Waiting on Wednesday

Waiting on Wednesday is a blog meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine to highlight upcoming books.

This week's WoW selection is:

The Falconer by Elizabeth May

Release Date: (UK publication September 19, 2013; US publication approx May, 2014)
Publisher: Gollancz (UK); Chronicle (US)
Pages: 368

Heiress. Debutant. Murderer. A new generation of heroines has arrived.

Edinburgh, Scotland, 1844

18-year-old Lady Aileana Kameron, the only daughter of the Marquess of Douglas, was destined to a life carefully planned around Edinburgh’s social events – right up until a faery kills her mother.

Now it’s the 1844 winter season. Between a seeming endless number of parties, Aileana slaughters faeries in secret. Armed with modified percussion pistols and explosives, every night she sheds her aristocratic facade and goes hunting. She’s determined to track down the faery who murdered her mother, and to destroy any who prey on humans in the city’s many dark alleyways.

But she never even considered that she might become attracted to one. To the magnetic Kiaran MacKay, the faery who trained her to kill his own kind. Nor is she at all prepared for the revelation he’s going to bring. Because Midwinter is approaching, and with it an eclipse that has the ability to unlock a Fae prison and begin the Wild Hunt.

A battle looms, and Aileana is going to have to decide how much she’s willing to lose – and just how far she’ll go to avenge her mother’s murder.

I hesitated at first to list this title because of the uncertain US release date-- but I love the description too much not to share. I hope I don't actually have to wait a year to read this!

Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." -- Trailer 1

Yay for the return of Agent Coulson!

TV: Doctor Who 2009 Specials

By “Journey’s End”, it had been announced that both Russell T. Davies and David Tennant were leaving Doctor Who.  But nobody (apart from them and Stephen Moffat) knew what form that was going to take.  What the public did know was that “Journey’s End” had a happy ending in which the Doctor survived and dropped all of his companions off on Earth and alternate Earth.  Would the Doctor take on a new companion at the last minute intended for his next incarnation?

Not so much.  Instead, the story took a page from “The Deadly Assassin”’s book and gave the Doctor some time on his own.  Some who count companions would argue that that this “season” has as many as five companions.  I would say that that’s completely ridiculous unless you’re going to count every guest star in every episode as a companion.  Only Wilf arguably counts as a companion, and he’s pretty much Earthbound throughout his tenure in Doctor Who, even if you count his appearance in the 1960s.

I call these the “2009 Specials”, but actually, of the 5 specials, only 3 of them were actually in 2009.  This period started on December 25, 2008 and continued until January 1st, 2010, so forgive me if I extend 2009 by seven days for the sake of simplicity.  These specials are “The Next Doctor”, “Planet of the Dead”, “Waters of Mars” and “The End of Time”.  They were aired on Christmas, Easter, November, Christmas, and New Years, respectively (the end of time was aired in two parts).  And they were not very good.

“The Next Doctor” is definitely my favorite of the bunch, my primary complaints being that it had too much time to slow the pacing down (each of the specials is fifteen minutes longer than the average episode, save “The End of Time Part 2”, which is thirty) and that it would have worked better with a seasoned companion for the Doctor to work off of.  The premise is no less functional than the average episode, save the fact that the entire special was a trick set up by Russell T. Davies to trick the audience into thinking that the Doctor was regenerating into David Morrissey.

The premise of “The Next Doctor” is a Cybermen invasion of Victorian England.  It features a steampunk interpretation of the TARDIS (a hot air balloon) and of a giant mech created by the Cybermen.  The titular “Next Doctor” is a man who, following a traumatic break with reality, had thirty seasons of Doctor Who downloaded into his brain in a single day, and that’s never meant to happen.  Convinced he was the Doctor, he built a TARDIS (in this case, “Tethered Aerial Release Developed In Style”), took on a companion (Rosita) and fought the Cybermen.  There are plenty of things to nit-pick about this episode, sure, but ultimately it’s an average episode of Doctor Who that’s main fault was trying to be an extra long special.

