Why the New Doctor Who was Awesome if You're an Old Doctor Who Fan

(INB4 grammar complaints: I know that I didn't capitalize the name of the doctor despite the fact that since it's his name technically it's a proper noun and should be capitalized. Well this is my blog and I can do what I want so ner-ner-na-ner-ner) 


So for anyone who isn't a Doctor Who fan you may not know that the newest series of the show started recently...okay scratch that even if you don't give two craps about Doctor Who you probably know that it started recently because both the media and the internet have a tendency to go on about it somewhat.

Either way the new series has now begun and the general consensus of the new doctor is practically non-existent. Half of the fans love him and half of the fans hate him, but examining it from my personal, somewhat interesting point of view has lead me to the conclusion that the new doctor at least is absolutely amazing. 

Firstly I think I should explain why my own perspective on the series is a little odd. Partially it is due to the fact that my introduction to the doctor who series began not in 2005 with the release of the rebooted franchise but back when I was a young kid during conversations with my mother. Although she's not what you would call an avid fan of the old series she has seen every single episode of the Tom Baker series and a lot of the Sylvester McCoy series, and as such would often talk about it to me when I caught the name of the show in TV times while it was being re-run.

The conversation we had led me to seek out and watch a few episodes of the original series, finding nothing of particular interest to my then sugar fueled brain I promptly lost interest and forgot all about it. Fast forward to 2005 and the release of the new series being advertised in a gaming magazine led me to begin watching the show and attempting to watch through some of the older episodes.

With my newly matured (or at least less hyper) brain I really got into the series and once Eccleson was finished with his series I promptly sank a ridiculous amount of time into watching the original series. (for anyone interested I didn't watch tenant because at the time I was seeing how amazing some of the old doctors where and really if you've seen them you can understand why Tenant could not really compare) 

With this new found interest in the series I managed to watch a lot of the old episode and read a lot of the books that had been released since the series cancellation, dipping in and out of the newer series when I caught it on TV. Eventually I decided to just bite the bullet and watch the new series as well, as this was just as Matt Smith was taking over the role I had a lot of back tracking to do in regard to the newer series, but in the end I was all caught up and could really get stuck into the series again.

So there is my perspective on Doctor Who explained, albeit in a bit of an obtuse manor, but either way it done now so I'm hoping that it will go someway to explain why I feel the way I do about the new doctor.

So to begin my explanation I will examine one of the early scenes in the episode. Somewhere near the start the character Vastra is talking to Clara and has some interesting things to say about the doctor and his regenerations. A few key things that popped up during the conversation now follow:

"You thought he was young?"

"He looked like your dashing young gentleman friend, your lover even"

"You might as well flirt with a mountain range"

"He looked young, who do you think that was for?"

"me?"

"Everyone. I wore a veil as he wore a face, for the same reason"

"What reason?"

"For the oldest reason there is. To be accepted" 

  

 (For anyone who cannot tell green is Vastra and red is Clara)

(Before this goes any further I find it necessary to defend the following with the qualifier that it is all of course my own opinion and I am not trying to say that the messages I got from the conversation are the messages intended to be imparted, it is simply how I interpreted what I saw)

So, why exactly have I brought up this conversation ? Well firstly because it become infinity more interesting if you imagine that they are talking about the show instead of the person, and if you imagine that Vastra is addressing the new wave of fans instead of Clara. 

The first sentence could easily refer to the fact that most new fans either didn't know about the older series or didn't care, which is practically criminal. I'm not going to pretend that if you haven't seen the old series you shouldn't watch the new series, the new series was made specifically for new fans and will always be a separate entity. What I am saying is that to ignore the fact that there was 30 years of back story and character is only going to do a disservice to a character you're supposed to be a huge fan of. 

The next sentence primarily seems to refer to the modern trend for younger and more physically attractive doctors. In the old series the doctors character was almost always played by older men who could give off the air of someone who was very old and very wise, in the newer series they just about manage to sound like a high school nerd hoped up on sugar. Again I am not saying that the newer method for casting doctors is at all wrong and it might be perfect for the new load of fans that are interested in the show these days, just saying that it is hugely different to the way the doctor always used to be. 

