The End of Time by: Russell T. Davies and directed by: Euros Lyn

 

The End of Time stars David Tennant as the Doctor, Bernard Cribbins as Wilfred Mottt, and John Simm as the Master with Timothy Dalton as Lord President Rassilon, Claire Bloom as the Woman, Jacqueline King as Sylvia Noble, Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, Karl Collins as Shaun Temple, David Harewood as Joshua Naismith, Tracy Ifeachor as Abigail Naismith, Silas Carson as the Voice of Ood Sigma, and Brian Cox as Voice of the Ood Elder.  It was written by: Russell T. Davies and directed by: Euros Lyn with Gary Russell as Script Editor, Tracie Simpson as Producer, and Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner as Executive Producers.  It was originally broadcast on Fridays from 25 December 2009 to 1 January 2010 on BBC One.

 

Russell T. Davies “one last hurrah” was always going to be large in scale.  The largest issue (outside of David Tennant not deciding to leave the role until late 2008, leaving Steven Moffat the job of casting the Eleventh Doctor and rewriting his first series for a new Doctor instead of what at one point would have been Tennant’s final series as the Doctor) was that Davies was unaware of when the final episode would air.  The original candidate was Christmas 2009 or Easter 2010, which would have immediately preceded the first series under Steven Moffat, so Davies sketched the idea of the Doctor saving an alien family on a spacecraft and dying of a radiation leak.  Davies was very keen on setting up the regeneration to be the Doctor saving somebody unremarkable and in an unremarkable way, but in April 2008 negotiations began with the BBC to lock plans for the final special.  Davies wished to move Steven Moffat’s first series to the autumn of 2010 and proposed a miniseries for the usual spring 2010 slot, something that Jane Tranter countered with two episodes to be aired just before Moffat’s first series, something that Davies and Gardner specifically disliked as it easily could lead to their final story overshadowing Moffat’s series with a final counter of moving their final two specials to Christmas 2009 and New Year’s Day 2010.  This decision made Davies believe that audiences would not be satisfied with a quieter end and scrapped the original plans, deciding that despite intending the ring drop of the Master’s burning body in “Last of the Time Lords” to be picked up by a successor, secured John Simm as a special guest star to reprise the role of the Master and the barebones of The End of Time is born.  Several ideas were worked through including a body swap before deciding to follow up on the ending of Donna Noble, securing Catherine Tate in a cameo and Jacqueline King and Bernard Cribbins in larger parts, Cribbins as Wilfred Mott being the one-off companion for these specials, as well as developing the first proper look at Gallifrey for the revival with the plot point of bringing back the Time Lords.  In developing the script however, Davies did something new for Doctor Who, something that would thankfully become standard for when regenerations would also hand-off production teams and that was to allow his successor Steven Moffat to write the final moments of the episode post-regeneration to introduce Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor.

 

The End of Time as a story is this attempt at writing an intricate web of a story to serve as both a Christmas and New Year’s Day special, with each episode having these varying tones, the first being action packed with spectacle while the second is an attempt to be more character focused.  These two tones don’t work nearly as well, especially since this is broadcast as a single story under one title, the first time the revival of Doctor Who would actually do that, and the only time until 2020’s Spyfall.  There’s a lot with this story that generally doesn’t work well, often things integral for making it work.  First, and foremost, it’s a story that is in general too big for itself.  Russell T. Davies had been escalating and in “The Stolen Earth” and “Journey’s End” that escalation was to the already far too big, every version of reality is at stake, and the way it is meant to get bigger is the concept of time unravelling.  Davies attempts to communicate these stakes through dialogue because how do you properly show time unravelling outside of getting quite surreal, and since this story is a special there is this utter reluctance to challenge the casual audience with something surreal.  There is exactly one monologue from Tennant in the second episode that actually does an excellent day of adding hints to the unknowable reality of the Time War, despite the line itself being one of those things that should sound silly (especially the army of meanwhiles and never weres) but because Tennant is such a good actor he sells this idea.  It’s also assisted by the sequences on Gallifrey being shot on minimalist, abstract sets that helps set the idea of the Time War on-screen, something that had largely been built up through Eccleston and Tennant’s performance through their era.  There’s also a gravitas to the Time Lords, carried by the performance of Timothy Dalton as Rassilon, despite the oddity of the immortal Rassilon being terrified of dying, something clearly done by Davies to build up the idea of the cosmic horror of the Time War while going against the one specific character trait of his other appearance in the series The Five Doctors.  The costuming of the Time Lords, while updated into very nice costumes, is sadly a bit to standardized and the idea of a Time Lord prophet feels almost contradictory.  Again, this also feels like something added to the Time War, but the prophet in particular feels almost too concrete and too much to be written as this is a special episode and we’re building up the stakes.

 

The fact that this story is two specials genuinely means that as a one last hurrah, Davies has written something that is incredibly bloated.  The previous specials have been building up the prophecy of the Doctor’s death, made explicit early on in the first episode that it will be a regeneration in the Doctor’s mind.  This is in a scene where the Tenth Doctor basically makes regeneration viewed as a literal death where the next incarnation is a completely new character, something that compounds itself with much of the Tenth Doctor’s final lines in the second episode being about how he could do so much more and the character’s final line being “I don’t want to go” just goes against the character of the Doctor as a whole, though not necessarily the character of the Tenth Doctor.  What is quite interesting about this is that this particular issue could be largely negated by playing the regeneration as a surprise, the Doctor believing that this might actually be his end.  It would add to the anger of being killed by Wilf with the “he will knock four times” being revealed to be Wilf trapped in a cabinet designed as a scientific instrument but also a death trap that it will flood with radiation all while forcing one person to be inside at all times.  The death also comes after the Doctor falling out of a spaceship, through glass, and onto hard marble without outright killing him which honestly indicates to me that the radiation sequence, while leading to the Doctor’s regeneration being a sacrifice for a friend, feels incredibly redundant.  It would also work if the 20 minute sequence of the dying Doctor visiting basically every recurring character from the era (or in one case the descendent of a major character) was either cut completely or just trimmed to be the scene at Donna’s wedding.  This sequence also just has the vastly problematic element of pairing Martha Jones and Mickey Smith as a married couple because Davies loves Smith and Jones as an idea, though these characters have before this shared so little screentime and can be read as pairing up the two recurring characters of color.  This 20-minute sequence establishes what now becomes a tradition of regenerations being an event with drawn out final sequences to reflect on the era as a whole and it's a tactic that just dos not work as a regeneration, making it too much into an in universe event as well as an out of universe event.

