Friday Fun Times

49 seconds of pure awesome.

Friday Fun Times

Fucking awesome fanvid trailer for the Doctor Who 50th.

Friday Fun Times

The world's briefest intro to Doctor Who....

And I got this from a SciFiWire story but the text surrounding it is as stupid as everything else SFW ever puts up, so I'm not linking to it.

Thoughts for the Soon-to-be-Fan

This is a rebroadcast of a post I originally wrote for the Pursuit of Harpyness. If you've already read it there, apologies; come back on Friday for something more original! (Okay, it probably won't be technically "original," but it will be different.) And I'll try to get my act in gear re: The Doctor's Wife for next week, I swear.

When Anna originally asked me if I would be interested in doing some guestblogging on what I call "the orange blog," she suggested that I could think about writing about Doctor Who companions -- possibly from the original series -- and why they are awesome. This is largely because I spent a lot of time complaining about the bloggers who complained about the length of Amy Pond's skirt. (Short version: who cares about the length of her fracking skirt? If you're staring at her legs, you are totally missing the point. End short version.)

I considered this, but then another friend -- the wonderful Lola -- suggested in an email that a primer for those baffled but intrigued by the Doctor Who universe and fandom might be a good idea. And before I could plan, really, I was already suggesting "rules" and a collection of episodes to Anna via chat. What follows has been cleaned up and expanded, but still.

For those who don't know the series, welcome! The TARDIS has lots of space; find a seat and hang on. For those who do -- well, I hope what follows is at least a little bit funny.

1. It's bigger on the inside.

2. Never lose faith in the sonic screwdriver. And prepare to be charmed by its regenerative capacities. From originally looking like a tire pressure gauge, it now looks like some kind of whacky mini-LCD flashlight crossed with a tire pressure gauge. And it goes "chirp" a lot. Enjoy this.

3. Time Lords. Time Lords are...a real bitch, honestly. In the original series -- 1963-1989 inclusive bar a couple of BBC worker strikes in the '70s and '80s -- the Time Lords were, more or less, supposed to be the magical deus ex machina good guys. The Doctor (no spoilers here) is a Time Lord -- if he is awesome, then shouldn't his planet be just overflowing with awesomeness? Well, yes, and no. If you look closely at the original series Time Lords (I'm thinking here of things like the last part of of the Patrick Troughton episode War Games where the Time Lords force the Doctor to regenerate and exile him to Earth and the first several season of Jon Pertwee's Doctor where he's dealing with the exile and, by the way, having had bits of his memory tampered with also by the Time Lords) they're not so sweet and kindly. They're actually pretty devious, rather self-centered, and capable of being quite cruel. The Doctor makes more than one reference (The Deadly Assassin, The Five Doctors) to the Time Lords' history and how it "ain't all lavendar." In the new series, head writer Russell T. Davies and, in his turn, current show-runner Steven Moffat, have taken that idea and run further and faster with it than I think anyone expected them to. If you're an old series fan (like me) who always secretly thought the Time Lords were probably on crack, The End of Time (the last of the David Tennant specials) will warm the twisted cockles of your heart. If you're a totally new fan, enjoy the cracktasticness of having illusions destroyed.

4. Anything being in the TARDIS other than the Doctor, companion(s), and specifically invited guests is bad. Any sounds, any voices, faces -- if there's an actual physical person, then whoa. If you hear a deep bell tolling (see Cloister Bell) prepare for the deep and sticky 'cause it's gonna get bad in here.

Fifth Doctor.
(Peter Davison.) Note celery.

5. There have been 10 other regenerations of the Doctor. If you don't like this one, there are plenty of others to choose from! but, please: leave others to their enjoyment. Almost every fan has a particular regeneration of the Doctor they consider to be "theirs." It's often the first Doctor you encounter but doesn't have to be (hey, it's a fandom: there are no real rules here!) If you love Peter Davison (5), that's awesome; I'd love to listen to you enthuse for hours on why celery is the greatest thing ever; but, please, don't knock Matt Smith (11) for not being David Tennant (10). And so on and so forth.

6. That being said, the Doctor is, in essence, always the Doctor.

7. The Daleks are small irritable pepper-pots who want to rule the universe. Their history with the Doctor goes back to the second episode of the first season of the series; more about this in a later post. Give thanks to the estate of the late, great Terry Nation who created them that Davies and Moffat get to play with them. They will always come back. They will always be short-tempered. They will always want to rule the universe and/or kill the Doctor. It's just what they do.

