I’ve been hearing about the finale for this year of Doctor Who, and most people are really unhappy. Had I not already bailed, I would’ve turned the finale off halfway through, for certain, when they pulled one reveal involving a particular Cyberman. So I’m glad I wasn’t there for it.

Aside from that, though, I’ve never heard The Doctor Who Podcast people this upset and unhappy. I’m hearing a lot of reasons, and many of them sound awfully familiar.

Several episodes ago, in response to “Kill the Moon,” I sent in some audio feedback they chose not to use. I’ve transcribed the core of it, taking out introductions and the like and adding a phrase to clarify a point that was clear in spoken form, but not clear in written text. It is otherwise unchanged. I present it for your consideration.

Audio feedback for The Doctor Who Podcast
Recorded 11 October 2014, transcribed 10 November 2014

I just watched “Kill the Moon.” And I can’t care anymore.

I have seen almost every surviving episode of Doctor Who. There’s a few I’ve saved, kind of holding in reserve – but the local PBS station here runs them all in sequence, starting way back at William Hartnell and chugging right through to the end of the classic series, and then starts over again. Which is how the second doctor, or as I used to call him, Shemp Doctor, is my doctor. Because that’s where I came in.

There are a lot of reasons why I’ve been unhappy with Mr. Moffat, but I’ve been sticking with him, thinking, ‘I’ve made it through Colin Baker, I can make it through this.’

And then “Kill the Moon” happened.

Doctor Who has descended to a point of incoherence I associate with the television show Superfriends. This was an animated show, a superhero saturday-morning-cartoons little-kid’s show, and pretty much literally anything could happen at any time. It didn’t have to make any sense.

And here we have an episode of Doctor Who wherein… the moon… magically doubles its mass, turns into a space dragon, flies away, and leaves a replacement… moon egg… in its… place?

Lost in Space would’ve thought twice about this.

I don’t expect hard science from Doctor Who. It’s space fantasy, I get that, it’s science fantasy, I get that. But I expect things to make some degree of sense. I expect there to be some coherence. I look for some relationship to the world in which it’s set.

Now yes, yes, yes, yes, it’s a fool who looks for continuity in the annals of Doctor Who. But I’m not talking about continuity across episodes, I’m looking for coherence within one.

Right now, there are fewer rules in the Doctor Who universe under Moffat than there are in Hogwarts. It is a more magical – by which I mean random and arbitrary – place than the Harry Potteruniverse.

And I can live with that to some degree. I can live with that if it’s a light hearted and kind of silly environment. For example, The Thrilling Adventure Hour. That is totally a magic world; anything can happen at any time, and it’s hilarious.

A lot of old Who, when it gets kind of magical and random, at least has a charming eccentricity to it, kind of a lightness that you can go along with, that you can follow along with, and you like the people on screen.

But this isn’t that. This is trying to be drama. But in this environment, there can be no consequences, there can be no results of actions, there can be no results of decisions. Drama relies on all of these happening, and without them, fundamentally, there can be no drama.

Right now, anything can happen, at any time, for no reason. That is not drama. You cannot run drama that way, it doesn’t work. But that’s where Doctor Who is right now.

All the things that make a magic world work are missing. I don’t like any of these people; there’s no humour; there’s no light touch; it’s all very heavy handed; it is deathly serious and because everything is arbitrary, there can be no drama that functions as drama, which means there’s nothing left.

Fortunately I have Big Finish, which I will continue to attend to closely, and I have the classic series. But the current series… I’m just done.

Wake me up when Moffat’s gone. I’ll give it another go then. But not until.

Most of my weekend involved power outages and damage control, fortunately relatively little of the latter given everything. So it’s a music links roundup of awesome.

NASA have dumped a huge library of space sounds you can use in music. For free. They’re public domain. THIS IS AWESOME. I have no idea what I’d use any of this for, but I WILL FIND A REASON.

Not on Bone Walker, maybe, but I will find a reason.

Here are some posters about music theory which I have confirmed are incredibly useful, particularly if you can read music. (I can’t, I’m still getting a bit out of them. Also wow some of this shit is weird.)

My friend Ben Deschamps of The Heather Dale Band has finally started releasing some solo work. It’s one of those song-a-week things, and he’s been building up a backlog of material in a bunch of different modes – instrumentals, silly, rock. You might enjoy giving a listen; he’s a really strong guitarist.

And I don’t know Four-Stroke at all, but if you like your punk thrashy, 80sish, and funny, check out Ottawa’s number one punk band on Reverb Nation. I particularly like “(I Wanna Be a) Suburban Jihadi,” which is a free download.

So, yeah. How was your weekend? Less power-spikey, I hope.

