When you don't go to the parties or to the firework shows for a 4th of July, you end up at home switching between the movie marathons on cable or watching the 4th of July specials on PBS or NBC.
Only I can't watch the 4th Specials for too long on the networks. I just can't.
Because there's too much Country music playing.
I'm sorry. I never got into Country. I grew up in the suburbs of Virginia Beach and later Tampa Bay. I'm a Boy from the Harb. I grew up to Led Zep and Van Halen and every arena hard rock band between 1979 through 1991. I miss the Dunedin Record & Tape Outlet store, it's where I got into L.A. punk and British Sixties blues.
Country to me has too much twang, too much proud ignorance, not enough poetry or wit IMHO when it comes to the lyrics. There are few Country songs I can abide, there's practically only one song - this one from Dierks Bentley - because at least it's got self-deprecating humor to it:
I admit if my parents stayed in Albany GA or we moved to a part of Florida that was out in the boonies, I might have grown up different. But nope, I'm a suburban mallrat, I grew up to heavy drums and loud lyrics and screeching guitar licks and that's what I want to hear for my 4th of July goddammit.
Where's the "Stars And Stripes Forever" march played by Metallica, you fiends.
As we await the series finale of a program that concluded before the book series it's based on did, we need to talk about how we got here.
Game of Thrones was pretty much exactly what the label says: A show about a squabbling group of fantasy-world noble houses fighting Musical Chairs over an Iron Throne made up of melted swords and really uncomfortable to sit on (it was uncomfortable to look at).
You had the banished Targaryens, a power-mad (emphasis on mad) dynasty that rose to kinghood literally on the backs of dragons. You had the Lannisters, prideful lions who deemed themselves masters of all. You had schemers like the Tyrells, vengeance-seekers like the Martells. You had sea pirate Greyjoys, essentially the Internet Trolls of Westeros politics. You had the stubborn, unhappy Baratheons. You had the honorable Starks and the mindful Tullys, who didn't want to play the game but whose honor (or political value) made them players.
And among them you had schemers and plotters: Varys and Littlefinger, debating over order and chaos; and the slavers of Essos and the masters of the Braavos Iron Bank. Above all of that you had the massive elemental force of a White Walker zombie apocalypse, a storm of ice and death that our heroes had to defeat first before they could resolve the more minor matter of the Iron Throne itself.
That wouldn't matter, people. The show is following the rough outlines of George RR Martin's master plot, which means this ending is what Martin is expecting from his work and how his fantasy world is destined to end whether YOU like it or not.
AND THAT'S THE POINT. As Ramsay Snow famously said early on "If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention."
Martin's overall narrative on Game of Thrones is a grand play on leadership and power. To quote Varys' early riddle to Tyrion: Power resides where men believe it resides. The power of the Iron Throne is based mostly on how someone can back up their claim for it, based on either two sources of Love or Fear to do so.
For all of Jon Snow's foolishness - yes, he does know nothing, his leadership and actions all based on bravado and chronic desire to do Good instead of doing Right - Snow has ended up as the Machiavellian model of a beloved leader. He becomes a respected member of the Night's Watch at the Wall and even gets voted in as its Lord Commander (against the ire and envy of more veteran, but more brutal, figures like Alliser Thorne). Through betrayal and bad decisions, Snow still survives due to sheer luck and rescuing by other figures, and yet retains a charisma that makes the show's heroes and fighters gravitate towards him as a "natural" leader, eventually making him King of the North when all other viable figures - Robb and Bran and Rickon - are killed or removed from power (the sisters due to male primogeniture are reduced to minor players even though Sansa has grown into arguably the true Queen of the North behind Jon's back).
Along all this is how Jon doesn't *want* power - he is driven more by Duty and Honor to wield it - even though it's revealed especially in-show this eighth season that he's the direct true heir to the Iron Throne as a secret Targaryen love child between Rhaegar and Lyanna Stark. Once it's gone public, Jon claims he doesn't want the throne and willingly passes it to Daenerys... but that aversion to power just makes him more popular among the power-brokers of Westeros.