“Planet of the Dead”, the Easter special, is thoroughly forgettable.  The story features a wormhole, a cat burglar, stingray monsters that the Doctor doesn’t care about as long as they don’t get to Earth, and is filmed in Dubai because there are no deserts with better politics to give the BBC’s business to.  Christina is the standout element of the episode, but as the Doctor’s not in the mood to travel with a companion, she’s left behind and forgotten, removing all trace of this special except for a psychic’s premonition of someone knocking four times.  This leads to a lot of people knocking and banging on things for the rest of 2009.

The November special, “The Waters of Mars”, is by far the most popular of these stories in my experience.  It’s an interesting story, and probably the worst thing about it is the way that the next special lops off the better part of the ending, leaving the worse part of it to be the part that sticks.  That “worse part” is the idea that there are absolutely no consequences to deciding you’re going to disregard the laws of time because the people who usually guard them are dead.  The Doctor realizes that this idea is going a bit too far at the end, but as I mentioned, the next special throws that part out the window.

The story proper of “Mars” is the Doctor being trapped into what this era refers to as a “fixed point”, an event that is so entrenched in time that the fabric of the universe would be warped if something actually managed to change it (which is supposed to be impossible, especially since a Time Lord’s deepest instinct is to keep all time travelers far away from them).  The last time the Doctor found himself at a fixed point, he ended up causing the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii.  Needless to say, he’s not eager to repeat the experience, yet for some reason he stays and interferes.

In the midst of this, a parasitic outbreak is threatening the crew.  Interestingly, the idea of “the potential of infection outweighs the need of the survivors” is never brought up, though at least the crew of scientists on Mars do their best to isolate the source of the infection and ensure that nobody infected has a chance of escape.  I imagine there’d be a lot less drama if Captain Brooke had simply declared escape to be out of the question thirty minutes into the episode.

The episode ends with an Ood telling him “something bad is going to happen”, which leads us into the next episode.  “The End of Time” is a story that is so dramatic that it didn’t bother me the first time, when everything was a mystery, but subsequent viewings have shown it to be less than a quality story.

The Master was believed to be killed, but unbeknownst to the Doctor he became a disembodied consciousness.  He goes on to possess Eric Roberts, and wait, actually, that’s a better TV movie than this one.  It does provide some kind of precedent for this sort of event, however, as the Master survived in the form of a ring with Gallifreyan writing on it.  Here is where I would normally comment on the technology and how clever or stupid various characters were in relation to its use, however, it’s treated as a magic artifact that requires a magic ritual in order to conjure up a new John Simm.  The ritual is interrupted, which results in the Master being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, shoot lightning from his hands, become a spooky and/or comical skeleton for brief periods of time, and become a speed eater for reasons that may or may not have been entirely the result of a directing mistake.

By bringing the Master back to the series so quickly, several problems are brought to light.  One is the fact that every time John Simm is on screen, he’s knocking four times.  Really, the titles for “The End of Time Part 1” and “Part 2”, and “The Sound of Drums” and “Last of the Time Lords” could have been switched with their respective alternates and nobody would have noticed.   If you didn’t like John Simm’s Master because he’s so over the top, you’ll hate him here, where the most over acted scene of “The Sound of Drums” doesn’t hold a candle to the most subtle scene he appears in here.  If you liked him in the “Sound of Drums” two-parter... again, the most over the top scene of that story is more subtle than his most subtle scene here.  If you didn’t like the Doctor wanting to travel the universe with one of the most notorious mass murderers in all of time and space, well, at least that idea has less screen time here than Bernard Cribbins gathering everybody old enough to have bought tickets to his first Doctor Who appearance together to scour London for the Doctor, because a mysterious person who may or may not have been either Susan or Romana said that he may return.

