It’s always a big surprise when the holiday episode of Doctor Who is a critical not-to-be-missed episode. When we last saw the Doctor, she was trapped millions of light years away in an alien prison. The New Year’s Day 2021 special Revolution of the Daleksis not a filler, out-of-continuity holiday showpiece, instead continuing after ten months have lapsed for the Doctor’s companions back on Earth, and after the Doctor has been imprisoned for years in that same relative time span. If you missed this episode you missed: the return of John Barrowman’s universal fan-favorite character Captain Jack Harkness, another Law & Order/Law & Order UK crossover/reunion, the last we’ll see of some major characters, a new Prime Minister, a preview of a new companion, and one of the best Dalek episodes in the 57 years of the series. As the studio releases word that Jodie Whittaker will be soon leaving the series, Revolution of the Daleks reflects that both her performance as the 13th Doctor and Chris Chibnall’s running of the series has finally arrived. It’s a timeless story full of important, lovely emotional beats, fantastic new sci-fi special and visual effects, and a return to the classic framework and themes of the show’s past.
Let’s take a look at why this episode was superb and offer up some candidates for the 14th Doctor…
In the first episode of Season 2 of BBC’s Sherlock, we met one of readers’ favorite characters from 130 years of fandom for Arthur Conan Doyle’s ultimate detective. Initially published in The Strand in 1891 in A Scandal in Bohemia, Irene Adler first stepped into readers’ imaginations. Of course Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss gave the story and characters their trademark modern twist with their episode A Scandal in Belgravia, and it’s that episode that gets the manga treatment in Titan Comics’ latest manga adaptation. Fresh from confronting Moriarty in the end of The Great Game, Holmes and John Watson are called to save the royal family from blackmail at the hands of “The Woman,” and Sherlock is truly given a run for his money. We have a special extended preview of the manga today from Titan Comics for borg readers.
By the time of his death in 1982, science fiction writer and future visionary Philip K. Dick wrote some 44 novels and 121 short stories. A master storyteller, Dick’s short story writing was often simple and straightforward, but it was packed with amazing worlds, prescient technologies (and glimpses at what would be real problems resulting from those technologies), plus truly unique and inspiring ideas and ideals. The real genius of Dick can be found in these quick stories. The 2017 British and American co-production Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams is a science fiction series of ten episodes inspired by ten of his short stories, available now in the U.S. for the first time via Amazon Video. If you find you’re not a fan of the series, don’t hold it against Philip K. Dick–the episodes are only very, very loosely based on his short stories, opting instead to expand on the stories and update most of the settings and plots, including swapping new technologies for those he wrote about. Ideally those new to Dick’s works will be inspired by the ideas in the series to delve into his written works and experience his creations for themselves.
Written and directed by a variety of filmmakers, Electric Dreams is a hodgepodge of styles, storytelling, and continuity. Surprisingly the writers opted against sticking with the magic of Dick’s stories, deleting key memorable scenes, and choosing to add extra subplots with a few stories barely recognizable from their source material. Most of the updates detract from the underlying story. Three episodes fare the best–coincidentally or not, these are episodes that stay the truest to Dick’s own work. The rest are less compelling, but each has its high points, either via surprisingly good special effects and production values for TV, or the choice of and performances by the actors (including Vera Farmiga (Bates Motel, Source Code), Anna Paquin (X-Men series), Timothy Spall (Harry Potter series), Steve Buscemi (Reservoir Dogs, Fargo), Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad, Total Recall), Jacob Vargas (Luke Cage), Terrence Howard (Wayward Pines), and Anne Reid (Hot Fuzz, Doctor Who, Marchlands). Based on one of the best of all Dick’s stories, Impossible Planet follows the original story to create the best episode of the series, taking viewers on a final voyage home accompanying an old (more than 300 years old) woman played by Geraldine Chaplin (even this episode cuts the most powerful scene from the short story). The Father Thing takes its time getting to the story, but once there it keeps the guts and spirit of the original story. Loyal to the source material, it also has a great John Carpenter-esque soundtrack and Greg Kinnear is perfectly cast as the father. For a person who was not remembered as a family man, Dick’s stories involving children are among his best and “The Father Thing” is no different. Ideas furthered in a story familiar to most sci-fi fans, “The Minority Report,” are examined in The Hood Maker, complete with precognitive telepaths and the concept of pre-crime. The episode follows the original story, and its “buddy cop” duo would make a great spin-off series.