 

The bloat is not contained in these sequences.  The first episode in particular is bloated with these set pieces that often barely connect to one another, building the Master’s plan of changing the Earth into clones of himself using technology from these two green, spiky aliens working for this father/daughter pair (that are for some reason played by David Harewood and Tracy Ifeachor as if they are in an incestuous relationship, Harewood being directed to be especially hands on which is weird).  The Master is also decaying because the literal necromancy ritual performed by the Cult of Saxon using his DNA which somehow is still on Lucy Saxon is stopped by a magic potion that Lucy has prepared instead of just shooting him a bunch because that worked last time.  Oh, and Lucy is in prison and dies because of this when the prison explodes.  The Master is given magic lightning and jumping powers, as well as just a cannibal.  There are multiple scenes of John Simm just menacingly eating food that are actively trying to be camp but camp without the elevation that makes camp, camp.  John Simm’s performance throughout this story is just insane, but in a particularly annoying way.  So much of his dialogue is either shouting which is especially annoying, or just breaking the fourth wall again by trying to do non-elevated camp.  It’s nice that the Master does a final sacrifice for the Doctor.  There’s also a set piece on the Ood Sphere that opens the story that includes this dissonance from the tone of “The Waters of Mars” with the Doctor being especially comedic and it just doesn’t play well.  The jokes don’t land, especially if you watch this within a week of “The Waters of Mars” or are binging, which I understand was not the way it was intended, but this was aired just a month or so after the previous story.  There is also dramatic narration about how the planet Earth is coming to an end, a subplot of a woman played wonderfully by Clare Bloom intended to be the Doctor’s mother though never stated being cryptic throughout to Wilf, a comedic set piece of Wilf and his social circle finding the Doctor, several set pieces in this quarry where the Master eats some homeless people and a burger menacingly, the Doctor and Wilf sneaking into the mansion where the Master is being held (one of several sequences where a character is tied up), the transformation of the planet into the Master, and Donna remembering the Doctor.  Yes, Donna is shown to remember the Doctor and it’s such a failing since the story has continued the buildup of if this happens, she will die, but she doesn’t because the Doctor didn’t leave her defenseless and that’s then dropped.

 

So if there’s so much of The End of Time that doesn’t work, what does.  There are things to like here.  First, most of the stuff with Donna outside of her not dying is genuinely quite sweet, it’s good to see her having put her life together and the Doctor’s final act of giving her and her new husband a winning lottery ticket from her father is wonderful.  Catherine Tate and Jacqueline King, although they aren’t in the story much, are always wonderful.  Bernard Cribbins as Wilf and the specific café scene, outside of some elements involving death, is wonderful, seeing Cribbins and Tennant muse over Donna is wonderful.  David Tennant is desperately attempting to hold things together because he is a very solid actor, and some of the moments on the spaceship where things are actually allowed to calm down for a bit are good.  It’s essentially whenever the story decides to slow down and be quiet about the emotions it succeeds, but much of that is lost in bombast.  Euros Lyn’s direction and Murray Gold’s score are also top notch, even with Lyn having to use these ridiculous lightning effects in the first episode.

 

Overall, The End of Time feels like such a weird ending because it is the end of the era and the episode knows that largely to its detriment.  Watching it is like watching an assault of plot points and ideas that are barely strung together because Russell T. Davies was basically given the task of stretching a one-episode story to 2 hours and 15 minutes spread across two episodes.  It contains practically all of the issues of the Davies’ era with at least a few moments.  On reflection, while I often have said it’s the worst of Russell T. Davies’ first run as showrunner, writing this entire series of reviews has given me some appreciation for it (even if that’s very slight) and the era in general, though not without exceptions where some episodes have tanked in my estimation.  It’s an ending that doesn’t work and just is far too bombastic to the point of idiocy with glimmers of something interesting when it’s allowed to be quiet and contemplative.  2/10.

The Ultimate Computer by: D.C. Fontana, from a story by: Laurence N. Wolfe, and directed by: John Meredyth Lucas

 

“The Ultimate Computer” is written by D.C. Fontana, from a story by Laurence N. Wolfe, and is directed by John Meredyth Lucas.  It was filmed under production code 53, was the 24^th episode of Star Trek Season 2, the 53^rd episode of Star Trek, and was broadcast on March 8, 1968.

 

The concept of a computer gaining sentience was nothing new by the time Star Trek decided to essentially riff on the concept in its purest form in “The Ultimate Computer”.  Star Trek itself had already done several sentient living computer episodes like in “A Taste of Armageddon” and “The Return of the Archons”, but “The Ultimate Computer” works because it distills the narrative down to its most basic components, adds a very small supporting cast so the focus can squarely be on the characters that we have already grown to love over nearly two seasons of television, and confined it completely to the Enterprise (this final point was also largely a budget saver, but one that was incredibly effective).  D.C. Fontana provided the script from an outline from Laurence N. Wolfe, giving it to Star Trek by way of Ray Bradbury of all people, Wolfe being a mathematician and not a writer so much of this review will be referring to largely Fontana’s work which is what actually made the script work.  Wolfe’s outline was largely concerned with both a fascination and fear of what computers could become, taking some heavy inspiration from contemporaries Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, but it is Fontana’s contribution of allowing this story to focus its first half largely on the fear of being replaced by a computer or just general automation.  The premise of the episode sees the Enterprise outfitted with the M5 computer so the crew can become a barebones crew of 20, much of the tension of thee first half coming from the fact that the M5 is incredibly effective.  Now this is a little incongruous with the post-capitalist world that Star Trek has setup, as much of “The Ultimate Computer” is playing on fears due to capitalism leading to profit increases under the lie of increasing efficiency.

 

William Shatner gives genuinely one of his best performances throughout the episode, but especially in the first half where Kirk has to grapple with the mounting evidence that the M5 computer could easily run the Enterprise with no human input.  DeForest Kelley as McCoy gets this excellent moment where he provides Kirk with a very strong drink and some advice, all while Leonard Nimoy’s Spock has seemingly been taken in with the logic and use of the computer.  McCoy’s encouragement throughout the episode is fascinating, musing on the fact that nobody really seems to care about automation until it is too late and that James T. Kirk is the one who generally would make the right, human calls in high stress situations.  Nimoy’s switch as Spock is also fascinating, as soon as the M5 shows itself to be a completely logical machine and thus ignoring the logic of protecting potential life by destroying an automated freighter speaks so much to who Spock is as a character.  Spock is not apathetic to the value of life or people, despite his apparent lack of emotion that Star Trek has shown time and time again to be mostly a show he puts on to appear as more Vulcan than he really is.

