TV Review: Doctor Who – The Twelfth Doctor Era (2014-2017)

Original Run: August 23rd, 2014 – December 25th, 2017
Created by: Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber, Donald Wilson
Directed by: various
Written by: various
Music by: Murray Gold
Cast: Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Alex Kingston, Pearl Mackie, Matt Lucas, Maisie Williams

BBC, 40 Episodes, 45-90 Minutes (per episode)

Review:

When Peter Capaldi was originally announced as the new Doctor on a television special, I was really optimistic and pretty damned pleased with the casting.

However, despite him being great and also being a pretty perfect Doctor, his material severely lacked when compared to what Matt Smith, David Tennant and Christopher Eccleston had to work with, before him.

Initially, I liked Clara a lot. However, she got terribly annoying by the end of her run as the Doctor’s companion. She started being a know-it-all and bossing the Doctor around, teaching him lessons. It got ridiculous and frankly, killed the show and everything that was once great about it. When she left after staying incredibly too long, I thought we’d get a cool, new companion.

In came Bill, a lesbian that you knew was a lesbian from the get go, that had to play up the lesbian thing so much, it’s all you really knew about her one note character. I thought that the actress, Pearl Mackie was okay, she was just given shit for material. I don’t care that she’s a lesbian and really, most people don’t. But when that is all your character is, you’re a shitty, basic character.

In the end, Bill actually got a compelling story but by then, it was too little, too late and she was gone.

There were also only a few really good episodes in this stretch. Most of them were either awful, boring or both. Usually, it was both.

You could tell that the budget was either cut or that the showrunners just didn’t want to put in much effort anymore, as many episodes were just characters trapped on a ship, or in a base or in some other basic facility with lots of hallways and control rooms of some sort.

There were some decent concepts and characters that popped in. I liked how the epic, long-running River Song story wrapped up. I also liked everything associated with Maisie Williams’ recurring character. However, these high spots were too far and few between and most of Capaldi’s run felt like monotonous filler.

However, things would only get exponentially worse once he left and we got the next Doctor.

Rating: 6/10
Pairs well with: The Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors’ runs.

TV Review: Doctor Who – The Eleventh Doctor Era (2010-2013)

Original Run: April 3rd, 2010 – December 25th, 2013
Created by: Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber, Donald Wilson
Directed by: various
Written by: various
Music by: Murray Gold
Cast: Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill, Jenna Coleman, Alex Kingston

BBC, 44 Episodes, 45-77 Minutes (per episode)

Review:

When the era of the Tenth Doctor came to an end, it was a hard day. But then Matt Smith came on board as the Eleventh Doctor and right out the gate, even if I didn’t love him as much as David Tennant, he was, in many ways, an incredible Doctor.

I think the thing that makes this era of Doctor Who so damn good, is that the show had new blood calling the shots behind the scenes. Russell T. Davies moved on, the reigns were given to Steven Moffat and he did a great job in the first few seasons as show runner. Granted, his era went on for too long and it was pretty lackluster by the end but in the first two seasons of the Matt Smith era, almost every episode seemed to hit the right chords.

Additionally, this era had my favorite Doctor/companion relationship with Matt Smith’s Doctor and Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill as the Ponds, Amy and Rory. Also, add in the great performances by Alex Kingston and this group of friends had the best ensemble chemistry out of any Doctor/companion/ensemble lineup in history. And really, it is absolutely the strength of that ensemble that makes this era so f’n spectacular.

Now once the Ponds leave the show and Jenna Coleman comes in as Clara, things sort of fall apart. Coleman was actually fun, in the beginning, and I liked her storyline up until Smith left Doctor Who behind. However, the second half of Smith’s final season, which focused on the Doctor and Clara instead of the Doctor and the Ponds, felt like a dark time in the show. I wasn’t sure why, at the time, but the tone was changing, leading up to Peter Capaldi’s run as the Twelfth Doctor and the era where the show really fell apart for me. In fact, it never really recovered after the exit of the Ponds, except for a handful of Kingston episodes after that.

Had the Eleventh Doctor’s run not have been so dark and almost depressing in the last eight or so episodes, it could have equaled and maybe surpassed Tennant’s run, overall.

Rating: 8.75/10
Pairs well with: The Ninth, Tenth and Twelfth Doctors’ runs.

Film Review: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Release Date: July 19th, 2011 (El Capitan Theatre premiere)
Directed by: Joe Johnston
Written by: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely
Based on: Captain America by Joe Simon, Jack Kirby
Music by: Alan Silvestri
Cast: Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Dominic Cooper, Neal McDonough, Derek Luke, Stanley Tucci, Kenneth Choi, Toby Jones, Natalie Dormer, Richard Armitage, Jenna Coleman, Samuel L. Jackson

Marvel Studios, Paramount Pictures, 124 Minutes

Review:

“Whatever happens tomorrow you must promise me one thing. That you will stay who you are. Not a perfect soldier, but a good man.” – Abraham Erskine

It was nice going back and revisiting this chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. To be honest, I really hadn’t seen this since about 2012 or so. They pump out Marvel movies so fast that sometimes you get caught up in all the new stuff that the older films get neglected. At the time that this came out, it wasn’t my favorite of the Phase One set of films. I think that’s changed, however.

Captain America: The First Avenger is, first and foremost, an origin story. The first half really has to deal with how Captain America comes to be. The second half has to deal with Cap saving the world from the evil Hydra commander and Nazi officer, Red Skull.

This also introduces us to the Tesseract, which would evolve into the first Infinity Stone to be seen in a Marvel movie. This MacGuffin would be center stage in this film, as well as in the first Avengers movie where its ownership would shift to Loki. This mystical item would carry a lot of narrative weight, as it still exists in the current crop of films and still hasn’t had its power fully unleashed. I’m assuming we’ll see all the Infinity Stones in all their glory when Avengers: Infinity War hits theaters in late April.

But back to this movie.

It is a solid World War II action film that just happens to have a superhero and some crazy sci-fi elements thrown in. Shift some things around and this almost feels like a live-action version of a Wolfenstein game.

The relationship between Captain America and Peggy Carter has helped to define both characters after this film. Both had to move on without the other and under very different circumstances. It was nice coming back to this movie and seeing how it all started. Chris Evans and Hayley Atwell and incredible chemistry and the weight of the scene where Cap crashes Red Skull’s ship is so much heavier now knowing the pain that both of these characters felt after losing one another.

I also liked going back and seeing the relationship between Steve and Bucky before they went to war. This is something else that didn’t have quite the weight that it has now, knowing where their journeys would go in future films.

One complaint however, is that I feel like the villains Red Skull and Zola were wasted. Red Skull could have offered so much more to the franchise and really, he should have come back by this point or another person should have taken over the mantle. Zola, who was a formidable Captain America villain would only return as a computer program.

I actually forgot that Tommy Lee Jones was even in this. It was cool seeing him though. It was also a delight to see the Howling Commandos in all their glory and to be honest, they deserve their own movie or at least a short season television show like Peggy Carter had.

This is the one Marvel film that is a true period piece. The different world this exists in was refreshing and did a lot to enrich the mythos and to expand the universe beyond the films before it.

Captain America: The First Avenger is a solid piece of tent pole, blockbuster filmmaking. It’s a popcorn flick that’s more fun than most and it just feels truer to the title character than even Iron Man did.

Rating: 8.5/10
Pairs well with: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War and The Avengers.