The remainder of the series offers concepts that will be familiar to fans of Dick’s works, particularly those short stories previously committed to film, including “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” adapted into two Total Recall films, Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, John Woo’s Paycheck, The Adjustment Bureau, and Next (from “The Golden Man”), among others. Many Dick full-length novels have made it to the big screen, too, most notably Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? released as Blade Runner, and although it does not credit Dick, The Truman Show is obviously sourced in Dick’s novel Time Out of Joint. In addition, recently Dick’s award-winning novel The Man From the High Castle made it to home video as another Amazon series.
What if your planet was massacred and you were the sole survivor? What if a legendary figure out of space and time found you a place to hide?
In the United States we have been offered up only the briefest teaser preview for the new Doctor Who spinoff TV series Class. With two stars of the Jeremy Piven star vehicle Mr. Selfridge in lead roles–the brilliant actress Katherine Kelly and the up-and-coming actor Greg Austin–the series was built for success. We are hard pressed to come up with an actress who might make a better first female Doctor than Kelly. Maybe Sherlock’s Lara Pulver? So getting Kelly into this universe is great for Whovians everywhere.
Class is the second spinoff series of Doctor Who, following the successful Torchwood, which sparked new phases of the careers of John Barrowman, Eve Myles, and Burn Gorman. Class is steeped in good British and Doctor Who tradition: For 54 years viewers have heard of the school at Coal Hill. So who are the students attending classes there these days? Class is going to show us just that, including one student who is an alien. Class is a teen-centric series, not aimed at the typical young end of the Doctor Who audience. So this series is for a wider audience and is to explore broader themes. The several BBC trailers that so far have only aired in the UK are exciting and fun, dotted with fun characters, and even a fan favorite villain from Doctor Who.
Class, written by A Monsters Calls’ Patrick Ness and executive producer Steven Moffatt, follows Katherine Kelly’s Miss Quill and four students, played by Austin and newcomers Sophie Hopkins, Vivian Oparah, and Fady Elsayed. Even Peter Capaldi’s Doctor makes an appearance at the beginning of the first season. Moffat called the series dark and sexy and has labeled it a British Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Ness agreed, saying, “Adults watch Buffy because it’s a great show, but the POV and the agency are all teenage, and that’s what we want to do with Class.
Unfortunately, Class may not make it to the States before being cancelled back home.
Our annual “All the Movies You’ll Want to See…” series has been one of the most viewed of all of our entries at borg.com each year. So this year we again scoured Hollywood and its publicity machine for as many genre films coming out in 2017 that have been disclosed. The result is a whopping 58 movies, many you’ll probably want to see in the theater or catch on video (and some you may want to skip). We bet you’ll find a bunch below you’ve never heard of. Bookmark this now for your 2017 calendar!
Most coming out in the second half of 2017 don’t even have posters released yet. We’ve included descriptions and key cast so you can start planning accordingly.
What do we think will be the biggest hits of the year? How about Star Wars: Episode VIII or Wonder Woman? Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of 1,000 Planets? Ghost in the Shell? Or Beauty and the Beast?
You’ve heard endlessly about Logan and Justice League, but 2017 will also see numerous other sequels, like Alien: Covenant, Blade Runner 2049,Thor:Ragnarok, and sequels for Underworld, Resident Evil, Planet of the Apes, Pirates of the Caribbean, XXX, John Wick, King Kong, The Fast and the Furious, Cars, The Kingsman, Transformers, Despicable Me. And The Six Billion Dollar Man is finally on its way. Look for plenty of Dwayne Johnson, Tom Cruise, Vin Diesel, Ben Affleck, Samuel L. Jackson, Zoe Saldana, Hugh Jackman, John Goodman, Michael Peña, Ryan Reynolds, Sofia Boutella, and Elle Fanning in theaters this year.
So wait no further, here are your genre films for 2017:
Emily Blunt is a standout in every film she’s in. As the obsessive mom in Looper, the forbidden girlfriend in The Adjustment Bureau, or even as Miss Piggy’s receptionist in The Muppets–she’s someone we can’t get enough of. The first trailer is out for the futuristic sci-fi flick Edge of Tomorrow, and it appears Blunt will have a major role, starring opposite Tom Cruise. (Flash forward to our opening day review here).
Cruise, of course, continues to pump out two movies a year these days. Pretty exceptional for a Hollywood superstar who has had a movie in the theater every year except eight since 1981. And many years he has starred in two films. More importantly he has delivered the goods in every action film he’s made–from Top Gun to Mission Impossible, from Minority Report to War of the Worlds, from The Last Samurai to Valkyrie, we can’t enough of Tom Cruise, too.
