So Good, But So Bad: "Doomsday"

 Our favorite episode of Doctor Who is the one called "Doomsday," wherein the Daleks and the Cybermen battle it out for control of the Earth.We cannot even describe the awesomeness of this battle. Two robotic species with mechanical voices, shouting "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" and "Delete! Delete!" as they shoot lasers at each other? Don't even get us started. It is amazing. It is hilarious. It is brilliant and full of things exploding. (Sidenote, gentlemen: We love explosions and spent all day watching the World Cup. Remind us why we're still single?)

Our least favorite episode of Doctor Who is the one called "Doomsday," wherein the Doctor and Rose Tyler are separated forever. We cannot even describe the sadness it causes. We, who never cry at movies or television shows, ever; we, who did not shed a single tear during Titanic, when everyone around us was sniffling and sobbing ... we tear up EVERY TIME we watch this episode. (Okay, maybe that's why we're still single. Who cries at science fiction?)

We think it's rather unfortunate that these two episodes are the same. On the one hand, it is PURE AWESOMENESS; on the other hand, it is the end of an era for Doctor Who. Rose Tyler is our faaaaavorite (although Amy Pond is definitely giving her a run for her money. Man, we love Amy Pond). The first episodes of Doctor Who we ever watched were from season 3, with Martha Jones. We loved Martha Jones ... until we met Rose. Martha's okay, we guess, but she's not Rose. Every episode involves her being clueless for, like, twenty very important minutes before she FINALLY figures out what's going on. And she's kind of whiny. Mostly, though, we just feel sorry for her because she so desperately wants the Doctor's love and he's all hung up on Rose (as we all are). So not only does the best episode of this show involve the end of Rose Tyler, it also signals the beginning of the Doctor's lackluster partnership/rebound with Martha. It totally kills the hilarious alien robot battle vibe.

And this episode had such potential.

Sidenote: Who wants to buy us those action figures?

Image from starstore.com.

HeroesPWN

OMG, y'all, the Heroes writers totally read our post! We just watched the season finale (okay, we're still watching it right now, we just couldn't wait to write this) and we are impressed.

A while ago, io9 wrote a post about how to fix Heroes. Sidenote: What is up with ZQ's eyebrows? They look like they're made of plastic.

Back to reality. The first thing io9 recommended was the deaths of Hiro Nakamura, Sylar, and Noah Bennett. The writers paid about fifty percent attention to this suggestion. Not only did Noah and Hiro not die, but their combined abilities - Noah's man-with-the-plan-itude and Hiro's ability to transport people - saved the day! Hiro's heroics are good for two reasons: one, we love him; and two, we were getting bored of his powers being all wonky. Sylar will never die. We here at SRSBZNZ have made our peace with that. Whatever. ZQ is good looking, so we guess we'll put up with him.

The first thing SRSBZNZ recommended: treat each season as its own, mostly separate, entity, like a real comic book. This finale TOTALLY DID THAT. Samuel was defeated - in a sort of anticlimactic way, granted - and the cliffhanger ending was enough to keep us interested (well, interested in the sense that we can't seem to stop watching this show even though it's kind of lame) without trying to carry over any already-meandering storylines.

Right now, SRSBZNZ is winning the Ways to Fix Heroes Contest with one point, while io9 trails with no points. Go us!

However, io9 earns half a point by recommending that Claire Bennett become the villain, which she sort of did. So you know how Samuel was going to tell the whole world about the heroes, or "specials," as they now seem to be called? Well, he failed. Sad face. But then Claire was mad at her dad for thinking that "specials" (This Week's Special: A Dude With X-Ray Vision! Only $99.95, for a Limited Time Only!) couldn't coexist openly with normal people, so she jumped off the top of one of the carnival rides in front of a bunch of news cameras. We don't think that makes her a villain, but it definitely could have negative repercussions for our favorite specials.

Now that we're reading our post, we have to take half a point away from ourselves for also recommending that Sylar get killed off. In our own defense, since this is OUR blog, we had, at that point, mostly realized that Sylar was immortal, but were not quite ready to let go of the idea that he could be written out of the show. We've since come to terms.

Final score:
SRSBZNZ: 0.5.
io9: 0.5
Heroes: 1, for not failing at season 4.

Caprica What?!

... No, really. We spent about half of this two-hour premiere asking ourselves what was going on. Pilots are always like that, though, so fear not, clever readers! We'll be watching this week, too. (Okay, so we're a little late on the review. Blame it on the fact that we have a life. Also, we don't get paid for this. Show us the money and we'll talk about timely reviews.)

Okay, so first of all, props to whomever hired Ann Number One from Arrested Development to play main character Zoe Graystone. Props taken from whomever named her "Graystone," because we will always think, "By the power of Greyskull!" whenever we see her or her parents.

Now, you might be wondering about the premise of this show. Zoe, she of the Power of Greyskull, is all computer genius-y and involved in some kind of weird avatar world where everybody is TOTALLY FREAKIN' CRAZY and people are, like, shooting each other and sacrificing virgins, and engaging in all sorts of despicable behavior. But Zoe and her friends are trying to undermine that avatar world (we think?) because they believe in some sort of monotheistic - and, apparently, to everyone else on Caprica, crazy - religion. But then Zoe goes and gets herself blown up.

You may think the show ends there, but no! Because the two hours are not up yet, we discover that Zoe's avatar survived. Because she is a computer genius and created an avatar that couldn't die, we don't know, whatever. The point of all this is to get to the part about her dad. Her dad finds out about this surviving avatar, and because he's all computer genius-y, tries to make it into a Real Boy, like Pinocchio, except it's actually a girl. Duh. What, did you think this show was about wooden puppets?

Anyways, Zoe's dad makes friends with this guy from our mom's favorite show, Da Vinci's Inquest, which is some kind of Canadian answer to Law and Order, except with more of a serial plotline. So this dude, who is from a planet called Tauron, where apparently everyone eats dirt (no they don't), has just lost his wife and daughter. Zoe's dad is all like, I WILL BRING YOUR DAUGHTER BACK TO LIFE IN THE AVATAR WORLD! and then he does, but the daughter is like, um, no thank you, this is weird, because my REAL self is dead. So we're not really sure how this Tauron dude is going to continue to fit in the plot, but he got so much screen time during the pilot that we know he's important.

Finally, because we're sure you're ready for this recap to just end already - we know we are - the icing on the cake: Zoe's dad has created this robot that looks just like Megatron, only smaller, and he tries to transfer Zoe's avatar into it, but it doesn't work ... except it DOES!!!!!! The episode ends with Zoe's voice speaking out of the tiny - well, tiny by comparison, anyway - Megatron, asking her friend for help.

Um, hi. We love any pilot episode that ends with a girl-robot asking someone for help. Because it's ridiculous. And since you don't know us too well, internetz, we love ridiculous.

Our one complaint about this show is that their favorite swear word is apparently "frak." In case you're not an avid 30 Rock watcher like us, that's their favorite fake swear word. When someone calls someone else a "frakkin' dirt eater," we cannot hold it together. It sounds ridiculous - but not the good kind of ridiculous, the kind where you're like, really? You couldn't come up with a better swear word? Really. What the frak were you thinking?!

 

Images from Oh Mars, Share of Voice,  and Geek Sugar