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felassan · 3 years

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Mass Effect development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

This is the Mass Effect version of this post.

[In case you can’t read it the subtitle in the bottom left logo above is “Guardians of the Citadel”]

Note: Drug use is mentioned.

Cut for length.

Mass Effect 1

ME began its life in a vision document in fall 2003

Codenamed “SFX”

Conceived of by Casey Hudson and a core team from KotOR. Its genesis was the intention to create an epic sci-fi RPG in an original setting that BioWare owned (so they could have full creative control), and in a setting that was conceived of first and foremost as a video game

Initially players could control any squadmate, but they wanted it to be about Shep and for players to be focused on Shep being a battlefield commander, rather than on switching bodies

By the start of 2004 its story was shaping up. Initially humans landed on Mars in 2250 and discovered evidence of an ancient alien race and a powerful substance, Black Sand, which rapidly advanced tech to the point that FTL travel was possible. (My note: obviously now the Prothean artifacts on Mars & associated mass effect force tech enabled this in the final canon, but I wonder if aspects of the ‘Black Sand’ naming-type & powerful substance stuff was rolled into red sand from final canon) Humans were suddenly capable of travel to multiple star systems and made contact with a multitude of other species. At the start of the first game, these species together with humans had a fragile peace, with focus placed on the political center of the galaxy, a hub known as Star City, later renamed the Citadel

Multiplayer was a vision for the series as far back as 2003. The plan was for ME1, an Xbox exclusive at launch, to take advantage of the platform’s online components. Early designs saw players meeting in one of the central hubs to interact and trade items in their otherwise SP adventures

By 2006 it had the name ME and the story was more specific, with the theme of conflict between organic and synthetic lifeforms. The story’s scope now stretched across 3 games and included scope for full co-op MP

They tried to do MP in every game, discussing it from the get-go, but it always just fell by the wayside. “When you’re trying to build something that is a new IP, on a new platform, with a new engine, you’ve got to really focus on the core elements of the game.”

The conversation system prototype was made in Jade Empire, and some of ME’s earliest writing was done in an old JE build. At first there was no conversation wheel. Paragon was “Friendly” and Renegade “Hostile”. In the prototype Shep was a silent unnamed Spectre. Many conversations in the prototype about the player’s choice in smuggling a weapon through Noveria made it into the game

In said prototype a merchant referred to themselves as “this one”, though the word hanar never appeared. The PC in it also had the option to end a conversation with “I should go”. In the prototype also, Harkin was voiced by Mark Meer

An early version of the Mako got used as the krogan truck in ME2

Early concepts of the Citadel were drawn in pencil by CH. A piece of concept art of its final design was painted based on a photo of a sculpture near Aswan, Egypt

As with any new IP naming it was a struggle. They put out a call to all staff for ideas, did polls, made a name generator that combined words that they liked in random ways and made pretend logos of ones they liked in Photoshop to see if they could make themselves love the name or find visual potential in it. (Some of these names are in the pic at the top of this post.) CH liked “Unearthed” as it was a reference to Prothean ruins dug up on Mars and humanity’s ascendance going away from Earth. They knew the game would have a central space station featuring prominently so some of the ideas were based on that - “The Citadel”, “The Optigon”, “The Oculon”. “Element” was another one they had in mind due to the rare substance in the game

CH: “I was a big fan of John Harris’ book Mass, which had epic-scaled sci-fi ideas, so that was a word that came up often. Many of the names came from the idea that the IP featured a fifth fundamental physical force (in addition to the known four of gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear) so the word ‘effect’ came up pretty often.” Ultimately none of the ideas really felt right. One Monday morning they were going over the names and Greg Zeschuk said he had an idea on the weekend: “Mass Effect!” CH: “I said, ‘I don’t hate it’, which in the naming process is a high compliment. And it stuck!”

CH on Shep’s Prothean vision from the beacon: “It was hard to imagine how we would do this. CG was - and is - really expensive. Instead I wanted to try doing it through photography and video editing. So I went to a local grocery store and bought a few packages of the weirdest looking meat that I could find. Then I set up a little photoshoot in my basement, complete with some electronics parts and some red wine for juicyness.” He used these props to create a video sequence where the photos were rapidly cycled and blurred, along with production paintings, to create the scary vision an organic/machine experiment on the Protheans. These mashups were also used as inspiration for concept artists and level designers who were working on these themes

Tali used to be called Talsi

On the licensing side they often joke that they’re licensing N7 not “Mass Effect” due to N7′s popularity

There was a confidential internal guide to the IP in 2007 to help devs along and summarize/synthesize the vision etc. Some excerpts from it are shown in the book and this is the first time the public have ever seen them

Early versions of Asari had hair

Asari were designed as a nod to classic TV sci-fi (with human actors wearing obvious makeup and prosthetics to play aliens)

The turian design guideline was “we want them to be birds of prey”. They also wanted a range of alien types, some close to human like Asari, while others were to be a lot further away, like turians

BioWare patented the conversation wheel, which was a first for them. CH had been frustrated with reviews of Jade Empire that said that the actioncentric game was too wordy [with its list dialogue]. “I’m like, story is words. [...] What is it about our games that is making people feel like they’re wordy?” Then he thought “In a game you kind of need to feel like you’re continuing to play it. Maybe you should continue feeling like you’re playing it actively into the dialogue.” “[The wheel] kind of gave a new experience with dialogue when you did start to react based on emotion, and that’s ultimately what we’re trying to bring out in our games”

The original krogan concept was based on a bat “with a really wide squidgy face. We just used its face on top of this weird body and it kinda worked”

Geth musculature was based on fiber-optic cables, with flexible plates of armor attached

The vision for the IP was 80s sci-fi inspired space opera

The concept art of Saren lifting Shep by the throat inspired a similar scene in-game. The staging wasn’t planned til designers saw that art

A squadmate with Shepard on the way to meet Ash in an old storyboard was called Carter. Early name of Kaidan or Jenkins?

Bono from U2 was kinda instrumental in bringing us ME lol

Finding the right cover art for ME1 was notably tricky

Matt Rhodes got his start drawing helmets for ME1, including one which would become Shep’s “second face”. He estimates he drew between 250-270 different ones

Some of the sounds in-game were people smashing watermelons with sledgehammers and sticking fists into various goos

The audio team had fun trying to slip the iconic main theme into unexpected places throughout the MET. “We were very aware of how powerful that track was for the fans and it was tempting to overuse it for any moment we wanted to make really emotional”.

The theme was creatively repurposed in ME3: slowed down and reworked as the ambient sound for the SR-2. “If you listen to it for a really long time, just stand in the Normandy and listen, you’ll actually hear the notes change slowly. It doesn’t sound like music, it sounds like a background ambiance, but it’s there.” (My note: Well no wonder the Normandy feels so much like home?? 😭 sneaky..)

Bug report: “Mako Tornado”. There wasn’t enough friction between the tires and the ground, causing testers to lose control of the vehicle and send it spinning into the air like a tornado. “As it turns, the front end comes up, and then it starts spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning faster and faster and faster until it just flies up in the sky” (My note: Sounds like a regular day in the Mako to me)

Cerberus originally had a bigger role in this game. It was cut but they had a whole explorable outpost. “I called it Misery,” says Mac Walters, “It was this planet with a little outpost that said ‘Welcome to Misery’”. Everything on the outpost was shit - dirty worn stuff, no windows, no kitchen, the vehicle bay was open to the elements etc

The Reaper sound is literal garbage. Some audio designers went on a recording trip to a national park. One of them got fixated on a garbage can, “a metal bear-proof receptacle with a heavy lid that creaked horribly when opened”. “It was like, ominous, spooky, tonal and almost musical. I decided to throw a mic into the garbage and record it moving. I didn’t know what it was going to be until later”

They were making lots of noises to record like throwing logs and rocks around. An old couple peered at them through the window of their camper van in the woods and must have called the cops because then the cops showed up, pulled them over and told them to stop. The cops towed their car (the driver’s plates were Cali plates and expired), drove them to Edmonton outskirts and then the audio producer Shauna got a call and had to go pick them up “like three little boys”. “We got a stern talking to”. Once back they were playing around with the garbage sound, editing it etc. Casey heard it and proclaimed “That’s the sound of the Reapers”

Preston Watamaniuk: “There are things I could have done to Mass 1 to make it an infinitely better game with better UIs” and some simple cuts and changes. “But when you’re living with it, it’s very hard to see those things”

BioWare Labs

As social media and smartphone games exploded, BioWare dedicated a small team dedicated to exploring opportunities here - BioWare Labs

Mass Effect: Galaxy used a unique graphic art style and static visual presentation common in visual novels. It has the distinction of being the only iOS game BW have made during their first 25 years

Scrapped ideas were a 3rd person space shooter called Mass Effect: Corsair and 2 DA titles - a strategy game and a top-down dungeon crawler starring young Wynne. (My note: Maybe the corsairs stuff was rolled into Jacob’s backstory in 2, the Alliance Corsairs)

Corsair was a very short-lived project that never got its feet under it. It was a spin-off on Nintendo DS featuring a behind-the-ship perspective and branching dialogue. At one point it had MP. The idea behind it was basically “ME: Freelancer” - fly your ship around, do missions, get credits. It had a limited branching story but was a gameplay-centered experience intended to fill the gap between ME1 and 2. That gap ended up being filled by Galaxy

Galaxy and Corsair’s smaller screen allowed concept artists to use bold colors and a simplistic character design style to help those games stand out from Shep’s story

Nick Thornborrow did some art for Corsair but was worried his art style didn’t fit ME. He moved to DA where he feels his art style fits better

Lots of BioWare VAs and even a lead writer and the VO director are drawn from Edmonton’s local community theater scene, which is vibrant. Think this is how Mark Meer got involved

Mass Effect 2

Player choices carrying over was a first for BW

Dirty Dozen-inspired plot

Its plot is a web of conditionals (see Suicide Mission)

Was more of a shooter than anything BW had made since Shattered Steel

There was 2 camps on the team, those who wanted to push combat and systems forward and redefine the ME experience and those who wanted to make a true sequel, with the same gameplay and systems but a new story. Karin Weekes: “I think it ended up being a good push-pull. It felt like a pretty healthy creative conflict”

“ME2 was a game you could hold up to someone who argues that games aren’t a serious medium and go ‘Oh yeah, then why is Martin Sheen in this?’” Sheen was their first pick for TIM

The idea for TIM came from a mash-up of concepts CH had collected over the years. The name “Illusive” originally came from his pitch for naming DAO’s Eclipse engine, a word inspired by Obi-Wan’s line “It’s not about the mission, Master. It’s something... elsewhere. Elusive”. “I thought, what if we called our next engine 'Elusive', but used an ‘I’, and then it’s like ‘Illusion’. [...] I still really like the word with an ‘I’ and what it conjures”

When ME1 DLC was in production, CH had been watching a lot of CNN, specifically Anderson Cooper. “How is one guy travelling to all these places and never looking tired and always being able to speak with clarity?” CH says it seemed almost superhuman. “What if there was someone who is the absolute maximum of the things you would aspire to be, but also the worst of humanity?” Cooper, though not evil, became an inspiration for TIM down to the gray hair and piercing blue eyes

Inspiration for TIM’s behind-the-scenes role pulling political strings came from Jack Bauer’s brother Graem in 24. Graem “can call up the president and tell him what to do and hang up, because he’s so connected and so influential”. Sheen had played a president and his performance brought gravitas and wisdom to the role. He had quit smoking, but the character smokes. He didn’t want to fake it, but he also didn’t want to smoke, “so he actually asked for a cigarette” to hold so he could stop his words to take drags with natural cadence

Writing was still pushing to write and revise lines hours before VO started. A series of problems like injury and some writers leaving for other opportunities left it so that Karin, Lukas Kristjanson and editor Cookie Everman hand to land the story safely, with PW helping where they could. Lukas: “We took over the writing bug and task list, and I can’t stress enough how much [Karin and Cookie] did to get ME2 out the door. There’s no part of that thing we didn’t touch”. Karin: “That was the most dramatic 2 weeks of my life”

Initial fan reaction when they started promo-ing ME2 was very negative because people didn’t want to know about new chars like Jack and Mordin. “[fans were like] ‘Get them out of here. We want our characters from the first game’. But then when they played them, those became some of the most popular chars [of the series]”

Concept art of Thane has an idea annotation saying “Face can shapeshift?”

