Benjamin T. Milnes, – Page 2 of 8

Deadpool 3 – Enjoyable, but flawed – 8/10

I would have liked to have reviewed this earlier, but this movie required a second viewing.

It was difficult to decide what to title this review. This movie is, in some ways, quite complex. It achieves some remarkable things with regards to the context in which it was made, but also has some crucial flaws that I think make it not quite as good as the first two movies in the series.

Where to begin. Well this movie masterfully handles the inclusion of the Deadpool franchise – and the X-Men franchise – into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is an aspect which it could have gotten very, very wrong – and I think with anyone other than Ryan Reynolds writing it, it would have gone very, very wrong.

This movie had many problems it had to solve. First, of course, was that the last time we saw Wolverine was in 2017’s Logan (seven years ago!). The general commentary around that movie was that it was going to be Hugh Jackman’s last performance of the character – I don’t know if that was an idea that came from Hugh Jackman himself, or whether the tone of the movie itself simply suggested it to everyone – but either way, that was the general understanding. And along with that also came the idea that this was the true end for the character. Logan was well and truly dead – his healing factor had finally given out. It was an extraordinary ability but it was not infinite. He was not coming back. (I found it a bit strange that everyone was willing to go along with this idea. It wasn’t as though the X-Men movies had handled timelines and do-overs perfectly up until that point. Timelines had been altered, people had come back, people had made unusual cameos – the studios had always just done whatever they wanted – that’s how it had been for years.)

This was what Deadpool 3 was facing as soon as they decided to include Wolverine. A lesser movie would have just avoided giving any explanation – it would have just included Wolverine and ignored any questions about timelines and settings and canon. This movie tackled it head-on – and that was the right way to do it.

The opening scene handles the questions that we the audience have. Surely Wolverine’s healing factor is infinite? Surely its slow-down was just a result of whatever that evil guy in Logan was doing with the water or something? Surely he’s actually alive? Surely Deadpool’s just got to dig him up?

Well he does, and no, he really is dead. A clever writing move – in writing it’s always extremely risky to bring a character back from the dead, as you undermine the ultimate stakes of any story. And how did Deadpool 3, therefore, get around this? By using the MCU’s new(-ish) multiverse to acquire an alternate Wolverine.

After Deadpool digs up Logan’s adamantium-coated skeleton, some people from the Time Variance Authority show up, and there’s a big fight. The Deadpool movies always start with a fight – which always includes lots of unusual and striking methods of attack, with plenty of gore, highlighted with slow motion.

Now, I was very sceptical when the TVA showed up. I do not think the TVA have been done very well at all. I did not watch the Loki television series. (Have there been two series’ of it so far? I don’t know.) Well – I watched the first episode and a quarter, or something – I can’t quite remember – but it was just dreadful and I couldn’t watch another second. I did not like the TVA in that and I haven’t liked them in anything I’ve seem them in.

I have said it many times before: time travel is difficult to get right as a writer – you have to be very careful about including it in a story. And even harder to get right is any kind of extra-temporal entity. Doctor Who has had problems with this in the past. The TVA seem to exist ‘outside’ of time, but the very fact that they can breathe and walk and talk at all shows that they themselves occupy a space-time. It might be a different space-time to our own, but they clearly occupy one. But then also the fact that they can and do interact with our own space-time shows that they are causally connected to it – they can take part in the events that they are supposedly ‘outside’ of temporal connection with. So to what extent are they really ‘outside’ of it at all. It just becomes meaningless – the TVA isn’t outside of time or outside of our reality at all – they are, unavoidably, inevitably, part of our timeline.

This is the kind of problem you run into when doing any kind of time-travel stuff in stories. Most writers are not mentally equipped to deal with the paradoxes of time travel – and it tends to show VERY quickly. The TVA come across as nothing special. They appear to be able to teleport, but they don’t seem to be able to do anything clever at all time-wise, despite ostensibly having the knowledge, means, and dimensional vantage point to do so.

In order to make something like the TVA work, they cannot merely be ‘quirky’, with some outdated, Arts décoratifs, brown-glass design choices. They must be unknowable. Any beings that are truly beyond time would have such a radically different experience of reality that we would struggle to understand them. Think of how in Interstellar the super-dimensional beings that make the tesseract towards the end never speak or communicate directly. We do not see them; we do not understand them – we only know of their existence through their actions. It doesn’t have to be taken to this extreme every time, but this is how you make something unknowable. They could have done this in the MCU, but they didn’t, and the result is that the TVA is plain and uninteresting. The TVA comes across as less powerful and less mysterious than SHIELD did.

So the moment I saw that the TVA was going to be included in this movie, I was sceptical. But actually, not only did this movie avoid some of the mistakes made with the TVA previously, it managed to repair the concept somewhat. And it did this by not over-using them. A few scenes later we meet Paradox – the movie’s second villain, or deuterantagonist. The fact that Paradox is not following the commands of the broader TVA, and working somewhat independently, allows for an explanation for the TVA’s apparent non-omnipotence. The TVA should be extremely powerful, but Paradox does not have many of the usual options available to him because he is trying not to draw attention to what he’s doing. Deadpool steals a device for travelling around the multiverse, and Paradox tries using a ‘time ripper’, but that’s it really. It sets the movie up for a standard ‘destroying the universe’ storyline with a little bit of multiversial travel to get another Logan. Beyond that the TVA’s just a bunch of kitch workers in a dreary super-dimensional office and their incapable henchmen. We don’t need to indulge the underwhelming ideas of Loki.

This is why I say that this movie achieves some remarkable things with regards to the context in which it is made. With just a few deft keystrokes, this movie has solved the problem of everyone expecting Logan to be truly dead, the problem of how the Deadpool stories can actually be included in the multiverse, and the problem of how to include the TVA (which they have to be to some extent), while also actually improving the TVA over their appearance in Loki. This movie manages to put one thread through several needles on its first try.