On top of that, this story gives us Rassilon reduced from a wise immortal to a raving lunatic (as are most of the Time Lords by this point), and the Doctor convinced that his regeneration (which takes ages) is going to mean the end of the world.  I defend this scene by saying it’s a nod to the arrogance and the Superman complex that the Tenth Doctor has developed, and that radiation poisoning isn’t instant... but those are shallow defenses of a scene where the failsafe of a nuclear device is “if somebody else enters, the person about to die may leave”.  The Doctor is right to complain about that scene- the only reason such a device could possibly exist in this movie is if it’s placed there specifically for the purpose of forcing him to regenerate.  Even though it gives him time to take several trips in the TARDIS to visit all of his friends.  It’s a shame the Doctor doesn’t have the ability to force lethal amounts of radiation into his shoe or something.

Altogether, this “season” is almost definitely the least entertaining and least intelligent thing that Russell T. Davies has contributed to this universe.  The sole purpose these specials exist is to foreshadow and then follow through with David Tennant’s regeneration, which to me translates as a sacrifice of five hours of pointless, largely forgettable television that is completely driven by plot convenience, for the sake of “Journey’s End” having a happy ending.  It’s doubly a shame when you realize that Dalek stories in the past have had about a 50% chance of getting rid of either a Doctor or a companion.  It would have been fitting for Davros’s first on-screen appearance in decades, ending a Dalek-heavy run of the show, would give Davros his first victory over the Doctor.  “Journey’s End” could have been the “Logopolis” of the new series, completely skipping the need for these specials.  Both the episode and the show would have been better for them, and maybe fans of this era wouldn’t have quite so much to defend.

Waiting on Wednesday- "Apocalypse Cow" by Michael Logan

Waiting on Wednesday is a blog meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine to highlight upcoming titles.

This week's WoW selection is:

Apocalypse Cow by Michael Logan
Publisher: St. Martin Griffin
Date: May 21, 2013
Pages: 352

If you think you've seen it all -- WORLD WAR Z, THE WALKING DEAD-- you haven't seen anything like this. From the twisted brain of Michael Logan comes Apocalypse Cow, a story about three unlikely heroes who must save Britain . . . from a rampaging horde of ZOMBIE COWS!

Forget the cud. They want blood.

It began with a cow that just wouldn't die. It would become an epidemic that transformed Britain's livestock into sneezing, slavering, flesh-craving four-legged zombies.

And if that wasn't bad enough, the fate of the nation seems to rest on the shoulders of three unlikely heroes: an abattoir worker whose love life is non-existent thanks to the stench of death that clings to him, a teenage vegan with eczema and a weird crush on his maths teacher, and an inept journalist who wouldn't recognize a scoop if she tripped over one.

As the nation descends into chaos, can they pool their resources, unlock a cure, and save the world?

Three losers.
Overwhelming odds.
One outcome . . .

Yup, we're screwed.

Oh my god. Zombie cows? And that title- I'd pick this for the name alone. 

"Ender's Game" Trailer

Pepper Potts: Heroine of Iron Man 3

Every once in a while, a trailer will convince somebody to watch a film they otherwise wouldn’t have seen. The premise sounded boring, but the trailer promises action. The name was lame, but it actually looks pretty cool when you see some clips. Or in this case, the Iron Man films were all mediocre films with some comedy, uninteresting action and an intentionally unlikable protagonist, that finally decided to put out an honest to god action flick.

I’m not what you’d call a big “action movie” person. I’ve never seen a James Bond movie, nor a Bruce Willis movie that wasn’t an M. Night Shyamalan drama. When I watch action films, it’s generally for the Sci-Fi aspects, like Terminator, or because they’re more martial art films than what’s generally considered to be action. There are even some action films that seem like they would be interesting to me, yet I can’t bring myself to get excited for them. Something about seeing yet another gunfight or explosion, yet another vehicle chase, does for my interest in a movie what brussels sprouts hitting the intestinal tract does for a romantic mood. If more action movie trailers looked like Iron Man 3, I’d call myself a fan.

