Doctor Who Edition: The Great Fandom Swap!

with Nancy of Graphic Novelty²

Michael from My Comic Relief and I have been good friends for years now, as we both started blogging within a few months of each other and discovered each other’s blogs early on. I even had the pleasure of meeting him during a family vacation, as my family and I arranged to meet up for lunch with him and Kalie, who writes Just Dread-Full. For awhile we have good-naturedly pushed the other to start watching our favorite fandoms – which for Michael is Doctor Who and for me Star Trek, specifically The Next Generation. What is amazing about both our series is that they both began in the 1960s, had a few speedbumps to overcome, but then were re-tooled for the better in recent years. So we both choose eight episodes to best represent our favorite fandom and had the other watch them, after giving each other some introductory comments.

Star Trek Edition: The Great Fandom Swap!

with Nancy of Graphic Novelty²

Friendship is wonderful, isn’t it?  It can lead you to do all sorts of things you’d never do on your own.  I’d start listing examples but, c’mon, then we’d be off on a tangent (a beautiful, nourishing, and entertaining tangent to be sure!) which could fill pages.  Let’s cut to the chase!  My friendship with Nancy of Graphic Novelty² – my oldest, longest, and dearest blogging friend – has led to an historic first.  I, Michael John Miller, author and operator of the blog My Comic Relief, am writing about Star Trek for the very first time.  You see, Nancy loves Star Trek and I’d never seen a single episode of Star Trek (only the JJ Abrams films).  I love Doctor Who and Nancy had only seen a few episodes in passing.  So, in the name of friendship, AMAZING THINGS, and blog content, we did our first ever Fandom Swap!  Eagerly sharing what we love with the other, Nancy chose eight episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (her favorite iteration of the show) for me to watch and I gave Nancy eight episodes of Doctor Who. 

Fiction’s Fearless Females – Wendy Torrance

By Kalie Zamierowski of Just Dread-full

One of my favorite scenes in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is a two or three second shock during which a series of terrifying events happen.  At this point in the film, Danny has been replaced by Tony, who’s saying “Redrum” in a voice that’s robotic at first and amplifies in intensity and urgency as Jack’s presence gets closer.  As Danny—or “Tony,” his psychic alter-ego—screams “Redrum,” Wendy reads the words backward in the mirror.  The camera pans in on the word “murder” written in childish handwriting with blood-red lipstick.  Almost as soon as we, the viewers, read “murder” in the mirror, we hear the unnerving sound of an ax chopping through wood and the camera moves to Jack, who wields the huge, sharp, silver device and uses it to slice through the wooden door of the caretaker’s quarters, where Danny and Wendy reside.  As if this nexus of sensation weren’t enough to alarm us, the viewers, and pull as even a little more deeply into The Shining’s sinister, unpredictable world, Wendy’s voice intercepts this moment with a simultaneously frenetic and bone-chilling scream—a scream that we’ll hear different variations of for the rest of the movie.  In turn, we, as the viewers—at least a little bit—start feeling Wendy’s maddening fear, and our cognition is ultimately forced to accept a mis-en-scene and narrative moment that’s eliminated anything reassuring or comforting for us to latch onto.  We are, in a sense, in the void, and we are there with Wendy.

Fiction’s Fearless Females – Rey

By Kiri of Star Wars Anonymous

I have heard that the opposite of love is fear, not hate, which may be first emotion that comes to mind due to the love/hate analogies we often make. If we go by that assumption, then someone who is fearless, or without fear, is someone who loves immensely.

Fiction’s Fearless Females – Princess Leia

By Jeffrey Cagle of The Imperial Talker

There is a line in Star Wars: A New Hope which often gets lost in the greater scope of the film, a quote which points to the toughness of the movie’s lone female protagonist, Princess Leia. It comes when Darth Vader, the movie’s villain, speaks to Grand Moff Tarkin, the secondary villain in the film. Pacing back and forth as if annoyed, Vader admits that, “Her [Leia’s] resistance to the mind probe is considerable. It will be some time before we can extract any information from her.” Prior to this admission, we saw Vader enter Princess Leia’s prison cell with an interrogation droid floating behind him, a needle protruding from the droid and Leia’s face giving off subtle apprehension. Now, Vader states that it was for not, that the Princess has resisted this “mind probe” and that breaking her will take more time.

Fiction’s Fearless Females – Scarlett

By Rob of My Side of the Laundry Room

When the subject of fearless women in fiction ever comes up, my thoughts instantly go to the first woman I ever idolized. Her name was Scarlett and she was a member of G.I. Joe. When I was a kid growing up in the 80s, G.I. Joe had three separate “universes”. There was the toyline, the cartoon, and the comic book. These three things weaved together from time to time but usually they distanced themselves from each other, only coming together with one goal in mind…making Hasbro Toys money.

Fiction’s Fearless Females – Amy Pond

There was an idea.  Jeff knows this.  The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable bloggers to see if they could become something more.  To see if they could work together when we needed them to, to celebrate a collection of incredible female characters we never could on our own.  This week it’s my turn and I’m shining my spotlight on the incomparable Amy Pond, my all-time favorite companion to ever set foot inside the TARDIS in the world of Doctor Who.