Doctor Who: Apollo 23

Apollo 23. (Doctor Who). Justin Richards. Based on the TV series created by Sydney Newman, C.E. Webber, and Donald Wilson. 2010. BBC Books. Pages: 248. [Source: Bought]

"Houston - we have a problem."

An astronaut in full spacesuit appears out of thin air in a busy shopping center. Maybe it's a publicity stunt.

A photo shows a well-dressed woman in a red coat lying dead at the edge of a crater on the dark side of the moon - beside her beloved dog 'Poochie'. Maybe it's a hoax.

But as the Doctor and Amy find out, these are just minor events in a sinister plan to take over every being on Earth. The plot centers on a secret military base on the moon - that's where Amy and the TARDIS are. - back cover.

Did I love Apollo 23? Not really, but I did like it. The characterization was beautifully done, whenever the Doctor spoke I could practically hear his voice speaking the words in my mind's ear. It was enjoyable and well thought out.

But there's a problem. I found the story to be quite slow at first. It wasn't until Chapter 10 that the action really began to pick up, while the first 9 chapters were focused on setting the scene. I've been studying how to set up the first few chapters of a novel when you are writing it, and I've found that the best way to catch a reader's attention is to ask questions, make them feel as if there's something not right with the situation, which would make them want to read more so that they can have their questions answered.

Yes, I had questions - but not enough questions. I often felt that the only reason why I kept reading was because I knew the characters and I wanted to read/see the 11th Doctor again (he's since regenerated into the 12th Doctor). I guess Doctor Who novels are not to my taste.

But the science-fiction-y, suspense, and boarder-line jump-scare was!

[This novel counts towards what I've read/watched for the 2016 Sci-Fi Experience that runs until the end of the month :) ] Geronimo! 

The Time of the Doctor

The Time of the Doctor. Christmas Special 2013. Original Airdate: December 25 2015.

I guess this could count as a movie for the Christmas Spirit Challenge I'm participating in this Christmas. Note to self: add "The Time of the Doctor" to 'Films I've Watched So Far' on my Christmas Spirit Challenge post.

Anyway, I have mixed feelings with this episode - not because it wasn't good. It was great, even! But "The Time of the Doctor" is the episode where we say goodbye to the 11th Doctor and say hello to the 12th (though we only see Peter Capaldi's Doctor for less than a minute before the episode cuts to credits).

Now, as a reminder, if you haven't watched "The Time of the Doctor" yet, I suggest you read no further. I don't want to spoil it for you!

This is a curious episode/movie/thing, whatever you want to call it. It opens with Clara Oswald (my favourite companion to date) ringing the doctor on his phone (which is located outside the TARDIS, in space) Apparently, her mother, father, and grandmother are coming over for Christmas dinner - and somehow, some way, Clara let it slip that she had a boyfriend (which she doesn't).

So in her panic, she calls up the Doctor, who's in space hovering above a strange planet surrounded by almost every alien the Doctor has had to face. (Okay, this makes this the second 2016 Sci-Fi Experiance appreciation post about a ton of aliens over a planet involving the Doctor in some way, lol).

The Doctor abandons his spot amongst all the alien ships and his TARDIS appears in the field next to Clara's apartment building.

And guess what? Clara's apartment building doesn't posess an elevator, meaning that whoever wants to visit her, or if she wants to go anywhere, they have to climb an almost never-ending staircase. And Clara's apartment is halfway up the building! I can just imagine the dread she must feel after every long school-day. Her feet may be sore and she is faced with having to climb all those stairs before she can have a chance to relax! I makes me grateful that I only have eight stairs to climb before I get to the back door of the house I'm in now.

This episode induced a lot of bittersweet feelings inside of me. There was humor and there was war. We learned that the planet he had been hovering over before Clara called him was, in fact, Trenzalore, the planet where Clara jumped into the Doctor's time stream and scattered herself all over time and space in order to protect him from the Inteligence, but way back in time before it was converted into a planet-sized graveyard.

