#minivanjukebox

When I started watching Doctor Who (beginning with 'Rose', the first Ninth Doctor story), I wasn't initially hooked. I really liked the premise, I was very intrigued that the show had been running since the '60s, and I liked the promise of some interesting mythology stories related to this mysterious Time War. There were some great scenes and acting from Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper that kept me going through some of the stranger parts of the beginning of Russell T. Davies' first season of the show, but I almost quit after the two-parter that introduced the Slitheen. I really really really didn't like the Slitheen. And not in a 'villain I love to hate' way. In a 'they're making fart jokes and overacting a little' way. But when I watched 'Dalek', I completely fell for the show. It just clicked for me. And it continued to click for me when David Tennant took over the role of the Doctor. Although there were still some episodes I wasn't very fond of ('Love & Monsters', 'Daleks in Manhattan'/'Evolution of the Daleks' are my least favorite) I still greatly greatly enjoyed the show. My favorite episode soon changed from 'Dalek' to an episode called 'The Girl in the Fireplace'. It was dark, romantic, and had a wonderfully sad ending. I noticed that the writer of this episode tended to write some of the more acclaimed episodes of the show. His name was Steven Moffat. I found that I liked his episodes best. They seemed slightly more clever than other Who episodes, and darker, too. Whoever has watched 'Blink' and didn't jump with fright at least once is probably lying. So when I found out that he took over the show after Davies, I was very very very excited.

Let me be clear, I love Series 5. I. Love. Series. 5. It is honestly one of my favorite seasons of television. It follows the episode formula that the Davies seasons followed, but added a bit more serialization, and a slightly (initially, anyway) simpler series arc/storyline to follow.

Series 6, I think, has a fantastic opening two-parter. It is the season when the show began to falter a little, though. The death of the Doctor storyline is a very awesome and clever idea. Too clever. I enjoy how Moffat wrote his way out of it, to be honest. But River Song's story wasn't handled very well, in regards to her origin. Her being Amy and Rory's daughter, fine, awesomeness! Having her be Amy and Rory's best friend from childhood that's never been hinted at until middle of Series 6 and then being psychotically in love with the Doctor and then deciding to save his life after trying to kill him; not so much. At least in execution. River for the second half of Series 6 becomes a crazed Doctor groupie almost, leaving behind the amazing, not taking your shit, confident, and interesting woman we'd been introduced to in Series 4 and 5. And yes, we don't get much acknowledgment of the horror of Amy's kidnap and pregnancy. And yes, a few key moments towards the end of the season where the Doctor decides to not travel with Amy and Rory anymore, and the re-kidnapping of River feel a little tacked on to their respective episodes.

Series 7, though, I will defend a little more. I personally enjoyed the deliberately big and simple plots of the individual episodes. True, it was hit-or-miss, but it honestly felt a little more like how I felt with the Davies' run, where some episodes worked and some didn't. But I loved how different in feel the episodes were. Is Clara kind of a walking plotline? Yes. Is she still interesting and fun to watch and a fun character? Yes, but not because of the writing. Because of the acting. Clara doesn't get much development besides deciding to save the Doctor by dividing herself throughout his timeline, but Jenna Coleman made me like the character because, well, Jenna Coleman is a good actress. And she and Matt Smith work very very well together. And the Ponds finally have their outside lives acknowledged this season. In response to those who complain about Moffat-era Doctor Who characters not being ordinary people like Davies-era Doctor Who, I'd say that you shouldn't expect the same of Moffat as Davies. And I don't just mean that in a passing-the-Bechdel-test way. I mean that Moffat's style of Who is more story and plot-based than Davies. That's why Moffat doesn't have fantastic character arcs like Davies does. That and he does have a problem with writing women different from the consistently underdeveloped sassy ones he writes.

So, how do I still love the show? How do I still love every second of almost every episode I spend with the Eleventh Doctor and his friends? How do I not feel guilty for enjoying a show that lately has more than a few plot and character issues due to its showrunner trying too hard to be too clever (shoutout to Eli for that wording of Moffat)?

