Vee

I'm getting to Season 3 as we speak. Good times.

Claire Labine talked at length in a WLS interview about the various aborted Holly stories in her time at the show - the Buzz and Billy triangle, the lesbian thing. I always thought the idea of bi/lesbian Holly lusting after a straight woman was a step back. I did like her with Jordan Clarke and Justin Deas.

I thought Abraham looked ridiculous. It was like the Street Fighter movie - put him in a tank top with a flat-top and dyed red hair, like he's Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile. This is why I prefer it when they deviate from Kirkman's tired comic, as they have with most of the show. The only reason the Governor worked for me is because they built that character slowly and differently from the cartoon of the comic.

This stuff was never going to get off the ground. It is scary in the moment, though.

Of course she did. Doesn't change the fact that she did it.

There are no more mainstream Republicans in office. There is only the fringe right - who were foolishly installed in a wave election by a power elite who mistakenly believed they could control the idiots they helped get elected - and the remaining old guard in office, formerly 'mainstream', who must struggle to pander to the extremist wing of their constituents in order to hold their seats. And as for the voters, your extremist wing is the most active, vocal and organized element of your party today. To retool and bastardize an old slogan, you bought it, you broke it, you own it.

Regardless, Jan Brewer did the right thing today.

Yes, Alec played for Bo's football team, and Phylicia Rashad's character, Courtney, was its PR person, IIRC. Together they formed a quad with Ed and Carla.

Holly waxed rhapsodic about Hill in her book. He had quite a career on the stage.

I had heard rumblings about a romance. But I have no idea where they're going with the character, except that I believe he is a companion.

As has been rumored for a while, the Doctor and Clara are getting a fellow companion: Clara's fellow Coal Hill schoolteacher Danny Pink.

Per Moffat:

For the fourth time in Doctor Who history, Coal Hill School is coming to the aid of the TARDIS. In 1963 teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright accompanied the First Doctor. These days it’s the turn of Jenna Coleman as Clara Oswald. And very soon now, Sam Anderson as Danny Pink will be entering the world of the Doctor. But how and why? Answers are coming later this year in Peter Capaldi’s first series of Doctor Who!

Is this show still edited, performed and paced like a silent film?

I don't think Rick had the wrong idea at the prison - Hershel supported it and he was right. They could build a stable community, and eventually they'll need to attempt one again. Those kind of safe zones are going to be the new normal. Their fatal mistake was leaving the Governor alive when he knew their location.

I sympathize with Rick a lot. And yeah, I think that whole episode does nothing but keep pushing Rick and Michonne. Danai Gurira should win for that scene in the herd.

It's an ensemble - I like seeing the show stretch.

I had heard it would be mostly

two or three-hander episodes with the group split amongst themselves

for the second half. I've no problem with that. I think it's innovative.

I see I missed nothing giving up on this after Week 1.

That was my point. The dialogue was not uncharacteristic of the Carlotta I knew. She was religious and devout but extremely open and welcoming.

Carlotta was very gay-friendly going back to the '90s.

Patricia Mauceri hardened her heart and her faith in the intervening years. She refused to play Carlotta - and while IIRC, the scene was more broadly comic than it had to be, nothing about it was out of character for Carlotta. Certainly not the line she quotes as refusing to have said - with Carlotta saying she knows her Bible and what it says and what her church believes, but she's going to choose for herself. That was absolutely her character. I loved her on the show and still miss her as Carlotta, but she's full of [!@#$%^&*] and she deserved to be let go.

The Doctor and Clara on location - in costume - in Cardiff. With video. I can't hear much of anything, but it looks like it's near the regeneration - Clara still has the same outfit from TOTD, while Twelve is in his new duds - and she is finally coming around. Quite a lot of a scene, bit of a silent film.

