Doctor Who The Magician's Apprentice
I'm not clear here who was the magician and who was the apprentice. Doctor Who/Clara or Davros/Dr. Who?
I have seen no episodes with The Master (I haven't seen all the runs of Who) that I recall, but I just despise the Missy character and was not happy to see her again.
Clara has grown on me, but I didn't care for her bit here super analyzing the frozen plane dilemma with some brain trust peeps. Once reunited with Who, she was wonderful.
In a bit of purest sacrilege, I also don't like the tinny voiced Daleks with their idiotic incessant "exterminate" whine.
Colony Sarff, a being composed of deadly snakes, now he was interesting.
I loved Peter Capaldi rocking out with his guitar, riding atop of tank. Best entrance ever.
Fear the Walking Dead: Not Fade Away
Our group tries for normalcy under the imposed martial law. From the opening we know it's been nine days since the lights went out in Los Angeles and elsewhere. There's no water, landline phones, nothing, and the occupiers aren't providing much information.
They do say they're working on getting services restored, and health checks will continue. These folks are one of 12 safe zones south of the San Gabriel Mountains. This stuck with me so I looked for a map to see how much area that covered. Not really so much land area, and they don't say how many people are in each safe zone.
They also said that it was great news that a six mile area around the safe zone had been cleared. When Madison goes sneaking through a fence with her handy fence cutter to see what that zone is like, she finds the dead lying all over in the streets, some clearly not diseased, just shot.
When Travis reports to the head military goof that some sort of signal seems to be coming from the deadened zone, the guy looks up, dismisses the idea, and goes back to golfing in the street (a common thing for apocalypse honchos to do, note the Governor, season three The Walking Dead lofting golf balls at zombies).
Later that night, Travis sees lights from the house, then sees the place lit up with gunfire, which can be heard even at the distance. He is so enamored of the security the military brings, but I'm hoping he sees that he is responsible for those deaths.
Madison, in addition to sneaking outside the fence, goes whacko on Nick and beats him for stealing drugs from a dying neighbor. I understand that she is cracking under the strain but, just yell at the kid. Man.
Alycia just has to butt into every conversation. Agh.
Ofelia changes out of her sweetie pie dress and slinks out to find a soldier who might give her mom new meds.
Liza, who keeps sneering at Travis for trying to fix everything, is right out there on the front lines going door to door using her nurse-in-training skills to help out. When ratted out by a real doc who comes to town, she hops on a truck and leaves everyone behind in order to travel with Griselda (who is going to get surgery for her foot-wink-wink) and Nick, who is apparently a risk of OD-ing and needs to be removed. I see nothing good ahead for those folks, since soldiers come and forcibly take them at night--why at night? and relatives are not allowed to come along for the ride.
The only good things that can come from these events are that Liza gets some crash course medical training that will be valuable later, and Daniel and Madison will unite to try to get them back, and I think they make a formidable pair. Through them, we'll also get a bit more of an idea of what is happening in the larger world.
My last thought is, in the chaos of the times, how did they get a big chain fence up around this community in so little time?
Gotham: Rise of the Villains: Damned If You Do...
This season is Gotham, Rise of the Villains. All of the neo-natal villains from season one--Penguin, Joker, Riddler and more are coming into their own.
Jim Gordon is tossed from the force by the commissioner. Gordon goes to Penguin to ask for help getting reinstated and he wants Commissioner Loeb removed. Penguin want Gordon to do a favor too, collect money from a reluctant mob boss. He refuses, but basically Bruce Wayne shames him into going to do it for the long term good of the city. Wise beyond his years is Bruce.
Jim does the deed, ends up killing the mob boss, but he gets Penguins help and is reinstated by new commissioner Essen. Yay, now things will shape up.
Horribly, there's a new uber villain in town with a psycho sister in tow with big ninja moves (Theo and Tabitha Galavan). I don't mind a passle of silly over the top villains, because this is the comics, folks. I hate uber, untouchable, smarter than everyone villains though. Boring and ugly.
Worse yet, Uber dog has set loose a team of scum from Arkham Asylum which includes Barbara the super psycho which puts my beloved Dr. Leslie Thompkins in danger. Yech.
Great scenes with Bruce determined to get into the Batcave and getting yelled at by Alfred for trying to make a fertilizer bomb using an Internet recipe. Thanks to Alfred's own skills, they blow open the door and find a spider webby cave with an old computer and a note to Bruce from his dad. The doorcode was Bruce, doh. To the Batcave!
Minority Report: Pilot
This has taken the place of Sleepy Hollow after Gotham and I found the commecials for it to be just cringe worthy. Ha!
The story doesn't quite match the film, and yet it was quite enjoyable.
Three children with precognition are trapped by the goverment for a decade predicting crimes. Theyr'e released after the program doesn't quite work out but are not to bring any attention to themselves.
Cue the entrance of Dash, who sees visions of murders and can draw rather bizarre caricatures of the killers. He sees these just barely enough in advance to try to stop them but he can't ever successfully get to the scene in time.
He decides to ask for the help of detective Lara Vega, who has retinal implants which help her recreate crime scenes and scan areas for heat signatures among other things. The high tech available to the cops is fun to see. They were able to create a 3D sketch from Dash's drawing of a killer, then go after that person.
The show was unexpectedly fast paced, compelling as a crime story, with Vega and Dash being a good pair working together.
An interesting twist going forward is that Agatha, the precog sister who sees the future as a larger picture without details, sees something bad coming of Dash working with Vega. Maybe his death, maybe the recapture and imprisonment of the three siblings. Arthur, the sibling who sees names and dates and places wants to help Dash but fears Agatha may be right. Dash himself sees the details of the murder, but not locations, names or any general idea of what surrounds the crime. Only the three together get a good picture of what is to be.
