From the Archives: Seashells

Hi everyone. Still on vacation. Next week resumes with new material, but here's a bit I wrote involving one of my favorites series of all time. One of the few pieces of fan fiction, you might say, that I've ever written. Video included for context if you're not a Mass Effect fan. 

In a reality sideways from our own, some details were different about the Reaper War. Some lives that were sacrificed in our timeline were spared, and some lives spared were ended prematurely. This is one such story.

     About an hour before the last light gave up on the beaches of Nevos, Doctor Mordin Solus squatted carefully in the sand, taking an inventory. As was often the case, Solus was lost deep in thought, and muttered to himself in half-song, half scientific jargon.

I've studied species mollusk, horseshoe, and exuviae

I'm quite good at conchology as a subset of zoology

because I am an expert which I know is a tautalogy

     Mordin picked up an especially interesting specimen, an Asari mollusk that grew abnormally large in Nevos's freshwater oceans. He turned it over in his hands, his primary finger tracing the coils affectionately.

My phylogeny studies range from aquatic to agrarian

Appreciating gastropods and cephalopods and scaphopods

In short, in matters purely mollusk and crustacean, I am the very model of a...

     “Hm. Last verse...problematic. Oceanographer too long. Marine Biologist clumsy....ah!” He hissed to himself with the pleasure of finding the solution.

I am the very model of a malacologist Salarian!

     Mordin looked up, spotting the red-haired woman in Alliance blues.

“See? Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong.”

     With a barely suppressed grin, she tactfully replied, "Mordin...have you thought of learning a new song?"

Supernatural is My Little Pony for Girls

     Wait, wait, wait, come back! I can back that up. I have sound logic behind that bizarre statement, I promise!

     So some years back now, Hasbro rebooted the My Little Pony franchise for its Hub network under the supervision of animator Lauren Faust. It was full of rounded, varied female lead characters, lots of bright colors, and stories with warm and fuzzy morals. It was also pretty well written for what was supposedly targeted at such a young crowd. And despite being targeted at young girls, it caught on with older viewers of both genders.

     Some years even before that, a show called Supernatural was launched. It's a show focused around a brotherly bro-mance, hunting monsters, going on adventures, and driving around in a classic Impala listening to classic rock. It's dark, violent, and full horrific imagery. It also caught on like wildfire among the female demographic.

     On paper, each of these shows could not be more different, but the way they've been embraced by viewers and fans not only outside of their intended demographic, but the nearly polar opposite of that intended demographic, is startling. On paper, you couldn't convince me that pastel ponies having non-violent adventures would appeal to grown men, and you couldn't convince me that the bloody, bro-fueled horror adventures set to AC/DC and Kansas would be such a hit among women. Even if Sam and Dean are amongst the prettiest men on television.

     The resemblances don't stop there. We've all heard of the more questionable side of MLP fandom. The plushy with the "pocket" in the rear end. The Rule34 fan art. The people that don't make it into the brony documentaries. But the Supernatural fandom can be... well..

     So one of the main draws of the show is the brotherly chemistry between Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, and in later seasons the cameraderie between Jensen and Misha Collins's Castiel. The deeper parts of Supernatural fandom are full of slash fiction of of Sam and Dean, and the Castiel/Dean slash shippers have gotten vocal enough that Ackles himself refuses to address the issue anymore, earning him the ire of such esteemed 'news outlets' as DailyDot and pretty much half of Tumblr.

     That's not to say it's all unpleasant fandom, though. Both shows have pretty dedicated following, and some of the fan-art and music to come out of the MLP crowd is pretty impressive. There's a long running joke that the Supernatural fandom has a response gif for any situation. MLP has brought together some otherwise unpopular and awkward people and formed some friendships in the real world.

     But when it comes right down to it, these are two shows which were clearly marketed to a specific demographics that defied odds and became a hit in a completely other demographic. So, back to my original point: Supernatural is My Little Pony for girls. Makes sense now, at least to me. Is this just a pair of successes in marketing and development for the respective programs, or is it a triumph in fandoms bucking what's expected of them and showing love for something not necessarily "created for them?"

Dr Wholmes - The Final Chapter: The Exile.

     And now we come to the final installment of comparisons, where I take my premise and stretch it truly past the breaking point. The other three have been pretty clear parallels, but this one even I'll admit pushes it. If you're a Doctor Who fan but haven't seen the 50th anniversary special, you might tune out for fear of spoilers. Likewise if you're a House fan and haven't seen the finale.

