Fanboy Friday: Why I Wander The Wastes

I’ve been watching a lot of AMC’s The Walking Dead lately and it’s got me thinking about the apocalypse. Not, like, what my zompirepocalypse action plan would be, I mean, I’ve got that dossier drawn up already (if you’re looking for the latest Apocalyptic Survival tips, check out Seth On Survival – that show is very informative, and the guy that hosts it is super dreamy.) No, I’ve been thinking about why I’m drawn to apocalyptic fiction and, by extension, why ‘the culture’ these days seems drawn to it too.

Poor T-Dog.

The Walking Dead is a pretty dour apocalypse. Zompocalypses in general are big downers. Even though TWD is a long-form series you always get a sense that the characters are living on borrowed time, that they're fighting to survive the next moment. Every time they try to build a more permanent foothold (Herschel’s farm, the Prison) it inevitable gets destroyed by a wave of the undead, asshole humans, or their own shortsightedness. While I watch The Walking Dead for the chills and superbly directed suspense (it’s rare for other modern horror to make me tense up as well as well as that series does), I also watch it because it’s a morbidly pessimistic dissection of society. A lot of season three especially has been about whether or not human decency is a detriment in the post-zombie world. The Guv’ might be a complete batpoop psychopath but Woodbury has (at least for its regular citizens) the best quality-of-life rating we’ve seen in TWD’s post-apocalypse. Rick’s descent from square-jawed, Jack Shepard-esque hero to benevolent dictator has seemed to be at least vaguely effective in keeping his group alive. The Walking Dead’s  main theme seems to be asserting that basic human compassion and decency would be detrimental to survival in ‘the wild.’ While I patently disagree (many disasters on that show could’ve been prevented with a little more good faith and open communication), watching the show’s narrative try to work out that question is super entertaining for both brain and heart.

Alternately, two of my favourite vidjagames are the two latest Fallouts (3 and New Vegas), and I play them for completely different reasons than why I watch The Walking Dead. In Fallout you wander the post-apocalyptic wasteland, righting wrongs (or just doing more wrongs and looting the bodies if that’s your thing) and shooting zombies and bandits. I play Fallout for the sense of freedom and adventure it instills – exploring a destroyed civilization, collecting loot, shooting things and occasionally (since I’m that kind of game roleplayer) helping NPCs out for good karma. In Fallout, the apocalypse is something that provides an escape – if civilization is destroyed, we are no longer bound by its rules and can therefore seek better and more exciting, bullet-filled climes. In this way, the apocalypse of the Fallout universe serves the same purpose that the frontier in a traditional western provides - it’s a blank canvas upon which we can set out on our adventurous lonesome and forge our own destiny free from the chains of society.

The Lone Wanderer and Dogmeat wander the wastes in Fallout 3. Any apocalypse that gives me a free puppy I'm probably okay with.

While the idea of a lone post-apocalyptic cowboy wandering the wastes doin’ his own thing because he damn well can is a kind of utopian libertarian fantasy wherein all our society-prevented freedom is returned to us via the apocalypse, other optimistic apocalyptic fiction can be about society rising from the ashes. The term “cozy catastrophe” was coined by British sci-fi author Brian Aldiss to describe stories like Day of the Triffids wherein modern society is destroyed, but its destruction allows for a kind of wiping the slate clean. Free from the constraints of the ‘old world’, the survivors of the apocalypse are free to rebuild society better than it was before. This is basically the opposite of what The Walking Dead seems to be trying to do since every attempt at post-zombie civilization crumbles to sobbing pieces, but the hope in the ‘cozy catastrophe’ is pretty darn appealing to my sensibilities – I mean, I’m the guy who got in an argument with a T.A. over my optimistic interpretation of the end of Dawn of the Dead (I know I’m wrong. Whatever. I’m free to read the text as I see fit, dammit)!

That being said, realistically, I’m definitely very much in favour of society. I vote NDP for pity’s sake – give me my socialized health-care and running water any day of the week over wandering an apocalyptic wasteland. But, that doesn’t mean that the wasteland can’t provide a good escapist romp.

Also, I just need to say it... poor T-Dog. I miss 'em.

Fanboy Friday: Theorizin' 'Bout F'nales (Doctor Who S.7 Edition)

Every year it's the same tired story. The showrunner of the venerable and excellent telly program Doctor Who starts setting up a running arc throughout the season, hinting at a massive conspiracy that we believe will ultimately come into play in the season finale, culminating in the realization that Amy Pond's home town was actually the Eye of Harmony the whole time or the return of the Eighth Doctor or Adric or Nega-Rose. But of course, every year it's the same thing - all the theorizing comes to naught, and it ends up just being a regular season finale with a big space battle and the Big Bad being defeated by the Power of Love or whatever.

