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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “The Hungry Earth”

So does it still count as a cliffhanger if the climax occurs underground?

Somebody on the writing staff has obviously seen his or her share of Val Lewton films. And read a bit of Arthur Conan Doyle, to boot. And yes, I have apparently made my life's mission to try and guess the inspiration for each Doctor Who episode this season. Hopefully, this next episode will be too imaginative for me to do that.

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “Amy's Choice”

So not only does the Doctor dance, the Doctor also -- well, you'll see.

And who knew Amy was such a closet polygamist?

And judging from the abundant bird noises during this episode, I suspect someone on the writing staff has seen The Innocents.

Poor Rory Williams. As much as I hate to admit it, I really felt for the dude during this episode.

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “Vampires of Venice”

Oh my. I finally got my memory back.

Anyway, this episode was one of my favorites of this season despite a ton of goofy plot logic.

Somebody on this show's writing staff is definitely up on their Hammer movies. Paging Kate Bush! Paging Kate Bush!

I am starting to get sick of how every other alien tries to give the good Doctor a guilt trip. I know it is an easy way for them to get away with pulling his chain but it is also a hoary plot device.

Nor do I care too much for how the good Doctor humiliated Amy's friend and husband-to-be Rory Williams in the pre-credit sequence. Maybe I am just sentimental because a friend of mine has a grandson who habitually mispronounces the name “Roy” to sound like “Rory” -- and I have more than a few relatives named Roy -- but I always thought poor Rory got the short end of the stick in this episode -- and that the Doctor proved himself to be a twit.

Oh, well. It is not like they killed off poor Rory, right?

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “Flesh and Stone”

Wait a minute! Who's this Doctor fellow you mention?

Who's Amy?

What's this Internet?

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “The Beast Below”

Here we have yet another episode proving the creepiness of British schoolgirls. Which is odd considering that the ending of this episode is more child-friendly than most other episodes.

Kudos to the writer for not using such obvious jokes as, say, a reference to Jefferson Starship.

I'm not sure I buy the believability of the central gimmick -- a large alien creature which apparently has no need to breathe and which can negotiate the cold vacuum of space and the dense atmosphere of a planet with equal ease. But it was nice to see an episode that seemed fated for a tragic ending come up with a comparatively pleasant ending without negating its own story logic.

And the machines that gave voters a choice between “protesting” and “forgetting” seemed all too believable in today's political world. I guess it was a good thing that this was meant to be a fictional story, right?

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “Blink”

This is very easily one of the creepiest episodes of the second series -- apart from maybe “Midnight” -- to air thus far.

It was so good it could very easily have produced a spin-off involving its main character (the one who is not the Doctor). But it never got one.

It was also so good that it did not really need a sequel. But it got one anyway.

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The Office (U.S.): “Secretary's Day”

Aw! Poor Erin.

And for that matter, poor Andy. He really did want to make her happy after all.

And once again, Michael Scott proves that though he's still totally clueless about so many things, he still has an uncanny way of dealing with women. Of course, the show has hinted for some time that he and Erin have a secret bond, perhaps because Erin looks up to him far more than Pam ever did.

And speaking of Pam, kudos to her for coming up with just the right thing to say to Erin even though her message was taken totally the wrong way. If more real-life people were like her, this would be a better world.

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “Victory of the Daleks”

That Winston Churchill was a bastard. A bastard, I say. First there was that foolishness at Gallipoli, then he tried to steal something from the Doctor. In addition to that, he authorized the use of a special secret weapon which will help Great Britain hold out against the Nazis, if not win the war. The weapon in question: Daleks.

Granted, this is an alternative history version of Churchill -- which might explain why the actor who plays him looks so little like the traditional image of Churchill nearly all American schoolchildren grew up seeing in our history books.

And this, of course, is an alternative history version of Doctor Who, whose writer dares to ponder the question: if use of the Daleks had been offered to Churchill during World War II, would he had accepted it? (Of course, I cannot help wondering what would have happened had the Daleks been offered to Stalin or Roosevelt instead, but then that is just me.)

Okay, I must confess at this point that I have gotten pretty sick of the Daleks. Yes, they were a memorable enemy in the first series, but they tend to be most effective when they are underused. The Daleks are supposed to be the Doctor's worst enemy -- so bringing them up every time one of the second series' writers is stuck for a story idea diminishes their impact.

