The Return of Doctor Mysterio

Not a lot of rewatch value, but a fun Christmas special, and nice to see Nardole again.

1. The Pilot

Not a bad intro for the new companion, but the snippets-of-mystery season arc has an uncomfortable whiff of how they handled Missy in season 8, where the revelation wasn’t worth all the time spent setting it up. I spent a lot of time wondering who Bill’s step-mom was (last seen having kittens in season 3), which was distracting enough that I almost didn’t get the point behind the box of pictures.

I had to turn on closed captions to catch all of the dialogue. Also, I’d like to see the actress who played Heather in something that shows a little more emotional range. Or a little more skin. Either way, I’m good.

2. Smile

I can’t decide whether this should have been shorter or longer. Shorter, for the material as they used it; longer, if they’d actually put some real thought into it, and maybe given some personality to one of the walk-on parts. Not impressed.

3. Thin Ice

Dear Writer, if you’re going to put Profound Words into the Doctor’s mouth, could you try to make them a bit less trite? And avoid trendy buzzwords like “privilege”? Kthxbye. As for the plot, I’d rather not.

“​…and this week Doc is playing with Julie, Gopher is playing with Vicki, and Isaac’s got a big surprise for Captain Stubing!”

(via)

Coming next year, a full season of The Tick on Amazon. The pilot episode was a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to more.

The pilot for Amazon’s new The Tick series is pretty good. I hope it gets a full season. Vote Tick; the only sane option in 2016.

Thanks to Christmas and my Amazon wishlist, I finally got to see the Agent Carter series. My DVR had skipped the first episode, and I never got around to watching it any other way, so the Bluray went onto my list. Well worth it, and now I can watch season two in two weeks.

…unless my DVR flakes out, of course.

What I’ve been watching recently, more or less:

Doctor Who

Better than last season, mostly due to the relative lack of Missy. The high point for me was coming up with a decent way to bring back Osgood and tie into the excellent 50th-anniversary special. The most recent episode, however, left me nodding off repeatedly due to the laconic pace, and the whole Louie Punch solution was... "disappointing". The one before that was only notable for a tediously drawn-out gratuitous death scene, and the special-effects animation in Clara's bra.

Heroes Reloaded

Frequently whiny and borderline incoherent (due in part to the expectation that of course everyone watched the web-only mini-episodes featuring the loser whose name I can never remember), the nicest thing I can say about it is that the often-dead female cast is quite attractive when they're not trying to look fierce. Or dead.
   I never had a big investment in Heroes after the writer's strike took the show down, but I agree with the critics who've been saying that they still think the things they pioneered in season one are fresh, rather than tired clichés overused by everyone else since then. The Japanese dialog has been quite odd in places, with only a loose relationship to the English subtitles, and often seems to be at the wrong level of politeness. Also, the whole meet-cute between Miko and Ren felt like they left out about an episode's worth of interaction.
   On a related note, Kiki Sukezane can actually do a decent fight scene ...in her demo reel on IMDB; the stuff they had her doing for most of the season was utter crap by comparison. (her training is in Tate, a school of dramatic stage fencing, which doesn't seem compatible with how they staged her fights)

Agents of SHIELD

I originally dumped this during the train episode in season 1, then used the wiki to catch up because people told me it got better. The current season started off with a major emphasis on Daisy's bustline, and even managed to get Gemma stripped down and pushed up. Oh, and there's some kind of story involving the outbreak of Inhumans; I'm two episodes behind at the moment. Doesn't suck, but I hope they wrap up the "rival agencies" crap soon.

The Librarians

They ran a marathon of season one a while back, so I whimsically set my DVR to record it. Quite good, actually, and the only thing I actually watch as soon as a new episode shows up.

Man In The High Castle

Watched the pilot when it came out, loved it. Watched the second episode when it came out, loved it. Haven't sat down and watched the rest yet, but expecting to love them.

Grimm

I'm still a full season behind, but that one's now free on Amazon Prime, so I'll catch up soon. I'm completely in love with Rosalie, of course.

Supergirl

My DVR failed to record episode one, but I happened to catch the second one. Wasn't as good as the original teaser trailer promised, but I'll try to record the inevitable reruns and catch up some time.

Belatedly, it occurs to me that in last week’s episode of Heroes, Emily was chicksplaining comic books to Tommy. I feel triggered! Start a protest march!

1. Last week’s odd soliloquy worked as part of the teaser, but was dropped into the actual episode with all the grace of a flaming bag of manure.

2. This week’s fourth-wall-breaking was… jarring, to be kind. Vaguely condescending as well, which would be fine if it were Doctor-to-companion rather than writer-to-audience.

3. Hey, at least Missy didn’t show up.