I’ve been going through this movie somewhat chronologically because it’s difficult to do anything else. The opening scenes – though clever, and solving many problems – do make one or two mistakes.

Something I found quite confusing on first watch-through, and which I still don’t understand now that I’ve seen it a second time, is how exactly the events of the first two Deadpool movies fit into the timelines and the multiverse. The second scene of the movie is the one between Deadpool and Happy Hogan. It’s a very funny scene – I’ll get to that in a moment – but we are told very explicitly that this is Earth 616 – i.e., ‘the Sacred Timeline’. This is the universe in which all of the events of the MCU before the multiverse split happened – it’s the one we know from the movies. But in the next scene we are told (very explicitly again) that we are looking at Earth 10005, and that it is six years later. So we’re in a different parallel universe, and it is this universe that the TVA pulls Deadpool from (and this universe that the TVA wants to destroy (I think – I’m pretty sure)).

So hang on, which universe did the events of Deadpool 1 & 2 occur in? The scene with Deadpool and Happy Hogan occurs in Earth 616 – does it also occur in Earth 10005? The text says ‘six years later’, implying it did (or that this is a pan-dimensional six years), and they reference it later – it’s given as the reason why Deadpool lost his motivation and split from Vanessa. If it happened in both, why show us it in a different universe? If the events of Deadpool 1 & 2 happened in both universes, then why even suggest that our Deadpool is not from the prime universe?

It’s not clear to me at all. Perhaps there’s an explanation out there on the internet, or perhaps it’s all clear if you watched Loki. I don’t know. This is something that should have been straightforward – either the Deadpool we know is from the prime universe or he isn’t.

This ties into another flaw in this movie – which I actually didn’t realise until after I’d finished watching the movie, even though it is quite obvious from the very first scene. It’s implied (obviously) that the Deadpool of this movie is the same as the Deadpool of movies 1 and 2. This movie also incorporates the events of Logan – Logan happens in the Deadpool universe. In Logan, Logan himself is old, as is Charles Xavier, but in Deadpool 2, when we’re in the X-Men mansion, we momentarily see the young X-Men cast. Charles is bald, so it’s after the events of X-Men: Apocalypse, but this means that between the events of Deadpool 2 and Deadpool 3, some 40+ years must have passed, which would not make sense given that none of Deadpool’s friends have aged.

So although Deadpool 3 managed to include itself into the MCU quite well – solving many problems along the way, it was not perfect. This is, in large part, a result of the mess made by other movies. It was always going to be hard to include the X-Men movies into the MCU, because the X-Men movies have a lot of inconsistencies like this. They simply were not as careful with the young-cast X-Men movies as they were with the MCU pre-Endgame.

Something this movie did incredibly well was weaving together all of the previously non-MCU movies into the MCU by the inclusion of characters from those movies. I mean, this was done really, really well – to the extent that this movie was an homage to 25 years of moviemaking. There are too many to list, but obviously having Chris Evans as the Human Torch from the Fantastic Four movie was a stroke of genius. It was a way to have Captain America in the movie without having Captain America in the movie. It was a brilliant twist when he said ‘Flame On!’. It was a nod through the fourth wall to the curious fact that, while Captain America and Fantastic Four were originally not part of the same cinematic universe, they were part of the same source material universe, and having the same actor in two different parts was ironic. It was also great seeing Chris Evans playing quite a different character from the rather earnest Captain America (which Chris Evans seemed to enjoy).

I was also thrilled to see the return of Azazel – though he wasn’t played by the original actor. I was also thrilled to see the return of Sabretooth and Pyro – both played by the original actors – I love that.

An absolute favourite was the return of Jennifer Garner as Elektra. For that alone I have given this movie an 8/10 instead of 7/10. 2005’s Elektra is an iconic movie for me, and I’m a huge fan of Garner’s version of Elektra – I was beyond thrilled that we got one more performance of the character here. (Personally, I’d quite like to see a whole new Elektra trilogy with Garner.)

Reynolds certainly knows what the fans like and want. It was amazing to see Henry Cavill for a short cameo as an alternate Wolverine. Few studio bosses would have had the awareness to do that. Nicepool was also a fantastic addition – Reynolds has the gift of knowing with extreme precision how a line or expression will come across, and that is why he’s able to create and play a character like Nicepool without it breaking the entire immersion.

Reynolds also knew what the fans wanted in terms of fights. We got two Deadpool vs. Wolverine fights – both of which were very creative – and we got a Deadpool and Wolverine team-up against the gang of different Deadpools (which had a perfect conclusion with no-one dying (except Nicepool) and the gang of Deadpools getting distracted by Peter).

Emma Corrin gave an outstanding performance as Cassandra Nova. That is not an easy character to play. Go too serious and the character becomes incomprehensible. Go not serious enough and the character doesn’t seem threatening. With a character like that, it’s not what powers she has that makes her threatening, nor is it how she uses them – it’s her own reaction to what she does with them that makes her come across as threatening.

The character of Paradox was a bit off. He was a very self-aware villain, somewhat over-the-top, and a bit camp. It made his motivation seem unserious. It was probably not helped by the fact that the protantagonist was introduced quite late in the movie.

I think one of the bigger flaws in this movie was it did not seem to fit with what we’ve seen of Wade and Vanessa in the previous two movies. In the first movie we were shown that Wade and Vanessa are very much made for each other. Vanessa dies near the start of the second movie, and the whole movie is about Wade’s sorrow – and then she comes back at the end. I just don’t believe that, after all of that, they would simply drift apart, as is shown at the start of this movie. Vanessa is almost entirely absent from this movie, which just doesn’t seem to make sense.

