The Opinions Can Be WrongCast - Episode 2: Batman

The Opinions Can Be WrongCast - Episode 1: Doctor Who

X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class, or "The Story of how Magneto got his Helmet," which was recently released on DVD, is one of the latest in Marvel's ongoing trend of producing a consistent output of superhero adaptations which, though rarely anything mind-blowing, generally leave you thinking "That was indeed an enjoyable superhero film." It's sort of the opposite of DC's current policy of mediating Christopher Nolan directed Batman extravaganzas with intermittent and uninspiring adaptations of mostly stuff no one cares about. Seriously, if you want good DC films, watch the animated stuff. Anyway, I'm no X-pert but I'd say this is probably the best X-Men film. While the original trilogy has its moments, particularly in the first two films, they were often let down by somewhat unambitious or meandering scripts and an indecisiveness about how seriously they were taking themselves. First Class is a little more focused, dealing with the origins of the X-Men and an exploration of the different points of view set against the ever-permissive backdrop of the Cold War. This provides a clarity of purpose which is made more effective by paralleling the human/mutant divide with the USA/Soviet tensions of the early Sixties.

As the film begins we're presented very effectively with an essential comparison of Xavier and Magneto in their youths, and this has vital consequences for the setting overall. It is Xavier, who has grown up in ridiculous luxury but with a loveless family, who desires kinship with all peoples, happy when Mystique enters his life, whereas Magneto has the love of his mother snatched from him by Nazi brutality. It's a bit Freudian but it provides a good basis for their differences of opinion; Xavier has received love and companionship from outside. For Magneto, it was the outside world which stole that bond away. Psychologically speaking, it gives an excellent counterpart to their more obvious conflict of philosophies.

Of course, as is standard for X-Men, Xavier believes great things are to be achieved by mutants and humans working in harmony. Magneto, having experienced xenophobia first hand in its most violent form, sees mutants as a group who must strike pre-emptively to protect themselves from the fear of humanity. Yet this film's action focuses around them working together in friendship, compromising until the situation becomes so untenable that they ultimately fall apart. Most of the time the film succeeds in keeping the morality ambiguous; as long as Xavier and Magneto share a common goal in defeating a mutual enemy both perspectives are given their time. Xavier wants to save the world, while Magneto is out for a fairly justifiable revenge.

Mutual enemy du jour takes the shape of Sebastian Shaw, apparently a long-standing X-Men foe who coincidentally shares a name with that guy who plays Darth Vader for like a minute after Luke removes his helmet in Return of the Jedi. Shaw basically wants to start a nuclear war between the US and Soviet Union so that he can recolonise the Earth as a mutants-only club in the ensuing radioactive wasteland. He's got a few flaws in his plan. For a start, he says that radiation started mutant evolution and that nuclear war will only make mutants stronger. But I'm pretty sure most mutants still need to, y'know, eat and stuff, so good luck raising animals or growing plants even if you aren't horribly wrecked by radiation no matter how unusual your genes. He also wants to lead mutant civilisation but he never has more than three other mutants on his team and doesn't seem to have considered that even if they could survive the radiation most of the mutants out there would, for instance, get blown up by nuclear explosions along with everyone else even before radiation became a factor. He also sends Emma Frost, who is clearly the most useful mutant on his team, off on her own to Russia which inevitably leads to her capture. He's not the brightest spark.

It's never really explained how merely manipulating two generals, one Soviet and one American, leads to nuclear plans for Turkey and Cuba, and how this gets through the chain of command, but then again it's not explained how he has a yacht with a detachable submarine either. In a world where telepathy is still a secret but the Soviets nonetheless make a telepathically shielded helmet I suppose anything is possible. The authorities are naturally played as sceptical and stupid; the Soviets play easily into Shaw's hands and the Americans refuse to listen to Moira or take their own mutants seriously. They order a pre-emptive strike on all the mutants in Cuba even though they've seen the X-Men battling Shaw's cronies before their very eyes and you reach the point where it's kind of difficult not to sympathise with Magneto's rather dim opinion of the idea of human/mutant co-operation. Indeed Moira is one of the only sympathetic humans in the entire film. In their conversation before the finale Magneto accuses Xavier with the remark "You believe they're all like Moira," to which Xavier cuttingly retorts "You believe they're all like Shaw." But that's the thing; Magneto doesn't believe they're like Shaw. He has entirely different reasons for hating Shaw, the sociopath who killed his mother in cold blood for the sake of an experiment, to the humans whose violent fear of mutants he equates with the Nazis' attitude toward Jews.

In fact Xavier, for all his mentorship, spouts a lot of pop psychology and rather hollow aphorisms which seem to undermine his appearance of wisdom. I'd think it was an intentional part of showcasing these characters in their youth but it's presented as if it is replete with gravitas and profundity. For instance, he advises Magneto that true focus lies "somewhere between rage and serenity". So... normal temperament, then? He additionally tells Beast that "Robert Louis Stephenson would be proud," when he unleashes his mutant powers to run really fast but this seems like a strained effort to give Xavier and Hank some "fellow intellectual cameraderie" which is rather heartily undermined as Xavier stands there like a plum while Havok insults Beast. Beast of course gets his own dubious moment when, upon testing Banshee's flight suit, tells him that "the sounds waves have to be supersonic." Beast, scientist that he is, would hopefully know that supersonic means "faster than sound", which by definition excludes sound from being one of the things capable of being supersonic. Perhaps he meant ultrasonic, which is to say high frequency.
Beast of course gets his own sub plot with Mystique in a sort of half-arsed attempt to give the film a smidge of romance otherwise irrelevant with the flirty but ultimately ineffectual Xavier and the cold, snide Magneto as leads. He wants to share with her the ability to not look 'different', to make their powers 'invisible' like Xavier's. This does add an interesting layer of discussion regarding conformity versus independence, and contributes a nice extra helping of ambiguity when it is the insecure and wannabe-conformist Beast who sticks with Xavier while Mystique, who learns to accept and appreciate herself for who she is, joins Magneto. Unfortunately the characters themselves at times struggle to be engaging and despite being intellectually interesting their narrative can occasionally feel like a frustrating distraction from the exploits of the much more charismatic Xavier and Magneto, whose scenes do a much better job of being both entertaining and critically engaging.
Xavier of course isn't all just pith and optimism and his wisdom isn't as artificial as I may have implied. James McAvoy portrays the character with a great deal of dignity, sincerity and wit which makes him easy to appreciate even if sometimes he seems a little idealistic. His plea to Magneto that "we can be the better men," is a fair point, and one which stands more firmly against Magneto's otherwise fairly justifiable inimity towards humans. His reminder as well that revenge does not bring peace may seem a little trite but it reinforces the point. "With great power comes great responsibility," is of course a favourite Marvel message but it's obvious that Xavier sees its responsible use as an opportunity. With their power to defend themselves they can rise above pettiness and negativity. As unfair and cruel as the US/Soviet attack on the mutants is, Magneto could easily have stopped the missiles and destroyed them rather than turning them back on their dispatchers. Yet Xavier's ambition to have mutants seen as heroes fails without Magneto's wrath to blame. So we're left rather unsettlingly with two factions, one whose intentions seem more prudent but whose means are ruthless and violent, and one whose ethos is more forgiving but whose ambitions seem naïve.

