Batman '66: The Lost Episode (2014) Comic Book Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. The second to last episode of Superman & Lois season 1 aired last night and it was insane! I'll talk about that more next week when I review the season following the season finale. Marvel's What If...? begins today and I'm watching the first episode with my sister on Disney+ tonight though I'm not as excited about that show as I am about the season 2 premiere of Star Trek: Lower Decks, which airs on CTV Sci-Fi Channel tomorrow night. So lots of cool stuff coming up. Today though I'm here to talk about a one-shot comic from 2014, with a cover date of January, 2015. So let's get into Batman '66: The Lost Episode!

The 1966 Batman TV series is one of my favourite shows of all time. In fact it's in my top 3 favourite shows with Star Trek: The Next Generation beating it, and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers right behind it. So when DC Comics announced in 2013 that they were going to be publishing a monthly, ongoing, comic book series based on the TV series, I got excited. Especially since, even though it was a digital comic first, they were still going to publish physical copies of the series, combining a few chapters of the digital comic into the standard single issue comic book format. Unfortunately I was only able to get the first issue when it came out in 2014 and then came a period where I just wasn't able to get to the comic book store often enough to pick up other issues. Though I did manage to pick up issue #7 though I didn't keep it as this was just before the Great Media Purges of 2015 and 2016 and I was fine with just having the first issue.

This issue is actually based on a story treatment written by Science Fiction author, Harlan Ellison, who is well known among Trekkies as the writer of the TOS episode, "The City on the Edge of Forever". The original treatment is replicated in the back of the issue, and it's dated 1965. So it was meant to be written for the show's first season which began in January, 1966. The episode would've introduced Two-Face into the TV show, and both the network and the studio greenlit the story to be developed into a script for production. However, for whatever reason it never got made. There doesn't seem to be an actual reason why it wasn't produced, but that happens on every show. There are always episodes that, for whatever reason, never get produced, even though the network and studio okays the script or story treatment. My theory is that William Dozier, the producer of Batman, was hesitant to put Two-Face in the show because the comics hadn't used him since the early '60s and even then had only used him sparingly since the '40s due to the lighter tone the comics that DC published during the Silver Age (1950s to 1970s) had and Two-Face was a darker character. And that's why the treatment was never produced.

As a story it's actually pretty good. Two-Face doesn't feel out of place in the world of the show like I thought he would when I first saw the solicitations for this issue back in 2014. In fact he actually fits in quite nicely despite being a more tragic figure than any of the other versions of the Batman characters that appear in the show, such as Batman and Robin themselves. What's cool is that the late Len Wein wrote this comic book adaptation only three years before he passed away.

The only thing that's odd to me about this issue is the narration. It's a mix of Dozier's narration from the TV show and the comic book narration from the 1960s. Which is interesting, but I almost prefer it if it was just one or the other. I can pretend I hear Dozier's voice as I read the narration, particularly when it says "Meanwhile in Stately Wayne Manor..." or something along those lines.

Something that I'm confused about is how Batman and Robin got to the auction house before Commissioner Gordon and Chief O'Hara. When the Commissioner asks Batman, he simply states that it was just a matter of preplanning and preparation and knowledge of the traffic light schedule for Gotham City. However, just to make sure I went back and looked at the artwork to see if Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson were in the background anywhere but there doesn't to be any panels where they show up. So I guess it's a mystery as to how Batman and Robin got there so quickly. It doesn't ruin the story by any means, it's just weird that we don't know how Batman and Robin got there so quickly.

The artwork is pretty good. It's a mix of the designs from the show itself, and designs based on the designs in the comics at the time. For example, the Batcave has the atomic pile, but is also much larger and includes the trophy room set up to how it was in the comics at the time the TV show was starting.The artists on the book are Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Joe Prado. I'm not familiar with Prado's work, aside from a couple of issues of the 52 series which ran for a year following Infinite Crisis in the late 2000s. Garcia Lopez however was the penciler and inker on many DC Comics publications in the '70s, '80s, and '90s, including many Batman titles, like the comic book adaptation of Batman Returns. So I'm a little more familiar with his work than I am with Prado's.