Something I also didn’t like in this movie was the ‘grotesque’. I have a very specific idea in my mind of what I think of as ‘grotesque’, and it’s often hard to convey, but I absolutely hate it. I would consider that ugly dog to be grotesque. Of course, the point of the dog was as a joke – that Deadpool would have an obsession with something so ugly. But it was still grotesque. I would also consider that flying skull version of Deadpool to be grotesque. I hated that too. It’s just repulsive – in a way that regular blood and gore isn’t. Were it not for these distorted forms, I might have given this movie a 9/10.

Above all, though, this movie is funny. This is possibly the funniest of the three Deadpool movies – the jokes are just packed in. Particularly funny is that second scene between Deadpool and Happy Hogan – an interview for Deadpool to join the Avengers with Jon Favreau – who plays Hogan – being one of the architects of the MCU. I suspect that scene was conceived of long before the rest of the story.

I think a third Deadpool movie would have been better if the franchise had not been included in the MCU – it could have focused much more on its existing characters like Vanessa, Negasonic, Yukio, Domino, Peter, and Dopinder. However, given that it was to be included, it did VERY well with the situation it had. It managed to neatly connect the X-Men franchise to the MCU, bring in Wolverine with a strong motivation (Wolverine as a character always seems to be best when he is filled with regret), solve some of the problems with the TVA, and be very funny. 8/10.

I’m going back to DVDs

Streaming is just so annoying now.

In the late 2000s and early 2010s I built up a large DVD collection. Well – it seems large to me, but I suppose compared to some collections it’s actually quite moderate. I don’t know the exact number, but I think it’s about 200 DVDs.

I was quite pleased with it, but by the mid 2010s it seemed quite pointless. Lots of what was in my collection was available on Netflix, and anything that wasn’t was likely an old-ish movie – 90s or early 2000s – and not something I was likely to rewatch that often. Also, I was running out of space. I have two shelves for DVDs – both of which have long been full, and I’ve just been stacking up the rest on top. It’s at risk of falling off the wall.

So I stopped adding to it. All was fine for a few years, but I’ve now decided to (mostly) abandon streaming for DVDs once more.

Streaming was fine when it was just Netflix. Now, though, in order to maintain access to the movies and television shows I like to watch, I have to have a subscription to Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video too, as well as buying some movies and shows through YouTube. When BritBox still existed I had to have a subscription to that too, and when Game of Thrones was on and still good I had to pay for NowTV (which was the shittest service I have ever encountered – I wasn’t so much watching a television show as enduring a PowerPoint presentation).

What’s even worse is that half the time I don’t even know where something’s going to be available. (I think most people get around this via their ‘smart TV’ – but I don’t have one – television for me is just something that’s open on a different browser tab.) And things come and go from different platforms. Something that I think is going to be available somewhere often turns out to no longer be.

And the most egregious sin of Netflix: when only the second movie of a trilogy is available. Why would I want to watch only the second movie of a set of three, Netflix? I will watch all three or none at all.

Streaming is now neither cheap nor convenient. (Add to that Hollywood’s burning desire to edit old movies and television shows to delete anything that doesn’t fit their latest extremist ideology and soon I’m paying a lot of money not to watch a heavily-censored movie.) DVDs nowadays seem to be very cheap (if you’re still on the old pre-Blu-ray ones as I am (yes I realise that makes me seem very old)), and they also allow for the wonderful surprise of rediscovering a movie you had otherwise forgotten about.

So I’m swapping back. Time to put up some more shelves.

The Rites of December

At the beginning of every year, I write a big list of the things I want to do that year. I’ve done this for the last few years now, and it’s a great way of keeping those things at the front of your mind throughout the year – I look back at it all the time.

Note that it is not a to-do list. These are not things that I have to do by the end of the year, and they don’t necessarily roll over into the next year if I don’t do them. It is simply a list of things I want to do – an intention list. (It’s a concept I want to explain more in another post or video.)

Inevitably, there are some things on the list each year that I don’t get round to – I’m just focusing on other things, and they get pushed to the back of the queue. What I want to do this year – and in subsequent years – is to make December the month of doing things that I haven’t gotten round to all year. All those things on the list for the year that I haven’t done yet I want to do in December.

Of course, there’s a good chance I won’t be able to do all of them. Some of them are quite big projects – far too much to do in one twelfth of the year – but that’s fine. To complement my New Year’s Day Tradition, and to give the year a sense of completion, for me, December is about finishing things off.

Words of Pain – Words that end with the Greek element ‘-algia’

The word ‘nostalgia’ refers to a sense of longing for a time in the past – perhaps a time in one’s own life or a time long before one’s life.

This word used to have a different meaning: a sense of longing to return home. This makes more sense given its etymology – it’s from Greek nostos, meaning ‘returning home’, and Greek algos, meaning ‘pain’.

The word is part of an entire etymological family of words that end with ‘-algia’. There are actually quite a lot of them. Most of them are nothing as abstract and philosophical as ‘nostalgia’ – most of them just refer, very literally, to pain in a certain part of the body. The table below lists a few (though far from all, as there are A LOT).

Noun	Meaning
myalgia	muscle pain
abdominalgia	abdominal pain (obviously)
brachialgia	arm pain
cephalalgia	head pain – a headache
dentalgia	tooth pain – toothache
glossalgia	tongue pain
ophthalmalgia	eye pain
polyalgia	many pains

There are a few particularly interesting ones. ‘Analgia’ – a state of painlessness. ‘Hypalgia’ – a reduced sensitivity to pain. ‘Hyperalgia’ – an increased sensitivity to pain. ‘Hypnalgia’ – pain during sleep. ‘Pygalgia’ – a pain in the arse.

There is another abstract one – ‘solastalgia’ – referring to a type of homesickness not when one has moved, but when one’s environment has changed. A very useful word.

