It was a hot day. The kids had the day off due to it being a PD Day, but they had no interest in going outside. Nor did any of the kids in the neighbourhood. We just lounged inside and took advantage of the air conditioning. Truly a dog day of summer, and it’s only May.

However, Erin resolved that we shouldn’t waste this day. After going to work early, she came back early, and hauled us to the beach.

As you might expect, looking at a map of Kitchener and its position in southwestern Ontario, that was quite a trek. After some research, we figured that the nearest place to get some sand between our toes and some surf in our hair was Port Burwell, on the shores of Lake Erie. Still, it was a ninety minute drive away.

And we were exceptionally lucky in our timing this day. The weather was highly unsettled and, as we struck out onto the 401, we were met by a thunderstorm with heavy rains. Fortunately these cleared up just in time for us to have fish and chips in Aylmer. And while we were surrounded by dark clouds when we finally hit the beach at Port Burwell, we even managed to get a bit of sun. In fact, the weather had left the beach completely deserted. We had it all to ourselves, which enhanced the experience.

The kids didn’t complain too much about the trip, although I must admit that the use of iPods helped. However, I think they were bored from sitting in the house all day, and they knew that a day out was exactly what they needed. They fell asleep on the ride home as well, which is as sure a sign as any that we had a successful trip.

More photographs of this day can be found here.

It has been nearly six weeks since we had to put down Gus. It seems short as a mourning period. We both miss the guy something fierce, and strangely enough we’ve also gotten used to living in a cat-free home. Not having drifts of fur rolling about. Not having to keep an eye to the floor whenever we open the door. Making sure the screen doors are closed, that sort of thing. However, the kids have been asking about the possibility of getting another cat and, truth to tell, we miss the sounds of little feet.

So, earlier today, Erin up and said, “let’s go to an adoption centre and find a cat to adopt.” We bundled the kids in the car, keeping our destination a surprise, and we looked at (and held) a number of candidates at a local Petsmart. We finally settled on a 10-month-old grey shorthair cat from the KW Humane Society. He’s a neutered male with all his shots, in good health — kind of shy, but very friendly.

Although originally named “Luna”, the kids wondered if we could name him something else, and they were trying out names. Daughter the elder hit upon Jasper, saying “what about Jasper?” and that just clicked in my head, much the same way that “Gus” clicked when he sauntered out from the bedroom, all those years ago. Daughter the younger was less enthused about the name, but when Erin picked up the box and said, “Come on, Jasper!” we knew the issue was basically settled. Strange how some names just click, don’t they?

He’s in the basement right now, exploring the place floor by floor.

I’ve said this already in my Kitchener Post column, but I want to tip my hat at the volunteer organizers who put together New Dundee’s Victoria Day celebrations. They gave the daughters and I an unforgettable experience. Not even my allergies could dim my appreciation of the food, the fun, Eric Traplin, and a visit by the Peterborough fire dancing group The PyroFlies.

The fireworks display at the end was a wonderful cap to a wonderful evening, and even the thunderstorms were kind enough to hold off until just after the kids and I got back to the car. Thanks again New Dundee. If you do this next year, you can count on us to come out.

I took pictures, and you can find them on Flickr here.

Yesterday, I took daughter the younger out of school for the day, to give her a special Daddy-Daughter day together. We went to Toronto on VIA Rail, and then I took her out to the end of the Queen streetcar line. Years ago, when I was still in grade school, my mother would indulge my love of streetcars by kindly accompanying me as we explored where all of the lines went. My favourite spot was Neville Park at the eastern end of Queen.

The place is world’s away from anything else in Toronto, even from the Beach neighbourhood just a few blocks west. The Beach is a fiercely independent community with a bustling commercial district along Queen, but as the street peters out at the border of Scarborough, the character changes. It’s quiet, almost small-town residential. The thought of applying that description to any part of Queen Street is just absurd. That’s one reason why I loved it.

But Neville Park had another secret: where the sandy beaches met the retaining walls of the R.C. Harris Water Purification plant was one of the best beaches to look for interesting stones in all of Toronto. All sorts of interesting stuff washes up here — a lot of it, it must be admitted, probably junk from the building up of Toronto. There were interesting rounded rocks of limestone, granite, and old asphalt. Some of the best skipping stones are to be found at this beach. And there was sea glass.