All in all it's actually a rather ethically and philosophically complex film when observed from the right angle but beyond Xavier and Magneto its character development lets it down a bit. This seems to be a carry-over from the original trilogy of films which, in all truthfulness, with Patrick Stewart content to phone it in from a wheelchair, was almost entirely carried through script limitations by Ian McKellen's performance as Magneto. Much like those films, First Class has an irritating disparity in terms of characerisation, with a handful of characters lavished with incredible attention and the rest, despite their prominence, left as two-dimensional cyphers bereft of any depth at all. In the original trilogy there were awkward characters like Rogue and Iceman or the constantly recast other schoolchildren but the prime offender was obviously Storm who, despite appearing in increasingly large roles throughout the films, had absolutely no character and very little significant dialogue. The same is true in First Class of Banshee, Havok and Angel Salvadore. Darwin, already unmemorable and having done absolutely nothing, is the token sacrifice in an appallingly cliché case of "black dude dies first." Banshee, who shares an unfortunately strong resemblance to Ron Weasley, serves along with Havok no greater purpose than action set-pieces and occasionally bouts of fairly lame comic relief. Angel is more ambiguous, joining Sebastian Shaw after he massacres dozens of security agents for no apparently greater justification than that some of those selfsame security agents made not particularly harsh jibes against the mutants.
Shaw himself may be a deluded sociopath, but good villains often are, and it's easy to hate him for what he did to Magneto, and to provide more context for how Magneto's own opposition to humanity is more than just power-mongering. As for his crew, Azazel and Riptide fill the unfortunate role which was filled by Toad and Sabretooth in the original film, as unspeaking stooges who solely exist to provide narrative threat where necessary and to show off special effects. They're so totally flavourless and devoid of personality that their presence serves to spoil the ambiguity somewhat, although I suppose it suggests that mutants too can be men "just following orders" and either reprehensible or pitiable for the same reasons. But a shred more characterisation would have helped. Even a scene or two of just them talking to each other in the submarine could have done it. Emma Frost, whose performer appears to have been cast more for her looks than acting talent, is wooden and unengaging besides a moment when she seems frustrated at Shaw which is never elaborated upon.
This by and large is a problem with all the X-Men films and, to an extent, with the whole concept of X-Men as a whole. It seems that more often than not the creators are content to use kooky powers and bizarre appearances as a substitute for investing the characters with believable personalities or anything beyond contrived relevance to the plot. It's not helped by the film franchise's obsession with constantly injecting each film with a fresh batch of mutants with new powers cherry-picked at random from various comics and continuities with no explanation as to where the last lot disappeared to or, in the case of the prequels, why they never appeared since. This isn't helped by the fact that the film is uneasy about whether it's a prequel to the X-Men film trilogy or just to X-Men in general. For instance, Xavier is crippled in this film despite the fact that he was walking around as a bald middle-aged man in X-Men 3's opening flashback. Yet earlier he and Magneto come across Wolverine as played by Hugh Jackman in a confusing but nonetheless unexpected and very funny brief cameo. And of course Magneto and Xavier meet in Florida, not in Israel the way they do in the comics. So I'm not really clear on what continuity it's meant to be supporting. It's really half and half, maintaining references to the previous films without being constrained by them and choosing to go in its own direction, which isn't really a problem considering that those previous films weren't that good anyway.

It still maintains some of the unfortunate traditions though, like the scattergun introduction of new mutants. A lot of their powers just come across as inherently ridiculous or unimaginative, too. While Xavier's telepathy, Magneto's magnetokinesis or Mystique's shapeshifting are all reasonably plausible as a higher or more evolved form of life, having a girl with butterfly wings or a guy who shoots laser beams out of his chest or a dude who summons tornadoes just by wiggling his fingers a little bit seem arbitrary and just bizarre. How do such specific powers even come about? And how come everyone seems to have different powers? Emma Frost is a telepath like Xavier, but can also turn herself into diamonds. That one's just weird. It's not the fault of the filmmakers. It's more a fault of the entire concept. It's harder to argue for "mutant pride" or whatever when mutants seem less like a consistent species and more like jut an unusually high proliferation of genetic anomalies. If someone really wanted to do something totally effective with the concept of 'the next stage of evolution', as I'm sure they already have, it would have to be just that: a distinct species, not loads of people with all different abilities.
But all this is besides the point. First Class is, when you get down to brass tacks, fundamentally a good film. While a little corny at times with the stranger mutants and Shaw's yacht sub and captions for locations like 'Secret CIA Base' and stuff the Cold War backdrop is effective and the characterisation of Xavier and Magneto alone makes the viewing worthwhile. It just could have done with a more complex story and better developed supporting characters to complement its philosophical and intellectual aspirations. That being said it's still the best live action X-Men film so far and as for this year's Marvel offerings is more fulfilled than the close-but-not-quite Captain America. Of course it all ends with a big sequel hook, with Xavier setting up his school. Emma Frost's prison breaks open at the CIA and Magneto marches in looking like an unbelievable twat in a baggy jacket and cape in a failed effort to hybridise one of his more conservative comic costumes with reality but which is so ill-fitting and shapeless that it looks like he must have got someone else to buy it who didn't know his sizes. Speaking of which, why does Magneto have an Irish accent? It doesn't bother me and it probably sounded "generically foreign" to most American audiences but it seems a little bizarre that this multilingual German-Polish Jew living in America would have such a peculiar cadence. Anyway, X-Men: First Class proves reliably as ever that a line doesn't have to be drawn between our entertainment and our intellectual matter and its Cold War setting and exploration of themes surrounding difference and discrimination should give it an appeal beyond the superhero afficionado.

DC's New 52

If you're in the know, you'll be aware that DC recently did a big relaunch of all their comic titles, now distributed across 52 lines. This has meant a number of shakeups both in terms of creative team and internally to the story and characters of the DC universe. Obviously this was to a significant extent a ploy to sucker people like me into buying more comics, because what better time could there be to get into these stories than now, with new number 1s and new volumes for everything? So being the good little consumer that I am I've been visiting the comic shop over the last month picking up various titles. Now that I've read my fill, I decided to post some thoughts here. Instead of posting for every issue, which seems excessive given their relatively short length, I decided to just go through title by title here and give some opinions. Obviously I didn't read all 52; I couldn't give two hoots about Firestorm or Aquaman or whoever "Resurrection Man" is but that's DC's problem for not making me care, not mine. Anyway, here we go.