     After spending who knows how long avoiding the Time War, the 8th Doctor was mortally wounded attempting to rescue a brave pilot from a crashing starship. That would have been the end of the Doctor due to the severity of his injuries, but he was recovered and aided by associates of the Time Lords. His regenerative cycle was kick-started and, for once, he was given a choice of what his next regeneration would bring.

     A warrior was then born, in fire and pain and conflict. When next we see this warrior, the War Doctor, he's been fighting so long that even his unnaturally long-lived body has worn old and worn down. He's gotten old all over again, bitter and irascible and with very little patience for anyone else, including himself. He'd reached the end of his rope, and was ready to blow it all away to destroy the world he knew in order to make a better world for everyone else. His only connection, his one longest companion, the TARDIS, the only thing to survive.

     Gregory House's life was one much of travel and study, much a background in medicine, physics, archaeology, and assorted other skills. His own personal war started with his father, an abusive military man who House never believed to be his real father. That personal war culminated in an infarction in his leg that left him crippled and in pain. When we meet him, he's very much the same bitter and irascible man, completely incapable of regular social interaction without biting sarcasm and nearly blatant attacks on anyone who engages him.

     By the time his end comes, his war has spiraled so out of control that he's alienated nearly everyone in his life, ruined his professional career, and ended up in jail, rehab, and worse. House's way out of his war, his way to make the world better for those around him, was to destroy himself, or at least fake it. Again, leaving his only connection, his one longest companion, Wilson, the only thing to survive with him.

     Because of his actions to end the Time War, the War Doctor was an exile in his own mind. Because of his actions leading up to faking his death, House was an exile to anyone in his life beyond Wilson. House was Sherlock Holmes on the day it was impossible to be Sherlock Holmes, much as the War Doctor was The Doctor on the day it was impossible to do the right thing, and perhaps they were both wearing a bit thin.

Now, I'd better leave off before I dig up another Doctor that I can connect to Batman, since I seem to be out of recent Sherlock Holmeses.

Doctor Wholmes Part the Third: The Alien

     You reach a certain point in your life where you find that you just can't relate to people anymore. At least, you do if your mind works like the subjects we've been taking a look at over the past weeks. This manifests in the most alien of incarnations that we've looked at so far: The Eleventh Doctor and Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock. On the surface, these two are nothing alike, but deep down, the similarities are striking.

     The Eleventh Doctor is a wild-man. From his manic first moments of crashing into the garden of a seven year old and demanding wide and varied foodstuff to standing down an array of assorted alien warships with a (questionably silly) shouty speech, he's non-stop movement. All gangly limbs running and jumping and licking things like a gazelle on meth marking its territory against things much bigger and meaner than him.

     Cumberlock, on the other hand, is quiet and reserved, unless he's giving a (sometimes deserved) withering tongue-lashing. He's dignified and poised (except when he's a homeless junkie). He's sane and rational (except when he's throwing a man out of a window four times for threatening a friend). He's calm and collected (except when she's concerned). Maybe those differences weren't so broad after all.

     But the main crux of my argument here is that despite all their differences, these two are the most similar of the comparisons we've looked at so far because they are so different from baseline normality. They come across as different and alien. Their minds work in a way that is utterly unfathomable to most, and they express themselves in such a way that they would stand out in nearly any crowd. They say inappropriate things not to get a rise out of people but because that seems like the logical thing to say at that particular point.

     And, while the Doctor has let people think he was dead before, Eleven is the first to fake his death on such a scale that the Universe forgot who he was (resulting in that incredibly cheesy Dalek chant of "DOCTOR WHO? DOCTOR WHO?"). Considering the Sherlocks we've looked at before, Cumberlock definitely has the more spectacular death scene, especially considering I barely remembered RDJ's at the tail end of A Game of Shadows. And finally, the Doctor gets a proper mystery in Clara Oswald. The type of mystery that Holmes would tear his hair out at.

Next time..?

Doctor Wholmes, Inter-dimensional Detective {part the first}

The Soldier

     So if there are two great institutions of British storytelling, it's Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who. Two formative memories were my mother's leather-bound, bible-paper paged copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes and my father tuning into Doctor Who, and later pulling out the VHS copies of the black and white episodes of the first and second Doctors. I don't have a clue where he got them. My dad was well-connected, and kept up with modern tech.

     As I've grown through the years, I've noticed connections that, while I'm sure they aren't completely intentional, were at least parallel between the two. Doctor Who is hardly the only, and probably not the first, to be influenced by Doyle's works, but since 2005, since the relaunch series, I've seen more and more parallels emerging. I'd like to take a look at a few of them. As much as there's been Relaunch Doctors, there's been "Relaunch Holmeses," so to speak. Of course, the order's not the same, as you'd expect when dealing with time travelers and sociopathic detectives..

