#jetjocko

We talk a lot about the Marvel cinematic universe and business strategy, but this portfolio from WB television is really interesting.

We talk a lot about the Marvel cinematic universe and business strategy, but this portfolio from WB television is really interesting.

An honest vendor at SDCC

Gotham by night only not really.

Hall H line for Saturday...at 9:52 PM on Friday.

Comic-Con without Comic-Con

This year is the 50th anniversary of the television show Doctor Who. That means a big TV special with both Matt Smith, the current actor in the role, but also David Tennant, the last guy to play him. BBC is making a TV movie about the making of the first episode of the series back in 1963, starring the many who presided over the Red Wedding on Game of Thrones, David Bradley, as the first man to play the Doctor, William Hartnell. How unqualified am I to write about all this? Super-unqualified. Because for more than 30 of those 50 years, I have been watching Doctor Who. I watched it when I couldn't imagine anyone else knowing about it, on the second TV in the house where I grew up while my parents were watching something normal. The theme song makes me cry. So I'm the last guy to tell anyone what's good or bad about it. I'm in too deep, is my point. Matt Smith was on the panel. So was the current companion, Jenna Coleman. Steven Moffat was there, and Mark Gatiss, and Bradley. They showed clips--a trailer for the making-of movie, a trailer for the 50th anniversary Two Doctors show. I'm still sorry that Christopher Eccleston, the first Doctor of the new era, isn't in it. But so it goes. They make the shows and I watch them, even when I don't think it's going the way I want it to. That's what 50 years of shows teaches you: patience. Don't like this season? Don't panic. They're never not going to make it. It'll change. Moffat was more articulate about the Doctor than I've ever heard him today, maybe because he's about to recast. Smith is leaving; time for a new guy. Again. "There's only one Doctor. He has lots of different faces, but he's always the same," Moffat said. "He lives in the moment all the time. He never really looks back because if he did, he'd be staring all day." The TV host Craig Ferguson moderated the panel, and at the end showed the clip of the song he performed about Doctor Who when Smith guested on his show. It's an utterly insane dance number with weird costumes, sung to the tune of the theme song. But the refrain captures why an often silly science fiction show with few rules and little world-building could survive for so long. The show, says Ferguson, is fundamentally about the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism. Seems right to me.

Katie Cook of My Little Pony again, on calibrating darkness in kids' comics.