Now that’s a remarkable material. Industrial glass worn down by the action of the waves looks both natural and manmade. It’s a contradiction, and it’s pretty. For me, finding some was like finding a gemstone.

I repeated this experience with daughter the younger yesterday. The portion of Queen Street was there, the stone beach was there, and the waves were there. She loved it. She found some interesting stones. We skipped some in the waves (my throwing sucks, but I did manage a five). But no sea glass. Hard as I looked (and I looked hard), there was no glass to be found among the stones.

The water also looked bluer than I remembered. And I wondered, maybe we’ve cleaned up the lake since I was there in my childhood. Maybe less industrial glass in the waters. That would be a good thing, even if it means a dearth of gemstones.

I am a long-time Doctor Who fan. My first memory of seeing Doctor Who comes from 1976. My parents and I were visiting some aunts, and one of them asked if we could turn on the television to TV Ontario as there was a show she was watching, and the last part was on tonight. The show turned out to be part six of Genesis of the Daleks, and the scene I recall is when Davros addressed the Kaled scientists and turned to a big red button, offering said scientists the chance to blow up most of the bunker and end the Dalek production before it even began.

My reaction at the time was to leave the room and to go play with some other toys.

But my parents tuned into Doctor Who in the weeks and months to come, and I gradually got into the show. I think it was The Robots of Death that confirmed me as a fan. My interest intensified even as my parents’ interest settled down. I collected the books, came to learn of the full mythos and, when I was twelve, I joined the Doctor Who Information Network fan club.

Fandom, for me, has been an almost universally positive experience. I fell in love with fan fiction, and I wrote fan articles on various Doctor Who subjects, both acts which built up my skills as a writer. I met many good people, including best friends and the woman who became my wife. But if there’s one thing I’ve noticed about fandom is that some elements are notoriously pessimistic.

It’s one thing to criticize elements of the program, including plots that don’t make sense and directorial choices that don’t quite come together, but sometimes fandom goes beyond that. Fans like myself care deeply about the things we love, to the point that I fear a few of us lose our objectivity. Episodes are ripped to shreds for their flaws, characters and the actors that play them are derided for perceived mistakes, or simply not being as good as companions or Doctors in the past. And the problems are amplified to predictions of doom in some cases.

This reality exists even today. A handful of fans have elevated legitimate criticisms of the direction Steven Moffat has taken the program since taking over from Russell T. Davies to extreme concern. They fret over ratings, pointing to every small decline as a sign that the show is about to come to an end, and it’s all (insert name here)’s fault. Never mind that Doctor Who has survived fifty years with a single continuity. Never mind that the show remains in a position (within the top 20) eight years in its revival that it only infrequently achieved in the 26 years of the original series.

To these few fans who are so upset over where things stand, I have to wonder why they continue to invest so much time and energy attacking the show that they used to love. But, at the same time, I can understand. This is a show that, at some point, touched us deeply and became an important part of our lives. It hurts us deeply when something like that disappears or, worse, changes into something that we either don’t recognize or don’t agree with. Just because I’ve strived to stay objective doesn’t mean that I’m special. More likely, I’ve just been lucky.

Which is one reason why I loved The Name of the Doctor. Much as I still love the revival and everything in it, I note that when we watched Doctor Who on Saturday, once the end credits ended, we immediately went back to the beginning of the episode and watched it again. We haven’t done that in years.

How does one review an episode like, The Name of the Doctor? It’s breathtaking in its ambition. It promises much. It answers a lot of questions and raises many more. It faces the challenge of high expectations inherent in just the title. The secret behind Clara is revealed, and a deeper secret in the Doctor is hinted at. In short, you have to respect that it tried very hard, and it had every potential for blowing up in writer Steven Moffat’s face.

But what The Name of the Doctor did, was that it reminded me of what it is like to be a fan of Doctor Who — and I’m talking about the whole series. I came away from this episode remembering the sense of wonder that I had when I first saw the Doctor vanish off into his TARDIS.

