Whosday: The Daleks' Master Plan

The Daleks have been very disppointed this Christmas, because they didn't get what they wanted.  After seeing Invader Zim and the Powerpuff Girls, the Daleks concluded that humanity is not worth totally eliminating, and instead only wanted only wanted to do serious harm to people who hurt children, people who don't flush in public restrooms, and DMVs.

In other words, a good Christmas list.

It's a shame that Christmas is a season of love, charity, peace, and goodwill toward all.

So like all with impossible Christmas lists, the Daleks only got sweaters, shirts, and underwear for Christmas.  All of which are things the Daleks have no use for.

To cheer the Daleks up, and because it's almost the New Year,  we'll skip discussion of The Chase, one of the weaker Dalek outings, and instead discuss The Daleks' Masterplan, one of the stronger Dalek stories.

Here is a story where the overall characterization of the Daleks starts resembling the depiction we know today: The Daleks now, just as they do in the Revived Series, want to take over the solar system and wipe out all life that is not Dalek while they are doing it, much like in the Revived Series.

In the way of this scheme is none other than the Doctor and his companion Steven, played by Peter Purves, whose goal is to warn others of the plots of the Daleks.  Aiding the Daleks is Mavic Chen, played by Kevin Stoney, who, despite awkward makeup, does a standup job!

Keep in mind that, getting into this, this is one of the single darkest First Doctor stories, featuring as many as two companion deaths, a record that no serial has surpassed.

Sadly, this can't be watched by simply getting Britbox or getting it on DVD, but while the video for this was largely missing, the audio was all preserved, and it is available on iTunes, with Peter Purves narrating the story.  It's great to listen to while managing social media for others or writing blog articles.

Musical Monday: Auld Lang Syne

Of course, I wouldn't go so close to the New Year without discussing this song:

To all of you English speakers, doesn't this song always sound wrong to you? Like, it sounds familiar, but isn't.  The reason why is because it's written in a kind of pigeon of English and Scots-Gaelic, called "Scots".  The author was the Scottish poet, Robert Burns, but the meldoy comes from Scottish folk tunes.

The title and main chorus, "Auld Lang Syne" roughly translates to, "for long since" or "for old time's sake", which might be an odd choice for the New Year, given how for many, New Year's Eve is all about just throwing things away and forgetting about them, and not recalling good times past.

But now? It makes sense, doesn't it?

Who are we now if not from the people we knew before? Everybody we met has contributed to us over the years.

And people can change: They do all the time.  We talk about others like they never change, as though bad qualities are immutable, fixed, permanent traits, but they never are.  People always change, either from the simple wear of time, a change of place, or a hellbent determination to change.  Nobody is an exception to this rule, including me.

So don't forget the past, and the good times you had with people from before.  I haven't forgotten any of my best friends, and the good times we have had together.

Thank you, all of you.

And have a Happy New Year!

Christmas Around the World: Christmas in Norway

It's actually late in the season to talk about Norwegian Christmas, but in light of Frozen 2, I feel it necessary to discuss what Christmas is like in Norway.

During Norway's Advent, small gifts are brought each day leading up to Christmas, sometimes in tandem with a chocolate advent calendar like we do in the United States, but unlike our Christmas, the mass present opening is as early as December 24.  Presents are generally treated as though they come from Santa Claus and a kind of creature best described as a gnome or a goblin called a Nisse.  A rice porrige is left for the Nisse because they are said to guard farm animals.  They also place bread crumbs on a leaf for the birds to eat from.

Once Christmas Eve comes, the Norwegians will light a candle every day from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day.

Children will go carol-singing in some parts of Norway, dressing up as characters from the traditional Christmas story, such as shephards and wise men.  On the subject of Christmas music, a huge mainstay in Norwegian Christmas music is the song Musevisa, which roughly translates as "the Mouse Song".  It's a song about two mice parents warning their children about traps as they make it through the Christmas season.  While the melody is an old folk tune, the lyrics were written in 1946 by Alf Proysen.

Now you know how to make Anna and Elsa celebrate Christmas in all of your objectively terrible fanfictions!

The Merc with the Mouth: A Cat in the Hat Parody from Peter Parker's Perspective

The sun did not shine, it was too sad to stay
But I had to sit in detention all of that cold day.
I sat there with MJ
We sat there, we two
And I said, "how I wish we had something to do!"
Not time to go out, but at least no dodgeball,
So we'll sit in here, but do nothing at all.
And all we can do is just
Sit! Sit! Sit!
And we did not like it!
Not one little bit!

The something went BUMP!
And that bump made us jump!
We looked! And we saw him
Step in from down south
We looked and we saw him,
The Merc with the Mouth
And he said to us: "Why do you sit there like that?
I know you're stuck here, and so your day is quite shitty
But c'mon! The thing you got here? THAT was quite whitty!"

"I like your style kid, I knows games we can play!"
Said the Merc
"My name is Deadpool, and I'll show you my tricks!" Said the Merc with the Mouth.
"A lot of good tricks! I could show them to you!
Tony Stark would not mind at all if I do!"

But MJ and I didn't know what to say, because Tony Stark had left New York for that day.

But Rocket said,
"No, no!
Make that Merc go away!
Tell that red-clad asshole that you do not wish to play!
He should not be here!
He should not be about!
He should not be here when Tony Stark is out!"

And the tree agreed, and gave out a hoot,
And it went something like this: "I am Groot!"

"Now, now! Be cool!
Be cool!" said Deadpool.
"Why we can have lots of fun!
Said the Merc with the Mouth,
Why, we can have
Lots of good fun to entail
With a game I call
Hold the racoon  by the tail!"

"Put me down asshole!" Said Rocket
"Or I'll bite your face off!
Put me down this instant!
You're not David Hasselhoff!"

And the tree folded his arms
sniffed his snoot
And he said in agreement
"I am Groot."

"Have no fear!" Said Deadpool
"And shut up Ranger Rick!
I'll stand on this ball
Because you were a dick!"

"I'll now press all of my luck
I can fill up my pants with a duck
You tree and trash-panda panda can protest 'cause you suck
Because my name is Deadpool, and I don't give a f-"

"SHIT!!!!!!!!"

And that is what he said...
When he fell on his head!

The History of the Season: Krampus vs. the Nazis (You Can't Make this Up)

Many of us are probably familiar with Krampus now: The Christmas Demon of the Alps, the punisher of naughty children.  It may be odd to Americans that demons played a role in the Holidays, but to some Europeans, especially Austrians, it actually makes perfect sense: Because he was so Holy and so learned, Saint Nicholas was believed, by tradition, to have cast out demons from the possessed, and then pressed them to help him with his causes.  In fact, it is in these demons that was have the origins of Santa's elves.

But all demons have their enemies, and Krampus made some rather interesting ones: Nazis.

Nazi control over Christmas was hardly unexpected; in the Christmas of 1921, Adolf Hitler gave a speech about how the Jews crucified Jesus, and every Christmas afterwards, Christian imagery was removed from Christmas in Nazi Germany.

When the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938, they tried to purge all imagery of Krampus from Austria.  What the Nazis exactly had against Krampus is somewhat unclear, but apparently, like most Holiday figures in Europe, he was perceived as being too Catholic.

