True Blood: Frenzy

Jason: "Sometimes you need to destroy something to save it. That's in the Bible. Or the Constitution."

I loved the Queen's "day room" so, so much. It was luxurious and utterly weird, and it's hard to pull off a combination like that. And it suited her, come to think of it, because the Queen is indeed luxurious and utterly weird. The Yahtzee game and some of the things she said were just hilarious. (She was cheating at Yahtzee. Who cheats at Yahtzee?)

Torchwood: Captain Jack Harkness

Jack: "It's not my name, it's his. I took his. But I didn't realize he was so hot."

Jack goes back into the past, and falls in love with himself. A new and interesting take on narcissism.

Torchwood: Combat

Jack: "The weevil has landed."

Fight Club with weevils. No, let me rephrase that. A bad episode about Fight Club with weevils. Yes, let's search for the meaning of life by getting mauled. That works. In fact, this entire episode was one long metaphor about nasty, aggressive guys being brainless alien animals.

Torchwood: Out of Time

John: "What, did you fall through time, too?"
Jack: "Yeah. You could say that."

I like time travel stories. This one was quite good.

Torchwood: Random Shoes

"I didn't really know what the eye was anymore, but I was damned if I was going to let it go for thirty-four pounds and a banana milkshake."

Episodes based around someone else with a minimum of regular cast tend to be chancey, and mostly, they don't work. I was impatient with this one early on, but it turned out to be rather touching.

Heroes and Smallville and the fall season

This hasn't been an easy decision for me to make. I don't drop shows midstream; I tend to remain faithful to the sweet or bitter end. (I'm not oblivious to how I refer to my relationship with a particular show as a love affair.)

Torchwood: They Keep Killing Suzie

Jack: "We've been talking to the wrong corpse."

Torchwood is a tough place to work; your corpse and your stuff stay with Torchwood forever. Talk about your job owning your soul.

Torchwood: Greeks Bearing Gifts

Tosh: "So I'm shagging a woman and an alien."
Mary: "Which is worse?"
Tosh: "Well, I know which one my parents would say."

Despite its flaws, this was the second episode in a row with lots of character development goodness.

Torchwood: Countrycide

Owen: "I hate the countryside. It's dirty. It's unhygienic. And what is that smell?"
Gwen: "That would be grass."

You really get to know your work mates when you go camping together and get kidnapped by cannibals.

True Blood: New World in My View

Maryann: "What are you?"
Sookie: "None of your business!"

Welcome home, Sookie! Candles on the floor, dirt smeared on the walls, sacrificial altar in the front yard... I've heard of roommates trashing the place, but this is ridiculous. What the heck was the zapping that Sookie gave Maryann? Sookie was as surprised as Maryann was. (Yes, I've read the books, so please – no book spoilers in the comments!)

Torchwood: Small Worlds

Gwen: "Fairies. Are you kidding me?"

Fairies. Protecting chosen little girls from pervs. At least near the woods in Cardiff, anyway.

Torchwood: Cyberwoman

Owen: "It's wrong. It's beyond wrong. It shouldn't be here."

When I saw this episode the first time, I hated it. I had never watched Doctor Who back then and (blissfully) didn't know what a Cyberman was. I know now. And with more Who background and twenty twenty hindsight, I found some of this episode to be quite fun. I said "some."

Torchwood: Ghost Machine

Jack: "The problem with seeing the future is you can't just sit and look at it. You got to try and change things."

The last episode was about sex. This one was about strong emotion. And it was much better. (Not that there's anything wrong with sex.)

Torchwood: Day One

Gwen: "Okay. First contact with an alien, not quite what I expected."

An alien comes to Earth, possesses a human woman, and then she tries to have sex with everyone. This sounds terribly familiar. I could think of at least two other series that have done the same plot, and I wasn't even trying hard.

Torchwood: Everything Changes

Gwen: "I'm getting tired of following you."
Jack: "No, you're not. And you never will."

Everything changes for a young police constable named Gwen Cooper, when her natural curiosity puts her in the right place at the right time for a truly major career change.

Doctor Who: Last of the Time Lords

Master: "Dying in your arms. Happy now?"

You know, maybe the Academy's policy of having kids look into the time vortex was one they should have rethought.

I enjoyed some of this one. I really did. But the Doctor as a tiny elderly big-eyed muppet in a bird cage was just a bridge too far for me. Everyone in the world reviving him by chanting his name was way too Peter Pan, too. I was just shaking my head and saying, no, you've got to be kidding me.