You could ask for nothing better for the lead-in to the 50th anniversary of the program. Ultimately, Steven Moffat gets it. He knows what it’s like to be a fan because he’s a fan himself. In The Name of the Doctor, using just six major characters and a handful of studio sets, he captures the indescribable essence that unites fifty years of episodes in a program that has seen more than eleven actors take the lead role; a show that has switched styles and genres multiple times, and which keeps on bringing the fans back for more.

A full spoilery review can be found after the break.

In this episode, we return to the trio of Paternoster Row (get these guys their own spin-off, already!). Vastra visits a condemned murderer who has been muttering cryptically about the Whisper Men. He conveys a stark warning about the Doctor (told creepily in rhyme, as all things seem to be nowadays). Alarmed, Vastra calls for a conference on the astral plane. Joining her, Jenny and Strax are Clara (who is rendered unconscious with a letter held, I assume, by a lawyer for 120 years and delivered on the correct date — the scene is lovely to behold; having only seen the real Clara once, Vastra knows the woman all too well)… and Professor River Song.

The scene serves to move along the plot in a number of ways. While the trio are unconscious, they’re attacked by a faceless group of monsters known as the Whisper Men. Jenny takes on the role of damsel in distress, and Vastra gets to show just how important Jenny is to her life. River shows off her leadership skills, taking charge from a shaken Vastra to wake everyone up. Most importantly, Clara is able to learn of the cryptic message and relay it to the Doctor, who has arrived while she is sleeping.

The cryptic message talks about Trenzalore — a name we’ve heard a few times before. It seems to be a planet of prophesy, and when the Doctor hears it, he’s clearly affected by it (kudos to Matt Smith for acting his heart out in this scene). After running off to the TARDIS, nearly in tears (!), he confesses to Clara that Trenzalore is the planet where the Doctor’s future grave can be found.

This, of course, is the one place in the universe the Doctor must never, ever, evereverever go. However, the Great Intelligence and his manufactured minions the Whisper Men have snatched Jenny, Strax and Vastra, and have taken them to Trenzalore. There they will die unless the Doctor comes to bargain for their lives. And the Doctor knows he has no choice. He recalls how much of a help they were during his “dark times”. He frankly admits that he owes them a hell of a lot, so of course he’s got to go (and, again, can we get the trio a spin-off, already?). And, of course, there’s no way he’s going to dissuade Clara from going.

Some plot points are glazed over for expediency. How did the condemned murder get the cryptic message that he chose to relay to Vastra (Whisper Men, probably. But, if so, why choose this prisoner?)? How did the Great Intelligence transport Vastra and Company from 1893 London to Trenzalore (mind you, if you’re worried about that, I suspect you’re a little pedantic)? Me? I was swept away by the whole imagery and concept of Trenzalore.

This is the planet where the Doctor dies, and there has been a battle here. The Great Intelligence calls this a small battle “by the Doctor’s standards”, but it’s clearly of great import. And there were clearly survivors (who, after all, buried the bodies and put up the gravestones?). And just by these brief strokes, Moffat has put an image in my mind of an aging Doctor (possibly played by John Hurt?) leading fighters against some unnamed foe. Imagine what it would be like to be in at the end? Imagine what it would be like to witness all of that and survive? How would you get on with your life afterward, dealing with this sense of loss?

This sense of future loss imbues The Name of the Doctor with tremendous energy, but this is not the central focus of the story. There is actually a lot going on here. Moffat addresses not just Clara’s tale, or the Doctor’s long-running battle with the Great Intelligence, but River Song’s story seems to come to a close, here. The River Song that’s in this tale is not the Doctor Song of the eleventh Doctor stories, but the River Song copy in the Library’s data banks. This River Song knows the sum total of her life with the Doctor.

This is elegant plotting, actually. It explains how you can have a story titled The Name of the Doctor without naming the Doctor (the fact that River Song knows the Doctor’s name allows her to save the Doctor’s friends without the Doctor revealing this key data to the Great Intelligence), but it also allows the Doctor and River to have some real closure to their relationship. There are still questions, here — I don’t believe we’ve yet seen just how River Song learned the Doctor’s name (remember, he doesn’t tell her in The Wedding of River Song, he merely tells her to look him in the eye to show her that he’s a Tessalecta) — but this is a good place to end their tale. If River Song shows up again, I’ll be happy, but if not… well, I will still take comfort in the fact that their story was well and properly told.