 

The M5’s malfunction is not some malicious sentience of seeing humans as ineffective a la HAL-9000, but the ruthless efficiency of threat elimination and productivity for the Enterprise’s mission.  The big reveal is that its creator, Dr. Richard Daystrom, played by William Marshall, imprinted his own brain on the computer so it would be able to make these decisions, about halfway through the episode locking out the crew based on this brain pattern.  William Marshall’s portrayal of Daystrom is fascinating as he is nothing but cooperative until it becomes clear that his building of the M5 was a total failure, triggering this mental breakdown, but like many villains on Star Trek, Daystrom is allowed to live, if sedated and being sent for mental health recuperation as he is still a person.  It’s a nice fate and the way Marshall plays the character is utterly fascinating, using his rather tall stature to give this imposing sense of knowledge above the characters he interacts with, but still making the nervous breakdown.  Daystrom is able to rationalize many of the M5’s decisions of cutting power in areas of the ship that aren’t currently in use including the sickbay, or even locking out the crew from turning it off in places, but that slide happens quite well.  Shatner’s admonishing Daystrom when it turns out the M5 kills the crew of an entire ship while injuring and killing other crews.  It’s a burst of righteous fury which is played perfectly.

 

Overall, despite “The Ultimate Computer” coming initially from a mathematician, D.C. Fontana has once again worked her magic on a script, bringing out the best elements and producer John Meredyth Lucas taking over directing duties makes this first an intense character study and then an excellent thriller.  While there are some elements that are far too predictable for this sort of a story, even in terms of what Star Trek has done before, it’s an excellent example of what the show does best and gives its cast some amazing little moments throughout to really reflect the themes of the episode.  8/10.

The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by: Brandon Sanderson

 

The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England is the Secret Project from Brandon Sanderson with no connection to the Cosmere and is just a story that begun as a mix of ideas from years ago and those that came to the man as he lay attempting to sleep.  Sanderson and Dan Wells had this idea for a story about time travel tourism sending people back to the sinking of the RMS Titanic, potentially with a pair of teams attempting to sabotage the sinking and the other attempting to sabotage the saboteurs.  It was this idea that eventually worked its way into shifting the setting to medieval England, then further to an alternate dimension of medieval England with its own idiosyncrasies, and instead of two teams it largely becomes a story of redemption for one man finding his place in the world.  Much of The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England is told through Sanderson’s attempts to be as witty as Douglas Adams, with several interludes of the in universe book of the same name by Cecil G. Bagsworth III while the actual plot is of a man waking up in one of the many dimensions for sale with no memory and his copy of the handbook scattered, attempting to regain his memory and bearings when it turns out the mafia has invaded this dimension.  The tonal incongruence is what leads this book away from being one of Sanderson’s best, nor even really up to the standard of Sanderson’s weaker books.  There are essentially two stories at play here, both clearly ones that Sanderson is interested in writing, but neither quite fit together, certainly not well enough for this to work entirely as a book.

 

The interludes by Cecil G. Bagsworth III and the many illustrations on almost every page of the deluxe Kickstarter edition by Steve Argyle, available on Sanderson’s website for those not reading a physical or digital copy of the book, work incredibly well to make this humorous tale of the many dimensions, hinting at the future state of the world where dimensional travel has become a trivial tourist trap.  Sanderson, especially as the interludes continue to become more ridiculous, is this close to hitting the heart of the issue largely being capitalism, and while it is clear that Sanderson is at least aware of what he is getting at there is this great reluctance to actually get anywhere than this.  There are two interludes dedicated to colonialism and imperialism which are essentially putting the tongue firmly in cheek to explore that yes this is essentially committing those acts as an act of tourism and is widely irresponsible.  Jokes are made at the expense of how capitalism will often put up platitudes of combating the damage that it does to others in the form of odd pieces of charity that really wouldn’t help the problem.  The narrative voice of Cecil G. Bagsworth III is honestly one that could carry an entire novel, even a novel that was as outwardly satirical as Sanderson feels as if he is desperately attempting to achieve, though only if The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England was actually the in universe book instead of a novel.

 

The actual plot suffers from what occurs when several plots attempt to set up a mystery box, the answer as to what is inside the box is unsatisfying.  Sanderson beginning the novel with a blank slate protagonist and building to a protagonist that is an almost complete failure, responsible for the predicament of himself but also those around him that he has to redeem, suffers from perhaps being the most obvious thing that could be in the mystery box.  Now this particular twist is well executed and the protagonist, eventually revealed to be called John West, is at least charming, though sadly nowhere near as interesting as Sanderson’s other protagonists.  There are other twists, however, in The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England that generally don’t work, including one particular example of a classic fantasy fake out death that is used to completely twist the emotions of our protagonist.  Sanderson also develops this romance that at least tracks with the increase in John’s confidence as even without his memory he is a bumbling fool that needs to learn how to stand on his own two feet.  The closest this plot gets to really tying into the ideas is what could be an interesting commentary on how capitalism does not properly value the uniqueness of the individual, John being a failure not through lack of talent but through the universe generally not going his way, something joked about due to the insane improbabilities that populate the novel.

 

Overall, The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England may be a book that doesn’t really involve wizards nor medieval England, and because of that it’s a book that suffers from a general lack of focus.  It’s incredibly fun in places in the few places that the themes generally do align, but the characters are largely bland, and there really isn’t enough to make this one a very engaging read beyond some fun in the prose.  It’s perhaps the weakest thing I’ve read from Brandon Sanderson, an author I usually rate much higher than this, and there’s disappointment in just how with maybe another draft or two it could have been improved.  4/10.

The Waters of Mars by: Phil Ford

 

The Waters of Mars was written by: Phil Ford, based on the story of the same name by Ford and Russell T. Davies.  It was the 183^rd story to be novelized by BBC Books.

 

So much of “The Waters of Mars” works because of Ford and Davies’ script and Graeme Harper’s direction being incredibly aware of what a visual medium television is and making a horror episode that fits within that medium.  Horror on film and horror on the page are two very different types of horror, and Phil Ford is a television writer so it was quite the pleasant surprise to see The Waters of Mars works just as well as a novelization as it does on television.  The Doctor is the main point of view character in The Waters of Mars as was the case on television, though through third person limited perspective with a few shifts for the other characters when there are scenes on television the Doctor isn’t present for early on.  There are particular deaths as presented in the novel through the Doctor’s viewpoint, translating and cementing the visual language of film that it was the death of Ed Gold, a self-sacrifice once infected with the Flood, that pushed the Doctor into the decision to save the survivors on Bowie Base One and it is the knowledge of the correct future that drives Adelaide Brook to her final decisions to destroy the base and herself, after being saved.  Adelaide’s death seems quicker in the novel, it’s only a few pages from the end after all and is done in one line, but with that one line Ford has this excellent moment to genuinely look at how this tiny decision changes the world.  Ford adds an aftermath: her suicide changed her daughter and granddaughter’s hardship the world beginning to believe Earth never actually went to Mars and that became the drive to get out into space.