Which brings us to Daenerys.
When people registered shock at how she destroyed King's Landing in Episode Five, they seemed to have forgotten that Daenerys has been a stone-cold killer throughout the series. Driven both by a divine sense of righteousness - taught since her youth that the Iron Throne is hers by birthright - and a brutal sense of justice - to avenge even the slightest wrong committed on her - this daughter of the Mad King Aerys has left a swath of destruction in her wake.
Think back to all the acts of vengeance she takes: Against the witch that sterilized her and left her first beloved Dothraki Horse-Lord Drogo a mindless half-dead wretch, against the cruel masters of Qarth and the wizard who dared steal her dragons, against the Astapor slavers who tried to buy her dragons in exchange for the Unsullied army Daenerys would need to conquer Westeros Essos. When she approaches Meereen, the city masters crucify 163 children to mock her... and crucifies 163 masters in return (even the ones who had nothing to do with torturing/killing those children). She uses her dragons - either with fire or teeth - to enforce her position when stealthy terrorists known as the Sons of the Harpy undermine her rule. She gets captured by Dothraki lords who abandoned her after Drogo's death, and when they threaten to abuse and rape her she uses her family-based immunity from fire to trap them in a burning house to kill them all, leaving her in command of a suitably cowed Dothraki army.
Daenerys could be a vicious Mother (of Dragons) when she needed to be.
It was easy for fans to accept - and even forgive - Daenerys' actions because each time her opponents were evil and deserving of justice (even as the fairness or wisdom of her acts still made them horrifying). For all of Khaleesi's desire and belief that she was a beloved Breaker of Chains, her rule was no better than the despots she overthrew.
And all of this hits her hard when she finally arrives to her destiny in Westeros. Expecting a warm welcome in the face of Cersei Lannister's sadistic and violent claiming of the Iron Throne, instead she receives doubt and scorn by the remaining great Houses... and quickly loses allies like the surviving Tyrells and Martells. Forced to confront the Lannisters with her Dothraki army and her dragons, she regains control of the battlefield but is forced to publicly execute the head (and favored son) of a respected Tarly House, establishing her more of a tyrant than a chain-breaker. She tries to find love with fellow hero figure and survivor Jon Snow... but the revelation of Jon being her nephew by blood (falling back on the mad Targaryen habit of incest) and having a stronger claim to the Iron Throne disrupts any happiness she could find there. Dealing with Sansa - who reflected the hard reality of the North and of the Starks' view of power - turned uncomfortable and cold every time Daenerys tried to bond with her, isolating the Targaryen from her last strongest ally. Watching Jon get celebrated at the banquet following the Army of the Living's victory over the Night King while she sat there only isolated her even more. Even her Starbucks coffee could not comfort her, for the show editors whisked it away from future viewings. Losing her closest friend Missandei and losing her most devoted defender Jorah had to break her heart and spirit.
It's not that Daenerys went mad when the bells rang at King's Landing. It's that she'd always been like this: Ruthless, because it was the only way she could survive against a world that hated and betrayed her.
She openly decided to rule not by Love but by Fear.
Machiavelli opined that ruling by Fear is the optimal choice for a Prince... only so long as there was Respect for what the Prince did under his (or her) rule. In some ways, Daenerys had remained a favorite character - even a hero, the beloved Khaleesi - to the GoT fanbase because the audience respected how she got to where she was, why she had to do what she needed to do just to survive.
But her massacre of King's Landing becomes a troubling moment. Daenerys may have acted like this to impose a rule based on Fear, but she runs the great risk of becoming Hated, the thing Machiavelli warns against. By killing so many, by doing so in the most brutal way Westeros knows - in the fires spewed from a monstrous dragon - our Khaleesi becomes the Mad Queen, a bloody figure of her mad father's revenge against the Seven Kingdoms.