Overall this was a great issue. I hadn't planned on reviewing this issue this week, but as soon as Brad dropped it off on Saturday just before lunch and I saw it, I decided that I needed to review it this week. If you can find it, it's worth picking up. 

That's it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for my review of the first episode of Marvel's What If...? which I'm watching sometime after dinner with my sister. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Star Trek Season 1, Episode 24 "Space Seed" (1967) TV Episode Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing well. So this week I wanted to review an episode of Star Trek that I've seen a few times but am not a huge fan of, "Space Seed". I also decided to do this in tandem with a review of the movie it spawned, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That review will be coming out on Saturday. I figured I'd get this done before I dove head first into the modern era of Doctor Who. So let's get into it.

While I watched Star Trek when I was a kid, as it was on every Saturday morning around 11 on CBC for a long time, I always preferred Star Trek: The Next Generation being that the second Star Trek series was airing brand new when I was a kid and I preferred Captain Picard over Captain Kirk. Not that Kirk isn't a good character, most of the time, but he felt a bit formulaic and hardly deviated from that formula. Plus William Shatner chewed the scenery a little too much while Sir Patrick Stewart rarely did so as Picard unless it was for a specific purpose like trying to get Lwaxana Troi back from the Ferengi in the season 3 episode "Menage a Troi". And while I love the dynamic between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy and Spock is my favourite character on TOS, I related more to Data. Which made it really cool when Spock and Data were on screen together in the TNG fifth season episode, "Unification". 

"Space Seed" is not an episode I remember watching when I was a kid. I remember it more from seeing it a couple of times in reruns on Space Channel when I was a teenager, as well as watching it on DVD with the TOS Season 1 box set as well as the The Best of Star Trek: The Original Series Volume 2 DVD release that came out around the time the first JJ Abrams Star Trek movie came out in 2009. It's a good episode, but it's not great. 

I think what really brings it down for me is Marla McGivers. She's not a bad character, but I have to question why she joined Starfleet if she had feelings for the tyrants of old Earth such as Khan? Like you'd think Humans would've given up that misguided obsession with dictators and people who commit such evils by the 23rd Century. Especially if they intend to join Starfleet as that kind of thing goes against the Federation's philosophy. 

The episode also makes the rest of the crew look incompetent because they couldn't figure out who Khan was until it was too late. I thought most Starfleet officers were required to have some passing knowledge on all subjects, including historical figures. And it's not even a matter of Khan being smart enough to hide his identity from them either. It's a simple matter of Kirk and Spock not figuring it out as soon as Khan introduces himself as Khan even though McGivers did figure it out pretty quickly. Especially when Spock is supposed to be the most intelligent person on the Enterprise! I don't know if that's because the episode's writer Carey Wilber, just didn't understand how to write for Star Trek and wrote the crew to be more incompetent than they usually are, or he did it deliberately to demonstrate how intellectually superior Khan is. Either way it didn't work even though both Gene L. Coon and Gene Roddenberry rewrote the script once each as per standard operating procedures in the Star Trek production office at the time.

I get why Khan is an alluring villain. He's strong, smart and perfect in every way. But that doesn't make for a good character. Simply because there really isn't anything behind that. In a way Captain America is like Khan in that way. But what makes Steve Rogers interesting is the humanity behind him. When Steve got injected with the super soldier serum and it was successful, he easily could've become full of himself and gained a superiority complex, similar to John Walker in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. But he didn't. Instead he dedicated his life to fighting evil, be it Hitler during World War II or whatever threat the Avengers faced. Khan is a criminal and has only two modes: Dictator, and revenge seeker. I'll talk about that more in my review of Star Trek II later this week.