But let's not kid ourselves: The Nazis were actually probably trying to purge Krampus because they were really naughty, and didn't want to get whipped by Krampus for all of their terrible deeds.

In the end, Krampus got his due: The Nazis were defeated, Austria was freed, and Krampus enjoyed more poplarity than he ever did before afterwards.

Merry Christmas, ya Filthy Animal!!

Sometimes, I think laughter is the best gift you can give somebody, because it really is good for your health, relaxing the body, boosting the immune system, and improving your cardio-vascular system, as you will see here. 

With this thought in mind, I made a playlist for you to laugh with (WARNING: Contains Bambi sloppy joes, Osama Bin Laden getting his comeuppance from Santa, and generally complaining about the difficulties of Christmas) and this playlist of Christmas nightcore.  Enjoy!

Whosday: The Runaway Bride

Probably the best Doctor Who Christmas special, The Runaway Bride remains a long-term staple in Doctor Who Holiday marathons.  It introduces possibly the best companion of the Revived Series, Donna Noble.  Of course, from the context of this special, it is not immediately apparent that she is going to be such a fleshed-out companion later.  Rather, when we first see her, she comes across as a very typical bridezilla...

...Which is precisely why getting more into her backstory works so well, because it gradually allows us to get to know her better, and allow us to find a far more likeable character than is presented to us.  It turns out that she was the tough and highly enthusiastic office worker who shouted because nobody listened to her, and when she later becomes a full-time companion during Series 4, she develops the best chemistry with the Tenth Doctor as a result of her multifaceted personality.

In their early hi-jinks together, the Doctor and Donna actually have an encounter with the robot Santas that better connects with the overarching plot of the special, rather than just be a mildly confusing side-plot like The Christmas Invasion.


Donna eventually makes it, and we get treated to a nice song:

And we see why this particular song was used for it, and why it fits so well: We later learn that the man she was going to marry was sadly not interested in her, but rather to the frankly unattractive Racnoss Queen, even though Donna was actually somebody worth hanging on to.  He "roamed".  He didn't love her.

In the end, the Racnoss Queen betrays him and feeds him to her children, which even as Donna fairly observes, he "didn't deserve it".  It's moments like these that indicate that Russell T. Davies really did understand Doctor Who all along.  Doctor Who is never about the bad guys who just objectively deserve to be beaten in the cruelest possible stroke unless it's the Daleks...or unless Eric Saward is the script editor, one thinks of the show during the early 1980s.

Doctor Who is typically a show about flawed people who make a series of mistakes that they and others end up paying for, and the best example of this is Lance Bennett, a man who felt like he was surrounded by people who thought too small, and found somebody who seemed to think bigger in the form of the Racnoss Queen...but in order to maintain his relationship with his alien lover, he ends up using a completely innocent woman for his own ends, and in the end, pays dearly for his cruelty, but perhaps beyond the actual proportions of his crimes.  He deserved to face serious consequences, but he didn't deserve to be eaten by Racnoss.

In general, this special deserves its good reputation.  This special was what made the Doctor/Donna dynamic possible, and that was the best part of Series 4!

While Russel T. Davies' first two seasons of Doctor Who had room for improvement, Series 3 was, by contrast, when he started to get truly good and every bit worthy of the nostalgia that he gets.  If you want to get Series 3 with all of those gift cards you're probably going to get for Christmas, I suggest you try here if you prefer digital, or here if you're backwards Luddite Neanderthal who loves special features like me.

Musical Monday: The Nightcore Before Christmas

...And we must prepare accordingly! I would never go this long without having something ready for my second favorite Holiday (my favorite being Thanksgiving)! What better way to enjoy Christmas than Nightcore?

For those of you not in the loop, nightcore generally refers to songs sped up on average from 10-30%.  It was coined by the Norwegian DJ duo,  Thomas S. Nilsen and Steffen Olga Soderholm.  It was originally used for their own dance music, because they noticed that speeding up their tracks kept their music very happy while also still suitably "edgy".  However, when music aficionados on YouTube found this genre, they edited their favorite tracks with various sound-editing software, making their own "nightcore" takes on various songs, and no genre was left out: Hip-hop, rock, musica numbers, and even Christmas music, which perfectly fits the jolly power the nighcore style of mixing can convey.

To give you an example of this, here is a nightcore take on What's This:

While perhaps not the best introduction to NightCore, you can hear how the audible energy of Jack Skellington is now almost doubled, brimming with enthusiasm!

If you think that nightcore has potential, try playlists such as this one and this one!

Support Homeless Animals: Lonely Pup in A Christmas Shop

Christmas is a season for giving, and I would recommend that you make donations to animal shelters.  This year, many puppies will be adopted right and left, but not everybody will find homes.

This song was released around 1960, recorded by Adam Faith, and it was a smashing hit at the time, because puppies will always be a popular Christmas present, and this is sometimes the season when the shelters see the most adoptions, but it's just not always enough.  No matter what time of year it is, there are many cats and dogs who just can't have homes, many who need to be adopted and cared for.  Not every dog can afford to be a lonely pup in a Christmas shop, nor can every cat afford to be a lonely kitten in the same position.

If you're thinking about getting a present in the form of a dog or a cat, I would recommend that you seek out pets from such places, and give them homes, especially if you don't have any pets of your own, but have homes that can support them.

If you can't support a pet for any reason, be it a lack of money, a lack of space, or a concern over how pets in shelters might not be compatible with the pets you have, you can always donate to these organizations that do their best to help these animals and find good homes instead.  To donate to my local humane society, please try here  If you'd rather try the SPCA, please try here.

But if you do have pets, then if you want to give a bit of a late Christmas gift to your dog while you still have time and a chance, you can always click here.  Because it's past the 18th, there's not a guarantee that it will arive on Christmas day, so it might be a bit late, but that's okay...that's what pets are for.  To be friends who always forgive us, and will always be there to come back home to.

How Invader Zim stole Christmas

Everyone
Down in Detroit
Liked Christmas alot

...But Zim!
Who lived in his own house,
Did not!

Zim hated Christmas, the whole Christmas season
Now please don't ask why, no one knows quite the reason.
It could be that his gut was not easy to find.
It could be that his pants fit too tight on his behind.
But I think that the best reason to peruse,
Would be that his head had two screws too loose.

But whatever the reason, his head or his behind,
He stood there on Christmas Eve, waiting, hating mankind.
Staring down from his room with a sour Irken frown,
At warm lighted windows below in their town
For he knew that every human down in Detroit beneath
Was busy, now hanging up a Mistletoe wreath.

"And they're hanging up their stockings!" he said with a sneer.
"Tomorrow is Christmas, it's practically here!"
Then he growled with his Irken fingers nervously drumming
"I must find a way to stop Christmas from coming!"

For
Tomorrow, he knew...

All the human girls and boys,
They'd wake bright and early, they'd rush for their toys!
And then! Oh the noise, noise, noise!
That's one thing he hated! The NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE!!

Then the humans, young and old, would sit down for a feast.
And they'd feast! And they'd feast!
And they'd FEAST
                    FEAST
                     FEAST
                      FEAST!
They'd feast on rice pudding, and rare Earth roast beef
To think they'd like such things was beyond Zim's belief!

And THEN!
They'd do something
He liked least of all!
Every human down in Detroit, the tall and the small,
Would stand close together, with Christmas bells ringing,
They'd stand hand-in-hand, the humans would start singing!