Words of Healing – Words that end with the Greek element ‘-iatry’

What’s the difference between a psychiatrist and a psychologist? I remember wondering this years ago, and learning that a psychiatrist is the actual medical practitioner, while a psychologist is an academic who studies the human psyche.

I had this distinction memorised for many years without knowing the etymologies of the words. (Well, without knowing the etymology of ‘psychiatrist’ – ‘psychology’ is a fairly easy etymology to work out.) But recently I wondered where this ‘-iatrist’ ending comes from.

‘Psychiatrist’ is obviously just the agent noun from ‘psychiatry’, which is in turn from Greek psykhe, meaning ‘mind’, and Greek iatreia, meaning ‘healing’. So it’s a perfectly-formed word – no etymological quirks.

There are a few other Modern English words that use this ‘-iatry’ ending – or its derivatives and variants ‘-iatric’ and ‘-iatrist’. I’ve listed some of these in the table below. Curiously, in each case, only one form – the adjective, the noun, or the agent noun – is commonly used in Modern English, with the others not, and sounding a bit out-of-place. I’ve put the common-ish words in bold.

Adjective	Meaning	Noun	Agent Noun
bariatric	‘of or pertaining to obesity’, ‘of or pertaining to the healing of obesity’	bariatry	bariatrist
geriatric	‘of or pertaining to old age’, ‘of or pertaining to the care of the elderly’	geriatry	geriatrist
paediatric	‘of or pertaining to the care of children’	paediatry	paediatrist*
podiatric	‘of or pertaining to the healing of the feet’	podiatry	podiatrist

(*Of course we usually use the word ‘paediatrician’ here, but there’s no reason why it couldn’t be ‘paediatrist’.)

Not a very large selection of words. It’s curious that such a useful word-forming element is not used that much.

As I have done with the other posts in this series, however, we can get creative and imagine some new words that use this ending.

Noun	Meaning	Adjective	Agent Noun
ailuriatry	‘the healing of cats’	ailuriatric	ailuriatrist
cyniatry	‘the healing of dogs’	cyniatric	cyniatrist
chiriatry	‘the healing of the hands’	chiriatric	chiriatrist

And more. Such words could be quite useful in fantasy fiction, where there might be various different kinds of healer.

New Term: Autolobotomite

‘Lobotomite’ is a great word. It refers to someone who is brainless, stupid – as though they have been lobotomised. It’s a great insult that I like to use to refer to Hollywood writers.

We are living through the Great Age of Stupidity, and the demand for insults for stupid people greatly exceeds the supply. Much of the idiocy we see in the world today seems to be self-inflicted – people who have achieved great antisagacity (there’s another new word) by choosing to believe quite obvious nonsense, by refusing debate and discussion, and by rejecting anything that has even the slightest whiff of their enemy’s benodorous scent. There are people who seem to adore their own un-knowledge – and then they also resent anyone who criticises their own adoration of their un-knowledge. Instead of turtles all the way down, it’s just wilful stupidity supported by even more and stronger wilful stupidity.

For these people I can only use the term ‘autolobotomite’ – a person whose intellectual injuries are self-inflicted – a person whose lack of intelligence or knowledge is a result of their own beliefs.

Also, ‘antisagacity’ = ‘the opposite of sagacity’, and ‘benodorous’ = ‘nice-smelling’ – i.e., the opposite of ‘malodorous’.

New Term: Avant-Cliché

I actually came up with this term a few years ago. I thought I might have used it somewhere, but apparently not (unless it was in a video).

This was a term I came up with when reviewing movies and television shows – I think specifically it was when I was reviewing Star Trek Discovery that I thought of it. I remembered it again when watching reviews of Agatha All Along recently. (I haven’t actually watched any of Agatha All Along – the MCU turned to shit a while ago. I just watch the reviews.)

The word cliché refers to an expression that has been used so often – an expression that’s so tired and worn-out – that it has lost all meaning, and often is used only by people who cannot think of anything original or interesting to say.

The term avant-cliché refers to something that, though it has never been done or said before, is immediately a cliché the moment it is used – because it is something so predictably pathetic – such an obvious pattern in an absence of thought or insight – such a blatant appeal to overly-ruminant, self-indulgent, vapid, narcissistic emotion – that even though it is the first time it has been done or said, it feels as though you’ve seen or heard it a thousand times before.

I forget the thing that I originally saw that made me think of the term, but in the clips I’ve seen from Agatha All Along in the reviews, that stupid song they sang made me think of it. As a piece of music, it was so luridly bland – utterly lacking in interesting melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre – that it was as though I’d heard it thousands of times before, even though I’d never heard it before.

Words of Divination – Words that end with the Greek element ‘-mancy’

Continuing my series of posts on words from the same etymological families, in this post we will look at words that end in ‘-mancy’.

‘-mancy’ is a word-forming element of Greek origin that means ‘divination by means of’. For example, ‘cartomancy’ is ‘divination by means of playing-cards’. And ‘tasseomancy’ is ‘divination by means of reading tea leaves’ (which you might remember from Harry Potter).

We also use words ending in ‘-mancy’ to denote kinds of magic. ‘Necromancy’ is often used to mean a type of magic capable of reanimating dead bodies. ‘Pyromancy’ is often used as a general term for ‘fire magic’ – as in Game of Thrones. (Interestingly, it is the Mad King’s fire mages who are called ‘pyromancers’, but Melisandre is far more fitting of the term, since she does actually use fire for divination.)

This family of words is, clearly, of great use to writers of fantasy. And, it turns out, there are a lot more words in this family than one might first expect – most of them aren’t used very often – perhaps an opportunity to bring some back.

Below are words ending in ‘-mancy’ that I’ve been able to find in dictionaries.

