Being an American Doctor Who fan in the ’80s meant being patient. If you wanted to see the newest episodes from England, you had three options (four, if you could afford the plane trip):

• Wait for enough episodes to be assembled into a syndication package, then convince your local PBS station–in my case, WTTW in Chicago–to purchase it.
• Find a friend in the U.K. willing to record the episodes for you, then have the videotapes converted from the PAL television system to our own NTSC.
• Join a Doctor Who club and watch grainy, seventh-generation dubs.

I do not miss those days.

Last night saw the unprecedented: a new season of Doctor Who premiering on the same day in both England and the U.S. (Note that it’s not the first time for an individual episode; last year’s Christmas special enjoyed a same-day U.S. airing, and the 20th anniversary special “The Five Doctors” actually screened here two days before the Brits saw it.) Finally, BBC America realized that waiting months or even weeks was an ice age in the era of file-sharing.

It’s a little bit weird to see Doctor Who featured in Entertainment Weekly ads, late-night network TV interviews and multi-day cable marathons. While it’s not the institution in the U.S. that it is on the other side of The Pond, I think it’s fair to say that Who has never been more mainstream.

That said, watching it on BBC America kinda sucks. What was announced as “limited commercial interruption” turned out to be five very long breaks. And I don’t care for the way they handled the cliffhanger, with a fade-to-black followed by a network promo rather than the traditional intruding blast of the theme music. (At least they aired the Elisabeth Sladen memorial.) Sure, it beats those seventh-generation VHS tapes, but torrenting is still looking pretty good in comparison.

What of the episode (“The Impossible Astronaut”) itself? Well, I’ll need to see it again. And, of course, then there’s next week’s conclusion. Furthermore, it’s likely that the events of this initial story will continue to influence the rest of the season.

That’s the biggest difference between nu-Who and the original series: season-long story arcs are now the norm rather than the exception. Showrunner Steven Moffat has doubled-down on that, with last year’s plot bleeding over into the 2011 run. The mysterious force that attempted to destroy the Doctor’s TARDIS and unravel the universe has been revealed as The Silence, a race of cadaverous Men in Black that disappear from memory every time they’re out of view. (“Out of sight, out of mind” made literal.)

I imagine that these guys scared the bejeesus out of the kids.

Moffat’s love of “timey-wimey” plots comes to the fore again, with events occurring out of order and the Doctor’s friends challenged to stop a terrible future. (The suggestion that Amy, Rory and River cannot change their own timeline without causing a paradox seems to fly in the face of last season’s finale, which had the Doctor comically popping backwards and forwards in history and even being released from an inescapable trap by his own future self.) It’s funny how often non-linearity figures into nu-Who; the old show almost never took that type of advantage of its time-travelling premise.

Which brings us to River Song, the Doctor’s quasi-love interest played by Alex Kingston. I have to say that I’m not nearly as fascinated by River as Moffat seems to be; I find her smug and obnoxious and just don’t care that much about her mysterious background. That said, I thought that there she had a good scene this week in which she described the awful reality of loving someone who knows her less and less every time they meet, like some form of chronological Alzheimer’s.

If all that sounds as if I’m down on the episode, that’s not my intention. Niggles aside, it was good stuff. (Bonus: cameo appearance by W. Morgan Sheppard, “Blank Reg” himself!) I’m very much looking forward to next Saturday!

Dave Doctor Who The Silence

For the second time in two months, tragedy struck square at the heart of Doctor Who fans old and new with today’s news that longtime companion Sarah Jane Smith, actress Elisabeth Sladen, has died.

It was just February that I found myself remarking how the late actor Nicholas Courtney, who played the Brigadier, was the heart and soul of Doctor Who. Sladen was arguably a very close second.

She first appeared as intrepid journalist Sarah Jane Smith in the 1973 serial The Time Warrior, alongside Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor. And while she only remained a regular for a little more than three years, it’s obvious that I wasn’t the only one in love with her. She returned to the franchise again and again, first in the aborted spin-off K-9 and Company, then in the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors. Her first appearance in nu-Who was in the 2006 David Tennant episode School Reunion, which led to a spin-off series entitled The Sarah Jane Adventures. Unfortunately, it appears that the fifth season of SJA will never be completed.

As was the case for many fans of a certain age, Sarah Jane Smith was my favorite of Doctor Who‘s companions. Pretty and plucky, she persevered through being cold and wet; hypnotized left, right and center; shot at; savaged by bug-eyed monsters; and never knowing if she was coming or going, or being.

I only saw Sladen in person once, at a 20th anniversary convention in Chicago, and never actually had a chance to speak to her. I wish that I had taken the time to stand in the autograph line.

Till we meet again, Sarah.