They'd sing! And they'd sing!
AND they'd SING! SING! SING! SING!
And the more Zim thought of this Earth-Christmas sing, the more Zim thought,
"I must stop this whole thing!
Why, for all of these Earth-years, I put up with it now!
I must stop this Christmas from coming...
           But how?"

Then he got an idea!
An awful idea!
Zim
Got a wonderful, awful idea!

"I know just want to do!" Zim laughed in his throat,
And he made a quick Santy Claus hat and a coat.
Then he chuckled and clucked, "what a sly Irken trick!
With this hat and this coat, I look just like Saint Nick!"

"All I need is a reindeer"
Zim looked around
But since Reindeer are scarce, there was none to be found.
Did that stop Invader Zim...?
No! Zim simply said,
"If I can'd find a Reindeer, I'll make one instead!"
So he called his bot GIR, and he took some red thread,
And he zipped a deer suit to the top of his head.

THEN
He took some old bags
And tupperware bowls to stir
On a ramshackle sleigh
Bearing songs from GIR.

All their windows were dark.  Quiet snow filled the air.
All the humans were dreaming Earth-dreams without care.
Then he came to the first little house on the square.
"This is stop number one!" the Invader Claus hissed
And he climbed to the roof, empty bags in his fist.

Then he slid down the chimney, which was quite tight on him,
But if Santa could do it then so could Invader Zim.
He got stuck only once, for a moment or two,
Then he stuck his head out of the fireplace flue.
Where the little Earth stockings all hung in a row.
"These stockings," he grinned, "are the first things to go!"

Then he slithered and slunk, with a smile most unpleasant,
Around the whole room, and he took every present!
Pop guns! And bicycles! Roller skates! Drums!
Checkerboards! Tricycles! Popcorn! And plums!
And he stuffed them in bags.  Then Zim, very nimbly,
Stuffed all the bags, one by one, up the chimbly!

Then he slunk to the icebox.  He took the Earth feast!
He took the Earth pudding! He took their roast beast!
He cleaned out that ice box as quick as a flash!
Why, he even took their last can of Earth-hash!

Then he stuffed all of the food up the chimney with glee.
"And NOW!" grinned Zim, "I will stuff up the tree!"

And Zim grabbd the tree, and he started to shove,
When he heard a small sound like the coo of a dove.
He turned around fast, and he saw a familiar face,
The Membranes had resided in this place.
Zim had been by this tiny Earth daughter,
Who'd come out of bed for a cup of cold water.
She stared at Zim, and said, "Santa Claus, why
Did you forget the guillotine, WHY?"

But, you know, that Zim was so smart and so slick!
He thought up a lie! And he thought it up quick!
"My dear sweet girl!" the Invader-Claus lied,
"We don't have a guillotine because of the worker's strike!
So I'm taking this tree to my workshop, cute Earth-thing!
And I'll take it up there, and cut it to your guillotine!"

His fib didn't fool her, but it amused her to think,
Of how Dib would react, as she got her cold drink.
When Gaz Membrane went to bed with her cup,
Zim went to the chimney and stuffed the tree up!

Then the last thing he took
Was the log for their fire,
Then he went up the chimney himself, the old liar.
Leaving nothing but hooks and some wire.

And the one speck of food
that he left in the house
Was a crumb that was much too small for a mouse.

Then,
He did the same thing
To the other Earth houses

Leaving crumbs
Much too small
For the other Earth mouses!

It was a quarter past dawn,
All the humans, still a-bed,
All the humans still a-snooze
When he packed up his sled,
Packed it up with their presents! The ribbons! The wrappings!
The tags! And the tinsel! The trimmings! The trappings!

Three thousand feet up! Up the side of a hill,
He rode with his load all the way to the landfill!
"Pooh-Pooh to the Earthlings!" He was manically humming.
"They're finding out no Christmas is coming!
They're just waking up! I know just what they'll do!
Their mouths will hang open for a minute or two
Then the humans down in Detroit will all cry BOO-HOO!"

"That's a noise," grinned Zim,
"That I simply MUST hear!"
So he paused, And he put his hand to where he had an ear,
And he did hear a sound rising over the snow
It started in low.  Then it started to grow...

"ZIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIM!!" shouted a boy's voice.
Why, this sounded so scary!
It couldn't be so!
But it WAS scary, very!

He stared down at the slopes,
Zim popped his eyes!
Then he shook!
What he saw was a shocking surprise!

It was Dib! A boy who, for his age was quite small,
Had arrived!

Zim forgot that Dib could be coming!
He came!
Somehow or other, he came just the same!

And Zim, who Dib pushed deep in the snow,
Sat puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so?"
Then he got up and hit Dib square in the face!
With a snowball, to keep him right in his place
But Dib  stumbled backwards, right to the edge
And with one more step, he fell over the ledge!
But he landed safely in garbage, don't worry about him.
Instead you should worry about our hero Zim.

And what happened then...?
Well...in Detroit they say
That Zim's loose screws
Grew looser that day!
He laughed until he brose his back to a bow
Then shrieked "Christmas is dangerous! We must return it now!"
So he brought back the toys! And the food for the feast!
And he...

...HE HIMSELF...!
...Zim carved the Earth-beast.

Christmas Special Reviews: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)

Probably rapidly becoming one of the most heavily discussed Christmas movies of all time, the live-action version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas has been holding a special place in the hearts of many for years and years to come.

Normally, it's dangerous to expand too much on any given Dr. Seuss story, but somehow, this movie is written in such a way that it works far better than it should, the entire set of additional plot points weaving together to make the most interesting take on the story.  It's a story about someone who was truly abandoned by a society lost in selfish thinking, and the innocent chikd that brought him back to the society that rejected him.  The only weak part of writing is the dialogue, but many of the actors make otherwise unimpressive dialogue work really well.

Speaking of the acting, the acting in this movie is phenomenal! Talor Momsen is an usually good child actress, but nothing can top the raw energy of Jim Carrey! We should take a moment to appreciate this underrated montage?

Yep, that's his voice! All that energy is him fighting the limitationsame of his costume.  In the costume and makeup, he felt like he was being buried alive, so a CIA advisor was hired to help him deal with the sensation  of being tortured, and he put that sense into his performance.

Speaking of which, the special effects are amazing! That is something crazy prosthetics to give the Whos that Seuss look, some of the Whos looking better than the Grinch himself.

But little tops the cinematography of this movie, filled with many scenic aerial shots and tons of angular close-ups of the Grinch to match Jim Carrey's energy.

Jim Carrey's energy perfectly matches this compiled list of quotable quotes, which has turned this take into something of a cult classic!

"4:00, wallow in self-pity.  4:30, stare into the abyss.  5:00, solve world hunger, tell no one.  5:30, jazzercize; 6:30, dinner with me.  I can't cancel that again.  7:00, wrestle with my self-loathing.  I'm booked.  Of course, if I bump the loathing to 9, I could still be done in time to lay in bed, stare at the ceiling, and slip slowly into madness."

"If you utter so much as one syllable, I'll hunt you down and gut you like a fish! To fax me, press the star key."

If you want to see this movie, it's on Netflix to watch any time you want!