True Blood: I Will Rise Up

Sookie: "You big lying A hole!"
Eric: "Bill, you're right. I believe I can sense her emotions."

Eric, Eric, Eric. What is it with me and those blond bad boy vampires? We saw two distinct sides of him here: a deeply emotional side, as well as an extremely naughty side.

Doctor Who: The Sound of Drums

Doctor: "Don't you see, all we've got is each other?"
Saxon: "Are you asking me out on a date?"

I'm usually easy to please. And there was so much that was promising in the "Utopia" set-up, too. But no. So let's go with my standard "good bits bad bits."

Sunshine

"The only dream I ever have is the surface of the Sun. Every time I shut my eyes, it's all I ever see."

[My review will not spoil the end of this movie for you; minimal spoilage.]

It is the year 2057. The Sun is growing colder, and life on Earth is in danger of extinction. Eight astronauts on the ship Icarus 2 are on a mission to re-ignite the Sun. Things go wrong, as things in movies always do, and difficult decisions must be made.

Stephen King’s Wizard and Glass (Dark Tower IV)

“I will show you something different from either/ Your shadow at morning striding behind you/ Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;/ I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

Book III of the Dark Tower was called The Waste Lands, in an obvious homage to T.S. Eliot’s famous poem. A slightly less-obvious in-joke comes in the name of the city through which the ka-tet must quest: Lud, first mentioned, as far as I know, in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1130). Geoffrey’s History is the chronicle that brings King Arthur to the masses, and we can’t forget that Roland is descended on the sinister side from Arthur of Eld.

Doctor Who: Utopia

Jack: "How long have you known?"
Doctor: "Ever since I ran away from you."

A lot of this episode was just terrific. I loved seeing the Doctor and Jack together again; they're both such wonderful characters, larger than life, and the dialogue just sparkled. Jack was overjoyed to be with his beloved Doctor again, while the Doctor felt so much discomfort around Jack that he almost couldn't look him in the eye. (And yet, the Doctor seemed to be threatened or put out by the way Jack constantly hit on everyone – male, female, alien. Why? Was he jealous?)

The X-Files: Fallen Angel

Case: Operation Falcon, a covert military operation to retrieve and conceal the existence of a 'Fallen Angel' --- a crashed alien ship and its occupants.

Destination: Townsend, Wisconsin

Doctor Who: Blink

Doctor: "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly... timey-wimey... stuff."

A gem of an episode. It was Doctor light, but it wasn't story light. It was creepy and amusing and unusual, and it had a lot of heart.

Doctor Who: The Family of Blood

Doctor: "That's all I want to be. John Smith. With his life, and his job, and his love. Why can't I be John Smith? Isn't he a good man?"

This episode touched on the core tragedy of the Doctor's existence. He is a lonely, isolated, unique and wonderful being. He can't have a life and a job and a family. And truly, it's hard to tell if that was even what he would have wanted.

True Blood: Timebomb

Bill: "If you shoot her, everyone here will die. Let her go, now!"
Steve: (to Sookie) "Honestly, what do they see in you?"

What a terrific episode. I laughed out loud so many times that I scared my cat.

Doctor Who: Human Nature

Martha: "You had to go and fall in love with a human. And it wasn't me."

This was exactly my cup of tea. Prime character development for the Doctor, and about time. (Pun intended.) Romantic, too, and there's never enough of that for me.

Buffy Season Eight: Living Doll

Xander: "We have to rescue Dawn. And I don't mean the underrated Christian Bale movie."

Synopsis:

Dawn has gone missing. Her third transformation was from centaur to tiny porcelain doll, and she's imprisoned in a Gepetto-like old man's cottage full of toys that talk. Gepetto is actually protecting Dawn, though; if she breaks, her soul will disperse painfully.

Dollhouse: Epitaph One

[This is the unaired thirteenth episode of the first season of Dollhouse, which is now available streaming and on DVD.]

Dominic: "How does it feel to end the world, Ms. DeWitt?"

Doctor Who: 42

Martha: "I can't believe our lives depend on some stupid pub quiz."

So there were glaring holes in the science. So it was mostly Sunshine crossed with Alien. It also reminded me quite a bit of season two's "The Impossible Planet/Satan Trap;" I was thinking that maybe they re-used some of the same sets. And when you spend your entire first paragraph pointing out what they did that has already been done, it's not a good sign.

Dollhouse: Echo (Unaired Pilot)

[This is a review of the unaired pilot episode for Dollhouse, entitled "Echo," which is available on the fourth disk of the DVD set.]