At one point when designing Thane concept artists sent multiple variations of him to the team asking them to vote on which was the most attractive

Most of the Normandy crew was written by lead level designer Dusty Everman. Lukas gave him advice in the evenings between bugs

BioWare Montreal made ME2 and 3 cinematics

CC for Shep was based on tools used by char designers to create in-game chars. Under the hood similar tools existed to create aliens

Aliens were much easier to animate than humans. When something is human it’s very difficult to make it look realistic and you can see all the mistakes and everything

Over the holiday period in 2007 CH worked out a diagram on a single piece of paper that would define the entire scope and structure of the game. The diagram is included in the book

Bug report: “I shot a krogan so hard that his textures fell off”. At one point shotgun blast damage was applied to each of the pellets fired, and shot enemies ended up with just the default checkerboard Unreal texture on them after their textures got blown off

Blasto was meant to be 1 step above an Easter egg but his fan popularity prompted them to bring him back in ME3

They rewrote chunks of Jack 2 days before she went to VO. She was the only one they could change because all the other NPCs were recorded. They redesigned her mission by juggling locked NPC lines and changing Shep’s reactions by rewriting text paraphrases to change the context of the already-recorded VO

Lukas snuck obscure nods ito ME2′s distress calls. In the general distress call for the Hugo Gernsback, there’s BW’s initial’s and Edmonton’s phone number backwards. In a fault in a beacon protocol there’s the initials and backward phone number from Tommy Tutone’s “Jenny”. In 2 other general distress calls there’s initials and numbers from Glenn Miller Orchestra’s “Pennsylvania 6-5000″ and initials and numbers from Geddy Lee and Rush’s “2112″ respectively

Mass Effect 3

“The end of an era marks the beginning of another”

ME3 “marked the end of Shep’s story”

Saying bye to Shep was as difficult for devs as it was for players

JHale’s final VO session included Anderson’s death and romanced Garrus’ goodbye. “We were in the session and we both just started crying”, Caroline says. “I couldn’t come on the line to give her notes because I was crying, and she was crying. And so there was just this minute-long pause of like, nothing, nothing, nothing - just silence through the airwaves. And then I came on and just told her that I was crying and she said ‘I’m crying!’” They talked about these anecdotes also here on the N7 Day reunion panel

The Microsoft Kinect voice support required devs to teach Kinect hundreds of commands in a variety of accents across multiple languages. The result was useful but made for some awkward moments. Numerous players accidentally said “geth” or “quarian” while making a particular decision and accidentally killed Tali

MP chars were voiced by cops and military people

The helmet on one of the MP chars was originally designed for cancelled project Revolver

The payload device at the end needed to attach to the Citadel while essentially serving as a giant trigger. “It ended up becoming quite the engineering feet just to visualize how this thing would move and connect to the Citadel”

Concept artists explored creating an anti-team, where Kai Leng was almost an anti-Shepard essentially, with an elite squad to counteract your team. This idea never went beyond concept phase

ME3 Special Edition was released on Nintendo Wii U exclusively. This exclusive version of the game includes Genesis 2 (a sequel to the original Genesis comic) and unique gameplay features that took advantage of the touchscreen GamePad. For years Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood had had the honor of being BW’s only game made for a Nintendo console

FemShep regrettably didn’t feature in major ME marketing til ME3. Later releases like DAI, MEA and Anthem have taken increasing care not to gender their protagonists in cover art

To capture combat sounds they took a trip to CFB Wainwright, a military base southeast of Edmonton. They got a big tour of it and were allowed to record anything they could find. The tour ended with them getting to drive and shoot tanks (real shells). The force of doing that sent waves through Joel Green, he felt his whole chest compress when it went off; the perfect sound for the Black Widow! After the trip the soldiers let him keep the shell he fired and it’s been passed on like a torch to various devs since

Kakliosaurs began life as a joke in the writers’ room after John Dombrow placed a Grunt figure on a t-rex toy he had on his desk. Lore was brainstormed to justify the mash-up before someone asked, “Why don’t we put this in the game?” They loved it so much Karin had custom coffee mugs made

Bug report: For a while Tali’s final romance scene would fire when she was supposed to be dead

“Balancing combat: how designers in ME3 entered an ‘arms race’” - the solution to players feeling OP vs players feeling frustrated by really strong enemies is to find a good middle ground, but for designers Corey Gaspur and Brenon Holmes, it was war. Brenon designed enemies, Corey designed guns. Corey “was obsessed with bigger, heavier guns. We had this sort of informal competition where he’d make this crazy overturned gun that would just murder all the enemies, and then I tuned some stuff up to compensate”

Brenon had to invent new ways to “stop Corey” and this led to the Phantoms. Corey had in turn designed consumable rockets that could wipe out entire waves of enemies. He must’ve figured this would make short work of Brenon’s space ninjas, but Brenon had other plans: “I had just added the ability for her to cut rockets [when Corey was playing MP and he was watching]. She cut the rocket in half... Corey just turns and looks at me and is like: ‘Really dude? I just shot a rocket at this Phantom and she’s fine? Not even damaged? Zero damage?’”

This friendly rivalry helped elevate ME3′s gameplay. Corey had a knack for making a gun feel so good to fire it had his fellow designers scrambling to keep up. It was his version of balancing. Before Corey sadly passed away he mentored Boldwin Li in all things weapon design and the arms race continued

Corey designed the Arc Pistol. It was causing problems for enemies because it was too powerful. It seemed hell bent on staying that way, Boldwin would tune down all its stats and it was still doing 3x the damage it should have been doing. “I was like ‘What the hell?’, and then I looked closer. It secretly fired 3 bullets for every pull of the trigger! Corey, you sneaky jerk”

The day it launched there were midnight launch parties across North America including one near the BW building. Numerous devs sat at long tables greeting fans and signing autographs as the fans picked up preorders. When midnight struck the line was long enough that it took several hours for some fans to get their game. One particular fan is remembered: “It was 3am. Some guy drove up from Calgary with his friends. He was like one of the last people in line. I think he was sort of tired-drunk. He threw himself across the tables, pulled up his shirt and shouted ‘Guys, sign my abs!’ And like I did, because he waited so long. It felt impolite not to. So I hope he enjoyed his copy of ME3″

For designing Protheans concept artists had free reign to design something that read as ancient

Before the concept art team had the story of the game to work toward, they explored wild ideas of their own including an image of the crew stealing back the Normandy to go after the Reapers

Jen Cheverie was testing scenes and was initially excited to be testing Mordin scenes, til she saw she was testing the Renegade version of his death. “This is even before like all of the audio and everything was in, so you didn’t even have the sad music. I remember sitting at my desk and my hands just went to my face when I saw that the gun Shep pulls on Mordin is the gun he gives Shep in ME2. I burst into tears and was crying for the rest of the day. People are waving to me as they walk by and I’m like, ‘It’s ok, I’m just killing my best friend’”

There’s a segment called “Shepard’s story ends”. Casey on the ending: “There’s a whole bunch of things that come together to make it incredibly tense and emotional for players. I think the biggest one was the sense of finality, that whatever it was that happened in that very last moment... was it.”

Wrapping up the story was a massive feat. In a way all of ME3 is an ending. Its final moments were the players’ last with a char they’d been with all the way from Eden Prime

“And while the critical reception of the game was extremely positive, many fans were unsatisfied with the ending, which became one of the most controversial in the history of games.” CH: “We were, on one hand, at the end of a marathon trying to finish the game and the series. But as devs we also knew that there would be more. We knew that we would continue to tell the story. In retrospect, we didn’t fully appreciate the tremendous sense of finality that it would have for people”. He envisioned an ending that posed new questions, something in the tradition of high sci-fi that left players dreaming about what that particular galaxy’s future could hold. “Frankly, there’s a lot more that we could have and should have done to honor the work players put in, to give them a stronger sense of reward and closure”

AAA games are massive undertakings with a million moving parts. Somehow they come together but even the best-planned projects don’t turn out quite like devs hope. From start to end video game production is a series of compromises. It’s rare if not impossible for devs to ship a game they’re entirely happy with. “I think that people imagine that when you finish a game, it’s exactly the way you wanted it to be. But whether people end up loving or hating the final result, we work hard to finish it the best we can, knowing that there’s a lot we would have wanted to do better. I think that’s true of any creative work”

As the dust settled after the initial reaction to the ending and later its epilogue, meant to show the wide-reaching ripple effects of Shep’s final choice, “players emerged mostly asking for one thing”. CH: “Now, most of what we hear, after both ME3 and MEA, is ‘Hey, just go make more Mass Effect’. And that to me is the most important thing. Knowing that players want to return to the ME universe is what inspires us to press on and imagine what comes next”

Mass Effect: Andromeda

By creating a new ME in a new galaxy the team was challenged to put their own visual stamp on the game while keeping it true to the franchise

Being the first ME game on a new gen of consoles meant for more detail

“Massive transport ships called arks populated with salarians, turians, humans, asari and quarians” made the risky jump to the Cluster

MEA was the first time BW had truly codeveloped across 3 studios: Edmonton, Montreal and Austin. The bulk of the work especially early on was done in Montreal, which was composed of a handful of Edmonton expats and heaps of experienced devs who joined from elsewhere specifically to bring a new ME experience to life. Series vets in Edmonton then came on to contribute writing, cinematics, design and QA, along with leadership from creative director Mac Walters and the core Production team. Austin writers and level designers also joined the fray

“It took a new team to take ME beyond the Milky Way”

Mac: “A lot of people in Montreal joined BW as fans of the franchise, so they just had this passion, and it felt like it was more like the days of Jade Empire, where a smaller younger team gets to do something for the first time. Even though it wasn’t necessarily a new IP for me, it felt fresh and new because of that. The team was just super excited to be working on it”

Early plans had the player exploring hundreds of worlds, procedurally generated, allowing for a nearly infinite variety of experiences. But as development wore on, it became clear that the game narrative required more specific, hand-touched level design on each world to keep the story focused and the experience engaging. “The plan was to give players numerous uncharted worlds to explore. Designers worked hard to come up with procedural elements that would make such planets special. Eventually the team made the difficult decision to abandon procedural planets in favor of more memorable hand-touched alien worlds, each with a specific story to tell”

One challenge was defining what ME meant without Shep. Care was given to include many of the MET’s key species. “Ryder recruited turian, asari, krogan and salarian followers”. Like Shep Ryder represents humanity’s hope for a peaceful coexistence among aliens who had long operated without human contact

Beginning with MEA the team decided that with few exceptions vehicles in ME have 6 wheels. Early Nomad concepts were bulkier. Later ones focused on its ability to move over its ability to protect itself from hostile fire, underlining the themes of exploration

German concept designer and auto-motive futurist Daniel Simon was contracted to create the Nomad and Tempest. The Tempest’s final design took inspo from the Concorde

Concepts for angaran fighter ships have the following notes: “Two doors swing open, wings rotate down to function as landing struts, the landing struts split open. It has a spinning turbine engine

Despite being set a galaxy away and some 600 years after Mordin’s death, there was a time when he had a cameo. It wasn’t cut due to running out of time however, it was cut due to drug references. John Dombrow explains: “One day I had to write a small quest for Kadara. I thought it’d be amusing if these 2 guys living way out on the fringes in a shack were growing plants for uh, medicinal purposes, and needed Ryder’s help with it. It occurred to me, wouldn’t it be amusing if Ryder had the option of actually trying ‘the medicine’ to see what would happen? And I thought, what if it turned into some hallucination that somehow involved SAM - like maybe SAM would sing? But why? How could I motivate that? Then it hit me. Who else in the ME game sings unexpectedly? MORDIN. As a nod to him I wrote SAM singing Modern Major-General. It got even better when our cine designer John Ebenger wanted to take it even further. Bless him, he came in on a Saturday to do a special hallucination showing Mordin himself. It was great. Til the fateful day we were told MEA had already been submitted to the ratings board. That’s when you declare things like drug references in your game. Mordin fell under that category which meant it was a no-go. We were too late”

Ryder’s white AI armor contrasts Shep’s iconic dark armor (intentional design)

Concept art for Ryder involved experiments with cloth (cloaks, ponchos, capes - “Pull here to release cloak”) and asymmetrical design elements

For alien design, there’s a few exceptions but humanoid figures are the ME standard and this persisted into MEA

Kett and angara concepts explored striking lines and textures

– From Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

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ryttu3k · 3 years

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I want to have them all on Tumblr, so. Here are my reaction posts, in order, for Resolution of the Daleks and season 12, part 1!

Resolution of the Daleks

Thoughts on Doctor Who - Resolution! Spoilers, obviously!

Okay, negative first, just to get it out of the way. Doctor Who, I really appreciate that you consistently have queer minor characters and queer couples. Just super casual and all, as it should be. Now can you please stop killing off half of said couples? Angstrom's wife, Frankie, now this young guy? It's really not cool.

Don't think the voiceover worked. I feel the prologue would have worked better with just visuals.

Again, Yaz didn't have much to do. The Doctor got a ton of action, Ryan and Graham both had significant interactions with Aaron, Yaz was... just kind of there. I'm hoping that when the show comes back in a year, now that Ryan has largely dealt with his issues, Yaz will get more attention?

UNIT was killed by Brexit?! Fuckin' rude!

Okay, on to the positive!

The Dalek was, frankly, fucking scary. Despite knowing that the Doctor would beat it, obviously, it caused huge swathes of damage and racked up a... rather high body count. Like it felt like a proper threat. Also, its ability to stop the TARDIS tracking it and stuff. Lin's terror felt extremely genuine and it was just nice and horrific overall, like - if it wasn't for the Doctor, it would feel like a genuine threat to the entire Earth.

(Also, it shut down the wifi. On New Years Day. What a monster!)