The climax of this story resolves the questions raised by Clara’s storyline. It’s not perfectly done — why does no one make any attempt to even stop the Great Intelligence from entering the Doctor’s time stream, for instance? Having Strax struggle would have addressed this. Also, Clara spends a little too much time talking about what she has to do. The mystery resolved may not be very complicated or mysterious but it is, in my opinion, lovely. To see the breadth and depth of the Doctor’s time stream, Clara becomes the embodiment of fandom. After all, haven’t we witnessed the breadth and depth of the Doctor’s life experience, and cheered him on every step of the way? Clara does in this story what we have been doing all our fannish lives.

In terms of tone, you can’t ask for anything better in the lead-up to the 50th anniversary. And speaking of lead-up, there’s a nice scorpion sting at the end. John Hurt as “The Doctor”? That was perfectly introduced to stoke expectations, not to mention wild fan theories, as we wait through the long summer months for November 23…

…Much, as I point out, fans have done during big cliffhangers of the past, like Star Trek’s summer of the Borg. For me, Steven Moffat has made being a fan of Doctor Who fun again (not that it hadn’t been before). And for that, I am immensely grateful.

That’s my review. Baseless speculation proceeds after the break.

Further Thoughts and Unanswered Questions

• Okay, so is this what the Silence were worried about regarding the big question? Or is it the battle of Trenzalore itself? It should be noted that silence did fall when the Doctor’s name was spoken (by River), but I don’t think this threat is quite showy enough to merit that much alarm. The Battle of Trenzalore, on the other hand…
• An unfortunate side-effect of Clara’s intervention is that she is now the answer to every unanswered question of the classic series, up to and including whose mysterious hand prevented Sutekh from rising from his eternal seat with his pillow attached to his butt, and there’s Photoshop to prove it. And, when I say “unfortunate”, I of course mean “hilarious”.

• Finally, there’s the appearance at the end of John Hurt as “The Doctor”. Clearly the antagonist in the upcoming anniversary special, he’s clearly a part of the Doctor that the Doctor himself hates. I suspect he may well have been what the Doctor saw when he witnessed his biggest fear in The God Complex. But who is he?

  I think a reasonable explanation could be the Valeyard (who was namechecked in this episode). I think it’s significant that the Valeyard was implied to be an amalgamation of the last two incarnations of the Doctor, and given that Clara saw eleven faces in her whirlwind tour of the Doctor’s timeline, it’s significant that there are only two left to be seen. However, as Cameron noted, John Hurt’s Doctor did not seem evil, only defeated. He defends his actions as having “no choice” and doing what he did to preserve “peace and sanity”. I would counter by saying that the Valeyard might not be evil so much as simply ruthless. A theme of the show in later days is that the Doctor is a dangerous force, and only a good man because of the rules he imposes on himself. I argue that the Valeyard is simply the Doctor without those rules.

  On the other hand, the Valeyard seems too convenient an explanation. I suspect Moffat would have more up his sleeve. We shall see what we shall see. I invite similar baseless speculation in the comments below.

• Asylum of the Daleks and The Snowmen show that many of Clara’s scattered remains through the Doctor’s timelines are actual, physical embodiments of Clara, with their own memories and life experiences. So, that was a real Clara that appeared to the first Doctor when he stole the TARDIS. Was it the same Clara that digitally took Leela’s place in the flashback to the fourth Doctor’s Invasion of Time? Does the Doctor have a Gallifreyan stalker with Clara’s face? What if she survived the Time War? Fan fiction writers, to your posts!

Further Reading

• TV.com Review.
• Den of Geek Review.
• The Nerdist Review

And I have one question:

What the hell, Australia?

Seriously? What the hell? What. The. Hell?

It’s not enough that you have the most poisonous snakes of any continent in the world. It’s not enough that you have deadly spiders sneaking into swimming pools. It’s not enough that you have a mammal with a duck bill that lays eggs and possesses a venomous stinger that can cause debilitating pain.

It’s not enough that you have Jack Jumper Ants that will swarm out of their nests and jump all over some unsuspecting soul six feet away who happens to walk past, delivering painful bites and stings — ants which entomologists apparently believe were made extinct elsewhere in the world possibly because the other ants ganged up and killed these ants because they were too dangerous to live. Now you give us this.