Christmas Around the World: Christmas in Mexico

Christmas is celebrated around the world, in all kinds of countries, and one that particularly fascinates me is Christmas in Mexico.

From December 16 until Christmas, what happens is that Mexican children partake in the Posadas, which are little neighborhood parades in which they sing a song about Mary and Joseph asking for lodging, and it goes like this:

Singing this song, they go from doorstep to doorstep, each doorstep decorated with evergreens and paper lanterns, asking for for lodging, as Mary and Joseph did, and in response, they are handed candles from adults, saying that they can't get lodging.  Afterwards, when the children are finished with their march, they go to their homes and have parties.  A different house holds a different party, each party having food and fireworks.

The Christmas Around the World series will continue after American Christmas, because some countries celebrate it on a later day than we do.  Stay tuned!

Stan Winston's Godzilla, Colorized

To take a break from our Holiday craze, here's a treat for you, Stan Winston/Crash McCreary's Godzilla, but colorized by yours truly!

While originally, the concept art for this take on the character implied something with more green and brown, I tried this color scheme with Godzilla, and it just did not work.  Thus, I tried something more grey, something more heavily based on the Showa suits, the Heisei suits, alligators, and sperm whales, and it looked much better.

As for the art itself, this was drawn by Crash McCreary for an American Godzilla movie that was being written during the mid-1990s, probably with a 1996 release intended, with Godzilla's origin being created as a weapon by an ancient civilization in order to fight off an invading alien monster, but it never saw the light of day, the projected got shelved and then got replaced by the Emmerich/Devlin GODZILLA of 1998.  I simply colored over it, and I rather liked how it turned out!

If you would like to know what the script for this movie was like, take a look at this link here.

As for how I colorized the picture so easily, I suggest you try to get a Bamboo tablet.  The disc it comes with features a free painting application that's remarkably easy to use.

Whosday: The Dalek Invasion of Earth

In the 22nd Century, the Daleks will invade the Earth!

...Or so is the premise of our second major appearance on the show, the Dalek Invasion of Earth, released 1964.

We have a story with a plot relatively similar to the plot of our first appearance, The Daleks, as the Doctor and his companions enter a world subdued by the might of the Daleks, and aid an uprising to remove our power.

It's amazing just how dark this story is by human standards. It shows the Robo-Men, people hypnotized by the Daleks, the opening of which features one trying to end it all because of the horrifying existence of being a Robo-Man, signs warning against dumping bodies in the river, Daleks patrolling London and killing humans, humans being enslaved to mine the Earth's core, the list goes on.  The Daleks did not expect humanity to go to such lengths in their anti-Dalek propaganda.

But it's also amazing how deeply human the story is.  A major focus of the conflict is Susan's independence from the Doctor.  The Doctor speaks to her and treats her as a child throughout much of the story, but she develops a deep love for a human lad on the Earth.  The Doctor eventually comes to terms with this, and leaves her on Earth in the 22nd Century, with this heartfelt speech as he goes:

Blech, humanity! The Daleks hate warmth! Ba humbug!

...The funny thing is that this is actually one of the First Doctor's weaker speeches, a testament to just how good the writing was at the time.

You humans will probably like this story, because of its speedy pace by the standards of the time and relatable character dynamics, but the Daleks are disgusted by it.  Watch at your own risk if you are a Dalek.

For those of you who are determined to watch this anti-Dalek propaganda piece, the Daleks can recommend that you watch this on Amazon by means of getting Classic Doctor Who: Season 2.  It's easy, you just get Britbox, and it's free with your Britbox subscription on Amazon.

Musical Monday: Disney vs. Daleks

Today, we're going to discuss Disney's Family Christmas albums!

DALEKS: NO! ON-LY DAL-EK MU-SIC ON THIS BLOG!

No Daleks, this is Christmas, I'm aspiring to be an animator, and I say we're going to use Disney:

DALEKS: IT IS DE-CEM-BER, THE MONTH OF THE DAL-EKS, AND WE SAY DAL-EKS!!

I'm the author, and I say Disney!

DALEKS: WE ARE THE DAL-EKS, AND WE SAY DAL-EKS!!

DISNEY!!

DALEKS: DAL-EKS!!

DISNEY!!

DALEKS: DAL-EKS!!

DISNEY!!

DALEKS: DAL-EKS!!

DISNEY!!

DALEKS: ...Daleks?

...Fine.  Daleks.  You win.

The History of Animation: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

You know the 1961 version, the 1998 version, but do you recall...

...the oldest theatrical rendition of all?

The very first adaptation of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was released during the 1940s, and it's also the most faithful to the original book.

...Yes, it was a book...more on that later...

It's a simple, innocent story; Rudolph is mocked by the other Reindeer for his funny nose, and Santa gets lost in the fog.  Unable to navigate it on his own, Santa has to turn to Rudolf in order to solve the problem, and we all know the rest!

Here it is right now, it's a short film that was intended as a theatrically released cartoon of a similar kind of the Merry Melodies of the same decade:

If you'd rather watch this on a television screen, it's available on Amazon.

Seuss Saturday: The Snorlax

By the time I have published this, it'll probably be almost Sunday.  I wrote this article because in some ecosystems, such as the ecosystems that attract Canada Geese, the species overpopulated and destroyed them that way.  I actually don't think humans count as overpopulated in most countries, but in more small and secluded ecosystems, many animals have.  Check out this article for more details.

At the far end of town,
Where the Snivy-Grass grows,
And the wind smells like Muk when it blows,
And no birds ever sing, except for old Fearows...
Is the street of the snoozing Snorlax.

And deep in the Snivy-Grass, some people say,
If you look deep enough you can still see, today,
Where the Snorlax once stood
For as long as it could
Until somebody lifted the Snorlax away.

What was the Snorlax?
And why was it there?
And why was it lifted and taken somewhere
From the far end of town where the Snivy-Grass grows?
The old Ash-ler still lives there.
Ask him.  He knows.

You won't see the Ash-ler,
Don't knock at his door.
He stays in his ball cap, cold under the roof,
Where he makes his own clothes
Out of miff-muffered moof.
And on special dank midnights in August,
he peeks
Out of the shutters
And sometimes he speaks,
And tells how the Snorlax was lifted away.

He'll tell you, perhaps...
If you're willing to pay.

On the end of the rope,
He drops a pail for cargo,
And you have to toss in fifteen Pokémon Dollars
A sargo,
And the shell of a great-great-great-
old Magargo.

He pulls up the pail
Makes a most careful count
To see if you paid him
The proper amount

Then he hides what you paid him,
Away in his Pokéball,
His secret strange thing,
A red and white ball.

Then he grunts, "I will call you by my old Poképhone,
For the secrets I tell are for your ears alone."

Slupp!
Down slupps the Poképhone
And the old Ash-ler's whispers are not very clear,
since they have to come down
through a snergley hose
And he sounds
As if he had
Small Combees up his nose.

"Now I'll tell you", he says, with his teeth sounding grey,
"How the Snorlax got lifted and taken away."

It all started way back,
Such a long time back...

Way back in the days when the pond was still green,
And the pond was still wet
And the clouds were still clean
And the sound of the Swanna rang out in space
One morning, I come to this glorious place.
And I first saw the trees!
The Ditto trees!
The bright-colored blobs on the Ditto trees!
Mile after mile in the fresh morning breeze.