Oh man that Dalek laughter. Creepy as fuck. The Doctor dragging it in via hologram to dare it to laugh in her face? Fucking iconic.

"I've learned to think like a Dalek." Oof.

Doctor vs Dalek. Not just the physical aspect, but the mental part - the Doctor recognising the seriousness of it, but also having that element of cockiness ("Oh, mate") because, frankly, she's dealt with bigger threats. She's right when she points out that the biggest problem will be if regular humans try to engage it!

Elements of Dark!Doctor when she asks the team - almost desperately - if she gave it enough chances, if she was nice enough. Because the Doctor can get fucking scary around Daleks and she knows it. She's nice. She's friendly. But she's also the Doctor, and the Doctor has done some really damn questionable things to stop the Daleks, and she knows that. Fantastically done and I still desperately want some proper Dark!Doctor.

Really liked the parallels between the Doctor using scrap to make her sonic screwdriver, vs the Dalek using scrap to make its armour. The Doctor makes a tool, the Dalek makes items of war. Of course, well, the Doctor is probably more dangerous just with a swiss army sonic than a Dalek blaster...

I love how the whole, "Dads are complicated... so I've heard" bit could refer to either the loom thing or the Doctor having actual parents or the Doctor being a shitty dad themself XD

Graham was so excited to show off the TARDIS! Like he's just going, "How cool is this?!"

There were some legitimately funny moments! Graham's chair, "I suppose... we'll have to have a... conversation?", "Junkyard chic"... UNIT was killed by Brexit like that's so awful but. But in a kind of funny way.

Okay, now the unsure. Ryan, Graham, and Aaron. Ryan and Graham have sorted out their issues - but Aaron is still such a big overshadowing part of it that it's a bit of a shock when he comes back in. As someone with a similarly shit biological father, I was completely empathising with Ryan in the coffee shop conversation. And I do understand why they wanted reconciliation, so they showed Aaron as acknowledging his bullshit and Ryan ultimately choosing to forgive and save him.

But it's just... not that easy. It's not all going to be perfect just because they stopped a Dalek together. Aaron's neglect hurt Ryan really badly, and it just felt... too easy? Like it helped that Aaron was genuinely contrite, and that he had that good stepfather talk with Graham, but just... yeah, not sure how I feel about it, honestly.

The Doctor's first words to him being, "You weren't at Grace's funeral. Ryan waited for you, you let him down" were so, so good. Like the Doctor is just going "fuck you I'm his father now". Like tbh I think she was 100% prepared to yeet him off the TARDIS and be done with it. Like damn don't emotionally hurt one of her crew.

Some wonderfully savage lines, though. The Doctor's, "You're almost making up for your parenting deficit!"; Aaron and Ryan's, "Is that how you talk to your dad?" "I don't know, he's not been around"; Graham's fucking smirk when Ryan pointedly calls him 'Gramps'.

I did see a suggestion that would have made it much better - instead of the Dalek capturing Aaron, it captures Ryan. First, it ups the threat in the mind of the Doctor and Team TARDIS - this isn't some dickhead, this is one of them. And instead, it's Aaron who reaches out to Ryan, Aaron who risks his life, Aaron who has to come through for Ryan, instead of the other way around. Also would have tied in beautifully with, "Family isn't about DNA, or a name. It's about what you do, and you haven't done enough."

Also, 'srs tech skillz'. With a Z. Doctor why.

In conclusion, I am going to fight Nigel Farage for killing UNIT.

Spyfall part 1

Current response to Doctor Who: making a near-literal SDKFJHGSDASDKFH sound, grabbing a cushion, nearly throWING THE CUSHION.

More intelligent commentary when my brain comes back online.

Okay. Am calm. Am good! We're good.

MAJOR SPOILERS for Doctor Who: Spyfall, part 1!

So yeah I actually literally screamed (kind of... scream-laugh-holy-shit-yes). Like, even before Dhawan finished speaking the, "Or should I say spy... Master?" line because of the way he had said 'spymaster' in full in the line before and there's nothing that grabs my brain like that one word in that one context. It wasn't quite as mindblowing as the Utopia reveal, since, let's face it, it's only been a season since we last saw that magnificant arsehole, but still.

(Actually, since I didn't watch Twelve's run, the last time I saw them was exactly a decade ago in The End of Time, broadcast New Years Day 2010. And I still fucking cry over, "Get out of the way." So. That may have been why I literally screamed lmao)

I mean. It's the Master. I can't not. They're my favourite jerk. This is probably slightly concerning.

Anyway. Comments!

The good

Episode was just flat-out exciting. It reminded me both of the Three and Ten eras, a bit? Fun gadgets, fancy suits, and what ends up being a giant game! Did start wondering when they were talking about spies and codes and stuff. It's basically a puzzle that's been set up for the Doctor to solve. Plus, the way she was pretty much enlisted into it! Thirteen and Dhawan!Master might end up having a more Pertwee-Delgado-esque dynamic, maybe? I would be down for that!

(My introductory episode to the Master was The Mind of Evil. Let's just put it that way XD)

"I'm her best enemy." <3

I mean, in retrospect, isolated house full of high-tech stuff and a wall full of books about the Doctor... oh honey. Long, looong game of playing Spies and Conspiracies just for, apparently, the sheer funsies of it. Oh, honey. They're such a disaster and I love them.

The reveal scene, Jodie's acting. The way she just... freezes and hunches in on herself. She's been hiding her past more than other Doctors have in the past, and suddenly, here is her past!! Right here!! Laughing and joking and right there in front of her! And she's just like, "Ohhh shit, I was not ready to have this conversation again..."

Yasmin and Ryan's dynamic. I do like that they split up the usual combos of Thirteen-Yasmin and Graham-Ryan for once, because I do like seeing the way they play off each other! It makes them feel more cohesive as a group. I liked Ryan trying to comfort Yasmin after her experience.

Post-reveal, I'm now wondering if the weird zappy forest thing is the Master's TARDIS? Something to do with changing and processing DNA into something else? Something based around neurons, with the electric travelling system? Am also wondering what happened to Yasmin while in there, since she seemed to be processed in some way, and I'm wondering if she had part of her DNA rewritten as well - or maybe if she's been replaced entirely, like she's currently piloting an alien version of her own body while her actual self is still in there. They did already do that with Flesh!Amy, though.

Once this arc is over, I think Thirteen is definitely going to have to sit down and tell the Fam who the hell she actually is. Graham is having some serious questions, and the Master was definitely egging that on, pre-reveal.

How much do I love that even in a tux, the Doctor still has the culottes and boots? A lot, that is how much. Also, how much do I love the Doctor in a suit and on a motorbike? A lot, that is how much.

"I've had an upgrade." <3

Thirteen playing Snap. It's okay, Thirteen, you still win my heart <3

"Worst! Uber! Ever!!"

"Kisses!" Yes, we know ;) They've been texting! Someone write me a WhatsApp chat fic with plenty of subtext and double meaning, I require it. Also, memes. You know it's true. The Master isn't a Time Lord, they're a Meme Lord.

"Everything you think you know is a lie." Season hook? :o

The hmm

Main concern is how they're handling the Master's characterisation? Last we saw, they were so ready to jump the Doctor ship. Now it's back to games. Kind of wondering if that means the Master is just at the point of being resigned that they and the Doctor just don't work and so is going back to games because at least it makes them happy, but I'm happy to wait until next week to see how things play out!

Did see a suggestion that this is the Master from one of the alternate universes (or at least that seems to be the general consensus on why there were multiple maps), so not actually necessarily the same version as Missy. Alternatively, this could actually be a pre-Missy version! Maybe between Simm!Master and Missy, since we never actually see that regeneration?

Actually, if this is the one immediately before Missy and this two-parter ends with the Master regenerating and we actually do get Thirteen and Missy together on screen I may cry.

(Like I'm aro-ace and agender but I'm still so gay for both of them. There is no word other for this emotion other than 'I'm gay'.)

I kind of wish someone had double-checked the name of the company because VOR running the world is. Is. "Right now, VOR is more powerful than most nations." Just. *pinches bridge of nose* Like okay you know how we say 'oh yeah just google it' 'yeah I googled it' are they really gonna say 'yeah I just VO

'I'm going to V

I can't say it. I can't.

Apparently the Australia scenes were filmed in South Africa. Kind of assumed it wasn't really Australia as soon as I saw actually greenery in the background h e h.

Highkey wish I could have seen Missy and Thirteen together. Dhawan!Master is very fun so far but. Missy and Thirteen. See comment above about the Master's characterisation!

...ABC are you really going to keep to Thursday night broadcasts even after the UK switches their Sunday nights / our Monday mornings? Well that's a good way to guarantee I'll be watching them online first! I was happy to wait twelve hours or so so I could watch it with Mum, but like hell I'm going to wait three and a half days!

In conclusion, am dead, send help, is it Monday morning yet?

Spyfall part 2

Thoughts on Doctor Who: Spyfall, part 2!

GALLIFREY LOOOOORE.

Oh man I'm hyped. We got a teeny teaser to the Timeless Child way back last decade but now we may actually get to see what the fuck is going on. And hell, if nothing else, at least the discovery is being teased to be so devastating it did undo Missy's characterisation. If this incarnation of the Master is after her, at least. Still not necessarily anything to suggest that. The Master will likely be recurring over this season, so we'll find out more, at least!

God, the Master is so fucked up. Like. He's seen something apparently so massively traumatic that he had to destroy his own planet and legitimately does look broken by it? Unless he was acting, but I did not get that impression from the message at the end. And the only way he can think of to get the Doctor's attention is to start his old tricks? Not sure if it's better or worse for him to be pre-Missy tbh.

It's just... such an interesting dynamic. Also I really want to read into the whole... scene where the Master asks the Doctor to kneel and call him 'Master' in front of everyone - then, when she does (defiantly! Stubbornly!), he... kneels to be at the same level as her. Like, "I'm going to play these BDSM-esque power games with you but when it comes down to it, I still consider us equal."

Anyway the Master is def a service top.

This comment from Tumblr user upslapmeal:

"'why would it stop? I mean how else would I get your attention’ what did I say about the Master being like a cat knocking things off shelves"

I mean. Yeah.

"Contact." Old school.

The Companions! They get a capital C because they were rad as hell. I love them all deciding that what they do next is: carry on to save the world. Like they're all heroic af without the Doctor and it's so good.

"Don't make me do a soft-shoe shuffle!"

And questioning at the end, oooh man. There are some Implications there, yeah. They've found out some surface information, yes, but no real hint at the deeper trauma. And given what this coming season is hinting at, I strongly suspect we will indeed be getting that deeper trauma and maybe even Dark!Doctor. Gallifrey does tend to bring it out of them...

The whole on-the-run thing seemed to definitely be a callback to Sound of Drums. Uh, what's that going to do long-term? Send out a worldwide message saying, "Sorry, our bad, they're fine"? I mean, last time that happened... okay, Jack was already with Torchwood and so is used to Not Really Existing, but Martha definitely couldn't go back to fuckin' medical school. She ended up at UNIT and then went independent. They did not return to their normal lives.

Barton: needs a goddamn punch. He killed his mother what the fuck. On the plus side, at least he seems to have thoroughly destroyed his career? Be interesting to see if he reappears later, you don't go from the most powerful person on the planet to massive pariah overnight without Repercussions.

On to our guest characters! I hate to brag but I guessed who Ada was as soon as I heard her first name and saw her outfit. I mean the computers theme was already there, who else would she be? :D And I admittedly didn't know who Noor Inayat Khan was except in passing, but still. Little upset about the erased memories (Donna ;_; ), but I can see why the Doctor did it and like... this way, I'm glad they were able to avoid the implications of, "Ada only developed computing because she had already seen the future." Like people said that with Rosa Parks even though the Doctor said explicitly to only ensure there were enough seats filled and the act itself was all Rosa, so they may have wanted to play it safe.

I... really want to comment on how Ada definitely was crushing on the Doctor (and really, who wouldn't?), but she was a real person so I shall avoid those implications. (But really though!)

Doctor how many times have you been in someone's liver. This is some Magic School Bus Inside The Human Body bullshit and I love it.

Doctor's recording: "First of all, you're not gonna die! Second of all, don't talk back to the screens, obviously I'm a recording and I can't hear ya. Third, don't panic. Especially you, Graham."

Graham, panicking: "I'M NOT PANICKING!"

Doctor's recording: "Yes, you were! And I did just say, don't talk back to the screens!"

Graham: "????!?!!"

I want an entire series of the Master having a really infuriating seventy-seven years on Earth. Please.

Comments on continuity issues regarding that, "It's worse than Jodrell Bank!" "Did I ever apologise for that?" "No." "Good." exchange XD;; Like people are going, "Continuity error!! It was the Pharos Project, not Jodrell Bank!!" and like. Pharos was a project. Jodrell Bank is an observatory. You can do projects at observatories. Also, you can refer to projects by location, too. Am I referring to the Canberra Deep Space Communication Project or Tidbinbilla Station? Both! They refer to the same thing! In the Whoniverse, they likely did the Pharos Project at Jodrell Bank, and just had some lighthearted bantz about that time where the Master killed the Doctor, no biggie.