This final episode has a lot to resolve. The three major characters - Jon, Daenerys, Tyrion - have to face their destinies tonight. Tyrion - who wanted to play the game to defend his family (even as said family hated him) in order to gain a modicum of respect from a world that literally underestimated him - has to deal as a Hand (advisor) to a Queen who is no longer a forgiving sort (and now has no reason to keep him alive). Jon has to cope with his love (once sexual, now familial) for a Queen he can no longer bend his knee to. And Daenerys has to deal with the repercussions of all this death, sitting on an Iron Throne surrounded by damning ash instead of redemptive snow.
A lot could happen. Arya, who had fled the destruction of King's Landing scarred and broken, could return to her assassin's ways and kill the Queen, leaving the throne to Jon... who would abandon it as there was nothing in his mind or soul forcing him to stay. Jon could physically confront Daenerys, trying to gain control of Drogon the last dragon, break her rule and will somehow, possibly killing her or at least dying in her presence to shatter her resolve.
The ending I want to see tonight is Daenerys keeping her word to "Break the Wheel," to end a cycle of madness and powerlust for a throne no one (save Cersei) really wanted to sit in. To have Drogon blast that piece of metal into a thousand melted blades. For her to send the Unsullied home, freed from even her rule. The happiest ending would be Daenerys returning to her childhood home, described in the books as a comforting abode with a red door, and end her days there as the other characters end theirs in peace.
What am I doing?
This is Game of Thrones. No happy endings. Everybody you love fooking dies.
...Fox just issued a press release confirming the long-whispered return of The X-Files — and also confirming the return of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as FBI Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.
It's been 13 years since the finale (and a couple of so-so films in between) and now Fox has re-ordered a six-episode X-Files run, with original showrunner Chris Carter.
In the PR release, there's lots of nice talk, like this bit from Carter saying he thinks of the hiatus as a, "...13-year commercial break." And as for what's in store, lots more weirdness as Carter seems pretty giddy about the state of scifi television today, "The good news is the world has only gotten that much stranger, a perfect time to tell these six stories."
Hell. Yes.
In a previous life before the political blogging here, I did fanfiction and alt.tv.x-files postings as I followed this show I got hooked on back in the early 1990s. I've mentioned before I was into the conspiracy stuff, UFOs and Bermuda Triangle and Bigfoot and ghosts and here was this show that delved into all of that and I pretty much geeked out.
This was around the time that Star Trek was getting into a rut, where Babylon 5 was an acquired taste, and Dr. Who had faded away (with only a badly written but well-acted TV movie with Paul McGann as The Eighth Doctor as a hoped-for reboot), and there wasn't much else good science fiction on television. There wasn't much more in the way of mind-bending fun/scary sci-fi, and The X-Files covered the need.
It helped that the show was anchored by two fun actors - Duchovny and Anderson - and had heaping helpfuls of a recently realized trope called Relationshipping (or 'Shipping for short). The concept had been around for ages, as a literary trope (SEE Ivanhoe, Little Women, Jane Austen), but rarely seen on television the way they did it on this show. They didn't create UST (Unresolved Sexual Tension), they merely demonstrated how brilliant a story-telling device it could be in the right hands.
Fans tuned in less for the scary monsters and tuned in to watch Moose and Squirrel shamelessly flirt with each other over an autopsy. It got to where nearly every other show aims for it, intentionally or not (West Wing was a good example: the show started off with the open intent of having Josh flirt with Mandy, but when it proved Josh interacted better with Donna the dynamic of the show - Will They Or Won't They? - revolved around that).
From that, my massive output of writing during the 1990s revolved around what I called Senseless 'Shipper Surveys, an episode recap done in a humorous vein around how much that episode involved the 'Shipping and how silly Mulder got while St. Scully lorded over all. I had a major section of a personal website (ye olde wittylibrarian.com site) devoted to it (the other half was to following the Tampa Bay Bucs).
The website is gone - I got to the point I couldn't afford to pay the domain rights - but I've got those old surveys on file somewhere. I am sorely tempted to waste a lot of my time re-posting them online.