Word	Meaning and Etymology	Agent Noun
bibliomancy	divination by means of opening a book at random; from Greek biblion, meaning ‘paper’, ‘scroll’; could perhaps also be used to refer to any magic that uses books	bibliomancer
spodomancy	divination by means of ashes; from Greek spodos, meaning ‘ashes’, ’embers’	spodomancer
sciomancy	divination by communication with shades of the dead; from Greek skia, meaning ‘shade’, ‘shadow’; could perhaps also be used just to mean ‘shadow-magic’	sciomancer
chiromancy	divination by the hand – palm-reading, essentially; from Greek kheir, meaning ‘hand’; could also be used to refer to any kind of magic that uses hand gestures	chiromancer
geomancy	divination by means of signs in the Earth – from Greek ge, meaning ‘Earth’	geomancer
lecanomancy	divination by inspection of water in a basin; ultimately from Greek lekos, meaning ‘plate’, ‘pan’; could also be used to mean divination by inspecting broken plates or pottery	lecanomancer
capnomancy	divination by smoke; from Greek kapnos, meaning ‘smoke’	capnomancer
gyromancy	divination by walking in circles; this is quite a funny one; from Greek gyros, meaning ‘circle’	gyromancer
crystallomancy	divination by means of crystals – looking into a crystal ball; from Greek krystallos, meaning ‘clear ice’; this word could also be used for ‘divination by looking into ice’ or ‘ice magic’	crystallomancer
rhabdomancy	divination by use of a divining rod; from Greek rhabdos, meaning ‘rod’, ‘wand’, ‘staff’; could also just be used to mean ‘wand-magic’ – so possibly quite a useful word; much of the magic in Harry Potter could perhaps be described as rhabdomancy	rhabdomancer
rhapsodomancy	divination by means of verses; from Greek rhapsodos, meaning ‘reciter of epic poems’; could be used to refer to any kind of magic that uses incantations – and so, like rhabdomancy, could refer to a type of magic that appears commonly in fiction; could also be used to refer to a kind of magic that uses songs	rhapsodomancer
cartomancy	divination by means of playing-cards; from Greek khartes, meaning ‘layer of papyrus’; could be used for any kind of magic that involves paper	cartomancer
astromancy	divination by means of the stars and planets – what today is commonly called ‘astrology’	astromancer
oneiromancy	divination through dreams; from Greek oneiros, meaning ‘dream’	oneiromancer
ophiomancy	divination through interpreting the movements of coiling snakes; from Greek ophis, meaning ‘snake’	ophiomancer
anthracomancy	divination by inspection of burning coals; from Greek anthrax, meaning ‘live coal’; potentially a useful word in combination with ‘pyromancy’	anthracomancer
arithmancy	divination by numbers; from Greek arithmos, meaning ‘number’	arithmancer
catoptromancy	divination by means of a mirror; this is quite a good one; from Greek katoptron, meaning ‘mirror’	catoptromancer
psephomancy	divination by means of pebbles; from Greek psephos, meaning ‘pebble’	psephomancer
tephromancy	divination by means of ashes (from a sacrifice); from Greek tephra, meaning ‘ashes’	tephromancer
ornithomancy	divination by means of birds; from Greek ornis, meaning ‘bird’	ornithomancer
pegomancy	divination by fountains; from Greek pege, meaning ‘fountain’, ‘spring’	pegomancer
pyromancy	divination by means of fire; from Greek pyr, meaning ‘fire’; also just a general word for ‘fire magic’	pyromancer
cubomancy	divination by throwing dice; from Greek kybos, meaning ‘die’	cubomancer
ceromancy	divination by inspection of melted wax; from Greek keros, meaning ‘beeswax’	ceromancer
psychomancy	divination by consultation with souls of the deceased; from Greek psykhe, meaning ‘soul’, ‘mind’; could just be used to refer generally to psychic powers	psychomancer
necromancy	divination by communication with the dead; from Greek nekros, meaning ‘dead body’; has the more general meaning of ‘black magic’, and is often used to mean ‘magic involving dead bodies’	necromancer
xylomancy	divination by means of wood; from Greek xylon, meaning ‘wood’, ‘timber’	xylomancer
onomancy	divination from the letters of a name; from Greek onoma, meaning ‘name’	onomancer
phyllomancy	divination by means of leaves; from Greek phullon, meaning ‘leaf’	phyllomancer
hydromancy	divination by the appearance or motion of liquids; from Greek hydor, meaning ‘water’; could just be used as a general term for ‘water-magic’ (such as water-bending in Avatar)	hydromancer
aeromancy	divination by means of air; from Greek aer, meaning ‘air’; could just be used as a general term for ‘air-magic’ (such as air-bending in Avatar)	aeromancer
lithomancy	divination by stones; from Greek lithos, meaning ‘stone’; can be used for ‘stone-magic’	lithomancer
chronomancy	divination to determine the favourable time for an action; from Greek khronos, meaning ‘time’; could just be used for ‘time-magic’	chronomancer

There are a few others that I found, but they were less interesting. As you can see, there’s a lot of them – you could use them in some quite interesting ways in fantasy stories.

The table below gives some words ending in ‘-mancy’ that I’ve made up with my limited knowledge of Classical Greek. (I haven’t checked if anyone else has made these up too – it’s quite possible.)

Word	Meaning and Etymology	Agent Noun
electromancy	divination by means of amber; divination by means of electricity; electricity-magic; from Greek elektron, meaning ‘amber’	electromancer
chromomancy	divination by means of colour; colour-magic; from Greek khroma, meaning ‘colour’	chromomancer
heliomancy	divination by means of the Sun; Sun-magic; from Greek helios, meaning ‘the Sun’	heliomancer
logomancy	word-magic; speech-magic; perhaps a term for any magic that involves incantations; from Greek logos, meaning ‘word’, ‘speech’	logomancer
anthomancy	flower-magic; from Greek anthos, meaning ‘flower’	anthomancer
selenomancy	divination by means of the Moon; from Greek selene, meaning ‘the Moon’	selenomancer

As is usual with these posts, I may add more words over time.