Superhero movies have largely been considered their own genre. This is because at the heart of what is essentially a Sci-Fi/action genre, there’s so much drama that it’s often hard to invest oneself in these movies. A lot of emotions that are either set up to be resolved in the third or fourth sequel, or simply resolve over the action scenes, in which case, why not use some of that down time for the sake of the action scenes? Add that to the fact that they often follow the same formula, re-telling origin stories that lost their fresh and exciting flavor well before they developed the technology to put many of them onscreen. It’s often not until several installments that the film makers are confident enough in the ability of the audience to watch the film without being told decades-old stories with new visuals that they feel free to tell their own story.

While Iron Man 3 is largely about a familiar Iron Man villain, Iron Man 3 is anything but a rehash. Everything about this movie is fabricated especially for this movie’s universe; this is almost the way Christopher Nolan would adapt the character, though not quite. That’s likely to be the largest complaint from fans about this film, and I could easily write an entirely separate review of this film from the perspective of a comic fan, but as somebody whose favorite thing about Iron Man has always been the 1960s’ cartoon theme song, I could easily separate this from the quality of the film itself.

Central to this film is the role that Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) plays. First and foremost, she’s a female character in a comic book movie. I suppose that had to be said, and when you look at Carol Ferris, Mary Jane Watson, and Batman’s girls of the week, that sets a certain expectation. Pepper starts off the film by rejecting the intellectual (and implied physical) advances of a newly attractive man from her past. She then has an argument with her husband, and when he concedes fault, she tones it down to look at his point of view. She comes up with a plan to seek safer ground- not because she’s a coward, but because she’s traditionally been the most sensible person in the series- and Tony disagrees with her. Again, this isn’t because he’s entirely masculine and arrogant, but because he has genuine concerns about his ability to protect his non-superpowered wife in a different location.

Their entire relationship is based on this: Tony and Pepper recognize one another’s strengths and weaknesses. Pepper doesn’t allow Tony to get away with things because he’s her man or some other tripe, she doesn’t believe he has any ability to resist her demands. She just recognizes that he’s human, and has a tendency to make certain types of mistake, which she will forgive him, scold him or correct him for, depending on the situation. When he fails to prevent an attack from an unexpected angle, Tony is also quick to recognize the flaw in his plan and the value in hers, and makes no attempt to take credit for it.

Pepper is taken prisoner, yes, but so are both of our male leads, which gives us about 4 instances of male Damsels in Distress and 1 of Pepper. Iron Man is more successful at freeing himself than Pepper is, but he’s notably no more successful at freeing her. Or saving her. At all, in any way, despite really wanting to. “But Damsels in Distress dying to further the male hero’s story is nothing new” I hear you saying. And you’d be absolutely correct. But just because the male hero fails to save his wife doesn’t mean that she dies. And just because he fails to save himself doesn’t mean that he dies, either.

Pepper Potts is a true inspiration for me as a storyteller. She proves that a male character can be written with a standard by-the-numbers plot without the female character suffering for it. She goes through suffering, yes- the same amount of suffering as the superhero that she chose to spend her life with. But she doesn’t suffer as a character. Assuming that she did not become a female Human Torch in the comics, if you can’t get behind her in this film, you are simply not going to be pleased. It might have been nice to see some growth for this character, but for a secondary character who has found success in her career and love life and falls in the moral and logical right far more often than not, it would have been hard to include any that wouldn’t have distracted from the intended plot.

And the intended plot is nothing to sneer at. As I said, they took this franchise and released a serious action film of the sort that could make me look entirely differently at action films. A large part of this is that Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark spends a large portion of his time out of his Iron Man armor, doing things like thinking and having human emotions. He’s still the semi-lovable dick that we’ve been with through the past three films (the argument could be made that this is Iron Man 4, following The Avengers), but he’s grown as a person. There are references to Tony’s womanizing days from the first film, and it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t miss that lifestyle in the slightest.