Because I still think it's interesting that Amy was so psychologically messed with because of the Doctor meeting her as a child. That as a woman Amy tried to sleep with him, something that we really haven't seen a companion do before. Because her and Rory became one of my favorite fictional couples. Because Matt Smith milked every single scene he had as the Doctor and made me laugh, cry, and cheer for him while at the same time question his motives and see the dark side of this character. Because I actually like the basic mythology we know so far about The Silence. Because The Question is, in my opinion, genius. Because when River Song shows up, and is the real, grown-up, awesome River, her and the Doctor are very fun and interesting together. Because Eleven and his companions seemed far more closer to me as friends than some of the other companions with past Doctors. Because even if some of the answers to plot mysteries disappoint, the questions and possibilities that it creates for me as a viewer still intrigue me. Because I'm excited as fuck for Matt Smith and David Tennant to be together onscreen. And with fucking John Hurt. Because I see the problems with Moffat's writing. I have read and listened to so many things that show what is wrong with his writing and characters. And even knowing this and acknowledging and accepting this, I still cannot stop loving this show. Moffat may be the head writer of the show, but he is not the show. The show is a crazy story about a mad man in a blue box, traveling through space and time. Some parts of the story may be dated, or sexist, or undeveloped. But there is too much good and too much promise and too much optimism and too much that I love about this show for me to not watch it. I can't wait for more of this show. I can't wait to see Eleven again. I can't wait to meet Twelve. And I can't wait to see the wonderful craziness that this story is going to show us.

Kyle Boyce

The movie starts out rather promisingly. The first 20 minutes or so are about the destruction of Krypton and General Zod's attempt at taking over the planet, along with Jor-El sending Kal-El away to Earth, of course. It can be argued that some parts of this opening are rushed, but to me this was the most solid part of the movie. After that, my interest started to slowly go down as the movie went on. I think some of the ideas in the movie, like the Kryptonians' artificial breeding vs. Superman's natural birth and that Superman has been hiding from the world in fear of people's reaction to him, are really really good. But I don't think the movie pulled these ideas off, because they didn't get enough attention. I was not at all affected by the death of Pa Kent because I wasn't shown enough of his and Clark's relationship to care about his death. I admired that Lois Lane was smart enough to track down Clark, but didn't see any scenes/moments of chemistry between her and Superman that explained their kiss towards the end of the movie. I also completely zoned out when that battle started. There was no emotional tie for me to the action, making all the punches and flying at and through buildings not matter to me. I liked the idea of Superman feeling forced to kill Zod, but the execution of it just didn't work for me. I don't know if it was because of me being desensitized to Zod threatening to kill a few people after the insane amount of destruction and death that his fight with Superman has already caused at this point, or if it was Superman's screaming after Zod's death. I understand that the purpose of the scream was to show Superman's sadness about being the last Kryptonian, but the reaction didn't work for me because he and Zod didn't exactly have a relationship/understanding that would create this kind of reaction. If Superman had been able to understand Zod's point of view more, or been shown more of what Krypton used to be like, maybe his reaction would have seemed believable to me. And the part of the finale with Perry White and a couple other Daily Planet writers being in danger from the destruction of Metropolis didn't get much attention from me because, again, I didn't get enough of those characters to care about what happened to them. I feel bad having this opinion of the movie, because there are good things here. The casting is pretty great. Props to Michael Shannon for playing a fairly simple villain role very well. Props also to Henry Cavill, who I think can be a good Superman, but doesn't get too many Superman moments here. The closest we got was when Superman allows himself to be captured by the military. He is calm and polite while he allows himself to be handcuffed and taken to an interrogation room, but also incredibly honest and nonthreatening when he explains that the military cannot and will not control him. The rest of the movie is him on the road at different jobs trying to blend in (but that made sense), or full-on superbrawling with the evil Kryptonians. Superman the character does fight, but the fights in this movie made Cavill's Superman more of an angry superpowered action hero to me than Superman the character.

When I first heard about Man of Steel, I was led to believe that the reason Christopher Nolan chose to produce it was because he and David Goyer had figured out how to make Superman interesting and significant to a modern audience. When I began speculating what this meant, I theorized that the only way that Superman could be interesting to an audience would be him being rejected by the world because they could not believe that he was a God-like being with completely good views, and intentions to only use his powers to help others, not himself. Basically, Superman would become a response to modern cynicism. Superman gets criticized often because of how simple and, arguably, boring he is. He doesn't have character flaws, or any weaknesses besides kryptonite. And his villains are either mad scientists or aliens. Superman cannot use his incredible strength against mad scientists because he will not harm or kill people if he can help it. So he can only use his strength against beings with equal or greater strength than him. Man of Steel seemed to have two elements that could finally make Superman an interesting character to more people: giving him significance by contrasting his character with cynicism, and giving us a villain that represents both his Kryptonian heritage and what he could potentially be to Earth: a dangerous, selfish, all-powerful God. Also, the villain is someone that Superman can use his ridiculous strength to fight. I think if Man of Steel had focused solely on these elements, instead of trying to integrate Metropolis and Lois Lane and the artificial vs. natural birth thing, it would have been a great movie. Simpler, to be fair, but better than what it turned out to be.