It’s over. It’s dead. 0/10 – Doctor Who – The Church on Ruby Road – Review

Before the 2023 specials, I was cautiously optimistic that Doctor Who could come back from death. There had been a number of concerning pieces of information that had come out in the lead up to these specials and the next series, but I remained hopeful.

The specials were a mixture of underwhelming, mediocre, and infuriating – not so much a problem if only one episode is like that, but all three were. Together, they were the worst writing I have ever seen from Davies – by far.

We’ve now been given a Christmas special – which I’m treating as the first episode of the next series, even though I think officially it’s not. I was optimistic about Gatwa as the Doctor – particularly in contrast to Jodie Whittaker, who was shit. But this optimism was misplaced.

This was one of the worst episodes of Doctor Who I’ve ever seen. (In fairness, I didn’t actually watch a lot of the Whittaker run – including that episode with all the ‘timeless child’ bollocks – my sense of how bad those episodes are comes from watching other reviews – it’s a much less visceral sense.) I award this episode 0 out of 10. I don’t think I’ve ever given anything 0 out of 10 before.

This episode completely and utterly shattered the immersion. You know those shatterproof rulers you used to have in school? Remember how ear-splitting the snap was when you did try to shatter it? That’s what this episode did to Doctor Who. This episode was so unlike Doctor Who, that when I was watching it, it was like I was watching another show. It was like I was watching one of Davies’ gay shows: Queer As Folk, Cucumber, It’s A Sin. Everything about it – the pacing, the aesthetics, the tone, the setting – was just like from one of those shows. This wasn’t a new series of Doctor Who – this was a new series of Queer As Folk.

The moment in the episode that exemplified this the most was the Doctor dancing in a nightclub, wearing a low-cut tank top and a skirt. (People will say that it’s a kilt, but to me its form appeared closer to a skirt – and given the gender-bending obsession of Russell these last few episodes, it seems plausible.) This moment is what drops the score to 0/10. There was actually one good thing in this episode (just one), but this nightclub scene was so bad that any and all remaining points are deducted.

I’ve already seen the qwerties of Twitter desperately trying to defend this shit. All the arguments boil down to the same thing: the qwerties like going to nightclubs themselves so they want the Doctor to as well – because god forbid the qwerties watch any character who isn’t identical to them.

The Doctor spinning around, arms in the air, grinning like a woman from HR getting kompromat on an employee at an office party, wearing a tank top that would be considered racy even in the queue for a glory hole, all while the most bland, directionless, meaningless, tuneless, non-music echoes in the background, and support dancers surround him, screwing their faces as hard as they can in a desperate attempt to suggest profundity, is a moment that shows us a character that is in no way connected to the actual Doctor at all. This is not the Doctor. This is so utterly incompatible with anything we have previously seen of the Doctor’s character, that all we can conclude is that this is not the Doctor. The immersion has been snapped. We are no longer watching Doctor Who – we are just watching Ncuti Gatwa dancing in a nightclub. That’s it.

Gatwa should be utterly humiliated by this. The absolute worst thing for you, as an actor, should be the audience not seeing the character – only seeing you. If that happens, it shows that you have utterly failed as an actor. We are not supposed to see you; we are supposed to see the character. This episode, in my opinion, seriously damages Gatwa’s career. I would hope that his agent is shouting down the phone to Russell at this very moment for allowing this to go out on television.

Nothing – nothing at all – about Gatwa as he appears here is reminiscent about William Hartnell’s portrayal of the Doctor. It’s laughable to even mention them in the same sentence. As I say – this isn’t Doctor Who – it’s an extra episode of Queer As Folk. Even worse, this moment has fuck all to do with the rest of the episode – it’s just there to make a statement.

The rest of the episode is little better: an inexplicable voice-over at the start (Russell seems rather keen on those at the moment), a lot of wasted time and dialogue (this episode could have been 15 minutes shorter), a grotesque set design for the apartment (it looked like the 70s had thrown up all over it), some pointless and unrealistic dialogue from the supporting actors (and some ghastly acting too – particularly from the actors who played the next-door neighbours).

Gatwa’s non-character claims to discover a new kind of science in this episode: the science of luck. Once again Russell is showing his recent lapse into unoriginality here – he did a similar thing in that episode about Shakespeare in series three. Gatwa’s non-character also claims to be ‘learning the vocabulary of rope’ as he tries to understand some knots. He’ll be gutted to discover that topology has already been studied and well understood for decades.

There is one good thing in this episode, and that’s the CGI for the goblins – they’ve done that very well. The goblin king is also fun and well-designed. (Although again, Russell shows his unoriginality – this goblin king is very similar to the one in The Hobbit.)

Unfortunately the goblins are ruined by their giving us a musical number. An overly-heavy beat and a trumpet that sounds like an Argos keyboard isn’t something anyone with a mental age greater than three wants, Russell. You might think that couldn’t get worse, but it does – with the addition of an autotuned Gatwa and side-kick (I forget her name – she’s quite a forgettable character).

There’s a hilarious moment when a woman in the nightclub shouts ‘Give us some willie!’ at a man pretending to be a woman on the stage. I think it’s supposed to be ‘Give it some wellie!’ – the perils of enunciation.

I’m surprised that the qwerties weren’t outraged by the goblins in this episode. After all, the qwerties insist, time and time again, that Rowling’s use of goblins in Harry Potter was antisemitic. In this episode, goblins are not only present, but they literally steal and eat children. They are also the cause of all the misfortune in everyone’s life. Why on earth the qwerties aren’t screaming antisemitism at this episode, I don’t know. (But consistency of position was never their strength.) I also notice that no-one asked each other what their ‘preferred pronouns’ were in this episode. According to Russell, this is bigotry, so I guess we are supposed to consider all of these characters bigots.

