Star Trek: Discovery Opening Credits

CBS has released the opening credits for Star Trek: Discovery. Catch the premiere tonight.



This version should work outside the US/Canada

Prepare for launch. #StarTrekDiscovery pic.twitter.com/my33EodVGZ

— Star Trek: Discovery (@StarTrekNetflix) September 24, 2017

Luke Cage Opening Credits

Netflix has posted what I'm assuming is the opening credits for Luke Cage. It's either that or a weird teaser. All episodes will be available in about 13 hours, 40 minutes.

Justice may be blind, but tomorrow it becomes unbreakable. #LukeCage pic.twitter.com/srR5H7FskR

— Luke Cage (@LukeCage) September 29, 2016

Jessica Jones Title Sequence

Marvel has released the title sequence for the Jessica Jones series. Catch all episodes tonight at midnight Pacific Time.

The wait's almost over. A little something to get you through the next twelve hours. #JessicaJones https://t.co/CLroWR3xHu

— Jessica Jones (@JessicaJones) November 19, 2015

Fan Fiction Review

Chuck is apparently still alive. Mind you, we didn't actually see him die. He vanished into thin air during Swan Song, then Kevin was activated as a new prophet two years later. According to Castiel, there can only be one active prophet at a time, so something must have happened to Chuck. A lot of fans would like to believe that Chuck is actually God and activated Kevin after he got tired of being a prophet. If he is here and is still a prophet, then that solves the prophet problem I mentioned in previous episodes. That problem is that Castiel needs his grace back (or a brand new one) and the instructions on where to get it are stored in the angel tablet. Of course, only prophets can read the tablets. The other problem is that the tablet is in a millions pieces, though it was previously shown to be easily reparable.

The writers actually mentioned Adam for the first time in about five seasons. After he got locked in hell, they basically just forgot about him. The brothers never mentioned him or made any attempt to rescue him, even when they were trying to get Sam's soul out of the same cage. What happens now is anyone's guess. Sam and Dean probably aren't willing to risk letting Lucifer out just to rescue a half-brother they barely knew. If there's a way of getting him out without throwing the doors wide open, then they may be willing to try that. The other problem is that Sam's soul was severely damaged after just a few months being tortured by Lucifer. Imagine what Adam's going to be like after five years. Also his body had been abused by two of the most powerful beings in the cosmos, so it's probably not in much better shape. Even a fully-healed Cas may not be able to restore Adam's mind and body back to its pre-cage state.

I really like the credits montage at the beginning of the episode. The director actually managed to work it into the plot line. I'm not sure, but I believe they had not only all ten regular credits, but all the special credits as well. These were the credits from the Christmas special, the Western, the black and white one, Meta Fiction, and a few others. The fact that they included all these is not only incredibly cool (and highly giffable), but a real tribute to the past 199 episodes.

They also brought up Destiel and Wincest in this episode. Dean seemed genuinely disgusted by Wincest and Sam even suggest Samstiel. Does he actually want to hook up with Cas? Do they both want to hook up with him in a three-way? Would Cas even be open to it or just terribly confused? I think he would do whatever he could to help the Winchesters but would be confused as to why that required sex.

Deep Breath Review

Overall, I thought this was a great introduction to both the new series and Peter's Doctor. However, The Eleventh Hour will still be my favorite.

Steven has at least partway fulfilled his promise to explain Peter's multiple past appearances in the show. The Doctor recognized his face and knew he had seen it before. His conversation with the Half-Faced Man in the restaurant while holding the plate showed how neither of them really knew where they had gotten their face from. It also does seem to suggest that the face does come from somewhere. We already know that besides the Doctor, there are other Colin Bakers and Patrick Troughtons (and I think William Hartnells) out there in that universe. So there could be another Matt Smith or Christopher Eccleston as well.

Clara seems to have developed as a character since The Name of the Doctor. Back in series 7b, there were a fair number of fans complaining how she was two-dimensional and not very well developed. In Day and Time, we got to see some aspects of her personal life and family. Having seen the next four episodes, I can confirm that there will be more of this. Also, the description for episode 9 seems to suggest that it is Doctor-lite.

Finally, the mystery of the woman in the shop was addressed. To recap, all the way back in The Bells of Saint John, Clara was given the TARDIS phone number by a woman describing it as the "best helpline in the universe". Some fans speculated it was River Song, however since Clara has now met her, she would have simply said that it was River when the Doctor asked her. Since she did not, it implies that someone else gave her the number. Whether or not it was the same person who put the ad in the newspaper remains to be seen.

