On Saturday I went to ApolloCon for several hours. Met up with Michael Bracken, Bill Crider, Lee Thomas, Gabrielle Faust and a guy who looked like Brian Keene wearing a kilt. The con is a little different than a horror convention in that there is a lot of gaming going on (including, interestingly, crokinole, a game I used to play when I was a kid) and a fair number of people in costume. One guy, who looked like an anorexic Darth Vader, must have been hellaciously hot. There was the usual smattering of starfleet regalia, including a fetching young woman who had her very own tricorder, and some costumes that I didn’t recognize at all. The dealer room had a mishmash of booksellers, gaming equipment sellers, authors, herbal supplements and the type of geeky t-shirts that the gang from The Big Bang Theory would probably have been all over.
The panels were also an interesting mishmash, including subjects such as hurricane preparedness, e-publishing and e-readers, general writing, the role of the “Mary Sue” in fiction, body mutilation/art in the genres, and flirting at conventions. I went to a few panels, wandered the dealer’s room and, by 4:00 decided I’d had my fill. I watched the last few minutes of the US/Ghana World Cup match on the big screen in the lobby before heading out. One wonders what Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger found to discuss in the stands. The general consensus around ApolloCon was that they were comparing little black books.
I finished “Goblin Lake” by Michael Swanwick, which descended utterly into metafiction without really seeming to have much new to offer the trope. I enjoyed “Mallon and Guru” by Peter Straub, which is either a vignette outtake from A Dark Matter or else Straub still had Mallon on the brain when he was invited to contribute to Stories: All-New Tales. Spencer Mallon is in India on a quest to visit a famous guru when he has some mystical (perhaps) experiences en route. The meeting with the guru is probably less than he hoped it would be.
“Catch and Release” by Lawrence Block is a non-supernatural story about a former serial killer who has taken a page from his love of fishing and now does exactly what the title suggests with his potential victims. He believes that a fish, if it has any feelings at all, feels never so alive as it does in the moments after a hook snags it, when it is yanked from the water, gasps for oxygen and is released, so he tries this out on female hitchhikers and other vulnerable people. He’s not entirely sold on the concept, though…
Named for a classic jazz piece, Jeffrey Ford’s story “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” benefits from a second reading. I wasn’t quite sure exactly what was going on after I finished it the first time, but I think I’ve pieced it together now. The story has the feel of a noir 30s tale. I pictured it entirely in black and white. A cool guy picks up his gal for a spin out to a popular restaurant/jazz joint on the edge of the desert, with mysterious references to the gap in time since they last went out together. Everyone loves Dex, it seems, except for a guy who is fixated on numbers. It seems to be one of those “caught in a loop” stories where the characters are offered a way out. Very moody and stylish, if a bit hard to grok.
Chuck Palahniuk “Loser” is a wry, quirky story about a sorority sister who takes acid before being selected as a contestant on The Price is Right. Since the whole experience is through her eyes, it’s truly bizarre, and the loser of the title isn’t exactly who we expect it will be.
I was interested to learn that the actress who plays Amelia Pond, the younger version of Amy Pond in Doctor Who, is actually Karen Gillan’s cousin. Doctor Who Confidential for the final episode of the new season has quite a bit about a publicity tour the actors and showrunner did of New York City a while back. They were just putting the finishing wraps on The Big Bang but were helping to launch The Eleventh Hour in the U.S. Matt Smith seems a natural in front of the adoring fans and interviewers.
And now, regarding the finale:
They didn’t take long to dispatch with the massive crises established at the end of The Pandorica Opens: Amy seemingly dead and the Doctor confined in the Pandorica. Surprisingly, though, they returned to young Amelia on the night she was waiting for the Doctor to return–only this time he doesn’t. And there aren’t any stars in the sky any more, even though she insists on putting them in her drawings. Stars are now as mythical to her family as the raggedy doctor. (There was a funny reference to the cult of stars and that “shifty” Richard Dawkins, a British scientist who popularized science a la Carl Sagan.)
Her trip to the National Gallery was like something out of A Night at the Museum, with all sorts of wonky impossibilities on display, including a decrepit old Dalek. The pandorica was the main exhibit and once Amelia follows the clues, it opens…and what a surprise. “Okay, kid, this is where it gets complicated.”
Complicated indeed. As the Doctor says, he’s willing to cheat the rules of time to save the universe. His cheating includes the use of a vortex manipulator (Cheap and nasty time travel. Very bad for you. Trying to give it up.) which is essentially a wrist-mounted TARDIS that lets him generate one paradox after another. They very cleverly outfit him with props so we can tell where he’s coming from when he pops back to 200 A.D. The fez was the best part, a running gag of sorts (What in the name of sanity have you got on your head? River Song asks). Apparently the producers were so afraid Matt Smith would become enamored of it that they would only write it into the script if there was a countering scene where the fez was destroyed. Among the apparent paradoxes and rule violations: Amy and Amelia hanging out together, the Doctor encountering the 12-minutes-in-the-future version of himself, and the self-fulfilling trips back to prime Rory with instructions and Amelia with directions that Rory and Amelia both instigate. The funniest bit was Amelia complaining she was thirsty, so the Doctor jumps back a few minutes to steal her drink to give to her now…which means she was only thirsty NOW because the Doctor took her drink THEN. Screwy, farcical good fun.
I’m glad we’re going to learn more about River Song in the next series, because she and the Doctor work so well together. When he interrupts her own infinite loop inside the TARDIS, he greets her with “Honey, I’m home.” To which she responds, “And what sort of time do you call this?” as a wife might chastise an errant husband.
The thematic statement that is the crux of it all actually came from The Pandorica Opens: If something can be remembered, it can be made real again. The end of the episode was very sweet, with Rory and Amy returned to their reality, only it’s a better reality because the crack hasn’t been sucking away bits of her existence all her life, including her mysteriously absent parents. It goes to show that Moffat had the whole thing mapped out from the beginning and the season truly did have a strong arc. Interestingly, one bit that some fans were complaining about as a continuity error was revealed to be a clue: the Doctor’s message to Amy when she had her eyes closed to keep the Stone Angel from taking her over–his admonition that she had to remember what he told her when she was seven. Apparently his suit is different in that scene from the rest of the episode, though I couldn’t tell.
The wedding was a lot of fun (dig the Doctor’s dance moves) and Rory makes a perfect comedic foil to Amy’s outrageous force of nature. “Mr. Pond,” the Doctor called him and, yeah, that’s the way it is.
So, all in all a pretty spectacular and brilliant ending to the season, with a hint of what’s to come. A married couple as companions on the TARDIS–that must set a precedent. The pandorica clue from the first episode is resolved, but the silence isn’t, and that will be at the heart of next season, along with more about River Song. I guess the Orient Express will be the Christmas special–that sounds like fun.