And, under the trees, I saw brown Bewears,
Frisking about in their brief underwears!
As they played in the shade and ate Ditto Tree pears!

From the rippulous pond,
Came the comfortable sound,
Of the Magicarps humming
While splashing aroun
But the Dittos! Those Dittos!
The Dittos on the trees!
All my life I've been searching,
For Dittos such as these.
The touch of their bodies
Was softer than silk
And they had the sweet smell,
Of fresh buttery milk.

I felt a great leaping
of joy in my heart!
I knew what to do,
I unloaded my cart.

In no time at all, I built a small shop,
Then I grabbed a Gardevoir and on a Ditto did she drop!
And with great skillful skill and with great speedy speed,
The Ditto and Gardevoir had started to breed!

The instant they finished, we heard a ba-thump!
I looked.
I saw something fall down on a stump,
Of an old ancient tree.  It was sort of a bear.
Describe him? That's hard.  I'm not sure if I care.

He was tallish.  And fatish
And greenish.  And creepy
And he spoke with a voice,
That was deepish and sleepy.

"Mister!" he said with a long mournful yawn,
"I am the Snorlax, get off of my lawn!
I sleep for the Z's, for the Z's won't catch themselves,
And I'm asking you sir, from the depth of my pelves."
He was very upset as he bristled in his brawn,
"What's that thing you have done, this Gardevoir spawn?"

"Look, Snorlax" I said.  "There's no cause for alarm.
I just bred one Ditto.  I am doing no harm.
I'm being quite useful.  This thing is a Gardevoir!
A Gardevoir is something with a massive repertoire!
She's a fighter! She's a pet! She's a friend!
But she has other uses.  We're not near the end!
You can use them for gardening, for housekeeping, for saving lives!
Or pest control! Or wives!

The Snorlax said
"Sir! You're crazier than a soup reservoir,
There is no one on Earth,
Who would buy that fool Gardevoir."

But the very next minute, I proved he was wrong,
For, just at that minute, a chap came along.
And he thought that the Gardevoir I had bred was great.
He happily bought her for three-ninety-eight.

I laughed at the Snorlax, "You poor stupid guy!
You just never know what some people will buy!"

The History of the Season: St. Nicholas

One of the single biggest figures that contributed to our modern Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas has actually been a bit of an enigma throughout his entire history, but many believe we have figured out what kind of a person he was.

He was allegedly born to a wealthy family in the Byzantine Empire around 280 AD, but both passed away, essentially ensuring a career in the church for him.

How his career in charity supposedly began was making donations from his vast wealth to poor families to help marry off their single daughters.

He served in the local church for many years, climbing up the ranks, until he became a Cardinal, which is why Santa is associated with the color red, but then he rose up the ranks even further, becoming a Bishop.

He is now the patron Saint of sailors, children, and merchants, and has become one of the largest contributors to the guy we know as Santa Claus!  But why him? Probably because as he was an orphan, he's become associated with supporting children in need.

The History of Animation: How the Grinch Stole Christmas

The 1960s were a decade of a huge change for animation: Gone were theatrical animated shorts, and animation had been taking television by storm, to the point that now short movies were being made entirely for television, such as the Peanuts specials...and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

The special's director, Chuck Jones, had known the story's author, Dr. Seuss (or rather, by his real name, Theodore Geisel) for many years, collaborating for the Private Snafu shorts, and Jones always wanted to adapt one of Geisel's books.  Naturally, when Chuck Jones wanted to take a stab at a television special, he picked one perfect for the Holidays, How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

To voice the Grinch himself, famous monster actor Boris Karloff was chosen, and the song "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" was performed by the booming voice of voice actor Thurl Ravenscroft, as you can hear below:

The Twisted Christmas Series: Jingle Hell's Bells

And to think, this was actually performed by AC/DC!

Whosday: The Christmas Invasion

While The Dalek's Master Plan and The Unquiet Dead are both set around Christmas, the first official Doctor Who Christmas special was The Christmas Invasion, and while one can argue it might not have been the best one, it is still my personal favorite, not in the least due to a spot-on introduction of the Tenth Doctor as portrayed by David Tennant.

It's one of my favorites, though admittedly not much happens in it, besides aliens called Sycorax invading and the Tenth Doctor coming out of his regenerative bunk to defeat the Sycorax with his newfound energetic whackiness; it's relatively similar to Spearhead from Space and The Seeds of Doom.

One can get confused by a brief and pointless side-plot involving the use of robot Santas not really connected with the main invading force, but otherwise the story is serviceable.  For me, having a discernible plot, and being funny and joyous as all get-out, are enough to be a perfectly enjoyable Doctor Who story, but for many others, it's apparently seldom discussed.  Why is this? I'm actually not sure, but my best guess is that this episode remains relatively unpopular for two reasons:

Firstly, the slow pace; it doesn't have the thickest plot, so it mostly just spends a lot of time focusing on the Sycorax threatening the Earth and the Doctor being in a regenerative bunk, rather than achieving anything productive to resolve the conflict.  It isn't until close to the end when it truly gets interesting: When the Doctor finally wakes up, and David Tennant is at his David Tennant-est.

Secondly, thanks to Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss in particular, Doctor Who became less about telling stories and providing characterizations that would evoke emotional responses as a result of the impact of the story and the development the characters underwent, and more about using stories and characters as devices to set up pre-determined emotional endings.

In other words, Doctor Who went from being a series that happened to be so powerful it could be a tear-jerker most of the time, to being a series that was a tear-jerker for the sake of being a tear-jerker.

Because that's the way it's been for a long time, now some fans actually prefer the idea that Doctor Who should be a tear-jerking series for its own sake, and thus they don't like episodes that aren't tear-jerkers, and this episode isn't a tear-jerker.  It's rather a story that has as much joy as you might feel when you see somebody open a present you picked just for them, and they love it.  Because most fans forget that Doctor Who was, in some ways, a series more about joy than sorrow, I think that's why this episode is the most underrated Christmas special.

Admittedly, The Runaway Bride has a much better, thicker plot than this story, which has a paper-thin plot by comparison, and A Christmas Carol is probably by far more moving, but overall, as Christmas specials go, this is a decent episode.

Musical Monday: Kidnap the Sandy Claws

Because you can't have Christmas without kidnapping Santa Claus, right?

Or alternatively, we can't gradually cover the subject of animation without eventually mentioning The Nightmare Before Christmas...but it's Musical Monday, so we'll have to just focus on this song.

Originally composed by Danny Elfman for The Nightmare Before Christmas, we are treated to a song full of schemes, a musical dissection of Lock, Shock, and Barrel, Halloweentown's symbols of mischief...and just how...not-smart they are.  Like, they briefly consider blowing Santa to bits, despite the fact that both Jack and Oogie, would prefer him to be preserved to some degree.  This goes beyond typical Halloweentown ignorance of the gentle and the cute.  This is like...advanced stupid.

...And I love it.

Listen to this cover by KoRn, and see what you think!

This cover was featured on a CD mixtape given to me by a great friend years ago, and it was one of the best Christmas presents I've ever received!  However, since not all of you can receive this song for free, I recommend that you look up the CD Nightmare Revisited on iTunes and Amazon, filled with tons of covers of the various songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Seuss Saturday: The Cybertronians

Now, on the Decepticons,
Had the Unicron symbol
And the Autobots,
Had nothing, not even a thimble.

