and then adult when i first properly watched him but actually!! when i was eleven years old i’d sleep over at a friend’s house most weekends and it always coincided with the airing of a new season 5 episode and i remember we watched the finale with the dumb time hopping to get out of the box prison that was never explained and didn’t make sense and i thought at the time “this is really stupid”. and before that my only other doctor who exposure was watching the david tennant christmas specials with another friend and throughout childhood my only opinion on doctor who was “this is a tv show that is not for me but is one that all the boys i am friends with like so i will put up with it to maintain our friendships” but at least those episodes were both suspenseful and engaging enough to keep me watching all the way through. like who the fuck does an end of the world sci fi plot and approaches it with an “oopsy woopsy i am a funny little alien man who is going to stop you all by making you do a hecking silly” like it’s unneeded and self-parodies an already cheesy show to the point where it becomes unwatchable and makes it impossible to ever take this man seriously.
next thing that downright sucks ass so badly is the stupid fucking overwritten constantly escalating plotlines. like everything from season 5 up until his regeneration at the end of season 7 is meant to be this grand interconnected cosmic plot about how...the doctor trying to bring back his planet will end the universe or something so all the top powers across all of reality tried again and again to stop him from doing that except he doesn’t know what’s going on so he keeps thwarting these people who supposedly mean good?? i mean i sure don’t fucking know what they were trying to say!! like for some reason we never get the doctor suddenly becomes this superdemon that threatens everything so these people (whoever they are) decide to, in sequence: suck him through a time rift to erase him from existence, trap him in a prison and remake a universe without him, take his companion’s baby and turn her into a perfectly trained doctor killer, form two(!!) secret societies to hunt him throughout history that are only stopped by his companion splintering herself across his personal timeline to protect him, and repeatedly cause reality collapsing events because it’s a kinder outcome for the universe than what he will do. this grand and terrible event turns out to be...he spends a few hundred years chilling by a rift that leads to his home planet and protects a few generations of children from monsters which convinces them to give him infinite regeneration power then fuck off back to their pocket universe. and it’s like!! what is the point of anything that happens in this man’s era when everything is always “the darkest moment” or whatever the fuck!! i don’t care!! we never get a compelling reason to believe this bumbling clown of a man could ever be a universal threat!! the whole thing is so dumb i hate it!!!
thing number three i hate is how the eleventh doctor is ALSO characterised as this abrasive egotistic male supergenius to the point where he becomes genuinely indistinguishable from bbc sherlock. genuinely who enjoyed seeing this guy constantly tell people their tiny human minds can’t comprehend what he’s doing and then basically just wave his magic wand to solve whatever problem each episode is facing. 2012 is the year of human sin because this fucking shitsmear character archetype somehow became both a redditor role model AND a tumblr sexyman and it’s like!! nobody is enjoying this stop making this seem cool! him saying timey wimey thing any time he does anything is frustrating and dumb and locks the viewer out of giving a fuck about anything that is happening! smartest man in the room syndrome is a disease and the eleventh doctor is terminal with it. like remember how they established river as an accomplished scientist (when she wasn’t being a child soldier or a time paradox or whatever the fuck) and every time that came up mr doctor eleven man was like “oh this thing is obvious because i’m a genius and you didn’t realise because your brain is tiny so get out of the way and let the grownups think” or that time it turned out amy had been replaced with a slime clone for half the season and the doctor chewed rory (audience surrogate) out for somehow not realising this fact we didn’t know right from the start and like. this served no purpose other than to draw into severe question why the doctor is also this super beloved magical figure implicitly trusted by all children everywhere like. mr steven moffat is totally allergic to writing and solving mysteries in his tv show and fuck you for wanting to figure things out as you go along based on the new evidence you uncover at strategic plot intervals just let this asshole man use magical thinking to reveal he knew the answer all along and you’re a fucking idiot for not also realising this thing which had no basis or precedent anywhere else in the show.
speaking of dumb things let us not forget the absolute shitshow that was minority representation in this era. i’m not even talking about the low hanging fruit of how genuinely unironically sexist amy and clara were written where each episode moffat either seemed to loathe them or was incredibly horny over them and they had no character growth or arc or fucking anything. i’m talking about how fucking shit terrible the incidental representation was. god remember how every single fucking gay person who appeared in this era was written as one incredibly fucking stupid joke and how the women were all either sexy dominatrix, feeble girl in love, or Mother (or all three in some really terrible cases) and i’m not qualified to talk about this but also how incredibly white this era was and how on two separate occasions we had monarchs reimagined as sexy girlbosses with a gun played by black women who the doctor leched over. nothing about any of this was good ESPECIALLY coming off the back of rtd who was surprisingly forward thinking for 2005 and did a really good job of positing travel with the doctor as queer allegory. in comparison moffat gave us THE MOST heterosexual shlock i’ve ever had to endure. amy and rory could have been interesting characters were they not hemmed into this domestic bickering young straight married couple bullshit that was in no way changed or altered by traveling with the doctor except for the quasi incestuous river song reveal that was dumb and bad and stupid.