8. Sontarans look like pissy potatoes. If you were the genetically modified member of a clone society entirely based on military conquest and domination, you'd be easily annoyed, too.

9. Yes, you can escape the entire Cyber empire on foot, at a gentle stroll. Don't let them concern you unduly.

10. The Master. Just -- remember that name. It will be important and when you need to know why -- you'll know why.

The Master. (John Simm).

11. Okay, here's why: the Master is, along with the Daleks, the Cybers, and the Sontarans, one of the longest-running and most popular villains on the show. He has been through at least two official regenerations (I'm counting Roger Delagado, Anthony Ainley, and John Simm here although there are eight actors who have played the part one way and another) but more bodies than that and is, as Time Lords go, so far at the end of his regeneration rope (having started in the show at 12 back in the day with Jon Pertwee and the Third Doctor), that his rope has given up and gone home (see point 14). He makes up what he no longer has in regenerations through body-stealing and black magic.

12. The Time War. Think of it as Event Zero (for the new series) and almost completely irrelevant (for the old series). To know more, watch David Tennant (10), season 2-4 of the new series. And then, when you understand it, come back and explain it to me.

13. Companions. Used to be called 'assistants' back in the '60s and '70s. Often, though not always, a young woman; often, though not always, a single person travelling with the Doctor, sometimes for multiple series. Serves the function of the audience: asks the question to advance the plot; gets lost/poisoned/captured/hypnotised/drugged; goes and opens the door with "Do Not Open" on it; wanders into places which should not be wandered into; and, in the new series more than the old to my mind, keeps the Doctor a little more in the light than he might otherwise be. Classic companions from the original series include Susan, Jamie, Zoe, the Brigadier, Jo Grant, Sarah Jane Smith, Leela, Romanadvoratnalundar, Sergeant Benton, Adric, and Ace. (If you want to discuss the politics of skirt length, do it somewhere else.) 

14. Regeneration. Time Lords -- of which the Doctor is occasionally not the last; see point 3 -- get to regenerate when a body is old, worn-out, or too badly injured. They get 12 regenerations. This is old series canon. Steven Moffat may (or may not) be on a road to reinvent this from the ground up.

15. Hey, I came up with 14; I figure y'all get to do some work here, too: what's your 15? If you're a fan, what's the thing you tell your friends when you're trying to get them hooked?

Which Captain Jack Would Be Relevant Here?

Here we are today to talk about the pirate episode of season 6. I know, I know: it has a real name. Black Spot something-or-other. But, honestly -- are we ever going to call it anything other than "the pirate episode"? No, we are not. So lets just start as we mean to go on and leave it there.

But first: a public service announcement from the end of A Good Man Goes to War: WHAT THE FUCK! SERIOUSLY. WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK WAS THAT ABOUT.

Ahem.

Moving on. Spoilers, yada yada.

The Curse of the Black Spot. (I did say it had a real title.) Overall, this has much the same feel as, for instance, Victory of the Daleks. It's a fun, charming monster-of-the-week that tries to do something a little more serious at the end and, depending on how much you liked the rest of the episode, succeeds or fails accordingly.

I have heard people complaining about this episode because it's not like the season openers were. To sidetrack for a minute and be fully honest, I don't really read the Tor.com posts about Doctor Who (the first link) because I don't like their DW bloggers. They seem to me to be all new series fans who expect the show to be something that, in its DNA, it isn't. But that's a post for another day. (If nothing else, the episode Teresa Jusino talks about in her post, The Web Planet, is one of my favorite Hartnell episodes. I love the bugs; I love the planet; I love Ian. So bite me, Ms. Jusino: if your taste is for the adrenalin-driven and simplistic, I suggest you try Supernatural or Battlestar Galactica. Or, say, The Hills. And get the hell out of my party.)

Ahem. *kofkof* Sorry about that: bad fan moment. I get no cookies. Go your ways, Ms. Jusino: I'm sure there's room enough in the TARDIS for all of us.

Anyway, no, Black Spot is not the most exciting episode that the first half of season 6 has to offer: it is a fun way to spend 45 minutes. The TARDIS lands on a pirate ship that is being haunted by a siren who claims anyone who is injured or sick on the ship; even a minor cut is enough for her to turn up and whisk off the luckless sailor to -- heaven knows where. Or the Doctor knows where. There's also a grumpy captain and a mysterious stowaway.