Thus, while I found it neat to see Moffat and company stumbling across an alt history idea that has yet to be used by Harry Turtledove, it is hard for me to pretend that a whole lot happens in this episode beyond the opening sequence that was not predictable.

Will the Doctor confront the Allied Daleks? Yes, he will.

Will trouble come of said confrontation? Yes, it will.

Will the Daleks prove to have a secret plan? Are you kidding? The Daleks would not be Daleks if they did not have a secret plan.

Will the Doctor's assistant, Amy Pond, play a key role in defeating the plans of the Daleks? Of course.

I did think it was a neat touch that one of the characters in Churchill's military headquarters had a lady friend named Dorabelle. Is that Dorabelle as in Adora Belle Dearheart, the golem expert in Terry Pratchett's Discworld Series? Not necessarily but it would be a nice touch if it was. So let's pretend it is until we find out otherwise.

Edited to add: No, wait, the lady friend's name is Dorabella. Still close enough for government work, though.

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Doctor Who (The First Series): “Remembrance of the Daleks”

Wow! Who ever knew that British schoolgirls could be so creepy? And that they all dress like Catholic schoolgirls? (Or do Catholic schoolgirls dress like them? Inquiring minds, yadda, yadda, yadda.)

Seriously, this episode was best known as being one of the better Doctor Who episodes of the Sylvester McCoy era and definitely the most memorable one since he acquired would-be punk rocker Ace (an Earth-born girl exiled to outer space) as an assistant. Not that the other McCoy episodes were all that bad but most of them were not really my cup of tea and I always felt a bit sorry that an actor as likable as McCoy was stuck playing the Doctor in such episodes. I suspect if he had better scriptwriters, the show would have lasted a lot longer. But, alas, it did not. Anyway, if it had continued, we might never have got the second series.

In any event, the show opened up with the Doctor and Ace landing in 1963 London, just in time to get involved in an alien invasion of Daleks. It turned out that the city of London was not just being invaded by one faction of Daleks, but two -- the second being less racially pure by Dalek standards than the first. The result was a civil war between Dalek factions that just happened to involve the human race.

It was up to the Doctor and Ace to help sort things out -- in part by combining Ace's gift for explosives and the Doctor's gift for troubleshooting into an united front. Along the way, Ace and the Doctor stumbled across the creepy British schoolgirl mentioned above who seemed to know a lot more about the Doctor than one would expect. The Doctor also stumbled across a British military man who was a younger version of the Brigadier, a character who played a key role in the Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker eras. Not much was made of this encounter. Indeed, for all the interaction that occurred between the Doctor and Brigadier, Jr., the writers might as well have named him John Smith. And despite the fact that much of this episode took place on locations used in the show's first episode, there were surprisingly few nostalgic in-jokes in this episode.

One thing that was noticeable in this episode was the use of a racial subtext usually not employed in the first series -- perhaps because most racial conflicts on the show tend to be more of an alien versus terrestrial variety. Not only did the episode have the racial differences between the two Dalek factions play a key role in the plot, but one human Dalek sympathizer in this episode (a bad guy, natch) revealed himself to be a former Nazi sympathizer (and thus, a racist) and yet another revealed himself to be a white supremacist who, unlike Ace, had no problem with the segregated restaurants of 1963 London. Ace and the Doctor, needless to say, were against both racism and both factions of the Daleks and in the end, the Doctor managed to play the two factions off against each other until both were destroyed and the surviving human sympathizers were either killed or vanquished.

Was this a perfect episode? No, and I have seen many episodes in earlier seasons that I liked way better. But it is not bad and if I ever had a chance to see it again, I would.

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Doctor Who (The First Series): “Genesis of the Daleks”

If you see just one episode of the original Doctor Who series, it probably should be this one, which took place in the Tom Baker era. Granted, if you do see it, you run the risk of finding out how addictive watching Doctor Who episodes can be. And how hard it is to go cold turkey. (Why, you would almost have to wait until the show went off the air.)

Seriously, this is one of the more memorable episodes of the Tom Baker era. Elisabeth Sladen's Sarah Jane Smith makes a great Girl Friday for Tom Baker's Doctor and Davros, the evil alien scientist who invented the Daleks, makes a great villain.