Just how many blogs should I be running at one time? I may need to grab another Blogger address... UPDATE: new blog address for the Surveys, folks! http://xfilesshipper.blogspot.com/
When my parents bought a VCR back in 1978... or was it 1979?... one of the first things we did was tape a lot of PBS Masterpiece Theater shows, because MOM had control of the house dammit and nothing was getting in the way of her All Creatures Great and Small.
But we sons had the option to get Saturday Night Live recorded to our amusement, and that helped keep up appraised of the wild and crazy skits until we were old enough - about 12ish - to stay up late on our own to watch.
It's slightly amazing that the show is still chugging along 40 years after its debut in 1975. Part of the reason is that the show works as an ensemble, it is not tied to one person, although one person or duo can tie everybody together to an era like no other. Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Phil Hartman, Darrell Hammond, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey... Eddie Murphy in particular became a superstar straight out of SNL, unlike any of the others. Like Bill Simmons notes in his Grantland article about Murphy, I too watched the bit where Eddie mocks Stevie Wonder, and felt the same way about watching LIVE a classic moment that millions of others were seeing.
Over on the Salon site, that sharing among fellow viewers is argued as the main reason SNL remains on the air even decades after so many other skit shows - In Living Color, MAD TV, various others that barely lasted a season - faded into history. Mostly because those shows encircled a key player or team - Living Color in particular revolved around the Wayans family - and when those players left, the shows couldn't continue. SNL was one of the firsts to exist without revolving around a singular talent (even though a singular talent would rise to dominance over a 3-5 year period), taking from the variety act shows of Ed Sullivan and merging it with the improv and satire of underground stage comedy, and people keep tuning in because, God help us, we want to be there watching when something brilliant - More Cowbell! Lazy Sunday! - happens. As Sonia Saraiya writes:
Saturday Night Live’s finest moments have a way of becoming instant history, meaning that we’re instantly nostalgic for them. And that’s because when we witness them, we sort of all feel like we were there for it, that we witnessed it firsthand. It doesn't have to be good, honestly, because the point is that we showed up—the bad moments sometimes just give you more to talk about.
I’m of the opinion—as is Gary Susman at MovieFone—that SNL has gotten way, way too safe as it’s aged, mostly because its star showrunner, talent scout and occasional on-screen presence Lorne Michaels has aged along with it. That’s left the show vulnerable to other shows that also rely on our sense of togetherness—The Daily Show with Jon Stewart being the best example. I’d love to see Saturday Night Live take a lot more risks, to get not-safe-for-work, to take advantage of its timeslot and its storied history to say something really provocative...
...Live television is so fundamentally exciting to watch—it’s a thrill knowing that it is happening now, and that you, as an audience member, are a part of it. But sports are a competition played on a field; awards shows are glorified industry events. It’s only stuff like Saturday Night Live that really talks back to its audience, that looks into the cameras and literally says “goodnight.” As it is now, “SNL” squanders something very precious—the opportunity to be on everyone’s TV, unvarnished, unedited and in a bad wig, making the rest of us laugh. Its very presence. If the show isn’t careful, even though it is the last/only live variety show we have, it may find itself replaced.
But I do hope that we are never without some version of Saturday Night Live—of the closest thing we have to all of America attending the same play. We have fascination and disdain for SNL, yes—at its inconsistency, its former glory, its cast members breaking character to start snickering during a bit. But at least we have it, together, and that is something.
There are a lot of memories for me watching SNL back when I could - when I was young enough to stay up late and not suffer for it. I remember turning on the show one night in 2005, just no reason why, did it not realizing it was a new episode that night, and happened to turn it on just as "Lazy Sunday" started playing on the show.
By the end of the clip, I knew I had watched one of those Big Moments, when Saturday Night Live hit the home run, making a cultural and historical milestone around which the show could stagger on for another five years. It reminded me of the times back in 1992, during the Presidential primaries and campaigns, when Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman teamed up for some of the greatest political satire I've ever seen (and this is with SNL bringing in solid satire nearly every 4 year Presidential cycle).
