I haven’t written anything about the recent salvos of the Late Night TV Wars. That’s partially because I’ve been very busy, and mostly because they’ve been so thoroughly covered elsewhere.

Oddly, while I consider myself on “Team Conan” in the current feud over The Tonight Show, he’s really my third choice for what to watch in that time slot. Second is David Letterman, of whom I’ve been a fan since he first sat in Johnny Carson’s chair.

Truth to tell, these days I’m a Colbert watcher. If Stephen’s in reruns, I flip to Letterman. And as much as I personally like Conan (who, I remind you, wrote the classic “Marge vs. the Monorail” episode for The Simpsons), the truth is that I was much more likely to see him at 11:35 pm. And even that’s in question now, as I’ve really taken to Craig Ferguson.

So, even though I think Jay Leno should’ve gracefully bowed out, I admit that I really have no horse in that race. Which is not gonna stop me from posting this clip from last night’s Late Show, in which Letterman eviscerates his former pal Leno.

Updated: Taiwanese TV explains the Late Night Wars via goofy computer animation and superhero metaphors! I really need to start watching more Taiwanese TV.

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Here’s the “red band” trailer for the upcoming Saturday Night Live-inspired movie, MacGruber.

Definitely not safe for work.

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The first trailer for Avatar left me convinced that James Cameron’s $300 million comeback film would be a titanic flop. It stunk of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the 2001 Japanese flick which burned bags of money to create a photorealistic, computer generated sci-fi world that absolutely no one cared about.

The next trailer was more promising, yet what it promised was Dances with Wolves. It was the traditional white man’s guilt fantasy: white man meets noble savages (who, inevitably, use every part of the buffalo), goes native, and ultimately leads a revolt against his former people.

Bonus: it also looked to be a heavy-handed eco fable featuring a literal “mother earth.” James Cameron was back, and he would speak for the trees.

I was unimpressed. Pretty to look at, I thought, but this was what he’d spent the last fifteen years developing? I was certain that only the Cameron faithful would show up on opening weekend. The Avatar toys infiltrating big box stores nationwide would be buried alongside those for Dragonball: Evolution and Astro Boy: The Movie.

Okay, so I was wrong about that. (But not about Dances with Gaia.)

Despite my lack of enthusiasm for Avatar, I felt that I really ought to see it. Sure, I was intrigued by the technology. I’m also a sucker for good 3-D. But in the end, I think that what I wanted most was to be able to bitch about it with authority.

Last weekend I drove up to visit my dad (who is conveniently located near an IMAX theater), and plunked down my $12.50.

The verdict? Pretty much I expected. Gorgeous and groundbreaking. Pity about the script.

Briefly, Avatar is the story of a paraplegic soldier transported to the planet Pandora, his mind transferred into an artificially-created copy of the indigenous population. The Na’vi are ten-foot tall, blue humanoids who literally link to their environment via a tendril/hair thingy. These plug-and-play Smurfs (who are 30 apples high) live in a hollow tree sitting on the largest known deposit of unobtanium (no shit, that’s what they call it), an isotope of mcguffinite so valuable it can buy entire cities. (And yet, the local mining company official keeps a chunk of it on his desk. Really?)

Avatar leaves no doubt that there are no longer limits on what can be depicted on screen if one has the money and computing power. While I’m not sure that Cameron’s in-camera animatics (which allowed him to see digital characters in a virtual set while directing the live actors) will change the way that movies are made, it will certainly change how very expensive movies are made.

I was impressed by his advanced technique for capturing facial movements, allowing the performances of Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver to shine through their digital makeovers. Cameron seems to have emerged from the “uncanny valley” that made Robert Zemeckis’ computer-generated Tom Hanks and Jim Carrey so unsettling. However, I wonder how many sins are covered by the blue, cat-like features of the Na’vi. The real test, I think, would be to create a realistic duplicate of the actor’s own face.

Much was made of Cameron’s attempt at world-building, but I didn’t find it so remarkable. Several years ago, the crew of Peter Jackson’s King Kong similarly created an entire ecosystem for Skull Island.

I did, however, appreciate the believably* alien flora and fauna, and wasn’t surprised to see that artist Wayne Douglas Barlowe (whose seminal work Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials sits on my bookshelf) did an early design pass on them. The use of phosphorescence was a clever way of tying together the Pandoran biosphere**.

*Not so sure about the lizard whose defense mechanism was to turn into a tiny helicopter and helplessly rotate six inches from where it had been sitting. Dangling food is still food.