The third sentence can pretty much be seen as pointing the finger at the almost rock star style adoration and sexual attraction that a lot of fans have towards the newer doctors. For the most parts his companions seem to have an attraction to the doctor, much like his fans, something that was never really a part of the older series. The doctors character was never supposed to be eye candy he was supposed to be your grandad, the wise old man who kept you safe and always seems to be saving the day. The idea of any of his companions being an object of attraction for the doctor was practically unthinkable, after all he was old enough to be their grandfather's, grandfather's grandfather. 

This last section is perhaps the most telling, this is to be directed at both the newer fans and at the returners who stuck with the show from the old series. Firstly it points out that the younger doctor was supposed to be for the younger fans, the newer fans responded positively to a younger, physically attractive doctor, so the show makers gave them what they want. 

The conversation also explains why this was done. The last sentence I copied above is aimed at the older fans, it is an attempt to explain to them that has they decided to not change the doctor, both the character and the physicality of him, then the series might not even be here for you to enjoy at all. Had they stuck rigidly to the old format then the show would possibly have dipped heavily in popularity and would have almost certainly been taken off the air again. I mean hell if that had happened it's possible they would have given up on trying to resurrect the show at all and we wouldn't have gotten any of the newer doctor who stuff we now have. 

So what does all of that mean overall? Well from the way the first episode seems to have been put together it seems to me that the shows creators are attempting to gently reintroduce elements of the older Doctor Who to the new series so that the older fans will have something of the old doctor back but the newer fans won't be turned off by an overload of heavy changes. 

A lot of people do not like the writing style of Steven Moffat, and honestly in places I can understand why, but whatever you think of how he writes the character it is apparent that he is at least trying to recapture the spirit that made the doctor such a hit in the first place. 

As for the new series I cannot say that is definitely going to be amazing, I mean even this episode had moments that seemed pulled right out of Moffat's darkest regions, but what I can say is that if they keep the new doctor the way he is I wouldn't be surprised to see a resurgence of older whovians returning to the series, and I don't see how that could be a bad thing.

Rugrats Feminist?

Okay so recently I was poking around buzzfeed as one is prone to doing when one is bored (aint I posh?) and noticed a post called '14 Forgotten Feminist Cartoons from the 90s' and saw that the thumbnail for the post was a picture of Charlotte Pickles from Rugrats.

Intrigued by this I clicked on it and read through the list, most of which was pretty agreeable, but in the number 1 spot was the aforementioned Charlotte Pickles. This puzzled me a little because she is not exactly a great character from the show, and if we're honest she is possibly the worst one of the bunch to have chosen for the number 1 spot on that list.

I can see why someone might choose her if I'm honest, she has a high profile job at a powerful company and is the main breadwinner for her family ( I know that her husband has a job as well but it's clear that she's the one who makes the most money if you watch the show) so at first glance she seems like a great pick; however if you closely examine what she's like it seems a little less tenable to keep her there.

Firstly because she totally ignored her child, seriously most of the time she's too busy on her phone to even listen to what her little girl is saying. Now I'm not saying that she should have a shitty job or no job at all so she can stay home and look after her child, that sort of attitude hasn't made sense since the 1940s and even then it was bloody stupid, but when she's not at the office she should at least be willing to make some time for her child.

I know that the parents in the rugrats weren't amazing, I mean the amount of time they lose their children in the show is a good enough indicator of that, but for the most part the parents in the show take a genuine interest in their children. Charlotte pickles would rather have her head in the business world than spend any amount of time with her daughter (In her defence Angelica's a little B*tch).

In my opinion Charlotte Pickles should not have been that number 1 spot, if anything it should have been Betty Deville, she ignored gender stereotypes by being the masculine half in her relationship, she doesn't take crap from anyone regardless of gender or station and manages to make time for her children without being a slave too them.

I know that it's never made clear in the show if she has a job or not (at least as far as I know) but having or not having a job doesn't make someone a good feminist character, her outspoken nature and unwillingness to let people walk all over her because she's a women is what makes her a decent feminist character. She defies stereotypes without letting her defiance of those stereotypes turn her into a token 'anti-stereotype' character

I know that Charlotte had her moments as both a feminist and a parent but for the most part she was obnoxious annoying and a downright horrible person, whereas Betty was strong, a great role model and managed to defy the common perception without letting that denial define here. If anyone from that series a good role model for young girls it was Betty.