(dammit the link broke, BRING IT BACK SNL BRING IT BACK)
Before the day goes by, today is the 45th anniversary of one of mankind's greatest achievements:
With all congratulations to the late Neil Armstrong, to Buzz Aldrin, and to Michael Collins (who had to stay in the Command Module) for their historic flight there and back.
And also, due to their efforts, we were able to contribute to one of the best episodes of the television show Mad Men:
And with that "Bravo," Bert Cooper passes on... and later on that episode, Don Draper witnesses Bert's ghost sing "The Best Things In Life Are Free" in a mind-blowing (there are layers of symbolism behind this that would take a 20-page journal essay to spell out) closer:
The song, the setting, the moment... all because we as the human race achieved the moon. We haven't really moved on from that moment - the technology can't sustain ourselves for long out there, so we're still on this fragile blue ball - but if anything out of all the wars and madness, we made it. It may have cost a fortune, but we made it. And it was a moment everyone back then shared... a moment we all share today, and it was in a way free for all.
As the lead-up to the 50th anniversary to the start of the long-running science-fiction show, the producers have seen fit to give us some closure regarding the dreaded backstory of the Last Great Time War. A war between the Time Lords and Daleks at the height of their respective empires that reportedly shattered much of space-time.
This mini-episode is about seven minutes long but packs a season's worth of details into it (The following CONTAINS SPOILERS STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED THE EPISODE YET):
The Time War itself has become so massive that nearly every race has been dragged into it whether they wanted to or not.
The War began during the lifespan of the Eighth Doctor, but he himself refused to participate in it and tries to help people flee from it.
Other races are so horrified or disgusted by what was/is/will be happening that the ship's captain Cass flat out refuses the Doctor's help.
The other elder races of the universe - the Sisterhood of Carn for example - are well aware of what's happening. From earlier tellings we already know most of those races had fled the known universe altogether.
EDIT: Has been noted elsewhere that The Eighth Doctor mentions all of his companions from the Big Finish audio series - the thing that kept Doctor Who popular between the 1989 cancellation, 1996 movie, and 2005 rebirth. The Big Finish series is in fact still ongoing and very popular with the fans, and there's been a question if those stories would be accepted as canon. YES THEY ARE...
The Eighth Doctor himself is offered a handful of choices as he faces his own death in four minutes' time: accept his death and let the Time War destroy everything; regenerate and use his skill as The Doctor to save whatever he can before the Time War destroys everything... or become a Warrior and end the war by any means possible. As he considers the rejection he endured by Cass' rage towards him, The Eighth Doctor makes his choice...
Oh, and one more thing: McGann would have F-CKING ROCKED AS THE EIGHTH DOCTOR.
Damn you, Fox Channel. You really screwed the pooch with that 1996 movie.
The Sopranos changed a lot of how television works anymore.
Before, few shows were designed to hold season-long, series-long narrative arcs (the ones that promised to like The X-Files couldn't really pull it off). Very few shows were character studies. Drama itself was viewed as a dying breed as the costs of making them for the major networks were getting too high. And TV drama was stuck in a kind of self-censored halfway point, unable and unwilling to push the boundaries of decorum to see how far audiences were willing to go.
In stepped HBO, offering an openness of its marketplace to allow for the creation of a show like The Sopranos to flourish. Looking past the nudity and profanity and gore, this was a show that asked us to examine the life of a mafioso, slightly more sociopathic than most people but in most respects an Everyman stuck with the traumas and dread of middle-class, middle-age self-inflicted hell.
James Gandolfini imbued Tony Soprano with calculated savvy and genuine intellect: a character twice as smart as everybody else in the room yet with little to show for it, but a suppressed rage and a desire to find some honest meaning in the world and his place in it. Before this, he'd been a Hey It's That Guy background character, providing some memorable performances in small roles such as the ex-stuntman in Get Shorty, or the guy beating up Patricia Arquette in True Romance, talking about how his first kill was such a shock to his system and inadvertently giving Arquette the incentive to kill him. Tony Soprano made him an A-Lister.