If I had to choose the most memorable scenes of this episode, it would not be the endless action scenes that play up the similarities between the Daleks and the Nazis -- or for that matter, the scenes that play up the similarities between the Daleks' opponents and the Free French resistance movement. It would be the scene in which the Doctor tries to talk Davros into destroying the Daleks by likening their creation to that of a deadly virus -- only to find to his horror that Davros is fascinated by the concept of such a virus. But then Davros is a villain so the good Doctor really should not have been surprised.

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Ugly Betty: “Hello Goodbye”

SPOILER for those who haven't seen it yet.

Oh, cool. Everyone got a happy ending. But then most hardcore fans saw that coming so it was no big surprise.

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She-Wolf of London: “She-Wolf of London”

Once upon a time, a snarky young American girl got together with a stodgy British gent to fight supernatural beasties, all the while cursing the fates which gifted her with an unwanted supernatural power. Sound familiar? Of course, it does. But the show in question is not Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer; it's She-Wolf of London, a short-lived syndicated show which aired briefly in the early 1990s and then vanished. And while it would be nice to imagine that such a show inspired Buffy, I suspect that only Joss Whedon and his lawyers would know if that was really true.

Anyway, I thought it a pity that SWoL never really took off since the two main characters -- Kate Hodge's Randi Wallace and Neil Dickson's Dr. Ian Matheson -- had a lot of chemistry together and I must admit that there were times that I wish the show had not felt compelled to throw in the whole supernatural angle since the personal interactions of Randi and Ian seemed a lot more interesting than any of the show's insights on lycanthropy. Hodge especially had a way of saying her lines in a way which made even the clunkiest line -- and sadly there were many -- seem interesting.

Perhaps the highlight of the first episode was a scene in which Ms. Wallace was alone in a tent on the British moors, typing an essay about the supernatural on her laptop and absorbing the noises of the wilderness around her. Wallace came across as a smart young woman whose writing unfortunately ended way too soon when she was attacked by a wild animal. Later on, she discovered that no wolf in his right mind would have jumped her at the fir -- er -- attacked her in the tent. And when the full moon rose, she found that she was cursed to become the title character of the episode.

She enlisted Matheson's help in finding a cure for the curse but unfortunately, there was no cure to be found in this episode. An attempt to end the curse by severing the bloodline of Wallace's original attacker ended in futility when her assailant died in an accident -- and she stayed cursed. In the last few scenes, Matheson was preparing Ms. Wallace to undergo yet another lupine transformation by chaining her up in the basement of his parents' house, promising her that they would eventually find her a cure. Eventually...

If I had to pick the most obvious drawback to the series -- and the most probable reason it never caught on -- it would be the fact that the show never came up with a convincing reason why the death of Wallace's attacker did not end the curse. Indeed, the show itself suffered from a rather odd paradox -- if you liked the title character, you really did not want her to stay a werewolf, and yet if she ever stopped being a werewolf, the show would end. Of course, other shows -- for example, The Fugitive and The Incredible Hulk -- managed to survive similar no-win premises. But this show did not. Add to that some not quite convincing special effects and the fact that the show was on an obvious low budget and it is a wonder the show lasted as long as it did.

And yet I do not consider it a bad show. I liked the two main characters, I liked the supporting cast and I genuinely enjoyed many lines in the otherwise uneven script. At worst, the show stands out as part of the obvious transition between campy horror shows like the 80s series Tales from the Darkside -- which did not even pretend to resist indulging in the campier side of their subject matter -- and more sophisticated shows like the 90s series The X-Files -- which proved you could write such shows on a more serious level and still get a large audience.

Of course, it is still kinda hard for me to believe that my beloved Buffy Summers would have ever hit the small screen if Miss Randi Wallace had not been there to pave the way. After all, TV executives may show no shame in blocking the way to a petite blonde -- but how many have the cojones to stand up to a female werewolf?

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Modern Family: “My Funky Valentine”

Believe it or not, I actually liked this episode. I'm still not as fond of this series as I am Ugly Betty or The Office but I am starting to warm up to the characters now and appreciate the writers' attempts to breathe new life into old plotlines -- even if it sometimes seems as if their creativity peaked with the idea of using the same fictional documentary approach used in The Office on a family sitcom.