the last major mega gripe i have with the series is moffat’s fucking jingoistic boner for british military aesthetics. this carried over throughout his entire tenure as showrunner but was super terrible vomit inducing in eleven’s era. the unironic admiration for ww2 britain and winston churchill is downright wretched. are you incapable of telling a second world war story outside of churchill’s london and plucky blitz fighters. shit gives me hives so badly. and then!!! that weird church owned army that features in the future that end up being bad not for the concept of what basically amounts to an imperialistic intergalactic rendition of the fucking crusades but because they’re part of the nonsense go nowhere puzzlebox narrative that says the doctor is a not good man who will do bad things to the universe :(. remember how rtd’s doctor was a freshly traumatised man hot off the war criminal press who time and time again vehemently refuses to engage in military violence, but who tragically inadvertently turns every one of his companions into soldiers in his own personal army, and he has this moment of complete horror at the realisation and it is this which causes the downward spiral that ends in 10′s regeneration. and then how there’s this cringe line about how there’s a force of people who are “the doctor’s army, always ready to fight his battles when he’s not around” or some shit and then it turns out this is actually massive literal military operation and we’re meant to celebrate this. fuck off.
bonus round because this needs to be said but i have never hated anything like i hated that fucking human tardis episode. everything about it induced violent anger in me from the sickening overindulgence of that softgoth dark whimsy helena bonham carter tim burton aesthetic to the bafflingly terrible evil carny stereotype of those junk scavengers to the overblown sudden tragic shipbait romance of human tardis and the doctor. every word out of her mouth was trite shit and the fact that the death of her body was presented as this super emotional dramatic scene despite there being no buy in or incentive to care and the fact that every single person on tumblr in 2012 ate that shit up like it was fucking gourmet. i loathe every single thing about that episode so much.
#Anonymous#hi bestie here's 1500 words of me getting mad about the worst television experience i had in my life#why the FUCK was this man tumblr's favourite back in the day. what the fuck did anyone see in any of this shit#i never want to think about dr whom ever again
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What are your opinions on Wonder Egg Priority? Through my confidential sources, it seems like you gave it a 7/10. I personally gave it a 9/10, so I am curious about what informed your decision. Are you looking forward to the special episode and do you think it might impact your final opinion on the show? --- Prince Anon
Prince anon I want you to know you are enabling to rant and make an essay on anime and theres no turning back from it so brace yourself to my very high connoisseur anime review based on absolutely nothing other than the fact I like watching 2D animation SKSKSKS.
I see your sources are correct with that MyAnimeList knowledge (best platform 10/10 my favorite social media 😌) and I did give it a 7. To be fair I tend to be a bit harsh on my ratings so its basically anything below 6 a meh, 7 are okay but they had some problems for me and anything 8 and up I would read the manga of (mostly). So I will just leave my thots below the thingy in case anyone reading this wants to avoid spoilers or is sensitive to opinions brrr
Wonder Egg Priority was like a rollercoaster of an anime for me. I watched the first episode and I honestly thought about dropping it because the CGI monster thingies looked off in my opinion and I just thought it was a metaphorical bs that went beyond my realms of thinking. I kept watching however and when the other girls were introduced I began seeing the appeal to the series and actually kind of understanding the symbolisms more with the backstories.
I specially want to highlight Momoe and Rika, I really enjoyed their arcs and I thought the way they treated their individual struggles and backstories was very well fleshed out and it made me understand their characters further.
I think my problems arrises when the whole Frill and android whatever narrative was introduced and it left me with a really sour taste. Honestly, and this may just be me being picky and ehhh about it, I thought it was a cope out and kind of defeated the whole premise build up in the episodes before. Like, if they were trying to sell me a sci-fi 'this girl is controlling these other girls into committing suicide through mass manipulation' story plot with hints from the beginning I would have been okay and taken it with an x doubt but nonetheless taken it. But I feel like throughout the story the whole narrative had been of understanding each of these victims and their stories with actual reasons as to why they come to the feeling of wanting to end their life and to me the "It was just an android!!!" felt very diminishing and brushing everything else off for a shock factor.
Agian, I feel like the story is a solid one, but I felt like each episode was trying to look into more hidden representations in the symbolism of the hidden worlds of depth that sometimes it just lost its touch and disconnected the message I thought they were going for in the beginning. I feel like watching Wonder Egg I came to watch two completely different shows at the same time where one had this emotional message about life and what these girls went through and the other parallel narrative where it was just robots go brr and fancy laboratories experiment brrr and it did not tie down in the end how I hoped it did and lacked direction in my opinion.
And also the fact Frill sold into the idea that the girls were easy to manipulate and lead them to suicide just kind of ended rubbing me off in the wrong way. I know they were probably not going for that but nonetheless it stuck out to me a bit and eeehh.
The whole teacher narrative with Ai also seemed extremely fleshed out in a way I personally thought didn't fit the timing and every episode with Ai we took a step forward to take later on two steps back and in the end it just became kind of an exposition into this metaphorical take on their relationship that maybe I was too dumb to understand but I just thought of as unecessary.