It’s been a busy weekend around the lair – and a bit bloggier than usual, too. You might enjoy “GamerGate True Believers are the Anti-Vaxxers of the Online World,” or maybe my ‘okay I’m done’ rant about Doctor Who, written after walking out on “Kill the Moon.” Check comments in particular on that second post, there are some good ones.

Apparently, some people rather liked the episode. I don’t see how, but hey, carry on.

No, here, it’s been mostly paperwork – even supervillains have to catch up on email and clear the desks sometimes – and a decent bit of Legend of Korra! Yes, I’m finally through all of year three. So far behind but so worth it. If you’re one of the people who didn’t get much out of the first year, give it another go, starting, oh, no later than midway through year two, with “The First Avatar.” It really rocketshots after that. I’m pretty sad that year four is probably the last year – it’s been so good. I’ll miss it.

I never did write up that VCON report, dammit. Wrote a bunch of other things, but not that. Here’s a nice one by Steve Fahnestalks at Amazing Stories, if you want, wherein he was kind enough to give me a little shout-out for my drum work. Thanks, Steve! 😀

But even in all the paper catch-up this weekend, music hasn’t been entirely set aside. It’s just mostly been MIDI instruments, which means lots and lots of keyboarding. I’m… vaguely competent on keyboard – good enough for this – but wow, do I have no emotional feel for it. OKAY LET’S PUSH ALL THE BUTTONS DOOT DOOT DOOT OKAY LET’S PUSH ALL THE BUTTONS AGAIN DOOT DOOT DOOT

I’m trying, I really am, I have touch sensitivity and aftertouch and all that, and I’m using it. But – yeah. It’s just not my thing.

It is useful, though. At least, once I can stop myself from just setting everything to drums and mashing all the keys at once. That is fun. But… kind of useless. And the MIDI tenor sax isn’t entirely bad.

I’m wondering whether I have time to get just good enough on xaphoon to fake my way through a soprano sax solo. Should I try it? I don’t think I have enough time. But it might be fun to try.

Wow. Just watched last week’s Doctor Who, the one on the moon. This show has descended into utter incoherence so steadily I never even noticed when Aquaman showed up.

Thing is, I didn’t like Superfriends as an animated kids show. I don’t like it any more now that it’s called Doctor Who. I don’t expect hard science, I know it’s science fantasy, but I do expect better than Superfriends Logic. And upon getting to that point, I am done.

Ring me up when Moffat’s gone. If the show survives that long, I might come back. Then again… I dunno. I walked out on this one as the space dragon that the moon turned into laid a replacement moon egg, and wow, do I not have any fucks to give anymore. I can’t even work up being insulted. I’m just done.
 
 

eta: Anna stayed through to the end.

Scarecrow Video has been a Seattle institution for many years. It started as a video rental store – and still is one – but it was owned by the kind of crazed film fanatics who run a business primarily as a way to build the biggest collection of things imaginable. The original owner was the sort of person who would fly on an hour’s notice to former Soviet republics on the rumour that he could get a SECAM videotape copy of a particular obscure Stalinist-era Belorussian film. And half the time, he’d return with it.

Despite having one of the largest film collections in the world – possibly the largest in the world – video rental doesn’t cut it anymore, so they’re going non-profit. But that’s expensive, too, so they’re launching a Kickstarter to make it happen. Go help.

I started renting from them when they were next to J&S Phonograph Needles in Roosevelt – yes that was a store for phonograph needles it didn’t make much sense then either – and remember when they moved to the U. District, on 50th and Roosevelt. They bought out what used to be the biggest Radio Shack ever, a multistory building with its own screening lounge and everything.

This is a small fraction of their collection.

It’s pretty damn cool, and it’d be a disaster to lose such a comprehensive film collection – particularly as it is actually available to the public. Even the exotic stuff can be rented and/or screened – they have multiformat players available, too. In some cases, they have one of only three to four copies of films still in existence, and you can see it. That’s the kind of collection this is.

I’ve known one of the current owners for a long time; this project is a big deal for them, too. So go help them flip that switch to non-profit. As I write this, they’ve made 60% of goal in a day, thanks in no small part to The Onion‘s AV Club. Let’s see if we can’t get them there by tomorrow, eh?

Anna has had Faerie Blood, the first book in the Free Court of Seattle series for which this soundtrack album will eventually be for, on sale for 99¢ this month, and today is the last day. So go! NOW! if you want it at that special price.

As for the soundtrack delays – I’m frustrated too. And a little embarrassed.

It’s been a bunch of different reasons; my inexperience with arranging so many players caused some of the early delays. That’s on me – but it was, at least, a valuable learning experience. But everything was ready to go last autumn for a winter of work followed by a spring release date.

And – and my eye exploded. Not quite literally, but close. That’s totally not my fault. Three rounds of eye surgery kept me mostly immobile for four months, and there’s going to be a fourth round – but not until after this album comes out.