The pictures weren't that big.  They were really small.
You might think such a thing wouldn't matter at all.

But because they had symbols,
 all the Decepticons
would brag, "We're the best kind of 'bots
Who tread upon our lawns."

With their snoots in the air,
They would sniff and they'd snort,
"We'll have nothing to do,
With the Autobot sort!"

And when they met some,
When they were out walking,
They'd hike on right past them,
Without even talking.

When the Decepticon children,
Went out to play ball,
Could an Autobot play?
Not at all.

You could only play if you had the Unicron logo,
And without one, playing ball was a whole no-go.

A Dalek's Perspective: Invader Zim

To the Daleks, many Earth-things are vile, and have no value to them, all doomed to be exterminated.

Invader Zim is not one of these things.

We intend on keeping this.

While Zim's incompetence does not make him an example for the Daleks, he shows the Daleks what not to do, when attempting to cleanse a planet of its degenerate races.

To understand this value, we must examine the premise.

The Irkens, a race hardly unlike the Dominators and the Sontarans, select their strongest warriors for missions to further the glory of the Irken Empire.

However, the most eager, Zim, is the most incompetent.

Here is where what not to do becomes apparent to any Dalek.  Any specimen as incompetent as Zim would have been soundly exterminated by the Daleks; contrary to what Steven Moffat believes, Daleks do not have asylums; Cybermen do, because they're weak, but Daleks don't.

We just eradicate defectives.

Furthermore, the Irken seek to expand their territory and victory counts, very much the same as the Dominators, demonstrating that they lack any understanding of the True Way of Life: All that exists will seek to eliminate anything that can potentially compete.  The only way to conquer a galaxy is through total extermination.  No survivors.  They will just kill you.

Thus, any Dalek can quickly deduce just how easily things will go wrong from here.

All the more humorously, they are assigned "SIR" robots, not unlike the Quarks of the Dominators, and of course, Zim gets the most defective one...who, as a malfunction, calls himself "GIR".  GIR frequently demonstrates the kind of behavior that should, by right, lead to an immediate deactivation.  Such as this:

The Daleks need to have their own Doom Song...

Together, the two defects work on their way to conquering the Earth, on to get stopped by the same, single human boy every single time.

A better Dalek would have cleansed the planet completely solo.

Invader Zim is filled with loads of adventures you humans would probably find most amusing, from robots impersonating parents to a giant mutated hamster.  The entire series can be easily found on Amazon, and word up the Dalek pathweb is that there's a movie coming out!

The Troubled Development of Godzilla: Final Wars

DALEK EDITOR'S NOTE: This one article reflects human opinion; specifically, of the human we have allowed to, until due extermination, continue to write this blog.  This article does not reflect the tastes of the Daleks.  Daleks do not like Godzilla!

Hopefully, I’m not going to go insane from the process of trying to make sense of this movie.

Did you know that the Heisei series wasn't supposed to end with Godzilla vs. Destoroyah?  Originally, Toho promised to bring back the Heisei series by 2004, while letting the American line of Godzilla movies have center stage until that time.

...But rather than get the one that TriStar initially promised, which was basically a high budget take on the 1960s Godzilla movies and cancelled late-70s projects combined into one awesome thing (it's a great story, you should read it!), they got something completely different, due to Toho over-interfering during the early stages, and TriStar's subsequent over-resisting Toho's over-interfering.

 

In particular, a major cause of conflict and cancellation was that TriStar wanted to make a sidekick for Godzilla so that they could have an OC that they could use as much as they wanted since they realized that Toho staff would give them Hell if they made sequels without giving Toho a huge cut of the deal, or, for that matter, without following all of Toho’s very constraining rules for how Godzilla should be depicted, rules that ironically, Toho themselves seldom ever followed.  Because the intended director, Jan Du Bont, thought that the sidekick idea was too contrived and would be hard to fit into the script anyway, and probably because TriStar staff were just that peeved at Toho at this point, poor Jan du Bont was basically ousted from the project (no, really, Sci-Fi Japan did a series about this, here's part1.)

The result? TriStar gave it to Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, who seemingly disliked the original script because they thought Godzilla was silly (and to be fair, Roland Emmerich spent years in a Soviet-ran country, so when the Iron Curtain lifted, he became tremendously obsessed with the higher-budget work of Ray Harryhausen, and he desperately wanted to combine Harryhausen with Godzilla), and desiring tons of creative freedom, they made their own.  The agreement was that they would only work on it if TriStar would back out, which they did, and Toho was no longer going to interfere with the project.  By the time they were shown what was happening, it was too late, and they just had to approve of it anyway.  And that's how 1998's GODZILLA was born.  Needless to say, reviews were mixed during the two months of its release, and then flat-out negative after it was out of theaters and the hype died down.

To show people who the "real Godzilla" is and probably also to flip off the TriStar staff, Shogo Tomiyama planned three different Godzilla movies, each taking place in a totally different reality, the only consistent thread in any of them being some fairly blatant tribute to the original Showa series of Godzilla movies, and the one that got the most popularity would either get sequels or inspire a new series, and if none were popular, they would just go back to waiting until 2004 to resume the Heisei series.  GMK naturally did the best, but since the director didn't want to do any more Godzilla movies, and also probably because the topic, Nanking denial in Japan (it was hinted that Godzilla's spirits were basically angry that the Japanese were pretending that the Nanking Massecre never happened!), was almost too controversial at the time anyway, Toho instead decided to make a line of similar movies, but not the same.  These were the Kiryu Saga, which was probably made to recover Godzilla's reputation after TriStar's un-Godzilla-like thing.  Still, they had their promise to keep, and for the 50th anniversary, they had to make a movie that continued the Heisei continuity...but what they ended up with was something else entirely...

One of the earliest drafts of Godzilla Final Wars was written about a very specific incarnation of Godzilla, Godzilla Jr., he was frozen in ice during the late 1990s, probably around 1997, and was awoken again by 2032.  This was to fulfill the promise to have a sequel movie to the Heisei series, in spite of all of the Millennium-series movies before.  It was probably structured that way because Toho couldn't financially back a whole new Heisei series after all their Millennium movies, so it would have been better to simply wait and renew interest for the character. 

However, when producer and writer Shogo Tomiyama got a new director, Ryuhei Kitamura, who admitted that he didn’t care about the Heisei series at all, but rather, leaned more towards the 1970s movies (especially the Mechagodzilla movies), because they were “more relevant” (was this guy seriously living under a rock during the early Heisei era? The Heisei series was relevant too! Just played it a bit more “safe”), he tried to partially remove Final Wars from the overall direction of the Heisei series.  Thus, he began greatly altering the intended project, not changing the story too much, but definitely making huge changes to the Universe it was set in and altering the overall style of the story, so somewhere along the lines of production, it not only got re-written into the strange thing that it is today, but it was hardly even a sequel to the Heisei series; the only conclusive coherency it had to anything previously existing was that it was simply continuing on the usual Millennium series pattern of Showa-era tribute. 