So, onwards to... an apparently unrelated episode for next week! Also, the Kassavin? Still there. Like. The Master only gave suggestions. They still have all those agents everywhere! They're still ready to act! And yeah, now they have the Master in their hands, so... I wonder if they'll make the Timeless Child a long, ongoing arc, and have the much more immediate threat of the Kassavin as the season finale?

Orphan 55

Thoughts on Doctor Who - Orphan 55!

...whew.

First thought: anvilicious, but some anvils need to be dropped, because, uh, have you seen the world lately.

It feels like quite a brittle episode? Even beyond the immediate tension of 'there are large angry creatures trying to kill everyone', there's just this sense of... like, tension. There's the tension between Benni and Vilma, which at first is kind of a sweet tension then becomes a life-threatening and sad tension. There's the tension between Roger Parslow Silas and his dad, with Silas not being taken seriously (although I do think him running out while they're in life-threatening danger is a bit much). The obvious and major tension between Bella and Kane that drives the whole episode, yes.

And there's also the tension amongst Team TARDIS! The episode starts with the Doctor still in Some Kinda Way about last week, and I felt a bit of tension between Yaz and Ryan? She seemed rather unimpressed by Bella, at any rate. I do like how organic the relationship between Ryan and Graham feels, at least. "It ain't the aliens that are gonna kill me, it’s worrying about you!"

Set and costume building, I felt, was kind of... eh? I liked how Tranquility itself looked, but the tunnels looked Very Generic, and some of the looks I felt didn't really work. Silas and his dad's green hair just looked very obviously fake, and I saw a description of Hyph3n-with-a-three looking like a cross between a Jellicle Cat and John Candy in Spaceballs (which... yeah, honestly). And I'm not sure about the Dregs, although I did initially have the thought that whatever the original inhabitants of the planet were, they must have been humanoid was amusingly accurate...

"I just pulled this out of a friend of mine! >:("

"Oh! ...We do not make any judgments on our guests and fully support any way you choose to enjoy yourself here at Tranquility Spa! ^_^;;"

"... ... ...It wasn't recreational! o.O"

God you could feel Hyph3n-with-a-three's embarrassment...

"If I had crayons and half a can of Spam, I could build you from scratch!" Excuse me I am at least Tofurky.

Also a logical issue on the whole journey to find Benni, because frankly, it just wasn't... sensible. Okay, bring a kid. Father of the year right there. Okay, bring an old woman. Granted, she could have insisted because it was her man-friend they were looking for, but surely she would have known she would slow them down? Her 'heroic sacrifice' felt very wasted, because dammit, she could have survived if she had stayed in the Dome where it was at least a bit safer!

"At least three eighths of a plan, right here! ...Two eights. I'll be honest, all I've got is the letter 'P'..."

So the Doctor is almost at the point of passing out from oxygen loss but hang on, let her first indulge her curiosity...

The sheer existence of orphan planets is very depressing. The sheer fact that there's at least fifty-five is very depressing.

There's an interesting comment about how straight after discussion of the reveal, the first shot of the preview is the Statue of Liberty. Very Planet of the Apes! (No apes next time, just Tesla vs Edison!) Also feeling a strong connection to Midnight (stunning resort on dangerous planet with a very personal enemy), and I saw a comment about Thirteen unintentionally The-End-Of-The-World-ing the Fam (and making a connection between 'very angry trees' and the Forests of Cheem). Bit of Ravolox. Bit of... fuck what was it... Curse of Fenric.

Although, we know that the Earth will eventually be consumed by the sun, and it was done in a way that was like... it was its time. This was not its time, was a colossal fuck-up on a planetary scale (and the Doctor continues to be 'eat the rich'), but it's also only one potential future. Which is good, because that got dark. Even more than The End of the World, even more than Utopia, even more than fuckin' Frontios, because this is the near-future. The shots we saw of the destruction were modern day! That was the Dome of the Rock you saw getting bombed!

"Be smarter than what made you." PAGING THE GOVERNMENT...

Going to put it on a solid... maybe 7/10? Some really good elements in there, but also some clunkers, and unfortunately not a patch on the same writer's It Takes You Away, which was one of the strongest of the last season.

Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror

Thoughts on Doctor Who - Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror!

Opinion before episode: man, Tesla's cool. Opinion after episode: man, Tesla is fuckin' cool! :D That was a well-done personality-based historical, absolutely - I think it's my second-favourite personality-based historical only to Rosa (there are other pseudo-historical based ones set in the past that I love, but they're not personality-based; the Human Nature duology is a good example).

But yeah, Tesla just came across as a really, really cool character. Genius and he knew it, yes, and the real Tesla did have some questionable views (sexism, mostly), but otherwise the archetypal Idealistic Genius who wants to change the world for the better. Contrast with Edison, who was... a businessman. With, like, a really punchable face. Still pretty intelligent, but... very, very punchable. I've read about the Tesla-Edison feud before and always sided with Tesla, and let's face it, so did the writer XD

Good mix of character combinations - with a lot of characters, it's easy for someone to get sidelined, but this managed to handle Thirteen and the Fam, and Tesla, Dorothy, and Edison, pretty well. There were some neat combinations, like Ryan and Dorothy bonding over the sense of adventure, and Graham and Edison's confrontation; I also really loved the whole conversation between Thirteen and Tesla on the joy of just... creating. There's actually a very nice overlap between arts and sciences.

Antagonists - not bad? I feel a lot of people were expecting the Racnoss, and there was such a similarity that I would have liked at least a throwaway line about how the Skithra were related or something. Ooh man she definitely brought out Dark!Doctor, though. Teleporting the queen back to the ship, specifically so she can be fried? I mean, she might have survived it. Might. And just that fantastic little change of expression when the queen asks the Doctor if she's ever seen a dead planet before! Whittaker pulled that one off.

There's a very interesting compare and contrast between the Skithra and Edison, I found. Thirteen has her speech about how once the Skithra are gone, they won't be remembered. Caput. Forgotten. They left nothing behind. Compare and contrast to Edison, who was openly accused of using other people's work, but who's able to learn from his mistakes, end on an even(ish) setting with Tesla, and who does get remembered. Which kind of stings, honestly, if you look at Tesla's actual history.

Like. Apparently that, "The man just didn't understand the American sense of humour," line was an actual historical line, according to Tesla's own records. The absolute main reason for the difference in fame and recognition is that Tesla was a genius who didn't know how to market. Edison was a marketer who could invent a bit. So in conclusion Edison is a dick and Tesla needs more respect, the end.

Favourite lines and scenes:

Tesla: "Is - is this your own design?" Thirteen: "I made it! Mainly out of spoons! :D" Tesla: "You're an inventor! :D" Thirteen: "I have my moments." Tesla: "I knew it! So you... so, you can understand how it feels, you know, when you have an idea, and - and to make it real. I don't think there's any greater thrill!" Thirteen: "I couldn't agree more." Tesla: "You... you spoke of aliens. People here laugh at the very idea." Thirteen: "But not you." Tesla: "Well, apparently I'm not like other people. It can be difficult, you know, to feel no one else sees the world the way you do. It's like you're, uh..." Thirteen: "...out of place."

Graham: "Yeah, still. I bet you'd jump at the chance to have him back working for you, wouldn't ya?" Edison: "Yeah?" Graham: "Yeah!" Edison: "How d'you figure that?" Graham: "'Cause I had a supervisor like you at my old depot. And men like you don't pay a bloke that much attention unless you think there's a payout comin'."

Thirteen: "I wouldn't go killing me and Yaz. 'Cause Yaz... can tell you what this is." Yaz: "It's a camera!" Thirteen: "Bingo!" *FLASH!*

Edison: "I couldn't figure it out either." Tesla: "The internal dimensions transcend the external." Thirteen: *GRIN* Edison: ._.

Thirteen: "You do realise, it's killing Edison that they want you and not him? ;D"

Graham: "Don't worry. This ain't our first rodeo!" Ryan: "We've never been to a rodeo." Graham: "...you're not helping, Ryan..."

Thirteen: "And what are you queen of, exactly? A stolen ship and second-hand guns? A queen of shreds and patches. You're not a ruler, you're a parasite." Queen: "And what are you? So clever, stealing onto my ship, taking what I claim as mine. But where has it got you? No weapons. No armour. No escape. Just the desperate hope you might change my mind." Thirteen: "No, we are way past that. I gave you your chance." Queen: "A chance to be like you?" Thirteen: "A chance to evolve. But you were too stupid to take it. When you die, there'll be nothing left behind - just a trail of blood and other people's brilliance. No one will even know you existed."

(Side note: I love that this speech was actually in front of the companions. They're starting to see that things are Not Okay.)

Thirteen: "Don't give up." Yaz: "Whatever anyone says." Tesla: "Well, let them talk. The present is theirs. I work for the future... and the future is mine."

Favourite incorrect lines:

Thirteen and Tesla, firing at the ship: "VIBE CHECK!"

Fugitive of the Judoon

I'M GONNA... NEED A HOT MOMENT TO PROCESS THAT...

WELL I. UH. OKAY.

lmao I'm serious I don't even know where to begin.

Uh, some very disorganised comments on Doctor Who - Fugitive of the Judoon!

I squealed when I heard Jack's voice then saw him in the flesh. I gasped audibly when 'Ruth' broke the glass. I yelped when we saw the buried TARDIS. I MAY HAVE SCREAMED A LITTLE WHEN 'RUTH' INTRODUCED HERSELF.

(Also can we talk about her outfit. That was on point.)

I'm getting a very... very early vibe? She didn't know what the sonic screwdriver was, and that was introduced with Troughton. Since we saw the Hartnell-Troughton regeneration, she must be pre-Hartnell? Maybe a Doctor whose memories were rewritten to the point that they thought the Hartnell incarnation was the earliest? Not to mention that was a pretty old-school-looking TARDIS!

Alternatively, maybe between Troughton and Pertwee? Either option has some inconsistency - if she's post Troughton, she should have known what the sonic was, although it admittedly did look very different. Plus, her TARDIS is already its police box shape, which was implied to have set in the junkyard. Also, we never actually do see the regeneration between Two and Three, and it could explain why Gallifrey was after her - she escaped after her trial after The War Games!

Definitely early, though.

Alternatively alternatively, Thirteen actually does say 'time is swirling around me'. Maybe an alternate timeline. Something to tie back to the Timeless Child?

"I've lived for thousands of years, so long I've lost count. I've had so many faces. How long have you known me? You don't know me. Not even a little bit."

That wasn't just aimed at the companions. I feel that was aimed at the Doctor themself.

(Related: the response from the fam was flat-out beautiful. Doesn't matter who she was or who she'll be. They know her now, and they love her.)

Just. Wow. Wow.

Really cool note from Twitter - disguised name was Ruth Clayton. Ruth = 'friend, companion'. Clayton = 'of the Earth'. She literally named herself 'friend of the Earth'.

"You're probably a bit confused right now."

I mean. Yeah. Confused and intrigued and what.

"Don't do points! I do points! Points are my thing!"

Jack. Jack. Smooching Graham, hitting on all the companions, getting into Shenanigans! The Lone Cyberman - I wonder if that's a totally different crisis that isn't even related to the current Gallifrey-Timeless Child one? The more important part is Jack's presence - the presence of another time traveller with a... unique relationship with the universe. The actual warning could be a red herring, but Jack showing up anywhere in the first place is a sign that something is happening with time?

Orphan 55 had a timeline that may or may not have been the 'real' one. Being only a potential future kind of doesn't work with what we know of established DW continuity, so I'm liking the 'alternate timeline' theory, maybe?

Ryan: "I liked him. Kind of cheesy."

Yaz: "But good cheesy."

Thirteen, smiling: "That's Jack."

Graham just standing there going, "He kissed me tho? ...Wasn't bad, actually."

"Is she safe?" Jack, honestly, is she ever safe?

"When she needs me... I'll be there." Oh yeah, he's so coming back later this season.

Also, Judoon, chameleon arch, the Master, Jack - getting big season 29 vibes here and that's a big thumbs up for me because that's my favourite season. We just need Martha to make an appearance now!

...hehe honestly, between Jodie's entire existence, and now, in the span of five episodes, introducing Dhawan!Master, Gat, and now Jo Martin as the first black female Doctor, and reintroducing Jack, one of the most overtly and openly queer characters on the series, the 'Doctor Who is too PC!' bunch are going to be so mad XD

"A platoon of Judoon... near the moon." / "Look at you, your platoon of Judoon near the... that lagoon..."

Man. The close-up in the very first shot of the watch. Nice tie-in.

"The Doctor never uses weapons!" "I know! Shut up! >.>"

Where do the Kasaavin come into play? Is this something they've done by integrating themselves throughout time and space? Maybe they're fraying the fabric?

My mind is blown. I can't wait for the rest of this season :D

[Part 2 - Praxeus to The Timeless Children]

#doctor who #companion love #best enemies #long post

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wln559wln559 · 3 years

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anothergracekellyblog · 7 years

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Taken from Good Housekeeping, May 1977

A noted novelist visits Princess Grace and finds laughter and tears beneath her serene armor of “glacial perfection.”

