Erin Watches (Doctor Who, medical dramas, Superman)

[erinptah]

So that season of Doctor Who deserved another handful of episodes. What we got was mostly great! And Fifteen is absolutely owning the role. But some of the character stuff suffered from being rushed, and that one untwist at the end was a real cop-out.

Bonus feature from the DVD collection of The Pyramids of Mars: an “interview with Sutekh” about his experience working on Doctor Who, and his career since. Whenever they release a box set of Gatwa’s first season, they should film an update.

(Pet peeve: the Doctor made a throwaway comment in one of the episodes about the Egyptian iconography being “cultural appropriation.” Out-of-universe, sure, it was probably-white British writers who incorporated an Egyptian deity into DW in the first place. But in-universe, he’s not appropriated, he’s just…a guy who exists and looks like that.)

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Been back in the groove working on comics, which means needing a lot of TV to binge in the background, which means I’m all caught up on Grey’s Anatomy. Gosh, those doctors sure do keep having messy romances. And it continues to be fun whenever you recognize a plot point from some 6-month-old viral news article, that the writers were obviously reading at the same time you were.

Followed that up by watching the last season of The Resident. Last one forever, it’s been canceled, and apparently the reviewers were always pretty meh? To me, it’s never felt that different from Grey’s. Less focus on messy romance, more on messy healthcare-industry corruption, that’s all.

The Good Doctor is finished too, but I’m not picking that one up again. Dropped it after the episode where, not even kidding, the main character shows up at the house of a female friend with a baseball bat…smashes up her car windows…yells about how he “wanted to hurt you the way that you hurt me”…and she decides that’s hot, and they start making out?? From what I hear, the show only doubled down on “that was totally a romantic and non-horrifying way to start a relationship.” Glad I got out when I did.

And now I’m periodically churning through the backlog of ER, the trope-setter that all the others built on. It’s impressive how much of the medical-drama formula is already solidly established, even in the early seasons. On the other hand…whoo boy, there are some moments of serious 1990s culture shock. (A doctor with ADHD is bullied into going off her Ritalin because “that’s for hyperactive little boys”! A nurse finds out her pregnant patient is smoking weed to relax, and tips off the cops to get her arrested! The Grey’s staff would never.)

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A new Superman movie has been filming outside my workplace this past week! The officially-released set photos are better quality than anything I could snap (especially since they started making all staff enter/exit through a service entrance), but it’s still pretty fun to see it live.

Speaking of Cleveland! There was some news a couple months ago about the library having a Quran bound in what was, purportedly, human skin. Well, the tests came back, and there are finally some articles about the results: it’s sheepskin. It was always just sheep.

Comments

[rheanna]

I watched new Who consistently during the Nine, Ten and Eleven runs and lost interest when Capaldi took over. Not that I don't like Peter Capaldi - he's great! - but by that point I'd run out of patience for the frenetic storytelling style. But from the tiny bits I've seen of Gatwa, he looks really excellent, and I've been toying with maybe dipping back in to the latest season, not least because I was half toying with the idea of a DW/MK crossover. Steven would be ideal companion material!

[erinptah]

The frenetic storytelling is in full force this season, but if you're ready for more of that, it's a good jumping-on point! Or, since you watched all of Ten's era, jump on with the Fourteen-and-Donna specials that led into Fifteen's. They revisit stuff from the earlier seasons in a way that I thought was really fun and satisfying.

Steven would be a perfect companion! Especially now that we basically have "the Doctor versus murderous Overvoid gods" on the table.

[rheanna]

I like the idea of Steven as a companion, and perhaps even more the idea of Steven dragging Marc and Jake unwillingly along with him.

I should watch those specials, actually - I always really loved Ten and Donna and I’m glad they revisited her unsatisfying original ending.

[axolotls]

Agree about the new season, yeah.

Re: the cultural appropriation line, I thought the meaning was that he didn't initially look like that or was named that, but took that appearance and role on, hence appropriating it?

[erinptah]

Sure, but in-universe, what's more likely -- that a cosmic immortal death-being took the name and iconography from one mortal culture on one out-of-the-way planet? Or that various cultures across time and space, including at least one from Earth, have incorporated their encounters with a real cosmic immortal death-being into their mythology?

[axolotls]

Suppose it could be either? Wouldn't put it past Doctor Who to do either hah. I can see how the line could be missing the mark in the other case.

[jesse_the_k]

I’m glad that Cleveland still has an alt weekly, and sorry that pretty flower baskets are a pure fantasy.

As for as med-drama origin tropery, have you seen St Elsewhere?

[erinptah]

I've seen some amount of St. Elsewhere, it's on my Hulu watchlist, but doesn't look like I got very far! Going in with no knowledge about it except the finale twist ending, I expected it to have a higher baseline weirdness level? And the parts I saw didn't deliver.

It wasn't actively off-putting like The Good Doctor, I just drifted away from it along with ER and The Resident, and haven't picked it up again (yet).

[lb_lee]

Oh hey, I massively approve of filming Superman in Cleveland, that's the way to go!

People still do the whole "bound in human skin" thing???

[erinptah]

It is!

I don't know if "still" is the right word, looks like this binding was done around the 1880s. (Apparently the testing was done by an organization that does a lot of these -- something like half their results come back as Actually Human, the other half turn out to be "welp, that claim was a lie.")

[lb_lee]

Mori: Wait, people really do bind books with human skin? I assumed that some kinda bogey myth shit! I didn't think anyone actually did that!

[erinptah]

The spooky storytelling about it has definitely outpaced the reality! But yeah, there are some examples confirmed real.

[lb_lee]

Huh. Today I done learned.

(Lol, of course one of 'em would be Holbein's Dance of Death and a work of Vesalias. Naturally.)