     The 9th Doctor is a lonely man, fresh out of a war. War comes in many forms, and can have many different meanings to different people. Johnnie Lee Miller's Holmes, of Elementary, is a man fresh out of a war as well. His own personal war with heroin, that was born out of going to war against a criminal mastermind. He used the drugs as tools in his war, until they dulled him, broke him, and the war was over. The Doctor, just prior to regenerating into the 9th, had used tools that proved detrimental to him as well in his war, and they had broken him as well.

     Both men were desperately alone. 9 met Rose, and Holmes met Joan Watson, and after initially trying to chase them off, relented, and had a moment where you could see the honesty and pain in their eyes, where they reached out for a true connection. Angry, broken men putting themselves back together after a war.

     Both men are out of their element, with the Doctor having spent centuries under the shadow of the Time Lords and then suddenly, brutally gone, and Holmes out of London and in New York.

     Both men, when confronted with a soldier of their arch-nemeses, were prepared to go through with inhumane torture to accomplish a goal. 9 with the lone Dalek in Utah, and Holmes with "M."

     Both men have initially acerbic personalities, relying heavily on sarcasm and dry humor, sending snappy remarks over the heads of people that don't register as worth their time, but treating those who they value with the utmost respect. Once they've taken someone, say Rose or Joan Watson, under their wing, they're the greatest ally you could hope for. Both strong, both soldiers for their cause, but both tired and in a great deal of personal pain.

Next week: The Rock Star

A Few Brief Thoughts on a Series Close to My Heart.

     So, it's been a few weeks, the dust has had time to settle, and I think I've finally managed to gather up a few thoughts. Next week, maybe, a bit of guff about the anniversary shows, but this week maybe a reflection on why the relaunch series is dear to me. I have a very hard time remaining objective about Doctor Who, as it was my first immersion into Science Fiction. I lived overseas at a tender age, and that's what was on, and when I moved back to the states, it was *still* on, on PBS, at my uncle's house in Massachusetts, and on VHS tapes that I'd dig out of old boxes even years later. Even though I'd watch a Star Wars film, or stay up late to watch Star Treks TNG or DS9, it'd always be that block of PBS programming of Doctor Who and Red Dwarf that I'd look forward to the most.

   Now don't get me wrong, the classic series will always be important to me, and Sylvester McCoy will always be *my* Doctor, but the new series has resonated with me in a very personal way, and that's what I'd like to think about today. 

Image courtesy of BBC America

     The majority of fandom these days tends to overlook that rough first year of the relaunch. I don't want to think that it's because David Tennant was the first pretty Doctor of the new series, but let's face it, Tennant was the first pretty Doctor of the new series. Eccleston's wounded golem of a man appealed to me, though, as I was in the middle of a war that was near invisible to the people around me at the time, to, but took no less a toll on anyone that happened to be near enough to it. I identified with this broken, beat-up, shell of a man. Then he left.

     Tennant came in at a weird time for me, as I was still in the heart of my own personal war, but now my Doctor (my new one, at least) had left me, and been replaced by this cheerful twat (apologies, Erin, I know he's your fave) with sticky-uppy hair and pointy chin and big goofy grin. It wasn't until I'd gotten out of my bad, dark, painful place and gotten some distance that I could see that man was still hurting, he was just trying to forget it at the same time. Trying to move past what he'd been through and smile again, even if the hurt would forever be in his eyes.

     Then, just as Tennant was growing on me, his Doctor hit a wall. And I hit a wall. I spent a while pretending I was OK around the same time that Ten was out and Eleven was in. I look at Matt Smith's alien, unfamiliar face, and those ancient eyes buried in the misshapen skull of a younger man, and I see someone that's very old, very tired, but won't let the world know just how old and tired. You look around the walls of my apartment and you'll see Lego kits, action figures, posters, and electronic gadgets. Given how isolated I am from the world right now, I really do feel like I'm living in a cloud bank over olde London Towne, and I need a good mystery, but am unwilling to go look for one.

     Yeah, I definitely feel like maybe I can put some thoughts down about the anniversary shows, now that I've put some of the newer stuff in context with my own life. Be warned though, I kinda like Matt Smith better than David Tennant, I don't hate Moffat, and I'm really rather fond of River Song. More so than Captain Jack. But not by too much.