 

There are several other interesting additions.  Because this is a novel and Ford is aware that the audience of this adaptation is Doctor Who fans, there is a longer explanation of the Ice Warrior society that uncovered the Flood initially, a warning written in Martian being found and unheeded due to the inability to translate, Mia being revealed to secretly assigned as translator as well as archeologist as UNIT was aware of the Ice Warriors by 2059.  It’s a nice little bit of worldbuilding that is expanded by sections from the perspective of the Flood, exclusively referring to humanity as the Flesh and not making distinctions of previous identities of Maggie Cain, something that feels as if Ford is taking inspiration from John Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing; the prologue in particular does this by really making the reader understand how the water has been waiting.  Adelaide’s flashback to “The Stolen Earth” is also greatly expanded to really give her this deeper love of space and exploration from the beginning, as well as recontextualizing the horror through the eyes of a child which is beautifully written with Ford really expanding his prose style to an almost lyrical nature.

 

Overall, The Waters of Mars manages to be equally as interesting as the televised episode with Phil Ford adding this depth necessary to make the transition to the format of a novel instead of a piece of television.  Ford both does a tribute to pulp horror as well as keeping the strong characterization that made the story work, making some subtleties of the Time Lord Victorious slightly more explicit to compensate for the lack of performance and adding more depth in general to everyone.  10/10.

The Omega Glory by: Gene Roddenberry and directed by: Vincent McEveety

 

“The Omega Glory” is written by Gene Roddenberry and is directed by Vincent McEveety.  It was filmed under production code 54, was the 23^rd episode of Star Trek Season 2, the 52^nd episode of Star Trek, and was broadcast on March 1, 1968.

 

Star Trek became incredibly lucky in 1966 when Samuel A. Peeples was chosen to write “Where No Man Has Gone Before” as the second pilot that directly led to the show being picked up for its first season.  The other two scripts in consideration for the slot were ideas directly from Gene Roddenberry, the campy but terribly problematic “Mudd’s Women” and “The Omega Glory”.  “The Omega Glory” is the weakest episode thus far, somehow manages to sink below the mess that was “The Gamesters of Triskelion”, largely due to opening with so much potential before completely wasting it in favor of an incredibly racist and borderline nationalistic episode towards the United States of America.  It is fascinating as the idea came directly from Roddenberry who just four episodes earlier adapted Jud Crucis’ “A Private Little War” which directly criticized the United States Government and its involvement in the Vietnam War (even if that episode also was of a lower quality).  The opening of the episode does begin quite well: the USS Exeter is orbiting planet Omega IV and all that remains of the crew are chemical salts bar Captain Ronald Tracey, played by Morgan Woodward, who is living on the planet.  In the general scheme of the episode Tracey becomes our main villain.  As soon as the crew, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and a red shirt, arrive on Omega IV the episode begins to take the nosedive in quality as Tracey has broken the Prime Directive and become ruthless in his interference.  This break in this particular episode is used almost as a stand in for an American citizen defecting to join the Soviet Union during the Cold War, something believed to be done for the selfish gain of a defector which would be fine on its own but “The Omega Glory” takes story choices that add this as one issue on an episode full of issues.

 

Omega IV has two tribes of people, the Yangs and Kohms locked in an eternal war and Tracey is on the side of the Kohms.  These tribes are humans, the Kohms being explicitly Asian in portrayal including yellowface on several actors which already is a poor choice from production, especially since George Takei as Sulu features in the episode and there are clearly some actors of Asian descent used.  This includes stereotypical Asian accents and several characters being the stoic, silent stereotype of an Asian especially present in media of the era.  This would be bad enough if not for the episode’s big twist being that Yang and Kohm are language devolutions of ‘Yankee’ and ‘Communist’, approximately at the time where the savage Yangs are suddenly taking over and begin to be portrayed sympathetically, they are American after all.  The episode builds to the conclusion of veneration of both the Pledge of Allegiance and preamble to the United States’ Constitution, while the latter is an incredibly important historical document that does lay out the eventual goal of the United States as a land of freedom, the episode refuses to engage with the idea of what the words actually mean nor what the United States is.  The imagery of the US flag is revered as a sacred relic by director Vincent McEveety and the score quotes “The Star-Spangled Banner” at several points as full reverence to the country.  This reverence is in an episode where the Yangs, our stand in for America, are brought to the conclusion that it is their right to rule the planet, giving the Kohms an equal place in society which is the absolute thinnest of silver linings.  The use of communist as a connotation for the Kohms also lends this episode to at least a partial pro-capitalist reading, even if the conflict is explicitly in a feudal setting, which is especially odd for Roddenberry’s own view of the future presented in Star Trek as post-scarcity and essentially in a communist like system of governance at the very least.

 

Overall, “The Omega Glory” is just an episode that does not seem to be aware of what it is doing in terms of the director and actors in the episode while Roddenberry’s script knows exactly the patriotic propaganda the episode is, something that feels outside of Roddenberry’s general political scope especially.  It quickly becomes this glorification of the United States of America, almost warmongering the idea of the USA being the stewards of Earth in a revival of manifest destiny and no real examination of what that might mean for the future.  Not only content to be borderline nationalist, it’s also filled with Asian stereotypes and an unhinged villain who could also be read as a Communist defector in another incredibly weird choice.  This is clearly going to be one of the episodes near the bottom of Star Trek and is best forgotten.  1/10.

The Waters of Mars by: Russell T. Davies & Phil Ford and directed by: Graeme Harper

 

“The Waters of Mars” stars David Tennant as the Doctor and Lindsay Duncan as Adelade Brooke with Peter O’Brien as Ed Gold, Aleksander Mikic as Yuri Kerenski, Gemma Chan as Mia Bennet, Sharon Duncan Brewstetr as Maggie Cain, Chook Sibtain as Tarak Ital, and Alan Ruscoe as Andy Stone.  It was written by: Russell T. Davies & Phil Ford and directed by: Graeme Harper with Gary Russell as Script Editor, Nikki Wilson as Producer, and Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner as Executive Producers.  It was originally broadcast on Sunday 15 November 2009 on BBC One.

 

Content Warning: This review will contain a discussion of suicide as it pertains to the episode and characters in Doctor Who “The Waters of Mars”.  Reader discretion is advised.