Arthur Darville gets to have a marvelous time in this episode doing a cod version of Alan Tudyk's fantabulous stoned turn in Death at a Funeral. Rory is injured fairly early on in the episode and the siren keeps trying to take him away; Amy and the Doctor basically sit on him, but his behavior when the siren around is a hoot.

Turns out the siren can enter the ship -- to claim the aforementioned injured victims -- not simply through the water around or on the ship but through any reflections. It may be that all reflections are now open doors from one universe or dimension to another. (Is anyone else harking back to the Family at this point? 'Cause I swear, if that little girl with the red balloon starts popping out of mirrors, I am going to haul my couch out away from the wall so I can hide behind it.)

Now, personally, I think Black Spot is doing something at least a little more interesting than a lot of the reviews I have seen of it seem to think. The siren, it seems, is a medical program from a ship stalled in the same area as the pirate ship but in a different dimension. (Stones of Blood!) The siren is also not being as unhelpful as everyone thought: what she's trying to do is carry out her program and heal the injured and sick. (The Empty Child!) Seems like her program is a little damaged, though, and she can't quite figure out how to do her job right: all she can do is place people in stasis and leave them. (The Doctor Dances!) So, if nothing else, there are a crap-ton of series nods in this episode which are endlessly fun.

There are some lovely moments in this episode: the captain and his stowaway son; the siren and Amy in the stasis chamber; Amy and Rory in the TARDIS -- plus another near-death experience for Rory which got the response from the three of us watchers: "Oh, please, no, not again -- c'mon, Rory!" And sighs of relief all 'round when he didn't die (Kenny was funny...but only on South Park.) And the Doctor is yet again confronted with his desire to save everyone -- or at least to try and keep people from killing people or things until the situation is understood.

I really do think if you just take this episode for a cheerful, amusing romp with pirates, it's a pretty solidly good time. Yes, the CPR is wrong; is there a TV show that gets it right? Yup, there are dialogue goofs and continuity fluffs and it's just generally not perfect. Gosh. Shall we all storm the studios of BBC Wales and burn the place down now? Does the story hang together as tightly as (we hope) the season openers will (in the end)? Well, no -- but if everything were Day of the Moon, frankly, I don't know if I could cope. And there are space pirates at the end? Do you understand this, people? Space frelling pirates! Okay? Yes? Are we all good now?

So when it comes time to click into that third episode, make some good tea or get a glass of wine, pick out your favorite candy, and relax a bit. (Oh, except for when the woman peers through the wall at Amy. Tense up then. 'Cause, believe me, when you hit the end of the season, you're going to wish you spent a lot more time being tense around those moments.)

It's Not This Cold in Boston. Yet.

Thanks to Neil Gaiman for linking to this because I might not have found it otherwise.

And for the win mix of new series/old series references!

Friday Fun Times: "Don't you forget me."

Because why not have another good cry over Sarah Jane?

"This isn't even South Croyden!"

There should be a rule that when you first turn on your computer when you come home -- there can't be bad news about some treasured performer from your childhood dying.

Terror of the Zygons.

You really were the best.

Invasion of the Bane.

R.I.P.

"I do have my academic reputation to consider!"

So I said the next episode was one of my favorites, right? Top five at least -- I love Stones of Blood. The last quarter gets a tiny bit dodgy, but the rest makes up for it.

With two segments of the Key safely stowed in the TARDIS -- in what my father said is an old cake safe and why should I disbelieve him? It certainly doesn't look very much like a safe safe, whatever it is -- Romana and the Doctor move on towards their third destination, which the Doctor promises Romana will be a treat: "Earth!"

They land on a wide, grassy moor and find deep depressions in the grass: farming equipment, Romana says, testing the soil with her wildly impractical spike heel. Really -- check this outfit, folks.

Perhaps she should have asked K9 what to wear...

I couldn't find a shot that would show her feet but, trust me, the heels are atrocious. Fortunately, she gets to change into something better about halfway through -- a kind of claret-colored blouse and skirt with nice solid boots. Must have been a great relief!