(UPDATE: I just found out from the rugrats wiki that Betty was indeed the breadwinner for her family as her husband Howard stayed at home and looked after the house and kids, I was pretty confident of this already but it's nice to have it verified) 

Why I hate Dead Space 3

Anyone who knows me will be able to tell you that I am a tad partial to the horror genre no matter which medium it comes in. I have enjoyed horror books for a long time particularly Poe and Lovecraft, and have seen more than my fair share of horror films particularly the hammer horror films.

The third medium I tend to think of when thinking of horror happens to be video games (I am not discounting audio based horror either to be honest. The midwich cuckoos with Bill Nighy is an amazing radio play and terreffied me as a child) I have in my time played through most of what is usually considered 'the classics' of the form, things like the first two silent hill games and the resident evil games, and I have also tried more contemporary survival horror in it's many flavours (for anyone who didn't think pixels could be scary you need to play lone survivor) 

Having said all of this I have also played the three games in the Dead Space series and I thoroughly enjoyed most of them. To elaborate what I mean is that I own and have played extensivly the first two games in the series, and while I am the first to admit that they weren't ever really scary they did have the atmosphere of horror games for the most part and a large part of why I enjoy horror is the atmosphere that surrounds it.

You may have noticed that I left out the most recent game in the trilogy from my list of dead space games that I have played and enjoyed. This is because I recently got the chance to play Dead Space 3 for free (For anyone who doesn't already know this Playstation Plus is awesome) and found myself thoroughly hating almost every single minute of it.

So sit back and strap in as I use this blog to once more vent my frustrated rage on a game I hate...or explain why I think the games bad whichever sounds better.


1. Co-Op features

For anyone who is not familiar with Dead Space it's really been a single player experience up until now. There may have been some multi-player features involved (I actually don't know I own both the first two on XBOX360 and never pay for gold because my desire for online play is so infrequent that it doesn't warrant a £5 a month subscription) but the main campaigns were always reserved for a single player experience only. This is primarily because a feeling of isolation can create a lot of the horror that one usually feels. The feeling like you are totally alone being overwhelmed by a titanic amount of gutteral horrors is a large part of the enjoyable atmosphere that surrounded dead space in particular.

This has totally been ruined in the third game by having the inclusion of Co-Op features. Apparently the developers felt that the games where going to get stale and tired if they didn't do something to change up the style of the gameplay, so here comes the Co-Op (just so everyone knows you cannot do this crap split-screen, it's on-line only folks) 

Other than the destruction of the atmosphere, which admittedly is only  a problem if you play the co op campaign instead of the solo one, is the changes to the gameplay that effect single player even if you don't want them to. The most noticable is the inclusion of elements and missions that you cannot use if you are on your own, this just serves to make you feel like you're missing out on something when you play the game in single player.

They also waaaaaaay scaled back the power of all your weapons so that it'd be more necessary for you to have two players. In dead space the enemies of the series are already dead and can only be put down permanently by removing most of there limbs, usually you are given engineering tools (your character is an engineer) which are designed for cutting through things meaning that you can slice and dice all you like. In DS3 your weapons don't even make the bad guys flinch half the time.

The lack of power beind the weapons coupled with upgrades that are specifically only useful if you're in Co-Op even if you happen to be playing in single player just make it seem like EA and Visceral the people behind the game didn't give a crap. They slapped together a single player campaign without changing anything and it just makes the game feel like it wasn't designed to be played alone at all.

speaking of guns...

2. Micro-Transactions

If anyone is unaware of the term micro-transactions it basically means that instead of paying full price for something you have the option of buying in really small amounts for lower prices more often, that way the developers get a more steady income stream and those who don't want to pay for the micro-transaction products don't have to. These are usually in free to play games like Farmville or The Tribez so that the devs can support themselves without having to charge for the main game itself.

So why the hell does a full price game need these?