Can you imagine somebody driving along a lonely road in the outback, miles away from anything, worried about making it to the next habitation before the sun sets and/or the gas runs out, cresting a hill and seeing this thing on the horizon. Can you imagine what they would do?

I could easily see them doing a U-turn and hi-tailing it back where they came from. “Sorry, kids! We’re going back to Sydney. We only have to worry about sharks, there. And spiders. And ants.”

(Full story here)

So, our gym is having a fitness challenge, pictured above. I’m not sure if we have to work up to doing 100 “burpees)” in 100 days, or if we have to do just 100 burpees in 100 days (1 burpee a day? I can do that. Fetch me some soda!), but I post this sign here because the campaign does not appear to be taking off.

Problem one may well be this sign, which unlike the motivational posters usually found at our gym, doesn’t really… motivate.

Problem two is that some dullard named these exercises “burpees”. Seriously, just exercising is hard enough. How is somebody supposed to tout that accomplishment? “I did 100 burpees today!” / “You poor dear! Have you tried going to a Gastroenterologist?”

One of the strange things of writing criticism is that it’s easier and possibly more fun to review an episode with flaws than one without. Emphasis on “more fun”. So I hope that Mark Gatiss will take this as the compliment that it has taken me a week to comment on his Doctor Who episode, The Crimson Horror, and I hope that Neil Gaiman won’t be too insulted to hear me rubbing my hands and cracking my knuckles.

Earlier, I speculated whether Mark Gatiss’ main problem with writing for Doctor Who is that he really, really needed an extra episode to flesh out all of his good ideas. Notice how much he has been able to do using Sherlock’s longer running time. Victory of the Daleks would have been much better if more time had been spent drawing out the mystery and suspense of the Daleks’ actions, culminating in a cliffhanger that cues (all together now) Spitfires! In! Spaaaace!. Similarly Cold War proves that it’s difficult to do Das Boot in 42 minutes.

The Crimson Horror, however, is just about perfect, possibly because Gatiss has been inspired to write a story which features Diana Rigg and her daughter working together for the first time professionally. He delivers a tight script that hits all the right notes quickly and in character. The two actresses clearly have fun, Mark Gatiss has fun, and so do the audience. And the line of dialogue he gives the Doctor (“Yes, I’m the Doctor, you’re nuts, and I’m gonna stop you.”) is as accurate a summation of most of the show’s canon as anybody could possibly write within 140 characters.

As for Neil Gaiman, it’s fair to say that anticipation over his contribution, Nightmare in Silver, was possibly the most anticipated episode of this part of the season, what with the out-of-the-park home run he scored with The Doctor’s Wife. Unfortunately, this one didn’t go as well. And here’s where it gets fun for me. As the armchair quarterback ready to replay the game on Monday morning, I can say that some of the elements in this story could have been reworked to improve things. True, it’s easy to write in hindsight, but what would a critic’s lot be if this wasn’t open to us?

A more spoilery review appears after the break.

Ironically, the thing that may have undercut Nightmare in Silver are the elements which link it most closely to The Crimson Horror. At the end of Crimson Horror, Clara comes home to find that her trips back in time have not gone unnoticed. The kids in Clara’s care, showing more savvy than many other family members on the show, have done a lot of research, and set about immediately blackmailing her for a trip on board the Doctor’s time machine.

It’s a fun moment, and I eagerly looked forward to seeing the Doctor’s reaction to Clara looking at him sheepishly and saying, “they followed me aboard. Can we keep them?” I was looking forward to their sense of wonder.

So, Angie’s stereotypically teenage cynicism to seeing the TARDIS, its time travelling abilities, and the biggest amusement park in the universe, drove me right up the wall. You blackmailed your way onto the TARDIS, Angie. How dare you — how dare you! — not show respect to the Doctor for what the ship can do. You take that attitude, Clara would have been right to tell the Doctor to march the TARDIS right back to London and toss Angie into her room.