Probably my favourite part of this episode is the back and forth between Kirk and Spock. Whenever people talk about TOS they always talk about the verbal sparring between Spock and McCoy but they never mention that Kirk and Spock go at it from time to time too. In this episode Spock says, "I fail to understand why it gives you pleasure to see me proven wrong." and Kirk responds with, "An emotional Earth weakness of mine." Later in the episode, Kirk suggests that the Botany Bay was used to ship criminals off of Earth, and Spock responds that that is impossible due to the dark age that Earth found itself in in the Star Trek Universe version of the 1990s, and then is later proven wrong once Khan is revealed. And yes, Kirk smirked a little when that information was discovered. 

Like I said "Space Seed" is a good episode but definitely isn't in my list of favourite Star Trek episodes of all time. There are other TOS episodes that I like alot better than this one. The crew's incompetence, coupled with Khan being a one off antagonist that gained undeserved importance by returning in the second movie, and McGivers being too easily manipulated by Khan, just makes this episode weak in my opinion. The writing is still really good despite it being a cheesy '60s Science Fiction series. But it being a cheesy '60s Science Fiction series is the reason I don't discount TOS as a whole it's just I prefer TNG. 

And that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for my review of the comic that Brad dropped off for me on Saturday. So until then have a great afternoon and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Doctor Who Story #2 "The Daleks" (1963-1964) TV Show Review

 Hey everyone! How were your weekends? Mine was pretty good. Brad dropped off a comic for me on Saturday so I'll be reviewing that this week. Which means I'll be taking a break from my reviews of The Amazing Spider-Girl. I'll talk about that more at the end of this review. Right now though let's get on with it and talk about "The Daleks". 

I'm not overly familiar with the Daleks. In fact, aside from this serial the only Dalek centric episode I've ever seen was the 50th Anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor. Otherwise I haven't seen any Dalek centric episodes from the modern era. And because I saw The Day of the Doctor only the one time during it's original airing in 2013, I don't remember anything about the Daleks from that special. Which makes it even more interesting seeing them in their original incarnations from 1963.

While "The Daleks" wouldn't've made a good introduction to Doctor Who in 1963, I actually think it's a much better story than "An Unearthly Child" is. Doctor Who was so different at the beginning than it is now and yet "The Daleks" is slightly closer to what the show is in the modern era than the previous serial was that it's astonishing to see the similarities as well as the differences.

The model work and set design on this serial is actually pretty amazing. Despite the low budget this show had back in the '60s the model of the Dalek city looks impressive. Also the sets actually make it look like the underground facility is vast. I'm sure they reused the same chamber and corridors for all of it though. Star Trek did that to make the Enterprise look like it was as big as it appeared to be when looking at the model of the ship on screen. While most of this is so much easier today, given that TV shows have the same budgets that movies had thirty years ago, and with the use of CGI it's easy to augment physical sets with digital extensions. Of course this just wasn't possible back in the '60s when Doctor Who, Batman, Lost in Space, and Star Trek were being produced.

The Doctor is so different in the beginning than they are today. Unlike the Doctor of the modern era this Doctor isn't a hero. He's an explorer, a scientist, and a historian of sorts. Therefore he only helps others if it benefits him somehow. Which makes him a difficult character in this serial. Of course the First Doctor, played so wonderfully by William Hartnell, is pretty difficult as he's always butting heads with Ian and Barbara. He also butts heads with Susan a few times throughout the course of this serial as well. Which is interesting. It's not bad, I'm just not used to the Doctor being at odds with his Companions. 

I was actually more intrigued with the Thals than I was with the Daleks. After I watched the serial I went on the Doctor Who Wiki and looked to see of the Thals appeared in the modern era. I'm sad to report that they don't. They do show up a few more times in the classic series, so I might have to track down those stories at some point just to revisit them.

Overall this was a pretty good story. I do find myself preferring modern Doctor Who to the classic series, but I do appreciate the classic series because it laid the foundation for what we have now with Doctor Who. Plus the writing is pretty good even though it's pretty cheesy at times. But, it is a show that was made for kids originally, so I don't expect any less of it than that.