When it does come time to pull out the CGI suits, this film pulls out all of the stops. There were concerns by some fans over whether this franchise would include Iron Man’s true strength: adaptability. Well, not only does Iron Man prove he’s adaptable out of his armor, but we see somewhere between twenty and forty suits of armor, including the fan favorite Hulkbuster armor. They’re clearly not as useful when he’s not at the helm, but they make the climax something awesome to behold.

Iron Man 3 may well be on its way to becoming my favorite superhero film of all time. It has all of the elements that many superhero films lack (many of those elements being the role Pepper Potts plays in both this film and the franchise) and all of the best elements of many such films. I did use the scenes with the child sidekick to refill my drink and empty my bladder, but even these scenes weren’t as bad as many shoe-horned in child sidekicks are, and in fact seemed like they were intended to be parodies of such scenes. One thing’s for certain: this is not the last time I’ll be watching this film.

"The 5th Wave" by Rick Yancey-- Books Like This Are Why I Still Read YA Fiction

~Synopsis

After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one.

Now, it's the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth's last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother--or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.

Stories about alien invasions never get old. In fact, I'd argue that the more technologically savvy we get the more fearful we become because we know that an advanced civilization could devastate us with one well placed attack-- something that is explored in Rick Yancey's multi-layered new book.

Cassiopeia (Cassie), the heroine of The 5th Wave, might have her namesake immortalized in the stars but her name is the only romantic thing about space in the bleak, solitary world in which she is trying to survive following a cataclysmic alien invasion. The aliens attack in waves that obliterate the world's population and 16-year-old Cassie knows her chances of survival aren't any better than the billions of people who have already been killed. But she made a promise to her brother Sam that they would be reunited and family is something that has become incredibly rare in the few short months since the first attack.

Cassie is my kind of girl. Her life is divided into two parts and she is, predictably, a different person following the alien apocalypse. She instinctively knew, when the ship first appeared in the sky, that they weren't a benevolent presence and the same fierce intelligence that guided her through the early days is what keeps her going in her quest to find Sam. She's not the type of girl who suffers fools easily. Her father's childlike acceptance of the invasion and naive hope generally infuriates her and it's not surprising that Sam's fate ends up in her hands.

"The 5th Wave" spends more of its time exploring the emotional and physical impact of the invasion rather than delve into the minutiae of an alien civilization. In fact we don't know what the aliens look like throughout most of the book. Yancy does a masterful job of taking plot elements that we've seen before in other works of dystopian fiction and tweaking them so that we don't know which characters are the villains and which ones are the good guys. You'll see comparisons to "Ender's Game," "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and even "The Stand"-- and in some ways they're all apt. Yancey takes a multitude of end-of-the-world scenarios, including an Ebola epidemic to engineered tidal waves, and fuses them with a not-so-standard alien invasion that is a marvel of interweaving story lines.

My favorite aspect of "The 5th Wave" has to be that it is nothing like the angsty YA fiction that you usually find on the shelf these days. Cassie does sometimes brood about Ben, the boy she had a crush on in her former life; and there is Evan Walker, the mysterious boy who saves her life. But there isn't the typical does-he or doesn't-he-like-me moments in "The 5th Wave" because everyone is trying too hard to survive and trust doesn't come easy enough for relationships to form quickly. Yancey also spends some time pondering the impact of loneliness and isolation and how tough-minded one must be to survive chronic aloneness. Cassie copes by keeping a journal and it serves as a window into her mind and what drives her to keep going when the temptation to give up looms large.

The only thing that keeps me from giving "The 5th Wave" a 5-star review is a fairly extended interlude in Cassie's travels that bring her and Evan Walker together. It's interesting in some ways but Evan's character is a little bit hovering and reminiscent of Edward Cullen ("Twilight"); though Cassie is no Bella (thankfully). And yet that interlude does allow Yancey to break away from Cassie's story for a little bit to focus on Sam and the mysterious military base he's been taken to, along with all the other children, for safekeeping. At that point the narrative takes on a more ominous vibe as Yancey explores the ease in which children can be manipulated to accept, and do, almost anything.