I genuinely think that a great Superman movie can be made. The Richard Donner movies (yes that's Superman: The Movie and Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut because the Richard Lester version of Superman II is bad), while a little dated, hold up fairly well story-wise. And Bryan Singer's Superman Returns is ridiculously underrated, mostly because people disliked that Superman didn't have a villain to punch as well as its admittedly slow pacing. But none of these movies have truly been a great Superman story. I hope that someday we finally get it, though. I can't wait for that Superman movie.

Kyle

This is the kind of movie where if you were present with me seeing it (on a lovely IMAX screen, by the way, an experience I highly highly recommend), my reactions were rather, well, enthusiastic. During the montage showing the situation of Noel Clarke's (yep, Mickey from Doctor Who) character, during Kirk's sacrifice to save the Enterprise, during Spock's reaction to this, during any scene with Benedict Cumberbatch as John Harrison/Khan, I was riveted and maybe a little too emotional regarding what was happening. This is a universe I greatly enjoy visiting, and I also tend to have a weakness for loving the works of the Bad Robot crew.

The reason why my opinion took a while to form is because of specific aspects of the movie that quite a lot of people have, understandably, responded negatively to.

The first is Carol Marcus. Yes, she mainly served as a plot device, and as eye candy in that one scene. I did think that part was a little pandering to the dudes in the audience, so that criticism I agree with.

Also, a lot of Enterprise crew members didn't get much to do in this one, but I don't fault that as much because of the size of the cast, and the incredible difficulty of giving everyone a good arc as a result of that. Movies with a cast of characters like this have to be rather hard to write. I can't imagine how long it took the writers of X-Men 2 or Joss Whedon when writing The Avengers to figure out their respective movies. I also imagine that Star Trek is hard because Star Trek's characters were created for a TV series, where one has multiple episodes/stories to explore and focus on different characters. With movies, you are typically telling a single story, and with the amount of characters in this movie, it is always going to be a problem of finding something for every character to do in addition to giving them some kind of development. Which is why I look forward to this new Trek series' continuation, so we can get more focus on the other characters. They've all been cast rather awesomely, so this doesn't worry me too much.

Now, Khan. The original Khan was played by the late, great Ricardo Montalbán, who was a Mexican actor. Benedict Cumberbatch is an English actor. A criticism is that Khan is white in this movie. Firstly, I feel it's important to know that the filmmakers' original choice for Khan in this movie was Benicio del Toro, who is a rather awesome Puerto Rican-born actor. (source) For whatever reason, del Toro did not end up playing Khan. Could he have? Absolutely. I still think that Cumberbatch did an incredible job. I do understand that his casting can be seen as white-washing. However, in this case because I loved Cumberbatch's performance, it doesn't bother me as much. I am mainly familiar with him as Sherlock Holmes, which he does play as a "high-functioning sociopath", but still as a hero. Cumberbatch does, however, have plenty of moments as Sherlock where he gets to be a very threatening presence. So seeing him as Khan, a full-on villain, allows him to show a larger range of rather terrifying aggression in addition to being threatening and knowing more than other characters. He also gets to show Khan's sympathetic side during his monologue about his crew. It has been a while since I have seen "Space Seed", the original Star Trek episode that introduced Khan, but I do not recall a moment in that episode where I felt as much sympathy for Khan as I did during this scene.

As for the sacrifice of Kirk, I liked it. As soon as Khan confirmed his identity, I immediately began wondering if we were going to head into Wrath of Khan territory, in which Spock (Spoilers!) sacrifices himself to save the Enterprise from Khan. So when the tables were turned and Kirk was doing what Spock did in Wrath of Khan, I was floored. I completely bought that he was going to die. It made sense for him arc-wise, and was a clever way, I thought, of both acknowledging and inverting the original timeline from the original series. I should have picked up on the tribble bit, as I did note the comment about Khan's blood earlier in the movie to seem a little random, but I honestly did not make the connection that it would save Kirk. And even when the connection was made, I still was in suspense because I did believe that Spock could kill Khan before being told that Khan's blood would cure Kirk. Basically, that whole sequence of events had the filmmakers' desired effect on me. Whether it works on everyone else, I don't know.

Do I think Star Trek into Darkness is perfect? Nope. I do think it's probably going to end up being one of the best movies from this summer. And I know that I enjoyed watching this movie a lot.

Kyle