**Curiously, most of the animal life was six-limbed, yet the Na’vi had only two arms and two legs. Did they originate elsewhere?

Unfortunately, Cameron spent far less time on the script that he did on the production design. I might have forgiven the “seen it all before” plot if each of the story beats hadn’t been equally telegraphed. Was there any doubt that Jake would reclaim his standing with the Na’vi by taming that family-sized pterodactyl, or that Mother Nature would listen to his plea* and assemble her horde of uintatheriums and displacer beasts to save the day?

*And just why was Jake so much more Na’vi than the Na’vi anyhow?

Having seen Cameron’s Aliens a great many times, I couldn’t shake a feeling of déjà vu when the evil military commander climbed into a mechanical suit and threatened Jake’s ferocious warrior girlfriend Neytiri. I half-expected Jake to shout, “Get away from that bitch, you bastard!”

Wired magazine’s recent feature article about Avatar explained what inspired James Cameron to become a filmmaker: a fit of jealous pique after seeing the original Star Wars. Star Wars, it said, “was the film he should have made.”

Since that didn’t happen, he settled for producing a space western in which a technological empire is defeated by bow and arrow-wielding primitives, and all life is connected by a mystic energy field. I hear that his next film will be about a globe-trotting anthropologist.

Dave Movies 3-D, Avatar, James Cameron, reviews

It’s the opening sequence of The Simpsons, done up in live-action for Estonian TV!

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And so we say goodbye to David Tennant as Doctor Who…

#58:  ”The End of Time”

This song is ending, but the story will never end.

I watched the second half of “The End of Time” with a mixture of sadness and relief: sadness over the impending death of the 10th Doctor, relief that the story ended so well. Russell T. Davies’ season finales tend toward an everything-plus-a-neon-encrusted-kitchen-sink approach. For all the spectacle and joy, there are usually at least a couple of eye-rolling, Earth-towing moments.

Part one threatened to take a hard turn in that direction. John Simm’s incarnation of the Master was already brimming with lunacy, and “The End of Time” added to that a botched resurrection that left him bursting with energy, jumping fifty feet in the air and gobbling down whole chickens. And that was before he used the Immortality Gate to transform nearly every person on Earth into a maniacally laughing duplicate of himself. So it wasn’t without reason that I feared that the conclusion would journey into the gone-too-far territory of “Last of the Time Lords.”

Speaking of Time Lords, part one ended with the biggest reveal since the Dalek army in the concluding moments of “Bad Wolf”: Timothy Dalton as the (saliva-intensive) Lord President of Gallifrey presiding over a massive assembly of the Doctor’s own people. There had been hints of the Time Lords’ return–notably a publicity photo of Dalton wearing their telltale robes–but I honestly didn’t anticipate that all of them would be coming back, or that they’d be bringing their planet with them.

In hindsight, it had to happen. After five years of references to the Last Great Time War and the Doctor’s status as the last remaining Time Lord (more or less), it was fitting that Tennant’s tenure ended with the possibility of overturning that status quo, then demonstrating why that would be a bad, bad thing for everyone.

I admit that I’ve missed the Time Lords, but I can understand why Davies did away with them. If they were truly as powerful as often had been suggested,* then why wouldn’t they step in and sort out universe-threatening problems before they started?

As it turned out, the Lords of Gallifrey were themselves out to destroy the universe and thus to win the Time War. I suppose that I shouldn’t have been surprised; the Time Lords had always been assholes. They’d birthed more than their share of mad power-mongers, and in their prosecution of the war against the Daleks, they’d shown their willingness to transgress their own legal and moral boundaries in reincarnating the Master** to fight for them.

*Never mind that in most of the Gallifrey-centered episodes of the original series, the Time Lords were seen as doddering bureaucrats incapable of turning back a handful of aliens made of cellophane, much less the amped-up Daleks of the modern era.

**Interestingly, Dalton’s character was apparently Rassilon, the long-deceased founder of Time Lord society. I wonder, did they resurrect Omega, Borusa and other renegade Gallifreyans as well?

The visuals were spectacular, but what really made this story sing were the quiet scenes between the Doctor and the Master, as well as the Doctor and Donna’s grandfather, Wilf. We learned what the Doctor felt about his endless cycle of death and rebirth. And we found that after all of the death the Master had caused, the Doctor still saw in him the friend he lost.