Then spring! And lots of serious progress! And I’m thinking end of June or end of July for sure! And now it’s the end of of July… and I’ve just spent six weeks on day job stuff, working on restoring a 1924 apartment (with the 1958 kitchen I posted about earlier) 10 hours a day seven days a week that entire time. But … you gotta pay bills, you know?

Sorry if that shatters any illusions.

Believe it or not, we’ve made album progress over the last six weeks. Some of it is really important. John Barbour is the slow, quiet, calm moment in the centre of what is a high-energy upbeat storm of an album. It’s stripped down, it’s really bare, it has subtext of amusingly inappropriate behaviour, it’s six minutes long(!), and it needs to be there. Musically, it gives the album a chance to breathe. Thematically, it’s the lead-in to Song for a Free Court/Anarchy Now.

It’s the opposite of what I usually do, and despite that, it’s gonna be really good. I’m just waiting for the third vocalist to get his material in. (He’s not late – I got him the tracks to record into late last week.)

But it’s not coming out today.

The intent is to dive in now, throughout August, and Get Done. I’ve got Day Jobbe Fun coming up in September, so wow, do I not want to slip into that. Fortunately, there’s no reason we can’t finish this project, and finish it right, this month.

But that’s been true before. Multiple times – each one of those eye surgeries was supposedly the “last one” and I was ready to dive in when the next one happened. So I’m not announcing a new release date, as much as I want to.

I swear to you, this is not Chinese Democracy. It’s not going to take 13 more years. I just need a month with decent working conditions and no explosions. I realise, as a supervillain, that this is a lot to ask. But I’m asking.

Just back from the first movie I’ve seen in months, Maleficent. I wanted to see this before it fell out of theatres, mostly because of the trailers with her wings, because yeah.

Let’s talk about the good parts, first: Angelina Jolie is wonderful. It looks great. The green fire which is signatory to this version of the character was lovingly rendered and just felt right. The christening scene, reinterpreted here? Perfection. The later interactions of Aurora and Maleficent, ages, oh, 13ish to the end of the story resonated well, and just worked.

But… while so many things are right, I can’t get past “pretty good” as a response. Not great. Merely pretty good. That’s because I just can’t get past the fact that in this film, too many things are too easy. I don’t mean physically easy, tho’ there is some of that; those parts are not so important. No, I mean emotionally easy.

And from here on out, we’ll be heading deep into spoiler territory, so you have now been warned.

Let’s start with our antagonist, King Steffan.

Sharlto Copley plays Doctor then King Steffan well, given what he has to work with. But there isn’t enough meat in the part. There should be; all the bones are there. But Steffan’s arc is missing too many important, difficult notes.

His needed to be both a more political story – it’s a very political tale, after all – and a story about ruined love. Okay, sure, there was never “one true love,” as the film fairly points out – but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a kind of love there, and I think there was. And, well, betrayal of such things is a staple of royal histories. It’s entirely in theme.

And so Steffan commits a great treachery, setting events in motion, becoming King Henry’s heir. But that sort of treachery – so personal a treachery – needs confronting. In the film, all we really get is a big fight scene.

That’s letting him and the audience off easy, and it’s a failing. We in the audience need to know his self-justifications – how it was right for him to cut off and steal her wings, how it was right for him to seize the throne from a dying King Henry, how everything since then – the economic hardships, the battles – have proven how he and King Henry both were right to hate and desire the faerie lands.

How it’s all self-defense. How it’s all her fault. Not his. Not King Henry’s. Her fault.

Never his.

We shouldn’t buy it, of course. We don’t need to believe it. We just need to believe he believes it – even if only by lying to himself so strenuously for so long. We needed Maleficent to confront his justifications, and deny them, laying the lies bare.

We needed to see that, and we didn’t. Steffan’s descent into paranoia – see also, “uneasy rests the head that wears the crown” – played out well, but that’s not enough. We needed to get into his brain, and find him lacking.

It also would’ve been nice to see some of this from Princess and then Queen Leah’s view. It’s clear that King Steffan’s isolation grows throughout the film; it would’ve been nice if we’d known some of that has come from Queen Leah’s knowing that something happened between him and Maleficent. Sure, she knows about the wings; that’s why he’s king. But there was more to it, more that he’s lying about, something both more and rotten. Something that makes her suspicious, then untrusting, then isolating.

In short, his betrayal should ruin two potential loves. Ruined love already underlies the text; it should be a stronger undertheme, since it’s what unlocks his character. Love doesn’t have to be “one true love” to still be love; Steffan ruins it through betrayal for the sake of power, every time he acts.

It would make a nice parallel to the the other easiness problem in the film: the too-easy relationship of Maleficent and Aurora.

