December 2014 – Simon’s Incoherent Blog

Doctor Who–Last Christmas

“Do you know why people get together at Christmas? Because every time it might be the last time.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Do you know what, for me, is the biggest disappointment when I’m reading or watching a story? When it ends with some variant of “he woke up and it was all a dream”. For me it cheapens and discredits everything that went before, however good it might have been. It also provides licence for some very dodgy writing, with the inevitable defence that, if it’s a dream, it doesn’t have to make sense.

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Your Christmas TV Highlights!

It’s the time of year again when normally sensible TV genre shows abandon all logic in favour of doing “the Christmas episode”. While Christmas episodes sit well in comedy shows, they always seem oddly forced in shows like, say, The X Files, Supernatural or Grimm. Unfortunately it now seems de rigeur, especially for US shows – though we in the UK have the wildly fluctuating in quality annual Doctor Who special, which this year seems to have outdone itself by actually including Santa.

It’s only a matter of time before even critically acclaimed dramas will be obligated to produce a “Christmas episode” every year. What could that look like? Let’s find out…

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The Walking Dead: Season 5, Episode 8–Coda

“You keep telling yourself you have to do what it takes just until this is all over. But it isn’t over. This is it.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

So this week we bid farewell to The Walking Dead for a little while – till February, anyway. As has been traditional since season 2, the show has taken a mid-season break, giving rise to that new style of cliffhanger, the “mid-season finale”. Compared to previous years – and indeed to this season’s slam-bang opener – this was a surprisingly low key affair, both in action and in stakes. In season 2, the mid-season finale brought an unusual bit of excitement to Hershel’s farm when the barn zombies broke free and we discovered the tragic fate of Sophia; season 3 brought the reunion of the Dixon brothers after Rick’s ‘terrorist attack’ on Woodbury; and season 4 had the spectacular destruction of the prison along with the deaths of several established characters.

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