Action Comics:

I really enjoyed this one. Often these days we see Superman spending his time fighting burly aliens or averting disasters. Here, however, we have a younger Superman, early in his career, who's using his powers to fight crime. It was an interesting scenario, because normally this is the purview of the unpowered heroes like Batman and I thought it was an effective way of displaying how a superhuman could operate in a vigilante scenario. Superman doesn't have to trick or manipulate people the way Batman does; he knows the police can't hurt him any more than the criminals can, and it's really entertaining to see Clark being threatening towards the cops and crooks alike as his idealism rubs up against the corruption of Metropolis. Grant Morrison's writing of this scenario is excellently assisted by Rags Morales' pencils, which are very clear and easy on the eye whilst equally conveying the power of Superman and his potentially sinister nature. Consider the third frame on page six where he grins at the cops, face shadowed with nothing but heat vision for illumination. It's a very readable combo.
What I also appreciated was the sheer amount of content; we have enough space allocated to both Superman's activities in the crime bust and Clark's reporting duties later on. My only quibble would be that the plot becomes rather rushed and difficult to follow towards the end as the train hijacking and Luthor's plot to incapacitate Superman become piled on top of each other and at times I wasn't really sure what was going on. Often instances seem to occur with cluey characters like Supes and Lois where they know a good deal more than the reader and we're left to draw plot links which may not be astoundingly evident.
I may as well give a mention to the second issue as well, featuring the study of Superman in custody. While this was a more predictable encounter I enjoyed the characterisation of Luthor. My main complaint, and it's kind of a big one, is that obviously there was some issue resulting from the use of two artists, with Brent Anderson and Morales sharing the credit, because there are some extremely ugly pencils in the second half of the issue, especially featuring Lois and a frame where Superman appears in an elevator and looks bizarre. Nonetheless I'm glad I looked into Action Comics; it's an interesting exploration of Superman's origins.

Batgirl

I wasn't expecting to read Batgirl but I have to admit I was intrigued by the idea of Barbara Gordon returning to the cowl after all these years. Frankly I always considered her paralysis in The Killing Joke to be a rather crass and somewhat shallow piece of shock vaue on the part of Alan Moore and I agree with the notion that a universe where characters can recover enormous injuries and come back from the dead made her permanent disability a somewhat uncomfortable scenario. People have complained about Barbara regaining the use of her legs but I think it was time for a change. I found this to be surprisingly enjoyable; it's rare to see an intellectual outlook from the younger characters in comics and I appreciated her characterisation as her somewhat self-conscious and self-deprecating inner monologue was contrasted to her combat and detective skills. The plot wasn't bad either, and in another reference to the second issue I thought the idea of the villain Mirror was quite interesting. The point at which Batgirl "chokes" when a gun is pointed at her was quite powerful too. I must confess myself intrigued, although I think I would like to see the crime fighting family connection reinforced by having her team up with or at least encounter Bruce Wayne sometime soon.

Batman

You can always count on Batman comics to be good value. He's a universally appealing character, and as long as the plots don't become too ridiculous in relying on science fiction or magic for their progression and stick to devious crimes and criminal investigations there's always something you can find to enjoy about the story of an ordinary man who does extraordinary things. This first issue of the second ever volume of Batman is a strong opener, with a good hook and some nice writing. Of course Batman's inner monologue is pretty par for the course these days but it's strong and punchy here. The 'Gotham is' section is a nice reintroduction to Batman's personal ethos, the setting and the villains, and the teamup with what appears to be the Joker is an intriguing twist. Batman's attitude is also nicely compared to Bruce Wayne's plan to revitalise Gothamn. It's not pushing any serious envelopes but it's a solid piece of Batman writing. If I had one complaint it would be that the art is a little inconsistent. While Batman himself looks good I feel that he looks to young as Bruce Wayne, as well as a little too scruffy. Maybe that's my personal quibble as one of the last men on Earth to actually comb my hair. The shot of Bruce, Dick, Tim and Damian standing around in Wayne Manor also reinforces how awfully similar they all are. I personally would have made Dick a little taller and Bruce a little older. Even Tim seems too short; having Bruce a full head taller than Dick makes him look absurdly oversized.

I also thought the villains at the beginning were a bit of a mixed bag. While Two-Face and Killer Croc look good, Riddler and Mr Freeze look kind of silly. Nonetheless it was a strong opener and I'll be curious to see how this story develops.

Batman and Robin

You can never really have too much Batman. I wasn't too familiar with Damian as Robin, however, and what I had read was of course from the era of Bruce Wayne's absence where the rather dour child was contrasted with a much more light-hearted and facetious Batman in the form of Dick Grayson, a reverse of the normal scenario. Now we have Bruce and Damian as a father-son Batman and Robin team and I have to say it works really well. They're both dark and brooding characters, but in different ways. It's very striking to see Batman lightening up in a sense, deciding to no loner commemorate his parents' deaths but rather their marriage, and the way this is contrasted with Damian's apathy and emotional disconnection. That being said the plot is a little hard to follow at times and the sense of a not-yet-relevant arc was a little frustrating. However the art is good and if Damian occasionally looks a tad awkward I can forgive it in a medium where the characters are normally adult and built like yaks. It's worth it simply for the cleverness of how two equally serious characters are turned into foils for each other in some very elegant writing and characterisation.

Batman: Detective Comics

I must say that Detective Comics is traditionally my favourite Batman series. I have a bit of a soft spot for crime fiction and I'll take the mystery and intrigue of a good detective case over mindless action any day of the week. However I felt like the first issue didn't have enough of this. While we did get the seeds of a good arc mystery in regards to this 'Dollmaker' person I can't help but feel like having a rather long-winded run-around with the Joker was kind of missing the point and also didn't contribute a great deal to the development of Batman's arch enemy. The art was nice and appropriately gruesome at the right times and having read the second issue I want to see where things go but I think there was a missed opportunity here: having Batman hunt Joker down doesn't necessarily entail an interesting investigation, and I feel like the title can feel a bit stronger when the arc is supported by individual cases rather than just having a chase to tease towards bigger problems.

Captain Atom

I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Captain Atom. I was always a fan of Doctor Manhattan in Watchmen and as a result I've become intrigued by the character upon which he was based. I appreciated the characterisation of Captain Atom in this opening title: he is actively trying to embrace the instinctive side of humanity's animal nature and reject the notion of specialness. Obviously he has to include himself to avoid the conception that he's somehow above or superior to other people purely due to his great power. I also enjoyed the idea that a lot of his energy is derived from being able to perform nuclear fission upon the atoms of his own body, and that if this procedure occurred in his brain he could lose his identity or his life. It was a nice way of introducing a bit of plausibility to his powers. One thing which gave me pause was when Atom tells Dr Megala "I was a pilot, not a scientist." It'd be interesting, I think, if a guy who'd become a walking nuclear reactor had taken an interest in science and was trying to learn. Similarly the "volcano in New York" scenario was just bizarre and kind of silly. I desperately hope that it gets a worthwhile resolution in the next issue. Nonetheless it's good to see some love being given to one of the second-stringers.