Dave Doctor Who obituaries, Sarah Jane Smith, The Sarah Jane Adventures

Director Wes Craven’s 1996 effort Scream was best known as the horror film populated by characters familiar with the tropes of horror films. Their survival meant adhering to the “rules”: don’t have premarital sex, don’t say “I’ll be right back,” and, for goodness’ sake, don’t forget to look behind you.

That winking meta-commentary was fun, but it wasn’t the only thing I admired about Scream. It was also a murder mystery that played fair with the audience. There were red herrings aplenty, but the final reveal of its omnipresent, Halloween-masked killer held up under multiple viewings.

Furthermore, Scream and its sequels had something to say about how media and their audiences feed upon each other, howling around in an endless, recirculating wind. Scream 2 kicked off at the premiere of “Stab,” a film-within-the-film based upon the events of the previous installment’s “real-life” killings. And Scream 3 took place on the set of a sequel to “Stab,” with a parallel cast playing Hollywood analogues of the franchise’s regular characters.

Which brings us to Scream 4. Eleven years have passed since the previous chapter, and what a difference a decade makes. The original Scream played with the growing ubiquity of cell phones among the young, but the clunky handset seen in the clip of “Stab 5″ (or is it “Stab 6?”) serves as a reminder of how personal communications technology exploded in the Oughts. Webcams and social media figure heavily in the plot. Want to sound like the Ghost Face killer? There’s an app for that!

To some extent, the meta-meta-commentary this time around is too clever for its own good. The opening sequence–a series of fake-outs and reversals–is certainly fun, but there’s absolutely no comparison to the intense terror of Drew Barrymore’s deadly trivia game back in 1996. And having the characters hang a lampshade on the script’s deficiencies doesn’t excuse them. (The killer is even tripped up by the old “I never told you about [specific detail]” mistake.)

It’s a little disappointing that Wes Craven didn’t do more to address changes to the horror genre during the intervening years. There are references to “torture porn,” “found footage” movies and Japanese ghost girls, but the actual murders remain old-school slasher stuff. It’s oddly charming in its way.

Unfortunately, this time I pegged the killer early. That may not be the film’s fault; prior to seeing Scream 4 I’d read something online that drew my attention to a particular character and had me tracking that person’s comings and goings. To the script’s credit, the murderer’s motivations make so much sense that I’m surprised we haven’t seen something similar in real life. Yet.

Another thing in the plus column is that the Scream films continue to have a point. This time there’s a wicked observation on the nature of fame in the 21st Century.

Scream 4 is good, grisly fun. I enjoyed revisiting these characters and wouldn’t mind catching up with them every decade or so. Next time, Ghost Face will be making taunts through subcutaneously-implanted phones.

Dave Movies reviews, Scream

The first trailer for the upcoming Planet of the Apes sequel/remake is out.  The project–formerly known as Caesar and/or Rise of the Apes–has been redubbed Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Furthermore, this new title has been lovingly rendered in the original film’s typeface. I approve.

What of the trailer itself? It looks like a film that could go either way. It has the benefit of being a quasi-remake of one of the better entries in the original Apes cycle, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. On the other hand, it appears to be going the traditional route of science-gone-wrong rather than tackling the civil rights allegory of that earlier film.

And it must be said: the problem with Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes “reimagining” was not that it needed more realistic monkeys.

Admittedly, it never quite made sense to me that the ape servants of Conquest‘s near-future world already resembled the creatures that Charlton Heston encountered in the nuclear-blasted 40th Century. Rise looks as if it will avoid that potential disconnect while at the same time providing an explanation for the primates’ rapid evolution.

I suppose that Peter Jackson’s WETA special-effects crew will work the same magic they did with Gollum, and that the performance of Andy Serkis–who plays Caesar, the leader of the ape revolt–will show through his digital avatar just as it did in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Still, a big part of the charm of those old films was the (groundbreaking for the time) monkey makeups.

As I said, this one could go either way.

Dave Sci-Fi Planet of the Apes, trailers

There’s been both one good reason and one bad for the lack of meaningful content here these past couple of weeks. The good reason is that I was swamped at work, what with planning both the June TV schedule and the FY ’12 budget for Illinois Gardener.

The bad reason was this:

This, my friends, is Dungeon Raid, a maddeningly-addictive game app for the iPhone/iPad. It’s a cross between Bejeweled and Dungeons & Dragons in which you trace an unbroken line of matching symbols to collect gold, kill monsters (represented by skulls) and buff your dungeoneer. In other words, it induces the pleasant, semi-mindless haze familiar to players of slot machines or PopCap Games; and it also provides the constant reinforcement of gaining new and ever-more powerful abilities.

It’s very, very hard to put down. In fact,

Dave Videogames Dungeon Raid, iPad, the first step is admitting you have a problem

Apparently, Draw a Bird Day is a thing that happens. So here’s Rodan.

Dave Sci-Fi Draw a Bird Day, giant monsters, Rodan