But then again, I am rambling at this point and I am sorry you had to read all that because I have thoughts and I like screaming them sometimes ASDFGHJK I hope it made some sense I am bad at typing sksks
Do I think that the special episode could up it for me? I honestly doubt that and depending on the ending I may rate it a 7 too but I hope it surprises me maybe with a twist and it can be an 8? MayhaPSss
But yeah no, this felt overly negative but as I said, the series had some positives; the visuals (apart from that weird CGI they used at times that threw me off) are absolutely stunning, the soundtrack as well and Rika and Momoe my beloveds their individual eps being probs my favorites from the series ^^ But yes!!! I talk a lot!!! SKSKKSKS Give me your thoughts on it Prince anon ✨
#I re read this and its basically thought dump but I cant voice message through Tumblr so we get an essay#ASDFGHJ I rambled so much about this when the Frill episode came out that now it feels a bit fuzzy but#those were my overall thotsss#but do tell moi why the 9/10 I would love to hear the other side and maybe I am just being overly picky at sheneniganss#wonder egg priority#anime#prince anon#ask#I still believe Shawty anon was the way smh😔😔 lmaoo
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5 Favorite Horror TV shows
So keep in mind I dont watch a lot of TV but there are still some spooky shows I like
The Twilight Zone
This is one of my favorite TV shows .It’s a mixture of fantasy,sci fi and horror ,though the horror is more existential .It is over 60 years old and is still relevent and beloved for a reason
Night Gallery
The sort of sister series to Twilight Zone ,Night Gallery is more about the ghouls then it is about existential questions .Dont love it like Twilight Zone but it is still a fun show
Tales From the Crypt
I think when people think of horror TV they think of this show.A lot of overacting ,gore,campy stories,awful people getting their just deserts and all presented by a pun loving puppet ,this show is a delight
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
A lot of my family are fans of this show and I am a casual fan .Good action ,likeable characters,cool monsters,it’s a cool show
Ash Vs Evil Dead
This is the show I waited for since I was a kid .A show where my favorite horror hero Ash Williams goes on more adventures ?YES PLEASE .I love seeing Bruce Campbell again ,I love the new characters,I love the new monsters,Lucy Lawless makes for a great villain .I have my issues with it(It can be too gross,and Ash is sometimes to dumb)But Iview it as a solid continuation of the movies and love it
#ash vs evil dead#buffy the vampire slayer#tales from the crypt#night gallery#the twilight zone#hallloween
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FEBRUARY !!!!! 4 THE CHARACTER THING
FEBRUARY MY BELOVED
First impression: I think my first actual impression of her as a character was like “oh she’s DUMB dumb” & it honestly making me really happy because I found it a lot more interesting than her just being Generic Action Girl like most sci-fi love interests are
Impression now: Honestly pretty much the same sfjjfjk I love how starkid actually lets their love interests be funny & be actual characters in their own right. Also the fact that she has yellow nail polish is amazing it lives in my mind rent free.
Favorite moment: Ugh all of her interactions with Bug are so spot on it’s hard to choose just one. . . Atm though might say the bit where she & Bug first reunite on the starship at the very start of act ii, her acting in it is really cute
Idea for a story: Gd I have no idea I’m not a writer asgkhfjk. . . I do really like the idea of her moving to Bug Planet a bit after the events of the show once there’s been a human settlement established
Unpopular opinion: She and Bug fuck and if you can’t admit that you’re a coward. Also Idk how unpopular this is but I HATE when people try to act like she’s not actually dumb like she is & that’s her charm!!
Favorite relationship: I mean do I even have to say shkfhkkk
Favorite headcanon: besides what I already said regarding story ideas. . . She’s bisexy
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"Re: The third point, I could go on about the specific example of Dragon Quest and how I think Undertale works best when read as a response to that franchise + similar series in particular" do you think you could find the time to elaborate?
Fair warning. This one is a bit long.
Let’s talk about Dragon Quest.
Overview
The Dragon Quest series of games (originally localized as Dragon Warrior in the U.S. due to a copyright/trademark issue) is pretty much one of the “Big Two” JRPG franchises alongside Final Fantasy. It’s extremely big in Japan, while enjoying more moderate success in the United States.
I’m not going to go into too much detail comparing the two or talking about their history, but I think it’s relevant to note that Dragon Quest games tend to be straightforward, high-fantasy stories in a way that a lot of beloved JRPGs (Final Fantasy included) aren’t. You’ll fight a robot from time to time, but sci-fi elements beyond that are rare; explicit social commentary/allegory is extremely rare; the plot rarely becomes especially bizarre or complex, with the narratives tending to rely a lot on characterization to make an impact; and so on.
(I should note that none of this is a bad thing, per se - I love Dragon Quest games. DQ8 and DQ11 are some of my favorite RPGs of all time, in large part because of their gorgeous settings and excellent character work, and I’ve played a fair few!)
Monsters
With that being said, if you know anything about JRPGs, you probably know how the player spends most of their time in a Dragon Quest game - going from town to town and dungeon to dungeon, fighting a wide array of whimsical monsters. (big ups to Akira Toriyama for his excellent character designs, with the exception of the Cyclowns, which I hate a lot.) There’s sidequests and minigames and such, but by and large, this is how the player interacts with the world - find monsters, fight monsters, get strong enough to fight the Big Boy monsters, maybe halfway through you start fighting the occasional anime boy or possessed dog.
The role that monsters play in the narrative is also, for the most part, very simple: they’re almost exclusively the minions of either the local boss/miniboss, or of the big mean demon lord you fight at the end of the game, and pretty much all they do is terrorize villagers, cause mayhem, and so on.
Note that I said almost exclusively...
“Don’t worry, I’m a nice monster!”
...because in basically every Dragon Quest game, some monsters are chill and friendly. Most commonly, this will be a slime, the franchise mascot:
Sometimes they’ll show up at the bottom of a well and give you a trinket for talking to them, other times they’ll hang out in a dungeon and give you some lore or a hint about a nearby puzzle. They say a lot of things like “goo-ness gracious” and it’s very cute and charming, and, uh, hang on, these guys talk, and make puns, and aren’t just bags of XP and herbs? Okay. Sure.
Depending on the game, you can often encounter other monster friends as well. Sometimes there’ll be a town with friendly monster NPCs to talk to; other times, beating monsters allows you to recruit them to your party or your Monster Arena team. It’s neat.
But what never changes is that it’s some monsters that are nice. A tiny minority. And they’re only ever a curiosity, a side note. They’re the exception that proves the rule, and the rule wants to kill you.
Which brings me to:
The One Guy Who Isn’t Evil
There’s a thing that a lot of speculative fiction does where cultures are set up as broad and all-encompassing. These are the Primitive But Kind Bear Goblins, and over here are the Mafia Slugs. These are the Prissy Forest Guys, and they hate the Gruff Cave Guys.