The Other Princess Grace by Budd Schulberg

When I was invited to write the scenario for a television special on the life of Princess Grace of Monaco, my gut reaction was: What an odd bit of casting. I write about prizefighters, brawny longshoremen, the fight for survival in the inner cities. I root for underdogs.

Princess Grace wasn't exactly my idea of an underdog. Her father was rich and she is immaculately beautiful. Her career from Philadelphia to New York to Hollywood to Monaco seemed to be up, up, up to the top of the mountain. For a child of Hollywood who had been raised with - and, accordingly, took a rather dim view of - movie stars, and of establishments in general (from film moguls to European royalty), a pilgrimage to the crystal chandelier world of Princess Grace Patricia Kelly Grimaldi of Monte Carlo would not seem to be my cup of tea, or should I say, my Venetian glass of champagne.

Is that a nice way to talk about a princess? A princess, especially an American born princess, is the stuff and the fluff of fairy tales. Hans Christian Andersen (with an assist from F. Scott Fitzgerald) should be writing this story instead of a follower of the fight game, a self-appointed expert on Muhammad Ali.

But it's a little late in the day for Andersen or Fitzgerald. And so...

Once upon a time there was a beautiful Irish-American girl whose grandfather had sailed as an immigrant boy in search of his fortune in the New World. If we had told John Henry Kelly as he stepped off the gangplank of a creaky old sailing ship in Boston that his granddaughter would return to the Old World and become the Princess Grace married to Rainier III and help to rule a sovereign principality from a 200-room palace that is one of the most majestic living museums in all Europe, that sturdy greenhorn would have put us in our place.

Grandfather Kelly made his way in the green world of 19th-century New England. His sons moved on to Philadelphia, where they prospered. Patrick, the oldest, made a success of the construction business and Grace's father, Jack Kelly, went to work for him as a hod-carrier and a bricklayer. A fierce second-generation competitor, Jack thrived on work. He could lay bricks fast and make money fast and row fast - somehow he found time before and after work to train for hours every day in a racing shell on the Schuylkill river and to become the national sculling champion. Wife Margaret was an ideal mate, not just a successful magazine cover girl but an athlete, too: the first co-ed physical education teacher at the University of Pennsylvania. “Way ahead of her time,” Princess Grace would reminisce, “the completely well-rounded modern woman. Now there's someone you could do a special on!”

We were sitting with her in the drawing room of the Grimaldi’s Paris townhouse in a courtyard of lovely old houses just off the Avenue Foch. When we rang the buzzer, she came to the door herself, with a warm and easy welcome to Bill Allyn, who would produce the TV special. Allyn had been a friend of hers from live television days in the early 1950's when they were both young actors scrounging around New York for work.

I was pleasantly surprised at the informality. No liveried servants, no bowing or scraping. Dressed in slacks and a light brown sweater with another shade of brown sweater over it, she might have been a suburban housewife in her late thirties, an especially pretty housewife. Marvelous eyes, marvelous nose, marvelous bones, marvelous skin. Yet neither in dress nor in manner anyone's conception of a fairy-tale princess. More like the girl next door, albeit the beautiful girl next door, 20 years later. I had pictured the cool grace of the Hitchcock movies and palace receptions. Instead, in a most friendly manner she led us into the drawing room, tastefully furnished but lived-in and warm. A big old dog called Andy bounded at her side. Chatting and reminiscing with Bill, she was shy and diffident with me, a watchful stranger. But quicker to laugh than I would have expected.

Spread on the coffee table were snapshots of a recent family trip to the Sahara. "I'm the family photographer," she said. "I really think these are pretty good, don't you?"

She picked one out, a moody sandscape relieved in the distance by what looked like an oblong glass. A mirage, she said proudly. "That's awfully hard to get. Rainier didn’t seem so impressed. But even when you can see it with the naked eye, it's tricky to pick up with a camera."

We asked about her family, the Philadelphia Kellys. Jack Kelly Sr. had been a driving spirit whose motto in life was, "I don't care what you do but whatever it is, don't just be good at it, be the best!"

He had gone to England's Henley Regatta to race in the Diamond Sculls, but had been forbidden to enter because he had the hands of a working man. "This is an event for gentlemen." A generation later, the Kelly family had gone to England to cheer Grace's brother "Kell" on as he won the cup that had been denied his father.

"There aren't any words that can do justice to my feelings." Father Kelly had said. "I feel a tremendous sense of pride for Kell. He's the one that matters, not the thwarted ambitions of an old guy who once got his fingers publicly burned over here because he was born without a silver spoon in his mouth."

"It must have been a heavy load," I said to Princess Grace, "to keep up with the Kellys, to keep up with yourself - to be the best."

She crossed her legs and thought a moment, as if there were still a challenge in the question, some lingering sense of childhood hurt. We had heard from friends that not only had she been a shy child, but rather sickly, too - unlike her outgoing, tomboyish older and younger sisters. She liked to stay in her room and read, draw, sew and dream, try to turn her introspection into poetry.

"Yes, it was - it is - a heavy load," Princess Grace said. The silence that followed seemed to hold its own inaudible sentences: Loads are to be carried. Burdens are to be borne. Challenges are to be met. And overcome. You could almost hear the convent sisters teaching her character with a stinging ruler. And the voice of Jack Kelly Sr. echoed in the room: "Be the best, Grace Patricia, be the best!"

UNCLE WON PULITZER

The mood changed suddenly when we talked of her two theatrical uncles: Walter Kelly toured the vaudeville stages of the world as "The Virginia Judge," and the famous playwright of the 1920's, George Kelly, won the Pulitzer Prize for Craig's Wife. Grace warmed to his memory. "I think Uncle George was a great American playwright, but there's a whole new generation that doesn't know him as well as I wish they did. He knew his people. Exactly how they talked and what they felt. Both The Torchbearers and The Show-Off are wonderful plays, human, funny and moving. In his preface to The Show-Off, the great humorist Heywood Broun wrote, ‘This is the best comedy yet written by an American.’”

Then it was Uncle George who influenced you to go into the theater?" She thought a moment.

"We were always doing plays. I was Cinderella in my sister Peggy's play when I was twelve, and I had a part in an Old Academy Players production in our hometown, called Don't Feed the Animals. I did Peter Pan as our graduation play at Stevens - but we were talking about Uncle George."

Clearly, of the two theatrical careers, she was much more at ease with George's than Grace's. "Uncle George was one of the most fascinating men I ever met. He could remember every poem he ever read. He loved poetry and language and the theater. He could recite favorite poems all night long. So wise, witty, human - there was simply no one like him in the whole world."

I had once been aware of, and then half-forgotten, the George Kelly-Grace Kelly family relationship. Certainly I hadn't realized until now what a driving force it has been in her life.

Then, with both of them remembering lines from another of Uncle George's plays, Behold, the Bridegroom, Bill Allyn and Grace (for she was all actress now and not at all princess) fell to reminiscing about those live shows they had done in what is now looked back on nostalgically as "the Golden Age of television": Studio One, Lights Out, Philco, The Kraft Playhouse. They were both talking at once. "Those were really insane days... absolutely hysterical... things are so much more ordered now, on film or tape, but live, going on in front of all those viewers... how did we ever get through it?"

"It was like living on the edge of a precipice!" Grace was laughing. "I'll never forget one time I was playing a scene in bed with all my clothes on under the covers so I'd be ready to run into the next scene dressed. But the camera didn't stop in time and they didn't cut away, so there I was, on the screen getting out of bed with all my clothes on!"

Now she and Bill were trading bloopers. She was up on her feet, standing in front of the mantel, trying to stop from laughing so she could demonstrate a dreadful mishap in The Cricket On The Hearth. "It was supposed to be snowing and a wonderful English character man and I were coming to bring an orphanage a hot pie for Christmas. The prop men were throwing salt down but we were told to walk close to the window under the eaves, so it wouldn't actually fall on us, because there we'd be with snow on our costumes that wouldn't melt when we got inside. We were to wave through the window, and the pie was too hot. So I set it down and the old actor stepped in it. He came limping into the place with half the pie spread over his shoe. "Look what we brought you - this nice, hot pie - Merry Christmas!"

INFECTIOUS LAUGHTER

As I listened to her laugh, I thought of all the people who had warned me about her "glacial perfection." But the laughter was infectious - from a real live girl with an appealing, self-deprecating sense of humor.

She was still getting money from home in those early theatrical days, but that streak of independence led her into modeling to pay for the acting classes. Before she was 19, she was earning enough to move out of the Barbizon Hotel for women and into her own apartment. A nesting sort of person, she enjoyed fixing up the place.

"Remember giggle belly?" Allyn said.

"Giggle belly!" Again Grace laughed as she tried to describe this silly game. A group of young actors would lie on the floor with their heads on each other's stomachs and tell funny stories that would make their heads bounce up and down as their bellies giggled. "We did a lot of silly things," they both agreed. "And we all laughed a lot. But along with the fun there was hard work... "

"Like Strindberg's The Father," we prompted.

That was Grace's Broadway debut, with her name in small print under the starred names of Raymond Massey and Mady Christians. Grace still says she only got the role because both stars were tall and her rivals for the part were all too short. "Nonsense,” says Raymond Massey. "She got the part because she showed the most promise. All through the rehearsal period we were impressed with her earnestness, her professionalism and her good manners. She was organized and dedicated. Between rehearsals she would ask Mady if she could sit in her dressing room and talk about the theater. She was a delight to have in the company. A rare kind of young person who had a hunger to learn and to improve herself."

"It ran only a short time," Grace said, "but it was wonderful experience."

Young Grace Kelly soon became a favorite cover girl, so it was inevitable that Hollywood would tap her on the shoulder - Hollywood personified in the ebullient, English-fracturing Russian director, Gregory Ratoff, who screen tested her for a somewhat less than immortal film entitled Taxi.

The Taxi story turns out to be another funny bit. I'm not studying her anymore, I'm laughing with her. It has ceased being a job and has become a vacation.

The role in Taxi, she told us, called for an Irish brogue. Although her name was Kelly, she sounded not at all like forebears from County Mayo. More like a proper Philadelphian. But, like any aspiring actress, she assured Mr. Ratoff that the brogue was no problem. Then she ran home to ask how one went about acquiring an overnight brogue.

"One of my friends had a maid just ονer from Ireland I hurried oνer to listen to her speak. But she was too shy to open her mouth. I'd ask questions to try and get her talking, and all she'd say was, ‘Yes, Mum,’ or ‘No, Mum.’ So I handed her the newspaper and asked if she'd mind reading it out loud. The poor girl finally admitted that she could hardly read. I put together what thought might pass for a brogue - and flunked the screen test."

But Grace Kelly had what Frances Fuller, head of the American Academy, described as, "A very special quality. Also the face of a Grecian goddess, but it was that extra something that is more than beauty, some special poise, an inner light."

When her New York agent, Edith Van Cleve, described that "special quality" to Jay Kanter, a youthful but influential Hollywood agent, brogue or no brogue, Kelly was movie bound.

AGAIN THE PRINCESS

"You must be getting hungry?" was Grace's answer to the first question about Hollywood. “If it's alright with you, I've made a reservation at a club nearby - the food is quite good." She rose briskly. Suddenly she seemed the princess - a gracious, down-to-earth princess, but clearly in command. Now it was difficult to imagine her ever playing "giggle belly" or impersonating an old actor with a meat pie on his shoe.

A blonde, middle-aged, bejeweled houseguest materialized. A friend from Grace's Philadelphia days. Having lived at least four different lives in four different times, places and worlds, Grace cultivates a capacity for not losing touch with anyone of them.

There was a waiting chauffeur and limousine. The princess asked us if we'd prefer to walk. The gentlest of commands. People who recognized her pretended not to, as if they understood that she preferred it that way.

We were ushered to a round table in a corner of the Club Rothschild with the most muted of fanfare. Luncheon conversation was easy but disjointed because Grace's houseguest was something of a dangling participle to a life story I was trying to piece together. It was like a flashback to Philadelphia adolescence while I waited to move forward to Hollywood early maturity. The princess was being the perfect hostess, somehow managing to talk old times with her hometown friend and films and filmmakers with us. On her way out, I noticed that fellow members of the club stepped back or moνed to one side so they could gain a clear view without being ostentatious. She pretended not to notice.

Back in the comfortable and now familiar drawing room, we were returning to the Hollywood of my youth. After an uneventual role in a forgotten movie called Fourteen Hours, Grace was on her way to the most remarkable five-year career in the history of motion pictures. A mouthful of a statement, but there it is. In 60 months, a classically photogenic face, the stamina of a marathon runner, an obsessive drive for self-improvement and a little bit of luck that was parlayed into great gobs of luck by the power of the will, swept Grace Kelly from obscure starlet to international star.

The luck began when Jay Kanter "sold" her to producer Stanley Kramer and director Fred Zinnemann for High Noon. In her big scene, she is finally driven to pick up a rifle and kill the fourth outlaw to save her husband, played by Gary Cooper, after Cooper has dispatched the other three.