The Flash

I don't buy into the whole Barry Allen/Wally West divide in fandom. Wally was the first Flash I read but Barry has similar strengths. My problem is that ever since he was brought back I think Barry has lost some of the robustness and solidity which was inherent to his Silver Age character. These days writers seem to go too far with his idealism and good old fashioned Mid West values to the point that he comes across as naïve and ineffectual. Geoff Johns made him tiresomely angst-ridden and wracked with self doubt but with Francis Manapul's writing he just feels like a cipher. His date with Patty seems slightly forced and hard to believe; Barry says he's "methodical", which seems like the kind of self-relection he wouldn't really do, and Patty replies "Methodical is kind of hot." Huh. Not the most vibrant dialogue, huh? Sure, Patty lampshades the weirdness of this remark in the very next frame but it's easy to see how prosaic the whole thing is. "This tech symposium is amazing!" Barry remarks redundantly, since we can see high-tech stuff and socialites wandering around right there in the frame. There's a lot of telling rather than showing going on and it's kind of dull. It's not helped by the army of generic-looking high tech crims who show up to steal some McGuffin and scarper. It only adds to the sense of blandness. In my opinion if they wanted to go for a snappy opener they would have had a battle with a traditional foe like Mirror Master or Captain Cold, or even a few Rogues together. None of this is helped by an equally bland art style which is probably most disserviced by pallid colours which lack a sense of depth and substance. Failing to give Barry his traditional clean-cut look further serves to make him seem like just a "boring guy" rather than a bit old-fashioned and curious. Then there's some silly flashback to Barry's past and he flirts with Iris West and so on. I don't really care that Iris and Barry are pre-relationship again but it seems like unnecessary titillation. The ending was pointless and predictable, as we're asked to care about some old friend of Barry's who we don't really know who's been cloned and who runs with Barry for no reason. Overall it was kind of unimpressive and as a Flash fan I found the whole thing to be a bit of a disappointment.

Green Lantern

I've never been a huge Green Lantern fan. As I stated in my post on the film I have two main quibbles with the line. The first is that I find stories about guys flying around in space having punch ups with aliens and shooting different coloured lights at each other to be a bit boring. The second is that the main Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, is an idiotic character who is written in a way which I find completely unlikeable but which apparently is meant to make us love him. So when I heard that the first issue of the new Green Lantern would be starring Sinestro, not Hal, my interest was piqued. I could forgive space punch-ups if Sinestro was involved too, because he's simply an interesting character. Unfortunately I was let down by the fact that about half of the issue was about Sinestro while the other half revolved basically around Hal being hopeless and incompetent on Earth without his ring. I think it was meant to be heartwarming and funny but I found it cretinous and dull. There was simply not enough Sinestro. When he was there I was enjoying myself but whenever it cut back to Hal being a doof I was disappointed. Geoff Johns needs to learn that not everyone is in love with this fictional character the way he is. The art is pretty nice but a little simplistic. The thing where Hal jumps in to stop an assault but is actually interrupting a film set, however, is ridiculously cliché and stupid. It was only worth it to see Sinestro killing his own dudes, of which there was not enough. Fortunately all this was redeemed to an extent by the second issue, which had Sinestro and Hal together for a better balance. It's nice to see the extremely ruthless, utilitarian Sinestro being praised as a hero. I think I'll have to see where this one goes. I'm not as blind as some Green Lantern fans appear to be.

Green Lantern: New Guardians

I like Kyle Rayner. Maybe it's because I don't really like Hal but I've often found Kyle to be a more interesting Lantern than his predecessor. He's an artist, which works well with the whole 'ring construct' idea, and it makes him easier to empathise with than the usual 'cop or army guy turned hero' thing we have with Hal. As such when I heard that Kyle was getting his own series where he was part of a team of Lanterns from each colour Corps I thought it could be kind of cool. The reintroduction of Kyle's backstory and his public perception as one of the "secondary" human Lanterns was interesting enough. My main complaint would be that the issue felt like so much introduction. I was hoping the all-Corps Lantern team would get going straight away. However, a good deal of space is spent showing various other Lanterns losing their rings. While it's slightly amusing and kind of disturbing to see how utterly without hope most Lanterns would be if they lost access to their one source of power it does feel like it takes us a while to get to where we need to go. Nonetheless it's good enough for Kyle and the concept alone and I'm looking forward to what happens once the premise has been firmly established.

Justice League

One of the big selling points for this title was that we were returning to a traditional conception of the Justice League: the traditional 'Big Seven' of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Flash and Aquaman with Cyborg replacing Martian Manhunter presumably for reasons of slightly forced ethnic diversity. However it looks like we're going to have a bit of a drag before we get anywhere, because for all intents and purposes this first issue is a Batman and Green Lantern story with Superman not appearing until the very end and the other heroes completely absent apart from a brief and completely unrelated Cyborg scene. It's meant to be set five years before the DC Universe's present as the League comes together but it's a little too obvious that Geoff Johns just wanted to have Hal team up with Batman. I really can't think of much to say about it; it just felt like time-wasting. We really needed to see Wonder Woman, Aquaman and the Flash as well.

Justice League International

Traditionally this has been the 'funny comic' of DC team-ups and while that isn't strictly a hard and fast rule it was disappointingly absent. The first issue of JLI really was quite bland and boring, albeit redeemed by a surprisingly strong second issue. While the idea of choosing Booster Gold as leader was a very interesting idea the political side wasn't handled in a very interesting manner and the journey to an exotic locale to fight mud men and robots felt a little old hat. On the plus side I like the choices of heroes such as Rocket Red and August General in Iron, who could be sure to be interesting in future, and the exploration of a UN-representative hero force was one which might work well. As I say, the second issue was a good deal stronger and more enjoyable. Perhaps it was just a matter of the series finding its feet.

Superman

While perhaps not as strong an opener as we received in Action Comics this was still a good Superman story. Once again the focus on the ownership of the Daily Planet grounded Clark Kent's activities squarely in the tension of a superhuman dealing with matters of a more mundane variety, which was nice to see, especially in terms of his conflict with Lois and resultant awkwardness. It wasn't helped, however, by the giant flame alien which he fought in the second half of the story. There was also a segue in which we the readers were encouraged to invest in the first issue of Stormwatch, to my irritation. You'd hope that Superman of all things could stand on its own. As I say, though, the battle with the fire alien, although not devoid of interesting elements, felt an awful lot like action for its own sake. Nonetheless I'm keen to see where things go and it was nice to see the journalism element, so integral to Clark Kent's character, playing a role in the storytelling itself. If Superman comics are to maintain their effectiveness they have to continue exploring the tension of how a man who could live without rules fits into human society.