This isn’t necessarily bad writing, but it can be a bit repetitive and one-note after a while, so a lot of speculative fiction also has The One Guy Who Isn’t Like That. The illogical robot, the pacifistic/intellectual barbarian, the pragmatic and materialistic guy who bailed on the monastery.
And, of course, The One Guy Who Isn’t Evil. The vampire who doesn’t drink human blood. The dark elf paladin. That one dragon from Skyrim with the cool speech. They’re very useful characters, in that they soften the Troubling Implications of an entire species or ethnicity of bastards, and there’s a lot of cool stories you can tell about their conflict with family and former friends, and perhaps even... with themselves... with the beast within.
At the core of these stories is the assumption that a creature capable of thinking independently and acting on their own free will can always choose to be good, regardless of their “nature.”
But this goes both ways. If something is capable of choosing to be “good,” or even “nice,” they have to be able to conceive of these concepts. To make that choice. They can’t truly be Made Of Pure Evil, or be beasts acting on instinct, or be slaves to the will of a much more powerful entity.
Are Slimes People?
So, in the example of Dragon Quest, we’ve reached a conundrum. Some monsters - very few, but some - are nice, or at least open to conversation. Most are only there to, pardon the phrasing, kill or be killed.
Which means there’s basically two main possibilities:
Some slimes are nice and they’re always already nice. They attacked you first so it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.
Slimes are definitely all thinking, feeling beings, and it’s probably a little fucked up to kill a bunch of them because you’re saving up money for the casino, even if they “attacked you first” after you spent a half hour running in circles, Erdrick.
The first one works fine for the context of a story like Dragon Quest, because we can employ suspension of disbelief. But it kind of unravels if you look at it for too long. In some installments, there are evil but non-hostile monsters who won’t attack you, but will deliver a whole little monologue about how cool Lord Merdur of Fort Finalboss is. And, hey, what causes a monster to decide to be nice instead of evil?
For the most part, we never learn, because it doesn’t matter. The Nice Monster is a throwaway character, usually a bit of a joke. They’re there for flavor, not because of what their existence implies.
And that’s kind of weird, right?
Undertale As Response
It’s obvious how Undertale works as a critique on level grinding and the like, but this alone would be kind of facile, imo. People will say, “well, that monster was trying to kill me, so I acted in self-defense. It’s only fair.” And it can be difficult to argue against this without getting into weird arguments about monsters’ Actual Motivations or the relative negative utility of thousands being imprisoned beneath a mountain vs. seven children being killed.
Here’s the thing that I think a lot of people ignore, though. Undertale is also a critique of the idea that Some Monsters Are Nice, as seen in Dragon Quest and similar games. And part of why that critique works is because it does not allow you to set up a dividing line. All those monsters have a place in Underground society - you can’t simply write some off as Fights while viewing others as worthy of kindness or redemption.
If you spare Toriel and Papyrus, because they’re nice and well-meaning... then how can you justify killing Undyne and Mettaton, who are kind of assholes, but have good intentions, and are pillars of the community?
If you spare Undyne and Mettaton, how could you justify killing Whimsun, who’s terrified of you? Or Temmie, who’s just kind of scatterbrained and weird? Or Snowdrake, who constantly tells bad jokes, just like your friend Sans would if you had to fight him?
So how could you justify killing Tsundereplane and Vulkin, so desperate for affection?
So how could you justify killing Muffet, so desperate to save her family and friends?
And so on, and so on, until we reach Moldsmal.
Oh! That One’s A Slime! Is Maxie Tying It All Together?
Trying to, anyway.
This is Moldsmal and Moldbygg. They’re called that because they’re Jell-O Mould monsters.
Moldsmal just kind of sits there, lazily firing bullets. Its description says it has “no brains.” If any monster is okay to kill, it’s this one, right?
Moldbygg pretends to be a Moldsmal, but is actually big. It also has explicit boundaries and preferences: It does not want to be hugged. You spare it by Not Hugging it. It’s goofy, but still: Moldbygg, explicitly, has thoughts and emotions.
And if it’s not okay to kill Moldbygg, how the hell are you going to justify killing Moldsmal? They’re both slimes! They’re practically identical! Maybe they have family reunions where instead of eating the Jell-O one of them just sits on the dining table! You don’t know!!
So Here’s My Thesis On The Morality of Undertale Or Whatever
Fundamentally, the commentary Undertale is making on the idea of the “nice monster,” the “recruitable monster,” the “monster town,” is this:
If one monster can be your friend, is there actually a reason all of them can’t be?
And it says “no, what, that’s dumb,” and I don’t think it’s wrong to do so. Viewing Undertale specifically with this additional context, of the weird push-and-pull certain RPGs have between “that’s a monster! kill it for loot!” and “okay well not that monster,” shores up the related critique of XP grinding by rooting it in a more specific moral core.
Anyway I hope that all made sense, I’m gonna go eat exactly one maraschino cherry and have a glass of water
#ask#anon#undertale#dragon quest#long post#this is a bit meandering but i hope y'all enjoy it regardless
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The Asset
so I’m making my mom watch Agents of SHIELD (obviously) and today we watched eps 1x03 - 1x06. That’s The Asset, Eye Spy, Girl in the Flower Dress, and FZZT.
THEN I ACCIDENTALLY SPENT LIKE FIVE HOURS DISSECTING MY LEAST FAVORITE EPISODE YOU’RE WELCOME
First off, full spoilers ahead, of course.