This episode gives us the definite beginnings of a story-arc. I thought the arc for this season would center around Gallifrey. It might still relate back to that, but Moffat seems to be intent on introducing a brand new character in the form of the Gatekeeper of the Nethersphere (aka Missy). When I say "brand new", I mean brand new to us, since she appears to already know the Doctor. Unless, of course, she is actually the Black Guardian. I've got an entire conspiracy theory as to how the White Guardian was involved in The End of Time, so it makes sense to introduce the Black as well.

The opening credits were fantastic. I really liked the clock theme. The problem I have is that it's not been that long since the credits last changed. Back in 2012, if Moffat knew Matt was leaving soon, he should have kept the credits the same until Matt left. Either that, or start switching the credits out when the companion leaves instead of the Doctor. I just think two shifts in as many years is too many. The other thing is that they use the credits in-show to display the time vortex. So whenever they change the credits, the vortex changes appearance, too. Some phenomenon of nature isn't going to just randomly change appearance like that.

Someone in the 51st century has a thing for pre-revolutionary French women. Probably Captain Jack. The question is, why are they staffing their ships with homicidal robots? The robots seem more intent that the ship reaches its destination than that the crew does. The first parts for the Marie Antoinette probably came from its crew, much like the Madame de Pompadour. Also, if you have sophisticated temporal engines, why are you making mechanical droids? Why not build a complex electronic one (like Data from Star Trek)? One possible explanation is that someone was trying to build a large fleet of ships to search the cosmos for the Promised Land. It wasn't that important that the crew return home, just that someone transmit the information. The mechanical droids originated from stretching resources out as far as possible.

This episode also saw the Doctor drawing some chalk scribbles. They featured rather prominently in both some promo shots and the script for episode 4. It appears the Doctor transferred them from Vastra's floor onto the new chalkboards in the TARDIS. I'm guessing he's trying to complete the calculations that were done in The Day of the Doctor.

Moffat on Title Sequence

Viewers at the screenings have previously confirmed that the series 8 title sequence is based on the work of Billy Henshaw. Steven Moffat has now come forward to explain how that came about.

Our beautiful new title sequence — it’s absolutely stunning — is from an online Doctor Who fan. Billy Hanshaw just decided to make a Doctor Who title sequence and put it up on YouTube. I happened across it and thought it was the only new idea for a Doctor Who title sequence since 1963. We got in touch and decided we were going to do that one.

I suppose when we talk about Doctor Who fandom online, that’s what we should be talking about. We should be talking about the extraordinary creative response. We give them a show and they give us the show back, sometimes better. That’s cementing. There’s something magical about Doctor Who that makes some of the people actually want to do it.

Source

Doctor Who Future Continuity - Revision 3

It's been a long time since I've done one of these posts. Basically, I try to predict the future of the show based on nothing more than precedence, fan theories, and pure speculation.

Clara certainly won't last past the end of series 9. It's more likely she'll leave at the end of series 8, unless they try to go for Amy's extended length. Most companions don't last more than about one or two seasons, with the exceptions of Amy, Tegan, Sarah Jane, and a few others. Both series 8 and 9 are set to be full runs, so there won't be split in the middle where they could replace the companion. The only way I see Clara leaving the middle of a season is if the Doctor picks up a new companion prior and they have two companions for a while. That way, we get a transitional period before Clara leaves the TARDIS.

Steven's end is a bit harder to predict. He'll likely leave once he runs out of story arc, but I can't tell whether that will be at the end of series 8 or 9. The current story arc of finding Gallifrey is likely to only last one season. The only question is what that will lead into. If it has any sort of cliffhanger, then it's likely Steven will write the conclusion. If Gallifrey's return simply kicks open the door to a whole new world of possibilities, then Steven will likely step down and let someone else takeover. Unless of course, he's hell-bent on being lead scriptwriter forever.

Peter will definitely outlast Jenna. I don't see him being a one-companion Doctor like Chris was. If Matt and David are anything to go on, he'll likely last until the end of season 10, then do a couple specials. If Steven leaves at the end of series 9, then there's a small possibility that they'll step down together. However, I doubt they'll do a complete reset like they did in 2010.

As for the opening credits and TARDIS interior, it's definitely too soon to change them. We've hardly had them for a year, and that's not even a complete season. On top of that, the credits weren't even featured in The Day of the Doctor. The sonic screwdriver on the other hand, is long overdue for a change. I'm predicting we'll get a new one in the very first episode of series 8.

Agree or disagree? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below.

The Day of the Doctor Review

First of all, let me say, that was amazing. The Day of the Doctor has been anticipated for years now, and I think I can safely say that it lived up to its expectations.