Anyway, they stroll off across the very pleasant field, following the signal of the tracer (have I mentioned the tracer before? it locates the given segment of the Key and transforms it back to its original form), and find a stone circle with two women doing an archaeological survey. It turns out there's a local nouveau Druid circle making sacrifice at the circle on a regular basis; when the Doctor goes to talk to the head of the circle, Mr. DeFrees, who lives at the nearby Big House, he discovers the focus of the sacrifices: the Cailleach, a Celtic goddess of "..war, death, and magic -- Beware the raven and the crow, Doctor; they are her eyes." Before getting whacked on the back of the head after getting a glimpse of the goddess, the Doctor gets some local history based around missing paintings, paintings theoretically removed to be cleaned, but really.... dundundunnnnnn Clearly something is up with the paintings. When they are later discovered in the basement of the house, they are portraits of the same woman over a period of nearly a thousand years. And she looks very familiar...

The Cailleach. And her cardboard
head.

The first three-quarters of the episode are a pretty tight murder mystery with aliens -- there's the stone circle; the archaeologists surveying it; the Druids sacrificing in it; and the latest reincarnation of a bloody-minded Celtic goddess. The last quarter, though, explains the goddess away as an alien criminal stranded on earth and, for some reason, introduces her transport: an interdimensional hyperspace ship that has been stranded for centuries above the circle. It all gets a bit confusing: Romana gets trapped; the Doctor gets arrested; there's a lot of citric acid. In the end, the segment turns out to have been disguised as a rather tacky necklace that one of the characters, the alien-passing-as-human Vivian Fay, has been wearing.

So what's the draw with this episode if the ending is so soggy? Well, to go back to the original stone circle and the folks surveying it: the two women are Professor Amelia Rumford and Vivian Fay -- and Professor Rumford is who I want to be when I grow up: she is kick-ass all up and down the map and she is an absolutely fantastic "companion for the duration of an episode."

She even out-Doctor's the Doctor at one point: the two of them have gone to "find out what happened" at the Big House and have discovered one of the episode's aliens, an Ogri, killing the inhabitants of the house. The Doctor and Amelia pursue the thing -- not a wildly smart idea since it's a giant mobile stone with a taste for blood -- and, when they've escaped from the house, the Doctor turns to dive through a gate into the open fields and Amelia stops: "Doctor! It is our duty to capture that creature! We can track it to its lair!"

Romana, Amelia, and the transdimensional gizmo.
It probably goes 'ping!' when there's stuff.

And when the time comes to run the Gizmo of the Episode in order to send the Doctor and Romana across dimensional barriers to a hyperspace ship (I told you the last quarter of the episode got a bit sketch), Amelia steps up.

Plus the great bit of dialogue between her and the Doctor when she asks if he's from outer space; he says, "No, I'm more from what you'd call inner time." She blinks, but takes it solidly on the chin and stays where she is.

Oh, and didn't I mention?

She's a tiny little old lady.

With a blackjack.

She rocks.

Plus, the first three-quarters of the show are really solid: the Ogri are a frightening nasty. They have no particular brain or motivation other than the obvious: eat and survive. They're awakened and used by the Cailleach -- Vivian Fay in a lot of silver makeup and not enough dress -- to intimidate and/or kill anyone she finds inconvenient. There's a genuinely creepy scene about midway through where one of the Ogri stations itself by the tent of a couple of campers. The man wakes up and comes out, calls back to the woman to get her to come out and look at the stone, a new addition to the landscape since they went to bed. And we wait for the inevitable moment when one of them touches the stone -- and it's all over bar the screaming. Quite unpleasant -- and the Doctor nowhere around.

And the end -- with the Doctor put on trial for his life by the Megara, justice machines meant to be trying Vivian Fay but trapped by her on the hyperspace vessel -- is kind of fun, although the whole "trial" gag gets a bit old. There's plenty of time for Tom Baker to stalk around and look silly in a horsehair peruke, though, so that's a good time being had by all. And there's plenty of time for Romana and Amelia, back on earth, to sort out a great Gizmo of the Week (see picture above) and spend some time running from the Ogri.

On the whole, Stones of Blood is one of the more successful episodes in the Key season. The basic story is reasonably solid; some of the performances either flat-out inspired (see Amelia) or scenery-chewing goodness (see Mr. DeFrees, latest head Druid).

"Has anyone here seen a planet called Calufrax!"

Jelly babies are probably the solution.

So we've all got the plot now, right? There's a Key which we have to find; the Guardian who wants it found; and the Doctor who gets given a new companion in order to find it. It's all pretty simple, really. Of course, the Key is split into six segments and scattered throughout time and space which is a bit of a problem.