I do not fault actress Eve de Leon Allen for this. This is a stylistic choice that Gaiman made, and it undercut a lot of the promise the final scene in The Crimson Horror set up. And Gaiman seems to have great difficulty incorporating Angie and Artie into the narrative. Early in the story, handling the baggage that they represent results in several incidents of idiot plotting. Let me count the ways:

1. The Doctor senses something amiss about the abandoned pleasure planet (because, really, what else can you expect from an amusement park that has clearly been abandoned in haste) and refuses to leave until he sees what’s what. That’s fine and good if it’s just him and Clara, but Erin and I both said, “Um… Doctor? The kids?!” I was astounded that Clara didn’t throw a fit over this. The Doctor has as much as admitted that something is not right — that There is Danger Here (tm). The kids are in her care, ergo they are under threat. The responsible thing would be to send them home and return. True, the TARDIS might make this difficult, but here’s an idea: LOCK THEM IN THE BLOODY TARDIS!!

   Note that this probably would not result in them actually being safer, but it would show that the Doctor and Clara aren’t complete dunderheads and are willing to take at least some steps to secure their safety.

2. In order to investigate what is amiss about the abandoned pleasure planet, the Doctor and Clara shove Angie and Artie into a room in a wax museum containing at least three deactivated Cybermen and tell them to go to bed. One, this makes the kids seem a lot younger than they look. Two, how the hell do you expect them to sleep on a strange planet with all of the scary waxworks about (Kassius Carey Johnson as Artie does a very good job of illustrating this) and, three…

3. The Doctor notices that something is amiss, and he’s seen three de-activated Cybermen in the room he’s put the children in, and he doesn’t immediately draw the connection? Every single fan is already several steps ahead of the Doctor. They’re not in a patient mood, and they’re watching the Doctor and Clara act like complete dunces while there are Cybermen about and kids under threat. This would merit a call from Child Protection Services, for goodness sake!

Worse, the kids don’t really do anything. Artie and Angie quickly get kidnapped and set up for conversion to Cybermen. Except that the Cybermen do a complete pivot when they realize they have much better pickings in converting the Doctor. Fair enough: when the Cybermen do make their move and try to draw the Doctor into their clutches, I immediately sat up. If I had popcorn handy, I would have started snarfing it. It’s the scenes of Matt Smith fighting himself in the cyber-conversion process that makes Nightmare in Silver a potentially great episode. But it has too much to overcome: idiot plotting to get us this far, and time wasted with superfluous characters that could have been spent expanding the scenes of the Doctor fighting himself.

The kids really don’t need to be there. Clara doesn’t need them to have skin in this game. And time could also have been spent expanding the other undeveloped element in this story: the presence of Porridge, the Emperor of Humanity (played by Warwick Davis). The fact that he reveals himself at the end to be the leading figure of the human resistance against the Cybermen and, oh incidentally, the only other person who can activate the Great Big Bomb (tm) that can end the Cyber threat, means that he’s a big Deus Ex Machina element, and that’s a problem right up there with the idiot plotting that got us into this episode.

Here’s a suggestion: combine the Emperor, Angie and Artie’s roles into one. Make the Emperor into an actual child who is fleeing his or her crushing responsibilities. The fact that the Emperor finally choses to reveal that he had the ability to destroy the Cybermen the whole time would be mitigated by the fact that, as a child, he’d been abducted by the Cybermen and was thus in stand-by mode until the Doctor made the move of sacrificing his queen in a deal to release the children. In one fell swoop, you wipe out some of the flaws and you integrate this element into an important and powerful moment in the story when the Doctor appears to sacrifice the game in order to save one of the pawns — revealing, in fact, that it’s the pawns that save the game.

So, you see, the potential is there. And, of course, we know that Matt Smith could make it work, because he puts on a virtuoso performance. It’s clear that the idea of the Cyber Race and the last of the Time Lords fighting things out in the Doctor’s brain is the central concept that most interests Gaiman here. It’s fresh and new, and it puts the Cybermen in an interesting light. It hints at a possibly scarier version of Cybermen — a race with the emotional bearings of the Doctor. Indeed, let’s combine the Doctor’s desire to go around fixing the universe, twist that around the Cybermen’s abilities to adapt and upgrade everything, set that spinning and see if that doesn’t keep you up at night.