Overall I really liked "The 5th Wave." It's the kind of book that encourages me to keep picking up YA fiction because it explores dark themes without pummeling the reader with explicit violence or sexuality while still maintaining an elegant and intricate plot. Yancey doesn't dumb the story down to meet a YA criteria-- quite the opposite. Cassie is clever and real and a great leading lady- one I believe we may see again (I certainly hope so). There is enough of a reveal to get a sense of what the alien invaders are in "The 5th Wave," but the fate of the last human survivors is largely unknown. There is a hint at a love triangle of sorts, but Yancey doesn't overplay that particular plot point. Basically, there is a lot of story yet to be told and I'm more than willing to back and see how it all works out.

4 out of 5 stars.

Waiting on Wednesday

Waiting on Wednesday is a blog meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine to spotlight upcoming books.

This week's WoW selection is:

Antigoddess by Kendare Blake
Publisher: Tor Teen
Date: September 10, 2013
Pages: 352

Old Gods never die…

Or so Athena thought. But then the feathers started sprouting beneath her skin, invading her lungs like a strange cancer, and Hermes showed up with a fever eating away his flesh. So much for living a quiet eternity in perpetual health.

Desperately seeking the cause of their slow, miserable deaths, Athena and Hermes travel the world, gathering allies and discovering enemies both new and old. Their search leads them to Cassandra—an ordinary girl who was once an extraordinary prophetess, protected and loved by a god.

These days, Cassandra doesn’t involve herself in the business of gods—in fact, she doesn’t even know they exist. But she could be the key in a war that is only just beginning.

Because Hera, the queen of the gods, has aligned herself with other of the ancient Olympians, who are killing off rivals in an attempt to prolong their own lives. But these anti-gods have become corrupted in their desperation to survive, horrific caricatures of their former glory. Athena will need every advantage she can get, because immortals don’t just flicker out.

Every one of them dies in their own way. Some choke on feathers. Others become monsters. All of them rage against their last breath.

The Goddess War is about to begin.

I'm mostly intrigued with this title because Kendare Blake has come out with some cool books over the last couple of years (Anna Dressed in Blood, Girl of Nightmares) and I'm really interested to see what she does with Greek Myth. "Antigoddess," like her other books, sounds like it's going to have a strong dark side too.

Giveaway: "London Falling" by Paul Cornell

Courtesy of Tor Books I have a copy of London Falling by Paul Cornell to offer for giveaway.

Police officers Quill, Costain, Sefton, and Ross know the worst of London—or they think they do. While investigating a mobster's mysterious death, they come into contact with a strange artifact and accidentally develop the Sight. Suddenly they can see the true evil haunting London’s streets.

Armed with police instincts and procedures, the four officers take on the otherworldly creatures secretly prowling London. Football lore and the tragic history of a Tudor queen become entwined in their pursuit of an age-old witch with a penchant for child sacrifice. But when London’s monsters become aware of their meddling, the officers must decide what they are willing to sacrifice to clean up their city.

(The only reason I'm giving this away is because I have an ARC copy for my own greedy self...)

Just add your information to the form below to enter (all information is guaranteed confidential and will be discarded once the contest ends) and I will randomly pick one winner by Tuesday May 7th. No multiple entries please-- all multiple entries will be discarded. Open everywhere. 

Good luck!

TV: Doctor Who Series 4

In 2008, Doctor Who reached its fourth season under the leadership of Russell T. Davies. This was his final full length season, one written as a testament to the past three years.  Catherine Tate reprised her role as Donna Noble, a middle aged woman with an attitude that had a place in the universe far beyond the obvious. While the general strengths and weaknesses inherent to Davies' run on Doctor Who are present, I would consider this to be the overall best season from 2005 to the present.