I think that's going to be it for me for now. I'll be back tomorrow with my review of the Star Trek episode "Space Seed". On Wednesday I'll be taking a break from reviewing The Amazing Spider-Girl so I can review the comic that Brad got for me on Saturday, which is a one-shot called Batman '66: The Lost Episode. I'll explain that more in my review. Also, because I was dumb and forgot that the first episode of Marvel's What If...? drops on Wednesday and the season 2 premiere of Star Trek: Lower Decks airs on Thursday night, I planned to review both Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan AND Flight of the Navigator this week. Yeah, that's not happening, so Flight of the Navigator will be reviewed at a later time and I'll be watching Wrath of Khan on Friday night to review on Saturday. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) Movie Review

 Hey everyone! Happy Friday! How are you all doing today? I'm doing quite well for the end of the week. Today I'm here to review the 1971 classic Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which was adapted from Roald Dahl's 1964 novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and stars Gene Wilder as the titular character, Willy Wonka. As always there will be some spoilers in this review so I can talk about things without worrying about it. So let's get right into it shall we?

Last night was the first time in about thirty years that I'd seen Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. That's due to the fact that we never owned the movie. My parents rented it for me from Rogers Video a few times, but we never owned it despite all of the home video releases it's had over the years. I'll get into that a little later. Despite having not seen it in such a long time I actually remembered quite a bit about the movie. Certain scenes popped up that I remembered from having seen the movie as a kid. Despite not having the ability to watch it since the last time we rented it.

The most fascinating part of the movie for me, and of the original Roald Dahl novel, is actually Willy Wonka himself. I mean his plan to bring kids to the factory is pretty elaborate and almost conniving in a way given he actually sends someone out to pose as his competitor, Slugworth, to approach each winner with an "offer" for them to steal the Everlasting Gobstopper in exchange for a large sum of money if they're successful. And even that detail isn't revealed until the very end of the movie once Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt, Violet Beauregarde, and Mike Teevee are out of the picture. It's just assumed by Charlie and Grandpa Joe, as well as the audience, that it was actually Slugworth who approached them.

Also, I think Gene Wilder does a magnificent job at a portrayal of Willy Wonka that is actually quite faithful to the novel. He's a mix of dark, tragic, cheerful, and sarcastic, which is exactly how I remember the character from the book being. Honestly the entire cast is pretty accurate to the characters in the book. One of my favourite things about this version of the character is how every time one of the children goes to do the stupid thing that ends their tour of the factory he only half-heartedly tries to stop them from doing it as if he doesn't want them to be there as he's already deemed them unworthy to inherit the chocolate factory. Which is why Charlie and Grandpa Joe don't get ejected from the tour when they take a sip of the Fizzy Lifting Drinks.

Charlie Bucket is pretty bland in the movie, but he's also bland in the novel. At least compared to the other characters, including Grandpa Joe. That's mainly because Charlie is basically the straight man in the film, while everyone else, Grandma Josephine, Grandpa George, and Grandma Georgina and his mother aside, are so over the top and wacky that Charlie seems uninteresting as a result. Which is oddly fascinating given how child characters are often portrayed as in movies like this as shown by the other child characters in this movie.

Obviously the Oompa-Loompas are the most memorable part of this movie for me. Probably because they're used fairly sparingly and their song, "Oompa-Loompa" is actually pretty haunting. It's a really catchy song, but very very haunting. Especially since they sing it after one of the children does something stupid almost as a warning to the other children.

The Slugworth storyline doesn't really work for me. The character was simply mentioned in the novel and the movie doesn't actually do anything with him since he's not actually Slugworth, but one of Wonka's people pretending to be Slugworth. So that just makes the storyline pointless and out of sync with the rest of the movie.

  As I mentioned earlier, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory was based on the 1964 novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory written by Roald Dahl, a famous children's author who also wrote The BFG, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, and the sequel to this novel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator among many others. I read this novel alot as a kid. We had a copy of it on our shelves for years. My mom even still has that copy though I bought myself a newer paperback edition. I've always enjoyed the book though I hadn't read it in years until I got my own copy in late 2019.