BBC announced yesterday that Matt Smith’s last episode as the 11th Doctor on Doctor Who, the oldest series on television, will be this year’s Christmas episode to air on Christmas Eve. He’ll also appear in the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who episode this fall. For those of us who never would have given Doctor Who a try but for Matt Smith, he will be sorely missed. Without Matt Smith’s energetic and brilliant performances, we wouldn’t have seen how awesome David Tennant was as the 10th Doctor, met Christopher Eccleston’s 9th Doctor and his long-running companion Rose, or checked out the numerous audio books, or even peeked at those earlier “other” Doctors.
But just as we quickly have embraced his new companion with Jenna-Louise Coleman’s Clara (Amy Pond who?) after we thought we’d met the best companion ever, life goes on and so will the Doctor’s next incarnation as he takes the form of another actor… or actress?
So who should be the next Doctor? Matt Smith has given us some brilliant performances. If you aren’t a Doctor Who fan and wanted to sample some of the best of Matt Smith’s Doctor, try these:
The Eleventh Hour. We meet Matt Smith’s Doctor for the first time as he must save the world in 20 minutes with a wrecked TARDIS and broken sonic screwdriver and with the help of Amy Pond–the girl who waited.
The Beast Below. The Doctor and Amy travel to a future where residents live on a spaceship called Starship UK. We meet a future Queen and learn the terrible truth about what keeps the ship–and all its inhabitants–alive.
If you are a fan of Doctor Who or Batman or Star Trek or The Lord of the Rings, there is really only one series that should top your TV viewing list right now. And that series is Sherlock, airing Sundays on Public Television. This week’s episode charged past even the original three episodes produced by the BBC that first aired more than two years ago. We’ve waited a long time for the series’ return and we couldn’t have been happier with the result. A stunningly good plot based on a classic Holmes story, introducing an enchanting new character, and as much Holmes and Watson verbal sparring as you could pack in one week’s time slot.
Why watch Sherlock? Let’s count down some reasons.
1. Sharp writing. The show is smartly written by the best current TV writer anywhere—Steven Moffat. Moffat has been dazzling us with the best stories on TV including 20 episodes of Doctor Who, and his stories are always interesting, even exciting, and always full of twists and turns. Moffat has written episodes of Sherlock, including this Sunday’s episode “A Scandal in Belgravia” and next week’s episode “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” With all the drama are equal doses of laugh-out-loud humor. You will laugh at Sherlock’s oddities and Watson’s dumbfounded expressions. I can’t think of a better written series since the original Life on Mars, and this week’s episode is one of the best stand alone TV episodes you’ll ever see. If you think I am exaggerating, I just dare you to watch this week’s show and tell me I am wrong.
2. A modernized classic. Sherlock? The British show on Masterpiece Theater? Make no mistake: This isn’t Masterpiece Theater of the past. This is no stodgy series re-hashing old plots. Yes, the stories are rooted in the original works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but the updating to today is brilliant and artfully done. This Sherlock and Watson get to excite a new generation of fans to the sleuthing and detective mind of Holmes, only using the modern technologies and investigative methods—some methods even ahead of their time as only a guy named Sherlock Holmes could do.
3. The acting. What other TV series has the soon-to-be biggest performers in the blockbusters of tomorrow? Usually once an actor makes it big he leaves TV and doesn’t turn back. But for right now Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch and Watson’s Martin Freeman are still doing TV and it will be among their best works no matter what they do from here on. Freeman and Cumberbatch also make for great old fashioned buddy cops. Like the masterful ensemble cast of the A&E series Nero Wolfe and the TNT series The Closer, the supporting cast of Sherlock is fun to come back to visit each week in their own right.
4. You like Batman. Who doesn’t? How many writers of some of the all-time best Batman stories were inspired by Doyle’s classic detective? If you’ve read Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee’s Batman: Hush, the 19th century Holmes permeates every inquisitive angle of the Dark Knight Detective’s sleuthing. And it’s not just Batman. The New 52’s Batgirl series includes an updated Barbara Gordon who is in many ways yet another Holmes in training. If you like the Mystery in Masterpiece Mystery, you will find yourself sucked into the plot and trying to beat the master detective as he follows the clues of each week’s quandary.
5. You like comic book style. The “special effect” of printing words on the screen as Sherlock moves from location to location, indicating the speed and scope of Sherlock’s genius mind should be familiar to comic book readers’ world of thought balloons and sprawling visual effects using words.
6. You like The Lord of the Rings. If you like The Lord of the Rings like me, you’ve probably continued to follow the cast members who played the characters in the trilogy in their projects after the movie. Why not start early with the new star of The Hobbit, Martin Freeman, Sherlock’s Dr. John Watson? And Benedict Cumberbatch, who will be the voice of Smaug in part 2 of The Hobbit?