Gandolfini passed away today at 51, preliminary report is due to a heart attack.
Trying to find an appropriate YouTube clip to do him justice.
“Oh, I think not,” Varys said, swirling the wine in his cup. “Power is a curious thing, my lord. Perchance you have considered the riddle I posed you that day in the inn?”“It has crossed my mind a time or two,” Tyrion admitted. “The king, the priest, the rich man—who lives and who dies? Who will the swordsman obey? It’s a riddle without an answer, or rather, two many answers. All depends on the man with the sword.”“And yet he is no one,” Varys said. “He has neither crown nor gold nor favor of the gods, only a piece of pointed steel.”“That piece of steel is the power of life and death.”“Just so…yet if it is the swordsmen who rule us in truth, who do we pretend our kings hold the power? Why should a strong man with a sword ever obey a child king like Joffrey, or a wine-sodden oaf like his father?”“Because these child kings and drunken oafs can call other strong men, with other swords.”“Then these other swordsmen have the true power. Or do they?” Varys smiled. “Some say knowledge is power. Some tell us that all power comes from the gods. Others say it derives from law. Yet that day on the steps of Baelor’s Sept, our godly High Septon and the lawful Queen Regent and your ever-so-knowledgeable servant were as powerless as any cobbler or cooper in the crowd. Who truly killed Eddard Stark, do you think? Joffrey, who gave the command? Ser Ilyn Payne, who swung the sword? Or…another?”Tyrion cocked his head sideways. “Did you mean to answer your damned riddle, or only to make my head ache worse?”Varys smiled. “Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.”“So power is a mummer’s trick?”“A shadow on the wall,” Varys murmured, “yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow.”Tyrion smiled. “Lord Varyls, I am growing strangely fond of you. I may kill you yet, but I think I’d feel sad about it.”“I will take that as high praise.” - from the book source A Clash Of Kings
Partly I see the warning of Machiavelli in the series: the question "whether it is better to be loved or feared," and the answer "the real solution is to avoid being hated, which is the worst thing a Prince can accomplish." No finer example to be offered than Joffrey himself: the spoiled brat of a boy king who views himself perfect and noble and strong and yet everyone else - and whoa do I mean everyone - sees as weak, craven, worthless. Made king only through rite of birth, Joffrey does nothing to prove himself: he immediately expects everyone to bow and scrape and follow his orders. Of the flawed characters with a claim to The Iron Throne, Joffrey's the worst: the believer of the Divine Right of Kings and title holder of Zero Percent Approval Rating. (Viserys is even worse than Joffrey, with the saving grace that he got himself killed in karmic fashion early enough that he doesn't leave the destruction that Joffrey does)
But Joffrey's not the only one. Every character with an eye on that throne has a serious flaw when it comes to power and how to use it.
The Stark family as a whole - Kings of the North - are a noble breed but rule with their hearts more than their heads. Eddard Stark is too trusting; Robb Stark too impulsive and focused on personal honor. Both suffer, both die, and the aftermath of each one's fall leaves their House in great disrepair (albeit still alive through respectful allies keeping certain children safe).
The Lannisters - right now the family of power in the Seven Kingdoms - are wealthy and feared (Machiavelli would be pleased) but each prominent member has issues: the patriarch Tywin is obsessed with the family name even as he disparages all of his children for their folly; eldest son Jaime is favored but is foolish and headstrong (and boning his own sister); Cersei imagines herself a player but is too vindictive and overplays her hand, and too much fears a prophecy of her children's fate that makes her commit acts that doom them anyway; Tyrion is the smartest character in the whole world, shows adept skill at manipulating ally and foe alike, and in all regards would be the best suited to rule... except as a dwarf he's dismissed by many of his fellow lords, is blamed for the sins of his nephew Joffrey, and his one strength - his wit - is also his weakness because Tyrion can't stop himself from saying the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time.