 

“The Waters of Mars” is an episode that wasn’t initially on the schedule for the 2009 specials to say goodbye to Russell T. Davies, Julie Gardner, and David Tennant.  While the plan was to write a series of specials to be broadcast through the year, the exact number of episodes that would be part of the special series, initially believing to be four: “The Next Doctor” which was in production, an Easter special which would become “Planet of the Dead”, and two further specials that would become The End of Time.  Another would be added to the schedule to air between “Planet of the Dead” and The End of Time, bringing the episode count up from five to six, split across five stories.  Davies was determined to get Phil Ford into the main show before he left the series after his work on The Sarah Jane Adventures, initially suggesting “The Midwinter’s Tale” set in a hotel on Mars which evolved into “Christmas on Mars” or “Red Christmas” before finally focusing in on “The Waters of Mars” for a November airing, before the holiday season could properly begin.  As with “Planet of the Dead”, Russell T. Davies worked closely with Ford on developing the script in co-written format, but unlike the former the general idea was actually Ford’s and not Davies’.  Davies contributed particularly the character that would become Adelaide Brooke, designing her as a role for Helen Mirren or Dame Judi Dench, and the ending of the episode with Ood Sigma appearing as lead-in to The End of Time.  Both agreed on creating a multinational cast though Davies was also responsible for adding a robot and the explicit nature of the fixed point in time surrounding Bowie Base One.

 

Due to a budgeting issue, “The Waters of Mars” also had less funds to facilitate the switch to high definition in “Planet of the Dead”, limiting some of the effects director Graeme Harper could use, something that works to the episode’s advantage.  Harper has always been one of the best Doctor Who directors, and television directors in general and this has some of his best work.  While it was always scripted as a base under siege story, being limited with how many sequences could be outside of the base and the monsters themselves being limited to human actors with minimal effects is a limitation that just adds to the horror.  The manifestation of the Flood as the script denotes the creatures that take over the members of Bowie Base One are truly terrifying simply because of the sheer amount of water yet how dry the faces become adds this uncanny valley that feels wrong in the absolute best way.  The idea of the water being patient, waiting until the final possible moments to break into the base once the characters seal themselves in add to the tension, the audience knows how history will remember this base and how it must end, something the episode does deliver on while subverting expectations in the best way possible.  This entire episode is one where the patience and resolve in a crisis ends up being the downfall, the characters make all the right decisions but it’s still not enough.  “The Waters of Mars” is one of the few episodes of the revival of Doctor Who that is entirely from the Doctor’s perspective.  Even though the rest of the specials with one-off companions, those companions stayed the focus, but here it’s all on the Doctor, arriving on the base and almost immediately learning exactly what is about to happen to these people, something that he is powerless to stop.  Ford and Davies directly parallel “The Fires of Pompeii” with the Doctor knowing that morally he should be saving these people, yet because of history he can’t, and this leads to the point where he snaps, doing it anyway in an incredibly harsh decision to be a Time Lord Victorious (though the fact that this becomes a thing for a multimedia event treating it like a prophecy when it isn’t is weird in retrospect).

 

David Tennant gives one of his absolute best performances in this episode, his facial acting in particular through the first half of the episode showing this great sorrow and resistance to actually leave because why would he?  Initially the idea is that even if he cannot save these people, he has to know what happened.  As soon as he arrives the first member of the crew is infected, the second is infected and found unconscious before being quarantined, and the bodies start to pile up as the water begins to mobilize.  Tennant spends the last ten to fifteen minutes of the episode having a third act breakdown, screaming and making the decision to play God and interfere, one of the few times where the deification of the Doctor in the revival is explicitly shown to be wrong.  Tennant’s anger and sorrow is amazing and placing him against noted character actor Lindsay Duncan just exemplifies this.  The Doctor resists until he is forced to share with Adelaide her fate and what it means for the universe, giving this episode the lens of asking what it means to be a part of history and how does one define the big lives when compared to the small ones.  This is the woman the Doctor not twenty minutes earlier was running and enjoying the company of throughout.  Duncan in return gives one of the best performances in Doctor Who’s history, a performance that remains near to the top position.  This was the first thing I had seen Duncan in and based on this performance alone tells me the caliber of actress she is.  It was already on the way, but her final silent moments are perfect and some of the darkest Doctor Who has done.  To prove the Doctor wrong, Adelaide Brooke enters her home and immediately commits suicide so history can remain on track, one final death to inspire the future.  It ends the episode with this horrific feeling and realization that the Doctor has genuinely gone too far and needs to regenerate.  In fact, if the Tenth Doctor’s era had ended here and The End of Time didn’t exist we would have one of the best regeneration stories in the series’ history.

 

Overall, “The Waters of Mars” is oddly an episode people sometimes overlook due to being the episode right before the massive two-part finale.  It’s an episode in the midst of specials that go for spectacle and fanservice over substance, but it also proves that even in its final moments Russell T. Davies’ era of Doctor Who knows how to pull out all the stops for one last perfect ride before things can end.  It deserves to be discussed as one of the Tenth Doctor’s best moments despite the character being at his lowest, something that would have been the perfect end to the character and the era instead of what happened in the final two specials.  “The Waters of Mars” is perfect.  10/10.

Planet of the Dead by: Russell T. Davies & Gareth Roberts and directed by: James Strong

 

“Planet of the Dead” stars David Tennant as the Doctor and Michelle Ryan as Lady Christina de Souza with Lee Evans as Malcolm Taylor and Noma Dumezweni as Capt. Erisa Magambo.  It was written by: Russell T. Davies & Gareth Roberts and directed by: James Strong with Lindsey Alford as Script Editor, Tracie Simpson as Producer, and Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner as Executive Producers.  It was originally broadcast on Saturday 11 April 2009 on BBC One.

 

When Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner were planning the 2009 specials, they were determined to air them across the year so Doctor Who would not be off air for more than a few months at a time.  This meant in between the 2008 and 2009 Christmas specials there would be two other specials, one to coincide with Easter 2009 and one at some point in the fall.  Although not writing a full series this year, Davies was also working on the five-part Torchwood: Children of Earth and decided that at least two of the specials would have to be cowritten with other authors.  The first of the year was intended to be a special effects heavy episode, partially because Doctor Who would be airing in high definition for the first time and partially to accommodate David Tennant’s schedule with the Royal Shakespeare Company.  Davies developed the episode with Gareth Roberts, wishing to take ideas from Roberts’ The Highest Science as a basis for the episode after ideas for a Star Trek parody fell through.  Davies came up with the desert setting which Roberts developed into San Helios, while the elements of the flying bus directly evolved from The Highest Science’s London train as well as the original idea of the aliens being the Chelonians.  The Chelonians would be written out due to the logistics of shooting in the desert.  Roberts attempted to make an overweight one episode companion tour guide while Davies developed cat burglar Hermione who developed into Lady Christina De Souza in the final episode.  Tracie Simpson came onto production as Phil Collinson’s replacement with Nikki Wilson filling in for the fall special that year as well while directing duties were given to James Strong by the time the title became “Planet of the Dead”.