1x03 is, hands down, the worst episode of the series. PERIOD. I didn’t give it my full attention when I did my rewatch, because I remembered it well enough for some reason and the guy that plays Quinn looks too much but not enough like Tahmoh Penikett to seriously irritate me. DODGED A BULLET THERE.
Giving it your full attention does not do it any favors. I was physically discomfited, squirming in my seat and dropping snide remarks every 12 seconds. It’s bad, you guys.
First off, we have this guy, who is, for now in S1, the one and only “Agent Mack.”
THE SIMILARITIES ARE UNCANNY.
Then this big rig gets dropped like 50 feet and I’m supposed to believe that this guy strapped in the back only had his glasses knocked askew?
Ok then we go see what the team is up to, and lord, three episodes has not been enough time for Chloe or Brett to Figure Their Shit Out. They’re so awkward and dumb looking.
After a passable briefing scene, where we learn that Baldy McGlasses is a valuable asset (and beloved advisor to FitzSimmons) who was being transported with maximum security before being kidnapped, we get this wildly wild “we have to put something on the screen while exposition happens” shot:
Which cuts contemporaneously to
Thanks I hate it
Where did the atmospheric smoke go? Was that highway always there? What time of day is this supposed to be where the ambient light changes so drastically over a matter of seconds? They couldn’t have kept the camera on the left side of the lane marker?
But it gets worse because Simmons has a line and the coverage for this is basically just a matched jump cut over to the other half of the line up and back again.
I can’t stand it.
So Agent Mack survived the fall and is still on the scene of the accident. My mom was pretty incredulous that he was alive, and I was thinking it was too bad that he had to sit there for hours waiting to be debriefed instead of being taken to a hospital.
THEN there’s some FitzSimmons pratfall-adjacent sci-fi nonsense that my mom really got a kick out of. But I was too distracted by Iain’s decision to play Fitz as a douchebag so far this season so I wasn’t in the right mood to be impressed.
Ok then we go back to the lab to do some science on the MacGuffin, and I will admit my favorite part so far is Skye challenging Coulson on the existence of the truth serum, and Coulson plays it so Coulson-y it’s truly chef’s kiss.
BUT THEN May comes along and drops 100 pounds of print media for Skye to review (oh yeah, there’s a key subplot about there potentially being a mole inside SHIELD, which is how McGlasses got got) and MY MOM who REGULARLY prints out things like Facebook posts to keep for posterity rightly pointed out that they have high-tech on this plane like holograms and stuff, so printing out all this correspondence in order to go through it page by page makes 0% sense.
Also we never see it again.
OKAY THEN COULSON AND WARD ACCOST A COWBOY RIDING A HORSE THROUGH THE WOODS. Said cowboy also just happens to have the incriminating bag of gold on his person, which Coulson and Ward straight up steal. That’s it. That’s the whole concept for the scene. Coulson’s just parked his car along a narrow woodland path, just waiting for a cowboy to come riding along so he can accost him/steal his gold.
Check out how whack this scene-setting shot is, too. We have Coulson on the left, facing the Cowboy on the right. At this trajectory, you can see that Lola and the horse are basically pointed perpendicular to one another.
Yet cowboy pulls to a stop without banking and addresses something dead ahead of him.
Surprise! Coulson’s over there now and Lola and the horse are facing dead on.
To really drive this home, cowboy spends the rest of the scene on the left, addressing Coulson who remains on the right.
Anyway so yeah, this scene is about roughing up an innocent civilian for intel and then stealing his legally acquired wealth.
At least they can’t take the sky from him.
The purpose of the cowboy gold is that it’s directly traceable back to Quinn Worldwide, which is hilarious considering that one assumes the under-the-table transaction used this method of currency in order to not be easily traced.
Coulson name drops Quinn like he’s some off-brand Tony Stark that we should be impressed with, and we are immediately shown that Ian Quinn’s defining characteristic is that he has an assistant to hang up his cell phone calls for him. We are not impressed with Ian Quinn.
OKAY AND THEN WE GET THIS COMPLETE MIS-READ OF SCRIPT INTENT IN THIS SHOT
why why why why why why would you ignore a character’s line like that. Why are you choosing to TELL me that a man is tied up when it would be SO EASY to SHOW me.
Especially since the narrative so far is that McGlasses has been skillfully kidnapped by a very determined adversary, and this moment, this interaction, is where that assumption is proven erroneous. Quinn’s line is a very specific cue that we are meant to SEE that he’s restrained, per our expectations following a kidnapping, specifically to introduce the twist that Quinn is just that budget Tony Stark who actually has no malicious intentions towards his former colleague.
A super close close up of McGlasses fails to achieve that moment the script was hunting for. I’m feeling that the intent was to keep the focus on this dude because of the upcoming secondary twist where he is revealed to be the SHIELD mole who masterminded his own kidnapping, but this guy is So Bad at acting I don’t think keeping him front and center is ever going to pay off.
(ok I just checked and it turns out Ian Hart is a prolific English actor. this makes me feel like I ought to chalk it up to “difficulty emoting while doing a fake American accent” but guys this performance is so bad I’m really not willing to believe there’s a good excuse)
anyway it turns out Quinn’s good guy!
.....but then he’s on the wrong side of the shot all of a sudden for no good reason and HEY maybe this set up with the wide angle on the lab and a clear look at McGlasses’ physical situation within that environment would have been an alternative for, you know, maybe some sort of establishing shot? Maybe? No?