This episode is another reminder of rule 1: Moffat lies. He said that he'd never do a Time War story and that there were no classic Doctors involved in the 50th. He also said that Capaldi wouldn't appear until Christmas. All of those proved to be lies. We finally got to see the war in something more than flashbacks. What's more is that we got to see how it all ended, which is what I think a lot of us have wanted to see ever since we heard that it was the Doctor who was responsible for it. Both Tom Baker and Paul McGann made appearances (see Night of the Doctor for McGann) and archive footage was used for all of the classic Doctors. We also got to see our first glimpse of the next Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi.

A lot of people expected Capaldi to make an appearance, however, I think most of them were thinking that we would see the regeneration. Instead, something happened that's never happened before in Doctor Who history. A future Doctor made an appearance before the current Doctor regenerated into him. We didn't see much of Peter (just his eyes, forehead, and one hand), but it was enough to get most of us (myself included) excited for his arrival. I personally didn't anticipate Peter being in the episode, I thought Moffat would stick to his word about him arriving at Christmas. In retrospect, especially considering Jenna's surprise appearance in Asylum, I really should have seen this coming.

We actually got to see the War Doctor regenerate. I thought during that scene we would get a few seconds worth of Christopher Eccleston, but we didn't. I had been hoping for a while that they were pulling a ruse and he would make an appearance. On the other hand, this leaves the door open for another surprise regeneration between Hurt and Eccleston. I doubt the writers will pull the same trick twice, but you never know what they will do in the future.

I for one, was hoping that we would get to see Rose Tyler and Tentoo from the parallel universe. I was thoroughly convinced that Rose was the woman in the shop who gave Clara the Doctor's phone number (with a bit of information from Tentoo). I also thought we would get a repeat of the Bad Wolf omen from Turn Left, which would alert the Doctor that something was up. I wasn't disappointed, though. We finally got to see the long-discussed relationship between the Doctor and Queen Elizabeth I, including the circumstances of their marriage. This does raise interesting questions about whether the Doctor has any claims to the throne. However, given Elizabeth's hatred of him in The Shakespeare Code (which I believe indicates some sort of divorce) and his exile by Victoria, I think it's safe to say he doesn't. I really liked Billie's portrayal of the Moment. She was brilliant, quirky, and just a tiny bit mad. I'm not sure how a galaxy-eating weapon has the power to open up time fissures. I think it might have something to do with the fact that she was in the form of the Bad Wolf. I am beginning to worry, though, that the writers are developing a bit of a sexy wooden box fetish (see The Doctor's Wife).

The director has apparently forgotten that the phone on the TARDIS door is a fake. At least two times (in The Empty Child and The Bells of Saint John) it was stated that it was a pretend phone, as it wasn't actually hooked up to a telephone line. It was only accessible through either an om-com or by dialing a special number than required intricate knowledge of the TARDIS (something only a Time Lord would know). Twice in this episode the Doctor used it as a regular phone. The second time, there was no real reason to since there's a perfectly fine one inside.

I guess we didn't get to see the Doctor and Clara's escape from the Doctor's timeline. They appeared to be trapped there at the end of The Name of the Doctor, since the fissure they jumped through appeared to close. It's just one of those false cliffhanger endings where the writers come up with a quick and easy way out of a situation (in this case by not showing it at all).

The nods to An Unearthly Child at the beginning were brilliant. It was one of those things where if you weren't paying attention for a minute, you would've missed them. All there was was a sign for I.M. Foreman's junkyard (where the TARDIS was originally parked) and a sign saying Coal Hill Secondary School (where Susan attended class). Not only that, but the Chairman of the Governors was none other than Ian Chesterton. This seemed to go against what Sarah Jane said in The Death of the Doctor about there being two professors at Cambridge named Ian and Barbara Chesterton who hadn't aged since the sixties. However, he could have simply had a career change after a more lucrative opportunity showed up.

I always sort of knew that Gallifrey wouldn't be gone forever. I figured that with something that important to the show gone, it was the perfect opportunity for a cliffhanger ending where they bring it back. Especially with the show having the potential to go on for years, some future writer would dare to reverse the consequences of the Time War. This goes with what Steven Moffat said about The Day of the Doctor looking towards the future and reinventing the show. With the Time Lords back, the show is different than it has been for the past eight years. The Doctor can now go seek out his people and return them to the waking universe. This is probably going to tie heavily into Peter's story arc. I feel like he's going to spend series 8 trying to find Gallifrey and bring it back and the rest of his time dealing with the consequences of not being the last Time Lord anymore (another trial anyone?). The brilliant thing about the way Moffat did it, is that is doesn't interfere with the rest of the new series. The Doctor (except for the current one) doesn't remember saving Gallifrey. He thinks it was wiped out at his hand and that he's the last Time Lord, when in reality, they're just in a parallel universe. The current Doctor is the only one who knows this, and he can now deal with that fact.