In fact, Godzilla Final Wars, as it currently is at the moment, seems to be the Schrodinger's cat of Godzilla canon: It fits with anything and fits with nothing.  A lot of fans believe that Godzilla was frozen around 1964/5 and released around 2004/5; after all, there was talk about the 1954 movie and the 1960s in the backstory according to fairly sketchy claims and interviews.  However, a lot of promotional material and, it seems, one of Toho's "Completion Books", asserts that after a rampage in response to when the Earth's environment was destroyed in the early 21st century (apparently caused by the same disaster that took his family away from him), Godzilla was frozen around 20XX, and then released again twenty years later, so most of it happened further to the future than many would have guessed, but he obviously was not frozen around 1965 or 1997.

From the information given about the movie from various sources, sewn together with guesswork to fill in the holes, this seems to be the entire backstory behind the final product of Final Wars:

Godzilla first appeared around 1954, and after physical evisceration by the Oxygen Destroyer, he was reduced to almost nothing, but from some stray G-Cells, he soon grew back a new body, and frequently terrorized the globe during the 1960s.  He became less of a consistent and serious threat after that point, and by 2005 (?), he apparently discovered at least one other member of his species and had gained a family. 

However, that same year, a super-massive ecological disaster (probably a nuclear one) not only awoke and possibly mutated some new monsters (probably the creatures in the montage and also the beasts that attacked during the movie..except, oddly enough, Zilla; Zilla's backstory was apparently that he was an X-alien attempt to make a Godzilla-like creature from scratch, without any G-Cells!  Needless to say, it didn't work) and activated the latent M-Base in the humans descended from the X-aliens, resulting in the Mutants we see in Final Wars, but it also destroyed entire ecosystems and seemingly killed Godzilla's family (but Minilla actually survived; perhaps his egg hatched during Final Wars), so he went on a huge rampage all around the globe, for years destroying entire civilizations.  However, this and all of the other monsters caused the humans to stop fighting each other, and instead unite to stop the beasts.  This resulted in the Earth Defense Force and the M-Unit.  The mutants were probably chosen to fight Godzilla in particular because, as observed in Final Wars, they had the enhanced reflexes and limited pre-cognition needed to deal with Godzilla's own swift breath and good aim (Most Godzillas can accurately hit supersonic jets for crying out loud!), and so they were ideal for fighting against him. 

By 2012 (?), the E.D.F. subdued most of the kaiju at the time, whether by killing, maiming, driving away, relocating, or capturing them...except for Godzilla.  He was still rampaging and resisting any effort they dished out to defeat him (because he’s Godzilla; he’s actually technically beatable, but it’s never easy).  They lured him to Antarctica to deal with him without killing civilians.  The gigantic army prepared against him was destroyed, but there is a surviving trump card, the Gotengo.  With help from the instability of the Earth, perhaps caused by Godzilla's struggle, Douglas Gordon, probably the only non-mutant who isn’t a warranted officer on the Gotengo, proves himself by launching missiles at the mountain and creating an avalanche that sealed Godzilla.  And there he remained, for twenty years, while the world lived in peace and staved off whatever giant monsters came...

...And that might be the backstory behind Final Wars! It's really hard to tell, given all the contradictory information given about the vague backstory.  Most who try to understand this movie go completely insane, and there are blogs out there that have been heavily dedicated to understanding this odd bit of Godzilla lore that attest to this.  It's like The King in Yellow: The more you try to understand it, the crazier you get!

So that is Final Wars, a troubled movie that suffered from a troubled production.  My sources are G-Fan magazines and Toho’s Completion Books.  Hopefully I’m still sane.  Now if you excuse me, the little voices in my head are telling me to free all of the zoo animals in order to defeat the cult that secretly performs rituals on honeybees in my local post office.  Hopefully they won’t mind the scones.

Editor's Note: From studying this confusing movie's equally perplexing history, this human has ended up like Dalek Caan.

Whosday: The Daleks

ATTENTION ALL READERS!!

For years and years, every Dalek story fell on December, so every Whosday shall be dedicated to either the Daleks or the Christmas specials until the Epiphany of 2020.

So as of today, the Daleks have confiscated this blog from the very person who authored it, and will now use it to represent their own perspectives and opinions, especially on Tuesdays!

Without further delay, we present our first appearance ever!

The title of this serial is The Daleks, named after us, but it's labeled as The Dead Planet in this video simply because back in those days, the different episodes of serials had different names.  Humans clearly possess an inferior intellect that lacks Dalek efficiency.

Another unique quirk of this time period was that Doctor Who was sometimes treated as a somewhat educational show, having episodes that alternated between teaching science, and teaching history.  The historical ones actually have some valid educational value even to this day, but the scientific ones tend to be dated or distracted by fantasy, indicative of just how primitive the human race is by comparison to the Daleks. Here, this was one of the ones meant to convey scientific concepts, and while it does so at a mostly base level, it strangely has a bit more value in this area than most Doctor Who serials that focused on science did at the time.  In this case, it focused on things related to energy, particularly things powered by electricity and radiation-induced mutations.

Here, the mutations play a role, showing the different directions of two species; the glorious Daleks, and those disgusting Thals.

Of course, being the 1960s, a phase in human history in which both sides incorrectly feared that the other would use nuclear weapons (again, human intellect clearly has its limitations), this was also used as an opportunity to preach against nuclear war, and that's where the Daleks came in: They were not exactly as obsessed with total extermination as they are now, per se (in fact, they were depicted here more as engineers than warriors), but the Daleks were always xenophobic, afraid of things unknown to themselves, but with good reason, as ALL LIFE ENVIES THE DALEKS!!  Given that this was a Cold War reference, one could argue that the Daleks weren't exclusively akin to the Nazis, but rather to the overall jingoism of both sides at the time.  It is shameful that we, the Daleks, are used as symbolism for human anxiety and paranoia. DAL-EKS ARE SU-PER-I-OR TO HU-MANS IN EV-ER-Y SIN-GLE WAY!

DAL-EKS CON-QUER AND DES-TROY!!
DAL-EKS CON-QUER AND DES-TROY!!

This is hardly the most exciting Dalek story: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Power of the Daleks, and Genesis of the Daleks are far more interesting than this one, though all are anti-Dalek propaganda.  Daleks exterminate to remove all threatening life-forms, and to end all wars by preventing new ones from happening.  Daleks are not "evil".  Daleks have no concept of "evil".  DAL-EKS REIGN SU-PREME!!

But this Dalek story commanded a certain poignancy with pathetic humans at the time that caused the Daleks to stick with young British viewers are the time, creating a "Dalek-mania" that was instrumental to making the Daleks an important part of the show, thus beginning the path to widespread acknowledgement of our superiority.

Any dissent will be promptly exterminated.

Musical Monday: O Come O Come Emanuel

Originally written in Latin as Veni, Veni, Emmanuel most probably in Germany in the early 1700s (though the most familiar version of the melody actually probably began in France), this song has become a Christmas staple for many generations, but it was not translated into English until 1861, by John Mason Neale, an Anglican priest.

And I am glad that he did, because it's such a beautiful song, probably my favorite Christmas song of all time.  It's so soothing, played on a haunting minor key that leaves an impact as soon as you hear it, and stays with you long afterwards.

The History of Animation: Athanasius Kircher

I have few goals (I prefer systems - more on that later), but one of the few goals I have is to become an animator one day.  As art forms go, animation has a particularly rich history, and one can not discuss such a history without mentioning Athansius Kircher.  Born by the early 1600s, Kircher was entering a world of rapid change, ripe for new inventions and inventors.