Here's the crazy part - word is that after Clara finishes her phone call, Capaldi supposedly says

"the man on the phone is right here - standing in front of you." Rumor has it that the reason the phone in the TARDIS was off the hook at the close of TOTD is because the Eleventh Doctor calls Clara in the scene shown above, just to pave the way for the new man. Whether or not they show Smith I have no idea.

I think it'd be a mistake to show it, but it is a ballsy idea.

Looks gorgeous.

Oh, my God.

Excerpted from Doctor Who Magazine, in a new interview with superfan Peter Capaldi:

Doctor Who Peter Capaldi says he was born to play the Time Lord and the role is “in his DNA”.

In his first interview since taking on the sci-fi role, the former Thick Of It star said the show has always been a huge part of his life.

Capaldi said: “I was five when the show started. I don’t remember Doctor Who not being part of my life, and it became a part of growing up, along with The Beatles, National Health spectacles, and fog. And it runs deep. It’s in my DNA.”

The 55-year-old told the February issue of Doctor Who Magazine that he was most looking forward to “getting on with it” and said the way he was unveiled as the 12th Time Lord on a special BBC1 show in August last year was a baptism of fire to his new found level of fame.

“Admittedly, it was somewhat outside of my comfort zone to be revealed in that way, but that’s the way it fell. I was nervous about the ‘Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be Doctor Who’ element. It seemed a million miles away from the actual job. However, in the end, I kind of enjoyed it. A little showbiz never hurt anyone. And Zoe Ball was great.”

Capaldi, who wrote a fan letter about Doctor Who to Radio Times in 1974, went on to say he “can’t stop” watching old episodes of Doctor Who as he began filming in Cardiff this week.

And he defended the lack of big budget effects in the old versions of the show.

He said: “People look at them now and, understandably, mock the bargain-basement monsters, and the accidents and collisions that came from having virtually no time in the studio to shoot fantastically ambitious stories. But those old shows were only made to be watched once, on a flickering monochrome telly that smelled of valves and furniture polish.

“In that context, they succeeded immeasurably. They were triumphs of imagination.

“It may surprise you now, but something like The Web Planet [an episode from 1965] lived powerfully and expansively in my head for decades… until the DVDs came along and spoiled the party. But I’m glad to say that the Menoptra eventually flitted back into my dreams, where they belong.”

The new series of Doctor Who featuring Capaldi will be on screen in the second half of the year. Show runner Steven Moffat told industry magazine Broadcast there will be at least 13 eps in 2014.

Oh, God, that's the early teen Kevin with the creepy doll face.

Look at little Erin and Chris McKenna.

The show circled and circled the Max/Asa relationship so many ways, for so many years - he loves him, he hates him, his father hated Asa, he's Asa's son, he's pretending to be his son, their families were at war, they are family, etc. I never understood all the permutations of that. It was a deep thing for them. It's amazing and ridiculous that less than ten years later JFP decided to do the story yet again. I would've liked to see Max do a guest run on the new show - scheming with Cutter and Natalie in some more Buchanan business. He has the existing relationship with Natalie, and he could have made Cutter's divided new life and nature complicated.

First pix of Peter Capaldi filming.

Unless I'm mistaken that may be the same outfit Clara was wearing in TOTD, so this may be from the first post-regeneration story - i.e., Capaldi's outfit is likely not final. It looks a little too similar to Smith's, because it probably is one of the Eleventh's. Oh, and the report confirms it's from the first story.

Oh, yes, but the Valeyard also was promised the Sixth Doctor's remaining regenerations, IIRC, if he got rid of him. Or something. The point is, the process has been established.

What was done in TOTD was also discussed more than once in the classic series - the Time Lords promised either the Master or someone else a full new set of regenerations if he did X or Y, I can't remember what. Or maybe it was the Valeyard, trying to get more life if he framed the Doctor for some corrupt Time Lords. And then the current group gave the Doctor just that on Trenzalore - a new set of regenerations.

I hope you enjoy her appearance on GH (played by Lisa Peluso, natch) in summer 2014.

(Not the worst idea, really)