That's right despite being a game that you will have to pay full price for (unless you're me and you've got Playstation Plus) there are still micro-transactions in the game. These come in the form of 'resource packs' which you can use to help build parts to upgrade your weapons or armour, and if you don't pay for them they're usually found lying around on the ground as you play the game. So why would anyone actually pay for the resources?

Well if you remember in single player your guns have been so scaled down in power that if you don't pay for the micro-transactions you're probably going to have a hard time getting through the entire game. I mean I suppose it's arguable that I only think that because I am terrible at the game but I would ask you to remember a few things:

   . I am playing on the easiest difficulty
   . I have been playing games for nearly two decades now

Bearing this in mind shouldn't I be having an easy time of it on this difficulty setting? I mean I could be wrong and the micro-transactions having nothing to do with the scaling down of the weapons but it just smacks a little too much of bullcrap to me.

3. Cliche around every corner 

I know I shouldn't really expect too much from a video game storyline that isn't produced by Bioware but the story of the first two games was at least passable. In the first you're sent to a space ship that's gone quiet to investigate and to see if it can be fixed. I don't remember much about the second games story other than it involved the main character havign his brain probed so that the government can make copies of the evil thing that made people turn into zombie (thanks obamacare. jk) 

In the third game the 'evil' religion of Unitology (careful game devs!) has decided that they want everyone to be evil mindless undead zombies so they try to kill the protagonist because he has a history of destroying the markers. Apart from that not making much sense (1 guy has a history of destroying something meaning he is the ONLY GUY WHO CAN! so much sense) it just comes across as something a blockbuster hollywood film should be doing and not a horror film at that. The game coems across the same as any Sci-Fi action film and even has the cliched characters to match.

The guy who has stolen main characters girlfriend, who is obviously going to be a jerk so that the protagonist can get back together with his girlfriend

The big breasted Ex-Girlfriend of the main character who exists for cheap sex appeal, so she can get back together with the main man and so she can die at some point (Seriously she went from having an almost beleivable human being character design in DS2 to being pointless eye candy with clevage a mile long. For shame Dead Space 3, for shame) 

The nerdy scientist who is just likeable enough that when she dies you feel sort of bad for her

The gruff old man who's seen his fair share of adventure/space travel/engineering etc

The 'oorah' commando block who is clearly there just to be teamed up with the protagonist so they can have a disagreement at the beginning and become friends at the end. (this is made worse by the fact that if you play single player he's not there throughout the game so they've had zero time to have this change in relationship) 

Evil english dude...I shouldn't even have to mention why that's cliched

So there you have, the three main reasons that I am angry at dead space 3. Of course there are many, many MAAAAANY more reasons why this game is terrible and if I were to try and bring them all up on one blog post it would probably be about 5000 pages long and would cause several different types of coma (yes there are types) so I have restrained myself for now in reference to the slagging off of dead space 3.

See you next time I have sheathing to complain about.

Looking for info on Yogventures? So is everyone else

UPDATE: The project is now officially dead. See here


Ahh Yogscast, a UK based gaming channel that I have had an interesting relationship with over the past few years. I first discovered them when they hit the front page with one of their minecraft videos called Planetoids, and admittedly I thought that I thought Simon was a stoner which is sort of why I started watching (for the most part it was because he was funny, not just because I think he was high when he recorded that episode) 

For a few years after I discovered their videos I watched the yogscast religiously and followed everything they did from their SOI minecraft series to the Yogpod and beyond. However the happy times where not to last, and for some reason after the completion of the Shadow of Israpheal (or rather after it got stalled) I started to loose a lot of interest in the channel only occasionally returning to watch through their songs or game series.

Luckily thanks to most of my friends being fans of the Yogscast I still manage to keep up to date on their big developments and it's not like I don't occasionally get an itch to watch some of their videos, so I have kept abreast of a lot of the yogscast related news (hence my blog post about the SOI animation).

This leads me onto yogventures. Yogventures was basically a game that the yogscast announced a couple of years ago that was based around their antics, primarily their antics in minecraft, and had a lot of interesting looking mechanics. How about world building in a more graphically appealing world? it had it, dwarves, spacemen and explosives? It has it, your favorite pair of English twits (unless you like a bit of Fry and Laurie, that's the shit) the game has it.