Topher: "This is cutting edge science in a house full of hot chicks."

Doctor Who: The Lazarus Experiment

Lazarus: "I'll be fine in a moment. It's probably just a cramp."

This episode could have been really good. There could have been so many interesting explorations of Lazarus' change as it related to the Doctor's longevity, immortality as a curse instead of a blessing, lonely god, hubris, and so on. The experiment was even evocative of how the Doctor regenerates, and the youth booth much the same size as the Tardis. The parallels were so obvious that I honestly thought that was where they were going.

True Blood: Release Me

Andy: "With a bull mask! And these giant claws!"
Bud: "Claws? Uh huh."
Andy: "And the whole town had these big black saucer eyes like zombies!"

[Book note: I'm a big fan of the books and I remember what happened in pretty much all of them. But I am treating the series as separate and different, and I am not assuming anything. That's why I haven't mentioned obvious book stuff below about Maryann, Godric, Barry, and so on.]

New Show: Defying Gravity

This is my theory: there are two ways to do great genre shows. The first I’ll call the Mystery Method (with an ironic nod to the maestro of misogynistic dating techniques): the viewers and the characters are in it together, wondering what’s going on. Think of Charlie’s question—one we’re still trying to answer—at the end of the Lost pilot: “Guys, where are we?” The character’s expression of concern excites interest in the viewer, and the discovery of the Mystery is the backbone of the show’s plot.

The X-Files: Ice

Case: The unexplained fate of the Arctic Ice Corp Project team after their leader sends a disturbing transmission stating they “are not who they are.”

Destination: Icy Cape, Alaska

Torchwood

Season 1 | Season 2 |
Children of Earth |
Miracle Day |
Related Links | Cast |

Torchwood (2006-2011) is a spinoff of the iconic Doctor Who that was intended to be (and is) sexier, more adult, and literally down to Earth. It's about an elite, secret task force that investigates alien activity, led by the rather amazing omnisexual Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman). Torchwood is the reason I finally started watching Doctor Who. That's the cart before the horse in a great big way, isn't it? That also means that I didn't have years of Doctor Who behind me to add history and context to my Torchwood reviews. But I wrote them, anyway.

Torchwood ran for two seasons and two miniseries, Children of Earth (outstanding) and Miracle Day (sort of sucked, unfortunately).

Season One

1.1 Everything Changes
1.2 Day One
1.3 Ghost Machine
1.4 Cyberwoman
1.5 Small Worlds
1.6 Countrycide
1.7 Greeks Bearing Gifts
1.8 They Keep Killing Suzie
1.9 Random Shoes
1.10 Out of Time
1.11 Combat
1.12 Captain Jack Harkness
1.13 End of Days

Season Two

2.1 Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
2.2 Sleeper
2.3 To the Last Man
2.4 Meat
2.5 Adam
2.6 Reset
2.7 Dead Man Walking
2.8 A Day in the Death
2.9 Something Borrowed
2.10 From Out of the Rain
2.11 Adrift
2.12 Fragments
2.13 Exit Wounds

Torchwood: Children of Earth

Reviews by Billie Doux
Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four
Day Five

Reviews by Paul Kelly
Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four
Day Five

Torchwood: Miracle Day

4.1 The New World
4.2 Rendition
4.3 Dead of Night
4.4 Escape to LA
4.5 The Categories of Life
4.6 The Middle Men
4.7 Immortal Sins
4.8 End of the Road
4.9 The Gathering
4.10 The Blood Line

Related Links

Doctor Who/Torchwood/Sarah Jane Adventures Crossover Guide
Doctor Who reviews (2005-present)
Doctor Who reviews (1963-1989)
Arrow reviews

Cast

John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness)
Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper)
Kai Owen (Rhys Williams)
Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto Jones)
Burn Gorman (Owen Harper)
Naoko Mori (Toshiko Sato)

Buffy Season Eight: Safe

Faith: "So tell me howcum the slayers have a sanctuary in the middle of a Dracula flick?"

Synopsis:

Faith and Giles rescue a reluctant new slayer named Courtney from a vamp. Courtney mentions the Slayer Sanctuary, a place where slayers don't have to be slayers. Giles says this is a place they need to check out.

Doctor Who: Evolution of the Daleks

Doctor: "The Daleks just changed their minds. Daleks never change their minds."

This episode made me wonder why I decided to review Doctor Who in the first place. It was so bad that I was embarrassed for the actors. The plot resolution was a shambles, and the characterization of the Doctor was completely trashed.