Also here let’s take a moment to let the “plot” really sink in. These two chuckleheads are former classmates and colleagues, even though one of them looks about 20 years older than the other, and Quinn discovered that “an asset” was being moved, “deduced” that the asset was McGlasses, and wanted to bring McGlasses in on his semi-nefarious science plan. So to avoid SHIELD interference in his schemey scheme, Quinn
kidnaps McGlasses directly from SHIELD custody,
in the showiest manner, not only using but LEAVING BEHIND the exact product at the core of his scheme,
and pays a local cowboy with easily traceable gold in exchange for just some regular backhoe to bust open the big rig transporting McGlasses, instead of, I don’t know, using his massive wealth and influence and in-house R&D products to not massively incriminate himself
He couldn’t have just invited McGlasses over without calling attention to himself?
There is the way that “the asset” was being “moved” makes it sound like McGlasses was on top secret lock down with no civilian rights or means of making/receiving contact with people like old colleagues. But this is never clarified, like, the only other thing we know about him is that he evidently advises classes at the Sci-Ops branch of the SHIELD academy.
ALSO we have yet to learn that McGlasses personally staged “being moved” and leaked the hints regarding the identity of “the asset” to Quinn just so that Quinn would do all these nonsense things he done. He couldn’t have just invited himself over???
Also the conversation they have at this point is real rough, with non-sequiturs, shambling exposition, and garbage jokes that wouldn’t float even if you didn’t have a log and a ham struggling to mimic human behavior.
Also Quinn bought the PRIME MINISTER OF MALTA’S old manor specifically because it has a huge underground lab???? What about Malta do I need to know about before this makes sense?
Let’s move on. FitzSkimmons have an only-mostly painful scene of exposition in which Iain is still having a hard time with the lines/characterization the Powers That Be are forcing Fitz to be at the moment. I’m going to say it. Season 1 Fitz is Utterly Unlikable.
However, this rant has given me the opportunity to 1) stand corrected and 2) appreciate this understated joke:
She’s still on page 1 of 1 billion LOLOLOLOL
The other nice thing to come out of this scene is the casual validation that the public school system may not be right for everyone, and that being a high school drop out does not mean you can’t also be an intelligent self-starter who finds value and satisfaction in picking up a trade skill on your own. *coughs in Robbie Reyes*
UGH but then we go back to McWooden and Bargain Ham. Their story is UNINTERESTING and their performances are HARD TO STOMACH. Also it ends on a mirror of the shot we started with (so there is some evidence of intelligent design at play here after all)
But this framing makes me so uncomfortable like, I’ve shipped for less don’t put weird ideas in my head that no one wants least of all me--
Ok. We’re a third of the way through. It doesn’t stop getting worse.
So here’s the correct way to reposition your characters if you want to change up the eye lines without making it super jarring! The start of this scene is actually really textbook-nice, just look:
The pre-mission planning is already in full swing, but we follow Skye, the outsider on the outside, approaching the scene with some amount of hesitation.
She starts on the right, facing left, and crosses across the path of the camera as it follows her towards the meeting, ending up on its left while the folks currently giving lines are framed over her right shoulder. Your eye line and sense of positioning has fluidly followed hers, and this makes sense.
From this establishing shot, we do a real nice punch in on Coulson as he’s speaking, using a really action smooth cut as he does a bit of business with his hand.
We’re still coming into this scene from Skye’s POV, and this shot reflects that -- close enough to focus on the important action, but distant enough to show Skye’s current position (literally and figuratively) relative to the rest of the team.
The reverse shot is ... fine. It’s fine. I don’t like that she’s framed on the right hand side of the screen (exactly where Coulson was a split second ago), but the eye lines still match up and it does give the impression that the camera is the avatar of the audience and we just turned on the spot to look at her as she quietly invites herself to this scene and starts putting that big beautiful brain of hers to work.
Then we leave her to it! Feel the difference this cut has, emotionally, from the last time we looked over at Coulson:
We’ve left Skye’s aloof POV and now we’re all up in his biz. This framing tells us he’s no longer the subject of Skye’s contemplation and has gone back to being a character of the TV screen doing TV character things.
The remainder of this scene holds onto that “normal” shot-reverse-shot framing of the team as they give their opinions and work through the plan.
This laudable result of thoughtful camera work is almost instantly ruined by Fitz yammering on about using a brave little monkey to do their serious spy business and HOLY COW Iain does his best with the dreck he’s been given but there is no universe in which I will find this type of dialogue acceptable.
The valuable plot point here is that Skye is finding her footing on the team, doing hacky stuff on her phone and putting herself out there as -- wait for it -- an asset to Coulson. Ward responds to this with bafflement, being generally supportive of her known abilities while also being doubtful that she’s a complete package, and turning to Coulson for advice on how to round her training out.
This results in yet another JARRING AF transition (read: there’s no transition) from Ward and Coulson’s heart to heart to Ward pointing a gun at Skye at some indeterminate amount of time later.
Look we haven’t even had time to ingest Coulson’s line yet and BAM we’re here.
This scene’s fine. It’s doing double duty and that’s admirable. Triple duty, even. Many duties are being performed in this scene. We have
fledgling Skyeward
the introduction to the gun-manipulation maneuver Skye will use later on
Skye’s irreverence butting heads with Ward’s need for brass-tacks
at least one solid joke at Ward’s expense
Ward valuing Skye’s er, assets -- I’M TALKING COMPUTER SCIENCE YA PERVS
a very competent conversational segue into Ward’s Whole Deal, wherein we are introduced to the concept of his childhood trauma (lolol and man does Brett just fail to deliver these lines in any sort of a way that inspires human empathy wowowo he’s so bad in this one)
a callback to an earlier conversation as well as a set up for a future joke
SKYE STEALING WARD’S GUN FROM OUT OF HIS PANTS A++++
Now we go into pre-heist plan-walkthrough mode, and it’s so boring and lifeless that Skye’s actual summary line is “Plan, green, drop, walk ... pie.” To be honest, she got more out of the discussion than I did.