A nomination for Best Supporting Actress in Mogambo didn't convince her that she was all that good in it. "I really wasn't," she said straightforwardly. "I was lucky. I was in awfully good hands. I was new in the business."

To master film technique, so different from either live television or the theater, was a challenge. "Be the best!" was echoing in the hall again. But from the outset Grace Kelly was a different cut from the lovely blonde starlets so overjoyed and overwhelmed by Hollywood. With her two sisters to keep her company, she stayed at that Sunset Boulevard relic of lost elegance, the Chateau Marmont. She would only sign her seven-year contract at MGM with the provision that she could go back to New York and the theater every other year. Remembering her as a star on the rise 25 years ago, agents, producers, directors, fellow actors and friends all draw a consistent picture of a girl with a steel trap mind who could not be dissuaded once she set that mind on what she wanted to do.

LUCK AND WILL

Now the Kelly luck embraced the Kelly will: the screen test that had failed her in her quest for a role in Taxi impressed that crustiest of critics, John Ford, who cast her in Mogambo - a remake of Red Dust, with Grace playing the Mary Astor role of the genteel but adulterous wife, Ava Gardner taking on Jean Harlow's "Honey Bear" and Clark Gable repeating the role he had created in the original. Two more disparate ladies than Ms. Kelly and Ms. Gardner could hardly be imagined, but they got on surprisingly well. Ava threw tantrums while Grace tended to her lines and her knitting. Frank Sinatra, in Africa for a visit with his unpredictable Ava, pronounced Grace Kelly the squarest of the squares. Even when columnists hinted out loud that Graces love scenes with Gable were unusually convincing. Grace never lost her Kelly cool.

Back in Hollywood for the Mogambo interiors. Grace and fellow-actress Rita Gam found an unpretentious apartment on Sweetzer Avenue. A pair of hard working bachelor girls, they were an odd couple: the cool golden girl who all ways seemed to have her emotions in check and the dark, exotic beauty whose emotions kept spilling over, "We both kept falling in love with the wrong men,” Rita remembers.

But if there were emotional frustrations and dead ends, the Kelly career kept climbing smoothly upward. The same, now-famous test that Ratoff and 20th Century-Fox had thumbed down caught the eye of another film master, Alfred Hitchcock. There was Dial M for Murder opposite Ray Milland, Rear Window opposite Jimmy Stewart and To Catch A Thief vis-a-vis Cary Grant.

With top directors Zinnemann, Ford and Hitchcock and leading men Cooper Gable and Grant, could a girl ask for anything more? If her name is Grace Kelly, the answer is yes.

We were still sitting in the Paris townhouse, but our minds were now focused on The Country Girl. The Clifford Odets Broadway hit was to be done as a film Every female star in town was after the role of the drunken actor's wife, described by Odets as "the broom behind the door." Grace knew that this was a part that could prove she wasn't just an elegant clotheshorse.

But winning that role was one of the longer shots in the Hollywood sweepstakes. In the first place, MGM, her "home studio," didn't want to loan her out. In the second place, Paramount and the producers of The Country Girl - wanted a bigger name to match the star male leads, William Holden and Bing Crosby. And, finally, even Crosby, looking for all the help he could get in playing a complex and difficult dramatic role, expressed his doubts that the elegant Kelly girl could handle a part so totally out of character for her.

The more opposition, the greater the determination. Grace told Jay Kanter and Lew Wasserman, representing the sinew and brains of the powerful agency that represented her, that they had to get Metro to release her for the role. She had to get this part. Otherwise, she was ready to go on suspension, quit Hollywood and return to New York to concentrate on the theater.

Thus are Hollywood legends born. For the screen test, Edith Head, whose mantelpiece is a parade ground for Best Costume Oscars, and who had dressed Grace in dazzling gowns for those high fashion movies, now helped Grace completely transform herself into the worn and weary country girl. And in the film, which she subsequently made, it wasn't just an outward change. She gave a performance from the inside such as she had never given before. At the end of the first week, a convinced Bing Crosby said, "I'll never open my big mouth again!"

It was Oscar time and Grace was nominated for Best Actress. But everybody agreed that Judy Garland had a lock on the little statue - the sentimental favorite making a dramatic comeback (on and of the screen) in the musical remake of A Star Is Born. But when Bill Holden opened the envelope on the stage of the Pantages Theater, we heard: "And the winner is . . . Grace Kelly!"

That same night Marlon Brando won his Oscar for On The Waterfront. While they posed together, swarming photographers shouted, "Kiss Marlon, Grace! Go ahead, kiss him!”

Suddenly Miss Kelly was from Philadelphia and the Stevens School, and her father was Jack Kelly, Sr. and her uncle was George Kelly, who had won a prize she respected perhaps even more, the Pulitzer. "Don't you think he should kiss me?” asked Grace Patricia, looking cool and elegant in aquamarine satin. On she swept to a party at Romanoff's - the girl who had everything. "Miss Perfect," people were calling her, some in awe and some inspite

"How did it feel?” I asked her in Paris.

Another long pause. "I was unhappy. Now I had fame, but you find that fame is awfully empty if you don't have someone to share it with."

As she sat there remembering that triumphant and lonely night, I found myself thinking of a note that F. Scott Fitzgerald had written to himself while preparing to write his heroine Kathleen in The Last Tycoon: "People simply do not identify with people who have all the breaks. I must endow this girl with a little misfortune.” I was beginning to find it in the girl who had everything.

Meanwhile, back at the Palace...

In 1955, the principality of Monaco was not the flourishing place it is today. The casino was run-down, the ancient palace itself in disrepair. Aristotle Onassis, George Schlee and Gardner Cowles were meeting to discuss how to save it.

Running the troubled affairs of Monaco for seven years, already in his mid-30's and still a bachelor, Prince Rainier III knew he must find a suitable wife with whom to share his life and the duties of the principality. Remembering his own unhappy childhood (a broken home at age six, lonely and disoriented at a British boarding school), Rainier insisted he would not make a marriage of convenience.

LOVE STORY OF THE CENTURY

And so the stage is set for what the press of the world called, "The love story of the century." The Prince had met Grace casually in Monaco when she attended a showing of To Catch A Thief the year before. Now he came to Hollywood on a visit less casual. Then went on to Philadelphia to meet her family.

I begin to ask direct questions and get surprisingly (although less surprised now than when I first met her) direct answers.

"Did you ask your parents for permission to marry Rainier?"

"No, I made up my own mind. I had asked them once or twice before and it hadn't worked out. This time I knew I had to make my own decision."

In fact, Father Kelly disapproved of the match. Rainier seemed like a nice fellow. But European princes are notorious playboys. And she'd be an American living far away in a foreign land.

I took a breath. “Princess Grace, do you mind if I ask you a very personal question?"

"Well, suppose not."

"I'm trying to put myself in your place. Every writer has to do that. It must have been a terribly difficult moment. You were marrying a man you barely knew… going off to a strange world… knowing as a member of your church there was no turning back. Giving up a film career on your way to becoming a superstar - you must have felt... well, how did you feel as you went up that gangplank?"

This time the pause was so long that I thought she resented my question too much to answer. She stared at the floor. When she looked up, her eyes were wet. If she had glacial perfection, the glacier was melting. She spoke quietly, with total simplicity:

"The day we left, our ship was surrounded in fog. And that's the way I felt - as if I were sailing off into the unknown. I had been through several unhappy romances. And although I had become a star, I was feeling lost and confused. I didn't want to drift into my thirties without knowing where I was going in my personal life."

As if she had been conceived by Scott Fitzgerald, here she was, endowed with a certain misfortune.

"I guess I'm a homebody at heart, she was saying. But I didn't have a home. Rainier came into my life at just the right moment. I needed someone who wouldn't be Mr. Grace Kelly. I could see that Rainier was a dedicated man. He had liberal ideas for making the principality more than a playground. While life on board ship must have seemed to the world like one continuous party, I couldn't help looking out into the fog and wondering: ‘What is going to happen to me? What will this new life be like?’ I had never met his family, except for his father, I must say he was wonderfully supportive. But I had no idea how the rest of the family, and the Court, would accept me. What sort of world was waiting for me on the other side of that fog?"

A friend said to Princess Grace, "But it was such a gorgeous wedding. The loveliest royal wedding of the century. European royalty. World celebrities. And so beautifully organized."

Now Princess Grace laughed.

WEDDING SHEER CHAOS

"Chaos! Fifteen hundred invited guests. And most of them wanting extra tickets for the balls and the dinners and the two weddings, first the civil one in the throne room of the palace, then the religious one in the cathedral. The weather was foul. And more journalists than they had covering D-Day. The language barriers! And the palace wasn't ready to be lived in yet. Sheer chaos!"

Bridesmaids, including Rita Gam, remember it as the most romantic time of their lives. But for Princess Grace the summer was long and hot. There was resentment from the traditionalists. What was an American, and from Hollywood at that, doing in their palace? Rainier understood the difficulty of the transition and was of great help to her But there were times, Grace admits, when she would stroll the palace walkway and wonder....

But time is a patient teacher. "Once Caroline was born, and then Albert, I began to feel my roots in Monaco. I was finally beginning to master the language, by osmosis. You might say I worked from the inside out. Now that I had my new family around me, I could move outside the palace into the community."

Once she got her bearings, Grace of Monaco became the most active princess the principality has ever had. Realizing that the local hospital was run down, she found ways to modernize it. She founded a daycare center and enlarged the old people's home. "She brought us heart," an old man says.

"She brought the palace back to life," says a staff member. "Inviting the children of the village into the throne room for a Christmas party. And the flowers everywhere. The Garden Club that grew into an International Flower Arranging Festival. The Children’s Village she set up through the Monegasque Red Cross to help keep together children of the same family who have lost their parents. Bazaars promoting the arts and crafts of Monaco. Using the courtyard of the palace as a natural stage for the International Arts Festival."

I was standing in the courtyard of this ancient castle, with its gracefully winding stairway. The chief of the secretariat was speaking with an enthusiasm he had drawn from Princess Grace. "She wants the palace to be used, to be alive, to help make the world more beautiful. Nureyev has danced here, and Danny Kaye has entertained, and the Paris Opera Ballet, Yehudi Menuhin, the Mexican Ballet Folklórico... She's brought a special quality to the palace that enriches the life of the principality. That's why we love to work with her. She gets up early and never stops.

"It's not just because she's our princess,” says Paul Choisit, the former consul for Monaco in New York, who now runs the secretariat, "I think she's the most unusual person I've ever known And with all the demands on her, the official duties, she still manages to save a great deal of time to share with her children. It's a known fact throughout the principality that Caroline, Albert and Stephanie are blessed with a supporting and loving mother."

I'm back at the townhouse in Paris, having returned from the old-world new-day atmosphere of the palace. We're talking of the ballet school I’ve toured (where teenage ballerinas are schooled by masters), through which Grace of Monaco hopes to restore to its former grandeur the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. The phone rings and it's Arthur Rubinstein. The phone rings again. It's Moscow. The International Television Festival is coming up and her staff has been at work on it, reaching out to renowned guest artists to appear at the gala after the awards. Monaco's Festival, far purer than the now corrupted Film Festival in Cannes, gives awards for such shows as the best on protection of the environment and best children's program, as judged by children themselves.

I see that Grace Kelly of Philadelphia, daughter of self-made millionaire Jack, niece of the Fabulous Uncle George, has found her way through the fog to a creative world she has made for herself on the other side.

As Hans Christian Andersen might have said, "And so the princess lived happily - and busily - ever after."

#grace kelly #princess grace of monaco #budd schulberg #1977 #good housekeeping #sheila scan

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hsews · 6 years

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Some of Patrick Mahomes‘ earliest memories are from baseball clubhouses, where he accompanied his father, Pat, a pitcher for six major league teams. Mahomes, then 5, recalls seeing his father’s Texas Rangers teammate Alex Rodriguez trying to perfect his swing by hitting off a tee before games in 2001.

The frequent sight made an impression on Mahomes that he carries with him now that he’s the starting quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs. The lesson: Athletic ability alone is not enough to carry a player to greatness.

“My favorite player growing up was Alex Rodriguez,” Mahomes said. “I remember … how hard Alex worked. That really stuck with me. You see him hitting off the tee for hours, and you’re like, ‘Man, you’re hitting home runs every single game. Why are you hitting on the tee for two or three hours?’ That’s just stuff you see and you remember as a kid, and it sticks with you.”

Twins pitcher Pat Mahomes with his son Patrick Mahomes, now the starting QB for the Chiefs, back in 1996. Courtesy of Pat Mahomes

Mahomes is one of three Chiefs with fathers who once played major league sports, with veteran punter Dustin Colquitt and rookie offensive lineman Kahlil McKenzie being the others. Colquitt’s father, Craig, punted for two Super Bowl-winning Pittsburgh Steelers teams in the late 1970s. MacKenzie’s dad, Reggie, was a linebacker for two NFL teams more than 20 years ago and is now the general manager of the Oakland Raiders.