Unfortunately, the idea needs the support of the rest of the episode, and it’s not there. Mark Gatiss weaves all his elements together in The Crimson Horror and there’s nothing wasted. Every character has a part to play (even if it is only to notify the Paternoster Row Trio of the problem, and faint three times), and the result is all the more satisfying for it. Simply put, I can’t go in to Mark Gatiss story and say what could be combined or added or taken away to improve things. The fact that I can do that with Nightmare in Silver isn’t to the episode’s credit.

Arguably, Nightmare in Silver had the potential to be a stronger episode than The Crimson Horror, but it squandered it by not looking after the little details. So even though Gaiman’s episode hits higher highs, the end result is more frustrating and ultimately, unsatisfying.

So, kudos to Mark Gatiss: you beat Gaiman on this one. Indeed, you beat most of the field.

Other Thoughts

• The chess-playing Cyberman is a cool idea, but he defeats Artie ridiculously easily. The Doctor calls it “Fool’s Mate” which is an actual chess term describing an actual set of moves. You can learn more about it here. The relevant quote: “Fool’s Mate received its name because it can only occur if White plays extraordinarily weakly (i.e., foolishly). Even among rank beginners, the mate almost never occurs in practice.” So, Artie belongs to a chess club at school, does he? Why do I get the impression that the other members bully him whenever he shows up to play? Again, Gaiman’s characterization of the kids is extraordinarily inconsistent. Are they savvy teenagers able to handle cellphones, or whiny little kids? Are they geeks who play chess or not? To be fair to Gaiman, he’s working from afar, and their creator, Steven Moffat, may not have been too clear himself on who these two people really are.

Basia Bulat covers Bruce Springsteen

A couple of weeks ago, daughter the elder asked if she could buy some Pokemon cards with her allowance. My curiosity was twigged. How did she find out about Pokemon? Her television experience continues to be limited by the fact that we still don't have cable TV and refuse to get it. She does have access to our computers, so she has played some educational games and she -- like daughter the younger -- have fallen under the spell of My Little Pony.

Mind you, this is the same person who, when I explained that I bought a small coffee rather than my usual large because I'd already had plenty of coffee, said, "and you don't want to get so jacked up that you can't sleep!" I can see that school is having a significant impact on her cultural experience.

It's one thing to like princesses and ponies, but to get involved in the powers and the abilities of the various cards -- to understand the value of collecting? That was new. So, I poked at this with questions, and came up with this item: a lot of boys in her class are getting into Pokemon, and playing it whenever free time allows. I suspected that Vivian wanted into that social club.

I agreed to let her use her allowance to buy some Pokemon cards. After all, I collected hockey cards at around her age. Still, I was a little concerned. The kids her age have started pairing up on gender lines. The boy she was best friends with has started to stick around with other boys, and the girls have gathered into their own groups. My daughter's interests are not that gender-structured, and she feels the pain of being excluded, but I'm not sure what, if anything, I can do about it.

We took daughter the elder to a local toy store called Mastermind, where she shunned a pack and instead picked a tin. The packs cost $5.95 and the tins $21. At first glance, the tins only promise about five or so cards -- albeit rare and strong ones. Fortunately, they also come with four regular packs, which makes me feel much less like she's being ripped off. She spent most of yesterday evening sorting through her haul, and she brought the tin to school.

She emerged at the end of school today close to tears. I immediately suspected that the boys had rejected her entry into the Pokemon social club on the fact of her being a girl, but that wasn't it. Rather, she'd been playing soccer-baseball at the gym, and the game hadn't gone well. She'd failed to score, and the game had been lost, and some of the kids had been crowing about winning. That brought back a lot of memories. I took her through the Tim Horton's drive through window. I figured she needed it.

I try to do my best for my daughters. I don't want them to take in some of things that television has to offer. I don't want them to believe that there are things they can't do because they are girls. I don't want them to believe that losing a game is something to be ashamed of. But these are the rules that we play under in this society, it seems. I can advise and guide, but I can't control what goes on among the people my daughters deal with. I can only offer support as my daughters learn how to deal. Hopefully they can find the strength to change the things that should be changed, or the serenity to ignore the things that cannot be changed. That's not up to me.

However, the Pokemon cards did work in getting her into the Pokemon social club. Apparently some of the boys (and the girls who are also involved) are quite impressed by the E-X cards she was able to land. She's proudly holding onto those, while she's traded for some others.