May has an interesting character moment where she’s complaining about going into the field and then immediately regrets it because she was never going to be sent in, but that means Coulson’s going in instead and that worries her. I keep thinking back on this season as being unfocused, but that’s because I forget that the sales pitch for this entire shebang is “we killed Coulson in Avengers but now here’s a show where he’s the lead because everyone loves him so much” and the subsequent focus of the inaugural season is everyone’s burning curiosity to find out how they undid his murder.
Aside from the sci-fi/Marvel/generic spy show gimmick of the week, these early episodes never fail to prioritize the interpersonal dynamic of their team while simultaneously teasing out the Coulson mystery with these nice little regular hits.
I let it keep playing while I was typing, and we flew over some whatever business where Skye goes to Quinn’s party, and Coulson and Ward land their little raft on the beach, and the other kids are watching from the Bus and FITZ IS AGAIN TERRIBLE
I feel you, Jemma.
(Also, am I wrong in hearing him give in and say “boobs?” The Netflix subtitles have it as “oops” but that can’t be it.)
Anyway so Skye’s busy using her Assets to win Quinn over, and Chloe’s shining moment in this scene is the delivery of the drivers test joke.
Back to stuff that’s gratingly awful, we’re supposedly on Malta, right? And you know how Hollywood generally and the spy show/movie genre specifically tries to stretch their location budgets by putting on color filters to “evoke” distant lands?
We go from the above, washed out and unfiltered, to this sepia-toned nonsense:
This is supposed to be taking place basically right outside. Why not just keep the filter on for the interior scenes, too? There’s plenty of searing Maltese light coming in through that wall of windows.
(They must have had a hard time on location for the manor shoots, though, it’s just as washed out in the earlier scene set outdoors that I didn’t show you because it was boring but I’m showing you know because it’s not even the same color filter as the Coulson/Ward shots
)
((Also, yeah, I get it. You can’t fly to Malta for a day for a television shoot. But how many people are you fooling when you put the Santa Monica mountains in the backdrop of every exterior shot?))
So we go back and forth between these high-grain-low-saturation beachfront stuff to these holy angelic light of judgement shots and I hate it.
Like, why choose to shoot against this nuclear-blast light? It’s not doing your actors any favors.
Especially when you’re ALSO choosing to depict that same “natural” light with a whole different palette and then continue to give us the opportunity to compare and contrast.
Also I hate the Ward/Coulson business because it’s just generic spy stuff where some guards come out of nowhere and I guess maybe it’s implied that their cute boat was found but it could just as easily be that it was explicitly stated that there were guard patrols and I forgot.
But then they fight and defeat the guards in literally under 8 seconds and that’s that. End of stakes.
The character moment that validates this trivial obstacle is that Coulson tries to do something with a gun and finds that May’s concerns weren’t entirely unfounded. He’s a little rusty.
Also Ward’s response to this is to chuck the gun into the laser wall and I don’t know why. In any case, the energy from both of them in this screenshot really resonates with me.
So then Skye Does The Thing with her Assets and if you’ll let me be picky again about plot holes, why does the wireless access MacGuffin need to have an interface for Skye to check that the connection is possible, and THEN have that connection activated by LITERALLY dropping it on the table. They couldn’t have set it to auto-scan and then tell her through her earpiece to stay still when the connection activated itself?
Whatever. Success! Immediately followed by ... INEXPLICABLE OBSTACLE
WHO, praytell, is on the other end of that walkie talkie? Because the downed man is the man you see. Typically, it would be like a survivor of the scuffle who radios for backup, but here we see the scene of the scuffle and some unknown unseen ADDITIONAL MAN who I guess is just spying on them from somewhere and radioing still more unseen men?
Instantly hearing this news, the Unseen begin a sniper assault on Coulson and Ward, and we get to see their bullets getting evaporated by the laser wall. Remember those guards walking along the sea cliff towards the sign? There’s no place for the snipers to be sniping from, unless they have some kind of invisible floating island.
This scenario is made even more hilarious once Fitz brings down the laser wall and Coulson and Ward dive through like they think they some kind of James Bonds and then the wall goes back up and the snipers keep sniping.
Why aren’t the guards on the inside of the perimeter of the compound which they guard? This laser fence is now protecting the intruders. Minor design flaw.
Anywho, Quinn is still talking about how he doesn’t trust SHIELD and SHIELD doesn’t trust him, so it’s like, what are we supposed to believe about this guy anyway? Why did Coulson introduce him as bargain bin Tony Stark if he was known to be bargain bin Justin Hammer all along?
So now that snipers have failed to snipe the intruders, some Seen Guards come to alert Quinn so he breaks the wireless MacGuffin and turns a gun on Skye. (Just sayin, if it had been some secret device that was still in her bag, she’d have plausible deniability)
I think, at this point, I have two conclusions
Team Coulson has no extraction plan for getting McGlasses out of the compound since they don’t have a Plan B to get back through the laser wall, no firepower to use on the Seen Guards, and no available land-or-sea getaway vehicles.
There was never any sort of extraction plan for Skye even if the laser wall and the Seen Guards were not an obstacle.
Here’s where it gets the messiest.
Coulson busts in on McGlasses but is told no rescue is required.
AT THAT SAME TIME
May has just popped open a tablet over in some room by herself, evidently disinterested in whatever FitzSimmons is probably doing right now in light of this drastic turn of events, and she’s randomly googling up on the SHIELD leak mentioned earlier, only to discover that it was MCGLASSES ALL ALONG.
