Beautiful and Necessary: The Empowerment of “That Scene” at the end of Avengers: Endgame
I am now four days out from my first and, so far, only viewing of Avengers: Endgame and I have thought about it every single day. My mind keeps drifting back to it, mulling it over, remembering moments that moved…
Review| Instant Family
Instant Family is a comedy about a very serious thing: foster care. While the traumas that bring kids away from their birth families and into the foster system are no laughing matter, the messiness that results from imperfect people trying…
Who-ology| S03E03 Gridlock
This episode has long been one of my favorites, certainly of season 3, possibly of all Doctor Who. There are so many threads worth following in this thematically rich story: kidnapping, drug addiction, terrible consequences of the human propensity towards excess, repentance and…
Who-ology| S03E02 The Shakespeare Code
This episode is all about the power of words. And who better to feature in a language-focused story than the generally-lauded King of the Written Word, William Shakespeare! “By the pricking of my thumb / Something wicked this way comes”: Also appropriate is…
Who-ology| S03E01 Smith and Jones
In this second episode of the new season, the Doctor finds himself in a hospital that is displaced to the moon by the Judoon. These rhino-looking alien creatures are “police for hire” who have taken the hospital to “neutral territory” in order to…
Who-ology| S03E00 The Runaway Bride
“The Runaway Bride”—a Christmas episode—follows immediately on the heels of the season 2 finale: just after losing Rose, the Doctor is thrown into a new adventure. He doesn’t seek it out. It appears right in front of him in the…
Review| The Light Between Oceans
In terms of storytelling, director Derek Cainfrance is a novelist. The journey through The Light Between Oceans is careful, sometimes excruciating. It lingers over moments, drawing them open with beautiful images rather than words so that the shifts between them…
Who-ology| S02E13 Doomsday
As noted in last month’s Who-ology, the Christian narrative starts with the distortion of truth in the Garden of Eden: with good being called evil, and light being called darkness (Isaiah 5:20, Genesis 3:4,5). That is the beginning of the…
Who-ology| S02E12 Army of Ghosts
“Army of Ghosts” is part one of the two-part story that is the finale of season two. At its beginning, the Doctor and Rose return to modern-day London to visit Jackie Tyler, only to find that the world has gone…
Who-ology| S02E11 Fear Her
If there’s anything the Doctor believes in, it’s companionship. Even when he finds himself without a semi-permanent traveling buddy, he is making friends with whomever he comes into contact with on his adventures. Companionship is the centerpiece of this episode. Perhaps the…