Maleficent’s affection for Aurora comes too quickly and too trivially, in film-time. Less so in story-time; it spans many years in character. But that’s not communicated well, and even in story-time, Maleficent’s saving Aurora’s life from the inept fairy trio’s overwhelming incompetence^* mere days after cursing her to die.

And it doesn’t resonate; it doesn’t work. Maleficent’s complex and multistage arc should be awesome – from young love, to betrayal and ruined love, to justified hate, to claiming her revenge… and then turning back from that, working through to regret, and to building an adult, parental love, and reclaiming her life for her own, from the wreckage wrought by Steffan.

Most of the pieces are there, but… it’s hollow in the middle. We needed a better arc of her hate. The arc is set up nicely. The betrayal is agonising. And so, she cursed an innocent baby to “sleep like death” tragically on the cusp of adulthood, as per her symbolic death with the rending and theft of her wings, and we’re kind of on board with that. We can see how she gets there.

So she can’t just step in and save Aurora over and over again without a good emotional reason, even if only to tell herself. Yes, it’s the turning point in her arc. Yes, from her own curse (irony!) she’s fated to love Princess Aurora in some form, as everyone who interacts with Aurora will come to love her, though not “true love” her. Maleficent is hoisted by her own petard here, and that’s fine.

But as with Steffan, there are always rationalisations for things done. Steffan needs to rationalise his evil; Maleficent needs to rationalise her goodness, in symmetry.

It could be simple – Aurora has to live to 16 so that Maleficent can see the curse she laid down become true, and watch King Steffan’s agony and failure to stop it. That’s a bit stock – a bit, heh, easy, really – but it’s a starting point.

Saving infant Aurora is a critical change at a critical moment. We needed some emotional support for that, and we didn’t get it. I’m not looking for All! The! Angst! – I’m looking for more emotional struggle to sell me the progression of character. Maleficent initially needs to save Aurora out of hate and revenge, not out of “well, guess so.” “Might as well” is just too damned easy.

Which is a damned shame.

Still, pretty good. Not what it should’ve been, though. That always hurts; good and great are awesome, terrible is terrible, hilariously terrible is even better. They are what they are and could be. But the near-misses like this one… they hurt. Maleficent could’ve been brilliant. Instead, by letting characters and the audience off too easy, it was merely… pretty good.

Not great. Pretty good.

And that’s a damned shame.

*: The three fairies were well too incompetent. It felt as though they were made even more spectacularly incompetent simply to provide more opportunities for Maleficent to step in and save Aurora. And again, that’s another case of letting things be Too Easy.

eta: Anna has a review up here, wherein she gets more into detail and less into overarching thematics. I agree with her about the wings and the new queen business, in particular. But you can read that yourself, if you like.

As work progresses on Bone Walker, the Free Court of Seattle soundtrack album, the first book in the series goes on sale for 99¢ in eBook form. That’s a thing that just happened! It’s a direct-by-author push, which is awesome. You can order a special ultra-high-resolution retina-ready PDF version from Anna if you’re into that, too.

The 99¢ sale price is good until the end of July, after which it goes back up to $4.99. YES IT’S 80% OFF RIGHT NOW. Obviously you’ll want the book that the soundtrack goes with, right? Of course you will. So go get it!

Meanwhile, book one her other series – Valor of the Healer, first of the Rebels of Adalonia series – also just went on sale for 99¢. That’s a shorter-term sale, and the price is only good until the 19th, after which it goes back up to $2.99. So go ahead and grab both. Two for less than the price of one.

Grabby hands! GRABBY HANDS!
 
 
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It looks like a part number, but it’s actually a Burning Man art project my friend Fish is putting together. As in literally putting together, as in, he’s building it.

You might remember Fishy and Attoparsec from the Harmonic Fire Pendula and other such fire-based endeavours. This time, it’s “what happens if you take a little handheld BB maze game and scale it up for bowling balls?”

I’d say something like this.

The Kickstarter project is just enough to fund the steel and a couple of other things. The rest, he’s paying for out of pocket.

I can’t go to Burning Man ever, really, because reasons. Secret reasons. But I like backing strange art projects, particularly kinetic ones. Occasionally I get to see them in person even if I can’t go to their primary display point, and there are videos, which never hurts.

He also has videos at the project page, of course.

He’s not doing the ‘flexible funding’ thing, so he actually has to make goal, which means your individual support actually actively matters. So go give the project a look, and if you can, toss him a few bucks. I think it’ll probably be worth it for the tremendous racket it’ll make alone. CLANG clangaclangaclangaity CLANG clanga CLANG

I need this. I need it like burning. It’s a device that basically turns anything, and I mean anything, into a percussion instrument.

Including the coffee cup.

I see how it’s made and I’m kind of thinking, y’know, maybe I should build that.

Then again, maybe I should stop adding new projects and finish ones I’ve already started. Maybe that.

(Thanks to Klopfenpop for the link.)