The only problem? Well as it turns out there hasn't really been much information available about the game for a couple of months. I mean it's not surprising that it's still not been released yet, games take a long arse time to finish, but there was news last year that the game would go early access on steam soon so that people could finally try it, it's over 6 months later and it still hasn't happened.

This would not itself be an issue, hell for months at a time there can be no information about video games, I mean maybe they've been working on the same boring crap for four months and haven't had anything to tell us? The reason that it's worrying in this case is that the Dev has taken down all of the websites relating to the game, stopped posting in the forums for the game and seems to have deleted his own twitter account as well.

It does almost look like the Dev has done a runner on this game, loads of people keep commenting on the steam page asking for information on the game and haven't got any replies which has caused no small degree of concern, especially amongst people who payed to back the game on kickstarter.

If I'm honest it's more than likely that the Dev has simply removed his twitter and other sites so he doesn't have to keep getting asked inane questions while he's working on the game, having said that this could easily turn out to be something much, much worse, so let's hope we manage to gain some info soon.

 

The 'World War Z' movie wan't good, even if you liked it.

Okay so for anyone who isn't an avid reader/a huge zombie fan World War Z is a book that was written by Max Brooks (Son of famous comedian Mel Brooks just FYI) that concerns the world being overrun with zombies (ya don't say)

You might be saying to yourself 'so what? zombie apocalypse stories are a dime a dozen' well the difference here is how it was presented to the reader. Most zombie stories are captured in a more visual medium, partially because a zombie apocalypse isn't usually very interesting to just read about and partially because most of the people involved with zombie based media tend to work in the visual areas of the entertainment spectrum.

Most literature surrounding zombies usually goes one of a few ways, the comedy route a'la 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' or a record style a'la '2012: A record of the year of infection' but with World War Z we are presented with a full record of the events surrounding the build up to the zombie world war, the fighting for survival that occurred in it's darkest days and the eventual push back towards a zombie free(-ish) world.

The book presents all of the information from the point of view of an investigative reporter going around the world to get stories about the apocalypse from the people who where in the center of it. This is firstly unusual because you'd imagine the knowledge that the world survived (As made apparent by the fact that the reporter writing the book is still alive) would remove a lot of the tension in a zombie apocalypse story but it's still surprisingly tense in a lot of places.

As the book goes on the point of view bounces between a few different interviewees in different places throughout the world as they recount their particular experiences in each section of the war and ends with some quite jarring revelations in the last chapter (which I won't ruin for you here) 

So now that I've explained to you who do not know why the book was such an amazing work of literature, despite the stigma usually surrounding zombie based stories, I can really dig into telling you why the movie is god awful.

Okay so before I go on I should probably bring something up:

SPOILER WARNING!!! IF YOU KEEP READING AND HAVE NOT SEEN WORLD WAR Z YET YOU WILL HAVE SOME PARTS OF THE STORY RUINED FOR YOU. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED !!!SPOILER WARNING

Ah, there we are, don't you just feel better with that out of the way?

So the movie in question is an adaptation (in the loosest sense of the word) of the Max Brooks novel in question starring Brad Pitt in the role of... erm, well he works for the U.N I think, or at least he used to and then he does again or... you know what it's just Brad Pitt, let's call him that.

So the film opens with Brad and his saccharin sweet family having a wonderful breakfast of pancakes together while they dump exposition about Pitt's old job on the audience. They then drive off for some sort of weekend away together and this is when all hell breaks loose.

As they cross the city they live in the inevitable hoard of zombies (preceded by an equally inevitable hoard of panicked civilians) appears to wreck their family picnic with a lot of running, snarling and for some odd reason running flying headbutts...seriously.

So other than the obvious absurdity of the whole flying headbutt thing what is actually wrong with this? I mean lots of films have taken the sort of speedier approach to zombies and although I may not look it I am not a 'shufflers only' sort of zombie purist. The reason that the running zombie is a problem at least in the context of the film is the fact that Max Brooks took an inordinate amount of time and effort to outline his 'zombie mythos' (in fact he took an entire other book to do this 'The Zombie Survival Guide') and that involved a lot of logic that is usually left out when people think about creating zombies.