7. You like Star Trek. Khhaaaannnn! One day it’s “official” the next day it isn’t and the studio’s PR machine isn’t helping quell rumors, but whether or not Benedict Cumberbatch will reprise Ricardo Montalban’s Khan, he is some type of villain in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, next year’s 12th film in the Star Trek franchise. No matter how loyal you are to the late great Montalban, no matter how much of a traditional Trekker or Trekkie you consider yourself, you, too, will be convinced by Cumberbatch’s ability to take on any role by watching his performance as Holmes.
8. You like Doctor Who. I’ve already mentioned Steven Moffat writing the series above, but if you want to get a glimpse at the only actress rumored to be among the first considered to replace Matt Smith as the first female Doctor, you need look no further than the stunning performance by Lara Pulver as Irene Adler in Sunday’s first episode of the second season. And heck, True Blood and Robin Hood fans will like seeing Pulver here, too!
9. You’re an anglophile. Doesn’t the mere sight of the London Eye ferris wheel at the beginning of each Sherlock episode want you to go buy plane tickets? And this week’s story took place in part in Buckingham Palace. What more could you want? And if you like James Bond, who ever was a better ringer for Ms. Moneypenny, fawning over the great 007 spy, than Sherlock’s poor coroner Molly Hooper, and her unrequited love for Holmes?
10. You believe that “brainy is the new sexy.” Hey, it’s not my quote. Just watch this week’s episode.
It’s one of the lamest marketing messages I’ve ever read, and many shows have used it before, but basically I’ll use it here because it applies: “there is simply no reason not to watch” Sherlock. And every reason to watch it.
Several stories have been reported across blogs and UK journals over the past few weeks about Matt Smith and Karen Gillan soon wrapping up their roles as the Doctor and his companion, Amy Pond. So let’s wade through what appears to be fact and what appears to be rumor.
First of all, it will be a sad day when Matt Smith and Karen Gillan are replaced. I tried watching Doctor Who when Christopher Eccleston became a Doctor and then when David Tennant became the next Doctor. And neither hooked me into how fun this series could be, after years of giving the show a try through several changes in Doctors. But Matt Smith’s youthful energy and Karen Gillan’s beautiful Scot look and comic timing made the series the most enjoyable around, and caused me to go back and finally dig into the series with the two prior Doctors. And made me a fan.
But the beauty of Doctor Who is the fact that the Doctor regenerates into new people–so the show can go on for generations, as long as new writers can continue to write exciting stories. I overheard a kid in a local comic store who must have been no older than 13 say “you always remember your first Doctor” and it made me laugh. He’s probably right.
So what news is true? The producers of Doctor Who have reported on the official Doctor Who website that the next actress to play the companion to replace Karen Gillan is 25-year-old actress Jenna-Louise Coleman from Blackpool.
Jenna-Louise Coleman–the next Doctor Who companion.
Writer and executive producer Steven Moffat had reported this past Christmas that the Ponds (Amy and hubby Rory) would be leaving. The website makes clear that Coleman will replace Gillan after one more season with Amy and Rory in the story. Coleman has had roles on British TV and a small role last year in Captain America: The First Avenger.
Coleman in Captain America: The First Avenger.
The website suggests that the new companion will accompany Matt Smith’s eleventh doctor for 14 episodes in 2013, the 50th anniversary of the series on British TV. Here is the sneak preview at the new season coming soon to BBC One and BBC America, and HEY!–note that it features a cool cyborg, right out of the movie Westworld:
So that’s the next companion story. But what about the next Doctor?
The British tabloid the Daily Express, known for sharing rumors, this week claims an insider has disclosed that Matt Smith’s replacement will be the first woman Doctor of the series. And one of the front runners (again, per the reported rumor) may be a very cool choice, the new Irene Adler in the third season of the Sherlock series, also produced by Doctor Who’s Steven Moffat. Adler is portrayed by British actress Lara Pulver. Pulver was a regular on BBC’s Robin Hood series as Isabella, Erin Watts on MI-5, and is currently Claudine Crane on True Blood. Although this has aleady aired in the UK, here is a preview for U.S. viewers of Pulver as Adler in the new Sherlock (and ignore the reference to Pulver as “naked”–it’s all innuendo with a lot of clever filming):
What is clear from the above clip is that if Pulver can hold her own opposite both Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes (soon to star in the next Star Trek and The Hobbit films) and Martin Freeman’s Dr. John Watson (starring this year in The Hobbit), there is no doubt she would make a great, sassy and smart 12th Doctor in the Doctor Who franchise. If we’re going to lose Matt Smith–my vote for the best Doctor of all–why not try something really new?
So… new companion? True. New Doctor? Nothing confirmed to report yet.