The Baratheons have the current, more honest claim to the throne through the accusation that Joffrey and Cersei's other children are not those of Robert Baratheon, the king who dies at the beginning of GoT. But they start off divided even in their own House: the elder brother Stannis claims the throne but internally knows he's disliked for his stubbornness (if he ran for President he'd be an Active-Negative like John Adams); the younger brother Renly is the more charismatic and openly courts favor from his followers (he wants to be loved), but proves indecisive and disorganized and is ill-positioned when the moment comes to act.
The Greyjoys aren't even really playing for the Iron Throne: basically a House of pirates and raiders, they're in it to deal their rival family the Starks a serious blow. Short-sighted, self-serving, needlessly cruel (leading to the "hated more than feared" doom) with the only decent characters - Theon, Victarion - suffering or due to suffer massive humiliations.
The Martells are either level-headed or honor-obsessed, and sometimes both. They backed the wrong House in the last big war before GoT and suffered for it. Opposed to the Lannisters, they would be formidable opponents except for their current leader Doran's fear of exposure (he's confined to wheelchair, fearing he would be viewed as weak) and proper paranoia that any move towards a deal could lead to betrayal... which leaves them incapable of making any deals at all.
The Tullys own a key point of land - the Twins, a vital bridge linking the North lands to the other kingdoms - but not much else: they are used by the other families or ignored. Except for when one of their minor Houses - Frey - takes revenge on one such slight against Robb Stark and his House... by violating the most inviolate rule in human history (Sacred Hospitality); by doing so the Freys become hated - having rarely been loved or respected, this essentially dooms their House. And it leaves the Tullys with almost no players on the board at all...
The Tyrells as a whole are quiet, watchful, intelligent, shrewd... and let themselves be manipulated by the other Houses - Lannisters especially - only because they came to power in their kingdom over more legitimate Houses, meaning they have little loyalty outside of their small circle of allies (again, the Lannisters). They are good at playing the Game of Thrones (and are major characters because of it) but are playing for such long odds that they can miss every opportunity that arises to claim it...
The Targaryens are the fallen House, the kings before the start of the story whose rule was dominated by arrogance and madness (sourced to their open inbreeding campaign of marrying brother to sister). Driven by a variant of the Divine Right concept - that they are Dragons (literally) - the Targaryens created a hostile environment against their House leading to Baratheons' rebellion and the wiping out of nearly every Targaryen claimant to the throne. Except for two (really three, but the third remains hidden): Viserys and Daenerys. Already mentioned Viserys as unstable and worse than Joffrey, and got himself rightfully killed off for his folly before he could do serious harm; on the other hand Daenerys has proven nicer, genuine and respectful of the people she now leads in foreign lands building up an army to reclaim the Iron Throne. And it doesn't hurt that Daenerys has her dragon pets, and has proved her invulnerability to fire (!) confirming her divine right as Dragon. But she's easily distracted, obsessed with a form of justice that her contemporaries refuse to accept, and tries too hard to be both loved and feared, which Machiavelli noted was difficult to manage for even the best of Princes.
The riddle Varys presents at the start of this article remains potent: who truly is in power? Who is best using such power? Solve the riddle and you figure out who is going to be left standing at the story's end. Personally, I got money on (discovers Littlefinger has poisoned his drink) WHAT? NOOOOooooo...
The Intertubes exploded last night with the word that Matt Smith, Eleventh Doctor, was quitting the show for the Christmas episode, meaning the push is on right about now to find a replacement Doctor (if you're one of the non-geeks out there: Doctor Who is a Time Lord and able to regenerate which is why there's been 11... no actually 12 different versions of him).
