Doctor Who For Dummies: Series 4

Doctor Who - Series 4 (2008)

I've been enjoying "Doctor Who." A lot more than I initially thought that I would. It's been far from perfect and there have been a lot of growing pains in the first three series. It's easy to overlook a lot of those because of the performances of the principals, especially David Tennant's Tenth Doctor. But, things like that can only be overlooked for so long and I was a little nervous that "Doctor Who" would never live up to the potential and greatness that it sometimes showed. Then series 4 came along. It is by far the best I've seen so far and the apex of Russell T. Davies work on the series. A lot of that has to do with the stellar work done by the Doctor's newest companion, Donna Noble played by the effervescent Catherine Tate. Let's take a deep dive into series 4 of "Doctor Who."

"I Am the Night" Rewatch: "Harley and Ivy" and "Shadow of the Bat" Parts 1 & 2

Batman The Animated Series

In this post's episodes, sisters are doing it for themselves. B: TAS shifts focus to it's female characters and the results are pretty great. We get two debuts. The first is an iconic pair that continues in the comics today and a character that has become as well recognized as Batman and Robin themselves.

Comics Corner: X-Men Blue 1-6

X-Men Blue

"X-Men Blue" is the counterpart to "X-Men Gold." In case you didn't know, Beast decided to bring the five teenage original X-Men to the present. This is the third series the five original X-Men have headlined and if you haven't been following them, allow me to catch you up. These aren't you father's OG X-Men. Cyclops found out about his older selves possession by the Phoenix Force and subsequent murder of Charles Xavier and vowed to be better. Iceman came out of the closet. Angel gained fire wings. Beast started dabbling in the occult. Marvel Girl gained a power up and did some morally ambiguous things in regards to using her powers to freely read minds and manipulate people. She's working on that. In the final issue of their previous series, the X-Men returned to their own time only to find that they were still there?

In the "X-Men Prime" one shot, the OG X-Men decided to appoint Jean their team leader and strike out on their own. This is where we find them when "X-Men Blue" begins.

"I Am the Night" Rewatch: "Zatanna" and "The Mechanic"

Batman: The Animated Series

Sometimes it feels like B: TAS takes place in a vacuum. A place where no other DCU heroes exist. It's just the Dark Knight in his never ending battle with his various rogues. That's fine. The early '90's were a simpler time. There didn't need to be all the interconnectivity that we see now. But it is nice to see some familiar faces from outside the Bat universe and that's just what happens in the first episode we deal with in this post.

Comics Corner: X-Men Prime, X-Men Gold, #1-6

X-Men Gold

I've been an X-Man fan for over twenty years. I connected with them immediately when I first started watching "X-Men: The Animated Series" back in the fall of 1992. For a kid living in the country in Iowa who already knew that he wasn't like the other boys, there was something about a group of people hated and feared based solely on a genetic quirk they couldn't control that really hit home. 

It wasn't a huge leap from the cartoon to the actual comics and I still remember the first X-Men comic I bought from a spinner rack in one of our local Hy-Vees. It was "Uncanny X-Men" #303 and it prominently featured Jean Grey, my favorite character from the show and still my favorite X-Man to date. What a great first comic to pick it up. It deals with the death of Colossus' (Piotr Rasputin) sister Illyana from the deadly to mutants Legacy Virus, an AIDS like disease with no cure at the time. There's no big action scenes, just a lot of talking and it was still enough to keep a ten year old's attention. The majority of time is spent between Jean and Jubilee, at the time the youngest X-Man, talking about the helplessness one feels when confronted with the death of a loved one. It's so good and if you are a comic fan or an X-Man fan, I'd really advise tracking down a copy. 

Thanks for allowing me to wax poetic, but my point is that I've followed the X-Men pretty faithfully from then until now. Through the good (Grant Morrison's run, Joss Whedon's run), the bad (the majority of the '90's and early '00's) and the indifferent (the majority of the '00's). Marvel loves to reinvent and restart and the X-Men are not immune to that. After a war with the Inhumans, the less said about that the better, the X-Men went back to their roots. They split the team into two, Blue and Gold, a call back to the early '90's, put two prolific X-Women into leadership roles for the first time and let them loose.

In today's comics corner, we'll take a look at the first six issues of X-Men Gold.

"I Am the Night" Rewatch: "Mudslide" and "Paging the Crime Doctor"

Batman: The Animated Series

There are a lot of great things about B: TAS. We've talked about a lot of them, but one thing I haven't mentioned is how it was willingly to use some of it's villains sparingly. Sure we get a lot of episodes with the Joker, but when a villain has a particularly impactful debut, the show isn't afraid to give that character some breathing room. A great example of this is Mr. Freeze. We are over fifty episodes in and he's only been seen once. The same can be said for Clayface. Well, it could be until the first episode we deal with in this blog post.

"I Am the Night" Rewatch: "Off Balance" and "The Man Who Killed Batman"

Batman: The Animated Series

One of the many great things about B: TAS is the inspiration it takes from the source material. The writers of the show aren't afraid to take classic Batman tales from the comics and adapt them to fit the format of the show. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the show's introductions to the al Ghul's, the first of which we meet in the first episode this post deals with.