But that ain't gonna stop me from theorizing.

This week on Fanboy Friday I'm going to be talking quite a bit about the seventh season of Doctor Who, and, specifically, what I'd be doing with their upcoming season finale were I to be lucky enough to be wearing Stephen Moffat's big imposing Scottish TV writer shoes.

Despite my opening preamble, I'm actually a big fan of the Who finales. Doomsday was fantastic, the whole Utopia/Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords three part finale was impeccable save the moment when the Doctor was saved by the whole world clapping it's hands and saying "I believe in Time Lords" (I paraphrase, but still). During Moffatt's current tenure as showrunner, the season finales have actually been kind of amazing. Season five's finale might've been about saving the whole of time and space from evaporating, but the action of the episode was contained and quite intimate. The whole thing took place entirely in a museum with just the four main characters running away from a petrified Dalek. Amazing!

This season, we've got two mysteries going already. The prophecy at the end of last season about how the Doctor will be forced to answer "The Question" (the question being "doctor who?") and this will have some kind of universal ramifications. The other mystery which wasn't really a mystery unless you're like me and read entertainment news, was that the actress playing the Doctor's new companion, Jenna-Louise Coleman, was in the first episode playing a differently named character, who is revealed to actually be a Dalek, and subsequently dies. How exactly is that actress going to go on and play the new series lead if she's killed in the season premiere?

I think I have a pretty ingenious solution to this. So! This season, each episode keeps drawing attention to the fact that the Doctor has been going on a tear deleting any record of himself from databases throughout the universe because his legendary reputation was doing more harm than good. Hence everyone asking him "Doctor who?" like, every episode this year. So. I presume this is setting up how that question will be important - the fact that people know or don't know who the Doctor is is important. And, at the end of the Dalek episode, Jenna Coleman's character uses her crazy hacker skillz to delete any record of the Doctor from the memory of the Dalek race before she dies. This is pretty big since it's established in that episode that "Doctor" is a synonym for "Predator" in their language - the Doctor's existence is tied to the Daleks' entire worldview. 

My theory here is that when Jenna Coleman joins the main cast, she'll be the same character as in that Dalek episode, but picked up by the Doctor before she crash-landed on the Dalek planet and became assimilated (because he thought she was so cool, and decides to use his freakin' time machine to save her from her grisly fate).

This, of course, will lead to the Daleks remembering who the Doctor is, because Jenna Coleman was never Dalekized and never deleted the Doctor from their database. The Daleks will, as per usual, come up with some kind of Season Finale level evil scheme that the Doctor will only be able to stop if his anonymity remains intact - leading to a fateful, terrible decision where he'll have to either consign Jenna Coleman back to her original, tragic fate or let the Daleks win.

I think this would be great, especially because the importance of the question "doctor who?" is only established by facts that came into play after we found out what the question was in season six (Jenna being Dalekized, the Doctor becoming anonymous, etc). It wouldn't rely on any arcane backstory from the classic series or back in the new series catalogue! That and it sets up a neat, timey-wimey but emotionally trying conflict for the Doctor to go through.

But, then, of course, Christmas happened. In the Christmas special, Jenna Coleman shows up again as a presumably different character in Victorian England who also dies but who has the same last words as her Dalekized counterpart. And then it's teased that she's playing yet another character who lives in the modern era. Which kinda blows my idea out of the water.

I really hope this multiple characters played by the same actress who are somehow linked isn't explained with some kind of mystic silly shared soul or essence thing, and that they aren't 'destined' to all meet the Doctor and die similar deaths or something. There's enough fate-based material to play with just by having a Time Machine as a weekly prop without bringing in actual Fate. I'm sure the Moff has something up his sleeve, but I, for the life of me, have no idea what it is.

But, again, theorizing has never actually helped when it comes to Doctor Who (or any other sci-fi series. I mean really, Starbuck's dad should've been a secret Cylon. Really.) Fingers crossed for an exciting second half of season seven!

Also, since if you got to the end of this post I assume you watch this series, when Amy and Rory got trapped in the late 30s, why couldn't the Doc just go get them in the TARDIS? I know there was all that "I can't go back to 1938 New York, too much time distorion" malarky, but, couldn't he have just gone back to 1938 Detroit, and got in a cab? Or go to 1941 New York? All I'm saying is that it really seemed more like a major inconvenience rather than a "we can never meet again" thing.

END OF RANT, NERDS!