 

“Planet of the Dead” as an episode has a production which is largely a misstep for the Doctor Who Production Team, the setting largely being a desert meant that the production was allocated location filming.  The location chosen for the production was Dubai in the United Arab Emirates meaning both Davies and Roberts could not be present for the location shoots, written on paper as Davies having to write the final two specials.  This could have been avoided as the desert locale could easily have been found in other, more progressive countries such as the United States.  This was also an episode that had to be rewritten on the fly to add extra scenes in London as it was found to be severely underrunning and when you watch it you can tell.  This is an episode which really suffers from not having a strong enough plot, nor strong enough spectacle to make it a particularly interesting watch.  The bus is transported to the planet, the Doctor and Lady Christina find the first group of aliens (flies in boiler suits called Tritovores), discover aliens that create the wormhole and devour everything in their past, find a power source, get back to the bus, and leave.  There’s a B-plot essentially added on Earth with UNIT watching the wormhole led by Captain Magambo and Dr. Malcolm Taylor, played by Noma Dumezweni and Lee Evans, which are fun enough to watch but feel more like they’re meant to fill time.  Capt. Magambo also has the setup for some sort of story arc, pulling a gun on Malcolm when he refuses to close the wormhole when the bus hasn’t returned but that aspect of the episode is just abruptly dropped because the resolution happens.

 

The big problem here is that the only thing of note is a very quick sequence at the end of a character telling the Doctor he is going to die soon to build hype for the regeneration.  This is communicated with another character who happens to be slightly psychic, something that really doesn’t play into the episode outside of repeating things that the Doctor is already discovering: she hears the wormhole which the Doctor is already on track to discover and hears the psychic imprint of the dead which the Doctor already will discover again.  Now “Planet of the Dead” isn’t entirely bad.  David Tennant’s performance has some very good moments, especially when calming everyone down on the bus and he has chemistry with Michelle Ryan as Lady Christina de Souza.  Christina as a character is a bit flat in places, Davies and Roberts hinting at something deeper as to why she steals and while both authors claim to have intended her to be a one-off, she feels more like the natural successor to Donna as a companion for the Tenth Doctor in particular.  Ryan as an actress brings something nice to the role, even when the writing itself is really giving her very little to work with (and for whatever reason the impression impressed people enough for the character to have a spin-off and several appearances in audios from Big Finish Productions).  Her best scene is the moment where she takes command of the situation in addition to the Doctor making the pairing of the characters work quite well.  Sadly she doesn’t really have an arc, she just gives up the ancient gold artifact she stole at the climax as the end of a character arc and the pre-credits of stealing it as the beginning of one without really anything of depth in the middle.

 

Overall, “Planet of the Dead” looks good under director James Strong despite the problematic decision of filming locations leading to the episode to really just being a boring hour of television.  There are moments where Davies and Roberts give glimpses into what might have been, but it’s an episode that is almost too simple for its own good, leading to the second lackluster special in this big series of specials.  4/10.

By Any Other Name by: D.C. Fontana and Jerome Bixby, from a story by: Jerome Bixby, directed by: Marc Daniels

 

“By Any Other Name” is written by D.C. Fontana and Jerom Bixby, from a story by Jerome Bixby and is directed by Marc Daniels.  It was filmed under production code 50, was the 22^nd episode of Star Trek Season 2, the 51^st episode of Star Trek, and was broadcast on February 23, 1968.

 

D.C. Fontana’s skills as a script doctor for Star Trek are perhaps something that has a tendency to go largely unnoticed.  She is probably the only reason “Charlie X” isn’t one of the worst things put to television and there is the distinct feeling that her work with Jerome Bixby on “By Any Other Name” was to make Bixby’s rather high concept script work on a television budget, though never enough for Bixby to totally lose his original vision as evident by both Bixby and Fontana sharing scripting duties.  The script is rather high concept, involving the Kelvans, a race of god-like aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy who wish to spread out and conquest the galaxy.  Now the script of the episode is odd, making a distinction between conquest and colonization, showing the latter as a good thing due to the Federation’s colonization and the former as wrong and evil.  Now I’d like to be able to read this as attempting some sort of anti-colonization piece, the Kelvans have to learn to cooperate with the Federation in the end, beginning the episode as cruel and authoritarian towards the crew of the Enterprise, and everything wraps up neatly with a Federation proposal being sent to their home planet and the planet the episode begins on proposed as the new home.  This ending is especially odd because the script points out early on that this could very well be the conclusion that solves this, meaning the episode feels as if we’re waiting with Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty for the aliens to come to this resolution.  It drags out the episode, only to have it elevated by the utter insanity that the episode decides to go through.

 

“By Any Other Name” takes its title from Romeo and Juliet, and it almost seems as if Bixby and Fontana wish to show some parallels to humanity with the Kelvans, the performances from Barbara Bouchet, Warren Stevens, and Stewart Moss being particularly stilted and becoming more humanlike.  Kirk quotes the line directly early in the episode with the complete comparison to a flower and the plan to “corrupt” the Kelvans are to make them aware of aspects of life, humanity, and emotions.  Spock pretends to be ill so McCoy gets him to the Enterprise and pumps him full of drugs, with a wonderful piece of face acting from Majel Barrett as Nurse Chapel.  Scotty gets one of the Kelvans incredibly drunk which leans into some Scottish stereotypes but James Doohan’s performance is a riot.  Kirk gets the female Kelvan to fall in love with him by getting her to understand the concept of kissing, something foreign to them.  There is some tonal whiplash in this back half of the episode since these hijinks are played as hijinks, but early on the Kelvans outright murder a yeoman and redshirt to show their general power, they are not human and do not follow human morality.  Shifting then from this very serious danger into a humorous runaround on the Enterprise makes “By Any Other Name” kind of a complete mess.  Marc Daniels is in the director’s chair for this episode so it looks great and the scenes are paced incredibly well so it isn’t a total loss.  Once the episode goes into the comedy portion it really does pick up and the insanity of it all is incredibly fun to watch.

 

Overall, “By Any Other Name” is kind of the definition of a perfectly fine episode of Star Trek.  The plot is a plot that by this point Star Trek has done before and the twists on it are to make it into a comedy which is at least an interesting bent for an episode.  The performances and direction are the only thing really selling this one as the emotional whiplash took a high concept script and genuinely attempted to make it work on television.  6/10.