It appears Moffat decided to advance the Zygon's technology a bit. In Terror of the Zygons, the humans whose identity was being stolen had to be kept in a special booth in order for the Zygons to use their body print. In the event a Zygon was killed, the link was broken and the human was freed from the booth. In this story, it appears the Zygons have enhanced themselves so they can impersonate any human. The only condition is that the human needs to be kept alive, but not in some special chamber. It possible that the chamber was only used to keep the humans in a drugged, unconscious state, rather creating some sort of signal from them.

You can definitely see how much more mature the War Doctor is compared to 10 and 11. He wasn't having any of that silly gobbledegook with "timey-wimey" and "geronimo" and he actually got that the sonic screwdriver, is just that, a screwdriver. I don't know whether it was because the war hardened him or because he was a naturally more mature Doctor, but he had a very no-nonsense attitude towards life. It might also be just that 10 and 11 are simply sillier Doctors.

I'm glad they decided to do epic credits, like they did in Journey's End. I was hoping for a reprise of the series 7.2 theme song with all of the main characters' names squashed in there. Instead we got the first Doctor's theme song and the cast overlaid onto the main picture. At first, I thought something had gone wrong and they were accidentally transmitting the wrong picture. It didn't help that the beginning was black and white. The way the actors' names were overlaid onto the episode itself, rather than the time vortex reminds me of the way movies do it, where they don't actually have an opening sequence like TV shows do. They just have a title card and the actors, producers, and director's names on a non-important sequence, like a landscape or some dark alley. I guess The Day of the Doctor is supposed to be a cinema quality event, seeing as it's 76 minutes long, shot in 3D, and shown in theaters.

The Snowmen Review

The Snowmen may just be my favorite Christmas Special yet, although The End of Time gives it a real run for its money.

The meeting of Clara and the Doctor was very innocent, much more so than most other companions' first meetings with the Doctor. After their initial conversation about the snowman outside the bar, Clara could have easily just gone back inside and not ever seen the Doctor again. Most people would have thought nothing of a conversation like the one she had with the Doctor, but not her. Her curiosity was too strong to be put down by the simple conversation they had. She wasn't content not knowing how that snowman got there and what this mysterious man's name was. It really speaks volumes about her curiosity and strong will.

The new TARDIS interior is awesome. It's circular again like Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant's TARDIS, only it's cylindrical instead of domed. Also, they've taken the long-standing up-and-downy thingy and replaced it with a spinny thingy. I'm not sure what I think of the spinning movement, but I'm willing to let them try it out and see how awesome or not awesome it is. There ought to be some special function of the TARDIS that causes the writing on the central column to light up with the same greenish light that's coming up from around the bottom. I'm don't know what that function would be, other than that it's some new function we haven't seen yet. There's more hexagons on the new interior, which always remind me of the classic series interior, except those were circles.

The new opening credits amazed and delighted me. I was afraid that they would be too much classic series and not enough new series. Thankfully, they still had the TARDIS flying around, which is the main thing that separates classic from new intros (except Sylvester McCoy's intro). The music has many elements from the classic series, borrowing from many different Doctors. Also, who can forget Matt Smith's face embedded in the nebula? I like how his face was part of the nebula, rather than a completely separate element from the background like in the classic series. I cannot wait to see how the opening credits look next November with several different Doctor's faces (although they may only do Matt Smith's, as he's the primary Doctor) and the names of a dozen different actors and actresses flying through there.

All of the actors and actresses did a spot-on job. All their roles were very believable, nothing was boring or old, and there was just the right amount of humor. I only wish we had seen more of Dr. Simeon and Capt. Latimer. I was kinda looking forward to seeing what role Captain Latimer played in the episode, and was rather disappointed that we didn't see much of him or Doctor Simeon. The main focus of the episode seemed to be on the Doctor and Clara, which it should be seeing as they're the main characters, but there should be just a little bit more attention paid to the other characters, as well.

New Opening Credit Sequence

Someone finally posted them to YouTube.

New Credit Sequence

According to Den of Geek's review, there's going to be a brand-new credit sequence starting Christmas. Apparently, it's going to be more similar to the classic series opening credits, which seems to suggest less TARDIS-flying-through-the-time-vortex and possibly the Doctor's face in the middle of the whole thing.

New Logo For Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

The BBC website now features a new logo for this week's episode, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.

The rest of the Official Doctor Who website has switched to a red and green theme, too. Their Twitter has also changed color accordingly.

I'm just wondering if the time vortex is going to be red in the second part of the title sequence.