We got the first segment in pretty good shape and now we move on to number two -- the only issue here is that the second segment of the Key seems to be dodging about a bit. The Doctor and the Romana get a fix on it -- only to have it vanish and reappear on another planet. Unusual to say the least: the Key isn't meant to be self-motive, but the Guardian did make it pretty clear that the Key could be anything and you may wish to keep that in mind.

Repairs under pressure.

The Pirate Planet was written, largely under the influence of a locked hotel door and a lot of black coffee, Scotch, and possibly bath salts, by Douglas Adams. If you're an Adams fan -- and if you're not, please cease reading this blog immediately -- you'll recognize the touches: there's lunatic dialogue that really makes sense (Tom Baker has a lot of fun with this); a semi-robotic pirate captain with a robot parrot and a tendency towards existential crises; and an Evil Queen who may or may not be dead.

And then there's the wittering mechanic Mr. Fibuli, the Mentiads, and the odd behavior of the planet Calufrax. Oh, and Bandraginus V may have been reduced to rubble which will chill the hearts of those of us who were hoping to have a genuine Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster before we die.

It's all just a lot of fun, really; Planet isn't serious -- I think maybe there was meant to be a moral lesson about environmental destruction or possibly responsible mining? somewhere in there, but it got lost. There's manaically colorful costumes; ridiculous plot twists; and a general sense of everyone having an excellent time and making lots and lots of bad jokes -- including terribly geeky ones about the importance of upholding basic laws of physics.

Yes, the season-long arc of the Key story does move forward -- there's another segment safely in the TARDIS by the end of the episode -- but I don't know if a lot else happens that is of great moment. The Doctor and Romana are clearly learning to work together more comfortably and Romana is a pleasure to have about the place as a companion: she's self-reliant, intelligent, generally unafraid, and deeply snarky to villains. Or quasi-villains since the poor old Captain ends up to be not as bad as you might think -- or at least more sinned against than sinning.

I've seen a lot of people complain about middle Tom Baker-era stories, including the Key arc, because they're "jokey" and "flippant" and to these people I say: have a jelly baby. And relax. Our fandom involves lots of spaceships made out of tin-foil and flying on string; aliens who are, somehow, always humanoid and speak perfect RP English; an alien hero who often behaves like a cross between a sulky child and the worst Oxbridge don you can imagine; and a spaceship which is, fundamentally, broken ...while at the same time, of course, being bigger on the inside. It's all okay, guys; a couple of jokes won't break us.

Tune in next time for --- Stones of Blood! One of my personal favorites and my second favorite episode in the Key season.

"Is there no-one you can trust these days!"

All right, ladies and gentlemen. Here's the deal: see, at the minute I have two full sets of Doctor Who, season 5 sitting on my bookshelf. Both of them work -- sort of and sometimes.

See, the first disc of one set works only in my laptop until about halfway through The Eleventh Hour, when it freezes; the first disc of the other set works only in my DVD player unless I start it running in the DVD player and then switch it to the laptop. The second disc, reverse it. It's very frustrating and none of the discs seem to work quite right in either player. It's as though someone decided to encode the main menu on each disc as an easter egg: you have to play around in each and every case with which combination of buttons you need to press in order to get there. Then, you may have to press additional buttons in order to make the damned thing work. I tell you, it's worse than getting K-9 to run over uneven ground.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I have yet to figure out which disc will let me rewatch The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang satisfactorily in order to write a post about them. It's as though the BBC is personally trying to thwart my blogging! Damn you, BBC executives -- I will not be stopped!

But, unfortunately, I will be delayed.

I had a couple of plans for post-season 5 -- one of them was a post about Torchwood: Children of Earth which I am...really, well, I'm putting it the hell off. The other -- more ongoing vision -- was to talk about some original series episodes because, well, I don't think enough folks who got into the show with the new series have investigated the old series very thoroughly. And they're some of my favorite episodes.

So I've been thinking about where to start this very sketchy and uneven sort of "rewatch" non-liveblog kind of thing. And I figured I might as well start with the Key to Time series: six episodes that made up the 16th season and a whole year's worth of Tom Baker episodes. With all that in mind -- not that it matters a whole hell of a lot -- lets start at the beginning with The Ribos Operation. (If you remember a couple of posts I did last year about "good place to start" episodes, this series of episodes was briefly mentioned.)