Both agreed with Mahomes that when it comes to preparing to play in the NFL, having a dad with a pro sports background has its benefits.

“I don’t know that I ever would have tried football if it wasn’t for his influence,” Colquitt said.

In Colquitt’s case, it’s easy to conclude that he wouldn’t have played in the NFL or been one of its best punters for 13 seasons without his father’s help. Colquitt wore his dad’s black No. 5 Steelers jersey for Halloween as a kid in Knoxville, Tennessee, but he didn’t play football until his senior year of high school.

The team’s kicker broke an ankle shortly before the start of the season. With no other reasonable alternative, the coach put in a call to Colquitt, a soccer player who was planning to play that sport in college.

Despite having a father who had been a professional punter, Colquitt knew nothing about kicking.

“When I first started, I was actually dropping the ball right-handed,” the left-footed Colquitt said. “I was literally crossing over to punt. My dad came to practice one day, and he was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we have got to straighten this out.’ I think it was kind of embarrassing for a punter who had two Super Bowl rings.”

A few instructional sessions with his father got Colquitt straightened out. In one of his first games, he hit a 75-yard punt that got the attention of the coaches at the University of Tennessee, where his father kicked in college. They asked Colquitt to walk on, and he did, cancelling his plans to play soccer at Brown.

“It was literally only because of my dad’s last name,” Colquitt said.

But Colquitt kicked well enough his first season at Tennessee to earn a scholarship. He punted well enough the remainder of his career that the Chiefs drafted him in the third round in 2005.

Mahomes and McKenzie might not owe as direct a debt to their fathers, but both players talked about walking into the Chiefs’ locker room for the first time, Mahomes last year and McKenzie this year, ahead of the game — not just because of what they learned from their dads but also because of what they saw.

Kahlil and Reggie McKenzie (back row), along with the rest of their family, the day before the Packers won Super Bowl XLV in February of 2011. Courtesy of the Green Bay Packers

McKenzie said when he was young, he would head after school to the office of his father, at the time a scout for the Green Bay Packers. He would inevitably wind up hanging out with wide receiver Donald Driver and cornerback Al Harris, now an assistant coach with the Chiefs.

“They’d sit there and talk to me about whatever I had to say at that young age,” said McKenzie, who was drafted by the Chiefs in the sixth round this year. “You just see how they carried themselves, just the way they came in and approached the game every day and made guys around them better.

“You just kind of know what goes on in this business. You know what to expect going in, what guys expect out of you. You know what drives decisions that are kind of made behind the scenes. You really know what really matters and [what’s] kind of the fluff. I know what I need to be able to do and what I need to kind of ignore. I know I don’t need to worry about this or worry about that. I just need to come in and work hard, keep my head down, do what the coaches ask me and go out there and help this team win games because at the end of the day, this is what it’s all about.”

Being the son of a pro athlete can have its disadvantages. Colquitt, whose brother Britton punts for the Cleveland Browns, initially didn’t want to go into what was becoming the family business. That’s one reason he resisted football as long as he did.

Mahomes in high school was told that he would never be as good as his father. But by then, he had learned to tune out that type of noise.

“As soon as he could walk, pretty much, I started taking him to the ballpark,” Mahomes’ father said. “He got to be a part of it. He got to dress in a uniform, go out on the field before the game. He was probably 5 years old and caught his first ball in batting practice off a big-league bat.

“He’s always been a student of whatever game he was playing. He always wanted to learn. For him to get to be around me and around my teammates and see what we went through every day, that had a big influence on him. He learned how to act like a professional athlete, and he takes that with him now every day.”

Mahomes remains close with some of his dad’s former teammates. Long-time major league pitcher LaTroy Hawkins is his godfather. Rodriguez had the biggest impact on Mahomes.

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“He wanted to be a shortstop,” Mahomes Sr. said. “He studied every move that Alex made. Alex would take him down underneath the stadium to the batting cages, and he’d let Patrick hit off the tee and show him different drills. He would videotape all of that and show him what he was doing wrong.

“I pretty much knew he was going to be a professional athlete from the time he was about 6 years old. I thought he would be a baseball player. I actually remember betting some of my teammates that he was going to be drafted by a baseball team when he was old enough. I tried to get him to quit football when he was a junior in high school. I thought that was the last sport he would go pro in. The quarterback thing came late, but once he got into it, he was all into it.”

Much has been made about Mahomes’ physical football skills. He can make some difficult throws that many other quarterbacks can’t, and without that ability, the Chiefs wouldn’t have drafted him in the first round last year.

But the Chiefs have been as impressed with how Mahomes has handled himself and his work habits. He’s beyond the typical 22-year-old in those areas. He by all accounts deftly assumed command in the locker room this offseason, which is no small feat on a team that features veterans such as tight end Travis Kelce and safety Eric Berry.

“You can’t overestimate the effect that growing up in that environment had on him,” said Mahomes’ agent, Leigh Steinberg. “From the day he was born, he’s been around professional athletes. You can’t overemphasize what sitting around with Alex Rodriguez or standing around him in batting practice and being around ballplayers does for someone. You can say he’s been groomed for leadership.”

Running back Kareem Hunt recently said that Mahomes is the most competitive person he has ever met, with that competitiveness extending everywhere from video games to the football field. Asked where that love of competition comes from, Mahomes said, “Definitely growing up in a locker room. If you watch those guys, they compete at everything. My dad is the same exact way. He still competes with me to this day. He thinks he can beat me in a foot race.”

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junker-town · 7 years

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Matt DiBenedetto wants to be the face of NASCAR. Now he needs cash.

NASCAR driver Matt DiBenedetto is sitting on Willie Nelson’s old tour bus watching me crash his race car into a cement wall.

It’s Friday afternoon, the day before the Federated Auto Parts 400 at Richmond Raceway in Virginia. DiBenedetto, his director of communications Ryan Ellis, and I are playing NASCAR HEAT 2 on Xbox to pass the time before DiBenedetto runs his qualifying laps. This old RV has been on the race circuit for a while now since Willie stopped touring in it (if the rumors are true), and sometimes DiBenedetto and Ellis stay here, parked among other drivers’ personal, shiny, multi-million dollar buses. One of the walls near the front bears the signatures of Richard Petty, Darrell Waltrip, Jimmie Johnson, and other NASCAR legends.

Everything about DiBenedetto’s life is on wheels. When he isn't moving, he's sitting around waiting to move. He gets to the track each week on Thursday night, whether the race is Saturday night or Sunday afternoon, and the hours between practice, qualifying laps, and races stretch long. DiBenedetto, 26, and Ellis, 27, are best friends not only because they like each other, but also because they understand the strains of being on the road 38 weekends a year. Besides Ellis, the people DiBenedetto hangs out with most are his parents, his wife Taylor, and Cosmo, his 40-something neighbor who owns a car dealership.

"I don't see anyone," Ellis says, eyes on the screen, hands on the controller. "Getting older means being lonely."

At some point, DiBenedetto signed his name on the wall under Waltrip's. But, unlike most of the other drivers, he left off his car number. Perhaps in the hopes that No. 32 won’t be what he’s saddled with forever.

“You're pretty stuck there, try backing up,” DiBenedetto says. He and Ellis, who was also a full-time driver until this year, laugh as they watch me realize Ellis is actually controlling the car on the top screen that I thought I was moving. On the bottom half of the screen, I've actually been slamming DiBenedetto’s character into a barrier on pit road for a full minute.

We restart, and DiBenedetto’s car materializes, magically repaired. I’m looking at the right one this time as the green checkered flag falls. Ellis, who’s racing as Dale Earnhardt Jr., wins. I come in 27th, and apologize to Real Matt for Computer Matt’s less-than-stellar showing.

“That’s okay,” he says, “That’s probably about where we’ll finish tomorrow anyway.”

DiBenedetto declines to play as himself. Ellis says he'll do it, so we switch controllers. He changes the location to Bristol Motor Speedway and rockets around the short track. He wins again. Computer Matt climbs out of the car on the black and white checkered pavement of victory lane and stands on the roof, pumping his pixelated fists as confetti falls. The scene is familiar; DiBenedetto became the youngest winner in Bristol’s history when he raced late models there 10 years ago.

“That guy looks nothing like me,” DiBenedetto says. “What's with my dang hair?”

Computer Matt is a scrawny guy with red, curly hair, and a full beard. Real Matt — who peppers his speech with “dang”s, “darn”s, and “gosh”es — has straight, brown hair that always looks like it’s picture day at school. His face is boyish, handsome, with a jawline he squares up by trimming his short beard just so.

DiBenedetto also has biceps. Put together, they're almost the same size as his substantial core. He works out a lot, and has grown into a sturdy dude since he won Bristol as a 5’1” 16-year-old clocking in at a whopping 75 pounds. You have to be strong to wrestle a car without power-steering around a track. He sweats out 15 pounds of water and burns thousands of calories over three and a half hours during a race. NASCAR is as physically grueling as it mentally punishing.

There might be a glitch in the game, because Computer Matt won’t stop pumping his fists. Real Matt gets up from the pleather banquette to take a video of the video game celebration. He’s obsessive about documenting his life on Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram. This mostly entails posting videos of him pranking his wife, Taylor, with rubber snakes, or cannonballing into the pool next to her while she's sleeping on a float, but also includes candid reactions to very good and very bad races. DiBenedetto gets his sense of humor from his mother, Sandy. She’s a tiny, energetic woman who recently snuck into DiBenedetto’s house to hide a lifelike plastic tarantula behind the toaster. Her son is scared of spiders.

Photo by Matt Sullivan/Getty Images

DiBenedetto’s followers respond to his social media presence with fierce loyalty. Despite having a fraction of the followers big name drivers command, he almost made it into this year’s All-Star race on the fan vote.

DiBenedetto tells me he identifies with Dale Earnhardt Jr., the way he connects with fans.

“That’s what I’d like to be,” he says.

The sport is battling the perception of declining national interest and waning viewership, and, with Dale Jr. retiring, it could use a relatable guy like DiBenedetto to step into the spotlight. DiBenedetto knows he has the talent and personality for it. He also knows he has to nail down big time sponsors or join a state-of-the-art team for it to happen.

As the son of an appliance repairman, DiBenedetto wasn't born into money. And if you want to win in NASCAR's Cup Series (the major leagues), you need cold, hard cash to fund one of the completely custom-made, spaceship-like vehicles required to win in NASCAR today. These things are hunks of technology that get tested in wind tunnels, calibrated down to milli-everything, and cost $20 million to maintain for one season. The days when you could buy some parts, screw them together, and become a hero the way Dale Earnhardt Sr. did are long gone. A sport that markets itself as blue collar is closer to America's Cup sailing than it would like you to know.

DiBenedetto’s story is Sisyphean: Since he was 5 years old, he’s been pushing, endlessly, to get to the top of the sport he loves. He’s been bowled over and he's tumbled down many times. But — thanks to his raw talent, dumb luck, and sheer force of will — he’ll race tomorrow night at the highest level of the sport in a car that has his name on the side. His equipment isn't the best, and he knows there’s no way he’ll win. But just the fact that he’s made it this far, he says, is like lightning striking twice.

He can finally see the crest of the hill. The question now is whether he can make it to the top.

Sandy calls DiBenedetto her “oops baby.” When she found out she was pregnant in 1991, she and DiBenedetto’s father, Tony, were in their late 30s, already had three kids, and were running Tony’s business fixing washers and dryers. Sandy says she cried for the entire first trimester, but is quick to add that Matt’s been the best thing that ever happened to the family.

Family lore has it that Young Matt fell in love with NASCAR when he caught a glimpse of a race as his father clicked through the TV channels trying to find a baseball game. He became obsessed, watching every Sunday after that, tracking his favorite driver Jeff Burton in the No. 99 car.

DiBenedetto is telling me The Myth of Matt on Thursday night from the passenger seat of Ryan’s 2012 Ford Focus. Ryan’s driving us from his house just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, to the Richmond Raceway. Ryan always drives. DiBenedetto hates driving anything when there’s a destination. He only likes going in circles: driving race cars around tracks, doing doughnuts in parking lots, forcing ATVs up and down mounds of dirt.

Once they realized DiBenedetto was hooked on cars and there was no dissuading him, Sandy and Tony bought him a go-kart, then a modified car. DiBenedetto turned his family's grassy backyard in Northern California into a dirt track. When he got home from school, he would drag the unwieldy garden house out to the yard so he could water, rake, and tamp down the dust of his race course. Then he’d fire up the engine of his lead sled — brap, brap, brap — and tear up all his hard work, splattering mud onto the metal of his machine as he careened around the corners he'd constructed.

Photo by Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images for NASCAR

DiBenedetto at a NASCAR Pro East Series race at Dover International Speedway in 2009.

DiBenedetto started winning races, then championships. People at tracks who watched him deftly maneuver the used go-karts and modified cars the DiBenedettos could afford would tell Tony and Sandy to “do something with this kid.”

So they did. When DiBenedetto was 12, the family moved to North Carolina. They wanted to be close to Charlotte, where the majority of NASCAR teams are headquartered, but the city was too big and busy for them. So they settled on Hickory, a small town about an hour outside of Charlotte that has a race track.