Star Wars: The High Republic: Into the Dark by: Claudia Gray

 

For my second foray into the Star Wars expanded universe, while Light of the Jedi did not entirely work for me, the setting of the High Republic was intriguing enough to continue in that era.  Into the Dark is the second novel released for the setting in the first phase, though the first to be aimed at the young adult audience from writer Claudia Gray, a veteran of the Star Wars novels according to Wikipedia.  Gray being a veteran novelist actually greatly assists in bringing Into the Dark into focus as a novel, focusing on a small group of characters in the aftermath of the Great Disaster, at least after a few chapters of introduction.  Now Gray does fall into the trap of including a prologue that isn’t actually a prologue but a first chapter in disguise which gave me a slight pause for continuing the book, but outside of this misstep and the odd placement of flashback interludes as part of chapters instead of their own little side story in between chapters, Into the Dark moves along at a wonderful pace.  Gray is clearly interested in expanding on the general themes of light and dark with Star Wars and the true potential for at least some sort of a shade of gray (or at least to appropriate a Terry Pratchett idea, white that’s got a bit grubby).  Speaking of Pratchett, Gray feels largely inspired by Pratchett for the way some of the aliens are treated in this book, on a ship that becomes the protagonist’s primary transportation (at least initially) there is a rock called Geode that purports to be sentient which is just treated as this thing that might be certifiably insane which just adds this little layer of limits to the universe that has telepathic space wizards as protagonists.

 

Reath Silas is the protagonist of Into the Dark and he is kind of the perfect young adult protagonist for a novel.  He’s a Padawan with at least some training under Jedi Master Jora Malli, so there is a sense of understanding of the basics of the Force, and is set up as more of an introverted person.  While Reath is ready to commit himself to becoming a Jedi and learning, his introverted personality allows an exploration of other functions Jedi can fill in the world, Reath being suited to archival work.  There is this metaphor throughout the book of asking why a Jedi wouldn’t cross the Kyber crystal alone, while one of the things that makes this clearly a young adult novel with the obvious answer that the Jedi are all different and need one another revealed at the resolution of the book, but it’s a fitting metaphor to set Reath on his journey.  The setting for thee large part of the novel is an abandoned space station where refugees from the Great Disaster have found themselves, a space station inhabited by gardening droids that take quite the drastic action to those that would destroy the plants.  Reath’s journey is essentially learning to lead and react to situations using his own wits and training for his own.  Sure it’s another play on the hero’s journey which is part and parcel for Star Wars, but it’s done quite well.  Eventually the Nihil get involved, setup in Light of the Jedi as the larger antagonists of this High Republic period, as well as the plant-like Drengir escaping from their prison on the station and torturing the Jedi who was originally Padawan to Jora, Dez Rydan.

 

Gray does a surprisingly nuanced job at depicting the torture and its after effects quite well.  Dez’s stance in the light is directly challenged due to the torture, he ends the novel as needing to recover which will take a long time.  Now this is also represented partially through applicability of the Force as a concept representing one’s mental state, but it’s a nice metaphor to tackle a subject like this.  Gray spends quite a bit of time in the novel questioning the Jedi tenants of not making connections of love and not allowing yourself to mourn, actively contradicting the inherent connections of a master/apprentice relationship.  Reath has to deal with the death of his master, something that shakes his person to his very foundations.  Dez, Jora’s first apprentice, also has to undergo this after being tortured.  The Jedi Council’s reaction to Reath’s decisions are surprisingly measured and allow him to realize the correct path to take in the end, still being in the light but perhaps understanding some of the actual flaws.  These are the clear themes that were present in The Last Jedi that for whatever reason didn’t connect well with people, so Gray writes them to perhaps be more obvious than Johnson’s film.  The interlude sequences pop up throughout the novel to further bolster this theme, though they are slightly choppy due to the formatting being in the middle of chapters and not as their own interludes.  Cohmac and Orla who are the main characters of the interludes are great characters, especially with how they dovetail into the main events of the novel, which ends with some different threads for future stories.

 

Overall, Into the Dark tells a story archetype that everybody has experienced before, but it does it quite well.  Claudia Gray’s prose is light and the characterization is especially strong in reveling in the universe of Star Wars (though at times it expects you to know more of the lore of different species in place of descriptors for potential newcomers).  Some of the twists are perhaps a touch too obvious and there are those small formatting things that feel more like publisher’s requests, but it’s a book that I had a lot of fun with and hope Gray gets the chance to continue with many of these characters in particular.  7.5/10.

The Next Doctor by: Russell T. Davies and directed by: Andy Goddard

 

“The Next Doctor” stars David Tennant as the Doctor and David Morrissey as Jackson Lake with Velile Ttshabalala as Rosita Farisi, Dervla Kirwan as Miss Hartigan, Ruari Mears as the Cyber Shade, Paul Kasey as the Cyber Leader, and Nicholas Briggs as the Cybermen Voices.  It was written by: Russell T. Davies and directed by: Andy Goddard with Lindsey Alford as Script Editor, Susie Liggat as Producer, and Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner as Executive Producers.  It was originally broadcast on Thursday 25 December 2008 on BBC One.

 

When Russell T. Davies decided to make his final year on Doctor Who one of several specials, both allowing him a break and David Tennant to star with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Hamlet and Love’s Labour’s Lost, the Christmas special would have to be entered into production around the rehearsal dates at the RSC.  Davies was intent on bringing back the Cybermen for their third appearance in the revival.  “Court of the CyberKing” was always going to take place in Victorian times (although there was a brief period where it was thought the special may involve the fantasy world of J.K. Rowling came to life that was discouraged by Tennant).  Development on the script was surprisingly slow, partially due to Davies contracting a case of bronchitis early in 2008 going so far as to have to push back production dates by one week because the script was not ready, all while the BBC had changes to the Controller of Programmes for BBC One.  Davies had developed the idea for the Doctor to be the one to act as the companion to an imposter Doctor, the title at this point becoming “The Next Doctor”.  Inspiration was drawn upon from The Little Match Girl for the companion of the Doctor, Rosita, and originally a cliffhanger ending to “Journey’s End” was filmed of the Cybermen entering the TARDIS.  It was also produced as the final block of the fourth series, assigned to Torchwood director Andy Goddard, but sadly producer Phil Collinson had fully left Doctor Who and was replaced by Susie Liggat in what would be her final producing role for Doctor Who as well.  David Morrissey was cast as Jackson Lake, the man tricked into believing himself the Doctor.

 

“The Next Doctor” is the pure example of promoting an episode based on the gimmick.  David Tennant had been announced to be leaving Doctor Who, so there was a chance that the audience would believe David Morrissey could actually be playing the Eleventh Doctor, indeed Steven Moffat would only have confirmed the casting of Matt Smith a few weeks before “The Next Doctor” aired.  As a gimmick it sadly doesn’t really add to the episode, instead just making this a way to build some sort of hype that does not work after the fact.  The gimmick is dropped almost immediately after the opening credits, shifting towards a mystery of who this false Doctor actually is.  Davies doesn’t write the script in a way to give any impressions that this man is a villain or is working with the Cybermen.  Davies attempts to creates the mystery of who the man is, there are two candidates, Jackson Lake and Reverend Fairchild, basically the only two male characters who are mentioned to be dead.  Morrissey’s performance is, however, a highlight of the episode, playing off Tennant nicely and having this wonderful breakdown on discovering his true identity.  The chemistry with Tennant leads to some very nice closing scenes where the Doctor and Jackson Lake have Christmas dinner.  Heck, all the performances are at least a fairly enjoyable.  Morrissey and Velile Ttshabalala make a nice double act as Doctor and companion, while our main human villain of the episode Miss Mercy Hartigan, played by Dervla Kirwan, chews the scenery of every scene she’s in.