The Master was even allowed a redemptive moment that, surprisingly, didn’t seemed forced. Perhaps that was because it seemed less about saving the Doctor’s life than it did about the Master venting his rage against Rassilon for visiting madness on him in the first place.

With both Master and Time Lords dispatched, the Doctor appeared to have cheated the prophecy of his death. But in the most heartbreaking moment, we heard those four quiet knocks and realized that sweet, old Wilf would be the one to bring his end.

The next fifteen minutes may have been similar to the multiple epilogues of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, but like that film trilogy, I felt that the last five years of Doctor Who had earned its long goodbye. It was nice to see everyone one last time, my favorite reunion being the Star Wars cantina riff featuring Captain Jack and a multitude of returning aliens.

At last, it was time to say farewell to the 10th Doctor.

That brings us to:

#59:  David Tennant

I don’t want to go.

And I didn’t want you to go.

My first Doctor was Jon Pertwee, and I count Tom Baker, Peter Davison and Sylvester McCoy among my favorites, yet I think that David Tennant was my favoritest of all. His Doctor was enthusiastic, joyful, quirky, manic, angry, compassionate and loving. In other words, all of the previous Doctors in one gangly package.

Plus, he had an awesome coat.

It didn’t hurt knowing that Tennant himself was an uber-fan. On the other hand, that’s why I thought that he might stay longer than his three-years-and-change. The previous four Doctors (C. Baker, McCoy, McGann and Eccleston) had such short lifespans that I’d hoped David would aspire to the Tom Baker end of the scale.

Ah well, it was not to be. British actors are notoriously fickle about tying themselves to a long-running TV role.

So long, Doctor Ten.

And so long to:

#60:  Russell T. Davies

Now, I’ll admit that I’m ready for Davies to move on. I’m hoping that the show will get past his vision of a vengeful, dangerous Doctor. And, as I’ve mentioned, Davies doesn’t always quite know where to draw the line between a good idea and a what-the-fuck one.

But I absolutely must give Davies his due. Without him, Doctor Who might never have come back, and it almost certainly wouldn’t have regained its prominence not just as a mass-market phenomenon, but as a by-the-grace-of-Rassilon international franchise.

He made so many right decisions, from his impeccable, risky casting choices to his decision to respect the past without wallowing in it. Lesser producers can (and have) taken the show in less-fruitful directions.

While his writing is at times prone to excess and deus ex machina, his character scenes are excellent. And he’s been responsible for some of my favorite episodes, including “Tooth and Claw,” “Smith and Jones,” “Gridlock,” “Partners in Crime,” “Midnight” and “Turn Left.”

So, props to Russell T. Davies, David Tennant, and the many, many cast and crew members who made the last five years in time and space one hell of a ride!

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With the end of David Tennant’s run as the 10th Doctor Who only a day away (in the U.S.), here’s the penultimate entry in my look back at the last five years.

#50:  ”Turn Left”

“What if?” stories are opportunities for writers to have their kronkburgers and eat them too. They offer the chance to knock out one of the central pillars of an ongoing narrative and examine the ramifications without lasting damage.

In “Turn Left,” Donna was tossed into a world in which her absence at a crucial moment had caused the Doctor’s death. The results were not pretty.

In a fun-house mirror version of seasons three and four, the Doctor’s friends attempted to fill his sneakers. Martha Jones, Sarah Jane Smith and the Torchwood team were all killed or otherwise lost in dealings with the Judoon and the Sontarans. London was obliterated by the crash of the spaceship Titanic, and sixty million chubby Americans were converted into Adipose. England, as usual, was shown to be one disaster away from fascism.

Of course, they all got better. That’s the advantage of the “What if?” story.

#51:  Memes

“The End of the World” introduced a group of baddies called The Adherents of the Repeated Meme. While they turned out to be merely a cover for the true villain of the story (see item #53), their name hinted at what would become a regular feature of Russell T. Davies’ vision for Doctor Who. Each of the first four seasons included one or more repeated words or phrases: Bad Wolf, Torchwood, Mr. Saxon and the Medusa Cascade.

During the first season, “Bad Wolf” was subtly (well, most of the time) worked into nearly every episode, providing a mystery for attentive viewers and a means for Davies to tie together the Doctor and Rose’s adventures throughout time and space. It ultimately turned out to be a meaningless phrase spread throughout the universe by Rose–after temporarily gaining omnipotence during “The Parting of the Ways”–as a message/warning to herself.