The movie was released on VHS, Laserdisc, DVD and Blu-ray several times over the years. I'm pretty sure the VHS copy we rented was the 1986 edition as this is the cover I remember seeing at the video store and we actually only rented it prior to our move out into the country in 1993. But since it was re-released on VHS in 1991, chances are that was the one we rented rather than the 1986 one. I'm hoping to put the VHS in my collection in the near future hopefully. 

Overall this was a fun movie to revisit after thirty years. As a musical it feels like a remnant from the classic musicals of the 1930s and 1940s, upbeat and positive. It's also pretty good as an adaptation, with most people preferring it over the Tim Burton version from 2005. If you've never seen this movie before, I highly recommend it. 

And that's it for me for this week. I'll be back on Monday for my next Doctor Who review. I'll also have issues 13-18 of The Amazing Spider-Girl for you on Wednesday as well as a review of the 1986 Disney Sci-Fi film, Flight of the Navigator for you on Saturday. However, I'm going to do two additional reviews on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Sunday I'm going to review the Star Trek episode "Space Seed", on Tuesday I'm going to review Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Thursday I'll be reviewing the first episode of Marvel's What If...? which drops on Wednesday morning. Then on Friday I'll have a review of the season premiere of season 2 of Star Trek: Lower Decks which airs on Thursday night. So stayed tuned for all of that coming your way here at the Review Basement. Until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

The Amazing Spider-Girl: Comes the Carnage! (Issues 7-12) Comic Book Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing quite well for a Thursday. Today I'm going to be reviewing The Amazing Spider-Girl #'s 7-12 which covers the story arc "Comes the Carnage!". There will be some slight spoilers because I want to talk about a few things that happen in this issue without worrying about that sort of thing. So with that in mind let's get right into it shall we?

Unlike last time, this arc doesn't cover all six issues. Instead there's a two part story told in issues 7 and 8 that basically follows the aftermath of the previous arc while continuing a couple of the high school storylines from the previous arc as well. I don't really have a whole lot to say about these two issues, because not a whole lot goes on in them. I do like that Mary Jane comes to terms with Mayday being Spider-Girl over the course of these two issues. However, we don't really get Peter's side of things as he is barely in these two issues except to be the "disapproving father" character so THAT's a thing here. Aside from that these two issues were decent. I still don't like Mayday's boyfriend, Gene Thompson in them, especially in issue 8, but at this point he's basically playing the Flash Thompson role which means he's not SUPPOSED to be likeable so I can't fault the comic for that too much.

The rest of the arc is...okay. I'm not a big fan of Venom or Carnage, and so I don't really care all that much about this version of the character any more than I would the Cletus Kasady version if he were to show up. Also, it wasn't really a shock to me when it was revealed that Carnage was Mayday's friend, Moose Mansfield. Look, I've read a few comic books with teenage protagonists, not to mention seen a few TV shows, and inevitably there's always going to be one story arc or TV season where it's revealed that the main character's friend has actually been their enemy the whole time. Actually, never mind just teen shows, how many seasons of The Flash has there been where it's revealed at some point that one of Barry's allies is actually the enemy he's been fighting all season? How many seasons of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.? It happens alot, so it really wasn't a shock. Especially since, while Moose was mentioned in the previous arc, he didn't actually appear in the series, so naturally the new supporting character is going to be the new villain or working for an old villain. 

The high school stuff to superhero stuff is less balanced this time around, but it actually feels more intrusive to me in a way. I don't know if it's because it's the same stuff that I see in EVERY other comic book, movie, TV show, or novel set in a high school or just because of Gene's behaviour in issue 8 when it's revealed that Mayday's friend, Sara is a Mutant when her powers manifest during class. That's gotta suck. At least on Superman & Lois Jordan's powers didn't start to manifest until AFTER school. I digress though. My point is that Gene is a jerk and it doesn't look like he's gonna grow beyond the stereotypical dumb jock. Of course Mayday isn't going to kick him to the curb either, despite the fact that he basically cheated on her with the school's resident Mean Girl, Simone, because that's what dumb jock boyfriends tend to do in stories like this. I prefer her friend, Wes Westin. And yes, they did usec alliteration for his name though it's not as imaginative here as it usually is.