Donna Noble is a different kind of companion for new Who. She has no romantic interest in the Doctor, nor does she look up to him as a hero or a teacher. In fact, she's the kind of person week who has trouble being respectful to her boss. Donna stands with the Doctor as an equal and a friend. She also struggles with self-fulfilling self esteem issues: she treats every one the way she feels about herself, and gets crap back from life at the same time. Apart from her grandfather, the Doctor is probably the first person in Donna's life to treat her as though she's important, which is what sparks her character growth and ultimately makes the manner in which she leaves the TARDIS so devastating.

I've found that the best way to look at a season's strengths in this era is by the way each episode ties in to the finale. Series 4 is littered with several themes: Donna is important, she has no faith in herself, and something terrible is going to happen to her. There are also a few references to something invisible on Donna's back, referencing the penultimate story of this season in a Doctor Who version of "It's a Wonderful Life".  And finally, almost every episode of this season features a missing world, or a moon.  Sometimes it’s just an off-hand reference (running into a scholar who is looking for the Lost Moon of Poosh in “Midnight”) and sometimes it’s the catalyst of an episode (the disappearance of Adipose 4 in “Partners in Crime”).

As for more subtle connections between episodes, this season has more companions than ever.  Two companions who would appear in future episodes feature in this season: newcomer River Song, and returning actor Bernard Cribbins reprises his role from Voyage of the Damned as Wilfred Mott, Donna’s grandfather.  Billie Piper as Rose Tyler has several short cameos throughout the season, and Freema Agyeman appears as guest star in several episodes as Martha Jones.  Finally, in “The Doctor’s Daughter”, the Doctor, Donna and Martha are joined by Jenny, a genetically modified clone of the Doctor played by Georgia Moffett, the daughter of Fifth Doctor Peter Davison (formerly Moffett) and future wife of David Tennant.  I think future head writer Steven Moffat took notes on this relationship when planning Series 6.

This all leads up to the two-parter “The Stolen Earth” and “Journey’s End”, arguably my favorite Doctor Who story to date.  This isn’t the most imaginative or thought-provoking episode, but Doctor Who doesn’t always need that.  “Journey’s End” is about a long-time DW fanboy writing a special about his favorite villains doing their best to destroy the Doctor and his favorite people.  Rose and Jackie Tyler, Mickey Smith, Jack Harkness, Sarah Jane Smith, Martha Jones and Donna Noble stand beside the Doctor as he faces off against Dalek creator Davros, while Wilf, Ianto Jones and Gwen Cooper from Torchwood, and Mr. Smith and Luke from Sarah Jane Adventures defend against the Daleks at home. K-9 and the Doctor’s hand from “Christmas Invasion” help deal with the crises at the end of the episode as well.  "Journey’s End" wasn’t the last thing Russell T. Davies did for Doctor Who, but it was the end of the journey.  Most of these individuals would continue to appear- Torchwood would run for two more seasons and each of the Doctor Who companions would appear in Davies’ final episode, but the end of Series 4 is the end of an era, and with a conclusion like this it’s only right that it’s the final complete season that he wrote for the show.

Barring "Journey’s End", Series 4 doesn’t have as many of my favorite moments as the earlier seasons did, but there’s also a lot less reasons to be squeamish of this season.  I’d gladly take a few “Sontaran Strategem”’s in place of the combination of “Fear Her” and “The Impossible Planet”, or “The Doctor’s Daughter” in place of “Evolution of the Daleks”.  That, and I just can’t help from watching the three episodes at the end of the season literally any time.

For a fair review, I need to admit that there are some faults here.  Davros’s appearance is completely out of the blue.  Despite the fact that 2005-2008 features more Daleks than any similar time period since 1975, there was never so much as a hint of his existence (unless you count the Doctor’s crack in “Evolution of the Daleks”).  There really was never so much as a hint that Daleks had anything to do with anything that was going on, which makes the fact that the entire season leads up to them feel slightly off.  On top of that, Donna starts off as a pretty annoying companion until she spends some time with the Doctor, and Rose and River’s reactions to Donna all but scream “ZOMG WATCH THE FINALE DONNA WON’T BE HERE NEXT SEASON!”  Still, overall I feel these are rather minor drawbacks for such a solid season.