Wonder Woman

This one was just bizarre. It was rushed, the plot didn't make much sense and Wonder Woman was barely in it. This isn't to say it was bad per se but it was hard to follow. What made up for it was some delightfully grotesque imagery, such as a horse being decapitated so that the man-part of a Centaur can grow from the stump. I wish things had been explained better, however. Too much of it was left until the end, making a great deal of the events just feel like random bits of dialogue and action with no connection to each other. As I said, for a Wonder Woman comic it didn't feature Diana in a role beyond that of fighting bad guys, which was unfortunate. I believe in the rule of three, however, which I'm applying to these comics. If they become good by issue 3, then I'll keep reading. At this rate Wonder Woman is really the only one which still hasn't proven itself, so I suppose I must give kudos to the writers and artists at DC for making a good start on their new 52.

"The Wedding of River Song"

What a lame title. Seriously. It wasn't really important to the episode. Anyway, this was unusual in that it was a one-part finale instead of a two-parter and I'm not sure if that was a good or bad thing. On the one hand it felt like a lot of quick set pieces were crammed together but alternatively often there seemed to not be too much actually going on. But instead of immediately explaining why this was the case, let's get to grips with things from the start.
One bit that really was a giveaway was the set of rather laborious Tesselecta clips from "Let's Kill Hitler" which made it seem very obvious that the shape-changing ship would feature at some point, although to be fair Moffat made it look like it was only going to feature in that bar scene. Regardless, we're dumped into a reality where "it's always 5:02 PM" and all of history is happening at once - which basically means steam locomotives and some Roman stuff in perfectly contemporary London. We're reintroduced to Ian McNeice's Churchill, who is always good value, and there's even a pointless role for Malokeh the Silurian doctor from last series. What's even more surprising is the tiny cameo given to Simon Callow, reprising his role as Charles Dickens from "The Unquiet Dead" of all things. He must have been a bit short of cash or something.

Anyway Churchill's got this nagging feeling that something's not quite right in this ridiculous yet slightly unambitious bizarro-universe so he summons "the Soothsayer", who from the moment he's mentioned is obviously going to be the Doctor. Nonetheless they feel the need to show us ambiguous shots of him in the few moments between his first appearance and showing his face. It's not like it was a big surprise. Regardless, Churchill's as good a foil as ever for the Doctor and frankly I wish he hadn't been ditched halfway through the episode. The events leading up to the creation of this odd timeline are detailed in a too-frantic fashion for me, however, because I thought they were some of the best parts.
The moment where the Doctor confronted the dying Dalek was excellently played and Matt Smith definitely made the Doctor seem like a kind of malefic entity as he taunted his enemy. Something about the Stetson made it even more unsettling. It was nice to see a Dalek used in this way, and similarly that its severed eyestalk let the bartender on Calisto B know that he meant business. It seems like the Daleks are actually a threat again, and anyone who's a threat to the Daleks is... well, an even bigger threat. Then the Tesselecta, disguised as a monk with a funny accent, sends the Doctor off to some "Live Chess" game with Mark Gatiss in incredibly plastic-looking prostheses as some kind of space viking. I thought all these "space" bits were nicely atmospheric and interesting; Moffat likes to use them for his intros and I wish they'd get more of a whole episode's plot devoted to them.
Anyway Mark Gatiss takes the Doctor to the Headless Monks' catacombs where there are living skulls. The bit where Mister Space Viking gets eaten by skulls looks incredibly fake and I wonder if the bit where the Doctor looks down the pit at it happening with Matt Smith putting on his best "Ooh err" face was meant to be shocking or just funny, because it was it wasn't very shocking to me. Then we're reintroduced to big fat blue man, aka Dorium Maldovar, who I realised I'd actually come to quite like as a character. While he may just be a head now he still has quite an engaging manner and although I'm not too keen on his cryptic comments about the "Fall of the Eleventh" and so on it was good to see him and I even wish he'd been used more.

What did irk me was that after all the rather profound moments in the previous episode the Doctor was being kind of flippant and saying time was not the boss of him and so on. While I can appreciate the sentiment it jarred quite noticeably with the entire mood of his departure at the end of "Closing Time". However when he rings up the Brigadier and discovers that he's died he realises that it's time to stop buggering around. I did enjoy this little tribute to Nicholas Courtney and the Brigadier although I'm not sure how fond I am of him dying in a nursing home and I think it made it clearer than ever that they should have included him in one last episode before he passed away. What I didn't enjoy were the references to some of the lamest elements of the RTD era: eloping with Elizabeth I, mentioning Rose for no necessary reason and mentioning Jack. It was pointless, self-indulgent and trite. Rose already gets over-referenced in Moffat's era without being stated here. There could have been perfectly valid Classic Series references to mention.
Nonetheless, the Doctor zips off to America to get shot by an astronaut. To my surprise it was indeed River in the space suit. I thought last episode's hook was going to be subverted or something. River gets all teary because she "loves" the Doctor for some reason, then drains her weapons systems and buggers up time so that everything's happening at once. Cut back to the Doctor and Churchill noticing a big bunch of Silents hanging from the ceiling and Amy shows up with a bunch of generic soldiers wearing eyepatches and stuns the Doctor.

This is the point at which I started finding the episode a bit annoying. The Doctor wakes up in Amy's "train office" going to the pyramids and she and Rory don't remember each other for some reason. This was a bit repetitive of Moffat and kind of pointless. Amy and Rory's roles were pretty arbitrary in this episode and while I realise that "The God Complex" was kind of their proper sendoff that only makes their presence here seem more silly. There's a lot of pointless stuff about the Doctor trying to get Amy and Rory to remember each other and then River hams it up.

One thing which I imagine a lot of people would find pretty objectionable is this idea that River's a psychopath. Psychopaths, as far as I'm aware, are violent and manipulative people who lack empathy and exploit others for personal aggrandisement. I'm not sure that's really true of River and it might make the whole issue of pathological disorders seem trivialised. There's also this whole issue of her apparently loving the Doctor. Nicely enough the Doctor seems rather dubious about the whole idea and flat out states that he doesn't want to marry her. At least even with this River plot they're prepared to maintain some ambiguity. Nonetheless, much like the situation with Rose, I don't appreciate the notion that the Doctor is having some kind of offscreen romantic life that we're just not being shown for the security of the kiddies and out of limited respect for the rules of the Classic Series. I get the feeling Moffat wants to be cheeky and risqué for its own sake and subvert the tenets which are so integral to the programme's history. Anyway the Silence bust out of their tanks and start killing everyone, Amy guns them down and they just kind of disappear. She kills Madam Kovarian with her own eyepatch too, so I guess that's the end of that. I don't really understand what the point of the Silence was. Apart from mucking about with River they don't seem to actually play any role other than as cannon fodder. Speaking of mucking about with River, we still never really got told why they put young River in the astronaut suit or ditched her in 1969 in an orphanage. What was the point?
Anyway up on the top of Giza it is revealed that River has some distress beacon which reveals that everyone loves the Doctor. However this entire plot point is ditched in about five seconds and the Doctor decides to marry River for some reason, presumably to get her close enough to short out the time differential and restore reality to order. I thought this whole thing was hokey bollocks to be honest and I would have preferred if they'd found another way; that's the whole problem with River's character - she implies too much about the Doctor which is distinctly un-Doctorly by all the original principles of the show.