Overall this was an okay set of issues. I much prefer the Hobgoblin storyline than this round's field trip into Carnageland, but again, I have more of a connection to the Hobgoblin due to the '90s animated series than I do to Carnage, since I got my first Spider-Man comic before Carnage debuted in The Amazing Spider-Man #362, and then I didn't read another one until a couple of years after Maximum Carnage had come out. I also don't care about Moose since I'm presuming he showed up in Spider-Girl, which I haven't read yet, but this set of issues was my introduction to him, so that reveal probably would've been more impactful to me if I'd read the previous series. Issues 7 and 8 are my favourite of this set of issues because they do deal with the aftermath of the previous arc and I'm assuming they also set things up for the rest of the series.

I think that just about wraps it up for this review. I'll be back tomorrow for this week's movie review where I'll be taking a look at Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory starring Gene Wilder. So until then have a great afternoon and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Doctor Who Story #1 "An Unearthly Child" (1963) TV Show Review

 Hey everyone! How're you all doing today? I'm doing well. It's Wednesday and I'm here to review the very first story of Doctor Who, a four parter called "An Unearthly Child". As I go through my reviews of Doctor Who I'm not going to worry too much about spoilers simply because until I get current stuff from Series 12 and Series 13 (when that airs) many of these seasons are many years old. Especially this story as it will be 58 years old at this point. Which means that for those Whovians who are interested in Classic Who probably have already seen this first story before. Plus as I get into New Who there are most likely going to be story points that I'll want to talk about in each season. So let's get into it and talk about "An Unearthly Child", the first four episodes of Doctor Who.

Doctor Who is not a show I grew up with. In fact, I didn't know it existed until 2004 or early 2005 when it was announced that the BBC was reviving the series after sixteen years. By the time I was old enough to remember watching TV, the original run of the show had ended after 26 years and the reruns stopped soon after. So the show just wasn't available for me to watch. My parents had seen it, at least my dad had at some point in the '70s but wasn't enough of a fan to show it to me when it was on in reruns. And being that I don't recall if the VHS releases the series had in the '80s and '90s were even available at the video store we went to when I was a kid, Rogers Video, Doctor Who passed me by until I saw the 50th Anniversary special The Day of the Doctor. Not to worry I'll be doing a full review of that special when I get to the end of Series 7, which was the end of Matt Smith's run as the Doctor.

1963 was an interesting year in the world of geekdom. Mainly because geekdom as we know it today didn't really exist. Julius Schwartz was busying revitalizing the DC Universe, while Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko were starting the Marvel Universe, neither Star Trek nor Star Wars existed yet, though Star Trek would start airing around the time that William Hartnell left the role of the Doctor and was replaced by Patrick Troughton, effectively ending the First Doctor's adventures and beginning the Second Doctor's run. None of the other franchises that I know and love today didn't exist yet when Doctor Who began airing in 1963. The internet and cell phones also didn't exist yet. So Doctor Who could be considered the first geeky fandom, which is crazy to think about.

The story itself is actually fairly simple. Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright are teachers at Coal Hill School in Shoreditch, London, England who are intrigued by an incredibly bright student named Susan Foreman. When they follow her home they discover that her and her grandfather, who is known only as the Doctor, are time travelers from another place in time and space and live in a spaceship that's disguised as a police telephone box. To prove to Ian and Barbara that it's real, the Doctor takes the ship, known as the TARDIS into the year 100,000 B.C. where they encounter a tribe of cave dwellers. They are captured and must find a way to protect themselves from the erratic inhabitants of the time period. That's it. That's the whole story. There's some story with the cave people, particularly their leader Za and his rival Kal, but it's not super complex. Which is one of the things I like about the story. Because it's the very first Doctor Who story, the lore and continuity isn't there yet. So the plot isn't grand like they would become as the series went on, which makes it a good story to watch as a sample of the classic series.

What astonishes me about this story is how much is similar to modern era Doctor Who. For example, there are four main characters in the show. Two men and two women. In this story it's the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan. In Series 11 it was the Doctor, Ryan, Yaz, and Graham. The only difference is that the gender of the Doctor is different in Series 11 than it is here. The time travel is also similar, because Doctor Who is a time travel show. 