And all the remaining time in the episode is just filled with virtue signalling and The Message.

That was an absolutely atrocious episode. With that episode and the three that preceded it – all of which had a multitude of serious, serious flaws – I am forced to conclude that Doctor Who is well and truly dead. Completely and utterly dead. There is no point watching the rest of Gatwa’s series. I won’t be watching it or reviewing it.

Doctor Who should be cancelled. What the franchise needs is to be left alone – for at least a decade. Leave it alone; do nothing with it. Whoever picks it up again after that will be someone entirely different – hopefully someone who hasn’t been infected with this idiocy virus. It’s rare that I will outright call for a show to end, but now I am: cancel it. This also represents the downfall of Russell T. Davies. He has written many excellent shows over the years: Queer As Folk was well-written for what it was (I just don’t want Doctor Who to become it); Cucumber, A Very English Scandal, and It’s A Sin were all fun; and of course, the first four series’ of New Who. But these episodes have been an absolute disaster. Russell appears to have lost his talent.

Preachy, tiresome, but with a few fun moments, 7/10 – Doctor Who – The Giggle – Review

Where to start with this review? This episode was all over the place. It had some moments of brilliance, some moments of tiresome idiocy, some very promising moments, and some moments of what I can only describe as übercreep.

But first, Russell T. Davies would like us all to know that he’s very, very clever. Really, he is. He is very, very, very, very clever. He’s far cleverer than all of you, and he’d like you to know that.

It was clear right from the start that this was one of those episodes that’s going to have that gross, grotesque, ‘creep’ factor – in the form of those horrid dolls. This is certainly not the first episode to have that factor – S5E2 The Beast Below had it – with those horrid, disgusting ‘smilers’. It’s a thing that’s appeared in many other shows too. I think of this quality as being very easy to identify, but I don’t think it really has a proper name. I find it grotesque and repulsive, but these words alone don’t really emphasise just how perverse it always seems, so I think I shall call it übercreep. I find that kind of imagery – those misshapen dolls, with their malformed noses and rather noncy grins – to be uniquely repulsive. That’s the point, of course – to be creepy and repulsive – I guess some people find it entertaining – I don’t.

I think there’s this idea that übercreep makes for good television because it’s ‘scary’. But it’s not scary – it’s just repulsive. As such, it doesn’t really maintain any suspense. Things in a story are only really scary when the characters can’t do anything about them, but the only correct respond to these rather noncy dolls is to kick their fucking faces in and toss them in a skip, and preceding that to talk about how noncy they are. When tension is only maintained by a creep factor, you can cut through it with only words.

Some people like übercreep; I don’t – and it’s subjective, so I won’t mark the episode down for that.

Also, in case you missed it, Russell T. Davies is very, very clever. Did you know that? Very, very clever. And he’s going to remind you of that every two minutes in this episode.

We get some dialogue telling us that everyone in the world has suddenly started thinking they’re right all the time. The dialogue is absurdly expository (Jesus fucking Christ Russell, put some fucking effort in) and it’s also wrong. We see in that scene, as well as all later scenes, that people don’t actually just think they’re always right, they’ve just been driven into a state of mania where they’re very entitled, conspiratorial, and angry.

You see, what Russell’s doing here is very clever. Did you catch it? No of course not, because Russell is being very, very subtle here. He’s making an allegory for social media. Everyone always thinks they’re right on social media don’t they? And they’re always arguing with each other aren’t they? What an astute observation Russell’s made in 2023. (That was sarcasm, for the people at the back.)

Yep, this whole episode is going to be one giant allegory to social media.

Now, I don’t dislike allegory. I’ve written quite a lot of allegorical stories myself, and hope to keep writing more. But as I’ve said before, it’s not good when allegorical stories come across as preachy or patronising. (I hope mine never do – I fear that it’s something one cannot detect in one’s own stories.) It’s also not good when the allegory is insanely basic. What Russell seems to have gone for here is ‘social media bad’. Wow – what insight Russell. No-one has ever made that observation before. Do expand on that. Oh, you’re not going to?

As I said, Russell is very, very clever.

We’re taken to Avengers Tower. Oh no wait it’s UNIT Tower. They look very similar. Russell’s really going for the original ideas this series. It’s nice that UNIT has been made sensible again – I could never keep track of what was going on with them in the Moffat and Chibnall years. (Also nice that we get a bit of that UNIT leitmotif back – they could stand to do a bit more of that.)

Jemma Redgrave is back as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. I can hardly remember anything of the Capaldi run, so I couldn’t tell you anything about this character’s backstory, but I vaguely recognise her. Jemma Redgrave performs the part very well.

Bonnie Langford is back as Melanie Bush. I’m not well-versed in Classic Who, but I could tell the second she appeared on screen that she was a classic character. Langford also by far gave the best performance of the episode, despite having quite a small part.

Wheelchair Lady is back. She’s fun. Did they ever tell us her name? I don’t know. They make a point, though, of, when Lethbridge-Stewart has her anti-spike Zeedex turned off, her angrily saying ‘I’ve seen you walking’ to Wheelchair Lady, and then apologising to her when her Zeedex is turned back on. An obvious allusion to the phenomenon of people online not always believing when someone is disabled. Isn’t Russell clever for putting that in there? Isn’t he clever? It definitely doesn’t pull you out of the story for a few moments.

Actually that reminds me, I don’t think I heard a single person in this episode ask anyone what their ‘preferred pronouns’ were. Bigots, the lot of them. That’s what Russell thinks, anyway.