Now as I've stated time and time again I'm not beyond thinking that the Doctor could be a man with an appetite for romance, but all of the most plausible relationships point towards the fact that it's a bit beyond him these days. Clearly he had a Time Lady wife once upon a time. Why are writers so scared of referencing that? Are they worried that people won't be able to reconcile it with "Lungbarrow"? He tells Dorium that the nights with River are "between her and me" and while that's rather vague it still has unpleasant sexual undertones that I don't enjoy at all. I don't see where the responsibility or moral character lies in having a relationship with a woman who you know in reverse order and who was psycho-conditioned to be obsessed with you. Similarly I think a more overt concept of romance heavily contradicts the alien and eccentric characteristics of the Doctor. Romantic relationships are such a fundamental quality of human existence that they feel too mundane for the Doctor. Even if we do accept this situation, we're left with the question: who does he love? Is it his long lost wife? Sarah Jane? Romana? Rose? Madam de Pompadour? River? Do you see my point? I know he's long lived but if you're not prepared to compromise a character by giving them a plausible romantic life and then they shouldn't have one at all, not just some bizarre pick 'n' mix. I think it actually makes me see Gaiman's episode in a more positive light - if any relationship, no matter how bizarre, is the most consistent and makes the most sense in the entire course of the show, it's that between the Doctor and the TARDIS, although I still refuse to imagine any Doctor before the New Series describing her as "Sexy". I mean c'mon. Can you see Hartnell saying that? No, you can't. I'm glad we're agreed on this.

So to get back to things, the Doctor had to die to save time from collapsing and the universe from extinction for the millionth occasion. Time to lower the stakes, Moffat! Of course the Doctor doesn't really die; I think it was pretty predictable that the Tesselecta stood in for the Doctor on the beach but I still found it funny when it showed him popping back in and asking the Tesselecta for help, although I still feel like it ruined some of the profundity of "Closing Time". I like the Tesselecta captain and feel like those characters should have been used more. I know Moffat is desperate to be experimental and avant-garde with the show but these more traditional sci-fi elements like the ship crews and the future space docks and so on just aren't used enough in the New Series and I think it'd be fun and refreshing to give us a whole episode where they were given centre focus.
However the point I wanted to make is that the conclusion renders the entire scenario redundant. The Doctor was a Tesselecta from the moment he arrived in Utah, all the way through the "5:02 PM reality" and while he was burned on the lake. So how come at the lake the Doctor didn't just tell River that he was a Tesselecta and that she wasn't going to actually kill him? Effectively half the episode is redundant because it was simply a product of the Doctor trying too hard to not give away his secret and let everyone think he was dead. However, River blabs to Amy and Rory later on anyway. What was he worried about? Who would the Ponds be able to tell? What could have been cooler is if it'd been established that it was a Tesselcta straight away, they'd done the whole death in Utah thing and then the Doctor had popped out and dealt with the Silence. The "5:02 PM reality" was just a spectacle and once again Moffat was letting the "Rule of Cool" dictate the plotting of the episode rather than coming up with something truly inventive. He is, as I've said, trying to be all experimental, but the whole dragged-out hype-building switcheroo death thing is pretty samey and old hat when you think about it. Establishing the fakery straight away and building upon that would have been a much better subversion of traditional narrative structures.
Anyway, River, Amy and Rory have a pointless chin wag in the garden which reinforces the sense of them not being properly farewelled but since we know that Amy and Rory are coming back in some capacity next year I guess it's not too surprising. Speaking of which, why does River have to go to prison for a crime she didn't commit? Just to keep the Doctor's secret? Seems a bit unfair. The Doctor returns Dorium to the catacombs and Dorium reveals the Question, which stands up there with River being Amy's daughter and the Doctor not really being dead on the levels of predictability - the question is, of course, "Doctor who?" While this is really corny I found something kind of funny about it and combined with Dorium's rather hammy performance I think it had its own effectiveness, reinforcing the sense of mystery which I suppose was entirely the point. The Doctor has become overexposed and now he's going back to the shadows where he belongs. He's always been best as a mysterious wanderer who shows up a complete stranger wherever he goes yet seriously shakes up the system. Hopefully that will be reflected next series; I wish Moffat could have made the point sooner. It's also kind of silly to have the question as "Doctor who?" because that's something you can't answer without giving away too much. I know Moffat's always had this notion that the reason the Doctor's name is never uttered is because it's some kind of dark and terrible secret but I can't imagine what that could be. It seems a little paradoxical of Moffat to want the Doctor to lose his notoriety yet in doing so maintain the idea that there is some notorious mystery about him. I always preferred the idea that his name wasn't important and that Gallifreyan exiles, particularly self-exiles like the Doctor, the Master, the Rani and the War Chief, tended to eschew their old names in order to separate themselves from the impotent, fusty bureaucracy from which they had escaped. I never was particularly sold on Andrew Cartmel's notion that the Doctor was "more than just another Time Lord" and similarly I'm not sold on Moffat's idea that his true identity is some great universal secret. Indeed I always liked the notion that the Doctor was altogether just another Time Lord, albeit one who'd bucked the system. It made his lifestyle and actions more exceptional. Making him some kind of super-being, a protector of a dark secret or part of some kind of triumvirate with Rassilon and Omega or something always denigrated the theme so integral to the series that an ordinary man, with the right outlook, could be capable of extraordinary things. If the Doctor is made into someone extraordinary by nature rather than by choice, into a champion or saviour in fundamental rather than self-determined ways, he seems less special rather than more.
So another series of Doctor Who has come to an end and it's time for me to give my final thoughts on the overall product. While inevitably the characterisation of the Eleventh Doctor and Matt Smith's performance in particular elevated it above the previous era of the New Series it wasn't nearly as strong as Series Five. It was a bit too aware of itself and while it of course lacked last series' freshness it also lacked its integrity and idealism in some regards. Compared to Series 5, Series 6 relied too heavily on hype and melodrama rather than good storytelling. The arc was too heavy-handed and full of plot holes, serving more to interrupt the stronger stand-alone adventures. Series 5 understood this rather well, and kept to a stronger if more conservative formula. Maybe the split made Moffat feel like he needed two finales and thus the arc had to interrupt the middle of the series and get more screen time than normal but I think it more just showed the weakness of the arc than suggested that the split was potentially damaging to a sense of cohesion. More stand-alones would have made the gap less noticeable. Amy and Rory were desperately underused on numerous occasions and River was completely overused to the point of becoming rather annoying. "The Curse of the Black Spot" and "Let's Kill Hitler" stand out in my mind as two particularly poor episodes, while "The Doctor's Wife" and "A Good Man Goes To War" were strongly suggestive of the notion that sometimes flashy special effects, bombast and spectacle are used to cover up limited plots. The strongest episodes were easily the non-arc related items, "The Rebel Flesh", "The Almost People", "The Girl Who Waited" and "The God Complex", with honorable mentions to the decent but slightly weaker "The Impossible Astronaut", "Day of the Moon", "Night Terrors" and "Closing Time". I can't blame Moffat for doing what he felt worked to keep people interested but the stand alone stories were clearly the best and were needed more over the arc numbers. Nonetheless, with the Doctor back out of the universe's spotlight, maybe we'll see a return to form.

