In the medieval university, though, "Master" and "Doctor" were used more or less synonymously to refer to the highest rank of faculty. The modern distinction began to emerge when "Doctor" began to be used as the primary term for senior faculty in medicine and law (while those in arts and theology remained "Masters").…

Other than the Doctor meeting himself, have they ever had the Doctor meeting a Time Lord at an earlier point in that Time Lord's timeline than previously televised? Despite the Doctor's crossing his own timeline business (which always seemed bracketed in "that's really not supposed to happen" comments), I'd always got…

I think CGI has really hurt transformation scenes. I'd put the transformation from American Werewolf in London up alongside the Norris head scene for incredible practical effects work. The transformation is so… physical. There's no other way to put it. So many CGI transformations are ruined by that fluidity (and even…

“You think I’m mad, that all I want is power for its own sake. No, I
have to have power. The world is weak, vulnerable, a mess of
uncoordinated and impossible ideals. It needs a strong man, a single
mind. A leader!”  — Tobias Vaughn

I'd also recommend that you try a format other than "first to shout the answer" — it makes it hard to play along at home when half the time you don't even hear the rest of the question. Maybe let each player have an "at bat" and if they get it wrong one of the others can jump in and steal the point. Something like…

You are not the only one. I even own the DVD set.

So, you're asserting that superhero comics don't make regular use of various sorts of reset buttons?

Thinking about it, I suppose my description was influenced by the comparison of the new series to classic Doctor Who. The effects in the new series do look practically cinematic compared to the old wobbly walls, rubber monsters, and badly haloed compositing of the series' history.

Two points: 1) as far as that desire "making sense" — is this not the same standard argument about fame? How can famous people resent their celebrity when everyone wishes they could be famous? It's not a fantasy problem.

But that's also partly a function of it never having to pretend to exist in the everyday world. It's the integration of effects into "realistic" scenes of contemporary life that gets problematic — and is probably also a reason why superpowers just look better in animation, because even when the setting is ostensibly…

I didn't watch Heroes or the 4400, so correct me if I'm wrong, but did either of those shows have events on the order of supervillains freezing entire cities in ice or attempting to evaporate the ocean or marching robot armies through the streets? That's the kind of scale of conflict that classic comic book…

Yeah, I posted above about live-action T.V. not being able to pull off the necessary spectacle for a superhero story on its budget, but the new series of Doctor Who would be the biggest challenge to my claim. They do pull off stories where planets are stolen and cities are swarmed with evil robots and mad scientists…

I think the real issue is less a matter of structure, conflict, and serialization but rather the word "live-action," which doesn't really get analyzed here at all. I think the form really requires a scale of action, event, and design that T.V. can't afford in live-action production.

I think the thing to do is to ask the strippers and models what actual power they've been able to exert to go along with their merely "feeling empowered." I'd suspect a lot of the answers would be (or could easily be rephrased) to the passive voice: they get the power to be desired, to be judged more attractive than…

I actually like the performance, too — I didn't mean to suggest that it was bad that it was so Olivier-like. But I wasn't sure if it he was channeling Olivier in a kind of deliberate homage or recognition that the characters are similar kinds of schemers, or if it was a bit more of a "strategic" borrowing of a set of…

Also — and maybe this was mentioned in the DVD features (I watched this on Netflix streaming a while ago) — but, in line with Bahn's comments about the Shakespeareaness of the whole production, I thought it was almost painfully obvious that Ringman was doing Olivier's Richard III. He even hunches.

I'm a big fan of the documentary series "The First 48," and there are a surprising (to me, anyway) number of female detectives in the homicide departments they follow. And female segeants bossing the detectives around. And while no doubt everyone's trying to be on their best behavior when the camera's around, there…

I think there's a narrow range — and I'm not sure what characteristics make this possible, but I think it has to have something to do with an inherent streak of silliness — where you can simultaneously root for success and delight in failure. If you imagine a truly great batter swinging with all their heart and then…

And I would argue that "The Walking Dead" would be an example of the rare show that you could watch on all three wavelengths. There's enough craftsmanship there to watch it for its moments of quality, and it's got escapist zombie-killing action, but it also has this persistent thread of dunderheadedness running though…

Yeah, but they already do very production-oriented commentary tracks for the Venture Bros. DVDs. They already share all that insight pretty freely. I think it's much more valuable to get showrunners in who don't necessarily have a venue to talk about that part of the television craft.