It is nice to see actor Ed O'Neill play a character who is actually supposed to be likable for a change and I like the fact that the writers are starting to depict his Colombian wife more like an actual person and not just some walking ethnic joke. I appreciate the fact that actress Julie Bowen actually gets more airtime -- and sympathy -- on this show than she ever seemed to get on The James Spader Show AKA Boston Legal. I like the interaction between the gay couple on the show. At times it seems a bit over-the-top, but then I could say the same thing about some real-life heterosexual couples I know. Indeed, after some of the real-life dysfunctional families I've witnessed, the sight of a couple who are actually doting on their child seems like a breath of fresh air, even if the doting couple and the child are just fictional.

It would be interesting to see what happens when the show gets older and the children on it -- especially Lily, the adopted Asian child of the gay couple -- start growing up. Indeed, this appears to be one of the few new TV shows I have seen this year which has me looking forward to a second season. Then again, I have not been watching a lot of the newer shows so please feel free to take that for what little it is worth.

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Ugly Betty: “The Past Presents the Future”

Oh no they didn't.

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “The Eleventh Hour”

Yes, I know we're all supposed to hate the new guy and that fans my age are supposed to especially hate him because he's so darn young. Plus one could argue that the show hardly needs yet another red-headed companion while visions of my beloved Donna Noble are still echoing in most people's minds.

And yet...

I liked this episode.

I wondered for a bit whether writer Steven Moffat was starting to lose his touch because I actually anticipated some of this episode's plot twists but the episode still managed to be an emotionally satisfying one. And even the new assistant was likable. I must admit the prayer scene in the first five minutes was a nice touch as well. However, I can't help but wonder if the last shot of the episode was supposed to be Moffat's way of telling former show writer Russell T. Davies that he didn't need to use any of his stinking characters any more than he needed any stinking badges. But I'm probably projecting that part. So never mind.

Will the next episode be as watchable?

Time will tell.

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The Big Bang Theory: “The Adhesive Duck Deficiency”

At long last the show gives us proof that the seemingly asexual Sheldon is not quite as asexual as he seems. Of course, I should be embarrassed to admit I found this out via a rerun but I guess that is still better than waiting for the DVD.

Then again how exactly am I supposed to react to an episode that makes fun of a character for having had sex with his cousin when more than a few relatives in my family had actually married -- and on one occasion that I know of, had children with -- a cousin? Yes, they are aware of the laws of genetics. And most of them chose to marry said cousin after they had conceived all the children they want with a former spouse. And to be fair, not every cousin in my family seeks to marry another cousin.

Then again if it was good enough for Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, who am I to look down on the practice?

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Ugly Betty: “Back in Her Place”

Oh, cool! Betty Suarez is starting her own blog.

Perhaps I should do something like that.

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Ugly Betty: “Plus None”

Betty Suarez is a Billy Idol fan? Who knew?

Anyway, America Ferrera looks so cute dancing in that last scene that it doesn't really matter how plausible her character's taste in music is.

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The 4400: “Wake-Up Call”

Actor Jeffrey Combs is famous for playing geeky characters who may or may not be scientists. Actress Summer Glau is best known for playing mysterious waif-like women who have secret abilities.

So guess what type of characters they play on this episode.

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The 4400: “White Light”

Agent Warren Lytell from the previous episode kidnapped Kyle but Baldwin and Skouris kidnapped him back with help with Theory Room geek Marco, a NTAC employee who was obviously smitten with Skouris.

Kyle persuaded Baldwin to take him back to the beach where he and Shawn were when Shawn was abducted. A white light came down and seized Kyle. In an effort to free his son, Baldwin entered the white light and saw -- ah, but that would be telling.

Meanwhile, Sam and Lily finally got sick of their would-be benefactor's controlling ways and tried to leave Jordan Collier's 4400 command. Unfortunately, they had to force their way out but not before Collier inadvertently touched Lily's stomach and received what appeared to be a revelation from Lily's unborn child.

In other news, Shawn fought with his brother over Nikki and turned to Collier for sanctuary.

Six months later, Lily's baby was due and Sam drove her to the hospital. But not before the TV audience got just one more hint that this baby was going to be extraordinary...

Thus endeth the first season.