“Torchwood” was more intrusive and less mysterious, given that we already knew that it was a tease about the upcoming spin-off series. Whereas “Bad Wolf” had an in-story reason for its frequent appearance, constant name-checks of “Torchwood” (even in the far future of “The Impossible Planet”) seemed arbitrary. Thankfully, by the time the Saxon/Master story arc rolled out, Davies had figured out how to organically work his memes into otherwise unrelated episodes.

“Bad Wolf” continues to pop up in the parent series, its spin-offs and its merchandising. (It even intruded on the 2nd Doctor’s era in one of the reconstructed episodes found of the DVD of “The Invasion!”) It returned in a big way during the final moments of “Turn Left,” where it appeared everywhere–including the TARDIS itself–to warn of a crisis that threatened all reality.

#52:  Billie Piper

While the character of Rose ultimately wore out her welcome (how can we miss you if you won’t go away?), I feel that I really should say something about the actress who played her, Billie Piper. When the bubble-gum pop singer was first announced as the co-star of the reinvented Doctor Who, I expect that the reaction in British fan circles was much as it would have been here if, say, Britney Spears was added to the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Happily, Piper proved to be a real actress, giving Rose (and the show itself) a grounding in reality. She’s since gone on to several Masterpiece Theatre productions and the TV series Secret Diary of a Call Girl.

One thing that I found refreshing about Piper, especially after seven seasons of stick-thin girls on the aforementioned Buffy, was that she was proportioned like a real person. Rose proved that sci-fi/fantasy starlets didn’t need anorexia to be sexy.

#53:  Cassandra

The first true villain of modern Who was Lady Cassandra O’Brien.Δ17 (no, not a typo), who claimed to be the last pure human in the year Five Billion. “Pure” in this case was entirely relative, given that hundreds of plastic surgeries had left her as nothing more than a fashionably thin, stretched piece of skin attached to a brain tank.

This “bitchy trampoline,” as Rose dubbed her, set the stage for the quirky adversaries to come.

#54:  Doing “Domestic”

One of the biggest changes in new Who was that the Doctor’s companions were no longer people without attachments. When Rose went away with the Doctor, he promised to bring her back in twelve hours; instead, Rose returned twelve months later to find her mother conducting a frantic missing persons search and her boyfriend Mickey accused of her murder.

Rose, Martha and Donna left behind not only their mundane lives, but various family members, some of whom became recurring cast members and even traveled in the TARDIS. They helped bring the fantastic down to earth.

#55:  Martha Jones

Martha Jones was arguably the longest-serving of the Doctor’s many companions. She spent two months watching over him while he pretended to be a human (“Human Nature”/”The Family of Blood”), an unknown but lengthy period trapped with him in 1969 (“Blink”), and an entire year circling the Earth on foot telling his story to the people living under the Master’s rule (“Last of the Time Lords”).

However, she never got the respect she deserved, suffering as she did from the severe disadvantage of Not Being Rose.

#56:  Davros

While the Master is seen by many as the Doctor’s chief nemesis, for my money that title belongs to Davros, creator of the Daleks. He’s got a richer backstory, a more consistent characterization and a believable motivation. Crippled and impotent, he exceeded his mandate to create a “travel machine” for the mutated remains of his people and instead birthed a race of monsters bent on imposing his will upon the universe.

During his initial appearance in the classic episode “Genesis of the Daleks,” the Doctor asked Davros a hypothetical question: if he’d created a virus that would destroy all other forms of life, would he release it?

Yes… yes. To hold in my hand a capsule that contained such power… to know that life and death on such a scale was my choice. To know that the tiny pressure on my thumb, enough to break the glass, would end everything. Yes – I would do it. That power would set me up above the gods! And through the Daleks, I shall have that power!

When Davros returned in “The Stolen Earth” (with a fine, creepy performance by actor Julian Bleach), it seemed that the Doctor’s suggestion was still on his mind. Instead of a virus, his mad plan to set the Daleks above all involved the “reality bomb,” a device that would not only destroy the universe, but all possible universes.

People and planets and stars will become dust. And the dust will become atoms and the atoms will become… nothing. And the wavelength will continue, breaking through the rift at the heart of the Medusa Cascade into every dimension, every parallel, every single corner of creation. This is my ultimate victory, Doctor! The destruction of reality itself!

And that is why Davros has it all over the Master, my friends.

#57:  The Return of the Time Lords

The final moments of “The End of Time, Part One!” For Gallifrey! For victory!

After I’ve had a chance to watch part two of “The End of Time,” I’ll be back with the last three items and some final thoughts.

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