Firstly Brooks' zombies do start out able to run when they first turn, and have the strength that they where capable before they turned. This coupled with their lack of need for rest and there never ending stamina means that you might think the movie had the zombies down, but not quite. As Brooks' points out human muscles get stronger when they rip during use and reform themselves stronger, (this is grossly over simplified, please don't assume I'm an idiot) zombies however do not have this advantage because they are dead therefore every time they use their muscles they deteriorate and don't repair *BREATH*

In very basic terms this means that almost straight away physical exertion rips the muscles of zombies apart and makes them less and less capable of agile movement. This means that although they may be capable of swift movement at first within a few minutes they will functionally be reduced to the shambolic, shuffling rabble seen in the old Romero movies. Obviously this means that the running and jumping is out of the question, let alone the full on flying bloody tackling.

That is just a microcosm of what is wrong with the film, the introduction of numerous support characters who are swiftly killed off to make room for new ones (worst offending moment being when the young 'sidekick' introduced at the beginning, seemingly for the duration, is killed off within a few minutes when he trips and accidentally caps himself in the head. Lethal ineptitude at its finest) The constant breaking of physical laws so that Hollywood style 'tense' scenes can be levered into the film (At one point a fortified city is over run when the dead make a giant tower of zombies to scale the walls in a matter of moments....what the actual hell) and for the love of god the terrible, terrible twist that was pulled completely out of the films fat sweaty arse (Would say I won't spoil it for you but it was spoilt before it was written. Basically the zombies don't even notice people who suffer from sever illness....and no one but Brad Pitt noticed this) 

As a zombie movie it's just okay, it's not going to be genre changing or earth shattering but hell if you're looking for a zombie film to watch you could probably do a lot worse (try La Horde, best terrible zombie movie with the best terrible dubbing) but as an adaption it could have been something much more than it was, a truly different zombie film that could have brought some much needed refreshment to the stale genre.

Having said that Brad Pitts performance is pretty solid, and the film is at least competently made (from a technical perspective) so despite the fact that I will personally never be seeing the film again, if you're not a fan of the book then you might wanna check out the movie, at least to see that guy trip and cap himself.

 

...The yogscast pulled a George Lucas

Okay so the above video is an animated continuation of the Yogscast's famous minecraft series 'the shadow of Israphel' (at least that's what people seem to think it is, personally I wouldn't be shocked if it turned out that this was just a side thing to keep people happy until they released the proper series) 

The internet met this animation with the sort of reactions that you'd expect, most people where pissed the hell off. As it turns out the animation itself is actually pretty funny in places, the scene at the end with Israphel and his minion on the cliff is a personal favorite, but most of the people who saw it seemed to think it was utter crap, so why is that?

Well the simplest answer to that is the star wars syndrome. After 'Star Wars: return of the Jedi' was released there was a somewhat substantial gap until they released the next installment (about 15 years actually but hey who's counting?) This meant that the fans had 15 years to imagine the most awesome thing that could ever have happened to them ever in their tiny little lives.

The problem this causes is that no matter how good something is it cannot live up to 15 years of nerd induced hype. Now I am in no way saying that 'The Phantom Menace' doesn't deserve hate, I mean come on Jar-Jar Binks.....really? But it isn't all that bad if examined by itself, it's just another crummy Hollywood blockbuster.

With the release of this latest animation the Yogscast have created a similar situation for themselves by waiting so long to release something relating to the SOI series. After three years (-ish, seriously I can't exactly remember when they last did something SOI related) they have released a sort of okayish animation that seems to have very little effort put into it, at least on the part of the Yogscast.

The animation style itself is great, it looks pretty good and I'm sure the animator put a lot of time and effort into what they were doing, but Lewis and Simon's dialogue is all taken from episodes of Yoglabs and in all honesty the voice acting for Israphel leaves a lot to be desired in places (if you want to see what I mean listen to the scene where they're running away from the nyan pig cannon) but overall the quality of the animation is a 6/10 minimum.

Now if this was just another yogscast animation it would be fine and I don't think the reactions would have been anywhere near as bad, but because people have assumed it's a continuation they've all gone batshit over it and started bawling in comment sections.

You mark my words, at some point we may yet see a continuation of the SOI and I guarantee that the reaction will be the same as it was to this animation.