And because the Doctor was there, defending the town called Christmas, Trenzalore probably never became that graveyard.

Points I liked about this episode:
- We got to see an almost fatherly-side of the Doctor because all the children in Christmas looked up to him.
- I got a chuckle out of the wooden cyberman with the flame-thrower strapped it its forearm. Well, that was smart - not. lol
- It tied up a lot of mysteries - we found out why the TARDIS suddenly exploded in "The Pandorica Opens"/"The Big Bang", where the Silence came from, and why Trenzalore was so important.
- I liked Handles, the cyberman head. Handles was the Doctor's closest "friend" for three hundred of the years he was on Trenzalore. He got to see one last sunrise and reminded the Doctor to patch the phone through the TARDIS' console before he finally died.

Points I didn't like about this episode:
- Seeing the 11th Doctor so close to death from old age. He was the first Doctor I was introduced to, so he was my favourite. Props to the makeup department for making the character's age look so real on the actor!
- The fact that the "Church of the Papal Mainframe" considered itself a church when all it seemed to be was a nudist colony ship that was militaristic in nature and used religious-themed codewords. They are also the Silence, and I never really liked the Silence anyway (since they were trying to kill the Doctor, caused Time to explode, and terrorised practically everyone since no one could see them and remember them once they looked away).

Other than that, is was a pretty good episode/movie. Now I can finally watch the escapades of the 12th Doctor!

The Pandorica Opens & The Big Bang

Last night, my family and I figured out how to hook up my Wii U to our netflix account, and we spent some time watching Doctor Who before my brother had to go to bed.

This is a short appreciation post for the two episodes I watched in the light of the 2016 Sci-Fi Experiance.

For the longest, longest time I wondered what was up with the episode "The Pandorica Opens". And for the longest time, I wondered why the Doctor kept calling Rory Williams "Rory the Roman". I finally got my answer last night.

Now, before you read any further, if you don't want to read any spoilers or if you haven't watched anything to do with the 11th Doctor yet, I would suggest you don't read any farther. After all, it's spoilers, sweetie.

"The Pandorica Opens" opens with Vincent Van Gogh writhing on the floor of his room, on death's door, screaming. Turns out, he had a dream where he saw the TARDIS exploding, heralding the end of reality. It both terrifies and confuses him. And he paints it as what seems to be his last painting. (I don't know very much about Van Gogh's role in the Whoniverse, honestly).

This episode was facinating, and together with "The Big Bang", paints a story of how they got Rory back after he fell out of the universe in a previous episode (which I must have skipped, because I have no recollection of Rory being erased from reality). One day, when me and my family have unlimited internet again, I am going to rewatch 11th's era again. Or, at least, I will watch the episodes I haven't watched yet.

"The Big Bang" explains how they fix reality after the TARDIS explodes. In "The Pandorica Opens", it showed how the Pandorica (I think it was the Pandorica) controled the numerous Roman soldiers which Rory had brought under Stonehenge (where the Pandorica was) and Rory as well, revealing that Rory and the Romans were actually plastic replicas of themselves and that they have guns in their hands. Guns in their hands.

The Pandorica manages to gain control of Rory and makes him shoot her with his hand-gun, so she dies. The Doctor's been locked in the Pandorica because, as it turns out, it was built to lock him away. But...well...if you've watched the episodes, you know how it turns out, and if you haven't...well - spoilers. If I told you the whole story, then you wouldn't want to watch it then, hmmm?

Points I liked about these two episodes:
- River Song managed to convince a whole leigon of Roman soldiers that she was Cleopatra (even though Cleopatra was dead by the time the majority of the first episode took place).
- The oldest words in the universe turned out to have been written by River Song. "Hello Sweetie".
- Turns out River Song and the Doctor can ride horses at a full-on gallop. Amy - not so much.
- I loved, loved, loved, loved the fact that Rory waited for Amy for 2000 years! The mythos built around him and the Pandorica was practically romantic!

Points I didn't like about these two episodes:
- The promotion of the Big Bang.
- How lonely Earth seemed without stars in the sky.