 

The big problem at the heart of “The Next Doctor” is that it’s an underbaked episode.  It’s clear that Davies didn’t have enough time to fully flesh out the script before filming began.  This is an episode that shows child labor but doesn’t really use it to explore any idea outside of the notion that child labor is bad.  Miss Hartigan is working with the Cybermen because she’s a woman and wants equality in a time that wouldn’t give it to her.  She becomes a Cyber King and the episode plays it as this horrific conversion, but there’s no real horror played like say the conversion sequences in “Rise of the Cybermen” and “The Age of Steel”.  She’s just in a new hat, making the climax just not come across effectively as she regains her emotions and loses her mind because of the monster she’s become.  Except she hasn’t become a monster, she’s just wearing a silly hat and controlling a giant Cyberman mech.  Yes, there’s a giant Cyberman mech at the climax of the story because it’s a special and that means there must be some sort of spectacle to really sell the danger, yet because the script is underwritten something that should elicit something just leaves me completely cold.

Overall, “The Next Doctor” is just an episode that is incredibly underwritten.  Underwritten so much that the basic plot feels honestly stretched too thin to fill the hour long time slot it was given as a Christmas special.  Russell T. Davies’ dialogue has some nice beats, the performances are nice, and Andy Goddard’s direction makes it feel festive, but the episode is just kind of lackluster.  It’s lackluster enough that it’s pretty tough to actually talk about, it’s about as deep as a very shallow puddle, and hoping that the gimmick is enough to get it by.  3/10.

Tress of the Emerald Sea by: Brandon Sanderson

 

In 2022 Brandon Sanderson shook the publishing industry by announcing that throughout 2020 he had written in secret four novels, largely for himself to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.  These four novels were announced to be published through his own company, Dragonsteel Entertainment, in deluxe editions quarterly throughout 2023, available for purchase through what would become the biggest Kickstarter of all time (at the time of writing).  Three of these secret projects are set in the Cosmere, one is a standalone in its own universe, and despite ordering them I am just now getting around to starting them.  Tress of the Emerald Sea is the first of the four, and the secret project Sanderson explicitly wrote as a gift to his wife, Emily.  This fact is immediately apparent in the opening chapters of Tress of the Emerald Sea, chronicling the young Tress’s infatuation and attraction to the son of the duke Charlie and how Charlie was taken away from her due to a ducal duty to marry, though promising that with each rejection of a suitor in each country he visits, he will send her a cup to show that he still loves her.  Several cups arrive first with notes, then on their own, then silence.  Something has broken Charlie, only made worse by the announcement that the duke’s nephew will be the heir and Charlie has been sold to a figure only known as the Sorceress.  Sanderson’s inspiration of William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, largely the film adaptation directed by Rob Reiner, is admitted in his author’s note at the end of the novel but the tone is apparent.  Several other reviewers have suggested Terry Pratchett’s Discworld as an inspiration, but I’d even argue that isn’t tonally there.  The tone of the novel works so well as a gift to the woman Sanderson loves, something that is dripped into every page of the novel making this already a very different feeling from Sanderson’s usual style.  It’s a novel that just flows differently, at an almost leisurely pace.

 

Tress of the Emerald Sea is the first Cosmere novel to be from the perspective of Hoid, telling the story to a captive audience (the reader) long after the fact, and taking quite the large part in the story.  This means that the novel actually feels like a nice rundown of who Hoid is, several asides in the very Hoid manner that eases you into this story and adds to the Goldman homage at the center of the book.  It also helps guide through for when Hoid actually appears in the story, he is cursed by the same Sorceress that has Charlie into idiocy.  Well, more than his usual idiocy.  There’s a surprising amount of Cosmere lore in the novel as well, characters that readers of Sanderson will recognize the species of and potentially other cameos and magic systems, but this is also a book that actually might work well as an introduction to the Cosmere in general.  Apart from being a rundown of who Hoid is and his general deal, Tress of the Emerald Sea is largely standalone with the plot and is quite unique in its magic system.  The premise of this particular world in the Cosmere is an island world where the many seas are not made of water, but spores that react violently with water in different ways.  Some people are able to use the spores to their advantage, there are creatures living among certain spores, the weather itself can be dangerous, and spore technology has been imagined.  It’s a wonderfully weird system of magic, not entirely representing Sanderson’s usual magic system, and this becomes one that Sanderson really only goes into the basic mechanics of since the novel is meant to be a standalone and technically shorter than much of the rest of the Cosmere.  This is more to the advantage of the novel so Sanderson can focus on Tress as a protagonist and character.

 

Tress of the Emerald Sea as the title indicates, ends up becoming a story about pirates.  Tress as a character begins the novel isolated, falling in love with Charlie because of his ability to tell a tale and sneak out to se her.  Tress isn’t her real name and the Rock that she lives upon is incredibly boring, Charlie’s capture giving her a damsel in distress to rescue and the catalyst for change.  As a protagonist, Tress is perhaps more simple than some of the other protagonists of the Cosmere, but this is largely due to the added layer of separation from being a usual third person perspective of other books and Tress of the Emerald Sea’s first person perspective from Hoid.  Tress’s journey is one of largely growing up and learning to understand how people and life works, how to affect people and get people on her side.  She learns how to use influence but is haunted throughout by stumbling into these lies from joining a pirate crew and forming a conspiracy against the cursed captain Crow who wishes to trade her to a dragon.  Oh yes, there is finally a dragon on-page for a Cosmere novel.  The rest of the characters are the crew, the general workers being blended into the many Dougs in the narration, but the named characters all fit specific pirate archetypes.  There’s a ship’s doctor who is utterly insane and ready to chop off limbs and organs to consume, a carpenter obsessed with training, a sharpshooter who couldn’t hit the side of a barn, and a cabin boy who has lost his agency.  And Huck the talking rat.  The absurdity of these characters is through the lens of Hoid and that does wonders for selling it.

 

Overall, Tress of the Emerald Sea is so completely different from everything else that Sanderson has done, being one of the secret projects written for his wife adding the idea of a love story even in the large stretches of the novel that aren’t concerned with the love story.  It’s honestly the perfect introduction to Sanderson’s style despite being such a different type of story being told and the piracy adventure just adds to the wonderful voice and prose Sanderson employs to make it work.  10/10.