"Closing Time"

"You don't have to go home but you can't stay here." How does the sequel to "The Lodger" fare compared to its interesting but rather frivolous predecessor? My brief summation would be: similar, but not as good. Gareth Roberts' contributions to televised Doctor Who have revealed a pretty thorough appreciation for the light-hearted side of things but this gets mixed in with the serious and contemplative through the knowledge that the Doctor is apparently going to snuff it next episode. All this is done fairly well and the humour is mediated with a number of touching and profound moments. My main complaint would be how wishy-washy the story is, and it was this insubstantiality of plotting which had me feeling a bit nonplussed. Sure, the plot of "The Lodger" was hokey bollocks too but it had a pace and atmosphere which "Closing Time" lacks and the mood of this more recent instalment would really have benefited from a stronger narrative.

So Craig Owens has a new place and a baby and he's trying to prove he can cope on his own while Sophie has a weekend away. What better opportunity to prove this than amid alien hijinks featuring everyone's favourite Time Lord? Lo and behold the Doctor shows up on the doorstep, notionally popping in for a last "social call" before his apparent death in "The Impossible Astronaut". How he knows he specifically has to go die now is still a matter of conjecture but we'll figure that out later. Anyway, the scenes with the Doctor, Craig and Alfie the baby are all pretty decent, with Matt Smith and James Corden having a strong rappor which shows through in their discussions. It's unfortunate that these tend to take over the entire show at points which reveals the lack of actual plot but they're all very touching moments, especially when Craig gives the Doctor the Stetson he's wearing in the first episode. The scenes with the Doctor talking to Alfie are good too; Matt Smith can carry an entire scene, including dialogue, entirely on his own without difficulty.
The stuff in the shop is a bit more variable. While the scenes with the Doctor working in the toy department are very natural, the dull shop assistant characters are hardly interesting fare and the jokes where the Doctor and Craig are mistaken for a gay couple become pretty tedious as they're increasingly overplayed. The plot too is pretty much just an excuse for the ruminations the Doctor experiences around Craig. While I suppose it's nice that we didn't have a completely arbitrary monster invented for this episode the Cybermen don't exactly get the best service imaginable. They only turn up for a few minutes and their presence is virtually unexplained. Once again their motive is solely towards "converting the planet". I remember a time when Cybermen had slightly more on their agenda than just making more of themselves. The return of the Cybermat is a nice element but overall I feel like the Cybermen were begging for more use. Similarly, the way in which Craig uses the "power of love" to resist conversion is, obviously, absurd. I dislike the New Series predilection for having the Cybermen with emotions repressed in a volatile manner instead of wiped clean and replaced with pure logic. While I can maybe buy that Craig's paternal instincts overrode the conversion machine interfering with his brain, why does it cause "emotional feedback" or whatever? And again, like in "The Age of Steel", why oh why oh why does this cause the Cybermen's heads to explode? Seriously, is this a cartoon or something? How would experiencing emotions make their heads explode? What's more, how would it make their ship explode? Does their near-lifeless crashed spaceship have repressed emotions too? I always thought that if they were going to do this thing with Cybermen violently experiencing emotions they should go on a rampage or something like a deeply, deeply repressed person might if they suddenly cracked. Regardless, they were underused. The plot could be summarized as "the Cybermen are trying to restore themselves" because all they do is suck some energy and abduct people.

What we do get is more from the Doctor about how he's exhausted from saving people all the time and more of his realisation that his attitude towards the lives of his friends could be construed as selfish and rash. It's a nice idea but maybe slightly overplayed by this point. You can't help feeling sorry for him, however, as he finally vanishes from Craig's house thinking he's essentially had his last adventure. The bit where he talks to the three kids in the street is a bit weird though, especially when you wonder why anyone would have been interviewed about this later for "eyewitness accounts". This leads us into our set-up for the finale, with River being abducted by Kovarian and the Silence. At this point the recitation of the creepy nursery rhyme from "Night Terrors" has just become absurd, and its ridiculousness is compounded only by the fact that we're meant to take it seriously. Kovarian just keeps repeating it for no reason and then we have the little kids recite "Til River Kills the Doctor." Real subtle.
"Closing Time" is worthwhile for all its touching little moments for the Doctor, and there's a sense of slow sadness which, to trivialise slightly, encapsulated to me a feeling evocative of Sunday afternoons and, appropriately, closing stores - that feeling of clinging onto something which passes too quickly that you would prefer to last forever before an ending. When the Doctor confesses in the Cyber-ship that he's going to die this last strange incident with Craig and the Cybermen feels like such a silly, inconsequential little diversion from something harsh and terrible that it's hard not to feel sorry for him and a little blue about how futile it would seem. It's not the weightiest stuff out there but with a title like "Closing Time" I hope it was intentional. It's far from a highlight of this rather scattergun series but as penultimate episodes go I think it does what needs to be done considering there's only a stand alone rather than a two parter to follow.

"The God Complex"

It's becoming a bit passé in the New Series to invoke heavy deconstructions of Doctor Who's fundamental principles but this Toby Whithouse-penned episode does it with a great deal more aplomb than what we've had recently. I could go into cack-handed examples from the previous era but these could be summed up basically with the phrase "nobody's perfect". This was pretty much all it had to say about the Doctor regardless of how much people go on about his 'dark side'. We also got "regeneration isn't just a change of appearance." Under Moffat we've had the idea that the Doctor is some kind of monster. He was the most dangerous being in the universe, interestingly enough, in "The Pandorica Opens", but by the time of "A Good Man Goes To War" we have River clunkily informing the Doctor that he's become his own worst enemy or something to that effect because a group of people went to desperate measures to get at him. Of course we also had things like "what if the ever-personified TARDIS was literally personified?" and all sorts of dashedly clever notions like that flying around with various degrees of ineptitude. It's perhaps then understandable why I might be a bit dubious about any more instances of this situation where we're shown or told that "what you take for granted in Doctor Who might be worth reconsidering!" It's like being constantly served cups of lukewarm tea; it's good in the most basic sense possible but it's repetitive and poorly executed. How, then, to buck the trend?