Everyone's already been on Twitter pushing their faves, which of course merely shows off that particular person's geek leanings. But this is Serious Business, much in the way that getting a replacement James Bond is Serious Business (once they found an actor to play Spock in Zachary Quinto, doing a reboot of Star Trek was easy-peasy: finding an actress to fill out the costume for Wonder Woman after Lynda Carter... /headdesk). There are rules to consider:
1) The next Doctor has to be British, or at least United Kingdom (Scots, Irish, Welsh). They could go with Canadian or Australian or other Commonwealth if they could, but this is the UK's primary contribution to global geekdom. It's gotta use home-grown talent.
2) The next Doctor to be younger or as young as Matt Smith now. The producers are clearly thinking long-term: once a Doctor always a Doctor (even Chris Eccleston has learned that), and they're gonna want to have someone filling the role of Number Twelve for a good 40-50 years. There's also a bit of archetype at play: The Doctor as a secular variation of Merlin/Wandering Jew, with the idea that such immortals age backward, meaning the older the Doctor really is the younger he's going to look.
3) Here's the variation: The Doctor's Wife introduction of The Corsair makes gender-crossing Time Lord a canonical fact. Which means a woman / actress can be hired for the role. So this is more up for grabs than anyone realizes.
That said, here's my list of Who To Be Who:
Matthew Lewis (formerly Neville Longbottom):
PRO: familiar to geeks, already has established fanbase of geekgirls; relatively young enough to fit the producers' needs
CON: already tied into a massive UK geek franchise with Harry Potter, he may not be interested in getting further embroiled into the geekdom's dark side of nitpicking.
Evanna Lynch (formerly Luna Lovegood):
PRO: England's answer to Summer Glau (minus the ass-kicking); also a known quantity with geeks from the Potter Verse; of actresses "qualified" to be quirky enough to play The Doctor, she's on the short list.
CON: Like Lewis, may be content with being a major star in other established franchise.
Idris Elba:
PRO: established television actor, well-respected, has huge geek cred (from, of all things, The Wire); there's been a clamor for a non-white Doctor for some time, and he's current on the Hot List.
CON: Is 40ish, on the wrong side of the age scale that producers might be looking for.
Helena Bonham Carter:
PRO: Geeks would die of geekgasm the second her name gets announced. Which might be a CON since, you know, you've killed off your fanbase. Has a knack for playing off-kilter, quirky, incredibly cool characters.
CON: Same problem as Elba, on the wrong side of the age scale; demand for her to star in movies and other time-consuming activities may make her unavailable anywho.
David Morrisey:
PRO: Already played The Doctor (kinda) in a Christmas special with David Tennant; fans liked the performance and wouldn't mind him as a real Doctor; has expressed interest; depends on when he needs to finish up filming for Walking Dead series (his character is due to die soon, but filming schedule is a tricky thing).
CON: Wrong side of age scale (late 40s)
Neve McIntosh (aka Madame Vastra):
PRO: Fans love her performance as Vastra, and some are arguing the Doctor could (in a rather complicated way) merge/regenerate using her as a template; having a non-human Who would be tempting to pull off.
CON: Make-up effects are costly; Vastra is already a cool character to begin with and she, Jenny and Strax deserve their own mini-series spinoff; don't want to confuse new fans with how regeneration works.
Emily Browning:
PRO: I'm just really keen on seeing a female Who, okay? Browning is a slightly recognizable actress from a few fantasy/horror films (best known for Sucker Punch) but not too well known to be an established quality meaning fans might be intrigued to see what she brings to the role; plus is on the right side of the age scale (24, younger than when Smith took on Eleven).
CON: All depends on her schedule, really; as an Aussie she's not home-grown, but she's Commonwealth and has the accent; I don't see a downside.
Someone We've Never Heard Of:
PRO: Leaves fans guessing how the character will act; unheralded actors come CHEAP.
CON: Gambling big time on a franchise to give it to an unknown quantity; yes it worked well with Smith as Eleven, but you can't stay lucky forever.
If I had my druthers I'd go with Lynch first, Browning second, Lewis third. We'll see if I'm right.
In the meantime, wanna good reason why Doctor Who is such a major force in modern geekhood?