Keeps a cool head, our May.
Yeah, we know, we .. he ... he just said ... you know what? We didn’t actually care, though? Who the mole was or that it was McGlasses. We certainly didn’t spend the last half hour watching May diligently tracking down some breadcrumb trail of clues to get to this dramatic reveal, only to find out a second too late. We didn’t even see her checking up that Skye had/didn’t have this angle covered.
Did she print out the contents of the four-foot binder as some sort of eco-terrorist cruel joke since she was just planning on spending three seconds on the computer to complete the same task?
Ok so Coulson misinterprets McGlasses’ decline of his rescue operation as collaboration with Quinn until May clues him in. We then go to commercials and come back and have to go over all this info again just in case we didn’t follow that super exciting double-cross the first two times.
At which point we figure out where all the pre-production time was sunk -- somebody had to spend a lot of effort envisioning how they were going to do the wacky-gravity scenes. My feeling is that fun challenges like that are what stand out to people who are working on a thing, and sometimes the prestige of “pulling that off” can overshadow the need to pay attention to other, less exciting aspects of filmmaking, like making sure your eye lines stay coherent in a scene or that your color gradings aren’t super distracting.
Anyway I do really like the load-bearing scene where Quinn threatens Skye at gunpoint because it is one of those many examples this season has of laying ground work for and paying off character moments.
Skye’s flip and smart and completely not ready for this level of field action, but she remembers her training, remembers how earnestly Ward wanted her to be ready for this defining moment, and gets the gun!
That “nOPE” when she can’t shoot the man is also Classic Skye and we Love Her For It.
Anyway oh yeah, McGlasses reveals his master plan to get kidnapped, so that he could get on site and ruin Quinn’s everything because he’s a Bad Justin Hammer. His performance is SO PAINFUL and his reasoning has yet to make sense. Coulson doesn’t ask “why did you have to be kidnapped to get in, though” but he does ask “why didn’t you try reasoning with him” as if that were the question we needed an answer to.
Also it turns out FitzSimmons has been pretty chill this whole time since their agents lost their extraction plan (well, they’re smart, they probably knew all along that there wasn’t one) and are just puttering around the lab working on what looks like their regular day-to-day science, talking excitedly about gravitonium rather than panicking that the whole plan’s gone to shit.
Unflappable.
COME ON PEOPLE the mission wasn’t “throw McGlasses into the gravitonium and do high-fives” it was “rescue McGlasses from Quinn’s grasp.” From the way that this plays out, there is 0% indication that their initial plan was ever expected to succeed.
WE DON’T EVEN SEE HOW THEY GET OUT OF THERE, WE JUST LOOK AT SOME MCGRAVITONIUM AND THEN SEE COULSON ON THE BUS INSTRUCTING THE CONTAINMENT FACILITY ON HOW IT SHOULD BE HANDLED.
Oh well, the gratuitous plot is disposed with after this point.
In the denouement, we get to see May and Coulson interact over his experience in the field and her experience being stuck watching him in the field. She’s finally ready for combat, but strictly for his sake. And he’s at the point where he’s ready and willing to take her up on her offer instead of trying to prove that he’s everything he was before he died.
Following that, we get some Skyeward with some really gross romantic comedy type music. Bear, you’re better than this!! But the scene is nice, Chloe really brings it (almost brings too much) and Brett is there to support her.
It’s a really on-the-nose admission from Skye that her allegiances lie with SHIELD, but its an organic continuation of that bit from earlier where she wandered all up on their meeting, the outsider, and pushed her way into the heart of it. She wants this. She wants to feel like she belongs here. And now she’s been trusted with some opportunities and tools to prove it!
This early in the season, we’re still doubtful that she’s on the up and up, what with that Rising Tide plot thread hanging so loose and tantalizing over our heads. Due to the potential of a storyline revolving around her betrayal, there are a lot of fun little moments in the next few episodes where Ward gets to say some betrayal-related stuff that is absolutely excellent in retrospect.
I was watching some old interviews and while it is very clear Brett did not know the fate of his character in advance, it’s also distinctly implied that no one knew and the arc of the season may have developed episode by episode. That’s so nutty to me, considering how strong the structure of the season is, how there are so many satisfying call backs and payoffs later on.
I think I’m more likely to applaud a well-plotted narrative, in which foreshadowing and a deliberate order of events slowly unravel to great effect. But I can definitely appreciate the ability to force the illusion of the same by being crafty and attentive and not letting any usable threads go to waste.
Ultimately, whether by design or by providence, Season 1 is successful in pulling it all together. It’s just that episodes like this one don’t really inspire you to believe that that outcome is likely, or even possible. Episodes like this one cause a person to give up watching halfway through the season and walk away for years until cajoled into giving it another shot because “it got good somehow.”
But what this season has, every episode, especially ones like this one, is a pronounced, chaotic, relentless prioritization of Character over Plot. What is this show about? Who cares. That’s the wrong question. This show could have been about anything, and these early episodes are all too aware of it. What kind of story can you tell when every option is on the table and no one knows what to expect from you?
You find that story, step by step, episode by episode, through the eyes of your characters. The forward motion of the story isn’t “how did Coulson come back to life” but “what is life going to be like for him now?” It’s not “will Skye betray the team” it’s “what does she want and what is she willing to do to get it?”
Posing and answering these character questions generates the Story of Agents of SHIELD. Plots be damned. Remember how at one point in this episode, our heroes robbed a cowboy at gunpoint? Yeah. Me either.
And I can’t agree more with this approach. In my experience, PWP works best when its about the characters.
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