DiBenedetto was fresh out of Outlaw karts and just getting into racing Legends cars on local circuits by then, winning race after race at the Hickory Motor Speedway. He soon graduated to Late Models, and won lots of those, too, eventually touring up and down the East Coast.

Despite his promise, when DiBenedetto was 16 his parents realized they couldn’t afford to pay for his passion anymore. They wanted to, but it was just too darn expensive. If DiBenedetto was really as good as everyone said he was, someone — a team owner, a wealthy patron — would put him in a car, Tony believed. So he told his son he was going to sell all of his racing equipment.

A lot of families on the race circuits below NASCAR often say they’re going to get rid of everything. They’ll kvetch about it at races with other parents, saying to each other, “Oh, yeah, this year is the last.” Owning a race car is like feeding a growing teenage boy; you can’t ever put enough into one. But most of the families who threaten to quit don't. They’ll show up the next year with a few new parts, maybe a new trailer.

Tony actually followed through. DiBenedetto came home from high school one day to find that everything was gone. His cars weren’t in their parking spots, and the truck his parents dragged the trailer behind had disappeared. The trailer was gone, too. Their little makeshift shop next to the house was empty. You’d only know someone there drove race cars because of the trophies in DiBenedetto’s room.

“And then, at the end of the season, another driver came in with millions of dollars. I was out as quick as I was in. So again, I’m like, well, my career is over. I have nothing.”

“It was time number one of one thousand that I thought my career was over,” DiBenedetto says. “I thought I was all done.”

DiBenedetto says his family thought they’d be able to run a team for him because they were “naive.” His parents use the word “naive,” too. They also all say “struck by lightning twice,” and Sandy and DiBenedetto list the racing equipment they sold in the same order. Tony says that if DiBenedetto ever disrespects a fan, even if he’s super old, he’ll “get out of his wheelchair and kick his ass.” DiBenedetto tells me that if he ever disrespects a fan, Tony will “get out of his wheelchair and kick my ass.”

The DiBenedettos know the script. They’ve had to tell and sell their story to countless sponsors, team owners, fans, and (more recently) journalists just to keep DiBenedetto in the sport. They schmooze, network, cold-call businesses, and market DiBenedetto — who turns himself into a human billboard whenever he puts on his fire suit splashed with sponsor’s logos — just to stay in the sport.

At this point in the story, we pull into a gas station in the middle of nowhere. DiBenedetto asks Ellis if he needs gas, and Ellis says no, we should be fine. As Ellis pays for the energy drinks and snacks he’s hoping will help him stay awake, DiBenedetto goes outside and fills up his friend’s car anyway.

We get back on the road. It’s 11:30 — we’ve been driving for close to two and a half hours, and we still have two left. That’s nothing for these guys. They're now on a team with enough money to fly to most races, but the first time they raced together in 2014, they’d drive across the country smushed into the backseat of a van with 10 pit crew guys. They recall some of their trips, like the time they overslept and had to Uber to the racetrack in Chicago. It's funny to imagine: two race car drivers with their helmets and fire suits in the back of some stranger’s Kia.

After Tony sold his racing equipment, DiBenedetto was rudderless for a while. But, just like Tony said they would, people started calling, offering rides. First, it was a team out of Asheville, then it was a family in Charlotte. DiBenedetto hopped in and out of different cars and put up more incredible finishes.

It was during this time that DiBenedetto won at Bristol. Then he got a call from Joe Gibbs Racing, a powerhouse team that guys like Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin drive for. Gibbs had been keeping an eye on him since he beat his team in a race a few years ago. They wanted him to come in for a meeting at team headquarters in the Charlotte area.

DiBenedetto, who was 17 at the time, had no idea what to expect. He thought they just wanted to meet him, say hello, keep him on the back burner. Instead, they put a contract on the table in front of him and told him to sign if he wanted a development deal.

DiBenedetto couldn’t pick up the pen fast enough. It would be the first time that he had steady access to equipment commensurate with his talent. He started beating most of the people he raced against in one of Gibbs’ K&N cars (think minor, minor leagues of NASCAR). He was ripping up concrete tracks like he was back on the West Coast tearing through the dirt of his old backyard.

Photo by Sara D. Davis/Getty Images for NASCAR

Matt and Tony after Matt won the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East Race at the Bowman Gray Stadium, on Saturday, June 4, 2011.

So the team bumped DiBenedetto up and put him in an Xfinity car in 2009 (think triple-A). He’d never driven one before. They’re a whole different animal from K&N cars, but that first race in the Xfinity Series was a dream come true anyway: DiBenedetto finished an impressive 14th after running second for most of it against big names like Kyle Busch and Matt Kenseth.

The next season was a nightmare. Everything went perfectly wrong. DiBenedetto didn’t get to practice enough, and he only got to run six races. He made mistakes he says he’d be able to avoid now, but he also had a lot of bad luck, from blown tires to wrecks that weren’t his fault.

“And then, at the end of the season, another driver came in with millions of dollars,” DiBenedetto says. “I was out as quick as I was in. So again, I’m like, well, my career is over. I have nothing.”

Sandy and Tony say they’re glad the Gibbs deal didn’t work out. They think their son has stayed grounded because he’s had to fight so hard to stay in the sport since then. But DiBenedetto has a hard time truly believing that. If he’d done well, it would’ve been a fast track to a ride in one of the best Cup Series cars on the circuit. He could’ve been a household name by now.

Instead, DiBenedetto went home to Hickory. He was 19, and, feeling like he was out of options, went to work at Carillo’s Collision Repair, an auto body shop in the area.

“I wanted to blow my brains out every day,” DiBenedetto says, turning around in his seat to look at me. “Not that I was unappreciative of life or anything, I just had no passion for doing that crap. I hated it.”

DiBenedetto worked at the shop while he continued to network in the NASCAR world. He’d run some races on the weekends, but during the week he fixed normal cars that normal people drove to run normal errands. It smelled like racing — engine grease, burnt rubber, oil-soaked rags — but it was the opposite. It was standing still.

Eventually, a family-run team took a liking to DiBenedetto and let him “start and park” the worse of their son’s two Xfinity cars. This meant that DiBenedetto would qualify the car, then start the race so the owner could collect the money from simply making the field. DiBenedetto would then run a handful of laps and drop out, so as not to burn through a fresh set of wheels.

Then he’d go back to Hickory and the auto body shop.

As frustrating as it was for DiBenedetto not to be able to run full races, just being in the cars paid off. The Motorsports Group (TMG) noticed him and offered him a deal starting-and-parking. They eventually moved him into one of their Xfinity cars in 2014.

Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Ryan Ellis racing at Daytona International Speedway in 2016.

At this point in our road trip, Ellis has started interjecting more as DiBenedetto talks. He was also racing on and off for TMG at the same time DiBenedetto was, so he’s in the story now. He remembers the races, the practices, the long cross-country drives, the sponsor meetings, that DiBenedetto is telling me about.

Ellis’s grandfather built cars for Mario Andretti and died in a crash the same year Ryan’s father was born. But despite being a racing family like the Elliots, Earnhardts, or Childresses, the Ellises didn't get rich from cars. They couldn't fund Ryan's career.

Ellis misses driving more than he’s willing to admit. When a few fans recognize him at the track over the course of the weekend he lights up, thrilled to sign their cards and hats. What Ellis doesn’t miss is the cutthroat side of the sport. Last year, he kept getting bought out of races by richer, younger, and less experienced drivers who come from family money (we're talking serious money, here: NASCAR drivers are the sons of Vegas casino owners, heads of agricultural lobbies, owners of airlines). It was the same thing that happened to DiBenedetto at Gibbs.

“I became emotionless,” says Ellis, who dropped out of college two classes shy of a marketing degree to drive full time. “Literally. I felt like I was just a zombie. When I’d get bumped from another race, I’d be like, ‘Oh, well that sucks, I’m going to hang myself again.’ I don’t blame the teams, it makes sense for them. But you just become numb.”

He’s glad to finally have a steady paycheck working for Matt. And if it can’t be him, at least his best friend is the one who got one more lucky break than he did. When someone he knows bumps into Ellis bumps at the track and asks what he’s up to now that he’s not racing, he tells her, “I’m living Matt’s dream.”

Despite the fact that DiBenedetto drove well for TMG, the team dropped him at the end of 2014. Thinking it was all over for the umpteenth time, but refusing to quit, DiBenedetto kept calling, emailing, and taking team owners out to dinner trying to schmooze his way back in. He says he even drove eight hours to show up at the Daytona 500 uninvited to convince a team called BK Racing to give him a chance. It worked, and he ran some races for them starting in 2015. Last year, he drove to a sixth-place finish at Bristol, his lucky track. The cars weren’t great, but BK eventually gave DiBenedetto a proper crew chief — a surly guy named Gene — and a dedicated crew that worked on only his ride.

At the end of 2016, DiBenedetto signed with GoFas Racing. A family named St. Hillaire owns the team — they made their fortune running garbage removal and port-a-potty businesses in Maine. GoFas was doing poorly every week, and wanted to be better. DiBenedetto — handsome, talented, personable, available — seemed like the perfect guy to drive their No. 32 car.

Photo by Daniel Shirey/Getty Images

DiBenedetto says that everyone thought he was crazy to sign with GoFas. Gene told the St. Hillaire’s, to their face, that their cars were “junk.” But DiBenedetto believed if he could turn a low-budget program around, maybe the owners of the best teams would finally consider him. Maybe the big-time sponsors would come calling. Maybe the NASCAR world would realize he wasn't going away.

So far, he seems to be doing it. In used equipment and almost no time, DiBenedetto has taken the team to its best finishes ever, including two in the top 10. He came in ninth at the Daytona 500 and eighth in the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis — two of NASCAR’s biggest races. GoFas has improved from 38th to 31st in the owners points standings.

The problem is that a whole lot of money still separates DiBenedetto from where he is now and the chance of winning a Cup race. This weekend at Richmond, a finish close to the top 20 would be GoFas’s version of coming in first.

But 20th isn’t first. DiBenedetto’s best still won’t earn him a trophy, and it drives him insane.

On Saturday night at Richmond, DiBenedetto comes in 31st.

The bright floodlights of the raceway glint off the advertisements on the hood of his car as he pulls into the pits. His fenders are scraped up, and the track smells like burning rubber and gasoline fumes. When DiBenedetto takes his helmet off and climbs out of the car, his usually perfect hair is poking up and matted down in various places. He’s a little pale. His lips looked chapped.

“We sucked,” he says.

Ellis and DiBenedetto are driving to back to Charlotte tonight because they want to sleep in their own beds rather than the cramped bunks of Willie’s old bus. Ellis will drive, that is. DiBenedetto will probably fall asleep in the passenger seat after about 45 minutes. But before they can hit the road — before DiBenedetto can even change out of his fire suit — he has to go talk to the sponsors he’s been shepherding around the track all weekend.

These sponsors are wealthy, but they're not giving DiBenedetto enough for him to finally end up in a car as good as he is. For that to happen, DiBenedetto needs to convince a huge corporation to back him, or find many more smaller businesses that want to slap their logos onto his body. He has no choice. In NASCAR, marketing is as much a sport as the driving itself. Even though DiBenedetto signed for another year with GoFas, it all still feels precarious.

Photo by Jerry Markland/Getty Images

Most people like DiBenedetto — including Ellis — have given up the dream of driving. In Ellis’s car on Thursday, both of them joked that the most talented driver in the country is probably driving a tractor somewhere. But racing cars is DiBenedetto’s only passion. His stubborn optimism makes him think that maybe someday his skill, dogged ambition, and charisma will be enough. Despite the many times he’s seen evidence that it might not be. The dang world just isn’t fair.

“All I can do is turn left,” he says.

Since DiBenedetto was 16, people have been asking him what he’ll do if this all falls apart. He’s never had an answer, and even thinking about it is terrifying. He keeps straining against that boulder, believing he will get it over that hill. Somebody has to make it, and DiBenedetto refuses to accept that he might not be the guy who does.

Except that it’s not up to him. He’s reminded weekly, thanks to the leaderboard, exactly how far away he is from becoming the face of NASCAR. His story is familiar and deeply American; he wasn’t born with the right last name, or the correct amount of zeros in his bank account, and no matter now hard he pushes his foot down on the pedal of that No. 32 car, it won’t be enough, not unless something changes.

DiBenedetto finally takes off his sweaty suit and puts on a T-shirt and shorts. He and Ellis say goodbye to the sponsors, the team, and DiBenedetto’s parents. They duck into the media center to grab some free pizza before they head back to Ellis’s car.

I retrieve my bag from where I left it on the counter of the GoFas hauler and bump into Curtis, one of the guys on DiBenedetto’s team. He’s older, tall, with a big, white beard, broad shoulders, and a sizable belly. Curtis loves NASCAR. His parents used to carry him to races before he could walk. Working on cars is the only job he’s ever had.

“I can't imagine doing anything different,” Curtis says. “They'll be carrying my cold, dead carcass out of here.”

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