I don't particularly care for the way the Doctor is portrayed here. Don't get me wrong, William Hartnell does a fine job in the role, but I find the First Doctor to be a bit prickly and a little unlikeable here. And I think it's an issue with the First Doctor in general, because I didn't like him all that much in the 2017 Christmas special, Twice Upon a Time where he's played by David Bradley. I think that's just how he's supposed to be. I prefer the more fun portrayals of the Doctor that we get with the modern incarnations as portrayed by Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant (despite the intensity in his expressions), Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi by the time of Twice Upon a Time, and Jodie Whittaker though. But Hartnell falls right into the role though and you can tell he made every effort to make the role believable to the audience, despite the fact that Doctor Who was originally made for children.

Putting aside the story elements for a moment, that's something that I find incredible and probably the most fascinating things about the series this early on. Doctor Who was originally produced as a Television drama for children. Which is a pretty far cry from the more intense, mostly adult but sometimes family friendly, series that it is today. Because it is a children's show at this point in time if it had been on, even in reruns, when I was a kid, it's something that my siblings and I would've seen on PBS or TVO and would've loved from the start. 

I think Ian, Barbara, and Susan are great Companions. In my limited history as a viewer of Doctor Who I've always grown fond of the Companions. Rose is great, Donna is amazing, as is Clara, Rory and Amy are my favourite, and Yaz, Ryan, and Graham are amazing too. Obviously I haven't met ALL of the Companions from the modern era (Captain Jack, Martha, Bill, and Nardole are ones I haven't really been introduced to yet) and none from the classic era aside from Barbara, Susan, and Ian, but I enjoy the Companions as they are the stand-in for the audience for this show. Which in turn has helped me connect to the Doctor as a character alot easier. 

Aside from the Doctor being portrayed as almost antagonistic, there isn't much about this story that I didn't like. Yes, it's a bit slow in places, but this isn't the faster paced series that the show is today and I'm oddly okay with that. The next story, "The Daleks", is three episodes longer than this one, at seven compared to this one's four. But honestly, it doesn't matter to me. It's still pretty decent despite it's low budget and shorter length compared to what the show is now.

Oh one thing that I find amazing is that Verity Lambert, a woman, is essentially the showrunner for the series at this point. According to the Doctor Who Wiki, the British TV industry didn't have the title of Showrunner on Doctor Who until Rusell T. Davies took on the role when he revived the show in 2005, but Lambert's role as producer is essentially that of head writer/executive producer/showrunner, which is fascinating because there's never been a showrunner who is a woman on Doctor Who in the modern era, despite the fact that a woman currently plays the Doctor on the show. So it's interesting that Lambert was showrunner on Doctor Who when it first started in the '60s, where women couldn't be an executive producer/showrunner on a TV show here in North America.

One more thing I didn't mention is that the first episode aired on November 23rd, 1963 and garned low ratings because nobody paid attention to it that night. John F. Kennedy had been assassinated the day before and so everybody was in shock, even over in the U.K., and were listening and watching the news to try to keep up to date on the investigation. Luckily, the BBC rebroadcast the episode the following week and people liked it. 

Overall "An Unearthly Child" is a bizarre start to an almost 60 year old franchise, but it gets my seal of approval as a great start to said franchise. It takes time for us to get to know the main characters, it was exciting for the most part, and the story wasn't too complicated on it's first outing.

And that my friends is it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for my review of The Amazing Spider-Girl #'s 7-12 and then on Friday for my review of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. And next week I'll be returning to the TARDIS to review Story #2, "The Daleks". So until then have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Blog Update: August, 2021

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I hope you all had a good weekend. I certainly did. I actually saw my grandparents for the first time since Christmas Day so that was nice. Today I'm here for a blog update for the month of August. So let's get right into it.