The Doctor, and "assembled Ponds" find themselves in a cheesy, cheap hotel. Are we having the horror of human mediocrity rammed in our face again so soon after the "Night Terrors" council estate? No; the Doctor is quick to inform us that we're not on Earth. Still looks like somewhere on Earth though, doesn't it? Amy and Rory seem rather put out that they're on boring old Earth, or at least somewhere that looks like it, not a spectacular and fascinating alien landscape. Can't remember the last time we saw one of them when it wasn't for one scene or part of a hologram or illusion. It's revealed at the end that we're on a holodeck prison "decked out" (if you'll pardon the pun) to look like a cheesy hotel and stuck on that setting. How convenient!
Anyway the Doctor, Amy and Rory run into two stiffs and a mole person in the lobby. There's a further stiff tied up in the dining room. If this is, as we later learn, a space-faring prison which abducts residents from various planets, why do we have to have so many humans and only one alien who looks basically like a bald, pointy-eared human with a snub nose and rat teeth? He's even wearing human clothes. My god this show is unimaginative sometimes. We have Rita, the oh-so-clever token minority medical student who the Doctor immediately takes a shine to because of how "clever" she is, which in New Who terms means is kind of smug and annoying. Notice how the "clever" ie smug and annoying men, for instance Luke Rattigan in the Sontaran two-parter, are always seen as incredibly duff by the Doctor, but the women are always "brilliant". Yet we're expected to believe that he's not just some intergalactic player who zooms around picking up chicks? Of course our young male is Howie the conspiracy theorist girl-fearing blogger nutjob, which is to say Steven Moffat's mental image of every Doctor Who fan. Resident mole person du jour is Gibbis in a rather generic piece of casting with David Walliams being given his two normal roles of providing mild-to-negligible comic relief and making you feel slightly uncomfortable, often at the same time. Frankly I think he could have been used in a less typecast fashion.
Anyway they find out that something in the hotel is making everyone go snooker-loopy and start praising a Minotaur who is ambling around the corridors. Initial loopy unwilling hotel guest à la carte is gambler Joe, yet another human tied up in a chair and surrounded by ventriloquist dummies. Now ventriloquist dummies, especially the "old-fashioned scary ones" as Big Train  famously described them, are indeed an unsettling sight, but if everyone had their own room, how come Joe's tied up in a dining room full of ventriloquist dummies, rather than there just being a bedroom with one sitting there? Where'd they come from? This never happens to anyone else. All other fears are contained in the applicable room. After Howie starts praising the Minotaur in the dining room we don't see it fill up with skanky chav girls mocking his stutter. Maybe Joe's room was the dining room? Doesn't seem very likely though, does it? Everyone else has a bedroom. It's just a weird inconsistency where they, as usual, prioritized spectacle over consistency. Ah, New Who. I hope that if I rub your nose in your own poo often enough one day you'll learn to do it outside.
So Howie, Rita and Gibbis get spooked by their respective rooms and Gambler Joe is killed by the Minotaur. His organs have apparently just stopped working and to the Doctor it's as if all these emotions have been sucked out of him. I'm fairly sure "loves" are mentioned, as are "faiths and fears", which become important to the plot. Yet of course our emotions are our life. Suck out someone's "faith", in this case, and they're dead. I'm fairly sure emotion is described as an energy at some point. It's all this sort of awkward "soul" type depiction of sentient existence which seemed a little implicit in last episode's angle as well - somehow your mind or thoughts or consciousness have some kind of life of their own distinct from their body. I guess that all seems very nice in some ways but it sounds rather naïve and wishy-washy to me. The term "magical thinking" is once again peeking out from under the dresser.
Wow. Can you believe I actually liked this episode?

Well on a more positive note I can say that the magical thinking which normally comes across as just lazy or frivolous writing is actually related to this episode's concept of faith, really - the idea that your thoughts can somehow impose upon reality, or at least your perception of it. The Minotaur feeds on faith, yet faith is also what keeps Rita and Amy going; it can be both a strength and a weakness. Cowardice is characterised as an ultimately aggressive action, and Gibbis is a survivor where the others are lost. Things are certainly ambiguous. Rory, curiously, has no faith. He just keeps being shown the exit. It's a nice bit of character development which, coupled with the past tense usage the Doctor points out, shows that he has become a good deal more self-reliant and secure.
Of course the Minotaur is an unwilling villain and the Doctor must break the cycle of faith in order to deny it its food source and thus euthanise it. The scene where he convinces Amy of his selfishness and vanity in taking her as a companion is well written and excellently performed by Matt Smith. Of course this also rather neatly reveals why he might be more interested in people like Rita, who are good for his ego. It's very reminiscent, of course, of the Seventh Doctor making Ace lose faith in him in "The Curse of Fenric" but here it's a good deal more difficult to tell whether or not he's lying. This is what makes it more effective than Moffat having River preachily tell us that the Doctor's gone wrong or something. It's ambiguous but the effect is the same; to save his companions the Doctor is forced to admit his faults and realise his mistakes. Rita tells him that he has a "god complex" - he thinks of himself as the only one who can save the day, but in this instance the only reason he can save anyone is by shattering Amy's faith in him, which is to say denying his own position of "godhood" or role as an object of faith. It's very elegantly crafted and portrayed in the end and of course it can only conclude with Amy and Rory's departure from the TARDIS team.
I suppose it may seem corny to some that the Doctor gives Amy and Rory a house and a nice car but since he's come to this realisation it's better than just ditching them the way it normally happens. It's a shame to see them go but simultaneously it's a much better way of having them leave than the fake-out "deaths" and forcible departures we've had in the not-so-distant past. I suppose this is a unique situation, at least for the New Series, in that despite the Doctor's absence Amy and Rory still have each other, which is something bigged up a lot, especially from the previous episode. When was the last time that happened? Ian and Barbara? Maybe Ben and Polly? At least these two are married. It makes more sense for them to leave this way.
It was also nice to see the Nimon referenced in regard to the Minotaur considering the relative similarity of both their appearance and their modus operandi. I don't see why it couldn't have just been a Nimon flat-out but there you go. There was some good humour in this episode and while it was at times a little bland in terms of setting or characterisation for the non-regulars it did its job well. I'm certainly getting the impression that they were saving an awful lot of money for the finale though. The departure of our companions was touching but it would have been more poignant without Murray Gold lathering on the tear-jerking female choral music with a bulldozer. Nonetheless it was a relatively strong point of the series and has again depicted how much better these stand-alones are than the arc. So far with the exception of the first part this half of the series has come across as a good deal stronger than the first. Let's just hope that after all this deconstruction we aren't left with nothing to rebuild.