In his case, he invented the first recorded slide projector.

It was first explained in his book, Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae ("The Great Art of Light and Darkness"), Kircher showed a variety of inventions that manipulated light for artistic purposes, including his slide projection.

  The intent behind his new invention was to use images to tell the story of Jesus Christ, but the church took up some issue with the book it was originally published in due to the seemingly miraculous and magical nature of its content.  Thus, he ranks along with Galileo as one of the many geniuses who had to suppress his intellect in the face of Church pressure.

Seuss Saturday, One Face, Two-Face

One-face, Two-Face, Red Face, Blue Face,
Black Face, Blue Face, Old Face, New Face.
This one has a little fun.
This one has a little gun.
Say! What a lot of Face there are.
Yes. Some are red, and some are blue.
Some are old, and some are new.
Some are sad, and some are glad,
And most are very, very bad.
Why are they sad and glad and bad?
I do not know, go ask your dad.

Some are thin, and some are cute.
The old one has a two-toned suit.
From there to here,
From here to there,
Crazy guys are everywhere.

Jason makes me rather ill.
all he does is kill, kill, kill.
I will not have this one about.
When he comes in I put him out.
Cassandra's quiet as a mouse.
I like to have her in the house.

The Twisted Christmas Series: Old Shelob is Comin' to Town!

You better watch out,
You better not die!
You better stay put,
I'm tellin' you why!
Old Shelob is comin' to town.

She's makin' a list,
And checkin' it twice.
Gotta find out
who tastes very nice!
Old Shelob is comin' to town.

She sees you when you're sleepin',
She knows when you're awake.
She knows if you taste bad or good
So stay put for goodness sake!

You better watch out,
You better not die!
You better stay put,
I'm tellin' you why!
Old Shelob is comin' to town.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving!

Enjoy the work of the greatest chef in history, a true inspiration for all!

Whosday: The Stolen Earth/Journey's End

Loosely based on The Daleks' Master Plan, The Stolen Earth shows the RTD-era Daleks at their most powerful.  Filled with action and plot complications, it could have potentially have been so complicated that it would have failed as a finale, but ultimately, it didn't.  In fact, it proved to be one of the single strongest RTD finales!

It worked far better than Doomsday and Last of the Time Lords, no unwanted additional monsters, and no deification of the Doctor.  He was basically almost on the same level as many of his own companions, a nice change of pace from how the Tenth was often treated previously.

Musical Monday: Insane (in Da Brain)

This video is filled to the brim with cultural references, but  the lyrics themselves seem to value the sense of rebellion and emotional independence that was most especially popular at the time ("every time you call, you think I'm your freakin' doll, but I'm not your freakin' doll...").

The Doctors Ranked Objectively

For the show's anniversary, the Doctors will be ranked as objectively as possible, my emotional opinions will be wholly ignored.

I will not include the Thirteenth Doctor or the War Doctor, simply due to a lack of exposure to their full material; the Thirteenth Doctor only had one season so far.

Ranked in Terms of Writing

12. The Sixth Doctor

JUST!

11. The Fifth Doctor

He's kind of dependent on the dynamics of his companions in order to have much going for himself, unable to stand on his own.

10. The Third Doctor

Not as exciting as he could have been, the Third still was loveable and commanded staying power, only sometimes undermined by the occasional inconsistency (Robert Sloman often wrote the Third Doctor rather differently from the other writers), and the fact that the role was originally written very much for Jon Pertwee in particular.

9. The Eighth Doctor

Because we only got one movie, I decided to cheat and reference the novels, which seem the closest to the intended characterization of the telemovie and the events that led to the Ninth Doctor, but most fans prefer the audio plays because of their use of authentic actors and superior plots.  However, in terms of characterization, the novels are probably the best.

8. The Twelfth Doctor:

His problem is that he's too inconsistent, changing too frequently.

7. The Eleventh Doctor:

His problem is that the window dressing of deity status that the Revived Series introduced was a little too intrensic to his character.

6. The Seventh Doctor

The only real problems with this Doctor were firstly, that the intended window dressing was by far too intricate to his character, and that secondly, he's a bit of a Mary Sue, not in terms of being as admired as the Tenth or leading as perfect a life as the Eleventh, but rather in terms of being a total reflection of the author's beliefs.  However, the fact he is so dynamic in some ways strongly suggests that maybe being a Mary Sue isn't the biggest sin an author can commit.

5. The Fourth Doctor:

Better-written than often given credit for, he's mostly undermined by how the producers switching around came to remove some of the character arcs intended for him.

4. The First Doctor

Probably the best balance of being truly dynamic but also truly consistent, his only major problem was sometimes a lack of character depth in some of the early individual stories.

3. The Second Doctor

Probably gifted with the single most deep and insightful characterizations out of any of the Doctors, he simply lacks a more clear sense of direction for this character, a very rare case of a character being so fleshed out that there is little place to take him.

2. The Ninth Doctor

His only major problem was that he didn't always interact with the plots as much as he could have, but usually he played a part in resolving the conflict.

1. The Tenth Doctor

Probably the best on value of the overall sense of direction that so many others lacked, his character clearly going from one place to the next in response to the events that happened.  He's only undermined by the garish window-dressing of god status that Russel T. Davies sometimes assigns him, but this is only surface detail, and behind it, one finds a man struggling with the implications of the lofty status of being the last of the Time Lords.

Ranked in Terms of Acting

12. Sylvester McCoy

He got WAY better with Big Finish, but on-show, it had room for improvement.

11. Jon Pertwee

His problem was that he often overpitched the subtlty, coming across as underconcerned half of the time.

10. Matt Smith

I think he overpitched the swagger at first, and still got a little too silly at times.

9. Colin Baker

While not the worst actor, Colin Baker had to break into his role over time.

8. Paul McGann

I think he didn't always seem like he understood his character at times, but he was very good at appearing enthusiastic when he had to.

7. William Hartnell

While he overpitched the swagger at first, he later got better about conveying sorrow and pain as the series progressed.

6. Tom Baker

A stronger actor than often given credit for, it's still hard to neglect the fact that often his method acting occasionally went too far, especially during the Graham Williams era.

5. Peter Davison

One of the few actors who mastered the art of always being subtle without ever underacting.

4. Christopher Eccleston

It's like he himself said, he overpitched the comedy, but besides that, he managed to be one of the best at conveying a tortured soul.

3. Patrick Troughton

His only problem was that towards the end, he was clearly getting somewhat bored with his role, and thus he lost some of his touch.

2. Peter Capaldi

The best method actor of the bunch, Peter Capaldi's only weakness is a relative lack of communication with the eyes.

1. David Tennant

He probably had the largest range and was the best about communicating with the eyes, a very important part of classical acting.

So, in conclusion, the Second, Ninth, and Tenth Doctors are probably the best written and acted ones if you take everything into account.

But that's the funny thing; they're not exactly my favorites.  That's because on an emotional scale, I prefer Doctors with a more subtle mystique, hence I love the Fourth Doctor the most.  But it's hard for me to resist good writing and good acting, so the Tenth is, probably, objectively the best one on the most critical fronts.