The first thing I would like to do is make an announcement. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to start reviewing Doctor Who. I have the first three stories of the Classic series as well as the first seven series of the modern era, with the accompanying Christmas Specials and I'll be getting the Peter Capaldi DVD set in the very near future. Which will take me up to the 2017 Christmas Special Twice Upon a Time which is where I first started watching the show as it aired instead of just on DVD or in reruns.

I've never been a huge Doctor Who fan. I didn't see a single episode until The Day of the Doctor which was the 50th Anniversary special that aired in 2013. I became aware of it when the series first came back in 2005, but I didn't really pay attention to it as nobody I knew watched it and I couldn't watch it in my bedroom like I could Star Trek and other shows. So as I said, starting with the 50th Anniversary special I saw a few episodes from Matt Smith's run on Space Channel back in 2016. I also saw half an episode from Peter Capaldi's run. But nothing really grabbed me about the show. Don't get me wrong, I quite enjoyed Doctor Who, but I didn't latch onto it the way I latched onto Star Trek and Star Wars when I was a kid in the '90s and shows like Andromeda, Stargate SG-1, and Mutant X as a teenager in the 2000s. Maybe because by the time I did see my first episode of Doctor Who I was more aware of just how popular the show was and it intimidated me. Especially since I have friends now who are huge fans of the show and they can be a little...pushy when it comes to Doctor Who. Naturally that made me resist it until Jodie Whittaker's first series, Series 11, started and I just jumped right in. Now I have the first seven series and the first three stories of the classic series on DVD though I stopped watching the most recent series, Series 12, as it aired, because it started off with alot of heavy continuity stuff that I didn't understand having not seen a whole lot of previous series.

The reason I decided to start reviewing Doctor Who is because I don't get to talk about TV very much on the blog. Unless it's a current show that I'm reviewing the season for as soon as it's finished airing. Even then I only do that if I know I have enough to talk about when the season is over. Like I knew I wasn't going to have much more to say about season 1 of Punky Brewster when that wrapped up that I hadn't already said when I reviewed the first two episodes when they premiered. Same goes with Monsters at Work when that finishes in a few weeks. But I really wanted to dive into a show the way I did with Community last year. And I figured Doctor Who would be the perfect show for that since it's geeky and a show I like but just haven't seen enough of yet.

I haven't quite decided how exactly I'm going to watch the show. Obviously on DVD, and one story per week for the Classic Who stories that I'll be reviewing, but once I get into New Who with Series 1, I'm not sure if I'm going to watch one episode a day, or binge however many episodes are on a disc in the DVD sets that I have until I get to the end of a series. We'll see what happens when the time comes. But for now, I will be reviewing Doctor Who on this blog starting tomorrow afternoon with the review of "An Unearthly Child" coming out sometime in the evening. So stay tuned for that.

As a result, once I get into the modern era, I'm going to be putting movie reviews on hold so that I can focus on watching Doctor Who as I have alot to go through. Don't worry though I have movie reviews coming up this week, next week and in two weeks. This week I'm going to be reviewing Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, next week I'll be reviewing Flight of the Navigator, and the week after I'll be reviewing Shazam!. So look out for those.

This week I'll be reviewing issues 7-12 of The Amazing Spider-Girl. I really enjoyed talking about the first story arc last week from issues 1-6 and I'm excited to be carrying on with that comic book series over the course of the next few weeks as I make my way through that series. After that I'll be diving into the Knightfall Saga, the epic Batman storyline that ran from 1993 until 1995. And yes, I'll be including Batman: Prodigal in that series of reviews as well.

So that's the plan for August, and I guess September, October, and possibly November depending on how long it takes me to watch Doctor Who. Oh and I'm not going to review novels anymore, so I can focus on movies, TV, and comics. I really want to get the blog back to it's geeky roots from when I originally started it on Wordpress back in January 2015. Which means getting back to talking about those three things in general as well as the franchises that I love like Star Trek, Star Wars, DC Comics (specifically Batman), Spider-Man, and Disney. Among others of course. 

Alrighty that is going to be it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow afternoon with my review of the first story of Doctor Who, "An Unearthly Child". So until then have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.