Here's the set-up:





As one of the comments on the video at Youtube.com said, "...[he] makes the Doctor an offer he can't refuse." Basically: find the parts to this semi-mythical Key, put them back together so I can save the universe -- or else. The 'else' doesn't even have to be spelled out; Valentine Dyall as the White Guardian does such a fantastic job of making it a threat by tone, look, and mint-julep-swirl.

The Ribos Operation comes just after a lot of very hectic action at the end of season 15 which started with the nice, relaxing jaunt through the closed-room murder mystery of The Horror of Fang Rock (oh, juicy goodness, my friends!) and ended with the departure of the Doctor's companion, Leela, accompanied by a version of K9 to live with her new lover on Gallifrey. (Lame ending to Leela's story arc? Why, yes, yes, it is. We don't talk about The Invasion of Time here.)

So the Doctor is (temporarily) companion-less except for the new version of K9 but now has a new companion thrust upon him by the Guardian to help with the search for the Key. We re-enter the TARDIS to find...

If you're thinking "impractical," you're right.

Yes, well, the Doctor blinks a bit, too. Actress Mary Tamm had been a model "in a previous life," and the costume department clearly had fun with that. Romanadvoratnalundar's ("It's either Romana -- or Fred!" "All right, call me Fred!" "All right. Come on, Romana.") costumes range from the truly bizarre to the merely 'huh'-inducing but Tamm carries them all off with great style and a certain amount of grace -- even the really stupid ones: wait for it, we'll get there in Androids of Tara.

Steven Moffatt clearly had Romana in mind when he created River Song: Romana is a Time Lord; she attended the University; she is smarter and more successful (academically speaking) than the Doctor ("A triple first? are we meant to be impressed?" "Well, it's better than scraping by with 51 percent at the second attempt." "That information is confidential!"); and she knows how to fly the TARDIS -- possibly better than the Doctor. She is intelligent, self-confident, and not willing to take guff from anyone, let alone him. She even begins to diagnose his psychological problems and give him advice within the first ten minutes of residence in the TARDIS.

What makes Romana a great companion is that, much like River, her expectations begin to change. She shifts from viewing the Doctor as someone she might be expected to respect if she were a more revolutionary character herself or someone who might have done better had he done different things with his lives and, instead, begins to see what his skills really are and how important they might be. She has no idea how to talk to people, for example, and if the Doctor has a core set of skills then, by golly, schmoozing is right at the top of the list. By the end of the season, Romana is still very much her own character -- but she and the Doctor have learned to appreciate each other: technically, Romana is streets ahead of the Doctor and he knows that. Interpersonally, the Doctor can outrun Romana any day and she knows that.

They track the first segment of the Key to a planet called Ribos and the fun really begins. The heart of this story is a three-card trick being played by two conmen, Garron and his assistant, Unstoffe, on a deposed ruler, the Graff Vynda-K, and what remains of his army, primarily represented by his aide-de-camp, Sholakh.  Garron and Unstoffe are trying to sell the Graff a non-existent mine and salting the ground by using a piece of jethryk -- an element which would power a space fleet for an entire campaign. Obviously, the jethryk is the first segment of the Key and there's a whole bunch of sleight-of-hand involving this rather attractive blue bit of rock. There are also dragons -- of a sort -- called shrivenzales; a magician called the Seeker with a fantastic hat; and Binro the Heretic.

The actor who played Binro, Timothy Bateson, died not long ago and, in memory thereof, I think we should all take a minute and watch what I think may be one of the best scenes from Operation:





I should also point out that Iain Cuthbertson (Garron, not in this scene) is fantastic in this. Cuthbertson is pretty much always fantastic (check out his work in Inspector Morse, for a case in point -- right up until the point where, as I recall, Ian McDiarmid kills him. Sad, but a great moment for genre fans!)

The Ribos Operation is a nice, solid introduction to the new season; it makes sense, doesn't offer any ghastly un-wrapped-up loose ends (other than the Key itself); and has some great characters to offer, along with an absolutely dribbling villain in the Graff. (Really. The man goes out while shrieking encouragement to an entirely imaginary army under his equally imaginary command. Complete loon.)

Trivia for the day: If you happen to notice that Tom Baker looks injured, you're right. He was in a pub, so goes the story, and was bitten by another pubgoer's dog which damaged his upper lip. You'll notice he seems to be nursing it in the first episode -- in the American version, for about the first 20 minutes of the show -- and then forgets about it.

Next time: The Pirate Planet, written by everyone's favorite hitch-hiker.