Doctor Who series 8

Is there any Doctor Who season as polarizing as Series 8? Is there another that not only divides fans, but wittingly pits them against each other? You rarely hear a moderate opinion about Series 8 — folks either love it or hate it. And for many who love it — as I myself do — it’s one of the greatest seasons, and it’s distressing that others can’t see it. And so you feel a need to defend it against its detractors. Very little about Doctor Who inspires that level of protectiveness; until the Chibnall era brought out the crazies, Doctor Who fandom — recognizing that divergent opinions were inevitable with a show that’s been running for some 40+ years — had pretty much adopted a “live and let live” attitude. I can’t stand most of Series 3, but if someone tells me it’s their favorite season, I’m fine with that. And conversely, I think Series 5 is sublime, but if someone tells me they don’t care for it, it rolls off my back. But come after Series 8 and, well, it’s war.

Doctor Who: the companions' best and worst performances

In an essay in the summer of 2018, I looked at the actors who've played the title role in Doctor Who, and judged their best and worst performances. I thought I'd do the same for the companions. Doctor Who has, by and large, been blessed with such extraordinary actors as companions that it's easy to take their work for granted -- to presume their performances are uniformly strong. But actors, like the rest of us, have good days and bad days, and in the case of Doctor Who, there are all kinds of factors that can contribute to the quality of a performance -- just as there are all kinds of criteria I have for judging them. A few words in advance. I'm only considering companions who stuck around for more than two full-length stories, and I’m not including the threesome traveling with the current Doctor, as they’re only partway through their journey. And just to mix it up, I'm listing the companions alphabetically — so get ready to bounce around the decades. (As in my essay about the Doctors, I've bolded the stories that contain the companions’ best and worst work, but I vary the order in which I present them. Sometimes, I list the good before the bad, sometimes vice versa; if you only look at the titles bolded, you might be surprised, when you read the text, to discover which is which.)

Crime Pays: The Best of 2018

My annual TV year-in-review, the key difference this year being that the essay is ten months late. But truth be told, when I finished my final Knots Landing essay in July of 2018, I felt perhaps it was time to lay this blog to rest. Maybe I’d said everything I needed to say. I’d written up all fourteen seasons of my favorite series, and the other show that had most inspired me — Doctor Who — had fallen into a creative black hole that rather dampened my desire to discuss it. But recently I was moved to start writing again, and came across a list I had meant to publish last January, of the series I’d most enjoyed in 2018. So I’ve written it up. As always, this is not the sort of “best of” list proffered by formal TV critics, who have to watch (and have access to) every quality show they hear about; I never purport to have “watched everything.” These are simply the shows I saw that I loved the most. As always, they’re a pretty eclectic bunch. And happily, since time isn’t a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, all eleven series are still available for streaming, ten months later.

But first, a warning:

Vicar-ious Thrills: 2014 in review

Last spring, CBS and I had an ugly break-up. You probably read about it; it made all the tabloids. First I grew disillusioned with Survivor, and quit watching after 14 years; at Entertainment Weekly, Dalton Ross called it the best cast of all-new players since the first season, but I found most of them clueless and/or odious, and where's the fun in that? (If it's clueless and odious I'm after, I'll turn on truTV.) Then Jeanne Tripplehorn was written off Criminal Minds, only to be replaced by the less talented -- but younger-skewing -- Jennifer Love Hewitt; no reason was given for Tripplehorn's departure, but her air time been shrinking for months, so you had to figure it was a network decision, dictated by the almighty demo dollar. And finally, CBS announced they were again holding Mike & Molly till midseason. You know, a loyal viewer can only take so much.