We get some more wonderfully subtle, subtle, very subtle, totally-not-obvious allegory from Russell: ‘The world is now 100% online.’, ‘Everyone is connected.’, ‘For the first time in history, everyone has access to this – a screen.’, ‘Hating each other – you never needed any help with that.’. Tip of the fedora back to you Russell – this is top stuff. It’s said that the dildo of consequences rarely arrives lubed, well the dildo of unsubtlety is twelve inches too big and slathered with mayonnaise, and Russell is going to slap you in the face with it.

Tennant and Tate have seemed ‘off’ for the last two episodes. In this episode, they are right back to form. The Doctor and Donna in this episode seem like an exact continuation from series 4, which is good.

The Toymaker makes a return in this episode. I’m quite glad that they’re selectively bringing back things from Classic Who. He’s played by Neil Patrick Harris. Unfortunately Neil Patrick Harris always just seems like Neil Patrick Harris. He’s like Johnny Depp and Ryan Reynolds – he’s always really playing the same character. I felt like I was watching A Series Of Unfortunate Events – this rendition is basically just Count Olaf.

Also, Russell seems to be almost exclusively choosing gay, transgender, or “queer” actors for parts. Neil Patrick Harris, Nathaniel Curtis, Miriam Margolyes, Yasmin Finney, Ncuti Gatwa. Statistically unlikely to not be a deliberate choice. Is it even legal to hire people on those grounds?

There are some basic errors of continuity. The Doctor says ‘when he was young’ when referring to his last encounter with the Toymaker, but with all the Timeless Child nonsense, the Doctor was already old by the time he was the ‘First Doctor’. The Doctor also calls himself a Time Lord, but he’s not – he’s an unknown species. (Well, that’s my understanding based on what I’ve heard of the Timeless Child nonsense – I never watched the episode itself – only the reviews.)

We get some more übercreep. I don’t care for it. Donna has the right idea – she kicks it in the face. Count Olaf gives us a recap of several series’, including ‘The Flux’ – whatever that is. I don’t care Russell – I just don’t care.

Did I mention that Russell is very clever? He’s certainly not going to let us forget. ‘[The Doctor] The human race, back in the future, why does everyone think they’re right? [The Toymaker] So that they win. I made every opinion supreme. That’s the game of the 21st century. They shout and they type and they cancel.’

Oh clehp clehp clehp clehp clehp clehp clehp clehp clehp Russell. Oh how astute! Those people on the internet they sure do love to ‘cancel’ don’t they Russell? When will they learn? Surely after witnessing this delightlessly deft writing, Russell. Now get this mayo dildo out of my face.

We get a scene of Count Olaf dancing to the Spice Girls. It’s actually quite a visually spectacular scene – well made on a technical level. But it did just look like Neil Patrick Harris having fun dancing in a costume – I wasn’t sold on it.

‘[The Doctor] I don’t understand why your so small!!!’ – that’s ‘cause he’s far away dear – move closer and he’ll appear bigger.

We’re then introduced to a new thing: ‘bi-generation’. I actually find this idea quite interesting. The Doctor has essentially reproduced here. We don’t know what species the Doctor is, so we don’t know how it reproduces – apparently it’s by mitosis. (With all Russell’s polemicising about the universe being ‘non-binary’, it’s ironic that he’s chosen a method of reproduction that is distinctly binary.) Apparently it’s caused by the galvanic beam, so the Doctor could now reproduce indefinitely (though obviously that won’t happen, for the sake of the writers’ feeble hands).

Can’t say I’m thrilled to discover what kind of underwear the Doctor wears, though. I’d’ve thought a time-travelling, billion-year-old super-genius would’ve worked out that white cotton button-up boxer-briefs are a hard no. Might I suggest a polyamide-elastane blend for sir? (Also, the clothes being shared between the bi-generated Doctors and the Gatwa-Doctor wearing underwear means that the Tennant-Doctor is going commando. That’s not something I wanted to know.)

We’re given a bizarre moment of Gatwa embracing Tenant saying ‘I got you.’. God it’s weird. Here’s a rule of television writing for you: never have a younger character act like a parent to an older character. It’s weird and creepy.

The Master is apparently locked inside the Toymaker’s gold tooth, which for some reason falls out before he goes all origami. A hand picks up the tooth, in an almost exact replica of the scene from several series’ ago where a hand picks up the Master’s ring, which somehow contains his essence. (I think that’s how it goes – I can’t be bothered to look it up.) Who’s hand is that? Who was even standing there on that part of the platform? I don’t think anyone was.

The duplicate TARDIS is apparently wheelchair-accessible. Apart from the entire inside, of course – quite a few steep inclines. Isn’t virtue-signalling great?

Gatwa doesn’t really have enough of his own time in this episode to judge his performance – I guess we’ll wait until the next episode to see how that turns out.

And that’s it. That was the episode. Gosh, it’s worse on the second viewing.

There were some great moments in that episode – the structure made it fun, and there were some entertaining (if not good) performances – but there was also a lot of dizzying, preachy, tiresome, eye-roll-worthy nonsense. This could have been a great episode – I think it could have been a 9/10, if Russell had just had some self-restraint. I’d have to put it at a 7/10.

I was hoping that with these three episodes Davies would establish that Doctor Who had turned around – that it would no longer cling to the tropes of bad fan fiction. These three episodes have failed to do that. This really should be a lesson for all writers in the importance of not doing things that pull your readers or viewers out of the story. When I think back over the episodes, the things I remember most vividly are the nonsense: the gender-woo of the first episode, Indian Newton of the second episode, and the multitude of weird things from this one. It all pulls you out of the story, and when something pulls you out of the story, it’s like putting a spotlight on that thing.

I don’t want to watch any of these episodes again. Not a good sign at all – especially since as I’m writing this I’d quite like to go back and rewatch series’ 1-4 of New Who. I’ll give Gatwa’s first full series a watch, but I am much less optimistic about it than I was.